New Iceage? Much Evidence? - Global Cooling

[Cymro]

Adam, the question you're asking in the poll is whether global temperatures are rising - the answer to that is yes, there really can't be any doubt?

Beyond that - I'm no climate scientist and we all know about the opposing views on this subject, but from a purely statistical point of view it'll take the mother of all swings to bring it back to levels we were seeing even 20 years ago, and even if a number of cooling factors came into play, who's to say they'll do anything more than slow the rise?

This next year could be an interesting test - not much sun activity and a major la nina likely, it should in theory mean a big drop in global temps in the shorter term I would imagine - how low will they go though? If they don't drop much when those two factors are in play then it's virtually impossible to see anything other than a continued long term rise imo - and that's completely ignoring the co2 debate..

Fair enough points but as well all know about statistics they never tell the full story do they. I dont doubt the temperature rising either but what I do argue is this must trigger another reaction which ought to balance things ought and are we on the cusp of something like that coming into fruition. Your right however when talking about the next year or so because in theory it should be rather cool but when theory is put into practically we all know it never pans out like it should. A bit like comunism, perfect on paper in reality a complete mess.

[VillagePlank]

Fair enough points but as well all know about statistics they never tell the full story do they. I dont doubt the temperature rising either but what I do argue is this must trigger another reaction which ought to balance things ought and are we on the cusp of something like that coming into fruition. Your right however when talking about the next year or so because in theory it should be rather cool but when theory is put into practically we all know it never pans out like it should. A bit like comunism, perfect on paper in reality a complete mess.

You must talking about the red-top type of stats .... the work done on the climate is, in the main, par excellence, and for very good reason. You might find me arguing the 'toss' about such things, but that's me being the devil in and amongst the details, and usually because I don't really understand it fully.

Edited September 26, 2010 by VillagePlank

[Paul]

Lol communism doesn't look perfect on paper to me!!

And when we're talking about a straight forward figure - ie global temperatures, then statistics are actually pretty handy!

[❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️]

Hasn't the monthly global mean temperature been above average for the past 150 months or thereabouts?

[kold weather]

I do have to wonder exactly how dependable those stats of temps are before say 1900...I'd say very unrealiable indeed but who knows!

Anyway you don't get a sustained La Nina without cooling and the Oceanic temps are slowly coming down but are still impressivly warm...

I suspect what will happen this winter is we get a +VE AO which will lead to a strong Subtropical belt overall (though thus far it hasn't really worked that way this La Nina) this would then lead to a slow but steady drop in the Ocean anomalies seen in quite a few basins and obviously the longer the La Nina holds the greater the effects of this will be. Eventually it will work its way through the whole system and cools things down BUT we have to come down from a near record breaking point and will need a period of cooling probably even more sustained then we saw between 1999-2001 and 2007-2009...

So yeah we will cool in the short term, but long term all that is happening is we are heading towards a period that will stall temps more or less close to where they are.

Next 5 years will be the peak.

Following say 15-20 years see maybe a slight drop away at the start followed by a maybe a slight rise.

After that it all depends on any -PDO but at some point that flips and temps rise faster...

Once we get another say 10 years beyond that and the AMO flips back positive, things will rocket upwards again like we've seen in the past 10 years.

One other thing, its worth noting that the last 15 years *could not have been any more FAVOURABLE for warming* you had the perfect combo of the PDO being warm, the AMO really powering up as well as a fairly rampant sun for large chunks of that period bar the last 2-3 years. That on top of the obvious background warming is always going to lead to things shooting upwards rapidly...the real test for GW/AGW is probably just beginning now.

[VillagePlank]

One other thing, its worth noting that the last 15 years *could not have been any more FAVOURABLE for warming* you had the perfect combo of the PDO being warm, the AMO really powering up as well as a fairly rampant sun for large chunks of that period bar the last 2-3 years. That on top of the obvious background warming is always going to lead to things shooting upwards rapidly...the real test for GW/AGW is probably just beginning now.

