Roland Pease

Volunteers Step In to Help Understaffed NOAA Track Hurricane Melissa

NOAA’s hurricane research division staff has been cut from 52 in 2020 to 28 in 2025, almost a 50% cut. They’ve resorted to using volunteers to man the critical radar and dropsonde stations on Hurricane Hunter flights. Senseless cuts in an era of climate change making the strongest storms stronger.

Debunking bullshit takes an order of magnitude more work that creating it.

While all experts who looked closer at the "synthetic origin" bruhaha immediately realised how scientifically unsound it was, it just takes so much work for so little reward to refute it.

Zach did anyway, and oh boy.. ⬇️

Carnivorous ‘death ball’ sponge among new species found in depths of Southern Ocean Researchers previously took first confirmed footage of a juvenile colossal squid in scarcely explored habitat

Carnivorous ‘death ball’ sponge among new species found in depths of Southern Ocean

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

More reading for me

Look what the dog fetched up! @matthewcobb.bsky.social’s new biography of Francis Crick.

Folks, it’s like no other Crick biog. Full of new research, fresh insights, juicy stories, & it’s a romp.

Having watched this develop from the larval stage, it’s a thrill to hear it thunk! on my table

I've had to update the plot of the strongest tropical cyclones by ocean basin all too often in recent years, since climate change increases the number of high-end storms. Melissa has joined the club, tied with Dorian (2019) as strongest Atlantic hurricane recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico.

For the record, Melissa's main targets of Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, and the Bahamas account for, respectively, 0.016%, 0.0089%, 0.064%, and 0.0038% of the global annual total of CO2 emissions.

That's the bit that makes no sense to me.

Are you sure this story hasn't escaped from The Onion?

Indeed

This is cool, 6 million year old ice from Antartica with inferred temperature ~12°C warmer than the late Pleistocene. No CO2 level yet! (That will be highly anticipated!)

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

For me this chart (if I've understood it correctly) underlines where the energy for #Melissa comes from - surface waters of the Atlantic down to 70 m depth cooled by up to ~2C suggess a huge amount of heat transferred. Assuming the T profile after is flat because of all the mixing down to that depth

Anthropocene as a biological event - the massive increase in human and domesticated mammal biomass vs the startling decrease in land and marine wild mammal
biomass in the past 160yrs, as documented the great team of Ron Milo in Nat Comms.
Sobering graph.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2322597121

At 185 mph maximum sustained winds, Cat 5 Hurricane #Melissa is now just 7 mph shy of what @michaelfwehner.bsky.social r.bsky.social & Jim Kossin have defined as the cutoff for a prospective "Cat 6" hurricane:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Operations has begun! I am happy to report that the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has formally begun the operations phase. The Operations team has accepted the responsibility for and authority over the full Observatory...

Science operations for @vrubinobs.bsky.social has begun, but science data is not flowing just yet. The observatory will start operations in an engineering mode. The LSST (Legacy Survey of Space and Time) is expected to start no earlier than the December 31, 2025. community.lsst.org/t/operations...

YouTube video by Michael Mann Michael Mann discussed Hurricane Melissa +Bill Gates climate comments with Chris Jansing on MSNBC

I discussed how climate change supercharged Hurricane #Melissa + Bill Gates latest climate comments with Chris Jansing on @msnbc.com: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ5O...

Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy and Children’s Risk of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability This nationwide cohort study with sibling control analysis examines the association of acetaminophen use during pregnancy with children’s risk of autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability.

Acetaminophen (Tylenol) in pregnancy does not increase the risk of autism @jama.com @ki.se

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

The time is now: a call to contain H9N2 avian influenza viruses In the past century, we have seen four pandemics caused by human influenza A: H1N1 Spanish influenza (1918–1920), H2N2 Asian influenza (1957–58), H3N2 Hong Kong influenza (1968–69), and H1N1 swine inf...

I've seen H9N2 pop up on BlueSky recently. So, I wonder if people might be interested in this comment from a few years ago.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

***ALL-TIME RECORD***
#Melissa is now the Strongest landfall ever on record in the Atlantic (and it seems to be getting stronger!)
892mb, winds 185 mph. (Tied with the FL Keys Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 in wind and pressure)
#jamaica
1/

While most eyes are on Jamaica and #HurricaneMelissa, central Vietnam just received over 1m of rain (>39”) in 24 hours

BBC World Service - Science In Action, Fifty Years of Science in Action Sir Paul Nurse, virologist Wendy Barclay and Nasa's Ellen Stofan on 50 years of science

Robyn is indeed the ultimate legend in science broadcasting. But the claim for oldest programme goes to BBCWS Science in Action, which had its 50th birthday 11 years ago.
Robyn wins 2 ways
SinA's been through many many presenters.

SinA's last episode is this week :-)
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/98/3/bams-d-16-0134.1.xml

worth re-upping this one in light of the rapid intensification of #Melissa...

If you grew concrete, it would sink and bury it much quicker.

bsky.app/profile/drje...

Coincidentally, this theme came through very strongly in the conversation I just recorded with @drdebhoury.bsky.social @angierasmussen.bsky.social @michaelemann.bsky.social and @naomioreskes.bsky.social on what's going wrong with trust in science.
#Quibono?
Sorry it over ran the promised 30 mins!

I have a garden to tend...

Last minute revision for the recording shortly of the final edition of BBC Science in Action - @naomioreskes.bsky.social's why trust science?

How attacking healthcare has become a strategy of war

“I have not seen anything like the almost daily attacks on hospitals, the relentlessness of the repeated attacks, the indifference to the consequences of the attacks for patients and staff” - Len Rubenstein

www.bmj.com/content/391/... @bmj.com

There's something about the fact they cancelled a Mixed Oxide research project the last time they were in power that has you wondering whether this plan, to give away plutonium, is fully thought through. 🤔

Really valuable and very normal feedback from Dr. Ebright the last two months.