Extreme Weather: Can This Planet Be Saved?

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FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

Thank you for joining us, and please remember to subscribe. Today's guest is Dr. Jeff Masters, who is the guy you want to talk to if you want the lowdown on extreme weather. So Jeff, thanks so much for joining us today.

Sure, Jaci.

So I, I know it's kind of a busy season for you given that it's hurricane season, um, but I do want to start out by asking you, how does a little boy grow up to become a hurricane scientist?

You go to school. You know, I mean, you got to take a lot of science and math and chemistry and physics. If you're interested in all the physical sciences, that's what you need to become a meteorologist. And got to go to college and preferably these days get at least a master's degree.

Okay. All right. So what is it about hurricanes in particular that interests you?

I grew up in Michigan, so you wouldn't think hurricanes would have been on my plate, but You know, if you're a meteorologist, hurricanes are kind of the, the ultimate weather phenomena that everybody's fascinated with. They are just incredible spectacles of nature. I mean, you look at them on the satellite and you say, wow, how could something that perfect and that beautiful be so incredibly destructive? And you want to find out more. So just a fascinating spectacle of nature, and I was fortunate enough to be able to fly into hurricanes for 4 years as a member of the Hurricane Hunters.

Now then, I have to ask you, are you just like a little bit crazy to do that?

Clearly, yep, a little bit crazy. I never chased storms on the ground though. Tornado chasing, that's a little too crazy for my blood.

Okay, all right. So, and I believe, what was it, Hurricane Hugo, that was life-changing for you?

Oh yeah, that was a Category 5 storm. It was actually the second Category 5 I ever flew in, but It did not go so well. We went in at a lower altitude than we should have. We were not expecting it to be a Cat 5, and we ended up losing an engine in extreme turbulence, having it catch on fire, and the pilot losing control of the aircraft as we popped into the calm eye. So near miss there. We pulled out 800 feet above the waves and just barely made it home on 3 engines.

At what point did you think you were going to die?

Oh, in the eyewall, clearly, when the engine flamed out and we were hitting 6 Gs of acceleration. And I knew that the wings were supposed to tear off at 6 Gs. So yeah, I was praying to whoever would listen to me pray, hoping our pilots could pull us out. And they did.

Okay. All right. So then after that experience, what did you do with your life? How did that change?

Yeah, I had a master's degree at that point. And I ended up going back to PhD school back at the University of Michigan. And I spent 7 long years working on my PhD, actually in air pollution. I was done with hurricanes for a while. And along the way, as I was in school, there was this crazy thing called the internet that was getting started. This was back in the early 1990s. So I started playing around with internet-based weather stuff and got really involved in something called the Weather Underground, which was our little educational project that we put online. And Sure enough, that took off. By 1995, we spun it off into a business, and then I worked for that company that I helped found for over 20 years after that.

Okay. All right. And now you're at Yale. It's Yale Climate Connections, correct?

Yeah, I've left the world of private meteorology, and I'm now in the nonprofit world. I consider myself semi-retired. I, you know, write when I want to, and That's a little more than I would like to because I like to write about extreme weather, and there's certainly been way too much extreme weather of late.

Yeah, seriously. Now, so how long in total have you been interested in extreme weather?

Oh, I mean, growing up in Michigan when I was 5 years old, so that would be 57 years ago.

Okay, so tell me, from your perspective, how has it changed?

Yeah, it used to be really reliable growing up. I mean, the 20th century climate was pretty stable. You could expect You know, in Michigan where I grew up, maybe one 100-degree day every 8 years, uh, 3 months of snow and cold when it, when it barely got above freezing.

Mm-hmm.

But now things are topsy-turvy. I mean, if you look at the, uh, growth zones for the, the plants, we've shifted an entire zone now. So what used to grow down in Ohio now grows up here in Michigan. And the extremes have really changed. I mean, it may not seem like much to say that the climate's warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius in the last 100-plus years.

Okay.

But what that doesn't tell you is what the extremes have done. And when you shift the baseline just a little bit like that, the extremes really amplify. And we're getting crazy extremes now in not only temperature, but in Storms and drought, hurricanes, not so much tornadoes, which we're thankful for, but there is a possibility that those could grow more extreme in the future as well.

Huh. Okay. This is interesting. Now, I did read something where, I mean, does all of it basically come down to the planet is getting hotter?

