Happy new year, and a happy new open thread.
In response to some the comments we’ve been getting about previous open threads, we are going to try separating out OT comments on mitigation/saving the planet/theories of political action from ones related to the physical climate system. This thread remains a place for climate science issues, questions, & news, but we have started a new Forced Responses thread where people can more clearly discuss mitigation issues. We realise that sometimes it can be hard to cleanly separate these conversations, but hopefully folk can try that out as a new year’s resolution!
Note we will be updating the Model/Data comparisons over the next few weeks as the various observational data sets get updated for calendar year 2017. The main surface temperature datasets will be released around Jan 18.
Alastair @ 85: If it is all absorbed at lower levels then what happens higher up “is f*****g irrelevant”.
Only if you completely ignore conservation of energy.
CO2 can’t just absorb energy ad infinitum without then re-emiting it. So anything going on with CO2 at low levels cannot possibly affect the total energy unless it redistributes photons that otherwise would escape to space. And that is exactly what CANNOT happen if the absorption is saturated, BY THE DEFINITION OF SATURATION.
Any extra energy absorbed at low levels by added CO2 is exactly equal to the added energy then reemitted. A maze of mirrors would have the same effect — both simply redistribute energy within the lower atmosphere. Neither magically creates energy from nothing.
By contrast, extra CO2 at the top of the atmosphere captures and redistributes energy that otherwise would escape to space, and that DOES make a difference — more energy is sent back to lower levels.
Thomas @86,
You ask if there is “a ‘science’ repository for (or a series/collection of published papers that addresses ) these kinds of climate change impacts already happening all over the world,” with exemplars of “these kinds” given as jellyfish, toads and coral bleaching.
To my knowledge there is not.
A single phenomenon will be treated scientifically and many will have bold reviews of the global or regional state-of-play-so-far published from time to time. A few phenomenon (more the climatic ones than the eco ones) will have maintained catalogues (of variable usefulness). Non-scientifically, there are those fully reporting such events (folk like say EcoWatch) but they don’t do much to fill in the blanks and they manage to mix it in with other reporting – certainly it is not catalogued.
The IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report managed to report numbers of scientific papers on such subjects by region (in Fig 1.11) but I see no resulting catalogue in the public domain.
So there is scientific work pointing in that direction but I have never met any of it actually arriving. I was reminded by your question of the ‘catalogue’ set up within Drijfhout et al (2015) but having tracked it down their Catagories/Types/Cases were all climate and less eco and future modelled events rather than actual events.
Of course, the work required to catalogue extreme/exceptional events is massive while the value is not immediately apparent. And even when data is available, it doesn’t necessarily easily translate into useful numbers.
For instance, this NOAA web-page shows that over the last year (which was globally the second/third warmest on record, depending on the record, so certainly a warm year) there were globally more cold (max & min) records being broken than hot records, and that some places were record-breakingly wet/snowy although record dry spells are not so easy to enumerate and so absent. It also shows that the maximum daily temperatures are presently far more variable than minimum ones (which may be a matter of fact for any year). There is obviously a whole mass of useful data being accessed to provide these tables yet this attempt to provide something useful set out on a page has fallen short of the mark.
Yet with a bit more work, it does become seriously informative as this contiguous US version demonstrates. (Although I would recommend adding some presentation of a couple of the indicators as a time series over the full record. It would improve that US page no end.)
Interesting CO2 ppm data coming out of Mauna Loa already this non-El Nino year.
(my estimated) January-February weekly ppm average
2015 ~400
2016 ~403
2017 ~406
2 weeks of Jan 2018 ~409 ppm avg., and heading towards 410 ppm / +4 ppm above last year.
ref data ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_weekly_mlo.txt
compare with 2017 april-may = the only time the avg has been above 409 ppm
2017 4 16 2017.2890 409.61 6 407.48 387.49 126.55
2017 4 23 2017.3082 409.92 6 407.67 386.85 126.62
2017 4 30 2017.3274 409.13 5 407.68 386.44 125.67
2017 5 7 2017.3466 409.28 7 407.77 386.48 125.75
2017 5 14 2017.3658 410.36 5 407.39 386.30 126.86
2017 5 21 2017.3849 409.96 7 408.16 386.79 126.61
2017 5 28 2017.4041 409.52 7 407.62 386.92 126.39
2017 6 4 2017.4233 409.65 7 406.77 386.81 126.82
2017 6 11 2017.4425 409.39 4
To my minds eye, the Annual Mean Growth Rate for Mauna Loa, Hawaii here https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html only keeps Growing ie the Growth Rate is in fact Increasing.
There have been several discussions about this “issue” in the UV comments section here on RC last year. So what is the ‘CO2 ppm data’ now telling us?
The 2010-2017 growth rate appears to be very close to an avg of ~2.5 ppm annually now – up from ~2.0 ppm per year during 2000-2010.
This data closely resembles the size of known yearly increases in ff energy use globally during the same periods.
And closely resembles the science based IPCC 8.5 RCP projections/forecasts/estimates.
This means that as we ‘speak’ even more climate forcings are being embedded into the climate system for decades and centuries to come until such times as atmospheric ghg concentrations begin decreasing on a permanent and sustainable basis.
That is what the science and the data is in fact now saying, isn’t it?
Or is there a better way to say it?
100 nigelj “…. but it might have if I was 20 years older.”
Or if it lasted another several days and nights instead.
And by 2030 onward it those “short term heatwaves” could be lasting for several weeks on end while NYC is in the deep freeze again. Who knows for sure?
As there continues to be nonsensical blather in this thread about the rate of increase in CO2 concentrations skyrocketing, I am extending this comparison of El Nino year CO2 levels (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’) to include 2018. For the record, the average 12-month increase for the weekly MLO data through 2017 was 2.30ppm. The average 2010-to-date was 2.39ppm. The average 2000-2010 was 1.96ppm. However, note that even decadal averages can be significantly influenced by ENSO.
