> Sensitivity is not constant ….
> natural variation
So who’s claiming it’s a constant?
It’s an outcome — of a specific configuration that doesn’t repeat.
The planet’s temperature changes, for whatever reason — basalt outbreak, asteroid impact, evolution of something that makes oceans more effective at consuming CO2 and reflecting sunlight, or an oil-sucking detritovore, or the second round when vast coal beds burn — the planet’s radiative equilibrium goes into deficit or overrun for a while. Right?
What I’ve read defines climate sensitivity as the temperature change) that follows an instantaneous doubling of CO2, at the point in time when the planet has recovered a radiative equilibrium. It’s an observation that has to be made on a specific planet.
Do it on a dead planet and you’ll get a simple answer.
Do it repeatedly on the same dead planet and you’ll get similar answers each time, as long as it’s in about the same orbit.
Do it several different times on an evolving planet — before and after the evolution of deep-water-living coccolithophores, and before and after the evolution of grasses, for examples — and you’ll get different results.
Start from a deep ice age, then again from a hot humid age, then from one of those temperate intervals in which farming is possible. You’ll get different results.
Who are you arguing with, and arguing about what?
Sorry, I really don’t get what you’re going on about here.
Have pity on those of us mere ordinary readers trying to puzzle it out.
Following on from GISS a few days back, NCDC also reporting a warm March 2015, third warmest anomaly on record with Feb 2015 pushed into fourth place. There are 4 months in the last year in the top ten spots (actually they are the last 4 months. GISS gave a different set but 5 in the last year) with 9 months in the last year in the top 24 spots (identical to GISS).
Scorchio!!
1=- 200701 0.86°C
1=- 199802 0.86°C
3 – 201503 0.85°C
4 – 201502 0.84°C
5=- 200202 0.80°C
5=- 201003 0.80°C
7=- 201311 0.79°C
7=- 201412 0.79°C
7=- 200203 0.79°C
10= 201004 0.77°C
10= 201501 0.77°C
Yes, GISTEMP had March at 0.84 C. For March specifically, it’s the 3rd warmest, behind 2002 (0.88) and 2010 (0.87). Interesting that 3 of the 5 warmest anomalies ever are from that month! The only other month represented more than once in your list is February (4th & 8th spots).
Meanwhile, NCDC has weighed in for the month, and we are looking at the warmest March ever in that data set, with an anomaly of 0.85 C. It’s apparently the third-warmest anomaly for any month.
Priming fossil deposits through global affords, by means of making leakage more likely. Thus, geomorphological features are affected, which in turn impacts carbon cycling, storage and release.
Synthetic feedbacks, through projected flooding. Artificial creations become suddenly more accessible, again with impacting carbon cycling, contaminating food webs, environmental risks are tremendous, many serious and long lasting health impacts (What is the world doing with all the nuclear plants, most of them situated at the coasts? It takes decades to remove reactors).
There isn’t a specified localised impact, but on planetary scale with many systems already falling – not providing enough (natural resources, water, clean air).
There is no united back up plan.
There is no global agreement to stop CO2 emissions.
There are no local agreements to stop CO2 emissions (Yes, there are exceptions)
From a network perspective, many nodes may fail, including life sustaining nodes.
And the Arctic Circle is also laden with carbon, and we are in the process to make all of it accessible, releasing it. For like 15 million years there wasn’t a higher CO2 amount in the air/land/ocean. So if you compare the past look at each situation on a case per case basis. It makes also sense to exclude large impact events, since they were single local events. It is not enough to just compare the past per CO2 amount.
Sensitivity is not constant – and that you fail to understand this or appreciate the ‘mathematical theory of climate sensitivity’ presented by Ghil is your problem and not mine.
1) Long-term average modelled and real world ocean heat uptake rates are probably compatible, albeit there’s a large spread in modelled rates and large uncertainties in observations (meaning global estimates using ocean temperature measurements). I would actually say evidence for the most recent decade, particularly up to 2012, points to real world rates being lower than generally modelled. This appears to be reflected in altimeter SLR trends too, e.g. dip to 2.7mm/yr for 2003-2012 in AVISO.
ARGO-based estimates of global heat uptake likely significantly underestimate due to key geographical coverage holes. However, I’m not sure backing it out of observed SLR provides much insight. Thermal expansion probably contributes less than half total SLR right now, which means accounting for the other factors needs to be quite precise in order to arrive at a usefully constrained result.
2) I’ve found the linear trend for 2007-2014 comes to about 3.6mm/yr in various altimeter datasets.
The absolute values in the AR5 files refer to anomalies compared to the 1986-2005 average. Using Church & White 2011 to extend altimeter records back to 1986 I find the observed 2014 anomaly is slightly higher than in the AR5 files, though effectively no difference. It seems observed trends were higher than average modelled over the early part of the relevant 1986-present period and lower than modelled in the latter part.
———————–
One issue I haven’t seen discussed much is the Arctic gap in altimeter products. They are clipped to 66N, due to the nature of the satellite orbits, and model projections suggest the area North of 66N should have some of the fastest rates of SLR on the planet (e.g. see http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_proj_regional.html) so it seems likely that altimeter data underestimates true global SLR. It’s a relatively small area so the difference is probably slight in the long-term but, as Cowtan & Way showed with surface temperatures, coverage holes could be significant on sub-decadal timescales.
Kevin McKinney @156.
The preponderance of March anomalies in the GISS top ten isn’t so evident with NCDC and less again with HadCRUT4. But the top tens are almost all wintertime months. The graph in this SKS post probably demonstrates the reason. Winter-time anomalies are far more subject to inter-annual variation. (The graph compares Dec-to-Feb average with Jun-to-Aug average.) A quick analysis of the GISS data shows above average variations for the period Dec-Mar and below average May-Sept, a finding that is present through the full record.
Ellison,
We don’t buy any of that schtick that something like ENSO sporadically goes haywire. At the Azimuth Project, we are making great progress in modeling ENSO and paying no heed to what Ghil and Tsonis have to say. Going back to the fundamentals of the wave equation and understanding the nature of climate standing wave dipoles is a rewarding exercise: http://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/comment/14498/#Comment_14498
One doesn’t make progress in science by asserting that a tipping point will be reached and therefore give up. That’s akin to punting on first down. Maybe you guys do that in rugby but not here in the states.
These are not cycles – or even bistability of extremely simple ‘daisyworld’ models. They are shifts in the mean and variance of the climate system every 20 to 30 years – numerically approached for the first time in the 2007 Tsonis et al paper. Although many people – a who’s who of climate science – have been discussing chaos in climate for 20 years.
In the words of Julia Slingo and Tim Palmer – they are regime like changes that – while completely deterministic – are seemingly random. The timing, extent or even direction of more or less extreme future shifts at multi-decadal intervals are not knowable.
Dynamic climate sensitivity implies the potential for a small push to initiate a large shift. Climate in this theory of abrupt change is an emergent property of the shift in global energies as the system settles down into a new climate state. The traditional definition of climate sensitivity as a temperature response to changes in CO2 makes sense only in periods between climate shifts – as climate changes at shifts are internally generated. Climate evolution is discontinuous at the scale of decades and longer.
‘Viewed in this light, the lack of modeled compared to observed interdecadal variability (Fig. 2B) may indicate that current models underestimate climate sensitivity.’
