From ClimateREALISM
An article in the Ohio Capital Journal claims that it’s time to link violent weather to climate change for the state. This is false. There is no real-world evidence showing climate change is weirding the weather in Ohio or anywhere else. Even the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not link changes in severe weather to climate change, or more particularly changes in tornado patterns which the story focuses upon.
The article, written by Marty Schladen is titled, Analysis: Ohio has had weird, violent weather. Is it time to link it to climate change? It begins with these two paragraphs:
For two years running, Ohio has seen what used to be rare February tornadoes, followed by a deadly outbreak just last week. But news coverage of the twisters almost completely omitted any mention of climate change.
With climate scientists overwhelmingly agreeing that human-caused warming is happening and last year having the hottest average global temperature on record, is it time to start linking that to the weird weather we’ve been seeing?
Had Schladen bothered to look at data and the climate science literature, he would have discovered that they show no link between climate change and shifts in the timing or frequency of extreme weather.
First, Schladen errs in believing that two consecutive years of what he considers to be abnormal weather in February is significant. This is not a long enough trend to be considered climate change. It is well established by the World Meteorological Organization that climate change is measured over thirty years not two.
He compounds that error by using one year of warmer than normal temperatures (2023) as the basis for the claim that warmer weather is driving more tornadoes in February. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Storm Prediction Center (SPC) indicates that since 1998, there has been a zero trend in Ohio tornadoes for February:
If, in fact, gradually warming temperatures in Ohio due to climate change were driving more tornadoes you would see it in the trend data, but no trend is evident. The February 2023 and 2024 tornadoes in Ohio were rare, but not unique historically. In fact, 17 tornadoes have been recorded in February in Ohio between 1950 and 2016, including some occurring during the period when the Earth was cooling on average from the 1950s through the 1970s. Nor are tornadoes in Ohio becoming stronger. The last F5 tornado recorded in Ohio was in 1985, nearly 40 years of modest warming ago. Data do not support claims that climate change is causing a long-term trend of earlier tornadoes or more extreme tornadoes in Ohio, or anywhere else.
Climate change does not affect individual states like Ohio, it is a much broader phenomenon. Looking at the entire United States over the past 50 years, which has seen a gradual warming, there is also no upward trend for violent tornadoes as seen in Figure 2 below.
Climate at a Glance: Tornadoes reports that the United States has been experiencing a record low number of violent tornadoes in the past decade:
The number of tornadoes in the United States, as well as in other countries, has been slowly declining for the past 45 years. At the same time, the number of strong to violent tornadoes, EF3 or higher, has been dramatically declining for the past 45 years. (See Figure 1.) In fact, the United States set a record in 2017–18 for the longest period in recorded history without a tornado death, and it set a record for the longest period in history (306 days) without an EF3 or stronger tornado.3,4 The two record-low years for tornado strikes in the United States both occurred this past decade, in 2014 and 2018.5
Further, even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has acknowledged, “There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes.”
Not only that, a recent peer-reviewed paper, Time trends in losses from major tornadoes in the United States, published in Science Direct in September 2023, shows that U.S. tornado damage & strong tornado incidence are both sharply down. If warming by climate change was driving more tornadoes you would see it in the tornado damage record, but it’s not there.
There is simply no evidence in the data or in climate research supporting the claims made by Schladen. However, if you read the entire piece by Schladen, it becomes obvious that he strays from analysis into opinion, especially when he starts blaming other journalists for not doing their homework, saying:
For journalists covering weather events, it’s easier not to wade into the subject of Earth’s changing atmosphere and whether that has anything to do with the tornado or flood or hurricane or wildfire that they’re trying to cover. In fact, NPR reported in November, weather experts in the Midwest said that talking publicly about global warming brought them threats.
Not mentioning climate in such coverage is also easy to rationalize. No one weather event can be definitely attributed to global warming, many climate scientists have long said.
If Schladen had simply stuck with the last sentence in that excerpt he would have been on target. Instead he lambasts other journalists for being cautious in linking instances of extreme weather events to climate change. They are avoiding, to Schaleden’s displeasure, the error he commits.
The Ohio Capital Journal story is just another instance of sloppy, irresponsible journalism by a reporter promoting his preconceived views on climate change, and the climate catastrophe narrative, over data and facts which don’t fit the narrative.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Being wrong if one still agrees with The Narrative is forgiven.
Forgiven? Heck, he’ll probably be given a Pulitzer and be nominated for a Nobel peace prize. Maybe get a job offer from the NYT or Grauniad.
Causing ‘Weird, Violent Delusions sums up the effects of the new religion to a tee. For me at least.
My legal immigrant grandparents (both came separately thru Ellis Island from Slovakia and met and married after Grandpa got back from WWI- he commanded a volunteer Slovak unit on the French side) lived on Cleveland’s west side, along with many other legal immigrants from Eastern Europe. The area was mostly modest two story brick bungalows with basements. Folks mostly worked at the local steel mill or the local GM assembly plant. My grandfather was their insurance agent.
One time we were visiting—I was probably about 12-14—and the tornado warning sirens went off. So early sixties. We all hurried to the basement and stayed there until the all clear. Turns out the big tornado just missed us, but hit badly just a few blocks away.
