My wife keeps telling me I should be more dog — I should just live in the moment, stop reflecting on the past and let the future take care of itself. But I can’t help it. My past is too full of mishap to be comfortably ignored, and I have no reason to believe that the future will be any different; therefore, I worry about it. And whilst I have no great expertise to bring to bear that enables me to predict the precise nature of my fate, there is certainly no shortage of experts around who delight in filling in the picture for me. One such expert is Professor Friederike Otto of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, whose party piece is to reflect upon past calamity and come out with statements such as, “This is definitely what we will see much more of in the future”. In fact, that’s precisely what she told the world this week after storm Boris had just finished ravaging Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Austria and Italy, leading to at least 24 deaths and billions of pounds of damage. But how can she know this? The BBC explains:

Scientists at WWA work out how much of a role climate change played in an extreme weather event by comparing it with a model of how bad that storm, drought or heatwave might have been in a world where humans hadn’t been burning fossil fuels for nearly 200 years.1

And these models are very good, don’t you know, because they can fill you in with numbers:

But if warming reaches 2C, similar episodes will become an extra 5% more intense and 50% more frequent, the WWA warned.

The trouble is, however, that specific events such as storm Boris cannot be predicted by these models, and so the art is to wait until they happen, and then attach the reality of the experience to a set of scary future statistics, resulting in a mind-set that couldn’t possibly be any less dog. It is an approach that has worked very well for Professor Otto and her colleagues, and it has made a huge contribution to the zeitgeist that seems to have given the UK’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy a free pass in declaring that “nothing could be more central to the UK’s national interest than delivering global progress on arresting rising temperatures.”2

But just how good have these experts been in predicting the increasing number of unpredictable events? Is anybody keeping track? Well, there has been one recent prediction relating to the numbers of the unpredictable that has thrown quite a light on the skill of these models, and the light proved to be quite unflattering. According to a logic that Otto would readily recognise, warm oceans provide the ideal conditions for tropical storms. For example, in 2023, the hottest Caribbean sea temperatures on record led to 20 named storms in the Atlantic, the fourth most active hurricane season on record. This year the seas have been just as hot and so, according to the models, there would be at least as many named storms – somewhere between 15 and 25 were confidently predicted. The season is now nearing its end, and the count is in:

Seven. That’s right, a measly seven named storms.3 So what went wrong? Where are all of the missing hurricanes?

Well, from the perspective of the experts, nothing went wrong. Their models were correct but the climate made a few mistakes that they couldn’t possibly have been expected to foresee. At least, that’s the explanation that has now been provided:

With the moist monsoon air reaching further north than usual, easterly waves are emerging into the ocean via Mauritania or Western Sahara rather than Senegal or the Gambia. There, the ocean is cooler, and, as the waves rotate, they bring in cooler, drier air from the north, so there is not as much energy for waves to turn into storms. Effectively, if these waves are the seeds of major storms then they have been planted in the wrong soil: unable to receive the warmth and moisture they need to develop into hurricanes.

Okay, I’ll buy that. But I still want to know why the climate models were unable to anticipate this ‘wrong soil’ development. This isn’t a case of a single storm failing to materialise, where the capriciousness of the weather gods can be blamed for a no-show. This is virtually a whole storm season being wiped out. Science earns its spurs in predicting this sort of thing – not coming up with neat, after-the-fact explanations.

The reality is that life is very complicated and experts rarely have a sufficient understanding to enable accurate predictions. But that doesn’t seem to bother them all that much. If one restricts oneself to statistical forecasting, rather than the prediction of specific events, then the chances of a failed prediction coming to the public’s attention are greatly reduced. As far as storm prediction is concerned, it’s just a sequence of specific predictions that were never actually made, and so were never wrong. And by the time someone has twigged that something did go wrong, the experts will have already come up with their expert explanation as to why the statistics didn’t play the game. That’s why we call them experts. Meanwhile, the models will have been tweaked:

State-of-the-art climate models suggest that in a warming climate, the west African monsoon may become wetter and shift further northwards, potentially resulting in similarly quiet hurricane seasons in future.

