Confused about CO2? - then read this

[noggin]

...

Noggin, I really do think you over simplify warming on a number of counts, and this reveals itself time and over in your arguments. Can you please answer the following questions for me: yes / no will suffice.

1 - Does warming mean that every year has to be warmer than the one before?

2 - Does warming mean that at any moment, all locations on earth must be warmer than normal?

3 - Does warming mean that for any location, each and every day must always be warmer than average?

Answer those and I'll respond to your original challenge.

Now, a simple yes/no might suffice for you Stratos, but it isn't as simple and straightforward as that. You are being a bit naughty, TBH.

1-I would expect there to be a notable increase over, say, a 10 year period. Which there hasn't been, over the last 10 years. Indeed, I am quite agog with excitement regarding what the gobal temperature for 2008 will be, given the record cold experienced in so many places.

2-It would help to convince me that the world is continuing to warm, but it just ain't happening. There is record breaking cold, not just a bit of "below average" cold. Record breaking cold. That does not sit comfortably with a warming world.

3-A trap for the unwary. What do you mean by "average"?

[Stratos Ferric]

Now, a simple yes/no might suffice for you Stratos, but it isn't as simple and straightforward as that. You are being a bit naughty, TBH.

1-I would expect there to be a notable increase over, say, a 10 year period. Which there hasn't been, over the last 10 years. Indeed, I am quite agog with excitement regarding what the gobal temperature for 2008 will be, given the record cold experienced in so many places.

2-It would help to convince me that the world is continuing to warm, but it just ain't happening. There is record breaking cold, not just a bit of "below average" cold. Record breaking cold. That does not sit comfortably with a warming world.

3-A trap for the unwary. What do you mean by "average"?

For question three read "average" to mean the industry accepted standard, i.e. the thirty year mean for that day.

Where is the record breaking cold please? And why doesn't it sit with a warming world. For it not to sit well your answer to 3 MUST be yes.

Do you understand the argument about inter-annual variability being larger than the rate of long-term change? I really think you're going to ave to explain, in detail, why a localised cold record does not sit well with your understanding of a warming world. All that warming does is make the record harder to achieve - it doesn't render it impossible.

If you look, say, at the records set in athletics, a new record is not set every year, nor is the best in any given year as good as the best the year before: but, across time, in each and every event performance has improved, and continues to do so. ALL natural systems betray precisely this chaos. I really do think that you hang on to a far too linear view of warming, and my hunch is that you have looked at the projections from the likes of the IPCC, with their necessarily straight lines drawn, and made the mistaument make of assuming that for the general projection to be valid warming must occur in constant spatial and temporal increments. Feel free to correct me, but every argument you post re warming can be traced back to this too linear frame of reference.

In a short phrase, it's seriously flawed reasoning, and is factually incorrect.

[Yeti]

Now, a simple yes/no might suffice for you Stratos, but it isn't as simple and straightforward as that. You are being a bit naughty, TBH.

1-I would expect there to be a notable increase over, say, a 10 year period. Which there hasn't been, over the last 10 years. Indeed, I am quite agog with excitement regarding what the gobal temperature for 2008 will be, given the record cold experienced in so many places.

2-It would help to convince me that the world is continuing to warm, but it just ain't happening. There is record breaking cold, not just a bit of "below average" cold. Record breaking cold. That does not sit comfortably with a warming world.

3-A trap for the unwary. What do you mean by "average"?

Excuse me, but can you please show me just how much "record breaking cold" there has been? You refer to "so many" cold events, but at least show me your evidence. And as I said earlier, "record breaking cold" is not the same as "record breaking snow". I would also like to see that there have been more record cold events than warm events in recent years.

I personally do not believe in this "evidence" of yours - you seem very confident about it but haven't produced any for us to see.

[Stratos Ferric]

Now, a simple yes/no might suffice for you Stratos, but it isn't as simple and straightforward as that. You are being a bit naughty, TBH.

