Neat idea, Patrick. But there’s a lot that isn’t yet clear to this reader, at least. So keep working.
mikesays
to AL: is your “scorchyissmo” rating on temps about the same as your “skyrockety” denigration on concern over spikes in CO2 numbers?
one might ask: how are we doing on CO2?
pretty good, I guess:
Last Week
April 7 – 13, 2019 413.13 ppm
April 7 – 13, 2018 409.46 ppm 3.67 ppm increase yoy
April 7 – 13, 2009 389.50 ppm 23.63 ppm increase over ten years ago
last month?
March 2019: 411.97 ppm
March 2018: 409.25 ppm 2.73 ppm increase yoy
The yoy numbers appear to be a bit high despite little or no strong EN influence.
I would not say skyrockety because I don’t really know what that term or scorchyissimo mean, but with either the temp data that you post or the CO2 data that some of us post, I would say, hmmm… those numbers don’t look good to me.
If we are lucky, someone will weigh in and “splain” it all to us.
mike @52,
May I then explain “skyrocketry” to you.
Unlike my use of “scorchio” and its derivatives which are not so well considered and more a bit of ‘fun’ (or perhaps ‘frippery’ is a better description), I felt the comment that I denigrated as being “skyrocketry” was wholly serious yet nought but childish blather. It was selectively using MLO (& later global) CO2 data to suggest that atmospheric CO2 was rising far faster than it actually was and invoking some fictitious CO2 source (perhaps some new natural feedback) that would soon see CO2 levels skyrocketing.
My repost was that global CO2 emissions were flat so there was no reason for directly-human-caused CO2 to be accelerating at all. And evidence of some new feedback was nil (so fictitious).
As for the CO2 increases seen in recent days/weeks/months, the MLO y-o-y CO2 increases have been raggedy this year. Even under normal circumstance, taking a single day, week or month is plain silly. I note your usual “very noisy numbers” warning is missing from #52. Yet with the raggedy readings this year, a warning is more necessary.
Let us then take the MLO year-so-far as potentially a useable average. The weekly data since w/b 30/12/18 averages 2.96ppm/yr. And you say “The yoy numbers appear to be a bit high despite little or no strong EN influence.”
Yet consider this – the ONI data for recent months (which you say should be showing “little or no strong EN influence”) is a pretty good mirror for the equivalent ONI last year, so presumably showing “little or no strong La Niña influence”.
Last 12 months ONI for last year
+0.1 .. +0.3 .. +0.4 .. +0.4 .. +0.2 .. -0.1 .. -0.4 .. -0.7 .. -0.9 .. -1.0 .. -0.9 .. -0.8
Last 12 months ONI for this year
-0.6 .. -0.4 .. -0.1 .. +0.1 .. +0.1 .. +0.2 .. +0.4 .. +0.7 .. +0.9 .. +0.8 .. +0.8 .. +0.8
They aren’t an exact mirror image (& other ENSO indices are available) but I would suggest it is easily good enough to give credence to averaging the CO2 y-o-y data from last year and this year to provide some sort of underlying CO2 y-o-y rate with zero (or reduced) ENSO influence.
The average for the two MLO starts-of-year is +2.40ppm/yr.
We could do a similar average using ESRL global daily data (so any argument about MLO being impacted by changing weather patterns is neutralised) and that works out to (1st Jan to 19th Apr) +2.26ppm/yr.
And is that looking “good”? For well over a decade the message (or one of them) on emissions was that they must peak by 2020. But 2020 is now just months away and that peaking is not looking very evident. So it is good seeing the kids on strike from school and the streets of old London Town paved with climate protesters. It is timely. Here in UK AGW mitigation has been going backwards since 2015 when we should have been re-doubling our effort. Yet there is a worry that these protests lose traction and implodes amidst shouts of egregious doom-mongering (like “skyrocketry”) and calls for impossible mitigation measures (a carbon-free UK by 2025). There are many who would love such an implosion and will be branding the movement as fuelled by air-headed neo-hippies and crypot-communists to undermine it. So I would suggest that now is the time for us to be sticking to the sciency stuff like glue.
zebrasays
#49 Snape,
Now you are just getting silly.
You asked about 28 years of data, relative to 30 years of data, not one. I gave you my opinion; there’s no “speculation”, just the point that I have been making all along… that what matters is the question you are trying to answer.
If you can’t explicitly tell me what it is about my answer that you disagree with, then either you don’t really have an opinion yourself, or you are indeed challenged in language skills.
If you can’t just outright say what you are thinking, then it is pointless to continue.
Killiansays
MAR, you’re being dishonest with the data.
Using the clearly pejorative terms you do to disparage the honest work of others – whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant to an adult – is immature. You have a strong bias towards conservative interpretations of climate data that affects your analysis and feeds your pointless rudeness.
To wit, you use a non-analogous set of numbers, CO2 during a LN, to say the clearly high y-o-y CO2 during neutral-to-EN numbers are not, despite the factual evidence, somewhat to very anomalous. Not only do LN and EN have different weather and climatic effects, but cool temps have the opposite effect on CO2, so why would we expect LN-period rises to be like those of EN’s, particularly when we are entering an EN, not at the end of one?
So, here we are with significant fractions of the recent WINTER and SPRING CO2 numbers that are as far above the previous year as the 2016 numbers were during a massive EN, and the best you can do is downplay that as skyrockety and analogous to small rises in LN-period numbers?
You seem to have a real issue with others you seem to believe are beneath you in terms of maths and climate science seeing things you don’t/getting things right. When I said in January a couple of days of elevated CO2 readings were a bit extraordinary, we saw the same sort of minimizing. That it went on for an extended period did not cause you to engage in discussions of why, or wondering how I or others could make sense of such short-term patterns, etc., no, it caused you to double down on the denigration.
Sorry, right again, and you, wrong again. Your wrong again column is downright… skyrockety.
In my opinion, and I say this with no ill will, but because it is important, your practice of badly underselling the rates of change are bad enough, but the way you denigrate other honest actors is both unacceptably rude to others and a form of denial of climate change that is more dangerous than outright denial at this point because it has the effect of an agent provocateur. You are ostensibly concerned with climate changes, yet constantly ridicule others who also are merely because they are more worried than you are.
And, in this case, you do it with a use of the data that is in no way valid, because… well… I’ve already made that clear.
This is all too important for that.
patrick027says
Re 51 Kevin McKinney – Thanks; will do, … but it will take awhile.
