Because tornadoes and cyclones never appeared in temperate zones before
![World_map_indicating_tropics_and_subtropics[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/world_map_indicating_tropics_and_subtropics1.png?quality=75)
Story submission by Eric Worrall
The Sydney Morning Herald has advanced a claim that Cyclone Marcia, the cat 5 cat 2 storm which is still raging in Queensland, is evidence that the tropics are “expanding”.
According to the SMH;
“The southward shift of cyclones under climate change will force planners to demand stronger building standards as far south as Coffs Harbour on the NSW North Coast, Cairns climatologist Steve Turton says.
Storms such as the category 5 Cyclone Marcia, which crossed the central Queensland coast on Friday, “are going to become more common in the future along the eastern seaboard of Australia,” Professor Turton from James Cook University told Fairfax Media.
Climate change is resulting in the expansion of the tropics at the rate of 150-300 kilometres every 30 years, bringing more regions in the path of potential cyclones, Professor Turton said. (See his essay in the 2014 State of the Tropics report.)
“The research is suggesting that, in a warmer world, we’ll get more intense cyclones because there’ll be more energy in the oceans and also the atmosphere,” he said.
Professor Turton then rather spoils the effect, by stating “For north-eastern Australia, cyclones may become fewer in number but more intense when they form”.
My question – if the conditions promoting cyclonic activity are intensifying and expanding, why would we expect *fewer* cyclones? Why wouldn’t cyclones become more intense AND more frequent? Could this prediction of fewer cyclones be a desperate attempt to accommodate an inconvenient observation, that cyclones are becoming more infrequent – an attempt to spin a rather feeble cyclone season into a story of impending doom?
As WUWT has noted in previous posts, the evidence is that tornado intensity is decreasing http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/14/are-tornadoes-getting-stronger-rebuttal-to-elsner-et-al/ . I don’t know what the figures are for cyclone intensity. No disrespect to my fellow Australians, whose houses were damaged in the last few days, but despite Marcia and Cyclone Lam, this year has been a rather feeble Australian cyclone season.
Cyclone and Tornado intensity seem to me to be a source of embarrassment for climate modellers. Like the inexorable growth of Antarctic sea ice, alarmists would surely be more comfortable if cyclones and tornadoes behaved themselves, comporting themselves in a properly apocalyptic fashion, instead of wimping out shortly after making landfall.
And a quick look at the historical record reveals plenty of extreme weather events which made it into temperate zones in the past – such as several dangerous tornadoes which struck the state of Minnesota in the 1800s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks
When put on the spot, the doomsayer’s only option is to issue scary warnings of what the future may hold – because there is no evidence that any dangerous intensification of extreme weather is occurring right now.
global warming theory predicts the poles will warm faster then the tropics. this will reduce the efficiency of the global heat engine, which will on average reduce wind strength.
What, because winds only blow north and south???
If the earth weren’t spinning, yes. Winds would only blow north and south. It is the spinning of the earth that takes the north south winds and turns them into east and west winds.
Regardless, it has been known for centuries, that it is the temperature difference between the equator and the poles that is the ultimate driver of weather.
I’m surprised that you weren’t already aware of this.
No because strong winds, storms, are a process to distribute heat from the tropics to the poles. Higher polat temperatures mean that there is less of a heat differential to cause the storms.
Ignorance is bliss. Fact is that the wind that start cyclone and hurricanes are temperature gradient dependent, hence fewer if the gradient decreases, but the intensity of storms is dependent on energy availability. This has nothing to do with temperature gradient and everything to do with the latent heat of water vapor condensation. Hence higher intensity with higher ocean surface temperature. If only the world worked like you dream it does “ferdberple” then you could dream away AGW
“Hence higher intensity with higher ocean surface temperature.”
