Is Climate Change in any way shape or form related to more tornadoes?

Sorry, neglected to address this question in the previous response.

It's negatively correlated because again, the strength of these conditions depend on a greater thermal gradient (in the horizontal). At the surface, a strong cold front is defined as a tight thermal gradient across the front. Warmer air behind the front results in a weaker front and less surface convergence.

Divergence aloft depends on strong winds at jet stream level "diverging" in direction, which promotes vertical lift (surface convergence promotes lift also). Winds aloft generally become very weak in summer, which is why tornado incidences decrease markedly in summer, especially in the southern CONUS.

Lift is also created by wind speed maximums at the jet stream level, called ageostrophic circulations. These jet stream speed max's (jet streaks) are also the result of thermal gradients in the horizontal.

Just though of an analogy. A very steep slope causes water to flow faster than a shallow slope. A lowering thermal gradient between the poles and tropics is analogous to a shallower slope of water flow. This is not strictly comparable because flow in upper levels of the troposphere is actually parallel to the pressure gradient due to counter-balancing forces (e.g., coriollis force).

 

While I can see no reasonable explanation to tornados causing global warming or vice a versa, it has been shown that the dust bowl caused warmer temperatures and intesified the drought. Stranger things have happened like a tornado closing down nuclear reactors.

Apparent tornado causes Surry nuclear reactors to shut down | Richmond Times-Dispatch

 

Just to clarify my "water running downhill" analogy, since the atmosphere is a gas (mixture of gases), it expands and contracts in the vertical with temperature changes.

These "height" changes can be plotted on a map, similar to a topographic map of elevation changes. The heights generally fall from south (i.e., the tropics) to north (i.e., the poles) in response to the south to north thermal gradient.

Air flows "downhill" (i.e, from higher "heights" to lower "heights") the same as water flows downhill, and the air flow faster when the height contours are packed close together, and flows very slowly when the height contours are spread far apart, just like elevation contours on a topographic map. The only difference is that the flow of water is perpendicular to the elevation contours on a topographic map, and parallel to the height contours on a 500 mb height map, but the principle remains the same.

By the way, tornadoes would have nothing to do with causing global warming (they're an extremely small-scale event), and in my opinion not the other way around either, for reasons which I have stated.

 

It would be my naive opinion that more of the energy increase from the greenhouse effect would be occurring at the equator rather than at the poles. This is not inconsistent with the poles experiencing larger temperature increase, since 1) the polar regions are smaller than the equatorial regions, 2) the energy could eventually be transported to the polar regions (via the horizontal temperature gradient. Thermal mass and phase change materials which can absorb more energy with a smaller temperature change. Certainly, if the equator is receiving more energy and the poles are experiencing more temperature change there is room in the model for energy to moving poleward.

 

Do you have any reason or data to support either the poles warming more or storms being more intense? If those are mutually incompatible, it would be nice to have some data to determine between them.

 

That was from the IPCC's 2007 Report. IIRC, the poles have been observed, and are projected by climate models in future years, to have about twice the warming of the tropics.

 

Old Farmers Almanac 2011:

April 20th-23rd
Potentially severe thunderstorms Arkansas into Louisiana. Storms may be capable of cloud to ground lightning, damaging winds, large hail and even tornadoes.

 

it still does not answer the counter argument:
more energy -> more severe events.

So the argument is that in order for tornados to form you need specific conditions (high temperature gradient and high wind at higher elevations).

Here is the counter argument:
Climate warming does not remove temperature gradient, that is until the polar caps melt completely and troposphere is polluted deep enough for air to warm by itself.

However due to climate warms up the number of days tornados can form had increased.

Perhaps the probability of tornado on one given day had reduced, but overall number/intensity may have increased?

 

It's not my hypothesis that the poles are warming relatively more than the tropics, that's the findings of the IPCC. I agree that if the global climate is warming uniformly, severe weather events may actually increase.

If more energy (in the form of equivalent potential temperatures) in the atmosphere is the main criteria for tornadoes, how do you explain that tornadoes almost never form in the tropics? There's plenty of warm and moist air year-around in many tropical regions.

As far as that goes, the number of tornadoes generally peaks in late April and early May in the U.S., then decreases in number and intensity later in the summer when the temps and dew points are generally significantly higher.

