WUWT strawman: Week 13 of 52 - not much extreme weather? So sez Anthony Watts
Sou | 5:22 PM 7
Anthony Watts, or one of his surrogates, has made a brief appearance at WUWT to write a headline and an opening salvo. Here is what he wrote (archived here):
So far, 2015 seems to be a bad year for the ‘severe weather caused by climate change” meme Anthony Watts / 21 mins ago March 22, 2015 Looks like another “divergence problem” as tornadoes don’t follow the climatology
That's it. The rest was a copy and paste of an article from NOAA (archived here). The NOAA article was about how there have been no tornadoes reported in the USA this March, so far. This is a record - since 1970 at any rate.
Anthony Watts talked about a "meme", but what he wrote is a logical fallacy known as a strawman, as you'll see below.
The NOAA article that Anthony copied and pasted is five days old. As you know, Anthony's not been about much at WUWT lately so you might think this was him catching up. But this is the second article in three days at WUWT (see here) about the NOAA press release on the lack of tornadoes, so it's more likely that Anthony isn't keeping track of his own blog.
Will tornadoes increase with global warming? Maybe, maybe not.
We're not even one quarter of the way through 2015 yet. I expect Anthony is getting in while he can. Thing is that the science is ambivalent about whether global warming will bring more or fewer tornadoes to the USA. It depends on more than just the energy in the atmosphere, it has to do with shear. Here is what is written in the latest IPCC report (AR5 WG1) (my paras and emphasis).
Severe thunderstorms, associated with large hail, high winds, and tornadoes, are another example of extreme weather associated with the water cycle. The large-scale environments in which they occur are characterized by large Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) and deep tropospheric wind shear (Brooks et al., 2003; Brooks, 2009). Del Genio et al. (2007), Trapp et al. (2007; 2009), and Van Klooster and Roebber (2009) found a general increase in the energy and decrease in the shear terms from the late 20th century to the late 21st century over the United States using a variety of regional model simulations embedded in global-model SRES scenario simulations. The relative change between these two competing factors would tend to favour more environments that would support severe thunderstorms, providing storms are initiated. Trapp et al. (2009), for example, found an increase in favourable thunderstorm conditions for all regions of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Large variability in both the energy and shear terms means that statistical significance is not reached until late in the 21st century under high forcing scenarios. One way of assessing the possibility of a change in frequency of future thunderstorms is to look at historical records of observed tornado, hail, and wind occurrence with respect to the environmental conditions (Brooks, 2013). This indicates that an increase in the fraction of severe thunderstorms containing non-tornadic winds would be consistent with the model projections of increased energy and decreased shear, but there has not been enough research to make a firm conclusion regarding future changes in frequency or magnitude. So thunderstorms will probably increase in severity and frequency. Tornadoes may actually decrease.
Weather vs climate vs climate change
And it's worth a reminder about what is weather and what constitutes climate - and climate change. Again from the IPCC report, S1.2.2 (my paras):
First of all, it is important to distinguish the meaning of weather from climate. Weather describes the conditions of the atmosphere at a certain place and time with reference to temperature, pressure, humidity, wind, and other key parameters (meteorological elements), the presence of clouds, precipitation, and the occurrence of special phenomena, such as thunderstorms, dust storms, tornados, etc. Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the average weather, or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The relevant quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind. The classical period for averaging these variables is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. Climate in a wider sense also includes not just the mean conditions, but also the associated statistics (frequency, magnitude, persistence, trends, etc.), often combining parameters to describe phenomena such as droughts. Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.
Some extreme weather-related events in 2015, so far
Was Anthony correct in his headline that this is "a bad year" for 'severe weather caused by climate change' meme? Let's see what's been happening around the world on the extreme weather front in the first 13 weeks this year:
A Plethora of Tropical Cyclones
- Super Tropical Cyclone Pam which devastated Vanuatu - which Anthony didn't notice and mention at WUWT. (There was a sentence in an article by someone else, buried deep in an article about something else.) Below are pictures of the devasation - with more here on the ABC.
Incredible before/after pics from pilot William Dyer #TCPam #CyclonePam #Vanuatu pic.twitter.com/zBSDnSuFXT
— Sam Bolitho (@SamBolitho) March 18, 2015
Heat extremes
- Anthony's own home state of California had its second-in-a-row warmest winter on record, and just this month heat records have been falling all across his own home state.
Precipitation extremes
Drought
- Again back to the USA where large areas, particularly Anthony Watts' home state of California, are still in the grip of a devastating drought.
Global heat records keep falling
And don't forget that 2014 was the hottest year on record. January 2015 was the second hottest January on record, and February 2015 was the second hottest February on record.
I could go on...
I could go on, but you probably get the picture. Extreme weather continues, unlike what the disinformers at WUWT will tell you.
You might be asking if weather extremes are happening more often. Well, a few days ago I posted the Munich Re chart below, which suggests that they are. The chart shows loss events. This is not the same as insured losses - it includes all events that "either resulted in direct property damage and/or at least one fatality". The report is available here, but you'll need to register (it's free).
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