"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
1975 : Tornado Outbreaks Blamed On Global Cooling
1970s Global Cooling Scare
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/1970s-ice-age-scare/
National
Academy Of Sciences
Science
News
Oklahoma tornado: is climate change to blame?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/21/moore-oklahoma-tornado-climate-change
The Oklahoma
twister was a 'classic look', but the data shows we are experiencing more
volatility in the US
tornado season
Is Whitehouse correct? It's difficult to assign any one storm's outcome to the possible effects of global climate change, and the science of tornadoes in particular makes it pretty much impossible to know whether Whitehouse is right.
Let's start with the basics of what causes a tornado. A piece from my friend (and sometimes co-chatter) Andrew Freedman two years ago sets out the basics well.
First, you need warm, humid air for moisture. The past few days in Moore have featured temperatures in the upper 70s to low 80s, with relative humidity levels regularly hitting between 90% and 100% and rarely dropping below 70%.
Second, you need strong jet stream winds to provide lift. As this map from Weather Underground indicates, there were definitely some very strong jet stream winds on Monday in the Oklahoma region.
Third, you need strong wind shear (changing wind
directions and/or speeds at different heights) to allow for full instability
and lift. This mid-level
wind shear map from the University
of Wisconsin shows that there were 45
to 50 knot winds, right at the top of the scale, over Oklahoma on Monday.
The long-term weather question is whether or not we'll see more or less of these "classic" looks in our changing meteorological environment. It turns out that of all the weather phenomena, from droughts to hurricanes, tornadoes are the most complex to answer from a broader atmospheric trends point of view. The reason is that a warming world affects the factors that lead to tornadoes in different ways.
Climate change is supposed, among other things, to bring warmer and moister air to earth. That, of course, would lead to more severe thunderstorms and probably more tornadoes. The issue is that global warming is also forecast to bring about less wind shear. This would allow hurricanes to form more easily, but it also would make it much harder for tornadoes to get the full about lift and instability that allow for your usual thunderstorm to grow in height and become a fully-fledged tornado. Statistics over the past 50 years bear this out, as we've seen warmer and more moist air as well as less wind shear.
Meteorological studies differ on whether or not the warmer and moister air can overcome a lack of wind shear in creating more tornadoes in the far future. In the immediate past, the jet stream, possibly because of climate change, has been quite volatile. Some years it has dug south to allow maximum tornado activity in the middle of the country, while other years it has stayed to the north.
Although tornado reporting has in prior decades been not as reliable as today because of a lack of equipment and manpower, it's still not by accident that the six least active and four most active tornado seasons have been felt over the past decade. Another statistic that points to the irregular patterns is that the three earliest and four latest starts to the tornado season have all occurred in the past 15 years.
Basically, we've had this push and pull in recent history. Some years the number of tornadoes is quite high, and some years it is quite low. We're not seeing "average" seasons as much any more, though the average of the extremes has led to no meaningful change to the average number of tornadoes per year. Expect this variation to continue into the future as less wind shear and warmer moister air fight it out.
The overall result could very well be fewer days of tornadoes per Harold Brooks of the National Storm Center, but more and stronger tornadoes when they do occur. Nothing about the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, or tornadoes over the past few decades break with this theory.
None of it proves or disproves senator Whitehouse's beliefs either. Indeed, we'll never know whether larger global warming factors were at play in Monday's storms. All we can do at this moment is react to them and give the people of Oklahoma all the help they need.
Does Climate Change Impact Tornadoes? The Scientific Jury Is Still Out
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05/21/does-climate-change-impact-tornados
Scientists don't yet have enough data to determine if twisters, like the one that destroyed Moore, Oklahoma, are enhanced by climate change.
May 21, 2013
There's no debating the devastation of the two-mile-wide tornado that leveled much of Moore, Oklahoma, yesterday, May 20. The Oklahoma City suburb, situated right in the heart of Tornado Alley, suffered unimaginable loss of life and destruction: 24 deaths, including nine children, and an untold number of pulverized buildings, including schools and hospitals.
But, is this particular type of extreme weather caused by climate change?
Short answer: Depends on whom you ask and how you ask it.
While the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajenda Pachauri, says that this tornado cannot be pinned on climate change, some scientists are starting to connect the dots between global warming and stronger tornadoes.
The IPCC’s special report on managing extreme risks states: “There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes and hail because of data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems.”
In laymen’s terms: We don’t have enough data to measure, since the United States only began keeping reliable tornado records in 1953, and Doppler radar wasn’t used for weather until the 1970s.
On the other hand: An increase in tornadoes is consistent with the warmer, wetter world created by climate change, and particularly large and unprecedented tornado events may represent the results of climate disruption.
“As far as climate change is concerned, there will likely be a greater clashing of cold air masses from the north with even warmer, even more humid air masses coming off the Gulf of Mexico—conditions that are favorable for breeding destructive storms,” says Michael Mann, climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.
