Climate Experts Vahrenholt And Lüning Call Recent Tornado Activity “The Great Tornado Doldrums” reposted from “No Tricks Zone” with permission
Putting information together from various sources, Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt have written a short analysis of tornado activity in the USA. Despite what one hears from the media, the two German scientists describe recent tornado activity as being in “great doldrums”.
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The Great Tornado Doldrums: No Relationship Between Climate Change and Tornadoes
By Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt (translated by P Gosselin)
In May 2013, there was a series of severe tornadoes that caused horrible damage. The media reported profusely on these events (see our blog article “Violent Tornado Double Strike in May 2013 in Oklahoma: The History of Tornado Alley Since 1950“). How should we perceive these storms? Has tornado activity perhaps increased over the recent years, as some commentators have assumed from their gut feeling? If yes, could climate change perhaps have something to do with it?
Rather than relying on the suspicions and interpretations from third parties, it is worthwhile to have a closer look at real data so that a scientific basis can be established for the purpose of discussion.
We therefore first take a look at the tornado frequency of the last 8 years (Fig. 1). The steepest increase in each of the curves takes place in April and May, which is the main tornado season. Surprisingly, despite the prominent storms, the year 2013 (black curve) is in last place, and is comparable only with the year 2005 (green curve), which also saw relatively few tornadoes. The years 2008 and 2011 saw the most tornadoes.
Figure 1: Tornado frequency of the last 8 years, cumulative for each individual year. Source: NOAA Storm Prediction Center, 19 June 2013.
And how does this compare to the long-term? Figure 2 depicts the statistically evaluated tornado frequencies since 1954. Also here the year 2013 ranks near the bottom. More than three quarters of all years saw more tornado activity than 2013.
Figure 2: Long-term tornado frequencies in the USA since 1954. Besides the strongest and weakest tornado years, also the limit range for the upper and lower 25%, as well as the mean value (50%) are shown. Source: NOAA Storm Prediction Center.
And how was last year? Also in 2012 tornadoes were relatively rare, as no year saw fewer tornadoes than 2012 since tornado recording began in 1954. 2012 was the absolute low-point of the officially recorded tornado development of the past 60 years. The lilac-colored curve in Figure 2 represents the year 2012, which is not that far off from the current 2013 year (black).
Next let’s take a look at a bar chart of the last 40 years (Figure 3). Also here we can observe that tornado frequency has a downward tendency rather than an upward one.
Figure 3: Tornado frequency development since 1970 for the more powerful EF2 and higher category tornadoes (upper chart) as well as EF3 to EF5 (lower diagram). Source: WUWT.
Even though the average global temperature has risen half of a degree Celsius over the last 40 years, tornadoes have not become more frequent. Rather the contrary has occurred; they have decreased somewhat. Thus it is no wonder that the NOAA takes a clear position at its information website, and excludes climate warming as the trigger for tornadoes:
Does ‘global warming’ cause tornadoes? No. […] ‘Will climate change influence tornado occurrence?’ The best answer is: We don’t know.”
Also the Extreme Weather Report of the IPCC from 2011 is unable to find a trend in tornado development over the last decades. In the meantime this knowledge has become known to the activist groups close to the IPCC and are now no longer able to escape this reality. One of these groups is the Union of Concerned Scientists, who still claim that the main reason for climate warming is man. In a blog article dated 22 May 2013 titled “Evidence to Date Does Not Show Clear Link Between Tornadoes and Climate Change” the group writes:
The short answer is that scientists don’t see a clear link between climate change and the number or intensity of tornadoes over the past several decades.”
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Dr. Sebastian Lüning is a geologist and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt is a chemist. Together they authored the climate science critical book “Die kalte Sonne”, which reached No. 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list for non-fiction in 2012.
Above tornado photo credit: NOAA (public domain photo)
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Good tornado analysis at “Tornado Climatology”; http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html
The reason the USA has more tornadoes than the rest of the world is due to the topography of the vertical N/South ridge of the Rocky Mountains causes aerological blocking of the zonal flow when the lunar declinational tidal bulge production at culmination is delayed a day while the warm moist air from the gulf comes up from the South, then the North Western of the tidal bulge is deflected around the Southern end of the Rockies and presents as the commonly seen dry line that sweeps in from the west to over run the slower moving gulf air mass.
