New Study impresses AP’s Seth Borenstein – Uses ‘extensive computer models’ to find ‘man-made extreme weather has hit all over the world’

By SETH BORENSTEIN
Published: Yesterday

WASHINGTON (AP) – Most people on Earth have already felt extreme and record heat, drought or downpours goosed by man-made global warming, new research finds.

In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists analyzed weather stations worldwide and calculated that in 85 percent of the cases, the record for hottest day of the year had the fingerprints of climate change. Heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas made those records more likely or more intense.

“The world is not quite at the point where every hot temperature record has a human fingerprint, but it’s getting close to that,” said lead author and Stanford University climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh.

Climate change’s influence was spotted 57 percent of the time in records for lowest rainfall in a year and 41 percent of the time in records for most rain in a 5-day period, according to the study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For the last several years, researchers have come up with a generally accepted scientific technique to determine whether an individual weather extreme event was made more likely or stronger because of climate change. It usually involves past weather data and extensive computer models that simulate how often an event would happen with no warming from greenhouse gases and compare that to how often it does happen.

Outside scientists said what makes Diffenbaugh’s study different and useful is that he doesn’t look at an individual event such as California’s five-year drought. Instead, he applies the technique to weather stations as a whole across the world, said Columbia University climate scientist Adam Sobel, who wasn’t part of new work.

“This is a step forward in that it allows general statements about what fraction of events of the given types selected have a statistically significant” human influence, Sobel said in an email.…

Warmist Scientists say Paris climate accord essentially useless — it’s going to get warmer anyway

Scientists say Paris climate accord essentially useless, it’s going to get warmer anyway

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/30/scientists-say-paris-climate-accord-essentially-useless-its-going-to-get-warmer-anyway

Scientists: World likely won’t avoid dangerous warming mark by Seth Borenstein (AP) A team of top scientists is telling world leaders to stop congratulating themselves on the Paris agreement to fight climate change because if more isn’t done, global temperatures will likely hit dangerous warming levels in about 35 years. Six scientists who were leaders […]

— gReader Pro…

An eminent climate scientist explains what caused the record rains in Texas

“With the lack of a positive trend in monthly springtime precipitation, there is no direct observational evidence that the record-setting May 2015 statewide rainfall total in Texas had an anthropogenic component.”

Preparing for Extreme Weather

From the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center.

The mainstream news media have become more cautious in their coverage of extreme weather, unlike their previous uncritical reporting of everything as climate change. For example, see this by USA Today: “Wild weather shifts in Texas spark concern about “new normal’.” And “Climate Change May Have Souped Up Record-Breaking Texas Deluge” by Elizabeth Harball and Scott Detrow at Scientific American on 27 May 2015 — “Deadly downpours flooded Texas and Oklahoma and may have been exacerbated by global warming.” The link to climate change is strongly implied, but not stated as definite. The text reports climate scientists’ uncertainty about attribution of events to climate change.

Activists ignore the science, preferring simple narratives. Bill Nye, the children’s science guy, says on CNN: “The floods in Texas, the strengthening storms… these things are a result of human activity making things worse.”  As usual, the most over-the-top story comes from fantasy writer – climate activist Robert Marston Fanney (bio here) at his blog RobertScribbler: “The Merciless Rains of Climate Change Hammer Houston, Southeast Texas.”

Eventually scientists will produce papers with more definitive information. Here’s an excerpt from an early analysis (click on the link to read it in full)…

The faucet: Informal attribution of the May 2015 record-setting Texas rains

by John W. Nielsen-Gammon (see his bio)
Texas state climatologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M
From NOAA’s Annual Climate Diagnostics and Prediction Workshop, Oct 2015

Analysis: More nonsense from AP’s Seth Borenstein on floods allegedly worsened by ‘global warming’

image

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/sns-bc-us–houston-politics-of-flooding-20160518-story.html

 

More nonsense from Seth Borenstein:

 

With clay soil and tabletop-flat terrain, Houston has endured flooding for generations. Its 1,700 miles of man-made channels struggle to dispatch storm runoff to the Gulf of Mexico.

Now the nation’s fourth-largest city is being overwhelmed with more frequent and more destructive floods. The latest calamity occurred April 18, killing eight people and causing tens of millions of dollars in damage. The worsening floods aren’t simple acts of nature or just costly local concerns. Federal taxpayers get soaked too.

Extreme downpours have doubled in frequency over the past three decades, climatologists say, in part because of global warming. The other main culprit is unrestrained development in the only major U.S. city without zoning rules. That combination means more pavement and deeper floodwaters. Critics blame cozy relations between developers and local leaders for inadequate flood-protection measures.

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/sns-bc-us–houston-politics-of-flooding-20160518-story.html

 

The nearest USHCN station to Houston is Liberty, 40 miles away. Below is the whisker plot for daily rainfall there.

 

broker

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?_PROGRAM=prog.climsite_daily.sas&_SERVICE=default&id=415196&_DEBUG=0

 

There is clearly no evidence of any rising trend in extreme rainfall. By far the wettest day came way back in 1994, when 18.5 inches fell on 18th October.

