Storm Eowyn

[saneagle]

I

Twenty four hours after the worst of the storm, 50,000 people in Scotland are without electrical power and 189,000 homes and businesses in Northern Ireland are in the same boat.

In NI, a statement from the Department for Infrastructure said: "There were over 2,300 reported obstructions on the road network during the storm including hundreds on motorways."

The managing director of NIE Networks said Storm Éowyn caused "devastating levels of damage" to the electricity network in Northern Ireland.

"We've never seen anything like that," Derek Hynes told BBC News NI.

He said the NIE has "issued requests across Europe and into GB," and to the UK government for support.

"We're hoping over the next few days that we will see people pouring onto the island through Belfast, through Dublin, to come here and support us," he said.

"Almost one third of the people here have no power," said Mr Hynes.

Storm Éowyn: 185,000 without power in Northern Ireland

The clear-up operation is continuing after Storm Éowyn caused chaos across Northern Ireland.

www.bbc.co.uk

In Ireland, ESB Networks who run the grid said on their blog: "Storm Éowyn brought unprecedented, widespread and extensive damage to electricity infrastructure resulting in 768,000 customers losing supply earlier today. (24th).

On Saturday 25th at 1530, the the network provider website said:

"Given the extent of the damage nationwide, we anticipate full restoration will take more than a week in the worst impacted areas. Estimated restoration times (ERTs) will be provided as network faults are assessed and these will be available to view throughout Saturday and Sunday on www.PowerCheck.ie "


Meanwhile a fellow in Telford having apparently consulted alternative information sources said- Nothing to see here.

"Eowyn knocked down a few power lines and probably tipped some trucks."

ESB Networks restore power to 143,000 homes, farms and businesses this afternoon: 625,000 remain without electricity supply. 5:40pm Friday, 24th January 2025

300 died in the 1953 storm, 18 in the 1987 one. How many died directly because of storm Eowyn.

 

[AndyBike]

BBC saying 145km/h gusts rather than 140mph.

Apparently it was recorded at 93mph in Glasgow city. They had a reporter out in it, and while he was getting pretty buffeted about, I think the actual wind speed, without including gusting, was in the region of 60mph
Could be wrong of course, frequently am, but I've sailed in 50mph+, and that looked similar to the effects the reporter was suffering.

Most of these high speeds are recorded on top of a hill, or on a moor, so the wind is unimpeded. This makes me think that the speeds the TV/news papers are putting out is more the sensational aspect, rather than the actual wind speeds you'll feel in a city(high buildings etc)

That said, Mums trellis is in bits(was 8'Lx6'H) and the greenhouse didnt survive, with one wall that was facing the winds got 'popped' in, bending the alloy frame and breaking some of the glass.

All in all though I dont see this as a new thing. I used to sail the west coast of Scotland, and at one of the regattas I did notice an increase in wind speed year on year, till the last I was at, in I think 1996, when most of the field retired minutes after going out past the harbour breakwater bit.
As we were 'cruising' we were last out, and therefore first back in and on the VHF all you could hear was such and such-Retiring. We had just left and were getting 45knts of wind crossing the deck. Way further out in Loch Fyne, i think the wind was going to be 20mph+ above that.
So maybe from about '93 or '94 I really noticed the stronger winds than the previous year.

 

[Ghost1951]

I

300 died in the 1953 storm, 18 in the 1987 one. How many died directly because of storm Eowyn.

Apples and oranges old chap.

1953 East Coast Flood Disaster was caused by a high spring tide, low pressure (but nowhere near as low as Eowyn) and a northerly gale which drove water down the North Sea, adding to the flood. The ECD in 53 was primarily a flood which inundated low lying coastal regions. The lack of communication to the public was a contributory factor, nobody on the ground knew what was happening until floods overwhelmed them in their homes. Floods are far more life threatening than winds. These days we get much better warning of adverse events.

You are using two different kinds of events to try to make a case which is false - ie that Eowyn was not a bad storm.

It was.

At my house in Newcastle, a three inch thick plumb tree snapped and fell down into the garden - three inches thick at the break. Last night my power in Northumberland failed nine times for some reason. NONE of that is normal. People all over Scotland and Ireland are still without power. It is snug in Telford though so nothing happened of note.

 

[Ghost1951]

All of us have anecdotal experience. My plumb tree snapped, Andy's mums fence fell down, all was pretty normal in Telford.

