by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
The IPCC has published the complete report Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). The Summary for Policy Makers was discussed previously on this thread (I don’t see anything in the full report that would change my mind re what I said about the SPM). The report is being spun by both sides. GWPF has an essay entitled IPCC confirms: we do not know if the climate is becoming more extreme. This article in Reuters reflects the MSM reaction: Plan now for climate related disasters. The summary points:
- Rising population, development put more in harm’s way
- Policymakers urged to act in next few decades
- Less emphasis on mitigation, more on cutting risk
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After the NSIDC declaring the on 3/18 that the Arctic sea ice melt season had begun, the Arctic sea ice has continued to increase, with much greater than normal sea ice extent in the Bering sea.
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The UK Met Office has begun to talk to climate sceptics, mostly under the initiative of Richard Betts. Kudos to Betts and the UKMO. The article discusses extensively the visit of Andrew Montford (Bishop Hill).
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Each week I check AGW Observer, who does an excellent job of summarizing recent journal articles of general interest. From this weeks list:
- European hot summers associated with a reduction of cloudiness – Tang et al. (2012)
- September Arctic sea ice predicted to disappear near 2°C global warming above present – Mahlstein & Knutti (2012)
- Framing the way to relate climate extremes to climate change – Trenberth (2012)
- Is a bipolar seesaw consistent with observed Antarctic climate variability and trends? – Schneider & Noone (2012)
The one that caught my eye in particular is this one:
New paper claims that stratospheric ozone is most important driver of recent climate
Climate sensitivity to the lower stratospheric ozone variations – Kilifarska (2012)
Abstract: “The strong sensitivity of the Earth’s radiation balance to variations in the lower stratospheric ozone – reported previously – is analyzed here by the use of non-linear statistical methods. Our non-linear model of the land air temperature (T) – driven by the measured Arosa total ozone (TOZ) – explains 75% of total variability of Earth’s T variations during the period 1926–2011. We have analyzed also the factors which could influence the TOZ variability and found that the strongest impact belongs to the multi-decadal variations of galactic cosmic rays. Constructing a statistical model of the ozone variability, we have been able to predict the tendency in the land air T evolution till the end of the current decade. Results show that Earth is facing a weak cooling of the surface T by 0.05–0.25 K (depending on the ozone model) until the end of the current solar cycle. A new mechanism for O3influence on climate is proposed.”
Citation: N.A. Kilifarska, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2012.03.002.
JC comment: I have been overbusy the past two weeks (this state will continue for another two weeks). But it seems to me that the climate blogosphere has become slightly boring as of late? I note that I had this same sentiment just before the Peter Gleick story broke :) I have a number of interesting ideas for future posts, but they all will take more time than I currently have available to develop. Let me know if you see interesting papers or blog posts that could serve as the basis of a thread here. And please let me know if you are interested in doing a guest post.
How do I let you know re guest post thoughts?
We will have a guest post ready after “connecting the dots” on the sudden flurry of events after the first man-made “nuclear fire” vaporized Hiiroshima on 6 Aug 1945:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
Here is an outline of early, pre-Climategate events:
01. Hiroshima vaporized (6 Aug 1945)
02. World War II ended (14 Aug 1945)
03. Kazuo Kuroda analyzed Hiroshima ashes (Aug 1945)
04. First UN General Assembly meeting (10 Jan 1946)
05. First UN Security Council meeting (17 Jan 1946)
06. UN General Assembly adopts first resolution (24 Jan 1946)
07. Abrupt U-turn in solar science (1946)
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-15
08. Kuroda showed self-sustaining nuclear reactors occurred naturally on earth in calculations presented at the AGU Meeting (April 1956)
9. B2FH explains, “Synthesis of the elements in stars,” Reviews of Modern Physics 29, 547-654 (October 1957): http://rmp.aps.org/pdf/RMP/v29/i4/p547_1
10. Twenty-six years (26 yrs) later, Kuroda reports:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-21
“Until recently, scientists believed that the chemical
elements were synthesized only in stars. The dis-
covery of the Oklo phenomenon in the Republic
of Gabon in 1972 has revealed, however, that a
nuclear “fire” had existed on the earth and large-
scale transmutations of the elements were occur-
ring on the planet 1.7 x 10^9 years ago.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n556224311414604/
judith.curry@eas.gatech.edu
A few citizens of Iran and Israel found an interesting way to bypass government propaganda:
Do you really think wiping out Israel isn’t a populist position in large tracks of Iran and the middle east as a whole??
I feel his pain but this is the kind of stuff that get’s people killed as well. Those rockets from Hamas come from Iran and have already killed Israel citizens. Hating the Jews helps keep Iranian leaders in power.
Curious view of “propaganda” and somewhat offensive. I should think this party is better informed simply because he’s there and I’m on another part of the globe and not Jewish?
AGW is the kind of stuff that has almost collapsed the world economy and confidence in the world leaders that brought society to this sad state.
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Emeritus Professor Nuclear & Space Studies
Hamas funded by Iran;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
Another fairtale we can’t afford.
No, AGW is a fairy tale.
World leaders use fear to retain power. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!
Buddha awoke to reality and proclaimed this message.
Einstein awoke and expressed it mathematically: E = mc2.
We are continuously bathed in energy that sustains life.
a.) Solar luminosity
b.) Atomic rest mass
Fear of the atomic rest mass that vaporized Hiroshima on 6 Aug 1945 scared world leaders into trying to hide the energy source that sustains life by pretending the Sun is powered by the glowing sphere of “pulsar waste products” that hides the Sun’s iron-rich mantle encasing its pulsar core.
For today we have scaring the proles.
H/t sleepalot, Henry Reed & the Bish.
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The Kilifarska thesis is a blockbuster. Another theory of natural variability no less, accounting in [principle for most of the supposedly observed change.
Yes, I predict that he skeptics will jump onto believing this one-dimensional model that somehow gets trustworthy global ozone measurements back to the 1920’s.
I predict Warmers will believe Global Warming stories.
Andrew
It is not a question of believing it, just of recognizing it. Skeptics have more fun because we are participating in the conjecture phase of climate science. I do not believe any of the natural variability conjectures, because none has been confirmed yet. Nor has any been falsified. Multiple competing hypotheses is the true state of the science.
‘Skeptics have more fun’. There’s a T-shirt there. Mugs. All kinds of merchandise.
I like it! I can see a large market, including myself!
I haven’t seen the mechanism by which a 10% reduction in stratospheric ozone seen over Switzerland can be the cause of global warming. I would be glad to hear it, but until then, call me skeptical.
It’s the garden gnomes.
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There are multiple mechanisms in play with a peturbed stratosphere.The first nontrivial is transport ie the flow of energy from lower to higher latitudes,that is peturbed during enhanced polar vortex excursions.
The UNEP 2011 suggests for the SH
Observations and model simulations show that the Antarctic ozone hole caused much of the observed southward shift of the Southern Hemisphere middle latitude jet in the troposphere during summer since 1980. The horizontal structure, seasonality, and amplitude of the observed trends in the Southern Hemisphere tropospheric jet are only reproducible in climate models forced with Antarctic ozone depletion. The southward shift in the tropospheric jet extends to the surface of the Earth and is linked dynamically to the ozone hole induced strengthening of the Southern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex.
The southward shift of the Southern Hemisphere tropospheric jet due to the ozone hole has been linked to a range of observed climate trends over Southern Hemisphere mid and high latitudes during summer.
Because of this shift, the ozone hole has contributed to robust summertime trends in surface winds, warming over the Antarctic Peninsula, and cooling over the high plateau. Other impacts of the ozone hole on surface climate have been investigated but have yet to be fully quantified. These include observed increases in sea ice area averaged around Antarctica; a southward shift of the Southern Hemisphere storm track and associated precipitation; warming of the subsurface Southern Ocean at depths up to several hundred meters; and decreases of carbon uptake over the Southern Ocean.
The inter relationship with AGW ie mechanisms of the same sign, is a an area of evolving research,and the requirement for better o3 proxies is one of those,due to the divergence proble is one reason eg Mckenzie 2006.
It has been suggested that changes in UV-B radiation due to ozone depletion may have been responsible for a departure in the relationship between tree rings and temperature over the period since the 1970s.. However, the changing behaviour seems to precede the
period of most significant ozone depletion, and may be due to other factors. One possible factor is the decreasing irradiance due to increasing cloud and aerosols that occurred over this period, sometimes called “global dimming”, a trend which may have reversed to a “global brightening” since the late 1980s. Further work on biological proxies for past UV-B radiation is currently being conducted by several groups, and reliable results may eventually be
produced. Promising attempts include the chemical composition and structure of pollen grains and spores.
The UV-B irradiance depends not only on the ozone layer and other atmospheric properties (clouds, aerosol), but also on the variable emission of the sun and the variable geometry of the solar system. Although several proxies for past solar emission exist, and though modelling and comparison with other stars can provide further information, the uncertainties remain great, and published values must be used with caution.
In a very long-term perspective, calculations based on the oxygen content of the atmosphere can give some information about the historical development of the ozone layer, as can measurements of the isotope composition of certain minerals
The Arosa database is well used in attaining calibration for independent observations such as the huggins lines from astronomical photographs.There is some nice work from Liz Griffin.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/431935
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/6/2231/2006/acp-6-2231-2006.pdf
This is an expensive area of research however .
Well as it current stands the RCP estimate for stratospheric ozone forcing prior to 1980 is 0.
Now, we can be pretty certain that this is wrong. We can be fairly certain that the forcing due to stratospheric ozone was not zero prior to 1980.
You can search the literature for reconstructions and see this.
Yet, an estimate of zero is used in the RCPs. somehow, people see this as trustworthy.
Let me put it a different way: you might chide skeptics for believing in a reconstruction, however, the alternative used today in the RCPs is a ‘reconstruction’ that claims 0 forcing ( basically no change in forcing)
If a reconstruction is proposed and if GCMs that use it do a better job of predicting temps in the 30-40s ( when there appears to have been a change in Uv) what would you say
More broadly it’s about how you handle forcing that are so uncertain or speculative that it’s difficult to quantify it. Giving it a value of zero seems as arbitrary as any other number.
Jim D: Yes, I predict that he skeptics will jump onto believing this one-dimensional model that somehow gets trustworthy global ozone measurements back to the 1920′s.
I think that you are missing a major point. All the evidence taken together is not sufficient to rule out alternative hypotheses. This study provides evidence that the effect of ozone fluctuations on some measures of climate change may have been underappreciated. It isn’t about “belief”, but about the relations of all the ideas to all of the evidence.
Start your research on ozone here
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Natalya_Kilifarska/publication/216225592_Nonlinear_reassessment_of_the_long-term_ozone_variability_during_20-th_century?jtp=false
and then go get the Swiss dataset.
interesting
Mosh
A couple of years ago I asked the max Planck institute and Cambridge university whether the ozone hole could always have been there but we just didn’t have the equipment to detect it until the 1950’s.
They said they didn’t know the answer but had a couple of research projects which coincidentally might provide the answer in a few years. do you consider that man was definitely the cause?
Tonyb
i do not know. i just went looking for forcing data and recons and data sources
When I was in grad school, the ozone hole held center stage and global warming was only just being talked about. As I recall, the location of the “hole” confounded the experts, as they predicted it should be over the NH. Can’t recall if anyone ever figured out why it wasn’t. I also recall a calculation, which for me put the issue into perspective. It showed that assuming the “hole” was over NA, the amount of additional uv exposure one would get would be equivalent to what a person living in Minnesota would get if they moved to New Orleans. Not something I’d give a great deal of concern too.
At the time I was of the opinion that the CFC ban was most likely another of those feel good actions which would have a negliagable effect on the ozone hole, but I did think that ultimately it would prove to be worthwhile due to the impact of CFC as a GHG.
Steven Mosher, thank you.
Kind of like the pH records of the oceans, eh?
Absolutely! I perdicks it will wash out that GHGs account for 10% of the residual 25%, and AGW-CO2 for 1% of that.
“What, me worry?”
>:)
Is there a way of reading the full paper, not paywalled? The paper seems to come to the right conclusions, but are they justified?
The Bi-polar seesaw and the stratospheric ozone are interesting, though I am not so sure it is just stratospheric ozone. Following Pinatubo, stratospheric cooling virtually stopped.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/FunwithNoiseStratospheregloballandocean.png
During the satellite record, as the Northern extent warmed
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/Funwithnoisenoext.png
The southern extent cooled until Pinatubo, when it started a neutral to slight warming, then back to cooling.
Looks like a rather impressive aerosol effect.
Looking just at the polar mid-tropsphere,
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/nopolevsopolemidtropfrom1994.png
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/nopolevsopolemidtrop.png
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/nopolevsopolemidtropfrom2002.png
When oscillations get synchronized, big things can happen.
This is OT, but the visualization is so neat I’m sure others will want to see it. It’s an overhead view of winds in the US. It can become mesmerizing. Click on map to zoom to an area.
http://hint.fm/wind/
Heh, the turbulent why.
