Around the traps: GWPF and global warming, BEST daily temperatures and an El Niño watch

Some blog articles worth reading.

Ed Hawkins (and others) on a GWPF article on climate sensitivity

First Ed Hawkins has written about some article Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok wrote for the GWPF.  Actually it was two articles reports, a short version with 44 pages cover to cover and a long version with 72 pages cover to cover.  Ed makes the point that not before time is the GWPF acknowledging that we are heading to dangerous warming of more than two degrees by the end of the century if we keep burning fossil fuels at the rate we are.  The other points he makes are about why Nic Lewis is probably erring on the low side in his estimate of climate sensitivity.

Greg Laden has also written a good article on the topic of the Lewis and Crok article, which you can read here.  Bob Ward took down Nic Lewis' recent testimony to a UK parliamentary committee (along with that of other deniers).

I can't really add anything to what these people have written, except to say that Judith Curry wrote a foreword to Nic and Marcel's articles, with effusive praise for Nic and Marcel and slightly more muted "appreciation" for the GWPF.  Plus maybe a hint that they asked her to find a publisher, which she couldn't manage to do.

While writing this Foreword, I considered the very few options available for publishing a report such as this paper by Lewis and Crok. I am appreciative of the GWPF for publishing and publicizing this report. Public accountability of governmental and intergovernmental climate science and policy analysis is enhanced by independent assessments of their conclusions and arguments.

Victor Venema on the daily temperature dataset from BEST

The other article I'll point you to is by Victor Venema.  He's saying "Be careful with the new daily temperature dataset from Berkeley".  And continues:

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project now also provides daily temperature data. On the one hand this is an important improvement, that we now have a global dataset with homogenized daily data. On the other hand, there was a reason that climatologists did not publish a global daily dataset yet. Homogenization of daily data is difficult and the data provided by Berkeley is likely better than analyzing raw data, but still insufficient for robust conclusions about changes in extreme weather and weather variability.

It's worth a read - Victor is a specialist in climate temperature data.

RealClimate has an article by Zeke Hausfather and Robert Rohde, two of the BEST team members behind the new data set.

Jeff Masters on El Niño watch

You read it here at HotWhopper first of course :)  Then NOAA announced it.  Jeff Masters has now written about it too. There may be an El Niño on its way later this year.

Jeff points to this earlier article by Michael Ventrice at wunderground.com that is worth reading. (I wrote something about ENSO here some weeks ago, which has more links to the subject,)

Update: Webb Roberts ‏(@webbr) pointed me to another article about this from Kim Cobb's Lab at Georgia Tech, suggesting it could provide a rare opportunity for scientific study and learning more about ENSO, if resources can be put together in time.

Jumping the shark or Watts Up with Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts isn't the sharpest tool in the toolshed.  Today he decided to use something from Jeff Masters as his "quote of the week" (archived here).  Anthony said that Jeff Masters "jumped the shark".  I wonder if Anthony knows what the saying means.

This is where the saying came from:

Click here or here for the explanation of "jump the shark".  From Wikipedia, "it's the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality, which is usually a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of "gimmick" in an attempt to keep viewers' interest."

Now Anthony Watts says that Jeff Masters is beginning a "decline in quality" with this particular gimmick segment from a report of an interview for the Voice of Russia.  The interviewer's comments are in bold italics above Jeff Master's response:

What kind of tendency such kind of things show if we take 10-20 years for example?

This is the coldest winter in about 20 years in the eastern part of the US. So, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen something like this. And we would expect with the warming climate to see fewer of this sort of winters but there will still be an occasional cold winter.

Does that actually show that climate change is not that predictable as many say?

That is for sure. Expect the unprecedented – that is kind of my watch words, when you disturb the climate like we have, we are going to see a lot of crazy weather events and that sure has been the case over the last few years.

Anthony highlighted the last sentence.  He thinks it was the sign that Jeff Masters has begun his "decline in quality".  Before we go back to why Anthony thought that Jeff Masters is about to disappear of the face of television (or is it from the Internet), I'll add a couple of other points Jeff Masters made in the interview.  First, his response to an earlier question:

Can we speak of the impact of climate change as far as this winter storm is concerned?

