Changing the Conversation: Extreme Weather and Climate
Changing the Conversation: Extreme Weather and Climate
It has been an exceptional year of tornadoes in the U.S. Hundreds have died and several cities have been especially hard hit(Jeff Masters on Living on Earth). Ultimately, I will talk about these tornadoes and climate change and bring, at least temporarily, closure to my discussion on event attribution and climate change. (First in Series, Second in Series)
First, I want to write a couple of casual observations about forecasts and warnings. In 1953 there was a tornado in Flint, Michigan that killed more than 100 people. Many comparisons have been made between that 1953 tornado and the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri. One of the comments that I have heard is that comparing 2011 to other years in terms of risk to human health, we can say that the health risk is less in 2011 than 60 years ago. The logic in the argument is that we have many more people in the U.S. today, and hence, if the risk was the same, then more people would have died in 2011. Standing alone, this is a peculiar argument, but it got me to thinking about risk.
Several times this year I have heard mayors of towns say that the warnings they had received for either tornadoes or floods have saved many lives and property. If you go back and check the forecasts, there are cases when a high probability of tornado activity has been predicted several days in advance. When it gets down to actual tornado warnings, the mayors in interviews say that people had 25-30 minutes to prepare, to take cover. Compared with the 1953’s state of knowledge and the ability to forecast both these long-term forecasts and short-term warnings are stunning advances. What stands at the basis of these advances? Observations, predictive models, and the ability of models to ingest and use those observations in forecasting. There is technology, and there is a lot of scientific theory and plain smartness tied up in those models and their interpretation. When we talk about federal science budgets for weather and climate, we are talking about predictions and risk assessment and warnings and knowledge which provide the opportunities for individuals and organizations to make good decisions.
If there is less risk to human health in 2011 than in 1953, then much of that risk reduction is due to improvements in model-based predictions.
Back to climate change. In my previous entries on event attribution I argued that the media discussion of the attribution of specific extreme events, primarily, contributed to the political argument rather than to the communication of scientific knowledge. As such, the primary product of this media discussion is to build and maintain doubt. Since that last blog, Christine Shearer and I completed and published an article in IEEE Earthzine, called Changing the Media Discussion on Climate and Extreme Weather. All I will do here is to highlight some of the arguments that we made:
1) We assert that a journalist’s question that asks a scientist to provide a yes-or-no answer to whether or not an extreme event is “caused” by climate change is, scientifically, ill posed.
2) That scientists are part of the conversation, and it is their role to participate in such a way that leads to a scientifically correct question.
3) The question in number 1 is ill posed for a number of reasons, but at the top of the list is because it requires the scientist to suppose there are two climates: one with and one without anthropogenic warming. We only have one climate, and we see the warmer climate, the moisture air, and the extreme weather evolving in that warming climate.
If you’re interested read the article. More generally, there are some very good articles in IEEE Earthzine. Christine Shearer and I have gotten a number of good comments on the paper, and through it all, I was interviewed by Tony Wood of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who wrote a nice story. This led to me getting an email from a Hal Hartung who maintains a web site on Anthropogenic Peat. Mr. Hartung made an interesting comment to me concerning the discussion of global warming which is: given that greenhouse gases are well known to hold energy close to the Earth, those who deny an anthropogenic impact on weather, need to pose a viable mechanism of how the Earth can hold in more energy and the weather not be changed. Think about it.
r
P.S. One of my former students, Amanda Graor, wrote me to correct an error in the original posting of this blog. Here is her blog on volunteering in Joplin.
Reader Comments
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One thing from your column above that I have yet to see any contrarians respond to in any way that could be construed as productive is this: "...given that greenhouse gases are well known to hold energy close to the Earth, those who deny an anthropogenic impact on weather, need to pose a viable mechanism of how the Earth can hold in more energy and the weather not be changed."
Any takers? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?
That's what I thought. But that's okay; I've become accustomed to that silence.
MSNBC Article...
Couldn't you call 600% of typical tornado activity that has never been recorded before, climate change?
I don't think individual storms are from climate change, but the abnormal number or strength of storms themselves define a new climate regime. When events change the average strength, range, or return interval of future predicted weather events, that is climate change if not "C"limate "C"hange.