1-I would expect there to be a notable increase over, say, a 10 year period. Which there hasn't been, over the last 10 years. Indeed, I am quite agog with excitement regarding what the gobal temperature for 2008 will be, given the record cold experienced in so many places.

2-It would help to convince me that the world is continuing to warm, but it just ain't happening. There is record breaking cold, not just a bit of "below average" cold. Record breaking cold. That does not sit comfortably with a warming world.

3-A trap for the unwary. What do you mean by "average"?

In what way are we warmer now than we were in 1998? So far as I can tell off the following plot the rolling mean (30 year) is around 0.1C warmer (I've helpfully put some lines on the plot to help reading of the facts). Or is your point that we've had no warmer year than 1998? Viewed another way, but on the same warper logic (and more importantly) we've had nothing remotely as cold as 2000 since then, and viewed in the long term 2000 was, at the time, about the 5th warmest ever.

As we keep saying, when the thirty year rolling mean starts to trend strongly down THEN we can start querying the warming climate orthodoxy. Until then, let's not confuse weather with climate.

[Stratos Ferric]

This reply probably belongs in the climate analysis section, but it answers Noggin's queries above. The attached builds on the previous slide to explain the flaws / risks in looking at individual years as being indicative, on their own, of anything.

...

I personally do not believe in this "evidence" of yours - you seem very confident about it but haven't produced any for us to see.

I rather suspect it's a case of cherry picking, combined with misinterpretation and misunderstanding, to lead to some flawed conclusions.

In Noggin's defence, globally the trend has levelled for now, but that's a far far cry from suggesting that we're about to trend down at all, let alone return to the sort of levels we saw in the 70s.

[HighPressure]

What is really puzzling me is that we have another effect which seems to very closely mirror that of recent Global Warming, yet it appears to get very little coverage in the debate? Its not about proving CO2 has no effect or a reason for in action its about getting to the truth, I just want to make that clear before you shoot me.

Ozone depletion correlation with increased global temps is real and cannot be denied:

CO2 correlation does not even come close to matching Ozone/GW and I cannot accept coincidence either, just too much of one I am afraid? Not only does does ozone depletion follow GW it even started about the same time.

Edited February 9, 2008 by HighPressure

[wysiwyg]

What is really puzzling me is that we have another effect which seems to very closely mirror that of recent Global Warming, yet it appears to get very little coverage in the debate? Its not about proving CO2 has no effect or a reason for in action its about getting to the truth, I just want to make that clear before you shoot me.

Curses on you HP - just when I thought I was getting my head around all this .

Seriously, the South Polar Region puzzles me generally - we look as far into the depths of the galaxy as we can and yet one of the most confusing scientific conundrums of the modern age exists on our doorstep.

My suspiscion is that, whilst the correlation you show is indeed striking, it will be subject to the same lead/lag arguments as the CO2 debate is. The further problem here is that we only discovered the ozone 'hole' relatively recently. Whilst most evidence is relatively unchallenged that CFCs et al contribute to ozone destruction and the variance seen recently in the SP 'hole', we cant be certain that the hole is man-made from scratch or that we just contribute to its size. How come there isn't one at the N pole, ozone naturally varies seasonally in the tropsophere etc etc.

So we have an anomoulously cold S polar region, and anomolously large ozone hole, warm seas around the continent causing sea ice to break up and drift off, possibly volcanic activity deep under the continental ice mass. Rubic's cube - HA!

Like you though I err on the side of thinking that this is just too much of a coincidence. Especially when you look at the long half-life of CFCs in the atmosphere compared to CO2.

[Admiral_Bobski]

With regards to hot and cold records being broken I think there is an important point to make, and one which I have made several times before only to find that it is ignored or forgotten further down the line.

If temperatures are the highest they have been in over a hundred years then there is a far greater chance of a hot record being broken than a cold one.

