Global warming discussion III

[CapelDodger]

You are confusing two different things. Cohen et al used 1988-2010 for their 2012 paper, and 1990-2014 for the latest. They are looking at the cold areas, not the entire NH. They make no claims about global averages and the boreal winter.

I made no reference to Cohen et al. I referred solely to your preferred selection of NH Land Dec-Feb 1995-2014 on the NOAA's handy site.

It's good that you are checking, because that is how science works.

It's how everything works. Distrust and verify.

Now check the snow extent records and you will see the mechanism Cohen et al proposes, as well as what various other papers about this are discussing.

It's hard to argue for a direct connection still. But it's a good hypothesis.

And is entirely compatible with climate science as we know it. Just as a period of two decades with little or no surface warming is entirely compatible with climate science as we know it.

As bit-pattern pointed out, Cohen et al are extending the science from its established base. That's how science works.

 

[r-j]

r-j's preferred measure of NH Land Dec-Feb 1995-2014 which shows cooling,

It's actually about the worst app to use.

 

[macdoc]

Unobtainum...2 C

Ditch the 2C warming goal': Researchers suggest society is striving for a misleading, unattainable climate goal

As climate instability increases across the planet, limiting global surface air temperature increase above pre-industrial levels to an average of 2° C (3.6° F) has become a popular metric for success in the public eye.

But a pair of researchers at UC San Diego argues that the goal is a misleading one. Though it is a relatively tangible concept to appreciate, the standard does not correlate well to prescribed government actions such as limiting fossil fuel use or establishing carbon markets. It also provides fodder for those factions advocating little or no action on climate who use the recent flatlining of global air temperatures to argue that scientists' climate change projections contradict reality.

"Scientifically, there are better ways to measure the stress that humans are placing on the climate system than the growth of average global surface temperature—which has stalled since 1998 and is poorly coupled to entities that governments and companies can control directly," write authors David Victor and Charles Kennel in the Oct. 2 issue of the journal Nature.

more
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-ditch-2c-goal-society-unattainable.html#firstCmt

4C anyone....???

apologies if it was posted before ....so much noise in the thread.....

 

[Pixel42]

I've been looking at the NH winter trend using http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global and r-j's preferred measure of NH Land Dec-Feb 1995-2014 which shows cooling, and I've found some interesting things. December in that period shows warming - slight, but it's there. January the same. February shows a cooling. So r-j's "winters are cooling" reduces to " NH Februarys are cooling"

It's even more specific than that: NH February land temperatures are cooling, provided you cherry pick a peak year from which to calculate the trend and use a short enough period.

I've made a mental note to enter the same parameters and start year in March to see how much difference one more data point makes.

 

[CapelDodger]

It's even more specific than that: NH February land temperatures are cooling, provided you cherry pick a peak year from which to calculate the trend and use a short enough period.

I've made a mental note to enter the same parameters and start year in March to see how much difference one more data point makes.

I intend to see what the same length period produces, so 1996-2015 NH Land Dec-Feb. That's as valid as 1995-2014, obviously.

(Thanks again for digging up the site ).

 

[macdoc]

IF there is a 60 year trend I'd be interested in seeing how it matches with Envionment Canada's published 3.3 C average winter temperature increase.
Might actually detect when the jet stream began to weaken allowing southward incursions of the polar vortex.

 

[CapelDodger]

It's actually about the worst app to use.

I don't care why you chose it, just that you did.

 

[greybeard]

Speaking of global warming affecting the food chain. Strange things are happening in the North Pacific.

"Right now it's super warm all the way across the Pacific to Japan," said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport, Ore., who has linked certain ocean indicators to salmon returns. "For a scientist it's a very interesting time because when you see something like this that's totally new you have opportunities to learn things you were never expecting."

Not since records began has the region of the North Pacific Ocean been so warm for so long. The warm expanse has been characterized by sea surface temperatures as much as three degrees C (about 5.4 degrees F) higher than average, lasting for months, and appears on large- scale temperature maps as a red-orange mass of warm water many hundreds of miles across. Nick Bond of the The next link/button will exit from NWFSC web site Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington earlier this summer nicknamed it " The next link/button will exit from NWFSC web site the blob."

 

[OCaptain]

It's actually about the worst app to use.

Why is it the worst to use?

 

[r-j]

Why is it the worst to use?

This arose in regards to winter trends. In regards to looking at regional changes, it shows nothing about why we see a decline for the boreal winter. It's the huge failing of the mean, or the anomaly graph. It is fine if you are looking at the over all heat balance or radiation transfer summary, (though many would argue simple temperature is the worst way to summarize heat), but it tells you almost nothing about what actually happened.

It's like the weather forecaster only gave you the global mean temperature forecast for the next week. Or even the hemisphere you are in. It says very little, or nothing at all, about what you are facing..

It's why these claims of "hottest month ever" or "warmest year ever" not only mean very little, they mean less than nothing if they are announced during, or after one of the worst winters ever.

It can even make the report of "warming faster than ever" seem like a joke, when people can look out the window and see more snow and cold than they have ever experienced in their lifetime.

Now if decades ago the warnings and fears about climate change (rather than global warming) emphasized that for many areas, important population centers, agricultural areas, if the warnings had been it was going to get colder, and more snow would fall, that winters would become worse, not milder, then every report of increasing global temps would of course be greeted with moans and hand wringing.

"Oh geez. Another brutal winter is coming We really have to do something about this global warming." Which sounds like a joke, but if Cohen et al are on to something, it very well may be the truth.

 

[DC]

it was not the worst winter, only the 8th warmest, we had thus atleast 7 worse winters. but yeah it was pretty bad here, no snow at all.

