Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak.

Question: We just had an episode of 66 tornadoes! How come?

Answer: Follow the energy! Human increase of CO2 controls the water that is trapping more Infrared that the Earth is using to balance energy from the sun. Ninety percent of this is absorbed in the oceans. Five hundred twenty nine calories per gm of that is evaporating water into the atmosphere, that warmed air holds more water vapor that is transported northward to the U.S. Daytime sun lifts it into the cooler atmosphere where it condenses, releasing that latent heat. That latent heat furnishes more lift against gravity and more condensation at higher altitude to form a supercell. If that packet of air in the supercell experiences a westward wind from the polar air mass, we have a twist with rotational energy and angular momentum.

If that air is cooled by falling cold rain, it will fall, regaining the gravitational energy stored in the increased elevation. Now that packet of air has more rotational energy from gravity. But there was no additional torque, so the angular momentum stayed constant. Physics says that packet will have an increased spin in a cone shape or a large wedge shape, and we have a tornado!

There are some things that we may depend on in the future. The sun will continue to rise somewhere in the east and set somewhere in the west. The midday solar zenith angle observed from Boulder’s Baseline Avenue will remain less than 40 degrees from March to September with minimum about 17 degrees in June. Polaris will always be in the north. The universal law of Black Body Radiation with continuum spectral distribution will depend only on the Kelvin temperature, increasing abruptly in the ultraviolet and decreasing gradually in the infrared. The molecular structure and radiation absorption of each water and carbon dioxide molecule will not change. The ocean temperature will never decrease rapidly, and the average global surface temperature will continue to gradually rise so long as humans insist on burning fossil fuel for energy and burn or otherwise destroy our forests. That rate may vary slightly with societal behavior short of nuclear war.

Planet Earth responds to human pollution of the atmosphere with infrared trapping by greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide that has a long atmospheric lifetime due in part to the carbon cycle century lifetime of plant growth and decay. The resultant global warming exhibits short-term extremes of weather as the 10-day evaporation-precipitation cycle controls the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Weather 3-day forecasts continue to depend on the atmospheric science of 75 years ago. (See photo of document signed by a famous Swedish meteorologist. I believe it to be possessed by a very few living individuals.) These forecasts now depend on a very large database and fast computers.

So, the Weather Channel continues to report the computer models of temperatures and precipitations responsible for floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and wildfires, with emphasis on the disaster costs to the vulnerable members of society. The print and television news media concentrates on government and economic scandals with little mention of climate change.

(Originally published in the May 2, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)