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Cliff Mass (whose blog is really worth following) points out that this is not an abnormal hurricane season by historical standards. There is not a big temperatu
by idlewords 9y ago
Cliff Mass (whose blog is really worth following) points out that this is not an abnormal hurricane season by historical standards. There is not a big temperature anomaly in the waters fueling these storms: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/08/global-warming-and-hurricane-harvey.html http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/08/global-warming-and-hur...
In other words, this is the kind of storm season you can expect to get once in a while even before factoring in the effect of warming seas.
- cryptoz 9y agoPlease note that the Cliff Mass blog post you linked to is not about the hurricane discussed here. Also note that your summary of his post ("this is not an abnormal hurricane season by historical standards") is misleading as that is not the topic or conclusion of that piece.
- idlewords 9y agoLook at the weekly SST temperature anomaly along Irma's track and you'll see the argument carries over.
- JshWright 9y agoIndeed. It is more or less impossible to say "this storm happened because of climate change". What climate change does is shift the storms/year bell curve slightly to the right.
- idlewords 9y agoIt's not a bell curve, though.
- JshWright 9y agoNo? A (very) quick and dirty plot looks like a pretty normal distribution to me... https://www.dropbox.com/s/fs9fqjsq6vau5bt/Screenshot%202017-09-06%2009.57.34.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/fs9fqjsq6vau5bt/Screenshot%202017-...
- idlewords 9y agoNote that nine-sigma (or whatever it is) event on the right.