This month’s open thread on climate-related topics.
Please be substantive, one comment per person per day, no bickering.
Reader Interactions
134 Responses to "Unforced variations: Aug 2022"
jgnfldsays
Cliff Mass wrote a blog entry “proving” no heating of practical significance is occurring in the PNW “because” annual record high values in July/August only at SEATAC (i.e. aggregating the data from Jul/Aug at a single site by single extreme values annually) are not significantly increasing since 1970 (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-great-heat-wave-dilemma-explained.html). Tamino took him to task as well as a number of commenters (https://tamino.wordpress.com/2022/07/31/not-even-wrong-2/). Interestingly a large proportion (nearly 30%) of annual extremes at that site occurred outside Jul/Aug but he “explains” excluding those values by shouting: “BECAUSE THAT IS THE WARMEST PERIOD”.
I would label his analysis worthy of any Tobacco Institute “scientist”. That said, I’ve been seeing this “let’s throw away all the data except for only annual single extreme values and see if we can find an HIATUS ( :-o ) again” sort of analysis very commonly in the last half year or so, so I guess it’s circulating broadly on denial/lukewarmer sites.
Isn’t it amazing how throwing away all but 50 datapoints from a collection of over 3000 of them leads to statistical nonsignificance?!
Essentially this is yet another bit of propaganda along the lines of “well Gramps smoked cigarettes all his life and lived to 92, “therefore” tobacco use is not a significant problem in the population. so beloved years ago by the Tobacco Institute and its followers..
Russellsays
The most interesting connection between tobacco and climate propaganda is how the doyen of US climate advertising firms, Porter Novelli, turned to environmental matters after TV cigarette ads went off the air, and its anti-tobacco clientele pulled their accounts- .
CLIFFORD MASSsays
Please read my follow-on blog where I show other stations…Olympia and Lind. The results are very robust–well-exposed stations with good instrumentation show less trend in max/extremes than mean and min. These results are supported in the peer-reviewed literature. And my general experience is that that those who do a lot of name calling (e.g., calling folks Tabacco Institute scientists) generally do so when their own arguments or understanding fail.
jgnfldsays
I suggest anyone interested in Cliff’s high dudgeon here to read the analysis provided by tamino and the comments on his “analysis” there.
Btw, re. your “victimhood”: NO one “called” you anything. So don’t melt down too badly. One only noted that presentation of misleading and insufficient factoids without full context was one of the TI’s everyday techniques–just as we see in many climate denial/obfuscation entries out there.
In particular, what Mass either intentionally glosses over or else fails to understand is that the sampling distributions of single extreme max temps from a set of 61 day spans are MUCH larger than the sampling distribution of stats taken from those same periods (e.g., means). As well, it has been shown by tamino and commenters that his procedures selectively ignore a large portion of the extreme data events by restricting his analysis to 61 day Jul-Aug spans.
Contextless factoids such as he posted without reference to what they actually can and do mean can be quite misleading. And his post was misleading in my humble opinion.
The following R script points out the sampling issues pretty clearly, I think:
set.seed(1234L) # to replicate these results
# required library for colstats functions…load if not present:
#library(timeSeries)
# Generate 10K 61-day random normal series w/ mean=50 and
# sd=10 (series are cols here) to simulate Jul-Aug temp readings
q = replicate(10000,round(rnorm(61,50,10),1))
# required library for describe()…load if not present:
#library(psych)
describe(q.mean) # se of estimate is .01
describe(q.max) # se of estimate is .05
# se of max is 5X se of mean
hist(q.mean, breaks= 30)
hist(q.max, breaks= 30)
# Note that the mean in the vast majority of these series
# is between 46 and 54 whereas the various maxes
# range mostly from 61 to 91 and show a definite skew.
Which parameter (as much as max even is a ‘parameter’ like mean/var, etc.) has the power to see small changes and which does not? Which parameter makes it easy to hide any changes over these intervals even if they are occurring?
UAH TLT has been posted for July with an anomaly of +0.36ºC, the highest anomaly of the year-to-date which previously spanned +0.00ºC to +0.26ºC.
July 2022 sits as the 2nd warmest July on the UAH TLT record, behind 1998 (+0.38ºC) and ahead of 2020 (+0.30ºC), 2016, 2019, 2021, 2010, 2018, 2017 & in tenth spot 2002 (+0.10ºC).
July 2022 sits =25th in the all-month UAH TLT rankings.
The high July anomaly pulls 2022 back up to 7th in the year-so-far average anomaly rankings.
Here’s something: “Scientists Warn of Devastating Mass Extinction Event Caused by Climate Change.” It basically says that because we are causing the warming much faster, it could be really bad, worse than in the Phanerozoic, not giving species enough time to adapt.
“Lucy”, our Australopithecus Afarensis common great-grandmother to power n, made it through very harsh conditions and made our existence possible, while we are destroying our and other species’ habitats for the sake of one more useless plastic trinket and other myriad wants, constantly created by an economy that is not operating in “creative”, but destructive destruction mode.
Killiansays
The logic of this is, and has been, obvious: Less time to adapt = less likely to adapt. To that end, I have begged/warned for years for the communication of climate science to shift to a risk basis, specifically long-tail existential threats such as this paper suggests.
The planet has never been changed this fast other than bolide impacts. Not even close. How, then, do we go on acting as if there is any corrollary? There simply is none. So, to assume temps are going to rise at a safe rate, that species can adapt to this extreme rate of change, or even that the sensitivity of the earth – regardless which of the three you choose to focus on, will be the same as in the past. I mean, despite the very clear signals of varied indicators coming in “faster than expected”, and some of them now centuries faster than expected, how is it 3C is still taken seriously as the most likely sensitivity? The range is up to 4.5C, I believe, and the rates of change we are observing clearly do not align with 3C, yet, that remains the standard assumption.
Is this rational? Rhetorical, of course.
Unfortunately, this paper cites +7~9C to trigger mass extinction. Hard not to notice extinctions are already well underway. And the paper even states clearly the rapid rate of change makes adaptation harder, yet does *not* say – at least not in the abstract – that would indicate 7~9C is likely too high for current conditions because it is the interplay of time and temp change that matter, not just temp changes.
Anywho…
J Robert Gibsonsays
Lynn. Thanks for starting the coverage of this paper.
Its key point, to quote: “The risk of global societal collapse or human extinction has been “dangerously underexplored”.
My take: We need an analysis of ‘what ifs’ for ‘really bad’ scenarios:
1) Tipping points such as (1) permafrost melt and CH4 release; and, (2) Burnout in a significant part of the Amazon.
2) Possible human societal reaction to areas of the planet becoming uninhabitable on a ‘self-sustaining’ basis given factors such temperature, precipitation sea-level rise and the consequent impact on the ability of people to feed themselves.
3) Societal impacts such as mass-migration, war and mass euthanasia.
The purpose of such analysis is to greatly strengthen Government action to reduce GHGs in the atmosphere.
SO: Which body should do this analysis?
1) Should it be the IPCC’s on a basis similar to its 2018 1.5C report? This took about 30 months to produce.
2) What about the UK’s Royal Society on a basis similar to its 2009 report on Geoengineering? https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2009/geoengineering-climate/ ?
My view is we need both. A report such as the Royal Society’s would be quicker to prepare and less politically constrained. A report from the IPCC would take longer but provide a process for getting more Jursidictions to seriously consider this important ‘What If?’ A ‘If’ which has a dangerously high chance of becoming a reality.
Killiansays
We don’t need them, but they would be nice. The reason is really quite simple: It’s an existential threat, so the risk analysis makes the best options very clear, and those don’t change because the news gets worse and worse because it **already was** an existential threat. Has been understood to be for quite while. I’ve been citing the need for this kind of long-tail-based communication from climate scientists for YEARS on this very site and have been roundly ignored. So, I guess good for the psoter who posted it finally (it had been out for a while) and good for the scientists who wrote the paper, but….
… we lost about ten years of time that was invaluable for effective mitigation and adaptation.
Not so thrilled about that.
Chucksays
Factbox: Wildfires breaking out across the world | Reuters
How about that Dallas flooding a couple of days ago? I think the Climate has tipped a little bit more.
Tom Doehnesays
I’ve been reading the IPCC technical summary, and have some questions.
1. Why are 1.5 and 2.0 degrees C picked for target temperatures? What thinking and research tells us those are the significant boundaries or transition temperatures?
2. Low-likelihood, high impact outcomes – the ‘tipping points; – are either highly unlikely or poorly understood (“not well known “). They are not included in any simulations except the severe warming (SSP5-8.5) scenarios (correct?). I understand why the poorly understood ones are not included; you shouldn’t include systems that are poorly understood if you want a valid simulation. Which of the LLHI tipping points are poorly understood, and which are understood but just extremely unlikely? (given the understanding that likelihood increases with temperature)
3. Three of the LLHI tipping points have significant positive feedback warming dynamics; Amazonian rainforest turning to savannah, frozen organics ->methane conversion from melting permafrost, and methane release from melting undersea clathrates. Did I miss others? How much of the carbon sequestered since the Eocene is locked up in permafrost or clathrates? Do we have fairly accurate measurements, or just ballpark estimates?
Right now, we control the amount and speed of global warming by emitting greenhouse gases. It’s hard to get a sense of how much warmer it can get before any of the positive feedback tipping points gets triggered, and we lose that control. Some laypeople think that we’ve already locked in a temperature rise that will set off one or more of the tipping points, but that doesn’t seem correct. Do we understand the systems well enough to say where that point is? Or if some point is still fairly safe (like +2 degrees?)
zebrasays
Tom, I think lots of confusion comes from the language we use, and this is certainly such a case.
It sounds to me as if you are defining “tipping point” as an on-off switch or set-p0int, so that the scenario would be:
1. GMST reaches T1, indicating a certain level of energy increase in the climate system.
2. Even if humans immediately stop burning fossil fuels, and making cows belch, and cutting down trees, and so on, T (system energy) will continue to increase (unless humans also magically remove CO2 from the atmosphere).
That’s OK, but what is the point of attempting to quantify that with any precision? Do you think it will have any effect on human behavior?
My understanding of what the specialists think is that you are correct that such a condition would be relatively far off. Does that mean “don’t worry, we can just keep increasing that CO2, we’re nowhere near turning the planet into Venus”?
The point for me is that long before we get close to such an outcome, we will have changed both the climate system and the human system to the point where “all bets are off”. The human system is probably more unstable than the climate system, and they are coupled, so what can we predict?? Do we have the computing power to do Monte Carlo analysis of Monte Carlo analyses?… because that’s what we are looking at here.
So I think it is reasonable for the IPCC not to worry too much about tipping points as you define them; they have enough to do already.
Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London states that we have passed the point of no return on climate mitigation and the only option available is deep adaptation.
Even if it might not be true yet, any rational person and responsible, democratic government with the opportunity and means to take action on solving the climate emergency, would do it, urgently.
Firstly Steven you got the definition completely wrong.. Poisoning the well is a preemptive attack.. You may wish to look it up in future if you wish to use the phrase again.
Secondly, Silvia called me irrational, all I have done is point out her blatant hypocrisy.. If I am incorrect, and Silvia does not use any fossilised carbon, I am sure she is able to correct me In my experience most people calling for an end to fossil carbon use feel virtuous as they have reduced their own use. And mostly it is people who have already gone through the hard early stages of setting up a life, and home, and potentially a family. So they aren’t spending all their effort just to put food on the table and pay basic living expenses.
@SL-A: – ” …to take action on solving the climate emergency, would do it, urgently.
Solution: stop using fossil fuels for anything. ”
— There is usually more than one solution in life. Convincing a horde of billions of fossil-fuel Yunckies to abstain overnight isn’t that easy.
I would also like to declare a global climate emergency and would like to found a UN fire brigade. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the point of no return for climate protection has not yet been reached. If waiting for reducing CO² emissions leads to a dead end blocked with stupidity and irrationality – take a different route.
For example, think of H²O…
Although it is many times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO², I am convinced that we currently have far too little H²O in the atmosphere. – Because
It also has a cooling effect as a cloud, as evaporative cooling on the earth’s surface, CO² absorber in photosynthesis, as an energy transporter in the earth’s climate system and even on your skin, in your car and heating system.
How much water does it take to produce ~3.6 million km² of clouds / to keep the land surface ~ -0.3°C cooler / absorb an additional 8Gt/y of CO² from the atmosphere / and stop sea level rise ???
– See here:
“I am convinced that we currently have far to little H2O in the atmosphere- Because..”
Discussion:
I see warnings on the net that the centyral walley in California wi9ll have a superflood, 9 meters above 1/3 of the USA vegetable production. I see further that the fameous death walley has drowned now after 50 years. Schürnes prayers are obviously being heard.
Todauy there was a communal machine sweeping up on the road after still another flood. It costs each time and Schürle is selling water without having any, and never mentions the taxpayers. That large machine on 4 wheels had a 6 cyl 4 liter diesel at least, as I could hear from my office.
In Oslo, the manhole covers are dancing in the streets, and at Tretten in Gudbrandsdal a whole bridge was obviopusly broken by the flushing river. and people blame this on the climate all the time.
Question:
When shall also the Schürlers learn moderation, reason, and understanding?
Xavier Koenigsays
Hey, I see a AGW-denying geologist named Matthew Wielicki making a lot of traction on TikTok lately. Any chance realclimate or any of you will make a move to the site and produce some content?
Adam Leasays
More disappointing behaviour from a subset of the UK population who seem to be trying to behave like the worst of Americans:
SE England has had its driest July on record with only 10 mm of rain. Two water companies have introduced hosepipe bans as August has started off in a similar dry manner minus the insane heat.
Abstract: “Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses. We outline current knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies’ vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.”
Would be very interesting to hear some comments.
[Response: We’ve written about some of the pitfalls and issues in looking at the worst case scenarios before. I’m not sure this commentary adds much. YMMV. – gavin]
Thanks for this Kathleen. What physics based “climate science” seems to substantially ignore are constraints on ECOSYSTEMS. I write the word in plural although life is all hooked together. This bias seems along the lines of not seeing the living planetary system for the forest.
For example, have we put so much and so many toxins, carbonic acid, climate heating, etc. into the ocean to begin cascading extinctions of phytoplankton, and all marine life dependent on them and their oxygen? If so, then since oxygen is regenerated mainly by two ecosystems 1) forests on land and 2)phytoplankton in the ocean, it would appear that oxygen levels could begin dropping precipitously, as forests burn (rapid oxidation) and conditions exceed living conditions for these single cell plants..
That is, falling more quickly than oxygen levels are falling in the ocean/atmosphere system already. (See Scripps Institute)
Karsten V. Johansensays
Thanks, Gavin, for reminding us all about what you wrote then. It is indeed thoughtprovoking and makes many good points. I am, though, not sure that what motivates the aforementioned paper is any kind of belief that scientifically unfounded fearmongering will force the nescessary and urgently needed long-term policy actions from politicians and the public – of which we haven’t in the three decades since the creation of the IPCC seen much more than still more dither and delay, as precisely characterized by Mann in this interview:
“I interviewed Mann, who has now collected his experience in a book, The New Climate War (published in Italy with Edizioni Ambiente), to talk about the new strategies of deniers, rebranded “inactivists” by Mann, and how to recognize and deactivate them in order to move towards a constructive and effective path of action for climate.
Climate denial has evolved through the years and strategies have changed. One of the initial strategies, which obviously you mentioned in your book, was to “reposition global warming as a theory” rather than fact. What are the current denier strategies, and what do you tell people when they say climate denial doesn’t exist anymore?
It exists in a different form. It’s not the sort of hard denial that we encountered in the past: “Climate change is a hoax, the planet isn’t warming.” That’s just not tenable anymore. Those sorts of talking points aren’t credible anymore because people can see and feel the impacts of climate change now in their own lives. And so, as you allude, what we’ve seen is a shift in tactics, away from denial but towards all these other words that begin with “D,” from denial to delay, division, deflection and doom-mongering because ironically that can lead us down this path of disengagement. If we really believe that we have no agency, we can’t do anything about the problem.
And so you’ve seen the forces of inaction or the inactivists, as I brand them in the book, polluters and those advocating for them, we’ve seen them shift to these other tactics in their effort to prevent us from moving on because that’s all they care about. The end game is the same, whether it’s because we deny that climate change is real or we don’t care, or we think it’s too late or for any other variety of reasons.
As somebody who’s been on the front lines of the climate wars for literally more than two decades now and I’ve watched those tactics evolve — that was the purpose of this book, to sort of share what my own observations so we can make sure that we don’t fall victim to these new tactics, because they are the only thing now that lie in our path. We’re so close to finally seeing the action that’s necessary, but we still have these obstacles. And the purpose of the book was to make people aware of what those obstacles are.
So you consider inactivism to be another form of denial?
I see them as close cousins of denial. They are not denial of the evidence of climate change but denial of the urgency, denial that we have agency that we can do something about it, denial that we can do it. And so in many respects, these other words that I’m using — deflection, delay, division — they are all close cousins of denial, engaging in this softer form of denial that we should or can do something about it.” https://global.ilmanifesto.it/how-the-oil-industry-quietly-continues-to-deny-climate-change/
The interesting/crucial *scientific question* here is to me: for how long can this combination of most liberal politicians’ de facto inactivism (out of fear of losing voters and/or losing support from big money) and nearly all “conservative” (here in Europe we would rather call most of them “reactionary revolutionaries”) politicians’ very activist denialism (I consider the politics of Trump etc. in the US, Xi Jinping, Modi, the saudis and especially Putin to be in this camp) go on, before resulting in destabilizing developments that become self-sustaining? I mean, the spectre of war for the remaining fossil fuel reserves and other resources has for some time been looming more and more threatening on the horizon, and is now beginning to materialize from Ukraine, and while this is happening, we have Biden etc. always really caring only for what is happening “at the pump”. As soon as you have “economic problems” (not to speak of war) – and this really is in fact always the case – any trace of climate policy is immidiatly put aside/”forgotten”. Until now, there have always been excuses abundant for delaying climate action “a little”, and all leading politicians are always eagerly looking for those excuses. How do scientists at least avoid contributing to this devil’s circle?
You write: “Recent social science research (for instance, as discussed by Mann and Hasool (also here)) suggests that fear-based messaging is not effective at building engagement for solving (or mitigating) long-term ‘chronic’ problems (indeed, it’s not clear that panic and/or fear are the best motivators for any constructive solutions to problems). Thus an argument has been made that, yes, scientists are downplaying worst case scenarios, but not because they have a personal or professional aversion to drama (point #2), but because they want to motivate the general public to become engaged in climate change solutions and they feel that this is only possible if there is hope of not only averting catastrophe but also of building a better world.”
But was it really not panic that suddenly awakened the politicians and the general british public to action, when the troops had to be very hastily evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940? Was it really not panic that awakened the politicians and the general american public to action after the attack at Pearl Harbour?
The problem with climate change in this respect seems to be, that when these kinds of catastrophic events happen, which will at last make the climate dangers dawn on the general public and thus on the politicians, it will probably be too late to avoid really dangerous climate change. Or am I wrong here?
Is it really true that the way the scientific results are viewed and presented to the public has no bearing on this? On one hand, crying wolf without the evidence, like Wadhams fx., is clearly counterproductive. On the other hand: downplaying – like the IPCC has done in some cases like the speed of permafrost warming and thawing and the speed of polar sea ice reduction, the acceleration of extreme weather event as fx. seen this summer in Europe – one’s underestimations of *the consequences of the warming that has already happened*, is that really no problem?
In precisely this respect the IPCC and leading climate scientists from my point of view have been “erring on the side of the least drama” by not making this side of the scientific uncertainty abundantly clear to the public. It seems as if all uncertainty is always counted as weighing in on the side of relaxation – “no need to panic” – meaning to the general public: no need to really do anything.
As written in the article I asked for comments about: “As noted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there have been few quantitative estimates of global aggregate impacts from warming of 3 °C or above (1). Text mining of IPCC reports similarly found that coverage of temperature rises of 3 °C or higher is underrepresented relative to their likelihood (2). Text-mining analysis also suggests that over time the coverage of IPCC reports has shifted towards temperature rise of 2 °C and below https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022EF002876. Research has focused on the impacts of 1.5 °C and 2 °C, and studies of how climate impacts could cascade or trigger larger crises are sparse.” https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2108146119
The question for me here is: why is this the case? Does it not point to a real problem concerning the current climate research?
Here in Norway, where I live, exactly the fact that “the coverage of IPCC reports has shifted towards temperature rise of 2 °C and below” was skillfully used by our local denialist organization (calling themselves “The climate realists” under the main parole “It is the sun…”) to say: “look what we said all the time! They were just scaremongering!”
Kemp et al suggest we need better definitions of catastrophe from AGW and may or may not make some useful contribution to that with its enumerating of percentage death toll of humanity. But specifically on “better definitions” and “human extinction” (which presumably gave the paper its BBC coverage) it surely gets its bootstraps tangled in providing the following definitions:-
Extinction risk = The probability of human extinction within a given timeframe.
Extinction threat = A plausible and significant contributor to total extinction risk.
I find the use of the words ‘contributor’ and ‘total’ makes the whole exercise nonsensical.
However, the subject is far from nonsensical and I would argue that if you do wield the prospect of “human extinction,” take a good grip.
It is easy to see (1) AGW coming to cause enough death and destruction that the ‘world order’ cannot easily help and turns away from the disaster rather than rushing in with relief. And in such circumstance, it is very easy to imagine (2) parts of the ‘world order’ instead of rushing in to help, rushing to secure its own well-being and thus global conflict being added on top of the ravages of AGW. (3) A goodly helping of AGW coupled with a garnish of nuclear war could well sever humanity from the technological means of preventing extinction of the species. And it can be argued that the present absence of useful mitigating action to address AGW already constitutes (1) in operation and that mankind is thus entered into a situation analogous to that of the Boiling Frog.
” And it can be argued that the present absence of useful mitigating action to address AGW already constitutes (1) in operation and that mankind is thus entered into a situation analogous to that of the Boiling Frog. ”
— For many months I have been trying to promote such a mitigating measure on this forum.
Water and rain retention / water cooling for land areas / global cooling through improved cloud albedo.
Not only because mankind is manipulating the water cycles mindlessly like the carbon cycle, but because the most dangerous effects of global warming such as: droughts, floods, sea level rise but also record temperatures during heat waves, species extinction,…etc. all related to the presence or absence of water.
You were one of the first to make fun of this holistic concept of lowering sea level rise & global temperature – maybe because you only understood it half-heartedly from the start or because, like the rest of climate science, you are already convinced in advance that mankind cannot influence the rise in sea level.
So you and some other experts here have yourself to thank for this current lack of useful, no regret and mitigating measures to combat AGW.
And if you all end up as a boiled frog, don’t complain. So if it gets really stupid and hard dumbed mankind doesn’t even have water to boil frogs – do you like grilled frogs better?
macias shurly,
You say you have been “many months … trying to promote … a mitigating measure [for AGW] on this forum” and that I was “one of the first to make fun of this holistic concept of lowering sea level rise & global temperature.”
What you fail to mention here is that prior to your arrival “on this forum” you and I were having the same interchange at SkS where, back last September, I appear to have been the first to respond to your crazy proposal.
Strangely you persist with your proposal and almost a year later, even with so many folk helpfully pointing out that your proposal is ridiculous with your reasoning in gross error at so many points. And dispite all this helpful comment you are still loudly banging the drum for Matthias Schuerle’s eye-bulgingly crazy ‘Holistic, alternative climate protection strategy’ [the Strategy]
At this point, the casual reader of this thread may be wondering ‘What is the Strategy?’ and Why would I brand it as eye-bulgingly crazy?’
Such casual readers should note that the commenter who calls himself macias shurly does provide a link to his webpage explaining the Strategy, but given the time I have spent attempting to correct all this eye-bulgingly crazy nonsense, I can myself quickly provide a shorter description of the Strategy as follows:-
Fundamentally, the Strategy proposes to prevent both SLR and AGW.
☻Firstly there is SLR resulting from AGW (& a small bit from draining aquafers). SLR effectively stores excess water volume in the oceans that stretch over two-thirds of the globe, with SLR being a problem solely at the coasts where rising seas will inundate the land. The Strategy prevents SLR by somehow storing all this excess water on land through some truly gargantuan effort of engineering and resulting in the level of this excess water rising now over the entire land surface of the planet rather than over the oceans. LSSI (Land Surface Sploshiness Increase) will thus be rising twice as fast as SLR did before.
☻Secondly there is AGW. Having prevented SLR the Strategy then asserts that with the land turning more sploshier year-on-year in this manner, the atmosphere will now be in receipt of more moisture over land and will become cloudier at a rate of +1% per year and this extra cloudiness will cool the planet, providing a negative forcing rate roughly double the positive forcing rate of today’s increasing AGW. Thus AGW is not just mitigated but put into reverse.
☻It should be noted that the Strategy does not explain how long this gargantuan project needs to operate. But after a century or so, if AGW forcing were to continue at present rates, this future sploshier world would be returned to pre-industrial forcings (when AGW=0). So any future SLR would be neutalised (AR5 suggested 2.3m SLR would eventually result from +1ºC AGW) and coincidentally the SL would be also something like at pre-industrial levels. But if AGW were allowed to continue beyond a-century-or-so and continue on into the distant future, the Strategy would perhaps be required to prevent further warming. Although, if the Strategy were increasing cloudiness at 1% per year, how long could it continue to work? Especially as the cloud fraction over land is not zero today.
JCMsays
“does not explain how long this gargantuan project needs to operate”
Restoring the average sustained 5% deficit in transpiration can be achieved within a decade and it is meant to operate forever.
Averaged across all catchments: Restore soil organics 5%, and/or, restore wetlands 5%, and/or restore native vegetation 5%. By whatever means suitable, restore sustained latent fluxes 5% across landscapes.
5% is a good rule of thumb for any type of restoration efforts. 5% restoration of ecologies is most certainty achievable. Any community can get behind this target.
Achieve this by restoring somewhat natural water retention in watershed ecology. Increase moisture-holding capacity in catchments by only a small fraction (5%). Increase the duration and extent of transpiring fluxes 5%.
This decentralized approach complements technological CO2 cuts. It empowers communities to make a real difference. Each and every small parcel landowner can take part if they so choose. Children can get their hands dirty replacing their lawns, for example, by helping to install a small rain garden or planting deeply rooted native greenery. The power of cumulative decentralized efforts can achieve 5% improvement quite easily. There is no downside.
— First of all, I hope that you, like me, live in a region where heat waves, record temperatures, droughts and forest fires have been increasing over the last years, and where parched rivers, forests, agriculture and cities are suffering from water shortages. This improves understanding.
My strategy is simple – in principle a simple, worldwide request to politics, agriculture, industry but also to private persons to build up extensive water reserves wherever/whenever possible in order to use them generously in plant growth, evaporation, clouds and “water cooling ” during periods of drought in spring and summer.
So if you continue to claim that an improved water supply for humans and nature would be eye-bulgingly crazy nonsense – the neutral reader should ask himself:
Who is normal here – and who is crazy?
The question should also be addressed as to whether increasing CO2 emissions are solely responsible for the increase in global temperature and ocean levels – or whether other, greater stupidities of mankind in dealing with H2O also play a part in the AGW warming cause.
In this post/conversation with my head gardener @JCM, I attempted to quantify the reduced evaporation capability in cities and agriculture due to human activities and land use change:
My personal estimate amounts to a missing ~ 12000 km³/y of evaporation, which is accumulated through millennias of human evolution and is distributed over about a third of the land area (49 million km²).
Maybe another number will convince you, which you can understand independently with a dew point calculator:
Suppose the troposphere contains a total of ~13000 km³ of water vapor + clouds.
At ~16°C and rH 79% the absolute water content is 10.78g/m³ –
at 16°C and rH 78% it is only 10.64g/m³ (~ -1.3%).
! Global relative humidity has decreased by ~1% from 1980 – 2010 while specific humidity has increased due to temperature:
Calculate the loss of 1.3% absolute water content on 13000 km³ and you get a volume of ~170 km³, which is missing in the atmosphere on average.
If you want to make up this difference, you have to bring up ~ 40 x 170 km³ by evaporation from the earth’s surface, since the residence time of H2O in the atmosphere is only about 9 days.
The total difference of missing evaporation ~ -6800 km³/y affects clouds but also the temperatures on the ground and in the atmosphere. The land surface remains ~ 4625 PWh/y warmer and the atmosphere above land correspondingly colder. The difference is attempted to be offset by higher sensible heat flux, increased LW radiation up surface (higher temperatures) and evaporation energy imported from the oceans (~19W/m²).
The volume 6800 km³ of missing evaporation corresponds to ~ 3.5W/m² (9% or 45mm) less latent cooling in a global energy balance for land areas and is rapidly increasing occurring largely within the arid regions, which are thereby becoming even drier in general.
MAR: ” The Strategy prevents SLR by somehow storing all this excess water on land through some truly gargantuan effort of engineering… ”
MS: — The 2010-12 La Nina event shifted ~1800 km³ of rain from oceans to land surfaces. Sea level dropped ~5mm and as you probably know La Nina years are also ~0.2°C cooler on average – even the thermosteric SLR was neutralized by La Nina 2010-12 during its phase… — completely without gargantuan effort of engineering.
@JCM spoke of a 5% deficit in transpiration, which then corresponds to about 1.9W/m² (25mm or 3650 km³) evaporation. The water retention index (WRI) can be increased through a wide range of measures. The potential water retention in vegetation, water bodies, soil and underlying aquifers, as well as the influence of slope and artificially sealed areas are greater than you think. With cisterns, rainwater retention basins and former mines as pumped storage, drought and flood protection, these WRI capacities are expanding.
MAR: ” Especially as the cloud fraction over land is not zero today. ”
MS. — However, it has been decreasing over the past few decades (-2-3%), as is the correspondingly decreasing rH.
The holes in the cloud cover to fill the sky with additional evaporation and clouds you will find where cloudless, blue dryness in spring and summer leads to long lasting high pressure, drought and high temperatures.
If you recognize the global deficit in potential evaporation and don’t deny its connection to surface cooling over land – you will have to get used to the fact that H2O and CO2 are both the most powerful greenhouse gases…
…but while we know that high concentrations of CO2 warm the earth – we now know that higher emissions (mainly from artificial irrigation) of H2O have a cooling effect on the earth.
Explain to me which values should not be correct and prove that with meaningful references, which expose my simulation of 1.2% more evaporation & clouds as nonsense – please.
ms: The question should also be addressed as to whether increasing CO2 emissions are solely responsible for the increase in global temperature and ocean levels – or whether other, greater stupidities of mankind in dealing with H2O also play a part in the AGW warming cause.
BPL: For the past 170 years, CO2 has been responsible for 85% of the variance of temperature. Google “analysis of variance.”
JCMsays
@ macias.
