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Japan's summer of crazy weather

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“The world’s weather is heading into unknown territory,” frets Shukan Gendai (Oct 13) after a summer in Japan of searing heat and “guerrilla rain.”

Kyushu was hardest hit – 32 dead or missing and 200,000 evacuated in three days of July storms – but tempests once associated mainly with Japan’s south and west are spreading north and east. As just one example of what this is doing to the wildlife, see the magazine’s photo of a brown bear perched on rocks in Hokkaido’s Shiretoko peninsula. It’s so emaciated you have to study it to be sure it’s not a dog. Bears and deer in greater numbers than ever are drifting from forest habitats to outlying farms and not-so-outlying towns, even cities. Food in the forest is in short supply, and development and climate change are the culprits. No one expects things to get better any time soon.

Wind and rain assailed the archipelago this past summer and early fall as never before. Even 1988, the previous record-setter, is said to pale in comparison. Umbrellas are useless against torrential rain that rivals waterfalls and winds that, at worst, blow roofs off houses. The Meteorological Agency’s technical definition of a downpour worthy of the name is 50 mm or more precipitation per hour. In 1988 that was noted happening 173 times nationwide. In 2012 it’s 185 and counting.

“People think global warming means it gets warmer everywhere,” says Agency researcher Yoshinobu Masuda. “It’s not so. As the surface gets warmer the upper air, to compensate, gets cooler. It’s the widening temperature gap that generates atmospheric instability.”

Look for flash storms once associated exclusively with summer to continue into November, he warns.

We’ll have to learn to live with this, but it won’t be easy. In seas off Kushiro in eastern Hokkaido, fishermen find the nets they spread for salmon full of the newly-flourishing (and economically worthless) Echizen jellyfish instead. Closer to where most people live, twisters, typhoons and floods this spring and summer brought an onslaught to residents not used to such incursions. The worst effect of the typhoon that hit Tokyo in June was traffic paralysis and a healthy dose of fear. But 70 km farther north, a twister in Tsukuba, Ibaragi Prefecture, killed a junior high school student in May.

The rains and resulting landslide that derailed a train in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, on Sept 24 kept tensions high, fortunately without fatalities. September’s extraordinary heat is still fresh in the collective memory. Temperatures in Tokyo were three degrees above normal, and the rain that fell on Yokosuka was measured at 100 mm per hour. Cloudbursts on that scale were almost unheard of so far north.

What’s the prognosis? Guerrilla rain, Shukan Gendai hears from weather forecaster Yukiko Katayama, can fall just about anywhere, just about anytime.

© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

17 Comments
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The signs are everywhere now of the damage the coal and oil industry is causing the global climate. We may be beyond the recovery point now. Yet many people keep their head in the sand regarding this greatest threat of all to our livelihood.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

“As the surface gets warmer the upper air, to compensate, gets cooler."

I'm no scientist, but this I really can't comprehend. It's like saying"I tried to make a pizza, but as the oven warmed up the pizza dough cooled down to compensate."

Anybody with the knowledge to explain it to an idiot like me?

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

zurcroniumOct. 15, 2012 - 01:25PM JST

The signs are everywhere now of the damage the coal and oil industry is causing the global climate. We may be beyond the recovery point now. Yet many people keep their head in the sand regarding this greatest threat of all to our livelihood.

I've been telling people for months that their efforts to increase fossil fuel use will end up destroying the environment for longer and cause more human deaths than any tiny radiation spill. In a hundred years when there's wide spread famine, people will look back and disown their great-grandparents for how stupid they acted.

lucabrasiOct. 15, 2012 - 01:59PM JST

“As the surface gets warmer the upper air, to compensate, gets cooler."

I'm no scientist, but this I really can't comprehend. It's like saying"I tried to make a pizza, but as the oven warmed up the pizza dough cooled down to compensate."

Anybody with the knowledge to explain it to an idiot like me?

They tried to make it dumbed down but failed. Basically it's like saying that your air conditioner broke, so while your house gets colder, the exhaust of the AC unit got colder. It's relative, not absolute. The winds work like a giant engine, with space as the ultimate heat sink, so while both get hotter, the bottom gets hotter faster, and the temperature difference increases.

