From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

CBS News posted an article titled, “Southeast Asia floods and landslides kill more than 1,000 as climate change turbocharges monsoon season,” claiming that extreme rainfall associated with the Southeast Asian monsoon is worse now because of climate change. This is false. There is no clear trend of increasing monsoon rainfall patterns or worsening monsoon seasons. In fact, ample research indicates monsoons may have become less severe in recent decades.

CBS reported that extreme rainfall events hit Sri Lanka, Sumatra, southern Thailand, and northern Malaysia, which are currently in monsoon season, “but scientists say climate change is producing more extreme rain events, and turbocharging storms across the planet.”

Already, CBS is off to a bad start. The first link they provided regarding extreme rain and “turbocharged” storms does not say that climate change HAS done those things, but only that it could in the future, according to projections from climate models. The models being relied on are famously inaccurate at predicting the future, which does not bode well for the claim.

The second link discusses only attribution studies that presupposes storms are worse because of human-caused warming – they do not show this is true with real world measured data. Climate Realism has discussed the grave error of relying on attribution studies in past articles. What was true in those is still true for the case of CBS’ recent post: attribution studies are not evidence, and they aren’t even good science because they begin with the conclusion that human activities are related to a particular storm’s severity, and then set out to prove how bad global warming made them. They are more like propaganda constructed with complex computer models.

It’s true that data suggest average rainfall is higher in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, but this does not translate to severe monsoons and flooding. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change even admits that they have only “low confidence” that climate change is impacting flooding globally.

Past studies on the monsoon in South Asia have shown no clear trend across the region experiencing annual monsoon seasons. For instance, studies looking at India have supported claims that both the monsoon is getting more severe and making dangerous floods more likely, and also weakening, threatening South Asia with eternal drought. Yet another study from 2013 concluded that global warming has had no impact on monsoon rainfall at all.

Historically, Southeast Asia has seen severe and weak monsoon seasons, which are partially tied to natural fluctuations of warmth in the Pacific, called the El Niño Southern Oscillation. Paleo data from rivers across Southeast Asia shows a strong correlation between El Niño and rainfall pattern across the region. When the Pacific enters a cooler to neutral phase, rainfall increases, and during the warm period, the region gets more drought. This year saw the end of the warm phase, and has begun to lean more towards the cool La Niña, so more rain should be expected.

According to the World Bank Group’s climate portal, Sri Lanka has seen no established long-term trend in annual precipitation. The past few years have been rainier than the 1980s and 1990s, but not more than the 1960s.

Thailand sees much the same, recovery in precipitation from a low in the 1990s.

According to the same data group, Malaysia has also experienced a recent recovery from low precipitation in the 1980s/1990s, but no clear sustained long-term trend.

Nothing about this data indicates some kind of a climate change driven trend towards a “turbocharged” monsoon, nor does it show drought becoming more extreme or severe. Interannual and decadal fluctuations are normal for regional climate.

CBS is taking advantage of the suffering of people in Southeast Asia in order to promote the human-driven catastrophe narrative, even when the data fail to support such a connection. If one’s goal is to motivate demands for government action on climate, as CBS’s seems to be, it is easier to convince people using emotional stories sans historical context, especially when trying to convince people to be afraid of climate change. Presenting the facts in a nuanced and accurate way would be more honest, if CBS were concerned about honest reporting, but it would be less likely to motivate demands for government action since the data suggest there are no alarming trends to be worried about.