This has been an unusually mild year in Tornado Alley, which is good news, of course, for the people who live here, but a little frustrating to scientists who planned to chase twisters as part of a $10 million research project.
“You’re out there to do the experiment and you’re geared up every day and ready. And when there isn’t anything happening, that is frustrating,” said Don Burgess, a scientist at the University of Oklahoma. But he was quick to add that he is pleased the relative quiet has meant fewer injuries and less damage.
Nationwide, there were 826 tornadoes this year through June 30, compared with an average of 934 for the same period during the previous three years, according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla. Most twisters strike in Tornado Alley, which generally extends from Texas and Oklahoma to Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.
During a remarkable 17-day lull from mid-May through early June, there were no tornado watches issued anywhere in the United States. And that is typically the height of the season in Tornado Alley.
“It was very, very unusual,” said Joe Schaefer, director of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, which, like the Severe Storms lab, operates under the National Weather Service.
Meteorologists are attributing the relative calm not to anything dire, like global warming, but to the shifts in the jet stream that happen from time to time. When the jet stream runs south to north in the spring over the central states, there are usually plenty of tornadoes. When it’s more west to east, as it is this year, tornadoes are less common.
The serenity has proved exasperating for people like Burgess and other researchers working on Vortex2, a project funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study tornadoes in May and June. Except for one twister in Wyoming, the researchers were left with little to examine. The relative calm follows a horrific 2008, when 1,304 tornadoes and 121 deaths were recorded by the end of June. In all of last year, there were 1,691 tornadoes and 126 deaths.
Organizers of Vortex2 had hoped that a close-up look at killer storms this year by more than 100 scientists and assistants from various universities and the government would help them forecast storms more accurately and increase warning times. “There weren’t any tornadoes to find,” said Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist with the Severe Storms Laboratory. And when tornadoes did form, only a couple of funnel clouds would appear at a time, not the dozens that can materialize.
“No long tracks, massive killer tornadoes,” Schaefer said. “They’ve been coming in onesies and twosies.” Even in this quiet year, there have been devastating storms. The worst tornado hit the night of Feb. 10 in Lone Grove, Okla., killing eight people in a mobile home park. Also in February, one person died when a twister destroyed a church and mobile homes in Hickory Grove, Ga. Through the end of June, tornadoes had killed 21 people nationwide. “If we get rid of the February outbreak, it’s been a fairly good year,” Schaefer said. Read full story here.
Although there has been some high heat in the southern Plains and most recently the southwest, for many areas of the lower 48 states, unless August turns around big time, it may be remembered as “a year without a summer.” After some early heat with 92F in April, Central Park peaked at 86F in May, just 84F in June and so far in July 86F. As of the 28th, June/July ranked as the second coldest since 1869 behind only 1881. It may slip a little with warmth the last few days. In Boston, the June/July combo will rank 7th coldest in 138 years.
In Chicago, Tom Skilling tells us this July likely to be the first ever not to reach 87F in 139 years of record keeping.
June was below normal in the southwest and all across the northern tier. July for the first three weeks was exceptionally cold, in many places ranking among the top 5 coldest. More seasonable temperatures the last week of the month (especially in the east) will diminish the anomalies a little but the month will end up cold (below with larger image here).
There really has been no heat wave so far in most of the major metropolitan areas, saving on air conditioning but with both chilly temperatures and frequent rains, cutting back on summer beach traffic and outdoor activity. Many experienced forecasters in the Great Lakes and northeast have noted similarities to the volcanic summer of 1992 (more on that next week).
Yet this year, NOAA and the EPA released reports suggesting heat wave frequency was increasing and would continue to do so this century. The reports were based on the IPCC findings but unencumbered by the facts, armed with supercharged models and emboldened by an alarmist administration, the authors made even more extreme even ridiculous claims.
ONE CLAIM - HEAT WAVES INCREASING
The UN, NOAA and the EPA in their analyses made the following claims:
Widespread changes in extreme temperatures have been observed in the last 50 years. Globally, cold days, cold nights, and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent.
Severe heat waves are projected to intensify in magnitude and duration over the portions of the U.S. where these events already occur, with potential increases in mortality and morbidity, especially among the elderly, young and frail.
REALITY
There is no indication that record heat is increasing in frequency, in fact the data shows a precipitous decline in the number of heat records in recent decades. The early 20th century dominates the heat statistics for the United States and the world.
The presumption that global heat waves and extremes have increased in frequency is not supported by the official government data. NOAA’s NCDC shows that record high temperature by continent have occurred mainly in the 1880s and early 1900s, with only 1 post 1950 (Antarctica in 1974) (below with larger image here).
In the United States, there has been almost a total absence of new statewide records. There was no evidence of extreme warming based on temperature extremes (compiled by Bruce Hall below with larger image here).
