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Reducing Climate Change Uncertainty By Figuring Out Clouds
Most climate scientists agree that the Earth's climate is getting warmer, but models predicting the severity of the temperature rise span a (relatively) broad range. One big reason for this is the difficulty in modeling things like cloud cover and how different air masses mix and move around each other.
"Specifically, they have differences in how water-rich air at the bottom of the atmosphere gets mixed with the layers immediately above it. In some cases, this mixing increases rapidly as the temperature rises, effectively drying out the lower atmosphere and suppressing cloud formation there. This in turn would enhance the warming effect. In others, the increase in mixing is more gradual, limiting the impact of warming on clouds. The former produces a higher climate sensitivity; the latter a lower one. ... So, the authors turned to the atmosphere, using data to determine the relative importance of these processes (abstract). In the end, they find that the models that dry out the lower atmosphere more quickly are likely to get the process right. And, in these models, the mixing increases the drying rate in the lower atmosphere by about five to seven percent for each Kelvin the Earth's temperature increases. In contrast, the rate of evaporation, which adds moisture to the lower atmosphere, only increases by two percent for each Kelvin. Thus, the lower atmosphere dries out, cloud formation there is suppressed, and the planet warms even further. How much more will it warm? Quite a bit."
Is to change to using an absolute scale of temperature like Kelvin
As a physicist I do not take modeling of the atmosphere as we understood it now serious.
The atmosphere is too much a chaotic system with many (meta-) stable states.
... apparently there is a great deal figured out in regards to engineering the weather. The polar ice caps are not shrinking, but growing.
Fucking Clouds, How Do They Work?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This sounds like that hokey atheist socialist liberal "science" thing I was warned about. Everyone knows there's no such thing as global warming. A guy on the radio said so.
The study assumes that the models that show lower amounts of warming are the "less accurate" ones, and the models with higher warming are going to be "more accurate." Eventually, that is.
The problem is that all of the climate models that predict AGW have been wrong, and the ones that show the least amount of actual warming are the ones that are least wrong at this point. So their solution is to come up with yet another one-dimensional computer model that shifts the possible warming a few decades into the future.
The study also suggests that the water vapor in the lower atmosphere will more or less migrate up - which is not happening, according to actual observations by satellites.
It's like the old AGW models, which predicted a "tropical hot spot" a few miles up that would happen due to AGW - and which never appeared.
"the science is settled".
How can there be any uncertainty when "the science is settled"?
The science is settled: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9047642
an easy to understand video about climate change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq4Bc2WCsdE
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Oh.
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs/Climate%20change/Climate%20model%20results/over%20estimate.pdf
shows that the models are over estimating, relative to the data
I forget the link, but some one in response has looked at the hadcrut data set, and said if you correct for sparse records at the poles, the diff recorded by Fyfe etal is less....
but I'm sure next week will bring another story
Is CO2 transparent to visible and opaque to 15 micron IR?
Is that scientific statement settled, dear?
Do tell.
Is that science settled?
the abstract doesn't say they used data, it says they identified a math procedure that caused variation between the models
so, what you have are a lot of complex computer models that vary in output; the authors show that about half the variation is due to cloud mixing
however, we have no idea if the models are in fact accurate, other then Fig 1b of Fyfe etal, which suggests that the models are in fact NOT accurate, so it doesn't matter if you lower the variation between them.
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs/Climate%20change/Climate%20model%20results/over%20estimate.pdf
I would remind people of history: in the early 1800s, people realized that CO2 absorbs IR, and the late 1800s, they realized that humans were actually putting out enough CO2 to make a diff
Then, around 1900, someone pointed out that the atmosphere is optically thick in the IR (if you could see the color "IR" it would be pitch black all the time), so an increase in CO2 shouldn't matter
This *scientific consensus* lasted untill the 1950s, when people realized that it is emission from the outer atmosphere that matttrs....
so, for 50 years, there was a consensus that CO2 human warming was hooey
Graph shows 1990 IPCC predicitons with REALITY. There is a range of values predicted by the IPCC and the "settled consensus of climate scientitst" and then there is reality which isn't in the range they selected. They are WRONG, 100% WRONG. They made their predictions, gave a range, told everyone to stop debating, and were wrong, period.