Do you agree?
Nope.
From Dr. Rood's article:
"Those pushing this tactic [of institutionalized denial] understand that doubt is a powerful way to keep climate change from being identified and seen as a social problem requiring action. Extreme weather events offer easy opportunity to generate doubt, for example, with some news outlets and commentators pointing to snowstorms as "proof" that global warming is false doctrine — as could be seen with "Snowmageddon." Such anecdotal "proof" that global warming is false is intuitive and appealing. Of course, in this case it ignores that climate models do indeed predict increased precipitation, and hence, large snow events."
The globe is warming, the climate is changing, and the weather is responding. Period.
No, I don't agree. Warming world = more moisture & more energy in the atmosphere. More moisture & more energy in the atmosphere = more precipitation. More precipitation = more rain where it's warm, and more snow where it's cold.
I'm not quite sure why "skeptics" are unable to grasp that simple concept. It seems pretty easy to me. Global warming does not mean everything turns hot and humid; it means things are warmer than they were. Which, by the way, they are.
Oh, I'd wager it's not so silent.
That will put cap in your heat, PinaTubo anyone?
The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines killed hundreds and damaged thousands of homes but equally ominous were the climatic effects
Link
anthropogenic impact on weather,
Boy, that is one odd looking person.
Unless,
You must mean Jessica.
Link
Oh, you forgot about the clouds again. Those climate models have a great grasp of cloud formation don't they? Don't forget you still owe me $5 also :P
Here, try something different aside from your tiresome rhetoric.
Scientists at Aarhus University (AU) and the National Space Institute (DTU Space) show that particles from space create cloud cover
A new approach to long-term reconstruction of the solar irradiance
leads to large historical solar forcing
Cosmic rays, aerosol formation and
cloud-condensation nuclei: sensitivities
to model uncertainties
MSNBC
Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann
Wow, what a roster, oops that's right Al Gore
stole the mad dog.
Anyone for real science?
When the Sun’s magnetic output is low, winters in Europe tend to be cooler than average – whereas higher output corresponds to warmer winters. That is the conclusion of a new study by physicists in the UK and Germany that looked at the relationship between winter temperatures in England and the strength of the Sun's magnetic emissions over the last 350 years. The group predicts that, global warming notwithstanding, Europe is likely to continue to experience cold winters for many years to come.
Link
The longest cold spell in six decades has hit North Korea, a report said Tuesday, allowing people to walk across the frozen river in Pyongyang while causing farmers to worry about their crop production this year.
Frozen along with the landmark Taedong River were ports on the west coast close to the capital, said the Chosun Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper that has correspondents in the communist country but is published in Japan.
The temperature in North Korea stayed below the freezing point for 40 consecutive days this winter, a phenomenon only surpassed by a 62-day streak in 1945, the paper said, citing a North Korean meteorologist.
“Even last year’s winter, which had already been colder than before, did not freeze the Taedong River this completely,” the Chosun Sinbo said. “People are now walking across the Taedong river in the heart of the city.”
The chill has frozen soil up to 42 centimeters below, 10 cm deeper than last year, the paper said. The freeze may cause a delay in the plowing season, making farming more difficult although it does have the benefit of freezing harmful insects to death, it said.
“At present, a wave of phone calls are being made by workers in the fields of agriculture and city construction” to the local weather agency with concerns, the paper said.
South Korea also suffered a prolonged cold spell this year with temperatures even in the usually warmer southern regions dropping to their lowest levels in decades. Heavy snowfall and high waves also disrupted ground and sea traffic in those regions.
The guys that wrote that admit that their calculations were wrong.
There will be an extended period in the United States where heavy snowfalls, "on average," will increase in number and intensity for several decades due to the increased potential energy. Eventually, the climate will warm enough in the US to cause the heavy snowstorms to decrease in number as they instead become heavy rainstorms... Generally from south to north of course.
So are you saying, then, that the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo is the cause of the observed warming over the past 100 years?
I think you should research the effects on the climate from those volcanoes before posting.
There's no comparison between the amount of human caused greenhouse gases produced since the industrial revolution and the amount of gases produced by volcanic activity since that time.
