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michael sweet at 02:39 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Eric: We need to start Easterbrook at his 2000 prediction. Why do you give him tie first eight years when he has been wrong for free?? If you always choose the most optomsitic prediction, and then let them correct it when they are wrong, it will always look OK. -
dana1981 at 02:33 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Riccardo - I agree. When I say "good projections", I mean projections which are based on sound physics, not projections which are necessarily spot-on. We'll be looking at some projections from studies in the 1970s which may not be perfect, but which we can learn from, because unlike Easterbrook's, they were based on sound physics. Eric - I'm pretty sure Hansen's Scenario B projection (made in 1988) was closer to reality in 2010 than Easterbrook's projections (first made around 2000). But it's true that Hansen was "wrong" in the sense that his climate model was too sensitive. Had his model sensitivity been about 3.4°C as opposed to 4.2°C for 2xCO2, he would have been "right". You can't say that for Easterbrook - his fundamental approach is wrong. -
Kevin C at 02:16 AM on 30 June 2011Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
Hmm... This should be something which could be tested without too much difficulty. If stations are being extrapolated over too large a radius, then working with a subset of the data should make things much worse. So take something like clear climate code and throw out a lot of the stations. In fact they did exactly that here, throwing out all but 440 stations. It's noisier, but shows the same basic shape. Nick Stokes goes further with TempLS and produces a global land and ocean reconstruction from only 60 land stations, chosen only on the basis of geographical distribution and longevity, by introducing a proper Vorenhoi area weighting term (compare GISS vs TempLS60):
Maybe I've overlooked something, but I don't at the moment see how you can get that good an agreement if the temperature record is being biased by poor sampling and over-extrapolation.
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Dan Olner at 01:42 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Reading the last para on using stats... I'm reminded of hearing a talk from a meteorologist on early weather prediction methods. They were entirely statistics based - and completely rubbish. The history of meteorology has been all about understanding the mechanisms better, leading to increasingly accurate forecasts. I wonder if anyone out there could do a little comparative history? Relying on Easterbrook's methods would be like going back to statistics-based meteorology for predicting the weather. (i.e. it doesn't work...) -
Dikran Marsupial at 01:33 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Eric, a fairer comparison would be to compare Hansen's projections (which is an estimate of only the forced response of the climate without natural variability) with ENSO-adjusted temperatures (which give a better indication of the forced response by attenuating a major component of the unforced response). E.g.:
If you do that, you will find that Hansens projections appear better and Easterbrooks rather worse, as I suggested.
IIRC Easterbrook produces his projections in exactly that manner. Using such a daft way of making the projection should give pause for thought to anyone taking him seriously. His basic prediction is basically that there will be some unspecified cooling, but he makes that rather vague and unsubstantiated prediction look more scientific than it is by drawing some scientific looking plots. Sadly in doing so, he gives a hostage to fortune and voila his projections are demonstrated to be wrong. It would have been better if he had simply hand drawn his projection (c.f. the famous Lamb medieval warm period plot used in the first IPCC WG1 report).
