Typhoon, and global warming

The dimensions of the tragedy in the Philippines probably are unimaginable to most Americans, spared from storms of such ferocity and fortunate to live in a land of coastal-zone management – however imperfect.

For more on the particular vulnerability of the Philippines, we recommend this Washington Post piece. Jim Eberwine, erstwhile marine forecaster for the local National Weather Service, opined that the inundated region is situated "in what is perhaps the worst places to be for storm surge."

The death toll and the scope of the devastation may take years to calculate, but we do know that Typhoon Haiyan will rank among the most destructive storms on record.

Not surprisingly, as with other extreme weather events, the typhoon has stoked the global warming discussion.

As widely reported, the Philippines negotiator at the U.N. climate conference in Warsaw made an impassioned speech linking global warming with the disaster and announced a hunger strike.

So what exactly did global warming have to do with Haiyan?

Based on what some of the best minds in the tropical-cyclone universe have said in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and elsewhere, that question would be unanswerable for now.

Ten scientists – representing quite a spectrum of perspectives – did say in a 2010 paper said that the computer models suggest an increase in tropical-cyclone intensity on the order of 2 to 11 percent by the end of the century.

But they said that to date, the human imprint on hurricane intensity wasn't possible to measure.

Frank Marks, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Research Division, hasy remarked that he wouldn't expect to see much impact for awhile.

"Given that the warming is expected to affect the polar regions more than the tropics," he said recently, "I doubt we will see much change in the tropical cyclones due to warming for some time."

Roger Pielke Jr., a disaster expert at the University of Colorado concurred. He said that even if the models nail the trends, "It will be many decades, even centuries, before such a signal can be detected in trend data."

In the meantime, as we posted yesterday, Haiyan's precise intensity hasn't been determined ; the  ground-truth measurements are wanting, and computing the maximum winds and minimum pressure will require extensive analysis.

Typhoon Tip, in 1979, might have generated a lower pressure reading, and typhoons in 1958 and 1961 might have spun up more-powerful winds.

Suffice to say, it was a monstrous storm, and none of the above is meant to suggest that worldwide warming, which has occurred at the rate of about 0.25 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1980, is harmless.

- Anthony Wood