Mike @45,
It’s probably best I do some adjustments if I’m taking this further. (This is because I was using the previous 30 days to get my ‘average’ to compare against. As there’s an annual cycle, that isn’t the best of schemes.) And now I look back at the whole record back to 1958.
So using the 30-day period centred on the day-in-question, and searching for days more than 2.2ppm away from that average (3ppm is asking a bit much now the averages are ‘centred’), you get 14 ‘dropped’ days more than -2.2ppm below that 30-day average. They are scattered at roughly a constant rate through the length of the record, the first in June 1963, the most recent in August 2017.
And there are now 22 ‘high’ days more than +2.2ppm above that 30-day average. These have all arrived since 1996. Ignoring the last few days, the most recent was back in November last year. (I included the two of very recent days even though they have not yet the full 30-day average for comparison. Probably only one will likely survive as we’re in the rising part of the CO2 annual cycle and that 30-day average will climb.)
Yeah, some stray CO2, very possibly from Kilauea, seems quite likely. That’s why they QC obs. But this episode was mild.
And I’m pretty sure that’s behind your observation that you don’t see comparable downward excursions–a patch of not-yet-mixed-in CO2 can easily raise concentrations a few ppm temporarily, while there’s no analogous effect on the downside.
Denialati like to make a lot of this, but there’s nothing comparable AFAIK with the South Pole data, and the records are quite congruent–as is that of the rest of the global CO2 monitoring network.
Amazing to me how many folks seem to think Mauna Loa is the whole of our monitoring capability.
Piotrsays
MA Rodger (35): The 17 >3ppm above average readings have come in clumps with a clump of 3 back in 2019 & another 3 in 2016.
Killian (46,47): “Soooo…. 17 of them. At least 6 of the 17 in the last five years.” “Once again, MA comes riding his steed to calm the waters and let us all know these extreme changes aren’t any big deal.”
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar: this CO2 observatory is located near an active volcano, and volcanoes emit CO2 – so sometimes, when the wind blows from just the “right” direction – the CO2 from the volcano affects the reading. Once the wind shifts, in a few hours or days, things return to their normal values, and this is treated as noise, an occasional outlier with no bearing on the global increases of CO2.
An alternative is to believe that those are true “extremes” representative to the global values, i.e. that the Earth overnight just emitted extra ~ 25 Gt of CO2 (3ppm), i.e. more than YEAR’s WORTH of CO2 ACCUMULATION IN ONE DAY.
And that the Nefarious MA Rodger and Scripps try to hide these spectacular fluxes from the world. And by doing so, they “ distort the record as it is the extremes that indicate what’s coming in the future and have the greatest effects on ecosystems.”
By the way what some of these “ the greatest effects on ecosystems” that a … local 3ppm spike in CO2 that dissipates within a few hours or days would exactly be?
Kevin McKinney @52,
I would be a lot less enthusiastic about blaming Kilauea for the fluctuating CO2 at MLO. While I am not so familiar with the geography of Hawaii and MLO does have altitude, the meteorological tea spoon stirring the NH atmosphere does not eliminate CO2 fluctuations and prevent them from wafting across the Pacific at least at lower altitudes, according to this NASA CO2 animation. And while I’d assume these animated fluctuations are surely lower than the 3,400m of MLO, they would be a more likely source of what we see than Kilauea erupting.
I must revise my earlier comment. I said “there’s no analogous effect on the downside,” (i.e., CO2 excursions below baseline conditions.) Turns out that that is no more than very broadly correct. Browsing the ESRL Global Monitoring Site over coffee this morning, I took a look at some plots from various locations, including the South Pole Observatory, Alert (Nunavut, Canada–the most northerly program, above 80N) and Easter Island.
And hey, presto, they have four ‘downside’ excursions–as opposed to 30+ ‘upside’ excursions. But they do happen. The boilerplate statement they have on all the plots says:
+ Symbols are thought to be not indicative of background conditions, and represent poorly mixed air masses influenced by local or regional anthropogenic sources or strong local biospheric sources or sinks.
Well, it’s hard to imagine a “local biospheric sink” unique enough across the years and strong enough to lower CO2 concentration from ~377 to ~355, as happened once in early 2006, especially at Easter Island, where the annual vegetative cycle is small enough to be lost in the statistical noise. One has to suspect measurement error of some sort on that observation. (It’s interesting that a roughly equal ‘upside’ excursion was logged at roughly the same time.)
It’s a restricted data sample, but it’s also interesting–and potentially worrying–to observe a possible trend toward more ‘upside’ excursion in recent years. There have been 11 since the beginning of 2018. (Data are complete to the end of October, 2019, with more recent obs presumably awaiting QC.)
But climbing back out of the metaphorical weeds, overall, Easter Island data show the same trend you see everywhere else. The CO2 record is *very* well replicated. Alert, like Barrow, has a very pronounced annual cycle, but if you estimate the midpoint of the annual cycle, which conveniently occurs around October, you find it’s within a couple of ppm of Easter Island. And you find great coherence of the smoothed trend line.
mikesays
The Siberian permafrost heave mounds are spectacular. We need to fund the study of these things so we can get some real time video of the moment when they explode.
These are particularly dangerous if they explode near or under existing infrastructure. I suspect we don’t have a good idea yet about how much methane etc is actually released into the atmosphere from these mound explosions.
The strange plots on Roy Spencer’s UAH TLT monthly anomaly chart I noted @9 up-thread can now be explained by a sneaky change to the anomaly base.
The data page has now been updated and it shows that with the end of 2020 arrived, the anomaly base has been shifted from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020. As a result all the global anomalies have been reduced by between -0.11ºC and -0.17ºC.
The one curious aspect with this is why the December 2020 anomaly have been adjusted by -0.14ºC when all the other Decembers have been adjusted by either -0.11ºC or -0.12ºC.
Because this change in anomaly base was not evident on the ‘Latest Global Temp Anomaly’ page, the comparisons I made up-thread @9 require revision.
The revised 2020 average anomaly now sits at +0.36ºC with December 2020 the lowest monthly anomaly of the year at +0.15ºC. The January 2021 anomaly is not greatly below this at +0.12ºC.
These big daily spikes in CO2 seem relatively uncommon from numbers MAR has quoted. Some of them might be caused by emissions from couple of sources happening simultaneously. Bound to happen very occasionally by pure coincidence. Very hard to prove of course.
Much of the variance in CO2 is due to El Nino ENSO cycles, which likely includes MJO for more rapid fluctuations. Someone has contributed open-source machine-learning code for trying to predict short-term ENSO movements
I think you may be over-estimating my “enthusiasm” for attributing Mauna Loa CO2 anomalies to vulcanism, but my “very likely” was both premature and overstated. In any case, the observatory is definitely affected from time to time by volcanic emissions–although the researchers feel they understand the variables involved very well:
We only detect volcanic CO2 from the Mauna Loa summit late at night at times when the regional winds are light and southerly. Under these conditions, a temperature inversion forms above the ground, and the volcanic emissions are trapped near the surface and travel down our side of the mountain slope. When the volcanic emissions arrive at the observatory, the CO2 analyzer readings increase by several parts per million, and the measured amounts become highly variable for periods of several minutes to a few hours. In the last decade, this has occurred on about 15% of nights between midnight and 6 a.m. These periods of elevated and variable CO2 levels are so different from the typical measurements that is easy to remove them from the final data set using a simple mathematical “filter.”
