by Bruce Peachey and Nobuo Maeda
Contemporary climate models only include the impact of water vapor as positive feedback on warming; the impact of direct anthropogenic emissions of water vapor has not been seriously considered.
Background
Recent climate change and increasingly scarce fresh water resources are two major environmental issues facing humanity. Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas. Contemporary climate models only include the impact of water vapor as positive feedback on warming; the impact of direct anthropogenic emissions of water vapor has not been seriously considered.
Our recent publication used the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data set to examine whether the Clausius−Clapeyron equation can form a basis for such positive feedback commonly assumed in the contemporary climate models [1]. We found that: (1) qualitatively, the log-linear nature of the Clausius−Clapeyron equation [(ln Pv) vs (1/T)] demonstrates a significant level of consistency when averaged over expansive regions like specific latitude zones around the globe; (2) this consistency does not extend to individual locations where a plot of (ln Pv) vs (1/T) becomes nonlinear, indicating substantial undersaturation that varies with time; (3) quantitatively, the discrepancies between the locally observed and the expected values of the slopes of (ln Pv) vs (1/T) are wide-ranging; and (4) the absolute amount of water vapor has increased substantially above the population centers and the agricultural areas in the Northern Hemisphere between 1960 and 2020, but not in the Southern Hemisphere where the surface area of the oceans is much greater. These findings suggest that direct anthropogenic emissions of water vapor are an important driver that influences the local water vapor content.
Our paper concluded that the use of the Clausius–Clapeyron equation as a basis for calculating the positive water vapor feedback appears to be on shaky ground [1]. Since the discrepancies between the observed and the expected values of the slopes of (ln Pv) vs (1/T) were wide-ranging [1], it remains unclear if the amount of atmospheric water vapor will truly increase by as much as 6 to 7% in response to every 1 °C of warming, as commonly assumed.
In the present contribution, we highlight: (1) the role of humans in the global water cycle and impacts on climate change, (2) the regional nature of many aspects of “global” warming, (3) propose that future research effort should be directed toward obtaining the relevant data as a matter of urgency.
Water cycle
Human activities indeed have been impacting climate but most of the key factors are related to water, as opposed to CO2 [2-6]. Atmospheric water vapor increase in the Northern Hemisphere has been by several percent per decade. In contrast, there has been little change in the Southern Hemisphere. Unlike water, CO2 is in a single phase and largely uniformly distributed in the atmosphere. Thus, if CO2 were the cause of the current climate change, and if the ocean is the source of the water vapor that is supposed to increase by about 6 to 7% in response to every 1 °C of warming caused by the non-aqueous greenhouse gases, then the Southern Hemisphere should have observed more of the consequences than the Northern Hemisphere due to its much larger surface area of the oceans. To the contrary, a 2% average increase in precipitation, that amounts to an average of about 2 Tt/year over the last century, has been observed in the Northern Hemisphere land precipitation, while no such increase was observed in the Southern Hemisphere land precipitation [7]. This increase in the Northern Hemisphere land precipitation has been accompanied by an estimated 2 to 4% increase in the frequency of heavy precipitation events in the last 50 years, again in the Northern Hemisphere but not in the Southern Hemisphere.
Water is being consumed by humans at an increasing rate, predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere, at least by 3 to 4 Tt/year (excluding some sources such as reservoir evaporation). This increasing water consumption has been accompanied by reductions in the return flows of the fresh water to the oceans from the rivers in regions with intensive irrigation & industry, again predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere. Other major contributors identified by the IPCC are water emissions and land use. Calls for the comprehensive integration of substantial changes in the hydrological cycle into global climate models are not new [8, 9], but have received limited support, and consequently these causes have generally been ignored and not incorporated into the contemporary climate models to date.
Natural land water flux is based on water vapour coming on to land areas from the ocean, water falling as precipitation with some being re-evaporated from the landscape with the remaining flow, of about 40 Tt/yr, flowing back into the ocean to balance the flow of water vapour from the ocean. Ocean water vapor flux is 6 times larger than the land water vapor flux, even though the global water surface area is only about 3 times larger than the land area [2]. This is because: (1) the ocean surface is darker and hence absorbs more solar energy and (2) the ocean surface is always wet, which enhances mass transfer compared to the land surface, which sometimes is wet and sometimes is dry. At any one time, the atmosphere contains about 13 Tt of water, which contributes most of the greenhouse effect, and a given water molecule on average only spends about 10 days in the atmosphere each time it goes through the cycle [10].
Global water budgets are found in many publications on water availability and show some variations in numbers used, but are within a reasonable range, and generally agree with each other. For this analysis, we show schematically a global water budget in Figure 1, which uses the numbers from “Global Warming – The Complete Briefing” by Houghton [11]. Here we assume that the total amount of water in the atmosphere does not change materially in a short time span of a year (after all seasons in a year), notwithstanding the fact that warming leads to increased water vapor content.
More recent literature (https://www2.whoi.edu/site/globalwatercycle/) provides slightly different numbers of (after converting the unit of m3/s to Tt/yr) 41 instead of 40 for the horizontal land to the ocean water flux, 69 instead of 71 for the upward land to land atmospheric water flux in Figure 1, 110 instead of 111 for the downward land atmosphere to land water flux, 426 instead of 425 for the upward ocean to oceanic atmosphere water flux and the same 385 for the downward oceanic atmosphere to ocean water flux, which provides the readers with an idea of the amount of variations involved. Our conclusions will remain unaltered regardless of which version of numbers we use.
Figure 1 Global conservation of water masses adapted from [2]. The numbers show the movement of water masses in tera tons per year. This is the base case before the recent warming became an issue.
The numbers in Figure 1 show the movements of water in tera tons (1 Tt = 1012 t = 1015 kg) per year before the recent warming. The inflows and the outflows of water must be balanced at each reservoir of “land”, “ocean”, “sky above land” and “sky above ocean”, to satisfy the conservation of mass. These four entities can, but do not need to, be geometrically continuous.
Water withdrawal and water use data is available from a number of sources and studies. Most estimates put human water withdrawals in the range of 4 to 5 Tt/yr worldwide, with over 60% of that going to irrigation, 20 to 30% to industrial cooling and the remainder for domestic use. For example, the IPCC’s estimate of anthropogenic water withdrawals that are reducing ocean discharge flows in rivers such as the Nile, Colorado, Yellow, Rio Grande, and other rivers that are heavily used for irrigation places the reduction in the return flows to the ocean (the 40 Tt from “land” to “ocean”) is around 10%, or 4 Tt/yr [7, 12]. Houghton reports “in the United States, for the Missouri river basin it is 30%, for the Rio Grande it is 64%, and for the lower Colorado 96%. Almost none of the water in the Colorado river reaches the sea” [11]. In short, the water consumption on such river systems as a percentage of the total discharge can be substantial. More recently, the latest 2021 IPCC Climate Change report reported the magnitude of the impacts humans have had on water cycle on land in that: “Direct redistribution of water by human activities for domestic, agricultural and industrial use of about 24,000 km3/year is equivalent to half the global river discharge or double the global groundwater recharge each year” [13]. Therefore this 24 Tt/yr is ~60% of the total estimated return flow of 40 Tt/yr to the oceans.
Unfortunately, these reports do not provide an explanation as to where the water goes after it has been withdrawn or redistributed. Consequently, what is less clear is the actual amount of evaporation of water to the atmosphere. For irrigation withdrawals, most of the water is evaporated during irrigation or from the field after irrigation, whereas for most domestic water withdrawals the water may be returned to the source or another water body as sewage. The main industrial water use is for cooling thermal plants, however, the relationship between withdrawals and evaporation loss of water varies greatly, depending on the cooling process used (i.e. evaporative cooling on-site or return of hot water to a large body of water). Some data sources breakdown water volumes by use, by water basin, or by country with accuracy varying depending on what is being reported, consistency in the reporting, measuring methodologies, and the rigour applied to the data collection process [11, 14-21]. Often these estimates do not include other water losses, where the water transfer is unintentional or unmeasured, such as losses to groundwater reservoirs, or evaporation from hydroelectric or irrigation reservoirs, they may also not contain withdrawals of groundwater from aquifers which have greatly increased in recent years [22].
A major challenge for a contemporary climate model is: How to generate a 5% increase in land precipitation in Northern hemispheric land areas, which has been reported to occur in the IPCC reports [7, 12], but not in Southern hemispheric land areas?
Since the Northern Hemisphere contains 67.3% of the Earth’s land, if we neglect the Southern hemispheric land precipitation increases for simplicity, the increased Northern hemispheric land precipitation by 5% would result in about 3.4% increase in global land precipitation. Such 3.4% increase of the 111 Tt downward water flux over the entire landmass equates to about 4 Tt extra downward water flux. Under the contemporary non-aqueous greenhouse gas-driven global warming paradigm, this extra 4 Tt would have to come from the oceans through a 10% (of the 40 Tt) increase in the water vapor content of air crossing onto land masses from the oceans. Now, one cannot realistically assume that 100 % of this extra water vapor generated from the ocean surface will exclusively flow to the land: the majority should precipitate back onto the ocean.
For simplicity, here we assume that the same proportion of the water vapor generated as that shown in Figure 1 would partition into the land and to the ocean downward fluxes. Then, to generate the 4 Tt increase in the water vapor content on the landmass, both the upward and the downward water fluxes over the entire ocean surface must also increase by 10% over historic levels. Then, the resulting global water balance (without considering the Northern vs Southern hemispheric water partitions) would look something like what we schematically draw in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Global conservation of water masses that corresponds to the settings assumed by the contemporary climate models. The numbers show the movement of water masses in tera tons per year. Non-aqueous greenhouse gases initiate a positive feedback in which the initial warming leads to increased evaporation from the oceans of 42 tera tons per year. 38 of the incremental 42 tera tons would directly precipitate back onto the ocean and 4 out of the 42 tera tons would transport to over a land area before precipitating. The 4 tera tons of the excess water that has precipitated on the land would need to flow back to the ocean to close the water cycle, which is contrary to the observations.
The purported change of water from the oceans to the land areas to account for increased land precipitation would generate a significant (+10%) increase in total water outflow off continental land masses (the return flow of about 4 tera tons to compensate for the excess water evaporated from the ocean as a part of the purported positive feedback mechanism in the contemporary climate models), as shown in Figure 2, which is incidentally contrary to the observations that show dwindling outflows of major rivers around the globe [7, 12]. Nor does it explain how the only area showing incremental precipitation is the latitude band from 30 to 60 degrees North, with no significant change in the Southern Hemisphere.
