NOTE: readers of this thread may be interested in this:
An ethical challenge for Greg Laden – put your money where your mouth is
================================================================
Here is the sort of headlines we had Friday, for example this one from Huffington Post where they got all excited about some early reports from Andrew Freedman:
Super Typhoon Haiyan — which is one of the strongest storms in world history based on maximum windspeed — is about to plow through the Central Philippines, producing a potentially deadly storm surge and dumping heavy rainfall that could cause widespread flooding. As of Thursday afternoon Eastern time, Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Yolanda, had estimated maximum sustained winds of 195 mph with gusts above 220 mph, which puts the storm in extraordinarily rare territory.
UPDATE 5: from this NYT article:
Before the typhoon made landfall, some international forecasters were estimating wind speeds at 195 m.p.h., which would have meant the storm would hit with winds among the strongest recorded. But local forecasters later disputed those estimates. “Some of the reports of wind speeds were exaggerated,” Mr. Paciente said.
The Philippine weather agency measured winds on the eastern edge of the country at about 150 m.p.h., he said, with some tracking stations recording speeds as low as 100 m.p.h.
Ah those wind speed estimates, they don’t always meet up with reality later – Anthony
==============================================================
By Paul Homewood
Sadly it appears that at least 1000 1200 1774* lives have been lost in Typhoon Yolanda (or Haiyan), that has just hit the Philippines. There appear to have been many unsubstantiated claims about its size, though these now appear to start being replaced by accurate information.
Nevertheless the BBC are still reporting today
Typhoon Haiyan – one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall …….The storm made landfall shortly before dawn on Friday, bringing gusts that reached 379km/h (235 mph).
Unfortunately we cannot always trust the BBC to give the facts these days, so let’s see what the Philippine Met Agency, PAGASA, have to say. Here are the surface wind reports:
http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/wb/tcarchive_files.html
http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/wb/wbfcst.html
So at landfall the sustained wind was 235 kmh or 147 mph, with gusts upto 275 kmh or 171 mph. This is 60 mph less than the BBC have quoted.
The maximum strength reached by the typhoon appears to have been around landfall, as the reported windspeeds three hours earlier were 225 kmh (140mph).
Terrible though this storm was, it only ranks as a Category 4 storm, and it is clear nonsense to suggest that it is “one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir%E2%80%93Simpson_Hurricane_Scale
Given the geography of the Pacific, most typhoons stay out at sea, or only hit land once they have weakened. But in total terms, the busiest typhoon season in recent decades was 1964, whilst the following year logged the highest number of super typhoons (which equate to Cat 3 +). Of the eleven super typhoons that year, eight were Category 5’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon
So far this year, before Yolanda there have been just three Category 5’s, none of which hit land at that strength.
Personally I don’t like to comment on events such as these until long after the dust has settled. Unfortunately though, somebody has to set the record if we cannot rely on the BBC and others to get the basic facts right.
UPDATE
In case anyone thinks I am overreacting, take a look at the Daily Mail headlines.
Just looking at it again, is it possible the MSM are confusing mph with kmh? It seems a coincidence that PAGASA report 235 kmh.
UPDATE 2
I have just registered a complaint at the Press Complaints Commission against the Mail article. If anyone spots similar articles elsewhere, and I will add them to my complaint.
UPDATE 3
I seem to have been right about the kmh/mph confusion!
I’ve just scanned down the Mail article and seen this:
Unless they think “gusts” are less than “winds”, it looks like someone has boobed.
=============================================================
UPDATE4: Kent Noonan writes in with this addition –
CNN has had several articles stating the same numbers for wind speed as BBC and Mail. I saw these numbers first last night at 10PM Pacific time.
Today’s story: “Powered by 195-mph winds and gusts up to 235 mph, it then struck near Tacloban and Dulag on the island of Leyte, flooding the coastal communities.”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/philippines-typhoon-haiyan/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews
If these “news” agencies don’t issue a correction, we will be forever battling the new meme of “most powerful storm in world history”.
Look at today’s google search for “most powerful storm”
stories run by Independent, NBC, dailymail, NPR, Foxnews, CNBC, WND, Business Insider, PBS, BBC, CNN, FirstPost, Bloomberg
“All you need to know Typhoon Haiyan, world’s most powerful storm” by FP Staff Nov 8, 2013
Then they go on to correctly state gusts to 170mph !!
UPDATE 6: (update 5 is at the head of the post)
BBC now reporting reduced wind speeds that would make it a Cat4 storm:
Typhoon Haiyan – one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall – swept through six central Philippine islands on Friday.
It brought sustained winds of 235km/h (147mph), with gusts of 275 km/h (170 mph), with waves as high as 15m (45ft), bringing up to 400mm (15.75 inches) of rain in places.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24887337 (h/t David S)
UPDATE7: While hit and run haters like Greg laden deplore us pointing out the measurements of wind speeds, labeling us with all sorts of derogatory names, they conveniently ignore purposely created propaganda like this:
The juxtaposition in Tenney Naumer’s Twitter Feed says it all:
Rules for Radicals: “We are always moral and our enemies always immoral.” The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the immorality of the opposition,”
UPDATE 8: here is another number you are likely to see bandied about as supposed proof of this storm being historically unprecedented, courtesy Tenney Naumer who pointed it out in comments:
NOAA recorded Haiyan’s lowest central pressure at 858, quite possibly a record in the instrumental era:
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/2013/tdata/wpac/31W.html
Those aren’t measurements Tenney, they are ESTIMATES. Done from satellite. They are called DVORAK fixes.
And note, the estimates stay the same for several hours without any fluctuation, then repeat values in bracketing outside that period, a sure sign of a model doing rounding.
Here is the source page: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/storms/HAIYAN.html
The technique is new, and has issues and acknowledged biases, it is a work in progress. One of the issues is that verification has only been done for near US Atlantic Basin storms within the range of hurricane hunter aircraft.
Paper on the technique is here: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010WAF2222375.1 ]
UPDATE9: (h/t to WUWT reader StewGreen)
From the Government of the Philippines sitrep report, a screencap:
Click to access NDRRMC%20UP%20Sitrep%20No12%20re%20Effects%20of%20TY%20YOLANDA%20111113.pdf
UPDATE 10: Laden’s claims in his tirade aren’t supported by actual science and data, he writes:
But Watts and Homewood don’t want storms to be important for the simple reason that the best models strongly suggest that there will be more storms … especially in the Pacific, where Haiyan struck, over coming decades because of the changes to climate that humans are carrying out and that Anthony Watts and Paul Homewood deny to be real.
This paper shows the reality:
Kubota, H. and Chan, J.C.L. 2009. Interdecadal variability of tropical cyclone landfall in the Philippines from 1902 to 2005. Geophysical Research Letters 36: 10.1029/2009GL038108.
==================================================================
* Reports are varying wildly
The Red Cross in the Philipines says 1200 in this report: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/09/us-philippines-typhoon-idUSBRE9A603Q20131109
But now Reuters is claiming and estimate of 10,000 based on a late night meeting of officials at the Governors Office. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/10/philippines-typhoon-casualty-idUSL4N0IV00F20131110
About the same time as the Reuters 10K report, television News in the Philipines says the death toll is 151. http://anc.yahoo.com/video/ndrrmc-151-dead-due-yolanda-011610793.html
Early reports often vary widely, and it will be some time before accurate numbers are produced.
Our hearts and prayers go to the Philippine people. For those that wish to help, here is the website of the Philippine Red Cross: http://ushare.redcross.org.ph/
Monday in the WSJ:
Philippines Typhoon Death Count Rises to 1,774
Toll Exceeds Red Cross Estimates of 1,200; Likely to Rise Much Higher
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303914304579191821439194290?tesla=y
Source of the number: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/334950/news/nation/ndrrmc-confirms-1-774-fatalities-most-are-from-eastern-visayas
UPDATE: 11/12 7AM Philippine president Aquino says to CNN: Typhoon Haiyan deaths likely 2,000 to 2,500 — not 10,000
==============================================================
…the stupid, it burns like a flare!
Thanks, Anthony, I had a feeling that the strength of this storm, tragic though it may be, was messed with during reporting.
The quality of the staff at the Daily Mail leave a lot to be desired – factual errors apart there seems to be no proof reading and most certainly no-one with any science knowledge, let alone general knowledge…… then again, the DM are pretty typical of the British MSM (main stream media) as a whole.
Trying to correct (mistakes – SARC) after the MSM informs the public will make very little difference. The public’s perception is made by the first news articles. It is a very sad situation we are in. The deaths and trouble in the Philippines are sad, but this kind of thing happens each year in different places of the world. What the MSM does in creating false perceptions is worse, because the clowns the public elect based on the false perceptions are causing worse problems. The future is very grim. Good luck to one and all.
Thanks for the updates. Does anyone know the actual pressure? Not estimated.
When the comparison to Typhoon Tip was made, it caught my attention. There really was no real comparison in the end.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Tip
Thanks for the information – I used your info to correct two newspapers in Canada – The National Post,m and the CBC – which of course wen crazy as usual with hopes of the Philippines themselves being wiped off the face of the earth as THE global warming event they all desperately needed to be that destructive. It never ceases to amaze me how excited the global warming ghouls are with something like this – they really cheer for death and destruction.
But what about the past? [H/t Steven Goddard]
more typhoons from the past in the Philippines.
The majority of the damage from this storm appear to be centred about the Tacloban area of Leyte Island, where landfall was first encountered. The configuration of the coastline apparently enhanced the severity of the resulting storm surge, which was at least a story high, creating a tsunami like condition. Much of the population were still in their homes at the time, resulting in major casualties. It is difficult to estimate the number since virtually all communications and infrastructure were compromised, but initial reports place the known death toll at about a hundred. There is some question as to why no comprehensive evacuations took place, despite the ample warning given.
=========================================================================
I can understand, and forgive, the “plebe” who typed that getting confused between a scale they are familiar with and one they are not. I don’t understand how it made past the editors.
You say potatos, I say potatoes. Miles, Kilos, it’s all the same if your error bars are large enough.
Very few anemometers survive sustained winds over 200kts, misreporting is common as the winds are typically measured in nautical miles per hour and converted to metric and Statue miles per hour. There are pretty substantial differences between the different standards, and it seems like most reporting agencies like to round up in favor higher wind speeds. The misrepresentation by the main stream media is commonplace and they rarely do retractions. kind of disheartening.
The “mistake” of the Mail seems apparent, but I wonder if it is their source of information that is to blame?
The BBC are well known for attempting to convert everything into metrics to make us “more European”.
Their “379 kmh” seems strangely exact. Have they also seen the “235” figure and assumed it is mph (just as the Mail did) and then decided to convert it to kmh to get to 379kmh?
Indeed, it suggests the original source, whatever it may be, is where the original error crept in.
I’ve sent a msg via the form at the end of the BBC page prompting them to check the 235 figure’s units.
You can also use the following feedback forms.
General feedback on news – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/21937779
Error corrections about news – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/21012132
I don’t understand why PAGASA actually bothered to measure wind speed. Surely the number of typhoon photos uploaded to Flickr is a better indicator?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/05/move-over-millibars-flickr-is-the-new-atmospheric-metric-for-hurricane-central-pressure/
As always this disaster is based on the poverty of the area. Populations living in areas that are inadequately prepared for whatever natural events that may occur where they live because they do not have adequate financial resources to do so (or like Katrina) where the resources are misapplied.
Is it just me, or is Yolanda looking a bit ragged as she makes a jog to the north?
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/gms/largec.html?area=6&element=0&time=201311092300
Gary Hladik @ 3:25…..hilarious !!
The Daily Mail science dept is responsible for this little gem which says that Virgin Galactic can be pulled to Australia by gravity (orange box at bottom of page)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2467356/London-Sydney-TWO-hours-Virgin-Galactic-space-flight-technology-used-build-new-generation-super-jets-replace-Concorde.html
It’s almost quaint except that the 2 million plus DM readers are in dire need of an education already.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
Jeff Masters
“Haiyan’s place in history
Haiyan hit Guiuan, on the Philippine island of Samar, at 4:40 am local time (20:40 UTC) November 8, 2013. Three hours before landfall, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) assessed Haiyan’s sustained winds at 195 mph, gusting to 235 mph, making it the 4th strongest tropical cyclone in world history. Satellite loops show that Haiyan weakened only slightly, if at all, in the two hours after JTWC’s advisory, so the super typhoon likely made landfall with winds near 195 mph. The next JTWC intensity estimate, for 00Z UTC November 8, about three hours after landfall, put the top winds at 185 mph. Averaging together these estimates gives a strength of 190 mph an hour after landfall. Thus, Haiyan had winds of 190 – 195 mph at landfall, making it the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in world history. The previous record was held by the Atlantic’s Hurricane Camille of 1969, which made landfall in Mississippi with 190 mph winds.”
CBC radio in Vancouver this morning also converted the 235 mph back to Km/hr and breathlessly reported “wind speeds up to 379 Kph”.
