Tornadoes are usually drawn to wide-open spaces. That’s according to climatologist Dev Niyogi of Purdue University. So Niyogi wondered…
Dev Niyogi: Why did we get a tornado in an urban region like Atlanta?
Niyogi has been studying the tornado that struck Atlanta, Georgia in early 2008 and caused over $200,000,000 in damage. He said it started as a thunderstorm, but as it moved toward the city, it passed through what Niyogi described as a ‘mosaic’ of urban sprawl – moist agricultural areas interspersed with dry, hot paved regions.
Dev Niyogi: It’s going over a wet region and it gets its moisture and all the juice it needs, then it gets over a warmer region and gets all the heat it needs, and gets even more intensified.
Based on satellite data, Niyogi believes the storm developed into a full-blown tornado when it reached the city and mixed with Atlanta’s dry heat.
Dev Niyogi: The urban region is warmer than the surrounding region by about 5-10 degrees Celsius, at times.
Niyogi said this understanding could benefit urban planning and development across the U.S., since many cities have a patchwork of sprawl – and heat – like Atlanta’s.
Dev Niyogi: So even though we cannot alter every thunderstorm that comes our way, we can certainly use some science that is evolving now to see what kind of buffers ought to be developed around the cities to reduce the threats of severe thunderstorms.
He said that buffer could be as simple as a reforestation zone.
Niyogi’s research could also help urban planners decide in what direction to expand a city.
Dev Niyogi: A specific example we have right now is we’re studying the Indianapolis, Indiana region and we are seeing that when a city is made bigger than it is right now, the thunderstorms actually start getting deflected away from a city. So one could start thinking In what direction to expand the city.
Our thanks to:
Dr. Dev Niyogi is an Assistant Professor with joint appointment in the Departments of Agronomy and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University . He is also the State Climatologist for Indiana and the Director of the Indiana State Climate Office.
Photo Credit: Brian Patrick Hummel, used with permission.
Dear Dr. Dev Niyogi,
Thanks for the great work you are doing.
The family of humanity appears to be in clear & present danger because the Masters of the Universe among us are willfully denying one of God’s greatest gifts: humankind’s carefully and skillfully developed science on human-induced climate change.
Faulty reasoning, contrived logic, ideological idiocy, arrogance, material obsessiveness, greed, linear thinking and a mechanistic world view, all of which we see pervading the predominant culture in our time, could result in the children following their misguided elders down a patently unsustainable “primrose path†only to be confronted by a colossal ecologic and/or economic wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has seen.
Can it be that acceptable standards for determining what is real and true in our culture today have not much to do with science? Consider that whatsoever the Masters of the Universe instruct their minions to proclaim vociferously, share widely, consensually validate and judge to be economically expedient, politically convenient, socially agreeable and religiously tolerated is true and real…. scientific evidence of the biophysical conditions of the natural world we inhabit notwithstanding.
At least to me, it seems that God’s science is censored, gag rules imposed and countless distractions presented whenever reasonable and sensible evidence comes into conflict with what the economic powerbrokers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians prescribe to be real and true. Perhaps science does present the leaders of the predominant culture on Earth with evidence of inconvenient truths.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
If we do not have broad and open discussions like this one regarding the human population, how on Earth are we going to avoid a distinct possibility: that humans seem destined, despite our intelligence, to play out a scenario of reproduction that is much like that of other species. We know better.
It appears that humans not only know better, we will not have the chance to do what we know if leaders in my not-so-great generation of elders continue to treat certain vital topics as a taboo.
We have many leaders with ubiquitous opportunities to speak what is true to them, whatever that may be, regardless of what is politically convenient, economic expedient, social agreeable, religiously tolerable and, therefore, in one way or another culturally prescibed. The leaders of recent years have been doing as they have because they have not possessed a fundamental appreciation for either intellectual honesty or scientific facts.
In science, there is no place for leaders who pose as hysterically blind or willfully deaf; posture as if electively mute; discredit or misrepresent good evidence; create the illusion of serious debate; manufacture controversy; and spread uncertainty where none would otherwise exist. Science is an honest and straightforward presentation of carefully and skillfully obtained evidence using scientific principles and methods and nothing more.
Scientific research is supposed to be done independent from political, legal, economic, social and religious considerations. All of these “considerations” can give rise, either singularly or in combination, to what is called “cultural bias†in science. Unfortunately, the phenomenon of cultural bias that has led many of our brothers and sisters inside and outside the community of scientists to extensively research, widely share and consensually validate factoids based upon faulty reasoning, contrived logic, inadequate theory and mountains of unsufficiently understood data.
Scientific facts need to be adequately and more accurately distinguished from politically convenient and economically expedient, preternatural factoids.
Agreed, on the interview of Dr Dev Niyogi
and the Comments.
Hello,
I read an article years ago in Science news discussing more severe thunderstorms in Atlanta. The warm air over the paved areas of a city rises and draws in the more humid outlining air. Research years ago showed that thunderstorms were more severe in cities where you had these conditions. A hot city in an arid climate will not, of course, cause thunderstorms.
I’m impressed, I need to say. Really hardly ever do I encounter a weblog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me let you know, you’ve got hit the nail on the head. Your idea is excellent; the difficulty is something that not sufficient people are talking intelligently about. I’m very joyful that I stumbled across this in my seek for one thing regarding this.