Dot Earth: Hurricane Expert Reassesses Link To Warming

Back to front page »

By Andrew C. Revkin

A fresh study by a leading hurricane researcher has raised new questions about how hurricane strength and frequency might, or might not, be influenced by global warming. Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle nicely summarized the research on Friday.

The research is important because the lead author is Kerry Emanuel, the M.I.T. climate scientist who in the 1980’s foresaw a rise in hurricane intensity in a human-warmed world and in 2005, just a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, asserted in a Nature paper that he had found statistical evidence linking rising hurricane energy and warming.

That work was supported by some subsequent studies, but refuted by others. Despite the uncertainty in the science, hurricanes quickly became a potent icon in environmental campaigns, as well as in “An Inconvenient Truth,” the popular climate documentary featuring former Vice President Al Gore. The message was that global warming was no longer a looming issue and was exacting a deadly toll now.

The new study, in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is hardly definitive in its own right, essentially raising more questions than it resolves. But it definitely rolls back Dr. Emanuel’s sense of confidence about a recent role for global warming. (The abstract is here. A pdf is downloadable on Dr. Emanuel’s ftp page.)

I queried Dr. Emanuel about it and he sent this note Friday night:

The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us. There are various interpretations possible, e.g. a) The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or b) The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet.

The study essentially meshed two kinds of computer models — the massive global climate simulations used to project long-term consequences of building greenhouse gases and small high-resolution simulations of little atmospheric disturbances that can grow into hurricanes. When hundreds of potential storms were seeded across warming oceans, some places in some computer runs — like the North Pacific — saw more activity, but others saw less intensification and fewer storms.

As Dr. Emanuel told Eric in the Chronicle:

“The take-home message is that we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Emanuel said. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty in this problem. The bulk of the evidence is that hurricane power will go up, but in some places it will go down.”

The fresh findings, and Dr. Emanuel’s willingness to follow the science, remind me of something he told my colleague Claudia Dreifus in 2006: “[I]t’s a really bad thing for a scientist to have an immovable, intractable position.”

On his SciGuy blog, Eric discusses some of the ramifications of Dr. Emanuel’s new storm study:

• This should put to rest a lot of the nonsense about a global warming conspiracy among scientists. Emanuel, faced with new evidence, has moderated his viewpoint. That’s what responsible scientists do, and most are responsible. The amount of scientist-bashing when it comes to global warming is generally quite deplorable.

• Anyone who doubts that the threat of large hurricanes is still being used as part of global warming campaigns should look no further than the energy and climate platform of a presidential candidate [pdf alert], who writes, “Global warming is real, is happening now and is the result of human activities. The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.”

• If you’re a skeptic, and you welcome these results, please remember that these are the same climate models you bash when they show global temperatures steadily rising during the next century.

They are solid points that hold lessons for advocates on both sides of the charged debate over climate science and its implications for society. There are lessons here for journalists, too. Science is a trajectory toward understanding, not a set of truths. Sometimes that can be inconvenient, whether writing a headline or advocating for a climate bill.

But somehow society has to learn how to be comfortable with this aspect of the scientific enterprise, while not fuzzing out because things aren’t crystal clear. As Stephen Schneider, a veteran climatologist at Stanford, recently mused, the question is, “Can democracy survive complexity?”

It’s clear that Dr. Emanuel’s admonition about the need for a lot more work applies beyond the realm of science, as well.

climateaudit.org has a pretty good breakdown of the paper. ====================================

†Posted by kim

The big take-away here is that the science is not settled after all. Now we need to figure out how to set appropriate policies and spend money wisely in the face of uncertainty.

†Posted by John Goetz

As a skeptic I believe that development can lead to certain detrimental affects on a local and global level. I also know the warming induced hysteria of pestilence, plauge, famine, flooding and drought that are supposed to reduce humanity in a couple decades has hit the level lunacy. Of course the stupidity of the “denier” attack is exposed again. Anyway, there was a member of the IPCC who posted on this blog a couple months ago on how the connection between hurricanes and warming or droughts (australia) was “unproven” but they did highlight dangerous events. Finnaly, why sould only skeptics be happy, don’t we all live on the planet

†Posted by robert verdi

And the answer to the question is. We don’t know and maybe in ten or twenty years we might be just begining to have an idea of what is going on with the climate.

†Posted by Mike D

” a) The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or b) The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet.”

I’m afraid the very obvious choice is “b)”. Models are known to start out oversimplified, and need lots of revision; when attempting to describe highly complex phenomena. Basic physics, however, HOLDS. Add heat to the pot- it will boil faster.

Sorry, deniers, there’s no way around that one.

Many thanks to Emanuel for the outstanding demonstration of scientific ethics. Of course he came forward when he looked and didn’t see his own statistics holding up. It’s what real scientists do.

†Posted by Greenpa

This whole business of trying to incorporate hurricane intensity and frequency into computer models should be decoupled because hurricanes are short-lived weather events and are not “climate.”

It is obvious that the higher the surface water temperatures in the path of a hurricane are, the more strength the storm will acquire. Duh!

The determining factor in the “destructiveness” of a hurricane is whether or not it ever reaches land in the first place.

Last year, numerous typhoons and hurricanes started on their way toward land and never reached it because they were sheared to bits by strong winds that sucked them up to the North Pole.

This condition persisted for most of the hurricane season of 2007 (certainly the latter half). This affected the hurricanes that grew out of systems coming off of the west coast of Africa that headed west, roughly along the Equator.

At the same time, hot moist air was being pulled north from the Amazon, and there were systems being created in the Caribbean that did form into hurricanes that did reach land.

The incredibly strong winds created by the polar oscillations and vortices seemed to be the determining factors in last year’s hurricane season.

In a few short years, when the Arctic sea ice is totally absent during the summer months, and the water and air up there get hot (instead of being cold as it was during the past 10,000 years or more), we have no idea what is going to happen to the weather and that includes any attempt to predict intensities and frequencies of hurricanes, which, in my opinion, is a non sequitur. These MIT guys could better spend their time on trying to predict what the oscillations will be doing and what their affects will be.

