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Global Warming: loading the extreme weather dice

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by bwilson4web, May 21, 2013.

  1. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    Tornadoe = weather
    Trend in extreme weather events = climate
     
  2. icarus

    icarus Senior Member

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    I am simply suggesting that we have heard for a decade or more that the net result of climate change won't simply be "global warming". What we have heard is that abnormal weather events of size , duration and intensity will become more common. Nowhere have I written that any specific event be it any specific hurricane, or tornado or snow storm or what ever is directly tied to human caused climate change.

    What we are seeing, without question is more abnormal weather events, including abnormal temperate events, snow events, rain events, outlier tropical storm events, doughts, floods etc, etc. One can choose to believe this or not, but I am willing to bet that I f we were to have this self same conversation 15 years from now, you would be more likely to agree with me. I'll put a days wage in escrow, and lose it willingly IF what I believe to true continues to prove to be true.

    As for Galviston , if one actually reads the history of the great Galveston Hurricane, one finds that hubris and lack of understnding about how tropical storms and storm surges work contributed mightily to the outcome. The fact that we willingly rebuild in the same location just amplifies the hubris.

    There is a fairly good, quite entrainment book about the great Galviston hurricane

    Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

    There
     
  3. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Well yes, and many in the scientific community object to the vagueness of the claim. It is often followed by other claims that this tornado or hurricane is evidence. There was a major uproar and protest about the hurricane chapter of IPCC use of grey literature that would not pass peer review, and the exclusion of contradictory peer reviewed research. The meterologist that was the chapter's author still likes to claim global warming will cause increased huricanes, but hasn't been able to publish anything that backs this up.

    If we define what is supposed to change, then we can test the hypothesis. If its just bad stuff will happen, you will get protest. Some like skeptial science and watts up with that will continue to move the goal posts with every weather event. I'll start

    Higher record temperature - quite likely and supported by evidence
    More storm surge damage because of higher sea levels and destruction of natural barriers - quite likely and supported by evidence, but has cofactor of destruction of wet lands/barrier islands by mans activity not related to ghg.

    tornadoes - not supported by evidence
    huricanes frequency - not supported by evidence
    huricane strength - supported by evidence, but increased strength minor, much less than claims


    I have not read about more abnoral snow and rain, only different snow and rain, but am open to peer reviewed research. I am interested in the flood and drought data, but again, there is scientific disagreement here, and I would like to see more papers.

    I'm glad we can agree about that. A cousin rebuilt his cottage with the government insurance money. There was quite a financial incentive this time around to do it. I am of course sickened that the Govenor's commitee, edited the environmental report on galviston to exclude prediction of rising sea levels and high risk in the future.

     
  4. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    We'll have to agree to disagree about this. I see global warming as turning up the heat in a steam boiler, a way to make the engine that is our atmosphere churn faster. Weather and winds are just the mechanical part of that engine. A warmer but 'calmer' weather system, well there is Venus:
    Source: Venus' Atmosphere: Composition, Climate and Weather | Space.com
    Even in the absence of water, we see planets with atmospheres have churning that to the best of our knowledge is solar heat driven.

    As for government 'policy' driven by climate deniers, we have our own Roy Spencer and he has been busy visiting state committees with his particular nonsense. So I'm not surprised that Texas, like King Canute, commands the tides to stop:
    At one time, Arkansas passed a law that the value of Pi is three. States, the research labs of America.

    Bob Wilson
     
  5. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    The more heat, and the greater disparity of temperatures, the faster the energy's going to flow. Sounds logical to me.
     
  6. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    Yep, I think the conclusion that the water cycle of Earth has increased it's frequency is not in doubt. A little less sure is the conclusion that the total water vapor in the atmosphere is increased.

    Between the two, findings of increased extreme precipitation events is expected, and according to the latest IPCC report that evidence is now called 'medium certainty.' I looked for and could not find a probabilistic analog to what medium certainty means, presumably because it represents the IPCC authors' subjective evaluation of the literature.

    Incidentally, while Richard Lindzen of MIT is something of a discredited climate skeptic, in no small part due to his clinging to his pet theory of an 'Iris effect' modulating GHG sensitivity, there is no doubt he remains one of the world's authorities on the physics of weather. He explained that in warm weather, the higher energy in the atmosphere that acts to promote tornadoes was more than negated by the drop in shear, and so postulated that tornadoes would not increase in frequency as the world heated up. The irony is that he used the absence of a drop in tornado frequency in the empiric record to bolster his climate skeptic position.

    Not irony from Lindzen who has remained pretty consistent, but irony that the uninformed have flipped the science.

    Lastly , a footnote about Lindzen: he is on record as stating that it is 'nutty' to dispute CO2 as a GHG which leads to AGW. So the leading climate skeptic in the world also thinks our climate change denialists are fruitcakes.
     
  7. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Just curious, what is the metric for shear?

    The reason I asked is I started looking through nature.com and I'm finding:
    One common thread, water vapor is the primary fuel. For the smaller, microclimate, tornado event, shear plays a part but the local shear events appear to be more a function of a strong frontal boundary (no mention of jet stream, my ad hoc observation.)

    The thing is we are starting to see "Attribution of Climate Events" (ACE) with a lot of push-back, but a continuing effort from the UK. One recent paper:
    http://www.wcrp-climate.org/conference2011/documents/Stott.pdf
    There seems to be recent work on hurricane intensity.