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Bob, thanks for that link. I am always looking for more wind data in my line of work :)
+1
(Best viewed in Chrome, btw.)
Judith, the climate blogosphere gets boring several times a year. It’s very event-driven and when there isn’t a scandal de jour everybody just rags on each other. And that’s boring.
I remember commenting how boring things were a couple of years ago. I think it was in November…
True, dat. So, who wants to predict the next Black Swan for CAGW speculators?
“Swan” doesn’t seem like the right wildlife. How about “Black Albatross”??
More than a single Black Swan event, more likely we’ll see a continued increasing number extreme climate events this summer, and into 2013, 2014, etc. etc. etc. with AGW skeptics continuing to claim they are simply part of natural variability. To get what I feel is a very solid perspective on these extreme events, I highly recommend the article by Dr. Trenberth that Dr. Curry provided a link to:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/0008xl84w0743102/
Unusual weather is usual, so every year the warmers find something new to point to. Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, whatever happens to happen. Now we have this new phenomenon, the “extreme climate event.” We can even count them, so we know their number is increasing.
Now this is surely pseudoscience.
Of course it stands to reason that skeptics would shy away the kind of logical analysis and perspective on extreme climate events such as presented by Dr.Trenberth. But as the extremes continue occur in ever greater frequency, true skeptics will understand and appreciate Trenberth’s perspective, and the only thing left will be the pseudo-skeptics who maintain their pseudo-skepticism not for scientific reasons but political and probably even personal.
Umm
If they are becoming more common, then surely they are no longer extreme. And didn’t the IPCC just say that they couldn’t identify any increase? Or is this IPCC report no longer the trusted Bible of the alarmist camp?
Same argument as the birdwatcher who wishes to see unusual species and bemoans that there are so few of them. That is exactly the point!
R Gates: Of course it stands to reason that skeptics would shy away the kind of logical analysis and perspective on extreme climate events such as presented by Dr.Trenberth.
Trenberth’s perspective piece is neither especially novel nor logical. Alarmists have warned for decades that the real problem is the increased frequency of extreme events (droughts, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc), as might be expected on any theory of increasing total energy accumulation. Showing that a trend of increasing extremes actually exists has been problematical, as most analyses (like those in Trenberth’s perspective piece) have depended on extremes selected post hoc, and have focused on extremes that support global warming and ignored those that don’t. Even if there have been trends in extremes over some time frames, that doesn’t support the idea that the trends have continued in the most recent decade, and provides no evidence as to the mechanisms causing the (possible) trends.
On the whole, the study of extreme weather events is to be welcomed. But the answers relevant to public policy decisions are likely to come from more studies of the mechanism of particular heat flows, and detailed calculation of actual heat transmitted. Right now, scientists can not tell what a doubling of CO2 concentration will produce at any region of Earth surface, or in the atmosphere above it.
But no matter what changes will be caused by CO2 increases anywhere, floods and droughts will alternate in the places where they have always alternated, and adaptation in those areas (Indus valley, Queensland, California) needs to be strongly supported. Hurricanes and tornadoes will destroy buildings, etc, as they always have. And so on. Showing that the next great flood in China (say) is 5% more water flow that the greatest flood in the 1930s (say) is likely to be of no help at all, whether or not it can be related to hypothesized AGW.
Several years ago I realized that there are several regions on Earth in which the nexus of expanding human population and variable regional weather and climate would predictably create natural disasters on a regular basis.
The Southern border of the Sahara is one such place. As the climate cycles from drier to wetter the border of grassland grazeable by nomadic herder, and of arable land cultivatable will predictably move north and south. The human catastrophes will have an element of predictability, even genocide instead of smallpox could have been predicted.
Another such place is the north end of the Bay of Bengal, the delta of the Ganges. There is low-lying land there, settled and cultivated despite government strictures, which is a predictable patsy for the odd cyclone.
A long forgotten commenter added the great river valleys of China. Population pressurizes the productive crik bottom there, and inevitably pressure cooks the not so odd flood.
Prophylax, rescue and adapt. We can do no better.
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Oh, yeah, Pakistani river valleys, too. Allah, be merciful. Benglastan & Pakidesh, oh, Bamiyan, oh Bamiyan.
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kim;
yes, humans “push the envelope”, and as each wave of disasters recedes, the recovering territory is quickly exploited to the fullest, in the confident expectation that the new conditions won’t revert to disaster mode.
History clearly teaches us that we can’t learn from history.
First as tragedy, then as tragedy, then as tragedy. The farce is how we act in between.
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Is it possible that the gains from exploiting the delta during non-disaster years exceeds the cost of absorbing the losses during disaster years? Just asking whether it is a possibility.
And, could gubmint intervention actually encourage investment on the delta, by picking up part of the disaster-year tab, but doing nothing during the non-disaster years? Just asking whether it is a possibility.
Good question, NW. The fact that the barely above sea level delta land is re-populated and cultivated suggests that the net is beneficial rather than harmful. We do see only the face of the disasters when a cyclone roars up near Burma cross the bay.
With adequate warning, evacuation should be feasible. The storm surge recedes quickly, leaving a mess.
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Unusual would depend on the time frame used to define usual. Compared to the last 200 years, future climate will likely be unusual. Since regional climate tends to be a bit chaotic, reconstructions of past climate make poor global climate reconstructions. There are a few truly global climate events that appear to be common to most paleo reconstructions. 1400AD and 1816AD stand out clearly on most of the reconstructions.
I was just looking at a North American precipitation reconstruction. A cool PDO generally means drought in my area, this one by Bale et al 2011 is new. Since you mentioned Black swans, I thought I would compare the Bale et al to the Neukum et al 2010 Southern south American reconstruction. I choose these, because the authors actually included all the data. I am not a fan of omitting data that is inconvenient.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/BaleandNeukumwhitemountainsversusSSA.png
Even in the noise, 1400 AD stands out in both a northern hemisphere precipitation and southern hemisphere temperature reconstruction.
When comparing the Neukum et al to the Cook et al. 1998 Tasmanian reconstruction, 1400 still stands out.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/TasmaniaSSAreconwithHadsst21300plusaverages.png
I even threw in the HADSST2 in green just for grins.
Looking at these, warmer will be uncommon for the past 600 years, Major North American drought would be uncommon for the past 300 years. Before that, not so uncommon. Skeptics just happen to think that Black Swans are not that uncommon and there is much more than CO2 to be concerned with, especially when half of the 0.8C rise in temperature doesn’t look to be related to CO2.
Then if I look at the Neukum et al 2010 and the Jacoby et al. 2000, which is truncated in 1970 because the data appeared to diverge from the instrumental,
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/NeukumversusJacoby.png I start seeing what is said to be CO2 related. Only problem is, about 1% of the surface of the Earth was converted to crop land in Eurasia during the last few centuries thanks to mechanization powered by fossil fuels. Enough crop land to feed billions of people.
So skeptics just want accurate information and advice on energy from energy experts, not scientists that knock 35 years of inconvenient data off their work.
Trenberth’s article isnt what I would call a rigorous analysis. It’s a “framing” and not a very cogent one at that.
the problem with the extremes argument is that it is utterly redundant.
In a warming world, regardless of the cause, one expects new extremes.
Almost by definition. The point is trivially true and scientifically and statistically un interesting. FAR, attributing a fraction of the cause to anthropogenic warming, is equally silly. It’s silly because the the estimates of the percentage of warming that is attributable to humans is itself uncertain. That’s building uncertainty upon uncertainty.
What lies behind these types of argument is some peoples need to generate a present day cost for climate change. That argument however backfires on the drive for mitigation. It backfires because the present day costs of climate change can only be addressed by adaptation.
The focus on extremes is scientifically uninteresting and from a policy perspective makes a great case for adaptation.
That’s a wicked comment. You don’t need my compliments but just live with them.
Steven,
I would agree that Trenberth’s paper is a “framing” piece, and not rigorous, nor meant to be. The point is one of perspective, and valuable on this basis. This is nicely summarized by this paragraph, where Trenberth wrote:
“Scientists are frequently asked about an event “Is it caused by climate change?” The answer is that no events are “caused by climate change” or global warming, but all events have a contribution. Moreover, a small shift in the mean can still lead to very large percentage changes in extremes. In reality the wrong question is being asked: the question
is poorly posed and has no satisfactory answer. The answer is that all weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.”
In short, individual extreme event attribution is a wrong approach as it is now all Anthropocene weather. Exactly what would have happened to the weather during this interglacial Holocene sans humans is unknown and unknowable, and can only be hinted at by climate models.
As to whether the effect of a changing climate on weather extremes is scientifically interesting, I think that is clearly a subjective perspective. Much can be learned about both weather and climate by looking at the extremes and their causes. If you or someone else finds that uninteresting, then it reflects more on you or them, then on what can or can’t be learned. On a non-scientific basis and at the very least, you can be certain that many actuaries are interested in the potential increases we might see in extreme weather events.
R gates
In last weeks thread you made a comment about blocking weather patterns to which I replied but I suspect you didn’t see it.
Were you insinuating that such things as blocking highs and other ‘stuck’ weather patterns were becoming more frequent due to agw. If so could you give me a citation.? Thanks
Tonyb
The question “is it caused by climate change” should be straightforwardly answered. NO.
climate change is a statistical notion. “climate” is not an observable. ‘climate’ refers to the statistics of weather. Climate does not exist and can’t cause anything.
Extremes are not Caused by “climate” change. Extremes are evidence of changes in the the weather. Weather exists. Climate does not. “climate” is statistics , long term statistics, of weather.
This is what happens when people do not attend to ontology
Well if climate is defined as long term weather and that shows no trends anywhere then there is currently no climate change at all by definition.
However the term climate change is usually misleadingly used instead of the more correct term ‘global warming’. Trenberths notion that higher temperatures will cause more extreme weather is faulty on the meteorological basis that most events are caused by differences rather than absolutes. Indeed Lindzen reminds us often that it is textbook meteorology that a warmer world would lead to fewer storms in total. Even tropical storms are expected by the IPCC to be less frequent in warmer weather; the debate being only about hurricane strengths and that is currently a 50/50 bet according to Knutsons (admittedly crap) modelling efforts.
Furthermore Trenberths single and entire mechanism for excessive weather change is a less than impressive 4% increase in water vapour (and even that is debatable). The man is holding down a job for which he is patently incompetent.
Hi Steven.
I can’t quite grasp the difference between climate and weather other than that difference in length of observed period.
They seem to only differ as an inch does to a yard.
Why isn’t weather also a stat derived from smaller time frame distinct events ?
The point Mosh is trying to make is that if it rains you can measure how much rain fell.
Climate is statistics. You can calculate the mean of all the sea surface temperatures that you have but nowhere in the world can go out and measure the mean sea temperature. It does exist physically. It is a statistic.
This is why the claimed uncertainly of +/- 0.0005K on the Argo data is a lie. They pretend that they have 10,000 measurements of the global mean when in reality they do not even have one!
R. Gates,is that the Trenberth funded by reinsurance companies that profit from charging higher prices if/when extreme weather events are considered more frequent? Just asking…
Gates: “continued increasing number extreme climate events”
Compared to what? 2003? Or all the way back to the 1930s or even earlier.
For every “extreme climate event”, there are 100 in the past 100 years that exceed the modern ones.
Give us 10 examples from the last 10 years of cooling temperatures that have never been surpassed before 1950.
Trenberth does not seem to understand probability. If you measure temperature for 100 years, in 100 locations, there is a 63% probability of seeing a hundred year record in any single year. Measure a half dozen metrics over thousands of sites and pretty soon the odds are 100% for all practice purposes (they can never actually equal 100%).
Why is it that all the extreme weather experts disagree with Trenberth, who by the way is not an extreme weather expert, but now somehow the consensus doesn’t count.
We measure too infrequently and with too little detail to adequately plot the shifts in extremes, to decide on the question of the nature of extreme weather.
One of the reasons extreme events came into the topic of climate change is that change in extremes, a new level of the system, is predicted in Chaos Theory for a chaotic system under external perturbation. Whack an active hornet nest with a stick if you doubt this.
Were we measuring about 100 times more datapoints over land and a thousand times more over sea, and more than just the highs and lows for the day, for temperature, plus windspeed and direction, pressure and humidity, and spectrums of insolation, particulate density, cloud, ocean composition at varying depth, current speed and direction, then mmmmmaybe we might be able to say if we’re seeing changes in extremes due external perturbation. If we’d been measuring these globally for over 205 years.
The mathematics says we will be experience shifts in extremes. It also tells us we can’t confirm this with observation given our current datasets, or rule it out either, for any particular extreme event.
Leaving us to unsatisfying frameworks such as climatologists struggle to improvise into something meaningful.
That said, the evidence — such as it lamentably is — does much more strongly support AGW; the argument that in an Anthropocene climate all weather is due the climate in the same way that all pepper falling from a pepper mill iis due the action of milling holds. What of it?