“The wildcard is the shear—we don’t know with certainty whether that will increase or not in the key regions for tornado formation as a result of climate change,” Mann continues. “But if one factor is likely to be favorable, and the other is a wildcard, it’s still more likely that the product of the two factors will be favorable. Thus, if you’re a betting person—or the insurance or reinsurance industry for that matter—you’d probably go with a prediction of greater frequency and intensity of tornadoes as a result of human-caused climate change.”
Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the USA National Center for Atmospheric Research, does the math: “The climate change effect is probably only a 5 to 10 percent effect in terms of the instability and subsequent rainfall, but it translates into up to a 33 percent effect in terms of damage. (It is highly nonlinear, for 10 percent it is 1.1 to the power of 3 = 1.33.) So there is a chain of events and climate change mainly affects the first link: the basic buoyancy of the air is increased. Whether that translates into a super-cell storm and one with a tornado is largely chance weather.”
By meteorological standards, the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado was a common, garden variety twister: warm humid air meeting a strong jet stream with strong winds, in the middle of Tornado Alley, during prime tornado season (May and June) and during the prime tornado hours (late afternoon).
The only abnormal thing about this tornado was its sheer size. The climate dice have indeed been loaded for bigger and badder
MORE Tornadoes from Global Warming? That’s a Joke, Right?
April 29th, 2011 by Roy W.
Spencer, Ph. D.
If there is one weather phenomenon global warming theory does NOT predict more of, it would be severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.
Tornadic thunderstorms do not require tropical-type warmth. In fact, tornadoes are almost unheard of in the tropics, despite frequent thunderstorm activity.
Instead, tornadoes require strong wind shear (wind speed and direction changing rapidly with height in the lower atmosphere), the kind which develops when cold and warm air masses “collide”. Of course, other elements must be present, such as an unstable airmass and sufficient low-level humidity, but wind shear is the key. Strong warm advection (warm air riding up and over the cooler air mass, which is also what causes the strong wind shear) in advance of a low pressure area riding along the boundary between the two air masses is where these storms form.
But contrasting air mass temperatures is the key. Active tornado seasons in the U.S. are almost always due to unusually COOL air persisting over the Midwest and Ohio Valley longer than it normally does as we transition into spring.
For example, the poster child for active tornado seasons was the Superoutbreak of 1974, which was during globally cool conditions. This year, we are seeing much cooler than normal conditions through the corn belt, even delaying the planting schedule. Cool La Nina years seem to favor more tornadoes, and we are now coming out of a persistent La Nina. The global-average temperature has plummeted by about 1 deg. F in just one year.
An unusually warm Gulf of Mexico of 1 or 2 degrees right now cannot explain the increase in contrast between warm and cold air masses which is key for tornado formation because that slight warmth cannot compete with the 10 to 20 degree below-normal air in the Midwest and Ohio Valley which has not wanted to give way to spring yet.
The “extra moisture” from the Gulf is not that important, because it’s almost always available this time of year…it’s the wind shear that caused this outbreak.
More tornadoes due to “global warming”, if such a thing happened, would be more tornadoes in Canada, where they don’t usually occur. NOT in Alabama.
It is well known that strong to violent tornado activity in the U.S. has decreased markedly since statistics began in the 1950s, which has also been a period of average warming. So, if anything, global warming causes FEWER tornado outbreaks…not more. In other words, more violent tornadoes would, if anything, be a sign of “global cooling”, not “global warming”.
Anyone who claims more tornadoes are caused by global warming is either misinformed, pandering, or delusional.
Global Warming
Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work.
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that the only way they can get their computerized climate models to produce the observed warming is with anthropogenic (human-caused) pollution. But they’re not going to find something if they don’t search for it. More than one scientist has asked me, “What else COULD it be?” Well, the answer to that takes a little digging… and as I show, one doesn’t have to dig very far.
But first let’s examine the basics of why so many scientists think global warming is manmade. Earth’s atmosphere contains natural greenhouse gases (mostly water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) which act to keep the lower layers of the atmosphere warmer than they otherwise would be without those gases. Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation — the radiant heat energy that the Earth naturally emits to outer space in response to solar heating. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal, petroleum, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and this is believed to be enhancing the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. As of 2008, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 40% to 45% higher than it was before the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800′s.
It is interesting to note that, even though carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth to exist, there is precious little of it in Earth’s atmosphere. As of 2008, only 39 out of every 100,000 molecules of air were CO2, and it will take mankind’s CO2 emissions 5 more years to increase that number by 1, to 40.
The “Holy Grail”: Climate Sensitivity Figuring out how much past warming is due to mankind, and how much more we can expect in the future, depends upon something called “climate sensitivity”. This is the temperature response of the Earth to a given amount of ‘radiative forcing’, of which there are two kinds: a change in either the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth, or in the infrared energy the Earth emits to outer space.
The ‘consensus’ of opinion is that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is quite high, and so warming of about 0.25 deg. C to 0.5 deg. C (about 0.5 deg. F to 0.9 deg. F) every 10 years can be expected for as long as mankind continues to use fossil fuels as our primary source of energy. NASA’s James Hansen claims that climate sensitivity is very high, and that we have already put too much extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Presumably this is why he and Al Gore are campaigning for a moratorium on the construction of any more coal-fired power plants in the U.S.
