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Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

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Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#22

For a weather forecaster this is a really strange take. Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is. Adding energy to the system produces a wider range of possible outcomes. This is absolutely one of the possible outcomes. A few degrees less war…

While I admire your ardor, and agree with you that anthropogenic global warming is a serious problem, your explanation lacks a specific mechanism, and the disrespect you show towards the experts is reprehensible. I found these facts in the article interesting: - This is not actually unprecedented -- hurricane Patricia in 2015 did the same thing, more intensely. - "Sea surface temperatures were close to 31°C over Otis…

I must agree with you about disrespecting the experts. All of the best models created by the best meteorologists/climatologists suggested this wasn't going to come to pass. This was an extreme happening and brushing it off as rudimentary chaos theory is not useful.

Some of the weather people I see on Mastodon were talking about how this was a freak happening, but the article helped me understand that better. Forecasting hurricanes has gotten remarkably good, so this was surprising to me.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#23

For a weather forecaster this is a really strange take. Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is. Adding energy to the system produces a wider range of possible outcomes. This is absolutely one of the possible outcomes. A few degrees less war…

> Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is.

This is a bit of a strawman. It's not that "no one thought this was possible".

We've known that we will be seeing storms that are larger, stronger, and faster forming than what we've seen before.

It's not been known that our current forecasting tools will be 100% useless in predicting when those much-worse storms would form. That's what was shocking; not just the rate of intensification, but that it failed to be predicted at all, so soon before the event happened.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#24
post #11

> So how did every reliable model we use miss this? That’s for graduate students and researchers to answer in the coming years, because I have no formal idea. Would love to see followup on this. Wish there were some way to like bookmark or something and come back in a few years.

add a calendar event for when you want to be reminded

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#25

For a weather forecaster this is a really strange take. Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is. Adding energy to the system produces a wider range of possible outcomes. This is absolutely one of the possible outcomes. A few degrees less war…

While I admire your ardor, and agree with you that anthropogenic global warming is a serious problem, your explanation lacks a specific mechanism, and the disrespect you show towards the experts is reprehensible. I found these facts in the article interesting: - This is not actually unprecedented -- hurricane Patricia in 2015 did the same thing, more intensely. - "Sea surface temperatures were close to 31°C over Otis…

technically correct! the best kind of correct!

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#26

For a weather forecaster this is a really strange take. Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is. Adding energy to the system produces a wider range of possible outcomes. This is absolutely one of the possible outcomes. A few degrees less war…

It is strange, but it’s not. My friends keep asking me why it seems like the weather predictions are always off lately. I tell them because they have no climate models for the state of the climate that we’re living in right now. They’re all based on past climate. so this weather forecaster is just doing the same thing, he’s trying to predict future events on past performance. What they need to do is start looking rig…

I don’t see how taking advertising dollars from fossil fuel companies affects anything. It’s not like we’ll suddenly stop burning carbon if we stop oil and gas companies from advertising. The demand for oil will still be there. We need to make alternative energy sources cheaper than fossil, then demand will plummet.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#27
post #11

> So how did every reliable model we use miss this? That’s for graduate students and researchers to answer in the coming years, because I have no formal idea. Would love to see followup on this. Wish there were some way to like bookmark or something and come back in a few years.

there is already a very good theory. see this interview with an expert from Yale: https://youtu.be/CSVFpval4Dw?si=oelutbqzOGcpI8gm

tldr: garbage data into the model, garbage out.

Detailed summary from interview: • only 1 hurricane hunter flight was done into this storm. • mexican hurricanes just don’t get as much reporting coverage (historically). For example for atlantic hurricanes, NOAA hurricane hunter airplanes have tail doppler radar, which provides good data to feed into the model. • without detailed doppler radar, they had to fallback to satellite measurements. • Mexico doesn’t have ground based radar coverage at all, like the US coast does.

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#28
There's something going on over there: "From October 9 to October 25, western Mexico has been hit by FOUR consecutive eastern North Pacific tropical cyclones. " https://twitter.com/DrKimWood/status/1717557808147943922

I found this analysis more comprehensive https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/10/nightmare-scenari...

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#29

For a weather forecaster this is a really strange take. Anybody who understands what the big words 'climate change' mean, could have predicted this. HAVE predicted this. I personally have predicted this and I'm not even a weather forecaster, I just know what chaos theory is. Adding energy to the system produces a wider range of possible outcomes. This is absolutely one of the possible outcomes. A few degrees less war…

It is strange, but it’s not. My friends keep asking me why it seems like the weather predictions are always off lately. I tell them because they have no climate models for the state of the climate that we’re living in right now. They’re all based on past climate. so this weather forecaster is just doing the same thing, he’s trying to predict future events on past performance. What they need to do is start looking rig…

> no climate models for the state of the climate that we’re living in right now

That was the overall impression I got from the article: model after model predicted unremarkable intensification, and they were consistently wrong.

Out models are only as good as the input parameters, all of which are based on data from a past that no longer applies. Is there a way to apply climate change modelling to short-term weather modelling? Change the forecasting from "we expect such-and-such to happen because that's the most common case over the past 50 years" to something like "in the past we'd expect such-and-such to happen but including more recent work we expect a different thing"?

Re: Trying to make sense of why Otis exploded en route to Acapulco

#30
post #11

> So how did every reliable model we use miss this? That’s for graduate students and researchers to answer in the coming years, because I have no formal idea. Would love to see followup on this. Wish there were some way to like bookmark or something and come back in a few years.

Post it on Reddit and use the reminder bot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindm...

Or put it on your calendar with an email alert ;)

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