![wea00246[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wea002461.jpg?quality=83)
Problem is, tornado formation, being highly chaotic, can’t be as easily interpolated, infilled, and adjusted like temperature data can. Just because a tornado occurred in two places, doesn’t automatically mean there was one in between them that was unreported. Thunderstorm cell formation is micro to mesoscale in size, meaning tornadoes are highly local, and not all cells produce tornadoes, even if there is a line of tornadic prone cells with a front. They’ll have to make up reports out of whole cloth in my opinion. Interpolation of tornado sighting data just isn’t sensible, but they are going to try anyway:
Their model calls for the reported number in rural areas to be adjusted upward by a factor that depends on the number of tornadoes in the nearest city and the distance from the nearest city.
Also, in my opinion, this is statistical madness.
From an FSU press release, by Jill Elish
Twister history: FSU researchers develop model to correct tornado records for better risk assessment
In the wake of deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma this past spring, Florida State University researchers have developed a new statistical model that will help determine whether the risk of tornadoes is increasing and whether they are getting stronger.
Climatologists have been hampered in determining actual risks by what they call a population bias: That is, the fact that tornadoes have traditionally been underreported in rural areas compared to cities.
Now, FSU geography Professor James B. Elsner and graduate student Laura E. Michaels have outlined a method that takes the population bias into account, as well as what appears to be a recent surge in the number of reported tornadoes, thanks in part to an increasing number of storm chasers and recreational risk-takers roaming Tornado Alley.
Their model is outlined in the article “The Decreasing Population Bias in Tornado Reports across the Central Plains,” published in the American Meteorological Society’s journal Weather, Climate, and Society. The model offers a way to correct the historical data to account for the fact that there were fewer reports in previous decades. In addition to Elsner and Michaels, Kelsey N. Scheitlin, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and Ian J. Elsner, a graduate student at the University of Florida, co-authored the paper.
“Most estimates of tornado risk are probably too low because they are based on the reported number of tornadoes,” Elsner said. “Our research can help better quantify the actual risk of a tornado. This will help with building codes and emergency awareness. With our research, the science of tornadoes can move forward to address questions related to whether cities enhance or inhibit tornadoes.”
Although other researchers have proposed methods to address the population bias, all of them assume the bias is constant over time, Elsner said. This model is the first to take into consideration how the population bias has changed over time.
Historically, the number of reported tornadoes across the premiere storm chase region of the central Plains is lowest in rural areas. However, the number of tornado reports in the countryside has increased dramatically since the 1970s and especially since the 1996 release of the disaster movie “Twister.” The movie spawned a generation of storm chasers who are partially responsible for more tornado reports, Elsner said.
Interestingly, Elsner’s model was developed after he led a team of undergraduate and graduate students on a storm-chasing mission of their own.
“While we were driving around the Great Plains looking for storms, I challenged my students to think about how the historical data could be used to better estimate the risk of getting hit by a tornado,” he said. “The observations of other chasers and the geographic spacing of towns led us to our model for correcting the historical record.”
In addition to more storm chasers logging tornado sightings, greater public awareness of tornadoes and advances in reporting technology, including mobile Internet and GPS navigating systems, may also have contributed to the increase in reports over the past 15 to 20 years.
The increase in reports has diminished the population bias somewhat, but it introduced a second problem: There are more reports, but are there also, in fact, more tornadoes? In other words, is the risk actually increasing?
To address these issues, the FSU researchers first made the assumption that the frequency of tornadoes is the same in cities as in rural areas. They also operated on the assumption that the reported number of tornadoes in rural areas is low relative to the actual number of tornadoes.
Their model calls for the reported number in rural areas to be adjusted upward by a factor that depends on the number of tornadoes in the nearest city and the distance from the nearest city. The model shows that it is likely that tornadoes are not occurring with greater frequency, but there is some evidence to suggest that tornadoes are, in fact, getting stronger.
“The risk of violent tornadoes appears to be increasing,” Elsner said. “The tornadoes in Oklahoma City on May 31 and the 2011 tornadoes in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., suggest that tornadoes may be getting stronger.”
The Oklahoma City tornado on May 31, 2013, was the largest tornado ever recorded, with a path of destruction measuring 2.6 miles in width. The Tuscaloosa and Joplin tornadoes are two of the most deadly and expensive natural disasters in recent U.S. history.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
What do you get when you cross a tornado and a hockeystick?