The water mass balance (budget) above also has significant energy balance implications. To achieve the required 42 Tt/yr of incremental water evaporation off oceans would require a large amount of incremental solar energy being absorbed. We estimate that this would require on the order of 10 Zeta Joules/year being absorbed by the oceans (42 Tt/yr × 2260 kJ/kg) or a 10% increase in solar energy absorbed. Given that the average estimated incremental radiative forcing is ~ 2 W/m2 of the earth’s surface, it is much more realistic to assume that the incremental radiative forcing would proportionately partition so that the ocean to the oceanic atmosphere water flux would increase by ~ 2 [W/m2] / 300 [W/m2] × 425 [Tt/yr] = 2.8 Tt/yr, assuming the 300 W/m2 is the net average radiation absorbed by the earth and 425 Tt/yr being the upward water flux over the oceans (note our conclusion remains unaltered even if the correct number were 200 W/m2 or 400 W/m2 as the net average radiation absorbed by the earth). Then, about 10% (the same proportion as in Figure 2) of the 2.8 Tt/yr incremental water vapor, or 0.28 Tt/yr, would transfer to land areas while the rest would precipitate back to the ocean, which would be considerably less than the 4 Tt/yr incremental precipitation observed over land areas. In short, the scenario envisioned in Figure 2 is highly unrealistic.
Figure 2 is for the global water mass balance and hence does not account for any regional-scale details. From a regional water mass and energy conservation perspective, an intensified non-aqueous greenhouse gas effect resulting in global warming should have a much greater impact on climate in the Southern Hemisphere because its fraction of the ocean is far greater. Yet the IPCC climate data shows a definite bias towards precipitation from climate change being a predominantly Northern Hemisphere phenomenon, and the total precipitation over the Southern Hemispheric land masses has not increased [7, 12]. The contemporary climate model simulations show that most of the extra evaporation to originate in the Southern Hemisphere, so it leaves the question open as to how the water vapour purportedly generated in the Southern Hemispheric oceans preferentially crosses into the Northern Hemispheric land masses.
To the contrary, the areas of increased precipitation tend to be in cool wet Northern areas, fed by air masses from hot, dry or highly populated areas, with high anthropogenic water emissions, which are unassociated with “global” warming. The main region in the Southern Hemisphere, which shows a similar response to the Northern Hemisphere, is Patagonia in South America, which has an irrigation and energy intensive economy. Patagonia, through ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns, feeds water and energy to the Antarctic Peninsula, which is the only part of Antarctica to show any impact of “global” warming [23]. Since the latent heat of vaporization of water is large, one tonne of water vapour contains enough energy to melt 6.7 tonnes of ice or snow. An analysis should be undertaken as to the relationship between the water use in Patagonia and deterioration of ice masses on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Other regions in the Southern Hemisphere, such as New Zealand, the western coasts of Australia and Southern Africa, show little change in precipitation that they should have experienced with increased water evaporation from the oceans that is purported to occur under the non-aqueous greenhouse gas-driven, water vapor positive feedback amplified, paradigm. To the contrary, the South Island of New Zealand, with its high mountains and the Tasman Sea to the west and should have experienced substantially more precipitation, has not. In Australia, the coasts of Western Australia remain dry, and increased precipitation and extreme heavy rainfalls instead occur in Eastern Australia which is downwind of the water withdrawn from the Murray–Darling Basin for irrigation.
Since there is sufficient evidence / observations that support the idea that anthropogenic emissions are an important driver of recent warming [1], we now consider how the conservation of water masses might look like if anthropogenic emissions of water vapor were indeed the primary driver of the recent trend of climate warming. As noted above, wetter land surfaces and new vegetative cover after irrigation are darker than the dry surfaces before irrigation, and consequently absorb more sunlight. The concomitant incremental radiation energy absorbed through increasing the area of absorption by spreading water from lakes, rivers and underground aquifers over fields and rice paddies is still an incremental energy input, and must be released by the water during condensation (cloud formation) and precipitation in the Northern areas. Anthropogenic emissions of water vapor, which is predominantly emitted in the low to mid latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere (between 0 and 60°N), would move water and energy poleward to the Arctic through atmospheric circulation patterns.
The condensation of water vapor would release latent heat, cause melting of Northern and inland ice sheets, increase Northern cloud cover, and increase precipitation and severe weather events, wherever the water comes out. Such movements of water masses also explain the reported freshening trend in water flowing to the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific, and the increasing salinity and temperature increases in tropical water masses, which are no longer receiving those cool fresh water returns from rivers. Figure 3 shows how the water balance might look like in this scenario. As was the case in Figures 1 and 2, Figure 3 is for the global scale description that does not include any granularity or geographical spread of each of land and ocean components.
Figure 3 Global conservation of water masses when the Anthropogenic Emissions of Water Vapor is assumed to drive the recent trend of climate warming and climate change. The numbers show the movement of water masses in tera tons per year. Here, extra 4 tera tons per year of water vapor would be generated from the land and virtually all of them precipitate back on the (colder parts of) the land.
As we did during the calculation of the water mass balance in Figure 2, since the Northern Hemisphere contains 67.3% of the Earth’s land, if we neglect the Southern Hemispheric land precipitation increases for simplicity, the increased Northern Hemispheric land precipitation by 5% would result in about 3.4% increase in global land precipitation. Such 3.4% increase in the 111 Tt downward water flux over the entire landmass equates to about 4 Tt extra downward water flux, which has been observed to be concentrated in the cold Northern Hemispheric landmass. Unlike in Figure 2, however, the extra 4 Tt does not come from the sky above ocean, but instead comes from the warm, dry and/or populated regions of the landmass.
On a regional basis, anthropogenic emissions of water vapor also better match the observations of reduced flows in highly utilized rivers and lakes in dry, heavily populated regions such as China, India, Pakistan and the southwestern United States, and the corresponding increases in rainfall in Northern temperate regions. Examples of regional–scale “unusual patterns” include: (1) weekly patterns of rainfall on the east coast of the United States showed that rainfall was 22% higher on Saturdays than any other day of the week, with Sunday to Tuesday being the lowest days [24]; (2) workweek diurnal temperature variations, where some water emitting areas showed night time cooling on weekends, while other non-water emitting regions showed cooler nights on weekdays [25]. Neither natural planetary orbital cycles nor global warming should be able to generate weekly or workweek patterns, but water emissions from power generation, and irrigation, tend to drop on weekends.
Another notable regional-scale issue is that the mass balance and the energy balance around the Gulf of Mexico should show the impacts of reduced water inflow into the Gulf from the Rio Grande, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers. The reduced flows of fresh, cool water into the Gulf should result in a warming of surface waters which in turn could potentially (1) impact the strengths and paths of hurricanes, (2) generate warmer climate downstream of the Gulf stream (e.g., Western Europe due to a warmer yet lower rate of flow). These are regional, as opposed to the global, “unusual patterns”, but the point is that anthropogenic emissions of water vapor have major, observable impacts in regional scales.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Anthropogenic water emissions are large enough to result in a ~5 to 7% incremental increase (4 to 5 Tt/yr) in land-to-atmosphere water flux and a similar increase in water vapor in the atmosphere over land areas impacted by human water uses such as irrigation, evaporative cooling and evaporation from water reservoirs. These water emissions are about 1000× the net increase in carbon mass emitted to the atmosphere and contribute significant amounts of latent energy to the atmosphere in cold northern areas, which GHG emissions do not. We recommend that such direct anthropogenic emissions of water vapor should be coherently incorporated into the contemporary climate models before forcing extreme actions related to the carbon balance alone.
About the authors: Nobua Maeda is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta, Canada. Bruce Peachey is President of New Paradigm Engineering in Alberta, Canada.
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grass lawns are cooler than desert (Arizona and the rest of the southwest US), how much water vapor is in the air as a result of agriculture and lawns?
We hear a lot about the product of combustion co2. Is there no significance to the other product h2o?
The oxygen depletion from burning fossil fuels is rarely discussed either. I could see a causal link between ocean hypoxia and the steady decrease in atmospheric oxygen. Ocean dead zones are not getting smaller.
Burning fossil fuels and other materials containing a carbon atom requires air. 78% of that air is nitrogen. The heat from the combustion may cause nitrogen atoms to join oxygen atoms. I am not a scientist so I cannot point to relevant papers, but common sense tells me that the “origin of NOX” is an unwanted product of combustion.
Nature will eventually return to the balance. Don’t worry.
No need to worry. Both CO2 and NOX are fertilizers for plants. Go GREEN!!!
Fossil fuels are fossilized CO2, H2O, and solar energy. I’m with you, why is one significant and the other two not?
All three are significant, that is, CHANGES in all three (and many other things) are significant. One just happens to be currently (much) more significant than the other two. Another case of non-quantitative focalism. It seems that the only ones that suggest/blame CO2 as the sole cause of climate change, do so, so they can deny it and its importance.
Burning fossil fuels and creating CO2 emissions is probably the most important catalyst that allows humans to manipulate almost all the other elements. It is the main reason humans have been able create over 250,000 man-made molecules (so far). Most are probably harmless but others like PFAS/PFOS affect all species so there are some wicked side effects.
Long term thinking would advocate that constraining FF consumption would reduce pressure on the biosphere.
Combustion produces about 12 giga tons of water per year. New biomass captures about 25 giga tons of water per year. Gravimetric data suggest that about 77 giga tons of water is captured by land every year. https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1732059843266060686?s=46
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1704665115
Please correct me on this if I’m mistaken. The climate models do not incorporate the Soden-Held theory of positive water vapor feedback directly.
In other words, the modeling code does not directly implement the Soden-Held theory that warming at the surface allows the atmosphere to hold more water vapor than it otherwise would at those altitudes most important for affecting the earth’s radiative energy balance.
Rather, the Soden-Held theory is being invoked post-hoc to explain the behavior of the climate models in projecting increases in global mean temperature above and beyond what the basic effect of CO2 is on the earth’s radiative energy balance.
So what we have in Soden-Held is a postulated theory of a water vapor feedback mechanism, a theory which uses climate model outputs in lieu of direct atmospheric observations as the primary basis of support for claiming that such a feedback mechanism actually does exist and is of considerable importance in amplifying the increase in global mean temperature well beyond the known basic effects of CO2 on the earth’s radiative energy balance.
Any enlightened additions or corrections to my comment are most welcome.
From an engineering point of view something must limit or offset a water vapor positive feedback or this would be a dead planet.
We have avoided runaway warming so far. But we have runaway leftist climate scaremongerinng.
Measurements to determine an annual average of global absolute humidity are of poor quality. Worse than surface measurements of the global average temperature.
The CC Relation can not be verified with these data.
Unfortunately, no scientists is willing to say “we don’t know”.
So far AH measurements show rising AH from 1980 to 2000 followed by a flat trend from 2000 to 2020, That adds up to confusion, with no conclusion possible.
As a result of inadequate measurements, the guesses of a water vapor positive feedback range from zero to 5.5x amplification of the small warming effect of CO2 alone. Which is the same as saying “we don’t know”.
There are at least two or three climate related feedbacks in addition to the claimed water vapor positive feedback caused by a warming atmosphere:
(1) More evaporation cooling Earth’s surface
(2) More upwelling radiation cooling our planet, per the Stefan–Boltzmann law,
(3) Global average changes in clouds … that have even less accurate data than global average absolute humidity.
When you add up all these unanswered climate change questions, blaming manmade CO2 emissions is the easy answer. I call that silly science.
Climate change (warmer winters) had been very pleasant until the leftists started lecturing us about it.
Richard Greene
The reason there is no run away greenhouse effect is due to the rotation of the earth, tilt of the axis of
rotation, and cloud formation.
