This ridiculous video story below from ABC news cites über alarmist Richard Somerville of Scripps in San Diego, and is backed up with this print story.
Here’s what the print story headline said:
Raging Waters In Australia and Brazil Product of Global Warming
Quoting Somerville:
“Because the whole water cycle speeds up in a warming world, there’s more water in the atmosphere today than there was a few years ago on average, and you’re seeing a lot of that in the heavy rains and floods for example in Australia,” Sommervile [sic] said.
he adds:
“This is no longer something that’s theory or conjecture or something that comes out of computer models,” Sommerville [sic] said. “We’re observing the climate changing — it’s happening, it’s real, it’s a fact.”
Well perfessor, while a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor content, I call BS on your statement. The climate has always changed. The same argument is being used to hype increased hurricane threats, and as we’ve seen from Dr. Ryan Maue, the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) says the linkage just isn’t there.
The headline of course is sensational, they really didn’t put any thought or research into the Brisbane, QLD flooding, they simply drew a conclusion and found somebody to support it with a soundbite. I’ve seen plenty of examples of this style of crappy TV news journalism in my career. Professor Somerville apparently couldn’t be bothered to do a little historical research before claiming the floods in Queensland were connected to “global warming”, neither could ABC News.
What did ABC news and professor miss? This graph from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) on Brisbane flooding history. When you add the 2010 flood levels to the graph (as Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. bothered to do, shown in red below) all of the sudden, the historical context for the flood being driven by global warming disappears:
And this is backed up from the BoM web page narrative.
Explain then perfesser, how the 1974 flood, which was worse, links to “global warming”. Or how about the biggest flood, in 1893? How does that figure with “global warming”, especially when it was cooler in 1974 and in 1893 there was no appreciable rise in CO2 globally?
Some people will say, “well that’s just Queensland”, so here is the Australian continent. The same questions apply:
The historical narrative for 1893 from BoM:
| 3/2/1893 | Lower part of Brisbane submerged, and water still on the rise; the “Elamang” and the gunboat “Paluma’ were carried by the flood into the Botanical Gardens, and the “Natone” on to the Eagle Farm flats. |
| 4/2/1893 | Disastrous floods in the Brisbane River; 8 feet of water in Edward Street at the Courier building. Numbers of houses at Ipswich and Brisbane washed down the rivers. Seven men drowned through the flooding of the Eclipse Colliery at North Ipswich. Telegraphic and railway communication in the north and west interrupted. |
| 5/2/1893 | The lndooroopilly railway bridge washed away by the flood. Heaviest floods known in Brisbane and suburbs. |
| 6/2/1893 | The lower part of South Brisbane completely submerged. The flood rose 23’9″ above the mean spring tides and 10 feet above flood mark of 1890; north end of the Victoria Bridge destroyed. |
| 7/2/1893 | Flood waters subsiding. Sydney mail train flood bound at Goodna, unable to either proceed or return. |
| 13/2/1893 | Second flood for the year in the Brisbane River. |
| 16/2/1893 | More rain in the south east districts; another rise in the Brisbane; further floods predicted. |
| 17/2/1893 | A third flood occurred in the Brisbane River for the year. |
| 18/2/1893 | The ‘Elamang” floated off from the Botanical Gardens. Business at a standstill in Brisbane. Ipswich and other towns. Several deaths by drowning reported. |
| 19/2/1893 | The gunboat “Paluma” safely floated off the Gardens, and the “Natone” off Eagle Farm flats. Another span of the lndooroopilly railway bridge carried away. The third flood reached its maximum height at 12 noon, viz. 10 inches below the first flood. |
In my opinion, professor Somerville is spouting nonsense about Australia.
As for Brazil, they don’t have as easily accessible climatology, but I did find this newspaper front page from the 1967 Brazil flood, on the website of my friend and fellow skeptic, Alexandre Aguilar in Brazil who works for the weather forecasting firm METSUL. This event which mainly hit Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, with floods and landslides/mudslides, was the worst ever then. The headline cites 400 dead.
The final death toll was 437 people.
