The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a stunning statement in a recent report. Roger Pielke Jr. has the details on his blog.
Just to remind folks that we’ve been saying much the same thing for months on WUWT:
Global Warming = more hurricanes | Still not happening
=======================
A team of researchers under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization has published a new review paper in Nature Geoscience (PDF) updating consensus perspectives published in 1998 and 2006. The author team includes prominent scientists from either side of the “hurricane wars” of 2005-2006: Thomas R. Knutson, John L. McBride, Johnny Chan, Kerry Emanuel, Greg Holland, Chris Landsea, Isaac Held, James P. Kossin, A. K. Srivastava and Masato Sugi.
The paper reaches a number of interesting (but for those paying attention, ultimately unsurprising) conclusions. On North Atlantic hurricanes the paper states (emphasis added):
Hurricane counts (with no adjustments for possible missing cases) show a significant increase from the late 1800s to present, but do not have a significant trend from the 1850s or 1860s to present3. Other studies23 infer a substantial low-bias in early Atlantic tropical cyclone intensities (1851–1920), which, if corrected, would further reduce or possibly eliminate long-term increasing trends in basin-wide hurricane counts. Landfalling tropical storm and hurricane activity in the US shows no long-term increase (Fig. 2, orange series)20. Basin-wide major hurricane counts show a significant rising trend, but we judge these basin-wide data as unreliable for climate-trend estimation before aircraft reconnaissance in 1944.
The paper’s conclusions about global trends might raise a few eyebrows.
In terms of global tropical cyclone frequency, it was concluded25 that there was no significant change in global tropical storm or hurricane numbers from 1970 to 2004, nor any significant change in hurricane numbers for any individual basin over that period, except for the Atlantic (discussed above). Landfall in various regions of East Asia26 during the past 60 years, and those in the Philippines27 during the past century, also do not show significant trends.
The paper acknowledges that the detection of a change in tropical cyclone frequency has yet to be achieved:
Thus, considering available observational studies, and after accounting for potential errors arising from past changes in observing capabilities, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone frequency have exceeded the variability expected through natural causes.
The paper states that projections of future activity favor a reduction in storm frequency coupled with and increase in average storm intensity, with large uncertainties:
These include our assessment that tropical cyclone frequency is likely to either decrease or remain essentially the same. Despite this lack of an increase in total storm count, we project that a future increase in the globally averaged frequency of the strongest tropical cyclones is more likely than not — a higher confidence level than possible at our previous assessment6.
Does the science allow detection of such expected changes in tropical cyclone intensity based on historical trends? The authors say no:
The short time period of the data does not allow any definitive statements regarding separation of anthropogenic changes from natural decadal variability or the existence of longer-term trends and possible links to greenhouse warming. Furthermore, intensity changes may result from a systematic change in storm duration, which is another route by which the storm environment can affect intensity that has not been studied extensively.
The intensity changes projected by various modelling studies of the effects of greenhouse-gas-induced warming (Supplementary Table S2) are small in the sense that detection of an intensity change of a magnitude consistent with model projections should be very unlikely at this time37,38, given data limitations and the large interannual variability relative to the projected changes. Uncertain relationships between tropical cyclones and internal climate variability, including factors related to the SST distribution, such as vertical wind shear, also reduce our ability to confidently attribute observed intensity changes to greenhouse warming. The most significant cyclone intensity increases are found for the Atlantic Ocean basin43, but the relative contributions to this increase from multidecadal variability44 (whether internal or aerosol forced) versus greenhouse-forced warming cannot yet be confidently determined.
What about more intense rainfall?
. . . a detectable change in tropical-cyclone-related rainfall has not been established by existing studies.
What about changes in location of storm formation, storm motion, lifetime and surge?
There is no conclusive evidence that any observed changes in tropical cyclone genesis, tracks, duration and surge flooding exceed the variability expected from natural causes.
Bottom line (emphasis added)?
. . . we cannot at this time conclusively identify anthropogenic signals in past tropical cyclone data.
The latest WMO statement should indicate definitively (and once again) that it is scientifically untenable to associate trends (i.e., in the past) in hurricane activity or damage to anthropogenic causes.
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One of the authors of the paper, John McBride, responded to one of the questions put to him from ABC Watch about the paper with the following:
“It is the result of literally hundreds of scientific papers, enormous numbers of scientific experiments with computer simulations …”
One doesn’t do “scientific experiments” with “computer simulations” – all that does is test the assumptions built into the simulation code. Unbelievable – and these ‘scientists’ are paid for this stuff ? I suggest an immediate remedial course on what experimentation is for – it’s about testing nature itself, not about querying one’s own model and recording the results.
