Was Hurricane Sandy caused by global warming?

Question

A lot of of the people on Al Gores global warming promtion website think that global warming cause Hurricane Sandy.

http://current.com/community/93949754_corporate-media-breaks-climate-silence-following-undeniable-sandy-superstorm.htm

Are they corrrect in their assumption that global warming caused Hurricane Sandy?

Answer 1

Global warming increases the likelihood of severe weather but Hurricane Sandy is by no means evidence of Global Warming. If anything, Hurricane Sandy was an eventuality, regardless of Global Warming, New York was going to eventually be hit by a hurricane as it has in the distant past. A scientist would not attribute Hurricane Sandy to Global Warming, it's merely weather not climate.

Answer 2

The story seems to be about media reporting on Sandy, I saw no suggestion Sandy was caused by AGW, the closest to such a statement is the quote "Sandy is a foretaste of what is to come", from professor Michael Oppenheimer. Deniers keep making the statement that AGW will cause hurricanes, I am not aware of any scientists who has suggested that, what has been said is AGW will increase the average strength of hurricanes as temps and sea level continue to rise and both are still rising.

Given that sea surface temperatures are the known cause of Hurricanes and how strong they are and the estimates of what these will do as the century moves on, it is not an unreasonable comment.

Sandy was unusual as it was meet by a system from the North that helped feed it, it may have lost power as it neared the coast but as a storm front it was the widest seen since records started the previous was ~500 miles across, Sandy was nearly 1000 miles across, this is why it caused so much damage over such a large area. I note one of the media outlets quoted as changing their reporting was Fox, do you seriously want to call the alarmist.

It's not unusual for media to try and link a big hurricane to climate change, but scientists response is no one storm can make such a connection and given if you look at the timescale of the projections it is likely going to be decades before such a trend is obvious.

This would be the same media who keep reporting on crop circles long after it was revealed how they are really created, I still find it amusing that deniers keep quoting media sources, particularly those owned by Murdock and pretend that is somehow science.

Answer 3

Hurricane Sandy may or may not have occurred with anthropogenic global warming, or any type of warming. However, it was most likely fed by warmer sea surface temperatures as well as other weather masses.



PeterJ: It was not a normal hurricane on a 'normal hurricane path'. The hurricane was affected by cold fronts and warm fronts and took an abrupt turn toward the west suddenly when it struck one of these fronts causing it to travel more inland than usual. It was also the largest Atlantic hurricane on record. It was only a category 1 yet the air pressure associated with it is usually attributed to a category 3 or 4 hurricane.

Answer 4

it isn't plausible to characteristic a unmarried hurricane to global Warming. yet, there is clinical consensus that global Warming makes storms worse. How a lot worse is a vast debate. yet no man or woman is taken heavily that could want to say global Warming lessens or has no effect on storms. causes: a million - Our oceans are about 9" more beneficial now compared to one hundred fifty years in the past. 2 - The planet is hotter than is replaced into one hundred fifty years in the past a hotter planet capacity extra capacity interior the type of wind. a hotter planet capacity extra water interior the ambience...extra rain.

Answer 5

There is not a scientific consensus that global warming causes a greater number of hurricanes. Thus even the warmer Atlantic ocean would not cause a higher probability of a category 1 hurricane. Remember, as a hurricane, Sandy was not remarkable. It was not even still a hurricane when it made land-fall. There is not scientific justification for saying that global warming caused that particular storm.



But Sandy was a storm unlike any that has ever before hit the U.S. What made it so different was the geographical size and the huge storm surge. These were fed by the merging with an early season nor'easter moving further to the south than normal and a blocking high pressure area to the north. Both of these patterns are made more common by the loss of arctic ice. Arctic ice has a great influence on the jet stream, the more ice there is the less wavy the jet stream there is.



Global warming caused conditions that made such a frankenstorm more likely. It is not coincidence that the largest storm to ever hit the U.S. came in the same year a record low arctic ice. This type of storm, as well as nor'easters extending as far south as Florida will continue to become more common as arctic ice continues to melt. This particular manifestation of climate change is specific to North American because there is no east-west mountain range to keep the cold weather patterns from dropping south and mixing with the warm patterns as happened with Sandy.

Answer 6

Only in climate science is a line defined by a single point, and always with a positive slope. And, of course, n=1 is a statistically significant sample.



There is no way to make a valid causal connection between that (and any other) hurricane, and global warming. Al Gore tried to do the same thing with hurricane Katrina, in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth". There was no science behind that connection, either. In fact, a lawsuit was filed in the UK over the various unsubstantiated claims in the movie, and Gore lost. The judge determined that there were 9 claims in the movie which ran afoul of their laws prohibiting the propagandizing of schoolchildren. They would have determined there were more, but that was all the time the judge had. Today, that movie cannot be shown to UK schoolchildren unless it is accompanied by a document which outlines the errors.



That hurricane Katrina was related to global warming was error #7.



Christopher Monckton wrote a paper which cataloged a total of 35 errors in the movie. You can read it here:



http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html



Proposing a causal connection between hurricane Sandy and global warming is not scientifically valid. It cannot be proven; more importantly, the claim cannot be falsified. Anything that cannot be falsified cannot be taken to be true (see Popper's principle of falsifiability).



If one wishes to make a connection between global temperatures and hurricanes, you first will have to show a trend, over some time period, which correlates with temperatures. The correlation must reject the null hypothesis at the 95% level; then you have to propose a model as to how that works; and, finally, to show causation (not just correlation), you have to show that the model predicts events in the real world--reliably.



The 30 year trend in tornadoes, hurricanes and tropical storms are all negative. Any correlation between these types of storms and global warming is either falsified, or not statistically significant.



Based on the above, claims that hurricane Sandy is a product of global warming are not science; they are propaganda.

Answer 7

May be....global warming can be a reason of Hurricane sandy. We know the earth as a whole is warming. Almost the climate of all the many areas around the world is getting effected ,scientists agree on that.

Naturally, a warmer climate would affect how weather systems behave.

Answer 8

Probably not, though Sandy may have been made more severe by global warming

Answer 9

They want you to think that . But they leave out century's of history . 84 hurricanes

ans tropical storms hit NY in the past .

The stupid media thinks NY was never hit before hurricanes . When the next blizzard

hits maybe they will blame on global Warming .



But wait there is a history of blizzards too.

Answer 10

Ha! Ha! That's what Al Gore said.

They have had hurricanes long before you drove your SUV.

Answer 11

Asked at least six times already in the last six days. Check the prior Q&As.

Answer 12

This video should explain it all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OJv57s5WN4

Answer 13

global warming did not cause the hurricane, it did intensify it and likely changed it's course eastward.

Answer 14

Hurricane Sandy was weather.



It was a normal hurricane, on a normal hurricane path in a part of a cycle that has actually been pretty light in hurricanes....

Answer 15

If it is, then thats pretty scary, the world is coming to an end though, we all need to be ready..

Answer 16

I don't think so. It would not explain why there were similar storms as far back as the 1800s.