This NOAA report was released today, and it claims to see an AGW link in half of the severe weather events of 2012 they studied. I’ll comment in detail later, but for now I’ll simply provide the report, and this reminder from the editors of Nature last year while all the vain attempts at linking severe weather and AGW were unfolding:
Better models are needed before exceptional events can be reliably linked to global warming.
– Anthony
Explaining Extreme Events of 2012
Human influences are having an impact on some extreme weather and climate events, according to the report Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective released September 5, 2013 by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Scientists from NOAA served as three of the four lead editors on the report. Overall, 18 different research teams from around the world contributed to the peer-reviewed report that examined the causes of 12 extreme events that occurred on five continents and in the Arctic.
The report shows that the effects of natural weather and climate fluctuations played a key role in the intensity and evolution of many of the 2012 extreme events. However, in several events, the analyses revealed compelling evidence that human-caused climate change was a secondary factor contributing to the extreme event. “This report adds to a growing ability of climate science to untangle the complexities of understanding natural and human-induced factors contributing to specific extreme weather and climate events,” said Thomas R. Karl, LHD, director of NCDC. “Nonetheless, determining the causes of extreme events remains challenging.”
In addition to investigating the causes of these extreme events, the multiple analyses of four of the events—the warm temperatures in the United States, the record-low levels of Arctic sea ice, and the heavy rain in both northern Europe and eastern Australia—allowed the scientists to compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of their various methods of analysis. Despite their different strategies, there was considerable agreement between the assessments of the same events.
Thomas Peterson, PhD, principal scientist at NCDC and one of the lead editors on the report, said, “Scientists around the world assessed a wide variety of potential contributing factors to these major extreme events that, in many cases, had large impacts on society. Understanding the range of influences on extreme events helps us to better understand why extremes are changing.” See more of what Dr. Peterson has to say on global warming and weather in this Climate Q&A from Climate.gov.
Extreme weather events aren’t worth being precautionary about, because $12 billion + events per year isn’t a scary enough figure to make it worthwhile to mitigate CO2. Only high sea level rise and a high average global temperature rise threaten damages in the trillions.
After hearing Mr. Watts lecture recently, I am impressed on how he said after he received critiques on “surface station report”, he made changes/corrections so the report would be improved to increase the body of knowledge. It seemed like an open source peer review
This NOAA report seemes like a puppet review. How could this report even be presented on one year events! With their bias, next years report conclusion is already known. It is just getting harder to find ten events.
What properties of CO2 give rise to extreme weather events?
Since it has not warmed (at any rate there is no statistically significant evidence of warming) these past 17 to 22 years (depending upon data set used), if the claim that CO2 leads to more extreme weather events is based upon the heat trapping/warming attributes of CO2 and a warming globe, then the likelihood of extreme weather events ought not to have changed these past 17 to 22 years simply because there has been no further warming during this period. Put simply, we are no more likely in 2013 to experience extreme weather events than we were say a decade ago.
If it is because of sea level rise, then there is no evidence (that stands up to scientific rigour) that the rate of sea level rise has accelerated these past 50 or so years. There is no correlation between the increase in rate of sea level rise and increased manmade CO2 emissions. There is presently no evidence of man’s finger print on sea level rise.
All of these model studies are so divorced from reality. Hurricane, cyclone, typhoon activity is all down, not elevated these past 20 years. The facts contradict the study result, and the study is nothing more than an illustration of yet more model failures.
Given the timing, I suspect there was a mad rush to find a research paper in time to release just prior to the Australian elections.This was the only one available so it was “dressed up” at the last minute then sent off to the Australian Climate Institute for distribution to Oz media mates.It won’t make any difference now as the media have already declared (so to speak) and won’t be interested. Pretty silly really to put out junk like this just to get headlines.It will come back and bite them.
Has there been any reported climate extreme in 2012 which has not been exceeded by one or more climate extremes which have been recorded previouslly?
Promotions in the agency are evidently based on how many approved buzzwords/buzzphrases are contained in each document submitted.
test to see if the ‘pre’ (preformat) tag works to enforce fixed font, for DIY tables:
NAME DATES MAX WIND (MPH) ————————————————— TS ANDREA* 5-7 JUN 65 TS BARRY 17-20 JUN 45 TS CHANTAL 8-10 JUL 65 TS DORIAN 24 JUL-3 AUG 60 TS ERIN 15-18 AUG 40 TS FERNAND 25-26 AUG 50If this muddled study is the best an agency of the executive branch of government can produce in response to their President’s marching orders to defend his AGW-based energy policy, that policy is probably in its death throws. Grab your share of green energy giveaways while the getting is good and go long on coal futures.
