(Excerpted from a personal blog post.)
Ever notice how it seems that the typhoons seem to have arrived late this year?
I wanted to find out what the trends are, and so I googled for the trends and frequency of entry of typhoons, tropical depressions, and tropical storms that have entered the Philippine Area of Responsiblity… but I wasn’t able to get any raw data from PAGASA. Instead, I was able to get from Typhoon2000.com data from 1963 to 1988, which doesn’t cover the last two decades (thanks to Michael V. Padua who compiled the list last June 11, 2008; the data is on his site’s statistics page).
From Padua’s raw data, I was able to derive the following graphs (click to enlarge the image):
It seems clear to me that there indeed is a trend, where typhoons are entering even more late in the year than they used to half a century ago.
Yet more evidence of global warming, yes?
Wake up, folks. We’re in an archipelago. We are going to be screwed real silly if we don’t start making long-range contingencies for this problem.
A copy of Padua’s raw data here. Analysis tables and graphs here. I’ll try to find more data, and if I’m able to, I’ll update the data of this post. For now, folks, do try to take the useful data and spread the word that we do have to fight global warming.
Hey, we only have one Earth.
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Jester,
Why on earth would we expect the weather patterns to be the same today as they were a half century ago? There are cycles upon cycles that the earth, and Sun undergo which can explain this data. In fact the Sun is spotless this year but the solar wind is maxed out, or vice versa. Or maybe not, but what’s the connection of typhoons arrival time and global warming again? Isn’t the arctic ice melt better evidence of something going on?
And what if all the planets are warming? Is it really man’s fault?
If you like the beach front life style, just move to Baguio, nyuk nyuk.
heh. i know, right.
What is puzzling is the path of this year’s typhoons.
But rising sea levels is really the proof of the eating is in the eating!
Hmm… looks like someone saw Gore’s movie last night on HBO. :)
With regards to my contribution in alleviating global warming, let’s say I opt to not take my car if the distance is say Pasong Tamo to Glorietta, and instead use pedal power.
Sure, I may end up having killer legs, but the air pollution will give me killer lungs too.
Drowning from flash flood or Lung Cancer? Decisions, decisions. ;)
The trends merely show that there is climate schedule change, not climate change per se.
The late entries have become irritating, however, and it might move proposals from starting school in September (similar to the US) to starting school in January (similar to Singapore).
I wonder which one would be better?
It is utterly wrong to think that the earth’s climate is “normally” constant, static, unchanging, or benign. We know from geological evidence that it has undergone periods of cold and warmth, of nearly total glaciation or liquefaction, of total night or blazing day, or even when the atmosphere was completely toxic, sulphuric, polluted. How many ice ages it has endured, and how many of fire? The earth’s history is one of great turbulence and constant change, because the big picture is we live on a planet that is cooling from the remnants of its creation out of the stuff leftover from the birth of the sun.
How much does Man contribute to these processes?
I think very, very little actually, despite the popular cult science of global warming due to human causes.
This doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, however what we do about it is another thing.
Ever heard of the new proposals for Geo-Engineering? They’re talking about plugging the Ozone hole with chemicals emitted into the stratosphere by commercial jetliners (when they go on polar routes, say), really messing with the atmosphere so we can f*ck it up really good. hehe.