Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

Enter a term in the search box to find its definition.

Settings

Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off).

Term Lookup

Term:

Settings

Beginner Intermediate Advanced No Definitions Definition Life:

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

More supplemental reading:

Ted Cruz’s favorite argument about climate change just got weaker by Chris Mooney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Mar 7, 2016

hank at 04:22 AM on 8 March 2016

GWPF throws out centuries of physics, climate scientists laugh, conservative media fawns

> that statistical model to forecast future temperature changes.

> It’s an approach that’s been used to predict financial market

> changes, for example.

You omitted the word "unsuccessfully" there.

jbpawley at 00:46 AM on 8 March 2016

Mapped: The sensitivity of the world’s ecosystems to climate

Hi Will,

As I understand it, this study doesn't measure drought per se, but the sensitivity of thhe local plants to climate. In the case of Syria, I think that the answer may be that although the ecosystem may only be medium-sensitive to climate, the system itself is also so marginal for producing any plant life (as seen in the background of the news photos) that beyond a threshold, a small amount climate change was enough to tip it over the edge. Of course, this doesn't mean that NOTHING would grow, only that farmers could no longer make a living from what they could grow. Here things get complex because the economic viability of farms is affected by variables other than local climate. The massive collapse of small "corn and beans" farms in Mexico was probably caused less by climate change and more by the sudden availablility of cheap imported food from the US driven by NAFTA. Then the force driving emmigration became not so much lack of food as the lack of any money to buy it.

José M. Sousa at 00:33 AM on 8 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

Russia is not a OPEC member

chriskoz at 22:49 PM on 7 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

sauer, I totally agree with you. CO2 pollution is a classic example of Tragedy of the Commons, which is a free market failure. Players on such a failed market will continue to pollute without a price correction (e.g. fee & divident) and/or env regulations.

Taking other examples of Tragedy of the Commons from history: whales would have been hunted to extinction if they were not protected, acid rains would still be falling if filtering regulations were not imposed, ozone would have been destroyed if CFC were not banned.

There is no reason to believe CO2 pollution is any different: if anything, it is a worse TOC than the examples I quoted above because it is more widespread and necessary byproduct of virtually every economy today. A free market, especially US-style, can only aggravate such TOC problem, therefore the failed market must be corrected, at least until a transformed economy renders the pollutant obsolete (we are far far away from that in case of FF). Possibly longer: even today, whale hunting must remain under strict control, otherwise they would be hunted to extinction just for sport. I concur that american thugs would make sure FF burnout continues "just for fun", even if solar was abundant & available for free. That's because FF burning can be more "spectacular" than renewables, by thje same token eg. ferrari turbo engine is more spectacular than electric motor. Strict regulations must keep the desires of such thugs curbed if we want to control CO2 pollution.

Elmwood at 16:17 PM on 7 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

The average inflation adjusted oil price for the last 100 years or so is about $40/bbl. Oil prices are rising now and will likely be above $40 by the end of the year. maybe in a few years they will be back up to $80.
i don't think renewables will have any effect given the speculation and geopolitics that are involved.

COP 21 was a joke and there is basically no to little support for drastically cutting fossil fuel consumption in this country. besides bernie, who will most certainly not win the election, nobody running for POTUS cares.

John Hartz at 06:04 AM on 7 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

Supplemental reading:

Adjusted satellite data derails one of Cruz’s arguments against climate change by Elizabeth Koh, Dallas Morning Herald, Mar 6, 2016

One Planet Only Forever at 02:44 AM on 7 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

While TMT and TTT are scientifically interesting things to better understand, it is clearly the trend in TLT (the values below more of the excess CO2 known to be the result of burning fossil fuels and deforestation to grow commodities that already fortunate people can profit and benefit more from), that would be more relevant as a comparison to the trend of global average surface temperatures (which is clearly the more relevant surface temperature data, particularly the surface data evaluations that include the polar regions since satellite evaluations do not include the polar regions).

