Tag: tornadoes

‘Floods are not increasing’: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. slams ‘global warming’ link to floods & extreme weather – How does media ‘get away with this?’

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), slammed the linkage of global warming to the recent Louisiana floods and other types of extreme weather. (See: Bill Nye: Climate change is reason for Louisiana floods)

Pielke authored the 2014 book “The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change.”  

“Flood disasters are sharply down. U.S. floods not increasing either,” Pielke Jr. declared on August 23. Pielke rebuked New York Times columnist Paul Krugman for linking floods to climate change.  Krugman blamed “climate change” for ‘a proliferation of disasters like the one in Louisiana.’

“How does Krugman get away with this?” Pielke asked while showcasing this scientific graph.

“Floods suck when they occur. The good news is U.S. flood damage is sharply down over 70 years,” Pielke explained.

In a message aimed at climate activists and many in the media, Pielke cautioned: “Remember, disasters can happen any time and they suck. But it is also good to understand long-term trends based on data, not hype.”

“In my career I’ve seen the arguments go from: 1- ‘Drought increasing globally’ — To — 2- ‘OK, not globally, but look at THIS one drought.’ I’ll stick with the UN IPCC and the USGCRP (U.S. Global Change Research Program) consensus rather than selected studies. Both of those agree there is no global or U.S. trend though literature is diverse,” Pielke wrote.

Extreme weather is NOT getting worse

Pielke also pointed to the hard scientific data that shows other types of extreme weather are not getting worse and may in fact be improving.

“Is U.S. drought getting worse? No,” Pielke wrote and revealed this EPA graph:

Professor Pielke Jr. also noted: “US hurricane landfalls (& their strength) down by ~20% since 1900” and provided this graph.

“Recent years have seen record low tornadoes,” Pielke Jr. added with this data from NOAA.

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Related Links:

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.

Al …

‘Yet another study finds little basis for attribution of extreme weather (drought-flood-storm) to human-caused climate change.’

Excerpts:

“There can be a tendency in some quarters to want to confidently attribute extremes to anthropogenic climate change in the absence of scientific consensus or to argue that it isn’t possible to link individual extreme events with anthropogenic climate change, neither of which is correct. Given that many extreme weather and climate events have occurred before substantial anthropogenic modification of the climate system has been clearly detected in many regions, an over simplistic attribution to human causes could be costly. For example, based on the occurrence of a particularly damaging extreme event, plans could made to adapt to an increasing frequency of such events in future when in fact this is not what is expected.”

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2015: U.S. Sees Another Quiet Tornado Season – ‘Numbers have been running well below average’

Claim: ‘Extremely cold winter months likely held down the number of tornadoes in Oklahoma this year, resulting in the fewest twisters in the state since 1988’

Only 13 tornadoes hit the state through June this year, which was the latest available data. Only one of those tornadoes — an April 27 EF2 that injured 12 and killed one person in Quapaw — was of any “significance,” said Greg Carbin, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.

Only numbers through June are officially available at this time, as data is still being collected on July and August, though those months saw no significant action, Carbin said.

The 13 tornadoes on record through the first six months of 2014 is the lowest total in Oklahoma since just 10 were documented during the same time frame in 1988, according to meteorologist Doug Speheger.

“I believe that those are the only years on record since the modern era of tornado documentation in 1950 that Oklahoma has had that few tornadoes in that time period,” Speheger said.…

The State of the Climate Report That Warmists Don’t Want You to See

2014 Tornado Stats: ‘So far, the tornado season has been another quiet one’

Tornado Stats

http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/tornado-stats

By Paul Homewood
 

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/2014/us-tor-probs.png
 
Traditionally, US tornado counts peak in early June. It is encouraging then to be able to report that, so far, the tornado season has been another quiet one.
 

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/torngraph-big.png
 
While not as low as last year’s record low count, it continues the trend of below average years, starting in 2012.
 
Many more tornadoes get to be reported these days, because of changes in observation procedures and technology, such as Doppler radar. To allow for this, the Storm Prediction Center produce “inflation adjusted” statistics of tornado counts dating back to 1954.
This method shows that, so far this year, tornado counts are well within the bottom 25th percentile.
 

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/adj.html
 
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Oops. Fine print in Obama’s climate report breaks from warmist narrative — Admits no trends in droughts, storms, tornadoes and hail!

No Hurricanes And The Fewest Tornadoes: ‘There have been no hurricanes in the Atlantic this year, and the US has had the fewest tornadoes on record – less than half of normal’