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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 93001 to 93050:

  1. It's the sun
    Tom Curtis at 08:57 AM , I agree with the idea that geography is a factor and have posted on it on some other threads. I have focused more on the cycles such as ENSO which some people feel balances out once a cycle is complete, ignoring that it is the geographic distribution that determines what conditions each phase brings to a region, and thus all things are not equal, or mirror images of one another. This should be taken into account when considering how this plays into the heating or the cooling of the oceans.
  2. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Camburn, the paper you linked to @9 shows strong evidence of Bond events in the North Atlantic, but ambiguous evidence for it elsewhere in the globe. It also shows the correlation of Bond events to solar activity it hotly contested. I am not sure how it helps your case. @7 you make several claims, none of which you support with evidence. One at least, is very dubious. The wet conditions in the Sahara arrived suddenly with the warmer conditions following the Younger Dryas, and dissipated slowly in the period 5000 to 3000 before the present. As such, it shows no significant correlation with Bond events that I know of. If you have evidence of such a correlation, please show it. Otherwise it is most logically treated as a consequence of global warmth during the Holocene Climactic Optimum. Your claim that we are "about due" for a Bond event is certainly false. Quite apart from the fallacy of claiming that a recurring event with durations between events varying between 900 and 2300 years is "periodic" and can be "due"; the peaks of the Bond events are "... around 400, 1,400, 2,800, 4,300, 5,900, 8,100, 9,400, 10,300 and 11,100 cal years BP." (Wanner and Büttikoffer (2008)) Clearly the next Bond event will not be "due" for several hundred years at least, and probably not for another thousand years.
  3. Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
    Angus @101, Aaah, the goal posts shift :) First, forgive me, but I am not going to take your posted Figure at face value. Given the choice between a practicing climate scientist and you, I choose Dr. Schmidt. Also, I note with interest that you are using HadCRUT-- but "skeptics" claim that the CRU folks fudged the data, despite what the numerous investigations found. And we know very well why HadCRUT has become the darling of "skeptics", despite those allegations-- it is because it runs cooler than NCDC and GISTEMP. Now I expect you to now claim why the GISTEMP cannot be trusted et cetera, but that would just amount to you dismissing the truth again. "I would appear that Mother Nature is putting the brakes on for us." As much as I would like for that to happen, Hansen et al's recent peer-reviewed paper published in Rev. Geophys. disagrees with your opinion. Specifically, referring to their Fig 21. (see hyperlink, used 5 and 11-yr running means to negate impacts of ENSO and the solar cycle) they conclude that: "On the contrary, we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15°C–0.20°C per decade that began in the late 1970s" [Source NASA GISTEMP] So feel free to believe whatever you want the data to show you Angus, it does not change the reality or the science. Again, if asked to choose between your opinion and the hard facts and data presented by prominent climate scientists, I choose the scientists. I'll close with this graph from SkepticalScience which shows the primary global air temperature records--onwards and upwards: Some advice Angus, the next time you take your car in for a service and the technician informs you that your break pads urgently need replacing or your breaks need servicing, I do hope for the safety of you and your family that you listen. Now they could be wrong, it could be a conspiracy, but in all likelihood s/he is right and is looking out for you and your family.
  4. Christy's Unconvincing Congressional Testimony
    Camburn @45 and 49, "It disputes Mr. Zwiers assertion that the recent winters are tied to AGW in the US. First, this thread is about Christy (a "skeptic") recently misleading Congress and the public about the science of climate change. Now you might be OK with that, others are justifiably not. So please stop trying to detract from Christy's misconduct. Now regarding Dr. Zwiers. This is what he actually stated in his written testimony: "Recently we have seen a spate of extreme climate and weather events that have drawn intense media interest, including this winter’s intense storms affecting the US and Canadian eastern seaboard,....." Canada indeed experience some severe nor'easter events these past winter. If you do not believe me go and look at the media reports. Also from NCDC: December 2010: "Several large winter storms affected the U.S. during the month. According to data from the Rutgers Global Snow Lab, the December snow cover extent was the seventh largest on record for the continuos US. Several cities across the Midwest and Northeast broke monthly snowfall records including Minneapolis, Minnesota and Syracuse, New York. January 2011: "Several winter storms impacted the northeastern U.S. during January, causing New York City and Hartford, Connecticut to break January snowfall records. The 57.0 inches (145 cm) which fell at Hartford's Bradley International Airport was the city's all-time snowiest month on record. The snowstorm that traversed the northern plains, Great Lakes and Northeast United States on January 9-13 ranked as a Category 3, or "Major" snowstorm, according to preliminary analysis on the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS). The NESIS score of 5.31 was slightly greater than the "Christmas 2010" blizzard and slightly less than the storm of late February 2010." February 2011: "Several record breaking snowstorms caused the U.S. to have above average snow cover extent during February. The "Groundhog Day Blizzard" dropped at least 5 inches of snow in 22 states." Dr. Zwiers is correct, and you have misrepresented his statement.