This isn't to say that temperatures don't fall by the same degree that they did, say, 100 years ago - or perhaps drop relatively even further - but they don't tend to drop as low.

It has been said on here several times (and I'm paraphrasing somewhat), "Look at all the hot records being broken - well, how many cold records are being broken?" So if the number of hot records exceeds the number of cold records then we should just accept that AGW theory must be right? For a warm record to be broken the temperature need only peak above the currently held high, which isn't generally too far away, but for a cold record to be broken then temperatures have to drop by a lot more than they would have 100 years ago (or whatever arbitrary time period has been selected).

Every cold record that is broken these days must be something fairly exceptional if it can win out over previously set records.

CB, there are many cycles each having different causes. They may be coincident or not, and in many permutations. However, to attribute continued warming to natural cycles of already known dimension and frequency becomes less and less plausible the longer it continues. If in the past cycles have occurred so as to hold temperatures more or less static (within narrow bounds) then why, suddenly, we we only have warm effect and no cold ones? It simply doesn't stack up, the more so if the leading indicators of such effects are not being detected.

To continue citing "effects that we aren't aware of", whilst not being totally beyond the bounds of possibility, does rather stretch plausibility given the sophisticated science we have available to us nowadays, and the huge effort that goes on continuously to monitoring and assessing the state of the earth and the wider near universe.

As I said the other day, I guess it's possible that aliens are targetting us with an undetectable heat ray, in which case, by simple extrapolation, we will never know what the cause is for sure.

SF, why do we only have warm effects and not cold ones? Oh, hang on a second, we don't do we? The apparent plateau of global temperatures seems to show that we are not currently experiencing "only warming effects", so your argument doesn't really hold water.

Yes I keep mentioning effects that we aren't aware of, but you always miss out the first half of what I say: "lack of understanding of the effects that we are aware of". I generally mention the two hand-in-hand, because who's to say how much we do know and understand? I can't disagree more with your comment about the "sophisticated science we have available to us nowadays". Pride comes before a fall. A hundred years ago our science was so apparently advanced that the leading scientific figures were turning people off studying physics because they believed there was nothing left to learn. They got a bit of egg on their faces when Relativity and then Quantum Mechanics showed up. We will never know whether there's more to learn or not, regardless of how apparently sophisticated our science is.

I'd put your aliens back in your cupboard if I were you - if you're trying a bit of reductio ad absurdum then it's not working.

Rate of change is not the issue - on its own it's a meaningless measure. The factor that is noteworthy at present is the duration of warming, AND (you keep missing this) the fact that we continue to warm despite being at unprecedented levels of temperature. Reflux warming (or cooling) tells us nothing; change that busts previous boundaries should make us sit up and ask whether what we're seeing is indicative of a lagging measure of fundamental change in the system, or an instance of a random long return event. You could argue that the current warmth is simply, say, a 1:1000 year occurrence of coincident warming events, but for this be happening at the same time as other events (e.g. increasing GHGs) that are strongly implicated (to say the least) in causing warming is up there with the presecient case of the alleged Suffolk rapist's claimed bad luck in having met the five dead girls in the sequence in which they died.

Rate of change isn't an issue? Then why do people keep talking about the unprcedented rate of warming? Why do people say things like "we've never warmed so fast before"? Is it just because a skeptic is using the rate of change argument that it is considered irrelevant? You say we continue to warm despite unprecedented levels of temperature. Unprecedented since when? Since records began? What boundaries are we talking about? Boundaries that are convenient to the AGW argument?

I'd put your rapist in the cupboard with the aliens.

CB

[Stratos Ferric]

What is really puzzling me is that we have another effect which seems to very closely mirror that of recent Global Warming, yet it appears to get very little coverage in the debate? Its not about proving CO2 has no effect or a reason for in action its about getting to the truth, I just want to make that clear before you shoot me.

