Extreme events of 2011: climate change a major factor in some, but not all
The science of quantifying how climate change changes the odds of extreme weather events like droughts and floods took a major step forward Tuesday with the publication of NOAA's annual summary of the past year's weather. The 2011 State of the Climate report contains a separate peer-reviewed article published in the July issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society titled, Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 From a Climate Perspective. In the paper, a group of scientists led by Peter Stott of the Met Office Centre in the United Kingdom looked at how climate change may have changed the odds of occurrence of some of 2011's notable weather extremes. These kinds of attribution studies require huge amounts of computer time and take many months to do, but the scientists plan to start making this a regular part of the annual NOAA State of the Climate report. Some of their findings for 2011:
- Determining the causes of extreme events remains difficult. While scientists cannot trace specific events to climate change with absolute certainty, new and continued research help scientists understand how the probability of extreme events change in response to global warming.
- La Niña-related heat waves, like that experienced in Texas in 2011, are now 20 times more likely to occur during La Niña years today than La Niña years fifty years ago.
- The UK experienced a very warm November 2011 and a very cold December 2010. In analyzing these two very different events, UK scientists uncovered interesting changes in the odds. Cold Decembers are now half as likely to occur now versus fifty years ago, whereas warm Novembers are now 62 times more likely.
- The devastating 2011 floods in Thailand caused an estimated $45 billion in damage, making it the world's most expensive river flooding disaster in history. The study found, however, that the amount of rain that fell in the catchment area was not very unusual, and that other factors such as human-caused changes to the flood plain and the movement of more people into flood-prone areas were more important in causing the disaster. "Climate change cannot be shown to have played any role in this event," the study concluded, but warned that climate models predict an increase in the probability of extreme precipitation events in the future in the region.
- The deadly drought in East Africa, which killed tens of thousands of people in 2011, was made more likely by warming waters in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. While the scientists did not specifically tie the warming of these waters to human-caused global warming, they noted that climate models predict continued warming of these waters in the coming decades, and this will likely "contribute to more frequent East African droughts during the spring and summer."
Figure 1. An SH-60F Sea Hawk helicopter assigned to Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron (HS) 14, flies around the Bangkok area with members of the humanitarian assessment survey team and the Royal Thai Armed Forces to assess the damage caused by the 2011 floods. Image credit: Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Villalovos.
Weather on steroids
One interesting aspect of the paper was the scientists' use of the baseball player-steroids analogy to help explain how climate change can increase the odds of extreme weather: "One analogy of the effects of climate change on extreme weather is with a baseball player (or to choose another sport, a cricketer) who starts taking steroids and afterwards hits on average 20% more home runs (or sixes) in a season than he did before (Meehl 2012). For any one of his home runs (sixes) during the years the player was taking steroids, you would not know for sure whether it was caused by steroids or not. But you might be able to attribute his increased number to the steroids. And given that steroids have resulted in a 20% increased chance that any particular swing of the player’s bat results in a home run (or a six), you would be able to make an attribution statement that, all other things being equal, steroid use had increased the probability of that particular occurrence by 20%. The job of the attribution assessment is to distinguish the effects of anthropogenic climate change or some other external factor (steroids in the sporting analogy) from natural variability (e.g., in the baseball analogy, the player’s natural ability to hit home runs or the configuration of a particular stadium)."
Video 1. National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Dr. Jerry Meehl explains how climate change's impact on extreme weather is like how steroids affect a baseball player.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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umm global warming comments, if ya going to be blog police do a proper investigation to what i was responding to......
I sense that this may be a loaded question. ..... or, perhaps, it is this answer that is loaded? ..... I will have to ponder awhile on this one............
becoming annular?
see that string going across the eye???
getting ready.
Do you have the link to the cam?
see the seabreezes colliding
I don't think the "3% of climate scientists and 40% of the general public" data is correct.
First, the 97%/3% data was collected prior to skeptic-scientist Richard Muller's two year study of the raw temperature records. In that study Muller found that the planet has been warming and that it seems to be warming even faster than what other scientists had been reporting. (Muller used a lot larger database.)