You wouldn’t expect with climate change to see more record cold and this storm is kind of an anomalous sort of storm, it is forming at the very edge of some cold air unlike we’ve never seen in March, which is quite a change from two years ago when we had what we called "summer March", where we had July-like temperatures in March. It is hard to figure out what is going on. We are seeing crazy extremes in March, cold this year and exceptional warmth two years ago.

And the final two points:

Unlike those people who say that the climate change actually mostly leads to the weather becoming warmer, it is sometimes on the contrary, right?

Yes, global warming is just that. It is global and over some regions you are not going to necessarily see warming in all seasons of the year, there are going to be exceptions.

Not warming for everyone.

Not this winter, that is for sure in the US. Although in Las Vegas, Nevada had its warmest winter on record this past winter. So, it’s been a different story on the west coast.

No prizes for guessing why Anthony left off the last two points, or the last one in particular.

Back to why Anthony thinks that ex-hurricane-hunting, ex-NOAA meteorologist Jeff Masters, with his BSc, MS and PhD and founder of one of the most popular weather websites on the internet is about to become irrelevant, unpopular, disdained by all the world.  (It's empty words on Anthony's part of course. Jeff Masters goes from strength to strength while WUWT fades into irrelevance, relying on "bloggie" awards to feel important. Wunderground.com is way more popular than WUWT could ever hope to be.  Anthony's pathetic anti-science blog WUWT is not merely not in the same class as wunderground.com, it's not even in the same school district.  They aren't comparable by any stretch of the imagination.)

By the way, Anthony gives a hat tip to professional climate disinformer, Marc Morano.  The professionals use tools like Anthony Watts as a free publicity arm.  Denial tools don't need to be sharp. Blunt tools work as well because the people who "believe" them aren't very sharp.  Their world view has blunted their intellect.

When the climate changes, what changes?

Anthony offers the IPCC's SREX and AR5 reports as evidence that Jeff Masters has started down a slippery slope.  He ends by writing:

There’s simply no connection between droughts, hurricanes, thunderstorms, flash floods, tornadoes and “climate change”. There’s no mention of colder, more snowy winters either.

Which leads us to a question.  If, as Anthony claims, there is no connection between any of the above and climate change, then what does constitute climate change?  Is it a change in air temperature, rainfall, frost or maybe wind?  Perhaps it gets drier without drought.  Or maybe it gets wetter without flooding.  Or maybe it gets colder with no snow.  What do you think?  Do people generally think the climate can change just a little bit?  So no-one notices?

One thing Anthony did mention was heat waves, writing: "They’ve only talked about heat waves and precipitation events being connected".  And the connections keep coming:

From ScienceDaily.com: "New research shows extremely hot temperatures over land have dramatically and unequivocally increased in number and area".

From CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology State of the Climate 2014, Australia is already nearly one degree hotter than early last century.  This past year alone it had more very hot days (very hot days in the top 1 per cent of mean temperatures) than for the entire period from 1900-1940.  The climate in the south east has already started to change, getting drier when farmers need it most and getting markedly hotter as well.

It looks as if there is a change in extreme rainfall in the USA, too, as elsewhere, especially in the north east.  And some say floods are about to get much worse in Europe.

Anthony Watts seems to think none of this matters, as long as cyclones and tornadoes don't become more common.  Well, he should know what climate change can do.  He lives in California.

Unprecedented - getting it right

You remember what Jeff Masters said about cold weather?  He said "we would expect with the warming climate to see fewer of this sort of winters but there will still be an occasional cold winter."  He didn't say that the recent cold spells in the USA were unprecedented. Yet our old friend ferdberple makes a song and dance and says:

March 4, 2014 at 7:20 am
Weather Underground’s Dr. Jeff Masters jumps the shark with the Voice of Russia:
Expect the unprecedented
===========
How can the coldest winter in 20 years be unprecedented if it was colder 20 years ago?
Unprecedented means “never done or known before”. It does not means “happened 20 years ago”.

Apparently Jeff is not a Master of English.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=Unprecedented
unprecedented
never done or known before. without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled: an unprecedented event.

Deniers are getting dumber by the day!  The cold spells in the USA are just an example of weather from the recent past, that are only unprecedented in the lifetime of people younger than around twenty years of age.

Some weather has been called unprecedented.

Typhoon Haiyan may have been unprecedented in wind strength at landfall.

The wet weather in the UK this past winter can be called unprecedented in the record books.

