Tag Archives: Global Warming

Dr. Gavin Schmidt’s Epic Response to Scott Adams

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Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, the once funny but now highly repetitive cartoon about a nerd who has a job in an office.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt is high up in the top ten list of world class climate scientists. He is Director of the currently under siege GISS Unit of NASA, where much of the climate science done by that agency is carried out. If you read my blog, you’ve read his work, because you also read RealClimate, where GS writes about climate science in a manner designed to be understandable to the intelligent, honestly interested, thoughtful individual.

Adams has a history of going after core science concepts, often substituting scientific reality with his own. He has done so with climate science.

And, he’s done it again. In a recent blog post (of yesterday) Adams tries to “convince skeptics that climate change is a problem”

This is a re-hash of earlier posts he’s written, in which he does the old denial two step. Of course climate change is real, he says. I’m not a scientist, he says. I don’t know jack about climate science in particular, he says. Then, he uses up piles of ink telling climate scientists how they’ve got all the science wrong.

His objective, I assume, is to spread and nurture doubt about climate science and science in general.

Dr Schmidt caught a tweet of Adams’, pointing to his absurd blog post, and responded with a series of tweets addressing all the things.

I wanted to preserve this excellent, well documented and richly illustrated TweetTextBook, and it occurred to me that you might want to see it too. So, here are the tweets.

Feel free to add additional relevant tweets to the comments, if you like. I hope this doesn’t break the Internet.

Earliest Tornado in Minnesota

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It is now verified that the earliest 2017 tornados — first tornados of the season — struck several communities in east-central Minnesota (a few miles north and south of me). So what you say? Especially because it was a mere F1 and didn’t hurt anyone!

This is an important event because the earliest recorded tornado of the year in Minnesota was previously March 18th, and that was in 1968. This tornado, striking on March 6th (confirmed yesterday by the NWS) is way earlier than that!

One tornado, near Zimmerman went for nine miles.

A second tornado appears to have passed through the community of Clark’s Grove as well. That one may have been on the ground for over 12 miles.

Neither tornado was large, but there was a lot of damage to property and trees.

Needless to say, the frequency of storms in general, and their severity, are expected to rise with climate change. Part of that seems to be the lengthening of the storm seasons. More time, more storms.

The local reports:

Ben Santer on Seth Myers

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Via Media Matters of America. Very interesting segment.

Santer talks about what is is like to be a rogue scientist in a Donald Trump administration.

The words referred to here the twelve words, were part of the 1995 Second Assessment report of the IPCC. That report is regularly updated, and forms the scientific and policy basis for our thinking about climate change at the national and international level. I highly recommend that you have handy at all times what I like to think of as the human-readable version of the most current IPCC report: Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change

An excellent resource for debunking and learning about the sort of junk Ted Cruz is seen to be spilling on this segment is Dana Nuccitelli’s book Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics.

Here’s a little more on Ted Cruz:

Chile’s Devastating Fires: Another Climate Change Story

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There have been significant wildfires in Chile since November, and they continue. These are the worst fires Chile has seen in known history, and Chile has been keeping track of its history for quite a while.

Are these fires climate change caused? Apparently so. Chile has had a rain deficit for well over a decade, though it as been extra dry for about five years. Drought experts call it a “mega-drought.” Droughts tend to have climate change links, and this one is no exception. A study from just one year ago links anthropogenic climate change to the drought.

Within large uncertainties in the precipitation response to greenhouse gas forcing, the Southeast Pacific drying stands out as a robust signature within climate models. A precipitation decline, of consistent direction but of larger amplitude than obtained in simulations with historical climate forcing, has been observed in central Chile since the late 1970s. To attribute the causes of this trend, we analyze local rain gauge data and contrast them to a large ensemble of both fully coupled and sea surface temperature-forced simulations. We show that in concomitance with large-scale circulation changes, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation explains about half of the precipitation trend observed in central Chile. The remaining fraction is unlikely to be driven exclusively by natural phenomena but rather consistent with the simulated regional effect of anthropogenic climate change. We particularly estimate that a quarter of the rainfall deficit affecting this region since 2010 is of anthropogenic origin. An increased persistence and recurrence of droughts in central Chile emerges then as a realistic scenario under the current socioeconomic pathway.

Heat on top of the drought adds to the likelihood of fires. Decreased snow pack from reduced rainfall and increasing temperatures at altitude also contribute.

Here is the Climate Signals attribution schematic for this event. Click through to climate signals for more.

Trump’s orders = two steps back on climate change

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The science is clear: Human caused global warming is happening and is serious. Building and expanding infrastructure to make it easier to burn fossil fuels is a very bad idea. The Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline were two such projects, and in recent years, the environmental community, politicians, and others managed to stop these projects.

Today, President Trump signed an executive order that brings these projects back to life and moves them forward.

From Rhea Suh, president of the National Resources Defense Council:

“It’s appalling that Trump wants to throw open our borders to big polluters. Eliminating the national interest determination process, used by both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades, cedes control of our borders to multinational corporations to jam through cross-border infrastructure projects. And it completely shuts out public engagement in decisions that affect our communities, air, water and climate.

“These unprecedented actions could also pave the way for approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline—a project vehemently opposed by the U.S. tribes whose land its crosses and waters it could pollute. Equally troubling, they also revive the Keystone XL pipeline— a tar sands project that would lock our country into, for a generation or more, massive development of among the dirtiest fuels of our past. They pose a grave threat to our water, communities and climate. We will use every tool available to help ensure that they are not built.”

From Climate Hawks Vote:

Climate hawks fought one White House over the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines and we won. We’re going to fight the next one. And we’re going to keep on fighting until we clear the American skies of the fossil-fueled stormfront of Trumpism – and we will, ultimately, prevail.

In the wake of Trump’s election, thousands of our members pledged resistance, including peaceful civil disobedience if necessary. We’re now calling on all Americans — including political candidates and elected officials — to pledge to resist these climate-destroying pipelines.

From Price Of Oil:

Today, President Trump will be signing executive orders reportedly to fast-track approval of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines. In response, David Turnbull, Campaigns Director at Oil Change International released the following statement:

“Both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines will never be completed, no matter what President Trump and his oil-soaked cabinet try to do. Trump’s first days in office saw massive opposition, marking the beginning of four years of resistance to his dangerous policies. We stopped Keystone XL and Dakota Access before and we’ll do it again. These are fights Trump and his bullies won’t win.”

It appears that this isn’t just hippie punching by Trump, but rather, a shrewd business deal for someone. According to DeSmogBlog:

As DeSmog has reported, Donald Trump’s top presidential campaign energy aide Harold Hamm stands to profit if both pipelines go through.

Hamm, the founder and CEO of Continental Resources who sat in the VIP box at Trump’s inauguration and was a major Trump campaign donor, would see his company’s oil obtained from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the Bakken Shale flow through both lines.

Trump has suggested that these projects would produce tens of thousands of jobs. This is only true in Alt-Universe. In Real-Universe, they will only produce a few dozen jobs long term. In fact, making the movement of a commodity more efficient, which pipeline builder argue pipelines do, reduces the number of jobs to move that commodity, by definition.

Evangelicals and Climate Change

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The term “Evangelical” is a bit of a moving goal post. But, there is a strong association between Evangelical and getting climate science totally wrong in a way that is actually materially damaging to our planet and to future generations. So, it is not hard to be angry at Evangelicals because they are ruining it for everyone.