  5. It's the sun
    muoncounter @795, I'm afraid you are showing a Northern Hemisphere bias. Perihelion is not winter, but winter in the Northern Hemisphere, while being summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The reverse is true of aphelion. And the interesting facts about solar radiation and outgoing radiation that you point to apply approximately to all temperate and polar locations, regardless of their location in either the Southern or Northern Hemisphere, so it is not in itself the explanation of the phenomenon. This is complicated by geography, which influences the rate at which heat is transferred from the tropics to the poles. London, sitting close to a branch of the Gulf Stream, for example, will show a smaller (more negative) net radiation because it is substantially warmed by that current. Seattle would show a larger (less negative) net radiation because of the cold current of its coast (I believe). Both of these cities would show a larger net radiation in summer than, for example Moswow which would have hotter summers and cooler winters because of its inland location. In fact, overall the NH would display less of the disreprancy you indicate because of its larger land mass. That means fewer of its locations are close to the coast. It is that fact which in fact accounts for the Earth being warmer at perihelion (the NH summer). Temperature variations are smaller in the SH because so little of its land is far from the ocean, and there is so much more ocean. The greater heat capacity results in a smaller overall seasonal fluctuation in temperature. That means the NH seasonal fluctuation dominates overall, resulting in greater warmth during the NH summer, which coincidentally is at the moment during aphelion.
  6. Rob Honeycutt at 08:44 AM on 13 March 2011
    The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Camburn @ 9... There are definitely differing opinions on Bonds events. That's why I linked that last paper, Maslin 2009. That's the most recent paper I could find on the topic, which suggests that Bond events are there. My biggest takeaway from this topic is that the planet often redistributes temperature around the planet. And the difference with today is that we see nearly all indicators of temperature going in one direction. I believe that is the unprecedented nature of warming this past century.
  7. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Camburn and Daniel #9 and #10 This is the syntax exactly: <a href="http://geography.cz/sbornik/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/g08-4-1wanner.pdf">http://geography.cz/sbornik/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/g08-4-1wanner.pdf</a>
  8. Wrong Answers dot com
    Chemware@1 One of their investors (Redpoint), invests in 'green' research and technology: http://www.redpoint.com/portfolio/energy-and-environment/
  9. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Moderator: I am somewhat frustrated. I have tried to do the link correctly, but it seems to disappear. DB: Your eplanation was good, but I must be missing a step.
    Moderator Response: [DB] See my response to you in the previous comment. You'll get it. Without the interior label, your link (though constructed properly) would not echo back to the screen (the interior label serves as a graphical placeholder for the link).

    I figured it out, eventually. If I can, anybody can.

  10. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Took me some digging, but I finally found this again: Relates to the validity of Bond cycles. Are they real or imaginary correlations? http://geography.cz/sbornik/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/g08-4-1wanner.pdf
    Moderator Response: [DB] You were almost there. The html tag string has an interior set of right-and-left arrows, between which goes the name of the link or whatever you're calling whatever you're linking to, which was missing. Here's the string with no arrows, substituting the number 1 for the left arrow (shares the same key as the comma on my keyboard) and the number 2 for the right arrow (shares the same key as the period on my keyboard):

    1a href="http://geography.cz/sbornik/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/g08-4-1wanner.pdf"2http://geography.cz/sbornik/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/g08-4-1wanner.pdf1/a2

    or

    1a href="http://geography.cz/sbornik/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/g08-4-1wanner.pdf"2Here's a link to an interesting study I found1/a2

    Which (substituting the appropriate arrows back in for the 1's & 2's) yields:

    Here's a link to an interesting study I found

  11. Interactive animation of the climate change impact on agriculture
    johnd - You handle long term changes such as that the same way we handle the aerosols in the 1950s-1970s: you note the active factors and look at long term trends in light of them. Long term shifts do not introduce noise, they introduce long term slope changes. And the 30-year averaging is intended to average out noise, variability that we don't have a handle on due to chaotic factors and details of local interactions. I'll note that I have yet to see a 60-year cycle actually extractable from the data; many have tried, but it just doesn't hold up under numeric analysis as periodic events.