It is also interesting, but not really relevant to the evaluation of the impact of excess CO2 from human burning of fossil fuels, that UAH (Spencer and Christy) have recently presented their evaluation of the RSS update (on Dr. Roy Spencer's website), but chose to first report their evaluation of TMT. They have pointed out a couple of reasons they would consider UAH TMT more 'accurate' than RSS TMT. And it appears they wish to imply that their cherry-picked points of critcism in the TMT evaluation by RSS should be the basis for deciding which method of 'guessing how to manipulate the satellite data to represent temperature values' is the better one (with the default claim being that the interpretation of satellite data that UAH is currently on version 6 of is somehow the only valid measure of the human impacts - which isn't really their claim because their presentations to date appear to be based on the fundamental position that the burning of fossil fuels is not a matter of concern and their job is to develop and deliver the 'best possible information in support of that preferred belief').

Clearly, a major impediment to the advancement of humanity continues to be the potential for people who have little interest in advancing humanity to a lasting better future for all to knowingly abuse deliberately deceptive marketing to drum up unjustifiable popular support for irresponsible, unsustainable and damaging economic and political actions. The wealthiest and most influential among these people understand that the required changes to advance humanity would include stopping 'their callous greedy pursuits of personal reward any way they can get away with'. Their motivation is clarly to try anything they think they can get away with to delay the advancement of human understanding and development of a lasting better future for all, including trying to focus the discussion heard about by the general population on the trends of a selective method of determining TMT from satellite data. The objective is to create the impression that the less reliable and less relevant satellite TMT evaluations are strong evidence that any trend in the global average surface temperature data is wrong (it is also an attempt to distract attention from the other clear indications of the unacceptable results of the massive burning of fossil fuels and deforestation being gotten away with for the benefit of already fortunate people to the detriment of the future of humanity).

Bob Loblaw at 00:51 AM on 7 March 2016

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

bicyclebob:

Glenn's comment not-withstanding, but yes spectral radiation is typically expressed in units that include a "per unit length" term. If you think of total energy flux in the radiation as W/m^2 (1 Joule per second, for each m^2 of surface), when you divide that total into a "per wavelength" - i.e. spectral - distribution, you are of necessity divding by the units "wavelength" is measured in. Micrometers or nanometers are common, but there is nothing odd about centimetres, so you get the cm^-1 term. When you integrate over all wavelengths to get a total, you are multiplying wavelength times the "per wavelength" units and cancelling them back out.

Although Beer's Law (the equation you give) is appropriate for determining the absorption of the IR radiation, the emission of IR becomes more complex, as Glenn states. Although absorptivity = emissivity at a specific wavelength for a specific gas, actual emission involves temperature, too.

sauerj at 22:01 PM on 6 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

Riduna, I live in midwest US, the heart of a country that "doesn't have a clue", the "joke of the world" (increasingly so these last couple months).

I am not trying to be a troll or argue against you; I am just being a sad-hearted realist. 1) You mention that solar is 'cost free'. Yes, operating cost is free (unless you have to pay for backup power, likely in US); but capital cost is hardly free (and capital cost is the big deal here, required to get us over the 'conversion' hump). A PV conversion will cost me $10k-$15k installed (link). Even if that were to drop to $5k (there will be too many other installation/labor costs to fall below that), the average US clueless thug would never even consider such a move if the price of FF grid power stays low (my assumption based on the impetus of this article). 2) EV's: Even a CO2 aware guy like me is still going to likely buy a low priced, used small gas car ($15k) versus an EV ($35k in 2017); I simply can not afford to justify the difference. And, I can guarantee you that the average US thug will go buy a Hummer with gas still at $1.50/gal and not even consider an EV.

I am in full agreement that FF's need to go (not trying to be a troll here); I just know people in the US, and I know that as long as FF's are cheap they will use all they can afford plus, in addition, use all the renewable energy they can afford (as they become cheaper). That's my point here; people will just add on more energy usage if it is cheap. In other words, they will consume even more energy per person than they are consuming now, with still a very large chunk of that being FF's. They will buy more gadgits and more useless crap until they have drained all their finances; and cheap FF's will only feed that insatiable consumption.

