extreme weather

I agree, but I'm not confident that atmospheric models will ever be able to forecast synoptic-scale features months in advance. Droughts are mainly the result of upper-level ridging (essentially high pressure in the upper troposphere) that persists over a prolonged period of time. The current crop of models have little or no skill past about two weeks in reliably forecasting these synoptic features, much less many months.

Dr. Molina loses credibility when he starts lumping "severe storms" (presumably organized severe weather events - those are the ones that attract media attention), into "extreme weather".

 

More from 'the extremists'

Karl and Katz, in press at PNAS

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1211721109

write a commentary about the Hansen paper. Most of interest to me because of their figure, pirated for you here



Over the length of record, one would have to say that the 1970-2005 interval stands out. The legend explains that this is an 'all-hazards' compilation. Interesting the the 1930's and 2011 (the last bar, which was also a bit droughty) don't jump off the page at us.

Anyway, you got the graph, you can read the paper (which is mostly in praise of Hansen's technique), you can follow the link to NCDC, and form your own conclusions.

 

We have at least one example from this spring that different extreme events don't occur (or scale) together. That was drought and tornadoes. Tornadoes are not in this CEI, but the point remains that a strong drought year may not have a large surface coverage of other extreme events. That said, the 2012 drought is going to be very expensive, and now the western states' fire season is pushing dead corn off the news pages.

Reasonably attributing to CO2 might require an approach as I described before. First separate regions finely enough so that the effects (teleconnections) of ENSO and the other 'O's' are consistent w/in regions. Now see whether those oscillations can be linked in time&space with th extreme events. If those relationships are historically predictive, bring them forward into high-Co2 times and see if any extreme events are left over.

I won't claim that it would work or that it's the only/best way. But without some regional examination of the oscillations through time, the attributions have simply not been done.

On the other hand, waving one's hand and saying all extreme events come from natural climate variability is just rubbish. To declare it so, without even trying to sort out causality? C'mon sceptics, if you're going to be sceptical of anything, be it that.

 

Thats rather assbackwards .Extreme events have been occurring throughout the Earths existence.
Their occurrence has been of completely natural origin for millions of years.
Hansen cherry picks a 30 year period of low extreme events and in comparison concludes extreme events are unusual and must be caused by CO2.
First they say hurricanes will increase from CO2.WRONG.
Then they say tornadoes will increase from CO2 .WRONG.
Now that we have droughts and floods ,they must be caused by CO2.
Its not the skeptics job to disprove the junk science.
Its the junk scientists job to prove his assertion.
Hansen has far from done that.

BTW Ive seen studies which show that more extreme weather has occurred during colder climate periods than warm climate periods.

Also ,Hansen has so little confidence in his study that he doesnt dare(COULD NOT) publish it in a peer reviewed journal.
At least there have been plenty of honest scientists, many whom are AGW believers ,who have come forward to debunk Hansens BS.
But Hansen isnt a scientist.Hes a propagandist.He doesnt care that his propaganda cant withstand peer review.
He got the media headline and thats his only intention.

 

It's my experience that SST oscillations and upper-level meteorological features (e.g., persistent upper-level ridges/troughs) are linked in time and space. In fact, CPC relies on these oscillations (CPC - Climate Weather Linkage: Teleconnections) to forecast seasonal outlooks (albeit a very inexact science).

 

That should NOT be an expected outcome of AGW, at least with the polar amplification premise of IPCC. Tornadoes should tend to decrease in frequency and intensity under this scenario, not increase.

Apparently, even the climate models are projecting a decrease in shear, which is the primary driver of organized severe weather events, higher heat and humidity notwithstanding (AccuWeather.com - Climate Change | Climate Change and Severe Thunderstorms).

 

Just something to share:

Actually this is how science works:

• hypothesis - some phenomena is described and a model postulated expounding on what is going on
• testing - a test can disprove a hypothesis so serious scientists look for counter evidence or models. There is no "proof" of a hypothesis but the possibility to find a test or model that disproves it.
• repeat above - it is a piece-wise operation often taking a while before something can be elevated to a law

Now if you want a "proof" you'll have to go into math but math need not have any relationship to the natural world.

No doubt Hanson and others share a similar opinion of your recent post but personalities don't have any real standing in science nor in global warming. The side effects of global warming such as a tropical disease in Texas; northern migration of tropical critters and plants; weather extremes, and; melting ice . . . these natural phenomena really don't care who is "good" "bad" or "ugly." It is why "Killin' the messenger " by ad hominem does not work because it does not change the facts and data.

Bob Wilson

 

The sense of the court (here) seems to be that without attribution, extreme events mean nothing.

I suggested a procedure for attribution. It may not be optimal, but it seems not to have been attempted. Seems to be that climate scientists have done rather less than that so far. So, they get negative mark. Also seems to me that climate sceptics have done little but holler, and that's two negative marks.

Here are two analogies to other human activities. All analogies fail to some degree, so I'll leave it for the group to consider if one fits 'climate&carbon' better.

1) A suspect is accused of a crime and taken to court. A presumption of innocence, and the prosecution is required to provide all the evidence. The defense may dispute/question/ad hom the evidence. Evidence is judged.

2) A pharma company promotes a new medicine, asserting that the benefits substantially outweigh any harm. In almost all cases, the medicine is supposed to profit the company (orphan drugs fall outside the analogy). Here there is no presumption of innocence, and the company is obliged to provide all the evidence related to benefits&harm. Govt regulatory agency (the 'prosecution' in this analogy) may audit the evidence or repeat or extend testing. Evidence is judged.

Now, if you think along the lines of 'climate crimes' (which I believe is a Hansenesque phrase), the first might fit better, and yes, the sceptics would then be in the catbird seat.

Or instead, realize that returning fossil carbon the atmosphere as CO2 has generated vast profits, and caused obvious benefits to the human condition. But beyond that, are there harms? When and where? how shall we know?

Are the profit-makers to be fully absolved of providing any evidence that benefits substantially outweigh any harms? Catbird seat again? Dispute/question/ad hom the evidence?

No analogies may fit perfectly because again, this fossil carbon thing is arguably the biggest thing humans have ever done.

 

Wxman@66 the CPC teleconnections quite what I had in mind for 'better attribution'. It may be challenging to combine the effects of all the large-scale oscillations, anyway it's more than I could do.

We have, 'at BEST', the period 1750-1950 to consider as baseline, and that's presuming that someone has (or will) clean up the precipitation records as Berkeley has for surface temperatures. But with all that done, look (regionally) at 1950-2012. If it is not significantly different anywhere, you have de-attributed CO2.

Wxman@67 reducing shear over land will limit tornadoes and large thunderstorm outbreaks, but reducing it over (particular) marine latitudes will aid the formation of hurricanes. Agreed?

 

New stuff. On the one hand the Rhine River froze over 14 times from 1780 to 1963

AGU: Link found between cold European winters and solar activity

on an 11-year cycle. Sound like solar forcing to you? Ding you win.

On the other hand, it has not frozen since 1963. Sound like solar forcing being overwhelmed by CO2 forcing? Well, one certainly would not want to ignore the possibility.

Fascinating times we live in.

 

Sure the 1.5C increase in avg annual temperatures in last decades had nothing to do with it?. It did help to set the records

 

Climate science is so ignorant about climate .Its a branch of science that has poor comprehension of how the Earth works.
Astrophysicists have been saying we are entering another cold period much like the Little Ice Age.
They have been observing sunspots.
This includes NASA's opinion of a coming cold period.
And it wont be localized to the Rhine as the climatologist suggests.

 

A river NOT freezing is not always good weather! For example where I live much of the year, we rely on ( and our forebearers have relied on) frozen lakes and rivers for travel for 6 months a year. In recent years, that "good weather" has made our ice road season very unreliable, and down right dangerous. Like last March, temps in mid mrch in the mid 20s C when they should be -20. We were ice free by the third of April,,a full 7 weeks earlier than average, 3 weeks earlier than ever in the last 75 years. (e previous early record was about 3 years ago.)

So while it may seem Ike "good weather" is was (is) a disaster for us.

Icarus

PS. I am surprised we haven't heard Piers Corwyn's name in a bit!

 

Yes, I agree.

It can also be expected that disorganized diurnal convection ("pulse" storms, i.e., typical scattered afternoon thunderstorm cells common in summer) could potentially increase in frequency and intensity in a warmed climate scenario, which is what I assume Brooks of NSSL was referring to in the accuweather link I posted previously about an increase in damaging straight-line wind events. Pulse storms are almost entirely dependent on instability and diurnal surface heating.

 

Mojo @76 expresses concern about the science, especially regarding solar effects. With no claim that the following are optimal and complete, y'all are invited to take a look and assess.

Siingh et al 2012 "Solar Activity, Lightning and Climate"
Surv Geophys (2011) 32:659–703
DOI 10.1007/s10712-011-9127-1
(includes some mechanisms I would not have thought of)

Solanki et al 2004 “Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years”
Nature 481:1084-1087
(spoiler: proxies indicating that it has not been as high for 8000 years)
Some recent media and affinity websites have discussed the possibility of a quiet sun in the next one to few cycles. I have not found the primary literature on that so help would be appreciated. But from this report

Is the Sunspot Cycle About to Stop? - News from Sky & Telescope - SkyandTelescope.com

I just have to show the money shot, embiggened



Alarming, yes? Just a couple of things though. A linear extrapolation equal in length to the data presented would need some sort of justification. It is not the usually done thing. Also, all the data comes from s single sunspot cycle. Have other cycles been like this, or different? we can't know from here. It certainly makes one wish for data from 2012, as the sunspot numbers have been increasing.

If these concerns have merit, then I can't be too pleased about the National Solar Observatory "doubling the decline" with taxpayers $$ one must presume. It would tend to support Mojo's point, at least regarding the extrapolators.