Climate Impacts

Heatless in Seattle Summer 2023

Posted on by Ron Clutz

With all the media noise about “Global Boiling”, they must think we are all frogs in a pot on the stove (electric, no gas permitted).  And yet, what a difference a year makes in the US Northwest, as Cliff Mass reminds at his blog A Summer Without Extreme Heat in the Northwest.  Excerpts in italics with  added images.

With all the talk of heat waves in the media these days, it is fascinating to note that the Pacific Northwest has NOT had extreme heat this summer.  

No major heatwaves.   A lack of warm temperature records.

A really moderate, benign summer regarding high temperatures.  And the temperate weather is not over.

And more surprises…there is really little evidence over the past decades of increases in extreme July heat in our region.

Let me show you some data, to prove the above to you.

Just a reminder….the end of July is climatologically the warmest time of the year (see the climatology of SeaTac Airport, below).   By the end of August, solar radiation has declined so much that the temperatures inevitably decline.

 

A July Without Extreme Heat

Below you will find plots of the highest temperature in July over many decades for five local stations:  Olympia and Bellingham in western Washington, Wenatchee and Kennewick in eastern Washington, and Portland, Oregon.  I have plotted the July highs for the entire period of record and plotted a linear trend line for your reference.

Really interesting.   The high temperatures in July at these stations have been very average and FAR below record levels.  

Most of you have not needed AC this month.

Perhaps Shocking to Some
Now look at the trend of the extreme July temperatures above (brown lines) and you will notice something that is perhaps surprising:  there are no large increases in record July temperatures over many decades.
About a 1°F increase at Bellingham and Olympia, roughly .5 °F at Portland and Wenatchee, and a DECLINE of roughly 2 F at Kennewick over many decades.
The background global warming of mean temperatures is about 2F.  Our regional extremes are going up LESS than that.  
There is no local amplification of extreme temperatures as the planet slowly warms.
To bring home the message of the lack of extreme temperatures this July, below are the temperatures at Olympia and Wenatchee (blue bars showing observed highs and lows), with record daily highs shown by the red colors.
No daily high-temperature records were broken.  None. Nada. Zippo.

Finally, the moderate temperatures are not over.  

To illustrate, the latest 7-day forecast from the European Center ensemble (shown below) indicates cooler than normal conditions (blue colors) over and west of the Cascade crest (this is for the daily average temperature, NOT the high temperatures).
As noted in my previous blogs, the lack of extreme high temperatures is associated with a persistent atmospheric circulation pattern.  It also helps explain the lack of wildfires over the region.

 

No CNN, Gulf Stream is Not Collapsing

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Red colours indicate warm, shallow currents and blue colours indicate cold, deep return flows. Modified from Church, 2007, A change in circulation? Science, 317(5840), 908–909. doi:10.1126/science.1147796

 

Leave it to CNN to jump the shark with scary claims Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A crucial system of ocean currents is heading for a collapse that ‘would affect every person on the planet’

A new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature, found that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current – of which the Gulf Stream is a part – could collapse around the middle of the century, or even as early as 2025.

Scientists uninvolved with this study told CNN the exact tipping point for the critical system is uncertain, and that measurements of the currents have so far showed little trend or change. But they agreed these results are alarming and provide new evidence that the tipping point could occur sooner than previously thought.

Yikes!  Shades of Day After Tomorrow

Scientists Admonish Against Going Over the Top

Fortunately knowledgable experts in the area have weighed with context and perspective at Science Media Centre Expert reaction to paper warning of a collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. 

Of course some commented as cheerleaders, but many cautioned against exaggeration and speculation. The RAPID programme (see diagram at top) measures daily flows of water at several depths between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, and its scientific coordinator, Prof Meric Srokosz, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, said:

While the possible collapse of the AMOC with significant climatic impacts is a concern, providing a warning of its collapse is problematic as a long set of observations is required. In this paper the warning depends on using proxy AMOC data (here based on sea surface temperature, SST) as direct continuous AMOC measurements are only available since 2004. The warning comes from applying statistical techniques to a long time series (over a century) of proxy AMOC data, but the warning is only as good as the proxy data are in representing the true AMOC. So, this warning needs to be treated with caution as there is no consensus as to which proxies can accurately capture the behaviour of the AMOC over the long term.”

Prof Penny Holliday, Head of Marine Physics and Ocean Circulation at the National Oceanography Centre, and Principal Investigator for OSNAP, an international programme researching AMOC processes, variability and impacts, said:

“Confidence in the validity of the conclusions are undermined by our knowledge that sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre is not a clear indicator of the state of the AMOC, and that there is no evidence that the AMOC has dramatically weakened in the past 50-75 years. A collapse of the AMOC would profoundly impact every person on Earth but this study overstates the certainly in the likelihood of it taking place within the next few years.”

Does the press release accurately reflect the science?

“On the whole it does – the title of the paper is more sensational than the actual statements within it, and the press release does make that clear. However there are two statements that are not accurate as follows:

‘The strength of the AMOC has only been monitored continuously since 2004 and these observations have shown AMOC to be weakening’

“This is stated in the paper but it is not correct information. The observations since 2004 show that the AMOC goes through fluctuations of being in a stronger or weaker state that last for about 10 years. The observations since 2004 show the subtropical AMOC getting slower from 2004 to 2012, but gradually becoming stronger since then. The only data from AMOC observations shown in the paper are from 5 sparse ship surveys and are used out of context – the authors use them to argue for a severe decline in the AMOC, but that interpretation has long been discredited in the scientific literature (including in the reference they cite for it).

‘The authors found early warning signals of a critical transition of the AMOC system and suggest that it could shut down or collapse as early as 2025 and no later than 2095.’

“This is not quite as the paper states. In the paper the time period of potential collapse depends on choices they have made in how they construct the time series of sea surface temperature which they use as evidence for change. They present three versions of the temperature records, and the three resulting model predictions suggests a collapse is ‘likely’ at any time from 2024 to 2180. The 2025-2095 is the period of time their statistical model predicts that a full or partial collapse is most likely.

How does this work fit with the existing evidence?

“The conclusions are different to the consensus derived from climate projections as described by the IPCC AR6 assessment. The averaged AMOC projections from climate models under all the IPCC emissions scenarios all show an AMOC decline, but not a collapse (a “high confidence” conclusion). Some individual climate model runs do show a future collapse in the AMOC, so the possibility cannot be entirely ruled out.

Are there any important limitations to be aware of?

“There are some questionable assertions and decisions in the methods as follows. The authors state confidently that the sea surface temperature (SST) of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre can be used as a proxy for the strength of the AMOC. The validity of an SST proxy for AMOC strength is a matter of ongoing scientific debate however, because it is based on model behaviour and is not proven using real-world data.

