This month’s open thread on climate science topics. Arctic sea ice minimum is upcoming, global temperatures running at (or close) to record levels, heat waves, new reconstructions for the last 2000 years, etc… Surely something there to discuss?
Climate science from climate scientists...
Is there any work on the relationship – specifically – between strong El Nino years and the Arctic sea ice minimum? Is there a lag effect?
Okay, just to get things going, U.K. Met. Office analysis indicates the top 10 warmest years for the U.K. (since 1884, start of the continuous data record) have all occurred since 2002; reported here:
– https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2019/state-of-the-uk-climate-2018
and good summary on the Beeb, here:
– https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49167797
mike @163 last months UV thread. Regarding tracking sea level rise. I have a look a couple of times a year to see what is happening with sea level rise on NASA’s website as below. This has a graph of the satellite data that gets updated a couple of times a year. It’s enough for my curiosity. You might be able to find shorter term weekly or monthly sea level rise data on their website, or by googling jason topex sea level rise data, but it probably requires opening an account.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
I was banned from tony hellers youtube channel bec I asked why his plots dont show the data he says they do.
P.e. in his current video “Climate Crisis” he shows graphs of Travemunde, Germany (12.49) and Dublin, Ireland (13.01) (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5iIRRKCfPI). He does not give the full source just names the PSMSL as source, so the most of his followers will not controll the data. I did.
In the original data of Travemunde we see not only the peak of 2002, which he shows, there are more peaks in the following years, which his graph does not show (source: https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.plots/13_high.png ). In his graph of Dublin he stopped plotting short after the year 2000 do not need to show the rise up to 2010, as seen in the original data (source: https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.plots/432_high.png). I asked him why so, and he deleted my question.
Cheers
The 2019 Arctic melt season is currently running with less ice for the time of year than any previous melt season.
Looking at Sea Ice Extent (JAXA numbers) and strip away the big annual melt cycle, the situation looks like this (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’).
At the present time in the melt season, it is probably best to consider the situation of the season in terms of ‘days/weeks ahead’ of previous years.
2019 is a week ahead of 2007, 2016, 2017 & 2018. Given there is perhaps six weeks of melt to go, that’s quite an impressive lead.
2019 is however only 2 days ahead of 2012, the meltiest year on record. With the melt season still having c45-odd days to go, a two-day lead is not significant. The next couple of weeks of big melt through to the middle of August will likely show how melty 2019 will end up.
Another measure of meltiness is from the excellent PIOMAS model which actually updates twice monthly if you are in the loop like Arctic Penguin who plot the PIOMAS Sea Ice Volume anomaly data year-on-year up to mid-July showing 2019 as the least icy by volume, again ahead by only a couple of days, this time from 2012 & 2017. The plot to the end-of-July should appear in the next week.
Yes, and new modeling suggests climate sensitivity of 5C.
If that’s true then civilization collapse is no longer alarmist.
@Mittel Al terliche Warmperiode, #4
” I asked him why so, and he deleted my question.”
That’s just the way the deniers work, they are not honest, they never were. Don’t waste your time with these kind of ignorants, they give a shit about scientific hard facts, but they can never escape the hard facts of the cooking pot of Nature, muhahaha, I love that fact as they will burn too.
@P S Baker, #6
” Yes, and new modeling suggests climate sensitivity of 5C.”
Interesting, wouldn’t surprise me that much, but could you provide any scientific source please…
” If that’s true then civilization collapse is no longer alarmist…”
I just have to look out the window to know that the coming civilization collapse, the zombie apocalypse is real, even without climate heating. I just have to open my eyes, ears and mind and watch and listen to the sheeples to know for sure, Hell is real. And I’m not talking about funny christian hell, but I’m talking about the real cooking pot of Nature, the concrete jungle. And I’m no alarmist, I’m a wolf, I got animal instinct, I’m no shep. Anyone who’d call me an alarmist will learn better very soon.
@ 4 , i checked SL data @ PSMSL a few locations at random , they are flat as Tony Heller claims .
P S BAKER @ 6:
Granted the following link is to a weather report, but still, it does make one wonder!
https://www.iflscience.com/environment/the-terrifying-reason-this-5yearold-weather-report-is-going-viral/
It’s not often that a weather report goes viral. It’s even less often that a weather report from five years ago goes viral. Weather reports are generally not known for their longevity.
