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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Robert Hooper says:
May 24, 2011 at 4:15 am
“Washington Post has a front page article today linking the increase in super strong tornadoes to climate change (paraphrased).”
There is only one word to describe this callous attempt by the global warming industry and their enablers in the media to coop the horrible tragedy in Joplin for their personal gain:
Opportunism
“Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances, with little regard for principles.“
Paul Coppin;
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?>>>
Well there are others far more qualified to respond than me. I have to admit, I never gave my tongue in cheek remark a moment’s thought as anything but sarcasm.
I will note though that I grew up on the prairies where you could see a lot of sky. Every once in a while you could like up, and WAY up there see an air mass spinning. OK, you couldn’t see it, you could only see the whisps of cloud swirling inside it. Often you could see two, spinning in opposite directions. My understanding has always been that this is how tornadoes form, and they only touch down if the right conditions in the air mass around them tips them sideways.
As to that, I don’t see UHI being involved. We’re talking two air masses moving in opposite directions starting some air between them spinning. But UHI causing the conditions for the spinning air to tilt seem equally unlikely to me. UHI isn’t something that has a sharp demarkation point. It is a very gradual increases from the edge of the city to the centre. So even a large UHI of 2 degrees C would still be a gradient tens of miles long from city edge to city centre.
Further, we’ve seen evidence that would make me think the opposite is true. No real increase in the number of tornadoes, the bulk of them touch down over water or fields where they do little harm. Cities have been growing in size, so with more area to hit, you would think the incidence of tornadoes hitting urban areas would rise accordingly. This year we’ve seen a spate of hits on urban centres, and given natural variability, that is what one would expect. A year here and there that stands out either for an unusual number of incidents, or lack thereof.
I remember one year…would have been roughly 1990 give or take a couple years, when tornadoes just had it in for trailer parks on the Canadian prairies. I dimly recall one trailer park getting clobbered twice about a week apart (Edmonton?). It was a very odd year, a lot of lives and damage, and everyone started coming up with theories about what was causing it. Then it didn’t happen again for a few decades and everyone forgot about it.
Heidi Cullen 2010 – House Subcommittee
Okey-dokey. ;>)
Steven Goddard asks “Why Did They Choose To Start Counting In 1950?” He provides the answer. Very interesting.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/why-did-they-choose-to-start-counting-in-1950/
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html#history
@Scottish Sceptic says: May 23, 2011 at 11:45 pm
“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.”
Well, last night they were too busy trying to rubbish Shale Gas with the help of some “energy expert” from WWF.
I particularly like the hand-wringing about the “effect on the landscape” if we have a lot of shale gas wells (accompanied by pictures of an exploration rig!). No mention to the wholesale destruction of UK landscape by BigWind, of course.
I did not read all the comments. Watching the Weather Channel this morning, the expert repeated the claim about warm Gulf air. But couldn’t the snowmass remaining from the winter be keeping the cold fronts cooler? Isn’t the frontal instability influenced by the temperature differences, not the absolute temps?
Jimbo says:
May 24, 2011 at 5:47 am
Heidi Cullen 2010 House Subcommittee
“And the urgency is that the longer we wait, the further down the pipeline climate travels and works its way into weather, and once its in the weather, its there for good.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/heidi-cullens-weather-is-not-climate-moment-before-congress/”
Jimbo – she does have a Ph.D. in climate science from Columbia University…hold it…isn’t that where Hansen, Schmidt, and…
Could you expand on that in bold above please? It is an area I study/have studied …
.
Oklahoma, I would say, has better preparedness, as well as the citizenry have built additional auxiliary safety ‘structures’ (safe rooms and tornado cellars) in homes and trailer parks have built tornado shelters for tenants to seek shelter …
Let us NOT overlook the FCC mandated changeover to Digital TV with portable sets not as prevalent as they used to be and not to mention the sometimes poor digital reception that negates a picture/audio whereas a ‘picture’ with some snow was still usable (sound nearly ALWAYS came through).