Ozone depletion correlation with increased global temps is real and cannot be denied:

CO2 correlation does not even come close to matching Ozone/GW and I cannot accept coincidence either, just too much of one I am afraid? Not only does does ozone depletion follow GW it even started about the same time.

I think you'd need to show the plot much further back to prove a tight correlation HP. I think the action that has been taken to correct the ozone depletion is starting to have an effect if I remember rightly, and there may just be a bit of coincidence here - remember correlation doesn't equal causation (e.g. a plot of the incidence of smallpox across the world combined with the penetration of colour TV would show a hugely compelling inverse relationship - however it would be fanciful in the extreme to link the two in allsense bar one: technological evolution).

I suspect that the release of CFCs coincides well with the increase in GHG emissions, since aerosols came into widespread use post WW2 I think. It's perhaps no more than unfortunate timing that the switch away from CFC in the 90s, and the current apparent levelling of global temps are coincident (I'd put the latter down to natural cycles being in cold mode at present - e.g. La Nina). There MIGHT be something in it, but I doubt it, however we'd need a few years to know for sure. Not to be dismissed, but I'd file under "dubious".

[Hiya]

CO2 correlation does not even come close to matching Ozone/GW and I cannot accept coincidence either, just too much of one I am afraid? Not only does does ozone depletion follow GW it even started about the same time.

I'm interested in this (as I've said before) do you have any explanation or thoery about why there is such a close match?

Curses on you HP - just when I thought I was getting my head around all this :lol: .

Seriously, the South Polar Region puzzles me generally - we look as far into the depths of the galaxy as we can and yet one of the most confusing scientific conundrums of the modern age exists on our doorstep.

My suspiscion is that, whilst the correlation you show is indeed striking, it will be subject to the same lead/lag arguments as the CO2 debate is. The further problem here is that we only discovered the ozone 'hole' relatively recently. Whilst most evidence is relatively unchallenged that CFCs et al contribute to ozone destruction and the variance seen recently in the SP 'hole', we cant be certain that the hole is man-made from scratch or that we just contribute to its size. How come there isn't one at the N pole, ozone naturally varies seasonally in the tropsophere etc etc.

So we have an anomoulously cold S polar region, and anomolously large ozone hole, warm seas around the continent causing sea ice to break up and drift off, possibly volcanic activity deep under the continental ice mass. Rubic's cube - HA!

Like you though I err on the side of thinking that this is just too much of a coincidence. Especially when you look at the long half-life of CFCs in the atmosphere compared to CO2.

Since ozone has a strong adsorption in the IR region you would expect with increasing size of the ozone hole the surface temperature of the land underneath to decrease since less radiative reflection is taking place, although conversely higher energy UV will be incident on the surface.

The mechanism that leads to ozone destruction in such a vast scale forms perfectly over the large, cold landmass of Antarctica.

Maybe we should open a topic about ozone? HP could do it with since you seem to have the data at hand for an introductory post.

[Stratos Ferric]

...SF, why do we only have warm effects and not cold ones? Oh, hang on a second, we don't do we? The apparent plateau of global temperatures seems to show that we are not currently experiencing "only warming effects", so your argument doesn't really hold water.

...CB

CB, I wish you'd actually read what I write instead of what you wish to see. Where have I said we don't have cold forcing?

Ad nausaeum I have referred to natural cycles bringing both warming AND cooling; I even pose the question in the post to which you have responded - which is bizarre in the extreme. Presumably you miss the subtlety of my question mark.

If in the past cycles have occurred so as to hold temperatures more or less static (within narrow bounds) then why, suddenly, we we only have warm effect and no cold ones? It simply doesn't stack up, the more so if the leading indicators of such effects are not being detected.

Admittedly, my typo confuses the sense slightly: it should read "then why, suddenly, DO we only have warm effects and no cold ones?"

several times in this thread I have cited 'oscillation' in the climate (are you telling me that oscillation only moves in one direction - in which case you're redefining the word, and I hope I don't have to spell out join-the-dots fashion to link from oscillation to natural events that variously have upwards and downwards impacts). In fact, several times recently, mainly in trying to explain to Noggin why a current levelling of temperatures might not indicate that the drivers of warming have gone away (in fact, if you follow the logic, it actually makes the case for AGW more compelling).

