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

Hi All,

We call it Global Warming, but its really Global Atmospheric Energy Increase. And that energy can be anything from increased water vapor, to high winds, to huricanes to tornados, to lots of Lightning.

 

wxman, do you have any links to those studies? for educational purposes.

continuing this discussion: would be interesting to see the statistical data assembled over large areas/long periods of time (decades) and how they agree/disagree with IPCC predictions.

It is hard to imagine then adding more energy to close system will result in less activity, but perhaps the activity will be manifested in some different form (sand storms, hurricanes, etc)

The polar cap melting is decreasing intensity of ocean currents (specifically Gulf Stream), so it may have the similar impact on atmosphere.

 

Earth's not a closed system...

 

One more note on Corbyn, even a broken watch is right twice a day!

I can predict severe thunder storms in the mid west this summer, and snow in Cascades next winter, but that doesn't make me a seer.

I would be more impressed if he would reveal his methodology and let his work be peer reviewed.

Icarus

 

IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The "Summary for Policymakers" is a good place to start.

I agree this is a possible scenario.

Again, IF the scenario that the poles are warming relatively more that the tropics is occurring, I still posit that a generally weakening thermal gradient from south to north would result in weakening upper flow and a decrease in tornado activity, not that there won't still be tornadoes occurring even in this scenario.

 

reduced activity? sure!

Dozens of tornadoes kill at least 297 people in South - USATODAY.com

 

Not sure if the last comment is directed at me, but if it is, in my opinion, it doesn't support the IPCC's premise that the poles are warming relatively more than the tropics. The global warming issue is a very long-term phenomenon anyway (climate time scale). This is just an extreme weather event on a relatively very short time scale.

I stand by my assertion that outbreaks of extremely strong tornadoes like this requires very strong winds aloft, which is exactly what this system had (this was an example of what happens when all of the supporting conditions come together at the same time).

 

I would hate to see that. One ork is bad enough, but a group of them could be really dangerous.

Tom

 

Nanoo, Nanoo!

Mork!

Damn Ipad!

 

Orc, nae ork.

 

It's an alternate spelling, and the only thing I could do with that typo.

Tom

 

Ork, the other, other, other white meat.

 

I won't get into the argument of whether Climate Change is man made or natural but something is happening. There was all the dreadful tornadoes which this thread refers to and then in the UK we've had the hottest (or should that be warmest?) April in 350 years of records dating back to 1659!

BBC News - Heatwave sees warmest UK April for more than 100 years

Sure it's been very pleasant having sunny days instead of the usual April showers but somethings definitely not right. We had a cold winter with temps of -15c (unheard of here) and now a summer like April.

 

10.7C? we call it winter around here.

 

I don't think there's any escaping the data: over the last several decades the frequency & severity of cyclonic storm in North America has decidedly increased. Compare the 1960s, the last decade in which there were years (1962 & 1963) without newsmaking storms to the 2000s, where every single year had multiple newsmaking storms.

Some allowance should be made for smaller population density in the 60s and smaller urban regions in "tornado alley" than today, such that a tornado that was deadly today might have gone unremarked in 1960, but I doubt that factor alone can account for the immense difference in activity between then and now.


[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks"]List of North American tornadoes and tornado outbreaks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Hear a blurb on the news today that's exactly what insurance companies are doing: revising their risk tables for the windstorm vulnerable regions of the country. They see the trend.

 

Your interpretation conflicts with Note #4: "Due to increasing detection, particularly in the U.S., numbers of counted tornadoes have increased markedly in recent decades although number of actual tornadoes and counted significant tornadoes has not. In older events, the number of tornadoes officially counted is likely underestimated."

What is 'news' changes considerably with technology and time and marketing focus. Because of these biases and changing population densities, I generally dismiss trends supported primarily by counting news stories.

 

Is anyone here able to figure out exactly how that is determined? How can you possibly know how many uncounted tornadoes there are? Sounds like a mathematical impossibility to me.

It seems reasonable to assume that more tornadoes are being reported, but that provides NO evidence about whether the actual number is going up, remaining constant or going down. Nor does it provide any way of determining it. This is just someone's way of making the observed data match their political ideology.

 

it is really really REALLLY disappointing to me that we have to have indisputable proof that we are F' ups before we will even consider a change to the way we treat our planet