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Albatross at 12:50 PM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
Tom @13, Good points. Steve Chase is also wrong about what he claims is stated in the video about global sea level rise. The video starts of with reference being made to a press release from the Niels Bohr Institute, the heading for that press release is: "Studies agree on a 1 meter rise in [global] sea levels" Nowhere do they state 1.8 m as the best estimate for the increase in global sea level by 2100. Admiral Titley does note in the video that sea levels could rise between 0.9 m and 1.8 m by 2100 (~3-6 ft), and that range is entirely consistent with the GRL paper referenced below. So we have some "skeptics" here cherry picking values to misinform and to fit their narrative. That Niels Bohr press release in turn refers to a paper just published in GRL by Jevrejeva et al. (2012) who conclude that: "With six IPCC radiative forcing scenarios we estimate sea level rise of 0.6–1.6 m, with confidence limits of 0.59 m and 1.8 m." So as new information becomes available the best estimates of increases in sea level are being revised upwards. Now 2100 is rather arbitrary, because sea levels will continue to rise well beyond 2100 because of global warming. -
Tristan at 11:52 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
When I was around 9 (1991) we were shown a video at school about global warming. My takeaway from that video was that the ice sheets could collapse as early as 2022 and this would result in a 60m sea level rise. Some of the kids in the class were crying. Does anyone here have an idea on what that video might have been or where it came from? Thanks in advance. -
Tom Curtis at 10:10 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
Steve Case @11, first I'll note that the sea level rise projected in that graph is approximately equal to the expected rise from thermal expansion alone assuming the IPCC A2 scenario (270 mm). However, if we linearly extend the rate at which ice sheets are loosing mass, we can expect a further 360 mm of sea level rise on top of that (and ignoring glaciers). That represents a sea level rise of 630 mm above 1980-1999 levels by 2100. That represents an increase of at least 50% above the approx 400 mm increase your projection shows over the same period.
The CSIRO estimate that not more than 30% of the sea level rise since the 1950s has come from polar ice sheets. Based on that, and using your projection, the sea level rise contribution from other sources can be expected to be 280 mm from 1990, leading to a combined expected increase of 640 mm. That estimate is not based on models, it is simple extrapolation of known data.
That illustrates, in part, the folly of simple projection. Using two different projections methods, we arrive at inconsistent results which diverge by over 50%. It also shows how foolish it is to think you can assess future sea level rise without examining potential future changes in temperature, not to mention such wild cards as the potential instability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
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Albatross at 09:16 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
Steve @11, Can I please remind you about the topic of this post. You seem to be trying your best to obfuscate. I will also note that I cited Church and White (2008), not their 2006 paper. Regardless, nowhere in their paper do Church and White simply extrapolate the best fit line over the observed record as you appear to have done in your figure @11. Doing so is a no-no from both statistical and physical stand points. Readers might be interested to note what Church and White (2008) have to say about recent rates of sea level rise when referring to the figure below (their Fig. 6):
Caption: "Projected sea-level rise for the 21st century. The projected range of global-averaged sea-level rise from the IPCC (2001) assessment report for the period 1990–2100 is shown by the lines and shading (the dark shading is the model average envelope for all SRES greenhouse gas scenarios, the light shading is the envelope for all models and all SRES scenarios, and the outer lines include an allowance for an additional land-ice uncertainty). The updated AR4 IPCC projections (90% confidence limits) made in 2007 are shown by the bars plotted at 2095, the magenta bar is the range of model projections and the red bar is the extended range to allow for the potential but poorly quantified additional contribution from a dynamic response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to global warming. Note that the IPCC AR4 states that ‘‘larger values cannot be excluded, but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea-level rise.’’ The inset shows the 2001 projection compared with the observed rate estimated from tide gauges (blue) and satellite altimeters (orange) (based on Church et al. 2001; Meehl et al. 2007; Rahmstorf et al. 2007)"
"The concern that the sea-level projections may be biassed low has been reinforced by a comparison of observed and projected sea-level rise from 1990 to the present. For this period, the observed sea level has been rising more rapidly than the central range of the IPCC (2001, 2007) model projections and is at the very upper end of the IPCC TAR projections (Fig. 6; Rahmstorf et al. 2007), indicating that one or more of the model contribu- tions to sea-level rise may be underestimated." [My highlighting]
In my opinion, those who wish or choose to believe, that uncertainty is skewed towards the lower end of outcomes, are being incredibly naive.
