Links tagged “hurricanes”

Dr. Matt Briggs points out that most attribution claims are based around comparing simulations of the climate today to simulations of the climate as it might have been without human activity. But as he explains, this approach has a fundamental problem: “We simply have little or no idea what the climate would have been without human activity. Moreover, we can’t ever know what it was like.” ... 

“In order to attribute individual weather events to humankind, scientists need a perfect model of the climate. They do not have this. Therefore, claims that we are responsible for any particular weather event are at best overconfident, if not plain wrong.”

Fox Business Channel - Broadcast March 19, 2021 - 'Kudlow' w/ Larry Kudlow

Physicist Dr. Steve Koonin was undersecretary of energy for science during President Obama’s first term and is director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University.

Physicist Dr. Steve Koonin: "First of all, I think everybody agrees that the globe has warmed about a degree from 1900 until the present. And that warming is due to some combination of human influences and natural influences. But beyond that, almost no severe weather event shows any detectable trend. There are no long-term trends in droughts or floods around the globe -- in severe weather events like thunderstorms.

Sea level is rising at the spectacular rate of one foot per century and was doing it at about the same rate 80 years ago. In the US, record high temperatures are no more frequent than they were in the 1900s. I can go on and on. No detectable human influences on hurricanes. This is not Steve talking, this is what's in those reports often explicitly, but sometimes a little bit obscured and you got to read closely to find it."

Larry Kudlow: "Actually I want you to go on and on, I'll give you 45 or 50 minutes on the show because this is so important. All these people, you know they got the memo 'existential threat', you're saying factually it's not true."

Sean Sublette, a meteorologist at Climate Central, who pointed out that the 1960s through 2010s saw between one and three storms each decade before the June 1 start date on average. It might be tempting to ascribe this earlier season entirely to climate change warming the Atlantic. But technology also has a role to play, with more observations along the coast as well as satellites that can spot storms far out to sea.

“I would caution that we can’t just go, ‘hah, the planet’s warming, we’ve had to move the entire season!’” Sublette said. “I don’t think there’s solid ground for attribution of how much of one there is over the other. Weather folks can sit around and debate that for awhile.” Earlier storms don’t necessarily mean more harmful ones, either.

A 2021 paper published in Science concluded [since 1982], worldwide, “To date, there has been no firm evidence of global trends of the frequency of tropical cyclones with maximum wind speed above the hurricane-force wind (64 knots) at landfall.”

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: "But what happens when we take a look further back in time? ... Overall, 2020 was not an usually busy year on planet Earth for hurricanes. The figure below (via @RyanMaue) shows that 2020 had 44 total hurricanes, of which 21 reached major storm strength (technically, Category 3 or greater on the Saffir/Simpson Scale). According to Phil Klotzbach at Colorado State University, since 1980 the most hurricanes observed globally in one calendar year was 59 in 1992 (major = 38 in 2015) and the least was 38 in 2009 (major = 15 in 1981)."

"Our latest update of global hurricane landfalls...shows landfalls for the 51 years 1970 to 2020. With 23 total landfalls, 2020 saw the most hurricane strikes since 2007, and the third most since 1970. The large number of 2020 landfalls was in part to the very busy North Atlantic hurricane season, which saw 9 total landfalls. The North Atlantic averaged 2.5 landfalls per year 1970 to 2019." ... 

"With a longer-term perspective, we see a very different pattern in landfalling hurricanes than we do starting an analysis in 1970. The 1970s and early 1980s have long been understood to represent a period with lower tropical cyclone activity than before or since. That means that any analysis of trends starting from this period will likely show upwards trends, but that such trends need to be interpreted very carefully."

The Biden Administration "aims to free up as much as $10 billion at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to protect against climate disasters before they strike.

The agency, best known for responding to hurricanes, floods and wildfires, wants to spend the money to preemptively protect against damage by building seawalls, elevating or relocating flood-prone homes and taking other steps as climate change intensifies storms and other natural disasters."