Is this year what we can expect?
Is this year what we can expect?
In recent weeks a question I have been asked often, “is this year, the last couple of years, like what we can expect in the future?” The question is often asked quietly, perhaps by a planner, say, someone worried about water in their city. The question follows from not only a perception that the weather is getting “weird,”, but also some small aspect of experience in their job. For example, a water manager recently said they were seeing their local river showing a distinct change to sporadically high flow in the winter, smaller spring flows, and extremely small flow late in the summer. Is this what I should expect in the future? The short answer is yes.
This question of expectation has rolled around in my head for years. I am a gardener with aspirations for small farmer. Over the last 30 years, I have definitely pushed my planting earlier in the year. When I was in Maryland, I felt wet, cool Mays were becoming the “norm,” with my tomatoes sitting in sodden soil. At the same time I would recall plots I had seen in some recent presentation that showed modeled shifts in the warm-cold patterns suggesting springtime cooling in northeastern North America. These are the sorts of casual correlations that lead people to think are we seeing a new “normal.”
In 2008 I wrote a blog about the changes in the hardiness zones that are reported on the back of seed packages. These are the maps that tell us the last frost date, and there were big changes between 1990 and 2006. These changes in the seed packets caught the attention of a lot of people. Recently, NOAA published the “new normal.” This normal relies on the definition of climate as a 30 year average. (AMS Glossary) What was done - at the completion of the decade NOAA recalculated a 30 year average. That is, 1981-2010 rather than 1971-2000. This average changed a lot, with notable warming of nighttime minima. There was some regional reduction of summertime maxima; that is, cooling. All in all, the average temperature went up, with most of the increase in nighttime minimum, a fact that is consistent with both model simulations and fundamental physics. This also came with another update of those hardiness zones.
When trying to interpret climate information and determining how has climate changed and how will it change, the combination of observations, fundamental physics, and models provide three sources of information. The combination of this information and the determination of the quality of that information is subject to interpretation. In the case of determining whether or not we are already experiencing the climate of warming world and how that change will be realized in the next decades it depends on how we use the models.
In my previous entry on heat waves, I implied how to use these pieces of information together. There are fundamental physics in the relationship between temperature and moisture in the air; hot air holds more water; warm water evaporates more quickly. The question of the model is - how well does the model represent the movement of that moisture? For the heat wave example, it is important how well do the models represent persistent high pressure systems over North America in the summer? Are these high pressure systems represented well by the models for the right reasons? The answer to the model question has a range of answers. The model does represent these systems, but if you are an expert in summertime persistent high pressure systems, then you can provide a long list of inadequacies. How can we glean information about the quality of the model? If we look at weather models, then we were able to predict the heat wave – even with the inadequacies that the expert or skeptic can list. Returning to the climate model, do we see like events in the current climate, and do these events change as the planet warms? The answer is yes. Then can we use this to guide our development of plans to adapt to climate change? The answer is yes, if we can connect the model back to data and the fundamental physics. This does become a matter of interpretation – how strong or weak is that connection?
The more I work with planners the more I hear the need for interpretive information, expert guidance, advisories about climate and climate change. People start with the notion that they want digital data from climate models that looks like current weather data. Once presented with 1) the logistical challenges of using that data, 2) the complex nature of the uncertainties associated with that data, and 3) the relative importance of climate to other parts of their decision package – once presented with these facts, they move to the need for advice. This makes sense - most of us want a narrative weather forecast, rather than model output. And the models play the same role in the use of weather forecasts as they do in climate projection. The models guide our thinking, with the ultimate forecast based on that guidance refined by observations and fundamental physics.
This entry started with the question I hear more and more – is this year what we can expect more of in the future? I have a mantra which is that on average the surface of the Earth will warm, ice will melt, sea level will rise, and the weather will change. What we are seeing here is weather changing in a warming, more energy laden, environment. The extraordinary extremes that we have seen in the last year and are seeing this year are quite solidly connected to both fundamental physics and the guidance from climate and weather models. Hence, my answer, as I walk around my garden, thinking how to get better tomatoes next year, thinking about my irrigation system in my doddering retirement, is yes, what we are seeing this year tells me about what to expect in a future that is relevant to me - not something far off.
r
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Wookies???