Heat is energy. And when you put more energy into the atmosphere, it's gonna generate more extremes. on both ends of the spectrum. So when you happen to have a dry period, you're going to get hotter heat waves and more intense droughts because a hotter climate will dry out vegetation more. Conversely, when you happen to be on the storm track and you're getting precipitation, that's going to be increased because a hotter climate evaporates more water vapor off of the warm oceans, and that extra vapor goes in to power stronger rainstorms. When vapor condenses, it releases what we call the latent heat of energy, which is a little extra boost of energy that it takes to evaporate the water in the first place. And that extra energy goes to power the storm to make the updrafts more intense, makes the storm larger, draws in water vapor over even a larger area. So your rains could increase 10, 20, even more percent than that.

Huh. Okay. Did we just get like the condensed PhD course?

That was very condensed. Yeah, it would fit in a few tweets. But yeah.

Okay. Okay, fair enough. So I mean, it is November here. So it is a busy hurricane season. But now, I know you wrote about Hurricane Ian, and we have a few hurricanes coming our way now, correct?

Yeah, I mean, we've got Tropical Storm Nicole In the Bahamas or approaching the Bahamas, and it's expected to be a Category 1 hurricane hitting Florida early Thursday morning. That's very unusual. The east coast of Florida has only ever been hit by one hurricane coming from the east in recorded history in November. So, Nicole, very unusual.

Okay. All right. So what does that tell you, though?

These sort of events are more likely to occur when you've got a warmer climate because the oceans are warmer. And a lot of times that is the limiting factor for late season sorts of hurricane development. Your oceans simply aren't warm enough. You got to have at least 80 degrees. And right now the ocean temperatures off Florida are about 82, about 2 degrees above average. So hey, if that 2 degrees above average, you know, was down more at 79 or 80 degrees instead, then maybe we wouldn't be getting a hurricane.

Okay, but now Category 1, does that even interest you?

Certainly, if I lived there, it'd be very interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating from a meteorological point of view what's going on with this storm, because the storm surge, which is the water that the storm pushes out in front of it and pushes onto shore, we're expecting near record values up in northern Florida by Jacksonville on Wednesday and Thursday. And that's because of a combination of factors. Number one, this is a very large storm, even though it's a Category 1. The area of tropical storm force winds extends 400 miles away from the center to the north. That's a huge wind field. And not only that, but the storm is hitting during the full moon. We had a full moon today, and that brings higher tides. And when you get a strong storm surge, At the time of the full moon, then you, you get a situation with more flooding than usual. So these are called the king tides we're getting this week, and it turns out that in October and in October, November, some of the highest tides of the year occur. So very fascinating sort of setup here to have a large storm like this hitting at the time of the king tides in November. Just very unique. But it's gonna be nothing like Hurricane Ian was back in late September. Remember, Hurricane Ian's going to end up being a $100 billion storm, and I think Nicole's going to be more like around $1 billion.

Oh, okay. All right. Take us behind the scenes a little bit though, because I'm wondering how the forecasting tools have changed. So in your experience from when you began, I mean, you did mention that the internet came along during your lifetime, so I'm sure that changed things a lot.

Yeah, I mean, back when I was an undergrad in the late 1980s, we had computer models of the atmosphere, but they were very primitive.

Mm-hmm.

You only had a forecast going out about 2 days. And the way those models work is they subdivide the atmosphere into grid cells. So you can think of, you know, a cube of air, maybe in that day, 50 miles on a side, and you cover the globe with those cubes, and then you figure out, okay, what's the initial starting condition of the atmosphere? And then we're going to solve the equations of physics of the flow of the atmosphere to come up with a forecast. So it was just getting started back then, computer technology being applied to meteorology. And as it turns out that whenever a new supercomputer is developed, the first thing it does is go try and forecast the weather.

Yeah.

Because that is a super high-end intensive utilization of computer power. And boy, Moore's Law, which says that we have a doubling of computer power every year and a half, has really made a big change in the way I do my science.

Yeah. Okay. So how far out now can you forecast that you feel is reliable?

I'd say that now a 10-day forecast is about as accurate as the 2-day forecasts were way back when I started 45 years ago.

Okay.

