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El Nino Has Finally Arrived, Far Weaker Than Predicted
An anonymous reader writes "The periodic warm weather pattern called El Niño has finally arrived in the mid-equatorial Pacific Ocean, more than a year late and far weaker than predicted by scientists. "The announcement comes a year after forecasters first predicted that a major El Niño could be in the works. At the time, NOAA predicted a 50% chance that an El Niño could develop in the latter half of 2014. The agency also said the wind patterns that were driving water east across the Pacific were similar to those that occurred in the months leading up to the epic El Niño of 1997, which caught scientists by surprise and contributed to flooding, droughts and fires across multiple continents.
In the end, last year's forecasts came up short, in part because the winds that were driving the system petered out. Researchers, who have been working to improve their forecasting models since 1997, are trying to figure out precisely what happened last year and why their models failed to capture it."
In the end, last year's forecasts came up short, in part because the winds that were driving the system petered out. Researchers, who have been working to improve their forecasting models since 1997, are trying to figure out precisely what happened last year and why their models failed to capture it."
Well, hell, why not? Just remember that it's Climate Change now though, not Global Warming. Among other amazing things, Climate Change is responsible for:
ISIS: Yup, somehow, Climate Change was one of the reasons we have ISIS.
Crime. Climate change is also responsible for more rape.
Prostitution. Yeah, see, climate change may increase prostitution too.
I know, I know, this comment is a little snarky, but even the people here on Slashdot that are hardcore global warming types can see that there's a whacko fringe in their camp that is beyond ridiculous.
Love sees no species.
Weather != climate.
If you flip a coin and get heads twice in a row, do you claim statistics is bunk?
"NOAA predicted a 50% chance that an El Niño could develop in the latter half of 2014"
With odds like that, how could they be wrong?
Is this sig nificant?
is El Nino. You killed my father. Prepare to DIE!!!
Those are climate models, not weather models, aren't they? I'm not sure that long-term weather forecasts are any more reliable than they were a few decades ago.
Ezekiel 23:20
The real story is a lot more complicated that TFA indicates. The new el nino is just starting and it's six months out of phase with the usual timing. So instead of starting six months late, it could just as well be seen as starting 6 months early in the next cycle. And more importantly, it is now combined with a phase change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The two cycles combine to produce a much stronger warming effect. The negative PDO was responsible for the impression that warming had slowed. Now that it has reversed the warming will not just return to pre-1998 levels but will be much stronger. This could last for the next 10 to 15 years. Hopefully by then people with short attention spans will have realized that the planet is irrevocably getting hotter.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
But computer models are always right and we can NOT investigate further....science is settled.
The political problems in Syria are very much timed with huge crop losses causing food price issues that are very likely the fault of global warming.
So weather IS climate, just on a much shorter scale.
Just like the position and speed of an atom in a cloud of heating gas is thermodynamic data, only much more detailed. Just because you know the cloud is heating doesn't mean you can predict where that one atom will be at a given point in time. I'm not surprised that one el Nino gets mispredicted. It means very little.
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm always amused that every single time anything is ever shown wrong when talking about weather models (not even climate models!), we have at least one person posting something like this.
I'm fully aware of this phenomenon myself. However, I'm seeing a consistency to the wrongs. One would think the models would be altered to reflect real data, instead of ignoring "anomalies" on a regular basis. (of course, climate models are not very simple either...)
It has been one of the coldest and wetist winters in awhile. High around 39 should not be a common occurrence on the gulf coast but it feels more like Seattle than a subtropical place. It got in the 70s only a few times last February.
El Nino was supposed to be big as a big surge of very warm water up to 150 ft deep and almost 1,000 miles long headed east. However the winds picked up and chilly Antarctic current which cools west South America mixed in for a few months so it is not so warm anymore.
Weather is complex and last decade (no I do not deny global warming) had a solar null which means cooler temperatures and more la nina events like those in the mini ice age from 1400 - 1840 which explains colder temperatures and dryer conditions. California hit a 500 year drought where the climate actually changed from mediterranean to desert. Same in Chile and Peru.
http://saveie6.com/
They can't predict the weather next week very accurately, but we are supposed to "trust" the experts when they tell us what is going to happen in the next few years or longer?
There is quite some difference between predicting an outcome of a chaotic system (tomorrow's weather) and accurately enumerating data sets already acquired in the past.
Your 'Climate Skepticism' (global warming denial) is very thinly veiled. Top points for smugness, though.