Of course, as has been noted countless times here and elsewhere, during previous warming periods, the planet's mean temp took thousands of years to raise as much as we've done it in a few hundred. That's why I--and climate scientists--refer to the current situation as "unprecedented".
Of course, that same story was all over the internet today; I merely plucked it from the first source available. The fact that that turned out to be MSNBC is indicative of their credibility and efficiency as a news-gathering organization.
P.S. -- Olbermann hasn't been on the network for months.
"Shouldn't that of already started?" It's my belief that no, it shouldn't have started yet. I believe we have just begun to see the effects of an increased average of heavy snowstorm activity and believe that this will last for several decades. Of course, we will have to wait a bit longer to determine whether this is a permanent change or not. I don't expect that these enormous snowstorms will occur every winter. I expect it to be a 2 steps up, 1 step back, 2 steps up, 1 step back type of thing. The changeover to primarily rainstorms is still far off at this point. I think that March of 1993 and December of 2009 could turn out to be important turning points.
"Again I gave the snowstorms or what nots with Florida and there have been a high amount in just the past 2 years." Point taken and true...
"I think the climate isn't warming as fast as people think and they are just trying to figure ways out of a corner they put themselves in." I hear what you're saying, but I've actually read reports indicating that average temperatures are rising at a rate on the highest side of the range of possible outcomes that the climate models had predicted years ago.
Build the tunnels and we won't contribute to the problem.
hardly use MSNBC as a source for anything except
for propaganda.
When you quoted you left out all the empirical science bits, wonder why?
No surprise.
Anyone for real science?
When the Sun’s magnetic output is low, winters in Europe tend to be cooler than average – whereas higher output corresponds to warmer winters. That is the conclusion of a new study by physicists in the UK and Germany that looked at the relationship between winter temperatures in England and the strength of the Sun's magnetic emissions over the last 350 years. The group predicts that, global warming notwithstanding, Europe is likely to continue to experience cold winters for many years to come.
Link
The longest cold spell in six decades has hit North Korea, a report said Tuesday, allowing people to walk across the frozen river in Pyongyang while causing farmers to worry about their crop production this year.
Frozen along with the landmark Taedong River were ports on the west coast close to the capital, said the Chosun Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper that has correspondents in the communist country but is published in Japan.
The temperature in North Korea stayed below the freezing point for 40 consecutive days this winter, a phenomenon only surpassed by a 62-day streak in 1945, the paper said, citing a North Korean meteorologist.
“Even last year’s winter, which had already been colder than before, did not freeze the Taedong River this completely,” the Chosun Sinbo said. “People are now walking across the Taedong river in the heart of the city.”
The chill has frozen soil up to 42 centimeters below, 10 cm deeper than last year, the paper said. The freeze may cause a delay in the plowing season, making farming more difficult although it does have the benefit of freezing harmful insects to death, it said.
“At present, a wave of phone calls are being made by workers in the fields of agriculture and city construction” to the local weather agency with concerns, the paper said.
South Korea also suffered a prolonged cold spell this year with temperatures even in the usually warmer southern regions dropping to their lowest levels in decades. Heavy snowfall and high waves also disrupted ground and sea traffic in those regions.
can hardly afford the extra CO2, right Neo Pat???
Maybe you guys should contact the Hague and start
some trouble with the Germans since there plan is
detrimental to the planet.
If not for the world economic survival.
Some disagree:
Mitsubishi Heavy to retain plan to double nuclear business by FY 2014
Link
Germany has had a love-hate relationship with nuclear power. Reactors provide nearly a quarter of the industrial nation’s needs, and last fall Chancellor Angela Merkel announced she was extending the life of nuclear power plants till 2035.
But now, in the shadow of the Fukushima disaster and under intense political pressure, Merkel has reversed that decision, and is ending the relationship, promising that Germany will pull the plug on all its nuclear plants by 2022. For reaction we turn to Chris Gadomski--lead nuclear analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
GADOMSKI: Quite frankly I'm not surprised at the decision to go ahead and do this, given the environmental interests and concerns of the German population. They have decided this is the way they want to go forward. It’s a very exciting time for the German people
GELLERMAN: Yeah, I guess the Green Movement is very strong there. Right after the Fukushima disaster, there were a quarter of a million people marching to demand that nuclear power be shut down.
