How unstable the climate can be

[mooncliff]

How unstable the climate can be

Now we are back to tired global warming theory complaints (again)? The main point here was climate instability, not whether it will get hotter or cooler in East Sooke, BC.

A very large change in the composition of the atmosphere is likely to destabilize the climate - especially given that the normal state of the climate is one of tremendous instability (the past 10,000 years having been a rare period of exceptional calm).

Perhaps I take these possibilities more seriously than some because I have actually seen examples firsthand.

In the spring of '82, El Chichon erupted in Mexico.
My cousin and I were in Hawaii. She called me up and said "Doesn't it seem like the volcano is erupting? We are having asthma attacks."
"Yes," I said "but the volcanoes on the Big Island are not erupting... what's going on?"
Sure enough, it was the sulfur dioxide all the way from Mexico. The cloud spread over a large part of the Pacific. The sky in Hawaii was milky white. I went out at noon in June, closed my eyes, and could not feel the heat from the Sun! It was astounding. See graph on the right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chichón

When I was growing up in Hawaii, even though I lived on the leeward side of Oahu, which is technically a desert, it was not too hot and it rained often enough.
In 1977, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its other state. Suddenly, in the early '80s WE DID NOT HAVE ANY RAIN ON OAHU FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR. The trees died. It was unbelievable, and it was like someone had flipped a switch. This went on for nearly 30 years. Finally, it has switched back to it's other state, so hopefully we will have a few decades of good weather and rain again like when I was little.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific...al_oscillation

Things are pretty good the way they are now. For almost the entirety of its history, the climate of the Earth was far less pleasant.
It is possible for the seas to become a stagnant mess if the poles melt. Everything dies (I'm not joking or exaggerating).
This is well worth watching.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude/

[loweyecue]

Re: How unstable the climate can be

Yes, I brought this topic up not so that we can come to a conclusion about any aspect of climate, but so that everyone would look at some of the concepts and perhaps get an inkling of just how complicated climate is. Even a single aspect like the albedo of the Earth can lead to many fascinating hours of reading.

I also brought it up because something like the onset of an ice age in a single year would be the greatest human and economic disaster in history. Literally billions dead. I do not think that will happen soon, but it will in the future at some point. We could have a supervolcano eruption, but we cannot at this point control things like that. We CAN control the gases that we are injecting into the atmosphere, the albedo of our roofs, deforestation, and perhaps even bioprecipitation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...precipitation/

I have a Ph.D. in a related field, which of course does not mean that one is right (in fact, most people in the graduate school department were perfect idiots), but it does mean that I can say that I have spent several thousand hours on these topics, and I can assure you they are fascinating... there really is a lot to see. (And that was just about the Earth; the other planets teach other, even more amazing things.)
I no longer work in this field, so have no attachment to what I learned. In fact, the last few decades are a perfect illustration of "Science is the process of learning to be less wrong."

I think the climate has been unusually warm for the last 10,000 years because we cut down a lot of the trees and altered the albedo of the Earth. This was the first anthropogenic global warming.
It is not a good idea to inject so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when we do not know what that will do.
The entire arctic is melting, and this has happened suddenly in the last few decades. We will be very unhappy if the melting causes drastic changes in the circulation of the oceans.

And if you think that something like the Younger Dryas requires a huge glacial lake to burst in Canada...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8398

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, very refreshing to read from someone who actually worked in a related field. Also agree with the points made by Dr No, the climate in indeed unstable and we have had a run of stable climate that is more of a blip on the otherwise chaotic sclae of time. And to do anything that may tip us back in to the chaotic mode would be the single most foolhardy thing mankind can conceivably acheive.

In all this infernal debate of so called "science" has focused the attention on the typical denial theories etc and moved focused away from the core undeniable issues facing us: Too much CO2 emmissions are bad. And sooner or later it is going to tip the fragile balance of forces that exist now. And who knows what the outcome will be?

But all we can do is continue with this incessant debate on why water levels did not rise and other such tripe. All I see is the inescapable evidence that the arctic shelves are disappearing and a few years from now one of the most magnificient animals to grace our lifetime will be history. But lets keep debating water levels, yeah!!