I remain very skeptical that things are going to get any better (any significant drop in CO2 generation) until FF's are priced to include future costs (CFD). ... Trust me, I do hope that I am wrong, very wrong! But, I really doubt it! I just know the typical, average US mind, and it isn't even close to understanding or caring! It knows just one thing: consume! Just look at the average electorate; need I say more! ... Peace brother!

tmbtx at 20:46 PM on 6 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

I feel like this public examination of the satellite data's limits and uncertainties is finally catching up with the Cruz's abuse of that data. I've been trying find information on why RSS is different for several years now and it's been hard to find. Glad that gap is finally closing.

Glenn Tamblyn at 16:42 PM on 6 March 2016

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

bicyclebob

No, it isn't per a single cm-1 wide, it is much narrower than that. And no, the absorption coefficient isn't just the inverse of the spectral intensity. And at that point everything gets a lot more complicated.

SpectralCalc have a description of some of the calculations and theory here. But I suspect getting to Beer-Lambert from this still involves more stuff.

It always amazes me how simple rules and laws always end up being so complex when we look under the hood.

bicyclebob at 16:23 PM on 6 March 2016

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

Comment 191 shows a graph of log intensity with the units cm^2/cm-mol. I assuming that I(l,v) = I(0,v)) x 10^(-a x C x l), where I(l,v) is the intensity of radiation of frequency v at distance l, a is the absorption coefficient, and C is the concentration of the gas, presumably in moles/cm^3. Am I correct in assuming that the intensity is per a wavelength band one reciprocal cm in width? Am I also correct in assuming that if the log intensity in the units given is -20, then the absorption coefficient is 20. Finally, if I want to compute the IR emissivity, can I just use the Beer's law equation multiplied by the energy per photon and the Boltzmann ratio of excited to ground state at the temperature of the gas? It has been a very long time since I have done these kinds of calculations, and I am not sure I am properly understanding what I am reading.

Glenn Tamblyn at 14:37 PM on 6 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

martin

Possibly. TMT, even with the new Diurnal Drift adjustments, still has a significant stratosperic signal included with it. Their TTT product (also V4.0) attempts to remove some of this.

An interesting comparison might be TTT vs surface in the Tropics.

Riduna at 12:42 PM on 6 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

Sauerj - You raise the point that persistently low prices for fossil fuels would result in their wider use, higher greenhouse gas emissions and delay use of solar to generate clean energy.

This would be the case were it not for the fact that solar energy is relatively cost-free. Its use is presently limited by the efficiency and cost of available technology to use solar energy to generate and store electricity – rather than the cost of fossil fuels. At $50/tonne or less smaller and less efficient coal mines cease production and at less than $30/bbl it is not profitable to pump oil - but the sun continues to shine, delivering energy everywhere.

Advances in photvoltaic cell efficiency is rapidly approaching a point where the cost of solar generated electricity is less than use of coal or oil, even at their present depressed prices. Battery and other technology enable production of electric vehicles which are increasingly competitive with vehicles fuelled by fossil fuels, both in terms of performance and cost. If you had $25,000 and could choose between an EV, range 500k per charge, and a fossil fuelled vehicle, which would you choose? Most business and vehicle owners do not care where their energy needs come from or how it is produced – as long as it is the cheapest available and reliable. They will abandon fossil fuelled energy for solar as the latter becomes increasingly competitive due to technological advances. Those advances are now being made with growing momentum and will result in wider demand for and use of electricity – not fossil fuels.

