Katharine Blames Floods On CO2

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
http://ift.tt/16C5B6P

By Paul Homewood

Another gem from Katharine in that interview with Yale 360:

There have been an enormous amount of flooding events in the Midwest and Northeast.

http://ift.tt/2ullcVw

Well, what do the experts at the USGS have to say on the matter?

In 2012, they published a paper, “Has the magnitude of floods across the USA changed with global CO 2 levels?”.

This is the Abstract:

Statistical relationships between annual floods at 200 long-term (85-127 years of record) streamgauges in the coterminous United States and the global mean carbon dioxide concentration (GMCO2) record are explored. The streamgauge locations are limited to those with little or no regulation or urban development. The coterminous US is divided into four large regions and stationary bootstrapping is used to evaluate if the patterns of these statistical associations are significantly different from what would be expected under the null hypothesis that flood magnitudes are independent of GMCO2. In none of the four regions defined in this study is there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing GMCO2. One region, the southwest, showed a statistically significant negative relationship between GMCO2 and flood magnitudes. The statistical methods applied compensate both for the inter-site correlation of flood magnitudes and the shorter-term (up to a few decades) serial correlation of floods.

http://ift.tt/2u9lUIA

The USGS press release also stated:

Climate changes that could influence flood magnitudes include shifts in the intensity and tracks of various types of storms and changes in the type of precipitation (rain versus snow). The conditions on the landscape when large storms arrive can also change (for example, smaller snowpacks, less soil moisture and less frozen soil). All of these can influence the size of floods. Of course, human activities within the watershed can also have a major influence in the size of floods. These include urbanization, building of dams and levees, and shifts in vegetation types and drainage of soils and wetlands. At the present time, we see much larger changes in flooding from these causes than we can see from greenhouse forcing.

http://ift.tt/2uIhvt8

There have always been floods, but Katharine now believes they are caused by CO2.