But, within the “Evangelical” movement, there are people who are trying to change that. I wish them luck. One person is Katharine Hayhoe, and here she is talking about that:

Another is my friend Paul Douglas, famous meteorologist. He wrote Caring for Creation: The Evangelical’s Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment:

Climate change is a confusing and polarizing issue. It may also prove to be the most daunting challenge of this century because children, the elderly, and the poor will be the first to feel its effects. The issue is all over the news, but what is seldom heard is a conservative, evangelical perspective.

Connecting the dots between science and faith, this book explores the climate debate and how Christians can take the lead in caring for God’s creation. The authors answer top questions such as “What’s really happening?” and “Who can we trust?” and discuss stewarding the earth in light of evangelical values. “Acting on climate change is not about political agendas,” they say. “It’s about our kids. It’s about being a disciple of Jesus Christ.” Capping off this empowering book are practical, simple ideas for improving our environment and helping our families and those around us.

So, if you are an Evangelical, take heed. If you are not, find one and pass these items on to them.

AMOC Amok: Global Warming Bad News

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You already know abut the North American Conveyor current. Briefly: The major ocean currents happen because the equatorial ocean is warmer, and since water (unlike land) can move (though not as fast as air) the dissipation of this heat across the surface of the Earth results in warm water moving, at the surface, north or south away from the Equator, where it loses its heat and finds it way back to the equatorial regions, usually as deeper, cooler water.

Conveniently, this process also involves increasing the salinity of the water far from the equator, as evaporating water becomes saltier. This saltier water is therefore both cold and dense, so it sinks, drawing the warm surface water into the evaporation regions. Something like this is happening at a small scale around all the oceans, but the density driven conveyor is the biggest driver of ocean currents, most significant with respect to weather, and most famous, in the North Atlantic.

With global warming, the fresh water budget and distribution in the northern latitudes, in the Atlantic, changes, with more fresh water coming out of the Arctic and off of Greenland. This freshens up the hypersaline engine of the Atlantic Conveyor, also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). When that engine slows or shuts down, the currents in the entire North Atlantic, and beyond, change.

Here is the number one reason this is important (though number two may be more important, I’ll get to that in a moment). You know how England is warm and Maine is cold, though they are both really far north? London, Saskatoon, and Adak are all at about the same latitude. Paris, Quebec City, and Thunder Bay. Northern Europe is warmish, and habitable, even in Scandinavia, because of the heat that the AMOC transfers from ocean to land.

If the AMOC shuts down or moves really far south, Scandinavia, which is at the same latitude as Hudson Bay, will act more like Central Canada, which it does not do today.

screen-shot-2017-01-06-at-9-50-40-am

Visiting London from Minneapolis in the Winter now means going to a warmer (if dreary and foggy) place. Without the AMOC, it will be more like going to central Canada.

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The above strip maps make it look like there is an equivalence across different longitudes at a given latitude. This is not true. The ocean, even without the AMOC, will still warm Western Europe. But now, there is a gradient of warmth from eastern North America over to Europe, where a mostly non freezing winter shifts north to a degree that is nothing short of spectacular. Without the AMOC, that shift will be modest. And, interior areas in Eurasia, such as Moscow, will also cool down (though relatively not as much).

Newly published research tells us something new and troubling about AMOC deterioration. Current climate models suggest that this may happen, but it is unclear to what degree and when. Physical evidence shows the actual real life weakening of AMOC in recent years. So, reality seems to be outpacing the models. Some have suggested that this means that AMOC varies a lot, and will likely swing partly out and back in. Others are not so sure.

The recent research identifies a bias in the generally used climate models that causes AMOC to be more stable and long lasting, under global warming, than it might in real life. When the model is run with and without the bias corrected, you get very different results (see graph above).

This is a preliminary finding. The model has not been run enough times, and a few other things that are usually done have not yet been done. But the results are interesting enough that it is getting some serious attention.

global_warming_youll_be_dead_by_then_but_i_wont_beOne of the world’s experts on this topic, Stefan Rahmstorf, has written this up on RealClimate: The underestimated danger of a breakdown of the Gulf Stream System. The original research is here, but you may need a subscription.

I should mention that the collapse of the AMOC that happens when this model is run occurs in the somewhat distant future. That makes it worse, of course, because even more people will be living in, and depending on, the affected region than today. But it also allows us to ignore the problem because, hey, who cares about what happens to our children anyway, right?

Oh, and on that other thing that could happen if AMOC shuts down. This is speculative, but we do know that in the past large areas of ancient versions of the Atlantic Ocean and other seas have essentially died, become anoxic over large areas, so they become sources of dead matter rather than edible fish and stuff. This is how many of the major oil supplies we exploit today formed. I would imagine that shutting off the relatively restricted North Atlantic basin from much of the global circulation would be a first step in killing the ocean. So, there goes that food supply, and possibly, that source of oxygen. You know, for eating and breathing and stuff.

The Best and Most Current Climate Change Books

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Time to make sure you are stocked up and up to date on your climate science books. First, you will need reference materials throughout the holiday season, because Uncle Bob is going to challenge you more stridently than usual. Climate change deniers have taken over the US government. You are on the run. Underground. Up against the wall. So, you need to be ready. Uncle Bob is coming for you.

Second, you may want to give a few climate change related books away for the holidays. Know any science or social studies teachers? Maybe a nice book for Uncle Bob’s wife? Ha, that would be funny. Anyway, you’ll want to do that.

There are four books I recommend as gifts for anybody, but also, for your own enjoyment.

The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy by climate scientist Michael Mann and Washington Post political cartoonist Tom Toles is one of the most current, and in many ways, the most fun, of the climate books. The authors go right after the science deniers, but not at the expense of a lot of excellent explanation of the science itself, and the overall political situation. The cartoons are great, the text is engaging.

Also richly illustrated, but in a totally different way, and by one of the same authors, is Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change. Michael Mann shared a Nobel Prize with the IPCC and the other scientists for their work on climate change. That process involved the production of the Scientific Basis for Climate Change IPCC report, which is redone every several years, and includes all the science behind the broad consensus. Dire Predictions represents that science in a fully understandable way, and adds additional material on the other aspects of the problem: Policy. This is a basic on the shelf text you need in your home, and that your kid’s science teachers need in their classrooms.

Not a climate change book but essential, and that I’ll put right here for you to consider: The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It, Shawn Otto’s latest popular yet scholarly work on the effort to destroy science, is a must read. Climate science isn’t the only science under attack. This book covers it all.

Caring for Creation: The Evangelical’s Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment by Paul Douglas and Mitch Hescox is specifically written for your Uncle Bob, is Uncle Bob is a conservative Evangelical Christian. Paul is the country’s top meteorologist-communicator who happens to be a conservative (he claims) Evangelical Christian. Paul wrote the science in this book and it is real science, no holding back. Mitch is an Evangelical Christian guy who supplies the scriptural-religious part of the story. The book, obviously, is about how if you are an Evangelical Christian you should not be a dick about climate change.

Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know® by Joe Romm is unique among climate change books. Romm looks at the actual personal impacts of climate change, in the near and longer term future, on typical Americans. Think about it for a second. Many Americans who live in the north plan to eventually retire to warmer, southerly climes. Is that a good idea, with global warming and sea level rise happening? Are you sure that shorefront (or near shorefront) property on the Gulf Coast is a good idea right about now? What about your investment portfolio, what with changes happening in the energy industry and uncertainty in other areas? This is the book that covers that.

Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics by Dana Nuccitelli attacks climate science denialism by rushing right through the battle lines into enemy territory and deconstructing their bogus tripe. This is like the Guns of Navarone, where the guys sneak pas the Nazis and boow up their stuff, but with models. Just how have those alternative ideas and predictions, made over the last several years by climate change deniers, done, compare to the mainstream science? Well, read the book and find out. But I’ll bet you can guess.