†Posted by Tenney Naumer

For Dot Earth readers, here is a link to an article in NewScientist’s environment section. The article is a synopsis of a paper published in Nature, and it describes the transport of heat to the North Pole — heat from cyclones formed in the tropical Atlantic.

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/clima te-change/dn13134-melting-ice-may-not-explain-warming-a rctic.html

†Posted by Tenney Naumer

from Mike Roddy:

I never liked the Katrina evidence, because hurricanes are too random and complex. Gore and others used it because these events are telegenic and dramatic. The new papers indicating that this particular cause and effect is not well established is unsurprising and, as contrary evidence of climate change, meaningless. I’m expecting a bunch of “aha!”s from the deniers who blog here, but will ignore them, as usual.

The best evidence of global warming is also the most obvious and comprehensive: temperature increase, and higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And the best indication of planetary danger comes from degraded ecosystems and collapse and extinction of all kinds of species. This can be proved empirically, compared to the historical record and even early 20th century rates of species loss.

Michael Novacek, provost of the American Museum of Natural History, said it best: “It is the double whammy of climate change combined with fragmented, degraded natural habitats- not climate change alone- that is the real threat to many populations, species, and ecosystems, including human populations marginalized and displaced by these combined forces”.

†Posted by Mike Roddy

“If you’re a skeptic, and you welcome these results, please remember that these are the same climate models you bash when they show global temperatures steadily rising during the next century.”

I’m not sure how that fits into this:

“The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us. There are various interpretations possible, e.g. a) The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or b) The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet.”

Sounds to me like nobody has to praise the models to accept the fact that there is a lot of uncertainty and that the science is not settled.

But, I admire Emmanual’s integrity in publishing a paper that contradicts something that he has publicaly and professionally committed to.

All I can add is “watch your back.”

(You don’t suppose Lindzen sent some of that ExxonMobil money his way?)

:)

†Posted by John M

Hurricanes are an ocean-cooling heat transfer mechanism. The more powerful the hurricane, the greater the drop of ocean surface temperature in its wake. Thus one might expect larger hurricanes to extend the interval between hurricanes over the patches of ocean that spawn them, because they don’t spawn until the sea surface warms sufficiently again.

I think recent data suggests that there are fewer but more powerful hurricanes .

†Posted by Steve Bolger

What the right temperature, Dan? Will someone who knows please post it?

†Posted by M

how refreshing to know that there can still be a civil discourse between “advocates on both sides of the charged debate over climate science and its implications for society.”

phew! i guess the debate isn’t quite “over.”

since this revelation was presented as the dissenting view in today’s climate debate daily, how about a thread on the previous day’s dissenting view. that one was potentially of much greater import, from roy spencer, and was backed up by the lead ipcc author. it questions the relative underlying importance of co2 as a global warming forcing agent.

http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=21153&c id=39&cname=NBR+Comment

†Posted by sas

It is very simple and clear to thinking people, the science is not well understood and the models have a large amount of variation in them. Now some would take very expensive and possibly un-needed actions based on uncertain predictions. I sure don’t want to mess up our economy and spend a lot of resources based on “science” that is no where good enough to make these types of decisions on. Do some sensable things, pospone major changes until later when both the “science will be clearer” and the technology to address it more mature!!!

†Posted by Vulcan Alex

It’s the media who seized upon this, and in many cases presented it as fact while whipping up hysteria. “Mother Nature’s retribution!” warns the narrator as a hurricane symbol spins away in CNN’s Eco Solutions promo which they broadcast about 100 times a day. Will the media outlets devote the same effort to letting everyone know that quite possibly there isn’t a connection here at all? Not a chance.

†Posted by -Spyros

The paper basically says that the models they used predict that frequency of global hurricanes may actually decrease while in a warming world, but the intensity of some of those that occur may increase.

This is no reason to be too quick to debunk the models, if you are trained to think as an engineer, for instance. The first thing you learn is to check limiting cases when a prediction is made. OK, in the limit as warming goes to infinity , there would be no hurricanes, because there would be no atmosphere. So that prediction, in the limit, checks out. Heating also changes viscosity and introduces all sorts of other means of energy transport in fluid and gaseous systems which could easily make cyclonic modes much less likely.

Only a very naive scientist or someone utterly untrained in science would take the prediction of less hurricanes with increased warming to mean the model is faulty. It could more likely be be evidence that the model is not so faulty, imho.

It frightens me how quickly people jump willy-nilly to fallacious but seemingly plausible conclusions simply because they like to opine on things they think are important but haven’t the sense to understand.

†Posted by kay kanuffisousa

from Danny Bloom:

Good reporting by Mr Berger in Houston, and it’s instructive, yes, to see a scientist review his ideas after getting new information from his research, and it’s good for the public to see how these things happen and how “science” is always evolving, changing course, revising and coming up with new ideas, pro and con climate change impacts.

It’s also good to see the New York Times referring readers to another newspaper’s reportage — such as the Houston Chronicle, which is a Hearst paper, and therefore a competitor to the New York Times national empire … but who cares? … information is information — as this blog has often done with links to articles at the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, among others.

We’re all in this together, so sharing news links is helpful to readers across the Web.

Let’s watch the next 10 years of hurricane activity (and typhoon activity in Asia) and see what scientists come up with then.

The big “get” this coming summer, I guess, will be the new photos and “conclusions” about the melting summer Arctic ice above Alaska and Canada, if indeed it continues its recent melting back from previous summertime marks. Unlike my receding hairline, which is beyond redemption now and past the point of no return, the Arctic ice may not be “hair” today, gone tomorrow. Looking forward to your summer reports on this hairy issue!

[smile]

†Posted by Danny Bloom

The IPCC report was quite equivocal about the hurricane link, so this recent article by Emmanual is actually in line with mainstreaam opinion in the scientific community.

