Comments by Kip Hansen — 8 September 2024
There has been a lot of attention paid to this year’s Hurricane Season in the weather media. We even had one re-post here at WUWT — Mysteries Surrounding The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season. CO2 Definitely Not the Driving Factor – from NoTricksZone which itself is a re-post translated from KlimaNachrichten. Not bad, but, to me, not really satisfying – after all, no one could possibly think that the slowness of a single hurricane season could be really driven by changes in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
A sampling from the press, in no particular order:
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“This hurricane season is confounding experts and defying forecasts. What the heck is going on?”
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And, finally, actually quoting someone who might have a professionally informed opinion:
We all saw the headlines earlier this year:
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And then, later in the year, just a month ago:
Highly active hurricane season likely to continue in the Atlantic — Near-record sea surface temperatures and the possibility of La Nina are key factors (August 8, 2024)
That last NOAA press release includes this magnificent night-time satellite image of Hurricane Beryl as it approaches the coast of Texas:
[The full high-resolution image is well worth downloading here ]
Phil Klotzbach at CSU even issued a new forecast on August 6th still predicting an above-average season:
Most readers will know already that the season has thankfully under-performed:
And there we sit, still today on the 8th of September with the Atlantic Tropical Weather outlook, for the next 7 days:
The orange area represents a weather phenomenon where “a tropical depression could form during the early or middle part of next week while the system moves slowly northwestward to northward over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico.” So, not yet even a tropical depression. The yellow area has this: “Some slow development of this system is possible while the disturbance meanders through the early part of next week, then begins to move west-northwestward across the central tropical Atlantic during the middle to latter part of next week.”
And what might be forming? A Tropical Depression:
“Cyclones are characterized by a circular wind pattern or circulation.
Meteorologists identify the growth phase of hurricanes into three categories of development:
Tropical Depression — wind speeds less than 36 mph
Tropical Storm — wind speeds between 36 mph and 74 mph
Hurricane — wind speeds greater than 74 mph” [ source ]
So, to work its way up to being a hurricane, an area of low pressure with thunderstorms must first produce a circular wind flow with maximum sustained winds below 39 mph. Without the circular wind flow, winds of just below speed would be called a ‘near gale’ – or “A gale is a strong, sustained wind with wind speeds between 39 mph and 54 mph. The word is typically used as a descriptor for maritime weather.”
Note: I have sailed in a full gale, once, accidentally, and I did not like it.
The Seven-Day Outlook means that we will pass the historical peak day of Atlantic hurricane activity (below) without adding to the tally issued on 1 September (above).
From the 10th September, hurricane activity historically begins to slow down rather sharply by the 1st of October. After the 1st of October, probability of a hurricane drops by 40 to 50% compared to the peak. By the 1st of November, the season is pretty much over but officially ends on the 30th.
If I were still in the Virgin Islands (US or UK), I’d be feeling pretty confident and not running to Salinas, PR, which is the nearest dependably safe hurricane hole. The advantage of Salinas is that it is downwind and a quick easy sail, less than 24 hours, much of which can be accomplished overnight, even being chased by a storm arriving from the east.
Does any of this mean that the islands, the Yucatan, the Gulf Coast, both Florida coasts, the U.S. East Coast or the Bahamas can relax and think they dodged the hurricane bullet for the season? Absolutely not.
As NOAA keeps reminding us, it only takes one hurricane hitting your area to make a disaster.
The questions being asked in the Weather/Climate press are:
What does the obvious hurricane prediction failure mean?
Have we really gotten it that wrong?
Is there still a chance that the season will heat up and make up lost ground?
How did we/they get it so wrong?
Is there something fundamentally wrong with our models?
Those are all good questions and there have been a lot answers and a lot of excuses.
Many readers here are quite familiar with hurricane science and I’d like to read their opinions in the comments.
Here’s my take:
The basic cognitive error that I have identified is a confusion between:
1. Favorable conditions and indicators, learned from the experience of past seasons along with hypotheses about hurricane genesis
and
2. Cause
Hurricane predictions are naturally, quite correctly, made based on the historical past – identifying conditions that seem to have resulted in more hurricanes – and the statistical historical results (such as the Peak Season graphic) These are then coupled with hypothetical causes – things we think ought to cause more hurricanes – to come up with a guess – a prediction – of how activity the coming season will be.
That is a perfectly proper way to make these predictions. Not a piece out of place…..
