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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

#101

Post by Applejinx »

acdha wrote: post #34
Podgajski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One problem: if you acknowledge climate change on air, you’re risking a lot of flack and even violence from people who are steeped in right-wing science denial: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184461263/iowa-meteorologist... I agree they need to act but also understand someone not wanting to put themselves or their family at risk.

I feel like acknowledging climate change on Hacker News can produce similar reactions :)

I stand by literally everything I said, and would add that I expect another event, let's say half an order of magnitude more horrific, within five years.

Due to the nature of what chaos is, there's no telling where and when: could even come out of seemingly nowhere. But it's latent in what the situation is, and is the expression of what chaos means. And when the global system was that few degrees cooler, the upcoming event (or Otis) could not have happened.

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

#102

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

rob74 wrote: post #80
zootboy wrote: post #51

This headline could really use the word "hurricane" in it. I had no idea what Otis or Acapulco were, and my initial guess was wildly off: some sort of space probe experienced a catastrophic failure on the way to an asteroid.

I know what Acapulco is, but when reading "Otis" I first think of elevators, which very rarely explode...

One thing that they have in common with nice girls.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093617/

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

#103

Post by Applejinx »

cratermoon wrote: post #29
Podgajski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Yes. And they'll be doing just that. They couldn't even be modeling this without modeling chaotic systems: their models are chaotic systems too. With another model, the Otis event MIGHT have appeared, or might have appeared one run in a hundred.

With their current modeling, the Otis event might have appeared in their model one in a thousand runs, or one in ten thousand, depending on if they're accurately capturing the energy state of the system. They might've discarded it if it came up, as a glitch.

When real life glitches you don't get to re-run the model for more optimistic results.

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

#104

Post by Applejinx »

margalabargala wrote: post #23
Applejinx wrote: post #2

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…

I think it's wrong to imply that the current tools are 100% useless. I've seen a guy on youtube drawing on apparently elaborate weather models from multiple sources and they're just the sort of thing that would highlight the risks.

This guy (Ryan Hall (y'all)) has repeatedly highlighted the high sea temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, stressing that they could produce rapid intensification of hurricanes, several times this season. The times that he drew this to his viewers' attention, the giant storms didn't happen.

This time, in the Pacific Ocean, in a different location not covered by his audience demographic, under the same conditions he's been highlighting right down to the warm ocean waters, the giant storm did.

Our tools are NOT useless, much less 100% useless. We're looking at windows into chaos. The rules are just different. A guy like I mentioned has to be concerned with crying wolf if he repeatedly warns against a super-storm that fizzles, but he's gonna keep doing it if he's honest, because he knows there will come a time when he calls it and is giving a warning for something that will come as a surprise.

You can SEE the conditions and go 'uh-oh'. Our current forecasting tools show these conditions, pretty well. You simply can't be certain which will turn into an explosion, and which will fizzle.

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

#106

Post by Applejinx »

dylan604 wrote: post #44
esalman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know some models gave the storm a 25% chance of rapid intensification. The actual storm itself just unraveled afterwards.

>The actual storm itself just unraveled afterwards. Isn't this the expected behavior once it made landfall?

Yes, that's expected.

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

#107

Post by ethbr1 »

jacquesm wrote: post #92
Fomite wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the researchers on a new disease forecasting project, and I'm bookmarking this because we often use hurricane forecasting as an example of a level of accuracy we aspire to, so this is a really interesting breakdown.

The big miss here seems to be that not enough data had been seen yet to even know the envelope of what's possible. Without that there will always be inputs where a model breaks down. Disease modeling is also always going to have to contend with the fact that our historical data was collected when things weren't quite what they are today, for instance population numbers and densities are still entering uncharted terri…

If author's hunch was correct, it may have been a "greater than the sum of its parts" hyperlocal edge case.

E.g. the wind sheer exactly right, a patch of warm water, etc.

That does seem really tricky to model without making the models overly jumpy.

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

#108

Post by Applejinx »

hedora wrote: post #50
foobarbecue wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My reading of the article was that this (and most above average hurricanes these days) was probably due to climate change, since the ocean was warmer than usual, etc. However, repeating that isn’t particularly interesting. In other news, it is 2023. The interesting question then is why all the models screwed up so badly. Is it because climate change means the model is now inaccurate, or was this within the baseline (…

The model IS also a chaotic system.

My guess is that if the model accurately represents all the realities being modeled, and if they ran the simulation enough times, they would get Otis in the model. It's very easy to get chaotic behavior out of such a model, or even simple circuitry.

At that point the question is not 'can the model do a run that produces Otis', because at that point it can and does, one run in ten thousand.

The question is, do the forecasters refuse to mention that one run of the model that produced that result. What seemed to happen this time was, not enough data or attention, and nobody ran their model enough times to produce the Otis result in the model. I don't think anyone saw it and discarded it, I think it didn't show up in anybody's runs of their models.

Odds are good that it COULD have, if the models are any good. It's just unlikely.

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

#109

Post by Infernal »

zootboy wrote: post #51

This headline could really use the word "hurricane" in it. I had no idea what Otis or Acapulco were, and my initial guess was wildly off: some sort of space probe experienced a catastrophic failure on the way to an asteroid.

I assumed it was a small sailboat or similar, on the basis that if it was a cruise liner or large container ship, I would’ve heard about it already

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

#110

Post by mannykannot »

bloopernova wrote: post #65
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to take it up with the scientists who study and discuss radiative forcing in units of watts/m^2

I'm not familiar with the term, and I must have missed it the first time I read the comment. Thank you for a new term to research :)

Do not be bamboozled by the attempt to insinuate that it is you who has misunderstood something here (for more details, see some of the other replies.)
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