Archives par mot-clé : Hurricanes

Scientists Throw Cold Water On Claims Linking Hurricane Florence To Global Warming

by M. Bastasch, September 19, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Hurricane Florence made landfall on Friday in North Carolina, bringing heavy rains and flooding. But before the storm touched down in the U.S., scientists and news outlets were already linking the storm to global warming.

However, not all scientists agree that man-made warming is making hurricanes, including Florence, bigger, slower and wetter as is often claimed in the media.

Climatologist Judith Curry called efforts by the “mainstream climate community” to link Florence to man-made global warming “woefully inadequate and misleading to scientists, the public and policymakers.”

Hurricane Florence is not climate change or global warming. It’s just the weather.

by Roy W. Spencer, September 15, 2018 in USAToday


Even before Hurricane Florence made landfall somewhere near the border of North and South Carolina, predicted damage from potentially catastrophic flooding from the storm was already being blamed on global warming.

Writing for NBC News, Kristina Dahl contended, “With each new storm, we are forced to question whether this is our new, climate change-fueled reality, and to ask ourselves what we can do to minimize the toll from supercharged storms.”

The theory is that tropical cyclones have slowed down in their speed by about 10 percent over the past 70 years due to a retreat of the jet stream farther north, depriving storms of steering currents and making them stall and keep raining in one location. This is what happened with Hurricane Harvey in Houston last year.

But like most claims regarding global warming, the real effect is small, probably temporary, and most likely due to natural weather patterns …