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Berényi Péter at 10:15 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#35 doug_bostrom at 05:33 AM on 18 August, 2010 when we look at statistics it becomes clear we may conclude that a proportion of increasingly frequent extreme weather events are themselves indicators as well as outcomes of climate change OK, let's have a look at statistics on some extreme weather events. Fortunately we have this technical memorandum on The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones From 1851 to 2006 from NOAA National Hurricane Center. In Appendix A of the report one can find a complete Chronological List of All Hurricanes which Affected the Continental United States: 1851-2006. I have also collected hurricane data for the most recent three complete hurricane seasons from 2007-2009, so I could produce an overview of this special type of extreme weather event for the last 159 years. As a crude measure of hurricane intensity, I have simply added up the category numbers of all hurricanes annually. As we are talking about climate (not weather), it is a 25 year running average of that number, assigned to the middle year. It looks like this:
As you can see, hurricane intensity is decreasing slightly on a century scale, therefore increasingly frequent extreme weather events do not include hurricanes hitting the US. More importantly, no relation to either any kind of global average temperature history reconstruction or atmospheric CO2 levels can be seen. At least in this respect, if hurricanes are considered indicators, climate does not even seem to change much, not in the Atlantic region for sure.
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Doug Bostrom at 10:01 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
On the other hand, if you dont' want to be constructive, continue presenting counterfactual narratives of climate science here and in a strange way you can be equally helpful to Skeptical Science's never ending quest to reassemble intellectual integrity from the broken shards scattered about as the result of degenerate rumor-mongering. Please, however, try to be original. Put some effort into it, don't lean on extended quotes from fringe specialist conspiracy theorist websites, don't cite political pundit blather only tangentially related to science, don't lazily say "what if" without bothering to explore "if," don't parrot the latest talking point or strange theory from your favorite contrarian source. Take a look at the "Argument" list, eliminate the obvious, innovate. Or, at least use the "Argument" list to make comments in the appropriate thread, rather than blurting seemingly random non sequiturs in the wrong place. Borrowing from Sherlock Holmes, it's the dog that didn't bark that's interesting, even if it turns out the dog has nothing useful to say when asked. -
elowells at 09:40 AM on 18 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
#31 Berényi Péter at 22:15 PM on 17 August, 2010 The RMS error is for an ensemble of "pixels": samples at the spatial resolution of the instrument, which is about 40 km x 40 km. Pixels at the equator are sampled twice per day and pixels at the poles about 14 times per day. There are about 320,000 pixels over the surface of the earth, or more than 640K samples per day. Over a decade this is more than 2.3 Gigasamples. What limits the accuracy of determination of a trend in Global Average Temperature are time dependent systematic errors, such as the orbital decay/diurnal correction. Just because one can only determine the temperature of a single pixel at one sample time to within a few degrees doesn't imply that one can't determine the global temperature trend over a decade to much higher accuracy using billions of samples. -
Ned at 09:35 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
John Cook writes: Climate skeptics vigorously attack any evidence for man-made global warming yet eagerly embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that refutes global warming. and Pete Ridley replies: The majority of those who are sceptical of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis do NOT reject the notion that humans case global warming. What we reject is the claim that there is convincing evidence that any such change is significant for global climates or that our continuing use of fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global climate change. I'm not sure what your confident assertion about "the majority" is based on. I doubt it's correct, but it doesn't really matter anyway. The great thing about this site is that it provides information to address people's questions more or less across the board: * Some people come here wondering whether the observed rise in CO2 is really caused by humans -- maybe it's coming from the ocean! (Nope) * Others have heard that the greenhouse effect contradicts the second law of thermodynamics (nope, again). * Some people accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but are under the impression that there are all kinds of problems with the surface temperature record, such that Gistemp and Hadcrut can't be replicated (wrong). Now, it's fairly common for people to come by here and say "Why are you addressing all these absurd and obviously wrong arguments when you should be addressing mine, which is the one that all real, serious skeptics believe?" In point of fact, though, all of the arguments here are addressing claims or questions that other people actually do raise. So, Pete, instead of giving John a hard time for all the work he's put in responding to other peoples' questions and arguments, why not do something constructive? Next time you see a "skeptic" claiming that CO2 isn't actually rising, or that it's coming from the oceans, or that it isn't a greenhouse gas, or whatever ... why not help correct their misimpressions yourself? I've said this before, but it's stunningly rare for any "skeptic" to ever speak up here and contradict or correct another "skeptic's" mistaken claims, no matter how absurd they are. There are a few examples elsewhere (e.g., Ferdi Engelbeen trying to convince people at WUWT that the CO2 rise is real and anthropogenic). But on this site it's very, very rare. I could probably count the number of times it's happened on the thumbs of one hand. So ... to end what is already a too-long comment, I would once again ask my "skeptic" friends on this site to (a) be patient when we respond to claims that you think are stupid, because someone else actually does believe them, and (b) feel free to pitch in and help address those claims. Hey, the sooner we can get everyone to agree that yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and yes, the observed rise in CO2 is real, and yes, it is coming from fossil fuel combustion ... the more time we'll be able to spend on debating climate sensitivity or 21st century emissions scenarios or whatever you think is the real problem with the IPCC projections! :-) -
