From the “more facts against the Mann” department. While claims of climate change swirl about from the usual doomsayers, such as this one from Time Magazine:
Climate change is making rare weather events less rare
At least nine people have died in flooding across South Carolina that has left city streets submerged in water, destroyed homes and closed more than 100 bridges. Nikki Haley, the state’s governor, described the disaster as one of such an epic scale that science suggests it would only occur once every 1,000 years.
A flooding disaster of this scale was unlikely to be sure, scientists say, but climate change has transformed once-in-a-lifetime events into periodic occurrences. The flooding may have been hard to predict, but it should no longer come as a surprise.
And everybody’s favorite poster boy for disaster, Michael E. Mann, says at the Washington Post:
This is yet another example, like Sandy, or Irene, of weather on “steroids,” another case where climate change worsened the effects of an already extreme meteorological event. In this case, we’re seeing once-in-a-thousand year flooding along the South Carolina coastline as a consequence of the extreme supply of moisture streaming in from hurricane Joaquin. Joaquin intensified over record warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, which both allowed it to intensify rapidly despite adverse wind shear, and which provided it with unusually high levels of moisture — moisture which is now being turned into record rainfall.
Really? As Bob Tisdale pointed out here a few days ago:
In fact, the sea surfaces along the {hurricane Joaquin] storm track were regularly warmer in the 1940s and 50s than they have been recently.
Clearly, Dr. Mann is all wet.
There is also the claim being tossed about that there’s more water vapor in the air due to global warming. There’s no support for this idea in the satellite data:
The NVAP-M project shows total precipitable water (TPW) data is shown in Figure 4, reproduced from the paper Vonder Haar et al (2012) here. There is no evidence of increasing water vapor to enhance the small warming effect from CO2.
Instead of “steroids”… a more mundane explanation has emerged from satellite imagery: a river of moisture, aka an “atmospheric river” much like we get in California from time to time, which we call the “pineapple express” due to the origin of the river of air near Hawaii. Wikipedia defines it as:
Pineapple Express is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon characterized by a strong and persistent flow of atmospheric moisture and associated with heavy precipitation from the waters adjacent to the Hawaiian Islands and extending to any location along the Pacific coast of North America. A Pineapple Express is an example of an atmospheric river, which is a more general term for such narrow corridors of enhanced water vapor transport at mid-latitudes around the world.
…
Early in 1862, extreme storms riding the Pineapple Express battered the west coast for 45 days. In addition to a sudden snow melt, some places received an estimated 8.5 feet of rain, leading to the worst flooding in recorded history of California, Oregon, and Nevada. Known as the Great Flood of 1862, both the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys flooded, and there was extensive flooding and mudslides throughout the region.
Get that? A “meteorological phenomenon” not a climate phenomenon. And, the confluence of meteorological events that led to that situation happened well before “climate change” was a glimmer in Jim Hansen’s eye. Even the normally pro-warming Capital Weather Gang say the flooding in South Carolina is a “very complex meteorological event “.
“At least eight key elements conspired to create a highly efficient, small-scale rain machine centered on South Carolina,”
Some meteorologists have been calling this plume of rain a predecessor rain event, or “PRE,” which sometimes occurs ahead of tropical storms that interact with separate areas of low pressure and lingering surface fronts — exactly what Hurricane Joaquin did. – Jeff Halverson at Capital Weather Gang
The reason things get complicated is that the heavy rains over South Carolina are a confluence of multiple causes, that low to the left, Hurricane Joaquin to the right; the atmospheric river tapped some of its tropical moisture and the low spun it right into South Carolina.
Clearly from this NOAA GOES satellite image of water vapor content, we have a meteorological phenomenon that is a rare confluence of meteorological events that resulted in an atmospheric river:
Added: h/t to Willis Eschenbach for the video clip
While thousand year events are rare, it’s a big world out there. That’s the fact that escapes (or is just ignored) the alarmists.
If you have a million locations, the odds are you are going to get 1000 thousand year events, every year.
BTW, big wind Sandy was only a 100 year event. NYC has been hit by one of these about every hundred years since they have been keeping records.