BPL, #94:
” Crack a book, okay?”
Not ok, I decided to just keep tracking temperature and co2, that’s enough to keep me amused 8)
James McDonald #101,
“Only if you completely ignore conservation of energy.”
Yeah, so?
But seriously, I was going to compliment you on a previous comment where you tried to give a basic-principle/logical explanation, because I think it’s the best way to offer sincere, rational people a way to begin understanding
However… some individuals, for whatever reasons, can’t let go of their misconceptions, even if they are sincere (unlike our troll friends). It probably seems incomprehensible to you that AM can hold the contradictory idea that CO2 is both absorbing and not absorbing energy at the same time, but there it is.
Anyway, I am not trying to discourage you from trying, but saying you should continue communicating basic principles as you have been, and not get sucked into the madness. It’s not you, it’s them.
#100 nigelj said How Australia’s extreme heat might be here to stay”
“While it is record-breaking that tends to make news, scientists say it is the unbroken run of hot days in the high 30s and 40s that causes the significant problems for human health, and other life.”It’s not being able to cool down at night, and in the days that follow, that causes problems,” he says.
It’s the extremes, stupid. – Me, to myself, 2011
#103 Thomas said Interesting CO2 ppm data coming out of Mauna Loa already this non-El Nino year.
(my estimated) January-February weekly ppm average
2015 ~400
2016 ~403
2017 ~406
2 weeks of Jan 2018 ~409 ppm avg., and heading towards 410 ppm / +4 ppm above last year…
This means that as we ‘speak’ even more climate forcings are being embedded into the climate system for decades and centuries to come until such times as atmospheric ghg concentrations begin decreasing on a permanent and sustainable basis.
That is what the science and the data is in fact now saying, isn’t it?
Yes. And has been for a very long time. Since 1953, technically. Since 2005 more obviously, IMO.
A better way to say it? Time is short. Very short. Simplify. Now.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa00e
“Temperature and humidity based projections of a rapid rise in global heat stress exposure during the 21st century”
Ethan D Coffel1, Radley M Horton and Alex de Sherbinin
Published 22 December 2017
Abstract:
“As a result of global increases in both temperature and specific humidity, heat stress is projected to intensify throughout the 21st century. Some of the regions most susceptible to dangerous heat and humidity combinations are also among the most densely populated. Consequently, there is the potential for widespread exposure to wet bulb temperatures that approach and in some cases exceed postulated theoretical limits of human tolerance by mid- to late-century. We project that by 2080 the relative frequency of present-day extreme wet bulb temperature events could rise by a factor of 100–250 (approximately double the frequency change projected for temperature alone) in the tropics and parts of the mid-latitudes, areas which are projected to contain approximately half the world’s population. In addition, population exposure to wet bulb temperatures that exceed recent deadly heat waves may increase by a factor of five to ten, with 150–750 million person-days of exposure to wet bulb temperatures above those seen in today’s most severe heat waves by 2070–2080. Under RCP 8.5, exposure to wet bulb temperatures above 35 °C—the theoretical limit for human tolerance—could exceed a million person-days per year by 2080. Limiting emissions to follow RCP 4.5 entirely eliminates exposure to that extreme threshold. Some of the most affected regions, especially Northeast India and coastal West Africa, currently have scarce cooling infrastructure, relatively low adaptive capacity, and rapidly growing populations. In the coming decades heat stress may prove to be one of the most widely experienced and directly dangerous aspects of climate change, posing a severe threat to human health, energy infrastructure, and outdoor activities ranging from agricultural production to military training.”
It sounds like the term ‘wet bulb temperature’ will be something more and more people will come to know about in a very personal and ever more lethal way!
101 “CO2 can’t just absorb energy ad infinitum without then re-emiting it. So anything going on with CO2 at low levels cannot possibly affect the total energy unless it redistributes photons that otherwise would escape to space”
False. Emissions don’t need to occur at the frequency of absorption, the photon can be and probably will be down converted to photons of lower energy, also collisons can convert bond energy to thermal energy through collisions between molecules, and as a result of conservation of momentum.
101 “Any extra energy absorbed at low levels by added CO2 is exactly equal to the added energy then reemitted.”
Absolute nonsense.
More CO2 means more scattering events and a longer residency time for the surface heat as it bounces around – down converting to lower frequencies – and being converted to random kinetic energy of the molecules composing the atmosphere (not just CO2), as it randomly walks up and out of the atmosphere.
This:
https://dailyplanet.climate-kic.org/climate-change-amplifying-water-scarcity-southern-europe/
Comes from This:
https://www.climatechangepost.com/news/2018/1/16/climate-change-amplifying-europes-contrast-drying-/
Which originally comes from This:
Nature Climate Change 7, 813–816 (2017)
doi:10.1038/nclimate3416
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3416
Is that “Letter” worthwhile, and really useful, or is it perhaps merely a sales/income generator for Nature that becomes redundant (or totally lost in the noise) of genuine research into impacts of AGW/CC?
While reading the whole thing in full, due to “cost”, I was already aware that historically for thousands of years southern europe had a lower precip water flow than nth europe anyway.
So how does a paper like this really matter, or present material that has the appearance that this differential is caused by climate change, versus the status quo natural way it has always been?
Does someone (time &) have sufficient knowledge and access to the paper to be able to say it is useful and important for climate science know-how in general …
(while not reading…due to cost)
PS re: “These results highlight the issue of increased water scarcity in the Mediterranean region under climate change.”
Hadn’t the even the IPCC summaries noted this for the mediteranean years ago? (my memory, sorry dont have a link atm)
I do understand the issue is “increased scarcity” but no where can one see how much any “possible/maybe” increase is vs modelling in quantitative terms … in the above links.
I’m wondering what ‘value’ there is in this Letter for working climate scientists.
