Extreme Temperature Diary-November 12, 2018/ Topic: Deadly California Fires/A Presidential Boo Boo…NOV 2018 Day 5

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Monday November 12th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing post will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials)😊. 

Deadly California Fires/A Presidential Boo Boo…November 2018 Day 5

Dear Diary. Here is an unfortunate update from this evening:

Quoting Bob’s post from this evening:

President Donald Trump got major blowback after a tweet sent on Saturday: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!” Brian Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters union, which represents more than 30,000 first responders, declared in a statement: “The president’s message attacking California and threatening to withhold aid to the victims of the cataclysmic fires is ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines.”

As of this morning there were 31 dead and more than 250 people still missing as a result of the latest round of horrific fired across California. At a time when the leader of the free world should be acknowledging what climate change is doing, and at the very least comforting victims and fire fighters, we get this:

I suspect that at least through January 2021, barring impeachment, we won’t be getting much empathy from Trump initially when climate change related disasters occur. The mark of a good leader during disasters, like Churchill during the Blitz, or Obama after mass shootings, is inspirational oratory comforting victims. It’s now obvious to me that for the rest of Trump’s term the main two climate change related disasters will be deadly hurricanes, such as Maria and Michael, and wildfires. We need strong leadership on climate issues going into the next decade. The United States will be very fortunate to not see another disaster on the caliber of the current wildfires through 2020. I suspect that our luck has run out.

In Trump’s defense I did see this tweet this morning: 

 

From Bob’s tweet I highly recommend reading Stephen Pyne’s Slate piece: 

https://slate.com/technology/2018/11/california-woolsey-camp-fire-trump-forest-management.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru

As high pressure continues to build over interior portions of the West Santa Ana and other easterly winds will continue over California through at least Tuesday:

As the West continues to experience drought conditions a disturbance linked to the North American dipole will bring flooding rain to the East through much of this week.

 

Just like yesterday I will post more social media information, some of which has links to finely written articles on the fires. If anyone has a link for me to post, please drop me a note:

Here is some impressive NASA imagery of the burn areas:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA22816

The ARIA team at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory created these Damage Proxy Map (DPM) images depicting areas in Southern and Northern California that are likely damaged by the Woolsey and Camp Fires.

click here for Figure 1 for PIA22816   Figure 1

The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, created these Damage Proxy Maps (DPMs) depicting areas in California likely damaged by the Woolsey and Camp Fires. They are derived from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

The pre-event images for the Woolsey Fire in Southern California (main image) were taken before the fire on Oct. 30, 2018 and the post-event image was acquired during the fire on Nov. 11, 2018. The map covers an area of 50 miles x 25 miles (80 km x 40 km), indicated with the big red polygon. Each pixel measures about 33 yards x 33 yards (30 m x 30 m). The color variation from yellow to red indicates increasingly more significant ground surface change.

The pre-event images for the Camp Fire in Northern California (Figure 1) were taken on Nov. 4, 2018 and the post-event images were acquired during the fire on Nov. 10, 2018. The map covers an area of 55 miles x 48 miles (88 km x 77 km). As in the previous image, each pixel measures about 33 yards x 33 yards (30 m x 30 m). The color variation from yellow to red indicates increasingly more significant ground surface change.

Preliminary validation for both maps was done by comparing approximate location data to Google’s Crisismap. These damage proxy maps can be used as guidance to identify damaged areas with the understanding that they may be less reliable over vegetated areas including farmlands. For example, the scattered single colored pixels over vegetated areas may be false positives, and the lack of colored pixels over vegetated areas does not necessarily mean no damage.

Sentinel-1 data were accessed through the Copernicus Open Access Hub. The image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA and analyzed by the NASA-JPL/Caltech ARIA team. This research was carried out at JPL funded by NASA.

For more information about ARIA, visit http://aria.jpl.nasa.gov.

Here is some other weather and climate news from Monday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity.)

We did see some cold “ETs” in Canada this morning:

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The Climate Guy

 

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