Gray-Wolf

This is probably the wisest stance to take Pete? We know natural has always ruled our climate but we also have instances where external forcings also play their part (eruptions/methane releases/impacts) and so we need to 'blend' both what we know of the 'natural' and of anything 'novel' to the system as this 'novel forcing' will rarely be mute and will rather augment or mitigate the 'natural'? 2010 had a large dose of solar min at play over the winter months and the Atlantic blocking this facilitates but somehow, in a warmer world than the last time we saw such, the impacts appeared more focussed?

And how do the changes we see across the Arctic, and the energy now available to the climate that was once employed in ice melt play into that BFTP? We may all have different 'theories' on how and why we see change but they should surely include all the information available to us? The combination of 'Albedo Flip' (adding more energy into the system), ice loss (adding back energy once 'spent' on ice melt all summer) and First year ice predominance across the basin (allowing 3 times the energy into the basin than older ice) Must lead to an additional energy imbalance compared to the last time we saw your cycle come around to this juncture? How have you accounted for this 'new energy' and will it prove pivotal to the changes we see compared to what we have seen in past incarnations of your cycle?

Sadly it appears 'weather' is to be discussed and not the climate forcings behind such events? Take a look at Barrentsz and Kara Sea areas. Then look at the sst's from the S. of Greenland north. If you get the chance then look at the salinity plots for that section of ocean compared to the Bering side. What do you see? This is supposed to be winter and yet we see conditions that would have been unthinkable in summer 20yrs ago. Will such changes not impact weather?

Oh I agree with you there BW! Like with the L.I. it appears to be the retro fit that is all important? If our current models are still not assigning correct values to things because they are poorly understood then we are in for a whole world of pain later when the true weightings take trends way ahead of the models over an instant in time (as we saw with Sea ice in both 07' and 2012 or with greenland mass loss/melt in 2010/12). The fact we have been so wrong in those instances has me ever more convinced that we are not assigning forcings correctly. I'm starting to wonder if 'hidden energy' (that employed in tasks other than atmospheric/sea surface heating) have been underestimated by a couple of degrees of scale and now some of the 'tasks of Hercules' that this energy was employed on have actually ended (or are ending?) that we suddenly have enough 'new energy' to wrought sudden and dramatic changes in the climate system? As was noted over on the L.I. thread it is one thing apeing the past but another completely to do that and to accurately predict the future with the same model?

It's another toughie as microscopic particle of black carbon are hygroscopic in nature and so form the minute condensation nuclei cited as reducing the raindrop size in areas impacted by the 'dimming phenomina' and so raising the reflectivity of the cloud tops. Efforts to 'clean up' may , in fact, lead to temp rises as clouds return to normal and more TSI reaches the surface? That said 'cleaning up' will be a priority for the nations now facing the same respitory crisis we faced in our healthcare system prior to the clean air acts. All in all I guess the planet will deal with it's visible pollutions far faster than it's invisible ones?

So , if the crops don't rot in the ground or burn to a frazzle conditions will be ripe for carcinogenic molds to form on them....... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=deadly-fungus-poisons-corn-crops (I think I'd prefer falling foul to the hallucingenic type of rye.......)

http://planetsave.com/2012/01/30/ocean-hotspots-and-strengthening-winds-driving-ocean-currents-poleward/ So we know that a lot ofthe warmed bottom waters are heading to the south but it also appears that we have a surface visitor on it's way there as well (oh! and lets not forget the general warming due to reduced cold down-welling??). As I assumed it appears that all eyes will be heading down south to witness the 'unthinkable' spectacle of a rapid period of 'catchup' going on across both East and west Antarctica? Once again freeing up energy that used to be spent on ice melt, once that job is finished off by the extra energy perculating it's way there...... Hi B.W.! But the debate is around the human induced part of the warming ? As such we would need to accept that we have had a hand in the past 150 yrs of warming? Armed with that we would have an idea of how human forced warming was trending (we even already have a decadal average don't we?) and so should be able to subtract the other 'known forcings from that? I must be easily pleased if I saw this as a useful way of folk seeing that human induced warming is not at an end and so should not be forgotten about as as soon as natural forcings change back to positive the trend line will sky rocket. As for my view on things? I worry that both the albedo flip and the re-deployed energies are now also piling on top of the AGW signal adding to our woes?

