Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Buenos Aires hadn't seen snowfall for 89 years.
Image: SpookyLittleGirl.Yesterday, amid the celebration of the Argentinian Independence Day, snow and sleet surprised many in the greater area of Buenos Aires and other parts of Argentina. It was the first snowfall there since June 22, 1918. The National Weather Service even doubted to announce the predicted snowfall, because it is a phenomenon that occurs only about every hundred years.
"It's the first time that sleet falls here since the sixties, and it hasn't snowed since 1918 –I wasn't even born yet," said Diana Morinelli, a resident of the Olivos locality.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Speaking of a cold year
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2008) — A new study by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers indicates older, multi-year sea ice in the Arctic is giving way to younger, thinner ice, making it more susceptible to record summer sea-ice lows like the one that occurred in 2007.
ReplyDeleteThe team used satellite data going back to 1982 to reconstruct past Arctic sea ice conditions, concluding there has been a nearly complete loss of the oldest, thickest ice and that 58 percent of the remaining perennial ice is thin and only 2-to-3 years old, said the lead study author, Research Professor James Maslanik of CU-Boulder's Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research. In the mid-1980s, only 35 percent of the sea ice was that young and that thin according to the study, the first to quantify the magnitude of the Arctic sea ice retreat using data on the age of the ice and its thickness, he said.
"This thinner, younger ice makes the Arctic much more susceptible to rapid melt," Maslanik said. "Our concern is that if the Arctic continues to get kicked hard enough toward one physical state, it becomes increasingly difficult to reestablish the sea ice conditions of 20 or 30 years ago."
A September 2007 study by CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center indicated last year's average sea ice extent minimum was the lowest on record, shattering the previous September 2005 record by 23 percent. The minimum extent was lower than the previous record by about 1 million square miles -- an area about the size of Alaska and Texas combined.
The new study by Maslanik and his colleagues appears in the Jan. 10 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors include CCAR's Charles Fowler, Sheldon Drobot and William Emery, as well as Julienne Stroeve from CU-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and Jay Zwally and Donghui Yi from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The portion of ice more than five years old within the multi-year Arctic icepack decreased from 31 percent in 1988 to 10 percent in 2007, according to the study. Ice 7 years or older, which made up 21 percent of the multi-year Arctic ice cover in 1988, made up only 5 percent in 2007, the research team reported.
The researchers used passive microwave, visible infrared radar and laser altimeter satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as ocean buoys to measure and track sections of sea ice.
The team developed "signatures" of individual ice sections roughly 15 miles square using their thickness, roughness, snow depth and ridge characteristics, tracking them over the seasons and years as they moved around the Arctic via winds and currents, Emery said. "We followed the ice in sequential images and track it back to where it had been previously, which allowed us to infer the relative ages of the ice sections."
The replacement of older, thicker Arctic ice by younger, thinner ice, combined with the effects of warming, unusual atmospheric circulation patterns and increased melting from solar radiation absorbed by open waters in 2007 all have contributed to the phenomenon, said Drobot. "These conditions are setting the Arctic up for additional, significant melting because of the positive feedback loop that plays back on itself."
"Taken together, these changes suggest that the Arctic Ocean is approaching a point where a return to pre-1990s ice conditions becomes increasingly difficult and where large, abrupt changes in summer ice cover as in 2007 may become the norm," the research team wrote in Geophysical Research Letters.
in other news:
New research from the American Museum of Natural History provides the first detailed study showing that global warming forces species to move up tropical mountains as their habitats shift upward. Christopher Raxworthy, Associate Curator in the Department of Herpetology, predicts that at least three species of amphibians and reptiles found in Madagascar's mountainous north could go extinct between 2050 and 2100 because of habitat loss associated with rising global temperatures. These species, currently moving upslope to compensate for habitat loss at lower and warmer altitudes, will eventually have no place to move to.