Riduna at 12:40 PM on 6 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

Miguelito - Japan and USA were both significant LNG importers in 2014 but are now exporters and in 2015 China’s consumption of LNG fell by 1.1%. So no surprise that global consumption of LNG fell in 2015 or that this added to a market already awash with hydrocarbons. This is now being aggravated by new LNG production facilities in Australia and Qatar starting production in 2016. In the absence of increased demand, this addition to the LNG glut is likely to prolong depressed prices. Over the next decade, LNG will have to compete with solar generated electricity, likely to be delivered and stored more cheaply than LNG. Customers will opt for the cheapest form of energy available. That is likely to be clean solar generated electricity rather than CO2 emitting LNG.

martin3818 at 06:48 AM on 6 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

Does RSS 4.0 have any bearing on the existence or non-existence of the tropospheric hotspot?

sauerj at 02:46 AM on 6 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

Sorry, a lower FF price does not encourage me. The driving force for energy users to move off of FF only gets less attractive as the cost of FF drops. I would rather see a rise in FF price and, at the same time, a drop in sales. If this were the case, then this would be true evidence that economic incentives were truly moving in the right direction to eradicate FF usage.

The metric that is missing here is demand and not just by each individual energy type but total demand presented as CO2 produced by all FF combustion (i.e. coal may be going down, but is gas simply taking its place). Until the CO2 generation metric actually starts to drop, we are only eluding ourselves that man is actually getting off FF's. This metric is, in the end, all that matters.

My worry is that as FF prices drop (w/ little economic incentive to actually quit using them), renewable energies will simply be "added on" to man's array of energies. As a result, man will only invent new & more ways to use yet more energy (per person), resulting in still using all of the FF energy he was previously using PLUS the additional renewable energy. This has been man's trend as new a different & lower cost energy options have come economically available (he just consumes more & more).

For me, the only truly effective means to really get the job done is CFD (carbon fee & dividend). We have got to price FF's to include true costs (which include future costs). ... Please join CCL (Citizen's Climate Lobby); I believe it is the main activist group that has Fee & Dividend legislation as its primary goal. Click on link to became a member & join a local chapter today!!!

malkazoid at 21:57 PM on 5 March 2016

It's methane

Deathtokoalas - that's a lot of factors you're asking us to ignore, and they are factors that are not being dealt with so I'm not sure why we should ignore them. What matters it the current impact of agriculture, not what it could be if we wished away various aspects of it, wouldn't you say?

Your argument is misleading. Increased rumination due to our apetite for animal flesh puts methane and the resulting CO2 and water vapor into the atmosphere. This is the bottom line - as long as these animals release gas, this will remain true. Where would the constituents of methane be if they were not being farted out? They would be in trees that would be, on net, absorbing CO2 instead of releasing it. When the trees die, their carbon returns beneath ground (unless we burn the wood).

So the effect of clearing massive swathes of forest (which is not being offset by replanting), plus pushing carbon from plant growth into methane and up into the atmosphere, is not neutral at all... or am I missing something?

Miguelito at 14:15 PM on 5 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

So, I've gone and looked and, contrary to what i believed, demand actually fell 2% in 2015, which surprises me (Asian demand was falling, but European imports doubled). So you're right about that.

But, still, the big driver in the fall in prices is the big growth in supply and the drop in oil prices. Even if demand had been flat, or even slightly growing, it still wouldn't have been able to keep up with the growth in supply.

Miguelito at 13:38 PM on 5 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

Oh, and importantly, the price of LNG used to be linked to oil prices in Asia in what they used to call the Japanese crude cocktail. But, with the big drop in oil prices, that price support is gone as well.

So, there are lots of reasons why LNG prices have fallen and it isn't because of declining demand.

nigelj at 12:30 PM on 5 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

One Panet Only @1.

I broadly agree. Cruz's core supporters will be slow to change their views. They are the modern equivalent of the flat earth society, and will not change until temperatures are truly off the scale. Cruz is manipulating them for political purposes.

Cruz is locked into his views now, and wont want to lose face by admitting he was wrong. Basically the science is unfortunately being dominated or sidelined by a huge range of social / political forces and human failings.

wili at 11:05 AM on 5 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

Mann has said the spike we are seeing cannot be explained by El Nino alone. Besides underlying, ongoing GW, might we be seeing some result of the removal of some of the 'aerosol umbrella' of coal plant aerosols now that China's economy is slowing down and since it is supposedly working to close down the dirtiest coal plants?

