"Years of Living Dangerously"

Climate change is a complex topic and even some of the experts have a difficult time grasping all of the implications.  As the climate changes so does the society and world in which we live.  The most recent findings of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) point out what the science knows and the risks ahead.

Now a documentary series tries to bring the knowledge of climate change to the ordinary person.  It does this by telling the stories of people affected by climate change.  How does degrading the environment affect the world and the food you eat?  How does drought relate to climate change?  What are the risks involved in our future?

These are some of the questions addressed in a new Showtime series airing Sunday, April 13, 2014, at 10 p.m. called “Years of Living Dangerously”.  It is a nine-part series that will address a number of topics related to climate change.

The first episode is already available on the internet at the website www.yearsoflivingdangerously.com .  If you do not get Showtime, you can watch it here.  Below is a discussion on the documentary and climate change from two of the participants in the program on a recent Face The Nation on CBS:

Weather? Climate? Confused?

Have you noticed the attention the weather has been getting in the media?  The cold blast for much of the U.S. & Canada, the trapped ship in the Antarctic, and the storms hitting Europe around Christmas are just a few examples.  Other news reports that you may not have been aware were the floods in southern Brazil and in the Caribbean, the heat wave in Argentina, the usually cold weather in the Middle East.  These are all weather events.

Some media outlets are reporting the cold events indicate that we have little to fear from global warming.  Yet global warming does not cancel the seasons.  In fact what we know about our changing climate is to expect more weather extremes worldwide.   Not just heat waves, but more floods, droughts, and even energized storm systems.  This is how a changing climate translates into daily weather.

Often many in the media confuse the difference between weather and climate.  Don’t worry, because some meteorologists do too.  The weather is basically composed the events that unfold in the present.  Meanwhile climate looks at the long term average of weather.  By definition this is a 30-year period.  We can look at shorter term trends to look at how changes are progressing, but we still have to look at the climate period of 30 years.

When Weather Becomes Climate

Note: It has been a busy three weeks which included a week of much needed vacation.  Much has happened in the interim.  I am working on a number of posts which will be rolled out in May.

Meanwhile, many people often confuse weather with climate.  You have heard the refrains like it is so cold, how could the earth be warming?  Or how can we be in a drought when we’re having a flood?  Just when does weather become climate?  Good question!  Meteorologists at the European Space Agency have produced an answer to that question.

The following video is about 12 minutes long, but it is well produced and worth the time to view it.  They have a wealth of information with which to determine climate change and it is interesting comparing weather in the early 1800’s to weather today.  I hope you enjoy this production.

Click here: When Weather Becomes Climate

Energy And Climate

The 2013 annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society took place this past January in Austin, Texas.  One of the topics was that of energy and climate.  Billionaire T. Boone Pickens spoke on Sunday evening before the annual meeting began.  It was an enjoyable evening and interesting to hear was he had to say.

T. Boone Pickens

First, he holds a degree in geology from Oklahoma State University.  Pickens said “I’m one of the few (petroleum) geologists that agree that global warming is happening.”  He agrees that we need to do something to mitigate the effects of the warming.  It is smarter to do something to avoid the problem rather than waiting until it happens to do anything.

However, he went on to say that hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) would be with us for the next 50 years.  Pickens said that wind and solar represent just 2% of the energy generation and he didn’t think that it would become substantial until it became economically more competitive with fossil fuels.  That means a price of about $6 for natural gas (it is just under $4 today).

Pickens is against the idea of a carbon tax or cap & trade.  However, he did not say whether he agreed with the idea of ending fossil fuel subsidies.  Tom Friedman of the New York Times has an interesting article on attacking carbon emissions and the fiscal debt.

Bad Place For Science

Two recent editorials in Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) are examples of why you don’t want to get your science from the editorial page.  The paper touts its views as conservative, but these examples are either meant to mislead or are out of ignorance.  They deserve to be put to rest once and for all.  You can read them here and here.

