Apologies in advance for the Vinerism.
From the University of Hawaii ‑ SOEST, something that doesn’t seem to be a problem based on the past data I’ve found:
![whaw_rainfall[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/whaw_rainfall1.gif?resize=640%2C406)
Source: USGS
It seems clear when you look at the peaks of 1997/1998 and 2004/2005 (both big El Niño years) that Hawaii is a slave to ENSO more than anything else. Even in the press release they admit their best models can’t predict future rainfall reliably, and even though new approach (which is the focus of the new paper) falls short. So, given their blunt admissions of uncertainty, I don’t even know why this press release exists – Anthony
=============================================================
Less rainfall expected for the Hawaiian Islands
Almost imperceptibly, rainfall over the Hawaiian Islands has been declining since 1978, and this trend is likely to continue with global warming through the end of this century, according to a team of scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) and the University of Colorado at Boulder. This latest Hawaii rainfall study, published in the March 13, 2013, early online issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, supports previous work conducted at the University of Hawaii. What has been unclear, however, is whether this drying trend will continue.
“For water resource and ecosystem management, and for other societal needs, we need to know whether this drying trend will continue this century,” says lead investigator Oliver Elison Timm at the International Pacific Research Center, UHM.
As of now, not even cutting edge climate models have enough resolution to capture the diverse rainfall pattern over Hawaii, where dry and wet areas often lie only a mile or even less apart.
To work around this problem, the team devised a method called ‘statistical downscaling.’ They first got a take on the effects of the general drying trend on local heavy-rain days by reanalyzing observations from 1978 to 2010 at 12 rain-gauge stations spread throughout the islands. Studying hundreds of weather patterns during such days, they identified the typical atmospheric circulation patterns in the North Pacific that favor heavy rains over Hawaii.
“The patterns we saw did not surprise us,” recalls Elison Timm. “For example, we found that the typical winter Kona storms with moist air-flow from the South often produce torrential rains in the islands.”
Using those weather patterns linked to heavy rains, the team developed a statistical model that estimates the number of heavy rain events during a year. They found that the large circulation patterns over the mid-latitude and tropical North Pacific have already shifted since 1978 so that fewer weather disturbances reach the Islands during the rainy season from November through April.
“We can’t predict individual rain events with our method,” clarifies Professor Thomas W. Giambelluca, Department of Geography, UHM, “but it gives us a very good estimate of the number of heavy rain events in a given season based on the large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns.”
Combining information from their statistical model and cutting-edge climate models driven with the projected increase in greenhouse gases until the end of this century, the scientists conclude that we can expect the recent trend towards drier winter seasons with fewer heavy-rain days to continue through the end of this century.
“It is extremely difficult to take all the uncertainties into account and our overall result may not apply to all sites in Hawai’i,” cautions Senior Researcher Henry Diaz from the University of Colorado. “We are just beginning to understand the details of how climate change will affect the Hawaiian Islands. We do not know yet how further warming will impact extreme heavy downpours.”
Citation:
Oliver Elison Timm, Mami Takahashi, Thomas W. Giambelluca, and Henry F. Diaz, 2013: On the Relation between Large-Scale Circulation Pattern and Heavy Rain Events over the Hawaiian Islands: Recent Trends and Future Changes. Journal of Geophysical Research, (early online-release in March 2013, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50314/abstract )
Funding:
The project was supported by grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the Pacific Island Climate Change Cooperative and the Pacific Islands Climate Science Center. Additional funding was provided jointly by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Honolulu District, and the Commission on Water Resource Management, Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Seems there have been several periods recently when the rainfall was, for 3 or 4 years in a row, quite a bit lower than the average.
What effect did this have on agriculture and on civic water supplies? Was there a problem?
Anthony asks: “I don’t even know why this press release exists – Anthony”
Its: “The project was supported by grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the Pacific Island Climate Change Cooperative and the Pacific Islands Climate Science Center.”
Publish or perish. One has to issue a press release after spending considerable money and most will think it is an important study to deflect any criticism the money spent was justified. If you are lucky to have a “grant”, you better post something, and it must be politically correct.