This century there was the Russian heat wave and the European heat waves and Australia's Angry Summer.  In fact the global surface temperature of each of the past four decades can each be called "unprecedented" in the instrumental record.

It won't take long for there to be lots more "unprecedenteds" as climate change kicks in. Within a few decades, sea levels will probably be "unprecedented" since civilisation began 10,000 years or so ago. Sooner or later some iconic buildings will be under water. The Arctic will be free of ice before then - another "unprecedented" in a very long time.

While Anthony Watts and his deniers point to cyclones and tornadoes they are missing the point of climate change.  Sure there will be lots of dramatic "unprecedented" extremes.  There will also be shifts in climate like we are already getting in Australia - and like is probably happening in the USA.  These insidious shifts in climate will be the ones we have to adapt to as "crazy weather" becomes the norm.

“This is crazy. This is madness, what’s going on now."

For all the deniers in Australia who scoff at Perth for building its desalination plants, I'll leave you with this, from Perth Now:

THE weather bureau says Perth’s record-smashing summer was “madness” and it has used temperature and rainfall data to lash out at climate change sceptics.

And the state’s top meteorologists are warning West Australians they face decades of rising temperatures – with hotter, drier and more extreme summers.

The 2011-12 summer was Perth’s hottest on record and this summer was the second hottest on record, tied with both the 2009-10 summer and the 2010-11 summer with an average maximum of 32C.

This summer was also the driest in five years for Perth, with just 2mm of rain, and the driest on record for Mandurah.

Perth had only three days where rain fell and not one drop fell last month – the first dry February since 2000.

It might have been the start of autumn but there was no respite yesterday, with temperatures nudging 37C in Perth.

The weather bureau is normally conservative, but Bureau of Meteorology climate expert Neil Bennett said the data was staring climate change sceptics “in the face”.

“It’s climate change. It’s warming. It’s staring you in the face,” he said. 

“This is crazy. This is madness, what’s going on now.

“The climate doesn’t change like this. This is really remarkable. The last four summers have all either been the hottest or second hottest on rec­ord.

“It’s not just Perth – in Bunbury eight of the hottest summers have occurred since the turn of the century.

“What we are saying is when you look and see the trend is going up, it seems foolish to try to ignore that trend.

“This is really, really unusual. It’s a sign that the temps across Australia are warming. There is no getting away from it.”

It's hotting up all over the world (but what about that cold spell?)

From the NOAA - last year was the fourth hottest on record, tying with 2003. And in another ENSO neutral year.

The year 2013 tied with 2003 as the fourth warmest year globally since records began in 1880. The annually-averaged temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average and marks the 37th consecutive year (since 1976) that the annual temperature was above the long-term average. Currently, the warmest year on record is 2010, which was 0.66°C (1.19°F) above average.

To date, including 2013, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occured during the 21st century. Only one year during the 20th century—1998—was warmer than 2013. The global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.06°C (0.11°F) per decade since 1880 and at an average rate of 0.16°C (0.28°F) per decade since 1970.

Here's a map.  It doesn't show the Arctic or Antarctica - which we know to be getting warmer.

Source: NOAA

From WUWT

Sorry - this doesn't rate a mention at WUWT (except in a few comments)!  They are too busy discussing the current cold spell in eastern USA in an article Anthony has made "sticky" to keep it at the top (archived here). To compare and contrast (my bold italics):

From WUWT and Joe D'Aleo - hasn't seen anything like it since 1918 ...the most severe run thus far

A new forecast shows the cold blast in the eastern half of the USA extending well past Groundhog Day, Feb 2nd, according to their models. WeatherBell has had an excellent track record this winter so far. He says he hasn’t seen anything like it since 1918 when the big flu pandemic hit the USA. ...D’Aleo writes in a follow up email...It covers the coldest period of the winter season climatologically in most areas. The other global models agree through at least 10 days. This is the most severe run thus far. We have been alerting clients to it for weeks. 

