Post on 13-Jun-2020
Global Warming Brings
More Tornadoes and also
Less Tornadoes
by Joseph D’Aleo
SPPI Original Paper ! May 29, 2009
2
Global Warming Brings More
Tornadoes and also Less Tornadoes
by Joseph D’Aleo | May 29, 2009 Last year was an active tornado season, the most active this decade. When all was said and done, the calendar year delivered 1691 tornados, with tornados in all but 3 of the lower 48 states.
The active severe weather season and serious spring flooding in the central states was due to the cold La Nina 2007/08 winter and spring (Chicago and Rockford, IL did not reach 90F until September 1, 2008). A cool trough lingered over the wet north central and that helped fire up the thunderstorms that brought the heavy rains and tornadoes. You can see how spring floods and tornadoes are related to the recent COOLING and are more frequent in La Nina years here, here, here and here. The cool spring and summer meant much less need for air conditioning throughout the nation’s central and northern states saving us money, especially in early summer before energy prices collapsed.
3
No Global Warming Surely to Blame
But the media and the alarmists predictably saw it otherwise. Conveniently ignoring the cool temperatures, they jumped on the heavy rains and tornado activity as “consistent” with global warming. Nobelist and Emmy award winning former Vice President Al Gore was the keynote speaker at the 2008 Jefferson Jackson Dinner at Hy‑Vee Hall in Des Moines last October. Gore attributed the historic floods that devastated Iowa in June to man‑made emissions causing more water to evaporate from oceans, increasing average humidity worldwide. “In 66 of your 99 counties, the flood damage was truly historic.” Gore told the crowd of 1,000 Democratic donors. “No one has ever seen a flood like this” (even though it was similar to the flooding in Iowa in 1993). Gore also blamed climate change for increased tornadoes, including the one that leveled much of Parkersburg earlier this year. “Yes, we’ve always had tornadoes in Iowa and in Tennessee,” he said. “But they’re coming more frequently and they’re stronger.” No Al, the trend for strong tornadoes is down even as our ability to detect storms with trained spotters and radar. The storms were most numerous in May, 2008 with 461 tornadoes. The activity dropped off quickly in June as La Nina quickly gave way to a weak El Nino like ocean temperature pattern in the tropical Pacific.
4
This year, we again had a La Nina winter, albeit weaker, but it has been weakening more rapidly this spring.
April 2009’s preliminary number were greater than 2008’s total for April, but with the quicker La Nina demise, there have been less than half the number of tornadoes this May. But year to date, we are right at the normal for the last 5 years.
5
Most of the storms have been so far this year in the south and central. This is typical of early seasons. As the spring evolves into summer, the activity will shift north to the north central.
6
Cedar Hill Texas tornado April 29, 2009 courtesy of Pat Skinner, TTU.
VORTEX2 – The Big Disappointment
An unprecedented $10.5 million dollar effort to understand tornadoes planned to send dozens of scientists into the field May 10 to June 13. Verification Of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment 2 (VORTEX2) is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). VORTEX‑2 is a carefully planned field experiment that will target a potentially tornadic storm and canvass the area with an armada of instruments including radars, mobile vehicles equipped with instruments, instrumented weather balloons, and research aircraft. Researchers from four countries and 19 universities and institutions will fan out and chase tornadoes across South Dakota, western Iowa, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma.
7
VORTEX2 will be the largest and most ambitious attempt to explore tornadoes, their origins, their structure and evolution, and how to increase the accuracy and timeliness of tornado forecasts and warnings.
The infamous Elkhart Indiana double funnel tornado during the Palm Sunday Outbreak in 1965. It was the only F5 tornado that day and it killed 36 people. VORTEX2 has been running for more than two weeks now and has not seen one twister. It is bad timing mostly as had they started April 10, they would have had numerous study cases.
Global Warming Again to Blame for Lack of Activity?
Last week, Weather Channel Senior Meteorologist Stu Ostro speculated that global warming was the cause for the decline in tornadic storms, with the main jet stream up in Canada and a frequent ridge over tornado alley. Stu was formerly a skeptic or at least an agnostic when it came to global warming, despite heavy pressure by the networks producers and high level management to get on board the AGW train. Then he started working with the global warming queen Heidi Cullen, since departed for Climate Central, who stirred great controversy by calling for
8
broadcasters who didn’t accept man‑made global warming to have their broadcast seals revoked. Oh and GE and NBC with the green peacock bought The Weather Channel. Stu became a believer. To be fair Stu did a lot of research and found evidence that the climate had changed since the 1970s (which it has) and allowed himself to believe that man could be responsible. After all, the prestigious climate centers at NASA and NOAA, the national societies and the United Nations said so. As to Stu’s reasoning for a lack of tornadoes this year, a persistent ridge would lead to heat and dryness across the central states. Instead the region has seen progressive troughs and has been hit hard with heavy rainfall and very little warmth (fuel for severe storms). The planting season across the heart of the Corn Belt has been significantly delayed by cool temperatures and saturated soils.
Try again Stu. It is sad how far The Weather Channel has declined. At least Cullen is gone. Actually the sudden dropoff of severe weather around May 10 was predictable as mother nature has a perverse sense of humor. The Gale Project in the winter of 1985/86 to study east coast storms had no east coast storms that winter, just one passing cold front. You just knew that VORTEX2 would lead to a lack of storms
9
to study. We need them to schedule a massive study of hurricanes and we will surely have a dud tropical season.
Conclusion
Count on the alarmists and their cheerleaders in the media to take any unusual weather pattern and blame it on ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’: record cold and heat, flooding rains and drought, storm or lack of storm, lack of snow and record snow. Yet they are quick to accuse the ‘realists’ of cherry picking’ when we point out it there has been no statistically significant warming since the middle 1990s, cooling since 2001, a drop in ocean heat content since at least 2003, slowing sea level rises since 2005 and so forth. Then they claim you need to look at long term trends, there favorite being the changes since 1970, the heart of the last cold period. Some have even gone as far as to claim there was no global cooling/impending ice age scare in the 1960s and 1970s despite special documented CIA warnings and numerous magazine and newspaper accounts of exactly that they can’t wipe from the archives. During the next decade or so, during which the global warming scare will be totally discredited, expect a gradual evolution of the scare tactics, and an attempt at reinventing the history of their movement. Already today, there is a story on how scientists and environmental writers are facing the dilemma of language and framing when they write about this issue in order to effectively communicate the ‘gloom and doom’ with the “ignorant’ masses (Seed Magazine). We can only hope those who have perpetrated this hoax will someday get their well deserved share of blame and pay the appropriate price for their actions.