The number of hurricanes striking the US peaked in 1886, and have been declining ever since – as CO2 has increased.
As CO2 has increased, the number of hurricanes hitting the US has decreased
The total hurricane intensity is also declining.
There is no evidence linking hurricanes to CO2, but that doesn’t stop scientists from lying about it.
Would be interesting to show hurricane intensity on this chart too. That would answer the question from some quarters: “well, maybe they are getting more intense”. Also, you could consider adding right onto the chart a reference to the source (the gov’t analysis), and also a quote from the part of the source saying it may well be undercounting hurricanes in the early years. Those things would make this powerful chart even more so.
The question about “well maybe they’re getting more intense” has been answered. The answer is no. Liars will point to Typhoon Haiyan and Patricia as evidence of increasing intensity but they are largely satellite estimated wind speeds and as far as the historical record is concerned, the record is even more sparse since many of the Pacific systems fizzle out or change intensities well away from land where no observations exist.
If someone tries telling you that hurricane intensities are increasing, they are absolutely lying.
DC.
The quarters saying “well, maybe they are getting more intense” need to be called on their lack of knowledge and effort to obtain it. If they really gave a hoot about the facts and data they would find out by investigating themselves instead of just speculating in a manner that is more or less a demand to be spoon fed the information. I have found that more often than not, people that use speculation as a reply to an answer they cannot rebut will often go off on another tangent once you spoon feed them the information they claimed to want to know. Often, no amount of information you present will move them from their previous held notion. When finally backed into a corner this type will often go off on a completely irrelevant tangent without acknowledging that the information you provided had any value or effect on their opinion. When you see that manifestation of the cognitive dissonance required to remain a true believer then you have a choice. Either walk away, or turn away from the subject, or remain steadfast and continually expose them as fools they are.
IMO the best source for the answer you seek is the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) index:
http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php
Sorry to be off topic,
But this is a treasure. :-)
http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article208357729/Zu-lange-an-der-E-Zapfsaeule-Wagen-wurde-abgeschleppt.html?google_editors_picks=true
Use google translate..
As far as I can gather, the guy was waiting (several hours) in a queue to charge his electric car. Left his car.. and got a $150 fine for illegal parking ! :-)
make that 150 Euros.
US Hurricanes Continue Their Decline
And so there are “scientists” which wish to change the metric. Instead of the Saffir-Simpson scale they would like to use another:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00185.1
To RAH: thanks for your response. And the link you provided is helpful. But I assume the purpose of a chart like the one in this post is to show people a certain truth, in a compelling way — here, that US hurricane landfalls have declined since the 1800s according to government data. The chart may not convince all people who look at it, but it will persuade some — and the better it is, the more people it will convince. That’s why I think adding intensity would be a good idea. It’s not only “alarmists” who would wonder about that. It’s a natural question I think, when presented with a chart showing fewer landfalling hurricanes over time — i.e., might that same data show increased intensity? Also, I may be misreading the info you linked to, but am I right that it only goes back to 1970? The power of Tony’s chart is that it uses government data going back to the 1800s. If that long term government data shows not only fewer landfalling hurricanes, but declining (or stable) intensity at landfall, that would be doubly interesting. The data shows the hurricane category at landfall, so the work is doable for someone who has time (not me unfortunately!) With that additional dimension added, I think the chart would be extraordinary — a complete, government-data based rejoinder to politicians blaming recent hurricanes on climate change.
Research ACE Accumulated Cyclone Energy. There has been no increase in tropical storm intensity.
D. Self: Thanks. I get that there’s data of different types out there on intensity. My point was different. I was suggesting that the original post be improved to show what *the particular government data in question (back to the 1800s)* shows not only about frequency, but also about intensity. In other words, to use the same dataset to show both. The post now does that (I am certainly not taking credit for it — it probably was the plan all along), and I think it’s great. Now if anyone says hurricanes are getting worse, there’s all-in-one resource to show that’s wrong, based on government data to boot. This is a great post — and I love that it prominently shows the source, making it impossible to brush aside as of uncertain provenance.
Not been too many hurricanes in the Atlantic side, 2005 being a high water mark.
Any reason, or just natural fluctuation? I believe the latter, and AGW cannot be used as a reason currently to pin the blame.
Andy
The high water mark was 1886.
Andy
IMO part of the reason for our hiatus was because of the Super El Nino effects. During El Ninos Atlantic storms tend to be reduced in number and intensity. ty. This especially true in the western Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico due to several factors. During La Nina years, tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic generally increases.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/impacts-el-ni%C3%B1o-and-la-ni%C3%B1a-hurricane-season
“Simply put, El Nio favors stronger hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific basins, and suppresses it in the Atlantic basin (Figure 1). Conversely, La Nia suppresses hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific basins, and enhances it in the Atlantic basin” (Figure 2).”
Remember which way the wind is flowing during an El Nino. Those easterly winds extend into the Gulf and Caribbean and cause powerful sheer. It is also common to have lower than normal SSTs in the Atlantic during and El Nino.
