 And welcome to the show, which is Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and our guest today is Dr. Stephen Buzzinga, who is the chair of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. And Stephen, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you here. You've been on the show before. But at the present time, there's an awful lot of interest in meteorological phenomena, particularly on the east coast of the U.S. So today, we're going to be talking about hurricanes, and in particular, some of the big hurricanes which have affected parts of the United States early this year. So what does a meteorologist know about hurricanes then? What's your particular skill set? Well, first of all, just let me say thank you for having me on the show, Pete. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. We are meteorologists are fascinated by weather. And if you enjoy looking at clouds and watching storms and have a fascination with hurricanes, then Atmospheric Sciences is a good place to be. This summer has been very a bit too exciting, I would say. We've had Hurricane Harvey, which has produced a tremendous amount of flooding in Texas, and we've had Hurricane Irma, which came up and did a lot of damage to the U.S. Virgin Islands, also Cuba, and then it struck Florida, and has a very interesting storm and produced also a lot of damage. Finally, there was Maria, which came in and struck Puerto Rico dead on and has knocked out its utility services completely, and they're in pretty bad shape. So we've had three very strong hurricanes in a row that's hit the... And of course, as an academic, I presume you will study each of these hurricanes. How do you predict their paths? Partly because here in Hawaii, fortunately, we've been blessed without a direct hit in the past, but there's always that possibility, presumably. Is that correct? Well, that's correct, and that's right. As meteorology researchers, we are interested in improving the forecast of the track and improving the forecast of the intensity of hurricanes. And the track forecasts have gotten quite a bit better in the last 30 years, but the intensity forecasts have been lagging. So that's an area that there's a lot of room for improvement. And one of the things that we're looking at is how to get more information on the core of the storm. And the core of the storm, the eyewall, has lots of thunderstorms in it, and it can be very lightning active. So one of the things that my group is doing is looking at the lightning and using lightning as a proxy for rainfall. Because if there's a lot of lightning, we all know that there's going to be some rainfall. So when Hurricane Harvey crossed the Yucatan Peninsula, it... And that's in Mexico, correct? That's in Mexico. It almost died out. It was a very weak storm when it came through. It was like a tropical depression. But it picked up a lot of interesting aerosols, like dust and pollen. And that came in, and it caused the thunderstorms to reinvigorate a little bit. And that is something that we are studying. Let's take a look at one of the storms which I think you've been mentioning and talk us through. So here we see Hurricane Harvey. We mentioned a little bit about global warming. We might get back to that later in the show. But what do you see in this kind of image, which presumably is of the Texas coast, right? Yes, it's just making landfall in this image. It's a day-night image. So you can actually see, it's taken at night. And so you can see lights of the cities. And at the same time, you can see the structure of the clouds really well. The dark hole in the center is the eye. And surrounding that is an eye wall that is comprised of a bunch of thunderstorms. And as I was saying before, if you look at the distribution of those lightning strikes in the thunderstorm, it can give you information that may help us to improve the forecast. And this is just as the hurricane was making landfall. Presumably a meteorologist, whether an academic or professional, no meteorologist would be tracking this particular storm days before landfall. Is that correct? That's correct. The difficult thing for this storm was that when it crossed the Yucatan Peninsula, it was a very weak storm. And all the hurricane models tended to bring the storm in as a Category 1 hurricane. But it actually made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane. So the weather models really did a poor job of forecasting the intensity of this storm. Tell our viewers roughly what is the size. It's hard for us to grasp how big this is. Is this the size of Oahu or the Hawaiian Islands or bigger? Well, it's interesting. You know, from our experience in Hawaii, when Aniki struck, the eye went right over the island and it did tremendous damage. But Oahu, on the other hand, didn't receive that much damage. And if you look at the distance between those two islands, it's maybe 150 kilometers. And so Aniki and I were storms in the mid-80s and the mid-90s, right? So we've not had, apart from last year, where we had some very narrow misses, there hasn't been a particular hurricane we planned for. That's right. There was one storm, Izel, that came into the Punakost on the Big Island. And it brought in some hurricane wind gusts. But it was categorized as a tropical cyclone. The tropical storm strength at the time. So the kinds of things that you try and investigate or predict would be the wind speed, how fast it's moving, and of course, where it's going to go. Is that correct? That's