Bob in 1991 barely missed NYC. TS Sandy landing on a high tide was a simple storm timed badly. People not preparing is an annual event.
Indeed, there are over 3000 counties in the US, so on average 3 counties should experience a 1000 year rain event every year. And in addition, every year 3 counties should experience a 1000 year drought event, heat event, cold event, snow event …. you get idea. As weather extremes are often very local, 1000 year events should be VERY common in the US since there are so many events and so many locations. This particular 1000 year event affected 10 to 20 counties in South Carolina.
Thousand year storm? Try hurricane Floyd, in the Carolinas, no less; or tropical storm Alison (compare the rain totals), tropical storm Agnes, hurricane Irene in New England, Hurricane Diane in New England. Is here a pattern here. The moisture for this event was provided by hurricane Joaquin.
I hope that the birth of Michael Mann is a 1,000-yr event.
“…A flooding disaster of this scale was unlikely to be sure, scientists say, but climate change has transformed once-in-a-lifetime events into periodic occurrences. The flooding may have been hard to predict, but it should no longer come as a surprise…”
How was the flooding hard to predict? Because we’ve underestimated how much we’ve changed the landscape?
I saw predictions for up to 20″ of rain in 24 hrs in some locations. The meteorologists got it right. There was no “surprise.”
I saw a typhoon drop 22 inches of rain in 24 hours in South Vietnam in 1968. Our company was postioned along a small waterway at the time, and we watched it grow into a roaring river right before our eyes as the hours passed and the rain fell. We had to move to higher ground eventually.
TA
Until honest climate scientists (I’m assuming they exist) come forward and condemn the charlatans associating these weather events with alarmist beliefs about climate change they’re all charlatans in my book. The greatest disappointment in all of climate science is not the alarmists but those who allow themselves to be stained by alarmists and remain silent. I believe it is a consequence of them all being fed from the same trough.
The shameful way that honest people like Mr. Soon are tarred and feathered has a chilling affect on honesty, to be sure.
But it only got this way because too many were silent for too long.
“Records” (snow, floods, temperatures, etc.) assuming randomness, have a frequency of ‘Ln N’, where “N” equals years. This assumes the first year in the series is a ‘record’. It is derived from permutations of a series of random numbers (say 1 to 150) N= 150yrs, then, starting with the first year of the series as a record, Ln 150=5 says there will be about four successive records in the century (after the first year of the series). Ln 1000= ~7 and Ln3,000 = 8.
Note more than half of the records starting 3000 years ago have a good probability of falling in the first 150years (5 of them) followed by one more in the next 250yrs (6th), one more in the following 600years (7th), which is year 1000, and then we are likely to wait 2000yrs more to beat that record.
Of course, year 1 in a series is likely to be an ordinary year and the first few are similarly not likely to be significant records since they easily surpass the previous ones. If we had good historical information for a couple of thousand years ago on two or three successive big floods, we might try, from the spacing between such significant events to construct a more realistic future expectation for a monster flood. Possibly, the flood in North Carolina, if it is beyond any known in history, might be deemed to be a 2000yr flood.
Finally, since we are dealing with probabilities, two “1000 yr floods” could occur within a few years of each other and then wait a very very long time for the next. Also, over very long periods, climate things don’t appear to be random, but for snowfall records, specific river valley floods, etc over a century or so of records, they seem a reasonable approximation. Comparatively short periods are the preoccupation of CAGW proponents in their pronouncements of the hottest year, longest drought, etc. and the little exercise in this comment shows how illogical such pronouncements are.
One of the delightful things about my time in Charleston SC, was that the young ladies showed how to convert an extremely heavy rainfall into a fashion opportunity. I never saw so many well-turned Wellington boots, before or since.
Now that’s what I call climate adaptation.
I Philly they wear thee things called Uggs.
Shabby chic?
*shoulder shrug*
I was born in Philly, so I won’t say a bad word against it.
I was born there too, and love the place.
Not sure how noting that the women wear them some Ugs is a bad thing to say?
