Anthony Watts continues to tell lies at WUWT. Remember this whopper of a lie? Now he writes (archived here):
I guess he didn’t read the recent IPCC AR5 report that showed no connections of climate change/global warming with severe weatherAnother whopper of a lie.
Anthony's writing about an upcoming 24 hours of reality by the Climate Reality Project, which will be broadcast in about five days time.
It's Anthony's constant refrain of "no connections of climate change/global warming with severe weather" that I'm writing about. If you are curious where he gets his weird notions, I believe he bases it on Table 12.4 from the IPCC WG1 AR5 report, which discusses the likelihood or otherwise of specific events, most of which are not weather events but things like huge methane releases from permafrost melt. And the table isn't about whether or not they will happen at all, it's about the likelihood of them happening before this century is out. Anthony reckons if these events don't happen in his lifetime then what should he care if they happen in his children's lifetime or that of their children.
As you know, Anthony Watts' capacity for brainpower is severely hampered by his world view, which is limited to about 10 paces from his front door, by my reckoning. He's heard about tornadoes and hurricanes. I'm not sure if he realises that a hurricane is what is known elsewhere as a typhoon or tropical cyclone. Anthony is oblivious to the fact that severe weather includes such things as heat waves, flash floods and blizzards and can cause catastrophic wildfires.
Speaking of wildfires, his article is a slap in the face to his followers from Australia, which today experienced one of the worst bushfire days on record for NSW - and it's only the middle of spring. Summer is another six weeks away.
Back to Anthony's claim about the IPCC AR5 report. He's wrong of course. Here is just some of what the report states about severe weather and global warming:
- Future increase in precipitation extremes related to the monsoon is very likely in South America, Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia.(page 14-3)
- It is also very likely that heat waves, defined as spells of days with temperature above a threshold determined from historical climatology, will occur with a higher frequency and duration, mainly as a direct consequence of the increase in seasonal mean temperatures (page 12-36)
- Several recent studies have also argued that the probability of occurrence of a Russian heat wave at least as severe as the one in 2010 increases substantially (by a factor of 5 to 10 by the midcentury) along with increasing mean temperatures and enhanced temperature variability. (page 12-36)
- Model projections show rainfall becoming more intense, in part because more moisture will be present in the atmosphere. Thus, for simulations assessed in this report, over much of the land, 1-day precipitation events that currently occur on average every 20 years could occur every 10 years or even more frequently by the end of this century. At the same time, projections also show that precipitation events overall will tend to occur less frequently. These changes produce two seemingly contradictory effects: more intense downpours, leading to more floods, yet longer dry periods between rain events, leading to more drought. (page 12-87)
- Changes in the climate are also associated with disturbances such as fires, insect damage, storms, droughts and heat waves which are already significant processes of inter-annual variability and possibly trends of regional land carbon fluxes. (page 6-37)
- Regional studies for boreal regions suggest an increase in future fire risk...Models predict spatially variable responses in fire activity, including strong increases and decreases, due to regional variations in the climate–fire relationship, and anthropogenic interference. (page 6-66)
Update: Since writing this Anthony has added some text from the IPCC report, some of which contradicts his claim of "no connection".
