From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Meanwhile the Met Office keeps on peddling the old lie about global warming:
Hurricane Activity Close To Lowest On Record In Last Year
- Tuesday, April 23, 2024
From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Meanwhile the Met Office keeps on peddling the old lie about global warming:
The data doesn’t lie. Warmer means fewer hurricanes.
Or do we just have the same number of hurricanes?
Remember we now measure them much differently.
The Met Office is either full of scientific illiterates or is being dishonest. Like ALL processes that derive mechanical energy from heat (wind is mechanical energy) it is NOT the high temperature that drives the process, it’s the DIFFERENCE in temperature between a hot and cold body. If temperatures warms uniformly everywhere wind energy does NOT go up. If the temperature gradient fron the hot to the cold body decreases (the cold body warms faster than the hot body) wind energy goes down, even if it’s getting warmer..
There’s no reason to believe that the slight global warming is increasing potential wind energy over the ocean.
Yes. This is the second law of thermodynamics.
However, the clearest example of violent weather being caused by temperature gradients is the association between tornadoes and cold fronts. Global warming should reduce the gradients in cold front. Lo and behold, this shows up in the data.
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5torns.html
It has been over 9 years since we’ve had an EF-5 tornado—a record that is broken every day this string continues. And notice that we averaged one EF-5 per year over the last half of the 20th century.
We’ve only had 9 since 1999.
Wait, what, It’s warmer? When did that happen?
It’s not warmer where I live. We just suffered the coldest April and May in history. But if it was to get warmer globally sometime in the future, that would result in fewer hurricanes and major storms due to the reduced contrast/gradient between warm regions (just the same) and cold regions (warmed slightly).
The warmunista hair-on-fire dire predictions of more bigger hurricanes are contrary to known fact. In any case, destroying the economy with loopy vengeance will not affect the weather or climate.
I understand your point, but, still, we do get more hurricanes forming in the NH summer months, so it is fair to assume that warmer water means more hurricanes. No?
We are detecting more than we used to, but some of that is due to better detection of storms while they’re out over the ocean. To make an unbiased comparison, we must only look at hurricanes as they make landfall. That shows no trend.
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html
La Nina seems to cut down frequency and intensity of Typhoons in the NW Pacific basin to a large extent and that is where the strongest storms typically form. At the same time it seems to allow for greater activity in the N. Atlantic and N. Indian Ocean basins. (Yes I know very well that they are naming Storms they never did before, and the average ACE number for named storms had dropped considerably. But what I am referring to is the total ACE number for a given basin.)
I wonder what was the last year that the Global ACE was above “normal”? Was the ENSO in El Nino territory that year?
East winds along the equator favor typhoons in the Philippine Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
But the last couple seasons before this one the ACE for the NW Pacific basin has been well below “normal” and in fact season before last was a near record low for Typhoons as I recall.
The following is not a personal criticism, rah: Ireneusz listed the Philippine Sea and Gulf of Mexico, not the NW Pacific basin. I don’t know which, if either, claim is accurate since no statistics were presented. Also I think it is clearer to use average instead of normal in scare quotes.
Using “normal” is legit since that is the way this mostly reported in the media: to scare people.
If they above average, that is “normal” since everyone knows that if you talk of average, that necessarily involves data points above and below.
If they substitute above “normal” , that implies there is something abnormal about the reported events ….. and we all know whose fault that it !
Look at Dr. Mau’s ACE index.
Global Tropical Cyclone Activity | Ryan Maue (climatlas.com)
Notice the column titled “Normal YTD”?
This is where Paul Homewood got the graphs he shows above. Now tell me again why I shouldn’t use that term in the context of the ACE index as I have?
Joe Bastardi uses the term “normal” all the time in his videos and defends it use.
An average is an average. But normal can refer to an average over a period of time. Is not a 30 year mean not an expression of both the average and what is “normal” for that period?
I’m no scientist or meteorologist, but I have read people arguing over the use of “average” and “normal” on this blog and other climate blogs several times over the years and what I have expressed above is the way this truck driver sees it.
Oh, and BTW :”The western North Pacific (WNP; 0°–60ׄ° N, 100° E–180°) is the most active tropical cyclone (TC) basin in the world, with an average of approximately 26 TCs (including tropical storms, typhoons (TYs) and super typhoons (STYs)) per year (1981–2010) 1.”
So all of the Philippines is in that basin.
Further:
The 2020 season was below average.
2020 Pacific typhoon season – Wikipedia
and the 2021 season was well below average having the fewest named storm since the 2011 season.
2021 Pacific typhoon season – Wikipedia
For some reason I am having trouble finding Dr, Mau’s ACE indexes for past years. I only get the current one. Can anyone point me to a link to find his ACE indexes for past years?