A lot of people seem to have the sense (and I must admit sharing this sense from time to time) that things have got to get really really bad before we start seeing substantial movement on CO2 reductions from governments like the USA. There are certainly impacts of climate change (like ocean acidification, for example) that are pretty much unquestioned. Nevertheless, the bulk of impacts are going to be probability based.

Take, for example, the massive declines in returning chinook salmon populations this year (and sockeye last year). These declines are almost certainly due to the poor oceaan conditions in 2005 when these salmon were first arriving hungry at sea. The failure of upwelling due in 2005 is known to be responsible for these poor ocean conditions. Such upwelling failures are associate with warmer waters, altered currents, and weaker winds, all predicted to happen more frequently in climate models. But can we unequivocally prove that the conditions in 2005 were due to global warming? No, we can’t.

The underlying problem here is the generally differing attitudes that the USA and, say, Europe have to environmental issues in general. Europe uses the precautionary principle- better safe than sorry. USA uses the “innocent until proven guilty” approach- if there is ‘reasonable doubt,’ then you don’t act.

Until we have a shift in attitudes in the USA towards the precautionary approach, we will continue to bicker about whether this or that climate impact (be it frogs, salmon, hurricanes, ice sheet collapse, etc.) is REALLY due to climate change or not. In the meantime, CO2 levels keep going up, salmon populations plummet, and we continue to speed towards the edge of the cliff….

†Posted by seastar

There is no reason to think that Katrina’s destructive power was not partially, at least, caused by global warming. Katrina passed over areas of the Atlantic and then the Gulf of Mexico where the temperature of the water was very, very high in comparison to other years, and also, the depth of the hot water was greater.

However, this same information cannot be used to predict frequency of landfall. (N.B. I am not saying that the paper tried to do this.)

For those of you who have no idea how scientific publishing works, permit me to explain a few things.

No research paper is perfect or complete.

Before Dr. Emanuel had even submitted his paper to Nature (I refer to the paper published in 2005), he would already have known that there were many things left to do, and no doubt he had already begun working on them.

Furthermore, far better than he should definitively critique his own work.

This would be the normal course of things at a good research university like MIT.

And, most fortunately, his more recent paper was accepted for publication (this is never a given).

Also, negative results may be just as useful and provide just as much information as positive results.

†Posted by Tenney Naumer

One thing which seems to be missing from the discussion is not whether or not hurricanes will increase in intensity and become more frequent but whether we will begin to see more storms make landfall in places that didn’t historically get these kinds of events. Witness the storm that hit Brazil in recent memory. In 2004 Nova Scotia was pummelled be hurricane Juan, a category 2 storm that devastated Halifax and destroyed a large portion of forest in the middle of the province. By some estimates 100 million trees were knocked over and are still being cleaned up. Forecasters at the time predicted it to weaken to a tropical storm by landfall and were taken by surprise by its intensity when it hit. The reason given - warmer than usual sea surface temperatures. Can we link this event with certainty to global warming - probably not - any more than we can say the fires in California can be or droughts in Australia or Hurricane Katrina for that matter, but it leaves a person to wonder. What happens when a similar storm makes landfall in say, The Netherlands. This doesn’t seem too far out of the realm of possibilities given recent trends in climate. When you begin to consider the fact that as sea level is predicted to rise with melting ice caps even a foot or less of increase can have devastating impacts when associated with storm surges created by hurricane strength storms. I grew up in a coastal town which is basically an island connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway. If the infrastructure that supports the town gets too expensive to maintain then it will die a slow death like many other coastal communities.

†Posted by R. Crosby

Perhaps we do possess enough scientific evidence to recognize and understand that the human community could soon need to find a new way of living in the world because we may not be able to provide a good enough future for our children by following much longer the “primrose path” of endless economic globalization that our leaders are relentlessly pursuing now.

That is to say, we need to do something, both individually and collectively, that is different from the way we are doing things now.

Time is short, it appears. Something calamitous could happen soon, much sooner than most people are imagining.

Recently the great man, James Lovelock, reported that he is hoping for 20 more years before “it hits the fan.” By ‘giving’ us twenty years, I suppose he will not disturb the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe among us from my not-so-great generation of elders who have set their sights on rampantly growing the leviathan-like global economy until its unbridled increase becomes unsustainable and produces some kind of colossal ecological wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has seen….come what may for our children, coming generations and for life as we know it on Earth.

Such adamantine willfulness, unvarnished selfishness, unmitigated arrogance, and unfathomable potential for the precipitation of mass destruction are unparalleled in human history, I believe.

†Posted by Steven Earl Salmony

Tenney- you said “It is obvious that the higher the surface water temperatures in the path of a hurricane are, the more strength the storm will acquire. Duh!”

Prof. Emanuel has published at length concerning the connection between SST and hurricane top wind speeds, intensity, etc. For example, look here- ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/Physics_Today_2 006.pdf

If you look just at SST changes, the maximum wind speed can be estimated by modeling the hurricane as a Carnot cycle heat engine. The wind speed is given by v^2= E(Ts-To)/To, where v is peak wind velocity, Ts is SST, To is TOA temperature, and E is a constant. Temperatures are in Kelvin. An increase in SST of 5 degrees C is predicted to increase the maximum hurricane wind velocity by 2.5% (!). We have no way of measuring peak wind velocities in hurricanes to that level of accuracy, so the effect solely due to increased SST is undetectable. One complicated part of hurricane intensity predictions involves understanding water vapor, which his current paper aptly shows by comparing his Figure 8b and Figure 10.

†Posted by paminator

The biggest thing the environmental movement has done to shoot itself in the foot is the advocates asserting certainty and solid links in cases where there is some (inevitable) ambiguity.

The biggest flaw in the neocon approach is the hypocrisy of applying the precautionary principle to spend trillions of dollars responding to “best available” military intelligence, but posturing to insist on 110% certainty when it comes to taking action to avert possible environmental threats.