102 MA Rodger, thx for links etc.
i appreciate what noaa bom etc do and the info available via numbers. Though I was more thinking along the lines of more tangible events, observations that are a bit more nuanced, real life scenarios, where the avg person is more likely to be able to gauge / understand the degree of impacts upon everyday people, or commercial activity — vs hard core numbers.
I’m thinking of a giant basic spreadsheet, and the original idea of a web of interconnected pages …. with exceptional events shifts new records etc.
eg massive beach mangroves die off in gulf carpentaria qld. aust. 2016
suspected or confirmed agw/cc related
cause – lack of water (precip/temps whatever) the mangrove trees died suddenly from spring 8/2015 to summer 12/2015
extent – 150,000 hectares, 600 miles of coastline
refs – news reports, wiki, uni, etc
and everything is cross referencing .. on key words eg “mangroves” “qld” “2016” “die off” etc etc
eg 2010 – Qld Cane toads population of at least ~1,000 established in Melbourne Vic Australia for first time
eg 2017 – Sydney NSW Heat wave above 40C maximum for 8 days – new Summer December Record
eg 2018 – Irunkandji Jellyfish originally from Far North Qld only 1880 until 1997 (@ Gladstone Qld Australia) new infestation in waters of Harvey Bay Qld Australia for the first time – summer Dec-Jan
cause – warmer SSTs of xC in SE Qld (?)
floods, below normal rainfall for x mths, bush fires, fish die offs, disease in tasmanian oysters, blue algae events, coral bleaching events, river flows, collapse of fish stocks (?), etc … anything from every where.
eg +100 killed in 3 months of massive Portugal bushfires in 2017
Contributors could simply enter the info into a pro-forma Form .. via an App or webpage?
Volunteer reviewers could cross check and add in verifiable references and more “data/dates” into the Event details and publish?
so someone could come along and do a “search” with parameters like
country australia
biosphere all kinds
events any kind
date/s 2010 to 2017 OR
country global all
biosphere mangroves
events die off
dates 1990 – 2010
Just a thought …. way above my pay grade.
PS more properly called a “database”
surely an app/algo could be made to automatically scour google scholar, other databases, and websites for the data, to “assemble/collate”, but maybe I’m dreamin’
110 – wili
To summarize the article: It’s going to get hot! May give a new meaning to the word he11hole. I think I’d plan to:
1) stay away from those places or else:
2) hang out in the local river, lake, ocean – preferably in the shade
3) have a minimum of 2 water coolers in each home (in case 1 fails)
4) drink lots of that cool water, or spray it on me
5) see if an Antarctic ice berg can be towed up near the beach
6) go watch a lot of movies at the theater
7) make ice for drinks
8) see if the city can open up some fire hydrants for people to cool off in
9) become a climate scientist and go on a research mission to Greenland
:)
Wonder if you can escape any of the heat by going under ground in those places?
117 -Mr kia
The whole point of wet-bulb heat stress is it is heat and humidity. If the air is saturated you can’t get evaporative cooling. So that limits the effectiveness of sitting in the shade at the beach, spraying cool water and opening up fire hydrants.
The ice berg idea might work, but it does sort of presume access to the ocean. And movie theatres, making ice and water coolers in the home all need access to electricity and a bit of money.
Actually going underground isn’t the worst idea. In parts of North East India traditional ‘baoli’ or step wells were constructed to access ground water. Often these step wells had shaded pavilions near the water where people could relax and chill out in the relative shade. Though I rather suspect the people doing the relaxing and chilling out weren’t the people who had to toil in the sun and dig the wells, or the ones cultivating crops in the fields to keep the relaxing class in ice and lemon for their gin and tonic.
for MAR at 105: I don’t think it is true or useful to say the rate of CO2 increase in skyrocketing, but I think it is true and useful to note that the rate of CO2 increase is increasing when measured in decadal periods.
Here are those numbers:
2005 – 2014 2.11 ppm per year
1995 – 2004 1.87 ppm per year
1985 – 1994 1.42 ppm per year
1975 – 1984 1.44 ppm per year
1965 – 1974 1.06 ppm per year
1959 – 1964 0.73 ppm per year
(6 years only)
source: https://www.co2.earth/co2-acceleration
there are a lot of ways to look at the raw data and the numbers change depending on what time frame is employed, but the trend is unmistakable and the trend is that the rate of increase is rising, right?
The rate of increase is rising, right? Is that ok?
a couple of links to review, if needed:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/10/11/co2-increase/
from that: “… more and more are talking about reducing our emissions of CO2. So, how is planet earth doing? We haven’t stopped increasing atmospheric CO2, but is there any sign that at least we’ve slowed down? … The rate of CO2 growth has been increasing (we knew that) so CO2 concentration has been accelerating. Unfortunately is hasn’t yet shown any sign that the acceleration has stopped.”
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/co2-increase-2/
from that: ” There’s still no sign that we’ve stopped the acceleration of atmospheric CO2, let alone actually decreased the growth rate.
The world is finally waking up to the fact that to avoid climate disaster, we need to reduce CO2 emissions. But it seems not yet to have realized that what we really need to do is stop CO2 increase. The frightening truth is that not only have we failed to stop CO2 growth, we haven’t even slowed it down.”
I don’t think it makes sense to use a word like skyrocket. Increase works fine. Acceleration works fine. It’s like saying a frenzied attacker is repeatedly plunging a knife into a victim. Maybe they’re just pushing a sharp object into a nearby person a number of time? I like careful use of language, but I also appreciate a well-turned phrase. Stabbed to death or death by sharp object? I will go with “stabbed to death.”
wrt CO2 rate of increase? I think I would avoid skyrocket and simply paraphrase Tamino thusly: It seems we have not yet realized that what we really need to do is stop CO2 increase. The frightening truth is that not only have we failed to stop CO2 growth, we haven’t even slowed it down.
Cheers,
Mike
Thomas, #112-114–
I had no trouble accessing the whole letter; Springer is ‘making it available,’ presumably as a sort of PSA. (That was just clicking on the link you gave.)
