Archives par mot-clé : Extreme events

Where Have All The Disasters Gone?

by W. Essenbach, Oct 14, 2021 in WUWT


I read today that the EU is using an estimate of US$68 per tonne of CO2 emissions for the purported cost of the damages done by CO2. This is known by a Newspeak term as the “Social Cost Of Carbon”.

It made me wonder—using this estimate, what is the overall total estimated damage done by humans from emitting CO2?

The answer is $97 TRILLION dollars since 1950.

YIKES! That’s about five times the 2020 US Gross Domestic Product (the value of everything produced in the US during that year).

So I thought I’d take a look at the various largest weather-related disasters. I got the big-disaster data from Wikipedia here and arranged it by type of disaster. All values are in 2020 dollars, that is to say, they’re adjusted for inflation. Here is the result.

Températures extrêmes et foehn – Démonter le mythe des ‘dômes de chaleur’

by B. Van Vliet-Lanoë et J. Van Vliet, 27 août 2021, in ScienceClimat Energie


EN GUISE DE CONCLUSIONS

Les températures extrêmes observées en juin 2021 en Colombie britannique et dans le Nord-Ouest américain s’expliquent quantitativement et de manière classique par le gradient vertical de 9,8 K/km de l’adiabatique sèche, associé à une baisse d’altitude de 2 km, par l’intermédiaire d’un phénomène de foehn autocatalytique.Les concepts de « dôme de chaleur » et de Global Warming ne sont donc d’aucune utilité pour interpréter les observations. 

De manière plus générale, le phénomène de foehn peut être déclenché par la présence de hautes pressions dans le voisinage d’une chaîne de montagnes. La chaîne des Montagnes Rocheuses est particulièrement sujette à ces phénomènes depuis la Colombie britannique jusqu’à la Californie, mais elle est loin d’être la seule, comme le montre le Tableau 13. Le vent de foehn chaud et sec favorise également les incendies de forêts.

La genèse des hautes pressions peut résulter du passage d’ondes planétaires, mais également du passage d’AMP en provenance du vortex polaire. Ce dernier est particulièrement renforcé lorsque le vent solaire – ou l’activité aurorale qui lui est équivalente – faiblit, comme c’est le cas entre la fin d’un cycle solaire et la montée de l’activité du cycle suivant (Schlamminger 1990). Ceci explique pourquoi les hautes pressions et les vagues de froid sont particulièrement intenses au début du cycle solaire, comme déjà observé entre 2009 et 2013, et comme attendu entre 2019 et 2023. Il est donc probable que les phénomènes extrêmes et les incendies de forêts se poursuivront dans les 2 ou 3 années qui viennent. 

Enfin, les différents phénomènes physiques évoqués se situent non pas dans un contexte de réchauffement, mais bien dans un contexte de refroidissement global qui a démarré avec le 21ème siècle (van Vliet 2020) et que le printemps froid et l’été pluvieux de 2021 rendent particulièrement visible en Belgique, en France, en Angleterre et en Allemagne.

Dans cet article, une analyse quantitative simple nous a conduit à la conclusion que les températures extrêmes et les feux de forêt sont d’origine naturelle : l’homme n’y est donc pour rien, sauf pour la gestion de la couverture végétale et … l’allumage. Il est faux de juger l’homme coupable comme le font systématiquement l’ONU et le GIEC.

Oser prétendre que la transition énergétique améliorera cette situation relève d’une alliance contre nature entre le monde politique, le marketing insensé des énergies renouvelables et la propagande écologiste.

Criminal Negligence? Authorities Failed To Heed Flood Warnings…”Let People Drown”…”Monumental System Failure”

by P. Gosselin, July 17, 2021 in WUWT/NTZ


Harsh criticism of German authorities failing to act is mounting in the aftermath of the recent deadly floods.

Germany’s New Orleans

Many of the over one hundred people died in the recent flood disaster in Central Western Germany could have been prevented – had the responsible institutions heeded the warnings that had been already issued days in advance by the weather services. Authorities had been warned days early, yet they did nothing to prepare to evacuate and mobilize resources. The media did nothing to warn.