The reporting is better. Ok, we get that. Stop lying about the past! Put an asterisk by any records you see and say “we don’t know about the past”. It is called honesty.
At Briggs’s site there is this: “The love of theory is the root of all evil. ”
So here we have a love of theory so great that the model of it MUST be right and the empirical data MUST be wrong. With such a model who need the data?
What do you get when you cross a tornado and a hockey stick ? A lot of broken Timber scattered across Oklahoma and another speech from Obama.
If what they are trying to assess is risk then surely tornadoes that weren’t reported because they weren’t observed are of no interest whatsoever? Maybe I’m missing something? Seems to me they’d want to know the ratio of tornadoes that hit something to tornadoes that verifiably occurred.
Imagine that you are keeping count of the number of lighting strikes in your town
from 1900 to 2000 you count 1 lighting strikes per month. thats 12 per year since 1900.
Next, iin 2001 you start counting lighting strikes at the golf course 10 miles outside town
and in 2005 you start counting lighting strikes in the whole county using a satillite.
for 100 years you are seeing 1 strike per month. then in the next 5 years the total at the golf course is 3. and then after 2005 the count for the whole county is 10 per month.
have the number of lightening strikes increased?
‘adjusting” the past data is the wrong terminology. What they are doing is estimating the number in the past that would have been observed had the current observation system been in place.
REPLY: and it’s STILL a bogus approach – Anthony
@Steve Mosher – and what tree rings do they use for this estimate?
They have not yet been able to accurately forecast tornadoes, so what makes you think they can “estimate” them with any kind of accuracy?
PS correction should read
and yet another long boring sanctimonious speech from Obama.
“The Tuscaloosa and Joplin tornadoes are two of the most deadly and expensive natural disasters in recent U.S. history.” Correlates nicely with burgeoning population (density) and inflated (dollar) values.
…..also a brand new episode of Storm Chasers on Discovery Channel
Who knew we had lost tornadoes? But the model he refers to in the article above is just a counting model. Here is another article on the next generation model that tries to calculate missing violent tornadoes. It includes code folks.
http://myweb.fsu.edu/jelsner/PDF/Research/ElsnerMurnaneJaggerWiden2013.pdf
Have fun.
Ya know, I bet someone will come up with a model that finds the missing people who were looking at the missing tornado. That way we can predic…er…project where to stand next time.
Hunter says:
,,,
Now is it good science? I leave this question to others.
Science is not about being selective if one thing helps support a scientific theory or not, that is known as confirmation bias then you can’t just accept something because it makes something look better (or worse) .. What you can do is question the science this particular question raises the simple question … Why do they need or want to do this? what would be the purpose of such data?
In medical research, we don’t make up data we don’t have. It is what it is. If we think there is some deficiency in a dataset because of different instruments or methods compared to today, we call it out rather than cover it up. Climatology has become so adjustment happy, they’re forgetting that while it might be interesting to play “what if,” you can’t replace empirical data with manufactured data and pass it off as reality.
Think risk assessment dollars. A whole lot more rural countryside filled with “don’t need it, don’t want it, get the hell off my property” folks will have to buy tornado insurance. Plus ALL the stories and research press releases are perfectly made for “Bleed? LEAD!” front page sound bites. If you are a climate researcher, what’s not to like? You are a media darling!
This ‘data’ can only be used for comparative purposes? The trouble with this is, the people making the comparisons may well be the people that make the adjustments can get any result they like.
Something that may not have been considered is that this ‘adjustment’ may be an effort to remove a series of single tornadoes that may have been reported two or three times bringing the historical record down. That is what my money would be on.
Watch the pea!
Steven Mosher says:
September 12, 2013 at 12:29 pm
They must make an assumption that there was a storm capable of producing lightning first. I did not know assuming something into existence was a proper scientific method. Just as these folks will need to assume storm of proper configuration existed to add in more tornadoes.
However, they will need to be careful not to add in too many as that could assist ‘deniers’.
Wait a minute, if they adjust upward historical data, then our time might hardly be unprecedented…
Are they getting stronger or not? We have the technology. You MAY be wrong. Tornadoes MAY be getting weaker.
Anything to get their hands on moola.
mkelly says:
September 12, 2013 at 1:13 pm
Steven Mosher says:
September 12, 2013 at 12:29 pm
They must make an assumption that there was a storm capable of producing lightning first. I did not know assuming something into existence was a proper scientific method. Just as these folks will need to assume storm of proper configuration existed to add in more tornadoes.
