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Cities' Heat Can Affect Temperatures 1000+ Miles Away
Living in dense cities makes for certain efficiencies: being able to walk or take mass transit to work, living in buildings with (at least potentially) efficient HVAC systems, and more. That's why cities have been lauded in recent years for their (relatively) low environmental impact. But it seems at least one aspect of city life has an environmental effect felt at extreme distances from the cities themselves: waste heat. All those tightly packed sources of heat, from cars to banks of AC units, result in temperature changes not just directly (and locally) but by affecting weather systems surrounding the source city.
From the article:
"The released heat is changing temperatures in areas more than 1,000 miles away (1609 kilometers). It is warming parts of North America by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) and northern Asia by as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), while cooling areas of Europe by a similar amount, scientists report in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The released heat (dubbed waste heat), it seems, is changing atmospheric circulation, including jet streams — powerful narrow currents of wind that blow from west to east and north to south in the upper atmosphere.
This impact on regional temperatures may explain a climate puzzle of sorts: why some areas are having warmer winters than predicted by climate models, the researchers said. In turn, the results suggest this phenomenon should be accounted for in models forecasting global warming."
more than 1,000 miles away (1609 kilometers)
Seriously, if you have one rough rounded number you can't do an exact convert and add false precision to the statement...
One of the concepts that interested me in Larry Niven's classic science-fiction work Ringworld is a civilization having to move its planet out from its sun in order to avoid perishing in their waste heat. I haven't seen that possibility explored so much in the years since. With studies like this, along with Kurzweil-ish woo-woo of extrapolating growth, can we talk an amusing guess at how long until heat waste renders the Earth, or at least certain parts of it uninhabitable?
Serious, first thing to look for a thermal is the local town, absent mountains or hills. A large parking lot already does do fine. I know of a military airport which has a cemetary nearby, the dense black marble is sufficient.
Not really. The overall temperature difference is the same. This is just affecting how the change is distributed. It's notable, and explains a known issue with the models, but it doesn't in any way invalidate the overall predictions, i.e., things are getting warmer.
Seriously, the entire waste heat production of humanity is nothing compared to solar heating. Solar heating is ~170 petawatts. The total energy production of humanity isn't even a tenth of a percent of that. Closer to a hundredth of a percent, really.
I've seen a map of thunderstorm frequency for UK which shows that a majority occur directly downwind (in prevailing wind direction) from cities, and size and frequency of storms is related to size of the city. Thunderstorm frequency and severity also relate to frequency and severity of lightning damage and hailstorms. If I can find that again, I'll post a link (unless someone else gets there first).
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
The heat island effect has always been taken into account for purposes of observation - when some of your data points are located in cities, you need to either discard them or compensate in some manner. This study shows that the effect covers a far wider area than previously thought. A few minor revisions to the models are needed. That doesn't mean previous predictions are suddenly all wrong - just that they are not as accurate as they will be once these revisions are implimented.
Yet another significant factor not accounted for in climate change models.
Also: News flash - Concentrated heat sources effect weather, back to you Tom Tucker.
Also the vast majority of CO2 production is not man-made. The carbon cycle is massive. We just tipped the balance it was in by chopping down some carbon sinks and burning up some reserves.
Unfortunately tipping the balance is all that is required to mess it up.
When questioned with PR company lies that answer is a fairly obvious response.
When one "side" pretends that if the other is not omniscient then everything they say can be rejected and replaced with a handy PR lie that's when you get assertions of certainty in response. Certainty is possible in general terms even if unreasonable levels of precision is not.
There is a website called "google scholar" now so there is no longer any reason to pretend there is no rigorous testing just because you can't be bothered to ever set foot in a library before making these wild claims. What is this bullshit about flooding the net with noise to try to shout down anyone with a clue? Do you realise that your anti-expert bullshit is having fallout in other fields, and if you are good at anything at all such a line is going to backfire on yourself if it catches on?
I think it's about time to graduate from the childrens dictionary Bongo if you are attempting to be credible.
Isn't this comment more or less an archetypal example? Veiled and nonspecific allusions to error, uncertainty, and weakness? No actual substance? Nonspecific accusations that could be leveled at any piece of research? Let's look at the issues you raise.
"The question is always, how do they know? What did they do to arrive at that result?"
It's in the papers. And countless popular accounts.
"...does not sound like a high standard."
That's why your rhetorical scenario is not the standard to which climate science is held. If you're interested it's... in the papers, and in the countless popular accounts.
"Where's your rigorous testing for that assertion?"
It's in the papers, and countless popular accounts. Assuming, of couse, you do not set an arbitrarily strict limit for "rigorous" that excludes them.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Think of the impact this would have, if many of the data-recording points for temperature were slowly surrounded by urbanization or in the 'heat shadow' of urban areas?
