From the University of Missouri-Columbia, one more example of how natural variation has trumped the supposed forcing of CO2 to make ‘bad weather’.
Pacific ocean temperature influences tornado activity in US, MU study finds
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Meteorologists often use information about warm and cold fronts to determine whether a tornado will occur in a particular area. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that the temperature of the Pacific Ocean could help scientists predict the type and location of tornado activity in the U.S.
Laurel McCoy, an atmospheric science graduate student at the MU School of Natural Resources, and Tony Lupo, professor and chair of atmospheric science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, surveyed 56,457 tornado-like events from 1950 to 2011. They found that when surface sea temperatures were warmer than average, the U.S. experienced 20.3 percent more tornadoes that were rated EF-2 to EF-5 on the Enhanced Fuijta (EF) scale. (The EF scale rates the strength of tornadoes based on the damage they cause. The scale has six category rankings from zero to five.)
McCoy and Lupo found that the tornadoes that occurred when surface sea temperatures were above average were usually located to the west and north of tornado alley, an area in the Midwestern part of the U.S. that experiences more tornadoes than any other area. McCoy also found that when sea surface temperatures were cooler, more tornadoes tracked from southern states, like Alabama, into Tennessee, Illinois and Indiana.
“Differences in sea temperatures influence the route of the jet stream as it passes over the Pacific and, eventually, to the United States,” McCoy said. “Tornado-producing storms usually are triggered by, and will follow, the jet stream. This helps explain why we found a rise in the number of tornadoes and a change in their location when sea temperatures fluctuated.”
In the study, McCoy and Lupo examined the relationship between tornadoes and a climate phenomenon called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). PDO phases, which were discovered in the mid-1990s, are long-term temperature trends that can last up to 30 years. According to NASA scientists, the current PDO phase has just entered into a “cool” state.
“PDO cool phases are characterized by a cool wedge of lower than normal sea-surface ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific and a warm horseshoe pattern of higher than normal sea-surface temperatures extending into the north, west and southern Pacific,” McCoy said. “In the warm phase, which lasted from 1977 to 1999, the west Pacific Ocean became cool and the wedge in the east was warm.”
In 2011, more than 550 deaths occurred as a result of tornadoes, resulting in more than $28 billion in property damage, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. McCoy says that with her findings, officials may be able to save lives in the future.
“Now that we know the effects of PDO cool and warm phases, weather forecasters have another tool to predict dangerous storms and inform the public of impending weather conditions,”
McCoy said.
The research will be presented at the National Weather Association Conference this fall.
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See video:
http://media.eurekalert.org/multimedia_prod/pub/media/63364_web.mp4
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[snip – Nicola, I’m not going to let you hijack this thread. You can talk about extreme weather, PDO, ENSO, but we won’t be veering off into your preferred realm of cycles – Anthony]
So now we have some statistical correlation between US tornado strength, SSTs and the PDO. I may not have the complete list of phenomena there. It could be some mystery 4th parameter also correlates; might even be a fifth one.
Now all I need is some evidence as to which one is the cause, and which one is the effect; and which ones just simply don’t relate to the issue, but just correlate. Maybe the cause is that 6th phenomenon that I forgot to mention; which I also seem to have forgotten the name of.
Just hurry up and figure it out.
Daylight tornadoes are one thing, after dark they are a whole other thing.
We’ve known this for some time. The 1974 Super Tuesday tornado outbreak was in a (ta-da!) La Nina year. 2008 too.
Tornado Alley….got its name because its the meeting point of warm moist air from the Gulf with cold dry air from Canada. You can massage statistics to ‘prove’ all kinds of stupid stuff.
davidmhoffer: “It is of zero practical use in predicting a specific tornado in a specific location.”
Sure. But then weather forecasters don’t predict the specific doppler values for specific pixels either. It’s a probability model. And that does need rebaselined. But then last I remember were actuaries getting twisted and calling for legislation because their risk models were out of joint. But then these professionals that do nothing but risk models had failed to update them in 30 years also.
PDO drives “a lot” of things!
I UTTERLY disagee with what this paper says.
Tornadoes in tornado alley derive from cool Pacific air colliding east of the Rockies with very warm and moist air pushing up in the NORMAL currents from the Gulf of Mexico. These latter are pushed west the prevailing easterlies, then north as they enter the mid-latitudes. Traveling then ENE, this air mass is broadsided by the cooler and drier air mass coming over the Rockies. The only part the Pacific plays in this is the dry, cool air masses – meaning they have to be coming from a cool Pacific, not a warm Pacific,
This is a classic example of someone sitting at a desk and crunching numbers – and not knowing what the heck the numbers even MEAN.
Heck, his text doesn’t even agree with his maps. His description of the cool phase of the PDO – compare that to the map – no connection whatsoever.
Everyone in the room is now stupider for having listened to him. I award him no points, and may God have mercy on his soul.
@MinB at 5:42 pm:
“I still find it hard to believe that the PDO was discovered only 15 years ago by someone studying salmon. IMO, this further weakens the credibility of climatologists who missed the climate impacts of just the LARGEST ocean on our planet.”
Take heart a little bit. Yes, biologit Ste3ven Hare was the first to publish the PDO – and name it.
Trust me, he was not the first to recognize it – but he beat then Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor to publishing on it. Taylor told me about it all in a personal email, back about 12-13 years ago. He found it and then took too long. That happens sometimes.
