Following Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ many have come to expect an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes hitting the US coast each year as the so-called "climate crisis" intensifies.
According to the US National Climatic Data Center, over the 10 years to the end of 2005, seasonal activity in the North Atlantic basin was 13 named storms, 7.7 hurricanes and 3.6 major hurricanes representing an increase over the average of the preceding 25 years (1970-1994) of 8.6 named storms, 5 hurricanes and 1.5 major hurricanes.
Today, the 30th November marks the official end of the 2006 hurricane season in the US and this year, according to a recent press release from the National Center for Public Policy Research, the number of hurricanes was 38 percent below the number originally forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The number of hurricanes that qualified as "major" - category 3 or above - fell 50 percent below NOAA forecasts and not a single hurricane made landfall.
"If we can't depend on hurricane forecasts made one to six months ahead of time, how can we expect to depend on predictions about the behavior of hurricanes decades from now," asked David Ridenour, Vice President of The National Center for Public Policy Research. "Those who claim that rising global temperatures would definitely lead to more intense hurricanes appear to be relying upon political science, not climate science."
The 2006 summary at the US National Climatic Data Center simply states that the Atlantic season has been much quieter than had been initially forecast.
All good news.
Paul - touche
Ian - OK - give us the exact grid coords so we miss your place. We can start again - if we miss the lighthouse.
Luke, I hope we are not that far apart.
There is no escape from the fact that climate alarmists have claimed that there is a definite link between global warming and hurricanes, when there clearly is no scientific consensus for such a claim.
The IPCC process is more political than scientific. I find it incredible that the 'Advice for Policy Makers' is actually overseen by policy makers and amended at the request of the policy makers themselves.
I suppose the clue is in the title - InterGOVERNMENTAL P C C.
Do you mean we can nuke Byron Bay Luke?
Yep know about that meeting Paul. We have discussed befoe ethis blog.
Trenberth's work post-dates the meeting.
And Landsea is "THE" expert is he? Says who?
Landsea should have stayed in the tent and fought it out. Lotsa science rivalry in the hurricane research game.
The statement says: "1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point."
This is correct. If you did deeper I think you'll find two camps.
But logically this also does not mean there is NO evidence of a link. Simply a lack of consensus and hard to be definitive at this early stage.
WHAT ELSE would you expect? (give natural variability). This will be a problem for some time.
And is this not a major AGW problem - seeing a signal emerge from a fog of climate variation.
Paul - I don't think our summary opinions are that far apart. HOW AM I an alarmist - please demonstrate. Until you do I'm going badge you as a DENIALIST to redress the imbalance.
However some conservative planning can be done on existing climate variation with tropical cyclones and expected future impacts. Like calculating Maxiumum Envelopes of Waters from Storm Surge. No point in developing hazardous areas.
http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/ClimateChanges/pub/OceanHazardsSynthesis.html
Luke - Landsea is the world's leading hurricane expert - even an alarmist like you should see something wrong with Landsea's report being politically altered. The 'party line' is that there is no consensus on a link between 'global warming' and hurricanes.
Luke,
I only munch whales off and on - does that entitle me to an honorary right wing facist badge that I´m only allowed to wear on every third sunday when there´s a full moon ? would thinning some trees help my application?. where´s that axe now... ( or do I need a petrol driven chainsaw to qualify? )
Statler
New WMO Consensus Statement on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001005wmo_consensus_statem.html
The ten consensus statements are as follows:
Consensus Statements by International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones-VI (IWTC-VI) Participants
1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.
2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.
3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.
4. Tropical cyclone wind-speed monitoring has changed dramatically over the last few decades, leading to difficulties in determining accurate trends.
5. There is an observed multi-decadal variability of tropical cyclones in some regions whose causes, whether natural, anthropogenic or a combination, are currently being debated. This variability makes
detecting any long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity difficult.
6. It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm. Model studies and theory project a 3-5% increase in wind-speed per
degree Celsius increase of tropical sea surface temperatures.
7. There is an inconsistency between the small changes in wind-speed projected by theory and modeling versus large changes reported by some observational studies.
8. Although recent climate model simulations project a decrease or no change in global tropical cyclone numbers in a warmer climate, there is low confidence in this projection. In addition, it is unknown how tropical cyclone tracks or areas of impact will change in the future.
9. Large regional variations exist in methods used to monitor tropical cyclones. Also, most regions have no measurements by instrumented aircraft. These significant limitations will continue to make detection of trends difficult.