NOAA’s predicting below normal hurricane activity for both the eastern & central Pacific in 2022
due to the La Niña which is one reason for higher activity in the Atlantic. It may not get the hype
as it has less scare factor!
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/Epac_hurr/index.shtml
https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-predicts-below-normal-2022-central-pacific-hurricane-season
At least the Met Office used “average” instead of “normal.” The Met Office speculating about the future, however, seems designed to support hysterical government climate policy rather than to inform the public. They must know that statements about natural variability hiding their “expected” increases in tropical cyclone intensity based on the warming we have experienced is total scientific nonsense. If you can’t measure it you can’t prove it. The Met Office talks like their expectations are proof of reality.
Lets hope that this tendency of replacing proof with speculation in CliSciFi will be finally debunked before it seriously (more than it already has) impacts our Western democracies and economies. In the meantime countries such as China, India & etc. are eating our lunch to our long-term detriment.
The MET Office will print a notice in their blog that says “It’s better than we thought”.
Just kidding.
If it isn’t a catastrophe, it’s not fit to print in their view.
If they are going to say anything like that it would be
“Not as bad as we feared, but still a manmade disaster and getting worse”
East winds along the equator favor typhoons in the Philippine Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
Ireneusz, that seems likely because La Niña pumps warm water into the Pacific Warm Pool. But that’s just speculation on my part.
Tropical Storm Agatha will pass over southern Mexico and reach the Gulf of Mexico.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/
And if it reforms it will transition from an Agatha to an Alex and get counted twice.
This is one of those “Trans” hurricanes.
Make
Everything
Terrible
Office
Storm Agatha will bring powerful tropical downpours and thunderstorms to Texas.
Is it really a storm anymore? It doesn’t seem well organized.
An atmospheric tropical river will be diverted to Texas by upper-level winds. There it will encounter a jetstream at level 500 hPa. This will lead to frontal thunderstorms.
Funny that not what I hear on the news or read in the paper. Even the web is loaded with it worse than we think stories.
The bright red bars on the US hurricane graph below show it’s share of major hurricanes.
Major hurricanes were harder to miss before the satellite era so it should be a better metric for
comparison vs. total storms/hurricanes. (from cited article in Joseph D’Aleo’s ICECAP post)
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/alarmist_claim_rebuttals_updated/
https://alarmistclaimresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/ac-rebuttal-hurricanes-092621-1.pdf
While the number of major hurricanes may have dropped relative to total number of hurricanes, that’s not necessarily what matters in the practical world of storm effects. There’s always the tendency to believe storms with higher peak windspeeds are more damaging, it’s not that simple. Tropical storm damage arises from multiple factors:
1) Peak wind speed around the cyclonic eyewall, whose effects vary widely with not only the windspeed but the diameter of the eyewall – small diameter storms like Andrew create extreme damage but only over a relatively small swathe of land area, whereas bigger eyewalls like Irma that cover much wider areas can actually create a lot more damage overall.
2) Wind direction and speed of the storm – where a given location is relative to the storm path, being either on the “dangerous semi-circle”, where a fast moving storm’s speed over the surface is added to the eyewall windspeed, or the “safe semi-circle” where the storm speed is subtracted from the eyewall windspeed. Also, the direction of the the winds are key to whether storm surge is a factor in coastal areas, or not.
3) Storm surge, which is usually what causes far greater damages than wind speeds
4) Precipitation and freshwater flooding, which is affected by how fast the storm is moving (slow moving storms cause much more rainfall than fast moving storms).
So pointing to a single stat, such as total number of all tropical storms, or focusing only on “major storms” (which is an arbitrary standard), or even focusing on ACE, simply does not begin to describe the practical effects on people and infrastructure of any given storm, or even of an entire storm season.
Perfect case in point: Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The max windspeed was high (cat 3), but the eyewall did not hit New Orleans but rather landfell to the east in Mississippi, areas of relatively low population density compared to hard-hit New Orleans. Coastal Alabama and western Florida caught the worst of the storm surge being in the “dangerous semi-circle” of the storm. The winds that came ashore in the New Orleans area were only category 2 or less. Yet the damages to New Orleans were devastating, not due to windspeed, or storm surge, but due to flooding after the levies failed.
That is a kind of strawman argument Duane. Bringing an economic factor into the discussion about frequency and strength.
Ehhh, I think Duane has a point here. After all, we’re not really interested in the ACE score per se, people are interested in what it means regarding potential damage. The climatistas are certainly beating that drum hard. The flip side is, technically correct or not, Duane’s points are a little too nuanced for the general public, so you have to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) the issue.
Agreed, D.J. The Met Office assertion was that with rising global temperature levels (which we’ve had over at least the past 100+ years) it “could be expected” (translation: “was”) increases in frequency (all TC’s) and intensity (major TC’s). Historical TC data in a generally warming world, however, contradicts the Met Office statement. The Met Office’s later weasel-words about natural variability hiding it are unscientific crap.