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Eric the Red at 01:14 AM on 30 June 2011Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
Sky, The correlation may increase at that point. The question is whether they are valid now. As I stated previously, the correlation is poor during the summer. How accurate is the GISS extrapolation out to 1200 km, when the maximum summer correlation is only 500 km? -
Eric the Red at 01:11 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Dikran, Considering that ENSO was largely in positive, El Nino territory up until the end of 2007, followed by the negative La Nina for two years, and then an El Nino in 2010, it looks as if ENSO would favor warming until the 2011 La Nina. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ Are there significant differences in Hansen's error bars compared to Easterbrook's. Easterbrook appears as if he just copied and pasted past temperature changes into the future. -
Eric the Red at 01:00 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
Sky, That is one parameter. I agree that the calculated September Arctic sea ice volume does show accelerated loss since 1979. That has not been shown in either Septmeber or March sea ice area, which are displaying linear trends (see above). Based on the most recent observations, there is no reason to believe that 2011 will not fall on or near that trendline. -
Chris G at 00:59 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Adelady, Thanks for the link to the SciAm article; I was thinking to make the same link. Trenberth has an interesting quote in the story. I wonder if the remark was based on work already published, or to be published some time in the near future. Regarding your concern over the Pine Island Glacier, I have some musings, but I wonder if we could get someone like MSPelto or yourself to draft an article for this site. My musings are along the lines that I've been thinking of the limiting factor of the PIG retreat being more related to outflow and ice viscosity, but if there is melt-water rolling to the surface, then that limiting fact might be made moot. If that is what is happening, then the limiting factor might become how much saline water can flow into the underneath of the PIG. I can't guess what that limit is because the less saline water flowing to the surface will create a conveyor flow for new, higher saline water to flow into the underneath part. If the PIG is undermined enough, the ice above would loose its support and a fairly rapid calving front would develop. If such a situation occurs, previous estimates of the rate of retreat to expect, if they were constrained by ice flow dynamics, could be seriously shy of the mark. And that would imply that the rate of sea level rise... The article could be titled something like, "When the PIG Flies". (Or has that been used already?) -
KR at 00:48 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman - "Munich Re report ... shows weather related disasters are increasing in frequency. The article I linked to that Tom Curtis responded to in post 55 states that with normalized data they cannot determine if disasters are actually increasing at this time. ...More people and more wealth could be the cause." It's well worth looking at the change in earthquake disasters (which should be pretty independent of climate change) versus the change in weather disasters. Weather disasters are increasing considerably faster, well above the 'people and more wealth' effect on earthquake accounting. In other words, use the earthquake rates to normalize the weather rates to actual change in weather extremes. All in all, though, this is really a side topic. It seems quite possible that climate change is increasing the severity of weather events, but that's going to take a lot of data (and hence time) for a trend to emerge from the noise. I consider it much more worthwhile to examine changes with higher signal to noise ratios, such as tracking ice retreat, ocean heat content, global temperatures, growth zones, etc. -
Dikran Marsupial at 00:47 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Eric the Red One difference would be that the behaviour of ENSO over that period would mean that one would expect the observations to be below Hansen's projection, as it would tend to partially mask the forced warming. The flip side of that is that it makes Easterbrook's projection appear even worse. However, if you want to ask whether they are wrong, you need to look at the error bars on the projections. Hansens projections match up to the observations fairly well if you take into account the uncertaintes in the model output and the observations. -
skywatcher at 00:38 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Seeing as there is no alternative theory to the well tested, verified, physically solid theory of climate that represents the state of the science, the 'winner' is already in the bag. Losers will be ones who believe in fake numerology and hopecasting that has no basis in physics, like Easterbrook's projections. -
Norman at 00:36 AM on 30 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Sphaerica @ 127 Sorry the 500 year for extreme events (to filter noise) was from Camburn. We are not one and the same. He lives in North Dakota and I live close to Omaha, Nebraska. The question I am asking is one of historical perspective and it does not come from watching disater from the news. So far the Munich Re report is the most used source of data on this thread. It shows weather related disasters are increasing in frequency. The article I linked to that Tom Curtis responded to in post 55 states that with normalized data they cannot determine if disasters are actually increasing at this time. There is not enough information to determine if the weather has become more extreme. The Munich Re report is about disasters. More people and more wealth could be the cause. I am still seeking a report of providing that weather events are becoming more extreme. As I posted earlier, I do not think the human race should not take action on energy needs. Seeking alternative forms of energy is a great idea and I am in favor of it. These extreme weather posts have an interest for me as I have already been researching the topic countering so many claims that it is all HAARP. I have been looking for historical trends before this thread was put up and I will continue looking. -
