At the risk of starting another blog brushfire, I need to correct the record about something that keeps coming up in the debate about hurricanes and (ugh) global warming.
There is a perception, repeated numerous times here and elsewhere, that meteorologists and climatologists have developed a habit of “crying wolf” about the number of storms that they expect to form in the Atlantic each year. This perception is understandable, for reasons that I’ll explain after the jump, but it’s also entirely incorrect. And I mean flatly, facially false.
The perception is based on one data point, namely the 2006 season, which is obviously not enough to demonstrate a trend or pattern. Between 2000 and 2005, the preseason forecasts actually underestimated the number of named storms every single year. And of course, as I’ve pointed out before, it’s laughably early in the 2007 season to be asking, “Where are all the hurricanes?”; the vast majority of the season still lies ahead, in terms of expected activity. It’s impossible to accurately assess the seasonal forecasts until mid-October at the earliest. So the only season the “cry wolf” crowd is really talking about is 2006.
The most widely respected of the annual forecasters is Dr. William Gray, and his predictions have generally been fairly representative of the range of predictions issued by various meteorological and climatological institutions, so I’ll use his numbers as our sample, for simplicity’s sake. Since 2000, Dr. Gray’s final preseason forecast (the one that’s issued in June) has only overestimated the number of named storms once: last year, when he predicted 17 storms, and only 10 formed. That’s a pretty big error, but what all the “cry wolf” taunters seem to forget is that 2006’s mistake followed on the heels of an even bigger mistake in the opposite direction in 2005, when Dr. Gray predicted just 15 storms, and 28 formed!
Dr. Gray, and everyone else, vastly underestimated 2005 and significantly overestimated 2006. How that adds up to a pattern of “crying wolf,” I have no idea, especially considering that in the five preceding years (2000-2004), Dr. Gray underestimated, by between 1 and 3 storms, each year’s storm total. (I haven’t looked at the pre-2000 forecasts, but I think a record of overestimating the number of storms in 6 of the last 7 years is enough to dispel the notion of a recent “cry wolf” pattern.)
So why does this demonstrably false “crying wolf” perception exist? I think I know why: the media. News outlets never used to pay much attention to these annual forecasts, and with good reason — they’re not terribly precise, they tell the general public nothing particularly useful (like where individual storms might go, or when), and they’re just as likely to create a false sense of security, or of danger, as to give anyone valuable information. So the forecasts were traditionally chewed on by weather nerds, but generally ignored by the masses. Then came the freakish hurricane season of 2005, followed by the cinematic/political phenomenon known as An Inconvenient Truth, and all of a sudden, these predictions were big news — bigger than they deserve to be, I’d argue. And of course, the media failed to provide any sort of valuable context, so people who had never before paid attention to these annual predictions were fooled into believing that they are some sort of gospel truth.
The resulting letdown was predictable. When the 2006 season failed to meet expectations (due a variety of understandably unforeseen, but thoroughly explainable, meteorological factors, none of which involve conspiratorial fear-mongering by Al Gore and his army of zombie-like scientists), some members of the public became disillusioned and concluded that the whole exercise was worthless, or worse, rigged. So naturally, when the 2007 predictions were again trumpeted in the media without any sort of context or analysis, just like the 2006 numbers had been, people were cynical, and thus have been all too eager to prematurely declare that the scientists are up to their old tricks again, trying to scare us into submission at the altar of ManBearPig — when in reality, the scientists are simply doing what they’ve always done, and it just so happens that people started paying attention in a year when they screwed up badly.
It doesn’t help that there has been a sudden proliferation of these long-range predictions, as every meteorologist and his brother jumped on the long-range hurricane forecast gravy train in hopes of getting some free publicity. At its core, though, this misunderstanding between the scientists and the public is largely a creation of the MSM beast. It must be enormously frustrating for serious scientists to see their work absolutely butchered like this. But frankly, I wonder if the whole exercise isn’t futile or even counterproductive at this point. What is gained by giving people a rough estimate (or rather, multiple rough estimates) of the number of storms that might form each year? Hypothetically, a big number might encourage them to prepare — but shouldn’t they be prepared regardless of the number (considering Hurricane Andrew hit in a season that saw just 7 storms)? And isn’t the preparedness advantage more than offset by the danger of complacency caused by this “crying wolf” perception? When I see people asking questions like, “Where are all the hurricanes the NHC had forecast for the last 2 years? just curious as to why we should panic over predictions that have little or no accuracy,” I worry that the credibility of hurricane forecasters is being undermined — even as their ability to predict individual storms continues to improve by leaps and bounds — because of misunderstandings and misperceptions about long-term forecasts that aren’t all that useful anyway.