exactly right. So defense and other agencies will really want to know. It's critical to deal with the storms. Yeah, and you want to have as accurate a forecast as far and advanced as possible. And one of the sort of controversial things, a bit controversial things, is that for the last decade or more, the ability to forecast the track and the intensity of storms is we're not the leaders in that in the world. The best forecasts are coming out of the European Center for Medium Range Forecasting. OK, let's take a look at that. Here, for example, is a track of Harvey. And it looks really quite unusual as it's sort of coming in from the Atlantic. As you say, it hit the Yucatan Peninsula, which is that piece of Central America sticking up. And then why was the path so unusual? Well, the really unusual thing about this storm, which contributed to its heavy, heavy rainfall and flooding over taxes, is the fact that it came in, made landfall, stalled, and just churned away, raining and raining. And then it backtracked back over the ocean. It actually deepened a little bit, and then it made landfall again. And the whole time it was producing copious quantities of rain. And that's an unusual characteristic of this particular storm. Yes, it was a rather unusual. It's when they make landfall in the US, primarily, go straight in line. That's right. And this must obviously be one of the reasons that Harvey was so catastrophic for the Houston areas. Absolutely. I think the next slide will show something a little bit about the character. So here's another view of Harvey. This is where it came out of the coast and went over the ocean again. It is now re-strengthening. You can see that the eye is reforming. And over land you can see that big white cloud to the north, which indicates heavy, heavy rainfall. That's the heavy rain. Yeah. And the winds are just drawing lots of tropical moisture off of the Gulf of Mexico and contributing to this tremendous rainfall. Yeah. And these are daytime images from satellites? This one is a daytime image, 8 a.m. And presumably you would use supplemental information apart from just seeing where the storm is and how thick the clouds are. Do you measure the temperature or the wind speed or what would you do with an image like this? The image, there are different, of course, wavelengths that the satellite sees and wavelengths of light, wavelengths of radiation coming up from the earth. And some of those wavelengths allow us to detect the temperature of the cloud top and also the sea surface temperature. And the sea surface temperature is very important for determining what the potential is for the storm to deepen, how strong it can become. And that's something we should probably return to when we talk about global warming. And the cloud top temperature tells you something about how deep the cloud is and how heavy the precipitation is going to be underneath. So there's a tremendous amount of information that comes out of these satellite images, for sure. Plus, you can see, presumably, these data are collected quite frequently. There's some weather satellites that get images out of it. Yeah, there's two different types of satellites. The satellites that are geostationary, they're above the equator, and they rotate exactly at the same rate that the earth rotates. They orbit. They orbit the earth in 24 hours, and the earth turns in 24 hours. They're over the same spot. And those satellites can take pictures every minute. And so you get a very rapid animation of everything that's happening. And from that motion that you see in the clouds, you can actually calculate the winds from the satellite as well. And then there's another class of satellites that travel much closer to the earth, and they go over the pole. And because they're so much closer to the surface of the earth, they can beam a radar beam down and get the reflection back and actually give you radar images over the ocean and give you the inside view of the hurricane. Wow. Really impressive stuff. Yeah. And so in the Atmospheric Sciences Department, this is the kind of thing you teach your students? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I believe there's even a NOAA weather bureau right next door to your department. There is. The National Weather Service Forecast Office for Honolulu is in our building. It's on the second floor and the department's on the third floor of the same building, which is a pretty unusual circumstance, but it's outstanding for our students because they can become students of meteorology. And when they graduate, they can work at the weather service. Is this a popular subject? How many graduate students and undergraduates do you have at any one time? We have about 30 undergrads and maybe 40 graduate students in a good year. And we're trying to have the department grow a bit. So it is popular, certainly the subject is very popular. We have much larger undergraduate introductory classes like the 101 class. Yeah. A lot of people enjoy learning about weather and forecasting and storms. The difficulty for some students, the sort of barrier, is that you need to have a certain passion and interest in mathematics and in physics. The interest in weather is not a problem, but the math can be a bit of a problem. So modern day meteorologists or atmospheric scientists will have to have good math skills, computer skills. It helps. Yeah. You don't have to be a math whiz, but you have to be willing to do the math. So you have to be motivated enough to do the work that