Here’s a graphical representation of Ghil’s 1-D climate model.
The model has two stable states with two points of abrupt climate change – the latter at the transitions from the blue lines to the red from above and below. The two axes are normalized solar energy inputs μ (insolation) to the climate system and a global mean temperature. The current day energy input is μ = 1 with a global mean temperature of 287.7 degrees Kelvin. This is a relatively balmy 58.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
The 1-D climate model uses physically based equations to determine changes in the climate system as a result of changes in solar intensity, ice reflectance and greenhouse gas changes. With a small decrease in radiation from the Sun – or an increase in ice cover – the system becomes unstable with runaway ice feedbacks. Runaway ice feedbacks drive the transitions between glacial and interglacial states seen repeatedly over the past 2.58 million years. These are warm interludes – such as the present time – of relatively short duration and longer duration cold states. The transition between climate states is characterised by a series of step changes between the limits. It caused a bit of consternation in the 1970’s when it was realized that a very small decrease in solar intensity – or an increase in albedo – is sufficient to cause a rapid transition to an icy planet in this model.
Ghil’s model shows that climate sensitivity (γ) is variable. It is the change in temperature (ΔT) divided by the change in the control variable (Δμ) – the tangent to the curve as shown above. Sensitivity increases moving down the upper curve to the left towards the bifurcation and becomes arbitrarily large at the instability. The problem in a chaotic climate then becomes not one of quantifying climate sensitivity in a smoothly evolving climate but of predicting the onset of abrupt climate shifts and their implications for climate and society. The problem of abrupt climate change on multi-decadal scales is of the most immediate significance.
The 1-D model is illustrative – it shows response in a chaotic system. A system that is not climate. But the climate system is likewise pushed past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. The system shifts with a greater response to changes at the tipping point.
‘Climate sensitivity is then defined mathematically as the derivative of an appropriate functional or other function of the systems state with respect to the bifurcation parameter.’ Michael Ghil
This is – of course – not the traditional definition. I have gone to some length to distinguish the two. The reality of climate is as a complex and dynamic system is the sense of complexity theory. Climate can only be understood by thinking in terms of unforced variation occurring as a result of abrupt climate change. The new paradigm has immense significance.
… model projections suggest the area North of 66N should have some of the fastest rates of SLR on the planet
Indeed!
Current sea level rise is about 3 mm/year worldwide, in contrast, parts in the Arctic report 2 cm sea level height increase per year.
“In the western Arctic, the Beaufort Gyre is driven by a permanent anti-cyclonic wind circulation. It drives the water, forcing it to pile up in the centre of the gyre, and this domes the sea surface,” explained lead author Dr Katharine Giles from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) at University College London.
The data (1995-2010) indicates a significant swelling of water in the Beaufort Gyre, particularly since the early part of the 2000s. The rising trend has been running at 2cm per year.
Well, even with all these model runs, all these different scenarios, multiple different possible paths and outcomes — we’re not likely to accomplish planning for all the possibilities of climate change as well as was done for Apollo ….
The NASA mindset of simulate, simulate, simulate meant that when things did go wrong, even something of the magnitude of the Apollo 13 explosion, there was always some kind of contingency plan worked out in advance. Controllers had a good gut-level feel for the limits of the spacecraft’s systems when trying to work through emergency problems.
One lesson is — technology is very easy to screw up in ways that don’t become apparent immediately.
An alternative to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This should be an exciting story to watch. It is possibly relevant here because it has been touted as a way for countries to obtain financing for the fossil-fueled power plants that WB and IMF won’t finance.
You’ve totally ‘jumped the shark’ with these comments.
You are not using that term correctly.
You’ve endlessly slagged
You are not using THAT term accurately. I *think* you mean insulted. Problem is…
renewables as unsustainable
because they are, thus, it’s not an insult, it’s an observation, a statement of fact. What’s interesting is that you are ego invested so oddly that you take a statement of fact personally, defensively. There are people you can talk to, you know…
Now, an English usage and reading comprehension lesson for you.
To slag means to insult. I have never insulted renewables. I stated a fact: They’re, as yet, unsustainably produced.
“Renewables as currently produced are unsustainable,”
…does not equal…
“I hate renewables,” nor, “I don’t like renewables,” nor, “renewables are bad,” nor “I oppose renewables”, nor any other misleading sentence you might dream up that I never said.
What I have said, in fact, is it can act as a bridge technology, that we have enough now given we need to simplify and that reliance on solar and building out more than needed creates an unnecessary infrastructure burden in the future and wastes resources.
None of that is “slagging,” nor does it indicate a dislike of, hatred of, desire to insult, renewables.
Hard to take you seriously after you 1. repeatedly make your comments personal without provocation and 2. show such a poor understanding of English.
so don’t try to claim now that “I have never in my life stated opposition to the use of renewables.”
I am not opposed to renewables. I am encouraging wise use of them. In fact, I wrote this in 2008:
But do understand, this was before I fully realized the problem with resources, so would encourage more shrinking to current production rather than building out more. However, that is true of the U.S. Other areas of the planet still need more. We need to stop, or reconfigure, more accurately, because utility-scale/utility-owned power generation is a very bad thing – but that’s not a conversation for this site.
Moreover, for you to claim that you are ‘more accurate than the IPCC’ is just ludicrous.
Except, it’s true, so…
With temperature projections specifically
Straw Man. I don’t do temp projections. I do effects projections. I have been more accurate across the board: CH4, Arctic melt, Antarctic melt, overall rate of change, food supply effects, etc., etc. ,etc.
I concern myself with the systemic issues, not the science. I have never claimed to be an expert in doing the science, or even that I do science, so…
But I’ve been really good at analyzing the science and stating short= and long-term scenarios that have, in FACT, been more accurate than the IPCC.
You are just a guy on a blog.
Logical fallacies: 1. Guy on a blog can’t do accurate analysis, particularly one whose work is in the field of working with natural principles and system design; 2. that you, a guy on a blog, have any more accuracy with me than you say I have with climate science.
I recommend pursuing this in the Hotwhopper thread set aside for Rob Ellison for further elaboration and repetition, since it’s been offered.
Give the idea a home and maybe invite scientists working in the area to comment.
Steve Fishsays
Re- Several comments by WebHubTelescope:
Hi, your comments appear to me to indicate that you might be able to answer a question regarding the physics of how chaos theory could apply to climate change. I understand how this idea arose from the study of weather because in this realm heat is moved from here to there without any overall change in global mean temperature. I just don’t see how global mean temperature can be chaotic because if the whole earth system gets warmer or cooler there has to be some obvious proximal cause. If there is going to be some kind of big tipping point shift to a hotter regime, where is the heat going to come from? Obviously, I am not criticizing your comments but I just thought that you might be able to explain to a simple biologist what is meant by chaos in global temperature change.
Ellison,
No one wants to listen to your defeatism when it comes to modeling climate. So you defer to authority to say something can’t be done. I ain’t buying what you’re selling.
You think it is an initial condition problem, but for practical purposes it is a boundary value problem.
Edward Greischsays
102 Chuck Hughes and group: Help me get this thought fully baked:
Denialists are such individualists that they think that they can all by themselves decide whether or not there is GW.
