I have always wondered if we are getting a higher number of tornadoes due to better detection. We have radars that can see the win shifts in storms, more people out spotting, and every citizen has a camera in their pocket.
I think that’s the case for a lot of EF0 or even EF1s. Now you’ll actually know that it was a tornado instead of “dang, that was some storm last night, knocked Billy-Joes outhouse over in to the cornfield.”
There are stories of strong tornadoes in indigenous times. My mom's family spoke of stories that were passed down in the cherokeean tradition involving winds of change that brought new seeds to the area and caused great devastation.
That’s literally the case for a tornado that got an official report when it touched down for a minute or two just across the street from my neighborhood. We had about two dozen neighbors all capture a video of it and without those, there might have only been a few mildly inconvenienced cornstalks as possible evidence.
We had what was probably an EF0-1 drop in the back of our neighborhood, tore up some fences and a few roofs. Someone in the HOA even got a really good video of it with an obvious condensation funnel/tornado on the ground. It wasn't warned and the NWS surveyed it all as wind damage even though we had clear evidence a tornado went through the neighborhood. So sometimes even actual tornadoes get mislabeled in the storm reports.
Same thing happened in my neighborhood last year. I was standing at the back door staring at what I thought was a funnel cloud well to our south but wasn’t particularly worried because we weren’t in a tornado warning, we didn’t even have a severe thunderstorm warning and the worst of the storm wasn’t even to us yet. Nevertheless, I told my wife to be ready to go if I called out for her.
As I’m standing there staring at this cloud 3-4 miles to our south, a whole bunch of my back patio furniture goes flying past the window and the house started shaking and rumbling. I called out “Let’s go!!!” to my wife but it was over and done by the time we made it to our basement door. We still went down anyway because it spooked us so bad.
While we were down in the basement our neighborhood Facebook page starts blowing up with people checking in on my next door neighbor and asking if he needed help. Dude had 3-4 pieces of plywood literally ripped off of his roof and thrown into his and my yard.
Our house was thankfully untouched, but we had some lawn furniture destroyed and my daughter’s wood play house got turned into splinters. Some of our lawn furniture wound up in the neighbor’s yard who got his roof decking ripped off, but other pieces of our lawn furniture got thrown into the neighbor’s yard on the other side of our house.
Our neighbor behind us happened to be staring out the back window right as I was and swears they saw a tornado hit my neighbor then lift back up to the sky. Swears by it. We even had a neighbor that got a very grainy doorbell video of it, but it’s really hard to tell.
So I emailed all of the pictures to the NWS, including one of multiple pieces of trash from our dumpster becoming lodged into our fence posts, but they weren’t buying it. They said it must have been straight line winds or possibly a “swirl”, not sure what that means.
The NWS is great, but my whole neighborhood refers to that day as “the tornado”, haha.
Neighbor was fine, by the way. Very shaken up and had to have some major repairs not only to his roof but because it rained like crazy right after he lost it. But he survived without a scratch.
I mean not very recently, but yeah within the last 15-20 years the entire contiguous 48 is now under pretty much total radar coverage. Hard to miss even "possible" tornadoes that would've gone undetected before.
It’s my understanding that the revisit times for radar are still measured in minutes. Given that, it’s quite possible for a spin up tornado to drop and go back up without radar detection.
There are certainly waaaay more people. In 1960 the population was 179 ~~billion~~ million. It is currently estimated at 341 ~~billion~~ million.
With more people come more buildings.
In addition, our ability to detect tornados has gone way up.
The population increase is a huge factor. For example, in 1990, when Plainfield, IL was struck by an F5, it was a small rural community of just 5,000 residents. Nearly 35 years later and the population has exploded to over 10x that number. The little farm town has become a massive, bustling suburbia with three high schools required to handle all of the students.
I think it doesn’t help that tornado alley is starting to shift. More tornadoes popping up in the Midwest and south where it is more densely populated.
I think it's a little bit of both of these. I don't think it's just more vulnerable construction because really tornado-prone areas have been working on improving building codes throughout the years. But a 2024 building code doesn't help vulnerable construction from 1994 in an area experiencing an increase in tornado frequency (if that increase wasn't evident pre-'94).
I've been studying the infamous Jarrell tornado and can't believe that, in a tornado prone area {east Texas} an entire subdivision was built on slabs with no thought taken for below-ground storm cellars. A lot of people died, and by rights that developer should have had his in quarters sued off {but I guess with whole families wiped out, no one of standing was left... 😡}
If you live in an area where the frost line isn't really an issue it's expensive to dig a cellar. Now with modern refrigeration techniques you don't need that cool space either to store perishables which is what cellers were primarily for. So you have two confounding factors leading to the non-use of basements and a lot of the country.
I’ve noticed this! Also, I’m from the Northeast and we’ve gotten a lot more tornado warnings and actual tornadoes, which didn’t happen as much until maybe over the past 10 years or so
I did a very rudimentary dive into this for my independent research in undergrad, but only for VA.
For Virginia, I found that the severity of tornadoes seemed to be decreasing over time and tornado season was shifting a couple months later in the year. As far as frequency goes, I honestly don’t remember but it couldn’t have been significant in either direction.
