This month’s open thread. We’ve burned out on mitigation topics (again), so please focus on climate science issues this month…
Reader Interactions
278 Responses to "Unforced variations: March 2015"
Rafael Molina Navas, Madridsays
#44# GMcGrew
I posted that Nature link when discussing on a Roy Spencer´s blog, got some typical skeptic replies, and even a link to an article specifically against Feldman, et al study: https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/the-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-that-wasnt/
I think it contains many errors, but my education doesn´t allow me to argue with them properly.
Dave Ericksonsays
I wonder if anyone here can point me to the latest climate modeling that is done on a more regional basis in the US? I believe that Union of Concerned Scientists did this in California a while back, but I wonder if there has been any update?
Also is there any compilation of observed changes on a state by state basis that are attributable to climate change?
This is a BBC production about the math of climate science. Worth a watch
Matthew R Marlersays
44, GMcGrew: I don’t think the paper got much coverage because, in one camp, it is just a confirmation of what we have known for ~100 years and in the other camp, it is a confirmation of what they have been denying for ~30 years.
Maybe. It was reported by WUWT, and then at ClimateEtc. Did Revkin at NYTimes pick up on it?
Another option for preserving the WAIS might be to follow the example of the Netherlands and use dikes to give the ice sheet solid grounding. The Netherlands have about 3500 km of dikes to hold out the sea and they use pumping stations to handle water from precipitation that accumulates behind the dikes. Building a similar arrangement around where the WAIS outlet glaciers are no longer grounded and pumping out the water on which they float could reground the glaciers and avert collapse. As with the Netherlands, the effort would have to be ongoing since melt water would still enter the grounding region and would have to be pumped. As with the Netherlands, wind power would be available to carry out that task.
The length of dikes that would be needed may be less than in the Netherlands and may also be less than the dikes around existing cities around the globe that might otherwise be build when the WAIS collapses.
Fred Magyarsays
GlenFergus @ 47
An Ecologist’s perspective.
Actually I think Dr, Huckauf is really a physical chemist but anyway…
Ecosystem
Thermodynamics
Aiko Huckauf
Increase of Entropy
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
∆S ≥ 0, all natural (i. e. spontaneous) processes
enhance the entropy of the universe.
Hence the universe will eventually degenerate
towards thermodynamic equilibrium where
* all gradients are eliminated,
* all matter is transferred into its most stable
chemical state,
* the entropy has reached its maximum, and
* the system is dead.
The Heat Death of the Universe
Some people find this heat death of the universe
thought so disturbing that they want to forbid the
Second Law:
“I wouldn’t want my child
growing up in a world
headed for total heat death
and dissolution into a
vacuum. No decent parent
would want that.”
Kansas state senator Will Blanchard
freemike @50.
There is a powerpoint of Gassmann & Herzog (2014) paper here. Beyond that and the paper itself (with only the abstract outside a paywall), there appears to be no serious comment on the work. The implications of the thesis presented (for anything let alone AGW) are not very clear from the powerpoint. Indeed the abstract’s statement “Conventional water-vapour fluxes are wrong by up to 10% and exhibit a negative bias.” is no clearer from this powerpoint which (from a quick scan) appears to be talking about lower troposhere before suddenly turning to high stratosphere. Gassmann & Herzog (2014)is not the sort of thesis that can be signed off as correct without quite a bit of familiarisation but this paper is now 8 months old now. With nobody rushing to develop this thesis so as to identify any significant implications, for AGW or for anything else, it is a fair bet that the impact is trivial, all this assuming the thesis presented is not in error.
That leaves the comment from a silly contrarian site which published on the same dy as the paper. That comment is simply pointing at words to reach its conclusion which is an extremely silly way of doing things. Then what do you expect from such a silly site?
jgnfldsays
@51 You could point out that if the refutation has merit, it should be sent to the journal and it will be published. Pielke and some Hadley scientists have been going on for years with comments and countercomments, this way re aspects of thermometer siting and related issues. Anyway, since he refuses to do so, the most likely inference is he knows the journal will not find merit in his supposed “refutation”.
That of course will satisfy no denier, but it just happens to be the right way to question/refute a finding such that other scientists will see it and consider it.
Kevin McKinneysays
“So the studies posted by climate central where they mention the increased rates of warming not seen in 1000 years is this the irreversible climate change tipping point?”
The short answer is, “No.” There probably isn’t any single “irreversible climate change tipping point,” and this paper doesn’t, as far as I can tell, delve specifically into non-linear feedbacks (AKA ‘tipping points.’) I summarized thus:
The idea is that climate or earth systems… could have several possible states that are relatively stable, but which, given the right (or wrong) ‘push’, could rapidly transition into another state. Again, given adaptation to the existing state, that would imply biological and social challenges—and doubly so, given the rapidity of potential transitions.
Possible mechanisms that might ‘flip’ the planet into a warmer climatic state include:
-Boreal forest dieback
-Amazon rainforest dieback
-Loss of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice (Polar ice packs) and melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
-Disruption to Indian and West African monsoon
-Formation of Atlantic deep water near the Arctic ocean, which is a component process of the thermohaline circulation.
-Loss of permafrost, leading to potential Arctic methane release and clathrate gun effect
These mechanism have been identified based on evidence that they may have happened in the past. But there’s little certainty.
jgnfldsays
What’s the latest kerfluffle going around denier sites about all the CIMP models being wrong now with all caps HUGE ERRORS?
wilisays
Victor C. Tsai, Andrew L. Stewart, Andrew F. Thompson. Marine ice-sheet profiles and stability under Coulomb basal conditions. Journal of Glaciology, 2015; 61 (226): 205 DOI: 10.3189/2015JoG14J221 (open access)
(Apologies if this was already posted somewhere.)
From the press release: “…estimates of future rates of melt for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet–and, by extension, of future sea-level rise–have been too conservative.”
57, MA Rodger responding to freemike: There is a powerpoint of Gassmann & Herzog (2014) paper here.
That is a most interesting paper, but hard to tell if there are important implications for climate modeling/forecasting. They say that their development permits a previously impossible implicit scheme for solving the differential equations: anybody know if that is a correct claim? They say that the modeling of water vapor is off by 10%, which is potentially enough to change the predicted surface temperature change in response to a change in forcing.
