2010’s world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards: The Associated Press has published one of the most interesting pieces of environmental science journalism in a long time, and that’s quite a feat in itself. Indeed, there are some serious factual issues as the authors intersperse anecdotes with specific scientists’ quotations while playing fast and loose with the facts.
This article deserves a thorough fact-checking and deconstruction. Hold onto your seats on this roller coaster…
This is an absolute masterpiece: quotations are in the boxes, comments are mine.
This was the year that the Earth struck back. Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 – the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.
What purpose does this statement serve? Is there a moral equivalence between suicide bombers and the heartbreaking suffering associated with Haiti’s earthquake, the resulting mysteriously-caused cholera epidemic, or the devastation associated with the Pakistani floods? Apparently there is, as the authors make that case that it is either human-caused or exacerbated.
And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.
That didn’t take long.
Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.
There is no doubt that the impoverished around the world suffer disproportionately from natural disasters: their ability to mitigate is very limited with poorly constructed buildings and standards of living that could further unravel by nature’s tragic pulling on the threads of survival. Earthquakes occur without regard to the dwellers above the ground. Tropical cyclones occur without regard to the topography in their path. Weather and seismic activity cannot be controlled; it can only be adapted to with the best possible disaster prevention. This fact is not ground breaking or in any way controversial, yet it is seemingly brought up, acknowledged, and summarily dismissed while Borenstein and Bell get to work on blaming humanity for the ills of the Earth.
Climate scientists say Earth’s climate also is changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.
Some climate scientists perhaps, but there is current NO peer reviewed literature that DIRECTLY connects the floods in Pakistan or the heat wave in Russia definitively to anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, there are scant scientifically diligent explanations available for the weather/climate events of 2010, but here’s one from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory Climate Attribution or CSI outfit on the Russian heat wave. Note, this is also a draft document, and not peer reviewed (yet), but with the extent of the data analysis from inside, it has a helluva lot more weight than the word of scientists who have not demonstrated or presented similar data analysis on the Russian heat waves or the floods. Instead, as Borenstein and Bell helpfully intersperse in the article, scientists are giving expert testimony on the events without tangible evidence, but perhaps intuition, feelings, or political motivations, which are superfluous anyways to the situation at hand.
Here is NOAA’s explanation by Dr. Martin Hoerling, which has received almost no media mention anywhere, and definitely not a press-release from NOAA.
Despite this strong evidence for a warming planet, greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave. It is not known whether, or to what exent, greenhouse gas emissions may affect the frequency or intensity of blocking during summer.
AP continues:
In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined.
What in tarnation does the number of casualties associated with plane crashes have to do with anything? Simply making an academic comparison here for the readers? WUWT!
Expert Quote #1
“It’s a form of suicide, isn’t it?” Professor Roger Bilham, geological sciences University of Colorado.
Anecdote #1
“I think it is the end of the world,” she said. “Our planet warns us against what would happen if we don’t care about nature.” Mask wearing Vera Savinova, a 52-year-old administrator in a dental clinic who in August took refuge from Moscow’s record heat, smog and wildfires.
Expert Quote #2
“These (weather) events would not have happened without global warming,” said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Where’s that missing heat? It’s a travesty…
How Extreme?
The article lists a series of weather events which seemingly are examples of events contemporaneously associated with the “season”, aka winter or summer aka cold/snowy, hot/dry, and some comments in parentheses. Here’s the rundown of extreme events: blizzards over the eastern-US, Russia, and China ( always happened, still happening, and will happen again & again ) | record heat in Los Angeles on one day (Urban Heat Island effects?) | freezes in Florida (yup, happened in January 2010 and December 2010) | tropical floods in tropical Australia, and desert droughts in desert Australia | Amazon drought (though flooding in nearby Venezuela must have been missed).
Anecdote #2 (How costly?)
Ghulam Ali’s three-bedroom, one-story house in northwestern Pakistan collapsed during the floods. To rebuild, he had to borrow 50,000 rupees ($583) from friends and family.
An attempt at scientific knowledge:
Even the extremes were extreme. This year started with a good sized El Nino weather oscillation that causes all sorts of extremes worldwide. Then later in the year, the world got the mirror image weather system with a strong La Nina, which causes a different set of extremes. Having a year with both a strong El Nino and La Nina is unusual.