There is solid evidence that there is no such clear relationship,
especially on timescales of less than 30 years.

“I believe the authors have overstated the pattern of subpolar North Atlantic SST change by subtracting two (and three) times the global mean surface temperature trend. This is not the usual approach for highlighting North Atlantic regional temperature trend (instead it is more usual to subtract just 1 x the global trend). The choice means that some of the SST data they use in the statistical model has exaggerated decline since the 1970s when the global SST began to sharply rise. In the version of the statistical model for which the global mean SST trend is removed, the predicted likely time of a partial or complete collapse becomes later and over a wider window of time.

“As mentioned above, the actual observations of AMOC since 2004 have long-since discredited the evidence that the authors are using to validate their modified SST temperature record. The 5 data points they show in the paper were collected several years apart by ship surveys, and it is well known and well established that they give a highly misleading impression of AMOC decline. All the observational evidence we have shows no evidence of dramatic decline in the AMOC over the past 50-75 years.

How uncertain are the uncertainties?

“The authors say that the model’s 95% confidence interval is 2025-2095. This is a measure of statistical uncertainty and they state in the discussion that they cannot rule out slowing rather than a collapse, as well as listing other reservations and caveats. Because of the limitations of their use of modified SST as a proxy for AMOC, the uncertainty in the stated message in the title and abstract is high.

What are the implications in the real world?

“The potential for the AMOC system of currents to collapse under global warming is a high impact, low likelihood scenario, and policymakers and planners do need to be aware of it. NOC and international partners are investing in ongoing observations of the AMOC in order to determine how closely changes in AMOC contribute to changes in SST and consequential climate and social and economic impacts on people. The strength of the out-of-sight ocean currents of the AMOC has surprisingly direct impacts on food, water and energy security, infrastructure risk, biodiversity, and human health. The paper demonstrates that decades of observations are needed to be able to detect a major tipping point in the AMOC, and the authors call for continued measurements of these great Atlantic ocean currents for long enough to do so.

Prof. Dr. Jochem Marotzke, Director of the Department Ocean in the Earth System, Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, said:

“The work provides no reason to change the assessment of the 6th IPCC Assessment Report: ‘There is medium confidence that there will be no abrupt collapse before 2100′. The statement so confidently made in this paper that collapse will occur in the 21st century has feet of clay. The maths are solid, but the starting point is highly dubious: the essential equation – marked with (1) in the paper – relies on the simplified models representing bifurcation – i.e. AMOC collapse – also being correct. But the more comprehensive models do not show this very bifurcation. In this respect, the paper does not live up to its self-imposed claim: ‘The strategy is to infer the evolution of the AMOC solely on observed changes in mean, variance and autocorrelation.’

The interpretation relies to an enormous extent on the authors’ theoretical
understanding being correct, and there are huge doubts about that.

“It must be added that there is considerable doubt as to whether surface temperature measurements are a valid proxy for the AMOC. Again, the paper addresses these uncertainties inadequately.

“When reporting about this study, it is important to include the key aspects in which this paper fails to include the scientific uncertainties.

Prof Niklas Boers, Professor of Earth System Modelling at the Technical University of Munich, said:

“I do not agree with the outcome of this study. While the qualitative statement that the AMOC has been losing stability in the course of the last century is true and supported by the data, uncertainties are too high to reliably estimate a time of tipping. In particular, the uncertainties in the heavily oversimplified model assumptions by the authors are too high. Moreover, the uncertainties in the underlying datasets are huge and would make the extrapolation carried out by the authors far too uncertain to actually report a year or even a decade for the AMOC tipping.”

Background Post 2019 AMOC Update: Oceans Moderate Climate Threat

Fig. 1. Schematic of the major warm (red to yellow) and cold (blue to purple) water pathways in the NASPG (North Atlantic subpolar gyre ) credit: H. Furey, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution): Denmark Strait (DS), Faroe Bank Channel (FBC), East and West Greenland Currents (EGC and WGC, respectively), NAC, DSO, and ISO.

Antarctic Sea Ice Varies, It’s Complicated

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Antarctic sea ice concentration on June 27, 2023, with white representing solid ice and dark blue representing open ocean. The median ice edge for 1981–2010 is drawn in orange. (Credit: Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center)

One of the more measured current reports of Antarctic sea ice is at Discover Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches a “Record-Smashing Low”.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The sea ice extent is nearly a million square miles
below the long-term average for late June.

Some scientists believe that what we’ve seen since 2022 may be signaling a significant and potentially long-lasting change. As Ted Maksym, a climate scientist and polar oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, put it in a recent story in Wired:

“Now there’s this question about: Have we got into a regime shift? A few of us are sort of speculating that that may be true, where the variability in Antarctic sea ice has changed and we might see these low sea ice extents for some time.”

But Maksym also says he and his colleagues are “watching with bated breath” to see if things will return to normal — and they could. Scientists just don’t know.

That’s because the Antarctic is a very different environment than the Arctic — in a way that complicates drawing firm conclusions. The latter consists of an ocean surrounded by land, whereas the former is a giant landmass surrounded by oceans.

Sea ice around Antarctica is affected by a host of complex factors,
including shifts in ocean currents and sea and air temperatures.

Given how remote, forbidding and large Antarctica is, observations of these factors have been relatively sparse. Moreover, the record of satellite observations of sea ice dates only to 1979, making it difficult to separate out a human-caused signal from natural variability. And the sparseness of data, and the complexity of myriad factors, have made modeling of Antarctic sea ice very challenging.

Bottom line: Scientists haven’t seen anything like what’s been happening to Antarctic sea ice in the past two years. But it will take time to know whether a dramatic shift truly has occurred, and more research to tease out the role of anthropogenic climate change in what’s happening.

Background Annual Cycle of Antarctic Sea Ice

Firstly, the annual minimum average is ~2.5 M km2 vs. an average maximum of ~17.5 M km2.  So the sea ice extent each year nearly disappears.  Secondly, since 2010, some years were well above the 1981-2010 average, and obviously there were likely many prior years below average.  Which suggests this may be a return to the mean, or not, as the experts say.

Previously, Antarctic Sea Ice Grew Steadily

Robot Sub Finds Surprisingly Thick Antarctic Sea Ice Nov. 24, 2014

Antarctica’s ice paradox has yet another puzzling layer. Not only is the amount of sea ice increasing each year, but an underwater robot now shows the ice is also much thicker than was previously thought, a new study reports.

The discovery adds to the ongoing mystery of Antarctica’s expanding sea ice. According to climate models, the region’s sea ice should be shrinking each year because of global warming. Instead, satellite observations show the ice is expanding, and the continent’s sea ice has set new records for the past three winters. At the same time, Antarctica’s ice sheet (the glacial ice on land) is melting and retreating.