See http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/abc-cyclone-report-leaves-questions.html
EXCLUSIVE: UN Climate Panel to Announce Significant Changes:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/24/exclusive-climate-panel-announce-significant-changes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fscitech+%2528Text+-+SciTech%2529
IPCC says it will announce “within the next few days” plans to make significant changes in how it does business……..
I think that the following is supposed to be pro-AGW – but it is an interesting, if scary, description of the future that the UN and financial types have in mind for us.
http://citizensclimatelobby.org/files/Conning-the-Climate.pdf
“Carbon trading is now the fastest-growing
commodities market on earth. Since 2005, when
major greenhouse-gas polluters among the Kyoto
signatories were issued caps on their emissions
and permitted to buy credits to meet those caps,
there have been more than $300 billion worth
of carbon transactions.
“Market forces created the worldwide industrial
growth that has led to global warming,
but the United Nations has concluded that
those same forces can be used to avert climate
change. By policing this huge new effort in rechanneling
capital, it has deputized the validators
and verifiers to measure carbon and thereby
transform it into a novel commodity:
one whose value resides entirely in
the promise of its absence.
Note that Tom Knutson has also responded, his comments now on the ABC NEWS WATCH BLOG:
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/abc-cyclone-report-leaves-questions.html
I believe that the AP had an article on this same study by climate alarmist radical reporter Seth Borenstein on February 21, 2010 that said this study published in Nature Geoscience showed just the opposite of this WUWT article. Borenstein claims the studies authors conclude that there will be fewer but stronger hurricanes because of manmade global warming. His article was “Study: Warming to bring stronger hurricanes”. If I’m correct about this somebody is off target regarding what this study concludes.
Everyone reading this should go to the link to the article and read the abstract. You might want to ask Dr. Pielke Jr. how he squares the abstract with his analysis. I tried to comment on his blog, but it a pain in the patudi, and my comment was lost.
Anyway the abstract reads like more alarmist propaganda, not at all what Pielke Jr. is arguing, and the article is behind a pay wall. I haven’t read it.
REPLY: I suggest you ask the question of Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. He’s the expert on hurricane frequency/damages etc. -A
I’m sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear: my question was why do you find this research more convincing?
Maybe now Gore will have Repower America change their “fact” sheet at least regards to hurricanes
“Fact: We can expect more extreme weather. Scientists tell us that climate change has already led to more extreme weather in the United States and we can expect stronger hurricanes, more wildfires, heatwaves and droughts, to name a few.”
If some of our so called climate scientists would get their heads out the sand (or wherever) and actually look at the basic energy transfer across the air-ocean interface they would find that it is impossible for a 100 ppm increase in CO2 to cause any kind of climate change. The penetration depth of long wave infra red radiation into the ocean is less than 100 micron. Yes that’s about the width of a human hair. Only the sun can heat the ocean to depths of up to 100 meters. It is the accumulation of solar energy in the tropical oceans that causes hurricanes, (and ENSO etc.). The wind induced variations in evaporation at the ocean surface have a much larger effect on ocean surface temperature than a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2. Instead of playing with hurricane occurence numbers, look at the basic energy transfer physics and show once and for all that a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 has no effect on hurricanes or on climate in general.
The climate models are simply hard wired with the hockey stick ‘calibration’.
Remove the empirical radiative forcing garbage in/gospel out from these models, put in some real physics and the whole CO2 induced global warming problem goes away.
The evaporation data has already been published:
Yu, L., J. Climate, 2007, 20(21) 5376-5390. Global variations in oceanic evaporation (1958-2005): The role of the changing wind speed.
The so called radiative forcing from a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 is 1.7 W.m^-2. This works out to an increase in evaporation rate of 2.4 cm per year. The measurement uncertainty in ocean evaporation rate is 2.7 cm per year and the observed changes are an increase of 11 cm per year between 1978 and 2003 with an average increase in global wind speed of 0.1 m/sec.
But global warming still gets the grant money ……………
…….and perhaps a longer jail sentence
Leif Svalgaard (15:56:23) :
The way the 2nd graph looks there are 2 distinct levels of temperature upon which the signal is bouncing. It could easily fall down to the lower level and resume bouncing around.
Or, another way of looking at things, if the Upper level of signal is UHI induced, then someday when the Earth is covered in Metropolis, that will be the new global temp.
I just prefer to ignore the trend lines.
Stipulating, just for fun, that they COULD prove an “anthropogenic” signal in their data, how would they distinguish between anthropogenic CO2 increase versus other human activity — soot, for instance, or oil rigs off the coast?
How do the folks attributing (stipulated, not accepted) mosquito population increase and malaria epidemics to “warming” distinguish that signal from (stipulated) land use changes?
How do theclimate doctors diagnose this fever as typhus and not typhoid?