So , back to the origional post. Am I mistaken in my belief that we can 'see' the impacts of volcanic activity on climate over it's term of impact? I'd always thought that we had the ability to do this even with paleo eruptions due to proxy measures? and ENSO? we now have a good 1,000yr rexcord of ENSO impacts so we are still unable to see the amount the signal pushes and pulls climate away from the then 'average'? Solar? Again we have paleo records that seem to show a fairly constant record of the impacts of the solar cycle (both active and sluggish) and so can be taken out of the background climate data in a similar fashion to the rest? I know that with the other 'unknowns' not being attempted to be factored in it may appear a little fudgey but 'all other things being equal' serves more than economics and so should allow us to discern a trend here (if one exists) when the louder 'noise' is removed? On the other hand you might be saying that there is a climate forcing that we have not isolated in our climate research that can also work on the short timescales being viewed here? If so then give us (and science) a clue as to what this forcing might be? As an add on there are other twiddles folk can do with graphs, NASA showed us what amount of warming is being lost to human particulate pollution in the form of 'Dimming' but this is not being messed with here just the major , short term forcings that have helped 'mask' the warming over the past few years. As I said we can do the same for the 80's to show how positive natural forcings skewed warming then if you want to see it work both ways . Either way we are still left with this (low?) figure for AGW 'warming' are we not?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130114152950.htm Another pretty graph with a familiar turned up end? No great impacts to match it through the record though so it seems a little beyond the 'natural variation' of the past 1,000yrs?

L.G.! You know full well I'm a Catastrophist!!! Joking aside, J' you warned me many years ago that you thought my posting style could lead to misinterpretations and so altered my style to emphasise that the posts are how 'I' see things or what 'I' believe? It is upsetting to find that you still insist I use a crystal ball or try and guilt folk? You can often come across as antagonistic or hurtful but do I continually bring this up or go running to mangement? Nope! It is just 'your' way of being when posting to me and I am accepting of that. If you do not see the evolution of the climate system I suggest then show me why and then have a go at seeing where you think things will go? This is a 'disscussion' forum after all?

Then we'd best leave it for yet another year and see if the events we witness still leave you unsure that we have a moral duty to react to the changes? Spin back to 07' and you will find us at the same impasse. Now track through the history since that time and tell me we are no further along the path that I projected from my witnessing of the changes up to that time? Maybe we should even leave it another 5 years and see how your words sound then? I'm always warning that we do not have the luxury of time to 'suck it and see'. Since the changes to the physical world we saw in 07' this is even more the case with ever more energy now flooding into the climate system. Climate is not static and with new forcings, in a single direction, how else can climate react other than in the direction we already witness it altering in? How many years of grain production blight can we endure without seeing greater impacts than we have seen this past 4 years? How much did your shop go up since Sept? How many years of climate disasters will it take to impact Nations? Be it wildfire, Cyclone, Flood, Drought ,Heatwave,Freezing, before we see those Nations impacted to a point that it harms their economic standing in the world? Our words are, and will remain in the Netweather Archives.