Doug Bostrom at 08:14 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
More happy talk: One 2008 study by researchers Tim Barnett and David Pierce of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography estimated that if current consumption patterns are not altered, Lake Mead has a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021. Water managers in the West were skeptical, as was The Las Vegas Review-Journal, which blasted the study in an editorial. “Predictions such as these virtually never come true,” the paper declared. “From Thomas Malthus in 1798 to Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s, the forecasters of famine, abandoned cities and desolated economies always look like fools in the end because they refuse to take into account the ingenuity and enterprise of the human race.” What's happening after the editorial was published Hint: Levels Plummet in Crucial Reservoir Oh, yes, it can't be put down to climate change, not definitively. It's entirely consistent with predictions, the variability is exactly what's expected and traditional, the trend appears to follow projections but let's not overdo it and form any conclusions, let alone imagine climate change might not be a walk in the park. -
Newcomers, Start Here
Pete Ridley - I read the Joanna Nova blog posting too. It's self-congratulatory, condescending, rather lacking in facts - fairly typical of her site. A lot of the comments there point that out clearly. It's hard to say "endorsed" when John states that this Nova app is "comprehensively misleading". Now, I haven't purchased the "Our Climate" app myself, and have therefore not reviewed it (have you?). However, if it contains the same arguing points that Joanna uses on her blog, it is indeed self-contradictory. From her Skeptics Handbook: "Something else (not CO2) caused warming", "It's not warming", "CO2 is trivial", "CO2 is saturated". The disagreements between climate skeptics aren't trivial. CO2 has no effect? CO2 effect is saturated? It's the sun? Cosmic rays? Ocean? Climate has varied a lot before (indicating high sensitivity to forcings, incidentally)? Records are unreliable (then how do you know the climate changed before)? Feedbacks will cancel out all change (contradicting the climate changing before)? If the various skeptics weren't all arguing against the science, there would be sufficient differences between them to spark inter-skeptic wars. The focus on the small points rather than the big picture (somehow assuming that any potential issue with any measurement invalidates a multiply supported theory), strawman arguments (her "hit list" postings), cherry-picking (choosing the last 10-12 years to argue for warming has stopped, when the statistics argue for a minimum of 30 year averaging based on the internal variability of weather): these are serious issues with the arguments Nova presents. If they're in the "Our Climate" app, then it's a piece of junk software. I would agree with Trueofvoice, incidentally - your pasted quote from Joanna Nova doesn't really inspire confidence in her rationality. -
scaddenp at 07:57 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
Pete - given Nova's abuse of science in past, it would hardly be surprising if she liked take downs of her stuff here. Do you actually believe there is any importance in her uninformed misunderstandings of science? John isn't trying to win a popularity contest, just accurately portray the science. Instead of posting useless opinion, how about putting up some actual science if you dont like John's stuff. Nova's complaints are roll on the floor laughingly bad as the "climate's changed before" thread would tell you. -
Doug Bostrom at 07:57 AM on 18 August 2010Greenland's ice mass loss has spread to the northwest
A little update: Researchers Race to Catch Up With Melting, Shifting Polar Realities When the Petermann Glacier calved an ice island four times the size of Manhattan earlier this month, GPS sensors embedded in the ice and time-lapse cameras sitting on nearby rock were watching. But scientists who put them there were caught off guard. Traveling to northwestern Greenland to retrieve the data that equipment recorded will cost them roughly $93,000, money they currently don't have. That's unfortunate, says Jason Box, a climate scientist at Ohio State University who helped place those instruments, because the difficulty comes as his research team has made a startling discovery. Of the 30 widest glaciers in Greenland, it's the ones in the north -- where Petermann is located -- that are collectively losing the most ice. "The science really hasn't caught up with the observations," he said of those results, which he will present at a scientific meeting this week in Ohio. "The observations are showing really dramatic changes. There is an element of surprise. The fact that there is so much change in northern Greenland is not something the community is aware of yet." Box's dilemma illustrates the difficulty and expense of operating in harsh polar environments, factors that can magnify sheer bad luck. (Scientists set up their monitoring of the Petermann Glacier last summer, when they expected it to calve at any moment.) But the story of the recent calving also offers a window into the intense, ongoing effort by scientists who study the world's ice to improve their understanding of how melting at the poles will contribute to sea level rise. "One of the major impacts [of the calving] will be that we expect Petermann Glacier ... to speed up, something like a factor of two, because glaciers always speed up when ice shelves break off in front of them," said Robert Bindschadler, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, at a recent congressional briefing. "That's an expected consequence. And that's going to increase the drainage of the Greenland ice sheet and contribute to a rise in sea level. But just how quickly the massive freshwater ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will melt is still uncertain. And that uncertainty carries over into projections of how high and how fast the world's seas will rise. Just three years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted seas would rise between 7 and 23 inches by 2100 -- but couched that estimate with a giant caveat. The IPCC cautioned that an additional rise could come from rapid and unpredictable melting in Greenland and Antarctica, which it didn't attempt to estimate. "The terminology in a football game is, we punted," said Pennsylvania State University glaciologist Richard Alley, one of the scientists who worked on that portion of the IPCC's wide-ranging fourth assessment report. "We didn't know