"Two things together--highly localized distribution close to the very highest summits, and the magnitude of these upslope shifts in response to ongoing warming--make a poisonous cocktail for extinction," said Raxworthy. In a paper recently published in Global Change Biology, Raxworthy and colleagues found overall trends for elevation changes among 30 species of amphibians and reptiles.
Uphill movement is a predicted response to increased temperatures, and other studies, including that of J. Alan Pounds in Costa Rica, have provided some empirical evidence of how tropical animals respond to climate change. Raxworthy's research, however, is distinguished by the number and diversity of species, the demonstrated meteorological changes over the same time period, the relatively large shifts in elevation, and the broader assessment of extinction vulnerability for tropical montane communities. Currently, there is also a dearth of information available concerning climate impacts on biodiversity for tropical regions.
Raxworthy has been surveying the diversity of Madagascar's herpetological assemblage since 1985 and discovered the uphill migration almost by chance while in the field. On repeated surveys of northern Madagascar's mountains, the Tsaratanana Massif, he noticed that some species were missing from camps where they'd been previously observed. Moreover, some of these "missing" species popped up at the next higher elevation surveyed. "I noted this in the field as strange, but when I later sat down and looked at the data, the trend persisted," Raxworthy explains. He culled elevation records and was able to compare surveys of animals over a ten-year period.
The results were dramatic. Among 30 species of geckos, skinks, chameleons, and frogs, and controlling for sampling effort, an average shift uphill of 19 to 51 meters (62 to 167 feet) was observed over the decade. When these results were compared with meteorological records and climate change simulations, the movement of animals could be linked to temperature increases of 0.1°C to 0.37°C (0.18°F to 0.67°F) over the same decade, which corresponds to an expected upslope movement of 17 to 74 meters (59 to 243 feet).
Raxworthy's results are robust because of the diversity of species included in his analyses. These animals come from five different families of amphibians and reptiles--narrow-mouthed toads, mantelline frogs, chameleons, geckos, and skinks--making it unlikely that a simple phenological change could explain the upward movement. "When you see a general trend across all these groups of organisms, it is likely to be related to a broad explanation like general temperature warming, not something more subtle such as seasonal variation," says Raxworthy.
The direct link between observed movement up mountains, possible extinction, and climate change has consequences for Madagascar's network of national parks. The government of Madagascar is currently planning to set aside 10 percent of its landmass for conservation purposes, and previous research by Raxworthy and colleagues published in Science in April used the distribution of 2,300 species of animals to map the areas of this island nation that provide adequate habitat for all species. "The Malagasy government is creating important new reserves and protecting forests. Sadly, however, with a phenomenon like global warming, species will move upslope, and so eventually may still lose all their habitat and go extinct," says Raxworthy. "This conservation problem thus requires a global solution."
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, and Raxworthy worked with scientists from Université d'Antananarivo in Madagascar, National Chung-Hsing University in Taiwan, University of Michigan in the United States, and the University of Oxford in England.
To quote Col Potter:
ReplyDeleteHorse hockey
We haven't had global warming for 10 years. If man is the cause then the change should be in phase with the increase of CO2.
It isn't.
This is about money. Money taken from the tax payer and given to fake science gurus for fake studies to draw fake conclusions with the political class in the middle to draw power and money as the deciders of who wins and loses.
I feel sorry for you because your inability to recognize BS when it is an inch from your nose means that you live in a bunch of it.
But that's your choice.
As the Japanese say:
Please go away. You make my head hurt.
If you can come up with a theory that doesn't involve global warning that explains the observations I've quoted and linked to, that would be worth 10,000 incantations of a fictitous character, and would actually be an example of how science works.
ReplyDeleteThe effects of forcing agents on the climate are complicated by various feedback processes.
One of the most pronounced feedback effects relates to the evaporation of water. Warming by the addition of long-lived greenhouse gases such as CO2 will cause more water to evaporate into the atmosphere. Since water vapor itself acts as a greenhouse gas, the atmosphere warms further; this warming causes more water vapor to evaporate (a positive feedback), and so on until other processes stop the feedback loop. The result is a much larger greenhouse effect than that due to CO2 alone. Although this feedback process causes an increase in the absolute moisture content of the air, the relative humidity stays nearly constant or even decreases slightly because the air is warmer.[35] This feedback effect can only be reversed slowly as CO2 has a long average atmospheric lifetime.
