• Tornadoes
• Heavy Precipitation
• Climate Extremes Index
• Drought and Extreme Wetness
• References
• Related Blogs

Has extreme weather increased in recent years? The science is still unsettled on whether climate change has resulted in more intense hurricanes, so let's restrict our attention to tornadoes and heavy rain. There is evidence that global warming has caused an increase in very heavy precipitation events--the kind most responsible for major floods. However, there is no evidence that climate change has caused in increase in tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, though preliminary research suggests this may occur late this century.

Are tornadoes and severe thunderstorms getting more numerous and more extreme due to climate change?

Figure 1. The number of tornadoes reported in the U.S. since 1950. Image credit: High Plains Regional Climate Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Source.

To help answer this question, let's restrict our attention to the U.S., which has the highest incidence of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms of any place in the world. At a first glance, it appears that tornado frequency has increased in recent decades (Figure 1).

However, this increase may be entirely caused by factors unrelated to climate change:

1. Population growth has resulted in more tornadoes being reported.
2. Advances in weather radar, particularly the deployment of about 100 Doppler radars across the U.S. in the mid-1990s, has resulted in a much higher tornado detection rate.
3. Tornado damage surveys have grown more sophisticated over the years. For example, we now commonly classify multiple tornadoes along a damage path that might have been attributed to just one twister in the past.

Given these uncertainties in the tornado data base, it is unknown how the frequency of tornadoes might be changing over time. The "official word" on climate science, the 2007 United Nations IPCC report, stated it thusly: "There is insufficient evidence to determine whether trends exist in small scale phenomena such as tornadoes, hail, lighting, and dust storms."

Furthermore, we're not likely to be able to develop methods to improve the situation in the near future.The current Doppler radar system can only detect the presence of a parent rotating thunderstorm that often, but not always, produces a tornado. Until a technology is developed that can reliably detect all tornadoes, there is no hope of determining how tornadoes might be changing in response to a changing climate. According to Doswell (2007): I see no near-term solution to the problem of detecting detailed spatial and temporal trends in the occurrence of tornadoes by using the observed data in its current form or in any form likely to evolve in the near future.

Violent tornadoes are not increasing

Violent tornadoes (EF4 and EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, or F4 and F5 on the pre-2007 Fujita Scale), though rare, cause a large fraction of the tornado deaths reported each year. These storms are less likely to go uncounted, since they tend to cause significant damage along a long track. Thus, the climatology of violent tornadoes may offer a clue as to how climate change may be affecting severe weather. Unfortunately, we cannot measure the wind speeds of a tornado directly, except in very rare cases when researchers happen to be present with sophisticated research equipment. Tornadoes are categorized using the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale, which is based on damage. So, if a violent tornado happens to sweep through empty fields and never destroy any structures, it will never be rated as a violent tornado. Thus, if the number of violent tornadoes has actually remained constant over the years, we should expect to see some increase in these storms over the decades, since more buildings have been erected in the paths of tornadoes.

However, if we look at the statistics of violent U.S. tornadoes since 1950 (Figure 2), there does not appear to be any increase in the number of these storms. In fact, there was only one tornado of EF5 intensity reported during the eight year period 2000-2007, the tornado that devastated Greensburg, Kansas in 2007 (although Canada did report its first EF5 tornado in history on June 22, 2007).

Figure 2. The incidence of violent (EF4/EF5, or F4/F5) tornadoes by decade since 1950. The asterisk by the decade of the 2000s indicates that the statistics extend only through February 2008. We can expect that another 20% of this decade's violent tornado activity will occur in 2008 and 2009.

The previous eight year period of 1992-1999 had six F5 tornadoes, so we can't say that climate change has caused an increase in the strongest tornadoes in recent years. Note that the EF scale to rate tornadoes was adopted in 2007, but the transition to this new scale still allows valid comparisons of tornadoes rated EF5 on the new scale and F5 on the old scale.

An alternate technique to study how climate change may be affecting tornadoes is look at how the large-scale environmental conditions favorable for tornado formation have changed through time. Moisture, instability, lift, and wind shear are needed for tornadic thunderstorms to form. The exact mix required varies considerably depending upon the situation, and is not well understood. However, Brooks (2003) attempted to develop a climatology of weather conditions conducive for tornado formation by looking at atmospheric instability (as measured by the Convective Available Potential Energy, or CAPE), and the amount of wind shear between the surface and 6 km altitude. High values of CAPE and surface to 6 km wind shear are conducive to formation of tornadic thunderstorms. The regions they analyzed with high CAPE and high shear for the period 1997-1999 did correspond pretty well with regions where significant (F2 and stronger) tornadoes occurred. The authors plan to extend the climatology back in time to see how climate change may have changed the large-scale conditions conducive for tornado formation.

