MeteorologyNews.com

Global Warming May Reduce Hurricane Frequency

J Michael — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:44:11 +0000

In further research that supports the hypothesis that global warming may reduce damage from hurricanes, NOAA published a preview of upcoming research today (Warmer Ocean Could Reduce Number of Atlantic Hurricane Landfalls). New research indicates that increased ocean temperatures will, as expected, increase wind shear over the oceans which in turn, may reduce the number of landfalling Atlantic hurricanes:

A warming global ocean — influencing the winds that shear off the tops of developing storms — could mean fewer Atlantic hurricanes striking the United States according to new findings by NOAA climate scientists. Furthermore, the relative warming role of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans is important for determining Atlantic hurricane activity. (more…)

Polar Bears “Thriving as the Arctic Warms”

J Michael — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:18:27 +0000

Could it possibly be that polar bears are not as endangered by global climate change as has previously been believed? New research seems to indicate that polar bear populations are thriving in the Arctic, even as the climate warms and ice melts.

A survey of the animals’ numbers in Canada’s eastern Arctic has revealed that they are thriving, not declining, because of mankind’s interference in the environment.

In the Davis Strait area, a 140,000-square kilometre region, the polar bear population has grown from 850 in the mid-1980s to 2,100 today.

(more…)

Hurricanes Frequent in Cooler Times

J Michael — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:21:56 +0000

The complicated connection between climate dynamics and hurricane strength and frequency continues to get more complex with each piece of research that is released.The latest research, as published in the journal “Nature”, indicates that even during periods when ocean waters were cooler, hurricanes were more frequent.

While this doesn’t directly dispute the popular belief that hurricane frequency increases with warmer ocean waters, it certainly complicates things:
(more…)

Weather Channel Founding Meteorologist Slams Station

J Michael — Mon, 21 May 2007 20:23:48 +0000

In a scathing review of how far off track the Weather Channel has gone from it’s original, well-intentioned mission, its first “Director of Meteorology” laments the loss in a piece he recently published online:

It has taken a turn in recent years to being more and more part time weather and part-time “Discovery Channel”. Now with Forecast Earth, advocacy and hype have replaced down to earth real-time weather coverage and forecasting. You don’t get weather when you need it anymore, just when they choose to give it to you. A few years back, they were embarrassed when an outbreak of tornadoes had people tuning to The Weather Channel and finding a special about growing flower bulbs in Holland.

After chronicling specific instances of the skewing of climate change data to the benefit of the alarmist viewpoint, Joe D’Aleo goes on to summarize many meteorologist’s viewpoint of how the channel has morphed over the last couple of decades:

Most people I know in the business of weather say TWC has become unwatchable. I sadly could not agree more.

Epic Drought Strikes Australia

J Michael — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:31:02 +0000

While many articles draw a direct connection between Australia’s ongoing drought and global climate change, the connection is far from solid at this point. But what is clearly understood is that the ongoing and worsening drougt in the interior of Australia is having profound impacts on it’s agriculture, economy, and beyond.

The opening of one article reads like a Hollywood doomsday movie: (more…)

2007 Hurricane Season Forecast: Media Frenzy

J Michael — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:48:46 +0000

Here we go again…another forecast for an “exceptionally active” hurricane season. Last spring, similar forecasts were touted following the horrific 2005 hurricane season. But what went largely unreported regarding last year’s hurricane season was how quiet it ended up being and how horribly incorrect those forecasts were. Obviously we have yet to know how accurate this year’s forecasts will be; only time will tell. At least a few big names are going on record as forecasting another busier-than-average season. I would imagine this will grab plenty of headlines over the coming days:

The Atlantic hurricane season will be exceptionally active this year, according to a British forecasting group, raising the possibility that killer storms like Hurricane Katrina could again threaten the United States.

London-based forecaster Tropical Storm Risk on Tuesday said the six-month season, which begins on June 1, was expected to bring 17 tropical storms, of which nine will strengthen into hurricanes with winds of at least 74 miles per hour. Four of those are expected to become more destructive “intense” hurricanes, TSR said.

The long-term average for the Atlantic is for 10 storms to form during the hurricane season and for six of those to reach hurricane strength.

The article goes to cite the inaccuracies in last year’s forecasts:

The United States emerged unscathed from the 2006 season after it spawned a below-average nine storms, of which five became hurricanes. Experts had universally — and erroneously — predicted 2006 would be a busy year for Atlantic storms.