But George, being the really decent guy he is, was just glad it got out there, that the world knew about it.
YES, it is and will always BE the elephant in the room, dominating the Pacific like it does. Because the Pacific is the elephant in the room. Nothing puny humans can do can match what the Pacific does, and the PDO is its biggest mechanism.
At the same time, this paper is garbage. The wrong conclusions have been drawn. If it leaves out the Gulf of Mexico and its über-warm, über-moist air masses as a factor, then it is rubbish. There ARE no tornadoes without the Gulf’s hot, wet air masses. Period.
All the energy is in THAT air, not the air coming off the Pacific. Anybody living in any part of the Midwest and watches the weather knows all this.
“Differences in sea temperatures influence the route of the jet stream”
Pretty Damned Obvious (PDO).
I agree with Bastardi…this stuff was already known. For example, I showed the PDO-tornado connection 2 1/2 years ago:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/05/the-tornado-pacific-decadal-oscillation-connection/
Nevertheless, it’s good for such connections to become more widely known.
I can’t wait to share this with my US Senators, Feinstein and Boxer, as well as my Global Warmists friends.
Roy, yes I believe I first learned of the US tornado/PDO connection here on WUWT from your post.
Steve Garcia: can you point us to your published work refuting this research?
… “Tornado-producing storms usually are triggered by, and will follow, the jet stream. This helps explain why we found a rise in the number of tornadoes and a change in their location when sea temperatures fluctuated.”
Would someone please explain the connection between the sea surface temperatures and the jet stream? I’ll do some homework, but guidance from a knowledgeable person would be a good thing.
@ur momisugly u.k.(us)
You wrote
Daylight tornadoes are one thing, after dark they are a whole other thing.
I need to ask”in what way?”
I couldn’t tell from your comment whether you were using a figure of speech, and the only difference is the amount of light, or whether you were making a substantive (if somewhat obscure) reference.
And if so, what were you referring to?
davidmhoffer says:
October 17, 2013 at 4:56 pm
Well if they don’t know the specific location, how are they going to warn the public?
————-
Meteorologists already know the specific location(s) where a tornado will likely occur …. but they only know that like one (1) hour or less before it happens, …… as noted in the above article, to wit:
“Meteorologists often use information about warm and cold fronts to determine whether a tornado will occur in a particular area.”
“Tornado-producing storms usually are triggered by, and will follow, the jet stream.”
So what the author is saying is now that the Meteorologists know the effects of PDO cool and warm phases they can determine the potential of a severe tornado occurring like several hours before it happens. They can do so because they can project the “path” of both the warm front and the jet stream to the “trigger” point where the two converge (overlapping).
gopal panicker says:
October 17, 2013 at 7:44 pm
Tornado Alley….got its name because its the meeting point of warm moist air from the Gulf with cold dry air from Canada. You can massage statistics to ‘prove’ all kinds of stupid stuff.
Plus a dry line from New Mexico. Our biggest storms here in Kansas usually come about when a low tracks out of Southern CA across the 4 corners region, the panhandles and along I-35. I would suspect that the PDO has marked effect on the number and strength of these storms.
But what drives PDO?
Good candidate
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PDO.htm
Samual C Cogar;
So what the author is saying is now that the Meteorologists know the effects of PDO cool and warm phases they can determine the potential of a severe tornado occurring like several hours before it happens.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As several commenters pointed out upthread, this causal link is not new, it has been known for years. Yet no improvement in forecasting tornadoes has emerged as a consequence. This is something I would GLADLY be shown to be completely and totally wrong about as there would be a lot of benefits in terms of saving human lives. I’m not wrong though, these clowns are regurgitating known science as if it were original, and claiming of it benefits that it doesn’t have in order to justify the grant money that they spent and in order to try and obtain more.
Can anybody splain the funky shift in the color scale. The top goes 0, .2, .4, .6 but the bottom goes 0, .2, .6 – This trick seems to be done on quite a few charts that get posted in articles, usually to make the authors point seem more impressive than it is. Here it seems to be … dunno, a mistake?
As we were also told at the National Weather Association Conference this past week: Tornadoes are getting stronger because of AGW and increasing HUMIDITY! (meh)
davidmhoffer says:
October 18, 2013 at 8:49 am
As several commenters pointed out upthread, this causal link is not new, it has been known for years. Yet no improvement in forecasting tornadoes has emerged as a consequence.
———
David, you asked a specific question, …. I attempted to give you a specific answer.
Anyway, what you stated above doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Rank has its privileges, ya know.
Are you familiar with the “wrong headed dinosaur”, ….. Brontosaurus?
To wit: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/09/166665795/forget-extinct-the-brontosaurus-never-even-existed
Chris4692 says:
October 17, 2013 at 6:32 pm
Bob Tisdale says:
October 17, 2013 at 5:41 pm
GlynnMhor says: “Now we need only figure out what drives the PDO…”
ENSO with sea level pressure in the North Pacific.
Go ahead, keep pushing. If I ever buy a reader it’s going to be so I can read that book of yours.
+++++++++++
Chris4692: I do not have a reader, so I purchased the pdf version. I read most of it on my laptop, and and the rest of it on my PC work station at home. Buy the pdf version. You will love it.
Mario