Post by Ryan Maue
We all pray for the survivors and victims of the tornado tragedy in Joplin.
The mainstream print media has done an excellent job reporting on the disaster. When asking questions about relationships between climate change and tornadoes, it is very encouraging to see who is on the journalists’ Rolodex in this instance: forecasters and scientists who are actually responsible for severe weather warnings and are true tornado experts — rather than the usual attention-seeking political climate scientists and their sycophant bloggers. I’ll highlight some of the quotes by prominent experts in three articles from ABC, CBS, and Reuters. Suggestions for comments: find alternative viewpoints, clip a sentence or two, and provide the “expert” along with the URL link. The hand waving may require a wind warning…
Brave souls should get a vomit bag ready when listening to simpleton Al Roker pontificate on the cause of these tornadoes: climate change which is bringing typically rural tornadoes into urban areas…yep.
WUWT May 9, 2011: NOAA CSI: no attribution of climate change to tornado outbreak
Lead forecaster Greg Carbin of the National Weather Service’s National Severe Storm Laboratory was asked why the 2011tornado season has been so extraordinarily devastating. — Question (1): Have there been more tornadoes in 2011 than previous years? From ABC News online: Joplin, Missouri Tornado: What’s Causing the Rise in Deadly Storms?
Carbin’s answer: “There is no indication of an upward trend in either intensity or numbers. We’ve had a lot more reports of tornadoes, but most of those tornadoes are actually the weak tornadoes, the F-0. When you take out the F-0 tornadoes from the long-term record, there is very little increase in the total number of tornadoes, and we don’t see any increase in the number of violent tornadoes. It’s just that these things are coming, and they’re very rare and extreme, and they happen to be hitting populated areas. So right now, no indication of an upward trend in the strong to violent tornadoes that we’re seeing.”
Next question (2): Are strong tornadoes a result of global warming?
Carbin’s answer: “With respect to a connection to climate change … it’s an unanswered question, essentially. We know that there are ingredients that thunderstorms need that could increase in a warmer world, but we also know there are ingredients that may decrease, so the connections if any are very tenuous and the scientific discoveries on this have yet to be made.”
CBS News online: Deadliest tornado season in 50 years – but why?
Quoting the article:
At the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma last week, lead forecaster Corey Mead was already tracking the early stages of a storm system that would devastate Joplin.
We don’t fully understand how tornadoes form,” Mead says. But, as CBS News senior business correspondent Anthony Mason reports, this 17-year veteran of the National Weather Service says forecasting has improved significantly.
“We can actually anticipate the potential for those types of storms several days out,” Mead says. “But the exact locations and timing of more significant tornado threats – sometimes we don’t know up until just a few hours leading up to the events.”
…City College of New York’s professor Stan Gedzelman … He says superstorms are formed by an instability in the air that usually occurs in the Spring. “Yesterday’s instability – and the instability of the storms that hit Tuscaloosa is just about as large as I have ever seen,” he says.
Gedzelman sees nothing strange in the weather pattern this year. But year-to-date, tornadoes have killed more than 500 people. That’s seven times the average, making this the deadliest tornado season in more than half a century.
“The warning system was absolutely as good as it could be,” Gedzelman says. In fact, Joplin residents were given a 24-minute warning. Studies have shown that warning of just 6 to 15 minutes reduce the expected fatalities by more than 40 percent.
“It’s really remarkable the accuracy of the forecasts,” Gedzelman says. “It’s just that the level of destruction is beyond belief.”
It’s rare for tornadoes of this force to form at all. It’s rarer still for them to find population centers like Tuscaloosa and now Joplin.
Next up in the mainstream media: Reuters — La Nina weather pattern may be factor in more tornadoes
“La Nina typically has a more active southern jet stream. This spring that has played a role in the severe weather,” said Mark Paquette, meteorologist for AccuWeather.com.
Another factor may be warmer temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which helped contribute to a warm and muggy air mass in the south, Paquette said.
But meteorologists said it was impossible to determine if climate change is responsible for the surge in natural disasters.
…
It could be climate change might cause more tornadoes, or less tornadoes, or there might be no change,” Wurman said.
The tornadoes that hit the south in April were exceptional in their number, according to weather experts. What was unusual about Sunday’s Missouri tornado was that it made a direct hit on a small city.
“It’s bad luck,” said Paquette. “Sometimes you have tornadoes that hit in the cornfields of Kansas or Nebraska or Iowa and the only person affected is that farmer and it doesn’t even hit his house. But here we have a tornado that hit a hospital.”
