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A new paper shows that U.S. tornado damage & strong tornado incidence are both sharply down

September 26, 2023

ROGER PIELKE JR.: A new paper has just been published by Zhang and colleagues — Time trends in losses from major tornadoes in the United States — which updates and extends our 2013 analysis. They find: “[B]oth the severity of damage from individual events and the total annual losses from tornadoes are seen to have reduced over time.”

Their analysis confirms our earlier work: “[O]ur findings reiterate the results of Simmons et al. (2013) who emphasize the importance of normalizing loss data to draw adequate conclusions about the severity of natural hazards.” … 

Zhang et al. also find that the strongest tornadoes have also declined appreciably since 1950. The figure below shows their presentation of trends in tornadoes of various intensities (with F1 the weakest and F5 the strongest). You can see that the incidence of tornadoes of F2 strength and stronger have decreased. In our 2013 analysis we found that ~90% of damage results from tornadoes of F2 strength or stronger.

Physicist: ‘The frequency & severity of floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves & wildfires are not increasing, & may even be declining in some cases’

May 31, 2023

https://www.scienceunderattack.com/blog/2023/5/15/no-evidence-that-extreme-weather-on-the-rise-a-look-at-the-past-1-hurricanes-129 By Physicist Dr. Ralph Alexander The popular but mistaken belief that today’s weather extremes are more common and more intense because of climate change is becoming deeply embedded in the public consciousness, thanks to a steady drumbeat of articles in the mainstream media and pronouncements by luminaries such as President Biden in the U.S., Pope Francis and the UN Secretary-General. But the belief is wrong and more a perception than reality. An abundance of scientific evidence demonstrates that the frequency and severity of floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves and wildfires are not increasing, and may even be declining in some cases. That so many people think otherwise reflects an ignorance of, or an unwillingness to look at, our past climate. Collective memories of extreme weather are short-lived. In this and subsequent posts, I’ll present examples of extreme weather over the past century or so that matched or exceeded anything we’re experiencing in the present-day world. I’ll start with hurricanes. The deadliest U.S. hurricane in record­ed history struck Galveston, Texas in 1900, killing an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 people. Lacking a protective seawall built later, the thriving port was completely flattened (photo on right) by winds of 225 km per hour (140 mph) and a storm surge exceeding 4.6 meters (15 feet). With almost no automobiles, the hapless populace could flee only on foot or by horse and buggy. Reported the Nevada Daily Mail at the time: Residents [were] crushed to death in crumbling buildings or drowned in the angry waters. Hurricanes have been a fact of life for Americans in and around the Gulf of Mexico since Galveston and before. The death toll has come down over time with improvements in planning and engineering to safeguard structures, and the development of early warning sys­tems to allow evacuation of threatened communities. Nevertheless, the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has been essentially unchanged since 1851, as seen in the following figure. The apparent heightened hurricane ac­tivity over the last 20 years, particularly in 2005 and 2020, simply reflects improvements in observational capabilities since 1970 and is unlikely to be a true climate trend, say a team of hurricane experts. As you can see, the incidence of major North Atlantic hurricanes in recent decades is no higher than that in the 1950s and 1960s. Ironically, the earth was actually cooling during that period, unlike today. Of notable hurricanes during the active 1950s and 1960s, the deadliest was 1963’s Hurricane Flora that cost nearly as many lives as the Galveston Hurricane. Flora didn’t strike the U.S. but made successive landfalls in Tobago, Haiti and Cuba (path shown in photo on left), reaching peak wind speeds of 320 km per hour (200 mph). In Haiti a record 1,450 mm (57 inches) of rain fell – comparable to what Hurricane Harvey dumped on Houston in 2017 – resulting in landslides which buried whole towns and destroyed crops. Even heavier rain, up to 2,550 mm (100 inches), devastated Cuba and 50,000 people were evacuated from the island, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Hurricane Diane in 1955 walloped the North Carolina coast, then moved north through Virginia and Pennsylvania before ending its life as a tropical storm off the coast of New England. Although its winds had dropped from 190 km per hour (120 mph) to less than 55 km per hour (35 mph) by then, it spawned rainfall of 50 cm (20 inches) over a two-day period there, causing massive flooding and dam failures (photo to right). An estimated total of 200 people died. In North Carolina, Diane was but one of three hurricanes that struck the coast in just two successive months that year. In 1960, Hurricane Donna moved through Florida with peak wind speeds of 285 km per hour (175 mph) after pummeling the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. A storm surge of up to 4 meters (13 feet) combined with heavy rainfall caused extensive flooding all across the peninsula (photo on left). On leaving Florida, Donna struck North Carolina, still as a Category 3 hurricane (top wind speed 180 km per hour or 110 mph), and finally Long Island and New England. NOAA (the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) calls Donna “one of the all-time great hurricanes.” Florida has been a favorite target of hurricanes for more than a century. The next figure depicts the frequency by decade of all Florida landfalling hurricanes and major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5) since the 1850s. While major Florida hurricanes show no trend over 170 years, the trend in hurricanes overall is downward – even in a warming world. Hurricane Camille in 1969 first made landfall in Cuba, leaving 20,000 people homeless. It then picked up speed, smashing into Mississippi as a Category 5 hurricane with wind speeds of approximately 300 km per hour (185 mph); the exact speed is unknown because the hurricane’s impact destroyed all measuring instruments. Camille generated waves in the Gulf of Mexico over 21 meters (70 feet) high, beaching two ships (photo on right), and caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards. A total of 257 people lost their lives, the Montreal Gazette reporting that workers found: a ton of bodies … in trees, under roofs, in bushes, everywhere. These are just a handful of hurricanes from our past, all as massive and deadly as last year’s Category 5 Hurricane Ian which deluged Florida with a storm surge as high as Galveston’s and rainfall up to 685 mm (27 inches); 156 were killed. Hurricanes are not on the rise today.

