The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder Or More Extreme.

Rather than trusting the dubious relevancy of some cherry-picked denialist verbiage from the long-biased op-ed pages of the Wall St Journal, how about going straight to the latest issue of Nature for some peer-reviewed research on this topic:

Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000 : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

 

The journal nature just published a piece on the link between extreme weather events and the statistical probability that they are linked to AGW. And surprise, surprise, after hundreds of thousands of models run through thousands of computer hours the many extreme weather events are indeed statistically related to AGW,, just as the models suggested they would!

The denial community is just whistling past the graveyard. (Murdock/WSJ/FOX conglomerate is only interested in their own bottom lines)

Icarus

 

Realclimate has a good discussion of the issue and the nature articles.
RealClimate: Going to extremes

The WSJ editorial came up in the comments. While the scientist quoted by the WSJ (Compo) is a genuine climate scientist, the gist of the realclimate response was that Compo's work did not, in fact, address extreme events.

And, sure enough, if you actually bother to track down what Compo's analysis was about, here:

The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project - Compo - 2011 - Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society - Wiley Online Library

And read down, you'll see that the "indices" that Compo was quoted about were not indices of extreme events. They were just indices of large-scale atmospheric circulation:

"Time series of seasonally averaged climate indices representing (a) the tropical September to January Pacific Walker Circulation (PWC), (b) the December to March North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and (c) the December to March Pacific North America (PNA) pattern ..."

Not floods, not droughts, not heat waves, not blizzards. Interesting in their own right, I guess, but taken out of context in the WSJ article. They went from analysis of large-scale circulation patterns to a discussion of extreme events. I'm pretty sure that's not warranted.

Given that, I'm not sure I'd place much faith in the rest of what the WSJ said.

In fact, we've got a market test of this. I'm pretty sure I've read that the major reinsurers, are setting aside larger reserves in anticipation of increased likelihood of extreme events. And I'm sure that Warren Buffett addressed this in one of his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway stockholders. Odd that the WSJ won't listen to the market and/or the richest guy in the US (who owns the two major reinsurers) in this case.

Not that this isn't a hard topic to say much about one way or the other. The Nature articles were, as I understand it, predicted probabilities based on simulations that did and did not include the buildup of GHGs. You can ding them for that if you wish. But, given that these events are by definition rare, I'd bet it'll be decades to centuries more before there is a definitive simple data-driven way to show an upward trend. I mean, how many years do you need to show a statistically significant upward trend in hundred-year storms? (So if the data don't have adequate statistical power, the only answer they can give in the meantime is "no trend", regardless of whether or not there is in fact a trend.) This is a case where the simulations may provide the only information we'll have for some time yet to come.

 

Indeed. Another thoughtful, insightful post from Trebuchet, who'd far rather fling the <male bovine excrement> than add anything meaningful to the conversation. Why not go back to the political forum where you belong?

 

Well, I at least am going to thank Trebuchet for drawing our attention to the 20th century reanalysis project

20th Century Reanalysis V1

Compo et al. have not yet gotten everything they could out of the reanalysis, so I would suggest that climate watchers should keep watching that site. Indeed, the data are open enough that the motivated could look at their own favorite weather extremes. Find a result or non-result, then publish your paper. That's how it works.

Given the preliminary nature of the results of the 20th century reanalysis project, it would seem, um, premature to suggest that it proves that climate change isn't and weather extremes aren't. But people have their own motivations and choose their own paths...

Meanwhile the WSJ article (OK, opinion piece) made another point very worthy of your attention. People (countries, areas) that are well prepared and well funded suffer much less from weather extremes. The Pielkes, Sr. and Jr., have been saying that for years and they are exactly right.

 

I'm not sure if "Oh Dear! " is in lockstep with any opinion, I mean to say it says nothing.

Oh and before you say it, I know my post says nothing to, but I wanted to stay on topic.

 

I see the "gang" is all here as usual.

 

How narrow-minded of me to accept reality. If only I were free to believe propaganda, lies, and fantasies, I could be free of truth's tyranny.

 

La la la la la...

Now back to the regularly scheduled topic...

 

^ he already has.

 

I was talking about climate change denial, not religion. Or were you saying you consider science a 'religion'?

 

Thank you for the thanks. I should not derail this discussion....

 

I cry foul.
Think about this for a moment.
Piers Corbin predicted the Yasi Hurricane weeks before the event.
It was actually a dual hurricane event and Corbin predicted both hurricanes.
He predicted the Exact time and location.
He also predicted(amongst many others) the East coast blizzard at Christmas ,the 100 year lowest temp blizzard in the UK and he screwed up in Australia by predicting a major heat event which never materialized.
But the Queensland floods were the exact time and location of the predicted catastrophic heat event.
Heres the question.
How is it possible to predict the Yasi Hurricane by observing the Suns magnetism and the moons position ,if Yasi wasnt caused by the Suns magnetism and the moons position?
Get over it, the science is settled.
No ones paying much attention ,particularly the MSM.
Piers Corbyn has developed a major scientific discovery.His discovery should merit the Nobel prize ,but that is unlikely due to their political stance.
Anyway the weirdness is in the minds of the doomers.The weather is caused by the Sun and the moon.
BTW just got back from Hawaii.
The weather report called for rain 8 of 10 days.
The 10 day forecast changed every day as the present drew nearer,but they managed to be wrong 70% of the time.Even though they changed the forecast each day before.
Got back to San Francisco and the day before forecast was completely wrong.
It called for partly cloudy while it rained heavily all day.
Piers Corbin has been 85% correct in forecasting catastrophic events for the past few years.
Since Ive been monitoring his success the past few months hes been more like 95% correct ,and his one failure was actually a harbinger of a different calamity.
Whereas conventional science has 0% ability to forecast beyond 4 days.And an uncertain chance of predicting weather correctly the day before,even while observing the direction of the weather systems.
Let me reiterate ,Piers Corbin is making correct forecasts weeks and months (and years and decades) before the event.
To be blunt ,weather is NOT caused by CO2.Not caused by global warming.

 

No one is paying much attention because he refuses to show his methodology.
For all you know he is using a typical methodology and just marketing it well for people who don't like standard weather forecasts.
It does appear he has a long term accuracy rate of 55%, which is pretty good.
But it would be nice to see his methodology before proclaiming his method superior.

 

Most of the talk here does border on blind faith not science. I never heard of anyone that did not agree with or understand a theory called a denier before in a scientific discussion.

The article which I did not think was bad at all, could be rephrased as there is not statistical evidence that global warming has made the weather more harsh. Did global warming cause the thunder snow in Chicago or the ice storm in dallas? The evidence is not there. If you blame global warming you are not being scientific, you are being a believer, and that is faith not science.

The other thing the article said is man can help mitigate the bad effects of the weather, and has done so. I think this point is undeniable whether you are a believer, a denier, or even someone that looks at the science ;-)

Man has no doubt changed the weather with his activities. The question of whether it is better or worse is a value judgment, and I do not like the experiment. But this is a far cry from believers looking at every incident and blaming global warming. There are natural and man influenced things going on. Let us let science sort them out instead of faith.

 

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Huh?

I certainly understand why and how weather is caused by the sun, but please explain to me how the moon causes weather events?


While the sun is the major driver in all climate, what you seem to ignore is that less of the sun's energy is reabsorbed into space (over time) due to greenhouse gas concentrations) leading to a net/net warmer planet, and ergo there will have to be climate change, and indeed weather events that are a result of that. Can anyone predict on what day any given weather event is likely to happen far out in time? Of course not. Can anyone point to any one weather event and say conclusively that weather event was influenced by climate change? Probably not, but certainly logical people can look at the plethora of "outlier" weather events and put 2 and 2 together and conclude logically that climate change has (and is having) an effect on weather.

Just because one cannot very accurately predict the weather more than about 48 hours out does not mean that long term climate models are therefore suspect. That,, does not logically follow. The models predicted (and predict) more outlier weather events going forward, so no one should be surprised when they happen. Just because climate models are not in agreement about the severity of climate change, and weather events, does not mean that they are all wrong. They may only be wrong as a matter of degree, some too severe, others not severe enough. In the aggregate there is a consensus that climate change is happening, it's effects are going to happen in a range of significance. To avoid doing something now, because we can't agree on a model, or because we are worried about the economic impact (which I argue is a short term strawman argument) is naive, and I would posit, selfish!

Icarus

PS As someone said to me last night, don't crap in your nest! If you have, clean it up!

 

I did a 7 minute speech on climate change at Toastmasters last night chronicling my exposure to the subject starting with -

2006 An Inconvenient Truth
summer 2010 - argument by Brian Sussman (former BA weatherman) on conservative talk radio that - 'ah CO2 is not causing climate change pfffft'

11/2010 - watching 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' - which I later learned has been largely debunked.

12/2010 - reading EPA, NOAA, IPCC, USGS website on climate change.

my conclusion - I will look to the authoritative websites like IPCC, EPA, etc .... for advice, info.

So, congrats to me ...

j/k on with the show.