Michael Wehner

CLIMATEWIRE Climate critics try to discredit IPCC author for linking disasters to global warming By LESLEY CLARK, SARA SCHONHARDT, CHELSEA HARVEY | 10/09/2025 06:22 AM EDT Roger Pielke Jr. and oil industry supporters are attacking climate scientist Friederike Otto, whose work has been used in lawsuits against polluters.

Table 12.12 | Emergence of CIDs in different time periods, as assessed in this section. The colour contesponds to the confidence of the region with the highest confidence: white cells indicate where evidence is lacking or the signal is not present, leading to overal bu confidence of an emerging signal.

The attack on @frediotto.bsky.social was seeded years ago by Roger Pielke Jr, who started arguing that this table from a recent @ipcc.bsky.social report proved that climate science cannot attribute extreme weather to climate change.

But Roger is of course lying. And we know this for 2 reasons.

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It would be interesting to calculate the partitioning of cooling by upwelling compared to energy converted to storm energy.

A Global Increase in Nearshore Tropical Cyclone Intensification Tropical cyclone (TC) intensification rates have increased in near coastal regions over the 42-year period 1979-2020 Increases in relative humidity along with decreases in vertical wind shear are...

Some more literature. Risk is increased near shore which is not good. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Thanks. And btw, in our cat 6 paper, we do not see substantial risk in the open Atlantic.

Does eyewall replacement cause the expansion in size? Or is it some other physical mechanism like available energy?

Jeff, what is the mechanism causing this expansion in physical size?

I am an executive editor for a journal. I would ask now. It may be that they are having trouble finding a suitable AE. Or it may have slipped between the cracks. In any event, the editor should let you know.

And to consider the change in risk of near shore intense storms agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Increased U.S. coastal hurricane risk under climate change Future ocean warming in eastern tropical Pacific will enhance US hurricane risk through changes in steering flow and wind shear. 

You may not want to assume that the risk of landfall remains constant at 11% www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I presume these values are from the NOAA look up table. Recent work finds that they underestimate the heat index for very high values. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Thank you for posting. I have hundreds of hours into these (2,3,4,& 5) . At taxpayer expense, I might add.

Data-driven upper bounds and event attribution for unprecedented heatwaves The last decade has seen numerous record-shattering heatwaves in all corners of the globe. In the aftermath of these devastating events, there is inte…

Probably not above the upper bound. But generally more than 7 standard deviations is "impossible" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves, are becoming more frequent and intense..." Present tense; attribution is recognized with this statement.

Congratulations Ben!!!

Photo of Ben Santer

Delighted to announce that Ben Santer is now an Honorary Professor @ueaenv.bsky.social & the Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

Ben is returning to his "academic home": he did his PhD in CRU before his stellar career developing "fingerprint" methods to identify human & natural effects on climate.

There are very few of us doing rigorous event attribution in the US. Extreme weather events are increasing but attribution scientists numbers are decreasing.😞

picture of a landslide in Medellin

What caused deadly landslides in Colombia? Finding out, should be easier. Tropical climates are complex, but if data are held by companies & organisations hiding them behind walls of bureaucracy it becomes impossible. @wwattribution.bsky.social study: www.worldweatherattribution.org/growing-expo...

And to further bridge the stats/climate gap, I started this journal to aid in cross field communication. www.advances-statistical-climatology-meteorology-oceanography.net

Climate Science Needs Professional Statisticians - Eos Climate science needs its own specialized “climostatisticians” as integral members of multidisciplinary research teams.

Having engaged with numerous professional statisticians, I find this a gross over generalization. As with any cross-discipline, success requires two way communication. And there is a language barrier. But recent workshops are bridging this gap. See my opinion piece: doi.org/10.1029/2019...

When we wrote the Cat 6 hurricane article, we recognized that a single number cannot convey local danger that individuals might face & instead recommended that NHC products, especially maps, are superior. NHC warnings have also become more direct. i.e. "certain death". Such messages might help here

How Hot Can It Get? Scientists Are Struggling to Find an Answer Figuring out how anomalously high temperatures can rise is taking on added importance as the planet warms.

It can get pretty hot.

The DOE BER takes a big hit. Scroll to page 102: www.energy.gov/sites/defaul...

Heatwaves affect different places in different ways. Leafy suburbs are cooler than more built up, concrete heavy areas, which means that disadvantaged communities are more likely to be more severely affected. Watch our super short video on heatwaves to find out more...
#heatwave

Apologize that i am such a curmudgeon. Comes with age...

To clarify.Impacts are often binary, then we can make the binary causal statement. But meteorology is not so binary. (And some impacts are not binary, like heatwave deaths) and it is important to note that impact attribution is in early stages. 2 important papers in review now

The dam breach is an extreme weather impact & I would agree. But I maintain my hot button for the ‘weather’ event. An important but subtle distinction

The title hits my hot button on causality. It causes them to be worse but doesn’t cause them per se. Complex events have complex causal factors

What bothered me is that the anchor asked her question in the future tense. It should be in the present tense.

References: doi.org/10.1038/s414... , doi.org/10.1007/s003... , doi.org/10.1007/s003...