Bob Tisdale writes in with:
What Do You Suppose They’ve Been Doing At The National Hurricane Center This Summer?
http://i27.tinypic.com/im1m2r.gif
Source: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
Bocce maybe? Horseshoes?
UPDATE – Ryan Maue of Florida State University writes in comments:
Global (Northern Hemisphere) tropical cyclone ACE for the months May – June – July is the lowest in at least the past 30-years or more.
I, for one, am not surprised. Continued inactivity should persist for the next few weeks until the atmosphere catches up with the radiative warming of the tropical oceans due to the season called summer.
2007 was a dud. 2008 was saved from being a record year by 2007. 2009 is behind the pace of both years. Amazing how natural variability affects tropical cyclone formation, tracks, and intensity. Who would have thought?
Ryan’s Tropical web page at Florida State University has this graph that shows accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) :
Sorted monthly data: Text File
Note where 2009 is in the scheme of things.
They are not even getting occluded fronts,
My guess is that they are getting something more personal occluded.
Stephen Wilde: You wrote, “I’m surprised by how closely that graph above matches the ups and downs of the solar cycles 20 through 23.”
Steve J: You agreed, “I noticed the same thing, but had a hard time believing there was a true relationship since, as you noted, there should be a lag. Definitely something worth looking into.”
You’ve got to plot things. Your eyes are deceiving you. There’s no correlation:
http://i30.tinypic.com/ajrz1d.png
Not even close.
With respect to weather stations I spent a good couple of hours over two attempts trying to find the weather reporting station in Curtis NE last week, # 252100. It was NOT where the Google Map location showed it to be on Surfacestations.org.
Then I remembered the tip to look it up on the NOAA/NCDC website and I did that to find the NNE located it about 2 miles away. Drove out there to find a rain gauge but no MMT sensor in sight. Felt miserable that I’d failed to find it but had to give up due to time pressure. Sorry guys I tried.
Wade (13:08:01),
What you said is true, but I believe they take the barometric pressure and wind speed aloft, and dropsonde measurements, and estimate the sea level wind speed, which is what is listed on the update as the estimated wind speed of the storm AT SEA LEVEL. My point is that the estimated wind speeds at sea level then do not correlate to actual wind speeds measured at sea level, either at the buoys or at landfall.
Gulf temps off Tampa have reached 90 F. However, we have had strong winds out of the west for quite a while due to the position of the Bermuda high. That high is moving back to a more normal place and our winds have now returned from the southeast, more typical for summer in Florida. But, as mentioned by others several times above, the peak of hurricane season is mid Sep (hey, so is max arctic sea ice melt) so we have a long way to go.
Is anyone asking their Insurance company for a reduced premium for storm damage insurance???
The jet stream map I see on the Seattle TV weather reports show it turning almost due north out over the Pacific to get around the big high pressure area giving Seattle record high temps this week. Then it makes a 180 and goes almost due south from up in Alaska toward the Gulf coast. So, everybody is right, it’s too far north and too far south.
To Bob Tisdale: “not even close”
Very true. The curves are about four years out of phase, if that means anything.
Bob Tisdale (13:08:18) : That´s ok; so you are right, and I´m right also. How this is possible?.
-Oulu neutron counter is at >10%, highest in 45 years.
-We are along the west SA coast (at 1+2 Nino), with a permanent low cloud cover, for fifteen days, drizzling all the time, cold time. (Weather as used to bein the last 50´s and 60´s)and winter usually worsens during august.
-Sun at minimum, time of cooling off heat, right here.
-Will drizzle and rain until all that heat has reached a certain equilibrium point.
Then chances are for a feeble El Nino…or suffering of AH1V1 flue, or La Nina coming back from arrranging herself at the toilette.
Sam: Shifting the Sunspot Number data four years doesn’t help. One or more of the last three solar cycles will always be out of phase. And then there’s SC20. The ACE is in a league of its own before 1975.
http://i31.tinypic.com/15phhtg.png
“Who would have thought” asks Ryan Maue. We all remember those who were quite certain in the opposite direction?
Nogw: We can both be right.
You wrote, “Then chances are for a feeble El Nino…or suffering of AH1V1 flue, or La Nina coming back from arrranging herself at the toilette.”
I believe it will be the feeble El Nino. I don’t think we’ll have a repeat of last year where the warm waters started to form but then disappeared. Last year there was still some cool water (surface and subsurface) in the central equatorial Pacific leftover from the 2007/08 La Nina. This year that cool water is not there.
Regards
“There are NO tropical cyclones globally right now either. None. Nowhere.”
Come on – I am sure that Captain Peter Willcox and the crew of the Arctic Sunrise could find a few.
Obama has cooled the earth in 7 months….it’s clear to me.
But, but, Algore said Hurricanes and Tornadoes would increase. He even had a big hurricane image on the poster for his propaganda flick. Where’s the beef?
