Posted: 11:03 am Monday, March 14th, 2011
By John Nelander
With the horror still unfolding in Japan, the news is naturally all about getting aid to the country and its suffering population. But there has also been a lot of Internet buzz this weekend about whether radiation leaking from Japanese nuclear power plants is capable of crossing the Pacific and washing over the United States.
It’s not a far-fetched concern. Weather moves from west to east, and in fact prevailing winds in northeastern Japan have been blowing out of the west and southwest, pushing whatever radiation has escaped thus far into the Pacific and points east.
And The New York Times reported Monday: “Operators fear that if they cannot establish control, despite increasingly desperate measures to do so, the reactors could experience meltdowns, which would release catastrophic amounts of radiation.”
He used the GFS model – the same one used to forecast the track of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific basins – to predict where the radiation might go.
“I’ve been performing a number of runs of HYSPLIT over past few days, and so far great majority of these runs have taken plumes of radioactivity emitted from Japan’s east coast eastwards over the Pacific, with the plumes staying over water for at least 5 days,” Masters said on Monday. “Some of the plumes move over eastern Siberia, Alaska, Canada, the U.S., and Mexico in 5 – 7 days.
“Such a long time spent over water will mean that the vast majority of the radioactive particles will settle out of the atmosphere or get caught up in precipitation and rained out. It is highly unlikely that any radiation capable of causing harm to people will be left in atmosphere after seven days and 2,000+ miles of travel distance.”
So from a pure science point of view, we should be able to set domestic concerns aside and focus on humanitarian efforts.
* * * * *
The National Hurricane Center has finished its annual analysis of 2010 tropical activity with no major revisions. Occasionally, forecasters add a storm and very rarely remove one from tropical storm status.
One candidate for revision this year – at least according to some observers – was Tropical Storm Nicole, which threatened South Florida in late September. The predicted flooding rains never materialized and there was very little wind out of Nicole.
“Nicole was a rather unusual system for the Atlantic basin, with a structure somewhat
resembling that of a monsoon depression of the Indian or western Pacific Oceans,” NHC forecasters noted in their final report. “The radius of maximum winds was quite large, at least 200 [nautical miles] from the center, although convection was within about 90-120 [nautical miles]….”
That was close enough to warrant a tropical or subtropical classification, they said. They opted for a tropical classification since the center of Nicole was warm core.
Graphic: 2010 tropical activity (National Hurricane Center)
About the Author
John Nelander is a freelance writer, book editor and publisher in West Palm Beach. Weather Matters features news and observations about the weather with a focus on what's happening in South Florida. The blog also looks at the latest studies on climate change as well as what's happening in the weather forecasting biz. His website is www.pbeditorialservices.com.