Before pundits and poor scientists begin pronouncing the expected east coast winter “storm of the century” to be a direct product of global warming/climate change/climate disruption, one might take a lesson from historical climatology.
What Does the Peer-Reviewed Literature Say About Trends in East Coast Winter Storms?
Commentary by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. (reposted from his website with permission)
The image above comes from a 2001 paper by Hirsch et al. (here in PDF) titled, An East Coast Winter Storm Climatology. The top curve shows all East Coast winter storms, and the bottom shows the most intense storms. for the period 1948 to 1997.
As the figure implies, they concluded in that analysis:
the frequency of ECWS show a downward tendency over the study period but at insignificant levels. One test found a decreasing trend in strong ECWS significant for an alpha = 0.10.
So there was no trend 1948 to 1997, or a slightly downward trend. This is interesting because over the latter half of that period one analysis (Willett et al. 2010) found an increase in the water content of the lower atmosphere over the US East Coast. So those who argue for a simple relationship between increasing water content of the atmosphere and storm strength, data do not support such a claim over this multi-decadal period, in this region.
In 2010 Frankoski and DeGaetano published an update to Hirsh et al. 2001, extending data through 2006. They concluded:
No significant time-dependent trends were identified for precipitation or snowfall from East Coast Winter Storms or for the percentage of precipitation or snowfall from East Coast Winter Storms.
Such research is likely why the IPCC AR5 concluded in 2013:
In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extra-tropical cyclones since 1900 is low.
What that means in climate-speak is that the detection of trends in winter storms has not been achieved. It also means that the IPCC has not attributedany trends to human influences. Detection and attribution are explained in some detail in my recent book.
You can of course find fringe views on both detection and attribution out there on the internet (carefully cherry picked). There are also plenty of smart folks trying to do their own analyses without referencing the IPCC or the peer reviewed literature on the subject. Minority views and amateurs are legitimate and worth hearing, as they can add valuable new perspectives. But if these folks really wanted to contribute to scientific understandings they should seek to publish their alternative theories in the peer reviewed literature.
No one – least of all those who consider themselves professional journalists – should confuse these alternative perspectives for what is found in the peer-reviewed literature and the assessments of the IPCC.
For further reading, see Vose et al. 2014 and Wang et al. 2008.
And then there’s this:
https://twitter.com/RogerAPielkeSr/status/690564112447705088
https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/690559923269185537
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71 years on this planet! Some years the lake across the street freezes over in early December and some years in January. The Asked Donald Trump about Climate Change. His answer was today is warm tomorrow will be cold and it is Called WEATHER>
The children aren’t going to know what normal weather is.
All but 2 (maybe 3 if you count 1960) of the costliest Hurricanes occurred before man started making significant CO2:
Costliest U.S. Atlantic hurricanes 1900–2010
Total estimated property damage, adjusted for wealth normalization[32][33]
Rank Hurricane Season Cost (2010 USD)
1 “Miami” 1926 $164.8 billion
2 Katrina 2005 $113.4 billion
3 “Galveston” 1900 $104.3 billion
4 “Galveston” 1915 $ 71.3 billion
5 Andrew 1992 $ 58.5 billion
6 “New England” 1938 $ 41.1 billion
7 “Cuba–Florida” 1944 $ 40.6 billion
8 “Okeechobee” 1928 $ 35.2 billion
9 Ike 2008 $ 29.5 billion
10 Donna 1960 $ 28.1 billion
Don’t you think that 1992 was after man was making significant CO2? Also Hurricane Sandy caused $75 billion damages and certainly qualifies, why did you omit it?
There was an ice storm in the NYC area in the late 1970s.
I was there on business with a crew, arriving after the storm.
We drove quite a ways down Long Island and saw ice coating trees. People way down LI were without power for days.
Hmm. It wasn’t January, but I recall a February storm in 1979 that dumped over 2 ft of snow in the Washington DC area with drifts over 3′, and bad snow all the way to Ohio at least. My memory is pretty clear because I parked my 1977 Camaro at my fiancee’s house outside of DC and we drove out to look at furniture at my Grandmother’s house in Ohio (with her parents in their Suburban). It was bad, blowing snow the whole way out. When we got back, my Camaro was buried above the roof line and it took quite a bit of digging before I could get it out and on the road back to Annapolis.