It was the coldest winter I can remember in New Orleans.
Seriously, it was cold. Made me nervous!There's some hard evidence!
The U.S. just experienced its coldest winter in 25 years, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The winter period December - February was the 18th coldest winter in the contiguous U.S. over the past 115 years, and the coldest since 1984 - 1985. It was also a wet winter, ranking 19th wettest. The states experiencing the coldest winters, relative to average, were Texas and Louisiana, which had their 5th coldest winters on record.
More extreme weather in the news. It got me thinking. In your opinion, are there more extreme weather events these days? If so, what to what do you attribute that?
You know why that graph is complete bull ****?
Prior to cataloged weather events, people weren't always around all those storms and hurricanes, nor did they even know what a hurricane, etc was.
The majority of the increase in weather phenomenon is mostly because people are there to experience it and we have the tools to detect them.
Some food for thought...
We've had seismographs since the 19th century and the technology has only improved since then.
Thermometers have been around for hundreds of years.
We've had radar since the 1940s, which was later improved to better detect weather and became more widely used.
We've had weather satellites since the early 1960s.
I doubt anyone would not know what a drought, tsunami, extreme cold, extreme heat, tornado, flood, wild fire, etc. are when they see one. It is however likely, as you suggested, that many of the extreme weather in the early 1900s was either not witnessed or not reported.
I'd like to see a better break down of this graph to see what it is claiming there is more of as of recent.
Yes, some of the early 1900s data could be ignored with their lack of weather detecting technology. Who knows if they even kept close record of weather in the early 1900s? But I feel our weather detecting capabilities were top notch after the 1960s. I wouldn't be able to confirm if this graph accurately shows the number of extreme weather in our recent history however, so until I see a better explained graph I'm going to ignore it.
100 years of weather is a terrible way to measure, whether or not, the extremes have increased.
What if 100 years prior to that we had 200 years of extreme weather phenomena?
That would certainly change the results.
It's just really, really stupid for someone to claim we have more extreme weather now compared to...... when?
It was the coldest winter I can remember in New Orleans.
I love how the graph acknowledges that its numbers are absolute garbage, then nevertheless says "How, we must ask, is global warming affecting the frequency of natural hazards?"