warneagle
Member
I think we've certainly seen an increase in intense cool-season events (with the perpetual caveat that tornado counts are going to be higher now than they were in the past). That makes a lot of sense, since a warmer planet and a warmer Gulf would provide greater thermodynamic support in the cool season where there's usually going to be ample shear and lift regardless. Friday was a good example of this, with a crazy thermodynamic environment for areas that far north in mid-December. I would think that's the primary deterministic effect of climate change on tornadoes.I do wonder how much climate change is going to have on the distribution and intensity of tornadoes and tornado outbreaks; Grazulis posted some stuff on his Twitter that showed a trend that climate change might kill spring chasing, among other things. I wonder if tornadoes in America will shift locations as to areas where they most commonly occur (Dixie taking the Plains' place as the main hotspot for tornadoes, for instance) and maybe tornadoes and major outbreaks may not occur as often but when they do they will be much more powerful and intense (I think climate change has had that effect on hurricane frequency and intensity, actually). Perhaps violent outbreaks of tornadoes in unexpected places will happen more often? No clue, just thinking out loud.
As far as the spring season goes, I've seen a few different ideas thrown around. Some people have said that the spring season may weaken because of decreased wind shear and upper level support, while other people have said that the issues may come from greater instability leading to less CIN (or rather enough instability to break the cap faster) and more widespread convection. We've seen the latter several times recently, where high-end environments were spoiled by early, excessive convection and messy storm modes (for example, 20 May 2019). I think it's probably harder to prove this is a deterministic effect though.