Global warming is contributing to an unusually harsh typhoon season in China that started around a month early and has left thousands dead or missing, government officials and experts say.
"Against the backdrop of global warming, more and more strong and unusual climatic and atmospheric events are taking place.
"The strength of typhoons are increasing, the destructiveness of typhoons that have made landfall is greater and the scope in which they are traveling is farther than normal."
Those reports came before the arrival on Thursday last week of Saomai, the eighth typhoon of the season and the strongest to hit China in 50 years.
The government said Saomai was the worst storm to hit China since Aug. 1, 1956 (see the 1956 tracking map of the storms at top of this post) , when a typhoon landed in Zhejiang with winds of as high as 234 kilometers per hour, killing 4,900 people and injuring 15,000, Xinhua News Agency said. Zhejiang and Fujian get the most typhoons and storms every year in China.
The Bloomberg report also commented on the intense rain. As much as 200 millimeters (7.9 inches) of rain was recorded in Wenzhou... and Up to 30 [11.8 inches] centimeters of rain fell in Fuding within 12 hours.. One should understand that 20 to 30 inches of rain being reported in major hurricanes is not at all unusual. Hurricane Flora back in 1963, before the oceans heated up, dropped 90" of rain on Cuba. Flora took 7,190 lives amongst the Caribbean islands which it ravaged. What caused that biblical amount of rain? Global cooling? And in 1980, Reunion Island in Commerson, LA received 223.5" of rain from Tropical Cyclone Hyacinthe. It wasn't even a hurricane.
The most intense Cyclone ever recorded on the planet was Typhoon Tip in 1979, in the western Pacific Ocean. In 1970 we were just out of the last round of global cooling and hurricane cycle was at it's low point.
And speaking of records, from NOAA (Chris Landsea):
The Bathurst Bay Hurricane, also known as Tropical Cyclone Mahina, struck Bathurst Bay, Australia in 1899. According to (Whittingham 1958) it produced a 13 m (about 42 ft) surge, but other contemporary accounts place the surge at 14.6 m (almost 48 ft). Fish and dolphins were reported found ontop of 15 m cliffs.
The AFP article continues with these far reaching conclusions:
The president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, Lester Brown, told AFP that the weather in China over the past few months is reflective of the worldwide extent of the problem of global warming.
"The emerging consensus in the scientific community is that higher temperatures bring more frequent and more destructive storms," Brown said.
There's no doubt that the alarmists and the MSM wish this to be consensus, however from National Geographic, discussing the findings of NOAA scientist, Dr. Chris Landsea and his team:
An expert with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is questioning the connection between climate change and the appearance of more intense hurricanes in recent years....
...In the commentary, he and colleagues write that firm conclusions on the link between global warming and hurricane intensity must wait until the historical hurricane record has been reanalyzed with modern methods.
But even then, Landsea said, he expects the increase in intensity to be small.
"Theoretical and numerical models do suggest [hurricanes] will become more intense due to global warming, but by a fairly tiny fraction, about 2 percent for every degree Fahrenheit [0.5 degree Celsius]."
I believe there is much agreement that we've experienced about a degree of warming since 1970 (note that many scientists say that much of that warming is cyclic and therefore naturally occurring.) However, if Landsea is correct and it's possible that warming can possibly increase cyclone intensity by some 2%, then by my calculations, a 135 mph hurricane could become a 137.7 mph hurricane. On the issue of hurricanes becoming more frequent, my guess is going to be that the same theory might apply - a 2% increase in the intensity of a 73 mph tropical storm might become a 74.5 mph minimal Cat. 1 hurricane - therefore hurricanes, as defined, would become more frequent. Is this the stuff that headlines are made of?
Consensus? Consensus is defined as, n., "agreement in the judgment or opinion reached by a group as a whole."On the issue of Global Warming being behind any newsworthy recent hurricane activity, I believe what we have is a "lack of consensus" within the scientific community.
Our hearts and prayers go out to the people of China hit so hard by this horrific weather event. It is sad, the destruction and the human suffering caused by these storms, but as we have seen before they do come back again, and again. This time, of course, it is Global Warming that is behind it.
