Tornadoes, Climate Change, and the Media

American Thinker ^ | 7 Apr, 2023 | Anthony Watts

[MtnClimber]

The hard data on tornado numbers and intensity refute any assertions that tornadoes are worsening due to climate change.

After the recent devasting tornadoes in the Midwest and South, some media outlets scrambled to try to link the weather events to climate change, when in fact there is no hard data to support this. In fact, tornado data refute claims that tornadoes are increasing in number, range, or severity. However, Salon, Axios, and the Washington Post among others ran articles suggesting climate change is expanding the length of tornado season and area over which tornadoes commonly form, as well as adding ingredients to the atmosphere to make more and bigger tornadoes.

The Salon article, “How climate change made the Mississippi tornadoes more likely,” (actually a reprint from Grist) claimed, "That added ingredient of more heat and moisture is going to be the big thing that will influence what happens and we can expect potentially worse tornado outbreaks," said William Gallus, a professor of meteorology at Iowa State University.

SNIP

The hard data on tornado numbers and intensity refute any assertions that tornadoes are worsening due to climate change. The number of strong to violent tornadoes, F3 or higher, has dramatically declined for nearly half a century. Additional evidence shows attempts to tie tornadoes to climate change falls flat. For instance, 2018 was a record-low year for tornadoes in the United States. Even the Washington Post wrote that 2018 was the first year with no violent tornadoes in the United States.

Also flying in the face of climate change attribution during the so-called “hottest decade in recorded history” from 2010 to 2019, two record-low years for tornado strikes in the United States occurred, in 2014 and 2018.

[MtnClimber]

I am sure it is Trump’s fault even though faults usually cause earthquakes.

[grobdriver]

“Don’t confuse me with the facts”, says every liberal, everywhere.

[motor_racer]

The media often discuss the severity of storms and earthquakes in terms of only 2 metrics: lives lost and economic cost. As population increases and more people move into more places, developing those places and increasing the local economic value, combined with the effects of inflation, continual increase in the “severity” by these measures is all but guaranteed to increase.

Few look at actual counts of events or actual measures of their physical strength.