Media awareness about global warming and climate change has grown fairly steadily since 2004. My impression is that journalists today tend to possess a higher climate literacy than before. This increasing awareness and improved knowledge is encouraging, but there are also some common interpretations which could be more nuanced. Here are two examples, polar amplification and extreme rainfall.
Polar amplification
A recent report on the ice on Greenland in the Washington Post discussed the melting of land-based ice on Greenland. The melting of ice in the polar regions is a great concern and is exacerbated by the so-called Polar Amplification which is responsible for a rapid warming in the polar region, especially in the Arctic.
In the said report, the fast pace of melting was explained as a consequence of a spiraling effect, where retreating ice uncovers a darker surface that soaks up more heat from the sunlight (the so-called albedo-feedback):
Vanishing land ice — such as ice sheets and glaciers — can also create a feedback loop. But because land isn’t quite as dark as the surface of the ocean, it doesn’t cause as much additional heating. This is partly why the South Pole (which is covered by the Antarctic continent) isn’t warming as fast as the North Pole (which is surrounded by ocean).
The situation is more complicated, however, as the strongest Arctic warming takes place in winter during polar nights, when the days are subject to 24-hr darkness. In other words, there is no albedo effect that can explain this exceptional warming because of the lack of sunlight.
Yet, sea-ice acts as an insulator between air and sea. When it retreats, it opens up for more heat and moisture exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere, and the strongest warming can be found where the sea-ice has retreated (Isaksen, et al., 2022).
There are also additional mechanisms that can explain the rapid warming near the poles. One of them is that the already colder conditions are responsible for lower heat losses, but this is the case for Antarctica as well.
Changes in cloud cover and air moisture (vapour pressure) also play a role. If there is a permanent cloud cover, then we expect a reduced albedo-feedback connected with ice and snow. Clouds also affect the albedo, and both clouds and air moisture affect the surface heat loss to space.
Other mechanisms include changes in the lapse rate (Boeke et al., 2020) and boundary layers (Bintanja et al., 2012), as well as heat transport from lower latitudes.
Storms may also influence the temperature indirectly through their effect on sea-ice. A take-home message from a talk by Gabriele Messori, Ehlke Hepworth, and Marcello Vichi at the European Meteorological Society’s 2023 annual meeting in Bratislava was that high-latitude cyclones in the Southern Ocean can reach and shape the Antarctic sea-ice.
Storms also play a role in the Arctic, and Aue and Rinke (2023) reported that seasonal variations in storms leave an imprint on the sea ice concentration in the Barents and Kara Seas. They also found that storms have an impact on the Arctic sea ice and that it has changed during the last 40 years.
Finally, in the BAMS State of the Climate (2023) the Arctic amplification was also associated with various localised land–ocean–sea-ice interactions as well as large-scale atmospheric and oceanic energy transport processes.
Extreme rainfall
Another common topic is extreme rainfall, and the link to global warming is often explained in terms of increased evaporation with higher temperatures. This is not wrong, but also not the whole story.
We can call it the thermodynamical explanation, and we indeed expect more extreme rainfall with higher temperatures which enhance the air’s moisture holding capacity and increase the rate of evaporation.
There are also dynamical aspects, which involve changes in winds and cloud structure, but they are rarely mentioned in news reports.
The water that evaporates comes down again, but in patches. It doesn’t rain all the time nor everywhere. Over time, the daily rain has fallen over a shrinking fraction of Earth’s surface (Benestad et al., 2022), thus becoming more concentrated into smaller and more intense wet patches.
A recent and tentative (not yet peer-reviewed) analysis suggests that about half of the increased extreme precipitation may be due to thermodynamics and about half may be due to dynamics (Benestad et al., 2023)
The dynamical nature of this trend may involve more convective clouds, higher cloud tops or an expansion of the sub-tropics connected to a widening of the Hadley cell. Another factor may be a slowdown of moving rain-generating systems (Kahraman et al, 2023).
There are reports of increased rainfall amounts connected with tropical cyclones, which combines both thermodynamics (evaporation) and dynamics (wind and cloud structures). Recently storm Daniel brought extreme rainfall amounts that caused devastating calamities both in Greece/Bulgaria/Turkey as well as Libya. The extreme rainfall was a result of both excessive evaporation (the Mediterranean Sea has been unusually warm) and circulation.