That's an interesting point, but the question it ferments (as all good science questions do - you ask a good one, and that good one yields more and more questions) is that is weather driven by climate, or is climate simply a summary of weather ....

[WhiteXmas]

Is the slowing down of the Jet Stream indicative of a climate change? After all the currents are the source of balance for our climate. And what factor(s) would be to blame for the cause of the decline of the North Atlantic Drift if it were to happen?

[VillagePlank]

Anyway - here's some (untested, and uncompiled - one of the function stubs doesn't even have enough brackets!!) code for my work on sunspots. I hope it makes you laugh like it did my wife - and it's completely legitimate code for transforming the sexagesimal number system to the decimal system that we all know and love.

Here it is - the Ada specification file:

After all, if you didn't laugh, you'd cry ....

Edited September 26, 2010 by VillagePlank

[Cymro]

Well I for one didn't expect so much discussion in this topic and am greatly proud that it's attracted so much attention

[VillagePlank]

Well I for one didn't expect so much discussion in this topic and am greatly proud that it's attracted so much attention

Well, like all good topics more questions are raised than are answered. First one: does the gulf stream affect climate? If it does how, why, when, where and what? I'm sure we can all agree to bin the 'day after tomorrow'

Possibly an important one, as the UK in likely to be first in the firing line.

[WhiteXmas]

Well I for one didn't expect so much discussion in this topic and am greatly proud that it's attracted so much attention

When it involves ice age specualtion it is bound to attract attention!

[cyclonic happiness]

The YD also occurred when much of the N Hemisphere was still covered by retreating ice sheets and there were still big glaciers in Scotland. Whatever caused the YD could not possibly have the same results today.

As for a new ice age - I'll worry when the Baffin ice caps are bigger than they have been in the past 2,000 years. They're currently at their smallest extent ....

Interesting though that despite a solar min and climate change catastrophists claiming a new ice age is imminent (didn't they learn from the debacle of the 1970s?) we're currently experiencing one of the warmest years on record with many places experiencing exceptonal summer heatwaves and nowhere in the S Hemisphere having an especially cold winter overall.

So when exactly is it all meant to start?

Yes. And the next glacial phase of the ice age is not expected for several thousand years - the current changes in N Hemisphere insolation which caused the Neoglacial, desertification of the Sahara etc not being being sufficent on its own to cause a glacial - we need all the orbital cycles to combine for that. We might expact some increase in ice caps though. Which makes it odd that the opposite is happening ..... We may be in a brief warm phases within the general downward spiral, but if so it ought be less warm than the previous one, with consequently less ice cap retreat than seen in the MWP. Ooops ...

well if science is to be believed the earth is still flat?

[VillagePlank]

well if science is to be believed the earth is still flat?

It's turtles all the way up mate. Didn't I make it clear?

[Devonian]

Well, like all good topics more questions are raised than are answered. First one: does the gulf stream affect climate? If it does how, why, when, where and what? I'm sure we can all agree to bin the 'day after tomorrow'

Possibly an important one, as the UK in likely to be first in the firing line.

Interestingly my views, having read a very little but significant little (a article in 'Weather' years back) about it, is the gulf stream really isn't that important to our climate. More important is the fact we have an ocean to our west that the prevailing wind blows over. Not much heat actually gets here directly by the gulf stream - much of which heads back south before it gets here.

[BARRY]

Interestingly my views, having read a very little but significant little (a article in 'Weather' years back) about it, is the gulf stream really isn't that important to our climate. More important is the fact we have an ocean to our west that the prevailing wind blows over. Not much heat actually gets here directly by the gulf stream - much of which heads back south before it gets here.

