So far the hurricane season for the Atlantic has been pretty quiet for 2009. Ryan Maue from Florida State University explains why. In related news, Al Gore has dropped the [hurricane frequency] related slide in his traveling PowerPoint show. – Anthony
Great Depression! Tropical Cyclone Energy at 30-year lows
Both Northern Hemisphere and South Hemisphere AND therefore overall Global hurricane activity has continued to sink to levels not seen since the 1970s. Even more astounding, when the Southern Hemisphere hurricane data is analyzed to create a global value, we see that Global Hurricane Energy has sunk to 30-year lows, at the least. Since hurricane intensity and detection data is problematic as one goes back in time, when reporting and observing practices were different than today, it is possible that we underestimated global hurricane energy during the 1970s.
Using a well-accepted metric called the Accumulated Cyclone Energy index or ACE for short (Bell and Chelliah 2006), which has been used by Klotzbach (2006) and Emanuel (2005) (PDI is analogous to ACE), and most recently by myself in Maue (2009) , simple analysis shows that 24-month running sums of global ACE or hurricane energy have plummeted to levels not seen in 30 years.
Figure: 24-month running sums of Accumulated Cyclone Energy.
Why use 24-month running sums instead of simply yearly values? Since a primary driver of the Earth’s climate from year to year is the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) acts on time scales on the order of 2-7 years, and the fact that the bulk of the Southern Hemisphere hurricane season occurs from October – March, a reasonable interpretation of global hurricane activity requires a better metric than simply calendar year totals. The 24-month running sums is analogous to the idea of “what have you done for me lately”. During the past 6 months, extending back to October of 2008 when the Southern Hemisphere tropical season was gearing up, global ACE had crashed due to two consecutive years of well-below average Northern Hemisphere hurricane activity. To avoid confusion, I am not specifically addressing the North Atlantic, which was above normal in 2008 (in terms of ACE), but the hemisphere (and or globe) as a whole. The North Atlantic only represents a 1/10 to 1/8 of global hurricane energy output on average but deservedly so demands disproportionate media attention due to the devastating societal impacts of recent major hurricane landfalls.
Why the record low ACE?
During the past 2 years +, the Earth’s climate has cooled under the effects of a dramatic La Nina episode. The Pacific Ocean basin typically sees much weaker hurricanes that indeed have shorter lifecycles and therefore — less ACE . Conversely, due to well-researched upper-atmospheric flow (e.g. vertical shear) configurations favorable to Atlantic hurricane development and intensification, La Nina falls tend to favor very active seasons in the Atlantic (El Nino years are the converse, with must less activity, as forecast by Gray and NOAA for 2009). Thus, the Western North Pacific (typhoons) tropical activity was well below normal in 2007 and 2008 (see table). Same for the Eastern North Pacific. The Southern Hemisphere, which includes the southern Indian Ocean from the coast of Mozambique across Madagascar to the coast of Australia, into the South Pacific and Coral Sea, saw below normal activity as well in 2008. During the 2008-2009 TC season, the Southern Hemisphere ACE was about half of what’s expected in a normal year, with a multitude of very weak, short-lived hurricanes. All of these numbers tell a very simple story: just as there are active periods of hurricane activity around the globe, there are inactive periods, and we are currently experiencing one of the most impressive inactive periods, now for almost 3 years.
Bottom Line
Under global warming scenarios, hurricane intensity is expected to increase (on the order of a few percent), but MANY questions remain as to how much, where, and when. This science is very far from settled. Indeed, Al Gore has dropped the related slide in his PowerPoint. Many papers have suggested that these changes are already occurring especially in the strongest of hurricanes due to warming sea-surface temperatures, but the methodology and data issues with each of these papers perhaps overshadows the conclusions. The notion that the overall global hurricane energy or ACE has collapsed does not contradict the recent climate change / TC linkage literature but provides an additional, perhaps less publicized piece of the puzzle. Indeed, the very strong interannual variability of global hurricane ACE (energy) highly correlated to ENSO, suggests that the role of tropical cyclones in climate is modulated very strongly by the big movers and shakers in large-scale, global climate. The perceptible (and perhaps measurable) impact of global warming on hurricanes in today’s climate is arguably a pittance (or noise) compared to the reorganization and modulation of hurricane formation locations and preferred tracks/intensification corridors dominated by ENSO (and other natural climate factors). Moreover, our understanding of the complicated role of hurricanes with and role in climate is nebulous to be charitable. We must increase our understanding of the current climate’s hurricane activity.
Ryan Maue’s Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Update
Current Tropical Cyclones = 0
September 21: As far as I can tell using the best-tracks, the last day in September without Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE, Bell et al. 2000) being registered was September 24, 2003. During the past 20-years, *15* September days have not had an active tropical cyclone with *5* of those days occurring at the end of September 1999.
Through September 21, comparing 2009 to the previous 20 Septembers for NH ACE, the current total from the operational advisories of about 71 is one standard deviation below the 20-year mean (mean=117,sigma=36). These links are for two plots that show the yearly Northern Hemisphere ACE for September and the average ACE per day during the month.
