Skeleton Lake.
Andre Willers
4 Mar 2014
Synopsis:
Flash hailstorms with stones about the the size of
beachballs are possible as Global Warming progresses . Turning city canyons
into death-traps .
Discussion :
1.See what happened in 850 AD
In 1942 a British forest
guard in Roopkund, India made an alarming discovery. Some 16,000 feet above sea
level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake absolutely full of
skeletons. That summer, the ice melting revealed even more skeletal remains,
floating in the water and lying haphazardly around the lake's edges. Something
horrible had happened here.
The immediate assumption
(it being war time) was that these were the remains of Japanese soldiers who
had died of exposure while sneaking through India. The British government,
terrified of a Japanese land invasion, sent a team of investigators to
determine if this was true. However upon examination they realized these bones
were not from Japanese soldiers—they weren't fresh enough.
It was evident that the
bones were quite old indeed. Flesh, hair, and the bones themselves had been
preserved by the dry, cold air, but no one could properly determine exactly
when they were from. More than that, they had no idea what had killed over 200
people in this small valley. Many theories were put forth including an
epidemic, landslide, and ritual suicide. For decades, no one was able to shed
light on the mystery of Skeleton Lake.
However, a 2004
expedition to the site seems to have finally revealed the mystery of what
caused those people's deaths. The answer was stranger than anyone had guessed.
As it turns out, all the
bodies date to around 850 AD. DNA evidence indicates that there were two
distinct groups of people, one a family or tribe of closely related individuals,
and a second smaller, shorter group of locals, likely hired as porters and
guides. Rings, spears, leather shoes, and bamboo staves were found, leading
experts to believe that the group was comprised of pilgrims heading through the
valley with the help of the locals.
All the bodies had died
in a similar way, from blows to the head. However, the short deep cracks in the
skulls appeared to be the result not of weapons, but rather of something
rounded. The bodies also only had wounds on their heads, and shoulders as if
the blows had all come from directly above. What had killed them all, porter
and pilgrim alike?
Among Himalayan women
there is an ancient and traditional folk song. The lyrics describe a goddess so
enraged at outsiders who defiled her mountain sanctuary that she rained death
upon them by flinging hailstones “hard as iron.” After much research and
consideration, the 2004 expedition came to the same conclusion. All 200 people
died from a sudden and severe hailstorm.
Trapped in the valley
with nowhere to hide or seek shelter, the "hard as iron” cricket
ball-sized [about 23 centimeter/9 inches diameter] hailstones came by the
thousands, resulting in the travelers' bizarre sudden death. The remains lay in
the lake for 1,200 years until their discovery.
2. See Appendix A for how large hailstones can grow .
3.Threat assessment :
Very high .
But , as usual , hardly any attention is paid .
But the insurance premiums keep on going up .
As well as food prices .
The main danger is from destruction of livestock and crops .
4.Flash hailstorms :
A sort of mini-tornado . High surface temperatures (in
excess of 27Celsius) and high humidity , combined with a cold front causes very
high vertical wind-speeds . See Appendix A .
If humans are caught in the open , flash hailstones with
sizes from baseballs to beachballs will kill them even inside cars .
5.Never mind the hole in the Ozone . The possible hole in
your head will require a bit more drastic attention .
6. An ARK-Hailstorm will require nuclear bunker facilities
for survival .
See Appendix B
Isn’t CO2 fun ?
Andre
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Appendix A
Friday, November 29,
2013
Giant Hailstones
Andre Willers
29 Nov 2013
“Everybody gets ice .
The poor in winter and the rich in summer.” Bat Masterton
Synopsis :
How large can
hailstones grow in a super-cell thunderstorm ?
Discussion :
1.Ball-shaped
hailstones grow by accretion as it is bounced up and down by updrafts and
downdrafts .
See Appendix I ,
Appendix II .
2.The updraft velocity
must be bigger than the terminal velocity of the hailstone . (Else it simply
falls to the ground)
3.The terminal
velocity of hailstones is approximated in Appendix III .
V=8.45 * D ^0.553 ,
where V is terminal velocity m/s and D is diameter in cm .