METSUL writes on their blog: (more photos there)
The disaster in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is the largest since the disaster Caraguatatuba in 1967 (photos). On March 18 of that year, a flood came down the hills like a tsunami of water, mud and rocks, causing a landslide. Hundreds of homes were submerged and rivers have won strong currents, trailing not only houses, but trees, bridges and other structures. The exact number of dead is unknown until today, having been speculation over 500, but officially are considered 300 fatalities. The rain gauge installed at São Sebastão in March 1967 indicated a [monthly?] precipitation of 851.0 mm, with 115.0 mm and on day 17 and 420 mm the next day. The accumulated [rainfall total] may have been higher due to saturation of the rain gauge.
Again, how did this massive flood happen without the help of CO2 back then?
The Australian rains are being driven by La Nina says NASA in this press release
“Although exacerbated by precipitation from a tropical cyclone, rainfalls of historic proportion in eastern Queensland, Australia have led to levels of flooding usually only seen once in a century,” said David Adamec, Oceanographer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “The copious rainfall is a direct result of La Niña’s effect on the Pacific trade winds and has made tropical Australia particularly rainy this year.”
UPDATE: Here’s yet another expert with a similar opinion, from CNN, where they quote a Columbia (where NASA GISS is located) lead forecaster:
The catastrophic weather events taking place across the globe – from Brazil’s and Australia’s flooding to the Eastern United States’ heavy snowfall – have two likely explanations.
Tony Barnston, lead forecaster at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, said two phenomena – La Niña and the North Atlantic Oscillation – are likely responsible for the patterns we’re seeing.
UPDATE2: T Gough in comments points out this discussion on the Met Office website:
For the Australian state of Queensland, there is strong evidence to suggest that La Niña is the main reason for the ongoing widespread flooding. The current floods are also the worst since 1974 – which coincided with the strongest La Niña on record.
They offer this chart:
And this Q&A discussion which is a transcript of a video interview (PDF)
La Nina and severe weather around the world
Adam Scaife – Senior Climate Scientist
What is La Nina?
La Nina is part of a natural climate oscillation in the tropical Pacific. It oscillates between the warm El Nino phase, El Nino is Spanish for ‘the boy’, and the cold La Nina phase. So La Nina is like the cold little sister phase of this oscillation and it’s a purely natural event, occurs every few years as part of this natural oscillation.
Is the flooding in Australia linked to La Nina?
So during La Nina the rainfall that normally falls out over the Pacific shifts west over Indonesia and indeed northern and eastern parts of Australia. So the fact that there’s been lots of flooding in Queensland recently is very consistent with the occurrence of near record La Nina this year.
Is the flooding in Sri Lanka and Brazil linked to La Nina?
So La Nina affects weather patterns throughout the globe but of course the further away you are from the La Nina the more difficult it is to pinpoint the affects, it’s a bit like waving a long stick, the uncertainty grows the further away you are from the source. And so when we look at remoter regions, like Brazil or Sri Lanka, it’s more difficult to attribute the recent flooding events to La Nina. If we take the Brazil case, then when we look in historical records and in our climate models, then southern parts of Brazil are actually dry during La Nina so it would be difficult to attribute the recent flooding near Rio to the La Nina that is going on at the moment. If you go to Sri Lanka that is a little bit more complicated, a little bit less clear because it’s right on the edge of the wet influence from La Nina, but again historically it looks like La Nina tends to drive drier conditions in Sri Lanka so the previous biggest event, or the biggest on record in fact in 1974, Sri Lanka was actually dry.
Is La Nina linked to climate change?
La Nina, El Nino cycles have been going on for a very long time, they’re natural cycles, they’re part of a natural oscillation in the Pacific and indeed when we run our climate models into the future with increasing levels of greenhouse gases then there are no consistent changes in the El Nino, La Nina cycle.
Here’s the video:
While the Met Office may have trouble forecasting winter, they are right about this basic understandign of La Nina. It seem’s there’s a consensus forming that contradicts Somerville’s view of the world.
UPDATE3: My Oz friend Dr. Jennifer Marohasy has this discussion of Eastern Australian rainfall from 2008 and offers this graph, not the 1974 peak. When this graph is updated with the latest rainfall data, it may show a spike similar to 1974.
