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Comments 98301 to 98350:

  1. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Original Post John Cook - we have seen all this evidence about OHC and SLR before (Lyman 2010, von Schukmann 2009 and Trenberth 2010) - on a number of occasions. Detailed criticisms have been made of the above Charts, offsets, etc which have not effectively been refuted by those offering OHC increase as proof of AGW. I won't repeat them here. That a skilled propagandist like Monckton is citing research papers favourable to his line does not mean the work itself has no merit. The OHC story is pretty flat since 2003. The energy balance is far from closed. More ice met and less steric rise in the SLR mix means that energy balance shortfall gets worse.
  2. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    Here in NW Europe (NL) the winter of 2009/2010 had normal temperatures compared to climate which is ofcourse colder then we're used to. 2010/2011 was off a cold start with December being the coldest in 40 years thanks to an exceptional negative NAO. January is already much warmer then usual, but it's ofcourse too early to tell if it will remain that way. I would not be amazed if turns out to be just a climatic winter afterall.
  3. The Queensland floods
    Ken @75, I have seen several suggestions that SEQ water should have maintained dam levels significantly below 100% of normal capacity going into a wet season. This seems dubious to me on at least two grounds. First 100% capacity is the designed capacity to ensure Brisbane does not run short of water, a designed capacity already proven insufficient by the recent drought (and given AGW, likely to be proven insufficient at least once every 20 years going forward). The second point is that it is not even obvious that SEQ could run down the capacity. SFAIK, normal capacity is level with the bottom of of the spillway. In other words, running the dam below normal capacity can only be achieved by pumping, and pumping cannot keep up with high levels of inflow such as experienced over the last few months. As to the timing of water releases, SEQ is very mindfull of the risks to those downstream. It has been suggested that they should have retained more water over the critical period thus lowering the level of the flood. However, even running the dam up to its maximum capacity would have only halved (approx) the water coming over the spillway, which would still have meant moderate flooding in Brisbane, but left the dam absolutely no flood mitigation capacity for the expected additional 12 hours rain. (That rain did not eventuate, but hindsight is 20:20.) It would also left no capability to react to a second Toowoomba/Lockyer style downpour. While I'm certain the algorithm used to determine amount and timing of releases will be improved from examination of this experience, I do not think the improved algorithm will be very different. I doubt it is practical to build up the dam wall. Currently the Brisbane Valley Highway runs over the dam wall, and there is no noticable gradient on either side of the wall. The only way to increase the size of Wivenhoe would be to extend the length of the dam wall by several kilometers (probably by 10 to 20 kilometers, and possibly more, and to flood out several Brisbane Valley communities. Finally, I think you are underplaying the significance of Cyclones. Having spent the majority of my 50 years in Queensland (including the last 37), I can tell you that rains such as we just experienced have accompanied every Cyclone I have been near, even when "being near" has meant living in Mount Isa while cyclones struck Normanton or Townesville. I can also say I have never experienced rainfall as continuos and heavy as that when not in the rain shadow of a cyclone.
  4. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    Original Port By the outlines of the land masses in the 'Nasa Map' above it seems like a Mercator projection is used. This vastly exaggerates the area of the high latitudes. The ominous dark red areas above the arctic circle (66.5N) in fact occupy about 4.5% of the Earth's surface, with the Arctic above 60N about 7% of the Earth's surface. It would be interesting to see a map of recent large winter snow areas at lower latitudes to compare these areas with the Arctic. The snow reflection effect would also seem larger at lower latitudes where there is higher incident solar radiation to reflect.
  5. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    Potholer 54 (whos video series a thoroughly recomend) has a new video out on this topic. Very useful and a pretty funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nJuAslQPaY&feature=sub
  6. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    #2: "upward flowing air over a warm ocean a low pressure regime" Similarly, the winter storms of late were under the influence of a counterclockwise flowing, north-south looping jet stream, as shown here for N Amer and below for the NH. Your globe makes it look clockwise. --from the Jet Stream archives at SFSU GeoSciences/Meteorology New Englanders call these winter storms nor'easters, as the low pressure loops over the Atlantic and wind comes from the northeast.
