Can somebody tell this idiot on Jeff Masters' site that AGW is NOT the primary contributor to Harvey?
This is SLIGHLY AGW enhanced, but in all honestly, only slightly, around 10%, possibly even less. We won't know until some statistical models and deterministic models are run, but this is more about a perfect ENSO Neutral year and a perfect Gulf Loop Eddy and a perfect no shear atmosphere.
My GOD, you cannot blame a BARE MINIMUM category 4 Hurricane on "Global Warming" every time it forms, because that's been happening for the past several hundred years anyway; actually for Billions of years, but that's beside the point.
The rainfall is roughly 10% AGW enhanced.
The Wind's speed, and therefore Angular Momentum and Linear Momentum was just barely HALF the thermodynamic maximum...only around 10% of which is AGW related, you can't seriously be blaming this on AGW...and certainly not as the primary cause.
The part of the Gulf that Harvey passed over during "Explosive Intensification" was 4C above normal, and no more than about 0.5C of that was AGW related. The other 3.5C of it came from natural ENSO variation plus natural Loop Eddy variation. Literally, even Dr. Jeff Masters, Mr. Global Warming Alarmist that he is, said so.
If we took 10% off the flooding, it still broke the previous record. Hell, if we took 20% off the flooding, it still broke the previous record, and quite obviously there is no way AGW has gotten bad enough to explain as much as 20% of this, not yet anyway. I tmight get that bad 100 years from now, but it's not that strong of an amplification yet.
Lying about it and exaggerating, such as making bad computer models that double the effect, such as how Michael Mann did, all of that bad science and fake news only fuels total deniers more.
Let's be serious, about 100 to 200 years from now, the effect gets very bad, I get that, I even can prove that.
However, these people can't seriously be doing this every time a record gets broken.
Basic statistics:
It takes 144 years of data in order to have a 95% confidence that you have actually seen one "One in One hundred years" event. We only have 137 years of modern, reliable data, so we have less than 95% confidence that our definition of a "100 years flood" is even correct for any given location. In a few cases, you can use proxy data, such as dead forest tree ring data, to gauge the statistical likelihood of a flood, but seriously, most of this is "fake news" alarmism, not real science.
Okay, 100 to 200 years, AGW gets out of hand.
Right now, it can't be blamed for everything that happens on the planet.
We have 10,000 weather stations in the U.S. This means in an average year, we are SUPPOSED to see approximately 10 one-thousand years floods "somewhere" in the U.S., and we are SUPPOSED to see approximately 10 one-thousand years droughts "somewhere" in the U.S. on average, every year.
To be honest with you, we're actually having fewer climate disasters lately than we are "supposed" to be having...12 years without a category 3 landfall, but in the 1980's, 1990's, and early 2000's they happened all the time...before AGW was really even measurable...
Please, seriously, they distract from the real science when they try to blame eveyrthing on AGW, even though a lot of this is honest to God normal ENSO variability....for example, what do you blame Amelia, the previous record holder, since it dumped 48 inches long before AGW had even begun to effect SST or Sea Ice?
Labor Day 1935 (185mph) was too early to be an AGW event, obviously, but is the strongest Western Hemisphere Landfall. Thanks to Super-Typhoon Haiyan (195mph in the Phillipines), Labor Day 1935 is now the second strongest global landfall officially. Unofficially, Cyclone Monica (Australia) may be the strongest landfall globally.
Camille has been downgraded from a 190mph landfall to a 160mph landfall, because it's been discovered from physical evidence and computer modeling that there is no way it was a 190mph sustained storm at landfall. Long before AGW was large enough to matter.
Andrew is now the second strongest U.S. landfall on record at 165mph, but that was in 1992, before AGW became large enough to even effect Sea Ice.
It's actually been an abnormally long time since a "theoretical maximum" hurricane hit the U.S. I hate to say that, but it happens to be true.
Since they downgraded Audrey to a Category 3, this means it has been over 160 years since the last time Louisiana experienced a Category 4 landfall, which was the "Last Island Hurricane," which I can assure you was way, way more devastating than Hurricane Harvey.
The previous Category 4 Hurricane before Last Island to hit Louisiana was during the War of 1812, which was documented by the BRITISH fleet commander, because he was horrified by it and actually offered assistance to the U.S. civilians in New Orleans when he saw how bad it was there.
Believe it or not, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes apparently don't hit the U.S. as often today as they did 100 to 200 years or so ago.