I think you will find, That on average it keeps the temperture 5c warmer than it would be without the gulf stream. Extract from the bbc weather centre

http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/impact/gulf_stream.shtml

Edited September 26, 2010 by Paul
Added a link to the source

[Cymro]

Interestingly my views, having read a very little but significant little (a article in 'Weather' years back) about it, is the gulf stream really isn't that important to our climate. More important is the fact we have an ocean to our west that the prevailing wind blows over. Not much heat actually gets here directly by the gulf stream - much of which heads back south before it gets here.

The Gulf stream has a major impact on the Uks climate places which also have ocean near i.e Newfoundland in Canada on average have a much colder winter and weather in comparison with the Uk and Ireland despite their relative same latitude north.

[Devonian]

I think you will find, That on average it keeps the temperture 5c warmer than it would be without the gulf stream. Extract from the bbc weather centre

It IS more a technical argument but, aiui, most of the water from the actual gulf stream does in fact circulate back around the south Atlantic. We get warmth for the reason as I stated - not just the gulf stream but also the warmth of the summer that heated the N Atlantic and which is brought to us as winter westerlies blow over it and are warmed - extract heat from the ocean.

As I said, a paper by D. J. Ellett in Weather 48 No4 'The north-east Atlantic: a fan-assisted storage heater?' was really enlightening for me and I'm basing what I say on it. I'd urge anyone interested to get a copy, not easy I admit

Edit: some discussion and graphic about Atlantic circulation here.

Edited September 26, 2010 by Devonian

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

The test is coming. La Nina perturbation cycle [36yrs], -ve PDO and solar cycle of a grand minima. Oceans lose heat slowly and it will take a while to cool from the very warm phase BUT it is significant that even with all the previous warming and the alleged continued warming effect from CO2 we couldn't warm further even with a very sinificant El Nino in place. We have peaked.

BFTP

Edited September 26, 2010 by BLAST FROM THE PAST

[summer blizzard]

10.0C>

1700>: 3

1750>: 5

1800>: 6

1850>: 3

1900>: 7

1950>: 12

2000>: 8 (only a decade in)

8.99<

1700>: 14

1750>: 22

1800>: 23

1850>: 17

1900>: 8

1950>: 6

2000>: 0

What this shows, is that we began having an abnormally warm number of 10C+ years from 1900 while we began losing abnormally cool years of 8.99C- from 1900 also. Conclusion – the last 100 years have seen a massive upward shift in terms of UK temperature, most worrying being that if the trend of 8/10 10C+ years persisted, by 2050, 40/50 years would have seen CET values of 10C+.

Very worrying.

[kold weather]

Yeah true SB but I bet once the AMO flips we only get a couple of years +10C in a good 10-15 year period like we've seen in the past. I suspect it'll be hard though to get much in the way of sub 9C anymore simply because of the background base warming, but I do think that our limit is somewhere between 10.6-10.8C and its no shock how we've had so many years between 10.5-10.65, thats close to the upper limit...though 2006 did break that due to the exceptional heat of the 2nd part of the year...so I'd guess our current limit is 11C. Once you cool the Atlantic down your going to see things cool down...though that doesn't mean we are going to get better winters, etc...it just means the westerlies probably will be a touch cooler!

I think like BFTP we've probably topped out at least for the next few decades globally unless we can get another large El Nino at some point...who knows they can crop up at any point even in La Nina dominated periods!

Thats not to say I think there will be that much cooling either but I suspect the slow but steady shift in the oceans to a cooler pattern (whether it gets below average who knows!) is starting though these tend to take a good while to shift, esp in the Atlantic which tends to follow the Pacific and flip maybe a decade or so later.

As I've said a few times before, Jan-Mar 2009 was probably the coldest period recently globally with it getting down to about +0.1-0.15C and its not a fluke that we were coming out of a La Nina, had a -PDO AND the ONLY time recently we've had any sort of -AMO present for a tri-monthly period and guess what happened, we went from 0.4C and dropped about 0.3C over the space of 5-6 months reaching the bottom in Jan 09...now guess what is going to happen when those states *lock* into place rather then just briefly being there before rapidly flipping back into a more 'modern' set-up.