Wishful thinking? I am reminded of the reasoning behind the despondent posts over the failure of the Arctic summer melt at Arctic Sea Ice Blog:
“Thus it is only logical for an alarmist to hope that the sea ice extent keeps diminishing. In fact, an ice-free Arctic might be the perfect wake-up call for the whole world to seriously start discussing what to do about AGW. It might perhaps even point people toward the underlying root problem that threatens human society in more ways than just Global Warming. So, melt, baby, melt, yeah! Show those (pseudo-)skeptics who’s been right all along!”
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/the-alarmists-paradox.html
One “ratty” new report I heard said something about a new eye wall.
I don’t have time to check better sources, but “eye wall replacement cycles” are an important feature of major hurricanes as they mature. In general, the smaller the eye the higher the winds, but also it’s harder for the wind to reach the center. A new eyewall forms further out and the old eye starves and dissipates. Over time the new eyewall may shrink and the wind increases again. Or the storm stays weaker, especially if the storm runs into challenges like land. Major hurricanes are remarkably delicate works of nature, many effects have to come together just right to keep them running well and fairly minor events can knock them down a notch or two.
Or so I recall, it’s been years since there’s been a najor Atlantic hurricane worth paying much attention to!
MPH, KPH, what, at this point in time, difference does it make?
Math is hard.
Last time I looked at it through the USN portal it was in the South China Sea and forecast to roll over Hanoi as a TD. Worst typhoon I can recall hit Guam around 1965 and pretty much leveled Anderson AFB. Don’t know how accurate it was but I heard of winds gusting at 200 knots. In any case, when Anderson was rebuilt it was all in reinforced concrete.
The satellite presentation was basically perfect at landfall. There is little doubt this was the strongest possible storm given the physical limits of storms that size. Typhoon Tip in 1979 was much larger but did not have such good symmetry. Tip only brushed land and many similarly strong storms never hit land or weakened before landfall.
The point that will be lost on the alarmists is that the near-perfect symmetry of Haiyan is only possible with nearly perfect weather conditions surrounding the storm. If anything isn’t perfect then the storm becomes asymmetric and can’t achieve top strength. That kind of weather will have no correlation to warning. Furthermore the (theoretical) decrease in the lapse rate will work against any increase in SST’s The SST’s provide better evaporation but the lapse rate provides the condensation which releases latent heat and causes the convection.
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/gms/largec.html?area=6&element=0&time=201311092300
New eye wall or utter collapse of the old one?
Oh, and the BBC have a track record in mixing up their km and miles. I had to correct them on this article in which they had multiplied square mile areas by the linear multiplier (1.61instead of 2.59).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23634801
The article is now ‘corrected’ but there’s more: they were talking about 61.8 ‘square km’ and converting them (inaccurately) to square miles. I suggested that they probably meant a square measuring 61.8 km on a side because this was about the hunting ranges of megafauna and 61.8 sq km meant a very small square for large animals. But when they corrected the multiple they just dispensed with the idea of squares of any kind and just left it as a distance, 61.8 km. What’s that, a radius? A narrow corridor they run up and down?
I think they just lost all confidence over basic school maths and realised they didn’t have a clue what square km were.
I wonder if the Typhoon article was by the same author?
Super. Not Supe. Supe isn’t a word.
I think “boobed” might also not be a word.
Guuardian website home page: “Typhoon Haiyan, possibly the strongest storm ever to hit land, has devastated several Philippine islands”.
The Age (Melbourne, Australia) aka SKS the Newspaper, is perpetuating the same confusion between KMPH and MPH.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/super-typhoon-haiyan-slams-philippines-20131108-2x5b6.html
Who is Greg Laden?
If the gusts are less than the sustained winds, does that mean it is sucking air?
While you are busy updating how many miles an hour the storm’s winds were please also be respectful and update the death toll. Check reuters for the latest numbers, you’re off by an order of magnitude.
REPLY: Latest report from red Cross says 1200, which I updated. This came in with the hour. Hardly an order of magnitude.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/11/09/typhoon-haiyan-philippines-vietnam/3483099/
As usual, you don’t cite your source, you just claim others are wrong – Anthony
This is a particularly callous post, even for WUWT. Fatality numbers are just starting to come in and the latest are now saying over 10,000 have perished.
You people are playing silly number games in the face of real human suffering. You should be ashamed.
I’ll cite it: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/typhoon-haiyan-death-toll-tops-10-000-police-1.2420971
As of an hour ago:
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/11/09/13/1200-believed-dead-philippine-typhoon-red-cross
I tracked this on the BBC website for 24 hours before it made landfall; they were consistently quoting 235km/hr forecasts. At the same time, CNN was hyping it as 235 mph winds (sustained or gusts not stated). In this case I suspect the BBC not at fault unless they later reconverted CNN wind speeds to km/h, which is certainly feasible but I haven’t sen it on their web site.
Earlier today I made a comment about the predictable media coverage of Haiyan on the other WUWT post echoing Ryan’s sentiment regarding “garbage articles.” My favorite excerpt was the one I quoted first (from a garbage article by 350.org co-founder Jamie Henn):
Climate change is loading the dice for extreme weather events like Haiyan. The storms strength and rapid development have been aided by unusually warm ocean waters and warm, moist air (warm air holds more water vapor than cold). Global warming also causes sea level rise, increasing the risk of flooding from storm surges, especially in low-lying areas like much of the Philippines. Carbon dioxide is the steroids that leads to grand-slam storms like Haiyan. Haiyan should be a five-alarm wake up call for negotiators in Warsaw and the capitals that sent them here.
It leads me to conclude that AGW alarmism is the steroids that leads to zombie doomsday memes being given eternal life. While Haiyan is a human tragedy, it is not a human-caused tragedy, despite the wailing from AGW zombie prognosticators. Cheers!
At this point all electricity is down and will likely be that way for days or weeks. Fatality numbers always are slow to emerge.
My point is, why would this site be downplaying the strength of this storm right when we’re just learning the full extent of the tragedy?
Greg Laden, Anthony Watts, nit-picking about mph and spelling mistakes while people are dying is sick. A plague on both your houses.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/typhoon-haiyan-death-toll-tops-10-000-police-1.2420971 is an interesting document. a photo caption says “The Philippine Red Cross is estimating that more than 1,200 people have died.” The main text says “”We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died,” Soria told Reuters.” It later says “Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said it was too early to know how many people had died in the storm.”
There is really no point in trying to keep track of fatality counts until some semblance of communications has been restored.
Physics Major says:
November 9, 2013 at 3:54 pm
MPH, KPH, what, at this point in time, difference does it make?
Math is hard.
——————————————————————————-
However, simple arithmetic is , well, simple.
Conversion of metric to imperial and vice versa is a simple mental exercise with any of the common units (metres/yards including kilometres/miles, kilogrammes/pounds, Celsius/Fahrenheit etc.).
Just in: Latest official fatality count (in Filipino):
http://anc.yahoo.com/video/ndrrmc-151-dead-due-yolanda-011610793.html
Only BBC and Jeff Masters have the right to play silly number games in the face of real human suffering? Rob, reserve your righteous ire for them.
Adding to the confusion, Jeff Masters’s numbers supposedly came from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, but their warnings state wind speed in knots. I could not find a warning before the landfall in the Philippines.
It seems like it was not just the BBC:
Times of India –
Haiyan had maximum sustained winds as it approached the Philippines on Friday morning of 315 kilometres an hour, and gusts of 379 kilometres an hour, according to the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre.
Sky News:
The US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre in Hawaii shortly before landfall said Typhoon Haiyan’s maximum sustained winds were 314km/h, with gusts up to 379km/h.
And even:
NASA
The U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that just before Super-Typhoon Haiyan made landfall its maximum sustained winds were 314 kph/195 mph, with gusts up to 379 kph/235 mph. PAGASA, the Philippines Weather organization noted that Haiyan’s maximum sustained winds at landfall were near 234 kph/145 mph.
http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/haiyan-northwestern-pacific-ocean/#.Un7YOCeokeM
It may be prudent to first check what the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center DID say and if it was correctly converted why the discrepancy?
(Note Bay News says “The local weather bureau makes estimates based on longer periods of time than others, such as the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center, which said shortly before the typhoon made landfall that its maximum sustained winds were 314 km/hr (195 mph), with gusts up to 379 km/h (235 mph).)
However this all seems rather academic in the big picture of devastation and loss of life in what is undoubtedly a massive natural disaster which maybe both alarmists AND sceptics should leave until another day to justify or repudiate a cause.
I don’t wish to show disrespect for the dead and injured but another aspect is to appreciate what amazing shows one can see by just watching the atmosphere.
Jimbo at 2:33 provides a link to “more typhoons from the past” but check the dates. Sorry no satellite views available.
=====
There is also this: “People sometimes make errors,” said Edward Weiler, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Space Science
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/index.html?_s=PM:TECH
“Check reuters for the latest numbers,” is a citation of a source. Please do not add stupidity to your callousness. One locality is now citing 10,000 via the governer’s office.
Let me ask you this but you better answer quick because the ground is sliding from underneath you as I type this. How important is 1,200 vs. tens of thousands? If it turns out to be tens of thousands instead of 1,200 will you STFU forever? Please?
Let me know right away, I want to watch.
REPLY: its an estimate from a meeting last night. Since it was too hard for you to make a link, I searched. See here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/10/philippines-typhoon-casualty-idUSL4N0IV00F20131110
The problem with early estimates is what this post is about. We’ll wait until something more concrete than an estimate from a late night meeting is given.
The Red Cross in the Phillipines says 1200, I trust them more than government officials making estimates. If it turns out the number is higher, I’ll report it. In the mean time feel free to be as upset as you wish.- Anthony
Meanwhile, someone competent ought to get into Wikipedia and fix things…Currently they’re saying this in first sentence:
“Typhoon Haiyan of November 2013, which is known in the Philippines as Typhoon Yolanda, is one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded.”
Thank goodness we have fossil fuels to aid in the rescue, recovery, and rebuild of the area devastated.
gregladen says:
“…you better answer quick… Let me know right away…”
No one seems to care about your demands. How does it feel to be impotent on the internet’s “Best Science” site?
Thanks Karl W. Braun for that link.
Has the hurricane season officially ended here in the US?
I posted the 1200 number as soon as it first came out, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/07/super-typhoon-haiyan-one-of-strongest-storms-ever-heads-for-philippines/#comment-1470180
Honeycutt: “You people are playing silly number games in the face of real human suffering. You should be ashamed.”
How dare you discuss numeric data when early estimates are that X people….!
Not until Nov. 30.
Some pictures: http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2013/11/aerial-images-of-typhoon-haiyans-destruction/#1
I’m pleasantly surprised to see this
“The typhoon barreled through six central Philippine islands on Friday, wiping away buildings and leveling seaside homes with ferocious winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour) and gusts of 275 kph (170 mph). By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the U.S., and nearly in the top category, a 5.”
http://ap.stripes.com/dynamic/stories/A/AS_PHILIPPINES_TYPHOON?SITE=DCSAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Reuters reporting 10,000 dead in Tacloban city alone. I am skeptical of that number. It would be 5% of the population of the city. We are going to get all kinds of hype.
Yeah, I get all my meteorological data from the Stars and Stripes.
“Haiyan hit Guiuan, on the Philippine island of Samar, at 4:40 am local time (20:40 UTC) November 8, 2013. Three hours before landfall, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) assessed Haiyan’s sustained winds at 195 mph, gusting to 235 mph, making it the 4th strongest tropical cyclone in world history. Satellite loops show that Haiyan weakened only slightly, if at all, in the two hours after JTWC’s advisory, so the super typhoon likely made landfall with winds near 195 mph. The next JTWC intensity estimate, for 00Z UTC November 8, about three hours after landfall, put the top winds at 185 mph. Averaging together these estimates gives a strength of 190 mph an hour after landfall. Thus, Haiyan had winds of 190 – 195 mph at landfall, making it the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in world history. The previous record was held by the Atlantic’s Hurricane Camille of 1969, which made landfall in Mississippi with 190 mph winds.”
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2575
The Left always use human misery to further their cause. So much for the “caring, sharing” myth.The constant use of every warm day being from global warming or every hurricane, storm, even super high tides and tsunamis being caused by global warming should start the alarm bells and bullshit meters going. wake up world, it is a giant propaganda campaign to destroy the achievements of the human race over the past 10,000 years.Hey Green Lefties, you are welcome to go live in the trees.
“the internet’s “Best Science” site?”
Are you referring to the contest you guys games? Nice. Fake data about climate, fake data about the quality of this site.
But you are right. I’m impotent here. I knew that before I commented.
In fact I’m so damn impotent here not one of you will bother to visit my commentary on this blog post, let alone comment there. Not one. I’ll be totally ignored. Here:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/11/09/wuwt-science-denialist-blog-hits-new-historic-low/
Begin ignoring now. Full ignore mode on. Check.