The first editorial attacks the notion that there is no consensus on climate change.  It uses a study published in November and can be read here.  The first red flag in the editorial is that they never mention where the study is published.  However, it did not take long for me to track down the paper.

It seems that the editorial originated with James Taylor, managing editor of The Heartland Institute’s Environment and Climate News, with a post he wrote on the Forbes website.  The original post on Forbes and thus the editorial in IBD have been thoroughly debunked here, here, and here.

Brian Angliss of Scholars and Rogues writes:

“The reality is that, contrary to claims made by Taylor and others at Heartland, every serious attempt to measure the degree of consensus among scientists and climate experts has concluded that the overwhelming majority of experts agree that climate is changing rapidly, that humans are the dominant drivers of the changes, and that model projections indicate that the changes will be highly disruptive if they’re not planned for. And every attempt to disprove the reported consensus has been disproved or shown to be based on distortions. Just like this attempt by Taylor has been.”

It's All About Chemistry

In 1827 the French mathematician and scientist, Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier postulated that something in the atmosphere was helping keep the earth warmer than it might otherwise.  He is generally credited with discovering the greenhouse effect even though he did not coin the phrase.  However, his work set the stage for later developments in the nineteenth century.

It was the British scientist John Tyndall who demonstrated the absorption of infrared radiation from different gases in 1861.  His work found that nearly all of the greenhouse effect was due to just a few trace gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2).  This was a startling discovery, because it had huge implications for Earth’s climate.

The Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius was the first to actually detail how a doubling of carbon dioxide would change the global temperature with the publication of his work in 1896.  His work eventually led to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903.  He is recognized with beginning modern climate science.

The discovery of global warming is a fascinating story.  I highly recommend the book by Spencer Weart by the name The Discovery of Global Warming.  If you are interested in the scientific papers, it is available in the collection called the The Warming Papers edited by David Archer and Raymond Pierrehumbert.

Note that the foundation of climate science occurred over a century ago.  It is also noteworthy that the trace gases were recognized for their ability to influence Earth’s climate as far back as the nineteenth century.

Fast forward to today.  The burning of fossil fuels has fueled (pardon the pun) the world economic growth.  China and the U.S. are the two largest emitters of CO2.  In the latest accounting the global growth in emissions continues.

How do we know that the increases in CO2 come from burning fossil fuels?

Denial Amongst TV Weathercasters

I was surprised this past week by an article in Rolling Stone magazine.  The article covered the issue of the denial of human-caused climate change among the nation’s television weathercasters.  It is an issue that has puzzled me given the science and the consensus among climate scientists.  One has to question why so many TV weathercasters seem to know more than climate scientists.  The article highlights a rather vocal group of communicators and can be seen here.

Screen grab of the Rolling Stone website.  Image Credit: Rolling Stone

There is one statement that I disagree with in the article.  It states that “Yet the cause of much of the meteorological mayhem – global warming – was rarely mentioned on air.”  The author implies that Sandy was caused by global warming.  I do not believe that this is accurate.  Sandy and other “meteorological mayhem” was enhanced in it destructiveness by global warming and climate change as I have written previously.

We're Melting! Melting!

“You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Oooooh, look out! I'm going! Oooooh! Ooooooh!”

                                                                                          From the Wizard of OZ

Dorothy watches the Wicked Witch of the West melt in the Wizard of Oz.  Image Credit: Everett Collection.

How many times have you seen this movie?  I won’t spoil the ending if you haven’t.  However, I couldn’t help remembering this line from the movie Wizard of Oz as I read a new report this week.

The report was published in the November 30 issue of the journal Science.  It was the work of 47 experts in glaciology from 26 institutions worldwide and the best estimate we have of the amount of ice being lost from Greenland and Antarctica.  The team analyzed different sets of data covering the period from 1992 to 2011 and included satellite measurements from NASA.