OT: On an earlier thread I posted a note about vulnerability of ‘Rate this’ (thumbs –up –down) facility, and now I am pleased to notice that it’s not there any more (or is it just my pc?).
““For water resource and ecosystem management, and for other societal needs, we need to know whether this drying trend will continue this century,” says lead investigator Oliver Elison Timm at the International Pacific Research Center, UHM.”
Even in the graph supplied, there is substantial variation – to the eye, never mind the statistician’s fine tooth comb.
I guess Lead Investigator [and High Priest of the Church of the Cagw] Timms,inexplicably, doesn’t care to look more than a generation or so back.
Plainly, in a generation, we cover the whole panoply of events that the Earth’s weather system can possibly contrive/experience/combine to show.
[Moderator, please advise: do I need to include ‘>SARC<'?]
I woder if the High Priest noticed the syclical nature of the figure shown.
Auto
Better:
I wonder if the High Priest noticed the cyclical nature of the figure shown.
Sorry!
That is kind of weird. Their first statement says rainfall has gone down almost imperceptibly and then they proceed to predict something completely different.WUWT?
From the “been there, done it, got the T Shirt” dept, I ran with a list of 1971 Extreme Weather Events a couple of years ago, as the year 2011 was, well, 40 years afterwards.
And one of the events I found was :-
Hawaii – The drought on Maui was described as the worst in 22 years.
http://www.maui-lahaina-sun.com/strange-maui-drought.html
Seems like there is nothing new!
“Studying hundreds of weather patterns during such days, they identified the typical atmospheric circulation patterns in the North Pacific that favor heavy rains over Hawaii.”
You mean the NWS never did this before? Pretty laid back for such an organization.
Well based upon Viners assertion in March 2000 that we in the UK will not see snow again”-
“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
Can someone put me in touch with an importer in Hawaii as I have bought a load of Umbrellas and the market for them in Hawaii is now assured.
This really is top of the range climate prediction. They discover that ‘rainfall over the Hawaiian Islands has been declining since 1978‘ and make a prediction that this will continue: ‘we can expect the recent trend towards drier winter seasons with fewer heavy-rain days to continue through the end of this century‘.
This is real value for tax payer dollars. It’s rare to find such talent amongst climatologists.
/sarc
On the big island of Hawaii alone there are multiple climatic zones ranging from rain forest to almost desert coastal lava fields. Rainfall variations are enormous over distances of 30 miles or less. An “average rainfall” over just that one island is meaningless. See this chart . The lowest average shown on the big island is 10.6 inches (269mm) at Puukohola Heiau up to 126.7 inches (3219mm) at Hilo. These two points are 65 miles apart by road. I don’t see a figure for annual rainfall in Waimea, which is probably only 10 miles from Puukohola, but it’s in a rain forest zone (Kohala Forest) and probably gets as much rain as Hilo. If you include the top of Mauna Kea where the observatories are, annual rainfall is 0.
I would assume people at the University of Hawaii would be aware of this, as they manage the observatories on Mauna Kea and have an observatory office in Waimea.
This is another example that averaging data destroys information.
Another fallacy:
“Almost imperceptibly, rainfall over the Hawaiian Islands has been declining since 1978, and this trend is likely to continue with global warming through the end of this century.”
It’s really too bad pressure data show that on the contrary, the meteorological evolution shows an increasing frequency of anticyclones penetrating deeper southward… Surely, higher pressure system are not the result of “global warming” for these modelers? Furthermore, higher pressure systems do explain a dryer Hawaii. Graham and Diaz 2001 found increased cyclonic activity in the Aleoutian low… probably “global warming”… sarc.
Let’s also appreciate that when they ““We are just beginning to understand the details of how climate change will affect the Hawaiian Islands…”, they are talking about the North Pacific which the hawaiian Island represent 0.00034%… that is a zone where MPHs anticyclones can roam virtually free of any continental interference and they just figuring out the details… No what they are just figuring out is how to join the bandwagon, torturing data and publish papers sucked out of their finger.
Anthony, you really don’t know why this Press Release exists? With your experience of “Climate Science”? Perhaps they had to rush it out before it got soggy in a deluge.
