Links tagged “floods”

Extreme weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: The figure above shows the annual costs of weather disasters (data from Munich Re) as a proportion of global GDP (data from the UN), from 1990 to 2017.

2017 ranks 2nd to 2005;
The dataset is dominated by US hurricanes (accounting for about 70% of losses);
The trend from 1990 to 2017 is downward;
6 of past 10 years have been below average;

Dr. Roger Pielke on The US National Climate Assessment and Weather Extremes: 

Drought: “drought statistics over the entire CONUS have declined … no detectable change in meteorological drought at the global scale”

Hurricanes: “there is still low confidence that any reported long-term (multidecadal to centennial) increases in TC activity are robust”

“IPCC AR5 did not attribute changes in flooding to anthropogenic influence nor report detectable changes in flooding magnitude, duration, or frequency”

In the US “”increasing & decreasing flooding magnitude but does not provide robust evidence that these trends are attributable to human influences… no formal attribution of observed flooding changes to anthropogenic forcing has been claimed"

The data says what it says. There is precious little evidence that extremes have become worse in the US since at least 1900, with the exception of more winter storms since 1950 and overall fewer cold spells. Attribution is weak to nonexistent.

Gore referenced a July 28-29 rainstorm that dropped 3 to 5 inches of rain in 24 hours around Pittsburgh.

“Every storm is different now,” Gore said.

...

Not everyone who attended was impressed with the figures. William Northy, 68, of Moon Township said he stopped in for the presentation since he had to be in Pittsburgh anyway for a doctor's appointment. “I think it's overly hyped,” said Northy, a retired airline pilot. He said he was skeptical of the barrage of statistics Gore presented. While he believes the climate is changing, he doesn't believe humans' contributions are very significant. “Every time you belch or fart, it affects the climate in a minuscule way,” he said, adding that he feels there are few “tangible” things people can do to change the trends.

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Gore rebuttal here: Fact-Checking & Review of Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ – Official Gore Sequel Rebuttal – Special Report

Study published in Journal of Hydrology - Volume 552, September 2017, Pages 704-717: 

"Overall, the number of significant trends in major-flood occurrence across North America and Europe was approximately the number expected due to chance alone.

Changes over time in the occurrence of major floods were dominated by multidecadal variability rather than by long-term trends."