[Starving Steve]

Re: Now we are back to tired global warming theory complaints (again)?

Now we are back to tired global warming theory complaints (again)? The main point here was climate instability, not whether it will get hotter or cooler in East Sooke, BC.

A very large change in the composition of the atmosphere is likely to destabilize the climate - especially given that the normal state of the climate is one of tremendous instability (the past 10,000 years having been a rare period of exceptional calm).

The temperature at San Francisco Airport is barely changed from decades ago--- perhaps up by one-degree F on the mean annual temperature, or not even that much, over a period of the better part of a century. The climate of SF Airport is stable to the point of being boring. The story is the same up and down the Pacific Coast, including Victoria Airport in British Columbia. Same thing at Honolulu Airport.

So, if I were a betting man, I would say that man's activities, including his release of carbon into the atmosphere, has acted to put a blanket around the Earth's upper atmosphere. So climate is stablized. The blanket of pollutants from man's activities actually protects the Earth from climate change.

Why then, is my thesis wrong? Why does a hockey-stick effect or feed-back loop for AGW lie ahead?

My thesis requires no hidden hockey stick or feed-back loop to be correct, whereas the AGW thesis (as articulated by Al Gore) does require such a hidden mechanism.

[mooncliff]

Re: How unstable the climate can be

Science is supposed to go where the data leads to, and the climate data on this planet leads to dismissing the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. Scientists had better be reviewing natural trends in the environment, especially trends on the Sun, to have any basis for predicting the Earth's climate in future years.

Oh, yes, the Sun has been unusually quiet for several years. The Sun is a variable star and usually goes through an 11-year oscillation in output. It does, however, sometimes drop in output for long periods. This kind of noise can swamp other effects. It is difficult to tease out the effects when you cannot hold all the other parameters constant.

We will see what happens when the solar output returns to its peak. I think we will get really horrendous spikes in global temperature. As Siberia melts, more greenhouse gases are released, and you can get runaway effects that become really difficult to stop.

Personally, I would love this party to go on forever, but some of my friends have drunk way past the fun level and wound up dead... and wound up killing other people in the accident.

Maybe the Maya collapsed simply because they cut down too many trees.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...sref=histories

[mooncliff]

Re: Now we are back to tired global warming theory complaints (again)?

The temperature at San Francisco Airport is barely changed from decades ago--- perhaps up by one-degree F on the mean annual temperature, or not even that much, over a period of the better part of a century. The climate of SF Airport is stable to the point of being boring. The story is the same up and down the Pacific Coast, including Victoria Airport in British Columbia. Same thing at Honolulu Airport.

So, if I were a betting man, I would say that man's activities, including his release of carbon into the atmosphere, has acted to put a blanket around the Earth's upper atmosphere. So climate is stablized. The blanket of pollutants from man's activities actually protects the Earth from climate change.

Why then, is my thesis wrong? Why does a hockey-stick effect or feed-back loop for AGW lie ahead?

My thesis requires no hidden hockey stick or feed-back loop to be correct, whereas the AGW thesis (as articulated by Al Gore) does require such a hidden mechanism.

The arctic is clearly warming very rapidly. This is not good. Its albedo is decreasing. Huge amounts of trapped methane and carbon dioxide are being released. The concern is that changes of only a few degrees can cause the circulation in the atmosphere and the circulation in the oceans to snap into new stable modes which will drastically change the weather patterns around the world.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...prings-forward

[Starving Steve]

Re: Now we are back to tired global warming theory complaints (again)?

The arctic is clearly warming very rapidly. This is not good. Its albedo is decreasing. Huge amounts of trapped methane and carbon dioxide are being released. The concern is that changes of only a few degrees can cause the circulation in the atmosphere and the circulation in the oceans to snap into new stable modes which will drastically change the weather patterns around the world.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...prings-forward

That's a great hypothesis. Very interesting and very scary, it's perfect for a story on the BBC World Television............. But now for the evidence, please?