I mean, given that long before the heat death of the Universe, a) the Sun will die, b) the Earth will die, c) humanity will die, d) our civilization will die, e) our nation will die, f) said child will die, and g) all the rest of us will die, can’t the good Mr. Blanchard find something, er, more immediate to worry about? And did he miss the day in kindergarten where they covered the fact that the truth of a proposition has nothing to do with how palatable it is? (In my life, this was generally expressed as “Life isn’t fair,” often prefaced by “I’ve said it a million times, but…”)
#60–Don’t know, have trouble caring very much. After all, they’re wrong about pretty much everything else.
toby52says
#60 jgnfld
I presume it is this “The Albedo of Earth” which has keyboards clickedy-clicking.
It is also shown how the ability of present-day models of climate in simulating the statistical properties of the energy reflected from Earth varies depending upon the metric used.
Models fail to reproduce the observed annual cycle in all components of the albedo with any realism, although they broadly capture the correct proportions of surface and atmospheric contributions to the TOA albedo. A high model bias of albedo has also persisted since the time of CMIP3, mostly during the boreal summer season.
Perhaps more importantly, models fail to produce the same degree of interannual constraint on the albedo variability nor do they reproduce the same degree of hemispheric symmetry.
The significance of these shortcomings is not yet fully known, but model studies of hypothetical slab-ocean worlds suggest that interhemispheric changes in albedo can grossly affect the climate states of those worlds, shifting the ITCZ [Voigt et al., 2013, 2014; Frierson and Hwang, 2012] and altering the amount of heat moved poleward [e.g., Enterton and Marshall, 2010].
Amazing how poorly they hide this secret stuff, huh? All it took was a single ‘oogle search to find it, and on the first page of results at that.
This “online errata sheet” is an interim website summarizing known problems in the CMIP5 database of climate model output. We plan to eventually replace it with a wiki-like website allowing users and data providers to enter updates. Meanwhile, please email .. to contribute updates and additional problem notifications.
Last update … 13 February 2015.
Killiansays
One quick note on prohibition of mitigation: Change the trees, you change climate. Change the soil, you change climate. Etc. Mitigation acts ARE climate science. Why otherwise intelligent people cannot understand this is unclear.
#4 MartinJB said, I know which one you WANT, which path you think is necessary. You’ve made that abundantly clear. I’m asking which one you think would have a better chance of being realized, ignoring what we want or think needs to happen.
Answered. Would you rather live on Jupiter or Mars? Just as useful to ask. All that matters is living within ecosystem. Period. Nothing else is an option worthy of my time. Or yours. What that means in the transition, and the end, is place-based.
The rest of your post was noise, your assessment of my comments here devoid of accuracy. Note: Learn what “bridge technology” and “appropriate technology” mean, then search all references by me of those two terms on this site.
This is inspired by a recent exchange with one of the popular climate bloggers who doesn’t post my responses when I criticize his articles — who tends to drop a scientist’s name and a sentence about his work, follow it with an illustration from some other blogger, and follow that with an expression of worry about things getting worse faster. (On the other side of the teeter totter are bloggers who do the same thing but lean in the “so, no worries” direction)
That’s done in a way that readers unfamiliar with the scientist’s other public statements will think the whole paragraph is telling them what the scientist said.
I try to be an equal opportunity kibitzer and give online writers hell or at least heck when appropriate regardless of whether I agree with their morals or politics. Often enough I pound on a blogger whose heart is definitely in the right place, in my opinion, when assertions aren’t attributed, cites aren’t provided, sources are conflated with the author’s opinion, and my fact-checking response gets ignored and never shows up in the topic, though I get email replies.
Note: If you think this is about you, it's probably not. You're not the only one who does it. I just had enough of it recently to write about it as an annoyance anyone who checks facts will recognize. We can and should do better than this.
So, I recommend reading a bit on citing sources and giving attribution.
Attribution is the difference between research and plagiarism. Attribution gives stories credibility and perspective. It tells readers how we know what we know. It also slows stories down. Effective use of attribution is a matter both of journalism ethics and of strong writing.
How do you know that? Attribution is a key ingredient in any story’s credibility. Readers are entitled to know where we got our information. If we are citing official statistics gathered by a government agency, that tells the readers something. If we are citing the contentions of an interest group or a political partisan, that tells the readers something else. If we don’t attribute our information, readers rightly wonder how we know that.
When should we attribute? Attribute any time that attribution strengthens the credibility of a story. Attribute any time you are using someone else’s words. Attribute when you are reporting information gathered by other journalists. Attribute when you are not certain of facts. Attribute statements of opinion. When you wonder whether you should attribute, you probably should attribute in some fashion.
When shouldn’t we attribute? You don’t need to attribute every fact in a story. Don’t attribute facts that the reporter observed first-hand: It was a sunny day. Don’t worry about attributing facts where the source is obvious and not particularly important and the fact is not in dispute: If you are writing about a town and you write that its population is 5,500, the Census Bureau is the implied source. However, if you are writing about the Census Bureau’s latest estimates of your community’s population, you cite the bureau because it is central to the story. Or if the town is challenging the census figure, you need to attribute the dueling estimates. If you say that an athlete is 6-foot-3, the reader understands that this comes from a team roster and that you probably didn’t actually measure the athlete’s height. If multiple sources tell you something and it is not in dispute, you can state it as a fact. However, if you are using a source’s choice of words to state an undisputed fact, you should credit that source….
Hat tip to Soylent News, which published this:
___________
A research collaborative has published a paper in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences that mathematically establishes such
a causal link between CR and year-to-year changes in global
temperature, but has found no causal relationship between the CR and
the warming trend of the 20th century.
Lots of cyclonic activity in the near OZ and NZ. Two approaching cat 3 status as they land in the north east (Olwyn, headed toward Perth) and south east (Nathan). The much larger Pam is a cat 4 is well east of these, passing Vanuatu and headed south in the general direction of northern NZ, though predicted at this point to pass to the east of it.
Is it a bit odd historically to have two cyclones hit Australia at the same time?
Isn’t
Jefsays
SecularAnimist – You are correct that solar as well as wind and other “renewables” are technologies and like all other technologies they are 100% reliant on FFs and many other extractive processes.
Never in the history of life on the planet has life evolved to thrive on a lower quality, more complex, and more expensive energy source. Not saying we can’t evolve, it’s just not going to be anything like the world as we know it.
K 69: One quick note on prohibition of mitigation: Change the trees, you change climate. Change the soil, you change climate. Etc. Mitigation acts ARE climate science. Why otherwise intelligent people cannot understand this is unclear.