Our reaction to threats of any source should be proportional to the size of the impacts weighted by our expected likelihood of such impacts. If you put every risk through the same analysis, you would find the case for prudent environmental policy much stronger than the cases for most pending military objectives.

†Posted by Neal

It appears the IPCC is also beginning to downplay its various positions / predictions RE CO2 centric Global Warming. Even to the laughable attempt to blame contrary data as periodic natural fluctuations. Hypocrites.

(AKA watch as the IPCC scapegoating begins, I hope DR Hansen can take the heat).

†Posted by SteamGeek

I’m surprised by the conclusions of this climate modeling study, and I wonder how important it is.

As I understand it (perhaps incorrectly), Dr. Emanuel used climate models supporting the IPCC conclusions, and he added to the models some code that generated tropical cyclones where conditions were favorable.

My question concerns the non-linearity of such models. Aren’t the predictions of such models extremely dependent on small changes in the variables and all the parameters? How robust is Emanual’s conclusion in relation to small changes?

Is it possible that one or two small changes in his variables or the parameters (like the probabilities assoicated with the initial conditions seeding the storms) could have changed his conclusions a great deal?

†Posted by Kapit

Andy,

KUDOS for recognizing Eric Berger’s fine work at the Houston Chronicle & his SciGuy blog.

†Posted by IANVS

The overwhelming effect of global warming is such that should be seen as an epidemic caused by the elite nations of the world. If I may ask, is this the dividend of colonisation to africa. I my opinion the campaign against global warming should given a wide and radical approach as the effect of it, is telling on the third world who on there own has contributed nothing to deserve this. I see this epidemy mal-handling humanity more than HIV/AIDS. The advance world should collaborate with us in passing this message to the local people in the grassroot Africa as a lot of then are already seeing it as the end of the world.The resultant effect of what am saying now is some has given up the situation as the weather is either favourable to their farming or not.CAN YOU IMAGINE THIS?

†Posted by Brisbane Chukwuemeka

If there’s more energy going into the system. i.e. World-heating-up, isn’t it logical there’ll be more violent weather?

†Posted by Mike Donald

The hurricane evidence was not presented as strong by scientists and the scientific case for warming has not rested on that. Hence, the scientific case for or against climate change, its causes, its effects, and its remedies has not changed substantively - its more a matter of degree than absolutes. Note that Dr. Emanuel did say “The bulk of the evidence is that hurricane power will go up, but in some places it will go down.”

It is unfortunate that politicians and others on both sides seize upon any scientific SUGGESTION, however mild, use it as an indicator of CERTAINTY, and then use anecdotal “evidence” from short term events (today it’s colder/hotter than average) to “support” their case. I understand people don’t like uncertainty, but overstating one’s case undermines it more than it supports it. The discussion then becomes about nonsense rather than substance, which is a waste. In that spirit, I’d love for the rhetoric to tone down: if you can’t support it, don’t say it.

†Posted by swatter0

Is the a typo in the abstract? “phrases”->”phases” or is this part of the nomenclature of the modeling?

If I recall, the curious thing about the observational result, a recent strengthening of storms, was that models had not predicted this behavior with the relatively weak forcing we’ve had so far. This methods seems as though it might address this issue eventually. The power dissipation measure seems to be doing interesting things in this regard.

†Posted by Chris Dudley

Meanwhile, the ocean keeps acidifying at an alarming rate…

†Posted by Sailesh Rao

we have to admire people who follow the data and not pre-conceived agendas of denial.

†Posted by kim

Just a note on scientific results and an author’s “beliefs”.

It is often the case that the results of research surprise the author or the author may not even like the results, yet the author still publishes the results since that is what the honest results are, and getting published first with new and good work is what it’s all about - I rarely think of “commitment” as figuring in. Fine-tuning or contradictions of one’s previous results using new techniques are not unusual and no big deal, and the uncertainty generates more research.

†Posted by swatter0

Finally, some realization that this whole global warming/hurricane nonsense, is just that, nonsense. Lets see in 2005 we had unusual hurricanes, yes indeed, but OH my ‘06 and ‘07 virtually none, and certainly none of extreme force. Thats also unusual. Ladies and Gents there is NO global warming, and when the NYT actually prints the UN scientists report that says they were “misunderstood” the whole world will know. Gee, this is simply a way to tax us, if people haven’t noticed.

†Posted by Roberto

The link to this article on the NYT homepage is titled “Dot Earth: Assessing Climate’s Link to Hurricanes.” I’m no expert, but I’d say there’s a definite link between climate and hurricanes. (Who writes those things anyway?)

†Posted by David H.

Andy, I’m shocked, shocked!, that you would publish this heresy. Anna Haynes will have you investigated! Jeff Huggins will refuse to read your blog for a week. Don’t you realize what a slippery slope it is when you use the phrase “the science isn’t settled”? Why that’s exactly what the Deniers claim about water vapor and cloud formation and their roles as feedbacks. It’s hard enough trying to convince people when CO2 can’t even overcome a mild La Nina. Now assume your proper role and bury this post! I just thought I’d get that out of the way for the DotEarth lynch mob before they waste all that carbon flaming you! :)

†Posted by Mike M.

This paragraph refers to the last quoted paragraph. How can you make the following remark when Emmanuel is a lone scientist with an open mind? What can you say about the other IPCC scientist experts when they say the science is settled? Scientists have created their own credibility problem. Don’t blame it on the critics of global warming.

For many years I constructed large dynamic economic models (still much simpler than climate models) and we couldn’t and still can’t get decent results very far out in time. What do the hard science folks know about modeling that hasn’t been published in the preeminent modeling journal Econometrica.

“This should put to rest a lot of the nonsense about a global warming conspiracy among scientists. Emanuel, faced with new evidence, has moderated his viewpoint. That’s what responsible scientists do, and most are responsible.”

