The Environmental Journal of Southern Appalachia

Displaying items by tag: peter thornton

Wednesday, 23 October 2024 14:01

Helene: Climate change fed the monster

image000001The CSX rail line through the Nolichucky River Gorge near Erwin, Tennessee was one of many transportation and vital commerce links destroyed by epic river flooding spawned by Tropical Storm Helene Sept. 26-27, 2024.  Jonathan Mitchell for Hellbender Press

ORNL Climate Change Institute: Weirdly warm water that spawned and fed Hurricane Helene was 500 times more likely due to climate change

OAK RIDGE — Hellbender Press spoke with Oak Ridge National Laboratory Climate Change Science Institute Director Peter Thornton about whether Hurricane Helene and its subsequent and disastrous impact on the Southern Appalachians was made worse by climate change. Citing an increasing scientific ability to link climate change to specific weather events, he said in a very matter-of-fact manner that yes, Helene was fueled by the symptoms and consequences of global warming caused by human emissions of carbon and other pollutants.

Thornton cited a World Weather Attribution report as a main source for his data and commentary, and summarized its research on Helene for Hellbender Press. Here is the interview, edited for clarity and brevity:

Hellbender Press: Can you please state your credentials?
 

“I am the director of the Climate Change ScienceInstitute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I am a corporate fellow researchstaff at the laboratory in the area of earth system modeling and coupled carbon-cycle climatefeedbacks at the global scale all the way down to local scales.” 

HP: The effects of Hurricane Helene were worsened by preceding rain events, correct?

“The event as it played out along the sort of the eastern flankof the Southern Appalachians was influenced strongly by precipitation that came beforethe storm even made landfall. There was what’s referred to as a stalled cold front, which was sitting over that SouthernAppalachian region and the front, kind of a linear element, stretched from Atlanta up along the flankof the Southern Appalachians.

“There were river stages that were already approaching record levels in some areasof that region before the storm arrived. There was probably moisture being pulled in from theouter bands of the storm into that stalled cold front, which was making that precipitation eventslightly bigger than it would have been otherwise. But it was an independentsynoptic-scale meteorological event.

(That could be linked to increased moisture, a hallmark of climate change, on the fringes of the tropical system, but there’s no data on that yet).

ThorntonNGEE 2Peter Thornton, director of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is shown here doing climate-research field work in 2015. ORNL

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COVER 1208 GatlinburgsInferno3Wild turkeys forage in charred hardwood forest soon after the 2016 Gatlinburg fires, which moved from the Smokies to developed areas in Sevier County. An ORNL model predicts wildfire threats will increase in the Southern Appalachians because of climate change. Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press via Knoxville Mercury

ORNL report: Local wildfire danger will likely loom larger because of climate change

OAK RIDGE — This cruel summer, the Southern Appalachian region is already baking in above-normal temperatures and basking in poor air quality. 

Air temperatures in Knoxville flirted with 100 degrees on July 6, which were well above average and prompted the National Weather Service to issue a heat advisory for much of the metropolitan area.

It’s hard to definitively link a heat wave to global warming, but one oft-cited consequence of climate change is the growing intensity of wildfires, even in the traditionally moisture-rich Appalachians. The range of climate change effects is difficult to pin down, but one constant in the study of climate change is an expected increase in overall temperatures, which can power wildfires via both fuel increases and volatility.

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