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dvaytw at 13:54 PM on 14 September 2013Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
In reference to my own question at #59: in case anyone else encounters this argument, I dug up the answer myself. This is from Joe Romm, and addresses that "single factor" talking point nicely:
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davidnewell at 13:07 PM on 14 September 2013Debunking 97% Climate Consensus Denial
Absolute agreement with following:
(29:One Planet Only Forever)
"The understanding that it is essential to develop truly sustainable ways of life that all humans can develop to and improve on forever needs to be the fundamental principle guiding all decisions about "acceptable human behaviour".
Popularity cannot be allowed to influence decisions about what is acceptable. "
==================
How can there be any argument with that? We are reaping the consequences of NOT adhering to these simple declarations. In a closed system "what goes around comes around".
Everywhere you look, there are UNsustainable realities: population, city growth, pollution, water use, etc etc... All interrelated, nothing separate.
What is civilization "worth"? What is the human race "worth"? What is all life on this planet "worth"?
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Tom Curtis at 10:43 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
spoonieduck @185, ok, you have convinced me. How, after all, could this not be considered a greenland:
Whoops. Sorry, wrong picture. That is Iceland, where before Norse settlement "Birch and willow forests like this one at Lake Mývatn used to cover much of Iceland's interior." In contrast even the inhabitable portions of greenland have never sported more than grasses:
Oddly, Iceland was names as such because, during an early attempt at settlement, drift ice was spotted in the harbour in winter.
This is the first reason why your argument fails. No matter what else, Eric was trying to convince settlers (whether from Norway or from Iceland) to move into a harsher, less productive environment. If it were ill advised to do that due to the "Vikings were truly violent people", then it were ill advised whether he used a bit of subtle persuasion by his choice of name.
The second basis on which your argument fails is that the "Vikings" were not a truly violent people, or at least not more so than most other European peoples of the time. The norse have a reputation for violence because they went viking (ie, on naval expeditions for raiding). To conclude from that that they were unusualy violent would be like concluding the English were unusualy violent based on French accounts of Agincourt (or on reading Shakespears plays). Yes, the Norse could be violent at home, but were not unusually so.
The basic fact you must account for is that even those small parts of Greenland that are ever green are not so when compared to Iceland or Norway. Therefore the name Greenland, even if only confined to those locations, must involve some creative embelishment.
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Rob Painting at 09:57 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
The paleoclimate scientific community seems to agree that southern Greenland was warm during the Medieval Period. See the spatial pattern below from Mann (2009).
Most of the world was much cooler than present though (as shown above). This is why sea level in the equatorial regions was falling throughout the Medieval Period. No such thing is happening today because the current human-caused warming is globally coherent.
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michael sweet at 09:48 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Spoonieduck,
Instead of speculating about what conditions were in Greenland in the 1,000's why don't we read something scientific about it!! What a novel idea, find out what is already well known instead of making up stories!! According to Collapse by Jahred Diamond, it was too cold to raise any vegetables in Greenland during the Viking settlements. They did collect forage during the summer for their cattle, but no plant farming. Currently there are over 100 tons of potatoes grown along with plentiful cabbages. It is only in the last 20 years that it has become warm enough to grow potatoes.
This is a scientific board. No-one cares what you remember from elementary school. Provide citations for your opinions or stop your nonsense.
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spoonieduck at 08:15 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
No, Rob, I'm not. Apparently only parts of southwest Greenland were habitable by Europeans with European technologies at the time.
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spoonieduck at 08:11 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Tom,
I thought I already addressed part of your statement. We were taught as children that Erik the Red falsely promoted Greenland as a Green Land to lure unwary and naive Scandinavians to his new colony.
Let's examine that belief a little more closely. The Vikings were truly violent people as retold in my of their Sagas and retold in the AngloSaxon Chronicle amongst others. Now let's say a group of Norwegian or Icelandic Vikings bought into Erik's propagandistic lie that Greenland was a Green Land and a great place to settle and raise a family. After sailing with their families--women and children--and livestock ater a long, nervous voyage in open Knorrs over dangerous northern seas, they come to southwestern Greenland, little more than frozen, barren rock with little more to eat than birds' eggs, fish and walrus blubber. How long do you reckon that Erik would have lasted?
Now, the Vikings did settle in southwestern Greenland. Archaeologists have found their settlements complete with church and structures that were probably animal overwintering facilities. I don't know if you have much experience with livestock but, obviously, they must be fed year round, not just in the summer. In northern climates, farmers put up hay in the plentiful summer months to feed their stock during the winter months. This presupposes the presence of quite a lot of grass and other forage during the warm months of the year.
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K.a.r.S.t.e.N at 06:25 AM on 14 September 2013The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle, and puzzles Curry
Kevin, yet another addendum:
The mentioned offset in the volcanic forcing in the Potsdam or Meinshausen et al. 2011 data, resp, is in fact a deliberately chosen nominal positive forcing of 0.2 W/m2 in order to obtain consistency between the historical period and the future forcings. The idea is to account for the average planetary energy imbalance caused by past volcanic eruptions. The very imbalance which causes the climate to warm as soon as a volcanically quiet period occurs. Or in other words, it is the forcing equivalent to the volcanic deep ocean cooling I mentioned earlier, which tends to cool the planet for a very long time (in the way hypothesized above). Of course, it is a crude average estimate, but better than nothing. Preferably, the CMIP5 GCMs would be spun up for a millenium or so before the actual simulation period of interest is run (in order to make sure the model is in quasi-equilibrium according to historic volcanic activity). See Gregory et al. 2013 for more details (I just had the pleasure to listen to a talk of Jonathan, during which everything became crystal clear all of a sudden ;-)).
So everything correct. I just didn't connect the dots properly.
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:27 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Spoonieduck... I just want to clarify something. You're not assuming the most of Greenland was actually green, are you?
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Tom Curtis at 04:39 AM on 14 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
keitho, consider the following graph by John Nielsen-Gammon:
In it, he shows the linear trend for El Nino, ENSO neutral, and La Nina years seperately. Each trend is approximately the same, and none of the three trends shows any slow down. Given this, we must conclude that either:
1) The underlying temperature trend has remained unchanged over recent years, with any apparent slowdown being primarilly the result of ENSO fluctuations; or
2) The apparent slow down in the temperature trend is real, the apparent ENSO related patterns in the graph are coincidental, and ENSO has no influence on global temperature.
Which conclusion do you accept?
Because if it is not one, it is you who is running headlong from the data to preserve your favoured theory!
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Tom Curtis at 04:26 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
spoonieduck @178, although at the time of Eric the red, some (small) sections of southern and western greenland were green (grass covered) in summer, they were less so than the settled areas of Iceland, and certainly less so than Norway and Denmark. Furthur, it is highly likely that Eric, having determined to establish an independent colony would want to attract fellow norsemen to his cause (thereby increasing his stature and power should he ever "go viking"). Of course, that explanation presupposes that some part of Greenland was at least sufficiently green that Eric wanted to settle there.
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John Hartz at 04:11 AM on 14 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
Keitho:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement by James Hansen:
"Climate is a complicated system but there is no change at all in our understanding of climate sensitivity [to carbon dioxide] and where the climate is headed," he said. "Our understanding of sensitivity is based on the Earth's history, not on climate models, and we have good data on how the Earth responded in the past when carbon dioxide changed. So there is no reason to change the forecast for the long term."
Source: Global warming has not stalled, insists world's best-known climate scientist by Damian Carrington, The Guardian, May 17, 2013
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Tom Curtis at 04:10 AM on 14 September 2013Debunking 97% Climate Consensus Denial
OPOF @29, you have clearly misuderstood what I wrote. I specified the range of damage estimated that IMO can reasonably be held regarding BAU. The lower end of that range is costs significantly greater than the cost of mitigation. Nothing in that statement implies in anyway that it is acceptable to incur those costs against future generations for the benefit of reduced costs by avoiding mitigation today. Indeed, for the majority of still living humans (anyone under 40) the cost within their lifetime of not mitigating is likely to be higher than the cost of mitigating.
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michael sweet at 04:08 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Spoonieduck
Instead of describing vague "sagas" you have read about on the internet you could refer to peer reviewed studies of Greenland. Jahred Diamond summarized much of this work in his book Collapse, on how societies in the past have collapsed from environmental change, some of it self inflicted. In spite of your vague suggestions, it is actually well known what conditions were in Greenalnd during Viking occupation. Why don't you do some serious reading and find out what is known?
As you have been told before, this is a scientific site. Vague descriptions of "sagas" without any references are handwaving and have no place in scientific discussion. Please start to present sources for your wild speculations.
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spoonieduck at 02:38 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
DSL,
I wrote "goats' when I should have written "sheep."
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spoonieduck at 02:34 AM on 14 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
DSL,
I forgot to list a sixth possibility i.e. the Vikings could have been lying. We were taught, as children that Erik the Red's naming of "Greenland" was a propaganda ploy to lure naive Icelandic and Norwegian settlers to Greenland [this is extraordinarily unlikely given the violent nature of the Vikings]. Conceivably, his successors might have been using propagandistic terms to describe the North American "Vinland".
On the other hand--and directly apropo to this site--it all may have been the literal truth. Southwestern Greenland may, indeed, have been a Green Land i.e. grassy, during the warmer months, one thousand years ago. The sagas tell us that the settlers were able to graze cattle and goats close to their several settlements. Not only that, but they were able to overwinter their stock which means that the settlers were able to harvest enough forage during the warm months to feed their stock during the snow-bound winter.
The same is likely true of "Vinland". Not only did the Vikings describe a "grape land", but they also stood amazed at its bounty. Of course, everything may simply be comparative. Even if Greenland were relatively lush 1000 years ago, Nova Scotia, at some distance South of the Greenland settlements, must have seemed bounteous, indeed.
Moderator Response:[DB] This is NOT a site to discuss speculative fiction. If you have a citation to a reputable source to support your claims, then please provide it.
Failing that, please refrain from such and instead discuss matters of science.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:34 AM on 14 September 2013Debunking 97% Climate Consensus Denial
Tom Curtis@28
I would encourage you to stop legitimizing the denialist argument that "Reasonable estimates range from economic damage significantly greater than the cost of mitigation...".
The comparison of the "cost of mitigation faced by a current generation" with "that current generation's estimate of the future economic damage it is inflicting on a future generation" in not a "reasonable thing to do".
More important is how sustainable a human activity is. Humanity should be planning to be living forever on this one and only planet. That would mean developing ways of living that can be continued forever. The way of living that has recently developed due to the burning up and consumption of non-renewable resources is fundamentally not sustainable. It is definitely popular, but everyone cannot develop to live the life of the most fortunate which is socially not sustainable. Actually, even just the few most fortunate would not be able to live their lifestyle forever.
The understanding that it is essential to develop truly sustainable ways of life that all humans can develop to and improve on forever needs to be the fundamental principle guiding all decisions about "acceptable human behaviour".
Popularity cannot be allowed to influence decisions about what is acceptable. That won’t have a 97% consensus of popular opinion, but it is the only way for humanity to have a better future for all life on our ones and only planet.
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Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
Keitho, models can always be improved. I wouldn't call model projections of surface temp "seriously wrong," though. After all, observed GMST is still within the 95% confidence range for CMIP3 ensemble modeling. True, GMST has swerved negative relative to the ensemble model mean, but if you can tell me what the ensemble model mean is worth in terms of science, I'd be much obliged. If you want seriously wrong, try Arctic sea ice projections. Ocean heat content is rising as expected. Sea level is rising at the top edge of projections. Changes to general circulation are happening as expected. Global ice mass loss is happening as expected. The physical mechanism of AGW, the greenhouse effect, remains unchallenged. Natural forcings are net negative over the last 50 years. Regardless, people continue to look for some way to say, "it's not happening."
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gpwayne at 02:01 AM on 14 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
Keitho - Two points:
"You really can't go on about "the science" if empirical measurements don't support your position".
First: I don't have a position. Everything I've stated, or alluded to, is entirely consistent with current climate science. On climate change science, I don't need a 'position' any more than I need an opinion. I read the science, and simply report what it says, in full or in summary.
Second: The empirical evidence does support what I've said in my post. Surface temps are increasing, but at a slower rate than in previous decades. Oceans are warming, which we know by dint of an accelerating rate of sea level rise, and by sticking a thermometer in the water and reading what it measures.
(And thanks to CBDunkerson for stalwart services)
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keitho at 01:55 AM on 14 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
@DSL . . If you hear hoofbeats don't start by looking for Zebras. (-snip-). Time for some deep thought wouldn't you say?
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic & sloganeering snipped.
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Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
True enough, keitho, but of course if we do, in fact, know that the oceans are getting warmer, and we know that there's a top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance. Yes, there's uncertainty involved with both, and there's always the chance that aliens are manipulating our instruments or that we're brains in vats being fed a Matrix-like "reality." Science does not provide absolutes, regardless of the public clamoring for such. The question, then, is what happens when people who are convinced that we don't know what's going on encounter pretty solid data that says we do know? Do such people adhere to the standards they have for critical thinking in other people? The evidence--and there is plenty--suggests that some do and many don't.
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Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
an additional contribution to reduced heat in the near term can be derived from the cooler sea surface temperatures which reduces the amount of tropical thunderstorm activity which results in a decrease in moisture transport to the lower stratosphere. This effect is also compounded by a recent decline in stratospheric ozone. When there is less water vapor in the lower stratosphere the radiative forcing declines. this is seen as contributing to the reduction in atmospheric heating. Jeff Masters wrote an excellent article on this on his blog:
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It's not bad
an additional contribution to reduced heat in the near term can be derived from the cooler sea surface temperatures which reduces the amount of tropical thunderstorm activity which results in a decrease in moisture transport to the lower stratosphere. This effect is also compounded by a recent decline in stratospheric ozone. When there is less water vapor in the lower stratosphere the radiative forcing declines. this is seen as contributing to the reduction in atmospheric heating. Jeff Masters wrote an excellent article on this on his blog: www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/stratospheric-water-vapor-decline-credited-with-slowing-global-warming
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Jim Hunt at 00:51 AM on 14 September 2013Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph
We have set our hearts on hauling the Mail in front of the Press Complaints Commission.
Should anyone here wish to help out or read all about it probably the best place to start is at "The Great White Con" -
empirical_bayes at 00:50 AM on 14 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
I'm having a hard look at the recent Fyfe, Gillett, Zwiers, "Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years" (Nature), with intent of doing so reported
- http://hypergeometric.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/overestimated-global-warming-over-the-past-20-years-fyfe-gillett-zwiers-2013/
- http://hypergeometric.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/p-values-are-random-variables/
and shared with the authors of the original (Zwiers). My emphasis is upon the statistical technique adopted, and my technical interest is how a Bayesian assessment of the same data might differ from their bootstrap-based result. This is just a note for future reference. I'm writing something up and sharing it for criticism by the authors, and, after I get their comments, I'll put it up on arXiv.org, with a link from http://hypergeometric.wordpress.com/.
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keitho at 00:49 AM on 14 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
"but all over the world people are peering at the sky and ground, the oceans and the ice, and declaring that something seems amiss"
When I was studying medicine in the 70's there was a well known effect that most of us experienced. When studying a particular disease it was common to experience some of the symptoms ourselves even though we were perfectly healthy. It was because we were made aware of these symptoms and so could easily ascribe them in ourselves, albeit for a short period. I'm sure you get my point.
If the air isn't getting warmer and we don't know what the oceans are doing despite your "certainty" that something is going on then, objectively, nothing is going on. You really can't go on about "the science" if empirical measurements don't support your position.
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Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Just a passing note: the first essay on history I did in college was over Helge Ingstad's Westward to Vinland. Well-written, but I can't recall what Helge said about the development of the name 'Vinland'.
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MA Rodger at 22:35 PM on 13 September 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #37A
ubrew12 @5.
As you sort of suggest, the changing pattern of precipitation under AGW is more defined than whether or not total global precipitation will increase.The links are to AR4, since when we have had five more years to add to the record which have included the two rainiest years on record. So it will be interesting to see what AR5 has to say on the matter.
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shoyemore at 16:31 PM on 13 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
Tom Curtis @17,
My earlier comment has been removed, but it seems to me you are saying what I was trying to say, only you put it much better. I wll read and learn. Thanks. :)
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spoonieduck at 14:20 PM on 13 September 2013Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Tom,
I'm aware of no Viking Saga stating that grapes were grown in Greenland. Around A.D. 1,000 the Vikings sailed West from Greenland, coming across a barren land they called "Markland", presumably Labrador. They sailed South and, as I can recall, they called their southernmost discovery, "Vinland" or "land of the grapes". We believe this is present day Nova Scotia where a Viking settlement was discovered at L'anse d'Meadows.
Note: The Vikings never grew domestic grapes, at least not in North America. The "grapes" they found may have been wild grapes, presently found no farther north than New England.
Possible explanations: 1. The Vikings misidentified their wild 'grapes'. 2. We are misinterpreting the word "Vinland". 3. The Vikings did discover wild grapes but, since then, wild grapes have disappeared from Nova Scotia for reasons other than climate. 4. The Vikings sailed as far south as New England. 5. Nova Scotia was significantly warmer then than now. Take your pick.
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tcflood at 13:52 PM on 13 September 2013Greenhouse Effect Basics: Warm Earth, Cold Atmosphere
Regarding 89 and 96:
I need to make a correction for my calculation of the population of the first excited vibrational state for the bending mode of CO2. The ground state wave function is indeed non-degenerate and the first excited state is doubly degenerate, so there is a degeneracy factor of 2 for the Boltzmann distribution calculation. At 25C (77 F) the equilibrium percent of CO2 in the first excited state is 7.4%.
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ubrew12 at 13:33 PM on 13 September 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #37A
wili@3: I may be totally off base here, but I'll hazard a guess. If CO2 warms the atmosphere, it holds more water vapor. That doesn't mean it evaporates more water vapor off the Earth's surface, just that it can hold more. Of course, there's the matter of the energy imbalance, yet that is quite small as a fraction of the total values of solar energy and Earth radiation. So, there might be a smidge more actual evaporation going on, but (I'm guessing) just a smidge. In that case, there would be little to no actual increase in condensation either (mass balance). If true, then why would evaporation/condensation increase its surface 'cooling effect' in a globally warmed world? Yes, the cycle is kind of a heat-pump, but why would this heat-pump become more efficient in the future as a 'negative feedback' to AGW? (this is different from saying the kinds of cloud cover might change to favor clouds that cool rather than warm).
It's often mentioned that precipitation patterns will change with AGW. More droughts expected, but also more flooding when rain does fall. However, I don't think the amount of evaporation/condensation going on is supposed to shift greatly, on a global basis. I'll admit I'm guessing here, but if so perhaps others can correct me.
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Bernard J. at 12:24 PM on 13 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
Yves at #2:
"Moreover, more knowledge now means more uncertainties now, this is a kind of paradoxical law of science but quite logic..."
This reminds me of the missing-link argument of Creationists, where every evolutionary link found between two species simply raises from the Creationists claims of ever-more missing links, as if this somehow weakens evolutionary theory rather than supporting it.
The parallel between this and the 'gap'-finding by deniers of climate science makes my skin crawl when I think of it.
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K.a.r.S.t.e.N at 11:00 AM on 13 September 2013The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle, and puzzles Curry
@Kevin C:
Re the volcanic response, I am not sure whether I got your last sentence in the 4th paragraph. If ENSO is included (which it already is in the first figure of the toy model), the lag time for volcanoes in the response function should be less than 30 years (which is the current default lag time). It seems that 5 years are more appropriate. With longer lag times, wouldn't there be the danger of "double counting" in case ENSO is partly volcanically modulated?
Re your last paragraph, there is an interesting paper by McGregor et al. 2013 which came out a week ago, argueing that ENSO might indeed be capable of responding to external forcing. While physically plausible, they present intriguing paleoclimatic evidence for that.
So far, it is thought that stronger (pos.) external forcing tends to produce less frequent El Nino events or to reduce its magnitude, resp. If this holds true also for short term forcings, negative volcanic forcing would increase the likelihood for El Nino events. And indeed, most volcanic eruptions are followed by an El Nino. As a result, a considerable energy imbalance builts up in the climate system, an imbalance which has to be overcome somehow ... and the easiest way to do that is to have stronger La Nina events in the decades that follow. I am not aware of any proposed mechanism for that, which is why I am very careful to connect the current La Nina preponderance with a delayed Pinatubo response. I just mentioned it before as one conceivable reason for that, while I consider it much more likely to be the case for past eruptions. I rather think of the current La Nina phase as a counterbalancing response to the strong GHG forcing (in agreement with some anecdotal paleo-evidence; see e.g. Mann et al. 2009). This way, everything would be fairly consistent, apart from the fact the many climate models suggest a different response. Nothing we should be too worried about in my opinion. The fact that things have looked different in the course of the past century could be easily explained by the highly spatially heterogeneous and temporally variable aerosol forcing. Above all: Stochastic internal variability!
Hope that makes sense to you, though it might not bring us closer to the "response function truth".
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dvaytw at 10:59 AM on 13 September 20132013 Arctic Sea Ice Extent Prediction
I'm posting this here because the 'Arctic ice loss is natural' thread has benne dead since 2010 (a problem that wouldn't exist if the website had an email notification option!):
I'm debating a Watt-bot and he's claiming that Arctic ice decline is all due to changes in wind patterns. He's posted several articles, but the broadest claims are made here:
Wind contributing to Arctic ice loss, study finds
Anything in the article that points out this doesn't question climate change's role he describes as spin - even though the study itself only seems to attribute 30-50% of the ice loss to changing wind patterns, according to the article.
Apparently this line is the dominant response to Arctic ice loss at WUWT other than the occasional rallying cry of "Recovery" (such as we are currently hearing). Any thoughts on this?
Moderator Response:[DB] Again, NO THREADS ARE DEAD at SkS. Regular participants follow the Recent Comments thread, so that no matter where ANY comment is made, it will be seen. And then responded to.
Please repost this on this thread, where others will then appropriately respond to you:
Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
This comment will be deleted in a little bit. Parties interested in responding to Dvaytw, please do so at the link.
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Tom Curtis at 08:09 AM on 13 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
Shoyemore @12, I think you have been confused.
The effect of the ocean is that it has a very large heat capacity. Therefore, for a given change in radiative forcing it takes a long time (centuries) to reach the equilibrium temperature. Without the ocean, the Charney equilibrium temperature would be reached in a few decades at most. Consequently, in a situation of radiative imbalance, the ocean cools (or warms) the Earth temporarilly relative to what the temperature would be without the ocean, but by no more than (approsimately) the difference between the Charney Climate Sensitivity and the Transient Climate Response. In current conditions, that is about 1 or 2 degrees C.
That analysis ignores the effects of the existence of the ocean on the radiative balance itself. Absent an ocean, we would have no water vapour feedback, and no ice/snow or cloud albedo. Further, the the albedo of the areas currently covered by ocean would be that of desert (much higher). The net effect would be a much colder Earth, although I have not seen a study of by how much.
What I suspect you are thinking of is the difference between the actual temperature of the Earth, established by the radiative/convective equilibrium relative to the temperature we would have in the absence of heat transfer to the upper troposphere by convection. Absent convection, the Earth would indeed be much warmer. Indeed about 36 C warmer as you indicate, as shown by Manabe and Wetherald, and discussed here (see the top figure on page 9).
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CBDunkerson at 08:06 AM on 13 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
somib, climate 'energy budget' studies take the energy used in converting ice to water into account. While this is a 'large' amount in absolute terms, it is actually only a small fraction (~2%) of the total energy from global warming... as can be seen here.
The thing is that atmospheric temperatures actually aren't "lower than projected". They are within the span of results produced by various model runs for the greenhouse gas levels we have observed. Climate scientists (and people capable of rational thought in general) have always known that fluctuations would occur... this denier idea that temperatures should rise in a continuous straight line is one of their dumber (and that's saying something) positions. There were temperature fluctuations before human induced global warming and no reason to imagine that they would stop after it.
Put another way... the difference between the 'slower atmospheric warming' observed over the past ~15 years and the 'rapid atmospheric warming' observed the 15 years prior to that is less than 1% of the total energy from global warming.
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william5331 at 06:53 AM on 13 September 2013Global imprint of climate change on marine life
Jelly fish increasing?? The turtles should do well, that is if we allow them to breed. Perhaps we will be eating turtle soup instead of tuna.
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somib at 05:43 AM on 13 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
How much of the excess heat absorbed in the oceans causes ice melt? This heat would melt ice floating on water. Melting of ice on land would keep the surface temperature from rising. In my high school physics class, I was told that it takes a large amount of energy to go from ice at 0 degrees centigrade to water at 0 degrees. Perhaps the melting of the floating ice and ice on land is keeping the tempeatures lower than projected?
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sidd at 05:29 AM on 13 September 2013Global imprint of climate change on marine life
One of my favourites is Cheung et al (2013) doi:10.1038/nature12156which shows the remarkable nortward migrations of fishes in the last three decades. Fig 1 is compelling.sidd -
Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
And by "recent geologic history," Composer99 means the last 300 million years. Honisch even suggests that it may be unprecedented, period. The argument extends to atmospheric concentration, since atmospheric and oceanic carbon are tied tightly together. It's possible that life in general has never experienced a carbon spike of this rate, and if temp follows (likely), then life in general may experience an unprecedented rate of increase in temp. Evolution occurs at different speeds in different species. The longer an ecosystem is at effective equilibrium, the more integrated and tuned the ecosystem's species become. Rapid change across the spectrum of climate (temp, precipitation, wind, circulation, ice) means ecological dis-integration, and the species that evolve slowly are more likely to become extinct.
This may all sound rather alarmist and fanciful, and it may be hard to see from the perspective of a single human life, yet we are warming at between 10x and 30x the rate of PETM warming right now, and 55 million years ago there weren't seven billion human beings wrapped up in a complex, highly-integrated global economy, half living in cities and highly-dependent on the consistent delivery of cheap food, water, and energy. Physics says the warming will continue for centuries.
Here's the abstract from Johanson & Fu 2008:
"Observations show that the Hadley cell has widened by about 2°–5° since 1979. This widening and the concomitant poleward displacement of the subtropical dry zones may be accompanied by large-scale drying near 30°N and 30°S. Such drying poses a risk to inhabitants of these regions who are accustomed to established rainfall patterns. Simple and comprehensive general circulation models (GCMs) indicate that the Hadley cell may widen in response to global warming, warming of the west Pacific, or polar stratospheric cooling. The combination of these factors may be responsible for the recent observations. But there is no study so far that has compared the observed widening to GCM simulations of twentieth-century climate integrated with historical changes in forcings. Here the Hadley cell widening is assessed in current GCMs from historical simulations of the twentieth century as well as future climate projections and preindustrial control runs. The authors find that observed widening cannot be explained by natural variability. This observed widening is also significantly larger than in simulations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These results illustrate the need for further investigation into the discrepancy between the observed and simulated widening of the Hadley cell."
That's already happening: significant changes to general circulation. During the PETM event, parts of general circulation flipped. You don't think something like that will have a significant, complex, and resonant impact on human agriculture?
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It hasn't warmed since 1998
Thanks for posting the email, MrGibbage. The response clarifies Fyfe's position quite a bit.
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Composer99 at 03:26 AM on 13 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
hank_:
In the first place, the hard data is already widely available. No special effort need be made by anyone who wants to find it. NOAA/NCDC, here at Skeptical Science, Real Climate, IPCC reports, and so on and so forth. Frankly, going around making statements implying that scientists have yet to "bring forth the hard data" sounds far more like spin in that light. In fact, it strikes me as practically an accusation of malfeasance.
In the second place, "damage control from the AGW faithful"?? Please. Pointing out (correctly) that the oceans are taking up 90+% of additional heat content from global warming isn't "damage control". It's called being accurate. If you want damage control, there are many accounts by climate pseudoskeptics of how Arctic sea ice has been "in recovery" any time over the last decade (it hasn't), or how a not-quite-statistically-significant-yet-still-positive surface temperature trend since 1998 counts as "no warming" or even "cooling".
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josiecki:
The NOAA/NCDC link posted by BBD works just fine for me (perhaps a mod fixed it if it was actually broken?). In addition, there just so happens to be a link to the Levitus et al paper in the Skeptical Science post discussing it. (Fancy that.) On to specifics regarding your inquiries:
Surface Temps vs. Heat Content
With regards to the prior focus on surface temperature anomalies, it must be said that these are much easier to measure than ocean heat content, we have longer-term reliable networks of surface temperature measurements, and as far as I am aware finding/developing adequate proxies for historical/paleo measurement is also much easier for surface temperatures than for ocean heat content.
That being said, we are getting better at measuring present and past ocean heat content, and it is IMO irresponsible to leave it out of the discussion, since as discussed it does represent heat storage of nearly 2 orders of magnitude more energy from global warming than do surface temperatures.
The Hockey Stick
For it's part, the "hockey stick" is in reality just a small, minor piece of the global warming body of knowledge. Insofar as it is a cause célèbre, at least in the last ten years, it is because of extraordinary efforts by denialists to attack and discredit it (which they have manifestly failed to do). It is also instructive since it shows an important part of the picture: the rapidity of contemporary warming.
Why the Atmosphere & CO2?
You ask "why are we looking at the atmosphere?" Then you basically answer the question yourself with "Isn't the atmosphere where we experience climate [weather]? [correction mine]"
The changes in weather due to warming, and its attendant effects on agriculture and other socioeconomic activity, is a very good reason to look at the atmosphere.
As for CO2, well, the physics shows that the reason all this warming is occurring, in the oceans and atmosphere and cryosphere, is because of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. (This is kind of a "Well, DUH!" thing.)
What's It All About, Anyway?
In your final post (as of this writing), you make what is IMO a very revealing comment:
If we didn't have warming, we would be like Mars or a floating chunk of ice. It is a question of whether we are in balance, out of balance or just fluctuating.
There are three major reasons why global warming is "kind of a big deal":
- Sea level rise. Sea level rise has consistently been at the high end of projections. Current expectations for sea level rise range from 50 cm to 2 m above preindustrial levels by the end of this century. The lower end projection entails an enormous cost to protect what coastal infrastructure we can and abandoning the rest. The higher end projection means the effective end of, say, entities such as the city of Miami, or the country of Bangladesh. Both represent severe economic and human crises.
- Ocean acidification. The "evil twin" of global warming, this is not caused by warming per se, but rather has the same source as warming: CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. Currently, ocean acidification is proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in recent geological history, faster even than occasions known to be associated with, say, massive dieback of coral reefs.
- Other impacts, especially on agriculture, glacier melt, and (sub)-tropical regions. I won't go into too much detail here.
Suffice to say, the net consequence of these impacts severely impairs our ability as a species to continue to exist in the extraordinary state of physical affluence and numbers we currently possess. If we want to maintain something like what we have now, global warming must be dealt with.
As a final word, as I said to hank_, the data you are wondering about is out there, in great abundance. Start with the IPCC reports and work your way through the references. Browse posts here, or at Real Climate, and work through the references. The people who know their stuff and are regulars here are quite happy to help (although their reaction is strongly contingent on the perceived "adversarial" nature of the questions - many are the pseudoskeptics who have come and gone while "just asking questions").
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shoyemore at 03:15 AM on 13 September 2013Global Warming’s Missing Heat: Look Back In Anger (and considerable disbelief)…
hank #9
You do not seem not seem to be aware the Charney Report was published over 30 years ago, before the stale rhetoric you are throwing around had even been thought of.
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MrGibbage at 02:14 AM on 13 September 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Oh, wow! I actually got a response from Dr. Fyfe. First my email to him and then his response below it.
Hello Dr. Fyfe. I am sure you are very busy, but for a long shot, I thought I would try and just ask you about a question I have about your report
Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309#affil-authI am not a scientist, but I do like to read a lot of science papers and reports (mostly space stuff). I am a believer in climate change, but I have a friend that is a denier. I have a Master's degree in computer modeling and simulation, so I understand how models are supposed to work. I understand your point of the paper in that the CMIP model has been overestimating the global temperature for the last fifteen years, when compared to the actual temperature. The model needs fixing--I get that.
What I don't understand is your statement:
The inconsistency between observed and simulated global warming is even more striking for temperature trends computed over the past fifteen years (1998–2012). For this period, the observed trend of 0.05 ± 0.08 °C per decade is more than four times smaller than the average simulated trend of 0.21 ± 0.03 °C per decade (Fig. 1b). It is worth noting that the observed trend over this period — not significantly different from zero — suggests a temporary 'hiatus' in global warming
All of a sudden it looks like (the typical denier sentiment) that the planet is not getting warmer at all. Now, I know this was not the point of the paper, but I am confused by it, and my friend is using it as evidence that climate change is not real. Maybe that *WAS* your point, in which case I may need to rethink my stance as well. Or maybe I am misunderstanding what you meant. Is the planet getting warmer or not?
Anyway, if you have the time, perhaps you could explain it to me in somewhat layman's terms what that statement really means and how it should be interpreted.
Thank you, Sir, for your time.
Very Respectfully,Skip Morrow
And Dr. Fyfe's reponse:
Dear Skip,
Thanks for your interest in our paper.
That the rate of warming has recently slowed down is well known. Not so well known are the reasons for this, although several lines of evidence suggest that it combines cooling impacts from reducing solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere, increasing reflecting aerosols in the stratosphere, and decreasing tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures -- which together are temporarily masking the warming impact from increasing greenhouse gases. None of these cooling impacts are expected to carry on very much longer, at which point we expect a period of rapid warming back the path the planet had been following for the last 100-years or so.
On a different topic, here is a new contribution of ours that was released today from the publishers of Nature.
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130912/srep02645/full/srep02645.html
Best, John
--
John C Fyfe, PhD
Senior Scientist, Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis
Environment CanadaOcean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Bldg., University of Victoria
e-mail: John.Fyfe@ec.gc.ca
off. 250-363-8236
fax. 250-363-8247I think I understand now. It's a shame that so many denier websites are using this report to support their cause.
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John Hartz at 01:33 AM on 13 September 2013Renewables can't provide baseload power
All:
I have deleted JvD's three most recent posts because they were sloganeering and repetitive.
I have also deleted responses to JvD's deleted comments.
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MrGibbage at 01:30 AM on 13 September 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
@IanC, I tend to agree with you, which is what makes me think I am misunderstanding what he is saying there.
I actually sent him an email. It will be interesting to see what (or if) he writes back.
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IanC at 01:14 AM on 13 September 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
MrGibbage,
I think one should not automatically assume there something is wrong about the paper, or that the author is a denier; this is particularly so since this is a piece in Nature Climate Change (not some obsure Journal where the editorial standard may be questionable), and as you said John Fyfe is a respected climate scientist.
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MrGibbage at 00:45 AM on 13 September 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
DSL, thanks for replying. I know HockeySchtick is a typical denier website. But it has the full text of Dr. Fyfe's report for free. At the nature website where it was originally published, you have to pay for it.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309#affil-auth
So I am not interested in the way that HockeySchtick is trying to use it. They are focused on the model inaccuracy--yeah yeah, I get it--the models are inacurate for short term, which is the point of the paper. I only have issue with the point that he made suggesting that the temperature hasn't increaded in fifteen years. Which to me is strange because he seems to be well regarded in climate science and even served on the IPCC.
I am not a climate scientist--I'm just a guy that reads a lot of science stuff and I am trying to convince a denier friend of mine that climate change is real. He found this report (which is written by a real climate scientist) and found the line suggesting that there hasn't been any increase and is using it as evidence that there is no climate change. I feel like Dr. Fyfe is on our side, but when he drops a stat like that and doesn't go into any more detail, then I am confused. I am pretty sure he knows about ocean heat content making up 90% of the thermal mass. So I think the statement that the temperatures haven't changed in fifteen years actually means something other than how I am interpreting it.
I don't know what Dr. Fyfe's motives are, but when he drops a line like that, it sure makes me think he is a denier, which just adds to my confusion.
He has his email address on his bio page here:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/ccmac-cccma/default.asp?lang=En&n=AD427C5F-1
Maybe I should just email him and ask.
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It hasn't warmed since 1998
MrGibbage, by what measure? Ocean heat content shows no "hiatus" over the period, and it makes up 90%+ of the effective thermal capacity of the climate system. Global ice mass loss makes up another 2-3%, and it has accelerated over the surface "hiatus" period. Further, if you run a 30-year linear from 1975 to 1998, you get 0.163C per decade, and that doesn't factor in the lower transient response of the period's earlier years. If you run 1975 to 2008, you get 0.19C per decade. So when did the "hiatus" begin?
Further, could Fyfe not have written this in 1995? The trend from 1981 to 1995 is 0.0879C per decade. The trend for 1997 (capturing the full 97/8 El Nino) to present is 0.071C. Not far apart. The trend from 1981 to present is 0.161C per decade.
All Fyfe is saying, to me, is "models are sketchy at projecting short-term surface temp fluctuations," which, of course, everyone already knows.
Now, has global warming "paused"? Or has the surface temp trend "paused"? Slow day at the Fyfe office, especially since five bajillion people have already covered the issue. Have you read Kosaka & Xie 2013? Does HockeySchtick provide fair and balanced coverage of it?
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