The Collapse Of Arctic Sea Ice

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Andy Lee Robinson started the recent trend of making compelling graphics about climate change that move. He did a version of the Arctic Ice Death Spiral (a term coined by Joe Romm), which was highly acclaimed but that did not go as viral as it should have at the time. Then, a version with additive ribbon graphs about three years ago. He called that the “waterfall diagram” and it was picked up and used by the BBC at the time. Not long after, he came up with the disappearing block of ice motif. And now, Andy has an updated version, here:

This is ice VOLUME, not the oft cited surface area. Surface ice will always reform and melt in the Arctic, but long term there used to be a lot of thick ice that never melted during the summer. This long term thick ice would survive the summer melt, and allow new winter time surface ice to form more easily each year. As that ice disappears from various coastal areas in the high Arctic, new winter surface ice takes longer to get going.

The first version of this graphic, using ice blocks, was requested by Joe Romm, for Think Progress, in 2013, and appears here. Joe just wanted two ice cubes, side by side, and that is what Andy provided.

But Andy got thinking about the presentation of this very important climate change related metric. “After a while I thought it would be a nice challenge to try to animate it,” he told me. “To accomplish this, I started from the same camera angle, zooming in, following the line to the minimum and then returning to the original location. This required a way to create hundreds of script files to describe each frame.”

Andy told me that he is fluent in Perl, so he used that to calculate parameters for the objects he wanted to manipulate and substitute them in a povray script template. “At a resolution of 1920×1080, it takes between 15 minutes and 2 hours to make one, depending on what computer is working on it. I wrote spline and easing routines to calculate the smooth motions of the camera and cube sizing, and to interpolate the progression of the graph series.” The MySQL is a shared database that each server has access to, in order to check out a frame, render and return the results over NFS to a shared directory.

“The same perl program is run on each server and therefore knows which frame to render next, and after a few days the finished frames can be assembled together using ffmpeg with music, in a wav file.”

Andy, who is a gifted musician, composed the music himself.

“This uses 8 machines in total, including a linux laptop at 2 hours per frame! It was very painstaking work, writing all the code and parameters, but once done the images can be replicated automatically as new data appears. If only it would pay the rent!”

Royal Society Puts Matt Ridley And His Friends On Notice

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The Royal Society is the world’s oldest extant scientific society. And, it is a place where scientific controversy has a home. Both Huxley and Wilberforce were members back in the 19th century, when young Darwin’s ideas were first being knocked around.

More recently, just a few weeks ago, the Royal Society accidentally agreed to host a talk by coal baron and formerly respected science writer Matt Ridley. Matt Ridley has been a great disappointment to us scientists and science teachers. Many of us used his book as a supplementary reading in our evolution courses, for example (Ridley was a respected science writer back in the day). But more recently he has become a global warming science denier, and the suggestion has been made that this is because his personal wealth is tied up in coal mining.

Here are some resources to get up to speed on the Ridley controversy:

<li><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/11/30/matt-ridley-and-benny-peisers-misleading-guide-to-the-climate-debate/"><strong><em>Matt Ridley and Benny Peiser’s Misleading Guide to the Climate Debate</em></strong></a></li>

<li><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/01/19/testing-matt-ridleys-hypotheses-about-global-warming/"><strong><em>Testing Matt Ridley’s Hypotheses About Global Warming</em></strong></a></li>

<li><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/12/10/mat-ridley-anti-science-writer-climate-science-denialist/"><strong><em>Matt Ridley, Anti-Science Writer, Climate Science Denialist</em></strong></a></li>

Anyway, the Royal Society accidentally allowed the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is an anti-science organization pretending to be a, well, a policy foundation of some sort, to book a talk by Matt Ripley. This was clearly an attempt to legitimize climate change denial. The real science community got wind of this, and objected. From Graham Readfearn:

The Royal Society is coming under internal pressure to cancel a booking on its premises made by climate science “sceptic” group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, DeSmogUK can reveal.

Several fellows and associates of the society – the world’s oldest scientific academy, founded in 1660 – are angry over an agreement to hire its premises to the GWPF for its 17 October annual lecture, to be delivered by Lord Matt Ridley.

DeSmogUK also understands some scientists intend to raise the issue at a meeting of the Royal Society’s governing council on 6 October, with a request to cancel the GWPF booking.

Well, they did. And the Royal Society thought about it and decided to allow the talk to continue.

And, we can get mad about that if we want, but I’m not. The Royal Society clearly made a mistake in making the booking, but this sort of mistake is one of the costs of at least trying to live in a world where the conversation over science can generally be an honest one, and nefarious shenanigans such as this booking by a fake think tank to have a fake expert talk about fake science circumvents that honest conversation.

I’m reminded of the time when Harvard’s Kennedy School of government accidentally booked Famous African Dictator Mobutu Sese Seku Kuku Kibombe of Zaire to give a talk as part of a series of world leaders talking about government. Not long after word of that got out, there was a move towards uninviting, but that is actually very difficult for an institution to do. That talk went forward, with protests, and Americans became suddenly much more aware of Mobutu and what he had been up to in the country formerly and currently known as the Congo. This actually helped with ongoing efforts to get the US Congress to cut ties with Mobutu (he had been a loyal mercenary extraordinary and plenipotentiary on behalf of the US for years, fighting the Libyans and other African bad guys …) but I digress. The point is, Mobutu’s talk at the Kennedy school ended up being an important nail driven into his eventual coffin.

DesmogUK’s Kyla Mandel now reports that the Royal Society will allow the talk to go forward, but promises that if the speaker throws science under the bus, there will be people watching and reporting.

When the Royal Society met to discuss the matter, there was general agreement that climate change was real, that Ridley was not a friend to the science, that they regretted giving the talk, etc. But they also felt that cancelling the talk would give more cachet to the cancelled speakers and his fake think tank than they deserved. Rather, they thought, let the talk go ahead and “If the GWPF uses this opportunity to misrepresent the scientific evidence it would undermine the legitimacy of its views on policy responses to climate change.”

Sounds very Minnesotan. Passive aggressive counter attack, that.

Mandel’s report has more details, go read it here.

I look forward to the debunking of the talk by Matt Ridley, the 5th Viscount of Coal. Or whatever he calls himself. His career as a respected science writer is pretty much over, but there’s always room for one more nail.

Mike Mann, The #HockeyStickGraph, #Matthew, #AGW

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It turns out that there is an untold story behind the “discovery” of the famous Hockey Stick graph by Mike Mann and his colleagues. It is an excellent example of how science works, worthy of repeating, say, in a science classroom.

Anthropogenic Climate Change is very serious business. And, therefore, there has been far too little humor applied to communicating about this problem. Mike Mann and his co-author Tom Toles have started to backfill that gaping hole in the collective effort to bring the most important existential issue of our time to everyone’s attention.

Hurricane Matthew wasn’t just a storm enhanced by, or affected by, or influenced by, climate change. Matthew is the new poster storm for climate change and catastrophe, not because it Destroyed America (it didn’t, America got lucky, though Haiti did not) but because of several unique characteristics of that storm.

So, I did an interview with Mike Mann, even as Matthew was just about to pounce on Florida, in which we discuss various aspects of Atlantic hurricanes, and Matthew in particular.

We also discuss long term variation in the climate record, those squiggles in the surface warming trend on top of which regular warming is imposed.

We discuss Mike’s journey to the Hockey Stick, which I’m pretty sure is a story that has not been covered on a blog post or podcast or anything like that.

And, we discuss Mann and Tole’s new book, “The Madhouse Effect.”