Go ahead back to your church of AGW and keep tithing and singing hymns or whatever else you do there. The rest of us used failed scientific predictions as PROOF they were wrong.
Spin away at those facts. Attack me, attack the graph, pretend I didn't post this, whatever. The fact remains the IPCC FAILED no matter how you want to try and look at it.
If you torture your data, it will finally commit... Feels a bit like the late 1900 attempts to 'prove' there is a God. Move on...
You mean the year of the record breaking massive storms in asia? You know, "global" means all the world, even if people like you in US think that there is nothing outside, and that can't tell the difference between weather and climate. How well you get paid to spread this?
I don't get paid a dime. I simply think for myself... Yes I understand global. If I should only be talking about climate and not weather, then why do all of the alarmists tout about extreme weather? hurricane Sandy was worse due to global warming don't you know?
Stop Using Climate Change to disguise an argument about human based climate change.
Nobody needs to argue that the climate changes.
These globalists who want a revenue stream for world government employed on you, your kids via carbon taxes always use this stupid, really irritating title on this so called paid research of theirs on human climate change.
Besides, I thought human based climate change was now a fact, and there wasn't any uncertainty?
Meanwhile low temperature records world wide are in the lead 2 to 1 over heat record highs because the SUN has nothing to do with climate change.
Globalist Climate Change Research = CRAP SCIENCE.
-Hackus
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Here we go:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/wrong-al-gore-predicted-arctic-summer-ice-could-disappear-2013
Globalist Climate Change Research = CRAP SCIENCE.
Unfortunately for you, this style of argumentation is just easily refuted in the same style: SEZ YOU. You're obviously a mindless puppet of the Koch brothers. Not a very satisfying argument, is it?
If you want to debate this at a higher level than middle-school playground reparte, you should address the researcher's argument: that at higher temperatures the cloud forming moisture at lower levels gets dispersed into the upper atmosphere. This reduces the rate of cloud formation, which in turn reduces the albedo of the Earth. That means that models which weight reduction of cloud formation higher are more likely to be accurate.
Feel free to take issue with any of the points raised in the previous paragraph. Or we can leave it as SEZ YOU.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Differences from a baseline mean that a different baseline between the two measures make no difference.
Warming 1degree kelvin from 273K to 274K is the same difference as warming 1 degree celsius from 0C to 1C.
Therefore "kelvin is an absolute scale" makes no difference.
Please think on this.
Those "record breaking massive storms" were, overall, not much worse than average. A couple of large ones, but they got large mostly because there weren't that many medium-sized storms along their paths. Meanwhile, we didn't seeing much of anything in the Atlantic (record-breaking "dud"), and areas outside of that one patch of Pacific Ocean were pretty average.
On the "paid" issue:
You do realize that even the guy who wrote that study you mention says that the reporter who wrote the story pretty much lied their ass off, right?
The short form: The actual study took any group that published anything at all that might, maybe, sorta could question AGW. Even one article or study. Then they took the entire budget of each organization and added it up. That's how they got that $900 million plus.
The actual amount that could actually, sorta, maybe be tied to anti-AGW funded studies or articles? About enough to fund Greenpeace for week and a half. If you counted things like studies showing that people don't like paying extra taxes for green energy stuff that doesn't actually work.
On the other hand, the "green" businesses are funding all sorts of sketchy "science" to support their industries. Like the guy who makes money off of "carbon remediation," who funded the really stupid "expedition"/tourism group that's currently being evacuated from their ice-trapped Russian ship.
> You're obviously a mindless puppet of the Koch brothers.
SEZ YOU.
Actual climate says he was right.
