We continue to foresee well above-average activity for the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season. Our seasonal forecast has been reduced slightly from early December, since there is a little uncertainty about ENSO and the maintenance of anomalously warm tropical Atlantic SST conditions. We continue to anticipate an above-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall.

Information obtained through March 2011 indicates that the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season will have significantly more activity than the average 1950-2000 season.

We estimate that 2011 will have about 9 hurricanes (average is 5.9), 16 named storms (average is 9.6), 80 named storm days (average is 49.1), 35 hurricane days (average is 24.5), 5 major (Category 3-4-5) hurricanes (average is 2.3) and 10 major hurricane days (average is 5.0).

The probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall is estimated to be about 140 percent of the long-period average. We expect Atlantic basin Net Tropical Cyclone (NTC) activity in 2011 to be approximately 175 percent of the long-term average.

We have decreased our seasonal forecast slightly from early December, due to anomalous warming in the eastern and central tropical Pacific and cooling in the tropical Atlantic.

This forecast is based on a new extended-range early April statistical prediction scheme that utilizes 29 years of past data. Analog predictors are also utilized. We expect current La Nina conditions to transition to near-neutral conditions during the heart of the hurricane season. Overall, conditions remain conducive for a very active hurricane season.

PROBABILITIES FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE LANDFALL ON EACH OF THE FOLLOWING COASTAL AREAS:

1) Entire U.S. coastline - 72% (average for last century is 52%)

2) U.S. East Coast Including Peninsula Florida - 48% (average for last century is 31%)

3) Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville - 47% (average for last century is 30%)

PROBABILITY FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE TRACKING INTO THE CARIBBEAN (10-20N, 60-88W)

1) 61% (average for last century is 42%

All the detail behind the forecast can be found in the PDF.

See my discussion on the upcoming season here. Here is an account of the Hurricane of ‘38, a La Nina summer.

In his testimony Richard Muller (which I posted on Friday April 2 2011), indicated that he used 2% of the available surface stations that measure temperatures in the BEST assessment of long-term trends. It is important to realize that the sampling is still biased if a preponderance of his data sources comes from a subset of actual landscape types.  The sampling will necessarily be skewed towards those sites.

If the BEST data came from a different distribution of locations than the GHCNv.2, however, then his results would add important new insight into the temperature trend analyses. If they have the same spatial distribution, however, they would not add anything beyond confirming that NCDC, GISS and CRU were properly using the collected raw data.

We discuss this bias in station locations in our paper

Montandon, L.M., S. Fall, R.A. Pielke Sr., and D. Niyogi, 2011: Distribution of landscape types in the Global Historical Climatology Network. Earth Interactions, 15:6, doi: 10.1175/2010EI371

The abstract reads [highlight added]

“The Global Historical Climate Network version 2 (GHCNv.2) surface temperature dataset is widely used for reconstructions such as the global average surface temperature (GAST) anomaly. Because land use and land cover (LULC) affect temperatures, it is important to examine the spatial distribution and the LULC representation of GHCNv.2 stations. Here, nightlight imagery, two LULC datasets, and a population and cropland historical reconstruction are used to estimate the present and historical worldwide occurrence of LULC types and the number of GHCNv.2 stations within each. Results show that the GHCNv.2 station locations are biased toward urban and cropland (>50% stations versus 18.4% of the world’s land) and past century reclaimed cropland areas (35% stations versus 3.4% land). However, widely occurring LULC such as open shrubland, bare, snow/ice, and evergreen broadleaf forests are underrepresented (14% stations versus 48.1% land), as well as nonurban areas that have remained uncultivated in the past century (14.2% stations versus 43.2% land). Results from the temperature trends over the different landscapes confirm that the temperature trends are different for different LULC and that the GHCNv.2 stations network might be missing on long-term larger positive trends. This opens the possibility that the temperature increases of Earth’s land surface in the last century would be higher than what the GHCNv.2-based GAST analyses report.”

This derived surface temperature trends is higher than what BEST found.  However, this also means that the divergence between the surface temperature trends and the lower tropopsheric temperature trends that we found in

Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841.

is even higher.  This difference suggests that unresolved issues, including a likely systematic warm bias, remains in the analysis of long term surface temperature trends.