skywatcher at 00:34 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
You're looking for an acceleration of Arctic sea ice melt, Eric? It's in the data, see Polyak et al or whatever data source that goes back 30 years or more! And it's not just due to extreme years in 1996 and 2007 either. So there's no need to wait and see if 2011 continues the acceleration... -
Eric the Red at 00:30 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
CB, Since 2000, Easterbrook has been low by about the same amount that Hansen has been high. Are they both wrong? -
skywatcher at 00:28 AM on 30 June 2011Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
#43: ...not true, see Table 2 of the article you linked. one single month has a correlation distance as small as 300km, due to the energy consumed by melting ice; two other summer months are 500km, and all others are >=900km. Hardly 'no correlation', as you claim. 300km or 500km is non-trivial, and of course for 9 months of the year there is no problem at all. What you don't state is the reason why the correlation distance is lower in summer - it's because the energy present is being used to melt ice, and so high land temperatures means more rapid sea ice melt. The summer correlation coefficients will increase once all the arctic ice has melted... -
DSL at 00:28 AM on 30 June 2011A journey into the weird and wacky world of climate change denial
Ahh - it's probably waiting moderation. -
Eric the Red at 00:27 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
sky, While I agree that the assertions are over-simplistic, the question was what changes would not be reversible if temperatures decreased? Alpine glaciers, sea ice, etc. has advanced and receded many times during the past millenia as temperatures have increased and decreased. The issue is what changes that have happened to date (not sometime in the future) are not reversible. Sphaerica, That is a tough question to quantify, but I will try. Since some predictions of solar minimum and cold PDO claim that temperatures will decrease until 2030, I will use that timeframe. If temperatures and Arctic sea ice revert to 1980 levels by then, then I would be fairly confident that the changes are all natural. Conversely, if temperature rise significantly prior to then, and is accompanied by acceleration in sea ice decline, sea level rise, glacial loss, flooding, etc..., then I would gladly abandon all skepticism. The timeframe would depend upon how fast the previous effects are changing - acceleration, or lack thereof would be the key. Arguing the "other side" is a matter of perception. Since I argue for both natural and manmade cause, I am on the "other side" of those who argue for one or the other. Remember, I have taken neither of the two aforementioned positions. -
DSL at 00:26 AM on 30 June 2011A journey into the weird and wacky world of climate change denial
It appears justmeint is uninterested in critical engagement, Dikran. I think your response has been deleted from her blog. Pathetic. -
CBDunkerson at 00:15 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Eric, given how wrong Easterbrook has been since 2000 I'd say 'the winner' (aka reality) already has been determined. -
CBDunkerson at 00:12 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
Arctic sea ice decline, Greenland ice loss, Antarctic ice loss, sea level rise, and ocean acidification are all progressing faster than most past projections showed. I'd include other less directly measurable factors such as 'extreme weather events' and 'species impacts' as also proceeding faster than most predicted, but as these can't be shown on a simple graph they aren't as clear cut. -
Eric the Red at 00:11 AM on 30 June 2011Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
I am open to more contemporay data. Do you have anything? -
Eric the Red at 00:10 AM on 30 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
sky, I think the winner be determined long before the 24 years is over. Don't you? -
Bob Lacatena at 00:04 AM on 30 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
Eric the Red, Could I ask you to quantify, with a time frame, temperatures, ice extent, and any other variables that you feel relevant, the scenario that would make you 100% confident that climate change is not happening, and that we are safe, and this is all just a natural blip in the climate system? Could I also ask you to bound, in the same way, the hypothetical situation which would force you to abandon your skepticism, and to agree that we have a serious problem... to the extent that you would begin arguing the other side, and telling people that you know that something needs to be done about it? -
KR at 00:04 AM on 30 June 2011Uncertainty in Global Warming Science
Ken Lambert - "That does not make sense. "TOA radiation" I assume to mean the net imbalance." That would be incorrect. What I was saying is that the integral of the imbalance (between energy received from the sun and that radiated into space as IR from the top of the atmosphere, TOA) over time gives the total change in climate energy - basic conservation of energy. My apologies if that was unclear. I don't quite understand how you went from TOA radiation to space to net imbalance. --- That said, your repeated claim that 'integral of TSI explains all' (paraphrasing) is indeed a PRATT. -
Eric the Red at 23:57 PM on 29 June 2011Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
A previous paper by Rigor, et. al. explored the correlation between land and ocean temperatures in the Arctic, and found a good correlation between the two out to 1000 km in the winter, but found no correlation in the summer. http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Publication/4061423Response:[DB] Pretty dated info there, Eric (data stops at 1997). Surely you can find something more contemporaneous than that?
