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Earth Science

Report: Science Can Now Link Climate Change To (Some) Extreme Weather (phys.org) 138

Posted by timothy from the confidence-levels dept.
mdsolar writes: Extreme weather events like floods, heat waves and droughts can devastate communities and populations worldwide. Recent scientific advances have enabled researchers to confidently say that the increased intensity and frequency of some, but not all, of these extreme weather events is influenced by human-induced climate change, according to an international National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report released March 11. "In the past, many scientists have been cautious of attributing specific extreme weather events to climate change. People frequently ask questions such as, 'Did climate change cause Hurricane Sandy?' Science can't answer that because there are so many relevant factors for hurricanes. What this report is saying is that we can attribute an increased magnitude or frequency of some extreme weather events to climate change,' said David Titley, professor of practice in Penn State's Department of Meteorology and founding director of Penn State's Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk, who chaired the committee that wrote the report.
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Report: Science Can Now Link Climate Change To (Some) Extreme Weather More

Report: Science Can Now Link Climate Change To (Some) Extreme Weather

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  • Link to report (Score:5, Informative)

    by mdsolar ( 1045926 ) on Sunday March 13, 2016 @08:25PM (#51691201) Homepage Journal
    http://www.nap.edu/catalog/218... [nap.edu]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      Cool part is you can actually read the report without subscribing (note: it's a report, not a peer reviewed study).

      So the big question is, how do they do it? The answer is, primarily by using our notoriously accurate climate models to model extreme weather. Note that when they say "extreme" that is different than severe weather. If it's 25C in April, that can count as extreme.

      • primarily by using our notoriously accurate climate models to model extreme weather.

        I know you're trying to make a "skeptic" joke here, but in fact our climate models are "notoriously accurate".

        Or have you evidence to the contrary?

        • I know you're trying to make a "skeptic" joke here, but in fact our climate models are "notoriously accurate".

          Or have you evidence to the contrary?

          Something something a long time ago that has long since been refuted, but denialists parrot it like it came form the bible.

          Either that, or a spelling error somewhere.

        • Start with this paper [arizona.edu]. If you search, you'll find more.

          • Oh good grief, the only example you could come up with the last time as well.

            "Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models. This
            difference might be explained by some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and
            internal climate variability".

            So the answer is no.

            • Your ability to explain away evidence that proves you wrong is astounding.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dywolf ( 2673597 )

                youre ability to misinterpret and misapply scientific papers and then claim they prove your right is even more so.

                • youre ability to misinterpret and misapply scientific papers and then claim they prove your right is even more so.

                  I really admire your depth of reasoning there. The way you subtly chose quotes from the paper that clearly showed how I misunderstood it......your presentation is astounding.

            • "Significantly less than" and "astoundingly accurate" don't seem to be in the same category to me...

  • Nope (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Would that be the same Penn State that gave us Michael E. Mann and his fraudulent Hockey Stick graph? If so, then no thanks.

    • It's a good report, worth reading. I suggest reading it.
      • The report is quite good unlike the absolute turd that was submitted as this summary and headline which are just plain wrong and bare little resemblance to the actual report.

  • No matter what caused it, the water is rising. Kinda weird to hear about 'drought'.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What's your baseline? Water's been rising for 11,700 years since the current interglacial period started.

      Lemme know when you started counting.

      • What's your baseline?

        How 'bout my basement? But hey, no rush.. It's insured

      • What's your baseline? Water's been rising for 11,700 years since the current interglacial period started.

        Yeah, and the "hiatus" during the last couple of millennia can be easily explained by?

  • Superstorm Sandy gets some discussion in the report, but the phenomenon that gets most discussion regarding an extended season is wildfire. But it seems like out-of-season weather would be among the easiest to attribute to warming.
    • Sandy was modeled for conditions occurring 100 years ago and 100 years in the future. Landfall shifted north and intensity increased with time. http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... [ametsoc.org]
    • I find it interesting how they could claim to correlate wildfires with global warming.

      Their chart on p. 83 of the report does not contradict THIS chart [postimg.org], but this chart does contradict that idea.

      There were vastly more acres of woodland burned by wildfires per year in the 1920s-1930s than today.
      • Are you absolutely sure that graph only shows wildfires? It doesn't use that word. Maybe it actually shows the total acreage burned, which would include the staggering amount of intentional burns started by humans for land clearing.

