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One Planet Only Forever at 01:35 AM on 9 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
This discussion about 'declaring an El Nino' has brought up some new details that help me better understand what is going on. It appears there are actually two different El Nino related matters being discussed:
- Have the recent months met the NOAA threshhold for being declared an El Nino event? If March 2015 is warm enough then the 5 consecutive ONI values of +0.5 C or warmer will have occurred starting in SON 2014. The NOAA ONI value history is here. And the current SST in the Nino 3.4 region presented here is currently +0.7 C which would mean it is quite likely that the March 2015 SST in the Nino 3.4 region will be warm enough to meet NOAA's threshhold for an El Nino event.
- Is an El Nino event going to develop in 2015? This is a disussion about what will happen in the upcoming time frame which is historically the time that an El Nino event would begin to develop. The model predictions presented in Figure 7 in the NOAA ENSO discussion start with the December-January-February value of the ONI of +0.5 C, down from the preceding NDJ value implying that the previous near-El Nino event was waning. So the discussion is about what will happen through 2015. The indications are that El Nino conditions have started to strengthen, in line with the average of the model predictions. And the current developing conditions could be the start of a significant El Nino event. However, 2014 proved that how the El Nino "potential event" starts is not a guarantee of what is to come.
Reviewing the NOAA ONI history it is clear that many El Nino conditions begin in May, June, or July of one year and continue until the early part of the following year. However, the ONI record includes several instances where the El Nino events get established later in a year and continue through the next year only waning after a nearly 2 year period. The following are the cases where this occurred:
- DJF 1953 to JFM 1954
- JAS 1968 to DJF 1970
- JAS 1986 to JFM 1988
- ASO 1976 to JFM 1978 (a bit of a cheat because from FMA 1977 to JAS 1977 the ONI values are +0.3 and +0.4)
- (many La Nina events also span periods longer than 1 year)
What is certain is that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere continues to rise rapidly. And that increased amount of CO2 will produce significant changes, including changes ine the oceans bue to a large percentage of human produced excess CO2 going into the oceans. And those changes can be seen in the history of many measurements, including in the changes in the 30 year average SST values in the Nino 3.4 region that NOAA updates every 5 years seen here.
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Jim Hunt at 00:17 AM on 9 March 2015A melting Arctic and weird weather: the plot thickens
Yet more Arctic melting! A whole range of Arctic sea ice metrics are currently at their lowest ever levels for the date:
Arctic Sea Ice Area Lowest Ever (For the Date!)
What's more yet another storm is brewing!
and air temperatures above the North Pole are much the same as on the shores of the Great Lakes.Moderator Response:[RH] Resized image. Please keep images down to 500px so they don't break page formatting. Thx.
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billthefrog at 20:56 PM on 8 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
@ John H #14
Of course what's far more significant than semantics is the effect that this el Nino-ish thing is going to have on global temps. (And more importantly still on people's lives.)
As you know, Gistemp, HadCRUT, NCDC, BEST and JMA all had last year as the warmest on record. Focussing just on Gistemp (as an example - hopefully not cherry-picked) Jan 2015 was 0.07oC up on the equivalent month in 2014. This will already have pushed the rolling 12 month average up by another ~0.006oC.
Feb 2014 was the real party-pooper, as (on Gistemp) it was almost a quarter of a degree down on the J-D annual average. However, the Nino 3.4 monthlies are frighteningly different. This year, the Feb anomaly is about 1.3 or 1.4oC up on last year. Similarly, the deltas on the Nino 3.4 monthlies for Dec and Jan were both a fraction under 1.2oC up on their equivalents from a year earlier.
If there is any predictive skill there, one might reasonably expect Feb 2015 global surface temps to be > ~0.1oC up on Feb 2014, hence pushing the rolling 12 up by about another ~0.01oC.
Of course, as the Pacific has an area of about 165 million sq kms, as compared to the paltry 6.2* million sq kms of the Nino 3.4 region, some caution is called for. (* Assuming I can still remember how to work out areas on a sphere.)
@OPOF #16
"I would suspect that the next update of the ONI baseline for 1986-2015 will not be another leap up"
Yep, that's exactly how I interpreted it as well. Let's wait and see if we're correct.
cheers bill f
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Jim Hunt at 19:53 PM on 8 March 2015Understanding Time of Observation Bias
By way of example, my particular hobby horse is Arctic sea ice. I went away and posted a helpful answer to a question on the topic of "State of the Sea Ice – February 2015" that remained unanswered at WUWT. My answer is still invisible at WUWT, and the question is still unanswered:
https://archive.today/aNInJ#selection-12501.0-12507.54
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Tom Curtis at 11:07 AM on 8 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
Cool Hand Luke @15, there has been some discussion of this at And Then There's Physics which you may find useful, starting with Jac's question.
In short, CO2 will be drawn down essentially by four processes. They are:
1) Draw down and equilibrization into the surface ocean and biosphere;
2) Draw down and equilibrization with the deep ocean;
3) Reaction of oceanic CO2 with calcium carbonate (CaCO3); and
4) Chemical weathering of rocks leading to a long term draw down of CO2.