REPLY: You’re a real prince Greg, remember how your last rant backfired on you? We’ll wait for something more substantial than an estimate – Anthony
President Aquino doesn’t seem to happy about the casualty counts in some areas. If 10,000 were killed in Tacloban, heads are going to roll.
http://anc.yahoo.com/news/pnoy–tacloban-seemed-unprepared-for-yolanda-123212742.html
Rob Honeycutt;
My point is, why would this site be downplaying the strength of this storm right when we’re just learning the full extent of the tragedy?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because misrepresenting the severity and cause of storms like this is being used to justify policies that keep hundreds of millions of people in poverty and starvation conditions. Yes what has happened in the Philippines is a tragedy. But the policies justified by falsely attributing both the magnitude and the cause of this storm are an even greater tragedy affecting a vastly larger number of people, and for generations at that.
And Rob, this site isn’t downplaying it. This site is reporting the facts as they emerge.
crosspatch – thanks for the link to pictures.
In one of the photos it’s interesting to see the big water tower remaining standing amid the destruction.
Hurricane deaths are affected by time in-between the last one. Meaning that development (of various quality) has occurred since the last one, and probably at a greater concentration. This type of “rebound” leads to increased devastation and death when the next one rolls in. However, this time evacuations were begun early and were more complete than previous efforts. Lives were saved.
There are weak/sick/? people posting on here that are just like Jihadist trying to hide behind unfortunate people. This is their meme: Ignore the weather facts, ignore the spurious AGW claims. There are people’s lives involved and it is terrible. It is even more terrible that those lives are being used by snake oil salesmen to sell the AGW agenda!!! But the weak/sick/? people will defend the snake oil salesmen right to use any and all disasters to sell their garbage.
According to PAGASA, these were the top five storms since 1970 to strike the Philippines prior to Yolanda. Note that four of them made their landfall in the exact same place:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=245857625570999&set=a.211004039056358.1073741831.163550757135020&type=1&theater
1mph = 1.6 kph
1 kph = 0.6 mph
1knot = 1.85 kph
It’s not hard for most, but one should never underestimate the snivelling incompetence of the lame stream media. And initially the errors in reporting would just appear to be incompetence. However it does raise serious questions of those “journalists” who go on to build a “worst storm evah!!!” story on top of figures they clearly didn’t check. That’s beyond incompetence, that’s wilful negligence.
Lying by commission, lying by omission and now lying through incompetence –
“but, but, but it fit the “narrative”, of course we didn’t check the figures!”
What were the death tolls from previous typhoons that hit the Philippines?
gregladen says:
November 9, 2013 at 6:32 pm
“….I’ll be totally ignored…..”
—————————————-
Greg,
I understand you have put many many hours into promoting the AGW scare and vilifying sceptics and it is a shame that much of your work is ignored. However the Internet is keeping a permanent record, so your effort is not wasted.
The good news is that with the collapse of AGW, a great number of people will be paying a great deal of attention to those that sought to promote or profit by AGW advocacy. Very shortly you will likely have more attention than you could have ever wished for!
It seems that the Washington Post is also adding stuff to up the size of Haiyan. In an article, they compare the size of Katrina and Haiyan in a side-by-side image of satellite pictures of both storms:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/11/08/super-typhoon-haiyan-one-of-worlds-most-powerful-storms-in-history-from-space/#!
You have to scroll down a bit to see the pictures.
The picture make you believe that the eye of Haiyan is much larger than the eye of Katrina, and thus implying Haiyan was much bigger and stronger. Because there is no scale, there is not way to directly compare the sizes.
However, it seems that the eye of Katrina was bigger than the eye of Haiyan.
Haiyan: 8 nautical miles, http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/haiyan-northwestern-pacific-ocean/#.Un73_icclEU
Katrina: 25 miles, srh.noaa.gov/mfl/?n=katrina
Hopefully it was less destructive than the world’s most destructive ones…
http://www.debate.org/reference/top-10-deadliest-typhoons-hurricanes–cyclones
A larger eye doesn’t make for stronger storm. A very tight eye can have some seriously strong winds. Generally an eye contracts as a storm intensifies. See Hurricane Andrew as an example.
davidmhoffer; “And Rob, this site isn’t downplaying it. This site is reporting the facts as they emerge.”
You misunderstand, the posters here have taken the unprecedented action of pre-emptive denial. They’ve presented facts before they could be adjusted, homogenized, gridded and installed under a narrative. It’s worse than we thought!
My mom asked me what 235kmh was when she was watching a news item on the BBC on Friday night, because we work in mph and it meant absolutely nothing to us. I said then I bet someone can’t be arsed to do a little bit of arithmetic and just convert it. Looks like I was right. However, they just changed the kph to mph instead. Hardly surprising, it’s just too damned hard to use the calculator on your phone.
It’s no different to the amount of times somebody in the media refers to financial figures in pounds sterling without converting from US dollars because they are (a) too lazy to divide the sum by whatever current exchange rate (£1 = $1.6), and (b) the media are incompetent and rarely check facts, and only bother after complaints.
I doubt the BBC will issue a retraction though, they’ll more than happy to push the ‘more frequent and bigger storms ‘ BS on the back of the storm that hit southern England last week still fresh in viewers memory.
gregladen says:
“Are you referring to the contest you guys games?”
In each of the Weblog Awards [all of which WUWT won], Anthony told readers to avoid voting more than once. Contrast that with several alarmist blogs, which gleefully informed their readers that they were voting multiple times, on multiple computers. But despite their attempts to game the system, they still lost.
So rather than ‘gaming’ the contest, Anthony went out of his way to keep it honest, and I suspect that greg laden is infected with psychological projection: imputing his own faults onto others. He is not honest, so he believes others are also dishonest.
What else should we expect from a liar?
[snip – unsubstantiated rant – mod]
gregladen says:
November 9, 2013 at 6:30 pm
“Haiyan hit Guiuan, on the Philippine island of Samar, at 4:40 am local time (20:40 UTC) November 8, 2013. Three hours before landfall, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) assessed Haiyan’s sustained winds at 195 mph, gusting to 235 mph, making it the 4th strongest tropical cyclone in world history. ”
~~~~~~~~
Wow, WORLD history. Not just since satellite records? That’s huge, man. Can I have some of what you are on?
One must segregate interpolation of a post.
Is this post about data, or feelings?
Bad things happen every day folks!
Sadly, every day.
That is not gonna stop any time soon………
@QssQss with Greg laden and Rob Honeycutt, it’s about feelings. Laden has launched into a blog and twitter tirade to make it look like we don’t care about the people that were killed and injured in this storm. We do, but we also don’t want to fall into the trap of over-hyping the death toll as tends to happen when early news reports come out.
This is a tragic storm, that’s never been an issue, but those who don’t like what we do here want to make our issues with wind speed reporting into one.
The post is about reported wind speed in the media, such as the clearly wrong Mail report of 235 mph. That’s either hype or incompetency.
Mod.. Asking a question doesn’t constitute a rant.
[ since you have removed your item 2) which was the rant in the subsequent comment, obviously you knew you were in the wrong -mod]
1) Does anyone here understand the difference between wind speed prior to and after landfall?
[snip -final warning – mod]
“MojoMojo says:
November 9, 2013 at 3:47 pm”
RE: WeatherUnderground
Used to use WU as a source for wind predictions when I was racing sailboats. They were usually spot on.
But now they stink. They have become big business for AGW. Of course now they are owned by the weather channel, which is owned by NBC which is part of the MSM.
No facts, just agenda.
[snip – again a rant – mod]
Once the ABC here is OZ made a boo-boo. They were doing an article on noise
levels from two sources, 120 dB and 130 dB, and added them to get 250 dB. I tracked
the error, BBC referred to two noise levels, AP picked it up and added the noise levels
together and ABC just ran with AP version. The article was corrected once it was
pointed out.
Anthony, the obvious is such.
I am thankful that the word got out about a big storm approaching, and they took action locally.
The toll would have been much greater if that hype had not happened in the end.
The hype is exactly what it is., past tense.
I cannot help those who are predisposed to make hype, as was obviously prevalent with this event.
Data is Data, in the end. I am just hopeful the hype saved lives.
I just added this update to the head post. I’m sure that haters won’t be able to accept it.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/powerful-typhoon-causes-mass-disruption-in-philippines.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
Anthony: With respect to your inline comment @November 9, 2013 at 8:37 pm we are unfortunately witnessing a phenomenon well described by David Horowitz
“Here is another statement from Rules for Radicals: “We are always moral and our enemies always immoral.” The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the immorality of the opposition,”
It is sad when the simple act of pointing out of a mistake by journalists causes posters to smear the web-host. But there is a reason for it..it is who they are
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362992/uniting-right-david-horowitz/page/0/1
gregladen says: “Check reuters for the latest numbers, you’re off by an order of magnitude.”
Reuters is not peer reviewed. Better check Wankerpedia, instead. Oh, wait, Wankerpedia is peer-fabricated. Never mind.
See the attached link Bureau of Met Australia re cyclone Olivia. It contains the following quote:
Olivia was one of the strongest cyclones to have crossed the Australian coastline in recent decades. The maximum wind gust of 408 kilometres per hour recorded on Barrow Island established a new world record for the highest wind gust ever recorded. In addition Varanus Island measured 267 kilometres per hour and Mardie recorded a wind gust of 257 kilometres per hour. At the time this was the second highest recorded on the Australian mainland, the highest being 259 kilometres per hour also at Mardie, during Trixie in February 1975 (subsequently Vance caused a wind gust of 267 km/h at Learmonth in March 1999).
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/wa/1996.shtml
Re: Update 5, the next 3 paragraphs in the Times story are:
“The United States Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center used satellite analysis to estimate sustained winds at 195 m.p.h., with gusts up to 235 m.p.h., but that measured the center of the storm when it was over the ocean.
“As far as satellite imagery was concerned, it indicated that this was one of the strongest storms on record,” said Roger Edson, the science and operations officer at the United States National Weather Service in Guam.
He said 195 m.p.h. winds would put the storm “off the charts,” but he acknowledged that satellite estimates require further study on the ground to determine if they were accurate.”
So it is perfectly reasonable for the press to be reporting the 195 mph estimate. Just because some stations reported lower numbers means little. They reported the wind speed at their locations. There is no reason that the maximum speeds will occur at all locations. (I am not saying global warming increased or decreased this storm’s magnitude. That’s a separate issue.)
Thousands of people die, hundred of thousands of people lost their home and business. No food, no water, no communication and here people from their warm cosy home talk about overhyped? Is there no respect here? I’m a AGW sceptic but this attitude is below any level.
[ the issue is with the wind speed reporting by the media versus actual measured winds, did you not notice the last line of the post and the link to Red Cross? give generously -mod]
Rob Honeycutt, do you really have such reading comprehension difficulties?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24887337
BBC is now reporting in both kph and mph!
Even a local source in the Philippines mentions the record status with a disclaimer. From a Philippine Inquirer website article:
“The provinces of Samar and Leyte were among the hardest hit areas by Yolanda. The typhoon made its first landfall in Eastern Guiuan in Samar at its peak strength early Friday, with winds of 215 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 275 kph. It is the strongest cyclone to make landfall in world history as US meteorologists put it”
Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/524543/yolanda-kills-300-in-samar-official
The US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center site reports wind speed in Knots. The maximum wind speed shown in the typhoon tracking data is 170 knots (196 mph, 315 kph) and the relative co-ordinates are given. One can check the tracking data co-ordinates to see what the wind speed was when the typhoon hit landfall.
Our thoughts are with those affected.
With regards to the google search for “most powerful storm”. It must be borne in mind that Google’s search algorithms will use news reports and promote them up the rankings but only temporarily. Its very likely that in a few weeks time when the media websites don’t have “most powerful storm” on their front pages that Google will be showing a totally different set up of results. It might include WUWT in the top rankings in the future because of the use of “most powerful storm” in the comments. 😉
It looks like the 10,000 deaths figure is the MSM taking a figure which is a guesstimate by authorities planning for the worst possible scenario and making it out that it its a real and actual value because it makes a good headline. So the death toll of a few hundred is the most realistic value.
does it make a difference if you get killed by 275 or 375 km/h? My thoughts are with the victims who deserve more respect than quibbling about windspeed, especially when it just happened.
Greg “Has Been, Hasn’t Been” Laden, how many years has your ilk promoted activist pseudoscientific AGW fraud that aims to squash the development of poor developing nations, those most profoundly affected by extreme weather events that have always happened and will always continue to happen?
I’ll answer for you. Decades.
Yet you have the balls to come here and promote that rabid pile of crap-Laden opportunistic propaganda you wrote claiming WUWT et al. doesn’t care about the people impacted. I know this is a terrible blow to someone as entrenched and irretrievable as you are, but it is YOUR DOGMA that will prolong poverty and kill millions. This comment I made on another WUWT post speaks to your anti-human prescriptions. Tough pill to swallow? Don’t care. Sprinkle a bit of that salt that oozes out of you and have a bite.