See animation of statewide records by decade here.
When examined on a state by state basis, the 1930s jumps out as the warmest decade with 24 state records. 37 records occurred before the 1970s (below with larger image here).
In Des Moines, Iowa, a continental climate far away from any large scale maritime influence, one would expect to see the effects of global warming extremes most. However that is not the case in the peak heat months of June and July. The last record highs in the months of June and July were in 1988. Here again, the 1930s dominate with 33 of the possible 61 record daily highs (below with larger image here).
In Central Park, New York, where urbanization warmth is certainly an issue, the peak warmth again occurred early in the period with 100F days peaking in the 1930s and 1950s and 90F degree days the 1940s, a secondary maximum occurred in the 1990s but the number of extreme heat days with one summer to go has declined this decade (below with larger image here).
The heat was clearly most dominant in the middle of the 20th century with a “secondary” smaller max in recent decades. Here too, there is no evidence of an increasing trend.
See word doc of this introduction here. See a more complete analysis including evidence the models are failing and that morbidity for cold is greater than heat and that overall morbidity for extremes had been declining for decades not increasing here.
Read other takes on this issue by Mark Vogan here and here and Bruce Hall here.
See Climate Depot’s very detailed compilation of cold and snow stories in the story: Climate Fear Promoters Explain Record Cold and Snow: ‘Global warming made it less cool’ - Switch from predictions of ‘climate crisis’ to “global warming made it less cool’ here.
The climate industry is costing taxpayers $79 billion and counting! The Science and Public Policy Institute announces the publication of Climate Money, a study by Joanne Nova revealing that the federal Government has a near-monopsony on climate science funding. This distorts the science towards self-serving alarmism.
Key findings:
The US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Most of this spending was unnecessary.
Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of “global warming” theory and to compete with a lavishly-funded, highly organized climate monopsony. Major errors have been exposed again and again.
Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks, which profit most, are calling for more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 - $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges.
Meanwhile, in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying just $23 million to skeptics - less than a thousandth of what the US government spends on alarmists, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in 2008 alone.
The large expenditure designed to prove the non-existent connection between carbon and climate has created a powerful alliance of self-serving vested interests.
By pouring so much money into pushing a single, scientifically-baseless agenda, the Government has created not an unbiased investigation but a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sound science cannot easily survive the vice-like grip of politics and finance. Says Nova, “For the first time, the numbers from government documents have been compiled in one place. It’s time to start talking of “Monopolistic Science”. It’s time to expose the lie that those who claim “to save the planet” are the underdogs. And it’s time to get serious about auditing science, especially when it comes to pronouncements that are used to justify giant
government programs and massive movements of money.”
Robert Ferguson, SPPI’s president, says: “This study counts the cost of years of wasted Federal spending on the ‘global warming’ non-problem. Government bodies, big businesses and environmental NGOs have behaved like big tobacco: recruiting, controlling and rewarding their own “group-think” scientists who bend climate modeling to justify the State’s near-maniacal quest for power, control, wealth and forced population reduction.“ Joanne Nova, who wrote our study, speaks for thousands of scientists in questioning whether a clique of taxpayer-funded climate modelers are getting the data right, or just getting the “right” data. Are politicians paying out billions of our dollars for evidence-driven policy-making, or policy-driven evidence-making? The truth is more crucial than ever, because American lives, property and constitutional liberties are at risk.”
Read Joanne Nova’s important paper Climate Money here.
Contact Robert Ferguson at SPPI or email here.
Henry Lampman, reporter for The New American interviews Joanne Nova, author of “The Skeptic’s Handbook”. Joanne Nova ... believed in manmade warming by carbon dioxide emissions from 1990-2007.
The Environmental Protection Agency is pushing the greatest regulatory intervention in US history, seeking to declare that carbon dioxide poses an “endangerment” under the Clean Air Act, threatening human health and the environment. To hear the EPA tell it, CO2 - which nonetheless remains indispensible to life on earth and without which plants die, more of which produces higher crop yields, etc. - will kill us all.
This proposal is a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s attempt to bring the energy sector of the economy under state control just as it seeks to do with health care, essentially ruining something in order to take it over in the name of cleaning up capitalism’s mess. It’s an old play, which the statists have run for decades, certain that every now and then it will break for a big gain. But an inconvenient EPA career professional just doing his job assessed the premise and informed his superiors, in the sole substantive report presented in the Agency’s internal deliberations, that upon scrutiny CO2 clearly does not drive temperatures or climate but oddly enough, the sun and oceans do. His boss told him to shut up, that nothing good could come to their office by injecting this analysis into the process, as the decision had been made.
One problem with that, of course, is that the decision is not allowed to be made before the process has run its course. That is the entire purpose of an internal debate which, internal documents now prove, was truncated and in fact illusory.