And then, when that doesn’t happen, we’ll have even newer models. But what we will never learn, it seems, is that the experts are still hedging their bets:

Researchers at Colorado State University, widely considered some of the most accurate hurricane forecasters, have estimated a 50% chance of a return to normal hurricane activity in the next two weeks.

Have they now?

Footnotes:

[1] Actually, Mr BBC man, it’s not one model. It’s a group of models cherry-picked by Otto, supposedly selected according to their suitability for the given attribution exercise. This collection is then treated statistically as though it were a random sample taken from the space of all possible models.

[2] How the UK can deliver global progress given the decidedly non-global scale of its emissions is not entirely clear. It appears to depend upon some form of dark energy that enables Lammy to force China into submitting to his personal charm.

[3] Admittedly, the season started off strongly. Hurricane Beryl was the earliest category 5 storm on record.

42 Comments

  1. So Lammy’s going to start arresting temperatures is he? They must be ‘far right’ temperatures, in which case they’ll be arrested, charged, denied bail and prosecuted within the next couple of weeks. The New Pause must be just around the corner, but of course that won’t stop the bad weather. The Labour government will then have to start arresting far right extremist weather but they’ve run out of prison places again, so it might have to wait – until they can institute a command and control economy based on energy rationing.

    Like

  2. Jaime,

    Have you been hitting the vino again tonight? 🙂

    On the subject of incarceration, I understand that scientists are not so keen on the Labour Government’s carbon capture plans:

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/25/climate-scientists-call-on-labour-to-pause-1bn-investment-plans-carbon-capture-blue-hydrogen

    I’m no expert but I think they’re going to have to introduce an early release scheme to make way for the right-wing CO2 that has been threatening our climate recently.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Slightly O/T (sorry, John) I was intrigued by an aspect of the Guardian report on Storm Boris:

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/25/global-heating-doubled-chance-of-extreme-rain-in-europe-in-september

    …The researchers said measures to adapt had lowered the death toll compared with similar floods that hit the region in 1997 and 2002…

    Isn’t that we sceptics keep telling them? Given that much of the world isn’t interested in reducing emissions, mitigation efforts alone in the west are expensive and futile. Spend the money on adaptation instead – it will be cheaper, and it achieves something.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. If you allow me four free parameters I can build a mathematical model that describes exactly everything that an elephant can do. If you allow me a fifth free parameter, the model I build will forecast that the elephant will fly.

    John von Neumann (1903-57)

    How many free parameters in a typical climate model (to the nearest hundred)?

    Liked by 1 person

  5. No, not a drop to drink John. As I said earlier, I think I’m going mad trying to swim against the tide of the Age of Unreason (ushered in by state instituted Idiocracy, Technocracy, Autocracy, Kleptocracy and Mediocrity). Madcap humour (or attempts thereof) seems like a reasonable, if temporary, panacea. When that doesn’t work, then I’ll hit the bottle, and if that doesn’t work, then I’ll drink the contents.

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Just a thought, all that water that the Hunda Tonga volcano put into the stratosphere has to come back down to earth somewhere, why not in Europe and the Sahara?

    Like

  7. Bill, the additional water vapour content of the stratosphere is still tiny compared to the total water vapour content and water vapour flux in the lower troposphere which forms clouds and falls as rain. So the change in rainfall over the Sahara is almost certainly as a result of changing circulation patterns depositing tropospheric water vapour evaporated from the oceans by wind and solar heating. It’s quite rare for water vapour to make it up as far as the stratosphere, and when it does get there, it tends to stay there for years.

    Like

  10. Ron,

    That’s an interesting quote, since it seems to suggest that the creation of complexity is a matter for suspicion. But even when the complexity is inherently benign (i.e. when it is not an artefact but just a fact of nature), the manner in which we attempt to analyse it can still be a source for all sorts of kidology. We see this whenever an outcome that was not predicted (because of too much complexity) is subsequently described as though it is entirely understandable after the event. The problem is that the complexity often allows for multiple after-the-fact explanations, many of which seem plausible but all of which might actually be wrong. A key thing to look out for is when someone is offering more explanations than are necessary. In the case of the missing hurricanes, a ‘wrong soil’ theory was conceived, but it wasn’t the only one. What I didn’t mention in my article is that the shortfall has also been put down to the Madden-Julian Oscillation being in a phase which does not favour tropical cyclone development. It has also been attributed to the upper atmosphere being too warm for storms to form. And if you don’t like those explanations then how about the winds in the upper atmosphere being stronger than usual, causing some potential tropical cyclones to collapse?