References
- K. Isaksen, . Nordli, B. Ivanov, M.A.. Køltzow, S. Aaboe, H.M. Gjelten, A. Mezghani, S. Eastwood, E. Førland, R.E. Benestad, I. Hanssen-Bauer, R. Brækkan, P. Sviashchennikov, V. Demin, A. Revina, and T. Karandasheva, "Exceptional warming over the Barents area", Scientific Reports, vol. 12, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-13568-5
- R.C. Boeke, P.C. Taylor, and S.A. Sejas, "On the Nature of the Arctic's Positive Lapse‐Rate Feedback", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 48, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2020GL091109
- R. Bintanja, E.C. van der Linden, and W. Hazeleger, "Boundary layer stability and Arctic climate change: a feedback study using EC-Earth", Climate Dynamics, vol. 39, pp. 2659-2673, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-011-1272-1
- L. Aue, and A. Rinke, "Cyclone Impacts on Sea Ice Concentration in the Atlantic Arctic Ocean: Annual Cycle and Recent Changes", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 50, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2023GL104657
- J. Blunden, T. Boyer, and E. Bartow-Gillies, "State of the Climate in 2022", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 104, pp. S1-S516, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2023BAMSStateoftheClimate.1
- R.E. Benestad, C. Lussana, J. Lutz, A. Dobler, O. Landgren, J.E. Haugen, A. Mezghani, B. Casati, and K.M. Parding, "Global hydro-climatological indicators and changes in the global hydrological cycle and rainfall patterns", PLOS Climate, vol. 1, pp. e0000029, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000029
- R.E. Benestad, C. Lussana, and A. Dobler, "Global surface area receiving daily precipitation, wet-day frequency and probability of extreme rainfall: Water Security and Climate Change", 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3198800/v1
- A. Kahraman, E.J. Kendon, S.C. Chan, and H.J. Fowler, "Quasi‐Stationary Intense Rainstorms Spread Across Europe Under Climate Change", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 48, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2020GL092361
Speaking of nuance, I’ll push back on the “half of the extreme rainfall” framing. The observed and simulated rate of increase of extreme rainfall is larger for the rarer storms, but the thermodynamic effect is 7% per degree, independent of intensity. So the dynamic fraction must be sensitive to the threshold definition of “extreme”.
The thrust of this post is that the media has improved but needs to do provide the full story…….. by quoting a new non-peer reviewed paper that suggests something?
Keith Wollard, 26 Sept: “by quoting a new non-peer reviewed paper that suggests something?”
What are you talking about, Mr. Wollard ? There are EIGHT references in Rasmus article and only one is pre-print, the rest are peer-reviewed. And that 8 references are support of a short (~800 words-long), One scientific reference per 100 words would be quite a good ratio for a scientific text, even more so for a post on a blog.
Unable challenge the text on its merit – you try to shoot the messenger – by insinuating hypocrisy and/or lack of intellectual integrity with your:
KW: “quoting a new non-peer reviewed paper that suggests something?”
And that coming from your mouth. Mr. Wollard is rich – remembering how you attacked the credibility of an Australian scientist who talked about overall decrease in soil moisture in West and East Australia – by your claiming, without ANY reference, that …. in some town in Australia you haven’t seen a declining trend in precipitation.
And then you disputed the link between global warming and changes in precipitation patterns, because, again referring to nothing other then his … assurance that there is no correlation between … LOCAL rain and … LOCAL temperature in Sydney and Perth. See: or
more recent summary https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/as-soon-as-possible/#comment-814293
Physician, heal thyself?
Correction to Piotr Sept. 27: the sentence and the end should have read:
“And then you disputed the link between global warming and changes in precipitation patterns, because … you haven’t seen correlation between … LOCAL rain and … LOCAL temperature in Sydney, or in Perth. No reference or peer-review either.”
There must be a link between extreme rainfall and the recent under the ocean volcano eruption.
Surely someone has looked at how the vast volume of water pushed into the atmosphere has affect the rainfall equation?
Richard,
The amount of water sent skywards is put at 58,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools which is perhaps 4 million litres each. So that’s 232 million tons H2O, a lot of water but not a great deal in terms of global rainfall which averages (990mm over 510M sq km =) 505 trillion tons. The main climate impact will be from the amount of this water that got into the stratosphere where it would elevate humidity for several years and, according to hot off-the-press Duchamp et al (2023), was enough to have more of a warming effect than the cooling effect from the SO2 emitted..
There seems to be quite different views on the warming vs cooling effect of this:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2023GL105076 (“Such properties are expected to facilitate the persistence of a climate warming due to the volcanic water vapor.”)
vs
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL104634 (“HT would cool the 2022 Southern Hemisphere’s average surface temperatures by less than 0.037°C.”)
I guess such disagreements are fair for the game, and as a laymen I can’t tell which side is most likely to be right, so… wait and see, I guess ?
Haven’t done the math, but I seriously doubt that the amount of water “pushed” is “vast” on oceanic scales.
As it seems and explained in the article the main aspects of Arctic warming are two combined mechanisms – Arctic sea ice loss, with the ocean taking up more heat that is released during Autumn/Winter when the atmosphere gets colder again and that this heat stays near the surface in the low convective environment of the Arctic (lapse rate feedback). And warm water transport from the south contributes to this. And moist air transport from the south can increase the loss rate of sea ice thereby having a much greater effect than its additional energy in itself.
If somebody is interested in the details on the warming structure, I currently write a chapter on why sea ice will likely be gone soon during summer – all that is needed from now on is a row of extreme events in one year and sea ice during summer will be mostly gone as the Arctic sea ice system lost now so much of its resilience that it can happen now any year but certainly between 2030 and 2040: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pR7e8G0Np2YJNBowy7jHj2cx8W3wjRl6/view?usp=sharing But I removed the sources, kind of copy right ;)
And if it happens before 2030 even our 2 °C goal could be toast by 2030…
All the best
Jan
Hr Umsonst
What do you think of the thick ice cloggings north of Grønland and Canada, where there seems to be a steady wind blowing over whatever freezes from the siberian waters?
The Icebears will have an eldorado ande a rescue in the western ices, but their presence in the east will depend on how fast and how long they can swim and walk in the cold season.
Beeren island and Beerenberg on Jan Mayen tellls us of bears lleft behind as the Dutch were whaling there.
