In response to Bill Proenza’s departure from the National Hurricane Center, Glenn Reynolds says, “Good thing it seems to be a slow season.”

I like and respect Glenn, but I can’t let his misimpression go uncorrected, especially when this false notion that it’s been a “slow season” is already being used by global-warming skeptics to press their political agenda. (Not that global-warming alarmists don’t also sometimes use false or distorted facts to press their agenda, mind you, but two wrongs don’t make a right!)

There is simply no valid basis for calling this a “slow season” thus far. Quite the opposite, actually. We’ve already had two tropical storms, Andrea and Barry, which puts us ahead of schedule. In the “average Atlantic season” between 1944 and 2005, the first named storm formed on July 10 — tomorrow — according to NOAA’s Tropical Cyclone Climatology page. The second named storm formed on August 6, and the first hurricane didn’t form until August 14. So we’ve got a loooong ways to go before the activity we’ve experienced so far would qualify this as a “slow season.” (And even if, as some folks believe, Barry wasn’t really a tropical storm, we’re still ahead of schedule!) Here’s a graphical representation of this season compared to the average season:

Glenn is presumably basing his statement on the ridiculous LiveScience article that he linked last month. The article, published on June 25, asked, “Where are All the Hurricanes?” Given that the season’s first hurricane wouldn’t be expected to form until 50 days after the article’s publication date, I think it’s pretty clear how ridiculous that question was. As I wrote previously:

A website called “LiveScience” shouldn’t be misinforming the public in this way. Not to put too fine a point on it, but anyone who “might wonder where all the action is” is completely ignorant of the climatological reality. … Two tropical storms, and no hurricanes, as of June 27, makes for an unusually active season so far, not an unusually inactive one! (On average, there is approximately one tropical storm every two years prior to June 30.) That’s not to say it won’t ultimately be a below-average season…but “Where are All the Hurricanes?” is, at this point, completely and utterly the wrong question. It would be like asking, on November 1 in New England, after two small October snowstorms, “Where are All the Blizzards?” It just makes no damn sense.

Confusion along these lines by Glenn and other non-weather-nerds is somewhat understandable, given the insanely active seasons of recent years. (It’s less understandable when “scientists” are the ones confused.) But let’s be clear. If the implicit comparison is to 2005 — when, by this point in the season, we’d had four named storms, two of them hurricanes, one of those a Category 4 — that’s just ridiculous. 2005 was the most active Atlantic hurricane season in history, by far. Calling this a “slow season” because it’s behind 2005’s pace is like calling Andy Roddick a bad tennis player because he hasn’t won as many tournaments as Roger Federer.

It might end up being another below-average season. But the jury is very much still out, and at any rate it isn’t a “slow season” thus far. Moreover, studies have repeatedly shown that there is virtually no correlation between the level of tropical activity through July and the level of tropical activity from August onward. A couple of illustrative examples are 2004 — the year of Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne — when no tropical storms formed until July 31; and 1992, when the first storm didn’t form until August 16. Its name? Andrew.

UPDATE: Glenn has posted a correction.

UPDATE 2: I just wrote in an e-mail to Glenn:

It could be argued that this season isn’t significantly “ahead of schedule,” but rather that it’s roughly on schedule, given that storms like Andrea and Barry might not have been named at all in prior years, especially in the pre-satellite era. What can’t really be argued is that it’s behind schedule. In fact, it’s pretty much impossible for a season to be behind schedule until at least July 11. :)

UPDATE 3: As with seemingly all weather-related posts these days, the only thing anybody wants to talk about in comments is… global warming. Apropos of which, a hearty Amen to Scientizzle’s comment:

It’s worth reiterating:

Yearly very small fractional increases in average global temperature and, in particular, regional oceanic temperatures would not simply manifest its effects in the integer value of the variable number of tropical storms that meet an arbitrarily defined human threshold. If anthropogenic global climate change exists, and if that climate change does result in the oft-predicted increase in the number and/or intensity of tropical storms, it certainly cannot be reliably determined by any one year of activity. It likely cannot be reliably determined by a decade’s worth of activity.

Long-term trends, people! Only controlled long-term analysis will support or refute this hypothesis. Why is that hard to understand?

Lots of people on both sides of the argument seem to have a hard time understanding it. Some folks on the “skeptics” side seem to think that the deceptive rhetoric of Al Gore & co. on this front somehow justifies their own deceptive fact-fudging for rebuttal purposes. Which is odd, because I thought the Right was anti-relativism. In any event, when substantial numbers of people on both sides of the debate are deceptively or ignorantly conflating weather with climate, short-term occurrences with long-term trends, the whole public discourse on this important issue suffers greatly. It’s time we all made a commitment to do our part to raise the discourse, regardless of what others might be doing.

National Hurricane Center director Bill Proenza has left his position after staff signed a petition calling for his ouster, CNN confirms.

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