Physicist: ‘No evidence climate change is causing tornadoes to become more frequent & stronger’

May 31, 2023

https://www.scienceunderattack.com/blog/2023/5/29/no-evidence-that-extreme-weather-on-the-rise-a-look-at-the-past-2-tornadoes-130 By Physicist Dr. Ralph Alexander After a flurry of tornadoes swarmed the central U.S. this March, the media were quick to fall into the trap of linking the surge to climate change, as often occurs with other forms of extreme weather. But there is no evidence that climate change is causing tornadoes to become more frequent and stronger, any more than hurricanes are increasing in strength and number, as I discussed in my previous post. Indeed, there are ample examples of past tornadoes just as or more violent and deadly than today’s, but conveniently ignored by believers in the narrative that weather extremes are on the rise. Like hurricanes, tornadoes are categorized according to wind speed, using the Fujita Scale going from EF0 to EF5 (F0 to F5 before 2007); EF5 tornadoes attain wind speeds up to 480 km per hour (300 mph). More terrifying than hurricanes because they often arrive without warning, tornadoes also have the awesome ability to hurl cars, struc­tural debris, animals and even people through the air. In the U.S., tornadoes cause about 80 deaths and more than 1500 injuries per year. The deadliest  episode of all time in a sin­gle day was the “tri-state” outbreak in 1925, which killed over 700 peo­ple and resulted in the most damage from any tornado outbreak in U.S. history. The photo montage on the right shows one of the 12 or more tornadoes observed in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana approaching a farm (top); some of the 154 city blocks obliterated in Murphysboro, Illinois (middle); and the wreckage of Murphysboro’s Longfellow School, where 17 children were killed (bottom).                                                                                     Unlike the narrow path of most tornadoes, the swath of destruction wrought by the main F5 tornado was up to 2.4 km (1.5 miles) wide. Amazingly, the ferocious storm persisted for a distance of 353 km (219 miles) in its 3 ½-hour lifetime. Together with smaller F2, F3 and F4 tornadoes, the tri-state tornado destroyed or almost destroyed numerous towns. Another 33 schoolchildren died in De Soto, Illinois when their school collapsed. De Soto’s deputy sheriff was sucked into the funnel cloud, never to be seen again. Newspapers of the day chronicled the devastation. United Press described how: a populous, prosperous stretch of farms, villages and towns … suddenly turned into an inferno of destruction, fire, torture and death. The Ellensburg Daily Record reported that bodies were carried as far as a mile by the force of the main tornado. Over three successive days in May 1953, at least 10 different U.S. states were struck by an outbreak of more than 33 tornadoes, the deadliest being an F5 tornado that carved a path directly though the downtown area of Waco, Texas (photo immediately below). Believing falsely that their city was immune to tornadoes, officials had not insisted on construction of sturdy buildings, many of which collapsed almost immediately and buried their occupants. The same day, a powerful F4 tornado hit the Texas city of San Angelo, causing catastrophic damage. As mentioned in the accompanying newspaper article below, an American Associated Press correspondent reported “a scene of grotesque horror” in Waco and described how San Angelo’s business area was “strewn with kindling wood.” June that year saw a sequence of powerful tornadoes wreak havoc across the Midwest and New England, the latter being well outside so-called Tornado Alley. An F5 tornado in Flint, Michigan (upper photo in figure below) and an F4 tornado in Worcester, Massachusetts (lower photo) each caused at least 90 deaths and extensive damage. The accompanying newspaper article, in Australia’s Brisbane Courier-Mail, mentions how cars were “whisked about like toys.” Nature’s wrath was on display again in the most ferocious tornado outbreak ever recorded, spawning a total of 30 F4 or F5 tornadoes – the so-called Super Outbreak – in April 1974. A total of 148 tornadoes of all strengths struck 13 states in Tornado Alley and the Canadian province of Ontario over two days; their distribution and approximate path lengths are depicted in the left panel of the next figure. The photos on the right illustrate the massive F5 tornado, the worst of the 148, that bore down on Xenia, Ohio (population 29,000, top) and the resulting damage (middle and bottom). The Xenia tornado was so powerful that it tossed freight trains on their side, and even dropped a school bus onto a stage where students had been practicing just moments before. Wrote the Cincinatti Post of the devastation: Half of Xenia is gone.  In Alabama, two F5 tornadoes, out of 75 that struck the state, hit the town of Tanner within 30 minutes; numerous homes, both brick and mobile, were chewed up or swept away. In Louisville, Kentucky, battered by an F4 tornado, a Navy veteran who lost his home lamented in the Louisville Times that: only Pearl Harbor was worse. In all, the Super Outbreak caused 335 fatalities and over 6,000 injuries. The following figure shows that the annual number of strong tornadoes (EF3 or greater) in the U.S. has declined dramatically over the last 72 years. In fact, the average number of strong tor­nadoes annually from 1986 to 2017 – a period when the globe warmed by about 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) – was 40% less than from 1954 to 1985, when warming was much less. That turns the extreme weather caused by climate change narrative on its head. Next: No Evidence That Extreme Weather on the Rise: A Look at the Past – (3) Floods