During the day the earth heats up, but cools off during the night, which lowers the amount of water in the air
due to dew formation as the air cools.
Due the tilt of the axis rotation, one hemisphere heats up during spring and summer while the other hemisphere cools down during fall and winter.
Cloud formation is the major there is no runaway greenhouse effect. If the amount of water in air gets to high, rain clouds form and the excess water is returned to the surface.
I wonder if increased plant productivity increases respiration at night, resulting in chemical heat release and transpiration at night, resulting in more dew and latent heat release at the surface.
“The diminishing difference between rural & urban heating is probably due to the greenhouse effect & feedbacks (increased plant respiration from CO2 fertilization, increased nighttime humidity from increasing transpiration in rural areas, dew & fog releasing latent heat near the surface at night.) 3/“
https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1642951399339073555?s=46
Hurricane #Debby will hit the southeastern US tomorrow. It will move slowly and bring extreme rains to a large area. Rainfall of 100 to 250 mm (4 to 10 inches) is expected on many places (and even more arround Savannah), potentially causing major damage. See rain accumulation from HRRR model on the next 2 days:
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=29.56;-82.06;6&l=rain-ac&t=20240806/0600 🧐💧‼️
The rain fall over a few days will close to the amount of water Greenland and Antarctica ice mass loses in a year.
50 trillion gallons of water is equivalent to approximately 189.27 metric gigatons, which is 36% more than the 139 gigaton of ice lost by Antarctica in a year.
The additional 42 trillion gallons of water bring the total to 348 metric gigatons, which is 84% of the 416 Gt of ice lost by Greenland and Antarctica combined in a year. https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1820609121860599851?s=46
Thank goodness someone has started calculations on the effects of hydrological cycles. If changes to global climate are partially the result of human activity, then water makes more sense than CO2. Across the 20th century till now, has seen land use change dramatically – forest clearance, river damming, water extraction for industry and irrigation, the shrinking of the Aral and Caspian seas, canalisation and diversion of river flows… We do not understand former water relations since no one was measuring, but it is clear that there have been substantive changes.
I read an article a few years ago about atmospheric water flows threw forests. The research had been carried out over decades by a couple of Russian scientists who proposed that water from the Atlantic ends up in China because it precipitates in northern Europe, is transpired by forest and carried east by the forest till it precipitates in the Himalayas etc and makes rivers that flow into China. Something similar happens in South America that takes Pacific water east and also south.
I suspect that CO2 would have been important in warming the atmosphere at the time of snowball earth, but that once evaporation reached a certain point, water would be the main gas transferring heat into the atmosphere.
Graeme, I’m guessing that paper was by A. M Makarieva and her colleagues. Their research led to the idea of the forests working as a “biotic pump” bringing more preciptation where they are, than other places without them. My synopsis is:
https://rclutz.com/2015/04/30/here-comes-the-rain-again/
> Often these estimates do not include other water losses, where the water transfer is unintentional or unmeasured, such as losses to groundwater reservoirs, or evaporation from hydroelectric or irrigation reservoirs, they may also not contain withdrawals of groundwater from aquifers which have greatly increased in recent years [22].
It would be very interesting to know these quantities. It is generally acknowledged that aquifers in the US Southwest have been severely depleted.
Good read, thanks.
Hey, whoa there, authors! I usually turn off when I see an alarmist intro like this:
“Recent climate change and increasingly scarce fresh water resources are two major environmental issues facing humanity.”
1. Please give two or five examples of recent climate change being a major environmental issue; and why fresh water is also a major concern, given the known technology of desalination with nuclear electricity in cases of extreme need. It is not as if water increase is an insoluble problem.
2. Also, as a chemist, I have never regarded Clausius-Clapeyron as usefully quantitative, but more as a qualitative indicator of directions of reactions. A bit like the precautionary principle, nice thought but limited computational content.
3. “water vapor that is supposed to increase by about 6 to 7% in response to every 1 °C of warming”. This expression is increasingly seen in literature. But, there is a difference between the water that the atmosphere CAN hold and the water that it DOES hold. Nothing forces it to eternal saturation, does it?
4. The impressions that people gain and write about landscape seem to depend on where they live. A central European person might tend to factor in dams, rivers, roads, cities close to each other as dominant features, whilst we in Australia can fly for hours without much sign of habitation below. This gives authors different perspectives about the coverage and importance of Mankind on hydrogeography.
5. Richard Willoughby from Australia has written on some of this hydrology and transfers between ocean and land.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/23/ocean-atmosphere-response-to-solar-emr-at-top-of-the-atmosphere/
6. “rainfall was 22% higher on Saturdays”. Similar day-preferences effect with some Australian daily routine temperature data, seems to be operator error in some cases, making up stuff instead of doing the proper observation.
These are initial comments after a first quick read and are not meant to be critical, just supportive.
Geoff S
“But, there is a difference between the water that the atmosphere CAN hold and the water that it DOES hold. ”
Exactly so. ‘DOES hold’ requires source(s) and certain conditions at the air-water interface, where ‘water’ means liquid or solid.
” (2) this consistency does not extend to individual locations where a plot of (ln Pv) vs (1/T) becomes nonlinear, indicating substantial undersaturation that varies with time;”
The Clausius-Clapeyron equation should be viewed as an upper-bound on what the atmosphere CAN hold, limited by the availability of water to evaporate or be transpired. That is, with a saturated air mass from the Pacific Ocean moving eastward across North America, it is routinely depleted of its water vapor by orographic uplift while passing over the N-S mountain chains. It will then be under-saturated. The amount of water to evaporate is severely limited, particularly in the Basin and Range province in America. That is, it WAS until reservoirs were built and irrigation was introduced to the arid and semi-arid regions, supplemented by withdrawing water from aquifers, particularly for pivotal irrigation. It should be no surprise that the absolute humidity has increased, particularly in areas that are leeward of mountain chains. What is surprising is that Death Valley hasn’t broken its 1913 record if water vapor is acting as an effective ‘greenhouse gas.’ It may be the result of the difference in the adiabatic lapse-rate, which is higher for dry air.
Anecdotally, I was told by an aunt and uncle (deceased) that when they first moved to NW Nebraska in the early-1950s, they did not observe water condensing on the outside of a glass of iced lemonade — until pivotal irrigation became widespread.
The fact of the matter and the bottom line is that we have gigatons more water today than we had in 1900. What we lack is the infrastructure to collect and distribute it fir human use. Furthermore, from a climate standpoint, with so much more water in existence, we should be COOLING due to increased cloud cover as a result of greater humidity. Cloud cover however has been decreasing – probably as a result of less condensation nuclei as a result of reductions in pollution due to green environmental policies.
“…, probably as a result of less condensation nuclei as a result of reductions in pollution due to green environmental policies.”
Probably also from increasing temperatures resulting in under-saturated air.
Could it be that there is less ice (glazier) due to melting, thus naturally temperature increasing? Common sense.
Probably has more to do with natural variation of CCN than clean air policy. The combination of increased water availability and increased WUE mean less stressed plants which will produce less terpenes etc. https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1768028430593864037?s=46
And yet a big actor in the Earthly drama we call weather and climate is vapor — water vapor: oceans of it! The energy of the sun falls on the oceans and lakes. This causes evaporation and the result of that is water vapor.
The water vapor mops up heat. As the vapor rises it leaves a cooler Earth behind. The water vapor rises and as it does the atmosphere becomes cooler and thinner and the water vapor eventually condenses. As it condenses the water vapor gives up its heat to the cold emptiness of space as the vapor returns to water and forms clouds or freezes and ultimately falls back to earth as rain, sleet, hail and snow.
The global warming alarmists cannot change this process. They can however program GCMs so as to depict runaway global warming by treating water vapor as a contributor to global warming—i.e., a positive feedback as if it collects heat like a greenhouse. In actuality, of course, water vapor is a part of a holistic process that results in a negative feedback because the amount of solar energy that is reflected away by clouds during the day more than offsets the suppression by clouds of cooling during the night.
In areas where there is high summer sunshine, it is worth thinking about underground or covered water reservoirs to reduce evaporation.
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Typo:
“To the contrary, the South Island of New Zealand, with its high mountains and the Tasman Sea to the west and should have experienced substantially more precipitation, has not.”
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Combustion produces about 12 giga tons of water per year. New biomass captures about 25 giga tons of water per year. Gravimetric data suggest that about 77 giga tons of water is captured by land every year. https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1732059843266060686?s=46
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1704665115
Land is 30% of the surface. 22% of precipitation happens over land, but only 17% of evaporation happens over land. Warming increases the hydrological cycle and will transfer water to land. CO2 fertilization increases retention of water on land.
Increased WUE and productivity mean more respiration at night, resulting in more dew, which can be reclaimed by soil and plants.
https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1546510569435549697?s=46
A tropical depression from over Cuba has turned into a monster that will flood the east coast with hundreds of litres of water all the way to New York.
Recent paper by group working under Bjorn Stevens found increases in tropics in the most extreme precipitation events, but only over the ocean.
“We do not find a robust relationship between changes in convective organization and changes in daily precipitation extremes over land.”
Intensification of daily tropical precipitation extremes from more organized convection | Science Advances https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1761397714376704171?s=46
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj6801
Groundwater replenishes much faster than scientists previously thought
Groundwater replenishes much faster than scientists previously thought
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-groundwater-replenishes-faster-scientists-previously.amp
Extreme precipitation drives groundwater recharge: the Northern High Plains Aquifer, central United States, 1950–2010 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.10809
Global models underestimate large decadal declining and rising water storage trends relative to GRACE satellite data https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1704665115
We just develop wheat that tolerates high levels of saline and voila, problems solved- no problem with droughts and food shortages- and, we don’t need to add any salt to our sourdough bread.
There is not any +33°C Greenhouse Warming Effect on Earth’s surface.
It is a huge scientific mistake.
The entire greenhouse warming from Earth’s atmosphere is some ~0,4°C.
In conclusion, the 1,5°C Global Warming observed since predindustrial period (1850) can only be explained by natural orbital causes.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Dr. William Gray made a compelling case for H2O as the climate thermostat, prior to his death in 2016. Thanks to GWPF for publishing posthumously Bill Gray’s understanding of global warming/climate change. The paper was compiled at his request, completed and now available as Flaws in applying greenhouse warming to Climate Variability.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/05/Gray-2018.pdf
My synopsis:
https://rclutz.com/2018/10/26/bill-gray-h20-is-climate-control-knob-not-co2/
Thanks, Ron. Good read.
Would love to hear Judith’s take on this.
Thanks Bill. In a nutshell, Gray concluded that any warming from rising CO2 perturbs the hydrology cycle, which speeds up slightly to restore balance. Don’t recall if that was discussed here.
Richard Lindzen made a similar statement:
I haven’t spent much time on the details of the science, but there is one thing that should spark skepticism in any intelligent reader. The system we are looking at consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.
Ron
Thank you for sharing both of these documents. Great food for thought.
On page 12 of Dr Gray’s paper he references the Surrounding Antarctica Subsidence (SAS). To my knowledge I have never seen that term. I couldn’t find any explanation in the document as to the specific mechanisms involved and how it affects the MOC and its relationship to the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation.