From Jeff Masters at Wunderground.com - not as impressive... (but) ...a respectable cold blast

It's "The Return of the Polar Vortex" over the much of the eastern half of the U.S. this week, as another round of bitterly cold Arctic air plunges southwards out of Canada. Like many sequels, "The Return of the Polar Vortex" will not be as impressive as the original, with temperatures averaging about ten degrees warmer than during the original Polar Vortex episode earlier this January. Still, with temperatures 15 - 25° colder than average expected over much of the eastern half of the U.S. Tuesday through Thursday, this week's sequel is a respectable cold blast. The cold air is centered over the Upper Midwest, and low temperatures in portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan dropped below -20° early Tuesday morning. Crane Lake, Minnesota bottomed out at a bone-chilling -32°F this morning, and Pellston, Michigan hit -25°. 

Commenters at WUWT are busy debating whether or not the cold weather in the USA in 1918 caused the (global) influenza pandemic.  With an occasional comment from a hot Californian.

Jenn Oates says:

January 21, 2014 at 1:44 pm
And here in Northern CA we’re wearing shorts with so little precip that Folsom Lake looks like the river it was before the dam.

snow says:

January 21, 2014 at 1:53 pm
With this pattern is there any chance of moister for the west coast? No rainy season at all for the west coast so far. They could sure use the rain and mountain snow.

Jim Cripwell says:

January 21, 2014 at 2:17 pm
I live in Ottawa, Canada, and I quietly chuckle to myself. We are having a very normal winter. My house is warm, my driveway clear of snow. My car starts with no problem. There is lots of snow for the skiers, and ice on the canal for the skaters. Life goes on with nothing extraordinary happening at all. We are looking forward to Winterlude at the end of January, beginning of February. Ho hum.

Todd says:

January 21, 2014 at 12:16 pm
I don’t remember 1993/94 but I sure do remember Jan/Feb 1996, which did break or tie state records in my neck of the woods. Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
Are we talking that level of cold, yet, anywhere?

It's hard to set all time cold records in a warming world...

In case you missed it, this is from Jeff Masters at Wunderground.com about the cold spell in the USA (my paras and bold italics).

As notable as this week's cold wave was--bringing the coldest air seen since 1996 or 1994 over much of the nation--the event failed to set any monthly or all-time record low minimum temperature records at airports and cooperative observing stations monitored by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

As wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt summed it up for me

"The only significant thing about the cold wave is how long it has been since a cold wave of this force has hit for some portions of the country--18 years, to be specific. Prior to 1996, cold waves of this intensity occurred pretty much every 5-10 years. In the 19th century, they occurred every year or two (since 1835). Something that, unlike the cold wave, is a truly unprecedented is the dry spell in California and Oregon, which is causing unprecedented winter wildfires in Northern California." 

Part of the reason that this week's cold wave did not set any all-time or monthly cold records is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in a warming climate. As Andrew Freedman of Climate Central wrote in a blog post yesterday,

"While the cold temperatures have been unusual and even deadly, climate data shows that intense cold such as this event is now occurring far less frequently in the continental U.S. than it used to. This is largely related to winter warming trends due to man-made global warming and natural climate variability." 

For example, in Detroit during the 1970s, there were an average of 7.9 nights with temperatures below zero. But this decade, that number has been closer to two nights.

Too much water and not enough - a tale of two Americas

Too much rain in Florida

In the past couple of days Jeff Masters of Wunderground.com has had a couple of blog posts that couldn't be in more stark contrast.  Today he wrote about the risk of a dike failure on Lake Okeechobee in Florida.  He writes:

After the wettest July ever recorded in Florida, the Army Corps of Engineers is battling to draw down the level of Lake Okeechobee before the September peak of the rainy season. The huge lake represents an important source of fresh water to South Florida, but also poses a grave danger. The 25 - 30'-tall, 143-mile long Herbert Hoover Dike surrounding the lake was built in the 1930s out of gravel, rock, limestone, sand, and shell using old engineering methods. The dike is tall enough that it cannot be overtopped by a storm surge from anything but an extreme hurricane, but the dike is vulnerable to leaking and failure when heavy rains bring high water levels to the lake. ...

..."There is limited potential for a dike failure with lake levels as low as 18.5 feet. The likelihood of a failure increases at higher lake levels. At a lake level of 21 feet--a 1-in-100 year flood event--a dike failure would be likely at one or more locations. In the event of a dike failure, waters from Lake Okeechobee would pass through the breach--uncontrollably--and flood adjacent land. Flooding would be severe and warning time would be limited. And with 40,000 people living in the communities protected by the Herbert Hoover Dike, the potential for human suffering and loss of life is significant. ...