Of course these events or lack of them don't make good measurements. That is why weather stations are set up and are designed to standard arrangements. They also usually remain long term so you can compare results over time. That way you can compile a long term database and form valid conclusions from what you see there. SOME weather stations are on hill tops. MOST of them are not. They are at airports, city centres and open spaces all over the country. The link below shows where the Met Office gets its readings from which are fed into it's computer.

Met Office WOW - Home Page

The UK Met Office Weather Observation Website (WOW). WOW allows anyone to submit their own weather data, anywhere in the world.

wow.metoffice.gov.uk

If Eowyn had taken a different track and come over the soft south like the 1987 'Hurricane' did, it would still be top news billing this time next week. As it is, it passed over the part of the country and our neighbour which have regularly much higher winds and wetter weather than the south, so for many, it was no big deal.

In 2021 Storm Arwen felled a million trees in Northumberland. I bet most of you don't even know about that event. 2000 hectares of forest were lost in the county.

see video ->

Kielder walker got lost due to 'significant' Storm Arwen damage

The man initially attempted a quicker route down but it was cut off due to fallen trees.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[saneagle]

In 2021 Storm Arwen felled a million trees in Northumberland. I bet most of you don't even know about that event. 2000 hectares of forest were lost in the county.

What caused that storm? Was it because the ice caps were too small at the time because of global warming, so they made the air colder, like storm Eowyn did?

 

[matthewslack]

Arwen's strong winds came from an unusual direction, NE or thereabouts, which wrong-footed all trees braced for a sou-wester.

 

[Ghost1951]

What caused that storm? Was it because the ice caps were too small at the time because of global warming, so they made the air colder, like storm Eowyn did?

The question asked is a ridiculous attempt at over simplification of a complex process. You know that too. Its a wind up.

If someone did that about an e-bike problem, I think I know how you would be likely to react. I'm not even going to engage with the direction of the question.

Weather is driven by energy in the oceans and in the atmosphere. The energy comes from the sun. The more of it that stays in the atmosphere and in the oceans, the greater the probability that extreme weather will result. Energy on the surface depends on how much of the solar energy stays here.

Some solar radiation is immediately re-radiated into space by bouncing off clouds and ice. Some of it is absorbed by the oceans, atmosphere and the land surface.

A portion of that heat is re-radiated as longer wave infrared radiation and goes back out of the system. Some gasses prevent a portion of that IR energy from being re-radiated. The most significant one is water vapour. It re-absorbs the energy, so does methane and so does co2. It is called the green house effect because that is how green houses work. On a cold clear night, lots of heat is radiated into space. In a greenhouse the temperature stays higher than the surroundings because the glass prevents the radiation of IR energy out of it.

You can do an experiment to see how this works with gasses. You set up a large tank equipped with a thermister and data logger and a standardised heat source. You put different gasses in the tank, heat the tank for a standardised time and see how the heat retention works out with different gasses. CO2, water vapour and methane retain much more of the heat than does ordinary air. The outcome is inescapable. It always works the same. CO2 retains heat. The tank stays hotter for longer.

Two thousand trillion tonnes of co2 added to the atmosphere since about 1850 has changed the way the atmosphere holds onto heat. More of it stays here and the mean global temperature has risen by 1.34 degrees c.

This means more energy is in the weather systems, so you will get more frequent and violent weather events.

Individual storms are created when cold air masses try to move into areas occupied by warmer wetter air masses. The two masses can not mix because warm always rises over cold. When the warm air rises, it has to be replaced, so air from around about is drawn in.

This is wind.

Warm wet air moving upwards, dumps much of the water vapour it contains. This will lead to exceptional rain storms - like the ones in Spain which you argued were caused by cloud seeding. You were either being disingenuous there or you just don't understand what went on.

LIkewise with your question about Eowyn and the polar ice. You are taking the p iss.

Eowyn ultimately happened because a large, cold, polar air mas moved down south over north America, bringing severe winter weather there, and then it moved over the Atlantic getting entangled with warmer air from the tropics. Your obsession with polar ice levels is irrelevant. The atmosphere moves huge air masses in pretty random ways ultimately all driven by the suns heat and ocean temperatures. They flow and come up against one another and sometimes they try to mix. Depressions and storms result, depending mostly on the temperature differences between the air masses. The greater that is, the more violent the winds. If the air is also very damp, the greater the torrential rainfall.

This web page shows air mass temperature.




The boundaries of different air masses are where the jet stream runs. The same web page shows both air mass temperature and jet streams and you can toggle from one to another.

Global Jet Stream Map - Netweather

View the jet stream forecast for the entire globe

www.netweather.tv

 

[saneagle]

The question asked is a ridiculous attempt at over simplification of a complex process. You know that too. Its a wind up.