Is anyone going to sue a coal mine to recover from the drought in Texas?
Is there a reason to read Trenberth? Or would it simply be wasting time on dweeb science?
Here is an 11,000 year ENSO proxy. It shows the drying of the Sahel commencing 5,000 years ago, the demise of the Minoan civilisation starting some 3,500 years ago. It shows droughts and periods of flooding and cyclones hundreds of years in duration. I doubt very much that we have seen anywhere near the limits of natural variation.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ENSO11000.gif
Well I did mean periods where cyclones were much more common – not one cyclone over hundreds of years. LOL. That would be extreme.
Bartopotamus talks about chaos – but the phase space seems to fall within extremes of glacials and interglacials. Serious extremes that they are. But there is no reason to think climate should shift into a radically different phase space. The idea of global warming is however antithetical (look up the dictionary Bart) to the idea of dynamical complexity (chaos). The former is simple cause and effect and linear change. The latter is control variables and non-linear feedbacks. Imagine warming (from El Nino and cloud change) leads to loss of sea ice in the NH, resulting in cessation of thermohaline circulation and runaway feedbacks in NH snow and ice. This scenario – and others – leading very rapidly to a new glacial can’t be excluded.
Best Regards
Captain Kangaroo
Robert I Ellison | April 1, 2012 at 12:51 am |
In the past 50 million years, since you’re so good with this omniscience thing:
What is the ratio of runaway glacials begun with CO2 above:below 240 ppmv?
Ratio of glacial periods span with CO2 above:below 240 ppmv?
In general, CO2 doesn’t rise rapidly as glaciation is in a runaway phase.
When CO2 does rise, glaciers recede.
True or false?
When glaciers retreat CO2 rises – I thought this was settled science? The rest of it is feeling about in a dark room according to the NAS – more productive in the right company seems to me.
Robert I Ellison | April 2, 2012 at 2:40 am |
So.. CO2 level is a great proxy for glaciation then, but only after the change in glaciation?
Which means, what, that we had an icecube Earth prior to 1750, and the 110+ ppmv rise of CO2 since then, (greater in size than any CO2 rise in 800,000 years and happening on top of the peak CO2 level of the past 800,000 years) that’s CO2 released because of the retreat of glaciers from the Equator to their present state?
Is that your assertion?
A Fascinating Story for the Discovery of the Causes of Ice Ages
Milutin Milankovitch, was born in the politically volatile Balkan nation of Serbia—later incorporated into Yugoslavia—in 1879. Milankovitch came from a relatively privileged background. His family owned extensive farmlands and vineyards, and several of his relatives were university graduates. For a time, he gave in to family pressure and studied agriculture in preparation for taking up the management of the Milankovitch estates. But he was more interested in the sciences and went instead to Vienna, where he earned a doctorate in engineering in 1904. After working for five years as an engineer in Vienna, building such things as dams and bridges of reinforced concrete, he gladly returned to his homeland to accept a post at the University of Belgrade. There he lectured on mechanics, astronomy and theoretical physics, and yearned for a challenge that would permit him to make his mark in the world of science.
In 1911, during an evening of wine tippling with a poet friend, Milankovitch selected his challenge: He would develop a mathematical theory that would enable him to determine not only the temperature of the earth at different latitudes and at different times but also the climates of other planets in the solar system. It was to be an ambitious scientific sojourn in what Milankovitch called “distant worlds and times,’ and the young professor had picked an ideal stage of his life to begin. “I set Out on this hunt in my best years,” he recalled later. “Had I been somewhat younger I would not have possessed the necessary knowledge and experience. Had I been older I would not have had enough of that self-confidence that only youth can offer in the form of rashness.”
Milankovitch pursued his goal with single-minded devotion. As he later observed: “When a scholar stands before a scientific problem, he becomes like a hunting dog that has sensed the game.” His first step was to make a thorough survey of work that had already been done in his chosen field. He was fascinated by James Croll’s astronomical theory, but concluded that Croll, for all his considerable accomplishments, had lacked the precise data required to deal adequately with a problem of such magnitude. Luckily, though, Milankovitch came across the more recent studies of the German mathematician Ludwig Pilgrim, who in 1904 had published minutely detailed calculations of the precession of the equinoxes and changes in the earth’s orbital eccentricity and angle of tilt. Indeed, Pilgrim had even gone so far as to chart the relationship between orbital eccentricity and the presumed chronology of past ice ages. Milankovitch judged that Pilgrim’s understanding of climatology left much to be desired, but could find no fault with his mathematics; he used the German’s figures to work out his own calculations of past climates of the earth and other planets.
His progress was interrupted in the fall of 1912 by the outbreak of the First Balkan War, in which Serbia joined its neighboring allies to expel the Turks from southeastern Europe; a reserve Army officer, Milankovitch was called to active duty with his regiment. Hostilities were short-lived, however, and Milankovitch soon returned to his civilian desk. During the next two years he published several papers outlining the emerging results of his work, which indicated that glacial advances and retreats could indeed be brought about by changes in solar radiation due to the precession of the equinoxes and to variations in the earth’s orbital eccentricity. (His calculations became considerably more accurate after 1913, when American scientists at the Smithsonian Institution were able to establish the solar constant, or the intensity of the sun’s radiation.) He also showed that variations in the planet’s angle of tilt influenced climate to a far greater degree than James Croll had believed.
In the summer of 1914, war intruded once again on Milankovitch’s affairs. He was visiting his home village of Dalj—then a part of Austria-
Hungary—when World War I began, and was promptly interned as a
prisoner of war. But his studies would not be hindered: In his suitcase, he
carried the papers on what he called “my great cosmic problem,” and during his first night of confinement, he whipped out his fountain pen and
turned to his calculations. “As I looked around my room after midnight,”
he recalled later, “I needed some time before I realized where I was. The
little room seemed like the nightquarters on my trip through the universe.”
Milankovitch did not stay long in his cell. Learning of his imprisonment, a Hungarian university professor who knew of the Serbian’s accomplishments prevailed upon the authorities to parole Milankovitch to Budapest, where he could have access to the library at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. There he spent the rest of the war years, developing a theory for predicting the earth’s climate and completing a description of the climates of Mars and Venus. In 1920, his results were published in a work titled Mathematical Theory of Heat Phenomena Produced by Solar Radiation, in which the author demonstrated mathematically that widespread glaciation could
be induced by astronomical changes that alter the amount and distribution of solar radiation reaching the earth. He also maintained that it was possible to determine the amount of radiation that had reached the earth at any time during the past. In short, Milankovitch was claiming he could prove that astronomical processes caused ice ages.
Among the many scientists who were impressed by Milankovitch’s work was the eminent German climatologist Wladimir Koppen, whose son-in-law, Alfred Wegener, had startled the scientific world in 1912 with his theory of continental drift. Now, Koppen and Wegener were in the process of writing a book about past climates. Invited to contribute to this project, Milankovitch readily agreed, and set out to plot a curve that would show the variations in radiation that he believed were responsible for the succession of ice ages.
James Croll had believed that variations in solar radiation at very high latitudes during the winter were the dominant factor in the onset of glaciation. But Milankovitch saw the matter otherwise. After lengthy correspondence with Köppen, he had become convinced that the decisive factor in glaciation is the diminution of summer heat in the temperate latitudes, not a reduction of winter radiation at the Poles—where temperatures even today are low enough to preserve a permanent snow cover. Working from morning until night, he drew curves showing how summer radiation in the middle latitudes—between lat. 55° N. and lat. 65° N.—had varied during the past 600,000 years. Finally, after 100 days, he finished his calculations and mailed the results to Koppen.
When the German scientist examined the work of his Serbian colleague, he was immediately struck by the marked similarity between the lines on the Milankovitch chart and the sequence of European glaciations established years before by the geographers Albrecht Penck and Eduard Bruckner. Koppen informed Milankovitch that his astronomical theory had thus been confirmed, and asked him to attend a scientific conference to be held in Innsbruck, Austria. There, as Milankovitch listened from an inconspicuous last-row seat, Alfred Wegener presented a spirited lecture on continental drift and ancient climates, illustrating the section on the Pleistocene epoch with Milankovitch’s painstakingly computed radiation curves. So well received was this new explanation for ice ages that Milankovitch slept that
night “on a bed of laurels and soft pillows.”
Köppen and Wegener included Milankovitch’s work in their 1924 book, Climates of the Geological Past, and many geologists were convinced that the ice ages had at last been explained. Milankovitch, meanwhile, continued to elaborate and refine his theory, computing curves for latitudes both higher and lower than those that he had previously plotted. In 1930, he published his clearest statement yet on the causes of ice ages: Mathematical Climatology and the Astronomical Theory of Climatic Changes. In it, he demonstrated that radiation curves calculated for the higher latitudes are dominated by the 41,000-year tilt cycle, while curves for latitudes closer to the Equator are more heavily influenced by the 22,000-year precession of the equinoxes.
Aside from the fact that they corresponded with the assumed periods of glacial advances and retreats, Milankovitch’s curves did not offer definitive proof that they delineated the causes of ice ages. But this correspondence seemed far too striking for mere coincidence. Scientists the world over came to accept the Milankovitch explanation for climate changes, and Milutin Milankovitch was convinced that his life’s great work was done. For the first time since 1911, when he had set his lofty goal of scientific discovery, he was without a great challenge to face. “I am too old to start a new theory,” he remarked wistfully to his son in 1941, “and theories of the magnitude of the one I have completed do not grow on trees.”
Planet Earth
Ice Ages
By Windsor Chorlton
Time Life Boks
1983
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Milankovitch noted that as the earth spins and moves around the sun,
both its orbit and its attitude change slightly. The orbit varies from almost
circular to strongly elliptical and back again every 93,000 years or so. The earth’s tilt in relation to the plane of its orbit—the cause of earthly seasons—changes from about 22 degrees to more than 24 degrees and back every 41,000 years. The earth also wobbles, rocking in a circular motion around its axis like a slowing top, and this too has a cycle: One full wobble consumes 25,800 years. By altering the distance between the sun and earth or changing the angle at which radiation strikes particular points on the earth, these moves alter the amount of solar energy reaching certain latitudes in certain seasons.
Evidence that supports the critical role Milankovitch attributed to these cycles has accumulated steadily. For instance, scientists from the Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory in New York discovered that variations in the type of oxygen and in the distribution of the remains of minute marine life—found in sedimentary samples taken from the floor of the Indian Ocean—indicate periodic and severe climate changes. The sea-core record suggests that some of these changes have peaked every 23,000 years, others every 41,000 years and still others about every 100,000 years. It seems highly unlikely that the similarity to the span of orbital variations is mere coincidence.
Planet Earth
Atmosphere
By Oliver E. Allen
Time Life Books
1983
Girma
Great read
Good post Girma. The link between glaciation and solar radiation discovered by Milankovich is quite evident.
However, since the periodicity and extent of solar activity seems not capable of prediction this work seems only of value in an historical sense.
“However, since the periodicity and extent of solar activity seems not capable of prediction this work seems only of value in an historical sense.”
So, you saying because we can’t predict the sun, it has no value in predicting future. Which of course applies to any other attempt to predict the future of climate.
But what seems to be becoming more popular is the idea that earth has cycles in climate which caused by past warming. And therefore though knowing how the sun will behave in to future would be helpful in predicting the future, knowing the precise heating of the past would also predictive of future climate.
And of course dispelling the myth that CO2 level are somehow significant in regards of causing glaciation and warming periods in the past, rather CO2 level being a result of warming and cooling, would educate the public so as not be victims of propaganda that is intended to frighten them into making foolish choices.
gbaikie said “So, you saying because we can’t predict the sun, it has no value in predicting future” and “And therefore though knowing how the sun will behave in to future would be helpful in predicting the future, knowing the precise heating of the past would also predictive of future climate.”
I am not sure what you are driving at here because while solar activity seems to have an effect on climate, in particular in respect of cloud formation which is now being studied by CERN, it stems from a system that seems to be chaotic, non linear, and not capable of prediction.
The cycles which you refer to are generally in relation to the periodicity and extent of natural variations in what can only be described as normal climate behaviour over time, which is dominated by negative feedbacks and relatively stable statistical error bands.
I agree that these types of systems can be used to forecast future trends but these projections cannot account for external forcings from solar activity, volcanic activity or magnetic fluctuations emanating from our solar system and beyond..
And see: Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes (Springer Praxis Books / Environmental Sciences) [Hardcover]
Richard A. Muller (Author), Gordon J. MacDonald (Author)
for their detailed spectral analysis of correlations of ice ages with astronomical cycles.
http://www.amazon.com/Astronomical-Causes-Springer-Environmental-Sciences/dp/3540437797/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333427283&sr=1-1
Dr. Curry noted that after the NSIDC declared that the Arctic Sea Ice has reached its seasonal peak on March 18th, that it “continued to increase”, with “much greater extent” then normal in the Bering Sea.
