In a blow to those that want to link increased severe weather with global warming/climate change, a new record low has been set according to NOAA tornado data. At the same time, it has been 2750 days (7 years, 6 months, 11 days) since the last major Hurricane (Cat 3 or greater) hit the USA on October 24th 2005 when hurricane Wilma made landfall. Each new day is a new record in this major hurricane drought.
Essay by Harold Brooks, NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory
Graph: Harold Brooks: NOAA
The 12-month period from May 2012 to April 2013 was remarkable for the absence of tornado activity and tornado impacts in the United States.
We can start by looking at the number of EF1 and stronger tornadoes during that period. A final count is available through January 2013 and we have a pretty good estimate of how many occurred in February through April, although final numbers won’t be available until July. Although the 12 month total may change a little bit with the final data, it’s unlikely to change enough to affect the results here.
From May 2012-April 2013, the estimate is that there were 197 tornadoes rated EF1 or stronger. Where does that stack up historically? Well, we have pretty good data back to 1954. During that time, the previous low for (E)F1 and stronger tornadoes in a 12 consecutive calendar month period was 247, from June 1991-May 1992. The next lowest (ignoring the overlapping periods, such as April 2012-March 2013) was 270 from November 1986-October 1987. The lowest non-overlapping 12 month counts on record from 1954-present, with the starting month, are:
197 May 2012 (preliminary)
247 June 1991
270 November 1986
289 December 2001
298 June 2000
This apparent record was set less than two years after the record for most EF1+ tornadoes in a 12-month period was set, with 1050 from June 2010-May 2011. The time series showing the evolution of the number of (E)F1+ tornadoes since 1954 is below. The number of (E)F1+ tornadoes in the 12 months beginning with the time on the x-axis is plotted for every month starting in January 1954 and ending in May 2012, the most recent point.
ef1plus12
The death toll from May 2012-April 2013 was 7. National Weather Service official statistics go back to January 1950, but we can extend that by using the work of Tom Grazulis from the Tornado Project, who has collected tornado fatality information back into the 17th century. The data are reasonably good back to 1875, but it’s still possible that there are some missed fatalities, particularly as we go back farther in time. So, where does 7 fatalities in 12 consecutive calendar months stack up? Again, here are the lowest totals, going back to 1875, for 12 consecutive months, with the starting month. (For overlapping periods, such as April 2012-March 2013 and May 2012-April 2013, only the lowest period is listed.)
5 September 1899
7 May 2012
8 August 1991
12 November 1909
12 May 1940
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Update: Here is an updated chart showing the hurricane drought stretch. Originally done by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., I’ve updated it since he is taking a blog break.
Reference: NOAA/NCDC US Landfalling hurricanes: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E23.html
I am delighted to see a bona fide NOAA scientist present real, unadjusted data for what it is. I really believe NOAA is on the mend.
The days between a major hurricane chart is very interesting with regard to the long term 100 + year picture it draws.
It’s actually starting to warm up here in Western Washington State. Beautiful sunny day (my birthday yay!) and it’s supposed to be in the mid-70s. Perfect!
What will be interesting to watch is when these coupled variations decouple. decoupling is usually an intense and chaotic thing. If a Dalton event is what is in our future then the decoupling will be massive cooling and rapidly. If not then warming will begin and we will have a massive surge in storms and sever weather. Again the SUN is the controlling fact on this one.
Tornado drought? That’s fine by me, here in OKC.
2011-12, mild continental US winter:
Global warming!
Early 2012-13, colder and more severe continental US winter:
Global warming! There will be less snow exactly like they said before, but that’s total, snow events will be rarer but perhaps more extreme.
Last night, ABC World News, reporting on the record unprecedented historic never-happened-before May snowstorms and extreme cold of the nigh-unending winter and delayed spring:
*crickets*
It’s the weather, Omega Block system, it happens.
Tornado and hurricane drought? What’s that? They never heard of that, it’s a (brief) return to normalcy before all of that accumulated hidden warming takes effect, etc.
It also could just be the weather.
A year of tornadoes is weather, not climate. Half a decade of hurricanes is weatherish. The half century records of tornadoes, hurricanes, and ACE (Ryan Maui) are climate, and put the lie to CAGW as does SREX 2012.
Now the interesting things to be learned about weather (not climate) is why the recent tornado and hurricane lows? Worth redirecting a lot of wasted climate research dollars into weather questions like that. Knowing would be useful in saying watch out, this year could be bad because…
Now the interesting things to be learned about weather (not climate) is why the recent tornado and hurricane lows?
More cosmic rays, due to reducing solar activity, seeding more clouds, reflecting more sunlight back into space, leading to lower insolation of the ocean, leading to less energy to produce severe hurricanes.
Just guessing… 🙂
Warmists would say that we’ve just been lucky wrt hurricanes, because they’ve stayed offshore recently. They may be right: Bastardi and some other authority predict lots of hurricanes this year. And someone else trustworthy here predicts a lot of tornados later this month.
The other day I was listening to the CBS news on the local radio at the top of the hour. They mentioned the “historic” snowstorms in Minnesota and Wisconsin, that the residents hadn’t seen this in almost “half a decade”.
…
Wow. A WHOLE half a decade? If they had said “5 years” it wouldn’t have sounded so dramatic. That’s unbiased reporting for you.
The same Harold Brooks that was giving me a hard time for including his papers on my list?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html#Tornadoes
He never gave me an answer if I was able to use his papers to support skeptic arguments that tornadoes are not getting worse due to global warming.