The expanding population of the United States, with accompanying suburban sprawl, has created more areas for tornadoes to cause serious damage.
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The new term is “climate breakdown”.
Here in Scotland we’ve had some strong winds with gusts up to 100mph. Trees are down everywhere with the result that many roads and rail routes were closed. Just as the winds cease the Icelandic ash cloud is arriving.
… so far no mention of global warming on the BBC.
I guess the “we don’t know” answer is better than outright blaming this year’s tornadoes on man-made global warming, but the obvious, scientific answer to the question is an emphatic ‘NO”! If man-made global warming caused an increase in powerful tornadoes, then we would have seen an increasing trend in powerful tornadoes over the last 50 years. Instead, we have a decreasing trend. So if there is any connection at all, it would be that man-made global warming reduces the threat of the most powerful tornadoes. Any other answer is still a cop-out!
[ryanm: one day soon, we will have cloud resolving, microscale climate models that run at resolutions of 100s of meters or less. The computing power required will exist eventually. Designing the modeling experiment will require at least another couple decades of work…]
It is all due to the normal variation in the 18.6 year lunar declinational cycle. Maximum tornado production occurs just after maximum North culmination, and three to four days after maximum South culmination (back on the 18th +4 days = the 22nd and 23rd then also as the moon crosses the equator headed north (5-26-2011) so you can expect to see more storms through the 28th of May 2011 before it calms down again.
1974 was 37 years ago or two 18.6 year cycles it will calm down in another year or so and be back to normal slow tornado seasons then for quite a while.
http://research.aerology.com/lunar-declinational-affects-on-tornado-production/
http://research.aerology.com/category/severe-weather/tornadoes/
And then…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-link-between-climate-change-and-joplin-tornadoes-never/2011/05/23/AFrVC49G_story.html
@savethesharks says:
No other natural disaster on earth can reduce entire communities to splinters in a matter of seconds…..
There is no comparison to an EF4 or EF5 tornado to any other hazard on earth, in terms of its immediate destruction.
Um… pyroclastic flow?
Ryan Maue,
“We all pray for the survivors and victims of the tornado tragedy in Joplin.”
I have the greatest sympathy and concern for the victims of this tragedy but I do not pray. Is it asking too much for believers not to make such remarks especially on a website dedicated to scientific inquiry? How about at least the usual inclusion of “thoughts” with the prayers or maybe “many of us pray”?
Then when you click on the hyperlinked word “pray” there is a photo of a statue of praying hands with the caption “…this photo shows the only thing on the Joplin campus that was untouched by the tornado”.
Do you really endorse the idea that a deity allowed an F-5 tornado to smash a religiously affiliated hospital killing five patients, not to mention the many innocent people in the surrounding community, but purposely intervened to spare a concrete statue of praying hands?
Two thoughts. First,
“Deadliest tornado season in 50 years – but why?”
“The expanding population of the United States, with accompanying suburban sprawl, has created more areas for tornadoes to cause serious damage.”
The population of the US in 1960 was 179,323,175 possible victims. In 2010, the population was 307,006,550 possible victims. That is an increase of 127,683,375 possible victims or an increase of 71.2%. We are lucky that there are not more deaths.
Second,
“La Nina typically has a more active southern jet stream. This spring that has played a role in the severe weather,” said Mark Paquette, meteorologist for AccuWeather.com.
It is more than just La Nina. When you couple La Nina with a strong, negative PDO, you get severe tornados. Why does everyone miss the negative PDO? I expect this severe weather to last for around 20 years. Yes, it is about the change in climate, but it has nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with our current global cooling.
Jeff Wiita
Gedzelman sees nothing strange in the weather pattern this year.
A strange comment really. He must not of been watching this years jet streams. The current large trough over the USA pushing cold air into warm is part of the current jet stream pattern that is a product of the low solar output.
There has been a recorded outbreak of sanity at the Guardian.
When one stops guessing and actually asks questions and look at the data you tend to come to different conclusions.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/09/noaa-csi-no-attribution-of-climate-change-to-tornado-outbreak/
It was the extremely cold central states air mass causing the warm, relative, air from the Gulf of Mexico causing an energetic cold frontal system that spawned these tornado clusters. It you call that climate change it is up to you but inaccurate.