Click here to get more info and hear the podcast, the latest edition of Ikonokast, with Mike Haubrich and Yours Truly.

If that is of interest to you, note also that we have an earlier interview with Peter Gleick on the California Drought and the crisis in Syria, and other matters, all related to Climate Change.

And a recent interview with Emily Cassidy on the food supply, which is a fairly closely related topic.

Hurricane Matthew: The Scary Clown of Hurricanes!

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LATEST UPDATE IS HERE. CLICK HERE FOR LATEST UPDATE.

Update: Wed Mid Day

Matthew weakened, strengthened, strengthening

Matthew has interacted with land masses in Hispaniola and Cuba to the extent that the storm weakened quite a bit, losing its temporary Category 5 status.

But, now Matthew is already showing signs of strengthening, and is likely to grow back to Category 3 or 4 status as it moves over the Bahamas. How bad a hurricane is when it makes contact with land depends in large part on the angle of the attack, and Matthew will likely be affecting several spots in the Bahamas at a particularly bad angle.

Bahamas are in serious danger now

This is the current warning for the Bahamas:

At 200 PM EDT (1800 UTC), the eye of Hurricane Matthew was located
near latitude 22.1 North, longitude 75.3 West. Matthew is moving
toward the northwest near 12 mph (19 km/h), and this motion is
expected to continue during the next 24 to 48 hours. On this track,
Matthew will be moving across the Bahamas today and tomorrow, and is
expected to be very near the east coast of Florida by Thursday
evening.

Maximum sustained winds are near 120 mph (195 km/h) with higher
gusts. Matthew is a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson
Hurricane Wind Scale. Some strengthening is forecast during the
next couple of days, and Matthew is expected to remain at category 3
or stronger while it moves through the Bahamas and approaches the
east coast of Florida.

Rainfall in the Bahamas is likely to be 8-12 inches wiht up to 15 in isolated areas.

A huge risk in this area is overtopping land masses with what may be a 10 foot storm surge. There may be large areas where fresh water, and fresh water plant communities, are destroyed, and may be affected for months or years to come, depending on exactly how this plays out. Nassau, the largest settlement in the area, is facing away from the storm’s track, so it will probably be spared a serious storm surge.

Florida is most likely to be affected in the US

Matthew, as a Category 3 or Category 4 will be getting close to Florida during the day on Friday. Depending on exactly what the storm does, it may spend enough time over extra warm waters of the Gulf Stream where it may strengthen. The storm may or may not make landfall in Florida. If the storm does not technically make landfall, there is still a very high probability of serious effects on the coast, most likely near central Florida.

NOTE: This is a perfectly good storm to display stupidity about landfall. Please avoid doing that.

Matthew is the scary clown of hurricanes

Then comes the strange part. Jeff Masters of the Wunderblog writes:

Thanks to my advancing years and a low-stress lifestyle that features daily meditation, there’s not much that can move me to profanity—except the occasional low-skill driver who endangers my life on the road. But this morning while looking at the latest weather model runs, multiple very bad words escaped my lips. I’ve been a meteorologist for 35 years, and am not easily startled by a fresh set of model results: situations in 2005 and 1992 are the only ones that come to mind. However, this morning’s depiction by our top models—the GFS, European, and UKMET—of Matthew missing getting picked up by the trough to its north this weekend and looping back to potentially punish The Bahamas and Florida next week was worthy of profuse profanity. While a loop back towards Florida and The Bahamas next week is not yet a sure thing, the increasing trend of our top models in that direction is a strong indication that Matthew will be around for a very long time. Long-range forecasts of wind shear are not very reliable, but this morning’s wind shear forecast from the 00Z run of the European model does show a low to moderate shear environment over the Bahamas and waters surrounding South Florida late next week, potentially supportive of a hurricane–if Matthew survives the high wind shear of 50+ knots expected to affect the storm early next week. The bottom line is that it currently appears that Matthew will not recurve out to sea early next week, and The Bahamas and Florida may have to deal with the storm again next week.

At this partiuclar moment, the red line in this graphic is the best guess for what may happen:

euro-highprob-oct5-1

There is a version of this where Matthew crosses Florida and ends up in the Gulf.

This scenario probably involves Matthew experiencing a lot of wind shear starting around the time it is near Florida and points north, and out at sea. This may actually make the storm a Category 1 hurricane or even weaker. But, if it makes this loop, the storm will be ina position to reform as a hurricane and menace the coast again.

I wrote a piece of fiction in which a hurricane in this general area finds a loop like this, but never stops. It just keeps going and going. In that story, Florida is mostly inundated by sea level rise, so it is actually a somewhat different configuration, but the same idea. I wonder….

Final point for now: Do not take your eyes off this storm.

I’m posting Climate Signals causality widget for this storm here, hope it works for you!

Update: Tuesday AM

Hurricane Matthew May Be One Of The Worst Hurricanes Ever

Such things are typically in reference to the region. There will always be Pacific hurricanes that are bigger than Atlantic hurricanes. Etc. But Matthew may be, for many years, on the list of the top few Hurricanes in the Caribbean region, in terms of strength and damage. The storm also has a number of odd features, some of which seem to be associated with anthropogenic global warming.

Hurricane Matthew will almost certainly end up being one of the worst weather disasters of the decade. It may end up being the worst storm to affect the region around Jamaica, eastern Cuba, western Hispaniola, and the Bahamas, but especially the island of Hispaniola, where an unusual feature of this storm (see below) is causing extraordinary rainfall. Haiti is more clearly in the path of the storm, but the Dominican Republic could end up experiencing a serious disaster (see below). (See: Matthew Hits Haiti, Their Strongest Hurricane in 52 Years)

In the end, it is likely that Matthew will be a poster child for social justice and climate change, since the storm is global warming enhanced and is affecting one of the most vulnerable populations in the world, in an area that is also geographically vulnerable.

Matthew’s Mysterious Blob

Also, Matthew has a strange new feature. A “mysterious blob” formed within the storm several days ago. The blob is probably going to end up being one of those interesting weather patterns that Rush Limbaugh and Al Roker do battle over. It is a complicated and mysterious phenomenon perhaps never before recorded with modern instruments but anticipated by meteorologists in the textbooks.

Hurricane Matthew's Mysterious Blob
Hurricane Matthew’s Mysterious Blob

Marshall Shepherd, of the University of Georgia (and former president of the American Meteorological Society) provides a discussion of the blob here. I’m not going to try to recreate his discussion here because it is very preliminary, but I note that Matthew is record breaking (nearly) in how far south if formed as a large storm. Matthew shouldn’t really have ever been born. But it was. And, the factors thought to be associated with Matthew’s Mysterious Blob might be more likely to occur in a south-forming hurricane.

The blob is basically a mini storm system, a small and quasi-independent tropical storm sort of, embedded within the larger hurricane. Like that birth mark that turns out to be your twin sibling. Maybe. Regardless of which metaphor works best, the blob could end up causing regions far to the east of the center of Matthew to experience rainfall of truly Biblical proportions. There are places on Hispaniola that may have rainfall amounts of well over three feet, and some wether stations near the blob have measured rainfall of well over 5 inches an hour. And, the storm is moving very slowly, so whatever the rainfall rate turns out to be at any given spot, it will add up to a large total, over rugged mud slide prone terrain occupied by under-built dwellings.

Matthew Is Global Warming Enhanced

Matthew is large, has a very low pressure core, very strong winds, and is moving slowly over waters that are, on the surface, warmer than normal because of global warming, which has contributed to the storm’s strength. The Atlantic is expected (and observed) to have more vertical wind shear as an effect of global warming, which should attenuate the formation or strengthening of most hurricanes in the region, but Matthew formed and grew large anyway, somewhat baffling meteorologists. Perhaps, in the end, extremely warm water will trump wind shear in the formation of disastrous storms.