I’d say that the significance of the paper is that it provides empirical evidence of an effect long projected in model runs. So we’ve officially gone from “It’s likely to happen,” to “It is happening.”
“All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.”
(But don’t get me wrong, we desperately *do* need education.)
You remark that “for thousands of years southern europe had a lower precip water flow than nth europe anyway.” That brings to mind another quotation:
“Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
Apparently St. Matthew’s prophetic abilities extended to certain effects of climate change.
Vendicar Decarian #111 and James McDonald,
I was trying to make a point in my previous comment that needs elaboration.
There are two kinds of people: Those who can independently construct a correct mathematical model of global climate processes, and the rest of us. In the second group, there are those who realize which group they belong to, and those who don’t.
My point being that entering into a “debate” with someone like AM on a detailed but purely verbal/descriptive level is pointless. Whom are you going to convince? You just create the impression that there really is a debate.
James may be using terminology imprecisely, but I think he is trying to address the more fundamental flaw in what AM is suggesting. Why not just ask AM where the energy goes? You will not get an answer, obviously, but if you want to “educate the public”, that’s a pretty clear refutation.
Vendicar, as an example:
I’m not sure what you object to in that second quote from 101. Does James mean “eventually re-emitted by that level of the atmosphere” or “re-emitted by the same molecule”? And, is your description perfect? What about mass transfer effects? And, is it really correct to say “heat bounces around”?
So, everyone gets lost in parsing this kind of language and nitpicking, when, again, someone with expertise has already done the math! The errors in arguments from AM and from Denialist trolls are almost always far more basic.
Thomas (@112) When I click on the nature.com link you provide, I get the PDF (I let my subscription lapse; it’s been released on-line only for free by SV… maybe not in all regions?). But your query seems odd. Should any individual paper have to meet a threshold of importance? Even if the results of this paper may seem less than groundbreaking, they may still advance our knowledge and provide a basis for future research. That said, I think regional studies, especially on secondary effects of global warming, are still not as robust as we would want, so anything that adds to our capabilities in that area is desirable.
“New study ‘reduces uncertainty’ for climate sensitivity”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-study-reduces-uncertainty-climate-sensitivity
“Scientists have presented a new, narrower estimate of the “climate sensitivity” – a measure of how much the climate could warm in response to the release of greenhouse gases.”
“We get a value with a ‘likely’ range, which means there’s a 66% probability that it’s in that range of 2.2 to 3.4C with a central estimate of 2.8C. That’s not so far from the central estimate of the IPCC which is 3C, but the range is much reduced, from 1.5 to 4C, to 2.2 to 3.4C. What that means is we can rule out very low climate sensitivities and we can rule out very high climate sensitivities.”
Stefan Rahmstorf Receives 2017 Climate Communication Prize
https://eos.org/agu-news/stefan-rahmstorf-receives-2017-climate-communication-prize
Congratulations. Well deserved.
All of this contention about CO2 line saturation, seems to be caused
by everyone making his own handwaving argument. The reality is that
oversimplified arguments can often mislead, instead you have to
construct a model that is self consistent, and solve it. Thats not
likely to be something that can be done analytically (solving math by hand),
but a competant physicist should be able to construct a computer model
and the solve it.
So what is needed.
The simplest model would be a 1D layered model with no clouds. You need
a heat source first, how much solar energy is absorbed by the ground and
at each layer. Then you can worry about radiative transfer, and include
the effect of convection. The later efect, convection can be greatly
simplified, by the assumption that the lapse rate cannot be any
greater than the adiabatic rate that air cools as the pressure decreases.
During a daytime period, where there is excess heat at the ground level
the temperature will follow this adiatic cooling, until some height
(the tropopause), above which all energy is transferred by radiation.
You will still need to solve for the radiation from the ground to the
tropopause, because that determines a radiation boundary condition at
that point, and you have to solve until the top of atmosphere is reached.
Pressure is zero there. It is best to use pressure, not height as your
vertical coordinate.
Now the radiative part is harder, as you have to contend with each
frequency and every angle from straight up to horizontal to straight down.
This means the radiative balance at any point requires and angle of
incidence at each frequency. Integrate over all frequencies to obtain
the energy balance at that height. Above the tropopause, at equilibrium
the balance should be zero, however you won’t know the temperature profile
to start with, but you could let the various layers heat/cool based
on the detailed balance at that point, and advance a timestep (which means
you’ve changed the temperature at each point). Now, this requires a
competant physicist, and a competant numerical analyst (often the same
person), but given such you can write a computer program to evolve
your temperature profile until it converges to equilibrium. If you want
to add day-night, you would vary the solar input over 24hours, and the
layers would never be in equilbrium, but would vary over the 24hour period.
You would need to run it over several days, until the daily temperature
profile converges. All this sound messy, but again a good physicist and
numerical analyst should be able to put it all together. Given decent
quadrature formulas, those integral reduce to a weighted sum over a few tens
of values, any modern computer would have more than enough speed and
memory to do this. This is how one verifies one’s handwaving arguments,
and this is what climate modelers do (with additional physics, and covering
the surface, not just a single point). But even a 1D model can teach a lot.
In any case, this has been done a doable for decades, and climate
scientists have access to the results, and can tweak the models and
perform other experiments. They don’t need to use fallable handwaving
arguments, but can proceed in this rigorous fashion.
A paper by Cox et al. claims to tghten climate sensitivity bounds quite a bit by looking at short term temperature fluctuations.
From the abstract:
” … a central estimate of 2.8 degrees Celsius with 66 per cent confidence limits (equivalent to the IPCC ‘likely’ range) of 2.2–3.4 degrees Celsius.”
