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Comments 95101 to 95150:
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RW1 at 01:34 AM on 20 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Tom Curtis (RE: 41), "RW1 @33, in 30 you quoted 0.2 w/m^2 per degree centigrade of global warming. That would mean the effect of polar amplification is 0.6 w/m^2 at 3 degrees of global warming, or 3.6% of the total effect. Of course, the figure you quoted is that derived from models which are underestimating the extent of sea ice loss in the arctic. Based on observation, the net forcing for the ice and snow loss to date is 0.62 w/m^2, and we have not yet experienced a full degree of global warming. That suggests the total effect could result in 7 to 10% additional warming, or up to an additional degree centigrade by the end of the century." Not really. There becomes less and less ice to melt, and you'll never melt it all because half of the year the Artic is dark and the ice grows back. Also, as more ice melts, you get closer and closer to North Pole, which means lower and lower insolation. Furthermore, increasing temperatures can lead to increases in evaporation, which can lead to increasing snow accumulations, which in turn increase the earth's surface albedo and have a cooling effect, which in turn can cause more ice to grow back. -
Ken Lambert at 01:05 AM on 20 February 2011Deep ocean warming solves the sea level puzzle
Ari Jokimaki #9 & zinfan94 #7 If the above paper is using Purkey & Johnson quoting Lyman 2010 viz: "From 1993 to 2008 the warming of the upper 700 m of the global ocean has been reported as equivalent to a heat flux of 0.64 (±0.11) W m–2 applied over the Earth’s surface area (Lyman et al. 2010)." - then it is probably wrong. The 0.64W/sq.m is derived from linearizing a step jump in OHC over the 2002-04 period which has been extensively discussed elsewhere on this blog. -
Ann at 20:37 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
@17 HPB “From what I can see and knowledge of history, like everything else on this planet it goes in cycles. One minute we are hot another cold. One minute theres ice and the next there is not. I can remember as a child rivers (salt) freezing over in southern England that you could walk on.” We have had some slight variations in the climate in historical times, for instance the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice age, but you shouldn’t compare f.i. a time in which it was possible to ice skate on the Thames in Winter (the little ice age) with a time in which the whole of Europe was covered in an ice layer 2 kilometers thick (a genuine Ice Age). Likewise, the worst case scenario: triggering a runaway greenhouse effect would have consequences that cannot in the least be compared to the medieval warming period. It is true that drastic climate changes have taken place in a more distant past due to natural causes so strictly speaking the current warming is not unprecedented in the entire history of the earth. But you have to understand that these past climate changes have led to mass extinctions, and a virtual standstill of the evolution for millions of years (look up for instance “snowball earth” or the “perm-trias mass extinction event”). The argument that sea ice melt or temperature trends have occurred in the past is in itself not comforting at all. I think this is a major problem with most people. They still think that climate change means we’re going to have a climate comparable to the south of France (at least that’s what people in Belgium think ). They even welcome the thought. We also know that the arctic regions were once fertile and that Mammoths were frozen in situ as they grazed these areas. In Roman times grapes tropically grown fruit was being farmed in Scotland and CO2 level were supposedly higher then than now as well as temperatures higher than now. Average global temperatures are currently higher than during the MWP, and still rising. CO2 levels have never been this high in historical times. They are the highest in 800000 years and very likely the highest since the origin of mankind, 3 million years ago. We are creating conditions on this planet that have not prevailed since the dawn of mankind. The consequences are difficult to predict, but knowing from the past how strong the earth’t climate may react to different conditions, we should prepare for the worst. -
johnkg at 20:26 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
#611 Thanks Muoncounter, I no longer need to read any more of this car-crash of a thread. -
Ann at 20:03 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
One pretty strong argument you can use in the discussion with the deniers is that even gas and oil companies believe that the arctic ice is disappearing (although it is still unclear whether this means that they endorse AGW). In every case they are in full battle for the rights to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Sea.Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Even Shell Oil Company, to their credit, is on record as accepting the findings of the IPCC AR4. -
