CBS News posted an article titled, “Southeast Asia floods and landslides kill more than 1,000 as climate change turbocharges monsoon season,” claiming that extreme rainfall associated with the Southeast Asian monsoon is now worse due to climate change. [emphasis, links added]
This is false.
There is no clear trend of increasing monsoon rainfall patterns or worsening monsoon seasons. In fact, ample research indicates monsoons may have become less severe in recent decades.
CBS reported that extreme rainfall events hit Sri Lanka, Sumatra, southern Thailand, and northern Malaysia, which are currently in monsoon season, “but scientists say climate change is producing more extreme rain events, and turbocharging storms across the planet.”
Already, CBS is off to a bad start. The first link they provided regarding extreme rain and “turbocharged” storms does not say that climate change HAS done those things, only that it could in the future, according to projections from climate models.
The models that the claims rely on are famously inaccurate at predicting the future, which does not bode well for the claim.
The second link discusses only attribution studies that presuppose storms are worse because of human-caused warming – they do not show this is true with real-world measured data.
Climate Realism has discussed the grave error of relying on attribution studies in past articles. What was true in those cases is still true for the case of CBS’s recent post: attribution studies are not evidence, and they aren’t even good science because they begin with the conclusion that human activities are related to a particular storm’s severity, and then set out to prove how bad global warming made them.
They are more like propaganda constructed with complex computer models.
Data indeed suggest that average rainfall is higher in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, but this does not translate to severe monsoons and flooding.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even admits it has only “low confidence” that climate change is impacting flooding globally.
Past studies on South Asian monsoons have shown no clear trend across the region, which experiences annual rainy seasons.
For instance, studies on India have supported claims that the monsoon is becoming more severe, making dangerous floods more likely, and also weakening, threatening South Asia with eternal drought.
Yet another study from 2013 concluded that global warming has had no impact on monsoon rainfall.
Historically, Southeast Asia has seen both severe and weak monsoon seasons, which are partially tied to natural fluctuations of warmth in the Pacific, called the El Niño Southern Oscillation.
Paleo-data from rivers across Southeast Asia show a strong correlation between El Niño and rainfall patterns across the region.
When the Pacific enters a cooler-to-neutral phase, rainfall increases, and during the warm period, the area experiences more drought. This year saw the end of the warm phase and has begun to lean more towards the cool La Niña, so more rain should be expected.
According to the World Bank Group’s climate portal, Sri Lanka has seen no established long-term trend in annual precipitation. The past few years have been rainier than the 1980s and 1990s, but not as rainy as the 1960s.
Thailand sees much the same recovery in precipitation from a low in the 1990s.
According to the same data group, Malaysia has also experienced a recent recovery from low precipitation in the 1980s/1990s, but no clear, sustained long-term trend.
Nothing in this data indicates a climate change-driven trend toward a “turbocharged” monsoon, nor does it show drought becoming more extreme or severe. Interannual and decadal fluctuations are normal for the regional climate.
CBS is taking advantage of the suffering of people in Southeast Asia to promote the human-driven catastrophe narrative, even when the data fail to support such a connection.
If one’s goal is to motivate demands for government action on climate, as CBS’s seems to be, it is easier to convince people using emotional stories sans historical context, especially when trying to persuade people to be afraid of climate change.
Presenting the facts in a nuanced and accurate way would be more honest if CBS were concerned about honest reporting. Still, it would be less likely to motivate demands for government action since the data suggest there are no alarming trends to worry about.
Top photo by Dibakar Roy on Unsplash
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