.
Scottish Sceptic says:
May 23, 2011 at 11:45 pm
Here in Scotland we’ve had some strong winds with gusts up to 100mph.
But you must have gotten lots of electricity from the wind mills. /sarc
Word by an official Monday morning was sirens sounded 20 mins ahead of time … perhaps the citizenry are growing resistant to sirens?
A few weeks ago sirens sounded in my small city as a T-storm w/’lowerings’ (updraft area but with no funnels nor rotation observed) moved W to E off just to my north as I viewed it … the city fathers/the EOC playing it safe I suppose.
The weather people in the DFW market do an outstanding job of tracking and noting the position of storms on our area … this is augmented by three of the stations having their own real-time weather RADARs (each in a different location BTW) as opposed to simply re-packaging NEXRAD (WSR-88D) imagery which has a latency measured in minutes (10 mins in “clear-air mode” to around 4.5 minutes in “VCP 212” mode). (We also have two FAA-owned TDWRs active in the area.)
In Corsicana, Tx an organization was formed years ago to provide their own timely weather RADAR imagery, in lieu of TV station or NWS RADAR:
http://www.corad.org/
Ref. for various WSR-88D VCP modes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEXRAD#Scan_strategies
.
Lance , May 24, 2011 at 1:50 am
Well said.
Mycroft says:
May 24, 2011 at 5:04 am
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?.
Mycroft,
The property damage by all the tornadoes this year has been more than the previous years, the actual insured property volume and the actuarial data using the past has been actually creating a significant surplus. So, the insurance companies are doing alright.
They will be increasing the premium very soon, and that will taper off after a few year.
so, there is no chance of insurers backing off from tornado coverage ( part of windstorm/hail coverage ) on the standard HO ( HO-1 thru HO-8 )
Jim,
As the events unfolded that (April 27). The cell phones would work when the system wasn’t overloaded. As the tornado numbers increase so did the down time for cell phones to actually work. On my first try during the first round during lunch time, I had to try twice. First time to report massive rotation with hangings, by my second try and NWS picked up it was obvious one of those hangings was a large twin funnel on the outside of the rotation headed my direction.
It took usually 2-3 times of trying and finding that the system was over loaded when I made calls, same for my daughter who kept texting info from her network of friends. When the big EF 4/5 hit, my daughter got a text reporting our grocery, gas and Rx stores were leveled and that was the last text. Later that evening while traveling to get to a relatives house who somehow had power I manage to get a call out again to NWS reporting the damage near the Limestone county line. Once I got the forecaster on the phone it was clear to hear in his voice they weren’t getting all the reports. Several days later we were eating with some cops at a relief site and talked about the event. This young cop got stuck in a car wash and had tried to radio base to report damage, he couldn’t. That evening all we heard on the few radio stations still on the air was to wait and see if power would be back during that night. No mention of all the damage . In my cell phone call while near Limestone county I had to relay all the places I was seeing emergency lights and where responders were turning traffic around.
The Huntsville NWS office has a facebook page and one of the articles which was put up the week afterwards was about how difficult their jobs became when they didn’t get as many reports as they expected. They could see the radar returns showing that debris was being picked up but they weren’t getting the usual reports as to the type of damage that were out in the field.
All areas in and outside the EF 4/5 zone had massive tree, power poles and tower damage including one media weather radar were taken out. So generators had to be brought in to help get the emergency communications back up. Heard also that portable towers for cell phone coverage had to be brought in.
My guess is that Joplin is having a repeat of what we went though and seeing the twisted pieces of cars, houses there are still people to be dug out. When you are an emergency responder you got to have your teamwork to get the job done.
BTW, our company is Verzion and they do many of the company contracts in Huntsville.
I always enjoy Ryan Maue’s contributions as his writing style is highly entertaining (that is not taking anything away from the other writers). But I think he missed one nuance in this report – and that is the networks (and Reuters) have been boxing themselves in with their denial that extreme weather is due to AGW (the past winter’s snow storms). So while they would have loved to nail this tail on the donkey (AGW), they cannot so soon after denying that the tail belongs to the donkey.