And don't give me Hansen's model output as evidence. I want the boring climate statistics gathered every day at world climate stations like San Francisco Int'l Airport. :rolleyes:

[mooncliff]

Re: Now we are back to tired global warming theory complaints (again)?

That's a great hypothesis. Very interesting and very scary, it's perfect for a story on the BBC World Television............. But now for the evidence, please?

And don't give me Hansen's model output as evidence. I want the boring climate statistics gathered every day at world climate stations like San Francisco Int'l Airport. :rolleyes:

This year's ice shrank to just 1.74 million square miles—860,000 square miles less than the average extent since 1979—and only slightly more than last year's record 1.59 million square mile icepack. In fact, the ice retreated so much that for the first time since record-keeping began [And that would be more than 200 years of attempts] ships this year could circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/bl...ust-2008-09-17
And that is just the ice cover; the thickness has also dropped dramatically.
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/2009-19.html

When there is ice, the white surface reflects about 90% of the radiation that hits it; when it melts, the ocean absorbs about 90% of the radiation that hits it.
In ice ages, we can get rapid runaway increases in albedo as snow builds up and makes the planet more reflective, sometimes freezing the planet nearly to the equator.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...all-earth.html
On the other hand, when snow starts to melt, we can get runaway decreases in albedo. Soot from burning coal doesn't help either.

My titanium oxide elastomeric roof makes the roof cool to the touch even at noon in the summer, whereas it used to be blisteringly hot, and if there was a little rain, steam would rise off. My roof is now reflecting back out into space about half a million kilowatt-hours per year, so I now know firsthand what just 2 millimeters of a high albedo material can do.


San Francisco is on the windward side of a continent. You would expect continental heating effects to show up there last.

There seems to be some misunderstanding that the planet will warm uniformly; it will not.

[mooncliff]

Re: Now we are back to tired global warming theory complaints (again)?

That's a great hypothesis. Very interesting and very scary, it's perfect for a story on the BBC World Television............. But now for the evidence, please?

The study team focused on weather stations that have been operating since 1950. They found that the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures slightly exceeded one to one in the 1950s, dipped below that level in the 1960s and 1970s, and has risen since the 1980s. The results reflect changes in U.S. average temperatures, which rose in the 1950s, stabilized in the 1960s, and then began a warming trend in the late 1970s.
Even in the first nine months of this year, when the United States cooled somewhat after a string of unusually warm years, the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures was more than three to two.
Despite the increasing number of record highs, there will still be occasional periods of record cold, Meehl notes.
"One of the messages of this study is that you still get cold days," Meehl says. "Winter still comes. Even in a much warmer climate, we're setting record low minimum temperatures on a few days each year. But the odds are shifting so there's a much better chance of daily record highs instead of lows."
Millions of readings from weather stations across the country
The study team analyzed several million daily high and low temperature readings taken over the span of six decades at about 1,800 weather stations across the country, thereby ensuring ample data for statistically significant results. The readings, collected at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, undergo a quality control process at the data center that looks for such potential problems as missing data as well as inconsistent readings caused by changes in thermometers, station locations, or other factors.

http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/maxmin.jsp

[we_are_toast]

Re: Now we are back to tired global warming theory complaints (again)?

That's a great hypothesis. Very interesting and very scary, it's perfect for a story on the BBC World Television............. But now for the evidence, please?

:rolleyes:

Figure 2. The graph above shows daily sea ice extent as of November 1, 2009. The solid light blue line indicates 2009; dark blue shows 2008, dashed green indicates 2007; light green shows 2005; and solid gray indicates average extent from 1979 to 2000. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

[c1ue]

Re: How unstable the climate can be

An interruption of the current would then lead to a cooling of these areas, while there is no particular reason that it necessarily should have any significant impact on the Earth's overall temperature trend (although, perhaps, if these areas were to freeze solid and be covered in snow and ice all year, more sunlight would be reflected than absorbed due to the increased albedo).

That is the theory. Where is the proof? Running models which don't even take into account localized major climate phenomena is worthless.