Bob Henson wrote about this a few days ago:

Vertical wind shear of up to 20 knots has plagued Matthew for most of the last two days, yet the storm has not only maintained its structure but grown at a ferocious rate. Dissertations may be written on how this happened! Working in Matthew’s favor has been a steadily moistening atmosphere along its westward path, which means that the shearing winds didn’t push too much dry air into Matthew. Once it developed a central core, Matthew was able to fend off the wind shear much more effectively.

But wait, there’s more.

The waters in this region are also warmer at depth (100-200 meters or so?) because of global waring.

Again, Bob Henson:

…water temperatures are unusually warm throughout the Caribbean (and the entire western North Atlantic), with an area of high oceanic heat content directly beneath Matthew’s path. Such deep oceanic heat allows a storm to strengthen without churning up cooler waters from below that could blunt the intensification.

The degree to which the ocean is heated not just on the surface, is reflected in this graphic from NOAA:

The ocean below Matthew is not just warm on the surface, but warm at depth, and very warm at that.
The ocean below Matthew is not just warm on the surface, but warm at depth, and very warm at that.

A hurricane can maintain strength by moving fast over warm water. The storm itself cools the surface of the water by using that energy in its own formation, and by roiling the surface waters, causing mixing from cooler water below. So, underneath a typical hurricane may be regions where the water is not really warm enough to form or sustain a hurricane. So, running fast avoids that. One might expect a slow moving hurricane to damage itself by using up some of this heat and dispersing it to depth.

But, sometimes the water is at “hurricane warmth” (about 80 degrees F) for many tens of meters of depth. This allows the surface waters to contribute to the hurricane’s maintenance, enhancing the overall strength of the storm. Katrina did this in the Gulf of Mexico (though that story is a bit complex so be careful what you infer here) and Haiyan did it in the Pacific.

And now, Matthew is doing it in the Caribbean/Atlantic.

My strong impression is that this warming at depth is an effect of excessive sea surface temperatures, and is an effect of anthropogenic global warming. It will take the meteorological research community a few years to catch up to this idea, but your dollars and my donuts are on the table on this one, and I’ll be taking your money. This, if confirmed, could be thought of as a qualitative change in the nature of storms caused by global warming.

Matthew may be, in a sense, a representative of a new kind of tropical storm. We’ve been seeing a lot of outlier storms lately. This includes storms that form really fast, like Patricia. Matthew did that to some extent as well. Matthew may be defying the effects of wind shear. Like Katrina and Haiyan, Matthew is feeding off of deep warm water. And, Matthew has this mysterious blob thing. Sandy was an outlier as well, a major hurricane that maintained strength way far north, then ate a Nor’Easter and became a Super Storm. Matthew is heading along a track similar to the one that took Sandy north (not uncommon, nothing odd about that). We don’t know what will happen. But, if storms had real personalities (which they don’t but this is a blog post, not a peer reviewed paper) I would expect Matthew to be on the hunt for a Nor’Easter to eat!

Please note that Climate Signals (BETA) has a page up now on Matthew, exploring the climate change connection.

Matthew may hit the US.

And, of course, Matthew may hit the US coast. This has always been a possibility, but now the chances are increased, with more models suggesting that the storm will track farther west than the previous models (on balance) suggested, with several models suggesting a US coast landfall.

Where?

Take your pick:

where_might_hurricane_matthew_hit_the_us_if_it_hits_the_us_at201614_ensmodel

That graphic is from here.

Though it is hard to see in that depiction, it seems most likely that Matthew will skip Florida, but probably still hose it down and make waves. The more likely landfall scenarios are anywhere from the Carolinas north.

This is a storm to watch very closely, and in which we shall remain in awe.

Older updates:



Update: Monday Mid Day

Matthew is a major hurricane, and is just starting to affect the area of eastern Cuba and western Haiti. Jamaica has already been affected and there are two or more dead there.

Starting about now and over the next 36 to 48 hours, both countries will likely be seriously affected by this storm. I suppose three countries, technically, given that the US has a bit of territory in the region as well. Various islands in the Bahamas are also likely to be very strongly affected.

This is a major hurricane, fairly large, very strong, and it will be spending enough time over very warm water to maintain its strength as a Category 4 hurricane, or nearly so, during this entire time.

Most but not all models put the hurricane to the east of Florida, but not too far, and later, it is possible that it will strike the US east coast. The average of all the models says no, it will stay at sea, but there is not much certainty behind that prediction.

Meanwhile, there is a another storm, which has somewhat less than better than a one in three chance of becoming Nicole, is quickly spinning up out in the Atlantic.

Matthew will be a news maker and a disaster for a lot of people. But they are brown and not Americans, so few will take notice and science deniers will continue to say that nothing has happened in the Atlantic in years. But, Matthew is something, and it is a bigger something than it otherwise would have been because of increased sea surface temperatures caused by anthropogenic global warming.

vis_lalo-animated
Update: Friday Mid Day

Matthew seems to have had, as a key characteristic, the capacity for very rapid change. What just became a hurricane about 24 hours ago is either now, or about to be, a Category 2 hurricane, and may well develop into something close to a Category 3 before hitting Cuba in a few days. The storm is expected to cross Cuba and perhaps stay as a hurricane the whole way, or to reform quickly, where it will vis_lalo-animated heading north.

Vertical wind shear has been affecting the storm, which should be weakening it, but he weakening is not observed. Further wind shear is expected to slow rapid growth over the next day, but that may or may not happen. Then the shear lets up and strengthening begins. I have the sense that the predicted transition to ca 100 knot maximum sustained winds starting in about 24 hours is a bit conservative.

Some earlier models had this hurricane possibly crossing into the Gulf of Mexico, but now it seems that all the models are in aagreement on a course that will parallel the Florida Coast (possibly getting very lose to Florida, but probably not) then heading up the atlantic. (See graphic above, from Weather Underground.) Most of the models have Matthew staying out at sea, but a number have the storm coming ashore in any of several possible locations from North Carolina Through Buzzards Bay, Mass, or perhaps even farther north.

It is very likely that Matthew will have crossed Cuba and be north of the Island nation by around mid day next Wednesday, and it is certainly true that there will be a much better idea then as to where the storm will go next.

at201614_sat_2

Update: Thursday Mid Day

The hurricane status of Matthew is so fresh that the NWS, at this moment, has a mixture of products that call it a tropical storm and products that call it a hurricane. To be a hurricane, a storm’s wind speed have to be 74 mph (64 knots) or more, and of course it has to be organized properly. The NWS Public Advisory and some of their graphical products call the storm a hurricane and the advisory indicates that maximum sustained winds are at 75 mph.

Interestingly, the “discussion” which is usually the best source of information, has the storm turning into a hurricane in several hours from now. I have gotten the impression all along that the strengthening of this storm has been a bit quicker than usual. This may be an example of that phenomenon.

The storm is expected to make landfall in a few days, as a hurricane, in Western Cuba, then head back out over the sea where it will likely strengthen owing to very warm waters.

It is hard to say what this storm will eventually do, but there is a non trivial chance that it will make landfall as a hurricane in the US, a better chance that it will stay out to sea but be close enough to the coast to be bothersome, and a very good chance that it will eventually wack into Canada or someplace as an extratropical storm. Very few models seem to suggest that Matthew will be one of those mid-Atlantic hurricanes that remains boring until it finally dissipates.