      • I find it interesting how they could claim to correlate wildfires with global warming. Their chart on p. 83 of the report does not contradict THIS chart [postimg.org], but this chart does contradict that idea. There were vastly more acres of woodland burned by wildfires per year in the 1920s-1930s than today.

        Funny how your graph is conveniently leaving out a decade of data. Pure coincidence, I'm sure. Nice how you ignore the obvious invention of fire plane, too.

        • Actually, Dr. Deanna Conners tracked down [wordpress.com] that graph's source and said: "... So it appears that much of the pre-1960 data were related to incendiary forest fires (per http://www.interfire.org/featu... [interfire.org] , an incendiary fire is one that is set intentionally) and not to true wildfires. The post-1960 dataset that I analyzed only contained data for wildfires; the National Interagency Fire Center explicitly separates the wildfire data from the prescribed fire data. Hence, comparisons to earlier data may indeed be

      • There were vastly more acres of woodland burned by wildfires per year in the 1920s-1930s than today.
        Could it be that this is the case because what already burned nearly century ago can not burn again? Or did all of the burned out areas regrow trees etc.?

        • Could it be that Jane's claim isn't the case at all because, as I've repeatedly noted, that graph isn't showing wildfires at all, but instead includes the staggering amount of intentional burns started by humans for land clearing?

          • I don't know :D

            You explain me :D

            I just find Jane often writing bullshit, so I tease her even if she might be right with distracting semi intelligent questions or semi silly comments :D

        • Could it be that this is the case because what already burned nearly century ago can not burn again? Or did all of the burned out areas regrow trees etc.?

          NO [safnet.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dywolf ( 2673597 )

        there were also more acres of woodland, period.
        and you may have forgotten this...but the 1920-30s were also another period of unusually warm, dry, drought years, which exacerbates and increases wildfires.

        so merely having more acres burned doesn't prove anything.
        you need to relate it to the number of acres available to burn.

        but even that is insufficient, because these are also local phenomena.
        a woodland in Washington state is less likely to burn than one in southern California.

        basically you've, once again, p

  • When I'm president, we're only gonna have elegant, classy science. Science Americans can be proud of, alright?

  • Yeah, well, if you hadn't heard....Snowden just linked climatic change to the CIA. I'm betting his evidence is more persuasive.
  • Obviously everything can influence events, this is what chaos theory show us very clearly, but it is another matter to say that we can predict what any given action will ultimately cause nor can we say what the polarity of the influence will be as the number of relevant interactions are so great that we cannot account for them all.

    The magnitude of events is a different matter, sure a patterned system with more energy in it can see more extreme gradients, it is like boosting the contrast on a photo, but

  • Liability (Score:1, Troll)

    by mdsolar ( 1045926 )
    With attribution comes liability. One party which had foreknowledge of the consequences of carbon pollution and attempted to hide it was Exxon. http://insideclimatenews.org/n... [insideclimatenews.org] Their liability may extend to triple damages.

  • obscure establishment institution, "international national(sic) academies of science, engineering, and medicine", releases a report, which is not a peer reviewed results of any study, based on some alleged modeling data in controllable climate models, and that is proof that "enables" "researchers to confidently say that the increased intensity and frequency of some, but not all, of these extreme weather events is influenced by human-induced climate change"

    oh how science has "advanced"!
    we are no longer in dark stone age where we had to use scientific method, real world experiments/data, and our results have to pass rigorous scrutiny of our skeptical peers.

    • But is is Science! Science! Saying it is "Science" in 2016 is like saying it is "God" in 1716.

    • obscure establishment institution,

      Oh Shit! Its the establishment! RUN!!!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The summary is wrong. The basic conclusions is that we don't have accurate enough modelling or knowledge of all the dominant factors for most severe weather pattern to be able to claim as a certainty that they are increased in severity by AGW. The only severe weather that we can attribute AGW to increasing the severity of is wild fires with which any increase in average temperatures affects the chances of and the severity of the fires but increased (or decreased) rainfall can impact on that as well and we

      • how far back do we have accurate wildfire history? I'd be amazed if most the 19th century were covered.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          There are ways to infer wild fires. Certain Pines need fire to open their cones and allow the seeds to germinate. Other types of trees such as Douglas Fir need the openness that fire brings to grow as they can't handle shade. Then there are the wounds that fire cause, that 2,000 year old Red Cedar shows the scars of each fire that it survived, with growth rings to date the scars, same with the dead one in the peat bog.
          Then there are the layers of ash in the soil, not as accurate, still evidence
          The history i

          • all that is sketchy stuff, tiny and large fires often not distinguished. we already know man's presence makes much less wildfires in many areas too, going years between what should be annual occurence

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      I'd mod you up if I had points, just to offset the Troll flag that some moron with an agenda assigned to your post.