All of these occur at different rates. The first occurs over the first year after emissions, and accounts for most of the reduction of the airborne fraction (ie, the fact that only 45% of total emissions actually remain in the atmosphere). The rates of the other three are illustrated by this diagram:
The diagram assumes an instantaneous pulse of CO2, so it does not distinguish between the surface and deep levels of the ocean. Further, it shows all CO2 initially entering the atmosphere. In the actual situation, with the gradual ramp up of CO2 emissions (in human terms), the start point for draw down would be at about 700 ppmv for the emissions shown in the diagram. Therefore ocean equillibriation (step 2) would draw down from 700 to 650 ppmv over 300 years, or at a rate of 0.167 ppmv per annum. As there are 2.12 (IPCC AR5) to 2.13 (CDIAC) Gigatonnes of Carbon per ppmv of atmospheric CO2, that amounts to 0.355 GtC per annum to allow a stable atmospheric concentration over the first approx 300 years of after peak emissions*.
After that, calcium carbonate buffering (step 3) draws down CO2 from about 650 to 450 ppmv over 5000 years. That represents a reduction of 0.043 ppmv per annum, or about 0.09 GtC per annum to maintain constant CO2 over that period.
Finally, the remainder of the CO2 is drawn down by chemical weathering over the course of about a million years. That represents 0.00017 ppmv per annum, or 0.0004 GtC per annum, for what is practically for ever (as David Archer points out).
To summarize, that is approximately 0.355 GtC per annum for the first 300 years, 0.043 GtC per annum for the next 5000 years, and 0.0004 GtC per annum thereafter. In terms of current emissions, that is 3.55% for the first 300, 0.43% for the next 5000 years, and diddlysquat thereafter.
You should not get too hung up on these figures. Different models of carbon uptake will vary the results by up to 30%. Further, the exact figures change significantly with increased cumulative CO2 emissions. Further, increased climate sensitivity reduces the permissible short term emissions (due to reduced capacity for the ocean to store CO2), but increases permissible long term emissions (due to increased chemical weathering). Finally, and obviously, I have made linear estimates of obviously non-linear functions so that there will be substantial variance over some years, particularly in the short term. In short, these are ballpark figures, not exact values. The important points to realize are that:
1) Currently only 45% of emissions remain in the atmosphere because we are using the bulk of short term storage in other earth systems (ocean, biosphere). Therefore we cannot simply reduce CO2 emissions to 45% of current values and expect CO2 concentrations to stabilize. We need a much larger reduction than that.
2) Within a very short time in historical terms, we will need to reduce CO2 emissions to essentially zero. Given that, we might as well make that our current target.
3) Stabilizing CO2 is a bad call in any event, as it ensures we experience the full equilibrium climate response, whereas by reducing CO2 levels (by natural draw down if by no other method) we can ensure an earlier and lower peak climate response, significantly reducing the damaging impacts of anthropogenic global warming.
* I have not read a decription of the model run used for this graph, and may be misinterpreting the net emissions and time period over which they occur. Calculating the short term stabilization target by a rule of thumb by David Archer, ie, that we will 25% of emissions will remain in the atmosphere in the short term, with the rest lasting effectively forever, we can calculate that there will be a 20% further reduction over the three years. For current emissions, that amounts to 55 ppmv over 300 years, or 0.18 ppmv per annum (0.4 GtC per annum). Ergo, the figure is in the right ballpark. More importantly, it is nowhere near the 45% (or even 55%) of current emissions some people mistakenly estimate.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:21 AM on 8 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
billthefrog,
The NOAA presentation of the history of 30 year averages of the Nino 3.4 region that they re-baseline every 5 years also shows that the most recent 30 year baseline values (1981-2010) are about 0.4 C warmer than the first of the 30 year baselines (1936-1965). This means that an el Nino event today has suface temperatures that are 0.4 C warmer.
And as you noted there are definite leaps of the baseline that were due to significant El Nino events during the 1991-1995 and the 2000-2005 period (which can be seen in the NOAA ONI history). Note that the 1997/98 event did not produce a step up because it was in a set of years that included significant la Nina events. So I would suspect that the next update of the ONI baseline for 1986-2015 will not be another leap up.
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Cool Hand Luke at 08:15 AM on 8 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
At what level of Global CO2 emission would the Atmospheric PPM of CO2 come down?
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John Hartz at 05:33 AM on 8 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
bill f: To complicate matters further, see the discussion contained in:
El Nino declared as climate scientists watch on with 'amazement' by Peter Haman, Sydney Morning Herald, Mar 6, 2015
It appears that meterologists in both Japan and Australia were surprised by the NOAA declaration.
The bottom-line seems to be that the chararcteristics of the current El Nino do not completely align with those of the typical El Nino.
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billthefrog at 01:06 AM on 8 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
@ John H & Wili
Hi again guys,
As Tom Curtis sagely states in #11, a single number is a pretty restrictive way of thinking about ENSO. The people at NOAA obviously think so as well, as, back in January, they put out a blog piece describing the need for, and relationships between, a multitude of ENSO-related indicies.