Miguelito at 10:55 AM on 5 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?

"Demand for [natural gas] has fallen at the same time as capacity to produce has increased. The result has been a dramatic collapse in the price of LNG."

No. not in the slightest.

Demand is still growing, it's just that supply has been growing much faster over the past few years. So now there's far more gas entering the market than there is demand for it.

That's why LNG prices have crashed, not because demand has fallen.

nigelj at 08:12 AM on 5 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

The latest UAH satellite temperature data also shows a huge temperature spike for February 2016. Any so called recent "pause" in this data looks well and truly over.

GFW at 04:37 AM on 5 March 2016

Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover?
An editing note: I don't think anyone uses PVC to mean Photovoltaic Cells. PVC always means polyvinyl chloride - a type of plastic. I suggest that "PVC" be replaced by "PV" or "PV array" as appropriate throughout this article.In one particular case, there's a complicating mistake"In Australia, over 1,250,000 houses have PVC displays with capacity to generate..."I think "displays" is just a typo or bad auto-correct, and was supposed to be "arrays".

wili at 03:12 AM on 5 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

Grist now covering the issue: grist.org/climate-energy/global-warming-is-now-in-overdrive-we-just-hit-a-terrible-climate-milestone/

wili at 01:53 AM on 5 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

We also just smashed through the limits set just a few weeks ago by the entire international community, at least for monthly (1.5 C in Feb) and daily (2 C on March 3, northern hemisphere) anomalies.

robertscribbler.com/2016/03/03/the-roof-is-on-fire-looks-like-february-of-2016-was-1-5-to-1-7-c-above-1880s-averages/

LINK

Moderator Response:

[RH] Shorten link that was breaking page format.

Rob Honeycutt at 22:52 PM on 4 March 2016

CO2 limits will harm the economy

pwlg... The idea of a carbon tax is to bring the external costs related to carbon emitting energy into the marketplace. Currently, we already pay a "tax" for fossil fuels in terms of the impacts of carbon emissions on the overall economy. The cost is estimated to be somewhere between, I think, $30-$200+ per ton of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Those costs are an existing burden on the economy. In essence, those costs are currently "socialize" into our economy. We all pay that price.

What a carbon tax does is pull those cost into the marketplace. It says, carbon emitters must bear the responsibility of that burden on the economy. That puts alternative means of energy production on a more even playing field with carbon emitters.

When that happens, you, as a consumer, have fully marketized choices. It's no longer an issue of choosing between carbon emitting or non-carbon emitting energy. You just make your choices based on price. You're obviously going to choose the lowest price source of energy. And overall, the cheapest energy is going to also be the lowest carbon emitting choice.

scaddenp at 14:15 PM on 4 March 2016

CO2 limits will harm the economy

Looks like a shrinking industrial sector also markedly help with the reduction in consumption. Not sure you would want to advocate that.

scaddenp at 14:07 PM on 4 March 2016

CO2 limits will harm the economy

Try looking here. Improving fuel economy and fewer miles travelled. Now why did fuel ecomony improve? Actually, which to libertarians hate more - a pigovian carbon tax or fuel economy standards?

I think less driving and demand for better efficiency are driven by perception (and reality) higher fuel costs. Carbon tax just plugs into that process. Want to bet on declining fuel consumption will fuel prices dropping and improving economy?

I am curious as why you think a carbon tax will not reduce GHG emissions? Do you like paying tax?

pwlg at 13:48 PM on 4 March 2016

CO2 limits will harm the economy

You've used BC as an example of how carbon pricing works and linked how lower fuel consumption was an outcome of BC's carbon pricing.

However, in the US, they've achieved even greater results in lowering fuel consumption without a carbon tax.

