by Steve Goddard
The Atlantic Hurricane Basin remains dead quiet, and is now falling below the 1944-2005 average.
http://www.weatherstreet.com/hurricane/2010/Hurricane-Atlantic-2010.htm
I have not spent a lot of time studying hurricanes, but I have read that the “purpose” of hurricanes is to move heat quickly from the tropics to higher latitudes. Heat flow is always driven by differences in temperature. If two places were at the same temperature, there would be no heat flow.
Suppose that temperatures at higher latitudes (60N) were very warm – as they have been. What motivation would there be for hurricanes to form? The video and stil below shows UNISYS SST anomalies, with all anomalies between -1.0°C and +1.0°C removed.
Note that the Atlantic hurricane basin has very few places which are warmer than 1.0°C above normal. This agrees with Bob Tisdale’s graph.
By contrast, SST anomalies in the North Atlantic are far above normal. The difference in temperature between the tropical and north Atlantic is far below normal. Supposedly, it is that difference which gives hurricanes their raison d’être .
Things can change quickly. 1950 was the second most active hurricane season on record, and the first hurricane didn’t form until August 12.
Does it make sense that the heat engine which drives hurricane formation is basically shut down? What do you think?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
As an addendum to this “strange” season, TD5 is backing off the continent and heading back over the GoM….
If it continues southward for the next day, it may well become the tropical storm (or even weak hurricane) that was originally expected.
Pamela Gray says: {August 15, 2010 at 8:10 am}
“Tom in Florida, your link shows me that temps are cooling since July. So to me, where the temps were once pretty good for a rip roaring season, it seems less so now.”
I would agree regarding the eastern Atlantic. However, any temps over 80F (27C) can spawn tropical systems, which is probably why they place a green dividing line at that temp . After they come into being the near environment takes over regarding further development. It would be nice to find a similar chart of previous years to compare.
Most of the storms this season, did nothing but drive up insurance costs.
Even our local media in SWFL has grown tired hyping the non-existent storms.
Normally this time of year the Gulf would be bright orange-red, on the NOAA SST chart. But our pool, which is right on the Gulf waters, was barely usable all summer. It’s way too cold.
The energy for a hurricane comes from the temperature difference between the water and the air above. The temperature at some other latitude does not directly cause a hurricane and I think the word “purpose” is an anthropomorphism. A hurricane is just a heat engine that converts some of the thermal energy from the temperature difference into kinetic energy.
There is a principle of physics here that explains a lot. There is no conservation of entropy the way there’s conservation of energy. If you have two bodies, one hot and one cold, you can extract physical energy with a heat engine. But you can also just “waste” that temperature difference by letting the heat flow from the hot body to the cold one. Energy is conserved and you get slight warmer bodies in the end than if you had extracted some physical energy. But the “potential” for extracting physical energy is simply lost.
Thus, things like wind shear can disrupt hurricanes and simply prevent their formation (or lessen them). When this happens, there is no energy “buildup” that needs to be dissipated eventually (unlike, say, earthquakes). This makes long term hurricane forecasting hard as hell. Temperature differences (air-to-water) in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico matter. Wind shear matters. The weather patterns in Africa matter.
Gray’s model, which is just an empirical fit, is the best available. It is of limited value and Gray reports its accuracy honestly. We can see a week or two ahead by looking at the Atlantic but September is a total wild-card. Premature crowing about a light season is highly risky.
Let me counter that:
Another post with telford revelling in his ignorance.
Hmm. I can see where this kind of rhetoric may lack the possibility of resolution. It also lacks actual information. It does, however, bear a remarkable resemblance to those badly spelled and randomly capitalised comments posted by poorly-educated adolescents attacking posts critical of World of Warcraft or the latest Twilight saga.
When I first started questioning the whole global warming doctrine a few years ago, it was sparked not so much by any knowledge I may have had of the vast and complex subject of climate (effectively nil), but by the language being used, which had all the characteristics of a cult, religion, or conspiracy theory — things with which I am, unfortunately, fairly well acquainted. “Facts” were provided in a condescending manner; counter-arguments brushed aside with impatience and, all too often, a gratuitous personal attack.
In short, my scepticism started because the proponents of global warming simply pissed me off.