  7. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Since when does a journalists' personal opinion rate as equal to the conclusion of thousands of scientists? the IPCC summary was approved word by word by the Bush administration. It is not some left wing publication. Why do the deniers get to argue that the IPCC report is extreme when it is mainstream?
  8. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    Are the last two winters really cold? Or are people just used to winter being warmer than it used to be? I see few records being set for cold. Lots of snow, as predicted by AGW. Last week some deniers cited cold in a small part of Florida as supporting that it was a cold winter in Europe. If the winter was really cold they would not have to search the entire globe to get a few of cold reports. On the other hand, it has been record heat in Greenland and much of Canada.
  9. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    Nice explanation with very nice pics: I haven't had time to check the meteorology myself, so thanks 'D.' :) I think this states a bit too much confidence though; The Honda et al paper from 2009 shows a good physical basis but it's also possible that there will be other ways to handle the high pressure and perhaps we won't see cold winters. Someone in my department found a link between low solar activity and cold European winters and perhaps that is the largest contributor... ...or we've just been unlucky recently!
  10. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    #6: ARGO data choice is justified since it's the best global coverage we have, but they have looked at a very short term dataset and there are some known potential problems with ARGO that they're checking iirc. It's possible that upper ocean heat content has been flat or declining for 5 years, but the data that suggests that might be flawed. It's a bit like when we put up the original MSU satellites to calculate temperatures. They are ideal, but we later found that they were dragging on the atmosphere. There's a potentially similar problem with the ARGO floats...
  11. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    Very helpful post! But I'm confused about one thing. Under "Global Pressure creates Arctic Corridor", isn't upward flowing air over a warm ocean a low pressure regime, rather than a high pressure regime?
  12. The Queensland floods
    Albatross #73 Not so fast Albatros. I was a little sloppy in conceding AGW might have had a hand in this extreme event. I should have said GW might have had a hand, although even Tom Curtis has added above that Aboriginal history confirms that event 2011 + 2.5m could be more like the limit of natural flood variation in the Brisbane area. You know the rule in this wide brown land; the flood relief claim is going in just after the last drought relief cheque has been received.
  13. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    A most excellent post! The graphics make the topic understandable for most lay people as well.
  14. The Queensland floods
    Tom Curtis #74 After a morning of cleaning up debris - I really should not be doing this either Albatros. Tom - good points. I defer to your detailed knowledge of the capacity of Wivenhoe in the lead up to this event. There is some discussion in today's papers about whether Wivenhoe should have been run down to a lower level given warnings in October of the the very well developed La Nina and the high probability of a lot more rain through the summer with higher than normal cyclone activity. Of course coming out of a major drought - it would have been a tough decision to run Wivenhoe below its 100% level given that it was down to 15% only 18 months before. While the general points about the limits of natural variability (2.5m higher than 2011) you concede - the huge volumes released from Wivenhoe at peak (56% of capacity by your numbers) do point to better micro management of the future levels. For example - timing of the releases to arrive in Brisbane city at low tide was a major factor in the peak levels reached and the number of houses and businesses inundated. With a high to low tide cycle of roughly 6 hours - being able to hold back releases for 6 hours at a critical point could make a large difference to the peak downstream. We were lucky that a 2.6m tide was not happening on the 12th and 13th of January. This is a utilitarian argument of course - those just below Wivenhoe might suffer more for the greater good of the major population centre in Brisbane. Maybe this points to running Wivenhoe with an extra 6 hours of peak 2011 discharge capacity in reserve (14-15%) so 'full' is no longer 100% but 85%. Or indeed if feasible - to raise the dam wall and increase capacity. Your final point is a bit of a stretch: "On the assumption of AGW we should find it less surprising, both because we expect such floods to occur more frequently, and because we expect them to occur with more normal (ie, non-cyclonic) rain conditions. Of course, AGW is not an assumption but a well evidenced theory with no coherent challengers." Firstly, the difference between a cyclone which weakens into one, and low which develops into a strong rain depression can be very little. Wanda in 1974 came in at Maroochydore headed SW and sat in the Brisbane catchment as a slow moving rain depression - not unlike this week's event. No serious 'skeptic' argues that the planet has not warmed in the last 100 years. There are 'coherent challengers' to the proposition that the temperature rise observed (0.7-0.8degC) is mainly man made, and what its future trajectory might be.
