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California's Hot, Dry Winters Tied To Climate Change
mdsolar sends word that hot dry winters may be the norm in the future for California. "Climate change is one of the most prominent public health issues currently on the CDC's radar. The organization's Climate and Health Program attempts to help state and city health departments to prepare for the health impacts of climate change, which can come in the form of things like temperature extremes, air pollution, allergens, and changes in disease patterns; they can also be felt indirectly through issues like food security. Since 2012, California has been in the midst of a record-setting drought, with extremely warm and dry conditions characterizing the last three years in that state. A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that warming caused by humans is responsible for the conditions that have led to this California drought. This study, published by scientists affiliated with the Department of Environmental Earth System Science and the Woods Institute for Environment at Stanford University, used historical statewide data for observed temperature, precipitation, and drought in California. The investigators used the Palmer Hydrological Drought Index (PHDI) and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), collected by the National Climatic Data Center, as measures of the severity of wet/dry anomalies. They also used global climate model simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) to compare historical predictions for anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic historical climates."
Sympathies for the AGW folks.
Because I'm in California, and it's so goddamned terrible here that car washes are still operating at maximum efficiency.
And we're still farming where we have no business farming.
And we're still demanding people water their lawns.
And our water is still cheaper than other states I've lived in.
It's terrible, let me tell you.
CA has experienced droughts worse than this in the past.
News for ya, CA is mostly a desert.
Watch how you word your summary of a scientific finding. In particular when the summary states:
A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that warming caused by humans is responsible for the conditions that have led to this California drought.
You shouldn't go to read the linked article and find the conclusions of the study state:
Our results suggest that anthropogenic warming has increased the probability of the co-occurring temperature and precipitation conditions that have historically led to drought in California.
The header, California's Hot, Dry Winters Tied To Climate Change fit the study. The start of the summary mdsolar sends word that hot dry winters may be the norm in the future for California fit the study. Resist the urge to overreach with the extra statement trying to sound like scientists have claimed proof that the drought is definitively the end result of AGW and naught else. Why? Because the scientists didn't say it, and they most likely didn't say it because they don't want to say something so stupid. Obviously draught is a part of the natural cycle in California without the benefit of AGW, no scientist is gonna be eager to declare that only AGW is responsible. Instead you will see the conclusion they ACTUALLY USED in the article noting instead that AGW absolutely contributed to, rather than definitively caused, the drought.
The difference between contributing to and worsening droughts and being the sole or dominant cause MATTERS.
I'm going to assume that 1) since it's on the NOAA website and 2) there's a largeish NOAA logo in the Atlantic Ocean, that it is most likely using information from NOAA. I mhttp://science.slashdot.org/story/15/03/09/1643256/californias-hot-dry-winters-tied-to-climate-change#ay be wrong, however.
You are making the assumption that the changes in ocean currents are unrelated to global warming. This is likely to be an incorrect assumption, as the ocean has become considerably warmer recently. Another factor is the weakening of the jet stream which is clearly tied to the Arctic warming faster than the equator. (The jet stream is driven by tempertature differences, much more than by their absolute value for any small change.)
OTOH, you're never going to prove that any one particular weather, or even seasonal, change is tied to climate. There's too much variation. Climate is basically a mean of several years weather, and there's not even an agreement over how many years should go into calculating the mean. (Of course that's arguing about words rather than about physical happenings, but people are good at that.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Ignoring your rather simplistic (and wrong) view of science and weather, I'll just say this: California is an easier case to investigate.
Other states are much more dependent on rainfall for their water, and those rain patterns come from many sources. Such as plains states getting systems out of the Rockies, up from the Gulf, down from the Arctic, and even occasionally from the eastern seaboard if a big hurricane or nor'easter rolls in.
But California is different. It's not reliant on multiple sources and patterns for its water supply, and it isn't actually very reliant on rain fall throughout the year.
Rather, the majority of California's water supply comes from one predictable source, the Sierra snowpack, in a predictable yearly cycle.
In Cali the snowpack is refreshed every Winter between (roughly) mid-December and April 1st by moisture laden air coming in off the ocean. That snow then melts through the rest of the year, supplying the state with the overwhelming majority of its water.
So while droughts in general are increasing and that is in general attributed to warming, the variability of the weather patterns that supply various areas of the country make pinpointing the source of particular droughts difficult. But because California's cycle is much simpler the backtracking of causes and effects becomes much easier.
And while the winter weather patterns have been there, the air has been dry, unusually dry, leading to almost no snowfall, leading to this horrible drought. So while the state is a very dry state in terms of rainfall and precipitation, the abundance of the snowpack meant they could overcome that and still be able to sustain much agriculture because people are good at engineering and building irrigation canals.
California is rightly proud of the efficacy of its statewide irrigation system (we can debate the pros and cons of the system and its impact on nature and people all day long, but as far getting water to crops, it does its job very well). But that system is still ultimately dependent on the snowpack.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Bullshit. The chart came from one Dr. Roy Spencer, who is not only a climatologist who has made a career out of claiming he's right and most scientists are wrong, but is also a noted creationist ("intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism" is my favorite quote from him on the topic).
Here's a nice summation of how he fudged numbers in order to come up with that bogus chart: http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201...