An upper range updraft
of 175 miles per hour is used as per Appendix II = 78.232 m/s
This gives a
D = (V/8.45) ^
(1/0.553)
D = 55.94866 cm
diameter hailstone .
This is about the size of a fitness ball
About 80 kg of ice .
A comparative coconut
(5 inches=12.7 cm diameter gives an ice mass of about 8 kg .
This must have
happened before , but nobody believed the survivors .
4. So , things can be
a lot worse .
And will be as global
warming drives updraft velocities .
Icily yours
Andre .
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Appendix 1
A discussion of how
hail forms.
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Appendix II
Ever wonder how fast air is rising into the sky
during a developing thunderstorm? What about during a Tornado? Here I will try
to explain what I know about vertical wind speeds in the centers of natures
most violent storms.
Here I will start with the basics. Convection is simply the rising of warm air and the sinking of cooler air. To have clouds, there must be rising, warm and moist air (compared to air surrounding the air "parcel") where the moisture condenses at a certain altitude, forming the cloud. This rising air may be a thermal, from the uneven heating of the earth's surface, or forcing / convergence caused by a front, mountain range, or inflow of air into a low pressure system.
Another important thing is that more heat energy is transferred to this air parcel as the water vapor condenses (or freezes). This makes the air parcel warmer and causes it to rise faster. About 540 calories of energy are released as a single gram of water condenses! When each gram freezes, an additional 80 calories is released. The small fair weather cumulus often have updraft speeds of about 5 MPH.
The really impressive updraft speeds occur in developing thunderstorms and especially in supercells. In a general (non-severe) thunderstorm, the development and early-mature cycle is when the updraft is strongest before downdrafts begin to disrupt the storm. Typical speeds range from about 15 to 30 MPH, or roughly 1,200 to 2,500 feet per minute. At this rate, the relatively "weak" storm reaches a height of about 30,000 feet in 15 minutes, and may last only a half hour.
Severe thunderstorms, require much stronger updraft speeds and depend on the type of storm. Multicell lines generally have weaker updrafts than multicell clusters but are arranged in a "curtain". The updraft speeds in a multicell line storm are a bit stronger than the single cell general storm described earlier. Multicell cluster storms often have updraft speeds around 60 MPH in developing components, or about 5,500 feet per minute. This is quite fast, keeping in mind that most general aviation aircraft can only climb up to 3,000 feet per minute (200 Super King Air).
This is also why pilots should NEVER try to "out climb" the top of a developing thunderstorm. The strongest updraft speeds lie with the most intense kind of thunderstorm, the supercell. A supercell is a "continuous cycle" storm, meaning that it has an updraft side and downdraft side at the same time which are separated from each other allowing the storm to last much longer than 30-45 minutes.
The updraft of a supercell also has a broad low and / or mid-level rotation (mesocyclone) which my further boost its speed. Supercell updrafts generally are stronger than 50 MPH, but 70 or 80 MPH is more typical. In the Great Plains of the United States, supercells often produce baseball and grapefruit sized hail (not to mention tornadoes) because of the extreme speeds of the updrafts within. Such updrafts have been known to reach 150 to 175 MPH, or about 12,000 to 15,000 feet per minute!
No aircraft except for military fighter jets with afterburner power could climb at these rates (for example, the F4 Phantom and Lear 35 Jet both have maximum climb rates less than 8,000 feet per minute). This is why a supercell can literally go from "blue sky to tornado" in a "New York minute". At 15,000 feet per minute, an air parcel will go from ground level to 45,000 feet in only 3 minutes!
An experiment was done via special weather balloon to find out how quickly a supercell updraft will carry it. The device was released into the inflow side of an HP supercell in the Great Plains and ingested into the storm. Only 2 and a half minutes later, the balloon was in the anvil of the storm. It rode the high-velocity core of the storm and gave vital information on the structure of the storm and internal dynamics.
Supercell storms are the most dangerous to aviation. Visibility and wind-shear are the most obvious threats at low levels, however, the updraft and mesocyclone is usually strongest at 20,000 feet. A commercial airliner flying though such a storm will most likely have its wings torn off, and this has happened to planes trying to fly through severe thunderstorms.