Feedback effects due to clouds are an area of ongoing research. Seen from below, clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect; seen from above, clouds reflect sunlight and emit infrared radiation to space, and so exert a cooling effect. Whether the net effect is warming or cooling depends on details such as the type and altitude of the cloud. These details are difficult to represent in climate models, in part because clouds are much smaller than the spacing between points on the computational grids of climate models. Nevertheless, cloud feedback is second only to water vapor feedback and is positive in all the models that were used in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.[35]
A subtler feedback process relates to changes in the lapse rate as the atmosphere warms. The atmosphere's temperature decreases with height in the troposphere. Since emission of infrared radiation varies with the fourth power of temperature, longwave radiation emitted from the upper atmosphere is less than that emitted from the lower atmosphere. Most of the radiation emitted from the upper atmosphere escapes to space, while most of the radiation emitted from the lower atmosphere is re-absorbed by the surface or the atmosphere. Thus, the strength of the greenhouse effect depends on the atmosphere's rate of temperature decrease with height: if the rate of temperature decrease is greater the greenhouse effect will be stronger, and if the rate of temperature decrease is smaller then the greenhouse effect will be weaker. Both theory and climate models indicate that warming will reduce the decrease of temperature with height, producing a negative lapse rate feedback that weakens the greenhouse effect. Measurements of the rate of temperature change with height are very sensitive to small errors in observations, making it difficult to establish whether the models agree with observations.[36]
Another important feedback process is ice-albedo feedback.[37] When global temperatures increase, ice near the poles melts at an increasing rate. As the ice melts, land or open water takes its place. Both land and open water are on average less reflective than ice, and thus absorb more solar radiation. This causes more warming, which in turn causes more melting, and this cycle continues.
Positive feedback due to release of CO2 and CH4 from thawing permafrost, such as the frozen peat bogs in Siberia, is an additional mechanism that could contribute to warming.[38] Similarly a massive release of CH4 from methane clathrates in the ocean could cause rapid warming, according to the clathrate gun hypothesis.
This is about money. Money taken from the tax payer and given to fake science gurus for fake studies to draw fake conclusions with the political class in the middle to draw power and money as the deciders of who wins and loses.
Based on estimates by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2005 was the warmest year since reliable, widespread instrumental measurements became available in the late 1800s, exceeding the previous record set in 1998 by a few hundredths of a degree.[57] Estimates prepared by the World Meteorological Organization and the Climatic Research Unit concluded that 2005 was the second warmest year, behind 1998.[58][59] Temperatures in 1998 were unusually warm because the strongest El Niño in the past century occurred during that year.[60]
But there's a 10 year cooling trend which contains the second warmest year on record.
There is very little justification for asserting that global warming has gone away over the past ten years, not least because the linear trend in globally-averaged annual mean temperatures (the standard yardstick) over the period 1998-2007 remains upward. While 1998 was the world's warmest year in the surface-based instrumental record up to that point in time, 2005 was equally warm and in some data sets surpassed 1998. A substantial contribution to the record warmth of 1998 came from the very strong El Niño of 1997/98 and, when the annual data are adjusted for this short-term effect (to take out El Niño's warming influence), the warming trend is even more obvious.
Because of the year-to-year variations in globally-averaged annual mean temperatures, about ten years are required for an underlying trend to emerge from the "noise" of those year-to-year fluctuations. Hence, the fact that 2006 and 2007 were cooler than 2005, is nowhere near enough data to clearly establish a cooling trend.
Global warming stopped in 1998. Global temperatures have remained static since then, in spite of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Global temperatures have cooled since 1998. Because 2006 and 2007 were cooler than 2005, a global cooling trend has established itself.