funglestrumpet at 19:08 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Thanks for going to all the trouble to ensure that the public are as well informed as possible. A prodigious output for a one man site. Unfortunately, for every day that action is delayed because the public is presented with conflicting information, a lot of it unsupported, or supported in a misleading way, vote-seeking politicians have an immediate need to hang fire. As things stand, to quote Bob Dylan, the 'sceptics' are 'winning the war while losing every battle' (Bob Dylan). -
nigelj at 19:06 PM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
Marcus #28 Ill be back. An idea might be what RC do and allow an open thread for no holds barred discussion on anything. More on topic Im in New zealand we have just had our hottest January - Febuary on record. Ive been having an intersting lengthy debate wth some political hacks using SC as a reference source. Im Gandalf. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10701558&pnum=2 -
Philippe Chantreau at 18:23 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
How can I sample results that I do not have and cannot obtain? Why will you not disclose your sampling method? The method matters little or not at all. Why can't you make up your own? You're not good enough with Google Scholar? -
Ari Jokimäki at 18:05 PM on 19 February 2011Deep ocean warming solves the sea level puzzle
dorlomin #1: I didn't see mention of aquifers in this study. dorlomin #2: Read the Purkey & Johnson mentioned above. They seem to suggest that Southern Ocean plays a large role (by circulation) in the deep ocean warming. Andrea Silverthorne #3: Methane has not risen much during the study period of this paper (1993-2008). Atmopheric methane concentration has been quite steady since 1999 (although it has been rising again since 2007). There's also Dlugokencky et al. (2009), who say that "Near-zero CH4 growth in the Arctic during 2008 suggests we have not yet activated strong climate feedbacks from permafrost and CH4 hydrates." By the way, there's a new paper out that gives satellite measurements of methane concentration. actually thoughtfull #5: It seems to me that the amount of warming discussed in Purkey & Johnson might not be enough to close that budget, but it would be nice to see actual analysis on that. Here's a relevant quote from Purkey & Johnson: "From 1993 to 2008 the warming of the upper 700 m of the global ocean has been reported as equivalent to a heat flux of 0.64 (±0.11) W m–2 applied over the Earth’s surface area (Lyman et al. 2010). Here, we showed the heat uptake by AABW contributes about another 0.10 W m–2 to the global heat budget." Albatross #8: They didn't calculate deep ocean OHC in this paper. They used an ocean model to determine the deep ocean situation, so they don't actually have any new observational data. -
Tom Curtis at 17:37 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Albatross @40, yes, I love the fact that Arrhenius got it so right so long ago. The one area in which he slipped up was Antarctica, which was a virtual unknown at the time. The first attempt to reach the South Pole did not even set out until four years after his paper. SFAIK, there are three crucial distinctions about Antarctica. The first is that rather than sea ice, it has ice sheets which cannot melt to bedrock in a season, or even in a hundred years; thus side stepping the mechanism of polar amplification. The second is the uninterrupted ocean of the Antarctic ocean allows circumpolar currents and winds that drastically reduce heat transfer between the tropics and the antarctic. The original mechanism identified by Arrhenius only works because the polar regions recieve a significant amount of heat from the tropics, and as the Antarctic receives much less than the Arctic, the effect is much weaker there. The third is the unusual fact that due to the extreme cold of Antarctica, especially in winter, sometimes there is an inverted lapse rate over the continent. The surface temperature in these circumstances is actually colder than the tropopause. When that happens, the effect of increased greenhouse gases is to cool the continent rather than to warm it. It is uncertain what the net effect of this is. I believe most models predict much reduced warming, though at least one has predicted cooling for Antarctica. -
Tom Curtis at 17:26 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1 @33, in 30 you quoted 0.2 w/m^2 per degree centigrade of global warming. That would mean the effect of polar amplification is 0.6 w/m^2 at 3 degrees of global warming, or 3.6% of the total effect. Of course, the figure you quoted is that derived from models which are underestimating the extent of sea ice loss in the arctic. Based on observation, the net forcing for the ice and snow loss to date is 0.62 w/m^2, and we have not yet experienced a full degree of global warming. That suggests the total effect could result in 7 to 10% additional warming, or up to an additional degree centigrade by the end of the century. -
Daniel Bailey at 17:22 PM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
Re: TOP (29) 1. Thank you for your perspective. 2. The study discusses in exquisite detail, replete with sourced references, the entire field of drought in a warming world up to the present day even before it attempts to look at what the future may bring. Could you explain what you mean by:"The computer models just charged on into the far distant future with no correlation to actual future events."
