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Yesterday I posted on a new study written by Reinhard Böhm of Austria’s Leading Weather and Climate Agency ZAMG.

His comprehensive, peer-reviewed paper found that there has been no increase in weather extremes in the Austrian Alps – surprising the world’s climate scientists. This study in my view is really big, and is upsetting the Climate Establishment in Europe. Dr. Böhm is quickly becoming the new enfant terrible.

Geologist Sebastian Lüning now provides additional details at his Die kalte Sonne website. I’ve translated his essay (with some editing).

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Surprise! Fewer Weather Extremes in the Alps Region

By Dr. Sebastian Lüning

The climate is going crazy and everything is getting more extreme. It’s only a question of time before the planet gets destroyed. This is what experts close to the IPCC have been telling us for some years now. But now a scientist has taken a closer look at the hard data and has found something truly amazing. Reinhard Böhm of the Central Administration for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna has examined dataseries from 58 locations in the Alps, some of which go back to the year 1760. All the data is available in the Internet. Böhm published the study in the European Physical Journal.“

As expected also in Austria there has been a warming over the last 200 years, like almost everywhere else on the planet. That is expected and simply represents the transition from the Little Ice Age to the Modern Warm Period. The question that Böhm investigated, however, is: Did the weather get more cranky and more extreme during this time?

Austrian newspaper Die Presse here wrote:

Whether it is snowfall, heavy rains, storms or dry spells: After every notable weather event the media and experts are quick to explain that the increased frequency of extreme events of the recent past and of the coming future is due to man-made climate change. Hardly anyone questioned this claim – except for one person: Reinhard Böhm […]. In his recent research work, he evaluated up to 250 years of old weather data of the Alps region. The result even surprised him. The core message: An increased frequency of weather extremes caused by climate change – at least in the Alps region – could not be detected.”

In a press release of the Institute the stunning results were more shown in more detail (Figure 1) (see the article in Der Standard):

[On] the often quoted increase in weather extremes, this however has not been the case in the Alps. Completely to the contrary: ‘The temperature fluctuations have even decreased over the last decades,‘ summed up climatologist and study author Reinhard Böhm. […] The results of the study have left the scientists amazed. Result No. 1: Over the last 250 years, the seasonal and annual fluctuation ranges of hot-cold, dry-wet have not gotten more extreme. Result No. 2: Also over the last 30 years, which have been greatly impacted by man, there has been no trend to more variability when compared to the decades before. And finally Result No. 3: The long-term development of temperature, precipitation and atmospheric pressure show two long waves of variability with a cycle of about 100 years. The climate was more variable (‘crazier”) in the middle of both past centuries, less variable (‘quieter’) at the start and end of the centuries.“

The last point is very important. As geological studies of the past 10,000 years have shown, natural cycles play an important role in the variability of the climate (see our past blog articles.

Figure 1: Changes in climate variability in southern central Europe over the past two centuries. Attention: NOT shown are the absolute values. Only the anomalies. Graphic source: ZMAG.

For the IPCC faithful, these results are quite unexpected. For years they have been claiming just the opposite. Austrian television ORF here writes:

Böhm’s study stands in contradiction to other studies that show a global increase in weather events is detected. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research spoke of a “Decade of Weather Extremes”. Also in March 2012 a Report by the IPCC showed more extreme weather events and, among other things, it is highly likely that periods of drought will occur more often over the coming decades – in many regions of the world, among them also Central Europe.“

Böhm takes these these alarmist colleagues especially to task. What is it that is driving some scientists to always want to observe everywhere only a worsening of the climate? Die Presse writes:

Böhm doesn’t hold back on criticizing the PR work of some colleagues. To save the world from climate change, one needs lots of attention. Claims that weather extremes accompany temperature increase may be wonderful for marketing yourself, but it has got nothing to do with reality.’ “

It is wonderful to see that there is a push-back by climate scientists and that solid data and evidence is slowly gaining the upper hand. The study shows once again the importance of datasets that go far back into the past. Today’s climate can only be properly assessed when put in a historical context.

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