Veteran meteorologist: “much could have been prevented”

Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann told in a PULS 24 interview that “much of it could have been prevented” and that “people could have been warned”.

“The rainfall could not have been prevented” but the authorities and the “media could have warned the population.” The veteran Swiss meteorologist is surprised by the “surprise of the authorities” and says “people could have been evacuated or at least items moved to higher floors”.

Let people drown” as “they broadcast shit”

Kachelman also commented to Germany’s leading national dailyBild: “It hurts when the very people who would have the resources to accompany such a weather situation 24/7 do nothing to save lives. But they broadcast shit and let people drown.”

Unpreparedness becoming a German habit

CO2 Cyclone Doomsday Flat Out Refuted: 170 Years “Absolutely No Trend” In Hurricane Intensity/Frequency

by P. Gosselin, May, 22, 2021 in NoTricksZone


The latest comes from statistics expert, Zoe Phin, who looks at the alarmists’ claim that increasing CO2 emissions are leading to more frequent and intense Atlantic hurricanes.

Alarmist claims cost nothing, and so easily made. Zoe Phin looks at whether the hurricane alarmist claim holds up.

Frequency

First Zoe looked at the (HURDAT2) data to find out if the first of the two claims (increasing frequency) is true. At first glance it would appear so.

But Zoe asks if the method of measuring the frequency really is sensible and if it maybe weren’t better to measure the amount of time the Atlantic spends in hurricane mode? To find out, Zoe plotted the hurricane hours data and the 10-year moving average:

Source: Zoe Phin.

….

Climate Catastrophe In The 17thC – Geoffrey Parker

by P. Homewood, Apr 9, 2021 in NotaLotofPeoppleKnowThat


 

 

Amazon’s blurb sets the scene:

Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides – the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were not only unprecedented, they were agonisingly widespread.  A global crisis extended from England to Japan, and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa. North and South America, too, suffered turbulence. The distinguished historian Geoffrey Parker examines first-hand accounts of men and women throughout the world describing what they saw and suffered during a sequence of political, economic and social crises that stretched from 1618 to the 1680s. Parker also deploys scientific evidence concerning climate conditions of the period, and his use of ‘natural’ as well as ‘human’ archives transforms our understanding of the World Crisis. Changes in the prevailing weather patterns during the 1640s and 1650s – longer and harsher winters, and cooler and wetter summers – disrupted growing seasons, causing dearth, malnutrition, and disease, along with more deaths and fewer births. Some contemporaries estimated that one-third of the world died, and much of the surviving historical evidence supports their pessimism.

 

 

Amongst these catastrophic events, Parker lists:

 

Early 17thC

1) West Africa, from the Sahel in the north to Angola in the south, suffered a prolonged drought between 1614 and 1619.

2) Catalonia suffered “the year of the flood” in 1617.

3) All Europe experienced an unusually cold winter in 1620/21, when many rivers froze so hard for 3 months that they could bear the weight of loaded carts; even the Bosphorus froze, an unheard of event.

4) Japan suffered its coldest spring of the century in 1616, while the sub tropical region of Fujian in China had heavy snowfall two years later, another extremely rare event.

5) Droughts in five years out of six between 1616 and 1621 almost the destroyed the new colonies in Virginia.

6) After a few better years, the summer of 1627 in Europe was the wettest for 500 years, followed by the “year without a summer” in 1628, when it was so cold that many crops never ripened.

7) Between 1629 and 1632, much of Europe suffered excessive rains, followed by drought.

8) Conversely, northern India suffered a “perfect drought” in 1630/31, followed the next year by catastrophic floods.

Parker notes that “all of these regions experienced dramatic falls in population

New Study: 100-Year Flood Events Have Decreased Globally Since 1970

by  K. Richard, Apr 6, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch


In contrast to alarming claims about rare, 100-year flood events now occurring every few years due to global warming, scientists have determined the exact opposite is more likely true.