You see this is not helpful J'? As with individual weather events it is, at present, safer to say that AGW was involved in the event than saying it was the sole cause This is of course changing. The latest paper showing extreme temp records are running at least 5 times higher than before AGW impacts were being felt would suggest that we can say 80% of such records are due to AGW alone. Over time, as this figure accelerates, more 'new records' will increasingly supplant old 'AGW assisted' records bringing about a period where AGW is the only driver. Climate derived loss of life "clutching at straws"??? I find this statement unsavoury at best J'. Are you saying you do not see any loss of life with an AGW fingerprint on it? Are you of the opinion that climate change will not have impacts on our lives across the planet? We have just had a run of years where major Grain producing regions have been blighted by rain/drought/cold/heat so how many more of such events are needed to remove them from your 'happened before' file and into a new 'this is odd' file? Recent crop shortfalls already impacts aid to countries but you seem to consign the deaths this causes to 'just nature and better reporting'? What will it take before this stance changes? We know global climate warmed over the last century no matter what the 'natural drivers' were doing. Recently we have seen temps continue to rise through another period of 'natural cooling' but more than the temps still climbing we saw frightening changes sweep across the Arctic region. The impacts of those changes include extra energy now being accepted into the climate system and also energy, already in the system, now freed up to be re-deployed elsewhere begging the question "How can our climate not be impacted" by this 'new energy'? As natural forcings again swing positive, and are increasingly augmented by human forcings, how will this new energy now impact the warming rates? We saw AGW's impacts on the warming through the 80's and 90's when natural forcings swung positive so how much more will we see over the next 30 yrs? You know that I am a great believer in Mother N. and her potential to wrought change far faster and more extensive than mankind's impacts, we merely lit the blue touch paper (gave enough forcing to overcome climate inertia?). I believe we now see this change over from the forcing being predominantly human to now being predominantly 'natural' with the re-animation of the hibernating carbon cycle, inactive for many glacial epochs, and the reintroduction of energies that have been utilised in 'ice melt/snow melt' for many glacial epochs. I think we both agree that current climate models have inadequacies in their make up but think we differ in where we see those inadequacies?

I'm sorry J' I thought we had a good idea about the scale of impacts of such events? I was sure we had a good idea of how much temps are impacted, via observational experience, by major drivers such as Volcanics, ENSO, Solar? Are you saying we have no idea of how much such events impact climate by? I thought we had a good idea, over the past 100yrs, how much the human contribution to warming is thought to be also? Are you saying that we have no idea of any of these forcings? If we do know how much mankind is warming the planet, and we know that his GHG impacts are growing (along with his deforestation/urbanisation/land use changes) then how would this impact suddenly reduce??? Somehow i get the feeling that you are playing the 'pedant card' here which is not really helpful when many folk are bamboozled by the myth that warming of the planet has stopped for 15yrs due to the massive exposure this myth has received via the media. Either climate change is occurring ,and so part responsible for some of the terrible climate events we saw through 2012 and also the lives these cost or it's just a sham and we'd be better served not concerning ourselves over the changes that we are told it has a hand in?

If the loss of physical mass of the ice has an important role of freeing up energy early on in the season (by the towering masses of ice no longer being present to 'chill' any WAA that arrives in the early melt season) then impacts on the jet could begin occuring ever earlier? We have seen , so far this winter, the inability of the Arctic ocean to hold onto the type of cold it used to and again witnessed the failure of ice to form in Barrentsz/Kara. These two sea areas may play a pivitol role in allowing the Jet to become wayward once again this spring by presenting a lessened temp gradient to the equator from the moment the Arctic Sun rises again leading to altered circulation patterns? These 'altered patterns may prove fundimental in setting up the Southern Greenland H.P. system downstream and set the stage for increased sinuosity as the melt season progresses? I still hold hopes that over time the sinuosity will increase and the frequency reduce leading to more 03/06 type summers for us here. I hope this mainly because we are still not up to full tilt with the Arctic Amplification and so as impacts become stronger and more pronounced. Greater rainfall events over the Central Atlantic has surely got to be a better deal over summer!!