Another pilots horror story was an L1011 trying to fly through a "hole" in a multicell cluster of severe thunderstorms. Invisible to the pilot, was that baseball sized hail was falling through that "hole" in the storm, and serious damage to the aircraft was sustained (cracked windows, cratered leading edges of wings, and crushed engine nacelles).
The most amazing stories come from several incidents of people who were unfortunate enough to parachute into a thunderstorm. Imagine a 100 MPH updraft, your parachute is descending at 10 MPH ... Do the math, this means you will go back UP at 90 MPH!
In the book "The Man Who Rode The Wind", a true story of a pilot who ejected into a thunderstorm at 45,000 feet is described. He ejected from an F8 Crusader and descended into the developing storm until his parachute deployed at 10,000 feet. He became caught in the storm updraft and actually re-ascended under his chute to 26,000 feet. Thin air caused him to pass out and the cold caused intense frost bite during his ride up and down the inside of the storm. The water inside the cloud nearly made him drown in mid air!
He was constantly slammed around by the extreme turbulence and at one point his body appeared to be ABOVE his parachute. Finally, the storm weakened and he descended back to earth 30 minutes later. A person found him in a field, severely injured but alive. This storm was not even a severe storm, just a strong summer 30-45 minute long storm. Imagine if this storm was a supercell.
Another incident happened in Germany where 5 parachutists fell victim to a thunderstorm updraft. All landed covered in ice after their wild ride ... yes, they became the "cores of hail stones". Only one of the 5 survived.
Other strange phenomena occur when a tornado picks up debris and it becomes involved with the main updraft of the supercell. This accounts for "rains" of frogs and fish if the tornado passes over water and dumps them far from their point of pickup. Some fish encased in ice occured with one such incident. Other objects such as appliances, roof shingles, insulation, plants, even a computer floppy disk and a desk have landed miles away from a violent
Here I will start with the basics. Convection is simply the rising of warm air and the sinking of cooler air. To have clouds, there must be rising, warm and moist air (compared to air surrounding the air "parcel") where the moisture condenses at a certain altitude, forming the cloud. This rising air may be a thermal, from the uneven heating of the earth's surface, or forcing / convergence caused by a front, mountain range, or inflow of air into a low pressure system.
Another important thing is that more heat energy is transferred to this air parcel as the water vapor condenses (or freezes). This makes the air parcel warmer and causes it to rise faster. About 540 calories of energy are released as a single gram of water condenses! When each gram freezes, an additional 80 calories is released. The small fair weather cumulus often have updraft speeds of about 5 MPH.
The really impressive updraft speeds occur in developing thunderstorms and especially in supercells. In a general (non-severe) thunderstorm, the development and early-mature cycle is when the updraft is strongest before downdrafts begin to disrupt the storm. Typical speeds range from about 15 to 30 MPH, or roughly 1,200 to 2,500 feet per minute. At this rate, the relatively "weak" storm reaches a height of about 30,000 feet in 15 minutes, and may last only a half hour.
Severe thunderstorms, require much stronger updraft speeds and depend on the type of storm. Multicell lines generally have weaker updrafts than multicell clusters but are arranged in a "curtain". The updraft speeds in a multicell line storm are a bit stronger than the single cell general storm described earlier. Multicell cluster storms often have updraft speeds around 60 MPH in developing components, or about 5,500 feet per minute. This is quite fast, keeping in mind that most general aviation aircraft can only climb up to 3,000 feet per minute (200 Super King Air).
This is also why pilots should NEVER try to "out climb" the top of a developing thunderstorm. The strongest updraft speeds lie with the most intense kind of thunderstorm, the supercell. A supercell is a "continuous cycle" storm, meaning that it has an updraft side and downdraft side at the same time which are separated from each other allowing the storm to last much longer than 30-45 minutes.
The updraft of a supercell also has a broad low and / or mid-level rotation (mesocyclone) which my further boost its speed. Supercell updrafts generally are stronger than 50 MPH, but 70 or 80 MPH is more typical. In the Great Plains of the United States, supercells often produce baseball and grapefruit sized hail (not to mention tornadoes) because of the extreme speeds of the updrafts within. Such updrafts have been known to reach 150 to 175 MPH, or about 12,000 to 15,000 feet per minute!