UPDATE: And another thing…
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Categories: 2007 Hurricane Season
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August 13th, 2007 at 11:17:42 pm
There are two reasons that the hurricane predictions are being focused on from the global warming skeptics.
1) The global warming movement has very publically stated that we will see more hurricanes, and Katrina sized hurricanes every year because of global warming. They were predicting that both last year and this year would be monster hurricane seasons. It didn’t happen last year, and this year seems to be average at worst. (at least so far) However the global warming movement and the MSM refuse to acknowledge the fact that they were/are crying wolf.
2) Also, as you have stated, the best in the business at predicting hurricanes have gotten it way wrong the last two years. This is yet more evidence to add to other evidence like weather forecasting, to strengthen the arguement that we have no fundamental understanding of weather or climate, and that it is absurd to predict global climate in the future, impossible to express causation of climate change and the height of folly to blame climate change on man.
August 13th, 2007 at 11:49:40 pm
Gahrie, you make some valid points, but I’ll just say that you need to analyze your logic with the same vigor that your analyze the other sides’ logic. If you did so, you’d notice lots of holes, which obscure the valid points somewhat. For example, off the top of my head: confusion and/or obfuscation with regard to who “they” are (these predictions aren’t coming from “the global warming movement,” they’re coming from various meteorological experts and entities, including Dr. Gray, who, if I’m not mistaken, is a GW skeptic); continuing insistence on using this year as evidence for something that it categorically is not evidence for at this point in time (the prediction wasn’t “we’d have monster hurricanes by mid-August,” it was that the season would be above average, and since we’re like 10% into the season in terms of the amount of activity one would expect, it makes NO sense to talk about how this season hasn’t lived up to predictions so far).
August 14th, 2007 at 2:22:35 am
“The perception is based on one data point, namely the 2006 season, which is obviously not enough to demonstrate a trend or pattern.”
What about the repeated references to climate data for the last 10, 20, 150 years of the planet’s 4.5 BILLION years so often use to prop up arguments of drastic, man-made climate changes in a NON-STATIC climatic system on geologic timescales (as is the case on every planet for which we have data?)
Not so sound of an argument if you ask me, and very much analogous to your “single data point” assertion.
August 14th, 2007 at 5:16:48 am
Brendan:
1) My post was not an attack on Dr. Gray. I fully accept that he is acting in good faith to do an impossible job. I was citing him to show that not even the experts can accurately predict the weather or the climate in the near future, let alone in historical timeframes.
2) My post was an explanantion for the skeptics’ attack on the global warming movement, the MSM, and Gore, all of whom have been breathlessly predicting longer hurricane seasons, more hurricanes, and stronger hurricanes, but have not been asked to answer for the fact that none of these predictions have panned out.
3) You have earlier stated that on average the first hurricane forms in mid-August. That means in a normal year, it is just as likely as not that we would have had a hurricane by now. So at worst, so far we are having an average hurricane season, not global warming movement’s longer, stronger, more numerous one as predicted, just like last year.
August 14th, 2007 at 8:32:20 am
I would posit that a good deal of the hype is due to the antics of a handful of bad players in the media, especially on The Weather Channel.
In years past, TWC was a reliable source for hurricane data, with a dedicated time slot for discussing the tropics, and a pair of seasoned hurricane forecasters. They did a good job for a good many years in a low-key fashion, reporting what needed to be said, and holding off on editorializing and speculating.
