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Norman at 14:10 PM on 7 July 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Side note I almost forgot about. Half the globe experiences extreme global warming every year. 41.4 F in US from Winter to Summer. We can observe the behavior of extreme global warming every year. I have not yet seen a tipping point in any yearly cycle. Everything seems to change gradually. It is not winter one day then spring then summer. All the changes are gradual. There is not a light switch flip on climate change to every indicate the realtiy of a tipping point mechanism. There may be a few days that are way above normal or below in the gradual cycle but no tipping point at all. -
Norman at 14:05 PM on 7 July 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
DB and Dikran Marsupial, Research I have conducted tonight to try and demonstrate why I am of the opinion that Global warming will not necessarily increase severe weather. I do believe Global Warming will produce Climate Change. I have evidence of that every year. One half of the globe warms drastically every year and the climate changes drastically with this warming. It is a fact and one I do not argue. Severe weather is the point I am not convinced off. The physical reason behind this postiion I take. It is based upon my understanding of equilibrium. Example of Chemical equilibrium. The above is an example of chemical equilibrium but in my view I think it is a Universal concept that applies to many branches of science. When a system is far from equilibrium the reaction rate is more intense, as the system approaches equilibrium things slow down, the reaction rate slows down until it final show no action. Weather is driven by a system far from equilibrium. Very cold poles in relation to a warm equator. Cold air get dense and heavy while warmer air gets lighter and rises. These differences in air density vs temperature drive the weather patterns. Adding moisture to the mix increases the complexity but does not change the fundamentals of equilibrium science. Air moves from the north (at ground level) to the south as it is heavier (in Northern Hemisphere) and south to north in the upper atmophere and drives the weather cycles. If all points on Earth were at the same temperature there would be no weather since it would have reached equilibrium. Now to determine if the physics behind this thinking have any relationship to the real world. I went to the NOAA site to get the average temperature of the US. (The region of the US is the test field to demonstrate that the physics of equilibrium does play a strong role in weather). Page I obtained average US monthly temps. Jan: 32.5 F (all temps in Fahrenheit scale) Feb: 34.7 (20th Century Mean temps) March: 42.4 April: 52.0 May: 61.0 June: 69.3 July: 74.2 August: 72.8 Sept: 65.4 Oct: 54.8 Nov: 42.5 Dec: 33.4 Because the month's of July and August and have the most atmospheric energy, Jeff Masters hypothesis would indicate that these two months should have the most severe storms. Further information to reinforce this concept. In Albatross's excellent post on thunderstorms above in 269 "The important part. Crook (1996) showed that by manipulating equation (1)increasing the low moisture by 1 g/kg increases the CAPE by 2.5 the amount as a 1 C warming of the low-level air would. So changes in near surface specific humidity of 10% or so of typical background values can have a huge impact on the buoyancy available to a storm, and in turn the maximum updraft strength-- as found by the papers I cited in one of my posts above." And his conclusion based upon this data. "So the short of it is that increasing the low-level moisture is likely to increase the chances for more intense/severe thunderstorms, and perhaps larger hail too." Here are two more links with Albatross's information. Check chart with Gulf of Mexico water temp. This chart shows July and August have the warmest Gulf Coast water. Next data group. Humidity in 100 US cities. Humidity of 100 US cities by month. If you click on May and August then check out Kansas City it is 54% for both months. I am using Kansas city as one point in an overall thesis to demonstrate a point. Any city will do I have already listed the average temps of the US above. This spot check is for moisture related test. Kansas City monthly temps. Fairly similar to the National average. Local temp May is 12 F cooler than August. National average May is 11.8 F cooer than August. This is significant when considering Albatross's quote on severe thunderstorms. Kansas City Monthly precipitation. Kansas City has almost an inch more of rain in May and June as compared to July and August. July and August would have much more potential energy for more severe weather than May. The Relative Humidity of May and August are the same but the temp is over 12F warmer. That means the August air is holding much more moisture and latent energy that can drive storms. Yet the preciptiation is lower. Also the source of the fuel, the gulf stream, is warmer meaning more moisture can be evaporated for storms in August. Now back to the National stats. I have posted the National monthly average temperature above. Now here is a really good proxy for severe thunderstorms. Number of tornadoes. Look at May and June then at July and August (this is for the whole Nation so it is not the isolated Kansas City topic) Total count of tornadoes in the US. So May has many more tornadoes than August, yet August has far more energy than May. What causes this? My understanding of weather and most physical systems is that as they get closer to equilibrium, intensity is diminished. To demonstrate. The average May temp of Yellowknife, Canada (way up North) is 41F. Atlanta, Georgia (one of the warm southern spots that air moves across to fuel severe storms) is 69.75F. Difference in temp is 28.75F In July the diference between these points 19.5F and in August it is 20.9F. The difference between the hot and cold air is less and is closer to equilibrium. That is why I feel the weather will not get more intense. I think the number of severe storms in May and June bring up a lot of latent heat to higher elevation warming that air mass. This reduces the instability of the air. The air was cooled during winter and as the warm moist air from the Gulf moves into this unstable air (cold uppper level air that allows for strong upward acceleration of warm moist air). So the very nature of the most severe thunderstorms, bringing latent heat to upper levels of the troposphere, actually bring equilibrium and suppress what should be the most severe weather in July and August as this is the air with the most potential energy. Also the temperature difference between Northern and Southern air is more extreme in May than August. This will lead to stronger winds that are moving to achieve an equilibrium. As the air masses come closer in temperature the winds are not as intense and there are less supercell storm formation. That is why I have a very difficult time accepting the models that project more intense storms as the globe warms. That was my point with Dikran Marsupial and science. If a climate model cannot predict in the range it is designed for then it is a useless scientific tool. Even if I am not adept at chaos theory or it subtle behavior, my lack of knowledge of this subject would not make a bad model good. With the nature of CO2 forced warming, it is acting in a way that should very much suppress, not inflate severe weather patterns. The poles are warming faster than the equator. This means the air is reaching an equilibrium state faster than seasonal cycles will propel it.Response:[DB] "One half of the globe warms drastically every year and the climate changes drastically with this warming."
You refer to the seasons here, which are part and parcel of the climate, and do not change it. You set up a straw man and proceed with tedium to knock it down. Think not that you can convince through dissembling volume what you cannot achieve through logic and merit of argument.
Until you can mount a position of substance based on sound analysis and rooted in physical processes, which you have not yet demonstrated to date, others would be well advised to ignore your contrarian efforts to further derail this thread.
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Eric (skeptic) at 12:57 PM on 7 July 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
From my local (Northern Virginia) forecast discussion: "this will place the area on the srn periphery of stronger westerlies and nrn periphery of a moist-unstable airmass. with this setup...we will have to monitor the potential for MCS activity next week." (weather.gov) Now that strong spring and early summer fronts are pretty much history, our severe weather would mostly come from thunderstorm complexes that move SE with the jet stream carrying their own supply of cooler, drier air like a well defined front would have. In contrast the next week's forecast further south (Georgia) is nothing much (too much warm air aloft for thunderstorms). This pretty much follows our pattern of a peak in severe TS in spring (early south, later north) followed by sporadic severe TS in summer. -
Norman at 12:32 PM on 7 July 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
DB @ 267 "But unless you can prove that these extremes currently being experienced are NOT due to human-influence and that you have physics-based hypothesis' supplemented by solid statistical analysis to back up your contentions, then you are just being contrarian and most here will no longer waste any of their valuable time trying to help you gain understanding." Good point. It does take time to develop ideas. My point of posting on this website was to gather information to learn what is already out there and progress with the concept I am developing in greater depth. I come here with some hope. Conspiracy sites are nothing but HAARP, media web sites are only some person's opinion. No depth, no science, no research. So many webpages are making the claim weather is intensifying and it is because of Global warming but no one is offering mechanisms of why they think this. I read Jeff Masters article. He is a PhD in meterology and I was hoping to read some mechanisms or behind the scenes physics but it was much the same. The idea of a warming world does go against what I have come to know about the weather via experience and observation. This does not mean that what I know is valid or correct. I may be working on a wrong assumption. I have been on this site awhile and have read many posts. It seems that many intelligent and knowledgeable people post and this would be a place to test ideas and theories. If they are wrong the errors will be pointed out. If I have become dull or "thick-headed" with my posts, I apologize. I do have reasons for them. -
Doug Mackie at 12:17 PM on 7 July 2011OA not OK part 2: Thermodynamic duo
Thanks Hugo, we appreciate your interest, but please be patient. This is post 2 of 18. We will get there. It would be fair to say that one of the many motivations to write this series was what we see as misconceptions in your seawater equilibria post at Skeptical Science. Most of the responses to your thoughts, here and in that post, can be addressed by responding to a single point. You said:Taking a solution of dissolved carbon dioxide, bicarbonate, carbonate, calcium ion and water ... to be in equilibrium with solid calcium carbonate and gaseous carbon dioxide...
While equilibrium chemistry is indeed quite simple, it is an inconvenient fact that the ocean is not in such an equilibrium. It is very important to remember that non-equilibrium systems behave quite differently to equilibrium systems. This fact changes much of what you have said here and in your previous posts. -
Eric the Red at 11:52 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
wingding, The temperature anomly is a 5-year moving average. The GISS 5-year moving average has been ~0.55 for the past 8 years, Had CRUT was about 0.1C lower 8 years ago, and has declined slightly since. If you go back to Figure 2, most of the proxies hit a low point in the early 19th century, and have shown a similar increase in both the 19th and 20th centuries. -
Michael Hauber at 11:21 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Shorter Akasofu: Assume that the warming trend from 1880 to now was caused by natural causes. Therefore this warming cannot have been caused by human emmitted Co2. Even though humans have been emmitting Co2 over this entire time period. -
Bern at 11:00 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Icarus: Very good point. I liken this sort of 'LIA Recovery = linear upward trend' argument, to a man standing on the beach at mid-tide, screaming in panic because the water is rising and soon the entire world will be flooded... Although I'm sure there will be plenty of deniers who would twist that around the other way when talking about climate science, the obvious point is that a model based on curve-fitting a short period of data can give you very bad results, while a model based on an understanding of the physical mechanisms that drive the tide will tell you to walk five paces up the beach and relax. The difference now, of course, is that the curve-fitters are the ones telling us to relax, while the folks looking at the physical mechanisms driving climate have got seriously worried looks on their faces... -
Eric (skeptic) at 10:55 AM on 7 July 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Albatross, thanks for the links. I read through Dai and it shows an upward trend in RH and paints a bigger trend for the central U.S. (fig 10a) where we have plenty of thunderstorms. On top of that trend are the fluctuations from the patterns, particularly ENSO (basically lower RH in La Nina and higher in El Nino). That may be primarily due to the relationship with temperature. I'm not sure how well severe convection correlates with the trend and the fluctuations. There are many different papers with various measurements and fluctuations but I have yet to find one with a clear or even tentative correlation with the RH trend and fluctuations shown by Dai. -
Bern at 10:33 AM on 7 July 2011Over the tipping point
@villabolo: don't forget CO2 emissions from concrete and steel manufacture also. Certainly they're a relatively small part, compared to the electricity generation. And they'd certainly be manageable. There are even alternatives for steel - e.g. direct reduced iron instead of coke-fired blast furnaces. Either way, a wind turbine produced using the dirtiest of brown-coal-fired electricity is *still* one of the lowest-carbon sources of electricity we have available to us. It's certainly an awful lot better than continuing to burn that brown coal... -
Bob Lacatena at 10:17 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
12, dana1981, Alas, I cannot take credit for "climastrology." skywatcher just introduced the term over on a comment over at "What does past climate change tell us about global warming." He goes on to say a quick google shows he's not the first either. And then I came here, and low and behold, it was the perfect example of climastrology in action. The timing was just too good. -
Bob Lacatena at 10:12 AM on 7 July 2011Climate's changed before
Sorry, I meant climastrologist sighting, not climatologist sighting. -
wingding at 10:10 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Comment #1 claims that Akasofu used HadCRUT. I am quite sure he actually used GISTEMP land only. The red line on his chart continues at the same slope through the 2000s. The 2010 anomaly was 0.83C, which if anything appears to be *above* the top end of his drawn "IPCC prediction curve". In the public paper he's switched to using NOAA land+ocean. The circle for 2008 is still there although it is plotted incorrectly at the position of 2011. Akasofu's cycle also now peaks around 2010 in the published paper rather than 2000 as it does in the unpublished graph above. Similarly the IPCC "coned" projection is shifted along to begin around 2010 rather than 2000. -
BBD at 08:42 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Eric the Red #9 WfT is a data visualisation tool that we are lucky to have. Its pro bono creator Paul Clark makes his methodology transparent. Let's not get carried away. -
ifonly at 08:33 AM on 7 July 2011Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
One big problem for layman is that Goddard using data up to March 2010 if asked would have said in 12 months time the oceans will most likely be lower and John Cook would have said the oceans most likely will be higher. So, just as picking a longshot horse or stock doesn't make you an expert (you may just be lucky) people will pay attention to "winners" until their predictions are shown to be wrong.Jason1 -
scaddenp at 08:04 AM on 7 July 2011Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
"What big error bars you have". Yep, climate models are for forecasting climate. They are no good at shorter scales because the climate system has a lot of internal variability. They are good for 30 year trends, not next years temperature. I think this discussion belongs in models are unreliable. -
scaddenp at 08:00 AM on 7 July 2011Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
"So the statement “model parameters can be adjusted to match any set of temperature observations" is not true? " Of course not. Even a brief look at papers on model parameterisation, or a look at the FAQ at realclimate would show that model parameters are not "fitted" to temperature. This is a common denialist assertion repeated without a shred of supporting evidence. If you are going to repeat it, then I do not think it unreasonable to ask for a paper showing a model parameter that was tuned to global temperature. I would also suggest looking at RC post on what IPCC models really say. You might also consider how successful Wally Broecker was at forecasting 2010 temperature in 1975, using results from a model so primitive that it didnt have parameterizations. -
Icarus at 07:56 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Akasofu's data is wrong in *both* directions (i.e. both the recent temperature trend, which is still upwards, and the temperature before 1880) -
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Riccardo at 07:51 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Eric the Red Akasofu did not use any particular dataset to make his projection. He added a multidecadal (armonic?) oscillation (PDO) to a linear fit (recovery from LIA), that's it. If his "model" is so sensitive to the choice between two very similar datasets (I invite you to compare the two) I'd say that the "model" is weak, to say the least. Anyways, this discussion leads us nowhere, there are much more solid reasons to dismiss the "model", as highlighted in this post and by others in the comments. -
KR at 07:24 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Eric the Red - "Whether his predictions is based on physics or not will not matter..." That, Eric, is a horrifying statement to read in a scientifically oriented discussion. It gives me roughly zero confidence in your critical and analytic abilities. Curve fitting without physics is just numerology, or "chimps and buckets", as Dikran noted. It has no predictive power, no scientific insights, as it doesn't contain any cause-effect relationships, or even statistical correlations. As many of the causes of climate change (anthropogenic gases come to mind, for some reason) aren't changing along a NNN year repeating sine wave, extracted curves just aren't going to be helpful for predictions. Cause-effect relationships, on the other hand, are. Akasofu has not explained the 'linear warming' since the LIA (which, incidentally, isn't linear, as the OP points out), and in fact makes no attempt to connect to causes or physics. It's just curve fitting, and with enough degrees of freedom you can fit anything. But predict, no. If you have the cause-effect relationships understood, you can predict what will happen to the climate as the causes (emissions in particular) change. With a close fit of something that doesn't have violent trajectory changes (like global temperature averages, sufficiently smoothed) even the simplest curve fit will fit for a brief while. But that's not predictive of cause and effect, just a symptom of limits to the rate of trajectory change. It tells us nothing about long term behavior of the climate system. This is a very sad, very bad paper.Moderator Response: (DB) ETR's comment was deleted for trolling for the reasons you mention. -
Eric the Red at 07:08 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
FYI, the temperature graph in Figure 5 above is referenced as NOAA in the recent paper. http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/article/2009/climate-change-global-temperature -
dana1981 at 06:35 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Very good point Jeff T - if there were such a thing, the global temperature has already "recovered" from the LIA, and overshot that recovery. -
Jeff T at 06:15 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Akasofu has a serious internal contradiction. If the temperature increase over the last two centuries is a "recovery," then one can estimate how close it is to fully recovered from the (downward!) curvature of the data. If the data are truly linear, as Akasofu claims, the system is far from fully recovered. In that case the recovery will take temperature far above even the highest claims for medieval warming. But a temperature far above the previous maximum can hardly be considered a recovery. In fact, as others have said, the curvature actually appears to be upward. Thus, the "recovery" seems still to be starting and is headed a long way up. -
BKsea at 06:04 AM on 7 July 2011History Matters: Carbon Emissions in Context
To me, the conceptual problem is that we draw the bathtub around just the atmosphere. In reality, the bathtub contains the atmosphere, the ocean (OA anyone?), and the plants. Very little CO2 is coming out of this tub and human emissions of CO2 are by far the main input to the bathtub. Something has to overflow. -
villabolo at 06:04 AM on 7 July 2011Over the tipping point
@3. Paul D "Wind turbines are not zero carbon systems, they are very low carbon systems, as are most renewables and sustainable systems." Paul, the necessity to burn FF to produce any form of alternative power is an initial cost only. Once we get to the point where a substantial fraction of our energy comes from alternative sources, the clean energy they generate will make a substantial contribution to the manufacture of any further windmills etc. Therefore, clean energy will get to the point where it will produce more clean energy while reducing and soon replacing all FF. -
Alex C at 05:38 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
@cynicus at 00:19 AM on 7 July, 2011: Akasofu used HadCRUT? I recall him referencing several temperature datasets in his paper, and the figure in the article above (the red/blue "cycle" one, Figure 1) is an interpretation based off of GISS, HadCRUT3, NOAA, so on, but I don't think that he specifically used HadCRUT for any major conclusions of his. For the more general audience, in any case, since it was Riccardo who had used HadCRUT in his article that Dana referenced, the accusation of a cherry pick toward that choice is rather weak, and calling the usage of an average of datasets a cherry pick itself is even weaker and simply silly. In the context that the HadCRUT data was used as well, it isn't obvious to me that the choice of data is even relevant, since the principle of trend choice still applies. Without a physical justification for a trend, and thus with trend order being arbitrary, the residuals will show a cycle within a certain trend and not show it in others. To say there's even a well-defined cycle at all is specious. No matter the data set you're using, this will still apply, especially in the case where the different data sets are so similar in behavior over the time period. -
AuntSally at 05:23 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Nice deconstruction. It's also worth noting that the journal in which the pared-down paper was finally published (Natural Science) is not on the ISI listing -- which is to say, does not meet the accepted standard as a for bona-fide peer-reviewed journal. This isn't too surprising, as I'm guessing many of the issues raised by Dana's analysis would (or perhaps did) prevent publication in an actual journal. -
dana1981 at 05:05 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Eric #9 - Sphaerica and Dikran have already done a good job responding to your rather absurd comment. If you think physics doesn't matter, I'm not sure why you're reading a science-based site like SkS to begin with. And if you think taking the composite of 4 datasets is cherrypicking, I suggest you look up the definition of the term. Also see my response to comment #1. By the way Sphaerica, I like your term "climastrology". That gave me a good chuckle. -
JMurphy at 04:19 AM on 7 July 2011Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
thepoodlebites, how do the error bars affect that black line you can see in the first graph, which is labelled 'IPCC Ensemble', and around which the actual temperature records are congregating ? -
les at 04:12 AM on 7 July 2011Climate's changed before
What I don't understan is why Mr. Cotton didn't post on the Akasofu thread to protest that his epicycles are more true then those epicycles. I mean, they can't both be right, surely? Without physical reality as the final arbitrator, it should be a good bit of sophistry. -
les at 04:03 AM on 7 July 2011Climate's changed before
Yes, well if climatologists are anti-science (lets say) than what better term to use to describe the sighting in 180? -
Bob Lacatena at 03:56 AM on 7 July 2011Climate's changed before
Climatologist sighting on the Akasofu thread! -
Bob Lacatena at 03:55 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
9, Eric the Red, Oh, and on top of everything else, there's no reason for you to try to use a disparaging term like "tree hugger." That's just an elitist "I hate environmentalists of all flavors" attitude that serves no purpose except to expose your underlying ideologies. Last... would you like to try to justify your unsubstantiated claim that "the recovery from the LIA is loosely tied to phsyics"? -
Bob Lacatena at 03:52 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
9, Eric the Red, Can you have posted a more patently offensive comment? First, how does the woodfortrees index make it "tree hugger"? It incorporates the satellite data as well as GISS and HadCRUT. Your label of it being cherry picked seems to be pulled randomly itself out of thin air. Second, how is this a "cherry pick"? He used what he felt was a representative record, one which incorporates multiple measurements. Do you have actual evidence that another choice -- HadCRUT -- would have yielded noticeably different results? Last, but not least, you are wrong, basing predictions on physics does matter more than anything. It makes all the difference in the world. Physics/mechanics based theories are science. Correlations and "look! squirrel!" based theories are climastrology. They are worthless. If you can't see the difference there, you must consider yourself to be hopelessly lost in the issues until you can see and understand that fact. -
Albatross at 03:28 AM on 7 July 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Skywatcher @272, Thanks, and you are welcome :) -
Eric the Red at 03:27 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Whether his predictions is based on physics or not will not matter (although recovery fro, the LIA is loosely tied to physics). Dana is using a cherry pick above when moving from CRU data to tree hugger.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] If he had been picking cherries, dana would have chosen a ripe one, e.g. GISSTEMP. Picking an average also has good statistical justification (c.f. Bayesian model averaging). Akasofu on the other hand has picked the ripest cherry for his own argument. The "tree hugger" comment does you no favours either. Please review the comments policy. -
Albatross at 03:26 AM on 7 July 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Eric @273, "Or is that not what you meant?" Correct, I did not mean that. "But the increase in moisture is a worldwide average, not necessarily some local area prone to thunderstorms." Not true. Areas prone to thunderstorms, including intense/severe thunderstorms have experienced an increase in near surface specific humidity. See references below. "The patterns dictate the moisture levels, not the GAT." Not entirely true, see references below-- increases in specific humidity are closely correlated with warming in most regions, inlcuding regions with thunderstorms. Dai (2006), noted an increase in annual surface specific humidity over most land areas, see his Fig 9b. "The data show increases in specific humidity of several percent per decade, and increases in dewpoint of several tenths of a degree per decade, over most of the country in winter, spring, and summer. Nighttime humidity trends are larger than daytime trends. The specific humidity increases are consistent with upward temperature trends." Here is a relatively old study for the USA by Gaffen and Ross (1999): "The data show increases in specific humidity of several percent per decade, and increases in dewpoint of several tenths of a degree per decade, over most of the country in winter, spring, and summer. Nighttime humidity trends are larger than daytime trends. The specific humidity increases are consistent with upward temperature trends." Here is a study for Canada by Vincent et al. (2007): "After accounting for these discontinuities, the results of trend analysis show evidence of an increase in air moisture content associated with the warming observed in the country. During winter and spring, the significant warming in the western and southern regions is accompanied by an increase in dewpoint and specific humidity and by a decrease in relative humidity; in summer, warming is observed in the southeast and it is associated with significant positive trends in dewpoint and specific humidity." And another for China by Wang and Gaffen (2001): "Moisture increases are observed over most of China. The increases are several percent per decade for specific humidity, and several tenths of a degree per decade for temperature and dewpoint." -
thepoodlebites at 03:10 AM on 7 July 2011Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
#53 Make that JMurphy, not KMurphy. A typo and a copy typo, nothing more. No conspiracy or hidden agenda, just the facts please. -
Dikran Marsupial at 03:07 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
rand15 yes, a prediction can be accurate without being based on any particular theory; however predictions made by chimps trained to pick the numbers out of a bucket can be accurate as well. The point is that predictions based on physical theory are more likely to prove accurate, at least that is what history tells us (hence the name of the series of articles). There is a heirarchy in the strength of arguments: physics > statistics > chimps & buckets chimps + buckets provides no insight statistics provdes insight into correlations physics offers insight into causal relationships If you have identified the causal relationships correctly, your predictions will be good, whateve the circumstances the model is used in. You can't say the same for a statistcal model based on correllations; they can only be expected to be accurate in the region of the calibration data. The "chimps & buckets" model is equally accurate in all circumstances, but not in a good way ;o) Akasofu is somewhere between "statistics" and "chimps & buckets" (as his statistical methodology is questionable). -
thepoodlebites at 03:05 AM on 7 July 2011Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
#51 KMurphy Ulterior motives? Surely you're joking Mr. KMurphy. Justed wanted to access precisely what scaddenp referenced, so there would be no misunderstandings. I'm now visiting the website now, for the first time. Wow, what big error bars you have, +-0.4C. -
thepoodlebites at 02:51 AM on 7 July 2011Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
#50 belay my last: too many nots, sorry. My guess is that the model temperature predictions based on CO2 rise alone will not match the observed temperature record since 2000. If that is the case then the radiative forcing components that Meehl used in 2004 were not accurate and that forcing from natural climate variability has not been properly accounted for. Or to put it another way, the temperature record for the last decade can not be reproduced in the model with anthropogenic forcing alone. -
skywatcher at 02:33 AM on 7 July 2011Climate's changed before
Turns out I'm not first with the word (bah!) - a google search on 'climastrology' comes up with all sorts of nasty anti-Gore, anti-science stuff. But I would certainly say it fits very well for people who think they can predict climate using some flavour or combination of 'cycles' rather than the well-understood and well-verified radiative physics, just like your example Sphaerica. -
ranyl at 02:31 AM on 7 July 2011Over the tipping point
Wonder what weather changes the rapid loss of arctic summer ice will bring?
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:23 AM on 7 July 2011The Last Interglacial - An Analogue for the Future?
That's a very long and wordy post that seems to be tending in the direction "we don't know" and "it's natural cycles", although this is actually not clearly stated nor defended in the post. I'm sure some will find your mini lecture on D.O. events informative but there are better sources for that. The same applies to the other types of events mentioned. I'll restate that there has not been a D.O. event in over 20K years. The periodicity of Bond events has not been established. Bond argues of approximately 1500 years, +- 500 years. It is not clear whether there actually is a cycle. If the timing of Bond event #1 is correct (450AD), then another should be underway now, or should be/have been, anywhere between 500 years ago and 500 years from now. But how much would that concern us? It is possible that the LIA was a Bond event (they are cold episodes), but perhaps it was not. If it was, it would confirm the lack of a global character of these events. The vast majority of them do not correspond to any clear climate signal, especially on a global scale. There is little indication that the LIA was a global event. Milliken, for instance, failed to find a clear signature for it in the SHALDRIL cores. I find that these purported cycles are of little to no relevance to the current warming event. I don't see how you demonstrate otherwise. -
dana1981 at 02:18 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
thanks CBD, figure numbering corrected. I agree, "LIA recovery" is one of my favorites because it's just so ridiculous, like the climate just bounces around some natural equilibrium for no apparent reason. As I noted in the rebuttal to "LIA recovery" linked in the post, the factors which caused LIA cooling are not currently causing warming, so again, it's a completly unphysical argument. -
dana1981 at 02:15 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
rand15 - you're free to object, but the fact is that Akasofu's prediction is not based on physics at all. "Recovery from the LIA" is not physics. Akasofu did not even attempt to identify the physical cause of the warming trend, other than a throwaway reference to cosmic rays in the published version of the paper. -
CBDunkerson at 02:14 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
You've got two items labelled as 'Figure 4'. Last two images should be changed to 'Figure 5' and 'Figure 6'. I always love the 'recovering from the Little Ice Age' explanation... as if it were completely reasonable to identify an effect without a cause. -
Steve Brown at 02:12 AM on 7 July 2011The Last Interglacial Part Two - Why was it so warm?
#9 - The paper you link to just provides further confirmation that some regions had continental climates during the Eemian due to the orbital configuration and Arctic sea-ice / albedo feedback. I touched on this in Part 1 of the series. I'm afraid it doesn't provide any support for #1. -
_rand15_ at 02:03 AM on 7 July 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Syun-Ichi Akasofu
@dana1981 [dana1981] No you're missing the point. Akasofu's prediction is inaccurate because it's not based on physics. I really object to this notion. A prediction can be perfectly accurate without being based on any specific theory. And a prediction can be inaccurate even though based on "physics", if it is based on a faulty analysis or if some important factor has been omitted. Should a prediction turn out to be inaccurate, you can then say "oh, well, what do you expect? It wasn't based on physics." Should it turn out to be accurate, then you want to find out why, which may be coincidence or may be new physics, or previously overlooked factors. -
JMurphy at 01:29 AM on 7 July 2011Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
thepoodlebites wrote : "When you get a chance, can you please point me to RC’s regularly updated model-data comparisons?" You obviously have some ulterior motive for asking that because a few seconds of searching found this, up to the end of 2010 : Real Climate 2010 updates to model-data comparisons Were you looking for something else ?
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