Regarding that …
“Global Physical Climatology” by Dennis L. Hartmann p.91: natural surfaces generally have LW emmissivities between 0.90 and 0.98 (fresh snow 0.82-0.995, water 0.92-0.96; several types of land surfaces are listed at around 0.90 – p.92 table 4.4)
Because of the greenhouse effect in place, this doesn’t have the impact on radiative balances at the tropopause or TOA that it otherwise could; the implied LW albedos of ~ 0.1 to 0.02… would reflect the downward LW back up, so the actual fluxes at surface level would be more similar to if the surface were a perfect black body – except maybe in the atmospheric window with no low cloud cover. So I’m wondering – is this LW albedo approximately independent of frequency/wavelength, from ~ 4 to ~100 microns? I haven’t found much with Googling.
Snapesays
Zebra
Last comment, I stated my position in a way I thought would be crystal clear. Apparently not, so I agree it’s pointless to continue.
patrick027 @56,
I think the term to search on is ‘specral albedo’. A fair amount of work looks at the Visible and Near IR rather than longer wavelengths (4-100 microns) but there will surely be some looking at those longer wavelengths.
Note that Hartmann is saying that “If the frequencies of downward longwave radiation and radiation emitted from the surface are essentially the same, then the effective absorptivity of the surface is equal to its emissivity.” This is because ‘absorptivity’ (aka albedo) is the flip-side of ’emissivity’. A shinier surface will reflect more and so absorb less but also emit less to roughly the same extent. But note his rider about “if the frequencies of downward longwave radiation & radiation emitted … are essentially the same.” This suggests there is a wavelength effect on albedo.
Killian @55,
Is it worse to (1) “disparage” repeated comment & the commenters responsible when the criticism levelled at them (but ever ignored) has always been fairly argued and supported by data, or (2) accuse somebody of “being dishonest with data”?
Let us look at “recent WINTER and SPRING CO2 numbers” and the relevant ONI numbers for those periods, ONI being “one measure of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation” according to NOAA. Let us consider the period December to the sixteenth week of the following year as this allows 2018/19 to be compared with 2015/16 and 2017/18, the years you cite.
.. Year .. .. .. .. Average y-o-y MLO dCO2 .. .. .. .. Average ONI
2015/16 .. .. .. .. .. .. +3.3ppm/y .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. +2.6
2017/18 .. .. .. .. .. .. +2.8ppm/y .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. +0.6
2018/19 .. .. .. .. .. .. +1.9ppm/y .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. -0.6
I have suggested that a point midway between 2017/18 and 2018/19 would be arguably ENSO neutral and thus an ENSO neutral value for y-o-y MLO dCO2 would be +2.4ppm/y.
You seem to have a problem accepting that finding but I’m afraid you have not made clear in any way the nature of your criticism. Where is it that I am “”being dishonest with data”?
Snapesays
MA Rodger
Nice work! I knew CO2 uptake was sensitive to SST and upper ocean heat content, but not to the degree (parden the pun) that your number’s suggest. Rather ominous going forward, as the oceans continue to warm.
Adam Leasays
Here in the UK, it looks like the climate change issue has reached the point where direct action demonstrations have begun to take place.
I’m not convinced this is the most productive way of raising the profile, because it is far too easy for people to dismiss it as an extremist action group. Here is Boris Johnson’s response, count the logical fallacies:
“I don’t want some double-barrelled activist telling me that air travel is only to be used in emergencies – when his own Instagram account contains pictures of his recent skiing holiday.”
“Surely this is the time for the protesters to take their pink boat to Tiananmen Square, and lecture them in the way they have been lecturing us.”
” the protesters would do better to “look to China”, adding that the UK is not the “prime culprit”
patrick027says
59 MA Rodger – Thanks!
Killiansays
A better article than most on rapid climate change.
Bottom line: US nuclear power looks set to keep dwindling due to economics, but there’s a viable path to slow the process and save a good chunk of carbon emissions in the near term doing it.
Also, it has some good points about the (limited, but potentially useful) ability of US reactors to load-follow that I’d not encountered before.
patrick027says
Re 59 MA Rodger – Thanks!
Al Bundysays
MARodger: Where is it that I am “”being dishonest with data”?
AB: You disagreed with “God” and/or brought up a point before “God” decreed it. Duh.
Killiansays
This is one of those “skyrockety” events that tells me we’re pushing the planet past it’s ability to support us, and faster than expected (scientifically.)
mikesays
When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its dire report in October warning of humanity’s fast-approaching reckoning with global warming, one factor adding to the urgency was a new estimate about how much additional carbon dioxide was being added to the atmosphere as a result of the warming of Arctic permafrost.
With rising Arctic temperatures setting free a vast amount of carbon previously locked beneath permafrost, the additional greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere would speed up warming, the report concluded — and that, in turn, would further melt the permafrost.
Melting glacier and feedback loop. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
Melting glacier and feedback loop. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
Quote from the article linked at 64:
“It is “feedback loops” like that one that make climate change unpredictable and represent a threat of global warming spiraling out of control.
“It’s already begun,” Thomas Crowther, professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich, told Yahoo News. “The feedback is in process.”
Crowther estimates that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”
I suspect Crowther is correct and that we are seeing some leveling of CO2 emissions directly from human activity being offset by increased emissions from a warmer planet, thawing permafrost and possibly small changes in the basic carbon cycle of the planet.
There are two primary planetary readouts that can help us determine how we are doing. One is the global temperature data that Al posts and those data continue to show significant warming with very little fluctuation to a low side. The other data set to watch is the CO2 (and CO2) numbers which show the same sort of rise with little fluctuation to the low side.
It’s always good to know your sources. Is Thomas Crowther of ETH Zurich a reliable expert on climate or is he out on the extreme end of the spectrum?
CO2? How are we doing? Pretty good, I guess:
April 14 – 20, 2019 413.59 ppm
April 14 – 20, 2018 410.99 ppm
“It’s already begun,” Thomas Crowther, professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich, told Yahoo News. “The feedback is in process.”
Crowther estimates that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”
I foresee a divergence developing between what the scientists will want to write in the next IPCC report and what the various governments will allow to be published.
Adam Leasays
64: Yes, one of probably several nasty positive feedbacks. All we have to do now is convince the general public that it is a serious enough issue to pressure those in power enough to act properly, instead of paying lip service. Unfortunatly judging by the comments section of that article, we have a long way to go in that regard, and I am not optimistic that enough will get done fast enough to avert destructive rapid climate change. Apologies for the tone of despair, but I can’t yet see it happening.
alan2102says
65 Kevin McKinney 23 Apr 2019: “Dunno if we’re going to see a new Forced Variations thread any time soon…”
Forced Responses. Did it go bye-bye, not to return?
Crowther estimates that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback* “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”
Yet I find it very difficult to square that statement with the IPCC’s SR15 report. Indeed, the Yahoo News piece talks of an IPCC “new estimate about how much additional carbon dioxide was being added to the atmosphere as a result of the warming of Arctic permafrost.”IPCC SR15 CH2 only give a “how much” statement for a total by 2100. And that is 100Gt(CO2). Such emissions would increase with a warming world so a constant 80-year level of Arctic emissions would be an overestimate. Such a constant 80-year level would amount to 0.07ppm/year, a lot less than the “12 to 15 percent” of Crowther’s estimate. The overestimate comes out as 3% of the “at the moment” value.