Del Genio et al.(2007) used a climate model with doubled CO2 to show that a warming climate would make the atmosphere more unstable (higher CAPE) and thus prone to more severe weather. However, decreases in wind shear offset this effect, resulting in little change in the amount of severe weather in the Central and Eastern U.S. late this century. The speed of updrafts in thunderstorms over land increased by about 1 m/s in their simulation, though, since upward moving air needed to travel 50-70 mb higher to reach the freezing level. As a result, the most severe thunderstorms got stronger. In the Western U.S., the simulation showed that drying led lead to fewer thunderstorms, but the strongest thunderstorms increased in number by 26%, leading to a 6% increase in the total amount of lighting hitting the ground each year. If these results are correct, we might expect more lightning-caused fires in the Western U.S. late this century, due to enhanced drying and more lightning.

Using a high-resolution regional climate model (25 km grid size) zoomed in on the U.S., Trapp et al. (2007) found that the decrease in 0-6 km wind shear in the late 21st century would more than be made up for by an increase in instability (CAPE). Their model predicted an increase in the number of days with high severe storm potential for almost the entire U.S., by the end of the 21st century. These increases were particularly high for many locations in the Eastern and Southern U.S., including Atlanta, New York City, and Dallas (Figure 3). Cities further north and west such as Chicago saw a smaller increase in the number of severe weather days.

We currently do not know how tornadoes and severe thunderstorms may be changing due to changes in the climate, nor is there hope that we will be able to do so in the foreseeable future. Preliminary research using climate models suggests that we may see an increase in the number of severe storms capable of producing tornadoes late thiscentury.

Figure 3. Number of days per year with high severe storm potential historically (blue bars) and as predicted by the climate model (A2 scenario) of Trapp et al. 2007 (red bars).

However, this research is just beginning, and much more study is needed to confirm these findings. The lack of an increase in violent EF4 and EF5 tornadoes in recent decades implies that climate change has not yet increased tornado activity.

Are heavy rain events becoming more frequent due to climate change? That is a difficult question to answer, since reliable records are not available at all in many parts of the world, and extend back only a few decades elsewhere. However, we do have a fairly good set of precipitation records for many parts of the globe, and those records show that the heaviest types of rains--those likely to cause flooding--have increased in recent years. According to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report, "The frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas". Indeed, global warming theory has long predicted an increase in heavy precipitation events. As the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 IPCC report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. Satellite measurements (Trenberth et al., 2005) have shown a 1.3% per decade increase in water vapor over the global oceans since 1988. Santer et al. (2007) used a climate model to study the relative contribution of natural and human-caused effects on increasing water vapor, and concluded that this increase was "primarily due to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases". This was also the conclusion of Willet et al. (2007).

This increase in water vapor has very likely led to an increase in global precipitation. For instance, over the U.S., where we have very good precipitation records, annual average precipitation has increased 7% over the past century (Groisman et al., 2004). The same study also found a 14% increase in heavy (top 5%) and 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events over the U.S. in the past century. Kunkel et al. (2003) also found an increase in heavy precipitation events over the U.S. in recent decades, but noted that heavy precipitation events were nearly as frequent at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, though the data is not as reliable back then. Thus, there is a large natural variation in extreme precipitation events.

It is possible that increased pollution is partly responsible for the increase in precipitation and in heavy precipitation events in some parts of the world. According to Bell et al. (2008), summertime rainfall over the Southeast U.S. is more intense on weekdays than on weekends, with Tuesdays having 1.8 times as much rain as Saturdays during the 1998-2005 period analyzed. Air pollution particulate matter also peaks on weekdays and has a weekend minimum, making it likely that pollution is contributing to the observed mid-week rainfall increase. Pollution particles act as "nuclei" around which raindrops condense, increasing precipitation in some storms.

It is difficult to say if the increase in heavy precipitation events in recent years has led to more flooding, since flooding is critically dependent on how much the landscape has been altered by development, upstream deforestation, and what kind of flood control devices are present. One of the few studies that did attempt to quantify flooding (Milly et al., 2002) found that the incidence of great floods has increased in recent decades. In the past century, the world's 29 largest river basins experienced a total of 21 "100-year floods"--the type of flood one would expect only once per 100 years in a given river basin. Of these 21 floods, 16 occurred in the last half of the century (after 1953). With the IPCC predicting that heavy precipitation events are very likely to continue to increase, it would be no surprise to see flooding worsen globally in the coming decades.