If, against YOUR wishes, the world’s poor were allowed to develop at their natural pace and enjoy the fruits of the Golden Economic Age rather than the unnatural and unforgivable mandates of YOUR “solution,” Sustainable Development, they would be in a far better economic position to address the core issues of poverty and low development that make typhoons (and other natural disasters) generally far more deadly than hurricanes.
But YOU want to control their access to resources and cheap energy. YOU want to limit their growth. YOU want to brainwash them into accepting your strict governance. YOU wish to limit humanity’s freedoms and it is YOU who does not care. So take your righteous indignation and shove it bud.
Your dogma seeks to keep the poor impoverished and impoverish the fortunate members of the current and future middle class. Under the guise of environmental and social justice, your promise of “income equality” is achieved only by making everyone poorer. You destroy rather than create, lower rather than raise. Thanks but no thanks.
You lose on the simple basis that humanity needs to rise or it will perish. While that may be your goal, the vast majority of global citizens want a better life for their children and will fight for that future. A similar majority, given the opportunity to develop the wealth needed to afford it, would be excellent stewards of the environment. Look up “environmental Kuznets curve.”
And then look in the mirror. Your projection here fails to hide the terrible reality (for you) that you have chosen the wrong side Greggo. You are fighting against humanity, and it is a losing battle. I advise you begin making peace with that reality. Until you do, you should be ignored.
Sadly, there are going to be many more intense weather events during this period of global cooling. Simply the result of increasing temperature differential between equator and the poles. Of course it will blamed on CO2 and global warming.
And this morning (Sunday, 08:00) the BBC radio news is still leading with the number of deaths “caused by one of the most powerful storms on record”. You could go nose-to-nose with that organisation and shout at them that they are liars, and I swear it would make not a jot of difference to their lying propagandist output.
Anthony
If some reports of wind speeds were exaggerated, is the converse also true?
b4llzofsteel says:
November 9, 2013 at 11:44 pm
“My thoughts are with the victims”
b4llzofsteel (8^D), if you have spent anytime here at WUWT?, you would know that is always first and foremost on the minds of our host and the regulars here.
Mods, obviously I have no idea of what Rob Honeycutt is saying, neither does anyone else, unfortunately, only you. Do you think it might be better to let the posts appear (as long as it isn’t defamatory) so that we can decide if it’s a ‘rant’ – though I don’t understand why a ‘rant’ isn’t allowed? This is, after all, a forum for people to express strongly-held views. Perhaps if it received enough negative comments from others, THEN it could be removed. I realise that you are in a difficult position, but I cannot be alone in thinking that there is far too much censorship that takes place on forums across the net. I myself, have been the subject of censorship on Tamino’s webite and also the New Zealand website, hot-topic (a gloriously-silly pro AGW place for like-minders to reassure each other). I make a point never to visit these sites again. The net is a wonderful place, and somewhere where you can read other’s views, even if they may be diametrically opposed to one’s own. Censorship should ONLY be happening in extreme circumstances or where a view could have a legal repercussion. I have spent many years here on WUWT, and it’s the only website that I visit daily, but I had to express my view that censoring of other’s posts MAY be happening too easily. Of course, I may be wrong – my wife says I often am.
Dear Anthony
I’ve been a constant follower of your blog since several years. I like reading the technical articles even If I am not a climatologist and I often appreciate the open and fair discussions.
I think however this time you really lost control over your instinct of crusader agains AWG and Co. This cynic discussion about kpm/Mph/knots, records/not record etc while people are dying and are going to die for the unavoidable spread of infection diseases through water is, to say the least, inappropriate.
For the sake of human solidarity I would suggest to suspend at least until this disaster is not ended and its dimension will be fully understood
thank you
Carlo Napolitano MD PhD
By the way, it makes me smile to know that it eats Laden up that Anthony has such a huge and dedicated readership. In fact, reading between the lines of Greg’s posts can be seen the words “sour grapes” over and over again. He does not understand that people can see right through his abrasive fear mongering and deceptive bullshit and choose to stay away. In his weak narcissistic mind he sees it as “being ignored’. Too funny.
The humanitarians of the now defunct global warming enterprise are concerned only that they can attribute a body count to a “world record” storm that they blame on CO2.To the thousands of victims, it makes absolutely no difference if their homes were destroyed by 149 mph winds or 160 mph winds
[snip – pointless insulting rant – mod]
b4llzofsteel: “does it make a difference if you get killed by 275 or 375 km/h?”
Does it make a difference if you don’t? If you’re so strung over on the inhumanity of inhuman forces then purchase an indulgence for your middle class sins at a fund that swears they’ll help out victims. No matter what wind speed didn’t kill them.
Howard Wiseman (@HowSmart) says:
What does your comment say when we look back through previous posts on this topic and see that WUWT commenters were citing the early reports of low numbers of deaths to criticise the warnings and forecasts?
We all know the game WUWT will play on these events in the coming years. Every decent meteorologist knows that the raising of the global average temperature by the best part of 1 degree will have significant impacts on weather events such as these – undeniably so. But WUWT and the contrarians will use the fact that this will be difficult and take time to prove empirically to deny it and to muddy the waters.
Play your games, children.
With 10,000 lives lost already and 315km/hr winds I think this thread is odd beam and shows WUWT in a bad light unfortunately. We don’t have to go to AGW lengths to ridicule everything!
So what you are saying is this:
1. The BBC journalists are incapable of passing the entry-level journalist requirement of identifying multiple sources of data and cross-validating them prior to issuing ‘news’.
2. The BBC Editor failed to ask for the appropriate corroboratory evidence before running the story.
3. The whole of the west’s MSM did likewise, not one of them carrying out basic professional journalism or editorial work to ensure that their role in informing, not brainwashing, was delivered.
And we all wonder why the Press nowadays has a reputation worse than second hand car salesmen, estate agents and politicians???
Ok the press is bad and is confused and wrong often in these cases, but I just think that we should be careful when people have lost many lives and are in suffering to not appear to be unsympathetic to their plight!
To those who are saying this site is being disrespectful to the dead by nitpicking about the wind speeds all I can say is go and lie down in a dark room. No web site is perfect but this site is generally sensitive and certainly not disrespectful.
The conversion of kph to mph is simple and should not be a source for error from even a twelve year old?
As an approximation
100 kph=60 mph (or to be precise 62.137)
To get this conversion wrong is absolutely pathetic.
There is an old Chinese adage that goes…
Superior virtue does not know virtue,
Inferior virtue practices virtue.
I;m reminded of this saying as a result of all the comments from the latter type who want to be seen as virtuous.
Rob Honeycutt
1) Does anyone here understand the difference between wind speed prior to and after landfall?
The PAGASA Update 5A, which was three hours before landfall quotes
Maximum sustained winds of 225 kph near the center and gustiness of up to 260 kph
http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/wb/tcarchive_files.html
Seems very strange to me, near complete devastation in the pics, whole areas unreachable, communications down and you lot are pissed off because some of the facts maybe wrong.
Give it some time, let us wait for the facts then you can argue your case.
[ maybe you missed the fact that the communications to the Philippine Meteorological Agency are not down, never were, and the data is available for anyone to see http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/wb/tcarchive_files.html this post is pointing out that media is doing a bad job – why wait until it is all over to point this out? – mod]
The latest Daily Mail headline…
Typhoon Haiyan feared to have killed TEN THOUSAND Filipinos as Vietnam and China now prepare for the worst.
Typhoon Haiyan was a maximum category-five storm with ground winds of up to 235mph.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2494635/Philippines-super-typhoon-Haiyan-powerful-storm-history.html#ixzz2kEyowl00
The images coming out of the Philippines is evidence enough that it was a Cat 5 typhoon.
http://news.sky.com/story/1166188/super-typhoon-haiyan-thousands-feared-dead
[ the first image in your link shows thatched roof beach huts still mostly intact – a Cat5 typhoon would have blown them away – mod ]
Typhoons by their very nature are often hugely destructive. To me its a total and utter waste of everyone’s time debating the exact magnitude since any sustained winds approaching 200mph for an hour or two will change and destroy lives on a scale we in the west find hard to appreciate. Cape Verde hurricanes as destructive as they can be are not in the same realm as some of the enormous Typhoon systems that crop up from time to time.
When you have poor people living in a low area, and a storm surge of ten to fifteen feet comes flooding in on howling winds, you are talking about water over the roofs of single-story houses. Anyone who didn’t heed the warning and leave would face swimming in debris-clogged water in screaming wind. Your odds are not good. (Read first-hand accounts of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.)
Damage diminishes quickly as you move away from the eyewall. Pictures from only fifty miles north or south give the illusion things were not so bad. The people who took a direct hit from the eyewall are under no illusions about the ferocity of the storm.
It is my understanding that the people of the Philippines get hit by more typhoons each year than anyone else, and are better than many give them credit for, when it comes to knowing how to respond. I read “local reports” that over a hundred thousand did heed warnings and get the heck out. However there is great uncertainty about how many foolishly stayed behind. For this reason you get statements that allow the death toll to vary between hundreds and thousands, such as this one:
“Tacloban city administrator Tecson Lim said the death toll in that city, located on Leyte Island, alone “could go up to 10,000,” adding that about 300 to 400 bodies have already been recovered.”
My prayers and sympathies to all who suffered.
What I’ve read is that there was one coastal city near a bay that funneled a storm surge that wasn’t evacuated. A storm surge in the middle of the night quickly flooded parts of the city to a depth of ten feet, killing many in their beds. In the morning, after the waters receded, a good rough estimate of deaths could be made. (Indirectly, this indicates that many lives were saved by evacuation.)
FWarner says:
November 10, 2013 at 12:45 am
“….. Every decent meteorologist knows that the raising of the global average temperature by the best part of 1 degree will have significant impacts on weather events such as these – undeniably so…..”
So any meteorologist who doesn’t know that is not decent?
I suggest you – and all those “decent meteorologists” – look at the data. The overall intensity of hurricanes globally has been falling for decades.
Rob Honeycutt says: @ November 9, 2013 at 5:14 pm
This is a particularly callous post, even for WUWT. Fatality numbers are just starting to come in and the latest are now saying over 10,000 have perished.
You people are playing silly number games in the face of real human suffering. You should be ashamed.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
WHY?
Anthony said “Latest report from Red Cross says 1200, which I updated. This came in and Anthony up dated within the hour, so he up-dates from a reasonable source not the MSM very quickly.
Besides we are not the actual cause of these deaths unlike Warmists. We are not making $$$ off of the deaths of the old and vunerable. Queen’s Paycheck Gets Lift From Crown Estate’s Wind-Farms – Crown Estate’s profit grew by 4 percent to 240.2 million pounds in fiscal 2012 on rising revenue from land leased for offshore wind parks. and Scotland’s wealthiest private landowners are on course to earn around £1 billion in rental fees from wind farm companies.
The UK’s idiotic energy policies caused About 2,000 extra deaths… in just the first two weeks of March compared with the average for the same period over the past five years…. This isn’t just more cold weather. It’s cold weather exacerbated by Energy Poverty. Even the BBC agrees there are extra deaths due to fuel poverty.
Warming WHAT Warming?
Gee, why don’t you time your ‘sharp increase’ to cause the maximum amount of deaths?
The government’s Response? Change the statistics! (Where have we seen that before?)
Note the activist group Consumer Focus came up with twice the numbers the government did when using the 10% of income criteria. The World Socialist Web Site came up with
I will leave it to you to calculate the £ per death each large landowner is earning.
These are real deaths not the convoluted
“Global Warming Deaths”lies the MSM likes to try to scare us with.Why? I think the answer is obvious. While the world spent a billion dollars a day on chasing white rabbits down rabbit holes, they made sure that poverty was still around – by denying resources to address it. And it is as much the poverty of the area that is causing the deaths (lack of proper notification, and protection, lack of options). They are feeling a lot of guilt right now for their selfishness, and they want to spread it around.
1. The job of main stream news is to deliver eyeballs to advertisers. The job of main stream news is not fair and accurate reporting.
2. If this was a record strength storm and likelihood of such was predicted by the IPCC and Global Warming Establishment (including government leaders), why haven’t there been preparations made in anticipation? The fact is that the Global Warming Establishment wants to de-carbonize world economies and government leaders don’t really believe in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. Actions speak louder than words.
3. Theories and causes of Global Warming and Climate Change aside, horrible and powerful typhoons are a fact of life in the Pacific. If citizens are going to cede responsibility for their welfare to their government leaders, they better start holding them responsible.
Since when? I am not disputing the reality, only the “job” description.
The real message from all of this is that disasters like this one have always happened and always will.
Instead of wasting trillions on a non existent problem, we should be using it to address the real problems that people in places like the Philippines face, such as disasters like this, lack of clean drinking water, poor sanitation and a host of other issues.
Greg, Rob, thousands of people are dying, and you’re quibbling about a blog post? Quick, men, book immediate passage to the S. China sea, and get out there in a small boat to block the wind, thereby protecting the innocents. Don’t forget to take anemometer readings. Report back here after you’ve protected everyone.