From "Explaining the US Petroleum Consumption Surprise", June 2015, Executive Office of the President of the United States:

"U.S. petroleum consumption was lower in 2014 than it was in 1997, despite the fact that the economy grew almost 50 percent over this period. Petroleum consumption peaked in 2004 and the subsequent decline was one of the biggest surprises that has occurred in global oil markets in recent years. Actual consumption in 2014 was 6.4 million barrels per day (b/d) below the 2003 projection of 2014 consumption, which we refer to as the 25 percent consumption surprise for 2014. This consumption surprise is nearly twice as large as the 3.4 million b/d U.S. production surprise in 2014, and it frees up roughly $150 billion for spending on other purposes (2014 dollars).

I'm all for reducing petroleum consumption not only in BC or the US but around the world. Pumping oil out of the ground in North America, transporting it to tide line and shipping overseas to be burned there rather than in North America doesn't make sense either. Embracing carbon taxes may console one's conscience but it may do nothing to reduce GHG emissions. The US outperformed BC without carbon pricing. Why?

LINK

Moderator Response:

[RH] Shortened link that was breaking page formatting.

michael sweet at 13:44 PM on 4 March 2016

Climate scientists worry about the costs of sea level rise

Riduna,

There are developed areas in Miami where there is only 4 feet of rise in ten miles. 1 meter sea level rise in those areas would inundate 8 miles inland. The fresh water wells for Miami are located 3 feet above historic sea level and they have seen about 9 inches of sea level rise already. 2.5 more feet and their wells are under sea water.

This Climate Central map shows substantial areas inland from Fort Lauderdale (just north of Miami) inundated by 4 feet of sea level rise. Storm surge would make that area uninhabitable long before the area is submerged by the rising sea. Miami will be an island with no water.

Many inundation maps on the internet are based on satalite observations and map the tops of trees and buildings. These maps underestimate submergence by rising sea levels since no-one can live in the tree tops. Climate Central is good for the USA.

In Tuvalu and other low lying islands the highest habitable areas in the entire country are less than two meters above sea level and they have already seen over 20 cm of sea level rise.

On reading the UNFCCC summary of the Bruun rule it appears to me that the Bruun rule applies to small sea level rises (a few centimeters) and does not scale up to meter sea level rise.

One Planet Only Forever at 13:14 PM on 4 March 2016

Ted Cruz's favorite temperature data just got a lot hotter

I am encouraged by the continuously improved understanding of what is going on.

However, I seriously question the claim that “It’s now clear that Senator Cruz has been hoisted by his own petard.”

The likes of Cruz do not appear to suffer any real consequences when better understanding that proves they were wrong arises.

Fundamentally, the lack of nearly immediate significant consequences for the likes of Cruz is the problem. They clearly play this game to delay losing, because maximizing the personal rewards they get in their lifetime is their primary interest.

There is little hope for humanity to advance to a better future as long as 'developing and disseminating deliberately misleading information to promote and prolong activity that can be understood to be contrary to the advancement of humanity to a lasting better future for all' can be gotten away with.

And since many of the wealthy powerful people today understand that their wealth and power came from getting away with actions they could understand were not going to advance humanity to a lasting better future for all there is little momentum in global leadership to actually admit how unacceptable things have become.

The core supporters of the likes of Cruz will likely remain entrenched solidly behind him. Many of them are probably unaware that he most likely knew he promoted the presentation of deliberately misleading information through the US Government position he holds and can abuse. And the ones among his core supporters who learn about the unacceptability of what he did will probably consider it to be another reason to become an even more committed supporter and defender of him, because what he did suits their interests.

scaddenp at 12:39 PM on 4 March 2016

Climate scientists worry about the costs of sea level rise

1cm of rise on a delta (low-lying, salt intrusion, soft sediment) is a big deal. On a cliff bound coast, you wouldnt notice it.

Glenn Tamblyn at 12:08 PM on 4 March 2016

Climate scientists worry about the costs of sea level rise

riduna

The UNFCCC has this to say about Bruun's Rule

"The Bruun rule is only applicable for small scale local sites."

I think the point might be that in regions where man-made non-eroding structures such as dykes define the shoreline, then the impacts can be very non-linear. In a beach erosion situation something like Bruun's Rule would apply. And it is possibly different agian in situations where substantial salt water intrusion into things like water tables can occur even before the land is overrun.

