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The 2013 Atlantic storm season has proved one of the quietest in decades with the lowest number of hurricanes since 1982 and none of them considered 'major', according to insurance broker Willis Re.

An unusually quiet hurricane season is significant for the insurance industry not only because there are fewer pay-outs for damage but also because it drives down reinsurance prices.

The Atlantic hurricane season is closely watched by insurers because a destructive storm can hit prosperous, heavily insured areas such as Miami, costing the industry billions in claims.

A review of the season by Willis Re, published on Thursday shows that the 2013 season saw only two storms - named Humberto and Ingrid - classified as hurricanes.

"A season without a major hurricane hasn't occurred since 1994 and the number of hurricanes this year was the lowest since 1982," the review said.

The official hurricane season runs between June 1 and November 30 and was predicted by many forecasters to be "active or above average", the report said.

"However, it was in fact one of the quietest seasons observed in the last 20 years," Willis Re said.

D1B wrote:Lets see, who to believe:

99% of the world climate experts and scientists or an itinerant banker wannabe?

Hmmmmmm

Global Highlights


-The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–October period (year-to-date) was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F). The first ten months of 2013 ranked as the seventh warmest such period on record.

- For the 15th consecutive month (since August 2012), Australia experienced above-average temperatures. The nationally averaged October maximum temperature was the third warmest on record with a departure from the 1961–1990 average of +2.1°C. Minimum temperatures were also above average, but did not rank among the top ten warmest on record. The mean national temperature was 1.43°C above average—the seventh warmest since national temperature records began in 1910, according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. Also, the 12-month (November 2012 to October 2013) mean temperature for the nation was 1.3°C above the 1961–1990 average—the highest 12-month period average for the nation. This value surpasses the previous record set the two previous months, +1.25°C (October 2012 to September 2013) and +1.11°C (September 2012 to August 2013). This is also 0.22°C higher than any 12-month period prior to 2013.

Averaging the globe as a whole, the temperature across land and ocean surfaces combined during October 2013 was 0.63°C (1.13°F) above the 1901–2000 average of 14.0°C (57.1°F)—the seventh warmest October since records began in 1880. It also marked the 37th consecutive October and 344th consecutive month (more than 28 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average October global temperature was October 1976 and the last below-average global temperature for any month was February 1985. The warmest October on record occurred in 2003 when global land and ocean surface temperatures were 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20th century average, while the coldest October occurred in 1912 [-0.57°C (-1.03°F)].

Ibanez wrote:Doesn't global warming really create a cooling effect?

AZGrizFan wrote:One down.

Ibanez wrote:

D1B wrote:Lets see, who to believe:

99% of the world climate experts and scientists or an itinerant banker wannabe?

Hmmmmmm

Are those the same scientists that keep saying we'll have active or above normal hurricane activity? You know, the guys that have been wrong for a few years in a row.

D1B wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:One down.

Yeah, for me.

JMU DJ wrote:Ah... so we're just looking at one country here.... and one month. Gotcha. I prefer to think longer term and globally.

Global Highlights


-The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–October period (year-to-date) was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F). The first ten months of 2013 ranked as the seventh warmest such period on record.

- For the 15th consecutive month (since August 2012), Australia experienced above-average temperatures. The nationally averaged October maximum temperature was the third warmest on record with a departure from the 1961–1990 average of +2.1°C. Minimum temperatures were also above average, but did not rank among the top ten warmest on record. The mean national temperature was 1.43°C above average—the seventh warmest since national temperature records began in 1910, according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. Also, the 12-month (November 2012 to October 2013) mean temperature for the nation was 1.3°C above the 1961–1990 average—the highest 12-month period average for the nation. This value surpasses the previous record set the two previous months, +1.25°C (October 2012 to September 2013) and +1.11°C (September 2012 to August 2013). This is also 0.22°C higher than any 12-month period prior to 2013.

Averaging the globe as a whole, the temperature across land and ocean surfaces combined during October 2013 was 0.63°C (1.13°F) above the 1901–2000 average of 14.0°C (57.1°F)—the seventh warmest October since records began in 1880. It also marked the 37th consecutive October and 344th consecutive month (more than 28 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average October global temperature was October 1976 and the last below-average global temperature for any month was February 1985. The warmest October on record occurred in 2003 when global land and ocean surface temperatures were 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20th century average, while the coldest October occurred in 1912 [-0.57°C (-1.03°F)].

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/10" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

AZGrizFan wrote:

JMU DJ wrote:Ah... so we're just looking at one country here.... and one month. Gotcha. I prefer to think longer term and globally.







http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/10" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No, we're looking at 40 years.

kalm wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:
No, we're looking at 40 years.

According to John Daly.

Grizalltheway wrote:

Ibanez wrote:Doesn't global warming really create a cooling effect?

The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes.

As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.

The sun’s energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools. When snow cover is more abundant in Siberia, it creates an unusually large dome of cold air next to the mountains, and this amplifies the standing waves in the atmosphere, just as a bigger rock in a stream increases the size of the waves of water flowing by.

The increased wave energy in the air spreads both horizontally, around the Northern Hemisphere, and vertically, up into the stratosphere and down toward the earth’s surface. In response, the jet stream, instead of flowing predominantly west to east as usual, meanders more north and south. In winter, this change in flow sends warm air north from the subtropical oceans into Alaska and Greenland, but it also pushes cold air south from the Arctic on the east side of the Rockies. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, cold air from Siberia spills south into East Asia and even southwestward into Europe.

That is why the Eastern United States, Northern Europe and East Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century. Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier. They have ignored the snow in Siberia.

andy7171 wrote:Low tornados and no hurricanes means one thing to me, a bigger refund from USAA!

