It’s Complicated
For a while, I’ve believed that increased frequency and intensity of major storms, provided clear evidence that climate change was real.
Until I found out that: It’s complicated”.
Several Atlantic hurricane activity metrics show pronounced increases since 1980. However, evidence for any significant trends is much weaker considering trends beginning from the early 20th century, partly due to observed data limitations. - NOAA fact sheet
A recent ChatGPT deep research provides the following referenced conclusions.
Possible decline in storm counts: While a clear upward trend in the number of storms has not been observed, some evidence suggests a slight decrease in global storm frequency over the long term. A recent study using historical reanalysis data (1850–2012) estimates that the annual number of tropical cyclones worldwide may have declined by about 13% since pre-industrial times. - Carbon Brief
In contrast to the ambiguous trend in total storm count, the number of major hurricanes (Category 3–5) has shown signs of increase. The proportion of tropical cyclones that reach major hurricane intensity has likely increased over the past four decades. - wmo
There is mounting evidence that the intensity of tropical cyclones is increasing. Storms are reaching higher maximum sustained winds than in decades past. - IPCC
… regional patterns vary. The North Atlantic has experienced a marked increase in hurricane frequency and intensity, whereas the Western Pacific’s storm count is steady or down but with a growing share of intense typhoons. The North Indian Ocean is seeing more intense storms in the Arabian Sea, and the Southern Hemisphere shows flat or declining cyclone numbers. These variations often reflect regional climate shifts — for instance, differential ocean warming rates, aerosol changes, or shifts in atmospheric circulation — superimposed on the globally-increasing thermal energy available to storms.
In other words, it isn’t as clear cut as more frequent and more intense.
Researching this question is how I stumbled onto the Honest Broker newsletter of Roger Pielke Jr..
In a multi-part series he dives into various aspects of climate and weather and provides a more nuanced viewpoint.
Got a minute? There is lots to read. In Interesting Things I read this week, I read Climate Science Whiplash, in which Roger Pielke Jr argues that cherry picking is easy, but baking cherry pies is hard.
There is surely a climate study to prove your point. Any point.
think of publications in the peer-reviewed literature that project how weather and climate variables might change due to human influences on the climate system. There are millions of such studies, and if you tell me a outcome — for instance, more hurricanes, less hurricanes, fewer but stronger hurricanes, more but weaker hurricanes, wetter, dryer, faster, slower — I can assuredly find you a peer-reviewed study that projects such an outcome due to human influences.
He calls what is going on: The Guaranteed Winner Scam Meets the Hot Hand Fallacy. I suggest you read the article to get his examples.
We reason backwards,
Instead of using science to inform understandings of the thing that just happened, we use the thing that just happened to cherry pick which subset of science we decide is relevant.
while nature may seem to have a hot hand occasionally.
First, the wide range of available predictions or projections essentially spanning the range of possibilities means that some expectations will seem to have anticipated the thing that just happened and suggest more to come. Second, a defining feature of climatology is persistence, suggesting that nature does sometimes have a “hot hand” — it is not always a fallacy in the context of climate. However, knowing a true “hot hand” from a false one is not simple..
As a result, we’re not really practicing science. We’re picking narratives.
Scientific assessments are so crucial because they force us to consider an entire body of research, not just a single paper or a seemingly-relevant tiny subset. Assessment is incredibly difficult not just because of the enormity of the scientific literature, but because the “excess of objectivity” supports multiple legitimate interpretations of that literature. Scientific assessment is hard to do well.
One reason why the IPCC framework sets a high bar for detection of changes in climate variables and the attribution of detected change to causes are is that it is so very easy for us to seem patterns in randomness and ascribe causes that do not actually exist, or are not particularly significant. Frustration with the scientific rigor of the IPCC is one factor underlying the rise of far less rigorous approaches to detection and attribution.
The “excess of objectivity” does not imply that we know nothing because we know so very much. What it does tell us is that knowing what is what can be challenging and requires a lot of work. This, more than anything else, is why we should all work to maintain (and improve) the integrity of scientific assessment bodies like the IPCC. Cherries are delicious — but you can’t make reliable understandings with them — stick to pie.