However, one weather report from TF1 in France has been doing the rounds over the last few days, and you aren’t going to like the reasons why. In 2014, weather reporter Évelyne Dhéliat teamed up with the World Meteorological Organization to create a fictional weather report imagining what the weather would be like in 2050. At the time their predictions were deemed far-fetched.
The Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital hosted this years Heartland Internatioanl Climate Conference.
Despite the weather it was not warmly received
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/greeland-ice-melting-four-times-faster-than-thought-raising-sea-level/
The numbers from this National Geographic article (from January, but I don’t recall the doubling times, or this article, specifically, though I’d guess it’s been discussed here…) are OMG-esque for Greenland, unless I’m misunderstanding something. These doubling times are coming down to levels Hansen, et al. warned about some years ago; sub-10yr. That rate of melt is only going to accelerate. If this info is accurate and widespread, we’re looking at those dreaded 5-year doubling times, easily, it would seem.
My caveat is I suck at math. Anyone care to work out the the doubling times for the data in this article?
Context:
[blockquote]All it takes to melt Greenland’s ice sheet is a surface temperature of 1 C and sunlight. “It used to be rare to get temperatures above 0 degrees on the ice sheet, but no longer,” Bevis said. And each degree above 1 C doubles the amount of ice melt….
However, there is a warming threshold that could be crossed in a few decades or less and, if exceeded long enough, the meltdown of Greenland would be irreversible, said Alley…
And it’s clear more of the overall ice loss is coming from the surface than marine terminating glaciers, Box said.[/blockquote]
Measured Melt:
[blockquote]Greenland… hit a tipping point around 2002-2003… By 2012 the annual ice loss was “unprecedented” at nearly four times the rate in 2003[/blockquote]
[blockquote]between 2002 and 2016, Greenland lost approximately 280 billion tons of ice per year.[/blockquote]
How do those billions spread over those 13 years. It’s got to be a parabolic curve, yes? Well, more of a sawtooth rising, still. This is not happening monotonically or it wouldn’t have quadrupled in such a short time.
Not having the math skills to apply an equation to the info, I drew myself a simple parabolic curve with doubling, tripling and quadrupling on one axis and 2-year increments of time on the other, out to sixteen. I popped a generic parabolic curve into it and got 10 years for the first doubling and 6 for the second.
I’m very curious what the actual math is.
[blockquote]It’s the same story for western North America’s glaciers—ice loss quadrupled since the early 2000s to 12.3 billion tons annually[/blockquote]
[blockquote]Alarmingly, the Antarctic is also undergoing an accelerated melt down, losing six times as much ice as it was four decades ago, a January 14 study reported. Its ice loss averaged 252 billion tons a year over the past decade.[/blockquote]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL080942
Just a reminder:
If the forests of Germany collapse, then you don’t need to worry about Germanies climate mitigation efforts anymore as the CO2 emissions of the collapsing trees will outpace any climate mitigation efforts. The forests of Germany ARE collapsing NOW.
Lay back, in Hell all climate palaver will end ultimately.
UAH has posted its July global TLT anomaly at +0.38ºC, a value equalling the year-to-date average (this following June +0.47ºC the highest anomaly of the year-to-date and May +0.32ºC the coolest). Dispite media talk of July 2019 being possibly the warmest month on record (July globally having the warmest anomaly base), in the upward-trend-denying UAH TLT record it is the =2nd warmest July behind 1998 (+0.51ºC), equalling 2016 (+0.38ºC) and ahead of 2010 (+0.33ºC), 2018 (+0.32ºC), 2017 (+0.29ºC) & 2002 (+0.23ºC).
July 2019 sits at =36th warmest monthly anomaly in the UAH TLT all-month record.
After seven months of the year behind us, 2019 still sits firmly in the top-five warmest years and still perhaps likely to end up placed 3rd behind the big El Niño years 2016 & 1998.