It's all those damn turbines we're putting up. Slow down all the wind, and pretty soon there won't be any. Then what are you going to do, eh?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
...no.
The fact that they did not accurately predict the weather, does NOT have a bearing on the legitimacy of the theory of human-induced global warming.
None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Not significant.
So you can stop posting about it.
It's a shame this hasn't so far made it rain in the California area. At least freak weather patterns can help sometimes by simply causing different weather. Hopefully that changes in the near future. Then again, California's economy and politics are so fucked up, the weather might as well crap out too.
Nice try, but 15 years of weather statistics is climate. One winter is not. The science has been fairly consistent, only the specifics seem up for grabs.
You might also want to note that El Nino isn't itself part of climate change.
And I wouldn't crow too much about the name change. The term 'global warning' has mostly fallen out of favor due to idiots thinking a slightly chilly morning in the middle of winter meant it couldn't be real.
The best scientists on earth can't tell you how a particular molecule in a balloon will move over the next second, but any kindergartner can tell you what will happen if you keep pumping more and more air into it.
If you're so confident in your political score-pointing criticism, how would you like to make a bet? Let's say, you predict the average temperature and rainfall for each day the next seven days, and I predict the average temperature and rainfall for each year the next seven years. Whoever is off by the lowest percent wins. And I assume you'd be willing to give me odds of approximately 1:365 in my favor since clearly my task is that much harder.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Lets see a mole of any gas 6.02214x10^23 atoms
Fifteen years has has 5479 days (rounded to the nearest)
a century has 36525 days.
So lets take the other way. What are the odds that a random sample of 10^18 atoms in a gas would have a significantly different temperature than the overall the temperature ?
Virtually zero.
And yet temperatures continue to rise, ice continues to melt, sea level continues to rise and the oceans continue to acidify.
Put a pan of cold water on the stove, and turn it on. After a while, watch the little swirls of water. Can you predict how they'll move around 2 seconds from any given time ? Probably not. Can you predict the average temperature 60 seconds later ? Probably yes. There's the difference between weather prediction and climate predication. Climate prediction is easier, because it deals with averages. Weather deals with chaos.
One definition of climate is the statistics of weather, IOW the average and standard deviation of weather over some time period. The World Meteorological Organization defines the standard classical period for climate as 30 years.
One scientists misstatement about snow doesn't make climate science collapse.
The difference between weather models and climate models it that weather models solve initial value problems, given the current conditions how do we expect weather to evolve over time. They're good for maybe 10 or so days usually. Climate models solve boundary value problems, given the forcings involved in climate and their interactions and feedbacks what are the boundaries we expect future weather to vary within. So far globally the weather has remained mostly within the boundaries projected by climate models so they're doing ok.
Because after 15 years, many of the chaotic changes in weather average out. The sun cycle is 11 years, for instance. After 15 years, you'd expect a few El-Ninos and La-Ninas. You can calculate that a 15 year period is about the minimum. For a more robust number, you could take 30 years. More than 30 years isn't very useful. There aren't really any weather related patterns that last longer than that.
There was an ice age 10K years ago. So there are definitely longer term weather patterns on this planet. That's not evidence for or against global warming, but to claim we understand the climate well is disingenuous at best.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Of course, there are longer term patterns, but these aren't weather patterns. Glaciation cycles are caused by orbital patterns. On even longer time scales you have things like continental drift, and gradually increasing solar output. These patterns are interesting, and it's good to know they exist when you want to compare climates over similar time spans, but they aren't really relevant for the discussion about climate change.
Weather is a chaotic system, but often chaotic systems have longer-term trends that are possible to observe. For example, if you pour sand into a pile, then you can fairly accurately predict the shape of the cone that it will create, but the exact pattern of bounces for each grain is impossible to predict as it depends on the exact position, shape, and location of every grain that it hits on the way down and a tiny error in any of these will magnify to a huge error after a few bounces. It's a chaotic system that has macro-scale effects that can be predicted.
Weather is a chaotic system with very similar properties. The longer the timescale, the easier it is to predict. Predicting the average temperature difference between summer and winter, for example, is much easier than predicting the temperature tomorrow.
To give a simpler example, if I toss a coin 100 times, I'd expect you to be able to tell me, with a fairly small margin of error, how many times I will roll heads. I wouldn't expect you to be able to guess what the result of any individual toss will be more than about half the time.
If you think that predicting weather and predicting climate are similar problems, then I'd encourage you to read up a bit on chaos theory.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Too bad there's no "not even wrong" moderation...