Note the correspondence of ecosystem desiccation by human activity and visible transpiration deficits, observed as areas effectively desertified in the link below. The tweet author correctly points out a climate crisis narrative. But the key point has been missed that this desiccation matches the spatial pattern of land clearing, active drainage, and erosion. It is not a coincidence the disruption in extent and duration of green growth matches areas of drought and extreme temperature vulnerability. It must be understood that agriculture is a necessary task, but it is not productive to overlook the obvious mechanisms of change. It is not productive to imply this desiccation, and associated hydrological extreme, is caused solely by CO2 forcing. Similar scenes can be observed over each developed continent. The human influence on hydrology, ecosystems, and associated climates is apparent. The ‘scarring’ observed by the tweet author is of course a consequence of land use practices, changing ecology, and changing hydrological characteristics.
PS – observe the subsequent graphic by the tweet author illustrating low cloud nucleation appearing to be repelled or disrupted specifically where transpiration of moisture and biota have ceased. https://twitter.com/i/status/1555937346423496704
“In the UK we’ve lost 90 per cent of our wetland habitats in the last 100 years” p.1
“At a national level it is estimated that pond numbers in England and Wales decreased by around three-quarters during the 20th Century from a maximum of about 800,000 to around 200,000 by the 1980s (Williams, P, Biggs, J, Crowe, et al).” p.3
I suspect in the decades since the 1980s this trend has continued, if not accelerated. Data collection on such matters is generally quite sparse.
Something dramatic changed in the management of landscapes during the 20th century. Landscape hydrology does not resemble that of past centuries over vast swathes of the planet.
matthias schuerle (aka marcias shurly) @up-thread,
My apologies if I did not spot your grand revelation from a fortnight ago but this is because as a rule I no longer bother wasting my time reading the nonsense you plaster down the comment threads here at RC.
Givng your grand revelation from a fortnight ago a quick once-over, I must say it is not dissimilar to what has gone before. Perhaps you are now arguing that all those trees mankind has chopped down since, well presumably since the chopper was invented; arguing that all this deforestation has caused serious amounts of global warming and perhaps also suggesting this is yet more reason to ignore the ever-increasing forcing from mankind’s GHG emissions and instead more reason to implement the Strategy you have invented to flood all the World’s land with river waters and thus stop both SLR & AGW in their tracks.
But my advice to you (given as you do say “please”) would be to take your time and not get carried away with that number you managed to find reported by Dias et al (2015). Thus, for instance, how does the conclusion you reach (from using Dias et al’s singular simulation result from the eastern Matto Grosso and extrapolating it over the whole wide world) compare with, say, the findings of Xu et al (2022) ‘Contrasting impacts of forests on cloud cover based on satellite observations’?
Your theorising had a good run for its money when it first appeared over at SkS last year. Within a tediously long interchange at SkS, it was shown to be nonsense and bringing it here to RC and adding a few magic numbers to it will not convert it into something sensible.
That is why I no longer bother wasting my time reading the nonsense you plaster down the comment threads here at RC. I do not apologise for paying no heed to your nonsense and indeed would encourage our hosts to commit your comment to the BoreHole or the CrankShaft.
— Only climate experts taxiing in their boreholes can believe that the accumulated lack of evaporation over land areas of ~6000 – 12000 km³/y (9-18% of the total annual evaporation over land !) has no impact on climate and temperatures above land areas.
You both underestimate the minus 1% relative humidity and cannot understand this missing amount of H2O in the atmosphere either mentally or quantitatively. I have calculated the effects – so please calculate it by yourself, or provide a link that proves the opposite.
The paper presented by MAR “Contrasting impacts of forests on cloud cover based on satellite observations” by Xu et al. (2022) does not contain any quantitative statement on evaporation, percentage of cloud cover or temperature. It only proves that there are also cloud forests, which partly absorb their water requirements from the air and can therefore also dissolve clouds.
It is about the historically important clarification of the questions:
1- Do higher H2O emissions have a cooling effect on the earth’s climate? (as I claim) or
2- Do higher H2O emissions have a warming effect on the earth’s climate? or
3 – Do higher H2O emissions have neither a warming nor a cooling effect on the earth’s climate?
So all I ask of you is to appropriate one of three statements.
The assumption in the graph that land use changes have a cooling effect (because the drier, bare surfaces may have a higher albedo) – is wrong or incomplete. Plants produce clouds/albedo – and clouds produce plants.
If you both deny the global water scarcity, falling rH & mean cloud cover and decreasing evaporative capacity of land areas and continue to ignore the arguments brought by @JCM about soil capacities – then I wish you a lot of fun in the desert …
– and enjoy the grilled frogs and you undistilled, lukewarm morning pee.
PS. Perhaps the pee will also help you to lubricate your own crankshaft for your last few meters.
JCMsays
The dismissal of biosystems and hydrology, and their relations to climate, is striking.
On the subject of forests, which represents but one biome, ecologists are expressing deep frustration with the ongoing mischaracterization and undervaluation of these systems. The carbon sink obsession has resulted in massive mismanagement of forestry from Europe to California.
If you have ever tried applying for restoration funding you will come across the carbon sink obsession when justifying your project. The reductionism of Earth system science to greenhouse gas narratives has percolated deep into policy recommendation and is causing untold damage to ecohydrological understanding and policy recommendation. Regardless, if you want to get anything done you have to play along.
“Forest-driven water and energy cycles are poorly integrated into regional, national, continental and global decision-making on climate change adaptation, mitigation, land use and water management. This constrains humanity’s ability to protect our planet’s climate and life-sustaining functions. The substantial body of research we review reveals that forest, water and energy interactions provide the foundations for carbon storage, for cooling terrestrial surfaces and for distributing water resources. Forests and trees must be recognized as prime regulators within the water, energy and carbon cycles. If these functions are ignored, planners will be unable to assess, adapt to or mitigate the impacts of changing land cover and climate. Our call to action targets a reversal of paradigms, from a carbon-centric model to one that treats the hydrologic and climate-cooling effects of trees and forests as the first order of priority. For reasons of sustainability, carbon storage must remain a secondary, though valuable, by-product. The effects of tree cover on climate at local, regional and continental scales offer benefits that demand wider recognition. The forest- and tree-centered research insights we review and analyze provide a knowledge-base for improving plans, policies and actions. Our understanding of how trees and forests influence water, energy and carbon cycles has important implications, both for the structure of planning, management and governance institutions, as well as for how trees and forests might be used to improve sustainability, adaptation and mitigation efforts.”
Quantifiably, forests represent only a small proportion of terrestrial biomes, but this represents an important example. Additional areas of interest, perhaps far more important include, and are not limited to: soil ecology, wetlands, croplands, grasslands, built environments, and (not least) the ecological role animals in biogeochemical cycling.
On the discussion of cloud, it is apparent the deeply integrated biological mediation of cloud nucleation over the continents is ignored. Atmospheric organic and bio-aerosols as hygroscopic cloud condensation nuclei.
Ecosystem change by human activity affects the temperature and hydrology through biophysical exchanges of water and energy between the land and the atmosphere. Indigenous peoples tend to know this intuitively, and it appears those studying such matters for decades, with super computers, many thousands of scientists, are only starting to get to this conclusion. It sounds trite and baffles the mind, some might find this offensive, but it is a cold hard truth.
In a healthy water cycle, while some rain enters streams and rivers directly and is carried off to sea, most rain water is absorbed by the soils in situ, where it lands. The rain gives life to the soil and sets many biological processes in motion, where it is essential for stable soil carbon storage and cooling the biosphere.
The two competing paradigms are not mutually exclusive:
Mainstream paradigm: Climate change is primarily a consequence of elevated greenhouse gas emissions, largely from the burning of fossil fuels.
Classic paradigm: Climate change is a consequence of global ecological destruction, especially of soils, soil biota, above-ground flora and fauna, and bodies of water; including disruptions of carbon, water, and energy cycles.
While the mainstream paradigm is virtually ubiquitous in discussions of climate change today, the classic paradigm will never cease to bear fundamental truths. It will persist regardless of the ebbs and flows of contemporary science communication.
There aint no / herrscht keine / water scarcity/ Mangel an Wasser/ on nearth.
Science has shown that,….
Thor Heyerdahl was once interwiewed in his office where he had a classical Globus on his writing desk, and a Protocoll and a telephone and hardly anything more.
Heyerdahl turned that globus the right way arould onto the eyes of the journalists and into the cameras and said: “Look for yourselves, this is not the planet earth, it is the planet Sea!”
and he was right.
Comment:
Landcrabs, I say. Landcrabs. I say no more, Landcrabs!
Genosse, there is Jacob Våthatt and Mari Vassause as good as can be, I am scared and alarmed and have to control the Waterstaat in my cellar and keep my Pompers/ Pumps strictly in order all the time.
Why settle and why worship on the wrong side of the globe?
Dusty desert walkers blind believers and flat earthers, I say,
How often shall I have to repeat that?
Russell Seitzsays
Existential Threat Inflation has been a thing since the day worst case scenario assessment began.
Killiansays
As has existential threat minimization. I’ll give you one guess which is the greater problem….
Gavin’s response is as expected. While all his points are reasonable as points, the problem is the things that happen to the planet are not only determined by things that happen in the climate science world. I’m not convinced Gavin, et al. are all that expert in trophic flows, e.g. There are at least two aspects of the worst-case scenario probability that I don’t recall Gavin, or anyone else, adequately addressing:
1. There is no parallel to the current situation. It is dangerous to assume conditions never before dealt with will mimic known situations in the past.
1a. It has never been the case that all ecosystems were simultaneously degraded. All other events sans Chicxulub did not occur with a degrading of the environment first by one of its species. Would that not affect resilience?
1b. In the past it was *only* heating. Do climate models include the poisoning of the ecosystem? No. Do they include the land use changes caused by humans on top of the warming? No. Do they include the plastics issue devastating wildlife all over the planet and pretty much showing up everywhere and in pretty much all living things, or rapidly moving in that direction? No. Do they include the poisoning of the waters of the world with chemicals from 70 years of incredibly short-sighted changes to farming? No. Does the destruction of the ecosystem happening completely independent of anything directly related to climate warming get included in models? No. Would it have an effect on those trophic flows and therefore ecosystem destruction and therefore the acceleration of warming? Yes. Not in the models.
2. Rates of change do have effects. More than one paper has addressed this. The combination of speed of change and amplitude of change *matters*, which Gavin *does* know, and yet he sees little reason for alarm. The Earth system has literally never been pushed at anything like the current rate other than Chicxulub and it took the planet millions of years to recover biodiversity and functioning, and it was a very different ecosystem when it did. Do want a very different ecosystem? It is simply not reasonable to me to downplay the fact of changes coming thousands of times faster than ever before.
These issues and more are not captured in current climate models to my knowledge. Being sanguine about them even as we watch the numbers of species after species plummet. We are already at collapse numbers across many, many species, many of which we will probably never know existed because they will be gone before we ever have a chance to find them… and we don’t know how critical they are. If they are keystone species, their disappearance will lead to massive ecosystem changes. This is not in the models.
I understand a climate scientist only focusing on their piece of the puzzle, but I’d warn against maintaining that posture because… this time is different.
Karsten V. Johansensays
I think there may be interesting and unspeakable reasons for “Gavin’s response being as expected”: it is, of course, unrealistic to believe that there is any kind of freedom of expression for leading scientists in a “democracy” like the one in the US, which has for many decades been faster and faster degrading into an oiligarchy – a fossil capital liberal-totalitarian dictatorship – ruled by senile cleptocrats like Biden, Trump, Pelosi etc., now just as old as the last generation of soviet nomenklatura 1980-90.
The “interesting” question for the non-oligarchic parts of humanity faced with this prospect of a still more tyrannic, climatically and ecosystemic destabilizing and warlike global race to the bottom of all bottoms here not being: who will be the american Putin, with Biden/Trump assuming the role of the late Boris Yeltsin? Will it be de Santis, propped up by madmen like Musk and Thiel?
Under the postmodern or rather second-and-global-coming-of-fascism-version of “freedom of speech”, it is far more impossible to raise this question to the general public, than it was to get any kind of rational debate about the situation fx. in Italy a hundred years ago, when hundreds of thousands of Mussolini’s fascist thugs had been murdering and terrorizing since october 1920 (since the liberal government of Giolitti had decided to pay eighty percent of their salaries as officers to all demobilized officers from WWI who joined the fascist death-squads). Thus is the quality of entertainment in our times, as precisely envisioned by Neil Postman 1985, when Reagan had been acting president since his succesfull plot with ayatollah Khomeiny 1980.
While American democracy is indeed under threat, we are not yet at the point where someone in Gavin’s position has reason to self-censor in a forum such as this.
The oligarchic system in place rather works by making it unlikely that fora such as this ever get any traction in the wider cultural space. Internet kitty pictures? Sure. The latest ‘it guy/girl?’ Obligatory. Existential threats? Too damn depressing. Who wants to hear about that?
Marcussays
Dear climateers,
I would like to read a kind of 101 introduction to the soil – moisture – precipitation feedback.
I find lots of scientific articles, but nothing introductory in textbook style.
The thing is, you would have to be more specific about what counts as “101” for you personally… what’s your background?
Recently, a couple of people have similarly asked about “simplified but detailed” explanations for the climate system’s energy balance, which to me at least doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s possible to explain the fundamental physics principles at work to people with little background, but if you want to study a specialized area you would have to take the prerequisites so you can “do the math” at that level.
Perhaps if you were more specific about what you are looking for, someone here with more specialized knowledge could give you some guidance.
Marcussays
My background is mathematical physics MSc. / research with numerical simulations in industry, my climate background is personal interest – have read Pierrehumberts book and completed Dave Archers coursera course
For sure this is absolutely nothing compared to Your daunting record of competence but my question was posed *crystal clear*, I know how to use Google and if You can’t give a meaningful answer that contributes something please do not answer at all, thank You.
zebrasays
Marcus, lighten up, dude. Sometimes people ask a question using a phrase they saw somewhere… I don’t know that what it means in their heads is the same as what’s in mine.
And I’m still not clear what you are looking for. Stipulating that I have zero expertise on the subject, here’s a couple of what seems to me informative discussions of the topic (see discussions):
OK, can you tell me what a 101 textbook on this would be like? I would expect to have to take multiple courses in different areas to be qualified to even begin evaluating such papers. (And how it relates to global climate… which, from my limited perspective, it doesn’t much, given how localized the effects are. )
If your google searching hasn’t found a “free introductory course at MIT” or whatever, maybe there just isn’t one at this time. Again, if you can be more specific, there are meteorology people here who might be able to help.
Marcussays
“And I’m still not clear what you are looking for”
I am beginning to suspect this is a personal problem.
I say explicitly I would like to see an introductory text about the subject and not scientific articles working on the subject, you keep posting links to papers .
“If your google searching hasn’t found a “free introductory course at MIT” or whatever, maybe there just isn’t one at this time”
This, and the “maybe”, is why I was asking here . If You don’t have something, please leave the room for someone who maybe has seen or has a copy or a link to an introduction to the soil moisture precipitation feedback, and stop feeding your stream of consciousness and silly gatekeepery under my question
zebrasays
Marcus, I’m trying to help with your quest, but you seem unwilling to engage in a useful dialogue. Try reading this (the introduction):
When I read this (and other references), my understanding is that this is a fairly recent, very “un-settled” area of scientific inquiry with respect to climate change, being explored by scientists with a wide range of specialties. I just assume someone with your background would reach the same conclusion.
So I’m trying to suggest that maybe you need to try a different set of sites/sources, not just “climateers”… meteorology, hydrology, soil science, and so on, because they are more likely to know of more elementary books that would be useful.
For me, the introduction in this paper is a pretty well-written “introductory textbook” for the current state of affairs.
Radge Haverssays
Marcus,
I don’t know if this helps (not my area), but I’ll chime in on the off chance… maybe “impact of climate change on the hydrologic cycle” should also cover the more narrow topic of feedback?
Also, and maybe less intuitively, a textbook on geohydrology (not hydrogeology) and perusal of tables of contents for relevant chapters. I wouldn’t necessarily expect a book on soil science to cover your question.
Marcus,
The “textbook-style” introduction you seek is probably not yet written. The Soil Moisture – Rainfall Feedback is a complex beast and until its complexities are better understood, that ‘textbook’ will be rather short. Perhaps the best you will get is a research paper or two with long introductions explaining this ‘complex beast’, perhaps akin to that in Yin et al (2014) or in Yang et al (2018) (which sounds a bit Taoistical, so perhaps a propitious sign).
Marcussays
BTW if You would have invested just a little care into inspection of Your own search results You might have gotten a clue why I am asking my question on this page
The control of soil moisture on surface albedo and Bowen ratio is the fundamental basis of the proposed soil moisture–rainfall feedback mechanism. The water content in the upper soil layer affects these two important properties of the land surface such that both variables decrease with any increase in the water content of the top soil layer. The direct effect of soil moisture on surface albedo implies that wet soil moisture conditions enhance net solar radiation. The direct effect of soil moisture on Bowen ratio dictates that wet soil moisture conditions would tend to enhance net terrestrial radiation at the surface through cooling of surface temperature, reduction of upwards emissions of terrestrial radiation, and simultaneous increase in atmospheric water vapor content and downwards flux of terrestrial radiation. Thus, under wet soil moisture conditions, both components of net radiation are enhanced, resulting in a larger total flux of heat from the surface into the boundary layer.
I’m with MA Rodger on this one. M. Schurle, regardless of which name he uses (he went through two different ones at Skeptical Science. in the thread linked to previously, and has used at least two here), has nothing but a bunch of out-of-context quotes and links to science that he does not understand, giving the appearance of being sciency.
We all know that wet surface are cooler than dry ones.
We all know that cloud cover affects solar radiation.
What M. Schurle has never been able to explain or provide evidence for is the foundation of his Grand Theory, in which he claimed in his rambling last year was based on the idea that a 1% rise in surface evaporation would lead to a 1% increase in cloud cover. It won’t, and M. Schurle has no idea how things like cloud formation, precipitation, and the water cycle work overall. The climate modellers understand this all far better than M. Schurle, and their results do not agree with his fantasies. Local cooling is not global cooling. Watering your lawn will make it cooler than the dry pavement beside it, so you won’t burn your bare feet if you walk on it, but it won’t cool the planet.
The “best” that he can do is provide links or quotes to elementary web pages or his own misguided truthiness. When challenged, he will ultimately resort to providing links to basic meteorology stuff, pretending that he knows what it means and others don’t. Then he’ll move to personal attacks, because when it comes to his Grand Theory, there is no “there” there.
M. Schurle wants us to believe that he actually has a step two. “And then a miracle occurs”. I won’t hold my breath waiting.
@Bla Lowbob says: – ” I’m with MA Rodger on this one. ”
Huhu — surprise – i guess you got married in Australia.
BL: – ” Watering your lawn will make it cooler … but it won’t cool the planet.
The “best” that he can do is provide links or quotes to elementary web pages. ”
— Your problem is that you don’t even know what’s in the links and tables you post yourself..
BL.: at 02:35 AM on August 15, 2021: – ” In that post, YOU provide a graph from the IPCC report, which shows the estimated temperature response due to a variety of factors over the last 100 to 150 years.
“Land use reflection and irrigation” is the second-last bar on the right. Note that the calculated effect is minor cooling, not warming. ”
— What should I think of such schizophrenic bubbling? – Of course, irrigation and water on the (earth) surface has a cooling effect – every child knows that.
The values given in the graph (0.06 – 0.14°C ) also fit well with my own calculations.
The fact that you, as an alleged climate expert, moderate a blog in Australia is actually a scandal. You drive water-cooled automobiles your whole life – cool yours Skin with 2L of water every day – have a water-cooled heating system at home that keeps your water-cooled cerebellum warm – but foolishly believe that the world is NOT water-cooled ???
This is ridiculous.
By the way, I myself cool LED light / PV modules and other surface mounted devices semiconductors with water – which generally increases the efficiency by about three times.
If you are looking for any links, which I have mostly already posted 3 times and which give you well-founded information, proof and indices about my climate protection concept / lower temps and SLR & protection from drought and flooding —
then just look for the red letters. smh
Bob Loblawsays
Just as I figured. Nothing but insults, out-of-context quotes, and complete confusion over local.effects vs. global effects.
Now it is rain cathastrophies in Schwaben & Bayern again, and time even fror you to begin learning some physics and meteorology.
I learnt that in highschool allready from a very good book, Atem der Erde by Theo Löbsack. In translation. It has been my elementary learning of meteorology ever since to my great advantage. Adolph and your antroposiophers can go home after Theo Löbsack., that class enemy of yours.
Question: Why does it suddenly rain in southern California and 50 millimeter per day in Death Walley?
It is not because the Schüirlers were there, but because there was moisture enough in the air which is normally is,….. and chill on the top of that. Namely Halos in the sun, to which you give a damn because it was not told by the Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät.
Nothing was done on the ground neither in southern California nor in Death Walley nor in Oberbayern. It is the Jørungandr above and the sea serpent below you see, that make it together in the sun.
And it is why the Halo, the solar wheel and the sun cross was seen as a symbol of fertility in the bronse and iron age.
Litt:
Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weisse
in Brüdersphären Wettgesang
und ihre vorgeschriebne Weisse
vollendet sie mit Donnergang!
SANN
We were in Venetia end of July as rain came so we decided to go home. Uphill in the alps, the rivers had been tiny creeks for several weeks, and the wide riverbanks were full of camping waggons on that cheapest ground with only narrow exits in the river walls. That were totally clogged and waggons were floating and rushing downstream as we passed by,
When shall they learn?
Over in Bayern we slept in the car and not just kits and dogs, but long frogs were pouring down onn the resonant roof all through the night.
If you really whish to study a rushing river, then look up Bramaputra with Google maps. Assam province has got the highest seasonal perscipitation in the world
The physics ofv such things are to be known and the alternatives to0 such physics to be degraded and mounted in the pillary. and announced trhere.
That is what could help.
Typical Mari Vassause as explained by Theo Löbsack, that is what you rather ought to read, to study, and to sell.
There aint no / herrscht keine / water scarcity/ Mangel an Wasser/ on nearth. ”
— With that sentence, you ousted Victor + J Doug Swallow from the top of the climate change denier hit list. From today – you are the forum clown no. 1.
The ERA5 re-analysis has been posted for July showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.38ºC, up on June’s +0.30ºC and the second highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date, the 2022 highest anomaly being March’s +0.39ºC and lowest Feb’s +0.23ºC.
July 2022 becomes the 2nd warmest July on the ERA5 record, below 2019 (+0.40ºC) and above 2016 (+0.36ºC), 2021, 2020, 2018 & 2017 (+0.26ºC) and then a bit of a gap to July 2015 (+0.15ºC) in 8th spot. July 2022 becomes 31st highest all-month anomaly on the ERA5 record.
In terms of the start of 2022, after seven months 2022 continues at 5th warmest.
The Copernicus ERA5 July 2022 web-page has a box with a daily July anomaly animation for Europe with a link to fuller coverage of the recent hetwave.
Globally the high July average anomalies over Antarctica are perhaps most prominent.
The GISTEMP LOTI numbers have been posted for July showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.90ºC, a tad down on June’s +0.92ºC and roughly average for the monthly anomalies of the year-to-date, the 2022 highest anomaly being March’s +1.04ºC and joint lowest Apr’s & May’s +0.83ºC.
July 2022 becomes the =3rd warmest July on the GISTEMP record, below 2019 (+0.94ºC) & 2021 (+0.91ºC), equaling 2020 and above 2016 (+0.84ºC), 2018, 2017, 2009, 2015 & 2011 (+0.73ºC) in 10th spot. July 2022 becomes =48th highest all-month anomaly on the GISTEMP record.
In terms of the start of 2022, after seven months 2022 continues at 5th warmest.
So does that rate as “scorchio”? I think with the La Niña running strong (MEI is given as -2.2 for Jun-Jul, the strongest La Niña since 2010 although there is a bit of a lag between ENSO & the SAT wobbles it creates), perhaps when adjusted for ENSO the 2022 SAT do rate as being “scorchio”.
Adam Leasays
Still bone dry in SE England. Welcome to the future?
I see there has been rain enough in Scotland and less and less further south. There seems to be severe draught now also in Paris and southern Germany.
This is all suggested and supposed by James Lovelock at the beginning of the climate dispute. Lovelock said that Sahara will come to southern England, so he must hurry up now and buy shares and land on Svalbard.
At the same time, the climate and weather seems to have been perfect this yeat 2022 in Ukraina, where troubble is of another kind rather of sheere antropogene nature using white phosphor, napalm, pure Vodka and amphetamines in the fields.
Plus professional Industrial fungicides, herbicides and pesticides.
U235 and Pu 238- may then be the next when the traditional remedies are failing more and more..
I can tell from Norway that the weather has rather been ideal this year like in Scotland.
GOD is Norwegian you see, and gives us all the advantages and hardly any of the disadvantages. The desert walkers and flat earthers, blind believers further south and west must learn to behave, to observe and to read and to listen , to worship, and to believe, and to understand all things first.
There is enough of holy water and sunshine here if it is just not fought and ridiculed.
There is rubbish and dirt enough and we need no further burnt organics and terrapreta to be pissed on.
What can be scarce is enough ice and snow.
Everytime snow falls in Washington and New Yoyk they damn and swear and condemn it,
.
GOD may hear that and serve as they request it. .
Adam Leasays
“Lovelock said that Sahara will come to southern England”. Unless climate model projections are predicting the descending branch of the Hadley cell will move 25-30 degrees further north, I don’t see that happening. The UK is in the middle latitudes and located close to the polar front jet stream so I don’t see how, from a dynamical meteorology perspective, the UK’s climate can change from temperate maritime to arid.
There is no need to exaggerate to get the message across that climate change consequences are massive and negative, in fact it is probably counterproductive.
Yes, there I must agree.
Even Lovelock is not right on everything and too many people also think that the earth is cylindric.
Knowing a lot about standing waves, I can hardly believe that all those hadley cells will moove northward because of global watming, they may change intensity for instance. rather than major location and patterns.
But wherever there are meandering patterns such at the jet streams and sea currents, that is likely also to change oscillation modi in sudden and dramatic ways.. That means rather sudden, regional, dramatic surprizes..
But things ought to talk for itself, and exaggeration in theese things to get then message across is counterproductive. One should set on critical and responsible understanding rather than on fear and professional political commercial magics when it comes to existencial things…
There have been increasing reports on “HTF” (high tide flooding) recently. Do I sense a reluctance to say “SLC” (sea level change) for some reason (Seaports With Sea Level Change – 23)?
Killiansays
Were we alarmist for warning these days were coming, and that it was obvious? Maybe we need a new word, “middlist” or “snoozist” for people who have such faith that the extremes are just too unlikely to be counted that we can just keep hitting the snooze button and shutting off the alarm – and keep coming up wrong about that.
Time’s up. If anyone still doubts that, god help them because we are seeing doublings and beyond far sooner than scientists predicted, as I predicted. It’s all about how you think about the problem, not how much dta you know or can cite.
Think differently. We’ve never been here before. The old ways of thinking about our large-scale threats no longer apply.
Yes it’s warming. From the 1940’s through 70’s it was cooling. Many feared a coming ice age. And yes there was something called a “little ice age” some time ago, when the Thames froze over and agriculture was seriously threatened. If you want to tie this to fossil fuels you need to do more than whine about the weather.
If we could get rid of your ignorant posts this site would be a lot better off. Part of the reason people have gotten rude on here is because we have to continually debunk your bullshit.
I have created an application, the Climate State App, which can be considered a major climate related content platform. Lots of content from NASA, various videos, and news. Large parts are also available for audio playback. Regular updates will extend the content.
RealClimate is kind of featured with the RSS feed.
“The initial carbon release during the PETM onset thus occurred
over at least 4,000 yr. Using estimates of 2,500–4,500 Pg C for the
initial carbon release, the *maximum sustained PETM carbon release
rate was therefore 0.6–1.1 Pg C yr−1*. Given currently available
palaeorecords, we conclude that the *present anthropogenic carbon
release rate (∼10 Pg C yr−1)* is unprecedented during the Cenozoic
(past 66 Myr). Possible known consequences of the rapid man-made
carbon emissions have been extensively discussed elsewhere. 2,30,34,35
Regarding impacts on ecosystems, the present/future rate of climate
change and ocean acidification12,36,37 is too fast for many species to
adapt38, which is likely to result in widespread future extinctions in
marine and terrestrial environments that will substantially exceed
those at the PETM (ref. 13). *Given that the current rate of
carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have
effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a
fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections*.” (My exclamation marks, KJ)
I repeat: “We have entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections”.
Wally Broecker was right again, when he warned against too much belief in the climate models:
““The climate is an angry beast,” Broecker liked to say, “and we are poking it with a sharp stick.” He meant that lurches like those seen in ice age times might happen today. Wrong, according to computer model teams. They see nothing in the current climate system susceptible to a catastrophic shift. Broecker pointed out, however, that the models are designed to be stable. Models are adjusted to represent the climate we have known over the past few millennia — an unusually stable period. And now we are shoving the temperature up at an unprecedented rate. If we keep pushing into unknown territory, we could find that Broecker was right again.”
I think the rapid developments since 2015 in extreme weather events underline Broecker’s caution. This can also be said concerning notable shortcomings of the IPCC modelling of the future:
1) “For example, the acceleration in fossil fuel CO2 emissions is tracking the worst case scenarios used by the IPCC AR4 (Copenhagen Diagnosis 2009). Consequently, atmospheric CO2 is increasing ten times faster than any rate detected in ice core data over the last 22,000 years.”
“Satellite and tide-gauge measurements show that sea level rise is accelerating faster than expected. Rahmstorf, Foster, and Cazenave (2012) compares the historical sea level tide gauge data from Church and White (2011) and recent satellite altimetry sea level data (orange and red in Figure 4, respectively) to the 2001 and 2007 IPCC report model projections (blue and green in Figure 4, respectively). The observational data in Figure 4 are aligned so that extending the satellite best-fit line (red) back to 1990 will match the IPCC projections at that date, where the IPCC TAR model runs begin.”
“Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.”
2) Already up to 2018, the warming of arctic permafrost was running as fast as projected by IPCC for around 2090 “Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.” https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5179760 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL082187
3) “Analysis of the causes of IPCC’s failure to identify the likely worst climate change impacts attributes the IPCCs underestimation of climate change impacts to: (a) the “consensus” methods of IPCC processes and, (b) that the relevant sciences follow epistemic norms designed to prevent false positive conclusions about cause and effect. This chapter argues that given the enormous potential harms from climate change, a precautionary science that allows scientists to identify all scientifically plausible harms is required by ethics and international legal principles.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-46259-8_1
Do you think that experts didn’t communicate the risks of nuclear war … low probability, but disastrous conequences… to various leaders around the world prior to the development of the war in Ukraine?
Do you think “ethics and international legal principles” are going to change the behavior of various regimes around the world, dependent on fossil fuels, willing to poison and dismember political opponents who aren’t even a serious threat to their power?
The world is what it is. If you want to “be realistic” about worst-case scenarios, you have to include the rise of fascism as the global norm, at which point nothing at all will be done to deal with climate change.
So, yes, those of us who understand complex non-linear systems are well aware of how chaos is always possible. So, OK, what’s your plan? Rend some garments, shout from the rooftops, blah blah blah?
Sorry, but nobody is listening, because people tune out really really really bad stuff even more than they have tuned out just the nasty stuff we are experiencing now.