you need to in order to understand the math. Ghana, the day is presumably where you just go out and you put a wind gauge or thermometer out or you fly a balloon to do an atmospheric structure or anything like that. You need to have the mathematical background to be able to interpret the data. Yeah, that is correct. Earlier there were positions that were more technician-like, but a lot of that work has been automated, so all the observations have become automated, and so there's less work for technicians. There's some. It's the analysis of the data. Yeah. Well, you mentioned something a few minutes ago about the potential impact of climate change. So we're coming up to a break now, but when we return, I'd like to expand a little bit on that particular topic because we do seem to have had three big hurricanes on the East Coast this summer, for example, and I'd like to get your opinion on whether or not we are actually seeing an increasing number or the severity of the storms. So let me just remind the viewers, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii research in Manila. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and our guest today is Dr. Steven Buzzinga, who is the chair of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at UH Manoa, and we'll be back in about a minute's time. So see you then. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Ted Rawson here, folks. You're a host on Where the Drone Leads, our weekly show at noon on Thursdays here on Think Tech. Well, we talk about drones, anything to do about drones, drones, remotely piloted aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, whatever you want to call them, emerging into Hawaii's economy, educational framework, and our public life. We talk about things associated with the use, the misuse, technology, engineering, legislation with local experts, as well as people from across the country. Please join us noon on Thursdays and catch the latest on what's taking place in the world of drones that might affect you. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and our guest today is Dr. Steven Buzzinga, who is the chair of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at UH Manoa. Now, Steven, we briefly mentioned the words, climate change in the first part of the show. And so I'm sure many of our viewers will be saying, having three big hurricanes in about six weeks, that's kind of unusual, isn't it? And I want to start off the second segment. We've got a picture of what you call, I think it's sea-surface temperature surfing. Go to this one. All right. Explain to the viewers what we're seeing here. It's obviously the southeast United States, but what do the colors mean? The colors represent how far away from the average temperature that this particular temperature is. And if you look at these temperatures, they range from about very close to normal. Which is the white. Which is the white. And then to temperatures probably a degree to two degrees above normal as you approach the coast to Texas. And this is very significant because if you recall that earlier show of the track, all of the deepening occurred in the last 12 hours before the hurricane made landfall. After it had gone north of the Yucatan, which is down at the bottom of the Caribbean. All right. So this is a snapshot in time. And we're seeing that the Gulf of Mexico is anything up to two, two and a half degrees centigrade, or that's what six degrees Fahrenheit hotter than your normal. That's correct. Yeah. I realize that we don't want to get into the political side of it. But could that potentially be due to climate change? And if so, what's the problem there? Well if you look at sea surface temperature observations and you look at a distribution say 30 years ago, that distribution is going to have an average, which is about a degree colder than it is today. So there's been a bit of warming, but there's always variability around that normal. And so if you shift the normal by degree warmer, then that means the outliers are also going to be a degree warmer. Now it turns out that hurricanes derive their energy from the sea surface. And it's an exponential increase in the energy availability. So for every degree of warming that you have in the sea surface temperature, you have a 7% increase in the water vapor that can be sustained above that warm water. And it is the water vapor that provides the engine for the hurricane. Okay. So any temperature anomaly in the sea surface really increases the severity or the wind speed or the water it can carry. It increases the potential intensity of the hurricane. Now there's a lot of factors that come into play when a hurricane is born. There's wind shear in the atmosphere, there's, you need to have a circulation to start with, you need to have thunderstorms. So there's a bunch of things that come into play. If you have a tropical cyclone and it starts to move over warmer water, it's going to find itself in a good situation to intensify. And that has been the case for all three of the big hurricanes that have hit U.S. territory. And I think that there is some controversy about whether you can attribute global warming, to what extent you can attribute global warming to these storms. But I think it would be foolish to say that global warming doesn't play a role because of this, this taking this distribution of sea surface temperatures and shifting it warmer and the sensitivity that hurricanes have. Now you gave a great interview on Hawaii Public Radio a