Well done for taking an analogy then crunching meaningless numbers to carry it through to the point of inapplicability.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That's rich, coming from a troll who's written over a thousand comments here about climate science with nearly nothing of substance in hundreds of pages worth of your nonsense.
And then you come along and spoil it by posting such a deep and insightful comment.
In fact it goes opposite to what global warming / climate change is expected to do. Global warming should result in more extreme weather, including more powerful storms.
Not trying to disprove global warming here. Isolated events taken out of context are not proof.
Wow the cognitive dissonance is stunning.
No kidding one winter isn't. That's the reason why the 'settled' science saying snowfalls would be gone in a decade (pub. 2000) is laughed at. Instead of embracing the joke and laughing at the kook element that is crying that the sky is falling the fact that you feel the need to 'defend' science (why is this a thing - science is what it is - evidence doesn't need defenders it speaks for itself) just doubles down on the hypocrisy.
There are plenty of us that thing the world is getting warming - are unsure but willing to let the actual evidence and further research prove how much is human forcing - and actually think most 'green' policies are fine at face value, however also think that the fervor used to tout 'climate change' is neither scientific or rational.
It wasn't one statement - it was multiple headlines over a period of a few years.
Don't put words in my mouth please I didn't say climate science collapsed. I said if you don't understand the joke here it is
I think the 15 years is being taken out of context (in all the replies) - 15 years is the period between publication of the first 'snow is gone in 10 years' article (2000) and today (2015) - it's not some magical number if the article was published 30 years ago I would have said 30. The only reason 15 years is relevant in my comment is because 1) that's how long its' been that the headlines were such, and 2) it is longer than the decade claimed after which snow was gone.
The headlines today aren't any less ridiculous - Science (the publication) just blamed the Syrian War on climate change. I'd actually go so far as to say the kook headlines are worse today than 15 years ago - and that's exactly what I mean when I say 'looking at 15+ years' - the ridiculous and unsupportable claims that climate change is the cause of every problem in the world at the same time.
Remember the whole "polar vortex" thing in North America last year? That thing that's repeating this winter? The bitterly cold temperatures are causing pipes to freeze. Pipes that are inside heated and insulated houses.
It's getting so damned cold from arctic air making it farther south than normal that people are being advised in some Canadian cities to keep their taps running 24/7 so they don't freeze, and their water bill will be adjusted so they don't pay for the extra water that they use.
If the arctic air coming south is so cold that it's causing issues like this, how is it even remotely possible that the arctic is warm enough for glaciers to be melting in huge amounts due to temperature?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Not trying to disprove global warming here. Isolated events taken out of context are not proof.
The problem is that every single event that refutes global warming is an "isolated event taken out of context," whereas every single event that points to global warming is "part of an undeniable pattern."
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
"Oh...ice ages aren't weather related patterns that last longer than 30 years, because that would disprove my incredibly ignorant comments about climate!"
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Nice try, but 15 years of weather statistics is climate. One winter is not
Err...that would be two winters. And a virtually non-existent summer.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
In other words: "It's only a good analogy when it supports MY point of view, dammit!"
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
And then all this garbage about the "hottest year ever".
If you're referring to 2014, I think it's just flat out wrong. Almost the entire northern hemisphere experience about a 9 month stretch that was 5-10 degrees colder than normal, to the extent of breaking cold temperature records that were a century old or more. Australia reported a heat wave for a couple of weeks at the beginning of 2014 that was about 4-5 degrees warmer than normal, but that's about all I've been able to find. That is certainly not even close to enough to compensate for the HUGE span of time that the north was significantly colder than normal.
If 2014 is the "hottest year on record," that points more to a failure in our methods of measuring average global temperature than the actual temperature being higher.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
If cold air is getting pushed out of the Arctic, what kind of air do you think goes back in to replace it ?
Weather related patterns are patterns that form as a result of the chaotic nature of weather. And these chaotic patterns are not responsible for ice ages.
These are some of the same climate scientists openly discussing geo-engineering of the climate. Just as you can't automate what you don't understand, you can't 'fix' something if you can't accurately describe how and why it's broken. Hands off until they can please..
Organization? You must be joking..
There isn't an equal balance of warm and cold air
There's not a perfect balance, but the local, day to day fluctuations we call weather are mostly a result of the same heat being distributed in different ways. Total heat on earth isn't going to be dramatically different between yesterday and tomorrow.
the sun is entering into a new solar minimum, meaning there is less warm air all around.
The amplitude of the solar cycle is about 0.1% of the total solar output. That's not a significant contribution.