Benestad
How fine to get back to the weathers again. There I can follow it a bit more.
What has been most surprizing for me this autumn is that flood cathastrophy in Libya, and another one in Spain, I saw.
We have had 2 severe splashflood events in august in the Oslofjord with one electric refrigerator drowned.
But it is very steady fine weather for the apples. and a lot of fine clouds to be seen and discussed.
I read that both railway lines to Trondheim are now broken , both Gudbrandsdal north of Lillehammer, and Østerdal north of Elverum.
One can say that it is extreeme but it has been predicted and now we see it and can adapt. Do not plan things that can be taken by extreeme flooding and keep your resque and evacuation systems in order.
I would also say, conscider opening all the small natural creeks again, that were dug down and paved over in the last 100 years. Why not have a river or a creek through your garden instead of a lawn with plastic swimming pool and a parking place? as the seabirds and crows are assembling on the Sofiemyr sportsground again discussing it, where there were an icepool 10 000 years ago..
I look to have a tiny natural birdbath also in my garden. Simply pave it out with stones where it can come and go. The birds (Corvidæ) seem to remember where, from year to year.
We had strict communal water restrictions in june and july, followed by catastrophic rainshowers in August
It should tell us that common water management and political philosophy should be better adapted to reality.
The wild trees flora and fauna seems to like it. Thus set on that instead. The pope has proclaimed the same, “Laudato si..”.
One more thing – that warming of the Arctic and its driving mechanisms should be more partitioned into factors of summer warming and factors of winter warming, as summer warming is very important in regard to sea ice loss. Missed till now such a partitioning even that it is possible to discern it from the different studies…
Maybe I should include it in my chapter.
Polar amplification is obviously caused by the fact that H2O vapor is very low in frigid polar air, making CO2 the main greenhouse gas there. Therefore, increasing CO2 would affect the poles more than the tropics, where H2O is 98% of the greenhouse effect, according to Salby. This was pointed out by Happer decades ago, but ignored by the CO2 folks.
Re: Morgan Wright 27 Sept
Having your ass handed to you time and time again in the previous thread see replies to your Grand Debut on RC, made you come back for more?
MW: the tropics, where H2O is 98% of the greenhouse effect 98% according to Salby.
Not bloody likely – Schmidt et al. 2010 using actual model of the atmosphere shows that water vapour makes up not 98% but 39% of greenhouse effect. Given that tropics cover 40% of Earth area – this would have meant that ALL effect of water vapour would have to be present in the tropics, leaving
THE REST of Earth north and south of 23 deg. lat – having ZERO humidity. Even been to Florida? 0% humidity, eh?
This was pointed out by Happer decades ago, but ignored by the CO2 folks
And why exactly would “global warming scumbags”/”stupid climafia” [(c) Morgan Wright], would want to hide the fact that the reasons for the massive warming in polar regions was INCREASING CONCENTRATION of CO2 ????
If one wanted to make a point how good greenhouse gas CO2 is – you couldn’t do better job than Mr, Wright, Hey, wouldn’t that make … Mr. Wright …. a “global warming scumbag” and a very “stupid” member of “ climafia” ????
Piotra,
Lots of bold words, but not a one explaining what’s wrong with my point, i.e. that polar amplification is caused by the fact that air at the poles is dry allowing CO2 to have a greater proportion, just like I said. Not a word. I bet you don’t even understand it.
Actual models? Is that like real mannequins or actual costume jewelry?
Morgan Wright
“polar amplification is caused by the fact that air at the poles is dry allowing CO2 to have a greater proportion, just like I said. ”
Not true. Polar amplification is defined as the greater warming at the poles than the tropics. Although CO2 is a greater proportion of the total GHGs at the poles, the total quantity of CO2 at the poles in ppm is roughly the same as at the tropics, so CO2 CANNOT be the cause of polar amplification. The reasons for polar amplification are reduced sea ice and other feedbacks as below:
https://sevenseasmedia.org/polar-amplification-why-is-the-arctic-warming-faster-than-the-rest-of-the-world/
Morgan Wright 7 Oct. “Piotra, Lots of bold words, but not a one explaining what’s wrong with my point. Not a word.”
Which part of the paragraphs showing you WITH NUMBERS how wrong is your point:
===
MW: the tropics, where H2O is 98% of the greenhouse effect according to Salby.
Piotr: Not bloody likely – Schmidt et al. 2010 using actual model of the atmosphere shows that water vapour makes up not 98% but 39% of greenhouse effect. Given that tropics cover 40% of Earth area – this would have meant that ALL effect of water vapour would have to be present in the tropics, leaving THE REST of Earth north and south of 23 deg. lat – having ZERO humidity. Even been to Florida? 0% humidity, eh?
===
according to you, constitutes: “ Lots of bold words, but not a one explaining what’s wrong with [Morgan Wright] point“. And AFTER THAT _you_ lecture _me_:
“ I bet you don’t even understand it.”
Arrogance correlates well with ignorance.
I never said 98% of IR absorption by CO2 on the whole planet happens in the tropics. I said 98% of absorption in the tropics is H2O. See how Florida got hot again? Nice way to twist what I said right-round.
Uh, dude, he quoted you word-for-word.
Apparently, it would be well worth a bet that *you* don’t understand him, rather than vice versa.