They use a simple model with a lumped heat capacity and look at the one year lagged autocorrelation. The fluctuation in radiative forcing is assumed to be white noise.
sidd
Sorry reference to Cox paper is
doi:10.1038/nature25450
sidd
GISTEMP has posted for December with an anomaly of +0.89ºC, marginally above the last few months (+0.70ºC to +0.88ºC) and the highest monthly anomaly since April. (The start of 2017 saw anomalies in the range +0.93ºC to +1.13ºC). It is the 2nd warmest December on record after 2015 (+1.10ºC) and ahead of 2016 in 3rd (+0.82ºC), with 2014 the 4th warmest Dec (+0.78ºC).
December 2017 is =20th warmest anomaly on the full all-month record. Only four months of the top twenty are earlier than 2015 (one each from El-Nino years 1998, 2002, 2007 & 2010) and none of these are in the top ten.
The table ranks the top-ten calendar-year annual anomalies. As expected, 2017 comes in at 2nd place, the warmest non-El Nino year by some margin.
2016 .. +0.99ºC
2017 .. +0.90ºC
2015 .. +0.86ºC
2014 .. +0.73ºC
2010 .. +0.70ºC
2005 .. +0.67ºC
2013 .. +0.64ºC
2009 .. +0.64ºC
2002 .. +0.62ºC
1998 .. +0.62ºC
NASA ranks 2017 the second-hottest year on Earth
So even an El Niño-free year on earth is now a record-breaking one.
“It really brings it home that the trends we’re seeing are independent of anything that’s happening in terms of variability in the Pacific,” Gavin Schmidt, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the NASA lab that conducted the analysis, told reporters on Jan. 18.
https://qz.com/1183099/climate-change-nasa-ranks-2017-the-second-hottest-year-on-earth-despite-no-el-nino/
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/long-term-warming-trend-continued-in-2017-nasa-noaa
Audio from the January 18, 2018 global climate call.
http://www.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/2017%20NOAA_NASA%20Global%20Climate%20Call%20011818.mp3
—
“These scientists have produced a more accurate estimate of how the planet will respond to increasing CO2 levels,” said Piers Forster, director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds.
That “known unknown” is called equilibrium climate sensitivity, and for the last 25 years the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the ultimate authority on climate science – has settled on a range of 1.5C to 4.5C (2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit).
Cox and colleagues, using a new methodology, have come up with a far narrower range: 2.2C to 3.4C, with a best estimate of 2.8C.
If accurate, it precludes the most destructive doomsday scenarios.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/18/worst-case-global-warming-scenarios-not-credible-says-study
[ ??? ]
Our approach is to focus on the variability of temperature about long-term historical warming, rather than on the warming trend itself. We use an ensemble of climate models to define an emergent relationship2 between ECS and a theoretically informed metric of global temperature variability.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25450
So is this ‘theoretical’ or ‘practical’? thx
For CO2 Mike:
Maybe someone has already shared this here (Oct 2017) if so, sorry about repeating it.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-pinpoints-cause-of-earth-s-recent-record-carbon-dioxide-spike
“Our analysis shows this extra carbon dioxide explains the difference in atmospheric carbon dioxide growth rates between 2011 and the peak years of 2015-16.
That increase was about 3 parts per million of carbon dioxide per year — or 6.3 gigatons of carbon. In recent years, the average annual increase has been closer to 2 parts per million of carbon dioxide per year — or 4 gigatons of carbon. These record increases occurred even though emissions from human activities in 2015-16 are estimated to have remained roughly the same as they were prior to the El Nino, which is a cyclical warming pattern of ocean circulation in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean that can affect weather worldwide.
They found the total amount of carbon released to the atmosphere from all land areas increased by 3 gigatons in 2015, due to the El Nino. About 80 percent of that amount — or 2.5 gigatons of carbon — came from natural processes occurring in tropical forests in South America, Africa and Indonesia, with each region contributing roughly the same amount.
—
There is of course another study showing how enso is being impacted by higher global temps ….
Research Letter
Future Changes to El Niño–Southern Oscillation Temperature and Precipitation Teleconnections Sarah J. Perry1,2,3,*, Shayne McGregor2,3, Alex Sen Gupta1,3 and Matthew H. England First published: 21 October 2017
https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL074509
Climate change to expand impacts of El Nino/La Nina extremes
https://www.climatescience.org.au/content/1201-climate-change-expand-impacts-el-ninola-nina-extremes
( Jan 10th – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/01/unforced-variations-jan-2018/comment-page-2/#comment-689251 )
105 MA Rodger, a question regarding this: “As there continues to be nonsensical blather in this thread about the rate of increase in CO2 concentrations skyrocketing.
Would please explain to the group how it is you receive input from words like “increasing” and “Growing” and “Interesting” then output that back to the forum falsely as “skyrocketing”?
The last time I looked doing that is called making a Strawman Logical Fallacy. Why do you keep doing that? (rhetorical)
Apparently it is a waste of time requesting that you be accurate. (sigh)
I say: “The 2010-2017 growth rate appears to be very close to an avg of ~2.5 ppm annually now – up from ~2.0 ppm per year during 2000-2010.”
You put the figures at 2.39 and 1.96 — and you’re complaining and over-inflating the verbiage used at the same time.
Are you serious? Apparently yes.
and you say: “For the record, the average 12-month increase for the weekly MLO data through 2017 was 2.30ppm.”
while I am speaking about the first few weeks of 2018 and the increases already showing on 2017 and the “trend” lines beign a concern IF that continues — please try to focus and stop misrepresenting what other people say and mean and the actual issue/topic they are presenting.
Not to mention totally ignoring the actual genuine questions being asked, such as “That is what the science and the data is in fact now saying, isn’t it? — Or is there a better way to say it?”
I won’t bother asking you to politely answer those questions versus being rude. I know it’s a waste of time. (shrug)
122
MartinJB says:
17 Jan 2018 at 9:29 AM
Thomas (@112) When I click on the nature.com link you provide, I get the PDF (I let my subscription lapse; it’s been released on-line only for free by SV… maybe not in all regions?)