It takes a certain kind of mind to counter measurable and published evidence with a flawed thought experiment using a single condition experienced by a small portion of the world for a small portion of the year.
Even ignoring the problems with your thought experiment, why not instead try and prove the visible evidence we see, rather than try and disprove it.
Or are you merely exposing your true identity as Adam Savage? "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
Remember the whole "polar vortex" thing in North America last year?
Not really. I live on the west coast of North America and it never affected us. The "polar vortexes" you are referring to only affected less than 5% of the surface of the Earth. February 2015 was in the top 5 warmest globally.
Yes, it has nothing at all to do with the instability in Iraq caused by a pointless war there. War apologist much?
Because there can never be an event that has multiple contributing factors? There always has to be exactly one straw that breaks the camel's back?
The "snow is gone" remark was never published in the peer reviewed literature. It was an off the cuff remark. It was only one scientist. It may have made the headlines but it was never part of the mainstream science.
I believe that up until recently, what is currently called a "polar vortex" was called "arctic air" in a weather forecast. Polar vortex, while being a historical term dating to the 1800's, was rarely used to describe the phenomena of cold cyclonic polar air pushing south. Using it commonly now makes it seem like winter weather patterns have suddenly and drastically changed. They haven't, not in just a couple of years.
Why are you so fucking stupid?
risk = damage x likelihood.
What would the damage be if global climate change is right? Is there 0% chance that CO2 traps heat? Is there a 0% chance that methane traps heat? Id there a 0% chance that ocean acidification will effect us?
I really want to know if you are paid to be shill or you are actually as stupid as you seem.
If 2014 is the "hottest year on record," that points more to a failure in our methods of measuring average global temperature than the actual temperature being higher.
So you want to tell us, when the scientific community in agreement declares the year 2014 to be the hottest on record, the majourity of those scientists is wrong?
On what basis do you conclude/declare this? Because on your couch it was cold?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So you're saying the arctic air is warmer than the air half way to the equator?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
An ice age is a period (an incredibly long one, I might add) of very cold, very dry weather across the entire planet. Of course it's weather related.
No, me deciding to work from home today rather than starting my car to drive to the office isn't going to start an ice age, so in that sense you're right, but you're using the most narrowly defined meaning of weather you possibly can, to avoid the fact that the climate of the earth has been in constant flux for millions of years, and somehow, now, the global warming apologists are convinced that we're suddenly causing it, and if we stopped burning fossil fuels, then the climate would become static.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Wow,
how can one be so stupid is beyond me.
The ice melts not in the winter when you have an arctic vortex. How retarded are you? Actually you have every winter an arctic vortex. The question is how many loops it has. Is it an even number of loops the north of america stays relatively warm, is it an odd number one loop is either over the US/canada *or* over skandinavia/europe.
Regarding the melting glaciers: they obviously melt during spring and summer. And as you seem to be an rally badly educated man: glaciers exist in the Alps, in the Himalaya, in Africa on the Kilimancharo, in New Zealand, I bet you have them in the Rockies and in the Andes, too.
If the arctic air coming south is so cold that it's causing issues like this
Actually, it is not even arctic air. That was likely an american TV layman's explanation. It is simply "continental climate". Air that cools down in central Canada, or central USA and drifts towards the north west of the USA.
If there was no global warming, you had this weather every year and much much colder. How damn young are you that you don't know that?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The amplitude of the solar cycle is about 0.1% of the total solar output. That's not a significant contribution.
It is a bit closer to 1%, but you are right, it is not really significant regarding the climate (or weather).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Looking at the black running mean on this graph:
https://protonsforbreakfast.fi...
I see about 1W swing on 1366W average, which is 0.07%
Well, I was more thinking about the sun itself. Minimum regarding sun spots and maximum, not sure about other cycles. The total between the lowest sun output and the maximum should be around 1% ... but perhaps I have memorized that wrong and it is 1 "promille" (strange that we have no sign for that on the keyboard)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sure - that doesn't stop it from being the message of climate change (especially when it's not loudly denounced) nor does it stop the message being out of control today (climate change causes prostitution - yep real headline).
And yet when you try and use rational thought on those articles you get the same responses everywhere 'denier' 'koch shill' etc. My worry is that the politicization of the topic along with the fervor used to defend it against any challenge at all no matter how trivial (the reason you see people compare it to a religion - because defending silly claims is silly) eventually will do more damage to science as a whole than anything else in modern history.