My point, as you seem to have missed it, is as follows. I shall break it into easily digestible chunks.

1 - in the past climate has oscillated;

2 - oscillation must require a combination of warm natural forcing and cold forcing;

3 - at present we are warming, and have been for forty year;

4 - IF there is no AGW then the current warming requires ONLY warm forcing to have been at play across all this time;

5 - On the basis of the historic record this seems unlikely: why, suddenly, would EITHER all the cold forcing turn off, or the warm forcing step up in magnitude to swamp any cold?

I am sure that several times over on the "wheels off" thread I have observed that the current levelling is almost certainly the product of natural forcing being in cold mode. In that case, with the cold mode doing all it can to cool things down, don't you think it's remarkable that the climate is merely holding at level?

Edited February 9, 2008 by Stratos Ferric

[Stratos Ferric]

With regards to hot and cold records being broken I think there is an important point to make, and one which I have made several times before only to find that it is ignored or forgotten further down the line.

If temperatures are the highest they have been in over a hundred years then there is a far greater chance of a hot record being broken than a cold one.

This isn't to say that temperatures don't fall by the same degree that they did, say, 100 years ago - or perhaps drop relatively even further - but they don't tend to drop as low.

It has been said on here several times (and I'm paraphrasing somewhat), "Look at all the hot records being broken - well, how many cold records are being broken?" So if the number of hot records exceeds the number of cold records then we should just accept that AGW theory must be right? For a warm record to be broken the temperature need only peak above the currently held high, which isn't generally too far away, but for a cold record to be broken then temperatures have to drop by a lot more than they would have 100 years ago (or whatever arbitrary time period has been selected).

Every cold record that is broken these days must be something fairly exceptional if it can win out over previously set records.

...CB

CB, that's a very fair point. However, go see the second graphic I produced this afternoon and see the point I make re the annual low mark in temperature climbing ever higher. I say yet again, in arguing over frankly irrelevant individual events we miss the bigger picture. For GW to be dismissed then global temperature needs to start trending down and to continue down. One off localised cold events prove nothing: what is required is sustained cold, over wide areas, such that annual global mean is held down.

Your argument is also rather too binary. Global temperatures have not risen either so consistently, nor so far, for cold records to be out of the question. Just looking at the CET the thirty year variation in temperature has often been 2C. That means, in theory, in the next 4-5 years here in the UK we could get down to 8.5C again, and to get that low there would have to be some low temperatures, not just in that final year, but along the way. Rising temperatures make low records far less likely, not impossible (to suggest temperatures would have to fall by a lot further is incorrect, they would only have to drop by around 1C more, not a huge amount when a low record typically requires an anomaly of 15-20C in winter: you're asking for a few % more, that's all): by the same measure, they make warm records more likely - on that you are correct.

Aggregated to annual levels, and across large areas, your argument holds more water, but since the argument with Noggin earlier was re her citing one off events then I am assuming that that is the scale of time at hand.

[wysiwyg]

Since ozone has a strong adsorption in the IR region you would expect with increasing size of the ozone hole the surface temperature of the land underneath to decrease since less radiative reflection is taking place, although conversely higher energy UV will be incident on the surface.

The mechanism that leads to ozone destruction in such a vast scale forms perfectly over the large, cold landmass of Antarctica.

Maybe we should open a topic about ozone? HP could do it with since you seem to have the data at hand for an introductory post.

Thanks for the heads-up Hiya - I did have some understanding of the mechanisms involved as I followed this debate with much interest during the 80s and 90s - unfortunately at that time my sources were mainly media derived. Incidentally, despite the general concern over the consistency of Wikipedia - the page on ozone depletion is actually one of the better researched imo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

Agree that this should be in another thread but it doesn't seem to matter what you call a thread these days as we seem to always drift off topic :lol: . Understandable as this whole issue has so many facets.