 

[Kestrel]

Originating from Kestrel :


A paper was published in 2005-ish which determined that such is the scale of noise compared to signal that a decade, or even two, without surface warming is not only possible but to be expected - and the term "hiatus decade" was introduced. I can't recall who wrote the paper , but I do remember the AGW denier cult misrepresenting it as a prediction that we were in for two decades of cooling starting right then.

That makes a lot of sense. The claim wasn't that warming had stopped, but that we might not see the effects on a year to year basis.

On other forums, I see claims that there hasn't been any warming for 18 years. Denier pundits moved the first decade of hiatus to before 2005 to make the story better. The claim is clearly false considering the recent record breaking hot years. But this doesn't keep the hard core deniers from repeating the talking point. It is a lot like trying to argue with a young earth creationist.

 

[macdoc]

In regards to looking at regional changes, it shows nothing about why we see a decline for the boreal winter.

You have had that explained over and over again...now stop with the repetitious nonsense.
A graph does not explain - it charts the information. Now move on beyond the cooling crap or start a new thread about it.

 

[stanfr]

Speaking of cold winters...that ginormous low developing over E Canada right now is scarily reminiscent of the polar vortex from last season. It's in the 10s-20sF up there right now and getting colder...will be an interesting winter out east. Hope some of that cold and snow comes to the west coast at some point courtesy EL Nino or CA is proverbially in deep doo-doo.

Incidentally, I was up in Glacier NP MT a few weeks back--first time ive been up there in over 30 years. What struck me most was not the lack of glaciers (down from 120+ to about 20-25 in those intervening years) but the huge amount of dead forest, due to extreme fires and fungus/beetles/invasive species. The latter is one of those 'gotchas' associated with GW that you unfortunately don't read a lot about--just not sexy enough I guess--the rapid deforestation which besides aiding the great extinction of many species, is also a feedback to GW.

 

[Belz...]

Speaking of cold winters...that ginormous low developing over E Canada right now is scarily reminiscent of the polar vortex from last season. It's in the 10s-20sF up there right now and getting colder...

Bring it on !

 

[CapelDodger]

On other forums, I see claims that there hasn't been any warming for 18 years. Denier pundits moved the first decade of hiatus to before 2005 to make the story better. The claim is clearly false considering the recent record breaking hot years. But this doesn't keep the hard core deniers from repeating the talking point. It is a lot like trying to argue with a young earth creationist.

It was in 2005, on this very forum, that I first heard "no warming for 7 years" (that was casebro, as I recall) which caused general hilarity as you can imagine.

The 18 years comes, I suspect, Monckton, the swivel-eyed viscount, who actually used RSS lower troposphere. RSS is the worst measure, of course, due to an orbital decay bias (according to Roy Spencer of UAH), but that's why Monckton chose it. He can't get the answer he wants with accurate data because he's peddling a lie.

The thing is, now that "no warming for 18 years" is out there some people will repeat it forever.

 

[macdoc]

Originally Posted by stanfr
Speaking of cold winters...that ginormous low developing over E Canada right now is scarily reminiscent of the polar vortex from last season. It's in the 10s-20sF up there right now and getting colder...

It clearly is exactly that. There is a stalled high off California, warm Arctic Ocean and a weakened jet stream so we have an early cold excursion from the north.

Here is a comprehensive overview of the process.

Winter of 2013-2014 Sees Most Extreme Dipole on Record: How a Strong Emerging El Nino Conspired With Climate Change to Ignite Record Drought in California and Collapse the Polar Vortex

Dipole. It’s a word often used among meteorologists and climate scientists. But what does it mean?

In weather terms we can simply think of it as this: one side hot, one side cold. So, as a basic principle, it’s pretty direct. But in a world where extremes between hot and cold are becoming more intense, in North America which has just experienced its most extreme dipole anomaly since record keeping began in 1960, it’s also something that’s important to understand as it relates to ongoing human-caused climate change.

For a recent blockbuster scientific paper by Dr. Simon Wang and associates and published in Geophysical Research Letters has now linked this extreme temperature differential, related polar vortex collapse events, and the California drought with both ongoing physical changes to the Earth System due to human caused climate change and to the first rumblings of a monster El Nino in the Pacific.

more

http://robertscribbler.wordpress.co...-in-california-and-collapse-the-polar-vortex/

Cold that is normally trapped around the pole ends to the south and the Arctic is warm.

This got extreme last year and appears to off to an early start this year. Welcome to the Anthropocene.

Good vid of the jet stream wandering..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nzwJg4Ebzo

 

[Trakar]

...It's why these claims of "hottest month ever" or "warmest year ever" not only mean very little, they mean less than nothing if they are announced during, or after one of the worst winters ever...

Ever heard the term "regression to the mean?" Do you know why it generally applies to natural systems and under what exceptional conditions it generally doesn't apply?

 

[macdoc]

they mean less than nothing if they are announced during, or after one of the worst winters ever...

only the 8th warmest globally

A Cold U.S. Winter for Sure, but 8th Warmest Globally ...
www.climatecentral.org/.../a-cold-u.s.-winter-for-sure-but-8th-warmest-g...
Mar 19, 2014 - Despite the frigid temperatures that kept those in the eastern United States shivering all winter, the period from December 2013 to February ..

How parochial some are.

some...pause..

 

[a_unique_person]

It's why these claims of "hottest month ever" or "warmest year ever" not only mean very little, they mean less than nothing if they are announced during, or after one of the worst winters ever.

You don't see something in "one of the worst ever" in terms of cold, compared to "hottest ever". Record high temperatures are outnumbering record lows three to one in the USA. That does tell you something.