January 15, 2021
Not many people know that
By Paul Homewood
https://theconversation.com/the-2020-atlantic-hurricane-season-was-a-record-breaker-and-its-raising-more-concerns-about-climate-change-150495
There was a lot of alarm that last year was a “record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season”. As I pointed out at the time, the claim was based on the number of tropical storms mentioned, which includes both hurricanes and weaker storms. The number of Atlantic hurricanes alone was not a record.
Due to the tendency to name all sorts of small storms these days, not to mention the ability of satellites to detect them, the claim has always been false.
Fortunately, we now have the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) data for the year. The claim has been shown to be nonsensical and fraudulent.
In short, ACE is a measure of the intensity and intensity of tropical storms and cyclones. [Tropical Cyclone is a generic name for storms which are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the W Pacific].
Reliable data for the Atlantic, both the number of storms and ACE, has only been available since the satellite era in 1966, as NOAA explains:
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd-faq/#tcs-to-1930
However, scientists with NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division have carefully examined older meteorological records to re-analyze hurricanes prior to 1966 – details here.
This enables us to make much more meaningful long-term comparisons. Their data shows that the past year was far from being a record hurricane season or tropical storm.
In terms of ACE, it was only the 10th strongest. The record year was 1933.
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd-faq/#tcs-to-1930
http://climatlas.com/tropical/
There is a clear cyclical pattern, with more intense activity from 1930 to 1970, less between 1970 and the late 1990s and increasing since then. This is directly related to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), a natural cycle that changes from warm to cold over a cycle of 50 to 60 years. It was in the warm phase from the 1930s to 60s and has also been in warm mode since the mid-1990s.
https://psl.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/gcos_wgsp/tsanalysis.pl?tstype1=91&tstype2=0&year1=&year2=&itypea=0&axistype=0&anom=0&plotstyle=0&climo1=&climo2=&y&&&& = & lag = & iall = 0 & mon1 = 0 & mon2 = 11 & Submit = Calculate + Results
NOAA explains the relationship between AMO and Atlantic hurricane activity:
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/faq/amo_faq.php
It’s also worth noting that even after re-analysis, hurricane activity was likely recorded before the satellite era of hurricane activity. Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center, who did much of the reanalysis, stated in his article Reanalysis of the 1921-30 Atlantic Hurricane Database:
Notice how the names of Emmanuel and Mann come up!
In reality, we will never be able to record all of the past hurricane activity as we can now. It is obviously clear, however, that there is nothing unprecedented in neither the hurricane activity of last year nor that of recent years.
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