Of course, that’s not Kilauea, that’s Mauna Loa itself. Kilauea, I find, is nearly 40 miles away, and better than 7,000 feet lower, which I presume puts it below the inversion layer isolating Mauna Loa observatory from the lower layers of the troposphere–most of the time.
And speaking of time, so little of it, and so many searches to be done!
#53, Piotr–
An alternative is to believe that those are true “extremes” representative to the global values, i.e. that the Earth overnight just emitted extra ~ 25 Gt of CO2 (3ppm), i.e. more than YEAR’s WORTH of CO2 ACCUMULATION IN ONE DAY.
Yes, that’s the problem that Beck’s work posed. The implied atmospheric fluxes are just not credible. Which, of course, didn’t prevent Beck from becoming a denialist ‘thing.’
Killiansays
RE 56 heave mounds:
All are associated with gas drilling. This is good news and bad news. This is good in that the Arctic permafrost does not seem to be erupting too abruptly all of its own accord just yet, though pingoes exist away from gas fields so far as I know.
This is bad news in that if that much gas is being freed up in the Arctic, it stands to reason it’s happening everywhere gas fields exist – or at least in fields using similar techniques – but without the ice there to keep it capped. That is, it must be flowing more freely to the surface in some areas and dissipating. This would seem to indicate fugitive emissions must be much higher than claimed by the FF Inc’s who have claimed it’s only faulty equipment.
mikesays
at KM at 55. You say “Easter Island data show the same trend you see everywhere else. The CO2 record is *very* well replicated. Alert, like Barrow, has a very pronounced annual cycle, but if you estimate the midpoint of the annual cycle, which conveniently occurs around October, you find it’s within a couple of ppm of Easter Island. And you find great coherence of the smoothed trend line.”
Just need a little clarification. Have you found that the 5 plus ppm spike in CO2 shown at MLO was also seen at the other stations?
I had trouble finding a link comparable to CO2.earth that tracks CO2 daily averages for some place other than MLO. If other stations far from MLO also tracked a 5 plus ppm spike, that changes things a bit.
Do you have links to the other spots?
Cheers
Mike
nigeljsays
Killian said “RE 56 heave mounds:All are associated with gas drilling.”
One piece of good news “The six largest banks in the U.S. have publicly stated they will not back oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.” If they carry through with this of course. If they can be trusted.
Kevin McKinney @60,
I did reckon that probably your “enthusiasm” was at the least not very positive; thus describing my own “enthusiasm” simply as being less than yours.
My own not entirely positive “enthusiasm” for a different potential cause in the rise in frequency of these bigger wobbles/excursions in the MLO CO2 record has itself been much diminished. The potential for the rise in frequency being an artifact of sampling decisions doesn’t square with the frequency of missing daily records. These missing days show a step change in about 2005 with the number of annual missed days wobbling around 100 before and sitting below 50 after. The wobbles/excursions within the record show no change due to this step change.
The comment by Paul Pukite (@whut) @59 suggesting CO2 variance is much caused by ENSO does perhaps have some merit here. If the frequency of these CO2 wobbles/excursions are plotted annually, there is significant correlation with years of La Niñas. But that correlation doesn’t explain the wobbles/excursions themselves and why the bigger +2ppm ones have only appeared in the last couple of decades.
I’m presently thinking their appearance is simply due to rising levels of emissions.
The frequency of smaller wobbles/excursions is also on the rise but, for those +0.5ppm or greater, the rise is linear. For those +1ppm or greater there is a definite acceleration in rate rather than linear increase. And those +2ppm or greater only appear in the latter part of the MLO record. This suggests to me the probability of a wobble/excursion’s size would be a part of a normal curve, a PDF which is spreading to now include +2ppm but only provide a linear trend for the more frequent +1ppm.
And if the wobbles/excursions result from the plumes of emissions from population centres and those emissions have been rising reasonably linearly through the decades, that and a spreading PDF would explain our wobble/excursion phenomenon.
MA Rodgers(64): “If he wobbles/excursions result from the plumes of emissions from population centres” – then why the correlation with La Nina? The only reason would be if people had short-term spikes in their local emissions in Hawaii during La Nina.
My money would be an upwind transient mixing or upwelling event in the adjacent ocean – bringing up deeper carbon-rich waters and warming it up would result in a pulse of CO2, which would quickly end once the algae catch up and use the upwelled nutrients to bring the pCO2(sur. water) down. La Nina has stronger than usual winds – more mixings and upwelling.
“Just need a little clarification. Have you found that the 5 plus ppm spike in CO2 shown at MLO was also seen at the other stations?”
No. That sort of short-term stuff is unique to each location. By “trend” I mean annual timescales & longer. The NH stations show much more pronounced annual cycles than the SH ones, so things look quite different among stations over weeks or months. Not so if you graph, say, annual averages.
And if you think about the speed of travel of weather systems through the atmosphere on one hand, and the mass fluxes involved if the whole atmosphere saw a coherent spike over 5 days on the other–well, I think one shouldn’t expect to see any such spike in common between monitoring stations.
Piotr @65,
You ask “If he wobbles/excursions result from the plumes of emissions from population centres” – then why the correlation with La Nina?
The correlation with La Niña years is quite evident. The plumes appear to be always there rolling across the Pacific to Hawaii (not building as they cross the Pacific) according to my reading of this NASA modelling I linked @54. Presumably this would be generally similar in all years. There is perhaps also a seasonality in the direction of plume reaching Hawaii which matches a seasonality in the frequency of the wobbles/excursions at MLO.
So, if some of the plumes are the source of wobbles/excursions at MLO, the question would be rather narrower – ‘Why are the La Niñas years resulting in more of the plumes reaching up to MLO?’ I’d hazard a guess at the ‘Weather Impacts to Hawaii’ brought by a La Niña year.
Both GISTEMP and NOAA have reported for January with a global anomaly up a little on December 2020 but below the full 2020 annual average.
GISTEMP [NOAA] gives the anomaly for January at +0.86ºC[+0.80ºC], slightly above the December 2020 anomaly of +0.80ºC[+0.78ºC] which was itself the lowest monthly anomaly of 2020. (The 2020 monthly anomalies otherwise sat in the range +0.87ºC[+0.83ºC] to +1.25ºC[+1.18ºC] and the full 2020 year averaged +1.02ºC[+0.98ºC].)
January 2021 is the 6th[7th] warmest January in the GISTEMP[NOAA] record.
MA Rodger (68) the “more frequent storm systems during La Niña years,/i>” from your link would be consistent with my explanation – stormy winds cause vertical mixing and upwellings – which bring deeper CO2 rich water to the surface (and increase air-sea gas exchange rate). A plume of CO2 get’s into the air and is then advected toward MLO. Explains also why the spikes don’t last too long – when the storm ends. The flux of CO2 F = k (pCO2(water) – pCO2(atm)), with the air-sea exchange exchange coef.
When the storm ends:
1. wind dies down -> k drops
2. the mixing depth – volume of water in contact with surface, i.e. from which CO2 can be extracted, gets smaller, reducing pCO2 of water
3. the upwelled nutrients stimulate a transient algal bloom that removes some or all the excess DOC, ALSO reducing pCO2(water).
So once the storm is gone – F goes to 0 and CO2 plume is no longer formed.
