From The Japan Times:
The number of typhoons this year could turn out to be the lowest on record, which experts theorize could be a result of the El Nino phenomenon lasting until this spring and the summer’s powerful high-pressure system in the Pacific.
As of Saturday, 14 typhoons — tropical cyclones generated in the Northwest Pacific or the South China Sea north of the equator with a minimum wind velocity of 61.9 kph — have been spawned this year.
The Meteorological Agency, which has been keeping statistics on typhoons since 1951, said the lowest number — 16 — was in 1998. The average per year between 1971 and 2000 was 26.7, while the most on record is 39 in 1967.
…
The agency believes the well-developed Pacific high that brought this summer’s heat wave has weakened the atmosphere’s convective activity in the sea, nipping the development of rain clouds, which help produce typhoons.
El Nino can similarly work to dampen the air’s convective activity in the sea near the Philippines, and the latest phenomenon is believed to have contributed to decreasing the number of typhoons this year, agency officials said.
Simulations run by the agency show that progress in global warming will reduce the number of typhoons but make each one more intense.
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Dr. Ryan Maue’s ACE plot also shows a low year. He adds: “The agency should have stopped when they were ahead and not mentioned global warming during a historically quiet Typhoon season. Their explanation must have been lost in the translation because almost everyone has noticed that there has been a rapidly developing and intense La Nina during the summer and fall of 2010. Put very simply, the previous historically quiet Typhoon seasons in the Western Pacific basin are usually associated with La Nina. Global ACE is still near 33-year lows, and shows no signs of picking up anytime soon.”
Figure: Year-to-Date (November 21) Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE; units: 104 knots2) for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole (top blue time series) and for the combination of the Western North Pacific (WPAC), Eastern North Pacific (EPAC), and Northern Indian (NIO) basins (bottom red time series). The difference between the two lines is therefore the contribution of the North Atlantic hurricane basin.
Stop Global Dumbing Now says:
November 21, 2010 at 10:29 am
I lost track of the Atlantic hurricane count at 5. What is the final tally and how did Dr. Hansimian do?
The final tally isn’t really final until Nov 30, but even that sometimes isn’t final. The current tally from http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/2010atlan.shtml lists
# Hurricane Alex – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Depression Two – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Storm Bonnie – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Storm Colin – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Depression Five – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Danielle – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Earl – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Storm Fiona – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Storm Gaston – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Storm Hermine – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Igor – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Julia – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Karl – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Lisa – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Storm Matthew – PDF – KMZ
# Tropical Storm Nicole – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Otto – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Paula – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Richard – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Shary – PDF – KMZ
# Hurricane Tomas – PDF – KMZ
12 hurricanes + 7 lesser storms = 19 named storms. (Letters unused Q, U, V, W, X, Y, Z)
NOAA expected (n August):
* 14 to 20 named storms (top winds of 39 mph or higher), including:
* 8 to 12 hurricanes (top winds of 74 mph or higher), of which:
* 4 to 6 could be major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of at least 111 mph)
Phil Klotzbach & Bill Gray (see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/10/klotzbach-on-atlantic-hurricane-season-analysis/ ) forecasts a total of 18 named storms, 10 hurricanes and 5 major hurricanes (compared with the climatological average of 11 named storms, 6 hurricanes and 2 major hurricanes).
Not too bad, given the slow start of the season!
You can look up the number of major storms and the chimp’s forecast.
@ur momisugly Mike McMillan 21 Nov 1319 hrs.
Wasn’t it in 1967 that climate scientists were informing us of the danger of a new Ice Age?
The dearth of typhoons is very disruptive to the typhoon preparedness process. That’s why we call it man-made global “climate disruption”. The computer climate models now show that anything could happen anytime, anywhere. Our $ billions have produced a very useful predictive alternative to “the forked stick”.
“The agency believes the well-developed Pacific high that brought this summer’s heat wave has weakened the atmosphere’s convective activity in the sea,” and “El Nino can similarly work to dampen the air’s convective activity in the sea near the Philippines,”
On October 5, there was a discussion on Dr. Spencer’s site as to why the anomaly in the troposphere jumped up in September while the surface temperatures dropped. Could the above be part of the reason, namely that strong El Ninos reduce mixing of air?
But the models provide the evidence. Warming means more activity. One of the model runs predicted this. What went wrong?
———–
AGW is way off the rails now. The theory has to make predictions. We have to wait over 30 years of climate to see if it has been validated. Thirty years on we have seen contrary evidence. Yet we are called deniers. :o)
Ric Werme says:
November 21, 2010 at 11:44 am
How many of those were fish storms? Subtract the fish storms from the “visible” storms (storms on or near land) to put them in historic perspective for us.
