News Brief by Kip Hansen —7 May 2024
World Weather Attribution, a purpose created organization intended to manufacture attention getting news stories in support of the Climate Crisis meme that “All Extreme and Bad Weather is caused by Human Induced Climate Change”, has published a report on the drought in Panama that has been affecting shipping through the Panama Canal.
“Who is World Weather Attribution (WWA)?
The WWA initiative was formed in 2015 by Dr Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Dr Friederike Otto.
Today, the core WWA team is formed by researchers from several institutions, including the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.
The core team also works with climate scientists and other experts in the country on which the study is being conducted, providing critical knowledge and insights on weather, databases, modelling and impacts.
Why are WWA studies performed rapidly?
Following an extreme weather event, people often ask: is climate change to blame?
Rapid attribution studies are carried out to give a robust, scientific answer to this question.
The results are published days or weeks after the event to inform discussions about climate change, mitigation and adaptation, while the impacts of the extreme weather event are still fresh in the minds of the public and policymakers, and decisions about rebuilding are being made.” [from the About page of the WWA ]
The acknowledged climate crisis advocacy group, Climate Central, claims responsibility and credit for the creation of the WWA. And Jessica Weinkle of The Breakthrough Institute, recently noted: “Elsewhere, the advocacy group, Climate Central, works to spread heightened views of climate change in run of the mill television weather broadcasting. Climate Central organized development of weather attribution studies fit for media rather than science. The studies are now integral to climate litigation.” [ source – a must read ]
But, as with the recent terrible drought in southern Africa, which is causing a serious humanitarian situation, there is a good problem.
That problem is that WWA, try as they might to keep to their mandate of scientifically proving (in a rather odd and invalid statistical way) that all bad weather events can and should be blamed on human-caused climate change, has been unable to do so.
Why? Simple, drought in Central America, including the Panama highlands, is dependent on the worldwide cyclical ENSO weather pattern – and specifically not on any aspect of recent slight general warming of Earth’s climate.
The disappointment is glaring obvious in the official report from WWA, which is headlined on the WWA website as: “Low water levels in Panama Canal due to increasing demand exacerbated by El Niño event”. [ The full official report is available as a free .pdf here. ]
After 8 other bullet-points highlighting reduced rainfall and increased demand on the reservoir water, WWA finally includes this:
“With neither climate model data nor a strong physical argument to support the hypothesis, we therefore cannot conclude that the observed drying is attributable to human-caused climate change.”
And while it may have disappointed Fredi Otto [“Together with climate scientist Geert Jan van Oldenborgh she founded the international project World Weather Attribution which she still leads.”], not even the reservoir’s evaporation water loss could be blamed on warmer temperatures:
“Evapotranspiration in Panama is mainly driven by wind speed, humidity and cloud cover which is in contrast to most other regions in the world, where temperature is a key driver. … the amount of water lost annually through evapotranspiration in this area is small compared to the rainfall deficits from lack of rainfall.”
All in and done, the effort to blame Panama’s rainfall troubles on climate change was a total bust.
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Author’s Comment:
Sorry, WWA, that’s two major loses in a row. Keep trying – you might be able to trick the data into showing something was maybe caused by climate change…like the rainfall in a single city in Ireland.
In my not-so-humble opinion, the WWA is, at the top, just a bunch of Climate Crisis Inc. weather panic shills, drawing on “experts” from other countries who are honored to be asked to participate in these studies and get their names added as authors on a sure-to-be published paper that will attract media attention – one of the most-sought-after forms of compensation available to today’s scientists.
But, I have been encouraged by the dilution effect. The advocacy of WWA’s founders, Fredi Otto and Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, becomes diluted through the addition of various national and local scientists who are not primarily intent on sharpening the climate crisis axe. These other scientists are much less likely to spin and stretch the data to fit the climate crisis meme. And I offer them my congratulations for refusing to bend to the pressure they must be under to do so.
Thanks for reading.
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drought in Panama that has been affecting shipping through the Panama Canal.
not even the reservoir’s evaporation water loss could be blamed on warmer temperatures:
BOOM!
