U.S. Tornado Trends

[Boris Konon]

This is a brief analysis I did on tornado trends in the U.S. and it discusses the non-meteorological factors associated with it all.
Yes, I do realize the U.S. represents only 6.6% of the world's land area, but it is the tornado capital of the world and we have
an extensive database documenting tornadoes.

Also, look at the last three years. Given we document tornadoes so much better now than even 20 years ago, I find these such
low annual tornado counts quite extraordinary. I would argue this is an extreme in itself.

Let me know what you all think. Comments welcome!

http://home.comcast.net/~trwplusa/tornadotrends.pdf

 

[JustinPhillips]

Interesting read, I tend to disagree with the last paragraph of tornadoes being "worse" due to social/tech reasons more than met/climate reasons. But I'm not really sure what you mean by that paragraph. I took it as media hype making tornadoes seem worse, which I would disagree with in the cases of Moore/El Reno in May 2013, and that stretch this year in June in Neb as those were violent tornadoes regardless of hype. If you ment it as, cities are growing in parts of tornado alley leading to things to seem worse, than in that case I would agree.

 

[Boris Konon]

By "worse" (I put it in quotes on purpose) is addressing a common problem with data sets and interpretations. If one looks
at annual count of tornadoes per year here, one could easily conclude that tornado frequency has increased from a climatological
perspective in the last 65 years, thus becoming "worse". However, you need to look beyond the raw data sometimes, and
look at various reasons/factors why there are changes over time. In this case, better detection and documentation has resulted
in the higher annual counts for the most part.

Every year, there are deadly and devastating tornadoes. I am certainly not contesting that. But these events by themselves are
not the best signals to use for meteorological/climatological trends in tornadoes. As I mentioned, population increase makes the
overall risk for tornado fatalities and destruction go up every year unfortunately, and since this is a non-meteorological change
over time, using fatalities and total costs each year can be misleading as to what is really going on with weather patterns and
climate.

 

[JustinPhillips]

Ah in that case I certainly agree. Using fatal tornadoes is a poor argument for global warming/climate change.