Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 745 746 747 748 749 750 751 752 753 754 755 756 757 758 759 760 Next
Comments 37601 to 37650:
-
shoyemore at 21:27 PM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Is anyone else having trouble with their login?
My (perfect valid (I thought) password no longer works.
On asking, I got sent another one, but the message seems to mean this is happening often.
Moderator Response:[DB] Check your email.
-
DMarshall at 19:52 PM on 16 March 201430 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science
Bernie Sanders not only made the "97% consensus argument" but alluded to the links between denialism of tobacco as a carcinogen & that of AGW.
-
Bjorn10256 at 18:41 PM on 16 March 201430 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science
For iPad and Android use the app "Photon". A web browser/flash player which allows you to watch Flash.
-
Wol at 15:51 PM on 16 March 201430 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science
>>It's probably a Flash problem, a "feature" of iPads. The video works on a PC in all browsers.<<
Didn't work for me either, on a PC.
However, I was not logged on: when I did log on it worked eventually, after I had refreshed it and clicked several times on the various "play" arrows. -
Steve L at 14:31 PM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
The Lawrence Torcello article on criminal negligence of the climate confusionists -- amusing to see commenters still obsessing about Mike Mann and "hide the decline". More relevantly, I think it would be very instructive to compare/contrast the criminality of fake climate skeptics to that of the tobacco producers who downplayed health risks and have been sued.
-
wili at 10:21 AM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
From the "How Much Hotter..." article: "the latest findings show that the cooling effect of aerosol pollution from factories and fires has been underestimated"
I was under the impression the recent studies had actually shown that the cooling effect of aerosols had been _over_ -estimated, not underestimated. Am I missing something here. There was now study linked in the original article to support this contention.
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - there have been a number of research papers that have suggested global dimming in the early 21st century. For example - see this SkS post: Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade.
But more recently see Schmidt et al (2014), and note this image from their paper:
Reduced solar radiation, volcanic and industrial pollution aerosols appear to have contributed to a smaller-than-expected net forcing of the climate. Still an area of large uncertainty I'm afraid.
-
Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Timothy Chase @ 36. Thanks again - lots of interesting reading there.
-
Tom Curtis at 08:08 AM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R @82, I find it seriously offensive that mister "only studies which find low climate sensitivity are valid" should accuse me of cherry picking.
In this case, you are claiming that there is a wall on ocean temperatures at, or about 30 C. As already explained, that tropical ocean temperatures are very stable is hardly surprising. They are ocean temperatures, with a large thermal mass. They are tropical temperatures, with near contant insolation over the year. And they are smoothed (mixed) both vertically across the thermocline, and laterally by both currents and wind so that large excursions are unlikely. That smoothing was not enough for you. You presented as evidence of the "wall" data that was a multi-annual montly average. That is, you presented as evidence of an upper limit on temperatures data that had any excursions beyond that limit smoothed out.
As to my purported cherry pick, to falsify the claim that a temperture series never exceeds 32 C, I need present only one example of a record above 32 C. That you then accuse me of "cherry picking" because I focus on an instance that falsifies your claim shows cutzpah, I'll grant you. It does not show intellectual integrity. In fact it shows rather the opposite, in that you gloss over the fact that my supposedly "cherry picked" example is not the only example of such a high temperature in the data shown, or even the highest shown (see also 2005 which has a day with a maximum temperture higher than 37 C). It also glosses over the fact that I pointed to two monthly records for a nearby station of 40 C, and to the highest recorded SST which is well in excess of your "wall".
If you are going to accuse me of cherry picking for pointing to instances that falsify your claims, this discussion is over. If you want it to continue, I expect an apology. If that is not forthcoming, I have done more than enough to show that on the science of climate change you are ignorant, and in fact dismiss any data you find inconvenient from consideration.
-
michael sweet at 08:01 AM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
While we are on the subject of "egregious cherry pick"s, I wonder why we are using sea temperatures from a Central Pacific island to illustrate maximun sea temperatures? Kirimati is one of the farthest east islands in the Pacific. Everyone knows that the highest temperatures in the Pacific are always in the Western Pacific. The trade winds push the hottest water west. The claim that it is desirable to get away from continental effects is not sufficient to choose an area strongly affected by upwelled cold water coming from the coast of South America. A location where sea temperatures are not artificialy lowered would be a much better location to use for this example. November in Rabul is already 30.2 average and 31.2 maximum.
-
Timothy Chase at 05:03 AM on 16 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
BC, I have little doubt Rob Painting has more background in this area than I do, and would defer to him in this.