—
when i posted the link the paper was not opening up like it does now.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3416.epdf?referrer_access_token=g50P2Riclcbo74lS0NoFCtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N2MaUqAk7_CQ67Q9N-v1NThbVv5s7k7iovIJ5dLgjVONlUnWyKo5q4vlP1DyzwsYTjmeTtW0fI8QWo9BSXmflKCy4WGkpzaHg0owSaxOLaDjdi2THhnjRo7e3w5-MwiX7sfzOrcZov6egwJNKQNcOz9hxoHLOgkM3CRmD7arCXBamtYhJgVDkMXgT5mUUeKAA-3BrTc7oWCEW9Eb7hOkiRO9U5rYEij6fWh18eW6ojhQ%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=www.realclimate.org
aka referrer_access_token=tracking_referrer=www.realclimate.org
excellent, now I can read it.
119 Mike: “I like careful use of language”
#MeToo
105 MA Rodger (et al) – here’s what I had already written (in anticipation) before I actually posted #103 https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/01/unforced-variations-jan-2018/comment-page-3/#comment-689429
Quoting myself from text doc:
Even more interesting about the CO2 ppm data coming out now indicates the following (based on ‘current bau’ if no genuine changes are implemented via COP or some other ‘action/event/driver’ of massive change in human affairs).
Well, I’ll wait for Jan/Feb to unfold and that official data to be presented in good time.
Meanwhile, it was 407 ppm in DEC 2017, right?
= 10 ppm since 2014
= 2.5 per year
= +25 ppm per decade current “on current trends”
Therefore 407 ppm + 2.5 x 3 yrs = ~414.5 ppm projected in 2020
OK, so, roughly speaking:
1950 = 320 ppm then ….
2020 = 415 ppm + 95
2030 = 439 ppm +119
2040 = 464 ppm +144
2050 = 489 ppm +169
2075 = 551 ppm +231
2100 = 613 ppm +293 = almost a doubling of CO2 since 1950
Do those rough numbers tell a reasonably accurate future ‘human story’?
How are ‘we’ looking?
Sorchimisio?
[ end quote ]
re #116 Thomas,
Public Release: 18-Jan-2018
Using data mining to make sense of climate change
New methodology puts emphasis on data to test climate models
Georgia Institute of Technology
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/giot-udm011818.php
eg
Immediate applications range from diagnosing representation and changes in teleconnections—or connectivity in the case of ecosystems—over space and time, to aiding adjoint models in a general framework for regional or global attribution studies.
Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-017-0006-4
Comments/insights? This is above my pay grade.
Killian et el re KA lecture, yes the one in Uppsala Sweden, Revealing the Naked Emperor: is the one.
And yes K, “it’s the extremes” and “the impacts” that really matter here, short and long term.
eg from KA @ https://youtu.be/Chsas3u8k-k?t=5m26s
(auto-transcript – a new thing worth knowing about)
05:38
might be quite nice but this is a global
05:40
average and the global averages have
05:41
huge repercussions geographically around
05:44
the planet and also they have big
05:45
implications during extreme weather
05:47
events so the average is really quite
05:49
unhelpful and we should really not have
05:52
used an average not for communicating
05:53
more widely so but we are we have we are
05:56
where we are now we’ve been using this
05:57
for a long time but remember that two
05:59
degrees centigrade can be six degrees in
06:00
the poles you’re going to degree see a
06:02
warming most of Greenland will melt not
06:04
in our lifetimes it will take quite a
06:06
few hundred years but within the next
06:08
probably next ten to thirty years we
06:10
will have locked in the melting of
06:12
Greenland that’s seven meters of sea
06:14
level rise so let’s not think that two
06:17
degrees C of warming is small many
06:19
people will suffer many people will die
06:21
at two degrees centigrade of warming
06:23
there’ll be poor there be low emitters
06:25
they’ll typically be non-white and they
06:27
live a long way from here so we know who
06:28
they are even and that’s why in the
06:31
Paris agreement there was a lot of
06:32
pressure for 1.5 from some of the poorer
06:34
more climate vulnerable parts of the
06:36
world because for them the impact of 2
06:38
degrees C are just unacceptable so they
06:40
pushed for one point
06:41
five but I getting because I don’t know
06:44
what all your backgrounds are I think
06:46
it’s because worth remembering in fact a
06:48
lot the science community forget this
06:49
and it’s really worth thinking about
06:51
this that are concerned with climate
06:53
change does not relate to temperature
06:55
but actually relates to impacts what are
06:57
the impacts that we’re going to face
06:58
from climate change and science can
07:01
actually describe what those impacts are
07:03
so we can understand what impacts
07:05
they’ll be at different parts around the
07:06
world with some uncertainty and for
07:08
different temperatures so it could be
07:10
sea level rise biodiversity loss
07:12
droughts floods extreme weather events
07:14
ice loss regional temperature change we
07:16
can say something about that quite
07:18
robustly from the science but with the
07:20
usual ranges of uncertainty and these
07:22
can then be related into the sort of
07:23
things that we might think about from a
07:24
human perspective agricultural yields
07:27
changes in food patterns vulnerability
07:30
to extreme weather human migration and
07:32
how these things might play out against
07:33
other tensions that are felt in
07:35
different parts of the world so it’s the
07:38
impact here that important so
07:40
temperature rise across the century
07:41
which is what we’re talking about when
07:42
we talk about two degrees centigrade or
07:44
so and she’s just a shorthand for
07:47
climate related impacts and we have to
07:49
remind ourselves of this we are actually
07:50
talking about impacts not really about
07:52
temperature but it’s a good proxy that
07:54
we use
Thomas @ 130: Note the following final paragraphs from your Guardian link:
“One wild card not taken into consideration by the new model is the possibility of rapid shifts in climate brought on by the planet itself. “There is indeed evidence that the climate system can undergo abrupt changes or ‘tipping points’,” Cox said.