Yes it has been manipulated! that is the point? First the suspot cycle and volcanoes are removed then the ENSO signatures are removed and so what remains is the human warming signature? EDIT: You can do the same with the 80's exagerated warming trend to reveal the human dominated rise below it? We all accept 'natural variation' still swamps the human signal (for now) but it works both ways 4. You cannot point to augmented warming and say it's all natural nor can you look at moderated cooling and see that as 'all natural'. Below lies the current rate of AGW warming?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_0JZRIHFtk&feature=player_embedded A nice little vid to show temps once you take out the major 'natural' elements leaving only the 'man made' temp rise for the past 16yrs.......seems to be no variation in that even if the natural drivers are

Oh you do appear silly 4! As far as politics go I have always been more 'left' than right wing. It appears that the 'Right Wing' is far more Free market than Socialist and so is more readily uptaken by folks who 'naturally' are more ancient in their brain wiring? Throughout history we have have folk pull away from the 'I, Me, Mine' , "I'm alright Jack" majority and been recognised as 'humanitarian' or Holy (as in 'easier for a Camel to pass through the eye of a needle' type Holy) but though revered by the 'Right' their way of 'being' was far too alien for such ancient wired brains to fully embrace or truely understand. I have no illusions that climate change will leave humanity unscathed and am accepting that nothing will be done until it is in response to a massive immediate threat (ancient wiring doesn't defend against unseen threats, it only reacts to life threatening, immediate danger). The only hope is the way that the more evolved brain has been allowed to survive in our times and maybe will be the 'Way' of being that comes to predominate once the great die off has ended and the remnants of humanity take stock and move forward? When you look historically the population squeeze, seventy odd thousand years ago, was probably that which finally did away with the 'Alpha'/Omega way of society but did not take away the allure of being 'Alpha' even if you did not have the physicality to have been so under the old order. This new 'Squeeze' on human population will probably be the best opportunity for us to finally lay this 'better than you' mentality of greed ,waste and imagined power out of our 'being' and allow for a truely equal society where eveyr person is allowed equal access to all of lifes essentials as a right of birth and not of parentage?

http://www.truthdig....ss_20130113/?ln Modern capitalist societies, Wright argues in his book “What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order,†derive from European invaders’ plundering of the indigenous cultures in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries, coupled with the use of African slaves as a workforce to replace the natives. The numbers of those natives fell by more than 90 percent because of smallpox and other plagues they hadn’t had before. The Spaniards did not conquer any of the major societies until smallpox had crippled them; in fact the Aztecs beat them the first time around. If Europe had not been able to seize the gold of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, if it had not been able to occupy the land and adopt highly productive New World crops for use on European farms, the growth of industrial society in Europe would have been much slower. Karl Marx and Adam Smith both pointed to the influx of wealth from the Americas as having made possible the Industrial Revolution and the start of modern capitalism. It was the rape of the Americas, Wright points out, that triggered the orgy of European expansion. The Industrial Revolution also equipped the Europeans with technologically advanced weapons systems, making further subjugation, plundering and expansion possible. When I read through this I suddenly realised that this 'ice age hunter', shaved and in a suit, was why we will let this catastrophe befall us. It is our 'hardwiring' that does not allow most folk to either grasp the danger or choose to react to it? Ah well , back to the fiddling.........

http://www.news24.co...e-heat-20130114 Seems we are getting hotter, faster. Not bad for a globe that apparently hasn't warmed in 15 years??? Paper here; http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-012-0668-1