Is the climate in the U.S. getting more extreme? The answer to this question depends upon how one defines "extreme". For example, as discussed above, the number of extreme tornadoes (violent EF-4 and EF-5 twisters) has not increased in recent years. We lack the data to judge whether there has been an increase in severe thunderstorms and hail. There has been a marked increase in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995 (though the possible contribution of human-caused global warming to this increase is not something hurricane scientists agree upon). Since it is difficult to quantify how severe storms like tornadoes and hurricanes are changing, a better measure of how climate extremes are changing is to look at temperature and precipitation, which are well-measured. NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has developed a Climate Extremes Index to attempt to quantify whether or not the U.S. climate is getting more extreme.

Figure 4. The Annual Climate Extremes Index (CEI), updated through 2008, shows that U.S. climate has been getting more extreme since the early 1970s. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center. On average since 1910, 20% of the U.S. has seen extreme conditions in a given year (thick black line).

The Climate Extremes Index (CEI) is based upon three parameters:

1) Monthly maximum and minimum temperature
2) Daily precipitation
3) Monthly Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI)

The temperature data is taken from 1100 stations in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN), a network of stations that have a long period of record, with little missing data. The temperature data is corrected for the Urban Heat Island effect, as well as for station and instrument changes. The precipitation data is taken from 1300 National Weather Service Cooperative stations. The Climate Extremes Index defines "much above normal" as the highest 10% of data, "much below normal" as the lowest 10%, and is the average of these five quantities:

1) The sum of (a) percentage of the United States with maximum temperatures much below normal and (b) percentage of the United States with maximum temperatures much above normal.

2) The sum of (a) percentage of the United States with minimum temperatures much below normal and (b) percentage of the United States with minimum temperatures much above normal.

3) The sum of (a) percentage of the United States in severe drought (equivalent to the lowest tenth percentile) based on the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and (b) percentage of the United States with severe moisture surplus (equivalent to the highest tenth percentile) based on the PDSI.

4) Twice the value of the percentage of the United States with a much greater than normal proportion of precipitation derived from extreme (equivalent to the highest tenth percentile) 1-day precipitation events.

5) The sum of (a) percentage of the United States with a much greater than normal number of days with precipitation and (b) percentage of the United States with a much greater than normal number of days without precipitation.

As summarized by Gleason et al. (2008), the National Climatic Data Center concludes that based on the Climate Extremes Index, the percentage of the U.S. seeing extreme temperatures and precipitation generally increased since the early 1970s. These increases were most pronounced in the summer. No trend in extremes were noted for winter. The annual CEI index plot averaged for all five temperature and precipitation indices (Figure 4) showed that five of the fifteen most extreme years on record occurred since 1997. Shorter-lived periods with high CEI values occurred in the 1930s and 1950s, in association with widespread extreme drought and above-average temperatures. The most extreme year in U.S. history was 1998, with 1934 a close second. The year 1998 was the hottest year in U.S. history, with a record 78% of the U.S. experiencing minimum temperatures much above normal. That year also had a record 23% of the U.S. with much greater than normal precipitation from extreme 1-day precipitation events. The 1934 extreme in CEI was due in large part because of the most widespread drought of the century--a full 52% of the U.S. was affected by severe or extreme drought conditions. That year also saw a record 64% of the U.S. with much above normal maximum temperatures.

The impact of maximum and minimum temperatures on the Climate Extreme Index
It is very interesting to look at the five separate indices that go into the Climate Extremes Index. Today I'll look at temperature, and next week, I'll focus on drought and precipitation. The portion of the U.S. experiencing month-long maximum temperatures either much above normal or much below normal has been about 10% over the past century (black lines in Figure 5). However, over the past decade, about 20-25% of the U.S. has been experiencing monthly maximum temperatures much above normal, and the portion of the U.S. experiencing much colder than normal high temperatures has been near zero.

Figure 5. The Annual Climate Extremes Index (CEI) for maximum temperature, updated through 2008, shows that 20-25% of U.S. has had maximum temperatures much above normal over the past decade. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.

Minimum temperatures show a similar behavior, but have increased more than the maximums (Figure 6). Over the past decade, minimum temperatures much above normal have affected 25-35% of the U.S. This means that the daily range of temperature (difference between minimum and maximum) has decreased over the past decade, which is what global warming says should be happening if greenhouse gases are primarily to blame for the rise in temperatures.