Measuring sea ice thickness is a crucial step in understanding what’s driving the growth of sea ice, said study co-author Ted Maksym, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Climate scientists need to know if the sea ice expansion also includes underwater thickening.

“If we don’t know how much ice is there is, we can’t validate the models we use to understand the global climate,” Maksym told Live Science. “It looks like there are significant areas of thick ice that are probably not accounted for.”

The Antarctic sunlight illuminates the surface of the sea ice, intensifying the effect of the fracture lines, Oct. 2003. (NSIDC, University of Colorado)

Theory:  Climate Change Increases Antarctic Sea Ice Extent

From AP Oct. 10, 2012 Increase in Antarctic ice may be sign of climate change.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

While the Arctic is open ocean encircled by land, the Antarctic — about 1.5 times the size of the U.S. — is land circled by ocean, leaving more room for sea ice to spread. That geography makes a dramatic difference in the two polar climates.

The Arctic ice responds more directly to warmth. In the Antarctic, the main driver is wind, Maksym and other scientists say. Changes in the strength and motion of winds are now pushing the ice farther north, extending its reach.

Those changes in wind are tied in a complicated way to climate change from greenhouse gases, Maksym and Scambos say. Climate change has created essentially a wall of wind that keeps cool weather bottled up in Antarctica, NASA’s Abdalati says.

And the wind works in combination with the ozone hole, the huge gap in Earth’s protective ozone layer that usually appears over the South Pole. It’s bigger than North America.

It’s caused by man-made pollutants chlorine and bromine, which are different from the fossil fuel emissions that cause global warming. The hole makes Antarctica even cooler this time of year because the ozone layer usually absorbs solar radiation, working like a blanket to keep the Earth warm.

And that cooling effect makes the winds near the ground stronger and steadier,
pushing the ice outward, Scambos says.

University of Colorado researcher Katherine Leonard, who is on board the ship with Maksym, says in an email that the Antarctic sea ice is also getting snowier because climate change has allowed the air to carry more moisture.

Does Sea Ice Growth or Decline Negate or Confirm Climate Change?  No.

From LA Times August 29, 2014 Does Antarctic sea ice growth negate climate change? Scientists say no.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

This year, Antarctic sea ice has expanded its frigid reach with unprecedented speed, setting records in June and July. By the time spring punctures the long Antarctic night, 2014 stands a decent chance of topping 2012 and 2013, which each broke records of maximum total ice extent.

In fact, since scientists started making satellite observations in the late 1970s, they have watched winter sea ice around Antarctica swell slowly but indisputably, despite predictions that it should shrink.

This poses a puzzle that climate scientists struggle to explain:
How can sea ice grow in a warming world?

Climate skeptics have pounced on this apparent discrepancy, citing it as proof that climate change isn’t real, or at least that scientists don’t completely understand it. But those who study Antarctic sea ice say their curious observations shouldn’t shake anyone’s confidence. Dramatic changes in temperature, sea level and extreme weather around the world are proof enough the planet is warming, they say; the only question is how these changes affect the Antarctic as they ripple through the climate system.

“Climate is a complicated thing,” said Ted Maksym, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. “Understanding how these kinds of changes play out in different regions is tricky business.”

The westerly winds blow fierce and constant around Antarctica, isolating the continent in a kind of permanent polar vortex. Scientists think they exert the most direct control over the state of Antarctic sea ice.

Ice requires cold temperatures to form, and winds help it grow by blowing it around the polar ocean. When the ice moves, new water is exposed to the chilly air, creating an opportunity to make more ice.

But it’s not quite as simple as more wind, more ice.

“It makes no sense to talk about a circumpolar average,” Stammerjohn said. “There’s so much regional variability.”

The Ross Sea, which faces New Zealand, has seen a dramatic increase in peak ice extent and 80 more days of ice cover since 1979, when satellites began tracking changes. But along the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches toward the tip of South America, the ice-covered season in the Bellingshausen Sea is three months shorter than it was 35 years ago.

Scientists say sea ice and continental ice are probably responding to the same forces — namely, changes in ocean circulation and winds. However, they also influence each other. Sea ice helps buffer ice shelves, the floating tongues of glacial ice that dam the ice sheets and keep them from spilling irreversibly into the sea. It also keeps warm ocean waters trapped beneath a frozen lid, insulating the ice sheet from their destructive heat.

In the long run, however, scientists expect Antarctic sea ice to decline everywhere.
That it hasn’t done so yet suggests there’s still much to learn about the region.

Antarctic Sea Ice Grows to All-Time Record High: NSIDC October 09, 2014

Antarctica Heat Hype

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jennifer Marohasy throws cold water on heat hype in her Spectator Australia article Warming in Antarctica? Only using ‘creative’ statistics.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Much has been written in the tabloids, and repeated by the fashionable, about it being very hot through June – even in Antarctica. Really, I wondered. Is Antarctica melting?

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has measured air temperatures at the Mawson weather station in Antarctica since early 1954 – this is one of the longest continuous surface temperature records for that part of the world. The Russians did not establish the more famous and isolated Vostok weather station until 1957. The satellite temperature record doesn’t begin until 1979.

Automatic weather station (AWS) near Mawson. Photo: John Burgess

The Bureau makes very few adjustments to the temperatures as measured at Mawson that oscillate within a band of some few degrees – mostly below freezing. These same temperatures show no statistically significant long-term warming trend, at least not since 1954. There are longer proxy temperature series, based on ice core records, and they show an overall cooling trend, considering the last 1,900 years. Here, again, I am referring to data from published studies, for example, the temperatures of East and West Antarctica were reconstructed by a team led by Barbara Stenni including scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division, British Antarctic Survey, and Russian Antarctic Research Institute. It is only remodelled proxy series that show warming over this same period.

Last month (June 2023), Antarctica was reported as ‘hot’ in various publications including Vox.com. It’s even hot in Antarctica, where it’s winter.  Yet the average maximum temperature for Mawson was minus 12.6 degrees Celsius, which is not quite as cold as the long-term June average for all years since 1954 which is minus 13.5 C. When the June maximum temperatures for Mawson are ranked highest to lowest, June 2023 comes in as the 29th hottest, and 42nd coldest – suggesting temperatures in Antarctica were not particularly newsworthy and rather cold.

Yet the tabloids, and fashionable, are claiming June 2023 as hot – even in Antarctica. It is all nonsense.

Some of these claims have their origin in the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations. So, they represent a remodelled average. Indeed, there is not a single place where anyone, can measure the average temperature of the Earth – or Antarctica. Rather, when it is announced that it is the hottest it has ever been, reference is made to a statistic.

This average temperature is necessarily a number
that has been derived from other numbers.