Winston Churchill: A fanatic is someone who will not change his mind, and will not change the subject.
“The idea has always been that the critters record the temperature right above where they are found on the ocean floor,” says Erik van Sebille, lead author of the study and a climate scientist at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and Imperial College London. “However, these critters are so small that they are at the mercy of the currents. They could easily have drifted for thousands of kilometers during their life span.”
Studying climate conditions in the past is essential to understand the global climate system and to predict future climate conditions. Foraminifera live close to the ocean’s surface, where they “record” the water temperature, and as they die they settle to the ocean’s floor. Scientists extract sediment cores to analyze the shell, which are similar to tree rings but on time scales of millions of years.
###
The study, titled “Ocean currents generate large footprints in marine palaeoclimate proxies” was published in the March 4 issue of the journal Nature Communications. The papers authors include: Paris, Erik van Sebille and Chris Turney from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and Imperial College London; Paolo Scussolini and Frank Peeters from VU University Amsterdam; Jonathan V. Durgadoo and Arne Biastoch from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany; Wilbert Weijer from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; and Rainer Zahn from Institucio´ Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) in Spain.
Using NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data for surface temperatures north of 80degN, a plateau seems to have formed in Arctic temperatures over winter since 2005. No year since that date has dropped below 4degC above the 1951 to 1980 average. https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8616/16609128468_b15c8573af_o.png
(#65) toby52, and others- Maybe I can provide insight on albedo implications on tropical rainfall.
In the modern climate, a seasonal cycle exists in global-mean temperatures on the order of ~3K (since the Southern Hemisphere response to the seasonal cycle in insolation is muted relative to the NH). In the annual-mean, the Northern Hemisphere is slightly warmer than the Southern Hemisphere, even though the SH actually receives slightly more net TOA radiation (for one thing, the Sahara desert is a good reflector of solar radiation and is sufficiently dry as to let lots of longwave radiation to space). Clouds and orography also contribute to this annual-mean hemispheric asymmetry. The NH can be warmer in the annual-mean, however, because oceans transport heat from the Southern to Northern Hemisphere.
Tropical rainfall listens to this hemispheric asymmetry, even if the asymmetry owes its existence to extratropical forcing (think e.g., aerosols in the mid-latitudes or Arctic sea ice changes). In general, the ITCZ migrates toward the hemisphere with more energy input. We see this exhibited in models of varying complexity and borne out in numerous paleoclimate examples, and we think we have at least a partially developed theory for why this happens.
It does follow from this however that any issues in model albedo, even “tough” ones like the presence and optical properties of clouds in the high latitudes, will project onto tropical rainfall location. Yen-Ting Hwang and Dargan Frierson (among others) for example have made some contact between the physics described above with the so-called “double ITCZ” problem in models (and more generally that models often put too much rainfall in the Southern Hemisphere tropics).
That’s still an issue. Whether it matters much depends on the question you’re asking of the model. ITCZ shifts in response to some asymmetric anomaly in the radiative budget, for instance, still occur even if the ITCZ mean position is not correct.
Gavin says “If the argument being made that models cannot possibly be skilful because of some supposed violation…”. The argument is not if the models are skilful, but if they are correct.
[Response: Not at all. All models – in whatever domain – are wrong since they can never capture the full complexity of the real world, so the issue is *always* whether, despite their imperfections, they are nonetheless useful. If you’d like to dispute this, please give an example of a perfect model of a real world phenomena. – gavin]
The sudden intensification of Marcia, which was a category one on Thursday afternoon before rapidly increasing to a five early Friday, was also unusual, the weather bureau’s assistant director of hazard prediction Alasdair Hainsworth told AFP.
“It is unusual that it developed at such a fast rate,” he said. “We were anticipating that it could develop quickly, but it’s fair to say the rate of intensification was unusual.”
Hainsworth said the quick build-up was due to the cyclone being in a “very favourable area of the atmosphere for development”, with “very conducive” upper atmosphere conditions to gain power.
“It had very warm sea surface temperatures sitting over the top of very warm ocean and it was just ripe for development.”
Hmm, where have we heard *that* before?
Killiansays
#74 BPL said *!*
#75 Wili said “Land, Ocean Carbon Sinks Are Weakening”
“The declining uptake rate of atmospheric CO2 by land and ocean sinks”
Killian said, Laughing at BPL, as usual.
patricksays
12 Mar 2015, 30-40 days before the average last freeze/frost day, parts of Iowa and Nebraska saw: “GRASSLAND FIRE INDEX WILL BE IN THE EXTREME,” & “RED FLAG WARNING…HIGH TO VERY HIGH FIRE DANGER ACROSS THE REGION…” I’m thinking about the precession of the fire index warnings.
patricksays
I think this presents the latest in global-warming-substitute terminology:
But the main novelty, I think, is that sea-level rise can be called “nuisance flooding.”
[That’s in the 4 minute audio at the head of this report.] Media partners are listed.
What is being denied is coherence itself, process, pattern, and physics. All of that can be dismissed as just: talk.
Nothing is said to be known to be rising except the frequency of “reports.”
Lawrence Colemansays
78: wili, Pam is now the strongest cyclone ever to have affected Vanuatu. Looked at the sea surface temp anomaly chart for 12/3 and the ocean area that spawned Pam is about 3-4C warmer than average, hence the sheer size and amount of water it is now carrying. A couple of month ago we had a cat 5 cyclone slam into Yeppoon (north queensland) causing so far 100s of millions of dollars damage. So the pacific is having a unusually active and late burst of activity. 2 cyclones concurrently is unusual-not unheard of. This year we have had two of those occurrences which makes it a little weird.
Jef 73: solar as well as wind and other “renewables” are technologies and like all other technologies they are 100% reliant on FFs and many other extractive processes.
BPL: This can’t be true, since not all our energy is 100% from FF. And the higher the fraction that is not, the less renewables depend on FF.
wilisays
Thanks, Kevin and Lawrence, for your perspectives on cyclones. As L pointed out, Pam just reached cat 5 status.
BPL 88 – All energy including “renewables” rely on FF’s to acquire the resources to fabricate, distribute, construct, maintain, and rely completely on the existing infrastructure that FF’s and only ffs could have built.
Renewables would have done a good job of augmenting FFs if we had started out aggressively 50 years ago. As it is renewables barely reach new demand and as demand falls so will renewable energy affordability.
