Hurricane Harvey through the eyes of science deniers

This image of Hurricane Harvey from NOAA and GOES shows water vapour is, in parts, almost off the scale.

The recent 5:00 am CDT statement from the National Hurricane Center includes these tidbits:

A NOAA tide gauge at Port Lavaca, Texas, recently measured a water level of 6.6 feet above Mean Higher High Water.

An automated mesonet rain gauge near Victoria, Texas, is reporting a 24 h precipitation total of 16.43 inches.

From the deniosphere

It's wrong to regard climate science deniers as being harmless idiots. It's not enough for them to deny, lie and play down the dangers of climate change. Not acting on climate change will cause a lot of death and destruction and ruin the livelihoods of many. It will also threaten world food supplies in future.

As can be seen today, climate science deniers are a threat to people in the here and now. In the last day or so, prominent climate disinformers have been playing down the dangers of Hurricane Harvey. Their motive seems to be, as always, because they want people to reject the fact and risks of climate change. Why they would want to downplay an immediate risk for ideology is unfathomable.

Tropical cyclones and aerosols, with Breitbart's Steven Capozzola at WUWT

Anthony Watts has posted an article by Steven Capozzola, who seems to be presenting himself as some sort of authority on hurricanes or climate (archived here, latest here). I checked him out. Is he any kind of expert on tropical cyclones? No. Has he even the most basic understanding of climate? No. Yet he pits himself against experts as if he knows something they don't.

Steven Capozzola claims to be "Media consultant. CEO of CAP Media LLC. Advocate for U.S. manufacturing & affordable power" - not affordable, but expensive and dirty power. He's a denier for hire.

At WUWT today, Steve is writing how he doesn't think that the USA will ever get a hurricane landing on its shores again. Well, not quite that. He wrote:

The New York Times ran an op-ed today by Adam Sobel, an “atmospheric scientist at Columbia.”  The gist of Sobel’s article: Since 2005, the United States has been experiencing a hurricane “drought” (I.e. no major hurricane has made landfall in the time. We are currently at 3918 days, over a decade.)  But don’t worry, Sobel says, there will be more hurricanes soon, and the fact that they will be coming is proof of man-made climate change.
Yes, that’s what he’s saying.

The question is whether Sobel is writing the op-ed to buck himself up, and the rest of the alarmist crowd. 

No, that wasn't exactly what Adam Sobel was saying, as you've probably guessed.

Fiji is hit by record-setting Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Winston

You've probably already seen how Fiji is being hammered by possibly the strongest cyclone ever to hit it in recent times. Tropical cyclone Winston is a Category 5 storm, and there's no record of Fiji having ever been hit by a category 5 cyclone in the record books. I tried getting onto the website of the Fiji Meteorological Agency but it's slow, which probably isn't surprising given the situation. I don't want to slow it down further, so I'll repost a chart that the ABC got from them three hours ago:

TC Winston is only the eleventh Cat 5 storm in the southern hemisphere east of Australia since 1970. Winds of 165 mph or 266 kph have been reported. I don't know if these are wind guts or sustained wind speeds. For comparison, Yasi was thought to have reached wind gusts of 285 km/h at landfall. Jeff Masters and Bob Henson reported that when it hit the airport at Vanua Balavu, 10 minute wind speeds were around 170 kph (106 mph), suggesting 193 kph (120 mph) one-minute wind speeds.

Hurricane Patricia - stronger than Haiyan

It was born and grew so quickly and is being described as the strongest ever tropical cyclone in the western hemisphere. In just 24 hours Patricia grew from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. It has made landfall in Mexico, with sustained winds (not just gusts) reported at 265 km an hour (165 mph). The ABC reported that before it hit land it had "winds of 325 kilometres per hour, even more powerful than the 315-kilometre-per-hour winds of Super Typhoon Haiyan".

Extra warm seas at some depth

It's intensity is because of the very warm water off the coast of Mexico. It's warm at depth. National Geographic asked scientists:

Scientists don't fully understand why Patricia grew so intense so quickly. But part of the reason is due to an unusually deep pool of warm water off Mexico's Pacific coast, says Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As a hurricane intensifies, it churns up the ocean beneath it, drawing deeper, colder water to the surface. Since tropical cyclones feed on warm water, that cooler water acts as a kind of brake, limiting how strong most hurricanes get, Emanuel says.