What the graph demonstrates is that heavy rainfall spikes have occurred in the past, and they are not exclusive to our present with m ore CO2. h/t to reader Crosspatch for this link.
UPDATE4: Crosspatch also points out that BoM now has the most recent rainfall totals online, here is the rainfall for QLD:
Weather history apparently can repeat itself, and the precedent was set before CO2 became a worry.
UPDATE5: See this report about Brazil –
Is the Brazilian flooding catastrophe evidence of another global warming era extreme ?
I think Dr. Richard Somerville needs a swift kick in the butt style reality-check, or perhaps he needs a course in weather history, or both.
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Look, everyone – you can post graphs showing previous Queensland floods till you’re blue in the face – these AGW-ers are the ones who get the air time – because they have an ‘explanation’.
You and me saying: ‘Its normal; its happened many times before’ – is not a story you can put on tv…
How could the news channels survive on: ‘Nothing much has happened today..’..?
Note the story told Brisbaners (?) are reading at http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/weather/more-of-australia-getting-hot-and-wet-extremes-20110115-19rj7.html and the paper in last month’s Journal of Climate http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3791.1 .
Well, Somerville has made a believer out of me!
Just check out this drought index:
http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html
Obviously there is no global warming in the Southeast U.S. because it is cold and dry in that region. Obviously the lack of CO2 there has prevented the air from being warm enough to hold moisture. But this is really a positive feedback because all this cold will make local residents to turn on the heat in their homes which will require more energy which will create more CO2 which will then eventually warm the air again. You will see, just wait a couple of months and see how warm the region gets because to this.
It is all about sunspots and they are right in their observations.
The accumulated global warming since 1934 since the growth of global warming sunspot cycles, the amount of precipitation in the USA rose by one inch on average and low precipitation for a year rose as well as the peaks over the period 1885 to 1933.
As has been proven, lower sunspot activity lowers upper atmosphere humidity, which causes drought, which causes more dust and that seeds the clouds and causes more flooding during drought periods.
“REPLY: James Hansen is an astronomer by training, so what? It doesn’t matter if Dr. Marohasy trains goldfish for a living, LOOK AT THE DAMN DATA. ”
The folks in Australia are swimming in data.
http://www.munichre.com/en/media_relations/press_releases/2011/2011_01_03_press_release.aspx
This is an insurance company, just looking to protect their money, not to advance any scientific theory or political ideology. They recognize the threat of climate change. Much like the Pentagon and our military do.
Buzz Belleville,
Did you notice the words “PRESS RELEASE” in your link? They are using ‘climate change’ to raise insurance rates. And their rationale is certainly confusing:
The level of overall losses was slightly above the high average of the past ten years.
What is a “high average”?
WUWT is a science based site. In fact, it is the “Best Science” site on the internet. Arguments based on an insurance company’s public relations advertising are not very scientific. Is that the best argument you’ve got?
There were over twice as many floods from 1840 to 1940,
as there were from 1940 to 2010.
Man made global warming has caused the amount of floods to go down by more than half.
Buzz Belleville – you should read:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/01/signals-of-anthropogenic-climate-change.html
There are other studies that cpme to similar conclusions.
Mike Borgelt says:
January 15, 2011 at 2:56 am
bryn says: January 14, 2011 at 11:37 pm
“So is our new drive by troll, Sou.”
No Bryn, I think he’s been here before. I’m sure that I remarked that a “Sou” is an obsolete and valueless French coin.
As in “Not worth a sou”.
Sou says:
January 14, 2011 at 9:00 pm
“Thanks for posting this. The charts you’ve posted clearly support the statements by Dr Somerville and other renowned scientists that anthropogenic global warming is already exacerbating the weather around the world, with disastrous consequences. More frequent and intense precipitation (rain, floods and snow), more extensive and hotter drought, more frequent and worse fires as the global temperature rises. ”
You forgot the most important aspect of AGW. Rising CO2 levels and increasing global temperatures obviously correlate with the spread of favelas on steep hillsides and the urban sprawl into floodplains. So as long as we go on emitting more and more CO2 we will see more favelas and more construction in floodplains, exacerbating future desasters.