(*Note that the IPCC projections to 2100 adopt CO2 & CH4 levels as an input so do not calculate an Arctic CO2/CH4 feedback& thus they have “left out the feedback.”)
(2) Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. Nothing controversial there. Arctic amplification is widely achnowledged although the albedo feedback is not so well quantified within IPCC modelling.
(3) Harold Wanless, director of the University of Miami’s geological sciences department. Sea Level Rise is famously underestimated by the IPCC reports but to suggest there is some mechanism that could yield 10m SLR by 2100 (as Wanless appears to imply) would take a lot of explaining. It is a big leap relative to the 2017 NOAA Technical Report NOS CO-OPS 083 cited by Wanless, a report which sets global SLR by 2100 as 0.3m to 2.5m. Even the speculations of Hansen et al (2015) only reckoned to 5m.
(4) Charles Koven, research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who “stressed that emissions from thawing permafrost were not, in and of themselves, necessarily catastrophic” and is cited as finding that “every 1 degree Celsius of warming releases from the permafrost the equivalent of 1.5 to two years of human-generated global carbon dioxide emissions.” That latter finding is roughly the same as the IPCC’s SR15 100Gt(CO2) by 2100.
(5) Roisin Commane, assistant professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University who says no more than the Arctic is showing dramatic results from today’s AGW. I don’t think any would disagree.
So I see this as an interesting collection but nothing which could be called alarming that sits well within the scence. Or am I missing something?
Sorry but I just feel that a sort of comment to the general status of the American = “global”, “liberal” “mind” etc. is of importance. I mean, what is science after all, when it is being ignored completely and denied totally by everyone in power or aspiring to it.
“Brothers, very far away
Over the salty seas
Rises up America
With it’s golden shores.
It is there the bird Phoenix lives,
Gold and silver grow on the fields
And in the shadows of the Woods
Roasted doves are nesting.
There the sun never sets
Every chestnut is roasted
There everything is love
The wells overfloat with champaign
If there you give your heart away
Immediately you receive two or three in exchange
And in the meadows only money flowers.
Chorus:
Oh what precious delight! God how wonderful a sight!
Only such a shame that America must lie so far away from us.”
Written by Hans Christian Andersen – the poet well known among touristing USAnians not for his fairytales – “The Little Mermaid” etc., but for the Disneyland sentimentalizised and commodified touristindustrial versions “of” them. Obviously he knew 150 years in advance that that catastrophe would happen – I guess it was never that difficult to know which spiritual “capacity” capitalism inspires (if one tries…), and then once also met Donald Trumps forefathers and realized what MAGA means.
The poem in danish:
“Brødre, meget langt herfra over salten vande
rejser sig Amerika med de gyldne strande.
Det er der Fugl Fønix bor, guld og sølv på marken gror,
og i skovens skygge stegte duer bygge.
Der går solen aldrig ned, stegt er hver kastanje,
der er alting kærlighed, kilderne champagne,
gir man der sit hjerte hen, får man straks to, tre igen,
og på mark og enge blomstrer der kun penge.
Omkvæd:
Hvor frydeligt! Gud hvor er det nydeligt!
Skade at Amerika ligge skal så langt herfra.”
(H.C. Andersen)
Late last year, the Russian energy giant Novatek finished building the northernmost industrial facility on the globe: Yamal LNG, a $27-billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant sitting at 71.2 degrees north at Sabetta, on the bank of the Ob River. The facility and its new port cling to the eastern shore of the gas-rich Yamal Peninsula, which sticks up like a frostbitten thumb into the Kara Sea—that is, in the middle of frozen nowhere.
The plant was finished a year ahead of schedule, in no small part because the Russian government helped build a massive port for LNG tankers, an airport, and a powerplant, not to mention using its fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers to keep the channel clear for ships coming in with construction material….
patrick027says
I made some graphs (related to my earlier post but not the same, though the calculations used for these graphs will be used for the visualizations):
For those who asked, I think Forced Variations in being left up for 2 months before a new one is posted.
Killiansays
Re #73 GreatAtNumbers BadAtAnalysis said But it’s not supported by data that’s 3 or more years old!!!!!
Really, MA, stay out of analysis. That you think the IPCC reports, excepting the recent special on 1.5C, should be used as anything more than a backstop for current discussions of climate is exactly why you are always, always, always wrong in any forward-looking conversation.
So, while here, let’s revisit our earlier:
GreatAtNumbers BadAtAnalysis said But, those goal posts are too well-placed for me! Let’s move them back! We can’t look at your analysis [hunch, actually] that the high CO2 numbers in January and Feb unless we include the irrelevant numbers from before that!!!
Basically, you’re really knowledgeable on the pure science side of climate, really poor at analysis, but even your numbers strength goes to hell when you’re trying to take someone down rather than doing objective analysis.
That is, your joy in taking people down, your allergy to being wrong, and others being right – or at least insightful – diminish the only value you have here.
mikesays
Hey Al, you say at 73 “So I see this as an interesting collection but nothing which could be called alarming that sits well within the science. Or am I missing something?”
The temperatures you track and report and the global CO2e data that some of us report here are simply alarming. If you are not alarmed about the state of things, then yes, you are missing something.
You have dismissed the notion that the CO2 numbers indicate significant new sources of atmospheric CO2 in the past when commenters have suggested that is likely. Here Crowther says that warming in the far north latitudes are now accounting for 12 – 15% of current emissions. This is positive feedback that has been predicted and will likely increase because the permafrost thaw is going to lag behind temperature rise. So, when that positive feedback begins (which Crowther say is underway now), it will continue for a long time and it is essentially irreversible. The dominos fall slowly, but stopping them once they are falling is going to be very, very difficult.
The IPCC reports are alarming in their own right, but they have always been mediated to the low side for a variety of reasons to achieve consensus.
So, I guess I will ask you, in your terms, are you really not alarmed about the climate change that you observe sitting well within the science?
Cheers, all
Mike
mikesays
I would love to see the site scientists post something on what Crowther sais in the Yahoo article:
It is “feedback loops” like that one that make climate change unpredictable and represent a threat of global warming spiraling out of control.
“It’s already begun,” Thomas Crowther, professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich, told Yahoo News. “The feedback is in process.”
Crowther estimates that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”
What’s so funny about climate change? This guy will tell you
Maxine Joselow, E&E News reporter
===================================
Josh Willis is a climate scientist by day.
By night, he’s a comedian who tells jokes about a subject few other comics would dare touch: global warming.
…
… Do your colleagues at NASA know about your comedy?