For his troubles, this physics graduate of Cal Tech and MIT PhD economist - which are why he had his job - was subjected to the ritual smear job as unqualified by the thugs running the global warming industry. The nicest thing said about him was “He’s not a climate scientist!” shrieked by legions of non-scientists nonetheless cocksure of their own wisdom, insight and informed judgment on the matter.
Left unmentioned were the scientific credentials of the EPA administrator, President Obama, and the 535 members of Congress who are tasked with deciding the issue. “He’s just an economist!” the non-scientists’ line continued, ignoring that whole physics-degree thing and that, ah, well, the UN’s “chief climate scientist” is “just an economist.” Again, as the whistleblower Dr. Alan Carlin learned, facts have little weight in this debate. Still, one key truth that Carlin brought to the fore exposes how - assuming that sanity prevails in the Senate and Congress is unable to impose “cap-and-trade” energy rationing - his exposé will carry the day in court.
This is man-made warming theory’s missing link. The global warming industry and its political enablers have been getting away with an amazing stunt of backing out from the equation inconvenient things which your lying eyes might tell you. Amid the cries of “warming proceeding even faster than predicted” - an actual, common claim among alarmists, politicians and the media - observations reveal that the recent cooling has brought us to the average of the entire 30-year history of the satellite temperature record. Read full story here.
In a number of posts this last year, we have addressed the unusually long and quiet solar cycles. A few weeks back, we noted the sunspot minimum seemed at hand as the month of June started with a series of cycle 24 sunspots and it appeared we would exceed the monthly sunspot number of 3.3 necessary to make the sunspot minimum (the lowest value in 13 month average) November 2008.
Well June despite numerous other small microdots characteristic of this cycle ended up with a monthly average of 2.6 which allowed December to drop from the 1.8 to 1.7 making December the earliest candidate for solar minimum. July would have to average below 3.5 in order for the minimum to move to January. It is unlikely to move to February as the month August would have to average below 0.5, the number in the month it will replace.
December had a 13 month average sunspot number of 1.7. Only three minima since 1750 had official minima below 1.7 (1913 1.5, 1810 0, 1823 0.1). Of course modern measurement technologies are better than older technologies so there is some uncertainty as to whether microdots back then would have been seen.
In a post Mt, Redoubt, a Quiet Sun and Your Morning Coffee, we showed how the solar cycle seems to have an influence on world production and spot market prices of coffee likely by influencing weather in the tropical growing areas. This year it may be enhanced by a developing El Nino which has similar results (all three favor an erratic monsoon season). Of course, the clueless Heidi Cullen no longer with The Weather Channel has already blamed that on global warming. We (WSI) have forecast that monsoon disruption for our ag clients since April with affects on coffee, rice, and cotton.
SOME OTHER INFLUENCES
ARGENTINA DROUGHT
Lower solar activity has a significant correlation with drought in Argentina. The last two years have seen a devastating drought in that country with major impact on winter wheat, corn and beans. This year’s drought is expected to produce lowest winter wheat yields in two decades. You can see the drought reflected in the satellite derived vegetation index (NDVI) (Source USDA Spot NDVI) which is a measure of the health of vegetation. The recent NDVI for South America is shown below. Note how the drought has extended into southern Brazil at times (Rio Grande do Sul) although recent rains have helped recharge soil moisture there. You can compare the NDVI with the correlation of precipitation rate with solar flux (Source NOAA CDC).
Hydrologist Dr. Will Alexander found in a multi-author study in the Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, a strong correlation of rainfall and river flow in the Vaal River. He showed a deficit in the three years leading up the minimum and heavy rainfall in the three years following.
In all but one sequence (Vaal River 1965/66, data not available), the three-year totals after the minima of both river flow and sunspot numbers, are substantially greater than the three-year totals before the minima. This information demonstrates the close association between major variations in river flow and corresponding variations in sunspot activity, with a high degree of confidence.
There are several interesting features in this table. There is an almost three-fold, sudden increase in the annual flows in the Vaal River from the three previous years to the three subsequent years. This is directly associated with a six-fold increase in sunspot numbers. The second important point is the consistency in the range of sunspot numbers before and after the reversal. The totals for the three prior years varied between 25 and 60, and the totals of the three immediately subsequent years varied between 250 and 400. It is very clear that these are systematic changes associated with the sunspot minima, and are not random events. (Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering - Volume 49 Number 2 June 2007)
Given this study, one should expect the upcoming three years to be wet as we come off the protracted minimum although perhaps not as wet as some periods if the upcoming cycle is a dud. See much more with correlations with the upper atmosphere and with high latitude blocking (the arctic oscillation has been the lowest of the recent record for the June to mid-July period) in the full post here. Next week’s post is on the El Nino, now official (preview here).