Read the full article here.

The Colorado River is running out of water

This situation facing the people in the south west of the USA is the opposite.  Not enough water.  Only a few days ago, Jeff Masters wrote:

For the first time in history, the U.S. government has ordered that flow of Colorado River water from the 50-year-old Glen Canyon Dam be slashed, due to a water crisis brought about by the region's historic 14-year drought. On Friday, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation--a division of the Department of Interior that manages water and electric power in the West--announced that it would cut water released from Lake Powell's Glen Canyon Dam by 750,000 acre-feet in 2014. An acre-foot is the amount of water that will cover an acre of land one foot deep; 750,000 acre-feet is enough water to supply at least 750,000 homes for one year. The flow reduction will leave the Colorado River 9% below the 8.23 million acre feet that is supposed to be supplied downstream to Lake Mead for use in California, Nevada, Arizona and Mexico under the Colorado River Compact of 1922 and later agreements. 

"This is the worst 14-year drought period in the last hundred years," said Upper Colorado Regional Director Larry Walkoviak in a Bureau of Reclamation press release. 

Read the full article here.

Climate migration in the USA?

Jeff put up this chart from Schwalm et al in his Glen Canyon Dam article (click chart to enlarge it):

With the south west of the USA facing increasing dryness, where will all the people go?  Or where will all the water come from?

With Miami facing sea level rise sooner rather than later - where will all the people go?

Anthony Watts sez an ice age cometh while Europe melts and the Arctic burns

No, Anthony - it's not the sun!

What did I say about Anthony rarely writing anything himself?  Here he is crowing about an article that a denier wrote for a Danish newspaper, saying:

Major Danish Daily Warns: “Globe May Be On Path To Little Ice Age…Much Colder Winters…Dramatic Consequences”!

Not "scientists warn" or "NOAA warns" or "solar experts warn".  No, Anthony's picked up a blog article from another crank conspiracy theorist (of the climate science is a hoax variety) who goes by the name of Pierre Gosselin.  Pierre is reporting an article in a Danish newspaper that apparently features a couple of climate science denying skeptics.

Anthony Watts of WUWT gets weirder every day.  While a heat wave grips part of Europe and Asia and fires rage in Northern Siberia, he reckons an ice age is coming! Anthony's gone barmy alright.

Meanwhile, in Europe and China, it's very hot

Anthony isn't reporting this.  I wonder why? (My bold italics)

A historic heat wave is underway in Central Europe, where both both Austria and Slovenia set all-time national heat records on August 8. Three locations in Austria passed the 40°C (104°F) mark, beating the former national record of 39.9°C (103.8°F) set just last week, on August 3rd at Dellach im Drautal.

According to the Austrian met service, ZAMG, the hottest spot was Bad Deutsch-Altenburg, with a 40.5°C (104.9°F) reading. Slovenia also surpassed its national heat record on August 8, with a 40.8°C (105.4°F) reading at Cerklje ob Krki (former record: 40.6°C (105.1°F) at Crnomelj on July 5, 1950.) Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, has broken its all-time heat record five of the past six days, with each day hotter than the previous record. The newest record is the 40.2°C (104.4°) recorded on August 8th. Records go back 150 years at this station. 

China's most populous city, Shanghai, broke its all-time record for hottest temperature on record for the second time this summer on August 7, when the mercury topped out at 40.8°C (105.4°F). The previous record was set just the day before (40.6°C/105.1°F), and also on July 26th.

Read more from Jeff Masters at WeatherUnderground

Northern Siberia Wildfires

Nor is he reporting the fires in Northern Siberia (my bold italics):

This unique summer for Northern Siberians brings Mediterranean temperatures but also 'out of control' blazes. Norilsk - one of Russia's coldest cities - basked in temperatures of 33C, as locals stripped off to catch a genuine Arctic tan, as we reported earlier. 

As NASA noted, the cause was a 'blocking high' - a persistent high pressure weather pattern over the Russian Arctic. 

For a few glorious summer days, the temperatures doubled from an average of 16C, but this also dried the land and led to wildfires, for example in the mainly Arctic autonomous district of Yamal-Nenets.  

'The fires are burning in an unusual area. Most summer wildfires in Siberia occur south of the 57 degrees North latitude line, along the southern edge of the taiga. The July 2013 fires are significantly north of that, raging in woodlands near the 65 degrees North line,' said one report.