Please tell your masters to have this included in the next IPCC report. It’s an obvious and unprecedented correlation; we need top climatologist researchers to prove it’s also a causal link!
/sarc
LazyTeenager says:
January 15, 2011 at 3:14 am
“Richard, it is an old meme. Maybe 20 years old. Glad to see your climate science knowledge is catching up.
Here is a little question for you. How many years of crazy weather would it take to convince you?”
So let’s change the name from Global Warming to Global Craziness, shall we? It describes the AGW believers quite well.
Just so we are clear Charles W.
They predicted drier conditions for Oz but with wetter rain events. How to go wrong when one covers all bases, eh?
Hmmm how could we have ever doubted them?
I note in the UK that these Oz floods are pointedly blamed on La Nina, as if to divorce them completely from Global Warming – so that Global Warming can continue as soon as they are over.
However, The Times noted that this was a particularly “warm” La Nina. Not only wrong, but an oxymoron, I would have thought.
.
Another one Jeff Masters in his blog is also quoting high SST and Global Warming… yet in his own post demonstrates that the 1967 Brazilian floods could not be due to high SST… but still goes on…
Was global warming the cause of potential devastating floods in Brisbane during 1841 and 1893? A small population a lesser disaster.
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/brisbane_history.shtml
The current flooding has so far fallen short of the crest of 1974, and far short of the crests of 1841 and 1893.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/15/australian-floods-quee…
I’m always late to the party. 🙁
Sou, thanks for the chuckles. And an introduction to the BoM! We’d never known it existed were it not for you! Please, do yourself a favor and peruse the archives of this site. I’m certain you’ll see the nearly uncountable references to the BoM. I’m curious, the unprecedented flooding (which isn’t unprecedented) occurring in Australia, is this a global phenomenon or is AGW simply picking upon Australia and a few other places? I find it interesting that you mention Arctic ice but say nothing of the growing mass to your south.
Your argument seems to be a common theme nowadays. Back in the good old days of AGW, it was simply warming we were concerned about. Then, it moved a bit to warming and drought!(climate change?) Australia was used as proof of such concerns. Then, we see that’s its moved again to simultaneous drought and flooding! Not only that, we see the cold in the NH is caused by, you guessed it! Warming! So we moved a tad bit again, to the AGW(now climate disruption?) exacerbates weather events.
Now, I can only come up with descriptive terms for these events to be warmcold- this is defined as cold caused by the warmth of AGW, as opposed to the extinct type of cold that used to be cause by less heat. After reading a story http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2011/01/does_climate_change_explain_th.html (thanks to Steve Goddard) we see that even these events aren’t unprecedented as claimed, but serious nonetheless! Were is not for this story, we’d never learn of the AGW phenomenon called drywet! I believe Australia is falling victim to this very phenomenon! While all of the connections haven’t been made, yet, I think its fairly obvious to any casual observer that drywet is a product of warmcold. There is an intermediate undefined process involved, but I think it has something to do with open freezer doors, or some such.
Fortunately, history has a recording of these unprecedented events so we know what not to do in the future when these unprecedented events visit us again.
Sou, you want to see less flood in your country, build some dams. Understand that weather events will still occur in your country, just as they did 1839 http://climatehistory.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/From-the-Sydney-Gazette-and-New-South-Wales-Advertiser-Thursday-13-June-1839.jpg
And welcome!
“Raging Waters In Australia and Brazil Product of Global Warming”
Or maybe a prelude to the next ice age
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
Queensland Floods. Climate Scientists 2010: Less Moisture Over Australia. Climate Scientists 2011: More Moisture Over Australia
Posted on January 15, 2011 by hauntingthelibrary
In what is sure to be yet further embarrassment for advocates of the theory of man-made global warming it has emerged that climate scientists pinning the blame for the Queensland floods on global warming have been contradicting a report published by other climate scientists just weeks earlier.
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/
Also
Queenslander (architecture)
Queenslander architecture is a modern term for the vernacular type of architecture of Queensland, Australia. It is also found in the northern parts of the adjacent state of New South Wales and shares many traits with architecture in other states of Australia but is distinct and unique. The type developed in the 1840s and is still constructed today
Queenslander buildings are primarily of timber construction and can be low or high-set, one to two storeys. They are typically “tripartite” in sectional composition; underfloor (stumps), primary rooms (can be two levels), and roof. All have one or more veranda spaces, a sheltered edge of the building that is typically only part-enclosed and used as another living zone. This consideration for climate is the defining characteristic of the Queenslander type.