    When you have four sufficient explanations you don’t have any at all.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. “How is climate change affecting hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones?”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42251921

    ...Assessing the precise influence of climate change on individual tropical cyclones is challenging. The storms are relatively localised and short-lived, and can vary significantly in any case.

    But rising temperatures do affect these storms in several measurable ways.

    Firstly, warmer ocean waters mean storms can pick up more energy, external, leading to higher wind speeds.

    Record high sea surface temperatures were a key reason why US scientists forecast an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season for 2024.…

    Curiously, they forgot to mention that the forecast looks likely to be wrong.

    Liked by 3 people

  13. Mark,

    Curiously, they forgot to mention that the forecast looks likely to be wrong.

    Curiously and predictably. The BBC is following the science, not the reality.

    Liked by 2 people

  16. This headline from the inestimable Babylon Bee seems appropriate:

    Experts Warn Hurricane in Hurricane Alley During Hurricane Season Clear Sign of Climate Change

    via WUWT

    Especially when contrasted against a BBC sub-headline on the page linked to above:

    Is Hurricane Helene a sign of things to come?

    (5.59 BST, from Isabelle Gerretsen, “Senior journalist, BBC Future” – whatever that is.)

    Liked by 1 person

  17. As an example of the confident predictions being made at the start of the season, there is this article from The Conversation:

    “Hurricane forecast points to a dangerous 2024 Atlantic season, with La Niña and a persistently warm ocean teaming up to power fierce storms”

    https://theconversation.com/hurricane-forecast-points-to-a-dangerous-2024-atlantic-season-with-la-nina-and-a-persistently-warm-ocean-teaming-up-to-power-fierce-storms-228351

    To be fair to the article’s author, she was only reporting upon what everyone was saying about the forthcoming season:

    If the National Hurricane Center’s early forecast, released May 23, is right, the North Atlantic could see 17 to 25 named storms, eight to 13 hurricanes, and four to seven major hurricanes by the end of November. That’s the highest number of named storms in any NOAA preseason forecast. Other forecasts for the season have been just as intense. Colorado State University’s early outlook, released in April, predicted an average of 23 named storms, 11 hurricanes and five major hurricanes. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts anticipates 21 named storms. Colorado State also forecasts a whopping 210 accumulated cyclone energy units for 2024, and NOAA forecasts the second-highest ACE on record.

    That’s an awful lot of experts getting it wrong. It wasn’t just one rogue forecast, it was the whole community of ‘expert’ storm forecasters cocking up. Even worse, there is a footnote to the article that suggests an earlier version that wasn’t quite wrong enough:

    This article has been updated with NOAA officials describing the forecast as the highest number of storms it has ever forecast.

    Never mind, you only need one good storm to erase the memory of a set of unanimously incorrect predictions. Cue Hurricane Helene:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ckgmx8vm8pnt

    Liked by 1 person

  18. ‘The reality is that life is very complicated and experts rarely have a sufficient understanding to enable accurate predictions.’

    What did Phillip Tetlock discover about experts and prediction?

    Passing exams is not the same as having to sail a boat in a storm at sea…..—–+—–

    Like

  19. Beth,

    Part of the problem is that experts are not as good at forecasting as we are led to believe. Another part of the problem is that the forecast usually takes on a salience that eclipses the reality. This is particularly true when foretelling doom, since the ensuing fear of it bites harder than its subsequent non-arrival. Rewarded by the attention received when making the forecast, and in the absence of sufficient chastisement when the forecast fails, the expert just carries on living in their modelled world, not needing to worry too much about a track record as long as they remain harbingers of catastrophe. Such a living is particularly easy to make when dealing in long-range forecasts, and when the forecasts are statistical in nature.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. I’ve just remembered a good quote that seems appropriate given the hoards of experts who seemed convinced they knew enough about the climate to confidently predict a record year for tropical storms:

    Conviction is a good motive, but a bad judge.