 …

Climate Skeptics turn tables on ‘attribution’ studies – Ask: Is ‘global warming’ causing a decrease in ‘extreme weather’ events?

Washington DC — Despite the fact that the climate data clearly shows declining or no trends in many major indicators of “extreme weather” like tornadoes, hurricanes, rainfall, droughts and heatwaves, climate activists are once again seemingly trying to link every storm to “global warming.”

Man-made global warming proponents are touting yet another study claiming to attribute “extreme weather” to man-made global warming. See: Scientists: ‘Links Between Climate Change and Extreme Weather Are Clear

While such studies rely on modeling claims and other assorted statistical methods to “attribute” “global warming” to specific storms, these studies never examine why “extreme weather” is not increasing. The Associated Press is claiming that “Starting in 2004, dozens of complex peer-reviewed studies found the odds of some extreme events — but by no means all — were goosed by man-made climate change.”

Yes, the AP is claiming that “complex” studies found “the odds of some extreme events” are being “goosed by man-made climate change.” Complex? Odds? Goosed? Really?

The AP’s resident climate activist writer Seth Borenstein continued: “When it comes to heat waves, droughts, heavy rain and some other events, scientists who do rigorous research can say whether they was more likely or more severe because of man-made global warming.” Rigorous? (Note: AP’s Borenstein relies on a small cadre of activist scientists to support the “rigorous” claims. Activists like UN IPCC’s Michael Oppenheimer, David Titley and Katharine Hayhoe)

Climate Depot’s Rebuttal:

If “global warming” can cause specific storms or extreme weather events to occur, how come “global warming” can’t cause the significant lack of “extreme weather?” NOAA: Number of major tornadoes in 2015 was ‘one of the lowest on record’ – Tornadoes below average for 4th year in a row –

Is “global warming” causing a decrease in “extreme weather” events? A 2015 study found just that. See: New paper finds global warming reduces intense storms & extreme weather – A paper published in Science contradicts the prior belief that global warming, if it resumes, will fuel more intense storms, finding instead that an increase in water vapor and strengthened hydrological cycle will reduce the atmosphere’s ability to perform thermodynamic Work, thus decreasing the formation of intense winds, storms, and hurricanes.

The media is indulging in what

AP’s Seth Borenstein giddy the ‘Pause’ has been erased by adjustments: ‘Are satellites now contradicting the climate doubter community?’

Chip,

Seeing that the climate doubter community has hinged so much on RSS and saying there has been no warming post 1997 _ despite NOAA heat records in 1998, 2005, 2010, 2014 and 2015 _  you’ve seen the RSS update that shows there has been warming in the last 18 years. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on it. Will you and those in your community keep using RSS, even if it shows no warming. Add to that the UAH record warming in February. Are satellites now contradicting the climate doubter community?

Thanks,
Seth

 

No serious student of climate science thought that it would last forever.  The important thing about it was that it provided a challenge to climate science and prompted enhanced research into natural climate variability, climate sensitivity, and other important aspects of climate science. So that it’s now over comes as no surprise.  But, once the El Nino warming subsides, I think we’ll probably see a continuation of the modest (below model mean) rate of warming.…

AP: Satellite data ‘adjusted’ – Now shows no ‘pause’ in global warming

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7a1d32e47f7146839c0bcce3128a998b/revamped-satellite-data-shows-no-pause-global-warming#

WASHINGTON (AP) — Climate change doubters may have lost one of their key talking points: a particular satellite temperature dataset that had seemed to show no warming for the past 18 years.

The Remote Sensing System temperature data, promoted by many who reject mainstream climate science and especially most recently by Sen. Ted Cruz, now shows a slight warming of about 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit since 1998. Ground temperature measurements, which many scientists call more accurate, all show warming in the past 18 years.

“There are people that like to claim there was no warming; they really can’t claim that anymore,” said Carl Mears, the scientist who runs the Remote Sensing System temperature data tracking.

The change resulted from an adjustment Mears made to fix a nagging discrepancy in the data from 15 satellites.

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The satellites are in a polar orbit, so they are supposed to go over the same place at about the same time as they circle from north to south pole. Some of the satellites drift a bit, which changes their afternoon and evening measurements ever so slightly. Some satellites had drift that made temperatures warmer, others cooler. Three satellites had thrusters and they stayed in the proper orbit so they provided guidance for adjustments.

Mears said he was “motivated by fixing these differences between the satellites. If the differences hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have done the upgrade.”

NASA chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt and Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M, said experts and studies had shown these problems that Mears adjusted and they both said those adjustments make sense and are well supported in a study in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate.

The study refutes the idea of a pause in global warming, “but frankly common sense and looking at how Earth was responding over the past 18 years kind of makes this finding a ‘duh’ moment,” wrote University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd.

Chip Knappenberger of the Cato Institute, who doesn’t doubt that human-caused climate change is happening but does not agree with mainstream scientists who say the problem is enormous, said this shows “how messy the procedures are in putting the satellite data together.”

The other major satellite temperature data set, run by University of Alabama Hunstville professor John Christy, shows slight warming after …