Grandparent scam: London, Ont., senior beats fraudsters not once, but twice
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
Climate change added at least 10 per cent more rain to Hurricane Ian, a study prepared immediately after the storm shows.
Thursday's research, which is not peer-reviewed, compared peak rainfall rates during the real storm to about 20 different computer scenarios of a model with Hurricane Ian's characteristics slamming into the Sunshine State in a world with no human-caused climate change.
"The real storm was 10 per cent wetter than the storm that might have been," said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab climate scientist Michael Wehner, study co-author.
Forecasters predicted Ian will have dropped up to two feet (61 centimetres) of rain in parts of Florida by the time it stopped.
Wehner and Kevin Reed, an atmospheric scientist at Stony Brook University, published a study in Nature Communications earlier this year looking at the hurricanes of 2020 and found during their rainiest three-hour periods they were more than 10 per cent wetter than in a world without greenhouse gases trapping heat. Wehner and Reed applied the same scientifically accepted attribution technique to Hurricane Ian.
A long-time rule of physics is that for every extra degree of warmth Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), the air in the atmosphere can hold seven per cent more water. This week the Gulf of Mexico was 0.8 degrees warmer than normal, which should have meant about five per cent more rain. Reality turned out to be even worse. The flash study found the hurricane dropped double that -- 10 per cent more rain.
Ten percent may not sound like a lot, but 10 per cent of 20 inches (50 centimetres) is two inches (five centimetres), which is a lot of rain, especially on top of the 20 inches that already fell, Reed said.
Other studies have seen the same feedback mechanisms of stronger storms in warmer weather, said Princeton University atmospheric scientist Gabriel Vecchi, who wasn't part of the study.
MIT hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel said in general, a warmer world does make storms rainier. But he said he is uncomfortable drawing conclusions about individual storms.
"This business above very very heavy rain is something we've expected to see because of climate change," he said. "We'll see more storms like Ian."
Princeton's Vecchi said in an email that if the world is going to bounce back from disasters "we need to plan for wetter storms going forward, since global warming isn't going to go away."
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
The deaths of four people on a farm near the Saskatchewan village of Neudorf have been confirmed a murder-suicide.
The Canada Revenue Agency announced Thursday it will not require 'bare trust' reporting from Canadians that it introduced for the 2024 tax season, just four days before the April 2 deadline.
The Parole Board of Canada has granted full parole to one of three men convicted in the brutal murders of three McDonald's restaurant workers in Cape Breton more than 30 years ago.
Nearly 20 hours after a man climbed and remained perched on top of the Reconciliation Bridge in downtown Calgary, the situation came to a peaceful resolution.
Ontario released its annual sunshine list Thursday afternoon, noting that the largest year-over-year increases were in hospitals, municipalities, and post-secondary sectors.
Genetic analysis has shed light on a long-standing mystery surrounding the fates of U.S. President George Washington's younger brother Samuel and his kin.
A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's stance on the Israel-Hamas war could complicate his party's relationship with Muslim Canadians.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is officially selling a copy of the Bible themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, 'God Bless the USA.' But the concept of a Bible covered in the American flag has raised concern among religious circles.
B.C. conservation officers recently seized a nine-foot-long Burmese python from a home in Chilliwack.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
The Ontario government is introducing changes to auto-insurance, but some experts say the move is ill-advised.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.
There’s a group of people in Saskatoon that proudly call themselves dumpster divers, and they’re turning the city’s trash into treasure.
Ontario is facing a larger than anticipated deficit but the Doug Ford government still plans to balance its books before the next provincial election.