No- higher sea surface temperature would only marginally increase the evaporation which provides the energy for these weather systems. Moreover intensity usually refers to rainfall intensity, not windspeed, and while the two are related, they are not mutual proxies. It has raised eyebrows that Cyclone Marcia was classed as a Cat 5 at landfall on the subjective basis of increasing rainfall intensity at the eye wall and not on the basis of windspeed measurements at that time and place.
Tropics expanding? Since when..?
http://www.sustainablecitiesnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/cyclones_990_496x275.jpg
Taken from:
http://www.sustainablecitiesnet.com/tag/governance
And how would that increase the tilt of the earth’s self-rotation axis with respect to the axis of its rotation abround the sun- because that is what determines the location of the tropics?
Here is some bad news for all the deniers
“For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.
One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming.
But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon’s work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.
He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html?_r=0
You mean how the Sierra foundation was caught out taking $25 million from an oil concern because they were against coal? Whoops. Don’t for get “big Oil” fund many climate change groups because they know they are basically into energy and if they can make money of renewables they will do it, because profit is profit no matter the source.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/earth/after-disclosure-of-sierra-clubs-gifts-from-gas-driller-a-roiling-debate.html?_r=0
Well actually big oil wants to get rid of coal (their main competitor) and they figure oil is less easily replaced, since basically everyone owns a car, but only governments own a coal fired power station. They also figure we would need massive amounts of diesel and gas “backup” for when sunshine and wind fail.
They also think they are successfully rebranding themselves as “energy” companies by putting photos of wind turbines on their annual report covers.
Unbolted, the people with very real vested interests are those 95% of scientists who get all their money from Big Government. They push the alarmist line because their job depends on it being true. Have you not noticed the many billions of dollars in research grants given out every year by Big Government to “catastrophic climate change” research?
Maybe you should read this-
http://wmbriggs.com/post/15356/
Wouldn’t believe in everything you read in the NYT.
ron dolton
Maybe you should read this-
http://wmbriggs.com/post/15356/
Same Briggs that published fiction with the great cancer cure delusional Monckton as co-author? LMAO
So what!
Who pays the alarmists? Greenpeace pays for many and they do not have vested interests???
This is the second law of thermodynamics at work. The storms are driven by temperature difference across the surface rather than vertically. According to the second law, a reduction in the temperature gradient results in a reduction in the output available from the system. It also results in reduced efficiency.
The frequency and intensity data of tornadoes and cyclones support this idea, even when we have gotten so much better in the last 30 years of telling whether one of these storms has happened. If climate models applied the second law correctly, they would have shown a world with higher average temperature and less temperature difference from the tropics to the poles is a world with fewer less intense storms. One would think the world would be ecstatic about this truth, the problem is it takes weight off the “climate refugees” part of the story.
Sorry off topic –
Africa, what a sorry state for climate data. Pitiful actually.
http://www.uneca.org/sites/default/files/publications/wp3-climate_data_network_and_rescuing_draft_final.pdf
They’ll be calling them “SuperStorms” soon.
Whenever the wind is below the level that constitutes a hurricane, it’s not a tropical storm, no, it’s a SuperStorm. (A La Tropical Storm Sandy.)
Now that’s scary!
Sandy was a Stupid Storm (excuse me, meant Super Storm) because it happened to hit NYC, or close enough… Anything that hits the NYC area is disastrous and evidence of CAGW and the end of the world. Weather that hits other parts of the USA are just really bad. I think it has something to do with all the super heroes that live in and around Gotham.
Reminds me of that drawing; The world as seen from NYC. About 80% of the picture is the city, everything beyond the river is the remaining 20%.
I’ve met enough New Yorkers to realize how accurate the drawing is.
In my observation, weather events are rated by the media on their economic impact rather than meteorological magnitudes.
I would refine that a little further. Weather events are rated based on their economic impact on reporters.
If it hits a place where a lot of reporters live, then it’s a big story. If it hits places where the fly over people live, then it’s less of a story.
They only use nominal dollar figures for the damage estimates and never bother to mention higher development intensities over time in coastal zones. It’s a two-fer. Always upward!