I didn’t mention economics – I discussed actual effects on people, which is all that ever matters. Nobody cares if the fish in the middle of the Atlantic see a Cat 5 pass over their heads. Everybody cares when a storm causes damage to people and infrastructure. Hurricane are vastly too complex a phenomenon to be reduced to a single stat line like number of storms or even ACE.
Uhhhh, Duane,
Regarding your last sentence: would the levies around New Orleans have failed had it not been from the hurricane-caused flooding?
It is recognized that hurricanes commonly cause flooding damage in places with or without levies . . . their effects are not limited to just windspeed or storm surge.
The failure of the levies was entirely 100% due to poor engineering and construction defects, which resulted from decades of graft and corruption. The water levels experienced by the levies were entirely within their design parameters, but they failed anyway.
Regardless of that most cogent of facts, my argument is exactly the same. It was not windspeed that flooded New Orleans, it was not storm surge that flooded New Orleans, and even the rainfall, while heavy, should never have flooded New Orleans if the levies had performed as they were required to perform.
Coastal MS received vastly higher storm surge and wind speeds than did New Orleans, but coastal MS was not built below sea level by a corrupt decades long mis-administration of levies.
“but due to flooding after the levies failed”
After the levies failed to perform as designed. The failure was in the workmanship, not the storm. The Corps of Engineeers screwed up. The levies should not have failed at all – but they failed the first test in real time.
New Orleans was flooded, not destroyed by wind. Try dumping Lake Pontchartrain into your city and see what happens.
Either/both the NYT/WashPo tried to blame W for not spending $$$ on the levees. An
article written that spring call proposed spending on the levees “pork”!
Mike Brown, FEMA’s head, resigned as he was in way over his head. Once the Coast
Guard admiral took over, he “got ‘er done”!
Actually, these were not Army Corps of Engineers levies that failed – these were levies built, operated, and inspected by the corrupt local levy boards in the New Orleans area. USACE is not a corrupt, incompetent organization – they’re bureaucratic as hell, but they are not corrupt and incompetent.
IIRC, John, there is a long history of local corruption in the administration of Federal disaster monies (including the City of New Orleans) and failures/incompetence of the Army Corps of Engineers due to political interference.
Yet it was just two days ago that WUWT posted an article about this alarmist claptrap coming out of NPR (ref: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/29/getting-ready-for-another-destructive-atlantic-hurricane-season/ , with my underlining emphasis added):
“Rebecca Hersher (she/her) is a reporter on NPR’s Science Desk, where she reports on outbreaks, natural disasters, and environmental and health research. She wrote the piece: ‘Get ready for another destructive Atlantic hurricane season’ heard on May 24, 2022 on (NPR’s program) All Things Considered.
“There will be more hurricanes and tropical storms than usual during this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, federal forecasters warn.
“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts 14 to 21 total storms will grow large enough to be named. Of those, forecasters expect 6 to 10 hurricanes, 3 to 6 of which will have sustained wind speeds above 110 miles per hour.
“If the forecast is correct, this will be the seventh year in a row with an above-average number of storms – by far the longest streak in recorded history. The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1 and ends on November 30, though storms sometimes form outside those dates.”
I suggest that NPR update its show title to “All Things Considered, Discarding Those Conflicting with Our Confirmation Biases”
Gordon, I’d change “Confirmation Biases” to “Radical Leftist Ideology.”
Mr. Dressler: A very good spot. I recalled hearing that “seventh year in a row above average” line, and thought, “not”. I’m grateful for commenters who remember things.
Once you read that far you can discount the person as a lunatic.
Any return towards more normal levels will therefore be billed as more climate disaster, instead of more climate normal.
I have been unable to find equivalent data, especially for recent years, at NOAA. Can anyone point me to it?
The MetO is a joke, and Stuart Kirk was right, climate change is a zero event, a big nothing, in fact it is beneficial, a milder climate, higher GDP. CO2 is good. We need to get it to 1000 ppm asap.
That does not even make sense. The graph shows “Major hurricane frequency” ie sum of events in a 12 mo period. That’s a frequency: how frequently they occur.
Major hurricane frequency is not a property of individual events, so it is nonsense to say “cyclones of major hurricane frequency”. He does not even understand the graph.
But then the dumbass has his PC Ukrainian flag up there too.
Leave Ukraine out of it, the dumbass may be PC, but Ukraine is a victim of Putler’s thirst for power and other people’s land.
A dangerous tropical storm may form in the western Gulf of Mexico.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=namer×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
Seems likely the solar minimum (no sunspots) effects the Earth. The idea of Birkeland Currents driving the weather (and many other things) on all the planets is gaining ground. They are contra rotating electric currents and magnetic fields and so likely impart some extra spin required for violent weather phenomina and a solar minimum would therefore provide less of that.