I've seen significant tornado outbreaks in conditions that are not very warm or humid at the surface; the upper-level dynamics in some cases are strong enough to overcome the lack of surface conditions conducive to tornado formation.

Again, the expected decrease in tornado activity is predicated on IPCC's predictions that the poles are/will be warming relatively greater than the tropics.

 

I dont know if you were being facetious or not, but I did a search of Old Farmers Almanac.
Interesting that OFA are 80-85% accurate.
They make broad generalized predictions so the prediction bar is rather low.
What surprised me is that they use Solar flares and Lunar position amongst other secret factors to predict weather.
Piers Corbyn may well have been influenced by their forecasting.
But PCorbyn is making precise forecasts of specific extreme events .Hes correctly forecasting precise dates and locations and especially the severity of events way beyond what OFarmersA has ever attempted.
Hes an astrophysicist tweaking a similar method with modern science.
Ive been monitoring his predictions for about 6 months and he has predicted date and locations for almost every specific extreme weather event around the world. And the dates of recent earthquake events (he cant predict location).
Anyway if weather events can be predicted by observing the Sun,they are caused by the Sun.
Not global warming.
If you can predict weather by using global warming theory , then I'll believe you know something.
If you can predict ANYTHING correctly I will swayed.
But so far the doomers are batting ZERO.(Actually below zero.
IPCC predicted that millions would be displaced by 2010 due to sea level rise.When in fact population of inhabitants rose)

BTW Farmers Almanac predicts global cooling for the next 50 years.As does Piers Corbyn(250 years +).

 

but global warming is also caused by the sun. the planet would have a difficult time warming w/o the sun.

Every weather event is, in part, caused by the sun. however, for that to be the only factor seems ridiculous. He's basically saying that the atmosphere is a deterministic/simple system whose outputs can be derived solely by observing the sun. The atmosphere seems rather more chaotic than that. So what's the limiting factor with earthquakes? How can he divine the exact time and location of a severe weather event and then not be able to locate earth quakes? The spatial distribution of those is more constrained than weather events.

 

Here's a bit about Corbyn, if anyone's interested:

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Corbyn]Piers Corbyn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Wikipedia sorely needs editing.
Hes recently perfected his technique after the 20 years of mistakes Wiki cites.
Recently hes almost always correct.
When hes wrong ,hes close.He predicted a major heat spell in Australia last year when the flood occurred.
Right location and date ,wrong weather event.
But at least he predicted the date and location of a major event ,that no one else had a clue was eminent.

 

Corbyn " perfected" his technique? That would be a feat even if close to being true!

I have to say Mojo, you devotion to Corbyn and his non peer reviewed "studies" verges on the cult like.

Icarus

 

His precise predictions for the past 6 months are correct.Thats all I care about.
"Cult like" is when a person defends lies.
Ring a bell?
BTW your comment is ignorant.

 

How the suns magnetic field affects the jet stream,causes predictable weather events.
Jetstream doesn't affect earthquakes.

 

2007 and 2008 aren't ancient history and he was quite wrong a number of times. He did predict some events correctly, but saying that there will be nasty storms hitting the UK in november isn't really radical. But still, he was right. However, since he doesn't disclose his methods, we have no idea why he was right.

As to the other "prediction"... if the sun so reliably determines whether, why was he so wrong. The fact that he predicted an event in Oz is pretty meaningless if he was completely wrong about what it was. Would you have considered him to be so sage if he'd simply said "something bad will happen in Australia this year"? Probably not, I certainly wouldn't. Again, without disclosing methods, how can we know? My take is that he's throwing darts, until we know how he's making these predictions and he's predictions aren't 90% accurate (sorry the Oz prediction was NOT accurate, that's a miss in my book) it's hard to take him seriously.

 

For the past 6 months I would guess he's been 95% correct.
When he's wrong he's not completely wrong.

 

This contention is demonstrably false. Since the sun hits half the Earth at a time. If weather depended soley on the sun, then entire earth would have the same weather.

More importantly you first statement is an example of the logical fallacy [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc]Post hoc ergo propter hoc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] .

 

saying there's going to be a heat wave and ending up with massive flooding is completely wrong. The whole ponit is the weather prediction. The location (an entire continent?) is fairly irrelevant in this case. Also, you're cherry picking an interval... something you've accused the IPCC of in the past.