Climate Change Zealots Exploit Deadly Tornadoes To Push Their Unproven Hypothesis

May 17, 2023

https://lidblog.com/climate-change-zealots-exploit-deadly-tornadoes/ by Jeff Dunetz If you believe the people pushing the climate change hypothesis, climate change is why I am bald. There’s been a rash of tornadoes the past few weeks, and the liberal media is combining with the climate change enthusiasts to blame the tornadoes on climate change—not true. From President Joe Biden on down, the usual suspects are already rushing to suggest that last week’s deadly tornadoes are yet another reason the world needs to do more about climate change. Yet no science supports the claim that tornadoes or any other form of humanity-threatening extreme weather are on the upswing, let alone links the supposed threat to global warming. To scare the public, climate change zealots have falsely linked the latest surge of tornadoes to climate change. Here are just a few of the latest headlines: Scientists: Tornadoes are going to be more frequent and devastating because of global warming Will climate change make N.J. more tornado-prone? … Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Every natural disaster these days — flooding, hurricanes, heat waves, drought, etc. — gets flogged as a reason for climate action, even though the worldwide death toll from extreme weather has been dropping steadily for decades. The climate change theorists exploit any bad news to sell their hypothesis. In 2018 when a polar vortex brought record colds, it blamed climate change. Yep, there were crazies claiming record colds were caused by global warming. Let’s start with a truth climate ‘change’ is real. In fact, the Earth’s climate has been changing almost as long as there has been an Earth because the climate is cyclical. Warm to cold-cold to warm long millions of years. There is no proof that climate change has anything to do with mankind. The climate change hypothesis is based on two things. 1) Computer models used to tie man to climate change were bogus and impossible to correct. Climate change enthusiasts are too reliant on computer models. They will work for years coming up with proprietary computer models containing all their prejudices, input thousands of numbers and develop a long-term prediction of what will happen. The computer models have been wrong because there are too many variables in the Earth, Moon, and the entire Solar System scientists haven’t discovered all the variables to put in a computer model. These computer model developers’ heads are stuck so far into their hard drives that they won’t admit it. 2)  Worldwide redistribution of income. In 2011 Ottmar Edenhofer, the author of the 2010 U.N. climate assessment, admitted in a speech it was not about climate but “about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.” 2015 saw Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, say the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. Referring to the new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.” In other words, to destroy capitalism. This is why the fiercest defenders of the hypothesis are the far left—the people who want to change the economy from capitalism to socialism. Climate Depot reported on some of the reactions from weather professionals to people blaming the tornadoes on climate change. Meteorologist Chris Martz had the most direct response: In 2019 Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, wrote, “Recent Tornadoes are Due to Unusually COLD Weather’ – To claim ‘global warming’ as cause for tornadoes’ is directly opposite to the clear observational evidence.” Extreme Weather Expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. noted:   One of my favorite examples is something I found a few years ago: The climate crazies blamed the increased tornado activity on global cooling. In a story about the coming ice age on June 24, 1974, Time magazine reported: Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds — the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa’s drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest’s recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.   Almost a year later, in April 1975, Newsweek wrote “the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded” killed “more than 300 people” This, according to the magazine, was among “the ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically.” But the change was global cooling. In 1977 Scientific opinion converged on global warming, not cooling, as the chief climate risk in the next century. When the cooling wasn’t working, they changed it to global warming. When that didn’t work, it became climate change. Here is the truth that nobody who believes in the climate change hypothesis will admit. If climate change believers genuinely believe that tornadoes are tied to a still-warming earth, we should all wear ruby slippers and follow a yellow-brick road to Emerald City. For those who don’t believe in science, here’s the truth from climate expert and researcher Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. The levels of tornado strength were set by the Fujita Scale. Dr. Pielke made a chart demonstrating the change in extreme tornadoes F4+ from 1950-2022 and a similar chart beginning in 2000. Each of the charts shows a significant decline in tornadic activity. But wait? Before they got fancy didn’t they call it global warming? That’s the fun part. When it was still called global warming, the purveyors of the hypothesis demanded scientists start tracking satellite data because it was more accurate than earthbound temperature tracking. But the average satellite data showed that the worldwide temperature hasn’t changed at least for the past 8+ years using the satellite data the climate change zealots requested. Those same scientists decided to ignore the data. At the same time, they stopped calling it global warming and changed the name of their worldwide redistribution of income program to climate change.   What about the future? The believers in the hypothesis say we are nearing the end of the Earth because of climate change, but I wouldn’t stop paying your bills yet. Climate change is not going to destroy the Earth. The Earth’s climate has been changing for billions of years.  