The 1990 IPCC report was 100% inaccurate. That is the one we can compare their predictions to what has happened up to this point, not only were they wrong, they were completely wrong. Their new report you ask? Well they say that one is 95% accurate, despite never being correct at ANY time in the past, and they just ignored how they have been wrong every time in the past. Thats not science, that is religious belief.
The BIble is more provably accruate than any IPCC report.
Sorry, but the Sun has everything to do with climate change when combined with the variable orbit geometry of the Earth around the Sun.
We will reenter the next ice age and Canada will again get covered by a kilometer or two of ice and all existing shipping harbors will become dry land.
It will probably take another 50,000 years, but it will happen on the 110,000 year cycle that has repeated at least a couple dozen times now.
You're right, but this is slashdot. It matters not what reality you live in, and what logical sequential set of events you outline in order to make an educated and valuable point. No, here it only matters that you talk in a way that makes others feel right, based on their gut feeling. It's 2014, this is the middle-school playground.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Did the same model predict today's flat line?
I guess not.
Sorry, but the Sun has everything to do with climate change when combined with the variable orbit geometry of the Earth around the Sun.
This is absolutely true -- over millions of years. It does not explain the warming trend in the past century. Your mode of argument is like saying "all will eventually die of old age, therefore automobile accidents don't kill people." There can be more than driver of climate change, and the timescale over which a driver of change operates is very important. Even if car accidents are less likely to kill you than old age, the fact that they kill you at 19 years old rather than 90 makes a big difference.
Four degrees C rise over 100,000 years is no bit deal for the human race. The same change over a century is a very big deal. Not species extinction for humanity by any means, but massive economic dislocation. Imagine the western US as much more arid than it is now; it could mean the end of agriculture on the Great Plains.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
4 over a century is fucking bullshit. link please. kindly provide accuracy.
"If I should only be talking about climate and not weather, then why do all of the alarmists tout about extreme weather?"
To preserve my blood pressure, I will assume that you are actually well meaning, and honestly want to learn and you are just temporarily ignorant.
Weather is the consequence of climate. Weather in North Dakota in the winter is measurably different than summer in Miami because they have differing climates. The specific weather on any one day changes with timescales related to the atmospheric circulation, which is a few weeks. Weather modeling has different purposes than climate modeling---weather takes certain observations as inputs and assumptions and boundary conditions, whereas climate modeling attempts to predict the long-term evolution of underlying physical parameters.
The inability to predict weather more than 2 or 3 weeks in advance is a known phenomenon coming from positive Lyapunov exponents in the evolution of the physical fields representing weather. This doesn't mean that climate is unpredictable because what is intended to be predicted in climate is the basic boundary conditions and inputs to weather models. It is simple to predict that winter in North Dakota will on average be much colder than summer in Miami, because the physics of the Sun and Earth show that less electromagnetic radiation reaches the ground in one case than the other.
Global warming from human activity arises because human-induced changes in the atmosphere resultsin increased emission of electromagnetic energy from the atmosphere which hits the surface. (This is not only a hypothesis, it is an experimentally validated fact). Climate models deal with the complex consequences of this change in physics. Weather models take certain inputs directly from current observations and predict the short-term evolution. They are operationally and structurally distinct.
If you really want to nail down climate change, you've got to narrow down aerosol behavior. Atmospheric aerosols in the Mie scattering size regime (comparable to a light wavelength) are both resident for the fairly long term (years to some decades) and, precisely because they're in the Mie scattering regime, are bloody difficult to model.
This is partly what makes proposals to dump aerosols into the atmosphere to combat warming utterly insane - You'd need reliable sub-1% accurate control over something that models can't handle for shit.
Also notable: the large-scale emission of fine particulate aerosols, rising in the early 20th century, peaking, then declining with the introduction of pollution controls, has been fingered as corresponding with the mid 20th century's slowed global warming. Meaning we can look forward to accelerated warming now that CO2 levels are even higher but aerosol emissions have largely been halted.
