What it takes to move an atmospheric river: two images

Deborah Byrd, of the ever-changing EarthSky radio program and science site, posts a wonderful animation of what the current storm hitting California looks like from moderately high pressure. 

Technical difficulties with the gif force me to post a still from the animation, but still you can see the rotation of the winds up against the California coast — amazing.

March 1st AR

This animated wind map of the storm – one of many– can be found at the astounding earth site, worth visiting on a routine basis. 

Here's another, from the GOES satellite:

March1ststormaccordingtoGOES

Enamored of this storm and all it has given us, I plan to take a walk up into its most beautiful bounty — the snow, which the experts say will be found at 5500 – 6000 feet. More pics soon w/luck.

For tonight, let me only remark in amazement and delight at the sound of frog. After three years of drought, and months and months of silence, the stream returns, and the frongs sing again.  

Tonight along Sisar Creek, all seems right with the world. 

What it looks like when a big atmospheric river hits CA

When an atmospheric river reaches California it's often a beautiful sight, especially in an infrared image drawm from NASA's AIRS satellite, explored in depth in this backgrounder from the Sacramento Bee: 

The exciting part is that — according to Duane Waliser, a lead scientist at the NASA-backed Jet Propulsion Lab — five-day forecasts of these "Pineapple Express} storms are now as skillful as three-day forecasts a few years ago, and as skillful as one-day forecasts a decade ago. The hope and expectation is that in time scientists will be able to forecast atmospheric river impacts three weeks into the future. 

“In certain instances, we’ll be able to have a little bit more foreshadowing – as in weeks-ahead notice,” Waliser said. “However, we’re just learning that capability, but this holds promise for that.”

It's not easy to imagine that, but a little easier after looking at this water vapor image from AIRS, which shows how the storm developed over the month of Febuary, reaching out and almost touching California before it came together and overwhelmed the West. 
 

But the real news for Ojai locally and yours truly is that something important happened for the first time in at least a year and a half:

DSC00103

Sisar Creek began to run.

Which raises a question: How many these "ARKstorms," as the USGS calls them, does it take to recharge the aquifer? Not how many inches. How many big storms? And is there a rating system for the size of these storms?  

To be reported out…

Hyperactivity linked to moms taking Tylenol-type painkilers

On the front page of the Los Angeles Times, Melissa Healy tells a story of a huge study in Scandanavia that shows that the active ingredient in Tylenol and Excedrine and many other over-the-counter medicines is an endocrine disruptor plausibly linked to hyperactivity and other developmental disorders. 

Healy makes a strong case simply by quoting the findings:

In analyzing data on more than 64,000 Danish women and their children, researchers found that kids whose mothers took the painkiller at any point during pregnancy were 29% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than were kids whose mothers took none. The risk increased the most — by 63% — when acetaminophen was taken during the second and third trimesters, and by 28% when used in the third trimester alone.

Could this explain the upsurge in developmental and behaviorial issues linked to mental disorders in recent decades? Healy doesn't speculate. 

Nor does she explain why a known endocrine disruptor, acetaminophen, was allowed to be sold freely without warnings, even when it — like many other products — was suspected capable of harm. 

Endocrine disrupting EDC-figure

[image reference]

She does quote plenty of experts who point out that this is just one study, first of all, and that many doctors — even those aware of the linkage and risk — may continue to prescribe acetominophen to reduce fever and pain.

She doesn't mention that children can overdose and even die fromtaking acetominophen, as dramatized in a blockbuster This American Life, nor that it has been linked by experts to causation of asthma. 

But she closes on an ominous note:

The international team that conducted the study will next investigate their data for evidence of the neuropsychiatric and other mental health effects of a variety of medications taken during pregnancy. Among the outcomes they will be looking for is autism.

http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-tylenol-pregnancy-20140225,0,3832225.story#ixzz2uVAWD6G1

 

Facing Drought Together: The Ojai Retreat 3/9/2014

Bill O'Brien, a civil engineer, Victoria Loorz, a pastor, myself, and Ulrich Brugger, who directs The Ojai Retreat, are putting together a public conversation which we hope will help motivate people of the Ojai Valley to take a serious look at our drought and what we can do about it.  