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] See my response to you at comment 78 below and respond to its criticisms on the appropriate threads. Thanks!
  15. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    #16 I have had a quick look into ulrichsweb.com: International Journal of Geosciences ISSN: 2156-8359 Start Year: 2010 Frequency: Quarterly Editor(s): Shuanggen Jin (Editor-in-Chief) Price: Free (effective 2010) Editor homepage: http://www.geosensings.com/ Most cited paper in WOS : Micro-plate tectonics and kinematics in Northeast Asia inferred from a dense set of GPS observations EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCE LETTERS Volume: 257 Issue: 3-4 Pages: 486-496 Published: MAY 30 2007 11 citations the first 10 papers in WOS by citation number has GPS in the title
  16. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    I don't think there is much use in going after Monckton. Rather, he should be pressed to present his credentials as a "skeptic". If you are not willing to assume that the negation of your hypothesis might be true, you are not a skeptic, you are a denialist. I fail to see one single case where Monckton qualifies as a skeptic. But I haven't followed him that much. He should be pressed to make public statements on issues like the following, and if he doesn't want to, that should be used for cutting him off. And of course, the 1. What would you accept as evidence for ocean warming? Parameters, single or in combination, critical values. 2. What rate of warming will you be able to detect using your methodology, or the methodologies of your trusted sources? 3. Why don't you more thoroughly consider the evidence contradicting your hypotheses? 4. Are you willing to acknowledge that mainstream science might be correct in some or all of the matters where you disagree with it?
  17. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    dana1981 and jonothansf13, I'm trying to find out what the Int Journal of Geosciences and particularly its publisher SCIRP really is. It is quite strange. The domain name www.scirp.org is in the hands of a chinese company well-know for spreading spam. It has a PO Box in the US in Irvine Californa, but so far no real address could be traced. So far, I can't help thinking that SCIRP is a fake publisher, may be instrumental to the denial machinery: flawed articles in one of the SCIRP-journals pop-up every once in a while in the skeptical scene in Europe. I have contacted the editor of IJG to ask some questions about the publisher, the editor himself, the journal, the peer review process and the quality of the articles. I'll keep you posted.
  18. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    so where do we go to make personal attacks on Monckton then? you spoil all the fun :) seriously, being on the back foot responding to this horribly incorrect gentleman and others of his ilk is the very worst approach if we can set up a body as significant as the IPCC to present the scientific case to the world's political leaders then surely we can set up a marketing and political arm to present to the media and to actively denigrate these professional snake oil salesmen not your job, i know. but there is an awfully naieve game being played here. sometimes you just have to wack people on the nose. hard. as often as necessary.
  19. Models are unreliable
    I see a lot of parallels between the modelling discussed in this article and the technical analysis used by some stock traders. Of course there are many differences, but at the heart of it, both types of modelers are trying to use intelligent analysis of past data to predict/project the future. I highly recommend the book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street) for a very approachable explanation of some of the techniques that modelers use. The author's arguments that it is impossible to "beat" the stock market through this analysis isn't relevant to weather modeling. However, I think he does a good job of addressing the question of identifying success based on past data.
  20. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Sphaerica and Daniel, That is an awesome graph, much better than mine @26. I see that it has a problem though-- they are soon going to have to change the colour shading because the warm end of the spectrum is becoming saturated.
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] They can always paint it black...
  21. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    jonathansf13 #8 - the International Journal of Geosciences (IJG) definitely seems very sketchy. It's the same journal that published the horridly flawed Soares paper claiming that CO2 increases are currently following temperature increases (we're working on an article on that one as well). And the group which publishes IJG (and many other journals) seems to have a sketchy habit of re-publishing papers which had been published long ago in other journals, without telling the authors. It's very strange.
  22. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    DKoD was on this 2 years ago, with some nice displays showing NH warming.
  23. Oceans are cooling
    Is BP still trying to argue that oceans aren't heating up because they were shown to heat up too much? Some people really do sound like broken records...