I think it has a marked effect on our culture and is partially responsible for other ludicrous crap like anti-vaxxers but you know never question because 'denier' is a powerful and vicious derogatory against someone who disagrees (even if it's over nuance) - at least until enough people decide to claim the title and we go back to a dark age.
but you're using the most narrowly defined meaning of weather you possibly can
I'm using "weather" to mean the daily chaotic events that go on in our atmosphere. I'm using "climate" as the average weather of a period that's long enough that most of the chaotic noise of the weather is removed. That takes about 15-30 years, depending on the circumstances, and what exactly you're looking at. Looking over even longer periods, we'll see "climate change".
The purpose of these distinctions is to aid in usefulness. A change in climate must have a underlying cause that we should be able to identify. A change in weather is just chance. Longer term events, such as glaciation cycles are interesting too, but we know their cause (orbital cycles). We also know that our current climate change isn't caused by those orbital cycles, because they follow a certain pattern.
the climate of the earth has been in constant flux for millions of years, and somehow, now, the global warming apologists are convinced that we're suddenly causing it, and if we stopped burning fossil fuels, then the climate would become static.
Correct. The climate of the earth has been in constant flux. But unlike changes in the weather, you can't just simply throw your arms up in the air, and claim we're just having a "warm century". There must be a cause. And if that cause isn't the increased amount of CO2, then please tell us what it is.
In this case, it's the weather that matters. Lack of El Nino means no end to the California drought.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So far globally the weather has remained mostly within the boundaries projected by climate models so they're doing ok.
Not according to scientists. Quote:
"The slowdown in the rate of global warming in the early 2000s is not evident in the multi-model ensemble average of traditional climate change projection simulations.......The loss of predictive skill for six initial years before the mid-1990s points to the need for consistent hindcast skill to establish reliability of an operational decadal climate prediction system."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well sed.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
OK, for those of us who slept through grade school, 2 < 15.
We're perfectly capable of predicting that a boiling pan of water will run dry, and even predict when exactly, without even having the faintest idea where exactly the next bubble will surface.
I'm in Holland. Holland is in the Northern Hemisphere. We had the highest average temperature in 2014. The highest in 3 centuries. Hell, I remember March 9th 2014, having a barbecue with my family with 20+ degree celsius. Every month with the exception of August was warmer than average. 2015 is not a whole lot different: no winter to speak of, no frost, no snow, no ice. Temperatures are again in the high 10s. You might want to do a bit more research.
People get excited about the hottest year but it makes more sense from a climate perspective to look at it in terms of decadal temperature trends. This graph does that. From it you can see that the 2000s were about 0.15 degrees C above the 1990s and so far the 2010s are about 0.05 above the 2000s.
Teh stupid hurts mah brain!.
Er, yes?
If you don't understand that then not only do you not understand science you fail at English too. An analogy is constructed to support a point of view. Picking apart an analogy is basically pointless because it is not the same as the underlying science and therefore has no bearing.
ALL analogies can be picked apart because by definition theyre not the real thing.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Temperature doesn't exist at the atomic level. It's a measurement of how much movement there is in a set of atoms. At zero Kelvin, there is theoretically no movement whatsoever. In a gas, atoms are moving in all directions and colliding with the container walls all the time (that's pressure), which changes their velocity and direction. They can also collide with one another, but that's much less frequent, comparatively speaking, since gases tend to have very low density.
Now, since the parent was talking about a cloud of "heating gas", it means the gas is being heated in some way. This can happen through a number of different ways, but most of those ways will only act upon a small subset of the full gas being considered. Thus, at any given time, the probably of a random sample of atoms in a heating gas to be of a significantly different speed (that which you call temperature) than the rest of the gas is actually measurably higher than zero, with how high depending on how much heat is being applied and in which manner.
Your 'Climate Skepticism' (global warming denial) is very thinly veiled. Top points for smugness, though.
No, your 'Agenda Denial' is very thinly veiled. Trotting out your straw man about someone "denying" climate change is the lazy way to avoid addressing the real issue. The real issue is that people are making specific claims about "settled science" model predictions of exactly X number of inches of ocean change, or Y change in temperature or precipitation in a given area, or Z change in glacier or sea ice, which clearly means that Policy A and Tax B and Redistribution Of Income Model C are clearly required and should be run by newly established International Entity D staffed by newly needed bureaucrats E, F, and G, all of whom stand to gain the power to steer vast sums of money to their own cherry-picked NGOs, contractors, and kickback-powered corrupt third world governments.