Almost, but not quite. Okay, it’s just untrue. La Nina is NOT the mirror image weather system of El Nino. El Nino is one mode of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is a 2-7 year period coupled atmosphere-ocean phenomena — it modulates the world’s weather — it is NOT weather. It is the number one mode of variability in the tropics. Someone please get these folks at the AP Wikipedia or Google or perhaps one of the experts can help them understand this. It’s like the fact checking / preparation that Larry King is known for! Here, Jerry Seinfeld talks to King who seriously thought Seinfeld’s show was canceled. Anyways, look at the graphic from that pesky government-run NOAA website again: when the red switches to blue, that’s when El Nino goes to La Nina, happens a lot — and if we had more than a hundred years of data, we’d see it goes back and forth, without any concern for the “human hand”.
Another attempt at scientific knowledge:
The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave – setting a national record of 111 degrees – would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.
The climate scientists he is referring to is ONE blogger at Jeff Master’s Weather Underground (no, not Bill Ayers’), Rob Carver. You’ll see from my comment #13 (RyanFSU), which is not responded to, that his interpretation of the “normalized anomaly” is woefully inadequate and should be removed as it is, uh, statistical rubbish. But, Carver is cited as “climate scientists” — the AP and the drive-by media is known for these mystery quotations of plural groups: “some people say“.
Expert Quote #3
“The extremes are changed in an extreme fashion,” said Greg Holland, director of the Earth System Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Please, someone publish a peer-reviewed transliteration of that statement, using the evidence contained in this article.
Expert Quote #4
“The science is clear that we can expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until society’s emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles are sharply reduced.” Ecoscience author, and Science Czar John Holdren.
And, almost a the end, the AP writers manage to throw in the BP oil spill, and declare the Chilean mining crew’s 69-day ordeal as the “feel good story of the year.” WUWT!
Here’s a clue AP: if you really want to understand the world’s weather and climate, don’t look to global warming. It is an absolute pittance compared to the global reorganziation of the world’s weather due to El Nino, and it will be for the foreseeable future. So, if you want the easiest, best, and most correct expert explanation for what happened in 2010 here it is:
The transition from a strong El Nino to a strong La Nina (ENSO), hardly unprecedented, dramatically changes the tropical Pacific ocean temperatures. The atmosphere and ocean, acting together in a coupled fashion, teleconnect these tropical changes to the rest of the globe — both hemispheres. Storm tracks including tropical and extratropical cyclones, large-scale weather regimes such as blocks and Rossby-wave breaking cut-off lows, and shorter-time scale oscillations such as the PNA, NAO, and AO are all NON-LINEARLY associated with ENSO.
Academically, we have only begun to scratch the surface in understanding atmospheric/climate variability — and no matter what the experts on 2010 quoted in this article purport to understand about this year’s weather, it is only hand-wavy testimony that is actually at odds with some researchers at their own government labs!
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Personally, I’m waiting for the screaming headlines that say “Climate has Flat-lined! No heating, No cooling! Scientists Mystified!”
Then of course will follow the stories about disasters if we have no floods, no storms no melting glaciers, no Icebergs…
Mark my words, the stories are coming!
Chew on this one:
Global Warming causes humans to grow taller.
hmmmm
INGSOC says:
“Drudge didn’t just bump down the headline for that (cr)AP story, he dumped it entirely! Seth Borenstoned; serial liar. I’ve already forgotten the name of the bint that co-wrote that piece (of crap) with him. I will do my best to forget I ever read it. ”
Yes, and Drudge brought it back today, December 20. Left column, near the bottom:
2010 WORLD GONE WILD: QUAKES, FLOODS, BLIZZARDS
linked to this
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20101219/D9K734E81.html
Drudge is a carnival barker who makes money with sensational headlines often linked to stupid stories. I think he would print any headline linked to anything, as long as his ad revenues kept going up.
[ryanm: please don’t disparage matt drudge here]
from mars says: December 19, 2010 at 5:17 pm
“1 W/m^2: That is a huge amount of heat. ”
I’m no scientist, but I calculate that 1 W/m^2 equates to a blackbody temperature of 65K (-208C).
1 W is 1 J/s – which would raise the temp of 1 kg of water by 1/4200 th of a degree Celcius in 1 second, or raise the temp of 1kg of water by 1 C in 1 hour and 10 minutes.
No, imo, it is _not_ a huge amount of heat.
Sleepalot
It IS a huge amount of heat for the climate.
Specially if you consider that most people that comment here believe that the oceans are cooling.