The Public Supports Action

The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University released their survey of the public (as of September 2012) in a bi-annual report.  A staggering 92% of Americans say the President and Congress should make developing sources of clean energy a priority.  The full report can be seen here.

The cover for the new report.

The Rise Of Extreme Weather

Extreme weather has always been with us, but the trend over the past few decades has been for it to increase in number.  The Climate Extremes Index (CEI) was developed by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and goes back to 1910.  It looks at the number of events that occur.  The graph below compares the period of January through October so that data from this year can be included.

The CEI for the period of January - October 1910 - 2012.  Image Credit: NOAA/NCDC.

The CEI with the experimental tropical cyclone indicator included.  Image Credit: NOAA/NCDC.

A new report recently released (before Hurricane Sandy) by Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, re-enforces this observation.  The report is about the increase in extreme weather over North America.  The report states:

The Global Weather Pattern Shifts

The previous post described how changes in the Arctic were causing changes in the weather and climate.  These changes extended down in the mid-latitudes where the impacts included cold, snowy winters.  However, the impacts of a warming earth do not end there.  Research shows that mankind is shifting the entire global atmospheric circulation.

Background

Meteorologists have developed an idealized view of the global atmospheric circulation over the past century.  It has long been recognized that there is too much heat at the equator and too little at the poles.  The atmosphere acts like “the great equalizer “ by transporting heat from the tropics to the poles.  If the earth were not rotating, this would be a simple straight-forward transfer.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the earth does rotate on its axis.  This has given rise to the three-cell global circulation model.  The three cells from the tropics to the poles are named: Hadley, Ferrel, and Polar.  This model is pictured below with the resulting wind patterns.

The three-cell general circulation model of the atmosphere.  This is an idealized model based on observations.  Image credit: NASA.

The Hadley cell (also known as the tropical cell) extends from the equator to 30 degrees latitude.  Many of the world’s major deserts lie at the poleward extent of the Hadley cell where the air descends from upper levels.  This produces a persistent dry climate with little rainfall.  The North American Desert, Sahara, Australian Desert, and Kalahari Desert all are products of this circulation.

The Effects of Losing Arctic Sea Ice

A dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice occurred this year resulting in a record-shattering minimum in mid-September.  The implications were touched upon in a previous post.  However, it is recognized that the loss of Arctic sea ice is changing the ecology, geology, and meteorology of the region.

I will focus on the meteorology in this post.  The Arctic is warming at a rate that is twice that of the mid-latitudes in a phenomenon known as arctic amplification.  This faster warming is reducing the temperature gradient between the high and mid-latitudes which in turn is changing the dynamics of the jet stream.

Image Credit: NOAA.

The jet stream is a river of high velocity winds in the atmosphere.  It meanders generally from west to east around the globe.  The speed of the wind in the jet stream is usually stronger in the winter than in the summer, because the north-south temperature gradient is much stronger in winter.

A cross-section of the atmosphere shows how the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, changes from the equator to the pole.  There are three circulation cells in the northern hemisphere and the jet streams are at the upper boundaries of the cells.  The jet stream helps to drive storm systems across the country so that knowledge of its future helps forecast future weather.

An Updated View Of Climate Change

The American Meteorological Society updated their statement on climate change last week while much of the country was preoccupied with Hurricane Isaac.  Research has greatly increased our understanding of the climate system and the body of research continues to expand at a rapid pace.  It overwhelmingly supports the consensus that the earth is warming and it is being caused by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

The full statement can be found here.  This newer version is a better read and accessible to the general public.  It is a conservative document and I am sure does not go far enough for some.  However, it is an important one as it represents the position of the society.  It is based on the science and not someone’s ideology or political orientation.  The previous statement on climate change can be found here.

An important point is summarized at the end in the final remarks:

Climate Change Attributions

Extreme Heat: The Odds Are Increasing, was published just before the American Meteorological Society (AMS) released their annual climate report this past week. 