If you have a degree in law or in public policy you really don’t know crap about diddly squat. That’s the problem with politics, it’s the uninformed saying ridiculous things that are crafted by an equally unaware speech writer, and between all of them they don’t know enough to know what they don’t know.
and its equivalent
If you have a degree in journalism you really don’t know crap about diddly squat. That’s the problem with journalism, it’s the uninformed saying ridiculous things that are crafted by equally unaware staff writers, and between all of them they don’t know enough to know what they don’t know.
It has happened here before. Lots of times. Hugo, Fran, Hazel, and several unnamed that I remember. Some of the deaths were from plain stupidity. One lady drove into 5 ft of water in a railroad bridge underpass and drowned.
That was before the big rain started. It was not the momentous event that the media is portraying it as. Heck, Clempson still played Notre Dame in the heaviest part of this mess and prevailed. It has rained for 6 days straight steady but not particularly heavy. Things are still a little soggy but the wind has been drying things out reasonably well.
Back when The Great Alan Sullivan was still alive, he had a notion that NH tropical cyclones during autumn would “phase” with midlatitude weather systems. This would juice the tropical cyclone and at the same time hasten the onset of “deep fall” (leading to Winter) weather. Interesting concept which I think warrants further investigation (if not already in process).
Either that or it is random and he was just making stuff up.
This was, I must say, quite stressful. I’m lucky though in that I I only saw about 1-12 inches where I live, and it was divided mostly between Friday and Sunday, with Saturday in between to all things to drain a little.
People are chasing extremes in order to build a narrative, and when you actively chase extremes, you’re going to find them. It’s always going to be the hottest day EVA in B.F.E Kentucky, or the hottest 3-day span EVA in Nowhere, California, or the hottest evening temperature monthly average in Spain, or the hottest February.
We just got a whole lot of rain, period. It doesn’t prove or disprove anything about the climate. All I know right now is I’m stressed and tired and will probably sleep well tonight knowing this crap has passed.
There are approximately 130,000 accidental deaths in the U.S. every year, almost 2500 per week. Based on South Carolina’s population we would expect something north of 30 accidental deaths within the state in any given week. How do we attribute any specific death to a storm? You need to remember that many of these accident reports are written by public safety officers, who often do a difficult job, but nonetheless will be prone to reporting the simplest explanation possible, (I’ve been on over 200 volunteer EMT runs so I do have some sense of how cops think about “accidents”).
Could be far less random traffic accidents during such weather events because few are out on the streets.
I have long been very interested in traffic fatalities stats, ever since coming very close to becoming one myself.
Interesting that for many years, annual traffic fatalities hovered near the 40.000 mark.
It was frequently noted how stubborn this number was, even as cars and roads become ever safer and more “survivable”, as with innovations such as improved guardrails, water filled drums and other energy absorbing materials at key locations, constantly improving tires, shoulder strap seat belts, antilock brakes, seat belt laws, electronic stability controls, air bags, better air bags, more air bags, etc.
I recent years, those number of fatalities have declined at last, but there seems to be something in the human psyche that causes people to just drive faster and more carelessly, or whatever, when the vehicle they are driving become more safe to drive and less accident prone.
Upon checking a little (a very little) further, it seems that the picture is somewhat more complex, as increasing population and vehicle miles driven make the number of fatalities per year a less telling statistic.
Still…interesting thought you have Mark.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
NOAA has the 24 hour PMP (probably maximum precipitation) for the area at 44 inches.
Thank you for the reminder. C.T. Haan (“Statistical Methods in Hydrology”) notes that V.M. Yevjevich (“Misconceptions in Hydrology and their Consequences”) states that the Probable Maximum is neither probable nor maximum. The morass has been described as the quagmire of marginal statistics. “Statistics of Extremes” by E.J. Gumbel is a good reference to have at hand when pulling the statistical boat through the leech-infested swamp.
Here’s the official word on flood flow frequency analysis:
http://water.usgs.gov/osw/bulletin17b/dl_flow.pdf
For rainfall, refer to NOAA’s Atlas 14. Here’s Charleston:
http://hdsc.nws.noaa.gov/hdsc/pfds/pfds_map_cont.html?bkmrk=pa
The table at the bottom is deph-duration-frequency with 90% confidence intervals for point precipitation. The rightmost column is 1/1000.