  12. It's the sun
    Rob, I often see this in students. They take a position based on something they've heard (or, sadly, been told by a parent or prior teacher) and cling to it no matter what. If, after a little Socratic give-and-take, you can see their doubt level rising, you can make a difference. However, some are afraid to simply admit that they've been misinformed or are just plain wrong. In the case of some of the most ardent skeptics, clinging to a pre-conceived notion frequently results in highly unscientific thinking -- and down goes credibility. In a case like this, realizing that net radiation is what matters leads to the next logical step: if we reduce the earth's outgoing radiation, the planet must warm. But that requires a greenhouse effect ... and that violates the pre-conceived notion. Illogical, does not compute!
  13. Interactive animation of the climate change impact on agriculture
    KR at 12:30 PM, we know from research that the climate in various regions has regularly alternated between wet phases and dry phases, with the corresponding effects on temperature, for periods up to double the 30 year standard. Please demonstrate how the 30 year standard would provide usable data in such circumstances. The projections made whilst in the midst of such periods are going to yield different results. This can be a problem for forecasts produced by statistically modeling. Most of this identification of such longer term cycles has only come about through recent research, thus is unlikely to have been taken into account when discussions on this subject were taking place a century ago.
  14. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Rob: The Byrd ice core is interesting in itself because it does show continued warmth during the Holocene. This is in direct contrast to some of the proxy literature of lower latitudes. I have to thank you for posting about the Bond events. These events allow good discussion about world wide climate without the "political" flare. I appreciate this.
  15. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    From the papers I have read it seems to me that the regional hydrological cycles have more information in them than "temperature" cycles. To change regional hydrocycles, such as the Sahara changing to desert, or Western NA having 400+ years of drought and then turning to a wet cycle show global circulation changes. These events are tied to temperature, but temperature does not always lead to these events occuring. There are indications that temperature shift are a result of these hydrological shifts, rather than the hydrological shift being a result of a change in temperature. Bond events from the past are tied to the suns strength. I am not only talking about TSI, but rather isotope data showing the changes in UV etc. TSI is not always a predictor of temperature. There have been several long term basin studies done throughout the world showing the correlation between solar cycle strength and precipitation over a large area. One thing that is certain, when a Bond event occurs, hydrological cycles throughout the world change very very quickly and this is off concern as we are about due for a Bond type event cycle wise. If we could only be sure what causes this event it would certainly make it easier to understand its scope and total dynamics.
  16. Rob Honeycutt at 04:19 AM on 13 March 2011
    Wrong Answers dot com
    cloa513 @ 21... That's a fascinating perspective. Do you have anything at all to back you up on that position other than just saying it?
  17. Rob Honeycutt at 04:17 AM on 13 March 2011
    Wrong Answers dot com
    hengistmcstone... That is really fascinating! Did you document it at all?
  18. Rob Honeycutt at 03:55 AM on 13 March 2011
    It's the sun
    It's so clear what is happening with TIS, and I see it in so many others who hold his position. They are in this constant process of confirmation bias. They start with the conclusion that AGW can't be correct and waltz through their way through the science locating the points that support that position. What they don't do is push past any of those points to fully understand the science because that endangers the conclusion they want to find.
