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Tony O at 08:52 AM on 30 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
We know from paleo studies that CO2 increases as temperatures rise and this increase came from the natural systems. So we can expect additional natural CO2 as we warm. The Earth will go from a carbon sink, to a carbon source. There are the simple physics chemistry responses such as warm oceans can hold less CO2 and the biospheric responses dying burning trees, phytoplankton losses then there are the biggies melting permafrost and ocean methane clathrates. So if we double CO2, expect nature to add her bit too. -
Philippe Chantreau at 06:08 AM on 30 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Ah, the "ideal temperature of the Earth" question. I'm always amused when I see that old canard kicked into quacking again. It is difficult to explain the promotion of such an argument except by postulating that the ones pushing it have not done given the subject much thought. What's funny is how clever and smug some feel when throwing the flailing ol' quackster in the conversation. From whom point of view would that temperature be "ideal"? The Earth? It's a planet, a ball of material orbiting around a star, it does not have feelings, it just exists. The ideal temperature range from the point of view of the Earth is that allowing for its existence, pretty wide. From the point of view of life, as a phenomenon? More restricted, no doubt, but still pretty open. Ever since their precursors took the better forms, life has been about bacteria. It is so now and always will be until the Sun explodes. The range of temperatures allowing them to exist is still generous. From the point of view of vertebrates? Terrestrial vertebrates? Mammals? Primates? Humans! Of course, that's the ideal temperature we're looking for. The temperature range in which humans not only can exist but flourish to the point that they can take their minds off of basic necessities and do all those other fun things that their brains can do. Now, that is a much more narrow temperature range; we're not talking about survival here but advanced civilization. Hasn't SkS looked at that? Of course they have: in a recent installment,the Y-Axis of Evil was thus exposed, but there were other posts before looking at that same question. No matter how exhausted and wrong any argument is, you know it's going to pop up again, driven by someone so convinced that they'd be ready to go to a war of words for it. -
sidd at 04:10 AM on 30 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
For a good explanation of nonlinear least squares, i like Bevington, "Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences" It has a good FORTRAN implementation. As for others, I seem to recall that the Bevington version is superior to the one in Numerical Recipes, or used to be. I use the open source Gnu FORTRAN compiler sidd -
sidd at 04:04 AM on 30 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
To detect if fitting parameters are correlated, look at the off diag elements of the correlation matrix that gnuplot dumps after the fit converges. sidd -
william5331 at 03:18 AM on 30 January 2013Australia's Great Barrier Reef: Last Chance to See?
As with so many other problems we are causing, as individuals we are very clever and know exactly what we should be doing but as a species we are incredibly dumb. What a strange animal we are. -
Bob Loblaw at 02:53 AM on 30 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
I haven't read the Norwegian stuff yet, but comments I've made about parameter fitting over here in the "16 more years of Global Warming" thread seem applicable. If you have multiple fitting parameters that are highly correlated, then you can get very similar results with quite different values of the parameters. In such a case, small variations in input data can also lead to large differences in fitted values. I can't say that this is what is happening to the Norwegian work, but it is one of the things I would look for if I were doing such a study. -
dana1981 at 02:23 AM on 30 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Dean @9 - I agree the study sounds like it's suffering from overfitting of natural variability, but that's not the same thing as "curve fitting". That's when a bunch of parameters are allowed to vary freely without physical constrataints to make a model fit the data - that's not what the Norwegian group is doing. Their model has a physical basis, they're just not fully accounting for the natural variability in the system (apparently). -
Bob Loblaw at 01:44 AM on 30 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Just speaking for myself, but reading Charliec65's comment (#34), I can't tell if (s)he's bugged by the criticism of the NASA retirees' claims, or bugged by the retirees implicit claim that their NASA expertise is worth something. It could be interpreted either way. Perhaps Charliec65 can explain... -
Bob Loblaw at 01:39 AM on 30 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
curiousd: A couple of other points I forgot to mention: - you'll find that Excel is more likely to get a decent answer if you have a reasonably good guess of the initial values of your fitting parameters. If it has problems, try a different initial value. You can also try different initial values to see if it still comes to the same solution (which increases confidence that it is a good solution). - the times when Excel will have problems finding a good solution are usually associated with fitting two (or more) parameters that are strongly correlated. In such a case, it doesn't make much difference which parameter is altered - they both have a very similar effect. The effects, therefore, can also be offsetting - e.g., make A a lot bigger, and B a lot smaller, but the overall result (on the sum of squares) is very small, so Excel starts to think that neither has much effect when in reality they both have a large effect. -
Lionel A at 01:15 AM on 30 January 2013Lessons From Past Predictions: Ridley vs. IPCC and Hansen
It would appear that Ridley has been at it again this time using the GWPF to promote his propaganda, or is it the other way around, H/T Russell Seitz at Eli's: A Lukewarmers Ten Tests, PDF, from GWPF. -
Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
curiousd - The AMO is more likely an effect than a cause of temperature changes, as I discussed here. The best fit to global temperatures is with the AMO lagging, not leading, temperatures. And regressing against the AMO (depending on definition, which makes things more challenging) to determine climate sensitivity will likely give an incorrect underestimate - due to subtracting the signal (expressed in the AMO). -
Composer99 at 23:59 PM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
snafu: Given your posts were in violation of the Comments Policy and were rather disrespectful & unreasonable themselves, I don't feel you have grounds to complain that others were snarky or sharp-tongued in response. ---------- Charliec65: I'm not sure where your charge of 'elitist' comes from. Retirees belong to one of the largest and more affluent demographics in the US. In addition, we are talking about retired NASA personnel from its "glory days" in the 1960s & 70s, whose efforts to muddy the waters of climate-related policymaking are spearheaded by a former fossil fuel executive (aka 'wealthy person connected to a wealthy & politically powerful industry'). Surely, if anyone belongs to any sort of elite, it is the authorship of this "climate report". -
JasonB at 19:09 PM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Charliec65, I think you'll find that what's being responded to is the false authority being claimed on behalf of the 20 "Apollo era NASA retirees". If 20 unknown people got together and issued a report saying that they aren't convinced that global warming is a problem then nobody would pay it any attention at all. But when those same people attempt to draw attention to their report by pretending that their credentials, and therefore opinion, matter, then they are inviting people to examine those credentials to see whether their opinion really does matter. I'd also point out that the original post actually addresses the substance of their report by answering all seven of their questions one-by-one, justifying the conclusion that the anonymous retirees really did not understand what they were talking about and therefore that their attempted appeal to authority was unjustified. It's not "elitist" to point out that those claiming to be authorities are actually ignorant of some pretty basic facts. The additional information that the project seems to be headed by a "77-year-old former oil and gas executive" illustrates conformity to a pattern demonstrated in Oreskes' "Merchants of Doubt", which I find interesting and useful to know. -
Dikran Marsupial at 18:28 PM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
@snafu While I did indeed give a reasonable response to your two questions, you have not given an adequate response to those answers. Do you accept those answers? If not, please explain your objections. -
Dean at 17:14 PM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
#6 dana1981 Perhaps you are right but the Norwegian press release (which is practically what published substance on the issue we have) describes what is classic overfitting. They claim that analysis over the period 1750-2000 gave 3.7K sensitivity, but including 2000-2010 data gave 1.9K. The 1750-2000 period was even outside their upper limit of 2.9. But it is well known that decadal variations occur via phenomenas like ENSO and the period has also been affected by large changes in aerosols forcings in Asia, which I assume is treated as "noise" in their study. -
Charliec65 at 15:47 PM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
The only thing that bugs me about this discussion and subsequent comments is the agist and elitist connection. Most of the evidence cited doesn't take a bona fide climate scientist to suss out, and I don't see that being 77 has to do with much anything. I'm sure there are plenty of 15 year olds, 25 year olds, etc. that have contrarian views, yet that seems to be the ad hominem perspective so prevalent with this better than thou crowd. I would only point out that Lovelock is close to 100 and wasn't a climate scientist either. It's the knowledge and acumen that's brought to bear. -
curiousd at 14:35 PM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
For presenting CC to a non expert, and probably hostile audience, I am becoming more appreciative of BEST data since about 1863. Land based transient responses are greater than global because of the moderating effect of 70% ocean on the global record, people live on the land, and it is in the lower 48 U.S.A. that this last year was a record, (Maybe Australia too? Have not looked in detail, but based on some things I have seen in SKS perhaps..)Plus BEST identifies the named historical volcano eruptions and indicates how long they were cooling things. (Something that yet escapes me is where and how one gets a volcano index to regress against.) The deniers will be having a field day with recent results purporting to show small global transient C.S. by regressing against the AMO. I am coming to the tentative conclusion that if one uses the AMO by Van Oldenborgh, rather than the AMO as used by Zhong and Tung, you likely get a larger transient c.s. if you do a regression. -
DSL at 13:56 PM on 29 January 2013Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
jsmith, countering James Taylor with comment is folly. Taylor is not concerned with credibility. He is paid by Heartland to say whatever needs to be said to promote doubt in the target audience. This is not baseless accusation. I've tried discussion with him. It's a game of mumble mumble fade away, much like Joe Bastardi, though Bastardi has more at stake. Taylor knows he has an audience that just needs some sciencey looking stuff with a few links (that no one in the target audience will follow). He's a minor league James Delingpole. I go there now and then to try to goad him into engaging in conversation, but he's not interested in discussion. -
curiousd at 13:56 PM on 29 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
Hi Rob in 129. That suggestion sounds right up my alley.I.E. I have a shot at being able to do this. -
Bob Loblaw at 13:30 PM on 29 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
curiousd: Although it is neither elegant nor efficient, you can (at least sometimes) do arbitrary least-squares fits to somewhat complex equations and data sets with Excel (or any spreadsheet with an equation-solving routine). In the version of Excel that I have (rather old - knowing Microsoft, details probably change with each new version), it is call the Solver. I think it may be part of the "Analysis Toolpak Add-In". In it, you can get Excel to change one or more cells, under various constraints, to yield a particular result. In order to do the odd-ball regression you need to set up a) a column with the data to be fitted b) a column with the calculated values. This needs to use a formula that refers to cells for the value(s) you want to try to fit to. c) cells containing the "fitting" values (the ones I mentioned in b). d) a column that calculates the differences between the observations and calculated values e) a column that squares the differences (or you could do that directly without the column of unsquared differences) f) a cell that is the sum of the squares (from e)... You need to set up the solver to manipulate the cells in c), with the goal of minimizing the sum of the squares in f). Though not straight-forward, it is readily available, and great way to understand more about just what it means to do a "least-squares regression" with something other than linear fits. -
AndyS at 13:30 PM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
In the RC link that you provide, there is an interesting discussion (comment 85 and onwards) where statistician Steve Jewson states: "Yes, using a flat prior for climate sensitivity doesn’t make sense at all. Subjective and objective Bayesians disagree on many things, but they would agree on that. The reasons why are repeated in most text books that discuss Bayesian statistics, and have been known for several decades. The impact of using a flat prior will be to shift the distribution to higher values, and increase the mean, median and mode. So quantitative results from any studies that use the flat prior should just be disregarded, and journals should stop publishing any results based on flat priors. Let’s hope the IPCC authors understand all that. Nic (or anyone else)…would you be able to list all the studies that have used flat priors to estimate climate sensitivity, so that people know to avoid them?" Nic Lewis then goes on to cite several papers on CS that use uniform priors to estimate CS.Moderator Response: [AS] To avoid confusion between AndyS and me, the contributor formerly known as Andy S, I have changed my SkS handle to my full name, Andy Skuce. -
Daniel Bailey at 12:50 PM on 29 January 2013Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
Why? The warming in the reconstruction is robust, with or without tree ring data. See Mann et al 2008."Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used."
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JasonB at 11:38 AM on 29 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
curiousd, I'm not sure what you mean by "regressions of non linear functions". You can do linear regressions of non-linear functions with Excel; for polynomial fits there's even a shorthand notation (e.g. "=linest(yvalues,xvalues^{1,2,3},true,true)" entered as an array formula for functions of the form y = ax^3 + bx^2 + cx + d) and there is also one for logarithmic functions, but even without that you just need to create extra columns (e.g. a column for x, a column for x^2, a column for x^3, etc., or a column for ln(x)) and use those as parameters to linest. This would work with any package that allows you to specify the input data by hand. The important thing to note is that while the function itself may be nonlinear, the fitting of the coefficients (a,b,c,d in the polynominal example above) is by linear regression. Sorry if I misunderstood your point. -
dana1981 at 10:47 AM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Bert @5 - I don't think that's accurate. The papers certainly have a physical basis, but they also have limitations, as discussed in this post. I don't think it's fair to call them curve fitting. -
jsmith at 10:24 AM on 29 January 2013Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
We should add an article about the Yamal stuff, I've seen it a lot, for instance on Forbes.com from James Taylor -
Bert from Eltham at 10:17 AM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Thanks Dana. From what I understood their model is just curve fitting without any Physics that constrain their wild speculations. The fact that the so called temperature hiatus since the El Nino years has so much effect on their models predictions is proof of this weakness. It is so predictable that a computer model that affirms the denialists worldview is acceptable but one that does not, that is based on real Physics, is considered a fiction in their Dunning-Kruger minds. It just like modelling the trajectory of a single electron due to unknown influences and predicting its future path without knowing what EM fields were. Let alone where they are at! Bert -
snafu at 09:55 AM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
At least Dikran Marsupial gave me a reasonable response to my 2 questions asked, and I do appreciate your answer. Thank you. To Danial Bailey.... The correct answer would be: Is that an African or European swallow? Ni! -
sidd at 09:54 AM on 29 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
gnuplot does nonlinear least squares fits sidd -
Dcrickett at 09:17 AM on 29 January 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #4
The cartoon is outstanding! The submerged houses take a second look to see. The contrast between the sails of the hull-down proas and the touristy westerner's outboard motor add more to the impact. I kinda expect to fine «Mene, mene, tekel upharsin» in there somewhere, too. -
dana1981 at 06:59 AM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Have updated the first paragraph of this post - Carbon Brief confirmed that the study being discussed has not yeet been published, or even accepted by a scientific journal. -
Roger D at 06:41 AM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
That should have been: "So, duh, that's why we DO want to minimize the deviation from the optimum temperature" -
Roger D at 06:38 AM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
I agree with those that say a valid response to the "skeptic" asking "oh yeah, well what is the optimal (average surface temperature) temperature of planet earth anyway, huh?" is to note that it is the abruptness that is problematic. But it would be fun to to have a pithy comeback along the lines of "well, I like 55 degrees F, because if it was 60 degrees it would be a real pain in the a*s". I don't know what the best value for a retort is -maybe someone could help me, but the point is that it would maybe stump the "skeptic" that smugly asks this question in the expectation that it can't be answered. Then if the conversation warranted, one could follow up with, "because, at several degrees warmer than optimum it will be a real hassel for us to grow our food, live on the coastlines like we have over the last thousand years or so, and it will be a bummer to have to try to cover the costs associated with the resulting increases in flooding and/ or fires. So, duh, that's why we don't want to minimize the deviation from the optimum temperature." just a thought -
Magnus W at 05:34 AM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Can confirm that it just was a translation from an earlier post in Norwegian. No new study published... however the group ofc continue to try to publish new research. What that will say, we do not know... -
Esop at 04:40 AM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Goodie. I was hoping that you guys would discuss this one. Little doubt that aerosol emissions, particularly from China, has had a rather significant effect. So the deniers all of a sudden agree with computer models and agree that CO2 causes warming now. Funny. We should get that in writing, as within a few weeks, it will be back to the "CO2 is an insignificant trace gas" chant from that camp. -
Composer99 at 03:44 AM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
As usual, a contrarian comes along with a "silver bullet" against reality, only for it to end up being a can of Coors Light. -
Albatross at 03:35 AM on 29 January 2013Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome
Thanks for clarifying this Dana-- what a mess. Sadly Revkin's initial report on this and his apparent bias towards lower climate sensitivity papers did not help matters. Fake skeptics also seem to be afflicted with climate model "syndrome". The following comment posted at The Guardian explains it nicely (H/T JohnM): "One other thing: I'm amazed at how many deniers have suddenly found computer models to be accurate, considering how many years they've been telling us they are utterly crap. Don't suppose this epiphany has anything to do with liking the results of some models ("good") while hating the results from others ("bad")." Yet another example of the logical fallacies and contradictory arguments used by fake skeptics and those in denial about AGW. Revkin, should know better than to actively enable this sort of obfuscation. Or is he perhaps trying to deal with his own cognitive dissonance? -
Dikran Marsupial at 02:50 AM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
snafu wrote "What is the 'optimal' temperature/climate of Planet Earth?" A reasonable answer to that would be "the climate to which our civilisation (and especially agricultural practices) has become highly adapted". It is the change in climate that is the principal problem, as adapting to change has costs. It seems likely that mitigation will reduce the cost of adaptation, so that would appear to be the rational strategy. It isn't rocket science. -
Daniel Bailey at 02:47 AM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Rather on par with"What's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
With the proper answer being"Depends on if he's carrying a coconut."
The most irritating thing about such parsimonious lines of rhetoric is that the asker of the question truly isn't interested in the answer or even capable of understanding it in context even if it is answered (as they never would have asked such a question had they the knowledge and understanding needed). -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:05 AM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
snafu @26... Regarding "the optimal temperature of planet earth." I've seen this question proposed dozens of times and it's really rather meaningless. The issue at hand is whether an abrupt, human caused shift in the earth's climate will cause massive disruption for humanity and other living species. -
snafu at 01:15 AM on 29 January 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
@ Bernard J., comment #17....ONLY! Since you are such an expert and above NASA astronauts/scientists, can you answer the following questions? 1) What is the 'optimal' temperature of Planet Earth? Bearing in mind that it has been warmer, cooler and has had more and less CO2 than today. 2) What is the 'optimal' climate of Planet Earth? Bearing in mind that it has been warmer, cooler and has had more and less CO2 than today. @ A Change in the Weather, comment #21....ONLY! Please repeat your statement...: "I'd say they're pathetic if I felt sorry for them. But I'm sure they're an arrogant, self-satisfied, and unself-aware tribe of jingoists, impressed with their own ability to find the tiny inconsistencies in the data trees. Meanwhile, they ignore the forest, the obvious and overwhelming evidence that, ironically, can be seen from space: the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap. It's the idiot light at the top of the world. Not to mention all the satellite data NASA collects. NASA should firmly rebut them and categorically disavow any ongoing relationship." ...to the families of: (-snip-)" (-snip-).Moderator Response: [DB] Moderation complaints and inflammatory tone snipped. Future comments constructed thusly will be deleted in their entirety. You are not doing well. -
citizenschallenge at 01:06 AM on 29 January 2013Meteorologists, Climatologists Featured in New ’2013 Climate’ Video
Yup, great video, the last two minutes when they explain reasons behind 2012's modest Tornado season is first class info to have on hand for the next phony skeptic who tells ya scientists don't know what they are talking about because Tornado counts aren't increasing linearly. And, since we've been talking videos here lately. NASA has come up with the best review of our Global Heat Distribution Engine to date. At one and half hours, no commercials; it goes into space and time and below the oceans with Computer Graphics based on actual data that will blow you away. Our Global Heat Engine ~ from space and within the ocean - a five star video Although they just call it "Earth From Space (HD)" Published on YouTube Aug 20, 2012 ~ sasijayaram ~ playtime: 1:31:32 Cheers -
curiousd at 22:53 PM on 28 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
I was hoping for some kind of canned program such as Origin or Sigma Plot. I have Origin, and it does linear regressions, but I don't think it does regressions of non linear functions, though I am not sure. I have heard of something you could get that works with excel. I don't want to learn a new programming language, for sure....I mean I know Fortran, Basic, and assembler language for the old Digital Equipment 8 kilobit DEC, and the IBM 1600 that used card stacks! (That DEC pre dated the Wang Calculator, which was the size of a suitcase, had a NIXE tube output, and could..da te de da te dahh - compute sines and cosines). -
Cornelius Breadbasket at 20:18 PM on 28 January 2013Video on Climate Change Lines of Evidence by the National Academy of Science
These videos are very good for genuine skeptics who are prepared to be open minded - and I'd include thousands of people who have been fed misinformation in that description. It is very U.S. centred - but that is probably a good thing. I'd like to see something similar come from the Royal Society. -
Ari Jokimäki at 19:49 PM on 28 January 2013Non-English climate science
Michael, I think IPCC summarizes the latest research which largely is in English. However, I think I have seen a few references from non-English languages in IPCC reports, but I should check that. -
Ari Jokimäki at 19:46 PM on 28 January 2013Non-English climate science
Perhaps I should have emphasized the historical aspect of this issue more. I agree that the modern situation is such that mostly the relevant science is available in English (although it would be nice to know the situation of Chinese journals). But we just established that the meteorology and hydrology journal is only available in English from 2005 onwards. Also, if we continue with Budyko, he published both in English and in Russian. For me it would be nice if his Russian output would be available too in some format. One (or several) example where results were caught by English world doesn't prove that there are no important results hidden in non-English journals. Gladly scientists have largely both published in many languages and picked up results from other languages, so the situation might not be that bad either. This needs further study. -
michael sweet at 18:58 PM on 28 January 2013The connection between Hurricane Sandy and global warming
Plantman: The sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are measured going back to 1880 or before. Why does Tisdale start his graph at 1938? Could it be related to the well known fact that temperatures increased from 1880 to 1940 and then decreased from 1940 to 1970? If we saw the entire record the result would certainly be different. This type of cherry pick is why Tisdale is an unreliable citation. This graph is exactly why you should cite peer reviewed science to support your points. It would never be allowed in a peer reviewed publication since it is clearly cherry picked. -
Doug Hutcheson at 17:35 PM on 28 January 2013Meteorologists, Climatologists Featured in New ’2013 Climate’ Video
Another excellent video from Peter Sinclair. I will be sending the link to many people I know. -
Rob Honeycutt at 13:55 PM on 28 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
curiousd... You know that a large amount of climate work is done in the R programming language. Is that what you're looking for? -
curiousd at 13:48 PM on 28 January 201316 ^ more years of global warming
By burning much midnight oil I got that Zhong - Tung devolcanized, de ensoed, data into excel and got so I could do a kind of manual regression, where I use the entire range of data and use the proper log function for the CO2 contribution from 1863 to present, and manually tweak weighting factors by hand for long periods of time. I used the Zhong - Tung version of the AMO index. I can do well enough by such fiddling to convince myself that the C.S. is no longer 1.9 something (as I get above on post 101 here by a simple log straight line fit), but by regressing this AMO is indeed a lower C.S., maybe 1.3. There is another definition of the AMO index I found on Wiki - "Oldenwhatever's methodology???" - that gives a much different AMO index and it looks to me like it would give a larger C.S. So would like to compare these results. But now I need something which has the computer, not me, systematically doing the prowling around in parameter space to give the smallest residual, then give a goodness of fit parameter. I want to buy such a program and learn to use it. Suggestions on what to purchase? -
wili at 13:28 PM on 28 January 2013Subcap Methane Feedbacks. Part 4: Speculations
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Andy (and even more for the series of articles on this important subject). As Shakhova and others have pointed out, the area has been warming steadily for millennia. At this point it likely will not take a large increase in temperature to destabilize the clathrates. I don't see how we can know exactly how that will happen--quickly or gradually. It strikes me that all three of the methane sources you so ably discuss are likely to interact with each other directly and indirectly in various ways. My hope would be that as one source destabilizes, it will somehow stabilize the others, perhaps by cooling the surrounding area. Somehow, though, I think that it is likely that in many cases the destabilizing of one of these sources will result in the further destabilization of the others, which in turn will prompt further destabilization of the first...in the kinds of vicious cycles we have been seeing acting out in the Arctic and elsewhere. And this is just the direct effects. There is no question that the added warming caused by all these sources of methane will further warm the area and the planet leading to the eventual warming and release of the other sources. The slow release scenario, if it ends up being inexorable, is deeply saddening in its own way, because it extends our very short-term forcing--over the last couple centuries and the coming few years or decades--for millennia or even millions of years into the future as far as I can see. It is all, obviously, worthy of further study. But mostly we just have to stop loading more and more chambers with bullets as we click away at the gun pointed at our children's heads.
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