This year's ice shrank to just 1.74 million square miles

In all this infernal debate of so called "science" has focused the attention on the typical denial theories etc and moved focused away from the core undeniable issues facing us: Too much CO2 emmissions are bad. And sooner or later it is going to tip the fragile balance of forces that exist now. And who knows what the outcome will be?

It would be nice to at least see something new with the standard AGW crap about Arctic ice:

1) The Arctic being 'ice free' or 'ice less' has happened several times in living memory. Does this look familiar?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/1...icebergs-melt/

washington post arctic warming.jpg

No Ice. Polars Bear Dying. Seals Disappearing. The End of the World is Coming!

Not.

2) As the Arctic ice has been decreasing in recent years, the Antarctic ice has been increasing. Thus the overall polar ice levels are not changing much.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16988

It's the southern ozone hole whatdunit. That's why Antarctic sea ice is growing while at the other pole, Arctic ice is shrinking at record rates. It seems CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals have given the South Pole respite from global warming.
But only temporarily. According to John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey, the effect will last roughly another decade before Antarctic sea ice starts to decline as well.
Arctic sea ice is decreasing dramatically and reached a record low in 2007. But satellite images studied by Turner and his colleagues show that Antarctic sea ice is increasing in every month of the year expect January. "By the end of the century we expect one third of Antarctic sea ice to disappear," says Turner. "So we're trying to understand why it's increasing now, at a time of global warming."

As for tipping points: so far no evidence whatsoever that they exist:

http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2009/6649.html

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO₂ than had been previously expected.
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO₂ should start to diminish as CO₂ emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket.

Pity - facts getting in the way of a sexy theory.

[we_are_toast]

Re: How unstable the climate can be

1) The Arctic being 'ice free' or 'ice less' has happened several times in living memory. Does this look familiar?




No Ice. Polars Bear Dying. Seals Disappearing. The End of the World is Coming!

Not.

Of Course, comparing anecdotal observations from fisherman, hunters, and explorers in the year 1922 is exactly the same as satellite data from the last 30 years. :rolleyes:

[c1ue]

Re: How unstable the climate can be

Of Course, comparing anecdotal observations from fisherman, hunters, and explorers in the year 1922 is exactly the same as satellite data from the last 30 years. :rolleyes:

Surely the people who live there don't matter when it comes to observing ice. It is so hard to see ice in the ocean after all.

And the fact that a ship sailed to 81 degrees - that doesn't matter either.

I've documented before numerous instances where the Arctic had little or no ice as evidenced by ships going around/through it, but that doesn't matter when AGW faith is in question.

For that matter, the NASA report on why 2007 was a low Arctic ice year:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-112

A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer's fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.

A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data from NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice.

Between winter 2005 and winter 2007, the perennial ice shrunk by an area the size of Texas and California combined. This severe loss continues a trend of rapid decreases in perennial ice extent in this decade. Study results will be published Oct. 4 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those thinner seasonal ice conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year's record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.

The Arctic Ocean's shift from perennial to seasonal ice is preconditioning the sea ice cover there for more efficient melting and further ice reductions each summer. The shift to seasonal ice decreases the reflectivity of Earth's surface and allows more solar energy to be absorbed in the ice-ocean system.

The perennial sea ice pattern change was deduced by using the buoy computing model infused with 50 years of data from drifting buoys and measurement camps to track sea ice movement around the Arctic Ocean. From the 1970s through the 1990s, perennial ice declined by about 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) each decade. Since 2000, that amount of decline has nearly tripled.

Results from the buoy model were verified against the past eight years of QuikScat observations, which have much better resolution and coverage. The QuikScat data were verified with field experiments conducted aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, as well as by sea ice charts derived from multiple satellite data sources by analysts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ice Center in Suitland, Md.

The new study differs significantly from other recent studies that only looked at the Arctic's total sea ice extent. "Our study applies QuikScat's unique capabilities to examine how the composition of Arctic sea ice is changing, which is crucial to understanding Arctic sea ice mass balance and overall Arctic climate stability," Ngheim said.