Not only have flood frequencies declined globally in the last 50 years, but the probability of a 100-year flood event is now so rare it has only been occurring once every 358 years on average since 1970.

According to the IPCC, there has been no clear evidence of a global-scale increase in flood magnitude or frequency in the last century (Hodgkins et al., 2017).

A new study (Slater et al., 2021) suggests that claims of flood magnitude, frequency, and probability dramatically increasing with global warming can be “misleading” if they use a stationary calculation approach instead of continually updating significant changes over time.

These scientists, using “observed annual maximum daily streamflow” records and a “nonstationary approach,” concluded there has been no obvious global-scale trend in 20-, 50-, and 100-year flood magnitude since 1970, with 100-year flood events defined as “flows of a given exceedance probability in each year.

NOAA’s Climate Disaster Claims Are A Sham

by C. Rotter, Feb 20, 2021 in WUWT


When a hurricane hits a populated stretch of coast, which is almost invariably, it is inevitable losses will be big. But while last year was a busy year for hurricanes, we do know that the frequency of US hurricanes has not been unusual in the last decade, and if anything the long term trend is down. (Though it is worth noting that the 1980s and 90s were below average, making the choice of 1980 as a start date statistically inappropriate):

De Telegraaf Misled By UN Disaster Report Researcher

by P. Homewood, Oct 20, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


You will all recall the latest UN report, which claimed there had been a massive rise in “reported disasters” in the last two decades, compared to the previous two.

The Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, published an article in response complaining that the UN were not comparing like with like, because many smaller disasters were simply never recorded in the past. They also published this reply from Joris van Loenhout, researcher at the Belgian Centre  for  Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters  (CRED):

“From about 1960-1970 onward, the completeness of the data is much greater, and the share of missing disasters much smaller. We are constantly working to improve completeness, and this is also happening for previous years and decades. For this reason, statements made in 2004 and 2006 are now somewhat outdated, as the completeness of the database has since improved,”

 I have now had time to analyse CRED’s database, EM-DAT, and have the figures to show that Loenhout has not been telling the truth.

 

In their 2004 report, “Thirty Years of Natural Disasters”, CRED included this table of the number of natural disasters:

PBS Blames Hurricanes, Wildfires On Climate Change, Defying UN ‘Consensus’

by H.S. Burnett, August 20, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch


PBS News Hour attacked climate science this weekend, publishing alarmist claims about hurricanes and wildfires that defy findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In an interview between PBS reporter Hari Sreenivasan and Andrew Freedman, editor of Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang, the two journalists blamed global warming for severe wildfires and hurricanes.

According to the IPCC, however, there is little or no evidence indicating global warming is impacting hurricanes or drought.

Figure 1: Total wildfire acreage burned by year in the United States, 1926 to 2019. Data from NIFC. Graph by meteorologist Anthony Watts

ANTARCTIC FRONT TO DELIVER “ONE-IN-15-YEAR WEATHER EVENT” TO NEW SOUTH WALES

by Cap Allon, August 20, 2020 in Electroverse


People do the best they can with the information they have, but it appears to me, and Charles Bukowski, that the problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubt, while the stupid people are full of confidence.

HEAVY SNOW is set to bury large swathes of NSW and the ACT over the next few days in what the Bureau of Meteorology is calling a “one-in-15-year weather event”, and what Electroverse posits is an addition to the ever-mounting pile of evidence which suggests anthropogenic global warming is a politicized, data-spun lie.

A large mass of Antarctic air is on course to blast the eastern half of Australia with blizzards, wild winds, and record-breaking low temperatures as it breaks-away from the ice continent and rides anomalously-far north on the back of a weak & wavy (meridional) jet stream (a phenomenon associated with the historically low solar activity we’re currently receiving).