Joseph Bastardi recently stated the Atlantic is in a warm period similar to the1950s. Then are tornadoes and hurricanes less frequent with a warmer Atlantic?
pochas says:
May 4, 2013 at 11:00 am
I am delighted to see a bona fide NOAA scientist present real, unadjusted data for what it is. I really believe NOAA is on the mend.
While it is somewhat encouraging, the fact that there is no mention of the fact that the 2011 “record” high is likely only due to the fact that we can now detect them better now, as populations and technology have increased. See my posts near the top. 2011 should have big asterisk next to it.
But an increase in EF and a greater distribution is dismissed as well?
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/annualtornadomaps/
Warm AMO cold PDO sets up New England for hurricanes. “The Big One” could well happen this year. Bastardi states the probability is higher. If it occurs, McKibben will be in full cry. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/21/hurricane-warning-mckibben-alert/
If the Atlantic is warm and Pacific cold then very likely the earth as a whole is relatively cold. Global cooling causes more hurricanes. The 1950s had warm AMO and cold PDO and was a cold period.
As so very often, AGW is not only not true, the opposite is true.
It also appears that only a couple of states experience a peak between January to April. The vast major have peaks that start from April, so i offer the celebrations be a small party and not a block party, yet. Much of tornadoes 2013 are yet to sing…
http://0.tqn.com/d/weather/1/0/i/-/-/-/tornadostatepeaks.jpg
Jeff Alberts says:
May 4, 2013 at 12:26 pm
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
May 4, 2013 at 11:30 am
2011-12, mild continental US winter:
Global warming!
Early 2012-13, colder and more severe continental US winter:
Global warming! There will be less snow exactly like they said before, but that’s total, snow events will be rarer but perhaps more extreme.
The other day I was listening to the CBS news on the local radio at the top of the hour. They mentioned the “historic” snowstorms in Minnesota and Wisconsin, that the residents hadn’t seen this in almost “half a decade”.
…
Wow. A WHOLE half a decade? If they had said “5 years” it wouldn’t have sounded so dramatic. That’s unbiased reporting for you.
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Actually we set an all time record for snowfall on Friday (0.5″). The previous record was 0.2″. Ice out on Lake Minnetonka, a popular, big lake just to the west of the cities, was May 2. That is the latest ice out in 50 years (1965) and missed the record by a few days. Regions of the state have set all time April snow records.
I can’t wait for is all of the improved crop yields we’re going to get by avoiding a prolonged growing season. Shorter is better, of course, or so the greenies keep telling me.
I also can’t wait for our local NPR climastrologist, Paul Huttner, to learn just what an average means in a system with large standard deviations as he reports from the “weather lab” aka his den.
Laurence Clark Crossen says:”Joseph Bastardi recently stated the Atlantic is in a warm period similar to the1950s. Then are tornadoes and hurricanes less frequent with a warmer Atlantic?”
Perhaps you should link to what Joseph Bastardi actually said.
Tornadoes and hurricanes are two totally differenct phenomena. Hurricanes are primarily linked to Altantic SST , tornadoes depend on wind shear and my be a more complex mix of atlantic and pacfic weather patterns.
Their trends over time look very different.
First here is a look at total annual cyclone energy vs N. Atlantic sea temperatures.
wlf15y says “the 2011 “record” high is likely only due to the fact that we can now detect them better now”
That has been true since about 1988, it has nothing especially to with 2011.
See the following plot and its description to see that it is sufficient to exclude EF1 to get a consistent tornado count.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=218
Unfortunately the plot at the head of this article included EF1 and thus does not correctly show how tornado count has varied over time.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/major-hurricanes-hitting-the-us-half-as-often-as-they-used-to/
Oops, here’s the link for ACE vs SST missing in above comment:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=215
Jeff Alberts says:
May 4, 2013 at 10:32 am
‘Hypercane’???
……………………………………………………………
Hahahahahahahahahaahha….
No, I really hadn’t…..
Cheers for that…..
So it really is worse than I thought?…
Big yawn… and what I’ve been reading.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/wine/10037035/In-France-the-world-keeps-turning-no-matter-what-the-weather-brings.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10035733/Summer-only-starts-when-we-women-say-so.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html
NOAA: “The bar chart below indicates there has been little trend in the frequency of the strongest tornadoes over the past 55 years.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF3-EF5.png
” has been little trend “? I beg to differ. All depends on what you mean by “little”. However, there is a clear difference as I noted above.
”http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=218
Their bar graph corresponds to the green line on my plot.
My graph shows the mean over the whole record. Clearly most of the pre1975 period was above average and most of the later period was below average. Conclusion global warming caused less tornadoes.
That’s one half of the ‘more frequent and more violent storms’ myth busted.
If there is a relation to be drawn from that data it would suggest is not a case of warm or cool temperature but warming or cooling trends.
periods of cooling show more tornadoes , periods with a warming trend show less.
It is interesting to note that “Harold Brooks is a research meteorologist with the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma” choses to included the EF1 data that is known to be inconsistent in his plot. Despite the caveats clearly being highlighted on NOAA site:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html
Yet another case of “hide the decline”.
Let’s see if I’ve got this right,..since the term global warming has come to be used as synonymous with ‘climate change’, and since climate change implies any change whatsoever, whenever, wherever, however, of the climatic environment, , then global warming is with us forever.
Regarding projections of storm frequency under a warming climate, the NOAA (source for the hurricane data used in the post) has this to say:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/G3.html