This is a LIE. The United Nations apparently does not read their own IPCC reports. Globally, floods have not become more frequent or more intense, although there are regional variations within the bounds of internal variability. There are two primary types of floods relevant to this discussion: fluvial (river) and flash (pluvial). Long-term trends in river floods are usually evaluated by looking at river and streamflow from river / stream gauges. This can be evaluated by looking at the flux of water passing by a fixed point, and we measure this in units of cubic feet per second (ft³ / sec). With respect to river flooding trends, IPCC AR6 WG1 states in Chapter 11 that, 🗨️ “Peak flow trends are characterized by high regional variability and lack overall statistical significance of a decrease or an increase over the globe as a whole. Of more than 3,500 streamflow stations in the USA, central and Northern Europe, Africa, Brazil, and Australia, 7.1% stations showed a significant increase, and 11.9% stations showed a significant decrease in annual maximum peak flow during 1961–2005.” 🔗ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downl… (p. 1568) With respect to attributing flooding trends to human influence, the IPCC states, 🗨️ “In summary there is low confidence in the human influence on the changes in high river flows on the global scale. In general, there is low confidence in attributing changes in the probability or magnitude of flood events to human influence...” 🔗ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downl… (p. 1569) More recent streamflow data from USGS gauges (and compiled by the U.S. EPA) affirm the IPCC’s synthesis in that river floods in the U.S. have neither increased nor decreased over the last 60+ years. The map I made below on the left shows the change in the magnitude of river flooding in the Lower 48 since 1960. The triangle-shaped markers show the annual linear trend in peak river flows (ft³ / sec) from 1960 to 2025 for all 425 USGS river / stream gauges having at at least 95% completeness over the period examined. Only ~5.2% of gauges show a statistically significant increase in river floods and ~5.9% show a significant decrease. The rest are not statistically significant in either direction, so overall the trend isn’t statistically different from zero. With respect to flash flooding IPCC AR6 says, 🗨️ “[H]eavier rainfall does not always lead to greater flooding. This is because flooding also depends upon the type of river basin, the surface landscape, the extent and duration of the rainfall, and how wet the ground is before the rainfall event... A mix of both increases and decreases in [flash] flooding have been observed in some regions...” 🔗ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downl… (p. 8) Ahmadalipour & Moradkhani (2019) found no increase in flash flooding incidents in the U.S. between 1996 and 2017. I suspect that these trends have continued, but an update to this paper would be nice. 🔗sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

At the Nobel Peace Prize lecture Al Gore gave on December 10, 2007, he warned us that the Arctic could be “ice free” by the end of summer 2014. That didn’t happen. Oops. And this year’s September Arctic sea ice extent (SIE) five-day minimum of 4.60 million km² on September 12th was ~440,000 km² higher than the September 2007 minimum. Although the Arctic has lost ice since the 1970s, there has been little change since Al Gore made his speech almost 19 years ago. The significance of this is that the climate models in CMIP5 predicted that a 20-year-long pause in Arctic sea ice decline had just a 5% chance of occurring under the current emissions pathway and virtually 0% under SSP5-8.5 / RCP8.5. I suspect sea ice will eventually continue its decline in the future, but this just goes to show that natural variability is important and perhaps underestimated.

Get this. 🤣 Four years ago, The Guardian claimed that Spain and Portugal are becoming too dry thanks to anthropogenic climate change. However, after the devastating floods in fall 2024, The Guardian said that Spain is becoming too wet because of climate change. The observational data, however, tell a different story. A recent study published in Nature in March 2025 analyzed long-term rainfall data in the Mediterranean and found that no statistically significant long-term trends exist in the whole. 🗨️ “𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑀𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 1871 𝑡𝑜 2020, 𝑎𝑙𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑖-𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑑𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑣𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦… 𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑏𝑒 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠, 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐 𝑑𝑦𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑐𝑠, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑣𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦.” 🔗 nature.com/articles/s41586-0… Interestingly, in Spain, there has been little trend in rainfall since 1871. However, if the analysis starts in 1951, there is a significant decrease (p <0.05), while starting in 1981 yields a statistically significant increase (p <0.05). This just goes to show that people (like the writers at The Guardian) can manipulate data to get a desired trend to suit a specific narrative.

I have lots of new followers today. Welcome all! Last year, I went viral thanks to this [positive] piece written about me by in the New York Post. I am a meteorologist and I am politically incorrect. Here’s a little about me to whet your appetite. 🔗 nypost.com/2025/05/31/us-new…