A method has been developed to study extreme space weather events

by SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SKOLTECH), August 15, 2020 in WUWT/Rotter


Scientists at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), together with colleagues from the Karl-Franzens University of Graz & the Kanzelhöhe Observatory (Austria), Jet Propulsion Laboratory of California Institute of Technology (USA), Helioresearch (USA) and Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia) developed a method to study fast Coronal Mass Ejections, powerful ejections of magnetized matter from the outer atmosphere of the Sun. The results can help to better understand and predict the most extreme space weather events and their potential to cause strong geomagnetic storms that directly affect the operation of engineering systems in space and on Earth. The results of the study are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Coronal Mass Ejections are among the most energetic eruptive phenomena in our solar system and the main source of major space weather events. Huge clouds of plasma and magnetic flux are ejected from the atmosphere of the Sun into the surrounding space with speeds ranging from 100 to 3500 km/s. These gigantic solar plasma clouds and the accompanying powerful shock waves can reach our planet in less than a day, causing severe geomagnetic storms posing hazards to astronauts and technology in space and on Earth.

One of the strongest Space Weather events occurred in 1859 when the induced geomagnetic storm collapsed the whole telegraph system in North America and Europe, the main means of communication for business and personal contacts in those days.

First Time In 70 Years No Pacific Typhoon Forms In July… Alarmists Alarmed Typhoon Trend Falling!

by P. Gosselin, Ausgust 1, 2020 in NoTricksZone


This year is the first time since 1951 the Pacific sees no typhoons in the month of July. Typhoons have seen downward trend since 1951. 

Global warming alarmists like to claim that tropical storms will intensify and become more frequent unless people stop using fossil fuels.

And recently these alarmists have had our attention steered to the Atlantic basin, where tropical storms this year have seen quite an active season thus far.

Another reason the focus has been on the Atlantic is because very little has been happening in terms of Pacific typhoons, and the alarmists don’t want to talk about that.

In fact this July is the first July to have seen no typhoons formed in the Pacific at all since statistics on this began in 1951, according to the data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

Data source: JMA, here and here

Normally between 3 to 4 typhoons form in the Pacific in July. Up to 8 have formed in the past, e.g. on 2017 and 1971. But this year July failed to see a single typhoon form – the first time this has occurred since 1951.

UK State Of The Climate Report 2019

by P. Homewood, April 16, 2020 In NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


London, 16 April: The floods that affected northern England in the autumn of 2019 were nothing out of the ordinary. That’s according to a new review of the UK’s 2019 weather.

Author Paul Homewood says that although rainfall in the region was high, it has been exceeded several times in the past, right back to the 19th century.

Key findings

* After a rising trend between the 1980s and early 2000s, temperature trends have stabilised in the UK.

* Heatwaves are not becoming more intense, but extremely cold weather has become much less common.

* There is little in the way of long-term trends in rainfall in England and Wales.

* Sea-level rise around British coasts is not accelerating.

The UK’s Weather in 2019: More of the same, again (PDF)

Britain’s Floods Have Nothing To Do With Climate Chang

by J. Delingpole, February 19, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Boris Johnson’s Greenest Government Evah has come up with a brilliant new excuse to duck its responsibilities for all the floods now swamping parts of Britain: climate change ate our homework.

From Hereford to Shrewsbury and South Wales to North Yorkshire, swathes of Britain are underwater thanks to flooding in the aftermath of Storm Dennis, which so far has claimed five lives.

There are currently more than 400 flood warnings around Britain, with more heavy rain forecast to come.

But the government has effectively absolved itself of responsibility by pinning the blame on ‘climate change.’

Environment Secretary George ‘Useless’ Eustice has said in an interview with LBC radio that the scale of the flooding is due to the ‘nature of climate change.’

Sir James Bevan, the chief executive of the Environment Agency, has gone a step further by blaming ‘the climate emergency.’

None of this is true. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that these floods are anything other than an entirely normal, cyclical event which has been repeated many times over many centuries — with or without the contribution of anthropogenic CO2.

Also : TWO NAMED STORMS HIT THE UK WITHIN TWO SUCCESSIVE WEEKENDS — “CLIMATE CHANGE TO BLAME!” BARK THE ILL-INFORMED

Despite 1990s Warming, Japan Climate Has Become More Agreeable, Less Extreme Over Past 100 Years!

by Kirye, January 9, 2020 in NoTricksZone


Though the media like to tell their audience that man-made climate change is leading to more extreme weather, the data don’t support it. In fact, one could easily argue that Japan’s climate is more agreeable today.

