Tag Archives: Global Warming

About That Global Warming Hiatus… #Fauxpause

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If I want to measure how much business a shopping mall gets, I can stand by an entrance way and count the number of people who go into the mall. If I stop every tenth person on the way out and frisk them for their receipts, I can estimate the per-person amount of money spent, and multiply that by ten to get an idea of how much business is represented by the particular entrance way I am sampling. This would work. I wouldn’t know how much money was spent in the mall because I have no information about other entrance ways, but I could track changes over time in business, and I’d probably be able to pick up weekly patterns and seasonal holiday shopping patterns.

But say one of the anchor stores has a big sale one weekend, and everybody tries to park near that store because they are going to go there. That would bias the relationship between my estimate and the the overall trend. I might see a drop in spending because my entrance way is on the other side of the mall from the anchor store, or if my sampling point is at that store, I might see an increase, and in either case, my estimate may be biased. Or, there may be roadwork on the route to the part of the huge parking lot of the shopping mall nearest my entrance way, causing a reduction of how many customers go into that store. Or a store that sells really expensive stuff and is really successful opens up in part of the mall and, again, depending on my sampling location, I would end up with a biased estimate because I either over-count cash flow from my 1 in ten sampling of recipes, or undercount it, again, depending on my sampling perspective.

This is like trying to estimate changes in the overall temperature of the earth under global warming. The part of the sun’s energy that lands on the Earth heats the surface (and a bit of the atmosphere) and then, that surface heat radiates back into space. Adding persistent greenhouse gasses like Carbon Dioxide slows the escape of this heat from our atmosphere, so there is more heat to warm the atmosphere, the surface of the land, and the surface of the oceans. Some of this heat, especially that which finds its way to the ocean surface, is then subducted into deeper strata. The vast majority of the heat that is found in the deepest parts of the ocean gets there from surface waters, ultimately.

In order to track global warming caused by adding persistent greenhouse gasses you can just measure the temperature of the air at any given point, all day and night and all year, for many years. But since the atmosphere is complex, this estimate would be very inaccurate and increases and decreases over time may be the result of the atmosphere being complex rather than changes in the effects of the greenhouse gasses. So you can measure a thousand points around the globe and average those readings out. But some of the heat might contribute to melting sea ice and glaciers, so you’d have to factor that in too. But some of the heat is held in the sea surface, so it is also necessary to measure the sea surface temperature at many locations. But some of that heat ends up in the deeper ocean, and over time, the rate of transfer of heat to the deeper ocean changes, so you’d better measure that too. And so on and so forth.

Eventually you’ll have enough measurements that you can track the movement of heat between all its reservoirs and get a good total. This would be analogous to placing research assistants at every entranceway to the shopping mall and sampling the receipts of the consumers more densely.

For the last several years the amount of heat that is building up in the atmosphere and the sea surface has been less than the previous several year. This heat has increased over this time, on average, but not as much as previously. However, this estimate misses the heat used to melt sea ice and glaciers, and it also misses the heat that is subducted into the deep ocean. When that is added in, it turns out that over both long and short terms, the amount of additional heat retained on the surface of the earth (including air and water and everything else) because of the additional of persistent greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere has been increasing.

But, there is still a problem with the measurements that have been used to make these estimates. One of the biggest problems is the temperature in the Arctic region. There has simply been less data from this region than elsewhere. Also, a few other areas of the earth, like big chunks of the African Continent, have not been sampled. A new study uses new approaches to fill in these missing blanks. The bottom line is this: The change in temperature of the atmosphere and sea surface, which combined is the most commonly referred to measurement used to track global warming, has been under-estimating the amount of warming over the last several years.

Here’s the info on the paper:

Title: Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends

Abstract: Incomplete global coverage is a potential source of bias in global temperature reconstructions if the unsampled regions are not uniformly distributed over the planet’s surface. The widely used HadCRUT4 dataset covers on average about 84% of the globe over recent decades, with the unsampled regions being concentrated at the poles and over Africa. Three existing reconstructions with near-global coverage are examined, each suggesting that HadCRUT4 is subject to bias due to its treatment of unobserved regions.

Two alternative approaches for reconstructing global temperatures are explored, one based on an optimal interpolation algorithm and the other a hybrid method incorporating additional information from the satellite temperature record. The methods are validated on the basis of their skill at reconstructing omitted sets of observations. Both methods provide superior results than excluding the unsampled regions, with the hybrid method showing particular skill around the regions where no observations are available.

Temperature trends are compared for the hybrid global temperature reconstruction and the raw HadCRUT4 data. The widely quoted trend since 1997 in the hybrid global reconstruction is two and a half times greater than the corresponding trend in the coverage-biased HadCRUT4 data. Coverage bias causes a cool bias in recent temperatures relative to the late 1990s which increases from around 1998 to the present. Trends starting in 1997 or 1998 are particularly biased with respect to the global trend. The issue is exacerbated by the strong El Niño event of 1997-1998, which also tends to suppress trends starting during those years.

The authors of the paper produced this video explaining what they did, and what they found:

Dana Nuccitelli has written up an excellent blog post explaining this research here: Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows: A new study fills in the gaps missed by the Met Office, and finds the warming ‘pause’ is barely a speed bump.

Stefan Rahmstorf has another excellent writeup, currently in German but you can hit “Translate” on your browser if you don’t read German (I’ll add the english version of it when I get it): Erwärmung unterschätzt

UPDATE: Two more posts on the topic:

At Real Climate: Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half

At Planet 3.0: The Disappearing Hiatus

Why Was Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda So Powerful, and is this a trend?