They already have. As Marcia blew herself out over Yeppoon and then move south to give Brisbane a soaking she was a superstorm. CAGW is the gift that keeps on giving. On the bright side it is causing all the morons in the world develop a Turette’s like symptom of uncontrollably saying words like ‘denier’, ‘superstorm’, ‘climate change’, ‘carbon pollution’ etc thereby advertising their condition. I hope they are working on some medication for these poor sods. Its worse than ebola in certain demographics.
I read a report a few days ago that Global Warming is to blame for the recent ebola outbreaks.
The ‘normal’ Australian cyclone season sees about ten cyclones between November and April, of which about six make landfall. This year as far as I know, we have had three, of which two made landfall the other day. In order to keep the global warming fires going, these cyclones have been upped in intensity and drama to make up for the lack of others. Cat 5 my foot. It was barely a Cat 3 and fizzed as soon as it touched the beach, yes lots of rain and wind, but leaves don’t stay on trees in a Cat 5. Kids were playing on the breakwater for gods sake. Ridiculous.
Exactly, where is the data to back up the claim, Middle Percy Island, almost in the path of the storm when it was supposed to be at Cat 5 had max wind gust of 208 and a low pressure of 975. This only makes it a cat 3. Yeppoon which according to the Media hype “bore the full force of the cat 5 cyclone” had wind gusts of 160 km. Can’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Exactly … there is no way at all this was even a cat 4 , just punched in as a CAT 3 , glad to see others on the ball
Where have I heard this crap before? Oh yea, here in the US a few hurricane seasons back. Until NOAA NHC was totally embarrassed (or at least should have been) by how far off their 2013 hurricane projections were:
Projection:”or the six-month hurricane season, which begins June 1, NOAA’s Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook says there is a 70 percent likelihood of 13 to 20 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which 7 to 11 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 3 to 6 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher).”
These ranges are well above the seasonal average of 12 named storms, 6 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130523_hurricaneoutlook_atlantic.html
Actual: Two short live CAT 1 hurricanes
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/bro/?n=2013event_hurricaneseasonwrap
The observed reduction in recent tropical cyclone activity is likely a result of an increase in amplitude of Rossby waves in the polar jet streams under the prevailing meridional flow regime. Deep troughs are able to redistribute tropical heat as effectively as tropical cyclones, and can therefore proxy for them during periods of dominantly meridional flow. When zonal flow prevails, as it did from 1909 to 1965, the amplitudes of Rossby waves in the polar jets are suppressed, and heat redistribution by tropical cyclones becomes the more important mechanism.
I am confused by the weather effects of the Rossby waves in mid latitudes. Are the two hemispheres in sync on amplitude or opposite? I understand the waves can spin off high or low pressure cells, so do you mean that in the Southern Hemisphere we get more anti cyclones with greater amplitude in the wave and therefore less cyclones?
I was taught that cyclones are generated in warm shallow waters, so with all this talk of warmer oceans why do we not have more cyclones?
I see your problem. While there is lots of talk regarding warmer oceans. The oceans themselves are failing to warm.
More climate hype liars. Tropical Cyclones go into temperate regions on occasion. Always have and always will. And the gobbledegook about stronger but less frequent but worse but rarer is simply sciencey sounding bs.
‘During the 95 year period from 1910 to 2004 there were a total of fourteen tropical cyclones that either caused gales or caused wind-related property damage in the Perth region.’
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/wa/perth.shtml
One big problem is that Cyclone Marcia was never more than a cat 3 storm and came ashore as a cat 2 – check the actual SSW (sustained wind speeds) and gusts…The Australian media were actually making things up about this storm.
“check the actual SSW” – please can you provide a link to the data, I can’t find it in bom.gov.au
http://www.bom.gov.au/qld/observations/qldall.shtml?ref=hdr
Scroll down to Capricornia. Links to the stations on the left. Also look at Middle Percy Island in the Central Coast-Whitsundays group.. Currently busted, but that is where the highest gust speed was at 4:30 am on the 20th. (208km/hr. Out in open water 70km off-shore, on approach, but still only a Cat 3.