…….. Jan-July Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.59ºC … … … +0.52ºC … … … 1st
1998 .. +0.58ºC … … … +0.48ºC … … … 2nd
2010 .. +0.41ºC … … … +0.34ºC … … … 4th
2019 .. +0.38ºC
2017 .. +0.31ºC … … … +0.38ºC … … … 3rd
2002 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.22ºC … … … 7th
2018 .. +0.23ºC … … … +0.23ºC … … … 6th
2015 .. +0.21ºC … … … +0.27ºC … … … 5th
2005 .. +0.21ºC … … … +0.20ºC … … … 8th
2007 .. +0.21ºC … … … +0.16ºC … … … 11th
2014 .. +0.18ºC … … … +0.18ºC … … … 10th
When the ecosystem collapsed and the Heat got hellish (soon), I will stand at the gates of Hell and I will welcome the deniers and I will shake their hands and I will say in a warm and polite tone:
Congratulation, you’ve won the debate, lay back and enjoy your well deserved price now.
Killian @12,
The National Geographic article you link to has a curious headline “Greenland’s ice is melting four times faster than thought — what it means”. The ice loss from Greenland discussed concerns Bevis et al (2019) ‘Accelerating changes in ice mass within Greenland, and the ice sheet’s sensitivity to atmospheric forcing’. This paper is addressing the GRACE data which has been the subject of discussion for many years now, so I struggle to see anything that was “four times faster than thought.”
Bevis et al suggests a constant acceleration of Greenland ice loss through 2003-2013 of 27.7Gt/yr/yr so for them there is no ‘doubling time’ as such although the rate of loss almost quadrupled over this 10-year period (102Gt/yr to 393Gt/yr) and this same data has been previously seen by others as containing a possible 5 year ‘doubling time’.
The period 2013-16 saw a dramatic deceleration with ice loss at rates of perhaps 200Gt/yr over the period and with 2013 styled a “pause” by Bevis et al who consider this being due to a year when the North Atlantic Oscillation had been in a positive phase through summer JJAS, NAO having been positive through JJAS 2013. And NAO was positive again in JJAS of 2016, 2017 & 2018 but the GRACE data was drying up by 2016. When GRACE FO starts yielding new data, the impact of summer NAO on Greenland ice loss will be better understood.
Re #6 and #8, climate sensitivity of 5C: not a scientific paper but a scientist saying so in public: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/august/1566136800/jo-lle-gergis/terrible-truth-climate-change
“When the IPCC’s fifth assessment report was published in 2013, it estimated that such a doubling of CO2 was likely to produce warming within the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C as the Earth reaches a new equilibrium. However, preliminary estimates calculated from the latest global climate models (being used in the current IPCC assessment, due out in 2021) are far higher than with the previous generation of models. Early reports are predicting that a doubling of CO2 may in fact produce between 2.8 and 5.8°C of warming. Incredibly, at least eight of the latest models produced by leading research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France are showing climate sensitivity of 5°C or warmer.”
you know, Nigel, I don’t have any problem with a person tracking sea level rise, but I feel compelled to point out that SLR is quite different from CO2(e) saturation because it is a trailing indicator of global warming where CO2(e) sats are a cause (leading indicator) of global warming.
It’s like trying to steer a vehicle by watching the rear view mirror alone. The rear view mirror is not a reliable indicator of what lies ahead.
But, it’s interesting and the source you have chosen makes sense to me. I don’t recall you posting much about SLR, but I don’t read everything here, so I may have missed your coverage of SLR.
Guardian has an article about greenland melt here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/02/heatwaves-amplify-near-record-levels-of-ice-melt-in-northern-hemisphere?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0xOTA4MDI%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email
I can pretty easily fit that in with a global atmosphere that has CO2 levels over 410ppm. Greenland melt is what you get when you allow CO2(e) to climb to the levels that we see now. The SLR that will follow will happen in an odd and slow manner I think as cold icemelt raises SLR slowly, but will also slow SLR on short term if it slows the accumulation of heat in the oceans. No worries, the heat will catch up eventually and SLR is like the wake of a boat. It’s there, it follows.
CO2? How are we doing? Peachy!
Daily CO2
Aug. 1, 2019: 410.51 ppm
Aug. 1, 2018: 407.53 ppm
weekly? Even better:
July 21 – 27, 2019 410.87 ppm
July 21 – 27, 2018 408.36 ppm
The yoy stuff carries a bit of noise. The trend is easy to spot if you watch regularly. It’s up, at around 2.5 ppm or more and the current baseline is 410 ppm. That’s a level of CO2 saturation that has not existed on the planet in the time of homo sapiens. Is that a guillotine blade hanging over our heads? Maybe. Let’s ask the engineers to check it out.