If someone did that about an e-bike problem, I think I know how you would be likely to react. I'm not even going to engage with the direction of the question.

Weather is driven by energy in the oceans and in the atmosphere. The energy comes from the sun. The more of it that stays in the atmosphere and in the oceans, the greater the probability that extreme weather will result. Energy on the surface depends on how much of the solar energy stays here.

Some solar radiation is immediately re-radiated into space by bouncing off clouds and ice. Some of it is absorbed by the oceans, atmosphere and the land surface.

A portion of that heat is re-radiated as longer wave infrared radiation and goes back out of the system. Some gasses prevent a portion of that IR energy from being re-radiated. The most significant one is water vapour. It re-absorbs the energy, so does methane and so does co2. It is called the green house effect because that is how green houses work. On a cold clear night, lots of heat is radiated into space. In a greenhouse the temperature stays higher than the surroundings because the glass prevents the radiation of IR energy out of it.

You can do an experiment to see how this works with gasses. You set up a large tank equipped with a thermister and data logger and a standardised heat source. You put different gasses in the tank, heat the tank for a standardised time and see how the heat retention works out with different gasses. CO2, water vapour and methane retain much more of the heat than does ordinary air. The outcome is inescapable. It always works the same. CO2 retains heat. The tank stays hotter for longer.

Two thousand trillion tonnes of co2 added to the atmosphere since about 1850 has changed the way the atmosphere holds onto heat. More of it stays here and the mean global temperature has risen by 1.34 degrees c.

This means more energy is in the weather systems, so you will get more frequent and violent weather events.

Individual storms are created when cold air masses try to move into areas occupied by warmer wetter air masses. The two masses can not mix because warm always rises over cold. When the warm air rises, it has to be replaced, so air from around about is drawn in.

This is wind.

Warm wet air moving upwards, dumps much of the water vapour it contains. This will lead to exceptional rain storms - like the ones in Spain which you argued were caused by cloud seeding. You were either being disingenuous there or you just don't understand what went on.

LIkewise with your question about Eowyn and the polar ice. You are taking the p iss.

Eowyn ultimately happened because a large, cold, polar air mas moved down south over north America, bringing severe winter weather there, and then it moved over the Atlantic getting entangled with warmer air from the tropics. Your obsession with polar ice levels is irrelevant. The atmosphere moves huge air masses in pretty random ways ultimately all driven by the suns heat and ocean temperatures. They flow and come up against one another and sometimes they try to mix. Depressions and storms result, depending mostly on the temperature differences between the air masses. The greater that is, the more violent the winds. If the air is also very damp, the greater the torrential rainfall.

Energy doesn't work like that. If there's a lot of it in the Earth's atmosphere, it can't stay there. The more there is, the faster it escapes. The same with CO2. The more there is, the faster the plants use it up to grow. There is always equilibrium, and there always has been for thousands of years.

 

[Woosh]

Energy doesn't work like that. If there's a lot of it in the Earth's atmosphere, it can't stay there. The more there is, the faster it escapes. The same with CO2. The more there is, the faster the plants use it up to grow. There is always equilibrium, and there always has been for thousands of years.

You need a lot of time for a large system like the earth to reach a new equilibrium otherwise the wind wouldn't blow in the first place. In the meantime, localised differences in air pressure can get accentuated with more greenhouse gases.

 

[matthewslack]

There was an equilibrium before the Industrial Revolution, of energy arriving from the sun, and energy being lost to Space, but there is no equilibrium now. That's the whole point.

Now more energy arrives than leaves, because of the raised and rising greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere.

A new equilibrium will happen, but at a higher temperature than before. Again, that's the point. Even the likely 3 degrees or more is catastrophic for much of the human world, which is why people are trying to do something about it.

Edit:

A qualitative description is really simple: net energy inflow into the earth/atmosphere. The quantitative description of what that will cause is much harder.

 

[Woosh]

There was an equilibrium before the Industrial Revolution, of energy arriving from the sun, and energy being lost to Space, but there is no equilibrium now. That's the whole point.

Now more energy arrives than leaves, because of the raised and rising greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere.

A new equilibrium will happen, but at a higher temperature than before. Again, that's the point. Even the likely 3 degrees or more is catastrophic for much of the human world, which is why people are trying to do something about it.

Edit:

A qualitative description is really simple: net energy inflow into the earth/atmosphere. The quantitative description of what that will cause is much harder.

