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"Storms History."
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Gales, cyclones, blizzards, tornados, and hurricanes--few things demonstrate the awesome power of nature like a good storm. Devastating, diverse, and sometimes appearing completely out of nowhere, storms are also a source of both scientific and aesthetic wonder. In this book, John Withington takes an in-depth and unique look at the nature of storms and the impact that they have--both physical and cultural--on our lives.
Book
Fluvial sediment supply to a mega-delta reduced by shifting tropical-cyclone activity
About a third of the sediment delivery of the Mekong River is shown to be associated with rainfall generated by tropical cyclones, suggesting that future delta stability will be strongly moderated by changes to tropical cyclone intensity, frequency and track.
Cyclones shaping tropical mega-deltas
The delivery of sediment to deltas is crucial for their survival, especially when faced with rising sea levels. Human activities, such as dam building and land-cover alterations, can affect sediment supply, but Stephen Darby
et al
. show that, for the Mekong River, about a third of the sediment delivered is associated with rainfall generated by tropical cyclones. More than half of the decline in suspended sediment supply to the delta between 1981 and 2005 arose from shifts in tropical-cyclone climatology, suggesting that future delta stability will also be strongly moderated by additional changes to tropical-cyclone intensity and track.
The world’s rivers deliver 19 billion tonnes of sediment to the coastal zone annually
1
, with a considerable fraction being sequestered in large deltas, home to over 500 million people. Most (more than 70 per cent) large deltas are under threat from a combination of rising sea levels, ground surface subsidence and anthropogenic sediment trapping
2
,
3
, and a sustainable supply of fluvial sediment is therefore critical to prevent deltas being ‘drowned’ by rising relative sea levels
2
,
3
,
4
. Here we combine suspended sediment load data from the Mekong River with hydrological model simulations to isolate the role of tropical cyclones in transmitting suspended sediment to one of the world’s great deltas. We demonstrate that spatial variations in the Mekong’s suspended sediment load are correlated (
r
= 0.765,
P
< 0.1) with observed variations in tropical-cyclone climatology, and that a substantial portion (32 per cent) of the suspended sediment load reaching the delta is delivered by runoff generated by rainfall associated with tropical cyclones. Furthermore, we estimate that the suspended load to the delta has declined by 52.6 ± 10.2 megatonnes over recent years (1981–2005), of which 33.0 ± 7.1 megatonnes is due to a shift in tropical-cyclone climatology. Consequently, tropical cyclones have a key role in controlling the magnitude of, and variability in, transmission of suspended sediment to the coast. It is likely that anthropogenic sediment trapping in upstream reservoirs is a dominant factor in explaining past
5
,
6
,
7
, and anticipating future
8
,
9
, declines in suspended sediment loads reaching the world’s major deltas. However, our study shows that changes in tropical-cyclone climatology affect trends in fluvial suspended sediment loads and thus are also key to fully assessing the risk posed to vulnerable coastal systems.
Journal Article
Projected Atlantic hurricane surge threat from rising temperatures
Detection and attribution of past changes in cyclone activity are hampered by biased cyclone records due to changes in observational capabilities. Here, we relate a homogeneous record of Atlantic tropical cyclone activity based on storm surge statistics from tide gauges to changes in global temperature patterns. We examine 10 competing hypotheses using nonstationary generalized extreme value analysis with different predictors (North Atlantic Oscillation, Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Sahel rainfall, Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, radiative forcing, Main Development Region temperatures and its anomaly, global temperatures, and gridded temperatures). We find that gridded temperatures, Main Development Region, and global average temperature explain the observations best. The most extreme events are especially sensitive to temperature changes, and we estimate a doubling of Katrina magnitude events associated with the warming over the 20th century. The increased risk depends on the spatial distribution of the temperature rise with highest sensitivity from tropical Atlantic, Central America, and the Indian Ocean. Statistically downscaling 21st century warming patterns from six climate models results in a twofold to sevenfold increase in the frequency of Katrina magnitude events for a 1 °C rise in global temperature (using BNU-ESM, BCC-CSM-1.1, CanESM2, HadGEM2-ES, INM-CM4, and NorESM1-M).