I have a feeling any article mentioning hurricane forecasts will still remind us of the horrors of the 2005 season, as this one has:

None of the hurricanes hit the United States, bringing welcome relief to beleaguered residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast, where Katrina killed 1,500 people, swamped New Orleans and caused about $80 billion in damage the year before.

As of 5:39pm EST 03/21/07, the article cited in the opening of this post yields 13 ‘related articles’ results from a google news search. Let’s see how this count mushrooms over the coming hours and days. I only wish we could somehow see how many (or rather, how few) headlines would have been created had this forecast been for minimal activity this hurricane season. I guess the absence of headlines following last year’s remarkably quiet season was a good indicator.

That said, I am in agreement with the overall opinion of a higher-than-average hurricane season. Sea surface temperatures are one of the best indicators of hurricane season trends and appear favorable for hurricane development this season. It is not the above-average forecasts themselves that I question, rather the play these will get in the mainstream media. After all, the planet has a fever, folks! Read much more about Al Gore’s senate testimony via Noel Sheppard’s Newsbusters posts here and here.

Technorati Tags: Hurricanes, 2007 Hurricane Forecast, Tropical Meteorology, Extreme Weather, Al Gore

Crazy Ideas to Combat Global Warming?

J Michael — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:51:15 +0000

Crazy indeed. This AP report (Crazy ideas to combat global warming) needs to be saved so that people can laugh even harder when they look back at how bonkos this country has become for global warming:

Crazy-sounding ideas for saving the planet are getting a serious look from top scientists, a sign of their fears about global warming and the desire for an insurance policy in case things get worse.

How crazy?

There’s the man-made “volcano” that shoots gigatons of sulfur high into the air. The space “sun shade” made of trillions of little reflectors between Earth and sun, slightly lowering the planet’s temperature.

The forest of ugly artificial “trees” that suck carbon dioxide out of the air. And the “Geritol solution” in which iron dust is dumped into the ocean.

“Of course it’s desperation,” said Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider. “It’s planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction. It does come out of the pessimism of any realist that says this planet can’t be trusted to do the right thing.”

This one is so good, you just have to read it all. Try to gloss over the dollar figures that have already been spent on these concepts or else you’re likely to get very sad or angry or both.

On Solar Variability and Global Warming

J Michael — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 03:47:43 +0000

It appears as though solar variability is gaining some mainstream media attention in being cited as a likely impetus for terrestrial climate change. But for confirmation of this, scientists have now begun to look beyond the Earth to other areas of our solar system. Most recently, research on the climate of Mars has confirmed warming that appears to be mirroring that of the Earth. Is my SUV destroying the climate of Mars too? As published by National Geographic, (Mars melt hints at solar, not human, cause for warming, scientist says) recent work citing solar variability as a primary cause of climate change here on Earth is gaining traction:

“Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,” Abdussamatov said.

By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.

Abdussamatov is not alone in citing solar variability - fluctuating energy output from the sun - as a major factor in the Earth’s climate. Just last month, research published by NewScientist explores evidence of a relationship between solar variability and the ice age cycles on Earth (Sun’s fickle heart may leave us cold). Work completed by George Ehrlich of Geoge Mason University concludes:

There’s a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years - exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth. So says a physicist who has created a computer model of our star’s core…

The article discusses many of the oscillations that control the temperature of the sun’s surface:

Ehrlich’s model shows that whilst most of these oscillations cancel each other out, some reinforce one another and become long-lived temperature variations. The favoured frequencies allow the sun’s core temperature to oscillate around its average temperature of 13.6 million kelvin in cycles lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years. Ehrlich says that random interactions within the sun’s magnetic field could flip the fluctuations from one cycle length to the other.

These two timescales are instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Earth’s ice ages: for the past million years, ice ages have occurred roughly every 100,000 years. Before that, they occurred roughly every 41,000 years.

For details, check out the full text of Ehrlich’s research. While recent work has explored a correlation between solar variability and terrestrial climate cycles, none have explored the potential mechanism until now, writes Ehrlich in his abstract:

A theory is described based on resonant thermal diffusion waves in the sun that appears to explain many details of the paleotemperature record for the last 5.3 million years. These include the observed periodicities, the relative strengths of each observed cycle, and the sudden emergence in time for the 100 thousand year cycle. Other prior work suggesting a link between terrestrial paleoclimate and solar luminosity variations has not provided any specific mechanism. The particular mechanism described here has been demonstrated empirically, although not previously invoked in the solar context.