Also Creal Reef in Coral Sea group. Good idea to have a map open to get the sequence right.
Thanks. Will do. Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Marcia) says it was a Cat 5 on or just before landfall, but the only Cat 5 references are to news outlets and the premier. I wanted to check a bit further.
PS. If the central pressure was 929 as reported, then it was just a Cat 5 on that basis, regardless of windspeed.
The lowest measured pressure at the Middle Percy Island weather station was 972hPa. At that time the cyclone was at its maximum reported intensity. The distance between the island and the landfall along the cyclone path was about 60km. The eye wall passed directly over the island. Any lower pressures reported were not observations, but rather estimates, and the U.S. Navy has conceded that its Dvorak estimates did not match the ground-based observations.
The Dvorak method uses infrared satellite images of cloud tops to estimate temperature gradients at sea level and eyewall geometry which give an inaccurate indication of wind speeds.
It seems that a decision was made to publicise information that exaggerated the severity of the system, knowing that the information was wrong, and knowing that reliable observation-based information was available.
I noticed the start of that storm on earth nullschool. I then took a look at the JTWC site to see what they were showing. They forecast Marcia to have maximum wind speed of 135 knots, while Lam was only forecast to reach around 90 knots. Then the media version of the storms came out. I read a piece today that claimed there was a maximum wind gust for Typhoon Lam clocked at 245 kph. I find that hard to believe.
Australian CAGW skeptic Jennifer Marohasy asked in her blog “how do we know that Cyclone Marcia was a Category 5 at landfall?”
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2015/02/know-cyclone-marcia-category-5-landfall/
Yes exactly , Marcia was a CAT 3 at best … media hype and defies science as a CAT 4 even needs sustained winds of well over 110 KM/h with gusts of 225 KM/h or more … the eye passed almost directly over 2 stations and offshore got 208 KM/h and mainland got 170 Km/h max gusts …
The tropics did expand during the late 20th century warming period:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24228037/#.VOixLMZyaUk
but they stopped expanding around 2000 and may now be contracting as evidenced by the more meridional jet stream behaviour of recent years.
Those changes in jet stream behaviour bear no relation to CO2 emissions but do seem to correlate with levels of solar activity.
This is the best guess so far as to causation:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
I thought the tropics were defined astronomically. They can’t expand unless Earth’s axial tilt increases.
“The Tropics” lie between North and South 20 degrees latitude.
The tropics have been defined
The tropics don’t drift.
>>“The Tropics” lie between North and South 20 degrees latitude.
Between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, surely.
Ralph
±23.44°
Here, here.
Ok.
Substitute tropical air masses for the tropics.
Fixed.
Hang on, this is climate change we are talking about, so DON’T get scientific.
I’m sure that a lot of our Northen Hemisphere reader would love to have some tropical air masses moving North just now.
I am sure some of our more northerly friends might like this.
Minimum temperature in Broome this week, for three nights it never came below 30C. Not bad for a coastal town. The Northern Indian Ocean out from here is hot, and we are pleading for a mild cyclone like Marcia. The quiet (nil) cyclone season is unusual, we were told to expect 4.
Check out the SST off Australia’s NW coast: http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDY00007.shtml
Like the GCM CMIP 3/5 ensembles, the CAGW strategy is cover every possible outcome of our ever-changing climate, warmer, cooler, wetter, drought, more hurricaanes, less hurricanes, etc. Then the Climate Change faithful always can post hoc cherry pick the result that agreed with reality. A naive, gullible, indoctrinated public accepts the pseudoscience results.
Doesn’t need to be true. Just needs to be in the paper.
Exactly.
Eric, if I may, what, exactly, is the site which tracks hurricanes for your region? (I suppose it is obvious buuuuuut thought I’d ask anyway. )
There are several – weather channels, radar tracking. Gympie Weather Radar is a good track events local to Hervey Bay and South East Queensland.