It’s going to be slow and unpleasant and chancy, but that’s what needs to be focused on. No Nirvana, just getting done whatever we can.
Solar Jimsays
Thanks for your excellent summary Karsten.
Epitaph on an emaciated earth: Here lies Humanity. “Climate Impacts” were much worse “than previously thought.”
Some thoughts for your consideration –
1) Fossil carbon and uranium are not now, have never been, and will never be “forms of energy.” They are underground forms of matter, primarily used by nation states as fuels of mechanized warfare, the fuels of war..
2) Economics are man-made, and always function under a philosophy of Political-Economy.
3) A civilization, with a fraudulent globalized economic system, that cannot understand and acknowledge reality is a sickened, corrupted and temporary one.
Welcome to the third decade of the 21st century and its globalized fossil and fissile corporate fascism.
Brian Dodge — “Even though events cannot automatically be attributed to climate change, analysis of the changes over decades provides plausible indications of a connection with the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans. Adapting to increasing risks due to climate change will be a challenge.” That is not weather.
V: No, Brian, it is not weather. It is climate. The climate is changing and yes, over the last few years it’s been getting warmer. And as I said, there have been periods in the past where the climate was changing in the other direction, getting colder — in the case of the Little Ice Age much colder. And the recent events that have thrown so many into a panic are indeed weather events, possibly due to recent warming, possibly due to other causes. If you cherry pick what suits you and ignore everything else then you can find all sorts of “evidence” to support your pet theory.
Victor the Troll,
You boldly inform us “If you cherry pick what suits you and ignore everything else then you can find all sorts of “evidence” to support your pet theory.” And you should know, given your long long experience of doing exactly that.
V: ” If you cherry pick what suits you and ignore everything else then you can find all sorts of “evidence” to support your pet theory.”
BPL: Or you can do actual research and statistical analysis.
Karsten V. Johansensays
Say what you want, like Trumps “It’s called the weather”, but of course “climate” is never directly neither measured nor experienced. Always only what is happening “now”, meaning a little while ago. Our thirty years average definition is purely man-made. Nature doesn’t care about how we define things.
You can say “keep calm and carry on” as much as you like, but when food shortages, mass starvation, energy shortages etc. happen because of extreme drought, flooding etc., happens to millions and millions, they won’t just keep calm. Because that’s impossible. When atomic power stations can’t be cooled because the water in the rivers is too hot, well, then they can’t. When rivers dry away, well then they do. Then you can say that that happened once maybe here or maybe there, in 1354 or whatever, but: 1) it didn’t happen all over the place at once. 2) How many people lived then? Only a tiny fraction of the number now living, and at much lower levels of energy consumption per capita etc. Again you can say: it was warmer for some five thousand years in the first half of the Eem interglacial, sea level was six to nine meters higher etc., and that’t the facts as science know them, but then incoming solar radiation at 65 deg. North was some 30 watts per m2 higher than now, causing the Greenland ice surface to be some hundred meters lower than now in average, causing some 1-2 meters of sea level rise, in it’s turn probably causing the buttressing of the big ice shelves in West Antarctica to destabilize to give way so they collapsed, causing maybe another 4-8 meters of sea level rise. Etc. But again: how many homo sapiens were living then? According to science maybe some tens of thousands, most of them in Africa and maybe the Mediterranean and Middle East, together with some tens of thousands of neanderthalers further north maybe.
Either way, that’s totally different from the global situation now, with near eight billion people living on Earth, and whether you want to recognize it or not, that’s going to have consequences, as Albert Bartlett with mild and dry sarcasm try to remind us here concerning our consumption levels of fossil fuels etc. (as always falling on almost only deaf ears, especially among billionaires and their politicians of course): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4 .
“”We can adapt to a certain degree, but we’ll never catch up with climate change,” said Fred Hattermann, who studies hydroclimatic risks at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “Surprises will keep coming.””
““We haven’t analysed fully this year’s event because it is still ongoing,” said Andrea Toreti of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. “There were no other events in the past 500 [years] similar to the drought of 2018. But this year, I think, is worse.”
He said there was “a very high risk of dry conditions” continuing over the next three months, adding that without effective mitigation drought intensity and frequency would “increase dramatically over Europe, both in the north and in the south”.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/13/europes-rivers-run-dry-as-scientists-warn-drought-could-be-worst-in-500-years
Tell me: how much “mitigation” can you expect from our leading lights in the next three months? Easy: What have they done the last three decades? Exactly nothing but business as extremely usual. Plus verbal junk, zero-messaging, “our thoughts and prayers”, dither and delay, because they don’t live as most of us do. They are VIPs, they don’t give a shit about the 99,9 pct., they are the pharaos of the 21. century. They are the psychopaths of our times, and mankind was always ruled by it’s psychopaths. In somewhat differing ways, but still.
“I know a lot of people working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis.”
McGuire finished writing Hothouse Earth at the end of 2021. He includes many of the record high temperatures that had just afflicted the planet, including extremes that had struck the UK. A few months after he completed his manuscript, and as publication loomed, he found that many of those records had already been broken. “That is the trouble with writing a book about climate breakdown,” says McGuire. “By the time it is published it is already out of date. That is how fast things are moving.”
Musk is blabbering on as his oligarch class collegues do, about one million men on Mars in 2050 etc… Well – good luck with that, baby, and please: stay out there if you don’t mind. Don’t come back. It’s enough that most of your space junk comes back.
These people are stupid, that’s why they got so rich, and still show no sign whatsoever of having got their measure. They have no measure, they are intelligent, but/and unbelievably stupid. And still none of all our free-speech-fellas out there dare to tell us that. They are all on salaries from the rich beasts. It’s called democracy, but democrazy is what it really is, just a smarter form of dictatorship and oligarchy. “Democracy” is a big, fat lie if ever there was one. “Free speech”: the right to blabber on, but only if it has no consequences but the usual nonsense.
What will happen, then? Well, what does it look like? WWIII is looking much more probable than any kind of cutting CO2 emissions. War for oil and water, it’s going on as we speak, it’s being planned. The US is spending 800 billion dollars a year on war, and just how much is fracking-Biden’s and coal-Manchin’s “climate” bill? A few percent of that, over a few years. Don’t make me laugh.
“Everyone understood Hitler at once” wrote the norwegian poet Georg Johannesen in 1983. Only very few seem to “understand” (be willing to understand) democracy, climate science and basic facts of life, he added.
Mankind resembles a global natural catastrophic event like the end-permian. They followed Reagan, a mafioso from Hollywood promising low taxes for the rich plus Armageddon, as they followed Hitler, Napoleon etc. Now Trump. Then de Santis. And so on for ever. They always admire and follow idiots. I’m tired of all their endless bullshit.
“fossil carbon and uranium are not now, have never been, and will never be “forms of energy”
that is hardly true.
Energy is measured in Joule, Newtonmeter, Volt ampere seconds, Electronvolts, watt hours, Ampere- hours times Volt, in Calories.. horsepowers times hours ……. and so on,
Theese units can be converted directly over into each other.
Problem: A woundup clock that will run for a while, a fully charged battery,… is that forms of energy or maybe practical things that contain forms of energy so called “energy carriers”? Yes or no.
To get any energy out of it you may have to refine things, think of natural uranium for instance.
But we have the conscept of Enthalpy H and delta H to our help. .
It takes a lot of energy to split water up into H +H +O, that can react back quite violently and give off an enormeous lot of energy namely theoretically what it took to split that water apart.
It takes a tremendous lot of energy to make metallic aluminium, thus quite an energy carrier
Other materials like Hg(CNO)2 is a white material that detonates into Hg+ 2CO + N2. when ignited, Mercury fulminate is also a dramatic energy- carrier..
Things are said to have “heat of formation” from its elements, called its enthalpy, that can be both positive and negative. Not more strange than a wound up clock or the opposite, something that can spontaneously suck up energy., that will spontaneously cool if you mix it or pull the trigger.
And we discuss fossile fuels in terms of this, potencial energy, enthalpy in H that is defined in joules or calories, or in kilowatt hours or calories pr gallon or ton or pr bottle.
The Entalphy of TNT is used also for war, yes that is so. .
Solar Jimsays
This should be my one reply to such basic assertions and questioning. You ask:
“Problem: A woundup clock that will run for a while, a fully charged battery,… is that forms of energy or maybe practical things that contain forms of energy so called “energy carriers”? Yes or no.”
Yes, a wound clock carries the input as elastic energy, and an electro-chemical cell carries the input as chemical energy. Both devices are forms of matter. Their internal arrangements store the input energy.
Other readers may want to consider the universal and historic reference to units of energy in terms of “Tons of Oil Equivalent.” A civilization that has “Ton” as a unit of energy is, as indicated above, corrupted.
That conscept of oil eqvivalents is often used about natural gas, one should specify LNG or at atmospheric pressure. But maybe adequate if you compare oil and gasfrields.
But think of having to compare hydroelectrics by known waterfalls, windmills onshore and offshore, coal minery and plants, nuclear minery refinery and plants… Further discuss costs volumes and weights, and thickness and lengths of the high voltage leads, heighth of the masts, and sell that to the consumers and the voters..
Maybe that is what takes quite a lot of corruption also?
Hermann Helmholz speculated about solar radiation and suggested that the sun falls together in its gravitational frield at a certain speed. And its effect was equal to a train with waggons of coal so and so long pr second or pr year. And concluded: “Thus, the solar system must be about 25 000 years old!”
Shortly after SIR Arthur Eddington headhunted Einstein, accepted E = mC^2 and suggested hydrogen fusion into helium.. And in that way gave Darwin enough time for his theory of evolusion.
Quite corrupted, I must say, also for other reasons, was an editor of popular astronomy who wrote that “Pressure is energy,… wherefrore vacuum is also energy!” and thus explained and launched the so called vacuum- energy. That is most possibloy a mis- cosception.
What is rather plausible and real and known from very many examples is density- change- energy. That can be quite impressive.
Are you Antroposophers or “biodynamics” or what is it?
Pleace be honest and tell us the truth about that. .
I once had to make up my mind having to try and sell a lot of apples through HELIOS, and found and red Justus von Liebigs biography, 2 big bricks 6″ x 8″ x 2 1/2″ from lhe library of chemistery to be prepared for discussion.
Liebig is the one who prooved forever that higher plants hardly eat humus. They rather eat mineral “stuff”.
I repeat…!
Not everyone could agree, a lot of peasant organizations of those days could not agree, Jøns Jacob Berzelius could not agree, Thus lost that case.
the Science is settled there.
Civilization and understanding and science on that may not yet have diffused into the public school of yesterday in the USA and further in the British empire.
The Frogs, Gay Lussac in Paris, was also a pioneer on it. Liebigb took over quite a lot from Gay Lussac. But the later Antroposophers biodynamics are quacks and freaks m and romantics on it.
To me, it is obvious by own experience, having also studied soil science at the agricultural highschool for 2 semensters.
If you uncover practically humus free well varied mineral soils by bulldozers good enough for making the very best concrete also,….
…………Then huge forests of violoncello size will stand there after 150 years with no humus from the beginning at all. And no industrial humus or fertillizer was necessary at all.
I have seen ecceptions. Potatoes thrive splendidly on fresh dung. Cabbage and Carrots do not. There seems to be plants that can actually take up ammonium directly befrore it is oxiized into HNO3.
Whatb seems to me to play a quite greater role in growth and soil metabolisms from crushed grinded flotated and settled bedrock up to vegetables fruits and beefs and thimbers is invading and thriving earth microflora and fauna. The stone- eaters. They must invade it and take it over first. Then also humus will develop.and carbon will settle in the ground without any human help and subsidees.
Blowing seasalts in the winds onto the sands and the rocks and foggy dews and rains and snows that wash out the strongest table salt again and seagull guano birdshit also on that give incredibly fine fruit and rosegardens in the cracks, rather by natural mineral fertillizers but with enough water and microbes also to it.
Rich, black soil develop in the sheere granite cracks and in the mosses. Gay Lussac didvc show experimental evidence that humus rather comes from the air without human help.
But the microflora and fauna may be essencial for mineral soil metabolisms into vio0loncello size thimbers. in just a few years. .
It grows on sheere, flat rock, even on car windows, if just left alone without any human violence / warfare against it. .
JCMsays
Carbo, always an enjoyment to read, who offers fresh input for productive discussion.
Historically, clear mathematical relationships had been confirmed between the rise in CO2 levels, its greenhouse effect and global temperatures by Arrhenius.
By contrast hydrological processes were so variable in time and space that it was ‘very hard’ to model how they may have changed or demonstrate how they are linked to the observed abnormal CO2 rise, the elevated greenhouse effect, or projected climate changes.
These processes are much more difficult to formulate with convincing graphic curves. They most certainly fall outside the scope of politicized UNFCC mandates to modelers.
The clear abnormal rise in CO2 levels and the fact that it is a greenhouse gas, has made it easy to assume that this is the dominant and primary cause of any recent global warming.
However, even with these assumptions, modern research has confirmed that the rise in CO2 and its greenhouse effect, can account for only a small global temperature rise, well below the observed levels. Force multipliers induced by abnormal CO2 rise are summoned to fill the void.
The fact that we have recently greatly increased our burning of and emissions from fossil fuel similarly provides a simple clear “causal assumption” for the abnormal CO2 rise, even if CO2 levels had been rising since 1750, 200 years before large fossil fuel use.
Consequently most research to assess the impacts from the clear CO2 rise has focused on modeling its component of the greenhouse effect; largely ignoring possible disrupted hydrological dynamics as an alternative causal factor.
The highly variable amount of water held in the air over terrestrial system, which is often at concentrations of up to 50,000 ppmv, either as vapour or as liquid, is governed by a balance of:
(1) Water available to transpire;
(2) Aerosol micro-nuclei that enable vaporized water in the air to form haze micro-droplets of liquid/solid, and;
(3) Much larger precipitation nuclei that enable millions of haze micro-droplets to coalesce hygroscopically into cloud droplets, and then precipitation, to remove this water from the atmosphere.
Textbook formulations and expedient model assumptions reliant on clausius-clapeyron do not characterize total ‘water in air’ or humidity profiles.
Contrary to our common assumptions, water does not disappear from the ‘air’ as temperatures decline, but simply condenses on aerosol to form haze. This condensed haze remains in the air until it is either re-evaporated into water vapour, or coalesced into cloud and precipitation.
With ample precipitation nuclei, this enables a rapid rate of water re-cycling. This reduces the length of time that water vapour is retained in the atmosphere either as a gas or haze. Clouds and precpitation occur with regularity.
The terrestrial ecosystems, some km away away from hygroscopic salt availability (near coastlines), seed the cloud by biological process.
A balanced ecosystem facilitates de-hydration of the upper atmosphere and rehydration of surface systems. This is a perfect scenario to maximize energy flux to space by a multitude of mechanisms.
An unbalanced ecosystem presents persistent haze at altitude, diminished re-cycling rate of water, surface water deficits, increased proportion of sensible heat, increased air pressure, and enhanced greenhouse effects. Fewer hygrosopic micobes and bacteria are supplied.
The processes are governed by ecology. More rapid and regular water cycling increases the volume of transpiration. More units of energy are taken up by latent heat, reducing re-radiation from the surface.
By clearing some 75% of the Earth’s primary forests, oxidizing most of its soils, and creating over 5 billion ha of man made desert and wasteland, humans have significantly impaired the Earth’s former natural transpiration rate, capacity, and coupled cloud process. This desertification has disrupted water cycling. We observe paradoxical humidity profiles that do not match mainstream hypotheses.
We find heat trapping hazes persisting for longer periods; surface cooling transpiration is reduced. This ‘force multiplier’ is today attributed to CO2 positive water vapor feedbacks. But indeed, simplifying assumptions taken for granted can be deceiving.
Degraded terrestrial systems will not deliver the vital biologically sourced precipitation nuclei, they will not sustain source water in the ecosystem, they will not deliver coolng latent fluxes, they will not deliver ample cloud, they will not dehydrate the upper atmosphere, they will not resupply the surface with ample moisture.
Degraded landscapes exhibit persistent hydrological drought, exacerbated by rapid runoff coefficients from rock-hard and actively drained surfaces.
As Carbomontanus wisely exclains; “[the ecology] grows on sheere, flat rock, even on car windows, if just left alone without any human violence / warfare against it.” The system is self organizing. Human intervention with best intention is often damaging.
Biosystems not as “stone-eaters” but as nutrient cyclers. Ultimately the plants are not eating the soils, rather the soils eat the plants to build themselves to plump water retaining sponge.
Given its apparent dominant effect on climates, we need to better understand variable and complex hydrological process. Ignoring with simplifying assumptions, while expedient, does not serve the best interests of science or humanity.
At the core it comes back to a simple observation – every day on average Earth receives 343 watts per m2 of solar energy in the troposphere. To sustain a stable climate, the Earth also has to re-transmit 343 back out to space. To date, by various mechanisms, we have impaired the escape of some 3-4 watts per square metre, or 1% of the incident solar radiation. There can be little doubt about the existence of complex transmission of energy related to water cycles.
Given that it is clear that a range of hydrological processes govern the bulk dynamics of energy absorption, reflection, and transmission, it follows that we should observe, quantify, and discuss hydrological process without prejudice. Macias is bold enough to take on this task, despite the great resistance which I find curious and mysterious. Enforced intellectual conformity will never advance understanding.
I checked up “Haze” on wikipedia, and it is defined as different from moistures and fogs. Rather very fine dry dusts.
So it is not a pre- stadium of fogs and clouds. Depending on what it is, it can rather be hydrophobe.
The known cooling effect of vulcanism and of fossile fuels with high sulphur contant is SO2 that reacts with O2 and vaporous H2O under UV sunshine and gives sulphuric acid nanoparticles, that are further extreemly hygroscopic. All that is called “sulphate aerosols” by which white clouds condenses immediately , even at the speed of sound if large enough bombs are set off in moist air. or at the wings of fast enough airplanes.
Aerosol pareticles are there, what matters for rain is the dewpoint and the freezing point.
So do not expect “haze” to become fogs and clouds and rain. It is 2 different things.
For rain to fall out of a cloud, that cloud must actually freeze on the top, So I have red in a very clever book by Theo Löbsack, at least.
And that is also why Halos in the sun are a most reliable sign of rain coming soon.
Those Halos are small and uniform glittering ice cristal prisms macro- orientated in the air as they are very slowly falling down out of empty air under blue sky in bright sunshine. ( Such halo systems can be seen even quite near to the ground in bright cold winters.)
Halos and pearl mother clouds and such things are not seen in high and stratospheric volcanic dust or industial smoke and “haze” or in widely traveling desert dusts because those particles are .chaotic And do not charge and clog together electrically the same way.
Another important source of sulphate- aerosols is CH3-S-CH3 dimethyl thio eter, dimethylsulphide, that is organic and marine origine and decays by sharp sunshine in air into H2SO4 and CO2.
JCM posts a number of old denier talking points: “The clear abnormal rise in CO2 levels and the fact that it is a greenhouse gas, has made it easy to assume that this is the dominant and primary cause of any recent global warming.
However, even with these assumptions, modern research has confirmed that the rise in CO2 and its greenhouse effect, can account for only a small global temperature rise, well below the observed levels. Force multipliers induced by abnormal CO2 rise are summoned to fill the void.
The fact that we have recently greatly increased our burning of and emissions from fossil fuel similarly provides a simple clear “causal assumption” for the abnormal CO2 rise, even if CO2 levels had been rising since 1750, 200 years before large fossil fuel use.”
BPL: CO2 accounts for 85% of the variance in temperature for the last 170 years. There is no need to “assume” its influence; we can measure it. Google “attribution studies.” The “force multipliers’ are known as feedbacks and they are not theoretical fudge factors; they are known physical processes such as the Clausius-Clapeyron law. In short, JCM’s post is pseudoscience claptrap. Just to make sure everybody knows it, he ends his screed with:
JCM: “Enforced intellectual conformity will never advance understanding.”
BPL: Another typical denier mantra. “Oh, we’re being suppressed by the scientific orthodoxy! We’re brave heretics going against the establishment! We’re like Galileo, and Tesla, not to mention Velikovsky!”
— On the first page you classify yourself as a 4/5 fundamentalist and member of a church that believes that heaven, earth and creation (and thus arguably climate too) came into being within 6 days. (LOL)
I suspect that in your personal Global Energy Balance @ TOA there is a friendly, hard-working older gentleman with a bushy white beard and a “holy scripture” in his hands counting & producing white, fluffy fluffy clouds and compares them with his writings.
As a biologist I therefor conclude that you have somewhat twisted ideas about the world, biology, physics and climate.
It is also the mysterious background to your efforts against me to conduct inquisition and witch burning – mentioned by @JCM.
My strategies against your efforts are puke bags, waste paper baskets and the ever-cheerful artist mind & intellectual liberty – which I also recommend JCM to use.
ms: On the first page you classify yourself as a 4/5 fundamentalist and member of a church that believes that heaven, earth and creation (and thus arguably climate too) came into being within 6 days. (LOL)
BPL: Apparently you don’t read very carefully. The fundamental I dissent on is literalism. So no, I don’t think the Earth was created in six literal days. The rest of your religious prejudices are not something anyone here is interested in. This is a science blog.
(2) Aerosol micro nuclei that enable vaporized water.. ….to form haze micro droplets…
(3) much larger prescipitation nuclei that enable millions of haze micro droplets to coalesque…..”
Question: Where have you got this from?
Pleace be honest, confess, and betray .your sources.
It is bullshit from un- qualified horizons that blocks autentic realistic insight and understanding quite effriciently.
A Nanometer is 10 Ångstrøm, common atopmic radii are in the magnitude of 1.5 Ångstrøm, thus H2O, that is a realistic particle gaseous molecule, that obeys Boyles and Daltons laws, is a sub- nano- particle measuring about 0.4 nanometers. (NH4)2SO4, that came up in the climateb dispute, is a typical nanoparticle, but that salt is not hygroscopic. It will hardly ” coalesque” further.
SO3 on the other hand is quite severely hygroscopic. It gives white smoke in less than a second if let out in the air.
White smoke tells us that its partricle size is chaotic and solidly up in the magnitude of 500 nanometers ( wavelength of sodium yellow) and more…… extreemly soon…
Blue 2 stroke engine oilsmoke is hardly hygroscopic,….
When did JCM learn to judge and to discuss smogs and hazes and “chemtrails” in the atmosphere?
It is high time for that, Genosse, but it takes also classical chemistery.
The pressure P inside a sphaerical droplet in the foggy dew Nephelai Aerosols, the rather woolen clouds, is 2 theta / R where theta is surface tension and R is the radius.. It becomes transcendent and no well formed formula, when R goes to zero,
My pocket computer says ERROR if I try 1/0
Conclusion, droplets must have a minima naturalis. Anything below that is not water droplets or bubbles. And there we have the necessary nuclei for formation of such things.
For ice cristals it is different. They are no droplets. That gives the rather Scirrus or fine feather types of clouds.
Water expands 10% when it freezes, foggy woolen cloudv droples are so small that they must expand and lift against a quite enormeous surface tension pressure when freezing, thus they remain woolen clouds and liquid down to – 20 and -40 celsius , but as soon as that frosty fog drifts into the bushes or your beards, it freezes immediately and make phantastic icy frost cristals. (=undercooled moist liquid fogs and rains)
So called diamond dust is no narcotics, it is tiny solid state ice cristal mirrors and prisms that origine from empy air under blue sky in bright sunhine if it is cold enough and the air is moist enough. It is what gives sun Halo phenomena even down here where we live,
I have it prooven on photo, individual halo colour particles in the air by 35 millimeter lens in the winter. That kind of brilliant icy dust in rainbow colours out of empty air under blue sky in bright sunshine on the top of the woolen clouds is decisive for possible rain or snow anywhere.
There is snow hurricane atop of the tropical huricanes with sun right in zenith. The higher chill decides you see, not just the seawater warmth and vapours.
Thus resign on those ground creeping causal explainations. That only betray unbelieving and unenlightened, vulgar , false prophecies.
Desert dust and industrial smog is something else.
A minimum of physics you see…. makes Nature even more wonderful and you will not have to sell the alternatives.
Just see how the desert walkers are rushing out, dancing and singing Halleluja when real snow is falling in their lands.
There you are on the tracks of orthodoxy and true healthy beliefs again.
Remark that a lot of mushroms, farns and mosses are true chosmopolites and know no national and regional boarders.
We tried motorized chladni plates with tone generator input and 10 watt driver. And tried sands and lycopodium on that. The sands then settles in the node- lines where there is minimum moovement. But the lycopodium coalesqued in large, amoebe- like, floating clusters even with psevdo skin and membrane and breathing holes in it, in the antinodes, where there is moovement maximum.
We could no more than conclude that “sperms and sphores have a genuine ability to come astray and enter into areas where there is maximum moovement,thus able to fly very high and very far,…
In general, there should be no doubt becxause there is so much evidence, that pollen and sphores are “aerophiles” and play quite a role in the airs.
Theese things are also obviously electrostatic, they even are electrophile,..so full possibilities are there that it has a proper affinity to water also in an organized and di- electric form and make “dispersions and aerosols” that seem to behave in a psevdo- vital way.
PS
I have even other examples.
Somtimes I find it hard to believe my own eyes. Once I saw a long spider silk thread drifting exactly 2 handwidths over the water curving down one handwidth to the tiny spider hanging behind. Poor animal, I thought, it will sink fall down into the water. But it stayed exactly steady all the distance, and liftede up at the reets, and flew over them also.
Then rather recently in smooth wind and strong sunshine agains it, long spider spins coming out from the big oak tree, and a lot of tiny spiders taking off and drifting away as the spins were about 1.5 meters long. As if they were clairvoyant or somenting.
I red somewhere very long ago that such flying spiders have been filtered out of the air several kilometers high up.
In order to believe my own eyes, I will have to suggest that it violates newtonian gravitation and Stokes law by some kind of van der Waals and electrostatic forces in the airs, because it simply looks quite magic.
Maybe Darwin could explain it? DS.
JCMsays
@ carbo,
on haze this discussion is of the wet kind. Humid haze.
For precipitation nucleation from sulfate aerosols, this requires supersaturated conditions i.e. >100% humidity, and cold temperatures <-20C.
If the relative humidity remains somewhat lower, say 70 percent, the droplets typically grow to only about a tenth of a micrometer in diameter, about 100 times smaller than a typical cloud droplet.
The haze remain suspended in the boundary layer. Many billions of haze micro droplets may persist for days over the desiccated continents. The dry landscape, devoid of moisture, may produce a more stable boundary layer.
I am not convinced that the longwave effects of these humid hazes in a more stable airmass are yet properly characterized.
In the presence of biologically sourced nuclei, low level reflective cloud and precipitation may form at warmer temperatures than <-20C, at humidity less than 100%. Surely this, too, has relevant shortwave and longwave radiation effects.
The idea is that water cycling is made more rapid in the presence of a 'natural' mix of precipitation nuclei. This keeps all flows of mass, nutrients, biota, and energy moving in the system.
I have looked it a bit more over, and believe that you are confusing desert dust and industrial smog perhaps also smoke from busfires with what you call ” Humid haze”, a conscept that I hardly find on the net.
And must recommend that you read Wikipedia about rain quite in general.
I can also recommend the article on Tyndall scattering.
An important property of water droplets and fogs is that what I wrote about pressure in bubbles and droplets that is due to surface tension.
It will stand in equilibrium with the relative moisture in the air, thus there is allways 100 % relative moisture inside a white cloud. , and in the air when snow is falling.
The freezing point of water seems not to matter at all for the dewpoint curve, exept for that when droplets and ice cristals is mixed in a cloud, the droplets will evaporate and the icy cristals will grow. This is an important effect. Tiny ice needles are falling from the top and sweep up and dry out the water droplets, melt by the lapse rate and fall down as raindrops.
Then for possible condensation nuclei, electrostatics and patrticle polarity plays an important role.. Free ions and charged molecules can be guaranteed in UV- light and electric clouds. This is well known from radiology, Wilsons cloud chamber and the fameouis bubble- chamber. Charged particles are very efficient condensation nuclei.
Then further hydrophile and hydrophobe substances and patrticles. The difference between glass and plastics when rubbed by dry leather. . The difference is Protons standing out from the surfaces of hydrocarbons, and rather oxygen showing its electronegative arsh from the surfaces of glass, ice, and water.
Collophonium is such a very extreeme hydrocarbon, highly flamable and even explosive.
mineral dust clay minerals is silicates and rather hydrophile. White organic smoke? Aldehyds phaenols and carboxylic acids for the most, I should guess.
Fogs and moisture from the air settles rather easily on glasses at any temperature only depending on dewpoint. And quite less easily on hydrophobic surfaces.
Water vapour settles on ice and on water just as easily as it evaporates and sublimates from the same.
All in all, I must recommende you to study the rains and the weathers by where it comes from namely from the sky and heavens and the temperatures and pressures up there, and not along with Genosse Schürle, from the flat, earthly grounds.
Meteorology is obviously not for landcrabs, blind believers, and flat earthers.
There is no lack of evaporation from the sea that is 70% of the global surface. But remark that rain and precipitation mainly occur due to weather- front- conditions that may be absent in arid lands…
Quite in general, there is definitely rain and precipitation enough in the world , but not necessarily everywhere on land and in southern California. But that is for other reasons and not for Spindoctors and whitchdoctors to earn their reputation from.
@ JCM
I am no expert on this, but I judege it all in the light of what I know of meteorology and especially of evaporation condensation agglomeration and further solutrion and cristallization phase- shifts and transition in general and physical hemistery. Plus some readings and experiments on bubbles and drops along with surface tension.
The idea of “moist haze” that is wet enough but will not rain…. with particle size about 100 nanometers or well below the wawelength of light
( that is from 400 to 800 nanometer remember sodium yellow is in the middle by 550 nanometer)…..
……..should be disqualified as old supersticion and rumors from the political spindoctors rainmakers, , I believe.
I saw further of Stratus- clouds that they are long, flat, straight and even and in layers high and low, and surely moist. They often rather lay on the ground in the mountain plains and heathers.
Down at the ground we call it “Yr”, something in between rain yes or no. Particle size easy to judge to well below one millimeter., it makes you and everything wet by time, it gives quite phaenomenal frost cristals in the naked bushes by inverse frosty weather in the winter. Goes right through your dressings and cools efficiently. – 35 inland in clear weather is better than -15 downtown in Oslo or København with Stockholm even worse. By fjord fogs and “yr”.
And this is the normal situation in flat foggy stratus clouds higher up. It freezes severely and gives “icing” in the air traffic.
If this becomes large enough to fall, it will thaw up and evaporate due to the lapse rate, in clear weather under the Stratus clouds, and no rain will fall.
But when it is thick enough and the weather is long and grey enough, it will give long but light rain for days in rather tempered weathers inland.
I just red somewhere that “Hot and moist air is rapidly pressed up in the atmosphere”.
That is the cumulonimbus situation and also the low pressure weatherfront cyclone systems with common and maybe heavy rain. Most common at sea. It weakens normally over land against the continental high pressures..
But now I read from Pakistan and the Indus bassin and valley. They are having onland wind monsune cathastrophies with repeated floods this summer aside of all the drought cathastrophies reported from elsewhere.