Since daily ACE represents a 4-times daily sum of wind speed squared, an “average” September 21st could see one of the following (among other combos):
One TC at 125 knots
Two TCs at 90 knots
Three TCs at 70 knots or
Six TCs at 50 knots
Current TCs = 0
September 15: Global Hurricane Frequency [storms with maximum intensity greater than 64 knots] has dramatically collapsed during the past 2-3 years. When measured using 12 or 24 month running sums, the number of tropical cyclones at hurricane intensity is clearly at a 30-year low. HOWEVER, the number of tropical cyclones with intensity greater than 34-knots has remained at the 30-year average (83 storms per year). More on the distinction in an upcoming paper currently submitted for publication.
Global Tropical Cyclone ACE valid September 22, 2009 00Z
| BASIN | 2009 Current | YEARLY | CLIMO
Thru Oct 31 |
CLIMO
Thru Sep 30 |
CLIMO
Avg Sep |
| N Hemisphere | 244.8 | 563 | 493.2 | 402.8 | 154 |
| N Atlantic | 41.6375 | 106 | 99.2 | 85.0 | 51.6 |
| W Pacific | 109.5 | 309 | 254.5 | 197.9 | 65.2 |
| E Pacific | 89.0625 | 132 | 130.1 | 112.6 | 36.8 |
| N Indian | 4.6 | 17 | 9.3 | 7.3 | 0.3 |
| S Hemisphere | 107 | 229 | Out of | Season | — |
Sorted monthly data: Text File
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Anthony:
I think the first sentence should read “quiet”, not “quite”.
Phil
REPLY: Fixed that as soon as I posted, but thanks. A little early for me here in CA. Server failure alarm got me up in the middle of the night. – A
I think if you put that top graph alongside a temperature anomaly for the same time period, you’d see a reduction in both over the last twelve years. Which may not prove the headline point.
No, I don’t think the correlation is significant, they are probably both responding to something else, or random. My point is that this could be ammo for the other side.
REPLY: Actually I’m working on an update graph doing just that. UPDATE: posted now. – Anthony
Last night I was watching the weather channel and Jim Cantori was in Georgia. He was talking about all the rain they have had recently. He said and I repeat if this isn’t CLIMATE CHANGE I don’t know what is. I thought weather wasn’t climate change? That’s what we all been told from all the global warming crowd for years. I guess if this winter we see feet of snow then what will they say then? I know natural variences.
All of these numbers tell a very simple story: just as there are active periods of hurricane activity around the globe, there are inactive periods, and we are currently experiencing one of the most impressive inactive periods, now for almost 3 years.
Same for Solar Activity. Hurricanes would then be a domino in the heirarchy.
Gore may have removed his hurricane jones, but he’s got a new thing in river deltas.
Less (trapped) atmospheric heat = less motion.(hurricanes)
I recall discussing hurricanes (Before and) after Katrina with someone who was a serious AGW = worsening weather advocate (The same person who suggested that an earthquake storm, Mag. 3+, in Wellington, NZ, was unusual LMAO, in a quake prone zone after all), and in 2006, there was no increase. In 2007, there was no increase. In 2008, there was no increase, and now in 2009, appears to be no increase. OK, 4 years does not make a trend.
Ban Ki-Moon in his opening speech at the UN Climate Week stated that he visited the North Pole an saw the melting glaciers with his own eyes!
Blatant lies compete with sound science and clear facts.
Climate Change must be stopped to safe the rain forests.
We all know it is not climate change that threatens the rain forests but the uncontrolled use of the chain saw and the quest for bio fuels.
Our politicians and the Green Movement have created their own cocoon, excluding sound scientific evidence from cherry picked semi scientific reports, preventing any open debate by spending over 79 billion dollar to corrupt our scientific institutions, and our press in order to screw our populations.
Facts don’t matter anymore.
The same goes for this excellent publication.
As long as the world accepts the fact that they are ruled by a bunch of frauds and opportunists collaborating with the most dangerous extreme ideology ever to roam the earth, worse than the murderous regimes from Mao, Stalin and Hitler put together, we can publish what we want without any serious effect.
The architects of the Green Doctrine are set to kill billions of people without risking a Nuremberg Trial.
The AGW/Climate Change doctrine is aimed to destroy our energy infra structure and create economic and social chaos.
The sooner we stop them the less blood will be shed.
Otherwise it won’t take very long before we find ourselves fighting for our survival.
Energy will be rationed and we will stand in long lines for food and water.
The developing world already feels the fallout of the devastating policies of the Greens and mass starvation is just around the corner.
Our political establishment can’t be trusted anymore and they have to go.
“Last night I was watching the weather channel and Jim Cantori was in Georgia. He was talking about all the rain they have had recently. He said and I repeat if this isn’t CLIMATE CHANGE I don’t know what is.”
Et tu Jim??? Correct me if I’m mis-remembering, but hasn’t Georgia had severe drought recently? Isn’t rain a good thing there?
