Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue has released the latest hurricane frequency data updated through September 2012 showing a continuation of depressed global major hurricane numbers.
He announced on Twitter today:
Still going down, global major hurricane numbers during last 12-months: 15 (hint, it’s negative PDO climate change)
The data since 1978 with trends:
The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) for the North Atlantic for this year compared to other years — the season just went over 100 with long-lived fish-storm Nadine. During the last 30-years, the season has averaged an ACE of about 104. However, with recent unfavorable MJO conditions, Nadine was the only show in town (helpful when GOES-13 is on the fritz).
The Accumulated Cyclone Energy dissipated by tropical cyclones worldwide this year (2012) is near-normal across the board from the Northern Hemisphere, and was below normal for the Southern Hemisphere during the last season (Fall 2011-Spring 2012). Globally, ACE is below normal for this year.
See more at Maue’s website here.
Since the MSM might not be following Ryan on Twitter, it might be interesting to contact them to see if any want to cover the story.
While I’m suggesting tasks for others, let me add a reference page on Hurricanes might be popular, and get more traffic for Ryan.
Let’s see, what will the defense of Hansen and CAGW be?
1. Ignore it and hope for more disasters next year? (most likely)
2. Find a prediction that says rising Man-made CO2 levels would cause this?
3. Claim that Hansen would have be right if not for the Montréal Protocols or if Anthony hadn’t put solar panels on his roof?
4. ????
The table you show doesn’t contain any of the current data, only the normal ACE totals per year for each region and the normal ACE totals for the year to date for each region.
You want the top-most table on the left-hand side at policlimate.com/tropical, Dr. Maue’s website, for the current year-to-date values of ACE, which has the northern hemisphere right on top of normal for the year so far, and the last southern hemisphere season was below normal.
NOAA are still rating this year as having ACE 50% higher than average – I think they are using a weird baseline as their number of storms is nothing special.
And Nadine is hanging on in there as a TS now – 20 days since she was named and has crept into hurricane status three times so far without moving out of the mid-Atlantic. A classic case of a storm no-one would have noticed prior to satellite observations.
@ur momisugly Gunga Din
4. All of the above.
Gunga Din:
4. The season isn’t over yet and lots of butterfies are stamping like mad in West Africa as we speak.
Obviously, more extreme weather events cause less extreme weather events. Our models predicted it. To warm-cold and drought-flood, we now need to add calm-hurricane.
sarcoff
Of couse that should read “butterflies” My computer can’t spell.
Has anyone compared this to what was predicted for those years? In 2005, Gore told us the number and intensity of hurricanes would increase. That clearly did not happen. But a comparison of academic predictions to observation would be useful.
First graph: Standing back and squinting, it looks like the hurricane number is indeed following about a 60-70 year sine curve that lines up with the PDO, as Ryan points out.
Second graph: Since most other years tacked on a few percent of their total ACE after Oct 1, it’s a bit misleading to extend 2012 out to Nov 1. Maybe at least “ghost out” the black squares after Oct 1 or even better just drop them. Then we would see that 2012 is in a near tie or even slightly above 2011 instead of well below it.
Edited the post:
The trend is not statistically significant. But as we have been beaten over the head by NOAA, lowest-ever and historical records are supposedly signals of climate change. The time-series above probably won’t change for the next 10-15 years as the PDO remains cold. Oh well.
In related news, the Australian Institute of Marine Science has released a new survey of the Great Barrier Reef. Storms (cyclones) are responsible for 48% of all damage in the last 27 years, nature (Crown-of-Thorns Starfish) is responsible for 42%, and Man (global warming bleaching events) are responsible for only 10% of all damage to the Great Barrier Reef in the last 27 years.
Where’s the “it’s worse than we thought”? Going by what alarmists say, I’d expect Man to be responsible for 120% of the damage.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/half-the-great-barrier-reef-gone-in-under-30-years-says-aims-study/story-fncynkc6-1226486114293
Actually, as a number of physicists have pointed out (at least Richard Lindzen and myself) one actually does expect the frequency and energy of hurricanes to diminish with a more uniformly warm planet, that is, with better heat distribution from the tropics to the poles (which is net global warming). Storm violence arises primarily from the difference in temperature between a warm reservoir, e.g. the ocean, and a cold reservoir. In fact, hurricanes are self-organized heat engines, driven by temperature difference as surely as your automobile.