Gee, could it have anything to do with the fact that they added a 2nd “canal” with larger locks than the original thereby more than doubling the fresh water usage rate?
No. See my reply to CG just posted below.
Tried and failed. AGAIN. Par for the climate course.
Hansen failed on sea level rise acceleration.
Wadhams failed on Arctic summer sea ice.
Viner failed on UK snow.
Sterling and Derocher failed on polar bears.
Guterres failed on boiling oceans.
Whole lot of climate failure. Very little success—thank goodness.
Rud ==> Once the zealots at LSE pick a target event, they have to call in local experts, in this case from Panama:
Steve Paton, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama
Robert F Stallard, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Hector de Lima, Autoridad del Canal Panama, Panama
also, in this case, plus an inordinate number of representatives from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, at the Hague. Seven of them.
I am guessing that it is harder to enforce Climate Crisis viewpoints on local experts, who are well aware of their area/region’s vagaries of weather. Panama has had drought and too much rain, alternately, throughout recorded history – 500 years.
They use a very questionable statistical method to make their claims of “XX% more likely” — exposed by William Briggs in a study published by the GWPF: “THE CLIMATE BLAME GAME“.
It is not Guterres fault he can’t tell the difference between ºF and ºC. Innumerate politicians but I repeat myself. 😉
Ayup, 3/4 of a century of FAILed doomsday predictions.
What kind of psychology believes catastrophists?
When I was in grade school in the early ’60s I remember an article in a magazine they gave all the kids.
It was about plans to build a sea-level canal to replace/augment the Panama Canal.
It involved using underground nukes.
Both the US and the USSR were seeking peaceful uses for nuclear bombs.
We tried fracking with them more than once. The USSR make a reservoir. (I never heard if the fishing was any good. 😎
I recall that too- in a different Central American nation?
I think there were two, maybe three, proposed routes.
One was north of Panama. (Across Nicaragua?) Another, longer route, was across Columbia. (Not sure where the third was if there was a third.)
The Nicaragua route has been proposed for now 120 plus years. In 2016 Ortega got the Chinese to agree to invest in starting construction. His idea was a longer (~120 mile versus 26 mile), but wider and deeper canal with fewer locks than the new 3rd set of Panamax locks. For whatever reason, China never followed thru—maybe because estimated cost was $50 billion.
IIRC, before the Panama route was proposed, the original route was through Nicaragua. But that country issued a postge stamp showing an active volcano.
Panama got the canal.
The nuke thing I originally mentioned would have had zero locks.
Not saying using the nukes would have been a good idea.
(I’m guessing tidal surges through it from the Pacific to the Caribbean would have presented a problem.)
Canals and/or lakes in Alaska, IIRC.
Here is the El Nino years drought pattern pattern over Panama and other precipitation patterns for El Nino which are bringing headlines for world catastrophe.
The Panama Canal expansion project, also called the Third Set of Locks Project, doubled the capacity of the Panama Canal by adding a new traffic lane, enabling more ships to transit the waterway, and increasing the width and depth of the lanes and locks, allowing larger ships to pass. pancanal.com/eng/index.html
Beginning commercial operation in 2016, the expanded Canal’s traffic increased substantially. As the Canal uses fresh water for its operation (lifting and lowering huge ships), the water consumption has increased by 100%. Could this be Dr Friederike Otto’s drought?
Nah!
It has to be Man’s CO2.
CG, interesting point, so did some quick research.
The original canal had two sets of locks. The new larger set makes three. The old Panamax was 49% of present ocean cargo vessels, the new Panamax is 79%.
The designers knew more water would be needed, so they did two things. The new larger locks include water conserving side basins (three for each of the three lock steps on each side (Atlantic and Pacific); the two older lock sets don’t have this feature. So the new locks effectively use ~1/3 of what would otherwise have been the case. And that ~1/3 was made up by raising the Gatun reservoir storage capacity so that it holds about 1/3 more. Wiki has a nice article and schematic layout.
Well thought through engineering, evidenced by no Canal capacity restrictions from when the new locks opened in 2016 until this past few months.