David Ball says: @ November 9, 2013 at 6:05 pm
Thank goodness we have fossil fuels to aid in the rescue, recovery, and rebuild of the area devastated.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If the UN truly cared about people instead of power they would have invested money in the equipment needed to rescue people. The governments making up the UN had the weather forecasts that allowed enough time to get in and DO SOMETHING about evacuating these people instead of using the deaths as a button they could push. Sandy, Bloomberg and Christie are another example not to mention the government SNAFUS connected to Katrina.
Why in heck do we have government and taxes if not to deal with these situations CORRECTLY.
Oh, Thats right governments main use is transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. Who cares if the sheeple die because of government incompetence.
gregladen says: @ November 9, 2013 at 6:32 pm
…I’m so damn impotent here not one of you will bother to visit my commentary on this blog post, let alone comment there. Not one…..
REPLY: You’re a real prince Greg, remember how your last rant backfired on you?
Yeah Anthony, I visited that time ONCE, enough said.
“does it make a difference if you get killed by 275 or 375 km/h? My thoughts are with the victims who deserve more respect than quibbling about windspeed, especially when it just happened.”
The piety above and from others, is nauseating. People die every day. Lots of them. The issue is mistakes and outright propaganda WRT to the strength of the storm. Life goes on. This doesn’t mean we don’t feel badly for those who were victims. BUt you don’t want to hear that do you? You’re too busy convincing yourself of your moral superiority.
Wow – talk about some obtuse people…
Look – another weather catastrophe, with many deaths and more to come. While we’re worrying about the people, others are manipulating the facts, USING this tragedy to further their own cynical agenda.
How can you POSSIBLY not see the problem here?
Yes, IT IS IMPORTANT. Using tragedies to further a stupid political agenda and crow about “we told you so” may not be criminal, BUT IT SHOULD BE.
Still, can’t fix stupid. There will always be those who just fail to see the actual problem.
WUWT should issue a formal apology for trying to score points on the reporting of this storm. It turned out to be as bad as predicted. A horrible storm.
I visit this site several times a day. I like getting a non-alarmist take on climate topics. You provide a refreshing alternative to the “consensus” crowd. However, your coverage of this storm smacks of childish zealotry. I’m used to such small-minded pettiness from liberals, but not from WUWT.
Please do the right thing.
http://www.worldconstructionnetwork.com/news/adb-to-provide-85-million-funds-for-wind-power-project-in-philippines-170713/
Note: This is the same company UPC/IVPC that had $1B in assets seized in Italy.
Australia’s ABC has reported sustained winds of 315 km per hour too. Good grief! Words fail me. Again. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-11/vietnam-braces-for-typhoon-haiyan-as-thousands-feared-dead-in-p/5081990
The accusation of WUWT being “insensitive” is laughable but expected. Little but straw, hair-splitting, and phoney concern.
Who is greg laden? /rolleyes
Take a look at the satellite imagery and try to argue that Super Typhoon Haiyan was not one of the most powerful storms on record, bring that to ANY meteorologist and they’d be willing to agree that it was, I have yet to see a meteorologist who says he’s seen a more impressive storm on satellite than this one. I’ve got no dog in the fight for or against AGW (personally I see merits to arguments both for and against), and I know that this blog is in place to argue against it and that’s fine, scientific debate is great, but to call this storm “overhyped” is a joke. Of course it can’t be said that the storm is THE most powerful on record, because unlike Atlantic basin hurricanes there is no reconnaissance aircraft in the Pacific to measure the storm so intensity is measured objectively by satellite, and certainly there’s no accurate ground measurements to be taken because any instrumentation in the strongest part of the storm would be ripped to shreds well before recording the peak wind. The reason that PAGASA’s wind estimates are much lower than the Joint Typhoon Warning Center and those quoted by news outlets is because for some reason PAGASA bases their sustained windspeeds on a 10-minute average whereas JTWC bases their sustained windspeeds on a 1-minute average (which is consistent with NOAA and the Saffir-Simpson Scale). You’re comparing apples and oranges with those lower PAGASA estimated windspeeds.
[snip – pointless insulting rant – mod]
Ah, but all those rants favouring Anthony’s position were full of point, eh?
Weak.
Greg Laden’s posting here boils down to two parts.
When people lie about a bad event, Laden wants us to embrace the lies and overwrought hype.
He’s desperate for visitors to his site.
Greg Laden can be summed up as a pathetic liar who bounces between weepy and hotheaded rages.
Regarding the censorship issue raised earlier: WUWT has one of the best sets of policies for moderating comments of any blog I’ve seen, including the snipping policy. The result has been to make the comments consistently worth reading.
The blogs that allow any and all rants often accumulate thousands of comments per post, making them rarely worth reading even though there might be some excellent commentary buried in the rant pile. It’s just not worth taking the time to find them.
The present moderation policy is working just fine.
Carlo Napolitano MD PhD … you hit the nail right on the head Carlo!!!
Your tolerance for error on death toll numbers should be matched by a tolerance for error on wind speed numbers in early reports, wouldn’t you think? Both will be sketchy early and more precise later.
Thanks, Anthony. Good reporting.
A Cat 4 is a monster of a storm nevertheless, but the hype about it is even more monstrous (although it’s just a word storm).
Please donate to lessen the suffering of this poor people!
Claimsguy: “Your tolerance for error on death toll numbers should be matched by a tolerance for error on wind speed numbers in early reports, wouldn’t you think?”
The reported estimates were 1*10^4 deaths. By ignorance of journalists that are incapable of numerical conversion this is widely reported as an estimated single death. It’s better than we thought!
It’s not an estimation problem, it’s a basic cockup in units of measurement.
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
November 10, 2013 at 12:15 am
Mods, obviously I have no idea of what Rob Honeycutt is saying, …
Frankly dear ghost there is no need to hear rants from all kind of alarmists.
There is a tragedy that happened, and we all should be trying to help as we can as pointed out by the moderator, pls give generously:
b4llzofsteel says:
November 9, 2013 at 11:44 pm
the issue is with the wind speed reporting by the media versus actual measured winds, did you not notice the last line of the post and the link to Red Cross? give generously -mod]
On the other side there is the issue with the ghouls that feed on suffering and want to use such catastrophe to further their snake-oil salesman agenda.
And this is the point that this post tries to address. Catastrophes should not be used as arguments to manipulate the people and this can be done only if the information is kept accurate.
There are a number of sites reporting that sustained winds were, in fact 195 mph (314 kph), and that this was a Cat 5 storm. I really don’t understand the attempt to minimize the size and severity of the storm before the facts are known.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/10/us-philippines-typhoon-idUSBRE9A603Q20131110
[ reporting on actual measured wind speeds from the Philippine met agency is an “attempt to minimize the size and severity of the storm”? – what an odd attitude – mod]
NOAA recorded Haiyan’s lowest central pressure at 858, quite possibly a record in the instrumental era:
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/2013/tdata/wpac/31W.html
[REPLY: Oh the beautiful simple-mindedness of Tenny when she’s on a mission to prove somebody wrong.
Those aren’t measurements Tenny, they are ESTIMATES. Done from satellite. They are called DVORAK fixes.
And note, the estimates stay the same for several hours without any fluctuation, then repeat values in bracketing outside that period, a sure sign of a model doing rounding.
Here is the source page: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/storms/HAIYAN.html
The technique is new, and has issues and acknowledged biases, it is a work in progress. One of the issues is that verification has only been done for near US Atlantic Basin storms within the range of hurricane hunter aircraft.
Paper on the technique is here: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010WAF2222375.1 ]
Chris – you don’t get confused by a reality. You must report a reliable estimated wind speed, not a measured one. And our respect for people dying or losing everything should leave only those nice folks at Weather Underground in charge.
Hey, FWarner, don’t let the facts interfere with your blovation. Worldwide ACE is unchanged from the 1970’s. Haiyan cannot even be considered an outlier, It is a storm that can easily find it place in the normal statistical distribution. The devastation and loss of life is tragic. Nature is too cruel. Blame God,
Rob Honeycutt says:
November 9, 2013 at 5:14 pm
This is a particularly callous post, even for WUWT. Fatality numbers are just starting to come in and the latest are now saying over 10,000 have perished.
You people are playing silly number games in the face of real human suffering. You should be ashamed.
Rob Honeycutt – this is not a minor matter; millions of idiots will now recall that this year the worst storm in history with unheralded windspeeds occured. They will go on to support spending billions on stupid ideas like windfarms, CO2 mitigation and the like instead of spending that money for concrete storm shelters that could have saved all those lives. The real crime is the misallocation of resources resulting from ACGW fraud. Talk about callous.
The content and particularly the title of this post are very poorly judged, as are many of the comments. Just wait until the Alarmists start selectively quoting it. Why give them the ammunition? Now is not the time for point scoring. Be better than them. In everything.
Jonathan Abbott says:
“Be better than them. In everything.”
We are.
===============================
FWarner says:
“Every decent meteorologist knows that the raising of the global average temperature by the best part of 1 degree will have significant impacts on weather events such as these – undeniably so.”
FWarner, you are flat wrong.
Hurricanes and extreme weather events have been decreasing. Your alarmism is based on feelings and beliefs, not on empirical evidence.
The alarmist crowd is trying desperately to link a single hurricane to global warming. And of course, they want people to believe that global warming is due to human activity. But as the links show, they are wrong. As usual.
[ reporting on actual measured wind speeds from the Philippine met agency is an “attempt to minimize the size and severity of the storm”? – what an odd attitude – mod]
After reading this thread, I have to say that your attitude is extremely odd!
So if people just used the words ‘estimated’ and ‘measured’ correctly in their reporting with both wind speed and numbers of deaths then understanding and knowledge would be vastly improved. It would also help if basic scale conversions could be be used correctly!
how strange. I don’t see a link to donate to the victims anywhere on Greg Laden’s site.
I can’t believe this article was even written. How quickly did you expect the news of the most devastated regions to come out after a Category 5-equivalent typhoon? I’ll tell you– it wasn’t going to be instantaneous. It is now feared that 10,000 people lost their lives in this typhoon; entire cities have been flattened by either a monstrous storm surge or winds well into the Category 5 threshold.
T Control,
Given Laden’s basic lack of honesty, I would hesitate to contribute even if there was a way on his blog. How would we know the money would be forwarded to those in need?
The traffic at Laden’s pitiful blog will probably increase tenfold as some people reading WUWT go there to “see what they’re missing.”
dbstealey,
good point.But even a direct link to Red Cross would show it had at least occurred to him. Sadly, I suppose it did not.
Anthony should ask him to put his money where his mouth is and match whatever contributions are made through WUWT.
The traffic at Laden’s pitiful blog will probably increase tenfold as some people reading WUWT go there to “see what they’re missing.”
I’m sorry. I really didn’t want to give him the page clicks but I wanted to see if he mentioned anything about donating, as Anthony always does in any disaster. What a hypocrite. Anyway, people, you’re not missing anything by not going there- just the usual angry leftist diatribes.
Hi Greg Laden. I just published a post at my blog that I suspect you will not appreciate…
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/are-greg-ladens-reading-comprehension-skills-at-an-all-time-low/
…because it is about your blog post linked above.
Have a nice day.
So can I assume that Greg Laden will be contacting Baroness Shirley Williams because she tried to make inappropriate political capital out of linking the ‘worst ever’ storm with her wish for the British to pay green taxes and look happy? See 5 mins 30
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24887994
And, since this typhoon will be fodder for every climate hysteria story until the next disaster, will Mr Laden be as concerned for the victims then? Or is there a timeframe for being in good taste when you exploit the dead?
PAGASA uses a 10-minute averaging time for their typhoon wind advisories and the averaging time used by JTWC and NHC is 1-minute, so as a result the winds seemingly come in lower. If you use the normal conversion rate for 10 minutes to 1 minute you still get 165 miles per hour, which is what the wind would have been on land, as those windspeeds are from the JTWC and NHC are only valid over water.
TinyCO2: “Or is there a timeframe for being in good taste when you exploit the dead?”
There is no time limit in exploiting the dead, as they can no longer speak about themselves. The living aren’t allowed to be exploited by the public until after the UN is doing giving them cholera.
Whoever wrote this article is an idiot. Must be another right wing tool, like 90% of their internet posters are.
The images coming out of the Philippines is evidence enough that it was a Cat 5 typhoon.
http://news.sky.com/story/1166188/super-typhoon-haiyan-thousands-feared-dead
[ the first image in your link shows thatched roof beach huts still mostly intact – a Cat5 typhoon would have blown them away – mod ]
Well then, those thatched roofs in that image must have been well away from the eyewall.
Look at the video below and then tell me a thatched roof would survive in those winds!
http://www.youtube.com/embed/zZQanISDpek?
mapsguy1955,
Your comment is typical of the know-nothing alarmist cult.
If you have valid criticism, cut and paste whatever you disagree with, and say why. Otherwise, you are just trolling.
The leftie pose of “We care more about real people than you do” is on full display.