'High temperatures play an important role in promoting wildfires.

'Warm fuels burn more readily than cooler fuels because less energy is required to raise their temperature to the point of ignition. With temperatures soaring in northern Russia, it was easier for previously active fires to continue burning and for lightning to spark new ones.'

Read more in the Siberian Times.

And more here from NASA:

The summer of 2012 was the most severe wildfire season Russia had faced in a decade. 2013 might be headed in the same direction after an unusual heat wave brought a surge of fire activity in northern Siberia in July.

A persistent high-pressure weather pattern in the Russian Arctic—a blocking high—contributed to the heat wave, which saw temperatures reach 32° Celsius (90° Fahrenheit) in the northern city of Norilsk. For comparison, daily July highs in Norilsk average 16° Celsius (61° Fahrenheit). Blocking highs are so named because they block the jet stream from moving rain-bearing weather systems along their normal west-to-east path; this leads to “stuck” weather patterns with long periods of stable air and exceptional heat.

Source: NASA

Selective memories of climate science deniers

In a guest post on WUWT, a science denier called Alan Caruba writes an article titled: "Short Meteorological Memories".  He draws together a couple of denier memes.

How can one remember something that hasn't ever happened in living memory?

Caruba writes:

What I always find interesting is the way much of the population seems to have absolutely no memory of any previous heat wave or, for that matter, a major blizzard. Either way the news media goes bananas, usually seeing it an apocalyptic scenario. No, it’s just a perfectly normal heat wave or blizzard.

That may be true or not in any one instance.  Caruba does mention the record heat Australia had last January where the average for the entire continent hit 40.3 degrees Celsius (104.6 degrees Fahrenheit).  That's not a hot temperature in one location, which, while extra hot, would no longer be unremarkable in many parts of Australia these days.  What it is is the average maximum across the entire continent of Australia.

Just think how hot it must have got over such a vast area to record a continent-wide average of 40.3 degrees Celsius.  Not only that, but there have only been 21 days in 102 years where the average maximum temperature for the whole of Australia has exceeded 39°C; eight of these days happened last summer.

I doubt there'd be anyone living today who would have a prior memory of anything like that because it hadn't happened before in the entire instrumental record.  You can see just how hot the continent was in this animated gif chart. (Click to enlarge.)

Global warming causes climate change

Caruba goes on about terminology, claiming that "climate change" has replaced "global warming".  Not so.  The terms are not identical.  Global warming signifies the earth heating up.  Climate change is what happens as a result. Here are some references to the two terms going back some time:

• The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change by Gilbert N. Plass (1956); Tellus Vlll
• Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming? by Wallace S. Broecker, published in Science in 1975
• Arctic climate's alarming change - a newspaper article from 1947 on the possibility of global warming and climate change, warning of the possibility of catastrophic rises in sea levels.

It's happened before, but not like this

Caruba then cites two extreme events (for the time) that happened thirty years apart.  One in the UK and one in the north-east USA.  Most reasonable people would come back with ten or more events that have happened in the past ten years.  Consider just these events, listed on Jeff Master's blog on Wunderground:

Earth's Deadliest Weather-Related Disasters Since 2000

1. Cyclone Nargis, Mayanmar, 2008: 138,366
2. Heat wave, Europe, 2003: 71,310
3. Heat wave, Russia, 2010: 55,736
4. Flood, India, 2013: 5,748
5. Cyclone Sidr, Bangladesh, 2007: 4234
6. Heat wave, Europe, 2006: 3418
7. Hurricane Jeanne, Haiti: 2004, 2754
8. Flood, Haiti, May 2004: 2665
9. Flood, Pakistan, 2010: 1985
10. Typhoon Bopha, Philippines: 2012, 1901
11. Hurricane Katrina, U.S., 2005: 1833
12. Landslide, China, 2010: 1765

I reckon it's Alan Caruba who has a very selective memory, deliberately ignoring what is happening around the world weatherwise these days.  I'll amend the last sentence of Caruba's fluff denial of reality:

By the end of the week, deniers on WUWT are sure to issue another boring claim that the latest weather disaster is "nothing new to see, climate is always changing, CO2 levels were higher 3 billion years ago". Ignore them.