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Jim Angel's avatar

Have you sent a copy of this to Bill Nye, given his misconceptions on the subject?

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Sean Rush's avatar

Roger, never a truer word was said: "We have often urged caution in over-interpreting tropical cyclone time series that begin in the 1970s and 1980s because it is well understood that this period represented a low point in activity. Starting an analysis in that period invariably will result in upwards trends in tropical cyclone activity. But start the same analysis in the decades before, and those trends are muted or disappear altogether."

In AR6's Summary for Policy Making, A.3.4, the following seemingly contradictory statements are made:

"It is likely that the global proportion of major (Category 3–5) tropical cyclone occurrence has increased over the last four decades, and it is very likely that the latitude where tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific reach their peak intensity has shifted northward; these changes cannot be explained by internal variability alone (medium confidence). There is low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in the frequency of all-category tropical cyclones. Event attribution studies and physical understanding indicate that human-induced climate change increases heavy precipitation associated with tropical cyclones (high confidence), but data limitations inhibit clear detection of past trends on the global scale."

So the IPCC cherry pick their opening statement by starting their analysis in the 1980s ('last four decades'). As Roger warns this presents an increasing trend that disappears when the full data set is considered which justifies the "low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trend."

Yesterday, University of Reading Professor, Ed Hawkins tried to pull me up on LinkedIn, by quoting just the first part of the above paragraph. When I replied with the full context, linking Roger in, I was blocked.

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