Let me make a prediction. The further left an agency or government is, the less it will actually contribute to rescue and rebuilding. The further left an individual is, the less he/she will actually donate or contribute to same. The left’s solutions are always “other people’s money”, not its own.
From CBS news,
Challenged to respond to a disaster of such magnitude, the Philippine government also accepted help from its U.S. and European allies.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed the military’s Pacific Command to deploy ships and aircraft to support search-and-rescue operations and airlift emergency supplies, while European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso sent Aquino a message saying “we stand ready to contribute with urgent relief and assistance if so required in this hour of need.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered his condolences and said U.N. humanitarian agencies were working closely with the Philippine government to respond quickly with emergency assistance, according to a statement.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57611659/typhoon-haiyan-leaves-thousands-dead-as-it-rumbles-on-towards-vietnam/
Note who’s coming with the goods and who’s “standing ready” and “working closely.” What ever your opinion of the US or the US military, they’re the ones that show up and do the heavy lifting. No organization is better at mobilizing men and materiel and operating a long and fat supply chain.
Jon says:
November 10, 2013 at 3:11 pm
“This site reminds me more and more of a school playground!”
==============
The old playground where you picked the grit out of your wounds when you fell off the jungle-gym, or the new playground with the rubber mats ?
I’m thoroughly confused by the negative reaction of many to this post. The most prevalent complaint seems to be regarding timing and perceived insensitivity. I remind you that this post was made well after the rampant multi-tiered hype had proliferated the coverage (search Superstorm Haiyan). The old Churchill quote “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” seems to apply here and it is one of the favorite tactics of the warmists. More importantly, the focus of the post was upon the apparently exaggerated wind speed and the widespread promotion of the storm as “the most powerful storm ever” with the subtopic of CO2 “steroids.”
WUWT used the empirical evidence available, anathema to sensationalists, to speak and allow us to speak to these exaggerations. Not until the crap-Ladens came along with their failed straw man about death toll did this mutate into a discussion about sensitivity. And unfortunately to me many fell for the bait.
As more information comes in the picture will become clearer and the story of what really happened in the Philippines will be told, and I’m sure the updates at WUWT will continue as further reliable evidence comes in. That is the responsible thing to do, and, unlike the alarmist coverage, responsibility for what is said is important to this community. As an example, watch the contrast unfold here as, I predict, the early reports prove inaccurate. There will be no loud or large “my bad” from the chronically-alarmist sources. They’ll just go on as though no fix is needed. Why bother when the fix is in, right? Their goals of scare and revenue mongering will have been met and they will tap the vein further with the tired AGW angle once the initial sensationalism tapers off. It’s what they do. Never let a crisis go to waste.
As I chastised Laden in my response, it takes some ridiculous nerve to get on the “we care” high horse when their painful prescriptions for AGW mitigation are exposed for all to see (not that they were ever out of plain view). Poverty kills over 20,000 people each and every day, most of them children. The AGW zealots want to prolong this poverty and prevent the expansion of the global middle class. It would be a death sentence for tens of millions, an unnatural culling of the world’s weakest, yet they somehow are able to declare some outrageous moral high ground?
I wish I could openly swear at this point because I would love to sound off the anger that just welled up in me. Who are these rats to tell us we don’t care? Seriously, who the hell do these people think they are preaching morality to us when they promote measures that drive up the cost of energy for those who have it and hinder the development of energy sources for those who don’t? Their intentional sustainable misery will make us all far poorer and their re-educated delusional sheep actually believe that they are saving the freakin’ planet? They are destroying it! Please people. Stop falling into their pathetic morality trap. It is they who need to discuss, amongst themselves, the morality of the future they so actively pursue. Um, Cheers!
mapsguy1955 (November 10, 2013 at 2:09 pm) says “Whoever wrote this article is an idiot.”
Well I clicked on your link to see what you had to say. As it turns out there is basically nothing at your link (an empty wordpress blog). At least Anthony wrote an article, he may be wrong sometimes IMO, I agree with him on the basics of AGW versus CAGW. One of the surest bets in a tragedy like this is that the CAGW side will exploit it even when it had nothing to do with AGW.
Got any fancy climate models that predicted the dud of an Atlantic season? Can AGW lead to fewer strong storms? The western Pacific saw many more storms of this magnitude in the 50’s and 60’s so there is certainly a decline there.
Jon (November 10, 2013 at 3:11 pm) same applies to you. If you have something substantive to say, then say it. You have not added to the quality of the dialog whatsoever.
Left the following comment at Greg’s site. I wonder if it’ll get through moderation:
David Smith
england
November 10, 2013
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Greg and other global warming activists are always trying to promote the, “Increase in extreme weather events” mantra. However, I’ve yet to see them post ANY data that demonstrates that the frequency of current ‘extreme’ events is any higher than in the past.
For every ‘extreme’ event that activists have screamed about over the last year (Sandy, bush fires, etc), a multitude more can be found throughout a record that goes back a hundred years or more.
To be honest, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is getting rather boring. I used to be a fully signed-up global warming believer, but soon realised that the church of Global Warming had become a religion just like so many others. As an atheist, I wanted no part of this organised mass-hysteria that seemed no better than the ‘world is about to end’ preachers on the God Channel.
BTW Greg is getting his a** firmly whipped over at the comments section at WUWT. It’s really funny.
RE: galileonardo says:
November 10, 2013 at 4:04 pm
Well said. You have a way with words.
I sort of liked how you went into a slow burn. I can relate to that, but don’t let it spoil your day.
met says:
“Take a look at the satellite imagery and try to argue that Super Typhoon Haiyan was not one of the most powerful storms on record, bring that to ANY meteorologist and they’d be willing to agree that it was, I have yet to see a meteorologist who says he’s seen a more impressive storm on satellite than this one. I’ve got no dog in the fight for or against AGW (personally I see merits to arguments both for and against), and I know that this blog is in place to argue against it and that’s fine, scientific debate is great, but to call this storm “overhyped” is a joke.”
met: All do respect, but this is drivel. How does looking at satellite imagery in this case distinguish this storm as “one of the most powerful”? A well defined eyewall does no such thing. Many tropical systems have well defined eyewalls but the larger ones would not have as strong of winds as would a smaller eyewall because of the central pressure and radius dependency that determines or drives the pressure gradient force and thus, the wind.
Nobody was arguing this wasn’t a strong typhoon, but it WAS hyped because of the glaring error in which the BBC and others incorrectly used kilometers as miles, meaning the winds were only 62% of the values reported in this type of error. That is not miniscule. It is a sizable mistake. If you also look at the paper that defines how DVORAK is used, it is very apparent there is potentially large error in storms with winds > 125 knots such as here. I won’t debate whether this was deliberate or because of incompetence, but there is no doubt in my mind that the CAGW crowd was licking their chops to try and use this catastrophe as proof that fossil fuel burning and CO2 are causing stronger storms. We now know this is nonsense and that Camille remains the most powerful tropical system in recorded history, which dates back to August of 1969, far from reach of the likes of the Greg Laden goons.
It is also very probable that because the speeds were measured much lower that the initial reports, that the central pressure was also way off the mark. Central pressure of these types of storms would go directly to an estimate of how strong the lateral wind divergence would have been near the core to generate the pressure gradients. 858 milibars is just not believable considering what we now know were winds that were around 170 MPH. I don’t know how they came up with that, but I would bet money that it is wrong…by a large margin of error.
Chuck Wiese
Meteorologist
At 1743 PST from Foxnews “The death toll has reached 1,000 but the number is projected to climb to 10,000.”
“One of the worst storms ever recorded” “Gusts to 275 kph” _Japan Times_
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/11/asia-pacific/huge-challenges-for-philippines-in-aftermath-of-deadly-typhoon/#.UoBewfFnc4Q
–bks
Mod said: [ reporting on actual measured wind speeds from the Philippine met agency is an “attempt to minimize the size and severity of the storm”? – what an odd attitude – mod]
Why is it an odd attitude? Are you really telling me that if the news stories had said that winds had hit peaks at 147 mph but the Philippines Met Agency had measured 195 mph, there would be an article here highlighting that discrepancy? I very much doubt that.
In response to Chuck Weise. Are you for real? Friction across land reduces sustained wind speeds, so the 195 mile per hour winds were reduced to around 165 miles per hour as a result. Another thing, a well defined eyewall does make a difference to the wind speed, as a perfectly symmetrical eyewall allows for greater energy uptake. As for the size of Haiyan, it was 600 kilometers across, which is a relatively moderate size for a tropical cyclone. A true tropical scientist would be aware of this. Just because the BBC made an error in publishing their article does not mean that Haiyan was not as strong as what the JTWC says it was. You call yourself a meteorologist, but you only have a B.A., which actually makes you less qualified than myself. It would seem anyone these days can claim to be a meteorologist.
BBC is correct, Typhoon Haiyan was a 170kt tropical cyclone because that’s what JTWC measured its intensity at. Actually, I’d dare say it was a conservative estimate. The satellite presentation, when compared with the directly observed via recon Super Typhoon Megi in 2010 (which had a 885mb pressure and 185mph winds at landfall in the Northern Philippines), was even more impressive. A perfect ring of -90C cloudtops surrounded by a nearly impossibly clear eye. I dare say winds in Haiyan were approaching 180kts while at peak. That being said, there was clear erosion of the eyewall before its second landfall in Tacloban, but in Guiuan it hit at full strength. Realistically, I’d argue it was ~145kts at landfall in Tacloban. That being said, Haiyan was for 100% certainty a Category 5 Super Typhoon.
Further evidence to suggest Haiyan’s status as an incredibly intense Super Typhoon is the damage being observed. There’s been wide scale tree demarkment from Haiyan’s eyewall. That’s something I’ve almost never heard of happening.
Now, regarding PAGASA and their estimate. PAGASA has been directly responsible for horrific forecasting errors, similar to what the IMD has done in the Indian Ocean. They’re horribly understaffed, underfunded, and because of this do not have the same level of credibility as JTWC does. PAGASA in short is an incompetent forecasting agency under a severely corrupt government.
Please don’t attempt to interject your political fallacies into tropical cyclone meteorology. Reading your blogs, I can tell that’s what drives you to post this bile. The notion that Haiyan was “overhyped” is absurbed, and what’s more absurbed is the fact you’re posting the death toll with it. 1,200+ people are confirmed dead, and it’s looking likely that the toll will rise to 10,000+ as the counts come in.
An ethical challenge for Greg Laden – put your money where your mouth is
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/10/an-ethical-challenge-for-greg-laden-put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is/
Stackhouse says: “In response to Chuck Weise. Are you for real? Friction across land reduces sustained wind speeds, so the 195 mile per hour winds were reduced to around 165 miles per hour as a result. Another thing, a well defined eyewall does make a difference to the wind speed, as a perfectly symmetrical eyewall allows for greater energy uptake. As for the size of Haiyan, it was 600 kilometers across, which is a relatively moderate size for a tropical cyclone. A true tropical scientist would be aware of this. Just because the BBC made an error in publishing their article does not mean that Haiyan was not as strong as what the JTWC says it was. You call yourself a meteorologist, but you only have a B.A., which actually makes you less qualified than myself. It would seem anyone these days can claim to be a meteorologist.”
Stackhouse : Your comprehension is near zero. Who said anything about whether symmetrical eyewalls allow for more energy uptake? The reference has to do with static conditions. If the eyewall is larger the potential for energy uptake is greater but the speed is less than a smaller well defined eyewall. And don’t bother readers with your frictional crap invective. That was written to insult. The ONLY people who attack me like you did with respect to my education and keep stating that I have a “BA” are the ones who read CAGW blog sites like Greg Laden’s who can never get much of anything correct and pick this crap up and keep repeating because it sounds good to the lemmings who read it. You know nothing about me, so if you want to cite qualifications or my experience try getting it correct before you open your mouth and that includes the spelling of my name. I stand by what I have said. The storm was hyped like Anthony said it was because the media reported kilometers as miles. A huge mistake. And even if it was a CAT 5 just before landfall, it does not rise to the intensity of being the “strongest tropical cyclone ever” or “in history”. The news of the day is really the CAGW climate loons who use any severe weather event as some sort of “proof” that the claim that CO2 is changing the climate is validated and it sure seems to me like that’s where this is headed, and because you can’t even get basic things correct about someone you want to pick a fight with, that’s enough to convince me you are in this category, and if that’s wrong, it is your own fault for so carelessly flapping your gums and giving the reader a wrong impression.
Chuck Wiese
Meteorologist
PAGASA measures the windspeeds using 10-minute intervals.
Mr. Watts, I would seriously consider revising your article as the latest figures come in.
Chuck Weise: (Clicking Thumbs-Up button)
KED1234:
You think your “bile” is better? One recurring theme on this thread is the fictional “moral high ground”, and all you’re doing is demonstrating it. I don’t care what your credentials are, your post comes across as an arrogant and rather dense person with no real clue.
PS: the word is “ABSURD”. I’m sure you hear that a lot.