Pablo Clemente-Colón of the National Ice Center, Suitland, Md., said the rapid reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice requires an urgent reassessment of sea ice forecast model predictions and of potential impacts to local weather and climate, as well as shipping and other maritime operations in the region. "Improving ice forecast models will require new physical insights and understanding of complex Arctic processes and interactions."

Other organizations participating in the study include the University of Washington's Polar Science Center, Seattle; and the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, N.H.

Wind, not temperature.

As always, reality confounds those too simple minded to recognize complexity.

[Starving Steve]

Re: How unstable the climate can be

If I may just ask a few Joe Six-pack type of questions:

Since the Earth is supposed to be getting warmer, why for almost a century, has no new record high global temperature been recorded? Why for almost a century has no new record low temperature been recorded on Earth? Why are winters generally warmer than decades ago, and why are summers generally cooler than decades ago?

My global filth hypothesis (of blanketing in the upper atmosphere) nicely explains why summers are cooler and winters are warmer. It also nicely explains why days are cooler and nights are warmer. It also nicely explains why no new global temperature records have occurred. It also nicely explains why weather records are becoming rather boring, each year of record is a re-play of some prior year in the records. It also explains why so little actual warming in the global mean temperature on Earth is occurring.

The AGW hypothesis does not explain the climate data as well as my simple-minded hypothesis. Plus the AGW hypothesis depends upon modelling results for support. The AGW hypothesis also rests upon a hidden hockey-stick or feed-back loop mechanism to explain what is happening, whereas my filth hypothesis does not.

So guess which theory gets published? :rolleyes:

[loweyecue]

Re: How unstable the climate can be

Surely the people who live there don't matter when it comes to observing ice. It is so hard to see ice in the ocean after all.

And the fact that a ship sailed to 81 degrees - that doesn't matter either.

I've documented before numerous instances where the Arctic had little or no ice as evidenced by ships going around/through it, but that doesn't matter when AGW faith is in question.

Newspaper article of anecdotal evidence from 1922? You gotta be kidding me. Here is another more recent article with "evidence" about a contentious topic from a credible source the US Army! Believe what you will.

For that matter, the NASA report on why 2007 was a low Arctic ice year:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-112



Wind, not temperature.

As always, reality confounds those too simple minded to recognize complexity.

This is a scientific paper from a credible source. But the conclusion you have drawn may be superfluous. Wind causes the ice to move and "abnormal atmospheric conditions" caused the wind. Did they elaborate on the abnormal atmospheric conditions? Could those have been contributed to by rise in temperature and or CO2 levels?

Even if the antartic ice is increasing, I have a sinking suspicion that the polar bears didn't get the memo about the need to relocate down under.

[c1ue]

Re: How unstable the climate can be

Wind causes the ice to move and "abnormal atmospheric conditions" caused the wind. Did they elaborate on the abnormal atmospheric conditions? Could those have been contributed to by rise in temperature and or CO2 levels?

To a hammer, all problems are nails.

To AGW fanatics, all abnormal conditions are caused by global warming due to man-made CO2.

The conclusion to be drawn from any discussions of Arctic Ice is that this area of the world has highly unstable conditions. If there are frequent and documented periods where the ice withdraws yet the ice has returned, then clearly there are variables at work far beyond global mean temperatures.

Similarly assumption that CO2 is related to Arctic ice retreats is much too simplistic.

Presuming that a single variable - man made CO2 - controls global mean temperatures is similarly fraught with peril.

I've looked in great detail at the AGW arguments (and continue to do so) but have yet to see a smoking gun which was not fabricated.

A scientific conclusion supposedly so obvious should not need such manipulation as well as outright lying.

As for the polar bears - while it sucks to have your world shrink around you - why is it different for anyone/anything else?

Why aren't we screaming to save the blue collar American worker from the FIRE bastards? This goal is eminently more achievable with the causation well documented.

From the AGWers own calculations - barring a complete cessation of fossil fuel burning then the existing climate trend will not reverse for decades. The bears are toast - or actually cubes. That the eco-Nazis are also against nuclear power is similarly bizarre.

While I don't agree with the more fanatic anti-eco-Nazis that the goal of this radical movement is extinction of the human race, I do agree that this policy stance is very inconsistent.