The 2011 State of the Climate report is peer-reviewed and published annually as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The report is part of a suite of climate services NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions. It was edited by Jessica Blunden, Ph.D., and Deke Arndt of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. The full report can be viewed online. The report highlights are available online.

The map above shows where in the United States June 2012 temperatures were different from the 1981–2010 average. Shades of red indicate temperatures up to 8° Fahrenheit warmer than average, and shades of blue indicate temperatures up to 5° Fahrenheit cooler than average—the darker the color, the larger the temperature difference.  Image Credit: NOAA Climate.

Additionally, for the first time a complementary article was published by the AMS examining the linkages between climate change and extreme events of 2011. The paper looked at six global extreme weather and climate events from last year.

Extreme Heat: The Odds Are Increasing

A number of people have been asking me during this exceptional heat wave if it was being caused by global warming.  My response has been that “global warming doesn’t cause the heat wave; it causes the heat wave to be hotter.”  Privately I had been telling people that we would likely break the all-time record high temperature in Columbia in the next 20 years.  That was two years before it happened.

The fact that so many record high temperatures are being broken is no surprise.  A 2009 study published in the Geophysical Research Letters showed that daily record-high temperatures were outpacing daily record lows by a 2:1 ratio in the first decade of this century.  If the climate were not warming the ratio would be 1:1.  The study showed that on a business as usual scenario the ratio would expand to 20:1 by 2050 and 50:1 by 2100.

The ratio of high to low temperature records from the 2009 study listed above.  Click on the graphic for a high-definition view of the graph.  Image Credit: Climate Central.

However, this year the ratio has expanded to 7:1 for the nation since the beginning of the year.  Almost 8,000 high temperature records have been set in just the past month.  Some of these records recently have been all-time record highs breaking records from the Dust Bowl Era.  Keep in mind that there have been two record heat events already this year.  The first was the record warm spell in March and now the exceptional heat wave this past month.

The ratio of high to low temperature records for June and the first half of 2012.  Click on the graphic for a larger view.  Image Credit: Climate Central.

Cherrypicking & Misleading

I am frequently disappointed when I read articles or editorials claiming that human-caused warming of the planet is not happening or that climate science is wrong.  Such disappointment occurred recently as I read an editorial from Investor’s Business Daily (IBD).

The national newspaper covers international business, finance, and the global economy.  Its editorials are by its own admission conservative.  I use the paper for the detailed information on companies and have used it for over two decades.  It is a good source for financial information, but a poor source for science information.

An online editorial entitled “Facts Get In The Way-Again-Of A Good Global Warming Story” can be viewed here.  The editorial is meant to criticize a recent trip by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  The editorial begins “Hillary Clinton made a well-publicized trip last week to the Arctic to see for herself the impact of global warming. Less well known, however, are two reports that contradict the climate-change alarmists.”

Image Credit: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio.

“First, polar ice is now the heaviest "in more than a decade," reports the Los Angeles Times.” Later it refers to another report “Second, photos taken in the 1930s by Danish explorers "show glaciers in Greenland retreating faster than they are today, according to researchers," tech publication The Register reported.

I long ago learned to be highly skeptical of any claim by IBD.  The first red flag is that they are quoting other media sources and not the science research itself.  Fortunately I was able to track down both reports.  It turns out that the information is cherrypicked and misleading.

Flood & Drought: Part 1

This is the first of a three parts examining changes in the hydrologic cycle, also known as the water cycle.  Our changing climate is changing the water cycle and the weather patterns that deliver precipitation.

Part 1 is a rewrite of a blog post that I published in 2009.  It is as important today as it was then.  Part 2 will be an update of the observed rainfall extremes in the Southeast and U.S.  Part 3 will look at drought and new research as to why drought is becoming more common across the southern U.S.

From 2009:

The idea for this blog came from two sources. The first source was a comment on an earlier story.

