The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary 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).😉
Main Topic: The Gulf Is a ‘Powder Keg’ of Record Warmth
Dear Diary. Over the summer meteorologists have commented on the Gulf of Mexico’s record warmth with some surface waters approaching 100°F around the Florida Keys. Here are snapshots of current Gulf sea surface temperatures and anomalies:
In July my friend who writes for the Washington Post, Matthew Cappucci, commented on these warm Gulf waters here:
Fast forward to late August and indeed a tropical storm has popped up, which is called Idalia:
It will be interesting but horrible to see if Idalia rapidly intensifies into a major hurricane before landfall due to this above average temperature Gulf water the next few days, although a CAT3 storm is not forecast by NHC as of this writing.
My biggest fear with Idalia is that it could veer slightly off its current forecast track towards the east, impacting Tampa Bay, which has not seen a direct hit from a hurricane in about a century. That would truly be an expensive disaster tallying tens of billions of dollars’ worth of damage and impacting millions of people, many more than what Ian did in 2022 to the Fort Myers area.
Here are more notes on Idalia and the tropics, which I’ll be adding to as Sunday rolls along:
Here are some “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is more July and August 2023 climatology:
Here is more climate and weather news from Sunday:
(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. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)