Suggesting that we must wait until after a speeding train hits us before deciding if we should have gotten out of the way seems logically impoverished to me. As do BP's ramblings on past conditions, which occurred under far different circumstances than today. 3. Models used in the study were the 22 coupled models used in the IPCC AR4. 4. On pages 13-14 of the study, that is discussed. Essentially, India gets progressively wetter though increased precipitation (which in its case is expressed as more frequent precipitation, as opposed to more precipitation when it does rain):
FIGURE 10 | Multi-model mean changes from 1980–1999 to 2080–2099 under the SRES A1B scenario in annual (a) precipitation (mm/day), (b) soil moisture (%), (c) runoff (mm/day), and (d) evaporation (mm/day). The stippling indicates where at least 80% of the models agree on the sign of the mean change. (Meehl et al 2007)
The Yooper
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Albatross at 17:17 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Tom @14, You are right, the framework which he used to make those calculations was in fact a simple model. In my original post I was thinking more in terms of the sophisticated and complex models (i.e., AOGCMs) that we are familiar with today, and not communicating very eloquently (my own lapse) that in fact there are some very basic (yet solid) physics are at play. Fascinating that Arrhenius predicted current events so very long ago. -
Albatross at 17:05 PM on 19 February 2011Deep ocean warming solves the sea level puzzle
Zinfan94, I was wondering how this translates into OHC. Have yet to look at the paper, but I'm wondering if they calculated OHC? If yes then it sure would be nice to see those data; if not, their data could probably be used to calculate OHC. -
Rob Honeycutt at 17:05 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
"You have still failed to disclose your sampling methods." I'm sorry I didn't notate the process. Make up your own. It won't make an appreciable difference in the results. -
Rob Honeycutt at 17:01 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... Again, you're looking for exacting methods where they have little impact on the results. You're saying that if I can't come up with an exact error rate for each year then the whole exercise is meaningless and that's completely absurd. You're quibbling tiny quantities. Based on the sample I did I got 6%. I don't care, call it 50% if you like, that will only change your number to 1% without even addressing the errors in your figures. You lose on all counts. -
muoncounter at 16:53 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PT: "Let me know when you get an actual number." Why? It won't make any difference to you. "I have refuted this some time ago" No, you have not refuted anything. What you have done is state ad nauseum that you have 'rebutted' this or rejected that as 'subjective,' using your own definitions for your own purposes. You cannot provide a single science based argument that could ever counter the likes of SoD, Rabbett, RealClimate, Trenberth, et al. who are the debunkers of your precious 'skeptics' in agwobserver's list. All you can do is repeatedly deny. It's boring and it needs to stop. "Idso and Lindzen have published more papers on the climate than most of them." So what? Here is a nice rundown on Lindzen; on Idso's group here. "That is because E&E is not indexed by them." How do you know that? If E&E is such a valuable paper, why isn't it indexed? And what's all this about 'validating' Rob's numbers? Who gave you the authority to 'validate' anything? If you don't accept what Rob has said, state your opinion as such. Lose the 'validation' concept. Give it up, PT. You've had a run. Time to move on. -
Rob Honeycutt at 16:51 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Phila... I happen to like nitpicky. Fixed. -
Rob Honeycutt at 16:49 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
"You cannot claim robustness for something you did not sample." Yes you can. By your logic you could all polling data would be unacceptable. You don't have to have an exact number in order to infer a result. -
Phila at 16:47 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Grammatical mistake in the first sentence: understand Spulling mistake in the second paragraph: warm faster 'that' the rest. Also, it's "jibe," not "jive." Nitpicky, I know, but that typo has always bugged me, since the words basically mean opposite things. -
Rob Honeycutt at 16:43 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... Your programmed responses are very tiring. Deflect as you may try, you know I'm right. -
TOP at 16:43 PM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
Just a thought to Daniel Bailey. When talking about a thread getting off topic the article is a good case in point. I have no idea what is going to be discussed until the last sentence of the third paragraph. I suppose that if the title of the first section was "Coexistence of Drought and Flood" a reader would have been clued in from the beginning kind of like peer reviewed papers tend to do. I thought BP brought up a good point in comparing what was predicted with what has happened in the past. The computer models just charged on into the far distant future with no correlation to actual future events. To bad the models weren't run backwards to correlate with the past. I found it interesting that India seemed to go unaffected while China was hard hit with drought. Just what makes India resistant to this effect of climate change? -
Rob Honeycutt at 16:35 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
"Cato Journal" I'm sorry but I can't help but laugh every time I read those words. -
