Manmade Climate Change Discussion

[BornFromTheVoid]

Historical trends in the jet streams

 

We found that, in general, the jet streams have risen in altitude and moved poleward in both hemispheres. In the northern hemisphere, the jet stream weakened. In the southern hemisphere, the sub-tropical jet weakened, whereas the polar jet strengthened. Exceptions to this general behavior were found locally and seasonally.

 

http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/File%20Library/Our%20People/Profiles/carcher/My_Papers/Archer_Caldeira_GRL_2008.pdf

[jonboy]

 

Historical trends in the jet streams

 

We found that, in general, the jet streams have risen in altitude and moved poleward in both hemispheres. In the northern hemisphere, the jet stream weakened. In the southern hemisphere, the sub-tropical jet weakened, whereas the polar jet strengthened. Exceptions to this general behavior were found locally and seasonally.

 

http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/File%20Library/Our%20People/Profiles/carcher/My_Papers/Archer_Caldeira_GRL_2008.pdf

 

 

Again reanalysis of data 1979 to 2001 so hence HISTORICAL

[Gray-Wolf]

Sorry jon but the Francis work ( initial presentation) was data up until 2010 and the second one was her scrabbling to get up to 2012 included ( due to the low ice that summer) so her work is as bang up to date as you'll find out there? She , obviously , is still working to build a data set that will ,eventually, be long enough to be acceptable to show any 'ice impacts' but the prior works on jet migration dovetail into hers giving us over the 'majik' 30yr period.

 

Back to the loss of the polar jet. I was listening to a Beeb weatherman explaining the current cold plunge and he ended with " the myth that what the U.S. get we get a week later". He was at pains to point out that the Atlantic will rapidly modify the outbreak ( basically 'kill the cold') so what we are seeing is a significant portion of the cold , long bottled up by a strong polar vortex, plunging south and being neutralised by the ocean warmth ( remember all that heating in the oceans? remember the typhoon feeding off typhoon forming temps down to below 100m??). How many similar instances would it take to drain the arctic of it's winter cold and show impact on the DMI 80N temp plot as a big positive spike? how does the loss impact sea ice thickening?

 

It seems that once the jet is so elongate as to touch the regions governed by the sub tropical jet we might have problems?

 

EDIT: Am I also seeing another 'Crackopolypse' beginning to form over Beaufort? The HP that has been stationed there over the past number of days seems to have fractured and begun to spin the ice there.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Gray-Wolf

[jonboy]

Sorry jon but the Francis work ( initial presentation) was data up until 2010 and the second one was her scrabbling to get up to 2012 included ( due to the low ice that summer) so her work is as bang up to date as you'll find out there? She , obviously , is still working to build a data set that will ,eventually, be long enough to be acceptable to show any 'ice impacts' but the prior works on jet migration dovetail into hers giving us over the 'majik' 30yr period.

 

Back to the loss of the polar jet. I was listening to a Beeb weatherman explaining the current cold plunge and he ended with " the myth that what the U.S. get we get a week later". He was at pains to point out that the Atlantic will rapidly modify the outbreak ( basically 'kill the cold') so what we are seeing is a significant portion of the cold , long bottled up by a strong polar vortex, plunging south and being neutralised by the ocean warmth ( remember all that heating in the oceans? remember the typhoon feeding off typhoon forming temps down to below 100m??). How many similar instances would it take to drain the arctic of it's winter cold and show impact on the DMI 80N temp plot as a big positive spike? how does the loss impact sea ice thickening?

 

It seems that once the jet is so elongate as to touch the regions governed by the sub tropical jet we might have problems?

 

 

If you go to http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/shemjet_archloop.html you can quickly build an animation of the jet stream. Comparing September/October animations from 2010 to 2013 shows how the jet stream has been slowly moving north over this period.