In the past several years (I think Ivan in 2004 was the turning point) TWC has begun to beat the global warming drum (and play themselves up in the ratings). What with the need to always show “growth” to the investors, it must be difficult to sit back and “just be a weather channel” and thus the need to hype and pontificate. Thus, they “cover” the yearly forecasts as their version of a pronouncement from the Fed, and all context and analysis is thrown away.
…
I just hope that all the scrambling for ratings doesn’t cause a “cry wolf” reaction for coastal residents… despite the pretty pictures on TV, you really don’t understand or appreciate the power of a hurricane until you’ve been through one, and done the cleanup afterwards.
August 14th, 2007 at 8:32:26 am
Brendan, I share your displeasure at the way in which the political battle over “climate science” has seeped into hurricane forecasting. Good forecasts of individual storms are a matter of life and death to coastal residents. It’s vital to stay clear-headed about this.
Seasonal forecasting is much more shaky than short-term storm prediction. It relies on global data that is much sketchier, and on historical inference that is difficult to correct for changes in observation technique (i.e. ship records vs. satellite data). Gray acts in good faith, but he and his successors must operate in a media environment tainted by controversies that unworldly meteorologists may not fully comprehend.
August 14th, 2007 at 9:51:05 am
Why predict at all just watch them as they come and alert when it is apparent that a Hurricane is going to hit the United States, otherwise you do indeed look like the boy who cried wolf and when a serious Hurricane is imminent people do not heed the cry.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:16:20 am
You write, “what all the “cry wolf” taunters seem to forget is that 2006’s mistake followed on the heels of an even bigger mistake in the opposite direction in 2005, when Dr. Gray predicted just 15 storms, and 28 formed!”
Perhaps the “wolf-criers” are unfair; but I’m afraid the ordinary skeptics like myself will draw the underlying lesson: if the smartest, most knowledgeable experts have issued such grossly erroneous short-term predictions, we should probably not be very confident about their long-term predictions either.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:33:18 am
i agree with jaded, hurricane predictions should not get ANY press because they try to forecast climate events over a prolonged period of time. Also, every time this year there has been a downgrade in the forecast, Reuters and the AP always quote an expert warning the worst is yet to come. Now without getting specific in that comment, that yes theoretically the worst is yet to come due to when hurricanes form, those comments are not used in that context and instead are used to try to create fear and prop up the meme of man-made global warming.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:54:46 am
The traditional definition of “expert” was “Someone from out of town, carrying a briefcase”. For the news media, it’s “Someone with a big mouth who has been talking about something for a while”.
Trying to guess how many hurricanes are going to form in any given year is too much like trying to bet on the number of straight flushes on any given evening. Plain silly due to the number of random factors.
August 14th, 2007 at 11:00:35 am
As a Florida east coast resident all this hurricane “forecasting” is perhaps more than just academic to me. But, your point is well taken that the scientists seem to be doing what they have always done, at least in the forecasting department, it is just that “we” (the media and otherwise) are paying more attention.
What I am curious about, and perhaps you can address Brendan, is my perception as a long time Florida resident (35 years) that they are presently “naming” storms that, until recently, would not have been afforded a “name”. This year, the brief storms Andrea and Chantal seemed undeserving of naming.
(Which leads into another topic – the whole absurdity of the “naming” process and media focus thereon. In 2005 there was near breathless panic that “THEY HAD RUN OUT OF NAMES!” Well, at last check www.babynamesworld.com has over 19,000 names, so the “running out of names” is a panic based on a pre-arranged fiction of only a “limited” number of names (21 – no Q’s, U’s, X’s, Y’s or Z’s). Why not make a master list of 5000 names which would last centuries?)
That aside, what may be happening is not only that “we” are reacting differently, but the folks at the NOAA / NHC are “over naming” in an effort to match a forecasting system that has remained relatively stable.
August 14th, 2007 at 11:10:48 am
I’ve been a resident of So. Fla for many years now, and watched the annual prediction spectacle over the last 14 years play out.
I think I am with Brendan when it comes to identifying this as a media problem. They treat each of these predictions (and the mid season’s revisions….gee, we all wish we could make our super bowl bets at the end of the 3rd quarter, eh?) like they were being handed down from Sinai. With great gravity and seriousness, they proclaim “X number of storms, Y number of hurricanes, and Z number of intensive hurricanes, Q of which will be left handed…” It’s always front page in the paper and headlines on the 6:00 news….and we all are supposed to……..what?