muoncounter at 16:33 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Rob: Better to say 'Arctic amplification' than 'polar' for the current context, as the South seems to respond dramatically differently. Serreze et al 2009 is a key paper describing what's happening in the Arctic. As the climate warms, the summer melt season lengthens and intensifies, leading to less sea ice at summer’s end. Summertime absorption of solar energy in open water areas increases the sensible heat content of the ocean. Ice formation in autumn and winter, important for insulating the warm ocean from the cooling atmosphere, is delayed. This promotes enhanced upward heat fluxes, seen as strong warming at the surface and in the lower troposphere. This vertical structure of temperature change is enhanced by strong low-level stability which inhibits vertical mixing. Peter Hogarth did an excellent post on this as well. -
Rob Honeycutt at 16:22 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1... No, it's not. Polar amplification just mean that. Global warming is amplified at the poles. Nothing more nothing less. -
Rob Honeycutt at 16:17 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... Yes I certainly can. In fact, it's more likely to work in your favor, bub. I also went back and looked at very early years with few papers and the number of erroneous results is higher. So, I'm sampling a year that has a higher error rate than more recent years. Just get used to it. Your list accounts for a very very tiny fraction of the scientific work on climate change and there are approximately 400 papers a week coming out on this topic these days. -
RW1 at 16:13 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
The issue at hand ultimately is what effect polar amplification may or may not have on global average temperatures, is it not? -
Rob Honeycutt at 16:03 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
pbjamm... Poptech has a rule about carrying a conversation over to his blog from another blog. But of course he is allowed to carry that conversation over here. Hence, we have 619 comments here and he has one there. Go figure. -
zinfan94 at 15:52 PM on 19 February 2011Deep ocean warming solves the sea level puzzle
It might be worth pinging Roger Pielke Sr. on the subject of this post. RPSr made a series of comments on this site last summer, where he claimed that ocean heat content measurements weren't supporting the planetary heating rate expected by AGW. He hinted revisions to OHC and SLR measurements would support his view. With this paper it now appears the planetary energy budget is closing, If RPSr is consistent with his previous comments, he should now reverse his position, and agree that the planetary energy budget supports AGW. -
Marcus at 15:34 PM on 19 February 2011CO2 is not a pollutant
In his attempts to hijack yet another thread, BP once again assures as of the hackneyed old "CO2 is plant food" meme-even showing us pictures of soybeans grown in otherwise ideal conditions to back him up. Of course, what he is not aware of is a little thing called "acclimation"-which effectively means that C3 plants, if exposed to high CO2 levels for sufficient time will start to lose the initial benefits they gained from the excess CO2-because they reduce the amount of enzyme that processes the CO2 (as production of enzyme is an energy dependent process). This of course means that the Rubisco pathway will just become saturated sooner-bringing the plant back to its "default" growth rate. Also, BP's post ignores the damage to plant growth caused by heat stress, accelerated aging, & damage from flooding & drought-all of which are proving to be the side-effects of increased CO2 emissions.Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] The comment Marcus refers to is by Berényi Péter and is located here. -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:25 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1... Again, you are conflating global temperature with polar amplification. -
Marcus at 15:24 PM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
Nigel, I know it can be frustrating, but please don't give up-that's just handing victory to deniers like BP. That's exactly *why* they hijack sites like this. Don't worry, though, we have excellent moderators who will ensure that all future OT posts get deleted, as they deserve! -
pbjamm at 15:23 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
muoncounter@611 If only you had found and posted this 10 pages ago! I wonder if we shall now have to endure a few pages of Poptech criticizing the your list. Perhaps a rebuttal at his blog. -
RW1 at 15:15 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
If it's only about 0.2 W/m^2 - that's only about 2% of the difference needed, or only about 0.03 degrees C of warming. -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:11 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Moderator... Feel free to delete my response as well. -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:10 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... I sampled a year that had fewer than 1000 results. I very much took this into account. The sampling is clearly robust. You can't poke holes all you want, Poptech, statistically the results are no different. -
RW1 at 15:10 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Rob Honeycutt (RE: 29), "Rather that beating around the bush I suggest you just give us the point you're wanting to make." My point is this: +16.6 W/m^2 is needed at the surface for a 3 C rise. 2xCO2 only gives you about +6 W/m^2 (assuming all the additional absorbed energy affects the surface). What percentage of the additional 10 W/m^2 will come from 'polar amplification' from ice melting? -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:03 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
**Case in point** Not point in case... It's getting late and I have the flu. blah. -
RW1 at 15:02 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