I want to revise my earlier post. Haiyan was an outlier, however you want to defines that term, sitting on the edge of the distribution of expected intensities. Such storms occur infrequently and make landfall even more rarely. But Haiyan was still a natural phenomenon within a couple of SD of the mean.
Romulo Virola, head of the filipino government national statistics board, stated that “Filipino typhoons are getting stronger and stronger, especially since the 90s”. “From 1947 to 1960, the strongest typhoon to hit us was Amy in December 1951 with a highest wind speed recorded at 240kph in Cebu. From 1961 to 1980, Sening was the record holder with a highest wind speed of 275kph in October 1970. During the next 20 years, the highest wind speed was recorded by Anding and Rosing at 260kph. In the current millennium, the highest wind speed has soared to 320kph recorded by Reming in Nov-Dec 2006. If this is due to climate change, we better be prepared for even stronger ones in the future.” (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/08/typhoon-haiyans-force-illustrates-the-rising-power-of-tropical-storms/). It is the overall trend that matters, not any one particular storm (although this one looked devestating).
Latest Situational Report every 12 hours can be found here http://www.ndrrmc.gov.ph
Philippines National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council
7am 11/11/2013 The casualty count they listed was 255
(On Sunday the BBC websites said around 10,000 whereas their TV reports implied much more “The death count for Tacloban City alone is …. 10,000”)
(A UK gov minister just said that Yolanda is worse than the Tsunami ! well that was around 200,000 deaths)
– WUWT is not being malicious by questioning questionable figures cos TRUTH matters. When a high figure comes in a logical person would immediately question whether a mistake like reading Kph as mph had happened, as once a meme is established it’s difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. The fact that is the mistake BBC’s Matt McGrath made in writing of the news report doesn’t say much for the BBC’s credibility. The fact that Greg Laden insults people who pick up that kind of error shows what respect eh has for the truth
strange times we live in, when folks seeking TRUTH and ACCURATE information are attacked!
and the attacks are coming from those seeking to LIE to the public.
Latest death toll count, from the Wall Street Journal (original source: National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council): 1,774. These numbers are going to continue to climb. This petty squabble is shameful.
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303914304579191821439194290?mg=reno64-wsj
I think you spoke way too soon tgis time! Clearly, this storm was as advertised, for once and the death toll is incredible.
WUWT is not being malicious by questioning questionable figures cos TRUTH matters. When a high figure comes in a logical person would immediately question whether a mistake like reading Kph as mph had happened, as once a meme is established it’s difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. The fact that is the mistake BBC’s Matt McGrath made in writing of the news report doesn’t say much for the BBC’s credibility. The fact that Greg Laden insults people who pick up that kind of error shows what respect eh has for the truth
Clearly, of course, the death count is going to be correlated with the number of people in the path of the storm.
I lived through Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve in 1974. We had not had a cyclone hit for a very long time, but it devastated the town (check the Wikipedia page, the pictures look as I remember it.). Only 71 people died, but there were only about 41,000 people there at the time and it was only a category three.
I would expect the death toll numbers to stabilize not much higher than we are currently hearing, but they could go higher, and, IMO, it has nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with AGW idiots looking for anything to sell their religion.
http://io9.com/climate-skeptic-blog-shamefully-downplays-super-typhoon-1462172385
Another post trashing this article from a Science/Sci-fi blog on the Gawker network.
Richard, the figures that the BBC uses are DIRECTLY from the advisories issued by the JTWC which estimated before landfall the strength of Typhoon Haiyan’s strength to have winds of 195 mph gusting to 235 mph. Now on may argue about the validity of satellite estimates (though, it can just as easily be argued that the satellites may have underestimated the intensity of the storm as one could argue they overestimated) the fact is that the BBC and other news agencies are “lying” by directly quoting the advisories of a widely recognized and legitimate forecasting agency is absurb.
What also seems to be omitted (and still has not been corrected by the author) is that PAGASA uses an entirely different way of measuring winds than what the JTWC and the NHC uses. PAGASA uses a 10-minute sustained wind measurement, which results in a consistently wind estimate than the 1-minute sustained wind measurement used by the NHC and JWTC.
The 1-minute sustained measurement is used widely in meteorological records, and is, at least to my knowledge, has not seen any major dispute from meteorological authorities. All wind records for hurricanes in the Atlantic, Eastern Pacific, and many in the western Pacific/Indian ocean use the 1-minute sustained measurement. To say that this measurement, is not valid, means you are calling into question, the intensity measurements of ALL hurricanes ever recorded by the NHC.
I do not know whether you made a mistake, and simply published this before you had a full understanding of the differences, or you are deliberately trying to mislead people knowing that what you are arguing is in fact false.
If it is the former, I hope for the sake of your credibility you make a quick correction and apology (if you so choose) for the mistake. If it is the later, than frankly you embody the worst kinda of cynical callousness that you accuse your political enemies to posses. Not only that, but you are doing a GREAT disservice for the people who have died in that storm by trying to misrepresent that intensities reported, and by insinuating that the media “made up numbers” in order to make this storm “appear stronger”. We already have seen significant problems with people disregarding the intensity of storms over the interpretation that the media is simply “hyping an event” (For example, Sandy) that have lead to life-threatening situations and possibly even deaths. To assert that the media is “hyping” Haiyan, when it is in fact doing no such thing at all, not only does obfuscate the facts about this event, but could very well put the lives of people in the path of future storms at risk.
Therefore, again I hope you quickly correct the information you posted, for the sake of your credibility, for the sake of the credibility of this site and your cause, and for the sake of layman who are reading your site.
Bill G said: “If this is due to climate change, we better be prepared for even stronger ones in the future.” (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/08/typhoon-haiyans-force-illustrates-the-rising-power-of-tropical-storms/). It is the overall trend that matters, not any one particular storm (although this one looked devastating.”
Bill G : Overall trend? With respect to what? With respect to what surveillance systems? Prior to the 1960’s you had no way to determine how many tropical systems there were unless they happened to strike a populated area or pass a ship at sea who was able to measure some of the meteorological parameters. There were no satellites. So this is comparing apples to oranges. As surveillance has improved over the years so has detectability. That improvement has surely led to larger sample sizes and intensities by itself.
So what is the trend compared to a thousand or even ten thousand years? The earth is millions of years old! Do you actually believe that a decadal or even multi-decadal trend is really a trend that can validate the claims of AGW when the surveillance and ability too measure parameters has been improving? This is nonsense. Not by just the statistical inference here but the physical as well.
Those who claim AGW by CO2 is true need to first demonstrate that the SPECTRALLY INTEGRATED OLR has actually declined as GHG’s have risen. This is crucial and has NEVER been accomplished. Computing or simulating narrow band absorption due to CO2 without demonstrating exactly how the hydro cycle and water vapor optical depth responds proves absolutely nothing and the warmers who proclaim the feedbacks are positive TO THE OPTICAL DEPTH have been proven wrong by observation.
It was the kooks like Laden who once told us that “weather” is not climate when global temperatures were cooperating with modeling, and the lay person would reference a cold weather event as proof the earth was not warming. Now that this has failed, the warming crowd and AGW loons have switched gears and abandoned and contradicted themselves completely and focus on any severe weather that occurs, claiming now that this is a validation of the failed CO2 warming claims. At the same time, they converted “global warming” to “climate change”. The lying and absolute disingenuousness of this is stunning and very convincing of how fraudulent and non scientific warmers have become to defend the indefensible.
Chuck Wiese
Meteorologist
@Gregladen – you are being ignored because you are both a hypocrite and irrelevant. I know by your statement that you have never discussed 9-11, yet 3000 people died. How dare you revel in the deaths of others!
If it is the later, than frankly you embody the worst kinda of cynical callousness that you accuse your political enemies to posses. Not only that, but you are doing a GREAT disservice for the people who have died in that storm by trying to misrepresent that intensities reported, and by insinuating that the media “made up numbers” in order to make this storm “appear stronger”.
Again we see emotion being used to foist a point of view.
Do you know the number of people who lived in the path of Taiyan?
Once we know that then we can determine whether how Taiyan fares with respect to other storms.
It seems that Leyte has a population some 40 times that of those in the way of Cyclone Tracy and we are talking about a category 4 tropical cyclone.
When the numbers finally come out we can determine whether all the hype was true or not.
Richard, a cyclone’s death toll does not reflect the strength it possesses.
Let us look at two recent examples from the Philippines, (2010) Typhoon Megi was a Catergory 5 equivalent cyclone that made landfall with a one-minute sustained wind speed of 185 mph (measured by the JTWC and aircraft recon) but only killed roughly 40 people in the Philippines
(2012) Typhoon Bopha was a Catergory 5 equivalent cyclone that made landfall on the southern island of Mindanao with 1 minute sustained winds of 175 mph (measured by the JTWC) and killed (officially) 1,246 people in the Philippines.
As it stands right now, with 1,774 death Haiyan is the third most deadly typhoon in the history of the Philippines, and will very likely be officially the 2nd most deadly tomorrow (since the second deadliest typhoon in Philippines history (Angela Typhoon, 1867), and if the at least 10,000 estimate is true, will likely go down as the deadliest typhoon ever recorded in the Philippines.
Another thing to note is that in almost all other cyclones, the vast majority of deaths were the result of floods, landslides and mudslides. Another aspect unique to Haiyan, is that the vast majority of deaths so far have been the result of wind and storm surge. In all regards, Haiyan’s impact on the Philippines is unprecedented in both material, and probably, even if we hope not to, human losses.
However, as I have noted above, death tolls do not in any way correlate with intensity, therefore we should rely on the measurements done by groups like the JTWC, and from observations of damage on the ground.
(Also, everything beyond the first paragraph was for the author of the blogpost, not you, I apologize for the confusion)
However, as I have noted above, death tolls do not in any way correlate with intensity, therefore we should rely on the measurements done by groups like the JTWC, and from observations of damage on the ground.
I made only passing reference to the intensity of the intensity.
My main point was that it was correlated with the number of people in its path.
I can only estimate how many people might have been in its path based on the population of Leyte and then compare that with what we have seen.
So far the numbers do not compare with those in Cyclone Tracy, but they might get there. There were no mud slides in Darwin. It was the wind and the storm surge that killed those people. I was there in the middle of it and actually outside for some of it sheltering between a door and a wall. Fortunately, I did not know any of those who died.
With respect to Phil Jourdan’s statement that:
lack of proper notification, and protection, lack of options
We had as much notification as anyone has about those sorts of events. I don’t see who would have made the political decision to evacuate in time. We had protection, and we were more than a little skeptical that there would be any risk because there had not been a cyclone through Darwin for a very long time.
Still the death and devastation came and it had nothing to do with AGW that time either and the overreaction afterwards was much the same.
Richard, I did some quick calculations concerning Cyclone Tracey and death rates
Cyclone Tracy killed 71 people in total, 49 on land and 22 at sea. For the sake of accuracy, I decided to only use the death toll of those killed on land, since the number of people at sea can be highly variable, and compared it to the population of Darwin (47,000) at the time.
49/47,000 gives us a mortality rate of roughly 0.104255% for the city.
If the rate were to repeat itself in Tacloban (pop roughly 221,000), we would get a death toll of roughly 230 people for the city. Now, so far I have been unable to find specific breakdown of deaths by city for this storm, but based on the current and rapidly rising death toll, estimates by local officials, and anecdotal accounts of hundreds of bodies simply lying in the streets, I think it is safe to say we have easily exceeded the death rate for Tracy in Talcoban City alone
Chuck Wiese – I was quoting a statistician from the government of the Philippines – I did not say what you quoted me as saying. That is why I put the quote in quotes. (I did say there was an overall trend – what I meant to say is an overall trend over the past three decades). Perhaps you should write the statistician telling that person why they shouldn’t have any concern about the increasing storm intensity over the past three decades, since that is what the statistician was quoted as being concerned with. They were able to apparently able to record wind speeds over the last three decades, despite your misgivings. Since we are talking about a government, three decades is plenty of time to determine a trend (we are lucky if a government plans 5 years ahead, don’t you think). I don’t know the longer term trends in storm intensities. Perhaps you can find someone else to argue with regarding. It is the responsibility of government to note trends in the medium to short term and to plan accordingly. That is why Bloomberg is preparing NYC for more intense storms and storm surges – there is increasing risk over the short to medium term.
Regarding Update 9, everybody and their brother must be trying to look at that, because dl is extremely slow.
It may have been over hyped and erroneously reported, but at this point, i think it doesn’t make sense to spend our time pondering over this topic whether this is a super typhoon or not. Like any other calamities, this Yolanda has claimed lives and destroyed dreams. I saw the photos of dead people for the past two days, and I think this isn’t the right topic to discuss — timing is off. I think what is relevant at this point is how we could help.
[snip – fake email, fake name, derogatory comment -mod]
Finally, a source where I can get some accurate (?) data and facts. I know, one way or another, that the mainstream and our local media would definitely exaggerate some facts. I’m tired of reading conspiracies and dogmatic BS on my FB news feed.