I think this summary could be misleading. While it is true that the sea ice hasn’t really begun its spring melt just yet, it is just about where it was on March 18th, having declined a bit, and then come back up a bit, but either way, showing no statistically significant move either way. The most accurate thing to say is that its pretty much the same.
But about the Bering Sea (and Okhotsk sea), which are currently showing the only real greater than normal extents in all the Arctic areas, it is very important to note that this March is not unlike late March 2010, where we saw a bump up in late season sea ice in both these seas. At the time, the skeptical community got quite excited as it seemed that because of this late season bump up, the Northern Hemisphere sea ice might actually, for the first time since 2004, get back to the long-term average extent line. We even heard pundits like Rush Limbaugh proclaiming that the “sea ice had recovered”. Of course, those of us who have been studying this for many years knew such proclamations where more than just a bit premature, as the longer-term trend (which is all that matters) was still showing decline. And alas, the skeptical hopes of Arctic sea ice recovery were smashed as the late season ice very rapidly declined once the melt season started as this ice was very thin. Then of course came summer 2011 when Arctic sea ice extent levels gave the amazingly low 2007 a real run for the lowest extent on record, proving that 2007 was no fluke or one-off event, but part of the longer-term downward trend that seem to be accelerating. Please note: I too would like to see the Arctic sea ice recover for the health of the Arctic ecosystem, but I differ greatly from the AGW skeptics in this regard as they would like to see it recover simply to have a reason to disprove AGW. This is a huge difference in perspective.
The lesson here is that not much should be made out of these short term wiggles in sea ice extent, and one should look carefully at the reasons for short-term bumps up or down. In the case of the Bering Sea in particular, a consistent cold wind from the north and northeast has caused the short-term expansion of the ice in the Bering Sea, and this has also aided in the divergence of the ice in this area. Each year is of course unique, but if 2012 turns out to be like 2010 in terms of the late season bump up in the Bering Sea ice, we can expect this ice to melt very rapidly come April and May’s real start to the melt season.
“I think this summary could be misleading. While it is true that the sea ice hasn’t really begun its spring melt just yet, it is just about where it was on March 18th, having declined a bit, and then come back up a bit, but either way, showing no statistically significant move either way. The most accurate thing to say is that its pretty much the same.”
So Dr. Curry’s statement is correct, but misleading? This is the flip side of Peter Gleick/Dan Rather syndrome – the statement is false, but accurate.
It would all be oh so funny, if it weren’t so sad.
Gary,
Dr. Curry’s statement is misleading from the perspective that the sea ice is pretty much exactly where it was on March 18th, and so really hasn’t “continued to increase”. It simply hasn’t started it’s spring melt yet. The the only two major areas that are showing a significant greater than average extent (the Bering and Okhotsk) are pretty much exactly where they were. The most accurate thing to say is the spring melt hasn’t really started yet, but the NH Sea ice certainly hasn’t continued to increase since March 18th as it is pretty much right where it was after having declined a bit after that date and then come back up a bit.
And again, this short-term late season bump up in the Bering and Okhotsk is of course very thin ice, which will melt rapidly once melt season really starts,
How can there be a “late season bump up,” if “the sea ice is pretty much exactly where it was on March 18th?” Unless you’re just playing with dates because you don’t like the point Dr. Curry made.
And how did you go from “just about where it was on March 18th” to “pretty much exactly where it was on March 18th?” “Just about,” “pretty much exactly,” “bump up,” none of which contradicts what Dr. Curry said. She didn’t say how much it was increasing. You are so worried about the impression the statement might make, that you are twisting yourself into knots trying to claim she is being “misleading.” You are being positively Fred Mooltenesque.
I have no dog in this fight. I don’t know and don’t care about the change in the extent of Arctic sea ice from March 18 to March 30. Although I would guess there is as much room for error there as there is in the reporting of changes in global average temperature on a daily /weekly basis.
My comment was just about how you claimed her comment was “misleading,” without saying it was wrong. You want to essentially call her a liar, but can’t show that she is. Unless you are claiming she is just ignorant on the issue. And since sea ice is her thang, or one of them anyway, I suspect you aren’t saying that.
Is this really a hill you want to fight to the death on?
Gary,
I think the word “liar” is far too strong to use in this case, and I am very aware of Dr. Curry’s area of expertise, respect it, and would never think of calling her such a name. Something can be misleading and even incorrect, and Dr. Curry simply may not be aware that the actual Arctic sea ice extent on March 30 is just about where it was or slightly lower than on March 18th. It really hasn’t increased since then, and as of the latest day’s data 3/30, seems to be about 300,000 or sq. km lower than the peak.
Also, I don’t view this as a fight, and was making a comment about the the notion that the Arctic sea ice has continued to grow. It hasn’t, but has really fluctuated down and up, but hasn’t overall changed much….i.e. the melt season hasn’t really kicked in yet, but when it does, the thin ice in the Bering added late in the season will melt very fast, as it did in 2010 when we saw a late season growth spurt in the Bering. Also, by late season growth I’m talking about the 125,000 sq. km or so of sea ice that the Bering added between March 1-15 of this year, with not much change since then.
Finally, what is this talk about hills and fighting to the death?
Ice area is above normal and climbing.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
“And again, this short-term late season bump up in the Bering and Okhotsk is of course very thin ice, which will melt rapidly once melt season really starts,”
Or, we could just wait a week or two and find out if your hypothetical “of course” is really true.
Might want to give it three or four and then I suspect the sea ice extent in the Bering will have declined faster than any other area of the Arctic…much like 2010.
R Gates
I would be interested to have your comments on my post at April 1st 5.16
I read your link and have seen others-judith posted something a couple of weeks ago. I can not see anything remarkable about the current pattern of blocking weather systems.
Perhaps you can tell me why you believe the modern day ones to be more signficant than those in the past? Thanks
tonyb
Can somebody remind me why I should give a t**s about how much sea ice there is ..whether increasing or decreasing?
I really don’t care much about the fate of the polar bears which are not the cute and cuddly things of childish imagination, and there are only 25,000 or so of them anyway. Apart from them, I think I am pretty much unmoved one way or the other.
So what is all the fuss about?
Of course Latimer, you should only care about what you can see from your own front door…you are an island unto yourself! (at least, this seems to be a commonly held belief and gross misconception among many). Or, you might try doing a bit of research into how Arctic sea ice can have a big impact on weather and climate around the globe.
I could indeed.
But since you are the one who seems a lot more concerned about it than I am, perhaps you’d like to give me some better reason than ‘can have a big impact on weather and climate around the globe’ – which is pretty much a catch all for anything at all.
It is clear that you seem to have studied the subject in great depth so I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t manage half a dozen sort paragraphs with the key points of the argument. After all, you are surely trying to persuade people of the rightness of your views? And for that some evidence is needed. You must have seen it since you are already persuaded yourself.
R gates
I have read some 500 Papers on arctic climate through the Holocene in preparation for my article ‘historic variations in arctic ice part two’
Some , indeed most, of these papers are deadly dull. I hope to go to the Scott institute in Cambridge in the next few weeks to continue my research and will be paying a visit to the met office library next week to gather further information. As I say many of the papers are dull so I was wondering if you knew of a good readable paper that highlights the seven major periods of arctic melt that can be detected over the past 7000 years together with the dozens of more minor events, of which the current event, the one in 1918 to 1940 and the one 1818 to 1860 seem to be classified. Not snark but gathering all the papers together is a huge task which someone must have done before me
Tonyb
Tony,
Very interesting and I applaud your efforts. How are you going to decide on which proxy reconstruction data to focus on in an attempt to narrow your research, or are you going to use a multi-proxy approach?
You no doubt are quite familiar with these recent papers, but they certainly represent some of the better (in term of being readable and comprehensive) of the current papers, and give wonderful references to others:.
Best overall:
http://bprc.osu.edu/geo/publications/polyak_etal_seaice_QSR_10.pdf
Others:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6043/747.abstract
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5945/1236.short
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/234/4777/689.short
http://www.springerlink.com/content/922v30um17650817/
I will be interested in reading your paper when it is published.
R gates
Thanks for those. I like a good mix of different sources all covering the same events, although I have noticed that some authors contradict their earlier findings depending on who they subsequently write with.
As you say some papers give very good references but in some there are more references than original research material. With some papers, I look at the author and groan as many in the field seem to try to compete to write the dullest paper.
Did you see my comment on this thread about ‘blocking’ weath systems?
All the best
Tonyb
Tony,
Some current research on blocking high pressure systems, changes in atmospheric pressure gradients and AGW induced climate change:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL051000.shtml
Well worth a read.
Hi R Gates
your 12.27
Thanks for the information on blocking patterns. You are surely aware that such states are nothing new or exceptional? Indeed in my supplementary information to my article ‘The Long Slow Thaw’ I specifically noted the following after reading many thousands of contemporary references from the 15th to 18th century.
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/long-slow-thaw-supplementary-information.pdf
“ Due to its geographical location British weather is often quite mobile and periods of hot, cold, dry or wet weather tend to be relatively short lived. If such events are longer lasting than normal, or interrupted and resumed, that can easily shape the character of a month or a season. Reading the numerous references there is clear evidence of ‘blocking patterns,’ perhaps as the jet stream shifts, or a high pressure takes up residence, feeding in winds from a certain direction which generally shape British weather.”
There are very many other references by researchers over the years that also indicate that these patterns have always been around, although obviously sometimes they are more frequent than others as you would expect from natural variability.
There is evidence of blocking patterns in the climate references from the Byzantine empire from around 350AD to 1450 AD. The most researched evidence probably concerns the 7 year period of the Merle Weather diaries dating from the 1340’s which the Met office analysed in 1972.
tonyb
Tony,
Nothing new with the existence of any TYPE of weather in the Anthropocene. Blocking highs, stalled jet streams, shifting jet streams have all been seen for millions of years. It is the frequncy, duration, and severity of them that will be the increasingly obvious signature of the Anthropocene and may distinguish this interglacial from others. Other, much earlie periods may have had a similar signature such as the mid-Pliocene 3 to 3.3 Mya, and thus this is a very hot area of paleoclimate research right now (pun not intended but recognized after the fact).
R gates
Think you must have made a spelling mistake. You presukably mwant to say;
“Nothing new with the existence of any TYPE of weather in the HOLOCENE’
tonyb
Anthropocene
R Gates
Hey, I criticise your spelling of the ‘A’ word then made a hash of it myself-Its not my fault, there’s too much co2 affecting my computer.
tonyb
Tony,
I am sure that it is here, among other areas that we differ in our perspectives. Certainly the biosphere is constantly interacting with the hydrosphere and atmosphere to modify them, and has been for quite a few hundreds of millions of years. When one particular species so modifies these spheres to dominate the influence of the biosphere in general, I would think something new is happening. You obviously seem to think this particular interglacial is nothing special, despite having a unique atmospheric and ocean chemistry unlike anything seen in at least a million years and probably far longer. And of course, the reason for the unique chemistry is human activity.
No, of course I meant Anthropocene, and think this interglacial is unique, and that whatever kind of weather and climate we could have had with a continuation of the Holocene without human influence is forever unknown, With some 7+ billion of us on this planet and growing, we have now forever changed the atmosphere, oceans, and land, and this change would be easily identifiable if some future scientist were looking at the strata of this period, no matter how narrow this layer might ultimately turn out to be.
Of course, the term Anthropocene is even more repulsive to some skeptics to AGW than even the notion of AGW itself. Some probably even find a great deal of hubris in it. After all, isn’t it bad enough to claim we are changing the climate…do we now have to have a geological period named after our species?!
With such an “honor” comes great responsibility. As geoengineering comes more and more to the forefront, the idea that we have unintentionally created the Anthropocene will be replaced with the notion of how to manage the widespread impacts we are having in the Anthropocene, and even of course, altering the climate. All this assumes of course that the changes we’ve already initiated are not truly “worse than we thought” to the point of crashing civilization itself. But this is for the doomsayers, and I choose to remain optimistic and hopeful that our large brains will help us figure all this out.
But this is all a bit in the future (but closer than some might think).
R Gates
Yes, I do believe humanity has an impact. As far as warming goes it is clearly there in uhi and that, I believe, presents a far greater concern than co2 will, although some northern cities might like the idea of being a few degrees warmer during winter nights.
It is very difficult to talk on a blog of the size of the earths burgeoning population, as immediately all sorts of wild malthusian accusations are thrown.
There is enough competition for space and all that goes with it with our current population and perhaps we in small overcrowded countries like Britain can see the problems better than in say the US, where you still have lots of wide open spaces.
I do believe that by education and providing higher standards of living that we can reduce our global population and this is something we ought to aim for, without any coercion.
.
I suspect around 4 billion was comfortable, 9 billion by the end of the century seems daunting. So yes, we will have an impact, but I think co2 is the least of our problems by a long way.