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I’m sure the measurements are still being checked and adjusted but it is clear that Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda was one of the most powerful tropical cyclones (termed “Typhoon” in the western Pacific) ever recorded. There are several ways to measure how big and bad a tropical cyclone is including it’s overall size from end to end, how low the barometric pressure gets, how high the sustained wind speed is, and how wide that wind field is. In addition, when a typhoon hits land details matter. The front right quadrant of a counter-clockwise spinning typhoon packs the maximum punch and if that part of the storm enters an embayment during high tide the storm surge can be immense. It seems that the storm surge for Haiyan/Yolanda was in the many tens of feet range, and quite possibly will be found responsible for the largest part of the still uncalculated death toll.

But here I want to look at one single factor that almost certainly contributed to the growth of Haiyan/Yolanda into a very powerful storm, a factor that probably doesn’t usually play into a storm’s strength. I refer to an anomaly in sea surface temperatures that was almost certainly caused by global warming, as part of a general warming of the ocean. But first a bit of background on the link between sea surface temperature and hurricanes. This is one of several factors that may be involved in climate change related effects on tropical storm intensity, a situation with which we should be concerned.

Tropical cyclones run on heat, and much of that heat comes from the sea surface. If the surface of the ocean is below a certain temperature, about 82 degrees F, about 28 degrees C, a hurricane or typhoon is very unlikely to form. Above that temperature, if other conditions are right, it may form. Warmer seas can make bigger or stronger storms, and as the storm passes over the ocean, the temperature of the sea surface has a strong influence on whether the storm increases or decreases in strength . As the storm moves over the sea, the interface between the windy storm and the roiling ocean becomes something of a mess, as though the surface of the ocean was in a blender, and there is a lot of exchange of heat across that interface. Also, deeper, cooler water is mixed with warmer surface water. A powerful storm moving across the ocean will leave in its wake a strip of cooler water. This sometimes causes subsequent storms moving along the same path to be weaker or to downgrade in strength more quickly.

This should indicate, one would think, that as sea surface temperatures (SST) have gone up with global warming, there should be more “hurricane” out there on the oceans. It has been hard to make the link between global warming and frequency of hurricanes, however. This may be because of the nature of hurricane formation. Once a hurricane forms in a given spot and gets big, it may reduce the chance of the next hurricane forming. Also, hurricanes are usually born as waves in a very large scale pattern of air masses. The total number of waves that form may not change with global warming, and the hurricane season is only a part of the year, and other factors have to come into play that are also ponderous in their timing to turn a wave into a major storm. An analogy might be this: Imagine that everyone in the working population of a downtown neighborhood becomes hungrier, perhaps because all the companies they work for insist on a two hour high intensity exercise program for everyone to lower their health insurance costs. Will this increase in hunger mean more lunches, snacks, and dinners consumed in the local restaurants? Or will the lunches, snacks, and dinners become larger, with people ordering more food with each sitting? Since there are only so many opportunities to go grab a bite to eat, there will probably be very few additional visits to the local eateries, but more food may well be consumed per event. Increased SST may be like increased hunger. There may not be very many more hurricanes, but among those that occur, some may be much stronger.

There is evidence for this. Kerry Emanuel did a study several years ago that linked sea surface temperatures in the Pacific with an index called PDI, which measures the overall energy involved in typhoon/hurricane activity. (Emanuel, K. (2005). Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years, 436(August), 686–688. doi:10.1038/nature03906.) He came up with this graph:

Emanuel_2005_hurricane_sst_link

The graph shows that hurricanosity, as it were, goes up and down with sea surface temperature more or less. And, SST goes up and down with decadal oscillations like ENSO (El Nino) but with an overall upward trend caused by global warming.

Here’s the new part. If you look at a map of Sea Surface Temperature you are seeing a measurement of, well, the surface of the sea … the top of the water. As a hurricane chugs along on the surface of the sea, turning the top meter or so of ocean into spray and creating a very wavy situation, that heat is certainly directly affecting the storm, but the temperature of the water several meters down also matters. It turns out that sometimes this shallow-deep water (as opposed to deep deep water, way down farther) can be quite warm. When that happens, the dissipation of SST does not occur to the same degree. The leading edge of the hurricane gets a good dose of heat from the surface, but instead of the SST dropping as the top warm water is mixed with somewhat deeper cooler water, the heat supply is not attenuated, or at least not by much, as the massive storm moves along. More of the storm gets more heat, and the storm as a whole gets more heat. And there’s more heat left over for the next storm.

We think this happened with Haiyan. Have a look at the following map. It is sea surface temperature anomaly (how much more or less than expected the SST is) for the top 50 meters for the western Pacific at the time of the typhoon. The Philippines is down near the bottom of the map straddling the 10 and 15 degree N lines. (Maps are from here) Notice that the surface is not unusually warm.

PacificSST-top-50-meters-Anomoly

This does not mean that the sea surface was not warm. It was plenty warm as it is this time of year i that part of the ocean, just not warmer than expected. Here is the raw temperature (not anomaly) map so you can see that the tropical ocean is, well, tropically warm:

PacificSST-to-50-meters-TEMP

The purple area along the south is sufficiently warm to form typhoons. The ocean to the east of the Philippines is warm enough to form typhoons, but is there any source of extra heat to form a super typhoon? Have a look at this map. This is the water temperature at depth, here at 100 meters. This is an anomaly map, so its shows if the temperature is more (or less) than expected. Notice that east-west band of red indicating several degrees warmer than it usually is, at depth.

PacificSST-100_meters_ANOMALY

[Updated:] Here’s the same map with Haiyan/Yolanda’s track and history, graphic generated by Jeff Masters.