They drown also in Kristiansand from thunderstorms and onland wind at the moment after rather a year of cathastrophic shortage in the hydroelectric dams.
It comes and goes and there is water and vapour enough in the world, but not necessarily on the ground in southern California.
Rain and snow seems to be caused mainly up in the clouds and there are clouds enough also in the world and can hardly be made more.
There are fameous boreal rain forests in Oregon north of southern California, and in Helgeland Norway north of Paris and Spain. They are also drowning in Texas now.
So I believe less in the Schürle holisms , knowing quite a bit more about it and seeing how he argues also,
@JCM: – ” …we have impaired the escape of some 3-4 watts per square metre, or 1% of the incident solar radiation. ”
— The 3-4W/m² is the accumulated radiative forcing since 1750. The radiative forcing at TOA – the difference between incoming solar and solar reflected + thermal outgoing is currently significantly lower globally.
Earth energy imbalance (EEI) = ~ +0.8-1W/m².
Since much of the imbalance is stored in the oceans, the EEI over land is only 0.03W/m² and can be compensated or reversed relatively easily by a 1% higher cloud albedo (-0.19W/m²).
yes indeed I agree there are numerous ways to enhance transmittance of solar energy back to space to eliminate, or to even reverse the trend in EEI.
In the best interests of humanity, we must explore all options, and not limit ourselves to a narrow scope.
While cuts to the emission of well mixed greenhouse gases and renewed sequestration to the Earth is an essential long-term goal as illustrated in IPCC documents, in the short term there is much to be gained by restoring characteristics of the water cycle that have been directly disrupted by human activity.
There can be little doubt about humanity’s massive and apparently underrecognized direct impacts to hydrological cycles and associated energy flux. This through cloud albedo, latent fluxes, persistence of moist hazes, atmospheric absorbed solar, closure of radiation windows, etc etc. Overall humanities most certainly impact the feedback response to total system radiation forcing.
The goal must always be to restore a semblance of balance by increasing watts per square metre energy transmission back out to space. Preferably by natural means due to the multitude of add on benefits and the likelihood of sustainability through the ebbs and flows of societal change. This can be achieved by numerous means, in addition to reducing the concentration of trace gases.
There can be little doubt we can enhance dissipation mechanisms of solar energy. You should be supported in such efforts as it is fully in line with main goals of all involved in climate research. The only risk is slight damage to the ego of a select few who will not budge from their preferred doctrine. It is they in their stubbornness who will delay the required holistic actions and cause unnecessary net harm to the Earth system and our life support systems.
@JCM: – ” The only risk is slight damage to the ego of a select few who will not budge from their preferred doctrine… stubbornness ”
— The answer to this stubbornness, which I understand more as arrogant stupidity, must consist of facts and circumstantial evidence that stand the test of time and have been established and represented by the IPCC itself.
One of the stubborn idiots commenting here is a particularly clever idiot. On this forum here he regularly denies that irrigation and “additional evaporation” mean global cooling, while on another forum he posts an IPCC graph and the following:
BL: – “Land use reflection and irrigation” is the second-last bar on the right. Note that the calculated effect is minor cooling, not warming. ”
MS: — Remarkable in this context is not the agile Australian turnneck of the alleged expert – but for the first time (2020/8) the statement of the IPCC that irrigation has a global cooling effect (~ 0.14°C).
However, what seems highly suspicious to me in this graph is the fact that, conversely, warming effects from the anthropogenic reduction in evaporation through land use changes are not taken into account at all. The internal logic is missing.
Other IPCC publications are very reserved on the subject of irrigation and evaporation in the quantitative context of land use change.
i.e.
page 135 — Dry soil conditions favor or strengthen summer heatwave conditions through reduced evapotranspiration and increased sensitive heat. By contrasting wet soil conditions, for example from irrigation or crop management practices that maintain a cover
crop all year round, can dampen extreme warm events through increased evapotranspiration and reduced sensible heat. ”
” A global biophysical cooling of 0.10 ± 0.14°C is estimated from global climate models and is projected to dampen the land-based warming (low confidence). ”
p. 171 — ” 2.5.1 Impacts of historical and future anthropogenic land cover changes
” The studies reported below focus essentially on modeling experiments, as there is no direct observation of how historical land use changes have affected the atmospheric dynamics and physics at the global and regional scales. ”
MS: — As I mentioned before, global relative humidity has been declining for decades –
so that is a direct observation of how historical land use changes have affected the atmospheric dynamics and physics at the global scales.
As water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, additional warming will come about, resulting in a much larger temperature increase than that induced from CO2 alone. Climate models therefore, in general, assume the relative Tropospheric humidity to remain more or less stable, as increasing air temperatures are compensated by increasing specific humidity.
The above diagram indicate that none of this has been the case since 1948.
The only explanation for this deficit of rH is desertification, spreading heat waves due to the man-made deficit in evaporation capacity.
Reducing the global rH by 1% corresponds to an absolute reduction in the evaporation capacity of ~ 6000 km³/y and decreases the evaporation factor in the global energy balance of land areas by ! 3.12W/m².
A 0,7-0,8°C increase (~50%) of land temperature can be explained due to that deficit of rH
– and is NOT a water vapor feedback of CO2 concentrations.
JCMsays
@macias.
I see in the literature some discussion of the biophysical response of the system to trace gas greenhouse enhancement.
I think, likely due to the relative ease of data acquisition through normalized vegetation indices from satellite, and focus on other relatively easy to acquire data such as CO2 concentration, the focus is primarily on Leaf Area Index type variables and modeling.
“As vegetation transpiration dominates evapotranspiration over land (Jasechko et al., 2013; Good et al., 2015), the influence of vegetation growth on terrestrial evapotranspiration is non-neglectable. As shown in Fig. 4, the effect is so strong that increasing LAI leads to a worldwide spread increase in actual evapotranspiration. As a result, first, the increase in evapotranspiration accelerates the moisture cycle and thus increases cloudiness (Figure S6a) and precipitation (Fig. 2). The increase in cloudiness further decreases incoming solar radiation over land. Second, the increase in evapotranspiration leads to an increase in specific humidity (Figure S6b), which decreases the vapor-pressure deficit. Third, the increase in evapotranspiration leads to evaporative cooling that decreases surface air temperature (Figure S6c). Last, increasing LAI increases surface roughness and decreases wind speed (Figure S6d). All of the decreases in solar radiation, vapor-pressure deficit, surface air temperature and wind speed lead to a decrease in potential evapotranspiration (Eq. 5; Fig. 3), which seems to be paradoxical with an increase in actual evapotranspiration, but actually to be a result of the increase in actual evapotranspiration.”
“We find that 93% of the global vegetated area shows negative sensitivity of LST to LAI increase at the annual scale, especially for semiarid woody vegetation. Further considering the LAI trends (P ≤ 0.1), 30% of the global vegetated area is cooled by these trends and 5% is warmed. Aerodynamic resistance is the dominant factor in controlling Earth greening’s biophysical impacts: The increase in LAI produces a decrease in aerodynamic resistance, thereby favoring increased turbulent heat transfer between the land and the atmosphere, especially latent heat flux.”
“Results show that by 2100, under high-emission scenario, greening will likely mitigate land warming by 0.71 ± 0.40 °C, and 83% of such effect (0.59 ± 0.41 °C) is driven by the increase in plant carbon sequestration, while the remaining cooling (0.12 ± 0.05 °C) is due to biophysical land-atmosphere interactions.”
“The seasonal greening of Northern Hemisphere (NH) ecosystems, due to extended growing periods and enhanced photosynthetic activity, could modify near-surface warming by perturbing land-atmosphere energy exchanges, yet this biophysical control on warming seasonality is underexplored.”
So, the enigma for me is that if there is a concession that biophysical impacts of CO2 have an impact on dampening a temperature rise, and other pattern effects relating to hydrology, why are the far greater impacts of desiccating 50% of the land masses directly over the past centuries explored in so little detail ? (as far as I can tell).
Most critically, the changes invisible to most satellites i.e. soil moisture, soil organics, microbial activity. Such measurements require probing the ground, laboratory analysis, and expert opinion. Expensive and incomplete data is the problem. My guess is that things difficult to observe receive little attention. I have little interest in the somewhat overblown CO2 ‘greening effects’ often cited by the skeptic community. However, these studies offer some useful information when considering in the very real, direct, and far more substantial direct biophysical changes imparted by humanity.
If so-called minor above ground “CO2 greening” effects dampen warming, why shouldn’t massive ecosystem desiccation ‘dampen cooling’?
JCMsays
PS – i will be travelling to Maharashtra over the coming 6 weeks observing several ongoing soil restoration sites, and also some site seeing, so I will be scant in participating on this board. Google estimates over 1000kg CO2 emission for this journey from Canada so I shall make it worth my while. In my experiences India treats foreigners quite well. If there is such a thing as a direct ecosystem impact to climates, and it becomes recognized, this will certainly improve the prospects for future work. I recognize my bias. For now the efforts are focused on blowing dust reduction from desertifying soils. Best to you, Macias.
Bob Loblawsays
…and what some idiot who keep trying to regurgitate his crap from comments on other web sites keeps confusing, is the difference between global cooling and local cooling. That make him believe that IPCC evaluations of “minor cooling” represent support for his hallucinations that 1% increase in evapotranspiration will lead to a 1% increase in global mean cloud cover.
Now, that idiot is pointing out a comment that mentions a 0.14C cooling effect, and is ignoring that the diagram in question shows the effect to be very small compared to other effects:
The same idiot, in the comment I am replying to here, has taken the IPCC diagram’s label of “land-use reflectance and irrigation”, and turned that into a claim that the 0.14% is just due to irrigation. His exact statement? “… the statement of the IPCC that irrigation has a global cooling effect (~ 0.14°C).” No, the IPCC diagram does not show that. It shows “land-use reflectance and irrigation”.
If M. Schurle is thinking that he is being witty in has argumentation, I’m afraid that he is only half way there.
So, M> Schurle has no idea of scale, no idea of geography, no idea of magnitude, and no idea what any of it means.
…and you quote “the increase in evapotranspiration accelerates the moisture cycle and thus increases cloudiness (Figure S6a)”
If you follow the path to the supplemental material, and look at figure S6a, you will find that the increases in cloudiness are largely local, not global. In some areas, cloud cover decreases. They do not provide a global average (the value M. Schurle seems to think will increase by 1% form just a 1% increase in evapotranspiration). That study is also looking at projections for the late 21st century. It does not support the hallucinations of M. Schurle.
— Empty heads like you should be happy that heartbeat and breathing are not dependent on clear thinking and neuronal brain functions, but work purely vegetatively without any brain power. If that weren’t the case, you’d be dead after 3 minutes with your flathead gear.
I always advise older, malicious “gentlemen” like you (& carbonito, mar, bpl), who already have one foot in the nursing home, to reduce the release of unnecessary adrenaline to a minimum.
If you don’t understand the water cycle: evaporation, condensation, clouds, precipitation and the average residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere of ~ 9 days –
then ask your nurse or in the kindergarten – they know that (95% confidence) and may be can tell you also that intensified water cycles (irrigation during drought) in the local land regions also increase overall global evaporation, cloud formation and precipitation.
And btw where should global evaporation, condensation and precipitation take place – if not in the local regions. SMH
@JCM
Have a good time and have a good trip. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep the twirled nonsense of some of the commenters here within bounds.
@Bla Lowbob: – ” The same idiot ” / “ land-use reflectance and irrigation ”.
— As long as you have no idea how land use reflectance and irrigation interact, you should just keep your chin up. Existing water on a land surface will always decrease its albedo and result in more radiant energy being captured on the ground. In contrast to ocean surfaces or deeper lakes, this energy is not diverted into the deeper water layers, but converted 100% into evaporation energy.
The main point of my critique of the IPCC chart is that while it is correct to attribute a cooling effect to irrigation – but then logically there must also be a warming effect that exists for areas where humans are responsible for NO or LESS water is available at the surface for evaporation. E.g. sealed areas, intentionally drained areas and agricultural areas where after harvest the areas without vegetation are exposed to the sun unprotected.
Empty heads like you should be happy that heartbeat and breathing are not dependent on thinking and neuronal brain functions, but work purely vegetatively without any brain power. If that weren’t the case, you’d be dead in 3 minutes with your flathead gear on.
Also, to older, malicious “gentlemen” like you (& carbonito, mar, bpl) who already have one foot in the nursing home, I always advise to reduce the release of unnecessary adrenaline to a minimum.
If you don’t understand the water cycle: evaporation, condensation, clouds, precipitation, and the average residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere of ~9 days – then ask your nurse or in the kindergarten – they know (95% confidence)
and maybe they can also explain that intensified water cycles (irrigation) in the local land regions also increase global evaporation, cloud formation and precipitation overall.
And btw where should global evaporation, condensation and precipitation take place if not in the local regions.
@JCM
Have fun and have a good trip. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep the twirled nonsense of some of the commenters here within bounds.
Climate Uncensored is a new blog, YouTube channel, podcast and resource base providing honest, unflinching comment and analysis of the challenges facing us in the climate emergency. It is a collaboration between climate researchers Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Dan Calverley.
The name, Climate Uncensored, inverts the self-censorship that we see happening within much of the expert community (scientist, policymakers and campaigners).
In coming weeks we will be releasing several animated films about some of the thorniest issues in climate mitigation, initially on carbon budgets and the essential role of equity or fairness, and later on ‘net’ zero and negative emissions, amongst others.
We have a wonderful, in-depth and candid interview with climate activist, Greta Thunberg. We have forthcoming blogs on the immediacy of mitigation and adaptation challenges. And in autumn 2022 we will begin releasing our podcast series.
The hallmarks of all content on Climate Uncensored are honesty and integrity. We shall not flinch from asking difficult questions or pressing for answers.
Our content will be accessible and intelligible for an informed lay audience. It will be (as far as is humanly possible) unbiased, with no favourite or ‘pet’ solutions; pragmatism and engineering reality (bounded by the carbon budgets that accompany our Paris commitments) prevail.
If you don’t get some regenerative design professionals on your channel, you’re ultimately wasting your time. Regenerative systems are simple, but virtually no scientists or activists study them – despite the claims. You can’t create what you don’t understand.
You might want to do an interview on this: https://www.patreon.com/RegenSys. Click on the “Welcome to the Global Simulation” link.
P?S
Sand to Sahara, Codfish to Lofoten and telling the hens how to lay egs, that is not the way how to performj, Killian. DS.
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
Excellent news, thank you. Only engaged and transparent scientists educating and collaborating with decision-makers and society at large will solve the climate emergency.
The time to ask scientists to stay out of non-scientific, in particular political and economic, debates in order to maintain their objectivity was centuries ago, but now is also very helpful, as their uncensoring gives humanity a chance to save itself and the biosphere.
Next step, for some of you, is to be in decision-making positions.
Chucksays
Time’s up for the Colorado River, and a scary new phase begins – Currently Weather Service.
Currently Weather Service – 14 Aug 22 2
Time’s up for the Colorado River, and a scary new phase begins 2
Time has run out for drought-stricken states along the Colorado River in the US southwest, as talks aimed at coming to terms on a water-sharing plan have broken down. “Negotiations among the Colorado River’s Lower Basin states of Arizona, California,…
Est. reading time: 3 minutes
In 2021, global carbon dioxide emissions reached 36.3 billion tons, the highest volume ever recorded. This year, the number of international refugees will cross 30 million, also the highest figure ever. As sea levels and temperatures rise and geopolitical tensions flare, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that humanity is veering towards systemic breakdown. The superpowers will be no salvation: Locked in a “new Cold War,’ the U.S. careens between populism and incompetence, while China remains locked down at home and alienates many nations abroad.
What Comes After the Coming Climate Anarchy? | Time
Time 3
What Comes After the Coming Climate Anarchy? 3
Our civilization is slowly collapsing—but the next one is already rising
Dead fish in river Oder spark Germany, Poland to probe mystery.
NBC News 1
Mystery surrounds mass die-off of fish in the river Oder 1
“We are dealing with a gigantic and outrageous ecological catastrophe,” the former head of Polish Waters said.
World’s largest ice sheet threatened by warm water surge.
The Earth Observatory page “Tracking 30 Years of Sea Level Rise” shows a strong NEGATIVE anomaly off the southeast coast of Japan. Can someone explain this or point me to an expert who can explain this?
NSAlito,
I’m not sure the Earth Observatory page you link-to is the best to illustrate your point. There have been quite a few such pages posted through the years yet I don’t see one specifically addressing that particular “strong NEGATIVE anomaly off the southeast coast of Japan.” But perhaps this Earth Observatory page is better as it does have a graphic showing a close-up of the bit of ocean in question.
The oceans are a whole lot flatter than the land but they are not flat. And if we ignore all the tides and El Niños and stuff, there are parts that will be generally higher all the time. This can be due to a number of factors but consider an ocean current thrusting itself across an ocean. A sub-surface current will leave a bump on the surface above not least because it can be introducing salinity/temperature differences into that bit of the oceans plus it will involve pressure-differences propelling it along. If the route of such a current is deflected away from its ‘original’ course due to, say, climate change, that ‘bump on the surface’ will move and if SLR is measured along the ‘original’ course, the absent ‘bump’ will appear as a bit of negative SLR while along the ‘new’ course there will be heightened SLR.
The water levels in the world’s oceans do not rise as steadily as the water level in a bathtub.
Its surface is also not flat, as one might think, when you look out to sea from the beach.
Satellite observations show that there are significant regional differences in sea level and rise in
water level.
For example, dynamic SLCs driven by water density and currents are one primary cause of non-uniform SLR (Gregory et al., 2019). Changing ocean currents can result in the redistribution of mass, heat, and salt, resulting in substantial sea-level variability (Stammer et al., 2013).
Decisive for rising or falling water levels can also be land uplift and subsidence in those coastal regions of pacific ring of fire.
For this reason, science often uses Sea levels – in the plural – spoken.
A striking example of this is the development of water levels on the coasts of North America.
While in recent years the sea levels along the west coast have remained almost unchanged or rather decreased, they are mostly increasing on the east coast to this day.
And then there are Rossby waves, also known as planetary waves, naturally occur in rotating fluids. Within the Earth’s ocean and atmosphere, these waves are formed as a result of the rotation of the planet and its shape.
The water levels in the world’s oceans do not rise as steadily as the water level in a bathtub.
Satellite observations show that there are significant regional differences in sea level and rise in
water level.
These can be attributed to the influence of ocean currents, to winds or to the heat-related factors of varying strength expansion of the water mass.
Decisive for rising or falling water levels can also land uplift and subsidence in those coastal regions of pacific ring of fire.
Rossby waves, which are caused by the rotation and shape of the planet, also play a role off the coast of Japan.
For this reason, science often uses Sea levels – in the plural – spoken.
A striking example of this is the development of water levels on the coasts of North America.
While in recent years the sea levels along the west coast have remained almost unchanged or rather decreased, they are mostly increasing on the east coast to this day.
“Save the planet with your own choices. But quit demanding that the rest of us blindly follow your diktats. Quit demonising and castigating us, merely because we don’t just happily cede to you all the extant power. We’re not evil just because we don’t believe that you are omniscient. We’re not evil just because we don’t want you to assume omnipotence and omnipresence too.
There is simply no pathway forward to the green and equitable utopia that necessitates the further impoverishment of the already poor, the compulsion of the working class, or the sacrifice of economic security and opportunity on the food, energy and housing front. There is simply no pathway forward to the global utopia you hypothetically value that is dependent on force. And even if there was, what gives you the right to enforce your demands? On other sovereign citizens, equal in value to you?”
“The warning bells are ringing. Listen to them, before they turn into sirens.
We will not advance without resistance through the straits of your enforced privation. We will not allow you to steal and destroy the energy that makes our lives bearable (and that produces our food and shelter and housing and the sporadic delights of modern life) just to address your existential terror (particularly when it will fail to do so in any case). We will not allow our children to be criticised first for having the temerity to merely exist and then be deprived of the prosperous and opportunity-rich future we strived so hard to prepare for them. We remain unconvinced of your frightened and self-congratulatory moralising and intellectual pretension, ignorance of the limits of statistics, and misuse of arithmetic.
We do not believe, finally and most absolutely, that your declared emergency and the panic you sow because of it means that you should now be ceded all necessary authority.”
“Leave us alone. Or reap the whirlwind. And watch the terrible destruction of what you purport to save, in consequence.”
It’s unfortunate that Dr. Peterson has chosen to pronounce upon matters which he chooses to remain deeply ignorant in. If there’s a ‘sting’ to be felt in that, it’s the sting of witnessing–oh, the irony, for a clinical psychologist!–emotionalism overtaking reason.
I don’t wish to stray into Peterson’s realm of competence by hazarding a diagnosis–but I do find the words “paranoid delusion” coming to mind.
Killiansays
So, he’s even more out of touch than previously thought.
Good to know.
jgnfldsays
Gee, vic…The loaded term-to-fact ratio here approaches a singularity!!!!
(One often observes this when one sees someone invoking terms like “sovereign citizens”. As a group, the sovereign citizen crowd tends to be diagnosable as exhibiting signs of Completely Out-to-Lunch Disorder according to the latest DSM.)
Ray Ladburysays
Now why am I not surprised that Weaktor venerates Jordan Peterson. At his best, Jordan Peterson aspires to “wrong”. Mostly, he’s in the “not even wrong” category…kinda like Weaktor.
V: There is simply no pathway forward to the green and equitable utopia that necessitates the further impoverishment of the already poor, the compulsion of the working class, or the sacrifice of economic security and opportunity on the food, energy and housing front.
BPL: Nor is anybody calling for those things. Google “straw man argument.”
Kevin McKinney: I don’t wish to stray into Peterson’s realm of competence by hazarding a diagnosis–but I do find the words “paranoid delusion” coming to mind.
From item 9: “Socio-Cultural Changes as well as Stable Rules and Regulations will be Required: Crucial issues in achieving transformational change toward sustainable future include non-technology drivers such as individual and public awareness, community and societal capacities to adapt to changes, institutions, policies, incentives, strategic spatial planning, social norms, rules and regulations of the marketplace, behavior of market actors, and societies’ ability to
introduce through the political and institutional systems measures to reflect externalities. Changes in cultures, lifestyles, and values are also required.”
That last sentence is especially chilling.
Ray Ladburysays
Weaktor,
Aww, did we catch a chill? If so, I don’t see how that statement gave it to you. It is merely saying that we are going to have to change the behaviors that got us into this predicament to begin with.
It’s like your doctor after a stroke or heart attack saying that you might have to change some of your behaviors if you want to live to a ripe old age. Except in this case, it is human civilization we are trying to save.
Frankly, it’s a whole lot more mature and productive than the FAFO approach recommended by glibertarians.
“The glossary of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C (IPCC, 2018, p. 559) defines four transformation-related concepts associated with climate change mitigation:
:
Transformation: “A change in the fundamental attributes of natural and human systems.”
Transformative change: “A system-wide change that requires more than technological change through consideration of social and economic factors that, with technology, can bring about rapid change at scale.”
Societal (social) transformation: “A profound and often deliberate shift initiated by communities toward sustainability, facilitated by changes in individual and collective values and behaviors, and a fairer balance of political, cultural, and institutional power in society.”
Transformation pathway: “Trajectories describing consistent sets of possible futures of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, atmospheric concentrations, or global mean surface temperatures implied from mitigation and adaptation actions associated with a set of broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes.” https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/wcc.738
BPL: Don’t look now, Victor, but there’s an Inner Party member standing RIGHT BEHIND YOU!
jgnfldsays
Uhhhh nope. In point of fact it’s not even remotely close to the plot, characters, or setting of the book (or the movie either).
You must never have actually read, or at least never comprehended if you have passed your eyes over the pages, the book 1984. Or even seen the movie.
Killiansays
Had a thought on the issue of so many heat records and extremes occurring after two straight La Nina’s, and a third apparently in process now. I’ve been asking how this is possible for a couple of months with no satisfying answer from any quarter. Actually, not even an answer from any quarter! One aspect is the general trend such that today’s La Nina’s are warmer than some past El Nino’s, but the extremes have been so high that doesn’t seem sufficient. What, then?
I stopped by the Arctic Sea Ice graphs site, which I’ve done not nearly as much as in years when expecting a relatively low minimum and happened to notice the Arctic Oscillation index (AO) has been largely positive or neutral pretty much this entire year, indicating relatively little cooling of the NH from the Arctic because the circumpolar winds have been keeping the cold air up north.
Mystery solved, perhaps.
Another aspect may be the lack of Pacific “heat bombs” due to cool surface waters due to the two La Nina’s.
This year’s Arctic Ocean melt season was icy enough for the NSIDC to pose the question “Will the extent drop below 5 million square kilometers?” in their bulletin a couple of weeks ago. They concluding there was a 30% chance that it would achieve a drop below 5M sq km and 2022 would end up ranked between 7th & 15th meltiest year on record. The interactive chArctic page is showing (30 Aug) 5.292M sq km so there’s still a bit to go to break the 5M at NSIDC.
That said, as the annual minimum SIE does carry a bit of bish-bash-bosh in the blogosphere, it is worth reporting that the JAXA Arctic SIE which is calculated & smoothed a little differently, it did drop below that 5M sq km mark on the last day of August. It has already achieved 17th meltiest year with September’s decelerating melt still to come. And in terms of to-end-of-August 2022 ranks 11th meltiest compared to past years on JAXA.
Perhaps a more interesting set of numbers appear when you press the Antarctic button on those cryospheric web-engines as 2022 may be seeing a record ‘lowest Antarctic maximum’. The numbers show 2022 setting the ‘lowest Antarctic SIE for day of year’ through June & July and still picking up a few days of it through August including (on JAXA) 31st Aug with 2022 then sitting 0.56M sq km short of the record least-icy Antarctic summer, this set back in 2002. And as none of the last seven years have seen additional freezing as high as +0.56M sq km from end-of-Aug through the remainder of the freeze season and further back, only seven of the 21 years since 2000 froze that much in Sept, a record unfreezy winter down in the Antarctic is looking pretty likely.
There’s some graphs of the JAXA Antarctic SIE anomalies (so with the annual melt-freeze cycle removed) here Graphs 3a & 3b.
Cliff Mass wrote a blog entry “proving” no heating of practical significance is occurring in the PNW “because” annual record high values in July/August only at SEATAC (i.e. aggregating the data from Jul/Aug at a single site by single extreme values annually) are not significantly increasing since 1970 (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-great-heat-wave-dilemma-explained.html). Tamino took him to task as well as a number of commenters (https://tamino.wordpress.com/2022/07/31/not-even-wrong-2/). Interestingly a large proportion (nearly 30%) of annual extremes at that site occurred outside Jul/Aug but he “explains” excluding those values by shouting: “BECAUSE THAT IS THE WARMEST PERIOD”.
I would label his analysis worthy of any Tobacco Institute “scientist”. That said, I’ve been seeing this “let’s throw away all the data except for only annual single extreme values and see if we can find an HIATUS ( :-o ) again” sort of analysis very commonly in the last half year or so, so I guess it’s circulating broadly on denial/lukewarmer sites.
Isn’t it amazing how throwing away all but 50 datapoints from a collection of over 3000 of them leads to statistical nonsignificance?!
Essentially this is yet another bit of propaganda along the lines of “well Gramps smoked cigarettes all his life and lived to 92, “therefore” tobacco use is not a significant problem in the population. so beloved years ago by the Tobacco Institute and its followers..
The most interesting connection between tobacco and climate propaganda is how the doyen of US climate advertising firms, Porter Novelli, turned to environmental matters after TV cigarette ads went off the air, and its anti-tobacco clientele pulled their accounts- .
Please read my follow-on blog where I show other stations…Olympia and Lind. The results are very robust–well-exposed stations with good instrumentation show less trend in max/extremes than mean and min. These results are supported in the peer-reviewed literature. And my general experience is that that those who do a lot of name calling (e.g., calling folks Tabacco Institute scientists) generally do so when their own arguments or understanding fail.
I suggest anyone interested in Cliff’s high dudgeon here to read the analysis provided by tamino and the comments on his “analysis” there.
Btw, re. your “victimhood”: NO one “called” you anything. So don’t melt down too badly. One only noted that presentation of misleading and insufficient factoids without full context was one of the TI’s everyday techniques–just as we see in many climate denial/obfuscation entries out there.
In particular, what Mass either intentionally glosses over or else fails to understand is that the sampling distributions of single extreme max temps from a set of 61 day spans are MUCH larger than the sampling distribution of stats taken from those same periods (e.g., means). As well, it has been shown by tamino and commenters that his procedures selectively ignore a large portion of the extreme data events by restricting his analysis to 61 day Jul-Aug spans.
Contextless factoids such as he posted without reference to what they actually can and do mean can be quite misleading. And his post was misleading in my humble opinion.
The following R script points out the sampling issues pretty clearly, I think:
set.seed(1234L) # to replicate these results
# required library for colstats functions…load if not present:
#library(timeSeries)
# Generate 10K 61-day random normal series w/ mean=50 and
# sd=10 (series are cols here) to simulate Jul-Aug temp readings
q = replicate(10000,round(rnorm(61,50,10),1))
# aggregate means/maxes
q.mean = colStats(q, FUN= “mean”)
q.max = colStats(q, FUN= “max”)
# required library for describe()…load if not present:
#library(psych)
describe(q.mean) # se of estimate is .01
describe(q.max) # se of estimate is .05
# se of max is 5X se of mean
hist(q.mean, breaks= 30)
hist(q.max, breaks= 30)
# Note that the mean in the vast majority of these series
# is between 46 and 54 whereas the various maxes
# range mostly from 61 to 91 and show a definite skew.
Which parameter (as much as max even is a ‘parameter’ like mean/var, etc.) has the power to see small changes and which does not? Which parameter makes it easy to hide any changes over these intervals even if they are occurring?
UAH TLT has been posted for July with an anomaly of +0.36ºC, the highest anomaly of the year-to-date which previously spanned +0.00ºC to +0.26ºC.
July 2022 sits as the 2nd warmest July on the UAH TLT record, behind 1998 (+0.38ºC) and ahead of 2020 (+0.30ºC), 2016, 2019, 2021, 2010, 2018, 2017 & in tenth spot 2002 (+0.10ºC).
July 2022 sits =25th in the all-month UAH TLT rankings.
The high July anomaly pulls 2022 back up to 7th in the year-so-far average anomaly rankings.
…….. Jan-Jul Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.47ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 1st
1998 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.35ºC … … … 3rd
2020 .. +0.38ºC … … … +0.36ºC … … … 2nd
2010 .. +0.27ºC … … … +0.19ºC … … … 6th
2019 .. +0.25ºC … … … +0.30ºC … … … 4th
2017 .. +0.21ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 5th
2022 .. +0.15ºC
2002 .. +0.12ºC … … … +0.08ºC … … … 10th
2018 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.09ºC … … … 9th
2015 .. +0.08ºC … … … +0.14ºC … … … 7th
2005 .. +0.08ºC … … … +0.06ºC … … … 11th
Here’s something: “Scientists Warn of Devastating Mass Extinction Event Caused by Climate Change.” It basically says that because we are causing the warming much faster, it could be really bad, worse than in the Phanerozoic, not giving species enough time to adapt.