Almost imperceptibly, rainfall over the Hawaiian Islands has been declining since 1978,
Almost “imperceptibly”? Better than “insidious” I suppose.
correction
“Almost imperceptibly”? Better than “insidiously” I suppose.
Combining information from their statistical model and cutting-edge climate models driven with the projected increase in greenhouse gases until the end of this century, the scientists conclude that we can expect the recent trend towards drier winter seasons with fewer heavy-rain days to continue through the end of this century.
Parapharsing:
Yep! That’s the way we modeled and programmed them to behave and they gave us the answer we wanted…. after sufficient torture of the the limited real data, of course. We predict it will continue to get drier until it starts to get wetter again. Until then, it’s worse than we thought and it’s your fault.
MtK
PS: def – Parapharsing: Paraphrasing asinine pseudoscience as farce.
“Combining information from their statistical model and cutting-edge climate models….”
“Cutting Edge Climate Model”?
Ha, ha, ha… my new favorite oxymoron.
‘cutting-edge climate models’
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!
Vukcevic — at LAST, I can finally answer a question on this site! The thumbs up/down is gone from my pc, too. Based on a sampling population of 2 and a logical inference, THE THUMBS ARE GONE. #:)
Anthony, you know quite well why this exists. FUNDING!!!!
Thumbs are gone here in the UK too. [I did click a couple, so not utterly innocent . . . .]
Will Hawaiians still know what snow is? http://www.hawaiiinfoguide.com/hawaii_skiing.htm
Nobody panic. We’ll just send them some of the snow we are inundated with every winter in the UK. That will cheer them up. Oh wait, perhaps I’m just imagining snow?
So how do I get on the gravy train @ CU – Boulder?
You get to do “science” then there is beer and biking…
Horse manure! Hawaii has plenty of rainfall. Every island’s north shore is drenched year round. And hot, dry places like Lahaina and Kihei normally have little rainfall. Water is pumped in from the north shore of Maui, and there is never a shortage.
This is just another cherry-picked example of wild eyed arm-waving over local natural variablity. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening, and Hawaii isn’t going to run out of rainfall. Taxpayers deserve a refund for this wasted grant money.
Heh…. pile some more junk science on the fire … what’s another log?
“So how do I get on the gravy train @ CU – Boulder?”
Sell your soul.
There must be a way to avoid this type of conflict of interest in the funding of this type of research. Has it always been this way with government funding for research or is this unique to climate research?
Wait a minute. I distinctly remember ReallywrongClimate saying specifically that more and more El Ninos were going to occur due to global warming (in fact, the PDO was never ever going to go negative again, according to them). And if Hawaii CLEARLY gets more rain in El Nino years (according to the observed data), then global warming obviously would mean MORE rain, not less, for Hawaii….
Can’t they just pipe Arctic meltwater down to Hawaii. The UK’s Met Office predicts there’ll be surplusses, so it’ll be a win-win situation.
Possible answer:
And then we have a possible Viner moment:
They and I won’t be around then so they can predict what they want.
They are probably invested in a desalination plant builder. Are these the same guys that prescribed Australia its desal plants?
AndyB says:
April 23, 2013 at 2:38 pm
“Has it always been this way with government funding for research or is this unique to climate research?”
I think politicians use scientists because the reputation of journalists is in the tank.
I wonder what they will use after scientists.
Sorry to post this again but it needs to be read regarding climate scientists and their batshit predictions / projections based on models and consensus.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/04/04/climate-science-humiliated-earlier-model-prognoses-of-warmer-winters-now-todays-laughingstocks/
It all hangs on this assumption:
The IPCC’s global mean temperature projections have failed in 2013. No worries, only 87 years to go. Winters were to be milder (now colder), the hotspot was supposed to be measured (now wind sheer crap) and so on…………What a bloody, hopeless failure. They think we are not looking.
‘Almost imperceptibly’ Is this code for ‘outside the error bars’?
Just eyeballing the graph it looks cyclic over the short time frame of 30 years.
At least they did not make the Australian error of predicting eternal drought and empty dams.
What is a “cutting edge climate model”?
When modeled outputs are presented together they all cut badly, all exaggerate warming, drought, hurricanes, even mosquitoes!