The timing and the intensity of the tornado outbreaks are a result of the relative declination at culmination as the 18.6 year mn declinational cycle of the moon changes, it reaches its most intense effects when the angle is increasing through the 23.5 degrees angle equal to the summer declinational angle of the sun. At maximum culmination angle ~28.5 degrees there is a lot more turbulence generated into the global circulation, and the tracks move further North.
We are currently at ~19.5 degrees at lunar culmination and decreasing, the syzygy of the sun / moon is/will be limited to the mid summer months so we are not seeing as many early spring outbreaks.
In Russia the Urals are not as high, nor extend as far South and as a result, out of the normal flow patterns of the tidal bulges that form in that area, partly because of the blocking from the Tibetan Mountains, they see mostly monsoonal flows in that part of the world.
Goldie says:
June 22, 2013 at 6:19 pm
One might reasonably ask the question why is it always assumed that things will get worse under climate change.
For one thing, if you polled the people living here in Minnesota where I live, plus those living at similar latitudes worldwide, plus those slightly South and North to the SubArctic, and asked if they would gladly accept all the draconian measures the climate alarmists demand as a solution to CAGW, but allow as the only catastrophe there is likely to be is slightly milder winters and slightly longer growing seasons, you probably wouldn’t find many takers.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
Reblogged this on The Science Blog.
So, Latitude thinks that number counting before Doppler is a problem. Hmmm, I guess we can just throw out all records before the satellite era or even the electronic age in that case as obviously no human could possibly keep accurate records. Seems that’s what they’ve done with their models and that’s why they continue to use data from the warm AMO/PDO cycle to spew forth their garbage. He tries to say that temps have risen .5 over the last 40 years and calls this article ‘cherry-picking numbers’. How about you, Latitude, picking out a time when temps were declining rapidly for several years as the ocean cycle changed and then claiming warming from that point? Apparently you have also ignored the fact that the Earth as a whole has actually cooled the last 10 years as the PDO has flipped and will continue to cool, overall, until the AMO flips. What will you people say then, when the globe is colder than at any point in 65 years? More number cherry picking I’m sure. The American people are becoming wise to the Chicken Little antics of the CCC (climate change charlatans) and once they finally realize how much it’s going to cost them while the money is going to friends of the king himself they will fight it. I know the warmists can’t come to grips with that but it’s the end result of a lie based on lies.
I see not everything available being disclosed here. Even though the “whole story” shows global warming not making tornadoes worse, I think the omissions can get called into question.
For one thing, the tornado count goes back to before 1970 – it starts at or close to 1950. Choosing an artificial start date just before the 1973 superoutbreak could be questioned as cherrypicking, like saying the world has not warmed since the century-class El Nino of 1997-1998.
Also, when including F1/EF1 and F0/EF0 tornadoes, the count has risen rather than fallen. Blame increased detection of smaller tornadoes that used to often be unnoticed.
I got the year of the 1970’s superoutbreak wrong – it’s 1974. I was thinking of the year of the dip in the sinusoidal approximation of the periodic component in HadCRUT3 when I said 1973.
Poor Mike Mac Cracken, Director of the Climate Institute and global warming advocate! He keeps playing his weak cards at Climatesceptic on Yahoo, here is his wisdom on the Alberta floods:
“That much moisture does not typically come over the Rocky Mountains or from the Arctic. My hypothesis, and it is a hypothesis, is that warm, moist Gulf (of Mexico) Coast air is making it way up to Alberta—and then running into colder air or the mountains and whoosh. As to why Gulf Coast air is getting there, well, I’d suggest due to the Arctic warming and not generating enough cold air to push the warm moist air back where it has been traditionally, far to the south.