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/surftmp/surftemp.htm
He makes a compelling case, the refutation of which has been on the order of "of course they considered this, they're experts"...when there's no trace of such analysis or correction applied to East Anglia conclusions or IPCC reports through at least 2005 (after which I stopped bothering to read them).
-Styopa
high concentrations are less polluting per capita...
and you'd be surprised about per capita pollution compared to just 50 years ago and even more surprised to 100 years ago when things were a real mess in most big cities still(pumping sewage straight out, burning shitloads of coal within city limits etc..).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Something doesn't have to be scientific to be truth. Philosophy, history, mathematics - all have means of determining "truth" without relying on the scientific method. The problem is that "science" is increasingly taken to mean "rational", when that is not true - science is a subset of rationality. Stating something is not scientific is not necessarily an attack against it; it's purely descriptive.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
First, what you do not seem to realize is that astronomers DO conduct experiments. They gather data, crunch it down, and see if the results compare with their hypotheses.
Second, there have in fact been a very large number of detailed physical experiments in astronomy. Apollo 8 was one such: no one knew for certain that the figure-8 "free return" trajectory family would really work, until they tried it in real life with a real spacecraft.
As for your comment about digital computers modeling the theories of the climate scientists, THAT EXPERIMENT HAS BEEN TRIED. REPEATEDLY. Every single climate model out there, when started with available historical data and allowed to run, FAILS to predict today's climate. A model which provably does not match reality is, by definition, an invalid model, no matter how cheap or how fancy a computer you ran it on.
Here's the thing that should clear on the order of crystal to those most sentient amongst us: if there is the slightest chance that our wanton use of the earth's resources is not without global consequences and repercussions, we are fools if we don't do everything we reasonably can to mitigate the damage our presence creates. We may or may not be the only self-aware species on the planet, but there's a decent probability we are the most self-aware, and one would imagine that incredible privilege comes with some responsibility.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
As for your comment about digital computers modeling the theories of the climate scientists, THAT EXPERIMENT HAS BEEN TRIED. REPEATEDLY. Every single climate model out there, when started with available historical data and allowed to run, FAILS to predict today's climate. A model which provably does not match reality is, by definition, an invalid model, no matter how cheap or how fancy a computer you ran it on.
Unfortunately, that's just not true.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Sure, you might want to start here.
Skeptical science has also done many blog post on predictions and how they've faired.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
"Living in dense cities makes for certain efficiencies: being able to walk or take mass transit to work, living in buildings with (at least potentially) efficient HVAC systems, and more."
None of these are valid justifications for cities.
Transportation: I can and do walk, rarely needing a vehicle. No need for mass transport either. I live on a farm and work there as well as in the forest. No need to drive. I often go months without getting in a car or truck.
Efficient HVAC: Our high thermal mass, well insulated home is far more efficient requiring far less energy for heating than city buildings and it requires no cooling. It also doesn't affect the local or distant environments.
Cities stink, are filthy dirty, centers of disease and filled with vermin of both the four legged, six legged and two legged sort. Cities can't produce their own food or fuel and they can't get rid of their own wastes. Studies show that they are black holes, blemishes on the environment, soaking up the resources and polluting thousands of square miles around them.
The only question is where else do we put all those people?
"Citation please. How do you know that the vast majority of CO2 production is not man-made?"
Nice try. But I don't need a citation for "to the best of my knowledge".
Human heat sources are a rounding error compared to the energy Earth absorbs from the Sun every day. We get more energy from the Sun in 12 hours than the human race uses in a whole year.
"Fascinating. Jane's "I don't need a citation" reflex is so deeply ingrained that he doesn't even notice that the citation request was directed at viperidaenz's claim."
It is neither a matter of reflex or "not noticing". It is a matter of how Slashdot shows the comments. Slashdot has changed a number of things about their format lately, and whose comments are in reply to whom is not as obvious as it once was.
The way it is displayed on my screen, it appeared to be a reply made to me. Maybe one of these days I'll find a setting that shows them more clearly.
So what's so special about climate science that they are unable to exploit those opportunities? Where are you drawing the line tmosley? Geophysics? Geology? Microbiology? Come on now, it's your own private definition so let us know what it is if we are all supposed to be wrong if we don't stick to it. Define it clearly, define why it is better than the standard definition and then tell people they are "wrong" instead of just telling people they don't match the secret in the head of some accounts clerk or whatever you are (sorry, I don't have a clue what you do but it clearly does not involve going anywhere near scientists or engineers - not that there's anything wrong with that until you start contradicting them with invented bullshit on their own turn).