Pielke Jr.: 2024 saw the third most total hurricane landfalls worldwide, since 1970 – But it is not part of any identifiable trend in hurricane frequency or intensity’

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-most-major-hurricanes-ever

The Most Major Hurricanes Ever – The 2024 update to our global hurricane landfall database

By Roger Pielke Jr.

This post is a joint effort with Ryan Maue. Check out his weather Substack, it is fantastic.

Excerpt: Last year the world experienced the most major hurricane landfalls since records are available, tying only 2015, with 11 storms. Does last year indicate that we have reached a new climate-fueled normal? Let’s have a look.

More than a decade ago, Jessica WeinkleRyan Maue, and I published the first long-period global hurricane landfall dataset using a consistent methodology. Since then, Ryan and I have updated the dataset annually.

Last year was a very active year for landfalling tropical cyclones of hurricane strength — with 24 total landfalls (S/S Category 1+), 11 of which were major hurricanes (S/S Category 3+). In fact, 2024 saw the third most landfalls around the world of any year since 1970, trailing only 1971 (30) and 1996 (25), as you can see in the figure below.

Source: Updated from Weinkle et al. 2012.

Globally consistent data is available from 1970. The figures below shows that global hurricane landfalls have an interesting set of distributions. The 13 landfalls of minor hurricanes was fairly usual (top panel), but the 11 major hurricane landfalls (middle panel) was an outlier. Taken together, 2024 saw the third most total hurricane landfalls worldwide, since 1970 (bottom panel).1

Source: Updated from Weinkle et al. 2012

The figure below shows trends since 1970 for minor (S/S Category 1 and 2) and major (SS Category 3+) landfalls.

Source: Updated from Weinkle et al. 2012.

Since 1970 there is no trend in Category 1 and 2 landfalls, but an upwards trend in Category 3+. Does the upwards trend since 1970 reflect a change in the global statistics of tropical cyclones— and thus a change in climate? And, if so, is that change a result of the emissions of carbon dioxide?

The IPCC AR6 answers no and no:

“There is low confidence in most reported long-term (multidecadal to centennial) trends in TC frequency- or intensity-based metrics . . .”2

What accounts for the IPCC’s conclusion that the available evidence does not support the detection or attribution of changes in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones?

The answer has two parts — First, even though globally consistent data is available only from 1970, some ocean basins have time series going back further in time, allowing for a better characterization of variability in tropical cyclone landfalls. Second, landfalls are just a small subset of all tropical cyclones, most of which do not make landfall as hurricane-strength storms.

Let’s take a quick look at each.

Source: Updated from Weinkle et al. 2012.

The figure above shows hurricane and major hurricane landfalls from 1950 to 2024 for the Western North Pacific and North Atlantic, which together account for more than 70% of global landfalls. You can see that the 1970s were a period of relatively infrequent landfalls, sandwiched by two much more active periods (I did a deeper dive on these data here at THB last year).

Over the entire time series, there is no trend in either minor or major landfalls, indicating that the increase in major landfalls since 1970 is within the range of documented historical variability.

Bottom line — The record (tying) number of major hurricane landfalls of 2024 is notable, but it is not part of any identifiable trend in hurricane frequency or intensity. The lack of detection of such trends today is exactly what we would expect based on assessed climate research — also known as, the current scientific consensus.

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