The Science of Doom

In #1 and #2 we looked at trends in frequency and intensity of Tropical Cyclones (TCs) and found that the IPCC 6th Assessment Report (AR6) contained good news. Not in the executive summary, and not particularly clearly even in the body of the report. But still, it is good news.

This article looks at the speed of TCs – how fast they move overall, not how fast the winds are swirling around. This is important, because as they hit land if they go more slowly there will be more rain and therefore more flooding.

This was going to be a short article, but as long time readers of this blog will know, brevity was never my strong point.

Here’s the plain English summary of the report:

Translation speed of TCs has reduced over the last 70 years, leading to more flooding as TCs hit the coast.

This is bad news. The actual text, from p. 1587, is in the Notes at the end of this article.

James Kossin’s paper from 2018 is the main idea of this section of the report. Two papers are noted as questioning his conclusion. Kossin replied in 2019, confirming his original conclusion. The report essentially agrees with Kossin.

One of the lead authors of this chapter 11 on Extreme Weather is also James Kossin.

The main focus of this series of articles is the conclusions of the IPCC 6th Assessment Report, but it seems the question is still open, so read on for more analysis.

– I’m moving to Substack. It’s a great publishing platform. See the rest this article (for free) at Science of Doom on Substack.