Cheers
Mike
June CO2 number are in!
June CO2
June 2019: 413.92 ppm
June 2018: 410.79 ppm
3.13 ppm increase in yoy numbers.
I don’t know if that is skyrockety, but still seems to be going the wrong direction and rising too fast.
No worries. This will all sort itself out.
Cheers
Mike
Regarding the national geographic article #12 on Greenland. The article talked about accelerated ice melt since 2002 – 2003 and the article did say near the bottom that it is caused by global warming plus a negative phase of The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) , a natural, irregular change. Would a positive phase of this cycle cancel some of this acceleration? Of course Greenland will melt and cause massive longer term sea level rise if we keep on burning fossil fuels, this is a given.
There appears to be some significant scientific opinion that IPCC estimates on sea level rise by the end of this century are too conservative, and instead that multimetre sea level rise is possible by 2100. I find this persuasive, although some of the extreme estimates look implausible to me. What does this website say about the issues? Perhaps it would make for an interesting article, or has one been done?
@MA Roger, #5
Greenland just wow:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2543.0;attach=128974;image
https://eos.org/articles/greenland-ice-sheet-beats-all-time-1-day-melt-record
@Malcolm Tattersall, #17
“… at least eight of the latest models produced by leading research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France are showing climate sensitivity of 5°C or warmer.”
If these models are right (and that wouldn’t surprise me at all), it will be a death sentence (not just) for all lukewarmers.
@mike
I see that guillotine blade working like a charm, there’s a nice mantra written on it:
“Faster than expected.”
@PS Baker #6 & Malcolm Tattersall, #17
Btw, that reminds me of this beautiful bit:
” 27.10.2017 – BP and Shell planning for catastrophic 5°C global warming despite publicly backing Paris climate agreement
Oil giants Shell and BP are planning for global temperatures to rise as much as 5°C by the middle of the century…”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bp-shell-oil-global-warming-5-degree-paris-climate-agreement-fossil-fuels-temperature-rise-a8022511.html
They are planning for their very own funeral, how sweet that is :)
In a draft paper several weeks back James Hansen suggested a global temperature rise “in the pipeline” as follows: assuming a response of 0.75C per watt/m2 (3C for 4w/m2) x 0.75 watt/m2 of current heat flux we should see 0.5C increase. I replied that since heat flux into the planet (Argo floats in the ocean) seems to be rising toward current net forcing, the calculation might be better represented by a minimum of 0.75C per watt/m2 x 2w/m2 net forcing or 1.5C in the pipeline.
Comments and corrections appreciated from the scientifically inclined.
Mike @19, yes CO2 trends are the more critical thing to bear in mind than sea level rise for the reasons you say. I certainly keep an eye on CO2 trends, although short term trends of a week or so don’t grab my attention much because of all the noise. I was more just interested in what things grab peoples attention, and the psychology of it.
Thank’s for the Guardian link on the heatwave and Greenland, I read something similar. It’s not good obviously and the heatwave is quite possibly linked to climate change given the heatwave has been generated by a loop in the jet stream.
The following recent article on the arctic is interesting and sobering:
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/research-highlight-loss-arctics-reflective-sea-ice-will-advance-global-warming-25-years
@Nemesis#23: “luckily” still not as bad as 2012:
https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/greenland-surface-melt-extent-interactive-chart/
The future will not be linear.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2591.msg218958.html#msg218958
Re #25
“In the pipeline” is not much useful without a timeline. Was there one included?
13
Nemesis says:
2 Aug 2019 at 12:06 AM
Just a reminder:
If the forests of Germany collapse, then you don’t need to worry about Germanies climate mitigation efforts anymore as the CO2 emissions of the collapsing trees will outpace any climate mitigation efforts. The forests of Germany ARE collapsing NOW.
Lay back, in Hell all climate palaver will end ultimately.
The beautiful thing about TEK/Permacuture is you can grow a food forest to near apex (in structure) in ten years that matches your new/future climate, resequester that carbon, create life-sustaining new ecosystem/hybrid ecosystem.
