From NOAA HEADQUARTERS (via EurekaAlert) and the “Climate Refugees” department comes this inane claim that can easily be explained by natural ocean current pattern changes such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Meridontal Oscillation, but instead get the universal boogeyman of “climate change” applied as the driver. Takeaway: “the global average number of tropical cyclones each year has not budged from 86 over the last four decades”.
Study: Climate change has been influencing where tropical cyclones rage
While the global average number of tropical cyclones each year has not budged from 86 over the last four decades, climate change has been influencing the locations of where these deadly storms occur, according to new NOAA-led research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
New research indicates that the number of tropical cyclones has been rising since 1980 in the North Atlantic and Central Pacific, while storms have been declining in the western Pacific and in the southern Indian Ocean.
“We show for the first time that this observed geographic pattern cannot be explained only by natural variability,” said Hiroyuki Murakami, a climate researcher at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and lead author.
Murakami used climate models to determine that greenhouse gases, manmade aerosols including particulate pollution, and volcanic eruptions were influencing where tropical cyclones were hitting.
3 forces influence where storms are hitting
Greenhouse gases are warming the upper atmosphere and the ocean. This combines to create a more stable atmosphere with less chance that convection of air currents will help spawn and build up tropical cyclones.
Particulate pollution and other aerosols help create clouds and reflect sunlight away from the earth, causing cooling, Murakami said. The decline in particulate pollution due to pollution control measures may increase the warming of the ocean by allowing more sunlight to be absorbed by the ocean.
Diminishing manmade aerosols is one of the reasons for the active tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic over the last 40 years, Murakami said. However, toward the end of this century, tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic are projected to decrease due to the “calming” effect of greenhouse gases.
Volcanic eruptions have also altered the location of where tropical cyclones have occurred, according to the research. For example, the major eruptions in El Chichón in Mexico in 1982 and Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 caused the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere to cool, which shifted tropical cyclone activity southward for a few years. Ocean warming has resumed since 2000, leading to increased tropical cyclone activity in the northern hemisphere.
Looking ahead: Scientists predict fewer tropical cyclones by 2100 but likely more severe
Climate models project decreases in tropical cyclones toward the end of the 21st century from the annual average of 86 to about 69 worldwide, according to the new study. Declines are projected in most regions except in the Central Pacific Ocean, including Hawaii, where tropical cyclone activity is expected to increase.
Despite a projected decline in tropical cyclones by 2100, many of these cyclones will be significantly more severe. Why? Rising sea surface temperatures fuel the intensity and destructiveness of tropical storms.
“We hope this research provides information to help decision-makers understand the forces driving tropical cyclone patterns and make plans accordingly to protect lives and infrastructure,” Murakami said.
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On May 9, the frost will return to the Great Lakes.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/05/09/0900Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-92.67,39.42,1183
My research shows that the observed pattern of changing climate predictions cannot be explained only by science.
but it can by religion.
OT, for a few laughs:
Using Humor And Games To Counter Science Misinformation
John Cook
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/05/the-nobel-disease-when-intelligence-fails-to-protect-against-irrationality/
for example: Take, for example, an issue such as climate change, which is uniquely difficult for our minds to grasp
see also the preceding article: The Nobel Disease: When Intelligence Fails To Protect Against Irrationality
There is a seeming lack of skepticism on the part skeptical inquirer
Years ago I read of a study where someone looked for shallow freshwater pools on the land side of sand dunes along the US Gulf of Mexico coast. He took core samples of the pool bottoms and found that layers of sand, washed into the freshwater pools by hurricane storm surges, were created at different times over a span of several hundred years. The sand horizons showed a pattern that could reflect the E-W shift of the mid-Atlantic high, which influenced the hurricane landfalls.
Sounds like an intriguing study, Mr. Hill. If you can find it, please post the link.
Until then, here are a couple of articles that might come close. (Q: do they?)
1. Abstract
(Source: Bregya, Wallacea, Minzonib, Cruzhttps (2017) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320079131_2500-year_paleotempestological_record_of_intense_storms_for_the_northern_Gulf_of_Mexico_United_States )
2.
(pp. 38, 39)
(p. 39)
(p. 45)
(Source: Holocene History of Catastrophic Hurricane Landfalls Along the Gulf of Mexico Coast Reconstructed from Coastal Lake and Marsh Sediments, Kam-biu Liu, Miriam L. Fearn (2000) http://coastandenvironment.lsu.edu/docs/faculty/liu/paleoecology_web/index_files/marsh.pdf )
“Greenhouse gases are warming the upper atmosphere and the ocean. This combines to create a more stable atmosphere with less chance that convection of air currents will help spawn and build up tropical cyclones.”
That might be a plausible corollary (or result coming out the model) of the WV amplification GHG hypothesis prediction IF the tropical hotspot in the mid-troposphere at 6-10 km (centered at 8km) altitude were actually there as predicted by those same models. But because the observed lack of the hotspot is a major CMIP3/5 ensemble model failure , then everything that comes from that is also failure.
More CO2 = Higher Viscosity = More Energy needed for whirly wind to form same speed hurricane.
