I would love to see somebody do a study of the trend of "record breaking weather events"
I suspect what we'd be seeing is a dramtic increase in record breaking weather events happening the world over.
Now admittedly, we have only a brief amount of records, but they do go back through about five generations, so if nothing else, they'll tell us that what we've come to expect is not what we should continue counting on.
There are two types of records:
Old records
Accurate records
It's amazing how we've had two floods of the century in the past 20 years in the midwest during strong La Nina events, isn't it?
If you watch Al Gore's bs movie, you'll see him claiming all of these events are "record breaking events" such as "This is the strongest hurricane ever recorded!" Well, yeah, and that's because our instrumentation is a hell of a lot more accurate then it used to be, and because we're actually paying attention now.
How many sattelites did we have trained on the Atlantic Ocean during the late 1800s to check out the number of hurricanes? So when Al Gore says the number of hurricanes that are hitting us at end of the 20th century are x% more frequent than they were at the end of the previous century... he's right! We had no idea how many hurricanes didn't hit the US, or how many tropical storms were just considered to be bad storms. Doppler radar wasn't even that advanced until the late 1980s, early 1990s.. and they're still improving it.
There are more people living in the midwest these days, so more people + more computers to track every single cloud on the planet = more reports of tornadoes.
Do you know how tornadoes are classified as an F0 or F5?
By the amount of damage it does to structures.
Do you know how many tornadoes actually hit structures? Less than 30%! Tornadoes can form over water (not water spouts, those are completely different weather phenomena), they can form over barren land and you could have a hudge wedge tornado with winds in excess of 300 mph and it not being recorded because it didn't hit a farm.
The insurance people who survey the damage who work with the NWS to determine the type of tornado it was, underplay the amount of damage so they don't have to write bigger checks. So a tornado that was really an F5, is officially recorded as an F3 to make the insurance companies less liable. The reason for this is, unlike hurricanes, there is no way to drop something in the center of a tornado and check out its wind speeds. In fact, a tornado will do the most amount of damage when it's roping up, so it could be a mile wide wedge tornado and still only be an f2. But you don't hear about this from Al Gore, because like the insurance companies, he has a purpose for doing what he's doing.
Here's my take on it:
When we have a strong La Nina like we've had for the past year and global temperatures everywhere are much warmer above average, then I'll be into global warming. 2008 was one of the coldest years on record. Why? Because of La Nina.
We should see another return of it this year. After that, who knows? We haven't had an El Nino (warm) since 2005, the warmest year on record. Maybe we'll finally get a break and be neutral for a year - that would be a boring weather pattern to follow. Average temperatures, average precip. no big storms.
Look at the 1920s. Historically one of the coldest decades on record. We have wild swings of strong La Ninas and weak El Ninos that decade.
In the 1990s, we had two strong El Ninos and barely had any La Ninas. What happened? One of the warmest decades on record.
This decade has been wild. We've had a modeate El Nino and a strong El Nino along with a strong La Nina and re-surging La Nina. It's no wonder you've so many severe weather reports as of late. All of this severely warm and severely cold air are clashing against each other. The stronger the warm or the stronger the cold air, the bigger storms you're gonna get.
Now, we still don't know, for certain, what the hell causes a tornado to form or what makes a tornado really big or really small. What we do know is that if a La Nina keeps growing during 2009, we will have a very weak hurricane season and a very strong severe weather season. You never see the two together... you never see a strong severe weather season AND a strong hurricane season.
Why?
Because severe weather is more affected by cold air.. we're eventually going to get warmer in March when air starts pouring in from the Gulf due to the tilt of the Earth. If that warm air collides against semi-warm air, then you won't have a strong t-storm/tornado season. But what that does is also pre-heat the Atlantic Ocean, which is fuel for hurricanes and tropical storms. But if you have that warm air colliding against cold air, then you have a really nasty severe weather season. But the Atlantic is more difficult to heat and to get hurricanes going.
If you live along the coast, what happens in Iowa during April and May matter very much to you. If they're getting hammered, the chances are reduced of a major hurricane hitting you. If they're barely getting any kind of a bad spring, then you better stock up on supplies.
In essence: Don't trust
any weather record before the 1950s temperature wise and before the 1970s severe weather wise.