To your point of "I may be wrong", let me say, yes.... yes you are.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
suvs are not what they used to be. many have over 30 MPG now a days. while you are correct. fuel use is still down
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
the main cause of the drop is the middle east trying to push the shale oil companies out of business
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What's really funny is that even with the screwing around, the chart still clearly shows global warming. It's like a serial killer arguing that he should be acquitted of all 15 charges because the evidence clearly shows that he only killed 11 people at random.
Bullshit. The chart came from one Dr. Roy Spencer, who is not only a climatologist who has made a career out of claiming he's right and most scientists are wrong, but is also a noted creationist ("intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism" is my favorite quote from him on the topic).
Here's a nice summation of how he fudged numbers in order to come up with that bogus chart: http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201...
To your point of "I may be wrong", let me say, yes.... yes you are.
For those wanting a similar graph of models versus measured there is a graph from the IPCC AR5 report here. It shows models aren't as bad as the grandparent, but it DOES clearly show the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.
I'm going to do something very foolish and imagine that you actually believe what you're saying, that you're not just being a troll, and that you actually think the data supports your conclusions. And now I'm going to explain why you're wrong, indulging in the fantasy that you'll listen with an open mind and, once you realize your mistake, freely acknowledge it. Prove me right. Or wrong. Your choice.
Also, ignore the arctic ice that's been increasing for three years,
Three years? Three years is random noise. The climate consists of steady, long term trends with lots of short term fluctuations superimposed on top of them. Take artic ice, for example. It shrinks every summer and grows every winter. There are lots of factors that affect the summer minimum: wind patterns, ocean currents, etc. A few years ago, lots of factors converged to give an exceptionally low minimum. It hasn't matched that since; but it's come close, and has remained far below anything seen until just a decade ago.
Here's a graph showing sea ice for almost 40 years: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_i.... Yes, it fluctuates up and down from year to year. But look at that and tell me it shows anything other than fluctuations around a steady decreasing trend that remains upbroken.
Let's look at something even more convincing: world wide temperatures. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist.... Look at those graphs, and then tell me they show anything other than short term fluctuations on a long term warming trending that has been in place for the last century.
Ignore Niagara falls that has frozen over two years in a row and ignore all the record cold around the country.
Wrong! There has not been record cold "around the country". Believe me, the whole western half of the country has been getting record heat, as has most of the planet. Here's a map showing it: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/.... Those are the difference between Jan. 2015 temperatures and historical (1981-2010) average temperatures. The red areas are hotter than average. The blue areas are colder than average. Yes, there's a small blue patch over the eastern US. But overall there's a lot more red than blue.
This is why scientists tend to prefer the term "climate change" to "global warming". Yes, the globe is warming up, but that doesn't mean everything is exactly the same, just uniformly warmer. Some times and places are a lot warmer. Others are only a little warmer. Others are actually cooler. Wind patterns are changing. Ocean currents are changing. Precipitation patterns are changing. Sea level is rising. Permafrost it melting. The climate is changing.
And if you want to know precisely how global warming is causing unusually cold weather in the eastern US, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P....
Ignore the fact NAS falsified the CO2 hypothesis in 2010
Sorry, but that is just BS. You linking to a story about how fungi help to hold onto carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere, and somehow translated that into "NAS falsified the CO2 hypothesis". No. I don't know what you think that article actually meant, but I can assure you that isn't what it meant. (OK, I see you also linked to that Register piece that totally misrepresented the conclusions of that study. The Register is a notorious denialist website. Believe me, the scientists who actually did the work would not agree with the conclusions they're trying to draw from it.)
No one has "falsified the CO2 hypothesis". In fact, it was recently proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, by actually directly measuring the incoming and outgoing radiation, showing that the CO2 abso
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
He is right about the extent of Antarctic sea ice, increasing, in the last few years it's been the highest winter extent in recorded history. The problem is that the extent of sea ice (ice floating on the ocean) is an irrelevant measure of anything. There could be hundreds of causes and most have nothing to do with climate change (natural fluctuations) and the few that do actually relate to climate change point to severe consequences and are supporting evidence.
One recent study of salinity levels showed that antarctic sea saline levels were lower than previously recorded values. Lower saline levels would cause dramatically increased amounts of sea ice but there are only two major reasons saline levels could drop (other than bad measurements). The first is that the mixing currents at the pole that cause high saline warm water from the inter-ocean currents to surface are beginning to cease. This would be catastrophic to local climates and actually cause regions near each pole to get colder as the warm tropical waters that keep northern climates warm stop. The second is that significant melting of the glaciers on Antarctica have begun and at a significant enough rate that local ocean salinity is declining because inter-ocean mixing currents cannot keep up. Melting of the Antarctica glaciers (3 miles thick) would portend massive massive sea level increases on the orders of hundreds of feet. Not even the worst climate change predictions predict Antarctica glacial melt on this scale.
The reason the sea ice extent is most likely irrelevant is because it's temporary. It's ice that builds up in the winter and melts in the summer. Even if sea ice levels are the highest ever seen during the winter, they are at the same time the lowest ever seen during the summer. This includes the massive massive ice shelves (the portion of the glacier that is floating on the ocean) that have broken off and disintegrated.
The anti-climate change people like to point at antarctic sea ice levels without ever talking about the details. Most I doubt even understand what any of it is or means, they are simply reporting a sound bite they heard on TV or the internet.