Almost:
NAME DATES MAX WIND (MPH) ——————————————————————————— TS ANDREA* 5-7 JUN 65 TS BARRY 17-20 JUN 45 TS CHANTAL 8-10 JUL 65 TS DORIAN 24 JUL-3 AUG 60 TS ERIN 15-18 AUG 40 TS FERNAND 25-26 AUG 50 ———————————————————————————Apparently kerning causes some distortions.
Remember the ‘good old days ‘ when weather was not climate ?
Funny how now reality is biting them on the rear end that , weather is climate when claiming so supports ‘the cause ‘
For Australia, if you take the link from Warwick Hughes (above) you can look at the chosen study period from the start of year 2011, by month to the so-far end of year 2013, for study 19. I’ve chosen the State of New South Wales as it largely fills the square selected by the authors of study 19.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/archive.jsp?colour=colour&map=anomaly&period=12month&area=ns&year=2013&month=3&day=31
Although the paper specifies March 2012 as the main part of the study, you can see by flicking through these monthly map records that
(a) March 2012 is not particularly outstanding
(b) the BoM data have a persistence in contouring that lacks the variation of rainfall patterns changing with time. They look strange. The months M,A,M,J,J,A,S look quite similar and there is no stated reason for selection of March 2012 as opposed to these other months.
The authors use US or Canadian data sets for rainfall & some temperatures. Why? (Australia’s BoM has collected them, but maybe not homogenised them further).
Then, SST in Northern Australian waters is estimated from a model and in their fig 19(c),
these equatorial modelled temperatures over a range of 1 deg C for months SON are regressed against rainfall anomaly in S-E Australia in the later period DJFM using a linear least squares fit to attempt to show a hypothesis.
This is torturing of data to a high degree. Both the location and the time period of the 2 variables is different and the temperature variations are verging on the limits of accuracy of measurement.
The La Nina source temperatures are some 4,400 km from the rainfall study area, more than San Francisco to New York, but teleconnection is invoked. It is claimed that a past relation has been established between La Nina episodes near the equator and high rain in East Australia – well, there might be a relation in the 1983 paper cited, but it is not shown that is a consistent relation with predictive power for the months chosen here, nearly 20 years of data later.
I could go on, but it’s more valuable for readers to flick through the maps.
BTW, one of the authors, David J Karoly, has a long history of extremism in global warming matters. This does not mean that his work is incorrect, but it signals a caution when reading it.
This is indeed a desperate effort, something that to me, fails to add to good science.
mddwave says:
September 5, 2013 at 9:43 pm
After hearing Mr. Watts lecture recently, I am impressed on how he said after he received critiques…. It seemed like an open source peer review….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It was. He put his draft up here at WUWT and got a lot of constructive criticism.
The best company I ever worked for did the same thing. A new product presentation was made with the chem engineering/pilot plant information included as well as packaging design…. It was critiqued by an auditorium of people from PhD chemists and engineers to plant foremen. The audience caught a lot of snafus in the design stage before construction of equipment was even started.
I was later at another company where a presentation was given of a new product by a Chem Engineer. When I offered constructive criticism as I normally would he blew up. Didn’t help matters any that when the plant was build without the correction I offered they had to go back and fix the problem.
Egos don’t belong in science but it has been my experience that they are the norm. That first company was an exception due to it’s upper level leadership. It was a Fortune 500 company for a darn good reason.
CAGW reminds me of that second company. Egos and greed without morals from the top down. Too bad it is the taxpayer and poor who have to pay the price in this case.
richard verney says: @ur momisugly September 5, 2013 at 11:10 pm
What properties of CO2 give rise to extreme weather events?….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is a Magic Gas. It can do anything even make the sun sleepy from here on earth.
Isn’t it time they answered the question skeptics who think the sun might have influence keep getting asked?
Show me the mechanism, the physics that connects CO2 to extreme weather events and I do not mean hand wavy models with hidden code.
“Nonetheless, determining the causes of extreme events remains challenging.”
Hence, more funding please
You went full alarmist, man. Never go full alarmist. You don’t buy that? Ask Sean Penn, 2001, “I Am Sam.” Remember? Went full alarmist, went home empty handed…
So disappointing, with Uccellini running NOAA, I had hoped for better but like every department and organization in this Administration, NOAA is being used for political advantage to advance an agenda.
Joe Crawford says:
September 5, 2013 at 1:51 pm
If we hadn’t built all those house trailers and placed them in such an enticing group that storm would not have left main street.
===============
That could well have been the path of least resistance that cause the tornado to veer. Do skyscrapers deflect tornadoes, forcing them onto less built of parts of the city?