Lance says:
May 24, 2011 at 1:50 am
—
Please do us all a favor and try peddling your intolerance somewhere else.
Mycroft: The problem is that such tornadoes can and do occur in almost half of the US.
Those of us who live where tornadoes are possible, already pay a premium to cover the possibility of tornado damage.
I read yesterday that the sirens were sounded 24 minutes before the tornado struck.
Perhaps that could be part of the problem. The sirens were sounding too early, and since nothing had happened for almost half an hour, people were starting to come out of their basements and safe rooms when the tornado struck.
I live in a middle sized city (250K), but even here, there are 3 stations with their own doppler radars. There must be some kind of agreement between the stations, because in times of bad weather, they combine the scans from all three radars into a single image, all three stations show the same triple scan. Each station has different software to display and help interpret the image.
“Phil Nizialek says:
May 23, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Where is everyone getting the idea that the GOM is so warm this spring? Michael mann mentioned that “fact” in his hurricane forecast last week. According to UNISYS, the GOM is almost 2 degrees C below normal for the date right now.”
I had not checked this but suspected it so. We have had over two months of strong, sustained winds off the gulf here on the coast. I’ve been here all my life and cannot recall a spring with sustained southerlies for this long a period of time. Normally we cannot fish the gulf in March due to winds, but they have usually settled by mid April.
The normal warming of the gulf may be dissipating northward due to these winds. If so, the upside may be less energy for hurricanes. The downside would be the tornados we are seeing.
The yin and yang of “Mother Gaia”.
“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… ”
UHI probably does increase the likelihood of convection over or just downwind of cities.
Living in a city also increases the likelihood that you will make it to the hospital before a heart attack kills you, that your children will be better educated, that you will have clean water to drink….the list is endless.
The cup runneth over and we complain about spillage.
New 3 part series on the BBC second part next week
“A series of films exploring the idea that we have been colonised by the machines we have built. Although we don’t realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011rbws
“This powerful idea emerged out of the hippie communes in America in the 1960s, and from counterculture computer scientists who believed that global webs of computers could liberate the world.
But, at the very moment this was happening, the science of ecology discovered that the theory of the self-regulating ecosystem wasn’t true. Instead they found that nature was really dynamic and constantly changing in unpredictable ways. But the dream of the self-organizing network had by now captured our imaginations – because it offered an alternative to the dangerous and discredited ideas of politics”
No idea how the second programme is going to pan out. The first one attacked the use of computer models in the financial markets. This is the BBC remember, can’t see it being aloud to question AGW.
From the reports I read, the warnings and sirens worked as they should, the problem is that people ignored them.
One 16-year-old visiting his grandfather in the hospital said that he heard them for almost 30 minutes but took no action until the building started to come apart. He and his grandmother ran for the hallway but he couldn’t move his grandfather. Fortunately, his grandfather only had minor injuries.
Were they waiting for someone to tell them what to do? Are people so helpless these days that they can’t save themselves with plenty of warning? With a 24 minute warning, there was no need for anyone to die, let alone 116 people. Yes, some unfortunate people did take shelter and were killed by collapsed walls, but others were found in their cars.
As for thinking the danger was over, etc. I can watch the progress of a storm myself – online or on a smart phone. I don’t even need the talking weather heads on TV or the radio. If I see the sky looking ominous, I can access detailed info in seconds.
These are the real questions people should be asking.
How very tragic.
Good to hear some in the MSM are getting it right, but not last night (May 23) on the ABC news. Their sole “expert” climatologist said the we have to expect more severe weather events like this with a warmer Earth due to global warming.
Common Sense says:
May 24, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Were they waiting for someone to tell them what to do?
Because they use the warning system for everything. People get used to it, and stop listening. Like TSA’s color alert system. Oversubscribed.