BTW – if the algal bloom overshoots and drops pCO2(water) below pCO2(air) -you would have a plume with LOWER than ambient pCO2, perhaps explaining the occasional negative spikes in CO2 at MLO.
as for other potential sources of the spikes:
I can’t think of any obvious terrestrial ecological process that would produce a positive spike of CO2 over such a short scale AND more frequent during La Nina.
and human-made spikes – could perhaps be created by the spikes in the use of AC during the heat waves (?) – but wouldn’t those be LESS frequent at MLO during la Nina than El Nino.
Piotrsays
MA Rodger (68) the “more frequent storm systems during La Niña years” from your link would be consistent with my explanation – stormy winds cause vertical mixing and upwellings – which bring deeper CO2 rich water to the surface (and increase air-sea gas exchange rate). A plume of CO2 get’s into the air and is then advected toward MLO.
Explains also why the spikes don’t last too long – when the storm ends. The flux of CO2 F = k (pCO2(water) – pCO2(atm)), with the air-sea exchange exchange coef.
When the storm ends:
1. wind dies down -> k drops
2. the mixing depth – volume of water in contact with surface, i.e. from which CO2 can be extracted, gets smaller, reducing pCO2 of water
3. the upwelled nutrients stimulate a transient algal bloom that removes some or all the excess DOC, ALSO reducing pCO2(water).
So once the storm is gone – F goes to 0 and CO2 plume is no longer formed.
BTW – if the algal bloom overshoots and drops pCO2(water) below pCO2(air) -you would have a plume with LOWER than ambient pCO2, perhaps explaining the occasional negative spikes in CO2 at MLO.
===
As for other potential sources of the spikes:
– terrestrial – I can’t think of any obvious terrestrial ecological process that would produce a positive spike of CO2 over such a short scale AND be more frequent during La Nina.
– human-made spikes – could perhaps be created by the spikes in the use of AC during the heat waves in Hawaii (?) – but wouldn’t those be LESS frequent at ML) during la Nina than El Nino?
mikesays
at KM at 67: thanks for the link and answers. I am getting old and more importantly, feeling old, so my ability to sort through a spot like ESRL to find a daily yoy comparison number to check against the MLO number provided in an easy manner at co2.earth is not great.
The bottom line is that the 5 or 6 ppm spike seen at MLO is a local occurrence. I thought that had to be the case because an event that could spike global numbers by that amount would probably be headline news. The trend is toward more upward spikes than downward spikes and that is not unexpected.
I expect to live long enough to see the next El Nino. That’s going to be ugly. I will state the obvious: we are not doing enough to reduce emissions. We need to do more and we need to move faster. We may eventually see a level of global warming that will significantly increase human suffering in the developed world. There will be gnashing of teeth at that point. I am ahead of that game. My dentist says I need to stop gnashing and grinding my teeth. Easier said than done.
Irresponsible of @unfcc to report this as factual. Neither the physical mechanism claimed, nor the observational evidence, nor numerical experiments, support this. It may be true, but perhaps more likely not.— Geoff Vallis (@GeoffVallis) February 15, 2021
Russell Seitz @75,
While you report the death of Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, the denial of AGW he promoted is still with us with the likes of his “long suffering science guy” Roy W. Spencer continuing along merrily spreading to all that crazy denial of AGW they still suffers from.
The apology Spencer made back then (preserved for posterity at Desmog Blog) to “Listeners of Rush Limbaugh on Thursday, November 8, 2007” shows the amazing foolishness of these denialists in full flow. Having read the hoax Klein et al (2007) Spencer tells us he had to ‘dig’ to convince himself that the paper was a hoax. (“Even though the hoax was quite elaborate, and the paper looked genuine, a little digging revealed that the authors, research center, and even the scientific journal the study was published in, did not exist.”) and then with a little more reflection adds that the hoaxer did not prevail in showing how stupid deniaists are (whose ‘science guys’ weren’t apparently fooled for a [number of] minute[s]) but instead it is the hoaxer that demonstrates their own incredulity.
In contrast, the hoaxer himself shows that he continues to believe in urban legends. To the interviewer’s question: “Do you think humanity is to blame for the current observed warming?”, the hoaxer replied, “Yes. The science could scarcely be clearer”.
This myth continues despite the fact that there have been NO scientific papers published with evidence that our current warmth is not due to natural climate variability, e.g., a small change in cloudiness, or precipitation efficiency, or general circulation of the atmosphere, or a variety of other possible explanations that do not involve manmade greenhouse gas emissions.
Absoluted right, Roy Spencer!! And I would add that there has been no scientific papers published “with evidence” that AGW does not result from saprotrophic eubacteria, not a single one. Klein et al (2007) may have been a complete hoax, but that doesn’t mean scientifically its thesis is incorrect!!!
Susan Andersonsays
Oh what fun. One of my all time favorite ironists, Russell Seitz, has taken on Rush Limbaugh.
Please don’t accuse him of not knowing which end is up, though with my personal quibble that he works on geoengineering (a job that needs doing by experts, any any case). [speaking of which, here’s Bill McKibben on that:]
Has this paper been discussed in Realclimate? “Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather” J. Cohen, X. Zhang, […]J. Yoon Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 20–29(2020)
“The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average since the late twentieth century, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification (AA). Recently, there have been considerable advances in understanding the physical contributions to AA, and progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms that link it to midlatitude weather variability. Observational studies overwhelmingly support that AA is contributing to winter continental cooling. Although some model experiments support the observational evidence, most modelling results show little connection between AA and severe midlatitude weather or suggest the export of excess heating from the Arctic to lower latitudes. Divergent conclusions between model and observational studies, and even intra-model studies, continue to obfuscate a clear understanding of how AA is influencing midlatitude weather.”
“The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average since the late twentieth century, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification (AA).”
76
Rodger, the linked page includes the passage from Spencer that you have redundantly quoted.
77. One of my all time favorite ironists, Russell Seitz, has taken on Rush Limbaugh.
Please don’t accuse him of not knowing which end is up, though with my personal quibble that he works on geoengineering (a job that needs doing by experts, any any case)
Susan, I work on Mie scattering modulation of water albedo to curb solar heating on urban to regional scales, and limit reservoir evaporation by passive water cooling. It relates more to White Roof mitigation of Urban Heat Island effects that geoengineering, and the limit of my R&D ambition is addressing Arctic sea ice meltiing on 100km scales.
[speaking of which, here’s Bill McKibben on that:]
I took on Bill McKibben in an amiable exchange in Orion a decade before I lit into Limbaugh’s Bethic Bacteria fiasco in my blog.
Elsewhere in the irony department, James Delingpole’s role as a Climategate raver been rediscovered:
Russell Seitzsays
Here’s the link to Delingpole’s Acid House cclimatology debut:
Sorry Weaktor, but I’m not feeling masochistic today. I feel I dealt with far more than enough stupidity over the last 4 years.
Guest(O.)says
Mit Milliardenklagen vor geheimen Schiedsgerichten torpedieren Konzerne die Klimarettung. Der Energiecharta-Vertrag (ECT) macht es möglich – und ist damit genau so schlimm wie TTIP und CETA. Frankreich und Spanien wollen den Klimakiller-Pakt kündigen, doch Wirtschaftsminister Altmaier (CDU) bremst.
Thanks Russell. Once again I display my ignorance, thanks for the info. I will never forget Delingpole accusing Sir Paul Nurse of “intellectual rape” when he dared to provide information in the face of arrogant ignorance! The video was taken down, I think, but the information persists.