In the body text of NOAA's diagnostic discussion and the NOAA blog piece that were both linked to in #10, the phrase "el Nino conditions" occurs more often than does "el Nino" without the trailing modifier. When restricting the context to references to the current state of affairs in the Pacific, the phrase "el Nino conditions" is vastly more prevalent.
By way of an analogy, in the whacky world of economics, there exists the dreaded word - recession. A country can often (always?) be described as being "in recession" when it has experienced two consecutive quarters of negative growth. (I just love that expression!)
If we were 70%-80% of the way through the second quarter of negative growth, and things were still in the shit, some analysts would say the country was in recession. Others (especially those representing the party in power) would cavil at this, saying a necessary criterion had not been reached - yet.
OK, call me Mr Cavil. I am aware that I am raising a petty objection, but, in the NOAA blog relating to multiple indicies, it clearly states in the opening paragraph...
"At NOAA, the official ENSO indicator is the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI), which is based on sea surface temperature (SST) in the east-central tropical Pacific Ocean."
It is also perhaps worth remembering that, in addition to not yet having 5 consecutive rolling 3-month averages >= + 0.5oC, we don't even have 5 individual months, as the October figure was +0.46oC.
To avoid going round in circles further, I have sent an email to Michelle l'Heureux at NOAA to ask if she, or a colleague, might care to drop in and tell it like it is.
cheers bill f (pedant to the nobility)
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billthefrog at 00:14 AM on 8 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
@OPOF #9
The NOAA page showing the rolling 5 yearly baseline increments to which you linked does indeed contain a wealth of information .
Up until the last 4 such periods, the rise was pretty monotonic, but has subsequently gone up in punctuated lurches. If you calculate an overall average for the ONI in each of the 4 most recent 30-year windows, you see that it also lurches in an analogous fashion. Each time the baseline is recalculated, it is somewhat affected by the relative frequencies and intensities of ENSO events occurring within that 30 year window.
In December last year, I thought I had noticed a typo in the page describing the changes, but I was just being thick. Michelle L'Heureux of NOAA had to patiently explain to me that the first of the 5-year shuffles was anomalous because it wasn't 5 years long - it was 6 years.
cheers bill f
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Jim Hunt at 22:30 PM on 7 March 2015Understanding Time of Observation Bias
Zeke - The folks at WUWT, including Anthony himself, are regularly "economical with the truth". Here's proof positive of that assertion:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2015/01/mark-serreze-and-the-arctic-sea-ice-death-spiral/
Tony and his band of merry moderators also suppress polite but adverse commentary. How much luck do you suppose I would have if I tried to put them all straight on this occasion?
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MA Rodger at 21:40 PM on 7 March 2015Arctic sea ice has recovered
As of today, NSIDC's Charctic graph is showing 2015 as the lowest SIE on record having just dipped below 2006. JAXA, who show a less icy 2006, put 2015 well below 2006 & 2011.
Mind, the timing of the maximum freeze is a little delayed nowadays compared with the climatology in the graph @73 so there is still a couple of weeks for things to change around.
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MA Rodger at 21:31 PM on 7 March 2015There's no empirical evidence
Continuing from #247 in the absence of a RedBaron reply.
I see no evidence that Houghton and others are in error over CO2 emissions from land use.
Concerning the issue of the role of soils in the reduction of atmospheric CO2 levels over the last 19 million years, this contention is based solely on the work of Retallack (eg Retallack 2013) which attempts to argue that there are three competing theories that could be responsible for this reduction, rock weathering, ocean up-take and soil creation and Retallack argues that soil creation is the most likely. Such argument is badly flawed as Retallack makes the same basic mistake as Teague & Savory described @244. From Retallack (2013):-
"If grassland soils sequester approximately 1 kgC per sq m more than do preexisting woodland soils (Retallack 2001), 40% of the current world’s land surface of 148,940,000 sqw km could have sequestered an additional 596 PgC, comparable with 750 PgC as CO2 currently found in the atmosphere (Sanderman et al. 2010) and compatible with the observed halving of atmospheric CO2 over the past 19 million years ."
However, to draw down atmospheric CO2 to half the level, say by 700 PgC, there will also be a need to sequester the resulting emissions from the biosphere (350 PgC) and the oceans (2,450 PgC) as the atmospheric level is in balance with boisphere and ocean. This totals at 3,500 PgC. (These figures very roughly based on the work of David Archer.)
The colder oceans would have taken perhaps 1,400 PgC leaving 2,100 PgC but the oceans can be considered as a feedback mechanism due to global cooling. The appearance of deeper soils may have reduced the amount of rock weathering required to handle the 2,100 PgC, but if this was something like 600PgC, the largest contribution to CO2 draw-down remains rock weathering.
The final line of argument fron RedBaron was the use of agriculture to sequestrate CO2 from the atmosphere and reduce the atmospheric levels despite continuing emissions from fossil fuel use. Because of the basic error described above, this could only hold CO2 levels static. It could not reduce them with the present CO2 emission levels. That in itself would be a wonderful thing to achieve if it were possible but it would require a change in agricultural practices worldwide to get such a result, a task almost as difficult as weaning mankind off the fossil fuels which is the primary cause of our problem.