But in Patricia's case, the warm pool of water beneath the storm goes down nearly 200 feet (61 meters). "That makes it harder for the hurricane to churn up cold water," says Emanuel.

That deep blob of warm water could be due to this year's predicted strong El Niño, a weather pattern characterized by warmer-than-usual water in parts of the Pacific Ocean.

Given the limitations in understanding the mechanics of hurricanes and the effects of climate change on these storms, Herndon fears Patricia won't be the last nasty surprise we see.

Strong winds

The article also provides some comparisons with Patricia's reported sustained winds of 265 kph, and up to 325 kph before landfall:

Tip's wind speeds topped out at 190 miles (306 kilometers) per hour.

Super Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines in 2013, recorded pressures as low as 895 millibars with wind speeds of 195 miles (315 kilometers) per hour. Hurricane Katrina came in at 902 millibars with maximum wind speeds of 175 miles (282 kilometers) per hour.

According to NOAA's public advisory, the winds will weaken as they hit the mountains. It warns of rainfall of "8 to 12 inches, with isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches, over the Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, and Guerrero through Saturday.  These rains could produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides." In addition there is a warning of storm surges. (I've archived the NOAA public advisory for the record.)

Below is an image of winds taken about 8 hours ago from Earth.nullschool.net:

And just now:

Stay safe.

WUWT strawman: Week 13 of 52 - not much extreme weather? So sez Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts, or one of his surrogates, has made a brief appearance at WUWT to write a headline and an opening salvo. Here is what he wrote (archived here):

So far, 2015 seems to be a bad year for the ‘severe weather caused by climate change” meme

Anthony Watts / 21 mins ago March 22, 2015

Looks like another “divergence problem” as tornadoes don’t follow the climatology

That's it. The rest was a copy and paste of an article from NOAA (archived here). The NOAA article was about how there have been no tornadoes reported in the USA this March, so far. This is a record - since 1970 at any rate.

Anthony Watts talked about a "meme", but what he wrote is a logical fallacy known as a strawman, as you'll see below.

Cyclonic conspiracies at WUWT

Anthony Watts recently posted another article (archived here) by one of his WUWT readers, Eric Worrall. Eric was writing about a Sydney Morning Herald article about tropical cyclones in Australia, after TC Marcia made landfall in Queensland.

Eric's blog article showed that he doesn't read much if any climate science. His article appeared under the headline:

Unsubstantiated Claim Over One Cyclone: Climate Change is “Expanding the Tropics”

The headline was wrong. First of all, the "claim" wasn't just "over one cyclone". Secondly, the fact that climates are shifting poleward is not unsubstantiated. There were references substantiating this in the WUWT article under the headline, and in the SMH article on which the WUWT article was based, and there is lots about this in the scientific literature.

Australia is being battered by two serious cyclones: Lam and Marcia

Source: Earth Wind Map

Two cyclones are hitting Australia right now - Severe TC Lam in the Northern Territory and Severe TC Marcia in Queensland. Below is the latest satellite image from the Bureau of Meteorology. (As always, click the image to enlarge it):

TC Lam crossed the Northern Territory coast as a Cat 4 Cyclone and is heading south west. Jabiru and Katherine will be among the areas feeling the effects. The ABC has a report on its progress and the communities affected - plus a good map:

Source: BoM

TC Marcia has developed into a Cat 5 (the highest possible) and is headed directly for the city of Rockhampton in Queensland. The areas affected are heavily populated, and including Yeppoon, Gladstone, Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, Gympie and further down, Brisbane itself will feel the effects.

Source: BoM

Again, the ABC is reporting the latest, including wind gusts of up to 300 km/hour.

In St Lawrence, hundreds of locals were asked to evacuate by police last night, and urgent evacuations were ordered in Yeppoon early this morning.

Queensland Police said the emergency cyclone shelter at the St Lawrence bowls club had been shut down as it was not strong enough to handle the system.

Marcia is one serious storm. From the ABC:

Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) senior forecaster Sam Campbell said the monster storm was not expected to weaken quickly, and would likely remain at least a category three until this evening, and possibly into Saturday.

"Even at 4:00pm [Friday] we expect it to stay at category three cyclone," he said....

...Bureau of Meteorology regional director Rob Webb said the cyclone would dump between 200 millimetres and 300 millimetres of rain.

"Those falls up to 500 millimetres or more are possible," he said.

A flood watch is current for the Wide Bay and Burnett, south-east coast and the Darling Downs and Granite Belt districts.