I'm guessing Muller is no longer part of that 3% and likely brought some other scientists along with him.
Second. a bunch of that 40% is the 27% who vote/cast opinions consistent with right-wing positions even if the position makes no sense.
I'd bet that a lot of those 40% recognize that climate change is underway but declare it not so because that's what one says to "support the team".
If you check this Gallup poll you'll see that a bit over 50% of Americans believe that we're already experiencing climate change. Around 30% think it's in our future. Less than 20% claim that climate change will never happen.
Link
That's a March, 2012 survey. Wonder what the numbers would look like following the recent heat wave?
?????
a lot of people believe the best kind of cucumber's a pickle. has about as much to do with the globe warming as the bible does.
the fact that the globe is getting hotter is irrespective of anybody's beliefs. i'm jewish and my beliefs don't discount the laws of gravity or the fact that you have to stand up to avoid falling down.
jose looked better
I certainly don't want to discourage you from planting trees. Plant a lot. Plant "useful" trees that give us food. Plant fruit trees where hungry people can pick some free fruit.
Planting trees is a good thing (done in the right places). But it's not a substitute for moving away from fossil fuels.
Bob, you know the real tipping point in the public opinion war is going to be when Santa can't come to Christmas because there's not enough ice to ride his sleigh across. And then the real concern will deepen when there's no more ice at all and Santa and all the little dwarfies are drowned in the deep blue arctic sea.
Oh my! What are we gonna tell the babies!
Link
11/1800 UTC 14.7N 117.7W T5.5/5.5 EMILIA -- East Pacific
annular soon
thought it twas blue
Are you being sarcastic?
No circulation evident with whatever it is off of Florida.
discussing is fine yelling at each other is not okay
i agree with some of what people say, but this is a weather blog.
And an astronomy blog:
Hubble discovers new Pluto moon
I no longer ponder. The answer was loaded and not the question.
i dont promote littering i am not saying there is not climate change, i am just saying i belive in God and not one human is going to change the way the earth is going to end or when it will end. if you don't belive in God that is your freedom of choice. i was just telling you how religion and science can butt heads at times either thru climate change, evolution, big bang theory. just be considerate if people choose to follow the Lord and his word over a science teacher and politician....
hey look! its a dust particle
Citrus... Hillsborough... Pasco and southwestern Hernando counties for
strong thunderstorms with strong wind gusts valid until 315 PM EDT...
At 215 PM EDT... National Weather Service Doppler radar indicates
strong thunderstorms located along a line extending from 43 miles
northwest of Homosassa to 13 miles northwest of Homosassa to 8 miles
west of Bayport... or along a line extending from 9 miles north of
Cedar Key to 14 miles west of Crystal River to 12 miles north of
Hudson... moving west at 20 mph will affect rural central Citrus
County and rural southwestern Hernando County.
Additional storms are moving into eastern Hillsborough and eastern
Pasco counties.
Gusty winds of 45 to 55 mph can be expected which can cause unsecured
objects to blow around... snap tree limbs and cause power outages.
Hail up to penny size may occur. Frequent to continuous lightning is
expected. To be safe go indoors immediately. If caught outside... find
a low spot... and stay away from tall objects. When driving through
heavy rain... slow down. Always leave a safe distance between you and
other vehicles.
My kind of weather!
daily inch of rain?
I sure hope not
Actually, if you look at the current top of this blog you'll see it's a climate change blog page.
Could be that "remember this pretty 'cane?" posts are off topic....
every day for the last week!
*FACEPALM*
*FACEPALM*
*FACEPALM*
*FACEPALM*
No harrison, its not...
Tree-ring study proves that climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is in the modern
the climate change is fine, the politics is not...
image, link?
or not
did you build an ark?
Extra large dust particle?
i was just going by what ya typed, can't read minds...sorry if ya took it the wrong waay...
The first summer Arctic meltout will (hopefully) get a lot of people's attention.
I grew up in a world that believed that the Arctic ice pack was a permanent part of our world. In just a few decades we're seeing a basic belief being destroyed.
We're going to have to tell the babies that we screwed up their future....
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