Like your automobile or any other heat engine, they are less efficient when the temperature difference between the driving reservoirs is smaller. If the Earth were much colder, so that the warm tropics stood in stark relief to colder polar waters, warm water driven oceanic storms would grow much more violent indeed!
The same thing happens on a smaller scale with tornadoes. Tornadoes typically happen on warm spring or fall or summer days when a cold front moves in. A uniformly warm day might produce a convection-driven thunderstorm, but is unlikely to produce a tornado or even a particularly violent wind. Bring in cold air — especially cold air that overruns a much warmer surface layer of air — and you have the right conditions for a tornado, with strong convective shear along the front and usually a horizontal turbulent roll where the warm/cool interface lives.
Even a thunderstorm is driven by convection from a warm/moist ground up into the cooler upper troposphere — a stable convective updraft lofts warm moist air up until it starts to precipitate out, creating a local low pressure system underneath the storm cell that acts like a “defect”, attracting warm moist air from the ground in to replace the warm moist air that lofts up into the increasingly turbulent and wet storm cloud.
So, to the unknown, but probably nonzero extent that manmade CO_2 has indeed contributed to the naturally increasing global warmth over the post LIA era, you are more right than you know. One would absolutely expect storm intensity and frequency to decrease or remain about the same, all things being equal. Of course in the Earth’s climate system, all things are never equal, and separating out systematic signal from chaotic noise is very, very difficult. But the result is hardly surprising.
The only thing that is surprising is that Gore and many other numb-nuts are so eager to promote the CAGW hypothesis that they openly mis-state — or if you prefer lie — about this and claim that storm frequency and violence is increasing.
In truth, IIRC, every day that passes is currently extending the longest period without a major (category 3 or higher) North Atlantic landfall in the US in recorded history. We’ve eclipsed the previous record (set last November) and are within a couple of month of extending it by a full year, without a major hurricane in sight. The boundary between warm and cool water is creeping south already (although there is plenty of warm enough water to produce a strong hurricane if shear conditions permit) but there is only one respectable tropical wave with the potential for further development at the moment, predicted to spin out nowhere near the US (and probably never even make hurricane in status).
rgb
Based on the greatly reduced hurricane landfalls and tornadic activity, I am sure that the insurance companies have greatly reduced premiums on related property-damage policies……Sure they have…
The Arctic atmospheric pressure appear to be a relatively good pointer of the future hurricane activity in the N. Atlantic
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AHA.htm
PF says:
“Gore told us the ……………………But a comparison of academic predictions to observation would be useful.”
PLEASE, do not use the words ‘Gore” and “academic” in the same paragraph. !!!
oldseadog says:
October 1, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Of couse that should read “butterflies” My computer can’t spell.
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The same butterflys inhabit my keyboard. 😎
rgbatduke says:
October 1, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Excellent post. Thank you.
Mark Wagner says:
October 1, 2012 at 1:35 pm
@ur momisugly Gunga Din
4. All of the above.
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I didn’t think of that. The shotgun defense.
Well blow me over, tropical storms ain’t increasing. Maybe I need a new expression.
Ryan Maue says:
October 1, 2012 at 1:55 pm
lowest-ever and historical records are supposedly signals of climate change.
____________________________________________________
Climate change can be blamed of everything – be it extreme weather, or extreme lack of it.
Thank you Dr. Maue for taking the time in your busy schedule to share this with us.
oldseadog says:
October 1, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Of couse that should read “butterflies” My computer can’t spell.
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Didn’t even notice the keyboard error.
Yes, those butterflies bear watching.
Now, wait a minute! Projecting the current Oct 1 data flat through the rest of the year is just not being objective! The expectation is that this will not be much different than the 2011 curve, so another 25 days from the current level of 100.
Add in some uncertainty, a gray fan that extends from 100 @ur momisugly Oct 1 to maybe 102 to 125 on Nov 1 for an 80% confidence interval. Come on, do you really think there is less than a 10% chance we won’t get another 2 hurricane-days in the atlantic in the next 31 days of the month? The highside is only as low as 125 because we don’t currently have a hurricane, only a 65 mph Nadine.