Riduna at 11:52 AM on 4 March 2016

Climate scientists worry about the costs of sea level rise

Expectations are that erosion of the coastline will occur where there is a sea level rise (SLR). Bruuns Rule states that on average each 1cm of sea level rise results in about 1m of coastal recession. In other words, for each meter of sea level rise, the coastline is eroded, over time, by 100 meters.

The point raised by Dr Abraham is that SLR of itself is not the salient factor when it comes to coastal damage but rather the increased incidence of extreme events which SLR engenders. Does this invalidate Bruuns Rule?

HK at 03:29 AM on 4 March 2016

Explainer: how surface and satellite temperature records compare

MA Rodger:
The +0.125°C/decade trend I gave for TMT v4.0 is from a graph by Mears et. al (presented by Tamino here), which doesn’t include data after 2014. That figure grows to +0.133°C/decade once you add the last 14 (very hot!) months. I guess this also explains the difference between the figure in that graph for TMT v3.3 (+0.078°C) and yours (+0.083°C).
It is worth noting that TMT has a significant contribution from the stratosphere. The TTT channel is less influenced than TMT, but still more than TLT. In spite of that, the trend for TTT v4.0 is as high as 0.172°C/decade, so I’m really eager to see what TLT v4.0 will be like.

MA Rodger at 01:41 AM on 4 March 2016

Explainer: how surface and satellite temperature records compare

HK @5.

Are you sure about those TMT trends? I get the +0.133ºC/decade for TMT v4.0 but I get +0.083ºC/decade for TMT v3.3. As I'm tapping this comment out, I have a thought that the +0.125ºC/decade could be TLT v3.3.

KR at 00:25 AM on 4 March 2016

Explainer: how surface and satellite temperature records compare

Many of the updates to the satellite records, in particular updates with large changes to trends, have been over diurnal cycle corrections. Looks like the most recent paper (Mears and Wentz 2016) involves a big one, replacing GCM estimates of the diurnal cycle drift with internal consistency checks from the satellites themselves.

The new temperature record is now more consistent between satellites, as well as more consistent with total column water vapor over the tropics, so it seems well supported.

It will be interesting to watch the UAH group (Drs Christy and Spencer) react to this - UAH is now the extreme outlier with its low trend, the unverified V6 being much more so than V5.6.

HK at 22:39 PM on 3 March 2016

Explainer: how surface and satellite temperature records compare

The revision of the RSS data I mentioned in my last post has now been updated to include February -16. That changes the TMT trend from 0.125 to 0.133 K/decade. This revision (v4.0) has also been applied to the TTT channel (temperature total troposphere), with the revised trend now being 0.172 K/decade. The TLT channel has not been revised yet, but when it is, it will probably show an even bigger trend than the TTT, as it is less influenced by the stratosphere than both TMT and TTT.

It seems that at least one satellite record is starting to agree pretty well with the surface records!

Daniel Bailey at 21:51 PM on 3 March 2016

Antarctica is gaining ice

"Antarctic ice? If the land ice is melting but the sea ice is increasing"

In reality, Arctic sea ice is at a record low and global sea ice is diminishing.

"Sea ice increases in Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last decades, a new NASA study finds. As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year."
“Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum this past September, global sea ice is still decreasing,” said Claire Parkinson, author of the study and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “That’s because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.”
“When I give public lectures or talk with random people interested in the topic, often somebody will say something in the order of ‘well, the ice is decreasing in the Arctic but it’s increasing in the Antarctic, so don’t they cancel out?’” Parkinson said. “The answer is no, they don’t cancel out.”