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Tom Curtis at 12:29 PM on 7 March 20152015 SkS Weekly Digest #9
Barry Bickmore has a beautiful take down of the "argument from authority is a fallacy" cannard, which neatly punctures Delingpole into the bargain.
(And just to be clear, an argument from authority is a logical fallacy. That is, the premises can be true and the conclusion false - even if it is just once in every billion times the argument is used. The argument from induction is likewise a logical fallacy. Indeed, it is impossible to draw any conclusion except in maths and logic without invoking a logical fallacy. The key question is whether the "logical fallacy" you invoke is inductively sound, ie, whether, of the premises are true there is a very high probability that the conclusion is also true.)
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Tom Curtis at 11:34 AM on 7 March 2015Arctic sea ice has recovered
michael sweet @72, perhaps more interesting is the Cryosat data, which for the most recent update (Dec 15) showed reduced ice volume relative to 2013:
"Measurements made during October and November show that the volume of Arctic sea ice now stands at about 10 200 cubic km – a small drop compared to last year’s 10 900 cubic km."
At that time, Piomass was showing the ice volume to have been the largest since 2008, whereas Cryosat ranked it fourth in its five years of observation. The drop in volume relative to last year is more consistent with the sea ice extent figures, as linked by moderator PS:
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Tom Curtis at 11:11 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
Here is the running 30 day SOI index:
Negative values indicate El Nino like conditions, while positive values indicate La Nina like conditions. Clearly, since July 2014 El Nino like conditions have prevailed, and by comparison with the SOI figures of 2010, you could argue that we have been experiencing an El Nino if you used SOI figures alone. However, the sudden rise to positive values call into question the continuation of those conditions. Such sudden changes often immediately reverse themselves, as in May 2013, or April 2014, but they can also be followed by a sustained reversal.
The SOI is a proxy for the strength of the trade winds, and we can now look at direct measurements of that strength. The BoM writes:
"Trade winds were weaker than average over the western half of the tropical Pacific for the 5 days ending 1 March (see map). A reversal of wind direction was seen in the far western tropical Pacific; westerly winds have been observed in parts of this area for about three weeks now. However, it is worth noting that westerly wind anomalies in parts of the western tropical Pacific sometimes occur during as a normal part of the breakdown of an El Niño.
Trade winds over the eastern half of the tropical Pacific were near average strength.
During La Niña there is a sustained strengthening of the trade winds across much of the tropical Pacific, while during El Niño there is a sustained weakening of the trade winds."(My emphasis)
The weakening, and even reversal, of the trade winds in the western tropical Pacific would weaken the Tropical Warm Pool as surface water flows east to the central Pacific. The continued strength of the trade winds in the eastern tropica Pacific, however, will prevent the warm water flowing further east, and the formation of a true El Nino.
This can be seen in the SST data:
There has been a marked warming in the Nino3 to Nino 4 region, but the rest of the tropical Pacific is neutral with respect to 1961-1990 average. Taking into account the effect of global warming, that means they are slightly cooler than we would expect. Crucially, that means while we currently have drier conditions for eastern Australia, as would be expected from an El Nino, we do not have a pool of warm water of the central American coast bringing wetter conditions there.
It is possible that the eastern Pacific trade winds could weaken, turning this into a true El Nino, but it is by no means certain. I think the BoM is right to be cautious. I also think looking at more data than just the SST in a single constrained region shows my distrust of such indices (ie, Nino 3.0, 3.4 and 4) is justified.
Unfortunately, the pages for the Multivariate Enso Index are currently down, so I cannot add them into the analysis.
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John Hartz at 09:08 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
bill f:
Wili and I both documented that NOAA had declared an El Nino as also detailed in the following:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists reported the switch to official El Niño status in their latest technical bulletin on Thursday, and outlined their decision process in a blog post .
El Niño Has Arrived, and It Could Produce the Warmest Year on Record by Eric Holthaus, Slate, Mar 5, 2015
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michael sweet at 08:24 AM on 7 March 2015Antarctica is gaining ice
Quantummist,
I posted a reply here where it is on topic.
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michael sweet at 08:22 AM on 7 March 2015Arctic sea ice has recovered
Quantummist,
Your quote from NSIDC is interesting. I wonder why you picked a quote from Feburary 2014 istead of a more recent quote.
This years NSIDC report did not mention the CRYOSAT data. Nevin has a good article on the January 2015 PIOMAS data here. PIOMAS and CRYOSAT usually agree. The data does not really have anything unusual to report. Perhaps next week when the new PIOMAS data comes out it will be more interesting since, as the moderator pointed out, Arctic sea ice is currently at it's all time low for the date.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:11 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
billthefrog@8,
I share your understanding of the terminology. El Nino/La Nina conditions are the average surface temperature anomaly of the of the Nina 3.4 region. As indicated on the NOAA ONI history page we both linked to in our earlier comments, the anomaly is being measured against a 30 year average. And that 30 year average is updated every 5 years because the ocean has been warming. The NOAA ONI page includes a link to a page that presents how the 30 year average has increased. It also shows that the 30 year average is not just 'a temperature', the 30 year average that the anomaly is calculated from has a different value for each month.
