Stewart, you seem to have fundamentally misunderstood the role climate change has played in this event. It is not true to say that "there is nothing to suggest anthropogenic climate change has had any meaningful influence".

As Kevin points out, anthropogenic CC has increased the oceans thermal content, increasing the likelihood and severity of storms. Equally sea level rise from thermal expansion and melting ice caps has contributed additional height to the storm surge.

You may be right that this event would have occurred regardless of whether humans had emitted CO2. However, the critical point is that our activities have made this storm potentially worse than it would have been under an un-altered climate system.

Thanks for the critical thinking Professor Franks.

I understand Hurricane Sandy to be a Category 1 possibly Category 2 storm - not overly severe as hurricanes go, perhaps (the Innisfail area has had a couple of Category 5 storms over the last few years, so that the issue is one of the standards to which built infrastructure in the Hurricane's path is constructed.

It's also around full moon, so high tides will exacerbate storm surges.

As it happens, the US East Coast is expected to experience more sea level rise than most due to climate change ("Model projections of rapid sea-level rise on the northeast coast of the United States", Yin et al, Nature Geoscience 2, 262 - 266 (2009), doi:10.1038/ngeo462). There are further factors to consider, however: perhaps alteration to hydrological regimes of US East Coast rivers may be the most dominant.

Hurricane Sandy is expected to mix with a powerful cold front approaching the east coast, and cold Arctic Air mass; these have become more pronounced with (northern) summer Arctic warming.
ref 1 Jaiser et al, "Impact of sea ice cover changes on the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric winter circulation", Tellus A 2012, 64, 11595, DOI: 10.3402/tellusa.v64i0.11595,
ref 2 Cohen et al, "Arctic warming, increasing snow cover and widespread boreal winter cooling", Environ. Res. Lett. 7 (2012) 014007, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014007).

Where climate change really comes in is with the possibility that the hurricane will merge with a cold storm down from further North: more severe the Arctic.warming of the Arctic

Are you the same Stewart Franks who says

"The scientists made really classic errors - they actually confused the physics, they got the physics wrong. "

Do you really believe that?

You should be aware that there is another possibility to influence warming on storms:
“The Impact of Climate Change on Natural Disasters” (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RisingCost/rising_cost5.php): “As a result, global warming may cause the temperature difference between the poles and the equator to decrease. And as the difference decreases, so should the number of storms, says George Tselioudis, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University.” “If we are creating an atmosphere more loaded with humidity, any storm that does develop has greater potential to develop into an intense storm,” says Tselioudis.”

However (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080812160615.htm): "We designed the computer simulations to show that as the ocean temperature increased, hurricanes would form more rapidly and easily, even in the presence of wind shear," says Nolan, associate professor of Meteorology at the Rosenstiel School. "Instead, we got exactly the opposite result. As the water temperature increased, the effectiveness of the wind shear in suppressing hurricane formation actually became greater." (...)

Arkadiusz

My guess is that Kevin is already familiar with that.

An interesting area of research that has been emerging in the last few years is the relationship between a warming Arctic and the Polar Jet Stream. It's still developing science, but it is starting to look like the greater warming in the Arctic is causing the northern Polar Jet Stream to slow, by around 15% so far.

The energy source that drives the Jet Stream is the the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles. So as the Arctic warms faster than the tropics, the temperature difference between the two regions drops and the Jet Stream slows.

In addition to slowing it appears to be meandering further North & South and becoming more prone to 'blocking' - freezing in position for a period. The Jet Stream is a major dividing line between arctic and temperatwe zone weather conditions.Cold low pressure systems are often north of the JS and warm high pressure systems south of it. So when the JS 'blocks' you can get more of the weather that is on top of you when that happens - warm weather lasts longer and is warmer, cold weather lasts longer and is colder. So a slowing JS may contribute to longer and more extreme weather conditions.

This may have been partly implicated in the droughts & heatwaves in the US this year, wet summers in England. Possibly in the heatwaves and forest fires in Russia several years ago.