BTW, full copy is here.
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Bob Lacatena at 23:56 PM on 29 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
This thread has grown tiresome. Norman doesn't believe that we can be sure about increased extreme weather events until 2511, when we have 500 years of careful, scientific and well quantified records of all possible events. Everyone else thinks that the atmospheric physics behind greenhouse gases indicate that the planet must warm as a result of anthropogenic CO2, that we are seeing exactly that warming, as predicted, that history and modern observations show that that degree of warming will be 3˚C or more if we double CO2 levels, and... that this will have nasty, negative effects on our civilized lives. Norman thinks that the droughts, floods, storms, wild fires, heat waves, melting ice and shifting extremes that we see today are possibly caused by climate change, but may just be weather, because he's seen droughts, floods, storms, wild fires, heat waves, melting ice and shifting extremes before, or at least, he thinks he has. Everyone else also thinks that the droughts, floods, storms, wild fires, heat waves, melting ice and shifting extremes that we see today are each, in and of themselves, just the sort of strange extreme weather that one sees everywhere, every year, some place or another. But everyone else also thinks that the bizarre confluence of these events, all at once, all over the globe, and not merely to the extreme, but far too often at actual record-setting levels, suggests that we are seeing the mere beginning of the dark, deadly hole that we are digging for ourselves. Norman doesn't see this. He sees news. He sees other people suffering from the same random, natural disasters that we've all been "entertained" with on and in the news, every year, our entire lives, while we sit comfortably saying "poor souls" and opening another beer. Everyone else sees their own future, or that of people they know, in each and all of these events. Everyone else thinks it's time to stop waffling and vacillating and ignoring the obvious, because in a little while it's going to be too late. Everyone else thinks that some day it's going to be Norman, or ourselves, or both that we're watching on the news, and we're going to feel as sorry for him and ourselves then as we feel for all of the victims now, even if it will be his own damned fault, and ours for our failure to make things clear to him and people like him soon enough to make a difference. -
Ken Lambert at 23:50 PM on 29 June 2011Uncertainty in Global Warming Science
KR #69 "More properly, you should state that "integrating the imbalance between TSI and TOA radiation wrt time will give the total energy change of the climate" - a much different question, particularly since we know the changes in TSI since the pre-industrial level quite well, and hence must look elsewhere for the imbalance leading to climate change." That does not make sense. "TOA radiation" I assume to mean the net imbalance. TSI (divided by 4 and multiplied by 0.7) is the incoming solar radiation, and is a component of the warming and cooling forcings which make up the imbalance. Taking the difference between a component (TSI) and the overall net imbalance of all the forcings does not make sense. "Moderator Response: (DB) The TSI/TOA/equilibria bit has indeed been "Point Refuted A Thousand Times" (PRATT); the conclusion is becoming inscapable that KL is purposefully conflating the issue." Daniel - don't prejudge the outcome of a discussion before it has developed - you might be wrong.Response:[DB] "you might be wrong"
Wouldn't be the first - or last - time. :)
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KR at 23:46 PM on 29 June 2011It's the sun
JoeRG - There's excellent correlation between the sum of forcings and climate, more than just TSI. Just not (currently) between natural forcings and climate, since we've added such a huge anthropogenic forcing. I suggest you look at the IPCC discussion of this:
Figure 9.5. Comparison between global mean surface temperature anomalies (°C) from observations (black) and AOGCM simulations forced with (a) both anthropogenic and natural forcings and (b) natural forcings only.
The climate moved clearly away from a natural forcing response (TSI, volcanoes, etc) sometime mid-20th century.