The fish storms would never have been noticed prior to the 20th century, storm worthy ships, and the radio—the only ships that would have registered them would have been sunk by them, or the rare survivor not believed as to their ferocity.
scott ramsdell
November 21, 2010 at 11:19
It is posts such as yours that make us CAGW skeptics look like idiots.
No energy is being taken, from the earth’s rotational energy, by mountains(or anything else) stirring through the atmosphere.
You should stick to telling us how idiotic Obummer and Goreacle are, and leave the sciency stuff to the sciency people here. Please.
As my prediction of the last two years were 100% accurate of zero major hurricanes hutting the US, I will go out on a limb to predict for next year my same forecast as the previous two years.
Would you mind clarifying what you mean by a “fish storm”, some of us have never heard of that term before. Perhaps it is a regional term, but I have no clue what you are referring to.
Larry
bubbagyro says:
November 21, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Not true – many of this year’s “fish storms” were well observed on land and appreciated by surfers (and not so appreciated by clueless swimmers and the life guards who pulled them out of rip currents). Tropical storms produce long-period swells, and major hurricanes produce swells that can be observed a thousand miles away. Julia and Igor (I think it was) were cat 4 storms that were far away from the US east coast but had newsworthy impact.
Ships logs from the 18th century have a wealth of information about tropical storms.
hotrod ( Larry L ) says:
November 21, 2010 at 10:27 am
Joe Lalonde says:
November 21, 2010 at 3:37 am
The average wind has been slowing globally which would effect the energy available for these events.
Interesting thought — since winds are driven by temperature/pressure differentials, could the world wide average wind speed be a convenient way to measure the energy flow in the atmosphere.
For example:
In the hypothetical case of zero heat flow and uniform world wide temperature, there would be zero winds as I understand the mechanics of Hadley cell, and Ferrell cell formation. No temperature to drive convection so no air motion.
As temperature imbalance increases, the wind energy developed should increase. If you used the earths wind system as a method to integrate all the temperature differentials there would be no need to actually measure temperatures at all. You could use Doppler radar or similar satellite wide area sensing technology to directly measure the results of those temperature differentials in the wind velocity/energy.
Net global wind energy goes up, then heat flow must have changed with a net heat flow into the system from the sun, or increased heat loss from the system at the cold sinks.
Let the atmosphere itself serve as the computer to integrate all those small temperature differences, and use the resultant wind energy as your data.
I suspect our understanding of bulk atmospheric wind speeds is higher than our temperature measuring precision over the same bulk volume of the atmosphere. This would also automatically deal with issues like heat island effects.
A single Doppler radar site, could map the wind energy over thousands of square miles of land area, and millions of cubic meters of atmosphere.
There are probably a thousand other considerations that would throw a monkey wrench into the calculation of net wind energy, but perhaps the concept is worth a look.
Larry
All except you forgot to consider this: What’s the temperature in a blazing hot sand storm versus the temp in a freezing snow storm?
If wind were the only factor, you’d be correct.
hotrod ( Larry L ) says:
November 21, 2010 at 10:27 am
If you were to stop the planet, the atmosphere, water and debris would sheer off at around 1669.8km/hr at the equator.
This planet generates massive energy pulling the atmosphere around and creating the pressure. The sun’s energy is not a solid energy like the centrifugal force of the planet, it can be absorbed or deflected or a combination.
Just a casual engineering observation of data like the decline in the ACE, I would say the Earth is conserving its heat energy.
Could this be a mechanism where the climatic systems are maintaining stable surface temperature in the face of a cooling trend?
hotrod ( Larry L ) asked: “Would you mind clarifying what you mean by a “fish storm””
A fish storm is one that stays out at sea.
My first thought: Typhoon Tally? What an odd name for an W. Pacific storm.
My second thought: D’oh!
2010 Typhoon Tally May Be Lowest On Record
That’s only because of global warming.
;O)
Jane Lubchenco used AGW winds to make her whopper of a fabrication (AGW=Ocean Dead zones) sound scientific.
“Extreme and unusual fluctuations in wind patterns and ocean currents are consistent with the predicted impacts of some global climate change models”
It’s one of the most widly distributed blatant fabrications by a scientist in the AGW movement. That and her ocean acidification embellishments got her millions in research grants and her appointment to head NOAA.
acementhead says: scott ramsdell, “It is posts such as yours that make us CAGW skeptics look like idiots. No energy is being taken, from the earth’s rotational energy, by mountains(or anything else) stirring through the atmosphere.”
Cementhead, suppose you show us exactly where in Scott’s comment he stated that energy will be taken from the earth’s rotational energy by mountain-to-air friction?