So an El Nino condition occurs any time the Nino 3.4 region anomaly is 0.5 C or warmer (the term is probably even applicable when weekly average values are 0.5 C and above). And NOAA declares an El Nino event to have occured when a set of 5 consecutive 3 month averages of the Nino 3.4 anomaly, what they call the ONI, are 0.5 C or warmer.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorolgy definition of what constitutes an El Nino event may not be exactly the same. Their latest ENSO update here states there is a 50% chance of El Nino forming in 2015 even though by NOAA methods only one more month of warm enough waters would be needed for NOAA to declare that an El Nino event has occurred.
There is also a range of strengths of El Nino events and even the linking of the ocean surface temperatures to trade wind patterns that could spread the warming effect of air passing over the warmer ocean surface to other areas of the planet. And there is other Pacific Ocean surface anomalies like the current large warmer area off the west coast of N. America shown on the following Australian link that can occur without an El Nino event being declared.
It is very complex, but regardless of the potential variations of terminology there is no doubt that the warming due to excess CO2 from human activity continues to occur.
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Quantummist at 05:42 AM on 7 March 2015Antarctica is gaining ice
In a statement issued on 5 February, the NSIDC said: “Preliminary measurements from the CryoSat show that the volume of Arctic sea ice in autumn 2013 was about 50% higher than in the autumn of 2012. In October 2013, CryoSat measured approximately 9,000 cubic kilometers (approximately 2,200 cubic miles) of sea ice compared to 6,000 cubic kilometers (approximately 1,400 cubic miles) in October 2012.”
Moderator Response:[PS] Please note that this topic is for discussion of Antarctic sea ice so arctic conditions are off topic. Also note that it is better to look at trends rather than short term variation though today's ice numbers are "interesting".
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billthefrog at 05:12 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
@ John Hartz #6
Hi John,
On the Oceanic Nino Index page to which I linked in #5 (and unwittingly repeated in #7), it states that...
"For historical purposes cold and warm episodes (blue and red colored numbers) are defined when the threshold is met for a minimum of 5 consecutive over-lapping seasons"
I've always taken that to indicate the difference between el Nino conditions being met for some undefined transient period, and a formal el Nino declaration. (That's why the red/blue periods are always in groups of at least 5.
However, I was sure I had also read something to that effect elsewhere. The page I was trying to remember is here, and the relevant bit says...
"Niño 3.4 SST anomalies are averaged over the three months ending with the current month, and that value is called the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI). If the ONI exhibits warm or cool phase conditions for at least five consecutive values, it officially becomes an El Niño or La Niña event."
Obviously, if the basis of your understanding supersedes the above, then I stand corrected and humbly defer to you and Wili.
Either way, this is almost at the semantics level: I'm sure we all agree that it's on the cards - if not now, then next month.
cheers bill f (and apologies again for the inadvertent repetition)
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixes done as requested
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Zeke Hausfather at 04:54 AM on 7 March 2015Understanding Time of Observation Bias
Slight error: the above figure is correct, but the TOBs corrections shown for USCRN are from midnight to 4 PM. All the TOBs corrections done to USHCN data are relative to a midnight observation time.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:53 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
The NOAA report indicates that current Nino 3.4 conditions are in the El Nino range. It also indicates the expectation is for low level El Nino conditions through 2015.
The NOAA report includes Figure 7 showing the ONI predictions of models (The NOAA ONI is the 3 month average of the Nino 3.4 region). Only a few models indicate the potential for a reasonably strong El Nino in 2014/15. Even the strongest model predicted event is significantly less than the magnitude of the 1997/98 event which had ONI peak values of 2.3 and 2.4 C as can be seen in the NOAA ONI value history here). Most models indicate a low level El Nino and a few indicate no El Nino.
The latest Australian summary of ENSO conditions here also indicates the expectation is only weak El Nino conditions to develop.
Modelling of long term generalized multi-year average climate conditions has been proven to be quite reliable (with the primary uncertainties being the actual impacts of things like how much excess CO2 will be generated), however, the accurate prediction by models of near term things like the ENSO is less 'reliable'. In spite of the variable success of near term prediction, in the big picture the average of the model predictions of many such potential climate related events is likely quite reliable. Said another way, if you looked at many years of predictions of the ONI the average predictions of all the models through all of the years would probably be seen to be quite reliable, even though specific years could be found where the outliers among the predictions were the ones that got 'that year right'.
So, for a strong El Nino event to develop in 2015 an outlier model prediction would need to be the correct one, which has a low likelihood of occurring, but such unlikely events can still be what happens.
What exactly will happen in the near term can be quite uncertain and is best forecast by "Wait and see", even though what will happen long term, in the averages of many years, is able to be quite reliably predicted.
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Zeke Hausfather at 04:40 AM on 7 March 2015Understanding Time of Observation Bias
The folks at WUWT provide a critique of TOBs adjustments today that, ironically, provides a pretty good validation for those adjustments. They compare the Kingston USHCN station to a nearby pristinely sited USCRN station. The Kingston station had its time of observation shifted from 9 PM to 4:30 PM. If we do the same shift to the hourly Kingston CRN data, we get quite similar results:
Over this period, the mean USHCN Kingston TOBs adjustment is -0.74
The "correct" TOBs adjustment based on the USCRN Kingston station is: -0.70Moderator Response:[RH] Adjusted image size. Please try to keep your images limited to 500px wide.