Where the heck did you get that factoid from?
The molecular weight of CO2 is higher than the other main components of the atmosphere, O2, N2, H2O. So the atmosphere is slightly denser with CO2 in it. However at only 400 ppm, the difference is so far down below rounding error it doesn’t make much real world difference.
Regardless, denser and more viscous are two entirely different things.
(This is not the same as saying that since CO2 is a small part of the atmosphere it can’t have any influence on how energy flows through the atmosphere. Like density and viscosity, two entirely different mechanisms.)
If and where a hurricane develops has a lot of factors. The ocean has to have enough heat, there has to be low shear, there has to be a way to ventilate the storm as it develops and there has to be enough water vapor (vapour for those that spell funny) in the air. Then there has to be a triggering device to kickstart the spin.
The Pacific has a lot of say whether the Atlantic will develop or not develop hurricanes, primarily by influencing upper level winds and shear levels. Even thunderstorms in the Indian Ocean matters to Atlantic hurricane development. It’s all tied together. Not sure how extensive this study was of areas outside of the North Atlantic Basin or interconnections.
And based on prior years, this Atlantic season looks like it might be an active one. Living in North Carolina which gets its fair share of these things, you pay attention.
Just how much additional energy does 0.003C or ocean warming provide for cyclones?
Each hurricane transports huge amounts of heat both poleward and spaceward.
If there actually were to be more hurricanes that would be another negative feedback.
“Greenhouse gases are warming the upper atmosphere and the ocean. This combines to create a more stable atmosphere with less chance that convection of air currents will help spawn and build up tropical cyclones.”
“toward the end of this century, tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic are projected to decrease due to the “calming” effect of greenhouse gases.”
I’ve read many times that more CO2 means more energy and H2O in the atmosphere which means more bad weather. These two excerpts don’t quite convey this message to me.
The models predict the mid-troposphere of the tropics warms faster than the bear surface (under 2km) under the water vapor amplification they program into the model with parameter tuning.
If this did occur, then the deltaT would diminish and the Pseudoscientist would be correct with that statement.
However the hotspot is non-existent after 20 years of much effort trying to find it in satellite AMSU and radiosonde observational data. Thus the models are wrong on both counts. The theory is wrong. The conclusions from it are wrong. Yet they model onwards like Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Oil companies should just pull an Atlas Shrugged and refuse to sell any oil for a year. They could say, we’re sorry that the consumption of our product must lead to the eventual extinction of human life, and we’ve decided, therefore, to cease selling it forthwith. Or course, after a few months the global death toll would get pretty high, but they’d have made their point.
My Dad was born in 1919 and raised in rural Saskatchewan. The family house was heated with a wood stove, draught horses were used to work the fields, and kerosene lanterns supplied the light after dark. ( In Saskatchewan, the temperature in the winter sometimes falls to 40 below.) By the time Dad was thirty, he lived in a house with electricity, running water and a coal furnace (which he had to stoke with a shovel), and he owned a Chevrolet. Think of how much his standard of living rose from 1940 to 1950. Had you told Dad that fossil fuel consumption was a curse, he would have thought you mad.
There are five requirements for the formation of a tropical revolving storm:
1. Sea surface temperature of 26 degrees celcius or higher (that is 78.8 degrees Farhenheit for those that don’t spell funny but cling to old methods of measuring)
2. a pre existing low pressure system
3. sufficient Coriolis force (tropical revolving storms very rarely form closer than 5degrees from the equator and never inside 4degrees from the equator)
4. little or no vertical wind shear
5. atmospheric disturbance
The little or no vertical wind shear is one of two reasons why the South Atlantic is practically devoid of tropical revolving storms. Hence why there is no alternative name for them in that part of the world (such as Typhoon, Hurricane or Cyclone)
“(that is 78.8 degrees Farhenheit for those that don’t spell funny but cling to old methods of measuring)”
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Yes sir. Goalpost migration is the exact description of this horrid thing called climate science. Not to determine what the theory predicts and then take data to test theory but rather to look at the data to determine what the theory should predict.
And this is The Science and to be critical of it is to be a science denier.
Using a climate model that assumes CO2 is the primary driver of climate to conclude that CO2 is changing the climate.
“While the global average number of tropical cyclones each year has not budged from 86 over the last four decades, climate change has been influencing the locations of where these deadly storms occur”
I assume that is why the name ‘climate change’ was invented! Got it?
The essential problem here is that the hypothesis to be tested was derived from the only data that can be used to test that hypothesis.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/06/tropical-cyclones-climate-change-2/
Rather more likely is the possibility that windfarms are having (Lorentzian) effects on air movements and thus possibly shifting cyclones etc. [ See for instance https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg24032021-000-the-possible-chaotic-effect-of-wind-farms/ ]
OOOps, the link has gone and I can’t find the original; another is https://www.newscientist.com/article/2181595-wind-farms-do-affect-climate-but-they-dont-cause-global-warming/
“New research indicates”
indicates that “the science” (whatever counts as “science” these days) is no settled on these matters.