Definitive Guide to Extreme Weather: No trends or declining trends in hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, droughts, heat waves, disaster losses, wildfires – All peer-reviewed & official sources – By Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.

March 25, 2023

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1625530996958572545.html The Honest Broker by Roger Pielke Jr.     Feb 14, 2023 • 18 tweets 🧵 What the media won’t tell you about extreme weather and its impactsHere is a thread of some of the figures I’ve posted in recent months about extreme weather that I have never seen in legacy media reportingAll peer-reviewed and official sources . . .  Floods IPCC finds no trends in flooding globally Did you know that flood impacts in the US as a proportion of wealth are down >70% over 80 years? Huge news, good news!But don’t tell anyone 🥸 rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/series-what-… SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . Floods Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and recent research actually sayshttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/series-what-the-media-wont-tell-you-3b0 # Drought The IPCC finds no long-term trends in meteorological or hydrological drought In Western Europe specifically there is no trend in drought over >150 years rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/series-what-… SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . Drought in Western and Central Europe Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and recent research actually say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/series-what-the-media-wont-tell-you # US heat waves The US government’s official metric for heat waves comes from a paper I co-authored more than 20 years ago. It shows an increase since ~1960s but a decrease since <1930s rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med… SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . U.S. heat waves Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and official data really say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-9f9 US heat waves During the past 50 years, when heat waves have increased, mortality from extreme heat has fallen pretty much everywhere in the US rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med…That is good news! Let’s keep it up SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . U.S. heat waves Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and official data really say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-9f9 # US (mainland) hurricanes IPCC, WMO, UNNCA are all in agreement No upwards trends in landfalling hurricanes, including the strongest storms. Have you ever seen these graphs in the media (aside from Bill Nye and his sharpie;) rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med… SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . hurricanes Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and official data really sayhttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about # US disaster costs As a proportion of GDP US disaster costs have gone down More good news! rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/billion-doll… “Billion Dollar Disasters” are a National EmbarrassmentYou won’t find a more obvious example of bad science from the U.S. governmenthttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/billion-dollar-disasters-are-a-national European disaster costs As a proportion of GDP European disaster losses have gone down Even more good news! rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/making-sense… SERIES: Making Sense of Trends in Disaster Losses Part 2: Normalized disaster losses in Europe 1995 to 2019https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/making-sense-of-trends-in-disaster-ced Global weather and climate disaster losses As a proportion of GDP global disaster (weather and climate, but also overall) have gone down Great news! rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/dont-believe… Don’t Believe the Hype Global Disasters in 2022, a Preliminary Assessment https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/dont-believe-the-hype Disasters This century the number of disasters tracked by EM-DAT has not increased, in fact down a bit Important to understand why so that progress with respect to the Sendai Framework can be maintained! rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/dont-believe… ] Don’t Believe the Hype Global Disasters in 2022, a Preliminary Assessmenthttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/dont-believe-the-hype # US tornadoes Reports of the strongest US tornadoes (EF3+) which cause ~70% of death and destruction are down in the long and short terms rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med… What the media won’t tell you about . . . Tornadoes Let’s take a look at what the data and science actually say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-3fe Damage from tornadoes supports the data on falling numbers of the strongest tornadoes Both inflation-adjusted and normalized tornado losses have decreased rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med… What the media won’t tell you about . . . Tornadoes Let’s take a look at what the data and science actually say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-3fe Normalized US hurricane losses As we would expect with no up-trend in US landfalls there is no trend in normalized US hurricane losses since 1900 rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/pielkes-week… Pielke’s Weekly Memo #19A sneak peak at normalized U.S. hurricane losses 1900 to 2022 https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/pielkes-weekly-memo-19 Global hurricane landfalls Lots of ups and downs over 70+ years but no overall trend rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-fac… Just the Facts on Global HurricanesMore storms? Fewer but more intense? More landfalls? No, No and Nohttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-facts-on-global-hurricanes Global hurricane energy More ups and down but no trend since 1980 rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-fac… Just the Facts on Global Hurricanes More storms? Fewer but more intense? More landfalls? No, No and No https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-facts-on-global-hurricanes Global hurricane energy per storm No trend since 1980 Storms are not getting stronger but fewerrogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-fac… Just the Facts on Global HurricanesMore storms? Fewer but more intense? More landfalls? No, No and Nohttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-facts-on-global-hurricanes Everything you find in this thread Everything Is consistent with what has been reported in the IPCC & found in official data and the peer-reviewed literatureShhh … don’t tell anyone How to Understand the New IPCC Report: Part 2, Extreme Events Contrary to what you’ve been reading, the massive new IPCC report offers grounds for optimism on climate science and policyhttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report-1e3 If you want to understand what the science of extreme weather, climate and disasters actually says, please sign up to The Honest Broker Amazing to me that some of the things I write about you cannot find anywhere else So I’m not gonna stop