Haiyan_Path

So, it would appear that Haiyan/Yolanda passed over the usual very warm waters that allow the formation of typhoons, but also, over water that was warm at depth so as the top of the sea is churned up by the growing storm, there would be extra heat to feed that storm.

One final map. This is the actual temperature (not anomaly) at the 100 meter level. Notice the purple area.

Pacific_sst_100m_TEMP

At 100 meters depth, the sea was warm enough to form a typhoon. That, dear reader, is extreme.

The same thing happened with Katrina. According to a report from NOAA:

A number of factors contributed to making Katrina a strong Category 5 hurricane…Sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Gulf of Mexico were one to two degrees Celsius above normal …, and the warm temperatures extended to a considerable depth through the upper ocean layer. Also, Katrina
crossed the “loop current” (belt of even warmer water), during which time explosive
intensification occurred. The temperature of the ocean surface is a critical element in the
formation and strength of hurricanes.

We know that the ocean is absorbing a lot of the extra heat caused by global warming. Well, this is some of that heat, causing megastorms.

I’ve noticed that climate science denialists are very adamant about two things: Denying the importance of major storms like Haiyan, and denying the fact that heat is going into the oceans. Perhaps they see the link, and are frightened that people will believe that anthropogenic changes to our climate can kill thousands of people at a time, in a few hours, through the mechanism of anomalously high temperature at modest depth below the surface of the already tepid tropical sea.

It is time for action.

Twin Cities Experiences Mini-Boulder: #WeatherWhiplash

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Over the last 48 hours or so a weather system slowly moved across the southern Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. It was in part shaped and positioned by the jet stream, and it was so slow moving because of the unusually curved nature of the jet stream. This is very much like what happened a few weeks ago in Colorado, but with less of an effect. Nonetheless, there was a damage and injury causing tornado in Nebraska and Iowa, and nine inches of rain in Winona, where there was some very inconvenient flooding. The huge multi-foot snow storm in the Dakotas was part of this system. People died in that storm.

And yes, folks, this is global warming. A warming earth meant a warming Arctic. The Arctic warmed to a certain point and then runaway feedbacks caused the Arctic to suddenly grow much much warmer than it was, and more importantly, the Arctic became relatively warmer compared to the rest of the plant, a phenomenon called “Arctic Amplification.” This changed the way extra heat in equatorial regions moves towards the north pole, and this in turn caused the jet streams to change their configuration so they get all bunched up (in these things called “Rossby Waves”) which causes large weather systems, usually either very dry or very wet, to stall in place or move very slowly. We were getting a mini-flash drought while Boulder and environs were getting flooded. And now we are getting flooded while our neighbors are being buried under three feet of snow. The rapid back and forth between extremes, and the more extreme nature of the extremes, has been termed “Weather Whiplash” by meteorologists.

Welcome to the new normal! Most of the time it will just mean a change in when you water your lawn. Other times it will mean footing the bill to rebuild all the roads, and a death here and there. Sometimes it will mean much more. Stay tuned.

More from Paul Douglas:

Your favorite meteorologist summarizes the #IPCC report

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Paul Douglas from Weather Nation (and elsewhere):

For the 5th time in 23 years, the world’s leading climate scientists have released an update on the state of the climate. WeatherNation Chief Meteorologist reviews the highlights plus shares the panel’s predictions for the rest of the century.

5th Report of the #IPCC: Greg Laden on Atheists Talk

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The fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just come out, and Greg Laden joins us this Sunday to tell us what it means. What do over 800 representatives of 85 countries have to say about the state of consensus in scientific literature? More importantly, what do we need to do about it?

Additionally, various memes denying the science of climate change have popped up again in anticipation of this report. What might you have been hearing about climate change recently, and why is it wrong?

CLICK HERE to access the podcast.

The IPCC Report in Pictures

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Each of these graphs from the IPCC policy summary shows the global surface temperature relative to a 1961-1990 arbitrary baseline. The upper graph shows the annual average, and thus captures a sense of variation reflecting a wide range of causes, but with a general trend from the early 20th century to the preset of increasing temperatures. The second graph shows the same data but using a decadal average. Notice that when you squint your eyes, turn your head sideways, and take some LSD you can see a highly significant decline, hiatus, pause, or even cooling in global temperatures that, if you’ve taken enough drugs, seems to obviate global warming. But if you look at the data by decade, even very strong mushrooms are not going to let you see what isn’t there.

Global warming. Real. Deal.
Global warming. Real. Deal.

Snow and ice, there’s less of it.

Less snow, less ice. The drop in arctic ice cover each summer is catastrophic and the rate at which it has happened was not predicted. This is one of a handful of reasons that everybody I now in the climate science world regards the IPCC report as conservative, even optimistic. Nobody saw this coming. What else are we going to not see coming?
Less snow, less ice. The drop in arctic ice cover each summer is catastrophic and the rate at which it has happened was not predicted. This is one of a handful of reasons that everybody I now in the climate science world regards the IPCC report as conservative, even optimistic. Nobody saw this coming. What else are we going to not see coming?

This is why we use the term climate change. Everywhere here you see a color, the climate changed. Blue means more wet, brown more dry. The IPCC report is somewhat equivocal on drought cause by climate change, but reasonably certain about rainfall shifts. This reflects, I think, the lag time of the IPCC process. The IPCC is somewhat current but not as current as it needs to be. Including the most recent data and most recent thinking, what the IPCC is very certain will happen over the next century with respect to drought and rainfall is very much happening right now.

Shifts is dry vs. wet conditions.
Shifts is dry vs. wet conditions.