Morgan Wright
“I never said 98% of IR absorption by CO2 on the whole planet happens in the tropics.”
.
Piotr never suggested you did. He made no reference to numerical quantities of CO2. Unless there is an invisible post by Piotr, that I cant read.
Piotr referred to “water vapour” for example: “the tropics, where H2O is 98% of the greenhouse effect …. according to Salby…..Not bloody likely – Schmidt et al. 2010 using actual model of the atmosphere shows that water vapour makes up not 98% but 39% of greenhouse effect.. Given that tropics cover 40% of Earth area ……”
You obviously cant read, or need new glasses :) Or are you deliberately putting words in his mouth and thus deflecting?
And surely it was intuitively obvious to you that the claim of the tropics where 98% of the greenhouse effect is H2O sounded too high? And thus shouldn’t be taken at face value and needed a bit of pondering?
Morgan Wright: Oct. 8: “ I never said 98% of IR absorption by CO2 on the whole planet happens in the tropics”
NOBODY claim you said _that_, Genius. Here is the exchange in question:
====
MW: “ the tropics, where H2O is 98% of the greenhouse effect according to Salby.”
Piotr: “Not bloody likely – Schmidt et al. 2010 using actual model of the atmosphere [as opposed to a few equations scratched on the back of the envelope] shows that water vapour makes up not 98% but 39% of greenhouse effect. Given that tropics cover 40% of Earth area – this would have meant that ALL effect of water vapour would have to be present in the tropics, leaving THE REST of Earth north and south of 23 deg. lat – having ZERO humidity. Even been to Florida? 0% humidity, eh? ”
===
And _you_ lecture _others_: “ I bet you don’t even understand it.” ? ;-) Too bad you never put any real money where your mouth was … I would have enjoyed parting the arrogant fool from his money.
Morgan Wright,
Your continued commenting here prompts me to reply to your initial misguided comment.
Concerning your citing of Murry Salby here at a website disguising climate science (which is what it says in the site’s masthead). Salby is a rabid purveyor of bullshit. If you do sensibly want to cite such a one, it would be best to cite both publication and page, and further to set out explicitly why the part of Salby’s work you are citing is not another pile of the utter garbage which Salby excels in creating.
I am no expert in the works of Murry Salby but a quick attempt to find some statement from the fool which matches your citation led only to p249 of his grubby little 2012 book titled “Physics of the Climate & Climate” (‘little’ in that it becomes so very small when Salby’s bullshit is pruned away from its 600-odd pages) finds him talking of a net +1.5Wm^-2 anthropogenic climate forcing (which is in accord with IPCC AR4). From this he insists this is only ” about 0.5% of the 327 Wm−2 of overall downwelling LW radiation that warms the Earth’s surface” which is incorrect as firstly the +1.5Wm^-2 is a value at the top of the atmosphere not the surface, and secondly the surface downwelling LWR is part of the planet’s energy balance which does not feature net Forcing. In this context Salby boldly tells us “The vast majority of that warming is contributed by water vapor. Together with cloud, it accounts for 98% of the greenhouse effect.”** This 98%, which applies globally and not just to the tropics, is simply more Salby bullshit.
(**I note you make this exact quote on your own webpage. Do be aware of what would happen in a world where the CO2 levels are reduced to zero. You do actually understand the situation with your frigid polar air” remark.)
Happer is a different species of idiot climate change denier. He is a wonderful example of “There is no fool like an old fool.”
His first attempt at second-guessing climatology (rather than just bad-mouthing it) was in a 5,500-word thesis published in 2011 and entitled ‘The Truth About Greenhouse Gases’, a thesis which demonstrated how knowledgeable the old fool was on the subject, that knowledge being best described as “vacuous” as was his obsession with the good old hockey stick graph which took up quite a lot of this thesis. So if you enjoy a bit of comedy, do take a look. (Note this was certainly not as you describe “decades ago.”) His more recent attempts are more science-like but continue to demonstrate the old fool hasn’t a clue about what he is ranting on about.
As for your raising of the subject of CO2 forcing w.r.t. Arctic Amplification, it would be best if you based such input on more useful sources than crazy fools like Salby & Happer, perhaps some of the papers cited in the OP above, or perhaps Liang et al (2022)
Oh, and speaking of Arctic sea ice, it appears the annual minimum (per VISHOP) was reached on the 15th, clocking in at 4.14 million km2.
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent/
NSIDC has it at 4.23 on the 12th, which is 6th-lowest in the record.
https://nsidc.org/news-analyses/news-stories/arctic-sea-ice-has-reached-minimum-extent-2023
They further note that the last 17 minima are also the lowest 17 minima ever.
But hey, ‘the recovery continues’, as 2023 is not a new low record–and in fact, that makes 11 years of ‘recovery,’ since the all-time low remains 2012! (/sarc)
Hr Umsonst
What do you think of the thick ice cloggings north of Grønland and Canada, where there seems to be a steady wind blowing over whatever freezes on the siberian side?
The Icebears will have an eldorado and a rescue in the western ices, but their presence in the east will depend on how fast and how long they can swim and walk in the cold season.
Beeren island and Beerenberg on Jan Mayen tellls us of bears lleft behind as the Dutch were whaling there.
Carbo: What do you think of the thick ice cloggings north of Grønland and Canada
Local weather, not the global climate.
