According to news reports, Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines a few days ago, is now overshadowing the UN climate summit in Warsaw. Some delegates and climate campaigners have been quick to suggest that global warming was to blame for this disaster. Nothing could be further from the truth. --Benny Peiser,
The Spectator, 12 November 2013
When it comes to cyclones and tropical storms, something quite remarkable has happened this year. The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters had predicted would be more active than normal, turned out to be a complete washout. For the first time in 45 years, no major hurricane made landfall. This year has also been marked by the fewest number of hurricanes since 1982, and the first since 1994 when no major hurricane formed. In fact, it has been one of the weakest hurricane seasons since modern record-keeping began about half a century ago, U.S. weather experts explained. So, how can the same alleged cause, global warming, inhibit hurricanes on one side of the world while triggering typhoons on the other side? --Benny Peiser,
The Spectator, 12 November 2013
Many at the climate conference in Warsaw and around the world see a link between global warming and the devastating typhoon in the Philippines. But several studies point to other causes -- and even more worrisome trends. In its most recent assessment on global warming, released in September, the IPCC stated that there were no identifiable long-term trends when it comes to tropical cyclones, which are also known as hurricanes or typhoons. However, there are fears that the strongest storms could grow even more destructive. --Axel Bojanowski,
Spiegel Online 12, November 2013
Philippine’s President Benigno Aquino dramatically lowered the previous estimated death toll of 10,000 to 2,000 Tuesday, blaming ‘emotional drama’ for the higher figure. “Ten-thousand, I think, is too much,” Aquino told CNN in an interview. “There was emotional drama involved with that particular estimate.” --Nina Golgowski,
New York Daily News, 12 November 2013
Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin... In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low. ----
IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 on weather extremes.
This morning I have been engaged in a Twitter debate with Jeff Sachs, of Columbia Earth Institute, motivated by his tweet as follows. @JeffDSachs: “Increasing Intensity of the Strongest Tropical Cyclones,” published 2008, demonstrated that disasters like Haiyan becoming more common. Unfortunately for Sachs that paper does not show trends significant at the >90% level for the strongest cyclones in the western North Pacific basin (the world’s most active and where Haiyan occurred). The lesson here is that if you are going to pick cherries, make sure that the fruit is not a lemon. --
Roger Pielke Jr. 12 November 2013