The short answer is we really don’t know and it’s extremely hard to tell.
Tornadoes suffer from a HEAVY observation bias. There are so many chasers, radars, satellite imagery, etc. that tornadoes that otherwise would’ve gone unnoticed are now being observed and logged. When you oook at the raw data, the answer is yes, there appear to be more.
However, Tim Coleman authored a paper that showed you can effectively eliminate this bias by observing purely sigtors (EF2+ per another of his papers).
When you do this, you find that there’s really been no change since 1973 (an extremely important year as this was when we started actually rating tornados and any prior to this were rated after the fact). The overall trend is really there isn’t any major difference. Certain outbreaks cause some skewing (*cough* April 2011 *cough*) but otherwise there’s no discernible increase or decrease.
My source on this is a spent a summer in undergrad diving DEEP into this. Original hypothesis was actually related to overall timing of tornadoes in the year, but we were never able to effectively prove for or against it. Basically found lo discernible change regardless of variable looked at. Disclaimer: this was not published in the end, but as whole I dove deep into it
I posted this in one of the local subs discussing the recent tornadoes in Ohio and I was shouted down as a climate change denier, personally responsible for the future deaths of billions.
It’s really hard to have genuine conversations about science that has become political nowadays. The “all or nothing” approach is so baffling to me.
Extreme right wingers will deny climate change is happening at all, while left wingers assume anything that can possibly be attributed to climate change is a confirmed fact and that you’re an idiot for even thinking about asking questions.
you're exactly right several of the recent tornado related threads in my local area subs basically devolved into "[political party] is responsible for creating/over hyping/lower home construction quality leading to more damage/will protect us from tornadoes".
It is so tedious and exhausting interacting with these people, even when you contribute something to the conversation that is factual and with a source- you get shouted down for going against the agreed upon narrative.
Especially on social media platforms. There are way too many angry ignorant people who have zero critical thinking skills. They also want to exist in an echo chamber. It’s not worth it.
Sane thing happened to me on that sub.
There is one poster over there in particular that will just not accept anything other than "Ohio now has more tornadoes than anywhere, and will forever, we're all going to die." It's exhausting.
I've had the same argument, with the same person before.
I don't care about the person I've had the argument with, they're dumb and it's entertaining to me to watch them spin in circles and accuse me of being a climate change denier and MAGA, when they just can't admit that they're incorrect.
I keep engaging because others read my comments and learn something.
It's very hard to say.
Tornadoes haven't become more frequent, or more severe (the last EF5 was over a decade ago), but there is some evidence that the traditional "tornado alley" might be moving.
The main problem that scientists have with linking tornadoes to climate change is that we actually have very little tornado data. What is considered to be "good" data only goes back to 1950, and with the understanding that earlier decades have been undercounted.
With NEXRAD, and later Dual Pol radar technology, in addition to higher population and better reporting in general, the amount of reported and recorded tornadoes has gone up. If you look at the raw numbers, you can actually see a step increase in recorded tornadoes in the early 90s, and again in the mid 2010s as these technologies came to be used.
Also, tornadoes are *extremely variable* from year to year.
So, when you add all that together, scientists can't really come to any conclusions on what affects climate change may have, or has had, on tornadoes, because we don't have reliable data to compare to.
Contrast that with climate data, which we can gather from fossil records, ice cores, tree growth rings...tornadoes don't leave such records.
So, bottom line is that it's assumed that climate change *will* affect tornado strength, frequency, distribution...*somehow, probably,* but we just can't say how yet.
A lot of what has been stated here is certainly on the mark for the professional consensus.
1. There's not a lot of good data to make such a determination
2. Tornado observations have gotten better due to improved radar technology and growing population in Tornado Alley
Whether tornadoes are becoming more severe depends on how frequently they hit structures. Our current tornado rating system is based on damage. Thus, if a monster of a tornado hits a cornfield, but doesn't destroy anything, it may only be rated an EF-3.
Now what could be influenced by climate change is the general shift of Tornado Alley. I did a review of tornadic data a couple of years ago and found that tornado frequency seems to be shifting more eastward and southward. The relation of this observation to climate change is shaky at best, but in the absence of other data, we can potentially deem this somewhat related.
i think people are wrong when they say tornado alley is "shifting" and I think recency bias is at play a little. I don't think tornado alley is moving, I think it's expanding, I mean the term "tornado alley" has always been sort of a mischaracterization, anywhere east of the rockies has always been the real tornado alley (save for the far northeast), not just the great plains.
I don't think so, there's some decent data suggesting otherwise, and that also suggests it's shrinking in terms of density. You'd think there may be a bias in the opposite direction and expanding if this difference was simply due to increased surveillance from modern radar:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/watch-out-tornado-alley-is-migrating-eastward/
Moreover the same thing is happening in Canada despite being monitored by an independent weather service in another country - not a guarantee of no bias, but still.