Carbo: The Icebears will have an eldorado
Maybe you should buy airline tickets there for the bears from Churchill, Manitoba, on the shores of Baffin Bay – the prime place for polar bear watching. For the last week one of the warmest places in Canada. 23C on Sept. 27.
No Hr Piotr,
that iceclogging is a rather permanent phaenomenon shown by many signals for several years, thus would have been called ” climate” along with the very good and appliciable Köppen” system that we may be brought up with and aquainted to outside of your personal horizons,… where the public school,system and general public enlightment was rather in order from quite early on.
Avoid believing that the cllimate is something invented by James Hansen or by Al Gore.. Not even by Roger Revelle. .
So my good question to Hr Umsonst, who seem aquainted to the Northpole, remains.
Polar bears are are actually being stranded, losing weight and wasting energy because of shrinking ice. One thing that has caught my attention though, is how scientists are using GPS tracking of bears to fine-tune their tracking of ice thickness. From my perspective anyway, this is some neat lateral thinking and an illustration of the integrative relationship between biology and climate science
anyhoo Montanus friend of Carbo interesting some research going on with icy raccoon cousins of latitudes of northwards sannheten while the earthly octopi are throbbing
——
Ocean of Earth
BY GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
TRANSLATED BY RON PADGETT
To G. de Chirico
I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean
Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes
Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are
Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against the windowpanes
House of dampness
House of burning
Season’s fastness
Season singing
The airplanes are laying eggs
Watch out for the dropping of the anchor
Watch out for the shooting black ichor
It would be good if you were to come from the sky
The sky’s honeysuckle is climbing
The earthly octopi are throbbing
And so very many of us have become our own gravediggers
Pale octopi of the chalky waves O octopi with pale beaks
Around the house is this ocean that you know well
And is never still
Hr R. Havers.
Personally, I have no sense for surrealism exept for a very few exeptions maybe.
I am quite much more a naturalist formalist even pytagorean realist, fond of meaningful figurative art and proper scolarly classical music.
Carbo,
Um, ok.
Can we all agree to stop using the deceptive phrase “Polar Amplification”
It is only an Arctic amplification, or better still a “Northern Amplification” Here is the trend in UAH anomalies by latitude bands :-
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ydiGaXHLahrwfBE28
Clearly polar amplification is a myth. Now I know you will point out 2 issues….
1) Dr Roy is a heathen so we can’t trust anything he publishes. I would love to use a different dataset, but his is the only one I can find that breaks measurements down via latitude.
2) It is a satellite dataset and I know you NASA types don’t trust satellites. Yes the measurment is the lower troposphere compared with 2m above the surface, but to get any sort of consistent spatial coverage across hemispheres it is the only practical solution.
I think we can put these concerns aside as I am only using it to generate trends for the latitude bands. .
(and Piotr, please grow up)
Keith Woollard: Piotr, please grow up
Are you referring to my
<a href= " https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/old-habits/#comment-814690"
Sept27 post?" If yes – which part of that post wasn't grown-up to your standards?
– the part where I challenge your attempts to discredit others based either on falsehoods (trying to discredit Rasmus with " quoting a new non-peer reviewed paper that suggests something?” when his short text was dense with references (~800 word text with 7 peer reviewed papers and 1 pre print), or when you try discredit others based on your ignorance (see below) ?
– or the part when I questioned quality your statistical reasoning with respect to the climate change – when you were a) ridiculing a statement on the changes in continental scale precipitation with your observation that …. in one town on that continent there was no clear trend in precipitation?;-)
or where you questioned the influence of global warming on the precipitation by assuring us that
there were no clear trends between … LOCAL temperature and LOCAL precipitation in Perth and Sydney. For this reasoning to be valid – the two cities would have to representative of either the globe or at least Australia, and more importantly – all weather would have to be generated locally – i.e. no movement air masses , no winds.
And since you have never admitted being wrong there – tells the readers how credible are any of your future claims, since they will rise from the same level of understanding and same level of intellectual integrity, as those before them.
The Antarctic, which has just had a record low sea ice reading, on line 1.
Sorry for the delay in replying Ray, I wanted to wait for the most recent data so I could fully ridicule your statement. I have now updated my graphic to include the September anomaly values – wow what a difference it has made!! I have also included for reference the RealClimate prediction from the link in the main text for the definition of polar amplification. See the image here
https://photos.app.goo.gl/7LYxuvCRY8gqr7oFA
So I have pointed out that the trend for the southern half of the planet is the complete opposite of predictions. And what do we get as a reply from the brains trust here?
Piotr : You said something a few years ago that I didn’t understand
Ray : One recent measurement of a different variable is unusual
Carbomontanus: Maybe the word amplify has a different meaning
RealClimate scientists: crickets
When data doesn’t match predictions, what should a real scientist do?
Keith Woollard 8 OCT “Piotr : You said something a few years ago that I didn’t understand”
Projections, my Dear Woollard, projections – I have no problem with understanding:
as summarized in see my post from Sept. 27
or for more details: in the original thread ,
in short:
1. your hypocrisy of lecturing others based on your own ignorance (you lectured an Australian farmer presuming that you knew better than him what were changes in precipitation and soil moisture on his farm and farms of his relatives – because, wait for it, … in some town in Australia there was no trend in local precipitations ;-)
2. quality of your quantitative reasoning – e,g, when you “disproved” the relationship
between global warming and precipitation patterns in Australia – by pointing that
… in Perth and in Sydney there was no obvious relationship between ….LOCAL
temperature and LOCAL rain, which would make sense ONLY if all whether was
generated locally – i.e. if in Australia air-masses were stationary
and there were no such a thing like “wind”.