  19. It's the sun
    Another observation re TIS' comment: "Explain the warmer July to me without using geography. ... if accurate, it does prove that geography plays a very strong role in global temperature." That's hardly an adequate 'proof.' But let's play with it anyway. Here's something that doesn't appeal to geography: Your statement 'the earth gets more energy in winter than in summer' clearly refers only to incoming solar radiation. It is certainly true that the peak value of solar insolation averaged across all latitudes at the time of perihelion (winter) is 7% greater than at aphelion (in summer), but isn't that primarily because the earth is closer to the sun in winter? However, basic Physical Geography (the name of textbooks, not part of the explanation) gives the control on temperature as the net radiation: the sum of incoming (daytime) and outgoing (nighttime). For example, this is London: --from physicalgeography.net During the winter months, outgoing longwave radiation actually exceeds incoming insolation producing negative net radiation values. The linked page gives examples for several other locations. So when length of day is taken into account, the 7% additional energy 'received' in winter is radiated away during those long winter nights; winters are colder than summer.
  20. Rob Honeycutt at 03:34 AM on 13 March 2011
    The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Camburn @ 5... I think you are correct, to an extent. I believe that, in general, Vostok is actually considered to be more representative of the planet as a whole. Reading through a bunch of papers on ice cores I find that the Byrd ice core is used as often Vostok for comparing NH/SH. The interesting thing you find there is that Byrd shows an overall warming trend over the Holocene, and also shows the same D-O and Bond antiphase events you see in Vostok. I'm currently trying to locate the actual data for Byrd during the Holocene. All the data at NOAA ends prior to the Holocene.
  21. Rob Honeycutt at 03:27 AM on 13 March 2011
    It's the sun
    TIS... (From previous thread) What you are missing saying that the planet warms and cools 4C during the year is the trend. Take that same monthly series that I linked from NOAA and plot it on a graph. You see the series rise and fall the ~4C that you state. But read the rest of the page. This data is the basis for the anomaly. As the the planet warms that same series you plotted is moving upward. All the datasets plot this. UAH, RSS, GISS, CRU... They are all taking this annual cycle into account.
  22. Rob Honeycutt at 03:19 AM on 13 March 2011
    What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
    TIS... I'm posting a response to #45 on the proper thread per the moderator response above.
  23. Interactive animation of the climate change impact on agriculture
    I don't know what in the world I am doing wrong, but I can't seem to get the fancy direct link working. Anyways, here is another link concerning soybeans and elevated levels of co2: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/uoia-hcb020609.php
  24. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    pbjamm: I am not sure that it is all in one direction. The ice core data from Volstock is for Volstock. An isolated area with a small change in actual temperature verses the lower latitudes. Comparing Greenland to Volstock is not a fair comparison, but must be taken into consideration and evaluated further to a more regional perspective and then graduated out to a global perspective. I am more interested in the hydro cycles that accompany a Bond type event. There are large shifts in that cycle that occur when a Bond event happens and they take 100's of years to move back to "normal".
  25. Interactive animation of the climate change impact on agriculture
    Back to co2. This research confirms that soybeans respond very positively to higher levels of co2. http://farmtalknewspaper.com/crops/x1327129664/Research-looks-at-crop-response-to-CO2
  26. hengistmcstone at 01:30 AM on 13 March 2011
    Wrong Answers dot com
    Hmmmm I just corrected an answer on Answers.com and it took less than 3 hours to be reverted back to it's original.
  27. It cooled mid-century
    12: Dikran Marsupial
    However, I suspect this should be discussed further on another thread.
    and, indeed, was touched on previously in the Climate Sensitivity: The Skeptic Endgame where Giles didn't understand it either. Someone might do an intro to modeling, simulation, log-likelihoods and MC methods...
    Moderator Response: (Daniel Bailey) Are you offering...?
  28. Wrong Answers dot com
    cloa513. A "meaningless unmeasurable quantity with no scientific value"? The same thing could be said about the average weight of 10 year olds or the average family size. No family has 2.3 or 1.8 or 4.5 children. However, scientists (and policy-makers) concerned with =average= =trends= in family size or health of school age children find numbers representing such trends very useful. The fact that they don't represent anything we can see or feel is entirely beside the point.
  29. What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
    Thanks for that Tom. I cannot see how geography is of any interest in climate calculation length periods. It doesn't change - or at least until Australia's 5cm a year northward movement gets us nearer the equator it won't. One degree of latitude is over 100 kilometres. At 200 years per metre, 200,000 years per kilometre, this is not of any relevance, let alone interest, except to seismologists and a very small subset of geologists. And I really cannot understand how seasonal temperature effects are of any more concern than tidal or diurnal effects. They're all just cycles. Climate is about whether future cycles will be the same, temporarily different (ENSO for example) or permanently different as in ice ages or warming. Permanent is a human generations word here not a geological period word.