Seeing as the discussions over on the L.I. thread have ceased I thought it might prove interesting to explore some of the issues that thread introduced? The L.I. itself illustrates how we can get a similar 'match' to past climate using very differing inputs? This , of course, set me thinking esp. about the 'missing Heat' we hear so much about from certain quarters of the debate. Could a portion of this 'missing Heat' have been hiding in plain sight? We already know , and expect, a certain 'lag' in climates response to any forcing. Mother N. appears to have lots of checks and balances to keep climate semi stable ( and so allow time for species to adapt to climate swings?) but under a constant forcing there must come a time where those 'balances' are overcome and climate changes to a more suitable state for 'balance to again be established? Seeing as we have seen climate change from ice age to interglacial we know that, at some point, climate inertia must be overcome and then a transition to another state occurs. Maybe science has 'overcooked' the books by settling for a climate model that , though aping past temp trends, did not include a portion of energy that would suddenly be introduced into the system once certain 'inertias' were overcome? To me I believe we are transitioning into one such period and this knocks my confidence in current short term modeling of global climate. I can see a vast body of energy that used to be used up melting ice over the north and south pole summers. Over the north pole we have seen a sudden reduction in the amount of ice to melt up to the point that a portion of the year now has very little ice for this energy to work on. Not only that but with the loss of the scale of ice we used to have over the North Pole comes a vast reduction in the Albedo there allowing more 'external energy' into the climate system. A similar 'flip' has been occurring to the snow levels over the northern hemisphere with ever earlier dates for snow melt out now appearing to be the norm allowing more energy to be absorbed by the ground below and less energy reflected back into space. All the while mankind is enhancing the atmosphere's capacity to hold onto that heat. Before such a melt out extra energy (from AGW) was spent melting out 'extra ice' leading to the overall reduction , to near nil, of the sea ice across the whole Arctic ocean. We could not 'see' a result from this energy as we were unable to study the Arctic in the ways we are able to do so today. Climate models were not sophisticated to model the ice loss along with global temps and show us a close match ,as they did with temp alone, and so, to me, a large chunk of the energy budget was ignored completely. This energy is now becoming ever more redundant from it's old job so surely we must ask 'What will it do next?'. We have been noting growing alterations to northern hemisphere circulation and some folk have been pointing to 'ice melt' as a mechanism. The folk who pooh, pooh, the idea have obviously neglected to include this 'old energy' in their calculations and only looked at the 'new energy' that open water brings into the system. Lets put it another way. how much surface area do you have in a rugged landscape of ice with blocks over four storeys high interspersed with less rugged ice? when you have a near flat 2m thick ice pack how much surface area does this expose to the air in comparison? From sun up over the arctic the amount of energy being 'sucked out' of the system by cooling has massively reduced from that which used to be employed. From Spring through to autumn sunset this reduced use of energy surely allows the portion that is now 'un-used' to work in different areas of the climate? Then we have the deep ocean. How much energy is absorbed by the oceans surface only to be sub-ducted to the depths? When this current warms it ends up taking less energy to warm it back to average surface temps once it re-emerges in cold upwelling later in it's journey. This again makes some of the energy that used to be needed to do that job redundant and free to work in other areas of the climate? Some of the 'early warmed' currents are already now re-surfacing (or near to) and so will allow another wadge of 'missing heat/hidden energy' to re-enter the open climate system? All in all I have to wonder at the scale of the warming the next time we move into a period of positive climate forcing with not only a stronger AGW signal to augment it but also this 'extra energy' added in as well? The folk who make such a song and dance about 'flat line temps' or a reduced warming rate should really be asking why have temps not fallen back to old averages? Why are we still seeing temps mimicking the late 80's/90's instead of returning to those more indicative of the negative forcings we have seen? I'm not sold on 'lags' as past periods of cold driver forcings have had instant impact (look at the last extended period of PDO-ve and show me how long it took for global temps to respond). Last year was a new 'record warm La Nina' period, pushing the previous year off that pedestal, how can this be? How can we still be pushing top ten global temps in a period where we should be seeing cooling and a predominance of cool records being set? The coming summer will see this extra energy again at play in the climate system and this time with no 'Nina pushing temps down. I wonder how our 'flat-line global temps' will respond? We also see one of the planets great ice sheets speeding up (naturally) to this 'extra energy' by melting at ever faster rates leaving more and more open ground where ice once covered and reflected incoming energy. When the Arctic is finished, and again finds it's annual rhythm, will we see Greenland make a step change and bring even more energy to the system? With the warming now breaking into the Antarctic continental margins I then have to wonder how long before we see East Antarctica begin acting in a similar way allowing the southern Hemisphere to inherit it's own 'hidden energy' source and accelerate change there to? I was rather tongue in cheek on another forum by suggesting the MetO's forecast change for the next few years warming was so that temps could exceed the 'average' predicted and so halt all of this "we're not warming" non-sense. I'm now beginning to wonder if this will now prove a little prophetic? EDIT: Shifted from a thread I thought might prove useful so I'm sorry it's ended up here!