    Kudos to anyone who can say who said this, and in what context.

    Like

  21. I have a naïve question that I was hoping someone out there could answer for me.

    The following quote from the BBC sums up the current understanding regarding trends in tropical storms:

    Globally, the frequency of tropical cyclones has not increased over the past century, and in fact the number may have fallen – although long-term data is limited in some regions. But it is “likely” that a higher proportion of tropical cyclones across the globe are reaching category three or above, meaning they reach the highest wind speeds, according to the UN’s climate body, the IPCC.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42251921

    So my question is this: How are the maximum wind speeds actually measured and how has this changed over history? The problem is that the modern technique of flying planes into storms and dropping dropsondes into the strongest of them has only been around for 25 years, which happens to coincide exactly with the period over which higher wind speeds have been recorded for such storms. What can anyone tell me to persuade me that this apparent trend in hurricane strength is not just a selection bias created by new techniques that enable safer measurement of the stronger storms?

    I don’t want to be told that, before the use of dropsondes, land-based anemometers were used. They could never measure a storm’s peek wind speeds because the storm has invariably lost some of its power following landfall. And I don’t want to be told that satellites were used, because they are not measuring maximum wind-speeds, only the surface ocean temperatures from which speeds are inferred. And I don’t want to be told that radar measurements were used, because if they were that reliable, precise and useful, then no one would be now sending up aircraft to precisely drop dropsondes into the appropriate storm locations.

    I’m not saying I am convinced that a selection bias is behind any of this, but I will say that it would explain how warming oceans can appear to have resulted in an increase in the number of the most dangerous storms to measure without increasing the overall number. Alternative explanations require some quite inventive climate modelling.

    Like

  23. “No, hurricanes are not getting more dangerous

    Hurricane Helene is a terrible tragedy – but it is not evidence of a climate apocalypse.”

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/01/no-hurricanes-are-not-getting-more-dangerous/

    The landfall of Hurricane Helene on the US Gulf Coast this weekend has prompted an all too predictable outbreak of climate hysteria in the mainstream media. That there have been many fatalities and widespread damage is indisputable – and of course terribly tragic – but killing people and wrecking things is sadly what hurricanes do. These risks are part and parcel of living in the south-eastern United States, the northern Bay of Bengal, or the coasts of China or the Philippines, and they always have been. Not that you would know that from the news reporting on Helene, which has been consistently alarmist and agenda-driven.

    The BBC has described Helene as ‘one of the biggest ever storms to hit the US Gulf Coast, with wind gust speeds of 140 mph’. That’s true, but it is still quite a long way behind the 150mph of Camille in 1969, or the 160mph of the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, both of which hit the US before climate change was deemed a major concern..…

    Liked by 1 person

  24. Helene has caused widespread destruction in North Carolina due mainly to extreme flooding. The situation is very desperate but it appears that FEMA is actually reluctant to respond robustly to the crisis and there are even stories (not confirmed) of people using private helicopters to evacuate residents and deliver supplies being threatened with arrest. Even Bret Weinstein is a conspiracy theorist now:

    How many of our governmental institutions do we need to witness performing the INVERSE of their intended function before we understand that we are under attack? FEMA enflames disasters DOD issues stand down orders to the most capable and well equipped Americans as fellow citizens needlessly die in the mountains FDA authorizes poison and bans medicine CDC causes diseases to spread and distributes misinformation Homeland security facilitates an invasion FBI instigates insurrection and hides evidence NIH/NIAID literally creates infectious human pathogens that destroy health It’s a struggle to find even a SINGLE counter example to this pattern To be clear: I am not saying the people who staff these agencies are traitors. I’m sure most are well intentioned. I am saying something has apparently gained control of our system and turned it against us. Most of the people in these institutions are just following orders because they’re too young to understand where that leads. This is not the pattern we would expect if the problem was simply one of corruption. Once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action, as they say in military circles. We’re now talking about dozens of institutions at every level of governance including international, hundreds of separate instances, a pattern occurring now across the West. And it isn’t just a government problem. In fact, it would be impossible in 2024 for the government to cryptically turn on the citizens in a Democratic Republic without the press, the academy and social media platforms marching in lock step. There is a strong argument to be made that “cancel culture” and vaccine mandates were needed to cleanse the institutions of would-be resistors. So the question is, what now?