Except…..
Statistics about the past are not causes.
Hypotheses about hurricane causation (or hurricane genesis) are not causes.
But, but , but….yes, I know. I suspect you are right, if those are not causes – meaning that looking at those non-causes might lead us astray in our prediction – then….
What does cause hurricanes?
Good question! Go to the top of the class.
Can I get an answer? Well, gee, I asked the Windows Copilot and it gave a sort of sciencey* non-answer that contained no causes, only favorable conditions and hypotheses about hurricane genesis.
* – “Appearing scientific without actually being so” [ source ]
We know the favorable conditions, we know the unfavorable conditions, we have some idea of the atmospheric mechanics involved (low pressure, circular wind patterns, etc).
If we knew the true causes, we would just need to look and see if the causes existed (or were likely to exist) and make a prediction.
Oddly, in 1963, David Fultz may have peeked at the answer in his rotating dishpan experiments at Chicago. [ here and here ] Edward Lorenz’s toy climate model, L96, could churn out the underlying chaotic genesis of hurricanes. In both cases, the causes are themselves related to topics in Chaos Theory studies.
If that is true – and I am not drawing a line in the sand here – then hurricane genesis is – buried under all the historic statistics, favorable conditions and hypotheses – basically unpredictable before the fact.
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Author’s Comment:
Don’t get me wrong, we can comfortably predict that there will be a hurricane season and it will have tropical cyclones and some of them will develop into hurricanes. But we can’t predict, for the next hurricane season or even the remainder of this hurricane season how many, precisely where or when, nor can we predict where those hurricanes that develop will go.
I am betting that there are conflicting opinions out there and I’d like to read them.
I don’t usually include graphics in this section, but was taken with this one:
We still might get some hurricanes after all – there have been more than a few (732) cyclones recorded in Septembers past.
Thanks for reading.
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Perhaps some of the Quantum Physicists need to turn their attention to Quantum “Atmospheric” Physics. “Modern” atmospheric physics doesn’t appear to be adequate. Where are Bohr, Schrodinger, and Heisenberg when you need them?
PMHinSC ==> Well, it may well be that we need some really sharp trained physicists to enter the climate field to straighten it out. We need replacements for the top physicists who are already talking climate, but are skeptics, who are – ah, how do we say – older.
Too late…
NOAA predicts above-normal 2024 Atlantic hurricane season
I doubt they could model their way out of a paper bag.
As anyone who is serious about computer modeling can tell you, it is important, when your model includes rare events, to understand that specific predictions related to these rare events is pointless.
I suspect the net value of the NOAA even putting out a prediction for hurricane season is fairly close to zero.
If anyone from the NOAA is suggesting that the hurricane season, even if the “favorable conditions” line is correct, will “catch up” in September and October, which implies that underlying conditions are at a level even more favorable than favorable has ever been, that borders on Al Gore-level recklessness and religion.
They should know better. But politics…
Joe ==> NOAA’s and Klotzbach’s general Hurricane Season predictions have been fairly accurate over the years. remember, they are only predicting general level of activity and these from early “favorable conditions”.
For those who recognize how to assess what fairly accurate means, sure. When the NOAA in general has lost credibility and the media misuses these predictions to suggest that there’s such a concept as catching up… that’s why I wrote that the net value may be zero, lower if there’s a concentrated campaign to scare people into thinking there’s an unprecedented danger in the next two months.
The nature of prediction of rare events – you’re hopefully going to predict a sample at the same level as your assessment of the underlying population mean. With something like hurricanes, the standard deviation of samples, even if your assessment is correct, is so high that the value of a prediction is almost academic alone.
That’s why I worry, given it’s our alarmist government running the show here. If they continually predict high activity for political reasons, they’ll be right often enough to convey the narrative that the predictions alone are proof that things are so much worse than we imagined.
Perhaps some Quantum Physicists need to turn their attention to Quantum “Atmospheric” Physics. The way atmospheric physics is being practiced doesn’t appear to be adequate. Where are Bohr, Schrodinger, and Heisenberg when you need them?
What does cause hurricanes?
The root cause of tropical storms is quite easy to understand. It is excess thermal energy accumulation in the tropical oceans. Energy accumulation not only of the surface waters, but at depth as well.
Tropical storms are nature’s way of clearing out this excess thermal energy accumulation of the tropical oceans. Remember that evaporating 1 tonne of water requires 2.4 GJ of thermal energy, and that this amount of energy would cool 600 tonnes of water by 1 C.
