Category Archives: Climate Change

E Mt Pleasant Ave & Sprague St Flooding – July 24, 2020

For the 2nd Friday in July, there was flooding in the historic Wingohocking Creek Watershed, this time at E Mt Pleasant Ave and Sprague St. The previous July 2020 flood occured at Belfield and Church on July 10th (link).

Here is a short video that shows the flooding between the SEPTA bridge and Devon St.

This flooding was caused by the blocked stormwater inlet shown in this picture.

The July 11th Belfield and Church flooding (link), on the other hand, was caused by too much stormwater runoff overwhelming the sewers in that area.

The July 24 rainfall for Philadelphia is shown in this map which shows that our area got 1.5 – 2 inches and parts of Germantown got 2.5 – 3 inches.

As our global climate warms, we are seeing more intense rain storms. The July 10 and July 24 storms are an example of what we can expect. Please let me know if you see historic Wingohocking Watershed flooded intersections, railroad underpasses of other flooding so that we can log and document them to make sure that the City is aware and taking steps to both clear our inlets and increase our combined sewer capacity to reduce future flooding.

If you live near on of PWD’s 24 flood prone intersections (link) please be sure to get homeowners – renters insurance.

Climate Change, Flood Risk & Mortgages

The Pennsylvania Story: More Plastic Pollution in the Making

My new video shows how Marcellus shale gas is changing economics of plastic production, increasing risks of plastic pollution and climate change.

 

Arctic Warming and Our Changing Weather Patterns

Vox has a great video that explains how loss of sea ice in the arctic is affecting our weather.

Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Scientist Interview

Peter Sinclair (https://climatecrocks.com/) provides excellent video interviews with climate scientists. Here’s an interview with Asa Rennermalm of Rutgers.

Texas – Louisiana Coast Rainfall from Hurricane Harvey

NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center is forecasting up to 20-inches of rain for Texas coastal areas over next 7 days (link).

Corpus Christie and Houston are in 20+ inch total 7-day rainfall belt, New Orleans is in the 4-6 inch belt.

Here’s an ArcGIS 10.3 map of the WPC forecast to show the rain belts and Texas – Louisiana cities.

 

Best wishes to all in path of this major flooding event.

Arctic Sea Ice Melting and Pennsylvania Weather

The Snow,Water, Ice, and Permafrost in the Arctic, or SWIPA, has released a report on their 5 year study. Highlights have been summarized in this powerful video.

I recommend Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week  for those concerned about climate change.

 

Temperature Trends – 12 Airports – East Coast USA

12_airport_trend

This animated gif  shows changes in annual mean temperature at 12 East Coast USA airports that had continuous daily data for the 1950 – 2015 period. The data was retrieved from Weather Underground using the R weatherData package .

11 of the 12 airports (all but JAX) show statistically significant increases in annual mean temperatures.

 

Philadelphia’s Changing Climate

2016  has been a hot and dry summer  in Philadelphia. Here are a few charts that summarize the 1950-2016 daily temperature and precipitation data at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL).

August 2016 warmest in 1950 – 2016 period

The mean temperature in August, 2016 was 81.3 F, making it the hottest August in the 1950 – 2016 period.KPHL_8_Monthly Mean Temerature

41 Days with maximum daily temperature was 90 or more degrees. 

KPHL_Summer_hot_days_2016-09-01

Very Dry Summer

It’s been a dry summer, we are 3.34 inches below median cumulative rainfall for this time of year. 2016 ranks 35th out of 45 years, only 11 years have had less rain than 2016 since 1970.KPHL_CumulativeRainfall_2016-09-01

 

 

Hot Summer in Philadelphia

It’s been a hot summer in Philadelphia so far this year. I started wondering in the global warming has anything to do with our recent spate of 90+ days.

First, lets look at the global warming situation. NASA has announced that July, 2016 is the warmest month on record (here, here). We are well on our way to the 3rd year of record breaking global temperatures.

NASA’s GISS Temperature Anomaly Trend

Is there a connection between global temperature increases and our 90+ summer? To find out, I first downloaded temperature data from the Weather Underground for Philadelphia’s NE Airport. I then plotted the daily maximum and minimum temperatures for the summer months of May through yesterday.

On first glance at the chart, I was sure that I found proof that our 33 90+ days was proof that global warming has hit Philadelphia. As I dug deeper I found that the number of 90+ days varies from a low of 6 in 1978,  to 41 in 2010 and a high of 43 in 1988. We are in the high end of the  6 – 43 day ranges of 90+ temperatures  range of the number of 90+ days we have had in the 1975 – 2015 period.

We need to dig deeper to find links between the number of Philadelphia’s dog days of summer and global warming. I’ll be writing on this more in the comming months.