During the past 6-years since Hurricane Katrina, global tropical cyclone frequency and energy have decreased dramatically, and are currently at near-historical record lows. According to a new peer-reviewed research paper accepted to be published, only 69 tropical storms were observed globally during 2010, the fewest in almost 40-years of reliable records.
Furthermore, when each storm’s intensity and duration were taken into account, the total global tropical cyclone accumulated energy (ACE) was found to have fallen by half to the lowest level since 1977.
In his new paper “Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity”, Dr. Ryan Maue, a meteorologist from Florida State University, examined the last 40-years of global hurricane records and found strikingly large variability in both tropical cyclone frequency and energy from year-to-year. Since 2007, global tropical cyclone activity has decreased dramatically and has continued at near-historical low levels. Indeed, only 64 tropical cyclones were observed globally in the 12-months from June 2010 – May 2011, nearly 23-storms below average obliterating the previous record low set in 1977.
On average, the North Atlantic including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea accounts for about 1/8 of total global tropical cyclone energy and frequency. However in 2010, the Atlantic saw 19 tropical storms, of which 12 became hurricanes as expected (and forecasted) due to the intense La Nina event and continued positive Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The Atlantic Ocean’s accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) corresponded to about 1/3 of the global calendar year output while the Western North Pacific typhoon season experienced a record few number. Seasonal forecasters of Atlantic hurricanes expect a similar but somewhat tempered outcome for the 2011 season, which has yet to get underway.
While the North Atlantic continued a 16-year period of above-normal activity in 2010, the North Pacific including the warm tropical waters from China to Mexico experienced the quietest tropical cyclone season in at least 40-years of historical records. Similarly, the most recent Southern Hemisphere cyclone season, except for the disastrous impacts of Yasi, was also notably below average. All told through June 27, 2011, overall global accumulated cyclone energy and frequency has settled into a period of record inactivity.
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Abstract of paper:
Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40‐years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large‐scale climate mechanisms including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one‐third of the overall calendar year global ACE.
Citation: Maue, R. N. (2011), Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, LXXXXX, doi:10.1029/2011GL047711.
Figure 1: (Updated: June 1) Last 4-decades of Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sums through June 1, 2011. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/blue boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE.
Figure 2: (Updated: June 1) Last 4-decades of Global Tropical Storm and Hurricane frequency — 12-month running sums. The top time series is the number of TCs that reach at least tropical storm strength (maximum lifetime wind speed exceeds 34-knots). The bottom time series is the number of hurricane strength (64-knots+) TCs. The added red lines are linear trends, which serve the useful purpose of delineating the respective time-series mean, since they are flat and parallel. Updated through June 1, 2011.
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“Masters is a self-admitted ideologue at this point in his scientific career. He doesn’t publish research that I know of.”
Jeff Masters apparently makes his living running a weather web site – one which I do NOT use anymore (there are much better weather sites out there anyhow – I now use intellicast.com).
The fluctuations in hurricane activity seem quite normal to me. Of course for the AGW alarmists ANY change in weather phenomenon is proof of AGW. You can’t actually “win” with these people as it is akin to arguing with a 4 year old. Now that AGW has ceased being science and has turned into a religion EVERYTHING proves AGW.
I think man-bear-pig did this trickery. It must be his fault that all the evidence is missing to support Al’s claim of Global Warming, I mean Climate Change, or whatever.
Whoo! Yer famous, Ryan! Drudge has got this linked right at the top of the page!
Best,
Frank
[RyanM: fwiw, Matt linked my personal webpage for me as a favor for all of the climate/weather links I provide him… ;-)]
The only paper he cited to “prove” that CAGW causes hurricane activity changes was this:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n3/full/ngeo779.html
Tropical cyclones and climate change
Thomas R. Knutson, John L. McBride, Johnny Chan, Kerry Emanuel, Greg Holland, Chris Landsea, Isaac Held, James P. Kossin, A. K. Srivastava & Masato Sugi
The CAGW crowd has always shown only those “peer reviewed” papers that support the cause.
Speaking of Jeff Masters, my dad (an AGW believer much to my dismay) posted on his facebook page how he thought Masters presents an evenhanded account of weather and climate. Having never heard of Masters before I decided to check out his blog…
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
This was one of the first lines I read “Unprecedented heat scorched the Earth’s surface in 2010, tying 2005 for the warmest year“. It appears to me that Mr. Masters has no idea of what the word unprecedented (or scorched for that matter) means. The rest was more of the same, I finally got bored reading.
Dad and I gonna have to have a chat…
Hello Ryan et al.
I’ve begun work on a Tropical Cyclone reference page for WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/tropical-cyclone/
Password: WUWT
Any recommendations of potential content for the page would be most appreciated.
But I thought any dissenting opinion is never published and yet I’ve seen 10+ articles that do just that………..LOL. I guess maybe there isn’t some conspiracy after all.
And Dr. Maue, do you ever talk with Dr. James Elsner……….you have similar research topics.
[no, interestingly he is in Greece right now at the 3rd International Tropical Cyclones conference. I attended the 1st in 2007, but none since.]
[the peer review process is painless if your paper is good enough — remember, that I am not only a paper submitter but also a reviewer of other papers, too]
Ryan, having seen the paper, I am curious as to what your thoughts are on what appears to be ACE actually slightly leading the ENSO indices?
[ryanm: it’s hard to figure this out since the Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone season occurs when the ENSO signal is not as strong. I suggested in my previous GRL paper in 2009 that the following TC season was set in stone due to the effects of the prior — and the corresponding imprint upon the SST in the North Pacific. It was just speculation / hypothesis, but hell, if I am right, I was the first — and I’ll be the first to take credit]
Wow……….All these dissenting paper are getting published, but I thought that wouldn’t happen. Just goes to show that if the methodology is sound it will get published.