Wysi

[Stratos Ferric]

...

Rate of change isn't an issue? Then why do people keep talking about the unprcedented rate of warming? Why do people say things like "we've never warmed so fast before"? Is it just because a skeptic is using the rate of change argument that it is considered irrelevant? You say we continue to warm despite unprecedented levels of temperature. Unprecedented since when? Since records began? What boundaries are we talking about? Boundaries that are convenient to the AGW argument?

I'd put your rapist in the cupboard with the aliens.

CB

I don't know why people make a fuss about it, but rate of change of temperature DOES NOT melt the ice. Absolute temperature does. I stated perfectly clearly the precedence I attach. How quickly we warm does not prove AGW; continued and sustained warming makes a compelling case, though seemingly not compelling enough for those who are minded absolutely not to accept man's part. This sort of argument proves nothing other than if you choose not to look at something then you won't see it. It doesn't mean it's not there.

If I mention "unprecedented" by the way it's in the context of the measured record. Our ability to recreate former climate is, at best, sketchy. Our ability to account for what was happening and why is negligible. The repeated playback of some doubters of the "several million years ago the earth was a lot warmer" is, frankly, not helpful at the present time. The plates are NOT in the same place, the composition of the atmosphere is likely not the same, the earths surface will have been different in character.

What IS noteworthy is that despite being beyond previously measured limits the temperature has been continuing to rise. Angle of slope is a nby-the-by. By reduction of your previous (incorrect) assertion that I overlooked cold natural cycles, don't you think we're well overdue a dip in trend? Any shape of dip would suffice.

You sceptics can only afford another few seasons promising that the cold is coming. If it isn't already ringing hollow, even in your own ears, I'm sure it must be soon.

[Yeti]

With regards to hot and cold records being broken I think there is an important point to make, and one which I have made several times before only to find that it is ignored or forgotten further down the line.

If temperatures are the highest they have been in over a hundred years then there is a far greater chance of a hot record being broken than a cold one.

This isn't to say that temperatures don't fall by the same degree that they did, say, 100 years ago - or perhaps drop relatively even further - but they don't tend to drop as low.

It has been said on here several times (and I'm paraphrasing somewhat), "Look at all the hot records being broken - well, how many cold records are being broken?" So if the number of hot records exceeds the number of cold records then we should just accept that AGW theory must be right? For a warm record to be broken the temperature need only peak above the currently held high, which isn't generally too far away, but for a cold record to be broken then temperatures have to drop by a lot more than they would have 100 years ago (or whatever arbitrary time period has been selected).

CB

Nobody has answered my question from earlier on - can anybody show me all these cold records? As you correctly say, warm records are more likely to be made than cold ones but Noggin was saying that "so many" cold records have been broken. Where are they?

If nobody can give me an answer then her argument is invalid.

[wysiwyg]

This point has probably been dealt with before - but - if we were having this argument as of 1940 would we not be saying similar things with regards to the statistics. A steep rate of warming leading to what then would have been anomolously high average global temperatures.

I am not disputing the warming just the fact that where we stand it is still within the variance shown on those graphs quoted previously. This supports the theory that there is an oscillation but that it is still well within expected variance if you take that graph as the data set.

Nobody has answered my question from earlier on - can anybody show me all these cold records? As you correctly say, warm records are more likely to be made than cold ones but Noggin was saying that "so many" cold records have been broken. Where are they?

If nobody can give me an answer then her argument is invalid.

Well I googled 'record cold weather 2008' and got a fair few indirect hits :lol:

[Admiral_Bobski]

CB, I wish you'd actually read what I write instead of what you wish to see. Where have I said we don't have cold forcing?