There will perhaps have been some measuring done here and there, and then some adjusting, and then some adding up and some adjusting again. This is how it is with the calculation of regional and global average temperatures – whether from satellites, tree rings, ice cores, or thermometers. To be sure, every year we are told it is getting hotter, and back in the late 1980s, this was achieved for the globally averaged thermometer record by dropping out some of the colder weather stations. This had the effect of increasing the overall average global temperature, at a time when temperatures at many individual sites were dipping somewhat.

Those who have followed the politics of measuring temperatures may also remember the infamous line in the Climategate emails, whereby the globally averaged temperatures based on tree rings, which also show a decline after 1980, are ‘corrected’ by substituting the globally averaged temperature from thermometer records – never mind that the dip in that record had already been ‘corrected’ by removing data from a great many high latitude Canadian and Russian weather stations.

Drawing from this sordid history of calculating global and regional temperatures, I can think of a large number of ways that the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer could possibly generate a higher-than-average temperature for Antarctica and especially the Earth. Indeed, the larger the geographic area covered, the more opportunity for creative accounting, for which corporates using similar techniques would go to jail, while climate scientists are more usually promoted.

The solution is to perhaps give up on believing the nonsense news headlines, especially when there is no reference to a specific weather station, like Mawson. Or do away with a random selection of weather stations and focus instead on a simple index based on a good sample of well-sited weather stations with long histories, like Mawson.

Such a concept could be based on the Dow Jones Averages or the S&P 500. No one ever tries establishing an impossible-to-define ‘average stock price’ — including many stocks of doubtful provenance — and nobody cares. Rather the solution is to have a pre-selected index of certain representative stocks, that are then followed over a long-time span. So why not have an index of agreed weather stations?

The only problem is, the tabloids and the fashionable, might then have nothing to talk about – should they limit reporting to the same weather stations and with temperatures reliably measured, which will require some modification to current methods and of course, no subsequent adjusting.

There may be no catastrophe to report at least not when it comes to weather as a measure of climate, for which the lack of reliable measures, and the great number of potentially creative solutions, are currently being exploited over and over to justify rather large expenditures on all manner of things.

 

Normal Arctic Ice Mid July 2023

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

The previous June Arctic ice update showed that shallow basins on the Pacific side lost their ice rapidly.  The animation above shows in the last 15 days how Hudson Bay (bottom right) is nearly all open water. And Baffin Bay (center right) is down to 22% of its March max. The images also show CAA (Canadian Arctic Archipelago–center bottom) is still blocking the Northwest Passage, despite open water in Baffin Bay and in Beaufort Sea to the west.  Also the Russian shelf seas (left) are starting to open. This is all normal melting of Arctic drift ice, presently at 56% (8.4 M km2) of last March maximum, heading toward the September minimum.

The graph for the last 30 days shows the normal melt is ~2.5M km2 down to 8.3 M km2.  2023 was above average for 3 weeks, and matching average the last week.  SII tracked the MASIE average throughout, as did 2007 in June, but dropped lower toward the end.

The table for day 197 shows how the ice extent is distributed across the Arctic regions, incomparison to 17 year average and 2007.

Region 2023197 Day 197 Average 2023-Ave. 2007197 2023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 8356350 8252843  103507  7963047 393303 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 843873 864156  -20283  825810 18063 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 736044 627024  109019  550547 185496 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 891273 909597  -18324  729250 162022 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 632760 547279  85481  525724 107036 
 (5) Kara_Sea 313437 331825  -18389  401874 -88438 
 (6) Barents_Sea 64976 54022  10954  60637 4339 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 433035 394327  38708  434750 -1715 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 397917 292326  105591  314783 83134 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 649440 710624  -61184  711889 -62449 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 165147 348600  -183452  183962 -18814 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3227307 3169018  58289  3222022 5284 

The table shows that Hudson Bay is the anomaly, melting out early, but will soon be matched by the average there.  CAA is also in slight deficit to average, while surpluses appear in Chukchi, Laptev, Baffin Bay and Central Arctic.  2007 was nearly 400k km2 lower than yesterday.

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents and snow cover.

Wild Weather News Spreads Like Wildfire

Posted on by Ron Clutz

New York City Covered in Thick Smoke from Western USA and Canada Wildfires

The Wild Weather meme has gone viral, along with the usual suspects claiming it’s climate change.  Just in the last 24 hours:

Extreme weather is terrorizing the world. It’s only just begun. Yahoo
Heatwaves are one of the deadliest hazards to emerge in extreme weather, and they’re occurring on a global scale.

After Earth’s hottest week on record, extreme weather surprises everyone — even climate scientists CBC.ca
This past week was the Earth’s hottest on record, as extreme weather from wildfires to floods ravaged various corners of the world. Here’s a closer look at what’s happening.

There’s no escaping climate change as extreme weather events abound The Washington Post

Extreme weather highlights need for greater climate action: WMO UN News Centre
Scorching temperatures are engulfing large parts of the Northern hemisphere, while devastating floods triggered by relentless rainfall have disrupted lives and livelihoods, underscoring the urgent need for more climate action,

White House details ‘extreme heat strategy’ amid blistering temperatures in U.S. City News
Crippling heat waves are an annual fixture in the United States — but it’s not every day the White House announces a detailed strategy to confront them. So far, it’s been an extreme-weather summer

U.S. lays out extreme heat plan amid record temperatures. What about Canada? Global News
Like in the U.S., the federal government in Canada has staked much of its reputation on enunciating and enacting a comprehensive response to climate change.

NASA climate adviser warns extreme weather events will persist if temps keep rising. wusf.usf.edu
With much of the U.S. facing extreme weather, NASA chief scientist and senior climate adviser Kate Calvin talks to NPR’s A Martinez about what we can expect as global temperatures continue to rise.

What this summer’s extreme weather events mean for humanity. Public Radio International
As the worldwide heat record fell last week, the acute effects are emerging quickly. Extreme weather events are proliferating across the globe.

Floods, tornadoes, heat: more extreme weather predicted across US. The Guardian
Over a third of Americans under extreme heat warnings as Vermont, still recovering from historic flooding, prepares for more storms

More than 40% of Californians say they were affected by recent extreme weather, poll finds Yahoo Canada Sports
An overwhelming majority of respondents say climate change is impacting their community, but are less confident in government’s readiness to respond.

El Niño is back: Surging temperatures bring extreme weather and threaten lives Euronews
“Early warnings and anticipatory action of extreme weather events associated with this major climate phenomenon are vital to save lives and livelihoods.” Rising sea temperatures are already …

Cities fight to keep the lights on in extreme weather events Politico Europe
More intense and longer-lasting heat waves are a challenge for the electricity grids that power Europe’s urban centers.