I put another Carrington event or deliberate hacking by unfriendly states as an act of war to be far more of a concern to our society due to our huge reliance on technology in even the most trivial aspects of modern life. There are plenty of other problems that also need to be sorted out before we throw huge sums of money at trying to reduce the earths temperatutre by fractions of a degree.
tonyb.
Don’t be daunted. Imagine 9 billion human minds especially if they are liberated from the mundane by cheap, reliably energy. Fantastic!
There was a great piece I read by an African (Kenyan I think) journalist who railed against the Malthusian liberals who worried about the fecundity of Africans seeing each new life as a problem, another MOUTH to feed. Her response was to see each new life as the MIND that would contribute to solving African problems.
I wish I had a link for you.
Latimer Alder
You’re commenting on the Internet.
It’s okay to say “toss” in polite Internet society.
The obscenity filters won’t even twitch.
Otherwise, carry on.
Thanks for the input. I know that US sensibilities differ greatly from UK, so I was trying to be nice. In UK based blogs I am happy to be more robust in my expression. And in the Dog and Duck very robust indeed :-)
It is normal for Arctic Sea Ice to go away, as in the Medieval Warm Period and cause the snow that took us into the Little Ice Age. It is during the warm periods with open Arctic that provides the snow to rebuild the Glaciers.
Normal and Healthy
Herman Alexander Pope | March 31, 2012 at 2:02 pm |
One despairs of those so captivated by climate science fringe debate as to have read so far down this page having any relevant experience on which to assess either “normal” or “healthy”.
R Gates said
‘…At the time, the skeptical community got quite excited as it seemed that because of this late season bump up, the Northern Hemisphere sea ice might actually, for the first time since 2004, get back to the long-term average extent line.’
Long term? You mean since they were first recorded in this manner way way back in 1979? You must be a lot younger than you look if you think 30 years is long term :)
tonyb
Satellite record of Arctic sea ice, appears to go back prior to 1979.
http://www.real-science.com/nsidc-pravda-news-release
Makes the current extent look above normal.
Adam
Thats why I said ‘in this manner.’ Different satellites, different methods of computing the data, so its not really like for like. Having said that observational data and scientific study shows low ice levels in previous ages-such as 1918-1940 and 1818 to 1860. I wrote about the latter event here;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/
tonyb
Here’s a fascinating chronology of “unusual weather events” (a.k.a. weather weirding) dating back to 2 A.D!
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.pdf
I will agree with others that it is a bit less exciting right now in the climate science community but maybe thats a good thing.
I heard of the ozone paper elsewhere (but like others have not read it) and I thought of a guy in Australia named Earl Happ who has a blog that looks at how the sun affects climate due to changes in strataspheric ozone, particularly at the poles and high latitudes. He seems to be an amatuer in this game but I think there is insight that can be built upon that is consistent with the ozone paper. He’s looking at the problem of how changes in the sun might affect the atmospheric pressure at the poles. Most people are aware that the top of the atmosphere or thermosphere reached a minumum altitude in late 2008, early 2009 that was associated with the deep solar minimum. When the sun’s activity picks up more solar wind interacts with the upper atmosphere particularly over the poles, it provides a means to increase the atmospheric pressure at the poles, leading to the cold polar air spilling into the temperate latitudes and a high amplitude jet stream with blocking highs. I don’t know if Earl has it right but it seems this solar affect on the upper atmosphere should be studied. It also does not make sense to me that galactic cosmic rays are the culprit here. Weak solar activity is certainly associated with their increase but it makes much more sense that both the changes in upper atsmospheric ozone and changes in GCR’s are both a consequence of changes in the solar activity. They may provide two independent mechanism for how minor changes in the sun can have profound consequences on our weather.
Very interesting. It seems to me that the really important issue is that here we have another potential way in which the sun affects climate. Whether it is valid or not, I dont know. But it is another way which has not been considered in either the IPCC TAR nor AR4. So, anyone who suggests that we can derive climate sensitivity by eliminating all the known effects, and what is left MUST be due to CAGW is simply wrong.
Ought this to be in the AR5?
Here is something that caught my eye this week.
http://www.infowars.com/climate-change-skepticism-a-sickness-that-must-be-treated-says-professor/
Current work:
I’ve developed new wavelet tools. I tested them out today. Found tight coherence involving changes in the following group of variables: southeast pacific & southern ocean sea surface temperatures, length of day, & geomagnetic aa index.
The Southern Ocean’s strong gradients (result of the present distribution of continents) separate out another group of variables including indian monsoon rainfall, atlantic hurricanes, & japanese sea level. Implication: Spatial asymmetry plays a huge role in sorting out timescales.
Everything’s pointing to solar excitation of water (& heat) circulation at dominant terrestrial frequencies – i.e. ocean-atmosphere hydrologic circulatory resonance.
A key feature of multi-parameter complex wavelets that dramatically enhances their utility: They can “see through” interannual inter-regional variations – i.e. they can see the forest for the trees.
—
Brief, illustrated elaboration on definitive solar-terrestrial results I shared last week:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/30/open-thread-weekend-9/#comment-940636
Dr Curry: But it seems to me that the climate blogosphere has become slightly boring as of late?
I think that most actual climate science progress will produce fairly boring months of blogosphere activity.
Does anyone have access to a non-paywalled copy of the paper?
“But it seems to me that the climate blogosphere has become slightly boring as of late..”
We’re letting our good host down, folks.
Spice it up. The Australians can’t be expected to provide all the entertainment. (For one thing, have you tried watching Australian youtube, television or movies? They could learn a lot from New Zealand.)
Funny boy – and this coming from an honorary Canadian. This difference is that we can laugh at ourselves whereas everyine else laughs at you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqbgOX_tZus&feature=fvwp&NR=1
I did note that you were bored the other day – didn’t bother replying. Why is it my job to entertain you. But I hope Priscilla helped.
Case in point.
Put Hugo Weaving in a dress in front of a New Zealander, you get three movies everyone on the planet knows.
Put him in a dress in an Australian film, and Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo together can’t save the remake.
I mean, it was a quaint enough effort and all, but it was no Some Like It Hot.
Australian film is always distinctive and quirky. It is what distinguishes original talent from formulaic trash.
http://film.org.au/people/
It is just a bit of fun but is also gritty portrayal of the outback though a clever juxtaposition of worlds. You are about as good at films as literature.
And getting obsessed with men in dresses is not really the point.
The Aussia movie Walkabout is on my top ten list. But then again I like movies that are mostly visual with almost no dialogue.
Moshpit likes this ending for aussie films
I too am a fan of Walkabout, but it highlights two issues with Australian film:
1. If there isn’t cross-dressing, it’s not Australian;
2. 41 years is a long time for a nation to go without producing a new great film.
I liked “The God’s Must Be Crazy”
Not Australian, but still a good movie.
This is from the Canadian who is obsessed about everything from “Some Like it Hot’ to ‘To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar’
Take your pick Bart – we do everything better than Canada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_films
Robert I Ellison | April 1, 2012 at 9:21 pm |
You can’t even do better than New Zealand.
The “List of Canadian Films” goes back a decade earlier than Australia, and has so much more content that, where the Australian list is broken down by decade, the Canadian one is broken down by year.
It would be faired to just say the Australian list is broken down film.
Not that I can recall ever watching an all-Canadian film, since pretty much 90% of either list is the work of other, greater film nations with a few Aussies or Canucks attached in some way. Heck, there are entries that are on both lists.
The first Canadian fiction film was Hiawatha in 1913 – you don’t really count a few minutes of Niagra Falls by Lumiere and others do you? Or an early documentary on farms and railways in Manitoba. The ‘Story of the Kelly Gang’ in 1906 on the other hand was in fact the world’s first full length feature film. The birth of modern cinema in fact.
We can’t ever be worse than New Zealand – they ever do anything good we steal it. All the bad stuff – i.e. Black Sheep – is theirs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn_AfVS0IWY
I’d do the same with you Bart – just haven’t seen an idea worth stealing.
Robert I Ellison | April 2, 2012 at 12:59 am |
And yet, when I say them to a New Zealander, I get hearty agreement, and endorsement of my views, or called too soft on Aussies by half.
As for whether Australians would smack me in the mouth for acknowledging that cross-dressing is a strong theme in Australian film, that Australian film is seldom stolen from, that Canada makes an order of magnitude more film than does Australia (neither nation doing so especially well all-in-all; except Quebec — Quebec cinema’s pretty good), that there are several greater film nations than Australia or Canada, that Australia’s overdue for a film to match Walkabout?
They’d have to be some oversensitive Australians, since I’ve heard all of the above from Australian lips, more than once.
And I have to disagree with you about Canadians, too. The ones I saw when growing up who crossed the border into Buffalo to watch the Sabres massacre the “Toronto Make-Believes” included some nasty, vicious punks who couldn’t hold their liquor and didn’t aim for the mouth when they didn’t like the things said to them.
Though I must thank Mosher for reminding us of Gallipoli’s ending. That was a great four hundred and thirty seven seconds of Australian film.
Robert I Ellison | April 1, 2012 at 11:42 pm |
That’s your big pitch?
That New Zealand film is worth stealing from?
One notes a distinct lack of theft from Australian film.
And remember the rule: if there’s no cross-dressing, it ain’t Australian.
Actually I think Black Sheep is pretty funny. Unlike you. I don’t find you funny at all. Normally we are pretty laid back but throwing around faux chauvanistic insults for the sake of insulting Australia? It is very juvenile. Most Canadians I’ve met are very nice – you are an exception.
If you said these things face to face to an Australian you’d deservably get a smack in the mouth.
Lord Monckton has come out saying the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate is far more important than combatting global warming. http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/22/lord-monckton-im-no-birther-but-obama-birth-certificate-plainly-a-forgery/
His remarks included
‘You’ve got a national debt which is rising into the stratosphere. You’ve got unemployment certainly here in California at 11 percent, 50 percent in the construction industry. These are real problems. You’ve got real environmental problems — overfishing, deforestation, pollution, not so much in the west but certainly in other countries. These are real problems which ought to be addressed. You’ve got poverty. You’ve got disease. These are again serious problems in Africa for instance, that we could be helping with. But no, we’re obsessed with making the rich even richer and making the absolute bankers richer still by going for global warming and cap-and-trade and other nonsenses of this kind.”
..all of which seem eminently sensible to me. I don;t really give a toss about whether future generations may or may not have to put another brick or two in the NYC sea wall to protect Jim Hansen from getting his tootsies wet.
It’s people who *are* here right now who have real urgent current problems that are important, not those who might be here one day and and who might have some of the problems some speculate that they might get that are a real concern. The net present value to me of my great great great grandchidren is a lot less than that of my immediate family now.
I agree. I generally find Monckton’s remarks to be sensible.
If you want to spice up the climate discussion, you can start by discussing Monckton’s search for truth in both climate and Obama’s birth certificate. Does his willingness to speak out against the majority show courage or foolishness?
I would suggest anyone calling Monckton a fool should first attempt to replicate the tests run on the Obama birth certificate pdf by Sheriff Joe. All you need is a computer, Adobe Illustrator and then download the birth certificate pdf off the White House web site. Then you can prove to yourself the birth certificate pdf was created on a computer and not scanned from paper. You can create a control but printing out the birth certificate and scanning so you get layers. Try as many different ways of scanning as you like, you will never get one that looks like the pdf the White House put on their web site.
The Cold Case Posse explains their methods at the press conference to make it easy for you to replicate their tests.
Off topic just a bit? Worse giving an excuse for folk to say this blog is full of truthers and flat earthere.
The rest of the world outside lala land doesn’t care about Obamas provenance, they are just so glad that he is not another plank of wood like Reagan or Bush baby. That he is clearly very intelligent is a bonus. That he listens to people who are less intelligent is understandable but unfortunate.
Perhaps you are not an American, but for most of us who live here the Constitution is still important. If the Constitution were not important, then we could no longer say we live in a country of laws or that no man is above the law.
Obama is not a good president or a popular president. I’m not convinced he is even legally president. While the birth certificate alone is not conclusive, the fact it was created on a computer and not scanned from paper as the White House represented is problematic.
I was pleased to see Monckton has spoken out on the issue. He is right, you know. The question of whether or not Obama is legitimate or a usurper is far more important than combatting AGW.
Ron you need to take this issue somewhere else. Most Americans in fact don’t seem to care either. The constitution is a piece of paper that has been extensively overwritten by the Patriot act.
http://www.scn.org/ccapa/pa-vs-const.html
So perhaps you need to start by rolling back some of the pre-Obama laws.
I like Monckton but he is certainly no oracle and he can be a buffoon. He recently told a Russian news service that they had more democracy in Russia than in Europe. Oh really?
I am cynical enough to believe that any presidents popularity still goes hand in hand with fuel prices – as it has for generations. Barring the odd chest-beating war of course.