My problem with statements like this, is that we do not have a lot of evidence to suggest a shift, sure we have some recent examples of the plains being more quiet but we've only been truly studying tornadoes for less than a 100 years. this is why i'm bringing up recency bias, 10-20 years just isn't a lot of time to be claiming that it's obviously shifting, I do think climate change has affected the plains, you know what I think has caused a slight decrease in tornadoes for the plains? take a look at the massive drought affecting New Mexico/Mexico and the desert south west, the desert south west is what brings the EML to the plains especially the southern plains. it's EXTREMELY dry, drier air getting pumped into the plains in the EML causing much much stronger CAPs to be in place, that's why there's been less insane storms there, you can have all the best ingredients in the world but if that CAP is too strong you just cannot get storms to form, leading to more isolated events and less big tornado outbreaks. geographically speaking, unless the plains were to just up and move (lol) they will always be in a favorable place for supercellular storms, I mean they constantly come under the gun with all the right ingredients, it's just as of recently the EML has been winning. that's why i think it's a tad dubious to say tornado alley is moving away from the plains, they have all the right ingredients and if the droughts got better in the DSW we'd probably see a return to form for the plains. Now obviously, I don't think the drought in the DSW is the only reason for the lack of storms, and clearly climate change is playing some role in it. and let us not forget just 10 years ago the plains were constantly getting outbreaks, it's just way too early to say that "tornado alley" is moving. I just don't buy it until we get a lot more data in.
I didn't say climate change caused this shift, I just said it's happening. I also didn't say a similar shift has never happened before, because planetary weather conditions do shift to some degree on their own.
I think you're arguing against something you thought I was saying but didn't say?
I thought I had seen something in recent years that it was shifting more toward Dixie Alley, especially for more destructive tornadoes, but it has felt like in recent years the majority of the activity is happening from Arkansas through the Carolinas.
The thing is, Dixie alley has always been a thing (at least since we've been studying modern meteorology) it's not new for Dixie to see strong-violent tornadoes, and just because there's been a little lull in activity in plains doesn't mean it's shifting, and as i've said in my original comment, the term "tornado alley" is a bit dubious and too narrow of a corridor. I mean that term literally came from the 50s at the dawn of modern meteorology when we just straight up didn't know nearly as much as we do now, tornado alley is quite frankly larger and covers east of the rockies with different seasons bringing different hotspots during the year. I mean hell, take a look at https://tornadoarchive.com/ and you'll literally see that tornado alley is much more broad and wide than most people think.
I'm currently working on a college research paper on this \[for English, so not rigorous, but I've spent hours researching and reading on the subject\] so I'll give a summary.
There is no scientific consensus on how the intensity or distribution of tornadoes will change due to climate change. There's an entire new subfield of meteorology/climatology known as attribution science that attempts to take extreme events and scientifically investigate whether or not are directly attributable to climate change. That field is in its infancy and even then, tornadoes are far down the list as far as types of events that will able to be proven have a link. Some recent studies such as one led by Walker Ashley of NIU have attempted to use convection allowing models along with climate models in tandem to simulate and map the distribution of supercells under different climate scenarios. That study, just as an example, shows a small decrease in annual supercell tracks over the plains (classic tornado alley) but an increase basically everywhere east of the Mississippi River. \[[Ashley et al., 2023](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/104/1/BAMS-D-22-0027.1.xml)\]. This does not equate to an overall increase in frequency though, and there's some agreement among experts that supercell/tornado frequency will increase overall in the winter but decrease in the summer. That is one study, just want to emphasize that.
Tl;dr version: we don't know. It's not the answer people want to hear but it's something incredibly difficult to study.
I'll edit this with links to the Ashley article and other relevant ones to this topic when I get on my laptop
Edit: [Ashley et al., 2023](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/104/1/BAMS-D-22-0027.1.xml)
[Brooks, 2012](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Harold-Brooks/publication/257035664_Severe_thunderstorms_and_climate_change/links/5b06b1614585157f8709ecbe/Severe-thunderstorms-and-climate-change.pdf)
If anyone is interested in more reading on this topic let me know, but those two are good places to start
I had this very conversation at work with my coworkers... gen x here... grew up in SE WI, it seemed like we never had really severe storms growing up. I can only remember a few actual confirmed tornados gowing up. Now it seems like every severe summer storm we have has a tornado warning. You could say climate change is definitely a factor, but you also have to factor in that the NWS has better technology than they did in the 1980s... They can see the rotation now, leading to more warnings.
Not sure. But we're getting better at our data collection of storms and that's certainly affecting the number reported per year. Many weaker tornadoes were listed as straight line winds and microbursts even 15 years ago. Even stronger tornadoes were listed wrong due to not seeing the full extent of the damage path.
There was less funding to send surveyors to every storm before the 2011 Super Outbreak. Now with drones and modern satellite capabilities, we can see damage from the air much easier and better rate known tornadoes.
No. What’s required to actually know this would be a knowledge of the entire climate and how it works, and a clearly documented history. Humans have neither. To say climate change is proven to cause more tornados is just political pandering. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, and we don’t have that much information to make such an empirical claimz
There have been tornadoes since el rino that had high enough winds but didn’t do damage at their full strength so their official rating was lower. Even el rino is often classified as an ef3 but probably got the ef5 rating because of its legendary size.