More than 200 swift water rescue officers have been sent to flood-prone areas.
Abnormally high tides will be experienced today with water levels expected to rise above the highest tide of the year on the high tide.

Residents between Mackay and Double Island have been warned of the potential for a dangerous storm tide. 

Stay safe everyone. Our thoughts are with you.

More on Tropical Cyclone Ita

Australia's attention is focused on Far North Queensland and Tropical Cyclone Ita. (More here.)

Source: BoM

The Cooktown shelter has gone into lockdown and power has gone out in the town.  I've just heard that people may be locked in the shelter for 48 hours. The storm will probably bring down powerlines so there'll be all sorts of dangers even after the storm passes. There's a warning that it could be a month before power is restored. (Supply in Far North Queensland was described as one long extension cord stretching north of Cairns.)

Been hearing that the cyclone shelter in Hope Vale is meant for a Cat 3 cyclone, so the people there are concerned, given Ita is a Cat 5.

The other thing is that the system is slow.  I've heard it could mean 300 mm of rain every six hours for days.  That means floods and more damage to areas already devastated by massive winds.

The locals seem to be very organised and have prepared very well. Cairns is a fair way south of landfall but is in the expected path as the system moves down the coast. (see here)

I've been collecting a few tweets about Tropical Cyclone Ita.

Warning in cairns that ATMs will stop working. #TCIta pic.twitter.com/GQHVrjI6g6
— Matt Wordsworth (@MattWordsworth) April 11, 2014

The main cyclone shelter in #Cooktown is now locked down as Ita approaches. Follow our blog for live updates #TCIta http://t.co/I3ESryk2Ig
— ABC News (@abcnews) April 11, 2014

Just got a text from Cooktown: "no power in Cooktown whole town out". It's going to be a long night in #FNQ. #TCIta
— Sam Drummond (@samdrummond) April 11, 2014

Cooktown power has just gone out, according to the town's Sovereign Hotel owner, Brendan Cullern. #TCIta
— Tropical Cyclone ITA (@Cyclone_Ita) April 11, 2014

We have set up a hotline for relatives of residents at #Bupa Mt Sheridan. For urgent inquiries regarding #TCIta please call 1300 352 638
— Bupa aged care Aust (@BupaAgedCareAus) April 11, 2014

Thinking of my family and friends in #fnq Especially all the hard working banana farmers. Stay safe. #TCIta
— Lucy Stocker (@miningmummy) April 11, 2014

@hairbyjulia1 If you haven't been through a big one before the noise of the wind and rain will shock you. #TCIta
— Pete (@PeteDotAscian) April 11, 2014

You can see some more info about Ita here.
.

Battening down in Far North Queensland for Tropical Cyclone Ita

Tropical Cyclone Ita is a dangerous Category 5 heading for Far North Queensland.  It's likely to hit the coast just north of Cooktown, which is north of Cairns.

The cyclone is regarded as the worst since Yasi in 2011. At least 23 people were killed when the storm hit the Solomon Islands, and up to 10,000 people were affected in what is reported as being "a natural disaster on a scale never before witnessed in the Solomon Islands".  And that was when Ita was just a tropical low.

Here is the latest chart from the Bureau of Meteorology. (As always, click any image to enlarge it.)

Note: I've updated the chart below as an animation. Note how the track after landfall has moved closer to the more populated coastal settlements of Cape Tribulation, Port Douglas, Cairns, Innisfail and Townsville. Sou. (1:08 pm Friday 11 April 2014 AEST)

Source: BoM

If you are interested in how communities prepare, this page from Cairns Post has a good overview.  It includes emptying hospitals of everyone who can reasonably be sent home, shutting up shops, opening emergency shelters, sandbagging and more.

I've taken a snapshot of some satellite images too. This first one is via BoM:

Source: BoM

Update: Below is an animation showing how the cyclone is slowly moving toward the coast (Sat 11 April 2:00 pm).

Source: BoM

The rest are from the Space Science & Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the longwave photo below you can clearly see the eye of the cyclone and how far the tail spreads.

Source: SSEC, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Here is the water vapour image.

Source: SSEC, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Below is the latest visible - which is a few hours old because it's night time here:

Source: SSEC, University of Wisconsin-Madison

From the Bureau of Meteorology

SEVERE TROPICAL CYCLONE ITA, CATEGORY 5, poses a significant threat to communities along the far north Queensland coast. At this stage it is expected to move to the southwest and make landfall between Cape Melville and Cape Tribulation later on Friday as a SEVERE CATEGORY 5 TROPICAL CYCLONE with VERY DESTRUCTIVE WINDS near the core and GALES extending some distance from the landfall location.