Survival, as Diamond said, is a choice, and humans almost always choose wrong. This time, we know everything we need to know to manage ourselves into simplicity.
Hopefully, a few of you are beginning to understand why that is the only thing we have time for.
Ten years to simplicity:
https://youtu.be/01N-kBSdiZI
Solar Jim @25,
I assume this Dec 2018 piece by Hansen ‘Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm’ is the primary reference you mention.
Within this account (which goes on to discuss additional slow-feedbacks that are not measured by the global energy imbalance), the important words are “if atmospheric composition remains at today’s level.” If we continue pumping GHGs into the atmosphere there will of course be more warming due to the additional forcing of those GHGs. But, and importantly, when we stop pumping those GHGs into the atmosphere, the level of forcing stops going up and, as the planet slowly sucks more CO2 into the oceans, the level of forcing will begin t decline.
There is thus one thing we can be sure of – “atmospheric composition” will not “remain at today’s level.”
—
One aside from Hansen’s Dec 2018 piece – Hansen spends some length discussing the measurement of Ocean Heat Content to obtain a good value for the global energy imbalance.
I am reminded of denialist Judy Curry who a couple of weeks back tried to write off some of this OHC as being natural.
And in the comment thread beneath her OP Curry (despite being warned off by fellow denialists) comes up with a figure of 20% for that “how much” question.
The 20% derives from Wunsch (2018) who finds for the period 1993-2002 “a 20-year average ocean heating rate of 0.48±0.1 W/m2 of which 0.1 W/m2 arises from the geothermal forcing.” Of course the 0.1W/m2 geothermal forcing is not controversial (derived from Davies & Davies 2010) and on a non-AGW planet woild usually exit the oceans and out into space to give a -0.1W/m2 at the TOA. (If not, the globe would be warming at, what, something approaching +0.003ºC/yr for year after year after year? I’m pretty sure there is no evidence to support a +3ºC surface warming over the last milennium. Or +3,000ºC in the last million years.) This TOA imbalance would mean that the planet has been, is, and will continue to be, roughly +0.027ºC x 3(feedbacks) = +0.08ºC warmer than it otherwise would have been.
@DasKleineTeilchen, #27
“luckily” still not as bad as 2012″
Yeah, but still the most crushing melt year since 2012 so far. Jason Box saw it coming:
“How we already know 2019 will be a big melt year for Greenland”
https://youtu.be/br9N_Cqmfz0
@DasKleineTeilchen
Addendum to my recent comment:
For what’s different this year compared to 2012 is that this year the Greenland melt started 3 weeks earlier than 2012.
Erm, about the possibility of a climate sensitivity of 5°C:
“… Incredibly, at least eight of the latest models produced by leading research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France are showing climate sensitivity of 5°C or warmer.
When these results were first released at a climate modelling workshop in March this year, a flurry of panicked emails from my IPCC colleagues flooded my inbox. What if the models are right? Has the Earth already crossed some kind of tipping point? Are we experiencing abrupt climate change right now?
The model runs aren’t all available yet, but when many of the most advanced models in the world are independently reproducing the same disturbing results, it’s hard not to worry…
But these days my grief is rapidly being superseded by rage. Volcanically explosive rage. Because in the very same IPCC report that outlines the details of the impending apocalypse, the climate science community clearly stated that limiting warming to 1.5°C is geophysically possible…”
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/august/1566136800/jo-lle-gergis/terrible-truth-climate-change
Staying under 1.5°C when climate sensitivity is likely 5°C? @Climate science professionals here:
Please explain that joke, where’s the punch line here…
@nigelj
Btw, the new model calculations of a climate sensitivity of 5°C answer your question at https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2019/06/unforced-variations-june-2019/comment-page-3/#comment-735252 perfectly, quote:
” Yes the MMCO was caused by massive volcanic eruptions. I think the point MAR is making is that its hard to reconcile the claim made of 5 degrees of warming in the distant past at ‘todays’ CO2 levels with the current science which tells us this can’t happen. So either the science is wrong, the evidence on past warming is wrong, or something additional to CO2 contributed to the past warming. Does anyone know?”
