In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Steven Koonin, former Department of Energy Undersecretary and BP scientist makes the case that global warming is caused by humans, important, that we must do something about it, and that further research on key topics is necessary to help guide policy.
He states,
The crucial scientific question for policy isn’t whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter … We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth’s global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries.
Unfortunately, Koonin also argues that climate science is largely at sea, and that we know so little about climate change that, he implies strongly, we really don’t know what to do about it. He seems to be suggesting that we should do nothing.
He states that the amount of anthropogenic change in global temperature is a fraction of natural change, but this is wrong. The amount of change over the industrial era caused by humans is far more than expected from natural change, and is all in the same direction. He states that estimates of projected “climate sensitivity,” the eventual change in surface temperature given a certain increase in added CO2, have not changed in 30 years. This is utterly false. The total range of sensitivity has, actually, stayed about the same but recent work has indicated that most climate scientists are more comfortable narrowing down the sensitivity to something like “Two. Or more. But I hope not. Maybe five.” More importantly, the issue of climate sensitivity has moved from being an “unkown unkown” to a “known unknown” over this time.
Koonin badly botches his discussion of models and how they work, confusing and conflating scales of time and space, and overall mischaracterizes what climate models do and how well they work. They actually work pretty well. He deosn’t seem to know that.
Yes, yes, we hear it all the time: More CO2 is good because plants love CO2
That is a rather dumb thing to say for a number of reasons; nature is not simple. You don’t change one variable and expect other variables to respond as though we were turning a garden hose up or down. For example, while plant growth might be enhanced with more CO2 in the atmosphere, there is no reason to think this would be linear, or similar across all plants. You have to dance with the one who brung ya. The plants we have are the plants that have been under Darwinian selection optimizing growth and maintenance physiology for gazillions of plant generations. Changing a fundamental variable may have little effect (and in fact, CO2 increase only enhances growth somewhat, and for only some plants) and may even have negative effects.
A new paper out in Ecology looks at the nutritional value of plants in a Ugandan rainforest and finds that the nutritional value of the leaves eaten by some Colobine monkeys there has declined, because fibre has increased at the expense of usable protein. From the abstract:
Global change is affecting plant and animal populations and many of the changes are likely subtle and difficult to detect. Based on greenhouse experiments, changes in temperature and rainfall, along with elevated CO2, are expected to impact the nutritional quality of leaves. Here, we show a decline in the quality of tree leaves 15 and 30 years after two previous studies in an undisturbed area of tropical forest in Kibale National Park, Uganda. After 30 years in a sample of multiple individuals of ten tree species, the mature leaves of all but one species increased in fiber concentrations, with a mean increase of 10%; tagged individuals of one species increased 13% in fiber. After 15 years, in eight tree species the fiber of young leaves increased 15%, and protein decreased 6%. Like many folivores, Kibale colobus monkeys select leaves with a high protein-to-fiber ratio, so for these folivores declining leaf quality could have a major impact. Comparisons among African and Asian forests show a strong correlation between colobine biomass and the protein-to-fiber ratio of the mature leaves from common tree species. Although this model, predicts a 31% decline in monkey abundance for Kibale, we have not yet seen these declines.
Jessica M. Rothman, Colin A. Chapman, Thomas T. Struhsaker, David Raubenheimer, Dennis Twinomugisha, and Peter G. Waterman, 2014. Long term declines in nutritional quality of tropical leaves. Ecology
According to data just updated by NASA, last August was the warmest August for the entire instrumental data record, which begins in 1881. This has been something of a mixed year but overall warm. Of the 134 years for which there are data, the coolest month this year so far was February, at 17th place, with July also being cool, at 11th place. Keep in mind this is over 134 years. For the months of January through August, there are no one-digit ranks (1 through 8) prior to 1989, inclusively, and you don’t really start getting consistent “top ten” ranks until 1998.
Monthly ranks so far this year, January was 4th, Feb was 17th, March was 4th, April was 2nd, May was first, June was 3rd, July was 11th, and as noted, August is 1st. For a year in which we are not (yet) experiencing an El Niño, that is very, very warm.
Again, these are global temperatures. Your local mileage may vary.
We don’t know how 2014 will rank as a year. If there is no El Niño it will rank high. If an El Niño gets going soon enough to affect the year’s average, 2014 may well be in the top few warmest years since global warming began.
Here is where the year to day (Jan through Aug) stands in relation to the years in the data set since 1990 inclusively:
Did you ever read a textbook on economic history, or an in-depth article on the relative value of goods over the centuries expressed in current US dollars? Have you ever encountered a graphic that shows long term trends in rainfall patterns or other climate variables, using a couple of simple lines, designed to give a general idea of relative conditions during different eras? Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about.
This is a graphic made by a major investment firm culling information from dozens or perhaps hundreds of sources into a single graphic. This is the graphic as it was initially provided by the researchers The value of gold in US dollars since the 14th century, from the Bank of England, Goldman Sachs Global ECS Research. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/charting-price-gold-all-way-back-1265
This is a graph of oxygen concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere. It is culled from a large number of different sources. This is the graphic, based on numerous proxyindicattors, as published in a peer reviewed paper:
This is a compilation from many different sources of stock market values assembled to show waves in stock market behavior over the last few centuries:
Long term look at stock market waves. From: http://www.elliottwave.com/affiliates/featured-commentary/bear-market-formation.aspx?code=91715
This is a set of climate related variables show in relation to human “civilization” over 18,000 years (n.b.: the term “civilization” is reserved in archaeology and prehistory for specific phenomena which did not occur before about 10,000 years ago). Various climate variables in relation to human civilization (sic) over the last 18,000 years, from: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/17/climate-and-human-civilization-over-the-last-18000-years/
In all these cases complex sources were culled in the peer reviewed literature 0r professional research literature, and turned into summary views of something happening over time. The graph itself is meant to show a derived variable, not the underlying complexity of the data. The graph is the sausage. The making of the sausage is laid out in the original documents, in some case in the peer reviewed paper the graphic appears in.
Here, Judith Curry makes the argument, in an excessively tl;dr blog post, that climate scientist Michael Mann acted inappropriately, perhaps fraudulently, or perhaps as a matter of scientific misconduct, when the IPCC published a version of his famous Hockey Stick Graph that instead of looking like this:
The famous Hockey Stick Graph with pretty colors and labels indicating which part of the data come from instrumental records and which parts come from proxies.
Looked like this:
Dumb old black and white version of the Hockey Stick Graph that shows the key point of the graph but does not indicate the different origins of the numeric values being plotted. Like the graphs above.
For the record, here is the original version of that graphic from the peer reviewed paper. Note that it indicates where the data come from but that was back in the late 20th century when in order to have color graphics in your paper you had to hire monks to draw them and there weren’t any monks available.
And here is the same graph in a similar updated paper a year later, looking much better:
From Mann, M., Bradley, R and Hughes, M. Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 26, NO.6, PAGES 759-762, MARCH 15, 1999.
Mann’s graphic representation of climate change, the Hockey Stick, is not fraudulent. But it is verified, real, and important. There are people in the climate discussion who make up graphs, of course (see this) but Mann is not one of them.
So Judith Curry and the flock of winged monkeys and child molesters that comment on her blog are arguing that Mann carried out scientific misconduct when he did something that is normal to do, and in fact, that he didn’t actually do. This is an “own goal” for Curry because it is a clear cut case of making up a version of reality in order to denigrate a fellow scientist and discredit his research on the basis of color coding rather than the science. Curry has credentialed herself a denialist.
If you ever see an image like this used by a climate science denialist, ACCUSE THEM OF FRAUD AND MISCONDUCT because this graph shows NOTHING about the multiple sources used to create the single black line squiggle therefore it is ILLEGAL.
Sorry… I get carried away sometimes. Anyway, I have a pro tip for those who are following along with the climate change discussion: Individuals who study climate change from any perspective (as a climate change scientist, some other kind of scientist, policy maker, communicator, interested citizen) should realize that some depictions or summaries are underlain by extensive and complex literature. A proper scholarly approach, even by an avocational scholar or journalist, requires keeping that in mind and digging beneath the surface where needed. So if you see a monochromatic hockey stick like curve, or any climate squiggle, hopefully there is a reference to where it comes from and then you can dig around and reconstruct the scholarship, if you are reasonably smart, reasonably diligent, not lazy, and well intentioned.
Or you can be one of Judith Curry’s followers and just whine about it.
Finally, here’s a recent version of the Hockey Stick Graph showing the many ways it has been verified. Checkmate, denialists.
The book provides basics on climate and energy, approaches to teaching about climate and energy, and of special interest for teachers, syncing the topics with existing standards. The main point of the book is to get teachers up to speed, but this is not restricted to teachers at a certain level, or for that matter, a certain topic, in that climate change and energy can be incorporated in a very wide range of electives and mainstream classes. The goal of teaching climate literacy is developed by focusing on the “seven essential principles”:
The sun is the primary source of energy for Earth’s climate system.
Climate is regulated by complex interactions among components of the Earth system.
Life on Earth depends on, is shaped by, and affects climate.
Climate varies over space and time through both natural and human processes.
Our understanding of the climate system is improved through observation, theoretical studies, and modeling.
Human activities are impacting the climate system.
Climate change will have consequences for the Earth system and human lives.
And, similarly, there are seven organizing concepts for teaching energy:
Energy is a physical quantity that follows precise natural laws.
Physical processes on Earth are the result of energy flow through the Earth system.
Biological processes depend on energy flow through the Earth system.
Various sources of energy can be used to power human activities, and often this energy must be transferred from source to destination.
Energy decisions are influenced by economic, political, environmental, and social factors.
The amount of energy used by human society depends on many factors.
The quality of life of individuals and societies is affected by energy choices.
There is a chapter on countering denialism, and a chapter on mainstream activism.
Mark McCaffrey is the Programs and Policy Director for these topics at the National Center for Science Education, and this book is an NCSE project. McCaffrey has blogged about the contents of the book on the NCSE blog; his first entry is here. In his own words:
…if well presented and handled with creativity and care, climate and energy issues are ideal interdisciplinary and integrating themes, potentially linking the sciences with mathematics, language arts, geography, history, arts, social studies and civics, and at the college level, bringing in psychology, sociology, writing and rhetoric, philosophy, business…. You get the picture.
Most importantly, climate and energy are topics that are imperative to teach if we are going to effectively respond to these challenges, and make informed climate and energy decisions.
Climate change is emotional, especially when the effects are disastrous and people’s lives are ruined. It is vague, sometimes. For example, bad weather happens and always has happened, so an increase in frequency or severity of bad weather isn’t necessarily qualitatively novel, and can be hard to put one’s finger on. Although the negative effects of climate change are already here, more serious effects are in our future. So, climate change has a component that is mysterious and hard to relate to, because it is in the future. Climate change is global, but spotty on a given day or in a given month. So, you may spend a long period of time between direct bouts with the phenomenon and forget about it or write it off as an “it can’t happen here” sort of thing. Climate change is scary or depressing, or both, so it is one of those things one tends to avoid thinking about. Climate change is complex, and climate change includes variation that is hard to understand.
NEW: Get your free chapter of this great book from the NCSE. Click here!
When we look at how the human mind works, using the tools of anthropology, psychology, or any of your favorite ways to study the human condition, we find that we are better at some things than others. All those things I just said about climate change are things we humans tend to be bad at, find hard to comprehend, evaluate, understand, or explain.
Therefore, climate change has two very important characteristics. 1) It is very important, representing an existential threat that we must deal with; and 2) we are cognitively, emotionally, intellectually, pragmatically, unable to deal with it. Or, one would hope, unable to deal with it easily. Hopefully we will get past that.
George Marshall’s Don’t Even Think about It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change is a must-read book for anyone interested in messaging and communication about climate change. You may know of George Marshall’s work; he’s the guy who made that great video on “How to talk to a climate change denier” (I’ve pasted it below).
If you know even a modest amount about climate change, and if you are likely to accept scientific consensus as valid (and the consensus on climate change is nearly 100% and is quite valid), then you may wonder how the heck people actively deny it. Less mysterious but still enigmatic is how people not actively engaged in denial don’t just accept the science. There is a handful of easy answers to these wonderments. Ignorance, financial incentive, getting bad information by a well funded and very active denialist industry, probably account for much of this. But just as climate change is something we address in science, denial of climate change, or refusal to engage in the issue, can also be addressed with science. Marshall’s book does this.
Marshall examines why people who aren’t worried about climate change do worry about being hit by asteroids or killed by terrorists. He examines the enigmatic fact that having children, who will certainly be more affected by climate change than the parents will be, makes it more likely to deny the reality of the phenomenon. He talks about the role of myth, fiction, and stories in shaping people’s belief, as opposed to science. He looks at why victims of climate change, such as those who lost everything in a major flood or terrible storm, exhibit a personal denial of the salient facts underlying their plight.
I have been dealing with science denial of one form or another for many years, much of that time surrounding the issue of evolution (as opposed to creationism). There are two things I’ve observed that relate to Marshall’s book. First, the patterns of cause of denialism are rarely simple. There tends to be a political cause, in some cases there tends to be a religious cause (especially with respect to evolution), there tends to be a money-related cause, and so on. But it is unrealistic to attribute denial to a simple causal agent, and one does so at one’s peril. The other observation is the commonness of well meaning people who look at denial think about if for a moment and come up with a simple fix. There isn’t a simple fix for such a complex thing. This is why Don’t Even Think about It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change is a must-read book for anyone interested in messaging and communication about climate change.
I strongly recommend this book.
Marshall has a post on his book here. Andy Skuce has reviewed it here. The Facebook Page for the book is here. The video I promised you is here:
This is a big thing. Starting just now, 97 different top experts on climate change, starting with Michael Mann (author of this book), one per hour, will have a say about the consensus. This is being run by Skeptical Science.
Research has shown that when people are aware of the expert consensus, they’re more likely to accept the fact that humans are causing global warming, and also more likely to support taking action to address the problem. Hence the consensus gap is a significant roadblock preventing us from tackling global warming.
To help close this gap, the website Skeptical Science has launched a 97-hour social media event starting today, 9/7. Each hour, the site will publish a relevant quote from a climate scientist, along with a playful caricature drawn by Skeptical Science founder and University of Queensland researcher John Cook. Each caricature lists the scientists’ name, title, expertise, and academic institution.
You can see the event unfold in an interactive 3D animation HERE. (Just pin the scientist down with your mouse cursor and make them talk!)
This is not a peer reviewed meta-study, but a meta-study nonetheless. Reuters has engaged in a major journalistic effort to examine sea level rise and has released the first part (two parts, actually). It is pretty good; I only found one paragraph to object to, and I’ll ignore that right now.
There are two reasons this report is important. First, it documents something about sea level rise that I’ve been trying to impress on people all along. The effects of sea level rise do not end at one’s perceived position of a new shoreline. Here’s what I mean.
Suppose you are standing on a barrier island, and your feet are on a grassy sandy knoll 10 feet above high tide. You are standing next to a climatologist who says “some projections say that the sea level will rise by one foot more than it already has by 2100. You breath a sigh of relief because you are standing 10 feet above high tide, and you realize that one foot of seal level rise is easily accommodated by the sea you see in front of you.
But you would be a fool to not be worried for several reasons. First, you are standing on a 10 foot high sea cliff. The sea cliff represents erosion that happened since the last bout of sea level rise (and is actually an ongoing process). When the sea rises by one foot that sea cliff will erode away. The land many hundreds of yards behind you may be fine, but the place you are standing will be gone. It is hard to predict how much land will horizontally erode with a given rise in sea level, but it is generally a positive number, rarely zero (there are places where it effectively can be zero but not along the sandy shores). Second, as you stand there looking at the sea, the restaurants and businesses along the road behind you and the residential and commercial properties all across the nearby hinterland are busy lowering the ground water by taking water out for their own use as if it didn’t matter. So, while the sea may rise up one foot by 2011, it may also drop a foot because of the groundwater removal. Third, if the sea rises only a little across certain kinds of sediments, the weight of the sea may further suppress the land. Fourth, if this bit of land you are standing on is along the US Atlantic coast, you probably get more than one foot of sea level rise if the global sea level goes up by one foot. This has to do with the shape of the oceans, wind and water currents, etc. Fifth, one foot of sea level rise means many feet of extra storm surge when that rare tropical storm comes along. The chance of a hurricane hitting a given beach along the Atlantic is low. But we’re talking about the year 2011. Between now and then a hurricane with enhanced storm surge will come along and remove the land you are standing on. Sixth, the climatologist you are standing next to is an optimist. He is referring to “some estimates.” The funny thing about sea level rise estimates, as well as polar ice sheet melt estimates, is that they keep changing over time, always in one direction. Ten years ago the estimate was one foot by 2200. Now, it’s 4 feet, and some estimates suggest 6.6 feet. Also, looking at the paleo record, the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were at their present level plus what we expect to put in the air over the next few decades for good measure, sea levels were so high we used meters instead of feet! Figure 25 feet, maybe 40. The town behind you will eventually be gone, buried deeply in the sea, a nice fishing ground. That probably won’t be by 2100, but is it really your job to throw every human that exists after 2100 under the climate change bus because it is a nice round number? No. No, it isn’t.
The Reuters report deals with most of those issues (though in a different way), chronicling numerous cases of actual current and ongoing encroachment of the sea on the land. And this brings us to the second key thing about this report. Reuters documents that the humans are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Local business leaders who want to preserve their short term profits are controlling supposedly long-term-thinking state and federal agencies so nothing gets done. Big Science (in the form of NASA) is busy studying glacial melt and sea level rise from rocket-launching bases that are being washed away by the rising ocean, and acting as though they can somehow stop that. Congress. It does nothing. And so on.
The climate change documentary, “Years of Living Dangerously” was nominated for two Emmy Awards. That was well deserved and fantastic news. But, frankly, with Cosmos also nominated for the same categories, no one really expected more than the nomination.
But, while Cosmos dis win in the “Outstanding Writing For Nonfiction Programming” category, and good on them for doing that, “Years of Living Dangerously” took the award for “Outstanding Documentary or NonFiction Series.
This is of course because it is a great, well done documentary. But I like to think part of this outcome has to do with people realizing the importance of climate change as an existential issue.
You can watch the first episode here:
You have to have Showtime to watch the rest of it, but it will be available on iTunes and as a DVD next month.
A new paper advances our understanding of the link between anthropogenic global warming and the apparent uptick in severe weather events we’ve been experiencing. Let’s have a look at the phenomenon and the new research.
Climate Change: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
It is mostly bad. Sometimes it is ugly. I was looking at crop reports from the USDA and noticed an interesting phenomenon in Minnesota, that is repeated across much of the US this year: Fewer acres are in crops but among those acres that are planted there is a high expected per-acre yield. The higher yield will make up for the lost acreage this year. Unfortunately, that is about as good as it gets.
The lost acreage, at least in Minnesota as I understand it, comes from a late spring followed by a wet early summer. And holy crap was it wet, and fairly cool. My own tomatoes were utterly confused. One plant produced a single tomato that ripened a month and a half early, then waited for weeks to make its next move. I think organisms do that sometimes; when they think they are about to die they reproduce desperately, which for a tomato plant, is producing one premature tomato and then trying to not be noticed for a while. In any event, many Minnesota farmers live with an interesting conflict. There are parts of their farms they can’t plant in a given year because it stays too wet too long, and that varies from year to year. The rest of the farm is irrigated much of the summer. This year, it seems that there has been enough extra rain to increase productivity of the irrigation season, but acreage was lost between the encore of a sort of Polar Vortex mimic and a lot of rain.
The extra productivity was a lucky break, and is limited in its effects. The same weather phenomenon that made June nearly the wettest month ever in the upper plains has contributed significantly to a longer term drought in California, which is on the verge of ruining agriculture there. Severe flooding or extreme dry can do much more damage to agriculture than is accounted for by minor increases in productivity because of the extra water vapor provided by Anthropogenic Global Warming.
And the floods can be downright dangerous. I was talking to my friend and former student Rusty several months ago about the flooding in Colorado. I asked her about how her husband was doing (they both happen to be climate scientists by the way).
“Oh he’s probably fine but I’ve not heard from him in three days. His cell phone battery is probably out. I imagine he’s clinging to some high ground up on the Front Range about now.”
He is a volunteer first responder and had headed up into the canyons year boulder during the big floods there. Which were like the big floods in Calgary. And Central Europe. And the UK. And that rainy June here. And the flooding that just happened in several parts of the US.
All of it, all of those floods, and some significant drought, and the Polar Vortex that hit the middle of North America last winter, all caused, almost certainly, by the same phenomenon.
Wildfires are probably enhanced by recent weather phenomenon as well, with extreme rains causing the build up of fuel, followed by extreme dry providing the conditions for larger and more frequent fires.
On the more extreme end of effects for severe weather is the Arab Spring phenomenon. It is one thing to have a bad year for corn because of a wet spring. It is worse to have a multi year drought that could seriously affect our ability to buy almonds, avocados and romaine from California. But what happens when an agricultural system fails for several years in a row, the farmer abandon the land and move to the cities where they become indigent, a civil war breaks out, and next think you know a Caliphate is formed, in part on the wreckage of one or two failed regimes, failed in large part because of severe weather conditions caused by human induced climate change?
AGWAAQRaRWaWW. Rhymes with “It’s stuck in my craw, paw!”
Let me parse that out for you.
AGW -> AA -> QR-RW -> WW
AGW – Anthropogenic Global Warming
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is caused mainly by added CO2 in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuel. By definition, the burning of fossil fuels is the release of energy by separation of carbon previously attached to other atoms by biological processes typically a long time ago, and over a long period of time. We humans are spending a century or two releasing tens and tens of millions of slow storage of Carbon, all at once in geological time, causing the chemistry of our atmosphere to resemble something we’ve not seen in tens of millions of years.
AA – Arctic Amplification
The CO2 by itself would warm the Earth to a certain degree, but it also produces what are called positive feedbacks. Which are not positive in a good way. For example, added CO2 means there is more water vapor in the atmosphere (because of more evaporation and ability for the atmosphere to hold water). Water vapor is, like CO2, a greenhouse gas. So we get even more warming. In the Arctic, there are a number of additional positive feedbacks that have to do with ice. The Arctic, with its additional positive feedbacks, warms more than other parts of the planet. This is called Arctic Amplification.
QR-RW – Quasi-resonant Rossby waves
Cross section of the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere. The Jet Streams form at the highly energetic boundary between major circulating cells which contain the trade winds near the top of the Troposphere.Normally, heat from the equator makes its way towards the poles via air and sea. Giant currents of air are set up by a combination of extra equatorial heat and the rotation of the earth. Part of this system is the so-called “trade winds” (winds that typically blow in a typical direction) and the jet streams.
What the jet stream is supposed to look like.The jet streams occur at high altitude between major bands of trade winds that encircle the earth. The trade-wind/jet stream systems are typically straight rings that encircle the earth (a bit like the bands on the major gas planets) and the jet streams move, normally, pretty straight and pretty fast. But, with the warming of the Arctic, the differential between the equator and the poles is reduced, so all sorts of strange things happen, and one of those things is the formation of quasi-resonant Rossby waves.
A Rossby wave is simply a big giant meander in the jet stream. Quasi-resonant means “almost resonant” and resonant means that instead of the meanders meandering around, they sit in one place (almost).
What the jet stream looks like when it is all messed up.It appears that Quasi-resonant Rossby waves set up when there is a certain number (roughly a half dozen) of these big meanders. When this happens, the jet stream slows down. The big bends in the jet streams block or stall weather patterns, and the slow moving nature of the jet stream contributes to the formation of either flash droughts (as Paul Douglas calls them) where several weeks of nearly zero rain menace a region, or extensive and intensive rainfall, like all the events mentioned above.
The recent decade has seen an exceptional number of boreal summer weather extremes, some causing massive damage to society. There is a strong scientific debate about the underlying causes of these events. We show that high-amplitude quasi- stationary Rossby waves, associated with resonance circulation regimes, lead to persistent surface weather conditions and therefore to midlatitude synchronization of extreme heat and rainfall events. Since the onset of rapid Arctic amplification around 2000, a cluster of resonance circulation regimes is ob- served involving wave numbers 7 and 8. This has resulted in a statistically significant increase in the frequency of high- amplitude quasi-stationary waves with these wave numbers. Our findings provide important new insights regarding the link between Arctic changes and midlatitude extremes.
The effects of climate change have occurred (and will occur) on a number of time scales. Over a century we’ve had a foot of sea level rise, which is showing its effects now. Storminess, in the form of changes in tornado regimes and tropical storms, has probably been with us for a few decades. But Agwaaqrarwaww has probably only been with us since about the beginning of the present century.
I blogged about this before. In “Global Warming And Extreme Weather” I described an earlier paper produced by the same research team, in which they presented this graphic:
Followed by this graphic, which I made, with the intention of more clearly showing the trend in QR events:
I sent that to one of the authors, which may have inspired the production of a different graphic but showing the same trend, for the current paper:
Look how recent this phenomenon is. It is now, current, happening at sub-climate time scales. We don’t know enough about it, and we need to address it.
I asked Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the paper’s author and the scientists I was exchanging graphics with, to elaborate on the signficance of this recent study and to explain why it is important. He told me, “Previous studies have failed to find trends linked to global warming which could explain the recent spate of unusual extreme events. For example they have looked at trends in the occurrence of blocking or in the speed of the jet stream. But you need to know what you are looking for in order to find it. The planetary wave equation reveals what the resonance conditions are which make the waves grow really big, causing extreme weather. So we knew what trends to look for.”
I also asked him if severe weather events post dating the end of his study period conform to expectations as Rossby Wave events. “I can’t say for sure because we have not done the analysis for the very latest data yet – studies like this take time,” he told me. “But I suspect there have been more resonance events. They are not necessarily constrained to July and August either. The record flooding in May/June 2013 in Germany of the Danube and Elbe rivers, for example, was associated with large planetary wave amplitudes. Dim Coumou has assembled a young research team now that will work on further data analysis.”
Prof Ted Shepherd, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, UK, but not involved in the work, said the link between blocking patterns and extreme weather was very well established. He added that the increasing frequency shown in the new work indicated climate change could bring rapid and dramatic changes to weather, on top of a gradual heating of the planet. “Circulation changes can have much more non-linear effects. They may do nothing for a while, then there might be some kind of regime change.”
Shepherd said linking the rise in blocking events to Arctic warming remained “a bit speculative” at this stage, in particular because the difference between temperatures at the poles and equator is most pronounced in winter, not summer. But he noted that the succession of storms that caused England’s wettest winter in 250 years was a “very good example” of blocking patterns causing extreme weather during the coldest season. “The jet stream was stuck in one position for a long period, so a whole series of storms passed over England,” he said.
I’m not convinced that the seasonality of Arctic Amplification matter much here, and I note that we’ve not looked closely at the Antarctic. Also, “blocking patterns” and QR waves are not really the same exact thing. They may be different features of the same overall phenomenon, but QR Rossby Waves are a more general phenomenon, and a “blocking” is something that happens, probably, when that phenomenon interacts with certain kinds of storms.
It occurs to me that there is a huge difference between Agwaaqrarwaww happening randomly in space vs. blocking and steering waves setting up for long periods of time over the same place, and appearing in those places typically. Like Godzilla. We know that over time Godzilla will usually destroy Tokyo and not London, because Godzialla, while sometimes random, is usually geographically consistant. Can we expect Rossby Waves to usually causae drought in California, flooding on the Front Range or Rockies, and drenching rains in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Region, for example? I asked Stefan about that as well.
“We have not looked at this aspect yet, but the recent paper by Screen and Simmonds has indeed found such a preference of the wave troughs and crests to sit in certain locations.
Published on Aug 1, 2014
Arctic Emergency: Scientists Speak On Melting Ice and Global Impacts (1080p HD)
This film brings you the voices of climate scientists – in their own words.
Rising temperatures in the Arctic are contributing the melting sea ice, thawing permafrost, and destabilization of a system that has been called “Earth’s Air Conditioner”.
Global warming is here and is impacting weather patterns, natural systems, and human life around the world – and the Arctic is central to these impacts.
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Scientists featured in the film include:
– Jennifer Francis, PhD. Atmospheric Sciences
Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University.
– Ron Prinn, PhD. Chemistry
TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
– Natalia Shakhova, PhD. Marine Geology
International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska-Fairbanks.
– Kevin Schaefer, PhD.
Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center.
– Stephen J. Vavrus, PhD. Atmospheric Sciences
Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison
– Nikita Zimov, Northeast Science Station, Russian Academy of Sciences.
– Jorien Vonk, PhD. Applied Environmental Sciences
Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University
– Jeff Masters, PhD. Meteorology
Director, Weather Underground
I don’t like the messaging Holdren almost always seems to start with: “While we can’t attribute a single bla bla bla to climate change” (it is not the right way to phrase what is happening, this is a good video just out:
So, you accept the science of climate change and global warming as legit. But you often encounter people, at family gatherings, on your Facebook page, on Twitter, at social events, etc. who don’t. Do you keep your mouth shut when someone says something clearly wrong that brings the science into question illegitimately? If you do, and others are listening, then one voice, a denialist voice, is influencing people. Probably better to say something.
The problems is that the denialist schtick involves having a lot of different arguments, with absolutely no regard as to legimacy, against the science. You’ve heard of the Gish Gallop. You make an argument that seems to invalidate your opponent’s position, and it does not matter how well that argument is demolished, no problem, you just make another argument. This is sometimes what happens when you find yourself in these conversations. “But what about ….” is probably the most common retort to a counterargument to a denialist claim.
I’m frequently asked what resources people can use to learn about the arguments, both the denialist arguments themselves and how to counter them. If I provide information on one resource, it is always skepticalscience.com. That web site is very nicely organized, it includes all of the denialist arguments (if you know of a denialist argument skepticalscience.com does not cover, let them know, or if you like, let me know and I’ll pass it on). The primers that address the arguments are often provided at multiple levels, so you can get the non-technical tl;dr, or you can go into the details.
But, not every body relates to web sites. Sometimes you like to take a book to bed with you for the evening, or to the beach, or to some other place where you like to read, and just learn stuff. Or, while you will certainly find skepticalscience.com or other web sites (including my blog, I hope) useful, you may want to explore a few other perspectives, or other ways of saying things.
Well, now there’s a book for that. “How to Change Minds about Our Changing Climate” is slightly misnamed. This book, by scientists Seth Darling and Douglas Sisterson, does not really go into the science of mind changing. But it does provide a litany of denialist claims and the scientific answer to them, in a way that you will find useful. You will not only learn the arguments but you will gain confidence in making the arguments at that family dinner or school board meeting or cocktail party.
Seth Darling is a scientist at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, and a fellow at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. Doug Sisterson is a senior manager at Argonne National Laboratory, US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility. They know the science and have done a very nice job putting the argument on paper (or eBook). From the publisher:
One by one, the authors debunk all the most pernicious myths surrounding climate change and offer talking points that readers can use to do the same, in chapters such as “There is no consensus” and “There’s no link between warming and extreme weather.” In fact, there is consensus, and the time to take climate change seriously is well past. As Darling and Sisterson cogently explain, “We are poised to compress an amount of global warming that historically has occurred over the course of thousands of years into a single century”—and the menacing effects we’ve already seen only hint at what’s to come…
Also, do me a favor. If you get the book on Amazon and read it, please go to Amazon and leave an honest review. Anti science denialists like to swarm books on amazon with bogus awful reviews, and you can help counter that.
ADDED: An important criticism of this book, that I agree with, is the authors’ use of the actual myths to be debunked as titles. This is not good communication strategy and is discussed, vis-a-vis this work HERE.
(Speaking of books being attacked, my book, which is a novel and not on climate change, is here. I got badly attacked by Mens Rights Activists who hate me because I’m against rape. The book isn’t even about that, but they are organized and have been in the habit of harassing me and other people who speak out for women’s rights.)
In any case, you can also up vote reviews you like and down vote reviews you don’t like, on Amazon.
Finally, a while back I put together a list of climate change related books, HERE. You might find that useful.
The original hoser, I’m told by an unimpeachable source from way up in Canada, was the guy who went out to his front yard in the middle of the winter and hosed down the lawn in order to make some flat ice, so he and his friends could play hockey. A better way to get ice is to find a cove or embayment along a small lake that is protected from the wind; clear off the snow and you’ve got a nice flat surface. If that is not available, clear the snow off the rugged and rough ice that forms on many lakes, build a dam of hard packed snow around it … and hose that down. Even better, build a partly enclosed structure, with low walls all around and a rough and ready roof overhead, and put a naturally freezing hockey rink in there. Make sure to add a warming shack nearby because it can get mighty cold.
All these things were done to make places to skate, and in particular, to skate with sticks in the game of hockey. Later, and more expensively and more rarely, were built buildings with central heating and an ice rink in the middle, which is a bit of a technological challenge requiring expensive machinery. But this approach can be done anywhere in the world. Hockey is a Winter Olympic game you can play anywhere, no matter what the geography or the weather, because of this technology
But to produce a plethora of players who someday might be pro hockey, you have to hose down the yard or have a local community outdoor rink, affordable, accessible, to serve as the starting point for so many so that so few can be so good. This is why Hockey is more of a northern sport; it is played widely all across Canada and the northern tier of US states, because that is where the natural ice, on small ponds and lakes, and the nearly natural ice of the outdoor rink, is to be found reliably.
Until now.
Sustainability is one of those hippie words, like recycling and om. But sustainability is also a real thing that even those who distain the culture of thoughtful treatment of the earth must pay attention to, if they want to be, well, sustained, in their pursuit of important things like hockey. The National Hockey League understands this, and recently issued their “2014 NHL Sustainability Report” in which they note that hockey is in trouble because of global warming. Simply put, those ponds and lakes and hosed-down yards have become increasingly unreliable as many winters are just too warm to allow their development and maintenance. In many areas, it was once the case that all a young person needed to play hockey was a good pair of skates, a big stick, and a love of pain (apparently). Nature provided the ice. But now nature, messed with by humans, has become an unreliable partner. The report faces off with a letter from Gary Bettman, NHL Commissioner, who states:
But before many of our players ever took their first stride on NHL ice, they honed their skills on the frozen lakes and ponds of North America and Europe. Our sport can trace its roots to frozen freshwater ponds, to cold climates. Major environmental challenges, such as climate change and freshwater scarcity, affect opportunities for hockey players of all ages to learn and play the game outdoors…
As a business, we rely on freshwater to make our ice, on energy to fuel our operations and on healthy communities for our athletes, employees and fans to live, work and play. Moreover, to continue to stage world class outdoor hockey events like the NHL Winter Classic, NHL Heritage Classic or NHL Stadium Series, we need winter weather….
This is all part of NHL Green, an effort to document the leagues environmental impact, and possibly, to do something about it. Currently, it seems that the league is mainly focused on documenting that they have a tiny impact on the environment compared to the entire world put together, but the are also working to offset impacts and raise awareness of related issues.
Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, also has a cover letter for the report:
You are about to read the single most important document about the environment ever produced by a professional sports organization.
The 2014 NHL SUSTAINABILITY REPORT is the first ever such report produced by a professional sports league…
… No league has ever produced a sustainability report that is so thoughtfully crafted, honest about its limits and emphatic about the urgent need to protect our planet. And no league has ever been so frank about the risks to its very existence posed by climate change.
This document is an important reminder to all sports fans, leagues, teams and businesses that while natural hockey ice might be the “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to the effects of climate change on sports, the effects of climate disruption are a challenge to all leagues and businesses, and we must take meaningful action to reverse course.
… this report underscores the fact that there is no action too small to undertake when it comes to addressing our ecological problems. After all, there is no single law or single business undertaking that by itself can remedy the problems posed by climate disruption, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, ocean acidification and so many other ecological pressures. We have no choice but to implement many small steps that will collectively add up to meaningful ecological progress.
This, in my view, is part of the shift in the cultural landscape we need to see in order to more effectively address climate change. The acceptance of climate science and the will do to something about global warming tends to distribute along a left-right political axis, with the left being more understanding and demanding, understanding of the importance of climate change and demanding that we do something about it. But this axis also sorts out other features of society, and team sports (especially some team sports), farming, and the military, to name just three examples, tend to more or less be distributed right of center. Lately we’ve seen a dramatic increase in concern over climate change by farmers; the military has been addressing climate change vigorously, despite efforts in the Tea Party Congress to thwart that, and now, hockey, the rightest and whitest, if you will, of the team sports, is chiming in. Because ice melts when it gets warm. Global warming. Its a thing.