DESTRUCTIVE WINDS may develop between Cape Melville and Cooktown from as early as sunrise Friday morning before extending inland to Laura and further south to Cape Tribulation and possibly Port Douglas later in the day.  GALES may develop between Lockhart River and Cape Tribulation during Friday morning before extending further south to Innisfail and inland to Kalinga, Palmerville, and Laura, and Chillagoe later in the day as the system moves closer to the coast and over land.

Coastal residents between Cape Melville and Cape Tribulation including Cooktown are specifically warned of the dangerous storm tide as the cyclone crosses the coast later on Friday. The sea is likely to rise steadily up to a level which will be significantly above the normal tide, with damaging waves, strong currents and flooding of low-lying areas extending some way inland.


In an ABC report, something was written that made me think of Roger Pielke Jr.  It was that "Cooktown residents are being warned that properties built before 1985 may not be able to withstand Ita's impact."


It will be a difficult few hours and days ahead for far north Queenslanders. Stay safe.

El Niño on its way

While we're on the subject of weather, most of you will probably have heard by now that the likelihood of El Niño was upgraded the other day.  Now there is a greater than 70% chance of an El Niño this winter (southern hemisphere winter, that is 1 June to 31 August).

Source: BoM

Denier Weirdness: Science deniers just can't wait for disasters

On the one hand science deniers at WUWT protest what they term "alarmism", in other words the warnings about what is likely to happen as global warming continues.  On the other hand they get it all wrong and jump on things that either aren't predicted to happen or about which science is less certain.

For example, while the heat events and heavy rains expected with global warming are already happening and increasing, science deniers either ignore it or pretend it isn't real.  Instead they build strawmen and talk about tornadoes and hurricanes (tropical cyclones to most of the world, by far the majority of science deniers live in the USA).  The science isn't all in on whether these will increase or decrease.  Some science suggests that tropical cyclones will increase over time, other studies suggest that they won't, but maybe they will get more intense or larger cyclones will increase.  Tornadoes is another question altogether - to do with wind shear etc.

Today, Anthony Watts complains (archived here) that his neighbours on the east coast of the USA haven't been hit with hurricanes this year - the implied response he wants from his fans is that global warming isn't happening or if it is it's a good thing.  Tropical storms are still hurting other people.  But they don't live in the USA so they don't count.

Anthony avoids writing about the long drying out of his own neck of the woods, which is predicted by global warming.  Or the current fire raging in Yosemite and the increase in wildfires in America's west over time.

Why does he avoid what is happening and build strawmen?  Why does he point at squirrels while ignoring wildfires in his own backyard? Why does he continue to promote silly denialist rubbish? Because he doesn't like paying tax - or that's the reason he gives anyway.  It's a strange reason for building strawmen and denying science, but there you go.

Tropical Cyclones - More and More Often

Bob Tisdale in an article  on WUWT makes a reference to a new paper by Professor Kerry Emanuel.  I found the full paper here.  Bob Tisdale writes:

This post has nothing to do with the Kerry Emanuel’s new climate model-based paper, Downscaling CMIP5 climate models shows increased tropical cyclone activity over the 21st century, but feel free to comment about it. The USA Today article here about Kerry Emanuel’s paper has interviews with Judith Curry and Roger Pielke, Jr., both of whom appear a bit skeptical.

I went and read the article in USA Today and here are some extracts:

The Atlantic Ocean -- where most hurricanes that impact the USA come from -- is projected to see more hurricanes develop. The world could see as many as 20 additional hurricanes and tropical storms each year by the end of the century because of climate change, says a study out today.

...His study found that these killer storms will not only increase in intensity during the 21st century, as many previous studies had predicted, but will also increase in frequency in most locations.

What's different about this new PNAS study? Improved computer models, Emanuel says: "Studies using the same technique applied to the previous generation of global climate models showed very little change in global frequency, but an increase in intensity," he says.

"Our study suggests that the largest increases might occur in the western North Pacific region, but with noticeable increases in the South Indian Ocean and in the North Atlantic region," he says. Most hurricanes that affect the USA form in the Atlantic.