†Posted by Dick Harriff

The statement “If you’re a skeptic, and you welcome these results, please remember that these are the same climate models you bash when they show global temperatures steadily rising during the next century.” isn’t quite correct. Earlier, we see: “The study essentially meshed two kinds of computer models †the massive global climate simulations used to project long-term consequences of building greenhouse gases and small high-resolution simulations of little atmospheric disturbances that can grow into hurricanes.” Only the large-scale model is used for global temperature modeling/prediction. The smaller-scale models are based on fluid dynamics calculations too complex for global climate modeling (currently). Good fluid dynamics models quite often produce counter-intuitive results and can be very sensitive to surrounding conditions. I applaud Dr. Emanuel for reporting his model results rather than trusting intuition - his own or that of the less learned who say this is all obvious. There is no “duh” here, unless want it to be.

†Posted by Chris Wark

It’s important to read this study closely enough to realize that Emanuel is not questioning global warming, only the prospective link between arming and the frequency and strength of hurricanes. He’s doing what responsible scientists do–building theory by testing hypotheses against data, using the best tools at his disposal.

†Posted by Bill Condon

We can’t wait until we get all the definitive information. Climate change due, at least in part, to global warming has already started and we as a nation are very irresponsible that nothing on the federal level is happening to combat global warming. My hope is in the next president and his/her administration will begin doing things to combat global warming and not just if China and India do also and not just voluntary stuff. We need a concerted effort on the federal level to try and make up for the time lost during the current administration. Ruth Beazer

†Posted by Ruth Beazer

Re: comment #21

Dear paminator,

Much to my chagrin, I am no longer able to open pdf files located on the web, due to a recent automatic upgrade to Adobe Reader. Therefore, I am unable to read the paper at the link you provided.

Be that as it may, I wonder if you have seen any papers describing significant weakening in hurricanes as they pass over warmer waters or significant strengthening of hurricanes as they pass over colder waters.

†Posted by Tenney Naumer

Re: comment #16

Dear Danny,

If you would like to know about the current status (April 11) of the Arctic sea ice and its future prospects, please go to the link below — it is not pretty.

http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/04/arc tic-sea-ice.html

†Posted by Tenney Naumer

paminator — is there anything in the paper you referenced concerning the “duration” of the maximum velocity?

†Posted by Tenney Naumer

The key takeaway from this (for me at least) is that while the noise around the edges of this discussion will ebb and flow, in the very long run our situation is unchanged. We are facing an eventual real reduction in the availability of fossil fuels and real limits on the productive capacity of the globe to sustain ourselves as well as those wild creatures we choose to spare.

So the challenge remains to develop systems and behaviors that are increasingly sustainable while maintaining our humanity. Some in here seem to believe that human exceptionalism itself is unsustainable and that the only solution is to use any means necessary to ensure there are fewer of us not just in the long term but soon. Sooner than can be achieved naturally through the development of less developed populations.

We can argue around the margins about various methods for addressing the key challenges, but if we can’t agree on our basic humanity, then I’m not sure around what we come together.

†Posted by Michael May (A3K)

“When hundreds of potential storms were seeded across warming oceans, some places in some computer runs †like the North Pacific †saw more activity, but others saw less intensification and fewer storms.”

Isn’t that what should expect? Similarly, you also see some areas will get more rainfall and some will get less. Climactic regions will shift. Hardly any variables can be expected to rise in a simple and uniform way.

The questions then are the magnitude of the changes, and the locations of the areas that will benefit and that will suffer. Some areas will probably come out ahead. Others could be in trouble. To the extent that a shift happens, that could even be a neutral change in terms of number or severity of storms, but if storms shift to areas that are less prepared there could still be an increase in damage and loss of life (or at least expense as those areas have to invest in storm preparations).

†Posted by JD

Thanks Bill Condon (#38) for a sensible response.

Dick Hariff (#36), are you kidding when you write,

“What do the hard science folks know about modeling that hasn’t been published in the preeminent modeling journal Econometrica.”

I recently saw a comment in which a physicist’s pointed that in many areas of the physical sciences, scientists are immediately skeptical of work invoking statistics. The processes are assumed, modeled, and confirmed as deterministic in nature. That is very, very rarely true in modeling human behavior.

†Posted by Ted Christopher

As a born again skeptic, this raises my confidence in some of the AGW climate scientists. As skeptic in AGW I would have no problems with this view because it is based on science. However, I think there may be something in believing that the some of the AGW science hardliners are beginning to try to salvage their reputation in case temps keep going down for the next 10 years?

†Posted by VG

All the climate models are being “revisited” because they have not properly predicted anything. Not even close. But they have been accepted as fact by far too many people with no science education, or at least not enough of an education to understand the science behind the models (or lack of scientific rigor).

Studying climate models in during my civil engineering education, we were asked to make a leap of faith. Without that leap of faith, the equations didn’t really make sense. All the rest of my engineering classes didn’t ask us to do this. In those classes and disciplines, it all made sense. It was all rooted in provable process. But not in environmental engineering. This was in the early 90s. And, lo and behold, the equations still don’t work 15 years later.

In this span of time, certain scientists and organizations with agendas have fought hard to try to make those assumptions bear fruit. And while we had a warming spell, it seemed to work well enough to convince laymen, even though the temps never actually matched the models. This is the exact way that religions keep their believers in the fold, BTW. And just like religions, they have shamed skeptic scientists into quiet (and there are a LOT of them, including members of the IPCC who were IGNORED by the UN). But they are starting to come out of hiding because they see this religious movement has gotten out of control.

The long and the short of it is that the average earth temperature (deviation from 100 year norm) has drop precipitously over the last 18 months, so much so that all of the warming has vanished. All of it. We are now at 0.03C above normal. If the “ever warming” climate models were accurate, this COULD NOT HAPPEN. Sure, we could have a cool spell, a period where temps dropped somewhat. But not back to “normal.” Not if CO2 really was the danger it is claimed to be.

