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Danielnrg OP t1_iu88zxv wrote

Reply to comment by scurvydog-uldum in TIL We are currently amidst the longest gap between EF5 tornadoes in history by Danielnrg

Forgive me for seeming obtuse, but I was under the impression that weather extremes would increase due to climate change. I've seen several people on the news ask if the recent hurricane in Florida was linked to climate change, and NWS experts say it wasn't. I'm getting mixed messages. You're saying that the planet will slowly die... but we'll get less tornadoes as a result?

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jedimika t1_iu8ab2z wrote

Look at the question a little bit different.

The US has more tornados than any other country, 1100-1200 per year. Canada is #2 with about 100 a year. Then conditions for our massive tornado count are a unique balance of weather patterns. As climate changes that balance could weaken/ break.

And while it would mean that this specific weather event becomes less common, others will become more prevalent. And the big hit is areas not used to certain events could get more. Texas has a hard time with blizzards, Maine has never seen a heatwave in the 110s.

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NinDiGu t1_iu8wbss wrote

> The US has more tornados than any other country, 1100-1200 per year.

Interestingly, the UK has more tornados than the US according to QI, but they are just much weaker.

As I rarely trust the fact checking on QI, as they almost always are wrong on facts about my area of expertise, I cannot imagine it to be true that GB has more tornados than the US, but they said on QI that there were more tornados in GB annually than the US.

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bearsnchairs t1_iu8xatu wrote

It may say that the UK has more when normalized for land area, but that is a silly stat. The US is far far larger than the UK. The US has far more overall tornadoes.

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NinDiGu t1_iu8ycnb wrote

That may have been it. I always have a cup of salt handy when watching the show.

I enjoy the show because in general I love panel shows, and there are lots of QI episodes to watch, but man the elves get so many things wrong, and Stephen even mocks people who know things. The specific examples that irked me was when Stephen Fry doubled down on his mistakes about German to a German speaker, and when he mocked Sean Locke for the interesting fact that banana plants are mobile (referred to as walking), which at least he was corrected on during the same show.

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dlyselxicssuck t1_iu94g5d wrote

In less populated areas tornadoes can go unnoticed especially if there are no trained weather spotters. Sometimes concealed by rain or night they probably miss a lot of them.

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padizzledonk t1_iu8fes5 wrote

This is like the cynical politician bringing a snowball to a meeting about global warming lol and why "global warming" fell out of favor even though it's true on average

Its a matter of WHERE.....Some places will get warmer, some will get wetter, some will get drier, Climate Change is far more accurate

As other people have said Tornadoes are caused by differences in temperature, we have some crazy conditions in the US for Tornadoes, we have hot air and cold air slamming into each other across the country and that causes a lot of Tornadoes, as that air temperature evens out there is less chaos to cause those vortices to form

We say there is going to be (and we see already) an increase in "severe weather events" but that doesn't necessarily mean "More Tornadoes" in America but it will mean more massive flooding, more wild thunderstorms, bigger Hurricanes, longer droughts, snowstorms in places that never got them and no snow in places where it always snows and it might very well mean that somewhere else might get more Tornadoes as things shift around....things may calm down in some places and ramp up in others, but its going to change everywhere

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HalobenderFWT t1_iu939jq wrote

Technically, while temperature difference can be a factor in the cause of a tornado - that’s like saying dry wood is a cause for a forest fire.

The temperature difference is the cause for the storms (along with moisture, and instability), that can potentially cause a tornado, but you’re not going to have a tornado without a strong wind shear.

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padizzledonk t1_iu9a0vo wrote

>but you’re not going to have a tornado without a strong wind shear.

Fully get what you are saying, this is just a more accurate "in the weeds" extrapolation of what I'm saying because that serious wind sheer is caused by big temperature differences

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Red_Meridian t1_iu94w4c wrote

The real truth is that we don’t know what will happen with climate change. A decade ago who would have predicted Portland would get hotter than Las Vegas has ever been.

The system is chaotic and unknowable.

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Poke-Party t1_iuaixzz wrote

Hurricane and tornado formation occur on completely unrelated time and size scales along with the processes that go into them.

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Celtictussle t1_iu9cyqy wrote

>Forgive me for seeming obtuse, but I was under the impression that weather extremes would increase due to climate change.

The myth that temperatures swings are more extreme on both sides only serves a very specific fallacy. Most of the world is getting warmer most of the year.

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horsemagicians t1_iu9vjyv wrote

Not all storms are built the same. Tornadoes need warm air and wind shear. The latter is expected to decrease with climate change resulting in weaker tornadoes. Tornado season will get longer but there’ll be fewer strong ones.

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Brock_Way t1_iuau6vc wrote

We will all die due to habitat destruction long before climate issues.

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scurvydog-uldum t1_iu9n9em wrote

Nobody is saying the planet will die. The planet will do just fine; our coastal cities might be underwater, but the planet won't care about that.

The IPCC says the only weather extremes linked to climate change are increased high temperature records outside the tropics and subtropics, and more heat waves.

The IPCC specifically excludes things like increased rain, increased drought, stronger winter storms, stronger summer storms, etc. So any time you hear some activist claiming weather is caused by climate change, know that the mainstream scientists have said it's not true.

The oddest prediction was decreased land-falling hurricanes in the US, but right after that prediction was published we had the longest period in history of no major hurricanes hitting the US.

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Only_Reindeer9968 t1_iu8a635 wrote

Honestly feels like bait. Anyways simple terms tornadoes are caused by the differences in air temps, if All the air is hot (it’s all hot because the ozone layer has been destroyed(this is where the climate change part comes in for your obtuseness.))there is no difference to cause the disruption that is the tornado 🌪

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Danielnrg OP t1_iu8b5ts wrote

I don't know what bait you're talking about, but your answer combined with the answer below seems to explain it pretty well

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Danielnrg OP t1_iu8co96 wrote

I take that back, the answer below is now a climate denier. I have now learned that saying things like "the answer below" is inadvisable on Reddit.

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OldWolf2 t1_iub283l wrote

The ozone layer hasn't been destroyed . It was damaged by CFCs in the 1970s and is recovering well since they were banned in the 1980s.

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