In reality, the human brain no more has the necessary hardware to see GW that the deer brain has the necessary hardware to stay out of the way of cars. But Humans also have The Dunning-Kruger effect.
Scientists figured it out over 2 centuries and it took thousands of scientists and billions of dollars worth of apparatus and computer time. [{Cooperation is seen as communism and conspiracy}] But scientists are also competitive. So which is it? Conspire or compete?
The schools have got to teach more than textbook science and the colleges have got to teach more than lectures and labs. The system has to be taught in high school and again in college. It has to be taught like the checks and balances in the US constitution are taught. The system of science has to be taught to everybody so that we won’t hear such accusations as “But he lied!” If you understand the system, you know that lies and mistakes are taken care of by the system.
We can’t teach at the fact-by-fact level only. We have to take it up several levels of abstraction to a meta-level that shows the whole system of science. We have to show them why they are personally not equipped to make any decision by themselves.
And then we can take them back to the lab and show them the parts that fit together.
#173–“What’s interesting is that you are ego invested so oddly that you take a statement of fact personally, defensively.”
Said Mr. Pot.
“Straw Man. I don’t do temp projections. I do effects projections. I have been more accurate across the board: CH4, Arctic melt, Antarctic melt, overall rate of change, food supply effects, etc., etc. ,etc.”
I’ve never seen you do a proper quantified projection of anything. You’re very fond of trumpeting your supposed accuracy, but would you care to back that up with pointers to just what you said, when you said it, and the relevant comparisons with observations?
And, by the way, what the heck is a warning to ‘expect’ ‘5 to 10 C’ warming, if not a (poorly quantified) ‘temp projection’?
“You are just a guy on a blog. Logical fallacies…”
Your ‘fallacies’ are themselves fallacious. I spend a lot of time on this blog, which is prima facie evidence that I think that there are useful things to be gleaned there. You’ve even said some. But the fact that various ‘guys on this blog’ may have worthwhile points to make is irrelevant to the question of whether I should give more weight to IPCC temperature projections, or to your statement that we should ‘expect’ 5 to 10 degrees of warming ‘in a human lifetime.’
Likewise, the undisputed fact that I am yet another ‘guy on a blog’ is irrelevant. It’s not a contest between you and I. It’s whether there is any reason to grant your prediction weight in comparison with the scientific state of the art. I saw none, previous to your comment at 173, and #173 certainly didn’t provide any new ones.
#178–Ed, as I perceive it, you have not one thought there, but several.
1) Denialism is linked to individualism, and leads to a faulty epistemology.
2) Correct epistemology (at least WRT the climate problem) requires the scientific method.
3) However, given that modern science is irreducibly, or at least characteristically, cooperative in nature, radical individualists will tend to see it as ‘conspiracy.’
4) Appropriate pedagogy is needed to demonstrate why #2 is the case, and thereby justify the scientific method, addressing the problem of #3.
FWIW…
And, by the way, I kind of like the ‘deer and car’ metaphor, though I think deer are rather better at avoiding cars than they generally get credit for. Nicely ’emotional’!
Thanks for that link. Interesting to see the seasonal difference variability, and it would be interesting to see an update.
It made me wonder, though, about the state of play in analyzing diurnal trends. The naive expectation was that nights should warm more than days, but IIRC, there has been some back and forth about what the observations actually show. I had a quick look and found this quote:
The rate of climate warming varies on diurnal and seasonal timescales. A synthesis of global air temperature data reveals a greater rate of warming in winter than in summer in northern mid and high latitudes, and the inverse pattern in some tropical regions. The data also reveal a decline in the diurnal temperature range over 51% of the global land area and an increase over only 13%, because night-time temperatures in most locations have risen faster than daytime temperatures.
The article is paywalled, but the figures are thumbnailed, and large enough to discern some things. Figure 2d certainly supports their characterization of latitudinal differences pretty clearly. My takeaway would be that the naive prediction is basically validated, but also shown to be oversimplified as blanket characterization. (Unsurprisingly, I guess.)
But that bit’s somewhat incidental to the main purpose of the paper, which is to look at biological impacts, so I wonder what the larger picture in the literature about diurnal trends looks like at present.
One of the best-known ecological studies — the ecological tradeoff on an island between wolf packs and moose herds — is affected by climate change nowadays:
… options, then, are to reintroduce wolves to the island or do nothing and see what happens naturally.
“One must use the word, ‘naturally’, carefully these days,” Peterson advises. “The human imprint is written all over the dynamics of this wolf population in recent decades”.
A case in point, he says, is the downward trend in the frequency of ice bridges in winter, which formerly allowed wolves with new genetic material to make their own way to Isle Royale.
Along with wolves, the other iconic animals of Isle Royale are moose. And unlike their canine predators, and in spite of several harsh winters, the moose population has been growing annually at 22 percent for each of the past four years.
“If that was money in the bank, you’d get rich in a hurry,” Vucetich says. “Soon we’ll be moose rich.”
While iconic, a proliferation of moose could actually be harmful and, if this trend continues, the population could reach past heights like in 1996.
“At that time the moose population had considerable impact on forest vegetation,” Vucetich and Peterson write in the Winter Study annual report. “Concerns remain that the upcoming increase in moose abundance will result in long-term damage to the health of Isle Royale’s vegetative community.”
The balance of predator-prey on Isle Royale has clearly tipped. The question remains what actions humans will or will not take to influence that scale.
Steve Fishsays
Re- Comment by Kevin McKinney — 20 Apr 2015 @ 10:24 AM, ~#181
Strange occurrence. When I clicked your link to- Terrestrial carbon cycle affected by non-uniform climate warming, by Jianyang et al, I got the full text article after waiting a short time. Steve
I wonder if anybody has an explanation for the sharp rise in sea level over the last few months? Could this be previously expanded warm water from the Western Pacific that has never met an ARGO float until it recently started sloshing back across the Pacific Ocean?
Killiansays
#179 Kevin McKinney said, !
#173–“What’s interesting is that you are ego invested so oddly that you take a statement of fact personally, defensively.”
Said Mr. Pot.
False. I never take anyone’s assertion about the science personally. I do not get in people’s faces for stating ANY opinion of the science. EVER. The only time *I* get defensive – which is not accurate: I get ANGRY at wasted time and DISGUSTED with dealing with childish bull – is when short-sighted, weakminded attacks on *me*, as opposed to what I say, occur. And it happens many times, any time I get involved in UV.
There is a group of you who are a very defensive, arrogant, condescending group. Defensive any time someone claims something beyond your ken. Yes, I see the world through a different lens, and rather than taking advantage of that (for example, I suggested a risk assessment-based approach to communicating climate YEARS ago here, and recently I noted a climate scientist saying the same. Hmmm… perhaps you should have listened…), and thinking on how to make use of that, you make inane, pointless little rants about a PERSON, never even addressing what is said in any subtantive way. It disgusts me. Deeply. There are serious issues afoot and I am serious about doing something about them, having invested everything I had in making change happen, literally. So when whiny dreck like you are posting comes up, it angers me. Grow up. There are serious issues. Act like it.
Get serious, Kevin, or get the @$@# out of the way. We are literally fighting for our lives.
There will be no further response to your drivel.
Chuck Hughessays
You are just a guy on a blog.
