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Polar Amplification

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Guest commentary by Cecilia Bitz, University of Washington

“Polar amplification” usually refers to greater climate change near the pole compared to the rest of the hemisphere or globe in response to a change in global climate forcing, such as the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) or solar output (see e.g. Moritz et al 2002). Polar amplification is thought to result primarily from positive feedbacks from the retreat of ice and snow. There are a host of other lesser reasons that are associated with the atmospheric temperature profile at the poles, temperature dependence of global feedbacks, moisture transport, etc. Observations and models indicate that the equilibrium temperature change poleward of 70N or 70S can be a factor of two or more greater than the global average. [Read more…] about Polar Amplification

One year on…

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RealClimate has been online for just over a year, and so this is probably a good time to review the stories we’ve covered and assess how well the whole project is working out.

Over the last 12 months, we’ve tackled a 100+ scientific topics that range from water vapour feedbacks, the carbon cycle, climate sensitivity, satellite/surface temperature records, glacier retreat, climate modelling to hurricanes. We’ve had guest postings that span questions of Martian climate change to Arctic ozone depletion and solar forcing. We’ve crossed virtual swords with Michael Crichton, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, George Will, Nigel Lawson, Fox News and assorted documentary makers (though only one person ever threatened to sue us). Hopefully our contributions have interested, intrigued and occasionally amused (at least a few of you…). [Read more…] about One year on…

2005 temperatures

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Translations: (Français)

Due to a historical quirk (of unknown origin), the World Meterological Organisation releases its summary for each year based on the Dec to Nov ‘meteorlogical year’ means (rather than the more usual calendar year). Anyway, the WMO summary is now available, as is the NASA GISS analysis and the CRU summary. The point upon which all the analyses agree is that 2005 was exceptionally warm and that it continues the long term mean warming trend. All show record warmth in the Northern Hemisphere since 1860, while GISS gives 2005 as the warmest year globally as well (CRU/WMO have it second after 1998). As the summaries indicate, the differences in ranking are on the order of a few hundredths of a degree (smaller than the accuracy of the analysis) and so a definitive ranking is not possible. Differences in how the separate analyses deal with missing data are responsible for most of the apparent variations. Note too that the convention for the base periods for the anomalies differ between the analyses (1961-1990 for CRU/WMO, 1951-1980 for GISS), but this does not affect the rankings.

Update 7pm: The GISS analysis curiously appears to have gone off line….
Update 8am 16 Dec: The GISS summation is still not back up, but the raw data and new figures do seem to be available http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp . Note that as pointed in comment #5, the WMO/CRU/Hadley Centre analysis is for Jan-Nov, and not for the met. year as stated above (though the GISS analysis is). Don’t ask us why!
Final Update 11pm 16 Dec: The GISS analysis is back!

(traduit par T. de Garidel)

Decrease in Atlantic circulation?

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Translations: (Français)

by Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann

In a sure-to-be widely publicized paper in the Dec. 1 Nature, Bryden et al. present results from oceanographic cruises at 25°N across the Atlantic showing a ~30% decline in the ocean overturning circulation. These cruises have been repeated every few years since 1957, and the last two cruises (in 1998 and 2004) show notable changes in the structure of the deep return circulation. In particular, the very deepest part of the return flow (at around 3000 to 5000 m) has reduced and moved up in the water column compared to previous decades. How solid is this result and what might it imply for climate?
[Read more…] about Decrease in Atlantic circulation?

More satellite stuff

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The November 17th issue of Science has an interesting exchange of letters between Christy and Spencer; Mears and Wentz; and Sherwood and Lanzante (ref here; subs required for substance). The context of this discussion is the tropospheric temperature record; see Et tu LT and The tropical lapse rate quandary for two RC posts that discuss the issue, and in particular three papers in the August 11th issue of Science.

[Read more…] about More satellite stuff

Chaos and Climate

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By James Annan and William Connolley

In this post, we will try to explain a little about chaos theory, and its relevance to our attempts to understand and forecast the climate system. The chaotic nature of atmospheric solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow has great impact on weather forecasting (which we discuss first), but the evidence suggests that it has much less importance for climate prediction.

[Read more…] about Chaos and Climate

Shameless Self Promotion

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Vote for RealClimate!

No, we’re not going to abandon our policy of steering clear of political commentary, but yes, you can nonetheless vote for us!

Some of you may have noticed the new logos up in the upper right hand corner of the RC webpage. As a followup to our selection last month for the “Science & Technology Web Awards 2005” by Scientific American, we are pleased to have now made it to the final round of Deutsche Welle’s 2005 Weblog Awards (for those of you not familiar with them, Deutsche Welle is sort of the German equivalent of Britain’s BBC World Service). [Read more…] about Shameless Self Promotion

Hockey sticks: Round 27

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Two more teams in the seemingly endless jousting over the ‘hockey-stick’ have just made their entry onto the field. In the first two (of four) comments on the original McIntyre and McKitrick (2005) (MM05) paper in GRL, von Storch and Zorita, and Huybers have presented two distinct critiques of the work of M&M.

The two comments focus on the ‘PC normalisation’ issue raised in MM05 which we discussed previously. Specifically, von Storch and Zorita show that in a GCM model emulation of the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) method, changing the PC normalisation technique makes no difference to the eventual reconstruction (i.e. it is not the normalisation that creates the ‘hockeystick’), consistent with earlier conclusions. Huybers comments that neither of the two suggested normalisations are actually optimal, and proposes a third method which looks like it gives results halfway between MBH and MM05. However, given the von Storch result, this too is unlikely to matter in the final reconstruction. [Read more…] about Hockey sticks: Round 27

Global warming on Mars?

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Translations: (Français)

Guest contribution by Steinn Sigurdsson.

Recently, there have been some suggestions that “global warming” has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a “global” change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.

[Read more…] about Global warming on Mars?

Happy Birthday to Us

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Just recently, RealClimate topped 500,000 visits (and well over a million page views) since starting in December 2004. And by happy coincidence, a present arrives in the form of RealClimate being selected for the “Science & Technology Web Awards 2005” by Scientific American, with the citation:

A refreshing antidote to the political and economic slants that commonly color and distort news coverage of topics like the greenhouse effect, air quality, natural disasters and global warming, Real Climate is a focused, objective blog written by scientists for a brainy community that likes its climate commentary served hot. Always precise and timely, the site’s resident meteorologists, geoscientists and oceanographers sound off on all news climatalogical, from tropical glacial retreat to “doubts about the advent of spring.”