The biggest backers for calling the models correct and science "settled" are those who have a vested interest in a huge new government-layer middleman operation with enormous reach into daily lives and cash flow across all industries and societies. There are a class of people who really see themselves as perfect for that role, and look for every opportunity to mandate the existence of such.
The main denial in play here is the denial that such people and such a fervently wished-for agenda exist.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I believe that up until recently, what is currently called a "polar vortex" was called "arctic air" in a weather forecast. Polar vortex, while being a historical term dating to the 1800's, was rarely used to describe the phenomena of cold cyclonic polar air pushing south. Using it commonly now makes it seem like winter weather patterns have suddenly and drastically changed. They haven't, not in just a couple of years.
I believe this ties into the phenomena of the naming of winter storms by a certain cable weather channel.
No the comment was not about temperature it was about hyperbole
BTW just as a friendly you note these might help you
Random Sample
A subset of a statistical population in which each member of the subset has an equal probability of being chosen. A simple random sample is meant to be an unbiased representation of a group.
Virtually
nearly; almost.
Central Limit Theorem
The arithmetic mean of a sufficiently large number of iterates of independent random variables, each with a well-defined expected value and well-defined variance, will be approximately normally distributed, regardless of the underlying distribution
So in the future when some someone says a random sample of size 10^18 is going to have virtually zero deviance from the mean you can check yourself before saying silly things.
Regarding the melting glaciers: they obviously melt during spring and summer. And as you seem to be an rally badly educated man: glaciers exist in the Alps, in the Himalaya, in Africa on the Kilimancharo, in New Zealand, I bet you have them in the Rockies and in the Andes, too.
There are hundreds of glaciers in the Cascade range of mountains in the northwest US. And sadly to say, they all seem to be retreating. Just the other day news broke of a glacier cave on Mt. Hood, near Portland, OR, that had been around for ages but is now collapsing. Not that I venture into glacial caves myself :-) And we have had one hell of a weird winter in this part of the world, which did not help the cave. While we watch the news and see what our family and friends are dealing with everywhere east of the Rockies, I have flowers blooming in my front yard two weeks ago! And I'm in the middle of Oregon!
I guess if you live long enough, you really can see it all. Heh
I wish. This report, though, doesn't make me want to cheer. In the first place it's weaker than expected, and in the second place it's 6 months out of phase. I'm not sure that translates into summer rain, I suppose it could, but it could also translate into "This rain is going somewhere else. Sucks to be you." as wind patterns in warm months tend to be different than those in colder months.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
0 A.D. was a bit cooler than it is now. By 1000 A.D. global temperatures had warmed to roughly what we're at now. Then it cooled down again, reaching a minimum somewhere around 1700 A.D. (which, incidentally, is what the global warming apologists frequently use as the pre-industrial average temperature, rather than an unusually cold minimum.) Then it started warming again, until about 1997, when it appears to have leveled off again.
Did Jesus develop lots if industrial technologies that caused a rise in CO2 and a corresponding rise in temperatures for the next 1000 years? Did an economic downturn in 1000 A.D. cause Jesus Industries Inc. to collapse, reducing CO2 output, and thereby cooling the earth off for the next 500 years or so? There must have been a cause, and since we all know that human produced CO2 is the only possible thing that affects global temperatures, that must have been it, right?
When I say the climate has always been in flux, I don't mean we've been in and out of ice ages for millions of years, with a 20,000 year static climate between ice ages, and an 80,000 year static climate during an ice age. I mean it's been in flux. Every single year is either warmer or colder than the year before it. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a static climate on earth. Man-made CO2 global warming models all seem to assume that the climate would be roughly static between ice ages, but for human-caused warming. All evidence points to this assumption being false.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I don't think that paper says what you're implying it does. To quote from another part of the abstract:
However, a number of individual ensemble members from that set of models successfully simulate the early-2000s hiatus when naturally-occurring climate variability involving the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) coincided, by chance, with the observed negative phase of the IPO that contributed to the early-2000s hiatus.
So when you cherry pick the individual model runs that happen by chance to coincide with what actually happened with the IPO in the real world they did quite well. Since the IPO is not something that can be predicted with any accuracy more than a few years in advance you can't really expect climate models to do that well on short (decadal) time scales. Nevertheless when you look at the CMIP5 data that were used used in the recent IPCC AR5 report and the ensemble mean with the 95% confidence interval the temperature may be below the mean lately but it's still within the 95% confidence intervals. That's what I mean by "they're doing ok".
The scientific community as a whole once believed the world was flat.
The scientific community as a whole once believed chocolate and red wine were bad for you. Or was that good for you? No, it was bad. No...good.