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Steve Case at 07:42 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
#6 RonManley said, "If a rise of 1 metre is to be attained by 2001 [sic] then the change in rate will be such that changes observed in the past pale into insignificance." The video actually predicted six feet or about 1.8 meters of sea level rise by 2100. #9 Albatross put up a graphic of the Church and White data. That data is available on the Church and White Data Page as Church and White (2006) If you graph it out and extend the Y axis to include the 1.8 meter prediction and extrapolate the time line out to 2100 as the video said, it looks like this:
It's merely a question of whether Sea Level rise will accelerate enough to make that prediction come true.
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Albatross at 05:05 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
Ron @8, Please make up your mind, @1 you said [my bolding] " Whilst the data do show an underlying acceleration in the rate of sea level rise it is less that the models project. " But now @8 you claim that "over a 20, 10 or 5 year period the rate of rise is lessening." Please stop playing word/rhetorical games. The Senate in Virginia wishes to deny all the science (both empirical and theoretical) that indicates that, in the long-term, the rate of sea-level rise will continue to accelerate. Does it not trouble you in the least that they are a) of this opinion/belief, and b) the lengths they went to to try and enforce their denial on others? -
Neven at 04:52 AM on 22 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
I regard sea-level rise as a slower threat I wasn't referring to SLR, but to the storms that the Atlantic gives birth to. That's why I hide behind the Alps (not that it's working). -
Albatross at 04:45 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
Some "skeptics" posting here are focussing on very short periods again to try and obfuscate, whilst also not supporting their assertions with hard numbers or data. Church et al. (2008) demonstrate nicely how the long-term trend is not linear but accelerating.
[Source]
It is this reality that some in Virginia wish to deny, and that is the subject of this post "Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise".
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RonManley at 03:19 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
Dana1981 #7. To avoid confusion, I am not saying that sea levels are falling, it is clear that they are continuing to rise. What I am saying, and what the data quoted in my previous posts support, is that over a 20, 10 or 5 year period the rate of rise is lessening. -
dana1981 at 02:46 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
Ron @6 - my point is that "appears to be on a downward trend" is clearly not supported by the data. -
RonManley at 02:30 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
Rob Painting #2. Your graph actually suggests the rate has been more or less constant from 2001 to 2009 at about 1 mm/year. Since the era of satellite data the 5-year rate of rise peaked at 4.5 mm/year in May 2003. The current 5-year rate of rise up April 2012 is 2.3 mm/year. So, overall the rate of rise is falling. Dana #4. You suggested that changes in the 20-year rate of sea level rise were ‘short-term noise’ and then show a straight line fit. My point was the rate has fluctuated over periods of several decades and currently appears to be on a downward trend. I’m not sure showing the long-term trend is appropriate as the crux of this posting is to argue that the long-term trend is not a good indicator for the future. If a rise of 1 metre is to be attained by 2001 then the change in rate will be such that changes observed in the past pale into insignificance. -
dana1981 at 02:09 AM on 22 July 2012Vision Prize Results
As now noted at the end of the post, the 'no consensus' rebuttal has been updated to include the Vision Prize results. -
dana1981 at 01:34 AM on 22 July 2012Vision Prize Results
Bernard J @13 - to be fair, the Vision Prize isn't limited to climate scientists, but also includes individuals "with relevant scientific or technical credentials," for example. That's how I was able to participate, as an environmental scientist with a physics background. I suspect Watts might qualify with his meteorology background, though as I recall he doesn't have a degree in the subject? I also echo John Hartz @15 in that WUWT commenters are the radical fringe, not at all representative of the general public. -
Composer99 at 01:28 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
The best fit for the current trends in Greenland and Antarctica land ice (as per papers such as Velicogna 2009 which is linked to here) is an accelerating decline. If memory serves, the range of sea level rise considered most likely is between 0.75 and 1.9 metres by 2100, starting from the levels in 1990 (per Vermeer & Rahmstorf 2009). Even the 'best case' scenario is bad. -
dana1981 at 01:28 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
As Rob notes @2, an acceleration (which I would certainly not characterize as 'healthy' because of the unintended connotations of that word) is exactly what's going to happen. RonManley @1 - you are confusing short-term noise with long-term trend changes.
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John Hartz at 01:26 AM on 22 July 2012Vision Prize Results
Bernard J: With all due respect, the "mob" posting on WUWT is an insignificant fraction of the human population. -
Bernard J. at 01:12 AM on 22 July 2012Madness over sea level rise in North Carolina
Tristan. What's even more sad is that this political interference in science will likely grow much worse, and for many years yet, before it improves. That should be just enough to permanently stuff things up. -
Steve Case at 00:02 AM on 22 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
#2 Rob Painting "Whether it will accelerate in the next few years remains to be seen" Yes, and in order to get to the prediction in the video, 6 Feet (1.8 meters) by 2100 it will have to average over 20 mm/yr for the next 88 years. That's well over six times the current rate. A very healthy acceleration will have to happen in order for that prediction to come true. -
Tristan at 23:46 PM on 21 July 2012Madness over sea level rise in North Carolina
Richard Pearson is the Noosa LNP member who proposed that anti-science motion Bernard linked to. He just commented over at JoNova's blog. Not that I recommend the link. The fact that he's even there is a sad indictment of where Australian politics is at the moment. -
shoyemore at 23:31 PM on 21 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
JohnMashey The stream (called a "river" on the maps) heads off towards the Boyne (one of Ireland's major waterways, see Battle of same!), but on the way has flooded back gardens when it is in spate. The local plan is to cut out some meanders and deepen the bed so it continues unvexed to the Boyne. In fact, downstream folks have experienced far more bother than we have. Ok, an innocuous little example, but multiply it by what may be hundreds of cases of housing too close to floodplains or seashores, and tens of thousands across the world, and you have one way climate change will "come home" to people in short order. Incidentally, Matthew Kahn in Climatopolis argues that Governments should not intervene in cases like this and householders in floodplains, or near seashores, should be forced to accept their losses, or pay their own way. To be honest, I have not read the book, just heard the author on video, and I cannot find the link. http://climatopolis.com/?p=2 Kahn's argument is for a completely free-market approach to climate change. -
Rob Painting at 22:48 PM on 21 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
In the near-term, the concern over future sea level rise is based upon the 65-70 metres of global sea level locked up in the giant polar ice sheets - Greenland and Antarctica, not thermal expansion of the ocean. Greenland & Antarctica are contributing to sea level rise at an accelerating rate.
These ice sheets have been essentially stable for the last 7-8000 years and only began to melt/disintegrate in the late 20th century. Global sea level rise in the 20th century was anomalous within the context of the last 7-8000 years.
Certainly there are other factors to consider in North Carolina - for one it is an area that was uplifted by the presence of the gigantic Laurentide ice sheet during the peak of the last ice age. The ice sheet is long gone, but the Earth is still responding to the change in loading - hence the subsidence going on along the North Carolina coast today.
The trends in the global sea level satellite data (the last two decades) are consistent with the ocean heat content data (cooling between around 2004-2008), which is itself consistent with the solar dimming trend in the Southern Hemisphere, and the cooling phase of the 11-year solar cycle.
The Earth has an energy imbalance, so it will continue to warm and sea level will continue to rise. Whether it will accelerate in the next few years remains to be seen, but unless reflective sulfate aerosols increase, it seems likely to.
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RonManley at 20:43 PM on 21 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
From the clip it appears that the century rate of sea level rise on the Virginia coast has been around 200 mm (8”), the same as globally, but compounded by an equivalent amount of land settlement. The global 20-year rate of sea level rise was 1.8 m/year in 1892, fell to 0.0 in 1934, rose to 3.2 in 1963, fell to 1.0 in 1978, rose to 3.6 in 2005 and is currently 3.2 mm/year and falling. The change in rate of rise follows a similar pattern to the AMO but lags it by a decade or so. The data suggest that the change in the rate of sea level rise is +0.014 mm/year². If the decline in the rate of sea level rise following the 2005 peak is similar to that following previous peaks, and taking into account the accelerating rate of rise, then the rate of rise might continue to fall to around 2 or 2.5 mm/year. I realise that a lot of this discussion is about whether to extrapolate from past data or rely on the projections AOGCMs. Whilst the data do show an underlying acceleration in the rate of sea level rise it is less that the models project. -
Bernard J. at 18:18 PM on 21 July 2012Vision Prize Results
I've just done something that I have not done for a long time, and read the Wattsian comments on Dana's first link at #11. Big mistake. I despair for humanity, if that mob is representative of the lay community. What does it say about us, that educated and trained people understand the universe in one way, and so much of the laiety crowd in layers on top of each other at the opposite side? I sincerely hope that the Vision Prize organisers have the presence of mind to purge their surveys of the contamination introduced by Watts. -
JohnMashey at 17:45 PM on 21 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
shoyemore: Hopefully, folks understand what happens downstream when you build stronger flood walls upstream. -
Bernard J. at 17:05 PM on 21 July 2012Vision Prize Results
Dana1981 at #11: Watts appears to be demonstrating a serious case of inability to understand context. The Vision Prize is clearly targetted at a particular (expert) grade of professionals trained in climate change science, and yet Watts takes umbrage at the fact that there is an assessment process to weed out non-qualified attempts to sign on.It will be interesting to see if they are biased or open and whether I get to join the “players”. I urge WUWT readers to sign up and report your acceptances or rejections below.
Why does he think that any joe from the streets should be allowed to contaminate the responses? The point is to garner an understanding of the opinions of the best-informed people in the world, and not from people who not only have no understanding, but who are actively motivated to oppose the directions and implications of reasoned understanding. As I noted in a post at Tamino's, to hold this perspective of what constitutes reasonable behaviour one would require a total absence of shame. -
KR at 08:50 AM on 21 July 2012The GLOBAL global warming signal
Kevin C - I would be curious as to behavior of the various techniques with hold-out checks: choose a sparse set of hold-out stations, run the spline/kridging/nearest neighbor with cutoff methods, and see just how close they come (and with what bias) to the hold-outs. How hard would that kind of analysis be? -
Lambda 3.0 at 06:58 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Esper ran both MXD as well as TRW on the samples (as well as early width and density). They show not late diversion problem (post 1960). However, in figure S6 in the supplementary information, there is a huge divergence from the beginning of the data until after 900AD. This divergence is not discussed in the paper, unless I missed something. What might this indicate? Another potential nit is from figure S10, where the correlation between the instrument record and the tree rings breaks down completely circa 1910 (looks like 1911 to me, but these are 15 year running averages). Volcanic eruptions from that time seem unremarkable (see here), though 1911 was noted for an extreme weather event in November in the US midwest (the great blue norther). Esper notes the breakdown, but does not attempt to explain it or indicate what it means to the reliability of the proxy record. Anybody know a enough about dendroclimatology or tree biology to shed some light here? (I was unable to find an SkS article dealing with the reliability of tree-ring proxy techniques, beyond the divergence problem. It is being attacked on the typical fake skeptic sites, so an article may have value.) -
Kevin C at 06:54 AM on 21 July 2012The GLOBAL global warming signal
OK, I've got Kriging working. It's not very much slower than splines. Interesting results: The Kriging results look very similar to nearest neighbour with a 1200km cutoff. I sort-of expected that from the theory, but the agreement is really quite good. Kriging gives global coverage, but as you move further away from the nearest observed cell, the weights for all the cells in the map approach equality - in other words, cells very far from any observation get set to the average of the observations, which is the same as leaving the cell unobserved. And it happens automatically. (Actually, this does depend on being able to solve the complete system of equations. BEST can't do this, because they are dealing with individual stations, not a coarse grid, so instead they impose a distance cutoff like GISTEMP in order to obtain a sparse matrix.) That also means that the GISTEMP 1200km kernel smoothing should give results fairly close to Kriging. Also, the divergence shown in Had4s in #9 before 1960 is an artifact of the spline extrapolation. The splines work well when coverage is good, but once you go back far enough to lose the Antarctic stations the spline method starts giving erratic. Unlike Kriging, the splines will generate more extreme values as the extrapolation distance increases. -
Alexandre at 06:42 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
WheelsOC at 04:21 AM on 21 July, 2012 I understood it the same way as you did, like on Jim's inline response here: Relevant part below: They make nothing of that issue, barely even mentioning it in passing, and then never again. It's likely a fortuitous result, possibly related to use of density data and possibly not, but not one that is new--there have been numerous studies in which divergence at decadal scales was weak or absent. -
threadShredder at 05:51 AM on 21 July 2012Vision Prize Results
Yes, I know about the updates. But I've noticed some posts could have been integrated or at least linked in some of the myths and weren't. I understand this is a voluntary effort from posters, and that the volume of material precludes any sort of comprehensive effort on single contributors. Given that, my suggestions are simply to suggest some inclusion if they are appropriate and may have been overlooked by busy people. I appreciate the site a lot, and wish I could be of more help, but I'm still a novice. Have been through all the myths and making my way through the posts as time allows. The site has come in quite handy for internet spats with deniers. -
Atomant at 05:22 AM on 21 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
That is spot on John. Great post. The intense cold spells we've seen in recent winters were result of the same 'stalling' no doubt. The future of the british isles looks like one of very wet and very dry seasons. I do have an issue with the increase in atmospheric water vapour caused by GW and recent expansion of Polar Mesospheric clouds (NLC's in lower latitudes) The issue itself being that at those heights solar UV busts apart the water molecule into its constituent atoms and the lightweight hydrogen atom bubbles up to the top of the atmosphere and escapes. Although for the size of a human there seems to be a lot of water on Earth, in proportion to the volume of the planet there is very little water indeed. Hydrogen is rare on earth, the main storages being H2O and CH4, therefore, like in Venus, when it all flies away water will be a thing of the past. This of course will not occur during our lifetimes, but it will certainly happen if GW is not slowed or stopped. As you mentioned 1 degree is about 7% increase of WV and at the same time, as the atmosphere warms, it expands leaving more room for higher humidity content. No matter which way you look at it is not looking good in the long term. We broke the sky :( -
desertphile at 05:19 AM on 21 July 2012Andrew Dessler's New Paper Debunks Both Roy Spencer And Richard Lindzen
Dr. Dessler's paper is available here: http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2011.pdf The link at the top of this page is obsolete. -
dana1981 at 04:54 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Note the authors say"Calibration/verification with instrumental data is temporally robust and no evidence for divergence was noted."
So it does seem that the divergence problem simply isn't an issue with their MXD analysis, not that they made a specific effort to remove the divergence. -
dana1981 at 04:50 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Wheels OC -"it seems like the [divergence] problem simply didn't occur in their analysis, not that they've come up with a methodology that removes it.
I believe that's correct, but I'm far from a dendrochronology expert. -
dana1981 at 04:48 AM on 21 July 2012Vision Prize Results
Note by the way that Anthony Watts has enlisted his minions to ruin the second round of the Vision Prize. Ironically, the second round is about the Arctic sea ice decline, which is a subject on which WUWT reader predictions have an absolutely abysmal record. -
WheelsOC at 04:21 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Seems I was a little slow in posting! -
WheelsOC at 04:21 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
The apparent resolution of the Divergence Problem is what interests me about the study, but either I'm denser than the maximum latewood measurements or the solution wasn't discussed here or at RC. From what I could glean in the comments there, it seems like the problem simply didn't occur in their analysis, not that they've come up with a methodology that removes it. -
dana1981 at 04:20 AM on 21 July 2012Vision Prize Results
We do try to update the myths database with information from new blog posts, when relevant. When we do so we usually add a note to the bottom of the blog post noting that we've updated the myth rebuttal. -
dana1981 at 04:19 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
It's just a result of their MXD reconstruction that it matches instrumental temperatures well, Martin. If you want a more technical answer, that's beyond my paygrade :-) -
Hyperactive Hydrologist at 04:17 AM on 21 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
Housing in flood risk areas should be insured by the government. This would ensure new developments are built outside flood risk zones and existing at risk properties are given adequate protection. Unfortunately flooding soon drops off the political radar. This was demonstrated recently by the big cuts to the Environment Agency budget of nearly 30% despite numerous reports stating spending need to increase every year just to maintain the existing level of protection. The design process is also lacking. I work as a surface water and drainage modeller and we are only required to protect properties against a 1in40 year rainfall event. The design storms we use are based on the Flood Evaluation Handbook, which only uses data up to 2000 I believe. Climate Change is not factored into the design process. Hard engineering options, such as up sizing of pipe or large storage tanks, are preferred to sustainable options for maintainence reason. Responsibility is also an issue. Currently the EA is responsible for river flooding and the water companies are responsible for urban drains. Things like culverted water course and engineered open channels in urban regions seemed to be a bit of a grey area. What is needed is an integrated approach with complete stakeholder participation ideally on the catchment scale. Things are starting to head in this direction with councils being given the overall management role. However tight council budgets have meant that flooding is not seen as a priority. -
Trent1492 at 04:11 AM on 21 July 2012What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
Just donated $50.00. I am sorry that this is a necessity but, I gladly contribute -
Martin at 04:05 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Could you explain how exactly they resolved the divergence problem? -
threadShredder at 03:50 AM on 21 July 2012Vision Prize Results