You have never been able to falsify these points – other than … dropping my name in the posts to other people, to talk how how I don’t understand you (no details provided), or with your famous zingers like: KW: “ (and Piotr, please grow up)“.
Powerful stuff!
Try and keep on-topic Piotr.
Look at the data, or look at my representation of it at the link above. Polar amplification is a myth.
The trend in warming monotonically increases from south to north
Keith Woollard Oc. 11: ” Try and keep on-topic Piotr
I don’t have to try – I did: You have done a drive-by, claiming that I “ didn’t understand ” your claims about Australia, I have proven that it is a lie – hence I “kept on topic” of your claim. And that discussion, and the fact that you were unable to admit, or perhaps even realize, that you were wrong – tells me all I need to know about you and the credibility of your claims, past and future.
Thus, I am no more interested in your NEW claims than I would be in the opinions of a plumber on the effectiveness of vaccines. I’d rather read the paper of epidemiologists, e.g.:
https://iccinet.org/latest-observations-antarctica-warming-nearly-two-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-the-world/
“ The Arctic long has been characterized by warming two-four times the global average; now, ice core measurements provide the first conclusive evidence that Antarctica as a whole is also warming twice as fast ”
Referring to Casado, et al Nature Climate Change, 7 September 2023,
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01791-5
Hmmm whom to believe – climatologists working with ice-cores from Antarctica, or the revelations of Keith Woollard, a guy who thinks he can disprove the effect of global warming on precipitation in Australia by saying that there is no clear correlation between … local temperature and … local rain in Sydney and Perth, i.e. implying that T and rain are generated locally, i.e. there are no air mass movement (no winds).
Casado Et Al is based on 1,000 year proxy data.
I was giving global measurements from the satellite era – the same time period used in RealClimate’s definition
@ Keith Wollard
“cllearly, polar amplificatiion is a myth”
It depends what you mean with it. The conscept of amplification may be borrowed from elsewhere and having different meanings and definitions.
If a signal follows proportiional to another and even allmost drowned in arbitrary noise, I would speak of an amplification even if the following or consequent signal is smalller than the input one. But the consequent sigal must be caused by the former.
We discuss it in decibels or perhaps even better, in iinput signal successive halalvings or doubblings.
Check up verbum to amplify.
With regard to the polar amplification it is certainly not just the media’s fault. Almost a year ago I have written a “climate critical hit piece” on the subject, quite consistent with the article above. The albedo effect will not work for two reasons. Yes, obviously the Arctic warming is in winter. But secondly water is a non-lambertian radiator / reflector with a high reflectivity at low incident angles. Ice or water will not make much difference in this regard at very high latitudes.
Lapse rate amplification will neither make much sense. Theoretically an increase in the lapse rate should grow the GHE. However in arctic winter with its pronounced inversion there is no working GHE, and there is nothing to be enhanced.
Of course the polar amplification is mainly due to convection. More sea ice means more continental climate, less sea ice more maritime climate. The potential for this is huge, you just need to compare winter temperatures for Trondheim and Yakutsk with a whopping 36K difference.
However this actual mechanism is barely covered. I scanned the whole AR6 (and AR5 btw.) and just is not mentioned. I can not help, but there seems to be some alarmistic bias. Both albedo and lapse rate effect would have global ramifications as they both increase the energy budget, the primary by absorbing more energy, the latter by holding more energy back. Convection however is only about the distribution of an otherwise constant energy budget.
E. Schaffer: “ water is a non-lambertian radiator / reflector with a high reflectivity at low incident angles
First – it applies only to the part of the Arctic that is not land and is not covered with sea-ice.
Second – of the-ice free water it applies only to the flat and smooth water – if you have waves or even ripples (capillary waves) – the effective incident angle adds to the slope of the wave –and suddenly your low angle becomes high angle and the reflectance falls dramatically. That’s why a sudden gust of wind makes the water look darker. And if you seakayak in the Arctic, you really pay attention to waves and wind – and I don’t recall many waveless and windless days.
Third – this applies only to the direct sunlight – in an overcast or foggy day – due to multiple refractions – the average incident angle for the diffused light is much higher than that of the direct light.
True, things are more complex. And if someone should integrate all these complexities to delevop a reasonable estimate on what the effective delta in albedo over the ice/water issue is, I’d be grateful for that.
However the starting point of the albedo feedback is like “ice (or rather snow) is white, water is dark”, and for the reasons named circumstantially this is not quite true. In reality it will make a marginal, not a huge difference.
E. Schaffer: “In reality it will make a marginal, not a huge difference ”
You don’t know that. In fact, I have already argued that your condition of marginality – “high reflectivity of water at low incident angles” – is marginal itself – an exception in the Arctic, not the rule:
– it does NOT apply to big part of the Arctic that is NOT land, nor the part of ocean covered by ice/snow – because both of them can experience a significant drop in albedo with warming without going to “dark water”
– NOR does it apply to the open water that has waves, and even to flat water if there are clouds or fog.
