IPCC: Atlantic Hurricanes/Tropical Cyclones Have Not Increased Since the Late-1800s

By Cap Allon

The IPCC’s latest report (AR6) continues the claim that human CO2 emissions have caused earth’s climate to warm–no shocker there. But the impacts this has had on Atlantic hurricane/global tropical cyclone activity may come as a surprise, at least to those who were duped by the narrative constructed over the past few decades. As NOAA/GFDL Senior Scientist Tom Knutson explains, global warming has had no impact on either storm frequency nor intensity…

The two most frequently asked questions on global warming and hurricanes are the following:

1) What changes in hurricane activity are expected for the late 21st century?

2) Have humans already caused a detectable increase in Atlantic hurricane activity or global tropical cyclone activity?

Widget not in any sidebars

Tackling the second question first, in the northwest Pacific basin, some observations appear to show a poleward shift in the latitude of maximum intensity of tropical cyclones, writes Knutson. And while another new study finds a slight increase in the fraction of tropical cyclone fixes of at least Category 3 intensity both globally and in the Atlantic basin over the past four decades, crucially though, the paper itself states that these changes “have not been confidently attributed to anthropogenic forcing”.

Modeling studies at GFDL/NOAA and the UK Met Office/Hadley Centre (UKMO) have found that a slight increase in tropical storm frequency in the Atlantic basin since the 1970s has been, at least partly, driven by decreases in aerosols from human activity and volcanic forcing. Natural variability is also thought to have been a key factor in the recent changes, and the observed increase since the 1970s isn’t expected to continue into the future. In fact, these same models actually project future decreases in Atlantic tropical storm frequency in response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.

There is also evidence for a slowing of tropical cyclone propagation speeds over the continental U.S. over the past century.

But most importantly, within ALL of the findings, there is no strong evidence of increasing trends in U.S. landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes, or of Atlantic basin-wide hurricanes or major hurricanes since the late 1800s, states Knutson.

In other words, one of the long-standing and key implications of CAGW, which has had ordinary folks concerned for decades now, has categorically been laid to rest: anthropogenic global warming does not lead to an increase in storms, neither in frequency nor intensity.

Tackling the first question —“What changes in hurricane activity are expected for the late 21st century?”— even given the unequivocal debunking of one of the key pillars of the AGW theory, NOAA’s Tom Knutson still goes on to repeat all of the other ‘usual suspects’, and he blindly contradicts some of the aforementioned findings along the way, too:

Sea level rise will apparently mean increased coastal flooding for the tropical cyclones that do occur.

Tropical cyclone rainfall rates are projected to increase in the future due to more atmospheric moisture content.

Globally, ‘they’ still expect tropical cyclone intensities to increase (by 1 to 10% according to model projections for 2 degree Celsius of global warming–bit of a range there). But “storm size responses to anthropogenic warming are uncertain.”

And lastly, the global proportion of tropical cyclones that reach very intense (Category 4 and 5) levels is projected to increase due to anthropogenic warming over the 21st century. However, and immediately contradicting itself, the “consensus” also states that there is less confidence in future projections of the global number of Category 4 and 5 storms, since most modeling studies project a decrease in the global frequency of all tropical cyclones combined.

—Confused grunt—

Given the disastrous track record of NOAA, NASA and the IPCC, combined with the fact that these bodies are still publicly contradicting themselves at every turn (cries for help?), I am confidently filing the above projections under ‘politicized dogma soon to go the same way as the hurricane intensification theory’ — that is to say, thoroughly debunked by real-world data.

Just give it time…

For more:

Here Come the Climate Lockdowns, “for the good of the planet”

Visit Cap Allon at Electroverse.net where this article first appeared. Follow on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Twitter. And please support his work at Patreon here.