[osmposm]

The Gulf stream has a major impact on the Uks climate places which also have ocean near i.e Newfoundland in Canada on average have a much colder winter and weather in comparison with the Uk and Ireland despite their relative same latitude north.

Newfoundland is not a good comparison for the reasons mentioned by Dev. We are at the eastern edge of a big ocean, Newfoundland is at the western edge. At these latitudes the prevailing winds are from the west - in our case coming to us over the warmer ocean (and the Atlantic will always be warmer than adjacent large landmasses in winter, with or without the North Atlantic Drift/Gulf Stream, though its cessation or diversion would certainly cool it down a bit). I'm no expert on Newfy weather, but I believe their winds are again generally from the west - in their case coming off a cold North American continent in winter (very cold if it's a north-westerly).

A better comparison might be with the western coast of Canada. The geography is very different, and it's tricky finding equivalent lowland stations that aren't bang on the coast itself. But as far as I can judge, the winter temperatures in the relevant parts of British Columbia are colder, but not dramatically so - 1 to 3C, perhaps more in places. As you'd expect with a drop of a few degrees from British levels, average snowfall is noticeably higher than southern Britain, though.

So if our part of the NAD were to fizzle out - and I'm far from convinced that it is has or will - the prognosis is not too awful. Somewhat cooler in summer, somewhat colder in winter. More snow.

[ZONE 51]

The gulf stream brings warm water up from the tropics to the atlantic towards britain, so it means a weaker gulfstream cant pull up warm water which in turn causes a cooler atlantic near and towards britain, this would affect our weather, a lower general temp for our part and winter would be below adverage temps, theirs low sunspot count, la-nina, and negative phase nao, the jet stream is south, its likely to be severe cold and prolonged this winter, i think we are going into a cold phase, but warming again when this cold period is over, but how many years? if a giant volcano went off this would change all predictions. their is something going on with the climate, it might of done it before, but we just was not around then.

[Hiya]

10.0C>

1700>: 3

1750>: 5

1800>: 6

1850>: 3

1900>: 7

1950>: 12

2000>: 8 (only a decade in)

8.99<

1700>: 14

1750>: 22

1800>: 23

1850>: 17

1900>: 8

1950>: 6

2000>: 0

What this shows, is that we began having an abnormally warm number of 10C+ years from 1900 while we began losing abnormally cool years of 8.99C- from 1900 also. Conclusion – the last 100 years have seen a massive upward shift in terms of UK temperature, most worrying being that if the trend of 8/10 10C+ years persisted, by 2050, 40/50 years would have seen CET values of 10C+.

Very worrying.

I am not sure you can draw a valid conclusion with 6 data points like that. Perhaps 20 or more would be more appropriate to determine trends and extremes?

[Paul]

He's not using 6 data points, he's comparing every data point through each century.

[Guest mycroft]

The gulf stream brings warm water up from the tropics to the atlantic towards britain, so it means a weaker gulfstream cant pull up warm water which in turn causes a cooler atlantic near and towards britain, this would affect our weather, a lower general temp for our part and winter would be below adverage temps, theirs low sunspot count, la-nina, and negative phase nao, the jet stream is south, its likely to be severe cold and prolonged this winter, i think we are going into a cold phase, but warming again when this cold period is over, but how many years? if a giant volcano went off this would change all predictions. their is something going on with the climate, it might of done it before, but we just was not around then.

The gulf stream will always flow and always has,the only thing that has happened and will happen again is that it is pushed further s/e by an influx of colder water at it sinking points. A study afew yers ago found that a sinknig point was found off the Gibralter Straits

from a few thousand years ago.

It will always flow due being wind driven as well as deepwater convection driven and the Coriolis effect ie; the rotation of the earth will assist it

Edited September 27, 2010 by mycroft