Speaking of temperature cycles, what is going on with the Arctic temperature….that’s a pretty big spike…certainly not unheard of, but really weird looking.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
REPLY: And there is one just like it on the left side of the bell curve. Not to worry. -A
Al Gore has dropped the [hurricane frequency] related slide in his traveling PowerPoint show. – Anthony
But i bet it has not been edited from the movie.
“rbateman (05:58:53) :
Gore may have removed his hurricane jones, but he’s got a new thing in river deltas.”
seems river deltas have more to worry about from “green” hydro power than coal or oil.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8266500.stm
Damming and diverting rivers means that much less sediment now reaches many delta areas, while extraction of gas and groundwater also lowers the land.
“Damming and diverting rivers means that much less sediment now reaches many delta areas, while extraction of gas and groundwater also lowers the land.”
Not to mention that most river deltas are in naturally subsiding basins, such as the Mississippi delta. Not really a surprise – that’s the only reason the river was flowing to that point in the first place!
I’ve updated the graph at top to show a comparison with GISS ocean temps, click to refresh if it doesn’t show up as a two-panel graph. Note that while there appears not to be a long term trend correlation, there does appear to some short term correlation to ocean temperatures. – Anthony
Where do we find the models that predicted the lower accumulated cyclone energy? If the models are on track, a retrospective would be soo handy about now.
Q: Why does the ocean temp graph stop at 2008, is this because the data would be incomplete?
AtB
REPLY: Yes, GISS only updates this particular dataset on annual boundaries. The data is as complete as GISS offers for this particular data set. I suppose I could run the monthly GISS Ocean data set and come up with a 2 year or 5 year curve, but I’m off to appointments this AM. If any of our WUWT regulars/contributors wishes to do such an exercise, I’ll be happy to post it later today. – Anthony
Nice one Anthony.
I’ve been looking for this sort of stuff to match up with the various climate plots I do.
One thing I’ve learned over the years with regard to the climate is, what you think should happen seldom ever does.
Obama at the UN predicting “Irreversible Catastrophe”. This guy needs to switch to decaf.
I believe this may be the price to pay for a reduction in tropical cyclone activity
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8267165.stm
“KENYA HIT BY KILLER DROUGHT”
The next rains are due in October/November, if they fail the people there will be in deep trouble. In Britain I would expect to see wide spread coverage on the MSM and an urgent call for emergency aid.
All this just before Copenhagen.
The DMI Arctic temperature spike could be the release of latent heat during a “burst” of freezing. Clicking through the years, they appear often during the fall freeze-up.
As Anthony indicates by mentioning the spike earlier this year (due, according to some, to the record sudden stratospheric warming in that case), the entire record is littered with such brief and sometimes dramatic rises.
If you look closely you might notice that the variation of ocean temps and TC’s is similar, although the trend isn’t. Why? Ryan has a different graphic which answers that question: ENSO. See page twenty two here:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/maue_2009_grl.pdf
This is likely because of ENSO’s effects in the Pacific Ocean, not the Atlantic (the sign is wrong for that).
M White (07:24:13) : The thing about weather is that there may be nothing new under the sun, but something is always happening somewhere. Hence, any and all days will have a disaster to be blamed on AGW. Find me one that doesn’t!
Just watched a speech by Hu Jintao on Climate Change issues.
The Chinese acknowledge the World Wide consensus on climate change to be the biggest challenge to be faced by humanity and they are prepared to cap CO2 emissions 15% by 2020.
Anthony
Thought you’d find this article of interest. I don’t understand most of it, but you probably will. Keep up the good work.
http://www.clemson.edu/media-relations/article.php?article_id=2262
I just figured it out. Hurricane frequency is a leading economic indicator! You may now call me at my new Wall Street office – LOL!
Ron de Haan (07:28:25) : 😆
Obama said we must act now on climate change.Time is running out but we can reverse it.Let me fill you in on A little secret.The climate changes every day every week every month and every year .It always has and it always will .End of story.Now if they are actually talking about global warming ,since we are entering a cold 20 plus year cycle , I guess Obama will look like a hero for cooling off the planet .In reality if this climate change bill doesn’t go into effect we still will go through A 20 colder cycle.IT’S A CYCLE PEOPLE.WE CAN’T CONTROL WEATHER .ONLY GOD IN HEAVEN CAN DO THAT.
In related news, Al Gore has dropped the [hurricane frequency] related slide in his traveling PowerPoint show.
Well, that’s one way to deal with failed predictions.
TERRY46 (05:55:04) : Last night I was watching the weather channel and Jim Cantori
Any time I see his his face with those grim looks I just change the channel. His global warming scare is one way to make a living I guess. It certainly is politically correct.
It seems to me that ACE is following the solar cycle activity with about 12-24 months delay.
Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png with ace above.
Hurricanes dissipate heat energy accumulated in the Oceans – they are one of Prigogine’s dissipative structures.
You need a certain minimum amount of heat to form them and to sustain them. Drop the heat input rates into the oceans and the ACE will drop simply because there is not enough minimum heat to drive the formation of the structure much less sustain it.
