She writes:

“Owing to the excellent work of Willis (Eschenbach – in the CA blog discussions], we have identified that Gray’s forecasts are skilfull relative to one of the metrics being used by Greg Holland (contrary to what Greg Holland has been reporting). The argument that I have been starting to develop re statistical forecast models performing more poorly the past decade is not supported by using Holland’s analysis of Gray’s actual forecasts (but there wasn’t much influence of the statistical model on these forecasts anyways).”

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=857#comment-52441

Dr. Curry testified that,

“Further, the draft IPCC 4th Assessment Report presents climate model simulations that are far
more sophisticated and accurate than were available in prior assessments, substantially increasing the credibility of such simulations and the associated projections.”

The simple scientific fact is that the “projections” in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) have zero credibility, as noted in the IPCC TAR itself:

“Scenarios are images of the future or alternative futures. They are neither predictions nor forecasts.”

Since the “projections” are NOT “predictions nor forecasts,” they can’t be proven false. And falsifiability is the absolute cornerstone of legitimate science. (That is precisely why “Creation Science” is not science; the advocates of “Creation Science” will not acknowledge any conditions under which the actions they claim were done by God can be shown NOT to have been done by God.)

Unless the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) DOES have falsifiable predictions or forecasts of the future, it will be no more scientific than the IPCC TAR. (One thousand times zero is still zero.)

And if anyone would like to bet that AR4 has falsifiable predictions of the future, I’ll be happy to take that bet. (Note: I haven’t seen AR4, but I’ll be shocked if the IPCC decides, at this late date, that it actually should do science.)

Dr. Curry went on to testify, “The cautious conclusions of the large body of scientists contributing to these assessment reports by evaluating a large body of published research are extremely important in providing a balanced overview of the state of knowledge in the scientific research community. Based upon these assessments, our understanding of how the climate system works, while incomplete, is more than sufficiently robust to afford a basis for rational action.”

In other words, we now know enough to take “rational action.” Does this mean that, prior to obtaining this knowledge, “irrational action” was all we could manage?

Dr. Curry also doesn’t state what this “rational action” is, particularly regarding hurricanes. But there does seem to be some recent advice that’s relevant:

“We call upon leaders of government and industry to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of building practices, and insurance, land use, and disaster relief policies that currently serve to promote an ever-increasing vulnerability to hurricanes.”

She claims that while the scientific debate is proceeding as it should, the public debate is being twisted by some questionable activities, and bullets four points in her presentation. The first is:

“The influence of global warming deniers, consisting of a small group of scientists plus others that are motivated to deny global warming owing to the implications associated with any policy to control greenhouse gas emissions.”

The use of the phrase ‘global warming deniers’ is inaccurate and generally considered derogatory, like the phrase ‘flat-Earthers’. I do not know of anyone who denies that the planet has warmed over the last 150 years or that increasing CO2 has a warming influence on the atmosphere. The scientific question has always been about the magnitude of this influence, not if it exists. She prefaced these points with a discussion of how carefully she considered the situation, so her choice of the phrase must be intentional and designed to carry a negative emotional message, not a factual one. Then she insinuates that part of this fictitious group is motivated by greed. I do not know what motivates Judith Curry and I would never be so bold as to speculate such things in front of Congress.

Number 2:

“The tendency of a large number of forecast meteorologists (including TV meteorologists) to deny global warming and in particular the possibility of a link between increasing hurricane intensity and global warming”

This statement smacks of a bias that begins in undergrad classes: “The real smart ones go into research; the dumber ones go into forecasting and the dumb ones with big egos become TV meteorologists.” The above statement is made without any supporting data. Who is denying global warming? (A crisis maybe, but not global warming.) Is it not possible that even a mere forecast meteorologist would have the ability to judge a scientific paper on its merits? If such things can only be understood by a handful of academic research scientists, why bother testifying before Congress? Aren’t they too stupid too?

Number 3:

“The public statements by NOAA administrators and National Weather Service scientists that neglect the published research and deny a link between hurricanes and global warming”

There is a big difference between neglecting something and disagreeing with it. I am quite sure that everyone Ms. Curry accuses of ‘neglecting’ the research is actually quite familiar with it, but not persuaded. Her accusation is false and unsupported!

Secondly, one must consider who she is accusing of such behavior. In the first paragraph of her testimony she states that she has been a research scientist for the past 25 years “…and most recently (focused on) the impact of warming sea surface temperatures on the characteristics of tropical cyclones.” While she admits that she is a newcomer to the world of tropical climatology, she has no problem testifying before Congress that the leading tropical climatologists in the world are causing problems by not agreeing with her! How dare these individuals who have studied hurricane climatology all of their lives have issues with her relatively simple analysis of historical hurricane trends and the conclusions she draws!

While she may have earned some political points for such audaciousness, she lost some scientific ones.

Is it surprising that many TV meteorologists would side with NOAA and the National Hurricane Center’s Hurricane Specialists over some recent academic studies touting more doom and gloom? I don’t think so!

Number 4:

“The role of certain elements of the media in promoting divisiveness among the scientists, polarizing the debate, and legitimizing disinformation”

Welcome to the world of the media! The media loves to promote divisiveness, polarize debate and spread disinformation, but what exactly is implied here? Does ‘disinformation’ mean information that is not correct, or information that Ms. Curry disagrees with. From the context, I can only assume the latter, once again demonstrating a remarkable audaciousness. I disagree with many of the scientific arguments concerning AGW, but if they are expressed sincerely, I would never characterize them as ‘disinformation’.

