Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Hurricanes and GW

A couple of papers in the news about global warming and hurricanes. Both are covered in the NY Times, and here's a press release about the EOS article by Mann and Emanuel. It seems there isn't a consensus yet, with some of the climate science people finding a positive correlation between hurricane strength and global warming and some of the hurricane people still attributing increased hurricane strength to natural cycles. From the climate scientists:
When Mann and Emanuel use both global temperature trends and the enhanced regional cooling impact of the pollutants, they are able to explain the observed trends in both tropical Atlantic temperatures and hurricane numbers, without any need to invoke the role of a natural oscillation such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
and from a hurricane guy:
Stanley B. Goldenberg, a meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who has expressed skepticism about any connection between global warming and hurricane intensity, said he had not seen the new papers but had read nothing in other recent research to change his view.

"There's going to be an endless series of articles from this circle that is embracing this new theology built on very flimsy interpretation" of hurricane data, Mr. Goldenberg said. "If global warming is having an effect on hurricanes, I certainly wouldn't base it on the articles I've seen."


5 comments:

EliRabett said...

He's real
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Goldenberg/index.html
and certainly a member of the Landsea crew

Anonymous said...

[blockquote]
[blockquote]
"There's going to be an endless series of articles from this circle that is embracing this new theology built on very flimsy interpretation"
[/blockquote]
Why would a pro use this sort of rhetoric? Sheesh.
[/blockquote]
Dano, compare to Judy Curry:
[blockquote]
Nobody thinks the data is that bad.
[/blockquote]
(from nat geo)

Emanuel's 2005 paper really changed the structure of the hurricanes and AGW debate - before, it was a bit of theory hinting at increasing intensity on one side, and historical data seemingly showing no trend on the other. Since Emanuel's paper, both sides have been grounded in the same data. Since most of the historical wind speeds contained some amount of subjective judgment in the first place, interpreting it is necessarily somewhat subjective. But the work of Emanuel, Curry, and Webster - when taken together - shows a very large trend. For there to be no trend, the effect of said subjectivity must be extreme. That is exactly what I believe Goldenberg intends to imply by the word 'theology' .

Anonymous said...

Goldenberg is pissed. Note that he only has an MS in meteorology (obtained under noted AGW denialist Jim O'Brien), which leaves him a little outclassed by the competition, plus it's obvious that his shining moment professionally was being lead author on http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Goldenberg/science01.pdf. This less-than-rigorous paper has in effect just been entirely discredited by the Kerry/Mike paper, and Goldenberg can only look forward to a bunch of other papers saying the same thing. The kind of TC science that will be called for from now on is out of Goldenberg's league.

Also, regarding the data, remember that it's an NHC product, so for them to argue that it must be all wrong is kind of strange.

If I may quote Dano, "He ain't got nothin'."

Just in general, David, it's important to note that the NHC/HRD have a rather shallow bench when it comes to climate science. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their main expertise is in observations and forecasting.

Anonymous said...

Just in general, David, it's important to note that the NHC/HRD have a rather shallow bench when it comes to climate science. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their main expertise is in observations and forecasting.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the discussion is that the scientific discussion has been between people who specialize in looking at the observations of hurricanes (Landsea, Goldenberg, Mayfield) and people who specialize in modelling and theory (Webster, Emanuel). Resolving the discrepancy between current theory, indicating relatively small sensitivity to increasing SST (Knutson and Tuleya got +6% for SST increases of ~2 C in their simulations), and the raw observational data, indicating large sensitivity to increasing SST (Webster et al). At the moment in the present discussion, the observational people tend to be coming out in favor of the theoretical prediction (small sensitivity) and the theoreticians/modellers are coming out in favor of the raw observational data (large sensitivity).

Anonymous said...

if it's part of a "natural cycle", it's a little odd that we've recently seen hurricanes of intensity & frequency never seen before. It's just a "bigger natural cycle" this iteration?