[knocker]

Jeff Masters blogged about this earlier in the year and plans to update this week.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2393

 

 

During March 2013, residents of Europe and the Southeast U.S. must have wondered what happened to global warming. Repeated bitter blasts of bitter cold air invaded from the Arctic, bringing one of the coldest and snowiest Marches on record for much of northern Europe. In the U.K., only one March since 1910 was colder (1962), and parts of Eastern Europe had their coldest March since 1952. A series of exceptional snowstorms struck many European locations, including the remarkable blizzard of March 11 - 12, which dumped up to 25 cm (10â€) of snow on the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey in the U.K., and in the northern French provinces of Manche and Calvados. The entire Southeast U.S. experienced a top-ten coldest March on record, with several states experiencing a colder month than in January 2013. Despite all these remarkable cold weather events, global temperatures during March 2013 were the 9th warmest since 1880, said NASA. How, then, did such cold extremes occur in a month that was in the top 8% of warmest Marches in Earth's recorded history? The answer lies in the behavior of the jet stream. This band of strong high-altitude winds marks the boundary between cold, polar air and warm, subtropical air. The jet stream, on average, blows west to east. But there are always large ripples in the jet, called planetary waves (or Rossby waves.) In the Northern Hemisphere, cold air from the polar regions spills southward into the U-shaped troughs of these ripples, and warm air is drawn northwards into the upside-down U-shaped ridges. If these ripples attain unusually high amplitude, a large amount of cold polar air will spill southwards into the mid-latitudes, causing unusual cold extremes. This was the case in Europe and the Eastern U.S. in March 2013. These cold extremes were offset by unusually warm conditions where the jet stream bulged northwards--over the Atlantic, the Western U.S., and in China during March 2013. In fact, the amplitude of the ripples in the jet stream reached their most extreme value ever recorded in any March during 2013, as measured by an index called the Arctic Oscillation (AO).

Edited January 6, 2014 by knocker

[Devonian]

Jeff Masters blogged about this earlier in the year and plans to update this week.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2393

 

Interesting.

 

Judging by several posts in other threads today I'm 99% sure our resident sceptics will say 'How interesting, I'll go away and give that fair consideration because Dr Masters is intelligent, well educated and his posts sensible and thought out' but, I suppose it's just possible, lets put it at 1%?, he'll be DKingly dismissed as an idiot...

Edited January 6, 2014 by Devonian

[knocker]

 

Climate scientist and leading expert on Arctic climate change, Jennifer Francis, says that while she would not attribute the current cold that's gripping the US to global warming, it is consistent with what she expects from global warming. I spoke with Francis this weekend about the connections she sees between weather, the jet stream, and climate change.

 

In many respects “the jet stream really is what creates our weather†here in North America, she said, adding that there's a “very amplified pattern to the jet stream†right now, “meaning that it's taking these huge swings northward and southward. And whenever that happens is when we get these unusual warm and cold events anytime of the year.â€

 

As an example of how a very amplified pattern can cause warm extremes, she pointed out that Finland is experiencing very warm weather for this time of year because of a big swing that has persisted in the jet there, but in the opposite direction as the one that's causing the North American cold outbreak.

 

Finnish news Yle reports “the exceptionally mild winter has persuaded many birds to stick around in Finland for longer than usual. Some small birds have even started to tweet spring songs.†In another story, they report that a “snow shortage†has driven ski vacationers away from the slopes and instead to the spas and swimming pools.

 

Francis said a certain frequency of very amplified jet stream occurrences is normal, but that global warming is causing the frequency to rise beyond normal. The main effect of an amplified jet stream pattern is to increase the occurrence of floods, droughts, heat waves, and, you guessed it: cold spells.¹

 

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2014/01/looking-for-winter-weirdness-2014.html#more

[jonboy]

Francis said a certain frequency of very amplified jet stream occurrences is normal, but that global warming is causing the frequency to rise beyond normal.

 

We know that the jet is amplified etc and obviously causes thes areas of extreme cold or warmth but how does global warming cause this? I've yet to see an explanation that goes from increased CO2 causes x which causes y which causes jet to be amplified. At this point in time linking this to global warming is plain wrong

[knocker]

Francis said a certain frequency of very amplified jet stream occurrences is normal, but that global warming is causing the frequency to rise beyond normal.

