Hurricanes Defying Alarmists

Many global warming alarmists want more destructive weather events to validate their assumptions whether they admit it or not,. But what happens when they can't get their 'dirty weather' as Al Gore calls it? Then they'll just have to define down what a disaster is. ¹ Many years ago, Gore swore that 'the science is extremely clear now.' Global warming was 'magnifying the 'destructive power' of the 'average hurricane,' he said. Man's impact on the environment 'makes the duration, as well as the intensity of the hurricane stronger.'

Climate disaster alarmists: Catastrophic 'hurricanes' or 'extreme weather' events

The weather refused to cooperate with Gore and the US went 11 years without a hurricane making landfall. But Hurricane Matthew renewed the alarmists' faith in their own nonsense. Acting as if 11 days rather than 11 years had passed, Gore said that in Hurricane Matthew, 'Mother Nature is giving us a very clear and powerful message.' Since they were not convincing anyone who wasn't riding along the climate disaster wagon, alarmists needed a new approach. In essence to redefine what a hurricane is so that what had before been tropical storms and hurricanes that didn't make landfall will in the future be catastrophic 'hurricanes' or 'extreme weather' events that they can point to as proof that their fevered dreams are indeed reality. ¹ We were repeatedly told 2020's Atlantic hurricane season was the worst ever. The reporting ignored that almost everywhere else, hurricane intensity was feeble, making 2020 one of the globally weakest in satellite history. And even within the Atlantic, 2020 ranked thirteenth. Because climate news only reports the worst outcomes most people think the damage will be much greater. ² Even though there is no trend in hurricane frequency of intensity, alarmists are trying to get the definition of a hurricane redefined so that the trend will become a positive one. Most hurricane scientists say we will probably be getting Category 4 and 5 hurricanes more frequently in the coming decades. But that hasn't happened so far, and there is no trend for all hurricanes or tropical storms since 1970, if anything, there is slight downward trend ¹ Add to this, 30 peer reviewed studies that show no connection between climate change and hurricanes. ³

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Modern technology is enabling us to locate and measure the full strength of hurricanes that would have escaped detection as recently as 20 years ago

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a consortium of more than 100 member colleges and universities has been tracking the number of cyclones and their energy levels for many years. Inspection of their accumulated cyclone energy graph for the last 40+ years shows no evidence of a higher frequency. (Hurricanes and cyclones are basically the same thing, but are given different names depending on where they appear. Hurricanes are tropical storms that form over the North Atlantic Ocean and Northeast Pacific. Cyclones are formed over the South Pacific and Indian Ocean). ⁴ Modern technology is enabling us to locate and measure the full strength of hurricanes that would have escaped detection as recently as 20 years ago. What's so different today? Only two geostationery satellites tracked hurricanes in 1975. Eight substantially more powerful geostationery satellites track and measure hurricanes today. The new technology not only locates more hurricanes out at sea that would have been missed in the past, but more importantly, is able to pry deeper into the hurricanes themselves to measure maximum wind speeds that escaped detection in the past. As a result, hurricanes measured at Level 3 a few decades ago will now be measured at Level 5 in many cases today.⁵ It is definitely true that the number of detected hurricanes has increased. This is due to better sensing technology, such as radiosondes, regular transoceanic air travel, and satellites. Due to limitations of older data, it doesn't make any sense to consider global dates before 1950. ⁶

References

1. Kerry Jackson, “Warming alarmists redefine what a hurricane is so we'll have more of them” Investors Business Daily, October 17, 2016
2. Bjorn Lomborg, “Enough with the net-zero doublethink', financialpost.com, June 17, 2021
3. Anthony Watts, “30 peer reviewed studies show no connection between climate change and hurricanes,” wattsupwiththat.com, October 14, 2016
4. Klaus E. Kaiser, “Pam and Vanatau,” Canada Free Press, March 16, 2015
5. Christopher W. Landsea et al. “Can we detect trends in extreme tropical cyclones?”, Science 313, 452, June 28, 20
6. Zoe Phin, Global hurricane hours stable or decreasing,” principia- scientific.com, June 22, 2021