The models predict whatever you want them to predict. The joy of modeling with an large number of variables, is that you can make the answer anything you want it to be.
The joy of climate science is that they are never wrong. They were smart enough to take a page from the palm readers. If you predict every possible outcome, or make your prediction so generic that they can be applied to any future scenario, then you can never be wrong.
Now, of course, people would begin to notice if you initially stated this. So what you do is have a BUNCH of studies that show entirely different results. You claim England will have more droughts and more floods. When a flood comes, you pull out the paper about flooding. When a drought comes (because when are you ever going to have the same amount of precipitation every year?) you pull out the drought paper.
If someone catches on you say that the climate will change and become more erratic. If they ask you for evidence of the climate being erratic you point to the inability to predict the climate changes. If they persist and ask you for statistical evidence of an increase in extreme weather accounting for multiplicity, then you insult them and make mention of a consensus study that has nothing to do with the question.
The great thing is that even though so many of your studies predict entirely different and many times opposing things, you get to still claim consensus. Everything is in a state of change. The climate is a chaotic system affected by everything that occurs on Earth. So you get a quick consensus of some change caused by man and you can always claim science is on your side. No need to mention the scientific method when you have got a consensus.
I think that the jury might be out.
Global warming might cause upper atmospheric winds that suppress hurricanes.
Since global warming causing more hurricanes would be a negative feedback and causing fewer hurricanes would be a positive feedback, the fact that Earth goes through cycles of advance and retreat of glaciers because of minor orbital changes would suggest that global warming causes fewer hurricanes.
Raisin Caine
Typical denialist straw man arguments.
< No need to mention the scientific method when you have got a consensus.>
Without compelling evidence scientists never reach a consensus.
The laws of thermodynamics are a consensus.
The law of gravity is a consensus.
I regret ever calling you a lukewarmer. You are a denier.
Hurricanes start over warm waters. That's why, on the East coast of the US, they always start in the Caribbean, and work their way up the coast until they run out of gas over the cooler waters of the North Atlantic.
Weather and climate prediction is a very inexact science, and subject to a large amount of short-term variation, it drives me crazy that people always take short-term fluctuations in weather and use that to "prove" or "disprove" climate change. Climate change is a matter of a few degrees over a period of years, it doesn't matter if it's hot or cold one week or the next, nor if we have a busy or quiet hurricane season. It's a very long-term outlook.
Anyway, having said all that. The atmosphere, and storms are more active over warm waters than over cooler waters. Therefore, warmer water = more, and more powerful storms, when looked at over a long time horizon.
Current thinking is that hurricanes will be less frequent but more powerful in a warming world.
Tropical cyclones and climate change (Knutsen et al, 2010) - ftp://profs.princeton.edu/leo/journals/K...
"However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%."
Modeled Impact of Anthropogenic Warming on the Frequency of Intense Atlantic Hurricanes (Bender et al, 2010) - ftp://soest.hawaii.edu/coastal/Climate%2...
"The model projects nearly a doubling of the frequency of category 4 and 5 storms by the end of the 21st century, despite a decrease in the overall frequency of tropical cyclones, when the downscaling is based on the ensemble mean of 18 global climate-change projections."
And this does seem to be what is occurring.
Recent intense hurricane response to global climate change (Holland et al, 2013) - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007...
" We find no anthropogenic signal in annual global tropical cyclone or hurricane frequencies. But a strong signal is found in proportions of both weaker and stronger hurricanes: the proportion of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has increased at a rate of ~25–30 % per °C of global warming after accounting for analysis and observing system changes. This has been balanced by a similar decrease in Category 1 and 2 hurricane proportions, leading to development of a distinctly bimodal intensity distribution, with the secondary maximum at Category 4 hurricanes."
The paper above states that increasing hurricane intensities may saturate with warming ocean temperatures though at a proportional level of 40% to 50% for category 4 and 5 hurricanes.
Of course this is location dependent.
Global warming shifts Pacific tropical cyclone location (Li et al, 2010) - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.10...
Models predict fewer, but more intense hurricanes.
But the natural variation is so large, it could take decades to notice.
I don't understand why you are confused, Dr. Jello. The answer is both and more, which is pretty obvious if you read the science press consistently and often.
First effect: rising sea surface temperatures. This pumps more energy into storms, allowing them to grow faster and bigger.
First effect = more storms and more powerful storms.
Second effect: faster upper atmosphere winds. This shreds the tops of the developing storms, disorganizing and destroying them.
Second effect = fewer storms as the weaker ones can never get going.
Combination of first and second effect:
Apparently you get about the same number of storms, but they will be more powerful.
Real world results:
About the same number of hurricanes more or less, but more cat 4's and 5's.
Does this help? Let me recommend ScienceDaily, the online science newspaper, for an excellent overview of what is happening in science. It gives links to all its sources, so you can investigate any work in depth if you so desire. That information also made it into textbooks several years ago. Archer, for one, iirc, and maybe Ruddiman also. Certainly it has been discussed at sites like RealClimate. Here's a quote from that site referring to a recent publication:
"...a 2010 study from Nature Geoscience, for which the abstract reads (my outline):
Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have changed or will change in a warming climate — and if so, how — has been the subject of considerable investigation, often with conflicting results. Large amplitude fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones greatly complicate both the detection of long-term trends and their attribution to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes. However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%. Balanced against this, higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre. For all cyclone parameters, projected changes for individual basins show large variations between different modelling studies."
- See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
Does that help?
It causes more. Look at information on global warming.
Yes. I guess it's pretty obvious since GW brings abnormalities to our weather and such - we will get more and some other places will get to experience, I guess. :/
Both- Al Gore wrote a book on this right after he invented the internet....
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GLOBAL WARMING.
Or is Both the right answer?