This is a complicated story but this graph summarizes it nicely. More CO2 in the atmosphere means more CO2 in the ocean, and this leads to acidification. That is a bad thing.

Ruh roh.
Ruh roh.

Most of the sea level rise over recent decades has been from the ocean getting warmer. But in the future expect the larger proportion to be from glaciers melting.

Warming, rising seas.
Warming, rising seas.

Here’s the change in ocean surface pH:

Ocean Surface pH
Ocean Surface pH

It is getting hotter. It is getting wetter, or dryer, depending on where you are. And the big ice hat our planet wears is falling off.

Temperature, Rainfall, Sea Ice
Temperature, Rainfall, Sea Ice

I’m pretty sure the upper limit on this graph is going to be an underestimate. Mark my words. You can take that to the bank, but do pick a bank that is on top of a hill.

slr
slr

It’s hotter everywhere, except, like, Iceland.

change_in_surface_temp

About The Fifth Report Of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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Eight hundred and thirty or more authors and editors representing eighty five countries wrote this thing. It is about climate change, and reflects pretty much all of the current (except the most most current of course) peer reviewed literature on climate change, with the intention of providing the basis for governmental policy related to this topic.

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 6.49.32 PMThe most important conclusion of this report is that humans have caused the warming of the planet that has been observed over the last several decades. More exactly, human activity has led to both cooling and warming effects, with the net outcome being warming. The report says, “Greenhouse gases contributed a global mean surface warming likely to be in the range of 0.5°C to 1.3 °C over the period 1951?2010, with the contributions from other anthropogenic forcings, including the cooling effect of aerosols, likely to be in the range of ?0.6°C to 0.1°C.”

In contrast, non-human, natural, effects on the climater over thisp eriod are in the range of ?0.1°C to 0.1°C superimposed on a natural variability within the climate system of the same order of magnitude.

So, that’s settled. Let’s not fiddle around with that argument any more, please.

Dan Nuccitelli has a nice summary of the documentation of human influence here, Real Climate discusses the report here, and Joe Romm has something here. Also, Peter Gleick asks “What does the IPCC say about water?” Oh, and Mark Hertsgaard notes that “Bill McKibben should feel vindicated today.” Andrew Revkin’s summary is here.

What does this mean, in terms of policy? Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists notes the following:

The IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) tells us that global average surface temperatures have risen about 0.85° C since 1900. It concludes that “cumulative emissions of CO2 largely determine global mean surface warming by the late 21st century and beyond” – in other words, the principal driver of long-term warming is total emissions of CO2. And it finds that having a greater than 66% probability of keeping warming caused by CO2 emissions alone to below 2° C requires limiting total further emissions to between 370-540 Gigatons of carbon (GtC).

At current rates of CO2 emissions (about 9.5 GtC per year), we will hurtle past the 2° C carbon budget in less than 50 years. And this conservatively assumes that emissions rates don’t continue on their current upward trajectory of ~3 percent per year.

So, we need to take care of that little problem. One thing we might consider along these lines is NOT APPROVING KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE PLEASE. (Anybody listening?) I mean, I know it’s repression and all, keeping all that carbon trapped in the ground. In fact, it so repressive Coal and Oil have written a song about liberation, sung here by Andy Revkin:

I have been flat out busy with teaching on the topic of parental investment and carrying out actual parental investment all week, so I am not going to say anything smart about this report today. But I will on Sunday Morning, 9:00 Central time on Atheist Talk Radio where I’ll be updating everyone on this report. More specifically, I think, I’ll be speaking with Stephanie Zvan on the current short list of things people have got wrong (mainly because of climate science denailism) about climate change. This is very closely related to the report because these recently generated or reinvigorated anti-science memes have been brought out of the zombie stable just over the last few weeks precisely because this report was to come out today. So, the memes and the report will do battle Sunday Morning in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis. If you oversleep or are in church or something, no matter, there will be a podcast.

Weather Whiplash Is Like My Old Broken Sprinkler

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There is a strong argument to be made that the recent flooding in Colorado is the result of global warming. Here are three things one could say about the flooding. Think of these as alternative hypotheses to explain that event:

1) Weather has extremes. Sometimes, instead of raining just a bit, it rains a hella lot and you get a big giant flood.

2) Weather has extremes etc. etc. but global warming tends to make some of the extremes more extremes, so instead of getting just a big flood, you get a big giant flood.

3) The storm that brought well over a foot of rain to one mountainous area was qualitatively distinct; it happened because of a configuration in the weather patterns that might have happened at any time over the last several centuries but only very very rarely, but because of global warming, this sort of thing happens far more frequently. The weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere have shifted in a way that makes the rain event in Colorado a fairly likely thing to happen somewhere in the world several times a year, and it happened to happen in Colorado this time around. Prior to global warming caused changes, this effect would be very rare, now it is common.

The difference between these ways of looking at the weather is very important, because under option 3, we have a problem. Just as people who live along the Gulf Coast or the mid-Atlantic or south need to worry about hurricanes as a thing, or people who live in the middle of the US have to worry about tornadoes as a thing, or people who live in Minnesota have to worry about killer cold as a thing, it may be the case that people who live at latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere now have to worry about this new weather pattern, which some call “weather whiplash,” as a thing. When you build your mountain roads in the Rockies, you’ve got to figure that there is a reasonable chance that during the next few decades there will be a foot of rain in the catchment of the stream that road runs along. Either build the road differently, or plan to replace it now and then. Mountain valley settlements in high mountains like the Rockies may need to measure out a new “high water line” for the creek they overlook and plan for that water line being reached within the lifetime of the inhabitants of the village, once or more.