That is what irritates me. The message should the same every year: It’s hurricane season. It only takes one. Be ready. Period. The end. All we need to know.
I too, believe Dr Gray and other forecasters are acting in good faith. It’s the state of the science right now that they make such big errors, both ways. But these seasonal forecasts are just worthless. I mean that in the plainest sense. Worthless. They mean nothing to me. How could they? But the media is relentless in hyping these forecasts every single year. It is so tiresome. They either need to stop with the seasonal forecasts (really, exactly what benefit do they provide? Data to help the insurance industry hedge, maybe? I dunno.),….or media, stop it! (yeah, likely).
August 14th, 2007 at 11:20:11 am
And boy, I would have so much respect for any news organization, that published, right on the front page along side of the breathless seasonal predictions, a quick little chart showing past the past several years’ margin’s of error.
It would be like saying, “Here is some news, but it’s probably crap, huh?”
Because I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I bet if I made a seasonal prediction every year that was simply the yearly averages, I probably would do just as good as Grey or any of the rest of them……And again: It wouldn’t change a thing. We have to take a look EVERY June 1st at our preparations, and get ‘em ready for the season, no matter what the seasonal forecast is. (Then, usually spend the winter eating a lot of canned goods for lunches and dinners……)
August 14th, 2007 at 11:40:12 am
hey Brendan,thanks for the post I thought you were referring to me,And you made my point the MSM loves to jump on doomsday scenarios.And if people of science are going to make predictions then I will say Is this science or conjecture? which is really my point.No one can accurately predict the weather other than it’s gonna be hot or we’re gonna have a hurricane or 2(or28),
Bob
August 14th, 2007 at 11:54:13 am
Gahrie hits the nail on the head. Someone is crying ‘wolf’ and it’s not the AGW skeptics.
August 14th, 2007 at 12:14:06 pm
Thanks, Brendan. There is simply no way that even the best metereological estimates can stand up to the constant and time-sensitive pressure we media consumer place upon them.
The forecasts aren’t all that reliable to begin with and sure make a shoddy place to prove or disprove some hypothesis about global warming. Attaching such importance to educated guesses will only further muddle the real picture of what is happening.
And the defense that “I’m not politicizing science, I’m merely pointing out that Al Gore did it first” only shows the obvious-that Al Gore ain’t a great mind.
August 14th, 2007 at 12:18:53 pm
Brendan Go checkout weather underground (great site BTW) tell me what INVEST90l is? I mean come on if that deserves a name then Colorado should have named storms every day,sad to say this gets overhyped and you guys down south get screwed IMHO
Bob
August 14th, 2007 at 12:48:10 pm
Brendan,
Very good article and astute and appropriate words in defense of Dr. Gray. You made one small error, however, that I think deserves calling out: in the seventh paragraph second sentence, it should have read “Al Gore and his army of scientist-like zombies”.
John
August 14th, 2007 at 1:12:48 pm
Gahrie came close to hitting the nail on the head, but I think a big issue that was missed is that:
1. Big media buys into global warming 100%.
2. They give a lot of credibility to the hurricane forecasts because scientists are able to predict global warming with 100% certainty (in the view of big media).
3. Big media never discusses the probably of errors in the forecast, because if scientists are not able to predict the number of hurricanes for just one year out, the whole world view of a lot of people in big media gets turned upside down (with respect to the scientists accuracy predicting global warming).
Thus the mainstream public remains uninformed on the realities of the forecasts.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:42:43 pm
Thus the mainstream public remains uninformed on the realities of the forecasts.
As opposed to the right-wingers who choose to ignore mountains of evidence from peer reviewed journals by respected scientists that show global warming is in fact quite real and humans are in fact contributing to it.
I’ve never understood why the right is so pathologically afraid of the idea that we should be working to be less destructive on the environment, its like a tree beat them up as a child or something…
August 14th, 2007 at 2:22:17 pm
Well, it’s like Oliver Twist, if you keep asking for ‘More, more, more,’ but there isn’t any ‘more,’ conclusions will be drawn.
