Guest essay by Eric Worrall
With an uncertainty of 900%, weather attribution specialists stand ready to contribute to the conversation about the urgent need for climate action.
Is climate change to blame for extreme weather events? Attribution science says yes, for some – here’s how it works
August 25, 2021 10.28pm AEST
Xubin Zeng
Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Director of the Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorolgy Center, University of ArizonaExtreme rainfall and flooding left paths of destruction through communities around the world this summer. The latest was in Tennessee, where preliminary data shows a record-shattering 17 inches of rain fell in 24 hours, turning creeks into rivers that flooded hundreds of homes and killed at least 18 people.
A lot of people are asking: Was it climate change? Answering that question isn’t so simple.
There has always been extreme weather, but human-caused global warming can increase extreme weather’s frequency and severity. For example, research shows that human activities such as burning fossil fuels are unequivocally warming the planet, and we know from basic physics that warm air can hold more moisture.
A decade ago, scientists weren’t able to confidently connect any individual weather event to climate change, even though the broader climate change trends were clear. Today, attribution studies can show whether extreme events were affected by climate change and whether they can be explained by natural variability alone. With rapid advances from research and increasing computing power, extreme event attribution has become a burgeoning new branch of climate science.
The latest attribution study, released Aug. 23, 2021, looked at the rainfall from the European storm that killed more than 220 people when floods swept through Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in July 2021.
A team of climate scientists with the group World Weather Attribution analyzed the record-breaking storm, dubbed Bernd, focusing on two of the most severely affected areas. Their analysis found that human-induced climate change made a storm of that severity between 1.2 and 9 times more likely than it would have been in a world 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.1 F) cooler. The planet has warmed just over 1 C since the industrial era began.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/is-climate-change-to-blame-for-extreme-weather-events-attribution-science-says-yes-for-some-heres-how-it-works-164941
How can anyone say with a straight face that attribution science is adding value to the conversation, when the best they can achieve is an uncertainty of 900%, and a bottom limit of no change in severity whatsoever?
The bottom limit of 1.2 times worse seems indistinguishable from business as usual, or even a slight reduction in the severity of weather, with an uncertainty of that magnitude.
I have no problem with people working to understand how CO2, weather and climate change interact. But in my opinion a branch of scientific analysis which apparently cannot distinguish between an unfolding catastrophe and business as usual is way too immature to add any value to the public discussion about climate policy.
Do these people really believe anyone with a brain would believe such utter balderdash? They’re just making it up and pretending there is some mystical statistics and science involved. It’s flim-flam dressed up to fool the punters. No one with any sort of science background can possibly take such absurdities seriously.
As soon as a computer model of the climate is used you know 100% sure that the conclusion depend to 100% on what was “assumed” before running the calculation.
As Lindzen has pointed out for years, physics suggests in a warming world the poles will warm significantly and the equatorial region will warm very little. The equatorial to polar temperature gradient will therefore reduce. As its the gradient that drives weather the expectation is that severe weather will reduce, not increase, in a warming world.
In a warming world everything gets worse? This is so unlikely as to be absurd. And as Lindzen has also pointed out, in science adjustment and updating of measured datasets over time is quite normal. What is not normal is how, in climate science, all the adjustments are always in the same direction – increasing warmth now and cooling the past.
Feynman must be turning in his grave. Climate scientists appear to ignore everything he said.
No matter how much they claim otherwise, the climate alarmist narrative is built on – and can never extricate itself from – the imbecilic notion of Edenic stasis. That the climate never changed before 1850. Belief in Edenic stasis of climate and now of even weather is more stupid than belief in a flat earth.
Though they claim to believe in past climate change, including of glacial cycles, with every revision of past reconstructed climate the temperature timeline gets a little bit smoother, and smoother, and smoother. Until they are back in the reassuring myth of the garden of Eden. Pristine before carbon sin.
If all the work was unpaid or paid for by benefactors not feeding from a government trough then I would agree with you.
Using government funds to produce this attribution tripe is evil.
“Identifying a human fingerprint on individual extreme weather events —“probabilistic extreme event attribution” — has been an important goal of the scientific community for more than a decade.”
No sh@t sherlock….
