From the Weather is Not Climate unless we say it is department and the University of Reading, comes this press release about an inane study that tries to link tree rings and severe weather, while ignoring warning fatigue.
How to stop being surprised by extreme weather – study
Helping communities predict extreme weather events that have never been recorded in modern history is the focus of a new study published in Nature Communications.
A team from the Climate Adaptation Services Foundation, the University of Reading and other international institutions has brought together methods to see beyond the limitations of conventional weather records, which typically only cover the past century.
The study reveals how, for example, nature’s own archives – like tree rings – combined with forgotten historical documents can unlock centuries of climate data that modern instruments have missed.
Lead author Timo Kelder said: “We’ve been limited by thinking extreme weather is only as bad as what we’ve measured since weather stations were invented. But our research shows we can use weather models to look back hundreds or even thousands of years to discover what’s truly possible in our climate system.”
A toolkit for scientists and practitioners
The researchers identified four approaches that together create a more complete picture of possible extreme weather:
● Analysing conventional records
● Studying historical and natural archives like tree rings
● Creating “what-if” scenarios based on past events
● Using climate models to simulate physically possible extremes
Tree rings proved especially valuable, with each ring preserving a year’s worth of climate history. Researchers used these natural time capsules to reconstruct 850 years of drought patterns in northwestern China, revealing extreme events that would have been invisible in modern records.
The team also highlighted forgotten weather extremes by digging through historical archives. They found that June 1846 in Durham, UK was significantly hotter than any modern June temperature. Similarly, September 1774 in Oxford was wetter than any month recorded in the 250 years since.
Adapt, adapt, adapt
The study emphasises that with these methods to anticipate the unseen, communities can better prepare for unprecedented weather. The methods can support three layers of preparation:
● Improved early warning systems
● Upgraded infrastructure
● Transformative social changes to reduce vulnerability
The researchers conclude that by breaking free from the constraints of limited modern records, we can finally stop being surprised by “unprecedented” weather events.
Dorothy Heinrich, co-author at the University of Reading, said : “Unprecedented weather doesn’t just break records—it breaks communities, infrastructure, and lives. When the unimaginable happens, being unprepared is a disaster waiting to unfold. But science can help us to imagine the unimaginable, to uncover these risks, and prepare. Our future depends on how quickly and thoroughly we adapt today.”
Here’s the study if you want to read it: How to stop being surprised by unprecedented weather
Abstract
We see unprecedented weather causing widespread impacts across the world. In this perspective, we provide an overview of methods that help anticipate unprecedented weather hazards that can contribute to stop being surprised. We then discuss disaster management and climate adaptation practices, their gaps, and how the methods to anticipate unprecedented weather may help build resilience. We stimulate thinking about transformative adaptation as a foundation for long-term resilience to unprecedented weather, supported by incremental adaptation through upgrading existing infrastructure, and reactive adaptation through short-term early action and disaster response. Because in the end, we should take responsibility to build resilience rather than being surprised by unprecedented weather.
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The researchers identified four approaches:
Spend
Spend
Spend
Spend
that funding.
“digging through historical archives.”
The, er, records that go further back than 1910
Story tip:
Weather forecasting AI breakthrough
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-breakthrough-offers-weather-forecast-161544914.html
Oddly, all of the trees remained standing.
> ● Using climate models to simulate physically possible extremes
Uhhhh. No.
but – “They found that June 1846 in Durham, UK was significantly hotter than any modern June temperature. Similarly, September 1774 in Oxford was wetter than any month recorded in the 250 years since”
so the dire messages about the worst <insert weather event here> EVAH are shown to be false then….surprised they published to be honest.
They better be careful or they could blow apart all their scare mongering.
There have been studies that indicate that tropical cyclones were more frequent and more severe during the Little Ice Age when the atmosphere was cooler.
How can she continue to talk about “unprecedented weather events” when she is clearly talking about “unexpected weather”? The 100- or 500-year storm or drought is clearly precedented
“Unprecedented” is an overused word. It means “never happened before,” not “new to us.”
The fact is, we don’t know if any particular weather event is unprecedented or not, because we have relatively few weather records compared to the age of the earth. It’s unlikely at this point that ANY weather event is “unprecedented.”
