Otis - a new kind of perfect storm, courtesy of fossil fuel
A collection of climate stories mostly
The only Otis I’d ever heard of before last week was Otis Redding, also known as the King of Soul. Not only did he have an amazing voice, he was an incredible songwriter too.
(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay, released in January 1968 pays testament to that. It was Redding’s only single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and the first hit single in US chart history to be achieved posthumously.
Ottis Redding, was 26 years of age, when he unfortunately died in a plane crash in early December, 1967.
There’s another Otis which nearly escaped everyone’s attention last week, unless you follow the news or live in Mexico - Hurricane Otis.
A hurricane is an area of low pressure over tropical or sub-tropical waters. These storms can typically be five to six miles high and 3-400 miles wide. They also move, sometimes in the direction of coastline cities to reek havoc and devastation.
What’s extraordinary here, is how quickly Otis shifted from a tropical storm with 65 mph winds to a category 5 hurricane whipped up to 165 mph. It managed that astonishing turn of speed in the 24 hours before landfall, near Acapulco, Mexico
Such intensification is extremely dangerous because there is no time to batten down the hatches, literally.
In this case, the whole of Mexico’s Guerrera state coast, including Acapulco, was under a hurricane watch several days before it struck. The lack of warning on intensification and timing was because the forecast-modellers got it wrong for once.
16 hours before Otis arrived, the National Hurricane Centre predicted a Category 1 event. In the end, it arrived 5 hours earlier than expected as a very dangerous Category 5 monster.
Otis didn’t follow typical hurricane behaviour for this region with many models predicting that the storm would stay offshore for days and might even miss completely.
The problem was the models lacked information because only one flight had been made by the Hurricane Hunters. These are aircrews that work for the United States Air Force Reserve or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who deliberately fly into hurricanes to gather weather information.
Otis was also only a small tropical storm. The hurricane force winds only extended 30 miles from its centre. But small can be deadly and this size of hurricane can weaken or intensify much more quickly, depending on the local conditions.
The situation was aided in this case by a sea surface temperature of 30-31 degrees Celsius, about 1 degree Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average.
Mexico has also just had the hottest September temperatures on record, which boosted the sea temperature as did the natural El Niño phenomenon.
There was also a fast-flowing current of jet stream air to the north of Otis, called a jet streak. As the storm pulled moist warm air from the surface, the jet streak acted like a ventilator, in the same way that we might ventilate a fire to get it raging.
A study was undertaken back in 2016 by MIT hurricane scientist, Kerry Emanuel, that concluded that warmer oceans will create hurricanes which intensify more rapidly.
In the climate of the late 20th century, the odds of a hurricane intensifying by 70 mph or more within 24 hours before landfall was about once every 100 years. In the climate predicted for the year 2100, the odds increased to once every five to ten years.
This was a US study and the cities most at risk of this happening were also identified - Houston, New Orleans, Tampa/St Petersburg and Miami.
I only read the other day, that climate change is yet to actually kill anyone. I guess the journalist writing must base that conclusion on evidence I’m not yet familiar with.
48 people have died so far, most of them drowned, and mostly in the city of Acapulco as a result of Hurricane Otis. 47 others are still missing, according to figures reported by the state attorney general’s office.
The science behind what happened to this hurricane used to be called rapid intensification. Acapulco and Hurricane Otis is going to be remembered as the first hurricane where rapid became redefined as explosive.
Up until now, as Emily Atkin, Heated, a climate campaigner and journalist argues, at best, we can expect reporting to include some sort of generic link to climate change. What’s still missing, in the case of this story, is the link between loss of life, courtesy of explosive intensification and specific sources of carbon pollution.
To date climate activists and journalists have been satisfied to simply get climate change linked in the story. There has been no mention, the obvious next step, to explain why climate change is happening.
Reuters is one of the few news outlets which recently made the connection in their climate coverage of the Maui wildfires in August.
Human-caused climate change, driven by fossil fuel use is increasing the frequency and intensity of such extreme weather events…
Atkin argues that every climate change story should include an added tag, referencing fossil fuels, deforestation and industrial agriculture as the primary cause for any particular disaster. It then becomes part of the educational process and doesn’t leave readers and viewers, with little to no information, feeling particularly hopeless.
Like any advertising message, if you say it enough, the take away and in this case solution to the problem becomes clear - a rapid reduction in pollution and deforestation.
Is there a reluctance to doing this because it might be seen as activism on the part of the journalists and meteorologists? Informing readers on the cause of a specific problem is clearly not the same as telling readers that they must now solve the problem. Being explicit provides readers with the information they need to make an informed decision.
I know journalists have to tread carefully, but given the overwhelming evidence that climate change is a human activity based on consumption, we ought to be able to associate industry sectors with any reporting. Better still if brands could also be mentioned in some bizarre dystopian reflection of what is actually happening in the world.
Hurricane Otis, a Mexican disaster brought to you today by Mexichem and Pemex, the largest oil producing companies in Mexico.