Ojaidroughtposter

 

 We also intend to ask for help. 

Leading British scientist links warming to flooding

In this country, scientists have been historically averse to link weather disasters — such as flooding caused by huge storms — to climate change.

The scientific cliche is well-known: No single meteorological event can be caused by climate change. 

A leading theorist of climate communications, Naomi Oreskes of UC San Diego argues that the general public is desperate for leadership on the subject of climate change, and that by always qualifying away the linkage between climate and meteorology, scientists are undermining their own authority. 

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times last year after Typhoon Haiyan, she wrote:

When we emphasize the uncertainty, we appear to justify a course of no action on climate.

Instead, we might focus on the reality of the threat that warming poses, even though we can't say with any certainty that it caused the particular case in front of us. We might focus on the fact that we expect warming to cause exactly this type of extremely intense typhoon to occur more often — as well as a range of other harmful and irreversible consequences, some of them quite certain.

Well, In the UK this year, after the worst flooding in 248 years, Dame Julia Sligo — the chief scientist of the Met Office — did exactly what Oreskes counseled,and bluntly warned that climate change means more such disasters to come, and unapologetically linked climate change to the flooding. 

Climate change is almost certainly to blame for the severe weather that has caused chaos across Britain in recent weeks, the Met Office's chief scientist has said.

Dame Julia Slingo said there was not yet "definitive proof" but that "all the evidence" pointed to a role for the phenomenon.

[edit] 

Climate change is almost certainly to blame for the severe weather that has caused chaos across Britain in recent weeks, the Met Office's chief scientist has said [to Rupert Murdoch's SkyNews network]. 

Dame Julia said the southerly track of the storms had been something of surprise.

She said: "They have been slamming into the southern part of Britain. We also know that the subtropical, tropical Atlantic is now quite a lot warmer than it was 50 years ago.

"The air that enters this storm system comes from that part of the Atlantic where it is obviously going to be warmer and carrying more moisture.

"This is just basic physics.'"

To an audience at the American Geophysical Union a couple of years ago, Dame Sligo said that her office was working on ways to forecast extreme events. Be interesting to find out if that system worked for the UK this year.

Here's a picture of one creature that might actually enjoy flooding — in Worcester last week, from the Daily Mail. 

SwansinWorchester2014

A Tale of Two Towns: Can a federal grant make a real change for the poor in Ventura County? | Reporting on Health

For an upcoming fellowship in health reporting at USC's journalism school, I'm working on a couple of long-form stories. This is the first of them — a look at how a federal grant aims to balance the scales of health for poor people in Ventura County. Hope it's of interest. 

A Tale of Two Towns: Can a federal grant make a real change for the poor in Ventura County? | Reporting on Health.

Here's an excerpt: 
 

ChildinpovertyIn Ventura County, which lies just north of Los Angeles in the sprawl of Southern California, great wealth — in towns such as Thousand Oaks or Ojai — can be found not far from great desperation, in towns such as Oxnard or Santa Paula.  

Some of the contrasts startle. In Santa Paula, for example, about 14 percent of married couples live in poverty. In Ojai, a comparable in size community less than twenty miles to the north, 0 percent of married couples live in poverty, according to Census Bureau numbers. 

Overall the statistics — from a report backed by the Centers of Disease Control — show that wealthy Ventura County residents eat better, they have better access to exercise, their lives are less stressful, and they live longer – almost nine years longer on average.  

And a chart — the heart of the piece in some ways. [Click to enlarge]:

Taleoftwotowns

Ojai has the oldest population in Ventura County: Study

Sometimes the news you would like to cover is not the news you encounter in a day at work — but it's still news.

Here's just such a fact which tumbled, unannounced, from a 127-page assessment of Ventura County's overall health by its healthcare agency, in a major report released in December (2013), whose funding was backed by a substantial grant from the Centers for Disease Control: