“Given this state of affairs, projections of changes in [tropical cyclone] intensity due to future global warming must be approached cautiously.”
This is the concluding sentence of a just-published article by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Kyle Swanson in which he carefully examined the historical relationship between sea surface temperatures and tropical cyclone intensity in the Atlantic and western Pacific ocean.
Of all the global climate related news we cover at World Climate Report, we seem to spend more time on hurricanes (a.k.a., tropical cyclones) than any other subject. We could feature a prominent scientific article on hurricanes every month, and despite the evidence to the contrary, popular presentations on the consequences of increased greenhouse gas concentrations never fail to include something about the great threat we face from more and more hurricanes. As we have noted many times before, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly states in the Summary for Policymakers “There is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.”
An article appears in a recent issue of the prestigious Nature magazine that at first might change the minds of the IPCC with the first sentence in the abstract stating “Hurricane activity in the North Atlantic Ocean has increased significantly since 1995.” The article is by a group of scientists from institutions in Sweden, Puerto Rico, Florida, Colorado, and Texas who focused their research of hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. What starts out looking like a dream come true for the global warming crusade soon deteriorates into their nightmare.
First things first – the title is wrong. We have presented many essays recently showing that hurricane activity is not increasing in terms of frequency and intensity or that any increase is simply a return to what was commonly observed decades or centuries ago. When we were writing about hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, or Gulf of Mexico (or even the Northeast Pacific), our use of the term “hurricane” was correct. These severe tropical storms appear in many other parts of the world, and when they occur over the Northwest Pacific Ocean and west of the International Date Line, they are called typhoons. “Hurricanes” near Australia and in the Indian Ocean are sometimes called Willy-Willies by the locals. However, in the scientific community, hurricanes, typhoons, and Willy-Willies are all called tropical cyclones.
For a variety of reasons, most of the research we have reviewed has been conducted in the Northern Hemisphere on tropical cyclone trends that have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere. However, the Southern Hemisphere gets its fair share of tropical cyclones, and the global warming supporters do not differentiate hemispherically in their never-ending claims that elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases will cause an increase in tropical cyclone frequency and/or intensity.
An interesting article has appeared in Earth and Planetary Science Letters regarding tropical cyclone activity in northeastern Australia over the past eight centuries. Eight centuries? A researcher would need to be very clever to figure out the number of large tropical cyclones that occurred every year from AD 1226 to AD 2003 in northeastern Australia.
On September 28, 1955, a Category 5 hurricane named Janet slammed into Chetumal, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, killing over 600 people.
Hurricane Dean, another Category 5, and the third-strongest storm ever measured at landfall, hit in exactly the same place earlier this week (Tuesday, August 21,2007) and killed no one. Maximum winds in both storms were indistinguishable. The hurricane-hunter pilot who flew through the eyewall of the storm Tuesday reported severe turbulence, which is a temporary loss of aircraft control. Probably for the first time in human history, a Category 5 storm hit a populated area and everyone lived.
Because of its peculiar location, the Yucatan takes more big hurricane hits than just about anywhere else in the western hemisphere. When Mexico was dirt-poor, as it was in 1955, hurricanes could kill hundreds. They were warned, then, too. Hurricane-hunter planes also monitored Janet. Only one of these has ever been lost, and it as Janet was making landfall.
Similar storms, huge storms, very different results. What’s happening here?
We are sure many of you remember headlines similar to these: “Global Warming to Cause Next Ice Age!” or “Global Warming to Send Europe into a Deep Freeze!” In fact, next time New England or Europe has a cold winter, we’ll guarantee that you’ll see them again. The idea behind this scare story (and the premise of the climatefright film The Day After Tomorrow) is that the ocean’s thermohaline circulation (which among other things modestly warms the winter climate of western Europe) slows down, or even worse stops, sending the climate into disarray—all because of anthropogenic global warming. In the case of The Day After Tomorrow, this circulation shut down led to a flash freeze of the planet, while more “reasonable” climate alarmists at least give it a couple of decades to turn Europe into the icebox. But, in reality, things just don’t seem to be headed that way at all.
Tellus is a professional scientific journal published on behalf of the International Meteorological Institute in Stockholm and is highly respected by atmospheric scientists throughout the world. A recent issue is devoted to hurricanes (a.k.a., tropical cyclones), and three articles in the issue are of significant interest to us at World Climate Report.
Hurricane (or tropical cyclone) season is here again, and the internet is full of sites predicting an active year in 2007. The hurricane season of 2005 was a global warmers’ dream come true, but the Atlantic hurricane season of 2006 was a monumental dud. Therefore, according to many sites, 2007 will be a return to exactly what we’ve been warned will happen if we do not start reducing emissions of heat trapping greenhouse gases.
The Summary for Policymakers in the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states “There is observational evidence for an increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970, correlated with increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There are also suggestions of increased intense tropical cyclone activity in some other regions where concerns over data quality are greater. Multi-decadal variability and the quality of the tropical cyclone records prior to routine satellite observations in about 1970 complicate the detection of long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity. There is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.” Fair enough, but as we have written about repeatedly in World Climate Report, the scientific literature is full of articles disputing the claim that tropical cyclones are increasing in intensity in recent decades beyond where natural variations would have taken them.
We agree with the IPCC that the detection of trends in tropical cyclone activity is complicated by the lack of long-term records. Don’t look now, but an article has appeared in the prestigious journal Nature entitled “Intense hurricane activity over the past 5,000 years controlled by El Niño and the West African monsoon.” The title suggests that someone has a 5,000 year record of hurricane activity and that the activity is controlled by El Niño and weather in West Africa – there is no suggestion that hurricane activity is controlled by greenhouse gases, planetary temperature, or sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic.
Besides being darned good forecasters, the good people at the National Hurricane Center are also paragons of social sensitivity. Consequently, storms are given names reflective of the cultures through which they are likely to pass. Hurricanes in the Atlantic basin are given anglicized names or ones that are roughly familiar in both English and Spanish. Alberto, Bob, Gloria. In the Eastern Pacific, where storms frequently hit western Mexico, almost all the names are purely Spanish.
In this vein, we’d like to vote that this year’s “H” storm in the Atlantic be given the name Hysteria. As in caused-by-global-warming-hysteria. As in the perception that there’s been a tremendous increase in the damages caused by these storms caused by global warming.
The name should be “Hysteria,” because that’s simply, flatly, untrue.
The greenhouse crowd had a field day following the active North Atlantic hurricane season of 2005, and they continue to do their best blaming any unusual tropical storm activity on global warming. Katrina remains the poster child for the link between warmer conditions and hurricanes. In the Gore film, Al explains how simple it is – warmer water will generate more storms and storms that are more powerful (and then run the Katrina footage – it seems to work every time). However, the North Atlantic hurricane season of 2006 was somewhat of a dud, so the blame machine is more than ready to go in 2007. You may have heard that tropical storm Andrea formed weeks before the 2007 official hurricane season (June 1 – November 30) got underway, and now with tropical storm Barry, we have two storms early on, and of course, global warming is to blame.
Perhaps not.
The atmosphere above the major hurricane formation and intensification region in the Atlantic ocean continues to evolve in a manner that is virtually opposite to the way it is projected to evolve by climate models run with increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other anthropogenic emissions. This fact suggests that the role played by natural variability in the recent upswing in hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean (including storms striking the U. S. coastline) is likely large and significant. A just-published paper further adds to this evidence.
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