    • I'm not sure what you want to say:
      a) if I do a scientific study and publish the results: it is not science because it is not peer reviewed?
      b) before publishing you have to find a secret circle of scientists who peer review your work first and then you publish it together?

      And in which of the two cases above was the "scientific method" violated?

      You are just a moron babbeling random stuff he has heard on the internet.

      Before anyone comes to the idea that something is worth to be peer reviewed, or worth to be te

  • Bull Fucking Shit. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 13, 2016 @10:32PM (#51691659)

    At some point someone has to call it and I'm calling it. I thought climate wasn't weather? Everyone ignored that fact when Gore implied Katrina was AGW related, but whatever, it was veiled. If the alarmists are now going full out climate-is-weather, I say fuckin' eh! Bring it on and show that you were full of shit from the very beginning. Slashdot has been a bastion of liberal shilldom for a long time now with morons like Timothy the most useful of idiots so let's just get it all out in the open please.

    • I thought climate wasn't weather?

      Its not. Climate does however influence weather more than any other factor. In a desert climate the weather is often sunny and hot. In an arctic climate, the weather is often cold and snowy. Global warming adds significant energy to the global climate which can be used to melt glaciers or power storms.

      The car analogy is too strained so think of the global economy (climate) and stocks (weather). If the global economy crashes (climate) on the whole, the stock market will be down overall but some companies mig

  • The Heat Is On (1997) - book by Ross Gelbspan outlined in detail what will happen - not that it just gets warmer, hardly much of that, but that the dynamic of weather will increase by the addes input of energy (warmth) put into the system.
    This was 20 years ago and still there are deniers, interest groups, individuals bribed by ... and propaganda against it happening.

    What are those guys/gals on the strings to change anything smoking or drinking?

    Oh, I forgot the god's people - anything goes, it's gods will, n

  • I don't give one fuck about anything that mddollar (intended) posts here. Scientific consensus must be built on testing, not politics.

    • Scientific consensus must be built on testing, not politics.

      It was, but unfortunately it happens to conflict with right-wing ideology and short-term interests of some powerful companies.

    • Rich Corinthian Blather. How much more testing do you need until you stop your politics based whining?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      well then I've got news for you, cause today's your lucky day!

  • The Committee on Extreme Weather Events and Climat (Score:5, Funny)

    by rioki ( 1328185 ) on Monday March 14, 2016 @05:13AM (#51692345) Homepage

    "The Committee on Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change Attribution" writes the report "Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change"...

    Without claiming their findings are invalid, it appears that they put the cart in front of the horse. They create a committee to find something and that committee finds it. It is really hard not to immediately start looking for confirmation bias.

  • People frequently ask questions such as, 'Did climate change cause Hurricane Sandy?' Science can't answer that because there are so many relevant factors for hurricanes.

    I think it is the wrong kind of question to ask, really; climate is the average of weather events over large, geographic areas and long time periods, so if anything, we would say that weather causes climate, and changes in wearther events cause climate change, mathematically speaking. We have known for a long time that the increase in extreme weather events is compatible with what we would expect from the climate changes we have seen; I think perhaps what we can now say is that the increase in extreme event

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  • "...influenced by human-induced climate change" Is there really any proof of "human induced"? And why isn't the cause any longer called -- more correctly, I might point out -- "global warming"? I won't say anything about "influenced by", although I think there is some question there, also. I will still ask why we are looking to the same government which encouraged all the things we are now blaming for a "solution" and why, in particular, the government (and Goldman Sachs) are supposed to be enriched (enl

    • While "global warming" is still a valid term, and often used, "climate change" is the more important thing. If the atmosphere got 2K warmer, with no further effects, nobody would really care. However, this isn't going to happen, hence the term "climate change" is used for the changes in climate caused by global warming.

      As far as "human induced", yes, it is. We've known for a long time that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will warm it up, and the increase in carbon dioxide is due to burning fos

  • Shouldn't it be, "Some extreme weather linked to climate change?"

    The title implies that extreme weather causes climate change, no?

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