This is also shown by the NINO charts showing warming throughout the range. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml
SOI is down to is lowest value since September http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/soi30.png

This should confirm that there will be no La Nina, indeed the rapid warming of the Eastern Pacific and the Southern Pacific suggests an intense El Nino later this year is becoming more probable.

Just a quick background on me so folks know where I am coming from: by training I am a climatologist (degrees in Physical Geography) from a large university in the south. I spent a few years at one of the 6 Regional Climate Centers here in the US as well as running a statewide mesonet for two years. For a total of four years I have worked (and still am working) in operational weather/hydrology for the agency that does the weather & water forecasting for the U.S (including a year in the Arctic). I have walked in the academic, research, climate and operational sides of this insanely broad field, so I get the viewpoints of many of the sides. My opinions are of course my own.

As far as the main part of this post…CPC issues a weekly ENSO briefing no matter what the conditions. I too read the brief this week with some curiosity, but saw what CPC was trying to say. The atmosphere and ocean are responding and the temperatures are in the right range, but the NOAA definition of an LA Nina event has not been met (three consecutive three-month periods of -0.5C SSTA’s in the Nino 3.4 region). It is a technicality, but it is one the folks at CPC have to make.

As far as the survey of meteorologists not buying into ‘global warming’ (I hate that term), I’m not surprised. Part of it is training- many climatologists couldn’t forecast their way out of a paper bag, but many mets don’t have the broad training in the climate system (or stats!) either. Scale is another issue as well…long vs short. Finally, I think alot of it comes back to faith in the data. We see data all the time in operational weather/hydrology that frankly is poor for hydromet use. So how can we believe the data for longer terms? On the other hand, a station that is poor for operational met may be excellent for climate because it hasn’t moved in decades (or in a few cases globally, 100′s of years). I liken the difference to engineers and physicists. I trust a physicist to make the big discovery, however I would never get on a bridge he designed!

All in all…great blog and some great and excellent comments! Keep up the work Anthony!

Cheers folks! :)

Weekly Ice Coverage for 2008/2009 Season

Historical Date Ice Coverage for 01/22/09 (compares January 22 of 2009 with January 22 of past years)

Total Accumulated Ice Coverage 12/04 – 01/22 (start of “ice season” to most recent date”)

Sorry about the preachy tone, I am one of the ‘alarmed’ after all. ;-)

It’s just that pieces like that on the website you linked to get on my nerves. I think that a ‘skeptic’ side to the debate such as WUWT has a part to play in the near future but this part is heavily undermined by misinformation such as the piece by the Baltimore Weather Examiner and even more so by sites like Icecap that give such stories a prominent place. Of course, only undermined inasmuch people research the background and provenance of these stories. Otherwise the purpose of dishing out misinformation is well-served of course.

I might be wrong about this but I have a feeling some time soon there will have to appear a dividing line in the ‘skeptic’ community between the part that deliberately misinforms for financial reasons (for instance Fred Singer) and egotistical reasons (such as Tim Ball and all those other old men that IMO systematically fail to show any wisdom corresponding to their age), and the part that is honestly questioning everything surrounding AGW.

Actually, in that light I have high hopes for WUWT, entirely based on the picture I have of Anthony Watts based on how he responded to me in the recent past (on the question what the moral implications of (un)deliberately spreading misinformation are) and the fact that he’s a proponent of renewable energy (or at least he has solar panels on his roof). But it’ll take a few more years of science rolling in to see which way things’ll be progressing.

Neven

Raindrops are usually at the temperature of air higher up and so usually carry less energy than the ocean surface.

The professionals should also know that positive feedbacks don’t work either because the weather systems just change their positions to maintain an equilibrium between sea surface temperature and surface air temperature without disturbing the balance between energy arriving at the Earth from the sun and energy leaving the Earth to space. Because those movements balance the energy budget no temperature rise can occur.

The latitudinal movement of the weather systems thus cancels out the variability in energy flow from the oceans and any disturbance in the energy budget of the atmosphere alone.

What is extraordinary about my last post is that the above farmwest online publication is for Canada. Putting into place a vineyard in Canada is just plain stupid (there is currently about 7500 acres in British Columbia). It is a one-generation or less, short sighted farming practice that will not put good quality low priced food on the table year after year, much less a stable year in and year out quality wine.

There is an saying here that the way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one and buy a vineyard in England. :-)

The Romans grew grapes in Northumberland (55N) in 250AD. The Norman invaders did the same in around 1100AD. Today, not a chance, the English vineyards are all south of Watford (51:30N). On the basis that 200 miles is worth about 1C, we are 1.5C cooler than the MWP.

” JimB (17:17:12) :

Not sure where to put this, so it’s landing here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7843186.stm

”

probably deserves it’s own thread.

Cheers

Richard

To clarify the significance of evaporation:The loss of that high energy tail of velocity distribution, is the reason why the average temperature of the water surface decreases due to evaporation.

The atmosphere may be the source of the energy that heats the water surface, but the energy transported with the water molecule, comes right out of the water.

George

And yes I agree; why don’t they know this?
————————————————

George or Stephen, thanks for all of that. I think I followed it all but, being a bit new to this, I need the final loop closed in my thought processes on this specific aspect of energy transfer: If I’m understanding it correctly, the downward radiative transfer from the GHG is essentially transferred to water molecules which then become airborne via evaporation (adding no energy to the ocean). How much of this energy is lost from the atmosphere before the molecule comes back down in a raindrop, and presumably a slightly more energy-containing raindrop than it would have been without the GHG (unless the answer is 100%) ??

Isn’t the answer to your last question – they do know this, which is why they had to invent positive feedback mechanisms ??

Reply: Ice can evaporate directly without ever changing to liquid water. The process is known as sublimation ~ charles the moderator

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7843186.stm

Quotes from the article:

“The continent of Antarctica is warming up in step with the rest of the world, according to a new analysis.”
” Most of Antarctica’s scientific stations are located along the peninsula, and scientists have known for many years that this portion of the continent is getting warmer.”
“”We have at least 25 years of data from satellites, and satellites have the huge advantage that they can see the whole continent,” said Eric Steig from the University of Washington in Seattle.

“But the [land] stations have the advantage that they go back much further in time. So we combined the two; and what we found, in a nutshell, is that there is warming across the whole continent, it’s stronger in winter and spring but it is there in all seasons.”

Now I go look at globalwarminghoax, and find this from Feb, 2008:

“the Antarctic is now at record levels of ice extent, ice concentration and the growth continues. You don’t have to believe us you can see the data yourself at The National Snow and Ice Data Center. Simply compare January 1980 (the first January after satellite measurements began) with January 2008. The difference is striking, 44.1% greater ice extent and 30% greater ice concentration in January 2008 compared to 1980. So much for “global” warming, if it occurred the Antarctic definitely missed out on it.”

And I recall an article here on WUWT from last summer sometime, maybe August?…

So frankly, I’m confused.

Anyway, seems there are some pretty big discrepencies regarding whats up with the antarctic…

JimB

if you hadn’t been so pontifical in your second post, i may have responded differently…

no need to get preachy with me, mr. palindrome.