Heat: 3 in 4 Californians say climate change is contributing to the state’s extreme weather events East Bay Times
With a heat wave approaching that could send inland temperatures soaring this weekend to more than 105 degrees, a new poll shows Californians’ concerns are rising about climate change and its connections to extreme weather.

Extreme Weather Bakes the South, Soaks the Northeast The Globe and Mail

This extreme weather from coast to coast: Is it ‘a new abnormal’? Yahoo News Canada
Wildfire smoke engulfed the iconic skyline of New York, blotting out the Empire State Building in a dystopian orange haze. A massive heat dome broke temperature records in Texas, straining the power grid and killing 13 people.

This seasonal outbreak of distressing media hype deserves a rational response, so I am reposting wise words from meteorologist Cliff Mass from summer 2021.

heat-dome-graphic

Reality Check on Extreme Weather Claims

CBS News headline was:  ‘Pacific Northwest heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, experts say.’

Eric Felton provides a useful reprise of the campaign to exploit a recent Washington State heat wave for climate hysteria mongering.  His article at Real Clear Investigations is Does Climate Change Cause Extreme Weather Now? Here’s a Scorcher of a Reality Check.  This discussion is timely since you can soon expect an inundation of hype saying our SUVs caused whatever damage is done by Hurricane (or Tropical Storm) Henri, shown below approaching Long Island and New England. Excerpts from Felton’s article are below in italics with my bolds.

Henri 20210822

The Pacific Northwest was hit with a record-shattering heat wave in June, with temperatures over 35 degrees higher than normal in some places. On June 28, Portland, Ore., reached 116 degrees. Late last week the region suffered another blast of hot weather, with a high in Portland of 103 degrees. The New York Times didn’t hesitate to pronounce the region’s bouts of extreme weather proof that the climate wasn’t just changing, but catastrophically so.

To make that claim, the Times relied on a “consortium of climate experts” that calls itself World Weather Attribution, a group organized not just to attribute extreme weather events to climate change, but to do so quickly. Within days of the June heat wave, the researchers released an analysis, declaring that the torrid spell “was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”

World Weather Attribution and its alarming report were trumpeted by Time magazine, touted by the NOAA website Climate.gov , and featured by CBS News, CNBC, Scientific American, CNN, the Washington Post, USAToday, and the New York Times, among others.

The group’s claim that global warming was to blame was perhaps less significant than the speed with which that conclusion was provided to the media. Previous efforts to tie extreme weather events to climate change hadn’t had the impact scientists had hoped for, according to Time, because it “wasn’t producing results fast enough to get attention from people outside the climate science world.”

“Being able to confidently say that a given weather disaster was caused by climate change while said event still has the world’s attention,” Time explained, approvingly, “can be an enormously useful tool to convince leaders, lawmakers and others that climate change is a threat that must be addressed.” In other words, the value of rapid attribution is primarily political, not scientific.

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World Weather Attribution was organized to quickly attribute extreme weather events to climate change.  World Weather Attribution

Inconveniently for World Weather Attribution, an atmospheric scientist with extensive knowledge of the Pacific Northwest climate was actively running weather models that accurately predicted the heatwave. Cliff Mass rejected the notion that global warming was to blame for the scorching temperatures. He calculated that global warming might have been responsible for two degrees of the near 40-degree anomaly. With or without climate change, Mass wrote, the region “still would have experienced the most severe heat wave of the past century.”

Mass has no shortage of credentials relevant to the issue: A professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, he is author of the book “The Weather of the Pacific Northwest.”

Mass took on the World Weather Attribution group directly: “Unfortunately, there are serious flaws in their approach.” According to Mass, the heatwave was the result of “natural variability.” The models being used by the international group lacked the “resolution to correctly simulate critical intense, local precipitation features,” and “they generally use unrealistic greenhouse gas emissions.”

WWA issued a “rebuttal” calling Mass’ criticisms “misleading and incorrect.” But the gauntlet thrown down by Mass did seem to affect WWA’s confidence in its claims. The group, which had originally declared the heatwave would have been “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change,” altered its tone. In subsequent public statements, it emphasized that it had merely been making “best estimates” and had presented them “with the appropriate caveats and uncertainties.” Scientists with the attribution group did not respond to questions about Mass’s criticisms posed by RealClearInvestigations.

But what of the group’s basic mission, the attribution of individual weather events to climate change? Hasn’t it been a fundamental rule of discussing extreme temperatures in a given place not to conflate weather with climate? Weather, it is regularly pointed out, refers to conditions during a short time in a limited area; climate is said to describe longer-term atmospheric patterns over large areas.

Until recently, at least, climate scientists long warned against using individual weather events to ponder the existence or otherwise of global warming. Typically, that argument is used to respond to those who might argue a spate of extreme cold is reason to doubt the planet is warming. Using individual weather events to say anything about the climate is “dangerous nonsense,” the New Scientist warned a decade ago.

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Perhaps, but it happens all the time now that climate advocates have found it to be an effective tool. In 2019, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found that three-fourths of those polled said their views about climate change had been shaped by extreme weather events. Leah Sprain, in the book “Ethics and Practice in Science Communication,” says that even though it may be legitimate to make the broad claim that climate change “may result in future extreme weather,” when one tries “arguing weather patterns were caused by climate change, things get dicey.” Which creates a tension: “For some communicators, the ultimate goal – mobilizing political action – warrants rhetorical use of extreme weather events.” But that makes scientists nervous, Sprain writes, because “misrepresenting science will undermine the credibility of arguments for climate change.”

Which is exactly what happened with the World Weather Attribution group, according to Mass: “Many of the climate attribution studies are resulting in headlines that are deceptive and result in people coming to incorrect conclusions about the relative roles of global warming and natural variability in current extreme weather,” he wrote at his blog. “Scary headlines and apocalyptic attribution studies needlessly provoke fear.”

The blogging professor laments that atmospheric sciences have been “poisoned” by politics. “It’s damaged climate science,” he told RCI.

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And not just politics – Mass also says that the accepted tenets of global warming have become a sort of religion. Consider the language used, he says, such as the question of whether one “believes” in anthropogenic climate change. “You don’t believe in gravity,” he says. The religious metaphor also explains why colleagues get so bent out of shape with him, Mass says: “There’s nothing worse than an apostate priest.”

That goes even for those who are merely mild apostates. Mass doesn’t dispute warming, he merely questions how big a problem it is. “We need to worry about climate change,” he has said. “But hype and exaggeration of its impacts only undermine the potential for effective action.”

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For a more in depth look at the the science of attributing causes of extreme weather events, see:

X-Weathermen are Back!

Hottest Year Misdirection June Report

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Activists and their media allies are Hell-bent to spoil our summertime joy by stirring up climate fear to further their zero carbon agenda.