Similarly, just as dense concentrations of rain are more likely under option 3, dense concentrations of dry conditions are also likely. In other words, weather whiplash is like my old broken sprinkler.

Until recently I had one of those sprinklers that wave back and forth with a couple dozen high power streams of water. The water comes out of a bar, and the bar oscillates back and forth and back and forth so there is a long, linear, gentle rain storm that passes back and forth across the lawn over the zone covered by the sprinkler. But when my sprinkler got old it would get stuck sometimes. The bar would stop oscillating, and the streams of water would create a long linear rain storm on one strip of the law while the rest of the lawn simply got dryer. The broken sprinkler did something that resembles the weather in the middle-ish part of the United States for a week or so during September 2013. The midwest got a “flash drought” during which no rain fell but it as hot and breezy, while the Rockies and other areas got lots of rain from a big storm that sat there for days and days without moving. The main part of the storm was in Colorado but New Mexico got extra rain as well, and after the storm left Colorado it moved north in the Rockies and wet down Wyoming and Montana a bit as well (causing only some flooding).

The jet stream is often a long, linear, fast moving necklace (well, more than one necklace as there is more than one jet stream) that encircles the earth at some distance from the equator. It is associated with the movement of air masses around the globe. These air masses alternately pick up and drop moisture. When the air mass is dry, it dries out the land beneath. When the air mass is wet, and it mixes with some other air along a front, it drops rain. But the rainfall (and correspondingly, the dry spots) are somewhat like an oscillating sprinkler that is not broken. A given area is likely to experience alternating rain and dry.

Some regions experience more dry than wet, some regions are wetter, but the rainfall across a given region is typically doled out in chunks, some of which can be very heavy, but rarely more than a few inches in a given storm.

Lately, the jet stream seems to have been very frequently changing its configuration. Instead of being a relatively straight circle around the globe it is all kinked up in the big “waves.” Where there are waves, several things happen. First, the movement of air along the jet stream slows down, and this interacts with other air masses. More importantly, it seems, is that the kinks create large very slow moving or stationary low and high pressure systems. The high pressure systems are south of the jet stream, the low pressure systems are north of it, but since the jet stream is kinked, these low and high pressure systems end up being next to each other. So, we get tropical stuff moving north, and subarctic stuff moving south, and there are vast differences in moisture and temperature. This can result in two things at the same time. Some regions have dry conditions and some have lots of precipitation. The key thing is this: Since these systems are very slow moving, or sometimes, just plain stuck, like my sprinkler, the dry conditions persist for many days, and the wet conditions persist for many days. Thus, Colorado.

I wonder if is possible that the position of the waves in the jet stream will end up being more frequently located in certain spots. I have no reason to say this empirically, but since air mass movement is linked to the position of mountains and oceans and stuff, it seems a reasonable question to ask. If that ends up being the case, than we could end up with a new climate regime wherein certain areas tend to get repeated stalled rain systems (not every year, but just more frequently than average) while other regions get repeated stalled dry conditions. That might be good news, because it might be easier to adjust to weather whiplash with more predictability. But if this sort of pattern was to be strong, we would probably see it already, so don’t count on it. Most likely, a climate pattern where very rainy weather shows up out of nowhere and sits on top of you for a week while elsewhere dry conditions persist for a few weeks in a row is not good for agriculture or for mountain villages and roads.

I got a new sprinkler. It wasn’t easy. This time of year it is hard to get sprinklers because they tend to stock up on them in the spring. Also, with the drought conditions were’ve been experiencing over the last few weeks in my neighborhood, there has been a run on the few sprinklers that are left. Climate change made it hard for me to find a sprinkler! (First World Problem #212124). But eventually I got one. I’m not sure how hard it will be to get a new climate.

I went to pick the sprinkler up to try to make it oscillate properly and it literally (and I do mean literally) fell to pieces in my hand. So I went and got a new one.
I went to pick the sprinkler up to try to make it oscillate properly and it literally (and I do mean literally) fell to pieces in my hand. So I went and got a new one.

CNBC’s Joe Kernen Makes Up A Fake Story about Climate Change on Squawk Box.

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Joe Kernen is a business finance talking head who co-hosts CNBC’s Squawk Box. I don’t know if he actually knows much about Wall Street, but I can prove he doesn’t know squawk about Climate Science. Have a look (warning: Might make you dizzy):

Something about a low participation rate because people are getting older. But that’s kind of unclear. Obviously, what is needed is a nice clear analogy from …. climate science!

So, the warmest period ever was in the 1930s when there were much lower CO2 levels. I did not know that.

Then the glaciers retreat and there are big forests. Arm wavingly big forests!

Then we realize in the Middle Ages it was warmer than it was now! Why??? WHY????

Why, then, why was the participation rate so low?????? Enquiring climate scientists want to know!!!

Please. Allow me to “put it in the big picture”

First, I have no idea why participation rates in some thing are low. That is not my field of study and I have no idea what they are talking about. Therefore I will not wave my arms around and tell you something about that.

Was the decade of the 1930s the warmest period ever? Let’s look at a graph!

The 1930s was a period during which global warming occurred, ant it was in fact warmer than PREVIOUS decades. But then it got warmer. Like in this graph.
The 1930s was a period during which global warming occurred, ant it was in fact warmer than PREVIOUS decades. But then it got warmer. Like in this graph.

So, no.

Was CO2 lower then? Let’s look at a graph:

CO2 was lower then. And so was temperature. In fact, temperatures and CO2 seem to ... correlate! Huh.
CO2 was lower then. And so was temperature. In fact, temperatures and CO2 seem to … correlate! Huh.

