Talk:Tropical cyclones and climate change

Mish mash of rubbish

This article is rubbish, isn't it? It's a mish-mash of stuff thrown together. For example the "measurement" section - why isn't that just a ref to something similar on the TC page? And Today measurement for a named system is done on a global scale is just silly William M. Connolley (talk) 19:53, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

The measurement section is based on the EPA page Climate Change Indicators: Tropical Cyclone Activity, and for ACE, the source (IPCC) reads, "The ACE values have been summed over all regions to produce a global value, as given in Klotzbach (2006), beginning in 1986." maybe improve it, or suggest a change. Basically the general section is mainly from above IPCC link. Notice also the NOAA Hurricane Research Division ranks their storms with ACE. Colorado State University has ACE for all basins http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?arch&loc=northindian prokaryotes (talk) 20:21, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

AR4 is pretty old. AR5 is five years old and revised tropical cyclones. Table SPM.1 show all the revisions from AR4 (they are all "low confidence" using the new nomenclature with certain exceptions and revised most of AR4 down as did SREX). Particularly, the assessment of the late 21st century went from a "likely" for the Likelihood of further changes" to a "more likely than not." Here's a section from the WG1 AR5 report: Aside from non-climatic events such as tsunamis, extremes in sea level (i.e., coastal flooding, storm surge, high water events, etc.) tend to be

caused by large storms, especially when they occur at times of high tide. However, any low-pressure system offshore with associated high winds can cause a coastal flooding event depending on the duration and direction of the winds. Evaluation of changes in frequency and intensity of storms have been treated in Sections 2.6.3 and 2.6.4, as well as SREX Chapter 3 (Section 3.5.2). The main conclusions from both are that there is low confidence of any trend or long term change in tropical or extratropic storm frequency or intensity in any ocean basin, although there is robust evidence for an increase in the most intense tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic basin since the 1970s. The magnitude and frequency of extreme events can still increase without a change in storm intensity, however, if the mean water level is also increasing. AR4 concluded that the highest water levels have been increasing since the 1950s in most regions of the world, caused mainly by increasing mean sea level. Studies published since AR4 continue to support this conclusion, although higher regional extremes are also caused by large interannual and multi-decadal variations in sea level associated with climate fluctuations such as ENSO, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, among others (e.g., Abeysirigunawardena and Walker, 2008; Haigh et al., 2010; Menéndez and Woodworth, 2010; Park et al., 2011).

There are interesting studies from changes in the Atlantic tropical cyclones since 1970 but not much confidence that it's changed since 1850 (centennial scales). Now, this article should get back to the facts and then summarize the research going forward because it is a topic of great interest with consequences but misrepresenting the science is not the way to do it. --DHeyward (talk) 01:11, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Major Page Update?

There is a lot of new and ongoing research into this topic. I think it would be wise to discuss an overhaul in the page. Personally, it might be helpful to declutter some of the older research/trends and reorganize the sections to present the information more coherently. Thoughts? -ADM4700 (talk) 04:12, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, please do! The article need sit. Femke Nijsse (talk) 06:14, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Potential areas of investigation

Just a quick list of areas that we need to investigate to ensure that this article gets up to scratch. Are there any more TC's as a result of CC? If not why not, if so why? Are there any changes in where TC's are developing, forming, peaking, dissipating etc. Are any island nations/countries/areas being impacted by TC's that haven't been impacted before as a result of CC. Are there any changes in the weather associated with TC's? Rain, snow, wind, waves etc?. Jason Rees (talk) 12:01, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm... how about the very active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season? 🐔 Chicdat ^{Bawk to me!} 12:16, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

@Chicdat: While Climate Change has had an impact on making the season more active than normal, we have to balance it out against other factors. This includes the fact that we have seen a decline in activity in the PHS and PTS, as well as the transition from El Nino to La Nina and the fact that we are now able to predict systems better. It would also come under: Are there any more TC's as a result of CC.Jason Rees (talk) 12:25, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Many of these questions are already answered inside in the article now. The two questions that are insufficiently answered in my opinion: 1) why is there likely no increase in TC frequency? 2) Impacts more general. Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:26, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

This article is surprisingly fair and balanced

Some in the popular media were claiming Hurricane Ian was caused because of climate change. Climate change is real. However, hurricane frequency has dropped in recent years and there were deadly hurricanes before climate change. Blaming every weather event on climate change is pseudoscience and it does a disservice to learning about the actual science. Thus, I am incredibly impressed by the NPOV and factual accuracy of this article - while also interestingly acknowledging how different cultures have responded regarding climate change anxiety due to a hurricane. TruthByAnonymousConsensus (talk) 03:36, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks :). A subset of media definitely has the tendency to attribute climate change too much, but the science of blaming some weather events on climate change is getting mature. For hurricanes, that usually means we cannot attribute the existence of a hurricane on climate change (even though Cat4/Cat5 hurricanes seem to be increasing in frequency a bit), but we can attribute the intensity of rainfall from the hurricane to climate change. See https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/analysis/storms/ for the type of analysis on individual storms. Femke (talk) 07:20, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the great response, Femke! I have a question which may be seeking a solution in search of a problem concededly. Without being able to cite the specific Wikipedia policy, an article by Fox News criticizing popular media for over attribution of a recent storm (e.g Hurricane Ian) to climate change would not meet the reliable sources policy - in my opinion. That being said, a CNN, Time Magazine, or USA Today article published less than 24 hours after the storm should not meet the reliable sources criteria either for this article. Is the bar here then that a source is peer reviewed and from a scientific source? Thank you for linking the extreme weather attribution article. I just cannot imagine anyone can know less than one day after what aspects of the storm were exacerbated or mitigated by climate change with any certainty. TruthByAnonymousConsensus (talk) 19:01, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Ideally, we want peer reviewed articles, or articles using peer-reviewed methodology. Like weather prediction, event attribution is getting faster with standardised methods. Still it takes a few weeks to do the analysis (rather than months/years to get it published in a scientific journal).

Before these studies are published, we have to make a choice between omitting all mention of climate change (which may make an article biased), and citing news sources. Newspapers will need to be cited carefully. For example, a statement like this can make its way into articles "Ian was an Cat 4 storm, and previous studies have shown that Cat 4 storms are now x% more likely". But not "Ian was caused by climate change". One hopes these news articles are then replaced a few weeks later when proper analysis comes out. Femke (talk) 19:11, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Anyone interesting in this topic please see also what I put on the talk page of tropical cyclone here recently: thoughts on streamlining the two articles better; and additional publications which are important to understand the relationship with ocean heat content, climate change and cyclones. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tropical_cyclone#Relationship_with_sub-article_Tropical_cyclones_and_climate_change? - Overall, the science shows that cyclones are not getting more frequent but they are getting more "intense" and thus potentially damaging. EMsmile (talk) 19:38, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Guys what about the south Atlantic basin?

I think that the frequency of tropical cyclones in the south Atlantic it’s increasing,we can see in the wiki of this basis,it almost duplicated compared to the last decade .maybe we should include it in this article 177.22.1.138 (talk) 00:11, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand what exactly you are proposing here? EMsmile (talk) 11:28, 23 April 2024 (UTC)