The point of us global warming deniers is not that the annual predictions were wrong but that there haven’t been more storms, and we were promised MORE.
Also, of course, the dishonesty of anybody (Gray included) who runs his trend line further back than the satellite observations go.
(It does not inspire confidince, by the way, that although the forecasters got the track of Flossie almost right — the first time they’ve ever done that for a powerful storm approaching Hawaii — they got the strength wrong by almost an order of magnitude.)
August 14th, 2007 at 3:03:09 pm
David K,
I am not saying that global warming doesn’t exist, I am saying that the jury should still be out on the subject. You need to think objectively. The simple fact is that the amount of warming that we have perceived (for the good data) is within the uncertainty (margin of error) of our ability to take the temperature of the earth. The earth’s temperature is generally given as 14 degrees C +/- 0.7 degrees C. The amount of warming we are supposed to have seen since 1880 or so is around 0.6 degrees C, which is within the margin of error.
BR
August 14th, 2007 at 3:30:07 pm
I addressed some of the points that are being made here (re: the notion that the inaccuracy of seasonal hurricane forecasts proves that global-warming forecasts are unreliable) in a new post.
August 14th, 2007 at 3:55:49 pm
Let’s, for the sake of argument accept that the jury is still out on Global Warming. I do not see how it follows 1) that it is the height of folly to think that man has an impact on the environment. Such a thing should be obvious to anyone that man has had significant impacts on the environment and other animals for thousands of years, and in all likely hood will continue to have such an impact until such time as we become extinct. Now weather man has an impact on the temperature, I suppose is more debatable. But given the unprecedented nature of our actions and our general history of doing stupid things on a massive scale only to find out later that it wasn’t so much in our best interest–damning rivers to the point that salmon can’t spawn being an example that leaps to mind. The Army Corpse of Engineers efforts with flood control for the Mississippi river being another. So I don’t see how it is folly to at least investigate weather or not we are having an impact on the climate through our actions. It would be, I should think, folly not to. 2) even if our actions burning fossil fuels has absolutely no impact on the environment, how does it then follow that we should continue a process without change and without investing in alternatives that is geologically unsustainable AND geopolitically destabilizing AND makes our cities and towns less comfortable to live in AND tends to make us dependent on an inefficient use of resources. Whatever else they might be cars and trucks are massively less efficient than other modes of transportation for both goods and people. And 3) why this means we should not invest in and move towards cleaner, healthier, more efficient technologies that will reduce the amount of toxic chemicals we pump into the air and seas. As a side effect these technologies might also curb global warming that, again for the sake of argument, may or may not be a problem.
In other words just because you argue that the jury is still out on Global Warming how does it then follow that we should just sit on our hands and do nothing? There seem to be more than enough reasons to change our behaviors without global warming.
August 14th, 2007 at 4:31:21 pm
“choose to ignore mountains of evidence from peer reviewed journals by respected scientists ”
It appears that the peer reviewing is badly done, or downright dishonest since they ALL missed Mann’s lies and they ALL missed NASA’s Y2K bug. How can you take GW peer review seriously ever again?
I have a degree in computing science. How can you rely on computer projections where the code AND the data rre kept secret and you have to take the “scientists” word for it that he got it right? (And you have to ignore how much money is involved in the “scientists” lies — sorry … guesswork)
Mann lied.
NASA lied.
August 14th, 2007 at 5:08:27 pm
Speaking of money and the global warming debate… Um, which side is it that has more? Lot’s more? possibly even exponentially more? Oh right, the side that want’s you to think it’s not happening… That was a stupid argument. Next?
August 14th, 2007 at 6:38:59 pm
Look, the forecasts DO matter. My homeowner’s insurance got cancelled this year due to the higher prediction of hurricanes. And so did thousands of others… I’m way up in Massachusetts, a little less than a mile from the coast. So, even if the scientists don’t think what they say matters — it does. My insurance agent wanted me to go in the state plan, pay four times as much for my insurance, have a 20% wind deductible, and no earthquake insurance. Needless to say I dropped that insurance company for afor all of my insurance needs. I’ve never put in an insurance claim in 14 years of owning my home. These insurers DO listen to the “experts”… and then they come up with their own equations.