I have been fascinated recently by weather forecasters often showing far northward flows of Gulf air and not even thinking it could be a result of climate change. Mike MacCracken”
Moist air coming from the Arctic now… Perhaps, just perhaps, MacCracken could have looked at a satellite animation before belching his hypothesis? He would have seen that on June 17, a strong polar anticyclone 1026hPa was coming down west of the west coast of Canada from Alaska, its eastern edge sending moist Pacific air over Washington and British Columbia. On June 18, the system was along the coast and sending more warm moist air from northern California northward that finally on June 19 met the western edge of the 1022hPa vast but weaker anticyclonic agglutination that was sitting east of the Rockies on the US Midwest. On June 20, a new polar anticyclone 1024hPa came down from the Northwest Territories over the northern portion of the Prairies Provinces. Both systems from the NW and from the W took over the area. The Rocky section over Southern Alberta was located in between these two polar highs, squeezing the moist air at their edge into a narrow band with considerable updraft. Hence huge precipitations.
So MacCracken’s hypothesis is wrong and could simply have been disproved by looking at weather satellites. How about that, Herr Director? Not only it was powerful arctic air mobile anticyclones –i.e. cooler air- debunking his warming arctic BS, but the moist air came from the Pacific and not the Gulf of Mexico! If arctic colder air masses pushing vigorously south at the end of June is MacCracken’s idea of a global warming climate change, then glaciations would have been torrid episodes of warming too!
MacCracken, do us a favor: stay in your plump little retirement job in Washington and model your CO2 and SO2 own emissions!
Qualitatively speaking it seems altogether reasonable to me that a warmer climate will have fewer tornadoes.
There are two basic factors involved in the production of tornadoes – cool, dry (more dense) air masses coming out of the Rockies clashing with warm, moist (less dense) air masses coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. One would expect the warm, moist air masses to be more plentiful in a warmer climate, but not the cool, dry air masses. If the air coming out of the Rockies is warmer, this equation changes. There are lots of places in the world where warm, moist air moves across regions without causing tornadoes. Why not? I would assert that it is because they don’t clash with cool, dry, dense air masses.
The lift that occurs when the two clash comes from the denser air mass pushing under the less dense air mass. If the density difference between the two masses is lessened, then the lift should also be lessened – and thus the energy creating the tornadoes should be lessened. A corollary: even the ones that do form should tend to be weaker.
Well, I don’t even have to put this out as a guess, I guess. Dr. Roy Spencer has this to say:
That is from http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/04/more-tornadoes-from-global-warming-thats-a-joke-right/
Steve Garcia
H/T to Andres Valencia for the NOAA link with the map.
I found out that my home state of Illinois with 54 per year has the 6th most average tornadoes (after TX, KS, FL, OK, and NE). But lest any of you might think that Chicago is at risk, that is not really so. The twisters generally happen in the southern and southwestern parts of the state mostly.
NOAA lists only 75 tornadoes since 1900 in the Chicago area. By decade:
1900s: 0
1910s: 6
1920s: 4
1930s: 2
1940s: 3
1950s: 12
1960s: 20
1970s: 19
1980s: 4
1990s: 5
2000s: 0
2010s: 0
If we notice a trend there, it is that in the coolest decades there were the most tornadoes. The 1930s had only 2, the 1940s only 3. And in recent years none listed at all since 1997. That current lull is the longest gap in history, the next longest being from 1896 to 1911.
Those are very significantly higher numbers in the 1950s through 1970s.
As to F4s and F5s, the only F5 since 1900 was in 1990, in a far SW suburb. There were 3 F4s in the 1970s. In over 100 years all the F4s and F5s occurred within 19 years of each other (1972-1990). Still within the cool era, before the Hockey Stick.
In climate as I understand it, it is the edges of the climate zones that show the trends clearest, similar to the assertions about the Arctic in the last few years. Chicago is on the edge of the tornado zone, so one might expect it to reflect the tornado forming trends and influences fairly clearly. And the broad brush influence is the climate warming – and the numbers seem to indicate more tornadoes during cooler decades.
Correlation doesn’t mean causation, but it is worth thinking about.
Vahrernholt and Lüning are making what seem to be correct observations.
Steve Garcia
CLEAN AIR CAUSES MORE HURRICANES.
Reductions in air pollution have “contributed to recent increases in hurricane numbers.”
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/24/4459286/air-pollution-may-cause-fewer-hurricanes-uk-met-office-finds
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/atlantic-hurricane