Has anyone else noticed this trend? As the level of global CO2 rises, the quality of education decreases. Put another way: As the number of PhD’s awarded each year increases at a rate equal to or greater than the rise in global CO2 levels, the quality of genius is diminished by an equal and opposite value. There simply must be a correlation -and I believe the weather in Washinton, DC, has a lot to do with it too- but, I guess, I’m simply too stupid to see what it is. I half suspect that ‘Birth Credits’ will soon replace ‘Carbon Credits’ and that the price of meat, poultry, and fish will soon go through the roof. (Don’t tell India or China, they’ll get mad.)
Joe Romm is shouting with glee that an appelate court has allowed states to sue utilities. The case is already 5 years old. The charge is that they pollute and cause radical warming. Of course they will have to confront this data. We have cooling and lower accumulated energy. It is nearly impossible to blame a power company when there is a forrest fire. Wonder how they will deal with power point pictures of forest fires?
If your graphic show cooling since 2005, how can they charge the smokestacks with warming?
Actually when Obama says “irreversible” that means we will no longer be able to see a graph that goes downward. But we do.
This is good news as it once agan throws doubt on the AGW brigade’s predictons.
Very few of my pro-AGW friends are still believers, as most have swung over to join me in the ‘skeptical’ crowd over the last couple of years. Too many failed predictons from the IPCC and too much media hype are the man reasons for their change of mind, I feel.
If we get another long cold winter here in the UK like the last one, then I’m hopeful the last two hard-line believers will move into the skeptic camp too. Common sense tends to prevail in the end 😉
What part of “we are well within natural variability” do people not understand? The perception of looming doom is clearly perpetrated for political reasons. It is time that we risk our jobs and our futures to ask that very question, and demand answers that make sense, not soothsayer predictions about 50 – 100 years from now. Most of the world ( including the U.S. and Canada ) could give a crap about CC, and this apathy has allowed the liars of the scientific world to gain the ear of the POTUS. The spell must be broken. It is also clear that these people and organizations want to push this agenda through, for in their hearts and in the back of their minds they know it will get colder, and then it will get warmer again, and then it will get colder again, etc. The green view’s ignorance of facts is exceeded only by it’s arrogance. Send me a smoke signal if you need me to build a sod hut for you and your family in the green future. You will need to gather food to trade for my services.
I’m afraid you’re wrong. This is unquestionably the most active hurricane season since the beginning of time. Yeah, I know there aren’t a lot of hurricanes, but you see, I’ve got a computer model that shows how many hurricanes there would have been if it weren’t for 17 completely anomalous weather patterns that suppressed the number of actual hurricanes. If you remove the effects of those weather patterns from this year, and previous years, you’ll see what this year’s hurricane season was really like. And it’s SCARY!!! 🙂
Your President said this recently….
“No nation, however large or small, wealthy or poor, can escape the impact of climate change. Rising sea levels threaten every coastline. More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive. On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees. The security and stability of each nation and all peoples – our prosperity, our health, our safety – are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out.”
Is he on a different planet?
I have to laugh my ass off at the global warming conspiracy deniers when I see what the Sun is denying them of every day. No sunspots for them for a very long time till they learn a lesson they will never forget, HAHA. The lesson includes, you can’t trick the world into accepting global energy rations and Rothschild style control of the energy markets through junk climate science.
Watch this 1990 documentary, it proves the on-going conspiracy to control the entire world through global taxation of the energy markets.
The Greenhouse Conspiracy
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5949034802461518010#
NO sunspots for Obama till he learns a lesson he will never forget!
When Obama said he would bring about change, what he meant was that is what is going to be left in your pocket.
Obama stopped the hurricanes, everyone knows that. When it’s 25 below zero this winter, they can claim victory over climate change.
The latest words of our Secretary of Energy are simply infuriating:
So our government sees us as children and they are in a parental role. This is called “patronizing” and I have felt partonized by our government but at least now we can see that it is official policy.
[snip – your email address of “nospam@hotmail.com” is invalid, in that it does not reach you directly. Per our posted policy on the policy page, your participation is denied, sorry. If you wish to use a valid email address, you can post a comment.]
Of course there is another explaination….
In 2006 my husband and I moved out of Miami, Fla which resulted in a dramatic drop in Atlantic activity. Since ALL of my friends agree=it’s a consensus.
I told every one I knew here at the beginning of hurricane season in SW Florida, there will be zero hurricanes hitting us this year due to the sleep cycle and dormant phase of the SUN! I knew the oceans would not be heated as much because of the low Sun activity and virtually no sun spots. I told everybody to drop their hurricane insurance and go naked, save themselves a lot of money and don’t worry about buying storm supplies. I was 100% right.
Harold Ambler (07:25:06) :
The DMI Arctic temperature spike could be the release of latent heat during a “burst” of freezing. Clicking through the years, they appear often during the fall freeze-up.
As Anthony indicates by mentioning the spike earlier this year (due, according to some, to the record sudden stratospheric warming in that case), the entire record is littered with such brief and sometimes dramatic rises.
Harold,
You are right, temps have varied through out the records.
Not one of them is without spikes.
As long as the temperatures stay well below zero there won’t be any problem.
Curiousgeorge (07:17:01) : “Obama at the UN predicting “Irreversible Catastrophe”. This guy needs to switch to decaf.”