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Rob Painting at 23:40 PM on 29 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Norman -"The Phrase "100 year event" may not be valid with the Amazon since I do not know if they have records of past droughts and severity of them" Of course they do, the drought of 1926 was particularly severe. And we have proxy indicators going back before record-keeping. None of as good as current measurements, such as satellites, but the tree-ring research in the tropics is not new: Teleconnection between tree growth in the Amazonian floodplains and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation effect - Schongart 2004 From the abstract (thought I had a copy of the full paper, but can't locate it) " We present a more than 200-year long chronology, which is the first ENSO-sensitive dendroclimatic proxy of the Amazon basin and permits the dating of preinstrumental El Niño events. Time series analyses of our data indicate that during the last two centuries the severity of El Niño increased significantly" For the Amazon that means drought - as discussed in the Amazon Death Spiral series. I believe Tom Curtis has also linked to this study: A history of ENSO events since A.D. 1525: implications for future climate change - Gergis & Fowler 2008 From the abstract: "Although extreme ENSO events are seen throughout the 478-year ENSO reconstruction, approximately 43% of extreme and 28% of all protracted ENSO events (i.e. both El Niño and La Niña phase) occur in the 20th century. The post-1940 period alone accounts for 30% of extreme ENSO years observed since A.D. 1525" And of course the Amazon region has been warming at twice the global average since the 1970's, which promotes further drying. There's a whole bunch of ground I'll cover in the upcoming chapters, but it's a very consistent picture that emerges - the Amazon may be in big trouble. -
skywatcher at 23:36 PM on 29 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
Eric, your assertion is blithely simplistic. Glaciers, for example depend not only on temperature/precipitation, but on the elevation of the ice surface, which is obviously dependent on the thickness of the glacier. Melt a bit of a glacier, whether it is a small valley glacier or a large ice sheet, and it is harder to grow it back to it's previous state, because the surface elevation where the snow falls is lower. 'Reversible', the melt may be, but not simply by returning temperatures to 'normal', whatever that is. I can't honestly believe you asked "What changes are proceeding faster than predicted?" on a thread about Arctic sea ice. Seriously! -
Ken Lambert at 23:34 PM on 29 June 2011Uncertainty in Global Warming Science
DM #74 I have not ignored he outgoing IR. I said: "These are instantaneous (power) quantities. To get the history of the energy added - you need to look at all the forcing curves wrt time (in isolation) and add them together to produce a composite curve." "All the forcing curves" includes the S-B IR curve which has a time point value (2005) of -2.8W/sq.m for a rise in temperature of about 0.8degC since AD1750 (Trenberth). "There isn't much point in discussing the more subtle issues with you if you repeatedly turn a blind eye to your fundamental misunderstanding" You are mistaken in trying to suggest that I have only condsidered the warming forcings and ignored the major cooling forcing of S-B. Please re-read #71. "The same story is true for CO2 (pointing out that they are estimated independently is transparently a red herring), but I suspect you would be up in arms if we were to go on about the area under the CO2 radiative forcing curve." No I would not be 'up in arms' - I would suggest that all the forcings identified in AR4 (including CO2GHG) need be treated the same way - their time series curves added into a composite with the 'climate responses' ie. "The climate response forcings are S-B (-2.8W/sq.m) and WV + Ice Albedo Feedback at (+2.1W/sq.m) (Trenberth)." -
Norman at 23:18 PM on 29 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
scaddenp @ 108 The only thing with your link to increased precipitaion from the magazine Nature is that Jeff Masters already has a graph of land precipitation on his post and it does not show an upward trend. It shows a cyclic trend. Wet and dry years. Do these sources conflict? I guess the Nature article is about North American precipitation and the other could be global. I also looked at your insurance links. They use Munich Re as a source.Response:[DB] Munich Re's position as an entity of reference has already been established on this thread, despite ideologocial positions to the contrary.
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Eric the Red at 23:14 PM on 29 June 2011Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
michael, When did I ever say that we should wait and see what happens before we do anything? Also, when did I claim that all the CO2 will go into the oceans? If you want me to respond, do not invent statements and attribute them to me. Sea ice, precipitation, glaciers are all based on temperature, and therefore, should recover if temperature increases are reversed. You have not presented any reason to dispute this. I have not addressed ocean acidification because I believe that it is a non-issue. What changes are proceeding faster than predicted, certaintly not temperature increases, which have not risen as predicted.Response:[DB] "certaintly not temperature increases, which have not risen as predicted."