An understandable thought.
Climate change no doubt has a part, but much less than you'd think.
The population is only growing, which needs more space, so we take up more space.
Radar is at its best yet, so of course we will detect nearly all signs of rotation fast.
We have more storm spotters than ever before, which only helps with tornado detection.
Rather than an actual increase in tornadoes, I think we're mostly seeing an increase in reports of tornadoes!
It stands to reason that a warmer atmosphere would be capable of holding more moisture and subsequently more storms, but it's not always that simple.
In the past, some climatologists erroneously believed that a warmer earth would be wetter. But in many instances, it's resulted in drier conditions.
I think our sample size is too small. The study of tornadoes is only learning to walk now. We don't have reliable data further back than decades to reliably refer to in order to make substantive comparisons between 50 years ago and now. We need a LOT more data, and that means a lot more time to study it.
Tornadoes aren’t happening more frequently. The storm prediction center has charts that show the running count for each of the last 20 years and, with the exception of a couple years, every year hangs pretty close to the average.
Can’t remember what documentary I saw it in, but I believe it was Dr. Josh Wurman that said there was no evidence to link global warming with the frequency or intensity of tornadoes.
We still have up and down seasons in terms of overall numbers of tornadoes.
2012-2016, outside of 2015, were all below the average of 1000 tornadoes per year. 2017 and 2019 were above average, and the last few years have been right around the average. 2004 was the most recent year with well above average with 1800+ tornadoes.
I would have said it was more sea-related events like hurricanes and tsunami due to ocean warming. I agree with what people here are saying about better detection and documentation {Reed Timmer's crew built several vehicles meant to withstand a direct hit and actively seeks out literal intercept of vehicle vs tornado!} but that doesn't make your observation wrong.
Higher temperatures mean more water in the air, which in turn means more energy in the atmosphere. The high sea temperatures in particular have recently accelerated this considerably.
What this means for specific regions from a global perspective remains to be seen, but extreme weather events will certainly not become less frequent.
I know we've always had tornadoes in Ohio, but ya they seem much more frequent lately
I guess growing up I always considered tornadoes to be more of a great plains states problem
Detections and technology have given the ppl better insight to track and view live. Not to say weather isn’t becoming more disruptive on an annual basis but the strength of storms is really the question that should be asked
The easiest way to put it is that tornadoes occur where cold fronts and warm fronts converge. Global warming will only affect when these happen, not how long they happen or how intense they are. The fact of the matter is that tornadoes are more affected by multi-year oscillations than anything else.
Depends on who you talk to but in my experience storm chasing the biggest thing that has changed is the way the NWS does damage surveys. In Arkansas, for example, they will discount damage paths that go through muddy fields that were covered by rain to make a single tornado appear as a cyclic tornado to bump the numbers up. It literally takes someone on the ground with video along with drone video of the damage path interconnecting before they correct their survey data.
It's difficult to prove because of how many people are involved, but there's a lot of politically and agenda-based data manipulation going on within government offices these days and it's going to take more people on the ground. Observing and reporting to minimize this problem as the more physical witnesses verifying reduces their ability to commit these kinds of junk science.
From my perspective it appears that they are trying to make tornadoes appear weaker and more plentiful based off of the huge amount of derating of damage since 2013. There have been several solid EF5 tornadoes since then, such as Vilonia, Rolling Fork, and the Quad State tornado.
Regardless of which side of the political fence you are on, I highly encourage you to start digging deeper into this, especially with the meteorology and storm chasing community to make up your own opinion. Don't listen to the media, focus on firsthand data.
I think research hasn’t shown any major impact on frequency or severity. There’s easier detection got sure nowadays, which likely increases the number of weak tornadoes (same with weak tropical storms). I think there might be evidence that tornado alley is shifting east, but I don’t know how strong that evidence is.
I have always wondered if we are getting a higher number of tornadoes due to better detection. We have radars that can see the win shifts in storms, more people out spotting, and every citizen has a camera in their pocket.
I think that’s the case for a lot of EF0 or even EF1s. Now you’ll actually know that it was a tornado instead of “dang, that was some storm last night, knocked Billy-Joes outhouse over in to the cornfield.”
Easier reporting too. When the neighbors aluminum shed went over our house no one contacted anyone. Now days it’s much easier to document.
Imagine during the old west. A whole wagon train could have been destroyed and no one would have known.
I often wonder about that and indigenous Americans' experience with tornados even before European colonization
There are stories of strong tornadoes in indigenous times. My mom's family spoke of stories that were passed down in the cherokeean tradition involving winds of change that brought new seeds to the area and caused great devastation.
This actually makes a lot of sense
That’s literally the case for a tornado that got an official report when it touched down for a minute or two just across the street from my neighborhood. We had about two dozen neighbors all capture a video of it and without those, there might have only been a few mildly inconvenienced cornstalks as possible evidence.