Update: Wed Evening:

Just a quick note to say that about a third of the forecast models suggest that Matthew could become a major hurricane, and a smaller number even suggest a category 5 hurricane.

Update: Wed PM:

Matthew has formed into a named storm, and continues to head westward across the Caribbean. This is a region sometimes called the “Hurricane Graveyard” because various effects tend to reduce the chance of hurricane strengthening, and increase the chance of weakening.

The storm is expected to upgrade to hurricane status by the end of the week, possibly late tomorrow. Later, it may make a right turn and head north toward Jamaica and eventually Cuba, or environs. Around the time the storm reaches Jamaica, it may be a Category 2 hurricane.

The chances of this storm, as a tropical storm or hurricane, striking or affecting the US coast is not insignificant. Keep an eye on it.

From Weather Underground, the “ensemble models” to give you an idea of what the computers are thinking:

at201614_ensmodel

Original Post:

The next named Atlantic storm will be Matthew. There is currently a well organized stormy blob in the Atlantic, heading for the Lesser Antilles, that has a very high probability of becoming a named storm, and that could happen by Wednesday or Thursday.

This seems to be a fairly fast developing storm. Also, though it is way to early to say much, its possible futures are interesting.

The storm could continue roughly westward and either encounter the Yucatan or western Cuba, then presumably on to the Gulf. But, it also seems very likely to make a hard right and squeeze between Cuba and Hispaniola, or perhaps traverse on e or the other, on the way to the Bhamas or Turkes and Caicos, then north into the Atlantic. This is not one of those storms with a near 100% probability of wandering out over the Atlantic until it dissipates. There is a reasonable chance that this could be a land falling storm in the US. Again, this is way too early to say but this is one to watch very closely.

Sea surface temperatures are plenty high in the waters over which this storm will track no matter which way it goes. Global warming enhanced anomalously hight. So, it is pretty much impossible for this storm to not be stronger than it otherwise would be owing to human caused global warming. Let us hope it doesn’t hit anything.

screen-shot-2016-09-27-at-2-07-28-pm

New Paleoclimate Paper: Longest detailed reconstruction plus possible bad news

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You’ve probably already heard about his paper because everyone is all a tizzy about it. There is a fundamental complaint being made about one of the paper’s conclusions. I’ve been paying careful attention to what my colleagues are saying about that one aspect of the paper, and I get their point but I’m not sure if they are right. I’ll explain that later.

What everyone so far has almost entirely missed, though, is the actual point of the paper, and that is important and while I’m sure it could be improved with further work, this is good stuff and important.

One of the major contributions people like Michael Mann and Malcolm Hughes and others made some years ago now, to the understanding of climate science, was the extension of the paleoclimate record back far enough to truly contextualize current global temperatures, and to meld that record with more recent instrumental records. There have been other attempts to put together paleo records as well. But this latest attempt is the first time anyone has reconstructed the global average surface temperature (GAST) for about two million years.

This is roughly the same time period as what is known as “The Pleistocene” or, if we want to put this in cave man journalistic terms, “The Ice Age” or slightly more correct “The Ice Ages.” The latter terms are misleadning and muddy, so please lets not us them (by those terms we are in the “ice ages” right now, but not in “an ice age.” See how annoying that can get, and for no good reason?)

The Cenozoic, roughly 65 million years long, is a time of general cooling across the Earth, and the Pleistocene, the most recent sizable period of time, a part of the Cenozoic, is the period when extra cooling seems to have occurred, and during which, there are a couple of dozen or so swings between relatively warm (like we have now) and relatively cool, with some of those cool periods, the most recent half dozen or more, being really really cool, with the big giant glaciers covering Canada, etc. etc. You knew this already.

For this period, we have a pretty good climate reconstruction, or least one that has been slowly building, that uses two sources of data from sea cores. One is the so called “delta-18” curve, and the other is the foram reconstruction.

The delta-18 curve simply measures oxygen isotopes in sea water, indirectly, and uses this to estimate how many cubic gigantometers of the planet’s water is tied up in ice, mainly in glaciers. (Some help on that here.) Examination of this curve starting in the late ’60s, but mainly in the ’80s, confirmed an old and zany theory that the Earth’s climate is controlled by the orbital geometry as our planet goes around the sun. Eventually it would come to be understood that cycles in how exactly the sun hits the Earth, called Milankovitch cycles, are a factor (but not the only factor) in global climate, and that this effect was very weak in the distant past, got stronger about 2 million years ago, and then perhaps got stronger again more recently.

The foram reconstruction is a bit more difficult. Here, fossilized remains of communities of a significant part of what we call “plankton,” which had settled to the bottom of the sea, are interrogated to estimate the sea surface temperature at that location. Certain forams prefer certain temperatures.

The new research, by Carolyn Snynder, published in Nature as “Evolution of global temperature over the past two million years” uses, mostly, this foram data to estimate sea surface temperature, and then, uses this to extrapolate to GAST, for the last two million years.

The result looks like the graphic above.

That, right there, that graph, is cool. It puts the modern world in context, and provides a good look at the Pleistocene.

The graph is not perfectly accurate and it is hard to say how inaccurate it is, given the paucity of data.

I asked the author about the possible limitations of this reconstruction. She told me, “this reconstruction is only as good as the proxy reconstructions and other assumptions it is based on (it is useful to note that three different SST proxy methods were included in the dataset). The more reconstructions available, the better the GAST reconstruction can be. That is why a significant amount of this research was focused on quantifying how large that uncertainty may be so that it was reflected in the final GAST reconstruction.”

Only sea surface temperatures are used, and there are strong seasonal effects in how foram communities form and are deposited. But, any ancient reconstruction is going to have problems, and this appears to be an excellent result. Dr. Snyder told me, “one of the major challenges of creating a global average surface temperature is that the primary reconstructions available over the past 2 million years are of sea-surface temperature. Available terrestrial temperature reconstructions are too infrequent and limited in spatial distribution to be used for a global reconstruction at this time. Therefore, I scale the average sea-surface temperature for 60ºN-60ºS to global average surface temperature using results from climate model experiments from 9 climate models. The scaling factor is necessary to address the fact that land surfaces and the poles tend to have larger temperature changes than the oceans. That assumption also drives a large fraction of the overall estimated uncertainty in the final GAST reconstruction.”

One of the most useful applications of this kind of information is placing modern global average surface temperatures in context. You can do that by looking at the graph, but I went ahead and asked the author how she would characterize modern temperatures vis-a-vis this reconstruction. She told me, “this is what we can say from this reconstruction: The only time periods in the temperature reconstruction when the estimated most likely global temperature change from the past 5,000 years was greater than 1 degree Celsius was during the last interglacial period (around 120,000 years ago) and then not previously until 1.77 million years ago. However, that is a summary of the “most likely” GAST estimate, and the uncertainty ranges are large, especially farther back in time. Also, the GAST reconstruction is relative to average temperature over the past 5,000 years, not directly to preindustrial temperature (due to the resolution of the reconstructions used), and so that is why I am not able to word this as a comparison relative to present temperatures.”

Now, on to what turns out to be a highly controversial result.

Snyder claims, using part of the Abstract of the paper to represent her finding, ” A comparison of the new temperature reconstruction with radiative forcing from greenhouse gases estimates an Earth system sensitivity of 9 degrees Celsius (range 7 to 13 degrees Celsius, 95 per cent credible interval) change in global average surface temperature per doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide over millennium timescales. This result suggests that stabilization at today’s greenhouse gas levels may already commit Earth to an eventual total warming of 5 degrees Celsius (range 3 to 7 degrees Celsius, 95 per cent credible interval) over the next few millennia as ice sheets, vegetation and atmospheric dust continue to respond to global warming.”