Simply incorrect, but thoroughly off-topic here. Much of the remainder of your comment is either incorrect (ocean acidification a non-issue, also off-topic here) or simply unsupported assertions and thus, hand-waving.
As constituted, most of your comment could be described as trolling. As I'm certain that is not your intent, you may wish to take greater care when formulating your comments.
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Tom Smerling at 23:03 PM on 29 June 2011ClimateBites.org -- A communicator's toolkit to complement SkS
Humanracesurvival & Kevin C. Thanks! We're new at this so all feedback is helpful. -
mclamb6 at 23:01 PM on 29 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Camburn: The idea that a 1 in 100 event is "noise" is silly. Again, it's you picking an absolutely random number where people will have difficulty establishing the occurrence of such events in order to insulate yourself from accurately considering the evidence. Because the next step is this: "Oh, we just had two 500 year events in the last decade? Well, I guess that's probably noise. It's not extreme unless we have a 1 in 1000 year event." -
Dikran Marsupial at 22:50 PM on 29 June 2011A journey into the weird and wacky world of climate change denial
justmeint I have left this comment on your blog. I assure you it is well intentioned, indoctrination of children's minds is not something I want to see either; but in arguing against it it is vital to avoid the rhetorical devices of indoctrination yourself. “Please remember a theory is still unproven.” No theory can ever be proven, only disproven, this is a fairly basic truism of the philosophy of science. It is rather ironic that an article on [d,m]isinformation should begin with such an error. It may be the case that some textbooks have errors, however a much better solution has been provided by the IPCC in the form of the WG1 Scientific Basis Report, which sets out the mainstream scientific position on basically all relevant issues. I would strongly recommend it as the next book you read on the topic. For a classic example of misinformation, you could do little better than “She never mentions that as a percent of the atmosphere the total increase in carbon dioxide since 1800 is .01%.”. This is a rather selective choice of measurements that makes the increase in carbon dioxide seem negligible. However, the 0.03% of carbon dioxide in the pre-industrial atmosphere was responsible for 9-26% of the natural greenhouse effect that makes the earth about 33 degrees centigrade warmer than it would otherwise be. A rise from 0.03% to 0.04% seems rather more substantial when that information (the strength of the effect) is included. If you want to avoid indoctrination of our children, I suggest you might want to start with some introspection and self-skepticism. I’m sorry to leave a rather critical comment on your blog, but I am also vary concerned about misinformation. -
skywatcher at 22:39 PM on 29 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
#20 Eric, you'd love for it to be a 24 year test beginning now, wouldn't you? But fortunately, we already have over a century's worth of observations, and the attributions have been done to quantify the relative contributions of different forcing agents, as can be found elsewhere on this site. Given the result - somewhere between 2-4.5C rise and associated climate disruption caused by the dominant forcing of CO2, we don't need to wait for another generation in order to form policy. Phew! -
ClimateWatcher at 22:36 PM on 29 June 2011Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
Back here on planet earth, we have solar variation, El Ninos and volcanoes.Response:[DB] And don't forget the copious quantities of human-caused global warming.