what to do." Now scientists are scrambling to play catch-up amid high stakes. Greenland's ice alone contains enough fresh water to raise the world's seas by 23 feet. Reconstructions of the Earth's past climate indicate that a temperature rise of roughly 2 to 7 degrees Celsius could cause the Greenland ice sheet to melt entirely, Alley said. "What we find from looking at history -- when the world warms, the Arctic warms more," he said, citing a 2008 federal report on abrupt climate change that he helped author. "When the Arctic warms, Greenland melts." Scientists don't believe the Greenland ice sheet will disappear anytime soon. But if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked, Earth's climate could reach a tipping point in a decade that would put Greenland's ice on a course to disappear within centuries, Alley said. Satellite measurements show the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are thinning, driven primarily by the acceleration of outlet glaciers like Petermann. "As the Earth is getting warmer, ice sheets are going to shrink and sea level will go up," Bindschadler said. "There is no doubt about it. The key question for experts such as myself are these: How much will sea level go up, and when is that going to happen? That's where research is going right now." More, including many interesting remarks by researchers -
michael sweet at 07:56 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Argus, I did not notice your post of your result. Once I see the data we can discuss it. Keep in mind that 17 all time high records have been set so far this summer. You are attempting to cast doubt on how hot it has been this summer by quibbling over a statistic. Look at figure 1 above and tell me where your doubt comes from. The GISS record is at an all time record high. I see no resonable room for doubt. As John often says, look at the whole picture. -
Trueofvoice at 07:46 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
Pete, Is your lengthy cut-and-paste intended as sarcasm? I would assume so, as it succeeds in making Mrs. Nova look rather unhinged. Keep up the good work. -
Trueofvoice at 07:42 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
TOP, Please provide a link to the Weizmann study of reforesting the Sahara to eliminate man-made greenhouse gases. I'll be damned if I can find a reference to it. -
Pete Ridley at 07:12 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
John, not everyone agrees with what you claim this site is all about. While searching for more information on positive feedbacks I happened across this beauty from Joanne Nova (http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/skeptics-iphone-app-endorsed-de-facto-by-critic/#more-9801). QUOTE: .. Cook runs the ambush site SkepticalScience.com. .. SkepticalScience.com is a parody of skepticism. It is “skeptical of the skeptics” .. but it accepts everything offered up by Authorities as if it is the Word of God. “NOAA can do no wrong” (and was that NOAA or Noah?) All of the points held up by Cook are weak “whatever” issues: things that are hardly a flaw. He’s noticed that the disorganized mass of real skeptics sometimes disagree with each other, golly gee, which proves we think for ourselves and don’t answer to a higher bureaucracy. John Cook — who so wants to be seen as skeptical – instead is anything but, and conforms strictly to the text-book litany as written by the IPCC. .. Cook of course, doesn’t quote directly. This is a classic modus operandi for unskeptical scientist. If they quote directly, they can’t impute things, like “sceptics citing this fact as if it’s never occurred to climate scientists”, which we don’t say, but Cook says, thus creating a strawman. Why would he bother stringing out this kind of weak speculative stuff if he actually had something real to attack? He makes preposterous claims that skeptics cherry-pick, focus on small picture, never on the big picture; except the graphs the skeptics use cover the last 30 years, the last 1,000 years, the last 10,000 years, the last 500 million years. There’s no period we won’t talk about — unlike the AGW crowd, for whom a trend is between 10 and 50 years (to get the last warming period 1975 – 2001 in) and who don’t want to talk about the little ice age or medieval warm period. Unskeptical scientists think “long term” means 100 years and repeat graphs from 1880 -2010 ad nauseum. They weren’t exactly producing billboards with graphs of the last 500 million years. UNQUOTE. I couldn’t have described it better myself. Best regards, Pete Ridley -
Doug Bostrom at 05:33 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
As Chris' cue above has largely been ignored, I'm going to respond to one of Chris' remarks. It's a very convenient truth that of course we cannot ascribe any particular weather event to climate change, not with certainty. However, when we look at statistics it becomes clear we may conclude that a proportion of increasingly frequent extreme weather events are themselves indicators as well as outcomes of climate change. When experts tell us so and we choose instead to focus on the uncertainty of a particular event, we're ignoring an inconvenient truth larger and more significant than the event itself. In the case of Pakistan, we have an event that has exceeded any previously recorded, in a way that has overwhelmed the resources of the country and is threatening Pakistan's stability in an entirely new way; Pakistan is in fact an example of what we may expect to see in the way of both physical and cultural impacts of climate change. Again, choosing to interpret this year's monsoon in Pakistan as a singular feature without heed of local as well as larger context is to lose perspective. We have other examples of stability being upset this year. When an extended history of cultural habit is overturned by a weather event transcending a local population's notion of where to live and how to live in that location and such an event is entirely in keeping predictions, that's a message to be folded into statistics. Such an occurrence is not only useful from a statistical standpoint but more germane to the topic of this thread is an indicator of how disruptive the sequence of action we've set into motion will be. If we choose not to see and allocate costs of climate change, our understanding is impaired and our ability to respond will be irrational by choice. -
sailrick at 05:23 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Arguments that warmer is not necessarily worse, miss the point that it is the rate of the changes that are so dangerous. That, at least in part, is what makes all these effects of climate change so hard to adapt to, for humans as well as other species. -
dsleaton at 04:23 AM on 18 August 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