In the comment section, a reader wrote:

“By the way, the article above does not inform you that global warming does not cause droughts or dry weather. Global warming would mean MORE RAIN.
I would defer to Mr. Gandy on that though. Am I correct Mr. Gandy, wouldn't global warming mean more evaporation of surface water and snow and more evapotranspiration from plants, causing more rain?”

This seemed intuitive, more water vapor, more rain.  Just over a year ago I was at a panel discussion in Denver, Colorado, where Dr. Kevin Trenberth mentioned that water vapor had increased about 7% globally.  Dr. Trenberth was a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change and serves on the Scientific Steering Group for the Climate Variability and Predictability program.  He currently heads the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.  This information has since been confirmed in several papers.

The top 10 daily rainfall totals for Columbia, SC.  Click on the image for a larger version.  Image Credit: Climate Central.

The second source came from a recent study (citation below) published 5 September 2009, in the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).  It has changed my thinking after a careful review of the paper.

Video: Extreme Weather and Rapid Arctic Warming

This is a repost of an article that appeared today at Climate Central.  It was originally published on the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media.  The video is produced by videographer Peter Sinclair who produces a series called Climate Denial Crock of the Week.  I have added a link to series under the Climate Links on the right-hand side of the blog.  There is more to this story and I will have a post on this soon.  In the meantime enjoy this video by Peter Sinclair.

By Andrew Freedman (Climate Central)


Recently I reported on a study showing links between rapid Arctic climate change and shifts in the jet stream throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The study, led by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, suggests that there may be an Arctic connection to some extreme weather events, particularly ones that result from stuck, or "blocked," weather patterns.

The study shows that by changing the temperature balance between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, rapid Arctic warming is altering the course of the jet stream, which steers weather systems from west to east around the hemisphere. The Arctic has been warming about twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, due to a combination of human emissions of greenhouse gases and unique feedbacks built into the Arctic climate system.

F. Sherwood Rowland: Scientist & Hero

Image Credit: Markos Possel Mapos

A few weeks ago word spread of the passing of F. Sherwood Rowland.  The first notice was a press release on the UC Irvine website.  He had an illustrious career as a chemist and won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but there are few in meteorology that didn’t know of him.  Those who knew him can tell you more about his career and they can be found at Real Climate and Climate Progress.  Rowland was a member of the National Academy of Sciences where there is a wonderful tribute to him.

Rowland along with post-doctoral student Mario Molino found that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a man-made substance, could be highly destructive to ozone.  One CFC could destroy up to 100,000 ozone molecules.  This could be damaging to the ozone layer even at concentration on the order of parts per billion.  The discovery led to their landmark paper published in Nature in 1974.

There were no observations at the time to confirm this, but it would not take long.  The first sign of trouble was reported by British scientists making measurements in the Antarctic.  Very low readings were being reported, but NASA could not confirm the observations from its satellite record.  A software glitch was found to be preventing NASA from seeing the low readings.  It turns out that the software was simply ignoring readings below 180 Dobson units, a measure of ozone concentration.

NASA was then able to confirm the British observations once the glitch was corrected and the data re-examined.  What they found was a tremendous hole in the ozone layer over the southern polar region.  The discovery sent shock waves through the scientific community and an international effort to study the phenomena was organized.

Warmer Winters, Fewer Freezes

This winter has been a warm one, but it isn't in the top ten just yet.  As of Tuesday, February 28, 2012, this winter ranks as the 11th warmest.  It might edge into the top ten thanks to a leap year.

Winters have been warming over the past few decades nationwide.  Here in South Carolina the winters have warm about 2 degrees F over the past 35 years.  The South has always enjoyed milder winters, but this has been more so lately in spite of the last two winters.

This map shows the average winter temperature trend 1976-2010.  Image Credit: Climate Central.

The warming has had benefits and problems.  Problems have included more summer insects, fewer chilling hours for peaches, and drier conditions.  However, one of the benefits has been a longer growing season.  The growing season has expanded by one week in the Midlands over the past 35 years.