Another facts against the Mann:
The LA Times reported that Mammoth Mtn resident Jonathan Bourne was arrested after public-posting a photo of him digging out a Native American bow near the edge of a retreating glacier, which had been buried under glacial ice, but was recently exposed due to global warming.
Take Home Fact: the bow was lost/abandoned on open non-ice-covered ground. The glacier edge was at higher elevation back then than at present: Then afterwards, the glacier edge advanced, and buried the bow. The bow has not been carbon-dated.
It needs to be. In any case, its discovery proves that the Western North American climate was warmer within the time-frame of earlier human settlement, than today. The discovery area is only about 100 miles from the famous Sheep Mtn bristlecone pine tree. Elevation of glacier’s edges beats tree-ring reading.
Living along the East coast and Gulf coast, one should pay particular attention to geology; especially geology in relation to hydrological features.
What is interesting are how many of the fields and hill valleys show hydrological formation wear evidence.
Which causes one to ponder just how often the water rose that high to cause those wear patterns. Especially after a few damp hurricanes filled those same valleys only half way.
A thought that’s often caused me to hope that I never see it rain hard enough to add more wear to the slopes.
South Carolina and North Carolina have been flooded before and will be again. Those folks that insist on living in flood plains should expect wet feet every now and then or move upslope.
What we should be glad of is that this wasn’t a snow or ice storm.
Now those Bermudan folks that sat under the real Joaquin for days could probably use some help; food, water, clothing and construction materials.
Bahamian?
You are absolutely correct! Senior lapse on my part… 🙂
Weak excuse that it is; I was worrying about the bone fishing and hoping the guides and their families were ok.
The Bahamian bonefish guide that I know tells me that he and his family are OK.
Thank you Phil.
That makes me feel better about the guide I used. I only knew his first name and the lodge that employed him closed several years ago.
Paul Homewood has data on this over at Nottalot. Appears that NOAA cherry-picked one city that did receive record rainfall, but nearby cities have had similar events several times in recent history. We had a local T-storm in 2009 that dumped 2+” on me in about 15 minutes (replete with flash flood) but left my son dry just 3 miles south. This event was bigger (more widespread) but a lot of the totals depend on where the rain gauge is located.
In the WaPo article, it is absolutely incredible that none of these “experts” would point out that 1) anticyclonic conditions reaching 1045 hPa HP covered the entire eastern continental US, from Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico as soon as October 1st 2) that the western wedge of a powerful 1035 hPa anticyclone initiated over western Europe was confining their depressionary edges of the two systems to a narrow band offshore that first brought rain and floods to the New Brunswick province of Canada. This configuration, independent of hurricane Joaquim shifted landward from Oct. 2 to Oct. 5. A strong pulse of the US anticyclone reached the Gulf of Mexico and its eastern edge brought its moisture to South Carolina while the high pressure wedge of the Atlantic anticyclone reached Florida waters, further narrowing the depression path at their intersection.
On Oct. 3 both system were totally imbricated, and if Joachim contributed to some moisture it was quite limited, episodic. The existence of these two anticyclonic systems pushed Joachim at sea in a NE trajectory.
As shown in the Water Vapor satellite of Oct. 5th published by WaPo, the essential of moisture did come from the Gulf of Mexico, advected by the US anticyclone. Joaquim is just an after thought there.
So once again, the key of this situation is the active dynamics of strong, powerful anticyclones that have reached the 1040s hPa values early in the season, one covering the entire eastern continental US while the other, initiated from Scandinavia, covered western Europe and then pushed over the entire north Atlantic. Intense precipitations were funneled into the narrow depressionary band that marks the boundary between the two: the more powerful the systems (high pressure), the more intense, reaching southward toward waters with high latent heat potential, then released in a narrow band through violent updrafts.
Once again, lower tropospheric circulation explains extreme meteorological events. Hardly a warming dynamic as on the contrary, this dynamic betrays the expulsion of colder Arctic air masses.
The same type of dynamic usually brings “Cevenol episodes” in southern France where the moisture is this time coming from the Mediterranean Sea. Such a sudden event occurred this week-end over the Nice and Cannes area causing the highest precipitation values over Cannes since 1949.
@ur momisugly Tomrude, Thanks for that explanation. I also noticed a band of moisture generated over the Great Lakes and that over the week of sept 28 – Oct 3 1-3 there was a large area of warm air there as well. Did that play a part?
Sept 28- Oct3 1-3 should read : Sept 28 – Oct 3, sorry. ( people in Toronto were walking around on the beach in shorts and swimwear)
It will be coming very quick that Insurance Companies like State Farm, Prudential et al. will head M.E. Mann’s views that all Meteorological and Weather Events are caused by AWG.
In the Insurance logic, since AWG is produced by every human being, i.e. every insurance holder, then such events as Lightening strikes, Wind storms, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Hail, Floods as they are produced by AGW then every insurance holder is to blame.
What Insurance company can give 3 Trillion dollars in claims of damages to a home owner who is the root cause of the clammily?
Insurance companies do not give money to home owners who commit Arson on their own homes, in order to receive instance money.
Ha ha
Read the small print on any policy, that’s been going on for years! And that is why they make all the bucks ( besides having really good lawyers and wordsmiths).
Well done, Anthony!
A very concise and well cited/documented post.
The warmunists are running out of empirical evidence to confirm their already disconfirmed hypothesis, so they’re relegated to searching the globe for one-off weather phenomena, fiddling with raw data and ranking years to scare the aggressively ignorant.
It’s getting pathetic and cannot last much longer.
And so it goes, until it doesn’t…
“Aggressively Ignorant”
What a concept!
Food for thought.
When I was a Physics student many years ago I happened to spend some time sharing accomodation with another student who had already received a first class honours and when I met him he was a supervisor and working towards a Ph.D.
Now, bear in mind that this was a Physics Ph.D. at the very same top UK university that has now given shelter to such scientific masterminds as the renowned psychologist and honourary climate action activist, Stephan Lewandowsky.
Damn, I have spoiled the point that I was about to make.
Anyway, bearing in mind that I am discussing the pre-Lewandowsky days when there was a high bar of academic standards, my Physics Ph.D. studying pal was simultaneously obsessed with the early works of Deepak “Quantum Healing” Chopra and also a woman called Shakti Gawain, an early proponent of the modern “believe it and it will happen” new age bull.
One might have imagined that years of the study of a rigorous and essentially rational subject such as Physics would have equiped him with the ability to spot such total bullcrap at a fair distance.
Or at least, to prevent himself from drowning in the stuff.
After numerous frustrating arguments, I gave up on trying to convince him that he could not alter the behaviour of the objective universe using only “consciousness”. At least not other than in the conventional manner, by performing some physical action.
So – why am I pondering on these memories?
Well – I am asking myself the very relevant question – is Micheal Mann, simply utterly deluded or is he simply a man with a taste for tropical beaches and cocktail umbrellas, who has seen an opportunity to cash in on the popular delusion of his age?
Are his comments the product of stupidity, insanity, a lust for the high-life or perhaps by a psychopathic inability to admit error.
Or all of these?
Many people might imagine that the acquisition of a Physics Ph.D. demonstrates some degree of ability to think in a reasonable manner.
My early life experience showed me quite clearly that this is not the case, Hence the long-winded story, for which I apologize.
It’s time that the public was told, that highly qualified experts can also be imbeciles of the first order.
Who cares about how long it has been since SC flooded; the point is I am here in the middle of this flood in SC and people are dead from being trapped in their homes; and all of you are worried about how many years it has been!!! Typical “Americans”!! SMH you all sound ridiculous!
Well, being hundreds of miles away from the disaster limits my ability to do much except talk about it and ponder the natural forces that brought it about. Perhaps someone here will get an inspiration that would help mitigate future disasters.
I promise you, though, that if I were in the middle of this flood I would be out helping in whatever way I could, and I would certainly not be on a science blog making disparaging remarks about the conversation.
SMH?
Stuck in twitter a lot there Darla?
From the SC Governor “…There have been 14 deaths attributed to the floods,…”. Fourteen is a sad toll, but still minor compared to alleged scale of the floods.