This may not seem a particularly scientific methodology, but in reality it’s actually not a bad rule of thumb. While I’m not a scientist (nor have I ever played one on TV), I’ve read a lot of scientific literature, starting at a very young age. As an unsophisticated kid it wasn’t easy to discern good science from bad, but I’ve always had an ear for language, and fairly quickly began to notice that the flat-earthers, hollow-earthers and others promoting what I would later discover to be pseudo-science, all tended to talk the same. It was like they all had the same speech patterns. The same “accent,” if you will.
And to my ear, the proponents of global warming fairly screeched with this accent.
I’m well aware that scientists can launch horrendous and personal attacks against each other, and we all know that Newton was hardly dispassionate when it came to defending his calculus; but when presenting their theories to the world, real scientists seldom treat their readers with either condescension or animosity. And virtually all of them know that whatever the state of science is at the time, it is never “settled.”
The “settled” science is left to the crackpots trying to warn us against attacks from aliens living within the core of the Earth.
The constancy of the speed of light has been tested in hundreds of ways over the years and could be considered one of the most “settled” elements of modern physics. Yet when John Moffat suggested that light might be slowing down, his idea was examined on its own merits, not dismissed out of hand with adolescent insults concerning his intelligence. And when Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons claimed to have succeeded in creating “cold fusion,” the scientific community, although expressing doubt, still took the time to try replicating the experiments.
As for global warming, I’ve now absorbed enough of the science to know that any claim of the science being “settled” is not just laughable, but bordering on criminal. I’ve watched the Climategate coverup, and seen the AGW crowd’s predictions batting close to zero. In other words, I am no longer a sceptic because of the language being used.
But thanks to you, and many, many, many AGW proponents like you, I am constantly reminded of my roots in this whole debate and what first prompted me to look at it more closely.
To return the favour, and for your reading enjoyment, may I recommend The Hollow Earth by a Dr. Raymond Bernard (appropriately enough, a pseudonym), printed in 1964. It may actually help you to improve your rhetoric and, therefore, your ability to make enemies and influence people — to become sceptics.
You folks are making insightful comments. Just two of the ones I find interesting are:
beng says: at 7:46 am
“The “heat engine” is always working. In fact, it works better in the moist subtropical zones when upper-air wind shear is blowing,…”
Ric Werme says: at 9:09 am
“Mid level dry air is important because it evaporates rain (reducing convection potential).”
To this last I say “virga.”
http://en.mimi.hu/meteorology/virga.html
Or see photo under “Dry as a Bone”, here:
http://the-oort-cloud.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
Ralph says:
August 15, 2010 at 9:06 am
> Hurricanes are simply low pressure systems that get tightly wound up because of a lack of Coriolis force in the tropical regions (because the Earth is ‘fatter’ there).
Hurricanes don’t form on the equator in part because there is no Coriolis effect. “Fattness” isn’t the key, surface angle relative the Earth’s rotational axis is.
> Low pressure systems form when jetstreams move vast quantities of upper air out of a region.
Well, sort of, but the extratropical low you’re talking about has a cold core and frontal systems. Tropical storms have a warm core (due to an eye and subsidence in the eye) and no fronts. They are also generally more compact. When an old hurricane makes its transition to and extratropical low the wind field widens.
The two types of lows are very different beasts.
I’m curious to read Hansen’s tome “Storms of my Grandchildren,” which is considered to the be the lost book of the New Testament by some Real Climate commentators:
http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/
He supposedly goes into detail about why the hurricanes, floods etc. will kill us all. I held my nose and read Gore’s “Earth in the Balance,” so I can probably laugh my way through Hansen’s book! However, I don’t plan to pay full retail!!
“richard telford says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:17 am”
“another post with Goddard revelling in his ignorance.”
Goddard clearly posted this thread as a thought experiment. Did you drop by to participate with your ideas, or just to drop off a grenade. Now the latter would just be “ignorant”.
Frederick Michael
The temperature in Phoenix 105F. The temperature at 35,000 feet above Phoenix is -65F. Why isn’t there a hurricane in Phoenix? There is plenty of humidity this time of year.
Steve, seems we may have gone through or are going through a major climatic shift. If the sun has anything to do with the climate we seem we are now on a downward tier unlike ~1955-2004 when we were definitely up on activity. It will take about five to six more years to be certain. Since this has not happened for decades, no, really centuries, most meteorologists and GCMs get used to certain patterns matching certain responses that may no longer hold true. I looked back for another downward solar movement from one tier downward to another and didn’t find one looking back as far back as 1700. There is one other upward movement in the early 1700s and one about 1955, other that those anyone’s guess is just as good as mine as you look further back from 1700, scanty records.