I would just like to remind everyone that the folks at the National Hurricane Center are operational forecasters, meteorologists and tropical climatologists. They are not the ones trying to tie hurricanes to AGW. Their focus is on damage mitigation and data analysis in the off season, and warnings and advisories during the peak of the hurricane season. Their life is a little easier if the season is slow, but they are not idle. Does your local National Weather Service forecaster have something to do even when there is not a tornado on the ground? Of course. The folks at the Hurricane Center are still tracking all the tropical waves, issuing multiple tropical weather summaries and advisories each and every day. They are prepping the public through seminars and media events. I would be willing to bet that they are just as busy as most people posting here…if not more so. And when the storms do come…they are invaluable.
As to the difference between advisory winds and observed winds at the surface: This is a function of the way the winds are measured. Surface and buoy observations are points on the map. The idea that the peak winds from any single storm will go over that specific point is rather low. Today’s aircraft, however, use state-of-the-art Doppler Radars to seek out the area of the storm with the strongest winds and then shoot dropsondes into that specific area, capturing the peak velocity. Also, hurricane winds almost always weaken when making landfall, so any observation on land will be significantly less than what is measured over the water and, consequently, in the advisory.
The modern equipment on today’s aircraft make it much easier to find and measure the peak wind of a storm. This has skewed the data, as historical storms were poorly measured, but the skew is the result of improving technology, not an AGW conspiracy. Operational tropical meteorologists are well aware of this. The academics that try to tie hurricanes to global warming seem to be oblivious. Please don’t lump the two together!
Was thinking about the lack of storms this morning and checked the stats. There are on average only 1.5 named storms between January and the start of August. So none so far is not really rare.
On the insurance front. My current home owners insurance went from $1100 to $1999 this year. I think they want to limit their exposure for hurricanes. My car insurance company will no longer insure homes in my state (VA). I did find a company for $1000 with no hurricane special deductible thanks to friend with the same old company I had who looked first. My new company only has one state with hurricane exposure, mine so hopefully it will stay without the high hurricane damage deductibles. My old policy also changed it from hurricanes to any named storm.
The low hurricane activity of the past few years has coincided with a severe drought in South and Central Texas. They could actually use a tropical storm or two (hopefully of the mild variety). I heard a presentation many years ago in San Antonio about water issues in that region and the presenter said they rely on the occasional hurricane (or remnants of one) to recharge the aquifer.
Tim Channon (14:13:12) :
Da da da da… da da da da..
Twilight Zone stuff. What a beautiful sine curve!… Can anything natural cause that? Maybe something man(n) made?
Jim Clarke (18:38:33)
Your distinction between academics and professionals should be engraved in stone!
This is not very scientific I suppose, but over the years I’ve always looked at the National Hurricane Center website, and determined where the ITCZ is. I then check the GOES satellite IR loop. It seems that most of the time if the ITCZ stays well to the south there are fewer Atlantic hurricanes. As the season heats up into August and September it moves north and then they occur more often. This year it seems to be slower to move north.
Then, measure it (the supposed ‘electric field’).
Whip out that laboratory-quality rotary-vane ‘field mill’ electrometer (static meter) and measure it (the DC static electric field)!
(I don’t believe it myself until you can QUANTIFY it.) So measure it …
Sample instruments: http://www.jci.co.uk/products.html
I picked up a model “JCI 111AM” off e-bay a few years back (complete with accys and Pelican case) for a few hundred bucks; you should see what those things show/measure in and near thunderstorms …
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Since Hurricanes and Tropical Storms are great cooling machines, the lack of them may indicate the Earth does not need any significant cooling at this time. Or, it could foreshadow some increased warming in the future.
I’m sure the warmers know exactly what will happen since the science is completely settled. Maybe we could get one of the normal contributors to explain what is going on and why so many climate scientists said we were supposed to have more of these storms. Mary, Flanagan, Bill, Joel, Nick, Phil. … jump in any time
“Jimmy Haigh (19:16:06) :
Tim Channon (14:13:12) :
Da da da da… da da da da..
Twilight Zone stuff. What a beautiful sine curve!… Can anything natural cause that? Maybe something man(n) made?”
A misunderstanding, I should have explained, yet that would take space and probably need time and investigation to fully work it out.
I am developing a tool which attempts to match a synthesizer output (from perhaps many generators, not necessary sine) to input data. In the simplest case this is non time quantised fourier synthesis.
In this case a significant component was as you saw. In my experience this is something to think about. There are for example also other components very close in harmonic and a phase structure.
The general concept is exploration where the human is trying to make sense of the data.
I’d have to say a lot more before it would fully make sense. Could be that doing anything out of the ordinary is best kept secret.
Let’s see: Global warming means H2O positive feedback, re: fewer clouds. This will let more heat/sun in, but it will be held in by that nasty pollutant CO2. If there are no tropical cyclones in the oceans, it must mean that fewer clouds/moisture is available and it is hotter/dryer over the oceans? But why aren’t we setting global temperature record highs?