Work published in Science Magazine in 2001 (Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene) cites specific influences of solar variability on the climate of the North Atlantic:

Surface winds and surface ocean hydrography in the subpolar North Atlantic appear to have been influenced by variations in solar output through the entire Holocene.

Bond et al. confirm the likelyhood that the particular influence on the North Atlantic may have been transmitted globally:

The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the solar signals and transmitting them globally.

Given that the sun has a profound impact on the climate of the globe, it naturally follows that any solar variability to influence the Earth’s climate in one location will have its affects felt throughout the globe.

Global Warming: What we don’t know

J Michael — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:46:17 +0000

What do we know about global warming - about the state of our climate? When it comes down to it, we don’t know that much. Attempting to simulate the behavior of our atmosphere via quantitative (computer) models has proven an incredibly challenging endeavour. The complexities involved in such a task are only now beginning to be appreciated by some, as noted in a great NYPost piece (Not that Simple) by Roy W. Spencer, a research scientist with the National Space Science and Technology Center:

Contrary to popular accounts, very few scientists in the world - possibly none - have a sufficiently thorough, “big picture” understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming. To the public, we all might seem like experts, but the vast majority of us work on only a small portion of the problem.

Mr. Spencer summarizes the current state of climate research very concisely:

I believe that when the stabilizing effects of precipitation systems are better understood and included into the models, predictions of global warming will be scaled back. Despite current inadequacies, climate models are still our best tools for forecasting global warming. Those tools just aren’t sharp enough yet.

So what gives - Spencer must be some shill for big oil, right? Well, ExxonSecrets - a site devoted to ” Documenting Exxon-Mobil’s funding of climate change skeptics” has a page devoted to him…but it simply displays his valid qualifications. Can anyone indicate where any of his research is flawed, or is this yet another ad hominem attack because Spencer doesn’t toe the line on athropogenic climate change? Roy Spencer is certainly qualified when it comes to speaking about climate change (per the NYPost article):

Roy W. Spencer is principal research scientist at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala. He is also U.S. team leader for the AMSR-E instrument flying on NASA’s Terra satellite.

Delaware Rebukes State Climatologist

J Michael — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:35:40 +0000

The state of Delaware has rebuked their state climatologist, attempting to distance themselves (or at least the Governor is) from their “state climatologist” over disagreements in the state’s official stance on global warming.

WILMINGTON, Del. — Gov. Ruth Ann Minner has directed Delaware’s state climatologist to stop using his title in public statements on climate change, citing a clash of views on global warming and confusion over the position’s ties to the administration.

Minner, who made the directive in a letter, described the move as a way to “clarify” the role of David R. Legates, a prominent skeptic of views that human activities are warming the planet and triggering climate shifts. “Your views on climate change, as I understand them, are not aligned with those of my administration,” Minner wrote.

The governor attempts to place blame on the “confusion” of the title and rather than simply making the title more official, the decision was made to drop the title all together (emphasis mine):

“In light of my position and due to the confusion surrounding your role with the state, I am directing you to offer any future statements on this or other public policy matters only on behalf of yourself or the University of Delaware,” Minner wrote, “and not as state climatologist.”

Legates, who could not be reached Wednesday, has not returned phone calls since The News Journal published articles about his position on climate change. His title was accepted by the American Association of State Climatologists and the National Climatic Data Center, and acknowledged by Minner and the university’s provost in 2005. But Legates received no appointment or state money to support his office at the University of Delaware, where he is also a professor of geography. His position as climatologist carries no state authority.

Legates also served as an unpaid “adjunct scholar” with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and had a paper published by that group arguing that science “does not support” claims of drastic warming or human influence on weather or climate shifts. He has previously referred to global warming arguments as “climate alarmism.”

So in summary, the state climatologist - the one with the science degree(s) - has been rebuked for his views on science. This is porbably beginning to sound a little familiar. This is now the second of such occurances following the January dismissal of Oregon’s state climatologist who also disagreed with the governor on climate change issues, stating simply:

“There are a lot of people saying the bulk of the warming of the last 50 years is due to human activities and I don’t believe that’s true.” He believes natural cycles explain most of the changes the earth has seen.“

Which of these governors has formal education in meteorology or climatology?