Well, I was slow to tell my colleagues that I was doing this because my colleagues are a bunch of stiffs.
I’m just kidding. But it is a different world. In science, we try to say things in a way that’s very exact and that really only a few of our colleagues understand. And jokes are a language everyone understands, so we’re kind of speaking two different languages.
But since I told them, I’ve mostly gotten support from my colleagues. I think most of them enjoy a good laugh and are happy to see someone out there trying to talk about climate change in a unique way.
What are you currently working on at NASA?
I’m currently working on a project called Oceans Melting Greenland, or OMG.
Did you pick the name to be funny?
I actually did pick the name the year I was taking my first improv classes at Second City, so it definitely had an influence on me.
What does the project entail?
Basically, it’s an airplane mission. So we fly around in airplanes and measure the temperature of the oceans and the condition of the ice. We’re trying to figure out how much warming temperatures are causing Greenland to lose ice around its edges, where it’s touching the water.
Is OMG your primary focus at NASA?
Yes, it is one of the two primary focuses. The other one is the satellites that actually measure sea-level rise.
So I’m the lead NASA scientist for the Jason missions, which look down from space and measure how tall the ocean is using radar. This tells us about global sea-level rise and ocean currents and a whole bunch of other things like El Niño….
john byattsays
The AF has fascinated me, I wonder if it would be possible for David Archer to do an update to his 2010 post, especially just how much more we may know about Knorr 2009 conclusions, many tks
Knorr 2009
Conclusion
[25] From what we understand about the underlying processes, uptake of atmospheric CO2 should react not to a change in emissions, but to a change in concentrations. A further analysis of the likely contributing processes is necessary in order to establish the reasons for a near‐constant AF since the start of industrialization. The hypothesis of a recent or secular trend in the AF cannot be supported on the basis of the available data and its accuracy.
[26] Given the importance of the AF for the degree of future climate change, the question is how to best predict its future course. One pre‐requisite is that we gain a thorough understand of why it has stayed approximately constant in the past, another that we improve our ability to detect if and when it changes. The most urgent need seems to exist for more accurate estimates of land use emissions. Another possible approach is to add more data through the combination of many detailed regional studies such as the ones by Schuster and Watson [2007] and Le Quéré et al. [2007], or using process based models combined with data assimilation approaches [Rayner et al., 2005]. If process models are used, however, they need to be carefully constructed in order to answer the question of why the AF has remained constant and not shown more pronounced decadal‐scale fluctuations or a stronger secular trend.
Killiansays
Ten times faster than expected… I’ve got some beach property in Florida you can get for a steal…
Early days yet, but could there be a difficulty with the Gregory et al. approximation for ECS
doi: 10.1029/2003GL018747
I can think of some involving slowish feedbacks.
sidd
Killiansays
So much for permafrost not being much to worry about in the shorter term. When it comes to climate, the trend is not our friend.
* Permafrost: Faster than expected.
* Abrupt thaw releases more GHG
* Affected areas < 20% of the Arctic, but…
* Possibly double the expected impact.
* Messing up infrastructure, habitats, hunting (ergo food/survival)
I have zero expectation that <20% will remain static.
#26 The situation with energy usage is addressed in the post linked below. Basically, Gail Tverberg @ourfiniteworld.com points out that climate scientists are not familiar with the energy predicament we are facing, and so assume the trend is continued increase in usage. She posits (and I agree) that the current continued increase in energy usage is not sustainable even short-term. This, of course, has implications for the climate. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/04/30/the-climate-change-story-is-half-true/
mikesays
last one out, turn off the lights
Daily CO2
April 30, 2019: 414.52 ppm
April 30, 2018: 409.26 ppm
UAH has posted the April 2019 TLT anomaly at +0.44ºC, a step up on the previous months of 2019 Jan (+0.37ºC), Feb (+0.36ºC) and Mar (+0.34ºC). April 2019 is the 3rd warmest April in the UAH TLT record, sitting below April 1998 (+0.74ºC) & 2016 (+0.72ºC), and above April 2010 (+0.33ºC) & 2005 (+0.32ºC), all of these El Niño years.
April 2019 is =24th warmest month in the all-month UAH TLT record.
As a start-of-the-year, Jan-to-April 2019 averages +0.38ºC, the 4th warmest Jan-to-Apr on record behind El Niño years 2016 (+0.72ºC), 1998 (+0.59ºC) & 2010 (+0.46ºC) while ahead of 2017 (+0.31ºC).
realizing my post at 91 will be misunderstood: “the lights out, party’s over” relate to the long moderation delays that have stifled the discussion, such as it it.
Daily CO2 reading is a noisy, noisy thing. 5.26 ppm increase in yoy daily number is startling, but no need to throw in the towel, end the party etc. Let’s party like it’s 2019, baby!
“in at least eight of the next-generation models, produced by leading centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, that “equilibrium climate sensitivity” has come in at 5°C or warmer.”
and
” “it’s a bit too early to get wound up,” says John Fyfe, a climate scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, whose model is among those running much hotter than in the past. “But maybe we have to face a reality in the future that’s more pessimistic than it was in the past.” ”
and
” The results so far are “not sufficient to convince me,” says Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. In the effort to account for atmospheric components that are too small to directly simulate, like clouds, the new models could easily have strayed from reality, she says. “That’s always going to be a bumpy road.” ”
Maybe we have less time than we thought, but there is no need to get wound up. We gotta look at clouds from more sides now.
Neat idea, Patrick. But there’s a lot that isn’t yet clear to this reader, at least. So keep working.
to AL: is your “scorchyissmo” rating on temps about the same as your “skyrockety” denigration on concern over spikes in CO2 numbers?
one might ask: how are we doing on CO2?
pretty good, I guess:
Last Week
April 7 – 13, 2019 413.13 ppm
April 7 – 13, 2018 409.46 ppm 3.67 ppm increase yoy
April 7 – 13, 2009 389.50 ppm 23.63 ppm increase over ten years ago
last month?
March 2019: 411.97 ppm
March 2018: 409.25 ppm 2.73 ppm increase yoy
The yoy numbers appear to be a bit high despite little or no strong EN influence.
I would not say skyrockety because I don’t really know what that term or scorchyissimo mean, but with either the temp data that you post or the CO2 data that some of us post, I would say, hmmm… those numbers don’t look good to me.
If we are lucky, someone will weigh in and “splain” it all to us.
Warm regards, Al
Mike
mike @52,
May I then explain “skyrocketry” to you.
Unlike my use of “scorchio” and its derivatives which are not so well considered and more a bit of ‘fun’ (or perhaps ‘frippery’ is a better description), I felt the comment that I denigrated as being “skyrocketry” was wholly serious yet nought but childish blather. It was selectively using MLO (& later global) CO2 data to suggest that atmospheric CO2 was rising far faster than it actually was and invoking some fictitious CO2 source (perhaps some new natural feedback) that would soon see CO2 levels skyrocketing.