Logical fallacies: 1. Guy on a blog can’t do accurate analysis, particularly one whose work is in the field of working with natural principles and system design; 2. that you, a guy on a blog, have any more accuracy with me than you say I have with climate science.
I disagree that teaching science is the problem. We teach science. We teach scientific method. I’ve taught 2nd Graders in the US and 2nd Grade *language* students in Korea how to appropriately use the scientific method. (Contextualized learning? You betcha!)
Climate denial has almost nothing to do with the science or scientific illiteracy. Just check any of OOreskes’ work. And read The Authoritarians, as well as other recent research on how political views are formed.
The problem is propaganda and ideology. More science, better science, doesn’t change political views of authoritarian thinkers.
What we need is inclusion of systems thinking and design. It’s very hard to see the world in pieces once you’ve become aware if the interdependence of its systems. It affects beliefs profoundly as it puts paid to a great deal of nonsense.
Dr. Ghil is one of many people working in a new area; see, e.g., his introduction here to a collection of papers: http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/471/2176/20150097
I recommend pursuing this in the Hotwhopper thread set aside for Rob Ellison for further elaboration and repetition, since it’s been offered.’
Give the idea a home and maybe invite scientists working in the area to comment.
Comment by Hank Roberts — 19 Apr 2015 @ 8:21 PM
The oddness of this comment demands a response. The subtext appears to be that this is an outlier in terms of paradigms of climate – that a realclimate post on unforced variation is not a suitable venue – and yet explicitly says that are many scientists working working on complexity science in climate.
As for going back to Sou’s – in was an amusing and instructive experiment but returning is not an idea that has any appeal. It is evident that the idea of climate shifts seems not to have crossed their horizon. The introduction unleashed intense vitriol and abuse – despite claiming that dynamic sensitivity had significant implications and things could be much worse with potentially radical change in as little as a decade. Yet the science of complexity as applied to climate is fairly obvious to most scientists. You would better off going to the recent series at Science of Doom rather than the trivial and poorly informed echo chamber that is Sou’s.
Re- Several comments by WebHubTelescope:
Hi, your comments appear to me to indicate that you might be able to answer a question regarding the physics of how chaos theory could apply to climate change.
Comment by Steve Fish — 19 Apr 2015 @ 10:42 PM
In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
The theory suggests that the system is pushed by greenhouse gas changes and warming – as well as solar intensity and Earth orbital eccentricities – past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation.
Ellison,
No one wants to listen to your defeatism when it comes to modeling climate. So you defer to authority to say something can’t be done. I ain’t buying what you’re selling.
You think it is an initial condition problem, but for practical purposes it is a boundary value problem. Comment by WebHubTelescope — 19 Apr 2015 @ 11:23 PM
‘The global coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–cryosphere system exhibits a wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical, biological, and chemical feedbacks that collectively result in a continuum of temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.’ A UNIFIED MODELING APPROACH TO CLIMATE SYSTEM PREDICTION – by James Hurrell, Gerald A. Meehl, David Bader, Thomas L. Delworth , Ben Kirtman, and Bruce Wielicki: BAMS December 2009 | 1819: DOI: 10.1175/2009BAMS2752.1
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.’ TAR 14.2.2.2
Both models and climate are clearly initial value problems – different problems in fact. Realism in climate modelling is about PDF of possible future states based on hundreds or even thousands of runs of perturbed physics models.
‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full
By all means read some James McWilliams for some maths and physics realities rather that parroting trite and ill-considered memes in colloquial Americanisms.
There are uncertainties in both initial and boundary conditions that cause model solutions to diverge exponentially through time. The same model with slightly different inputs gives many divergent, feasible solutions. It arises from the nonlinear nature of the core equations.
As the TAR said – prediction is impossible – ‘the most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions’. This involves generating hundreds or even thousands of model runs with slightly different inputs.
Relatively thick ice (red and up..over ~2.6 meters) seems to be mostly limited to the western half of the area north of 80 degrees…an area of a bit under 2 million k^2. Could that safely be said to be the lower limit of remaining ice we could see in September, no matter what the weather brings?
We can’t teach at the fact-by-fact level only. We have to take it up several levels of abstraction to a meta-level that shows the whole system of science.
John Nielsen-Gammon addressed this at the 2012 AGU meeting in his talk on Scientific Meta-Literacy, excerpted here:
Those of us who are trained scientists but who do not have enough personal literacy to independently evaluate a particular statement do not throw up our hands in despair. Instead, we evaluate the source and the context.
We scientists rely upon a hierarchy of reliability. We know that a talking head is less reliable than a press release. We know that a press release is less reliable than a paper. We know that an ordinary peer-reviewed paper is less reliable than a review article. And so on, all the way up to a National Academy report. If we’re equipped with knowledge of this hierarchy of reliability, we can generally do a good job navigating through an unfamiliar field, even if we have very little prior technical knowledge in that field.
… I claim that it’s an impossible task to raise the level of climate literacy in the general public to the point where most can tell that [a] statement about the ice age is wrong, let alone whether [a] statement about Sandy is wrong. And what about all the other fields in which they need to be literate as well?
The solution to this problem is not scientific literacy, but what I call scientific meta-literacy. Forget that dream about enabling the public to independently evaluate scientific claims on their merits – that’s just not going to happen. Instead, enable the public to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of scientific information.
As for Edward’s
We have to show them why they are personally not equipped to make any decision by themselves.
Early training in scientific meta-literacy may help people avoid falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
A heads up on this years Nenana Ice Classic. The tripod tilted on Monday but there’s a pack around it. The 2013 latest break-up ever (by around a hour) looks to be followed by the seventh earliest in 2014 and now a fair likelihood of the third earliest. It seem last year, and this haven’t been worthy of comment at Tony post emporium unlike 2013 when the Nenana break-up rated 4 or 5 posts and Pictures. Many Pictures.
Edited comment regarding webby’s all too apparent lack of understanding of complex dynamical systems as the theory applies to climate? He is far from alone in this. The editing seems a trifle arbitrary.
The title of Lovejoy’s paper is a allusion to the well known Mark Twain quote. The sense of the paper is that things are not quite as assumed in climate science. But instead of just linking to the paper
– why don’t you tell us what relevance it has for you. That really is the function of scientific synthesis. To build a bigger picture based on a number of empiric fundamentals. It used to be called natural philosophy.
My point is well enough expressed by Swanson and Tsonis (2009). It brings into the discussion a political quandary – a more likely than not lack of surface warming at least for decades coupled with inherent climate instability.
‘Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.’
The dynamic reality of climate – abetted by impractical policy informed by insane political ideology – is undermining pragmatic mitigation efforts.
Here’s a fun little exercise for those of you who know Visual Basic:
Sub Main()
Clear()
For i As Integer = 2015 To 2200
Dim A As Double
Dim Y As Double = CDbl(i)
A = 286.712# – 0.303704 * Y + 0.0000803054 * Y ^ 2
Dim T As Double = 287.2# + A
If i Mod 10 = 0 Then
Write(i)
Write(A.ToString(“f1”).PadLeft(8))
Write(T.ToString(“f1”).PadLeft(10))
WriteLine()
End If
Next
Dim s As String = ReadLine()
End Sub
Sorry about what the blog software does to the formatting.
> Sensitivity is not constant ….
> natural variation
So who’s claiming it’s a constant?
