Where is all the death and destruction? We were told global warming was here, and would ignite a fire under the storms, making them bigger and more frequent. Massive hurricanes like Katrina would become much more common. The world’s oceans were warming, and this would stoke the fires of these tropical monsters. But they are not here — the hurricanes are missing in action, and have been ever since 2005. The truth: there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of hurricanes in the last five years. The total energy of all hurricanes around the world has plunged since 1993 — the opposite of what was predicted. How could that be, if global warming is real and is impacting our climate today?

Let’s go back to the middle of last decade, and see what took place.

Pajamas Media: What Happened to All the Hurricanes, Al?

Worldwide hurricane activity hasn’t just slowed since Katrina, it’s dropped off a cliff.

Wang, B., Y. Yang, Q.‐H. Ding, H. Murakami, and F. Huang, 2010. Climate control of the global tropical storm days (1965–2008). Geophysical Research Letters, 37, L07704, doi:10.1029/2010GL042487.

Abstract:

The tropical storm days have a consistent global record over the past 44 years (1965–2008), which provides an alternative metric for integrated information about genesis, track, and lifespan. Seasonal-reliant singular value decomposition is performed on the fields of the global storm days and sea surface temperature by using the “best track” data. The leading mode, which dominates the variability of the global total number of storm days, displays an east-west contrast between enhanced activity in the North Pacific and reduced activity in the North Atlantic and a north-south contrast in the Southern Hemisphere oceans between active tropics and inactive subtropics, which are coupled with the El Niño and a positive phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The second mode reveals a compensating trend pattern coupled with global warming: upward trends over the North Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific warm pool (17.5°S–10°N, 70–140°E) and downward trends over the Pacific, especially the South Pacific. However, the global total number of storm days shows no trend and only an unexpected large amplitude fluctuation driven by El Niño-Southern Oscillation and PDO. The rising temperature of about 0.5°C in the tropics so far has not yet affected the global tropical storm days.

World Climate Report: No Trend in Global Hurricane Activity

Nicola Scafetta,

Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor (ACRIM) Lab, Coronado, CA 92118, USA

Department of Physics, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA

Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
Volume 72, Issue 13, August 2010, Pages 951-970

doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2010.04.015

Abstract:
We investigate whether or not the decadal and multi-decadal climate oscillations have an astronomical origin. Several global surface temperature records since 1850 and records deduced from the orbits of the planets present very similar power spectra. Eleven frequencies with period between 5 and 100 years closely correspond in the two records. Among them, large climate oscillations with peak-to-trough amplitude of about 0.1 and 0.25°C, and periods of about 20 and 60 years, respectively, are synchronized to the orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn. Schwabe and Hale solar cycles are also visible in the temperature records. A 9.1-year cycle is synchronized to the Moon’s orbital cycles. A phenomenological model based on these astronomical cycles can be used to well reconstruct the temperature oscillations since 1850 and to make partial forecasts for the 21st century. It is found that at least 60% of the global warming observed since 1970 has been induced by the combined effect of the above natural climate oscillations. The partial forecast indicates that climate may stabilize or cool until 2030–2040. Possible physical mechanisms are qualitatively discussed with an emphasis on the phenomenon of collective synchronization of coupled oscillators.

From the conclusions:

A detailed reconstruction of the climate oscillations suggests that a model based on celestial oscillations, as shown in Fig. 12, would largely outperform current general circulation climate models, such as the GISS ModelE, in reconstructing the climate oscillations. The planetary model would also be more accurate in forecasting climate changes during the next few decades. Over this time, the global surface temperature will likely remain approximately steady, or actually cool.

In conclusion, data analysis indicates that current general circulation climate models are missing fundamental mechanisms that have their physical origin and ultimate justification in astronomical phenomena, and in interplanetary and solar-planetary interaction physics.

H/T Watts Up With That: Scafetta on 60 year climate oscillations

Background

Based on 2000–08 data, extreme weather events are responsible for about 0.05% of all global deaths (31,700 deaths vs. 58.8 million, annually). That is, despite the media attention to such events, extreme weather events have a minor impact on global public health.
Long term (1900–2008) data show that average annual deaths and death rates from all such events declined by 93% and 98%, respectively, since cresting in the 1920s (Figure 1). These declines occurred despite a vast increase in the populations at risk and more complete coverage of extreme weather events (Figure 2).

Read the entire Global Warming Policy Foundation article here.

TROPICAL TROPOSPHERE: The 2006 CCSP report pointed to a mismatch between models and observed trends in the tropical troposphere as a “potentially serious inconsistency.” In short, the climate models need to get the tropical troposphere right, since it’s a vast region where the models all show a relatively enhanced and rapid response to greenhouse gases. If the models and data don’t agree in that region, there might be a deep problem with the way the models represent the climatic system’s response to greenhouse gases. Or at least there is an issue that needs to be sorted out. An important question, therefore, is whether the apparent mismatch between models and observations  is statistically significant, or just random noise. In 2007 Douglass et al. looked at the data and said Yes, the mismatch is significant: if you adjust the models so that they agree at the surface, the resulting profile of tropospheric trends are too high to match the observations. In 2008 Santer et al. said No, the mismatch is not statistically significant. They argued that the Douglass results were biased due to a failure to deal with autocorrelation, and in a model-observation comparison on data ending in 1999 they could not reject a null hypothesis of trend equality. The Santer paper figured prominently in the EPA endangerment finding research and in other places where the validity of climate models is at issue. In a new paper:

* **McKitrick, Ross R., Stephen McIntyre and Chad Herman (2010) “Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Series” in press at Atmospheric Science Letters.

we critically examine the common methods used for trend comparisons, and explain some modern econometric methods that provide improved handling of the complex error structures in these data sets. We then apply the methods to the tropical troposphere issue, based on an up to date (1979-2009) time series comprising the full suite of IPCC climate models and 4 observational data series. We conclude that observed trends in the lower troposhere (LT) are significant but those in the mid-troposphere (MT) are not; that on average the balloon and satellite observational data sets agree with each other, though the RSS and UAH satellite series exhibit significant trend differences; that the model-predicted trends are two to four times larger than observed trends and the model-data discrepancy is statistically significant in both the LT and MT layers. See also Supplementary Information; Data/code archive.

See also:

 Climate Audit: McKitrick et al (2010) accepted by Atmos Sci Lett

Jo Nova: The models are wrong (but only by 400%)

The number of weather stations providing data to GHCN plunged in 1990 and again in 2005. The sample size has fallen by over 75% from its peak in the early 1970s, and is now smaller than at any time since 1919. The collapse in sample size has increased the relative fraction of data coming from airports to about 50 percent (up from about 30 percent in the 1970s). It has also reduced the average latitude of source data and removed relatively more high-altitude monitoring sites.

Oceanic data are based on sea surface temperature (SST) rather than marine air temperature (MAT). All three global products rely on SST series derived from the ICOADS archive. ICOADS observations were primarily obtained from ships that voluntarily monitored SST. Prior to the post-war era, coverage of the southern oceans and polar regions was very thin. Coverage has improved partly due to deployment of buoys, as well as use of satellites to support extrapolation. Ship-based readings changed over the 20th century from bucket-and-thermometer to engine-intake methods, leading to a warm bias as the new readings displaced the old. Until recently it was assumed that bucket methods disappeared after 1941, but this is now believed not to be the case, which may necessitate a major revision to the 20th century ocean record. There is evidence that SST trends overstate nearby MAT trends.

The quality of data over land, namely the raw temperature data in GHCN, depends on the validity of adjustments for known problems due to urbanization and land-use change. The adequacy of these adjustments has been tested in three different ways, with two of the three finding evidence that they do not suffice to remove warming biases.

The overall conclusion of this report is that there are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications.

Read more by Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth: Marine Life Survived 8X Current CO2 Levels

References:

Tedesco, M., and A.J. Monaghan. 2009, An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high- latitude and tropical climate variability, Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L18502, doi:10.1029/2009GL039186.

Tedesco, M. and A.J. Monaghan. 2010. Climate and melting variability in Antarctica. Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 91, 1-2.

Wendt, A., G. Casassa, A. Rivera, and J. Wendt. 2009. Reassessment of ice mass balance at Horseshoe Valley, Antarctica. Antarctic Science, 21, 505–513.

World Climate Report: Recent News from Antarctica

The meltdown has not been as dire as some would suggest, said geophysicist Christian Haas of the University of Alberta. His international team flew across the top of the planet last year for the 2,412-kilometre survey.

They found large expanses of ice four to five metres thick, despite the record retreat in 2007.

“This is a nice demonstration that there is still hope for the ice,” said Haas.

The survey, which demonstrated that the “bird” probe tethered to a plane can measure ice thickness over large areas, uncovered plenty of resilient “old” ice from Norway to the North Pole to Alaska in April 2009.

The thickness had “changed little since 2007, and remained within the expected range of natural variability,” the team reports in the Geophysical Research Letters.

Read more in the Ottawa Citizen: Scan of Arctic ice dispels melting gloom: Researcher

Synoptic airborne thickness surveys reveal state of Arctic sea ice cover

Christian Haas

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Stefan Hendricks

Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany

Hajo Eicken

Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA

Andreas Herber

Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany

While summer Arctic sea‐ice extent has decreased over the past three decades, it is subject to large interannual and regional variations. Methodological challenges in measuring ice thickness continue to hamper our understanding of the response of the ice‐thickness distribution to recent change, limiting the ability to forecast sea‐ice change over the next decade. We present results from a 2400 km long pan‐Arctic airborne electromagnetic (EM) ice thickness survey in April 2009, the first‐ever large‐scale EM thickness dataset obtained by fixed‐wing aircraft over key regions of old ice in the Arctic Ocean between Svalbard and Alaska. The data provide detailed insight into ice thickness distributions characteristic for the different regions. Comparison with previous EM surveys shows that modal thicknesses of old ice had changed little since 2007, and remained within the expected range of natural variability.

Citation: Haas , C., S. Hendricks, H. Eicken, and A. Herber (2010), Synoptic airborne thickness surveys reveal state of Arctic sea ice cover, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L09501, doi:10.1029/2010GL042652.

British plants are flowering earlier now than at any time in the last 250 years, according to new analysis.

This is the longest continuous instrumental record of temperatures anywhere in the world, dating back to measurements made in 1659.

Well, 1659 is in the coldest part of the Little Ice Age from which temperatures started to recover before any significant man-made CO2 emissions. It would be interesting to see similar studies from the Holocene Maximum, the Roman Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm Period. We can see the effect of the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the Modern Warm Period on Viticulture here.