    https://x.com/BretWeinstein/status/1842109092648910977

    Look at what is happening in Britain now with Labour accelerating our decline and decide whether it is idiotic incompetence, systemic corruption or an organised attack upon our nation state. I suggest all three dependent on what magnification setting you set your microscope at to examine the phenomenon.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Jaime,

    “And it isn’t just a government problem. In fact, it would be impossible in 2024 for the government to cryptically turn on the citizens in a Democratic Republic without the press, the academy and social media platforms marching in lock step.”

    Well, I can certainly agree with that, since I said the same in a recent Cliscep article:

    “To put it simply, democracy is never under greater threat than when journalists and politicians are seemingly in lockstep.”

    https://cliscep.com/2024/08/05/the-real-threat-to-democracy/

    I’m not sure what is going on at the moment. There seems to be a strong sense of self-destruction within the world today; one that features an increasingly moralised cleansing of society. It looks like an emergent anti-humanist trend driven by self-loathing and a lack of confidence. The state’s role in this may just be to ensure that the mood is ‘properly’ acted upon. Whilst it certainly looks like the state is at war with the people, I think, more fundamentally, the people are at war with themselves.

    I blame the internet. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

  26. John,

    Just a matter of deciding then whether it is a top down or bottom up war against humanity. I’m not sure whether it matters at this stage, because supposedly we all come from the same gene pool and we all live on the same planet. Unless Icke is right and it is the Lizard People from outer space after all!

    Like

  27. Jaime,

    I’m not sure whether it matters at this stage…

    In a way, it doesn’t, but you highlighted a particularly important statement made by Weinstein:

    “I am not saying the people who staff these agencies are traitors. I’m sure most are well intentioned. I am saying something has apparently gained control of our system and turned it against us.“

    Knowing what it is that has gained control, and the process by which that has happened, is very important if we are to have any hope of emerging from the malaise. I suspect that anti-humanist ideologies taking root within academia played a major role, since a lot will follow on from that, including the capture of state policies and the indoctrination of the next generation.

    Liked by 2 people

  28. P.S. What do you mean by ‘unless Icke is right’? Of course he is right! Remember, we are conspiracy theorists and so we are committed to believing anything. You should go back and read your Lewandowsky.

    Like

  29. Agreed John, identifying the ‘something’ that has gained control is absolutely vital and this is where the accusation of conspiracy theorist comes in, because if you are of the opinion that the ‘something’ is purely emergent and devoid of volition and intelligence, then you will disagree with those who maintain that the ‘something’ is intelligent, purposeful and ultimately malign. And if you want to discredit and dismiss those who maintain the latter – for whatever reason – you will label them as conspiracy theorists, rather than engage in coherent debate.

    Liked by 1 person

  30. Jaime,

    I think I can understand why people have become so animated recently regarding the potential threat to society that can be posed by a group of ill-motivated conspiracy theorists. I think we have the internet and sites such as 4chan to thank for that. It is unfortunate, however, that anyone who has exposed legitimate reason to suspect conspiracy is also labelled a conspiracy theorist, and so is held up to be an equal threat to society – even though it is the conspiracy itself that actually poses the threat. Worst still, anyone who theorises non-agential phenomena that are phenomenologically similar to conspiracy in their effect can be caught up in the same labelling. The end result, as you say, is to close down important debate. In fact, I suspect this mislabelling may be an inevitable consequence of the sort of non-agential phenomena I have in mind. The debate is not closed down as part of a grand conspiracy – but it might as well have been. Society’s ability to candidly self-examine its control structures, without fear, seems to be dissipating and I’m not sure why. What I will say is that these control structures seem perfectly capable of creating self-protective conspiracy theories of their own.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. But here is where we’re at. Elon Musk call it ‘incompetence’, but it’s much worse. FEMA, a federal government agency, is deliberately causing and prolonging the hardship and even deaths of thousands of Americans in towns devastated by Helene. Tim Kennedy is there, on the ground (and desperately trying to get in the air) and FEMA are deliberately obstructing his mission to save lives. That’s not a conspiracy theory. The UK government has demonstrated to us that they have equal disregard for the lives of we, the people. It’s time to take the threat of rogue government very seriously.

