eddie
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Posts posted by eddie
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I was under the impression that, in the long term, winter storms would become weaker due to a reduced thermal gradient caused by the arctic warming faster than everywhere else.
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http://www.climate4you.com/images/EQUATOR%...201998-2006.gif
Not much warming going on here. Where's the heat energy gonna come from to turn that around - the sleeping sun,pockets of warmth hidden somewhere in the ocean depths,CO2 generating heat from nothing?
I don't think I have ever seen a 9 year baseline used in a chart like that before. I wonder why that is?
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These scenes remind me of footage from the Indonesian tsunami.
Complete devestation. I really hope that everyone was evacuated.
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Does the elephant even care that the ants are there though,let alone cause it an itch?There have been umpteen dramatic climate changes in Earths history as well as mass extinctions,the last great one being the reason we are all here.............or were humans responsible for all of that?Nope,so why do people believe that we are now?
Just because all past climate variation had a natural cause does not mean all climate variation has to have a natural cause. This is a logical fallacy.
I believe that humans are changing the climate now because many scientists from many disciplines have looked at all the things we know can naturally change the climate and none of them can satisfactorily explain the size and speed of the warming we are presently experiencing. As the science stands now, increasing CO2 emissions are the only thing that can explain the warming.
Humans are part of nature,as such might it not be argued that we are doing what comes naturaly and it's all just part of the grand scheme of things...........cattle produce methane as part of their natural process and yet they carry no guilt,humans produce carbon emissions as part of daily existance and to maintain a standard of life.Humans are part of nature and we are doing what comes naturally. However, we are in the unique and privileged position that we can see and predict the consequences of our own actions. I think it's crazy to carry on doing something that we believe could wipe out large chunks of our population.
I also agree that burning fossil fuels maintains our current standard of life. Unfortunately they are causing the planet to warm and they are also running out. Given those two facts it seems daft not to start the difficult move to renewables (or whatever) and a more sustainable lifestyle as soon as we can.
In theory if enough CO2 gets into the atmosphere then yes warming will occur but in practice the Earth's own checks and balances counter act our tiny contribution surely?What would those checks and balances be? What time scales would they operate over? Would those checks and balances stop catastrophic sea level rise? At what temperature will they kick in? Do I sound like Devonian?
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If one eruption of one volcano can change the climate significantly for a period of years, is it so hard to believe that we can do so too?
Exactly, if 20 million tons of SO2 released by a volcano (e.g. Mt. Pinatubo) can cool the planet by then how can releasing 27 billion tons of CO2 every year not have any effect?
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I refer more to extent of influence as apposed to actual influence........merely trying to point out I feel we are like ants argueing over who owns the elephant we're sitting on.
Do we really make any difference?
If the ants make the elephant itch and it decides to take a bath then everything is still fine from the point of view of the elephant. The ants might have a different view.
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Been fighting an infected PC for 2 days and so the last I looked ice loss had slowed down, a worry that it has picked up again as we are expecting some warm air up in some sectors for the next couple of weeks.
I may have to look back to the march sections of the thread to see how our impressions were back then compared to the 'reality'.
I seem to recall a bunch of folk being very confident about ice retention this past summer (esp. with ice extents up) and I'm wondering if witnessing such a phenomenal melt, on the back of an 'average' summer, has rattled their confidence in the 'normality' of the behaviour of arctic ice loss over the past 15 years....... or whether they too now have concerns?
I fully expected that this year's minimum ice extent would larger than last year's. The experts told us that the ice loss was partially due to exceptional synoptics and so I thought it was unlikely that we would see the same amount of ice lost this year.
I expected at least a partial return towards the ever decreasing mean, in line with the predictions of the arctic summer being ice free around 2040 or thereabouts.
I was wrong and I admit it!
GW, what do predict for next year's minimum ice extent?
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16.2C for me please.
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Hadley CET is now 14.2C (14.17 rounded) and it looks fairly likely that it will still be 14.2C tomorrow before they perform any final adjustment.
Looking at the rainfall and sunshine figures on Philip Eden's site (93% and 112%) average would be a good word to describe this month.
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16.5C is my wild guess.
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Hadley CET still on 13.9C. Yesterday was 14.2C.
Another random fact.. June is the only month where the 1971-2000 average is colder than the average of the whole CET series since 1772.
Month/Whole Series©/71-00©
Jan/ 3.4 /4.2
Feb/ 4.0 /4.2
Mar/ 5.5 /6.3
Apr/ 8.1 /8.1
May/ 11.3 /11.3
Jun/ 14.3 /14.1
Jul/ 16.0 /16.5
Aug/ 15.7 /16.2
Sep/ 13.4 /13.7
Oct/ 9.8 /10.4
Nov/ 6.1 /6.9
Dec/ 4.2 /5.1
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Hadley CET still on 13.9C after yesterday came in at 13.9C.
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The Hadley CET is now 13.9C up to the 22nd. Pretty much bang on average for this point in the month.
I predict that my guess of 16.5C is going to put me somewhere near the bottom of the league this month
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Eddie, or somebody, have a look at post number one here, the coldest June, surely not 1645 ?? CET didn't start until 1659.
Oops well spotted Roger. It should say 1675 not 1645.
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Interesting to hear you say that. The last 5 Junes have all been 1.0C above average or more:
2003: 16.1C
2004: 15.5C
2005: 15.3C
2006: 15.9C
2007: 15.1C
If anything we're overdue a cool one.
My view is based on the following data....Just seems like we are well overdue a top 20 finish for June.
Years since top 20 month recorded.