In testimony yesterday before the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment Committee on Science, Space and Technology, forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania called on Congress to cease funding global warming research, programs, and advocacy organizations.

Referring to an analysis he conducted with Kesten C. Green of the University of South Australia and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Armstrong told the subcommittee, “We approach the issue of alarm over dangerous manmade global warming as a problem of forecasting temperatures over the long term. The global warming alarm is not based on what has happened, but on what will happen. In other words, it is a forecasting problem. And it is a very complex problem.”

The three researchers audited the forecasting procedures used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose “procedures violated 81% of the 89 relevant forecasting principles,” Armstrong noted.

Armstrong and his colleagues recommend Congress end government funding for climate change research as well as other research, government programs, and regulations that assume the planet is warming. They also recommend Congress cease funding organizations that lobby or campaign for global warming.

“Based on our analyses, especially with respect to the violations of the principles regarding objectivity and full disclosure,” Armstrong told members of Congress, “we conclude that the manmade global warming alarm is an anti-scientific political movement.”

Armstrong can be reached for further comment at 610-622-6480 or armstrong@wharton.upenn.edu. A copy of the report he submitted to the committee is available online .

The situation in Japan is awful on multiple fronts, and the Japanese face a recovery that will challenge the limits of their capabilities. Yet back here at home, the EPA is aiming to melt down our feeble economic situation by taxing everything that produces energy - not because of anything like radiation, but due to harmless carbon dioxide.

I thought I had heard just about everything in the great global warming debate until, on March 1, the House of Representatives held a hearing dealing with the EPA’s proposal to commence sweeping nationwide regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. The idea behind the EPA’s plan is to regulate (read: “tax") the largest “polluters” to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the air. The EPA believes that by reducing carbon dioxide by some tiny fraction it can control the Earth’s climate system - a typical government mentality, no? Doing this would result in higher costs of doing business for the nation’s power generating facilities and manufacturing plants. It would increase the cost of doing business across the board for many other smaller businesses, and would likely inhibit companies from hiring new employees.

In February, Republican Fred Upton said:

Needless to say the Chinese government and other competitors have no intention of burdening and raising the cost of doing business for their manufacturers and energy producers the way EPA plans to do here in America. Our goal should be to export goods, not jobs.

During the EPA hearings, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) questioned Gina McCarthy, EPA chief of air programs and greenhouse gas regulations. He asked:

Do you know what the level of CO2 right now is generally speaking in the atmosphere?

He threw her a softball. Her answer?

Well actually I don’t have that figure.

(Take long pregnant pause here.)

You don’t have what? Please tell me this is a joke! The chief of the EPA’s air programs and greenhouse gas regulations doesn’t know how much carbon dioxide is in the air? This is beyond anything I thought was possible. This is a person leading the United States of America? Don’t tell our enemies.

What if Joe Barton was to ask a scientist who did not believe in manmade global warming that kind of question?

Barton: Mr. Horn, do you know what the instrument we use to measure temperature is, generally speaking?

Me: I don’t have that information at this time.

That’s how bad Gina McCarthy’s answer was. To be the chief regulator of such a potentially devastating policy and to not know that CO2 is 390 parts per million? What else doesn’t the EPA know about carbon dioxide? How about that it’s not a dangerous pollutant?

We have been told Ms. McCarthy is highly trained and unquestionably qualified for the job. Says Scientific American:

Although Ms. McCarthy has a tough road ahead, her experience and achievements prove she will rise to the challenge. She has shown true leadership in Connecticut and Massachusetts implementing a multi-pollutant approach to clean up the air in those states.

Let’s talk about that leadership: as head of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Power, Gina McCarthy helped develop the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the nation’s first mandatory cap-and-trade program. That program, called RGGI, is actually a tax on each resident and business owner in Connecticut and the other 9 RGGI member states. The charge for operating RGGI is hidden within complicated verbiage of electric bills each month.

Maybe that’s part of the reason New Hampshire just voted to drop out of the system, and more states are looking to follow New Hampshire’s lead.

There are two constants in the universe. The first is change, and the second is the bureaucratic mentality. Ms. McCarthy actually said:

I never really thought of myself as a regulator. I actually am a strong believer in markets. I really think our job is to make sure that the work we do is valued and priced in the markets appropriately. And so I am a true believer in democracy - in having government intervene when it needs to and not when it doesn’t.

