Explaining The Extreme Weather Events That Did Not Happen

By Paul Homewood

https://www2.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/explaining-extreme-events-from-a-climate-perspective/

Unable to persuade the public that a slightly warmer world is a bad thing, the climate establishment has turned to peddling the myth that global warming is leading to more extreme weather.

There have been a number of studies which have attempted to connect the two. Even then, as I showed with the above AMS attempt a few months ago, most extreme events cannot be linked, and those that are claimed to be are extremely tenuous.

Of course, weather is an impossibly complex affair, and it is inevitable that some weather events may be made more likely or more intense in a warmer world. But, equally, the opposite is also true – that some events are less likely. Naturally, we never hear the absence of extreme weather analysed in this way by the likes of the AMS or Met Office.

So, I invite them to have a go at these examples:

Hurricanes

US land falling hurricanes have been at record low levels in recent years, and it is now more than ten years since a major hurricane hit.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html

Tornadoes

There has been a long term decline in both the number of tornadoes, and particularly, the frequency of stronger ones.

Droughts

Droughts were much more commonplace, prolonged and severe prior to the 1970s.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/110/0/pdsi/ytd/12/1895-2016?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000

Summer Heatwaves

There has been a marked absence of extreme heatwaves in recent years, and nothing approaches the run of intensely hot summers in the 1930s.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/110/0/tmax/3/8/1895-2016?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000

Bitter Winters

According to NOAA’s albeit highly adjusted data, extremely cold winters are a thing of the past in the US.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/110/0/tmin/3/2/1895-2016?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000

Precipitation

As with drought indicators, US rainfall has tended to be greater since the pre 1970 period.

There is no indication, however, of precipitation becoming more extreme since then. The wettest year was 1973.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/110/0/pcp/ytd/12/1895-2016?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000

Regional Precipitation Extremes

National totals can, of course, cover up regional imbalances.The NOAA chart below shows the balance of extremely wet and dry areas. As with PDSI, very dry areas are much less common, while the area of very wet weather is stable.

(NOAA’s graph is not well presented; although it says “December”, it is in fact for all months since 1895. Each bar represents a single month)

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/uspa/?area=wet-dry&month=0&submitted=View