I’ve read much about Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation but the SAS is a new one for me.
Could you elaborate on the SAS as to specifically what it is and what role it plays in the variability of the MOC?
Thanks
ck, thanks for asking. Going back to the source document, I find this from Gray:
“It is my hypothesis that it is variations in the global ocean’s Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) that are the primary driver of climate change over the last few thousand years.12 These variations are manifested in alterations of the rate of deep water formation of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC)13 and the Surrounding Antarctica Subsidence
(SAS). Figure 11 shows how the MOC is a combination of the high-latitude deep-waterformation of the Atlantic THC and the Antarctic SAS. These changes in rates of deep-water formation are driven by upper ocean salinity variations on various multi-decadal to multi-century timescales. Figure 12 shows typical Atlantic Ocean current differences when the Atlantic THC is strong (there is, on average, a greater rate of deep-water formation) and when it is
weak (a lower rate of deep-water formation). The sea surface temperature realization of THC fluctuations is frequently referred to as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).” pg. 12
There is a more detailed discussion in this paper:
https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2010_heartland.pdf
Take a Civil Engineer to throw some realism in the mix… Well one.
Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela is one of nature’s wonderful storm factories simply produced by cold winds from the Andes blowing into the hot air of the Caribbean just north of the Lake and spectacularly showing us what happens next.
Just how many global storms are there on a daily basis involving much movement of water and is there a maximum and minimum number or is it absolutely random with global parameters that will continue to change infinitely?
There’s a lot of water doing stuff continuously including the average 55% that all thriving humans carry around with them not to mention the multitude of living things also thriving the same way. I wouldn’t trust any estimate of just how much water there is on planet Earth and what it is doing at any given moment, let alone think about trying to replicate a model of its cycle on a computer.
There’s a lot of water on the planet and it hides a lot of secrets from us, thank goodness.
The current hurricane top is being blown all the way to Europe!
https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,54.826,-57.129,3
One of the more ironic things I read recently was that ‘renewable energy’ is causing more nickel to be mined in SE Asia and this is leading to deforestation and soil degradation.
So in order for the west to be ‘more green’, the rest must continue to devastate their environments.
A rather glaring lack of joined up thinking, both at the UN and in national governments….
There are those who advocate for practical environmentalism. The real question becomes is that a non sequitur?
Debby’s center is still over South Carolina, which means a flood threat in North Carolina.
https://i.ibb.co/Qk2KZbq/goes16-vis-swir-04-L-202408081347.gif
I apologize for the forecast, but the situation is extremely difficult.
The north of the US is seeing a latitudinal jet stream. Below, there will be secondary lows that, combined with Debby, will bring more rain to the eastern US.
https://i.ibb.co/dDD3bdd/goes16-wv-mid-us.gifI
Gray is correct about the incosequential role played by CO2 and Spencer that the Clausius-Clapeyron equation should be viewed as an upper-bound on what the atmosphere CAN hold. Any formulation that uses this to predict what it does hold must be the result of incompetence, pehaps aligned with a truly desperate need to tie increases in CO2 to global warming.
Climate Change, both global warming and the increasing devastation wreaked by catastrophic weather, is driven solely by the increasing concentration of water vapor.
The entirety of “climate science” is based on “knowing” what the cause of warming is and then trying to explain all the other changes as long term neutral “oscillations”.
It can be seen that the weakening of the southern polar vortex began in the upper stratosphere and gradually reached the surface.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_HGT_ANOM_JAS_SH_2024.png
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Chris Martz’ web site. Interesting place!
My [now retired] professor covered this topic rather extensively in my undergraduate Cloud Physics and Precipitation Processes course, but it would seem that climate modelers either weren’t taught these physical concepts in university, or simply didn’t pay any attention in class, explaining the disconnect between observed trends in the precipitation extremes across California and CMIP6 climate model projections.
The bottom line here is that evidence is weak to link any recent extreme rainfall in California associated with the stream of atmospheric rivers to anthropogenic climate change. It’s possible that there could be some effect, but it is negligible and anything observed has not been outside the bounds of natural variability and randomness.
Final Remarks
None of the findings presented above should subtract any significance from the fact that atmospheric rivers produce inclement, and often dangerous, weather conditions that pose a serious risk to human life and property.
Whether or not climate change is having any meaningful impact on the extreme weather events we care about is irrelevant in the need to raise awareness to the fact that we continue to develop in disaster-prone areas and the necessity to improve societal resilience through better zoning codes and community planning. Mother Nature always has and always will throw curveballs in our direction, regardless of what the climate is doing in the long-term, and being better equipped to mitigate disaster losses or prevent them in the first place must be a focal point of engineers, emergency managers and policymakers in the years and decades to come.
https://chrismartzweather.com/2024/03/08/is-climate-change-to-blame-for-the-atmospheric-rivers-impacting-california-the-evidence-says-no/
As I non-scientist I fail to understand that humans can alter the climate (or weather) on Earth. However, I understand that making it a political concept, the door is open to all sorts of ideas.
To be clear about climate change:
It is global warming caused by anthropogenic emissions of (so called) greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide.
How do we measure global warming? By reading thermometers.
The thermometers are resting in the air, where natural atmospheric gases affect them, like water vapour.
I also fail to accept that since year 1750 the carbon dioxide increase in the air is only some 142 ppm and due to humans burning trees, bushes, coal and other substances containing an atom of carbon.
The 1750 measure of carbon dioxide must have come from natural sources.
My big question is: How much of the 142 ppm since year 1750 is the result of natural emissions?
Probably less than 10 ppm of the increase since 1750 is from natural sources. Look at, and compare, the constancy of atmospheric CO2 concentration for the 10,000 years prior to that (~260–280 ppmv).
https://berkeleyearth.org/dv/10000-years-of-carbon-dioxide/
For how global temperatures are actually evaluated, see:
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/the-raw-truth-on-global-temperature-records/
No. I feel it is more than 50%. I tried to account for CO2 increases from FF, etc. and my findings were that there was no substance in carbon dioxide emissions causing any warming of the atmosphere.
It is now time for my sauna, however there is no ice so I have to rely on a very cold shower.
Ingvarwz,
For the last 70 years, at least, human emissions have been more than 2x the atmospheric CO2 increase. That means natural reservoirs have been net sinks, not sources of atmospheric carbon.
Once you rely on “anthropogenic” emissions of CO2 plus others and measure those in a “dry air” lab, you ignore the facts of life.
By that I mean we cannot live on a planet where there is zero water vapour. It is about time we stop this nonsense and put some facts on the table.
Ingvarwz,
What you “feel” doesn’t matter, scientific evidence does matter.
Ingvarwz,
By all means lets get some facts on the table. If natural sources were making an important contribution to the rise in CO2, wouldn’t you expect the rise to exceed human emissions instead of being about 45% of them? Natural reservoirs besides the atmosphere are also accumulating anthropogenic carbon. See papers on ocean acidification and the flourishing of vegetation. Cut the soft and wishful thinking please.
ingvarwz … the prior post had some interesting commentary on natural vs anthropogenic CO2. These two pieces put natural contributions at 96%.
https://www.aimspress.com/article/doi/10.3934/mbe.2024287
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/
The difference between the alarmist and skeptic positions on this is huge, which means a large dose of vitriol.
Bill,
They are wrong, and the “skeptics” of the climate effects of CO2 are not skeptics, they are in denial and search for any possible alternate fabrication, often without plausible physical causality or quantitation (i.e., hand waving). Why they are so “skeptical”, I don’t know, but I expect it is much more a matter of investigation for psychology than climate science.
Ingvarwz,
You will notice that Bill Fabrizio does not attempt to answer the question I put to you:
“If natural sources were making an important contribution to the rise in CO2, wouldn’t you expect the rise to exceed human emissions instead of being about 45% of them?”
Unlike you, who wish to get some facts on the table, Bill has shown time and again that he has a different agenda. He wants to create doubt, not knowledge, and follows the strategy outlined in Merchants of Doubt: throw up a smokescteen with
a couple of discredited arguments instead of addressing the question asked. He wants you to walk away from the discussion confused, not enlightened.
Think for yourself. You will conclude that there are no weaknesses in the argument that we humans are responsible for the rising CO2 in the atmosphere. That fact should be on your table. If you are for some reason motivated to find flaws in the anthropogenic warming consensus, look elsewhere.
David Andrews:
You wrote “You will conclude that there are no weaknesses in the argument that we humans are responsible for the rising CO2 in the atmosphere”
We may be responsible for rising CO2 levels, but so what? CO2 has NO climatic effect. It is all a HOAX
Due to “Clean Air” efforts that began in the US and Europe in the mid-1970’s, the amount of SO2 aerosol pollution in our troposphere began to gradually decrease, and as its level fell, the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface naturally increased.
This INEVITABLE warming has wrongly been attributed to rising levels of CO2 our atmosphere, and because of the wrong attribution, there is no basis for CO2 to have ANY warming effect.
Unfortunately, we are still decreasing the levels of SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere, now also through Net-Zero activities, and, since Jan 1, 2020, because of the mandate for low-sulfur fuels for all maritime shipping.
Temperatures are going to keep rising, probably to disastrous levels, and we have only ourselves to blame!
ingvarwz: “As I non-scientist I fail to understand that humans can alter the climate…”
Well it’s not easy. We in the US do our part by burning (roughly) 50,000 rail tank cars of oil per day(!) and 10,000 coal cars of coal per day(!). And then we burn a lot of natural gas in addition. All this burning of oil, coal and gas takes carbon that has been buried on the Earth for a very long time, turns it into carbon dioxide, and puts into the atmosphere. That’s how we change the climate.
How about the benefits of modernity? To the many benefits we could mention and would fight like Greeks to avoid giving up we should add, Making the World Green Again! We can see that from space.
Burlhenry,
Thanks for acknowledging a scientific fact: humans are responsible for the industrial age CO2 rise. Those like Bill Fabrizio who try to frame the question as a “debate” between “alarmists and skeptics” confuse skepticism with willful ignorance. They are deniers of science for their own private purposes, and do not deserve the respectful title of “skeptics”.
Your push for recognition of the effect of aerosols on warming has merit, but you greatly overstate your case. You predict temperatures will rise to disastrous levels in the future because of their elimination, but pre-industrial temperatures were not disastrous. Clearly something else is going on, and the consensus would say that something is the CO2 you acknowledge we are putting in the atmosphere.
David Andrews:
Yes, I acknowledge that humans are responsible for much of the rise in CO2 levels.
HOWEVER, I do find that CO2 has NO climatic effect, ALL modern warming is due to decreasing levels of SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere.
Your comment that there was no problem with rising temperatures during pre-industrial times is wrong.
Temperatures during the MWP, prior to the LIA, were higher than now, due to a an almost complete absence of volcanic SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere –only 31 VEI4 or higher eruptions in 300 years.
The MWP was a bad time for much of humanity, with many early cultures failing because of heat waves, droughts, floods, and starvation, although some were apparently more fortunately situated.
If we continue to clean up our air, a lot of people are going to die from adverse climatic effects
If there is a FACT to be noted, you do not need an adjective, in your case scientific.
