Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com
Trying to use Atlantic hurricane patterns to promote climate alarm in the US and elsewhere was blown off course this year. Instead the predictive reputations of the experts of all shades of global warming opinion took a battering. Natural variation threw them off the scent somehow.
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While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) held firm to its prediction of an above-normal hurricane season – despite zero hurricanes at the halfway mark – the 2022 season proved to be nothing out of the ordinary, says CNS News (via Climate Change Dispatch).
Hurricane season, which runs from June through November annually, turned out to be pretty average this year, NOAA’s end-of-season report reveals.
There were just two “major” hurricanes (categories 3-5), below the annual average of three and less than NOAA’s prediction that there would be 3-6.
The eight total hurricanes (categories 1-5) this year falls dead-center in NOAA’s forecasted range. And, the total count of named storms (which had hurricane potential) barely hit the lowest number in NOAA’s forecasted range:
* Hurricanes Forecast: 6-10; actual: 8; average year: 7
* Major Hurricanes Forecast: 3-6; actual: 2; average year: 3
* Named Storms Forecast: 14-21, actual: 14; average year: 14
Two of this year’s hurricanes made landfall, with one hitting twice. NOAA does not forecast the number of hurricanes that will hit a U.S. coast.
Despite the mundane final results, NOAA characterizes the 2022 hurricane season as “unique”:
“This unique season was defined by a rare mid-season pause in storms that scientists preliminarily believe was caused by increased wind shear and suppressed atmospheric moisture high over the Atlantic Ocean.”
After June through August proved to be the slowest start to a hurricane season in 30 years, NOAA issued a minor revision to its forecast:
“NOAA forecasters have slightly decreased the likelihood of an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season to 60% (lowered from the outlook issued in May, which predicted a 65% chance).”
“NOAA still expects above-normal Atlantic hurricane season,” the revised forecast insisted.
But, not all experts have been quick to embrace NOAA’s gloomy forecast or to attribute any increase in hurricane activity to climate change.
“[D]espite what you may have heard, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent. In fact, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental U.S. has declined slightly since 1900,” Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg noted in a piece published by The Wall Street Journal.
As Hot Air has reported, the “number and strength of hurricanes stubbornly fail to increase.”
“There is no global trend in the number of tropical storms or hurricanes during the past 50+ years,” Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue agrees.
Full article here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
December 18, 2022 at 03:54AM
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