Extreme Weather Expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: Strong U.S. tornadoes have decreased as much as 50% since 1950 – Tornadoes are not being ‘juiced’ by ‘climate change’

March 15, 2023

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-3fe? What the media won’t tell you about . . . Tornadoes Let’s take a look at what the data and science actually say Roger Pielke Jr. Feb 13, 2023 1929 Hardtner, KS tornado. Source: Kansas Historical Society This is the latest post in an ongoing series, titled “what the media won’t tell you about . . .”, which is motivated by the apparent systemic inability of the legacy media to play things straight when it comes to extreme weather and disasters. Climate change is real and important, but its importance is not an excuse for the pervasive climate misinformation found across the legacy media. Here are the previous installments in the series, which are among my most popular posts and which have gone unchallenged. What the media won’t tell you about . . . Hurricanes U.S. Heat Waves Drought in Western and Central Europe Floods Today’s post focuses on U.S. tornadoes. This year so far has seen a lot of tornadoes — 178 were reported through February 11th, the 2nd most since 2005 and well above the 2005-2022 mean of 66 to date. Of course, nowadays wherever there is extreme weather, journalists rush to claim a connection to climate change no matter what the science actually says. For instance, after a tornado outbreak last month, the Associated Press reported that the tornadoes had been “juiced by climate change.” Similarly, The Washington Post said that in the past it was difficult to tie tornadoes to climate change but now, “science is accumulating to support the linkage.” Neither reported any of the data and science I share below. So, let’s take a look. Tornadoes are classified by their intensity according to the 6-category Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale, which runs from 0 to 5, and is shown in the table above (alongside the original Fujita Scale). The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) explains that “The Enhanced F-scale still is a set of wind estimates (not measurements) based on damage.” You can read about the EF Scale and its history here and here. In a 2013 paper, Kevin Simmons, Daniel Sutter and I used the EF Scale in a set of normalizations of U.S. tornado damage from 1950 to 2011 to account for changing wealth, population, and housing. You can see a recent update of our analysis through 2021 in the figure below and discussed in some detail here. Updated from Simmons et al. 2013. In performing our analysis of normalized U.S. tornado losses, we had to navigate the changing approaches used by the NWS to classify tornado strength from 1950 and various “oddities” of the dataset. See our paper (linked at the bottom) for an in-depth and technical discussion of these issues and how we dealt with them. Across our normalization approaches and NWS classification methods we found that from 1950 to 2011, tornadoes of EF3 strength or greater — accounting for about 6% of all reported tornadoes — were responsible for almost 70% of total damage. Here are the numbers for even stronger tornadoes: EF4+ tornadoes are about 1.2% of tornado reports and account for about 44% of damage; EF5 tornadoes are about 0.1% of tornado reports and account for about 14% of damage; According to The Tornado Project, from 1950 to 2011 EF4 and EF5 tornadoes were responsible for about 67% of all deaths from tornados. In short, about 70% or more of the death and destruction from tornadoes results from less than 7% of all reported tornadoes — those of EF3 strength or greater. Let’s take a look at trends in EF3 and stronger tornadoes, using official data of the NWS Storm Prediction Center. These data can be seen in the figures below. Source: NOAA NWS SPC The panel on the left shows reported EF3+ tornadoes from 1950 to 2022 and it indicates a dramatic decline, from about 60 per year to about 30. The figure on the right shows the same data for 2000 to 2022, also indicating a decline in incidence over the more recent period. Let’s now look at EF4+ tornadoes. Source: NOAA NWS SPC Here we also see declines over the longer (1950 to 2022) and more recent (2000 to 2022) periods. For completeness, let’s also look at the very rare EF5 tornadoes. Source: NOAA NWS SPC Tornadoes of EF5 strength are today rare, with almost 10 years since the last such event was reported in May, 2013. However, 2011 saw 6 such tornadoes in just one year. Here as well the official data indicate a long-term decline. The data consistently indicate a long-term decline in major tornado incidence on long- and near-term time scales. But are these trends real, or are they an artifact of changing methods for collecting data on tornado incidence? This is a question that we addressed directly in our research on normalized tornado losses. We concluded: The normalized results are also suggestive that the long-term decrease in reported tornado incidence may also have a component related to actual, secular changes in tornado incidence beyond reporting changes. To emphasize, we do not reach any conclusion here that stronger that ‘suggestive’ and recommend that this possibility be subject to further research, which goes beyond the scope of this study. While there are greater uncertainties in tornado counts prior to the deployment of Doppler Radar in the 1990s, we can have strong confidence that major tornado incidence so far this century has decreased. It may be that this recent trend reflects a longer-term decrease in activity. The case for a long-term decrease in strong tornadoes is stronger today than when we first suggested it in our 2013 paper. There has also been recent research on changing spatial and seasonal trends in tornado incidence (from 1979 to 2017), that finds that in recent decades activity has shifted east from the Great Plains to the Southeast. That research is explicitly equivocal on attribution: At this point, it is unclear whether the observed trends in tornado environment and report frequency are due to natural variability or being altered by anthropogenic forcing on the climate system. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its most recent report did not spend much time on tornadoes and none at all on trends in strong tornadoes. It concluded that any observational trends in tornadoes “are not robustly detected.” The data and research I have shared here would seem to contradict that conclusion — both in terms of the frequency of major tornadoes and their geographic and seasonal activity. However, there is strong agreement that major tornado activity has not increased, and no trends have been claimed to be attributed to climate change. Here is the bottom line: Strong U.S. tornadoes — the ones that cause the most death and destruction — have certainly not increased since 1950; In fact, evidence suggests that they may likely have decreased in frequency since 1950, perhaps by as much as 50%; It is almost certain that major tornadoes have decreased this century, by about 20%; The U.S. has not seen an EF5 tornado in almost 10 years, the longest such streak since at least 1950; The geography of tornado incidence shifted eastward from 1979 to 2017, but no strong claims or mechanisms of attribution have been advanced; Both inflation-adjusted and normalized tornado damage has decreased in the U.S. since 1950, providing good support and consistency for claims that overall incidence of strong tornadoes has decreased; Tornadoes are not being “juiced” by climate change. Looking to the future, a recent paper helps to place things into important perspective: “the impacts associated with projected 21st century increases in tornado frequency are outweighed by projected growth in the human-built environment” … Full article here: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-3fe?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=119454&post_id=102523346&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