Personally, while I was aware of the existence of the gyres, I thought of their motion as being principally horizontal and hadn't considered their vertical effects. However, it makes sense that they would involve that as well, similar to hurricanes, the latter of which involve a vertical pumping action and are responsible for some of the poleward circulation of heat in both the atmosphere and ocean.
However, what I was refering to in terms of "quasi-stability" was simply the tendency of the system to chaotically move about a mean state where the mean state itself remains unchanged and the system has no overall trend. In this sense, I was refering to the system's tendency to regress towards the mean. When a trend is involved you would have regression towards the trend.
But typically the term gets used in climatology to refer to the tendency of the system to remain within any one of several states that are "stable" for only a finite time, typically according to a characteristic time scale. With ENSO the quasi-stable states would be the El Nino, La Nina and neutral states. Other oscillations may have only positive and negative quasi-stable states.
There is however one point that I would like to touch on, a potential misunderstanding, basically where I speak of constructive and destructive interference between ENSO, PDO and IPO. When one looks at how they overlap, one possibility that suggests itself is that they are essentially independent of one another, independent modes that are superimposed and simply additive in their effects.
However, one indication that this is not the case is that a correlation with lag-time exists between El Ninos and the the positive phase of PDO. The positive phase of PDO will often follow an El Nino within a matter of three to six months, thus the El Nino appears to act as a trigger for the PDO flipping states. The reason, it would seem, is that their existence and consequent interaction involves various feedbacks.
Anyway, you might find some value in a comment I made in an earlier thread several years ago that goes into things in more detail. It includes both references and links. Frankly, I do a better job there than I would be capable of at present without more review. However, at one point it refers to a piece by Atmoz that has since been taken down. This is still in the Wayback Machine.
-
Russ R. at 02:23 AM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Tom Curtis @81,
No need to apologize for the tardy response.
What you should, however, be apologizing for is what amounts to the most egregious cherry pick I've ever seen.
You showed a daily high temperature at Kirimati on Oct 26, 2010 of 37C as evidence to counter my "wall" argument about tropical ocean temperatures.
Without further comment, here are the full daily records at that station back to 2000:
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014 (ytd)
-
Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Timothy Chase at 32 and Moderator comment at 30. Thanks for the detailed response. It's obviously more complicated than I thought and pretty interesting too. What I hadn't realised was the idea of the quasi-stability with heat going in to oceans (IPO negative, La Nina) having to balance heat going out of oceans (IPO positive, El Nino) over time. That makes sense.
One further question/comment about 32. You mention the thermohaline effects but not the subtropical ocean gyres - see comment 34 from Rob Painting, who did a post on this topic a few months ago. I suspect I had this in mind when I made my comment at 30. Would this heat transfer and the strong warming of the 0-2000m layer be why the stability you mentioned is only quasi?
-
Rob Painting at 16:13 PM on 15 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Barry - I think that pretty much sums up contrarians - they're not really interested in science, i.e. how the physical world really works, but simply jump from dataset to dataset in order to affirm their wishful thinking. As you point out, ocean heat content is a classic example - all the contrarians thought it the greatest thing since sliced bread when the 0-700 metre layer exhibited cooling in the mid 2000's.
Since then we've discovered that that was largely due to more heat being pumped down into the deep ocean via the subtropical ocean gyres, and that the 0-2000 metre layer has been warming strongly. With a longer record we have more confidence that the trend is robust, but contrarians have abandoned the ocean heat content data because it doesn't affirm what they'd like to believe. Hardly a surprise.
.....Meanwhile back in the real world the Earth continues to build up heat, and a return to the positive phase of the IPO (strong surface warming) draws ever closer.......
-
barry1487 at 15:37 PM on 15 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Re OHC, I remembered that 5 or 6 years ago (or more) RP Snr was consistently saying that ocean heat content is a much better metric to measure global warming than surface temps (I agree). Around that time he was pointing out that OHC for 2003 - 2006 had not risen, and prior warming was not homogenous across the oceans. A few years later with more data, and we see OHC has continued to increase, so I wondered how RP Snr had interpreted that. I found a post citing him at WUWT, where he advises that the problematic OHC data is not robust enough to rely on.
I haven't followed RPS as much as I used, but I long respected him for being a qualified alternative voice on climate science, whether or not I agreed with him. Do I have the narrative right, here? Did he really promote OHC as the best metric, then use it to emphasise little or no warming (or cooling), and then when warming continued called the data into question?
Good post, BTW. Thanks.
-
Tom Curtis at 10:53 AM on 15 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R @78 & 79, first, sorry for my very tardy response.