Nope. The oceans are warming.
from mars says:
December 19, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Von Shuckmann still very likely UNDERestimate the warming, as the thermo-steric sea level rise estimated in the paper is 1 mm/yr, when the total thermo-steric SLR is 3.2 mm/yr(measured from altimetry)-1.9mm/yr(ocean mass from GRACE)= 1.3 mm/yr., that is, o.3 mm/yr more than in the Von Shickmann paper.
I’ve read the link you gave too the skeptical science. It says:-
Whilst Greenland may be “losing ice mass at an accelerating rate” there is no evidence other than GRACE that the Antarctic is.
From the skeptical science:-
Grace is new technology and it has been noted that it is contradicting empirical evidence. The idea that you can calculate Ocean Heat Content by measuring the mass alone of the oceans is flawed. Only by measuring the temperature and pressure at the stratified layers of the oceans can you even begin to calculate the OHC.
AP = Always Propaganda
Look at the graphic from that pesky government-run NOAA website again: when the red switches to blue, that’s when El Nino goes to La Nina, happens a lot — and if we had more than a hundred years of data, we’d see it goes back and forth, without any concern for the “human hand”.
Remember the climate shift in 1975, looks like a lot more natural red, err sorry I mean AGW red than natural blue since then.
from mars says: December 20, 2010 at 8:24 am
“It IS a huge amount of heat for the climate.”
Ah, argument by use of CAPITAL LETTERS.
ryanm says: “please don’t disparage matt drudge here”
I didn’t disparage him; I stated a fact, which even he would probably not dispute. His headlines, which are chosen for maximum click-potential, sometimes outdo those of the old Weekly World News, which was a screamingly funny parody tabloid many dense people took seriously.
In the old days, if a natural disaster occurred, people might hunt out the “witch” in their midst who brought evil upon the land. “Modern man” thinks of them as being simple-minded, superstitious and ignorant of science -searching for evil to explain their suffering. Amazing how some people refuse to believe “natural disasters” actually exist and all disasters are caused by the evil and the greedy.
What in tarnation does the number of casualties associated with plane crashes have to do with anything? Simply making an academic comparison here for the readers? WUWT!
Propaganda tactic – the AP says it has relevance simply by presenting the comparison, therefore, it does, and readers should repeat it with the same authority to everyone else. Imo, it’s basically an example of purposeful “intellectual collapse”. – Jo Nova
Though this article is complete trash, it has an upside – the public see through this kind of rubbish and are put of climate change and green ideals completely – they are crapping in their own nest so to speak!
I experianced the Christchurch earthquake this year (7.1 magnitude) and I can tell you it was nothing to do with the climate – Unless its effects faults 15km below the ground!
@from mars
‘Nope. The oceans are warming.’
So essentially when El niño rages hippie say the oceans are warming, and when La niña rages hippies are saying the oceans are warming. All, of course, in the general statement: The oceans are warming!
I know of two oceans that aren’t warming, but hell maybe that is evidence that they are warming?
Is the antarctic ocean warming as well?
MartinGAtkins says:
December 20, 2010 at 8:39 am
“Grace is new technology and it has been noted that it is contradicting empirical evidence.”
Please show that “empirical evidence”. I have made the effort to bring here peer-reviewed literature, with links to it when that is possible (that is, when there is an open access source). It will be intersesting to see your sources so we can have an interesting discussion.
“The idea that you can calculate Ocean Heat Content by measuring the mass alone of the oceans is flawed.”
I did not calculated OHC by measuring the mass of the oceans alone. Do not criticise me for things I have not done. What I calculated is thermo-steric sea level rise, by the simple formula:
Thermo-steric SLR (mm/yr)= Total SLR from satellite altimetry (mm/yr) – Ocean mass SLR (mm/yr)
Thermo-steric SLR is a consecuence of ocean heating (the water warms and because of thermal expansion its volume increases) so this kind of SLR is proportional to oceanic heating.
“Only by measuring the temperature and pressure at the stratified layers of the oceans can you even begin to calculate the OHC.”
That is exactly what von Schuckmann did. See this link:
poseidon.inogs.it/sire/conferenze/ppt…06…/Argo_von_Schuckmann.ppt
But this is from just the upper 2000 meters of the Oceans. The oceans are more than 3000 meters deeps, so it is likely that more heat is accumulating below 2000 meters. Here enter the thermo-steric SLR as a proxy of Ocean Heat Content. Since thermo-steric SLR is proportional to OHC, by a simple proportion a very rough calculation of OHC increase in the global ocean is found.
