A top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rejected claims by environmental activists that the outbreak of tornadoes ravaging the American South is related to climate change brought on by global warming.
Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at NOAAâs Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said warming trends do create more of the fuel that tornadoes require, such as moisture, but that they also deprive tornadoes of another essential ingredient: wind shear.
âWe know we have a warming going on,â Carbin told Fox News in an interview Thursday, but added: âThere really is no scientific consensus or connection [between global warming and tornadic activity]â¦.Jumping from a large-scale event like global warming to relatively small-scale events like tornadoes is a huge leap across a variety of scales.â
We've seen a declining level of the severe tornadoes over the last half century in the U.S.,â Lomborg told Fox News.âSo we need to be very careful not just to jump to the conclusion and say, âOh, then it's because of global warming.ââ
In fact, NOAA statistics show that the last 60 years have seen a dramatic increase in the reporting of weak tornadoes, but no change in the number of severe to violent ones.
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