Climate change is profoundly altering our oceans and marine ecosystems. Some of these changes are happening quickly and are potentially irreversible. Many are taking place silently and unnoticed.
“In a new paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my co-authors and I instead focus on the potential for what we call “high probability, high impact” tipping points caused by the cumulative impact of warming, acidification and deoxygenation.
We present the challenge of dealing with these imminent and long-lasting changes in the Earth system, and discuss options for mitigation and management measures to avoid crossing these tipping points.
Some of us have been warning about tipping points for quite some time. Scientists are now talking about high probability, high impact tipping points.
The sixth great extinction event is underway in the oceans and on land.
I hope it moves very slowly.
Cheers
Mike
Killiansays
89 mike says:
23 Feb 2021 at 6:43 PM
Climate change is profoundly altering our oceans and marine ecosystems. Some of these changes are happening quickly and are potentially irreversible. Many are taking place silently and unnoticed.
“In a new paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my co-authors and I instead focus on the potential for what we call “high probability, high impact” tipping points caused by the cumulative impact of warming, acidification and deoxygenation.
We present the challenge of dealing with these imminent and long-lasting changes in the Earth system, and discuss options for mitigation and management measures to avoid crossing these tipping points.
Some of us have been warning about tipping points for quite some time. Scientists are now talking about high probability, high impact tipping points.
The sixth great extinction event is underway in the oceans and on land.
I hope it moves very slowly.
Cheers
Mike
I hate to say “I told you so…”
…so often.
Hahahaha!
But, yeah, I did, I have, I still do. For those of you who are so bound by numbers and expert opinions that you cannot see what lies ahead beyond what they tell you, I’d be happy to do a webinar on different ways of looking at information to allow you to not only be a master of the technically scientific, but also of the naturally scientific.
Killiansays
Sorry! MMT comment posted in the wrong place!
Killiansays
So you say you want a solar-covered Sahara, well, ya know, you better think agai-a-ain.
Kevin McKinney @80,
First a link to Cohen et al (2020) that actually functions.
The paper is a review article and runs to 48 pages, three-quarters of this the Supplementary Information (which I haven’t got round to reading yet).
The paper addresses Arctic Amplification (AA) during winter, specifically Jan to March. It sets out the reanalysis results showing analogous warmth both in the lower atmosphere and up in the stratosphere and contrasts this with model results which only show this phenomenon in a few models when the likes of sea ice is forced into the model.
This phenomenon is thus part and parcel with wobbly jet streams and freezing weather pouring out of the Arctic come winter-time, potentially global warming resulting in some localised freezing. The paper even goes so far at to say this situation is “fanning climate change scepticism, which can impede the implementation of mitigation and adaptation policies.”
So perhaps it should be pointed out that this situation is not that AGW theory is broken or that the models are broken (as all swivel-eyed denialists believe anyway). The situation results from a heady mix of mechanisms which is presently not well-enough understood to be able to say what are the significant drivers of the phenomenon.
Perhaps this aspect of AA can be seen as the antithesis of the tropical ‘red spot’, it is a measured phenomenon that cannot be currently explained properly while the ‘red spot’ is a phenomenon that can be explained but not currently measured properly.
At a more theoretical level, there is the consideration of the role of “internal variability” rather than forced variability, and that is an attractor for denialistic theorising. The likes of Wyatt’s Unified Wave Theory included a causal link where the thawing of the Laptev Sea would cause mid-latitude cooling and kick off a cycle of global cooling which will demonstrate that what we see as AGW is mostly being caused by WUWT’s stadium wave and not GHGs.
In direct reply to the question posed @80, it would be fairer to say that the paper concerns the mechanisms behind “WACC (Warm Arctic, Cold Continents)” rather than WACC itself.
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
“We report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second, we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. Third, this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on scientists to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government, business, and the public. We especially draw attention to the lack of appreciation of the enormous challenges to creating a sustainable future.”
“….Results reveal markedly higher changes in ground heat flux and heat storage within the continental subsurface than previously reported, with land temperature changes of 1 K and continental heat gains of around 12 ZJ during the last part of the 20th century relative to preindustrial times. Half of the heat gain by the continental subsurface since 1960 has occurred in the last 20 years….”
————————–
New study: Re-framing the threat of global warming: an empirical causal loop diagram of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse
Not worth anyone’s time. Their “recovery” mode is equated to population levels. Utterly nonsensical framing of what constitutes successful mitigation and/or adaptation. Population? Seriously?
New study: Re-framing the threat of global warming: an empirical causal loop diagram of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse
mike @95,
The paper you cite Bradshaw et al (2021) ‘Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future (which provides just a “short Perspective” on the matter at hand) is more about the ecological emergency the planet faces than the climate emergency. Consideration of the climate emergency gets little more than 10% of the analysis, short enough to be presented here in its entirety.
“The dangerous effects of climate change are much more evident to people than those of biodiversity loss (Legagneux et al., 2018), but society is still finding it difficult to deal with them effectively. Civilization has already exceeded a global warming of ~ 1.0°C above pre-industrial conditions, and is on track to cause at least a 1.5°C warming between 2030 and 2052 (IPCC, 2018). In fact, today’s greenhouse-gas concentration is >500 ppm CO2-e (Butler and Montzka, 2020), while according to the IPCC, 450 ppm CO2-e would give Earth a mere 66% chance of not exceeding a 2°C warming (IPCC, 2014). Greenhouse-gas concentration will continue to increase (via positive feedbacks such as melting permafrost and the release of stored methane) (Burke et al., 2018), resulting in further delay of temperature-reducing responses even if humanity stops using fossil fuels entirely well before 2030 (Steffen et al., 2018).
Human alteration of the climate has become globally detectable in any single day’s weather (Sippel et al., 2020). In fact, the world’s climate has matched or exceeded previous predictions (Brysse et al., 2013), possibly because of the IPCC’s reliance on averages from several models (Herger et al., 2018) and the language of political conservativeness inherent in policy recommendations seeking multinational consensus (Herrando-Pérez et al., 2019). However, the latest climate models (CMIP6) show greater future warming than previously predicted (Forster et al., 2020), even if society tracks the needed lower-emissions pathway over the coming decades. Nations have in general not met the goals of the 5 year-old Paris Agreement (United Nations, 2016), and while global awareness and concern have risen, and scientists have proposed major transformative change (in energy production, pollution reduction, custodianship of nature, food production, economics, population policies, etc.), an effective international response has yet to emerge (Ripple et al., 2020). Even assuming that all signatories do, in fact, manage to ratify their commitments (a doubtful prospect), expected warming would still reach 2.6–3.1°C by 2100 (Rogelj et al., 2016) unless large, additional commitments are made and fulfilled. Without such commitments, the projected rise of Earth’s temperature will be catastrophic for biodiversity (Urban, 2015; Steffen et al., 2018; Strona and Bradshaw, 2018) and humanity (Smith et al., 2016).
Regarding international climate-change accords, the Paris Agreement (United Nations, 2016) set the 1.5–2°C target unanimously. But since then, progress to propose, let alone follow, (voluntary) “intended national determined contributions” for post-2020 climate action have been utterly inadequate.”
I have ‘enlinked’ the citations within the quote that perhaps would be of interest and worthy of chatter here.
