extreme weather

I haven't yet been able to read the whole thread, but ...

A local weather researcher that I generally trust, and referenced here several times in the past, is crying a very serious foul on the Texas 20X report. Cliff Mass is very definitely a believer in AGW. But he has not been shy about challenging items that he believes to be hype and bad science, which damages the whole field.

Cliff Mass: Texas Tall Tales and Global Warming

 

This is why I don't get too wrapped around the axle trying to use fragmented historical records compared to modern satellite data. I don't fault those who make an effort but compared to what we're able to do today, concentrating on current, world-wide metrics offers a better return on investment.

I do remember the mid-50s in Oklahoma and at least two dust storms. This was well after more modern farming practices were widely adopted. But after the 50s, every creek, hollar, and low place had a dam. Now this is Oklahoma and most of them are pretty badly silted up by now but when you fly over the state, you can see how many of these shallow catch ponds exist.

Bob Wilson

 

AustinG, if you want the minimum possible info about ENSO, the cycles (broadly defined as barometric pressure differences between Tahiti and Darwin Australia) have been recorded since 17xx. Responses (in terms of precipittaion or precip anomaly wrt some chosen index period) depend locally on when somebody started writing that stuff down. For Texas I would presume that such records begin in 1890's, or perhaps earlier.

Diaz is one name to search for regional precip response patterns to ENSO. Has published a lot including a book.

Whatever precip changes result from changing climate, they will be additive to ENSO patterns, because there is no strong evidence that Clim change changes ENSO

New in JGR Biogeosciences, a paper that so far I have only read the abstract. Tree mortality increases during ENSO because the dry season dry outweighs the wet season wet. THey assert that mortality will incease w/clim. change, but the evidence is in the main text (not read yet). THis is about Borneo, where I don't work, but I know some "Borneologists" on staff here.

Here&now, it has been raining for several days. Yunnan province had a drought but the reservoirs are refilling. Last year's monsoon was weak. This year looks strong. This alternating pattern has been known for a long time.

What point? we actually know Much about climate patterns. The future-projecting models are um, unimpressive especially for rainfall and extreme events of any sort. But I think that some action is required.

THe alternative, once again, is to bet heavily that large increases in CO2 will have positive effects outweighing any&all negatives. This is our current path, but the science does not support that hope. I can't think of a way to say it with fewer words.

Meanwhile unrelated: THe police search for the climate gate email purloiner has been terminated. So if you're here and reading this, you may relax

 

More from Cliff Mass: Climate Extremists

"... But the evidence suggests that the big weather/climate events have little to do with global warming.

Reading the media and scanning the press releases of environmental advocacy groups, you would not come to these conclusions. Some organizations, like Climate Central and extremists like Bill McGibben, hype every major weather anomaly as proof of the profound effects of human-induced global warming. They ask you to "connect the dots" but are playing a very unhealthy role in this issue by providing false information. The trouble is that the media feeds upon this stuff...and my local paper..the Seattle Times....is one of the worst. ...

If you believe in the seriousness of global warming in the future, it is essential to stick to the truth. Over-the-top claims--which are easily provable to be false or which will fail to materialize in the near future-- simply undermine the credibility of the science. Mankind can only make the right decisions if they know the truth...and the uncertainties, and there are two groups in this conversation that are doing much to prevent the public from understanding the nature of this serious problem. "

 

do not know if this counts as "extreme weather", but Arctic sea ice levels are cratering to new record lows
for this time of year. It damn sure will LEAD to extreme weather, since pretty soon there will be no ice at all by midsummer.



This composite image of the central Arctic Basin is 1-2 weeks old - it's already become much worse, with that tattered ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas (you can see northern Alaska in the bottom left corner) now nearly gone.

Now why should we care?

The amount of heat absorbed by water is about 20x that absorbed by ice, and the sun is still high enough to pump it in - in previous years, such melting didn't happen till September, by which time the sun was on the horizon and not a factor. This image says that the alarmists are right about AGW, and if anything, too conservative.

Turn on the news and its full of Kardashians and badminton players.

Depressing as hell.

 

The 153 years average we have discussed here recently concerns Greenland ice, not arctic sea floating ice.

There are not many high-latitude thermometers, but those that are are generally showing T increase. This corresponds well with permafrost changes and some examples of plant redistributions. Therefore it seems reasonable to expect/consider/conclude some linkage with temperature, including this sea ice dynamic.

This is not the same as attributing the measured T increases to CO2.

