Comments on: Global warming = more tornadoes | Not happening this year

By: ron from Texas

ron from Texas — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:28:14 +0000

I live in north Texas. It and Oklahoma are the heart of tornado alley. Tornados happen more often here than anywhere else in the world. We had one go through our county and another suspected one (a rotating storm) come through. But the season was so slacking that many a storm chaser team went home empty-handed. And they were disappointed. Well, that’s because they don’t live here, they live in Colorado. If you want to know the magnficence and beauty of a tornado and talk about how wonderful it is, go to Lone Grove, Oklahoma. They were wiped off the map in February of this year. And you will get that beatific smile slapped off your face. Tornados destroy property and kill people. Around here, we’re not impressed with the majesty of it. We’re scrambling for cover and kissing our butts godbye. So I, for one, am glad that we had a low count tornado season. Secondary benefit is that it proves another AGW prediction wrong. Besides, warming is not the only factor in tornados. If anyone know half as much as I know about tornados, even though I am a layman in that regard, they would not be blaming it on CO2 emissions. My god, an 8th grader could poke holes in that theory.

By: AnonyMoose

AnonyMoose — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:25:38 +0000

XKCD may have found the reduction in tornadoes is the work of man. One man.
http://xkcd.com/640/ (CC-A/NC)

By: Richard Patton

Richard Patton — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:32:37 +0000

John F. Hultquist said:
“Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling, “No, it can’t be. Not a little thing like that. No!”
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.
“Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!” cried Eckels.
Ray Bradbury in Collier’s magazine, 1952″
——————————————-
It’s been decades since I read that story but just that paragraph you quoted brought it all back. Thanks.

By: DaveE

DaveE — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:00:24 +0000

Bulldust (00:30:31) :

I borrowed a friends postcode & voted fire & brimstone which turns out to be the leading contender ;-)

DaveE.

By: DaveE

DaveE — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:49:43 +0000

Kevin Kilty (20:16:30) :

I have some very vague memories of that effect. IIRC, it was taken quite seriously at the time.

DaveE.

By: MartinGAtkins

MartinGAtkins — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:44:37 +0000

timetochooseagain

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 problem with plotting data is we are viewing things on a two dimensional plane and adding the fourth dimension.

With graphs it’s often we hope to make superficial correlations using our intuition. As you point out we are observing an object that encompasses all four dimension. I hope you understand that my original post was just a mischievous preempting of any such notions.

However you post led me to some data diving. You could see that although there appeared to be a good correlation it was noisy until later in the graph and then seemed to settle into a pattern.

So approaching this from a technical point of view rather than a fundamental view I ran up some charts.

This first one is the same plot you posted but I did it for myself to ensure no shifting by the original author.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/No-Atl-ACE-1.jpg

It looks good but perhaps that’s what we want to see.

If we split them up it becomes less than convincing.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/split.jpg

I think with the tools used here we can see that a small correlation doesn’t lead us to the overarching conclusion that the AMO is a proxy for Atlantic cyclones.

By: Greendoubts

Greendoubts — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:36:23 +0000

All that australian dust is from La Nina´s make up.

By: David Y.

David Y. — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:17:48 +0000

OT, but what’s up with the current large ‘spike’ at COI (http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php ) ? Still well below freezing, so no apparent big deal, and certainly not unprecedented…just curious if attributable at all to local measurement biases/instrument problems.

By: John Lish

John Lish — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:01:26 +0000

John Mackie – I wouldn’t worry about the Independent newspaper – its going to close by Christmas according to Denis O’Brien (the 2nd largest shareholder in the media group that owns the titles). Quotes include:
“There’s no point in us as a company subsidising a newspaper that really nobody wants to read in the United Kingdom,”
“It’s not a relevant newspaper anymore and this newspaper’s going to be closed by Christmas,”
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSLI32052720090918?sp=true

For those not familiar with the UK newspaper industry, the Independent is the most hysterical on issues of climate change in the last few years. It has also lost more customers (as a percentage) than other papers. It fell by 18% in actual sales in August 2009 from August 2008 and is now selling less than 150,000 a day, less than half its nearest competitor. You could speculate as to a correlation between the hysteria and sales total…

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:22:48 +0000

Very exciting! Last year was a horrible year for NE and IA for tornadoes. My house was hit twice by a measly F1 – still scared the crap out of me and had me huddled in my downstairs shower. No problems this year. If this is global warming, I say bring it!

By: _Jim

_Jim — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:40:12 +0000

Adam (17:48:15) :
…
Uh… this really makes no sense. First of all the the severe weather season in the US occurs during spring and early summer (April – June) not September, so the severe weather season “wound down” quite some time ago.

Adam, maybe you can explain this effect to those thousands of people who lost power and a few more who lost their homes (presented on TV news last night) a couple of evenings ago due to high Thunderstorm winds in and south of Ft. Worth Texas as I am sure they would like to see the effects ‘ undone’ if at all possible.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6631112.html

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3498007
.
.

By: wws

wws — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:34:00 +0000

To Bill in Vigo – I’m in East Texas, and agree completely about the secondary severe weather peak in the late fall. The most devastating tornado that I’ve personally seen the effects of happend the second week of November.

Hre’s a fascinating frequency map I found – that secondary severe weather peak seems to be focused on the Gulf Coast states (east texas is much more like Louisiana than it is like the rest of Texas) I’d make a qualified guess that it’s caused by warm, wet air circulating up from the gulf and hitting arctic air masses coming down from the plains.

http://z.about.com/d/weather/1/0/i/-/-/-/tornadostatepeaks.jpg

By: paulo arruda

paulo arruda — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:27:39 +0000

Here in Brazil, tornadoes occurred in September. One site, MetSul predicted accurately in severe weather in August that we would face without citing any time in the ridiculous AGW. However, the mainstream media, which did not warn anyone, so say that AGW is bringing tornadoes to Brazil. But just uninformed and ill-intentioned, do not report that northern Argentina and southern Brazil are the second largest area of tornadoes in the world.
Excuse my English

By: Ron House

Ron House — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:00:25 +0000

King of Cool (19:01:16) :
…
Patrick, the amazing dust storm that has hit Sydney is the first event of this type for about 70 years and probably the first in most peoples’ lifetime.

This is just so not true. I saw one just like this as a five year old in the fifties, and I have seen them at intervals ever since. That’s in Qld, but these dust storms are half a continent wide. My wife from India was taught about Australian ‘tomato soupers’ in school there, so this is one heck of a case of collective amnesia.

By: Jim Bob

Jim Bob — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:39:42 +0000

I chase and photograph storms as a hobby and it has been a very unproductive year on the Great Plains. This is somewhat reflected in the tornado count, but the overall storm structure has been weaker and more outflow-dominant this year as well, likely due to the lower surface temperatures.

By the way, the peak Kansas/Oklahoma tornado potential is in May-June with a second peak in September, based on my experience, so Anthony’s statements aren’t far off base depending on what region you are looking at.