July 23rd, 2010, 11:14 PM
We continue to set records, every month of this year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...rmest-recordedLast month's combined global land and ocean surface temperature made it the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any April-June and January-June periods, according to NOAA.
It was certainly warm in Bournemouth.
Dreadful place.Originally Posted by Bunbury
The Sodom of the South Coast they say. Not that I would know.
By the way, not to make light of your OP; this is almost tantamount to official climate change. According to the Grauniad article "June was the 304th consecutive month with a combined global land and surface temperature above the 20th-century average". This is a strong trend, and if it gets to 360 consecutive months it will be an actual shift in world climate based on the usual definition of climate a being the weather averaged for 30 years.
Now that the US Senate has abandoned serious legislation on climate, and China forges ahead with coal, I'm about ready to concede that we have lost fight to mitigate climate change, and our thoughts and efforts would better be focused on how to deal with the consequences. What say you?
I would agree. Though preventing even worse effects in the future are worth while. The longer we wait the more expensive it's going to be because we have to pursue both reducing carbon emissions AND warming mitigation. And as the Pentagon has warned us in two reports over the past five years (and pretty much ignored by an unreceptive VP/Pres), climate change is the greatest future national security threat to the US because of the international instability it will create.
Yes, we should continue with efforts to reduce carbon even though the carbon emitting industries have apparently won the PR battle. (Why wouldn't they - they have all the money.) But carbon mitigation efforts are likely to be on a relatively small scale: sequestration of CO2 from coal fired power plants is not happening anytime soon or on anything approaching a large enough scale to make a serious dent in total emissions; use of CSP might just keep pace with population increase in the southwest; wind power is limited by integration issues; synthetic transportation fuels actually release more carbon than conventional oil.
We are already in a different world. The third world will feel the effects first and hardest but no one is immune.
Unfortunately the politicians and economists of the world would rather do nothing as they claim 'the economy is fragile and more susceptible to damage than the environment'. Yet the scientists, like me, disagree... The politicians (well most) and businessmen are just inept and ignorant. The signs are clear, the consequences terrible yet the mitigation non existent.
The cost of doing nothing is far worse than doing something to prevent or slow anthropogenic climate change down...
Don't blame the economists.
In my opinion it is just the politicians and their owners in big oil and big coal. The economists generally understand that “The cost of doing nothing is far worse than doing something” – see the Stern Report; see the Economist magazine; and see what insurance companies are doing. Insurance companies have to play the odds and the odds are based on historical precedent. There is no precedent for what is happening now so insurance companies are going to be raising premiums tremendously for everything from storm damage to houses, crops, floods, everything, because of uncertainty about how the new world climate will affect risk everywhere.
Insurance companies have no vested interest in hiding the facts about uncertainty since their business is statistics.
Sorry I meant business men and politicians not economists. Also, I've read the Stern Report, so I understand...
The actual root of the problem is severe overpopulation, and that is an even more intractable problem than climate. There has been *no* serious discussion of this elephant in the room.
And that's actually a very good metaphor. If there is an elephant in your living room it didn't come in through the door fully grown because it wouldn't fit through the door. Now it can't leave for the same reason. It walked in as a baby and grew too big to leave. The only solutions are to knock out a wall, kill the beast, or let it continue to live and grow there while you feed it and deal with the emissions. The elephant in the room is a problem that has no attractive solutions.
Ditto overpopulation. The best we can hope for is to stabilize at 9 billion or so and deal with the emissions. I believe that population scientists have studied the issue in depth and have concluded that even with the best efforts of education, reproductive choices and governmental incentives, 9 billion is still the result.
I mean, I agree that overpopulation is the root of the problem, but what can be done about it?
People that are educated and wealthy (meaning not dependant on others for support) have fewer offspring than the poor and uneducated.
I don't know that anything can be realistically done about it.And that's actually a very good metaphor. If there is an elephant in your living room it didn't come in through the door fully grown because it wouldn't fit through the door. Now it can't leave for the same reason. It walked in as a baby and grew too big to leave. The only solutions are to knock out a wall, kill the beast, or let it continue to live and grow there while you feed it and deal with the emissions. The elephant in the room is a problem that has no attractive solutions.
Ditto overpopulation. The best we can hope for is to stabilize at 9 billion or so and deal with the emissions. I believe that population scientists have studied the issue in depth and have concluded that even with the best efforts of education, reproductive choices and governmental incentives, 9 billion is still the result.