And Dr. Maue , do you ever talk to Dr. James Elsner since your research interests are so close?
My bet:
We will soon hear, from the AGW people, about normal climate variations which are, temporarily, masking human induced warming and the predicted catastrophic events.
You know, those normal climate variations which where so well known in 1998, and so well measured, and so well dismissed, that the only explanation for the warming observed in 1998 had to be burning fossil fuel. Those normal climate variations.
Just got done reading the Big Short, about the subprime real estate bubble. All the experts had it wrong, but they all made BIG bucks until the bottom fell out of the market. The capacity for humans to fool themselves, and others, when it is in their own selfish interests, is amazing. Even more amazing was the credulity of the people who were swindled (I count myself among them). They trusted respected institutions (Investment banks, bond rating agencies, the US government, newspapers, financial advisers. A few mavericks, outside the system, made big bucks shorting the bubble. These mavericks were despised. They were nobodies, and got no respect until the day of reckoning, when they became very wealthy.
The parallels to the global warming industry are all there. Just one example. The short sellers got impatient for the market to implode. They tried getting newspapers to runs stories about the fraud in the subprime bond market. The papers declined to run those stories. They told the SEC all about it. The SEC did nothing. They had to wait until the whole thing just collapsed under its own weight.
Read the Big Short, and think: How can we make money on shorting the global warming industry?
Really. Wouldn’t you like to get rich?
SO, lets see, our hapless National Hurricane predictor(s) who have been wrong more than right predicted 18 major storms this year. The economic effect is that insurance companies base their increased rates and reluctance to cover property on this incorrect data and consumers pay more. When no storms come no one is held into account for the additional cost.
“SO, lets see, our hapless National Hurricane predictor(s) who have been wrong more than right predicted 18 major storms this year.”
Wrong more than right? Care to back that up.
“The economic effect is that insurance companies base their increased rates and reluctance to cover property on this incorrect data and consumers pay more. ”
The insurance companies do not use these predictions as their basis to determine rates et. al.
“When no storms come no one is held into account for the additional cost.”
NOAA doesn’t predict landfall.
“NOAA’s seasonal hurricane outlook does not predict where and when any of these storms may hit. Landfall is dictated by weather patterns in place at the time the storm approaches.”
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110519_atlantichurricaneoutlook.html
Does this mean Gorbull Warmmongering is over?
As someone who lived in Charleston, SC when Hugo hit, I will say “all it takes is one.”
JAFO
“the peer review process is painless if your paper is good enough”
Partly true it certainly painless if you part and the ‘Team’ , even when its rubbish , look at the recent paper on sea levels.
But try taken on the icons of AGW and expect to find yourself getting the run around.
Meanwhile to stay on message you need to remember that the dogma is that there ‘no science ‘ that refutes AGW , otherwise you in danger of called a ‘denier ‘ HTH
[ryanm: i should have put a /sarc after my quip]
I think Joe Bastardi got this right.
[ryanm: please explain]
He’s very brave. Hope the good Dr. Maue doesn’t lose his funding over what many in the university community consider blasphemy.
savethesharks says:
Ryan if you have a chance read The Fountainhead. The book was written at the median of the last century but gets EXACTLY at what is wrong with everything.
Probably the most important book written in the 20th century.
Did you perhaps mean Atlas Shrugged? My wife just got through reading that (after much prodding) and was quite amazed at the parallels to present-day events.
The Fountainhead, as I recall, doesn’t involve the larger scale as much – it’s more one man’s story.
JAFO, the issue of hurricanes/tropical cyclones and climate has not become nearly so entrenched as other issues. Additionally, given that the tropical cyclone research community has largely been of the belief that climate impacts on them would be minimal to begin with, this paper really doesn’t rock the boat that much. Your statement that “if the methodology is sound it will get published” is not supported by the preponderance of evidence. Perhaps you would like to explain what was not sound about the methodology of Ross McKitrick’s paper showing that an important claim of the IPCC was flat wrong that had to eventually be published in a stats journal because none of the climate journals would tolerate it?
The paper:
http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/ac.preprint.pdf
The story of what it went through to get published:
http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/gatekeeping_chapter.pdf
How much extra energy is leftover in the climate system when it isn’t transported to space in these hurricanes?
Dr Maue, as long as your’e answering some posts, can we get your input on the following?
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-25.shtml
This paper states that ocean color can affect a hurricane’s path (and strength).
Could the loss of chlorophyll in the phytoplankton also be affecting the ACE?
One simulation had hurricane formation dropping by 70% in one area (but a 20% increase in another area).
[ryanm: i remember this paper. It is the classical “what-if” toy model type study to determine the sensitivity of the earth-ocean system to a given parameter or factor. However, when doing these studies, often the most extreme scenario is chosen — turning off all of the chlorophyll. While this may be a factor in hurricane frequency and intensity, it is probably undetectably small with our current tools and theories of tropical cyclone dynamics. File this one away in the “cool, but not currently relevant” category.]
Sincerest congratulations Ryan, not only for the paper, but also for giving us a tool by which to quantify the energy of TS activity.
Gorebull Wormmongering should have stopped in 1998 when climate warming stoped and global warming became climate change.
So having tested the waters a bit, I learned that the future of tropical cyclones would be fewer in number worldwide by higher in categorization yet ambiguous regarding cumulative ACE values. I wonder does this ring true within the sceptical community ?
[ryanm: global ACE can be approximated by the number of hurricane each year globally — the weakest tropical storms do not contribute much to the overall total. So, as expected, hurricanes will become more intense, slightly, yet less numerous probably the year 2030-2050 or 2070. That’s when we’ll be able to detect an anthropogenic trend in ACE. Start the clock.]