Here’s a little Levon Helm to get us in the mood…
Today is the 20th anniversary of the landfall of hurricane Katrina. Lots of lessons were learned from that devastating catastrophe, most of those lessons have been forgotten.
Are you prepared for a natural disaster? Here’s a good weather tracking site that I refer to daily. Tracking storms long before they’re on the local radar (pun intended), is something we can all do!
I saved your Zoom Earth web site, thanks.
Here’s my go-to.
Wendy
Thanks for sharing! I use the National Weather Service too, especially for weather alerts.
So far, so good this hurricane season.
It’s the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season but - very unusually - there are currently no tropical storms or hurricanes…However, forecasters suggest the current lull in activity will be short-lived with a flurry of storms to come later in the season…
With no activity expected in the next seven days, this will have been only the second year since 1950 where there will be no named storm from the end of August to mid-September. This quieter period may come as a surprise considering the pre-season forecasts all suggested an ‘above average’ season.
Dr Philip Klotzbach, senior meteorologist at Colorado State University (CSU), said: “This pronounced quiet period is quite remarkable at this time of year given that it coincides with the climatological peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.”
DB2
Goes to show how reliable modern seers are.
If they can’t predict the next quarter how reliable are the forecasts for the next quarter century?
Just askin…
The Captain
True dat for the number of storms. Not true dat for how prepared the US is for the next storm.
Meteorologists have a thankless job. Hopefully they’ll be wrong, but I’ve learned to not vender la piel del oso antes de cazarlo.
One thing is certain, the US is not prepared for the next major hurricane, whenever it hits.
Forecasts are remarkably accurate in the very short term (days) and the very long term (decades). It’s when they try to predict “months’ that they’re in trouble.
“Days” is easy (relatively.) Weather fronts move and interact, and it can all be seen on radar. Watch where the storms are, project forward a day or three to where they will be, compare to past histories of the same general conditions and you’ll have a fair degree of accuracy.
“Decades” is also pretty easy. The forecasts from those accredited in climate science have been pointing to warming atmosphere and oceans since at least the 1990’s. It’s just an extrapolation of longer term trends of what we’re pouring in to the open air every day. A million years worth of carbon burned every year - that’s different. If someone could propose a mechanism by which that would stop happening, or even reverse, that would make the forecasts iffy but so far no one has been able to do that.
Predicting 3 months out is dicey, even foolish. There may be hints and signs, but nothing on the order that would let you confidently say what is going to happen 3 months from now. You might be lucky and be right, you might even have some “tells” which increase your odds, but it’s mostly a crap shoot in that time period.
Three very different things. Don’t think the problems with one of them infects the others.
Quite true, although the global climate models have their own problems, particularly with clouds and precipitation. The CMIP6 generation is known to run hot. The models calculate the climate sensitivity (how much the world would warm with a doubling of CO2) which has typically ranged from 1.5 to 4.5°C. That is a pretty wide range, and they obviously can’t all be right.
And looking at hurricanes (tropical cyclones) in particular, models that are based on increased sea surface temperatures (SST) project an increase in major (Cat 3+) storms. Models that are based on relative SST differences do not come up with that increase.
Here is a chart of global tropical cyclones over the last 45 years as the world has warmed:
DB2
Thanks for posting a chart from the Heartland Institute! Aren’t they the organization that also argues that smoking isn’t bad for us?
You’re funny, eldemonio.
From Down Under, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology reports on trends in tropical cyclones (hurricanes).
Over the decades the trend in Australian tropical cyclone numbers and severe TC (Cat 3+) numbers is downward.
DB2
The Captain
I prefer this site. More range and excellent long range visibility.
There are several toggles on that site. One of my favorites is to switch to 330’ altitude so my views can match the weather forecasts for “peak wind gusts”. It’s more dramatic.
(Switching to “surface”, which is how almost all humans interpret weather is a bit…. less dramatic.)
Ooh, I love that site. When you select the radar layer, your phone clicks and vibrates with each lightning strike! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Bob! I try…but I wasn’t kidding.
Back in 2006, the president of the Heartland Institute self published a book. Here’s a quote -
“No victim of cancer, heart disease, etc. can “prove” his or her cancer or heart disease was caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.”
OK. Let’s get back to hurricanes/tropical cyclones. Last year Tu et al. had a paper out that looked at the trend in destructive tropical cyclones (hurricanes) over the past three decades. They use the PDI (power dissipation index) which combines intensity, duration, and frequency.
The authors note that “there is no significant positive correlation between local upper-ocean heat content and TC [tropical cyclone] destructiveness. In fact, TC activity is more strongly related to changes in relative SST.”
They write:
“Overall, the annual cumulative PDI of TCs reaches its maximum in the 1990s, followed by a slight decreasing trend. The annual cumulative PDI in the Southern Hemisphere has decreased significantly since the mid-1990s, while the PDI in the Northern Hemisphere decreases to a lesser extent and shows strong interdecadal variability throughout the study period.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01683-2
DB2
As long as we’re picking cherries, they also write this:
“In fact, since the 1980s, the frequency of intense TCs in the SIO has increased, especially the frequency of category 5 level TCs52,53, which is a result of global warming. This phenomenon has been found in other relevant studies54,55. While the frequency of tropical storms has decreased slightly, the frequency of TC genesis and landfall has also decreased in the Southwest Indian Ocean (SWIO)56. This study supports similar findings for TC frequency, but there has been no significant change in average intensity, which is possible because the contributions of intense and weak TCs offset each other. The average TC intensity shows a clear increase in magnitude over the last decade (Fig. 2b), suggesting a more pronounced increase in the proportion of intense TCs and potentially posing a challenge to tropical cyclone forecasting in the region.”
Now, lets get back to the original topic. Are we prepared for the next big one? No.