But now that there is political momentum throughout the “developed world” the reality of the climate model failures won’t get play. Just ask Al Gore, who barred the press form his recent speech and had a woman dragged away by paramilitary guards for questioning his wild assertions.

http://www.news.com/5208-10789_3-0.html?forumID=1&threa dID=36800&messageID=397625&start=0

It seems to me that once the politicians all finally “unite” behind a cause, that’s usually a sign the cause is falling apart. We have 3 presidential candidates that took a stand 12 months ago to support self-restrictive punishments to control CO2, (finally?) and now they are being proven wrong, but it will take them another 15 years to admit it, and during that time, they will use the law to squelch dissent.

We are headed for hard times in the Western world as we apply economic handcuffs to ourselves for no valid reason, while Asia does not do the same to themselves. But for those in the world who think this isn’t such a bad thing, think about this. If you have a problem with the USA being an “out of control super power”, just wait until we are usurped by China due to our self flagellation. You aint seen nothin’ yet…

†Posted by mikey

From Wang Suya

#20 Steven Earl Salmony said “Perhaps we do possess enough scientific evidence to recognize and understand that the human community could soon need to find a new way of living in the world because we may not be able to provide a good enough future for our children by following much longer the “primrose path” of endless economic globalization that our leaders are relentlessly pursuing now.

That is to say, we need to do something, both individually and collectively, that is different from the way we are doing things now”

He is true. Our endless economic globalization made us not to know how will be living in the future. We need both individualy and collectively action. Yestoday is my day to study English envrinmental article. One article say that now one cloth now sell in Amecria, matrial made in Japan, cloth are made in Vietnam. How much carbon footprint one cloth will cost? Not only this, as Steven mentioned that endless economic globalzation is problem, too. we are expanding our economic activity so endless. We need some action to process it. Not let it endless, we need regulate our economy. Earth is limit, we can not let our economy unlimit expansion. Other way, we also need whole world work together to fight against global warming. For example, why not we work together make a global project to build superconductive cables’ network, let whole world sharing the solar energy, together. Now our place is night we can use daytime’s place sunshine’s energy. We need change, need work together, need decide which one should do and which one should stop. Otherwise, there will be much thing like hurricane affect our next generation’s life.

†Posted by Wang Suya

#17 comment by seastar goes straight to heart of the matter. As long as the US business-military-politcal-industrial complex adopts an “innocent until proven guilty” approach, we will continue to race towards oblivion. The European precautionary approach to climate change and a huge dose of common sense would do a lot to get the world economy back in balance with the limits of nature. However, in business and politics short term profits and victories trump long term growing and gathering threats. We “pay it forward,” which is code for passing it on to the next generation. How sick is that?

†Posted by R. Clifford

The year of Katrina and Wilma, I was in Wilma, seemed to be enhanced by global warming. Since then we’ve been lucky enough to not experience another major event. This year there seem to have been a large amount of tornadoes. There has also been a lot of snow some places. The words global warming might be overused in that CO2 buildup might be causing divergent effects depending on concentrations and regions of concentration. There is plenty of overlapping phenomenon regarding weather and climate patterns that it must be confusing for forecasters to put it all together. Last year I got sick with chills. I say this because it seems that if we are getting our “nature” sick that it is conceivable that it might take on different forms at different times. If we say that we should cause more global warming to create hurricanes this would be vain beyond our understanding. Predicting hurricanes is more a matter of tracking them and correlating weather patterns to predict their future course. We’ve been getting a lot of good tracking but to predict a season before it’s time is more subjective. If the water temperature is much higher then it might make one wonder if a hurricane were to travel over these waters that they might very well become enhanced and that global warming might be in play making them stronger. When affected, however, it is very expensive and if cause and affect are really correlated then shouldn’t we be more wary about causing?

†Posted by Karl S Schwartz

Stephen Schneider surely remembers Alvin Weinberg’s characterization some thirty years ago of civilian nuclear power as a Faustain bargain.

Now that some environmentalists have picked up nuclear power as the weapon of choice in their fight against global warming, I suppose democracy would have to be suspended a few decades by our own ayatollahs.

†Posted by Nikhil

To Clifford (comment #49)

Given the cost to transform most(very large%) of the fossil fuel (was 68% in 1995) based electric generating foundation of the US, the installed technology capital cost of various Clean Air act mitigations for stacks (paid by electric customers), I’m curious what you think of the $38 Trillion un-funded Socail Security / Medicare tab being passed on to the younger workers in the age of NAFTA and related job losses, the losses of technical brain trust as the boomers retire, the state of technical education in the US, etc etc.

For folks who want to study Electric Power basics and Climate Models critique, here are some sources:

(Keeping society functional) http://www.energetics.com/gridworks/grid.html

http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/as sistance/sectors/notebooks/power2pt1.pdf

(the gamble) http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap3-1/public -review-draft/default.htm

I suppose we might want to consider cost / benefit of various “popular” political behaviors in Washngton DC (and New York, given the disaster deregulation has been for our antiquated national Grid).

From Wikipedia:

It was estimated by the Energy Information Administration that in 2005, 86% of primary energy production in the world came from burning fossil fuels, with the remaining non-fossil sources being hydroelectric 6.3%, nuclear 6.0%, and other (geothermal, solar, wind, and wood and waste) 0.9 percent[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel

†Posted by SteamGeek

Look, we are going to fry or not. You don’t have to believe in Global Warming to do something about it. I am a social scientist †I believe in wonky science. But even if we don’t know all the facts yet †do we really want to take the chance of doing nothing? I’ll play it safe thanks. But what about a few ideas on what to do if it heats up beyond what we can handle? Can something like the polar cities idea work? http://angryafrican.net/2008/04/09/heating-up-time-to-w orry/

†Posted by Angry African

First, this article only addresses the strength of the link between hurricanes and global warming. Global warming is real, what is unknown is what the affects on environment will be, to a certainty.

