Ever since he was a kid, Stu Ostro has been, in his own words, "obsessed with the weather." One day when he was around 11, he recalls, a lighting strike hit the house across the street in Somerville, New Jersey, while he and his brother watched from their porch—sending fire trucks scrambling, and the French fries that Ostro was eating "went flying." Back then, Ostro's weather fascination manifested as a "phobia" of thunder and lightning; nowadays, as a senior meteorologist at the Weather Channel and head of its team of tornado and hurricane specialists, his obsession takes a rather different form. Try perusing his 1,072-slide-long and ever-growing PowerPoint on extreme and unusual weather phenomena—and how they may relate to climate change—and you'll get some sense of it. Ostro will speak at this Thursday's Climate Desk Live on "The Alarming Science Behind Climate Change's Increasingly Wild Weather" alongside Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis, whose work on how the warming of the Arctic is driving wacky weather complements his own theorizing.
But Ostro didn't always fit this billing, because he didn't always buy into fears about global warming. As he puts it, he used to be a "vehement skeptic…not only about a human role in global warming, but also the idea that there was anything unusual about any weather we had been seeing." Indeed, circa 1999 Ostro could be found in USA Weekend expressing uncertainty as to "whether humans are contributing to climate change or not." In this, Ostro channeled the views of many of his fellow TV weather forecasters, who have long nourished a skeptical streak, as a group, towards the notion of human-caused climate change. "A lot of them are still where I was at," Ostro explains.Ostro's conversion was gradual, but the clincher was the stupefying hurricane season of 2005. Remember when forecasters ran out of letters of alphabet to name storms—Katrina, Rita, Wilma—and ultimately had to resort instead to the Greek alphabet (Epsilon, Zeta)? By the end of the next year, Ostro had decided, as he put it in an email, that he could "no longer accept the mantra of 'individual weather events can't be connected to global warming.'"
Rather, he now views climate and weather as intricately connected—you change the one, you inevitably change the other. Or as he puts it in his mega PowerPoint presentation: "Climate is a book, weather is chapters and pages." As an overworked forecaster in 2005, Ostro was noticing much more than the dizzying number of storms. It was the overarching atmospheric patterns conducive to storm formation that really caught his attention—and that led him to conclude that "something ain't right with the weather." More specifically, Ostro began noticing a pattern of what's called increasing atmospheric thickness. In other words, the vertical distance between the Earth's surface and various higher levels of the atmosphere (identified by their atmospheric pressure) was growing. To explain this, Ostro uses the helpful analogy of baking a loaf of bread. "You put dough in the oven, it rises," he says. "Same thing in the atmosphere." With increasing heat, the atmospheric ridges of high pressure (regions in which air is falling, rather than rising) were higher, taller, on average.
"The frequency of these really strong ridges of high pressure aloft, these anomalous high pressures aloft are increasing," Ostro explains—with profound consequences. Strong high pressure ridges are tough to alter. They're persistent, and so is the weather that accompanies them. It could be a long heat wave; or it could be rain or snow for days on end. "The crazy snow in China, the cold in parts of Europe and Asia this winter, and extreme flooding, and heat waves, it's driving all of that," Ostro says. The outcomes are variable—but the extremes are often powerful enough to have dramatic consequences in terms of human lives and also economic losses. Ostro says he has voted for Democrats, Republicans, and libertarians. But his neutral stance on politics hasn't kept the trolls away. Recently one commenter wrote, "Stu, how does it feel to have your name permanently attached to the biggest media weather hoax in the history of mankind?" One conservative blogger, meanwhile, dubbed him "Mr. Ostroass" and described his "charming ability to repeat Leftist government talking points while miring in his own idiocy."
There were even "a couple of comments which I intercepted before they made it to the site that were threatening," Ostro notes. That hasn't stopped him: His PowerPoint documenting eerie weather extremes, ranging from an unheard-of Brazilian hurricane to seasonally odd tornadoes, just gets longer and longer. So why don't more of Ostro's fellow weathermen follow the evidence from the atmosphere, and from the weather maps that they look at every day—just as he has done? "As meteorologists," Ostro explains, "we are used to always seeing extremes in weather, and we know there have been extremes for as long as there's been weather. So it might be a little extra hard to convince us that anything out of the ordinary is going on." As Ostro adds, it doesn't help that on occasion, some climate scientists can be a tad condescending towards meteorologists—who apply a sophisticated tradecraft in their work, but aren't usually known as great physicists or atmospheric theorists. Not all have advanced scientific degrees.
Some were originally trained as journalists. But the wilder weather gets, the harder it is to ignore—most of all for those who analyze it daily. So perhaps some inroads are slowly being made among television meteorologists—nearly two-thirds of which, according to a 2010 study, erroneously think global warming is mostly "natural," not human caused. Ostro himself still remains cautious—he isn't ready to connect the past few weeks' tornado disasters to global warming, and he also questions the early forecasts of a bad 2013 hurricane season. But nevertheless, he knows that, because of climate change, all weather is changing—because all weather now occurs in a different atmosphere. "The word that I use over and over in every talk," Ostro says, "is 'context.'"Most often used by people in the United StatesTHE WORLD’S biggest chunk of cut blue topaz gemstone has been unveiled 30 years after it was discovered by a swashbuckling British adventurer likened to Indiana Jones.