10. If the projected rise in sea level due to global warming occurs, then the vulnerability to tropical cyclone storm surge flooding would increase.
In addition the WMO has released a lengthy statement (PDF) co-authored by the WMO Tropical Meteorology Research Programme Committee, with members, John McBride (Australia, Committee Chair); Kerry Emanuel, Thomas Knutson, Chris Landsea, Greg Holland, Hugh Willoughby (USA); Johnny Chan, C-Y Lam (Hong Kong, China); Julian Heming (United Kingdom), Jeff Kepert (Australia).
The Committee's statement describes its purpose as follows:
This statement was developed, discussed and endorsed at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Sixth International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones, San Jose Costa Rica, November 2006. These invitation-only WMO International Tropical Cyclone Workshops are held every four years to bring together researchers and practitioners in the field of tropical cyclone forecasting. The Sixth Workshop was attended by 125 delegates from 34 different countries and regions. The Statement has been requested by WMO leadership and many heads of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services so they can respond to questions from the media, and also to assist in advising their governments on future activities and how to respond to climate change effects.
The statement includes the following conclusions:
On debate surrounding the trends documented in the Emanuel and Webster et al. papers from 2005: "This is still hotly debated area for which we can provide no definitive conclusion."
On what to expect for the future: "Given the consistency between high resolution global models, regional hurricane models and MPI theories, it is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone intensity will occur if the climate continues to warm."
On attribution of recent storms and seasons: "The possibility that greenhouse gas induced global warming may have already caused a substantial increase in some tropical cyclone indices has been raised (e.g. Mann and Emanuel, 2006), but no consensus has been reached on this issue."
On the societal factors driving losses: "Recent decades have seen a continuous increase in economic damage and disruption by tropical cyclones. This has been caused, to a large extent, by increasing coastal populations, by increasing insured values in coastal areas (e.g., Pielke 2005) and, perhaps, a rising sensitivity of modern societies to disruptions of infrastructure. For developing countries large loss of human life will continue as the increasing coastal populations are a result of population growth and social factors that are not easily countered (Zapata-Marti, 2006)."
On the expectations of new knowledge in this area: "Because of the rapid advances being made with this research, the findings in this statement may be soon superceded by new findings. It is recommended that a careful watch on the published literature be maintained."
Bottom line?
The perspective that we have provided here over the past several years and summarized in two BAMS articles has held up extremely well:
Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575. (PDF)
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-1766-2005.36.pdf
Pielke, Jr., R. A., C.W. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver, R. Pasch, 2006. Reply to Hurricanes and Global Warming Potential Linkages and Consequences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 87, pp. 628-631. (PDF)
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2458-2006.06.pdf
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L12704, doi:10.1029/2006GL026894, 2006
Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005
Kevin E. Trenberth
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Dennis J. Shea
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Abstract
The 2005 North Atlantic hurricane season (1 June to 30 November) was the most active on record by several measures, surpassing the very active season of 2004 and causing an unprecedented level of damage. Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the tropical North Atlantic (TNA) region critical for hurricanes (10° to 20°N) were at record high levels in the extended summer (June to October) of 2005 at 0.9°C above the 1901–70 normal and were a major reason for the record hurricane season. Changes in TNA SSTs are associated with a pattern of natural variation known as the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). However, previous AMO indices are conflated with linear trends and a revised AMO index accounts for between 0 and 0.1°C of the 2005 SST anomaly. About 0.45°C of the SST anomaly is common to global SST and is thus linked to global warming and, based on regression, about 0.2°C stemmed from after-effects of the 2004–05 El Niño.
Oh jeepers - Biggsy has wheeled out the Landsea's dummy spit letter. He's really going for it. Didn't we do that 12 months ago? Landsea's a whinger. Good riddance. We want people who tow the party line.
Yes we know you're evil - that's why we like you so much.
And of course you can now probably simulate our responses before we even post them. That's why Pinx and I (newly married, Phil is soooo angry) are trying to be unpredictable. But I guess even that is predictable.
So what we all really want to know is "does the IPA have a sense of humour, and is there an IPA calendar? The Bureau of Met ones are very good -if not classic - and worth getting.
Check out a sample at
http://www.bom.gov.au/calendar/index.shtml
Beautiful meteorological phenomena for socialist/commie/herbal tea drinking/left wing AGW sympathisers as well as virtuous/free market/DDT drinking/whale munching/GMO spreading/tree thinning/salinity denying right wing facists.
I was going to get one for Rog and Louis.
David Jones said if you can explain climate change attribution to him he'll send you one.