D (and others) -- Yes, ideally we could arrange people neatly in rows in Manitoba and make it work. But let's take a hard look at the economic reality of the private property system. We don't have a world government that can quickly plan and implement the kinds of population movements that have been discussed. We have hundreds of small and large nations (and global entities) in competition with each other for resources, and many of these nations are themselves made up of millions of plots of private property. Consider the current U.S. response to immigration (illegal or otherwise). Consider the U.K. response to the Empire machine being shifted into reverse. How long will it take for >ordered< mass immigration to take place, even on the realistic scale (5-10% of world pop)? And will the people who have to migrate also have to sell their futures to real estate opportunists? Worse yet, if people are to move, how much energy (and from what source) will be needed to build new homes (or are we thinking tent farms?), create new transportation, food, water, energy, communication networks, etc.? And who is going to pay for it? (don't mention raising taxes in the U.S. or, I'm guessing, Canada) And how much ill will and resistance will occur among the "natives" of these immigration destinations (an example)? We do need a change in mentality, but such changes occur very slowly, and how much frustration, misery, and despair will occur in the meantime? -
Doug Bostrom at 04:08 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Argus if you dig into records you'll see that all-time high records were set pretty much across Russia from St. Petersburg to Siberia. Lots of media focus on Moscow, but the impact of the heat wave was much broader. Anyway, this is a "lost in the weeds" argument; persistently zeroing in on distractions about the proper comportment of how information is conveyed is suggestive of a wish or need to ignore a larger message. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:01 AM on 18 August 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
D, all very interesting speculations leaving a myriad of important details unaddressed. Have we got a grip on providing decent living standards for people situated where they live today? If we don't, why would we believe we can relocate hundreds of millions of people and end up with an improvement? Is something about human nature going to change in way that makes such an enormous upheaval and migration feasible, desirable? Anyway, your remarks leave a bigger question hanging in the air. Why set such a course? Why would we do such a thing if we don't have to? -
Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
Canada and Russia are almost empty countries and seem likely to become more hospitable. The northern half of the USA, and its west coast, could possibly warm 6 degrees and still be more habitable than Florida (hot, humid) today. While the USA's not "almost empty", it has <10% the population density of many European countries. It needs a change in mentality. People might have to move country, and countries that believe they have a right to sprawl might have to accept European-style small-scale, space-efficient living - whether this be narrow streets, public transport or row houses. As far as I am aware, the entire world could move to Canada (3 people per km2) and it would still be ... about as densely-populated than England or the Netherlands are today (500 people per km2). I'm not proposing this, but matters might not be as bad as we think, if northern countries with space are willing to let some people in. Europe has some very underpopulated countries; e.g., France, Sweden, Finland. Surely there's space here for 50-100 million climate refugees? I live in the UK which is contemplating a rise in population from 60 million to 70 million by 2050. If this is possible, I fail to understand objections from other cool countries to admitting more people. -
Paul D at 03:25 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
huntjanin: "I can't believe that there will be absolutely NO benefits, anywhere in the world, as a result of sea level rise. Might not some river ports become seaports?" Possible, but then some will be lost as well or very difficult to defend. I don't think one can really say that relocating many millions of people away from flooded coastal cities as being positive. Another problem with increasing sea levels is that salt water makes it's way further up a river causing all sorts of problems. -
JMurphy at 02:34 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Argus wrote : "I am very open for the addition of possible new local (state) records within the U.S. (I did write 'so far'.) I just didn't find any such records where I looked (www.infoplease.com). Way to go, Delaware and Rhode Island!" Did you miss this bit : The persistence of this pattern over the last several months has resulted in the warmest May-July on record for several east coast states from South Carolina to New Hampshire. Have a look at the rest of the NOAA report for July for more details, and to pick other months this year to find more possible records. -
cbrock at 02:24 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Minor technical correction to the post--"vegitation" is a misspelling. Otherwise I agree it reads very smoothly and hits the important points without too much detail. The nuances belong in the "blue" section. -
LewisC at 02:14 AM on 18 August 2010Three new studies illustrate significant risks and complications with geoengineering climate
Batsvensson - your sarcasm is misplaced - particularly in a forum dedicated to rational discussion - if you were to read my posts you'd find no support for the use of sulphate aerosols. What you would find are some of the argumants why Geo-E is now essential to avoid otherwise inevitable catastrophic climate destabilization. You'd do better to address those arguments that to attack a position I don't hold. Regards, Lewis -
muoncounter at 02:13 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#18: "ports that are now on rivers but which, thanks to rising sea levels, might eventually become seaports." I wonder how that's going to be beneficial. Consider the industrial infrastructure in place on the lower Mississippi River and for that matter, all of coastal Louisiana. Here's a snip from a report written in 2006: The technological infrastructure of the petrochemical industry in the Gulf Coast has become more vulnerable in recent years for several reasons. Declining global crude oil and natural gas reserves have rendered supply chains more tenuous and less flexible. Storms have struck the area with increasing ferocity and frequency. And in 2009: "With rising sea levels, subsidence, and catastrophic storms such as Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike, the risk to coastal communities and the critical economic, energy and navigation infrastructure upon which the nation depends is incalculable." In short, rising sea level is a looming disaster along that coast. You won't be able to just pick up oil refineries, pipeline hubs, natural gas compression and processing plants, etc and move them upriver. What will happen to million bbl per day that move through the LOOP? The onshore terminal at Port Fourchon is shown as having an elevation of 0 ft. I supposed this would be considered by some as 'alarmist,' but 'alarm' has an implicit sense of urgency; these concerns have been talked about for years -- and still we do nothing. -