It’s an outcome — of a specific configuration that doesn’t repeat.
The planet’s temperature changes, for whatever reason — basalt outbreak, asteroid impact, evolution of something that makes oceans more effective at consuming CO2 and reflecting sunlight, or an oil-sucking detritovore, or the second round when vast coal beds burn — the planet’s radiative equilibrium goes into deficit or overrun for a while. Right?
What I’ve read defines climate sensitivity as the temperature change) that follows an instantaneous doubling of CO2, at the point in time when the planet has recovered a radiative equilibrium. It’s an observation that has to be made on a specific planet.
Do it on a dead planet and you’ll get a simple answer.
Do it repeatedly on the same dead planet and you’ll get similar answers each time, as long as it’s in about the same orbit.
Do it several different times on an evolving planet — before and after the evolution of deep-water-living coccolithophores, and before and after the evolution of grasses, for examples — and you’ll get different results.
Start from a deep ice age, then again from a hot humid age, then from one of those temperate intervals in which farming is possible. You’ll get different results.
Who are you arguing with, and arguing about what?
Sorry, I really don’t get what you’re going on about here.
Have pity on those of us mere ordinary readers trying to puzzle it out.
Following on from GISS a few days back, NCDC also reporting a warm March 2015, third warmest anomaly on record with Feb 2015 pushed into fourth place. There are 4 months in the last year in the top ten spots (actually they are the last 4 months. GISS gave a different set but 5 in the last year) with 9 months in the last year in the top 24 spots (identical to GISS).
Scorchio!!
1=- 200701 0.86°C
1=- 199802 0.86°C
3 – 201503 0.85°C
4 – 201502 0.84°C
5=- 200202 0.80°C
5=- 201003 0.80°C
7=- 201311 0.79°C
7=- 201412 0.79°C
7=- 200203 0.79°C
10= 201004 0.77°C
10= 201501 0.77°C
Worth noting that the first three months of 2015 look to be the warmest on record for that period. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
143 Chuck said, !
Don’t read, then.
M’k?
#145 Rob Ellison
Standard practice here. FYI. Harder for fellow posters. Up to you.
#121, MAR–
Yes, GISTEMP had March at 0.84 C. For March specifically, it’s the 3rd warmest, behind 2002 (0.88) and 2010 (0.87). Interesting that 3 of the 5 warmest anomalies ever are from that month! The only other month represented more than once in your list is February (4th & 8th spots).
Meanwhile, NCDC has weighed in for the month, and we are looking at the warmest March ever in that data set, with an anomaly of 0.85 C. It’s apparently the third-warmest anomaly for any month.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/3
#141, Hank
Past climate change vs today’s
Priming fossil deposits through global affords, by means of making leakage more likely. Thus, geomorphological features are affected, which in turn impacts carbon cycling, storage and release.
Different, synthetic atmospheric chemistry composition
Synthetic feedbacks, through projected flooding. Artificial creations become suddenly more accessible, again with impacting carbon cycling, contaminating food webs, environmental risks are tremendous, many serious and long lasting health impacts (What is the world doing with all the nuclear plants, most of them situated at the coasts? It takes decades to remove reactors).
There isn’t a specified localised impact, but on planetary scale with many systems already falling – not providing enough (natural resources, water, clean air).
There is no united back up plan.
There is no global agreement to stop CO2 emissions.
There are no local agreements to stop CO2 emissions (Yes, there are exceptions)
From a network perspective, many nodes may fail, including life sustaining nodes.
And the Arctic Circle is also laden with carbon, and we are in the process to make all of it accessible, releasing it. For like 15 million years there wasn’t a higher CO2 amount in the air/land/ocean. So if you compare the past look at each situation on a case per case basis. It makes also sense to exclude large impact events, since they were single local events. It is not enough to just compare the past per CO2 amount.
Uh, you know about Daisyworld? I’ve been reading this stuff a long while.
The model Ghil is talking about here refers back to Daisyworld, explicitly:
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys-discuss.net/2/145/2015/npgd-2-145-2015.pdf
I do try to keep up. I don’t see anything remarkable in the papers you find so important.
The 2009 paper has been cited subsequently:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL037022/full#footer-citing
Yes, there are others saying there’s a 60-year cycle predicting ongoing cooling, even more recently, citing the 2009 paper, e.g.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00704-014-1358-x
But — cooling continuing? What’s your point, what are you trying to establish here? What is it you think is unfamiliar about this work?
You are just a guy on a blog.
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/unforced-variations-april-2015/comment-page-3/#comment-628590
Comment by Kevin McKinney — 17 Apr 2015
There’s always a visionary out there somewhere that can see beyond everyone else. It’s a shame nobody ever listens to them.
‘So who’s claiming it’s a constant?
It’s an outcome — of a specific configuration that doesn’t repeat.’
There’s a linear formula for it. In reality – it varies with proximity to climate thresholds. As in the Ghil 1-d model.
Apparently Dr. Eric Rignot believes communication is a problem too…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANBHZfH4l6M
MMM,
1) Long-term average modelled and real world ocean heat uptake rates are probably compatible, albeit there’s a large spread in modelled rates and large uncertainties in observations (meaning global estimates using ocean temperature measurements). I would actually say evidence for the most recent decade, particularly up to 2012, points to real world rates being lower than generally modelled. This appears to be reflected in altimeter SLR trends too, e.g. dip to 2.7mm/yr for 2003-2012 in AVISO.
ARGO-based estimates of global heat uptake likely significantly underestimate due to key geographical coverage holes. However, I’m not sure backing it out of observed SLR provides much insight. Thermal expansion probably contributes less than half total SLR right now, which means accounting for the other factors needs to be quite precise in order to arrive at a usefully constrained result.
2) I’ve found the linear trend for 2007-2014 comes to about 3.6mm/yr in various altimeter datasets.
The absolute values in the AR5 files refer to anomalies compared to the 1986-2005 average. Using Church & White 2011 to extend altimeter records back to 1986 I find the observed 2014 anomaly is slightly higher than in the AR5 files, though effectively no difference. It seems observed trends were higher than average modelled over the early part of the relevant 1986-present period and lower than modelled in the latter part.
———————–
One issue I haven’t seen discussed much is the Arctic gap in altimeter products. They are clipped to 66N, due to the nature of the satellite orbits, and model projections suggest the area North of 66N should have some of the fastest rates of SLR on the planet (e.g. see http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_proj_regional.html) so it seems likely that altimeter data underestimates true global SLR. It’s a relatively small area so the difference is probably slight in the long-term but, as Cowtan & Way showed with surface temperatures, coverage holes could be significant on sub-decadal timescales.
Kevin McKinney @156.
The preponderance of March anomalies in the GISS top ten isn’t so evident with NCDC and less again with HadCRUT4. But the top tens are almost all wintertime months. The graph in this SKS post probably demonstrates the reason. Winter-time anomalies are far more subject to inter-annual variation. (The graph compares Dec-to-Feb average with Jun-to-Aug average.) A quick analysis of the GISS data shows above average variations for the period Dec-Mar and below average May-Sept, a finding that is present through the full record.