Chuck Hughessays
mike says:
24 Feb 2021 at 1:08 PM
dropped the link about potential ghastly future:
Mike, I appreciate your consistency in your postings and staying on message. This is disheartening news but nothing I didn’t expect or already know. I don’t know how we extricate ourselves from this nightmare. Overpopulation is at the heart of the matter and telling people not to reproduce is taboo in many cultures and religions. I see this pandemic as the biosphere reacting to humans. The earth is going to shut us down if we’re unable to control ourselves.
Donald Trump set us back. The Biden Administration seems to be embracing science and scientists. I hope the people who run this site take aggressive action and speak out now that they have the opportunity. This is our last chance to build the infrastructure for scientific communication with the public about the perils of Climate Change.
Mike @45,
It’s probably best I do some adjustments if I’m taking this further. (This is because I was using the previous 30 days to get my ‘average’ to compare against. As there’s an annual cycle, that isn’t the best of schemes.) And now I look back at the whole record back to 1958.
So using the 30-day period centred on the day-in-question, and searching for days more than 2.2ppm away from that average (3ppm is asking a bit much now the averages are ‘centred’), you get 14 ‘dropped’ days more than -2.2ppm below that 30-day average. They are scattered at roughly a constant rate through the length of the record, the first in June 1963, the most recent in August 2017.
And there are now 22 ‘high’ days more than +2.2ppm above that 30-day average. These have all arrived since 1996. Ignoring the last few days, the most recent was back in November last year. (I included the two of very recent days even though they have not yet the full 30-day average for comparison. Probably only one will likely survive as we’re in the rising part of the CO2 annual cycle and that 30-day average will climb.)
Mike, #45 & #48–
Yeah, some stray CO2, very possibly from Kilauea, seems quite likely. That’s why they QC obs. But this episode was mild.
And I’m pretty sure that’s behind your observation that you don’t see comparable downward excursions–a patch of not-yet-mixed-in CO2 can easily raise concentrations a few ppm temporarily, while there’s no analogous effect on the downside.
Denialati like to make a lot of this, but there’s nothing comparable AFAIK with the South Pole data, and the records are quite congruent–as is that of the rest of the global CO2 monitoring network.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends
Amazing to me how many folks seem to think Mauna Loa is the whole of our monitoring capability.
MA Rodger (35): The 17 >3ppm above average readings have come in clumps with a clump of 3 back in 2019 & another 3 in 2016.
Killian (46,47): “Soooo…. 17 of them. At least 6 of the 17 in the last five years.” “Once again, MA comes riding his steed to calm the waters and let us all know these extreme changes aren’t any big deal.”
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar: this CO2 observatory is located near an active volcano, and volcanoes emit CO2 – so sometimes, when the wind blows from just the “right” direction – the CO2 from the volcano affects the reading. Once the wind shifts, in a few hours or days, things return to their normal values, and this is treated as noise, an occasional outlier with no bearing on the global increases of CO2.
An alternative is to believe that those are true “extremes” representative to the global values, i.e. that the Earth overnight just emitted extra ~ 25 Gt of CO2 (3ppm), i.e. more than YEAR’s WORTH of CO2 ACCUMULATION IN ONE DAY.
And that the Nefarious MA Rodger and Scripps try to hide these spectacular fluxes from the world. And by doing so, they “ distort the record as it is the extremes that indicate what’s coming in the future and have the greatest effects on ecosystems.”
By the way what some of these “ the greatest effects on ecosystems” that a … local 3ppm spike in CO2 that dissipates within a few hours or days would exactly be?
Kevin McKinney @52,
I would be a lot less enthusiastic about blaming Kilauea for the fluctuating CO2 at MLO. While I am not so familiar with the geography of Hawaii and MLO does have altitude, the meteorological tea spoon stirring the NH atmosphere does not eliminate CO2 fluctuations and prevent them from wafting across the Pacific at least at lower altitudes, according to this NASA CO2 animation. And while I’d assume these animated fluctuations are surely lower than the 3,400m of MLO, they would be a more likely source of what we see than Kilauea erupting.
I must revise my earlier comment. I said “there’s no analogous effect on the downside,” (i.e., CO2 excursions below baseline conditions.) Turns out that that is no more than very broadly correct. Browsing the ESRL Global Monitoring Site over coffee this morning, I took a look at some plots from various locations, including the South Pole Observatory, Alert (Nunavut, Canada–the most northerly program, above 80N) and Easter Island.
The last is here:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=EIC&program=ccgg&type=ts
And hey, presto, they have four ‘downside’ excursions–as opposed to 30+ ‘upside’ excursions. But they do happen. The boilerplate statement they have on all the plots says:
Well, it’s hard to imagine a “local biospheric sink” unique enough across the years and strong enough to lower CO2 concentration from ~377 to ~355, as happened once in early 2006, especially at Easter Island, where the annual vegetative cycle is small enough to be lost in the statistical noise. One has to suspect measurement error of some sort on that observation. (It’s interesting that a roughly equal ‘upside’ excursion was logged at roughly the same time.)
It’s a restricted data sample, but it’s also interesting–and potentially worrying–to observe a possible trend toward more ‘upside’ excursion in recent years. There have been 11 since the beginning of 2018. (Data are complete to the end of October, 2019, with more recent obs presumably awaiting QC.)
But climbing back out of the metaphorical weeds, overall, Easter Island data show the same trend you see everywhere else. The CO2 record is *very* well replicated. Alert, like Barrow, has a very pronounced annual cycle, but if you estimate the midpoint of the annual cycle, which conveniently occurs around October, you find it’s within a couple of ppm of Easter Island. And you find great coherence of the smoothed trend line.
The Siberian permafrost heave mounds are spectacular. We need to fund the study of these things so we can get some real time video of the moment when they explode.
https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/scientists-call-for-urgent-increase-in-monitoring-potentially-explosive-permafrost-heave-mounds/
These are particularly dangerous if they explode near or under existing infrastructure. I suspect we don’t have a good idea yet about how much methane etc is actually released into the atmosphere from these mound explosions.
Mike
The strange plots on Roy Spencer’s UAH TLT monthly anomaly chart I noted @9 up-thread can now be explained by a sneaky change to the anomaly base.
The data page has now been updated and it shows that with the end of 2020 arrived, the anomaly base has been shifted from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020. As a result all the global anomalies have been reduced by between -0.11ºC and -0.17ºC.
The one curious aspect with this is why the December 2020 anomaly have been adjusted by -0.14ºC when all the other Decembers have been adjusted by either -0.11ºC or -0.12ºC.
Because this change in anomaly base was not evident on the ‘Latest Global Temp Anomaly’ page, the comparisons I made up-thread @9 require revision.
The revised 2020 average anomaly now sits at +0.36ºC with December 2020 the lowest monthly anomaly of the year at +0.15ºC. The January 2021 anomaly is not greatly below this at +0.12ºC.
With the new anomaly base, UAH TLT January anomalies over the last decade.
2010 … … … +0.36ºC
2011 … … … -0.21ºC
2012 … … … -0.34ºC
2013 … … … +0.31ºC
2014 … … … +0.06ºC
2015 … … … +0.16ºC
2016 … … … +0.42ºC
2017 … … … +0.26ºC
2018 … … … +0.15ºC
2019 … … … +0.24ºC
2020 … … … +0.42ºC
2021 … … … +0.12ºC
These big daily spikes in CO2 seem relatively uncommon from numbers MAR has quoted. Some of them might be caused by emissions from couple of sources happening simultaneously. Bound to happen very occasionally by pure coincidence. Very hard to prove of course.
