There’s a bit of spin by Jason Samenow, trying to link the two, but, eh, not so much
(Washington Post) The study (abstract): “Monitoring and Understanding Trends in Extreme Storms: State of Knowledgeâ€, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, states its objective plainly:
Due to the intense media coverage of and great public interest in the 2011 disasters, we suspect that many [meteorologists] have received inquiries or have a personal interest about the nature of these events in the context of long-term trends and potential climate change. This paper is meant to present a clear record that can be used by meteorological professionals about what is known and unknown and why.
What’d they find out?
Summary: Good long-term records of thunderstorms don’t exist and there’s no clear physical reason why to expect they would have changed.
Summary: Records of past tropical storm and hurricane activity are likely incomplete. While the frequency of Atlantic storms has increased since 1970 when observations have been more reliable, the cause of this uptick is not agreed upon.
Summary: There’s indication big snowstorms have increased over the last 60 years but no clear explanation for the change. The increase in big snowstorms has occurred even while the number of years with very little snow has stayed the same or increased. And there’s no evidence of meaningful changes in ice storms.
Summary: Reliable data indicate heavy precipitation events are increasing and rising amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere due to human-caused warming offer a good, but not necessarily complete, explanation.
So, the only thing they saw an uptick on is heavy precipitation events, which may or may not have anthropogenic causes, but, hey, could just as well be explained by solar activity. Jason is not convinced
The time may well come when we can more reliably describe the causes for trends we see in severe weather. But, for the time being, we’re all on firmer ground when drawing connections between climate change and increasing warm weather, ice melt, glacier changes, sea level rise, etc. And this study – in combination with others – makes a strong case to include heavy precipitation on the list.
Except, none of those things are acting according to the models, and, if you read the section at the story about precipitation, you’ll see that there really isn’t a big reason to believe that precipitation is anthropogenic. There are many reasons, such as nature doing its thing.
[…] Alternate headline? Severe weather not caused by climate change, Al Gore hardest hit. William Teach has the scoop […]
Your article is a bit misleading. You say there is no connection betw/ cc and ‘severe weather’. If by severe weather you mean thunderstorms, perhaps it has not been definitively linked YET. To me ‘severe weather’ also means probability of hurricanes, derechos, droughts (especially!), torrential rains. Strong links have been found there.
As far as “real proof” is concerned, you cannot ‘prove’ the sun will come up tomorrow. It’s a statistical thing.
holy cow.. that was an inane comment. only proof sun will come up is through the use of statistics?? I guess her birth is only a mathematical statistical variable as well. No proof it existed otherwise.
The author states:
… but then goes about labeling all things weather that we can ascribe to CAGW.
Dude? Seriously? Proofread much?
Author spends all that time crushing the any linkages or trends in weather events, then states proudly, but we can do so otherwise and with humidity too!!