SecularAnimistsays
Jef wrote: “… solar as well as wind and other ‘renewables’ are technologies and like all other technologies they are 100% reliant on FFs and many other extractive processes.”
Recent studies (see links below) have found that the photovoltaic industry is likely already a net energy producer, and will “pay back” the energy consumed during its early growth within five years. At that point photovoltaics will have more than paid back all the energy invested in their deployment and will continue to be net energy producers, with EROEI that gets better and better as the efficiency of PV improves and the energy and resource inputs to manufacture PV are reduced. So PV will be providing far more energy than it consumes and can no longer be said to be “dependent” on fossil fuels.
Jef wrote: “Never in the history of life on the planet has life evolved to thrive on a lower quality, more complex, and more expensive energy source.”
Replacing fossil fueled electricity generation with non-carbon alternatives has nothing to do with the “evolution of life” on this planet. It’s a technological transition, nothing more, nothing less.
And in any case, the reality is that solar energy is higher quality, simpler and less expensive than fossil fuels.
A NOTE TO THE MODERATORS: I apologize for this post on the off-topic subject of alternative energy. However, that rule is routinely ignored by commenters who choose to denigrate solar and wind energy with misstatements of fact. I try to ignore their comments and adhere to the rules, but sometimes I feel that to do so allows these pages to become a soap-box for unopposed anti-renewable energy propaganda. I don’t intend to make a habit of such rebuttals, but if Jef’s comment is allowed, it seems fair to ask that this response also be allowed.
#88–Of course it’s not true. Presumably Jef doesn’t know that we just went around this merry-go-round a couple of times.
Also, presumably he doesn’t really want us to abandon ‘all other technologies.’ I mean, I’m pretty sure that the technologies of deliberate fire-starting, cooking, knot-tying and weaving, even flint-knapping and pottery could still be kept.
/sarc
Eric Swansonsays
toby52 @ #65 and others – That report is a rather long review/summary of albedo measurements from satellites. But, having not read the supporting references, I think the conclusions are misleading. All the referenced satellites were flown with sun-synchronous polar orbits. The instruments referenced, primarily the ERBE and CERES sensors, have limited fields of view and can not directly receive any reflected SW from high zenith angles. As I happened to point out with a poster paper presented at an AAAS convention back in 1992, the albedo of the ocean, which is usually less than 0.07 at high zenith angles, becomes much larger and can approach 0.30 as the zenith angle nears 90 degrees under clear skys. Such conditions can occur at all latitudes in the early morning after sunrise, late in the day before sunset and at high polar latitudes throughout the day in summer. In fact, these satellites are designed with orbits which preclude what is called “sun glint”, i.e., the image of the sun as seen from above. That these instruments can not “see” this energy may be cause for great confusion, IMHO…
How many kilometer-wide, methane erupting craters would there have to be in the Arctic before we should start to worry about them?
Killiansays
92 SecularAnimist said Jef wrote: “… solar as well as wind and other ‘renewables’ are technologies and like all other technologies they are 100% reliant on FFs and many other extractive processes.”
Recent studies (see links below) have found that the photovoltaic industry is likely already a net energy producer, and will “pay back” the energy consumed during its early growth within five years. At that point photovoltaics will have more than paid back all the energy invested in their deployment and will continue to be net energy producers, with EROEI that gets better and better as the efficiency of PV improves and the energy and resource inputs to manufacture PV are reduced. So PV will be providing far more energy than it consumes and can no longer be said to be “dependent” on fossil fuels.
A fine example of the same sort of logical fallacy associated with the misuse of “sustainable.” EROEI is a measure of energy, like jule, erg, watt. It tells us nothing about the energy in question, however, except in context. Thus, whether a solar array returns more energy than used to produce it is merely a measure of efficiency and/or production and has zilch to do with the forms of energy needed to produce it. The *resources* embedded in a solar array are a different issue than the amount of energy contained in those resources, and you are confusing the two.
If FFs are used in production, regardless of EROEI, then they are still FF-dependent.
#93 and #88
It’s pretty clear you two are being intentionally obtuse here. Jef clearly was referring to higher technologies and not using the word in its broadest sense. You, of course, know this. We would all thank the moderator(s) to start boreholing these pointless, ego-driven “gotcha” posts.
You get scary from all extremes — scary-black-UN-helicopters people, and scary-methane-monster people. Rarely do they have an actual source.
If they show you their source, check the cite, read what was actually said.
For example, compare what Dr. Yurganov says the AIRS satellite can do, with the claims made and written in under sentences containing Dr. Yurganov’s name.
See how they sure make the paragraph sound like they’re attributing the scary conclusions to him?
Reality is plenty scary.
Bogus stuff steals energy from the real work needed.
Current methane growth in the Arctic, including 2012, is
gradual….
If a sudden venting (bubbling) of methane would happen due to intense hydrates destruction, IASI would be able to detect it ….
People who don’t cite sources aren’t eager to tell you where the facts can be found, when they’re not consistent with the scary story being cooked up.
Yes, Dr. Yurganov and others are watching, and watching carefully.
No, they’re not part of a conspiracy to hide the news from you.
Never in the history of life on the planet has life evolved to thrive on a lower quality, more complex, and more expensive energy source.
Citation needed. Seriously, if that’s the foundation of your argument, you’ll never get past the first journal editor.
Matthew R Marlersays
The increase in Sensible Heating of the troposphere from ground can be estimated from a result reported by Romps et al. Their main result was an increase in the cloud-to-lightning ground strike rate by 12% per 1C increase in mean temperature over the US east of the Rocky Mountains. The most important result for this note was the estimate of a 12% increase in the power of the process that generated lightning, and that estimate was not confined to the US east of the Rockies. Up to a constant of proportionality, the power of the process generating the lightning was calculated as CAPExPR, where CAPE is “convective available potential energy” and PR was precipitation rate. Precipitation rate was used in the calculation rate not because of the latent energy in the water vapor, but because the precipitation rate was treated as proportional to the rate of transfer of air (with water vapor mixed in) from the surface to the upper cloud level. That result depended on the modeled lapse rate and difference between the interior and exterior of the cumulus column. Assuming that their result is widely accurate wherever those can be modeled, and PR rate is proportional to the rate of ascension of air, the increase of SH due to a 0.5C increase of surface mean temperature should be approximately 6% of 24 W/m^2 (that figure of 24 comes from Stephens et al) = 1.4 W/m^2.