While there have been a few years (1921, 1934) when the portion of the U.S. experiencing much above normal maximum temperatures was greater than anything observed in the past decade, the sustained lack of maximum temperatures much below normal over the past decade is unique. The behavior of minimum temperatures over the past decade is clearly unprecedented--both in the lack of minimum temperatures much below normal, and in the abnormal portion of the U.S. with much above normal minimum temperatures. Remember that these data ARE corrected for the Urban Heat Island effect, so we cannot blame increased urbanization on the increase in temperatures. Recall that the all-time record maximum and minimum temperature data, which I presented in a post in February, are not corrected for the Urban Heat Island Effect, but look very similar to the CEI maximum and minimum temperature trends presented here.

A lot of people have told me that they believe we are experiencing more wild swings of temperature from hot to cold from day to day in recent years, but the CEI data does not answer this question. To my knowledge, a study of this kind has not been done.

Figure 6. The Annual Climate Extremes Index (CEI) for minimum temperature, updated through 2008, shows that 25-35% of U.S. has had minimum temperatures much above normal over the past decade. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.

Let's focus now on how the drought and precipitation extremes that go into the Climate Extremes Index have changed over the past century. The three precipitation-related factors to go into the Climate Extremes Index are:

1) The sum of (a) percentage of the United States in severe drought (equivalent to the lowest tenth percentile) based on the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and (b) percentage of the United States with severe moisture surplus (equivalent to the highest tenth percentile) based on the PDSI.

2) Twice the value of the percentage of the United States with a much greater than normal proportion of precipitation derived from extreme (equivalent to the highest tenth percentile) 1-day precipitation events.

3) The sum of (a) percentage of the United States with a much greater than normal number of days with precipitation and (b) percentage of the United States with a much greater than normal number of days without precipitation.

Items 1 and 3 have shown no change in annual average value over the past century, but there has been a marked increase in the number of heavy 1-day precipitation events in recent decades. Thus, the record values of the Climate Extremes Index in recent years is due to a combination of the increase in heavy 1-day precipitation events, plus the increase in maximum and minimum temperatures.

Figure 7. The Annual Climate Extremes Index (CEI) for heavy 1-day precipitation events shows that these events, on average, have affected 10% of the U.S. over the past century (black line). However, heavy precipitation events have increased recently, with seven of the top ten years on record having occurred since 1995. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.

Heavy precipitation events
Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events--the ones most likely to cause flash flooding--will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. The Climate Extremes Index plot for extreme 1-day precipitation events (Figure 7) does indeed show a sharp increase in heavy precipitation events in recent decades, with seven of the top ten years for these event occurring since 1995. The increases in heavy precipitation events have primarily come in the Spring and Summer, when the most damaging floods typically occur. This mirrors the results of Groisman et al. (2004), who found an increase in annual average U.S. precipitation of 7% over the past century, which has led to a 14% increase in heavy (top 5%) and 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events. Kunkel et al. (2003) also found an increase in heavy precipitation events over the U.S. in recent decades, but noted that heavy precipitation events were nearly as frequent at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, though the data is not as reliable back then.

Global warming theory predicts that although global precipitation should increase in a warmer climate, droughts will also increase in intensity, areal coverage, and frequency (Dai et al., 2004). This occurs because when the normal variability of weather patterns brings a period of dry weather to a region, the increased temperatures due to global warming will intensify drought conditions by causing more evaporation and drying up of vegetation. Increased drought is my number one concern regarding climate change for both the U.S. and the world in the coming century. Two of the three costliest U.S. weather disasters since 1980 have been droughts--the droughts of 1988 and 1980, which cost $71 billion and $55 billion, respectively. The heat waves associated with these droughts claimed over 17,000 lives, according to the National Climatic Data Center publication, Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters. Furthermore, the drought of the 1930s Dust Bowl, which left over 500,000 people homeless and devastated large areas of the Midwest, is regarded to be the third costliest U.S. weather disaster on record, behind Katrina and the 1988 drought. (Ricky Rood has an excellent book on the Dust Bowl that he recommends in his latest blog post).

The good news is that the intensity and areal coverage of U.S. droughts has not increased in recent decades (blue bars in Figure 8). The portion of the U.S. experiencing abnormal drought and exceptionally wet conditions has remained nearly constant at 10% over the past century.

A recent paper by Andreadis et al., 2006, summed up 20th century drought in the U.S. thusly: "Droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the country over the last century. The main exception is the Southwest and parts of the interior of the West, where, notwithstanding increased precipitation (and in some cases increased soil moisture and runoff), increased temperature has led to trends in drought characteristics that are mostly opposite to those for the rest of the country especially in the case of drought duration and severity, which have increased."