Ellison,
We don’t buy any of that schtick that something like ENSO sporadically goes haywire. At the Azimuth Project, we are making great progress in modeling ENSO and paying no heed to what Ghil and Tsonis have to say. Going back to the fundamentals of the wave equation and understanding the nature of climate standing wave dipoles is a rewarding exercise:
http://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/comment/14498/#Comment_14498
One doesn’t make progress in science by asserting that a tipping point will be reached and therefore give up. That’s akin to punting on first down. Maybe you guys do that in rugby but not here in the states.
These are not cycles – or even bistability of extremely simple ‘daisyworld’ models. They are shifts in the mean and variance of the climate system every 20 to 30 years – numerically approached for the first time in the 2007 Tsonis et al paper. Although many people – a who’s who of climate science – have been discussing chaos in climate for 20 years.
e.g. http://web.vims.edu/sms/Courses/ms501_2000/Broecker1995.pdf
In the words of Julia Slingo and Tim Palmer – they are regime like changes that – while completely deterministic – are seemingly random. The timing, extent or even direction of more or less extreme future shifts at multi-decadal intervals are not knowable.
Dynamic climate sensitivity implies the potential for a small push to initiate a large shift. Climate in this theory of abrupt change is an emergent property of the shift in global energies as the system settles down into a new climate state. The traditional definition of climate sensitivity as a temperature response to changes in CO2 makes sense only in periods between climate shifts – as climate changes at shifts are internally generated. Climate evolution is discontinuous at the scale of decades and longer.
‘Viewed in this light, the lack of modeled compared to observed interdecadal variability (Fig. 2B) may indicate that current models underestimate climate sensitivity.’
Here’s a graphical representation of Ghil’s 1-D climate model.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/unstable-ebm-fig-2-jpg1.jpg
The model has two stable states with two points of abrupt climate change – the latter at the transitions from the blue lines to the red from above and below. The two axes are normalized solar energy inputs μ (insolation) to the climate system and a global mean temperature. The current day energy input is μ = 1 with a global mean temperature of 287.7 degrees Kelvin. This is a relatively balmy 58.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
The 1-D climate model uses physically based equations to determine changes in the climate system as a result of changes in solar intensity, ice reflectance and greenhouse gas changes. With a small decrease in radiation from the Sun – or an increase in ice cover – the system becomes unstable with runaway ice feedbacks. Runaway ice feedbacks drive the transitions between glacial and interglacial states seen repeatedly over the past 2.58 million years. These are warm interludes – such as the present time – of relatively short duration and longer duration cold states. The transition between climate states is characterised by a series of step changes between the limits. It caused a bit of consternation in the 1970’s when it was realized that a very small decrease in solar intensity – or an increase in albedo – is sufficient to cause a rapid transition to an icy planet in this model.
Ghil’s model shows that climate sensitivity (γ) is variable. It is the change in temperature (ΔT) divided by the change in the control variable (Δμ) – the tangent to the curve as shown above. Sensitivity increases moving down the upper curve to the left towards the bifurcation and becomes arbitrarily large at the instability. The problem in a chaotic climate then becomes not one of quantifying climate sensitivity in a smoothly evolving climate but of predicting the onset of abrupt climate shifts and their implications for climate and society. The problem of abrupt climate change on multi-decadal scales is of the most immediate significance.
The 1-D model is illustrative – it shows response in a chaotic system. A system that is not climate. But the climate system is likewise pushed past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. The system shifts with a greater response to changes at the tipping point.
‘Climate sensitivity is then defined mathematically as the derivative of an appropriate functional or other function of the systems state with respect to the bifurcation parameter.’ Michael Ghil
This is – of course – not the traditional definition. I have gone to some length to distinguish the two. The reality of climate is as a complex and dynamic system is the sense of complexity theory. Climate can only be understood by thinking in terms of unforced variation occurring as a result of abrupt climate change. The new paradigm has immense significance.
Paul S, #162
Indeed!
Current sea level rise is about 3 mm/year worldwide, in contrast, parts in the Arctic report 2 cm sea level height increase per year.
http://climatestate.com/2013/08/07/arctic-ocean-freshwater-bulge-detected/
“There’s always a visionary out there somewhere that can see beyond everyone else. It’s a shame nobody ever listens to them.”h,
Oh, visionaries usually do get some sort of hearing, though often smaller and/or later than their ideas merit. But so do cranks.
Unfortunately, telling the one from the other can be a non-trivial challenge.
Well, even with all these model runs, all these different scenarios, multiple different possible paths and outcomes — we’re not likely to accomplish planning for all the possibilities of climate change as well as was done for Apollo ….
One lesson is — technology is very easy to screw up in ways that don’t become apparent immediately.
hat tips to:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/04/apollo-13-the-mistakes-the-explosion-and-six-hours-of-live-saving-decisions/ and the 2005 IEEE Spectrum article “Apollo 13, We Have a Solution”
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Infrastructure_Investment_Bank
An alternative to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This should be an exciting story to watch. It is possibly relevant here because it has been touted as a way for countries to obtain financing for the fossil-fueled power plants that WB and IMF won’t finance.
About #11, more on methane.
Another data source does not seem to show a recent sharp increase in methane concentration:
http://agage.eas.gatech.edu/data_archive/data_figures/gcmd_month/ch4_monS5.pdf
#149 Kevin McKinney said, “!”
You’ve totally ‘jumped the shark’ with these comments.
You are not using that term correctly.
You’ve endlessly slagged
You are not using THAT term accurately. I *think* you mean insulted. Problem is…
renewables as unsustainable
because they are, thus, it’s not an insult, it’s an observation, a statement of fact. What’s interesting is that you are ego invested so oddly that you take a statement of fact personally, defensively. There are people you can talk to, you know…
Now, an English usage and reading comprehension lesson for you.
To slag means to insult. I have never insulted renewables. I stated a fact: They’re, as yet, unsustainably produced.
“Renewables as currently produced are unsustainable,”
…does not equal…
“I hate renewables,” nor, “I don’t like renewables,” nor, “renewables are bad,” nor “I oppose renewables”, nor any other misleading sentence you might dream up that I never said.
What I have said, in fact, is it can act as a bridge technology, that we have enough now given we need to simplify and that reliance on solar and building out more than needed creates an unnecessary infrastructure burden in the future and wastes resources.
None of that is “slagging,” nor does it indicate a dislike of, hatred of, desire to insult, renewables.
Hard to take you seriously after you 1. repeatedly make your comments personal without provocation and 2. show such a poor understanding of English.
so don’t try to claim now that “I have never in my life stated opposition to the use of renewables.”
I am not opposed to renewables. I am encouraging wise use of them. In fact, I wrote this in 2008:
Build out vs grid
But do understand, this was before I fully realized the problem with resources, so would encourage more shrinking to current production rather than building out more. However, that is true of the U.S. Other areas of the planet still need more. We need to stop, or reconfigure, more accurately, because utility-scale/utility-owned power generation is a very bad thing – but that’s not a conversation for this site.
Moreover, for you to claim that you are ‘more accurate than the IPCC’ is just ludicrous.
Except, it’s true, so…
With temperature projections specifically
Straw Man. I don’t do temp projections. I do effects projections. I have been more accurate across the board: CH4, Arctic melt, Antarctic melt, overall rate of change, food supply effects, etc., etc. ,etc.
I concern myself with the systemic issues, not the science. I have never claimed to be an expert in doing the science, or even that I do science, so…
But I’ve been really good at analyzing the science and stating short= and long-term scenarios that have, in FACT, been more accurate than the IPCC.
You are just a guy on a blog.
Logical fallacies: 1. Guy on a blog can’t do accurate analysis, particularly one whose work is in the field of working with natural principles and system design; 2. that you, a guy on a blog, have any more accuracy with me than you say I have with climate science.
Dismissed.
Dr. Ghil is one of many people working in a new area; see, e.g., his introduction here to a collection of papers: http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/471/2176/20150097
I recommend pursuing this in the Hotwhopper thread set aside for Rob Ellison for further elaboration and repetition, since it’s been offered.
Give the idea a home and maybe invite scientists working in the area to comment.
Re- Several comments by WebHubTelescope:
Hi, your comments appear to me to indicate that you might be able to answer a question regarding the physics of how chaos theory could apply to climate change. I understand how this idea arose from the study of weather because in this realm heat is moved from here to there without any overall change in global mean temperature. I just don’t see how global mean temperature can be chaotic because if the whole earth system gets warmer or cooler there has to be some obvious proximal cause. If there is going to be some kind of big tipping point shift to a hotter regime, where is the heat going to come from? Obviously, I am not criticizing your comments but I just thought that you might be able to explain to a simple biologist what is meant by chaos in global temperature change.
Steve
( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)?
Ellison,
No one wants to listen to your defeatism when it comes to modeling climate. So you defer to authority to say something can’t be done. I ain’t buying what you’re selling.
You think it is an initial condition problem, but for practical purposes it is a boundary value problem.
102 Chuck Hughes and group: Help me get this thought fully baked:
Denialists are such individualists that they think that they can all by themselves decide whether or not there is GW.
In reality, the human brain no more has the necessary hardware to see GW that the deer brain has the necessary hardware to stay out of the way of cars. But Humans also have The Dunning-Kruger effect.
Scientists figured it out over 2 centuries and it took thousands of scientists and billions of dollars worth of apparatus and computer time. [{Cooperation is seen as communism and conspiracy}] But scientists are also competitive. So which is it? Conspire or compete?
The schools have got to teach more than textbook science and the colleges have got to teach more than lectures and labs. The system has to be taught in high school and again in college. It has to be taught like the checks and balances in the US constitution are taught. The system of science has to be taught to everybody so that we won’t hear such accusations as “But he lied!” If you understand the system, you know that lies and mistakes are taken care of by the system.
We can’t teach at the fact-by-fact level only. We have to take it up several levels of abstraction to a meta-level that shows the whole system of science. We have to show them why they are personally not equipped to make any decision by themselves.
And then we can take them back to the lab and show them the parts that fit together.
#173–“What’s interesting is that you are ego invested so oddly that you take a statement of fact personally, defensively.”
Said Mr. Pot.
“Straw Man. I don’t do temp projections. I do effects projections. I have been more accurate across the board: CH4, Arctic melt, Antarctic melt, overall rate of change, food supply effects, etc., etc. ,etc.”
I’ve never seen you do a proper quantified projection of anything. You’re very fond of trumpeting your supposed accuracy, but would you care to back that up with pointers to just what you said, when you said it, and the relevant comparisons with observations?
And, by the way, what the heck is a warning to ‘expect’ ‘5 to 10 C’ warming, if not a (poorly quantified) ‘temp projection’?
“You are just a guy on a blog. Logical fallacies…”
Your ‘fallacies’ are themselves fallacious. I spend a lot of time on this blog, which is prima facie evidence that I think that there are useful things to be gleaned there. You’ve even said some. But the fact that various ‘guys on this blog’ may have worthwhile points to make is irrelevant to the question of whether I should give more weight to IPCC temperature projections, or to your statement that we should ‘expect’ 5 to 10 degrees of warming ‘in a human lifetime.’
Likewise, the undisputed fact that I am yet another ‘guy on a blog’ is irrelevant. It’s not a contest between you and I. It’s whether there is any reason to grant your prediction weight in comparison with the scientific state of the art. I saw none, previous to your comment at 173, and #173 certainly didn’t provide any new ones.
#178–Ed, as I perceive it, you have not one thought there, but several.
1) Denialism is linked to individualism, and leads to a faulty epistemology.
2) Correct epistemology (at least WRT the climate problem) requires the scientific method.
3) However, given that modern science is irreducibly, or at least characteristically, cooperative in nature, radical individualists will tend to see it as ‘conspiracy.’
4) Appropriate pedagogy is needed to demonstrate why #2 is the case, and thereby justify the scientific method, addressing the problem of #3.
FWIW…
And, by the way, I kind of like the ‘deer and car’ metaphor, though I think deer are rather better at avoiding cars than they generally get credit for. Nicely ’emotional’!
#164, MAR–
Thanks for that link. Interesting to see the seasonal difference variability, and it would be interesting to see an update.
It made me wonder, though, about the state of play in analyzing diurnal trends. The naive expectation was that nights should warm more than days, but IIRC, there has been some back and forth about what the observations actually show. I had a quick look and found this quote:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n3/full/ngeo2093.html
The article is paywalled, but the figures are thumbnailed, and large enough to discern some things. Figure 2d certainly supports their characterization of latitudinal differences pretty clearly. My takeaway would be that the naive prediction is basically validated, but also shown to be oversimplified as blanket characterization. (Unsurprisingly, I guess.)
But that bit’s somewhat incidental to the main purpose of the paper, which is to look at biological impacts, so I wonder what the larger picture in the literature about diurnal trends looks like at present.
One of the best-known ecological studies — the ecological tradeoff on an island between wolf packs and moose herds — is affected by climate change nowadays:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/mtu-dtt042015.php
Re- Comment by Kevin McKinney — 20 Apr 2015 @ 10:24 AM, ~#181
Strange occurrence. When I clicked your link to- Terrestrial carbon cycle affected by non-uniform climate warming, by Jianyang et al, I got the full text article after waiting a short time. Steve
Aviso – sea level rise, including 2015 data
I wonder if anybody has an explanation for the sharp rise in sea level over the last few months? Could this be previously expanded warm water from the Western Pacific that has never met an ARGO float until it recently started sloshing back across the Pacific Ocean?
#179 Kevin McKinney said, !
#173–“What’s interesting is that you are ego invested so oddly that you take a statement of fact personally, defensively.”
Said Mr. Pot.
False. I never take anyone’s assertion about the science personally. I do not get in people’s faces for stating ANY opinion of the science. EVER. The only time *I* get defensive – which is not accurate: I get ANGRY at wasted time and DISGUSTED with dealing with childish bull – is when short-sighted, weakminded attacks on *me*, as opposed to what I say, occur. And it happens many times, any time I get involved in UV.
There is a group of you who are a very defensive, arrogant, condescending group. Defensive any time someone claims something beyond your ken. Yes, I see the world through a different lens, and rather than taking advantage of that (for example, I suggested a risk assessment-based approach to communicating climate YEARS ago here, and recently I noted a climate scientist saying the same. Hmmm… perhaps you should have listened…), and thinking on how to make use of that, you make inane, pointless little rants about a PERSON, never even addressing what is said in any subtantive way. It disgusts me. Deeply. There are serious issues afoot and I am serious about doing something about them, having invested everything I had in making change happen, literally. So when whiny dreck like you are posting comes up, it angers me. Grow up. There are serious issues. Act like it.
