No, media. Hurricane Helene wasn't made worse by local weather change – who agrees with that?

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on Friday, September 27 as a Category 4 storm and then moved inland, leaving behind large amounts of rain and subsequent flooding. As expected, many media outlets immediately blamed climate change for this storm and its damage. These claims are false. The data shows that over the past 50 years, there has been no climate signal for hurricane activity that neither worsened intensity nor caused more frequent hurricanes. Additionally, historical records show that flooding like this storm has occurred before in the same areas.

This is the second time this week that Climate Realism has reported on this particular storm, but the media's claims are extensive and worth refuting more than once. Here you will find a selection of some of the headlines. The Hill wrote, “How climate change is intensifying storms like Hurricane Helene.” Yahoo News claimed, “Helene shows that hurricanes in the age of climate change aren't just destroying coastlines,” while The Guardian opined, “'Nowhere is safe': Destroyed Asheville shows breathtaking dimensions of the climate crisis.” The Associated Press (AP) agreed: “Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain across the South.” Even Tampa, Florida Mayor Jane Castor jumped on the climate alarm bandwagon and stated in a CNN interview: “I don't know that there is anyone who can deny the impact of climate change on the sheer strength of the storms we have. I see it now.”

All of these claims ignore actual data and historical records. They also ignore the unique meteorological (not climatological) circumstances that have created the potential for more rainfall and flooding.

First of all, it must be said that weather events are not climate events. The weather works on completely different time scales than the climate.

Second, claims that storms like Helene worsen climate change simply don't hold up when the actual data is examined. For example, meteorologist Ryan Maue, Ph.D., quoted in the AP story mentioned above, keeps a running chart of “accumulated cyclone energy,” which tracks on a monthly basis how much energy is actually contained in hurricanes, as seen in the figure 1 below, updated through 2024.

Figure 1: Accumulated cyclone energy over the last 50 years and the Northern Hemisphere: running 24-month totals. Note that the year shown represents the value of ACE over the last 24 months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom row/gray boxes) and the entire world (top row/blue boxes). The area in between represents the entire ACE of the Southern Hemisphere.

He writes on his research page:

The accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of tropical cyclones has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability over the past 40 years. In the pentad since 2006, the Northern Hemisphere and Global Tropical Cyclone ACE has retreated dramatically to its lowest level since the late 1970s. Additionally, the frequency of tropical cyclones has reached historic lows.

So much for the Tampa mayor's claim: “I don't know that there is anyone who can deny the impact of climate change on the sheer strength of the storms we are seeing now.” The actual data refute your claim.

If climate change actually made storms like Helene stronger, this would show up on the ACE chart, but that's not the case.

Furthermore, meteorology says there is no connection between climate change and hurricanes. A page on the subject maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory clearly states that there is no substantive evidence to support such claims:

After all, climate science itself says that there is no connection between climate change and the strength or frequency of hurricanes. In Table 12.12 on page 90 – Chapter 12 of the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The occurrence of Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs) in certain time periods does not indicate a connection, either in the present or in the future. The color in the table corresponds to the confidence of the region with the highest confidence: White colors indicate where evidence of a climate change signal is missing or the signal is not present, resulting in an overall low confidence of an emerging signal. Note the tropical cyclone colors in the screenshot table below:

As noted in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, the IPCC's AR6 WG1 report published in August 2021, the IPCC stated: “Identifying past trends in TC.” [tropical storm] “Metrics remain a challenge,” a statement that essentially admits that scientists have yet to see a solid measurable upward trend in the data.

The media and uninformed politicians like Tampa Mayor Castor seem to conveniently forget the recent past. The United States recently went more than a decade (from 2005 to 2017) without a major hurricane – a Category 3 or higher hurricane – making landfall. This is the longest such period in the recorded history of the United States. If climate change had made hurricanes worse, such a drought of hurricanes would not have been possible.

Despite the media's inflated claims, data, science and history clearly show that their claims that climate change impacts hurricanes are completely untrue.

But what about claims that the massive rainfall and subsequent flooding in Helene was caused by climate change? Meteorologist Chris Martz gave a full analysis of the weather event on Twitter. Some excerpts:

I'll take a moment to explain the meteorology behind the North Carolina floods [and Tennessee]. The precipitation analysis of the last two days [from 12z today] shows that over a foot of rain fell in the Appalachian Mountains. This amount of rain in such a short period of time results in widespread rainfall regardless of land topography [and often devastating] Flooding.

The reason you're seeing 14-18 inches of rain [purple / pink contours in the image below] along the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge [mountains] is due to the strong orographic uplift reinforced by the mountains. [in the second figure below] As moist air parcels in the Helene bands rotated counterclockwise across the region, they were dynamically lifted to supersaturation on sloping terrain, causing excess vapor to condense and precipitate. On the leeward side in Tennessee, there was a slight rain shadow effect due to the downslope flow, resulting in lower rainfall totals. This happens almost every day on the Hawaiian Islands.

Okay, instead of spreading climate doomer doctrine, I will take a moment to explain the meteorology behind the floods in North Carolina [and Tennessee].

The precipitation analysis for the last two-days [from 12z today] reveals that over a foot of rain has fallen in the… pic.twitter.com/PA3sZnZg2E

— Chris Martz (@ChrisMartzWX) September 29, 2024

As always, a combination of the storm and local terrain caused rainfall to be heavier in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. The climate had nothing to do with it.

And history shows us that such heavy rains leading to flooding have occurred before in the Asheville, North Carolina area. Here are some photos from a newspaper article and a photo of Asheville, North Carolina, from July 17, 1916, when a major flood occurred:

The challenge for media and politicians is to explain how such catastrophic flooding occurred in Asheville before climate change even became a problem, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (which are thought to exacerbate climate change and the storms it supposedly triggers) are far lower was than today.

You can't. Instead, they would rather stick with a popular narrative that says a “climate crisis” caused this storm and the resulting damage, rather than pay attention to data, science and history that claim the exact opposite. This is completely wrong and, beyond simple ignorance, is journalistic and political misconduct.

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior fellow in environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of and behind the camera as an on-air meteorologist since 1978 and currently makes daily radio forecasts. He has developed weather graphics presentation systems for television and specialized weather instruments and is a co-author of peer-reviewed articles on climate issues. He runs the most viewed climate website in the world, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.

Originally posted at ClimateREALISM

Like this:

How Load…

Related