    Moderator Response: [muoncounter] TIS has veered off-topic. This is a thread about a CO2-free atmosphere. Discussion of seasonal solar radiation belongs on It's the sun. Comments there can link back here by including an HREF="" with the URL of the originating comment between quotes.
  30. Wrong Answers dot com
    The real scientific answer to has the global mean temperature changed is the global mean temperature is meaningless unmeasureable quantity with no scientific value. You can't just take a massive list of numbers and take and think its a representative number. Those numbers have a physical meaning which can't be averaged. A boulder of rock at 30C has far more energy than a similar size amount of gas. Supposing it did exist by somehow calculating the internal energy of the climate system (a very tough task) and dividing by the mass- there is no way we could reasonably derive before decent array of temperature measuring satellites was available. Before that very large errors getting worse back in time- basically some time in early history could only be able say its hot or cold.
  31. What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
    Inconvenient Sceptic @22, 37, and 45: First, you plainly do not understand how the greenhouse effect works, as is shown by your comment @22. The GHE is a consequence of the difference between the energy of the IR radiation to space from gases in the atmosphere, and the energy that would have radiated to space from the surface at those same frequencies has those gases not been present. Because it is the energy balance between radiation to space and radiation from the sun, the energy balance for energy transfers between atmosphere and surface is of only minor interest. Certainly increasing those transfers will not increase the greenhouse effect by itself, and nor will changing the form of the energy transfer. The simple fact that should convince you of your error is the fact that energy radiation from a gas is a function of the gases temperature. Therefore, cooling the atmosphere will reduce the energy radiated by green house gases in the atmosphere, and hence increase the difference between that radiation and that from the surface in the same frequencies. In other words, simply warming the atmosphere weakens the greenhouse effect, not increases it as claimed by you at your blog. Finally, the difference between July and January global temperatures is due to the high proportion of land in the NH, whose low heat capacity results in much faster temperature rises for a given forcing, and much faster falls if that forcing is removed. So much is obvious. What is also obvious is that this is irrelevant to your original and false claims.
  32. Dikran Marsupial at 20:32 PM on 12 March 2011
    It cooled mid-century
    Giles@11: (a) No, the use of multiple models is not "really strage", it is not even unusual. There is uncertainty in the details of the physic is involved and in the parameters, the use of multiple models captures some of that uncertainty. Secondly if different models give similar results, that indicates that the uncertainty in the physics is small and the climate projections are not greatly sensitive to them. That is a good thing from the modelling point of view, not a bad one. If anything it actually means the data do constrain the models relatively tightly as it constrains them all to say the same basic thing. As to scientific validation, you obviously don't understand there is no such thing as scientific validation, only scientific invalidation. You can't prove a theory right, only disprove it. (b) Complaining that bad models are not selected is pretty daft, if the model is inconsistent with reality it means the assumptions underpinning that model are incorrect, so why should we look at it. The CMIP ensemble were not selected in that way, it is an ensemble of models from leading modelling groups, so your objection is incorrect anyway. Complaining that the black line doesn't go out of the corridor is basically saying "the models must be wrong because they give the right answer"! (c) The models should not expect to produce temperatures that precisely match the observations, that comment shows a complete lack of understanding of Monte Carlo simulation methods. We can't predict the chaotic weather, so the model runs will always be different. The model mean won't match the observations either as it is an estimate of only the forced component of climate, not the unforced response - the observed climate has both components so there is no reason to expect that close a match. "That is not, by far, what I would call an accurate fit of data" well possibly that is because you don't understand the effects of the major sources of uncertainty. Given internal climate variability (which models cannot be expected to be able to model), the hindcast is pretty impressive. However, I suspect this should be discussed further on another thread.