Get serious, Kevin, or get the @$@# out of the way. We are literally fighting for our lives.
There will be no further response to your drivel.
You are just a guy on a blog.
Logical fallacies: 1. Guy on a blog can’t do accurate analysis, particularly one whose work is in the field of working with natural principles and system design; 2. that you, a guy on a blog, have any more accuracy with me than you say I have with climate science.
Dismissed.
Comment by Killian — 19 Apr 2015 @ 7:26 PM
In other words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs4Gj7JsET4
Thanks 180 Kevin McKinney.
Permafrost C emissions equal to that of US over 100 yrs possible this century
#178 Edward Greisch
I disagree that teaching science is the problem. We teach science. We teach scientific method. I’ve taught 2nd Graders in the US and 2nd Grade *language* students in Korea how to appropriately use the scientific method. (Contextualized learning? You betcha!)
Climate denial has almost nothing to do with the science or scientific illiteracy. Just check any of OOreskes’ work. And read The Authoritarians, as well as other recent research on how political views are formed.
The problem is propaganda and ideology. More science, better science, doesn’t change political views of authoritarian thinkers.
What we need is inclusion of systems thinking and design. It’s very hard to see the world in pieces once you’ve become aware if the interdependence of its systems. It affects beliefs profoundly as it puts paid to a great deal of nonsense.
WebHubTelescope: Going back to the fundamentals of the wave equation and understanding the nature of climate standing wave dipoles is a rewarding exercise: – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/unforced-variations-april-2015/comment-page-4/#comment-628760
In a high-dimensional nonlinear dissipative system, are wave equations and standing wave dipoles even defined, much less “fundamental”?
Dr. Ghil is one of many people working in a new area; see, e.g., his introduction here to a collection of papers: http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/471/2176/20150097
I recommend pursuing this in the Hotwhopper thread set aside for Rob Ellison for further elaboration and repetition, since it’s been offered.’
Give the idea a home and maybe invite scientists working in the area to comment.
Comment by Hank Roberts — 19 Apr 2015 @ 8:21 PM
The oddness of this comment demands a response. The subtext appears to be that this is an outlier in terms of paradigms of climate – that a realclimate post on unforced variation is not a suitable venue – and yet explicitly says that are many scientists working working on complexity science in climate.
As for going back to Sou’s – in was an amusing and instructive experiment but returning is not an idea that has any appeal. It is evident that the idea of climate shifts seems not to have crossed their horizon. The introduction unleashed intense vitriol and abuse – despite claiming that dynamic sensitivity had significant implications and things could be much worse with potentially radical change in as little as a decade. Yet the science of complexity as applied to climate is fairly obvious to most scientists. You would better off going to the recent series at Science of Doom rather than the trivial and poorly informed echo chamber that is Sou’s.
Re- Several comments by WebHubTelescope:
Hi, your comments appear to me to indicate that you might be able to answer a question regarding the physics of how chaos theory could apply to climate change.
Comment by Steve Fish — 19 Apr 2015 @ 10:42 PM
In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
The theory suggests that the system is pushed by greenhouse gas changes and warming – as well as solar intensity and Earth orbital eccentricities – past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation.
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Ellison,
No one wants to listen to your defeatism when it comes to modeling climate. So you defer to authority to say something can’t be done. I ain’t buying what you’re selling.
You think it is an initial condition problem, but for practical purposes it is a boundary value problem. Comment by WebHubTelescope — 19 Apr 2015 @ 11:23 PM
‘The global coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–cryosphere system exhibits a wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical, biological, and chemical feedbacks that collectively result in a continuum of temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.’ A UNIFIED MODELING APPROACH TO CLIMATE SYSTEM PREDICTION – by James Hurrell, Gerald A. Meehl, David Bader, Thomas L. Delworth , Ben Kirtman, and Bruce Wielicki: BAMS December 2009 | 1819: DOI: 10.1175/2009BAMS2752.1
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.’ TAR 14.2.2.2
Both models and climate are clearly initial value problems – different problems in fact. Realism in climate modelling is about PDF of possible future states based on hundreds or even thousands of runs of perturbed physics models.
e.g. https://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/rowlands-2012-fig1.png
‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full
By all means read some James McWilliams for some maths and physics realities rather that parroting trite and ill-considered memes in colloquial Americanisms.
There are uncertainties in both initial and boundary conditions that cause model solutions to diverge exponentially through time. The same model with slightly different inputs gives many divergent, feasible solutions. It arises from the nonlinear nature of the core equations.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roypta/369/1956/4751/F2.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1
As the TAR said – prediction is impossible – ‘the most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions’. This involves generating hundreds or even thousands of model runs with slightly different inputs.
e.g. http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751
Thanks for the [edit]
If you understand his point, perhaps you could help him out here?
P.S., hunt for more references to Ghil and this pops up:
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~gang/eprints/eprintLovejoy/esubmissions/climate.not.climate.dynamics.7.2.14.pdf
Any takers?
(Does anyone else find the whole Ellison discussion tiresome and repetitive, at best?)
Latest images out from CroSat: http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/science/science-a-environmental/60519-fast-access-to-cryosat-s-artic-ice-measurments-now-available.html
Relatively thick ice (red and up..over ~2.6 meters) seems to be mostly limited to the western half of the area north of 80 degrees…an area of a bit under 2 million k^2. Could that safely be said to be the lower limit of remaining ice we could see in September, no matter what the weather brings?
Edward Greisch:
John Nielsen-Gammon addressed this at the 2012 AGU meeting in his talk on Scientific Meta-Literacy, excerpted here:
As for Edward’s
Early training in scientific meta-literacy may help people avoid falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-experts-say-temperatures-could-rise-by-6c-by-2100-with-cataclysmic-results-10193506.html
http://www.the-earth-league.org/earth-statement.html
http://earthstatement.org/
A heads up on this years Nenana Ice Classic. The tripod tilted on Monday but there’s a pack around it. The 2013 latest break-up ever (by around a hour) looks to be followed by the seventh earliest in 2014 and now a fair likelihood of the third earliest. It seem last year, and this haven’t been worthy of comment at Tony post emporium unlike 2013 when the Nenana break-up rated 4 or 5 posts and Pictures. Many Pictures.
http://www.adn.com/article/20150421/nenana-ice-classic-breakup-appears-imminent-tripod-nearly-tips
Edited comment regarding webby’s all too apparent lack of understanding of complex dynamical systems as the theory applies to climate? He is far from alone in this. The editing seems a trifle arbitrary.
The title of Lovejoy’s paper is a allusion to the well known Mark Twain quote. The sense of the paper is that things are not quite as assumed in climate science. But instead of just linking to the paper
– why don’t you tell us what relevance it has for you. That really is the function of scientific synthesis. To build a bigger picture based on a number of empiric fundamentals. It used to be called natural philosophy.
My point is well enough expressed by Swanson and Tsonis (2009). It brings into the discussion a political quandary – a more likely than not lack of surface warming at least for decades coupled with inherent climate instability.
‘Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.’
The dynamic reality of climate – abetted by impractical policy informed by insane political ideology – is undermining pragmatic mitigation efforts.