My repost was that global CO2 emissions were flat so there was no reason for directly-human-caused CO2 to be accelerating at all. And evidence of some new feedback was nil (so fictitious).
As for the CO2 increases seen in recent days/weeks/months, the MLO y-o-y CO2 increases have been raggedy this year. Even under normal circumstance, taking a single day, week or month is plain silly. I note your usual “very noisy numbers” warning is missing from #52. Yet with the raggedy readings this year, a warning is more necessary.
Let us then take the MLO year-so-far as potentially a useable average. The weekly data since w/b 30/12/18 averages 2.96ppm/yr. And you say “The yoy numbers appear to be a bit high despite little or no strong EN influence.”
Yet consider this – the ONI data for recent months (which you say should be showing “little or no strong EN influence”) is a pretty good mirror for the equivalent ONI last year, so presumably showing “little or no strong La Niña influence”.
Last 12 months ONI for last year
+0.1 .. +0.3 .. +0.4 .. +0.4 .. +0.2 .. -0.1 .. -0.4 .. -0.7 .. -0.9 .. -1.0 .. -0.9 .. -0.8
Last 12 months ONI for this year
-0.6 .. -0.4 .. -0.1 .. +0.1 .. +0.1 .. +0.2 .. +0.4 .. +0.7 .. +0.9 .. +0.8 .. +0.8 .. +0.8
They aren’t an exact mirror image (& other ENSO indices are available) but I would suggest it is easily good enough to give credence to averaging the CO2 y-o-y data from last year and this year to provide some sort of underlying CO2 y-o-y rate with zero (or reduced) ENSO influence.
The average for the two MLO starts-of-year is +2.40ppm/yr.
We could do a similar average using ESRL global daily data (so any argument about MLO being impacted by changing weather patterns is neutralised) and that works out to (1st Jan to 19th Apr) +2.26ppm/yr.
And is that looking “good”? For well over a decade the message (or one of them) on emissions was that they must peak by 2020. But 2020 is now just months away and that peaking is not looking very evident. So it is good seeing the kids on strike from school and the streets of old London Town paved with climate protesters. It is timely. Here in UK AGW mitigation has been going backwards since 2015 when we should have been re-doubling our effort. Yet there is a worry that these protests lose traction and implodes amidst shouts of egregious doom-mongering (like “skyrocketry”) and calls for impossible mitigation measures (a carbon-free UK by 2025). There are many who would love such an implosion and will be branding the movement as fuelled by air-headed neo-hippies and crypot-communists to undermine it. So I would suggest that now is the time for us to be sticking to the sciency stuff like glue.
#49 Snape,
Now you are just getting silly.
You asked about 28 years of data, relative to 30 years of data, not one. I gave you my opinion; there’s no “speculation”, just the point that I have been making all along… that what matters is the question you are trying to answer.
If you can’t explicitly tell me what it is about my answer that you disagree with, then either you don’t really have an opinion yourself, or you are indeed challenged in language skills.
If you can’t just outright say what you are thinking, then it is pointless to continue.
MAR, you’re being dishonest with the data.
Using the clearly pejorative terms you do to disparage the honest work of others – whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant to an adult – is immature. You have a strong bias towards conservative interpretations of climate data that affects your analysis and feeds your pointless rudeness.
To wit, you use a non-analogous set of numbers, CO2 during a LN, to say the clearly high y-o-y CO2 during neutral-to-EN numbers are not, despite the factual evidence, somewhat to very anomalous. Not only do LN and EN have different weather and climatic effects, but cool temps have the opposite effect on CO2, so why would we expect LN-period rises to be like those of EN’s, particularly when we are entering an EN, not at the end of one?
So, here we are with significant fractions of the recent WINTER and SPRING CO2 numbers that are as far above the previous year as the 2016 numbers were during a massive EN, and the best you can do is downplay that as skyrockety and analogous to small rises in LN-period numbers?
You seem to have a real issue with others you seem to believe are beneath you in terms of maths and climate science seeing things you don’t/getting things right. When I said in January a couple of days of elevated CO2 readings were a bit extraordinary, we saw the same sort of minimizing. That it went on for an extended period did not cause you to engage in discussions of why, or wondering how I or others could make sense of such short-term patterns, etc., no, it caused you to double down on the denigration.
Sorry, right again, and you, wrong again. Your wrong again column is downright… skyrockety.
In my opinion, and I say this with no ill will, but because it is important, your practice of badly underselling the rates of change are bad enough, but the way you denigrate other honest actors is both unacceptably rude to others and a form of denial of climate change that is more dangerous than outright denial at this point because it has the effect of an agent provocateur. You are ostensibly concerned with climate changes, yet constantly ridicule others who also are merely because they are more worried than you are.
And, in this case, you do it with a use of the data that is in no way valid, because… well… I’ve already made that clear.
This is all too important for that.
Re 51 Kevin McKinney – Thanks; will do, … but it will take awhile.
Regarding that …
“Global Physical Climatology” by Dennis L. Hartmann p.91: natural surfaces generally have LW emmissivities between 0.90 and 0.98 (fresh snow 0.82-0.995, water 0.92-0.96; several types of land surfaces are listed at around 0.90 – p.92 table 4.4)
Because of the greenhouse effect in place, this doesn’t have the impact on radiative balances at the tropopause or TOA that it otherwise could; the implied LW albedos of ~ 0.1 to 0.02… would reflect the downward LW back up, so the actual fluxes at surface level would be more similar to if the surface were a perfect black body – except maybe in the atmospheric window with no low cloud cover. So I’m wondering – is this LW albedo approximately independent of frequency/wavelength, from ~ 4 to ~100 microns? I haven’t found much with Googling.
Zebra
Last comment, I stated my position in a way I thought would be crystal clear. Apparently not, so I agree it’s pointless to continue.
Regarding ENSO:
In February, there was a significant weakening of the trade winds (westerly wind burst), supporting the development of an El Niño:
https://ncics.org/pub/mjo/v2/hov/uwnd850.cfs.eqtr.png
Since then, the trades have been pretty normal, and accordingly, models have trended back towards neutral:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/nino34Mon.gif
Now, the forecast for next week is showing anomalously STRONG trade winds, consistent with La Niña…….something I’ve not seen in awhile:
http://www.atmos.albany.edu/student/ventrice/real_time/timeLon/u.anom.30.5S-5N.gif
*******
All the images come from Stormsurf, a site that covers ENSO conditions, past and present, as well as forecasts, with amazing graphics:
http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/links/ensocurr.html
Some are updated daily, some every five days. Fun to follow (reminds me of when I was a kid and followed the box scores of my favorite baseball teams)
patrick027 @56,
I think the term to search on is ‘specral albedo’. A fair amount of work looks at the Visible and Near IR rather than longer wavelengths (4-100 microns) but there will surely be some looking at those longer wavelengths.