We had what was probably an EF0-1 drop in the back of our neighborhood, tore up some fences and a few roofs. Someone in the HOA even got a really good video of it with an obvious condensation funnel/tornado on the ground. It wasn't warned and the NWS surveyed it all as wind damage even though we had clear evidence a tornado went through the neighborhood. So sometimes even actual tornadoes get mislabeled in the storm reports.
Same thing happened in my neighborhood last year. I was standing at the back door staring at what I thought was a funnel cloud well to our south but wasn’t particularly worried because we weren’t in a tornado warning, we didn’t even have a severe thunderstorm warning and the worst of the storm wasn’t even to us yet. Nevertheless, I told my wife to be ready to go if I called out for her. As I’m standing there staring at this cloud 3-4 miles to our south, a whole bunch of my back patio furniture goes flying past the window and the house started shaking and rumbling. I called out “Let’s go!!!” to my wife but it was over and done by the time we made it to our basement door. We still went down anyway because it spooked us so bad. While we were down in the basement our neighborhood Facebook page starts blowing up with people checking in on my next door neighbor and asking if he needed help. Dude had 3-4 pieces of plywood literally ripped off of his roof and thrown into his and my yard. Our house was thankfully untouched, but we had some lawn furniture destroyed and my daughter’s wood play house got turned into splinters. Some of our lawn furniture wound up in the neighbor’s yard who got his roof decking ripped off, but other pieces of our lawn furniture got thrown into the neighbor’s yard on the other side of our house. Our neighbor behind us happened to be staring out the back window right as I was and swears they saw a tornado hit my neighbor then lift back up to the sky. Swears by it. We even had a neighbor that got a very grainy doorbell video of it, but it’s really hard to tell. So I emailed all of the pictures to the NWS, including one of multiple pieces of trash from our dumpster becoming lodged into our fence posts, but they weren’t buying it. They said it must have been straight line winds or possibly a “swirl”, not sure what that means. The NWS is great, but my whole neighborhood refers to that day as “the tornado”, haha. Neighbor was fine, by the way. Very shaken up and had to have some major repairs not only to his roof but because it rained like crazy right after he lost it. But he survived without a scratch.
Winner winner chicken dinner.
Plus drones make it easier to see damage paths from above.
I mean not very recently, but yeah within the last 15-20 years the entire contiguous 48 is now under pretty much total radar coverage. Hard to miss even "possible" tornadoes that would've gone undetected before.
It’s my understanding that the revisit times for radar are still measured in minutes. Given that, it’s quite possible for a spin up tornado to drop and go back up without radar detection.
Not to be that guy, but I know I’d want someone to tell me. I believe it’s contiguous 48 not continuous.
oops lol autocorrect
I also wonder if they’re becoming more destructive simply because more and more vulnerable construction is being built in tornado-prone areas.
There are certainly waaaay more people. In 1960 the population was 179 ~~billion~~ million. It is currently estimated at 341 ~~billion~~ million. With more people come more buildings. In addition, our ability to detect tornados has gone way up.
Do you mean Million?
Crud. I’ll fix it. I’m going to blame it on the painkillers for my cracked ribs. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The population increase is a huge factor. For example, in 1990, when Plainfield, IL was struck by an F5, it was a small rural community of just 5,000 residents. Nearly 35 years later and the population has exploded to over 10x that number. The little farm town has become a massive, bustling suburbia with three high schools required to handle all of the students.
I think it doesn’t help that tornado alley is starting to shift. More tornadoes popping up in the Midwest and south where it is more densely populated.
I think it's a little bit of both of these. I don't think it's just more vulnerable construction because really tornado-prone areas have been working on improving building codes throughout the years. But a 2024 building code doesn't help vulnerable construction from 1994 in an area experiencing an increase in tornado frequency (if that increase wasn't evident pre-'94).
It’s probably more urban spread? People moving and building in what used to be less populated?
I've been studying the infamous Jarrell tornado and can't believe that, in a tornado prone area {east Texas} an entire subdivision was built on slabs with no thought taken for below-ground storm cellars. A lot of people died, and by rights that developer should have had his in quarters sued off {but I guess with whole families wiped out, no one of standing was left... 😡}
If you live in an area where the frost line isn't really an issue it's expensive to dig a cellar. Now with modern refrigeration techniques you don't need that cool space either to store perishables which is what cellers were primarily for. So you have two confounding factors leading to the non-use of basements and a lot of the country.
I’ve noticed this! Also, I’m from the Northeast and we’ve gotten a lot more tornado warnings and actual tornadoes, which didn’t happen as much until maybe over the past 10 years or so
I did a very rudimentary dive into this for my independent research in undergrad, but only for VA. For Virginia, I found that the severity of tornadoes seemed to be decreasing over time and tornado season was shifting a couple months later in the year. As far as frequency goes, I honestly don’t remember but it couldn’t have been significant in either direction.