Obviously, he was talking about his administration.
Listening to Obama/Ban Ki Moon and the others it makes me wonder what it will take for them to confront reality?
They seem under the influence of some kind of mass delusion which excludes reality and pragmatism, the longer they cling to to their faith the more foolish they are going to look when reality can no longer be denied.
Do these ‘world leaders’ have an eye to their legacy I wonder? Do they understand that to make an error of this magnitude will ruin their reputations completely in the years to come, it just doesnt make sense to me.
Surely they some inkling by now that all is not well with the AGW/MMCC/AAM theory and if they are not careful they are going to look pretty stupid, they must be very desperate to push this thing forward if they will risk so much to get it through regardless.
austin
@ 08:04:19
“Hurricanes dissipate heat energy accumulated in the Oceans – they are one of Prigogine’s dissipative structures.
You need a certain minimum amount of heat to form them and to sustain them. Drop the heat input rates into the oceans and the ACE will drop simply because there is not enough minimum heat to drive the formation of the structure much less sustain it.”
I’m not sure I understand the point of your comment, nor do I see how an ocean temperature relationship correlates reliably with ACE peaks on a global basis. ’84-’86 ocean temps are largely on the lower end of the anomaly range, but ACE is well above mean in those years. Similarly, ’00-’06 shows mostly a significantly higher anomaly, but ACE hovering around the mean. ’88-’98 reflects dramatic anomaly shifts up and down but ACE remains above mean. I’m on lunch break and don’t have time to do some simple math but I think there’s much more at work. (Looking at NOAA storm history and Atlantic temperature information from the very cold 70’s erodes the simple “heat = hurricanes” argument even more, if a “regional” look makes any sense.)
I’m VERY open to counter-argument as I do not hold an opinion one way or the other. If it IS indeed a strong correlation then the oceans must be cooling like crazy on a global basis since mid-2007…
Off topic but interesting
“After decades of debate and four years of investigation an international body of earth scientists has formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary age by 800,000 years, reports the Journal of Quaternary Science.”
“For practical reasons such boundaries should ideally be made as easy as possible to identify all around the world. The new boundary of 2.6 million years is just that,” concluded Gibbard, “hence we are delighted at finally achieving our goal of removing the boundary to this earlier point.”
“The decision is a very important one for the scientific community working in the field,” said Journal Editor Professor Chris Caseldine. “It provides us with a point in geological time when we effectively did move into a climatic era recognisably similar to the geological present.”
See more at lin
http://www.physorg.com/news172824857.html
thanks
Ed
Last night I was watching the weather channel and Jim Cantori was in Georgia. He was talking about all the rain they have had recently. He said and I repeat if this isn’t CLIMATE CHANGE I don’t know what is. I thought weather wasn’t climate change? That’s what we all been told from all the global warming crowd for years. I guess if this winter we see feet of snow then what will they say then? I know natural variences.
Hey Terry, Did you see the snow fall they had in Colorado yesterday? I think I saw the weather channel report the snow fall right after the story on the flooding in Georgia….. But snows just weather.
RE: “Joe Romm is shouting with glee that an appelate court has allowed states to sue utilities.”
Bring it on. We need a big fight between the providers of electricity and gas, and, the government media complex. I hope it ends in a “lockout.” Let the dumbed down voters freeze in the dark.
The Greenhouse Conspiracy
“During the past 2 years +, the Earth’s climate has cooled under the effects of a dramatic La Nina episode.”
What is the justification for this assertion?
How can one claim to know that the La Nina is causing the cooler climate and is not itself a manifestation of the the cooler climate?
Watching CNN for one our now and caught them on numerous lies including the increase in the number of tropical storms.
Media spreading false and misleading information are a defining element in any Marxist Society.
Today we are witnessing pure propaganda in a (still) capitalist society.
This triggers me to ask the following question:
Is there any legislation that could protect the public from hysterical and misleading media outages in the USA?
More to the point, is there any legal basis to sew them?
Off Topic:
I’d like to bring to your attention this article from NAS. I have always sustained that the solar radiation hitting on the Earth is actually increasing despite the extremely low number of sunspots:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=115595&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51
What Al Gore needs to do to salvage any shred of credibility he has left is to point out to the public what and why he is removing certain “inconvenient truths” from his presentations.
To scare the bejeebers out of people with dire hurricane forecasts and then surreptiously remove them later without explanation is downright dishonest.
–To omit history, is to rewrite history–
Anthony,
if you plot hurricane frequency alongside or above the UAH temperature data you also get a very good visual corellation, especially the last 10 years when air temps have not been impacted by volcanic activity. I tried to paste that in here but am unable to do so.
TERRY46 (05:55:04) :
Stuck weather pattern is what is troubling Georgia.
Recall the winter of 1976-7 when Buffalo, NY got buried in snow, and the west was dry as a bone. It was global cooling back then.
Second sunspot detected:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2009/22sep09/latest_lab.jpg?PHPSESSID=q9ckl5utntjeed5k7sab5u6fi3
Jeff Norman (09:46:08) : That would be because ENSO conditions change before GMST does.