Journal Article
On the Dirty Plate Trail
The 1930s exodus of “Okies” dispossessed by repeated droughts and failed crop prices was a relatively brief interlude in the history of migrant agricultural labor. Yet it attracted wide attention through the publication of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the images of Farm Security Administration photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein. Ironically, their work risked sublimating the subjects-real people and actual experience-into aesthetic artifacts, icons of suffering, deprivation, and despair. Working for the Farm Security Administration in California's migrant labor camps in 1938-39, Sanora Babb, a young journalist and short story writer, together with her sister Dorothy, a gifted amateur photographer, entered the intimacy of the dispossessed farmers' lives as insiders, evidenced in the immediacy and accuracy of their writings and photos. Born in Oklahoma and raised on a dryland farm, the Babb sisters had unparalleled access to the day-by-day harsh reality of field labor and family life. This book presents a vivid, firsthand account of the Dust Bowl refugees, the migrant labor camps, and the growth of labor activism among Anglo and Mexican farm workers in California's agricultural valleys linked by the “Dirty Plate Trail” (Highway 99). It draws upon the detailed field notes that Sanora Babb wrote while in the camps, as well as on published articles and short stories about the migrant workers and an excerpt from her Dust Bowl novel, Whose Names Are Unknown. Like Sanora's writing, Dorothy's photos reveal an unmediated, personal encounter with the migrants, portraying the social and emotional realities of their actual living and working conditions, together with their efforts to organize and to seek temporary recreation. An authority in working-class literature and history, volume editor Douglas Wixson places the Babb sisters' work in relevant historical and social-political contexts, examining their role in reconfiguring the Dust Bowl exodus as a site of memory in the national consciousness. Focusing on the material conditions of everyday existence among the Dust Bowl refugees, the words and images of these two perceptive young women clearly show that, contrary to stereotype, the “Okies” were a widely diverse people, including not only Steinbeck's sharecropper “Joads” but also literate, independent farmers who, in the democracy of the FSA camps, found effective ways to rebuild lives and create communities.
eBook
Katrina’s Lesson: Time to Imagine an After COVID-19
Some events are so powerful they mark our lives-before and after. In New Orleans, Louisiana, the split between what existed before and what came after is marked by Hurricane Katrina.Hurricane Katrina started as a tropical depression in the Caribbean on August 23, 2005. It initially made landfall at the southern tip of Florida as a category 1 storm before spiraling back over warm Gulf of Mexico waters, where it intensified. It made landfall for a second time days later at the border between Louisiana and Mississippi before moving inland, slowly weakening. Many fled for safety as the storm grew and barreled toward the Gulf Coast. Others remained, some unwilling to leave, many more unable to leave because of lack of transportation, health concerns, or lack of financial resources. In the aftermath, the world watched as the levees failed and the floodwaters rose. The wind, flooding, and storm surge mowed down much of the Gulf Coast. Everyone in New Orleans has a story about after. Some are heartbreaking. Lost loved ones. Days spent in miserable conditions desperately waiting for help. Patients on hospital rooftops. The sick doing theirbest to care forthe sickest. Displacement to new cities, unprepared and knowing no one.
Journal Article
Limits to Social Capital: Comparing Network Assistance in Two New Orleans Neighborhoods Devastated by Hurricane Katrina
Sociological research emphasizes that personal networks offer social resources in times of need and that this capacity varies by the social position of those involved. Yet rarely are sociologists able to make direct comparisons of such inequalities. This study overcomes this methodological challenge by examining network activation among residents of two unequal neighborhoods severely devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that local network capacities of Lower Ninth Ward residents relative to those of the more affluent Lakeview neighborhood dissipated before, during, and after the disaster to erode the life chances of individual residents and the neighborhood they once constituted.
Journal Article