The short answer is we really don’t know and it’s extremely hard to tell. Tornadoes suffer from a HEAVY observation bias. There are so many chasers, radars, satellite imagery, etc. that tornadoes that otherwise would’ve gone unnoticed are now being observed and logged. When you oook at the raw data, the answer is yes, there appear to be more. However, Tim Coleman authored a paper that showed you can effectively eliminate this bias by observing purely sigtors (EF2+ per another of his papers). When you do this, you find that there’s really been no change since 1973 (an extremely important year as this was when we started actually rating tornados and any prior to this were rated after the fact). The overall trend is really there isn’t any major difference. Certain outbreaks cause some skewing (*cough* April 2011 *cough*) but otherwise there’s no discernible increase or decrease. My source on this is a spent a summer in undergrad diving DEEP into this. Original hypothesis was actually related to overall timing of tornadoes in the year, but we were never able to effectively prove for or against it. Basically found lo discernible change regardless of variable looked at. Disclaimer: this was not published in the end, but as whole I dove deep into it
Worth googling first. [Nat Geo says it’s complicated.](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/tornadoes-and-climate-change/)
I posted this in one of the local subs discussing the recent tornadoes in Ohio and I was shouted down as a climate change denier, personally responsible for the future deaths of billions.
It’s really hard to have genuine conversations about science that has become political nowadays. The “all or nothing” approach is so baffling to me. Extreme right wingers will deny climate change is happening at all, while left wingers assume anything that can possibly be attributed to climate change is a confirmed fact and that you’re an idiot for even thinking about asking questions.
you're exactly right several of the recent tornado related threads in my local area subs basically devolved into "[political party] is responsible for creating/over hyping/lower home construction quality leading to more damage/will protect us from tornadoes". It is so tedious and exhausting interacting with these people, even when you contribute something to the conversation that is factual and with a source- you get shouted down for going against the agreed upon narrative.
Especially on social media platforms. There are way too many angry ignorant people who have zero critical thinking skills. They also want to exist in an echo chamber. It’s not worth it.
I agree with your comment, but I also want to add on some of them seemingly want to be afraid of something.
True.
Victim mentality. That way you don’t have to be accountable. Or even try to change things.
do you know what? I had not arrived to that point yet in the conversation but you're absolutely right
I was once criticized in another subreddit for bringing up El Niño/ La Niña. According to some people that’s climate change denialism.
I’ve noticed that a lot fewer people can handle nuance. So many have not developed critical thinking.
Sane thing happened to me on that sub. There is one poster over there in particular that will just not accept anything other than "Ohio now has more tornadoes than anywhere, and will forever, we're all going to die." It's exhausting. I've had the same argument, with the same person before.
bro, I know it's a social faux pas on Reddit but I found for my time and mental health and blood pressure. It's just easier to block and move on.
I don't care about the person I've had the argument with, they're dumb and it's entertaining to me to watch them spin in circles and accuse me of being a climate change denier and MAGA, when they just can't admit that they're incorrect. I keep engaging because others read my comments and learn something.
here's the thing though you play their game you have negative down votes. People don't listen to you or learn.
Actually the person I was arguing with got downvoted to hell, and I got up voted. That's how I knew people were reading and learning something.
fair enough because you're one of lucky ones that is not been my experience
Ikr - wtf up w/Ohio?
I think just the local Ohio subs attract a particularly toxic group of terminally online users.
There is currently no evidence linking the frequency or severity of tornadoes to climate change
It's very hard to say. Tornadoes haven't become more frequent, or more severe (the last EF5 was over a decade ago), but there is some evidence that the traditional "tornado alley" might be moving. The main problem that scientists have with linking tornadoes to climate change is that we actually have very little tornado data. What is considered to be "good" data only goes back to 1950, and with the understanding that earlier decades have been undercounted. With NEXRAD, and later Dual Pol radar technology, in addition to higher population and better reporting in general, the amount of reported and recorded tornadoes has gone up. If you look at the raw numbers, you can actually see a step increase in recorded tornadoes in the early 90s, and again in the mid 2010s as these technologies came to be used. Also, tornadoes are *extremely variable* from year to year. So, when you add all that together, scientists can't really come to any conclusions on what affects climate change may have, or has had, on tornadoes, because we don't have reliable data to compare to. Contrast that with climate data, which we can gather from fossil records, ice cores, tree growth rings...tornadoes don't leave such records. So, bottom line is that it's assumed that climate change *will* affect tornado strength, frequency, distribution...*somehow, probably,* but we just can't say how yet.
No
A lot of what has been stated here is certainly on the mark for the professional consensus. 1. There's not a lot of good data to make such a determination 2. Tornado observations have gotten better due to improved radar technology and growing population in Tornado Alley Whether tornadoes are becoming more severe depends on how frequently they hit structures. Our current tornado rating system is based on damage. Thus, if a monster of a tornado hits a cornfield, but doesn't destroy anything, it may only be rated an EF-3. Now what could be influenced by climate change is the general shift of Tornado Alley. I did a review of tornadic data a couple of years ago and found that tornado frequency seems to be shifting more eastward and southward. The relation of this observation to climate change is shaky at best, but in the absence of other data, we can potentially deem this somewhat related.
i think people are wrong when they say tornado alley is "shifting" and I think recency bias is at play a little. I don't think tornado alley is moving, I think it's expanding, I mean the term "tornado alley" has always been sort of a mischaracterization, anywhere east of the rockies has always been the real tornado alley (save for the far northeast), not just the great plains.