Second, thankyou for your agreement that the WV feedback increases in strength with rising temperature. As we are near a minimum for the ice albedo feedback, the implication is that we are at, or near a minimum climate sensitivity with respect to the current configuration of continents, and that increasing temperatures will increase climate sensitivity rather than decrease it.
Having said that, your agreement seems half hearted. You go on to say:
"I don't think it requires anything more than simple assertion to argue that the addition of heat to surface water causes it to evaporate, and rise, and then subsequently condense, and fall back to the surface."
Actually, that does require more than assertion. The tendency of rising water vapour to condense is a function of temperature. In an isothermal atmosphere, it would not condense as it rises, and as I recently learned, an atmosphere without greenhouse gases would be isothermal (or an immeasurably close approximation to isothermal). What you think you can claim by simple assertion is a contingent fact, depending on empirical conditions.
What is worse, it as a drastic oversimplification. As I have already discussed the potential impact of cloud top height, you know that your "simple assertion" glosses over a lot of relevant detail that can change the conclusions you seek. Another example is cloud droplet size. In optically thick clouds, increasing cloud droplet size decreases albedo. With more water vapour in the air, cloud droplet size is likely to increase (a fact evident everyday with the large, heavy droplets of rain found in the tropics). Consequently warming air will likely reduce cloud albedo per unit area, but may increase cloud area. You seem to be prepared to "simply assert" that the former effect is irrelevant, and only the later need be considered. Certainly you "rebutted" evidence that warmer temperatures will increase the GHE of clouds by your "simple assertion".
Frankly, in the face of these and other complexities, your simple assertion has all the logical elegance, and persuasiveness of (snip)
You also simply asserted that "... vertical heat transfer can occur by convection in addition to radiation,which your response ignores", which is odd given that none of my points relied on denying or ignoring that, and one (increased cloud height with increased temperature) directly relied on the fact that heat can be transferred by convection.
Your last simple assertion was that "...in any tropical ocean location, the surface temperature after an afternoon rainfall is lower, not higher, than before". That may be true, or not. I have seen, and you have provided no data on that fact. It is probable, IMO, in that tropical rainfall tends to start around 2-3 pm (ie, once the day starts cooling), and finish one to two hours later. Your imputation that the cooling is due to the rainfall is, therefore, very dubious. Rather, on nearly all afternoons in the marine tropics, it cools in the afternoon after about 1-2 pm, and that cooling may well result in precipitation. (I notice that you are carefull to cherry pick your assertion by limiting it to afternoon rainfall. Morning rainfall, I am sure, is accompanied on most occassions by a warming with time.)
Moving on, you continue to attempt to defend your claim of a wall in sea surface temperatures. This time you do so by showing that if you average an unspecified number of years data of averages of approximately 30 days data (monthly averages) the temperatures do not show extremes. That was, of course, obvious from the moment you took averages.
If instead of looking at averages, you look at daily temperatures you find things are more variable:
In this case, the daily temperatures are for 2010, Kiritimati, Kirribati. For Tarrawa, Kirribati, temperatures have reached as high as 40 C, both in March and December. What is more, maximum (and average) temperatures in Kirribati have been increasing. In the case of maximum temperatures, they have increased by 0.18 C per decade since 1950, or by 1.1 C over that period. Neither local maximum temperature records, nor the increase over time seem aware of the wall you are so confident in.
There are good physical reasons to think the very high maximum temperatures occassionally experienced in Kirribati are not perfectly reflected in SST. Indeed, had they been, they would have broken the world record SST of 36.67 C (Persian Gulf). But that record itself shows your wall to not exist. Likewise the higher SST in past eras determined by proxies show the wall to not exist. The "wall" is a figment of the imagination, having no physical basis, and stands refuted by actual temperature records from instruments and proxies.
Perhaps you will not shift the wall up to 36 C. If so, you will make the fallacy of the reasoning behind the wall plain to all. For any set of circumstances, there must be some SST which is not in fact exceded. What that temperature is is a function of the particular circumstances. The existence of a de facto limit in no way proves that it is an absolute limit, such that if circumstances change it will not be exceeded. Treating it as such is simple a non sequitor.
(More later)
Moderator Response:[PS] snipped portion unlikely to promote constructive debate,
-
Pete Wirfs at 10:26 AM on 15 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Same here.
-
Andy Skuce at 05:01 AM on 15 March 201430 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science
People trying to read this post on an iPad may not be able to view the video, instead seeing a blank space between the second and third paragraphs. The video shows Senator Sanders citing the Cook et al consensus paper.