The calendar turning to June and the official start to summer triggers the usual alarms that this year will surely be the hottest ever.  Headlines recently:

♦  Is 2023 going to be the hottest year on record?  World Economic Forum

♦  Why 2023 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record New Scientist

♦  Global temperatures in 2023 set to be among hottest on record  The Guardian

♦  2023 will be ‘one of the hottest on record’ says Met Office BBC

And of course you can count on NYT to totally jump the shark:

♦  The Last 8 Years Were the Hottest on Record – The New York Times

In the past few years, the earth cooled after warming from the 2015-2016 El Nino, and with higher North Atlantic summer anomalies repeating in 2020.  The cooling was significant as shown in the chart below (from the UAH satellite temperature dataset.)

The Global anomaly dropped from +0.7C January 2016 to <0.0C January 2023.  And of course the media ignored that cooling since they are addicted to the global warming narrative: temperatures can only go up, since CO2 keeps rising.  On the contrary, the chart shows CO2 did rise steadily, while temps fluctuated up and down, ending this period of 27 years flat.

Curiously, a lot of us have so far seen unseasonably cool temperatures this year, and wonder where this hottest year could be?  I mean, 60 cm of snow one June day in Jasper Park Alberta?   Suspecting that we have again a weather/climate perception that exists everywhere elsewhere, I turned to NOAA’s Climate at a Glance website to see what their data shows.

Climate reporting is confusing because the scope of temperature averaging gives very different impressions, and at the mega scale rarely corresponds to anyone’s particular experience.  So generalizations are claimed extrapolating from statistics, contradicted by many persons’ direct experience.

NOAA State of the Climate is another site advocating for the IPCC agenda and illustrates how this works.  First the Global Climate Report:

So there is the #1 hottest month out of 174 years–warmest Land, Ocean and combined Global.  Now let’s look at the year to date (YTD):

Whoops, that’s not as scary; the first half of 2023 is not #1.   Rather, the ocean is #2, Land #5, and the Global start to the year is #3.  And the table shows that 2016 was the hottest, consistent with the UAH graph above.  We start to see how media reports are speculating and hoping for this to be the hottest year, despite the first half of the year.

And to understand why most people will be put off by hottest year claims, we go to the Regional Analysis in order to see what the year has been like in various continents (land by definition).

It becomes obvious that no matter where I live, don’t tell me this is the hottest year ever. OK some Africans and Europeans may agree, but those in Oceania (mostly Australians) will boo you out of the room.

Note:  NOAA climatology data

The Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) dataset is a global monthly analysis of SST data derived from the International Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Dataset (ICOADS). The dataset can be used for long-term global and basin-wide studies and incorporates smoothed local and short-term variations.

The Global Historical Climatology Network monthly (GHCNm) dataset provides monthly climate summaries from thousands of weather stations around the world. The initial version was developed in the early 1990s, and subsequent iterations were released in 1997, 2011, and most recently in 2018. The period of record for each summary varies by station, with the earliest observations dating to the 18th century. Some station records are purely historical and are no longer updated, but many others are still operational and provide short time delay updates that are useful for climate monitoring. The current version (GHCNm v4) consists of mean monthly temperature data, as well as a beta release of monthly precipitation data. [Reported station data are subject to adjustments by way of a procedure, known as the Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA)]

In addition, a previous post gives directions and links for anyone to get the unbiased climate history where they live, including the example of my locale.  See June 2023 the Hottest Ever? Not So Fast!

Footnote: Everyone has an agenda and packages data in support of their POV.  Those who joined the anti-hydrocarbon crusade are bound to find and amplify any bit of global warming they can find.  My agenda is for people to consider the full amount of relevant data and facts, and to reason accordingly rather than go along with the crowd or their feelings.  My approach is best expressed in this essay:

I Want You Not to Panic

June 2023 the Hottest Ever? Not So Fast!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

For sure you’ve seen the headlines declaring June 2023 the Hottest month ever.  If you’re like me, your response is: That’s not the way June went down where I live.  Fortunately there is a website that allows anyone to check their personal experience with the weather station data nearby.  weatherspark.com provides data summaries for you to judge what’s going on in weather history where you live.  In my case a modern weather station is a few miles away  June 2023 Weather History at Montréal–Mirabel International Airport.  The story about June 2023 is evident below in charts and graphs from this site.  There’s a map that allows you to find your locale.

First, consider above the norms for June from the period 1980 to 2016.

Then, there’s June 2023 compared to the normal observations.

The graph shows May was warm, but not so much during June, pretty normal in fact.  But since climate is more than temperature, consider cloudiness.

Woah!  Most of the month was cloudy, which in summer means blocking the hot sun from hitting the surface.   And with all those clouds, let’s look at precipitation:

So, 19 days when it rained, including heavy rain, and sometimes thunderstorms, especially toward month end.  Given what we know about the hydrology cycles, that means a lot of heat removed upward from the surface.

So the implications for June temperatures in my locale.

There you have it before your eyes.  One Hot day, then cold, cool, warm
and ending comfortable.  Hottest June Ever!
Maybe in some imaginary world,  but not in the real one.

Summary:

Claims of hottest this or that month or year are based on averages of averages of temperatures, which in principle is an intrinsic quality and distinctive to a locale.  The claim involves selecting some places and time periods where warming appears, while ignoring other places where it has been cooling.

Remember:  They want you to panic.  Before doing so, check out what the data says in your neck of the woods.

 

Ten Days Melt in Hudson & Baffin Bays

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

The previous June Arctic ice update suggested that shallow basins on the Atlantic side will now lose their ice rapidly.  The animation above shows in the last 10 days how much open water has appeared in Hudson Bay (bottom right) and Baffin Bay (center right).  Just those two regions combined lost ~500k km2 of ice in 1.5 weeks and are now holding ~30% of their maximums.  The images also show little change elsewhere.  This is all normal melting of Arctic drift ice, presently at 63% ( 9.5 M km2) of last March maximum, heading toward the September minimum.

 

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents and snow cover.

Insurers Playing the Climate Card

Posted on by Ron Clutz

You’re probably seeing headlines like this one from The Hill Insurers pull back as US climate catastrophes intensify.   H/T Mark Krebs.  As usual, the Climate Card is a coverup for others who really are to blame for losses.  The linked article starts to look under the carpet, and I will dig deeper in this post.

Firstly, they label weather events as climate castastrophes in order to blame them on everyone else.  

From The Hill:

This month Farmers Insurance announced that it will no longer write new property insurance policies in Florida, citing “catastrophe costs … at historically high levels.” AIG also recently stopped issuing policies along the Sunshine State’s hurricane-vulnerable coastline.

State Farm, meanwhile, said in May, that it would impose a moratorium on new policies in California due to “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.”

Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications at the Insurance Information Institute, said that dozens of firms have reduced their presence in Louisiana, including 50 that have stopped writing new policies in the state’s hurricane-prone parishes.

Then in the article details, there are other factors causing claims, including bad governance

He noted that while Farmers made headlines, it’s the 15th insurer to stop writing new policies in Florida in the last 18 months. Although most of those companies have not pulled out of the state outright, he added, three have.

“Insurers are in many ways the first movers” in response to trends like extreme weather and natural disasters, Keys said. “They have a significant amount of money at stake, so they’re very exposed to the downside.”

Florida is in a unique position, Friedlander said, because of a combination of high fraud rates and widespread litigation, which both compound the cost of insurance on top of the climate risks. A state law enacted this year creates a backstop for property insurance in hopes of alleviating some costs, but it’s not yet clear how effectively it will counteract those factors, which have been building for years.

“The difference is in California and Louisiana, [insurance costs are] primarily climate-driven,” he said. “They don’t have the manmade factors we have here in Florida.”

“There isn’t an equivalent for wildfires in California, so the risks in California are borne much more directly. [Note:  Refers to California wildfires, which are uniquely a problem in that woke state which refuses to apply forestry management best practices.]

Insurance Industry Intends to Leverage Climate Fear

“The industry’s taking the approach now of what’s called predict and prevent, meaning being proactive to address climate risk and make sure insurance coverage reflects that and make sure homes and business take preventative action,” Friedlander told The Hill.

Keys also noted that the decisions don’t mean the insurers will never write policies or operate in the state again. Rather, he said, they should be understood as a way for insurers to negotiate, both on what they can charge in premiums and what factors they can weigh.

“It’s not that [insurers] don’t want to do business in your state, it’s that [they]
don’t want to do business at the current premiums [they] can charge.” 

Soaring School Insurance Costs Show How This Works

From Education Week Schools’ Insurance Costs Are Soaring—And Climate Change Isn’t the Only Reason.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

School districts are just like homeowners, renters, drivers, and small businesses—they need insurance, even as it’s become prohibitively expensive.

The 900-student Davis district in southern Oklahoma spent $61,000, or roughly $68 per student, on liability insurance for the 2019-20 school year. Last school year, the cost for the same coverage was $150,000, or $167 per student.  Next school year, it’ll be $261,000, or $290 per student. That’s a 328 percent jump just in two years.

Why is the cost of insurance rising so precipitously? Several factors provide clues.

For one, climate change is causing more frequent natural disasters that affect school district operations and require insurance companies to pay out. And it’s not only districts in hard-hit areas that see higher premiums as a result.

Districts’ coverage costs are increasingly determined by what’s happening nationally, not just in their own communities, said Kelli Hanson, executive director of the Schools Insurance Group, which provides insurance to schools in California.

“The more hurricanes we have in Florida, we’re impacted. The more flooding in the Midwest, we’re impacted,” Hanson said.  [Cashing in on Climate?]

Meanwhile, new laws allowing more lawsuits over sexual abuse are putting school districts in an unflattering legal spotlight—while also contributing to higher insurance premiums because of the added legal liability. In California, for instance, a new law passed in 2019 dramatically extends the statute of limitations for plaintiffs to sue over child sexual abuse, including in schools.

The growing frequency of cybercrimes is another factor putting districts at risk. The Shanksville-Stonycreek district in southwestern Pennsylvania saw cybersecurity insurance costs triple after a hacker got access to some of the district’s files in 2019, said Sidney Clark, the district’s business manager and board secretary.

And some districts have adopted controversial policies that are alienating their providers altogether. In Iowa, at least two districts nearly lost insurance coverage recently after they announced that they would be allowing teachers to carry guns on campus. After consulting with other providers who also wouldn’t commit to coverage, both districts have since nixed the policy.

In Oklahoma, one of two main providers of school property and casualty insurance shut down during the pandemic. As a result, Moring said, he has no choice but to sign up with the Oklahoma School Insurance Group (OSIG), no matter what its coverage plan looks like.

In turn, OSIG has struggled to keep rates down for the hundreds of districts in its membership, said Rick Thomas, a retired superintendent who has served as OSIG’s executive director for the last school year.

Over the last three years, Thomas said, OSIG has raised from $14 million to $30 million the amount of money it pays out to districts directly before seeking reimbursement from re-insurers—external companies that charge higher premiums.

School districts aren’t entirely powerless to stop insurance costs from swelling. In many cases, providers want to see that districts are proactively preparing for the unlikeliest scenarios.

Schools with safety plans with details on how they’ll deal with wildfires—what they’re doing to keep shrubbery away from buildings, how they’ll evacuate if necessary, for instance—are more likely to receive favorable insurance coverage, Hanson said.

Background from Previous Post Banking on Climate Alarm

The media are again amping up claims of bad weather to be feared from “climate change.” It is Whack-A-Mole time again, so here is a complete debunking of such media reports, compiled to refute a particularly bad speech by Mark Carney Governor of the Bank of England. H/T Friends of Science

Fact Checking Mark Carney’s Climate Claims is a useful reference document written by Steven Kopits of Princeton Energy Advisors. A few examples below show his systematic dismantling of the alarmist narrative by referencing publically available sources, many of them on government or corporate sites.

Temperatures Rising


We do have long-time series data for Central England, extending back to 1772. To the extent this measurement is reliable and can be extrapolated to hemispheric averages, it shows a step-up of about 1 deg Celsius from 1980 to 2005, which supports Governor Carney’s assertions. On other hand, it also shows a drop of 0.5 deg Celsius from 2005 to the present—which does not.

Sea Levels

As with just about every other metric the Governor mentions, we have data. Sea level is measured by tide gauges, and also by satellites. Satellite measurements suggest that sea level has been rising steadily by roughly 3 mm / year, which equates to about 1 foot per century.

Weather-related Insurance Losses

SOURCE: MUNICH RE NATCAT SERVICE

Hurricanes account for 75% of catastrophic losses, with typhoons representing an additional 8%. Thus, hurricanes and typhoons represent $6 of every $7 paid out in ‘top ten’ catastrophic weather-related insurance claims.

And this in turn tells us a great deal about the nature of insurance. Where do insured hurricane losses occur? Principally in the United States. Where do insured typhoon losses occur? Principally in Japan and Taiwan. Why these places? Because all of these are wealthy countries. Hurricane and typhoon losses will be greater where there is, first, a concentration of physical assets, and second, where those assets are valuable. In other words, in the advanced countries exposed to hurricanes and typhoons.

In this, no country is more exposed than the United States. Of overall losses due to top ten catastrophic weather events, nearly 2/3 occurred in the United States alone.

Insured Weather-related Losses

SOURCE: MUNICH RE NATCAT SERVICE

Indeed, if we restrict this to insured losses (including floods and tornadoes), the US accounts for 84% by itself.  Thus, if we are speaking of insured weather-related losses, as a practical matter we are speaking of hurricane damage in the US.  The rest is largely incidental.  For example, Superstorm Sandy caused more insured losses in one event than the cumulative and collective top ten catastrophic, weather-related losses from Europe, China, and Japan since 1980.  And Sandy was only the second worst insurance event in recent times. 

Now, why are US losses so great? Is it due to the number or strength of storms making landfall in the United States?

GLOBAL HURRICANE FREQUENCY SOURCE: RYAN MAUE

In fact, there is no such pattern discernible in the data. Indeed, the last few years have seen fewer than average hurricanes globally, with a recovery to up-cycle numbers in the last year or so.

Rather, reinsurance data hints at the source of losses: higher payouts for assets in harm’s way. 

INSURED LOSSES AS A PERCENT OF OVERALL LOSSES, TOP TEN LISTS, 1980-2014 SOURCE: MUNICH RE NATCAT SERVICE

Further, more and more expensive assets are exposed to hurricanes in particular.  In the US, for example, ever more people are living on the coasts, and beach front property has become prized and expensive.  One need only look out the window on a flight approaching Miami International Airport to be appalled at the sheer concertation of high-end housing built just above sea level on islands dotting Florida’s Atlantic Coast.   How long until a hurricane wipes a good number of these off their foundations?  And what kind of insurance losses will that involve?

Indeed, an examination of catastrophic losses suggests a decisive role for government policy.  Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed New Orleans in 2005, represents alone more than one-quarter of all insured top ten losses globally since 1980.  In just one event. 

The article goes on to deal with other claims regarding Floods, Droughts, Tornadoes, and Wildfires before reaching this conclusion.

Summing Up

In his speech to London’s insurance community, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, asserted a series of claims about climate change. Some of these are widely accepted. The climate does change. The world has warmed. Atmospheric CO2 has increased, half of the increment due to human activities.

Beyond this, there is no consensus, and indeed, the available data in many cases directly refutes the Governor’s more extreme assertions. There is no consensus that humans are the primary drivers of climate change. As we can see, sea levels, for example, were rising well before the 1950s date Carney gives as the start of modern anthropogenic warming.

Importantly, the increase in losses since the 1980s is more likely to reflect expanded insurance coverage, increasing payouts as a percent of losses incurred, and an increased number of assets with higher values placed in harm’s way. Losses increases have not occurred due to increases in hurricane, tornado, flooding, drought or fire frequency or strength, at least not in the United States, which represents the lion’s share of insurance claims. In many cases, either frequency or intensity of weather-related events has actually declined. Sea level rise has not accelerated, not as measured by either satellites or tide gauges. Sea level has been rising for well over 100 years, and continues on that pace.

Like so many other economists, Governor Carney seems to operate under the assumption that current CO2 levels are just on the edge of some catastrophic acceleration. For some reason, 320 ppm of atmospheric CO2 is safe, but 540 ppm is not, because there is some precipice—an inflection point or boundary—between here and there. The limit is not 1,000 ppm, or 5,000 ppm, or 42,448 ppm, but right here, right now. A little more CO2, a trace more of a harmless trace gas, and we are doomed.

The climate is complex and the future uncertain. It is possible the worst fears may prove correct. Nevertheless, such an assertion is not supported by the historical data, not for US droughts, floods, tornados, hurricanes or fires. But it does show up. In politics. If sea levels were 20 cm higher in New York and this contributed to the damage from Superstorm Sandy, well, any middling analyst could have predicted the rise back in 1940, just as we can predict today that sea levels will be one foot higher a century hence. The failure was not of CO2 emissions, but squarely a failure of governance. And that goes doubly so for the fate of New Orleans. If Governor Carney wanted to make a constructive proposal, he should have called for Lloyds to create macro audits of risk zones and censure or refuse to insure jurisdictions where governance is not up to par. If insurers had refused to insure New Orleans unless the levees were sound, they could have saved themselves $30 bn in payouts and probably twice that in losses.

As an analyst, I find Mr. Carney’s speech is truly dismaying. For the Governor of the Bank to claim that climate change is leading to rapidly rising insurance claims is, at best, a critical failure of analysis. As discussed above, insurance claims are a function of a number of factors, including the type and country of the weather event, as well as the extent of insurance coverage and payout ratios. A hurricane in the US may see one hundred times the payouts of a major flood in India. Payouts will rise as a function of nominal GDP, as both inflation and the value and concentration of assets will play a crucial role in overall losses. The specific path of a storm can also be decisive for global averages. It goes without saying that a storm which strikes in Philadelphia, marches up the New Jersey coast, slams into the Manhattan and turns towards New Haven is going to cost a bundle. That same storm hitting, say, rural Mississippi would cause a fraction of the monetary damages. And this matters, because Superstorm Sandy caused more insured damages than all the leading weather events in Europe, Japan, and China combined. Single events can move long-term global averages.

If the Bank missed this, it is not because the necessary data is hard to find. Information on weather-related events is readily and publicly accessible on the internet. Almost every graph I use above relating to hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts comes from the US government itself. Apparently, the Bank of England could not be bothered to consult the underlying climate data before making hyperbolic claims. Thus, at best, the Bank was careless with data analysis.

A worse interpretation of events suggests that Mr. Carney was willing to blindly accept the conventional wisdom, the ‘consensus of scientists’ regarding global warming, without any will or curiosity to dig deeper and form a personal view. One can only hope that monetary policy in the UK is not informed by such superficiality or passivity.

The very worst interpretation is that Mr. Carney is in fact aware of the source data, but chose to make hysterical claims to promote a personal political agenda. I cannot imagine a more ill-considered idea. For those of us who consider central bank independence sacred, the appearance of a national bank taking sides in a highly charged political debate—and doing so with scant regard for the underlying data—will establish the Bank of England as partisan and the political opponent of conservative politicians. Given that Janet Yellen, the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, hails from Berkeley, a hot bed of climate activism, should the Republican Party consider the Fed also its opponent? If so, I can assure you, the Republicans will find some support to ‘audit’ the institution.

At the end of the day, political neutrality is a pre-condition for central bank independence. If a political party deems the central bank to be an opponent, then it will take measures to gain political control over the bank, with the result that monetary policy itself may become politicized. If the Bank nevertheless feels compelled to champion a particular side in a political debate, its analysis must be water-tight and its communication, impartial. That Governor Carny violated both dictums is simply stunning and a huge blow to the prestige of the Bank of England. It was a very bad call indeed.

More anti-alarmist information at Climate Whack-A-Mole