No trend in long-term annual precipitation

Over the past 100 years, for example, annual precipitation has not trended in an particular direction over the long term, showing rather some cyclical attributes:

 

Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). 

If anything, precipitation has been rather steady for the better part of the past 2 decades, and even resembles what was observed about 60 years ago, in the 1950s.

Note how the extremes in precipitation occurred in the 1970s and 1980s when most of the climate talk was about global cooling. But overall, there’s been no trend change in precipitation in Japan.

Typhoons trending downward modestly!

Climate Change, Lies And The Lancet

by P. Homewood, January 7, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch


The Lancet has published its latest annual report on health and climate change, which inevitably orders us to stop using fossil fuels or the kids will get it!

It is the usual load of overhyped rubbish of the sort we have seen in previous years.

The executive summary contains a number of questionable claims and statements which seriously undermine the report’s integrity and reliability.

For a start, it claims that ‘a child born today will experience a world that is more than four degrees warmer than the pre-industrial average.’

Really? A temperature rise of three degrees in 50 years or so? Even the highly discredited climate models don’t regard this as realistic. For the Lancet to state this as a bald-faced fact calls into question the objectivity of its contents.

It then proceeds to list all sorts of ways in which health is already being impacted by climate change, including disease transmission, air pollution, extreme weather (which apparently will affect women more – yes, that’s got me and all!), wildfires, heatwaves and goodness knows what else.

Yet, tucked away in Figure 5 is the dirty little secret that mortality rates from climate-related causes have been plummeting since 1990.

Another year, and still no increase in severe U.S. tornadoes

by P. Homewood, December 27, 2019 in WUWT


Climate scientists love to blame every bad weather event on global warming. Yet we never hear them cite climate change for the relative absence of bad weather!

One such example are tornadoes in the US, where we now have several decades of carefully collated data.

With the year near an end, we know that the number of tornadoes has been above average this year, though well below 2008 and 2011. Primarily this is due to several outbreaks in February and April:

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data

A Critique of the Fourth National Climate Assessment

by Robert W. Endlich, December 18, 2018 in CAtmSciForum


In describing the errors in the Fourth National Climate Assessment, ‘NCA4’, I’ll use the words from the Executive Summary which purport to link climate changes in the USA to global climate change.

The first claim, “The last few years have also seen record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes,“ is shown to be false, simply by examining climate records, some from the National Climate Data Center.

Tornadoes have been decreasing over the past six decades as temperatures moderate from the significant cooling of the 1940s to 1970s.  As a basic knowledge of meteorology teaches, it is the pole to equator temperature difference that drives the intensity of cold season storms and especially the spring-season storms which bring the extremely strong tornado outbreaks.

Figure 1.  Annual count of strong to violent tornadoes from 1954-2014, showing a significant decrease of tornado activity the past 60 years, based on data from NOAAs Storm Prediction Center. [Note: This graphic replaces the original graphic that showed all tornadoes EF1 and stronger. Correction made 1/25/2019].

Extremes

by Judith Curry, June14, 2019 in WUWT


Politics versus science in attributing extreme weather events to manmade global warming.

If you follow me on twitter, you may have noticed that I was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Jun 12 [link].  The subject of the Hearing is Contending with Natural Disasters in the Wake of Climate Change.

Late on Jun 10, I received an email telling me that the Hearing is postponed (as yet unscheduled).  Apparently the Committee finds it more urgent to have a Hearing related to holding the Attorney General and Secretary of Commerce in contempt of Congress [link].  Interesting to ponder that Congressional procedural issues are deemed to be more important than Climate Change.

So I spent all last week working on my testimony (which is why there have been no new blog posts).  I hope the Hearing will eventually happen (Michael Mann is also scheduled to testify).

