Climate Cast: Hurricane Season 2013; What we know about CC, hurricanes and extreme weather

May 31, 2013 2:01 PM

Every Thursday MPR meteorologist Paul Huttner joins Kerri Miller on The Daily Circuit for "Climate Cast" on MPR News Stations to talk about the latest research on our changing climate and the consequences that we're seeing here in Minnesota and worldwide.

Hurricane Sandy winds up and heads for the East Coast.

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Image: NOAA

These days it seems like we are witnessing climate changes unfold right before our very eyes.

It's not our imagination.

The nature of our seasons is changing. Spring blooms come earlier. Summer is more humid with a documented increase in extreme localized flash flood events...and more frequent droughts. Fall lingers longer. Lakes freeze up later. Winters are trending shorter and noticeably, measurably milder. New plants are able to thrive in Minnesota's milder climate.

We're all living witnesses to rapid climate changes in our lifetime. This is no longer your grandparents "Minnesota" or Earth.

In 2013 at MPR we're devoting more coverage to the science behind and the growing effects of our changing climate in Minnesota and around the globe.

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You can hear me discuss the week's top climate stories, and get perspective from climate experts in our new "Climate Cast" every Thursday morning at 9:50am with Kerri Miller on The Daily Circuit.

Climate Cast for May 30th, 2013

The 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season is here. Both NOAA & CSU are calling for active seasons with an above average number of hurricanes. The big...and meteorologically unanswerable question is, how many hurricanes will make a U.S. landfall?

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Did a "climate change driven" unusual jet stream loop cause Hurricane Sandy to veer left into the USA east Coast last fall?

Image: Cornell University

In this week's Climate Cast we look at what we know...and don't know about climate change and hurricanes. We also hear perspective about the value...or lack of value of seasonal hurricane forecasts from WxUndergound hurricane expert Dr. Jeff Masters.

And we ask what types of "extreme weather" can we credibly attribute to climate changes?

The hurricane season that begins Saturday is likely to be more active than average. But it's not because of climate change -- or at least, not in any way that's easy to detect.
"Here's the bottom line," said Paul Huttner, MPR News' Chief Meteorologist. "Climate change does not seem to have a link to producing more hurricanes. The numbers just don't show that."
Speaking with host Tom Weber on The Daily Circuit, Huttner added that climate change may be a factor in the severity of the hurricanes, if not the number. "There's some evidence that these warmer oceans are producing more intense storms, more major hurricanes," he said. "In fact, since 1970 the number of Category 3 storms has doubled."
"All I know is that as we look at climate change and hurricanes, the only real link we're seeing is stronger storms. We're also extending the season ... Sandy's a great example, in that it happened very late in the season. Unusual to get a hurricane that far north, that late in the season. That was clearly a result of warmer-than-average ocean temperatures for that time of the year."
Asked for a clear example of an effect of climate change, Huttner pointed to "the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere," which he said had increased by 4 percent.
"That's believed to be a result of more evaporation, because the planet is getting warmer," he said. "So you get a warmer planet, you have more moisture. What we're seeing is a documentable increase in these extreme rainfall events, the flash flooding. When it rains, it rains harder. ... In the last 30 years for example in Minnesota, we've had a doubling of these extreme 3-inch-plus rainfall events. We're seeing that as a trend. Droughts are becoming more severe.
"The extremes are becoming more extreme."
Huttner said long-range hurricane predictions are of little use, and suggested that forecasters should focus more of their attention and resources on short-range predictions.
"Last fall, with Sandy, was an excellent example," he said. "The NOAA computer models, the National Weather Service, they missed it a few days out. They had Sandy curving out into the open Atlantic, harmlessly passing the United States. The European model, which... has a higher resolution, more computing power, that nailed Sandy's track a good five, six, seven days in advance. And that was really the model that tipped off NOAA that hey, we may have a major problem here for the East Coast."

I've offered my perspective many times before on the lack of value on seasonal hurricane forecasts. What really matters is how many storms hit the USA each year... and how accurate landfall and intensity forecasts are in the days leading up to landfall.

We asked hurricane specialist Jeff Masters about the value and development of seasonal hurricane forecasts. Here's his perspective.

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For the general public, I don't think hurricane forecasts for long ranges have much value, because they're not very skillful. If you roll the dice, you're not going to do that much worse than trying to make a seasonal hurricane forecast. I view them more as an interesting research project that has potential to get better in the future, but right now they don't have a lot of skill or a lot of value for the general public.
There is a lot of promise with some new techniques that are happening now, where they're using three dimensional models of the atmosphere to make long-term hurricane predictions. Now these are the same models that we use to make weather predictions just a few days in advance. Now we're just taking models and running them many months. As you run them for many months, you just count how many hurricanes pop up and it's turning out that it's giving statistical models a run for their money. They're about as good now. As these new models improve in the future, as we get better computer power, I anticipate that our seasonal forecasts will begin to show some marked improvement.

We also asked Jeff about what we know about climate change and hurricanes.

We expect that when we warm the oceans we'll increase the amount of energy available to hurricanes. Since hurricanes are heat engines that extract energy from the oceans and convert it to the energy of their winds, the strongest hurricanes will tend to get stronger. But as it turns out, computer models are showing that about a century from now the total number of Atlantic hurricanes may go down. It's just that when we do happen to get a hurricane, it's going to be stronger. And it's probably going to dump more precipitation - up to about 20 percent more. But the year-to-year variability, the natural ups and downs of hurricanes - are too great right now to tell if we're seeing an influence from climate change. It's just that we do expect that by late in the century we will start to see that impact.

2013 Hurricane Season: Active Forecast

Climate Central's Andrew Freedman has perspective on why this season may be a doozy.

The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season starts Saturday, and scientists are warning that it is likely to be a doozy, with more storms than average and more major hurricanes (Category 3 intensity or stronger). Not only are forecasters calling for an unusually active season, they also say that there are signs that the U.S., which hasn't had a major hurricane in a record seven years, may be particularly vulnerable this year due to a combination of weather and climate factors.
Although the U.S. has seen its fair share of damaging storms in recent years, including Hurricane Sandy in 2013 (which technically was not a hurricane at landfall), the last major hurricane to strike the U.S. was Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
Scientists contacted by Climate Central warned that in part because of the dearth of major hurricanes, there may be a sense of "hurricane amnesia" setting in among coastal residents -- a potentially hazardous combination for when the nation's luck runs out.

Up Cycle:

We're in a long term up cycle for Atlantic Hurricanes. Check out the numbers from Climate Central.

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Extreme Weather: What do we know about climate change and extreme weather?

Here's a great discussion on climate change and hurricanes...and extreme weather from CBS and Face The Nation last Sunday. If you missed it...it's worth watching.

Climate Change Mitigation: What you can do

Let's fact it, Climate Change can seem like an overwhelming problem with few easy solutions.

Many of you have asked what you can do in your lives to combat and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Here are some great resources from NASA and EPA.

NASA: Resources on Climate Change mitigation

EPA: What you can do about Climate Change

EPA: Regional impacts of Climate Change

Climate Cast resources:

Want to know more about climate change? Here are few quick links to credible climate change sources.

-Read the Minnesota Public Radio primer on Climate Change

-NOAA NCDC's "State of the Climate" report

-AMS Statement on Climate Change