Meanwhile, plans are in motion to rush to the Arctic (which is now more accessible due to... global warming) and dig up and burn everything we possibly can. Which is sort of like getting cold because you're asphixiating on the fumes from your unventilated indoor wood fire, and concluding that obviously throwing more wood on the fire will help...
Holy crap since when did /. get overrun by denialist trolls that just don't read articles, and obviously fail to even read the IPCC reports?
You libturds cling to climate change harder than a southern Baptist clings to his bible and guns. Just stop already.
You are right that 4 degrees Centigrade over a hundred years might be bad for current citizens and that begs another question when it comes to food and water supplies.
Given the world's climate change and the chance that it is cataclysmically caused by humans results in the question as to whether we have exceeded the number of humans that the earth can support in a stable manner.
Try to get a resolution through the UN on that one to reduce population! Trying to reduce man made effects, like not enough water, is not going to cause nations to reduce their population and any such suggestion will be called genocide.
Eventually overpopulation in the animal world corrects itself with massive die-offs. I doubt humans are immune from this. Overpopulation, lack of food and water will probably cause wars in the near future. History is a good teacher.
Most... what a bunch of BS. Like most polls, they use a small sample and then think they are illuminated. This is a callout to all the fucktard statisticians out there. 1000 sampled isn't good enough. 10,000 sampled isn't good enough. 10,000,000 isn't good enough. Their logic would be useful if it were true. It's not. They think they can sample 1000 people in New York and they believe it's a valid sample of people in general. I understand statistics, the best thing I learned was how to manipulate the data and how people with an agenda manipulate it for nefarious reasons. You will be rooted out for your falsehoods.
Every time I point out the shaky grounds on which the so called climate "science" is founded I get lambasted by very vocal, very fanatical shouters telling me I am a denier.
The conclusion is clear: I am wrong, all others with doubts about climate "science" are wrong, climate "science" is really science, and there is no uncertainty AT ALL in climate science.
without the climactix.
didn't you?
Climate articles and climate models have the same problem: the noise to signal ratio is 1:0.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Interesting conundrum. The left wing environmentalists want us to scale back on energy use, which effectively means we cannot support as many people on the earth as we have now. The alternative, they claim, is that doing nothing means we'll have problems growing enough food (due to climate change side-effects) to support the number of people we now have on the earth.
So do something that condemns people to die of starvation NOW to prevent the possibility that people will die of starvation in the FUTURE, maybe.
Of course the latter course does mean that attempts at mitigation (of possible side effects) will be successful and nobody will die of starvation after all but that would not fit with their ideas of an ideal world that has far fewer people in it.
Absolutely, it's also not just about our proximity to the sun, it is also about cycles of sun activity....
http://www.universetoday.com/103803/solar-cycle-24-on-track-to-be-the-weakest-in-100-years/
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/images/solar_irradiance.jpg
One of the reasons why climate scientists are off in their predictions is that the sun has been behaving in an odd way and the whole planet for the last few years has been getting far less energy from the sun that it normally does. The fact that the planet has remained in a warming trend during this period only backs up climatologists claims that we're in deep sh*t.
Climate science should be studied, it's fundamentally important to everyone on the planet. Hackus = TROLL
The fact you're being modded up for this completely ignorant/delusional statement is quite sad.
No one is claiming that we should do something that kills people to combat warming. We should use energy more efficiently and get energy from sources other than burning fossil fuels (e.g. solar, wind, nuclear, biofuels) to cut carbon dioxide emissions. We can do that and also support more people on the planet.
I think misconceptions about what we plan to do to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions is the reason most people don't agree with cutting emissions... they think it means that they will have to do without or with less. We can have just as much energy or even more while still cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
In my view using the 1990 First Assessment Report to compare to observations is just cherry picking. Use one of the last two reports (AR4 & AR5) if you want to compare the current state of the art science to observations. Or don't you believe in scientific progress?
Is there any actuall data to say that the earth is getting hotter? I'm not talking about the "lying with statistics" reports.
What, precisely, is the problem caused?
You can do the test for CO2's effect quit effectively.