Just take these new model calculations into account and, vois la, perfect fit. So, our conversation about CS wasn’t futile at all, we just needed some higher CS- like I said at https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2019/06/unforced-variations-june-2019/comment-page-3/#comment-735241 :
” After all, the scenario in the MMCO fits quite well to the scenario of today, except we are at least a thousand times faster than during the MMCO.”
:)
And thanks again to James Hansen, Ken Caldeira and Eelco Rohling:
” AGU FM11 – Paleoclimate record points toward potential rapid climate changes”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTTlAAiwgwM
@luckily, #27: would be good to have the original data, so that it’s possible to draw own graphs. I would like to see all data in a rather 3D-style … would be much better than clicking individually.
Wonder why the data is not presented there. To download data one needs to register there. Would be easier just to put it on the web…
“Survival, as Diamond said, is a choice, and humans almost always choose wrong.”
I’m a fan of Jared Diamond, but this is silly. If we almost always chose wrong there wouldn’t be 7 billion people. For every civilisation that has collapsed through making bad choices, many have survived. Ditto for every individual making bad life ending choices many don’t. Dont take everything JD says as proven facts.
@Killian, #30
” The beautiful thing about TEK/Permacuture is you can grow a food forest to near apex (in structure) in ten years that matches your new/future climate, resequester that carbon, create life-sustaining new ecosystem/hybrid ecosystem.”
Like I said repeatedly, there “could be” gazillion of beautiful things, but not in a completely corrupted economic/political system. What goes up, must come down. And it will come down for sure. I don’t see any radical system change anywhere, but we will see radical system breakdown soon.
Nemesis @35. A climate sensitivity of 5 degrees does indeed explain part of the paleo climate mystery, but not all of it. This will be a nit pick. Past climates apparently occasionally had 5 degrees of warming at C02 levels of about 413 ppm which is what earth has right now.
Assuming climate sensitivity is 5 degrees ( and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it is) then to produce 5 degrees of warming would require doubling of pre industrial levels of 275ppm C02 to approx 550ppm. ( we are not yet at a doubling just heading that way fast). So its still a mystery how levels of 413 ppm lead to such dramatic 5 degree warming in the past. It might have coincided with periods of high atmospheric aerosols or solar activity. Or the unthinkable thought that climate sensitivity is ABOVE 5 degrees.
Happy if the experts can tell me if and where I’m wrong.
It almost seems like the climate deabte is just another distraction from criminal BAU as the ruling class got their very own plan already anyway:
Saving their very own asses to Mars and/or funny shit like that.
They don’t care about us ANY WAY, they don’t care about anything except their own privilegs, their own war against the planet. They are trying to defy the laws of Nature, what an arrogance that is.
They will fail and go to hell as they will never change, Nature will kick them and their vampire system off the planet, that’s the only way back to reality. They think they are the boss, but there can only be one boss:
Mother Nature, hehe.
NigelJ, bad as the arctic sea ice loss is in terms of rdiative forcing, there may be another albedo feedback in play in the Greenland summer meltoff.
The faster the melt, the more rapidly the snow albedo falls as dust and, increasingly, snowmobile soot and aircraft exhaust carbon black on the surface are vertically concentrated under the midnight sun. A corollary feedback of more limited area is that the deeper the runoff water in the erosion channels, melt lakes and moulins gets the darker it becomes, and the gretter the solar heating of the water itself.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/climate-change-made-europes-2019-record-heatwave-up-to-hundred-times-more-likely
“Climate change made Europe’s 2019 record heatwave up to ‘100 times more likely’”
“The run of unprecedented temperatures in July – which sent records tumbling in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany – would have been “extremely unlikely” without climate change, according to a new quick-fire analysis.”
“The hot weather seen in the Netherlands and France was made up to “100 times more likely” by climate change, the study finds.”
“And the heat in Cambridge in the UK – which saw a new country-wide record of 38.7C in July – was made around “20 times more likely” by human-caused warming.”
“The findings come from the latest analysis from the World Weather Attribution network. “Attribution” refers to a fast-growing field of science that aims to quantify the “fingerprint” of climate change on extreme-weather events.”
“Across Europe, the July heatwave was “much more extreme than any other heatwave we’ve looked at over the last few years”, a scientist from the network tells Carbon Brief.”