What about the glaciers melting. Let’s look at a graph:

Glacial melting is not well measured back as far as the 30s, but we know they weren't melting back then or al the towns downstream from them would have noticed it then. But they certainly have been melting! It's a global warming thing.
Glacial melting is not well measured back as far as the 30s, but we know they weren’t melting back then or al the towns downstream from them would have noticed it then. But they certainly have been melting! It’s a global warming thing.

What about the Giant Arm Waving Forests? Hard to say. Where glaciers have melted away, maybe some day there will be forests there. Many mountain glaciers, though, are up at high altitudes where there are very few arm-waving forests, but rather, stumpy short alpine forests with no arms. In any event, I’m not sure what the point of this is. Perhaps Joe is assuming that after glaciers melt giant arm waving forests grow and eat all the CO2 we are releasing into the atmosphere. Or maybe the trees just wave their arms and blow the greenhouse gasses away. I await clarification.

Finally, there is the Medieval warm period. There was such a thing. It was warm. There are two problems, though, with this. First, it was a regional warming that happened in only some parts of the world enough to notice. But it was important. It was like having your heat on high in the winter time, then you go outside in the cold and it feels colder that it otherwise might because you were used to very warm air. This is because the Medieval warm period was followed by the little ice age. That sort of took people by surprise. The second problem with Joe’s statement is that it was not warmer then than it is now.

Let’s look at a graph:

Moberg_Hockey_Stick

So, no. Not that either.

Joe, I recommend you stick to your subject. I assume you know something about that. The random unexpected bloviation about how climate change science is wrong makes you look like a clown. Also, whoever produces this show … do try to keep track of these things. In other words, be professional!

Is Annual Arctic Sea Ice On Decent Track For A Change?

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Andrew Revkin thinks so:

Revkin_Claims_Sea_Ice_Back_On_Track

It is hard to interpret this as meaning anything other than the crisis of Arctic Sea ice melting too much and too fast is over. This is an important thing, because the rapid and widespread melting of sea ice in the Arctic seems to be causing a thing called Arctic Amplification, which means in normal human terms that the Arctic is warmer (amplified) than normal. This causes a decrease in the differential between equatorial heat and polar heat in the Northern Hemisphere which seems to change the way the Jet Streams operate which in turn causes Weather Whiplash, where we have days and days of warm air being drawn north into “ridges” under the Jet Stream or colder air being drawn south into “troughs” in the Jet Stream. Our Minnesota Snowy April, the current midwest Heat Wave, severe cold in Siberia a while back, flooding in Central Europe, etc. etc. all are effects of the warped and slow moving waves in the Jet Stream. Climate math seams to explain the warping and stalling of the Jet Stream as a function of Arctic Amplification, and Arctic Amplification is clearly the result of a warmer northern sea which is caused by exposure of the sea to more energy from the sun because the ice is reduced. The ice is reduced because of global warming, and this is positive feedback effect.

If the Arctic Sea ice melt is “on a decent track” than this might mean a) global warming isn’t really happening and/or b) the Arctic Sea ice to amplification to jet stream warping and stalling to weather whiplash connection isn’t valid. So, that would be important. So let’s see if Andy is Revkin the Right or Revkin the Wrong on this one.

Here is a graph of the track of Arctic Sea ice melt for a period of ten years for the first years in which good measurements are available, from the National Snow & Ice Date Center. Since the recent changes in the Arctic post date this time period, we can take this to be more or less “normal.”

Sea_Ice_Graph_Old_Pattern

The black, thicker line along the bottom of these other lines is the average ice track from 1981-2010. Note that the sea ice for this ten year baseline period is almost never below that line. The baseline for “on track” is the average of these ten years, and I’ll leave it to you to imagine a line running along the midpoint of the observed ice tracks from 1979 to 1988.

Now, here is the same graph but for the ten year period prior to 2012:

Sea_Ice_Graph_New_Pattern

For this later time period, the nature of Arctic Sea ice is fundamentally different than before. This is the period of time that the Arctic Sea has been warming. This is the period of time that Arctic Amplification has becoming more severe. This is the period of time that the weather has been changing. This is the period of time that has been affected by anthropogenic global warming. Sea ice tracks that are within this range are not “on track.” They are probably better characterized as “messed up.”

The following is the same data showing the ice track from 2012 and the present year to date.
Sea_Ice_Graph_2012_and_2013

The year 2012 was exceptional. It was the most melty of the measured years. This year, is in fact, “on track” but not “on track” to be normal. It is “on track” to be one of the years in which the melting is excessive, and it is “on track” to contribute to Arctic Amplification. It could be worse. It could look like 2012, or even worse, I suppose. But it is not good.

I know it is hard to see all the lines in these graphs when many are selected for display on the Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graphing Tool, but the years that are not as melty as the present year are all the years prior to the shift documented above, and 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 from after the shift. So, one way of looking at this year is that it is more or less average for the “new normal.” It is “on track” for more weather whiplash.

It is actually good news that the Arctic Sea Ice melting is not worse this year than last year, or even as bad this year as some previous years. But it takes a bit of imagination, or perhaps serves some intent that I find difficult to fathom, to suggest that this year things in the Arctic are on a decent track. Arctic Sea ice melt this year is not decent.