Much of the variance in CO2 is due to El Nino ENSO cycles, which likely includes MJO for more rapid fluctuations. Someone has contributed open-source machine-learning code for trying to predict short-term ENSO movements
Forecasting El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO): https://blogs.rstudio.com/ai/posts/2021-02-02-enso-prediction/
#54, MAR–
I think you may be over-estimating my “enthusiasm” for attributing Mauna Loa CO2 anomalies to vulcanism, but my “very likely” was both premature and overstated. In any case, the observatory is definitely affected from time to time by volcanic emissions–although the researchers feel they understand the variables involved very well:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-co2-record/
Of course, that’s not Kilauea, that’s Mauna Loa itself. Kilauea, I find, is nearly 40 miles away, and better than 7,000 feet lower, which I presume puts it below the inversion layer isolating Mauna Loa observatory from the lower layers of the troposphere–most of the time.
And speaking of time, so little of it, and so many searches to be done!
#53, Piotr–
Yes, that’s the problem that Beck’s work posed. The implied atmospheric fluxes are just not credible. Which, of course, didn’t prevent Beck from becoming a denialist ‘thing.’
RE 56 heave mounds:
All are associated with gas drilling. This is good news and bad news. This is good in that the Arctic permafrost does not seem to be erupting too abruptly all of its own accord just yet, though pingoes exist away from gas fields so far as I know.
This is bad news in that if that much gas is being freed up in the Arctic, it stands to reason it’s happening everywhere gas fields exist – or at least in fields using similar techniques – but without the ice there to keep it capped. That is, it must be flowing more freely to the surface in some areas and dissipating. This would seem to indicate fugitive emissions must be much higher than claimed by the FF Inc’s who have claimed it’s only faulty equipment.
at KM at 55. You say “Easter Island data show the same trend you see everywhere else. The CO2 record is *very* well replicated. Alert, like Barrow, has a very pronounced annual cycle, but if you estimate the midpoint of the annual cycle, which conveniently occurs around October, you find it’s within a couple of ppm of Easter Island. And you find great coherence of the smoothed trend line.”
Just need a little clarification. Have you found that the 5 plus ppm spike in CO2 shown at MLO was also seen at the other stations?
I had trouble finding a link comparable to CO2.earth that tracks CO2 daily averages for some place other than MLO. If other stations far from MLO also tracked a 5 plus ppm spike, that changes things a bit.
Do you have links to the other spots?
Cheers
Mike
Killian said “RE 56 heave mounds:All are associated with gas drilling.”
One piece of good news “The six largest banks in the U.S. have publicly stated they will not back oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.” If they carry through with this of course. If they can be trusted.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/01/investors-flee-big-oil-as-portfolios-get-drilled/
Kevin McKinney @60,
I did reckon that probably your “enthusiasm” was at the least not very positive; thus describing my own “enthusiasm” simply as being less than yours.
My own not entirely positive “enthusiasm” for a different potential cause in the rise in frequency of these bigger wobbles/excursions in the MLO CO2 record has itself been much diminished. The potential for the rise in frequency being an artifact of sampling decisions doesn’t square with the frequency of missing daily records. These missing days show a step change in about 2005 with the number of annual missed days wobbling around 100 before and sitting below 50 after. The wobbles/excursions within the record show no change due to this step change.
The comment by Paul Pukite (@whut) @59 suggesting CO2 variance is much caused by ENSO does perhaps have some merit here. If the frequency of these CO2 wobbles/excursions are plotted annually, there is significant correlation with years of La Niñas. But that correlation doesn’t explain the wobbles/excursions themselves and why the bigger +2ppm ones have only appeared in the last couple of decades.
I’m presently thinking their appearance is simply due to rising levels of emissions.
The frequency of smaller wobbles/excursions is also on the rise but, for those +0.5ppm or greater, the rise is linear. For those +1ppm or greater there is a definite acceleration in rate rather than linear increase. And those +2ppm or greater only appear in the latter part of the MLO record. This suggests to me the probability of a wobble/excursion’s size would be a part of a normal curve, a PDF which is spreading to now include +2ppm but only provide a linear trend for the more frequent +1ppm.
And if the wobbles/excursions result from the plumes of emissions from population centres and those emissions have been rising reasonably linearly through the decades, that and a spreading PDF would explain our wobble/excursion phenomenon.
…
And on a similar theme, that of tracking GHG sources, I note yesterday’s coverage of a more grown-up bit of detective work by Bristol University tracking down rogue CFC-11 emissions.
MA Rodgers(64): “If he wobbles/excursions result from the plumes of emissions from population centres” – then why the correlation with La Nina? The only reason would be if people had short-term spikes in their local emissions in Hawaii during La Nina.
My money would be an upwind transient mixing or upwelling event in the adjacent ocean – bringing up deeper carbon-rich waters and warming it up would result in a pulse of CO2, which would quickly end once the algae catch up and use the upwelled nutrients to bring the pCO2(sur. water) down. La Nina has stronger than usual winds – more mixings and upwelling.
Mike, #62–
“Just need a little clarification. Have you found that the 5 plus ppm spike in CO2 shown at MLO was also seen at the other stations?”
No. That sort of short-term stuff is unique to each location. By “trend” I mean annual timescales & longer. The NH stations show much more pronounced annual cycles than the SH ones, so things look quite different among stations over weeks or months. Not so if you graph, say, annual averages.
And if you think about the speed of travel of weather systems through the atmosphere on one hand, and the mass fluxes involved if the whole atmosphere saw a coherent spike over 5 days on the other–well, I think one shouldn’t expect to see any such spike in common between monitoring stations.
Mike, you might like looking at the different stations yourself. The ESRL locator map is here:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/
Piotr @65,
You ask “If he wobbles/excursions result from the plumes of emissions from population centres” – then why the correlation with La Nina?
The correlation with La Niña years is quite evident. The plumes appear to be always there rolling across the Pacific to Hawaii (not building as they cross the Pacific) according to my reading of this NASA modelling I linked @54. Presumably this would be generally similar in all years. There is perhaps also a seasonality in the direction of plume reaching Hawaii which matches a seasonality in the frequency of the wobbles/excursions at MLO.
So, if some of the plumes are the source of wobbles/excursions at MLO, the question would be rather narrower – ‘Why are the La Niñas years resulting in more of the plumes reaching up to MLO?’ I’d hazard a guess at the ‘Weather Impacts to Hawaii’ brought by a La Niña year.
Both GISTEMP and NOAA have reported for January with a global anomaly up a little on December 2020 but below the full 2020 annual average.
GISTEMP [NOAA] gives the anomaly for January at +0.86ºC[+0.80ºC], slightly above the December 2020 anomaly of +0.80ºC[+0.78ºC] which was itself the lowest monthly anomaly of 2020. (The 2020 monthly anomalies otherwise sat in the range +0.87ºC[+0.83ºC] to +1.25ºC[+1.18ºC] and the full 2020 year averaged +1.02ºC[+0.98ºC].)
January 2021 is the 6th[7th] warmest January in the GISTEMP[NOAA] record.