Argus at 01:55 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
JMurphy at 01:53 AM on 17 August, 2010, I am very open for the addition of possible new local (state) records within the U.S. (I did write 'so far'.) I just didn't find any such records where I looked (www.infoplease.com). Way to go, Delaware and Rhode Island! The problem is still that if there will be any new state records this year, USA will still contribute with just 0 km² to the total area, according to the metrics of Dr. Jeff Masters. Unless the national record from Death Valley is also beaten (unlikely), in which case all 9372614 km² will suddenly be added to the total land area that has experienced all-time high. -
Argus at 01:35 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
michael sweet at 00:44 AM on 17 August, 2010: So you think it is OK to claim that 19% of the total land area of Earth has experienced all time heat records, when more than half of this land area (11.5%) is based on one record somewhere in Russia? You find that "helpful". I find it misleading. Criticizing someone who has done the work without providing an alternate method of analysis does not advance understanding at all. Read again! I did provide a possible alternate method of analysis. -
Mikemcc at 00:46 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
One minor point, in the polar melting section surely albedo is dealing with reflection of visible light (mainly),rather than heat. So a lower albedo means more energy is absorbed in the ground to be re-radiated as heat? -
Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
RSVP - I can't let the statement "the more GHG, the more overall absorption and the more emission, therefore the more global cooling" slide by. That statement is completely, absolutely incorrect! You are, for some reason, ignoring the word "absorption", the input side of the equation. Additional GHG's increase the ability of the atmosphere to heat, and yes to cool, via IR. The global and atmospheric effect, however, is that IR on it's way to space is intercepted, re-radiated spherically distributed, causing half of it to go back down, thus reducing the IR to space, and therefore warming the global system. And in the process warming the atmosphere. All three (earth/air/water) are warmer due to GHG's. Not cooler! Increased GHG's raise the ability of air to cool via IR - but at the cost of raising its ability to heat via IR, with a net effect of heating the atmosphere and everything under it. -
Ned at 23:34 PM on 17 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
The standard deviation of both surface and satellite trends is presumably larger than 0.01C/decade. But right now the best estimates of each are less than 0.01C/decade apart (both are 0.16C/decade). Obviously there's a certain element of coincidence in that, and next year they could be 0.15 and 0.17, or vice versa. But the fact that the current observed trends are identical rather nicely contradicts claims (as in Doug Proctor's comment in this thread) that they're diverging. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:30 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
The violent weather phenomena are correlated only with the equally rapid cooling common at the end of long (always quiet) and rapid warming, often at the end of strong and violent El Nino (perfect example is the beginning of LIA, and the last: 1997 / 8; 2010 - the end of a strong El Nino - heat waves and floods, for example in Europe). Altithermal: "... warmest period during the last 75,000 years ..." „The palynological studies (ie, fossil pollen) that boreal coniferous forests (taiga), western Siberia and Canada, then stretched approximately 300 km further north, and so occupied areas, has completely treeless (tundra), but now overgrown with grass, shrubs and moss. Ocean water temperature was higher in some areas by up to 6 ° C above today's, oceans steamed so strongly, resulting in increased humidity. Increased rainfall filled to the brim Saharan pools and lakes, and Lake Chad, for example, took on the size of a real sea, spilling an area comparable to today's Caspian Sea [!!!]. Then it just became a green Sahara and the Middle East. Great rock rites and paintings testify, to the fact that these areas are rich with life and lived on them typical fauna - for today's, of the African savannah.” (author: dr. Ryszkiewicz; translation - unfortunately - my) Altithermal - the SH geological period might have been even warmer than the Eemian - Sangamon. It turns out that only in this period - from several million-year - part of the Atacama desert was green. If this is what I wrote above, and others "deny", it is really a picture of the disaster, it is a picture of a particularly "beautiful" disaster ... Described in the IPCC's fourth report: "increasing the number of violent climatic events", refer only to a further warming of 0.5 - 1 deg. C (maximum of 1.5 deg. C). Response to climate warming is not linear. -
TOP at 23:07 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
The Weizmann Institute in Israel has proposed reforesting the Sahara desert. This is possible because of higher CO2 levels caused by human activity and sufficient water in the area to maintain a reforestation activity for 200 years. Higher CO2 levels allow certain species of trees to prosper with less water. The finding that higher CO2 levels can cause a forest in an arid zone to grow better was a result of studies of the Yatir forest in the Negev. Such a project may be able to absorb all man made green house CO2. In addition the food and building material from such a project would help meet the growing needs of Africa and the rest of the world. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 22:35 PM on 17 August 2010Did global warming stop in 1998? (basic version)