So I suspect that our long hiatus is going to end either this year or next.
I checked all of the observations from FL to NC. While hurricane force wind gusts were fairly common, the only place to get a wind gust over 95 mph was Cape Canaveral, with a gust of 107 mph.
Since a major hurricane requires sustained winds of 111 mph, Matthew does not qualify as a major US hurricane. I don’t know if the fraudsters at the Hurricane Center will somehow try to claim it was a major hurricane, but in reality it was not.
There appears to be little chance of a major hurricane during the rest of this season, so it appears that the major hurricane drought will go into its 12th year.
Yes, already, roughly 70-80% of power has been restored in the worst hit areas of FL. That wouldn’t be the case with a major hurricane.
https://www.fpl.com/storm/customer-outages.html
Matthew was a major but traversed up the Florida coast far enough off shore o that the hurricane force sustained winds did not reach shore. As it did progressed northward it lost strength so that when it finally came ashore in South Carolina it was barely a CAT 1.
And so yes the already record so called “hurricane drought” continues.
That being said the storm has done plenty of damage and effected the lives of millions. It could have been much worse. How much longer is anyone’s guess.
None of this would really be an issue if the Alarmists and government hadn’t been claiming that climate change would cause stronger hurricanes that would do more damage to the US in the future ever since Katrina struck.
This “hurricane drought” is driving the alarmists nuts. So much so they want to change the metric by which a storms severity or land fall is judged from sustained wind speed or the eye wall passing over the shore to how much damage it does and/or how much storm surge it produces. Never mind that those factors are greatly dependent on where the hurricane comes close or actually comes ashore.
It really is funny to see the Alarmists squirm and equivocate. But the even better to know that we in the continental US have not had to deal with really powerful storms that could have caused much more death, suffering, and damage.
As for the chances of another major forming and threatening US shores again this year? I would not be so confident. The guys at weatherbell sure aren’t. They believe there is still significant potential for such an event. They believe that potential will continue right into November.
For us here in mid NC it was a minor inconvenience. The lights flickered, we got some heavy rain and that was all. I have seen much worse with thunder storms.
My brother and his wife live just outside Wilmington, NC. They said they got lots of wind and rain, but never lost power. Here in the Piedmont region, we just got rain. And today, it’s a perfect fall day. I’ve been looking at webcams for some of the beaches, and everything looks nice, people out strolling, no way of knowing that a hurricane had passed through the day before.
It does appear, however, that some folks did get some bad flooding. But that could happen without a hurricane.
Matthew was nice to me. Major damage was when the soil saturated and the ants moved into our car. My wife went nuts with the ant spray. Ants were dead but then we had to clean up all of the carcasses and eggs. What a mess.
Hurricanes are clearly remembered and with good reason for the amount of death and destruction they cause when they touch land, but in any season there will usually be a significant number of storms that never come anywhere near land. I counted 8 out of the 15 Atlantic storms so far this year, including one still active (Nicole) that have had either minimal or zero impact on land.
I do realise that Bermuda and the Azores might be affected by these oceanic storms as they move across otherwise open water and I suspect that many historic storms were only recorded because they passed close by one or other of these islands.
Who knows how many more potentially enormous Atlantic hurricanes with high ACE don’t appear in the records at all.
Incidentally, 1887 is supposed to be the third most active year on record, with 19 storms, 9 of which didn’t touch land.
Ok, now that I’ve been on my medication for a while now and have a much more calm, logical thought process on the subject of climate change instead of freaking out with anxiety and paranoia there’s things I’ve come to realize that others need to realize that no one’s saying.
If climate change was as big of a threat that so many people claim, if the science behind it was a true accurate science and it was about to kill us all and we’ve passed the point of no return and there was nothing we could do to fix it…….we wouldn’t be able to go on with our daily lives as we do. The national guard would be knocking on our door, there would be tanks rolling down our streets. There would be curfews, we would not have our freedoms.
An Inconvenient Truth wouldn’t have been a movie, it would have been a worldwide news announcement. They wouldn’t want to be prosecuting people who deny climate change, the military would be going in and shutting down all fossil fuel companies, they would be doing everything they could, everything it took to put a complete lid on this and save us.
If this was a complete true accurate science, if this was really all happening, there would not be scientists who work for NASA and the IPCC and so many others who say that it’s a false science, everyone would be made aware, in agreement, and everyone would be doing everything to stop it from happening.
But you know what? THAT’S NOT HAPPENING!!!!! We still go on with our daily lives and we still have our freedoms. The problem is people don’t take the time to stop and realize this, they just want to say that the science is settled and we’re all gonna die and there’s nothing we can do about it.
If that’s true, please explain to me why I’m still allowed to walk out of my door every day
Although I may not agree with your reasoning, I do agree with your conclusion, that CAGW is a total fraud. Please stay on your meds and remember to put your wife first in everything you think or say or do. It really pays off in the long run.
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