Severe weather phraseology in the media and general public.

[Hodgheg]

I hope you don't mind that i started a thread on what may be an old topic. 

as a weather geek i've noticed a few irritations this week on social media. Firstly many photo's of funnel clouds and possible tornadoes have been shared. Usually with the caption. "is this the start of a tornado" That's not too bad, you could argue that a funnel cloud is the "start of a tornado" but somehow it just still annoys me. More annoying is when someone says, "is this the start of a funnel cloud" When its an obvious funnel cloud. Its the the "Start of"bit,that annoys me. Id love to hear other peoples views.

Another thing that annoys me is the constant, is this specific weather even global warming? I agree that global warming and climate change are real, as per the consensus. However its very difficult to connect climate change to specific weather events, it doesn't exactly make sense to do so on such a short time scale. The public understandably ask the question, but then, as much as I hear meteorologists in the US denying climate change based on specific weather events, i hear them in the UK pushing the argument with the with the same sort of thing. It seems like argument from personal experience than actual data.  In a pod cast recently, I heard weather legend Paul Hudson pushing some kind of personal experience argument onto a climatologist from the university of Leeds. Obviously the guy was reluctant to agree, and i worry to some people this uncertainty may have come across as (well the scientists don't know what they're talking about) I'm not sure how this can be resolved 

That's the thing that annoy me at the moment, Please feel free to move this thread. Id love to get other peoples opinion. 

 

Edited June 17, 2016 by John Hodgson