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Spencer (Fox News go to climate guy) shows his data on his web site Roy Spencer, PhD
Hmm... the suspect graph (linked to below) shows only TWO category 3 or higher hurricanes from 2011 to 2018.
Some names of Hurricanes in that time frame.. Ophella, Irene, Sandy, Humberto, Ingrid, Gonzalo, Joaquin, Erika, Mathiew, Otto, Maria, Harvey, Irma, Nate.
The NOAA data base shows that there were 20 category 3,4,5 hurricanes between 2011 and 2017.
The original intention was to fact check Roy Spencer's statement on the Fox news interview I believe he said in that interview something close to: in the United States the frequency of hits of the United States by major hurricanes had gone down by 50% since the 1930's 1940's. (watch just after the one minute mark).
I dont know what data manipulation or constraints were used to come to the data he shows but man.. talk about data cherry picking.
Here is what the NOAA huricane data base actually shows. I used a ten year period to take into account that the NOAA web site data only goes out to 2014
2005 - 2014 74 Hurricanes, 31 were Cat 3 or higher
1995 - 2004 78 Hurricanes, 38 were Cat 3 or higher
1985 - 1994 48 Hurricanes, 14 were Cat 3 or higher
1975 - 1984 54 Hurricanes, 19 were Cat 3 or higher
...
1945 - 1954 64 Hurricanes, 27 were Cat 3 or higher
1935 - 1944 50 Hurricanes, 17 were Cat 3 or higher
You really have to manipulate the data to conclude that major hurricanes are down by 50% from the 1930's 1940's.
Last edited by waltcolorado; 09-17-2018 at 06:10 PM..
FYI, this article is fairly old now but has what I thought was good discussion regarding global warming and Hurricanes. Seems the science back then (maybe 2006?) might only indicate that higher temps only have a fairly minor influence on the number and intensity of hurricanes..
Some of the quotes down playing the role of global warming and hurricanes from the article..
Quote:
"I do not agree that global Category 4-5 tropical cyclone activity has been rising, except in the Atlantic over the last 11 years. The recent Atlantic upsurge has explanations other than global temperature rise".
Quote:
Hurricanes act as giant heat engines, so it is logical to assume that an increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) will make more intense hurricanes. Indeed, there is a general consensus among hurricane scientists that an increase in SSTs due to global warming, should, in theory, lead to more intense hurricanes. Theory predicts that hurricane wind speeds should increase about 5% for every 1 degree Centigrade increase in tropical ocean temperature (Emanuel, 1987). Computer models confirm this tendency, but assign a slightly smaller magnitude to the increase (Knutson and Tuleya, 2004). Given the expected 1.5° to 4.5° C warming of Earth's climate expected by 2100, theory predicts a gradually increasing frequency of Category 4 and 5 storms.
Global warming in the past century has increased ocean temperatures about 1°F (0.5°C) which should correspond at most to about a 2.5% increase in hurricane wind speeds. If this theory is correct, an upper-end Category 3 hurricane with wind speeds of 130 mph--like Hurricane Katrina at landfall--owes 2-3 mph of its sustained winds to global warming. Hurricane wind speeds are estimated to the nearest 5 knots (5.8 mph), and one can get a general idea of what percent increase we've seen in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes due to global warming by looking at the number of high end Category 3 hurricanes (winds of 130 mph) and low end Category 4 hurricanes (135 mph winds). If we assume a 2-3 mph increase in winds of these storms is due to global warming over the past 35 years, one would expect to see a 5% increase at most in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. An increase this small is not detectable given the current accuracy of estimating hurricane winds, and the relatively few number of of these storms that occur each year. This expected maximum 5% increase is quite a disagreement with the 80% increase found by Webster et al.! So, either the measurements are wrong, or the theory is wrong--or a combination of the two. I believe it may well be a combination of the two. The fact that the originator of the intensity theory (Kerry Emanuel) is one of the scientists who is advocating that the theory may be in error, is reason enough to doubt the theory. The formation and intensification of hurricanes are not well understood, and it would be no surprise if major revisions to intensity theory are made in the future. However, such a wide difference between the theory and the reported trends should make us suspicious of the observed data, as well.
Spencer's graph depicts hurricanes making landfall, while the NOAA data counts all hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin, most of which never reach land. For the time period prior to satellites, storms at sea could only be reported by ships or planes who directly observed them-- I would suggest many were unobserved or unreportd, lowering the counts for the earlier yrs-- making the differential tally over time even greater.
Spencer's graph also averages the whole record and then averages the period from 1931 to present. If he included 2018, then he's cheating because this yr's season is just starting so of course the count is low. OTOH, he could have started with 1941 and the downward trend line would be even steeper.
Torture the numbers long & hard enough and you can get them to confess to anything.