I mean, I agree that overpopulation is the root of the problem, but what can be done about it?
it isn't all emissions, it is land use etc. Climate change may have started before any significant change in emissions if you believe Ruddiman.
Some calculations suggest that every child born has roughly 20 times the climatic impact of the maximum savings that the greenest person could hope to achieve.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/c...arbonStudy.pdfA 2009 study of the relationship between population growth and global warming determined that the “carbon legacy” of just one child can produce 20 times more greenhouse gas than a person will save by driving a high-mileage car, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, etc. Each child born in the United States will add about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent. The study concludes, “Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.”
This upsets me.
Hmm, that's an interesting paper, but 20 is the cumulative footprint of all future descendants, not just of the original child, right? Not that that makes it better. The concept is clear enough - the problem is numbers of people, not so much what individuals do. But we can't stop people from having babies.
Bangladesh is often cited as an example of a country where climate change will result in mass migration of people, with the potential for conflict. Here's an example closer to home for some of us:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10770674
There is the footprint of the offspring in relation to the footprint of the parent, and there is the footprint of the potential offspring in relation to the carbon savings that a person could hope to achieve through typical green energy-saving measures. It is perhaps callous to equate a future child to a carbon footprint, but as long as we are comfortable equating existing people to carbon footprints we may as well equate the unconceived as well.
Since we are discussing future children here and what we want for them I think a little perspective might be in order.
There are two components to climate change. The part that was/is occurring due to the nature of Earths climate and the part that is being induced by us. The former I believe is probably not within our ability to change, the later we can and we are, but probably not to the satisfaction of everyone, but that is to be expected.
Now for the perspective:
Glacier recedes three thousand feet in four years.
From: The Ice age in North America, page 601, by G. Frederick Wright, Third edition, 1891.Another most interesting result of Mr. Russell's expedition has been to prove a recession since Vancouver's time of several miles of the ice-front at the head of Yakutat bay. This accords with my own conclusions respecting the Muir glacier, as stated on pages 51 to 57, and is amply confirmed by the observations of Professor H. F. Reid, who, with a small party, spent the summer of 1890 carrying on further investigations respecting that ice-field, and occupying nearly the same ground with my party of 1886. On comparing our photographs with his, Professor Reid is of the opinion that upon the eastern side that the ice-front facing Muir Inlet has receded three thousand feet in four years.
Unless I'm mistaken your quote describes the glacier calving cycle and doesn't really seem to have any relevance to the discussion.
Wikipedia:
The tidewater glacier cycle is the typically centuries-long behavior of tidewater glaciers that consists of recurring periods of advance alternating with rapid retreat and punctuated by periods of stability. During portions of its cycle, a tidewater glacier is relatively insensitive to climate change.
Ahh, for it to be cyclical it would need to re-establish its former size. Calving occurs do to flow pressure from up-ice and is sensitive to precipitation that adds mass. However, this link shows a series of photos starting with 1941 and an accompanying description of the Muir glacier:
http://geology.com/usgs/glacier-retreat/.
But, maybe the Ross shelf was just a tidewater event.
Calving speeds the rate of glacial retreat. As glacial melt continues, flowing water erodes the glacier and forms channels. Those channels deepen and broaden as melt waters continue to flow. The channels also then flow within the glacier, causing outward pressure, freezing and unfreezing, so (in short) volatility in the structure (as it expands and contracts). There is also an effect where by warm waters are drawn in below the glacier because of standard physical processes, and that warm water melts the glacier from underneath.
That's my recollection from a special on this in the US on a PBS program called Nova.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/extremeice/
There's a watch online feature at the above, too, but might not work if outside the US.
Maybe it was. Has anyone blamed the Ross ice shelf collapse direcly on AGW?Larsen B however is a different story.But, maybe the Ross shelf was just a tidewater event.
Well, the three major American TV networks alluded to the event as an example of such. But, that is not my point. My point is that since the LIA, Holocene warming has been and is continuing and that it is being compounded by fossil carbon in the form of CO2 being added to the atmosphere. Separating the effects of the two is difficult and only one can be partially ameliorated by any steps that we may take. The Earth's climate has never been stagnant and we are in an interstadial that has been relatively stable with several exceptions such as the mid Holocene altithermal and the LIA, and the Muir glacier did last expand during the LIA before resuming retreat. Where I live will probably be once again under ice in approximately fifteen thousand years, unless we can develop technologies to truly control, not just modify, our climate.