#44# GMcGrew
I posted that Nature link when discussing on a Roy Spencer´s blog, got some typical skeptic replies, and even a link to an article specifically against Feldman, et al study:
https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/the-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-that-wasnt/
I think it contains many errors, but my education doesn´t allow me to argue with them properly.
I wonder if anyone here can point me to the latest climate modeling that is done on a more regional basis in the US? I believe that Union of Concerned Scientists did this in California a while back, but I wonder if there has been any update?
Also is there any compilation of observed changes on a state by state basis that are attributable to climate change?
Thanks for any help with this.
Dave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zqkPmM_hj4
This is a BBC production about the math of climate science. Worth a watch
44, GMcGrew: I don’t think the paper got much coverage because, in one camp, it is just a confirmation of what we have known for ~100 years and in the other camp, it is a confirmation of what they have been denying for ~30 years.
Maybe. It was reported by WUWT, and then at ClimateEtc. Did Revkin at NYTimes pick up on it?
Another option for preserving the WAIS might be to follow the example of the Netherlands and use dikes to give the ice sheet solid grounding. The Netherlands have about 3500 km of dikes to hold out the sea and they use pumping stations to handle water from precipitation that accumulates behind the dikes. Building a similar arrangement around where the WAIS outlet glaciers are no longer grounded and pumping out the water on which they float could reground the glaciers and avert collapse. As with the Netherlands, the effort would have to be ongoing since melt water would still enter the grounding region and would have to be pumped. As with the Netherlands, wind power would be available to carry out that task.
The length of dikes that would be needed may be less than in the Netherlands and may also be less than the dikes around existing cities around the globe that might otherwise be build when the WAIS collapses.
GlenFergus @ 47
An Ecologist’s perspective.
Actually I think Dr, Huckauf is really a physical chemist but anyway…
Ecosystem
Thermodynamics
Aiko Huckauf
Increase of Entropy
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
∆S ≥ 0, all natural (i. e. spontaneous) processes
enhance the entropy of the universe.
Hence the universe will eventually degenerate
towards thermodynamic equilibrium where
* all gradients are eliminated,
* all matter is transferred into its most stable
chemical state,
* the entropy has reached its maximum, and
* the system is dead.
The Heat Death of the Universe
Some people find this heat death of the universe
thought so disturbing that they want to forbid the
Second Law:
“I wouldn’t want my child
growing up in a world
headed for total heat death
and dissolution into a
vacuum. No decent parent
would want that.”
Kansas state senator Will Blanchard
Cheers! >;-)
freemike @50.
There is a powerpoint of Gassmann & Herzog (2014) paper here. Beyond that and the paper itself (with only the abstract outside a paywall), there appears to be no serious comment on the work. The implications of the thesis presented (for anything let alone AGW) are not very clear from the powerpoint. Indeed the abstract’s statement “Conventional water-vapour fluxes are wrong by up to 10% and exhibit a negative bias.” is no clearer from this powerpoint which (from a quick scan) appears to be talking about lower troposhere before suddenly turning to high stratosphere. Gassmann & Herzog (2014)is not the sort of thesis that can be signed off as correct without quite a bit of familiarisation but this paper is now 8 months old now. With nobody rushing to develop this thesis so as to identify any significant implications, for AGW or for anything else, it is a fair bet that the impact is trivial, all this assuming the thesis presented is not in error.
That leaves the comment from a silly contrarian site which published on the same dy as the paper. That comment is simply pointing at words to reach its conclusion which is an extremely silly way of doing things. Then what do you expect from such a silly site?
@51 You could point out that if the refutation has merit, it should be sent to the journal and it will be published. Pielke and some Hadley scientists have been going on for years with comments and countercomments, this way re aspects of thermometer siting and related issues. Anyway, since he refuses to do so, the most likely inference is he knows the journal will not find merit in his supposed “refutation”.
That of course will satisfy no denier, but it just happens to be the right way to question/refute a finding such that other scientists will see it and consider it.
“So the studies posted by climate central where they mention the increased rates of warming not seen in 1000 years is this the irreversible climate change tipping point?”
The short answer is, “No.” There probably isn’t any single “irreversible climate change tipping point,” and this paper doesn’t, as far as I can tell, delve specifically into non-linear feedbacks (AKA ‘tipping points.’) I summarized thus:
What’s the latest kerfluffle going around denier sites about all the CIMP models being wrong now with all caps HUGE ERRORS?
Victor C. Tsai, Andrew L. Stewart, Andrew F. Thompson. Marine ice-sheet profiles and stability under Coulomb basal conditions. Journal of Glaciology, 2015; 61 (226): 205 DOI: 10.3189/2015JoG14J221 (open access)
(Apologies if this was already posted somewhere.)
From the press release: “…estimates of future rates of melt for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet–and, by extension, of future sea-level rise–have been too conservative.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150310105228.htm
57, MA Rodger responding to freemike: There is a powerpoint of Gassmann & Herzog (2014) paper here.
That is a most interesting paper, but hard to tell if there are important implications for climate modeling/forecasting. They say that their development permits a previously impossible implicit scheme for solving the differential equations: anybody know if that is a correct claim? They say that the modeling of water vapor is off by 10%, which is potentially enough to change the predicted surface temperature change in response to a change in forcing.
Boy, this is so mind-bogglingly silly it’s hard to know where to start:
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/unforced-variations-march-2015/comment-page-2/#comment-626783
I mean, given that long before the heat death of the Universe, a) the Sun will die, b) the Earth will die, c) humanity will die, d) our civilization will die, e) our nation will die, f) said child will die, and g) all the rest of us will die, can’t the good Mr. Blanchard find something, er, more immediate to worry about? And did he miss the day in kindergarten where they covered the fact that the truth of a proposition has nothing to do with how palatable it is? (In my life, this was generally expressed as “Life isn’t fair,” often prefaced by “I’ve said it a million times, but…”)
#60–Don’t know, have trouble caring very much. After all, they’re wrong about pretty much everything else.
#60 jgnfld
I presume it is this “The Albedo of Earth” which has keyboards clickedy-clicking.
It is also shown how the ability of present-day models of climate in simulating the statistical properties of the energy reflected from Earth varies depending upon the metric used.
Models fail to reproduce the observed annual cycle in all components of the albedo with any realism, although they broadly capture the correct proportions of surface and atmospheric contributions to the TOA albedo. A high model bias of albedo has also persisted since the time of CMIP3, mostly during the boreal summer season.