The rest of the globe has not been so lucky. Globally, Dai and Trenberth (2004) showed that areas experiencing the three highest categories of drought--severe, extreme, and exceptional--more than doubled (from ~12 to 30%) since the 1970s, with a large jump in the early 1980s due to an El Niño-related precipitation decrease over land, and subsequent increases primarily due to warming temperatures. According to the Global Drought Monitor, 50 million people world-wide currently live in areas experiencing the highest level of drought (exceptional).

The future of U.S. drought
As the climate continues to warm, one would expect the frequency, severity, and areal coverage of droughts to increase over the U.S. We're certainly off to a dry start in 2009--the period January - February this year was the driest such period in U.S. history, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Figure 8. The Annual Climate Extremes Index (CEI) for drought. The worst U.S. droughts on record occurred in the 1930s and 1950s. There has been no trend in the amount of the U.S. covered by drought conditions (blue bars) or by abnormally moist conditions (red bars) over the past century. About 10% of the U.S. is typically covered by abnormally dry or wet conditions (black lines). Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.

References

Andreadis, K. M. Lettenmaier, D. P., "Trends in 20th century drought over the continental United States", Geo. Res. Letters 33, 10, L10403, DOI 10.1029/2006GL025711

Bell, T. L., D. Rosenfeld, K.-M. Kim, J.-M. Yoo, M.-I. Lee, and M. Hahnenberger (2008), "Midweek increase in U.S. summer rain and storm heights suggests air pollution invigorates rainstorms," J. Geophys. Res., 113, D02209, doi:10.1029/2007JD008623.

Brooks, H.E., J.W. Lee, and J.P. Craven, 2003, "The spatial distribution of severe thunderstorm and tornado environments from global reanalysis data", Atmospheric Research Volumes 67-68, July-September 2003, Pages 73-94.

Dai A., K.E. Trenberth, and T. Qian, 2004: A global data set of Palmer Drought Severity Index for 18702002: Relationship with soil moisture and effects of surface warming", J. Hydrometeorol., 5, 11171130.

Doswell, C.A., 2007, "Small Sample Size and Data Quality Issues Illustrated Using Tornado Occurrence Data", E-Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology, Vol 2, No. 5 (2007).

Del Genio, A.D., M-S Yao, and J. Jonas, 2007, Will moist convection be stronger in a warmer climate?, Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L16703, doi: 10.1029/2007GL030525.

Gleason, K.L., J.H. Lawrimore, D.H. Levinson, T.R. Karl, and D.J. Karoly, 2008: "A Revised U.S. Climate Extremes Index", J. Climate, 21, 2124-2137.

Groisman, P.Y., R.W. Knight, T.R. Karl, D.R. Easterling, B. Sun, and J.H. Lawrimore, 2004, "Contemporary Changes of the Hydrological Cycle over the Contiguous United States: Trends Derived from In Situ Observations," J. Hydrometeor., 5, 64-85.

Kunkel, K. E., D. R. Easterling, K. Redmond, and K. Hubbard, 2003, "Temporal variations of extreme precipitation events in the United States: 1895.2000", Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(17), 1900, doi:10.1029/2003GL018052.

Marsh, P.T., H.E. Brooks, and D.J. Karoly, 2007, Assessment of the severe weather environment in North America simulated by a global climate model, Atmospheric Science Letters, 8, 100-106, doi: 10.1002/asl.159.

Milly, P.C.D., R.T. Wetherald, K.A. Dunne, and T.L.Delworth, Increasing risk of great floods in a changing climate", Nature 415, 514-517 (31 January 2002) | doi:10.1038/415514a.

Santer, B.D., C. Mears, F. J. Wentz, K. E. Taylor, P. J. Gleckler, T. M. L. Wigley, T. P. Barnett, J. S. Boyle, W. Brüggemann, N. P. Gillett, S. A. Klein, G. A. Meehl, T. Nozawa, D. W. Pierce, P. A. Stott, W. M. Washington, and M. F. Wehner, 2007, "Identification of human-induced changes in atmospheric moisture content", PNAS 104 15248-15253, 2007.

Trapp, R.J., N.S. Diffenbaugh, H.E. Brooks, M.E. Baldwin, E.D. Robinson, and J.S. Pal, 2007, Severe thunderstorm environment frequency during the 21st century caused by anthropogenically enhanced global radiative forcing, PNAS 104 no. 50, 19719-19723, Dec. 11, 2007.

Trenberth, K.E., J. Fasullo, and L. Smith, 2005: "Trends and variability in column-integrated atmospheric water vapor", Climate Dynamics 24, 741-758.

Willett, K.M., N.P. Gillett, P.D. Jones, and P.W. Thorne, 2007, "Attribution of observed surface humidity changes to human influence", Nature 449, 710-712 (11 October 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature06207.