Do the math:
0.77 W/m^2 = 1 mm/yr
x = 1.3 mm/yr
Result:
x= 1 W/m^2
Earthquakes.
Earthquakes.
…seriously?
Earthquakes:
“Was the 2010 Haiti Earthquake triggered by deforestation and the 2008 hurricanes?”
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1712
“At last week’s American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting last week in San Francisco, Shimon Wdowinsky of the University of Miami proposed a different method whereby unusual strains on the crust might trigger an earthquake. In a talk titled, Triggering of the 2010 Haiti earthquake by hurricanes and possibly deforestation , Wdowinsky studied the stresses on Earth’s crust over the epicenter of the mighty January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake that killed over 200,000 people
(…)
Tragically, the hurricanes of 2008 may have set up Haiti for an ever larger disaster. Wdowinsky computed that the amount of mass eroded away from the mountains over the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake was sufficient to cause crustal strains capable of causing a vertically-oriented slippage along a previously unknown fault”
Apparently, AP wasn’t so wrong after all.
Weather events can trigger eathquakes.
[ryanm: well if jeff masters has it on his blog, it’s gospel]
from mars
“If you use the long-term trend to 2010, you find a sea level rise near 3 mm/yr”
But your original argument, which you’ve not repeated, was based on Grace data from 2003 to 2008. Why in the world should anyone use a value obtained from a different time period to subtract from a value obtained from 2003 to 2008?
oops. Should be “which you’ve now repeated”.
John M :
I used the value of SLR over all the TOPEX/POSEIDON- JASON1-JASON 2 data (1992-2010).
The trend around 3.2 mm/yr was nearly constant, with some accelleration in 1997-1998 because of the Super 1997-1998 El Niño and some slowdown during the 2007-2008-2009 La Niña.
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_last_15.html
Since the rate of SLR has varied little over the last 20 years, you coluld use it in any interval of time, including 2003-2008 of course.
I used the Cazenave et al.paper:
A. Cazenave et al. : “Sea level budget over 2003–2008: A reevaluation from GRACE space gravimetry, satellite altimetry and Argo” (Ocean mass SLR: 1.9 +/−0.1 mm/yr)
Because it is the latest paper on that matter.
So I just used the best data avaivable at the moment. The result has some errors, but it is the best that can be done, and it is certainly better than use La Niña-biased rates of SLR between 2003 and 2008.
from mars says:
December 20, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Earthquakes:
“Was the 2010 Haiti Earthquake triggered by deforestation and the 2008 hurricanes?”
…………………….
slippage along a previously unknown fault”
Apparently, AP wasn’t so wrong after all.
Weather events can trigger eathquakes.”
___________________________
Is it hypothesis or theory? Hypothesis are cheap – and everyone has got a multitude of them.
The Physics guys can get away with wild hypothesis because:
a) No-one comprehends what they are saying; 🙂
b) It won’t matter because it is going to happen in 10^9 billion years. 🙂
But with climate science:
a) Everyone somewhat comprehends what is being said;
b) It does matter, and everyone (even the so called “denialist”) cares, and it’s right now.
My administrator at work is also hearing about it and immediately panics!!!
Not good for the science. Once she figures it out, she won’t support it anymore…..the credability thing.
Sorry I said it, please don’t kill me.
“Preliminary data show that 18 countries broke their records for the hottest day ever.”
I’d love to see where those thermometers were sited! Doubt it would appear bucolic
In the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, 230,000 people were killed.
from Mars,
Is there a reason you’re using only the ocean mass number (1.9) from Cazenave and not the “sum of ice and waters” (2.2)? The latter is what Cazenave et al. themselves used to subtract from the altimetric sea level rise, which they purposely chose to take for the same period as their study. They themselves conclude a steric rise of 0.3 mm/yr. I know you think you are more expert than they, and you think their altimetry number is “outdated”, but you prefer to use a 1993-2010 number when they themselves explicitly say they chose the contemporaneous number so as to be more relevant to their study. They explicitely say a reason for their study is that there appeared to have been a change in sea level rise around 2003, and despite your claim that sea level rise has been consistent, it has not, and varies over significant periods of time. If you want to use an updated sea level rise, use 2003 (the beginning of Cazenave’s study) to the present, which is the most up-to-date data relevant to the Cazenave study. From 2003, the rate of sea level rise has been about 2.0 mm/year. You may not like it, but that is what it is.
