The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) has released an assessment report titled ‘Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate,’ with a focus on North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands.
The official Press Release claims:
Global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases, according to the report. Many types of extreme weather and climate event changes have been observed during this time period and continued changes are projected for this century. Specific future projections include:
Abnormally hot days and nights, along with heat waves, are very likely to become more common. Cold nights are very likely to become less common.
Sea ice extent is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in the Arctic Ocean in summer in coming decades.
Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense.
Droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe in some regions.
Hurricanes will likely have increased precipitation and wind.
The strongest cold-season storms in the Atlantic and Pacific are likely to produce stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.
As pointed out by Prometheus, some of the conclusions from the report were not included in the PR:
1. Over the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.
2. Nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.
3. Despite increases in some measures of precipitation (pp. 46-50, pp. 130-131), there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (high flows above 90th percentile).
4. There have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms.
5. There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters.
6. There are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.
Roger Pielke Sr exposes the bias in the report on his Climate Science weblog:
Since this assessment is so clearly biased, it should be rejected as providing adequate climate information to policymakers. There also should be questions raised concerning having the same individuals preparing these reports in which they are using them to promote their own perspective on the climate, and deliberately excluding peer reviewed papers that disagree with their viewpoint and research papers. This is a serious conflict of interest.
Another Example Of CCSP Bias In The Report “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate”
Yet again, the CCSP report process presents biased information of the diversity of conclusions in peer reviewed studies of the climate system.
NOTE: THE TERM SCHIZOPHRENIC IS USED TO DESCRIBE THE CCSP REPORT IN THE CONTEXT AS DEFINED BY THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, WHICH IS DISTINCT FROM THE MEDICAL DISORDER:
“(in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements.”
But of course, everyone knew that already, didn’t they!?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Pielke has turned into a big sooky know-all player. Disappointing but predictable. There is now nothing that is written that he won’t have a superior opinion on with seconds of it being published, unless it agrees with his obvious denialist viewpoint. He might as well stop pretending and sign up to all the sceptic lists and petitions.
” Pielke has turned into a big sooky know-all player. Disappointing but predictable. There is now nothing that is written that he won’t have a superior opinion on with seconds of it being published,” ..
..and what wonderful example of the pot calling the kettle black that is.
Roger has cherry juice running down his shirt from all the picking he has done . For example, in his first point he digs down to p 132 to find a sentence that meets his requirement,
1. Over the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.
Yes, you read that correctly. From the appendix (p. 132, emphases added):
The final example is a time series of U.S. landfalling hurricanes for 1851-2006 . . . A linear trend was fitted to the full series and also for the following subseries: 1861-2006, 1871-2006, and so on up to 1921-2006. As in preceding examples, the model fitted was ARMA (p,q) with linear trend, with p and q identified by AIC.
For 1871-2006, the optimal model was AR(4), for which the slope was -.00229, standard error .00089, significant at p=.01. For 1881-2006, the optimal model was AR(4), for which the slope was -.00212, standard error .00100, significant at p=.03. For all other cases, the estimated trend was negative, but not statistically significant.”
while ignoring what was written on p. 5 and elsewhere
Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane destructive potential as measured by the Power Dissipation Index (which combines storm intensity, duration, and frequency) has increased (see Table ES.1). This increase is substantial since about 1970, and is likely substantial since the 1950s and 60s, in association with warming Atlantic sea surface temperatures (Figure ES.6) (Chapter 2, section 2.2.3.1).
Eli has made some accusations and assertions in support of the, shall we say, problematic resport in question; ignoring eli’s uncouth and unnecessary ad hom about cherry juice, the fact is northern hemisphere and global storm activity is not what is depicted in the report;
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
Neither is the Southern Hemisphere experiencing any increase in storm activity, quite the reverse;
http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/cyclone/tc-trends.shtml
The report’s assertions about SST are also problematic; and I’ll do another post to show why.
This report manifests all the problems inherent with both GISS data and modelling in general; none of its conclusions are safe for these reasons; the SST assertions are disputed here;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=56
On p 6 of the Executive Summary the report does make a variety of concessions;
“Uncertainty in the data increases as one proceeds back in time.”
“it is likely that the annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major huricanes in the North Atlantic have increased over the past 100 years, a time in which Atlantic sea surface temperatures also increased.”
Obviously the authors are John Cleese and the rest of the boys; how else to explain such blithely unreal pronouncements, given that SST hasn’t increased, and neither have the storms.
Once again we have model suppositions about something that doesn’t exist. If Roger has juice running down his vest then these guys have fallen into the vat.
A final point about SST; if same were rising you would expect an increase in atmospheric moistening; this is not happening;
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/a-window-on-water-vapor-and-planetary-temperature-part-2/