The next day Grandpa walked us over to survey the damage. Entire city blocks of brick bungalows severely damaged or gone. The center blocks in the about 3 block wide path were leveled. Nothing left. It was as if a bulldozer had come and smoothed the brick rubble so it was completely flat. Except near the middle of one of those central path city blocks, completely above the flat brick rubble, stood a single upright undamaged white bathtub with the plumbing stripped off. Made a lifetime impression.
Nothing in last week’s Ohio tornado outbreak looks to have done nearly that much damage. AW is right, the newspaper is wrong.
I was born and raised in Northern Kentucky, about 4 miles from Fountain Square in Cincinnati.
I lived a year or more in Kansas, 3 in New Hampshire, 1 in different parts of Texas, about 9 months in Indiana; but most of my almost 70 years have been in Ohio, 6 or so in west central but most of that in central Ohio.
I suppose they think that we have NOT had a “Blizzard of ’78” every year would fall under “weird violent weather” is a bad thing?
This is Ohio. Tornados happen. Not as often as in “tornado alley” (Oklahoma and The Wizard of OZ) but they do.
Some years it rains a lot. Some years it doesn’t.
The remnants of Hurricane Ike hit hard. And a “derecho” also hit hard a few years later.
But, speaking for one who has lived on this little particular spot in Ohio on the globe for about 35 years. Nothing “weird or violent” to report. (A few years ago there was an outbreak of tornados in the Dayton, Springfield area.) A tornado outbreak in Ohio, or just one anywhere, is locally “violent”. But not “weird”.
(A hurricane developing over Ohio would be “weird” or a still classed as a hurricane when it hit Ohio would be “weird”. Seasonal storms are not.)
Anthony, do you send this to the newspaper that reported this false news?
I now live in Ohio, for most of my life. (Almost 70 years.)
The all time recorded high was 106*F set 7-21-1934 and tied 7-14-1936.
The all time recorded low was -22*F set 1-19-1994. (I was working outside part of that day. Wind chill was not factored in.)
Tornados? Always violent. Nothing new to Ohio. Zanesville. “The Battle of Fallen Timbers”.
The remnants of Hurricane Ike and the derecho that came a few years later were rough.
What would be actually “weird” would be a hurricane actually forming over Ohio or a hurricane still being classed as a “hurricane” when it reached Ohio.
(My original comment @ March 29, 2024 3:16 pm, “is awaiting approval”. I tried to edit before I saw that and, was delayed on my end from completing the edit.
(I assumed I had “timed out”.)
If this comment or something similar, pops up more than once, the fault was likely on my end.
Funny Ohio hurricane story.
Back when, my father was a command Air Force officer /pilot.
So a hurricane was forecast to hit DC and joint base Andrews (he was then at the Pentagon). So he was ordered to fly one of Andrews planes to ‘safe’ Wright Pat in Ohio. Well, the hurricane hit DC as predicted, and then proceeded to hit Wright Pat in Ohio. Dad had to ‘fly’ his plane thru the hurricane remanent, on the ground. Fortunately, he had previously been EO of the 409th typhoon chasers off Guam, so had LOTS of real hurricane real flying experience.
He was not a happy camper when finally got back home.
Speaking of Wright Paterson, Ohio, storms and flying planes into them for study:
https://www.weather.gov/iln/ThunderstormProject
And if you’ve ever been to the Air Force museum there, here’s an excerpt about the P-61 Black Widow on display there. It was part of the Thunderstorm Project.
I would classify the newspaper author as mal-educated and also uninformed. He has been educated to believe in the catastrophic global warming hoax, and also hasn’t bothered to learn anything about historical weather data. In my view, that makes him a typical journalist of this era.
By all definitions, weather causes climate, not the other way around. People who ignore this fact have the cart before the horse.
Anyone other than me remember “The Tornado Episode” of WKRP in Cincinnati?
I spent two years in Cincy. Left in 1967. Made some Ohio friends.
Seven years later the “1974 Xenia tornado” cleaned a house owned by friends off of its foundation. Wikipedia has a page on the storm.
The WKRP episode ran in 1979.
Was this sent in as a letter to the Editor?
The last gasp of a dying industry. Newspapers are a shadow of what they once were and now local TV news has expanded from 30 minutes to hours of “reporters” reporting from the sidewalk in front of City Hall, the Baseball/Football/Basketball stadia and burning buildings.
We’ll miss it all … no we won’t.
Because the Second Law of Thermodynamics is counter-intuitive, most folks expect higher temperatures to naturally yield more energy for violent weather.
The truth is that the energy for violent weather MUST come from temperature differences—which are somewhat reduced by global warming. (The coldest places at the coldest times see the most warming.)
Specifically, tornadoes tend to be associated with cold fronts, because they have large temperature gradients. Global warming has made cold fronts less “sharp” leading to a dramatic drop in the strongest tornadoes. Notice the extreme lack of recent EF5 tornadoes here:
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5torns.html
Will we ever see another EF5? Probably.
Will the 21st century EF5s catch up to the 20th century average of one per year? Incalculably improbable.
Thanks for this article Anthony. We all know that the green industry is massively promoting catastrophic anthropogenic climate change as a way to take control of us and our power supplies, and to make a lot of money. I don’t think it is enough to simply point out that they are using false information in their green campaign. It would be helpful to include more specific details of scams in play, and the names of the people behind them, in these articles. Please keep up the good work done at WUWT.
Surely strong confidence that climate change is not making this one worse. How strong does the evidence have to be to admit the postulate was wrong? It’s like guilty of murder until proven innocent with no reasonable doubt and the victim is still fit and healthy.