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John Hartz at 04:15 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
bill f: I do believet hat wili is correct...
Just when everyone had pretty much written it off, the El Niño event that has been nearly a year in the offing finally emerged in February and could last through the spring and summer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday.
This isn’t the blockbuster, 1998 repeat El Niño many anticipated when the first hints of an impending event emerged about a year ago. This El Niño has just crept across the official threshold, so it won’t be a strong event.
“We’re basically declaring El Niño,” NOAA forecaster Michelle L’Heureux said. “It’s unfortunate we can’t declare a weak El Niño.”
After Much Ado, El Niño Officially Declared by Andrea Thompson, Climate Central, Mar 5, 2015
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billthefrog at 02:58 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
Hi Wili,
I think you will be proven correct, but you're slightly premature at the moment.
The key phrase to look out for is "el Nino conditions".
For an el Nino to be declared, the 3-month rolling average has got to be 0.5oC (or more) up on climatology for at least 5 consecutive periods. The last 5 such periods were as follows...
ASO(+0.2) SON(+0.5) OND(+0.7) NDJ(+0.7) DJF(+0.6)
We therefore need to wait for the March numbers, but - assuming I've got my sums right - unless the monthly anomaly drops to below about +0.2oC, then the 3-month JFM figure should be at least +0.5oC (with rounding).
The rolling-3 figures are given here.
cheers bill f
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hank at 02:52 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
> potential for a strong El Nino developing this year too.
Did you mean to quantify that as "low potential for a strong ..."?
I haven't found an agency suggesting a strong El Nino is at all likely.E.g. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/02/climate-oscillations-and-the-global-warming-faux-pause/comment-page-3/#comment-626577
Moderator Response:[Rob P] - Don't have much time to explain at the moment, but I'm writing a series on the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) which ties into this.
You are, however, misinterpreting what I have written. The potential for a strong El Nino exists because the southern hemisphere subtropical cell and subtropical ocean gyre circulation have spun down, unlike last year where the trade winds were persistent south of the equator. There is a greater potential for the current Kelvin wave to cross the Pacific and not be weakened by the subtropical cell and South Equatorial Current pumping heat out of the tropics - thus encouraging atmospheric reinforcement.
This doesn't mean we are due for a strong El Nino, merely that underlying oceanic conditions are more conducive to such. The situation could quickly change. As ever, I keep a beady eye on the situation.
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hank at 02:48 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
Typo alert for the main article above:
"continued warming of the plant"
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wili at 02:37 AM on 7 March 2015The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security
Thanks for the reply and the cool graphs.
Sooo, is it time for another El Nino update?
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Peter Metaskeptic at 22:12 PM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
It's not much, but it's a start. I'm grateful and won't ask for more insights, at least here.
Thank you all. See you around :)
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billthefrog at 22:06 PM on 6 March 2015Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?
Glenn,
I hadn't realised that Gilbert Plass's work was funded by the ONR - just goes to show that, even at my advanced age, one can still learn something new every day. (Assuming one is prepared to do so, of course!)
cheers bill f
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Stephen Baines at 22:02 PM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
Peter,
You are asking people to explain why they don't understand what they don't understand, which of course requires that they understand it. I read your post and it is very difficult to understand. You have to take that as an honest assessment of a reader.
It sounds like you are basically saying that we need a science that makes more of an emotional connection with people. What that entails exactly, even what you even mean by science in this case (you seem to be using teaching science as an example), and even if I am interpreting your statement correctly, is unclear to me.
It probably is not appropriate on this thread to properly dissect the ins and outs of your blog post in detail. Maybe you could bring a single observation or point up for discussion?
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Glenn Tamblyn at 21:23 PM on 6 March 2015Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?
BTF
"Sounds like the Pentagon is part of that sneaky red/green commie/environmentalist plan to install a one-world government under the aegis of the United Nations.".
Yep. And it goes all the way back to at least the 1950's.
Gilbert Plass's work leading to his publication of "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change" in 1956 was funded by the Office of Naval Research.
And the data in the HiTran spectroscopic database on infrared absorption properties of gases in the atmosphere was first being measured during the 1950's in support of US developments of the first heat-seeking air-to-air missiles.
The commonly used program ModTran that can be used to calculate infrared transmission through the atmosphere is 1/2 owned by the Pentagon. The officer responsible for signing-off on it's specs, testing and acceptance was for many years the Commandant of the USAF Geophysics Laboratory at Hanscomb Air Force Base in Massachusetts.
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Peter Metaskeptic at 20:54 PM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
I get the picture :D
Now, I could bring the crouton but I would rather have an explanation. Fair enough for you?
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Rob Painting at 20:20 PM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
It's word salad to me as well.
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Peter Metaskeptic at 18:56 PM on 6 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10A
About "We must defend science if we want a prosperous future" by Barry Jones.
Texts like this one are very important because they point out to a much bigger issue than global warming alone, or vaccination, etc. Good thinking, or the lack of, is a root problem that has to be address.