 

We know that the jet is amplified etc and obviously causes thes areas of extreme cold or warmth but how does global warming cause this? I've yet to see an explanation that goes from increased CO2 causes x which causes y which causes jet to be amplified. At this point in time linking this to global warming is plain wrong

 

 

The driving mechanism behind the jet stream is the north-south air temperature gradient, and that gradient is being strongly impacted by what's called “Arctic amplification,†a consequence of global warming which is very much underway already. Shrinking Arctic sea ice, less snow cover on land in spring and summer, and more moisture in the air, to name just a few, are all primary consequences and feedbacks pushing the Arctic to warm even faster and thus to further amplify the jet stream pattern.

[knocker]

Australia's hottest year was no freak event: humans caused it

 

By Sophie Lewis, University of Melbourne and David Karoly, University of MelbourneThe Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that 2013 was the hottest year in Australia since records began in 1910.Unusual heat was a persistent feature throughout the year. For the continent as a whole, we experienced our hottest day on record on January 7. Then January was the hottest month on record, and the 2012-13 summer was the hottest recorded for the nation.The nation-wide temperature record set for the month of September exceeded the previous record by more than a degree. This was the largest temperature anomaly for any month yet recorded.Averaged across all of Australia, the temperature for 2013 was 1.2C above the 1961-1990 average, and well above the previous record hot year of 2005 of 1.03C above average.What caused these extreme temperatures? Climate scientists have a problem: because climate deals with averages and trends, we can’t attribute specific records to a particular cause.But our research has made significant headway in identifying the causes of climate events, by calculating how much various factors increase the risk of extreme climate events occurring. And we have found sobering results.

[knocker]

Bagley Cartoon

 

 

[Gray-Wolf]

Well I never knew KL looked like that? Of course you'd never notice him in a room (LOL........joking folks, just joking)

[knocker]

Published on Jan 7, 2014

Blanket 24/7 media coverage of the short but frigid 'Polar Vortex' temperatures -- climate change? global warming? -- provides a cornucopia of material for this month's 'This is Not Cool' video.

 

[Gray-Wolf]

Are we really believing that the U.S. is still, another year and more compelling data on, trying to link a weather event to global warming? 

 

It would appear that the same 'conservative' media, the same that berates anyone linking individual weather events to climate change, is leading the madness?

 

Meanwhile back here our P.M. is being scolded for linking the current spate of winter storms to climate change..........

 

Well ,it appears we will be getting the U.S. airmass that has driven the hysteria on Friday. 4 days over the Atlantic will have cured it's cold. Amazing heat source an Ocean eh? 

[knocker]

http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/76448-scepticism-of-man-made-climate-change/page-48#entry2889873

 

It's very rare we agree Keith but I must admit that article is very funny although a bit sad. Pity they didn't quote a few scientists. It would have brought the house down.

 

Edit

Out of interest what is it from a scientific point of view do you, and others, find laughable about the explanation postulated by Mann, Francis, Masters, Box and others?

Edited January 9, 2014 by knocker

[Gray-Wolf]

I've not found myself laughing at any of them Knocks?

 

I'm pretty sold on the notion that we must see the Jet respond when we alter the energy balance that drives it and I've not been disappointed with what I've seen over the past 6 or 7 years? The 'knack' is figuring where and when these plunges occur!

 

This past year we've seen an alteration to the 'pattern' of troughs and ridges that we'd become accustomed to in the late noughties ( our washout summers and the US droughts) and the US is now seeing plunges instead of ridging over the bulk of the nation.

 

As I've already pointed out on the board the plunge on July 3rd 2013 is nearly identical to the one they've just seen so something seems to be pinning positioning? ( and we've lost our trough and so had a nice summer..... long may that continue!) and figuring how that occurs would allow us to better prepare for flood events/drought/cold outbreaks etc

[jonboy]

As I've already pointed out on the board the plunge on July 3rd 2013 is nearly identical to the one they've just seen so something seems to be pinning positioning? ( and we've lost our trough and so had a nice summer..... long may that continue!) and figuring how that occurs would allow us to better prepare for flood events/drought/cold outbreaks etc

Well it isn't down to CO2 thats for sure!!!