Perhaps more importantly, models fail to produce the same degree of interannual constraint on the albedo variability nor do they reproduce the same degree of hemispheric symmetry.
The significance of these shortcomings is not yet fully known, but model studies of hypothetical slab-ocean worlds suggest that interhemispheric changes in albedo can grossly affect the climate states of those worlds, shifting the ITCZ [Voigt et al., 2013, 2014; Frierson and Hwang, 2012] and altering the amount of heat moved poleward [e.g., Enterton and Marshall, 2010].
I would be interested in opinions.
http://webster.eas.gatech.edu/Papers/albedo2015.pdf
RE: #53 Pete Best.
The first of these three films contains a non-trivial error:
Homogenisation is not done by Kalman filtering!
for jgnfld: “all models are wrong” but not in the way the kerfluffle claims.
Have you tried ‘oogling?
LMGTFY:
https://www.google.com/search?q=CMIP+wrong
and lo, on the first page of the results (for me, as of this minute, YMMV) I find, among much else:
Devastating. You know how to find this stuff.
Perhaps there’s something else.
Do remember: “All models are wrong; some models are useful.”
Also, it’s possible someone discovered there’s an errata page:
http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/errata/cmip5errata.html
Amazing how poorly they hide this secret stuff, huh? All it took was a single ‘oogle search to find it, and on the first page of results at that.
One quick note on prohibition of mitigation: Change the trees, you change climate. Change the soil, you change climate. Etc. Mitigation acts ARE climate science. Why otherwise intelligent people cannot understand this is unclear.
#4 MartinJB said, I know which one you WANT, which path you think is necessary. You’ve made that abundantly clear. I’m asking which one you think would have a better chance of being realized, ignoring what we want or think needs to happen.
Answered. Would you rather live on Jupiter or Mars? Just as useful to ask. All that matters is living within ecosystem. Period. Nothing else is an option worthy of my time. Or yours. What that means in the transition, and the end, is place-based.
The rest of your post was noise, your assessment of my comments here devoid of accuracy. Note: Learn what “bridge technology” and “appropriate technology” mean, then search all references by me of those two terms on this site.
Finally, climb off high horse.
Aside — not about RC.
This is inspired by a recent exchange with one of the popular climate bloggers who doesn’t post my responses when I criticize his articles — who tends to drop a scientist’s name and a sentence about his work, follow it with an illustration from some other blogger, and follow that with an expression of worry about things getting worse faster. (On the other side of the teeter totter are bloggers who do the same thing but lean in the “so, no worries” direction)
That’s done in a way that readers unfamiliar with the scientist’s other public statements will think the whole paragraph is telling them what the scientist said.
I try to be an equal opportunity kibitzer and give online writers hell or at least heck when appropriate regardless of whether I agree with their morals or politics. Often enough I pound on a blogger whose heart is definitely in the right place, in my opinion, when assertions aren’t attributed, cites aren’t provided, sources are conflated with the author’s opinion, and my fact-checking response gets ignored and never shows up in the topic, though I get email replies.
Note: If you think this is about you, it's probably not. You're not the only one who does it. I just had enough of it recently to write about it as an annoyance anyone who checks facts will recognize. We can and should do better than this.So, I recommend reading a bit on citing sources and giving attribution.
That’s from: https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/you-can-quote-me-on-that-advice-on-attribution-for-journalists/
Read his credentials on his page. He knows what he’s talking about from long experience.
Hat tip to Soylent News, which published this:
___________
A research collaborative has published a paper in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences that mathematically establishes such
a causal link between CR and year-to-year changes in global
temperature, but has found no causal relationship between the CR and
the warming trend of the 20th century.
[1]http://phys.org/news/2015-03-cosmic-fluctuations-global-temperatures-doesnt.html
[Abstract]: [2]http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/23/1420291112
Discuss this story at:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=15/03/10/1330218
Links:
0. https://soylentnews.org/~AnonTechie/
1. http://phys.org/news/2015-03-cosmic-fluctuations-global-temperatures-doesnt.html
2. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/23/1420291112
________
end quote
Lots of cyclonic activity in the near OZ and NZ. Two approaching cat 3 status as they land in the north east (Olwyn, headed toward Perth) and south east (Nathan). The much larger Pam is a cat 4 is well east of these, passing Vanuatu and headed south in the general direction of northern NZ, though predicted at this point to pass to the east of it.
Is it a bit odd historically to have two cyclones hit Australia at the same time?
Isn’t
SecularAnimist – You are correct that solar as well as wind and other “renewables” are technologies and like all other technologies they are 100% reliant on FFs and many other extractive processes.
Never in the history of life on the planet has life evolved to thrive on a lower quality, more complex, and more expensive energy source. Not saying we can’t evolve, it’s just not going to be anything like the world as we know it.
K 69: One quick note on prohibition of mitigation: Change the trees, you change climate. Change the soil, you change climate. Etc. Mitigation acts ARE climate science. Why otherwise intelligent people cannot understand this is unclear.
Winston Churchill: A fanatic is someone who will not change his mind, and will not change the subject.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/12/3632373/carbon-sinks-climate-action/
“Land, Ocean Carbon Sinks Are Weakening”
http://www.biogeosciences.net/11/3453/2014/bg-11-3453-2014.pdf
“The declining uptake rate of atmospheric CO2 by land and ocean sinks”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/uomr-tmp031215.php
“The idea has always been that the critters record the temperature right above where they are found on the ocean floor,” says Erik van Sebille, lead author of the study and a climate scientist at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and Imperial College London. “However, these critters are so small that they are at the mercy of the currents. They could easily have drifted for thousands of kilometers during their life span.”
Studying climate conditions in the past is essential to understand the global climate system and to predict future climate conditions. Foraminifera live close to the ocean’s surface, where they “record” the water temperature, and as they die they settle to the ocean’s floor. Scientists extract sediment cores to analyze the shell, which are similar to tree rings but on time scales of millions of years.
###
The study, titled “Ocean currents generate large footprints in marine palaeoclimate proxies” was published in the March 4 issue of the journal Nature Communications. The papers authors include: Paris, Erik van Sebille and Chris Turney from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and Imperial College London; Paolo Scussolini and Frank Peeters from VU University Amsterdam; Jonathan V. Durgadoo and Arne Biastoch from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany; Wilbert Weijer from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; and Rainer Zahn from Institucio´ Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) in Spain.