Regarding our line of defense, I would add that we should make a heavy use of social dilemmas.
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Peter Metaskeptic at 18:14 PM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
Rob Honeycutt,
Could you at least give one example of a sentence or a paragraph that lacks coherency? It might be really helpful. Thx.
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Rob Honeycutt at 14:43 PM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
While I would agree that christoz could be a little more polite, having now attempted to read Metaskeptic's piece, starting from the opening sentence, I find it to be completely incoherent. I could only describe this as word salad.
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Peter Metaskeptic at 12:23 PM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
chriskoz,
Frivolous person and I intimidate girls, whoua, you got my attention for sure. My answer is: you may be annoyed by the text, but there was no need to goes that far.
I will answer any fair question regading argument in my texts.
Have a nice day.
Moderator Response:[PS] Agreed, lets keep this seemly.
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KR at 12:13 PM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
ryland - It's not how loud you are, but whether or not you're heard.
Over the last few years I've seen more and more mainstream media (MSM) references to Skeptical Science, to RealClimate, etc, as reliable go-to sources of information.
And as Rob points out, the signal to noise ratio on SkS and RealClimate is worlds above that on the major denier blogs, where the comments seem to consist primarily of "yeah, me too", "it's a conspiracy", "you can't trust the scientists", repeated ad hominems, whackadoodle personal theories amounting to 'Just So' stories, and so on, rather than questions, information, or exchanges regarding the science of the opening posts.
Personally, I feel that that the content on the science sites is far higher than on the denier blogs.
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PhilippeChantreau at 10:29 AM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
SkS, Real Climate andOpen Mind are better communicators of climate science. Those other sites mentioned are much better communicators of BS, the kind that rings an ideological bell with a large portion of the population. That is what their popularity is based on. Not to mention the histrionics like "we're going to hang them all" type of thing, which never fails to get the crowds excited...
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Daniel Bailey at 10:10 AM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
Ryland posits a false equivalence, in that Ryland presupposes that the volume of comments is indicative of communication veracity.
In reality, in the time that it takes for Skeptical Science to pull up the pants-legs of scientific truth, the anti-science "skeptics" make up things that circle the planet 8-fold.
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:48 AM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
ryland... I would look at those numbers more in terms of signal to noise ratios. Anti-science blogs produce a tremendous amount of noise relative to any possible signal (legitimate scientific information). You should look at how much moderation is done on each site to tamp down the noise. Most of the anti-science blogs do little or no moderation, or worse, they actually moderate out more rational discussion in favor of the noise.
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ryland at 09:18 AM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
Is it fair to say that the various blogs, such as Skeptical Science, that put up posts on climate change are science communicators? As I thought it might be I looked the 20 most recent posts on each of six blogs, three largely agreeing with AGW and three more sceptical, and counted the comments for each of the posts. For the pro-AGW blogs Skeptical Science had 207 comments in total, RealClimate had a total of 2565 and Open Mind atotal of 1055 comments. This gave a a grand total of 3827 comments from readers of these blogs. For the more sceptical blogs, JoNova had a total of 3019 comments, Climate Etc had 8988 and WUWT 2730 This is a grand total of 14737 which is nearly four times the number of posts at the pro-AGW blogs.
I don't know whether or not all of the comments on all of the posts were in agreement, I doubt it, but why are there so many more on the sceptical blogs? From the numbers I think it reasonable to assume the readership of the more sceptical blogs is either a lot greater than for the pro-AGW blogs or on average, each commenter at the sceptical sites writes four times as many comments which seems unlikely Assumingit is the readership that is so much greater why is that as the pro-AGW blogs would be expected to be the better communicators of climate science to their readers?
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chriskoz at 08:15 AM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
Peter@8,
I've read your "Meta Skeptic pledge". I think you give very poor example of an interraction with 16y old girl at a counter as your approach to science communication. Those two have nothing to do with each other. One is your frivolous entertaining desire to intimidate the girl (or even overpower her ino unjustified submission), another is a responsible job of a teacher who wants future generations to inherit his knowledge.
In general you fail to distinguish entertainment from work, frivolous ignorance from responsibility. That does not make sense, like failing to distinguish falsehood from truth.
So the answer to your "pledge" is: teacher A is always better when it comes to his main job of having future generations inherit science. If A realises he made a mistake at some point (no one is perfect A in a real world - we are all a mix of A+B), then he must correct his mind and his teachings, according to the requirements of his profession. An entertaining abilities of teacher B is nice and of course A+that entertaining bit of B is desirable and better than A only, however it's only a gravy over a main meat of science accuracy.
Moderator Response:[PS] The tone of this comment is hardly conducive to constructive debate. Please avoid throwing accusations around.
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billthefrog at 06:18 AM on 6 March 2015Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?
@ PluviAL
Hi there,
First off, your choice of the initials BAE might not go down too well with BAE Systems plc. ;)
More seriously, I'm afraid your laid back attitude to the use of SI units is more than a little confusing. The phrase "air contains about 10 to the 22nd joules/watts of energy" being a prime example. The joule is the SI unit of energy, and the watt is the SI unit of power, and ne'r the twain shall meet.