Note that Hartmann is saying that “If the frequencies of downward longwave radiation and radiation emitted from the surface are essentially the same, then the effective absorptivity of the surface is equal to its emissivity.” This is because ‘absorptivity’ (aka albedo) is the flip-side of ’emissivity’. A shinier surface will reflect more and so absorb less but also emit less to roughly the same extent. But note his rider about “if the frequencies of downward longwave radiation & radiation emitted … are essentially the same.” This suggests there is a wavelength effect on albedo.
Killian @55,
Is it worse to (1) “disparage” repeated comment & the commenters responsible when the criticism levelled at them (but ever ignored) has always been fairly argued and supported by data, or (2) accuse somebody of “being dishonest with data”?
Let us look at “recent WINTER and SPRING CO2 numbers” and the relevant ONI numbers for those periods, ONI being “one measure of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation” according to NOAA. Let us consider the period December to the sixteenth week of the following year as this allows 2018/19 to be compared with 2015/16 and 2017/18, the years you cite.
.. Year .. .. .. .. Average y-o-y MLO dCO2 .. .. .. .. Average ONI
2015/16 .. .. .. .. .. .. +3.3ppm/y .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. +2.6
2017/18 .. .. .. .. .. .. +2.8ppm/y .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. +0.6
2018/19 .. .. .. .. .. .. +1.9ppm/y .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. -0.6
I have suggested that a point midway between 2017/18 and 2018/19 would be arguably ENSO neutral and thus an ENSO neutral value for y-o-y MLO dCO2 would be +2.4ppm/y.
You seem to have a problem accepting that finding but I’m afraid you have not made clear in any way the nature of your criticism. Where is it that I am “”being dishonest with data”?
MA Rodger
Nice work! I knew CO2 uptake was sensitive to SST and upper ocean heat content, but not to the degree (parden the pun) that your number’s suggest. Rather ominous going forward, as the oceans continue to warm.
Here in the UK, it looks like the climate change issue has reached the point where direct action demonstrations have begun to take place.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-48011838
I’m not convinced this is the most productive way of raising the profile, because it is far too easy for people to dismiss it as an extremist action group. Here is Boris Johnson’s response, count the logical fallacies:
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/boris-johnson-says-done-young-120927319.html
“I don’t want some double-barrelled activist telling me that air travel is only to be used in emergencies – when his own Instagram account contains pictures of his recent skiing holiday.”
“Surely this is the time for the protesters to take their pink boat to Tiananmen Square, and lecture them in the way they have been lecturing us.”
” the protesters would do better to “look to China”, adding that the UK is not the “prime culprit”
59 MA Rodger – Thanks!
A better article than most on rapid climate change.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/its-already-begun-feedback-loops-will-make-climate-change-even-worse-scientists-say-090000011.html
Dunno if we’re going to see a new Forced Variations thread any time soon, but if we did, this would be an appropriate item for it:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/21/some-good-news-for-the-us-nuclear-fleet-renewables/
Bottom line: US nuclear power looks set to keep dwindling due to economics, but there’s a viable path to slow the process and save a good chunk of carbon emissions in the near term doing it.
Also, it has some good points about the (limited, but potentially useful) ability of US reactors to load-follow that I’d not encountered before.
Re 59 MA Rodger – Thanks!
MARodger: Where is it that I am “”being dishonest with data”?
AB: You disagreed with “God” and/or brought up a point before “God” decreed it. Duh.
This is one of those “skyrockety” events that tells me we’re pushing the planet past it’s ability to support us, and faster than expected (scientifically.)
When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its dire report in October warning of humanity’s fast-approaching reckoning with global warming, one factor adding to the urgency was a new estimate about how much additional carbon dioxide was being added to the atmosphere as a result of the warming of Arctic permafrost.
With rising Arctic temperatures setting free a vast amount of carbon previously locked beneath permafrost, the additional greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere would speed up warming, the report concluded — and that, in turn, would further melt the permafrost.
Melting glacier and feedback loop. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
Melting glacier and feedback loop. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
Quote from the article linked at 64:
“It is “feedback loops” like that one that make climate change unpredictable and represent a threat of global warming spiraling out of control.
“It’s already begun,” Thomas Crowther, professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich, told Yahoo News. “The feedback is in process.”
Crowther estimates that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”
I suspect Crowther is correct and that we are seeing some leveling of CO2 emissions directly from human activity being offset by increased emissions from a warmer planet, thawing permafrost and possibly small changes in the basic carbon cycle of the planet.
There are two primary planetary readouts that can help us determine how we are doing. One is the global temperature data that Al posts and those data continue to show significant warming with very little fluctuation to a low side. The other data set to watch is the CO2 (and CO2) numbers which show the same sort of rise with little fluctuation to the low side.
It’s always good to know your sources. Is Thomas Crowther of ETH Zurich a reliable expert on climate or is he out on the extreme end of the spectrum?
CO2? How are we doing? Pretty good, I guess:
April 14 – 20, 2019 413.59 ppm
April 14 – 20, 2018 410.99 ppm
Warm regards all,
Mike
I foresee a divergence developing between what the scientists will want to write in the next IPCC report and what the various governments will allow to be published.
64: Yes, one of probably several nasty positive feedbacks. All we have to do now is convince the general public that it is a serious enough issue to pressure those in power enough to act properly, instead of paying lip service. Unfortunatly judging by the comments section of that article, we have a long way to go in that regard, and I am not optimistic that enough will get done fast enough to avert destructive rapid climate change. Apologies for the tone of despair, but I can’t yet see it happening.
65 Kevin McKinney 23 Apr 2019: “Dunno if we’re going to see a new Forced Variations thread any time soon…”
Forced Responses. Did it go bye-bye, not to return?
Killian @64,
Let us look at your “better article than most on rapid climate change,” a piece on Yahoo News entitled ”It’s already begun’: Feedback loops will make climate change even worse, scientists say’.
The “scientists” quoted are but five in number bit with quite different messages.
(1) Thomas Crowther, professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich.
Yet I find it very difficult to square that statement with the IPCC’s SR15 report. Indeed, the Yahoo News piece talks of an IPCC “new estimate about how much additional carbon dioxide was being added to the atmosphere as a result of the warming of Arctic permafrost.” IPCC SR15 CH2 only give a “how much” statement for a total by 2100. And that is 100Gt(CO2). Such emissions would increase with a warming world so a constant 80-year level of Arctic emissions would be an overestimate. Such a constant 80-year level would amount to 0.07ppm/year, a lot less than the “12 to 15 percent” of Crowther’s estimate. The overestimate comes out as 3% of the “at the moment” value.