And, all this is about sea ice coverage. There is a more severe problem happening that these graphs don’t show; the melting of old ice, ice that is thicker, with multiple years all jammed up into thicker ice, has been severe over recent years. This ice is important because it forms the foundation on which new sea ice forms every year. Even if the climate went back to “normal” because some technology was invented that sucked all the extra Carbon Dioxide out of the atmosphere to return us to pre-industrial levels was implemented, the lack of old ice would mean that regeneration of sea ice in the Arctic each year would be difficult, and it would probably take several year get the Arctic Sea back to a decent track. For a change.

Here’s Mike Mann’s tweet response to Revkin’s tweet, which says the same thing I say in this blog post but in fewer than 140 characters:

Mann_Questioning_Revkin_On_Sea_Ice_Back_On_Track

(Professor Mann’s link is to the same data source I use above.)

Climate Threats, Climate Future

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A few items of interest from the intertubes:

Mann: Reality and threats of climate change are clear

This is a guest column in the Times Dispatch by climate scientist Michael Mann discussing ongoing legal issues.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli certainly has some odd characters coming to his defense in this paper for his attempts to go after climate scientists like myself.

First came Charlie Battig, who sought to defend Cuccinelli’s 2009 attempt to subpoena my personal U.Va. emails …

Most recently the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley of Edinburgh, Scotland, used offensive personal attacks and completely false statements in another attempt to defend Cuccinelli’s use of state funds to engage in a politically motivated attack on both me and Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia. …

The reality and threat of human-caused climate change are clear. Those such as Cuccinelli, who would silence scientists, and those like Monckton who are misleading the public about this critical issue, are doing a grave injustice not just to us, but to our children and grandchildren who will inherit the legacy of the energy choices we are making today….


AccuClimate: The Future of Climate Change Forecasting

Although personal experience may sometimes suggest otherwise, the accuracy of weather forecasting improved drastically along with the introduction of computer-based modeling some 40 years ago. According to Jones, the seven-day forecast now is probably as reliable as the one-day forecast was then.

“If climate science becomes more in-tune with societal impacts and decisions that people have to make then the probability of better outcomes is increased,” Jones said. “Tying science to decision-making will improve the science.”

The Wild Weather of the Future

In this talk, meteorologist and America’s “Science Idol” contest winner Tom DiLiberto gives a forecast of the weather of the future—the weather that will be produced by climate change.

Can Monckton Put His Money Where Is Mouth Is? NO! it turns out (UPDATE)

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Climate science denialist Christopher Monckton wrote a post at WUWT blog in which he describes the non-existent stall in global warming. At the end of the post he writes:

Meanwhile, enjoy what warmth you can get. A math geek with a track-record of getting stuff right tells me we are in for 0.5 Cº of global cooling. It could happen in two years, but is very likely by 2020. His prediction is based on the behavior of the most obvious culprit in temperature change here on Earth – the Sun.

My friend and Colleague, John Abraham of St. Thomas University (he blogs here) wrote the following letter:

Dear Mr. Monckton,

I understand that you’ve claimed Earth’s temperatures will likely decrease by 0.5 oC in two years, but most certainly by 2020. Specifically, you stated this on a website:

“Meanwhile, enjoy what warmth you can get. A math geek with a track-record of getting stuff right tells me we are in for 0.5 Cº of global cooling. It could happen in two years, but is very likely by 2020. His prediction is based on the behavior of the most obvious culprit in temperature change here on Earth – the Sun.”

Here is the link: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/27/the-200-months-of-the-pause/

I am calling your claim. I challenge you to a $1000 bet on both. Specifically,

1. I challenge you to a $1000 bet that the Earth temperature will not drop 0.5 C in two years
2. I challenge you to a second $1000 bet that the Earth temperature will not drop 0.5 C by 2020

Let’s keep stipulations as few as possible. My only requirement is that any major volcanic eruptions would make the bet void. I will let you choose the temperature dataset (NASA GISTEMP, NOAA, HADCRUT4). Any reputable data set of land-ocean surface temperatures. I will let you choose the starting year of 2012 or 2013. Obligations to pay can be based off our word and the publicity of this challenge. If you require payment to be sent to a third party ahead of time, I will gladly oblige.

Please respond at your earliest convenience, I am anxious to finalize this agreement. Please be assured that if you decline this wager, I will make your declination public.

Can we agree to donate the money to a charity that deals with climate issues. Selected by winner of the wager.

Cheers, As Always

Dr. John Abraham
Professor
University of St. Thomas

Monckton’s public reply is as follows:

One Rabett says someone wants to take a bet with me about whether the world will cool by 0.5 K before 2020 is out. However, it was not I but another who forecast that. In an earlier posting I merely reported the forecast, which is one of a growing number that find cooling more likely than warming in the short to medium term. To make any such bet symmetrical, there would be no payout if the temperature fluctuated by less than 0.5 K in either direction by 2020 compared with today. The bedwetters would win if the temperature rose by 0.5 K; the army of light and truth would win if it fell by 0.5 K.

However, the creature seeking cheap publicity by offering the bet has, I discover, been part of an organized (and probably paid) campaign to prevent skeptics such as me from being allowed to speak at various universities around the world to which we are from time to time invited. Evidence is being gathered, since in Scotland tampering with the right of academic freedom in this characteristically furtive way, particularly with the wildly malicious claims the perpetrator and his little chums have apparently been making, would be held to constitute a grave libel.

I had hoped to sue the defalcating nitwit in the U.S for an earlier malicious attempt by him to assert that I take a skeptical line because I am paid to do so (if only …). However, the lawyers whom I consulted, after having a good look at the case, concluded that, though what this inconsequential little creep had said was unquestionably libelous, as well as displaying an exceptionally poor grasp of elementary science and even of arithmetic, I did not have title to sue because, in the US, I am counted at law as a “public figure” and the jerklet is not. If he were a public figure, I could sue him. If I were not a public figure, I could sue him. But, since I am a public figure and he is not, I cannot sue him. Not in the U.S., at any rate.

EVIDENZ BEING GATHERED PEOPLE!!!

What a pompous lying ass. A gentleperson’s bet over a disagreement that would raise a bit of money for charity responded to by a threat of a law suit.

Let this be a warning to you, if you are a person of any kind, a journalist, a scientist, an institution, anything: Don’t approach this guy Monckton. He’ll sue you if you sneeze. HE WILL GATHER EVIDENZE!!!!

Here’s what’s funny. Look up defalcating. Here in his comment Lord (but he’s a fake lord) Christopher Monckton just called John Abraham a criminal. Explicitly. In the UK you can sue someone for that.

EVIDENZ WILL BE GATHERED!!!!

Jeesh.

Anyway, that’s over with.

Perhaps this would be a good time to donate to the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund!!! HERE

Climate Change = Extreme Weather = More Climate Change

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The last several decades of climate change, and climate change research, have indicated and repeatedly confirmed a rather depressing reality. When something changes in the earth’s climate system, it is possible that a negative feedback will result, in which climate change is attenuated. I.e., more CO2 could cause more plant growth, the plants “eat” the CO2, so a negative feedback reduces atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas bringing everything back to normal. Or, when something changes in the earth’s climate system, we could get a positive feedback, where change in one direction (warming) causes more change in that direction. A developing and alarming example of this would be warming in the arctic causing less summer sea ice in the arctic which warms the arctic which causes less sea ice, etc. etc., with numerous widespread and dramatic effects on climate and weather.

ResearchBlogging.orgOver these decades of observation and research, we’ve discovered that negative feedbacks are rare, and when they occur, the are feeble. Yes, some plants do eat some of that extra CO2, bur hardly any. This makes sense. Adding antelopes to the savanna might cause there to be more lions to some extent, but the cap on lion density is not antelopes … it is other lions, staking out territories. After the first few dozen antelopes all you get is a lot of antelopes. Biological systems tend to optimize within some range. Plants can’t really be expected to use more water, more CO2, more other nutrients, just because they are there, beyond some range that they typically use in nature.

Well, we have a new positive feedback: Weather Weirding caused by climate change causes more climate change. Here’s how it works.

First, we warm the arctic. This causes the gradient of warm tropical air to cooler temperate and arctic air to reduce. The gradient causes atmospheric systems that include jet streams to form, but with a reduced gradient, the jet streams change their behavior. When the gradient is low enough (as it is now most of the time) the polar jet stream shifts from being a more or less simple circle around the earth to a very wavy circle, and the jet stream itself moves more slowly. For reasons that have to do with the math of the atmosphere, when the waviness reaches a certain point the waves themselves tend to stop moving, or move only slowly. So the jet stream is moving through these waves, but the position of the waves remains stable for days and days on end.

Where the wave dips towards the equator, an low pressure system forms in the “elbow” of the wave and sits there for days on end, causing cool conditions and a lot of precipitation. Flooding ensues. Where the wave dips up towards the pole, a high pressure system forms in the inverted elbow of the jet stream. This brings warm air north and that air tends to be dry (depending on where it is). This results in heat waves and drought conditions. The reality is more complex that I’ve indicated here, but you get the picture. Weather extremes of both cold and heat occur, and weather extremes of both wet and dry occur.

(For more information on these phenomena see: Why are we having such bad weather?, Linking Weather Extremes to Global Warming, and The Ice Cap is Melting and You Can Help.)

And now comes the newly identified “positive” feedback.

The research by scientists at Max Plank is published in nature (see citation below) but summarized on a web page from that institute:

When the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere rises, the Earth not only heats up, but extreme weather events, such as lengthy droughts, heat waves, heavy rain and violent storms, may become more frequent. Whether these extreme climate events result in the release of more CO2 from terrestrial ecosystems and thus reinforce climate change has been one of the major unanswered questions in climate research. It has now been addressed by an international team of researchers working with Markus Reichstein, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. They have discovered that terrestrial ecosystems absorb approximately 11 billion tons less carbon dioxide every year as the result of the extreme climate events than they could if the events did not occur. That is equivalent to approximately a third of global CO2 emissions per year….that the consequences of weather extremes can be far-reaching. “As extreme climate events reduce the amount of carbon that the terrestrial ecosystems absorb and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere therefore continues to increase, more extreme weather could result,” explains Markus Reichstein. “It would be a self-reinforcing effect.”

In particular drought (caused by extremes of heat long term, and lack of rainfall) cause plants to absorb less CO2. Heavy precipitation increases the flow of water containing carbonate holding materials into bodies of water where the CO2 out-gasses.

I would add to this the relationship between drought, fire, and dark snow in Greenland.

Climate change causes extreme weather which causes more of the same sort of climate change.

Bobby Magill also discusses this here: Can Extreme Weather Make Climate Change Worse?

Reichstein, Markus, Bahn, Michael, Ciais, Phillipe, & Et Al (2013). Climate extremes and the carbon cycle Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature12350

The Recovery of Arctic Sea Ice

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Every northern summer Arctic Sea ice melts away and reforms for winter, but how much melts away seems to be increasing on average, at a rate that surprises climate scientists.

But there are some who see variation from year to year, and there is variation, in a rather unrealistic way. Here is a graph comparing how climate science denialists view arctic sea ice over time, compare to how “climate realists” (i.e., smart people who can read graphs and such) see it:

ArcticEscalator2012_med

Go HERE to see the source and learn more about what is behind this graph.