"... does not challenge the conclusion that human activity drives climate change." - and if I and the aforementioned (through me) of scientists - with the great achievements - a lot of significant - “pre-reviewed” - the papers, we agreed with that. We disagree only on the actual "severity - weight " Human activity drives in relation to natural climate variability (estimated by IV IPCC report) - and looking at the "flat" trend in the last decade, especially in the tropics, it seems to us that we have “full” right ..., ... and S. Solomon says: it might really we (maybe) have “partly” right... - this is a small, but - comparison the last period - great progress towards an agreement. -
CBDunkerson at 22:16 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Chriscanaris #7, whether the recent flooding in Pakistan was 'caused' by climate change is irrelevant to the point at hand... it was precisely the kind of flooding which climate change is projected to cause. It's effects have NOT been beneficial. Ergo, a relevant example of the kinds of problems climate driven flooding would cause. BTW, I find the whole 'we cannot say whether climate change "caused" weather event X or not' argument nonsensical. Weather occurs within a climate. If the climate changes significantly then ALL weather which occurs is, in some part, 'caused' by those new climate conditions. Without them the weather WOULD have been different. Could the weather have been 'better' or 'worse'? Sure, it is still weather, with a large degree of natural variability. Thus, in one sense a weather event can only be said to be 'caused' by climate change if it is SO extreme that it falls outside the bounds of what was possible under the previous climate conditions (a situation which we are now approaching), but in another sense ALL weather we are experiencing is 'caused' by climate change because it is all dependent on the current climate. When that weather includes more 'extreme weathers events' than normal then we very much CAN say that climate change has "caused" an increase in such events. -
Berényi Péter at 22:15 PM on 17 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
#27 Ned at 21:02 PM on 17 August, 2010 I do think it's pretty neat that the RSS temperature trend matches the GISS, NOAA, and HADCRUT surface temperature trends to the nearest 0.01C per decade ... Come on, get real. Exaggerated claims do not help us understand what's going on. With an RMS error of ~4°C of individual satellite temperature "measurements", as a rule of thumb, it would require about 16,000 statistically independent data points in a decade to bring the error margin down to 0.01°C. And only if the error is unbiased noise, which, considering the procedure applied (model fitting) is unlikely. -
RSVP at 22:14 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Arkadiusz Semczyszak 25 You will find sea shells incrusted in calcified rocks not too far from Carpatheans (Ojcow). This land was all under the ocean at one point in time. -
Ned at 21:41 PM on 17 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
Pete Ridley writes: You should also read his latest article “Top Climate Scientists Speak out on the Satellitegate Scandal” [...] It might be interesting to have a discussion about the current state of the international constellation of earth observing satellites. Working in this field myself I have strong opinions about this issue. But Mr O'Sullivan's column isn't really a good place to begin that kind of conversation, because of the way it's saturated with lurid and inflammatory claims of fraud, deception, etc. -
Berényi Péter at 21:33 PM on 17 August 2010Temp record is unreliable
One more piece of the puzzle. If DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute) Centre for Ocean and Ice is visited, a very cool melt season can be noticed this year north of the 80° parallel (compared to the 1958-2002 average). It went below freezing two weeks ago (with the sun up in the sky 7×24 hours a week) and stayed there consistently. This is unheard of since measurements started.
Melt season is defined here as the period when 1958-2002 average is above freezing. It is 65 days, from 13 June to 16 August.
One wonders how exceptional this weather might be.
Therefore I have recovered average melt season temperatures for the high Arctic from the DMI graphs for the last 53 years. This is what it looks like:
It is pretty stable up to about 1992. Then, after a brief warming (a tipping point?) it dives into a rather scary, accelerating downward trend. So no, this year is not exceptional, just an extension of the last two decades.
It may even be consistent with recent ice loss of the Arctic Basin, because lower temperatures mean higher pressure, a predominantly divergent surface wind pattern around the Pole, hence increased export of ice to warmer periphery. Of course with further cooling this trend is expected to turn eventually.
However, there is one thing this downward trend is surely inconsistent with. It is the upward trend reported by e.g. GISS (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Goddard Institute for Space Studies) and the computational climate models it is calibrated to, of course.
This conflict should be resolved.
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Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:30 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Glaciers as a water source - in Poland - for students - I explained it this way: when Poland was a year-long glacier in the Carpathians, the water is our main Vistula river were similar (in the flow) to the current supply of its very small - a tiny river: Wisłok .. . The amount of water in the soil would (a year-long glacier in the Carpathians) then be about 10 times smaller. The area of the Poland, could feed population of Lapland, at most, and not present Poland ... Rain water (saturation curve) increase the amount of groundwater to an extent significantly greater compared with the "power" of the glaciers. With overcapacity compensate for losses arising after the disappearance of the glacier. Tibet was a land of "vibrant green" ... - during the early Holocene Optimum, when the glaciers in the Himalayas retreated by more than 3 -5 km farther than today ... So this is where the "over-trust" for "gray references - literature" by the WHO, WWF; and another formal - informal, ecological "green" organization’s ... The only danger of global warming are such that: decreasing the desert can take care of the areas where they are not ..., can move to areas where a lot of people now living. -
Ned at 21:27 PM on 17 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
Pete, actually that's not particularly interesting. Mr O'Sullivan doesn't seem to understand some fundamental problems with his original claims: (1) The satellite-based global mean temperature record doesn't even use the same sensor as the Coastwatch project (the former use microwave radiometers, the latter uses a thermal infrared imager). (2) As Alden Griffith noted way up at the top of the thread, neither UAH nor RSS uses any data from NOAA-16, the satellite in question. In other words, there's absolutely no connection whatsoever between the occasional errors in the NOAA Coastwatch-funded Great Lakes temperature maps and the global mean temperature records cited as confirmatory evidence of climate change. They are completely unrelated data sets. In any case, regardless of whether Mr O'Sullivan understands it, I'm sure you get this point now, right? It's not like the problems with Mr O'Sullivan's claims are obscure or subtle. -