The collapse of the gulf stream, the thawing of carbon-rich permafrost, or the melting of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica – any of these could quickly change the equation, and not in the Earth’s favour.”
These tipping points and feedbacks are note just ‘possibilities’; they’re pretty much certainties, at some point at least. To just leave out the very possibility of them happening shows that the study just ignored the factors that could lead to worst-case scenarios, and it by no means ‘precludes’ them, as far as I can see.
But perhaps others or mods could step in and throw a bit more light on the subject?
[ sorry about that, the KA transcript quote was bigger than I thought – still a good quote – if it is true ]
and what about this KA comment on what is uncontested about the science?
https://youtu.be/Chsas3u8k-k?t=8m TO 9m53s
Is it true?
How would it be said better?
118 – Astringent
“The whole point of wet-bulb heat stress is it is heat and humidity. If the air is saturated you can’t get evaporative cooling. So that limits the effectiveness of sitting in the shade at the beach, spraying cool water and opening up fire hydrants.”
Agree that you will not get evaporative cooling by sitting in the air, but if you can sit in the water, you’ll be cooled by conduction and convection – even if the water is 90 degrees – but best if you have some shade – umbrella? Also, unless hydrant water is warmer than skin temperature it will provide cooling. And if you have refrigerated water you can drink it and/or wet your clothing with it – the cool water will provide cooling. For those without refrigerators, a simple water cooler could be devised to operate in the high ambient temps expected in those regions.
Something like this, except no water heating mode, well insulated and designed for operation in the expected high ambient temperatures. This one uses 80 Watts for cooling and water comes out at 6 to 10 deg C. They’re common in offices.
http://www.sears.com/goplus-water-cooler-dispenser-5-gallon-cold-and/p-SPM14750681424?plpSellerId=factorydirectsale&prdNo=3&blockNo=3&blockType=G3
mike @119.
You ask “The rate of increase is rising, right? Is that ok?”
No it is not.
“The rate of increase has been rising.”
I wasn’t necessarily aiming the “skyrocket” at you but you miss the main point I make @105 which is to “note that even decadal averages can be significantly influenced by ENSO.” Thus an innocent calculation of CO2 increase 2000-10 turns out to be less than representative of the times – what we accuse opponents of being a “cherry-pick.”
Because CO2 increases are like global temperature increases, we have to cope with the wobbles and “even decadal averages can be significantly influenced by ENSO.” We would expect an anthropogenic acceleration over the last two decades of c+0.02ppm/yr/yr. This is roughly what the acceleration was up to 2015 (using OLS over 20 year periods. Note the graph linked above is 10-year periods and a lot more wobbly.) Since 2015 the El Nino increased CO2 rartes to a peak of 0.043ppm/yr/yr since when it has been dropping and presently* sits at 0.031ppm/yr/yr (*for the most recent 20 years). The highest acceleration occurred through 2000, the result of El Ninos and the late 20th century volcanism. So even with 20-year data buckets, there are wobbles preventing long-term acceleration being quantified. But importantly, we can be satisfied that the acceleration does not yet hid any natural feedback mechanisms of any importance.
CO2 levels are increasing and will continue to do so until we cut our emissions by more than a half. That will not happen for at least a couple of decades.
CO2 emissions are encouragingly looking flat-ish over recent years. If this continues, we can expect the wobbly increase in the rate of rise of CO2 to show signs of dropping back towards zero.
Re: 121 Where does the energy go? He will say it is magically radiated into space. Maybe he is one of those who claim that since CO2 radiates in the IR that it actually cools the atmosphere. Who knows what quackery will be revealed if he answers at all.
CO2 saturation is wrong from basic principles. If you feel that you can convince people who can neither add nor subtract that the idea is idiocy by presenting an equation then you are not living in the real world.
There is at least a possibility that words will suffice.
Equations and models will never succeed with people who don’t do math and who claim that the models are contrived and or flawed.
Re comments on Cox et al.–
The paper seems potentially pretty big news, given how stubbornly ECS estimates have resisted tightening up over the years. And yes, the policy implications are significant: basically, we are still in the territory of ‘we *are* going to take more and worse hits from warming no matter what we do, but we don’t appear to be doomed to civilizational collapse regardless of future actions.’
So the significance in that sense is confirming, not changing, the prescription written (IIRC) so succinctly in an old RC post headed “Hit The Brakes Hard.”
However, the headline, which appears in multiple stories and so appears to be press-agency written, is yet another massive climate communications fail. It’s not clear just what “the most destructive doomsday scenarios” really means, and really that’s not terrible accurate in the sense that one can’t constrain (with complete assurance, anyway) just how much carbon we will or won’t ultimately emit!
And sure enough, my pet denialist–a long-term education project of sorts–responded to the study with the question “…did you see this, maybe its just not a problem after all.”
I’m guessing he didn’t read beyond the headline; it seems to be a minor role in my life to do such reading for him. Clearly he didn’t get to the part that says:
FWIW, he was citing the Agence France Presse story (English version):
https://www.afp.com/en/news/2265/worst-case-global-warming-scenarios-not-credible-study-doc-wx0de1
MAR at 142: I have asked Tamino if he has time to run the numbers again. The rate of increase is the number that I watch most closely and I believe that you can only see a flattening of the rate of increase if you choose time frames that allow for ENSO and LN spikes and troughs that have been smoothed, which is to say: you have to cherrypick the numbers to see a flattening of the rate of increase.
The last time this came up back in late 2015, Tamino’s analysis of the numbers ended the push from folks here to claim that the rate of increase was not in fact increasing (which is why I included the link to Tamino’s posts on the question).
I don’t think it is likely that there will be any change in analysis based on the 2016-2018 time frame addition which is, in fact, distorted by a significant EN event. I am patient. I will wait and see if Tamino has time to crunch the numbers again.