Without a computer, only their brain and some equations, Svante Arrhenius calculated the climate sensitivity from CO2's effect. He was high, but less than double the accepted answer and within the currently accepted range from observational evidence from paleoclimate.
So given that you don't need to run another planet to do the experiment, what's the problem?
The range being "We're fucked in 100 years" to "We're already fucked".
There is no "We have nothing to worry about" in the range of possibilities.
What, precisely, do you think 20N-20S means? Do you think it means global?
No?
Then why do you put that up there.
Here's where you can see how reality and the climate science show agreement:
http:www.ipcc.ch
This isn't a blogroll, it's science.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
Yeah, it's cherry picking to use the 1990 report, but when you use the 2001 report you'll just say that the models are not made for the "short term". When the "long term" is finally the present, you just revert to saying it's "cherry picking" or "the science is MUCH BETTER today" (but of course not verifiable because they are not made for "the short term").
Add to this expressions like "extreme weather events" that some climate shill found either in a fortune cookie or a horoscope.
All of this is the fallout from Al Gore's Orwellian "Campaign of Mass Persuation" that he launched publicly in 2006.
"Help with the mass persuasion campaign that will start this spring. We have to change the minds of the American people. Because presently the politicians do not have permission to do what needs to be done. And in our modern country, the role of logic and reason no longer includes mediating between wealth and power the way it once did. It's now repetition of short, hot-button, 30-second, 28-second television ads. We have to buy a lot of those ads. Let's rebrand global warming, as many of you have suggested. I like "climate crisis" instead of "climate collapse," but again, those of you who are good at branding, I need your help on this."
And what they came up with was "climate change" and "extreme weather events". Elusive words that any quack or astrologist would use to make what he says compelling and non-committal at the same time.
My grandfather (a geologist fwiw), warned during the oil crisis of the 70s that the next major war was actually going to be over water in the 2100s.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It hasn't though, has it. The trend is flat for the last 17 years. Also, you're discounting the positive effects of warming and increased Co2, which are substantial. They're not included because they hurt the "crisis" narrative and the crisis narrative feeds huge sums of government money to academic institutions, NGOs and "green economy" start-ups.
Your label "global warmers" puts non-scientist activists (e.g. McKibben, who really does push for what can reasonably be called decivilization) and the actual scientists (e.g.. Hansen, who doesn't) in the same category. I am not a close observer of the debate, so I cannot say what, if anything, other real scientists, such as Mann, propose, but a meaningful debate requires the two controversies--is there a problem vs. what to do about it if there is--be separated.
Do the models have non-linear feedback built into them? A quick Google shows a lot of papers and research programs in climate science focusing on such.
If non-linear feedback, then mathematical chaos. If mathematical chaos, then extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. If extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, then every run of the model will produce a completely different result. How are those meaningful in predicting a future climate?
If only linear feedback, the model is irrelevant because non-linear feedback is built into every chemical reaction : the rate of the reaction slows non-linearly with chemical concentration. Google has 1000s of papers on the topic.
"Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15C and 0.3C per decade" (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html). We have seen 0.23C per decade since the report was published: http://woodfortrees.org/data/gistemp-dts/from:1990/to:2010/trend.
It is clear that these models are simply put _bad_
No existing weather model predicts cloud formation and movement correctly in Alpine situations. Simple facts like daily valley winds and sea breezes are taken into account. Let alone the most important principle of them all: thermal formation.
Yet this is the most important way in which solar energy is pumped into the atmosphere.
These 'scientists' should get their head out of the clouds and learn paragliding. Observe and undergo the real behaviour of the air masses.
True knowledge comes from observation, and they certainly still have a lot to learn there!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/15/the-met-office-responds-to-global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago/
The real truth is that there are enough people on this planet with the power and money to deny the undeniable, who think they can lead a full long happy life without having to worry about the consequences of global warming, as it will not be a problem for their generation, but the generations to follow. If you're not rich and in your mid to late 60's you're unwittingly allowing an older generation to completely hoodwink you.