If you have been following the climate science literature, you may see that range as incredibly high. It isn’t actually as high as it looks, because most discussions of “climate sensitivity” refer to the metric “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” which is both shorter term and lower (and different in other ways) compared to Earth System Sensitivity. The difference may be as much as 100%. The ECS estimates are all of the map but, nobody believes the number can be below 3 (except a few odd balls), most think 3.5 is a good estimate, but most say it could be as high as 6. So, doubling the ECS to get the ESS (which is probably not appropriate but hell, this blog post is not being submitted to peer review, so complain in the comments if you like) we get 7.0 – 12. In other words, saying that ECS is about 3-6, likley 3.5 and that ESS is 7-13, most likely 9, are not quite as dramatically different as they seem.

But still, the implication is that sensitivity is higher than people have been thinking. And this is where lots of people don’t like the research. Not because of the finding, but because of the effort to calculate this number itself. NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt has been circumspectly tweeting about this for several days, and just wrote a blog post at Real Climate on it. He notes,

Nature published a great new reconstruction of global temperatures over the past 2 million years today. Snyder (2016) uses 61 temperature reconstructions from 59 globally diverse sediment cores and a correlation structure from model simulations of the last glacial maximum to estimate (with uncertainties) the history of global temperature back through the last few dozen ice ages cycles. There are multiple real things to discuss about this – the methodology, the relatively small number of cores being used (compared to what could have been analyzed), the age modeling etc. – and many interesting applications – constraints on polar amplification, the mid-Pleistocene transition, the duration and nature of previous interglacials – but unfortunately, the bulk of the attention will be paid to a specific (erroneous) claim about Earth System Sensitivity (ESS) that made it into the abstract and was the lead conclusion in the press release.

The paper claims that ESS is ~9ºC and that this implies that the long term committed warming from today’s CO2 levels is a further 3-7ºC. This is simply wrong.

That post is here, go read it.

Meanwhile, I’ll be happy to have a go at explaining this complaint as clearly as I can without using math or physics. I’ll use dogs.

When I leave my house, my dog is always looking out the living room window. When I come home, the dog is always by the front door. The distance between the living room window and the front door is ten meters. Therefore, I can estimate that the final net change in dog location, as a result of whatever movements my dog is making all day, is 10 meters.

Now, I’m going to try to model your dog and see how that goes. That’s where I run into problems. This forces me to generlize the problem by getting much more specific about what the actual dog is doing during any given point in time. I don’t know anyting about you, your dog, or your house, so I need a model that takes all the different factors into account, then I predict what your dog will do. Should be easy, right?

When dogs are left alone, they do several things. They sleep in a few locations, they look out various windows, they visit their food bowl to sniff at it a few times. But what exactly they do is different depending on if the time one leaves the home is in the evening or morning, because of light outside, changing the nature of the window visits. Was the toilet bowl left up or not? Is there a treat hiding under the couch? The complexity is enormous, and you really can’t say much about the movements of the dog all day. Then, when you get home, will your dog, or anyone’s dog, automatically go to the door to wait for you? What if your dog hates you? What if your dog has lousy hearing and you walk home quietly, as opposed to a dog with great hearing, and the owner drives a motorcycle?

While correlation between dog’s position at my house over time works well, and allows me to accurately characterize dog position over time as recorded for the past at my location, it does not take into account the fact that some variables may act differently than the correlation implies.

That’s the argument that Snyder can’t say what she says. GAST responds to dust, albedo, which relates to ice distribution and amount, and that is determined by various climatic factors, etc. etc. As long as everything is the same from glacial cycle to glacial cycle, more or less, we can use a set of glacial cycles to emperically estimate what happens for any other glacial cycle. But if they don’t, then forgetaboutit.

The dog actually did move NET 10 meters every day, no matter what happened in between. But, the correlation is either spurious or at least, underdetermined. The ESS estimate is about how things settle down in the end, not about what happens during a unique period of dramatic climate change.

And this is why the criticisms are both correct and incorrect. I thing the criticisms by Gavin Schmidt and others are not especially relevant or interesting when asking this question: “What is the ESS value controlling Pleistocene climate change (with changing CO2 and GAST) over the last 2 million years?” The answer to that question is 9 (but see Schmidt’s commentary, he has other issues). If you don’t like 9, do your own study, change the way you handle the data, get more data, get an arguably better GAST curve, get better CO2 estimates, and recompute.

However, the answer to the question, “What is the ESS or ECS value governing anthropogenic climate change at present, and over the next few decades, based on Snyder’s temperature curve?

Answer: The dog died. Or it ran out the door in the middle of the day. Or some other doggy metaphor indicating a dramatic gap between expectation and reality, because of humans.

Human impacts on the climate over the last two or more centuries, and especially over recent and upcoming decades, via land use changes and greenhouse gas release, are not the same as what happened during previous interglacials. So, really, while this new work places the entire question in historical context, perhaps it doesn’t actually answer the question, because the house we left the dog in is totally different than it ever has been before.

And the author seems to be saying something roughly along these lines. Snyder told me that she followed prior work that had already “… defined the correlation relationship between global temperature and greenhouse gas radiative forcing changes as ESS as a way to summarize patterns in the Earth’s past climate. This is a useful metric that summarizes a combination of interactive feedbacks in the climate system. This does include changes in longer timescale feedbacks, such as ice sheets, vegetation, and dust, within the ESS metric. It is not ECS, as that is defined as explicitly not including those changes as internal feedbacks, but rather as external forcing that need to be explicitly accounted for separately.” She went on to tell me that the ESS is “a useful reference as a way to summarize past relationships from the paleoclimate record. But again, it is a correlation observed in the past, not a test of causation.”

So, in essence, Snyder is only talking about the dog’s past repeated behavior. ESS, she says, “… is likely state dependent, and thus I focused on comparing my new estimate to estimates from previous research on the late Quaternary. I also was able to investigate the state dependence of the metric within the last 800,000 years and found that it was lower in deep glacial states. This is an interesting finding, as some people have assumed that the ESS metric would be higher at the glacial maxima (e.g., the LGM) than during interglacials. That is not what the data shows.”

Which brings me to a couple of other observations, which may be a bit esoteric but if you think about it, are really quite interesting. Remember above when I said that Milankovitch cycles have varied quite a bit in the past as to whether or not they had a big influence on climate? Snyder confirms or proposes that there was an increase in influence about half way through this time period. She also shows that the Pleistocene cooling continued only up to a certain point, then stopped. And, this research appears to elucidate the relationship between the Arctic and Antarctic, and the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as polar amplification, which is the increase in temperature change at the poles compared to the rest of the planet. Cribbed and reworded a bit from the abstract:

<li>Global temperature gradually cooled until roughly 1.2 million years ago and cooling then stalled until the present. </li>


<li>The cooling occurred, then stalled, before the increase in the maximum size of ice sheets around 0.9 million years ago, so global cooling is shown to be a precondition for a shift in Milankofitch effects to the more recent pattern of ~100,000 year cycles.</li>


<li>Over the past 800,000 years, polar amplification has been stable over time.</li>


<li>Global temperature and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have been closely coupled across glacial cycles. </li>

This may be an evolving situation. I asked Carolyn Snyder a few questions about her research after reading Schmidt’s first post, but before his second was posted, and I do not know if she had read either at that time. So don’t take her quotes from above as addressing his questions. They are merely clarifying remarks. Also, frankly, I’ve not heard the opinions of any of my colleagues who are on the higher end of sensitivity estimates. They may show up tomorrow and get in Snyder’s trench.

