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

Settings


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.

Home Arguments Software Resources Comments The Consensus Project Translations About Support

Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Mastodon MeWe

Twitter YouTube RSS Posts RSS Comments Email Subscribe


Climate's changed before
It's the sun
It's not bad
There is no consensus
It's cooling
Models are unreliable
Temp record is unreliable
Animals and plants can adapt
It hasn't warmed since 1998
Antarctica is gaining ice
View All Arguments...



Username
Password
New? Register here
Forgot your password?

Latest Posts

Archives

Recent Comments

Prev  807  808  809  810  811  812  813  814  815  816  817  818  819  820  821  822  Next

Comments 40701 to 40750:

  1. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    Tom Curtis @ 3.

    What is the source of that wind speed data?  I am reading that the measured sustained winds at landfall were 147mph and gusts of 170mph.

     

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24887337

  2. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    Mods can you correct the links in #12?  Thanks.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] I was able to embed the link to the article, Global sea-level rise is recognised, but flooding from anthropogenic land subsidence is ignored around northern Manila Bay, Philippines, in your point #3.

    I am not able to fix the link to the map in your point #2. 

  3. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    I am working on a research paper and did not have a lot of time to devote to researching this event.  However, I have a couple of statements and questions.

    1. What are the official storm surge figures?  From the the Global Disaster and Alert Coordination (GDAC) website I found this which apparently shows the predicted storm surge at 1.87 m.  I understand that these are predictions - I want to know the actual recorded data.

      Tacloban City

    2.  What does the data show for SLR in that area of the world?  It is easy to say that SLR contributed to the damage, but just how much more damage can a few mm of SLR cause?  

    3. Other manmade factors are potentially much more important.  From Global sea-level rise is recognised, but flooding from anthropogenic land subsidence is ignored around northern Manila Bay, Philippines by Rodolfo and Siringan (2006): "Land subsidence resulting from excessive extraction of groundwater is particularly acute in East Asian countries. Some Philippine government sectors have begun to recognise that the sea-level rise of one to three millimetres per year due to global warming is a cause of worsening floods around Manila Bay, but are oblivious to, or ignore, the principal reason: excessive groundwater extraction is lowering the land surface by several centimetres to more than a decimetre per year".
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Embedded pdf image of map as a jpg in Point 1.

  4. The Other Bias

    KC,

    I assume the HadSST2 is the time series with the least amount of corrections.

    This is what my inverted model residual looks like when compared to your fractional contribution measurement profile. Note that the Korean War was between 1950 and 1953 which might have been a time when not to use trailing buckets.  

    And then the issue of insulated vs uninsulated buckets....

    KevinC picture

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Modified image width to 550px.

  5. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #46B

    Nothing short of a tsunami washing over our political institutions is going to change our business as usual approach.

     

  6. Help make our coverage bias paper free and open-access

    We're currently at £1400, which is almost enough to cover open access if I qualify for RMS discount. I'll contact the journal on Monday.

  7. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    Chriskoz,

    Since Michael Mann was the lead author for this study:

    Mann, M.E., Woodruff, J.D., Donnelly, J.P., Zhang, Z., Atlantic hurricanes and climate over the past 1,500 years, Nature, 460, 880-883, 2009.

    as well as numerous other studies of ocean atmosphere interactions, I would presume he has "broader background/own expertise".

  8. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    I am an artist, not a scientist.  But, I've read a great deal of climate science as I researched and wrote my new play "Extreme Whether" and I continue to read the science.  My question is this: why when an esteemed scientist, Michael Mann, in this case, writes a cogent and moral essay, based upon observable fact, that is also a plea for action, do scientists then begin to parse and shred and take us back to questions about "this particular storm" and whether we are facing increased frequency or, only, increased severity.  Dr. Mann's essay, like Dr. Sano's emotional and compelling remarks in Warsaw, are calls for public policy action in the face what is most surely an increasing disaster area called our planet. Can we not act together, even as we continue to pursue our scientific research or our artistic explorations; can we not call for and support public policies to limit climate change?

  9. Antarctica is gaining ice

    Morgan,

    This is a scientific board.  You must refer to the scientific literature or no one will bother with your posts.  You have linked to several blog posts, including an unlabeled graph from a frisbie golf site (this one: http://www.hyzercreek.com/nasa2005.jpg).  At the same time Tom has linked to a number of peer reviewed publications.  Please bring your posts up to the standard used here or stop posting.  

    You will not convince anyone here with a frisbie golf graph with 2005 in the link.  No one cares what your interpretation of the data is.  Link to peer reviewed papers that support your view.

  10. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    barry@8,

    Thanks for the extra info, your explained query makes sense now.

    I don't know if Mann is biased by this single outlier study or if he has some broader background/own expertise to subscribe to it. I don't know enough about the subject to have an opinion.

  11. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    chriskoz,

    I clicked on the link and read before I posted.

    Hitherto, I had understood that projections had generally been that tropical storms frequency would not change under a warming climate, but that it was likely that storm intensity, particularly severe storms, would increase. This is how it is put in AR4 and most studies I have read. This from an article I read just now;

    The best evidence scientists have at the moment suggests tropical cyclones may become more intense under climate change, but are unlikely to increase in number.

    But a new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences challenges the status quo, suggesting tropical cyclones will become more intense, and occur more frequently.

    http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/07/new-study-shows-not-all-models-agree-on-the-fate-of-tropical-cyclones-under-climate-change

    I am used to Mann and other serious scientists taking a conservative approach to new work and climate science in general. I did not know if there had been a solid evolution in thinking on tropical storm frequency commensurate with Mann's comment, hence my query.

  12. Philippe Chantreau at 18:58 PM on 17 November 2013
    Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    I'm not sure where to find the data but what I would be interested in knowing would be whether there has been before a typhoon of this size keeping winds as fast. Normally these storms see a decreased wind speed when reaching the kind of size that Haiyan showed, yet the winds remained very strong, in the Camille range, a much smaller storm. Anyone has light to shed on this?

  13. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    barry@1,

    If you cared to click on the link pointed by the statement you question, you'd discovered that it leads to Emanuel 2013, which states in their abstract:

    Tropical cyclones downscaled from the climate of the period 1950–2005 are compared with those of the 21st century in simulations that stipulate that the radiative forcing from greenhouse gases increases by over preindustrial values. In contrast to storms that appear explicitly in most global models, the frequency of downscaled tropical cyclones increases during the 21st century in most locations

    (my emphasis)

    Therefore you would know that Mike Mann's claim comes from Emanuel 2013, and not from AR5 (14.6.3) as you chose to cite. In that context, the original statement is correct and you're wrong criticising it.

    You would be right by saying, "according to some other sources, i.e. AR5, the frequency of the storms will not increase". Then the reader would decide which source is more reliable: Kerry Emanuel, the leading world expert in tropical cyclones, or IPCC who took the average literature on the subject and draw more conservative conclusions, as expected per my emphasis.

    But the way you phased your comment, you suggest as if Mike Mann was somehow misinterpreting the evidence, which is not the case, therefore you're wrong.

  14. The Other Bias

    Penchant: The numbers are right. In our paper we also look at the effect of bias on the significance of the trends, which is maximised for 1997/1998. The suggestion that trends starting in 1997/1998 are most misleading is based on this result.

    Lay people do seem to have an instinctive grasp of the idea that longer term trends carry more information, and so 'misleadingness' needs to be evaluated against this. Lacking a cognitive model of how people evaluate trend claims the 'impact on significance' metric was the best we could do.

  15. The Other Bias

    WebHubbleTelescope:

    There are two impacts of the HadSST3 corrections compared to earlier versions which only handled the 1942 discontinuity - the sharp correction in 1945, and the more gradual recent bias. In this article I mainly focus on the second.

    I also managed to identify the post-war spike by the trivial method of comparing colocated coastal land and SST measurements. The results give a surprisingly good fit to the HadSST3 adjustments, barring a scale factor. The gradual change over the past couple of decades is far harder to check, although I may have picked up a weak echo of the signal in the constrast between sea-lane and non-sea-lane temperatures.

  16. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    hank_@2,

    You are wrong. The factual reality is that, no one has shown that model's predictions about future storms are accurate or wrong because no statistically signifficant data exists. In other words, the factual reality is: "we don't know". That's quite different to  your SkS comment policy violating answer "NO".

    Application of simple boolean logic in both statistics as in this example, as well as in everyday life, usually leads to illogical conclusions. In order to say "no" to any theory or claim, you have to present a proof that the claim is false. The fact that we cannot measure some claim (like in case of cyclones, we don't have enough data to show any statistically significant trend - the trend could be positive AWA negative with data we have), means that "we don't know".

  17. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    A quick review of recent papers and AR5 suggests that storms of this intensity have very likely increased in the North Atlantic and other ocean areas, except for the North West Pacific (the Philippines is in the western Pacific Ocean).

    Eg,

    This additional homogenization step is found to measurably reduce LMI trends, but the global trends in the LMI of the strongest storms remain positive, with amplitudes of around +1 m s−1 decade−1 and p-value = 0.1. Regional trends, in m s−1 decade−1, vary from −2 (p-value = 0.03) in the western North Pacific, +1.7 (p-value = 0.06) in the South Indian, +2.5 (p-value = 0.09) in the South Pacific, to +8 (p-value < 0.001) in the North Atlantic.

    http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00262.1

    While there is much uncertainty outside the North Atlantic, there is some confidence that Major Cyclone intensity has increased over the last 50 years or so globally, even while the total number of storms has not changed or decreased.

    Why is it important to determine if this storm was 'unprecedented'?

  18. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    hank_, with regard to (1), the intensity of a storm can be measured in various ways.  As measured by central pressure, Haiyan was exceptional but not unprecedented, being equal 21st of Western North Pacific cyclones (typhoons).  That is with an estimated low pressure of 895 hPa.  However, one storm chaser in Tacloban measured pressures as low as 972 hPa before his barometer was destroyed.

    As measured by windspeed, Haiyan had the highest windspeeds at landfall of any tropical cyclone.  Jeff Masters shows this chart of windspeeds at landfall:

    However, Tropical Cyclone Haiyan was not the strongest cyclone measured.  Unfortunately lists as to which were stronger vary, and measurements prior to 1970 are known to be biased high, so it is unclear whether Haiyan was the second strongest measured, or only the fourth.  So, again, exceptional but not unprecedented.

    However, on (2) you are simply wrong.  Elsner et al (2008) show a trend to increasing frequency of the 95 percentile of storms with increasing SST which is statistically significant (see table 1).  More recent studies have been a little ambiguous, but it is evident that the answer to your question, is either "yes", or (at best for you) "it is not yet clear". 

  19. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #46B

    "Majority of red-state Americans believe climate change is real", even in "red" states like TX & OK.

    That's very interesting news. Apart from being an indicator of a success in climate science communication (of which we at SkS play proud role), it may herald the change of mind in some politicians there. I predict that many hardcore flat-earth denialists will start to convert to at least "lukewarmemrs", as their political expedience dictates. Just like Tony Abbott in Australia converted recently, as described in "Abbott's response to the climate challenge". And, like Tony's predecessor John Howard has been converting, according to his own admission recently, that only his "gut feeling" and "political climate" drive his knowledge about the world.

  20. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #46B

    hank_@1,

    It'd be far more beneficial if you, instead of comlaining that "something obvious" was not mentioned, you'd actually explained what it was exactly, and even better provided the link, yourself.
    I, for example, don't know what you talk about from your description, but I'd like to know that news.

  21. Antarctica is gaining ice

    Thanks for the graph showing that ozone has not lowered since around 1988, backing up my argument, that it cant be the cause of south pole cooling.

    I also read the Lazarra paper you cited, in which he shows that the south pole winter temperatures are decreasing slightly as the south pole summer temperatures increase slightly, but that neither of which is statistically significant. So let's just say the south pole is staying the same, i.e. not warming. 

    Now, let's iron this whole thing out. South pole, not warming. Rest of earth, warming. The earth is a heat engine where most solar forcing is in the tropics, heated tropical air moving toward the poles, cold air returning toward the tropics to be heated again. So the earth is a heat engine, like a Sterling Engine, and it operates on the difference in forcing at the equator vs the poles. 

    So, the south pole is not changing, the equator is getting warmer, so the heat engine is getting stronger. That's why there is more polar easterly wind around Antarctica. That's why there is more antarctic sea ice. Has nothing to do with ozone which is just a stupid theory. Drop it. Let's never mention the word ozone again. There is no UV in Antarctica in the winter, almost none in the spring or fall. I'll give you the summer, which is when no sea ice forms. So, ozone has nothing to do with it. Time to burn the straw man.

    OK I'm done with this. Case closed. Forget ozone forever, ok?

  22. CO2 lags temperature

    Isn't CO(2) currently leading temperature and doesn't this reversal of temperature leading CO(2) to CO(2) leading temperature a strong indicator that current global warming is human-caused? If this is true, why do we need such complicated explanations of past natural changes to justify current conclusions about AGW? Why isn't this reversal of which initiates the feedback loop a major indicator that the current situation contrasts with natural climate change because it is human-caused? 

  23. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Great work, guys.   Made me think.  

    We're perfectly OK acknowledging the differences in tables and graphs when someone asks directly why there is any difference at all between temperature measurements and trends from different organisations.  See, look here, this crowd do it one way and these people do it another way and it's all perfectly reasonable that they come up with differing results.  And everybody nods wisely. 

    As soon as this question is no longer front and centre, we blithely discuss "slowdowns" and "pauses" and heat sinks and various climate mechanisms as though the measurements and trends are entirely reliable, a mere background for other discussions.  We should remind ourselves constantly that knowing about these features of the records is not like knowing times table or basic algebra as the unerringly solid foundation for simple calculations.  We learn those things so that we don't have to think about them.  These things do have to be thought about.  

    Keeping this work in the foreground for the next while should force us to keep the whole picture more comprehensively in mind.   

  24. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    I just want to make a note how valuable is a contribution to this discussion by Tom Curtis. To those who know Tom, my remark may sound trivial, however in this case Tom's posts made a particularly big, positive difference. His training in in ethics, logic and epistemology really paid off: we now have the factual standard of the article lifted and the reality of Howard's double standard & hypocrisy explained. (Not that I disregard other commenters but Tom realy stands out here).

    Now compare the logical standard above with that of Vincentrj, who is trying to make Argument from ignorance in order to confuse us, and he didn't even explain how his troll relates to the topic at hand. The difference in standard of discussion is so enormous that there simply cannot be any rational discussion, as Tom rightly asserts @30.

  25. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #46B

    No mention of the major 'about face' by the Japansese in regards to their CO2 reduction commitments? That was more of a shock than either the Canadien or Aussi stories.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] The news about the Japanese decision will appear in the next issue of the Roundup. 

  26. Free computer game - World at the Crossroads

    This game should allow you to decomission power plants ahead of schedule when you're playing as leader of the world. This will allow you to adjust your energy portfolio as soon as it is economically possible to do so.

    There should also be thorium-based molten salt nuclear reactor technology available, since in reality it represents a fairly inexpensive path to abundant, cheap power that doesn't come with the risk meltdowns. It should be available as early as the 1980s, depending on your research priorities.

    In general, the game seems to overstate the risk associated with nuclear power. To date, in the entire history of commercial nuclear power, there have been three notable nuclear accidents, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Of those three, only Chernobyl resulted in fatalities. The fatalities that accident produced, according to best estimates, numbers in the tens (I think the figure is between 40 and 70). This comes to .7-1.2 deaths per year worldwide for the entire nuclear industry. That's better than just about any other form of energy produciton.

    It would also help if the game writers cleaned up their economics a little bit. A few things I noticed:

    • I think what they're calling "income" is actually tax revenue.
    • A trade surplus when you play as an individual nation is shown as slows GDP growth GDP/capita growth. This is backwards. What would actually slows economic growth is saving unspent tax revenue.
    • The game makes dubious assumptions about what precipitates a financial crisis. The model they use assumes that negative GDP growth causes a financial crisis when in fact negative GDP growth is the result of financial crisis. As we recently witnessed, a financial crisis is perfectly capable of taking place during periods of economic growth (and subsequently bringing them to an end).
  27. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    The two things we have to ask ourselves about this storm are;

    1)"Was the intensity of this storm in the area in question 'unprecedented'?"

    and 2) Has the frequency of storms of this magnitude increased over the past 60 or so years?"

    At this point the answer to both questions is clearly "NO" "no"

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] The use of "all caps" is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Please read the policy and adhere to it.

  28. Debunking 97% Climate Consensus Denial

    Ironbark - My apologies, I may have in haste misread your post. Regarding the details of attribution, there is a lot of work ongoing, see here

    Regarding the basics of human influence being the dominant factor in warming, no, there isn't much research going on - as that's been very well established. 

  29. Debunking 97% Climate Consensus Denial

    Ironbark - As the paper itself clearly states:

    This result is expected in consensus situations where scientists '...generally focus their discussions on questions that are still disputed or unanswered rather than on matters about which everyone agrees' 

    It's been researched for over 150 years, and as per the observed consensus, the basic outline of AGW is no longer a question that requires discussion. 

  30. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Vincentrj:

    Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.

    Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thank you for your understanding and compliance in this matter.

  31. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    All:

    Vincentrj's most recent comment was off-topic and was therefore deleted. DSL's response to it was also deleted.

  32. Debunking 97% Climate Consensus Denial

    Given the low number of articles found which express the IPCC position (i.e. that humans are responsible for most of the recent warming), does this paper support the proposition that the extent of attribution is not a widely researched question?

  33. Southern sea ice is increasing

    For anybody who likes a relaxing assimilation of some information there's a lecture by Dr. Sarah Gille on the Antartctic ocean, apparently her specialty, on the web at time of my comment. Discusses the contraction that's happened causing cooler oceans near South Pole but warmer at slightly higher lataitudes. Also, a polar atmosphere lecture by Dr. Dan Lubin.

  34. Super Typhoon Haiyan: Realities of a Warmed World and Need for Immediate Climate Action

    "However, models suggest more frequent and intense storms in a warmed world."

    Is that right? I have often corrected 'skeptics' when they announce that more frequent storms is a climate prediction under a warm world, linking them to RealClimate, here and the IPCC reports, saying that storm intensity is predicted to increase, not frequency.

    AR5 (14.6.3)says:

    While projections under 21st century greenhouse warming indicate that it is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged, concurrent with a likely increase in both global mean tropical cyclone maximum wind speed and rainfall rates, there is lower confidence in region-specific projections of frequency and intensity. Still, based on high-resolution modelling studies, the frequency of the most intense storms, which are associated with particularly extensive physical effects, willmore likely than not increase substantially in some basins under projected 21st century warming.

    As far as I understand the matter, the sentece would be more accurate if it had gone thus; "...models suggest more frequent intense storms in a warmed world."

  35. Antarctica is gaining ice

    Morgan Wright @204:

    1)  Of recent papers on Antarctic temperatures all that I have checked show warming.  These include not only Steig et al, and O'Donnell et al, but also:

    Muto et al (2011), which shows warming of 1 - 1.5 C in East Antarctica, most of which has been in the last two decades.

    Bromwich et al (2013), which shows "Central West Antarctica [to be] among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth".

    Screen and Simmonds (2012), which shows mid tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling over all of Antarctica, with the stratospheric cooling being concentrated in Spring and Summer.

    Schneider et al (2010), which shows a 0.1 C per decade trend averaged over all of Antarctica, with warming strongest in the pensinsular, and second strongest in the West Anarctic spring.

    And finally, because your initial comments regarded the South Pole, we have Lazzara et al (2012), who show a cooling trend at the South Pole till about 2000, and a rapid warming trend thereafter:

    It should be noted that when the data is extended to include 2012, the trend of the full data sets becomes positive (as previously noted).

    So, there is little doubt from recent literature that Antarctica is warming, with most of the warming being in the last two decades, and in West Antarctica.  If you have a paper published in the last 5 years that disputes that, I would be interested to see it - but I see no reason to reject recent studies in prefference to older studies, particularly given that the older studies are now obsolete due to the recent rapid warming trend.

    2)  You are simply wrong about ozone.  Ozone has never fallen noticably below 100 Dobson Units in the period of observations:

     

    Your repeated errors on simple matters of fact are very damaging to your case.

    You are also wrong to claim the effect cannot occur because it happens in winter when the sun does not reach the pole.  That is first, because the effect occurs in the Autumn when sea ice is growing, but when the sun can still reach the pole.  It is also because the ozone hole often extends beyond the Antarctic Circle, which together with its high altitude ensures sunlight reaches regions of depleted ozone long after the pole falls into shadow at the surface.

    I will respond to your other points later.

  36. Free computer game - World at the Crossroads

    Meh, I guess I can just play it in Safe Mode. No big deal. Great game, by the way!

  37. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Passing ironic that my simple-minded note that OHC is the future and my lukewarm kudo for the sterling poster (actual posters) historical GMST (a "global warming" proxy) work drew only #39 Poster with an even more nebulous proxy that assumes I'm so ignorant that I think oceans at 0-4 Celsius will expand hugely if warmed a tad. I've done the simple math in the first few hours I first looked at this topic in spring. My moderation-resistant on-topic asides are Prof Muller BerkeleyEarth shows a smoother increasing temperature & derivative land-only data mean (? I've no time to study his available RMS? software) and that I disagree with Bert #43 about "venomous response" because I can only see this brilliant satellite infill analysis to correct (and warm-up) the data in recent years as increased polar warming renders simple interpolation (even modelled type) imprecise as being a much more accurate multi-sensor trick to hide the decline in polar GMST measuring quality that has evidently been happening with interpolation, so I see no basis for attack on the work or on my comment here for that matter.

  38. The Other Bias

    TC,

    I am looking at a very restricted interval during the war. KevinC posted this chart below in a previous SkS article which shows that ships were not using trailing buckets as long as U-boats were on the loose :

    KevinC picture

    My point is that this interval is exactly coincident with the only residual epistemic noise spike that I see when comparing my model to the data.  

    I am not certain which time series deal with this correctly.

  39. Antarctica is gaining ice

    Most papers on the subject state that the south pole, and much of Antarctica, are cooling. Study the following chart from NASA:

    http://www.hyzercreek.com/nasa2005.jpg

    The original explanation of how ozone is causing the south pole to cool is wrong, since the ozone level is not changing, (it is already at zero), and yet the south pole is cooling. Your attempt to tweak the ozone hole explanation with a new twist also does not work...you say the ozone fails to absorb UV in the stratosphere, causing more sea ice to form in the winter. This is impossible, because there is no sunlight at the south pole in the winter, and therefore no UV. 

    http://i.imwx.com/web/multimedia/images/blog/antarctica_wind_pattern.jpg

    Listen to me closely. Look at the above link and notice that the vortex has its center over the south pole and is blowing outward, not inward. Polar cooling of the air in winter causes high pressure which sends frigid air north along the surface. At the pole the air has almost no angular momentum, so as it moves north it will not spin as in a vortex. Rather, as the air moves north, the west-to-east rotation of the earth underneath it becomes increasingly fast, making the air blow to the west relative to the earth even though the air itself has little motion. These are referred to in the literature as polar easterlies. They are not really a cyclone because they are caused by the rotation of the earth, not conservation of angular momentum. 200 miles from the pole the earth is rotating  around 50 MPH but 1000 miles from the pole the earth is rotation 250 miles per hour. You can see the winds can become frighteningly fast fairly quickly.

    The colder the pole, the stronger the high, and the faster the northward motion of the air, and the sooner it can get north before picking up angular momentum from the friction against earth's surface. Therefore, the colder the pole, the stronger the polar easterlies will be. The increase in the polar easterlies is caused by increasing cold. Therefore, the increase in sea ice is caused by increasing cold at the pole. Therefore, we need to know why the pole is getting colder. It's not a straw man to mention the O3 hole, since we need to know whether it's cooling due to the ozone hole, or whether it's cooling because AGW is a false hypothesis.

    This web site is for skeptics of skeptics. All the skeptics are saying the antarctic sea ice is increasing because it's getting colder down there, and there is no AGW. Skeptics of skeptics are saying.....Some are saying, ok the south pole is getting colder but it's from the ozone hole. Some (this OP) are saying it's not even getting colder, the sea ice is from the wind, and part of that explanation is to pretend the wind is coming from the wrong direction and saying the south pole is a low pressure vortex. We need to iron this out.

  40. Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming

    Well, it only confirms what Richard Alley told us 4 years ago, doesn’t it?
    Since a huge increase in cosmic rays didn’t have a noticeable impact on climate 40,000 years ago the conclusion from CERN isn’t very surprising. Unless of course, the assumed link between cosmic rays and the beryllium-10 isotope is wrong.

    BTW, is Dimethylamine somehow related to Dimethyl sulphide? James Lovelock (the guy behind the Gaia hypothesis) has proposed that Dimethyl sulphide emitted from some marine algae play an important role in cloud formation over the oceans.

  41. The Other Bias

    Kevin C., somehow it escaped me that you are the Kevin Cowtan that coauthored the paper with Robert Way.  Congratulations!  I am looking forward to reading the paper.

  42. Free computer game - World at the Crossroads

    None of that worked. I can run it only when the computer is in Safe Mode. I can't even established user rights on my own computer because of the disgusting piece of garbage that is Windows 7.

    '2. On some computers the game may be blocked by an antivirus software (it was necessary to mark the file as "allowed" and everything run fine).'

    How?

  43. Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming

    HK@12

    It is necessary to test hypotheses in realistic experiments. So i do not think it is a waste of time what they have done at CERN. You must know that they did not only test Svensmarks hypothesis of cosmic rays seeding cloud condensation nuclei, but also other factors which may have influence on seeding clouds.

    There is a (in my onpinion) very important article in Nature 17.oct 2013 vol 502 Almeide et Al.

    Molecular understanding of sulphuric acid-amine particle nucleation in the atmosphere

    doi:10.1038/nature12663

    They find a natural presence of Dimethylamine dwarfing cosmic rays in their effect on cloud nucleation. This is a direct result from the CLOUD experiment at CERN.

  44. The Other Bias

    WebHub Telescope, the issue of switching from intake water to buckets is covered here:

    What caused such a dramatic drop in SST in 1945? In the wartime years leading up to 1945, most sea temperatures measurements were taken by US ships, who measured the temperature of the intake water used for cooling the ship's engines. This method tends to yield higher temperatures due to the warm engine-room environment. However, in August 1945, British ships resumed taking SST measurements. British crews collected water in uninsulated buckets. The bucket method has a cooling bias.

    A new twist on mid-century cooling
    Posted on 2 June 2008 by John Cook
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/A-new-twist-on-mid-century-cooling.html

    ... and as you indicated it is a 1940s issue.

    The problem involving the switch to buoys is more recent. It is introduced here:

    Ships and buoys made global warming look slower
    26 November 2010 by Michael Marshall
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19772-ships-and-buoys-made-global-warming-look-slower.html

    Met Office to revise global warming data upwards
    Leon Clifford, 26 Nov 2010
    http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/met-office-to-revise-global-warming-data-upwards.html

    The issue is identified here:

    Kennedy, J. J., R. O. Smith, and N. A. Rayner. "Using AATSR data to assess the quality of in situ sea-surface temperature observations for climate studies." Remote Sensing of Environment 116 (2012): 79-92.
    http://hadleyserver.meto.gov.uk/hadsst3/RSE_Kennedy_et_al_2011.doc

    ... and receives some mention here:

    Kennedy J.J., Rayner, N.A., Smith, R.O., Saunby, M. and Parker, D.E. (2011b). Reassessing biases and other uncertainties in sea-surface temperature observations since 1850 part 1: measurement and sampling errors. J. Geophys. Res., 116, D14103, doi:10.1029/2010JD015218
    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadsst3/part_2_figinline.pdf

    Additionally, NASA's approach uses a method of interpolation, and the somewhat more sophisticated kriging used in this more recent paper, which doesn't infill from satellite data per se, but uses how satellite data and surface temperatures are correlated over the ranges for which surface temperature measurements are available to infill where they are absent, appears more accurate.

    Please see:

    Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half
    Filed under: Climate Science Instrumental Record — stefan @ 13 November 2013
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/global-warming-since-1997-underestimated-by-half

    For more information on the new paper, might try:

    Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature record
    Kevin Cowtan and Robert Way
    http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/

    ... and in particular, the background:

    http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/background.html

  45. The Other Bias

    The third paragraph states, "One source of bias - due to poor observational coverage - has been discussed in our recent paper, although it was reported back in 2009, and it was addressed by NASA as long ago as 1987."

    "Our recent paper" is hyperlinked to the main page of Skeptical Science. I believe you mean to link to:

    Coverage bias. The HadCRUT4 and NOAA temperature records don’t cover the whole planet. Omitting the Arctic in particular produces a cool bias in recent temperatures. (e.g. Hansen et al 2006, Folland et al 2013). The video avoided this problem by using GISTEMP. However the issue affects the Foster and Rahmstorf analysis of the other records.

    Has the rate of surface warming changed? 16 years revisited
    Posted on 21 May 2013 by Kevin C
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/has_the_rate_of_surface_warming_changed.html

    ... although:

    The 2012 State of the Climate is easily misunderstood
    Posted on 24 October 2013 by MarkR
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/2012_soc_misunderstood.html

    ... may also be of some value.

  46. The Other Bias

    Kevin, The bias that you have isolated accurately is the one during WWII.  I agree that a measurement error of about +0.1C occurs between 1940 and 1945.  It is not clear whether the time series such as GISTEMP actually correct for this.  I have been doing my own time-series "reanalysis" via what I refer to as the CSALT model.   This recreates the temperature record via non-temperature measurements such as CO2, SOI, Aerosols, LOD, and TSI (thus the acronym).

    What I find is that there is a significant warming spike during the WWII years which I correct below. The amount of correction is 0.1C, and when I apply that the model residuals trends more to white noise over the entire record.

    CSALT model residual

     

     

  47. The Other Bias

    Just below Figure 1 a paragraph begins "The UK Met Office have developed a very sophisticated analysis to address these biases."

    "very sophisticated analysis" is hyperlinked to the main page of Skeptical Science. Two places that seem more appropriate are:

    First Look at HadCRUT4
    Posted on 18 April 2012 by dana1981
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/first-look-at-hadcrut4.html

    HadCRUT4: A detailed look
    Posted on 22 May 2012 by Kevin C
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/hadcrut4_a_detailed_look.html

    The second seems especially relevant. I would leave Figure 1 as is, then hyperlinks "more complex" in the caption to figure 1 to the first and "a very sophisticated analysis" to the second.

    I believe this would go a long way to addressing the concerns wili expressed in comment 3.

  48. Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming

    Mods,

     

          Please note that the link to the Trenberth paper is broken and should point to 

    http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/EnergyDiagnostics09final2.pdf

  49. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Vincentrj:

    Just because you are only recently interested in climate change does not mean that it is a new scientific endeavor.  The theoretical basis of AGW was mature in 1896 (that's 117 years ago) when Arhennius published his predictions for temperature increase worldwide from increase in CO2.  Arhennius correctly predicted approximately how much the temperature would go up, greater increase in winter than summer, greater increase at night, greater increase in the Northern Hemisphere (especially the Arctic) and greater increase over land than water.  These points were dismissed at the time but were confirmed experimentally in the 1980's and 90's as temperatures finally increased enough to go above the noise.  Your objection to long time periods having to pass to confirm predictions have been met by waiting long enough.  Exactly how long do you need to trust these validated predictions?  Obviously furthur increases in temperature will have greater effect.  That cannot be measured until we wait for them to occur.  Scientists did not come to a consensus until the 1960's that AGW would be a problem and it was the 90's before the data was confirmed to be above the noise. The reason so many disciplines are in agreement is that they have had over a century to review the data.  We are now 20 years past what any resonable person would call confirmed data and you want to delay because scientists are all in agreement?  Do you also think the world is flat since that is no longer debated?  

    Many scientits understand AGW well.  The reason scientists agree is that the data is overwhelming in support of AGW theory.  Only those who are unwilling to objectively look at the data are outside the consensus.  The scientific debate now concerns how bad the problem will be, what can be done to lessen the damage and how long we have before the damage is irreparable. 

    It strikes me that you are making an argument from ignorance.   Since you do not know what the data is you claim no one else does.  In fact, others have put in more time and effort and understand the data.  Do you intend to perform your own brain surgery when you need it or will you obtain expert help on such a specialty subject?

  50. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    DSL @29, Vincentrj's "tone" is not reasonable just because he uses no pejoratives while suggesting, in effect, that climate scientists are involved in a tacit conspiracy to misrepresent research findings so as to defraud the public.  The slander involved still makes his post obnoxious.  Further, given that his argument is, in effect, that AGW must be doubtfull because the scientists who study it overwhelmingly report evidence that confirms it, I doubt sincerely he is capable of rational conversation on the topic.

Prev  807  808  809  810  811  812  813  814  815  816  817  818  819  820  821  822  Next



The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


© Copyright 2024 John Cook
Home | Translations | About Us | Privacy | Contact Us