An article in the journal Nature claims climate change should make more high-energy unstable air, which is conducive to hail forming with storms pelting roofs and cars with larger hailstones. However, storms with smaller hail are to shrink by 4%- 8%, according to the researchers.
Climatologist David Legates of the Cornwall Alliance.
"Supposedly these massive hailstones continue to get caught up in the vertical updraft and the argument is with warmer surface you get more updrafts, so it keeps them up longer, so they pick up more moisture, hence they get bigger and they don't melt much. When they finally get big enough and have no updraft, they're falling and coming down so fast that they really don't have time to melt."
Legates said he reviewed prior research articles within the last ten years and found one said that they really didn't know how a warmer climate would affect hailstones and another made a similar claim to that of the journal Nature study. He isn't convinced.
"I realized there's no way to ever test this with data. So, the question is, how do we actually get measurements of hail? Almost everything just happens to be if somebody comes across it and measures a hailstone, then you get a measurement, but there's no recording of them. They're melting fairly quickly, because they're coming down in the summer. The temperatures are usually hot anyway, so they're not going to last very long. There isn't really a strong measurement database."
He said the best option is to look at what forecast models could show, but that hail is a small-scale phenomenon driven by large scale processes, which models handle poorly.
It has been reported that an El Nino is in place for this season, something that could lead to those warmer temperatures.
That forecast has climate alarmists talking about extreme weather events.
The Climate Prediction Center (CPC) reported last week that El Nino conditions were present due to above-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the central to eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
The AP reported that experts said El Nino, which is a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuels use and will likely turbocharge extreme weather across the planet.
Meteorologists forecast it will rival — or exceed — a record El Nino that began in 1997 and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes, and wildfires.
Legates pointed out that the article talked about winners and losers.
"Oh, so there'll be some good things about it (El Nino)? Well, that's not what the title said. The title says it'll be 'big bad.' I didn't hear anything about good. I didn't hear anything about saving money. We're going to have a weakened Atlantic hurricane season. We're going to have a milder winter across the top of the continent. We're going to have more rain in the Southern tier of states. So, no drought there. This is good."
He said California could get heavy rain, which could lead to flooding and landslides. However, he said no two El Nino events are the same. He also explained how the alarmists try to say El Nino is affected by climate change.
"Their argument, of course, is El Nino is a warming of the Pacific waters, so if you get warmer conditions, the water should be warmer. Therefore, it's more likely to go towards El Nino than towards La Nina, which would be a cooling of the Pacific waters. So warmer conditions should be favorable over colder conditions."
Legates said El Nino impacts are the biggest in the winter. And that's why it's called El Nino, named after the child, which literally was the 'Christ Child.' Because it started particularly across the coast of Peru, during Christmas time.