I don’t go calling you names when it floods up here. Nor do I understand why you go all emotional on line when you have flooding to deal with? Not to be terribly harsh, but don’t you have bigger things to be involved with?
Darla,
In all sincerity, the loss of life is tragic, as is the destruction. By the same token, this was not an earthquake or tsunami that struck with no warning, and it’s a bit hard to understand how people could not avoid death given days of advance notice. I have to call into question the veracity of the weather “causing” the deaths. Around here a good rain storm will cause a spike in traffic accidents, which also come with deaths, which are equally sad, but those too could be avoided if people just respected the road conditions. Attributing deaths to the “storm” in this case ignores the human contribution to causation.
someone commented on the high number of deaths (19) in the not-unprecedented French Riviera floods:
5 Oct: Local, France: Who’s to blame for the Riviera flood deaths?
While the president of the Alpes-Maritimes department Eric Ciotti said we have to admit a “form of powerlessness against nature”, others are pointing the finger of blame at the country’s weather agency Météo France, making it the prime target.
Although weather warnings were in place, the ferocity of the storms took everyone by surprise and some are now blaming the country’s meteorological service Meteo France.
On Saturday afternoon Meteo France had issued Orange alerts for storm and flood warnings for six departments including Alpes Maritimes, where most of the devastation took place…
But some local politicians claim the Orange warnings are issued so often that they have become “trivialized” and Saturday’s storm clearly merited the issuing of a red warning.
“We have about 20 Orange alerts each year. They’ve become so trivialized that no one takes the precautions seriously,” said Mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi…
But Meteo France have issued a staunch defence of their actions, simply saying that with the technology they have available it would have been impossible to predict the fact the storms would intensify to such a deadly degree…
others said the roots of the tragedy lay in the amount of intense construction the Riviera has seen in recent years, which has changed the nature of the area.
Several of those who died were trapped in underground car parks that have become necessary due to the sheer numbers of people living on the Riviera and the need to maximize space.
Michelle Salucki, the mayor of the town of Vallauris-Golfe Juan, where three people died after becoming trapped in a flooded tunnel, said “the concreting of town centres” was a factor in the disaster…
Cecile Duflot from France’s Greens group also denounced the fact that many buildings on the Riviera are made “waterproof”, which prevents flood water from being able to run away freely…
http://www.thelocal.fr/20151005/france-could-french-riviera-flood-deaths-have-been-prevented
I watched this weather event as it occurred over a span of several days and when the low that was centered over about Birmingham, Alabama which was quite large in size interfaced with Joaquin it diverted the flow/moisture off the northern circulation of Joaquin west while the southern flow off the inland low fed into Joaquin. It looked like two pulleys with a fan belt wrapped around them with the moisture from Joaquin aimed at South Carolina. Without this inland low I don’t believe that the rain bands from Joaquin would have reached the US coast if the hurricane track remained the same.
My best sources of reference were nullschool.net and GOES east. I don’t know how to retrieve the archives of the satellite views from GOES east and haven’t been able to go back in time on the nullschool site. I’ll try to provide last attempt to nullschool back one day :
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/10/04/0600Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=-84.78,36.78,1109
If you can view those two resources back a couple of days and the different elevations available with nullschool it is a very interesting observation.
Got back another day on nullschool. Here is another view:
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/10/04/0600Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=-84.78,36.78,1109
Here’s another view at a lower elevation.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/10/04/0600Z/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=-80.76,31.81,1821
Anyway there were some interesting interactions with regard to that inland low and its effect to the flow of moisture into the SC, NC, Va]A region over the course of a week or so. The rains began a week earlier with a low centered over Houston, TX and another one off the Carolina coast. I didn’t follow closely but the “Houston” low may have been the one that moved across Alabama then across Jacksonville,FL and on out to sea where I was watching to see if it might become a tropical storm forming behind Joaquin. It still lives today in its dying gasp off the Carolina coast.
Some proper “animated loops” and meteorological explanations would make for a good documentary presentation for TV and academic purposes. There was nothing special about this event other that an alignment of circumstances with devastating consequences for regions of SC.