When you eyeball his graph or the NOAA data, and superimposing the temp history that we know, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between the two, and the hurricane counts from yr to yr seem to be highly variable about the mean with no cyclicity apparent.
I'd conclude that chance has more to do with it than any known, possible driving factor. Weather is described by the mathematics of Chaos Theory-- highly variable and dependent on initial conditions--and that's the rub missed by most observers: at this instant, initial conditions are "A" but an instant from now has new initial conditions "B." That's why accuracy of weather predictions gets worse and worse as you try to extend the forecast.
In regards storm strength and temps: as I said, meteorologists have know for quite some time that wind strength is related to air pressure differential (that's what makes fluids move) not temperature-- you lift 1000 lb 8 ft off the ground with your tractor's loader by applying pressure with your fingers moving the control handle just 3 inches, not by heating up the hydraulic fluid...but that "agenda" keeps getting in the way of clear thinking.
Funny.. Im not a statistition.. but it looks like Dr Roy Spencer (Fox news climate science go to guy) manipulated the huricane data so much that the numbers are statistically insignificant. Yet he had no problem going on a national network program and saying (quote from his web site)
Quote:
Contrary to popular perception, the number of major hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. has dropped by an average of more than 50% since the 1930s:
Here is the plot again that he used to make that conclusion. Note how small the numbers on the left side of the graph.. I would think someone with a PHD would know better.
And if he had used the data that was not cherry picked, he would have arrived at the opposite conclusion, huricanes are slightly up. But this is also not statistically conclusive.
Funny also.. in his blog a bit earlier he said this about the same plot ,
Quote:
I’d say there’s no statistically significant trend…
Didnt of course hesitate from saying his conclusion on the Fox News interview.
But.. I guess that is how you get those paid gigs at Fox News and on conservative talk shows. And how you land paid speaking engagements where someone wants to hear that global warming is a fraud and hoax.
He published some paper.. which got some peer review that are from the link below
Quote:
“He’s taken an incorrect model, he’s tweaked it to match observations, but the conclusions you get from that are not correct,” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.
“It is not newsworthy,” Daniel Murphy, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cloud researcher, wrote in an email to LiveScience.
NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth in an email: “I have read the paper. I can not believe it got published. Maybe it got through because it is not in a journal that deals with atmospheric science much?”
Trenberth and John Fasullo at RealClimate: “The bottom line is that there is NO merit whatsoever in this paper.”
I appreciate the way you pick apart Spencer's presentation.
Now why don't you devote the same effort to picking apart all the failed predictions of the Warmist view? You know, Al Gore has made a tidy little profit from his movie, speaking engagements and carbon trading scheme.
My apologies for that.. As far as picking on the "warmist", you guys have already done a good job.. not much I could add or improve on.
At the science level, this subject is probably not that political. The link below has statements from a bunch of organizations on this subject.
If you think everyone at these organizations is liberal or democrat.. I think you would be pissing off about half the scientists that work there. If its like the engineering companies I worked for in the past.. there really was no correlation to political bias and being an engineer or scientist.. I always thought it was about 50/50. Even all the scientist with the IPCC.. I would guess about half of them vote the same way the skeptics vote.
I appreciate the way you pick apart Spencer's presentation.
Now why don't you devote the same effort to picking apart all the failed predictions of the Warmist view? You know, Al Gore has made a tidy little profit from his movie, speaking engagements and carbon trading scheme.
Al Gore isn't a scientist. Try picking apart Mann, Hansen, et al.
Spencer is a hack. He's actually been caught fudging data. At least use someone like Lindzen.
Al Gore isn't a scientist. Try picking apart Mann, Hansen, et al.
Spencer is a hack. He's actually been caught fudging data. At least use someone like Lindzen.
Try searching "unethical Michael Mann"-- he's the guy who used ONE lousy tree in Siberia for a tree ring study to "prove" the Medieval Warm Period did not exist and thereby giving us the "hockey Stick" temp curve. He's been caught in e-mails conniving with colleagues to "hide the decline" (in temps; his words) and to use "tricks" (his word) in presenting their data.Then he used a computer program which he only released for public review after a court order forced him to-- a program which regurgitates a hockey stick shaped curve even when random numbers are fed in. He is now fighting a law suit to release his data (he's resisting; so much for transparency in science). He's also still in court in a suit to make him return research funding to the tax payers for his fraudulent activities...oh, and he publicly describes himself as "Nobel Prize winning scientist" apparently because the UN IPCC committee won the award and he contributed his "hockey stick paper" to that publication. Talk about egoism & delusions of grandeur.
I believe you'll find Spencer's data set from satellite observations are the "only data set both sides consider accurate." Try Googling that phrase. Spencer, BTW, is not considered "a denier." He's neutral on the subject, although he thinks ocean cycles & cloud cover considerations outweigh the influence of co2 on climate/temp dynamics.
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