Max Ostro escaped death at the hands of the Nazis, braved malaria, and avoided piranha fish in his quest to find beautiful gems. Experts are unable to give an exact figure of the topaz’s worth because of insurance reasons, but have said it is “worth millions” and is “essentially priceless” A real life Indiana Jones: Max Ostro escaped Nazis and braved malaria in his quest to get his hands on the world’s most beautiful gems The stunning 9,381 carat stone will soon be on show in the National History Museum, so experts are unable to give an idea of its value because of insurance reasons. However specialists have said the 2kg gem, about the size of a rugby ball, is certainly “worth millions” and is “essentially priceless”. Ostro discovered the flawless blue stone in its natural form deep in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil in the mid 1980s. The sparkling gem has been locked away in the Ostro family’s vaults ever since. When Max passed away six years ago, his entrepreneur and philanthropist son Maurice Ostro OBE decided to use the family business to help in his charitable work.
OUT OF THE ASHES Hands up if you’re scared! He also wanted to promote the artistic potential of gemstones in honour of his father. The dazzling stone is to go on permanent show at the Natural History Museum’s minerals gallery from October 19. Maurice said: “My father led a truly extraordinary life and was a man of great grit and determination. “We believe sharing his legacy for others to enjoy and be inspired by will be a fitting tribute to his indomitable spirit of adventure and hopefully will create fresh interest in how gemstones can be used in art.” Complete with his fedora hat, Max Ostro has been compared to Hollywood hero Indiana Jones for his incredible adventures in search of precious gemstones. Max Ostro emigrated to South America abd started hunting for gems after his native country Poland came under communist control and all his wealth was confiscated Born in Poland, Max, his brothers and his parents were rounded up by the Nazis in 1943 to be sent to the death camp at Treblinka.
Aware of the fate that awaited them, Max’s parents told him and his brother Chanina Aharon to jump from the speeding train at night to avoid the Nazi sharpshooters. His brother was killed but Max survived despite suffering a head injury and typhoid fever. He cheated death again when he was later caught and spent 18 months in a slave labour camp before escaping just as he was about to be sent to Auschwitz. A friend of the family helped him find refuge but after he was nearly captured in an SS raid, he was made to hide in a grave where he remained for weeks in the brutal winter of 1944. He had just a small hole for air and some potatoes to live on. When the war ended Max returned to the family home only to find it was occupied by another family. With just a few possessions he went into business and eventually enjoyed tremendous financial success. However more misfortune lay ahead. Max’s son Maurice, pictured, said his “father led a truly extraordinary life and was a man of great grit and determination”
He tried to escape Poland’s new communist control only to have all his newly created wealth confiscated when caught. Believing Europe had no future for him, Max emigrated to South America and so began a highly successful career in business in which he travelled the world searching for gemstones. Maurice said: “Exploring the central regions of Brazil and the Amazon rainforest was fraught with dangers. “If you were mining near the Amazon river and accidentally breached the bank, water would flood in very quickly. “The biggest danger was not the water but the piranhas that could strip a person bare in minutes. “My father and anyone working in those mines had to be fleet of foot when that happened. “There were no roads to where they were operating and they literally had to carve a path through the jungle, using logs to make make-shift bridges to cross ravines. “In fact the area was so dangerous and remote – our mine manager got malaria five times – that we no longer operate there.
“My father carried on until he was in his eighties. “Eventually we got him an office in London but even that did not stop him from wanting to travel or from trying to invest in sometimes risky ventures.” Ostro’s incredible blue topaz will be on show in the National History Museum minerals gallery from October 19 Max, whose company was named Ostro Minerals, died unexpectedly in 2010 aged 84. His son Maurice is a successful entrepreneur in his own right and initially had no interest in running a gemstone business. However having sold many of his companies he decided to step in and take Ostro Minerals in a new direction by linking up with his charitable interests. These include supporting the arts, interfaith, and economic development projects. One new project is working in Burma with its new Nobel prize winning leader Aung San Suu Kyi to help the disadvantaged have opportunities to achieve economic self-reliance. Maurice Ostro fought off interest from other major museums around the world to ensure the Ostro topaz stone remains in Britain.
He said: “Although my father travelled the world, he had a great affinity for Britain and it is where I was born. “The Ostro stone has been in our UK vaults for many years and it is only fitting it should go on display here. “Collecting beautiful coloured gems was my father’s passion; my mission is to leverage his remarkable legacy in a way that would make him proud. “We are delighted that the finest of his gemstones will now be part of the collection at the Natural History Museum who share our passion for exceptional stones.” Ostro, his parents and his brother were rounded up by the Nazis in 1943 to be sent to the Treblinka death camp in Poland, pictured Mike Rumsey, Senior Curator of the Minerals Collection at the Natural History Museum said: “This stone is an excellent example of how as humans, we have crafted beautiful and desirable objects from the natural mineral specimens we find around us, like those that we preserve in the collections at Museum.