While I have serious issues with Judith Curry’s testimony before Congress, finding it disturbingly judgmental and inflammatory, I commend her for signing on to Kerry Emanuel’s statement (detailed today on Prometheus and elsewhere) recognizing that the US Hurricane problem transcends the debate on human induced warming and tropical cyclones.

This is the first I’ve heard of a Pacific outlook. NOAA only started doing Atlantic outlooks in ‘98-’99 and the earliest Pacific outlook I can find mentioned online is 2003. The format of the NOAA outlooks (a range of values) is sufficiently different from the CSU outlooks, and the record is short enough that there’s limited information available.

You’ve presented very interesting information on the history of actual Atlantic Basin storms versus predictions.

I just saw that NOAA does storm predictions for the East Pacific and Central Pacific:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2634.htm

Do you have similar historical data (predicted versus actual) for those areas?

Thanks,
Mark

There is an implicit assumption in the statement that this year’s season will be above average. The forecasts have shown reasonable skill in getting the sign of the departure from climatology right, so I’m using that information.

My style is somewhat more caustic than yours, but you would be correct in assuming that:

“it may definitely be helful to engage some statistical reasoning.”

This under-reporting in the historical record is true for the number of storms, the duration of hurricane season and particularly for the intensity of storms! If the exact same season as 2005 occurred in 1930, as many as 6 to 8 of the named storms may not have been named. More amazingly, if the 2005 hurricane season had occurred in 2004, we would have had one less hurricane. (Cindy was upgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane months after the end of the season, based on the reanalysis of data obtained from a recently installed, state-of-the-art Doppler radar in a Hurricane Hunter Aircraft. If ‘Cindy’ happened in 2004, she would forever be in the record books as a tropical storm.)

The increase in ‘observational technology’ has been marked by such major changes as aircraft observations (1944 to present), weather radar (1950s to present), satellite observations (1960s to present) and Doppler radar (1980s to present), but has been steadily improving long before, during and after these big leaps. Increasing populations along the coast and in the number of ships at sea is one factor, along with the improving observational skills of these populations since the 1800s. Aircraft observers have steadily increased their abilities to detect the intensity of storms over the years. Satellites have steadily improved as well, but are still the least accurate way of determining peak hurricane intensity.

Not only has the technology improved, but the methodology at the National Hurricane Center has changed, resulting in storms being upgraded more readily. Dr. Neil Frank, Director of the National Hurricane center from 1973-1987, commented that during his tenure, they would typically wait for verifying data to confirm that a storm had intensified. Now, they often make the call on a single observation. Dr. Frank claims that if the old standards were still used today, there would be fewer storms of each category in the record books.

Stating that the older records are ‘unreliable’ when they are actually ‘under-reported’ seems a bit disingenuous to me, particularly when so much of ones work depends on showing an upward trend that would likely go away or be reversed if the data was handled realistically.

With this in mind, the only graph of Atlantic Storm activity in Ms. Curry’s presentation that still has validity, is the graph of US landfalling storms. While there still is a slight chance that a landfalling tropical storm or hurricane could have gone unreported in the 1800’s, it is less likely to be under reported than the other variables. The interesting thing about this graph is that it clearly shows a general decline in the number of landfalling hurricanes from the beginning of the industrial revolution to about 1994! The large spike at the end data is no doubt the result of the last few seasons and could (and likely will) be reduced be a couple of years with perhaps only two to four landfalling storms factored into the 11-year running mean.

On other issues, she sites the studies which indicate no increase in the number of storms globally in recent decades, but an increase in the intensity of the storms. (Again, all questionable based on the above argument.) This supposed increase in intensity is tied to the increase in tropical sea surface temperatures around the globe. Later in her presentation, she states that the Atlantic Basin will see, on average, 5 more tropical systems per year because of warmer sea surface temperatures. If the warmer water temperatures around the globe have not resulted in more storms, were is the data that supports such a statement for the Atlantic Basin?

I was also somewhat confused by the story about the trip to the Arctic. The premise was that the Arctic was not as warm as the models said it should be, so they went there in search of negative feedbacks that might explain the observations. What they found was more positive feed backs than the expected! I would take this to mean that the theory was even more wrong than I thought! The temperature of the Arctic had a value. If you find more factors contributing to warming than you expected, than the warming potential of CO2 (or some other variables) had to be less than expected, or the value would have been greater! I don’t get how this trip bolstered the idea that CO2 was more of a problem than thought!

For example, the probability of any specific spot alone the coast experiencing category 4 or 5 hurricane force winds in a given year is less than 5%, even for the most active areas. Now lets say that man-made global warming increases that risk per year to a maximum of 6% (which I believe is a lot more than any of the models currently predict). Would anyone opposed to strengthening building codes at a 5% risk decide that a 6% risk is a call to immediate action? Would a change in the estimate of 100-year storm surge from 18 feet to 18.5 feet cause communities to rethink development plans?

The fact is that most communities in hurricane prone areas have been woefully unprepared for hurricanes for decades, and the problem gets worse as populations continue to increase. If we look at effective solutions to this problem, augmenting global CO2 emissions does not even make the list. I would be disappointed in my Governor (Jeb Bush) if he really thinks that CO2 emissions should factor into the states hurricane preparadness and policies.

I see from this article that Bill Gray has “only” been doing predictions since 1984:

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/051206_hurricane_forecast_2006.html