  33. It cooled mid-century
    I agree , that's the point. And if I look at the comparison between models and data, I'm not convinced again that the agreement during the first half is so good Of course at first glance it seems that the match is almost perfect. But if you look carefully at the first half of the century, and if you look also carefully at the methodology used to produce these curves, you will notice that a) curves are generated by a variety of different models, which is really strange, since it means that different modelling can produce the same kind of visual output - this really means that observations are only LOOSELY constraining models - which is the opposite of a scientific validation. b) the models contain parameters , especially for clouds, so there is an obvious selection bias due to the fact that bad models are simply not selected here. In other words, adding a superposition of approximate models with a selection of parameters giving results close to the data, will ALAWAYS produce an interval, a corridor , containing these data - it's almost certain and doesn't prove much. Note how curiously the black observed curve travels throughout the corridor and never crosses the border : is it not surprising that a unbiased set of models just reproduces exactly the range of natural variability, without any "lost space" in the yellow interval or without the black curve goint out of it? this cannot for sure be obtained without a selection of the sample. c) models produce temperature that are not precisely matching the reality in absolute. What is displayed here is ANOMALIES. Anomalies with respect to which baseline ? you have to read carefully the report to find the answer : with respect to the 1900-1950 period. So the agreement at least on the central point of the first half is automatically insured - no surprise here. So the real test of the preanthropic period is not the average value, but the details of the shape around this value. Is it well reproduced ? not so much. The break around 1940 is NOT reproduced in models - it just the width of the interval that blurs out the comparison. The only break in the models are in major volcanic eruptions - first Agung in 1963. Note also that volcanic eruptions are NOT so conspicuous in data. Actually if you look only at data, you couldn't say when these eruptions occured, contrary to the models. So it seems that models "play" with eruptions to try to reproduce breaks that are not really at the right place - playing with a whole interval of parameters to blur out the disagreement. That is not, by far, what I would call an accurate fit of data.
  34. Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
    Albatross @99 the paper I refer to is Hansen (2006) which is not too old. Your diagram @63 from realclimate appears to be quite impressive; however the temperature data does not look quite so impressive when used in context with AR4. Figure 1: IPCC Scenarios A1B, A2 & B1 Compared with Measured HadCRUT3 Temperature Data (after AR4, 2007) Figure 1 is based on IPCC AR4 Figure TS.26 on to which I have plotted the latest HadCRUT3 data. The black dots in the original diagram appear to be HadCRUT3 data but they are slightly misaligned with actual HadCRUT3 data (my blue dots). Therefore, I offset the HadCRUT3 data by adding 0.018°C to achieve a reasonable fit with the individual data points shown in AR4. The blue line with white dots is the smoothed HadCRUT3 data. It is evident from Figure 1 that the smoothed HadCRUT3 curve give an excellent fit with observed data presented as the solid black line in AR4. It is also evident that the observed temperature trends are significantly below the "likely" warming/emission scenarios presented in AR4. Indeed, the current trend is similar to the emissions-held-at-year-2000-level scenario. I would appear that Mother Nature is putting the brakes on for us.
  35. The Inconvenient Skeptic at 17:44 PM on 12 March 2011
    What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
    Rob and Alb and Muon, I do understand what global warming is about..... Really. Thanks for linking the NOAA site. I hope people will accept that as not made up. I believe that Jones himself did the study that provided the NOAA the data. Also, the average temperature of the Earth does not change during the day. Half is cooling, half is warming. It stays constant over the course of a day. It does change over the course of the year, by 4C. Here is my question. A serious and legitimate question. Define a forcing mechanism that causes July (lowest solar forcing) to be warmer than January (maximum solar forcing). Forcing doesn't fit. Describe to me a mechanism that causes the minimum energy point to be the warmest time of the year. By CO2 models January should be warmer than July. Please check. In January the Earth gets ~7% more energy than it does in July, but July is also ~4C warmer. Explain the warmer July to me without using geography. It cannot be done, not matter how hard you try. If you don't think that matters, that is fine. But if accurate, it does prove that geography plays a very strong role in global temperature. Convince yourselves that I am either right or wrong on that point. Then we can talk more.
  36. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Camburn, I think the point is (and I am sure I will be corrected if wrong) that the Bond Event may be a global temperature variation but it is not all in one direction. So the net change is neither positive nor negative, more flat.
  37. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    Thank you DB. I tried to convert the link but still have not figured out how to do that. What the paper shows, at least to me, is that there is an obvious link to the hydrological cycle world wide and Bond events. The changing of the thermocline in the Northern Hemisphere that happens during a bonna fide Bond event affects not only the Western NA continent, but also South America. Even tho the temperature may cool in the NH and rise in the SH, the overall affect is a world wide phenomenon.
