BBC – Global Warming Doubles Risk Of Extreme Weather
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30985039
Unsurprisingly, the BBC is making a big splash about the latest piece of junk science to come out of CSIRO and Exeter University:
Extreme weather arising from a climate phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean will get much worse as the world warms, according to climate modelling.
Parts of the world will have weather patterns that switch between extremes of wet and dry, say scientists.
The US will see more droughts while flooding will become more common in the western Pacific, research suggests.
The study, in Nature Climate Change, adds to a growing body of evidence over climate change and extreme weather.
The latest data – based on detailed climate modelling work – suggests extreme La Nina events in the Pacific Ocean will almost double with global warming, from one in 23 years to one in 13 years.
Most will follow extreme El Nino events, meaning frequent swings between opposite extremes from one year to the next.
Lead researcher Dr Wenju Cai from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia, said this would mean an increase in the occurrence of "devastating weather events with profound socio-economic consequences".
"El Nino and La Nina can be a major driver of extreme weather," he said. "We are going to see these extreme weather [events] become more frequent."
El Nino and La Nina are complex weather patterns arising from variations in ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific. They can have large-scale impacts on global weather and climate.
La Niña is sometimes referred to as the cold phase and El Niño as the warm phase of this natural climate phenomenon.
Prof Mat Collins, Joint Met Office Chair in Climate Change at Exeter University, UK, is a co-researcher on the study, which involved teams in Australia, China, the US, UK and Peru.
He said scientists were getting a better idea of how El Nino and La Nina are affected by global warming.
"Our previous research showed a doubling in frequency of extreme El Nino events, and this new study shows a similar fate for the cold phase of the cycle," he said.
"It shows again how we are just beginning to understand the consequences of global warming."
It is not possible to attribute individual weather events to climate change.
However, a review of research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the world has witnessed more hot days and heat waves since the 1950s and will see more changes to weather extremes by the end of the 21st century.
I think we can safely take with a pinch of salt anything that “models “ predict, particularly since, as ENSO expert, Bob Tisdale, frequently points out, “climate models models can’t simulate basic ENSO processes”.
But we can take a look at what has happened in the past.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
The blues are La Ninas, and there is clearly no increase in the frequency of extreme La Nina events. What can be seen very clearly is their much greater frequency between 1950 and 1976, followed by by the their near absence for the following twenty years or so. Since the turn of the century, La Ninas have started to become more frequent again.
The reason for this cyclical pattern is well known – the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO.
This went negative in 2007, and, based upon previous cycles, we can expect it to remain so for maybe another twenty years.
During this time, we may well see the same sort of predominance of strong La Ninas, as we saw previously. No doubt climate scientists, and their cheer leaders at the BBC will turn around and say they told us so!
There is, however, one fly in their ointment. La Nina years are typically much colder than average. Another two decades of them, and we will be unlikely to see much, if any, global warming during that time.
But you won’t hear that from the BBC.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Squint at the MEI. Cooling with predominant Nina to maybe mid 1970s, warming with predominant Nino to 1998, nothing balance since. Shows the absurdity of papers associating the pause with Enso. Several including from the usual Australian suspects were discredited in essay Unsettling Science.
Oh just look at a new news item (27 January 2015 Last updated at 20:47) on the BBC website regarding the prophesied snowstorm for New York:
“US snow: National Weather Service admits forecast error.
The US National Weather Service (NWS) has admitted its forecasts were wrong, after predicting a “potentially historic blizzard” would strike.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30996010
I accept ‘weather’ isn’t ‘climate’. But if models can’t accurately predict local phenomena 24 hours in advance, why should anyone believe global predictions 24 years & more into the future?
They shouldn’t. The fundamental reasons (which almost nobody talks about even among the sceptics) are laid out in essay Models all the way Down. Each illustrated visually or by reference to visuals in another of the book’s essays.
Surely the real Rud wouldn’t cite Naomi Oreskes essay which itself has predictions in it which have been falsified e.g. Global Warming polar amplification : contradicted by observed increas ice at the poles
Irnixally the title of her essay coincides with the philosophical fallacy
“Turtles all the way down” ie a model of the universe, which relies on the support of a model (turtle), which relies on the support of a model ..ad infinium.
Actually, the storm did happen and it was quite impressive. Also, as predicted, cold follows. The track of the storm was 50 miles east of the coast as the storm went north from the Carolinas and, so, mostly missed NYC. Nassau and Suffolk counties got hit as did Rhode Island and eastern Massachusetts. The following is a bit old now, but have a look:
This article reminds me why I find myself so, er, displeased when supposedly sceptical pundits occasionally appear on TV or radio and lose their bottle and tell the world that man-made climate emissions do have an impact on the climate. This while their writings online give the impression of the complete opposite. The usual suspects include Roger Helmer, Bishop Hill and Delingpole to name but three. There are loads more.
It’s as if they lose their bottle and freeze in the headlights. It’s not as if they’re going to get their whatsitsname out in front of the Queen.
They represent the lukewarmer tendency and do the cause much damage.
Paul2, please explain. A position beyond the rational does not help.
I suggest withholding any attribution of what happens in the tropical oceans to what the PDO index happens to be. Solar energy enters the oceans best when there is little cloud cover over water that is near the sub-solar point (sun is overhead). The heated waters are vast in the Pacific near the Equator. One should look to what goes on in this large region to see what happens in smaller, higher latitude, regions.
Suggested reading:
I’m indebted to the Bishop for pointing out this new blog about these type of stupidly disastrous prediction.
They also would like your input, stories such as this rubbish from bBC and any others you know of…
http://climatechangepredictions.org/category/hardest_hit
Rud, not sure if you’re being sarcastic or you represent the lukewarmer tendency. I’ll try again for clarity.
There is no correlation between the temperature of our planet and carbon dioxide emissions.
None.
It really is that simple.
In the same way that it’s impossible to be partly pregnant, in the same way that you either believe in God or not there really is no link.
None.
Belief to the contrary is to fall for the great delusion.
This BBC article says that this study ‘adds to a growing body of evidence…..’ and then in the next line says the study was based on computer models. Junk science.
It wasn’t that long ago that we were told by climate scientists that there would be an almost permanent El Nino condition as a result of global warming. What happened to that prediction? + 100s of other wronguns
Paul2,
I agree. Rising CO2 has correlated with rising global temperatures for just twenty of the seventy years since 1945. However it is clear that these twenty years of warming, from the late 70s to the late 90s, were due to natural causes. Hence there has been no discernible man-made global warming since 1950, which is the year when man-made greenhouse gas global warming allegedly started to “take off” according to the IPCC. See this paper which I recently sent to my local planning councillors, to try to dissuade them from consenting wind farm planning applications: http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/Junk-Science.pdf
Douglas, that paper you wrote deserves much wider reading. Spot on.
Yet another “no single weather event can be attributed to global warming”, “but yes this is the type of event we expect”, type of paper!
Excellent paper Doug.Thankyou for your time and effort.
Models are fine and can be treated as evidence, so long as they (a) have observational support historically and (b) are capable of making successful novel predictions about the future. E.g., have been tested and have passed the testing.
Journalists are, unfortunately, stupid. A new model is essentially someone’s new theory about how the climate system might work. It doesn’t add to the ‘growing body of evidence’. And if that’s what the ‘evidence’ consists of anyway, what you have there is a pile of random theories and hunches, not evidence.