Pete Ridley at 21:06 PM on 17 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
I'm sure that you'll be interested in what the author of the original article about the satellite problems, John O'Sullivan, has to say about this thread's article and comments QUOTE: Thanks! Just saw the link-its deliberate misinformation-it keeps referring to the same BS, "The Great Lakes Coastwatch data are likewise not merged with any of the global mean temperature records produced by NASA, NOAA, the University of East Anglia, the Japanese Meteorological Agency, or others." I don't doubt that the secondary Great Lakes Coastwatch data isn't not fed into other data sets-that's not the issue. The issue is the failure of the SOURCE of the data-NOAA-16.-the RAW data was corrupted before Coastwatch got it. That's why the satellite was taken off commission. The RAW data from NOAA-16 is as "degraded" as the sensor. NOAA has been selling their "degraded" data products to national and international researchers knowing it was junk at least since 2005/6 as affirmed by the evidence given to me by Dr Spencer and Dr Christy and others. No reports of any system 'Degradation" on the sensors appears on the official NOAA-16 Subsystem Summary. Interestingly I've been tipped off that the link in my article to NOAA's subsystem summary page is broken-evidently NOAA has not only removed the satellite's images last week from the web after publication of my first 'satellitegate' article, its now removed the official subsystem summary in the exact same circumstance- its panicking that the wider public will see the obvious fraud. As for SkepticalScience, all I can say is they are VERY desperate to try that obvious trick. Please pass this info on in to others in case any one buys the BS they're peddling. UNQUOTE. You should also read his latest article “Top Climate Scientists Speak out on the Satellitegate Scandal” at http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/26603 Best regards, Pete Ridley -
Ned at 21:02 PM on 17 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
Re: BP's posts in this thread: Neither Spencer & Christy nor Remote Sensing Systems uses a neural network in their processing of MSU/AMSU measurements. Both the UAH and RSS methods have been scrutinized pretty carefully at this point, and S&C of course have a personal inclination towards the "skeptic" camp. The actual estimation of temperatures from the MSUs is not especially controversial or difficult; most of the uncertainty in the trends (RSS vs UAH) comes from disagreements in how to handle the intercalibration of different copies of the instrument as one satellite is replaced by another in the POES constellation. I do think it's pretty neat that the RSS temperature trend matches the GISS, NOAA, and HADCRUT surface temperature trends to the nearest 0.01C per decade ... given that no microwave temperature data are included in the surface reconstructions and no surface measurements are used in the processing of the satellite data. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 20:37 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
A. Korhola: “Decision-makers should make sensible choices regarding the overall benefits in the environment of uncertainty.” “According to Korhola, the mistakes and exaggerations of the IPCC report that have now come to light – for example, regarding the Himalayan glaciers, destruction of the Amazon rain forest, collapse of the grain crop in Africa, and the link between climate change and natural disasters – have in this respect done a favour.” On Spitsbergen, when he was on the “current location on the map”, Polish researchers found that there millions of years ago, were growing - almost as big as the equator - tropical plants - how, why, have reached such proportions? - We do not know ... “heatwaves” - Between 2003 and 2006 - let's look at this figure:
“heatwaves “ were associated with more rapid cooling of (rapid La Nina 2003 and 2006) - such as CLAW hypothesis (?) - low clouds over NH ...
... and malaria
Climate change and the global malaria recession Gething et al., 2010.:
“First, widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent. Second, the proposed future effects of rising temperatures on endemicity are at least one order of magnitude smaller than changes observed since about 1900 and up to two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures. Predictions of an intensification of malaria in a warmer world, based on extrapolated empirical relationships or biological mechanisms, must be set against a context of a century of warming that has seen marked global declines in the disease and a substantial weakening of the global correlation between malaria endemicity and climate.”
and sea level increasing ...
Nils-Axel Mörner (2009.) Open letter to the president of the Maldives:
“When I was president for the INQUA commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999-2003), we spent much effort on the question of present-to-future sea level changes. After intensive field studies, deliberation within the commission and discussions at five international meeting, we agreed on a "best estimate" for possible sea level changes by the year 2100. Our figure was +10 cm ±10 cm. This figure was later revised at +5 cm ±15cm.”
“So, Mr. President, when you ignore to face available observational facts, refuses a normal democratic dialogue, and continue to menace your people with the imaginary threat of a disastrous flooding already in progress, I think you are doing a serious mistake.”
Darfur
- The greening of the Sahel: “Analyses made by several independent groups of temporal sequences of satellite data over two decades since early 1980s, showed a remarkable increasing trend in vegetation greenness.” “Increasing rainfall over the last few years is certainly one reason, but does not fully explain the change.”
“The vast belt of significantly increasing vegetation across the central Sudan corresponds to a large extent to provinces with large numbers of internally displaced people. In the seven Sudanese provinces ... ... almost 2 million people were internally displaced, corresponding to about 24% of the population. Being internally displaced means that people have fled their homes and live elsewhere away from their normal means of incomes, often on the outskirts of towns. As a consequence, agriculture is neglected and livestock dispersed.”