1 ( +5 / -4 )

House gets hotter, exhaust gets colder*

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

Thank you basroil. Makes perfect sense now. And thanks for all the radiation info over the last year or so. You obviously know what you're talking about. : )

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

The planet clearly cannot absorb the CO2 being generated at present. One solution is to reduce the world's population significantly - and I fear nature may do that for us, one way or another.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Warm air masses working their way North (in the northern hemisphere) tend to push the cold air mass at the pole to the other side of the globe. As more of the hemisphere remains relatively warm, the cold mass being pushed down into the warm air on the other side of the globe creates "instability" (a.k.a. serious storms) for that side of the globe. That cold air mass ends up acting like the head of a bobblehead doll - randomly sliding back and forth over the polar region and encroaching on the more temperate air masses. The result is EVERYBODY in the northern hemisphere gets disturbed weather patterns. The same thing happens in the southern hemisphere, but there's a bit of variation as Antarctica provides a different surface for the air mass to slide over compared to the North Pole.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Soon Japan will not have 4 seasons and then it will not be unique in the world any more.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Although autos, trucks, factories, etc. are contributors to pollution, I saw a show on National Geographic channel that said the biggest contributors to pollution were buildings. The Empire State building was recently upgraded environmentally and as a result now spends 1/3 less in operation costs, while reducing pollution. This needs to be done globally. All new buildings should be built accordingly.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

" The world’s weather is heading into unknown territory, frets Shukan Gendai "

And when was the worlds weather ever in known territory? The Shukan Gendai does not tell us. The whole idea that the worlds weather, which has always wildy fluctuated between hot periods and ice ages is somehoe inherently stable and can be controlled by man like an airconditioner is ludicrious.

But of course it is profitable for those who use the climate hype to gain power and money.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

And when things reach a tipping point, Mother Nature will take over and send things into a correction cycle which will probably reduce the numbers of offenders as during the Mini Ice Age.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

We are not generating CO2 and releasing it into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, we are simply releasing the CO2 that those fossil fuels contain. The planet has a finite amount of CO2 and the fossil fuels that we have used in the short history of using fossil fuels took millions of years to develop. Much of the CO2 is absorbed by the oceans which is the largest producer of the air that we breathe. But oceans are overtaxed and this is causing a whole new set of problems.

There is not enough space to explain the entire process and associated problems but if you want to learn more and have a pretty good read while you are at it I recommend:

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2007/11/last-hours-ancient-sunlight

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I've often wondered why, since in European languages there are four names : "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter" it would appear that ONLY Japan has "four seasons" ? Actually, it would seem somebody couldn't count since, in fact, there are "five" (including the "rainy season") here... Maybe the "rainy season" could help to dilute the CO2 ? (Before you "jump" on me - just joking !)

0 ( +0 / -0 )

This crazy weather has absolutely nothing to do with the burning of coal or othe fossil fuels, and nothing to do with the acmtivities. Of puny human beings. Its is nature in action. Loomat history and you will find equally crazy weather in the past as well. There is nothing new under the sun. Dont be decieved by all the talk of "global warming". Its a lie. The British Meterological Offeice the other day finally admitted that there has been no "global warming" since 1997, so have no fear, these things happen, and its only nature. The is nothing we humans can do about it. Its beyond our control and the only people who are b,eating on about global warming are those who want to make money out of it.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Realist, the Meterological Office said no such thing:

http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/

I quote:

"An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it’"

"It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme"

I recommend reading the whole thing, there's a very informative chart of the hottest years since 1850

http://metofficenews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/ranked_combined.png

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Check out information on how global warming is affecting the earth:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fclimate%2F2012%2F09%2F24%2F894511%2Farctic-sea-ice-what-why-and-what-next%2F&h=GAQFTCeOqAQH48bqeVTStp0_kUTTkeSR7UUmaVWbgRck_fg&enc=AZP02FMGVGGJWAnJOEjyzNK-9RzA0kLh-GPQCJDEgCaH5hdLY6D5-GY03T81fWPT5U6ZhOsRn5wgkckH3Y-rf7Va&s=1

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Also this interesting article:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jKKr0IRUKbR6Se7mFZu_qfcFWZTw

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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