Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.: What Does the Peer-Reviewed Literature Say About Trends in East Coast Winter Storms?

HirschECWS

The images above comes from a 2001 paper by Hirsch et al. (here in PDF) titled, An East Coast Winter Storm Climatology. The top curve shows all East Coast winter storms, and the bottom shows the most intense storms. for the period 1948 to 1997.

As the figure implies, they concluded in that analysis:

the frequency of ECWS show a downward tendency over the study period but at insignificant levels. One test found a decreasing trend in strong ECWS significant for an alpha = 0.10.

So there was no trend 1948 to 1997, or a slightly downward trend. This is interesting because over the latter half of that period one analysis (Willett et al. 2010) found an increase in the water content of the lower atmosphere. So those who argue for a simple relationship between increasing water content and storm strength, the data do not support such a claim over this multi-decadal period.

Paper calls Morano ‘Among the loudest skeptics’ – Florida’s Sun Sentinel newspaper features Climate Depot: ‘Skeptic disputes warmest year reports’

Among the loudest skeptics is Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot, who proclaims the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is “conning the public” with a recent report that 2014 was the warmest year on record globally.

Morano, a former U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff member, calls the report “shameless activism shown by our federal scientists” and denounced NOAA’s findings as “statistically meaningless.”

“The feds are conning the public on 2014 being the ‘hottest year,’” Morano countered in a statement. “We now know that both NASA and NOAA knew their ‘hottest year’ claims would not hold up to scientific scrutiny. But both agencies chose instead to loudly push the global warming narrative to a willing and compliant news media.”…

WATCH: BILL NYE ON MSNBC: BLAME CLIMATE CHANGE FOR BLIZZARD

NYE on MSNBC – Jan. 26, 2015: But is the economic effect of storms like this is huge. You cancel half of the flights out of the world’s — one of the world’s busiest airports, certainly the eastern seaboard is a very busy area economically for airplane travel and so when you start having big storms and you don’t have the infrastructure to deal with it, you are costing your society a lot of money and we’re in the developed world where we can handle this stuff.

So I just want to introduce the idea that the strong winds that we had in southern California, the very strong winds that will be associated with this storm in the next couple of days, these could be connected to climate change. Now proving any one storm is connected, specially cold-weather events is difficult. But I just want to present that.”…

Meteorologist: 2010s officially the snowiest decade in the east coast in the NOAA record – surpassing the 1960s

The monster blizzard of 2015 will be adding to what is already the snowiest decade on the East Coast.

“Assuming this storm gets ranked by NOAA as one of the high impact (population affected by snowstorm) snowstorms (likely since the November storm was), we will have had 14 major impact storms this decade (only half over) beating out the 10 in the 1960s and 2000s,” Joseph D’Aleo, CCM (Certified Consulting Meteorologist), told Climate Depot on Monday.

“Watch for widespread sub-zero cold next week if the European models are right (all the way to North Carolina and including DC area),” D’Aleo, the co-chief Meteorologist with Weatherbell Analyticsadded.

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The increase in snowfalls is counter to what the UN IPCC predicted. See: In 2001, the IPCC predicted milder winters and less snow. Experts are hoping no one remembers – UN IPCC 2001: ‘Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms’

Blizzard blamed on ‘global warming’ – Bill McKibben: Blizzards are ‘Climate change at work’ – NY Gov.: ‘Part of the changing climate’

Climate activist Bill McKibben, who was key organizer of the NYC climate march in September 2014,  wasted no time in blaming the massive blizzard bearing down on the Northeast on ‘global warming.’ McKibben tweeted on Monday:

McKibben: ‘5 0f 10 worst blizzards in NYC in last ten years, 0.2% chance that’s chance. Climate change at work’

Not to be outdone, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo joined in:

New York governor says massive storms are ‘part of the changing climate’: Andrew Cuomo says frequency of extreme weather, such as hurricane Sandy and current blizzard sweeping across north-east, ‘is a pattern never seen before’

Scientists were not impressed. Prof. Roger Pielke Jr., an extreme weather expert, mocked Cuomo’s claim. “Uh-huh, sure there is,” Pielke Jr. tweeted in response to Cuomo’s claims.

Also wading into the blizzard and ‘climate change’ connection is Bill Nye, the Science Guy.” See: WATCH: BILL NYE ON MSNBC: BLAME CLIMATE CHANGE FOR BLIZZARD – NYE: ‘I just want to introduce the idea that this storm is connected to climate change.’ & Bill Nye on MSNBC Hits ‘Unglued’ Viewers Who Object to Blaming Blizzard on Climate Change

UN IPCC Lead Author Michael Oppenheimer was also very clear in his predictions:  See: NYT in 2000 quoted ‘Oppenheimer on the pathetic spectacle of the unused sled in his stairwell, symbol of a warming world: ‘I bought a sled in ’96 for my daughter,’ said Oppenheimer, a scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. ‘It’s been sitting in the stairwell, and hasn’t been used. I used to go sledding all the time. It’s one of my most vivid and pleasant memories as a kid, hauling the sled out to Cunningham Park in Queens.’