The hurricane hullabaloo

Given the recent onslaught of Hurricane Dennis on Cuba and the Gulf Coast, it seems appropriate to look at the most recent discussions of hurricane causes. With clockwork regularity, Greenies of course blame every adverse weather event on global warming and hurricanes are far too juicy a phenomenon for them to be unconnected to global warming. But are they? One of America's most eminent hurricane experts -- Chris Landsea -- recently resigned from the IPCC because they ignored all his evidence about hurricanes in favour of politicizing them. His boss (Trenberth) at the IPCC does now however seem to have had something of a change of heart and recently wrote an article that concedes many of Landsea's points. That is however not at all the spin that the media have put on the article concerned. I reproduce below first Landsea's original announcement, then one of the more sober media comments on Trenberth's paper, then a scientific comment from one of Landsea's colleagues:

Open letter from Chris Landsea:

"After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns. With this open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my decision and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process.

The IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the world that every few years summarize how climate is changing and how it may be altered in the future due to manmade global warming. I had served both as an author for the Observations chapter and a Reviewer for the 2nd Assessment Report in 1995 and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, primarily on the topic of tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons). My work on hurricanes, and tropical cyclones more generally, has been widely cited by the IPCC.

For the upcoming AR4, I was asked several weeks ago by the Observations chapter Lead Author - Dr. Kevin Trenberth - to provide the writeup for Atlantic hurricanes. As I had in the past, I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an important, and politically-neutral determination of what is happening with our climate.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity" along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record. Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small.

The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).

It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth's role as the IPCC's Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.

My concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author; I was told that that the media was exaggerating or misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection between global warming and hurricane activity.

The IPCC leadership saw nothing to be concerned with in Dr. Trenberth's unfounded pronouncements to the media, despite his supposedly impartial important role that he must undertake as a Lead Author on the upcoming AR4. It is certainly true that "individual scientists can do what they wish in their own rights", as one of the folks in the IPCC leadership suggested. Differing conclusions and robust debates are certainly crucial to progress in climate science. However, this case is not an honest scientific discussion conducted at a meeting of climate researchers. Instead, a scientist with an important role in the IPCC represented himself as a Lead Author for the IPCC has used that position to promulgate to the media and general public his own opinion that the busy 2004 hurricane season was caused by global warming, which is in direct opposition to research written in the field and is counter to conclusions in the TAR.

This becomes problematic when I am then asked to provide the draft about observed hurricane activity variations for the AR4 with, ironically, Dr. Trenberth as the Lead Author for this chapter. Because of Dr. Trenberth's pronouncements, the IPCC process on our assessment of these crucial extreme events in our climate system has been subverted and compromised, its neutrality lost. While no one can "tell" scientists what to say or not say (nor am I suggesting that), the IPCC did select Dr. Trenberth as a Lead Author and entrusted to him to carry out this duty in a non-biased, neutral point of view. When scientists hold press conferences and speak with the media, much care is needed not to reflect poorly upon the IPCC.

It is of more than passing interest to note that Dr. Trenberth, while eager to share his views on global warming and hurricanes with the media, declined to do so at the Climate Variability and Change Conference in January where he made several presentations. Perhaps he was concerned that such speculation - though worthy in his mind of public pronouncements - would not stand up to the scrutiny of fellow climate scientists. I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4".




One media summary of Trenberth's most recent article:

A new scientific report about the potential effect of global climate change on Atlantic hurricanes appears likely to fuel debate over whether nastier storms are looming. A perspective article published Thursday by Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colo., argues that a warmer, moister climate over the Atlantic is almost certain to make future hurricanes more intense and perhaps more frequent.

Writing in the journal Science, Trenberth continues an argument that garnered considerable media attention - and drew attacks from many experts - during last fall's intense battering of Florida and the Gulf Coast. Most hurricane experts insist that there's no clear link between an increase in tropical storms since 1995 and any long-term change in global temperatures, which scientists think have been rising gradually for the past century.