GADOMSKI: Absolutely right. This is not surprising that when you have such a dramatic and terrible event as happened in Fukushima, that those people became increasingly concerned and have tried to go ahead and develop a strategy that would allow them to go forward without nuclear power. And it relies very heavily on development of renewable energy and a large deployment and commitment to solar power.
GELLERMAN: Germany has a huge amount of offshore wind and wind on land, and they’re planning a lot more solar, actually.
GADOMSKI: It’s very interesting that Germans really are responsible for the tremendous global surge in solar power installations by introducing a feed-in tariff which provided those individuals and those corporations in Germany with very attractive tariffs for selling the solar to the government.
GELLERMAN: They have 17 nuclear power plants in Germany. I guess they shut down seven after Fukushima. That leaves 10 nuclear power plants. Can they make that type of energy up using renewable energy resources?
GADOMSKI: Well, in addition to their emphasis on developing renewable energy technologies, the country is advocating a significant decrease in energy consumption- by 28 percent. They’re also going to have to go ahead and additionally import electricity from surrounding countries. Ironically, the electricity that would come from surrounding countries would be dirty coal from Poland, nuclear power from France, and perhaps nuclear power from the Czech Republic.
GELLERMAN: So does that mean that inevitably there’s going to be more CO2 and greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere?
GADOMSKI: I think that that’s a fair assumption that if you’re going to eliminate 20 gigawatts of nuclear power, which produces electricity without any carbon, and you replace them with a percentage of fossil fuels, that it’s going to be a net increase in CO2 emissions.
GELLERMAN: Greenpeace says that Germany can actually shut down all its nukes within four years and have no brown outs, no black outs, and no increase in the long run in the amount of CO2 going into the air.
GADOMSKI: Well, that must be Greenpeace’s opinion. I’ve talked to other people who sort of dispute that and anticipate that there’ll be problems in the near-term keeping the country cool this summer. Germany’s a big industrial economy and so it’s going to require a lot of very dense energy capacity to go ahead and power that and keep it going. So I hope that Greenpeace is right. I’m a little bit skeptical that it will actually accomplish that, but it’s part of my job as an analyst to look carefully at the numbers and see what I think.
GELLERMAN: It’s hard to believe that Germany would make this kind of decision thinking it was going to jeopardize their industrial society.
GADOMSKI: When you look at something like this, you need to sort of examine the decision through what I call a steep analysis. And the steep analysis, it means look at the social, technological, economic, environmental and political components of the decision. In making those decisions, however, they’re creating some additional environmental and economic problems.
The price of electricity is one of the highest it is in Europe and we had forecast that it would increase it by six percent just as a result of closing down the seven nuclear power plants, and that further closure of nuclear power plants would add to the cost of electricity. There’ll be a lot of people who will be come unemployed by closing down those nuclear power plants and there are also going to be creating some environmental issues, possibly an increase CO2 emissions.
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID= 11-P13-00022&segmentID=1
I don't mind anti-science rants, of course; they are part and parcel of the denialist game. But I don't care to be slandered. If you can point out where I "left out all the empirical science bits", I'd be interested in seeing it. If not, I'd like a retraction and an apology. Thanks.
Wrong again, I'm afraid.
A) It's disingenuous of Whitehouse to compare this year's temps to 2010's and use that to make the claim that "2011 still cool". (Not that I expect anything more from a Big Oil shill.)
B) Fact: April 2011 was the 7th warmest on record. Hmmm. If Whitehouse--or any of his loyal followers--want to claim that "7th warmest on record" = "still cool", I suppose they have that right. It's incorrect and illogical, but they do have the right...
I am sorry, When I quote someone, I include all the
contents, especially items in question.
So therefore, I was surprised that you excluded
the scientific articles which bolster my POV.
There is nothing slanderous or any libel. Just a comment on what is selected in a response.
I 'll assume those articles do not agree with you.
Article...
With the Preliminary Storm Survey completed by the National Weather Service in Taunton, Massachusetts (to see the complete findings, click here), we can more formally put the EF3 tornado from Westfield to Charlton, Massachusetts, in historical perspective.