No aircraft except for military fighter jets with afterburner power could climb at these rates (for example, the F4 Phantom and Lear 35 Jet both have maximum climb rates less than 8,000 feet per minute). This is why a supercell can literally go from "blue sky to tornado" in a "New York minute". At 15,000 feet per minute, an air parcel will go from ground level to 45,000 feet in only 3 minutes!
An experiment was done via special weather balloon to find out how quickly a supercell updraft will carry it. The device was released into the inflow side of an HP supercell in the Great Plains and ingested into the storm. Only 2 and a half minutes later, the balloon was in the anvil of the storm. It rode the high-velocity core of the storm and gave vital information on the structure of the storm and internal dynamics.
Supercell storms are the most dangerous to aviation. Visibility and wind-shear are the most obvious threats at low levels, however, the updraft and mesocyclone is usually strongest at 20,000 feet. A commercial airliner flying though such a storm will most likely have its wings torn off, and this has happened to planes trying to fly through severe thunderstorms.
Another pilots horror story was an L1011 trying to fly through a "hole" in a multicell cluster of severe thunderstorms. Invisible to the pilot, was that baseball sized hail was falling through that "hole" in the storm, and serious damage to the aircraft was sustained (cracked windows, cratered leading edges of wings, and crushed engine nacelles).
The most amazing stories come from several incidents of people who were unfortunate enough to parachute into a thunderstorm. Imagine a 100 MPH updraft, your parachute is descending at 10 MPH ... Do the math, this means you will go back UP at 90 MPH!
In the book "The Man Who Rode The Wind", a true story of a pilot who ejected into a thunderstorm at 45,000 feet is described. He ejected from an F8 Crusader and descended into the developing storm until his parachute deployed at 10,000 feet. He became caught in the storm updraft and actually re-ascended under his chute to 26,000 feet. Thin air caused him to pass out and the cold caused intense frost bite during his ride up and down the inside of the storm. The water inside the cloud nearly made him drown in mid air!
He was constantly slammed around by the extreme turbulence and at one point his body appeared to be ABOVE his parachute. Finally, the storm weakened and he descended back to earth 30 minutes later. A person found him in a field, severely injured but alive. This storm was not even a severe storm, just a strong summer 30-45 minute long storm. Imagine if this storm was a supercell.
Another incident happened in Germany where 5 parachutists fell victim to a thunderstorm updraft. All landed covered in ice after their wild ride ... yes, they became the "cores of hail stones". Only one of the 5 survived.
Other strange phenomena occur when a tornado picks up debris and it becomes involved with the main updraft of the supercell. This accounts for "rains" of frogs and fish if the tornado passes over water and dumps them far from their point of pickup. Some fish encased in ice occured with one such incident. Other objects such as appliances, roof shingles, insulation, plants, even a computer floppy disk and a desk have landed miles away from a violent
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Appendix III
Another discussion
about terminal velocities of hailstones .
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Appendix B
Saturday, February 09, 2013
Andre
Willers
9
Feb 2013
"A
River runs over it" with apologies to Norman Maclean .
Synopsis:
Water
just won't behave . Now it clumps up in Atmospheric Rivers , dumping biblical
floods at semi-random .
Discussion
:
1.Described
in Hammerstein II folklore :
"Ol' man river,
Dat ol' man river
He mus'know sumpin'
But don't say nuthin',
He jes'keeps rollin'
He keeps on rollin' along."
Dat ol' man river
He mus'know sumpin'
But don't say nuthin',
He jes'keeps rollin'
He keeps on rollin' along."
2.
Atmospheric river
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An atmospheric
river is a narrow corridor or filament of concentrated moisture in
the atmosphere. Atmospheric rivers consist of
narrow bands of enhanced water vapor transport,
typically along the boundaries between large areas of divergent surface air
flow, including some frontal zones in association with extratropical
cyclones that form over the oceans.[1][2][3][4]
The
term was originally coined by researchers Reginald Newell and Yong Zhu of
the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in the early 1990s, to reflect the
narrowness of the moisture plumes involved.[1][3][5] Atmospheric rivers are
typically several thousand kilometers long and only a few hundred kilometers
wide, and a single one can carry a greater flux of water than the Earth's
largest river, the Amazon River.[2] There are typically 3-5 of
these narrow plumes present within a hemisphere at any given time.