"There is no reasonable scientific way any such interpretation of this recent upward shift in Atlantic hurricane activity can be made," said Colorado State University tropical-storm researcher William Gray, who predicted the recent surge in storms and expects them to continue. Gray's culprit isn't greenhouse gases and global warming, but a long-term change in the salinity and deep-ocean currents of the North Atlantic that results in warmer surface temperatures and makes hurricanes more likely to form.

Trenberth contends in his paper that statistical models used in most hurricane forecasting simply don't capture the impacts of global warming. "Trends in human-induced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions," Trenberth wrote. "These changes are expected to affect hurricane intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear. The key scientific question is how hurricanes are changing." Trenberth points to several computer simulations done for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in recent years that show hurricanes gaining intensity with an 80-year buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He notes that sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic over the last decade have been the warmest on record, and water vapor over oceans worldwide has risen by about 2 percent since 1988. Both conditions supply more potential energy for the showers and thunderstorms that fuel hurricanes, he said.

However, Trenberth concedes that no one knows for sure whether global warming will enhance or impair wind-circulation patterns in the tropics that can either support or discourage hurricane formation. For instance, cold-water "La Nina" events in the Pacific set up trade-wind patterns that make for fewer hurricanes. Nor, he writes, is there any solid evidence that a warmer world will include more weather patterns that steer hurricanes landward. It was a high-pressure system that parked off the East Coast last fall and kept pushing storms into the Caribbean and Florida.

In a letter to key lawmakers last fall attacking the global warming/hurricane link, a group of climatologists led by James O'Brien of Florida State University made a case for fewer severe tropical storms in a warmer world.

Most climate-change experts agree that more pronounced warming will occur in polar regions. And it is the difference in temperatures between tropics and poles that sets up circulation patterns to guide storms. "Warmer polar regions would reduce this gradient and thus lessen the overall intensity or frequency or both of storms - not just tropical storms, but mid-latitude winter storms as well," the climate scientists wrote. Studies of long-term climate change seem to bear this out. "In the past, warmer periods have seen a decline in the number and severity of storms," they said.

Trenberth argues there's uncertainty on that point, too. "There is no sound theoretical basis for drawing any conclusion about how (human-induced) climate change affects hurricane numbers or tracks, and thus how many hit land," he wrote.




Comment on Trenberth by Roger Pielke:

"There is no sound theoretical basis for drawing any conclusions about how anthropogenic change affects hurricane numbers or tracks, and thus how many hit land." (K. Trenberth, Science, 17 June 2005).

Last winter, Chris Landsea caused a flap when he resigned from the IPCC claiming that Kevin Trenberth, the lead author of the IPCC chapter that he was contributing to, had made unfounded statements about hurricanes and global warming in a press conference organized by Harvard to allege a connection between the U.S. hurricane damages of 2004 and human-caused climate change. (Disclaimer: As most regular readers know, Landsea is a long-time collaborator of mine.)

In this week's Science, Trenberth has an essay on hurricanes and climate change that should put this issue to rest. Trenberth's essay clearly vindicates Landsea's actions, and, in my option, it would not be inappropriate for IPCC officials who failed to support Landsea (Rajedra Pachauri and Susan Solomon) to issue him a public apology. But don't hold your breath.

Let's take a quick look at Trenberth's essay and explain why it vindicates Landsea. Trenberth confirms in his Science essay what Landsea has claimed, that -- based on what is known today -- "there is no sound theoretical basis for drawing any conclusions about how anthropogenic change affects hurricane numbers or tracks, and thus how many hit land." None. There is no basis for claiming as Trenberth did that the hurricanes of 2004, much less their damages, could be attributed to human emissions of greenhouse gases/global warming.

Earlier this year, Trenberth said that his participation in the Harvard press conference was "to correct misleading impressions that global warming had played no role at all in last year's hurricane season." It is good to see this claim corrected. Trenberth confuses the issue by calling into question the role of hypothesis testing in science (one wonders what this apparently new found perspective on hypothesis testing means for the rest of climate science, but I digress), and some discussion of variables that clearly have some effects on hurricanes (i.e., ENSO), but in the end he concludes "it is not yet possible to say how El Nino and other factors affecting hurricane formation may change as the world warms."