‘oogled for wili,
australia “two cyclones”
answers your questions:
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-02-20/news/59339889_1_cyclones-climate-change-warming-climate
Now FOUR major cyclones in the general area. Pam, far the largest, is likely to reach category 5. http://www.weather.com/storms/typhoon/news/cyclone-pam-vanuatu-south-pacific
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/wundergroundlive/comment.html?entrynum=0
Looks like she’s 4-500 miles wide!
Apropos of nothing…
Using NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data for surface temperatures north of 80degN, a plateau seems to have formed in Arctic temperatures over winter since 2005. No year since that date has dropped below 4degC above the 1951 to 1980 average.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8616/16609128468_b15c8573af_o.png
The region north of 80degN is used because it is the same region DMI use in their temperature dataset.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
(#65) toby52, and others- Maybe I can provide insight on albedo implications on tropical rainfall.
In the modern climate, a seasonal cycle exists in global-mean temperatures on the order of ~3K (since the Southern Hemisphere response to the seasonal cycle in insolation is muted relative to the NH). In the annual-mean, the Northern Hemisphere is slightly warmer than the Southern Hemisphere, even though the SH actually receives slightly more net TOA radiation (for one thing, the Sahara desert is a good reflector of solar radiation and is sufficiently dry as to let lots of longwave radiation to space). Clouds and orography also contribute to this annual-mean hemispheric asymmetry. The NH can be warmer in the annual-mean, however, because oceans transport heat from the Southern to Northern Hemisphere.
Tropical rainfall listens to this hemispheric asymmetry, even if the asymmetry owes its existence to extratropical forcing (think e.g., aerosols in the mid-latitudes or Arctic sea ice changes). In general, the ITCZ migrates toward the hemisphere with more energy input. We see this exhibited in models of varying complexity and borne out in numerous paleoclimate examples, and we think we have at least a partially developed theory for why this happens.
It does follow from this however that any issues in model albedo, even “tough” ones like the presence and optical properties of clouds in the high latitudes, will project onto tropical rainfall location. Yen-Ting Hwang and Dargan Frierson (among others) for example have made some contact between the physics described above with the so-called “double ITCZ” problem in models (and more generally that models often put too much rainfall in the Southern Hemisphere tropics).
That’s still an issue. Whether it matters much depends on the question you’re asking of the model. ITCZ shifts in response to some asymmetric anomaly in the radiative budget, for instance, still occur even if the ITCZ mean position is not correct.
Gavin said “However, as a general rule, the larger claim cannot be true”. Does this apply to climate model projections as well or no?
[Response: Not following you. The ‘larger claim’ was about whether simulations increase entropy or not. What is the link to your question? – gavin]
Gavin says “If the argument being made that models cannot possibly be skilful because of some supposed violation…”. The argument is not if the models are skilful, but if they are correct.
[Response: Not at all. All models – in whatever domain – are wrong since they can never capture the full complexity of the real world, so the issue is *always* whether, despite their imperfections, they are nonetheless useful. If you’d like to dispute this, please give an example of a perfect model of a real world phenomena. – gavin]
SH cyclones: this bit made my ears perk up:
Hmm, where have we heard *that* before?
#74 BPL said *!*
#75 Wili said “Land, Ocean Carbon Sinks Are Weakening”
“The declining uptake rate of atmospheric CO2 by land and ocean sinks”
Killian said, Laughing at BPL, as usual.
12 Mar 2015, 30-40 days before the average last freeze/frost day, parts of Iowa and Nebraska saw: “GRASSLAND FIRE INDEX WILL BE IN THE EXTREME,” & “RED FLAG WARNING…HIGH TO VERY HIGH FIRE DANGER ACROSS THE REGION…” I’m thinking about the precession of the fire index warnings.
I think this presents the latest in global-warming-substitute terminology:
http://fcir.org/2015/03/08/in-florida-officials-ban-term-climate-change/
But the main novelty, I think, is that sea-level rise can be called “nuisance flooding.”
[That’s in the 4 minute audio at the head of this report.] Media partners are listed.
What is being denied is coherence itself, process, pattern, and physics. All of that can be dismissed as just: talk.
Nothing is said to be known to be rising except the frequency of “reports.”
78: wili, Pam is now the strongest cyclone ever to have affected Vanuatu. Looked at the sea surface temp anomaly chart for 12/3 and the ocean area that spawned Pam is about 3-4C warmer than average, hence the sheer size and amount of water it is now carrying. A couple of month ago we had a cat 5 cyclone slam into Yeppoon (north queensland) causing so far 100s of millions of dollars damage. So the pacific is having a unusually active and late burst of activity. 2 cyclones concurrently is unusual-not unheard of. This year we have had two of those occurrences which makes it a little weird.
Jef 73: solar as well as wind and other “renewables” are technologies and like all other technologies they are 100% reliant on FFs and many other extractive processes.
BPL: This can’t be true, since not all our energy is 100% from FF. And the higher the fraction that is not, the less renewables depend on FF.
Thanks, Kevin and Lawrence, for your perspectives on cyclones. As L pointed out, Pam just reached cat 5 status.
More on the general situation in the Pacific and on the growing El Nino here: https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/weird-2015-el-nino-fed-by-strong-west-winds-growing-kelvin-wave/#comment-35812
Elsewhere: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31862881
35 children killed in extreme flooding in Angola
In Historic Turn, CO2 Emissions Flatline in 2014, Even as Global Economy Grows http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomzeller/2015/03/13/in-historic-turn-co2-emissions-flatline-in-2014-evan-as-global-economy-grows/
BPL 88 – All energy including “renewables” rely on FF’s to acquire the resources to fabricate, distribute, construct, maintain, and rely completely on the existing infrastructure that FF’s and only ffs could have built.
Renewables would have done a good job of augmenting FFs if we had started out aggressively 50 years ago. As it is renewables barely reach new demand and as demand falls so will renewable energy affordability.
Jef wrote: “… solar as well as wind and other ‘renewables’ are technologies and like all other technologies they are 100% reliant on FFs and many other extractive processes.”
Recent studies (see links below) have found that the photovoltaic industry is likely already a net energy producer, and will “pay back” the energy consumed during its early growth within five years. At that point photovoltaics will have more than paid back all the energy invested in their deployment and will continue to be net energy producers, with EROEI that gets better and better as the efficiency of PV improves and the energy and resource inputs to manufacture PV are reduced. So PV will be providing far more energy than it consumes and can no longer be said to be “dependent” on fossil fuels.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/pv-net-energy-040213.html
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824
Jef wrote: “Never in the history of life on the planet has life evolved to thrive on a lower quality, more complex, and more expensive energy source.”