Unlikely; the orbital eccentricity and obliquity(tilt) are both decreasing which means we'll be spared from as deep an ice age as the last few for tens of thousands of years.
I'm a little more concerend about the next few hundred years rather than trying to predict the future for twice the length of the history of civilization. Even the IPCC doesn't make predictions beyond the year 2100.Where I live will probably be once again under ice in approximately fifteen thousand years, unless we can develop technologies to truly control, not just modify, our climate.
Your comments are increasingly irrelevant to the topic.
Isn't it possible that the decreasing eccentricity is leading to warmer global averages also?Unlikely; the orbital eccentricity and obliquity(tilt) are both decreasing which means we'll be spared from as deep an ice age as the last few for tens of thousands of years.
I am willing to change fifteen thousand years to some time in the future.Isn't it possible that the decreasing eccentricity is leading to warmer global averages also?Unlikely; the orbital eccentricity and obliquity(tilt) are both decreasing which means we'll be spared from as deep an ice age as the last few for tens of thousands of years.
And yes, Wild Cobra, I think we are in a period of warmer global averages plus our contribution.
Edit to add: If someone has a short timescale graph of the orbital parameters and could link me to it I would appreciate it. Of the many sources I have, most stop at zero (now) and the ones that go into the future deal in scales of 10k, 100k, or 1000k. I would like to see one in 1k or less through the next 100k years. (This request is not pertinent to this discussion but I would like to have the information anyway.) Thank you.
The eccentricity part I agree with, but beware the obliquity. I delayed responding to this part till I could be sure of what I had read and relocate the paper where I had read it.Unlikely; the orbital eccentricity and obliquity(tilt) are both decreasing which means we'll be spared from as deep an ice age as the last few for tens of thousands of years.
Haug et al. 2005
http://department.princeton.edu/geos...pdf/Haug05.pdf
Please read the entire paper because this snipet could be taken out of context in a manner that I do not intend.Thus, the obliquity minimum within isotope stage G6 at 2.7Myr
may have succeeded in beginning the age of intense Northern
Hemisphere glaciations specifically because it triggered the development
of the subarctic Pacific halocline, which then continued to
provide water vapour to boreal North America even as the globally
averaged atmosphere became colder and drier.
Now, obviously, the same conditions do not prevail today as they did 2.7mya, but expanding heat in the mid latitudes does move the Hadley cells that control the jet stream to the north and thus increase the moisture flow to the high arctic.
Thanks for a link to the paper. If you notice though, it said the conditions to initiate northern hemispheric ice caps were associated with warmer summers creating lots of available upwind moisture and colder winters. (sort of like synoptic and large scale version of lake effect snows). Based on astronomical forcing tilt will continue to decrease for about the next 10,000 years and we are also decreasing eccentricity (min is something like 20-30K years from now). In other words the opposite of their proposed situation--we'll have a narrowing of seasonal range, colder summers and warmer winters for something like the next 10,000 years. (see top two curves at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...itandCores.png)
Are you proposing that anthropomorphic green house gas warming by reducing sea ice and increased available moisture, might result in more land ice even with increasing land temperatures? When I read the increasing number of winter rain days being recorded even at high latitudes in places like Western Greenland, I'm doubtful.
The other neat thing about the paleoclimate reconstructions is the high resolution of the average seasonal temperature data, even if the temporal resolution is still relatively poor. The transition from a primarily 41K (tilt) driven climate of several million ago and the more recent 100K cycle which only matches the angle of orbital tilt (for unclear reasons) is another fascinating subject of study.
Generally the astronomical forcing is too slow to effect the hundred years without non-linear effects that we're still getting our arms around.
Is there evidence of that?My point is that since the LIA, Holocene warming has been and is continuing
What I was running into last I checked was that the LIA warming has ended, and we have been in a cooling stretch of that set of influences for quite a while now.
Counteracted recently, of course, by other and stronger influences.
You are welcome.
Not proposing anything except that as the planet warms under current conditions we could see rain patterns move north.
Indeed, I find the study of the Pleistocene particularly fascinating, but, that's me.