There are a lot of parallel processes involving sea and air temperatures. The AMOC is slowing down, that will cool the northern Atlantic, the uk, Norway etc may be more than what the greenhouse gases do to our summers. One thing seems to be probable, the number of local species that can't adapt to the rapid change of seasons will die out.

 

[soundwave]

Global CO₂ emissions by country 2023 | Statista

Annual CO₂ emissions in the U.S. have reduced since 2010, whereas China’s have increased by more than 30 percent.

www.statista.com

.

top 4 country's dont give a crap uk is 2nd from last yet pay the most for everything and its still fkn freezing.

if trump is going to drill drill drill then the world is over and everyone that thinks like that should be made in to burgers for profit

the sun is going to explode anyway as no solar system lasts forever or does it or is it even real in the first place.

the only thing that makes this world go round is power control and money Human beings are profit units for there corporations and are brain washed that there so stupid they cant even count coins yet work in a shop.

you should watch the tv show silo they made nano bots that got hijacked and to eat all carbon on the earth.

black cosmic dust

 

[Ghost1951]

There are a lot of parallel processes involving sea and air temperatures. The AMOC is slowing down, that will cool the northern Atlantic, the uk, Norway etc may be more than what the greenhouse gases do to our summers. One thing seems to be probable, the number of local species that can't adapt to the rapid change of seasons will die out.

Species and people will move their ranges - if they can move that is. It won't happen in a few days or weeks, so moving is likely. We've seen this sort of thing before - at least the planet has because there have been warm and cold periods before. There was a hominid species before us in Europe and Asia when the last ice age happened. Neanderthals - they had lived in Europe and west Asia for a long time but they died out during the last Ice Age - right at the end of it seems likely. This may have been more to do with the arrival of our species out of Africa about forty thousand years ago though. We know we came up against them, because all people of European ancestry have between 2% and 4% of Neanderthal DNA. People hailing from Africa today have none of that DNA.

Personally, I'm not one of the people who do a Chicken Licken about the likely warming we will see. There will be a new set of problems for us to deal with. Our species has been supremely good at adapting to different environments which is why we found indigenous peoples living just about everywhere on the planet when we started exploring far flung parts of the world. This is true from deserts to jungles to open plains and the polar regions. People can live in some pretty harsh environments, but not in large numbers and in the end - the biggest problem is how much we have over reproduced in the last 150 years - especially the last fifty which has seen human numbers double. THAT is the biggest disaster of all, because they all need resources and food and many of them live in places that are very hot and arid already. Strangely - those are the places which have seen the largest population rise. If we think we have big migration pressure now - we ain't seen nothing like what will be happening in another fifty or a hundred years.

This is a diversion though. Something else a bit scientific, for Polly to laugh at.

 

[Ghost1951]

Energy doesn't work like that. If there's a lot of it in the Earth's atmosphere, it can't stay there. The more there is, the faster it escapes.

So why has the mean global temperature risen by 1.34 degrees Centigrade since the nineteenth century, most of the rise since the 1960s?

Of course heat escapes, the issue is that it is also retained. If it wasn't being retained the temperature would not have risen.

The same with CO2. The more there is, the faster the plants use it up to grow. There is always equilibrium, and there always has been for thousands of years.

About half of what we have sent up smoke stacks and exhaust pipes and boiler flues is taken up again by natural processes, or it has been so far. Some of those carbon sinks though are temperature dependent. The ocean takes up the biggest amount, not that surprising because it covers two thirds of the planet. However - as water warms up, it can not hold as much dissolved gas as when it was cold. Make sure you don't open warm sparkling wine or beer, because it will demonstrate what I am saying and all the dissolved co2 will rush out at once. I am sure you are very familiar with that problem.

Warming has also been happening in the oceans, only slower, because of the effect of its high specific heat. There is a lot of heat stored in the oceans and as they heat up they will stop absorbing carbon and start giving it out.

There is also a lot of methane stored in cold sea water as clathrates and in the soil of tundra landscapes. These only remain stable at cold temperatures. Thawing tundra soils and warming of presently cold northern and southern oceans will cause methane release. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. The only good thing is that it breaks down quickly - about 12 years, into co2 and water. CO2 can take hundreds of years to break down naturally.

As for carbon in the biosphere like wood and biomass such as leaves. That will increase as co2 rises. I have written before about how glass house growers artificially raise co2 in their facilities to encourage faster and more growth, but all the biosphere carbon goes back to the atmosphere when the biomass decays - unless it is buried like happened to produce the coal and oil and methane gas we have dug up and burned. Fossil carbon once released is not going to vanish forever into plants. It will be back soon enough in the atmosphere when they die.