(*Note that the IPCC projections to 2100 adopt CO2 & CH4 levels as an input so do not calculate an Arctic CO2/CH4 feedback& thus they have “left out the feedback.”)
(2) Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. Nothing controversial there. Arctic amplification is widely achnowledged although the albedo feedback is not so well quantified within IPCC modelling.
(3) Harold Wanless, director of the University of Miami’s geological sciences department. Sea Level Rise is famously underestimated by the IPCC reports but to suggest there is some mechanism that could yield 10m SLR by 2100 (as Wanless appears to imply) would take a lot of explaining. It is a big leap relative to the 2017 NOAA Technical Report NOS CO-OPS 083 cited by Wanless, a report which sets global SLR by 2100 as 0.3m to 2.5m. Even the speculations of Hansen et al (2015) only reckoned to 5m.
(4) Charles Koven, research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who “stressed that emissions from thawing permafrost were not, in and of themselves, necessarily catastrophic” and is cited as finding that “every 1 degree Celsius of warming releases from the permafrost the equivalent of 1.5 to two years of human-generated global carbon dioxide emissions.” That latter finding is roughly the same as the IPCC’s SR15 100Gt(CO2) by 2100.
(5) Roisin Commane, assistant professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University who says no more than the Arctic is showing dramatic results from today’s AGW. I don’t think any would disagree.
So I see this as an interesting collection but nothing which could be called alarming that sits well within the scence. Or am I missing something?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/how-much-ice-has-greenland-lost-climate-change/587431/
“Greenland is falling apart” says the headline
Sorry but I just feel that a sort of comment to the general status of the American = “global”, “liberal” “mind” etc. is of importance. I mean, what is science after all, when it is being ignored completely and denied totally by everyone in power or aspiring to it.
“Brothers, very far away
Over the salty seas
Rises up America
With it’s golden shores.
It is there the bird Phoenix lives,
Gold and silver grow on the fields
And in the shadows of the Woods
Roasted doves are nesting.
There the sun never sets
Every chestnut is roasted
There everything is love
The wells overfloat with champaign
If there you give your heart away
Immediately you receive two or three in exchange
And in the meadows only money flowers.
Chorus:
Oh what precious delight! God how wonderful a sight!
Only such a shame that America must lie so far away from us.”
Written by Hans Christian Andersen – the poet well known among touristing USAnians not for his fairytales – “The Little Mermaid” etc., but for the Disneyland sentimentalizised and commodified touristindustrial versions “of” them. Obviously he knew 150 years in advance that that catastrophe would happen – I guess it was never that difficult to know which spiritual “capacity” capitalism inspires (if one tries…), and then once also met Donald Trumps forefathers and realized what MAGA means.
The poem in danish:
“Brødre, meget langt herfra over salten vande
rejser sig Amerika med de gyldne strande.
Det er der Fugl Fønix bor, guld og sølv på marken gror,
og i skovens skygge stegte duer bygge.
Der går solen aldrig ned, stegt er hver kastanje,
der er alting kærlighed, kilderne champagne,
gir man der sit hjerte hen, får man straks to, tre igen,
og på mark og enge blomstrer der kun penge.
Omkvæd:
Hvor frydeligt! Gud hvor er det nydeligt!
Skade at Amerika ligge skal så langt herfra.”
(H.C. Andersen)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/sabetta-yamal-largest-gas-field/
I made some graphs (related to my earlier post but not the same, though the calculations used for these graphs will be used for the visualizations):
https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/work-related-to-seeing-the-greenhouse-effect-behold-the-planck-function-like-youve-probably-maybe-never-seen-it-before/
April 29 in Italy and big snow has made an appearance. Enjoy:
https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/trentino-alto-adige/bolzano/colfosco-alta-badia.html
https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/veneto/belluno/cortina-d-ampezzo.html
For those who asked, I think Forced Variations in being left up for 2 months before a new one is posted.
Re #73 GreatAtNumbers BadAtAnalysis said But it’s not supported by data that’s 3 or more years old!!!!!
Really, MA, stay out of analysis. That you think the IPCC reports, excepting the recent special on 1.5C, should be used as anything more than a backstop for current discussions of climate is exactly why you are always, always, always wrong in any forward-looking conversation.
So, while here, let’s revisit our earlier:
GreatAtNumbers BadAtAnalysis said But, those goal posts are too well-placed for me! Let’s move them back! We can’t look at your analysis [hunch, actually] that the high CO2 numbers in January and Feb unless we include the irrelevant numbers from before that!!!
Basically, you’re really knowledgeable on the pure science side of climate, really poor at analysis, but even your numbers strength goes to hell when you’re trying to take someone down rather than doing objective analysis.
That is, your joy in taking people down, your allergy to being wrong, and others being right – or at least insightful – diminish the only value you have here.
Hey Al, you say at 73 “So I see this as an interesting collection but nothing which could be called alarming that sits well within the science. Or am I missing something?”
The temperatures you track and report and the global CO2e data that some of us report here are simply alarming. If you are not alarmed about the state of things, then yes, you are missing something.
You have dismissed the notion that the CO2 numbers indicate significant new sources of atmospheric CO2 in the past when commenters have suggested that is likely. Here Crowther says that warming in the far north latitudes are now accounting for 12 – 15% of current emissions. This is positive feedback that has been predicted and will likely increase because the permafrost thaw is going to lag behind temperature rise. So, when that positive feedback begins (which Crowther say is underway now), it will continue for a long time and it is essentially irreversible. The dominos fall slowly, but stopping them once they are falling is going to be very, very difficult.
The IPCC reports are alarming in their own right, but they have always been mediated to the low side for a variety of reasons to achieve consensus.
So, I guess I will ask you, in your terms, are you really not alarmed about the climate change that you observe sitting well within the science?
Cheers, all
Mike
I would love to see the site scientists post something on what Crowther sais in the Yahoo article:
It is “feedback loops” like that one that make climate change unpredictable and represent a threat of global warming spiraling out of control.
“It’s already begun,” Thomas Crowther, professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich, told Yahoo News. “The feedback is in process.”
Crowther estimates that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/its-already-begun-feedback-loops-will-make-climate-change-even-worse-scientists-say-090000011.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5yZWFsY2xpbWF0ZS5vcmcvaW5kZXgucGhwL2FyY2hpdmVzLzIwMTkvMDQvdW5mb3JjZWQtdmFyaWF0aW9ucy1hcHJpbC0yMDE5L2NvbW1lbnQtcGFnZS0yLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAC3ZdEn5acTcH7dpHsXVLtpWfxXt-2TTldWiJLH9ObeGh2O8Ab0ROWDcKZiBFNuTuEDOItVQpD4Ynl63UiBt3Geodpl9EFHTLRhzDFDrF9ogYa5mhmHyozbEcsi1Jqajj1Wm0LOfX5YZuKbDi2IWh3tI9RZvlKJ9S3Rh3ipauV32
Cheers,
Mike
The AF has fascinated me, I wonder if it would be possible for David Archer to do an update to his 2010 post, especially just how much more we may know about Knorr 2009 conclusions, many tks
Knorr 2009
Conclusion
[25] From what we understand about the underlying processes, uptake of atmospheric CO2 should react not to a change in emissions, but to a change in concentrations. A further analysis of the likely contributing processes is necessary in order to establish the reasons for a near‐constant AF since the start of industrialization. The hypothesis of a recent or secular trend in the AF cannot be supported on the basis of the available data and its accuracy.