Granted, saying La Nina “caused” that might still be wrong, but La Nina is not itself a manifestation of global cooling, since the La Nina happens first.
TERRY46 (05:55:04) : What’s funny is that it seems more likely that prayer to GOD is more likely than the wrath of Gaia. Remember the drought the South was having and all the local (Republican) governments could do was to tell everyone to get into the town square and pray? Yup.
Now THAT I remember hearing, was “Climate”. So they have it both ways.
Interestingly, you can check out the rainfall history of Georgia:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/ga.html
the trend for all the data for annual is:
0.01 Inches / Decade
One of the smallest positive trends in the country I think.
Global warming = 100% exposed FRAUD!! Must see!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrRusZOx3l4
Nasif Nahle (10:00:07) :
Off Topic:
I’d like to bring to your attention this article from NAS. I have always sustained that the solar radiation hitting on the Earth is actually increasing despite the extremely low number of sunspots:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=115595&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51
Nasif, I think you just put the horse behind the wagon on this one!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/17/ncar-number-of-sunspots-provides-an-incomplete-measure-of-changes-in-the-suns-impact-on-earth/
What happens if you remove that positive bias (slope) in the temp graph and overlay them? You’d think that hurricane energy would be a nice proxy (with a lag/lead, I’m sure) for ocean temp, and yet there is a slope to the temp graph, and not the hurricane energy graph. Couldn’t be that the temp graph has an “artificial” slope, could it??
Faster than a speeding “than we had previously imagined”.
More powerful than a failed Hurricane season.
Able to drown whole coastlines in a single proclamation.
It’s – SuperClimateChangeMan.
Yes, they are on a different planet.
Data of Sea Ice Extent
The latest value : 5,401,875 km2 (September 21, 2009)
Crisis is an opportunity for change……
AGW is just that…..a crisis produced from fiction, no facts given.
It’s time to stand up and just state that we have had enough of the lies and power grabbing politicans
One world order…..RollerBall, that’s the goal here. Complete control of everything. Food, Energy, Health Care, Property and on and on.
As the world lurches from one crisis to the next, maybe a little music from the past can help sooth your jangled nerves, and explain the problem facing you at the same time … Just think the AGW hoax when listening, to set the mood.
The Coasters were known for songs with a messages and comedy at the same time … And then …. I promise, it will stick in your head for the rest of the day.
There is also this video that showed up recently from the late 70s ice age is coming scare …
http://10ksnookers.blogspot.com/2009/09/ice-age-is-coming.html
As I understand it, hurricanes are not generated by ocean temperature, but by ocean differential temperature.
If the oceans have dissipated their heat successfully into higher latitudes, creating a homogeneous temperature profile, there will be no hurricanes. The Tropics need to heat up more, and the higher latitudes cool more, and the hurricanes will return.
I don’t understand how this data could be correct since my local conditions do not agree with the worldwide trend. There has been NO REDUCTION in tropical storms hitting Oregon this year.
Ron de Haan:
“Is there any legislation that could protect the public from hysterical and misleading media outages in the USA?
More to the point, is there any legal basis to sew them?” (I believe that is a typo, probably meant to write “sue them.”)
Media in the USA have great latitude under the First Amendment’s Free Press clause. We normally resort to pleas of voluntary restraint on the part of the Press, because there are few subjects or topics on which the Press can be muzzled. The idea is that in The Marketplace of Ideas, the good ideas will stand and the bad ideas will be laughed at.
We need more ridicule at the outlandish stories. Pointing out, as this blog does so well, how badly the Warmists miss their predictions is a good thing.
I especially liked the earlier post where NOAA (or was it NASA?) used only one available data set to show warming is occurring. Cherry-picking at its finest.
@Cassandra King (09:21:57) :
“Listening to Obama/Ban Ki Moon and the others it makes me wonder what it will take for them to confront reality?” […]
All it takes with any poitician is the certain knowledge that if they follow a particular course of action, they will not be re-elected.
Or in the case of lame duck politicians, then it is the certain knowledge that they will be shunned by the power-brokers after they leave office if they follow a particular course, i.e. no cashing in after leaving office. (And also in the lame duck case, the voters will be ignored completely in favor of the power brokers.)
Sadly, there are only a few rare exceptions in both parties; counting them on your fingers you’d have digits left over.
It’s sad that I’ve come to believe that, but I can only go by what I’ve seen over the course of my life and not by how I wish the political world ran.
Just for kicks, I overlaid the hurricane and temp data (after removing the temp data slope), and it doesn’t line up that well. If you offset the temp data by a year, it doesn’t look too bad though. I don’t know how to include those charts/pics here (done in Excel).
Jim
REPLY: use a free image service like http://tinypic.com/ and put the URL to the image in your comments. It will auto-link.
-Anthony
Here’s the ACE index plot for the North Atlantic.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/No-Atl-ACE.jpg
And no it doesn’t have the slightest resemblance to the AMO.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/AMO.jpg
The 1977 Ice age has turned into a boiling planet…..I was in HS in 1977 and we told another ice age was coming. Look out em now, the planet is going to burn up.