Replacing fossil fueled electricity generation with non-carbon alternatives has nothing to do with the “evolution of life” on this planet. It’s a technological transition, nothing more, nothing less.
And in any case, the reality is that solar energy is higher quality, simpler and less expensive than fossil fuels.
A NOTE TO THE MODERATORS: I apologize for this post on the off-topic subject of alternative energy. However, that rule is routinely ignored by commenters who choose to denigrate solar and wind energy with misstatements of fact. I try to ignore their comments and adhere to the rules, but sometimes I feel that to do so allows these pages to become a soap-box for unopposed anti-renewable energy propaganda. I don’t intend to make a habit of such rebuttals, but if Jef’s comment is allowed, it seems fair to ask that this response also be allowed.
#88–Of course it’s not true. Presumably Jef doesn’t know that we just went around this merry-go-round a couple of times.
Also, presumably he doesn’t really want us to abandon ‘all other technologies.’ I mean, I’m pretty sure that the technologies of deliberate fire-starting, cooking, knot-tying and weaving, even flint-knapping and pottery could still be kept.
/sarc
toby52 @ #65 and others – That report is a rather long review/summary of albedo measurements from satellites. But, having not read the supporting references, I think the conclusions are misleading. All the referenced satellites were flown with sun-synchronous polar orbits. The instruments referenced, primarily the ERBE and CERES sensors, have limited fields of view and can not directly receive any reflected SW from high zenith angles. As I happened to point out with a poster paper presented at an AAAS convention back in 1992, the albedo of the ocean, which is usually less than 0.07 at high zenith angles, becomes much larger and can approach 0.30 as the zenith angle nears 90 degrees under clear skys. Such conditions can occur at all latitudes in the early morning after sunrise, late in the day before sunset and at high polar latitudes throughout the day in summer. In fact, these satellites are designed with orbits which preclude what is called “sun glint”, i.e., the image of the sun as seen from above. That these instruments can not “see” this energy may be cause for great confusion, IMHO…
https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/unconfirmed-reports-of-giant-600-meter-methane-crater-found-in-siberia/
How many kilometer-wide, methane erupting craters would there have to be in the Arctic before we should start to worry about them?
92 SecularAnimist said Jef wrote: “… solar as well as wind and other ‘renewables’ are technologies and like all other technologies they are 100% reliant on FFs and many other extractive processes.”
Recent studies (see links below) have found that the photovoltaic industry is likely already a net energy producer, and will “pay back” the energy consumed during its early growth within five years. At that point photovoltaics will have more than paid back all the energy invested in their deployment and will continue to be net energy producers, with EROEI that gets better and better as the efficiency of PV improves and the energy and resource inputs to manufacture PV are reduced. So PV will be providing far more energy than it consumes and can no longer be said to be “dependent” on fossil fuels.
A fine example of the same sort of logical fallacy associated with the misuse of “sustainable.” EROEI is a measure of energy, like jule, erg, watt. It tells us nothing about the energy in question, however, except in context. Thus, whether a solar array returns more energy than used to produce it is merely a measure of efficiency and/or production and has zilch to do with the forms of energy needed to produce it. The *resources* embedded in a solar array are a different issue than the amount of energy contained in those resources, and you are confusing the two.
If FFs are used in production, regardless of EROEI, then they are still FF-dependent.
#93 and #88
It’s pretty clear you two are being intentionally obtuse here. Jef clearly was referring to higher technologies and not using the word in its broadest sense. You, of course, know this. We would all thank the moderator(s) to start boreholing these pointless, ego-driven “gotcha” posts.
wili, how many unconfirmed (and usually un-cited) claims does it take before you question your trust in people who aren’t helping you find facts?
read what Dr. Yurganov actually says, and compare that to the claims made in his name by the scary-methane-story people.
You get scary from all extremes — scary-black-UN-helicopters people, and scary-methane-monster people. Rarely do they have an actual source.
If they show you their source, check the cite, read what was actually said.
For example, compare what Dr. Yurganov says the AIRS satellite can do, with the claims made and written in under sentences containing Dr. Yurganov’s name.
See how they sure make the paragraph sound like they’re attributing the scary conclusions to him?
Reality is plenty scary.
Bogus stuff steals energy from the real work needed.
Don’t believe me — read it for yourself:
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/files/2012/11/AGU12ch4v2.pdf
People who don’t cite sources aren’t eager to tell you where the facts can be found, when they’re not consistent with the scary story being cooked up.
Yes, Dr. Yurganov and others are watching, and watching carefully.
No, they’re not part of a conspiracy to hide the news from you.
When the satellites do detect a large amount of methane — as they can and do — they publish, and point to the source, and provide pictures.
Good grief.
____________________
In other news:
http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2015/march/global-energy-related-emissions-of-carbon-dioxide-stalled-in-2014.html
Twin Cyclones Could Jolt Weak El Nino
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/twin-cyclones-could-jolt-weak-el-nino-18775
Jef:
Citation needed. Seriously, if that’s the foundation of your argument, you’ll never get past the first journal editor.
The increase in Sensible Heating of the troposphere from ground can be estimated from a result reported by Romps et al. Their main result was an increase in the cloud-to-lightning ground strike rate by 12% per 1C increase in mean temperature over the US east of the Rocky Mountains. The most important result for this note was the estimate of a 12% increase in the power of the process that generated lightning, and that estimate was not confined to the US east of the Rockies. Up to a constant of proportionality, the power of the process generating the lightning was calculated as CAPExPR, where CAPE is “convective available potential energy” and PR was precipitation rate. Precipitation rate was used in the calculation rate not because of the latent energy in the water vapor, but because the precipitation rate was treated as proportional to the rate of transfer of air (with water vapor mixed in) from the surface to the upper cloud level. That result depended on the modeled lapse rate and difference between the interior and exterior of the cumulus column. Assuming that their result is widely accurate wherever those can be modeled, and PR rate is proportional to the rate of ascension of air, the increase of SH due to a 0.5C increase of surface mean temperature should be approximately 6% of 24 W/m^2 (that figure of 24 comes from Stephens et al) = 1.4 W/m^2.