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Tom Curtis at 11:42 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman @144:"My strongest objection is it is an indirect proxy for measuring actual weather extremes."
(My emphasis) Norman @140:"Does the evidence really show this? Here is a report on British Columbia long term climate... There were some very big fires in the past. British Columbia drought history.
(My emphasis) From Norman's source:"High-resolution charcoal analysis of lake sediments and stand-age information were used to reconstruct a 1000-year fire history around Dog Lake, which is located in the montane spruce zone of southeastern British Columbia. Macroscopic charcoal (>125 mm) accumulation rates (CHAR) from lake sediment were compared with a modern stand-origin map and fire-scar dates in the Kootenay Valley to determine the relative area and proximity of fires recorded as CHAR peaks. Small fires close to the lake and larger more distant fires appear as similar-sized peaks in the record. This information reinforces previous findings where CHAR peaks represent a complex spatial aggregation of local to extra-local fires around a lake site."
So to be absolutely clear, Norman has strong objections to using indirect proxies ..., unless he thinks they show what he wants them to show, in which case they are fine despite such confounding factors as an inability to distinguish between small, close fires and large, distant fires, or the effects of modern fire fighting on fires. Of course, the paper does not show what he thinks it shows. On the contrary, it shows "frequent stand-destroying fires" in the MWP, the last time NH temperatures were similar to modern values. -
skywatcher at 11:41 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman #142 and #147, you seem to be looking only for 13's on the climate dice. Even if they haven't happened (and Russia and Pakistan must've been close to 13's), there's an awful lot of 11's and 12's being rolled together in close proximity. Scanning the archives for widely-scattered individual events in scattered localities and disparate times does not capture the remarkable concentrated nature of what we have seen in the past few years. I also do not trust your assertion that in Jeff Masters' precipitation chart you "... do not see any noticeable or certain upward trend in his graph." Well, I do. It just so happens that before about 1950 nearly all years were below average. Most years after 1950 were above average, and there is an upward trend, which is quite noticeable. -
Norman at 11:15 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Albatross @ 143 "Your argument , if one could even call it that, that because there were fires in the past means that we can not be causing fires now, or that we are not worsening existing situations now or into the future, is a logical fallacy." That is not my argument. Sorry that is what you see. My argument is fairly simple. Jeff Masters posted some severe weather events of 2010. He used these events to make the conclusion "The pace of extreme weather events has remained remarkably high during 2011, giving rise to the question--is the "Global Weirding" of 2010 and 2011 the new normal? Has human-caused climate change destabilized the climate, bringing these extreme, unprecedented weather events? Any one of the extreme weather events of 2010 or 2011 could have occurred naturally sometime during the past 1,000 years. But it is highly improbable that the remarkable extreme weather events of 2010 and 2011 could have all happened in such a short period of time without some powerful climate-altering force at work. The best science we have right now maintains that human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like CO2 are the most likely cause of such a climate-altering force." I just do not agree with his conclusion or that the weather is becoming more extreme. I am looking at various historical information of weather and climate events to determine if his statement is correct. That we are entering extreme times. I sent a report of droughts in the Northern Hemisphere for the last 1000 years and put a challenge to you. Look at the graphs provided and explain to me how they show droughts are getting worse either in frequency of events, duration of such events, or intensity of such events. The graphs have length of time per drought cycle and the intensity and the frequency of each cycle as well. I can not see an increase in droughts in North America from the graphs I look at, maybe you can. That is what I am asking for. On the fires, it is not about the cause of the individual fires. I posted that as demonstrating that the patterns are not more extreme. Points to get across. I am not against taking action and finding alternate fuels, I think it is a very good idea. So I am not against the general consensus of this website (which I believe most are advocating). I am questioning the whole concept of weather getting worse. Maybe a climate model predicts such events, that is about as good as a weather model forcasting weather. They are good for a few days and then it is anybody's guess. I am asking the posters to come up with conclusive empirical data that supports the thesis that Global Warming is definately leading to more severe weather (as defined by one of the following, intensity, frequency and duration). The best posted so far is the Munich Re disaster trend. And this is an indirect proxy with too many other varialble to create a conclusive argument of the overall thesis. -
Tom Curtis at 11:06 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman @123, the most extensive direct record of Amazon water states is from the river gauge at Manaus. That provides a continuous record of river levels for the Rio Negro, a major Amazon tributary, since 1903. The record is analysed by Richey et al 2004. The data through 2009 is available on a spreadsheat, in which river depths are given in centimetres. Analysing that data, the low river point in 2005 was 1.78 standard deviations below the mean, while in 2010 it was over 2.5 standard deviations below the mean. That gives an incomplete picture of the droughts. The 2005 and 2010 droughts where unusual both as to the location of the rainfall deficit and to their timing. In particular, their timing correlated with El Neno's, whereas, the 2005 and 2010 droughts correlated with La Nina's and where probably caused by unusually warm tropical Atlantic sea water. More importantly for this point is that, unusually for Amazon droughts, the 2005 droughts had low water simultaneously in all its tributaries (see abstract below). That means that a measure of river levels, and in particular the standard deviation of just one tributary (the Rio Negro) will understate the impact on the total Amazon flows."Severe hydrological droughts in the Amazon have generally been associated with strong El Nino events. More than 100 years of stage record at Manaus harbour confirms that minimum water levels generally coincide with intense warming in the tropical Pacific sea waters. During 2005, however, the Amazon experienced a severe drought which was not associated with an El Nino event. Unless what usually occurs during strong El Nino events, when negative rainfall anomalies usually affect central and eastern Amazon drainage basin; rainfall deficiencies in the drought of 2005 were spatially constrained to the west and southwest of the basin. In spite of this, discharge stations at the main-stem recorded minimum water levels as low as those observed during the basin-wide 1996–1997 El Nino-related drought. The analysis of river discharges along the main-stem and major tributaries during the drought of 2004–2005 revealed that the recession on major tributaries began almost simultaneously. This was not the case in the 1996–1997 drought, when above-normal contribution of some tributaries for a short period during high water was crucial to partially counterbalance high discharge deficits of the other tributaries. Since time-lagged contributions of major tributaries are fundamental to damp the extremes in the main-stem, an almost coincident recession in almost all tributaries caused a rapid decrease in water discharges during the 2005 event."
In the entire 108 year record , the Rio Negro has been lower than in 2005 (14.75 m) just 7 times {1906 (14.2 m); 1916 (14.42 m); 1926 (14.52 m); 1958 (14.74 m); 1963 (13.64 m); 1997 (14.34); and 2010 (13.63)}. The 2010 figure is, of course, the record low for the Rio Negro. The occurrence of two such low levels of the Rio Negro in just six years is itself unusual. When you consider that the reduction in the flow of the Amazon itself was even greater in relative terms, that the droughts occurred in an unusual geographic region, that they occurred when, based on the ENSO cycle we would have expected heavier rain rather than ligher, and that between them (2009) the record flood levels for the Amazon were set as well, also unusual as to timing and location, the notion that this is a continuation of "same ol', same ol'" is nonsense. Please note that the droughts of 2005 and 2010 were unusual dry season droughts. The most extreme Rio Negro drought on record was the wet season drought of 1926, in which Rio Negro peak flows were five standard deviations below the normal peak. Nor was 2005 exceptional in terms of total flows over the year, in that an almost normal wet season meant that lower annual flows have been achieved in one if four years. The distinction between wet season and dry season droughts is probably important with regards to impacts on the Amazon forest, but not with regard to the unusual nature of the 2005 and 2010 droughts. (As a side note, 1963 was also a wet season droughts.) More information available here (pdf) -
Norman at 10:55 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
FatherTheo @141 Maybe it does show a marked change and then again maybe not. When you deal with weather events, any single weather event (tornado, heavy rain etc) is created from a complex of many forces. Many factors go into a weather event (temperature, humidity, wind structure, cold lifting air, jet stream) all of which are variable and may influence each other. You remember the old physics experiment when you have a water bath and generate waves. The average wave height is a product of the energy input. But you can have constructive interference and generate waves much bigger than the average. You see a trend in the Missouri river drainage graph. Then look at this one. Weather is chaotic. Now look at the trend of this graph. Look at 1953 a peak above the rest (now compare your analysis to the Missouri river basin) then 1957 is above that. Then in 1965 maybe double the normal. Then 1974 stands out like a sore thumb. Proof positive the climate is changing for the worse and we will all soon be killed....whoops but then look what happens after that, everything goes back to normal until 2011. I believe you can see this random and wide fluctuations on most historical weather data. I compiled a little excel graph of snowfall in Omaha. You have these 3 huge peaks and then it never gets up there again. If you do not accept this I will find more historical graphs of weather related events and show to you that it is indeed how it works. The 2011 heavy rains were just like the biggest wave in the tank of water. All the right elements came together to produce the very heavy rainfall in the Missouri river basin. As I stated it this occurs a few more times I will think you are correct. My tornado graph was a demonstration of seeing trends were there may be none. Hope that clears it up for you. -
scaddenp at 10:50 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
Eric, which kind of event(s)/data in the future will convince you that you are wrong? -
Bob Lacatena at 10:36 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
126, Eric, That's a cop out. You seemed to give a pretty clear description, but by leaving it unquantified, it gives you all the wriggle room that you want to claim "that's not what I meant." Set things high if you want, but set some numbers. There has to be some point where you'd say really, this isn't right, no matter what. On the whole middle thing... science doesn't have a middle. There are a few fine points where you can argue one way or the other, and there are some other points where you can appear to argue it two ways (like climate sensitivity), but overall, the facts are the facts. The two sides of the road are "people who understand, and are concerned" and "people who are confused, and don't realize that they should be concerned." People who stand in the middle of the road, unable to choose, have either fooled themselves into thinking they understand when they don't, and they belong on the ignorance side of the road, or else the do understand and they are being disingenuous for some unknown reason, and are misleading people into thinking there is some reason to hesitate before picking a lane. There is no middle of the road. There's the side that's trying to steer the car around an upcoming, deadly obstacle, and there are the people on the other side, driving backwards, laughing, drinking beer, and guffawing at the frantic looks on the faces of the people in the other lane, shouting "Look out behind you! You're going to crash! Look out!" -
kiwipoet at 10:13 AM on 30 June 2011Climate's changed before
Bear with me, bloggers, as this is my first post to SkSci, in fact my first post ever. I would like to make a comment on E Sato’s post in this thread of May 16, as there is a story behind it. I teach writing at a NZ university, and gave a stage 1 (first year) English class (three tutorial groups, actually, about 60 students) a copy of the graphic that shows 97% of climate scientists acknowledging AGW, with media acceptance about 48% and the general public about 46%, and asked the students what conclusions they could draw from the data. (Sorry don't have link handy.) I further challenged the students to check out the SkSci site and a denier site, such as WUWT. The graphic produced a fierce discussion. About half the class seemed to get the point, although almost no one suggested that the monopolistic ownership of the media might be a problem. I should have been prepared for it, but I was quite shocked at the degree of confusion and fallacious thinking evident, with some truly ridiculous things being said. One student even suggested that climate scientists were terrorists of a kind. A student from India got angry at the idea that I was suggesting countries like India should curb their emissions while the ‘developed’ countries go on their merry way, while I had said nothing of the kind – I was solely concerned with the issue of scientific consensus. Anyway, of all the students E Sato was the only one to take up my challenge and post SkSci. E Sata describes herself as a second language learner, which explains some of her English, but aside from that the confusions evident in her post do reflect to some extent the more general confusion among the students. It seems that attitudes to possible solutions to AGW get conflated with the science of the issue: In other words, if you don’t like the tax, reject the facts! I came away from these classes thinking, rather gloomily, of that wonderful quote from Adorno, in his Minima Moralia: "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false." (page 15, recently quoted but not referenced by Al Gore in his Rolling Stone article) A further thought. The words ‘science’ and ‘scientist’ have in themselves become a kind of mental block; after all it was ‘scientists’ who told us nuclear power was safe, ‘scientists’ who told us genetic engineering would feed the poor and not just make Monsanto rich. When talking with deniers I no longer use the words ‘science of global warming’ but rather refer to the evidence or the facts and try to leave the S word out of it. Finally, with regard to the subject of this thread (!), It seems that the ‘climate has changed before’ argument, most prominent among the students, is a refuge for those who know nothing about the issue at all, who wouldn’t know a Moncton from a Monbiot, and is therefore difficult to deal with. Denial, as we are starting to realize, has deep emotional and ideological roots. Voltaire said it all in four words: ‘men argue, nature acts’. -
Norman at 10:07 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
scaddenp @142 I could only get an abstract to your article and from the reading it seems a model is used as opposed to direct measurements. Plus Jeff Masters already has a global precipitation chart in his article. It has 2010 as an extreme year over land but the graph does not look like an upward trend. I see cycles, dry and wet but I do not see any noticeable or certain upward trend in his graph. On the Insurance links. This issue is still up for debate. Even the Munich Re webpage that Tom Curtis linked to give multiple reasons as to explain why disasters are increasing. Climate Change is one of the possibilities. My strongest objection is it is an indirect proxy for measuring actual weather extremes. Weather extremes may be increasing and then they might not be. Too many other variables in the mix of what a disaster is. I have been asking for just the actual extreme weather events and a trend in these. Is there a chart out there in cyberspace that shows the number of floods a year increasing, or that the intensity of the flooding is going up as compared with previous years. Is there a chart of severe storms (as defined by meteorlogists) that show that the number and intensity is increasing? This is what I would call strong science. Direct evidence of the claim made Global warming is increasing extreme weather related events. So if you have direct (not modeled) evidence that precipitation is increasing that would help, but as I stated Jeff Masters already has a global chart up. -
SouthWing at 09:15 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
OA is the elephant in the room ignored by the "Geo-engineering will save us from warming!" crowd. I look forward to this series. Are you paying attention, Lomborg? (Probably not.) -
Tom Smerling at 08:51 AM on 30 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
Nice catch, Badgersouth. we'll add it as a variation to our current "loaded dice" bite. (BTW you can add your own favorite "bites" directly on the site, with the "add a bite" button in "Bites.") -
John Hartz at 08:28 AM on 30 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
The following is worth bottling... Scientists compare the normal variation in weather with rolls of the dice. Adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere loads the dice, increasing odds of such extreme weather events. It's not just that the weather dice are altered, however. As Steve Sherwood , co-director of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Australia, puts it, "it is more like painting an extra spot on each face of one of the dice, so that it goes from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. This increases the odds of rolling 11 or 12, but also makes it possible to roll 13." Source: Global Warming and the Science of Extreme Weather, Scientific American, June 29, 2011 -
Tom Smerling at 08:19 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
What a great idea! OA is such a "sleeper." I'm particularly interested in the latest projections re: impacts on the food chain and marine ecosystems in general. P.S. Love your titles! -
Albatross at 08:16 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman @140, Why oh why do you repeatedly insist on missing the point? The situation has been repeatedly explained to you, yet you insist with this position. That is not "skepticism"...and I for one am getting rather tired of this tired old "skeptic" and denier of AGW trick. Your argument , if one could even call it that, that because there were fires in the past means that we can not be causing fires now, or that we are not worsening existing situations now or into the future, is a logical fallacy. You mention BC forests. If I recall correctly, the dire pine beetle infestation that has destroyed swaths of BC's forests has been exacerbated by the marked warming, especially during the cold season, and may have set in motion a positive feedback loop in the Carbon cycle. See for example, Kurz et al. (2008, Nature). -
Doug Mackie at 08:10 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
The correct links are University of Otago Clark University I do know my OA but I don't yet know how to fix a link in a published post. -
scaddenp at 08:08 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman, you complained people were not showing you papers with "proper science". I can only assume you didnt read Min. What is shown there is NH data (because that is where measuring network is well-established enough to provide data that can be looked at in standardized way - ie science. See the supplementary section). What shows there is trends, it is not "cycles". It is the best proper analysis of extreme precipitation events on a large scale (not just the USA (2% world area) that I am aware of and its not comforting. On insurance. You were dismissing insurance material on the basis of imagined motivation - I was presenting evidence for alternative more likely motivation. Insurance lobbying of governments for action on climate change is about them protecting their investment. Perhaps it time to tell us what data would change your mind so that we know there is some point in continuing to present evidence. -
FatherTheo at 07:59 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman: I looked over your Missouri drainage data. I can see no reason for your judgement of "anomalous high peaks". The four highest peaks have happened since 1979, with the events in 1997 and this year shattering all the records that went before. In the information you have shown to us, have been twice as many high water events in the 33 years since 1979 as in the 80 years prior to that in the record. I can see a clear temporal consistency of these events which suggests that they are not anomalous except in relation to what went before. In other words, together with other worldwide data, these events represent evidence that the climate is changing. As for the issue of droughts in the Missouri basin, I regard that as relevant only if climate models consistently predict increasing droughts in that region. For instance, where I live, in North America's Pacific Northwest, climate change is predicted to bring more rain. -
skywatcher at 07:54 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
#126 Eric, this site, so far as I can see it, is highly biased towards the science! The sham is that some think there is some kind of 'balance', some kind of middle point between the scientists and the deniers where the truth sits. It's the trap that media organisations everywhere fall into, the 'two sides to every story' trap. It works quite well for politics, but fails miserably for science. The truth, as supported by the evidence, almost certainly lies with the science, and whether the true answer is 2C per doubling or 4.5C per doubling, or somewhere in between, the true answer is very very far from denier positions. And that's not based on belief, but evidence. To lighten the tone, this quote from the ever-brilliant Hitchhiker's Guide seems appropriate somehow: "It occurred to him almost instantly, with the instinctive correctness that self-preservation instils in the mind, that he mustn't try to think about it, that if he did, the law of gravity would suddenly glance sharply in his direction and demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing up there, and all would suddenly be lost." I like the idea of Arthur thinking of almost anything he possibly can (such as the pleasing firm roundness of the bottom of tulips!), to deny the possibility that gravity might look sharply in his direction. Seems appropriate, somehow... -
KR at 07:34 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
thepoodlebites - I have replied on the far more appropriate How do we know more CO2 is causing warming thread. Please leave this thread for discussions of previous climate predictions and how they have worked out. -
KR at 07:33 AM on 30 June 2011Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
thepoodlebites - "How do you separate warming from natural climate variability and CO2 rise?" Look at the levels of forcings that are currently causing climate change, up in Figure 4 of the 'Advanced' tab of this page. It's really a simple case of attributing cause and effect. -
Patrick 027 at 07:32 AM on 30 June 2011The Planetary Greenhouse Engine Revisited
The EUV dissociates/ionizes all molecular gas within the thermosphere and so, whatever is the characteristics of the molecular gases below the thermosphere, they will be heated from above and, if the layer surface-thermosphere is perfectly transparent, this heat will be radiated to space only by the surface where it can be carried only by conduction. In this case all the heat radiated by the mesosphere in the reality must be subtracted to albedo and Te increases. You were correct up to the part about the mesosphere. (Except I'm not sure you can say that *all* molecular gas is ionized - I think some neutral (as well as multiatomic) molecules do remain, but I'll have to double check.) Heating of the mesosphere just adds to the downward flux of heat that must be carried to the surface before emission to space. If you don't change the total amount of solar heating but only rearrange it, whether among different layers of air or between them and the surface, Te stays constant. Of course you can change the effective TOA albedo by changing atmospheric solar absorption of some layers so that more or less can be reflected by other layers or the surface, but that changes the total solar heating, which of course will change Te. Generally reducing absorption of solar radiation in the upper atmosphere should tend to reduce Te because of a greater potential for reflection by clouds or the surface or the scattering of the air itself, although this might not be a strong effect if the layers below mostly absorb the same radiation. Yes if the photon is absorbed/emitted with a EM forcing. Not at all if the photon is created/destroyed with a thermal forcing. The vast vast majority of radiation emitted by the Earth - surface or atmosphere - is from thermal processes, and in accord with the Planck function for the temperature and optical properties of the material. Aurora are different (I think 'fluorescence' applies), but that involves a very very very small amount of energy. And you can have stimulated emission without isothermal conditions, too. You don't need isothermal conditions for either. The Planck function is a function of temperature, and not of temperature gradient or time derivative. When temperature varies in space and time, the material in each location in space and time still has a temperature. If you still think otherwise, please explain how CO2 molecules at any temperature found in the Earth's atmosphere, which are continually colliding and thus at any given moment with some fraction in various excited states, could be prevented from emitting radiation, when it otherwise happens spontaneously (as has been observed). This is the last time I will address this issue; look it up in physics books if you need more. We can continue to argue until infinity if we don’t know the order of magnitude of all the contributes, or their weighted contributes, But you don't know; I at least know some things. because you continue to consider very marginal (pretty negligible) the role of the fluid dynamics. Not at all. Did you not notice my discussion (maybe some of this on the Real climate thread) on the mechanics behind the tendency for warmer air to rise and cooler air to sink. On the conversion between APE and kinetic energy, where, when APE is in the form of heat, APE to kinetic energy is thermally direct and acts like a heat engine, while the reverse is a heat pump (converts work to heat whil pumping heat from lower to higher temperature). In case you needed this link, the mechanism by which kinetic energy is produced from APE is the flow from higher to lower pressure - a pressure gradient is a force per unit distace per unit area, and work is done when there is flow across isobars - energy = force * distance; and if I'm not mistaken the kinetic energy (per unit mass) gain or loss is equal to the loss or gain in pressure, divided by density - thus in accord with Bernoulli's Law/principle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli's_principle ) - or for vertical motion, the combination of change in pressure and gravitational potential energy is converted to or from a change in kinetic energy. Regarding the deviation of the upper atmosphere from radiative equilibrium, I did discusss the work done on the upper atmosphere (running heat pumps there, driving thermally indirect circulation) by fluid mechanical waves which propagate vertically from the troposphere which has the heat engines that supply their kinetic energy.Now I could go into the coriolis effect, geostrophic balance, gradient wind balance, cyclostrophic balance, baroclinic instability, Hadley cells, etc, but it's not necessary - not because they're unimportant, but because it isn't specified in a simple first-order explanation of radiative-convective equilibrium. (In the full four dimensional climate system, horizontal radiant heating variations, in combination with the vertical variation, and along with latent heating, produce APE which drives Hadley cells, monsoonal circulations, and midlatitude storm track activity - the later provides kinetic energy to the zonal mean Ferrel cell, which itself is thermally indirect. This extratropical storm track activity in particular involves colder air sliding under warmer air and thus can have a stabilizing effect (these large-horizontal scale overturning can produce lapse rates that are stable to localized overturning). the troposphere and surface in high winter latitudes in particular is heated from horizontal transport from lower latitudes, and, especially when/where there is land or sea ice or ocean circulation is otherwise not supplying this heat, the heat goes through the troposphere and down to the surface, and I think both have net radiant cooling. Because of this pattern, the lower troposphere can be especially stable at high winter latitudes.) (Off on a tangent - when you create a warm air mass surrounded by cooler air, the warmer air rises and flows out over the cooler air, which sinks and slides underneath the warm air. But if this is taking place on relatively large horizontal scales, the coriolis effect will eventually stop this circulation before it is completed; geostrophic adjustment occurs, with the wind blowing parallel to isobars; the temperature contrast is stabilized and some APE remains. However, in the right conditions, there remains baroclinic instability, wherein wavy displacements (PV anomalies) of the air alter the wind field and induce other displacements such that the displacments at different vertical levels mutually amplify each other; this transfers some APE from the prexisting temperature contrast and puts it into the temperature variations of the waves, which convert some of that APE into kinetic energy. Aside from some other things, this is how extratropical storm tracks work.) (Having achieved geostrophic balance, warmING air tends to rise and coolING air tends to sink, even if the warmING air is still cooler than the coolING air.) All in all I think I've paid more attention to dynamics than you have. But it remains that to a good first approximation the upper atmosphere (at least up through the stratopause, maybe most of the mesosphere) is, in a global annual average, in radiative equilibrium. The effects of circulation cause some interesting deviations from that which I think may be much more important when considering the seasonal and latitidunal variations in temperature, rather than a global average or globally representative temperature profile. (Note in figure 10 of http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3829.1 "The HAMMONIA Chemistry Climate Model: Sensitivity of the Mesopause Region to the 11-Year Solar Cycle and CO2 Doubling" Schmidt et al. how the distribution of solar heating and LW radiant cooling match up in the lower mesosphere. Note also that heating rates are proportional to fluxes absorbed or emitted and inversely proportional to mass, so the fluxes involved in large heating or cooling rates higher up are much smaller than they might appear in a graph which uses geometric height rather than pressure as a vertical coordinate. Which isn't to say that the small fluxes are not important at those heights, but they are small compared to what is going in and coming out of some layers far below.) In the preceding post I saw that,e.g., the heating power yielded by a column radiator within a room is about 75% by convection, 25% by radiation, as certified by the engineering physics laboratories. What occurs, really, within the atmosphere, what will be the ratio convective/radiative? We cannot say anything (at least we cold guess something) without a well-advised synthesis of the fluid dynamics and the radiative transfer which, actually, represents the one way to obtain weighted answers and so to have realistic reasons for neglecting or not some aspect. But that work has been done. If you don't believe my account, read it yourself. -
Tom Smerling at 07:31 AM on 30 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
Thanks everybody! As the new kid on the block, we just so grateful for your feedback and suggestions. Please let us know how we can make it more useful to you - we can have fun with this. -
Kevin C at 07:19 AM on 30 June 2011Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
Sorry, I should have pointed you to Nick's original post here which explains the plot in detail. The CRU curve is CRUTEMP, not HADCRUT. i.e. it is a land only index. The GISS curve is GISTEMP - a land-ocean index. The TempLS60 curve is based only on 60 land stations, but with those stations carefully selected to optimally cover the globe, and weighted according to the area of the globe (land and sea) closer to that station than to any other. The point Nick was making with this figure, which I failed to pass on, was not just that he had a credible approximation to GISTEMP from just 60 stations, but that by weighting the land stations according to land-and-ocean coverage his land temperature record was closer to the GISTEMP land-ocean index than to a pure land index. So he's covering 3x the area with ~1% of the stations. (Admittedly they are carefully chosen stations, but they are chosen on the basis of coverage, not on the basis of value.) That's a pretty startling result for several reasons. -
Eric the Red at 07:08 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
Sphaerica, Let me get back to you on precise boundaries, if I can even set up such a thing. Regarding the middle, yes that is perspective. On this site, I am definitely on the skeptic side (or denier by your standards). However, you must remember that this site is highly biased towards those you believe that climate sensitivity is high and warming is imminent. There are others who think that the temperature record is a sham, and that no warming has occurred at all. To them, I look like an alarmist (their term). I am not saying that I am dead center, but there is a rather long continuum. -
Paul D at 07:00 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
BTW the Otago and Clark University links are incorrect. -
Paul D at 06:58 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
It will be good to read something a bit different, by people who clearly know what they are talking about. -
MattJ at 06:56 AM on 30 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
It looks great! -
dana1981 at 06:52 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
I hope this semantics argument doesn't continue throughout the series. The most frequent "response" I see amongst "skeptics" when ocean acidification and the associated dangerous consequences are discussed is this same "oceans aren't acid" semantics silliness. As several other commenters have noted, decreasing pH = becoming more acidic = acidification. That's what it's called, it's an accurate description, now let's move on and talk about the actual science.Moderator Response: Further "look squirrel!" comments about acidification will be deleted . The same goes for "looking for the squirrel" comments. (Rob P) -
Oceancamel at 06:45 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Camburn You do make me laugh! If I am on the south pole and travel north, I am northbound, even though I haven't left the southern hemisphere. For northbound read 'acidification'. -
Stephen Baines at 06:43 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Ricardo is correct. This semantic argument is just a way to distract from the science. -
Riccardo at 06:41 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Camburn please do not continue debating the terminology, it adds really nothing to the science of ocean acidification/decreasing pH/dealkalinization/whatever. And above all, this pseudo-scientific argument is an old and boring way to try to hijack the discussion. Please let people discuss the science. -
Stephen Baines at 06:40 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Camburn...that is simply not true. Adding acid to a solution is acidifying it - you are adding protons and making it more acidic. It doesn't matter what the start and end pH is. That is the common terminology - has been since I was in HS at least. Based on my textbooks, the usage goes back further. Before ocean acidification caught the ire of the antiAGW crowd this standard usage was never questioned. "You can't have an alkaline condition and an acid condition at the same time. It is physically impossible unless you know of a change in the laws?" That's true but it's irrelevant. You can't have something cold and hot at the same time either, but you can certainly heat something that is cold to make it a little less cold. -
Bob Lacatena at 06:35 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
122, Eric the Red, I guess I'd still ask you to quantify... set a precise boundary, for how much of a temperature rise, by what year, accompanied by continued other factors, that would define your "enough is enough" point. As far as your statement about being in the middle... you are entitled to your own perspective, and we've been down this road before, but my perception of you, and I believe most others will agree, is that you constantly argue against climate change. Maybe you think you are providing balance and moving the argument to the middle of the road, but that's not how it comes across. Every single point you make is in contradiction to the AGW perspective. Every comment appears to look for the silver lining that lets us delay serious consideration of the problem for just a little longer. That's why I'd like you to quantify, unequivocally, your limits. I'd like a line that I know you won't cross, and that won't move, so we know when enough is enough by your own standards. -
Robert Murphy at 06:33 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
"You can't have an acid state until your ph drops below 7." Acidification doesn't mean acidic. Basic chemistry. -
thepoodlebites at 06:12 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
#40 KR So you are using model predictions to prove that the observed warming is mostly from CO2 rise? And I'll move to the extreme weather thread but let us remember that weather is not the same as climate, and single events are not the same as trends. -
dana1981 at 06:06 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
poodle #39 - current observations are consistent with a sensitivity of 3°C for 2xCO2. If you use the IPCC range of transient climate sensitivity values, CO2 alone has caused 0.5 to 1.5°C warming so far, most likely 1°C - more than observed due to aerosols and other cooling effects offsetting some of that warming. That physics is how we know CO2 is causing the warming, aside from the anthropogenic warming 'fingerprints'. -
Norman at 06:00 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Albatross @ 134 "AGW is about considering the body of evidence, and the evidence does show a marked increase in extreme heat, extreme precipitation and drought." Does the evidence really show this? Here is a report on British Columbia long term climate... There were some very big fires in the past. British Columbia drought history. Here is one with droughts across North America. In the text they explain that the causes of drought in North America were also responsible for Global Climate patterns (more rain in some areas droughts in others). From this study it states there were much worse droughts in the past than today. They also have graphs at the end of the article which show 1000 years of droughts. I would challenge you to find an increase in frequency of droughts today as compared to the long 1000 year history. 1000 years of drought record for North America. Have not found data on the Heat waves of the past. I know in the US there were plenty in the 1930's decade. This report on the Missouri river has a graph of the drainage from the entire Missouri river basin since 1900. If you remove maybe three years from the graph (anomalous high peaks, there is no upward trend but there are clear wet and dry cycles). 2011 was a super wet year but anomalies happen. If this event would happen for a few years then I would totally agree with most posters. The point of this graph is please show where moisture is increasing. This is not just a small local area, it covers serveral square miles and should contain a clear signal of moisture increase or decrease to be considered extreme. Missouri River Basin drainage data. -
KR at 05:54 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
thepoodlebites - "How do you separate warming from natural climate variability and CO2 rise?" See the post and references here. The rest of your post belongs on the Extreme weather thread; it's off topic in this one. -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:51 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Looks like it will be an excellent resource, perhaps it might be worth submitting a version to somewhere like Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, so that it has the added advantage of having been peer-reviewed? -
DaneelOlivaw at 05:51 AM on 30 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
Very interesting. I'll take a look the next time I'm writting some rebuttal or explanation on my blog. -
thepoodlebites at 05:48 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
#37 skywatcher How do you separate warming from natural climate variability and CO2 rise? How do you know that most of the warming is from CO2 rise? I still think that climate sensitivity is lower than model predictions, based on current observations. I'm reading Jeff Masters post, an interesting collection of weather events. Snowmageddon? Negative AO and El Nino. The moisture plume for the Feb. 6, 2010, storm stretched from the eastern Pacific, all the way up the U.S. east coast. And from what I read, the 2010 Russian drought was an episode of atmospheric blocking, all within the realm of natural climate variability. What about the tornado outbreaks this spring, was all that from global warming too? -
John Hartz at 05:43 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
By coincidence, the following post popped up on ScienceBlog.com today: Climate Change Makes Some Chemicals More Toxic to Aquatic Life The blog is about a new paper published in the journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management. -
Stephen Leahy at 05:40 AM on 30 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
wow that's great - now I don't have to steal from my old articles -- it's a a whole new playground...yea! (and I will be happy to share some of my educational 'toys')Response:[DB] Added missing equals sign to URL tag.
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KR at 05:37 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman - I believe that is because your last post was various thoughts on damage per Richter number and distance, rather than observed frequency of 'extreme events' recorded by the insurance industry. I'm not surprised you didn't receive a direct reply to that. I don't believe that the number or strength of earthquakes have increased over time, although population spread and (in the other direction) building codes have affected the damage thereof. As I stated earlier, you can use observed 'extreme events' from earthquakes to scale population and construction effects out of other extreme events. -
John Hartz at 05:34 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Kudos to Doug Mackie, Christina McGraw, and Keith Hunter for taking this on. Out of curiosity, where are the University of Otago and Clark University located? -
Norman at 05:31 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
KR @ 129 I have been debating the earthquake point with Tom Curtis. My final post on it was at 94. Tom Curtis did come up with good arguments but I did not see a comment to my final response to his points. -
KR at 05:24 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Camburn - Acidification is the correct terminology, describing something changing pH towards the acid end of the scale, a reduction in pH value. On a side note, it's only 'basic chemistry' until the pH drops through 7.0! :) -
Camburn at 05:19 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Actually, to make this easier to grasp one should use the proper terminology. The ocean is alkaline with a PH slightly over 8.0, and co2 reduces the alkalinity. Basic chemistry. -
stefaan at 05:10 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
This article of Easterbrook is similar to this chinese article Periodic oscillations in millennial global mean temperature and their causes in which they just keep combining solar cycles and some marine influences untill they find a more or less good fit for the temperatures the last 1000 years. Of course by adding enough cyclic events you can fit any curve (probably in 2030 they will publish an article with maybe 20 cycles to fit the temperatures) but the link between correlation and causality becomes unexisting. -
John Hartz at 05:04 AM on 30 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
Kudos to Tom Smerling & Don McCubbin for creating ClimateBites. It is indeed a nice supplement to SkS. Let's grow the synergistic impacts by continuing to coordinate our efforts.
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