few weeks ago where you and Camilla Moore were actually sort of describing some of the things that the community in Hawaii or elsewhere could be doing. If we're seeing this connection between global warming and the severity of storms, what can the layperson do about it? There's a number of things that influence how much carbon dioxide we put in the air. And it's carbon dioxide and methane that are greenhouse gases, which essentially absorb the radiation from the earth and re-emit it to the ground and thereby warm the planet. And that's really the source of the climate change. So can you just connect the dots? Yeah, yeah. Because we were talking about anomalous sea surface temperatures, you're talking about carbon dioxide, just connect the dots for some of our viewers. So we have these greenhouse gases and it turns out that 95% of the energy that is excess energy that's returning to the earth is absorbed by the ocean. It's the ocean and because the ocean has a very large heat capacity, it slowly warms, very slowly warms. However, that has huge implications for climate and for storms. Now back to your question of what can we do here in Hawaii, there are a number of things. It turns out that animal husbandry actually produces, is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases. So one of the things that you can do is become a vegetarian. And I think that that's a humane thing to do too. So that's one. There are a number of other things. One is live within the climate. Don't always have the temperature set to 70 degrees inside. Live within your climate. And another is vote with your feet. If you can walk, walk. If you can ride a bicycle, ride a bicycle. If you have to drive by an electric car because it's cleaner and the energy, if it's coming from renewable energies of the source, then you are driving a car that is going to be clean. But this is presumably the severity of hurricanes and perhaps their frequency is quite likely to be with us for the rest of this century going forward even further, right? So should people start making these changes you're suggesting now? This is absolutely the case. And the problem with climate change is that it's very slow in the beginning of this century, but it's cumulative. So as the temperature rises, the rise in temperature is cumulative and it keeps rising faster and faster. So you have an exponential increase in the warming by the end of the century. And this is obviously going to impact people in Hawaii as well as in the southeast. It's a global problem. It's a global problem and it needs a global solution and it is very urgent and it's something that every government needs to pay attention to. It must be fascinating. I'm a meteorologist like yourself. You can look at the entire planet at one time and see these long-term trends, right? How did you get interested in this kind of thing? I mean, sort of a fascinating kind of project to be looking at. Well, that is an interesting question. It's a little bit... Sorry, I'll stick to it. Yeah, yeah. It turns out when I was a kid, I lived in Seattle. And on days when it snowed, there would be no school because the school buses were so lousy at taking the hills that Seattle has. And so in the morning, I would wake up and I would look at my curtain. And if the curtain was bright, I would know that there's snow on the ground and that I'd have a holiday. And that sort of spurred my interest in weather. So that's where it started. And the difference, you know, we see the weather woman on TV every evening. You're an academic meteorologist, so you're not working for FEMA, you're not working for a TV station. Why become a researcher? Well to me, it's the most creative and most enjoyable aspect. It's one that is always changing. There's always new things to study. In fact, I have some funding from O&R that came in recently to look at how storm systems break up the ice in the summertime in the Arctic. And it's a new phenomenon in a sense because the Arctic ice is melting and so there's more open water and there's more energy for storms to form up there. And there's a symbiotic relationship there between these storms that get stronger than they used to and the ice is thinner and the winds are causing the ice to then break. Where's the hot topic then for meteorologists? No pun intended. Sounds like it's the Arctic, right? Well the Arctic's a very hot topic for sure. And it relates right back to what we were talking about hurricanes because if the Arctic warms, then the westerly winds become less and that causes the winds to be stalled more and causes hurricanes to stall and that's what happened with Harvey. We had a stalled hurricane. I think this shows how interconnected presumably the atmosphere and the ocean as well as the ecosystem, right? Yes. It's one whole planet rather than individual pieces or things. Right, very good. Well I'm Fred Steve. We've got to the end of the show. So let me just remind our viewers you've been watching think tech Hawaii research in Manoa and it's been my great pleasure to have Dr. Steven Buzinga, who is the Chair of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at Eurich Manoa as I guess today, talking just a little bit about hurricanes. I know you had a lot more material which we could address. So maybe some other times, Steven, we can have you back and tell us about the Arctic or some of your other meteorological research. So thank you again for being on the show. My pleasure, Pete. We'll see everybody again next week. Bye-bye for now.