Hi, i wanted to address the new book and news of the former award winning NOAA scientist Dr. Rex Fleming: “The Rise and Fall of the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change” published by Springer.
I will not mention his claims about him being forced to be muted when he was at NOAA about saying his beliefs for climate change, nor about his claims for data manipulation as i find all these rather ridiculous to claim without proof, but i want to see comments about his book where he claims he proves(!), yes he claims that, that CO2 is not a factor for the current temperatures rising.
In my view, seeing his past work and papers and his place at NOAA, he is not another random voice on a blog, he must be respectable. And having a book published on Springer on this subject with real arguments(using physics and mathematics to support his claims and not just vague phrasing) makes it a solid voice so i would look forward for answers to his claims.
Are his mathematics wrong? Are his data wrong?
I would welcome any answers on this.
I didn’t read the book yet, but from his interview(i hope the journalist did not altered his words) seeing for example him saying this:
“Past climates have been warm and cold and warm and cold with no changes in carbon dioxide. How can that be a cause when there’s no correlation.”
I don’t have a good impression as the above statement is wrong.
The fact that there have been warm/cold transitions on the climate without changes in CO2, does NOT imply that CO2 can’t have an effect in making a cold environment warmer.
It’s a classic example of a one sided implication that some treat it like double implication that is not.
The fact that moon creates tides and lowers/rises the sea waters, does not mean if you put an elephant(CO2) inside water that it will not rise the water.
Anyway i hope that we will see some good arguments in the future about this book and his claims.
There have been a couple of mentions of what’s in the pipeline which led me to wonder if a simple calculation can be made. With an ECS of 3C (which seems to have been the best guess for a while, though that may go up with new work), 1.5C is half of that. As, roughly speaking, equal percentage rises in CO2 levels gives an equilibrium temp that is the same, then, it seems to me, that 1.5C needs a 40% rise in CO2 levels above pre-industrial. Another 40% rise on top of that would bring us to double preindustrial and an equilibrium temperature of 3C. So what is the rise in CO2 so far? It’s over 40%, so surely 1.5C is out of the question, unless ECS is low? Particularly as the CO2e percentage rise is even worse. Is it really even theoretically possible (without negative emissions tech) that 1.5C can be avoided with an ECS of 3?
Pour old Roy Spencer is a bit put out by the idea that July 2019 will be the warmest month on record. His original version of this message suggested that reanalysis data would be superior to actual thermometer data but he has gone a bit cold on that idea as he now sees the results from a reanalysis he looked at were a bit too close for comfort.
But in the spirit of openness, here is the ERA5 reanalysis July 2019 global anomaly which appears to be what Spencer disapproves of so much. (ERA5 doesn’t match the surface temperature records quite so well at a monthly level but I reckon does give a fit to the annual temperature records reasonably closely. ERA5 got a mention in the June UV thread suggesting June 2019 would be the warmest June on record, and that turned out to be correct for most of the surface temperature records.)
The ERA5 global July anomaly stands at +0.56ºC, up a bit on June’s anomaly but still average for the year-to-date. It is the warmest month on record (being the warmest July with July globally having the warmest anomaly base), and ahead of other Julys – 2016 (+0.53ºC), 2018 (+0.44ºC), 2017 (+0.43ºC) & 2015 (+0.32ºC).
July 2019 sits at 20th warmest monthly anomaly in the ERA5 all-month record.
With seven months of the year behind us, 2019 is in second position behind 2016 (which was boosted by its big El Niño) and sits firmly in the top-three warmest years-to-date with second-place looking the likely outcome.
…….. Jan-July Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.67ºC … … … +0.63ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.56ºC
2017 .. +0.55ºC … … … +0.54ºC … … … 2nd
2018 .. +0.44ºC … … … +0.46ºC … … … 3rd
2010 .. +0.36ºC … … … +0.32ºC … … … 5th
2015 .. +0.35ºC … … … +0.45ºC … … … 4th
2007 .. +0.28ºC … … … +0.23ºC … … … 11th
1998 .. +0.28ºC … … … +0.21ºC … … … 13th
2014 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.30ºC … … … 6th
2005 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.29ºC … … … 7th
2002 .. +0.23ºC … … … +0.20ºC … … … 14th
#37, nigel–
Agreed. In fact, while Diamond did call survival a “choice,” I utterly don’t believe that he ever said that “humans almost always choose wrong.” After all, the actual subtitle of Collapse is “How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed“. The idea of successful choices is also central to The World Until Yesterday (2012).