 

The anticipated ice-free (or at least navigable) arctic is of interest for resource extraction and military activities, as well as shipping as such. Maybe US will even decide to ratify the 'law of the seas' treaty

Figuring out the pluses and minuses does indeed appear complicated. Perhaps better to say that the pluses seem clear and the minuses are murky. It could be that they are presented as murky. But that would be me again accusing the merchants of doubt of 'doing what they do'. In any case it would all (ideally) get included in the balance of harm and benefits from our ongoing global warming/acidification experiment.

By no means would I want to exclude consideration of the benefits. But we need to be fair, and portray uncertainties as they are. Not as we might wish them to be. So, good luck with all that!

There have been some recent publications on extreme weather, one global overview in BAMS
DOI :10.1175/BAMS -D-12-00021.1
This will be of interest, and figure 3 does a better job of illustrating El Nino + and - effects (where) on precipitation than my recent effort here.

and another analysis of the accumulation of extreme T records in USA, in Geophysical Research Letters. The latter is accepted, no DOI yet, and behind the paywall. But the curious will PM me. They begin in the 1930s, and conclude that the accumulation of extremes is significant.

In Climatic Change, also US (summer ) extremes
DOI 10.1007/s10584-012-0396-6
With the bonus of using climate models to look forward to 2024. Again, one can only imagine of what arrives in the authors' email inboxes after being so daring.

Did I give the drought monitor link before? Things may be easing up a bit, but I imagine that the toasted crops cannot recover.

US Drought Monitor

 

Lower Water temperature melts ice a lot quicker than lower air temps would melt ice .
Warm water currents are the first suspect where there are no actual thermometers.
But its easy enough to prove ,just measure the air and water temps.
If the melting is due to water temp and currents ,its unlikely caused by GHG.
No wonder theres no thermometers in the arctic.

 

Arctic Report Card - Atmosphere Summary
Arctic Report Card - Ocean - Proshutinsky, et al.

Arctic T proxies
http://denverclimatestudygroup.com/OTHER-MISC/ArcticCoolingScience200909041236.pdf
(I just send you to where the Science article is free)

Warm water is coming in
http://instaar.colorado.edu/~marchitt/reprints/spielhagenscience11.pdf

Fig.2 here for the thermometers
http://ice.tsu.ru/files/paul/fulltext_Arctica.pdf

Svalbard airport T, etc
Estimation of trends in extreme melt-season duration at Svalbard - Kvamstø - 2011 - International Journal of Climatology - Wiley Online Library
(cause of the paywall I pirate for you their money shot)

I assure you that this stuff is not hard to find. And I've spared you all the permafrost and vegetation-migration stuff. But I think that the emergent picture is reasonably clear.

 

Watched the video - a bunch of rubish!!! Al Gore, with the bleeding heart liberals love this bull! Data is too, too, limited (100 years) - you got to be kidding me.

DBCassidy

 

^Did you hear of today's report to be published in the journal Science (I believe) that chronicles extreme temperature events of the last 30 years, and documents that the percentage of the planet experiencing extreme heat has grown from an average of 1% to ~ 13%? The conclusion stated that it was almost "an absolute certainty that these events we related to human induced GHGs?

Enjoy your stay in the great State of Denial!

Icarus

 

In a larger sense, it is all a distinction with out a diffence. As Bob Dylan once said, "you don't need a weatherman to tell ya which way the wind blows".

One can argue the nuance of this study or that, find methodology flaws with many studies, but if one simply opens ones's eyes, it takes a pretty naive person to accept the idea that the planet is getting warmer, and humans are the cause. I keep going back to this simple analogy: if you keep adding insulation to your house, and don't turn down the heating system, the end result is going to be a hotter house. To blame the furnace, misses the obvious.

Is any given extreme heat event a result of GHG and AGW? I don't know, and quite frankly I don't care. Taken in totality, it is hard to argue that these events are nothing but the simple sult of adding too much insulation, in the form of GAGs! There is no PLAUSIBLE alternative explanation.

Yes, the earth climate goes through "natural" cyclical changes, but what is happening is beyond the scale of that, both in speed and intensity.

Icarus

 

When I saw this Sunday, the incredibly short 30 year base period left me very statistically disappointed. Has anything new been added in the two days since?

 

It sort of reminds me a Veterinarian friend of mine, when called in to diagnose a chicken. She diagnosed it 100% correctly as,, DEAD. All this debate about whether or not weather events are climate change related is sort of like fiddling while Rome is burning. By the time we reach a conclusion satisfactory enough for some,, it will, (if it already isn't!) be too late to effect any meaningful change.

Then certain denialists will pipe up, "well somebody should have done something!"

Icarus