Tropical storms form when the combination of water surface temperature and wind reaches a critical threshold. Above this threshold, the rate of water evaporation itself drives the storm in a self-reinforcing process. High rates of water evaporation drive the wind (due to the low density of water vapor compared to dry air) which causes even higher rates of water evaporation, which causes even more wind and waves with broken surface, dramatically increasing the surface area available for evaporation and dramatically increasing the rates of water evaporation. This process will continue as long are there is enough warm water to support the process. When the water cools, the storm dies down.
So what are the sources of the excess thermal energy accumulation?
So what happened this year? There are two possibilities that I can think of:
dh-mtl ==> Not wrong, but those are the causes of storms in the tropics — thunderstorms, yes. That’s the Willis Eschenbach hypothesis.
But not necessarily Tropical Cyclones.
The topic here is Tropical Cyclones — Hurricanes. The question I have posed is what causes some tropical disturbances (NOAA definition) to turn into tropical cyclones ?
The question: ‘what causes some tropical disturbances (NOAA definition) to turn into tropical cyclones ?’
The answer:
A supply of sufficiently warm water, both in surface area and in depth, to set up the ‘self-reinforcing process’ of water evaporation that I describe in my comment.
dh-mtl ==> So your view is that is solely the ‘self-reinforcing process’ of water evaporation that turns thunderstorms, or tropical disturbances, into spinning cyclones?
Kip Hansen,
I would not say that it is ‘solely the ‘self-reinforcing process’ of water evaporation that turns thunderstorms, or tropical disturbances, into spinning cyclones’.
I strongly suspect that the complimentary process of condensation, of the vaporized water into clouds and rain, also plays a significant role in the formation of tropical cyclones. And I do not doubt that there are other specific atmospheric conditions that also play a role in cyclone formation.
My view is:
dh-mtl ==> With ya so far. So that makes a great big thunderstrom, with lots of energy. Been out in lots of those…
But what is the cause of turning that into a cyclonic storm?
What gets it spinning? I don’t know.
But it seems to me that if there is a substantial amount of water vapor condensing to form clouds and rain, then the absence of that water vapor (that has just condensed) in the air should create an area of low pressure at the altitude where water condenses. This should cause vertical air flows.
Is there something about vertical air flows that could lead to spinning? We also see such spinning with dry air, during hot sunny days in the summer (dirt devils, etc.)
But what is the cause of turning that into a cyclonic storm?
Upon reflection, I think that the answer to your question is that the storm turns into a cyclonic storm when the two halves of the process, i.e. the evaporation process and the condensation process, become coupled together. This coupling creates the closed circulation loop that is the key characteristic of cyclonic storms.
dh ==> But is that “spinning”?
dh ==> But is that “spinning”?
All vertical fluid flows that are open to the atmosphere spin, whether it be the bathroom drain, a tornado, or a tropical storm. Unless there is perfect atmospheric symmetry around the vertical flow, it would difficult for it not to spin.
I think that the key is the strong vertical air flows which result from the coupling of the condensing process with the evaporating process into a closed loop. The spinning is a side effect of the vertical air flows.
As most atmospheric physicists will attest, it is gradients (i.e. differences over distances) in either pressure or temperature that create winds (that is, tropical storms) in the atmosphere.
Meteorologist seldom measure, let alone use, atmospheric thermal energy content (i.e. the enthalpy of air) as a working parameter.
Measurements of humidity and pressure have been made alongside temperature measurements for at least 40 years. Those will allow at least an estimate of enthalpy.
The operative words in your post are “let alone use”.
OMG, another horrible thing about the climate emergency- a big decrease in the natural phenomenon, hurricanes! Many species depend on them! We must panic!
I am sure that I have picked up that the North Atlantic has cooled beyond expectations in the last few weeks . Significant ?
chrisspeke ==> I think the question is where it cooled…. this is the latest image I can find: 4 August 2024″: The cooling is in the blue box.
I am not familiar with hurricane science. However, here goes:
While there are often favourable conditions, we are looking for a cause that converts favourable conditions into an actual hurricane(/cyclone/typhoon). One possible cause might be conditions higher in the atmosphere.