A recap of 2022: Atlantic Basin & N. Hemisphere tropical activity below-normal – U.S. tornadoes below-normal…a quieter year in California for wildfires

December 30, 2022

https://arcfieldweather.com/blog/2022/12/28/1000-am-good-news-in-2022atlantic-basin-and-northern-hemisphere-tropical-activity-below-normalus-tornadoes-below-normalnumber-of-us-wildfires-on-a-downward-trend-last-15-years   By Meteorologist Paul Dorian – Arcfield – arcfieldweather.com 8:00 AM | *A recap of 2022 and the news is generally good…Atlantic Basin and Northern Hemisphere tropical activity below-normal…US tornadoes below-normal…a quieter year in California for wildfires* December 29, 2022 The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) is the best measure of overall tropical activity as it factors in both longevity and magnitude for individual systems. The ACE for the 2022 tropical season was below-normal across the Atlantic Basin (upper right box) and for the entire Northern Hemisphere (lower right box). Data courtesy Colorado State University, NOAA (climatological averages are shown in parentheses to the right of observed values for given location) Overview Despite the fact that the state of Florida suffered through direct impact by two hurricanes in just a six-week time period, the Atlantic Basin as a whole featured below-normal tropical activity in 2022 as measured by a metric known as the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE).  In addition, the entire Northern Hemisphere experienced below-normal tropical activity this year and – as was the case last year – the quieter-than-normal Pacific Ocean led the way to those favorable hemisphere-wide results. In terms of tornadoes, more good news in 2022 as it has been another below-normal year in the US and, once again, there were no EF-5’s observed (i.e., most powerful type of tornado). Finally, with respect to wildfires, it was a quieter year in California than the past few with some well-timed rainfall. The trend in the number of wildfires across the entire US continues to be downward for the past 15 years despite an uptick nationwide in 2022. Colder-than-normal sea surface temperatures continue to dominate the scene in the equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean in much the same way as in the prior two years. These “La Nina” conditions likely played an important role in the below-normal tropical activity across parts of the Pacific Ocean which has a huge impact on the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. Map courtesy NOAA, tropicaltidbits.com (as of 27 Dec 2022) Atlantic Basin and Northern Hemisphere tropical activity…below-normal The state of Florida suffered through an active tropical season in 2022 being directly impacted by two hurricanes, Ian and Nicole, in just a six-week time period.  However, in the Atlantic Basin as a whole which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, the 2022 tropical season was below-normal in overall activity.  In addition, the Pacific Ocean – the world’s largest and deepest by far – experienced below-normal tropical activity in 2022 which contributed greatly to overall below-normal levels for the entire Northern Hemisphere. While the Atlantic Basin experienced below-normal Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) for the 2022 tropical season, the state of Florida had to deal with two direct hits by hurricanes in a six-week time period. Hurricane Ian made landfall as a “major” category 4 storm on September 28th doing serious damage to southwestern Florida and Hurricane Nicole impacted the state 43 days later.  In an odd twist, a very similar sequence of events took place in 2004 with Hurricanes Charley and Jeanne with similar “cross-paths” and exactly the same 43 days apart. Plots courtesy “News4jax.com” (David Heckard, Jacksonville, FL) The “below-normal” attribution for the Atlantic Basin, Pacific Ocean and the Northern Hemisphere as a whole comes by using a metric known as the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE). The ACE metric – which was originally created by Dr. William Gray and associates at Colorado State University and later tweaked by NOAA – not only factors in the intensity of a tropical cyclone, it also takes into account its longevity. A “major” hurricane, for example, that lasts for a long time will have a much bigger impact on the accumulated cyclone energy than a short-lived and weaker tropical system. The ACE levels for 2022 were below-normal in the Atlantic Ocean, both sectors of the Pacific Ocean (i.e., east and west of the international date line), and also in the Indian Ocean leading to below-normal levels for the entire Northern Hemisphere. Global Hurricane Frequency (top), Accumulated Cyclone Energy (bottom) have trended relatively flat since 1980. (Data/plots courtesy Colorado State University, Chris Martz (Twitter)) The below-normal activity in the Atlantic Basin this year was fueled at least in part by persistent higher levels of wind shear in the main breeding grounds region of the tropical Atlantic Ocean which is somewhat unusual for a year with La Nina conditions in the equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean. Typically, colder-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean (i.e., La Nina conditions) lead to reduced overall wind shear in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and this, in turn, usually contributes to a more active tropical season in the Atlantic Basin. In the Pacific Ocean, the results in 2022 were more predictable as La Nina conditions usually act to suppress tropical activity and indeed, both sectors of the world’s largest ocean (i.e., to the east and west of the international date line) experienced below-normal levels. Of all the countries around the world, the US has the highest number of tornadoes and the totals this year (black line) fall quite low on the “percentile ranking” scale – just below the lowest 25th percentile (blue line) as determined by NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center.  (Plot courtesy NOAA (Harold Brooks NSSL, Greg Carbin NOAA SPC), data through 12/26)). US tornadic activity…below-normal 2022 has been a below-normal year in terms of the number of tornadoes across the nation ranking just below the “25th percentile” in a ranking of annual trends. The United States has the most tornadoes of any country, as well as the strongest and most violent tornadoes. According to data from NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC), the long-term trend of US tornado frequency has been relatively flat since the 1950’s. The long-term trend in US tornado frequency has been relatively flat since 1954 as seen on this plot produced using data from NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center.  (Courtesy NOAA, Chris Martz (Twitter)) More good news from this year with respect to tornadoes is that – once again – there were no observed tornadoes classified as “EF-5” which is the classification given to the most powerful type of all.  In fact, it has now been more than 8 years since the last “EF-5” tornado struck in the US (Moore County, Oklahoma during May of 2013).  According to NOAA, there have been a total of 36 “EF-5” tornadoes in the US since 1970 with 14 of those occurring in the 1970s. Here is a summary of the details on 2022 tornadoes in the state of Pennsylvania: – 8 total tornadoes on 3 separate days – 9 counties impacted – 3 EF0, 3 EF1, and 2 EF2 – 2nd most March tornadoes in PA behind only 1976 (8) – 1st year since 1972 with no tornadoes in PA during June and July [One final note, the current weather pattern across the nation is very active with numerous storms to pound California and other parts of the western US. One of these Pacific Ocean systems will push eastward into the Mississippi Valley region by the early and middle parts of next week and it very well may contribute to a severe weather outbreak – possibly to even include isolated tornadoes…something to monitor in coming days]. Despite an uptick this year in the number of wildfires across the US as reported by the NIFC, the overall trend is down during the past 15 years. (Data source: NIFC 2022, NIFC Prior Years) A quieter year in California for wildfires…Number of US wildfires continues on a 15-year downward trend Overall, it was a somewhat quieter year in 2022 for the state of California with respect to wildfire activity at least compared to the past few. While this year saw more than 362,000 acres burned in the Golden State, it was the fewest since 2019 and – to put it into perspective – last year’s acreage of 2.5 million was about seven times larger. And these last two years paled in comparison to the record-breaking year of 2020, when more than 4.3 million acres were ablaze in California. Almost a quarter of the acres burned this wildfire season in California took place in El Dorado and Pacer Counties during the “Mosquito Fire” in September and October. The nation as a whole experienced nearly normal temperatures in 2022 at +0.133 degrees (F) and California had some coastal spots slightly below-normal and some interior locations slightly above-normal. Map courtesy NOAA, Weather Bell Analytics Although California endured another drought year in 2022, much of the state was spared the worst of the dryness during the wildfire season and, in some cases, well-timed rainfall came to the rescue (Credit for California wildfire information: “calmatters.org”, California State Emergency Services Department). [Note: Drought conditions will actually be alleviated significantly across California during the next couple of weeks with excessive rainfall amounts in a very active weather pattern and also some incredible higher-elevation snows (e.g., Sierra Nevada)]. Temperatures averaged pretty close to normal for 2022 across the nation and also across California with some coastal spots ending up a bit below-normal and some inland locations a bit above normal. Across the nation in 2022, there was an uptick in the “total number of wildfires” despite the reduced numbers this year in California. The overall trend across the nation, however, continues on a slightly downward track since 2008 as reported by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). Meteorologist Paul Dorian Arcfield arcfieldweather.com