It's probably a Flash problem, a "feature" of iPads. The video works on a PC in all browsers.
-
Timothy Chase at 04:45 AM on 15 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
BC, you write:
"And when the IPO inevitably shifts back into a warm phase, all the heat now being stored in the deep oceans will be released back into the atmosphere"
I would have thought that the heat going into the deep oceans will mix in and cause a miniscule increase in temperature to that massive body of water. When the IPO shifts back won't it be a case that the surface temperature rises will more stay at the surface with the consequent effects - higher global temperatures, the world wide effects of El Nino etc.
If I might add my two cents (not sure what the exchange rate is, though)....
I believe we may be thinking largely along the same lines, but I am not so sure about your first sentence:
I would have thought that the heat going into the deep oceans will mix in and cause a miniscule increase in temperature to that massive body of water.
If you look at the sea surface temperature distributions of ENSO (the El Nino Southern Oscillation), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) they are quite similar, each with North and South components, but with the ENSO being more pronounced near the equator, the PDO more pronounced in the North Pacific, and with the IPO being roughly equally pronounced in both areas.
Each of these have their atmospheric and oceanic components, where there will be changes in air pressure, winds, air temperature, water temperature and water salinity. However, I will focus principally on water temperature, and to a lesser extent, salinity.
With regard to water temperature, I don't have a comparison map for all three, but here are the PDO and ENSO:
In essence, they appear as standing waves, and they may constructively or deconstructively interfer with one another. And as such, when the IPO is in its positive phase El Ninos are more common and more pronounced, La Ninas less common and less pronounced, but this is reversed when the IPO is in its negative phase. So we can focus primarily on ENSO at this point.
ENSO is an oscillation associated with the thermohaline circulation, where what determines the density of water will be a product of both its temperature and salinity, and denser water sinks below that which is less dense. As such, warmer water may sink below cooler if the salinity of the warmer water is sufficiently greater than that of the cooler water.
Furthermore, while over the long-run, when the climate system is quasi-stable, heat going into the ocean must balance heat coming out of the ocean, over shorter timescales the net flow of heat will be into the ocean with a reduction in moist air convection due to cooler water being at the surface, warming the ocean, and at other times the net flow of heat will be into the atmosphere through greater moist air convection due to warmer water being at the surface, cooling the ocean.
Now you don't actually see that great a rise in global surface temperature during an El Nino. The rise in global surface actually occurs when the El Nino begins to dissipate. The reason is that "pool" of warmer water rises to the surface, spreads out as it begins to mix with the ocean surface, exposing a larger surface area over which moist air convection can take place, carrying more heat into the atmosphere.
Thus when the IPO is in its positive phase, this promotes stronger and more frequent El Ninos through constructive interference with ENSO and results in weaker and less frequent La Ninas through deconstructive interference. Consequently, during the positive phase, the net flow of heat will tend to be from the ocean to the atmosphere due to increased moist air convection, but during the negative phase the net flow of heat will tend to be from the atmosphere to the ocean due to reduced moist air convection.
Anyway, my apologies if this is more detail than you need, but it helps me to spell things out so that I have a better handle on what I am discussing.
Moderator Response:[RH] Reduced image width to preserve page formatting.
-
Doug Cannon at 03:56 AM on 15 March 2014The Beginners Guide to Representative Concentration Pathways - Part 3
I'm having a problem with the Primary energy use graph for RCP2.6.
Your graph seems to match the IPCC report but my old copy of vanVuuren version of RCP2.6 shows significantly more renewable energy; 10-15% of total or about the same as bio-energy. IPCC and yours show only 5% or less of renewables. Was there a change made that I'm missing? Can we really expect to meet RCP2.6 goals with such low use of renewables.
Also, vanVuuren shows a significant amount of Carbon Capture and Storage; greater than 50% of total energy (for coal, oil and bio CCS). I can't find that IPCC emphasizes CCS at all.....although, admittedly, it's a difficult report to navigate through.
-
Timothy Chase at 02:01 AM on 15 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
James, I understand my comment (21) was a bit long and for that reason you may be skipping over it. However, at the end of the comment I mention a bad link. You might want to correct that.
-
JCMac1 at 01:44 AM on 15 March 2014Antarctica is gaining ice
I'm wondering about Transantarctic mountains, altitude, humidity, dehumidification, increased cloud cover and the creation of more Antarctic ice through this process. This is the process I'm thinking about and I want to know if it's possible or not. Can someone please tell me where this 'theory' goes right or wrong.