    Moderator Response: [DB] If you go here, you find tips on how to do that. For links or documents like pdf's, copy the first indented line of html string (everything between the leftmost-arrow and rightmost-arrow, including the arrows), replacing the text between the double-quotes with your desired source url plus giving some kind of description/name of the linked page/source.

    For images, look under the section that says IMPORTANT. Copy the html tag string that appears there into your comment box, insert your desired url string for your link source between the double-quote marks and then Bob's-your-uncle (you're ready-to-go).

  38. Christy's Unconvincing Congressional Testimony
    "The winter weather is weather... " That's just half of NOAA's conclusion; I'll repeat the remainder: ... we can make probabilistic statements about future climate, given a long data record and a good understanding of the state of the forces that drive the system. This is not inconsistent with statements made by Zwiers: ... human influence is now affecting the frequency and intensity of high impact events that put people and their livelihoods at risk. Moreover, studies of two specific events (the European 2003 heat wave, and flooding in the UK in the autumn of 2000) have shown that the odds of those events had been increased substantially relative to the world that would have been in the absence of human induced increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases. Nor is it inconsistent with the statements made here: Weather in a given region occurs in such a complex and unstable environment, driven by such a multitude of factors, that no single weather event can be pinned solely on climate change. In that sense, it's correct to say that the Moscow heat wave was not caused by climate change. However, if one frames the question slightly differently: "Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels," the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: "Almost certainly not." The frequency of extreme warm anomalies increases disproportionately as global temperature rises. "Were global temperature not increasing, the chance of an extreme heat wave such as the one Moscow experienced, though not impossible, would be small," Hansen says.
  39. Christy's Unconvincing Congressional Testimony
    muoncounter: Thank you for reading the link and commenting on it. The winter weather is weather and not in any way tied to AGW. The only reason I brought this up is that Mr. Zwiers brought it up in his testimony.
  40. Christy's Unconvincing Congressional Testimony
    DB@46: I didn't know that the site in question was a skeptic site. The graph came up in another discussion and when I saw that it was NOAA data including the link I deemed it credible. I have not been to the site in question so I can't comment on it one way or the other. The graph only confirmed other research that I have read concerning hydrological cycles in the US. This is something that I am keenly interested in as it directly affects what I do. Thank you for letting me know about that site.
    Moderator Response: [DB] A kindly word of advice: always seek out the source of any graph or data that interests you on blogs. Even well-meaning persons make honest mistakes. There are those less well-intentioned whose presentations lose fidelity when compared to the sources they claim to cite. The originating source is typically most credible. When even a credible source, such as NOAA, cites a study that interests you, check the original study (where possible) and those that cite it as a basis for further research. The true skeptic follows that route.
  41. Christy's Unconvincing Congressional Testimony
    Camburn, "I posted a link from NOAA concerning the winter of 2009-2010. Has anyone actually read it?" Yep, especially when I got this far: Still, bitter cold temperatures and blizzards of historic proportions prompted the questions: Why were there so many historic snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic region this winter? Are they evidence that global warming isn’t happening? No, the globe is warming. But the real story behind the mid-Atlantic’s winter isn’t about climate change, it’s about climate variability. Climate variability, the term scientists use, explains why record-breaking snowstorms and global warming can coexist. In fact, many of the weather events observed this winter help to confirm our understanding of the climate system, including links between weather and climate. ... predicting any single weather event is inherently difficult and why we don’t base our assessments of climate on any single weather event. And it shows why we can make probabilistic statements about future climate, given a long data record and a good understanding of the state of the forces that drive the system. --emphasis added Once again, the message is that specific weather events have disparate causes; but the overall warming pattern makes what were once infrequent and unlikely events more likely. Whoever first said, 'If you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes' knew what he was talking about.
  42. Christy's Unconvincing Congressional Testimony
    "Rain is a normal part of them is it not? Is not the destruction caused by the energy of the hurricane? Which is bore out by wind speeds etc? The destruction is caused by the winds. " This discrepancy is discussed on the hurricanes and global warming thread. Large rain events, also very destructive, are not included in the ACE index.
