Rud Istvan
This simple guest post was prompted by an alarming WaPo report ‘today’ of a new PNAS study seriously proposing an expansion of the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale to a ‘level 6’, (beyond the current peak of 5) because of intensified tropical cyclones caused by climate change.
The PNAS reasoning was that a few Pacific Hurricanes (aka tropical cyclones) have exceeded SF level 5. True, sort of. All 5 cited by PNAS only temporarily exceeded Cat 5. For example, quoting from the new paper, “The most intense of these hypothetical Cat 6 storms, Patricia, hit landfall in Jalisco, Mexico as a cat 4.” OOPS.
The PNAS paper reached its new and alarming future ‘Cat 6’ conclusion by applying ‘bias corrections’ to CMIP5. Although it then states, “None of these high resolution climate model projection should be taken too literally.” Especially after PNAS ‘bias corrections’. But IPCC said CMIP5 was then the best and brightest.
There are two basic skeptical problems with this newly alarming ‘climate science’—albeit ‘not to be taken too literally’.
First, almost all the recent ‘worst satellite wind speed’ Florida hurricane alarms were not ground truthed by observations near eye wall ground wind speeds—by a lot.
Ian was an exception to this, unfortunately as bad as predicted. So the satellite and hurricane hunter CatX estimates are generally high compared to ground truth. That is probably OK when NHC warnings a threatened Florida populace to evacuate—but not for ‘climate science’ in PNAS.
Second, Ryan Maui’s ACE shows no such ‘Cat 6’ strengthening over time.
So PNAS published an alarming model speculation based on “corrections to climate model biases’, then failed to publish the observed facts.
Feynman is surely rolling over in his true science grave.