They should use some money to invite Bob Tisdale to show them a few things that could possibly lead them to a better understanding of ENSO, and then maybe lead to longer forecasts than NOAA can do now.
“Hawaiians won’t know what rainfall is!”
Sounds very much like our UK weather outlook “Snow will be a very rare and exciting event!”
Not our last winter, nor the one before, nor the one before that either, in fact the one before that was even colder, and had more snow!
You can definitely rely on these alleged experts!
zootcadillac says:
April 23, 2013 at 2:04 pm
Nobody panic. We’ll just send them some of the snow we are inundated with every winter in the UK. That will cheer them up. Oh wait, perhaps I’m just imagining snow?
*
You’re not imagining it, Zoot, it’s just the wrong kind of snow (I don’t know why, maybe it doesn’t travel well in the mail). Heeheehee.
I have considerable first hand experience with rainfall in Hawaii – I was on Kauai for the duration of the 2003-04 flooding, provided material that protected several high profile properties from ending up in the ocean, and after the flooding of 2003-04 for a period I paid to maintain flood level monitoring equip on Kauai.
As others have noted the Hawaiian islands each exhibit the entire range of zones, from nearly tropical to almost desert. On Kauai this change occurs with 25 miles or so.
Precip varies on Kauai from appx 80″ annually on the Northeasterly windward side to less than 20″ on the westernmost leeward side. These numbers are however for the “makai” – or ocean front locations. A look at the “mauka” – or mountain locations – shows Kauai, in addition to have every type precipitation zone, also is home to the “wettest place on Earth – Mt. Wai’ale’ale – which has seen as much as 500+ inches of rainfall per year.
There are a couple other locations in the world that see slightly more total annual rainfall, however they are in monsoon zones, whereas Mt. Wai’ale’ale receives their rain largely year round.
There is plenty of water on Kauai, and on most of the Hawaiian islands, as each has similar trade wind dominated weather patterns and mountainous central cores. These trade winds (from the NE) blow over 80% of the time – with a thousands mile long fetch over open ocean. When they hit the islands the initial contact with land on the windward side starts squeezing moisture, thus the wetter North and East shores. But it is the core mountains that do the heavy work – wringing almost every last drop of moisture the trade winds bring – leaving the leeward areas of the island near desert-like.
The native Kauaian’s understood this, and as a result the island was divided into “ahupua’a” – land areas that went from a high elevation “mauka” water source (the Mt. Wai’ale’ale peak or adjacent Alaka’i swamp) to the makai (ocean) shore. Each ahupu’a provided access to fresh water source at higher elevation and to the ocean for sustenance.
This included, most importantly, the leeward areas of the, which, although they had very little rain themselves, were at thousands of feet lower elevation than Mt. Wai’ale’ale and the adjacent large Alaka’i Swamp.
So much water falls on Mt. Wai’ale’ale, that despite much of it running off in every direction, a large amount makes its way thru the Alakai Swamp and then into Waimea river, creating the spectacular Waimea canyon – known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. The Waimea rivers mouth at the ocean is the site of one of Captain Cook’s first landings in his discovery of the Sandwich Isles.
Native Hawaiian’s were excellent engineers as well as farmers. They diverted water from natural channels using sophisticated ‘auwai (water channels) to direct water, using gravity, to irrigate their “terrace” type crop production. They grew most taro – the Hawaiian’s most important crop – which provided many of their needs – food, medicine, bait, adhesive, dye, and other uses.
Water from the ‘auwai was diverted from the streams and rivers into the large taro ponds, called lo‘i kalo, and then channeled thru additional ‘auwai back to the stream.
Thus each ahupua’a provided its people all of their sustenance needs – fresh water, to drink and irrigate crops in the lower elevations with less rainfall, and access to the plentiful bounty of the ocean. Each ahupua’a also provided its people with a cool, higher elevation area for the short warm periods when the southerly Kona winds would blow (and cause thunderstorms and flooding).
Now to present – the historical data for 1949-2004 for Kauai:
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliGCStP.pl?hi6565
… show Mt. Wai’ale’ale averaging 373 inches per year. The highest year listed, at 429 inches occurred in 1951, and the lowest, at 283 inches just 2 years later in 1953.
