No Michael Mann — Climate change did not cause Hurricane Harvey

Dr. Mann at PSU has outdone himself. Back when New England had their famed February with snow and cold, he made the claim a warm eddy some 350 miles ESE of New England was enhancing water vapor and leading to extra snow.

But:

1. If he plotted trajectories from the storms he would see that the air from that source could not get back over New England since the mean flow would lead to enhanced snows in the Canadian Maritimes.
2. Convective feedback from such warm eddies would act to PULL STORMS OUT TO SEA.
3. The mean water vapor surface to 700 mb was BELOW NORMAL in New England in Feb 2015. The extra snow was high ratio snow with great crystal growth soundings because of the cold!

This is why climatologists should be forced to forecast for a year, so they can get an appreciation of what the weather does, not what they think it does based on their “research.”

But he may have outdone himself here.

I was emailed this quote, supposedly from him. It’s making the rounds in the skeptic community. It was in The Guardian:

The stalling is due to very weak prevailing winds, which are failing to steer the storm off to sea, allowing it to spin around and wobble back and forth. This pattern, in turn, is associated with a greatly expanded subtropical high-pressure system over much of the US at the moment, with the jet stream pushed well to the north. This pattern of subtropical expansion is predicted in model simulations of human-caused climate change.

He unwittingly describes THE EXACT OPPOSITE EFFECT to what is going on. He could not have even looked at the 5 day means! There was no expansive subtropical high. Quite the contrary there was a good forecast MJO phase 2, with a major cool trough in the 5-day means trapping the hurricane.

Out to sea? In August? In Texas? When does anyone see that? They move northwest or west through the state. BECAUSE NORMALLY THERE IS NOT A MAJOR TROUGH THAT FAR SOUTH TO STOP THE STORM!

When has anyone given the coast of Texas seen a storm move “out to sea” what does it turn around and head back southeast? Look at the 500 mb means and 5k temps, this is what is a ridge? There is a major ridge in the west like we see when there are a lot of storms. It’s warm in the west cool in the east, but there is no subtropical ridge trapping this storm. It’s caught in a trough.

Read rest at Junk Science