A more comprehensive review of current understandings of hurricanes and global warming can be found in this peer-reviewed paper, forthcoming in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, K. Emanuel, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, in press. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. (PDF: here)

Bottom line: Landsea and Trenberth are scientifically on the same page, and the perspectives now being espoused by Trenberth are (in my interpretation) entirely consistent with what Landsea argued at the time he stepped down from the IPCC. Because of Trenberth's change in perspective, Landsea should feel completely vindicated. The IPCC should be big enough to note this and invite Landsea back into the fold.

A final note, NCAR's press release and those who approved it apparently learned little from the controversy as the press release irresponsibly muddies the issue by making it look like there is in fact a clear global warming-hurricane connection and that there is new information in the Trenberth paper. If the Trenberth paper is cited in the media as supporting a hurricane-global warming connection (and we'd welcome any links to media coverage), then I place full responsibility on the unnecessarily obfuscatory NCAR press release which sets the stage for a further mischaracterization of this issue, on which scientists who once differed, now agree. That is the real story.





SCIENTIFIC HONESTY CANNOT BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED

Allegations of research misconduct reached record highs last year - the Department of Health and Human Services received 274 complaints, which was 50 percent higher than 2003 and the most since 1989 when the federal government established a program to deal with scientific misconduct. Chris Pascal, director of the federal Office of Research Integrity, said its 28 staffers and $7 million annual budget haven't kept pace with the allegations. The result: Only 23 cases were closed last year. Of those, eight individuals were found guilty of research misconduct. In the past 15 years, the office has confirmed about 185 cases of scientific misconduct. Research suggests this is but a small fraction of all the incidents of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. In a survey published June 9 in the journal Nature, about 1.5 percent of 3,247 researchers who responded admitted to falsification or plagiarism. (One in three admitted to some type of professional misbehavior.)

Some cases have made headlines:

-On July 18, Eric Poehlman, once a prominent nutrition researcher, will be sentenced in federal court in Vermont for fabricating research data to obtain a $542,000 federal grant while working as a professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He faces up to five years in prison. Poehlman, 49, made up research between 1992 and 2000 on issues like menopause, aging and hormone supplements to win millions of dollars in grant money from the federal government. He is the first researcher to be permanently barred from ever receiving federal research grants again. In 2001, while he was being investigated, Poehlman left the medical school and was awarded a $1 million chair in nutrition and metabolism at the University of Montreal, where officials say they were unaware of his problems. He resigned in January when his contract expired.

-In March, Dr. Gary Kammer, a Wake Forest University rheumatology professor and leading lupus expert, was found to have made up two families and their medical conditions in grant applications to the National Institutes of Health. He has resigned from the university and has been suspended from receiving federal grants for three years.

-In November, 2004, federal officials found that Dr. Ali Sultan, an award-winning malaria researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, had plagiarized text and figures, and falsified his data - substituting results from one type of malaria for another - on a grant application for federal funds to study malaria drugs. When brought before an inquiry committee, Sultan tried to pin the blame on a postdoctoral student. Sultan resigned and is now a faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, according to a spokeswoman there.

While the cases are high-profile, scientists have been cheating for decades.

In 1974, Dr. William Summerlin, a top-ranking Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute researcher, used a marker to make black patches of fur on white mice in an attempt to prove his new skin graft technique was working. His case prompted Al Gore, then a young Democratic congressman from Tennessee, to hold the first congressional hearings on the issue. "At the base of our involvement in research lies the trust of American people and the integrity of the scientific exercise," said Gore at the time. As a result of their hearings, Congress passed a law in 1985 requiring institutions that receive federal money for scientific research to have some system to report rulebreakers.

"Often we're confronted with people who are brilliant, absolutely incredible researchers, but that's not what makes them great scientists. It's the character," said Debbi Gilad, a research compliance and integrity officer at the University of California, Davis, which has taken a lead on handling scientific misconduct.

David Wright, a Michigan State University professor who has researched why scientists cheat, said there are four basic reasons: some sort of mental disorder; foreign nationals who learned somewhat different scientific standards; inadequate mentoring; and, most commonly, tremendous and increasing professional pressure to publish studies.

More here

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************