And there's— I think 10 days, it's going to be hard to get much accuracy beyond that. The atmosphere is just fundamentally chaotic. And at some point, you just can't make a good forecast too far in advance, because there's too many uncertainties, too much turbulence and chaos that all combine to send things spinning out of control.

Okay. So let me ask you, from your perspective, do you have any pet peeves when you, when you watch the news media? Covering storms? Do you ever just shake your head and say, why are they doing that? Or why are they saying that?

They can ditch the ominous music. I'm a little tired of the ominous music. But you know, that adds a lot of character, I suppose. You know, it would be nice if they could cover droughts in the same sort of detail and breathlessness as they cover storms, because droughts are just as impactful, even more so, I think in the future they will be. And yet they're relatively ignored. But, you know, they don't really give you the visual sorts of stimulus that the audience wants to see. I mean, you don't have buildings tearing away and, you know, people with the— blowing away in the wind. I mean, a drought is just quiet and sneaky and not that good for mass consumption by 7 PM news.

Gotcha. Okay. But talking about drought, that brings us to the Mississippi River. Um, what can you tell us about that? And keep in mind that not everyone paid attention in 4th grade American history class as to the importance of the Mississippi.

The Mississippi is the lifeblood of the American economy. The, the watershed for the river covers something like 2/3 of America, maybe 60%. A vast area of the country is drained into the Mississippi, and there's a lot of commerce that goes on. A lot of barge traffic shipping grains downstream to the world. And going upstream, the barges carry cargoes critical for the functioning of the American economy, things like fertilizer, oil, steel, raw materials, concrete, you know, all sorts of stuff that's absolutely essential.

Mm-hmm.

And barges can carry things very cheaply because they're big and you can put a big load on them. So if you lose barge traffic on the Mississippi, it's going to be very expensive. We don't really have anything to replace it. There simply isn't enough capacity in the trains and the trucks to make up for all the cargo that's transported on the Mississippi by barge. So right now we've got a situation on the Mississippi where water levels are very low, so barge traffic is restricted. You can't carry as heavy a load or you're going to scrape bottom. So at some point you've got to dredge it. And so we're spending billions of dollars dredging the Mississippi this year, and certainly every year they do that, but it's particularly bad this year. So it's interrupting supply chains, it's driving up food prices, and it's contributing to potential instability abroad where there's already a food crisis due to the war in Ukraine and the pandemic. And now we're adding drought causing supply chain issues. On the Mississippi.

Okay. So when we talk about drought, how extreme are we talking?

There are some gauges on the Mississippi along about a 150-mile stretch in the center of the country, uh, Arkansas, Missouri, that region where the levels were the lowest on record. Some other areas were only the second or third lowest behind the great drought of 1988. And the drought of 2012. So we're talking historic levels of drought here on the Mississippi.

All right. So what do we do about that?

The Army Corps is dredging the river. So that's the short-term solution. Diversifying our transportation infrastructure would make some sense, but I'm not sure that's gonna happen because trains and trucks are so much more expensive than barges. I don't know if that's gonna happen.

And wouldn't that just add to air pollution then?

It does, yeah, sure. I mean, uh, you start transporting, uh, a lot more cargo via truck, there's going to be a lot more air pollution for sure.

Yeah, okay. So how badly have we messed up the planet, Jeff?

There's a concept called planetary boundaries where they talk about multiple planetary boundaries that we don't want to cross because it's dangerous for natural ecosystems which we depend on. And those boundaries include climate, which we've crossed, fresh water, which we've crossed by pumping too much groundwater, Mm-hmm. pollution due to too much phosphorus and nitrogen, which we've crossed. We have huge dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico now because all that pollution gets flushed down the Mississippi into the Gulf.

Okay.

There's novel pollution entities like PFAS or plastics or other toxic substances. We've crossed that boundary. Deforestation, we've crossed that boundary. Species, we've lost a lot of species due to, you know, all these multiple stressors. But we're doing well in one area, one boundary we haven't crossed. In fact, we did cross it. That was the ozone hole.

Okay.

We, back in the 1980s, figured out that, oh my gosh, we've polluted the stratosphere to the point where the ozone hole is opening up there, threatening all life on Earth, and by gosh, we better do something about it. And we did. We passed a Montreal Protocol to limit chlorofluorocarbons, which were the cause of the ozone hole. And now that boundary that we crossed, we've now retreated, and it's now in the safe zone. So yeah, we're in deep doo-doo now because we've crossed so many planetary boundaries. But at the same time, I do have some hope because we have shown we can cross these boundaries. They're not irreversible. We can come back to a safe zone. And boy, we better start doing that in a lot more areas because we're just pressing the pedal to the metal, and we're heading over a cliff if we don't do anything soon.

Yeah. Yeah. So what is your response when, when someone tells you they don't believe in climate change?

You may go to your doctor and your doctor tell you you have cancer, and you can say, oh, I don't believe you. But, you know, it's not going to do you much good. In fact, you better pay attention to your doctor because there is some science that Does work that we know is going to make a difference in our lives. We better live our lives according to the best science we have, or we're all in deep trouble. I mean, the laws of physics don't care if you believe them or not. They're going to keep on working. If you're going to add CO2 to the atmosphere, the planet's going to heat up, weather's going to get more extreme, and it's going to challenge the foundations of civilization, which was built on a stable climate. the stable climate of the 20th century, and now we're in a whole new climate.

Okay, so when we talk about climate, I think one of the challenges is it's huge. So you think, what can I as one person do that can either help alleviate the growing problem, or what can I do to start reversing the problem?

Individual action is important, of course. I mean, Yeah. Reducing your carbon footprint is good, but, you know, the companies responsible for the whole climate crisis want to push the responsibility onto you to say, yeah, it's you that need to do something. You got to, you know, reduce your carbon footprint, you got to consume less, but that's not what needs to happen. We need to do collective action. There has to be progress at a government level. And international government level too. So everyone needs to come together. We all need to be smart and elect leaders that are going to do something about the climate crisis. And we need to ignore the voices of the fossil fuel industry, which are polluting not only the atmosphere, but the airwaves and social media as well, with a lot of misinformation that's misleading people into not wanting to take action. So you need to talk about the climate crisis, how it affects you. You need to learn more. You need to elect strong leaders and support policies which will do something about it.

Okay. All right. So where, where do you suggest people go for quality information on the topic? Because you mentioned there's misinformation out there on social media. And we know how crazy social media gets with one person retweeting or resharing, you know, something some crazy person said, and suddenly people start to believe it.

Yeah, of course, Yale Climate Connections, where I write, is a good source of information. There have actually been 2 books written by a couple of my favorite climate scientists. Michael Mann has written a book called— let's see if I have it here. Yeah, I do. It's called The New Climate War. And I've got a copy here. And then Katharine Hayhoe has written a book called Saving Us, also about the climate crisis. 2 fantastic books. They're actually very good about preventing you from feeling too much doomism, because there's a lot of doom and gloom about, you know, we've gone too far. And no, we haven't gone too far, because there's always going to be a civilization. It's just going to be handicapped to a greater or lesser degree depending on how much progress we make against the climate crisis. So I recommend those 2 authors in particular because they give a very realistic portrayal of where we are and what we can do. I mean, the clean energy revolution is here, and it is so gratifying to see how much progress we've made. I mean, the cost of solar and wind is now the cheapest of any energy source in history. And that's going to continue despite anything that, you know, the roadblocks that might be thrown in its way by fossil fuel and government interests. So progress is happening. We do have a better future ahead of us than some of the worst predictions were painting just a few years ago. So keep at it and consult some of these, you know, reputable climate scientists. They're on Twitter, Facebook, and social media too. Like I said, Yale Climate Connections is a good source. I like to use desmogblog.com to find out deniers, what they're up to. They have a whole list of the climate deniers and, you know, who they are and what to watch out for.

Okay.

I also like Carbon Brief is a good website to talk about the science of things. And skepticalscience.com is also quite good. It helps you debunk all the false arguments against climate change.

Yeah. And I should point out, in fairness to you, when you mentioned Yale Climate Connections, that's not just a shameless plug. You used to have the most popular blog about extreme weather on the internet, correct?

Yeah, back when I was blogging for Weather Underground, the company I helped found. Yeah, I did have the most popular weather and climate blog. Back when I started in 2005, I was pretty much the only one writing about hurricanes. And that was a banner year for hurricanes, as it turned out. And it really launched my career as a blogger. And ever since then, yeah, I've, you know, been one of the more quoted experts in the world on extreme weather and climate change.