  43. What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
    "Where the energy of the sun strikes causes more "feedback" than any of the GHG's. The location of the long term insolation changes matter most, not the magnitude." I find this mystifying. The comment starts with seasonal variation, then morphs to 'long term insolation change.' This is not the first time a 'skeptic' has attempted to interpret seasonal temperature change as an argument against AGW. But it makes no sense: All of that system has been in place for a long, long time. Pardon me for asking, how does that have anything to do with recent warming - or anything else in recent history other than the seasons themselves?
  44. Christy's Unconvincing Congressional Testimony
    DB: NOAA, at least to me, is a credible source. The University of Florida is also credible. As far as a disinformation site, you have lost me.
    Moderator Response: [DB] In your comment in question, your second link was from http://c3headlines.typepad.com, which serves up disinformation. Example: "NOAA February Data Confirms U.S. Has Been Cooling The Last 15 Years: -1.9°F/Century Trend" = Hokum. I applaud using credible sources such as NOAA or Florida State University, but to put those fine institutions on a par with the like of c3headlines is to de-value the contribution of your entire comment. You can do better (and you have indeed done so in other comments).
  45. Interactive animation of the climate change impact on agriculture
    johnd - I agree that local and regional weather and longer term climate will be vital to the impact and response of climate change on everyone. But you have not, as we were discussing, made the case that the 30 year averaging of variability to identify statistically significant trends is invalid.
  46. Christy's Unconvincing Congressional Testimony
    I am curious. I posted a link from NOAA concerning the winter of 2009-2010. Has anyone actually read it? It disputes Mr. Zwiers assertion that the recent winters are tied to AGW in the US. As far as hurricanes/cyclones. Rain is a normal part of them is it not? Is not the destruction caused by the energy of the hurricane? Which is bore out by wind speeds etc? The destruction is caused by the winds. Florida State University has a site that shows intensity and numbers.
    Moderator Response: [DB] That comment also contained material taken from a denialist disinformation site, so I personally stopped reading at that point. Material taken from original, peer-reviewed sources is best for building a credible, science-based argument here.
  47. Interactive animation of the climate change impact on agriculture
    John D, if you *honestly* think that I'm going to risk exposing myself to abuse & intimidation by your "skeptic" friends, by revealing more about myself than I already have, then you're sadly mistaken-especially as you still remain unwilling to do so yourself.. The only reason I said as much as I did was to disabuse Camburn of any illusions that I don't have working knowledge of current day agricultural practices (heck, my Mum & Step-Dad own a farm, for Pete's sake). Still, the fact that you've chosen to cast aspersions on my credentials reveals how weak the arguments you & Camburn have presented *really* are. Though its not my actual field of expertise, I have taken the time to read up on the literature regarding enhanced CO2 levels on crop plants, & they simply do *not* paint the incredibly rosy picture that you & Camburn try to do-even when the studies ignore all the other negative impacts that will be associated with CO2 induced climate change. I also have to love how you place so much *faith* in untested hypotheses, when you think they might support your AGW skepticism, yet you still show an unwillingness to accept more than 100 years of accepted science regarding the impacts of increased CO2 in our atmosphere. I guess your "skepticism" is very selective.
  48. Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
    This item at Tamino's gives a very nice analogy for the "it's not very much" line of thinking. At least I like it.
  49. Examining Hansen's prediction about the West Side Highway
    Chrisd3, I haven't lived in NYC since the 1980's, so I'm not sure what changes have been made. Persistent flooding would seem to depend on a number of factors, including elevation and regional sea level rise (the global rise isn't distributed evenly). HR: "But what's more important speculation by an influential climate scientist who's helping to shape the IPCCs position or a blogger?" Watts is not shaping the IPCC position or the science. I think the blogger would argue that he's helping to shape public opinion, perhaps more so than the IPCC. He and others certainly want to be seen as credible sources, taken as seriously as the scientists. It would be nice if the public (and politicians for that matter) could distinguish between objective science and his brand.
  50. The name is Bond...Gerard Bond.
    This paper shows a correlation between Bond Events and precip in Peru/Bolivia http://eas.unl.edu/~sfritz/pubs/BakerJQS05.pdf
    Moderator Response: [DB] (Converted URL to Link) Personally I think it's great that you're referencing primary source literature. But your description of it lacks an evaluation of whether you think it supports the topic of this post or serves to undermine it. Perhaps if you could add some further characterization of the study you reference it would serve to better enhance the discussion here. Thanks!

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