Experts Refute Claims Linking Deadly Tornadoes to Climate Change

December 17, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/experts-rebuke-claims-linking-deadly-tornadoes-to-climate-change_4157257.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge By Nathan Worcester Experts have pushed back against claims that this weekend’s tragic tornadoes in Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee can be clearly linked to manmade climate change. In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, professor and climate economist Richard S.J. Tol of the University of Sussex explained why it is so difficult to connect weather events on the scale of a tornado to shifts in the Earth’s climate. “Tornadoes are small, rarely more than 3 kilometers in diameter. The most advanced climate models, however, cannot see things that are smaller than 9 by 9 km. Climate models can therefore tell us very little about tornadoes,” he told The Epoch Times via email. “Data are not great, but suggest that there is no upward or downward trend in tornado frequency or severity,” he added. Professor and climate economist Richard S.J. Tol of the University of Sussex. (research.vu.nl) Over the weekend, President Biden speculated that climate change had “some impact” on the massive storms, which have claimed at least 74 lives so far. “All I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impacts as a consequence of the warming of the planet and climate change,” Biden said, according to reporting from Fox News. “The specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point.” “The fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. Everything. And obviously it has some impact here, but I can’t give you a quantitative read on that,” he later added. “The rush to attribute the… tornadoes to climate change illustrates perfectly the political distortion of the topic,” climate economist and University of Guelph professor Ross McKitrick told The Epoch Times via email in another exclusive interview. Bogdan Gaicki surveys tornado damage after extreme weather hit the region in Mayfield, Ky., on Dec. 12, 2021. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) “The IPCC AR6 (Sct 11.7.3) makes no attribution claims between greenhouse gases and tornadoes, and the long term data show no increasing trend in numbers or severity (indeed there is a slight decrease in numbers),” he added, referring to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the physical science basis for climate change. “Yet the public has been so primed by politicians and activists to blame extreme weather on greenhouse gases they hardly blink when someone like President Biden just makes up the connection.” A Dec. 13 article from The Washington Post claimed that tornadoes have become more frequent in recent decades, citing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that they said illustrated tornadoes in the United States are becoming more frequent. Homes are badly destroyed after a tornado ripped through area the previous evening in Mayfield, Ky., on Dec. 11, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Responding to that article on Twitter, University of Colorado environmental science professor Roger Pielke Jr. described a figure from the article as “incredibly misleading,” pointed out that the rollout of Doppler radar systems increased reporting of very weak tornadoes in more recent years. Like McKitrick, he noted that the IPCC has not found that tornadoes are clearly linked to climate change. McKitrick, who recently questioned a key statistical approach used to link greenhouse gases to climate change, wonders why some researchers only ever look at potential downsides of any changes to the Earth’s climate. “Now the alarmists are shifting to a claim that while the events are natural, greenhouse gases [make] them worse than they otherwise would be,” he told The Epoch Times. “Aside from the questionable statistical analysis behind such arguments, the big problem is that it’s ambulance chasing. The fact that they only ever associate greenhouse gases with bad weather outcomes is meaningless since they only ever look at bad weather events. They never study whether a stretch of mild weather could be attributed to greenhouse gases.”

Hurry, Lobby for Green New Deal! Newsweek hypes ‘worst-case scenario’ modeling study: ‘Winter Tornadoes Will Be 9 Times Stronger By 2099 If Global Warming Isn’t Curtailed’

December 15, 2021

  https://www.newsweek.com/winter-tornadoes-will-9-times-stronger-2099-if-global-warming-isnt-curtailed-study-1659323 Winter Tornadoes Will Be 9 Times Stronger By 2099 If Global Warming Isn’t Curtailed: Study In the wake of the recent deadly tornadoes that hit five states last week, a new study shows winter tornadoes will likely be nine times more powerful by 2099 if global warming doesn’t slow down. The study, which was conducted before the outbreak, looks at how tornadoes change as global warming continues. The study focuses on the strength of massive tornadoes, not how often they occur. Jeff Trapp, head of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and author of the study, said if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise by 2099, rare winter tornadoes could have stronger winds, extended and broader tracks of destruction, making them nine times stronger than what they currently are. To get his results, Trapp took conditions from two significant tornadoes in 2013 and put them into a computer simulation to see the worst-case scenario for climate change by 2100. The first tornado used was a winter EF4 tornado in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, with top wind speeds of 170 mph, which injured 82 people in February. The second was a rare spring EF5 tornado in May with a top speed of 210 mph, killing 24 people in Moore, Oklahoma. “There is a potential for events in the future that are more intense that would not have been as intense in the current climate,” Trapp said.   … Trapp used worst-case scenario, which the world used to be on track for, would have another 6 degrees (3.3 degrees Celsius) or so of warming between now and the end of the century. Trapp said he will soon run simulations based on a scenario closer to the current trajectory for carbon dioxide emissions of about 3.2 degrees (1.8 degrees Celsius) warming above current levels. … Not peer reviewed yet, it was presented in poster form at the American Geophysical Union conference on Monday as a peak at new research to be published later.

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