This paper uses simple(!) equations to show that an extensive influence along the axis of a vortex (which in a potential hurricane would be approximately vertical) would grow the vortex exponentially: “because stretched vorticity grows exponentially (in this simple geometry, at least), even a very weak vortical disturbance can rapidly become dominant”. I imagine that for a potential hurricane, such an extensive influence could be lower pressure higher in the atmosphere.
Are the forecasters looking at anything like this?
From memory, Klotzbach and Gray published a document in 2008 which showed more landfalling US Atlantic hurricanes during a period of global cooling than during a period of global warming. Could global cooling be associated with lower pressure in the higher atmosphere? Could Hunga Tonga have created higher pressures in the higher atmosphere over the Atlantic thus suppressing hurricanes? NB. I’m not sure how high this “higher atmosphere” is in this context, I suspect not very high (mid troposphere???) since we are looking at an effect which can elongate the initial vortex.
Mike ==> Some great comments. I don’t know, but are exactly what Fultz and Lorenz discovered in Fultz’s physical dishpan model and in Lorenz’s L96 toy climate model — thus hunts of hurricanes from the nature of non-linear dynamical systems.
“a lower tropopause level allows for higher TC intensity”
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/8/7/128
Continuous rise of the tropopause in the Northern Hemisphere over 1980–2020
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abi8065
So
– there was global warming 1980-2020, associated with rise of the tropopause.
– a higher tropopause is associated with lower TC intensity (corollary of first quote above).
– Klotzbach and Gray found that there were fewer US landfall Atlantic hurricanes in a period of global warming, compared with a period of global cooling.
It looks like it all adds up.
Ah , Kip, Force Six is a yachtsman’s gale so take two reefs and roll the Genoa and get onto harbor and double up and keep listening to the forecast
Lion Heart ==> In the most current Beaufort Scale: Force Six is Strong Breeze, followed by 7 as Near Gale, 8 as Gale, 9 as Severe Gale.
Some interesting photos of Beaufort Scales seas. Five was go-go-go wind for our British built 42 ft catamarran. Six made my wife nervous and uncomfortable. I found a Full Gale a bit nerve-racking.
Researchers should realise that many everyday aspects of life cannot ever be predicted usefully, if at all.
The human body that Nature provides for each of us has different moods and modes, some of which we class as illness. We seldom forecast, for example, that a person will or will not die of cancer. We cannot exactly forecast our cardiac pulse rate exactly one hour from now. There is no useful model of the human body that has the capacity to forecast. There is no useful big model of global climate.
Complexity rules, OK?
“Prediction” as a social media word is out of favour, try “Projection”. This is a reluctant admission of failure often seen in climate research.
There is a link on this WUWT page to Failed Climate Predictions Timeline. It is there because failure is the widespead result of climate projections. Yet, hordes of researchers continue to be paid for attempting more projections, with a high probability of failure staring at thm. Why do they persist? It is because they can draw little comfort from work about the past, full of failure, so they are left with work about the future – or a different job. Climate change research has a huge source of funds as failed researchers transition to being paid dispensers of research grants and funds in a way that seems to lack logic.
Geoff S
These weather guys should always keep in mind that models give you an answer that doesn’t mean it is the answer.
very warm upper levels in the troposphere– a byproduct of global warming – that could be making the Atlantic more stable than normal and capping thunderstorm growth despite record-warm sea surface temperatures
So nasty CO2 and
global warming, er, “climate change” reduces hurricanes now. That’s good, right? But it’s bad?Climastrology is so confusing.
I am no expert, but have been reading extensively on this since the start of the season. There are at least five or six low probability events that have ALL occurred that have impacted storm development. The primary failure of forecasters, imo, is giving a high degree of certainty to their forecasts, despite knowing they can’t predict these events.
In no particular order: the Pacific El Nino was suppose to transition to a La Nino weeks ago. It’s been slowly moving that way but is still a neutral ENSO. This has resulted in continued wind shear.
Saharan dust. Winds over Asia Minor and Africa have not been typical, pushing thunderstorms to the south, allowing dry Saharan dust to enter the Cape Verde area and flow westward. That is the TS breeding ground.
Tropical waves coming out of Africa have been further north than usual. The water is cooler than further south (more below on SSTs).
The Intertropical Convergence zone is further North than usual, squeezing the southern edge of where hurricanes form. This zone is the area where NH and SH air meets and winds are absent (the infamous Doldrums).
The stratosphere is warmer than usual, arguably due to the T-H eruption.