I’ve been closely, well not that much, monitoring the news and reading articles (data & facts) regarding T. Haiyan and some of the facts (?) I’ve heard/read so far:
— the 10,000 body count was just an estimate from the local military (?) who did a ground investigation. I guess they arrived to that estimate because you can literally see corpses piled up and lying on the ground ANYWHERE you look. And it was just in a single city. But the total recorded number so far ATM was less than 2000.
— I’ve heard on the news that the Mayor of Tacloban wasn’t really sure what a storm surge was so there could have been a lapse in judgment. Forced evacuations were made, but even some of the evacuation centers were flooded. I could bet some of the people here were reluctant to leave their houses and would rather take the risk than lose their belongings.
Although, let’s face it.. even the meteorologists themselves wasn’t really sure about the strength of T. Haiyan. So who could’ve really prepared for it? Dead bodies are dead bodies. T. Haiyan is the strongest storm of 2013, so far. And these media personnel gotta make a news for a living.
Sorry I’m not really adding up a solid figures here. I’m also just basing my post from the stuff I’ve heard in our local news. So here’s an interesting clip instead:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201720156158196
PS: I hope you could add a summary about T. Haiyan’s (speed/gust onshore/offshore, etc) and a comparison with the other strongest storms (Katrina, Tip, etc.) in your post. Thank you.
Bill Taylor says:
November 11, 2013 at 9:12 am
strange times we live in, when folks seeking TRUTH and ACCURATE information are attacked!
and the attacks are coming from those seeking to LIE to the public.
At second though you will see that unfortunately this is not so strange time Bill. It is the way how things with rare exceptions went in history in most places.
UPDATE: 11/12 7AM Philippine president Aquino says to CNN: Typhoon Haiyan deaths likely 2,000 to 2,500 — not 10,000
I really don’t think you care at all … for you it’s all about being right! You can use the donation cover all you want but deep down inside you know what you are up to!
Caleb says:
November 10, 2013 at 5:19 pm
Caleb, I’m late getting back round these parts but thank you for the kind words and sage advice. Much appreciated. I can’t help but go with the slow burn. I start off trying to stay calm about these matters but before long the emotions get a hold of me and I find it difficult to hold it back. These things don’t spoil my day, but they do certainly raise my hackles. As a father of two, I have no plan to yield to this grotesque behemoth being foisted upon us. It must be fought every step of the way. Thanks again and keep up the good fight.
That is exactly what I would expect a person who hates the truth to say.
Right now, and during this entire episode the global warmist lunatics have been using this event and those deaths you argue should make this topic verboten. They are building a meme that will last forever in the minds of hundreds of millions, and yes, RIGHT NOW, this moment and every moment is the right time to discuss the truth.
By the way, I lost family near Tacloban City and am currently working on getting the rest of my family moved from Tacloban City to Manila. My wife was severely harmed by all the lies and propaganda you wish to allow to remain the meme. Because of all the exaggerations she was certain they were all dead. She had to wait 5 days to hear from them to finally have any peace. The people who perpetrated the lies, propaganda and fraud should quickly and summarily punished to the full extent that our society can do so, thus hopefully preventing the same thing happening to other people.
Lyn Cacha says:
November 11, 2013 at 7:13 pm
It may have been over hyped and erroneously reported, but at this point, i think it doesn’t make sense to spend our time pondering over this topic whether this is a super typhoon or not. Like any other calamities, this Yolanda has claimed lives and destroyed dreams. I saw the photos of dead people for the past two days, and I think this isn’t the right topic to discuss — timing is off. I think what is relevant at this point is how we could help.
Chuck Wiese: “The earth is millions of years old!” Now talk about flapping your gums. If you did Geology 101 you’d know that the earth is a little over 4.5 billion years of age, but I digress. It is interesting that rather than refuting my claims through the use of facts, you waste your time with ad hominem attacks on myself. If you had read the post properly you would have noted that I was not referring to the size of the eyewall, but rather its presentation. As Sitkowski, Matthew, James P. Kossin, Christopher M. Rozoff, 2011: Intensity and Structure Changes during Hurricane Eyewall Replacement Cycles. Mon. Wea. Rev., 139, 3829–3847 note, the presentation of an eyewall is highly important in the intensity and development of a tropical storm. If you had further read Pun et al. (2013), “Recent increase in high tropical cyclone heat potential area in the Western North Pacific Ocean” you would have noted that the depth of ocean temperatures to sustain a tropical system (26 degrees) has increased by 17% in the area, which is a large increase. It is also worth noting that Cowton and Way (2013) also note the following: “The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you fill these data gaps using satellite measurements, the warming trend is more than doubled in the widely-used HadCRUT4 data, and the much-discussed “warming pause” has virtually disappeared.” It is quite apparent that you are the one misleading readers by “flapping” your gums.
It might have been the cause of Global Warming , it might not have been the cause of Global Warming. The wind speed might have been massive, the wind speed might have been lower, The body count might be high, the body count might be low .
One thing that nobody can deny it has caused a lot of devastation that is leading to a lot of suffering 6 days on and still people are out of reach and alone. It won’t be long before disease sets in . Another possible big problem will be an increase in mosquitoes that could bring a increase in dengue etc . So lets concentrate on the needs not the figures.
I’ve read alot on this page. This fairly arrogant expression is what made me to write this comment:
“Personally I don’t like to comment on events such as these until long after the dust has settled. Unfortunately though, somebody has to set the record if we cannot rely on the BBC and others to get the basic facts right.” (Anthony)
1) So why do you comment than right now? I know… hot topic… forge the iron when it’s hot but considering initial reports over the human aspect… what do wind speeds change about that?
2) I’m from continental Europe (Belgium), am engineer by trade (so have an idea about models, numbers, error margins, deviations etc.) and am currently in the Philippines. I’ve experienced Yolanda / Haiden on Mindoro. While you here are dickfighting over whether or not the initial reports, bases on measurements and models are correct (seems like a very British passing of time…(sorry, could not help myself here)), it is actually of non human importance. People are in serious trouble here.
3) A couple of times a reference is made to the poverty of the country and thereto the related death toll. A more than substatial part of the victims concerned are the wealthier people here, as they thought there house would be able to sustain the typhoons force and they had no idea of the intensity of the storm surge.
4) In relation to the estimates and measured wind speeds. There is a substantial difference between a 1-minute average (JTWC) and a 10-minute average (PASAGA). The same goes for measurement and model… Anyhow, if you are of opinion that 270kph or 345kph would make that much difference for your house, please let me know. As I don’t really see the point… Even related to engineering, a lot of what we do is based on estimates, assumptions and models that are only partly correct. That is why safety factors are so high and redundancy is a must in many systems…
5) Press and media have an obligation to report. They still are not weather experts, just as about everybody commenting here, me included are not weather experts. The end of the day, every media-organisation wants to sell their story. We should not be naive.
Media need to get their data somewhere. Initial reports (JTWC) indicated windspeeds BEFORE landfall at 195 mph. (This does not mean a) that at landfall the same speeds will still be there; b) that they occur in the place where the measurement is being taken; c) that the estimate is fact, it is still estimate). The media reports of 195mph (~315kph) are accurate. They are not based on some crazy guys webblog or whatever…
6) Anyhow, in recent history I would have loved this page. Now being here and witnessing myself some of the real-live effects I’ve become more humble. It’s easy from our European house, in front of our PC to make some webpage and write soms criticisms. This purely academic exercise is utterly pointless and insulting to those involved.
7) The combined intellectual capacities of the people commenting here (including me …) could be used more useful by trying to address the current problems such as how to get adequate help to the affected regions. We should know better…
My thoughts are with those who suffered the tragedy of this storm, their relatives and everybody else affected by it.
Sam @ city of Calapan, Mindoro, Philippines
What a confusing situation. Just to put the record straight on wind speeds: The Joint Typhoon Warning centre and National Hurricane Centre quote 1 minute sustained winds as does the Tropical Cyclone research community. The Japanese meteorological agency or JMA and the Philippines met agency quote 10 minute sustained winds. In Haiyan 190-195 mph (I mins sustained) was the quoted speed over water, on land that would be 15-20% lower due to frictional effects so 155 -165mph over land. The JMA and Philippines met agency quoted 145mph (10 mins sustained) for Haiyan over water so after the frictional effects of land at landfall more likely 130mph. I wish the press and various commentators would stop spouting and just get their facts straight before going to press.
The bottom line is that Haiyan was a prodigiously powerful Cyclone that tapped into near record levels of deep warm water to reach its maximum potential intensity.
I remember reading the data from the JMA which correlates with the Philipino met agency, but am buggered if I can find the ‘report’ again. My google-fu is clearly on the blink. Does anyone have a link to their readings?
I live in the Philippines. I have studied typhoons for 32 years. I can vouch for the fact the PAGASA is renowned for ALWAYS under-reporting wind speeds for typhoons. If you base your hypothesis for denigration of this typhoon’s status on PAGASA data then you are the fool. Six years ago in Puerto Galera (Mindoro, Philippines) when the typhoon passed within five miles of our location we saw winds speeds in excess of 100 knots recorded on our masthead anemometer when PAGASA said winds were only gusting to 70 knots. I share your lack of faith in BBC, CNN et al, but JTWC and FNMOC have a pretty good handle on things, and first-hand reports from Guiuan suggest that 200mph maybe understated. ST Haiyan was the worst typhoon I have ever witnessed at landfall in the Philippines.
Stackhouse: Your response is another gum flap that says a lot of nothing. Anyone who understands tropical systems knows well that eye wall size matters a whole lot. If you don’t think so, then somebody should explain the cyclostrophic balance to you where the centrifugal forces of wind become the primary balance to pressure gradient. So all you’re saying is the obvious and chasing your tail. “Presentation” IS about symmetry and symmetry is important to the cyclostrophic balance just like size. So what? That’s been known for a long time. And your point is?
Next, you bring up the paper by Pun, et. al about there being a 17% increase in depth of the 26 degC isotherm in the western north Pacific and infer from that as does the authors, that somehow we think that might be traceable to AGW and CO2 radiation. What a farse of an assumption! I note that they cut off their research after 1992, which was half way through the last warm phase PDO where the ENSO signal is pronounced with frequent Kelvin waves transgressing the ocean FROM that part of the world. We reversed to cold phase in 2007, which increases trade winds, weakens ENSO and essentially bottles up warm water in that part of the world. So it would seem plausible that what the authors are really observing is just that. And during cold phase, I would venture typhoons strengthen in intensity and frequency in that part of the world, just like Joe Bastardi warned us that the warmer Atlantic will also bring more frequent Atlantic storms for the next 30 years. The behavior of warmer loons like you was very predictable in regards to this. I’ve been talking about how you guys switched gears from “warming” to “climate change” where you create a boogeyman with every single severe weather event and claim its because of CO2 emissions. This storm is no different.
Then you trot out Cowtan and Way in their attempts to fill in climate data to the HadCRUT4 series to attempt to create another statistical illusion that the global temperature pause is really not a pause if you mix in the UAH satellite data with the HadCRUT 4 series. That is similar to the nonsense we got for a long while when Hansen was at GISS and not busy getting himself arrested making the fool out of himself that he continues to do. I won’t show where this is BS other than to refer you to the front of Anthony’s blog here and read the dissection of this nonsense written by Werner Brozeck, more on this down thread from David Whitehouse and more further down thread from Bob Tisdale. In reality, the UAH satellite data set and RSS satellite data already do what Cowtan claims is necessary and both those sets show the global warming has stopped since 1998 scanning both the Arctic and Antarctic. The lengths warmers will go to continue to perpetuate their nonsense and provenly wrong modeling are astonishing.
Finally, as warmers do when they run out of an argument to present is to nit pick some sort of comment someone else made about something that is not even relevant, such as the age of the earth. No, Stackhouse, you’re right. I never took Geo 101. I never had to as an atmospheric science major. It was never my cup of tea. I know the earth is old. At least millions of years old. That was my point to Bil G. concerning typhoon history. Even a century does not give you enough information to see a true climatological pattern emerge from these storms. You say the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Since that assumption is made from the U238 half life, it is likely not too far off the mark. But what is the significance of pointing it out? It’s obvious that it is to discredit but it has no relevance to my point. So I’ll correct my statement to Bill G : Bill, if you’re reading I was wrong when I told you the earth is millions of years old. It is actually 4,500 million years old.
Like Greg Laden, you’re quite a piece of work, Stackhouse.
How do you explain the JTWC’s figures? 315 kph gusting 378? An estimate is an estimate, but 100 kph error is a bit too big to dismiss. I think you can be selective with facts too… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Haiyan#Meteorological_history
Time for another update. Death toll now officially at 5,209, with 23,404 injured and 1,582 still missing. Do you still consider it overhyped, you arrogant dicks?
http://www.ndrrmc.gov.ph/attachments/article/1125/NDRRMC%20UP%20SitRep%20No35%20Effects%20of%20TY%20Yolanda.pdf
Please go donate.
Emily,
This arrogant dick donated more than $300 USD. How much did you donate?