The warming earth causes the atmosphere to hold more moisture all the way from the North pole to the south pole. When this moisture reaches Antarctica it's forced to altitude by the Transantarctic mountains.
This rise of moist air across the cold altitudes of the Transantractic mountains causes whatever moisture that remains in the air to create clouds over the TransAntarctic mountains.
These clouds then spread out and reflect the sun dropping temperatures even further causeing even more cloud cover and increased percipitation in the cold zone.In other words, the TransAntractic mountains are acting as a giant dehumidifier thats causing clouds to further cool an Area of Antarctica along with increased ice creating snow.
-
barry1487 at 00:42 AM on 15 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Same here.
-
StBarnabas at 23:20 PM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
I for one have not seen part 6 and will await the official posting.
-
Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
I wonder about the following statement, taken from the fifth last paragraph (the paragraph starting with "The “slowdown” of surface warming")
"And when the IPO inevitably shifts back into a warm phase, all the heat now being stored in the deep oceans will be released back into the atmosphere"
I would have thought that the heat going into the deep oceans will mix in and cause a miniscule increase in temperature to that massive body of water. When the IPO shifts back won't it be a case that the surface temperature rises will more stay at the surface with the consequent effects - higher global temperatures, the world wide effects of El Nino etc. It just doesn't seem plausible that the heat stored in the deep oceans will be released back into the atmosphere. But then I'm not a scientist so I'm interested in comments from people who know what they are talking about.
Moderator Response:Hmm, I guess that was a badly worded sentence. What I meant to say is that the heat that is in the oceans that would otherwise have been in the atmosphere will be released back into the atmosphere when the ocean cycles turn around. Obviously, not *all* the heat will go into the atmosphere. - James
-
Tom Curtis at 16:55 PM on 14 March 2014CO2 lags temperature
Cedders @441, by coincidence, Real Climate has a related thread on past temperatures today, which provides a number of usefull references (if nothing else). Unfotunately the graphic they show for phanerozoic temperatures is that by Robert Rohdes, and is based on Viezer (2000)'s adjusted dO18 without pH adjustment. Ocean pH levels do make a substantial difference, that being the difference between Viezer (2000) and Royer et al (2004).
Also of interest is this temperature reconstruction over the last 3.5 billion years:
(Source)
Again, this is without pH adjustment, so temperatures in some periods should be higher. In particular, temperatures would be appreciably higher in the Archean (up to 2.5 billion years ago), and Proterozoic (2.5 - 0.55 billion years ago). Of course, this has an even lower temporal resolution than does Royer et al (2004), and there are at least two instances of near complete glaciation ("snow ball earth") in the immediate lead up to the phanerozoic, which the resolution is inadequate to capture.
-
One Planet Only Forever at 14:25 PM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
An interesting 30 year average tid-bit.
In the NASA GISTemp global average surface land-sea data set, all of the monthly averages since November 1993 have been warmer than the monthly average 30 years earlier, except January 2011 which was very slight (0.07 C cooler) than January 1981.
-
One Planet Only Forever at 13:52 PM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
This is another great presentation of the 'fuller story', the type of presentation of information that actually leads people to better understand what is actually going on. However, many in the skeptical side do not wish to consider the fuller story, or prticipate in developing the best understanding of what is going on.
I personally prefer to follow a rolling 30 year average of the global surface temperature (a new average every month), and I see no significant change in the rate of warming. The 30 year average in the NASA GISTemp data set is still rising. And the 30 years ending in January 2014 are 0.166 degrees warmer than the 30 years ending in January 2003.
A benefit of following 30 year averages is that the longer average is likely to include, by averaging in, the significant and random fluctuations of the global average surface temperature due to things like ENSO, volcanic particles and solar cycles.
However, when I discuss this with a skeptic I am clear about not waiting for another 30 years to find out if the trend continues. Though the presentation of the decades (1980s, 1990s, 2000s), makes a clear point, it can lead some skeptics to claim they need to wait until 2020 to be convinced...or 2030 to really be convinced...or 2040 to almost be certain to be convinced. The minds of many skeptics seem to be locked in an instinct to protect their maximum personally benefit which is threatened by better understanding this issue (or immorally try to obtain benefit by trying to keep others from better understanding this issue for the benefit of immoral wealthy benefactors). That instinct or motive leads them to another instinctive animalistic response, aggression when rationally cornered.
-
Rob Honeycutt at 13:25 PM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Lucia... I actually have access to part 6 internally but was not participating in reviews because I was enjoying the suspense. But you pretty much ruined it.
