The Collapse of Global Tropical Cyclone Activity
March 4th, 2009Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Ryan Maue, a grad student at Florida State has a paper published today in GRL documenting the following:
Tropical cyclone (TC) activity worldwide has completely and utterly collapsed during the past 2 to 3 years with TC energy levels sinking to levels not seen since the late 1970s. This should not be a surprise to scientists since the natural variability in climate dominates any detectable or perceived global warming impact when it comes to measuring yearly integrated tropical cyclone activity. With the continuation (persistence) of colder Pacific tropical sea-surface temperatures associated with the effects of La Nina, the upcoming 2009 Atlantic hurricane season should be above average, as we saw in 2008. Nevertheless, since the Atlantic only makes up 10-15% of overall global TC activity each year (climatological average during the past 30 years), continued Northern Hemispheric and global TC inactivity as a whole likely will continue.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:11 am
Wot – no picture of hurricanes emerging from chimney stacks? Damn – I just killed another 1000 people!
March 5th, 2009 at 6:50 am
This is precisely what one expects to see if natural cycles dominate and the human influence on climate is still negligible. The PDO and the AMO are obviously huge factors in global climate, but their influence is not even factored in to the GCMs and the IPCC reports. If they were, the climate change attributed to humanity would be greatly reduced and the threat of a climate crisis would evaporate, along with billions of dollars of funding. Still, that is a small price to pay to avoid the possible trillions of dollars of direct and unintended costs of proposed climate change policy.