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR082.loop.shtml
I seem to remember reading of a hurricane that hit New England in the 1880s or thereabouts. How much CAGW did we have then?
Right now as I write this, New England has been hit with a series of Nor-Easters, and somehow those storms have never been associated with “warming” of any kind– quite the opposite, actually. There have been Nor’Easters in New England for at least as long as men have been there to record the events, so there’s nothing new there.
1821 and 1938 were more powerful storms than Sandy.
So that’s where all that “missing heat” has gone the past 18+ years; into “more energy in the oceans and also the atmosphere”. More desperate, magical thinking on their part.
I wonder why it stops in 2006/7?
They havem’t had time to write the script, sorry, make up the data for 2007 on. Its to inconvenient.
regards
Well, your chart of cyclone tracks makes a complete mockery of the uniqueness of these cyclones.
Anyhow, it’s the same old story of “this subject needs a great deal more study, so gimme lots more money now!”
If there had been no Australian cyclones this year, that would have been firm evidence of global warming, likewise so would have no cyclones or the usual number of cyclones.
Every time there is a bit of bad weather somewhere the snouts lift briefly from the climate change trough and a trotter is imperiously waved demanding more money.
The tropics is an area of latitude between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn and is totally dependent on the tilt of the earth’s axis for it’s location. The angle of the tilt of the earth’s axis is slowly decreasing to the angle of about 22.5 degrees as it normally does in its cycle. The Tropics are in fact shrinking at this time and no amount of weather or climate can change that.
Amen. The dingbat doesn’t know what “tropics” means.
OK, instead of “tropics”, how about “latitude of maximum hurricane intensity”?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7500/full/nature13278.html
I’ve got a big fat problem with “cat 5’…. a 3 max, according to WU…
http://icons.wunderground.com/data/dhc_archive_charts/sp_2015_charts/sp201513.gif
Cat 5, Cat 3 whats the difference, close enough for government work.
… close enough for catastrophist’s and journalist’s work 😉
yes wxactly my thoughts …
There was a thread on JoNova about this. People that were there said it wasn’t as bad as forecasted but the media was hyping it up. Someone did mention that they borrowed the American term “superstorm.”
I noticed out local news hypes up every weather event. If it supposed to snow it’s a Blizzard Watch, and if it’s rain it’s Storm Watch. I guess there aren’t enough intelligent people to realize it’s hype and question the motives.
Er…out=our. Wish we could edit.
Well they’ve lied about the wind speed of a couple of them in the Philippines in the last 6 months or so. Seems to be a pattern doesn’t it? Pathological.
Apparently Sydney was absolutely charred the other day when the temperature hit a “massive” 35 degrees. I’ve sat and watched the cricket in Melbourne on a 45 degree day. Normal for summer every single year. In fact this year has been a bit cooler and a bit more humid with some nice storms and showers. Lovely.
But, as I pointed out on JoNova, it did annoy my cat.
The only type of weather that doesn’t annoy Our cats is the hot peak of summer variety . During the middle of winter They can get quite cranky and randomly select a door to yowl at ’till it gets opened . They are convinced nice warm weather is outside one of the doors in the house if They can only find the right door to yowl at .
When I first moved too America one of the first things that struck me was that a cloud was a storm watch, drizzle was a storm, frost was arctic conditions and a half inch of snow was a blizzard.
I am not joking.
My first winter, woke up to a layer of, maybe, a half inch of snow, really not much more than a hard frost in UK terms, went to work and the parking lot was empty. Began to wonder if my watch was wrong … A couple of hours later, building still empty, I was wondering if it was some holiday I wasn’t aware of, then I heard footsteps in the corridor, so opened my door and asked where everyone was. “At home mostly, you are not going to get people going out to work after a snowstorm like that” I was told.
