{"id":293081,"date":"2023-12-29T19:04:16","date_gmt":"2023-12-29T18:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=293081"},"modified":"2023-12-29T19:04:19","modified_gmt":"2023-12-29T18:04:19","slug":"wrong-kansas-city-star-climate-change-isnt-worsening-weather-in-kansas-or-missouri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=293081","title":{"rendered":"Wrong, Kansas City Star, Climate Change Isn\u2019t Worsening Weather in Kansas or Missouri"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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By H. Sterling Burnett<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kansas City Star<\/em> ran an opinion piece claiming climate change is already making weather more extreme in Kansas and Missouri. This is false. There is no data supporting the claim that either flooding or drought, two specific extreme weather events cited in the story, are worse now than they have been historically. Almost all the records for such events in both states were set nearly a century or more ago, when global average temperatures were cooler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joel Mathis, the writer of the Kansas City Star<\/em> story, \u201cWe\u2019re watching the climate change in Kansas and Missouri. Why don\u2019t more of us care?<\/a>,\u201d opines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change is already taking a toll on Kansas and Missouri, and not just in the form of wintertime vegetation. Both states are enduring long-running droughts that have challenged the region\u2019s farmers and forced some communities to start hoarding their drinking water. That\u2019s probably just the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change is going to make the extremes more extreme \u2014 more intense rain and snowstorms, but also more extended periods of drought. Our big swings will get bigger and more destructive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Mathis\u2019 sees an even worse problem, in particular, that the majority of people aren\u2019t that concerned about climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLast week, Heatmap News reported its new poll found that Midwesterners are \u2018consistently blas\u00e9 about climate change,\u2019\u201d writes Mathis. \u201cFifty-two percent of folks in our region \u2014 a slim majority, but a majority nonetheless \u2014 say warming \u2018poses little or no risk to their region.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The residents of those two states are right to be unconcerned about climate change making their states\u2019 respective weather worse, since historical evidence and data show that neither drought nor flooding amid recent decades of modest warming are worse than they have been historically. Indeed, as Mathis himself notes, Kansas and Missouri are not strangers to droughts, floods, and rapidly changing weather extremes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Midwest is already a \u2018high variability\u2019 weather region,\u201d writes Mathis, who discussed this fact with Chuck Rice, a professor of soil microbiology at Kansas State University who served on the United Nations\u2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. \u201cThink about all the times you\u2019ve heard the joke that if you don\u2019t like the weather around here \u2018just wait five minutes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although it is true that parts of\u00a0Kansas<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Missouri<\/a>\u00a0are currently suffering from various degrees of drought, it is not a long-term drought, nor is it historically severe. A short-term drought is no evidence of climate change. Droughts in the early and mid-twentieth century, 70 and 90 years of global warming ago, were more prolonged and severe than the droughts experienced in either state since the beginning of the 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century. Since official record keeping began, Kansas and Missouri both experienced their most sustained droughts in the 1930s, only to both also experience a sustained drought again in the 1950s. Longer term records developed from proxy data show even more severe and sustained droughts, multiple decades long, have not been uncommon throughout the region\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 1. Western Kansas annual droughts during past 1,000 years. The vertical axis is the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). The more negative the PDSI, the drier (orange). On the opposite side, the more positive the PDSI, the wetter (dark green). Data obtained from Cook et al. 2004, Science 306 (5698):1015-1018. https:\/\/climate.k-state.edu\/news\/stories\/2016\/06\/climate_basics_5\/image1.gif<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

What\u2019s true of drought across Kansas and Missouri is also true of excessive rainfall and flooding. Kansas<\/a> experienced its worst flood in 1844; Missouri\u2019s largest recorded flood was 1785, with the flood year of 1844 being its second greatest flood. More costly damage<\/a> has been done by floods in both Missouri and Kansas since then, in 1903, 1951, 1993, 1998, and 2007. But the reason that more people and property were harmed by the more recent floods is not higher rainfall totals or deeper flood waters, but rather purely demographics. More people and development had taken place in the areas flooded than existed in the 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries when heavier flooding occurred. Neither recent rainfall totals nor floodwater depth have been greater in the 21st<\/sup> century than in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither a single flood event, no matter how severe, nor single instances of drought, no matter how widely covered in the media, are evidence climate change is making weather in Kansas or Missouri worse or less predictable. Only a long-term sustained trend of either or both types of weather events might implicate climate change in weather changes, but there are no such worsening trends for either state. In short, data provide no evidence that climate change is making weather worse in Kansas or Missouri, so residents there are displaying common sense when they downplay the threat of climate change in their lives. The media should follow the public\u2019s lead on this point. Follow the science, Mathis and the Kansas City Star<\/em>, rather than hyping a false climate alarm narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post\u00a0Wrong, Kansas City Star, Climate Change Isn\u2019t Worsening Weather in Kansas or Missouri<\/a>\u00a0appeared first on\u00a0ClimateRealism<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Kansas City Star\u00a0ran an opinion piece claiming climate change is already making weather more extreme in Kansas and Missouri. This is false. There is no data supporting the claim that either flooding or drought, two specific extreme weather events cited in the story, are worse now than they have been historically. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":293085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The\u00a0Kansas City Star\u00a0ran an opinion piece claiming climate change is already making weather more extreme in Kansas and Missouri. This is false. There is no data supporting the claim that either flooding or drought, two specific extreme weather events cite","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691824289,691825804,691825805,691823146],"class_list":{"0":"post-293081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city-star","11":"tag-missouri","12":"tag-weather-extremes","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/0Kansas-City.jpeg?fit=1638%2C724&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1ef7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":240417,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=240417","url_meta":{"origin":293081,"position":0},"title":"NPR is Wrong, Kansas Drought Trends are Declining, and Wheat Yields Have Increased","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"18\/01\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"An article by National Public Radio (NPR) claims that climate change is causing an increase in drought, as well as hot and windy weather in Kansas, which is damaging wheat yields. 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