muoncounter, From Flanner thread article: "i.e. for each degree of global warming, the loss of snow and ice means that another 0.25 W of sunlight is absorbed per square metre of the Northern Hemisphere. Globally, and in the long run it’s expected to be 0.2 because there’s less snow in the south and you eventually run out of summer snow to melt." So about 0.2-0.25 W/m^2 per 1 degree of global warming? -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:01 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1... I do not know the actual W/m2 without doing some research. But what I would suggest is that we know very clearly that there will be an increase in the Arctic when there is less ice. Correct? What I challenge you to do is not conflate the global change in albedo to the change of albedo in the Arctic. That would be an act of searching for a way to falsely downplay the effect. Be sure to also read Peter Offenhartz post at #4 so you understand that albedo is not the only mechanism behind polar amplification. Rather that beating around the bush I suggest you just give us the point you're wanting to make. Everyone here is open to hearing all perspectives. Point in case, Peter Offenhartz taught me something new I didn't know. -
muoncounter at 14:58 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Yooper, Nah, there are 53136 authors at the front of the line. -
Daniel Bailey at 14:54 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Game, set & match to the muoncounter. All hail! The Yooper -
muoncounter at 14:48 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
I keep trying to walk away from this thread, but it keeps going round and round with the same inevitable result as this NASCAR event. But until the crash occurs, here are some interesting numbers: Over at Ari Jokimaki's agwobserver, there is a list of 103 global warming topics. Each topic links to a list of papers (and they're all from real journals). Pulling 5 topics at random, they average 20 papers per topic, so Ari has indexed easily over 2000 papers -- an enormous achievement. As if this wasn't enough, he also has a list of 48 skeptic papers that have been thoroughly debunked -- some, multiple times. But the one that will put this NASCAR into the pits for good is the Thomson-Reuters sciencewatch.com November 2009 Climate Change database: The baseline time span for this database is (publication years) 1999-June 30, 2009 from the third bimonthly update (a 10-year + 6-month period). The resulting database contained 27,989 (10 years) and 11,428 (2 years) papers; 53,136 authors; 176 nations; 2,494 journals; and 10,801 institutions. I believe that was 27989 papers by 53136 authors (and that is a year old). The database allows sorting by author. The top 10 on the leaderboard are: Penuelas J 66, Chapin FS 57, Tol RSJ 57, Thuiller W 48, Allen MR 48, Chowin SL 47, Stott PA 46, Peterson AT 45, Giorgi F 44, Smith P 44. A cursory check of these names show these are mainly supporters of the A in AGW (which doesn't stand for 'alarm'). Seitz, Singer, Svensmark, Shaviv, McIntyre, Idso, Lindzen, Spencer et al. need not apply. It is also sortable by institution. The 10 most prolific are: Chinese Acad Sci 867, NOAA 420, Univ Colorado 414, Columbia Univ 412, USGS 387, USDA 368, UCBerkeley 363, NCAR 362, NASA 332, Max Planck Society 356. Surprised to see the CAS at the top of the pack, I found they are signatories to the Joint Science Academies Statement on Climate Change, which leaves little doubt about their position. The others are all recognizable names with well-known positions. The Marshall Institute does not make the list of top 20 institutions. Names that do not appear among the top 20 journals: E & E, Cato Institute, Iron & Steel, Waste Management, etc; nor do there seem to be any loosely defined 'policy' journals. See the thread on Compendium Maps for a prior reference to this database and some additional information. -
kiwichick at 14:48 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
thankyou moderator ok how about oh bugger!! the quote i heard in a interview on abc radio was that the greenhouse gas from the expected permafrost release will be the equivalent of the GHG releases from the USA at their current level for the next 80 yearsModerator Response: [Daniel Bailey] One other thing about the permafrost release paper is that the authors used the most conservative estimates based upon the IPCC medium emissions scenario. Note that actual emissions are following the high-emissions scenario, so the outlook taint as optimistic as portrayed in the linked paper you kindly provide. -
RW1 at 14:39 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
That's what I'm trying to quantify - potential polar amplification. Without knowing the actual quantification of the polar albedo, how do you know it's of any real significance? How many W/m^2 of additional post albedo solar power are we going to get into the system from Artic melting? Without knowing how many W/m^2 are currently being reflected away, how can you know?Moderator Response: [muoncounter] See the Flanner thread linked above. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:30 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1... Again, we're talking about polar amplification, not the entire planet. Do you have a comment relative to the article? -
RW1 at 14:16 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
That's what I'm trying to quantify. How many W/m^2 of the roughly 102 W/m^2 total albedo comes from the Artic? -
muoncounter at 14:09 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1: Surely you know the issue is not Arctic albedo as a percentage of the whole, the issue is added forcing due to the decreased Arctic albedo. See the Flanner thread for that discussion. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:09 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1... I don't believe that is relevant to the article. I'm talking about polar amplification, not global temperature. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:06 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
HumanityRules @ 16... I believe there is still considerable debate on that very point. See this lecture by Dr Barber.
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