Article here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/scientists-warn-of-devastating-mass-extinction-event-caused-by-climate-change/ar-AA10crXZ?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=81ea533afe8b4ec8a499f827748b6886
Journal article open & downloadable here: https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/19/3369/2022/
“Lucy”, our Australopithecus Afarensis common great-grandmother to power n, made it through very harsh conditions and made our existence possible, while we are destroying our and other species’ habitats for the sake of one more useless plastic trinket and other myriad wants, constantly created by an economy that is not operating in “creative”, but destructive destruction mode.
The logic of this is, and has been, obvious: Less time to adapt = less likely to adapt. To that end, I have begged/warned for years for the communication of climate science to shift to a risk basis, specifically long-tail existential threats such as this paper suggests.
The planet has never been changed this fast other than bolide impacts. Not even close. How, then, do we go on acting as if there is any corrollary? There simply is none. So, to assume temps are going to rise at a safe rate, that species can adapt to this extreme rate of change, or even that the sensitivity of the earth – regardless which of the three you choose to focus on, will be the same as in the past. I mean, despite the very clear signals of varied indicators coming in “faster than expected”, and some of them now centuries faster than expected, how is it 3C is still taken seriously as the most likely sensitivity? The range is up to 4.5C, I believe, and the rates of change we are observing clearly do not align with 3C, yet, that remains the standard assumption.
Is this rational? Rhetorical, of course.
Unfortunately, this paper cites +7~9C to trigger mass extinction. Hard not to notice extinctions are already well underway. And the paper even states clearly the rapid rate of change makes adaptation harder, yet does *not* say – at least not in the abstract – that would indicate 7~9C is likely too high for current conditions because it is the interplay of time and temp change that matter, not just temp changes.
Anywho…
Lynn. Thanks for starting the coverage of this paper.
Its key point, to quote: “The risk of global societal collapse or human extinction has been “dangerously underexplored”.
My take: We need an analysis of ‘what ifs’ for ‘really bad’ scenarios:
1) Tipping points such as (1) permafrost melt and CH4 release; and, (2) Burnout in a significant part of the Amazon.
2) Possible human societal reaction to areas of the planet becoming uninhabitable on a ‘self-sustaining’ basis given factors such temperature, precipitation sea-level rise and the consequent impact on the ability of people to feed themselves.
3) Societal impacts such as mass-migration, war and mass euthanasia.
The purpose of such analysis is to greatly strengthen Government action to reduce GHGs in the atmosphere.
SO: Which body should do this analysis?
1) Should it be the IPCC’s on a basis similar to its 2018 1.5C report? This took about 30 months to produce.
2) What about the UK’s Royal Society on a basis similar to its 2009 report on Geoengineering? https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2009/geoengineering-climate/ ?
My view is we need both. A report such as the Royal Society’s would be quicker to prepare and less politically constrained. A report from the IPCC would take longer but provide a process for getting more Jursidictions to seriously consider this important ‘What If?’ A ‘If’ which has a dangerously high chance of becoming a reality.
We don’t need them, but they would be nice. The reason is really quite simple: It’s an existential threat, so the risk analysis makes the best options very clear, and those don’t change because the news gets worse and worse because it **already was** an existential threat. Has been understood to be for quite while. I’ve been citing the need for this kind of long-tail-based communication from climate scientists for YEARS on this very site and have been roundly ignored. So, I guess good for the psoter who posted it finally (it had been out for a while) and good for the scientists who wrote the paper, but….
… we lost about ten years of time that was invaluable for effective mitigation and adaptation.
Not so thrilled about that.
Factbox: Wildfires breaking out across the world | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/wildfires-breaking-out-across-world-2022-07-19/
How about that Dallas flooding a couple of days ago? I think the Climate has tipped a little bit more.
I’ve been reading the IPCC technical summary, and have some questions.
1. Why are 1.5 and 2.0 degrees C picked for target temperatures? What thinking and research tells us those are the significant boundaries or transition temperatures?
2. Low-likelihood, high impact outcomes – the ‘tipping points; – are either highly unlikely or poorly understood (“not well known “). They are not included in any simulations except the severe warming (SSP5-8.5) scenarios (correct?). I understand why the poorly understood ones are not included; you shouldn’t include systems that are poorly understood if you want a valid simulation. Which of the LLHI tipping points are poorly understood, and which are understood but just extremely unlikely? (given the understanding that likelihood increases with temperature)
3. Three of the LLHI tipping points have significant positive feedback warming dynamics; Amazonian rainforest turning to savannah, frozen organics ->methane conversion from melting permafrost, and methane release from melting undersea clathrates. Did I miss others? How much of the carbon sequestered since the Eocene is locked up in permafrost or clathrates? Do we have fairly accurate measurements, or just ballpark estimates?
Right now, we control the amount and speed of global warming by emitting greenhouse gases. It’s hard to get a sense of how much warmer it can get before any of the positive feedback tipping points gets triggered, and we lose that control. Some laypeople think that we’ve already locked in a temperature rise that will set off one or more of the tipping points, but that doesn’t seem correct. Do we understand the systems well enough to say where that point is? Or if some point is still fairly safe (like +2 degrees?)
Tom, I think lots of confusion comes from the language we use, and this is certainly such a case.
It sounds to me as if you are defining “tipping point” as an on-off switch or set-p0int, so that the scenario would be:
1. GMST reaches T1, indicating a certain level of energy increase in the climate system.
2. Even if humans immediately stop burning fossil fuels, and making cows belch, and cutting down trees, and so on, T (system energy) will continue to increase (unless humans also magically remove CO2 from the atmosphere).
That’s OK, but what is the point of attempting to quantify that with any precision? Do you think it will have any effect on human behavior?
My understanding of what the specialists think is that you are correct that such a condition would be relatively far off. Does that mean “don’t worry, we can just keep increasing that CO2, we’re nowhere near turning the planet into Venus”?
The point for me is that long before we get close to such an outcome, we will have changed both the climate system and the human system to the point where “all bets are off”. The human system is probably more unstable than the climate system, and they are coupled, so what can we predict?? Do we have the computing power to do Monte Carlo analysis of Monte Carlo analyses?… because that’s what we are looking at here.
So I think it is reasonable for the IPCC not to worry too much about tipping points as you define them; they have enough to do already.
A reminder of the human cost:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/heat-brings-concerns-eastern-kentucky-172934217.html
Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London states that we have passed the point of no return on climate mitigation and the only option available is deep adaptation.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/30/total-climate-meltdown-inevitable-heatwaves-global-catastrophe
@realclimate group what do you think?
Even if it might not be true yet, any rational person and responsible, democratic government with the opportunity and means to take action on solving the climate emergency, would do it, urgently.
Solution: stop using fossil fuels for anything.
Are you doing that? I don’t mean you are reducing your use, I mean stopping.
Your house off the grid? No car (even electric) or public transport? No cement? No plastic?
Don’t preach to others if you are not willing to.
Poisoning the well (a type of ad hominem attack) doesn’t make for a strong argument.
Firstly Steven you got the definition completely wrong.. Poisoning the well is a preemptive attack.. You may wish to look it up in future if you wish to use the phrase again.
Secondly, Silvia called me irrational, all I have done is point out her blatant hypocrisy.. If I am incorrect, and Silvia does not use any fossilised carbon, I am sure she is able to correct me In my experience most people calling for an end to fossil carbon use feel virtuous as they have reduced their own use. And mostly it is people who have already gone through the hard early stages of setting up a life, and home, and potentially a family. So they aren’t spending all their effort just to put food on the table and pay basic living expenses.
Again, happy to be corrected
@SL-A: – ” …to take action on solving the climate emergency, would do it, urgently.
Solution: stop using fossil fuels for anything. ”
— There is usually more than one solution in life. Convincing a horde of billions of fossil-fuel Yunckies to abstain overnight isn’t that easy.
I would also like to declare a global climate emergency and would like to found a UN fire brigade. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the point of no return for climate protection has not yet been reached. If waiting for reducing CO² emissions leads to a dead end blocked with stupidity and irrationality – take a different route.
For example, think of H²O…
Although it is many times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO², I am convinced that we currently have far too little H²O in the atmosphere. – Because
It also has a cooling effect as a cloud, as evaporative cooling on the earth’s surface, CO² absorber in photosynthesis, as an energy transporter in the earth’s climate system and even on your skin, in your car and heating system.
How much water does it take to produce ~3.6 million km² of clouds / to keep the land surface ~ -0.3°C cooler / absorb an additional 8Gt/y of CO² from the atmosphere / and stop sea level rise ???
– See here:
https://02adf5ae1c.cbaul-cdnwnd.com/da475a79e4bc41c3b64b8d393a44d235/200000065-843b1843b3/1GEB9L.webp?ph=02adf5ae1c
An element that is extremely popular with firefighters.
“H²O ” …deuterium oxide???
About Genosse Schürle
To alol and everyone,
behind his back.
“I am convinced that we currently have far to little H2O in the atmosphere- Because..”
Discussion:
I see warnings on the net that the centyral walley in California wi9ll have a superflood, 9 meters above 1/3 of the USA vegetable production. I see further that the fameous death walley has drowned now after 50 years. Schürnes prayers are obviously being heard.
Todauy there was a communal machine sweeping up on the road after still another flood. It costs each time and Schürle is selling water without having any, and never mentions the taxpayers. That large machine on 4 wheels had a 6 cyl 4 liter diesel at least, as I could hear from my office.
In Oslo, the manhole covers are dancing in the streets, and at Tretten in Gudbrandsdal a whole bridge was obviopusly broken by the flushing river. and people blame this on the climate all the time.
Question:
When shall also the Schürlers learn moderation, reason, and understanding?
Hey, I see a AGW-denying geologist named Matthew Wielicki making a lot of traction on TikTok lately. Any chance realclimate or any of you will make a move to the site and produce some content?
More disappointing behaviour from a subset of the UK population who seem to be trying to behave like the worst of Americans:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62323048
SE England has had its driest July on record with only 10 mm of rain. Two water companies have introduced hosepipe bans as August has started off in a similar dry manner minus the insane heat.
Any thoughts or comments on this new paper https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2108146119
from Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann and others who write here?
Abstract: “Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses. We outline current knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies’ vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.”
Would be very interesting to hear some comments.
[Response: We’ve written about some of the pitfalls and issues in looking at the worst case scenarios before. I’m not sure this commentary adds much. YMMV. – gavin]
re: #3) – It seems to me that the human species has been provided by Nature with built-in self-destruct mechanisms, in case normal controls (viruses, etc.) of a rogue species fail. Therefore we see wars of aggression, nuclear proliferation and useless governance.
In order to end our war against Nature, we need to set Limits to Progress, to know when we’ve gone too far.. Climate change is just one of many assaults on Nature.
See https://www.mccroskey.ca/kathleen/simple-life.htm
Now, a report shows failing plankton, which is the main producer of our oxygen:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/humanity-will-not-survive-extinction-of-most-marine-plants-and-animals/
Also -why is oxygen pricing better than carbon pricing?
https://www.mccroskey.ca/kathleen/oxygen.htm
Thanks for this Kathleen. What physics based “climate science” seems to substantially ignore are constraints on ECOSYSTEMS. I write the word in plural although life is all hooked together. This bias seems along the lines of not seeing the living planetary system for the forest.
For example, have we put so much and so many toxins, carbonic acid, climate heating, etc. into the ocean to begin cascading extinctions of phytoplankton, and all marine life dependent on them and their oxygen? If so, then since oxygen is regenerated mainly by two ecosystems 1) forests on land and 2)phytoplankton in the ocean, it would appear that oxygen levels could begin dropping precipitously, as forests burn (rapid oxidation) and conditions exceed living conditions for these single cell plants..
That is, falling more quickly than oxygen levels are falling in the ocean/atmosphere system already. (See Scripps Institute)
Thanks, Gavin, for reminding us all about what you wrote then. It is indeed thoughtprovoking and makes many good points. I am, though, not sure that what motivates the aforementioned paper is any kind of belief that scientifically unfounded fearmongering will force the nescessary and urgently needed long-term policy actions from politicians and the public – of which we haven’t in the three decades since the creation of the IPCC seen much more than still more dither and delay, as precisely characterized by Mann in this interview:
“I interviewed Mann, who has now collected his experience in a book, The New Climate War (published in Italy with Edizioni Ambiente), to talk about the new strategies of deniers, rebranded “inactivists” by Mann, and how to recognize and deactivate them in order to move towards a constructive and effective path of action for climate.
Climate denial has evolved through the years and strategies have changed. One of the initial strategies, which obviously you mentioned in your book, was to “reposition global warming as a theory” rather than fact. What are the current denier strategies, and what do you tell people when they say climate denial doesn’t exist anymore?
It exists in a different form. It’s not the sort of hard denial that we encountered in the past: “Climate change is a hoax, the planet isn’t warming.” That’s just not tenable anymore. Those sorts of talking points aren’t credible anymore because people can see and feel the impacts of climate change now in their own lives. And so, as you allude, what we’ve seen is a shift in tactics, away from denial but towards all these other words that begin with “D,” from denial to delay, division, deflection and doom-mongering because ironically that can lead us down this path of disengagement. If we really believe that we have no agency, we can’t do anything about the problem.
And so you’ve seen the forces of inaction or the inactivists, as I brand them in the book, polluters and those advocating for them, we’ve seen them shift to these other tactics in their effort to prevent us from moving on because that’s all they care about. The end game is the same, whether it’s because we deny that climate change is real or we don’t care, or we think it’s too late or for any other variety of reasons.
As somebody who’s been on the front lines of the climate wars for literally more than two decades now and I’ve watched those tactics evolve — that was the purpose of this book, to sort of share what my own observations so we can make sure that we don’t fall victim to these new tactics, because they are the only thing now that lie in our path. We’re so close to finally seeing the action that’s necessary, but we still have these obstacles. And the purpose of the book was to make people aware of what those obstacles are.
So you consider inactivism to be another form of denial?
I see them as close cousins of denial. They are not denial of the evidence of climate change but denial of the urgency, denial that we have agency that we can do something about it, denial that we can do it. And so in many respects, these other words that I’m using — deflection, delay, division — they are all close cousins of denial, engaging in this softer form of denial that we should or can do something about it.” https://global.ilmanifesto.it/how-the-oil-industry-quietly-continues-to-deny-climate-change/
The interesting/crucial *scientific question* here is to me: for how long can this combination of most liberal politicians’ de facto inactivism (out of fear of losing voters and/or losing support from big money) and nearly all “conservative” (here in Europe we would rather call most of them “reactionary revolutionaries”) politicians’ very activist denialism (I consider the politics of Trump etc. in the US, Xi Jinping, Modi, the saudis and especially Putin to be in this camp) go on, before resulting in destabilizing developments that become self-sustaining? I mean, the spectre of war for the remaining fossil fuel reserves and other resources has for some time been looming more and more threatening on the horizon, and is now beginning to materialize from Ukraine, and while this is happening, we have Biden etc. always really caring only for what is happening “at the pump”. As soon as you have “economic problems” (not to speak of war) – and this really is in fact always the case – any trace of climate policy is immidiatly put aside/”forgotten”. Until now, there have always been excuses abundant for delaying climate action “a little”, and all leading politicians are always eagerly looking for those excuses. How do scientists at least avoid contributing to this devil’s circle?
You write: “Recent social science research (for instance, as discussed by Mann and Hasool (also here)) suggests that fear-based messaging is not effective at building engagement for solving (or mitigating) long-term ‘chronic’ problems (indeed, it’s not clear that panic and/or fear are the best motivators for any constructive solutions to problems). Thus an argument has been made that, yes, scientists are downplaying worst case scenarios, but not because they have a personal or professional aversion to drama (point #2), but because they want to motivate the general public to become engaged in climate change solutions and they feel that this is only possible if there is hope of not only averting catastrophe but also of building a better world.”
But was it really not panic that suddenly awakened the politicians and the general british public to action, when the troops had to be very hastily evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940? Was it really not panic that awakened the politicians and the general american public to action after the attack at Pearl Harbour?
The problem with climate change in this respect seems to be, that when these kinds of catastrophic events happen, which will at last make the climate dangers dawn on the general public and thus on the politicians, it will probably be too late to avoid really dangerous climate change. Or am I wrong here?
Is it really true that the way the scientific results are viewed and presented to the public has no bearing on this? On one hand, crying wolf without the evidence, like Wadhams fx., is clearly counterproductive. On the other hand: downplaying – like the IPCC has done in some cases like the speed of permafrost warming and thawing and the speed of polar sea ice reduction, the acceleration of extreme weather event as fx. seen this summer in Europe – one’s underestimations of *the consequences of the warming that has already happened*, is that really no problem?
In precisely this respect the IPCC and leading climate scientists from my point of view have been “erring on the side of the least drama” by not making this side of the scientific uncertainty abundantly clear to the public. It seems as if all uncertainty is always counted as weighing in on the side of relaxation – “no need to panic” – meaning to the general public: no need to really do anything.
As written in the article I asked for comments about: “As noted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there have been few quantitative estimates of global aggregate impacts from warming of 3 °C or above (1). Text mining of IPCC reports similarly found that coverage of temperature rises of 3 °C or higher is underrepresented relative to their likelihood (2). Text-mining analysis also suggests that over time the coverage of IPCC reports has shifted towards temperature rise of 2 °C and below
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022EF002876. Research has focused on the impacts of 1.5 °C and 2 °C, and studies of how climate impacts could cascade or trigger larger crises are sparse.”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2108146119
The question for me here is: why is this the case? Does it not point to a real problem concerning the current climate research?
Here in Norway, where I live, exactly the fact that “the coverage of IPCC reports has shifted towards temperature rise of 2 °C and below” was skillfully used by our local denialist organization (calling themselves “The climate realists” under the main parole “It is the sun…”) to say: “look what we said all the time! They were just scaremongering!”
Do we not have a problem here?
Karsten V. Johansen,
YMMV? This paper Kemp et al (2022) ‘Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios’ did manage somewhere enough ‘M’ to somehow make it onto BBC news with blather about “human extinction” but for me I don’t think it merits fishing for the ignition keys. So for me M equals a very big zero.
Kemp et al suggest we need better definitions of catastrophe from AGW and may or may not make some useful contribution to that with its enumerating of percentage death toll of humanity. But specifically on “better definitions” and “human extinction” (which presumably gave the paper its BBC coverage) it surely gets its bootstraps tangled in providing the following definitions:-
I find the use of the words ‘contributor’ and ‘total’ makes the whole exercise nonsensical.
However, the subject is far from nonsensical and I would argue that if you do wield the prospect of “human extinction,” take a good grip.
It is easy to see (1) AGW coming to cause enough death and destruction that the ‘world order’ cannot easily help and turns away from the disaster rather than rushing in with relief. And in such circumstance, it is very easy to imagine (2) parts of the ‘world order’ instead of rushing in to help, rushing to secure its own well-being and thus global conflict being added on top of the ravages of AGW. (3) A goodly helping of AGW coupled with a garnish of nuclear war could well sever humanity from the technological means of preventing extinction of the species. And it can be argued that the present absence of useful mitigating action to address AGW already constitutes (1) in operation and that mankind is thus entered into a situation analogous to that of the Boiling Frog.
@MAR: –
” And it can be argued that the present absence of useful mitigating action to address AGW already constitutes (1) in operation and that mankind is thus entered into a situation analogous to that of the Boiling Frog. ”
— For many months I have been trying to promote such a mitigating measure on this forum.
Water and rain retention / water cooling for land areas / global cooling through improved cloud albedo.
Not only because mankind is manipulating the water cycles mindlessly like the carbon cycle, but because the most dangerous effects of global warming such as: droughts, floods, sea level rise but also record temperatures during heat waves, species extinction,…etc. all related to the presence or absence of water.
You were one of the first to make fun of this holistic concept of lowering sea level rise & global temperature – maybe because you only understood it half-heartedly from the start or because, like the rest of climate science, you are already convinced in advance that mankind cannot influence the rise in sea level.
So you and some other experts here have yourself to thank for this current lack of useful, no regret and mitigating measures to combat AGW.
And if you all end up as a boiled frog, don’t complain. So if it gets really stupid and hard dumbed mankind doesn’t even have water to boil frogs – do you like grilled frogs better?
macias shurly,
You say you have been “many months … trying to promote … a mitigating measure [for AGW] on this forum” and that I was “one of the first to make fun of this holistic concept of lowering sea level rise & global temperature.”
What you fail to mention here is that prior to your arrival “on this forum” you and I were having the same interchange at SkS where, back last September, I appear to have been the first to respond to your crazy proposal.
Strangely you persist with your proposal and almost a year later, even with so many folk helpfully pointing out that your proposal is ridiculous with your reasoning in gross error at so many points. And dispite all this helpful comment you are still loudly banging the drum for Matthias Schuerle’s eye-bulgingly crazy ‘Holistic, alternative climate protection strategy’ [the Strategy]
At this point, the casual reader of this thread may be wondering ‘What is the Strategy?’ and Why would I brand it as eye-bulgingly crazy?’
Such casual readers should note that the commenter who calls himself macias shurly does provide a link to his webpage explaining the Strategy, but given the time I have spent attempting to correct all this eye-bulgingly crazy nonsense, I can myself quickly provide a shorter description of the Strategy as follows:-
Fundamentally, the Strategy proposes to prevent both SLR and AGW.
☻Firstly there is SLR resulting from AGW (& a small bit from draining aquafers). SLR effectively stores excess water volume in the oceans that stretch over two-thirds of the globe, with SLR being a problem solely at the coasts where rising seas will inundate the land. The Strategy prevents SLR by somehow storing all this excess water on land through some truly gargantuan effort of engineering and resulting in the level of this excess water rising now over the entire land surface of the planet rather than over the oceans. LSSI (Land Surface Sploshiness Increase) will thus be rising twice as fast as SLR did before.
☻Secondly there is AGW. Having prevented SLR the Strategy then asserts that with the land turning more sploshier year-on-year in this manner, the atmosphere will now be in receipt of more moisture over land and will become cloudier at a rate of +1% per year and this extra cloudiness will cool the planet, providing a negative forcing rate roughly double the positive forcing rate of today’s increasing AGW. Thus AGW is not just mitigated but put into reverse.
☻It should be noted that the Strategy does not explain how long this gargantuan project needs to operate. But after a century or so, if AGW forcing were to continue at present rates, this future sploshier world would be returned to pre-industrial forcings (when AGW=0). So any future SLR would be neutalised (AR5 suggested 2.3m SLR would eventually result from +1ºC AGW) and coincidentally the SL would be also something like at pre-industrial levels. But if AGW were allowed to continue beyond a-century-or-so and continue on into the distant future, the Strategy would perhaps be required to prevent further warming. Although, if the Strategy were increasing cloudiness at 1% per year, how long could it continue to work? Especially as the cloud fraction over land is not zero today.
“does not explain how long this gargantuan project needs to operate”
Restoring the average sustained 5% deficit in transpiration can be achieved within a decade and it is meant to operate forever.
Averaged across all catchments: Restore soil organics 5%, and/or, restore wetlands 5%, and/or restore native vegetation 5%. By whatever means suitable, restore sustained latent fluxes 5% across landscapes.
5% is a good rule of thumb for any type of restoration efforts. 5% restoration of ecologies is most certainty achievable. Any community can get behind this target.
Achieve this by restoring somewhat natural water retention in watershed ecology. Increase moisture-holding capacity in catchments by only a small fraction (5%). Increase the duration and extent of transpiring fluxes 5%.
This decentralized approach complements technological CO2 cuts. It empowers communities to make a real difference. Each and every small parcel landowner can take part if they so choose. Children can get their hands dirty replacing their lawns, for example, by helping to install a small rain garden or planting deeply rooted native greenery. The power of cumulative decentralized efforts can achieve 5% improvement quite easily. There is no downside.
Dividends:
Increased biofertility, increased microbial activity, increased moisture-holding capacity, increased drought resilience, sustained baseflows, more consistent precipitation, increased carbon sequestration, cooler temperatures, increased habitat, increased wildlife abundance, and diversity.
@MAR
— First of all, I hope that you, like me, live in a region where heat waves, record temperatures, droughts and forest fires have been increasing over the last years, and where parched rivers, forests, agriculture and cities are suffering from water shortages. This improves understanding.
My strategy is simple – in principle a simple, worldwide request to politics, agriculture, industry but also to private persons to build up extensive water reserves wherever/whenever possible in order to use them generously in plant growth, evaporation, clouds and “water cooling ” during periods of drought in spring and summer.
So if you continue to claim that an improved water supply for humans and nature would be eye-bulgingly crazy nonsense – the neutral reader should ask himself:
Who is normal here – and who is crazy?
The question should also be addressed as to whether increasing CO2 emissions are solely responsible for the increase in global temperature and ocean levels – or whether other, greater stupidities of mankind in dealing with H2O also play a part in the AGW warming cause.
In this post/conversation with my head gardener @JCM, I attempted to quantify the reduced evaporation capability in cities and agriculture due to human activities and land use change:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/07/the-cos2-problem-in-six-easy-steps-2022-update/#comment-805349
My personal estimate amounts to a missing ~ 12000 km³/y of evaporation, which is accumulated through millennias of human evolution and is distributed over about a third of the land area (49 million km²).
Maybe another number will convince you, which you can understand independently with a dew point calculator:
Suppose the troposphere contains a total of ~13000 km³ of water vapor + clouds.
At ~16°C and rH 79% the absolute water content is 10.78g/m³ –
at 16°C and rH 78% it is only 10.64g/m³ (~ -1.3%).
! Global relative humidity has decreased by ~1% from 1980 – 2010 while specific humidity has increased due to temperature:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-investigating-climate-changes-humidity-paradox/
Calculate the loss of 1.3% absolute water content on 13000 km³ and you get a volume of ~170 km³, which is missing in the atmosphere on average.
If you want to make up this difference, you have to bring up ~ 40 x 170 km³ by evaporation from the earth’s surface, since the residence time of H2O in the atmosphere is only about 9 days.
The total difference of missing evaporation ~ -6800 km³/y affects clouds but also the temperatures on the ground and in the atmosphere. The land surface remains ~ 4625 PWh/y warmer and the atmosphere above land correspondingly colder. The difference is attempted to be offset by higher sensible heat flux, increased LW radiation up surface (higher temperatures) and evaporation energy imported from the oceans (~19W/m²).
The volume 6800 km³ of missing evaporation corresponds to ~ 3.5W/m² (9% or 45mm) less latent cooling in a global energy balance for land areas and is rapidly increasing occurring largely within the arid regions, which are thereby becoming even drier in general.
MAR: ” The Strategy prevents SLR by somehow storing all this excess water on land through some truly gargantuan effort of engineering… ”
MS: — The 2010-12 La Nina event shifted ~1800 km³ of rain from oceans to land surfaces. Sea level dropped ~5mm and as you probably know La Nina years are also ~0.2°C cooler on average – even the thermosteric SLR was neutralized by La Nina 2010-12 during its phase… — completely without gargantuan effort of engineering.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012GL053055
@JCM spoke of a 5% deficit in transpiration, which then corresponds to about 1.9W/m² (25mm or 3650 km³) evaporation. The water retention index (WRI) can be increased through a wide range of measures. The potential water retention in vegetation, water bodies, soil and underlying aquifers, as well as the influence of slope and artificially sealed areas are greater than you think. With cisterns, rainwater retention basins and former mines as pumped storage, drought and flood protection, these WRI capacities are expanding.
MAR: ” Especially as the cloud fraction over land is not zero today. ”
MS. — However, it has been decreasing over the past few decades (-2-3%), as is the correspondingly decreasing rH.
The holes in the cloud cover to fill the sky with additional evaporation and clouds you will find where cloudless, blue dryness in spring and summer leads to long lasting high pressure, drought and high temperatures.
If you recognize the global deficit in potential evaporation and don’t deny its connection to surface cooling over land – you will have to get used to the fact that H2O and CO2 are both the most powerful greenhouse gases…
…but while we know that high concentrations of CO2 warm the earth – we now know that higher emissions (mainly from artificial irrigation) of H2O have a cooling effect on the earth.
Look again at the energy balance / land + 9L/m²:
https://02adf5ae1c.cbaul-cdnwnd.com/da475a79e4bc41c3b64b8d393a44d235/200000065-843b1843b3/1GEB9L.webp?ph=02adf5ae1c
Explain to me which values should not be correct and prove that with meaningful references, which expose my simulation of 1.2% more evaporation & clouds as nonsense – please.
ms: The question should also be addressed as to whether increasing CO2 emissions are solely responsible for the increase in global temperature and ocean levels – or whether other, greater stupidities of mankind in dealing with H2O also play a part in the AGW warming cause.
BPL: For the past 170 years, CO2 has been responsible for 85% of the variance of temperature. Google “analysis of variance.”
@ macias.
Note the correspondence of ecosystem desiccation by human activity and visible transpiration deficits, observed as areas effectively desertified in the link below. The tweet author correctly points out a climate crisis narrative. But the key point has been missed that this desiccation matches the spatial pattern of land clearing, active drainage, and erosion. It is not a coincidence the disruption in extent and duration of green growth matches areas of drought and extreme temperature vulnerability. It must be understood that agriculture is a necessary task, but it is not productive to overlook the obvious mechanisms of change. It is not productive to imply this desiccation, and associated hydrological extreme, is caused solely by CO2 forcing. Similar scenes can be observed over each developed continent. The human influence on hydrology, ecosystems, and associated climates is apparent. The ‘scarring’ observed by the tweet author is of course a consequence of land use practices, changing ecology, and changing hydrological characteristics.
https://twitter.com/spatialanalysis/status/1557368404461355009/photo/1
PS – observe the subsequent graphic by the tweet author illustrating low cloud nucleation appearing to be repelled or disrupted specifically where transpiration of moisture and biota have ceased. https://twitter.com/i/status/1555937346423496704
This corresponds to areas of “very degraded soil’ mapped in 1997.
https://commons.princeton.edu/mg/soil-degradation-1997/
PPS
consistent with most nations, UK environment ministry lists 90% wetland loss during 20th century.
https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/++preview++/environment-and-business/challenges-and-choices/user_uploads/biodiversity-challenge-rbmp-2021.pdf
“In the UK we’ve lost 90 per cent of our wetland habitats in the last 100 years” p.1
“At a national level it is estimated that pond numbers in England and Wales decreased by around three-quarters during the 20th Century from a maximum of about 800,000 to around 200,000 by the 1980s (Williams, P, Biggs, J, Crowe, et al).” p.3
I suspect in the decades since the 1980s this trend has continued, if not accelerated. Data collection on such matters is generally quite sparse.
Something dramatic changed in the management of landscapes during the 20th century. Landscape hydrology does not resemble that of past centuries over vast swathes of the planet.
matthias schuerle (aka marcias shurly) @up-thread,
My apologies if I did not spot your grand revelation from a fortnight ago but this is because as a rule I no longer bother wasting my time reading the nonsense you plaster down the comment threads here at RC.
