Duffy wrote:
Has there been an increased frequency and magnitude of weather events?
Serious question.
I know we've had an increased frequency and magnitude of REPORTING of pretty much every weather event.
Have we had more El Niño events?
Can you point to any data that shows any increase in extreme weather (as measured by, say, higher winds, more rain, colder blizzards, etc.)
Is ANY recent weather event unprecedented?
I know that here in the US we just had the first land fall of a hurricane in 12 years. That's very far BELOW average.
Absolutely, media coverage has expanded greatly, both in volume and breathlessness. No question there. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been more to report about, too. It's not a case of either/or; both things can be true at the same time. Besides Joe or Betty Reporter standing around in waders for a camera op, we do have standardized objective measures for various types of observations like temperature, rainfall (at both the flood and drought ends of the spectrum), wind speed, acres burned, etc, going back perhaps 100 years or more in many places, and pretty well-vetted proxy data going back much further.
Besides the most recent bigger media mega-frenzy events like Sandy, Harvey, and now Irma, we've had severe droughts and fires in the West, immediately following one of the coldest/wettest winters we've had before in our area, an ongoing SST anomaly in the north Pacific PDO (commonly referred to as 'The Blob' of warmer than avg water) ~ and while certainly all these types of events have happened on & off forever, we've been approaching and/or exceeding record observations again and again in just the past few years. It's obviously possible that it's only a totally random series of coincidences, but given that global weather/climate is essentially an integrated system, it's only natural for an intelligent/curious person to look for a broader systemic explanation (such as more trapped radiant energy in the atmosphere, consistent with increased greenhouse gas accumulations) underlying the common trend.
Funny, you yourself started this thread with a "Holy shit, look at this extreme weather!" and as soon as someone agrees with you that yeah, we really have been seeing a lot of really extreme shit in a relatively short period of time and then tries to connect the dots to a position you don't like, you immediately pivot and try to walk it back to "Whoa, whoa, nothing to see here..."