Number of tornadoes (not including EF0) in Massachusetts record, including June 1:
F5/EF5: 1
F4/EF4: 2
F3/EF3: 6
F2/EF2: 35
F1/EF1: 81
Longest Tornado Path Lengths in MA Record:
Worcester, 1953: 40 miles
Springfield, 2011: 39 miles
Worcester County, 1970: 35 miles
Franklin, 1953: 28 miles
Great Barrington, 1995: 11 miles
Deadliest Tornadoes in MA Record:
June 9, 1953: 94 (Worcester Tornado)
June 1, 2011: 4
August 28, 1973: 4
May 29, 1995: 3
August 10, 1979: 2
Unquestionably, a tornado that will remain in New England's record books for decades to come.
-Matt Noyes
Necn Weather
Wow. Just wow. I've read some inane, illogical, anti-science rants chock-full of bad math before, but oh dear god is that one mess. In between obsessing over Al Gore (his name is mentioned 23 times), comparing AGWT adherents to Nazis, and regurgitating almost every debunked denialist talking point ever heard, the writer spends time contradicting himself, mountains of data, and basic common sense. And he appears to be woefully ignorant of basic facts, such as: Tsaa is an outlet (tidewater) glacier, and as such doesn't react to a changing climate the way land-locked glaciers do; Greenland's ice is melting all over, and not from a hidden volcano; warming is just peachy for everyone and everything.
What a _______. (Fill in the blank.)
Submitted by admin on May 10, 2011 – 9:24
Well it was minus 8.1 in Goulburn last night (according to the BOM), Australia’s first inland city about 2 hrs south west of Sydney. When the mean min. temp for Goulburn is 4.7, this is almost 13 degrees below average. At -8.1 this is the coldest on record in Goulburn’s history – with the cold normally being experienced in July in the middle of winter and not in Autumn. And it looks like for the week ahead it is only going to get colder.
Link
The Globe as a whole has not seen any net warming for 9 straight years, now.
Part 1
Dr. Denis Rancourt, PhD Physics
Quote:
Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement.
Allegre's second thoughts
Dr. Claude Allegre, French Environmental Scientist.
Quote:
Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.
His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."
Dr. David Evans
http://www.aim.org/don-irvine-blog/anoth...l-warm ing/
Quote:
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Dr. Tad Murty, Indian Oceanographer
Quote:
"I switched to the other side in the early 1990s when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously," Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary."
Dr. Hans H.J. Labohm
Quote:
"I started as an anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN's IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics." "After that, I changed my mind," Labohm explained. Labohm co-authored the 2004 book Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma with Eindhoven University of Technology emeritus professor of chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "‗Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‗noise.'"
Dr. Tim Patterson, PhD Paleoclimatology
Quote:
"I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change," Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his "conversion" happened following his research on "the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific." "[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator)," Patterson explained. "Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances," he wrote. "As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles.
From here.
Observational evidence seems to agree that there doesn't seem to be an increasing trend of strong tornadoes that would be related to warming, at least so far.
From here.
Of course, only in-season tornadoes are counted here. I seem to recall that someone implied that out-of-season tornadoes were on the increase, but I've yet to see any supporting evidence given.
More heat more tornadoes.For the second time the bar has been raised this time from 1400 to 1600. Told you so!
Totally wrong. It is the difference in temperature (ie a cooler airmass and a warmer airmass colliding) that creates instability, which is needed for Supercell thunderstorms to form.
Why has there been no long term increase in strong tornadoes, as seen in the graph in № 46?
Your graph only shows five years, and I'm pretty sure still shows preliminary reports which will include a significant number of duplicated reports. It undoubtedly also shows many weak events that would not have been recorded until recently. I could probably go on and on here but...
Seriously, don't you think the long term trend tends to suggest that recent warming has not had an effect on the number of strong tornado events and a indeterminable effect on the number of weaker tornado events?
Incorrect. More heat means more severe weather and tornadoes. Just like your pot of boiling water. The more you raise the burner temperature the more steam you will make. The ocean is just a big pot of water.
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