This is why these carbon off-setting schemes are a giant con trick. Fossil carbon once released is going to be around for a VERY VERY long time. You can't plant some trees and think the carbon they fix is gone forever - not unless you bury them like in the carboniferous swamps.

Earth used to be much hotter, probably as much as ten or more degrees hotter in global mean temperature half a billion years ago. The co2 content of the atmosphere was far higher than now. It was the Carboniferous and Cretaceous eras which over a VERY long time took all that carbon out of the atmosphere and buried it in coal oil and gas reservoirs underground. Then the planet cooled. Half of the earth's petroleum was laid down in the Cretaceous era.



This diagram comes from the NOAA web site.

 

[soundwave]

 

[saneagle]

So why has the mean global temperature risen by 1.34 degrees Centigrade since the nineteenth century, most of the rise since the 1960s?

Of course heat escapes, the issue is that it is also retained. If it wasn't being retained the temperature would not have risen.



About half of what we have sent up smoke stacks and exhaust pipes and boiler flues is taken up again by natural processes, or it has been so far. Some of those carbon sinks though are temperature dependent. The ocean takes up the biggest amount, not that surprising because it covers two thirds of the planet. However - as water warms up, it can not hold as much dissolved gas as when it was cold. Make sure you don't open warm sparkling wine or beer, because it will demonstrate what I am saying and all the dissolved co2 will rush out at once. I am sure you are very familiar with that problem.

Warming has also been happening in the oceans, only slower, because of the effect of its high specific heat. There is a lot of heat stored in the oceans and as they heat up they will stop absorbing carbon and start giving it out.

There is also a lot of methane stored in cold sea water as clathrates and in the soil of tundra landscapes. These only remain stable at cold temperatures. Thawing tundra soils and warming of presently cold northern and southern oceans will cause methane release. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. The only good thing is that it breaks down quickly - about 12 years, into co2 and water. CO2 can take hundreds of years to break down naturally.

As for carbon in the biosphere like wood and biomass such as leaves. That will increase as co2 rises. I have written before about how glass house growers artificially raise co2 in their facilities to encourage faster and more growth, but all the biosphere carbon goes back to the atmosphere when the biomass decays - unless it is buried like happened to produce the coal and oil and methane gas we have dug up and burned. Fossil carbon once released is not going to vanish forever into plants. It will be back soon enough in the atmosphere when they die.

This is why these carbon off-setting schemes are a giant con trick. Fossil carbon once released is going to be around for a VERY VERY long time. You can't plant some trees and think the carbon they fix is gone forever - not unless you bury them like in the carboniferous swamps.

Earth used to be much hotter, probably as much as ten or more degrees hotter in global mean temperature half a billion years ago. The co2 content of the atmosphere was far higher than now. It was the Carboniferous and Cretaceous eras which over a VERY long time took all that carbon out of the atmosphere and buried it in coal oil and gas reservoirs underground. Then the planet cooled. Half of the earth's petroleum was laid down in the Cretaceous era.

View attachment 61908

This diagram comes from the NOAA web site.

Think about your premise.

 

[Ghost1951]

It seems that we are like two aliens trying to communicate.

Each of us sees the universe in a very different way - especially in the matter of the criteria we have for evaluating what is true and what is not. I have what may seem to you to be a very quaint idea that people with serious levels of expertise, belonging to organisations using the scientific method, can be trusted to measure the mean global temperature and fact check it within those organisations to ensure reliability and validity and then publish it. While you seem to employ other ways of coming to different conclusions than they do.

I will maybe climb back into my inter stellar space vessel and fly back home leaving you on planet Zog with your special methods which I don't understand.

 

[matthewslack]

The reason to be concerned about what sounds like a small number of degrees of warming is the feedbacks and consequences that make warming unstoppable.

I won't be around to see it, but someone born today will be cursing us when they get to my age!

 

[Peter.Bridge]

The reason to be concerned about what sounds like a small number of degrees of warming is the feedbacks and consequences that make warming unstoppable.

I won't be around to see it, but someone born today will be cursing us when they get to my age!

There are significant feedbacks when you increase CO2 (eg the warming from CO2 increases water vapour, which is itself a greenhouse gas) but the gain is < 1 so is not unstable. A doubling of CO2 will lead to an temperature increase but will reach equilibrium (IPCC AR6 estimates 3 Deg C most likely, somewhere between 2.5 and 4 Deg C)