Great video of winter storm on OR coast here:
Winter storm watching on Oregon Coast yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B6vIdrffZ0
Storm surge at Ocean City WA beach access road yesterday leaves cars scrambling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGSGNpfRFqQ
Huge waves at Ucluelet, B.C.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpNSIIBIdk8
It’s time for global warming optimists to show courage and resolve by buying shoreline property.
Cheers,
Mike
Merry Apocalypse, Everybody; & . . . Happy Armageddon!
[This ‘string’ is supposed to roll from the tongue W/the precise insouciance, or nonchalance with which the Cheers’ character Norm uttered his Signature: “Afternoon Everybody,” upon his entry, via stage left.]
I’ve been watching the emergence of The Warming now, since Jimmy Carter’s query to The Academy gave us The Charney Report, in 1979 (with still exact numbers for the Hi-end, Lo, & Central likelihood thermal consequence of a CO2 doubling). Last year one of my Barkeeps @ my Broncos Bar, told me her ‘sources’ inform her that Humanity will go extinct from Climate upheaval. (Two others are charmed by Righty Radio, & earnestly believe it’s All of Giant Hoax.)
For most of the intervening decades, I thought of our alteration an astronomical body–a planet–as something inherently nearly everlasting, if not cataclysmic, myself. But recent insights which have come my way have very greatly reduced my personal level of angst. The Chinese and Indians both are seeming to gravitate towards combustionless electricity generation (something we apparently are incapable of any longer). And there are plentiful means of calling back the carbon we have placed in the atmosphere–once we get the basics correct, and Stop Digging the Hole!
The ongoing Destruction of the Aquifer underlying the California Central Valley however, is tragically, Permanent.
]
145 – mike
“It’s time for global warming optimists to show courage and resolve by buying shoreline property.”
Winter storms on the PNW coast are normal. Storm surge is nothing new.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txt8wUznyJM
Would I want low lying property there? Not since the 2004 and 2011 tsunamis. Coastal property would be fine – just make sure you’re a couple hundred feet ASL. Even then, a big tsunami could get you:
Hilina Slump:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMUJKFjAiA
La Palma:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb4T8a1K5tw
Lituya Bay, Alaska – landslide caused 1,700′ wave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN6EgMMrhdI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMprH-4QC4
Thomas @135.
You provided a response to a critique of your comment @103 about future CO2 levels before any is even offered, before you even post it. This does suggest you felt your comment @103 was controversial. Certianly it was your comment @103 that exhibited the “skyrocket” message.
(As an aside, the latest daily MLO CO2 data is showing 407.8ppm for the week-so-far, a 12-month rise of 1.7ppm on the week which is not greatly different for the month to date. This does make your comment @103 “2 weeks of Jan 2018 ~409 ppm avg., and heading towards 410 ppm / +4 ppm above last year.“ look a bit unlikely.)
Concerning your comment @135, while you do mention RCP8.5 which is commonly seen as being the BAU scenario, you fail to compare your own projected CO2 levels to it or any other of the RCP.
And your question @103, re-asked @132:-
That is what the science is saying. It is called AGW. You might have heard of it. However, to suggest the CO2 trend has been runnuing at 2.5ppm/yr or “heading towards” 4ppm/yr is inaccurate, scientifically so.
And your presumably ‘politely-asked’ question @135:-
“Do those rough numbers tell a reasonably accurate future ‘human story’? How are ‘we’ looking? Sorchimisio?”
If you examine the literature (as have the IPCC), you should be able to judge that “future ‘human story’” to 2050 and beyond. The table below puts this in context. (The IPCC also graph their RCPs.)
… . … … … …Thomas … … … . RCP4.5 … … … RCP6.0 … … … RCP8.5
2020 = … … 415 ppm … … … 411ppm … … … 409ppm … … … 416ppm
2030 = … … 439 ppm … … … 435ppm … … … 428ppm … … … 449ppm
2040 = … … 464 ppm … … … 460ppm … … … 451ppm … … … 489ppm
2050 = … … 489 ppm … … … 486ppm … … … 478ppm … … … 540ppm
2075 = … … 551 ppm … … … 528ppm … … … 572ppm … … … 718ppm
2100 = … … 613 ppm … … … 538ppm … … … 669ppm … … … 936ppm
So from the science, this second graph may allow an assessment of your ” sorchimisio (sic)” relative to the usual understanding of BAU.
mike @145.
You appeal to Tamino because you fail to understand what I say.
Coinsidently, yesterday I posted a comment at Tamino’s Open Mind on this identical subject, satatisitcally that is. His Highness Willard the Wordrapist, Lord High Wiseacre of Wattsupia had felt it proper to broadcast more perverted analysis of one Sheldon Walker, a half-wit ever convinced of his own hetrodoxy. The half-wit was trying to make sense of the Confidence Intervals of OLS analyses carried out on 121 runs of monthly GISS LOTI data. His purpose was to demonstrate the existence of a pause in AGW. As with the famous Harrabin question asked of Phil Jones in 2010 (which examined 15 years of data), the results are simply not indicative of any underlying trend due to the ginormous wobbles, (The true answer is thus not “Yes! …” as given in that BBC interview but “Using just 15 years of data, such statistical significance will very often be absent, even in periods of evident warming, so the meaningless answer to your question is ‘Yes!’“
Your appeal to Tamino shouild result in a similar reply. If there has been an end to the accelerating CO2 levels of recent years, you will not find it appearing in the analysis used in 2015, even with all the up-to-date data added into the analysis. And that is because of all the wobbles. No meaningful signal will be apprearing for some years to come.
You say you are “patient.” Can you wait “some years” for your answer?
Re Zebra at 120:
With yet another post full of ad hominem points and no science.
Why don’t you ask him yourself?
The answer is tha the energy is radiated back down to the surface at night and then out to space through the IR window. It cannot go directly to space since absorption is saturated.
But stating the facts is pointless. Who am I goinng to convince? You have all blindly accepted the lapse rate feedback model as described in the second part of Spence Weart’s blog post, even if you only have a vauge idea of what it proposes.