My skepticism relates to strict parameters that relate to the original definition of climate change: global warming caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 etc.
But thermometers are in real atmosphere and among the gases and the 5 most important gases in the real atmosphere in order of importance are nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, argon, carbon dioxide.
In my observations, not peer reviewed as I am a retired trades person, I notice like most people around the globe, that the temperature at 2pm is usually higher that the 8am temperature. I hold water vapour is guilty on average of about 68% of that rise and around 14% for carbon dioxide.
From the IPCC’s point of view, what is happening in Nature is ignored without explanation and that is why you have sceptics and deniers around the globe who do not subscribe to the crazy agenda
” Non-aqueous greenhouse gases”
I’m still trying to work out what an aqueous gas would look like.
The usual term is non-condensing, not non-aqueous.
I’d like a prediction from the alarmists here. We’ve had some of the hottest months and years of the (recorded, not absolute) historical temperature record. You alarmists must realize the temperature may go down now and given the “hottest year ever”, you may not be able to say that ever again. What is your prediction? Will we exceed “the hottest year ever” in the next five years? Or not?
Yes, unless we have a VEI4 or larger volcanic eruption to cool things down.
At least you had the cojones to answer. ;)
You clearly don’t understand the concept of “The Arrow of Time”. Every ‘record’ will fall to entropy eventually. Highest, longest, shortest, deepest, heaviest. It’s just physics.
https://iep.utm.edu/arrow-of-time/
jim2 wrote:
I’d like a prediction from the alarmists here. We’ve had some of the hottest months and years of the (recorded, not absolute) historical temperature record. You alarmists must realize the temperature may go down now and given the “hottest year ever”, you may not be able to say that ever again.
I started following climate science around 1998. For several years I thought no year’s global temperature could every exceed that El Nino year.
Now, among El Nino seasons, 1997-98 ranks 9th highest.
First is 2023-2024.
Second is 2015-2016.
Third is 2018-2019.
according to NOAA data.
So, yes, there will come a year that is warmer than this ENSO season. Because physics. It’s inevitable. It’s not possible to say when, but El Nino years are on a warming trend, as are La Nina years, as are neutral years.
Kudos for predicting. Me? I’ll just wait and see.
Jim2,
Remember that besides larger amounts of atmospheric CO2 than in previous human history, the present ocean heat content is at record levels. Ocean heat content is less volatile than average surface temperature. With all that thermal inertia, as well as the continued radiative imbalance, it is hard to see why anyone would expect temperatures to fall.
My projection is ~50% probability of reaching a new global record GMST in the next 5 years. That is based on the average period between new maxima since 1980. Of course, it is possible that 2024 will be warmer than 2023 and thus a new maximum within 6 months is also quite possible.
Noted.
authors: When will this appear as a peer reviewed paper in a good journal? Has it been submitted?
Abstract
Absorption of solar radiation by water vapor in the near-UV region is a poorly understood but important issue in atmospheric science. To better understand water vapor near-UV absorption, we constructed a cavity ring-down spectrometer with bandwidth of 5 cm−1 (~0.05 nm) and obtained water vapor absorption cross sections at 1-nm increments in the 290- to 350-nm region. Water vapor displays structured absorption over this range with maximum and minimum cross sections of 8.4 × 10−25 and 1.6 × 10−25 cm2/molecule. Major water vapor absorption bands were observed at 293–295, 307–313, 319, 321–322, and 325 nm, with cross-section values higher than 4.0 × 10−25 cm2/molecule. To obtain further insight into major water vapor absorption bands, we measured water vapor absorption cross sections at 0.05-nm intervals in the 292- to 296-nm, 306- to 314-nm, and 317- to 326-nm region. Field UV residual spectra not only exhibited increased attenuation at higher atmospheric water vapor loadings but also showed structures suggested by the laboratory water vapor absorption spectrum. Spaceborne UV radiance spectra have spectral structures resembling the differential cross-section spectrum constructed from the laboratory wavelength-dependent water vapor absorption cross sections presented here. Incorporating water vapor absorption cross-section data into a radiative transfer model yielded an estimated energy budget of 0.26 W/m2 for the standard U.S. atmosphere and 0.76 W/m2 for the tropics. This shows that water vapor near-UV absorption is an important contributor for climate simulation and ozone retrievals.https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019JD030724
So it is possible that the temperature of water vapor over the ocean in the tropics increases when ozone production decreases. So it is not surprising that El Niño can persist during periods of low solar activity.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2023.png
Influenced by depleted ozone within the Ozone Hole, surface UV-B radiation amounts can reach levels found only in the tropics.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/polar/gif_files/uv_dosage_world_est.gif
Let’s see, the subsurface wave can’t develop to La Niña. The surface temperature remains neutral.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/oceanography/wrap_ocean_analysis.pl?id=IDYOC007&year=2024&month=08
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JAS_EQ_2024.png
The care and maintenance of a hoaxes and scare tactics- “We have a situation where everything is presented out of context in space and time. Natural events are identified or presented as unnatural. Normal events are identified or presented as abnormal. Speculation about more unnatural or abnormal events is self-fulfilling.” (anon)
The Stefan-Boltzmann emission law doesn’t apply to terrestrial temperatures.
Earth’s surface doesn’t emit at 288K.
The 288K is the Earth’s mean surface temperature. It is not some blackbody’s uniform surface emitting temperature.
Earth’s mean surface temperature 288K is not from an inner heat source.
The 288K is a result of incident solar EM energy interaction process with planet’s matter.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos, I think Thomas Allmendinger has done an interesting empirical analysis of thermal effects from EM radiation upon atmospheric gases. It deserves more attention and consideration.
His 2023 paper is
https://www.scirp.org/pdf/acs_2023071115264658.pdf
My synopsis is
https://rclutz.com/2024/08/04/experimental-proof-nil-warming-from-ghgs/
Thank you, Ron.
“5. The Altitude-Paradox of the Atmospheric Temperature
The statement that it’s colder in the mountains than in the lowlands is trivial. Not trivial is the attempt to explain this phenomenon since the reason is not readily evident. The usual explanation is given by the fact that rising air cools down since it expands due to the decreasing air-pressure. However, this cannot be true in the case of plateaus, far away from hillsides which engender ascending air streams. It appears virtually paradoxical in view of the fact that the intensity of the sun irradiation is much greater in the mountains than in the lowlands, in particular with respect to its UV-amount. Thereby, the intensity decrease is due to the scattering and the absorption of sunlight within the atmosphere, not only within the IR-range but also in the whole remaining spectral area. If such an absorption, named Raleigh-scattering, didn’t occur, the sky would not be blue but black.”
(emphasis added)
Thermometers do not measure air temperature. Thermometers measure the temperature they are at. A thermometer in the airless chamber will measure some temperature.
A mountain receives an amount of solar EM energy according to its “footprint” on Earth’s surface. But a mountain’s receiving and emitting area is much larger, because of the mountain’s pyramidal shape.
The lower mountains do not have snow and glaciers, in spite their pyramidal shape.
But the lower mountains, they get EM energy irradiation from the surrounding them plain areas’ solar energy reflection.
The higher mountains do not receive on their upper hight’s any solar EM energy reflection, because of the Earth’s spherical curvatur. The reflection from the plain areas sorrounding the larger mountains does not reach the mountain’s upper hights.
That is why the higher mountains are covered with snow and glaciers even in the Earth’s Equatorial areas.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Also,
“Subsequently, intensive research activities emerged, accompanied by a flood of publications, and culminating in several text books. Several climate models were presented with different scenarios and diverging long-term forecasts. Thereby, the fact was disregarded that indeed no global climate exists but solely a plurality of climates, or rather of micro-climates and at best of climate-zones, and that the Latin word “clima” (as well as the English word “clime”) means “region”. Moreover, an average global temperature is not really defined and thus not measurable because the temperature-differences are immense, for instance with regard to the geographic latitude, the altitude, the distinct conditions over sea and over land, and not least between the seasons and between day and night. Moreover, the term “climate” implicates rain and snow as well as winds and storms which, in the long-term, are not foreseeable. In particular, it should be realized that atmospheric processes are energetically determined, whereto the temperature contributes only a part.”(emphasis added)
–
The average global temperature 288 K is a satellite measured temperature.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Global warming alarmists worry about humanity’s daily contribution of 70 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere but as Roy Spencer observed, nature provides 24,000 times that amount of water vapor everyday.
The analogy is- ‘… my car is not running that well, so I’m going to ignore the engine (which is the sun) and I’m going to ignore the transmission (which is the water vapor) and I’m going to look at one nut on the right rear wheel (which is the human-produced CO2) … the science is that bad!’ ~Dr. Tim Ball
The Left’s fixation on humanity’s CO2 is, ‘the ghost in the machine.
‘Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere does not increase the amount of IR radiation from the surface, nor does it increase the total amount of IR absorbed by the atmosphere since this was already virtually all absorbed within about a dozen metres of the surface even at preindustrial levels of CO2. What more CO2 does do is absorb the back radiated IR even closer to the surface. However, the thin layer near the surface which is being warmed is constantly being mixed into a vastly greater volume of the atmosphere by convection and wind turbulence. Wind and convection also carry large amounts of thermal energy away from the surface by evaporation and release it through condensation at high altitudes, where it can radiate away into space. Since increased CO2 does not increase the total amount of energy being absorbed and cannot “trap” it in a physically confined space as does an actual greenhouse, the “greenhouse effect” of more CO2 is highly ineffectual.’ ~Walter Starck
Walter Starck is from the Heartland Institute. They are paid to deny climate change and are known liars. They have zero credibility.
“Global warming alarmists worry about humanity’s daily contribution of 70 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere but as Roy Spencer observed, nature provides 24,000 times that amount of water vapor everyday.”
So why isn’t the water vapor content of the atmosphere strongly increasing?
How long does the water vapor stay in the atmosphere? How much leaves the atmo every day.
More dumbness.
In this context, how much of a material is irrelevant. What is relevant is the amount of upwelling LWIR absorbed by the given species: H2O(g) absorbs, on average, only about 10 times as much as CO2. Even if you don’t know this, Dr. Spencer should know it. Therefore, I take his comparison of an irrelevant parameter as disingenuous.
Dr. Spencer recognizes global warming alarmists have a screw loose. ‘The assumptions underlying the use of radiative forcing in climate models are shown to be invalid. A null hypothesis for CO2 is proposed that it is impossible to show that changes in CO2 concentration have caused any climate change, at least since the current composition of the atmosphere was set by ocean photosynthesis about one billion years ago.: Dr. Roy Clark
Wags, In other words, you can’t discuss the science, just deny it. Thanks for your thoughts anyway.
“…it should be recognized that the basis for a climate that is highly sensitive to added greenhouse gasses is solely the computer models. The relation of this sensitivity to catastrophe, moreover, does not even emerge from the models, but rather from the fervid imagination of climate activists.” ~Richard Lindzen (at EIKE)
“Lindzen has given estimates of the Earth’s climate sensitivity to be 0.5 °C based on ERBE data.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen#Climate_sensitivity)
So Lindzen is already wrong, and by a large amount. He is a sad example of a scientist who proposes interesting ideas but is always wrong.