“It’s unlikely at this point that ANY weather event is “unprecedented.”
Yes, that would be my opinion, too.
These researchers don’t need models. The written, historic temperature record shows we are not experiencing unprecedented warming today because it was just as warm in the recent, recorded weather history, as it is today.
No unprecedented warming means no unprecedented weather extremes, since climate alarmists claim any Human-caused weather extremes would be caused by increased warmth added by humans.
These climate change researchers should study history, not climate models.
They should stand outdoor for a few hours with few clothes on during the winter to get a real appreciation of the current climate.
It’s unlikely at this point that ANY weather event is “unprecedented.”
It’s fair to say that’s a given. What is unprecedented is the amount of insane stuff the alarmists recycle with increasing frequency. AMO, glaciers etc etc etc
Extreme weather happens all the time.
I enjoy the spectacles.
On the other hand, I have never witnessed a climate change. Not sad.
I witnessed one at the end of the sixties in Berlin.
We had often weather from Russian/ Eastern regime that changed to weather that was dominated more from the Atlantic patterns.
At least my impression/ feeling.
These days that’s called science.
Your prize is a $5m grant
The climate around here has been pretty much the same all my life.
Even during the late 1970’s “Ice Age Cometh!?” period, the climate was pretty much the same with maybe a few more snow storms during the winter, but you wouldn’t know anything unusual was going on unless you followed the conversations of climate scientists, which most people did not.
Did you know that the year 1936, had one of the hottest temperatures in U.S. history, and during that following winter season had one of the coldest winters in U.S. history?
I bet these researchers didn’t know that. 🙂 I wonder if that showed up in their model?
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan
But it averaged out to normal. So neither happened.
Unprecedented climate alarmism doesn’t just break science – it breaks economies, standards of living, and lives.
Again, no mention of the hippopotamus bones found in the Thames River from the Eemian period.
When is a proxy not a proxy? When warming occurs without increased atmospheric CO2. Now, if we could only figure out why our Holocene European ancestors crawled under the glaciers to die, or frozen Siberian Mammoths were found with grass in their mouths, we might figure out something about extreme weather too.
Story tip
Leaked docs exposing true cost of Net Zero ‘prove what we all knew all along’, MPs blast
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice let rip in the Commons
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/33953299/leaked-docs-exposing-true-cost-net-zero-proves/
I did not have time today, so I will go back and read the report in full.
While my brief scan raised skepticism, there were some points that may, on further review, be valid.
At least the authors did not put CO2 on the most wanted list of evil.
Well, it does conclude—“Because in the end, we should take responsibility to build resilience rather than being surprised by unprecedented weather.”I always do one dumb thing a day, reading this was it! This is either a joke, written in a dream world, an attempt to salvage something or something ‘extreme’ in the history of history. Maybe all four. Most of the figures are for a 12 year old who back in my day would have laughed at them. Exception for figure 2 only shows lack of recent unusual observed and recorded weather. Only one of the 19 authors is from the US, Boston and the rest of the funding is from the old world. Seem to worship AI, 180 references, wow! NASA funds this and Nature publishes this to conclude what we already knew.
“….Extreme value statistics is the conventional method to estimate the probability distribution of extreme events9,15…..Storylines consist of physically plausible and self-consistent unfolding of climatic events, typically based on historical (high-impact) events….Pseudo Global Warming (PGW) and nudging approaches simulate historical or recent events under alternative scenarios, such as past, present or future climates…..Furthermore, we acknowledge funding support received by E.C.P. from the NASA cooperative grant titled “Today’s Risk of Extreme Events” (agreement number 80NSSC22K1706)…” and others.
Resilience means to be able to withstand or quickly recover from difficulties
Resilience is not prevention.
There was an earlier post about a severe weather assessment organization, that would do post event assessments and analysis to offer concepts that would reduce damage and loss from severe events (weather, volcanos, earthquakes, etc.)
The sentence quoted in your opening paragraph seems to support such a concept.
“Tree rings proved especially valuable, with each ring preserving a year’s worth of climate history.”
Or the history of the tree being a wolf’s favorite tree or a bears favorite place to do … what bears doo in the woods.
Would a tree ring from a tree that grew 50 feet from a river be different than a tree ring from a tree that grew at the same time 1,000 yards from a river?
Well, tree rings might possibly be good thermometers. Here’s the logic:
1. It gets warmer
2. Oceans outgass CO2
3. CO2 feeds trees more
4. Rings get larger because of more food
Simples!
As long as it rains.
Trees are not good thermometers.
Abies grandis (Grand Fir) found in Ombergs naturreservat, Östergötland, grows to 50m tall.
Trees may be good at growing in a particular season due to Goldilock conditions, but higher temperatures on there own do not a tall tree make.
Tree rings do not preserve a year’s worth of climate history. Weather, yes. Growth, definitely.
A waste of time money and resources.
Didn’t they just demonstrate that unprecedented weather is not actually unprecedented?
That’s exactly what I was thinking
This has ‘junk’ written large over it. Tree rings, for eff sake.
As weather is what you actually got/get each hour, climate is what you might expect for that hour of the year.
Australia has several climate zones.
I’m kinda hoping that this is satire, because it’s rather ridiculous otherwise.
Here in the US they taught us that there were 5 climates, Tropical, Desert, Rain forest, Polar and Temperate that stayed the same over thousands to millions of years.
“They found that June 1846 in Durham, UK was significantly hotter than any modern June temperature.”
It is also the hottest June in the Central England Temperature series. 1846 is also the best heliocentric analogue for 2025, and I won’t be surprised if the first half of August is very hot in the UK.
https://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
‘We stimulate thinking about transformative adaptation, as a foundation for long-term resilience to unprecedented weather supported by incremental adaptation…” Is Alan Sokal one of the authors?
In any case you could ask if the authors want some whine with that salad
Who actually believes this shit?
What’s possible is the lead into a hypothesis.
I’m surprised at all the negative comments regarding this study. One can complain about the inadequacy of computer models, but the main point of the study is that any extreme weather event in the modern era is unlikely to be unprecedented, and we should prepare for the future by increasing our resilience to extreme weather events that we know have occurred in the past and will likely occur again.
For example, Australia has a long history of floods and droughts. An examination of drill cores in the Antarctic, at Law Dome, has revealed that the longest mega-drought in eastern Australia, based on a 1000-year ice core record, lasted 39 years, from 1174 to 1212 AD, and is considered to have “no modern analog”.
If we had another 39-year drought in Australia, the climate alarmist would be screaming that it’s a result of our CO2 emissions, completely ignoring the fact that such a drought is not unprecedented.
Refer https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL062447
I looked up this garbage quickly
It’s full of meaningless buzzwords and waffle
“unprecedented weather” “disaster management” “climate adaptation”, “build resilience”, “transformative adaptation”, “incremental adaptation”, “reactive adaptation”
In the end, the main message is that humanity should look at more data, more lines of evidence, and this will “contribute to stop being surprised” when extreme weather events occur
As a secondary point, it then says we should engage in adaptation and disaster management
No sh1t Sherlock
Where to start with this nonsense.
Humanity is perfectly capable of “building resilience” to extreme weather, it’s been doing it since time immemorial and in the past century has got rather good at it in particular
I don’t see where a few mind maps, “storylines” and other humanities flatulence is going to aid in the large scale engineering efforts to help us adapt or survive
More importantly, how can the future be predicted?
Of course it can’t. By definition, “extreme” weather is out of the ordinary, it’s not part of any cycle or pattern
It is therefore a random phenomenon.
Ergo, it can never be predicted, which makes this study nothing but unwanted greenhouse gas emissions
You would think that if “climate change” were causing all these problems, people and governments would be more prepared, since they’re increasingly likely.
It goes back to what I’ve been saying for years: The politicians and greens don’t want to fix anything. More “extreme” events (that is, events they can paint as extreme) give them fodder to keep screaming about “saving the climate” so they can keep up their grift.
The study shows that “unprecedented” weather isn’t unprecedented. That the extremes of today have been the extremes (and worse) of the past.
All the alarmist claims of “unprecedented extreme” are just examples of looking at too short of a data set. — and that’s just plain bad science.
I believe there is value in studying what happened so we can be better prepared for what may happen next. Kill the buzzwords.
Maybe we should all just build our houses in old salt mines? Below ground is a much more controlled temperature that above ground.