As to current conditions – NOAA in their year end reports have noted”
Three things are relatively certain about Hawaii’s precipitation. One, they have a lot of it, and aren’t about to run out any time soon – on Kauai between 300 and 500 inches a year at Mt. Wai’ale’ale.
Two, It is all but impossible to model or predict with any accuracy, the rainfall amounts in any of the Hawaiian islands. They are home to extremely unique and complicated weather dynamics – from the multiple climate/precip zones in close proximity, to things like the critical trade wind inversion layer (clouds cannot generally rise above it – appx 6,000 feet normally).
Three – despite having hundreds of inches of rainfall at the higher elevations each and every year, and despite the rainfall totals according to NOAA being at or near normal – each of the last several years, they have still managed to attribute drought status to large portions of each of the Hawaiian islands – the same areas that are normally the lowest precip areas.. Which qualifies for a federal disaster declaration and the release of funds for same. Imagine that.
http://hawaii.gov/dlnr/drought/
Link to Kauai rainfall map:
http://www.mykauairealty.com/website/agent_pictures/2839/kauai_rainfall_map_tki.JPG
Hawaiian Islands rainfall map:
http://www.darrensears.com/storage/hawaiian_precipitation_map.jpg
Kauai Ahupua’a areas:
http://islandbreath.org/2006Year/13-sovereignty/0613-03Kauaimoku.jpg
For those interested here is a link to an overview of Kauai’s history – well worth a read:
http://www.hawaiianencyclopedia.com/kauai-history.asp
Forget about less rain, isn’t Hawaii predicted to drown under the same rising ocean that took Manhattan, as per Hansen, or does the sea only rise on one side of the continent????
That’s all very well and good. What if carbon dioxide were to cause; heavy snow and ice through winter, heavy rain, droughts and dry spells with floods, warm seasons and cold seasons. My question is, if I buy a lottery ticket for Saturday is there any chance that it will be mild and cloudy?
For those with more interest in why we see these extreme rainfall amounts in places like Kauai’s Mt. Waialeale – this paper is interesting:
Trade Wind Rainfall atop Mount Waialeale, Kauai Rimage & Schroeder (1999)
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0493(1999)127%3C2217:TWRAMW%3E2.0.CO;2
This passage provides an example of the difficulty, due to the intricacies of the orographic effect, of predicting rainfall in Hawaii – but more importantly a simple, almost perfect, example of the problems with ALL climate models.
Here the researchers found that although the presence of trade winds was a critical component for strong rains due to the orographic uplifts, trade winds were NOT the instigator of these rain events. The trade winds required the “trigger” of existing cloudiness to cause the extreme rain effect.
But they will still know what liquid sunshine is 🙂
When in Hawaii a few years back I was on the beach with my son and not a cloud in the sky. Perfect day in paradise. Then it starts to rain… with no clouds??? I thought it was a sprinkler on one of the hotel rooftops with the wind blowing it to the beach. A couple of days later I found out the wind can blow the rain over the mountains and it will hit the beach before the clouds get there. The locals call it “liquid sunshine”.
A. Scott says:
Ug! I am cave man, could it be the moon and the sun >>>CAVE ART…
Why aren’t the actual rainfall figures shown.
Where I live – Sunshine Coast in Australia – we had significantly low rainfall during the 10 years preceding 2010.
But when the average is close to 2 metres per annum a 25% reduction is not that significant.
PS – the name “Sunshine Coast” is the most inappropriate locality name I know of. It has only recently stopped raining (with overcast skies replaced by blue) since early January. We have a beautiful autumn, winter on average.
What a simplistic meme, the stuff of Sophomore lower division mumbo jumbo (which I know in my own case it certainly was). I get the concept – Horse Latitudes Highs do a “honey I blew up the High” act. But the nuanced view really does not support this. Warming (assuming it lasts much past our GHG and anthropogenic waste heat peak) should have a similar impact as past great warming events. The semi tropical dry zones shrink, the mid latitudes improve, the upper latitudes moderate slightly. Paleo proves this. Why would it be any different in the current case?