The scientific community as a whole has changed its mind on many things in the past, as new research has been done, or flaws in old research and methodologies have been found.
A huge part of the basis of science is attempting to disprove theories with new research. When you fail to question conventional wisdom, it's not science. It's religion.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
So, what caused the cooling trend from 1880 to 1905 or so? It would be very interesting to see data back to 1000 A.D plotted on that graph, which was roughly the middle of the Medieval Maximum, with temperatures roughly what they are today.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Yes, the snow at pass levels in Oregon (around 5,000 feet) is nonexistent this year. In a normal year there would be at least 4 or 5 feet of packed snow by now. The one glacier that is still growing in the Northwest is the one in the crater of Mt. Saint Helens but of course the crater and glacier didn't even exist until after the 1980 eruption.
Wow. The straw men in this article are thick and fast.
Nowhere did I state that 2 cold winters were more important than a 15 year average. I just pointed out that the "single winter" that the GP discounted was not only a single winter, but was significantly more "unimportant outlier data" than what they were admitting to.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 probably had something to do with it but I doubt it's the whole story.
The Medieval Maximum appears to be primarily a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon centered around the North Atlantic. It's not likely that globally temperatures were as warm then as they are now.
The scientific community as a whole once believed the world was flat.
I don't think a scientific community existed when people believed the world was flat. The Greeks had shown empirically that the Earth was spherical by the 3rd century BC.
A huge part of the basis of science is attempting to disprove theories with new research. When you fail to question conventional wisdom, it's not science. It's religion.
Do you think climate scientists are a special breed of scientists who don't question conventional wisdom? Do you believe that thousands of climate scientists around the world are all in on some conspiracy to subvert the truth about climate? It just doesn't make sense. They know the sooner or later the underlying empirical reality would make their science defunct. Any scientist knows they can make a name for themselves by overturning conventional wisdom. I can't believe that in the 25 years since the first IPCC report someone wouldn't have done that if it were possible.
No, actually I'm really looking forward to the next IPCC report to see how it deals with the fact that the models are all garbage. It's been obvious for a while to people who understand them, but there are always some zealots who will cling to things.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The problem is that every single event that refutes global warming is an "isolated event taken out of context," whereas every single event that points to global warming is "part of an undeniable pattern."
Unfortunately that's just part of human nature. We tend to take note of singular events more than long term trends. The reality is that all weather events happen on a background of a changing climate from global warming. The evidence of climate change is in the statistics of how those individual events are changing over time.
So you're saying your post wasn't intended to have any relevance at all to the conversation?
WOW.
The models are not garbage. It sounds like your expectation of what they should be in unrealistic. Gavin Schmidt, a person who understands the models because he helps write them (the GISS Model E climate model) wrote this comparison between models and observations in 2013. Weather is still well within the expectations of climate models.
He wrote it in 2013, we've had a lot of new knowledge come out since then. Also, realclimate.org is propaganda, can't you recognize that? Propaganda is recognizable from its style.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Careful man, average rainfall varies drastically from year to year. In California's central valley, for example, some years it comes to 5 inches, other years it comes to 25 inches. I feel confident I could beat you predicting rainfall for the next seven days, compared to you predicting rainfall for the next seven years.
It takes longer than seven years for the climate to average out.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's rich, coming from a troll who's written over a thousand comments here about climate science with nearly nothing of substance in hundreds of pages worth of your nonsense.
We know who you are, and why are you lying?
Temperature has some minor instances of feedback with the things like carbon but the VAST majority of temperature fluctuations come from solar activity or lack thereof and all long-term data show we are about to enter another iceage as the sun enters into a solar minimum.
Actually, that was the argument that was settled in the 1970s. Back then some scientists figured we would be heading into a new glacial period which would outway the human contributions to global warming. They were wrong, we aren't going into a new glacial period, instead it looks like human activity will end the Quaternany Period by melting both Ice caps. An event which we think hasn't happened in the last 2.6 million years.
Ice is melting but more is taking it's place (hence the ocean acidification as water is taken out of the cycle to be tied up in ice).
No, actually, it's not. Somewhere around 95% of the world's glaciers are losing mass year-over-year. Ocean acidification is not caused by water being removed from the oceans. We know this because a) sea levels are rising, instead of falling and b) ocean acidification is sufficiently explained by rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Extra CO2 is absorbed into the oceans, which causes the acidification.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Schmidt wrote several of the updates but stopped after the 2012 update because nothing he would have just been repeating what he had said previously. Sure knowledge has advanced since then but it hasn't changed anything fundamental in climate science.