If you have a TV or DVD that has a power consumption of just one watt when left in standby mode, that would still add up to an energy consumption of nearly 31.6 megajoules if you left it plugged in for a year. Another way of thinking about this would be to call it a bit under 9 kilowatt-hrs.
So when you talk about air containing about 1022 "joules/watts of energy", I really don't understand what you're trying to convey. (And I'm afraid it sounds like you are a bit wooly about this as well.)
However, let's assume you're trying to talk about the energy content of the atmosphere. Even then, that's a pretty meaningless concept, but let's try to go through the necessary steps. To start with, the mass of the atmosphere is about 5.3 x 1018 kg, and then we've got to think about the concept of Specific Heat. This is basically a constant* of proportionality linking the energy supplied to a "system", the mass of the "system" and the resulting temperature change of the "system". (*Of course, this is another one of those constants that isn't constant, as it is temperature dependent!)
If you are talking about the energy in some "system", it really makes more sense to talk about the delta from some specified state. For example, the famous Levitus paper on Oceanic Heat Content rise talks about the change in heat content from a given start date.
At the kind of temperatures humans experience (and stay alive) the Specific Heat of air is around 1010 joules/kilogram-Kelvin (J kg-1 K-1). That means it takes about 1010 joules to raise the temperature of 1 kg of air by 1 Kelvin.
Scaling up (and ignoring variations in Specific Heat and not even considering Latent Heat) it therefore takes about 5.3 x 1021 joules to bring about a one degree K change in temperature. The total energy content of the atmosphere (ignoring Mass-Energy of course) would therefore be the energy required to raise its temperature from Absolute Zero to its present state. We're now talking somewhere in the vague region of 1024 joules, or a yotta-joule.
Similarly, the opening sentence in your third paragraph seems to have gotten away from you somehow. Yep, the insolation at TOA is about 1.74 x 1017 watts. After allowing for albedo effects, this comes down to about 1.2 x 1017 watts actually entering the climate system. This does indeed dwarf our current primary power conversion of about 1.8 x 1013 watts.
However, to categorize tapping into this resource in any seriously significant scale as being "very easy" is, in the short term at least, to engage in some seriously wishful thinking.
I'm obviously not grasping what you're trying to say - and I suspect I'm not alone - so please try again to gather your thoughts and have another go.
cheers bill f
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L. Hamilton at 03:36 AM on 6 March 2015Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?
It's a well-known pitfall (or technique) in questionnaire design that details of question wording and context can influence responses. If you're trying just to measure something then carefully neutral wording is best, and even then you might see a difference between "global warming" and "climate change" versions of the same question. On the other hand if you're actively trying to influence the responses (or test ways to do this) then wording or introductions that clue respondents about the "right" answers often have an effect. That's done in everything from psychology and survey experiments to advertisement testing or political push-polling ("Would you still plan to vote for candidate X if you knew that he ....").
Experiments in questionnaire design and framing can give clear evidence about the effects of such manipulations, but leave open the question of how that generalizes to real life. In testing an advertising or political campaign it might be straightforward, for communicating science in our hyper-polarized context, perhaps not so much. Neutrally-worded, minimally manipulative surveys provide a key reality check on what's happening to public opinion in real life.
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Peter Metaskeptic at 03:31 AM on 6 March 2015New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science
I do understand the classical approach taken by you guys, but I'm no more agree with it. I wanted to write an answer, but the text is too long and has become an article with a larger scope.
http://www.metaskeptic.net/metaskeptic-the-science-communicator-excuse.html
Moderator Response:[JH] Link enabled. Please note that we frown on commenters posting "ads" for their own websites.
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PluviAL at 03:26 AM on 6 March 2015Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?
The profusion of issues all show something else we all know, climate change is a complex, emotional, technological, and political issue. We focus on the technological/scientific issue, but the other aspects are just as important. This article’s attempt to bridge the emotional and political divide is important, though perhaps not well executed. We need more of this discussion. It’s an emotional argument before it is a political one, thus we must hear the opposition’s fears and concerns. Of course the US is more polarized than the British; we are more reliant on fossil fuels for our absurd city sprawl, and we have all the fuels we will ever need to ruin the climate in AC comfort.
I’ll not use the P word for which I was very kindly rebuffed, before, but let me insert the concept using a different term: Benign Atmospheric Engineering BAE. The atmosphere/ocean preesent the syptoms of the problem, air contains about 10 to the 22nd joules/watts of energy and growing. It is the interface between the ocean system, the land system, and space. It is the engine which creates wind by processing energy out into space.
What if we could insert our energy needs into this process of 26% from 175,000 TW per second, insolation? It is adjustable; either up or down. Which is what the discussion is all about. And it will amply supply civilization's current <20 TW needs, and future 200 TW needs... for space colonization. By invoking this energy, process, as source, we will affect the climate and change the characteristics of the atmosphere and land on the planet, but in a largely beneficial way, thus BAE. And it is very easy, farming is a minor BAE, so is hydroelectric, but this are very small and indirect processes. When we consider Geoengineering, we will open our minds to large scale and direct BAE, which is to the good.
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