Warmest Global January anomalies run:-
. … … GISTEMP … … … … … … … … NOAA
2020 … … +1.18ºC … … … … 2020 … … +1.15ºC
2016 … … +1.17ºC … … … … 2016 … … +1.12ºC
2017 … … +1.03ºC … … … … 2017 … … +0.98ºC
2007 … … +1.02ºC … … … … 2019 … … +0.94ºC
2019 … … +0.93ºC … … … … 2007 … … +0.92ºC
2021 … … +0.86ºC … … … … 2015 … … +0.83ºC
2015 … … +0.85ºC … … … … 2021 … … +0.80ºC
2018 … … +0.81ºC … … … … 2018 … … +0.76ºC
2002 … … +0.77ºC … … … … 2010 … … +0.73ºC
2014 … … +0.76ºC … … … … 2003 … … +0.72ºC
MA Rodger (68) the “more frequent storm systems during La Niña years,/i>” from your link would be consistent with my explanation – stormy winds cause vertical mixing and upwellings – which bring deeper CO2 rich water to the surface (and increase air-sea gas exchange rate). A plume of CO2 get’s into the air and is then advected toward MLO. Explains also why the spikes don’t last too long – when the storm ends. The flux of CO2 F = k (pCO2(water) – pCO2(atm)), with the air-sea exchange exchange coef.
When the storm ends:
1. wind dies down -> k drops
2. the mixing depth – volume of water in contact with surface, i.e. from which CO2 can be extracted, gets smaller, reducing pCO2 of water
3. the upwelled nutrients stimulate a transient algal bloom that removes some or all the excess DOC, ALSO reducing pCO2(water).
So once the storm is gone – F goes to 0 and CO2 plume is no longer formed.
BTW – if the algal bloom overshoots and drops pCO2(water) below pCO2(air) -you would have a plume with LOWER than ambient pCO2, perhaps explaining the occasional negative spikes in CO2 at MLO.
as for other potential sources of the spikes:
I can’t think of any obvious terrestrial ecological process that would produce a positive spike of CO2 over such a short scale AND more frequent during La Nina.
and human-made spikes – could perhaps be created by the spikes in the use of AC during the heat waves (?) – but wouldn’t those be LESS frequent at MLO during la Nina than El Nino.
MA Rodger (68) the “more frequent storm systems during La Niña years” from your link would be consistent with my explanation – stormy winds cause vertical mixing and upwellings – which bring deeper CO2 rich water to the surface (and increase air-sea gas exchange rate). A plume of CO2 get’s into the air and is then advected toward MLO.
Explains also why the spikes don’t last too long – when the storm ends. The flux of CO2 F = k (pCO2(water) – pCO2(atm)), with the air-sea exchange exchange coef.
When the storm ends:
1. wind dies down -> k drops
2. the mixing depth – volume of water in contact with surface, i.e. from which CO2 can be extracted, gets smaller, reducing pCO2 of water
3. the upwelled nutrients stimulate a transient algal bloom that removes some or all the excess DOC, ALSO reducing pCO2(water).
So once the storm is gone – F goes to 0 and CO2 plume is no longer formed.
BTW – if the algal bloom overshoots and drops pCO2(water) below pCO2(air) -you would have a plume with LOWER than ambient pCO2, perhaps explaining the occasional negative spikes in CO2 at MLO.
===
As for other potential sources of the spikes:
– terrestrial – I can’t think of any obvious terrestrial ecological process that would produce a positive spike of CO2 over such a short scale AND be more frequent during La Nina.
– human-made spikes – could perhaps be created by the spikes in the use of AC during the heat waves in Hawaii (?) – but wouldn’t those be LESS frequent at ML) during la Nina than El Nino?
at KM at 67: thanks for the link and answers. I am getting old and more importantly, feeling old, so my ability to sort through a spot like ESRL to find a daily yoy comparison number to check against the MLO number provided in an easy manner at co2.earth is not great.
The bottom line is that the 5 or 6 ppm spike seen at MLO is a local occurrence. I thought that had to be the case because an event that could spike global numbers by that amount would probably be headline news. The trend is toward more upward spikes than downward spikes and that is not unexpected.
I expect to live long enough to see the next El Nino. That’s going to be ugly. I will state the obvious: we are not doing enough to reduce emissions. We need to do more and we need to move faster. We may eventually see a level of global warming that will significantly increase human suffering in the developed world. There will be gnashing of teeth at that point. I am ahead of that game. My dentist says I need to stop gnashing and grinding my teeth. Easier said than done.
Cheers
Mike
A lot is left to learn, wrt the polar vortex and meandering jet streams:
https://twitter.com/GeoffVallis/status/1361444674653855748
Open Energy Family and Open Energy Platform
https://openenergy-platform.org/
It saddens me to report the passing of the greatest living authority on the palaeoclimate of the Plasticene Era:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-hard-act-for-mark-steyn-to-follow.html
Russell Seitz @75,
While you report the death of Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, the denial of AGW he promoted is still with us with the likes of his “long suffering science guy” Roy W. Spencer continuing along merrily spreading to all that crazy denial of AGW they still suffers from.
The apology Spencer made back then (preserved for posterity at Desmog Blog) to “Listeners of Rush Limbaugh on Thursday, November 8, 2007” shows the amazing foolishness of these denialists in full flow. Having read the hoax Klein et al (2007) Spencer tells us he had to ‘dig’ to convince himself that the paper was a hoax. (“Even though the hoax was quite elaborate, and the paper looked genuine, a little digging revealed that the authors, research center, and even the scientific journal the study was published in, did not exist.”) and then with a little more reflection adds that the hoaxer did not prevail in showing how stupid deniaists are (whose ‘science guys’ weren’t apparently fooled for a [number of] minute[s]) but instead it is the hoaxer that demonstrates their own incredulity.
Absoluted right, Roy Spencer!! And I would add that there has been no scientific papers published “with evidence” that AGW does not result from saprotrophic eubacteria, not a single one. Klein et al (2007) may have been a complete hoax, but that doesn’t mean scientifically its thesis is incorrect!!!
Oh what fun. One of my all time favorite ironists, Russell Seitz, has taken on Rush Limbaugh.
Please don’t accuse him of not knowing which end is up, though with my personal quibble that he works on geoengineering (a job that needs doing by experts, any any case). [speaking of which, here’s Bill McKibben on that:]
The Enormous Risk of Atmospheric Hacking – https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/the-enormous-risk-of-atmospheric-hacking
Has this paper been discussed in Realclimate? “Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather” J. Cohen, X. Zhang, […]J. Yoon Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 20–29(2020)
A link to PDF of the paper cited by Peter Shepard @78 Cohen et al (2020) ‘Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather’ and the abstract:-
#79, MAR–
So, what I take from the abstract excerpt quoted is:
A fair summation?
“The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average since the late twentieth century, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification (AA).”
Interesting.
http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2019/05/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-9-even.html
Will the AMOC stop?
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-unfortunate-climate.html
76
Rodger, the linked page includes the passage from Spencer that you have redundantly quoted.
77. One of my all time favorite ironists, Russell Seitz, has taken on Rush Limbaugh.
Please don’t accuse him of not knowing which end is up, though with my personal quibble that he works on geoengineering (a job that needs doing by experts, any any case)
Susan, I work on Mie scattering modulation of water albedo to curb solar heating on urban to regional scales, and limit reservoir evaporation by passive water cooling. It relates more to White Roof mitigation of Urban Heat Island effects that geoengineering, and the limit of my R&D ambition is addressing Arctic sea ice meltiing on 100km scales.