Before the media got as big or as news grabbing as it is today many tornadoes were not reported and there are also far more people around to report such events. Ergo- more reports so more tornadoes. But not true since we do not know exactly how many tornadoes there were 50/100 years ago. tornadoes are also more likely to destroy towns now since towns are now much bigger so statistically more likely to be hit. Still does not mean an increase in tornadoes.
ja. yes!
climate change is happening, at least from where I peeked (past 4 decades)
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
It appears that it was not the increase in green house gases that did it.
Rather it seems less clouds (as evidenced by less rain and decreasing humidity) that allowed more solar radiation in, to reach the surface of earth….
Ryan,
If you have a less atmospheric pressure, you have less friction in the atmosphere that would slow down and break up tornadoes. So, they can be more powerful.
Science has many time ignored the obvious just for the push of the dreaded AGW.
“And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.”
Condescension from the WAPO, Via 350.org.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-link-between-climate-change-and-joplin-tornadoes-never/2011/05/23/AFrVC49G_story.html
Hattip to DGH above who also posted the link.
Just a thought- but does the ‘Urban Heat Island’ effect give more likelihood to the chance of a tornado touching down where there is a relatively open area with lots of tarmac and buildings – where heat is causing updraft just as the cooler air of the thunderstorms is overhead… If so – would it be possible to modify the air movement by changing the shapes of streets and buildings?
Sorry that last sentence should read : “Would it be possible to modify the air movement and decrease likelihood of tornado touchdown by modifying the shape and composition of streets and buildings?”
davidmhoffer says:
May 23, 2011 at 9:45 pm
…
What it does is make them more likely to hit population centres because they get sucked toward them by the UHI. That is why the third world isn’t getting hit by increases in tornadoes while the first world is. We’ve got high enough UHI to suck the tornadoes off their path and into the cities, the third world doesn’t.
…
(And yes, I noticed the /sarc). Anecdotally, I’ve wondered about this, not the “sucked toward them by UHI”, but by the increase in updraft over larger urban areas (even over smaller urban areas in discrete rural areas) , due to UHI. Watching urban development across the lower Great Lakes region, I seem to be seeing an increase in intensity in convective cells over a larger area that appears to correlate with UHI. Remembering back to my youth in the 50s and 60s, I remember summer thunderstorms as being more compact, discrete late afternoon cells over a city with population density of approx 50-60K. Much of the rural area surrounding that city is now built-up, and the greater region has grown by several orders of magnitude. Could we be seeing larger tornados in UHI areas simply due to the contribution UHI enhanced updraft may be providing to convective complexes? I appreciate there is a difference between larger air mass interaction and local convective updraft, but in either case, could larger area UHI not be an intensity factor?
Washington Post has a front page article today linking the ‘increase in super strong tornados to climate change’ (paraphrased).
Awful carnage in Joplin. Condolences to thosewho have lost loved ones..Will there come a time when goverment/insurance companies say sorry we will not insure you if you live in these severe weather areas.As some one who lives in England and has a benign climate i always ask myself when i see this sort of death and destruction, why would you live there knowing that could happen?.
In this case I’m wondering if the warnings were up to snuff. Compare with the 1999 Moore tornado, which flattened a similar area and had a death toll of 36.
In the last decade, many small-market TV and radio stations have been getting rid of live staff and running on autopilot computer systems, especially on weekends.
Frederick Michael says: “Meanwhile, solar cycle 24 has gone into a frightening slide.”
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/SunspotGraph.jpg
Might not be significant yet??
What surge?
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2011.01.021
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.776/full
http://itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1128/
Regarding tornadoes and populated areas in simple terms: The larger the target, the more likely it is to get hit. As the population grows towards 9 billion in the next 40 years, we can certainly expect a corresponding increase in storm damage and deaths, unless building codes are revised substantially. Solidly built dome structures would fare far better than slab sided structures with lots of glass.
People should not blame mother nature. This is a result of our lack of foresight.
Xenia in 74, Niles in 85. Both of these were tornadoes that wiped towns off of the map here in Ohio. In 85 we went into PA on a trip and noted that the niles tornado went along a river valley into PA, and removed all of the trees on the mountainsides for miles. How soon they forget.
Jeff Wiita says:
May 24, 2011 at 2:07 am
It’s usually a bad idea to use absolutes in the presence of software engineers.
From
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/01/big-time-la-nina-tornado-and-spring-flood-season-possible/ , Joe D’Aleo said “We believe a recent climate shift favoring a cooler Pacific and more frequent La Nina events suggests we have entered a period of increasing severe storms that could last a decade or more.
I think you just lumped Joe in the “nobody” set. 🙂