Samira wrote:
When that becomes "a few hurricanes a week", though, it sure adds up the data points.
Also the fact that it's hitting the marks for all of the models adds a little bit of weight to the argument.
Horribly paraphrasing, but some things working against upper storm strength/frequency that aren't necessarily intuitive:
1) Increased amounts of dry air. That giant desert in Africa isn't getting any smaller, and hotter temperatures aren't going to help any.
2) Overturn with colder water keeps the frequency of the biggest storms down. Once a strong hurricane goes through an area, it's difficult to get another in the region for a while as you get mixing up of colder waters from the deep ocean.
3) More smaller storms are predicted by some models as well. Not necessarily a "few hurricanes a week," but maybe your weekly tropical depression will be a thing. A lot of smaller storms can use that energy just as well as the big ones. This, of course, is horrible for other reasons.
4) The temperature isn't forecast to go up
that much. A few degrees in air and water temperature won't change the maximum potential pressure differences enough to do much beyond yielding fairly minor changes in max wind speed.
Storms that have 5-10mph higher max wind speed on average and 30% more energy in their circulation isn't the kind of thing we're going to detect without a few decades worth of data points (believe with the consensus increases somewhere around 2060-2080 we should start to have statistical significance indicating a change), especially since there's also decade-long patterns in frequency compounding the problem, which basically means more waiting before you can say something definitive. Compare that to something like what's happening in the Arctic Ocean where the temperature difference is greater, the ice cover is a lot lower, and there's a very observable increase ocean erosion, permafrost melting, wildlife behavior changing, etc. It's much easier to piece out the human-caused influence there.
All that said, I wouldn't be buying gulf-coast real estate as an investment right now.
Jophiel wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
[stuff]
Which is much different from "Nope, can't talk about it shut up shut up shut up you're being so mean!!!!!!" from our EPA chief.
The NOAA page edits have been interesting. There's plenty of discussion about climate change, the potential problems, but it's downplayed pretty significantly (like if you think anything I wrote here is downplaying it, you should check out
their website). Basically there's a false dichotomy contrasting works that are a little to the left of center, with ones that are basically on the far right of the spectrum. This is your ABC News vs Infowars making Fox News appear fair and balanced kind of thing; only with sciency stuff.
Edited, Sep 11th 2017 11:12am by someproteinguy