If you want to compare from 1993, you will have to compare with contemporaneous measurements for ocean mass numbers, not make some faith based statement that rates have been steady. Of course, over that time period, you will miss any recent changes in rates.
And if you insist on using data since the early 90s, then at least use the up-to-date number of 3.0 and not 3.2.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg
And finally, even if we take your point that all that heat somehow slipped by the Argo buoys without being noticed, doesn’t that mean the heat is effectively sequestered out of harms way?
John M says:
December 21, 2010 at 1:49 pm
from Mars,
“Is there a reason you’re using only the ocean mass number (1.9) from Cazenave and not the “sum of ice and waters” (2.2)? The latter is what Cazenave et al. themselves used to subtract from the altimetric sea level rise, which they purposely chose to take for the same period as their study.”
Well, if you like:
3.2 mm/yr-2.2 mm/yr = 1 mm/yr
In this case the von Shuckmann thermo-steric SLR is right. If it is or not, I don’t know. I t shows that the data has incertainities. By the way, I should have included the +/- errors. I didn’t for simplicity. Including the uncertainities:
Using GRACE:
(3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr) – (1.9 ±0.1 mm/yr) = 1.3±0.5 mm/yr
Using “Sum of ice and waters”
(3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr) – (2.2 ±0.28 mm/yr) = 1.0±0.68 mm/yr
There is a significant uncertainty, but in any case the oceans are accumulating heat. If von Shuckmann understimated or overestimated the heating, I don’t know, but given that his study missed the waters below 2000 meters, I think it is more likely that she undestimated the heating.
“They themselves conclude a steric rise of 0.3 mm/yr. I know you think you are more expert than they”
I do not think so. The study is from 2008, and was a La Niña year. The data is biased by ENSO.
” and you think their altimetry number is “outdated””
Yes, is outdated, as the recent data has shown.
” but you prefer to use a 1993-2010 number when they themselves explicitly say they chose the contemporaneous number so as to be more relevant to their study. They explicitely say a reason for their study is that there appeared to have been a change in sea level rise around 2003″
Yes, they said something similar:
“Yet, satellite altimetry observations indicate that global mean sea level has continued to rise since 2003, at a slightly reduced rate however (of 2.5+/−0.4 mm/yr over 2003–2008”
The key here is that 2007-2008 was a La Niña, and it biased the trend downward.
“and despite your claim that sea level rise has been consistent, it has not, and varies over significant periods of time. If you want to use an updated sea level rise, use 2003 (the beginning of Cazenave’s study) to the present, which is the most up-to-date data relevant to the Cazenave study. From 2003, the rate of sea level rise has been about 2.0 mm/year. You may not like it, but that is what it is.”
You may not like it, but the overall trend IS consistent. Just look at the figures:
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_last_15.html
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg
The SLR rate varies. El Niño accelerate the rate, La Niñas slow down it. But over 20 year, the original trend resumes a few years after. It happened after the 1997-1998 El Niño and after the 2007-2008 La Niña. It is not clear from the figures?
“If you want to compare from 1993, you will have to compare with contemporaneous measurements for ocean mass numbers, not make some faith based statement that rates have been steady. Of course, over that time period, you will miss any recent changes in rates.”
I used the Cazenave study because it is the most recent to date study about ocean mass changes. It is a bit outdated, and this of course increase errors, but is the best we have still. If you know a more recent study, I will thank you for the reference.
“And if you insist on using data since the early 90s, then at least use the up-to-date number of 3.0 and not 3.2.”
Well, your number is from the University of Colorado and I have been using the CSIRO ones.
The difference probably is for different Glacial-Isostatic Adjustment (GIA).
“And finally, even if we take your point that all that heat somehow slipped by the Argo buoys without being noticed, doesn’t that mean the heat is effectively sequestered out of harms way?”
That heat is in effect far from the surface so it not influences any more the climate, but remember that this discussion began because of the so-called Kevin Trenberth travesty.
That “travesty” is largely caused by a so-called “missing heat”. This is a result of heat accumulating far below the upper 700 meters of the ocean. This heat no longer affects the climate , but is an important part of the world heat budget.
This heat should cause a notable thermo-stric sea level rise, and it is.
I computed that thermo-steric SLR using the best data avaivable. Of course an altimetric SLR biased downward by a strong 2007-2008 La Niña is not good data. So I used the updated data.