That's not entirely correct. It's the nature of severe weather events that change when there's warming/cooling.
During periods of warming there's a tendency toward building ridges, so there's stagnation in the pattern that typically develops. So you get the type of severe weather that one would normally associate with stagnant weather patterns. Things like heat waves, droughts. Around the periphery of these building ridges you get your persistent rainfall patterns and flooding.
When there's cooling there's a tendency towards digging troughs. So the weather one would normally associate with digging troughs; things like intense areas of low pressure, blizzards, severe thunderstorm outbreaks, strong wind events, etc. are more prevalent.
Digging troughs also lead to a highly variable jet stream pattern, spreading out the regions that see severe weather whereas a stagnant pattern will see severe weather remain over a region for a longer period of time.
So it does seem like severe weather is more prevalent when its colder but of course it'll seem that way when one compares a progressive cold frontal passage/storm system to a stationary blocking high.
There "were" no ancient aliens.
Only Wookies...
Doesn't matter what caused it. It is a good indicator as to what may occur again. Since we are causing it to go up now at a much faster pace then back then the effects are going to be much worse and more rapid.
Neapolitan,
Do you typically go back and modify your comments?
************************************************* ***************
Yup, he does. Much like JF and SSI used to do.
That's one of the reasons I put this cat on ignore.
At least MSTL let his stand without edit. I respected him for that.
I understand your point. I was referring more to storms than heat waves. The clash of the colder air with the warm moist air feeds the supercell storms.
--In July, both Oklahoma and Texas had their warmest months on record, with monthly statewide average temperatures of 88.9 degrees F (31.6 degrees C) and 87.1 degrees F (30.6 degrees C), respectively. Oklahoma's statewide average temperature was the warmest monthly statewide average temperature on record for any state during any month.
--The July Climate Extremes Index for the CONUS was 37 percent. This is the highest July value in the CEI record (since 1910).
And now, some artwork. Remove your science-blockers and look closely, and you'll see a preponderance of reds and oranges:
More baseless and untrue allegations. Have you a single shred of proof that I've ever edited a comment (for anything other than punctuation, spelling, or grammar) unless I made inline note of the edit?
Yeah, I thought not. But I understand your frustration, I really do. If I were on the side of a debate in which I hadn't a leg to stand on, I too might very well resort to false accusations.
Can't wait for the GLOBAL DOT CHART for July!
I am sure like June
...
The world's highest official temperature is 136° recorded at El Azizia, Libya, on Sept. 13, 1922
120 Aug. 12, 1936 Seymour
Do you think they left the site or just the handle ? :)
They left the site.
I scored pretty good in body language and "speech patterns".
:)
That's Worse than Purgatory.
Wu nether Land
That's an incredible stat for Oklahoma. I was expecting them to come in close to their hottest on record but to go into hottest ever statewide monthly average is historical by any metric.
As noted in the previous blog, this heatwave will be noted for the high humidity which accompanied it, likely making for a shattering of the record high minimum temperatures and a top 5 high max temperature yielding the new record mean for Oklahoma. Every event has its own characteristics. The monthly average temperature came in at 77.0°F for the US as a whole, or 4th place; top 5, as I said a case will need to be made for. The summer thus far (June-July) is tied for 6th.
What the stats show is that this heatwave is severe, right around a top 5, but not the worst ever. Even when August gets added into the summer average it won't be. We're about a half degree behind 1936/2006 and August thus far doesn't seem to be making a run at that record.
Link
Are you an August denialist? lol
Ya know of all the non-verbal communication classes I have taken over the years, none of them covered Beerception! That must be my problem after taking a 600+ point beating on my now 301k today (☼¿☼)
Yes, humidity in this particular event has stretched the heat index.
I suppose now we want to address the fact that these Top 5 record waves are happening at a faster rate since xyz-year record keeping began.
Rate?
Maybe the computers are just faster today than in 1979. You remember ColecoVision? Something about as powerful as that was recording data in 1979. And the results had to be plugged into a Lite Bright and then sketched by hand.
No wonder we think we're geniuses today. My XBOX can do what a whole pannel of instruments could do back in 1979.
Only at closing time Ossymon.
Only at closing time.
