‘Massive damage': monster storms to slam into east coasts of US, China

A surge in storm activity in the northern hemisphere has spawned "monster" Hurricane Florence in the North Atlantic, super Typhoon Mangkhut in the north-west Pacific and a string of other dangerous tropical tempests.

Hurricane Florence and Super Typhoon Mangkhut.

More than a million people have been ordered to be evacuated along a 500-kilometre stretch of the US Atlantic coast to prepare for Florence's expected landfall as a category 3 or 4 storm on Friday, local time.

Read Peter Hannam’s story from The Age -“‘Massive damage': monster storms to slam into east coasts of US'Massive damage': master stems to slam into East coasts of US, China China.”

Drastic cooling in North Atlantic beyond worst fears, scientists warn

 Ice covering the ocean surface along lower Baffin
 Island, in the Hudson Strait and the Labrador Sea. 

For thousands of years, parts of northwest Europe have enjoyed a climate about 5C warmer than many other regions on the same latitude. But new scientific analysis suggests that that could change much sooner and much faster than thought possible.

Climatologists who have looked again at the possibility of major climate change in and around the Atlantic Ocean, a persistent puzzle to researchers, now say there is an almost 50% chance that a key area of the North Atlantic could cool suddenly and rapidly, within the space of a decade, before the end of this century.

Read The Guardian story - “Drastic cooling in North Atlantic beyond worst fears, scientists warn.”

Massive storm descending in Iceland - will be among worst ever

The hurricane-force low pressure center is intensifying rapidly northwest of Ireland, with a swirling cloud pattern visible on satellite imagery moving toward Iceland. The storm is projected to peak in intensity with a minimum central pressure of between 927 and 933 millibars on Wednesday morning.

This could be strong enough to bring it into the top 5 strongest storms on record in this part of the North Atlantic.

“It might get into the top 5, but I highly doubt it’ll break the record,” said Dave Kosier, a meteorologist with the Ocean Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, in an interview with Mashable.

Read the Mashable story - “Historic storm set to slam Iceland, northern UK with hurricane-force winds.”