Bottom line…..man has no clue of what will happen next.
Has Al also dropped the monster hurricane image (the one on all the PR for An Inconvenient Truth) from his slides as well?
What happens if you remove that positive bias (slope) in the temp graph and overlay them? You'd think that hurricane energy would be a nice proxu (with a lag/lead, I'm sure) for ocean temp, and yet there is a slope to yhe temp graph, and not the hurricane energy graph. Couldn't be that the temp graph has an "artificial" slope, could it??;
Abrew (13:43:00) : Why would there be a bias in the Sea Surface Temperatures? There are no air conditioners or cities over the oceans, and anyway as you can see from Bob Tisdale’s post here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/record-sea-surface-temperatures-are.html
The general behavior of the satellite (SURFACE mind you not talking about UAH’s LT, but Satellite Sea SURFACE Temperatures!) and the various data-sets is similar.
And as I said at:
Andrew (07:25:42)
The agreement with a detrended series is indicative of an ENSO signal.
MartinGAtkins (12:56:57) : Short term ACE in the Atlantic depends on ENSO conditions (evidently in the opposite way as the Pacific does, but then, the two basins are tightly link as far as activity goes. HOWEVER if you look at the long term ACE data, which is admittedly uncertain, in DOES look a bit like the AMO, with a lot of noise.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_4CE_Hurricanes_files/image017.gif
The reason for a lack of short term correlation is probably that, absent a volcanic eruption, the Atlantic is warmer during an El Nino BUT the wind shear is greater, thus destroying, on such occasions, the agreement you would normally get with multidecadal changes in SST in the Atlantic RELATIVE to other ocean basins. The increase in ACE since the 70’s is related to warming of the Atlantic, in that the Atlantic has warmed faster than other oceans. But that has nothing to do with Global Warming.
Can anyone here cogently explain the physical basis for the prediction that warming from CO2 would increase the frequency or strength of hurricanes? I would think that the opposite effect would occur.
Hurricanes are essentially heat engines that transfer latent heat energy upwardly from the ocean into the atmosphere by evaporation. The kinetic energy from the falling rain that occurs after condensation then feeds the circular winds that in turn draw more heat from evaporation etc. so as to form a positive feedback loop. The critical thing, however is that this heat engine depends on the temperature differential between the surface of the ocean and the atmosphere above to provide the vertical convective loop. Though hurricanes strenthen when moving over warmer water, this is merely due to the fact that the horizontal temperature gradient of the atmosphere is not as steep, i.e. the temperature differential between the water and the atmosphere increases as the storm hits tropical waters; it is not the ocean temperature per se that drives the hurricane. This should come as no surprise given that water flow in a hose is driven by presssure differential rather than the absolute pressure at one end, current flows by voltage differentials etc.
Since the source of anthropogenic global warming is ostensibly increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, it makes no sense to posit that over time the oceans will warm at a faster rate than the atmosphere above them. That’s like saying you can put a pot of water on a stove, turn on the burner, and the water will heat up fatster than the iron beneath it. To the contrary, if antropogenic global warming is occuring then it must cause the temperature of the atmosphere to rise faster than that of the oceans. The temperature differential that drives the hurricanes then should decrease, and hurricane strength should drop.
Unfortunately, every article I have read that explains why hurricane strength is anticipated to increase merely cites the observed link between hurricane strength and ocean temperature, without explaining why CO2 would cause water tempertaures to rise more than that of the air above it. This therefore appears to me as a prime example of the left hand not knowing that the right hand is holding your head up your butt.
Cassandra King (09:21:57) :
Listening to Obama/Ban Ki Moon and the others it makes me wonder what it will take for them to confront reality?
They seem under the influence of some kind of mass delusion which excludes reality and pragmatism, the longer they cling to to their faith the more foolish they are going to look when reality can no longer be denied.
Do these ‘world leaders’ have an eye to their legacy I wonder? Do they understand that to make an error of this magnitude will ruin their reputations completely in the years to come, it just doesnt make sense to me.
Surely they some inkling by now that all is not well with the AGW/MMCC/AAM theory and if they are not careful they are going to look pretty stupid, they must be very desperate to push this thing forward if they will risk so much to get it through regardless.
They expect to Win and not be held Accountable.
Anthony,
Thanks for this great post – one of the best I have read on WUWT. Also, Jim Cantore should be ashamed for invoking global warming when dicussing a single flood event. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
“TERRY46 (05:55:04) :
Last night I was watching the weather channel and Jim Cantori was in Georgia. He was talking about all the rain they have had recently. He said and I repeat if this isn’t CLIMATE CHANGE I don’t know what is.”
Read literally, Cantori’s statement sounds pretty accurate to me.
Surely you mean he speculates as to why. They sure as hell don’t know.
So how does Obama get away with saying that AGW is causing more extreme storms. It’s an outright lie, yet he mentions it again in his most recent speach (read it at nytimes)
What a joke. Someone should really call this puppet out on his bullshit
kurt (16:42:32):
Look at 2 scenarios:
A – present – say the temperature differential is 15 degrees.