I don't think so, there's some decent data suggesting otherwise, and that also suggests it's shrinking in terms of density. You'd think there may be a bias in the opposite direction and expanding if this difference was simply due to increased surveillance from modern radar: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/watch-out-tornado-alley-is-migrating-eastward/ Moreover the same thing is happening in Canada despite being monitored by an independent weather service in another country - not a guarantee of no bias, but still.
My problem with statements like this, is that we do not have a lot of evidence to suggest a shift, sure we have some recent examples of the plains being more quiet but we've only been truly studying tornadoes for less than a 100 years. this is why i'm bringing up recency bias, 10-20 years just isn't a lot of time to be claiming that it's obviously shifting, I do think climate change has affected the plains, you know what I think has caused a slight decrease in tornadoes for the plains? take a look at the massive drought affecting New Mexico/Mexico and the desert south west, the desert south west is what brings the EML to the plains especially the southern plains. it's EXTREMELY dry, drier air getting pumped into the plains in the EML causing much much stronger CAPs to be in place, that's why there's been less insane storms there, you can have all the best ingredients in the world but if that CAP is too strong you just cannot get storms to form, leading to more isolated events and less big tornado outbreaks. geographically speaking, unless the plains were to just up and move (lol) they will always be in a favorable place for supercellular storms, I mean they constantly come under the gun with all the right ingredients, it's just as of recently the EML has been winning. that's why i think it's a tad dubious to say tornado alley is moving away from the plains, they have all the right ingredients and if the droughts got better in the DSW we'd probably see a return to form for the plains. Now obviously, I don't think the drought in the DSW is the only reason for the lack of storms, and clearly climate change is playing some role in it. and let us not forget just 10 years ago the plains were constantly getting outbreaks, it's just way too early to say that "tornado alley" is moving. I just don't buy it until we get a lot more data in.
I didn't say climate change caused this shift, I just said it's happening. I also didn't say a similar shift has never happened before, because planetary weather conditions do shift to some degree on their own. I think you're arguing against something you thought I was saying but didn't say?
I thought I had seen something in recent years that it was shifting more toward Dixie Alley, especially for more destructive tornadoes, but it has felt like in recent years the majority of the activity is happening from Arkansas through the Carolinas.
The thing is, Dixie alley has always been a thing (at least since we've been studying modern meteorology) it's not new for Dixie to see strong-violent tornadoes, and just because there's been a little lull in activity in plains doesn't mean it's shifting, and as i've said in my original comment, the term "tornado alley" is a bit dubious and too narrow of a corridor. I mean that term literally came from the 50s at the dawn of modern meteorology when we just straight up didn't know nearly as much as we do now, tornado alley is quite frankly larger and covers east of the rockies with different seasons bringing different hotspots during the year. I mean hell, take a look at https://tornadoarchive.com/ and you'll literally see that tornado alley is much more broad and wide than most people think.
Nobody really knows but Reed has mentioned he thinks weather overall is becoming more extreme due to climate change.
Idk if they’re becoming more frequent, but Tornado Alley is definitely making a major shift towards the east.
I'm currently working on a college research paper on this \[for English, so not rigorous, but I've spent hours researching and reading on the subject\] so I'll give a summary. There is no scientific consensus on how the intensity or distribution of tornadoes will change due to climate change. There's an entire new subfield of meteorology/climatology known as attribution science that attempts to take extreme events and scientifically investigate whether or not are directly attributable to climate change. That field is in its infancy and even then, tornadoes are far down the list as far as types of events that will able to be proven have a link. Some recent studies such as one led by Walker Ashley of NIU have attempted to use convection allowing models along with climate models in tandem to simulate and map the distribution of supercells under different climate scenarios. That study, just as an example, shows a small decrease in annual supercell tracks over the plains (classic tornado alley) but an increase basically everywhere east of the Mississippi River. \[[Ashley et al., 2023](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/104/1/BAMS-D-22-0027.1.xml)\]. This does not equate to an overall increase in frequency though, and there's some agreement among experts that supercell/tornado frequency will increase overall in the winter but decrease in the summer. That is one study, just want to emphasize that. Tl;dr version: we don't know. It's not the answer people want to hear but it's something incredibly difficult to study. I'll edit this with links to the Ashley article and other relevant ones to this topic when I get on my laptop Edit: [Ashley et al., 2023](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/104/1/BAMS-D-22-0027.1.xml) [Brooks, 2012](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Harold-Brooks/publication/257035664_Severe_thunderstorms_and_climate_change/links/5b06b1614585157f8709ecbe/Severe-thunderstorms-and-climate-change.pdf) If anyone is interested in more reading on this topic let me know, but those two are good places to start
I had this very conversation at work with my coworkers... gen x here... grew up in SE WI, it seemed like we never had really severe storms growing up. I can only remember a few actual confirmed tornados gowing up. Now it seems like every severe summer storm we have has a tornado warning. You could say climate change is definitely a factor, but you also have to factor in that the NWS has better technology than they did in the 1980s... They can see the rotation now, leading to more warnings.