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-19/news/ct-wea-0719-asktom-20110719_1_tornadoes-dear-tom-fujita
University of Chicago tornado authority Dr. Tetsuya Fujita (1920-1998) believed friction caused by tall buildings in central Chicago would disrupt the inflow needed for tornadoes and would help to dissipate weak ones. He went on to say that almost nothing would stop the strongest F4 and F5 tornadoes. Computer modeling of the interaction of winds with various kinds of surface obstacles (like buildings) has since supported Fujita’s statements
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/fyi-can-skyscrapers-prevent-tornadoes
But tornadoes do in fact sometimes hit cities, says Gary Conte, a warning coordination meteorologist at the Upton, New York, outpost of the National Weather Service, citing recent touchdowns in Dallas, Memphis, Miami and four of New York City’s five boroughs (Manhattan has been spared, so far). Skyscrapers and topography don’t matter. “Tornadoes form thousands of feet above building tops,” Conte says. “Skyscrapers won’t prevent the funnel from coming down, but they might influence its shape so that it doesn’t look as nice and neat as it does on a flat surface like the plains.
What an amazing study. Sit on a beach. The longer you watch the waves, the more likey you are to see one that is bigger than all the rest. This is an extreme wave. Was it caused by global warming or climate change?
No. What has changed is the length of time you are keeping records. Keep record for 10 years and you will likely witness a once in 10 years storm. Keep record for 100 years and you will likely witness a once in 100 years storm. Since a once in 100 years storm is more extreme than a once in 10 year storm, does this mean that the climate has changed? Or does it mean that your time frame of observations has changed?
And this is the best science that the government and 18 research teams can produce? Its a good thing they aren’t in charge of managing the economy or the debt, or there could be real problems.
As usual, ferdberple cuts to the heart of the matter with his wave explanation. Gov’t ‘science’ is nothing but cherry-picking nonsense. None of it stands up to the mildest scrutiny. Its purpose is to generate tax revenue, nothing else.
Unfortunately, government schools have produced low-information voters, who dutifully head-nod, mouths agape, and do as expected: look to the government to provide for their redemption and safety over a non-existent problem. All it will cost is some more $billions — a pittance among the $Trillions spent every year.
But those pittances add up. They are a ratchet; they never go down, always up. And the low information voters who constitute a majority, along with everyone else, become progressively poorer every year. Thus, ‘progressive’ politics.
It is insidious. Any suggestions as to how to counteract this very successful separating citizens from their hard earned income would be appreciated. But the honest thinkers are too busy working, and the Obamaphone beneficiaries’ votes have been bought and paid for, cheap.
Is there an answer? Or is this the end of the American experiment in exceptionalism?
There is a logical error in this analysis:
It may be possible to “show” that increased warming may have been a major factor in say 6 of these 12 events,
BUT
it is also possible that warming has prevented 6 other extremes from happening. And those are not accounted for in this study.
Jimbo says:
September 5, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Compared to Nature and the IPCC the NOAA is an ‘extremist’ organisation.
I like your term “extremist” better than “warmist” or “alarmist.” If they are going to insist that occasional extreme weather is caused by global warming, as if such events never happened before, then they are extremists. We should refer to them as “weather extremists” or “climate extremists.”
Deja vu!
This name rings a bell; something about document properties for a presentation (powerpoint?) that used Anthony’s surface station old information, without permission or attribution to Anthony… Ring any bells for other folks?
Why would anything published by such a shyster be considered science or even worthwhile is a mystery to me.
Thomas Karl, LHD…
No one lists an honorary doctorate unless covering for some rather extreme inferiority.
How do we even know what constitutes “extreme” ? Compared to what ? If you look at measured temperature records and rainfall, we’ve only had good records since about 1880 and satellite temperature measurements since 1978. Proxy records are smoothed and cannot be compared logically to weather events of short duration. If you need perspective, just look at the long term records and see how tiny a blip the last 30 years represents.
They no doubt used the same climate models that failed to predict the recent “pause” in global warming in their analysis as well – not to mention totally fail in reliable predictions of regional weather. And it’s regional weather that their study addressed in actuality ! I’m strictly amateur, with a long standing interest in weather, but the whole thing looks like a bunch of scientists playing creative computer games – excuse me, simulations – on the taxpayers’ dime. Send that money to the SPC to improve our warnings for severe weather like this spring’s monster Oklahoma tornadoes. As I live in Oklahoma, there might be some bias in that statement – full disclosure 😉
What are the odds that NOAA bureaucrats, in a career threatening move, would even have allowed a release stating that the weather events included in their study had no connection to recent climate trends ? Low, very low.