Thank you for expressing your opinion, but I think I will stay. Many people are interested in discussing Monckton’s approach to discovering truth. In fact, I suggest Dr. Curry make the discussion of Monckton’s approach a main thread. Monckton is clearly interested in the evidence even if it makes him unpopular.
I don’t anything about Monckton’s comments regarding Russian democracy, but Pravda has recently chided US media outlets on not covering the fact Obama’s birth certificate is forged. Just as the media has taken sides with the climate alarmists, they have sided with Obama. Why do you think that is?
Hey, who’s Chief Executive now to be rolling back some of the pre-Obama laws you cast at as unconstitutional? You no longer have Boosh to push around. Push on Hopebama.
=================
I am an American, I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and I deeply appreciate the information roncram provided.
JamesG may not care, but many Americans want to know if Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent. Why?
Most of us were unsuspecting until Climategate emails and documents were released in Nov 2009 to expose serious abuse of basic principles of science by government-funder scientists in order to promote the world-wide AGW scare.
More alarming were official responses from world leaders, leaders of the scientific community, editors of major research journals, and especially the UN’s IPCC, the US NAS and the UK’s RS !
I am an environmentalist with a strong personal commitment to social justice and civil rights. I supported the left wing of the Democratic party, until I belatedly realized they are establishing:
a.) A totalitarian government, like that described by George Orwell in a novel banned by totalitarian regimes – “1984″:
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
b.) To replace basic rights, guaranteed since 15 Dec 1971 in the “Bill of Right” – of the US Constitution:
01. Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Petition
02. Right to keep and bear arms
03. Conditions for quarters of soldiers
04. Right of search and seizure regulated
05. Provisons concerning prosecution
06. Right to a speedy trial, witnesses, etc.
07. Right to a trial by jury
08. Excessive bail, cruel punishment
09. Rule of construction of Constitution
10. Rights of the States under Constitution
http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/BillOfRights.html
I do not object to globalization, nor to the corruption of almost every field of science – astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, climatology, nuclear, particle, planetary and solar physics – nearly so much as I object to the establishment of a tyrannical government and loss of protections guaranteed by the “Bill of Rights.”
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com/
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
Our basic rights have been guaranteed since 15 Dec 1791 in the “Bill of Right” – of the US Constitution not 15 Dec 1971
JamesG
Upholding the Rule of Law is foundational compared to deciding AGW policy of mitigation vs adaption etc.
The critical constitutional issue is that Obama failed to qualify by not providing any evidence to qualified authorities, as mandated by Amendment XX sect. 3 of the US Constitution.
which put the burden on Obama to qualify.
“Perhaps you are not an American, but for most of us who live here the Constitution is still important”
indeed, it states the requirement for a ‘natural-born citizen’, but then don’t go to the trouble of defining it.
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
However, we do know the minds of the people of the time, so unnaturally born would have been women and blacks; logically neither Hillary nor Obama should have taken the oath.
“the birth certificate pdf was created on a computer and not scanned from paper.”
1) The birth certificate in black and white was scanned in.
2) That was then overlaid on top of a color security paper image and made part of a PDF.
So yes it was created on a computer (step #2), but step #1 was a scan.
You obviously have not watched the press conference video. When the signature and official stamp layers are moved, the background also moves. That does not happen with any other layers on Obama’s pdf. No scanned document will ever behave like that. Ever.
“When the signature and official stamp layers are moved, the background also moves.”
Because the hawaiians have two images:
1) A template security paper image with date and signature stamp
2) Obamas black and white certificate
They take 1 and overlay 2 on top of it and then send the PDF to the whitehouse.
In the video they assume the whitehouse scanned it in. Why? What evidence is there that the hawaiians posted a paper document rather than sending a PDF?
You are speaking complete nonsense. The Hawaiians have two forms of birth certificates, a short form and a long form. But they do not have a paper birth certificate on two different pieces of paper (one on security paper and one of black print on white paper). I don’t know where you are getting your misinformation, but someone is lying to you.
If you wish to save time, you can begin at about 22:10 in the above youtube clip to see how the Cold Case Posse tested the layers and compared them to the control of a scanned paper document.
Please: No birther, truther or Bilderberg posts.
Is Svensmark correct ?
Here I show data for the last 15 months for the Ap-max index, which when above 50 results in a decrease of the galactic cosmic rays impact, known as the ‘Forbush decrease’.
Forbush decrease should be most noticeable in the polar regions.
Also is shown degree of cloudiness (%) for the area from 60N to 90N.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-Cl.htm
Cloudiness should significantly drop during the Forbush decrease. Allowing for variable delay between 3 and 6 days occasional (but not always) small reduction in cloudiness lasting 1-2 days could be observed, but no noticeable correlation can be established
wordpress ?!
globalwarmingmaybe = vukcevic
Yes.
It confirms the declaration of sea level rise => http://bit.ly/FQMamQ
It confirms the declaration of global mean temperature => http://tinyurl.com/7p963ez
Are we at the 5th turning point of the temperate record? => http://bit.ly/GZmYxf
Recent 30-years GMT trend decelerating => http://bit.ly/H58Iky
Seems that the JournOlist style of smear campaign, for example Chris Mooney featured here last week, against conservatives intellectual ability based on genetic defects is in full swing;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/30/climate_scepticism_racism_slavery_treatment/
Maybe we could find some racist and/or anti semitic links to sceptcism as well in the coming weeks and try to parse a middle road discussion on that as well???
Ever again.
========
Crazy people breath. I breath so I must be crazy. But crazy people don’t know they are crazy. I know I’m crazy. > 22
From Australia;
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/something_is_sick_and_its_not_the_sceptics/
The Mooney memo does make the rounds doesn’t it?? It isn’t fair to say he issued the original of course but in lock-step they keep popping up.
Re: Svensmark & Forbush decrease
Now included
Arctic
Equatorial area
Antarctica
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-Cl.htm
Dr Curry,
On SREX, you say “the report is being spun by both sides”. The Global Campaign for Climate Action has told it’s 300 Green organisations to make the link between AGW and extreme weather link irrespective of any IPCC doubts.
Which confirms a view I’ve always held: Big Green will go with the science if and only if it agrees with their wider agenda. If it doesn’t, they will ignore it or condemn it.
They’ve done this for the past 40 years, wherein every field of science apart from ecology has been attacked by Greens (physics: bombs; chemistry: pollution; medicine: non-holistic pills; agrarian science: pesticides, etc,etc), and engineering has been truly demonised.
Ironically, the recent thread on C. Mooney posed questions about the right-wing ‘war on science’. If climate science ever cools on AGW, then climate scientists will be the next to feel the Green heat.
Let me hark back to the thread on HAD/CRU series 4. It is my understanding that data on series 4 is now available up to and including 2010, and the series 3 data is still being produced for 2012. I assume this will change sometime this year, and from 2013 onwards only series 4 will be available. This brings up questions as to how to interpret the predictions of Smith et al Improved Surface Temperature Prediciton for the Coming Climate Decade from a Global Model. Science 10 August 2007 Vol 317 pp 796 to 799.
The authors hindcast (calibrated) their model from the series 3 data. It would then be straightforward to compare their predictions with series 3 data, if is is availabe in 2014; which it may not be. So this brings up the question as to what is the proper way to tell if the predictions turn out to be correct; a vital step in validating models.
The key prediction is as follows “with the year 2014 predictied to be 0.30 C +/- 0.21 C (5 to 95 % confidence interval) warmer than the observed value in 2014”. What is the proper way to interpret this prediciton? I can guess as to what is the way to interpret it, but my guess may not be the correct way. I have written to the UK Met. Office, asking this question, but I have not had a reply. What is the opinion of the denizens of Climate Etc.?
I should point out that the waters are already muddied by another prediction in the paper; that following 2009, 50% of the years would have temperatures greater than 1998. For series 3, 2010 was cooler than 1998; but for series 4 it was warmer.
Any suggestions?
The dataset used to check hindcasts was actually HadCRUT2v.
The key point to understand is that this paper was documenting an attempt at initialised modelling to test decadal predictive capacity. This is a different methodology than the uninitialised centennial model runs for CMIP, which feature in IPCC projections. It’s not so much a test for the models as it is for observation assimilation methods. Even a perfect model will produce incorrect predictions if initialisation isn’t good enough,or exogenous factors (solar cycle, volcanic eruptions) don’t turn out as expected.
Which dataset should be used to check after 2014? That depends on whether the initialisation procedure included assimilation of HadCRUT2v observations (or its components HadSST & CRUTEM data). If HadCRUT2v data was used in this way and the results are sensitive to its use instead of HadCRUT3/4 then version 2 provides the proper comparison. If not, HadCRUT4 would seem most appropriate as the more complete dataset.
Why some people can say definitively that extreme events are increasing, others can say they are unchanging, and still others say they are decreasing, and every one of them are completely correct:
http://xkcd.com/1037
If the link doesn’t work for you yet, don’t worry, in another universe it already does.
ARCTIC CLIMATE’S ALARMING CHANGE
LOS ANGELES.
May 30, 1947
A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, and in the Antarctic ice regions and the major Greenland ice cap should reduce at the same rate as the present melting, oceanic surfaces would rise to catastrophic proportions, and people living in lowlands along the shores would be inundated, said Dr. Hans Ahlmann, noted Swedish geophysicist today, at the University of California’s Geophysical Institute. Dr. Ahlmann added that temperatures in the Arctic have increased by 10 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. An ‘enormous’ rise from the scientific standpoint. Waters in the Spitsbergen area, in the same period, have risen from three to five degrees in temperature, and one to one and a half millimetres yearly in level. ‘The Arctic change is so serious that I hope an international agency can speedily be formed to study conditions on a global basis.’ said Dr. Ahlmann. He pointed out that in 1910 the navigable season along the western Spitsbergen lasted three months. Now it lasts eight months.
http://bit.ly/HdLubv
This is an interesting post.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/mckitrick-michaels-were-right-more-evidence-of-spurious-warming-in-the-ipcc-surface-temperature-dataset/
Most believers will dispute his results, but there is a suburban effect,
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/04/agricultural-impact-on-climate-real-and.html associated with land use changes.
So there is some spurious impact but there is also a real impact. Kinda got to sort that out to get a handle on what causes what and if that what is real or not. Tends to lower climate sensitivity to CO2, but not so much to anthropogenic. Of course this is coming from a libertarian and slight right of center former independent. We’re all stupid doncha know.
Looks like as the latest Forbush decrease has confirmed the Svensmark’s hypothesis.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-Cl.htm
gwmaybe
can you elaborate on this? (why the name change?)
tonyb
Re: Svensmark
If you read the Svensmark’s abstract (bottom of the web page)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ap-Cl.htm
written few years ago, about the previous Forbush decrease and then look at the bottom right smaller graph with the neutron count, you can see that the values in the graph from the last month are very close to what Svensmark found before.
Effect from Forbush lasts only few days and wouldn’t have much effect. I still have strong doubts about the temperature side of it (re GCR), since clouds during day reduce insolation but at the night time also reduce cooling, the net result on ‘24h day’ temperature scale, I suspect could be minimal. Also it is worth noting that cloudiness is 5-10% higher at night than during the day time.
Name: For some reason if I post to WUWT then come back here, then the wordpress sneaks in that name for me, without me noticing it, on occasions I manage to change it, but not always.
On Real Climate Stefan (I assume Rumsdorf) put up a ‘1 April’ post with a new correcting parameter 1C Heat (I CHEAT) bit, probably poor fellow never read anything by Freud.
I posted very short comment (still hanging in the air)
vukcevic says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
1 Apr 2012 at 1:33 PM
Hi Stefan
Freud wasn’t a fool.
done it again !
you really need to learn how to document your work.
Your mate Santa Svalgaard ascertained some time ago that I ain’t capable of learning.
On the enhanced foto
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Team.htm
you look more agreeable than some of your science pronouncements.
‘Willi the kid’ isn’t a cowboy often featured in his stories.
Vuk
Is that Mosh lurking in the shadows? He looks surprisingly benign :)
I don’t think I would have got anyone right if there had been a ‘place the name against the right face’ competition, except perhaps Leif looks quite like I would have imagined.
tony
Tony
for names see
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/01/team-wuwt/
What I want to know is what vintage of wine everyone is enjoying?
I wouldn’t bother, something odd there, all glasses are at the same level.
Looking benign is a ploy.
however, review WUWT circa 2007, december, post titled hunting for temperature stations at SFO. Anthony recounts our first dinner.
Me, Anthony, McIntyre, CTM.
Dr. Curry writes:
Perhaps the reason for this is that the notorious “CO2 ->climate change” is currently in the process of being subsumed by the “overarching” sustainable development jargon in the run up to Rio+20.
For example, while I don’t have any stats on this, it seems to me that some of the prime MSM peddlers (e.g. Revkin, Hickman) have been quite preoccupied with the spreading the gospel (and jargon) generated by the “Planet Under Pressure 2012” confab that took place in London last week.