That might be why some patterns don’t seem to work the way they have usually acted in the last three centuries, speaking of PDO, ENSO, NAO, currents, hurricane predictions, etc. I guess one loose way to look at it is the earth climate system might actually be now resisting cooling, if proper physics allows such a human trait, as embedded thermal warmth built in the oceans now reverses. What would the proper physics properties be in action to do this resistance? Small thermal conductivity in the oceans (~0.58 W/m2/m/K) and earth’s deep rock and soil along with tiny negative temperature differentials.
I look at this way, in the year 1700 the earth put it in gear and in 2004 or so put it back in reverse as it was in the 1600s, or at least neutral and now we are just coasting. 🙂
This subject is a bit out my league, however the jet regularly or irregularly perhaps, messes with us in southern Alberta. This year is no exception. We have been running about two to three weeks late, relative to normal summer conditions. Any gardener in Calgary will attest to that. Perhaps the whole inter-influenced system is also running late as well.
stevengoddard says: {August 15, 2010 at 11:44 am}
“Frederick Michael
The temperature in Phoenix 105F. The temperature at 35,000 feet above Phoenix is -65F. Why isn’t there a hurricane in Phoenix? There is plenty of humidity this time of year.”
I know that was a rhetorical question but there ain’t much humidity in Phoenix!
http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/humid_nat_640x480.jpg
BTW, here is another gem I found.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/figure4.gif
Briefly it states that hurricane activity seems to be following a tropical multi-decadal signal and that would exclude AGW from any significant effect on hurricane activity.
There are four ingredients needed to make a large storm, available heat energy, moisture to change phase states to generate the low pressure zone, ion potentials to drive the “precipitation” (not just condensation), and a global lunar tidal effect to drive the wind patterns that tighten up as the Coriolis effects strengthens as the storm moves off of the equator.
We have been having three of these ingredients showing up in the three named disturbances so far. However the global “pole to equator ion charge gradient” is currently stagnating, all of the seasonal drivers of these shifts in charge gradients will occur later in the year than is the”Normal” (although nonrandom pattern of distribution.)
The solar cycle has been slow, but is starting to pick up as we approach the heliocentric conjunctions of three of the four outer planets that drive the global ion potentials that create and drive these large storms. I have posted a detailed forecast of the dates to expect these storms to be produced several time over the past year.
Due to the geomagnetic effects of the increased coupling, of the solar fields extended out from flares and coronal holes, as the Earth passes through the focused area that lines up heliocentrically with the outer planets:
Neptune on the 20th of August, the Earth will have an increased homopolar generator charge potential inducted into it, then relaxed over the next two weeks (till end of August 2010) that will induce the typical discharge pattern that generates the large flows of ions that allow the global tropical storms to attain sizable effects above cat 1 – cat 2 levels, because of increased wind and precipitation production, powered by the enhanced action of the opposing ion charges swept into the cyclonic flow structure.
September 21st through 24th 2010 will see the bigger set of conjunctions that will do a much better job of driving the intensity of resultant global tropical and extra-tropical storms, that form on the discharge side of the ion flux patterns, after these dates. No the season is not over yet.
The lunar declinational tides that peak at the culmination of the declinational sweep occur at Maximum South on 19th August then heads North with tropical moisture in tow until the effects has run its course by the 2nd to 4th of September 2010, is the window of opportunity for the first weaker outbreak of global TS.
The lunar declination is Maximum South again on the 15th of September 2010, ahead of the peak of charging of the Uranus / Jupiter heliocentric conjunction of the 24th of September 2010, and it should be in phase with the movement of tropical moisture laden warm air crossing the equator following the moon, as it moves North across the equator on the 23rd of September.
The same day of the peak charging effects of the homopolar generator as the Earth responds to the increased inductive effects carried on the solar wind to affect the coupling through to the outer planets from the sun out of a large coronal hole created on the sun just for the purpose of providing the magnetic field energy needed. This powers up the cycle of positive ion charging along the ITCZ, by pushing more moisture into the lower atmosphere, to then add drive to the ion discharging phase, driving the resultant outbreak of global wide intense tropical storms, that will occur post conjunction.
By the time the Moon reaches maximum North declination on the 29th of September 2010, the global ACE values will be close to peak for the year. Inertial momentum of the global systems should carry on the enhanced zonal flow through the next two weeks.