Both of these making your scenario – exception not, the rule.
Further, In favour of the importance of the albedo feedback are also facts that:
– we have much larger warming in the Arctic than in the Antarctic where albedo feedback is much weaker in the latter case
– the glacial cycles are likely to be triggered by the Milankovic cycles changing the insolation in the Arctic in summer – of the 4 positive feedbacks that amplify this local change to global large change – CO2, CH4, and water vapour are not greatly increased as a result of warmer summers in the Arctic, but the ice/snow albedo feedback IS.
Trying to parse that, and not sure I’m entirely succeeding.
But–while the Arctic does indeed, IIRC, see frequent temperature inversions in winter, they do not–IIRC again–necessarily or typically extend the entire height of the air column. And if there is a typical lapse rate immediately below the effective radiating layer, there should be a GHE, no? (I do recall seeing one study that actually found a negative GHE for upland areas of Antarctica due to this effect, but not for the Arctic–it isn’t cold enough consistently enough.)
“…water vapour [is] not greatly increased as a result of warmer summers in the Arctic…”
Are you sure? Warmer summers mean more ice melt, and decreased SI coverage should mean more water vapor, shouldn’t it? And even the annual SI maximum has been showing a decreasing trend over time.
And while I’m commenting, maybe I should–a propos of the “warmer summers” phrase–remind everyone that the temperature increase in the Arctic–especially the high Arctic–is far more dramatic for winter than for summer. It can be easily seen here:
https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Compare winter temps early in the record to recent years, and it’s very obvious.
…”However in arctic winter with its pronounced inversion there is no working GHE, and there is nothing to be enhanced.”
A
using
surface upward LW flux – TOA upward LW flux
as measure of GHE, and
B
approximating lapse rate as 0 throughout (isothermal profile),
1st part would be true. But changing the lapse rate would change this, so 2nd part (…”there is nothing to be enhanced.“) does not make sense. And the effect of downward flux at the surface, or at other levels, is also part of the GHE (it’s really not one-dimensional) – and when the profile is so stable to convection, net radiant fluxes below the tropopause should have more effect on temperatures eg. @ surface (setting aside changes in horizontal heat fluxes).
We can now go to the consistently wrong National Geographic Magazine, since they threw in with the Anthropogenic Global warming crowd, & see what they have predicted.
“Worst Drought in 1,000 Years Predicted for American West”
Global warming to cause historic “megadrought” by century’s end.
By Brian Clark Howard, National Geographic
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 12, 2015
Large parts of the U.S. are in for a drought of epic proportions in the second half of this century, scientists warn in a new study that provides the highest degree of certainty yet on the impact of global warming on water supplies in the region.
The chances of a 35-year or longer “megadrought” striking the Southwest and central Great Plains by 2100 are above 80 percent if the world stays on its current trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists from NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University report in a study published Thursday in the new open-access journal Science Advances.
[…]In their study, Cook’s team used 17 computer models of droughts and three models of soil moisture to predict the likelihood of dryness over the next century. After they found a high degree of agreement among the models, they applied them to data gathered from tree rings going back to about the year 1000.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150212-megadrought-southwest-water-climate-environment/
My, aren’t those computer models wonderful tools to analyze the climate?
(Yawn) Is it 2100 already? Wow, that was quite a nap I just had! I only remember a strange dream where some guy asked a soothsayer named Rex Tillerson to gaze into Heartland Institute’s crystal ball and scry the climate of the future. Then, the guy jumped up and started running around and yelling about how Chicken Little was going to ruin us all. But it turned out that he was counting his chickens before they’d hatched.
Okay, things are starting to come back to me. Is Lake Mead still there, or has Las Vegas dried up and blown away?
When will you ever wake up and understand how much water is removed from Lake Mead by the expanded population that depend on its water.?
WATER LEVEL
1,065.83
Feet MSL
Sunday, October 1, 2023
7:00:00 PM
Level is 163.17 feet
below full pool of 1,229.00
https://mead.uslakes.info/Level/
JDS, when will you ever wake up and understand several different factors can deplete lake levels including taking water for irrigation and drinking, weather related droughts, and climate change making droughts more severe. Maybe all at the same time. Its not that complicated to understand., – or maybe you have no conscience and just deliberately spread bullshit.
What nigelj says is not even worth reading, due to nigelj not caring about what the facts are, when he write this; . “Its not that complicated to understand., – or maybe you have no conscience and just deliberately spread bullshit.” Maybe part of the problem is due to the dishonesty of this site, Real Climate, when they will not allow for me to have this information given any daylight on this site. Why is Real Climate so afraid of the truth?
National Geographic & California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has no idea about the basics of the Earth’s climate if he is stupid enough to believe that carbon dioxide causes it to acts like it does.
OROVILLE Note the date.
February 11, 2017 05:24 AM
Water began pouring over the emergency spillway at Oroville Dam early Saturday for the first time in its 48-year history. State officials continued to say they don’t expect the situation to result in flooding in Oroville or other communities downstream.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article132154774.html
While CA politicians worried about climate change, they sat and did nothing to make sure that Oroville Dam was sound and functional.
Oroville Dam: What made the spillway collapse?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/17/oroville-dam-what-made-the-spillway-collapse/
J Doug Swallow: – “We can now go to the consistently wrong National Geographic Magazine, since they threw in with the Anthropogenic Global warming crowd, & see what they have predicted.