My prediction (FWIW) is that in the months ahead we shall see/hear far less about “climate change” and far more about “sustainable development” – and the Green economy, of course … even though the honchos of the UN/UNEP, who dreamed up the concept, have yet to proffer an agreed definition of “Green economy”!
That’s pretty obvious. The climate and significant oil depletion are a massive 1-2 punch, whereby it is debatable which one to put more emphasis on. So you go with sustainable development, which mitigates both. You kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes.
WEB,
If oil depletion is such a significant threat, why are western governments effectively banning coal plants and burning and either shutting down or withdrawing support for nuclear plants?
As for the threat from climate – call me when some of those 50 million climate refugees start showing up.
You have to show that oil isn’t depleting in exactly the fashion that my model shows. You are referring to factors that have nothing to do with a real geological limitation.
I don’t have to show anything of the sort.
Now one could say that in discussing oil verses coal or nuclear we are discussing one energy source that is primarily used for transportation, while the other two are for electrical production, so it is a bit of apples and oranges. However if electric vehicles are one of the solutions to dealing with oil depletion, then sources for electrical generation do become relevant.
Which gets back to my question. If OD is such a major threat, why are we taking steps that look to be counter productive?
Although you categorise me as a civil engineer – and Bart calls me a plumber – my post grad qualification is in Environmental Science and I have been interested in development and environment for a long time. Sustainability is an interesting concept. In the first Rio conference development was central to sustainability. Poor people are very bad at making strategic decisions about conserving ecosystems or resources and lack the means for making changes in, for instance, agricultural systems. In terms of agriculture – the latest revolution is something called conservation farming. It is a suite of techniques – some of which are very high tech – that lifts farm productivity by 70% and more.
A secure food supply is the most critical issue facing humanity today and the critical inputs are capital and energy. Thus it is a multi-dimensional problem involving economic growth, democratic institutions, effective corporate governance, education, safe water and sanitation and communications. Some 15% of Australian farms now practice conservation farming and it is spreading rapidly across the world.
The method of spread of conservation farming is an object lesson involving decentralised person to person spread of information and technology. What is called a polycentric approach to problems of common resources. Would that any government were as efficient and effective. Modern communications facilitate the spread of information and the spread of communications technology is the best news coming out of Africa at this time.
Oil is an economic problem not a resource problem – thus again with multiple dimensions. The first is supply and demand. Is the supply so limited that prices are increasing dramatically? Ther are other reasons for price spikes that seem to be in play. However, let’s assume that supply is declining relative to demand and price is increasing. This feeds directly into farming at the margins – and production generally – and production decreases. People starve at the margins because that is where the global economy is at right now. To imagine that the solution is to raise prices further beggars belief. It is a scary vision that leads to people being viewed as a pestilence or a plague and presumably to a solution that dare not speak it’s name.
Oil is an economic problem because it is a good for which there are perfect subsitutes. If demand is constrained prices will rise until an alternative or alternatives become economically viable. Oil is perfectly substitutable because people don’t care what the source is but whether it can be put in their tractors and other capital equipment at a reasonable cost. I argue against restricting alternatives – shale oil, coal to fuel, coal seam methane -on the humanitarian grounds of people starving at the margins. A couple of hundred million of them. Excuse me for having such warped values.
Pragmatic approaches to both the development problem and to reducing equivalent emisissions by 50% in a decade or 2 – which as well as address related issues of population and conservation have been proposed. It invariably gets the proposor on silly lists of global warming deniers. So not only have you got the science wrong. The world is not warming for a decade or three more at least. But you impede sensible means to progress on the basis of a romantic notion of saving the world from itself through radically reengineering economic and social systems. I am less than impressed.
Oil depletion is an open and shut case. Finite resources such as fossil fuels follow strict initial conditions and boundary conditions. The initial conditions equal the boundary conditions and establish how much easily available oil is in place. The first to become depleted is crude oil, which is no doubt the most valuable grade of fossil fuel.
Several years ago I devised a stochastic model of oil depletion, which used estimates of previous discoveries to project future production, and applied it to various locations and across the world.
For instance, we can look at UK North Sea oil and watch it drop according to the model:
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/8022/uknorthsea.gif
Here are the latest numbers from the UK’s energy agency:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/stats/publications/energy-trends/3943-energy-trends-section-3-oil.pdf
This works exceedingly well and is overlooked by the majority of observers because they don’t understand that discovery estimates track eventual production. In this case a stochastic compartment model, really no different than that used by climate scientists, can mathematically project the production levels from the cumulative discoveries.
By the same token, the UK went through the majority of its coal supplies long ago, and really lacks a natural gas supply apart from what comes out along with the oil from the offshore platforms — in other words they deplete together.
The UK is in pretty bad shape as far as fossil fuels, and the USA is also in horrible shape, despite what you may read. Hydraulic fracturing of natural gas and oil is a flash in the pan, and all that is left is the coal (and the coal obviously leaves a trail of entropy in the landscape).
Like I said, I have been blogging about oil production since 2004, and all you have to do is track my archives to see how well one can track the decline of oil.
Captain Kangaroo
Re:”Oil is an economic problem not a resource problem – ”
As WebHubTelescope has quantified in his models, Oil is BOTH an economic problem AND a resource problem.
You have to understand Hubbert type peak oil models apply to EACH TYPE of resource for EACH geological region and for EACH technology and thus cost of transport fuel. Overall these are governed by Energy Return on Energy Invested and the 1st & Second Laws of Thermodynamics. You cannot violate those, no matter how much you wish to.
timg56
Re: “If OD is such a major threat, why are we taking steps that look to be counter productive?”
An excellent question – the primary reason is that we are being driven by fear by alarmists and utopianism amplified by funding – political feedback cycles. The focus on climate change is a major “blinker” blinding most politicians from reality.
No lack of CAGW rhetoric here:
http://old.news.yahoo.com/topics/climate-change-and-global-warming
This just out:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/04/global-warming-denialism-just-foolishness-scientist-peter-raven-says/
It seems that Peter Raven is now “One of the world’s most widely known and respected senior scientists…” He ran the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Big job that.
IMPACT OF THE PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION ON THE GLOBAL BALANCE OF POWER, by Lieutenant Colonel GS Pascal Eggen, 91 pages. MASTER OF MILITARY ART AND SCIENCE THESIS, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
Abstract:
Eggen cites Roberts:
I see catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) as epitomizing the hubris that we can massively change climate, naive idealism demonizing coal, leveraged by alarmism and funding feedback. With crude oil having leveled off in 2005, we are now rapidly transitioning from “idealism” to realism as the economy experiences the consequences of high oil prices. We will soon progress to “offensive realism” with shortages of available fuel and a crash program to develop alternative fuels from other “heavier” hydrocarbons (heavy oil, bitumen, kerogen, & coal) and sustainable sources.
Also fun:
http://www.inquisitr.com/214040/re-engineering-humans-new-solution-to-climate-change/
Yes, the climate blogosphere has been a bit boring recently.
And Steve McIntyre has not posted anyting for nearly 2 weeks.
These may not be unrelated.
Ms Curry’s boredom.
A search on Google Trends shows that climate interest goes thru a ‘natural annual oscillation’ or it could be a variety of of unrelated forces coming together to give the appearance of an oscillation to the pattern loving human eye.
http://www.google.ca/trends/?q=climate
Interest remains high in Q1 dips to a minimum in summer to return to it’s highs again for Q4. Of course an extreme forcing like Copenhagen can have a major impact, It looks like being one of the more astute in the climate blogosphere that JC’s boredom is slightly ahead of the rest of us.
Interesting how the patterns shift when you substitute, “climate change”, “global warming” or “extreme weather” for “climate”.
If you plot “climategate” trend and remove for it, somewhat different picture.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011GL050820.shtml
Paper in press – extreme weather as a result of natural climate fluctuation, Australian floods of 2011. Also good example of why the ‘linear’ effect of ENSO on climate should be treated with caution.
Technically, the abstract makes no more comment on whether the fluctuation is natural or anthropogenic than did the abstract of Dr. Curry’s recent paper on extreme weather due Arctic sea ice levels.
Is the phase change something that would have occured as soon without human activity? Perhaps sooner? It’d be surprising if the paper had conclusions about that not mentioned in the abstract.
When people are pushing at every domino in the world, who can say humans had no hand in any one domino fall?
Technically it sounds like it would be impossible to ever distinguish anthro from natural in any aspect of climate. We have one experiment running and no control running alongside. Time to close down the IPCC and all go home.
Try googling ‘Peter van Rensch ENSO”
There are plenty of PDFs about the science they advocate.Not technically about the flooding (rather the preceding drought in Australia) but you can see the authors reasoning behind what controls rainfall in Australia. In short the drought was brought on by the failure of La Nina to bring rain during the PDO positive period. The 2011 flood by the return of PDO negative state combined with La Nina.. In those PDFs they are not shy in saying that rainfall in Australia is controlled by multi-decadal processes and can’t be explained by anthro forcing. It can’t get much clearer than that.
That research stands in clear contrast to the statements put out by scientists and science institutes days after the flooding. Even before all the data was in or a single analysis was performed the link had been established. Hopefully we can both agree that is not the way to do science.
Tried Googling “Rensch ENSO”
Got http://drought.wcrp-climate.org/workshop/Talks/Cai.pdf as the first hit.
Per Cai & P. van Rensch, fully a one sixth increase in half a century due, they assert, to climate change, in the frequency of pIOD events not attributable to natural variability.
From the seasonal, polar and oceanic variations driven by higher global temperatures to increasing positive events, the presentation appears to be arguing that drought conditions in single years are one sixth more common, in two successive years are almost a third more common, and in three successive years are four times as common.
Mmmmaybe you have a different interpretation of what they mean when they say this?
‘Story 1: The IPO/PDO influences the impact of ENSO on eastern Australia. When the PDO is positive (since 1980), La Niña no longer brings
rainfall to east Australia, leading to a severe drought.’
The PDO has turned definitively positive since 2008 at least leading to the prospect of US drought and Australian flooding for another decade or three with more frequent and intense La Niña. As well as cooling global surface temperatures.
‘Story 2: The Indian Ocean Dipole is trending up, in part due to climate change, and is contributing to droughts, rising temperature, and severe
bushfires over Southeast Australia.’
Try this – http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/indian-ocean-drought/ Trends from 1950 are not all that convincing given multi-decadal variability. It is also connected with ENSO. La Niña trade winds pile up warm water against Australia and Indonesia which flows through into the eastern Indian Ocean. As relevant as it is to Australian rainfall – it is not independent of ENSO. Indeed the pattern this summer was interesting in that – despite a La Niña – central Queensland had lower than average rainfall while storms crossed the continent from the north west to south east Queensland and northern NSW. The IOD (or equivalently DMI) is such a new discovery that leaping into on the basis of SON graphing seems premature. Could this be the signal of a 2 year La Niña?
Story 3: The SAM trends up (with increasing pressure over Australia) while CO2 is increasing but reverses trend once CO2 stabilises. In response, SWWA rainfall behaves similarly.’
The idea is that warming decreases the sea level pressure at the poles – a positive SAM is by definition low pressure at the pole. This influences the tracks of storms spiralling off the polar vortex.
The first point is that warming was not notably caused by carbon dioxide – it was mostly albedo change – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Wong2006figure7.gif
The second point is the discovery of large solar UV variability interacting with ozone at the poles. This is a great big Cygnus atratus.
I don’t know how old the CSIRO link is – but these things are in flux and the newer reference to decadal variability is to be more believed. Better late than never I say. If the evidence evolves unmistakably – what does Bart do? Reference something out of date that he barely understands. Sounds about his speed.
Robert I Ellison | April 3, 2012 at 12:49 am |
Cai et al posit three determinants of rainfall. You dispute their conclusion. That’s all cool, it’s not my issue. You can have it out with them, and may the best scientist win.
I’m just pointing out how the source material cited might be interpreted to be neutral or noncommittal on natural-vs-anthropogenic causes.
You favor any cause that isn’t anthropogenic, be it the gravity of Saturn or the magnetosphere of Jupiter, the scribblings of an Australian farmer in the 1890’s, ENSO, PDO, phloegiston, Ley lines, shiny clouds, tea leaves or the zodiac. We get it. You’ll never believe it’s human-caused, no matter what else you have to believe to make it so. That’s fine. Really. We get it.
It has no bearing on this discussion.
An assertion was made. I countered the assertion with fact.
You can dispute what the authors conclude all you like; it doesn’t make claims they said something they didn’t factual.
Is the change from a warm PDO to a cool PDO influenced by AGW? We get the gamut of opinions from natural variability doesn’t exist to it exists but how do you know it isn’t caused by AGW. AGW didn’t cause the Pacific climate shift of 1910, the mid 1940’s, 1976/77 and 1998/2001 involving the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). This has been shifting dramatically for 1000’s of years. The planet will be cooling for decade or three? Caused by AGW? Yeah right – what a w@nker.