Yes, it is true that climate change is controversial. But not whether or not climate change is human caused, real, or important. It is all those things. But within the field itself, the scientist are busy fighting it out, as well they should. I’ll keep you posted.

AGU Throws Science, Climate Under The Bus

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The American Geophysical Union just lost whatever remaining credibility it had as a scientific society earlier today when it announced no change in policy regarding taking money from ExxonMobil.

We talked about this before, here.

Margaret Leinen, the AGU president, issued a communication today that says this:

Last week the AGU Board of Directors discussed the organization’s April decision to continue engagement with ExxonMobil after receiving additional information from several sources. The Board maintained its original decision after another careful and systematic review of hundreds of pages of both newly provided and previous documentation and a thoughtful and comprehensive discussion. We thank all those who made their voices heard.

AGU has always valued open dialogue and exchange of ideas, and we believe this decision best reflects AGU’s unique value to the scientific community: our ability to convene scientists of diverse views and from different backgrounds, disciplines, and industries. With membership spanning all Earth and space sciences, AGU has an increasingly important role to play – building on our recognized convening power – in providing a space for active, vibrant dialogue that advances collective scientific understanding of the world and our place within it. This is an important function and strategic goal of our organization as scientific issues continue to be top-of-mind for the public and legislators alike and as places for thoughtful discussion of diverging viewpoints become increasingly rare. We remain, as always, committed to cultivating a space that is inclusive to scientists working across all sectors of society in service of exceptional scientific research and discovery.

We welcome your questions and comments via comments on this blog post or by direct email to President@AGU.org.

See the key part? This: ” ability to convene scientists of diverse views and from different backgrounds, disciplines, and industries. With membership spanning all Earth and space sciences, AGU has an increasingly important role to play – building on our recognized convening power…”

The AGU is pretending that the range of normal activities among its lovely power giving constituency includes nefarious acts, paying for anti-science activities, and so on. They are not arguing that ExxonMobil is in the clear. They are arguing that it doesn’t matter.

The word “power” here is a clear — well, ok, veiled — dog whistle. Someone in the organization wanted us to see that word in this context. The real power in power companies is not the gas or electricity.

So, that’s it for the AGU. What’s next?

The Argument Against Anthropogenic Climate Change Is On Drugs

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First, a note on Lewis Carrol, Alice and Wonderland, and drugs. The current revisionist version of that work is that Carrol was not referring to drugs when he has Alice or other characters imbibe or smoke various substances (including ‘shrooms) and in so doing experience dramatic changes in reality. Uh huh, sure. The argument is based on the belief that Lewis Carrol did not do drugs. That argument is absurd, of course, because Alice in Wonderland and related works ARE FICTION. If these stories can only involve thematic metaphor to drug use by the author actually being on drugs while weaving the yarns, then what exactly do we expect Stephen King’s life to be like? But, I digress and we shall now get on to the point of this post.

There is a new paper by the Conspiracy and Consensus team exploring how climate science deniers, in a conspirational mode, are, essentially, on drugs. Not real drugs, just the metaphorical ones invoked when we think or utter, “What did he say? Man, he must be on drugs.” To be clear, this paper does not actually make the drug connection directly. The connection to the Alice down the rabbit hole metaphor is in the great disparity and incongruence among ideas proffered or claimed simultaneously by the deniers of climate science.

Here’s the details on the paper: Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J. & Lloyd, E. Synthese (2016). The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism. doi:10.1007/s11229-016-1198-6.

Click the link to get your free copy.

The authors make two key observations, and then explain them. First observation: The climate change denier community is capable of saying, seemingly at the same time, completely different things that contradict each other. Second observation: Same as the first one, but this also applies to individuals. In other words, the internally conflicting disparity of ideas does not solely represent heterogeneity in the denier community. It indicates a lack of need or desire for consistency or internal coherency. Science deniers do not care that they, as a group or as individuals, saying that even though paleo-temperature data from proxies are unreliable, a claim (which is incorrect) can be made that the middle ages were warmer than today. They can say that we can’t really measure atmospheric CO2 levels in the past, but they were higher in the past at particular points in time. And so on. The paper provides numerous examples.

The authors explain this lack of coherency by the fact that there is coherency, but at a different level. Given (or, as an assumption) that this is conspiratorial ideation in action, the deniers know (but are wrong) that there is a conspiracy at a higher level to obscure or hide the truth, or to make stuff up, etc. Therefore, any given idea, no matter how much conflict it implies with other ideas, is acceptable as long as it doubles as a finger pointing to the man behind the curtain, the deep and high level conspiracy. If an idea supports the idea that there is a conspiracy (any conspiracy, or just an unspecified conspiracy of some sort, not a particular one) then it is an OK idea.

I would either mildly disagree with this explanation, or take it one sept further and fully agree with it. I’m still thinking about it.

In dueling with deniers, one thing that very quickly becomes apparent is an utter lack of concern for honesty. One could ask the question, was honesty absent from the beginning, as a character trait of these individuals, or was it sacrificed in service of strong conspiratorial ideation? I think the lack of honesty is critically important, because this is what make it impossible, in a conversation, for the interlocutors to agree on what we are all getting at, or to acknowledge when we are going in a good vs. bad direction with intermediate conclusions or provisional ideas, or to in any way come to any kind of understanding about pretty much anything.

An honest conversation moves towards something, and that something is defined and redefined, and increasingly better understood, as part of the conversation itself. Deniers are not even moving towards a better and more coherent conspiracy. They are, rather, denying every aspect of the mainstream, coherent, consensus-seeking conversation, no matter what it is. You can test this, by engagement in comment sections of newspaper articles and blog posts. You can trick these folks into saying something that favors a normal interpretation of climate science, by simply letting them know that you are agin’ ’em, and then stating the opposite of what you want them to say. In the trenches, detailed positions are not necessarily developed and framed just in reference to the conspiracy by a higher power (the government, the academics, etc.), but also (or maybe mostly?) in simple opposition to whatever a scientist, climate change “believer,” etc. is saying.

That applies, by the way, to about everything one might talk about. On this blog, several folks who showed up as science deniers discovered a conversation about firearms, and engaged fully. And, the same tactics prevailed. I’m not sure how important that is, but those conversations might be worth a look.

This could be all about the Ultimate Conspiracy, and the dishonesty simply arises from the incoherence of the necessary arguments. Or, the Ultimate Conspiracy could be the final (and ultimate) excuse when everything else fails, and fail it must if ever the conversation goes on long enough for everyone to understand that the deniers have contradicted themselves and each other on everything they’ve said.

Either way, the utter lack of honesty must matter. The adherence to honesty in the normal, honest conversation about policy or science, or science policy, is critical. When that breaks down, and people involved in the conversation are working with other objectives, that is when you get serious problems (including post-modernism within academia, damaging political positions in state houses and national capitols, and utter craziness on the internet.) I’m not a psychologist, but I’m pretty sure that disregard for honesty, or the inability to grok honesty, or something, is associated with a range of pathologies. I’d love to see this explored more.

<li><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/23/1573393/-Alice-in-Denialand-Mad-as-Hatters">ClimateDenierRoundup has more on this paper, here.</a></li>

<li>Graham Readfearn has this: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/sep/23/how-climate-science-deniers-can-accept-so-many-impossible-things-all-at-once">How climate science deniers can accept so many 'impossible things' all at once</a></li>

<li>Sou at Hot Whopper has this: <a href="http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2016/09/climate-science-denial-rational.html">Climate Science Denial: A rational activity built on incoherence and conspiracy theories</a></li>

And, now, a musical interlude.