Because tornadoes and cyclones never appeared in temperate zones before

Story submission by Eric Worrall

The Sydney Morning Herald has advanced a claim that Cyclone Marcia, the cat 5 cat 2 storm which is still raging in Queensland, is evidence that the tropics are “expanding”.

According to the SMH;

“The southward shift of cyclones under climate change will force planners to demand stronger building standards as far south as Coffs Harbour on the NSW North Coast, Cairns climatologist Steve Turton says. Storms such as the category 5 Cyclone Marcia, which crossed the central Queensland coast on Friday, “are going to become more common in the future along the eastern seaboard of Australia,” Professor Turton from James Cook University told Fairfax Media. Climate change is resulting in the expansion of the tropics at the rate of 150-300 kilometres every 30 years, bringing more regions in the path of potential cyclones, Professor Turton said. (See his essay in the 2014 State of the Tropics report.) “The research is suggesting that, in a warmer world, we’ll get more intense cyclones because there’ll be more energy in the oceans and also the atmosphere,” he said. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cyclone-marcia-climate-change-is-expanding-the-tropics-20150220-13kdfi.html

Professor Turton then rather spoils the effect, by stating “For north-eastern Australia, cyclones may become fewer in number but more intense when they form”.

My question – if the conditions promoting cyclonic activity are intensifying and expanding, why would we expect *fewer* cyclones? Why wouldn’t cyclones become more intense AND more frequent? Could this prediction of fewer cyclones be a desperate attempt to accommodate an inconvenient observation, that cyclones are becoming more infrequent – an attempt to spin a rather feeble cyclone season into a story of impending doom?

As WUWT has noted in previous posts, the evidence is that tornado intensity is decreasing http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/14/are-tornadoes-getting-stronger-rebuttal-to-elsner-et-al/ . I don’t know what the figures are for cyclone intensity. No disrespect to my fellow Australians, whose houses were damaged in the last few days, but despite Marcia and Cyclone Lam, this year has been a rather feeble Australian cyclone season.

Cyclone and Tornado intensity seem to me to be a source of embarrassment for climate modellers. Like the inexorable growth of Antarctic sea ice, alarmists would surely be more comfortable if cyclones and tornadoes behaved themselves, comporting themselves in a properly apocalyptic fashion, instead of wimping out shortly after making landfall.

And a quick look at the historical record reveals plenty of extreme weather events which made it into temperate zones in the past – such as several dangerous tornadoes which struck the state of Minnesota in the 1800s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks

When put on the spot, the doomsayer’s only option is to issue scary warnings of what the future may hold – because there is no evidence that any dangerous intensification of extreme weather is occurring right now.

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