All these statements, and variations on them, have been confidently asserted in the international and Australian media in the past year or so, but the data do not support them.
I feel sorry for you because your inability to recognize BS when it is an inch from your nose means that you live in a bunch of it.
You need to rephrase that a little:
But maybe I am wrong.
Nah, you're right, have a little faith in yourself. Climate scientists are, after all, a bunch of librel nannygovernmentcompoops out to destroy your freedoms. It's not a big surprise that someone clever like you can bring their entire pseudo-scientific house of cards tumbling down.
You have all the science understanding of a 5th grader, and you remind me of the following:
The Enemy Reified
Perhaps the most trenchant part of his essay is the descriptive phrase of how the enemy is thought to act, the description of that personality:—
The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional). [bold emphasis added]
"The effects of forcing agents on the climate are complicated by various feedback processes."
ReplyDeleteAh yes. You want the blue suit we'll turn on the blue light.
"Howard Hayden, physics professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, has described the machinery of the computer models used by the IPCC and others to predict imminent and cataclysmic climate change as ones that take "garbage in" and spit "gospel out.
A common criticism of global climate models . . . has been that they only include factors such as solar radiation, atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases, which are affected by changes outside the climate system (while neglecting) internal climate change variability that arises from natural changes from within the system, like El Nino, fluctuations in ocean circulation and anomalies in ocean heat content."
Understanding the ocean's effect on climate took a quantum leap forward in 2003 when the first of 3,000 new automated ocean buoys were deployed, a significant improvement over earlier buoys that took their measurements mostly at the ocean's surface.
The new buoys, known as Argos, drift along the world's oceans at a depth of about 6,000 feet constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity, and speed of ocean currents. Every 10 days or so a bladder inflates, bringing them to the surface as they take their readings at various depths.
Once on the surface, they transmit their readings to satellites that retransmit them to land-based computers.
The Argos buoys have disappointed global warming alarmists in that they have failed to detect any signs of imminent climate change. As Dr. Josh Willis noted in an interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoy's five years of observation.
Actual observations trump computer models and as we learn more about the Earth we start to realize how puny and irrelevant man's contribution to climate change really is.
Link
GENEVA (Reuters) - Obesity contributes to global warming, too.
Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.
link
It is also the cause of terminal stupidity in most politicans, members of the chattering class and environmental wackos of very stripe.
Those who consider themselves extremely smart seem to catch it at a rate far higher than the general population.
Now, please go away. You bore me.
Sorry you can't deal with the truth, and as for Dr Keenlyside:
ReplyDeleteThe Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.
A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say. Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.
and
His group's projection diverges from other computer models only for about 15-20 years; after that, the curves come back together and temperatures rise.
"In the long term, radiative forcing (the Earth's energy balance) dominates. But it's important for policymakers to realise the pattern," he told BBC News.
Modelling of climatic events in the oceans is difficult, simply because there is relatively little data on some of the key processes, such as the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) - sometimes erroneously known as the Gulf Stream - which carries heat northwards in the Atlantic.
Only within the last few years have researchers begun systematically deploying mobile floats and tethered buoys that will, in time, tell us how this circulation is changing.
As a substitute for direct measurements of the MOC, the Kiel team used data going back 50 years from the Labrador Sea, where warm water gives up its heat to the atmosphere and sinks, before returning southward lower in the ocean.
Combining this ocean data with established models of global warming, they were able to generate a stream of model results that mimicked well temperatures observed in the recent past over the north Atlantic, western Europe and North America.
Looking forward, the model projects a weakening of the MOC and a resulting cooling of north Atlantic waters, which will act to keep temperatures in check around the world, much as the warming and cooling associated with El Nino and La Nina in the Pacific bring global consequences.
"We have to take into account that there are uncertainties in our model; but it does suggest a plateauing of temperatures, and then a continued rise," said Dr Keenlyside.
and:
The projection does not come as a surprise to climate scientists, though it may to a public that has perhaps become used to the idea that the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent phenomenon.