“It’s okay to be wrong, and [Lindzen] is a smart person, but most people don’t really understand that one way of using your intelligence is to spin ever more clever ways of deceiving yourself, ever more clever ways of being wrong. And that’s okay because if you are wrong in an interesting way that advances the science, I think it’s great to be wrong, and he has made a career of being wrong in interesting ways about climate science.”
– Raymond Pierrehumbert, http://rabett.blogspot.com/2013/09/established-science.html
We know glaciers come and go–sometimes obliterating everything–and, more than that: we know it is nature’s way: there is nothing humanity can do to cause or prevent it. That is the science; and, only superstition prevents us from seeing this natural process at work, without our help and irrespective of our concerns about it. The Sun is both the first and terminal reality and any variation in it that effects this world is merely a qualitative change in it but not the reality of it: it is the Sun, stupid.
Academia’s role in making humanity a central player in the future of climate change is mere sophistry.
What bull. Humans are warming the lower atmosphere by emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases. That causes glaciers to melt. Lookup the data. Denying basic science is just dumb.
The cult of global warming alarmism. Western science authoritarians have been deceiving the people for years.
But what about opinions that are outside those of dead and dying Old Europe and America’s government-education complex? The boffins of Japan, for example, compared climatology pseudoscience to the ancient science of astrology.
The shift in public opinion against the AGW weather underground, and all of the facilitators of AGW pseudo‐science in Western academia, parallels the change in the global culture and technology of information distribution and consumption. What we see is that you cannot license the truth.
It has always been just a matter of time. And the time has come: Global warming is nothing but a hoax and a scare tactic as everyone who has the slightest desire to become aware now understands.
“It has always been just a matter of time. And the time has come…”
REPENT!! Before it’s too late…
Trust Pat Cassen to summarize best… my attempt at corrective summary is that global warming is real and a real threat to our future prosperity, but is not a planet buster and has been exaggerated by NGOs and a small handful of scientists. Some glaciers are melting. Some are growing. Some are staying the same. Much like it has always been. The sun is the major driver of many components of earth’s climate systems. It has also been constant enough to not be seriously considered as a major source of recent changes.
Thomas, the sun has not been as constant as many believe. TSI can only be reliably measured from space-based sensors, leaving us without reliable earth-based proxies for TSI. And then there’s the problem with space-based sensors which generally don’t survive more than one solar cycle and also tend to degrade over time, so we’re left with consensus-driven composites and “calibrations” which, as one might expect in today’s political climate, tend to minimize estimated changes in TSI. These composites are then used, in part, to calibrate TSI reconstructions from solar-activity proxies, which leads to wide variability in the reconstructions. In short, we really don’t know how TSI has changed.
Another significant problem is that people ignore earth’s integration of solar activity, supplied primarily by the tremendous heat capacity of earth’s oceans. I’ve found that the time-constant of earth’s response is at least 100 years, which makes the small variations over a single 11-year cycle insignificant in terms of temperature. Earth’s time constant is usually ignored in simple energy balance equations, or is assumed to be significantly shorter in time when it is considered. This is one of the larger sources of error in estimating the sun’s impact on global temperature.
If indeed the amount of ozone in the stratosphere is decreasing, the role of water vapor and clouds is increasing, as they can absorb high-energy UVB radiation, which strongly heats solid surfaces. We can feel this on ourselves.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2024.png
Meanwhile, autumn in the northern hemisphere is already imminent. In summer, the temperature will not rise at the pole due to the Earth’s orbital position.
https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
In fact, the thin troposphere protects us from being burned by the sun in summer and freezing in winter.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_JAS_NH_2024.png
How does the roof work? A hurricane, for example, carries water vapor into the tropopause, where cloud tops radiate at about -80 C. You can see that the temperature in a hurricane decreases with height throughout the column and reaches its lowest value consistently at 100 hPa. Another example is the oceans in the tropics. When the surface temperature approaches 30 C, high convection is immediately triggered and the surface temperature of the open ocean never reaches 31 C. Is this by any chance the influence of the density of the atmosphere?
The question is: by how much does the percentage of CO2 produced by humans affect the density of the troposphere?
Wrong question
Free Read from my NYT account: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/11/climate/earth-warming-climate-tipping-points.html?unlocked_article_code=1.CU4.QLGe.MzjgVe1FL8cK&smid=url-share
Nothing new here. Same ole alarmism.
How many times has a ‘tipping point’ come and gone at which time the climate was predicted by the cult of global warming alarmism to be out of our control? How many times has America had just 10 years left since the ’90s and, of course, nothing happened.
We all must ask, has America been ambushed by academia? They killed the scientific method and with its death we must question everything as we all stray through an infinite nothing. Now more than ever, skeptics can never take a holiday again! Has global warming corruption reached a tipping point? The Left did more than take over the education system. It also set its sights on a takeover of the country too, using the ‘Tobacco-Model’ of Taxation which is nothing short of a takeover of the pricing, production and distribution of all goods and services in the U.S.
For those of us who are driven by the quaint notion that only an objective search for truth, wherever the facts may lead, can ever provide any real value, can we arrive at ‘true’ facts not convenient facts. Those who are so driven are the skeptics of a the coming Hot World Doomsday science of believers of the new AGW religion.
According to the new study by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago, patients who died because of cold temperatures were responsible for 94% of temperature-related deaths, even though hypothermia was responsible for only 27% of temperature-related hospital visits.
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cold-weather-accounts-temperature-related-deaths.html
In spite of the facts, some want to give names to heatwaves. If they want to name something, they need to name cold “waves”. Naming heat waves is just one more way to spread FUD and spin the warming trend.
As academics and governments debate the most effective tactics, calls are growing to mobilize around one: giving heat waves names. Very preliminary results suggest there might be benefits.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-12/should-heat-waves-have-names-meteorologists-are-unconvinced
If the cold don’t kill em’ then the carbon monoxide poisoning will.
Myocardial infarction increases as temperatures drop.
Poor Charlie’s Almanac says “invert, always invert”. Computers are telling us what burning fossil fuel will do to climate decades in the future. What did fossilizing CO2, H2O, and solar energy for millions of years do to the climate? The past is a fact not a prediction.
What explains the left’s anti-America Max great to warming alarmism? It’s their antipathy toward the idea of individual exceptionalism. The Left believes everything has been said; that every good idea has been had and patented. Every flavor has been tasted. Every song written, played and sung. There’s nothing new to be thought.
Stronger solar winds in recent weeks and
the end of SSW in the south.
https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/pole10_sh.gif
Addressing Energy Needs: U.S. Power Grid from my WSJ subscription: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/wsj-explains/the-us-power-grid-is-failing-here-are-three-ways-to-fix-it/DEF647B7-5568-41E7-93F2-39A2C224E8EF
Isn’t it time we cut back on paying government just for the privilege to eat? At a NV rally Trump put out a no tax on tips campaign pledge and apparently it was so popular, it was copied by Kamala (without attribution), so… why not carry on- HOW ABOUT NO TAX ON FOOD?
“HOW ABOUT NO TAX ON FOOD?”
What a great idea. How come nobody thought of that?
https://zamp.com/resources/sales-tax-on-groceries/
Prices for groceries have skyrocketed, creating significant inflation for the consumer. Kamala is going to eliminate the cause, price gouging. Solved?
The problem for Kamala is she has no clue what drives inflation.
Grocery stores are merely passing along their costs.
Grocery stores make less than 3% profit, so how are they gouging?
One needs to go all the way back to the farmer, they’re gouging? No, farmers make meager profits.
Costs to operate a farm have risen significantly. Input costs, fuel costs, transportation costs.
Who’s Kamala going to target for gouging?
The cause for inflation is the US government flooding the market with capital. There’s only one logical target for inflation, gouging, the US government.
Inflation dilutes the maintenance of debt. As the Iargest debtor the US government is being crushed by mounting debt. Creating inflation helps, it transfers capital from the consumer to gov. Inflation is a hidden tax on the consumer, inflation is a friend to debtors. It’s just another tax scheme to service debt.
But as a collectivist, Kamala wants to increase goverment spending, not target the US gov for gouging the public.
The culpable party for inflation is the US gov.
Kamala wants more inflation, not less; it’s a hidden tax on the consumer. She strategically blames the private sector for the gouging that gov has created. Precious. Another big manipulative Leftist lie.
In the last few years Kroger food stores managed to spend a billion dollars on stock buyback programs with that tiny profit margin. One might wonder if there is a correlation between record high stock prices and profit margins? Please note that almost all of that money flows to the biggest shareholders and is not taxed as income. Most of that wealth will accrue to the oligarchs’ estates, never to be taxed at all. It is what it is.
To claim there is not price fixing, shrinkflation and inflated costs is to deny America’s financial genius it’s proper respect!
Jack – A multitude of corrections to your post –
” Please note that almost all of that money flows to the biggest shareholders and is not taxed as income. ”
– correction – any funds flowing to the shareholder as dividends will be taxed as income. any funds flowing to the shareholder for the sale and/or redemption of stock will be taxed as capital gains on the net gain. The corporation will not get a tax deduction for the funds flowing the the shareholder in the form of dividends or redemption of stock, thus such income is subject to double taxation.
There is no provision in the US tax code , subchapter C, (US title 26) that provides for an exemption from taxation for funds distributed to the shareholder in his capacity as a shareholder. Except in the case of complete redemptions for amounts less than the shareholders basis in the stock.
“Most of that wealth will accrue to the oligarchs’ estates, never to be taxed at all. ”
That statement is also false. A) a significant portion of the growth in value of the stock is due to the income retained in the corporation which will be subject to the corporate income tax. Secondly, estates in excess of $6m ($6m once the provisions of the 2017 tax act expire, ) will be subject to an estate tax at 40%.
Thank you Dallas CPA, I stand corrected. I conflated taxing income (what the vast majority of the working population pay) with capital gains. Capital gains and their tax advantages were not designed to provide for an equitable tax system but it’s legal.
Let me correct you again.
Properly understood, The lower capital gains rate is designed to provide a more equitable tax policy, not to create a less equitable tax policy.
There is a gross misunderstanding on the sound tax policy reason for capital gains enjoying a lower tax rate than ordinary income. One of the primary reasons for the lower rate is a significant portion of the taxable gain is not economic gain since it price level adjustment due to inflation. During high inflationary times such as the 1970’s and 1980’s , there would often be an actual economic loss while being subject to positive taxation on that loss. The lower rate puts the effective tax rate closer to being on par with the ordinary income tax rates. Albeit imperfect,
Somewhat similar with the lower capital gains rate on qualified dividends. The income has already been taxed at the corporate level and the subsequent distribution to the shareholder is taxed a second time.
I’m looking forward to these kinds of conversations in the next several weeks up to the election. I’m particularly interested in the opportunities to fabricate some arguments for the “let’s shift the blame for inflation from the monetary and fiscal policies over to the grocers and away from the politicians” cha cha cha dance.