Givng your grand revelation from a fortnight ago a quick once-over, I must say it is not dissimilar to what has gone before. Perhaps you are now arguing that all those trees mankind has chopped down since, well presumably since the chopper was invented; arguing that all this deforestation has caused serious amounts of global warming and perhaps also suggesting this is yet more reason to ignore the ever-increasing forcing from mankind’s GHG emissions and instead more reason to implement the Strategy you have invented to flood all the World’s land with river waters and thus stop both SLR & AGW in their tracks.
But my advice to you (given as you do say “please”) would be to take your time and not get carried away with that number you managed to find reported by Dias et al (2015). Thus, for instance, how does the conclusion you reach (from using Dias et al’s singular simulation result from the eastern Matto Grosso and extrapolating it over the whole wide world) compare with, say, the findings of Xu et al (2022) ‘Contrasting impacts of forests on cloud cover based on satellite observations’?
Your theorising had a good run for its money when it first appeared over at SkS last year. Within a tediously long interchange at SkS, it was shown to be nonsense and bringing it here to RC and adding a few magic numbers to it will not convert it into something sensible.
That is why I no longer bother wasting my time reading the nonsense you plaster down the comment threads here at RC. I do not apologise for paying no heed to your nonsense and indeed would encourage our hosts to commit your comment to the BoreHole or the CrankShaft.
@ MAR / BPL:
— Only climate experts taxiing in their boreholes can believe that the accumulated lack of evaporation over land areas of ~6000 – 12000 km³/y (9-18% of the total annual evaporation over land !) has no impact on climate and temperatures above land areas.
You both underestimate the minus 1% relative humidity and cannot understand this missing amount of H2O in the atmosphere either mentally or quantitatively. I have calculated the effects – so please calculate it by yourself, or provide a link that proves the opposite.
The paper presented by MAR “Contrasting impacts of forests on cloud cover based on satellite observations” by Xu et al. (2022) does not contain any quantitative statement on evaporation, percentage of cloud cover or temperature. It only proves that there are also cloud forests, which partly absorb their water requirements from the air and can therefore also dissolve clouds.
It is about the historically important clarification of the questions:
1- Do higher H2O emissions have a cooling effect on the earth’s climate? (as I claim) or
2- Do higher H2O emissions have a warming effect on the earth’s climate? or
3 – Do higher H2O emissions have neither a warming nor a cooling effect on the earth’s climate?
So all I ask of you is to appropriate one of three statements.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Physical_Drivers_of_climate_change.svg/450px-Physical_Drivers_of_climate_change.svg.png
The assumption in the graph that land use changes have a cooling effect (because the drier, bare surfaces may have a higher albedo) – is wrong or incomplete. Plants produce clouds/albedo – and clouds produce plants.
If you both deny the global water scarcity, falling rH & mean cloud cover and decreasing evaporative capacity of land areas and continue to ignore the arguments brought by @JCM about soil capacities – then I wish you a lot of fun in the desert …
– and enjoy the grilled frogs and you undistilled, lukewarm morning pee.
PS. Perhaps the pee will also help you to lubricate your own crankshaft for your last few meters.
The dismissal of biosystems and hydrology, and their relations to climate, is striking.
On the subject of forests, which represents but one biome, ecologists are expressing deep frustration with the ongoing mischaracterization and undervaluation of these systems. The carbon sink obsession has resulted in massive mismanagement of forestry from Europe to California.
If you have ever tried applying for restoration funding you will come across the carbon sink obsession when justifying your project. The reductionism of Earth system science to greenhouse gas narratives has percolated deep into policy recommendation and is causing untold damage to ecohydrological understanding and policy recommendation. Regardless, if you want to get anything done you have to play along.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378017300134
“Forest-driven water and energy cycles are poorly integrated into regional, national, continental and global decision-making on climate change adaptation, mitigation, land use and water management. This constrains humanity’s ability to protect our planet’s climate and life-sustaining functions. The substantial body of research we review reveals that forest, water and energy interactions provide the foundations for carbon storage, for cooling terrestrial surfaces and for distributing water resources. Forests and trees must be recognized as prime regulators within the water, energy and carbon cycles. If these functions are ignored, planners will be unable to assess, adapt to or mitigate the impacts of changing land cover and climate. Our call to action targets a reversal of paradigms, from a carbon-centric model to one that treats the hydrologic and climate-cooling effects of trees and forests as the first order of priority. For reasons of sustainability, carbon storage must remain a secondary, though valuable, by-product. The effects of tree cover on climate at local, regional and continental scales offer benefits that demand wider recognition. The forest- and tree-centered research insights we review and analyze provide a knowledge-base for improving plans, policies and actions. Our understanding of how trees and forests influence water, energy and carbon cycles has important implications, both for the structure of planning, management and governance institutions, as well as for how trees and forests might be used to improve sustainability, adaptation and mitigation efforts.”
Quantifiably, forests represent only a small proportion of terrestrial biomes, but this represents an important example. Additional areas of interest, perhaps far more important include, and are not limited to: soil ecology, wetlands, croplands, grasslands, built environments, and (not least) the ecological role animals in biogeochemical cycling.
On the discussion of cloud, it is apparent the deeply integrated biological mediation of cloud nucleation over the continents is ignored. Atmospheric organic and bio-aerosols as hygroscopic cloud condensation nuclei.
Ecosystem change by human activity affects the temperature and hydrology through biophysical exchanges of water and energy between the land and the atmosphere. Indigenous peoples tend to know this intuitively, and it appears those studying such matters for decades, with super computers, many thousands of scientists, are only starting to get to this conclusion. It sounds trite and baffles the mind, some might find this offensive, but it is a cold hard truth.
In a healthy water cycle, while some rain enters streams and rivers directly and is carried off to sea, most rain water is absorbed by the soils in situ, where it lands. The rain gives life to the soil and sets many biological processes in motion, where it is essential for stable soil carbon storage and cooling the biosphere.
The two competing paradigms are not mutually exclusive:
Mainstream paradigm: Climate change is primarily a consequence of elevated greenhouse gas emissions, largely from the burning of fossil fuels.
Classic paradigm: Climate change is a consequence of global ecological destruction, especially of soils, soil biota, above-ground flora and fauna, and bodies of water; including disruptions of carbon, water, and energy cycles.
While the mainstream paradigm is virtually ubiquitous in discussions of climate change today, the classic paradigm will never cease to bear fundamental truths. It will persist regardless of the ebbs and flows of contemporary science communication.
“BPL: For the past 170 years, CO2 has been responsible for 85% of the variance of temperature. Google “analysis of variance.””
AR6 Figure SPM2 panel c would tend to refute your assertion. It shows CH4 having about 2/3 of the impact of CO2
@ Genosse Schürle behind his back
There aint no / herrscht keine / water scarcity/ Mangel an Wasser/ on nearth.
Science has shown that,….
Thor Heyerdahl was once interwiewed in his office where he had a classical Globus on his writing desk, and a Protocoll and a telephone and hardly anything more.
Heyerdahl turned that globus the right way arould onto the eyes of the journalists and into the cameras and said: “Look for yourselves, this is not the planet earth, it is the planet Sea!”
and he was right.
Comment:
Landcrabs, I say. Landcrabs. I say no more, Landcrabs!
Genosse, there is Jacob Våthatt and Mari Vassause as good as can be, I am scared and alarmed and have to control the Waterstaat in my cellar and keep my Pompers/ Pumps strictly in order all the time.
Why settle and why worship on the wrong side of the globe?
Dusty desert walkers blind believers and flat earthers, I say,
How often shall I have to repeat that?
Existential Threat Inflation has been a thing since the day worst case scenario assessment began.
As has existential threat minimization. I’ll give you one guess which is the greater problem….
+1.
Gavin’s response is as expected. While all his points are reasonable as points, the problem is the things that happen to the planet are not only determined by things that happen in the climate science world. I’m not convinced Gavin, et al. are all that expert in trophic flows, e.g. There are at least two aspects of the worst-case scenario probability that I don’t recall Gavin, or anyone else, adequately addressing:
1. There is no parallel to the current situation. It is dangerous to assume conditions never before dealt with will mimic known situations in the past.
1a. It has never been the case that all ecosystems were simultaneously degraded. All other events sans Chicxulub did not occur with a degrading of the environment first by one of its species. Would that not affect resilience?
1b. In the past it was *only* heating. Do climate models include the poisoning of the ecosystem? No. Do they include the land use changes caused by humans on top of the warming? No. Do they include the plastics issue devastating wildlife all over the planet and pretty much showing up everywhere and in pretty much all living things, or rapidly moving in that direction? No. Do they include the poisoning of the waters of the world with chemicals from 70 years of incredibly short-sighted changes to farming? No. Does the destruction of the ecosystem happening completely independent of anything directly related to climate warming get included in models? No. Would it have an effect on those trophic flows and therefore ecosystem destruction and therefore the acceleration of warming? Yes. Not in the models.
2. Rates of change do have effects. More than one paper has addressed this. The combination of speed of change and amplitude of change *matters*, which Gavin *does* know, and yet he sees little reason for alarm. The Earth system has literally never been pushed at anything like the current rate other than Chicxulub and it took the planet millions of years to recover biodiversity and functioning, and it was a very different ecosystem when it did. Do want a very different ecosystem? It is simply not reasonable to me to downplay the fact of changes coming thousands of times faster than ever before.
These issues and more are not captured in current climate models to my knowledge. Being sanguine about them even as we watch the numbers of species after species plummet. We are already at collapse numbers across many, many species, many of which we will probably never know existed because they will be gone before we ever have a chance to find them… and we don’t know how critical they are. If they are keystone species, their disappearance will lead to massive ecosystem changes. This is not in the models.
I understand a climate scientist only focusing on their piece of the puzzle, but I’d warn against maintaining that posture because… this time is different.
I think there may be interesting and unspeakable reasons for “Gavin’s response being as expected”: it is, of course, unrealistic to believe that there is any kind of freedom of expression for leading scientists in a “democracy” like the one in the US, which has for many decades been faster and faster degrading into an oiligarchy – a fossil capital liberal-totalitarian dictatorship – ruled by senile cleptocrats like Biden, Trump, Pelosi etc., now just as old as the last generation of soviet nomenklatura 1980-90.
The “interesting” question for the non-oligarchic parts of humanity faced with this prospect of a still more tyrannic, climatically and ecosystemic destabilizing and warlike global race to the bottom of all bottoms here not being: who will be the american Putin, with Biden/Trump assuming the role of the late Boris Yeltsin? Will it be de Santis, propped up by madmen like Musk and Thiel?
Under the postmodern or rather second-and-global-coming-of-fascism-version of “freedom of speech”, it is far more impossible to raise this question to the general public, than it was to get any kind of rational debate about the situation fx. in Italy a hundred years ago, when hundreds of thousands of Mussolini’s fascist thugs had been murdering and terrorizing since october 1920 (since the liberal government of Giolitti had decided to pay eighty percent of their salaries as officers to all demobilized officers from WWI who joined the fascist death-squads). Thus is the quality of entertainment in our times, as precisely envisioned by Neil Postman 1985, when Reagan had been acting president since his succesfull plot with ayatollah Khomeiny 1980.
While American democracy is indeed under threat, we are not yet at the point where someone in Gavin’s position has reason to self-censor in a forum such as this.
The oligarchic system in place rather works by making it unlikely that fora such as this ever get any traction in the wider cultural space. Internet kitty pictures? Sure. The latest ‘it guy/girl?’ Obligatory. Existential threats? Too damn depressing. Who wants to hear about that?
Dear climateers,
I would like to read a kind of 101 introduction to the soil – moisture – precipitation feedback.
I find lots of scientific articles, but nothing introductory in textbook style.
Any hints?
Cheers, Marcus
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=soil+moisture+precipitation+feedback+textbook
Quite a selection there at the top, eh?
The thing is, you would have to be more specific about what counts as “101” for you personally… what’s your background?
Recently, a couple of people have similarly asked about “simplified but detailed” explanations for the climate system’s energy balance, which to me at least doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s possible to explain the fundamental physics principles at work to people with little background, but if you want to study a specialized area you would have to take the prerequisites so you can “do the math” at that level.
Perhaps if you were more specific about what you are looking for, someone here with more specialized knowledge could give you some guidance.
My background is mathematical physics MSc. / research with numerical simulations in industry, my climate background is personal interest – have read Pierrehumberts book and completed Dave Archers coursera course
For sure this is absolutely nothing compared to Your daunting record of competence but my question was posed *crystal clear*, I know how to use Google and if You can’t give a meaningful answer that contributes something please do not answer at all, thank You.
Marcus, lighten up, dude. Sometimes people ask a question using a phrase they saw somewhere… I don’t know that what it means in their heads is the same as what’s in mine.
And I’m still not clear what you are looking for. Stipulating that I have zero expertise on the subject, here’s a couple of what seems to me informative discussions of the topic (see discussions):
https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/9/1107/2018/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hyp.14332
OK, can you tell me what a 101 textbook on this would be like? I would expect to have to take multiple courses in different areas to be qualified to even begin evaluating such papers. (And how it relates to global climate… which, from my limited perspective, it doesn’t much, given how localized the effects are. )
If your google searching hasn’t found a “free introductory course at MIT” or whatever, maybe there just isn’t one at this time. Again, if you can be more specific, there are meteorology people here who might be able to help.
“And I’m still not clear what you are looking for”
I am beginning to suspect this is a personal problem.
I say explicitly I would like to see an introductory text about the subject and not scientific articles working on the subject, you keep posting links to papers .
“If your google searching hasn’t found a “free introductory course at MIT” or whatever, maybe there just isn’t one at this time”
This, and the “maybe”, is why I was asking here . If You don’t have something, please leave the room for someone who maybe has seen or has a copy or a link to an introduction to the soil moisture precipitation feedback, and stop feeding your stream of consciousness and silly gatekeepery under my question
Marcus, I’m trying to help with your quest, but you seem unwilling to engage in a useful dialogue. Try reading this (the introduction):
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22394-7
When I read this (and other references), my understanding is that this is a fairly recent, very “un-settled” area of scientific inquiry with respect to climate change, being explored by scientists with a wide range of specialties. I just assume someone with your background would reach the same conclusion.
So I’m trying to suggest that maybe you need to try a different set of sites/sources, not just “climateers”… meteorology, hydrology, soil science, and so on, because they are more likely to know of more elementary books that would be useful.
For me, the introduction in this paper is a pretty well-written “introductory textbook” for the current state of affairs.
Marcus,
I don’t know if this helps (not my area), but I’ll chime in on the off chance… maybe “impact of climate change on the hydrologic cycle” should also cover the more narrow topic of feedback?
Also, and maybe less intuitively, a textbook on geohydrology (not hydrogeology) and perusal of tables of contents for relevant chapters. I wouldn’t necessarily expect a book on soil science to cover your question.
Marcus,
The “textbook-style” introduction you seek is probably not yet written. The Soil Moisture – Rainfall Feedback is a complex beast and until its complexities are better understood, that ‘textbook’ will be rather short. Perhaps the best you will get is a research paper or two with long introductions explaining this ‘complex beast’, perhaps akin to that in Yin et al (2014) or in Yang et al (2018) (which sounds a bit Taoistical, so perhaps a propitious sign).
BTW if You would have invested just a little care into inspection of Your own search results You might have gotten a clue why I am asking my question on this page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle
The control of soil moisture on surface albedo and Bowen ratio is the fundamental basis of the proposed soil moisture–rainfall feedback mechanism. The water content in the upper soil layer affects these two important properties of the land surface such that both variables decrease with any increase in the water content of the top soil layer. The direct effect of soil moisture on surface albedo implies that wet soil moisture conditions enhance net solar radiation. The direct effect of soil moisture on Bowen ratio dictates that wet soil moisture conditions would tend to enhance net terrestrial radiation at the surface through cooling of surface temperature, reduction of upwards emissions of terrestrial radiation, and simultaneous increase in atmospheric water vapor content and downwards flux of terrestrial radiation. Thus, under wet soil moisture conditions, both components of net radiation are enhanced, resulting in a larger total flux of heat from the surface into the boundary layer.
http://web.mit.edu/eltahir/www/a_wrr98d_files/1998%20Eltahir%20soil%20moisture-feedback%20WRR.pdf
I’m with MA Rodger on this one. M. Schurle, regardless of which name he uses (he went through two different ones at Skeptical Science. in the thread linked to previously, and has used at least two here), has nothing but a bunch of out-of-context quotes and links to science that he does not understand, giving the appearance of being sciency.
We all know that wet surface are cooler than dry ones.
We all know that cloud cover affects solar radiation.
What M. Schurle has never been able to explain or provide evidence for is the foundation of his Grand Theory, in which he claimed in his rambling last year was based on the idea that a 1% rise in surface evaporation would lead to a 1% increase in cloud cover. It won’t, and M. Schurle has no idea how things like cloud formation, precipitation, and the water cycle work overall. The climate modellers understand this all far better than M. Schurle, and their results do not agree with his fantasies. Local cooling is not global cooling. Watering your lawn will make it cooler than the dry pavement beside it, so you won’t burn your bare feet if you walk on it, but it won’t cool the planet.
The “best” that he can do is provide links or quotes to elementary web pages or his own misguided truthiness. When challenged, he will ultimately resort to providing links to basic meteorology stuff, pretending that he knows what it means and others don’t. Then he’ll move to personal attacks, because when it comes to his Grand Theory, there is no “there” there.
M. Schurle wants us to believe that he actually has a step two. “And then a miracle occurs”. I won’t hold my breath waiting.
http://sciencecartoonsplus.com/images/home-page-miracle.gif
@Bla Lowbob says: – ” I’m with MA Rodger on this one. ”
Huhu — surprise – i guess you got married in Australia.
BL: – ” Watering your lawn will make it cooler … but it won’t cool the planet.
The “best” that he can do is provide links or quotes to elementary web pages. ”
— Your problem is that you don’t even know what’s in the links and tables you post yourself..
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=3&t=132&&a=141#137603
BL.: at 02:35 AM on August 15, 2021: – ” In that post, YOU provide a graph from the IPCC report, which shows the estimated temperature response due to a variety of factors over the last 100 to 150 years.
“Land use reflection and irrigation” is the second-last bar on the right. Note that the calculated effect is minor cooling, not warming. ”
— What should I think of such schizophrenic bubbling? – Of course, irrigation and water on the (earth) surface has a cooling effect – every child knows that.
The values given in the graph (0.06 – 0.14°C ) also fit well with my own calculations.
The fact that you, as an alleged climate expert, moderate a blog in Australia is actually a scandal. You drive water-cooled automobiles your whole life – cool yours Skin with 2L of water every day – have a water-cooled heating system at home that keeps your water-cooled cerebellum warm – but foolishly believe that the world is NOT water-cooled ???
This is ridiculous.
By the way, I myself cool LED light / PV modules and other surface mounted devices semiconductors with water – which generally increases the efficiency by about three times.
If you are looking for any links, which I have mostly already posted 3 times and which give you well-founded information, proof and indices about my climate protection concept / lower temps and SLR & protection from drought and flooding —
then just look for the red letters. smh
Just as I figured. Nothing but insults, out-of-context quotes, and complete confusion over local.effects vs. global effects.
Hr Schürle
Now it is rain cathastrophies in Schwaben & Bayern again, and time even fror you to begin learning some physics and meteorology.
I learnt that in highschool allready from a very good book, Atem der Erde by Theo Löbsack. In translation. It has been my elementary learning of meteorology ever since to my great advantage. Adolph and your antroposiophers can go home after Theo Löbsack., that class enemy of yours.
Question: Why does it suddenly rain in southern California and 50 millimeter per day in Death Walley?
It is not because the Schüirlers were there, but because there was moisture enough in the air which is normally is,….. and chill on the top of that. Namely Halos in the sun, to which you give a damn because it was not told by the Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät.
Nothing was done on the ground neither in southern California nor in Death Walley nor in Oberbayern. It is the Jørungandr above and the sea serpent below you see, that make it together in the sun.
And it is why the Halo, the solar wheel and the sun cross was seen as a symbol of fertility in the bronse and iron age.
Litt:
Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weisse
in Brüdersphären Wettgesang
und ihre vorgeschriebne Weisse
vollendet sie mit Donnergang!
SANN
We were in Venetia end of July as rain came so we decided to go home. Uphill in the alps, the rivers had been tiny creeks for several weeks, and the wide riverbanks were full of camping waggons on that cheapest ground with only narrow exits in the river walls. That were totally clogged and waggons were floating and rushing downstream as we passed by,
When shall they learn?
Over in Bayern we slept in the car and not just kits and dogs, but long frogs were pouring down onn the resonant roof all through the night.
If you really whish to study a rushing river, then look up Bramaputra with Google maps. Assam province has got the highest seasonal perscipitation in the world
The physics ofv such things are to be known and the alternatives to0 such physics to be degraded and mounted in the pillary. and announced trhere.
That is what could help.
Typical Mari Vassause as explained by Theo Löbsack, that is what you rather ought to read, to study, and to sell.
@carbonito: – ” @ Genosse Schürle behind his back
There aint no / herrscht keine / water scarcity/ Mangel an Wasser/ on nearth. ”
— With that sentence, you ousted Victor + J Doug Swallow from the top of the climate change denier hit list. From today – you are the forum clown no. 1.
https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/media-centre/focus/2022/european-heatwave-update-drought-and-extended-range-forecasts
Many thanks Macias. Also thanks to MA Rodgers, this was helpful.
Cheers
Marcus
The ERA5 re-analysis has been posted for July showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.38ºC, up on June’s +0.30ºC and the second highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date, the 2022 highest anomaly being March’s +0.39ºC and lowest Feb’s +0.23ºC.
July 2022 becomes the 2nd warmest July on the ERA5 record, below 2019 (+0.40ºC) and above 2016 (+0.36ºC), 2021, 2020, 2018 & 2017 (+0.26ºC) and then a bit of a gap to July 2015 (+0.15ºC) in 8th spot. July 2022 becomes 31st highest all-month anomaly on the ERA5 record.
In terms of the start of 2022, after seven months 2022 continues at 5th warmest.
…….. Jan-Jul Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.49ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +0.48ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.38ºC … … … +0.40ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. +0.37ºC … … … +0.34ºC … … … 4th
2022 .. +0.30ºC
2018 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 6th
2021 .. +0.21ºC … … … +0.27ºC … … … 5th
2010 .. +0.18ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 8th
2015 .. +0.17ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 7th
2007 .. +0.10ºC … … … +0.04ºC … … … 14th
1998 .. +0.10ºC … … … +0.02ºC … … … 16th
The Copernicus ERA5 July 2022 web-page has a box with a daily July anomaly animation for Europe with a link to fuller coverage of the recent hetwave.
Globally the high July average anomalies over Antarctica are perhaps most prominent.
A tad “scorchy,” then.
The GISTEMP LOTI numbers have been posted for July showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.90ºC, a tad down on June’s +0.92ºC and roughly average for the monthly anomalies of the year-to-date, the 2022 highest anomaly being March’s +1.04ºC and joint lowest Apr’s & May’s +0.83ºC.
July 2022 becomes the =3rd warmest July on the GISTEMP record, below 2019 (+0.94ºC) & 2021 (+0.91ºC), equaling 2020 and above 2016 (+0.84ºC), 2018, 2017, 2009, 2015 & 2011 (+0.73ºC) in 10th spot. July 2022 becomes =48th highest all-month anomaly on the GISTEMP record.
In terms of the start of 2022, after seven months 2022 continues at 5th warmest.
…….. Jan-Jul Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +1.08ºC … … … +1.01ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +1.08ºC … … … +1.02ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.97ºC … … … +0.98ºC … … … 3rd
2017 .. +0.96ºC … … … +0.92ºC … … … 4th
2022 .. +0.90ºC
2018 .. +0.83ºC … … … +0.85ºC … … … 6th
2015 .. +0.83ºC … … … +0.90ºC … … … 5th
2021 .. +0.80ºC … … … +0.84ºC … … … 7th
2010 .. +0.77ºC … … … +0.72ºC … … … 9th
2007 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.66ºC … … … 12th
2014 .. +0.71ºC … … … +0.75ºC … … … 8th
So does that rate as “scorchio”? I think with the La Niña running strong (MEI is given as -2.2 for Jun-Jul, the strongest La Niña since 2010 although there is a bit of a lag between ENSO & the SAT wobbles it creates), perhaps when adjusted for ENSO the 2022 SAT do rate as being “scorchio”.
Still bone dry in SE England. Welcome to the future?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nJZ-dQ8dSM
Dr.A.Lea
I see there has been rain enough in Scotland and less and less further south. There seems to be severe draught now also in Paris and southern Germany.
This is all suggested and supposed by James Lovelock at the beginning of the climate dispute. Lovelock said that Sahara will come to southern England, so he must hurry up now and buy shares and land on Svalbard.
At the same time, the climate and weather seems to have been perfect this yeat 2022 in Ukraina, where troubble is of another kind rather of sheere antropogene nature using white phosphor, napalm, pure Vodka and amphetamines in the fields.
Plus professional Industrial fungicides, herbicides and pesticides.
U235 and Pu 238- may then be the next when the traditional remedies are failing more and more..
I can tell from Norway that the weather has rather been ideal this year like in Scotland.
GOD is Norwegian you see, and gives us all the advantages and hardly any of the disadvantages. The desert walkers and flat earthers, blind believers further south and west must learn to behave, to observe and to read and to listen , to worship, and to believe, and to understand all things first.
There is enough of holy water and sunshine here if it is just not fought and ridiculed.
There is rubbish and dirt enough and we need no further burnt organics and terrapreta to be pissed on.
What can be scarce is enough ice and snow.
Everytime snow falls in Washington and New Yoyk they damn and swear and condemn it,
.
GOD may hear that and serve as they request it. .
“Lovelock said that Sahara will come to southern England”. Unless climate model projections are predicting the descending branch of the Hadley cell will move 25-30 degrees further north, I don’t see that happening. The UK is in the middle latitudes and located close to the polar front jet stream so I don’t see how, from a dynamical meteorology perspective, the UK’s climate can change from temperate maritime to arid.
There is no need to exaggerate to get the message across that climate change consequences are massive and negative, in fact it is probably counterproductive.
Yes, there I must agree.
Even Lovelock is not right on everything and too many people also think that the earth is cylindric.
Knowing a lot about standing waves, I can hardly believe that all those hadley cells will moove northward because of global watming, they may change intensity for instance. rather than major location and patterns.
But wherever there are meandering patterns such at the jet streams and sea currents, that is likely also to change oscillation modi in sudden and dramatic ways.. That means rather sudden, regional, dramatic surprizes..
But things ought to talk for itself, and exaggeration in theese things to get then message across is counterproductive. One should set on critical and responsible understanding rather than on fear and professional political commercial magics when it comes to existencial things…
There have been increasing reports on “HTF” (high tide flooding) recently. Do I sense a reluctance to say “SLC” (sea level change) for some reason (Seaports With Sea Level Change – 23)?
Were we alarmist for warning these days were coming, and that it was obvious? Maybe we need a new word, “middlist” or “snoozist” for people who have such faith that the extremes are just too unlikely to be counted that we can just keep hitting the snooze button and shutting off the alarm – and keep coming up wrong about that.
Time’s up. If anyone still doubts that, god help them because we are seeing doublings and beyond far sooner than scientists predicted, as I predicted. It’s all about how you think about the problem, not how much dta you know or can cite.
Think differently. We’ve never been here before. The old ways of thinking about our large-scale threats no longer apply.
Article: https://www.yahoo.com/news/bad-news-study-reveals-the-arctic-is-warming-much-faster-than-previously-thought-180850752.html
Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00498-3
Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/mikarantane/status/1557745255251726337
…claims that the Arctic increase over the last 43 has been 3.8 times faster than the global average.
Barents Sea warming paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-13568-5
Areas in the Barents Sea near Novaya Zemlya have warmed up to seven times the global average
Yes it’s warming. From the 1940’s through 70’s it was cooling. Many feared a coming ice age. And yes there was something called a “little ice age” some time ago, when the Thames froze over and agriculture was seriously threatened. If you want to tie this to fossil fuels you need to do more than whine about the weather.
if you download the data for Lake Mead water level, it’s obvious that the level has bee declining for 40 years R^2 0,84 to a linear OLS fit. That is not weather. – https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/hydrodata/
“Most of the Northern Hemisphere has experienced declines in the number of snow-covered spring days over the past 5 decades. ” That is not weather. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-spring-snow-cover
“Since the 1960s, a dramatic change in extreme precipitation events has been observed on the global and regional scales….” that is not weather. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94486-w#
“Even though events cannot automatically be attributed to climate change, analysis of the changes over decades provides plausible indications of a connection with the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans. Adapting to increasing risks due to climate change will be a challenge.” That is not weather. https://www.munichre.com/en/company/media-relations/media-information-and-corporate-news/media-information/2022/natural-disaster-losses-2021.html
https://skepticalscience.com/pics/GlobalCooling.JPG
If we could get rid of your ignorant posts this site would be a lot better off. Part of the reason people have gotten rude on here is because we have to continually debunk your bullshit.
I have created an application, the Climate State App, which can be considered a major climate related content platform. Lots of content from NASA, various videos, and news. Large parts are also available for audio playback. Regular updates will extend the content.
RealClimate is kind of featured with the RSS feed.
Release: The Climate State App now available at the Microsoft Store https://climatestate.com/2022/08/12/release-the-climate-state-app-now-available-at-the-microsoft-store/
“The initial carbon release during the PETM onset thus occurred
over at least 4,000 yr. Using estimates of 2,500–4,500 Pg C for the
initial carbon release, the *maximum sustained PETM carbon release
rate was therefore 0.6–1.1 Pg C yr−1*. Given currently available
palaeorecords, we conclude that the *present anthropogenic carbon
release rate (∼10 Pg C yr−1)* is unprecedented during the Cenozoic
(past 66 Myr). Possible known consequences of the rapid man-made
carbon emissions have been extensively discussed elsewhere. 2,30,34,35
Regarding impacts on ecosystems, the present/future rate of climate
change and ocean acidification12,36,37 is too fast for many species to
adapt38, which is likely to result in widespread future extinctions in
marine and terrestrial environments that will substantially exceed
those at the PETM (ref. 13). *Given that the current rate of
carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have
effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a
fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections*.” (My exclamation marks, KJ)
http://climatechange.lta.org/wp-content/uploads/cct/2015/03/ZeebeEtAl-NGS16.pdf
I repeat: “We have entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections”.
Wally Broecker was right again, when he warned against too much belief in the climate models:
““The climate is an angry beast,” Broecker liked to say, “and we are poking it with a sharp stick.” He meant that lurches like those seen in ice age times might happen today. Wrong, according to computer model teams. They see nothing in the current climate system susceptible to a catastrophic shift. Broecker pointed out, however, that the models are designed to be stable. Models are adjusted to represent the climate we have known over the past few millennia — an unusually stable period. And now we are shoving the temperature up at an unprecedented rate. If we keep pushing into unknown territory, we could find that Broecker was right again.”
https://ncse.ngo/wally-broeckers-intuition
I think the rapid developments since 2015 in extreme weather events underline Broecker’s caution. This can also be said concerning notable shortcomings of the IPCC modelling of the future:
1) “For example, the acceleration in fossil fuel CO2 emissions is tracking the worst case scenarios used by the IPCC AR4 (Copenhagen Diagnosis 2009). Consequently, atmospheric CO2 is increasing ten times faster than any rate detected in ice core data over the last 22,000 years.”