The raising of the main living spaces off the ground can be seen as both a stylistic and practical device. The vertical “stumps”, initially of timber, allow the building to “float” above the terrain. Queenslanders all have this underfloor area that is used to cool the building through ventilation and also for protection of the main structure from termite attack and other pests. The stumps also help to overcome any variations in the terrain that would normally require earthworks to flatten for construction and ALLOW FOR THE NATURAL FLOW OF WATER across the terrain in the event of EXCESSIVE RAIN and downpours.
They were not stupid in 1840
I’ve been saying for quite some time that a change in the speed of the water cycle is the means whereby the extra energy from more CO2 is negated by shifting it faster to space.
However solar and oceanic variability already makes such huge natural changes to the speed of the water cycle that the influence of CO2 would be miniscule and unmeasurable.
For example in the North Atlantic the jet stream position (directly related to the speed of the global water cycle) can vary by as much as 1000 miles latitudinally in response to natural solar and oceanic influences.
CO2 might shift the jets by a few hundred yards.
This is the first time that I have seen a warmist accept the speed of the water cycle overall as a response to GHG effects.
Usually they just suggest more extreme events due to more water vapour. They don’t seem to realise that the speed of the water cycle dictates the speed of energy ejection from oceans to space and that therefore it offsets the effects of GHGs.
Australian rainfall patterns during La Niña events
“There is a contraction and weakening of the effect in western Queensland, but in the east of that state, the La Niña-induced tendency towards wetter than average conditions continues to be moderate to strong. This is significant as December to February are, on average, three of the four wettest months in this part of the country. In eastern NSW, there is an increased tendency for wet conditions in comparison with the impact during the winter-spring period. As with eastern Queensland, this is significant in northern NSW because the region experiences a natural summer rainfall maximum. ”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/ninacomp.shtml
Commonwealth of Australia 2011, Bureau of Meteorology
So why were they not prepared?
Actually, there are some updated graphs:
See here:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2011/01/annual-climate-statement-bureau-of-meteorology/
From here:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rain&area=eaus&season=0112&ave_yr=0
But the rain doesn’t stop at the end of the year and I wish there were “seasonal” or “water year” graphs someplace to get an accurate picture of the rains over the course of a rainy season and not calendar year. An exceptionally dry spring can mask an exceptionally wet winter in graphs that go by calendar year.
As regards the Australian , Sri Lankan and Brazilian floods the speed of the water cycle is not in fact the cause.
What has occurred is a latitudinal shift in the air circulation systems to bring rain bands across areas that were previously under drier zones.
The more equatorward/meridional shift that has occurred is related to a cooling globe and not a warming globe.
When the globe was warming those locations were situated under drier zones because the air circulations had moved more poleward/become more zonal.
Sou (if you are still around)
You like data. Then how does 2010 have all these more extreme weather events when it was less than 0.2C above the ‘norm’. From the BOM website on climate summaries for 2010, it claims;
‘Overall, Australia’s annual mean temperature for 2010 was 22.00 °C, +0.19 °C above the 1961 to 1990 average of 21.81 °C. This ranks as the nation’s 31st-warmest year since standard records began in 1910.’
Yes, these kinds of news reports must really upset AGW skeptics, and I can understand why. But the bottom line is, the acceleration of the hydrological cycle with increased amounts of CO2 is based on solid science, and while we can’t say that any specific flooding event was caused by, or even intensified by AGW, we can say that we will see an increase in the frequency and severity of such events as more CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere.
It is completely true that the current flooding in Australia (which is far from over, as the waters near Australia remain anomalously warm) is related to the current cooler phase of the PDO as well as the current La Nina, it is at least possible that these natural ocean cycles are being intensified by AGW and/or otherwise changed in their natural character. One would expect this to occur through the acceleration of the hydrological cycle brought about by increased atmospheric CO2.