Are those climate models ever going to include the sun???? http://www.king5.com/news/editors-pick/Watch-The-Solar-Threat-KING-5-Special-this-Wednesday-at-730pm-204353751.html?google_editors_picks=true
I remember the spring og 1958–21 inches in 24 hrs
“Almost imperceptibly, rainfall over the Hawaiian Islands has been declining since 1978, and this trend is likely to continue with global warming…”
Of course, the decline would be imperceptible: it’s not there. The rainfall curve doesn’t decline steadily; it rises and falls dramatically, clearly passing through vastly different regimes of natural variation, e.g., El Niño/La Niña cycles. There is a warming trend from 1985 to 1992, where precipitation increases, followed by an El Niño/La Niña dominated chaotic period from 1993 to 2004, then a plunge in precipitation as the Earth cools from 2005 to 2012. Trying to characterize all of these periods with an imaginary overall trend is just plain incompetent. The paper is drivel.
DirkH says:
April 23, 2013 at 3:52 pm
They are probably invested in a desalination plant builder. Are these the same guys that prescribed Australia its desal plants?
Where is Barry Harrop? Wind, drought whirley gigs and desalination bring back memories.
As for working @ CU-Boulder, what happens if you have no soul to sell?
I have a Progressive idea. Let’s not get involved in any wars with communist/totalitarian agressors who also happened to be involved in killing their own populations, like we did during WWII. We will let China handle North Korea. ALSO, let’s not abuse science to make scary water shortage models that require government to strictly control water and cause rates to skyrocket for homes, growers, and industry.
If these people have their way, children will not know what pineapples and banannas are, or milk, or coconuts, because of horrifying misguided “local only” policies.
“It is the violence of well intentioned governments that transforms drought to famine.” Adam Smith
vukcevic says:
April 23, 2013 at 12:07 pm
“OT: On an earlier thread I posted a note about vulnerability of ‘Rate this’ (thumbs –up –down) facility, and now I am pleased to notice that it’s not there any more (or is it just my pc?).”
WUWT is awesomely intelligent. I knew the “Rate” item would disappear quickly.
The government spends money on this crap and furloughs air traffic controllers, inconveniencing and even endangering citizens. Somebody’s priorities are slightly fornicated up, methinks.
Zeke,
“It is the violence of well intentioned governments that transforms drought to famine.” ~Adam Smith
That tugs on my heart.
The “cutting-edge” computer models are one step better than the standard “state-of-the art” models. They allow definition of “unprecedented imperceptibility” in trends.
Unless the Westerlies stop blowing, the windward side of all those islands will know what rain is. And when the Kona winds blow the western sided of those islands get rained on. The only exceptions I can think of are the smaller islands in the rain shadows of Maui and Hawaii.
R2Dtoo,
If a Model had a cutting edge thought in her pretty little brain (sorry was that sex’st ). R2, help, I’m about to be attacked by imperial troops.
A week or so ago I stopped the automatic posts from WUWT on my e-mail. Not at all because of what Anthony et al (and most of you) on the site do and explain. ( btw it is now a book mark so I can access at my own leisure) .
The problem is that the “leisure” quickly becomes exasperation after reading articles like this one above. The frustration with this kind of reporting is giving me and most of us migraines if not driving some of us mad!
G P Hanner,
Have you noticed; little Islands have bigger rain? I think the smaller an Island gets the bigger the rain drops are.
For Wayne: You made just the kind of comment I wish to make. Sarcastic and a little snarky, but you did it in two words. Bravo, bravo,bravo. Three thumbs up.
Chad – its off topic, but I just did some work on this exact issue thats worth sharing since you brought it up. Its not their priorities that are messed up – it is their most basic ethics. The current administration is intentionally and purposely creating the inconvenience to forward their own agenda. Often this type behavior is well known but hard to prove – but not here.
Here are some excerpts of an article I’ve been working on that show two important things – one the current administration itself proposed a similar cut a year ago, with no dire predictions of delays and compromised safety.