B – global warming – increase air temp by 2 degrees, but oceans are not as fast, and lag, so increase them by 1 degree. The temperature differntial is then 16 degrees.
So a higher temperature differential is the result and this means more hurricanes according to the basic premise that the higher the differntial the more storms etc. I don’t really agree, as it ignores other apsects of climate, but perhaps the energy sum would increase.
One thing that everyone gets excited about is positive feedbacks and tipping points etc.
One thing that I would like studied is the balancing nature of our climate (ie negative feedbacks). Our climate has a lot of checks and balances in it and these are not well understood imho.
I’m all for reducing our emissions responsibly – it can only be a good thing to not be ignorant of our use of resources. But let’s not scare everyone into thinking our poor little climate is “fragile” etc.
Ron de Haan (09:52:11) :
Is there any legislation that could protect the public from hysterical and misleading media outages in the USA?
Nope. We’re going to have to either buy them out & take over or prevent the government from bailing them out (which I’ve heard recently that they’re asking for) and force them into bankruptcy.
As for the global warming/hurricane link, it’s depressing to read how many media articles regularly reference it as a foregone conclusion. It just makes my blood boil thinking about how many kids are being fed this in classrooms every day.
There is a link between global warming & my blood boiling, however….
pete m (20:04:01) :
“Look at 2 scenarios:
A – present – say the temperature differential is 15 degrees.
B – global warming – increase air temp by 2 degrees, but oceans are not as fast, and lag, so increase them by 1 degree. The temperature differntial is then 16 degrees.”
You have it backwards. Temperature decreases with altitude, meaning that the air above is cooler than that below. That is why warm, moist air rises until it cools to a temperature that squeezes the moisture out as rain. Were the air above to be warmer than the surface, hurricanes could not form. Thus, if the (cooler) air above warms by two degrees and the (warmer) sea surface warms by only one, then the differential in your scenario drops from 15 to 14, decreasing the strength of the hurricane.
>>>Unfortunately, every article I have read that explains why
>>>hurricane strength is anticipated to increase merely cites
>>>the observed link between hurricane strength and ocean
>>>temperature, without explaining why CO2 would cause
>>>water tempertaures to rise more than that of the air above it.
A similar observation to mine.
Yes, to get a really good tropical storm, you need tropical warm waters and an arctic airflow above it, giving a huge temperature gradient in the atmosphere (low level warm air and freezing air above).
A warm atmosphere will kill thermic activity dead.
.
Maybe the propensity to fudge or round up the atmospheric temperature is causing the temperature to appear to ramp up as hurricane activity goes down. Sensor data from satellites is adjusted ( calibrated ) to match known surface data points.
What strikes me is the southern hemisphere values (ie global – northern hemisphere) are pretty consistent year to year, while NH fluctuates wildly. Is that really the case?
Thank you Mr Watts. I thought it would be something like that, although for a moment I thought Dr Vicki Pope from the Met Office was running a version of her old little graph of global temps, which is aired every now & then, curiously stopped in 2007, demonstrating beyond a doubt the warming going on as usual, just before the 2008 temp step drop & further cooling in 09, so that the trend stayed positive!
The Resilient Earth blog has a link to an interesting paper on Water Vapor which includes a comment about models showing _lower_ cyclone potential for both warmer and cooler climates that today’s. http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/climate-models-blown-away-water-vapor
“Both the eddy kinetic energy and the dry mean available
potential energy have a maximum for a climate
close to that of present day
Earth and are smaller in
much warmer and much colder climates”
Ref: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0908/0908.4410v1.pdf , WATER VAPOR AND THE DYNAMICS OF CLIMATE CHANGES, by T Schneider, P O’Gorman, and X Levine. Page 14 of the pdf. Figure 8.
timetochooseagain (15:19:13) :
MartinGAtkins (12:56:57) : Short term ACE in the Atlantic depends on ENSO conditions
Reply is in new Cyclone thread.
why is hurricanes are not effected by global warming can you tell me the details asap
OK, I dumped these to tinypic:
Hurricane energy versus temp (with temp slope removed for easier comparison)
http://tinypic.com/r/2ivmwpd/4
http://i36.tinypic.com/2ivmwpd.jpg
It looked like they’d line up better with temp moved back one year so:
Hurricane energy versus temp offset back on year (temp slope removed)
http://tinypic.com/r/331kbjt/4
http://i36.tinypic.com/331kbjt.jpg
All of this of course means absolutely nothing, I just thought it was an interesting experiment….the skewed (by one year) temp graph seems to show some correlation with hurricane energy.
jcl (12:55:37) :
Just for kicks, I overlaid the hurricane and temp data (after removing the temp data slope), and it doesn’t line up that well. If you offset the temp data by a year, it doesn’t look too bad though. I don’t know how to include those charts/pics here (done in Excel).
Jim
REPLY: use a free image service like http://tinypic.com/ and put the URL to the image in your comments. It will auto-link.
-Anthony
Clemson University scientists also find no link between warming and stronger storms: http://www.southcarolinaradionetwork.com/2009/09/23/study-refutes-connection-of-global-warming-and-storm-intensity/