Imperfect Storms
Though it would make for a great object lesson for those prepared to ever change their minds about future climate change, Katrina and Rita might just be examples of the phrase STORMS HAPPEN. But to throw up the particulars of these two storms to prove a point misses the point and gives business-as-usual happy-talkers an opportunity to toss out the baby with the toxic-wasted bath waters of the hurricane season of 2005.
Unfortunately, cause-effect of large events like this have to be posited in terms of probabilities, not certainties. But read on: the probabilities of future Katrinas is most certainly going up as oceans continue to warm:
There are troubling signs in the meteorological record of a link between global warming and hurricane intensity, says Emanuel, a professor in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. But the best available science suggests that the now-scattered populations of the Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama coasts are the victims of mere happenstance.There are simply too few examples of catastrophic hurricanes hitting U.S. shores to make out any statistical trend, says Emanuel. "It would be absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming," Emanuel wrote on his website this month.
What Emanuel does believe is that the average power of many tropical cyclones -- the blanket terms scientists use for hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones -- has risen sharply over the past several decades, at least in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. Moreover, the increase is closely tied to changes in the surface temperatures of the oceans where tropical cyclones are born. In other words, when the sea surface temperature rises, the energy of the cyclones above that surface also rises -- and at an even faster rate.
And lately, ocean temperatures have been rising more than they've been falling. Emanuel's examination of North Atlantic and North Pacific storm records over the last 50 years show a marked increase in the average intensity of tropical cyclones.
"It's a big effect," says Emanuel. "It's gone up 50 to 80 percent over the last three decades or so."
Bold text is my emphasis. But 'mere happenstance' is a bit misleading. Lack of rigorous stats does not RULE OUT, it only says we can't say with statistical certainty that these storms are in a different subset compared to past storms. This COULD HAVE happened by chance alone, given that we have too few data points in our short climatological history to do the math. What do you think?
Here are some Global Warming Hotspots--some other global alarms--not statistically proven and never likely to be. So. Let's wave our hand at them and go about our business. Ya think?