NASA LINK
NATURE LINK
NSIDC LINK

Further, Antarctic sea ice is shrinking, now statistically indistinguishable from the long-term average:

LINK, showing current extent of Antarctic sea ice

NSIDC LINK

wili at 12:48 PM on 3 March 2016

Climate scientists worry about the costs of sea level rise

Not just about see level rise, but wrt costs of gw generally:

m.insurancebusinessonline.co.nz/news/lloyds-makes-call-on-climate-change-206300.aspx
"An increase in temperature of more than 2 degrees could lead to a lack of affordable insurance"

bozzza at 12:15 PM on 3 March 2016

Climate scientists worry about the costs of sea level rise

Sea ice and sea level rise are not in a direct relationship.

When do we say that they are and is this the signal that markets are waiting for?

Glenn Tamblyn at 11:07 AM on 3 March 2016

Antarctica is gaining ice

B14

" don't we have two separate causes?" Yep. Maybe more than 2.

Sea Ice has increased a little in the last few years although mainly at the maximum in winter. This year, at the summer minimum it is rather low. Drivers of sea ice extent? Possible changes in sea water salinity, changing the freezing point of the water. Changes in the winds around Antarctica, driving more spreading of the ice and freezing over of the open water created. The wind patterns may have changed due to a combination of the current Pacific Decadal Oscillation which has now started changing, and the ozone hole allowing more sunlight to reach the surface rather than being absorbed in the stratosphere; the extra energy from this may have accelerated the winds.

In Antarctica land ice doesn't melt much - it is too cold. Rather it flows slowly to the coast and eventually breaks off as icebergs. Factors changing this? Ice sheet breakup. Floating ice sheets (not seasonal sea ice) act as buttresses, slowing the speed with which land ice can flow. Some have broken up. Grounding line retreat. This applies particularly in West Antarctica where the 'land ice' is actually sitting on the sea floor 100's and even 1-2000 meters below sea level. Sea water intrusion at the grounding line is causing some retreat of the grounding line, so that ice that was grounded ends up floating, and easier for icebergs to break off. The key here is what is happening to sea water temperatures at the base of these sheets, 100's of meters down. This in turn can depend on differences in what is happening to different currents at different depths.

Some recent research also suggests there is a critical threshold wrt the height of ice cliffs. It seems ice when it contains cracks isn't strong enough to allow ice cliffs to rise much more than 100 meters above sea level. Otherwise it breaks off. Then buoyancy of the remaining submerged ice can then break that off from the main ice cap.

Ice is way more complicated than just melting and freezing.

Tom Curtis at 08:28 AM on 3 March 2016

Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

shorter arationofreason @228, "I have had this random thought bubble. This random thought bubble disagrees with the conclusions of 1000s of scientists who have devoted tens of thousands of person hours to the problem. Therefore the 1000s of scientists must be wrong, and so wrong that only utter stupidity or corruption could explain the error."

The breath taking arrogance displayed demonstrates that 'arationofreason' is on a very short ration of reason indeed.

Among the facts that arationofreasonneglects in his thought bubble are that:

1) The CO2 contribution to the total greenhouse effect is about 20%, not 1%;

2) The 1.7 W/m^2 is the change in the CO2 contribution since the preindustrial, not the total contribution;

3) Because CO2 does not precipitate out with reduced temperature, while water does, the upper troposphere has very much less H2O than does the surface, but very close to the same amount of CO2, resulting in CO2 dominating IR absorption and reemission in the upper troposphere;

4) Because H2O precipitates out with reduced temperature, eliminating all CO2 (and hence 20% of the total greenhouse effect) would result in the precipitation of a great deal of the H2O in the atmosphere, reducing the IR impact of the remaining H2O. That in turn would precipitate out yet more H2O, and so on. The net effect is that in the absence of all long lived greenhouse gases, and assuming there had been no increase in the extent of ice sheets and/or deserts (ie, that albedo only changed due to reduced cloud cover, and increase in snowfields), only 10% of the current H2O would remain in the atmosphere, and temperatures would plumet by around 35 degrees celcius.

You don't need to be stupid or corrupt to not realize the above. All you need to do is to mistake abysmal ignorance for wisdom.

Moderator Response:

[PS] You know better but thanks for tackling the substance.

Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

Settings

Term Lookup

Settings

Latest Posts

Recent Comments