And possibly in why Sandy might be so bad. It is interacting with a cold front to the north that may be associated with a blocked weather system off Greenland.

There are a couple of words that we might want to pay a lot more attention to in the daily weather forecasts in future - 'blocking', 'blocked'....

Really Stewart? You are telling James Hansen that he does not know what he is talking about on this issue?

Does the word 'arrogant' mean anything to you? I could, with equal credibility, state that you do not know what you are talking about on the subject of engineering. And I wonder how you would react if I did so.

How about you stick to your subject, act with a modicum of scientific integrity, and listen to the advice of someone who is one of the world's preeminent experts on this one.

I am not suggesting that you bow to authority - but how about you do some actual research and search the literature as was suggested, It's not hard you know:
http://www.westfield.ma.edu/uploads/cbraun/trenberth2012.pdf

Your point being?

But changing climate changes the weather.

And the number and severity of extreme weather events is looking more and more likely to be linked to climate change.

Just because there was a big hurricane in the past doesn't say anything about the threat of more extreme weather due to climate change.

The long term trend of extreme weather events is getting worse: http://www.munichre.com/en/media_relations/press_releases/2012/2012_10_17_press_release.aspx

It is deniers such as yourself who are attempting to rewrite history and to distort facts.

The 'no warming for 16 years' that you mention is based on a UK Daily Mail article that was made up. A lie.

The Met Office has already refuted the article - which you would know if you read science instead of denier blog posts.
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/

Not only was it a lie, he has used the same lie twice in articles this year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbn1rCZz1ow

Wow. John "global cooling" McLean has resurfaced.

This is the same guy who predicted "it is likely that 2011 will be the coolest year since 1956 or even earlier""
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7349

How did that go? According to NOAA it was the "11th warmest year since records began in 1880. The annual global combined land and ocean surface temperature was 0.92 degrees F above the 20th century average of 57.0 degrees F. "

Perhaps that is why he is confused by Trenberth's statement "With every degree C, the water holding of the atmosphere goes up 7%" when he claims "Trenberth than (sic) seems to be implying that change in temperature is something we can discuss as percentages"

Well if you do not understand the science try parsing words seems to be the motto among the deniers on this thread.

Weasel word parsing!

Here is Kevin's certificate as issued by the IPCC in recognition of his contribution as a lead author.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=438525172870357&set=a.221233134599563.54502.221222081267335&type=1&theater

Congratulations Kevin. Hopefully we will see more articles from you on The Conversation.

Ah, the infamous McClean-Carter-DeFreitas "Detrend the data, then claim there isn't a trend" paper - worthy of an igNobel.

Climate models have an excellent predictive track record. We are still well within the 2 sigma distribution of predictions of models Hansen et al were using in 1988, never mind the more recent models cf: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
McLean, on the other hand, by his own admission, has a 100% failure rate.

Mssrs Mclean and Veerman, I think you owe Prof Trenberth an apology?

Many thanks Prof Trenberth for your outstanding contribution to climate science, I certainly hope we will see more articles from you here too, and greatly appreciate your willingness to engage in the discussion in spite of the risk of unpleasant smears.

Trolling, Are we John?:)
It doesn't really matter what Nobel prizes are awarded to whom. What matters is the science, and fact gathering. If he feels proud over being on the Nobel prize winning team then that's okay by me but it will be the facts that decide what I think, not prizes. And this storm I see as a result of global warming in that motto that winds, humidity, sea temperatures, ice loss (fresh water added to oceans), all are connected by one thing. Our tampering with the climate.

Maybe you should focus your efforts on getting Lord Monckton to acknowledge that he isn't a Nobel laureate, first.

Wrong again, John.

The Norwegian Nobel committee wrote to the IPCC and said that "it was up to the IPCC to decide what it would do to recognize the various contributors." In other words, Pachauri and the secretariat had every right to recognise the contributers to winning a Nobel in whatever way they saw fit.

http://rabett.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/eli-gets-email.html