More importantly, despite budgets that have increased significantly actual flights – aircraft arrivals and departures, are down over recent years. The FAA seemed to have no problem handling higher levels of aircraft traffic on significantly lower budgets in the past. Putting absolute proof to the claim these delays and safety concerns are unnecessary, unneeded and downright, in my opinion, outright criminal if indeed they do get someone hurt.
wayne says:
April 23, 2013 at 2:17 pm
Souls are going pretty cheap nowadays–I hear all you have to do is find an old hockey stick and put some new paint on it. Or use the words “Almost imperceptibly” in all seriousness and the world is your oyster.
Just don’t expect a refund–ever.
Around May 1992 my wife and I spent a week marooned by rain in an expensive hotel on the east side of Kauai near Lihue Airport. We heard that the last pineapple cannery had just closed and that now the Island would be reliant on tourism. This is a precarious state for an isolated economy. One bad tsunami or earthquake and it’s goodbye to income.
I wonder about the wisdom of these climate people publishing scary scenarios about future climate. If they are believed by planners, they are hardly likely to spark investment in new industries, or even plans to seek it. The locals plausibly become depressed by bad economic news and get into a downward spiral that can go quite low. I’ve seen this effect at work in isolated Australian aboriginal communities. Youngsters say “Why should I get a good education? They send me back here to be with my family, but there are few children interested in being taught and their parents take to drink, which does not help.”
There should be some mechanism to restrain these climate doom people from using guesses under the guise of academia to help places disintegrate.
Jimbo,s link (April 23, 2013 at 4:00 pm) is the best reference dossier of failed AGW predictions I have come so far. Well done Jimbo.
Here In the UK, this morning’s purple and crimson sunrise has subdued to orange – as the proverb goes: “Red sky in the morning, Global Warming. Red sky at night, Ditto.”
Hmmm. I thought the high rain years were due to AGW. That was the “new normal” But this report seems to say cooling is causing lower rainfall. Interesting…..though not unpredictable.
Hawaiians ‘won’t know what rainfall is’
Just as we in the UK were never going to see snow I assume?
A. Scott says:
April 23, 2013 at 9:23 pm
Can I duplicate your post over at http://www.FreeRepublic.com as its own thread?
A couple of 100,000+ readers over there would like to see your work – especially because it is highly compressed yet well summarized in even these few words.
So why didn’t they just say “Using cutting edge computer models we don’t know what happened in the past and we don’t know what will happen in the future”
My prediction is that there will be extremely heavy rainfall and flooding in the not too distant future. To arrive at this simple analysis I have used The Met Syndrome Method, which is an extremely accurate method of forecasting and has been developed using Met Office predictions. Whatever the prediction the opposite will happen.
I can assure you…as a long-time resident of Hilo, Hawaii…seems just as wet around here as it has been for the past 34 years (my personal period of record). The latest “mega-deluge” was in November 2000. This past February was pretty soggy, the farm equipment bogged down in the mud.
You are too kind but Pierre Gosselin did most of the donkey work. 😉 Commenters contributed too. The Notrickszone page is focused on to winter and spring quotes from mostly scientists. For a broader reference of various climate parameters you need to visit the following:
http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
A. Scott says:
April 23, 2013 at 4:48 pm
Thank you A. Scott; you provided much more detail than I had. I’ve only been to the big island but as you point out enormous climatic variations occur on all the Hawaiian islands.
So to calculate a valid “average” rainfall on any island would take thousands of rainfall sensors. And once you got a valid average it would be a meaningless number. And a trend in a meaningless number is still a meaningless number. And a grant to fund the study of a meaningless number is climate research.
DirkH says:
April 23, 2013 at 3:52 pm
Actually Hawaii goes the other way — they have dehydration plants (evaporate sea water to get the salt). In Kona on the big island is the Kona Sea Salt plant, which pumps sea water from 2200 feet (670m) down through a 2km pipeline to large solar evaporation ponds. See here . Supposedly the natural sea salt is somehow healthier than processed table salt, and it’s 100% iodine-free. Personally I’d be more concerned about whale poop.
Thanks again Jimbo . . . . and thanks to Pierre Gosselin as well.