-
lucia at 12:36 PM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
[BL] Come on, Lucia, you can wait a few days for Part 6 to be published.
I didn't have to. Someone was running a google search and part 6 is there in google cache. It's still there.
Rob Honeycutt Lucia... So, the one comment you come here to make is a spoiler?I commented here on part I. We're discussing at my blog. I suspect you wouldn't be happy if I (or we) posted those comments here. But mostly, it's easier. Anyone can comment without registering and providing their 'personal details' to a site.
-
Timothy Chase at 11:40 AM on 14 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
It should be noted that the same discussion about which hemisphere is experiencing more ocean warming and the role of aerosols in this is taking place in the comment section of Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up beginning with comment 23 by Hyperactive Hydrologist:
Is ocean heat content increasing faster in the southern hemisphere? If so would this add weight to the idea that the northern hemisphere is experiencing increased dampening due to aerosols?
and continuing as far as 27-28 by Tom Curtis where he states regarding a graph by Bob Tisdale:
... the SH is gaining heat 13 times faster than the NH per unit area, which would definitely seem to support Hyperactive Hydrologist's suggestion.. I suspect, however, that there are other major factors involved.... Tisdales graph only plots heat gain since mid-2005. That means he only plots it over a period in which the SOI has shown a distinct, and very strong trend towards record high levels (ie, from record high El Ninos to record low La Ninas). The tongue of water that is modulated by ENSO lies, primarilly, just south of the equator. Large changes in ENSO, therefore, may well have significantly different effects in either hemisphere, so that may be another major factor in the difference.
Regardless, it is an interesting question.
-
Rob Honeycutt at 11:24 AM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Lucia... So, the one comment you come here to make is a spoiler?
-
Timothy Chase at 10:32 AM on 14 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
Kevin C writes in 7:
StBarnabas: In this context, uniform heating means uniform between the northern and southern hemisphere,... Non-uniform heating involves the same total global heating, but more of it occuring in the southern hemisphere where it has less impact on temperatures.
Personally, I would still expect the northern hemisphere to warm more quickly than the south, both for the 20th century and for the period of modern global warming, from 1975 to present. There is more land than water in the northern hemisphere, and given that land has less thermal inertia, it has been able to warm more quickly. Then with the atmosphere as the intermediary, I would expect the land to drag the northern oceans along with it.
In any case, at least for the two hemispheres as a whole, the northern hemisphere warmed more quickly than the southern but was was more sensative to aerosols mid-century, with some cooling from 1940 to 1980, whereas there was only a single year of statistically significant cooling in the southern hemisphere.
Tamino states:
The cooling effect of man-made sulfates also helps explain the hemispheric asymmetry in temperature history. Most industrial activity is in the northern hemisphere, so most of the anthropogenic sulfate cooling should be there too. The northern hemisphere has warmed faster than the southern because there’s more land in the north than the south, and land has far less thermal inertia than ocean. But if sulfates are mostly in the northern hemisphere, that means that there should have been a stronger mid-century cooling effect in the north than in the south — and that’s exactly what we observe:
Anthropogenic Global Cooling
August 23, 2010
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/antrhopogenic-global-cooling -
Timothy Chase at 10:12 AM on 14 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
BaerbelW wrote in 4:
Re. RealClimate: not sure what's going on but when I try to go to realclimate.org I immediately get a "Forbidden - You don't have permission to access / on this server."
That sounds like a shutdown in response to attack, possibly due to an intrusion, similar to the Climategate upload. The details are more likely to be discussed in a less public forum.
-
Timothy Chase at 10:06 AM on 14 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
Wili wrote in 1:
OT question: Has anyone else had trouble getting onto RealClimate recently? Are they shut down for maintanance, or under cyber attack?
Earlier this week I had trouble but was able to get through shortly after that. My assumption was a DDoS attack by someone incompetant. If it were down due to maintanence I would expect it to remain down for a bit rather than be available only half a minute or so later. So DDoS seemed a safer bet.
-
Tom Curtis at 10:04 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
In addition to 27, Tisdales graph only plots heat gain since mid-2005. That means he only plots it over a period in which the SOI has shown a distinct, and very strong trend towards record high levels (ie, from record high El Ninos to record low La Ninas). The tongue of water that is modulated by ENSO lies, primarilly, just south of the equator. Large changes in ENSO, therefore, may well have significantly different effects in either hemisphere, so that may be another major factor in the difference.
