What do you think of Noted Hurricane Expert K. Emanuel for reversing his stance on Global Warming Impact?

Question

Kerry Emanuel is a noted scientist at MIT who has publicly reversed his stance on the impact of Global Warming on Hurricanes.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/off-topic/mit-atmospheric-scientist-reverses-position-on-global-warming/

Answer 1

It's a somewhat distorted view of what Emanuel's paper does say.  Emanuel et al. state in the paper:

"There is an overall tendency toward decreasing frequency of events in the Southern Hemisphere, consistent with direct simulations of tropical cyclones using global climate models, and power dissipation and storm intensity generally increase, as expected from theory and prior work with regional tropical cyclone models."

In the following paragraph, Emanuel et al. state:



"It is noteworthy that simulated global tropical cyclone power dissipation increases by more than 60% in simulations driven by NCAR–NCEP reanalysis over the period of 1980–2006, consistent with deductions from best-track data, while global power dissipation increases somewhat more than that over the next 200 yr in simulations driven by climate models undergoing global warming. This suggests either that the greater part of the large global increase in power dissipation over the past 27 yr cannot be ascribed to global warming, or that there is some systematic deficiency in our technique or in global models that leads to the underprediction of the response of tropical cyclones to global warming."

The message there is that intensity increases as he predicted, but that the already observed increase in intensity already accounts for most of the predicted increase over the next 200 years.

It's a far more ambiguous statement than given in the right-wing blog you are citing.  Here is the relevant article from the Houston Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hurr...

which is also more indefinite and shows the jury is still out.

What I find amusing is that you skeptics *love* it when MODELS show there is not effect but cry havoc and let fly the dogs of war when these same models show there is an effect.

Answer 2

I think it's interesting and not altogether surprising.  The link between global warming and hurricane frequency and intensity has always been a difficult one to determine.  Recently studies concluded that two global warming effects - increased sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and increased wind shear - would have opposite effects.  Increased SSTs would make hurricanes stronger while increased windshear would make them weaker.  The net effect is very hard to predict.

The Emanuel paper itself is available here:

http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0...

I prefer to get information directly from the scientists rather than filtered through the media, which often results in distortion of what the scientists actually concluded.  Here is what the Emanuel paper said:

"These simulations show potentially large changes in tropical cyclone activity in response to global warming, though the sign and magnitude of the changes vary a great deal from basin to basin and from model to model, reflecting large regional differences in the global model predictions as well as natural multidecadal variability in each model that cannot be averaged out over the 20-yr periods considered here. There is an overall tendency toward decreasing frequency of events in the Southern Hemisphere, consistent with direct simulations of tropical cyclones using global climate models, and power dissipation and storm intensity generally increase, as expected from theory and prior work with regional tropical cyclone models. On the other hand, there is a tendency toward increased frequency of events in the western North Pacific."

In the end I think it's an interesting finding, and I'm glad that one consequence of global warming probably won't be as bad as scientists initially expected.

As noted by J S, this finding simply involves one result of global warming, and doesn't have anything to do with the warming itself or its causes.

Answer 3

I think he will lose his funding resources, his job, his reputation and anything else that he values.

I commend his courage.

Answer 4

This is a distortion, if not an out and out lie.  

What he said was that the climate models he had helped develop are producing incorrect predictions about the effects of Global Warming on hurricanes, and need to be corrected.  Why can't people tell the truth?  The crackpot bloggers make a great deal out of something like this, but they make a great deal out of farts too.

Answer 5

There's a rare piece of objective science in amongst all the political activism.

It seems the researchers who 'proved' that hurricanes are increasing in intensity have had to develope special new ways of classifying the intensity of hurricanes so they can make the numbers go up.  The exisiting methods of classifying storms showed no such trend.

Answer 6

A lot of you (like dana and J.S.) just skim over the fact that alarmists have been using the idea that "hurricanes will get stronger" for some time now. As others note, there is much controversy on this subject and it is starting to look like hurricane frequency will likely go down slightly and hurricane frequency will probably not increase *substantially.*

Emanuel says in the Houston Chronicle article:

"The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries."

Vecchi says in that same article:

"While his results don't rule out the possibility that global warming has contributed to the recent increase in activity in the Atlantic, they suggest that other factors — possibly in addition to global warming — are likely to have been substantial contributors to the observed increase in activity."

More:

"In the new paper, Emanuel and his co-authors project activity nearly two centuries hence, finding an overall drop in the number of hurricanes around the world, while the intensity of storms in some regions does rise."

Notice the use of *some regions.*

Some more:

"For example, with Atlantic hurricanes, two of the seven model simulations Emanuel ran suggested that the overall intensity of storms would decline. Five models suggested a modest increase."

Emanuel finishes up by saying:

"There's still a lot of uncertainty in this problem."

It's good to hear scientists admitting that they don't know something (Don't get me wrong, there has been a lot of advances in the field of hurricane research, but there is still much to learn).

J.S.,

Based upon your response above, it seems like you are not interested in actual science, rather you are more interested in convincing people of your point of view. The inquirer was not talking about global warming itself, but global warming's impact on hurricanes. It is fascinating to see people who feel the need to defend their position when it is not even being attacked.

Edit:

gcnp58, in regards to your last paragraph:

I, as a skeptic, give little credence to computer models that predict climate trends, hurricanes, and a multitude of other things. However, model predictions of hurricanes have a little better track record, and hurricanes are not nearly as complicated as the Earth's climate in total (thats not to say hurricanes are not complicated--they are, and there is still much to learn).

Answer 7

Just another GW UNTRUTH that time proves to be WRONG.

Answer 8

when the west coast of the US has a El Nino weather cycle there are few  Hurricanes.

Global Warming will cause more and longer lasting El Nino cycles.

Thus as the world gets warmer there will be less Hurricanes

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that.

It is a known weather phenomenon.

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides...

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/faq....

http://edition.cnn.com/NATURE/9909/03/el...

http://gocaribbean.about.com/b/2006/09/2...

the treehuggers never were rocket scientist.

and many don't even read scientific research.

so all it took was one person to start the story that global warming would cause MORE Hurricanes

and then every one else chimed in with out checking facts.

when Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast they so badly wanted to use it to prove global warming that no one checked facts.

this just proves how wrong many of there facts are wrong.

Answer 9

Who cares about hurricanes?  

You're talking about a theoretical symptom, not global warming itself (or the other measured and projected effects).  Clearly some people don't understand that.

Answer 10

There's a legitimate scientific controversey on the effect of global warming on hurricanes.

Note though, that most all scientists on both sides of that, still agree that global warming is real, and mostly caused by us.

Good book about the hurricane thing:

http://www.amazon.com/Storm-World-Hurric...

Answer 11

I don't think much of it, he has just downgraded one unfounded estimate (50% increase in activity) with another (20% increase).

If his 1st model was GIGO, why should I think otherwise of the new and improved GIGO.

What is really sad is these continuing changes in predictions and the assumptions they are based on is causing a loss in credability in science in gerneral.  Might be time to reassess standards and practices.

Answer 12

In February a press release issued by NOAA where they publish an opinion smashing any link between hurricanes and global warming saying that “There  is nothing in the U.S. hurricane damage record  that indicates global warming has caused a  significant increase in destruction along our coasts.”

It seems that most scientist are turning their back on the link between Global warming and hurricanes.

Answer 13

one does note that he's not published his new position on an official MIT website.  i wonder why?