However, they will need to be careful not to add in too many as that could assist ‘deniers’.
#############################################
Huh, you didnt answer my question.
First, they are not assuming something into existence.
Second, assuming things into existence is the heart of the scientific method.
did you think that the electron was observed first and then explained? did you
think that people saw atoms before they posited them?
Lets take the neutrino, that’s even a weirder case. In the case of the neutrino
the experiements suggested that the law of conservation of energy was wrong.
So, it was suggested that maybe a particle existed that couldnt be observed yet.
here is what they are doing. they are making an estimate based on on a set of assumptions.
nothing more nothing less. I assume you were born even though I never observed that you
were actually inside a human female. Even though you have no video of the event.
In fact there is no observational evidence of your birth. And if there were we would have to assume it wasnt faked. We infer it based on a whole host of assumptions. Those assumptions have worked in the past, have stood the test of time, and we assume that they will continue to work. But who knows you could be alien spawn grown in a petrie dish. Highly unlikely, in fact it would be crazy to believe that. But logically speaking its a possibility, vanishingly small with no evidence to support it, but logically possible.
Did they really suggest that tornadoes are increasing in size by pointing out three recent tornadoes as if their occurrence somehow shows that tornadoes are getting larger? You can’t get any more unscientific than this!
Looking at the tornado data on NOAA’s website is interesting. Take Kansas for instance. We all know that there is a reporting bias that has increased the number of known tornadoes since the late 70s, but what is interesting is that the number of reported F3+ tornadoes hasn’t increased despite the reporting bias. What is even more surprising is that the number of days in which tornadoes have occurred in Kansas have actually slightly decreased since 1950 and the number of days in which an F3+ tornado has occurred has decreased more so. The actual data, at least for Kansas, suggest that there are less large tornadoes now than in the 50s-60s. NOAA seemingly agrees and they even suggest the total number of tornadoes has decreased as well. —
“Tornado days are generally considered a better measure of tornado trends over time than tornado occurances due to the increased reporting of tornadoes since the 1980s-90s”
IF they adjust the past history of tornado production could they please send me the Lat and Long, length of track, and F rating of the “new” archaic revised tornado data from the past so i can use it in my analog forecasts?
Man Bearpig says:
September 12, 2013 at 12:52 pm
Why do they need or want to do this? what would be the purpose of such data?
__________________________________________________________________________
Since it wasn’t observed or measured it is only speculation and not data.
Let me say this another way. First, rural areas with few tornadoes probably had more. So let’s quantify more and sell insurance. Now let’s sweeten the pot. Let’s put violent tornadoes in the middle of the little ones cuz they shoulda been there but no one was watching. Now let’s up the price of tornado insurance. Somewhere down the line we will be able to get away with manufacturing the data that shows all this stuff is getting worse too. Then we will also be able to manufacture the increase in heat because there are missing thermometers. And now we have confirmed global climate change. Kill the witches.
“The risk of violent tornadoes appears to be increasing,” Elsner said. “The tornadoes in Oklahoma City on May 31 and the 2011 tornadoes in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., suggest that tornadoes may be getting stronger.”
=============
Stronger ?, really.
How would one tell when wind speeds can vary by 50 MPH in the space of a city block.
Maybe you meant larger ?
Based upon the science of determining wind speeds from the damage path, which is a newer tool in its infancy.
You say “suggest”, I say get more data.
hunter says:
September 12, 2013 at 11:29 am
is this a bad thing for skeptics? that is a seperate question from “is it good science?”
###
If its bad science then it is a lie, which is bad for skeptics.
Leave the lying to the watermelons, its the only thing they are good at.
If you use the weapons of the devil, you will become the devil.
“That is, the fact that tornadoes have traditionally been underreported in rural areas compared to cities.”
So, they are saying that those yokels in the sticks don’t know how to report a tornado, or neglected to when their homes or crops were destroyed? Seriously? Why don’t they just come out and call them dumb.
If anyone has been to a ‘rural’ area, you would know that that type of event would be put down in the local newspaper. I am also sure that the tornado just didn’t sit there and hit that rural area, not moving on to a more populated area.
“With our research, the science of tornadoes can move forward to address questions related to whether cities enhance or inhibit tornadoes.”
All someone wants to know is if a tornado is coming. They don’t care about the science of the whole thing. That is why they have tornado sirens in cities that are prone to having twisters. What, are they going to move the cities, or get rid of them? Whether or not they ‘enhance’ them is irrelevant.