With the continual decreasing electromagnetic coupling as the Earth moves past these outer planets the severe weather activity levels, will drop with continued attempted recovery enhancements at the lunar declinational culminations, until by the time of the synod conjunction of Venus and Earth on the 29th of October 2010, we will see a last hurrah, then a slow shift into the storms of a deep cold NH winter.
Ian W said:
“It would be very useful if people stopped confusing temperature and heat content and instead were more disciplined about the terms. ”
I would say that it might be better to get rid of the term “heat content” and just stick
with heat as the thermal, as opposed to work, energy which is transferred from a higher temperature system to a lower temperature system. Once heat transfer has occurred, the system then has internal energy which cannot be separated into any kind of work energy and heat content. But humans seem to want to pretend that the thermal energy is still separate from the work energy in some separate internal ensemble.
There would not be so much discussion about heat transfer in the atmosphere if heat were considered as the net thermal energy transfer from the warmer body to the cooler body. There is always a time delay for input thermal energy to pass into and through a body thus causing an change in equilibrium temperatures by delaying the transfer of the heat energy to a cooler body.
Richard Holle says: {August 15, 2010 at 2:04 pm}
“to drive the wind patterns that tighten up as the Coriolis effects strengthens as the storm moves off of the equator.”
“don’t understand what you mean by “as the storm moves off the equator”.
Tropical systems that intensify to hurricanes do not form on or near the equator.
They are in the 12-15 degrees area.
stevengoddard says:
August 15, 2010 at 11:44 am
Frederick Michael
The temperature in Phoenix 105F. The temperature at 35,000 feet above Phoenix is -65F. Why isn’t there a hurricane in Phoenix? There is plenty of humidity this time of year.
I’ve heard of oceanfront property in Arizona but I haven’t gone there to see it. When I mentioned the temperature difference between the water and the air above it, I should have been more specific. It needs to be a body of water as big as the hurricane. Anything less can’t sustain the hurricane.
Tom in Florida says:
August 15, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Richard Holle says: {August 15, 2010 at 2:04 pm}
“to drive the wind patterns that tighten up as the Coriolis effects strengthens as the storm moves off of the equator.”
“don’t understand what you mean by “as the storm moves off the equator”.
Tropical systems that intensify to hurricanes do not form on or near the equator.
They are in the 12-15 degrees area.
Reply;
Much editing of a spontaneous, (non cut and paste response) was needed, evidently not enough was done…..Would you prefer I said that; As the tropical air mass that becomes the tropical storm, moves off of the ITCZ and further away from the equator, the Coriolis effect kicks in and strengthens, to assist the formation of the cyclonic circulation along with the associated ionic drives?
I was trying to post a comment without writing a whole book. Thanks for the peer / peer review.
I’ve been in Phoenix in August when the dew point was over 70 degrees. It can get incredibly humid there during the monsoon season.
I would like to echo Andres Valencia’s admonition, “But pay attention to Ryan N. Maue’s “2010 Global Tropical Cyclone Activity Update”, http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/.
Many of you are no doubt familiar with Livingston and Penn’s theory that visible sunspots may be on the verge of disappearing because of decreasing magnetic field strengths. Evidently, the field strengths associated with sunspots have inexorably been decreasing over time, and the belief is once they drop below a certain strength, sunspots will not be visible. It looks like we may be seeing something like that wrt hurricanes.
Maue’s website documents the “accumulated cyclonic energy” (ACE) that tropical storms, both Atlantic and Pacific, have produced by month (and year). ACE factors in storm strength and duration instead of just numbers of storms. It has been dropping for the last several years, and is now at the lowest level in over thirty years.
If you look at the three named storms this year, two of them are among the weakest in the record books. I’m not sure if Colin would have even been recorded prior to the satellite era. It looks like either something is either taking or preventing storms from developing much energy. Very curious.
stevengoddard says: {August 15, 2010 at 4:11 pm}
“I’ve been in Phoenix in August when the dew point was over 70 degrees. It can get incredibly humid there during the monsoon season”
A dew point of 70 degrees with an actual temperature of 100 degrees equates to about 35% relative humidity. Not really all that humid.
Richard Holle says: {August 15, 2010 at 4:00 pm}
Sorry Richard, wasn’t trying to be nit picky. It’s just that there are many who do not follow hurricanes and mentioning them with “equator” can create incorrect images.
Don´t worry about names NOAA has opened a newer and more flexible birth´s register.
And, be careful not to stir your cup of coffee/tea too much or opening your shower, NOAA will name it right away.
Tom in Florida
A dew point of 70 degrees is stifling.