By Dr. Roy W. Spencer
Even before Hurricane Florence made landfall somewhere near the border of North and South Carolina, predicted damage from potentially catastrophic flooding from the storm was already being blamed on global warming.
Writing for NBC News, Kristina Dahl contended, “With each new storm, we are forced to question whether this is our new, climate change-fueled reality, and to ask ourselves what we can do to minimize the toll from supercharged storms.”
The theory is that tropical cyclones have slowed down in their speed by about 10 percent over the past 70 years due to a retreat of the jet stream farther north, depriving storms of steering currents and making them stall and keep raining in one location. This is what happened with Hurricane Harvey in Houston last year.
But like most claims regarding global warming, the real effect is small, probably temporary, and most likely due to natural weather patterns. Any changes in hurricanes over 70 years, even if real, can easily be part of natural cycles — or incomplete data. Coastal lake sediments along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline from 1,000 to 2,000 years ago suggest more frequent and intense hurricanes than occur today. Why? No one knows.
Unusual things happen in nature sometimes
The Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 experienced a Category 3 or 4 storm, with up to a 20-foot storm surge. While such a storm does not happen in New England anymore, it happened again there in 1675, with elderly eyewitnesses comparing it to the 1635 storm.
Until 2017, the United States went 11 years without a major hurricane strike — something that is statistically very improbable. Nine years into that 11-year hurricane drought, a NASA scientist computed it as a 1-in-177-year event.
My point is that nature varies, and unusual things happen sometimes.
Full story here
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So the increase of the global average temperature by a degree or more has no effect on weather according to Spencer?
Utter BS.
The surface temperature of the oceans shows only 0.2 degrees C over the average from 1971-2000.
Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies, Ice and Snow Cover
shep smith on fox claimed there will be a huge storm surge on MONDAY and beyond……the media have LIED about this storm all week and getting worse now
The left have decided that storms and weather events are there to be monetized.
Roy Spencer’s measured voice or reason threatens to take that away form them so they howl with rage.
Speaking or Roy’s “measure voice”, I saw Roy interviewed on Fox News Channel tonight and I thought he did a very good job of injecting a little reason into the hyperbole around Hurrican Florence.
Roy even managed to mention Anthony Watts during the interview!
Good job, Roy! 🙂
Please don’t forget the 1938 New England hurricane. It came ashore on Long Island as a Cat 3.
Pierre Gosselin also has an excellent and thorough debunking of the “global-warming-is-making-hurricanes-worse” media fallacy, on his NoTricksZone site:
http://notrickszone.com/2018/09/14/inconvenient-real-observed-data-demolish-alarmist-claims-of-strengthening-more-frequent-hurricanes/
“The theory is that tropical cyclones have slowed down in their speed by about 10 percent over the past 70 years due to a retreat of the jet stream farther north, depriving storms of steering currents and making them stall and keep raining in one location.”
According to the paper linked to this statement, it is a weakening of summertime tropical circulation patterns that fuels the decrease in translational speed. I don’t see anything about the jet stream retreating – are the two linked?
Another question: If hurricanes are moving slower, could that in itself lead to a decrease in landfall rates?
Kristi,
Hurricanes can grow rapidly while in regions with favorable conditions, and can also lose power rapidly when entering an area that has unfavorable conditions. The hurricane has very little lag in its response to changing conditions. It cannot “buck up” and push through bad conditions.
SR
If Donald Trump was complicit in hurricanes, they could easily “buck up” and push through bad conditions… 😎
Still though NBC had a segment climate change rising oceans fuel Florence. They will never stop pushing the bs
The PBS News Hour had a six minute interview with an instructor who teaches “environmental sciences” from Columbia University. He said that most of the sea level rise from 1900 was due to CO2 emissions; that hurricanes have become much more frequent and intense, etc.
Here is the transcript:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-climate-change-is-loading-the-dice-for-more-perilous-hurricanes
We should all be hoping for the best for anyone caught in the path of such a storm. Modern technology has given us the ability to minimize the loss of life, but property damage and loss of power cannot be prevented.
Sitting here watching rescue efforts on TV, the boats are gasoline driven, chain saws gasoline driven, emergency vehicles, power generators, you name it, all impossible without the fossil fuels that created our modern society in the first place.
How are all those Tesla’s doing for you? Ask your local “fossil fuel” alarmist to imagine their world without gasoline right now, and to sit tight wherever they are until their sun and wind power is restored so the chainsaw can be plugged in/charged and the tree can be removed from their roof…
A little off topic. I recall an article from (I think WUWT) that showed how a hurricane path had cooled the water behind it where it had tracked. I think it was a satellite or aerial thermograph picture.
Anyway, I think it would be informative to see a thermograph picture of a metropolitan area and the surrounding country side to see how UHI looks. Would also be informative to see an aerial thermo picture on just a city, one that would show if roads, for example, were red hot colored.
This is a great online tool to visualize ongoing hurricanes, evolving tropical storms off the coast of Africa, Pacific typhoons etc.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-67.47,25.26,863/loc=-78.251,33.108
Dr. Spencer was on Fox News with Tucker Carlson talking about this issue and mentioned Anthony.
Folks can see it here
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/09/my-tucker-carlson-interview-last-night-and-calling-out-bill-nye-james-hansen/
“Nine years into that 11-year hurricane drought, a NASA scientist computed it as a 1-in-177-year event.”
To be fair, said scientist assumed that landfalls in each year are independent events, which is a pretty stupid assumption when it comes to the climate. It’s like those climate scientists who calculate p-values for temperature trends while ignoring the autocorrelation in the temperature series. GIGO and all that.