-
Tom Curtis at 09:58 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Rob, Scaddenp, if you actually run the numbers, then based on the trends in the graph, the NH oceans are gaining energy at a rate of 21 million Joules per meter squared per decade. In contrast the SH oceans are gaining energy at 271 million Joules per meter squared per decade. That is, the SH is gaining heat 13 times faster than the NH per unit area, which would definitely seem to support Hyperactive Hydrologist's suggestion. I suspect, however, that there are other major factors involved. One such factor could be that the Indian Ocean is almost entirely a SH ocean, with heat gained in the NH portion of the Indian Ocean being directed to the SH be geography.
-
lucia at 09:53 AM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Moderator Response:[JH] Part 6 was mistakenly posted by an SkS Administrator earlier today. When the mistake was recognized, Part 6 was replaced with Part 5.
[BL] Come on, Lucia, you can wait a few days for Part 6 to be published.
-
scaddenp at 09:20 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Good point!
-
Chris McGrath at 09:08 AM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Thanks Bob, this is a facinating read even for a non-IT person like me. I'm on the edge of my seat to find out the riddle to how "he" got in. You are almost being cruel in keeping us hanging in suspence, except that it makes the story like a good detective novel.
By the way, you keep referring to the hacker as "him". If you don't know the hacker's identity, why assume it is a male?
-
Rob Honeycutt at 08:48 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
scaddenp... It also seems like Tisdale's chart is, to a certain extent, just telling us the southern oceans are larger than the northern oceans.
-
scaddenp at 08:25 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Not that easy to get NH/SH data and I would guess ocean mixing would blur the signal anyway, but that "reliable" source of information, Bob Tisdale, seems to have done the work and produced this:
He uses this as argument against GHG warming, but assuming he has got the numbers right, then yes, SH is warming faster than NH. However, OHC rises mostly in the tropics and I dont think there is much difference between 0-10N and 0-10S.
Moderator Response:[RH] Reduced image width.
-
Hyperactive Hydrologist at 05:12 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Is ocean heat content increasing faster in the southern hemisphere? If so would this add weight to the idea that the northern hemisphere is experiencing increased dampening due to aerosols?
-
Hyperactive Hydrologist at 05:03 AM on 14 March 2014The Extraordinary UK Winter of 2013-14: a Timeline of Watery Chaos
The worrying thing of me is that we are barely at 0.8oC and the planet is regularly experiencing extreme event that would, under staionary conditions, have a less than 1-0.1% chance of annual occurance. What happens when we reach 2, 3 or even 4oC of warming? A lot of attention is given to projected temperature changes and climate sesitivity but what happens if the most extreme weather event occur at a lower temperature increase than originally predicted.
-
Timothy Chase at 04:39 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Last night I got the chance to read the entire article. I really enjoyed it.
The essay is essentially a review, bringing together a great deal which to some extent has may have been said before, but giving the reader an organized, more manageable overview of the topic. It does a good job of explaining the masking, the apparent slowdown and the so-called "pause"in warming, that the warming in the climate system is still taking place and why we should expect to see a great more of it in the future. The essay also does a good job of explaining how the meme of the "pause" in warming gained currency.
One question occured to me, though. Is the accelerating melt of Arctic sea ice actually evidence of accelerating warming?
Given that ice undergoes a phase transition at fixed temperature, if temperature were increasing at a constant rate, it would seem that melting would accelerate over time. If so, it would seem that observing melt accelerate over time cannot in itself be regarded as evidence of an increase rate at which the system warms.
Regarding the section title "Temporary factors are masking surface warming"...
I think that at this point there is a tension between "masking" as it might be commonly understood versus "masking" as it get technically used in climate science. Someone with a non-technical background, such as myself, may find it relatively easy to understand how temporary factors may mask warming, that is, in the sense that the warming is still taking place, but simply not visible to us but will later be unmasked. In this sense, they are understanding the term as a metaphor.
For example, during a La Nina more heat is absorbed by the deep ocean, so the warming is still taking place, just not at the surface, where we would experience it. But later on, during an El Nino, the heat is brought back to the surface, where we experience it, and after the El Nino temperatures tend to remain higher than they were before.
However, when you say "Temporary factors are masking surface warming" I believe you have already stepped beyond this common, metaphorical understanding, although at a certain level you are still relying on metaphor. As such, for someone with a non-technical background, it might make more sense to say that temporary factors are masking "future surface warming."
As the term "masking" is technically understood, including the word "future" is redundant. However, for someone with a non-technical understanding it is suggestive of how our expectations of how high or quickly temperatures will rise are built upon what we have already experienced. Yet it also suggests that appearances may be misleading due to temporary factors. These factors, including the volcanic aerosols or cooler phases of the solar cycle, where there is little warming of any part of the climate system, hide or "mask" the warming that will actually take place in the near future.