[knocker]

 

Well it isn't down to CO2 thats for sure!!!

 

Fine, accepting that as given I'll ask again what is the scientific explanation for this, accepting the Artcic as warming. "Well it isn't down to CO2 thats for sure!!! hardly constitutes a scientific explanation but just an ideological statement.

 

The driving mechanism behind the jet stream is the north-south air temperature gradient, and that gradient is being strongly impacted by what's called “Arctic amplification,†a consequence of global warming which is very much underway already. Shrinking Arctic sea ice, less snow cover on land in spring and summer, and more moisture in the air, to name just a few, are all primary consequences and feedbacks pushing the Arctic to warm even faster and thus to further amplify the jet stream pattern.

 

If CO₂ is not a major part of the equation what is?

Edited January 9, 2014 by knocker

[jonboy]

a consequence of global warming which is very much underway already. Shrinking Arctic sea ice, less snow cover on land in spring and summer

 

I'm sorry Knock's but CO2 is not the driver for shrinking ice or snow cover if anything these elements come late summer last time arround where higher than previous years but we didn't see cold plunges etc then did we.

One of the causes is as the article states the temperature gradient and that's so large at the moment not because of how warm the warm side is but rather how cold the artic vortex is that has spilled out / displaced from its normal location this has created the low pressure systems and then there is the strong high thats been sittin above Japan. These are not consequenses of increases in CO2

WE must also remeber that IPCC5 states that we will see warmer winters etc yet we are seeing the opposite and I'm not talking about just this year but in general over the last 3/4 years.

There can be no arguement that we are seeing an increase in the use of 'Climate Change' (and by default global warming as no one as defined what is meant by 'Climate Change') by our political masters to blame any weather event that is out of the recent norm. This is brainwashing the general populus by default into accepting taxes etc when the science is not remotely settled.

[knocker]

a consequence of global warming which is very much underway already. Shrinking Arctic sea ice, less snow cover on land in spring and summer

 

I'm sorry Knock's but CO2 is not the driver for shrinking ice or snow cover if anything these elements come late summer last time arround where higher than previous years but we didn't see cold plunges etc then did we.

One of the causes is as the article states the temperature gradient and that's so large at the moment not because of how warm the warm side is but rather how cold the artic vortex is that has spilled out / displaced from its normal location this has created the low pressure systems and then there is the strong high thats been sittin above Japan. These are not consequenses of increases in CO2

WE must also remeber that IPCC5 states that we will see warmer winters etc yet we are seeing the opposite and I'm not talking about just this year but in general over the last 3/4 years.

There can be no arguement that we are seeing an increase in the use of 'Climate Change' (and by default global warming as no one as defined what is meant by 'Climate Change') by our political masters to blame any weather event that is out of the recent norm. This is brainwashing the general populus by default into accepting taxes etc when the science is not remotely settled.

 

But Jeff Masters has already covered this which your answer circumvents.

 

During March 2013, residents of Europe and the Southeast U.S. must have wondered what happened to global warming. Repeated bitter blasts of bitter cold air invaded from the Arctic, bringing one of the coldest and snowiest Marches on record for much of northern Europe. In the U.K., only one March since 1910 was colder (1962), and parts of Eastern Europe had their coldest March since 1952. A series of exceptional snowstorms struck many European locations, including the remarkable blizzard of March 11 - 12, which dumped up to 25 cm (10â€) of snow on the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey in the U.K., and in the northern French provinces of Manche and Calvados. The entire Southeast U.S. experienced a top-ten coldest March on record, with several states experiencing a colder month than in January 2013. Despite all these remarkable cold weather events, global temperatures during March 2013 were the 9th warmest since 1880, said NASA. How, then, did such cold extremes occur in a month that was in the top 8% of warmest Marches in Earth's recorded history? The answer lies in the behavior of the jet stream. This band of strong high-altitude winds marks the boundary between cold, polar air and warm, subtropical air. The jet stream, on average, blows west to east. But there are always large ripples in the jet, called planetary waves (or Rossby waves.) In the Northern Hemisphere, cold air from the polar regions spills southward into the U-shaped troughs of these ripples, and warm air is drawn northwards into the upside-down U-shaped ridges. If these ripples attain unusually high amplitude, a large amount of cold polar air will spill southwards into the mid-latitudes, causing unusual cold extremes. This was the case in Europe and the Eastern U.S. in March 2013. These cold extremes were offset by unusually warm conditions where the jet stream bulged northwards--over the Atlantic, the Western U.S., and in China during March 2013. In fact, the amplitude of the ripples in the jet stream reached their most extreme value ever recorded in any March during 2013, as measured by an index called the Arctic Oscillation (AO).