[26] Given the importance of the AF for the degree of future climate change, the question is how to best predict its future course. One pre‐requisite is that we gain a thorough understand of why it has stayed approximately constant in the past, another that we improve our ability to detect if and when it changes. The most urgent need seems to exist for more accurate estimates of land use emissions. Another possible approach is to add more data through the combination of many detailed regional studies such as the ones by Schuster and Watson [2007] and Le Quéré et al. [2007], or using process based models combined with data assimilation approaches [Rayner et al., 2005]. If process models are used, however, they need to be carefully constructed in order to answer the question of why the AF has remained constant and not shown more pronounced decadal‐scale fluctuations or a stronger secular trend.
Ten times faster than expected… I’ve got some beach property in Florida you can get for a steal…
Ross Ice Shelf is pulling a Wicked Witch.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/ross-ice-shelf-antarctica-melting-climate-change-global-warming-sea-level-temperature-a8891506.html
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leonid_Yurganov/publication/332409478_Atmospheric_Methane_over_Arctic_Ocean_Observed_from_Thermal_IR_Sounders_AIRS_and_IASI/links/5cb345ec4585156cd796e025/Atmospheric-Methane-over-Arctic-Ocean-Observed-from-Thermal-IR-Sounders-AIRS-and-IASI.pdf
CO2:
April 21 – 27, 2019 413.77 ppm
April 21 – 27, 2018 411.70 ppm
2.07 ppm increase yoy. Noisy number
Could be worse.
Mike
I see that the first CMIP6 results are coming in hot.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/new-climate-models-predict-warming-surge
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-results-from-the-next-generation-of-climate-models-matter
Early days yet, but could there be a difficulty with the Gregory et al. approximation for ECS
doi: 10.1029/2003GL018747
I can think of some involving slowish feedbacks.
sidd
So much for permafrost not being much to worry about in the shorter term. When it comes to climate, the trend is not our friend.
* Permafrost: Faster than expected.
* Abrupt thaw releases more GHG
* Affected areas < 20% of the Arctic, but…
* Possibly double the expected impact.
* Messing up infrastructure, habitats, hunting (ergo food/survival)
I have zero expectation that <20% will remain static.
https://news.uoguelph.ca/2019/04/rapid-permafrost-thaw-unrecognized-threat-to-northern-landscape-global-warming-researcher-warns/
#26 The situation with energy usage is addressed in the post linked below. Basically, Gail Tverberg @ourfiniteworld.com points out that climate scientists are not familiar with the energy predicament we are facing, and so assume the trend is continued increase in usage. She posits (and I agree) that the current continued increase in energy usage is not sustainable even short-term. This, of course, has implications for the climate. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/04/30/the-climate-change-story-is-half-true/
last one out, turn off the lights
Daily CO2
April 30, 2019: 414.52 ppm
April 30, 2018: 409.26 ppm
5.26 ppm increase yoy.
The party’s over,
Mike
UAH has posted the April 2019 TLT anomaly at +0.44ºC, a step up on the previous months of 2019 Jan (+0.37ºC), Feb (+0.36ºC) and Mar (+0.34ºC). April 2019 is the 3rd warmest April in the UAH TLT record, sitting below April 1998 (+0.74ºC) & 2016 (+0.72ºC), and above April 2010 (+0.33ºC) & 2005 (+0.32ºC), all of these El Niño years.
April 2019 is =24th warmest month in the all-month UAH TLT record.
As a start-of-the-year, Jan-to-April 2019 averages +0.38ºC, the 4th warmest Jan-to-Apr on record behind El Niño years 2016 (+0.72ºC), 1998 (+0.59ºC) & 2010 (+0.46ºC) while ahead of 2017 (+0.31ºC).
Cheating supplier caused loss of two climate satellites:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/oco_glory_public_summary_update_-_for_the_web_-_04302019.pdf
https://news.google.com/articles/CBMicWh0dHBzOi8vYXJzdGVjaG5pY2EuY29tL3NjaWVuY2UvMjAxOS8wNS9uYXNhLWZpbmFsbHktY29uY2x1ZGVzLWludmVzdGlnYXRpb24tb2YtdHdvLWZhaWxlZC1sYXVuY2hlcy1hLWRlY2FkZS1hZ28v0gF3aHR0cHM6Ly9hcnN0ZWNobmljYS5jb20vc2NpZW5jZS8yMDE5LzA1L25hc2EtZmluYWxseS1jb25jbHVkZXMtaW52ZXN0aWdhdGlvbi1vZi10d28tZmFpbGVkLWxhdW5jaGVzLWEtZGVjYWRlLWFnby8_YW1wPTE?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
realizing my post at 91 will be misunderstood: “the lights out, party’s over” relate to the long moderation delays that have stifled the discussion, such as it it.
Daily CO2 reading is a noisy, noisy thing. 5.26 ppm increase in yoy daily number is startling, but no need to throw in the towel, end the party etc. Let’s party like it’s 2019, baby!
Mike
sidd’s link at 88: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/new-climate-models-predict-warming-surge is an interesting read. Here are a few quotes:
“in at least eight of the next-generation models, produced by leading centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, that “equilibrium climate sensitivity” has come in at 5°C or warmer.”
and
” “it’s a bit too early to get wound up,” says John Fyfe, a climate scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, whose model is among those running much hotter than in the past. “But maybe we have to face a reality in the future that’s more pessimistic than it was in the past.” ”
and
” The results so far are “not sufficient to convince me,” says Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. In the effort to account for atmospheric components that are too small to directly simulate, like clouds, the new models could easily have strayed from reality, she says. “That’s always going to be a bumpy road.” ”
Maybe we have less time than we thought, but there is no need to get wound up. We gotta look at clouds from more sides now.
All good, no worries per Fyfe and Marvel.
Warm regards,
Mike
Any comment on Has Global Warming already arrived Varotsos and Efstathiou 2019 ? Claims:
• The global warming during 1978–2018 was not more enhanced at high latitudes near the surface.
•The intrinsic properties of the lower stratospheric temperature are not related to those in the troposphere.
•The results obtained do not reveal the global warming occurrence
Based in UAH v6.