Sadly it looks to me (and I'm no expert!) that the map is already inaccurate? When you look at Peterman it still has last year calve attached! I'd imagine that we would also need to move the east coast snow line a bit after last years melt? I'm being a bit of a pedant but mainly to highlight that changes to the ice cover now appear to alter yearly. If the current rate of doubling continues then the Times map will be accurate soon enough!!!

I'd imagine (and I do a lot of that!) that the worry with AGW was that we did not fully understand the complexities of the initial climate inertia and so 'tweaked' models to get agreement with observations for the hind-casts. Were this indeed the case then the projection of those models will fall woefully short of the reality we find ourselves in with this 'extra energy' appearing in amounts that the models did not account for. Impacts would , of course, snowball thereafter. When you look at sea levels the last time global GHG's were at a similar level you get to see just what type of 'warming' event would be needed to see the situation 'normalised'? Sadly 'normalising' sea levels just reanimates another swathe of hibernating carbon cycle and so around we go again.

The 'new energy' is within the 'L.I.' model and not just created out of the blue! With no extra input from the 'tap' the ongoing changes within the leaking receptacle leads to energy that was once spent on enabling a 'state change' ,from the cargo of ice into water, is no longer 'spent ' on that task and so is 'freed up' to be used elsewhere? If we already have accounted for the ongoing (and increasing) albedo flip within the model then surely such 'new energy' needs accounting for to? Over time the warming of the deep ocean will also bring impacts to the atmospheric energy budget by lessening the energy needed to 'warm' the upwelling bottom waters as they re-emerge at the surface. These impacts must also appear as mutually reinforcing as part of the new energy will do into the changes bringing this 'new energy' into the L.I. Model?

Agreed Pete! It seems a shame that those who dismiss the current run of global extremes by comparing them to past instances of such record events never go the full mile and bring into context what brought about the past record? None of us dismiss natural climate extremes driven by ev ents like volcanic activity or an unusual collection of like natural forcings but when folk say " oh we had droughts/floods/heat/cold in the past they never explain what drove that extreme then and see if similar conditions are driving that extreme today? The Greenland 'Summit melt' this year is not alone in the series of snow records at the summit. Some folk are content to say " look! it's happened before!" and leave it at that without looking into what drove that event. As it is it appears that event was amidst the climate chaos caused by the eruption of Krakatoa. Where is that forcing last year? if that forcing is absent then what drove the melt this time? I would see it as the equator being impacted by the dimming the eruption brought and lessening the temp Gradient between pole and equator. I see the same mechanism driving the melt this time but instead of the equator cooling to lessen the grad. we have the pole warming. We are then left with explaining what is driving the warming of the pole. The same with past climates. We can find many mechanisms to bring similar end results and so it is important to isolate the individual mechanisms that brought about past periods of change so we can compare that forcing to what is occuring today and see if we can attribute todays changes to that forcing. If anything L.I. shows us a mechanism that can ape early AGW impacts but , now climate inertia is increasingly overcome, will the L.I. theory still be up to the job? Most of our current warming has occured since the 1980's and we can see the 'natural' warm drivers that helped in this process. Now we are in a suite of colder drivers we continue to see high temps but also major physical changes that are driven by exposure to a continuous warm driver (Arctic sea ice loss/permafrost melt to ever greater depths/ice sheet mass loss) even though logic begs that we should be cooling from the high's of the 80's? Of course the loss of ice leads to 'new' energy forcings in the form of albedo flip and also the energy freed up by the loss of ice to melt. Basically we have the continuous AGW driver (slowly growing year on year?) but now, suddenly, other energy sources within the climate model that did not exist prior to the late 90's (and also growing year on year). I do not remember the L.I. mapping a period where it's forcing brought about the introduction of an energy budget that altered it's deployment and also had new sources of energy that could be introduced into the model when certain parameters where reached?

http://www.ncadac.globalchange.gov/ The 4 year round-up of the US climate. Independent scientists compile this paper every 4 years. They do not appear to be in any doubt of the changes ongoing and , remember, this does not include most of the past year!