Agreed that things change too slowly astronomically for Human lifetimes to notice. There have even been some papers that the Clovis might not have noticed the Younger Dryas during there lifetimes. (Meltzer, D. J.).
I am sorry, I probably should not have used the acronym.
LIA = Little Ice Age
Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
From what I've seen we have entered a natural slight cooling phase, but the trend of the temperature anomaly graph still shows an overall warming trend.
I've looked at temperature anomaly graphs for dates way in the past and you can see the definite natural cycle of long ice ages and then shorter inter-glacial periods inbetween. The transition between these show steady rises in temperature from ice age to inter-glacial period. But when we look at the 'hockey-stick' graph for modern times, you can see a much sharper and rapid rise in temperature compared to the steady rises in the past. You can also see that this particular inter-glacial period we are in now is unusually long compared to most others in the past.
Many people are critical of anthropogenic climate change because of the 'medieval warming period' on the temperature graph. But this period of brief warming could be explained by increased effusive activity from volcanoes or increased solar activity. Furthermore, the medieval warming period's peak temperature has been dramatically overriden by the peak temperatures of today.
And now I see on the news that in Moscow and Finland temperatures have reached a record high of 37°C, which is a very large temperature anomaly for Russia and Finland...
I am familiar with the acronym. I should probably have said "post-LIA warming" - at any rate, most people last I looked seem to think it has been over, and the larger glaciation pattern embarked upon a cooling phase, for centuries now.
That would make the actual trend of temperatures recently even more striking.
The nineteenth century showed mountain glacier recession world wide and we hadn't kicked into high CO2 gear yet. I know of no peer reviewed paper stating that premise. Though, if there is one or more, I would love to read them. I would also point out that interstadials tend to end abruptly and if we were in a cooling phase and say we seriously knocked down CO2 and then a solar minimum popped up, we could have the opposite problem; unlikely.I am familiar with the acronym. I should probably have said "post-LIA warming" - at any rate, most people last I looked seem to think it has been over, and the larger glaciation pattern embarked upon a cooling phase, for centuries now.
That would make the actual trend of temperatures recently even more striking.
I have seen somewhere that it takes ~30 years forThe nineteenth century showed mountain glacier recession world wide and we hadn't kicked into high CO2 gear yet. I know of no peer reviewed paper stating that premise. Though, if there is one or more, I would love to read them. I would also point out that interstadials tend to end abruptly and if we were in a cooling phase and say we seriously knocked down CO2 and then a solar minimum popped up, we could have the opposite problem; unlikely.I am familiar with the acronym. I should probably have said "post-LIA warming" - at any rate, most people last I looked seem to think it has been over, and the larger glaciation pattern embarked upon a cooling phase, for centuries now.
That would make the actual trend of temperatures recently even more striking.to take effect in the atmosphere- to start absorbing radiation. So, basically we are experiencing the effects of our pollution from 1980; I dread to think what it will be like in 2030-40...
I was going to mentioned the lags seen in the geo/environ/ice records.
I posted one recently. Most were pretty stable or even increased to the start of the 19th century but were in mild retreat by the end of the century.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar...es/fig2-18.gif
I posted one recently. Most were pretty stable or even increased to the start of the 19th century but were in mild retreat by the end of the century.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar...es/fig2-18.gif
Nice graph
Got references for those, just the link is all I need.
Thanks
Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records
Johannes Hans Oerlemans 1*
Here's a link to the abstract (below). Haven't found the total paper available to public (non paying that is), though much of the material gets discussed by IPCC and the some of the popular climate web sites.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...e=3/31/2005%22
If you search the title you'll find a full copy hung on a few other web sites.
Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records
Johannes Hans Oerlemans 1*
Here's a link to the abstract (below). Haven't found the total paper available to public (non paying that is), though much of the material gets discussed by IPCC and the some of the popular climate web sites.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...e=3/31/2005%22
If you search the title you'll find a full copy hung on a few other web sites.
That's OK, the abstract tells me what I need to know and confirms what I thought. Science and Icarus are the two hardest papers to get, usually the author is your only hope.
Thanks again
Edit to add: got the paper but what's fun is to pull it in GOOGLE Scholar and then hit the Cited by button, and all kinds of good related stuff pops up.
2nd edit to add:I know no one cares, so I'm going to put this here. I just recieved "The Last Glaciation" by Ernst Antevs, 1928. I love the old stuff.
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