As such, while the term "future" is technically redundant, implicit for someone with a technical background, it would be helpful for the rest of us if you were to say "mask future surface warming."
One last detail: the link to Precarious Climate actually goes back to Skeptical Science.
In any case, I believe the article is quite good. I am looking forward to going back, re-reading it for my own understanding, and linking to it for other people. It brings things together on a variety of levels. I consider it a valuable addition to the Skeptical Science corpus.
-
Duncan at 02:07 AM on 14 March 2014They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'
Great article, as usual. I love your site. It is incredibly useful.
I just wrote a short and simple blog about this very topic, focusing on what "big data" (via Google Books Ngram Viewer) can tell us about this question. There are some interesting differences in the results between "American English" and "British English".
If you follow climate change/global warming, you will likely encounter people who insist that the term “global warming” was changed to “climate change” for various reasons (e.g., “global warming stopped, so they changed the name”, etc.).
One way to test this hypothesis is to tap into “big data”, in this case Google’s database of English books. Google has a cool tool called the “Ngram Viewer”, which allows you to determine the frequency of words and phrases in their database of books. What does Google’s Ngram Viewer tell us about this hypothesis?
Read more here: http://ow.ly/uy2fv
-
Cedders at 23:38 PM on 13 March 2014CO2 lags temperature
Thanks, both. I've downloaded the Ocean Acidification booklet and will work my way through it. I'm not a scientist, but to me it looks like the temperature effect (evident from the ice cores) is big enough to consider when looking at saturation of ocean carbon sinks; possibly also to investigate in reducing carbon budgets to fit a concentration pathway. If ECS is defined as equilibrium when holding pCO2 steady, then I presume it's not included there.
-
chriskoz at 22:38 PM on 13 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
RealClimate is up and kicking...
Recent article by gavin contains an apparent typo: "It never rains but it pause" (my emphasais) but gavin explained it to be an intentional pun. Can you guess the pun? Hint: think about rhotic british-like pronounciation (well represented by gavin himself) and what's happening in UK right now....
-
gpwayne at 22:36 PM on 13 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
I have to ask about this statement:
"If the trend is extended forward into the future, the Arctic Ocean will soon be entirely liquid."
My first reaction was to suggest that the statement is incomplete, and that it should continue "...in the summer months". Then again, is there any evidence that if all multi-year ice disappears, there will be no surface ice at all in winter?
Moderator Response:Fixed. - James
-
chriskoz at 21:45 PM on 13 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Another typo (although trivial) in Australian record:
Hottest October day (42.6°C on 31 August)
date is incorrect. I think you mean this source: Northern Territory in October 2013. The relevant statement:
Alice Springs Airport also set a new record for highest October daily maximum temperature with 42.6 °C on the 10th, the previous record 41.7 °C set on 24 October last year.
so the correct (and perhaps sounding stronger) statement would be:
October daily maximum broken back to back: 24 October 2012 (41.7 °C) and 10 October 2013 (42.6 °C) in one location (Alice Springs)
The original statement incorrectly suggests the record is applicable to the large (Australia-wide?) context, while in fact it is only about local (Alice Springs) context.
-
Cedders at 19:46 PM on 13 March 2014How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?
On Tuesday in the UK House of Commons, one of the members of the select committee on Energy and Climate Change, Graham Stringer MP, asserted that "50% of the meteorologists in the United States are unhappy with the conclusions of the IPCC" (at 1h24m) which led to some disagreement with the relevant Minister as Stringer did not have any source to hand. From a web search, I think this figure may have originated here, based on a 2008 survey of TV weather forecasters and commentary in an AMS journal (available online via Heartland).
(Committee sessions are a disappointing example of the science-policy interface. Stringer and Peter Lilley MP seem to me to be successfully obstructing discussion about important topics such as carbon budgets by focussing on odd details such as p1010 of WG1 SYN. The committee had previously interviewed Richard Lindzen, giving his affiliation as Professor at MIT, whereas I believe he's now at Cato Institute and we should normally refer to him as emeritus professor. It cannot be said they aren't giving space to contrarians.)
Regarding the 2011-12 survey of AMS members, a sample of the email that appeared to come from AMS is available at the Bad Astronomy blog. (James Taylor of Heartland wrote the misinterpretation of the survey, but has not responded to challenges to comment on Heartland tactics, Cindy Baxter etc.)
Prev 745 746 747 748 749 750 751 752 753 754 755 756 757 758 759 760 Next