Okay. Any thoughts about— I mean, because we, we hear a lot more now about space and the space race and, you know, creating hotels where we can now go visit out in space and things of that sort. Any thoughts about what we should or shouldn't be thinking about in terms of climate change if we're going to branch out beyond this planet?

Number one, the way to get to space is to ride a rocket. So if we're going to scale that up to mass numbers of launches, we need to consider what the global warming potential of all that rocket exhaust is. There's certainly some concerns about if you're emitting particularly high in the atmosphere where those gases that you emit have more impact, what that would do to the climate. So that's number one. Number 2, it's something interesting in my head about, yeah, maybe we could go to the asteroids and get some of those metals we need to build the clean energy economy. There's a lot of discussion about do we have enough metals, lithium and so on. So maybe that would help out. But really, I don't see the move into space as having a critical impact on the whole climate crisis. It's kind of a— a separate thing in my mind.

Okay. All right. So now what are you looking for in this, in the rest of this hurricane season? Now, can you give us some idea of what we should expect?

Typically, November is the last gasp of hurricane season, and I'm betting that Nicole is going to be the last storm of the season. Not for sure. I'd still give it a 30% chance we'll see One more named storm. But yeah, the— certainly the pattern coming up next week is not going to be very conducive to making hurricanes. We're getting a massive cold air outbreak over the center part of North America, and the cold fronts are going to be moving out over the waters offshore and cooling them off, and that could very well spell the end of hurricane season.

Gotcha. Okay. And I guess it just really depends on where you are in the country of what your priorities should be, right? Because I'm here on the East Coast, so hurricanes are a big deal. But if I was in California, I guess it's all about the wildfires, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. Just, you know, 5 or 10 years ago, I never would have suspected that I wouldn't want to travel in the summer out west because of wildfire smoke. But here we are. We're in a whole new climate regime and it's only going to get worse. The amount of wildfire smoke out there is very serious and it's causing major health impacts. I think, you know, thousands of new additional deaths each year due to wildfire smoke.

Wow.

Yeah. And I think that's really what I want to hone in here. We only have a couple of minutes left. It is to— how do you encapsulate how the changes in weather are actually impacting humanity?

We have to understand that it's not symmetric. Some places are not being impacted much at all. I mean, here in the Midwest where I live, it's really not a big deal, the changing climate as far as adverse impacts. But in the third— the developing world, it's a huge impact. There's some catastrophic results happening, particularly in Africa, some of the drought regions in the Horn of Africa where they're having 4 years in a row with failed rains. That is a climate change influence, and it's causing, you know, catastrophic famine. So that's going to continue to be the case where some parts of the world, major impacts, certainly Pakistan this year with their flooding, and drought and heat in other parts of the world. But a lot of places aren't going to get it so bad. So Just because you're not getting that big a deal impact due to a changing climate doesn't mean it's of no concern, because we're all interconnected. And what happens in Pakistan or in Africa, that's going to end up affecting you in multiple ways that maybe you don't see.

Okay. Now, I know you're a scientist, but I can't help but wonder sometimes, do you think weather has a soul? I mean, we sometimes look at it as Mother Nature being mad at mankind for what we've done to the planet. I wonder if it's a course correction of her saying, you need to knock this off now.

The whole Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a living organism applies to the atmosphere. It's part of the living organism that we are all a part of. It's a cool thought to think that every single person on this planet right now, at this very moment, is touched by the atmosphere. So we are all connected. The atmosphere touches me, it touches you at the same time. All of humanity, we're all moving through this wonderful fluid, this beautiful fluid. And the more we can become aware of that connection and our connection to each other, the better off we'll be, because the climate crisis is ultimately a spiritual disease. We're abusing our planet in ways that we shouldn't be. We're— it's like we're abusing ourselves. It's like we're you know, overeating or smoking or drinking too much. This, this whole system is part of us, part of each other. And we need to start taking care of ourselves by taking care of the atmosphere. I see.

That's a great way to explain it. I hadn't heard it explained that way before. So final question for you. It's kind of a typical fast chat question that we end with, which is, what's the best part about being Jeff Masters?

I have a very keen understanding and connection to the atmosphere and how it's changed. And that is a source of great comfort to me because I understand where we're headed. At the same time, it's a, a great responsibility because I know I should share that outlook with others.

Mm-hmm.

So Yeah, it's good to be knowledgeable about something that's so important to all humanity right now, and that's the best part of what I can bring.

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