So the capacity restriction really is lack of rainfall caused by El Niño.
Thanks Rud. Well thought out engineering indeed. So just down to natural el nino la nina oscillation then?
Do they dump the water into the sea or back into Gutan Lake?
Gatun is above the locks on both sides. The fresh water eventually enters the sea when a vessel leaves the lowest lock.
Very nice Kip.
Second that sentiment.
A bit OT when speaking of the Panama Canal but, before WW2 the Japanese built the two largest battleships in the world. (Yamato and Musashi)
One reason they built such huge battleships was that they reasoned any battleship the US could build to challenge them wouldn’t be able to pass through the Panama Canal.
OT response. Not very strategic thinking. A big battleship could have been built on the Pacific. Or sailed around South America thru the Drake passage. Both Yamato and Musashi were sunk by US carrier based planes. Sort of ended the battleship era.
Just part of the thinking. Biggest modern guns on a modern battleship when BB’s were still considered to be the queens of the sea.
Four were planned. The fourth was cancelled. The third hull converted to an aircraft carrier, to resupply the front line carriers. Sunk by a submarine on her first voyage.
(I don’t think we disagree but we’ve entered “Open Thread” territory. 😎
(My fault)
The USN Iowa class battleships were designed to pass through the Panama Canal. The Iowa class battleships included the USS Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa-class_battleship
I must be missing something here because if the sea levels are supposedly rising, wouldn’t the higher water amounts compensate for the drought conditions over the land? And couldn’t those who control the locks simply open them wider to allow a greater level of water to flow through? Or if worse really comes to worse, couldn’t ships resume following the old route around Cape Horn ? Or maybe this is just another example of the inaccurate alarmism so beloved by the climate disaster peddlers.
Edward ==> Sea levels are rising, generally about 8 inches to 1 foot per century. Trivial compared to the height needed for the canal. Water does not “flow through” the canal.
Water flows down from the lake to fill the locks at the highest point, and that water flows down into each step down.
The Canal depends on locks to raise a ship raise or lower a ship from one elevation to another, ABOVE sea level.
To raise a ship, it needs water from a higher elevation for gravity to do the job. If the lakes suppling the fresh water to that are running dry, there’s a problem.
And, as pointed out above, a parallel wider canal is in operation that will also use that same fresh water source for it’s locks.
So, the question is, is a Man-caused drought depleting the lakes that supply the fresh water or is the new canal using more fresh water than is being naturally supplied?
(Maybe some Mega-pumps to supply ocean water to the new locks should have been part of the plan?)
GD, see above. The new locks were very cleverly engineered to only need about 1/3 more water compared to the originals. That 1/3 was made available by increasing Gatun’s storage capacity by 1/3.
The water levels in Gutan Lake are the problem. When full, Gutan Lake is approximately 85 feet above sea level. With low water levels, ships are in danger of bottoming out.
Regarding the “attribution” part of this title…
Actual life experience and long exposure to the bogus warnings of climate change “scientists” is giving more people a renewed appreciation for agnostic scepticism. Don’t believe the self-annointed experts.
Ask an internist about that persistent pain in your lower back and he likely has a pill for it; ask a surgeon and he’ll want to operate; ask a neurologist and she’ll want to do a spinal tap and brain scan; a dermatologist will take note of a strange looking bump on your skin; a gastroenterologist will nod and explain how the symptoms appear very like a nascent cancer of the colon; an immunologist (etc)… They all will need money to do further testing.
People may have a diploma proclaiming their expertise but they are not paid to find causalities outside the thin slice of reality that is their actual knowledge. Experts attribute to what they know – or think they know but don’t. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change, an invention of the experts, is a chimera, appearing different to every observer. A “nightmare” suited to haunting the dreams of children. “Attribution” is the imprimatur of fraudulent consensus.
And just when you thought you had seen everything, up pops The Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.
It’s always drought-ing somewhere, and always raining somewhere. Midwest farmers always say that we’re only ever 2 wks away from a drought. An exageration, true-but thought provoking never the less. But there always seems to be a cycle going, not instantaneously, but thru time.