August 14th, 2007 at 7:13:14 pm
Tell you what.
Come up with any computer model that can be set at 1900, and then run forward to today, and accurately predict the climate and temperature for the last 100 years as we experienced it, with no tweaks or modifications of data, and maybe I’ll believe you can come up with one that can predict the next 100 years.
The problem is, you can’t.
August 14th, 2007 at 8:11:52 pm
dcl #26 - how about you bring in some actual science, not this emotional drivel about “Speaking of money and the global warming debate… Um, which side is it that has more? Lot’s more? possibly even exponentially more? Oh right, the side that want’s you to think it’s not happening… That was a stupid argument. Next?” …
And please find something fresh - this whole “global warming denier” stuff is old and tired …
I don’t know anyone that seriously disagrees that global warming happens … the honest ones also admit that global cooling happens …
The rational folk among us take a look at Global Warming (the Cult, the “settled science”) and we are sceptical all over it … we take a look at the temperatures over the past decades and centuries without dropping inconvenient periods and we see global temperature variations with reasoning supported by plausible science … not “settled science” - plausible science …
My own problem with the doom-and-gloom apocalyptics of Global Warming is that their methodologies tend to be what I learned are flawed methodologies in primary school … picking and choosing data points doesn’t make for a convincing curve or diagram … concealing raw data doesn’t make for convincing statistics … shouting down alternative explanations doesn’t make for good science …
I learned very early that one could tell that a weather forecaster was lying by watching his lips … weather forecasters didn’t have any good scientific tools with any form of convincing track record … Punxatawny Phil just isn’t good science …
Thus, when *I* say that I am not convinced by climate predictions, it is because those making the predictions haven’t been able to convince me that they are any more accurate than Punxatawny Phil …
When I link my lack of faith in weather forecasters and climate forecasters, it is because I see them as being equally charlatans - in different areas of different sciences, yet equally charlatans …
Like gahrie, I look for models that work, that allow for prediction of results … I’d be happy to see a model that explains either weather or climate since 1950, that can predict either for the next few years that we can then watch … what I also require is that whoever has this model also be able to give the model and explanations to a third party, and have them get the same results … to me, science is repeatable and falsifiable … and, when it’s neither, it is a cult (like Global Warming is right now) …
August 15th, 2007 at 12:23:31 am
You got that upside down, dcl. The chicken littles are the recipients of $50 billion (give or take a billion or two).
The global warming deniers, such as myself, get little or nothing. I get nothing.
I do it for love.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:37:27 am
I don’t get anything either, so what exactly is your point? Hi I’m a random person and I don’t get money to run around spreading bullshit ipso facto my side does not get money to run about spreading bullshit? Because that argument follows. Speaking of flaws, where does this $50 billion figure come from? Do you even have any idea? Not saying it’s not possibly true, just asking where you came up with it? What is true is that oil companies, coal companies, car companies &c. &c. invest a good bit of money in their efforts to down play the science on global warming. And you know what, I’d expect them to, it would be bad business not to. But, that doesn’t make what they say not marketing mubo-jumbo. Just like the new iPod Flea isn’t and it’s supper small yada yada is marketing mubo-jumbo. Now some times marketing has a basis in fact and some times it doesn’t. However, that does nothing to counter the realities of the billions of dollars being spent to down play the issue of global climate change.
And like I said, not withstanding global climate changes current practices are unsustainable… I’m afraid that is just reality. Oil and Coal will run out full stop. We will have to do something different. I think we can all agree that this e-85 ethanol crap is not a solution — it is expensive and inefficient to produce and a waist of food. So it is best to start planning for a future when we need to make changes now, before oil becomes sufficiently scarce that we really are fighting wars for oil and quite out in the open about that fact. In other words our energy addiction is not just a problem because of climate change. That is only one highly likely problem. There are a whole host of other problems that we pretty much know to exist and don’t seem to want to do anything about either.