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Eric (skeptic) at 20:31 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Under economic, for the U.S. which has a variety of climate zones, the total heating expenditures are $57B (table SH5 in http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2005/c&e/spaceheating/pdf/alltables1-13.pdf) The total A/C expenditures are $25B (table AC4 in http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2005/c&e/airconditioning/pdf/alltables1-11.pdf) Heating costs are less flexible since a house can be damaged in freezing weather unlike a house without A/C in warm weather. -
Eric (skeptic) at 19:53 PM on 17 August 2010Hockey stick is broken
Re: Comparing proxies against global NH (i.e. EIV) versus regional temperature records (i.e. CPS). The two methodologies are compared in Mann 08 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.full.pdf and are also compared in the new paper (see sections 3.2 and 3.6 in Doug's link in post 26) -
chris1204 at 19:42 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
On a serious note, I think the plain English format as above is a major improvement on the original post. It reads smoothly without dumbing down. On a lighter note, I note Port Jackson or Sydney Harbour is indeed a flooded river valley. Lovely water views, good sailing and so forth. It was last a river valley some 6000 years BCE if my memory serves me. Some parts of the world will continue to rise above sea level - Scandinavia is still in a post-glacial rebound - and other parts are rising due to tectonic activity. Not sure of the comparable rates though. I would cut out the bit about malaria - malaria was an ubiquitous disease until the mid to late 20th century. Other illnesses due to insect vectors might be more of an issue. -
JMurphy at 19:02 PM on 17 August 2010Did global warming stop in 1998? (basic version)
Arkadiusz Semczyszak wrote : "This is a very famous article - an interview with Solomon - The Guardian (29.01.2010) Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals" Very famous ?! Maybe amongst those who spend all their time thinking about AGW, perhaps ? Anyway, good to see the bit you quoted, in its full context, i.e. : Solomon said the new finding does not challenge the conclusion that human activity drives climate change. "Not to my mind it doesn't," she said. "It shows that we shouldn't over-interpret the results from a few years one way or another." -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 18:36 PM on 17 August 2010Did global warming stop in 1998? (basic version)
By the way, could you post a link to that quote from Solomon ? This is a very famous article - an interview with Solomon - The Guardian (29.01.2010) Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals As a reminder - Solomon: “An atmospheric chemist ... ... was one of the first to be stirred into action by reports in the 1980s of deterioration of the planet's OZONE layer.” “ As a co-chair with Dr. Qin Dahe of Working Group 1 of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), she played a key role in producing the report ...” The paper doesn't draw any conclusions ... ? “Satellite measurements were used to show that water vapour levels in the stratosphere have dropped about 10% since 2000. When the scientists fed this change into a climate model, they found it could have reduced, by about 25% over the last decade, the amount of warming expected to be caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.” No 90% “over the last decade” but 90% - 25% ? Merely 65% ? a negative feedback ... ? “She said it was not clear if the water vapour decrease after 2000 reflects a NATURAL shift, or if it was a consequence of a [anthropogenic] warming world [natural - The stratospheric cooling events at the equator ... “Stratospheric temperature is driven by the QBO of magnetic and irradiance activity on the sun.” “The temperature response at 10hPa was about 7.5 degrees.” “The change in total solar irradiance is immaterial.”]. If the latter [AGW feedback] is true, then more warming could see greater decreases in water vapour, acting as a negative feedback to apply the brakes on future temperature rise.” ... they don't believe most of what they're saying? He would like to point out that such skeptics such as Spenser, the two gentlemen Pielke, Segalstad even Lindzen, Lomborg, especially Korhola and von Storch (type of semi-sceptics) does not negate the role of CO2 in the current temperature change, say only that this role - CO2 - In the process of temperature change - by the IPCC - is far too highly estimated. I recently studying how very slowly (but still!) over the past three years to change the views of other "icons" AGW theory - F. Joos. Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate: “Our results are incompatibly lower (P,0.05) than recent pre-industrial empirical estimates of 40 p.p.m.v. CO2 per 6C, and correspondingly suggest 80% less potential amplification of ongoing global warming.” “Coupled carbon–climate models show a wide range in feedback strength, with 20–200 p.p.m.v. [?!] of temperature-driven CO2 ...” “Approximately 40% of the uncertainty related to projected warming of the twenty-first century stems from the unknown behaviour of the carbon cycle ...” If it is not (even slightly) skepticism ... -
huntjanin at 18:24 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
RSVP: If global warming continues, maybe they will work on their tans,too. -
RSVP at 18:20 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
When the coastline of Greenland gets greener, are people going to just take pictures of it? -
RSVP at 18:12 PM on 17 August 2010Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
batsvensson 217 When you see a plane way out on the horizon, it is hard to tell if is coming towards you or going away. Steady observation however reveals the direction over time. If it should be approaching for instance, you know for sure which way it is going. You still may not know how fast. Does the velocity matter, if all you wanted to say was whether it was coming or going? By the same token, it doesnt necessarily take measurements and data to unravel AGW; given the fact that graybodies emit IR as much as they absorb IR, the more GHG, the more overall absorption and the more emission, therefore the more global cooling. This does not exclude the possibility of a localized GHG effect, but overall (i.e. globally), the net result must be more cooling. Another way to look at this whole thing. H20, CO2 and energy are a product of combustion. As a byproduct of combustion, it just turns out you get some gasses that help cool the atmosphere. Imagine if this were not the case,,, over millenium all the brush and forest fires would eventually leave the Earth uninhabitable. It's almost as if it were "designed" perfectly, and yet, we are looking at this completely backwards. -
Ari Jokimäki at 18:06 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
One obvious positive outcome from the sea level rise is that the sea life has more room to live in. Sea life of course faces other serious problems from climate change and other human activities but that's one positive side.
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