George Orwell railed against the use of adjectives. This may have been prompted more by their abuse than use. I wonder what he would have made of the favorite words used today by climate activists. Climate activists, now that is an interesting phrase that correctly portrays their endeavours as ludicrous. When discussing climate we face a problem both of bad science and bad language – i.e. badly used or shoddy. What follows is a comment I made elsewhere that is applicable here:
The word “extreme” used with weather is a misnomer. It incorrectly divides weather into two categories, normal and extreme. However, weather includes all sorts of conditions, hot and cold, wet and dry, windy and still and so on. Nor should we speak of extreme climates.
There are some thirty climate zones and sub-zones. In each of these we find a range of weather conditions. What is normal in each of these is different from the others. Further, normal does not mean the average which is misleading but what people expect like winter rain in a Mediterranean area.
For an intelligent conversation about climate and weather we need to carefully use language and accurately define the terms we use. Climate alarmists are often characterized by shoddy language, a lack of cogent arguments and resorting to ad hominems.
I’ll post it again, just cos it’s fun.
This is the calculation. It’s basic Arithmetic, nothing fancy, no hidden agenda, just something you can do by taking your socks and shoes off.
Atmospheric CO2 levels in 1850 (beginning of the Industrial Revolution): ~280ppm (parts per million atmospheric content).
Atmospheric CO2 level in 2021: ~410ppm.
410ppm minus 280ppm = 130ppm ÷ 171 years (2021 minus 1850) = 0.76ppm of which man is responsible for ~3% = ~0.02ppm.
That’s every human on the planet and every industrial process adding ~0.02ppm CO2 to the atmosphere per year on average. At that rate mankind’s CO2 contribution would take more than 20,000 years to double which, the IPCC states, would cause around 2°C of temperature rise. That’s ~0.0001°C increase per year for 20,000 years.
One hundred (100) generations from now (assuming ~ 25 years per generation) would experience warming of ~0.25°C more than we have today. ‘The children’ are not threatened!
Furthermore, the Manua Loa CO2 observatory (and others) can identify and illustrate Natures small seasonal variations in atmospheric CO2 but cannot distinguish between natural and manmade atmospheric CO2.
Hardly surprising, mankind’s CO2 emissions are so inconsequential this ‘vital component’ of Global Warming can’t be illustrated on the regularly updated Manua Loa graph.
It’s independent of seasonal variation and would reveal itself as a straight line, so should be obvious.
Not even the global fall in manmade CO2 over the early Covid-19 pandemic, estimated at ~14% (14% of ~0.02ppm CO2 = 0.0028ppm), registers anywhere on the Manua Loa data.
Why am I not surprised?!
Wrong title. Should be:
“Claim: Weather Shows Climate Attribution is 1.2x – 9x More Severe Because of CO2”
The FIRST QUESTION MUST BE: Has this happened before and how often? ONLY then can one logically proceed.
Sounds like a whole bunch of not predicted outcomes looking for an explanation
Well, my problem with this kind of studies stems from the fact that the basic model they use typically is a high CO2 sensitivity CMIP. So it seems there is a missing uncertainty right from the start which is not properly discussed.
In other word they find some behavior in simulations which do not necessary describe the real world, in fact we know that such models fail verification tests.
From the article: “weather attribution specialists”
LOL !
Griff is a weather attribution specialist. He sees CO2 in just about everything.
I wonder how one specializes in weather attribution, when there is nothing factual on which to base such weather attributions?
I guess all such weather attributors must be True Believers in CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming), because they are not making fact-based assessments
The CAGW promoters have a high confidence in their opinions.
I have no confidence in their opinions.
From the article: “There has always been extreme weather, but human-caused global warming can increase extreme weather’s frequency and severity. For example, research shows that human activities such as burning fossil fuels are unequivocally warming the planet,”
The planet is currently cooling, 0.5C since 2016, and we are still burning fossil fuels, so how do you square that with your claim?
On top of that, what evidence do you have that CO2 is warming the planet? CO2 may not be net warming the atmosphere at all, it may be net cooling the atmosphere, and the person making the assertions above can’t prove it one way or another right now. Yet he seems so sure of himself. True Believers are the bane of science.
From the article: “Their analysis found that human-induced climate change made a storm of that severity between 1.2 and 9 times more likely than it would have been in a world 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.1 F) cooler. The planet has warmed just over 1 C since the industrial era began.”