[speaking of which, here’s Bill McKibben on that:]
I took on Bill McKibben in an amiable exchange in Orion a decade before I lit into Limbaugh’s Bethic Bacteria fiasco in my blog.
Elsewhere in the irony department, James Delingpole’s role as a Climategate raver been rediscovered:
Here’s the link to Delingpole’s Acid House cclimatology debut:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/02/what-ever-happened-to-first-person.html
Weaktor blogwhores@81.
Sorry Weaktor, but I’m not feeling masochistic today. I feel I dealt with far more than enough stupidity over the last 4 years.
Mit Milliardenklagen vor geheimen Schiedsgerichten torpedieren Konzerne die Klimarettung. Der Energiecharta-Vertrag (ECT) macht es möglich – und ist damit genau so schlimm wie TTIP und CETA. Frankreich und Spanien wollen den Klimakiller-Pakt kündigen, doch Wirtschaftsminister Altmaier (CDU) bremst.
https://aktion.campact.de/handelspolitik/energiecharta/teilnehmen
Thanks Russell. Once again I display my ignorance, thanks for the info. I will never forget Delingpole accusing Sir Paul Nurse of “intellectual rape” when he dared to provide information in the face of arrogant ignorance! The video was taken down, I think, but the information persists.
TWEETOSCOPE CLIMATIQUE
Discover what the web is saying about Climate Change
https://iscpif.fr/projects/climate-tweetoscope/?lang=en
Climate change is profoundly altering our oceans and marine ecosystems. Some of these changes are happening quickly and are potentially irreversible. Many are taking place silently and unnoticed.
“In a new paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my co-authors and I instead focus on the potential for what we call “high probability, high impact” tipping points caused by the cumulative impact of warming, acidification and deoxygenation.
We present the challenge of dealing with these imminent and long-lasting changes in the Earth system, and discuss options for mitigation and management measures to avoid crossing these tipping points.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-the-threat-of-high-probability-ocean-tipping-points
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2008478118
Some of us have been warning about tipping points for quite some time. Scientists are now talking about high probability, high impact tipping points.
The sixth great extinction event is underway in the oceans and on land.
I hope it moves very slowly.
Cheers
Mike
89 mike says:
23 Feb 2021 at 6:43 PM
Climate change is profoundly altering our oceans and marine ecosystems. Some of these changes are happening quickly and are potentially irreversible. Many are taking place silently and unnoticed.
“In a new paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my co-authors and I instead focus on the potential for what we call “high probability, high impact” tipping points caused by the cumulative impact of warming, acidification and deoxygenation.
We present the challenge of dealing with these imminent and long-lasting changes in the Earth system, and discuss options for mitigation and management measures to avoid crossing these tipping points.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-the-threat-of-high-probability-ocean-tipping-points
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/9/e2008478118
Some of us have been warning about tipping points for quite some time. Scientists are now talking about high probability, high impact tipping points.
The sixth great extinction event is underway in the oceans and on land.
I hope it moves very slowly.
Cheers
Mike
I hate to say “I told you so…”
…so often.
Hahahaha!
But, yeah, I did, I have, I still do. For those of you who are so bound by numbers and expert opinions that you cannot see what lies ahead beyond what they tell you, I’d be happy to do a webinar on different ways of looking at information to allow you to not only be a master of the technically scientific, but also of the naturally scientific.
Sorry! MMT comment posted in the wrong place!
So you say you want a solar-covered Sahara, well, ya know, you better think agai-a-ain.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/scientists-warn-filling-sahara-solar-230000011.html
Simplification, people. Solves everything.
Kevin McKinney @80,
First a link to Cohen et al (2020) that actually functions.
The paper is a review article and runs to 48 pages, three-quarters of this the Supplementary Information (which I haven’t got round to reading yet).
The paper addresses Arctic Amplification (AA) during winter, specifically Jan to March. It sets out the reanalysis results showing analogous warmth both in the lower atmosphere and up in the stratosphere and contrasts this with model results which only show this phenomenon in a few models when the likes of sea ice is forced into the model.
This phenomenon is thus part and parcel with wobbly jet streams and freezing weather pouring out of the Arctic come winter-time, potentially global warming resulting in some localised freezing. The paper even goes so far at to say this situation is “fanning climate change scepticism, which can impede the implementation of mitigation and adaptation policies.”
So perhaps it should be pointed out that this situation is not that AGW theory is broken or that the models are broken (as all swivel-eyed denialists believe anyway). The situation results from a heady mix of mechanisms which is presently not well-enough understood to be able to say what are the significant drivers of the phenomenon.
Perhaps this aspect of AA can be seen as the antithesis of the tropical ‘red spot’, it is a measured phenomenon that cannot be currently explained properly while the ‘red spot’ is a phenomenon that can be explained but not currently measured properly.
At a more theoretical level, there is the consideration of the role of “internal variability” rather than forced variability, and that is an attractor for denialistic theorising. The likes of Wyatt’s Unified Wave Theory included a causal link where the thawing of the Laptev Sea would cause mid-latitude cooling and kick off a cycle of global cooling which will demonstrate that what we see as AGW is mostly being caused by WUWT’s stadium wave and not GHGs.
In direct reply to the question posed @80, it would be fairer to say that the paper concerns the mechanisms behind “WACC (Warm Arctic, Cold Continents)” rather than WACC itself.
Guest(O.),
Bitte schreibe in Englisch.
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
“We report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second, we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. Third, this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on scientists to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government, business, and the public. We especially draw attention to the lack of appreciation of the enormous challenges to creating a sustainable future.”
Mike
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
dropped the link about potential ghastly future:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
New study with interesting results: Long-term global ground heat flux and continental heat storage from geothermal data:
https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/17/451/2021/
“….Results reveal markedly higher changes in ground heat flux and heat storage within the continental subsurface than previously reported, with land temperature changes of 1 K and continental heat gains of around 12 ZJ during the last part of the 20th century relative to preindustrial times. Half of the heat gain by the continental subsurface since 1960 has occurred in the last 20 years….”
————————–
New study: Re-framing the threat of global warming: an empirical causal loop diagram of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse
https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-02957-w
Not worth anyone’s time. Their “recovery” mode is equated to population levels. Utterly nonsensical framing of what constitutes successful mitigation and/or adaptation. Population? Seriously?
New study: Re-framing the threat of global warming: an empirical causal loop diagram of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse
https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-02957-w
mike @95,
The paper you cite Bradshaw et al (2021) ‘Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future (which provides just a “short Perspective” on the matter at hand) is more about the ecological emergency the planet faces than the climate emergency. Consideration of the climate emergency gets little more than 10% of the analysis, short enough to be presented here in its entirety.
I have ‘enlinked’ the citations within the quote that perhaps would be of interest and worthy of chatter here.
mike says:
24 Feb 2021 at 1:08 PM
dropped the link about potential ghastly future:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
Mike, I appreciate your consistency in your postings and staying on message. This is disheartening news but nothing I didn’t expect or already know. I don’t know how we extricate ourselves from this nightmare. Overpopulation is at the heart of the matter and telling people not to reproduce is taboo in many cultures and religions. I see this pandemic as the biosphere reacting to humans. The earth is going to shut us down if we’re unable to control ourselves.
Donald Trump set us back. The Biden Administration seems to be embracing science and scientists. I hope the people who run this site take aggressive action and speak out now that they have the opportunity. This is our last chance to build the infrastructure for scientific communication with the public about the perils of Climate Change.