CID1990 wrote:Science is NEVER settled.

If anthropogenic climate change is in fact a reality, its proponents do the cause the greatest disservice of all.

D1B wrote:

CID1990 wrote:Science is NEVER settled.

If anthropogenic climate change is in fact a reality, its proponents do the cause the greatest disservice of all.

Uh, it's Big Industry's self-serving portrayal of proponents that you object to.

Think for yourself, for once.

CID1990 wrote:

D1B wrote:
Uh, it's Big Industry's self-serving portrayal of proponents that you object to.

Think for yourself, for once.

No, I actually object to the notion that we think that a science that can only be observable in chunks of hundreds if not thousands of years can somehow be packaged based on very small data sets, and then be called "settled".

I am equally skeptical of that part of the scientific community that asserts that the body of data unequivocally DISPROVES AGC.

Again, there is no such thing as settled science. we know a lot about the atom, but we are still learning about subatomic particles.

We thought we knew about the Neanderthal's place in our genetic tree. Now we are unsure again because of new evidence of another prehistoric strain.

We know that viruses cause disease and how they are structured, but we still know very little baout how to combat them.

Saying any science is "settled" is the height of arrogance. I would expect better from the so called left, which apparently only is the side of science when it agrees with prejudged positions. That in and of itself is a corruption of the scientific process.

Just 20 years ago, nobody referred to it as "climate change". It was called "global warming". Since then, even proponents of AGC have been the ones to actually change the nomenclature, based on the EVOLVING SCIENCE. The only climate scientists who have been consistent in this debate are the ones who say we don't have nearly enough data to say what is happening or will happen. 20 or so years ago, we were going to burn up on a planet that would only support agriculture at high latitudes, and whole cities were going to be underwater (that last one IS going to happen for sure eventually- but whether or not we will be the cause is another animal). NOW, nobody knows what will happen... because observable events are consistently refuting previous conclusions.

True science is agnostic.

Anyone familiar with the author's other books on man and his fateful connection to the natural environment owe it to themselves to read this seminal offering first published over a decade ago when the phenomenon of global warming was a hotly argued and angrily debated issue. The publication of this new 10th anniversary edition arrives in a world in which most of the author's frightful prognostications regarding the negative consequences of the hotly-debated "Greenhouse Effect" issue of a decade ago have been proven to be accurate and true. If anything, McKibben's warnings were, in retrospect, conservative. For example, five of the ten warmest years on record have been in the last decade. Thus, "The End Of Nature " must be regarded as an intriguing book that comprehensively covers a critically important phenomenon; the massive intrusion of man, technology, and civilization into the natural order of the world's ecosystems to the point that we have ripped them asunder. While the Bushes and Gores fiddle away in their Washington offices, the forces of man are still engaged in such a maddening and suicidal plundering of the world's biological treasure house. We have in essence replaced natural forces with our own efforts, and have now become the single most important and decisive element in climatic calculus that determines the weather.

As a result, it is no longer possible to pretend that nature is something that just happens out there, and that we are merely subject to its forces and its whims. Instead, the author argues, it is human actions and human interference that now fatefully orients and influences the forces determining the weather. Yet, we live in a culture so embedded in patterns of denial about the effects of scientific and technological intrusion into the natural world that we seem to now regard the natural wilderness as mere grist for amusement parks. We seem so disconnected to nature or to its delicate balancing acts that we have no regard for the consequence of our continuing intrusions into its innermost workings. We seem to have forgotten our dependence on the elements of the natural world in order to survive, and consequently do not comprehend the disastrous consequences our massively ignorance, interference, and corruption of the natural world around us will likely bring.

Instead, we worry about our stocks and mutual funds, ignoring the facts that the world's potable water is disappearing as the world's population increases geometrically. We worry about our property values and our next promotions, never recognizing the degree to which our materialistic culture and our over-consumptive way of life is condemning us and the rest of the world to oblivion. So we fiddle as Rome burns. In any event, this is a terrific book, one that anyone interested in where we stand and where we are heading both culturally and globally needs to read. This, along with other books such as Lew Ayre's "God's Last Offer" and David Suzuki's "The Sacred Balance", can give the interested reader a better idea of what kinds of possibilities await us in the new millennium. Enjoy!

D1B wrote:ignoring the facts that the world's potable water is disappearing as the world's population increases geometrically

D1B wrote:

Ibanez wrote: Are those the same scientists that keep saying we'll have active or above normal hurricane activity? You know, the guys that have been wrong for a few years in a row.

Shut up asshole.

AZGrizFan wrote:

JMU DJ wrote:Ah... so we're just looking at one country here.... and one month. Gotcha. I prefer to think longer term and globally.







http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/10" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No, we're looking at 40 years.

Our results indicate that global mean temperature for the decade 2000–2009 (34) has not yet exceeded the warmest temperatures of the early Holocene (5000 to 10,000 yr B.P.). These temperatures are, however, warmer than 82% of the Holocene distribution as represented by the Standard5×5 stack, or 72% after making plausible corrections for inherent smoothing of the high frequencies in the stack (6) (Fig. 3). In contrast, the decadal mean global temperature of the early 20th century (1900–1909) was cooler than >95% of the Holocene distribution under both the Standard5×5 and high-frequency corrected scenarios. Global temperature, therefore, has risen from near the coldest to the warmest levels of the Holocene within the past century, reversing the long-term cooling trend that began ~5000 yr B.P. Climate models project that temperatures are likely to exceed the full distribution of Holocene warmth by 2100 for all versions of the temperature stack (35) (Fig. 3)