What part of “America”? I don’t think you’d get that reaction in the northern part of the USA. Or anywhere in Canada, for that matter…..where I am writing from. We’d be happy with only half an inch of snow.
Ian M
They are not wrong, the last time I drove to Rockhampton they were in the process of moving the Tropic of Capricorn marker to Gladstone.
Well the evidence is irrefutable.
As irrefutable as George Clooney getting married causing property values in Venice, Italy to soar and the kangaroo population in Australia to stay the same.
I noticed the news readers commenting on how worrying it was that the cyclones were moving further south. So I looked at that track plotting tool as well, and you can refine it by time period and location. I selected a a few different periods of time and I think it would be very difficult to say that there was any trend in the position of landfall. A plot of tracks from 1906 to 1929 within 200 km of Rockhampton for example shows plenty of cyclones.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/cyclones.cgi?region=ause&syear=1906&eyear=1929&loc=1&txtloc=&radius=200&ulat=23.37&ulon=150.47&lstloc=Rockhampton+%28QLD%29%2C+-23.37%2C+150.47
I remember the 1974 storm that hit Sydney which was the result of a Queensland cyclone http://thebeast.com.au/other/may-1974-the-storm-of-storms/#
Yes some of the Libs all of a sudden wanted to start grading Hurricanes on a scale like Tornadoes. Felt that CAT 1 or Tropical storm/Post Tropical Cyclone did not do what happened to NJ justice. They denied that Sandy wasn’t CAT 1 strength when it came ashore for a week and hid behind the fabricated “Super Storm” nomenclature. It was enough for me to think about what they would be saying had a Katrina or worse yet an Andrew had come ashore full strength on them.
Tropical storms and nor’easters have very different structures but storms can change between the two types depending on the dynamics of the core – tropical storms have downwelling air in the eye and hence an eye wall, nor’easters and other non-tropical storms have upwelling air in the center. (There are several other characteristics too, but these are key.)
One spinoff of Sandy is changes to how storms are handed off from the National Hurricane Center to local NWS offices – when your roof is blowing off and the storm surge knocking on the back door it’s fairly immaterial what sort of storm it is.
I think people would be very surprised if a storm like Andrew could reach the northeast as a Cat 5 storm. Those are very delicate machines, and when the storm moves past the Gulf stream into northern waters it would collapse within hours. Heck, a decent dry slot can knock one down to cat 3 in hours and take days to recover.
The 1938 hurricane managed to reach New England as a Cat 3 storm only because it had a very high ground speed and didn’t have much time to spin down. New York should have learned from it, the 1950s storms, Katrina, etc.
Ric Werme – “One spinoff of Sandy is changes to how storms are handed off from the National Hurricane Center to local NWS offices – when your roof is blowing off and the storm surge knocking on the back door it’s fairly immaterial what sort of storm it is.”
I think it was more like the foundation being washed out with Sandy. Storm surge was the culprit of the worst of it, not winds. Storm surge which came at high tide on an exposed area on the windward side of the storm.
“Climate change is resulting in the expansion of the tropics at the rate of 150-300 kilometres every 30 years, bringing more regions in the path of potential cyclones, Professor Turton said …”.
==============================
Hmmm, I’m not sure how that claim stands up to backtesting, after all the current warming trend has been going on for around 300 years so severe tropical storms would have been relatively rare in the late 1700s:
http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/documents/bf/storms-east-coast-1770-2008.pdf
Never mind what Turton said. Here are the people I trust to get it right:
https://www.jcu.edu.au/cts/
The url for the Rapid Assessment Report (PDF) is a bit big so here’s a TinyURL:
http://tinyurl.com/lpjt6sm
You won’t find much in the way of full-on contradiction as these people need to watch their backs, but on page 13 it says “The winds recorded during Marcia were below the design wind speed”.
Another quote:
“A community that receives an over-represented wind speed report may have potential for complacency in preparation or building standards in the future.”
Can’t wait for the tropics to move to Canada!