Ad nausaeum I have referred to natural cycles bringing both warming AND cooling; I even pose the question in the post to which you have responded - which is bizarre in the extreme. Presumably you miss the subtlety of my question mark.

Admittedly, my typo confuses the sense slightly: it should read "then why, suddenly, DO we only have warm effects and no cold ones?"

I must apologise for this one - the typo completely threw me off and I misinterpreted what you were saying as a result. I know that you often refer to both warming and cooling cycles, so I found your comment (which I read as suggesting that there was only warming going on :lol: ) rather bizarre myself. I was wondering whether you meant it or not, but I got rather carried away.

CB, that's a very fair point. However, go see the second graphic I produced this afternoon and see the point I make re the annual low mark in temperature climbing ever higher. I say yet again, in arguing over frankly irrelevant individual events we miss the bigger picture. For GW to be dismissed then global temperature needs to start trending down and to continue down. One off localised cold events prove nothing: what is required is sustained cold, over wide areas, such that annual global mean is held down.

Your argument is also rather too binary. Global temperatures have not risen either so consistently, nor so far, for cold records to be out of the question. Just looking at the CET the thirty year variation in temperature has often been 2C. That means, in theory, in the next 4-5 years here in the UK we could get down to 8.5C again, and to get that low there would have to be some low temperatures, not just in that final year, but along the way. Rising temperatures make low records far less likely, not impossible (to suggest temperatures would have to fall by a lot further is incorrect, they would only have to drop by around 1C more, not a huge amount when a low record typically requires an anomaly of 15-20C in winter: you're asking for a few % more, that's all): by the same measure, they make warm records more likely - on that you are correct.

Aggregated to annual levels, and across large areas, your argument holds more water, but since the argument with Noggin earlier was re her citing one off events then I am assuming that that is the scale of time at hand.

I am not suggesting that a single (or even several) broken cold record(s) negates the existence of GW, or even necessarily AGW - I was just making the point that it is unsurprising that fewer cold records are broken than warm records given that temperatures are generally higher. I appreciate that AGW doesn't demand that cold should never happen again, nor that cold records should ever be broken, but using the scarcity of cold records and the abundance of cold records as supporting evidence for AGW doesn't really add up. It is warmer now than it has been, but that doesn't prove the "A" in AGW.

CB

[HighPressure]

I'm interested in this (as I've said before) do you have any explanation or thoery about why there is such a close match?

Since ozone has a strong adsorption in the IR region you would expect with increasing size of the ozone hole the surface temperature of the land underneath to decrease since less radiative reflection is taking place, although conversely higher energy UV will be incident on the surface.

The mechanism that leads to ozone destruction in such a vast scale forms perfectly over the large, cold landmass of Antarctica.

Maybe we should open a topic about ozone? HP could do it with since you seem to have the data at hand for an introductory post.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, there was an Ozone thread but I cannot appear to find it so I don't know if it was deleted or whether Mods can resurrect it? Its a subject many on here will know I have had an interest in for quite a while now.

Taking it just a bit further and addressing SF's point about the correlation, there is now clear evidence coming to light that Ozone depletion is involved with our current warming. I follow the British Antarctic Survey who are working on the subject. One of the key issues for me is why our ocean sink performance is declining, I am of the opinion that these should of at least tried to soak up more CO2 and yet we have seen just a steady if not rapid decline in absorption. Ozone is now accepted as the cause of increased southern ocean wind speeds which is a major (or thought to be) contributor to sink failure. On top of this direct UV damage to ecosystems is a distinct possibility, a bit like CO2 in the lab, UV can been shown to have quite serious effects on phytoplankton. Studies are underway to look at individual spices and their response to UV, it known some cope better than others.

This is a complex subject and I have just tried to simplify its main points, but I have long since believed that Ozone depletion hinders our sinks leading to failure. Atmospheric CO2 is left to hang around, and the real problem is that CO2 leads to the warming of our Oceans which further hinders our sinks performance. This is why I think we may of started a chain reaction that simply removing CO2 will not overcome or at least not in the way we are lead to believe.