:))
You mentality is that of a frogs! How about stewing in this overnight?
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Mohandas Gandhi
And that is what happens when you take Christ out of the schools.
Actually, the science of that day was stuck in the earth-centered and sun-centered universe for a long, long while. You make out scientists to be some kind of special breed, but they're just like anyone else. They could only work with the tools available to them and knowledge in those days was not what it's today. What's remarkable to me is how things seem to have started with the earth then moved to the sun, followed by the galaxy and the universe itself. What's even more interesting than that is that it might go even further: multiple universes. It's amusing that we're always stumbling to find our center.
We didn't start with copernicus. Look at alchemy. It may not be as 'empirical' as you'd like it to be, but they were scientists in their own right. They were the forebears of modern chemists. Aristotle wasn't right either, but what he said made sense back then. He among many others are our forebears.
Many people say science started during the renaissance or the scientific revolution for whatever reason. As though science didn't exist before that because everyone was so enamored by religion there was no time for rationale thought. I think this is just a sign of how thick people can be. Reminds me of a bear contemplating the universe. No human being alive today can say when science started.
If you want to make religion your boogeyman, go ahead. But I suspect that the real boogeyman is inside each person, and it has nothing to do with religion; it's human nature. We're the monster.
Dude!
The impacts of a sweltering July extended well beyond the eastern two-thirds of the continental U.S. Both the extent and volume of ice in the Arctic were lowest on record for the month according to data and estimates from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and Polar Science Center.
NSIDC reported: Arctic sea ice extent averaged for July 2011 reached the lowest level for the month in the 1979 to 2011 satellite record, even though the pace of ice loss slowed substantially during the last two weeks of July.
Arctic sea ice typically begins declining in March or April, and bottoms out in September before mounting a recovery. Its lowest extent on record occurred in September 2007. Will the depleted extent in September 2011 rival that year?
Walt Meier, a scientist at NSIDC, told Bloomberg: will be another low year, very likely one of the five lowest. One year doesnt say too much in and of itself, but the long-term downward trend and the series of very low years is indicative of a thinner ice cover and warming temperatures.
Temperatures were, in fact, very warm in the Arctic for at least part of July. Wunderground meteorologist Angela Fritz wrote: In the first two weeks of July, air temperature over the North Pole was 11 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit above average. During the last two weeks of July, low pressure took over and brought cooler temperatures, although it appears this also acted to push the ice around, which resulted in a larger but thinner area of ice.
Indeed, while extent provides an idea of the sea ice coverage over the surface of the Arctic, the volume metric provides information on ice thickness as well - offering a more complete picture of whats happening to the ice. It is not measured directly, but estimated by a model (from the Polar Science Center out of the University of Washington) that assimilates data from a variety of different measurements (taken at different times/locations) from satellites, Navy submarines, mooring and field observations With respect to July thickness, the Polar Science Center reported: Monthly averaged ice volume for July 2011 was 8.900 cubic kilometers. This value is 51% lower than the mean over this period, 62% lower than the maximum in 1979, and 2.5 standard deviations below the trend.
From the image above, its clear the sea ice volume is on track to be the lowest on record.
The ice retreat opens up new navigation opportunities for ships. According to NSIDC: Over the past few weeks, the sea ice edge has retreated from the shores of Siberia and Eurasia, potentially opening up much of the Northern Sea Route, the shipping lane that runs along the Eurasian Arctic coast from Murmansk on the Barents Sea, along Siberia, and through the Bering Strait.
We have additional updates when new data become available in September and October.
Link
.
So let me put it another way...
The Great Global Warming Scare inspires new age believers to reinvent society in their own image. Much time passes and now science has a new opinion. Suddenly the new age believers are fighting the science to retain control of things. Ultimately, they lose. Same thing happened when people like galileo and copernicus started to shake things up. They weren't just trying to convince the church, as you might claim, but they were also trying to convince their colleagues and other thinkers like them. This is because the earth-centered and sun-centered era was millenary. It was usurped in hundreds of years. What's so amazing is that in a short period of time we're already focused on the universe and now looking for other ones. In other words, it's almost as though this knowledge is moving exponentially.