Atmospheric
rivers have a central role in the global water cycle. On any given day, atmospheric
rivers account for over 90% of the global meridional (north-south) water vapor
transport, yet they cover less than 10% of the Earth's circumference.[2]
They
also are the major cause of extreme precipitation events
which cause severe flooding in many
mid-latitude, westerly coastal regions of the world, including the West Coast
of North America,[6][7][8][9] western Europe,[10][11][12] and the west coast of North Africa.[3]
3.Satellite Storms :
One is reminded of the Rings of Saturn , where
satellite moons smooth out cyclone-type perturbations .
Satellite cyclones similarly shape and steer
atmospheric rivers .
4.That is why the atmospheric river is so narrow
and has such an incredible amount of water .
5. The satellite storms both steer it and feed it
(the same process ,actually)
6.Steering the Atmospheric River :
At present moment , the satellite storms are
allowed to occur at random . This gives catastrophic storms in California every
200 years (measured over the last 2 000 years) . See http://www.examiner.com/article/california-is-under-an-atmospheric-river-or-ark-storm-with-the-worst-to-come or http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=megastorms-could-down-massive-portions-of-california
7.Humans have both the technology and the
knowledge to steer satellite storms so that Atmospheric Rivers are diverted
into Atmospheric Deltas . (Which is where they normally are . Your normal
rainfall) .
All they have to do is to prevent a certain class
of randomness in the satellite storms .
A disruption , in other words , not even having
to know what you are doing .
Any disruption is better than none . The odds
favour you .
8. You are fairly safe on an East Coast , unless
you have a large island offshore . This disrupts the satellite steering storms
and leads to the Atmospheric River veering from east to west . Like Mozambique
(Madagascar) , China(Japan) , etc .
9.Global Warming :
The contraption is driven by evaporation of water
. Heat . The rule of thumb is that any 10 degrees centigrade rise doubles the
chemical activity . ie 100% . A simple linear extrapolation gives a 1 C
increase an increase of 1% in moisture in the atmosphere . Not too bad if it is
spread evenly .
But it is concentrated among the atmospheric
rivers . You are talking about billions of tons of water . Right over your head
. Looking for an excuse to drop in .
10. West African Coast :
Angola , Namibia and Western Cape .
These are western coasts . As the tropics heat up
, and especially the mouth of the Amazon also heats up due to deforestation ,
expect major dumping of water-loads on north-south mountain ranges . Expect the
Makgadigadi sea to refill . Some tectonic shifts might close the Victoria Falls
again .
11. Methane release in the Arctic .
The heat is in the vapour . Atmospheric Rivers
mean only parts (10%-33%) of the arctic tundra gets heated . The rest remains
frozen . But the heated part gets the publicity .
This goes for all the so-called human measurement
systems . The real warming is about 1/3 of what is reported , because they do
not take the heat-transport in atmospheric rivers into account .
12. What can humans do about it ?
You just have to watch and see if an Atmospheric
River is forming , then disrupt some of it's satellite storms .
There are many ways to do this. The easiest and
cheapest is simply to dump thousands of tons of pig offal to the north of the
atmospheric river . Remember , you only have to disrupt the system .
It's default is an atmospheric delta . The
organic material will change the satellite storms .
Get Astronomers to help you . This is exactly like
shepherd moons of rings . The maths will help you .
13 . I never expected them in a ecological role .
14. You are talking about another rainstorm , or
a $725 Bn flood damage .
15 . Your choice .
16 . ARKstorm
An ARkStorm (for Atmospheric River 1000 Storm) is a hypothetical but scientifically realistic "superstorm" scenario developed and published by theUnited States Geological Survey, Multi Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP). It describes an extreme storm that may impact much of Californiacausing up to $725 billion in damages and repair (most caused by flooding), and affect a quarter of California's homes. The event would be similar to intense California storms which occurred in 1861 and 1862.[1] The name "ARkStorm" means "Atmospheric River (AR) 1000 (k)." The name was created as a way of quantifying the magnitude of west coast storms. It also meant to be drawn as a parallel to the biblical Noah's Ark story.
17. Yakkity-yak .
Don't rely on yaks in global warming .
Andre
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