Really. It would seem that she believes in the markets only when it is convenient to her bureaucratic, unscientifically biased agenda.

Is the United States going to keep up with China and maintain our leadership role in the world? Not if the EPA keeps looking for ways to handicap us. We need to get our heads out of the clouds and start developing our own resources - the most abundant in the world. Nations such as China, India, and others are unburdened by the carbon dioxide ball-and-chain.

They are forging ahead with a clear vision of the future while we are regulating ourselves into mediocrity.

Read more here.

Art Horn spent 25 years working in television as a meteorologist. He now is an independent meteorologist and speaker who lives in Connecticut. He can be contacted at skychaserman@cox.net.

March 25, 2011

View the photo gallery ”A Trip Down Iceberg Alley.”

In a finding that has global implications for climate research, scientists have discovered that when icebergs cool and dilute the seas through which they pass for days, they also raise chlorophyll levels in the water that may in turn increase carbon dioxide absorption in the Southern Ocean.

An interdisciplinary research team supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) highlighted the research this month in the journal Nature Geosciences.

The research indicates that “iceberg transport and melting have a role in the distribution of phytoplankton in the Weddell Sea,” which was previously unsuspected, said John J. Helly, director of the Laboratory for Environmental and Earth Sciences with the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Helly was the lead author of the paper, “Cooling, Dilution and Mixing of Ocean Water by Free-drifting Icebergs in the Weddell Sea,” which was first published in the journal Deep-Sea Research Part II.

The results indicate that icebergs are especially likely to influence phytoplankton dynamics in an area known as “Iceberg Alley,” east of the Antarctic Peninsula, the portion of the continent that extends northwards toward Chile.

The latest findings add a new dimension to previous research by the same team that altered the perception of icebergs as large, familiar, but passive, elements of the Antarctic seascape. The team previously showed that icebergs act, in effect, as ocean “oases” of nutrients for aquatic life and sea birds.

The teams’s research indicates that ordinary icebergs are likely to become more prevalent in the Southern Ocean, particularly as the Antarctic Peninsula continues a well-documented warming trend and ice shelves disintegrate. Research also shows that these ordinary icebergs are important features of not only marine ecosystems, but even of global carbon cycling.

“These new findings amplify the team’s previous discoveries about icebergs and confirm that icebergs contribute yet another, previously unsuspected, dimension of physical and biological complexity to polar ecosystems,” said Roberta L. Marinelli, director of the NSF’s Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems Program.

NSF manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, through which it coordinates all U.S. scientific research and related logistics on the southernmost continent and aboard ships in the Southern Ocean.

The latest findings document a persistent change in physical and biological characteristics of surface waters after the transit of an iceberg, which has important effects on phytoplankton populations, clearly demonstrating “that icebergs influence oceanic surface waters and mixing to greater extents than previously realized,” said Ronald S. Kaufmann, associate professor of marine science and environmental studies at the University of San Diego and one of the authors of the paper.

The researchers studied the effects by sampling the area around a large iceberg more than 32 kilometers (20 miles) long; the same area was surveyed again ten days later, after the iceberg had drifted away.

After ten days, the scientists observed increased concentrations of chlorophyll a and reduced concentrations of carbon dioxide, as compared to nearby areas without icebergs. These results are consistent with the growth of phytoplankton and the removal of carbon dioxide from the ocean.

The new results demonstrate that icebergs provide a connection between the geophysical and biological domains that directly affects the carbon cycle in the Southern Ocean, Marinelli added.

In 2007, the same team published findings in the journal Science that icebergs serve as “hotspots” for ocean life with thriving communities of seabirds above and a web of phytoplankton, krill and fish below. At that time, the researchers reported that icebergs hold trapped terrestrial material, which they release far out at sea as they melt, a process that produces a “halo effect” with significantly increased nutrients and krill out to a radius of more than three kilometers (two miles).

The new research was conducted as part of a multi-disciplinary project that also involved scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, University of South Carolina, University of Nevada, Reno, University of South Carolina, Brigham Young University, and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography research biologist Maria Vernet and graduate student Gordon Stephenson also contributed to the paper.

ICECAP NOTE: By the way, the decreased ice in the arctic in recent years means more cold water to remove CO2.  See the large swi9ngs in CO2 in the annual cycle at ESRL.