As for RC being propaganda, if you say so. It is written by several leading climate scientists and invited guests and covers the mainstream of climate science well. Their posts cover mainly scientific topics and you're free to try and debunk them if you can.
Schmidt wrote several of the updates but stopped after the 2012 update
That was nice of him to update it until then.
As for RC being propaganda, if you say so. It is written by several leading climate scientists and invited guests and covers the mainstream of climate science well.
Propaganda isn't so much about who says it, but about how they say it. "A scientist is only a scientist when he acts as a scientist" etc.
One way to recognize the propaganda with realclimate.org is to realize they are clearly partisan, that is, any dissent from the standard line is attacked. Compare that to the IPCC report, (at least, WG1), which makes an effort to recognize the weaknesses and holes in our knowledge (of course, even the Heartland Institute has opposite viewpoints).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
One way to recognize the propaganda with realclimate.org is to realize they are clearly partisan, that is, any dissent from the standard line is attacked.
As scientists shouldn't they be able to defend and in fact are obligated to defend what they understand to be true about their science? In the end empirical reality will show what is right and they know that so it doesn't make sense that they would promulgate something they know to be wrong.
I watched your Heartland cite. Although I didn't totally agree with Denning* I didn't see that he contradicted climate science in any fundamental way. His main point was that if the political right does not offer solutions for the climate change that is coming the other side will come up with solutions they won't like. I'd love it if the political right started offering solutions rather than just more obstruction.
* His statement that "CO2 emits heat" is not the way I would describe it but maybe he was just dumbing it down for his audience.
As scientists shouldn't they be able to defend and in fact are obligated to defend what they understand to be true about their science?
They have the right to say whatever they want, in any way they want. At the same time, we as listeners can recognize the difference between rhetoric and science.
I watched your Heartland cite. Although I didn't totally agree with Denning* I didn't see that he contradicted climate science in any fundamental way.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to watch the whole thing, I merely tried to use it as an example to show that even a propaganda organization (the heartland institute) can at times present opposing viewpoints. If you watched it, I hope you enjoyed it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Seriously.
Do you think that errors in a model are cumulative?
Do you think the models used here are similar to, identical to, or components of, the global climate models?
If so, then the global models are not capturing all the processes that influence climate, correct?
If so, then the global models yield answers with a margin of error, correct?
Therefore, find out what the error is on the current climate models used to predict global climate change, because an error of +/- 2 degrees on a prediction of 2 degrees increase (say) is kind of important.
And good luck with that. Because there are no error values reported. And there probably can't be; we don't know what we don't know.
Based on that, how much do you want your governent to act on climate change "predictions"?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
(anecdote not data) It's been colder here in PA than it was at a friend's place in central Alberta - so yes.
You'd have a great point, but you don't seem to be able to recognize the difference between rhetoric and science...
Without any citations (to papers, not newspaper articles), your post is precisely indistinguishable from the frantic keyboard-mashing of any other denialist. Using terms like "bit cooler" and "roughly" really aren't helping you right now.
I think it doesn't really help your position to confuse an off-the-cuff remark from a scientist, outside their published work, with "the message of climate change". That's about as good an explanation of bias in effect that I can think of in this context. Seriously. You are terrible at this.
You'd have a great point, but you don't seem to be able to recognize the difference between rhetoric and science...
This is science. This is rhetoric. Specifically, the latter is a sub-genre of rhetoric known as apologia.
The former might be reasonably construed as dialectic, but now we're getting way over your head. Go smoke another joint an be gone.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The last century (i.e., the last one hundred years) had 36525 days, because the 00s that are dividable by 400 are leap (or jubilee) years.
It's especially not significant compared to the ~7% annual variation as the Earth swings in its elliptical orbit. This 91 W/m^2 is truly the elephant in climate forcing variations -- everything else is comparatively a mouse.
Interestingly, the annual temperature variation of the Earth countervaries with this -- the Earth is coldest when it is closest to the sun and warmest when it is furthest away. This is spite of the fact that in the tropics where the variation due to inclination is the least and one expects the strongest effect there is no major shift in land/sea area exposed and hence the albedo difference that supposedly cancels the more than 45 W/m^2 peak insolation relative to the mean.
The climate really is a highly nonlinear system and not all of it makes sense in terms of naive models. Yet. Pretending that we understand it when we don't may sell catastrophe (and hence research into contingent catastrophe), but it doesn't do science itself any big favors.
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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.