“Satellite and tide-gauge measurements show that sea level rise is accelerating faster than expected. Rahmstorf, Foster, and Cazenave (2012) compares the historical sea level tide gauge data from Church and White (2011) and recent satellite altimetry sea level data (orange and red in Figure 4, respectively) to the 2001 and 2007 IPCC report model projections (blue and green in Figure 4, respectively). The observational data in Figure 4 are aligned so that extending the satellite best-fit line (red) back to 1990 will match the IPCC projections at that date, where the IPCC TAR model runs begin.”
“Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.”
https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=51
2) Already up to 2018, the warming of arctic permafrost was running as fast as projected by IPCC for around 2090 “Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.” https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5179760
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL082187
3) “Analysis of the causes of IPCC’s failure to identify the likely worst climate change impacts attributes the IPCCs underestimation of climate change impacts to: (a) the “consensus” methods of IPCC processes and, (b) that the relevant sciences follow epistemic norms designed to prevent false positive conclusions about cause and effect. This chapter argues that given the enormous potential harms from climate change, a precautionary science that allows scientists to identify all scientifically plausible harms is required by ethics and international legal principles.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-46259-8_1
4) “Climate change is causing greater impacts than expected at lower temperatures than anticipated, disrupting natural systems and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, according to the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/climate-change-already-worse-than-expected-un-report
KVJ,
blah blah blah, as they say.
Do you think that experts didn’t communicate the risks of nuclear war … low probability, but disastrous conequences… to various leaders around the world prior to the development of the war in Ukraine?
Do you think “ethics and international legal principles” are going to change the behavior of various regimes around the world, dependent on fossil fuels, willing to poison and dismember political opponents who aren’t even a serious threat to their power?
The world is what it is. If you want to “be realistic” about worst-case scenarios, you have to include the rise of fascism as the global norm, at which point nothing at all will be done to deal with climate change.
So, yes, those of us who understand complex non-linear systems are well aware of how chaos is always possible. So, OK, what’s your plan? Rend some garments, shout from the rooftops, blah blah blah?
Sorry, but nobody is listening, because people tune out really really really bad stuff even more than they have tuned out just the nasty stuff we are experiencing now.
It’s going to be slow and unpleasant and chancy, but that’s what needs to be focused on. No Nirvana, just getting done whatever we can.
Thanks for your excellent summary Karsten.
Epitaph on an emaciated earth: Here lies Humanity. “Climate Impacts” were much worse “than previously thought.”
Some thoughts for your consideration –
1) Fossil carbon and uranium are not now, have never been, and will never be “forms of energy.” They are underground forms of matter, primarily used by nation states as fuels of mechanized warfare, the fuels of war..
2) Economics are man-made, and always function under a philosophy of Political-Economy.
3) A civilization, with a fraudulent globalized economic system, that cannot understand and acknowledge reality is a sickened, corrupted and temporary one.
Welcome to the third decade of the 21st century and its globalized fossil and fissile corporate fascism.
Brian Dodge — “Even though events cannot automatically be attributed to climate change, analysis of the changes over decades provides plausible indications of a connection with the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans. Adapting to increasing risks due to climate change will be a challenge.” That is not weather.
V: No, Brian, it is not weather. It is climate. The climate is changing and yes, over the last few years it’s been getting warmer. And as I said, there have been periods in the past where the climate was changing in the other direction, getting colder — in the case of the Little Ice Age much colder. And the recent events that have thrown so many into a panic are indeed weather events, possibly due to recent warming, possibly due to other causes. If you cherry pick what suits you and ignore everything else then you can find all sorts of “evidence” to support your pet theory.
Victor the Troll,
You boldly inform us “If you cherry pick what suits you and ignore everything else then you can find all sorts of “evidence” to support your pet theory.” And you should know, given your long long experience of doing exactly that.
V: ” If you cherry pick what suits you and ignore everything else then you can find all sorts of “evidence” to support your pet theory.”
BPL: Or you can do actual research and statistical analysis.
Say what you want, like Trumps “It’s called the weather”, but of course “climate” is never directly neither measured nor experienced. Always only what is happening “now”, meaning a little while ago. Our thirty years average definition is purely man-made. Nature doesn’t care about how we define things.
You can say “keep calm and carry on” as much as you like, but when food shortages, mass starvation, energy shortages etc. happen because of extreme drought, flooding etc., happens to millions and millions, they won’t just keep calm. Because that’s impossible. When atomic power stations can’t be cooled because the water in the rivers is too hot, well, then they can’t. When rivers dry away, well then they do. Then you can say that that happened once maybe here or maybe there, in 1354 or whatever, but: 1) it didn’t happen all over the place at once. 2) How many people lived then? Only a tiny fraction of the number now living, and at much lower levels of energy consumption per capita etc. Again you can say: it was warmer for some five thousand years in the first half of the Eem interglacial, sea level was six to nine meters higher etc., and that’t the facts as science know them, but then incoming solar radiation at 65 deg. North was some 30 watts per m2 higher than now, causing the Greenland ice surface to be some hundred meters lower than now in average, causing some 1-2 meters of sea level rise, in it’s turn probably causing the buttressing of the big ice shelves in West Antarctica to destabilize to give way so they collapsed, causing maybe another 4-8 meters of sea level rise. Etc. But again: how many homo sapiens were living then? According to science maybe some tens of thousands, most of them in Africa and maybe the Mediterranean and Middle East, together with some tens of thousands of neanderthalers further north maybe.
Either way, that’s totally different from the global situation now, with near eight billion people living on Earth, and whether you want to recognize it or not, that’s going to have consequences, as Albert Bartlett with mild and dry sarcasm try to remind us here concerning our consumption levels of fossil fuels etc. (as always falling on almost only deaf ears, especially among billionaires and their politicians of course):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4 .
“”We can adapt to a certain degree, but we’ll never catch up with climate change,” said Fred Hattermann, who studies hydroclimatic risks at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “Surprises will keep coming.””
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-10/europe-s-low-water-levels-threaten-rhine-river-hit-80b-trade-lifeline
““We haven’t analysed fully this year’s event because it is still ongoing,” said Andrea Toreti of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. “There were no other events in the past 500 [years] similar to the drought of 2018. But this year, I think, is worse.”
He said there was “a very high risk of dry conditions” continuing over the next three months, adding that without effective mitigation drought intensity and frequency would “increase dramatically over Europe, both in the north and in the south”.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/13/europes-rivers-run-dry-as-scientists-warn-drought-could-be-worst-in-500-years
Tell me: how much “mitigation” can you expect from our leading lights in the next three months? Easy: What have they done the last three decades? Exactly nothing but business as extremely usual. Plus verbal junk, zero-messaging, “our thoughts and prayers”, dither and delay, because they don’t live as most of us do. They are VIPs, they don’t give a shit about the 99,9 pct., they are the pharaos of the 21. century. They are the psychopaths of our times, and mankind was always ruled by it’s psychopaths. In somewhat differing ways, but still.
“I know a lot of people working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis.”
McGuire finished writing Hothouse Earth at the end of 2021. He includes many of the record high temperatures that had just afflicted the planet, including extremes that had struck the UK. A few months after he completed his manuscript, and as publication loomed, he found that many of those records had already been broken. “That is the trouble with writing a book about climate breakdown,” says McGuire. “By the time it is published it is already out of date. That is how fast things are moving.”
Among the records broken during the book’s editing was the announcement that a temperature of 40.3C was reached in east England on 19 July, the highest ever recorded in the UK. (The country’s previous hottest temperature, 38.7C, was in Cambridge in 2019.)” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/30/total-climate-meltdown-inevitable-heatwaves-global-catastrophe
Musk is blabbering on as his oligarch class collegues do, about one million men on Mars in 2050 etc… Well – good luck with that, baby, and please: stay out there if you don’t mind. Don’t come back. It’s enough that most of your space junk comes back.
These people are stupid, that’s why they got so rich, and still show no sign whatsoever of having got their measure. They have no measure, they are intelligent, but/and unbelievably stupid. And still none of all our free-speech-fellas out there dare to tell us that. They are all on salaries from the rich beasts. It’s called democracy, but democrazy is what it really is, just a smarter form of dictatorship and oligarchy. “Democracy” is a big, fat lie if ever there was one. “Free speech”: the right to blabber on, but only if it has no consequences but the usual nonsense.
What will happen, then? Well, what does it look like? WWIII is looking much more probable than any kind of cutting CO2 emissions. War for oil and water, it’s going on as we speak, it’s being planned. The US is spending 800 billion dollars a year on war, and just how much is fracking-Biden’s and coal-Manchin’s “climate” bill? A few percent of that, over a few years. Don’t make me laugh.
“Everyone understood Hitler at once” wrote the norwegian poet Georg Johannesen in 1983. Only very few seem to “understand” (be willing to understand) democracy, climate science and basic facts of life, he added.
Mankind resembles a global natural catastrophic event like the end-permian. They followed Reagan, a mafioso from Hollywood promising low taxes for the rich plus Armageddon, as they followed Hitler, Napoleon etc. Now Trump. Then de Santis. And so on for ever. They always admire and follow idiots. I’m tired of all their endless bullshit.
Hr Solar Jim
“fossil carbon and uranium are not now, have never been, and will never be “forms of energy”
that is hardly true.
Energy is measured in Joule, Newtonmeter, Volt ampere seconds, Electronvolts, watt hours, Ampere- hours times Volt, in Calories.. horsepowers times hours ……. and so on,
Theese units can be converted directly over into each other.
Problem: A woundup clock that will run for a while, a fully charged battery,… is that forms of energy or maybe practical things that contain forms of energy so called “energy carriers”? Yes or no.
To get any energy out of it you may have to refine things, think of natural uranium for instance.
But we have the conscept of Enthalpy H and delta H to our help. .
It takes a lot of energy to split water up into H +H +O, that can react back quite violently and give off an enormeous lot of energy namely theoretically what it took to split that water apart.
It takes a tremendous lot of energy to make metallic aluminium, thus quite an energy carrier
Other materials like Hg(CNO)2 is a white material that detonates into Hg+ 2CO + N2. when ignited, Mercury fulminate is also a dramatic energy- carrier..
Things are said to have “heat of formation” from its elements, called its enthalpy, that can be both positive and negative. Not more strange than a wound up clock or the opposite, something that can spontaneously suck up energy., that will spontaneously cool if you mix it or pull the trigger.
And we discuss fossile fuels in terms of this, potencial energy, enthalpy in H that is defined in joules or calories, or in kilowatt hours or calories pr gallon or ton or pr bottle.
The Entalphy of TNT is used also for war, yes that is so. .
This should be my one reply to such basic assertions and questioning. You ask:
“Problem: A woundup clock that will run for a while, a fully charged battery,… is that forms of energy or maybe practical things that contain forms of energy so called “energy carriers”? Yes or no.”
Yes, a wound clock carries the input as elastic energy, and an electro-chemical cell carries the input as chemical energy. Both devices are forms of matter. Their internal arrangements store the input energy.
Other readers may want to consider the universal and historic reference to units of energy in terms of “Tons of Oil Equivalent.” A civilization that has “Ton” as a unit of energy is, as indicated above, corrupted.
OK.
That conscept of oil eqvivalents is often used about natural gas, one should specify LNG or at atmospheric pressure. But maybe adequate if you compare oil and gasfrields.
But think of having to compare hydroelectrics by known waterfalls, windmills onshore and offshore, coal minery and plants, nuclear minery refinery and plants… Further discuss costs volumes and weights, and thickness and lengths of the high voltage leads, heighth of the masts, and sell that to the consumers and the voters..
Maybe that is what takes quite a lot of corruption also?
Hermann Helmholz speculated about solar radiation and suggested that the sun falls together in its gravitational frield at a certain speed. And its effect was equal to a train with waggons of coal so and so long pr second or pr year. And concluded: “Thus, the solar system must be about 25 000 years old!”
Shortly after SIR Arthur Eddington headhunted Einstein, accepted E = mC^2 and suggested hydrogen fusion into helium.. And in that way gave Darwin enough time for his theory of evolusion.
Quite corrupted, I must say, also for other reasons, was an editor of popular astronomy who wrote that “Pressure is energy,… wherefrore vacuum is also energy!” and thus explained and launched the so called vacuum- energy. That is most possibloy a mis- cosception.
What is rather plausible and real and known from very many examples is density- change- energy. That can be quite impressive.
To all ye soil organics….
Are you Antroposophers or “biodynamics” or what is it?
Pleace be honest and tell us the truth about that. .
I once had to make up my mind having to try and sell a lot of apples through HELIOS, and found and red Justus von Liebigs biography, 2 big bricks 6″ x 8″ x 2 1/2″ from lhe library of chemistery to be prepared for discussion.
Liebig is the one who prooved forever that higher plants hardly eat humus. They rather eat mineral “stuff”.
I repeat…!
Not everyone could agree, a lot of peasant organizations of those days could not agree, Jøns Jacob Berzelius could not agree, Thus lost that case.
the Science is settled there.
Civilization and understanding and science on that may not yet have diffused into the public school of yesterday in the USA and further in the British empire.
The Frogs, Gay Lussac in Paris, was also a pioneer on it. Liebigb took over quite a lot from Gay Lussac. But the later Antroposophers biodynamics are quacks and freaks m and romantics on it.
To me, it is obvious by own experience, having also studied soil science at the agricultural highschool for 2 semensters.
If you uncover practically humus free well varied mineral soils by bulldozers good enough for making the very best concrete also,….
…………Then huge forests of violoncello size will stand there after 150 years with no humus from the beginning at all. And no industrial humus or fertillizer was necessary at all.
I have seen ecceptions. Potatoes thrive splendidly on fresh dung. Cabbage and Carrots do not. There seems to be plants that can actually take up ammonium directly befrore it is oxiized into HNO3.
Whatb seems to me to play a quite greater role in growth and soil metabolisms from crushed grinded flotated and settled bedrock up to vegetables fruits and beefs and thimbers is invading and thriving earth microflora and fauna. The stone- eaters. They must invade it and take it over first. Then also humus will develop.and carbon will settle in the ground without any human help and subsidees.
Blowing seasalts in the winds onto the sands and the rocks and foggy dews and rains and snows that wash out the strongest table salt again and seagull guano birdshit also on that give incredibly fine fruit and rosegardens in the cracks, rather by natural mineral fertillizers but with enough water and microbes also to it.
Rich, black soil develop in the sheere granite cracks and in the mosses. Gay Lussac didvc show experimental evidence that humus rather comes from the air without human help.
But the microflora and fauna may be essencial for mineral soil metabolisms into vio0loncello size thimbers. in just a few years. .
It grows on sheere, flat rock, even on car windows, if just left alone without any human violence / warfare against it. .
Carbo, always an enjoyment to read, who offers fresh input for productive discussion.
Historically, clear mathematical relationships had been confirmed between the rise in CO2 levels, its greenhouse effect and global temperatures by Arrhenius.
By contrast hydrological processes were so variable in time and space that it was ‘very hard’ to model how they may have changed or demonstrate how they are linked to the observed abnormal CO2 rise, the elevated greenhouse effect, or projected climate changes.
These processes are much more difficult to formulate with convincing graphic curves. They most certainly fall outside the scope of politicized UNFCC mandates to modelers.
The clear abnormal rise in CO2 levels and the fact that it is a greenhouse gas, has made it easy to assume that this is the dominant and primary cause of any recent global warming.
However, even with these assumptions, modern research has confirmed that the rise in CO2 and its greenhouse effect, can account for only a small global temperature rise, well below the observed levels. Force multipliers induced by abnormal CO2 rise are summoned to fill the void.
The fact that we have recently greatly increased our burning of and emissions from fossil fuel similarly provides a simple clear “causal assumption” for the abnormal CO2 rise, even if CO2 levels had been rising since 1750, 200 years before large fossil fuel use.
Consequently most research to assess the impacts from the clear CO2 rise has focused on modeling its component of the greenhouse effect; largely ignoring possible disrupted hydrological dynamics as an alternative causal factor.
The highly variable amount of water held in the air over terrestrial system, which is often at concentrations of up to 50,000 ppmv, either as vapour or as liquid, is governed by a balance of:
(1) Water available to transpire;
(2) Aerosol micro-nuclei that enable vaporized water in the air to form haze micro-droplets of liquid/solid, and;
(3) Much larger precipitation nuclei that enable millions of haze micro-droplets to coalesce hygroscopically into cloud droplets, and then precipitation, to remove this water from the atmosphere.
Textbook formulations and expedient model assumptions reliant on clausius-clapeyron do not characterize total ‘water in air’ or humidity profiles.
Contrary to our common assumptions, water does not disappear from the ‘air’ as temperatures decline, but simply condenses on aerosol to form haze. This condensed haze remains in the air until it is either re-evaporated into water vapour, or coalesced into cloud and precipitation.
With ample precipitation nuclei, this enables a rapid rate of water re-cycling. This reduces the length of time that water vapour is retained in the atmosphere either as a gas or haze. Clouds and precpitation occur with regularity.
The terrestrial ecosystems, some km away away from hygroscopic salt availability (near coastlines), seed the cloud by biological process.
A balanced ecosystem facilitates de-hydration of the upper atmosphere and rehydration of surface systems. This is a perfect scenario to maximize energy flux to space by a multitude of mechanisms.
An unbalanced ecosystem presents persistent haze at altitude, diminished re-cycling rate of water, surface water deficits, increased proportion of sensible heat, increased air pressure, and enhanced greenhouse effects. Fewer hygrosopic micobes and bacteria are supplied.
The processes are governed by ecology. More rapid and regular water cycling increases the volume of transpiration. More units of energy are taken up by latent heat, reducing re-radiation from the surface.
By clearing some 75% of the Earth’s primary forests, oxidizing most of its soils, and creating over 5 billion ha of man made desert and wasteland, humans have significantly impaired the Earth’s former natural transpiration rate, capacity, and coupled cloud process. This desertification has disrupted water cycling. We observe paradoxical humidity profiles that do not match mainstream hypotheses.
We find heat trapping hazes persisting for longer periods; surface cooling transpiration is reduced. This ‘force multiplier’ is today attributed to CO2 positive water vapor feedbacks. But indeed, simplifying assumptions taken for granted can be deceiving.
Degraded terrestrial systems will not deliver the vital biologically sourced precipitation nuclei, they will not sustain source water in the ecosystem, they will not deliver coolng latent fluxes, they will not deliver ample cloud, they will not dehydrate the upper atmosphere, they will not resupply the surface with ample moisture.
Degraded landscapes exhibit persistent hydrological drought, exacerbated by rapid runoff coefficients from rock-hard and actively drained surfaces.
As Carbomontanus wisely exclains; “[the ecology] grows on sheere, flat rock, even on car windows, if just left alone without any human violence / warfare against it.” The system is self organizing. Human intervention with best intention is often damaging.
Biosystems not as “stone-eaters” but as nutrient cyclers. Ultimately the plants are not eating the soils, rather the soils eat the plants to build themselves to plump water retaining sponge.
Given its apparent dominant effect on climates, we need to better understand variable and complex hydrological process. Ignoring with simplifying assumptions, while expedient, does not serve the best interests of science or humanity.
At the core it comes back to a simple observation – every day on average Earth receives 343 watts per m2 of solar energy in the troposphere. To sustain a stable climate, the Earth also has to re-transmit 343 back out to space. To date, by various mechanisms, we have impaired the escape of some 3-4 watts per square metre, or 1% of the incident solar radiation. There can be little doubt about the existence of complex transmission of energy related to water cycles.
Given that it is clear that a range of hydrological processes govern the bulk dynamics of energy absorption, reflection, and transmission, it follows that we should observe, quantify, and discuss hydrological process without prejudice. Macias is bold enough to take on this task, despite the great resistance which I find curious and mysterious. Enforced intellectual conformity will never advance understanding.
JCM
I checked up “Haze” on wikipedia, and it is defined as different from moistures and fogs. Rather very fine dry dusts.
So it is not a pre- stadium of fogs and clouds. Depending on what it is, it can rather be hydrophobe.
The known cooling effect of vulcanism and of fossile fuels with high sulphur contant is SO2 that reacts with O2 and vaporous H2O under UV sunshine and gives sulphuric acid nanoparticles, that are further extreemly hygroscopic. All that is called “sulphate aerosols” by which white clouds condenses immediately , even at the speed of sound if large enough bombs are set off in moist air. or at the wings of fast enough airplanes.
Aerosol pareticles are there, what matters for rain is the dewpoint and the freezing point.
So do not expect “haze” to become fogs and clouds and rain. It is 2 different things.
For rain to fall out of a cloud, that cloud must actually freeze on the top, So I have red in a very clever book by Theo Löbsack, at least.
And that is also why Halos in the sun are a most reliable sign of rain coming soon.
Those Halos are small and uniform glittering ice cristal prisms macro- orientated in the air as they are very slowly falling down out of empty air under blue sky in bright sunshine. ( Such halo systems can be seen even quite near to the ground in bright cold winters.)
Halos and pearl mother clouds and such things are not seen in high and stratospheric volcanic dust or industial smoke and “haze” or in widely traveling desert dusts because those particles are .chaotic And do not charge and clog together electrically the same way.
Another important source of sulphate- aerosols is CH3-S-CH3 dimethyl thio eter, dimethylsulphide, that is organic and marine origine and decays by sharp sunshine in air into H2SO4 and CO2.
JCM posts a number of old denier talking points: “The clear abnormal rise in CO2 levels and the fact that it is a greenhouse gas, has made it easy to assume that this is the dominant and primary cause of any recent global warming.
However, even with these assumptions, modern research has confirmed that the rise in CO2 and its greenhouse effect, can account for only a small global temperature rise, well below the observed levels. Force multipliers induced by abnormal CO2 rise are summoned to fill the void.
The fact that we have recently greatly increased our burning of and emissions from fossil fuel similarly provides a simple clear “causal assumption” for the abnormal CO2 rise, even if CO2 levels had been rising since 1750, 200 years before large fossil fuel use.”
BPL: CO2 accounts for 85% of the variance in temperature for the last 170 years. There is no need to “assume” its influence; we can measure it. Google “attribution studies.” The “force multipliers’ are known as feedbacks and they are not theoretical fudge factors; they are known physical processes such as the Clausius-Clapeyron law. In short, JCM’s post is pseudoscience claptrap. Just to make sure everybody knows it, he ends his screed with:
JCM: “Enforced intellectual conformity will never advance understanding.”
BPL: Another typical denier mantra. “Oh, we’re being suppressed by the scientific orthodoxy! We’re brave heretics going against the establishment! We’re like Galileo, and Tesla, not to mention Velikovsky!”
@BPL: – ” JCM: “Enforced intellectual conformity will never advance understanding.”
BPL: Another typical denier mantra… ”
https://nook.barnesandnoble.com/products/2940016787442/sample?sourceEan=2940016787442
— On the first page you classify yourself as a 4/5 fundamentalist and member of a church that believes that heaven, earth and creation (and thus arguably climate too) came into being within 6 days. (LOL)
I suspect that in your personal Global Energy Balance @ TOA there is a friendly, hard-working older gentleman with a bushy white beard and a “holy scripture” in his hands counting & producing white, fluffy fluffy clouds and compares them with his writings.
As a biologist I therefor conclude that you have somewhat twisted ideas about the world, biology, physics and climate.
It is also the mysterious background to your efforts against me to conduct inquisition and witch burning – mentioned by @JCM.
My strategies against your efforts are puke bags, waste paper baskets and the ever-cheerful artist mind & intellectual liberty – which I also recommend JCM to use.
ms: On the first page you classify yourself as a 4/5 fundamentalist and member of a church that believes that heaven, earth and creation (and thus arguably climate too) came into being within 6 days. (LOL)
BPL: Apparently you don’t read very carefully. The fundamental I dissent on is literalism. So no, I don’t think the Earth was created in six literal days. The rest of your religious prejudices are not something anyone here is interested in. This is a science blog.
Hr.JCM
It takes time for things to come in here.
“(1)
(2) Aerosol micro nuclei that enable vaporized water.. ….to form haze micro droplets…
(3) much larger prescipitation nuclei that enable millions of haze micro droplets to coalesque…..”
Question: Where have you got this from?
Pleace be honest, confess, and betray .your sources.
It is bullshit from un- qualified horizons that blocks autentic realistic insight and understanding quite effriciently.
A Nanometer is 10 Ångstrøm, common atopmic radii are in the magnitude of 1.5 Ångstrøm, thus H2O, that is a realistic particle gaseous molecule, that obeys Boyles and Daltons laws, is a sub- nano- particle measuring about 0.4 nanometers. (NH4)2SO4, that came up in the climateb dispute, is a typical nanoparticle, but that salt is not hygroscopic. It will hardly ” coalesque” further.
SO3 on the other hand is quite severely hygroscopic. It gives white smoke in less than a second if let out in the air.
White smoke tells us that its partricle size is chaotic and solidly up in the magnitude of 500 nanometers ( wavelength of sodium yellow) and more…… extreemly soon…
Blue 2 stroke engine oilsmoke is hardly hygroscopic,….
When did JCM learn to judge and to discuss smogs and hazes and “chemtrails” in the atmosphere?
It is high time for that, Genosse, but it takes also classical chemistery.
The pressure P inside a sphaerical droplet in the foggy dew Nephelai Aerosols, the rather woolen clouds, is 2 theta / R where theta is surface tension and R is the radius.. It becomes transcendent and no well formed formula, when R goes to zero,
My pocket computer says ERROR if I try 1/0
Conclusion, droplets must have a minima naturalis. Anything below that is not water droplets or bubbles. And there we have the necessary nuclei for formation of such things.
For ice cristals it is different. They are no droplets. That gives the rather Scirrus or fine feather types of clouds.
Water expands 10% when it freezes, foggy woolen cloudv droples are so small that they must expand and lift against a quite enormeous surface tension pressure when freezing, thus they remain woolen clouds and liquid down to – 20 and -40 celsius , but as soon as that frosty fog drifts into the bushes or your beards, it freezes immediately and make phantastic icy frost cristals. (=undercooled moist liquid fogs and rains)
So called diamond dust is no narcotics, it is tiny solid state ice cristal mirrors and prisms that origine from empy air under blue sky in bright sunhine if it is cold enough and the air is moist enough. It is what gives sun Halo phenomena even down here where we live,
I have it prooven on photo, individual halo colour particles in the air by 35 millimeter lens in the winter. That kind of brilliant icy dust in rainbow colours out of empty air under blue sky in bright sunshine on the top of the woolen clouds is decisive for possible rain or snow anywhere.
There is snow hurricane atop of the tropical huricanes with sun right in zenith. The higher chill decides you see, not just the seawater warmth and vapours.
Thus resign on those ground creeping causal explainations. That only betray unbelieving and unenlightened, vulgar , false prophecies.
Desert dust and industrial smog is something else.
A minimum of physics you see…. makes Nature even more wonderful and you will not have to sell the alternatives.
Just see how the desert walkers are rushing out, dancing and singing Halleluja when real snow is falling in their lands.
@ carbo
BIoprecipitation and giant CCN bibliography
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169809516301995
Brief lecture on biological rainfall triggers from Cindy Morris in the agricultural sector
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFyNMUY1zgA&ab_channel=CindyMorris
Useful perspectives from microbiologists.
JCM
There you are on the tracks of orthodoxy and true healthy beliefs again.
Remark that a lot of mushroms, farns and mosses are true chosmopolites and know no national and regional boarders.
We tried motorized chladni plates with tone generator input and 10 watt driver. And tried sands and lycopodium on that. The sands then settles in the node- lines where there is minimum moovement. But the lycopodium coalesqued in large, amoebe- like, floating clusters even with psevdo skin and membrane and breathing holes in it, in the antinodes, where there is moovement maximum.
We could no more than conclude that “sperms and sphores have a genuine ability to come astray and enter into areas where there is maximum moovement,thus able to fly very high and very far,…
In general, there should be no doubt becxause there is so much evidence, that pollen and sphores are “aerophiles” and play quite a role in the airs.
Theese things are also obviously electrostatic, they even are electrophile,..so full possibilities are there that it has a proper affinity to water also in an organized and di- electric form and make “dispersions and aerosols” that seem to behave in a psevdo- vital way.
PS
I have even other examples.
Somtimes I find it hard to believe my own eyes. Once I saw a long spider silk thread drifting exactly 2 handwidths over the water curving down one handwidth to the tiny spider hanging behind. Poor animal, I thought, it will sink fall down into the water. But it stayed exactly steady all the distance, and liftede up at the reets, and flew over them also.
Then rather recently in smooth wind and strong sunshine agains it, long spider spins coming out from the big oak tree, and a lot of tiny spiders taking off and drifting away as the spins were about 1.5 meters long. As if they were clairvoyant or somenting.
I red somewhere very long ago that such flying spiders have been filtered out of the air several kilometers high up.
In order to believe my own eyes, I will have to suggest that it violates newtonian gravitation and Stokes law by some kind of van der Waals and electrostatic forces in the airs, because it simply looks quite magic.
Maybe Darwin could explain it? DS.
@ carbo,
on haze this discussion is of the wet kind. Humid haze.
For precipitation nucleation from sulfate aerosols, this requires supersaturated conditions i.e. >100% humidity, and cold temperatures <-20C.
If the relative humidity remains somewhat lower, say 70 percent, the droplets typically grow to only about a tenth of a micrometer in diameter, about 100 times smaller than a typical cloud droplet.
The haze remain suspended in the boundary layer. Many billions of haze micro droplets may persist for days over the desiccated continents. The dry landscape, devoid of moisture, may produce a more stable boundary layer.
I am not convinced that the longwave effects of these humid hazes in a more stable airmass are yet properly characterized.
In the presence of biologically sourced nuclei, low level reflective cloud and precipitation may form at warmer temperatures than <-20C, at humidity less than 100%. Surely this, too, has relevant shortwave and longwave radiation effects.
The idea is that water cycling is made more rapid in the presence of a 'natural' mix of precipitation nuclei. This keeps all flows of mass, nutrients, biota, and energy moving in the system.
@ JCM
I have looked it a bit more over, and believe that you are confusing desert dust and industrial smog perhaps also smoke from busfires with what you call ” Humid haze”, a conscept that I hardly find on the net.
And must recommend that you read Wikipedia about rain quite in general.
I can also recommend the article on Tyndall scattering.
An important property of water droplets and fogs is that what I wrote about pressure in bubbles and droplets that is due to surface tension.
It will stand in equilibrium with the relative moisture in the air, thus there is allways 100 % relative moisture inside a white cloud. , and in the air when snow is falling.
The freezing point of water seems not to matter at all for the dewpoint curve, exept for that when droplets and ice cristals is mixed in a cloud, the droplets will evaporate and the icy cristals will grow. This is an important effect. Tiny ice needles are falling from the top and sweep up and dry out the water droplets, melt by the lapse rate and fall down as raindrops.
Then for possible condensation nuclei, electrostatics and patrticle polarity plays an important role.. Free ions and charged molecules can be guaranteed in UV- light and electric clouds. This is well known from radiology, Wilsons cloud chamber and the fameouis bubble- chamber. Charged particles are very efficient condensation nuclei.
