So 2014 was weather as usual. The "extreme" moniker likely comes from the constituency that is desperately trying to produce causation from human burning of hydrocarbons

The Weather in 2014: Extreme Hysteria but Not Extreme Weather

By Ian Nunn ——Bio and Archives--January 6, 2015

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We have studied tornadoes (Flash Point: A Note on Tornadoes), hurricanes (Flash Point: Hurricanes and Hyperbole), and typhoons (Flash Point: Typhoons in Perspective) in response to the hyperbole over anthropomorphic global warming and climate change and found no evidence of increased activity. With the 2014 data now in, we see how 2014 compared to past years. In addition we address the current "hottest year" hysteria.

Tornadoes

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2014, with 1057 tornadoes recoded ranks the 13th fewest out of 15 years of data (go to Monthly and Annual U.S. Tornado Summaries).

Hurricanes

As noted in Flash Point: Hurricanes and Hyperbole, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) lists the hurricane season in the Atlantic as beginning June 1st and ending November 30th. As it summarizes (emphasis added):

FOR THE 2014 SEASON OVERALL...EIGHT NAMED STORMS FORMED IN THE BASIN. SIX OF THOSE BECAME HURRICANES AND TWO OF THOSE REACHED MAJOR HURRICANE STATUS. IN ADDITION...ONE UNNAMED DEPRESSION FORMED. BASED ON A 1981-2010 CLIMATOLOGY...THE AVERAGE LEVEL OF ACTIVITY IN THE BASIN IS 12 NAMED STORMS...6 HURRICANES...AND 3 MAJOR HURRICANES. FOR 2014...THE NUMBER OF NAMED STORMS WAS BELOW AVERAGE...BUT THE NUMBER OF HURRICANES AND MAJOR HURRICANES WAS NEAR AVERAGE. IN TERMS OF ACCUMULATED CYCLONE ENERGY...WHICH MEASURES THE COMBINED STRENGTH AND DURATION OF TROPICAL STORMS AND HURRICANES...ACTIVITY IN THE BASIN IN 2014 WAS ONLY ABOUT 63 PERCENT OF THE 1981-2010 AVERAGE. So hurricane activity was average for the recent 30-year period but the actual energy of the storms was well below the average. Nothing extreme here. For further commentary and graphs of storm activity read North Atlantic Hurricane Stats For 2014.

Typhoons

As we have noted in the past, typhoon activity data is hard to find. The Weather Underground has an archive but lists data only to 2010. The best source we could find was the database maintained by the Kitamoto Laboratory at the National Institute of Informatics in Japan. From it we produced a summary table of all typhoon and cyclone activity from 1951 to present. Classification of storm by category or wind speed was going to be a laborious task. Instead, we counted the number of typhoons from 2000 to 2014 by year, the same period as for the tornado data. The average yearly number of named storms was 23.53. 2014 was just below the average at 23. In other words, like the Atlantic basin, cyclonic activity in the Western Pacific basins was about average.

The Hottest Year?

Recently there was much media hype over 2014 being "the hottest year on record" (BBC.com: World on course for warmest year, Scientific American: 2014 to Be Hottest Year Ever Measured, CBC: 'Hottest year' record likely for 2014 after warmest October). There are a number of sources for temperature data acquired by different techniques. The one we were waiting for is the satellite measurement of temperature in the lower troposphere (TLT) compiled by Remote Sensing Systems. This is the atmospheric layer that touches the earth's surface. Their data is shown in Figure 1. As an aside, temperature data is usually presented as an anomalous value: that is the difference between the temperature measured and the average global temperature for the entire 20th century (see NOAA FAQ). Figure 1. Global temperature anomaly for 1979 to 2015 as measured by the RSS MSU & AMSU satellite.

A linear regression trend line for the data shows a slight warming trend (0.122 K/decade). The problem with this analysis is that there is no justification for a linear curve to fit the data apart from mathematical convenience. Indeed it is widely acknowledged that there is a 'hiatus' in the warming trend as shown in Figure 2, going back to the early to mid 1990s. A linear trend must also cause problems for those who wish to attribute the warming to anthropogenic CO2 sources since its increase is greater than linear as noted by CO2Now.org: The concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are increasing at an accelerating rate from decade to decade. The latest atmospheric CO2 data is consistent with a continuation of this long-standing trend. And there is no 'hiatus' in CO2 production. Figure 2. A linear regression trend line drawn on the data from Figure 1 for the period 1997 t0 2015

Source: Watts Up With That? and Remote Sensing Systems. But we digress slightly. What we want is to know where 2014 temperatures fall with respect to the recent past. As we can see from Figure 3, they are certainly not as high as others in the recent past although the year end was higher. Figure 3.

Source: Remote Sensing Systems recent history. To get a better picture of 2014 in its entirety in comparison to other years that exhibited high temperatures we go to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. The 6 warmest years on record are shown in Figure 4. The only way to compare them accurately is to integrate the area under each of the curves. However, by inspection, 2014 had the coldest February of the 6 and the warmest final quarter of the six. Clearly 1998 and 2010 were warmer overall as is easily seen by the distance between the black line (2014) and the dark blue (1998) and red (2010) lines. Figure 4. The temperature anomalies associated with the 6 warmest years on record.

Source: NOAA: State of the Climate, November 2014. It confounds us given this data, that NOAA can say: The first 11 months of 2014 was the warmest such period on record, with a combined global land and ocean average surface temperature of 1.22°F (0.68°C) above the 20^th century average of 57.0°F (13.9°C), surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.02°F (0.01°C).

Summary

In terms of storm activity in the form of U.S. tornadoes, Atlantic hurricanes and Pacific cyclones and typhoons, 2014 was average to well below recent averages (last 15 years or more). The media focuses on one-off events that are dramatic such as floods and landslides. Because these are more likely correlated to human activity such as deforestation and urbanization, they can't be correlated with climate change. And we are not aware of any comprehensive database of such events. Temperature-wise the warming hiatus continues. 2014 was a warm year but not the warmest on record. So 2014 was weather as usual. The "extreme" moniker likely comes from the constituency that is desperately trying to produce causation from human burning of hydrocarbons. That is the only extreme aspect of weather reporting in 2014.