    There are no end of non-scientific, counter-claims to global warming. FOX news takes any heavy or unusual snow as evidence that 'Al Gore is wrong.' What FOX misses, our local friends are more than willing to find someone who claims there is no correlation, no cause and effect . . . 'life is wonderful.' But these are little more than today's King Canute commanding the tide to stop.

    ACE is working on how to tie weather and climate together. Sure, our current models are coarse, Doug recently posted the 'cells' from the models are fairly massive. However, a model does not have to use single-sized cells and computing power continues to grow. I'm patient.

    I'm a 'steam table' guy who well remembers the heat of vaporization and partial pressure of water. Turn up the boiler and the engine runs stronger, it is as simple as that.

    Bob Wilson
     
  8. wxman

    wxman Active Member

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    meters^2/second^2 (Storm relative helicity)



    Boundaries can induce directional shear at the surface. However, shear is required for updraft rotation at all levels of the troposphere - not just the surface and not just the jet stream level.

    One more interesting point. High velocity jet stream segments, called "jet streaks", can induce significant vertical lift within certain regions of the jet streak. Boundaries can also produce lift (surface convergence), as can divergence of strong winds aloft (mostly the result of speed shear).
     
  9. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Thanks!

    In aviation we are well aware that as air velocity increases, there is a pressure drop. I've long suspect the area under a jet stream might have 'up draft' that would in effect, accelerate any vertical motion in the narrow region below its path. Then I've noticed a high frequency of tornadoes and overhead jet streams.

    What surprised me was reading about shear effects from frontal boundaries on hurricanes. Then I started remembering those that seemed to 'fall apart' when a strong, high pressure system came down versus those where the hurricane or later remnants would kinda of 'ride up' on the warm-side of the frontal boundary. I've seen their rotational core proceed all the way up to the Northeast . . . riding up the front.

    If the hurricane predictions are accurate, we are likely to see several examples this year. It might be fun to start a thread on a couple of them them with snapshots of their track and USA weather systems. Add some snapshots of various weather sources (I'm fond of Weather Underground.)

    Bob Wilson
     
  10. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Taking your speculation and running with it....knowing that air behaves as a fluid, and having observed many river currents, I wonder if the jet stream twists. As in rotates on a horizontal axis. Not a steady blow, as such, but a writhing, twisting snake of an air current. Your 'up draft' would be a 'down draft' on the other side. If the jet stream's located where air masses meet - fronts and systems - a twisting motion could be inferred by the relative motions of the adjoining air masses. Tornados could be spinoffs of the jet stream, created by the same forces that create the stream.

    It's the little twisty current that comes off the tip of the paddle, only on a different scale. ;)
     
  11. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    I don't know as I would have to to use oxygen . . . and a turbo to reach those altitudes. . . . Well maybe do some mountain wave flying . . .

    Bob Wilson
     
  12. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    It's probably a much safer place for an imagination than for an airplane..... ;)
     
  13. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    The airplane is probably OK it is the pilot I would have to worry about. <grins>

    Bob Wilson
     
  14. iClaudius

    iClaudius Active Member

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    Global warming is not much about hurricanes, tornados, snow storms etc. as the climate scientists at IPCC point out every time we have a big storm of some kind.

    We do see the climate science deniers seizing on the storms to trot out their home brewed charts and calculations to claim it disproves the 30 years of climate science research which has described an irrefutable existence of accelerated global warming due to industrial pollution. The climate deniers duke it out with the tele-evangelism industry for media attention with the tele-evangelists blaming women's suffrage (the vote to birth control) for the weather events. A lot of overlap with the climate deniers and the tele-evanglists.

    Returning to the science of the IPCC, the big storms are not specifically related to pollution driven climate change which is more about overall world patterns vs. specific incidents.

    Unless a climate denier or tele-evangalist, best to check with IPCC first.

    IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
     
  15. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    bob,
    you aren't remembering your ground school well. If the pilot isn't there to land most planes, the planes don't do well. #1 cause of accidents is pilot error, and flying into a wind sheer condition is definitely not a suggested task, without much training. Still a well trained pilot can fly into the calm eye of a huricane after passing through some really nasty conditions. ;) You have to fly above the worst conditions to have the plane land without incident.
     
  16. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Maybe Otto could fly the plane? ;)
     
  17. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    The last time the majority of the US electorate was worried about AGW was due to high prices at the petrol pump.

    If they now start to associate AGW with extreme weather events, they will still be wrong some of the time but a lot less wrong that a short few years ago. Progress

    If people like AG spent half their time debunking the general AGW FUD and denialist propaganda, I could then understand his desire to spend the other half clarifying specifics of AGW. As it is, his desire to nitpick details of AGW just adds to the overall imbalanced and horribly ignorant understanding of the larger picture, which is that:

    Climate Change is real;
    AGW is real;
    AGW is a problem that will threaten mankind on a global scale;
    Manifestations of AGW are protean;
    Extreme Weather will increase in frequency and severity on a global scale, although specifics types of extreme weather may either not increase in frequency or decrease.
     
  18. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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  19. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Yes, I was making a cryptic reference to Otto the pilot.

    Remotely-piloted drones, configured to gather weather data, sound very useful.
     
    austingreen likes this.
  20. icarus

    icarus Senior Member

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    It really is much simpler than all of this.

    Add insulation to your attic (CO2 is a known insulator!) Keep the furnace stoked with the same number of BTUs coming into the house, and...don't be surprised when the house gets warmer! Why is this so hard for (some) folks to figure out?

    Icarus