The Atlantic Ocean has cooled rapidly. Really, really rapidly.
I look at sites that show me the current dust, winds, and sea surface temperatures. Over the last month, water temps have dropped significantly. Two weeks ago, water off of Texas were hitting 89 degrees F. Today they are under 82 degrees. In the Cape Verde area, SSTs are below 80 degrees, and doesn’t seem likely to warm up. The cooler waters are still spreading. The water is far too cool to the north of where tropical waves have been coming out of Africa. Since 80 degrees is the minimum temp for storm development, there will be no Cape Verde tropical storms this year. Tropical waves must travel halfway across the Atlantic to the Antilles before conditions become favorable for storm development, but still subject to both dust and wind shear.
Temps in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico are still warm enough for a major hurricane, but storms must transverse much cooler waters to get to the US mainland. I doubt if any major hurricane will make landfall for the rest of this season.
And here is the big problem for the forecasts: all of these impediments must disappear or greatly abate for storm activity to be above normal.
jtom ==> a good summary of the reasons or excuses offered by the field for the lack of hurricanes so far.
We might get one later this week, the National Hurricane Center (NOAA) is calling for a disturbance off of Mexico (in the Gulf) to be declared a Tropical Storm later today.
“The primary failure of forecasters, imo, is giving a high degree of certainty to their forecasts, despite knowing they can’t predict these events.”
You just hit the nail on the head. It stems from climate science *always* using averages without ever factoring in the variance of the data used to create the averages. I simply don’t understand why climate science is so adverse to analyzing the variance of their data. I can only assume they are afraid that people won’t take them seriously if they don’t claim absolute certainty in their forecasts.
Even in the aggregate, correlation is not causation.
Roaddog ==> Excellent! Even a lot of favorable conditions that correlate with a more active season don’t really add up to CAUSE.
So predictions are hard,especially about the future, it seems. It is spring here and the expectation is that warmer weather is on the way but only misguided optimists put away their cold weather gear before Christmas, that would be tempting fate.
Evidence of existence of potential is not evidence of existence of outcome.
I suspect the CO2-induced greening of the edges of the Sahara is related to the low hurricane activity. 80% of atlantic storms originate on the southern edge of the Sahara.
Tommy2b ==> (Are you “to be” ? … never mind) There have been mentions of the wetter conditions (unusual amounts of rain) in the SW Sahara as possibly being related….but the “why”is not really understood.
BREAKING NEWS: The disturbance in the SW Gulf of Mexico has been upgraded to POTENTIAL TROPICAL CYCLONE SIX.
If, as forecast, NOAA declares it a full Tropical Cyclone — it will be Tropical Storm Francine.
Continued: Just in time to add to the total for the peak day of the 2024 Hurricane season.
Update: Tropical Storm Francine is here!
Bring the seasonal total to:
Magnificent article, Kip! I agree that we can predict there will be a hurricane season between May and November of every year.
I also agree with Phil Klotzbach’s and Neil Frank’s favorable hurricane formation criteria (hot sea surface temperature, low pressure, low vertical wind shear, active thunderstorm activity, and low Saharan dust activity). I say cloud cover is another variable in that hurricane formation equation. But predicting when, where, and how strong a hurricane will be, is a whole different ballgame.
Same story with the one and only attempt to “modify” a fully developed hurricane (Debbie in August 1969), which I participated in as a crewmember/meteorologist with Weather Reconnaissance Squadron Four, aka VW-4, aka the U.S. Navy Hurricane Hunters.
The goal was to redistribute the storm’s energy and change its direction by seeding it from above with silver iodide. Results were inconclusive, meaning we could not ascertain whether the turning of the storm or the spread of its energy, happened naturally or as a result of the seeding.
Bill ==> Great story — seeding a hurricane. Was there a published report on the effort? Do you have a title or a link?
Kip. Yes, the effort was called “Project Stormfury.”
Here’s a link to a Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society article on the history of Stormfury: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249614939_Project_STORMFURY_A_Scientific_Chronicle_1962-1983
I have a paper report of the 1969 effort by the project director (R. Cecil Gentry), as well as a copy of the Navy OPORD (Operational Oder) for the actual mission in August of 1969. It’s very interesting reading, too. They’re somewhere in my “den of disaster.” I’ll have to get back to you on that.
Peak of the season and #6 tropical storm just formed.
The root problem clearly rests with Senegal.
We should do something about that.