If that’s the case, then the planet has cooled 0.5C since it warmed to “over 1C, so we are sitting at 0.5C above the baseline, not 1.0C. These guys can’t even get their figures right. They are probably looking at the wrong temperature chart.
Here’s the temperature chart they should be looking at:
The UAH satellite chart:
These alarmists seem to think the planet is stuck at the high temperature of 2016. That’s not the case. As you can see, the temperatures have cooled considerably since 2016, yet the alarmists are still living in 2016. Their thought processes are flawed. Probably because they look at bogus, bastardized temperature charts and think they are real, instead of looking at the real world represented by the UAH satellite chart.
“A lot of people are asking: Was it climate change? Answering that question isn’t so simple.” – Xibom Zeng
No, Big Guy, It is freakin’ summer weather and excessive rainfall with flooding is NOT unusual anywhere at all, including wherever you come from.
That’s all it is, pal: W-E-A-T-H-E-R. You’ll just have to deal with that like the rest of us do, and make sure your house is above the flood plain, because – in case you hadn’t noticed – none of those houses damaged in that Tennessee flood were above the flood plain. And if the rivers that get a high volume of water overflow their banks, it has to go somewhere, like right into your basement.
I can’t figure out why that’s so hard to understand…. What did I miss?
I say 0 to 100x. Where’s my taxpayer-funded check? With a range like that how do you plan? You will be 1.2 to 9 times as dead.
Would World Weather Attribution have a vested interest in attribution studies finding a link between human CO2 and extreme weather? If there is no attribution link they might have to go and find proper jobs, maybe even producing something of use.
“For example, research shows that human activities such as burning fossil fuels are unequivocally warming the planet, and we know from basic physics that warm air can hold more moisture.”
But changes in water vapour are dominated by the ocean phases which are warmer when the solar wind is weaker, like with the AMO since 1995. Surface wind speeds over the oceans have also increased since 1995.
The IPCC and Met Office circulation models predict drier summers for Northwest Europe with rising CO2 forcing, due to a modeled positive influence on the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is exactly what stronger solar wind states do. But the summers have on average become wetter since 1995. The only excuse they have for this disparity is the warm AMO phase since 1995, hence the urgency to make it look like the warm AMO is Mann made, as opposed to being normal during a centennial solar minimum.
Other anti-science weather attribution from Friederike Otto includes the hot Saharan plumes of summer 2019 in NW Europe, which were totally dependent on strongly negative North Atlantic Oscillation conditions for the plumes to manifest, and so are predictably more common during centennial solar minima. There are several examples in the 1880-1890’s. Again, the negative NAO is the complete reverse of what all the circulation models predict with rising CO2 forcing. Yet her science fiction is being used in climate litigation cases.
This analysis says most attribution studies use invalid statistical methods. https://judithcurry.com/2021/08/18/the-ipccs-attribution-methodology-is-fundamentally-flawed/
I wonder what the 900% uncertainty climbs to if proper methods are used.
It’s water This has to be a joke. Possible to be accurate and not precise and vice versa…
A lot of people are asking was it climate change! Doubtful people’s homes that are flooded are asking is it climate change. More likely concerned about recovery and flood control.
“Today, attribution studies can show whether extreme events were affected by climate change and whether they can be explained by natural variability alone. With rapid advances from research and increasing computing power, extreme event attribution has become a burgeoning new branch of climate science.” They figure more powerful computers give better modeling results. But, at it’s heart, it is still nothing more than modeling. More powerful computing of “garbage in” just means faster “garbage out” results. Their faith in modeling is where they miss the mark.
Climate scientists are 95% certain these days, although they still report global temperatures with a 1 SD error estimate.
Unfortunately I spent a while as a university control theory tutor.
In a linear system, the frequency of any output is matched by the frequency of any input.
The increase of CO2 is an extremely gradual low frequency change, components having a period of decades.
Storms and disasters and such have exceedingly high frequency components in comparison; weeks, days, and hours.
So I wonder what the non-linear physical mechanism is that can amplify such a low frequency input to such high frequency outputs, and that is immune to diurnal and seasonal variations. Must be some incredible non-linear amplification happening.