Hurricane Idalia’s explosive power comes from unusually hot seas

Of all the surprising facts about our happily reconstructed world’s climate system, perhaps the most astonishing is this: If the oceans didn’t cover seventy percent of the Earth, our average temperature would have risen to about One hundred and twenty-two degrees. degrees fahrenheit. That’s because these oceans absorb 93 percent of the extra heat generated by the greenhouse effect and burning of fossil fuels. Over the past 150 years, we have averaged the oceans absorbing the equivalent of a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb every half second; in recent years, that number has increased to five or six Hiroshimas per second.

But that’s not to say the heat is simply locked away in brine storage. The energy in heat manifests itself in a variety of ways. For example, it can melt ice. It kills coral — and experts say corals in land tanks may be safer this summer than those in the Gulf of Mexico. It also raises sea levels—currently, more than a third of sea level rise is simply due to sea water expanding as it warms. In midsummer, 44 percent of the world’s oceans are under a “marine heatwave”. That heat powered Hurricane Idalia until it crashed into Florida’s Apalachian Bay, a land that hasn’t been hit by a major hurricane since records began in 1851. Idalia is a tropical storm that passed Cuba about 24 hours ago. . But the water in the Gulf of Mexico is very hot. In recent years, we’ve gotten used to these elevated readings and started referring to the bay as a bathtub. Earlier this summer, a buoy in the murky, shallow water near the archipelago recorded a temperature of more than 101 degrees Fahrenheit, which could set a new world record. That hot tub was hot. Hotter than your blood. You can’t sit in it for too long.

Water temperatures across the bay averaged two degrees Fahrenheit above normal. These high temperatures now extend a hundred feet or more below the surface; this superheated water is the fuel for what hurricane watchers call “rapid intensification,” the almost unbelievable acceleration of swirling winds.on a question twelve hours, Idalia experienced a Category 1, 2 and 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale, peaking as a Category 4 storm before making landfall as a Category 3 storm. (If it had stayed longer over the open waters of the Gulf, it would have likely continued to pick up winds; a natural cyclic process known as “eyewall replacement,” which lowered winds by a notch before making landfall.) As The gale grew stronger and spread, and it whipped up violent storm surges along this magnificent coast.

It is truly magnificent. Cedar Key, an island community off the coast, is where the best-known television hurricane expert, The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore, broadcasts from shelter, fording storm surge with typical bravado. More often than not, it’s a cute, sleepy town — old Florida, far from places like Daytona Beach or Disney’s Orlando. History knows two things. One: In 1855, a man named Eberhard Faber bought many of the cedar forests here, if you recognize this name, it is because he used cedar wood to produce the largest number of pencils on the planet . Second: In 1867, the yet-to-be-known John Muir arrived in Cedar Key at the end of the Thousand-Mile Walk by the Bay that he had begun in Louisville seven weeks earlier.

As he walked, Muir pondered a series of ideas that became the basis of an important branch of environmentalism, and his ideas reached true fanaticism on Cedar Island, where he contracted a severe case of malaria. Raised by a strict Presbyterian father who forced him to recite the Bible or be whipped, he knew the world was made for man. In his now classic, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, Muir described this “delightful plan” in which “the whales were our storehouses for oil,” hemp would be used in the rigging of ships, and iron would be used in Build ships. “Born for the hammer and the plow”.

But after his illness, he began to question whether the world was only made for humans:

During my long residency as a convalescent, I used to lie on my back all day under the broad arms of these great trees, listening to the wind and the sounds of the birds. On the nearby shore there is a wide shoal, which is revealed every day at low tide. It is a feeding ground for thousands of waders of all sizes, feathers and languages, making for vivid sights and noises as they gather in the huge family canteen to eat the generous bread they are offered daily.

As he reflected on the voracious alligators and spiny plants he encountered while traveling through the wilds of Florida, his ideas became more radical, proposing what may be the first modern biocentrism:

It never seems to have occurred to these far-sighted teachers now that Nature may have created animals and plants for the happiness of each of them above all, and not all things for the happiness of one. Why should man think of himself as a small part of a great creative unit? Of all the creatures that the Lord has painstakingly created, which one is not necessary to the integrity of the universe as a whole? The universe would be incomplete without humans. But it’s also incomplete without the tiniest ultramicroscopic beings beyond our egotistical eyes and knowledge.

For Muir, this worldview is the tonic. He eventually left Cedar Island, embarked on a journey to Yosemite, and founded the Sierra Club, our first great environmental organization. Muir was an imperfect human being, and his own organization eventually criticized him for holding racist views. But in times of desperate circumstances, we can also find comfort in the following thoughts:

Our own good earth has made many successful journeys around the sky before man was created, and the entire kingdom of life enjoyed existence and then returned to dust before man came. When humans have also played their part in the creation plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or unusual commotion.

Of course, it turns out that “full burn” is exactly what we did. By unearthing millions of years of biology and igniting it, in a century or two we have managed to conquer the world as Muir sees it. We’ve pumped heat into the air, especially the oceans, and now it’s starting to dominate life on our planet. We can still give up some: Every pipe we close and every solar panel we install helps reduce the number of Hiroshima bombs that go off at sea. But as Florida rediscovered Wednesday morning, the world rediscovered this scorching summer that we’ve changed our planet in the most fundamental ways. ❖