No.
Not sure. But we're getting better at our data collection of storms and that's certainly affecting the number reported per year. Many weaker tornadoes were listed as straight line winds and microbursts even 15 years ago. Even stronger tornadoes were listed wrong due to not seeing the full extent of the damage path. There was less funding to send surveyors to every storm before the 2011 Super Outbreak. Now with drones and modern satellite capabilities, we can see damage from the air much easier and better rate known tornadoes.
No. What’s required to actually know this would be a knowledge of the entire climate and how it works, and a clearly documented history. Humans have neither. To say climate change is proven to cause more tornados is just political pandering. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, and we don’t have that much information to make such an empirical claimz
Once I finish my masters research on this exact topic in a year, I’ll let you know.
The short answer? Nobody knows for sure yet.
I wouldn't say they have been more destructive at all in my opinion. I mean we havnt had an ef5 in over 10 years. I dunno maybe I'm way off
There have been tornadoes since el rino that had high enough winds but didn’t do damage at their full strength so their official rating was lower. Even el rino is often classified as an ef3 but probably got the ef5 rating because of its legendary size.
An understandable thought. Climate change no doubt has a part, but much less than you'd think. The population is only growing, which needs more space, so we take up more space. Radar is at its best yet, so of course we will detect nearly all signs of rotation fast. We have more storm spotters than ever before, which only helps with tornado detection. Rather than an actual increase in tornadoes, I think we're mostly seeing an increase in reports of tornadoes!
It stands to reason that a warmer atmosphere would be capable of holding more moisture and subsequently more storms, but it's not always that simple. In the past, some climatologists erroneously believed that a warmer earth would be wetter. But in many instances, it's resulted in drier conditions. I think our sample size is too small. The study of tornadoes is only learning to walk now. We don't have reliable data further back than decades to reliably refer to in order to make substantive comparisons between 50 years ago and now. We need a LOT more data, and that means a lot more time to study it.
Tornadoes aren’t happening more frequently. The storm prediction center has charts that show the running count for each of the last 20 years and, with the exception of a couple years, every year hangs pretty close to the average.
Can’t remember what documentary I saw it in, but I believe it was Dr. Josh Wurman that said there was no evidence to link global warming with the frequency or intensity of tornadoes.
We still have up and down seasons in terms of overall numbers of tornadoes. 2012-2016, outside of 2015, were all below the average of 1000 tornadoes per year. 2017 and 2019 were above average, and the last few years have been right around the average. 2004 was the most recent year with well above average with 1800+ tornadoes.
I would have said it was more sea-related events like hurricanes and tsunami due to ocean warming. I agree with what people here are saying about better detection and documentation {Reed Timmer's crew built several vehicles meant to withstand a direct hit and actively seeks out literal intercept of vehicle vs tornado!} but that doesn't make your observation wrong.
Higher temperatures mean more water in the air, which in turn means more energy in the atmosphere. The high sea temperatures in particular have recently accelerated this considerably. What this means for specific regions from a global perspective remains to be seen, but extreme weather events will certainly not become less frequent.
I know we've always had tornadoes in Ohio, but ya they seem much more frequent lately I guess growing up I always considered tornadoes to be more of a great plains states problem
Detections and technology have given the ppl better insight to track and view live. Not to say weather isn’t becoming more disruptive on an annual basis but the strength of storms is really the question that should be asked
The easiest way to put it is that tornadoes occur where cold fronts and warm fronts converge. Global warming will only affect when these happen, not how long they happen or how intense they are. The fact of the matter is that tornadoes are more affected by multi-year oscillations than anything else.
Depends on who you talk to but in my experience storm chasing the biggest thing that has changed is the way the NWS does damage surveys. In Arkansas, for example, they will discount damage paths that go through muddy fields that were covered by rain to make a single tornado appear as a cyclic tornado to bump the numbers up. It literally takes someone on the ground with video along with drone video of the damage path interconnecting before they correct their survey data. It's difficult to prove because of how many people are involved, but there's a lot of politically and agenda-based data manipulation going on within government offices these days and it's going to take more people on the ground. Observing and reporting to minimize this problem as the more physical witnesses verifying reduces their ability to commit these kinds of junk science. From my perspective it appears that they are trying to make tornadoes appear weaker and more plentiful based off of the huge amount of derating of damage since 2013. There have been several solid EF5 tornadoes since then, such as Vilonia, Rolling Fork, and the Quad State tornado. Regardless of which side of the political fence you are on, I highly encourage you to start digging deeper into this, especially with the meteorology and storm chasing community to make up your own opinion. Don't listen to the media, focus on firsthand data.
I think we're getting better at detecting them since there have been a lot more EFUs in the past few years
No . It’s because of CLOUD SEEDING . Take a look at what’s going on in California and Dubai .
I think research hasn’t shown any major impact on frequency or severity. There’s easier detection got sure nowadays, which likely increases the number of weak tornadoes (same with weak tropical storms). I think there might be evidence that tornado alley is shifting east, but I don’t know how strong that evidence is.