Jan: 1
Apr: 1
Jul: 2
Sep: 2
Oct: 2
Aug: 4
Nov: 5
Feb: 6
Mar: 8
May: 10 (Seems likely this month will be in the top 20 though)
Dec: 20
Jun: 32
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I noticed there wasn't a June CET thread yet so I hope nobody minds me starting one. I will be on holiday from tomorrow so I need to get my entry in early
June CET facts
1971-2000 Average: 14.1C
1978-2007 Average: 14.4C
The warmest recorded June was 1846 at 18.2C
The coldest recorded June was 1645 at 11.5C
There hasn't been a June that finished in the top 20 since 1976 (17.0C).
I think we are overdue a warm one so my guess is 16.5C
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The distance does not make as much difference as one might expect. Try (you will fail) drawing a scale diagram of the Sun, Venus and Mars at the right distances and the right diameters and note how much of the sun's rays are intercepted by the two planets and what difference their distances make.
A 1 meter square area at the top of the atmosphere of Venus would recieve 4.5 times more energy from the sun than a similar area at the top of the Martian atmosphere.
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Hiding away somewhere would certainly be the best strategy but that's not as easy as it sounds. Not for months at a time anyway.
It's quite likely that basic services such as water, electricity and gas would be affected since key workers would be dead or also hiding. At some point you would have to go outside to collect firewood/food/water or whatever and unless you own a nuclear bunker then you going to be at risk.
Clearly if you don't have to go to work and have a hugy supply of food then you are in a better position that most but you only have to open the door to the postman or a neighbour and you could be infected.
I actually think the best chance of survival is to catch the damn thing early on before the hospitals and intensive care units get full and the anti viral drugs run out.
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The highest final April CET achieved with a CET <= 6.8C by the 16th was 8.8C back in 1862.
I think will will probably end up somewhere between 7.5 and 8.0C though.
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I was born during the '20 broken years' and had a very happy childhood. They seemed fine to me with my family being better off each year.
Contrast that to runaway global warming that would put our survival as a species in jeopardy.
With repect biff, contrasting your happy childhood against the end of our species is not really a good scientific argument for embarking upon what would be massive economic upheaval.
I'm not saying it won't be necessary at some point in the future but I just think there are other less drastic avenues that should be followed until we are very very certain that level of effort is required.
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There is a posibility that AGW is real and that unless we reduce CO2 to 350ppm the human race will be toast.
At what probability of this being the case would it be worth doing as Hansen suggests - a World War II style mobilization of all nations to avert the calamity?
90%, 50%, 10% 1%?
The cost of World War II left this nation broken for 20 years. I would want to be at least 99.5% certain that 350ppm was the highest safe level of CO2 before going down that road.
I think something along the lines of an international 'Apollo' style project to find new energy sources would be a more prudent first step.
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Best tell the keepers of the CET system, then. I'd heard that the CET is meant to be a good NH proxy.
I am pretty sure the keepers of the CET system are well aware of this. They get away with it due to the fact they only use 4 stations. However you only have to look at the mathematical 'fiddling' required to maintain the homogeneity of the CET series to see how difficult a task that would be on a global scale with hundreds or thousands of stations.
So the anomaly series, then, isn't an anomaly against an absolute, it's an averaged anomaly of anomalies against local absolutes? Surely this presumes a linear and consistent error rate at all local sites?Nevertheless, I can see how that works.
HOWEVER ... the predictions of the future, then, should not be about an absolute increase in temperature, it should be an anomaly increase. So, Hadley, should be saying (something like) "the future of the climate in about 2050 is an increase in the anomaly of some 1.C against the anomaly mean of anomalies" ?
Yes.
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There is no global absolute temperature series and there is a good reason for that - It is far harder to calculate an absolute mean and the result would be less acurate.
Why?
Altitude, location, and terrain can all affect absolute temperatures.
How do you pick which weather stations to use? How do you space them? You could probaly change the global temperature be 1C just by careful choosing of stations above or below 150 meters. No stations could ever be addded or moved without skewing the average (not easy to guarantee on a global scale) and so using such a series for finding the rate of change in temperatures would be an awful idea.
However, if you use the anomalies for each individual station as measured against their baseline mean, you overcome this problem.
If you pick two weather stations at random in a 100 by 100 miles area then the daily series of absolute temperatures for the two could be perhaps be 3C different. However, amomalies from the mean for those two stations are probably going to be very similar despite the fact the absolute temperatures are quite different.
Using anomalies is just a far better way to measure how the temperature of the earth is changing and maintain homogeneity in the data series.
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So, Mr and Mrs AGW - where's the data?
There's years and years of pleas for evidence, and now its your turn. Turn out your evidence, please. And lets start from core principles - the world is warming. Let's see it. Please. Let's see the EVIDENCE of what you have so profoundly espoused. I am not interested in CO2 or any other GHG - let's just agree that the world is warming from raw data That doesn't mean deviation from the norm.
I'm fairly certain that what you are asking for doesn't exist. There is no global absolute temperature record.
I don't know about the other organisations but Hadley take the absolute temperature values for individual stations then subtract the baseline period mean for said station. These station anomalies are then averaged out over the globe to give calculate the global anomaly.
Winter Storms
in Space, Science & nature
Posted · Edited by eddie
Hard to say really. There seems to be anecdotal evidence that it was very stormy in the transition period into the little ice age but that was a cooling event and would have increased the thermal gradient as the arctic cooled.
I think it's fair to say that you might expect some unusual weather when the climate changes to a new state but that might equally mean a 10 year drought rather than more winter storms.
Cookie, you may find this chart interesting....
from a paper that looks at 300 years of storms in Dublin
A three-century storm climatology for Dublin 1715-2000
/edit
Did a bit more digging and although winter storms might not increase in frequency there are likely to be more summer-autumn storms (extra-tropical hurricanes).