You would think that we’d know the Earth’s ‘climate sensitivity’ by now, but it has been surprisingly difficult to determine. How atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems respond to warming is critical, as they are either amplifying the warming, or reducing it. This website currently concentrates on the response of clouds to warming, an issue which I am now convinced the scientific community has totally misinterpreted when they have measured natural, year-to-year fluctuations in the climate system. As a result of that confusion, they have the mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is high, when in fact the satellite evidence suggests climate sensitivity is low.
The case for natural climate change I also present an analysis of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which shows that most climate change might well be the result of….the climate system itself! Because small, chaotic fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems can cause small changes in global average cloudiness, this is all that is necessary to cause climate change. You don’t need the sun, or any other ‘external’ influence (although these are also possible…but for now I’ll let others work on that). It is simply what the climate system does. This is actually quite easy for meteorologists to believe, since we understand how complex weather processes are. Your local TV meteorologist is probably a closet ‘skeptic’ regarding mankind’s influence on climate.
Climate change — it happens, with or without our help
Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore's 'alarmist' climate change film
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/judge-attacks-nine-errors-in-al-gores-alarmist-climate-change-film-6667492.html
11 October 2007
A controversial documentary on climate
change which has been sent to thousands of schools has been criticised by a
High Court judge for being 'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'.
Despite winning lavish praise from the environmental lobby and an Oscar from the film industry, Mr Gore's documentary was found to contain 'nine scientific errors' by the judge.
A High Court judge ruled Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was
'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'
Kent
school governor Stewart Dimmock brought the legal action, claiming the film was
unfit for schools
Ruling that the film could be shown in schools as part of the climate change resource pack, Mr Justice Burton warned it must be accompanied by new guidance notes to balance Mr Gore's partisan views.
The High Court action was brought by a father-of-two who accused Labour of 'brainwashing' children with propaganda.
Kent school governor Stewart Dimmock claimed the film was unfit for schools as it was politically partisan, containing serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'.
Lorry driver and member of the political group, the New Party, Mr Dimmock had sought a court order to ban the documentary after the Government decided to distribute the documentary and four short films to 3,500 schools in February.
Yesterday he said he was delighted with the outcome: "The film contains blatant inaccuracies. It's a political shockumentary, it's not a scientific documentary."
A High Court judge ruled Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was
'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'
Describing the documentary as 'a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film', Mr Justice Burton said it was built round the 'charismatic presence' of the ex vice president 'whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming'.
But he said it might be necessary for the Government to make clear to teaching staff that some of Mr Gore's views were not supported or promoted by the Government, and there was 'a view to the contrary'.
Agreeing that Mr Gore's film was 'broadly accurate' on the subject of climate change, he found that errors had arisen in 'the context of alarmism and exaggeration'.
The judge then set out nine errors in the film which went against current mainstream scientific consensus:
When the judge indicated last week what his findings were likely to be, the Government updated the accompanying guidance to schools.
A Government spokesperson said it was not proposing to make any further comment on the case.
Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore's 'alarmist' climate change film
Last updated at 08:38 11 October 2007controversial documentary on climate change which has been sent to thousands of schools has been criticised by a High Court judge for being 'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'.
Mr Justice Burton said former US vice-president Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, was 'one-sided' and would breach education rules unless accompanied by a warning.
Despite winning lavish praise from the environmental lobby and an Oscar from the film industry, Mr Gore's documentary was found to contain 'nine scientific errors' by the judge.
A High Court judge ruled Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was 'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'
These inconvenient untruths included the claim that the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro were disapearing and solely due to the global warming and that sea levels will rise up to 20 feet in the near future.
Impressed by the film's slick message on climate change, the Government sent copies of the documentary to all secondary schools in England earlier this year, along with two short films and an animation about the carbon cycle produced by Defra.
Ruling that the film could be shown in schools as part of the climate change resource pack, Mr Justice Burton warned it must be accompanied by new guidance notes to balance Mr Gore's partisan views.
The High Court action was brought by a father-of-two who accused Labour of 'brainwashing' children with propaganda.
Kent school governor Stewart Dimmock claimed the film was unfit for schools as it was politically partisan, containing serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'.
Lorry driver and member of the political group, the New Party, Mr Dimmock had sought a court order to ban the documentary after the Government decided to distribute the documentary and four short films to 3,500 schools in February.
Yesterday he said he was delighted with the outcome: "The film contains blatant inaccuracies. It's a political shockumentary, it's not a scientific documentary."
Describing the documentary as 'a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film', Mr Justice Burton said it was built round the 'charismatic presence' of the ex vice president 'whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming'.
But he said it might be necessary for the Government to make clear to teaching staff that some of Mr Gore's views were not supported or promoted by the Government, and there was 'a view to the contrary'.
Agreeing that Mr Gore's film was 'broadly accurate' on the subject of climate change, he found that errors had arisen in 'the context of alarmism and exaggeration'.
The judge then set out nine errors in the film which went against current mainstream scientific consensus:
