In article .com,
says...

Harold E Brooks wrote:
In article . com,
says...

Harold E Brooks wrote:
In article .com,
says...
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Preliminary count for 12-13 March 2006 (140):
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/060312_rpts.html

Final count for 12-13 March 2006 (49):
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lsx/?n=march12tornadoes

This will be looked at very closely. The raw reports will be looked at
and the witnesses near the site will be questioned. The actual person
furnishing the report will be questioned. it's hard to believe a rash
of false reports suddenly sprang into existence. There are 10,000
weather enthusiasts on some weather forums and this isue will be
closely examined. You can bet your career on that fact.

They aren't false reports. As typically happens with long-track
tornadoes, there were many reports of the same tornado. One of the
tornadoes in Missouri that day had 30 reports. That's a drop of 29 for
that single event. The "weather enthusiasts" aren't relevant. The
preliminary count is collected by the local National Weather Service
Forecast Office, which then goes through the reports, does damage
surveys and collects other information to produce the final count.



For that one day, the final number is 91 fewer than the preliminary
number.


The last 6 months of the years 2003, 2004, 2005 brought these numbers
of tornadoes:
2003 = 323
2004 = 855.
2005 = 588.

History does not support your conclusions. The 323 tornadoes for
July-December of 2003 were more for 6 months than all of the years
tornadoes recorded in 1950, 1951, 1952.

Now, go look at the number of tornadoes in July-December for all the
years for 1954-2002. On average, 74% of reports have come in by 12
July. BTW, tornado reports weren't collected in real time for a full
year until 1954.

REAL TIME reporting was not brought up. The OFFICIAL RECORD, the one
that you have the burden of proof to present missing tornadoes if you
claim tornadoes were inappropriately not counted, gives an ANNUAL total
less than the amount of tornadoes that happened in any of thew last
three years in the final six months of those three years.

The kind of climate that exists today is different than the climate in
the 1950s. the OFFICIAL RECORD says so. You have a burden of proof to
find the missing tornadoes if you want to heap abuse on your
predecessors by claiming they were incompetent and couldn't count.


Wrong. My burden is to continue the work of those predecessors who
recognized that they weren't collecting reports of all events. The
challenge has been to try to deal with the imperfect record. The
recognition that strong tornadoes are better reported than weak
tornadoes has been around since the early 1980s. The importance of real
time reporting is that you're more likely to collect the information
than if you wait until the end of the year.

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The evidence that large numbers of tornadoes were missed is strong. The
fact that the increase is almost entirely in the weakest tornadoes is a
large part of that. See, e.g., Brooks, H. E., and C. A. Doswell III,
2001: Some aspects of the international climatology of tornadoes by
damage classification. Atmos. Res., 56, 191-201.
(http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/brook.../toulclim.html)

Uhh, Uhh, buddyboy. Weak tornadoes have increased. It's part of the
observations that give you a clue that climate itself has changed.

The amazing thing is that this increase in weak tornadoes without a
change in strong tornadoes has occurred in the US and Germany, where
there have been increased efforts to collect reports, but not in France,
where there has been no increase. It also flies in the face of the
peer-reviewed literature showing that the increase in weak tornadoes
essentially fills in the gap in expected statistical distributions by
intensity.



Radar now can distinguish that two different tornadoes in the same
supercell should be counted, whereas before they might have been totted
up as one of longer swath. A few after dark get counted that couldn't
be seen before, although if it touches down it leaves it's calling card
for the morning, and only touchdowns are counted then as now.

Radar does no such thing. I honestly don't think you have any idea how
tornado reports are collected and processed.

Doppler radar most certainly can distinguish two distinct tornadic
signatures at once, whereas people in the blinding rain, oft-time dark,
terrified for their lives hiding as best they can, sometimes fail to
notice that the tornado that was "here" was not the exact same tornado
that hit a few minutes later over there 3 miles away. That kind of
modern accuracy can increase counts a smidgeon, I grant you, yet you
refuse the concession.

In your earlier comment, you said "two different tornadoes." Now,
you're talking about "tornadic signatures." Those are very different
things. Few tornadoes are seen on the network Doppler radars. In any
event, radar observations don't go into the report database. I don't
grant you anything on it, because, again, you show you don't understand
the reporting process.


Your facts are WRONG and your premise is WRONG, so one has to ask why
you still hold a job of responsibility in this field that you are
obviously unqualified to hold?

I watch NOAA satellites, and download 450 to 800 satpix per day for my
archives. I have the SSTs of the Acapulco hot spot (and records going
back decades monthly averages for that location), the images of hot
moist air packets moving up Mexico into the US, the blowup into cells
and supercells and the daily severe storm maps which show where the
tornadoes struck was where the EPAC storms blew over at that precise
timestamp. MY records, apparently, are better than yours, and they
don't lie.

I use the official records, as collected at the local National Weather
Service forecast offices.

I cross check those.

What other reports do you have? The only database of reports in the US
is that collected by the National Weather Service offices.



Tornadoes are increasing -- NOAA's records impeach you. Heat theory
predicts that tornadoes will continue to increase.

What is "heat theory?" What do you think will happen to vertical wind
shear in the lower tropopshere and over the depth of the troposphere,
the lifted condensation level in a CO2-enhanced atmosphere? Those
quantities are at least as important as "heat" in tornadogenesis.

Heat Theory is the the theory that changes in heat in the biosphere
cause changes in the weather and climate. The tropics are the prime
receivers of heat and spread it polewards where it meets cooler air
eventually. The day-night temperature differences in the temperate
zones are sufficient to cause the conditions favoring violent storms
generating increasing tornadoes.

"Day-night temperature differences?" This is a novel and hitherto
unknown tornado theory. Would you answer the question about wind shear?

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The same heat theory predicts the dehydrated continental interors that
you failed to address and it also predicts the tinder-dry widefire
conditions that you failed to address. You attempted to blame
bureaucratic records bungling on one item, but failed to address the
entire prediction laid out in the post you replied to.

How about that? I only addressed one area where I have looked at the
records. I never claimed that there was bungling. You seem to think
that people intentionally didn't collect information. I think they did
the best they could at the time.

The tornadoe
record is supportive of the theory. The drought record is supportive of
the theory. The wildfire record is supportive of the theory. All of
these are official public records that damn well never be tampered with
to let that Bush Crook get away with burning down America. And you
ought to know that sleazy corrupt science hoaxers have reasons to be
concerned if you get caught in science hoaxing for political reasons.



I'm not sure why I should be concerned about "science hoaxing." I'm not
making claims that the database won't support.

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There's strong evidence (Verbout, S. M., H. E. Brooks, L. M. Leslie, and
D. M. Schultz, 2006: Evolution of the US tornado database: 1954-2003.
Wea. Forecasting, 21, 86-93. and Brooks, H. E., and J. P. Craven, 2002:
A database of proximity soundings for significant severe thunderstorms,
1957-1993. Preprints, 21st Conference on Severe Local Storms, San
Antonio, Texas, American Meteorological Society, 639-642.
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/brooks/public_html/papers/bcSLS21.pdf)
that the retrospective rating of tornadoes that took place in the mid-
1970s to rate the events in the database back to 1950 overrated the
intensity of tornadoes. There's no evidence, however, that they have
increased since then.

You are arguing apples versus oranges. I cited absolute totals
regardless of intensity has indesputably increased. You argue that your
favorite flavor of tornadoes has decreased. Once again the numbers you
produced show that the climate has changed.

Looking at the pre-1950 record put together by Fujita and Grazulis, it's
clear that F2 and stronger tornadoes are more likely to make it into the
database.


As far as tornadoes go, once the house is splinters, it makes no
difference if an F1 or F5 did it to the homeless.

F1 tornadoes don't leave houses in splinters. Noticeable damage to
ordinary houses starts at F2.

Like the fish that
got away, maybe people wanted bragging rights to rougher-tougher
tornadoes and might have inflated the intensity numbers a notch. Nobody
wants to believe that Katrina was officially a cat 3 when it hit
Mississippi either, and they'd feel better if a cat 4 or 5 took their
house away. Still, nobody disputes the fact that there was a hurricane
named Katrina, and no sane person disputes that the OFFICIAL RECORD
shows that tornado incidents have increased over time.

No one who works with the database and knows how it's compiled believes
that the "OFFICIAL RECORD" comes close to representing what actually
occurred.


Changing the INTENSITY does not change the total numbers. Total numbers
are the indicator that climate has changed. You have failed in your
burden of proof -- if you think there are missing tornadoes, go find
them -- the HURDAT people did exactly that going back to 1850s and they
CHANGED the official record, so you have little excuse while
eyewitnesses still live with plenty of newspapers and diaries and
journals not deteriorated to dust in our lifespans. You can't bring
your HUNCHES into scientific discussions. Either bring proof sufficient
to change the official record or shut your lying mouth. The OFFICIAL
RECORD calls you a liar.

People have done exactly that (Fujita, Grazulis, etc.) to create the
pre-1950 record and to make some additions to the post-1950 record.
Tornadoes that didn't cause significant damage aren't in the newspapers.
There are a large number of them in the current record.

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An increase in weak tornadoes is exactly what the record shows. That is
an indicator of climate change. You are squeezing the facts out of
recognition to fit your bonehead contention that nothing has changed.
The OFFICIAL record tells you that it has changed. It seems in some
regards it even changed for the better if the new weather regime favors
more weak tornadoes and disfavors the emergence of exceptionally
destructive tornadoes. The facts are there to inform you when the
climate has changed -- you need to become informed by the facts, not by
your hunches.

You need to read the vast literature on the reporting database and its
strengths and weaknesses. No one who works with it believes that the
official record represents meteorological reality.



Having spent a large part of the last 16 years looking at the official
record, I politely tell you that you don't know the nature of the
official record very well-why and how it's collected, its strengths and
weaknesses and how policy changes over the years have affected it. Just
as there's no reason to invoke changes in the atmosphere to explain zero
F5 tornadoes and only 29 F4 tornadoes from 2000-present, with only 2 F4s
since mid-July 2004 (1990s means were 1 F5 and 8.1 F4s per year) when
changes in procedures are adequate, there's no reason to invoke changes
in the atmosphere to explain the large increase in F0 and F1 tornadoes
over the years.
The numbers are in the record. I am not partial to F5s or F4s or F0s.
There were more F5s, now there are fewer. The HURDAT shows a decrease
in hurricane category 2s. It doesn't matter that your favorite flavor
is not there in the quantities or ratios that you prefer, the absolute
numbers have increased in both tornadoes and hurricanes. Under the new
climate regime we are currently living in, hurricane category 2s are an
unstable form: either it ceases to grow past cat 1 or it rapidly speeds
up through cat 2 to cats 3-5. That's reality. Apparantly, reality also
includes more weak tornadoes and fewer strong tornadoes.

Either that or the well-documented efforts to collect better information
has increased the number of reports.


YES, most years 3/4ths of the tornadoes are done by July, but in 2004
there were 855 yet to happen by July 1st through December 31st. This is
not yer daddy's climate anymore. That's why we need pure objective
numbers in our records, not numbers massaged and manipulated to try to
conform to expectations that nothing has changed. Who is going to be
fired for falsely inflating 91 extra tornadoes earlier this year? Will
they sue because they were unjustly fired after complaining that the
numbers were fudged to hide the true extent of climate change? Is
Tornado-gate about to erupt on the front pages of the NY Times? How
often in the past did 91 tornadoes in one month just vanish from the
record? That itself is a statistic worth looking at. What, was there a
rash of drunks reporting in? 10% of the whole year's total was bogus?
Who are you trying to fool?

No one inflated anything. It was the PRELIMINARY count. The FINAL
count was lower. That's what typically happens with long-track
tornadoes. You can see it on 2 April this year as well. The Memphis
office had 25 preliminary reports and ended up with 10 tornadoes in the
final analysis.



Last year every big mistake between preliminary and final monthly tally
was under-reporting. Suddenly in 2006 there is this vast problem with
over-reporting? You have some explaining to do on that. The largest
monthly overage last year was 11 too high, but most months the
preliminary reports were lower than the final reports and June, July
and August all under counted by 11 or more in the preliminaries.
Suddenly one month in 2006 there is a an epidemic of crack-smoking in
the office and they pull numbers out of a hat to report? We have an
audit trail on those reports and it will be audited. You work for me,
not Bush. You work for America, not the Republican agenda of denying
climate change. If you don't like the rules of the job don't let the
door hit your ass on the way out. If you get caught in a science hoax
you are out of science for life.

As I've said numerous times, overreporting in the preliminary log on
long-track tornadoes is common and not a new problem. It's likely to
affect the March 2006 numbers more than most of the time because almost
2/3 of the preliminary reports occurred on one day. The processes that
will add events in the final log that aren't in the preliminary log will
not add enough to make up for that.

The primary purpose of the preliminary reports is for an NWS forecast
office to communicate with other forecast offices and national centers
about what is going on, and to verify warnings, which are issued on a
county-by-county basis. Thus, having multiple reports of a single event
provides information to other people.

If you look at the preliminary log from 12 March and the final map, it's
pretty easy to see what happened. Nothing nefarious, just a large
number of reports of long-track tornadoes.

No one to date has produced a reasonable expectation of changes in
tornado frequency based on the environmental conditions that are
associated with tornadoes. Until you can do that (and the discussion
has to include changes in environmental wind shear), you're just dealing
with hunches.

I am well aware of who I work for and my obligation to science, which
requires an understanding of the data and their limitations. No agenda
involved, except to try to understand what is actually occurring now and
what changes are likely.

Your offensive comments, combined with your willful ignorance about the
nature of the data, lead me to question whether you even care about
truth.

Harold
--
Harold Brooks
Head, Mesoscale Applications Group
NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory