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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. -
skywatcher at 04:40 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
#36: climate sensitivity to doubled CO2, I wasn't entirely clear about that. So far we have most of about 0.8C due to a 35% CO2 rise, with more in the pipeline, so well in that ballpark for 2-4.5C rise. More info at Climate sensitivity is low. More info about climate disruption at Jef Masters' recent post - extremes of heat (high temperatures), drought (more evaporation) and flood (more available water vapour) appear to be increasing as predicted, and all this after relatively modest warming of 0.7C to present. I'd call that disruption when it causes food (wheat) prices to spike, as well as the obvious damage caused, and it's only expected to get worse with continued warming. -
Tor B at 04:35 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
Quote: "... So there is an intermediate organic molecule that is neither a nutrient for plants (dissolved salts), nor food for bacteria. My measurements showed that the sea is awash in this mysterious substance that I named slush. In fact the biomass in slush is far larger than all life on Earth combined. Reader please note that this is a very serious omission by mainstream science, and cannot be disproved!" link Mainstream science to the rescue! -
Humanracesurvival at 04:34 AM on 30 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
Checkout http://www.rockettheme.com/ for the best cms templates and http://jomsocial.com if you like to offer your user facebook walls and such. If you need help contact me at http://climateprogress.net -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:23 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
studentnigel.... You might try actually reading the article posted here from Dr Masters before you comment. Under the heading: "Global tropical cyclone activity lowest on record" he clearly makes statements that are consistent with Dr Maue's paper. -
thepoodlebites at 04:20 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
#23 skywatcher What observations are you referring to? The UAH satellite record is showing +0.2C per decade since 1980. How is 2-4.5C rise related to current observations? And what exactly are you talking about with the term "climate disruption"? -
dana1981 at 04:17 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Eric - this 'apples to apples' comparison is what was done in the post."Between 2000 and 2010, Easterbrook's 1945-1977 scenario (which we call "Easterbrook A") projected a cooling of approximately 0.19°C, versus a cooling of 0.38°C over this period in his 1880-1915 scenario (Easterbrook B). The observed temperature change from 2000 to 2010, on the other hand, is approximately 0.12°C warming, according to the Wood for Trees Temperature Index, which is the average of the four main temperature data sets (HadCRUT3, GISTemp, RSS, and UAH)....In short, over the first decade of his global cooling projections, Easterbrook has already been wrong by between 0.3 and 0.5°C."
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Eric the Red at 04:09 AM on 30 June 2011Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
Kevin, The difference between GISS and CRU is not that great. In fact, the trend since 1880 for both is ~0.6C / century. In your plot, CRU has a higher slope than GISS. The shapes are the same, and the overall statistics are similar, but show slight variations during specific timeframes due to data analysis. -
Albatross at 04:05 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Way up thread people were asking about the source of Trenberth's much quoted 4% increase in atmospheric moisture. The science behind this statement was published in a paper by Trenberth et al. (2005) in Climate Dynamics. If one looks more closely at the stats. it turns out that is estimate of 4% may be on the conservative side. -
Eric (skeptic) at 04:04 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
#127, Sphaerica, it's a false dichotomy to be either in favor of climate action or to be callously "opening another beer" while watching disasters on TV. The main reason is that I, and perhaps Norman, feel that we can best help people cope with disaster by helping them increase their resilience. A few policy changes would help like emptying out the dams in April and May rather than hoping for a slow melt of record snows. Norman and I both realize that disasters will happen regardless of any actions we take on climate. For example natural blocking weather patterns have played a role in many disasters. Even if the frequency of those disasters is increased, that doesn't really change the cost of preparation. The magnitude of the disasters is the obvious potential long term concern. I could certainly be accused of being callous about that potential threat, but it is one abstract threat of many. -
Tor B at 04:03 AM on 30 June 2011Ocean acidification: Coming soon
I'm so glad this series is coming! Ocean Acidification (OA) may be the biggest short-term threat we face in relation to anthropogenic climate change (ACC). I attempted some internet research a few weeks ago on the chemistry of OA, and the first blog I came to was decidedly bogus (a denier’s paradise with “un-disprovable” made-up facts that prove – with formulas – OA isn’t happening). I’m not the only one who needs help. OA is my number one reason why geo-engineering from space (decreasing solar gain and allowing increased CO2 emissions) would be total foolishness. -
Eric the Red at 04:02 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
michael, I was following the links, and using the projections in the report referenced - 2008. Going back to the older projections, he projected ~0.15C temperature decline from 2000-2010 (based on eyeballing figure 3). The 60-month moving average from CRU has fallen 0.05C since then, while GISS has increased by a similar value. When making comparison, it is nice to compare apples to apples. -
Albatross at 04:00 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
StudentNigel @131, Your posts adds nothing to the thread-- in fact it smacks of trolling/baiting. Regardless, you are also making the mistake of citing one source about one weather phenomenon and because that papers makes the case that a particular weather phenomenon is not on the increase you seem to be falsely concluding that all extreme weather phenomena are not on the increase. AGW is about considering the body of evidence, and the evidence does show a marked increase in extreme heat, extreme precipitation and drought. -
Albatross at 03:52 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Sphaerica @88, Like your thoughts and insights on this (yes, early days indeed), and the analogy is great. Thanks for that. -
DSL at 03:19 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
studentnigel, what do you make of Maue's work? What does it mean to you and your understanding of climate? What do you take from it? -
studentnigel at 03:06 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
More extreme weather recently? This post from Florida State seems to have a contrary view. http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
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