"It is important to emphasize that most studies suggest that the frequency of the highest category tropical cyclones (those of Category 3 and higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale) should increase as the globe warms," Emanuel says. "There is less agreement about the frequency of the weakest category of storms."

What will cause the additional tropical cyclones to form? "Our study has not established a cause," Emanuel says, "but we suspect that the projected decrease in man-made aerosol particles may be at least partly responsible."

"Uncertain" Judith Curry probably hadn't read the paper because she just repeated what she always says whenever anyone asks her anything about climate (tossing in "theory", "assumptions", "models" and "uncertainty"):

"The conclusions from this study rely on a large number of assumptions, many of which only have limited support from theory and observations and hence are associated with substantial uncertainties. Personally, I take studies that project future tropical cyclone activity from climate models with a grain of salt."

Roger Pielke Jr is more accommodating and is quoted as saying, among other things:

"Kerry Emanuel is a smart scientist; I'll trust that he has done good work here." 

Bob Tisdale gets it wrong again

Back to Bob Tisdale, who writes:

We know that climate models cannot simulate the sea surface temperature anomalies of the past 31 years. See here. (Bob's "here" refers to his own interpretations of projections from some multi-model ensemble means using R6.0 scenario, not the specific five models used by Kerry Emanuel using the R8.5 scenario.) So why should we have any confidence in a climate model-based study of hurricanes that depends on flawed simulations of sea surface temperatures? We shouldn’t.  Also, tropical cyclones are strongly impacted by El Niño and La Niña events, and climate models still can’t simulate El Niños and La Niñas. Kerry Emanuel’s new climate model-based paper is nothing more than computer-aided speculation, using models that can’t simulate fundamental components of the study.

Bob Tisdale wants something more than "computer-aided speculation" about the future.  Probably Bob would be satisfied with nothing less than a time machine, and even when he gets to the future he'll still be in denial.  Anyway, the technique used by Emanuel does not "depend on simulations of sea surface temperatures".  And while Bob talks about climate models not being able to simulate  ENSO, the actual paper states (my bold and italics):

The technique captures well the observed spatial and seasonal variability of tropical cyclones around the globe, as well as the effects of such climate phenomena as ENSO and the Atlantic Meridional Mode. Thus there are objective reasons to have some confidence in the ability of the downscaling technique to simulate the effects of climate and climate change on tropical cyclone activity. An important advantage of this technique over explicit simulation with global and regional models is that its high resolution of the storm core allows it to capture the full intensity spectrum of real storms.

The results indicate an increase in frequency of tropical cyclones

From the paper:

An increase in global mean frequency during roughly the first three quarters of the 21st century is indicated, with a total increase in the range of 10-40%. ... most of the increase in frequency is in the North Pacific, but with substantial increases in the North Atlantic and South Indian oceans as well. The only coastal region that experiences a substantial decline in track crossings is the southeast coast of Australia.

Projections to remain uncertain for some time to come

I would say it's almost a certain bet that neither Curry nor Tisdale read the Emanuel paper or at least not all the way through.  In the final paragraph Emanuel writes:

The differences between our results, those arrived at by applying the same technique to CMIP3 models, and the conclusions of other groups using different models and/or using different methods suggest that projections of the response of tropical cyclones to projected climate change will remain uncertain for some time to come.

Bob Tisdale's "it's only natural" chant

The rest  of Bob's article is about a current storm, Chantal.  In it, Bob repeats his claim that it's little green natural men who are boiling natural cauldrons under the natural sea that are naturally causing the oceans to heat up.  He writes:

For four years, I’ve been illustrating and discussing how ocean heat content and satellite-era sea surface temperature data indicate the oceans warmed naturally.

Here is the result of Bob's naturally warming oceans:

Data source: NODC/NOAA

Will "nature" stop behaving "naturally"?  Of course not.  Nature is just doing what it has always done in response to a forcing.  It's just that we're doing the forcing this time around.

One thing is certain - deniers will deny

Will deniers stop denying? Will they stop saying really dumb things?  I guess not.  Here is a sample of comments to Bob's article:

higley7 doesn't seem to appreciate that virtually all science uses models of one kind or another and says:

July 9, 2013 at 6:06 am  As Emmanuel’s new paper is on models and models are not science, why is it in PNAS?

omnologos turns to denialist poetry and says:

July 9, 2013 at 6:30 am Downscaling? Not again!!!
With all this flogging of dead horses one can only surmise sadistic necroequinophilia is a common condition among media-star alarmists