Yes, dana, that one. I think it would be very helpful to new folks for post writers to incorporate as many new posts as possible into the myths, according to appropriateness, of course. That is, if the writers of the new posts are aware of the totality of the myths topics, which I assume most are. Just providing links in the myth pages can help tie in new stuff to the myth topics, and give new folks like myself more continuity (if that makes any sense). -
Chris G at 01:49 AM on 21 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
Nice post, John. It is a natural counterpart to Rob's post on the US Midwest, but I'm stating the obvious. I'm baking here in Kansas, and have reduced my gardening efforts to simply trying to keep the rhubarb and asparagus alive. The current drought and heat here have made climate change more topical in the local paper, and I have come across comments to the effect that you guys are getting a lot of rain; therefore, it is just natural weather variability. I try to point out that less precipitation in some areas, and more precipitation in others is a long-standing prediction. Hence, the term 'climate change'. There is always debate about whether or not any event in particular is a result of climate change. I'm not sure what the alternate hypothesis is; that you can significantly change the energy balance of the planet without affecting weather? Side note: My father is an ex-Brit and he went to university in Wales. Cheers -
dana1981 at 01:48 AM on 21 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Sceptical Wombat - that gets to another inconvenient fact about the MWP. It wasn't simultaneously global. In various geographic locations there were 'MWP' peaks at different times. China wasn't hot at the same time as northern Europe, for example. Some areas were relatively hot from 900-1000, others from 1000-1100, and so forth. -
Robert Murphy at 21:28 PM on 20 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Sceptical Wombat @3: "I know that the MWP is a very slippery beast but I thought it was supposed to run from about 900 to 1300. The period of high temperatures in Fig 1 appears to be much earlier than this." Not only that, the LIA is gone in their graph, at least the LIA we're used to. Their LIA ends a little after 1500, then temps are mostly stable until the 19th century. I'm sure there's a lot of useful information in these new proxies, but they have to be integrated with many other regional studies in order to understand what was going on at a hemispheric level, let alone a global one. -
John Mason at 18:15 PM on 20 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
PS should explain that in the UK it is almost impossible to get a mortgage on a building that they won't cover against flooding. Hence this could become a big problem over the coming years. -
John Mason at 18:13 PM on 20 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
Thanks, Neven! I regard sea-level rise as a slower threat - and much of Wales is of high enough elevation that the overall shape of the country will be little changed if all the polar caps went - but the downside is the loss of much fertile growing land. Shoyemore - interesing point WRT flood insurance. There are some properties I know of locally that have flooded in recent years and one has been on the market three years with no takers - I suspect it's because nobody will insure the place any more. The house in question is hundreds of years old.... -
shoyemore at 18:00 PM on 20 July 2012The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
In Ireland we have similar concerns to Wales. There have been a couple of unprecedented flooding episodes in the last couple of years. Some areas of Cork city have been flooded twice and insurance rates are coming under pressure. This year, the Irish Met Office raised the average temperature used in their forecasts by 0.5C, and also precipitation expectations (while of course saying "this may be due to natural variation, not climate change"). Though local councils were supposed to take account of climate change for 10 years or so, many new housing estates were built on flood plains during the housing "boom". As a personal anecdote, the nice leafy housing estate where I live and the adjacent one are divided by a small stream which runs down a culvert. While it seems insignificant, the local council did a study which showed that a 1-in-100 year flood could overtop the culvert and inundate about 1/3 of our estate and 2/3 of the adjacent one. Flood walls upstream are projected, but some downstream estates are worse affected, and they may get precedence in the work. It would all cost a few million euros, but our situation is multiplied by many around the country. Money has been set aside by central government, but inevitably there will be winners and losers. While my house would not be affected by a flood (by sheer luck, we bought a house on higher ground), it will no doubt cost people in insurance, and possibly render tham homeless after a flood. Just one way climate change will impact ordinary people as "1-in-100 year" floods become more common. -
Tristan at 17:22 PM on 20 July 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
So...are we the xenomorphs?
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