Thread: Hurricane season 2007 is near the record low of 1977

Originally Posted by gc

Your 'source' does not state what is "normal". Looks like a clear upward trend to me...

"One sunny day does not a summer make..." or however the saying goes.

An upward trend? Looks like it peaked in 2004 to me and we're now on a downward trend. 2004 didn't get close to 1992 either.

Originally Posted by Clippo

ModernUKIP,
Some explanation of time series data:-

Any one time unit can have a value of the response way above or below it’s neighbours, but over a longer period, the basic mean of the response can rise or fall. If you take an individual result out of context of course you can get seemingly contradictory conclusions.

As a point of interest, consider the ‘shape’ of the period from 1970-1977 versus 1991-1999. Looks quite similar to me. However, if you calculate a running mean or a cusum of the individual data, I think you’ll find, as gc pointed out, that there is an upward trend (in the mean).

Additionally, (but I can’t find it at this instant), Akria added much more factual data concerning this year’s season in a recent post – like it started of with 2 landfall category 5 hurricanes – never heard of before. (this data doesn’t seem to be corrected for the estimated ‘strength’ of hurricanes)

Finally, it looks also that this data doesn’t include ALL tropical cyclones i.e. those occurring in the Pacific & Indian Oceans so I would caution you trying to use this data in isolation to ‘disprove’ GW or AGW.

Not trying to disprove anything, just stating that in the short term, there's a downward trend. I'd rather see a longer term graph.

Statistics can be used to prove anything.

Originally Posted by gc

Have you any idea how ridiculous that comment is?

Yes, in the face of a downward curve it is quite ridiculous. I'll repeat that I was referring to the short term, for your benefit.