It’s no longer possible to believe that humans originated the phenomenon of culture, but it remains unquestionable that we’ve developed it many orders of magnitude (metaphorically!) past any other known organism, and that that has been a tremendous tool for promoting sustained human survival over almost all Terrestrial environments.
In fact, I would go so far as to say–though probably the only daring aspect here lies in my pointing out the obvious–that for all, or almost all, other species survival is not a choice. For them, it remains randomly contingent upon the interaction of their genetic inheritance with the environment.
(It does of course remain a truism that “past performance is not a guarantee of future success.” Choices, choices…)
MAR says at 31: “If we continue pumping GHGs into the atmosphere there will of course be more warming due to the additional forcing of those GHGs. But, and importantly, when we stop pumping those GHGs into the atmosphere, the level of forcing stops going up and, as the planet slowly sucks more CO2 into the oceans, the level of forcing will begin t decline.”
I think I would modify that to say, “if and when we stop pumping GHGs into the atmosphere, we should expect that to reduce the level of forcing and then we would need to wait and watch as the system seeks to find a new balance based on the changed state. We can estimate with some accuracy as to what that state might be for any given level of GHG accumulation, but the accuracy of our estimates is uncertain and the new balance state is equally uncertain.”
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-global-doesnt-emissions.html
Do you agree?
Cheers
Mike
Nigel at 26 says: “I certainly keep an eye on CO2 trends, although short term trends of a week or so don’t grab my attention much because of all the noise. I was more just interested in what things grab peoples attention, and the psychology of it.”
That makes sense. I have posted the noisy and less noisy numbers on a regular basis over the past few years, in part, to counter the number of comments that highlighted falling emission numbers. This is a complex situation and I always felt that falling emission reports were over-valued/distracting/misleading unless the falling emission reports (and other “good news” climate stories) were supported by changes in the rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere. That’s kind of a “trust, but verify” approach and everytime I attempted verification, I found that there was little or no sign of reduction in CO2 accumulation. In fact, as Tamino confirmed, year after year, the rate of rise was continuing to increase.
Therefore, reporting the important, verifiable, raw number of CO2 at MLO seems like a good idea that overcomes concerns about the signal to noise ration in the various numbers provided by MLO.
last week?
July 21 – 27, 2019 410.87 ppm
July 21 – 27, 2018 408.36 ppm
2.51 ppm. Pretty noisy number. Last month? 3.13 ppm increase. Slightly less noisy number.
These are not good numbers even if you are generous with your noise adjustment.
Mike
RSS TLT has posted for July with an anomaly of +0.71ºC, down on June’s +0.81ºC. It is the warmest July on the RSS TLT record, ahead of July 2010 (+0.70ºC), 2016 (+0.68ºC), 2018 (+0.64ºC), 1998 (+0.63ºC), 2017 (+0.62ºC) & 2014 (+0.54ºC). (In UAH 2019 was the =2nd July behind 1998 and alongside 2016.)
July 2019 sits at 19th warmest monthly anomaly in the RSS TLT all-month record (=36th in UAH).
With seven months of the year behind us, 2019 is sitting quite firmly in second position in RSS TLT. (It was less firmly in fourth in the trend-busting UAH TLT record.)
…….. Jan-July Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.89ºC … … … +0.78ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.71ºC
2010 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 3rd
1998 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 5th
2017 .. +0.62ºC … … … +0.66ºC … … … 2nd
2018 .. +0.52ºC … … … +0.52ºC … … … 6th
2015 .. +0.51ºC … … … +0.59ºC … … … 4th
2005 .. +0.47ºC … … … +0.46ºC … … … 8th
2014 .. +0.47ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 7th
2007 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.41ºC … … … 10th
2013 .. +0.42ºC … … … +0.41ºC … … … 9th
@nigelj, #39
” So its still a mystery how levels of 413 ppm lead to such dramatic 5 degree warming in the past.”
Methane?