dChan
Anonymous ID: 78fb77 Sept. 2, 2024, 3:34 p.m. No.21524187   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>4194

Rare desert rains may have stifled Atlantic hurricanes—for now

Dennis Mersereau

Sat, August 31, 2024 at 1:33 PM EDT

 

Hurricane Beryl roared through the Caribbean in July as the earliest scale-topping Category 5 storm ever observed in the Atlantic—an apparent omen at the beginning of what experts expected to be a hyperactive, high-end hurricane season.

 

But save for a few odd storms, the tropics have been relatively quiet since Beryl’s deadly journey. A unique factor is driving this unexpected pause in hurricane season, and it’s not likely to last for much longer.

 

Where have all the hurricanes gone?

 

Seasonal forecasts called for a very active Atlantic hurricane season this year. Near-record sea surface temperatures across the basin, paired with other factors like a budding La Niña and an active African monsoon season, all seemed to point toward a bustling tropical basin.

 

Beryl was a stark example of what this season is capable of. Water temperatures remain much warmer than normal throughout the tropics—certainly warm enough to support very strong storms. But storms can only grow strong if a storm can form at all.

 

The main reason forecasters believe it’s been a quiet August is rather unique.

 

Rain falling over the Sahara Desert instead

 

Normally, we see easterly waves—tropical disturbances—form within a broad area of low pressure known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). These waves then roll off the western coast of Africa and into the tropical Atlantic Ocean where they seed the development of tropical cyclones.

 

This year, the ITCZ is sitting farther north than usual, pushing bouts of rare heavy rainfall over portions of the Sahara Desert. This precipitation could amount to an entire month’s worth of rain falling over an area that’s almost always arid, including sections of Algeria, Mali, Libya, and Niger.

 

Tropical waves heading farther north than usual combined with lower-than-normal instability over the tropical Atlantic Ocean have resulted in fewer opportunities for tropical waves to move over the ocean and develop into tropical storms and hurricanes.

 

Peak season is right around the corner

 

Historically, more than half of all hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin occurs after Labour Day. The climatological peak of the season occurs during the second week of September.

It’s important to remember that a quiet stretch during hurricane season doesn’t mean that the season has shut down. It only takes one storm to make for a bad season if that storm makes landfall.

 

MUST SEE: Hurricane forecasts are better today than ever before—here’s how

 

While this quiet stretch has likely cut down on the number of opportunities for storms to erupt, forecasters remain confident that we’ll see a decent number of storms over the coming weeks and months.

 

Hurricanes are relatively rare for a reason. It takes all the right ingredients coming together perfectly in order for a storm to develop and thrive. Many of those ingredients, such as very warm water temperatures, are in place right now.

 

Folks across the eastern half of Canada—even far inland in Ontario and Quebec—should prepare for potential landfalling storms over the coming weeks and months. Ensure you have an emergency kit handy long before one is ever needed.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rare-desert-rains-may-stifled-173303392.html

Anonymous ID: 78fb77 Sept. 2, 2024, 3:59 p.m. No.21524330   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>4559 >>4659 >>4726 >>4835 >>4873

POLITICO INVESTIGATION

Hacking blind spot: States struggle to vet coders of election software

In New Hampshire, acybersecurity firm found troubling security bugs — and the Ukrainian national anthem — written into a voter database built with the help of an overseas subcontractor.

 

“We felt the need to just do a hard look at the software code that the offshore resources had been working on,” Scanlan said in the first of two interviews in the New Hampshire Statehouse this April.

 

The issues discovered by ReversingLabs were concerning. They could have left the state’s voter registration database vulnerable to foreign hackers had the system been brought online without first being studied, according to the individual directly familiar with the probe and those briefed on the details by POLITICO.

 

That did not include the hardcoded Ukrainian national anthem, which posed no technical threat, but could have given fodder to conspiracy theorists.

 

The first of those risks stemmed from Microsoft software that had been misconfigured — probably by accident —to connect to servers in foreign countries, including Russia. The outbound traffic could have made it easier for hackers to identify and reconnoiter the system and slip past defenses deployed to protect it.

 

In addition, code for the database — which was not in use yet — included popular open-source software, core-js, that is overseen by a Russian national, Denis Pushkarev.

 

In an op-ed published last November that did not name New Hampshire or WSD Digital, a ReversingLabs researcher argued that using core-js in election technology was dangerous. Core-js included “callbacks” to Pushkarev’s personal website that could allow Pushkarev to pinpoint specific users of core-js, the article warned.

 

And the op-ed, which included a quote from the ReversingLabs CEO,suggested that Pushkarev’s criminal history and publicized financial struggles could make him susceptible to blackmail.

 

Though a reputable coder, Pushkarev warned publicly in early 2023 that sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine had cut off much of the financial support he was receiving for upkeeping core-js. In the same post, he also disclosed he served prison time following a hit-and-run incident that left one of the victims, a teenager, dead.

 

Dan Lorenc, an open source security expert andfounder of supply-chain security start-up Chainguard, said his concern is that someone could “slip malware” through core-js to its users.

 

While the risk is modest for some of the several million applications that use core-js, Lorenc argued that election technology should be held to a higher standard.

 

“When it comes to security critical software, you have to be responsible for every single component in there, including the open source, and that’s kind of a gap that not a lot of people think about,” he said.

 

In a text conversation, Pushkarev called ReversingLabs’ warnings “stupid and unprofessional,” arguing that any effort to “inject anything malicious” into core-js would be noticed by its users.

 

He also argued that his legal troubles are behind him. “There are no levers of pressure on me from any special services,” he wrote, “moreover — any compromise of the project would mean the end of my career.”

 

WSD Digital and ReversingLabs did not respond to repeated requests for comment over the course of several months.

 

Scanlan and Lang emphasized that the voter registration database was not online at the time of the probe, and that many organizations, including the U.S. government, use foreign contractors for some IT systems.

 

They said they opted not to cut ties with WSD because the company was transparent after they confronted it, and the scan revealed no signs that the system had been tampered with.

 

“There was nothing alarming that we saw that would cause any red flag for us,” Lang said.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/01/us-election-software-national-security-threats-00176615

 

When they don't see threats, there are always threats. Ukraine is a threat.