Hurricanes and climate change constitute a major portion of my testimony.  You may recall my recent series  on Hurricanes & climate change [link].  Specifically with regards to detection and attribution, my bottom line conclusion was:

“In summary, the trend signal in hurricane activity has not yet had time to rise above the background variability of natural processes. Manmade climate change may have caused changes in hurricane activity that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of these changes compared to estimated natural variability, or due to observational limitations. But at this point, there is no convincing evidence that manmade global warming has caused a change in hurricane activity.”

Roy Spencer: Why so many tornadoes this year? It’s not what AOC, Bernie Sanders (or maybe even you) think

by Charles the moderator, May 29, 2019 in WUWT


By Roy Spencer | Fox News

Progressive politicians like Al Gore, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.N.Y., don’t hesitate to blame any kind of severe weather – even if it is decreasing over time – on global warming.

With the devastating Dayton, Ohio tornadoes fresh on our minds, it is useful to examine exactly why (modest) global warming has produced fewer – not more – of such events.

The simple answer is that tornado formation requires unusually cool air.

Very few thunderstorms produce tornadoes. In the hot and humid tropics, they are virtually unheard of. The reason why is that (unlike hurricanes) tornadoes require strong wind shear, which means wind speed increasing and changing direction with height in the lower atmosphere.

These conditions exist only when a cool air mass collides with a warm air mass. And the perfect conditions for this have existed this year as winter has refused to lose its grip on the western United States. So far for the month of May 2019, the average temperature across the U.S. is close to 2 degrees Fahrenheit below normal.

Scientists Find No Human Impact On Extreme Rainfall Events In Southeastern Australia…Rather ENSO Related

by P. Gosselin, May 21, 2019 in NoTricksZone


A new study appearing in the Journal of Weather and Climate Extremes titled “Historical extreme rainfall events in southeastern Australia” – led by LindenAshcroft, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne – shows that even more extreme weather in terms of rainfall existed before 1900 in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide.

No real trend when examining Sydney, Australia data going back 178 years. Image: Ashcroft et al 2019.

Moreover, the authors found a “moderate and relatively stable relationship between El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and annual variations of total rainfall and the number of raindays.”

40-Year Meteorologist Says Public “Being Fed Bill Of Goods” By Climate Alarmists On Hurricanes, Tornadoes

by P. Gosselin, April 14, 2019 in NoTricksZone


At the latest Saturday Summary at Weatherbell Analytics, Joe Bastardi, a well-known 40-year veteran of meteorology, looks at tornadoes and hurricanes.

Although many meteorologists and climatologists confirm that there is no data suggesting global warming is causing more frequent and intense tornado and hurricane activity, there is a small but influential alarmist group who claim otherwise. And it’s no surprise who the click-baiting media parrot at maximum volume.

Landfalling hurricanes downward trend

At the 5:45 mark, Joe presents a chart depicting the frequency of US landfalling hurricanes since 1900:

 

BBC Repeat Fake Extreme Weather Disaster Claims

by P. Homewood, February 9, 2019 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


Politicians and policymakers have failed to grasp the gravity of the environmental crisis facing the Earth, a report claims.

The think-tank IPPR says human impacts have reached a critical stage and threaten to destabilise society and the global economy.

Scientists warn of a potentially deadly combination of factors.

These include climate change, mass loss of species, topsoil erosion, forest felling and acidifying oceans.

The report from the centre-left Institute for Public Policy Research says these factors are “driving a complex, dynamic process of environmental destabilisation that has reached critical levels.

“This destabilisation is occurring at speeds unprecedented in human history and, in some cases, over billions of years.”

The IPPR warns that the window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic outcomes is rapidly closing.

The authors urge three shifts in political understanding: on the scale and pace of environmental breakdown; the implications for societies; and the subsequent need for transformative change.

​They say since 2005, the number of floods across the world has increased by 15 times, extreme temperature events by 20 times, and wildfires seven-fold.

At least climate change features in policy discussions, they say – but other vitally important impacts barely figure.

What issues are being under-played?