Where will it go? How FAR will it go? I bet they asked the same question a thousand years ago or even more. It's not as though imagination only emerged just recently. But either we hit a limit and everything stops, or it keeps going and going.... And we, ofc, either resist like the church people resisted to see a larger universe or we go down that dark eerie road to puzzle over its mysteries.
OUCH!
A Necessary Condition for Arctic Drilling
Published: August 8, 2011
The Obama administration%u2019s decision on Thursday to give %u201Cconditional approval%u201D to Royal Dutch Shell%u2019s plans to begin drilling four shallow-water wells in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska alarmed many environmentalists. Cleaning up an oil spill in the frigid, turbulent waters of the Arctic Ocean is likely to be far more complicated than it was in the comparatively benign waters of the Gulf of Mexico.We have misgivings about this plan for just that reason. But President Obama, who indicated last year that he would honor Shell%u2019s leases if it passed various environmental reviews, seems determined to proceed. The administration should require that Shell meet basic safeguards before it receives final permits to begin punching holes in the ocean floor.
The most important safeguard, spelled out in an Aug. 4 letter from the Department of the Interior, is that Shell demonstrate the capacity to quickly contain a blowout %u2014 not with skimmers, relief wells or other surface equipment, all of which Shell promises %u2014 at the source. Perhaps the most shocking discovery in the gulf disaster is that nobody, federal regulators included, knew how to contain the leak once the blowout preventer failed. The result was a devastating 86-day gusher.
It will presumably be easier to plug a leak at 160 feet %u2014 the average depth of Shell%u2019s projected wells %u2014 than it was at 5,000 feet. But any well drilled below the ocean surface will generate great pressure, with the risk of a blowout. Shell%u2019s celebratory press release Thursday said it %u201Cremains committed to fabricating an oil spill capping system.%u201D That%u2019s much too vague. Ken Salazar, who as the interior secretary is responsible for giving the final go-ahead, must insist on a functioning capping system.
Link
.
Below I'm providing a comparison of ice thickness estimates from PIOMAS and the Navy PIPS2 and ARC models. I'm also providing comparisons of ice thickness for last winter using the aforementioned models, as well as the observational data from the Cryosat-2 satellite. Unfortunately the color legend for the PIPS2 and ARC models didn't appear with the graphs I'm linking, so it was just easier to provide the links the source following each map, where the corresponding color legends can be seen as well. The color legends for the PIPS2, ARC, and Cryosat-2 data are somewhat different, but I think are similar enough to enable a reasonable side-by-side comparison between the maps, which is why I'm including the maps inline. Note that the PIOMAS graph is given in № 282 so I'm using data from there.
Currently, the IARC-JAXA shows the arctic sea ice area as just under 5x10⁶ km²; So, with PIOMAS suggesting that current ice volume is only 6000 km³, this would mean that the average ice thickness is only about 1.2 metres. This is in stark contrast to both Navy models that give estimates of ice thickness, as shown below.
The above is the Navy PIPS2 model for August 5th, which is the latest available. Note that the source for map as well as the color legend are available here. I'll assume that the ice thickness wouldn't have changed too significantly in three days time.
The above is the Navy hycomARC model for ice thickness for August 8th. Map source and legend are here.
I know that there is some dispute whether the PIPS2 model is intended for estimating ice thickness, but it is my understanding that the newer ARC model is intended to be, and both Navy models seem to agree reasonably well. Moreover, both models suggest that PIOMAS significantly underestimates the volume of arctic ice; as can be seen by the fact that both models show the average ice thickness to be far greater than 1.2 metres.
Similiarly, when one looks at the Cryosat-2 data from last winter, which is not a model but based only on observational data, it agreed very well with both Navy models as well. All three graphs are shown below for comparison.
Map source and legend are here.
Map source and legend are here.
Map source is here.
Meanwhile, it can easily be shown that for the same time frame IARC-JAXA shows arctic ice area to be about about 12.5x10⁶ km² while PIOMAS shows the corresponding volume to be about 18000 km³, yielding an estimated average thickness of only 1.5 metres. This is obviously far less than Cryosat-2, PIPS2, and the ARC graphs suggest.