  24. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    #37: I was surprised to find a way around the paywall. Nice that he also mentions that molecules like N2 are transparent to IR 'in earthlike conditions'. Perhaps some of our deniers are actually speaking about conditions on Titan?
  25. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    ClimateWatcher - You might want to take a look at the latest numbers for Argo data and OHC.
  26. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Matthew, I'm not sure but it might represent heat lost to the atmosphere in the lead-up to the El Nino of 1998. That's just a guess though!
  27. Oceans are cooling
    #26: Stake through the debate or the debaters? Is it just me or does it look like that graph needs a quadratic fit: kind of flattish from '55-'75, then Bang Zoom Straight to the moon!
  28. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    The difference from 1910-1945 though, ClimateWatcher, is that there was a substantive rise in sunspot numbers (&, we assume, total solar irradiance), from 1979-2010 though, we've seen a fall in Sunspot Numbers/TSI, yet still we've got oceans warming almost as fast as they were in 1910-1945. Just FYI.
  29. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Why did the rate of warming within the oceans decrease between 1993 and 2004. Sure it is going up, but from 2004-2008 on that graph posted above shows this...Why?
  30. Oceans are cooling
    @ KR (25) You really know how to put a stake through the heart of a dead debate. ;) The devil's advocate in me can hear the cries now: "They've hidden the decline!" The Yooper
  31. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    I read the Knox and Douglass paper last week, and the first thing I noticed was that it was submitted on July 28, revised August 10, and accepted August 30. This could not have been a peer reviewed paper, the process was far to quick. I don't know what the standards of the International Journal of Geosciences is, I have never attempted to publish there, but they can't be too strict about scientific integrity.
  32. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    muoncounter - I was just reading that article this afternoon, wanted to put in a link, but couldn't find a publicly accessible version! Thanks for putting it in. Excellent paper. I especially appreciated Figure 2d, showing the interleaving of CO2 and H2O spectral lines.
  33. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Tom Yulsman pioneered it here. It's just a step to the left right... The Yooper
  34. Oceans are cooling
    gpwayne - There's an updated chart of Argo and XBT data at the Argo data center through 2009, including the latest updates to XBT corrections. Well worth looking at.
  35. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    New summary paper Infrared radiation and planetary temperature in Physics Today. Covers the basic physics, addresses the 'saturation fallacy', compares absorption of CO2 and H2O and ties in AIRS data. Adding more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere makes higher, more tenuous, formerly transparent portions of the atmosphere opaque to IR and thus increases the difference between ground temperature and the radiating temperature. The result, once the system has come to equilibrium, is surface warming.
  36. Climate Change: The 40 Year Delay Between Cause and Effect
    A skeptical friend points out that the average temperature of the near-surface atmosphere is cooler than the average temperature of the sea surface (link). His question is: how can the atmosphere warm the oceans if the surface of the oceans are, on average, warmer than the atmosphere? I figure the answer is 'circulation' - and that much of the heat transfer from atmosphere to ocean would occur at night and in warm regions. It's not been easy verifying these details on the net. General overviews, like the post heading this thread, are quite common. I believe my skeptic friend's deficit comes from 2-dimensional thinking.
  37. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    There is also a rebuttal to Monckton's attempt at a rebuttal : Mike Steketee's response to Christopher Monckton How much longer can Monckton continue to make merry with the truth ? He obviously has no shame.
  38. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    Even though I understand from the title that the subject is technological, I first thought "Global wind power has doubled over the 3 years" referred to the natural climate system and that it could not happen. In a minute I realized what part of wind power it meant. Certainly there is much wind power as a natural thing at high altitude, but it is not wind power as energy resource (as anonandon expects) yet, until we find some safe and reliable means to transmit it to the point of demand. I think that local energy storage (temporal aggregation) is crucial for utilization of wind power near the ground. Connecting together (spatial aggregation) does not guarantee stable supply. And the storage must be low-cost with respect to resources. Sometimes pumping water may work, but probably the main way will be something chemical, perhaps some kind of fuel cells. I think we should look for storage materials more conveniently stored than hydrogen. As for the issue of co-generation of electricity and heat from fuel, there is a trade off between efficiency in generating electricity and opportunity in supplying heat. Counting electricity and heat which have different utility in quantities of energy tends to favor co-generation, but if we think about exergy (energy potentially convertible to work), combination of high-efficiency heat engine and on-demand heat pump may be better.