    https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1842210911576035430

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Jaime,

    It’s time to take the threat of rogue government very seriously.

    Or maybe it’s just good enough to stop taking seriously the idea that governments exist to protect their people.

    As a case in point, the UK government introduced Smart Motorway active hard-shoulder running knowing it will kill some people, and they still felt that they were acting lawfully and morally. I know this because I was involved in the safety assessment of some of the associated technologies, so I got to read their safety arguments first hand and I argued vainly with the government agency representatives at the time:

    How Governments Think About Public Safety – Climate Scepticism (cliscep.com)

    As a second example, the present government has just voted to withdraw winter fuel payments for pensioners, in full knowledge that the cost will be measured in death for many and misery for countless others.

    Governments will often take morally questionable decisions, and many can look downright malicious depending upon your stakeholder perspective. It’s not just the despots of this world that we have to be wary of. Never underestimate the capacity of a simple bureaucracy to cruelly dehumanize.

    The interesting question is, why is a lack of moral compass becoming more apparent of late?

    Liked by 1 person

  33. John,

    My notion of acting with malice (malicious intent) is taking action in the knowledge that such action will result in significant harm, even death, to others, be that with the specific intention of causing harm and death to others, or with the intention of achieving some other objective, knowing that the consequences of pursuing and achieving that objective (however apparently honorable) will definitely cause harm and death to others. I apply that test to the actions of government and they pass with flying colours very often.

    Like

  35. I fear we are doomed to see this article repeated by the BBC every time a new hurricane hits the USA:

    “How is climate change affecting hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones?”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42251921

    For me, the key quote appears towards the bottom of what I found to be a long lecture:

    But rising temperatures do affect these storms in several measurable ways. Firstly, warmer ocean waters mean storms can pick up more energy, leading to higher wind speeds. Record high sea surface temperatures were a key reason why US scientists forecast an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season for 2024.

    A link is duly provided to the following article:

    “Atlantic to get ‘extraordinary’ hurricane season”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw441ng00wxo

    However, no link is then given to the article that explains how that prediction went embarrassingly wrong. But then they couldn’t, since no such BBC article was written. It seems the forecast is the only evidence needed to push the narrative, and the fact that the forecast proved woefully wrong is neither here nor there as far as the BBC is concerned. In their world, climate scientists making scary predictions constitutes the only relevant reality.

    Liked by 1 person

  36. Okay, to be fair, the BBC has now decided it’s time to ask the all-important question:

    How unusual has this hurricane season been?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cden551l7kko

    Anyone who has read any of the BBC’s climate change articles will know that they have the habit of posing a headline question designed to suggest an answer. In this instance, the reader can anticipate that they are about to read an article on how very unusual this hurricane season has been. Hence the opening statement:

    Hurricanes Helene and Milton – which have devastated parts of the south-east United States – have bookended an exceptionally busy period of tropical storms. In less than two weeks, five hurricanes formed, which is not far off what the Atlantic would typically get in an entire year.

    So, as one might expect, the answer to the question posed is, ‘Very unusual’.

    Except, of course, it wasn’t – a point that was only made later on in the depths of the article:

    However, the total number of tropical storms – which includes hurricanes but also weaker storms – has been around average, and less than was expected at the start of the year. After Beryl weakened, there were only four named storms, and no major hurricanes, until Helene became a tropical storm on 24 September.

    It’s not that there is anything incorrectly stated in this article; it’s just that even an ordinary hurricane season will feature plenty that is spectacular and attention-grabbing. And the average BBC climate change journalist is nothing if not expert at grabbing attention. The narrative to be pushed is that the strongest hurricanes are getting stronger, and so you only seem to need one humdinger to define the season.

    Liked by 2 people

  37. I saw that article, but hadn’t read it. I rather predicted what my feelings would be afterwards.

    I noticed the other day that BBC hurricanes no longer approach coastlines. They “barrel” towards them. Is this appropriate language? Why not just report the facts?

    Liked by 1 person

  39. Jaime,

    That’s a fascinating insight provided by your article. I had no idea that the WWA had started to resort to physical perturbation modelling for their attribution studies. I need to take some time out to think about the implications of that. The cynic in me suspects that they have changed tack simply because the new technique theorises greater impacts and yet is no more (or less) dodgy than the model ensemble techniques they have been using.

    In the meantime, we have the BBC pressing hard with the new orthodoxy that it is the strength rather than numbers of storms where we see the important trend. This is how their article finishes:

    Either way, this season has already highlighted how warm seas fuelled by climate change are already increasing the chances of the strongest hurricanes – something that is expected to continue as the world warms further. “Hurricanes occur naturally, and in some parts of the world they are regarded as part of life,” explains Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, USA. “But human-caused climate change is supercharging them and exacerbating the risk of major damage.”

    Firstly, that is not what ‘this season has already highlighted’. Secondly, I repeat the question I asked on this thread earlier. Can anyone point to any material that demonstrates that the apparent strengthening of the worst storms is not a selection effect resulting from a recent ability to safely measure the stronger winds? Until I see such material, I will remain the empirical sceptic.

    Liked by 2 people

  40. John, it’s a real piece of work. The deeper you dig, the dodgier it gets. The Imperial model paper says:

    The IRIS dataset is based on the mean of the 42-year input observations. The 10,000 year output is fixed to the “current” 1980–2021 TC climate rather than a prediction of any sort. The IRIS model produces independent synthetic years, so the dataset has no inter-annual correlation which may be important for some applications, for example, calculating multi-year risk. The magnitude of the inter-annual variability in the dataset resembles that of the 42-year observation period which may not contain the full range of the multidecadal variability of the Earth climate system.

    And yet, when you look at the WWA study for Helene, they use the model to make predictions of future intensity based on the observed trend in hurricane “potential intensity” (calculated using sea surface temperature) over the 42 year observation period, which they attribute in its entirety to anthropogenic global warming and furthermore they simply extrapolate this trend back to 1880 to calculate the potential intensity during the pre-industrial climate! And I’ve just found a study which suggests that multidecadal and even centennial variability in Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures (based on coral proxies) is much larger than the post industrial overall warming trend. Looks like I might have to share this disinformation in more detail on my Substack.

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Hurricane Milton live updates: ‘Don’t go sightseeing’, US officials say as they warn of preventable deaths – BBC News

    From 10 October 2024 Helen Willets BBC Weather – Partial quotes, My bold –

    “Milton initially brought winds in excess of 100mph which downed power lines, structural damage and trees.

    Over 18 inches of rain fell in St Petersburg and Tampa – that’s almost half a metre which is a one in a thousand year rainfall event for that area. Clearwater beach reported over 14 inches of rain.”

    “One Florida resident says Hurricane Milton is “probably the noisiest and the most powerful” storm he’s seen during his 25 years there. Phil Peachey, who lives in Orlando, tells BBC Breakfast the situation in the city is “really scary”. “I’ve never seen the trees bend so much,” he says.”

    “Asked about plans to rescue those who decided not to evacuate, Bevan replies: “I don’t think it’s going to be rescue once the storm subsides…it’s going to be recovery.

    “What we’ll probably be finding in the morning are bodies…it’s bleak in some of these areas.”

    She says officers told residents to write their name and next of kin on their arms with a black marker “so that we can get hold of somebody to come claim you”.”

    And on & on with more of the same. Not make light of the people killed & damage done, but these things happen in Florida unfortunately.

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