Then further hydrophile and hydrophobe substances and patrticles. The difference between glass and plastics when rubbed by dry leather. . The difference is Protons standing out from the surfaces of hydrocarbons, and rather oxygen showing its electronegative arsh from the surfaces of glass, ice, and water.
Collophonium is such a very extreeme hydrocarbon, highly flamable and even explosive.
mineral dust clay minerals is silicates and rather hydrophile. White organic smoke? Aldehyds phaenols and carboxylic acids for the most, I should guess.
Fogs and moisture from the air settles rather easily on glasses at any temperature only depending on dewpoint. And quite less easily on hydrophobic surfaces.
Water vapour settles on ice and on water just as easily as it evaporates and sublimates from the same.
All in all, I must recommende you to study the rains and the weathers by where it comes from namely from the sky and heavens and the temperatures and pressures up there, and not along with Genosse Schürle, from the flat, earthly grounds.
Meteorology is obviously not for landcrabs, blind believers, and flat earthers.
There is no lack of evaporation from the sea that is 70% of the global surface. But remark that rain and precipitation mainly occur due to weather- front- conditions that may be absent in arid lands…
Quite in general, there is definitely rain and precipitation enough in the world , but not necessarily everywhere on land and in southern California. But that is for other reasons and not for Spindoctors and whitchdoctors to earn their reputation from.
PS
@ JCM
I am no expert on this, but I judege it all in the light of what I know of meteorology and especially of evaporation condensation agglomeration and further solutrion and cristallization phase- shifts and transition in general and physical hemistery. Plus some readings and experiments on bubbles and drops along with surface tension.
The idea of “moist haze” that is wet enough but will not rain…. with particle size about 100 nanometers or well below the wawelength of light
( that is from 400 to 800 nanometer remember sodium yellow is in the middle by 550 nanometer)…..
……..should be disqualified as old supersticion and rumors from the political spindoctors rainmakers, , I believe.
I saw further of Stratus- clouds that they are long, flat, straight and even and in layers high and low, and surely moist. They often rather lay on the ground in the mountain plains and heathers.
Down at the ground we call it “Yr”, something in between rain yes or no. Particle size easy to judge to well below one millimeter., it makes you and everything wet by time, it gives quite phaenomenal frost cristals in the naked bushes by inverse frosty weather in the winter. Goes right through your dressings and cools efficiently. – 35 inland in clear weather is better than -15 downtown in Oslo or København with Stockholm even worse. By fjord fogs and “yr”.
And this is the normal situation in flat foggy stratus clouds higher up. It freezes severely and gives “icing” in the air traffic.
If this becomes large enough to fall, it will thaw up and evaporate due to the lapse rate, in clear weather under the Stratus clouds, and no rain will fall.
But when it is thick enough and the weather is long and grey enough, it will give long but light rain for days in rather tempered weathers inland.
I just red somewhere that “Hot and moist air is rapidly pressed up in the atmosphere”.
That is the cumulonimbus situation and also the low pressure weatherfront cyclone systems with common and maybe heavy rain. Most common at sea. It weakens normally over land against the continental high pressures..
But now I read from Pakistan and the Indus bassin and valley. They are having onland wind monsune cathastrophies with repeated floods this summer aside of all the drought cathastrophies reported from elsewhere.
They drown also in Kristiansand from thunderstorms and onland wind at the moment after rather a year of cathastrophic shortage in the hydroelectric dams.
It comes and goes and there is water and vapour enough in the world, but not necessarily on the ground in southern California.
Rain and snow seems to be caused mainly up in the clouds and there are clouds enough also in the world and can hardly be made more.
There are fameous boreal rain forests in Oregon north of southern California, and in Helgeland Norway north of Paris and Spain. They are also drowning in Texas now.
So I believe less in the Schürle holisms , knowing quite a bit more about it and seeing how he argues also,
I cannot recommend his sales. DS
@JCM: – ” …we have impaired the escape of some 3-4 watts per square metre, or 1% of the incident solar radiation. ”
— The 3-4W/m² is the accumulated radiative forcing since 1750. The radiative forcing at TOA – the difference between incoming solar and solar reflected + thermal outgoing is currently significantly lower globally.
Earth energy imbalance (EEI) = ~ +0.8-1W/m².
Since much of the imbalance is stored in the oceans, the EEI over land is only 0.03W/m² and can be compensated or reversed relatively easily by a 1% higher cloud albedo (-0.19W/m²).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-5295/ac6f74#erclac6f74s2
@macias.
yes indeed I agree there are numerous ways to enhance transmittance of solar energy back to space to eliminate, or to even reverse the trend in EEI.
In the best interests of humanity, we must explore all options, and not limit ourselves to a narrow scope.
While cuts to the emission of well mixed greenhouse gases and renewed sequestration to the Earth is an essential long-term goal as illustrated in IPCC documents, in the short term there is much to be gained by restoring characteristics of the water cycle that have been directly disrupted by human activity.
There can be little doubt about humanity’s massive and apparently underrecognized direct impacts to hydrological cycles and associated energy flux. This through cloud albedo, latent fluxes, persistence of moist hazes, atmospheric absorbed solar, closure of radiation windows, etc etc. Overall humanities most certainly impact the feedback response to total system radiation forcing.
The goal must always be to restore a semblance of balance by increasing watts per square metre energy transmission back out to space. Preferably by natural means due to the multitude of add on benefits and the likelihood of sustainability through the ebbs and flows of societal change. This can be achieved by numerous means, in addition to reducing the concentration of trace gases.
There can be little doubt we can enhance dissipation mechanisms of solar energy. You should be supported in such efforts as it is fully in line with main goals of all involved in climate research. The only risk is slight damage to the ego of a select few who will not budge from their preferred doctrine. It is they in their stubbornness who will delay the required holistic actions and cause unnecessary net harm to the Earth system and our life support systems.
@JCM: – ” The only risk is slight damage to the ego of a select few who will not budge from their preferred doctrine… stubbornness ”
— The answer to this stubbornness, which I understand more as arrogant stupidity, must consist of facts and circumstantial evidence that stand the test of time and have been established and represented by the IPCC itself.
One of the stubborn idiots commenting here is a particularly clever idiot. On this forum here he regularly denies that irrigation and “additional evaporation” mean global cooling, while on another forum he posts an IPCC graph and the following:
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=3&t=132&&a=141#137603
BL: – “Land use reflection and irrigation” is the second-last bar on the right. Note that the calculated effect is minor cooling, not warming. ”
MS: — Remarkable in this context is not the agile Australian turnneck of the alleged expert – but for the first time (2020/8) the statement of the IPCC that irrigation has a global cooling effect (~ 0.14°C).
However, what seems highly suspicious to me in this graph is the fact that, conversely, warming effects from the anthropogenic reduction in evaporation through land use changes are not taken into account at all. The internal logic is missing.
Other IPCC publications are very reserved on the subject of irrigation and evaporation in the quantitative context of land use change.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/4/2020/08/05_Chapter-2-V3.pdf
i.e.
page 135 — Dry soil conditions favor or strengthen summer heatwave conditions through reduced evapotranspiration and increased sensitive heat. By contrasting wet soil conditions, for example from irrigation or crop management practices that maintain a cover
crop all year round, can dampen extreme warm events through increased evapotranspiration and reduced sensible heat. ”
” A global biophysical cooling of 0.10 ± 0.14°C is estimated from global climate models and is projected to dampen the land-based warming (low confidence). ”
p. 171 — ” 2.5.1 Impacts of historical and future anthropogenic land cover changes
” The studies reported below focus essentially on modeling experiments, as there is no direct observation of how historical land use changes have affected the atmospheric dynamics and physics at the global and regional scales. ”
MS: — As I mentioned before, global relative humidity has been declining for decades –
so that is a direct observation of how historical land use changes have affected the atmospheric dynamics and physics at the global scales.
https://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericRelativeHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
As water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, additional warming will come about, resulting in a much larger temperature increase than that induced from CO2 alone. Climate models therefore, in general, assume the relative Tropospheric humidity to remain more or less stable, as increasing air temperatures are compensated by increasing specific humidity.
The above diagram indicate that none of this has been the case since 1948.
The only explanation for this deficit of rH is desertification, spreading heat waves due to the man-made deficit in evaporation capacity.
Reducing the global rH by 1% corresponds to an absolute reduction in the evaporation capacity of ~ 6000 km³/y and decreases the evaporation factor in the global energy balance of land areas by ! 3.12W/m².
A 0,7-0,8°C increase (~50%) of land temperature can be explained due to that deficit of rH
– and is NOT a water vapor feedback of CO2 concentrations.
@macias.
I see in the literature some discussion of the biophysical response of the system to trace gas greenhouse enhancement.
I think, likely due to the relative ease of data acquisition through normalized vegetation indices from satellite, and focus on other relatively easy to acquire data such as CO2 concentration, the focus is primarily on Leaf Area Index type variables and modeling.
For instance:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772737822000025
“As vegetation transpiration dominates evapotranspiration over land (Jasechko et al., 2013; Good et al., 2015), the influence of vegetation growth on terrestrial evapotranspiration is non-neglectable. As shown in Fig. 4, the effect is so strong that increasing LAI leads to a worldwide spread increase in actual evapotranspiration. As a result, first, the increase in evapotranspiration accelerates the moisture cycle and thus increases cloudiness (Figure S6a) and precipitation (Fig. 2). The increase in cloudiness further decreases incoming solar radiation over land. Second, the increase in evapotranspiration leads to an increase in specific humidity (Figure S6b), which decreases the vapor-pressure deficit. Third, the increase in evapotranspiration leads to evaporative cooling that decreases surface air temperature (Figure S6c). Last, increasing LAI increases surface roughness and decreases wind speed (Figure S6d). All of the decreases in solar radiation, vapor-pressure deficit, surface air temperature and wind speed lead to a decrease in potential evapotranspiration (Eq. 5; Fig. 3), which seems to be paradoxical with an increase in actual evapotranspiration, but actually to be a result of the increase in actual evapotranspiration.”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abb1981
“We find that 93% of the global vegetated area shows negative sensitivity of LST to LAI increase at the annual scale, especially for semiarid woody vegetation. Further considering the LAI trends (P ≤ 0.1), 30% of the global vegetated area is cooled by these trends and 5% is warmed. Aerodynamic resistance is the dominant factor in controlling Earth greening’s biophysical impacts: The increase in LAI produces a decrease in aerodynamic resistance, thereby favoring increased turbulent heat transfer between the land and the atmosphere, especially latent heat flux.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28305-9
“Results show that by 2100, under high-emission scenario, greening will likely mitigate land warming by 0.71 ± 0.40 °C, and 83% of such effect (0.59 ± 0.41 °C) is driven by the increase in plant carbon sequestration, while the remaining cooling (0.12 ± 0.05 °C) is due to biophysical land-atmosphere interactions.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31671-z
“The seasonal greening of Northern Hemisphere (NH) ecosystems, due to extended growing periods and enhanced photosynthetic activity, could modify near-surface warming by perturbing land-atmosphere energy exchanges, yet this biophysical control on warming seasonality is underexplored.”
So, the enigma for me is that if there is a concession that biophysical impacts of CO2 have an impact on dampening a temperature rise, and other pattern effects relating to hydrology, why are the far greater impacts of desiccating 50% of the land masses directly over the past centuries explored in so little detail ? (as far as I can tell).
Most critically, the changes invisible to most satellites i.e. soil moisture, soil organics, microbial activity. Such measurements require probing the ground, laboratory analysis, and expert opinion. Expensive and incomplete data is the problem. My guess is that things difficult to observe receive little attention. I have little interest in the somewhat overblown CO2 ‘greening effects’ often cited by the skeptic community. However, these studies offer some useful information when considering in the very real, direct, and far more substantial direct biophysical changes imparted by humanity.
If so-called minor above ground “CO2 greening” effects dampen warming, why shouldn’t massive ecosystem desiccation ‘dampen cooling’?
PS – i will be travelling to Maharashtra over the coming 6 weeks observing several ongoing soil restoration sites, and also some site seeing, so I will be scant in participating on this board. Google estimates over 1000kg CO2 emission for this journey from Canada so I shall make it worth my while. In my experiences India treats foreigners quite well. If there is such a thing as a direct ecosystem impact to climates, and it becomes recognized, this will certainly improve the prospects for future work. I recognize my bias. For now the efforts are focused on blowing dust reduction from desertifying soils. Best to you, Macias.
…and what some idiot who keep trying to regurgitate his crap from comments on other web sites keeps confusing, is the difference between global cooling and local cooling. That make him believe that IPCC evaluations of “minor cooling” represent support for his hallucinations that 1% increase in evapotranspiration will lead to a 1% increase in global mean cloud cover.
Now, that idiot is pointing out a comment that mentions a 0.14C cooling effect, and is ignoring that the diagram in question shows the effect to be very small compared to other effects:
https://www.realclimate.org/images/AR6_figSPM2c-442×600.png
The same idiot, in the comment I am replying to here, has taken the IPCC diagram’s label of “land-use reflectance and irrigation”, and turned that into a claim that the 0.14% is just due to irrigation. His exact statement? “… the statement of the IPCC that irrigation has a global cooling effect (~ 0.14°C).” No, the IPCC diagram does not show that. It shows “land-use reflectance and irrigation”.
If M. Schurle is thinking that he is being witty in has argumentation, I’m afraid that he is only half way there.
So, M> Schurle has no idea of scale, no idea of geography, no idea of magnitude, and no idea what any of it means.
As for JCM: the first link you provide is this one:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772737822000025
…and you quote “the increase in evapotranspiration accelerates the moisture cycle and thus increases cloudiness (Figure S6a)”
If you follow the path to the supplemental material, and look at figure S6a, you will find that the increases in cloudiness are largely local, not global. In some areas, cloud cover decreases. They do not provide a global average (the value M. Schurle seems to think will increase by 1% form just a 1% increase in evapotranspiration). That study is also looking at projections for the late 21st century. It does not support the hallucinations of M. Schurle.
@Bla Lowbob: – ” The same idiot ”
— Empty heads like you should be happy that heartbeat and breathing are not dependent on clear thinking and neuronal brain functions, but work purely vegetatively without any brain power. If that weren’t the case, you’d be dead after 3 minutes with your flathead gear.
I always advise older, malicious “gentlemen” like you (& carbonito, mar, bpl), who already have one foot in the nursing home, to reduce the release of unnecessary adrenaline to a minimum.
If you don’t understand the water cycle: evaporation, condensation, clouds, precipitation and the average residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere of ~ 9 days –
then ask your nurse or in the kindergarten – they know that (95% confidence) and may be can tell you also that intensified water cycles (irrigation during drought) in the local land regions also increase overall global evaporation, cloud formation and precipitation.
And btw where should global evaporation, condensation and precipitation take place – if not in the local regions. SMH
@JCM
Have a good time and have a good trip. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep the twirled nonsense of some of the commenters here within bounds.
@Bla Lowbob: – ” The same idiot ” / “ land-use reflectance and irrigation ”.
— As long as you have no idea how land use reflectance and irrigation interact, you should just keep your chin up. Existing water on a land surface will always decrease its albedo and result in more radiant energy being captured on the ground. In contrast to ocean surfaces or deeper lakes, this energy is not diverted into the deeper water layers, but converted 100% into evaporation energy.
The main point of my critique of the IPCC chart is that while it is correct to attribute a cooling effect to irrigation – but then logically there must also be a warming effect that exists for areas where humans are responsible for NO or LESS water is available at the surface for evaporation. E.g. sealed areas, intentionally drained areas and agricultural areas where after harvest the areas without vegetation are exposed to the sun unprotected.
Empty heads like you should be happy that heartbeat and breathing are not dependent on thinking and neuronal brain functions, but work purely vegetatively without any brain power. If that weren’t the case, you’d be dead in 3 minutes with your flathead gear on.
Also, to older, malicious “gentlemen” like you (& carbonito, mar, bpl) who already have one foot in the nursing home, I always advise to reduce the release of unnecessary adrenaline to a minimum.
If you don’t understand the water cycle: evaporation, condensation, clouds, precipitation, and the average residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere of ~9 days – then ask your nurse or in the kindergarten – they know (95% confidence)
and maybe they can also explain that intensified water cycles (irrigation) in the local land regions also increase global evaporation, cloud formation and precipitation overall.
And btw where should global evaporation, condensation and precipitation take place if not in the local regions.
@JCM
Have fun and have a good trip. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep the twirled nonsense of some of the commenters here within bounds.
Climate Uncensored is a new blog, YouTube channel, podcast and resource base providing honest, unflinching comment and analysis of the challenges facing us in the climate emergency. It is a collaboration between climate researchers Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Dan Calverley.
The name, Climate Uncensored, inverts the self-censorship that we see happening within much of the expert community (scientist, policymakers and campaigners).
In coming weeks we will be releasing several animated films about some of the thorniest issues in climate mitigation, initially on carbon budgets and the essential role of equity or fairness, and later on ‘net’ zero and negative emissions, amongst others.
We have a wonderful, in-depth and candid interview with climate activist, Greta Thunberg. We have forthcoming blogs on the immediacy of mitigation and adaptation challenges. And in autumn 2022 we will begin releasing our podcast series.
The hallmarks of all content on Climate Uncensored are honesty and integrity. We shall not flinch from asking difficult questions or pressing for answers.
Our content will be accessible and intelligible for an informed lay audience. It will be (as far as is humanly possible) unbiased, with no favourite or ‘pet’ solutions; pragmatism and engineering reality (bounded by the carbon budgets that accompany our Paris commitments) prevail.
in-full see https://climateuncensored.com/welcome-to-climate-uncensored/
If you don’t get some regenerative design professionals on your channel, you’re ultimately wasting your time. Regenerative systems are simple, but virtually no scientists or activists study them – despite the claims. You can’t create what you don’t understand.
You might want to do an interview on this: https://www.patreon.com/RegenSys. Click on the “Welcome to the Global Simulation” link.
Cheers
We are regenerating all the time, Killian. That is why I aint dead yet and able to teach and to knock you down. all the time
That “Climate Uncensored” is something else. I checked up and saw they ask Lord Moncton for advice.,
I cannot tell them to go to Hell, where they seem to comev from, until I have them further on the hooks. But they aspire strongly for it allready.
Shush. Your nonsensical ramblings aren’t even useful as entertainment, drunken sailor. Go be useful: Stop posting for a while.
P?S
Sand to Sahara, Codfish to Lofoten and telling the hens how to lay egs, that is not the way how to performj, Killian. DS.
Excellent news, thank you. Only engaged and transparent scientists educating and collaborating with decision-makers and society at large will solve the climate emergency.
The time to ask scientists to stay out of non-scientific, in particular political and economic, debates in order to maintain their objectivity was centuries ago, but now is also very helpful, as their uncensoring gives humanity a chance to save itself and the biosphere.
Next step, for some of you, is to be in decision-making positions.
Time’s up for the Colorado River, and a scary new phase begins – Currently Weather Service.
Currently Weather Service – 14 Aug 22 2
Time’s up for the Colorado River, and a scary new phase begins 2
Time has run out for drought-stricken states along the Colorado River in the US southwest, as talks aimed at coming to terms on a water-sharing plan have broken down. “Negotiations among the Colorado River’s Lower Basin states of Arizona, California,…
Est. reading time: 3 minutes
In 2021, global carbon dioxide emissions reached 36.3 billion tons, the highest volume ever recorded. This year, the number of international refugees will cross 30 million, also the highest figure ever. As sea levels and temperatures rise and geopolitical tensions flare, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that humanity is veering towards systemic breakdown. The superpowers will be no salvation: Locked in a “new Cold War,’ the U.S. careens between populism and incompetence, while China remains locked down at home and alienates many nations abroad.
What Comes After the Coming Climate Anarchy? | Time
Time 3
What Comes After the Coming Climate Anarchy? 3
Our civilization is slowly collapsing—but the next one is already rising
Dead fish in river Oder spark Germany, Poland to probe mystery.
NBC News 1
Mystery surrounds mass die-off of fish in the river Oder 1
“We are dealing with a gigantic and outrageous ecological catastrophe,” the former head of Polish Waters said.
World’s largest ice sheet threatened by warm water surge.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02168-y 1
Question about sea level altimetry:
The Earth Observatory page “Tracking 30 Years of Sea Level Rise” shows a strong NEGATIVE anomaly off the southeast coast of Japan. Can someone explain this or point me to an expert who can explain this?
Thanks.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-years-of-sea-level-rise
NSAlito,
I’m not sure the Earth Observatory page you link-to is the best to illustrate your point. There have been quite a few such pages posted through the years yet I don’t see one specifically addressing that particular “strong NEGATIVE anomaly off the southeast coast of Japan.” But perhaps this Earth Observatory page is better as it does have a graphic showing a close-up of the bit of ocean in question.
The oceans are a whole lot flatter than the land but they are not flat. And if we ignore all the tides and El Niños and stuff, there are parts that will be generally higher all the time. This can be due to a number of factors but consider an ocean current thrusting itself across an ocean. A sub-surface current will leave a bump on the surface above not least because it can be introducing salinity/temperature differences into that bit of the oceans plus it will involve pressure-differences propelling it along. If the route of such a current is deflected away from its ‘original’ course due to, say, climate change, that ‘bump on the surface’ will move and if SLR is measured along the ‘original’ course, the absent ‘bump’ will appear as a bit of negative SLR while along the ‘new’ course there will be heightened SLR.
The water levels in the world’s oceans do not rise as steadily as the water level in a bathtub.
Its surface is also not flat, as one might think, when you look out to sea from the beach.
Satellite observations show that there are significant regional differences in sea level and rise in
water level.
For example, dynamic SLCs driven by water density and currents are one primary cause of non-uniform SLR (Gregory et al., 2019). Changing ocean currents can result in the redistribution of mass, heat, and salt, resulting in substantial sea-level variability (Stammer et al., 2013).
Decisive for rising or falling water levels can also be land uplift and subsidence in those coastal regions of pacific ring of fire.
For this reason, science often uses Sea levels – in the plural – spoken.
A striking example of this is the development of water levels on the coasts of North America.
While in recent years the sea levels along the west coast have remained almost unchanged or rather decreased, they are mostly increasing on the east coast to this day.
And then there are Rossby waves, also known as planetary waves, naturally occur in rotating fluids. Within the Earth’s ocean and atmosphere, these waves are formed as a result of the rotation of the planet and its shape.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossby_wave#Oceanic_waves
https://web.archive.org/web/20151201005036/http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/SAT/Rossby/Rossbyintro.html
@NSAlito
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10872-022-00657-2
The water levels in the world’s oceans do not rise as steadily as the water level in a bathtub.
Satellite observations show that there are significant regional differences in sea level and rise in
water level.
These can be attributed to the influence of ocean currents, to winds or to the heat-related factors of varying strength expansion of the water mass.
Decisive for rising or falling water levels can also land uplift and subsidence in those coastal regions of pacific ring of fire.
Rossby waves, which are caused by the rotation and shape of the planet, also play a role off the coast of Japan.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151201005036/http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/SAT/Rossby/Rossbyintro.html
For this reason, science often uses Sea levels – in the plural – spoken.
A striking example of this is the development of water levels on the coasts of North America.
While in recent years the sea levels along the west coast have remained almost unchanged or rather decreased, they are mostly increasing on the east coast to this day.
Surprise!
[b]Rivers drying up all over the world[/b] https://climatestate.com/2022/08/17/rivers-drying-up-all-over-the-world/
Stinging rebuke from Jordan Peterson:
https://www.climatedepot.com/2022/08/18/jordan-peterson-peddlers-of-environmental-doom-have-shown-their-true-totalitarian-colors/
Some highlights:
“Save the planet with your own choices. But quit demanding that the rest of us blindly follow your diktats. Quit demonising and castigating us, merely because we don’t just happily cede to you all the extant power. We’re not evil just because we don’t believe that you are omniscient. We’re not evil just because we don’t want you to assume omnipotence and omnipresence too.
There is simply no pathway forward to the green and equitable utopia that necessitates the further impoverishment of the already poor, the compulsion of the working class, or the sacrifice of economic security and opportunity on the food, energy and housing front. There is simply no pathway forward to the global utopia you hypothetically value that is dependent on force. And even if there was, what gives you the right to enforce your demands? On other sovereign citizens, equal in value to you?”
“The warning bells are ringing. Listen to them, before they turn into sirens.
We will not advance without resistance through the straits of your enforced privation. We will not allow you to steal and destroy the energy that makes our lives bearable (and that produces our food and shelter and housing and the sporadic delights of modern life) just to address your existential terror (particularly when it will fail to do so in any case). We will not allow our children to be criticised first for having the temerity to merely exist and then be deprived of the prosperous and opportunity-rich future we strived so hard to prepare for them. We remain unconvinced of your frightened and self-congratulatory moralising and intellectual pretension, ignorance of the limits of statistics, and misuse of arithmetic.
We do not believe, finally and most absolutely, that your declared emergency and the panic you sow because of it means that you should now be ceded all necessary authority.”
“Leave us alone. Or reap the whirlwind. And watch the terrible destruction of what you purport to save, in consequence.”
“Stinging rebuke?”
It’s unfortunate that Dr. Peterson has chosen to pronounce upon matters which he chooses to remain deeply ignorant in. If there’s a ‘sting’ to be felt in that, it’s the sting of witnessing–oh, the irony, for a clinical psychologist!–emotionalism overtaking reason.
I don’t wish to stray into Peterson’s realm of competence by hazarding a diagnosis–but I do find the words “paranoid delusion” coming to mind.
So, he’s even more out of touch than previously thought.
Good to know.
Gee, vic…The loaded term-to-fact ratio here approaches a singularity!!!!
(One often observes this when one sees someone invoking terms like “sovereign citizens”. As a group, the sovereign citizen crowd tends to be diagnosable as exhibiting signs of Completely Out-to-Lunch Disorder according to the latest DSM.)
Now why am I not surprised that Weaktor venerates Jordan Peterson. At his best, Jordan Peterson aspires to “wrong”. Mostly, he’s in the “not even wrong” category…kinda like Weaktor.
V: There is simply no pathway forward to the green and equitable utopia that necessitates the further impoverishment of the already poor, the compulsion of the working class, or the sacrifice of economic security and opportunity on the food, energy and housing front.
BPL: Nor is anybody calling for those things. Google “straw man argument.”
Kevin McKinney: I don’t wish to stray into Peterson’s realm of competence by hazarding a diagnosis–but I do find the words “paranoid delusion” coming to mind.
V: Oh really? From the Global Energy Assessment of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (sponsored, among others, by the UN) — https://previous.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/Flagship-Projects/Global-Energy-Assessment/GEA-Summary-web.pdf
From item 9: “Socio-Cultural Changes as well as Stable Rules and Regulations will be Required: Crucial issues in achieving transformational change toward sustainable future include non-technology drivers such as individual and public awareness, community and societal capacities to adapt to changes, institutions, policies, incentives, strategic spatial planning, social norms, rules and regulations of the marketplace, behavior of market actors, and societies’ ability to
introduce through the political and institutional systems measures to reflect externalities. Changes in cultures, lifestyles, and values are also required.”
That last sentence is especially chilling.
Weaktor,
Aww, did we catch a chill? If so, I don’t see how that statement gave it to you. It is merely saying that we are going to have to change the behaviors that got us into this predicament to begin with.
It’s like your doctor after a stroke or heart attack saying that you might have to change some of your behaviors if you want to live to a ripe old age. Except in this case, it is human civilization we are trying to save.
Frankly, it’s a whole lot more mature and productive than the FAFO approach recommended by glibertarians.
“The glossary of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C (IPCC, 2018, p. 559) defines four transformation-related concepts associated with climate change mitigation:
:
Transformation: “A change in the fundamental attributes of natural and human systems.”
Transformative change: “A system-wide change that requires more than technological change through consideration of social and economic factors that, with technology, can bring about rapid change at scale.”
Societal (social) transformation: “A profound and often deliberate shift initiated by communities toward sustainability, facilitated by changes in individual and collective values and behaviors, and a fairer balance of political, cultural, and institutional power in society.”
Transformation pathway: “Trajectories describing consistent sets of possible futures of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, atmospheric concentrations, or global mean surface temperatures implied from mitigation and adaptation actions associated with a set of broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes.” https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/wcc.738
“1984” anyone?
V: “1984” anyone?
BPL: Don’t look now, Victor, but there’s an Inner Party member standing RIGHT BEHIND YOU!
Uhhhh nope. In point of fact it’s not even remotely close to the plot, characters, or setting of the book (or the movie either).
You must never have actually read, or at least never comprehended if you have passed your eyes over the pages, the book 1984. Or even seen the movie.
Had a thought on the issue of so many heat records and extremes occurring after two straight La Nina’s, and a third apparently in process now. I’ve been asking how this is possible for a couple of months with no satisfying answer from any quarter. Actually, not even an answer from any quarter! One aspect is the general trend such that today’s La Nina’s are warmer than some past El Nino’s, but the extremes have been so high that doesn’t seem sufficient. What, then?
I stopped by the Arctic Sea Ice graphs site, which I’ve done not nearly as much as in years when expecting a relatively low minimum and happened to notice the Arctic Oscillation index (AO) has been largely positive or neutral pretty much this entire year, indicating relatively little cooling of the NH from the Arctic because the circumpolar winds have been keeping the cold air up north.
Mystery solved, perhaps.
Another aspect may be the lack of Pacific “heat bombs” due to cool surface waters due to the two La Nina’s.
Cheers
Wind power troubles:
https://projects.oregonlive.com/wind-farms/
This year’s Arctic Ocean melt season was icy enough for the NSIDC to pose the question “Will the extent drop below 5 million square kilometers?” in their bulletin a couple of weeks ago. They concluding there was a 30% chance that it would achieve a drop below 5M sq km and 2022 would end up ranked between 7th & 15th meltiest year on record. The interactive chArctic page is showing (30 Aug) 5.292M sq km so there’s still a bit to go to break the 5M at NSIDC.
That said, as the annual minimum SIE does carry a bit of bish-bash-bosh in the blogosphere, it is worth reporting that the JAXA Arctic SIE which is calculated & smoothed a little differently, it did drop below that 5M sq km mark on the last day of August. It has already achieved 17th meltiest year with September’s decelerating melt still to come. And in terms of to-end-of-August 2022 ranks 11th meltiest compared to past years on JAXA.
Perhaps a more interesting set of numbers appear when you press the Antarctic button on those cryospheric web-engines as 2022 may be seeing a record ‘lowest Antarctic maximum’. The numbers show 2022 setting the ‘lowest Antarctic SIE for day of year’ through June & July and still picking up a few days of it through August including (on JAXA) 31st Aug with 2022 then sitting 0.56M sq km short of the record least-icy Antarctic summer, this set back in 2002. And as none of the last seven years have seen additional freezing as high as +0.56M sq km from end-of-Aug through the remainder of the freeze season and further back, only seven of the 21 years since 2000 froze that much in Sept, a record unfreezy winter down in the Antarctic is looking pretty likely.
There’s some graphs of the JAXA Antarctic SIE anomalies (so with the annual melt-freeze cycle removed) here Graphs 3a & 3b.