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Norman at 22:21 PM on 29 June 20112010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
Rob Painting @ 122 I looked at your article on the Amazon drought cycle. I do like those type of articles. Here is a new research project taking place right now to determine what is going on in the Amazon. The reason I can't find any information of the history of Amazon droughts is because there isn't any. Project development to investigate Amazon droughts. The Phrase "100 year event" may not be valid with the Amazon since I do not know if they have records of past droughts and severity of them. -
Riccardo at 22:17 PM on 29 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
mspelto absolutely, no sound reasoning here. What I wanted to say is that wrong predictions, maybe made some decades ago, by good scientists (emph. on good) are interesting and may teach us something. Thank you very much for alerting us on the release of the State of the Cimate 2010. -
JMurphy at 22:16 PM on 29 June 2011A journey into the weird and wacky world of climate change denial
justmeint, having read your comment here and looked at your own website, I think you really need to read further on this site. Then, you wouldn't use phrases like "(so called) Climate Change" (whatever that means - don't you think climate changes ?), or "the THEORY of Carbon Based Man Made Climate Change (CAGW). Please remember a theory is still unproven" (although, skywatcher has already replied to you on that. You should also not rely on what your husband remembers in 1943 because all our memories are very fallible. Nor should you link to online articles about Nazis and the Hitler youth - people might think you are trying to compare them to "radical" "far-left" groups you don't seem to like. Anyway, to start off with the first beliefs from your website (and in addition to DB's response to you), these links on this site should help you : Carbon dioxide/pollution, and here. Rather than a scatter-gun approach, why don't you go through your beliefs, find the relevant threads here, and then post your thoughts individually. -
Dikran Marsupial at 22:00 PM on 29 June 2011Uncertainty in Global Warming Science
Camburn Heaviside is a good name to mention in a thread on uncertainty in science, as he apparently once said "Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?". Rather apposite I thought! ;o) -
Kevin C at 21:45 PM on 29 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Sphaerica: Does anyone remember the tobacco-scientists? (Or at least, would they be remembered if not for the fact that some have shifted to the climate debate?) On past experience I think it unlikely anyone will care much about the ringleaders of the stupidity of previous decades, either to be angry or to laugh at them. More likely they'll just get old and drop out of the limelight. And people don't become intellectually more flexible with age, so I suspect most of their followers will go the same way. -
Eric the Red at 21:25 PM on 29 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
So, starting in 2007, we have the Easterbrook prediction of -0.4C by the year 2035, and the IPCC prediction of +1.2C by 2038. Let the race begin. -
mspelto at 20:53 PM on 29 June 2011Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
Riccardo where does the sound reasoning apply in this case. To look at sound reasoning based on observations from many scientists look at the BAMS State of the Climate 2010 that just came out. As one of the chapter authors (alpine glacier and ice sheets) I can tell you the editorial process is thorough. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:23 PM on 29 June 2011Uncertainty in Global Warming Science
Camburn I suspect Heaviside would have gone for a physics based mathematical model to decide whether integrated forcings were relevant. As he was very good with his differential equations, I suspect he could have easily shown that they are not, as he would undoubtedly have included the terms representing outbound IR. It isn't rocket science. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:19 PM on 29 June 2011Uncertainty in Global Warming Science
Ken Lambert You are still ignoring the point that the integrated forcing gives a deeply misleading picture because it ignores the fact that outbound IR increases and restores a (different) radiative equilibrium. There isn't much point in discussing the more subtle issues with you if you repeatedly turn a blind eye to your fundamental misunderstanding. The same story is true for CO2 (pointing out that they are estimated independently is transparently a red herring), but I suspect you would be up in arms if we were to go on about the area under the CO2 radiative forcing curve. -
Michele at 20:06 PM on 29 June 2011The Planetary Greenhouse Engine Revisited
@ Patrick On the idea that heating of the thermosphere heats the surface - 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 do not need to have an isothermal region in order for photons to be emitted (or absorbed). Yes if the photon is absorbed/emitted with a EM forcing. Not at all if the photon is created/destroyed with a thermal forcing. We can continue to argue until infinity if we don’t know the order of magnitude of all the contributes, or their weighted contributes, because you continue to consider very marginal (pretty negligible) the role of the fluid dynamics. 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. -
skywatcher at 19:54 PM on 29 June 2011New Zealand Snow No Show = No Jobs
Morph, did you read my comment at #2, where I said exactly the same thing, but with context? There are hypotheses that the cause is down to Arctic air not being kept in the Arctic during winter months, and spilling out into mid-latitude areas (while the Arctic is replaced by much warmer air), perhaps down to reduced sea ice. Whatever it is, it's led to years that would be snowy in Scotland by 1960s or 1970s standards, let alone 1990s. The problem is that it's perfectly clear from global temperature anomaly maps that those conditions are not a symptom of general cooling of the NH, but of localised winter cooling surrounded by general warming. The prognosis for Scotland is not good as the NH warms up, these bizarre winters are inevitably doomed to mild out as well, or to suddenly flip back to warm and snow-less. Anyway, this post is about NZ - I think there were other posts about NH winter snows / WACCO?
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