  39. Climate Change: The 40 Year Delay Between Cause and Effect
    barry, water may be a poor conductor of heat, but there is always some conduction. I'm sure someone has shown that one can warm water by having warm air at its surface (while keeping the bulk of the water beneath the surface insulated from any other source of heat). It may be slow and inefficient, but there is no reason why water cannot be warmed - to some extent - by a warmer gas at its surface. When we're talking about such a huge surface area, that amounts to a lot of heat over months and years. Remembering that there's also direct (even if inefficient) heating by radiation. Once you add in convection by ocean currents, there's plenty of scope for heating to affect the whole of the ocean.
  40. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    So is the Knox and Douglass paper just cherry-picking data? Did they justify their choice of data sets?
  41. Alden Griffith at 12:10 PM on 15 January 2011
    Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Nice post, John. I need to catch up with some more posts of my own...
  42. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    John, great post! n.b. the Purkey and Johnson link doesn't seem to be working.
  43. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Of course we will not attack Lord Monkton personally. Monkton is certainly permitted to follow any hobby that he desires. And his public speech is often engaging. On this issue - and many others - I notice a few members of Congress often will mistake pompous bufoonery - for valid science. But that is strictly a criticism of Congress.
  44. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Sphaerica @ 38 - That really is a great graphic, Gareth Renowden over at Hot-Topic highlighted it a while back. Says it all doesn't it?.
  45. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    I realize now that I should have mirrored the graph horizontally... right now, the months read right to left (i.e. January is on the right, December on the left).
  46. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    This image is global, not NH, but it's my personal favorite for conveying the warming seen in the past century, by year and month, with the most dramatic change starting around 1980. In that period you can easily see the trend for greater warming in the winter and spring, Pinatubo, El Ninos, and more. It's also annotated for volcanic eruptions, solar minima and maxima, El Ninos and La Ninas (click the link to get to the larger image to see the annotations clearly, or go to the gistemp page itself). It's a slight modification of the GISS image from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Tvs.year+month.lrg.gif at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ (near the bottom of the page). [I just spliced the three separate segments together, and rotated it to fit neatly in a narrow column.] Click this link or the image to see a larger copy. Monthly Mean Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index
  47. ClimateWatcher at 11:24 AM on 15 January 2011
    Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Through 1979, sea SURFACE temperatures do exhibit a solid warming trend ( I get 1.36K per century rate from the Hadley numbers ). That isn't the highest rate for a thirty plus year period, however. From 1910 through 1945, the SST warming was at a rate of 1.7 K per century. Climate watching is, unfortunately, a multi-lifetime pursuit.
  48. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    The analysis in this article concerning why Monckton's claim amounts to mere disinformation is good. But (and you knew there was a 'but' coming, didn't you?) it is still not very readable for the general public; I am not sure just who its target audience really is. Does this audience include anyone with actual influence over climate policy? So one of Monckton's many false claims is refuted. How many more to go? How do we avoid playing a losing game of catchup, one where we correctly and scientifically refute each one of his false claims, but only too late, after he has persuaded a politically significant population (e.g. the Republican Party in the US) to shut their ears to us? It is already too late to avoid disaster; soon it will be too late to avoid catastrophe.
  49. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Albatross, I was surprised they said "most", too. I looked to see if it was safe to say "northern hemisphere meteorological winter", saw that bit in wikipedia, and qualified my statement as a result. From others: "Forecaster Ian Michael Waite said: ‘We expect January to be colder than average – there’s no way we’re moving out of this mini ice age any time soon.’ Whoever that Ian Michael Waite is (couldn't find anything about him from his supposed home on NetWeather) but he seems to have provided the all-important quote that the so-called skeptics and deniers can latch on to. But has he spoken too soon ?" London certainly isn't experiencing a continued "mini-ice age" this first half of January, unless "more or less normal temps" qualifies.
  50. Seawater Equilibria
    Dr. Franzen, I was late coming back to check, but I just saw your replies and calculations in 74 and 80, in reference to my fear expressed in 72. Thank you very much!!!

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