“Worst Drought in 1,000 Years Predicted for American West”
Global warming to cause historic “megadrought” by century’s end.
By Brian Clark Howard, National Geographic
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 12, 2015”
Um… “century’s end” hasn’t yet occurred, J Doug Swallow. The second half of this century is still a few decades away. I think you are getting very desperate to call an outlook/projection wrong long before the period in question has occurred.
Nature Sustainability published on 24 May 2023 a paper by Timothy M Lenton et. al. titled Quantifying the human cost of global warming. I’d suggest you look particularly at Figure 4, showing regions exposed to unprecedented heat (MAT ≥29 °C) for +1.5 & +2.7 °C global warming scenarios.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6
Co-head of Research Department on Earth System Analysis of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor of Physics of the Oceans at the University of Potsdam, Professor Stefan Rahmstorf tweeted May 25:
The tweet included a gif animation showing areas of the globe (in purple) that would be considered no longer habitable (MATs ≥ 29 °C). It seems large areas of the USA are likely exposed to higher temperatures (not quite purple, but dark red) even at +1.5 °C global warming scenario, likely to arrive by the end of this decade.
J Doug Swallow: – “My, aren’t those computer models wonderful tools to analyze the climate?”
In the YouTube video titled Neil deGrasse Tyson scolds cherry picking climate science, published 18 Sep 2017, duration 0:05:28, from time interval 0:03:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson says:
“What will it take for people to recognize that a community of scientists are learning objective truths about the natural world and that you can benefit from learning about it. Even news reports on this channel talked about the, the fact that we have fewer deaths per hurricane. Why? Because you now know weeks in advance! We have models that have trajectories of hurricanes. In decades gone by, it was like: ‘there’s a hurricane there; we don’t know – should I stay; should I go?’ And then you stay, and you die, OK? So, to cherry-pick science, it’s an odd thing for a scientist to observe, and I didn’t grow up in a country where that was a common phenomenon. We went to the moon and people knew science and technology fed those discoveries.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1MZ8U8C9c8
What will it take for you to recognize that a community of scientists are learning objective truths about the natural world and that you can benefit from learning about it., J Doug Swallow?
“California Facing Worst Drought on Record”
January 29, 2014
The most populated state in the country is facing what may be its worst drought in a century of record-keeping. On January 20, the governor of California declared a state of emergency, urging everyone to begin conserving water. Water levels in all but a few reservoirs in the state are less than 50% of capacity, mountains are nearly bare of snow except at the highest elevations, and the fire risk is extreme. In Nevada, the situation is much the same.
[…]On average, California will accumulate more than 53 inches of precipitation statewide over a typical 30-month span stretching from July to December, based on NOAA Climate Division Data. (Of course, there are huge differences from place to place based on elevation.) In the 30 months preceding December 2013, the state has received closer to 33 inches, just a bit less than the previous record low for a similar period, from July 1975-December 1977.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/california-facing-worst-drought-record
“As in most of the rest of the American West, fortunes depend less on how much precipitation falls from the sky than how much of it falls as snow and how long that snow stays in the mountains. Despite the occasional severe winters, western snowpacks have declined in recent decades, and key researchers expect the trend to accelerate. “Warmer winters are reducing the amount of snow stored in the mountains, and they’re causing snowpacks to melt earlier in the spring,” says Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. Shrinking snowpacks and earlier snowmelts mean—in practical terms—that the region faces a persistent and worsening drought.”
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/west-snow-fail/
As snow on the ground is a much cheaper way to store water than large artificial dams perhaps. Glaciers and lasting snowspots uphill entail sure and steady water for the summer.
They are maybe facing and discussing the same problem in Himalaya Tibet, and China.
And in addition, large water reserves in areas with frequent strong earthquakes is dangerous.
I even heard it from Sognefjord Norway this summer. . The abortgineans say they like the snowspots lasting for long up in the hills.
India and Pakistan also like their glaciers and so do the Swiss. Also in Island they are proud of them.
As for my personal wiew, I do not quite like them because from my point of wiew in a much lower landscape, they entail that certain summer warmth has not yet properly come.
But in a mountaineous landscape with warm oceanic winds and saltwater fjords, there may be walking distance from fameous flowering fruitgardens up to permanent snow.. .
From the first link in the op:
Hard to argue with those points, but I’d especially like to put in a pitch for “knows how to assess scientifically credible information about climate.” Without that seemingly obvious first step, things can go off the rails pretty quickly, both for reporting and for how audiences process the news– witness the trolling in the comment sections.
Ok, so some of the trolling is just narcissists being asses, but there does seem to be some honest confusion out there among the surprisingly naive.
Thank you Rasmus,
While the article is structured to provide an overview of these concepts for a reader less familiar with the subject matter, the links to the latest literature on the topic are useful to those that would like to cite the latest literature in their work.
I have a paper or amplification bias and sea ice bias in global temperature datasets (GISTEMP, NOAAGlobalTemp, HADCRUT, Berkeley Earth, etc.) that is currently undergoing peer review. In this paper, I argue that global temperature datasets (except maybe Berkeley Earth) slightly underestimate the warming of the global mean surface temperature due to neglecting the highest rate of warming in regions of melting sea ice. It is good to know that I can cite the Isaksen paper in future work.