How many will be using the gross profits of corporations rather than the net profits. In some cases, the difference represents big numbers. As Jungletrunks noted, under 3% for net profits of certain big brands. How many politicians will be fact checked after they use, for some corporations, the much larger gross profit margins.
I expect that during this campaign they will get around to discussing the need for the rich to pay their fair share. I doubt very many in the electorate know the top 1% of income earners pay 46% of individual income tax revenue and the bottom 50% of income earners pay only 2.6% of individual income tax revenue. Both numbers from the latest IRS report.
Based on the rhetoric from one side, it appears capitalism is going to be tested with ideas that have not been popular since Nikita tried to visit Disneyland.
Well, I was wrong. I was expecting that some economic illiterate schmuck on the left would use gross margins to attack a grocer. It was of all people a well known hostess on a financial network. She used the 20% gross margin instead of the more appropriate 1% net margin figure. But then, why worry about details when making a political point.
Quote of the week is that, ‘Kamala is trying to distance herself from Kamala,’ but… the distance is no greater than the distances between, e.g., Castro, Chavez, Maduro, Mao… the dead and dying Economies…
Wagathon is as knowlegeable on tax code as he is on climate science.
…people don’t understand that tax on a restaurant bill is a tax on food? Perhaps explains why they continue to vote the way they do, e.g., the Democommies have 47% of the vote, no matter wh(o/at)s running, even if the devil h(im/er)/(it/them)sel(f/ves). And, the tax on the diesel fuel that runs the tractor that tills the field is not a tax on food?
Came across this, and thought some of you might enjoy it.
https://quillette.com/2024/08/15/scaling-the-heights-of-physics-james-bjorken/
Bill,
Thanks for posting. I hadn’t heard of BJ’s passing. I heard him speak at a conference back in the early ‘70’s, and a piece of my PhD thesis was a confirmation of “Bjorken Scaling.” Later I was involved with investigating bottom quark states, which further confirmed the reality of quarks. I am curious what it is about this man and the field of high energy physics that interests you.
Dave …
When you get older, obituaries seem to become part of one’s reading. ;-)
From the piece, I find Bjorken to be an accomplished and honorable man. Those are two qualities we should always celebrate, no matter the field. Particularly since …
“… man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep …”
Measure for Measure,
I.i.33
I haven’t read the Peter Higgs piece (the link is in the article), but I will.
Bill,
I know a couple of accomplished and honorable climate scientists too.
Based on your other posts, I assume your comment on the hubris of one who is “Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d” is meant to be dig at climate scientists. But I see it as an apt description of those amateur skeptics who claim “proof” that the IPCC (or whoever) don’t know what they are talking about, when it is generally obvious that the more strident these skeptics are, the less they know.
I find it interesting that you apparently accept that man can understand the internal structure of protons, but that understanding climate change is beyond us.
Dave … instead of celebrating an honorable man, with whom you apparently had contact, you’d rather speculate on my post as an attack. Jeez Louise.
Bill,
Feel free to clarify why you included that quote from Shakespeare.
Dave … I said Bjorken seemed an honorable man. If everyone were honorable the distinction would be redundant. Who better than Shakespeare to show us our frailties?
Bill – If you will permit an edit,
“Before the times of change… men’s minds mistrust ensuing dangers…”
(Richard III)
Pat … Ah, Third Citizen, Richard III, II, iii, 41-43.
You might have even included Lines 43-45:
… as by proof we see
The water swell before a bois’trous storm.
But leave it all to God.
Yet, I would call your attention to the preceding Lines 38-40:
Second Citizen:
Truly, the hearts of men are full of fear.
You can not reason (almost) with a man
That looks heavily and full of dread.
[I wonder if that last quote was in the back of Swift’s mind when he said: It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. Twain echoed something similar.]
Yes Bill, I guessed you would fill out the quote. “Give me six lines by Shakespeare and I will find six others to confute”.
(I believe Richelieu said that.)
Pat … I’d like to think Shakespeare would take that as a compliment. Like our quotes from Richard III, Shakespeare appreciated the complexity of the human condition. There are no easy answers, and if he wrote that way, we wouldn’t treasure him so much.
Just to be clear, Bill, I made that Richelieu quote up. He said something different. You knew that.
Pat … Clear? Interesting word choice.
No worries. I thought it a funny twist. You’re one of the few warmists on here who has a sense of humor. Even if it is gallows humor. ;-)
Enjoy your evening. Maybe even read a little of the Bard.
Interesting (and educational)
Bill “Pat … Ah, Third Citizen, Richard III, II, iii, 41-43.
You might have even included Lines 43-45:
… as by proof we see
The water swell before a bois’trous storm.
But leave it all to God.”
But if you are doing ‘climate change’ and possibly also ‘tipping points’ look up also the Talmud:
“Rabbi Yehoshua says: That day was the seventeenth of Iyyar, the second month of the year counting from Nisan, which is the day that the constellation of Kima sets during the day and the season that the springs diminish with the increased heat. But because the people of the generation of the flood changed their actions for the worse, the Holy One, Blessed be He, changed for them the acts of Creation, and instead of Kima setting, He caused the constellation of Kima to rise during the day and He removed two stars from Kima, and in this way He brought a flood to the world.”
Kima is the Pleiades. But unravel that with mathematics not prose.
ps. the 17th of Iyyar is equivalent to 2346bce (8th May to be precise).
MM …
Horatio: (speaking of Hamlet’s father’s ghost)
O day and night, but this is wondrous
strange!
Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet: I, v, Lines 163-167.
[Okay, I’ll stop.]
Any one have a chance to review this study.
I make no comment on the validity either pro or con, Just looking for credible and objective insight – without the partisan/agenda driven commentary
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-temperature-reconstructions-common-era-affected.html
Joe, I don’t trust tree-ring data as a temperature proxy. There are too many other local factors which affect growth: moisture, sunlight, disease, parasites, soil, location. For example, was an included tree shadowed at some point by another tree. Because there are so many other factors, the tree-ring proxy will naturally show lower variability when averaged across many trees. Also, as shown in the study, tree data is almost entirely from the northern hemisphere.
Now, if I wanted to make a hockey-stick plot, I’d use as much tree-ring data as possible.
My 2c worth (if you please. it is legal tender)
Years ago I started on a project as a diversion for the mind from looming retirement. It was way off the above subject, or my profession, but ended there just the same.
I needed support for evidence of my findings. Tree-rings was a first; a firm appearing date was 2345bce. I gathered from my source that it was still early days to any certainty.
It is very certain today. Counting from today it was 2346bce (counting from an earlier time it was 2347bce; there is a gap). I found a lot more on that date, that I can now point to the year, the month, the day, and to some extent even the hour. Data on the event is all over the ancient texts (they were cultic more than mathematical).
Tree rings have a lot of accurate data but there is need to sift and correlate carefully. There are plenty of other proxies that correlate. When more that four correlate, it is not by chance but its the devil at work. The devil is in the detail.
Looking back at the most extreme months of heat in the second half of 2023 and early 2024 when the previous records were beaten at times by more than 0.2C, an enormous anomaly, he said scientists were still baffled: “We don’t have a quantitative explanation for even half of it. That is pretty humbling.”
He added: “We should have better answers by now. Climate modelling as an enterprise is not set out to be super reactive. It is a slow, long process in which people around the world are volunteering their time. We haven’t got our act together on this question yet.”
This means climate scientists don’t actually understand how the climate works. The didn’t see this larger temperature anomoly coming. The proof is in the pudding (predictions) and while they might have lots of mays and mights, they don’t display any proofs.
Speaking for Democommies, Kamala Harris desire to fix prices as well as they’ve been fixing the climate, with the help of a politically-motivated Leftist Western academia, fails the test of reality. The price of a liter of milk in France is €1.54 or $1.67 whereas a liter of milk in the US is 67¢ to $1.20.
Even AI gets it right that global warming alarmism is not a scientific reality. It’s an institutional failure… e.g.,
AI Overview
Some say that global warming alarmism is not a scientific reality because there is no evidence that increased global temperatures will lead to the catastrophes predicted by alarmists. In fact, some say that increases in global temperatures may have a beneficial effect on how people live their lives. Others say that there is no scientific consensus that man-made catastrophic global warming is happening.
Here are some arguments against global warming alarmism:
No evidence of a climate crisis
According to the American Enterprise Institute, there is no evidence that a climate “crisis” looms in the future. Science shows that the earth’s warming over the last century is not dangerous in itself or catastrophic in its pace.
No detectable human impact on hurricanes
According to Dr. Koonin, there is no detectable human impact on hurricanes.
Wildfire activity has declined
According to Dr. Koonin, wildfire activity has declined since 2003, despite the recent high-profile fires in California and Australia.
Economic impact is negligible
According to Dr. Koonin, the economic impact of climate change is negligible.
Some say that there are fundamental uncertainties that arise from insufficient observational evidence, disagreements over how to interpret data, and how to set the parameters of models.
Can anyone explain how global and sea-surface temperature records can only have significant differences prior to 1900?
Most of you have seen my model which predicts global temperature from sunspot data. I’d always assumed that sunspot data accuracy prior to 1800 was the primary reason the prediction failed prior to 1900. Here’s the model shown against NOAA records. HadCRUT5 is very similar.
https://localartist.org/media/NOAASunspotOnlyModel.png
After noticing that sea surface temperature reconstructions showed elevated temperatures prior to 1900, I’ve computed the average SST temperature using NOAA’s ERSSTv4 dataset (psl.noaa.gov/)
Here’s the exact same model compared to SST.
https://localartist.org/media/SSTTempPrediction.png
Can anyone explain why the two temperature records diverge prior to 1900?
One cannot model sea surface temperatures from before 1970s in a meaningful way, up until satellites started to be calibrated from spot earth readings.
Before that time the measurement error bandwidth over the oceans was around 1.6 degree C. They were measured only in concentrated zones and pathways. Averaging geographically spread out measurements full of error and spread over time does not reduce the error.
Thanks, Dietrich, but if we can’t model SST before the 1970s, then we probably shouldn’t claim any accuracy on global temperatures before 1970 as well as most of the planet is covered in water.
Here’s a direct comparison of NOAA’s global temperature and globally averaged SST. The top plot uses two different y-axis scales, the bottom plot shows the SST plotted in the form of anomalies using a single y-axis scale.
https://localartist.org/media/ComparingNOAAGlobalAndSST.png
Does anyone else have an opinion on this comparison?
Yes, Robert no accurate readings on land, either. Even having much higher resolution instrumentation, it has been documented on a Watts Up with that posting – over 90% of all US weather stations are compromised with hot surrounds. The accuracy is anyone’s guess. As to the rest of the world, I suspect that pattern is not much different.
nice
As Michal replied I am amazed that a student can earn 100$ per hour would you see this websites……
As Michal replied I am amazed that a student can earn 100$ per hour would you see this websites…… shorturl.at/HsSr7
an AI Overview-
…global warming alarmism not a scientific reality- no evidence increased global temperatures will lead to the catastrophes predicted by alarmists. Some say that increases in global temperatures may have a beneficial effect on how people live and that there is no scientific consensus that man-made catastrophic global warming is happening.
