Thu, Nov 26 2009
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La Niña identified as source of violent tornado outbreaks “We just looked at the cold (winter) season, but it’s probably true of the warm season as well,” he said. “But what’s important about this pattern is that the tornadoes are stronger and track greater distances during a La Niña.”
Not global warming The study by Schaefer and Crook follows a similar study in 2005 by J.B. Knowles and Roger Pielke Sr., former atmospheric scientists at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. The study resurfaced after the “Super Tuesday Outbreak,” on Feb. 5 and 6, when U.S. Sen. John Kerry, a former Democratic presidential nominee, blamed global warming. The authors of the study said “such statements are extremely misleading.” The study found that tornadoes in La Niña-event years (between 1953 and 1989) were found to have longer-than-average track lengths, were likely to be more violent and there was a good probability of having an outbreak of 40 or more tornadoes. The opposite, they said, was true for El Niño years. In response to Kerry’s remarks, they said, “The conclusion is that regional climate variability, the La Niña, is the likely explanation for the recent family outbreak of tornadoes, not global warming. Media who do not present this scientific perspective, but perpetuate only the claims of Sen. Kerry that the event was due to global warming, are clearly guilty of biased journalism.” Too many to count The ingredients for severe weather came together in early January when 75 tornadoes scoured southern Missouri and three nearby states, killing three people in Missouri. It happened again on “Super Tuesday,” when 131 tornadoes ravaged southern Missouri, the Southeast and the Ohio Valley, killing 57 people. And, it happened again May 5-12 when 88 tornadoes strafed Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Georgia, killing 25 people. The May 10 deaths of six people at Picher, Okla., and 16 people in Newton, Jasper and Barry counties in Missouri were part of that outbreak. That tornado through Picher and Newton County, which tracked for more than 75 miles, reached wind speeds of 175 mph. It was EF4 tornado, the second strongest tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Those were the main outbreaks. There were smaller ones in Virginia and North Carolina. Even Brooklyn, N.Y., had a tornado. “The Super Tuesday Outbreak showed the classic La Niña pattern,” Schaefer said. “This La Niña appears to have ended. Hopefully, things will calm down now and return to normal. “It could be just like last year when the major outbreaks just stopped after the May 4 outbreak at Greensburg, Kan.,” he said. By the numbers 
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