Second, for those who are worried that we will wreck the economy by dealing with global warming: We have done precisely nothing to address global warming. Yet we have managed to wreck the economy anyway. Can skeptics name anything we have done to address global warming? How can you talk about overreacting?

†Posted by Greg Matous

re: #49 r clifford

“The European precautionary approach to climate change and a huge dose of common sense would do a lot to get the world economy back in balance with the limits of nature.”

the precautionary principle is entirely a political conceit that is impossible to apply without regard to competing political interests.

ALL actions have potentially unintended consequences. without an objective and impartial cost-benefit analysis and fair measurement of the opportunity costs of NOT acting, it is invariably impossible to apply the precautionary principle without bowing to political interests that weigh in the consideration of any particular proposed action.

that is why the precautionary principle should always be applied with extreme caution.

†Posted by sas

Danny Bloom comments:

1. Ruth Beazer, Post no. 39 above: “…we as a nation are very irresponsible that nothing on the federal level is happening to combat global warming.”

2. Someone on another blog remarked recently that is the USA could on the initiative of the White House decide to land on the moon and then to realize this achievement put huge amounts of resources and manpower and money into a massive effort to put human beings on the moon … and I think they did it, although some Flat Earthers and moon landing denialists say it never happened, just a video shot in a hangar somewhere in California … then it is time NOW for the USA government to commit itself to tackling these issues of climate change and global warming (or cooling as some believe, although it looks like it gonna hot up before things cold down) with a massive committment of money, time, resources and manpower to turn this thing around ….IF it not too late already … and IF it can be done…..

Ruth is right. Maybe this is not WWIII, maybe this is the Fight for the Continuation of the Human Species, in case anyone cares, and the USA government, along with other leading governments with money and smarts and manpower and scientific reseachers, needs to commit to this “war”.

Problem is: we could “see” the moon and dream of landing there. But we cannot “see” global warming or climate change so clearly, only a few amazing photos and satellite maps of ice changes at both poles. But the temps are going up so minutely year by year, and sea levels, if they do rise, will rise so minutely year by year, that it will be hard to “see” what is happening before it is too late.

Which is why we need scientists and reporters on the front lines of this battle, as look-out scouts to tell us if it is a real war or just an imaginary one.

†Posted by Danny Bloom

31 (kim) Though I agree with you, you are a different kim than the double underline variety.

This helps point out that the GCM’s, though a valiant effort, are still inadequate to model the most complex parts of the heat engine that is the earth. They don’t get the oceanic oscillations yet, nor the complex dynamics of cloud formation and tropical convection and radiation. It’s coming, though. It does seem clear that an emerging truth is that water vapor has a range of magnitudes, even signs, as a feedback during or after CO2 forcing. There seems to be a smaller climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide. If nothing else, this paper may buy a little time to more fully characterize CO2 and climatic effects, before we try flinging the transmission of the world economy into reverse while moving forward as rapidly as we are now. ==================================

†Posted by kim

For a moment, please consider the words of Mohandas Gandhi,

“God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West….. If {India was to take} to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.”

By resolutely increasing the human population numbers rapidly, depleting the planet’s resources recklessly and degrading the environment precipitously, is the family of humanity not running the gravest of risks: after having eaten ourselves “out of house and home” like locusts, one generation will leave this good Earth unfit for human habitation and life as we know it?

Many thanks for the clear vision and wondrous voice of Wany Suya.

†Posted by Steven Earl Salmony

This is what true science is all about. Constantly checking observations, reviewing new results and honestly publishing current information through peer reviewd journals until it’s gotten right. Would that the deniers/skeptics of the serious consequences caused by human-induced global warming and climate change could do the same. FAT CHANCE !

†Posted by J. R.

Dear R. Clifford (#49) and Seastar (#17),

Thanks for presenting the distinctly human-driven “human predicament” with such clarity of vision, coherence of mind and moral courage.

Many too many leaders are woefully inadequate. These economic powerbrokers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians, with great wealth and power as well as responsibilities to assume and duties to perform, have evidently chosen to take the human community down a “primrose path” and, as R. Clifford puts it so well, “to race towards oblivion” without a care for what our children could confront because of the spectacularly self-seeking behavior of their selfish elders.

The primrose path taken by too many of our leaders is not the only path, not the one right way to live. Despite all they and their minions have said and we have heard so often, the path of endless economic growth, reckless dissipation of natural resources, irreversible degradation of the environs, and unbridled population increase is not the only path, not “the only game in town.” Perhaps the relentless pursuit of precisely this path to the future could result in a colossal catastrophe like the one witnessed by the King of kings named Ozymandias.

†Posted by Steven Earl Salmony

Could everyone reading this article email it to your insurance agents. Those of us trying to find affordable insurance in New Orleans are suffering from predictions of increased hurricane activity due to global warming. There are millions (billions in time) of our dollars going to insurance companies when we can afford it least.

†Posted by Chuck Avery

The study is disappointing to me because it deals with only one of two possible mechanisms: hurricane intensity can increase because of the net energy in the climate system, or it can increase because of the direction of the change in energy in the climate system. Although historical records are poor, what we have suggests that the last several decades replicate in many ways the 1930-1960 period, when global mean temperature was lower, but the global warming change was similar in direction and magnitude. The study only sheds light on the question of net energy, and that light is highly ambivalent.

It is a shame that we reach the current state without a national consensus on no-losers response. In fact, the U.S. adds more energy service to the economy with energy efficiency than with all fossil, nuclear and renewable resources combined each year, and has done so for the last forty years at least. The precise amount is difficult to determine, because efficiency is “too cheap to meter” which some may recall is a phrase coined by advocates of a different and failed technology. But a simple calculation of energy/gdp suggests more than 50% of our new energy is efficiency, and more sophisticated efforts http://www.aceee.org/tstimony/0709HouseScience_Laitner. pdf place the value at 77% from 1970 to date.

This means that solving global warming will cost less than not solving it, and the many posters to this list who repeat the mantra about economic doom and dismemberment are just clinging to their buggy whips.

The efforts to predict the impacts of climate change are important, but secondary to the knowledge we have which make it clear that deliberate response is justified. We know that rising fossil carbon in the oceans will change reproductive processes for important algae, plankton, and probably vertebrate life. The suggestions (see post 12 and the link there) that a magic compensation effect for warming has been overlooked by all the scientists in the world except two guys with credentials affected by the time they have spent finding unrelated reasons to criticize the mainstream, always leading to the same conclusion, completely ignores the basic fact that atmospheric CO2 continues to rise, the proposed mechanism IS climate change, just a different mechanism, and the accumulation of fossil carbon in the ocean is probably a more serious problem than warming.

I appreciate the concerns about hurricanes because they motivate people. But weather is not climate, and what we see today and over the last thirty years is a small fraction of what we are already locked into.

†Posted by Ned Ford

This article goes to show really how different politica and science are. In science we do not carefully word our statements in fact we state what we find. Yes science unlike politics constantly checks its acertations to get at the TRUTH. We there are different sets of data then investigation continues and continues. Eventually clear and clear data comes through. For all we know the climate change could be caused by various factors. What if pollution is only agrevating the situation and in reality there are techtonic shifts under the ocean sea floor? What if it is all because of CO2? Only time and study will tell but politics is only worth its weight in gold and hot air is very light.

†Posted by JWF

JR (comment #59)

You have it backwards, This is exactly what many have been demanding, and has been sorely lacking due to biased tunnel visoned scientists sold out to Hollywood fame, and pandering politicians “paying” for poll benefical science.

The science state of the art is incomplete, the results inconclusive if not faulty due to overt omission of relevant facts, the consensus claimed by many is a fraud.

You were close, just backwards.

†Posted by SteamGeek

‘As Stephen Schneider, a veteran climatologist at Stanford, recently mused, the question is, “Can democracy survive complexity?”‘

This is not a new question. Collectivists of all stripes have always asked this question of democracy.

They believe that society must be centrally controlled by enlightened leaders, and that the unwashed masses are simply not intelligent enough to select those leaders.

This is certainly what communists in the soviet union, and national socialists in germany believed in the last century. Both those ideologies were driven by the rise of modernism. They revolutions in industry, communication, transportation, agriculture all demanded more central control.

Fortunately, the United States (and a few other places - UK, Australia) have generally not fallen for this line of arguement. The result - the countries that heeded the call to restrain democracy in the 20th century saw wars, famine, government collapses, and 100s of millions of unnecessary deaths.

Separately, the rise in observed category 4 and 5 hurricanes is to a large degree a matter of measurement. In the early 20th century almost no hurricanes were recorded if they didnt strike land - for the simple reason that no one cared to take a boat into a tropical storm to measure the windspeed. Accurate satelllite measurements first became available in the 1980s - obviously better measurement lead to more observed hurricanes. The 5yr running average number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes striking the US has not increased at all in the last 100 years. The data:

http://tinyurl.com/62hgj4

†Posted by Dirck Noorman

The bad news -

My ecological predictions are on the tombstones of at least a half a million good people from Bam, Iran to New Orleans and cover many of the greatest solar flares yet witness from our star and others. This spring - winter, South Florida will be the recipient of a micro-extinction events from Atlantic and Gulf hurricanes and the Dead Zone from the Gulf. This will be similar to the mass extinction of 270-225 million years ago during the Permian period from extreme biological activities making components of global warming. Instead of millions of years to accumulate toxic waste, ExxonMobils do it in less than a generation (or gestation period) if the March of Dimes and MADD have repeated donation shortfalls. Evacuees from Florida remember to bring along plenty of bottled water entering reeducation camps in Georgia. Louisiana will also be recipients of the monster hurricane ecosystems as well but we still don’t know any better being #50 after ~100 years of ExxonMobil’s eugenics and free formaldehyde “Plug-Ins”.

The good news -

“Blazing Saddles” - guy 1: “The sheriff is a ni’ - guy 2: “He said the sheriff is near”.

†Posted by Ozonator

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.

All NYTimes.com Blogs »

Hurricane Expert Reassesses Link to Warming

Link between warming and hurricanes questioned by an early proponent.

Can People Have Meat and a Planet, Too?

Can, or should, technology provide meat for 9 billion without trashing the planet?

A Textbook Case of Downplaying Global Warming?

A textbook case of downplaying global warming?

Money for India’s ‘Ultra Mega’ Coal Plants Approved

India’s “Ultra Mega” coal-burning power plant project moves ahead.

A Reef With Wheels and Seats

Crowded subway cars, on the sea bed.

By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Supported in part by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Mr. Revkin tracks relevant news from suburbia to Siberia, and conducts an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.

Access to cheap energy underpins modern societies. Finding enough to fuel industrialized economies and pull developing countries out of poverty without overheating the climate is a central challenge of the 21st century.

Africas Energy Gap The Power of Green The Energy Challenge series How to Spark an Energy Quest

Enshrined in history as an untouchable frontier, the Arctic is being transformed by significant warming, a rising thirst for oil and gas, and international tussles over shipping routes and seabed resources.

Human advancement can be aided by curbing everyday losses like the millions of avoidable deaths from indoor smoke and tainted water, and by increasing resilience in the face of predictable calamities like earthquakes and drought.

Earth’s veneer of millions of plant and animal species is a vital resource that will need careful tending as human populations and their demands for land, protein and fuels grow.

Andrew C. Revkin began exploring the human impact on the environment nearly 30 years ago. An early stop was Papeete, Tahiti. This narrated slide show describes his extensive travels.

Dot Earth is meant to be a two-way street, incorporating ideas, anecdotes, links and other contributions from readers, as well as exchanges with scientists, officials, tinkerers and thinkers working to smooth the interactions between people and the home planet. Get in touch.

+ rowData.contentSnippet +

Tag Cloud

External Information

Additional Information

Where Am I?