Why Weather History Isn't So Historical
Watts Up With That just posted an article about the 2020 hurricane season. The article is a look at what was considered a "record breaking" active year for storms.
In addition to the issue of named storms that were previously missed, due to the lack of ability to observe them, technological improvements also have effectively allowed the standards for naming a storm to be refined resulting in better identification of weak (near the 39-mph/63-kph threshold) systems.
In the article, the author breaks down that, while on paper, it might seem like we had a record number of named storms, we didn't. Even reaching into the Greek alphabet for names for the second time ever doesn't correlate with the actual available data that shows that it wasn't a record hurricane season. The most obvious reason is that they changed what they gave names to, which increases name usage. But the main reason is being used as a political hot potato...
Technology
As you can see by the image at the top of the post, the ability to actually track hurricanes is a recent thing. Before the 1940s, spotting a hurricane would require it to hit shore in a populated area or for a ship to run into it and survive in order to report the storm when it arrived back at port. Or, for someone to check the ship's logs years later and compare it with other ship logs over time. It wasn't until the 1970s that we started using satellites to even look at the weather. And, according to the image, "Objective/Advanced Dvorak Technique" doesn't even get adopted until the 1990s.
The Dvorak technique is a method using enhanced Infrared and/or visible satellite imagery to quantitatively estimate the intensity of a tropical system. Cloud patterns in satellite imagery normally show an indication of cyclogenesis before the storm reaches tropical storm intensity.
It was just a couple of days ago that I made a Tweet to mock the heat wave in Oregon. Now, the heat wave is a serious thing, but what I was mocking was that it was "historic" and "record breaking". Oregon didn't really start being populated until after 1860. I don't think any of the native tribes shared any ancient weather history with the new comers.
https://twitter.com/DeanLogic/status/1409968761302552577
Shortly after I posted my snark tweet, Watts Up With That posted their own article pointing out the same flaw with "record breaking weather" history.
Yes, the heat wave set all-time high temperature records in Washington, Oregon, and Canada. But consider this: At best, we have about 150 years of reliable weather records for the PNW, so a “black swan” outlier event like this isn’t surprising. It’s happened before, most certainly. We just weren’t around to observe it. After all, Native Americans did not keep written weather records.
Weather recording is a relatively new thing and we really can't say whether or not it is record breaking. Ice core samples and written history can tell us that the weather has been warmer in the past. It can't tell us if there were cycles like we are having now or if it took longer or shorter to develop. There is not that detail for weather data all around the world to let us know how things looked on a year-over-year basis. We still don't have reliable weather data today for developed parts of the world due to the "heat island" effect. Less developed or undeveloped areas have even less reliable weather recording.
Weather recording is in its infancy and to declare what we know in our myopic lens is "historic" is basically unscientific.
As for the new method of naming storms, I look to the Incredibles movie and Syndrome's speech on being super. The theme was that in order to make supers less super, Syndrome would make it possible for everyone to have "super powers". So that when everyone is super, nobody is super.
If every storm gets a name, then naming storms doesn't mean anything.
Let the positive energy sing!
More Power to the Minnows!!
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