This R. Gates isn’t nearly as sharp as the last couple. Time to rotate the sock puppet occupant; NEXT!!
We’ve got a “Help Wanted” ad out for a new and improved R. Gates. We’ll make sure to screen the applicants more thoroughly this time…
R Gates
I quite like the old one (sometimes) but I do wish he’d stop giving me links to articles that end in a pay wall, such as your most recent one ‘Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid latitudes.’
I managed to trace it through a number of semi hysterical sites including Skeptical science and another who saw it as definitive proof the world was ending, as stuck weather patterns were, according to them, something new and must have been caused by AGW.
I am going to the Met office library tomorrow to carry out some more research on an article so i will see if they have it there.
However, if you want to retain your position as the ‘official’ R Gates (which gives you certain priviliges that I am not at liberty to divulge) please provide links that won’t cost me money ( I spend several hundred dollars a year on artiles for my research as it is and the standard of the papers is not always that high)
Tonyb
Here’s a meme worth exploring, fake money leads to fake science;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577307553267972144.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet_bot
Maybe this is the next Fed Chairman? Romney could then dismiss Congress and retire for 8 years while the country could heal. The end of AGW junkscience would be a plus in the process.
funny comment by a fake conservative. Give it up cwon
Troll all you want Mosher, are you a board moderator aside from being a general fool?
Mosher is a no idea troll who I’ve obviously gotten under his skin. So there is no logic to the “fake conservative” meme other than distractions. So I’m being stalked, I can ask the moderator to delete but in the end I can only ignore.
Actually you can’t ignore. Look when Joshua tried to derail conversations you had no issue with those of us who drew attention to his behavior.
Your behavior is no different. Quit trying to pretend you are a conservative. you dont fool anybody.
board moderator?
No. but when I see a fake I have to call it out. I Did that before and you didnt complain. I’m Doing it again, only this time you are the fake.
If you google cwon14 you get plenty of postings, on many different site, for several years, most about Republican/conservative politics many outside the climate change milieu. If he’s a fake he’s been doing it for a long time and in many different online communities.
What’s a “fake conservative”?
(please don’t say cwon14, I’m honestly curious.)
I think it’s being used here to indicate that cwon is a sock-puppet agent provocateur, attempting to make an OTT laughing-stock of the conservative positions. And to discredit JC to the point that her efforts are ignored and disputed by conservatives/skeptics.
HR,
It’s pretty clear that cwon14 is performing a function much like Joshua used to. He is a cartoon at best a false flag at worst.
You remember Joshua. He would come on and attack Dr Curry question her motives and never discuss the science. Cwon is the same tactic, but from a “right wing” perspective. He’s either stupid or a false flag.
In the end you are a mindless stalker. I can ask you be deleted and barred but I can’t control that. You have no content and are only trying to stop ideas that upset you through low blog tactics.
Maybe you need to reframe the issue. I don’t come here to talk about Dr. Curry. Dr. Curry doesn’t come here to talk about Dr. Curry. This is about the topics of the threads, and not about Dr. Curry. When the topic is about an event in the news, such as fakegate, then it can be about a person, such as Dr. Gleick. It gets personal when the stated topic of the thread involves the conduct of a particular individual. Otherwise, this isn’t the climate version of a Hollywood gossip column, and the vast majority of us find it rather annoying to hear this steady stream of redirection toward the personal.
I frankly don’t care if Dr. Curry is a member of Occupy or the Tea Party or the Ku Klux Klan. This is about the topics, generally technical. Redirecting about people is not only off topic, but after a while becomes tedious.
The only time when peoples’ positions are relevant is when they’re the topic. Dr. Curry is not, and never was the topic. Maybe she have have a thread about herself, and Cwon can go to town. Otherwise, it borders on cyberstalking.
PE,
What those in the consensus believe, how and what they represent says everything about where the debate is. If it weren’t Dr. Curry parsing content and talking points there would be no blog at all.
Everyone can come for their own reason and she can block content at will. You’re framing is incorrect and most of what is discussed here isn’t “technical” at all. It’s largely political or science abstracts that can’t be proven one way or another with a fasade attached.
Post as you will, I’ll not stalk you as Mosher is me.
Dr. Curry,
The blogosphere problem stems from the failure of those who claim to be gatekeepers not doing their job. The strategy of ignoring or minimizing the growing list of news about coruption, fraud, criminal activity by AGW promoters and the suppression of the news that the world is not in fact facing a climate catastrophe means that an honest conversation is not taking place. People roganizing the next major envirocrat waste of money, Rio +20, actually assert that the climate is changing more than we can control and are not laughed off the stage or ridiculed.
As long as the believer community studiously and cowardly refuses to deal with reality, things will then to be boring, even as reality continues to ignore the AGW faithful.
Hunter,
She just listed Chris Mooney on a multiple choice to the blog (for approval or dismissal). What does this tell you about her and more importantly you and your claim above?
You mean well but you subsidize what you are being critical of. Dr. Curry only seems rational when compared to the fruitcake climate communinity as a whole. Comparative relational failure.
I imagine Judith can expect a place in Desmogblog’s denier disnformation database sometime soon ;(
http://www.desmogblog.com/judith-curry-was-me-she-was-against-me?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
I wish more scientist would write to them and say this sort of blacklist is not bery helpful….
Barry,
Worth reading although you miss key points. The blacklist as you call it is honest regardless of how wrong they might be on the debate. It’s what is not said but that everyone associated to the consensus thinks in lock-step messaging (silent, quiet, cultural wink and nod) that is far less helpful. That Dr. Curry had high praise for ideologe Chris Mooney at an earlier time should embarrassing and revealing but another related topic.
We should (wish) write to scientists that they be more honest about their political cultures (private blacklists they act on all the time) and simply disclose. That AGW is dominated by dishonest disclosure and bias which is obvious within the impacted fields to casual observers. We would all benefit by Desmogblog candor within the science community. They are what they are while scientists fly under false flags all the time. The worst one being “non-partisan”.
Desmogblog is a hate site focused on AGW advocacy, hundreds like them. Silent AGW “scientist” advocates pretending they are otherwise (even handed, science driven) has done society far more harm.
The “list” by the way;
http://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-denier-database
Trenberth appears to remain committed to reversing the Null Hypothesis (page 7). Further, he attributes precipitation and flooding extremes to “global warming”. Well, it could be either warming or cooling climate change.
1) A warm front impinging on a cool air mass may produce rain from nimbostratus. Its forerunner (heads-up) is cirrus.
2) A cold front impinging on a warm air mass may produce rain from nimbostratus and cumulonimbus. The latter can be extreme. The forerunner (heads-up) is altostratus.
Also, I am disappointed the does not identify the base period employed. It think it could make a difference whether it is a 30-year “climate” average, or a ~60-year Pacific Ocean oscillation. Trenberth does not mention recent trends in ENSO, PDO, AO and AMO.
However, I am gratified that Trenberth recognizes that “natural variability plays a major role” in climate “extremes” and that “Climate change from human influences is difficult to perceive and detect because natural weather-related variability is large.” Nonetheless, he terms the effects of natural variability to be “climate noise” and asserts that “thermodynamic variables” have stronger “signal-to-noise ratios than dynamic variables”. Without chasing his references into the impenetrable IPCC 2007 or crashing the paywall of Trenberth 2011b, I do not know what he means by “dynamic variables” unless he means “winds”. He does not touch upon Coriolis effects. He then discuses “winds” further down on pages 2 and 3.
“Framing the way to relate climate extremes to climate change” is a marketing document.
Futurra. “The Rules of the Game”. PDF, October 14, 2005
Recommendations to the Climate Change Communications Working Group. This is a marketing guide. It is to be found in the ClimateGate file
http://junkscience.com/FOIA/documents/FOI2009_climactic-research-unit-foi-leaked-data.zip
Futurra. “New Rules: New Game”. futerra, October 12, 2006. http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/NewRules_NewGame.pdf
This is another marketing guide, an updated version of “The Rules of the Game”: “These short rules are communications techniques which pull together the most effective strategies for changing people’s behaviour. They are based on a huge body of international psychological, sociological and marketing studies, gathered and analysed by Futerra. We’ve taken great concepts with terrible titles like ‘psychological reactance’ and ‘symbolic self-completion’ and translated them into simple-to-use communications tools to motivate behaviour change.”
Curry, Judith A. “Stephen Schneider and the ‘Double Ethical Bind’ of Climate Change Communication.” Scientific. Climate Etc., July 21, 2011. http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/21/stephen-schneider-and-the-%e2%80%9cdouble-ethical-bind%e2%80%9d-of-climate-change-communication/
On weather:
Chapman. Piloting, Seamanship, and Small Boat Handling. Motor Boating’s Ideal Series. New York: Motor Boating & Sailing, 2003
Paper under discussion at Climate of the Past
http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/8/1005/2012/cpd-8-1005-2012.pdf
A model-data comparison of the Holocene global sea surface temperature evolution, G. Lohmann, M. Pfeiffer, T. Laepple, G. Leduc, and J.-H. Kim
Clim. Past Discuss., 8, 1005-1056, 2012
Looking at the failure of models and proxy data to agree on the evolution of SST through the Holocene. Don’t say it loudly but the models might not be so good.
Another challenging paper under discussion at CP
http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/8/695/2012/cpd-8-695-2012.pdf
Changes in the strength and width of the Hadley circulation since 1871. Another just so story receives a challenge.
Centennial scale oscillation? Imagine that. Wonder why the NH Hadley Cells change differently than the SH?
UNFCCC Releases Parties’ Submissions on CCS under the CDM
28 March 2012:
source: http://climate-l.iisd.org/news/unfccc-releases-parties’-submissions-on-ccs-under-the-cdm/
The UNFCCC Secretariat has published the submissions from three parties on their views regarding specific aspects of the eligibility of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) projects as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects (FCCC/SBSTA/2012/MISC.8).
Three such submissions have been received from: Denmark and the European Commission on behalf of the EU and its member States; Nauru on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS); and Pakistan.
=========
Why are they proceeding to implement solutions to an unconfirmed problem and why don’t they focus on the real issues which relate to improving existing power generation?
Carbon capture is a complete was of time and money in the face of the reality that we’ll need to generate so much more power in the future.
Who knew, we have CCS organizations now — this is just crazy; http://www.ccsassociation.org/
Further evidence of the wonders of the greening of the European economy:
“Joblessness in the 17-nation currency zone rose to 10.8 percent – in line with a Reuters poll of economists – and 0.1 points worse than in January, Eurostat said on Monday.” (and that 10.1% figure is just as “adjusted” as the U.S. figure always is.)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-eurozone-unemployment-idUSBRE8310CQ20120402
Bring on the Solyndras.
Or of the after-effects of the 2006-2007 global extreme weather cluster and the triplepoint of fertilizer, fuel and food prices in 2007-2008 tipping under-secured bank papers into slide?
Good thing we haven’t had backpedaling into fiscal mismanagement and global extreme weather clusters that might impact agriculture the same way since then.. Oh. Well. Whatever.
Since this is week in review, and kind of like an open thread…
I am at an academic workshop on pathological gambling, in Dr. Curry’s home town Atlanta but at the competition’s digs (Georgia State University, the Center for the Economic Analysis of Risk).
A very interesting crew of psychologists, sociologists and neuroscientists, with the odd economist every now and then. Lots of fun. Dinner tonight was filled with hilarity and interesting talk. And, without flying to Davos or Cancun or Bali! Yes, you can have a fun interdisciplinary confab, without going to anything more exotic that downtown Atlanta! Imagine that.
*sigh*
One gives up so much, when one drops the soft sciences in favor of productive work. It is difficult to rise above envy, NW.
Call it admiration.
Post links?
Bart, eventually CEAR will post up video of all the talks, but usually unplanned video of academic talks sucks. Mainly because they are presenting to other academics, with little or no thought about a broader audience. Professionally produced video for pedagogy is a lot different from this.
At any rate, here is a link to the workshop program. Eventually, CEAR will post up the video of each talk, but right now is too soon.
http://cear.gsu.edu/workshops/11/CEAR%20Workshop%20–%20Gambling%20PROGRAM.pdf
Much obliged.
For the evergreen progressives who have defended the EPA’s new coal regulation on the grounds that no new plants were being built anyway because natural gas is cheaper than coal:
“How a Grassroots Rebellion Won the Nation’s Biggest Climate Victory
By the time Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declared the cap-and-trade bill dead in July 2010, the Beyond Coal campaign had helped prevent construction of 132 coal plants and was on the verge of defeating dozens more. It had imposed, noted Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, ‘a de facto moratorium on new coal-fired power plants.'”
http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/04/beyond-coal-plant-activism
When progressives talk about the death of construction of new nuclear or coal power plants in an open forum like this one, they claim it is all about the market. That corporations just aren’t willing to make the investments because the cost of construction is too high.
But sometimes they just can’t help but crow about the way they have systematically strangled industry across the country. All for the children of course.