It’s a shame that Chris Packham’s BBC Springwatch Special ‘Signs of Change’ from 17 May 2010 is no longer available to view. He spent a whole hour of licence fee payers money endorsing “the dire effect of increasingly milder winters, earlier springs & hotter summers on our British wildlife”.
I’d love to explain to him that the decline in our garden bird population has more to do with (a) domestic cats, and (b) an avian kamikaze tendency to collide into the increasing amount of glass conservatories tagged on the back of most people’s homes. I’ve just put another dead greenfinch in the wheelie bin. We have a conservatory. We don’t have a cat.
Looks like the team is starting to twist statistics related to the recent “pause” in warming to that could be construed as adverse, and blaming them on (the non-existent) warming. Excellent show of agility on their part…
Hey, Sparks.
I’m having trouble understanding your comment.
Islands like Niihau lie in the rain shadows of larger, higher islands lying to windward, e.g., Kauai blocks rain on Niihau, unless the Kona winds are blowing. Ditto, islands like Kahoolawe, which is down wind from Maui, and even the western slopes of The Big Island itself, with its two main mountains that top 13,000 feet msl EACH. The western sides of both Oahu and Kauai are quite a bit drier that their windwards sides. In fact, they are dry enoug that cacti and other succulents do very well, thank you.
RA Cook … no problem … send me a link please
In January I was at the vineyards on the slopes of the Mauna Loa, just down from the Kiluaua volcano and on the opposite side of the mountaintop from the Mauna Loa Observatory. The vineyards are in a “drought”, but one of a nature not what you might think: 70″ of rain/year instead of 130″ of rain/year!
The north side of the Big Island is clearly in a drought, with the grasslands dry and dead. There are also lots of dead deciduous trees on the flanks of Mauna Loa that drought has killed off. The problem is that the rock beneath the surface is a highly porous, empty lava tube sponge that drains away whatever rain that falls. It is retention rather than rainfall that make things a drought. At the same time, the Mauna Loa observatory is above the regular cloudbase of 9,000′ ASL, and is in a near-perpetual desert environment of < 7" of rain per year. That is why the observatory is there: no rain, no clouds, great viewing.
We are told that the Arctic air masses have changed because of more open Arctic waters, though there is more Arctic open water only during a few months of the year, and not during the cold winter, so I dunno about that. Now we are told that the Pacific ocean has surface winds that have also changed, but I guess not by ice. Somehow global warming did this. Sure are a lot of regional changes that are all caused by a global change of a few points of a degree in the last 30 years.
We’re probably going to see a lot more of this kind of Dorito-driven science from Colorado and Washington State, since they both legalized pot.
@ Alan Watt ?? Denial level 7,
Please let all of us know. HOW do you get to denial level 7 ? Are you advancing? Is that good or bad?,Or is that up or down, or maybe perhaps merely perceptibly sideways? Oh and does it depend if it is morning or evening at EST or Daylight saving time in October or is that March 2013 0r April 2013? In NYC or London? Please, please! You have to help us out Alan, or even point us into, like, any direction ? (anywhere, anywhere or any what, when or how? and no hockey sticks allowed).
Level 7, wow, it must have a meaning!
(fun off)
tobias smit says:
April 24, 2013 at 10:00 pm
It’s a takeoff on Scientology OT (Operating Thetan) levels. As I recall their progression you get to OT Level 7 and the next step is to go “clear”. I recall many years ago seeing some posters promoting a couple of Scientology bigwigs who described themselves as “OT Level 7 and CLEAR for years” — the longer you’ve been “CLEAR” the more advanced you are. See here . Somehow comparing Scientology to the Church of Catastrophic Climatology seems apt.
My adoption of this title was in response to a WUWT post a year or so back I believe regarding the Mann Gang wanting sceptics to be publicly branded “Climate Change Denialists” or some such. I suggested we print up fancy certificates and wear the term with pride.
@Alan Watt, sorry I am a little late with my reply , but I am much clearer now.
But CCD certificates are hard to explain to my friends (but I am proud of them), the size of only one of them takes up a whole wall. :).
G P Hanner says:
April 24, 2013 at 10:02 am
Sorry, I forgot the “joke tag”. I was making a light remark about the relative size of rain drops to an island in regard to the size of rain drops relative to a continent.