I have also been at pains to make the point I do not think this is at odds with AGW theory.

Edited February 9, 2008 by HighPressure

[Stratos Ferric]

I must apologise for this one - the typo completely threw me off and I misinterpreted what you were saying as a result. ...

I am not suggesting that a single (or even several) broken cold record(s) negates the existence of GW, or even necessarily AGW - I was just making the point that it is unsurprising that fewer cold records are broken than warm records given that temperatures are generally higher. I appreciate that AGW doesn't demand that cold should never happen again, nor that cold records should ever be broken, but using the scarcity of cold records and the abundance of cold records as supporting evidence for AGW doesn't really add up. It is warmer now than it has been, but that doesn't prove the "A" in AGW.

CB

Quite understanbdable re the typo C-B.

And re the records it does rather skew things. This is why I've started the tracker in the climate section - admittedly it uses only CET, but the same could be used for global temperatures (it would build more slowly I think because the global updates only seem to come through at year end, unless someone knows different).

The first step would be for us to get a sustained run of cold months which amount to a real hole in the warmth we've accumulated this past twenty years plus. I think we need to be realistic and look, certainly locally, more for some sustained relative cold, rather then occasional instances of absolute cold. The former is more substantial in making a mathematical, and actual, difference.

Although I do give Noggin some robust rebuttal for her "levelling" argument, the current pause is, at the very least, something different to what we've had since the early 80s. Continue to watch this space.

[jethro]

I am sure that several times over on the "wheels off" thread I have observed that the current levelling is almost certainly the product of natural forcing being in cold mode. In that case, with the cold mode doing all it can to cool things down, don't you think it's remarkable that the climate is merely holding at level?

Could you explain this part of your post a little further please Stratos?

[HighPressure]

Having given SF's point regarding coincidence early I thought I would struggle with Excel and plot Ozone hole size again Global mean temps since 1979. Sorry its a but crude but see what you think, is it just a coincidence?

[Red Raven]

Having given SF's point regarding coincidence early I thought I would struggle with Excel and plot Ozone hole size again Global mean temps since 1979. Sorry its a but crude but see what you think, is it just a coincidence?

It is an interesting corelation and one I think has some legs. I think its also important to recognise that the ozone gas at high altitude, where it forms a protective filter, performs/reacts very differently at lower altitudes. The gas at sea level is a poison and one that is bad news not just for breathing life but also for its possible affect on the climate. Could the correlation therefore, not be between the ozone hole but the ozone pollution created at teh surface.

[HighPressure]

It is an interesting corelation and one I think has some legs. I think its also important to recognise that the ozone gas at high altitude, where it forms a protective filter, performs/reacts very differently at lower altitudes. The gas at sea level is a poison and one that is bad news not just for breathing life but also for its possible affect on the climate. Could the correlation therefore, not be between the ozone hole but the ozone pollution created at teh surface.

If there is enough interest in Ozone/Climate correlation's, then I would be happy to start a new thread but its pointless if I am the only one posting which is what happened before? Now that I have managed to create a crud Excel graph there are quite a few more I would like to do.

[Yeti]

If there is enough interest in Ozone/Climate correlation's, then I would be happy to start a new thread but its pointless if I am the only one posting which is what happened before? Now that I have managed to create a crud Excel graph there are quite a few more I would like to do.

Perhaps you could plot a four point moving average for the temperature and hole size to eliminate seasonal differences?

[Stratos Ferric]

If there is enough interest in Ozone/Climate correlation's, then I would be happy to start a new thread but its pointless if I am the only one posting which is what happened before? Now that I have managed to create a crud Excel graph there are quite a few more I would like to do.

Don't measure usefulness by how many other people respond or contribute. Everything worthwhile starts with a passionate individual investing some effort to get things moving.