Arguments against global warming alarmism is that there is no evidence a climate “crisis” looms- science shows earth’s warming over the last century is not dangerous in itself or catastrophic in its pace, e.g., according to Dr. Koonin, there is no detectable human impact on hurricanes and wildfire activity declined despite the recent high-profile fires in California and Australia.
Moreover, the economic impact of climate change is negligible and in any event, there are fundamental uncertainties, e.g., insufficient observational evidence, disagreements over how to interpret data, and how the parameters of models shall be set.
If I understand correctly, CA is touting it’s emission-free ZIMU locomotive that runs on a hydrogen fuel cell to power the train so, is emission-free. However a conventional combustion-based power plant typically generates enough hydrogen for a hydrogen fuel cell. Obviously, if CA hates diesel engines, they must build build atomic power plants. But, they can’t be honest about that and have to talk about hydrogen fuel cells you believe he
You can see how ozone production over the equator is responding to the recent increase in solar activity.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JAS_EQ_2024.png
The southern polar vortex continues to be weakened.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_HGT_ANOM_JAS_SH_2024.png
Ozone SH anomalies.
https://i.ibb.co/QmDmrwx/current.gif
It can be seen that ozone is accumulating in the region of the Atlantic geomagnetic anomaly.
https://i.ibb.co/3BJxz3G/gfs-t30-sh-f00.png
Please let us see what happens when the Sun gets up.
Just saw this …
Roles of Earth’s Albedo Variations and Top-of-the-Atmosphere Energy Imbalance in Recent Warming: New Insights from Satellite and Surface Observations
– Ned Nikolov and Karl F. Zeller
“Observations and model calculations revealed that EEI results from a quasi-adiabatic attenuation of surface energy fluxes traveling through a field of decreasing air pressure with altitude. In other words, the adiabatic dissipation of thermal kinetic energy in ascending air parcels gives rise to an apparent EEI, which does not represent “heat trapping” by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases as currently assumed. We provide numerical evidence that the observed EEI has been misinterpreted as a source of energy gain by the Earth system on multidecadal time scales.”
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-7418/4/3/17
We await the predictable attacks on the publisher and if real lucky, some attacks on the personal lives of the authors.
Well. They don’t appear to be women. So there’s that.
“Figure 2 depicts monthly TSI anomalies computed from CERES monthly measurements of shortwave insolation. Note that TSI exhibits a nearly zero trend over the past 24 years, and its fluctuations (±0.48 W m−2) represent only a fraction of the observed changes in the absorbed shortwave flux depicted in Figure 1b. According to CERES observations, the Earth’s all-sky albedo has declined by approximately 0.79% since 2000 causing an increase of planetary shortwave radiation absorption of ≈2.7 W m−2. For comparison, the IPCC AR6 estimated a total anthropogenic forcing of 2.72 W m−2 driving climate change from 1750 to 2019.”
Note that with the decrease in ozone production in the upper stratosphere comes an increase in temperature in the lower layers of the atmosphere, and in the troposphere, clouds and water vapor absorb almost all UVB radiation. When the amount of ozone decreases, the Earth’s albedo must decrease.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2022.png
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2023.png
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2024.png
Hey Bill – I took a quick look at that paper. It’s quite a tour de force, as it should be, if it’s to overturn a century or two of atmospheric research.
But they admit:
“It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze in depth the cause for the missing effects of model-generated greenhouse-gas radiative forcing and positive feedbacks on the observed warming for the past 2.4 decades.”
(They should have said “…beyond the scope of this paper to analyze AT ALL…”)
What’s notable is the lack of any radiative analysis whatsoever. Their model seems to be independent any aspect of radiation, the only process that matters at the top of the atmosphere, where the imbalance is explicitly manifested. Sort of like leaving the garlic out of spaghetti aglio e olio.
Pat …
> Sort of like leaving the garlic out of spaghetti aglio e olio.
Are you sure you’re not just trying to add Swedish Meatballs to a perfectly simple dish? ;-)
Albedo/cloud cover seems to be a weakness in many models. They’ve detected a correlation from established sources of data that should provide for some robust debate. I hope that happens.
In response to bill’s and Pat’s comment
An interesting comment I saw a few months back dealing with the higher night time lows which is the time of day where a significant portion of the warming has been occurring. the comment was that the increasing cloud cover was a major reason for the higher night time lows. While the temp measurements over the last 150 or so years are reasonable (with limitations), there is virtually no data available to measure the changes in cloud cover over the last 150 years. Thus rendering any understanding of the cloud cover effect over the last 150years purely speculative.
Does anyone have any data / insight/ studies that address this issue.
Joe,
There is data for only about the last 40 years, but that is where a good fraction of the temperature increase has occurred, so still useful.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2022/04/16/where-have-all-the-clouds-gone-and-why-care-global-cloud-cover-decline-over-past-40-years
They find about 1.4% decrease in cloud cover per decade. There is more capacity for the atmosphere to hold water vapor, but the ability to generate it does not keep up, particularly over land masses.
From the Climate Depot link by ganon
“ We now have a new theory: cloud reduction global warming, CRGW: Man’s changes to land use causes the production of low relative humidity hot air rising to where clouds could be prevented (or destroyed) thus reducing the albedo of the earth
In other words: man’s growing changes to land use (rain forest to farm land, and city area expansion) have reduced the cloud producing moisture that used to naturally rise from the virgin land.”
I can’t argue against some impact from land use changes has some effect on climate.
Jo Nova asks a good question. If corals (and other proxies) were good thermometers long ago, why don’t they work for the present? Did they suddenly become not a good thermometer? If they are a good thermometer, then there is no justification for pasting the instrumental record at the end of the temperature reconstruction.
Can’t post the Nova URL here as the comment will be black holed, but joannenova DOT com DOT au is the addy.
I believe that changes in solar activity affect the climate mainly through changes in ozone production in the upper stratosphere. The ozone zone is very sensitive to changes in shortwave radiation. If these changes persist for many years, drastic climate changes occur. For example, an increase in UVB radiation in the troposphere heats up water vapor and thus impedes cloud formation.
The distribution of ozone in high latitudes in winter affects the pattern and strength of the stratospheric polar vortex, which can lead to an influx of Arctic air in middle latitudes.
In summer, stronger UVB radiation will warm land surfaces more strongly.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
In the troposphere, strong blocking is seen in the Pacific, which means an influx of cold air into South America.
https://i.ibb.co/q0N6pSD/500gz-anomalies-sh.png
Due to the weakening geomagnetic field over South and North America, similar anomalies may occur in winter in the northern hemisphere. Warmer winters are not expected in North America.
Does anyone believe Kamala will mention global warming even once at tonight’s coronation? However, if elected, Hot World Armageddon is a existential threat that is just around the corner, requiring a takeover of the entire American economy to save the world from imminent meltdown.
No, they won’t mention global warming because they know the alleged “solutions” cost trillions of dollars and even now are adding to inflation. They don’t want anyone to think about all the “green” related regulations for cars, houses, electricity, and appliances that are sucking up our money that we could be using for things we need and want. There are people in this country who can’t pay their mortgage or rent, so of course they won’t mention “climate change” and the exorbitant “solutions”. Even on this blog, the left-leaners have stopped posting because it just calls attention to the left’s spending binge on “climate change”.
JIM2:
One of the pillars of the Democratic Administration is their miss-named “Inflation Reduction Act”, where they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Green Energy and other initiatives to limit the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere.
However, it can be proven that global warming due to rising CO2 levels is a HOAX! Consider the following:
Because of Acid Rain and health concerns, “Clean Air” legislation was passed in the US and Europe in the 1970’s to reduce the amount of Industrial SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere.
According to the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS), of the Northwest National Laboratories , the amount of this pollution peaked at 139.4 million tons in 1980, and due to “Clean Air” and “Net-Zero” activities, by 2022 it had fallen to 73.5 million tons, a decrease of 66 million tons.
As the level of pollution decreased over the intervening years, the cleansing of the atmosphere resulted in an increase in the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface, and warming naturally occurred.
However, the INEVITABLE warming due to decreased levels of atmospheric aerosol pollution has been wrongly attributed to rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and because of the wrong attribution, there is no basis for CO2 to ever have caused any global warming. It is greening our planet, but it has NO climatic effect.
The undeniable warming from the decrease of millions of tons of SO2 aerosol pollution completely precludes any significant warming from any other source.
Currently, annual industrial SO2 aerosol emissions are about 70 million tons, and any efforts to decrease them, as through the “Inflation Reduction Act”, will contribute to our rising temperatures. The Democratic Party needs to be challenged on this issue!
I believe she mentioned it and called it climate change, not global warming.
Apparently, Kamala claimed it was a fundamental… ‘freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.’ I think the bigger problem is that we all now live in an, Age of Deceit.
Most Carbon Policies Don’t Work — Free Read from my WSJ subscription: https://www.wsj.com/science/environment/climate-change-policies-emissions-ai-research-a02b3f59?st=831bcsndage0ar9&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Stephen … thanks for the link.
> Bertram pointed out the slow transition from coal to natural gas in U.S. power plants that began in 2007 and resulted in a 25% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2022. This transition didn’t result in a sharp reduction in emissions, and therefore wasn’t picked up as a success in the study, he said.
Not only was the time frame longer, but I have to think that a significant part of the transition from coal to NG, in that time frame, was due to market forces. Regulation, incentives and now calling for taxes … market forces just don’t fit into the picture anymore. Adding punitive, direct taxes on ‘carbon offenders’, to the extent this article seems to be advocating, may have disastrous consequences on an already shaky economy.
The daily geopotential height anomalies at 14 pressure levels are shown for the previous 120 days as indicated, and they are normalized by standard deviation using 1979-2000 base period. The anomalies are calculated by subtracting 1979-2000 daily climatology, and then averaged over the polar cap poleward of 65S.
The blue (red) colors represent a strong (weak) polar vortex. The black solid lines show the zero anomalies.
https://i.ibb.co/ckPnKLG/hgt-aao-cdas.png
Another strong planetary wave in the southern polar vortex.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_JAS_SH_2024.png
For the past two years, there has been a reported drop in upper stratospheric temperatures in the tropics, which may indicate a decline in ozone production. The temperature at this level of the atmosphere can only increase due to photolysis of the O2 molecule by UV with a wavelength shorter than 242 nm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone%E2%80%93oxygen_cycle
https://i.ibb.co/DbWkTLd/05mb2525.png
Since the number of air particles in the lower mesosphere and upper stratosphere is very small, it is difficult to explain how the temperature rises in these levels. In my opinion, UVC radiation before hitting an O2 particle is a wave that becomes a photon only when an O2 particle is in its path.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_JAS_EQ_2024.png
Temperature depends on the speed of the air molecules, not the quantity of them. Heat depends on speed and quantity.
Yes, the excess energy that is produced by the Chapman reaction is converted into the kinetic energy of neighboring air particles, both oxygen and nitrogen.
https://apollo.nvu.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter1/vert_temp_therm.html
It seems that the temperature in the upper stratosphere in the tropics should be more constant on an annual basis. However, this is not the case, and this is due to the angle of the Earth’s axis to the plane of orbit.
https://i.ibb.co/DbWkTLd/05mb2525.png