"We've always known that the climate varies naturally from year to year and decade to decade," said Richard Wood from the UK's Hadley Centre, who reviewed the new research for Nature.
"We expect man-made global warming to be superimposed on those natural variations; and this kind of research is important to make sure we don't get distracted from the longer term changes that will happen in the climate (as a result of greenhouse gas emissions)."
Dr Wood cautions that this kind of modelling is in its infancy; and once data can be brought directly from the Atlantic depths, that may change the view of how the AMO works and what it means for the global climate.
As with the unusually cold weather seen recently in much of the northern hemisphere - linked to La Nina conditions - he emphasises that even if the Kiel model proves correct, it is not an indication that the longer-term climate projections of the IPCC and many other institutions are wrong.
Come back to see me when you don't have to use such words as:
ReplyDelete"Dr Wood cautions that this kind of modelling is in its infancy; and once data can be brought directly from the Atlantic depths, that may change the view of how the AMO works and what it means for the global climate."
Bottom line. No one knows for sure what will happen, but the sun will have the final word as it has for millions of years.
In the meantime you and GW minions like you want to bankrupt the country, destroy the economy of emerging nations just to be in control and make money.
Shame on you and the likes of you.
Now. Go lecture a middle school class, but watch the smart ones. They'll nail your hide to the wall!
you don't have to use such words as
ReplyDeleteActually, I repeated what the scientist said, I did not edit the news story in the slightest.
If you would care to click the link and verify this for yourself, that would be the measure of a mature approach to the subject.
Bottom line. No one knows for sure what will happen, but the sun will have the final word as it has for millions of years.
He is saying that as the data comes in from the Atlantic depths, then they be able to adjust their theory to the observations and increase the understanding of what is taking place there and in other places as well.
In the meantime you and GW minions like you want to bankrupt the country, destroy the economy of emerging nations just to be in control and make money.
Thanks for demonstrating what Hofstadter was talking about:
He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will.
The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry
Now. Go lecture a middle school class, but watch the smart ones. They'll nail your hide to the wall!
Now, you can explain how the IBD editorial differs from what Dr. Keenlyside was actually quoted as saying.
You will forgive me for not holding my breath while you attempt to reconcile this obvious contradiction. I'm not feeling optimistic today.
FWIW, I've dealt with nastier and smarter middle school students as a substitute teacher than you've demonstrated of yourself here, so your retort is as empty as the other insults you've made in the past.
Thanks for your fantasy suggestion, I needed a good laugh today.
"He is saying that as the data comes in from the Atlantic depths, then they be able to adjust their theory to the observations and increase the understanding of what is taking place there and in other places as well."
ReplyDeleteYou know, I don't know if you are just want to argue, or if you want to lecture, even when your confusion is obvious.
Did you read my reply about the information from the ocean depths showing a slight cooling??
Maybe he should start his theory changing, now!??
BTW - Hofstadter describes Pope Algore and all the panic being sold.
Now. Go find some more middle school students to try and impress. It appears that you are educated beyond your intelligence.
Did you read my reply about the information from the ocean depths showing a slight cooling??
ReplyDeleteYes.
Did you read what the Dr. said who was one of the authors of the paper?
"We have to take into account that there are uncertainties in our model; but it does suggest a plateauing of temperatures, and then a continued rise," said Dr Keenlyside.
BTW - Hofstadter describes Pope Algore and all the panic being sold.
Al Gore doesn't assert that a conspiracy of the type Horstader talks about, and which are usually from the right side of the political world.
You could read the whole thing and perhaps learn something about the concepts it talks about.
You can continue to make wild accusations, inept endevours at degradation that are more lame than offensive, but
As Neo said, the choice is yours.
I'll leave the above for the record it's safer that way,
Al Gore doesn't assert that a conspiracy of the type Horstader talks about, and which are usually from the right side of the political world.
ReplyDeleteOh really???
That's funny.
Now Horstader this.
Go away.
Last time I ask.