 

 

I'm sorry Knock's but CO2 is not the driver for shrinking ice or snow cover if anything these elements come late summer last time arround where higher than previous years but we didn't see cold plunges etc then did we.

 

Okay given that CO₂ is not directly or indirectly the cause of shrinking ice cover what are the drivers behind this? Plus I find it quite illogical to think that we can interfere with the natural carbon cycle to the extent with have and this will have no effect on atmospheric and ocean interactions. And I'm definitely not saying this is the only player in the game as obviously other cycles and teleconnections play a role in this complex scenario.

Edited January 9, 2014 by knocker

[Gray-Wolf]

On top of that Australia just had it's warmest recorded winter (LOL)

 

Here's what the white house have to say;

 

Edited January 9, 2014 by Gray-Wolf

[knocker]

I take it as pure coincidence that the unprecedented dry spell in California and Oregon and the record heat wave in Argentina has not been mentioned?

 

Not a Historic Cold Wave
As notable as this week's cold wave was--bringing the coldest air seen since 1996 or 1994 over much of the nation--the event failed to set any monthly or all-time record low minimum temperature records at airports and cooperative observing stations monitored by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. As wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt summed it up for me, "The only significant thing about the cold wave is how long it has been since a cold wave of this force has hit for some portions of the country--18 years, to be specific. Prior to 1996, cold waves of this intensity occurred pretty much every 5-10 years. In the 19th century, they occurred every year or two (since 1835). Something that, unlike the cold wave, is a truly unprecedented is the dry spell in California and Oregon, which is causing unprecedented winter wildfires in Northern California." Part of the reason that this week's cold wave did not set any all-time or monthly cold records is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in a warming climate. As Andrew Freedman of Climate Central wrote in a blog post yesterday, "While the cold temperatures have been unusual and even deadly, climate data shows that intense cold such as this event is now occurring far less frequently in the continental U.S. than it used to. This is largely related to winter warming trends due to man-made global warming and natural climate variability." For example, in Detroit during the 1970s, there were an average of 7.9 nights with temperatures below zero. But this decade, that number has been closer to two nights.

 

Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Edited January 9, 2014 by knocker

[knocker]

Addressing the Daily Mail and James Delingpole’s ‘crazy climate change obsession’ article

 

An article by James Delingpole appears in the Daily Mail today under the headline ‘The crazy climate change obsession that’s made the Met Office a menace’.

 

This article contains a series of factual inaccuracies about the Met Office and its science, as outlined below.

 

http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/addressing-the-daily-mail-and-james-delingpoles-crazy-climate-change-obsession-article/

Edited January 9, 2014 by knocker

[Gray-Wolf]

Will the paper print the corrections to his article as prominently as his piece or will it be hidden away in the small print somewhere?

 

The recent trials on trolling might do more good if such a high profile troller was brought to book ( with fines enough to 'hurt' ?).

 

EDIT: Oh, and Jon's 'cooldown' has just swiped 100,000 bats in Ozz...... 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/06/thousands-of-bats-killed-by-hot-weather-in-queensland?

Edited January 9, 2014 by Gray-Wolf

[jonboy]

As usual on this topic those who advocate CO2 to be the drive rely on others to explain their views rather than being able to explain in a sensible manner the mechanisms  involved from cradle to grave the CO2 impacts. Is this because its all theory and conjecture rather than real science !!!!