Furthermore, the PIOMAS model is suggesting that the ice volume is currently only about 2/3 that of 2007, and assuming that the 2011 curve mirrors the 2007 for the next month or so, that 2011 will have about 1/2 the ice volume that 2007 did--yet somehow 2011 extent and area will be at worst similar to and most likely greater than 2007.
It seems rather unlikely to me, and I think I'm more inclined to believe the Cryosat-2 observational data and the two Navy models, which all seem to reasonably agree, than the outlier, namely the PIOMAS model.
But one shouldn't necessarily try to make comparisons between the severity of a particular heat wave and the average temperature of the US as a whole. As you can see from the NOAA map I posted, the five westernmost states in the Lower 48--California, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, and especially Washington--have been very cloudy and thus very cool, and that's obviously dragged down the nation's average.
So far as August is concerned, the heat is not just continuing where July left off, but increasing. Not everywhere, true, but in the midst of the area that's been most severely affected by the heat wave and drought. Through yesterday--and the final numbers are not yet in, of course--record daily highs alone have outnumbered record daily lows by 1,509 to 54, or 27.9 to 1. (Record daily highs and high minimums are beating out record daily lows and low minimums by 3,569 to 112, or 31.87 to 1.) With that in mind, I don't think August as a whole will have any problems holding its own. (Too, the SPC's outlook calls for a cooldown in the upper Midwest and Mississippi Valley, but a warmup elsewhere, with the Southwest and Inter-mountain West finally getting in on the action.)
A few other tidbits:
--Dallas set no record highs in July; it's seen five in the first eight days of August.
--Oklahoma City saw four record highs in all of July; it's also had five this month.
In reference to the real JB's use of temperature charts that only begin in 1996 or 2001:As to the rest of the Meteorological Muscleman's rant: within the denialist echo chamber, the accepted line is that global warming has somehow been discredited. That's what they keep telling each other, but it's a "fact" only within the fantasy-based Denialosphere they've made for themselves. But out in the real world--you know, where truth is constructed through facts, open debate, and research--scientists are increasingly convinced that a) the global climate is changing much more quickly than expected, and b) our burning of fossil fuels is driving that change. In fact, the climate continues to behave pretty much as climate models have been predicting for the past 25 years, so JB's--and Watts', and Pielke's, and Spencer's, and etc.--anti-scientific nonsense means nothing.
Fine and dandy. However, what about the downward trend on all of them?
You ought to write a book and call it the "Cherry Pickers Guide To Climate Change." LOL!
"Not to make that dreary Monday morning you want a little sadder, but the Arctic is currently hotter than the Netherlands. Resolute Bay, which lies in the Arctic north of Canada, last week saw record temperatures up to 65.6 degrees.
"Flower fields are in bloom and climatologists are running around in short sleeves, according to a Belgian newspaper. The average year-round temperature in this northern town is just above zero at about 2.5 degrees, while the average daytime temperature in August is about 39 degrees. The highest temperature so far in this place was 65.1 last month, which was five degrees higher than the previous record from 2000. (The lowest temperature ever recorded in this area was -62 degrees in 1966.) The hot wind from North America and the fact that now is high summer, with almost 24 hours of light at the North Pole, explain the phenomenon.
"The word 'Arctic' sounds cooler than it is," says weatherman Eddy De Mey. Moreover, Resolute Bay is at the same latitude as Greenland, and not in the middle of the Arctic per se. But still, 65.6 degrees at that spot is a record figure, which makes it a true Arctic heat wave. This is the current somewhat bewildering landscape: no barren snowfields, but a land of flowers, including pool poppies."
Indeed, this image shows spots of very anomalous warmth in and around nothern Canada.
What this means for the ice is anyone's guess...
Serial Number: 70
Issue Time: 2011 Aug 09 0812 UTC
SUMMARY: X-ray Event exceeded X1
Begin Time: 2011 Aug 09 0748 UTC
Maximum Time: 2011 Aug 09 0805 UTC
End Time: 2011 Aug 09 0808 UTC
X-ray Class: X6.9
Optical Class: 2b
Location: N17W69
NOAA Scale: R3 - Strong
Here is what it means!
However.Infinitesimal effect on climate!
No like the ability to identify a downward trend like this since 1979! That is not cherry picking! Comprende?
Or this!
Semper Fi.
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