Truly this is an immature science
woodNfish (16:27:16) :
This is quite common with climate papers. The actual conclusions of the data if analyzed do not always match the spin put on the paper by the authors. Dr. Pielke is commenting from the context of what the paper actually says not the abstract. I cannot tell you how many papers include this spin. The authors reject scientific analysis to push their political agenda. You will find data and conclusions that any skeptic would take as damning only to be spun up in an agenda driven scientist’s paper as “still can be very bad if…” or “does not matter because…” ect…
I have found paper after paper that slip in comments to reassure the authenticity of AGW even when the paper has nothing to do with it. I suspect this is done out of pressure for publication. In this case it is about finding anything to promote AGW.
Can I answer this one?
Actually, the answer comes from K & T themselves.
The old paper is based on… drumroll please…. computer simulations.
The new paper???
Real world observation.
Here is the introduction of the 2004 paper. Quote:
2004? Pat Daniel Ash…. Say hello to the future. It’s here… now. Will the authors Knutson and Tuleya call Pat Michaels and tell him he was right after all????
I believe that the likelihood of increasingly intense S–t storms caused by the IPCC, GISS and CRU is now certain.
carrot eater (15:39:17) :
At least until you need to invent a new metric.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/90annual/techprogram/paper_165391.htm
These things tend to happen when the old metrics don’t seem to go the way you want.
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/climo.php
The money quote: “…we cannot at this time conclusively identify anthropogenic signals in past tropical cyclone data.”
Paul Daniel Ash (16:27:58) :
REPLY: I suggest you ask the question of Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. He’s the expert on hurricane frequency/damages etc. -A
I’m sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear: my question was why do you find this research more convincing?
Of course, I can’t speak for Anthony, but ………….Paul, because it is a re-work. If I were to tell you something, then later come back and say “I’ve discovered some more relevant information regarding what I originally stated.”, then wouldn’t you have more confidence my last statement as opposed to my prior? People study problems and then study them some more. Often, their original thought regarding the problem shows to be insufficient. I imagine, if you think about it, this would apply to just about everybody, including me, you and Thomas Knutson.
Paul Daniel Ash (15:54:49) :
The real question is why is the IPCC dismissing skeptic papers and cherry picking alarmist ones?
Anytime a paper comes out saying global warming will cause they end of the world, every media site and alarmist blog covers it, yet I don’t see you there calling them out for cherry picking. WUWT is one of the few places you get to here about the skeptic point of view. You have the MSM and alarmist blogs to get all of the other side you want. When you call them out get back to us.
“The paper states that projections of future activity favor a reduction in storm frequency…”
So how does this relate to:
“Global Warming = more hurricanes”?
Maue points out that ‘Accumulated Cyclone Energy’ is strongly correlated with ENSO –
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg
… and Figure S3 in:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/maue_2009_grl.pdf
All through this paper he identifies a strong link between ACE and sea surface temperatures generally. Given that your graph of GISS ocean data shows steady warming, it seems reasonable to expect an increase in overall hurricane activity with large natural variability superimposed on that trend from changes in ocean currents. I don’t see anything in the WMO statement or in Maue’s paper that would contradict this.
Kerry Emanuel in 2005:
‘Several recent studies indicate that intense storms can be expected to become more common with climate change. In August, research by Kerry Emmanuel, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published in Nature, found that the destructive energy of hurricanes had increased in line with rising ocean temperatures. “We are clearly seeing the same signal in the data,” Dr Emmanuel said yesterday.’ (sic)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article567156.ece
Kerry Emanuel in 2010:
‘…we cannot at this time conclusively identify anthropogenic signals in past tropical cyclone data.’
Nice!
I predicted Zero hurricanes hitting the US in 2009 and few overall.
I told this to everyone I know in SW Florida and not to worry about putting up and taking down the hurricane shutters. I told my State Farm insurance agent about the solar minimum and to lower their rates and stay in Florida.
It was fun watching The Weather Channel twiddled their thumbs all summer without much to report.
I predict 2 sub Cat 3 for 2010 hitting the US with minimal damage.
I plan on not worrying much about the hurricane shutters this year too.
Paul Daniel Ash (16:27:58) :
Maybe because reality is more convincing then virtual reality? Empirical evidence does not support the conclusions of worthless computer models.
Not a Model World, Re: Knutson & Tuleya 2004 ([i]Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D. Climatology[/i])
The real question is why is computer illiteracy this high?
But of course they can identify anthropogenic signals in future cyclone data. (sarcasm)
How about more Tropical Cyclones…but LESS intense?
I submit that ANY formulation as to what the future might bring is completely
without merit.
We know oh so little.
I am glad I live in the real world, that simulated one looks pretty rough.