Heat Wave In Russia – Is It From Global Warming?
Guest Post by Dr. Roger Pielke Senior, University of Colorado
Image: NASA Earth Observatory. This map shows temperature anomalies for the Russian Federation from July 20–27, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008. The anomalies are based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Areas with above-average temperatures appear in red and orange, and areas with below-average temperatures appear in shades of blue. Oceans and lakes appear in gray.
There has been considerable discussion of the heat wave in Russia and of the floods in Pakistan and China as to whether these events are from global warming. Examples of this in the media include
Will Russia’s Heat Wave End Its Global-Warming Doubts? By Simon Shuster / Moscow
Climate change whips up floods, fire and ice by Brian Sullivan and Madelene Pearson
The second article starts with the text
CLIMATE change has been blamed for floods that have killed thousands and left millions homeless from Pakistan to North Korea, fires and a heatwave in Russia that have left 5000 dead and disrupted global food markets, and a severe tropical storm threatening Bermuda.
and includes the statements
The weather drew comment from officials and activists at international climate change talks in Bonn.
One US delegate said Russia’s heatwave and the recent floods that have devastated Pakistan are ”consistent with the kind of changes we would expect to see from climate change and they will only get worse unless we act quickly”.
A new article in the Economist
Green View: A taste of things to come
has a more complete discussion for these weather events. Excerpts from the article includes the text
“The immediate cause of the problems is the behaviour of the jet stream, a band of high-level wind that travels east around the world and influences much of the weather below it. Part of the jet stream’s meandering is tied to regular shifts of air towards and away from the pole, called Rossby waves. The Rossby waves set up wiggles in the jet stream, wiggles which, left to themselves, would move westward. Since the jet stream is flowing eastward, though, the net effect of the Rossby waves varies. When the waves are short, they go with the jet’s flow and the resultant wiggling heads downstream to the east. When they are long they go against the flow, and the jet’s wiggling is transmitted upstream to the west. In between, there is a regime in which the waves move neither west nor east, and the weather stays put.”
Part of the straightforwardness of that analysis is that it treats all the previous years equally. When instead Dr van Oldenborgh takes into account that there has been a general warming trend over those past 60 years the heatwave starts to look less improbable—more like the sort of thing you might expect every century. As the warming trend continues in the future, the chances of such events being repeated more frequently will get higher. A single heatwave cannot be said to have been caused by global climate change; but what is known about climate change says such heatwaves are now more probable than they were.
The intensity of this heatwave has been remarkable. It is hotter than at any time in the instrumental record. According to an analysis by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute a straightforward comparison of the temperatures seen this summer with those of the past 60 years suggests that a large patch of Russia is experiencing temperatures which might be expected only once every 400 years or so. Some places within that patch are hotter than might be expected over several millennia.
In a world where greenhouse warming gets stronger, the tropics expand—an effect the beginning of which has already been observed. The paths of the jet streams to the north and south of the tropics will change in response to this. What that means for the interactions between jet streams and Rossby waves that lead to blocking, though, is unclear. Tony Lupo, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Missouri, has been looking at the question with some Russian colleagues. He says their climate modelling provides some reason to believe blocking effects might become more common in a warmer world, but also less forceful.
The attribution of the heat wave to atmospheric blocking this summer is a scientifically sound conclusion. The heat can occur from
- the advection of hot air from lower latitudes on the west side of a warm core anticyclone
- from compressional warming due to sinking air in the troposphere associated with the warm core anticyclone
- from a larger portion of solar insolation going into sensible versus latent surface heating as result of dry soils and stressed vegetation that occurs due to the absence of rainfall associated with the core of these anticyclones
- from added heating of the atmosphere from the absorption of solar insolation by aerosols from forest fires that occur in this dry environment.
[for a discussion of warm core anticyclones, see
Pielke Sr., R.A. 2002: Synoptic Weather Lab Notes. Colorado State University, Department of Atmospheric Science Class Report #1, Final Version, August 20, 2002.]
However, the statements that the tropics have expanded in recent years and the probabilities that such heat waves are becoming more common has not yet convincingly been made.
Indeed we looked at this issue for the heat wave in Europe in 2003 in the paper
Chase, T.N., K. Wolter, R.A. Pielke Sr., and Ichtiaque Rasool, 2006: Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context? Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L23709, doi:10.1029/2006GL027470
where we found that the 2003 heat anomaly was particularly extreme near the surface (perhaps due to dry soil) but less anomalous in the rest of the troposphere. Our conclusions were confirmed in
Connolley W.M. 2008: Comment on “Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context?” by Thomas N. Chase et al. Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L02703, doi:10.1029/2007GL031171.
We updated our analysis in
Chase, T.N., K. Wolter, R.A. Pielke Sr., and Ichtiaque Rasool, 2008: Reply to comment by W.M. Connolley on ‘‘Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context?’’Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L02704, doi:10.1029/2007GL031574.
In the Chase et al 2008 paper we reported that
Figure 1 updates Chase et al. [2006] through 2006 for 2.0 and 3.0 SD levels and adds to our original conclusion that 2003 was not very unusual in terms of the spatial coverage of extreme depth-averaged temperatures.
and
However, the addition of three additional summers (2004– 2006) to the time series, all of which appear to be relatively warm, now indicates the possible emergence of an upward trend as suggested in previous work [Stott et al., 2004]. For example 2.0 SD warm anomalies now appear to have an upward trend (p = 0.05) though this trend should be viewed with caution because of the small sample size and the dominant effect of data points at the end of the series. The rise in 3.0 SD anomalies comparable to the 2003 heat wave is, however, still insignificant (p = 0.16) and so the increased probability of such extremes with time suggested by Stott et al. [2004] is not yet apparent.
Tom Chase will be updating this analysis through August 2010 in early September when the data becomes available. Then, instead of qualitative claims about an expanding tropics and a greater frequency of heat waves, actual climate data will be available to quantify whether or not the claims made concerning the tropospheric temperature anomalies are robust or not.
We have certainly seen a warm troposphere this year. The July lower tropospheric temperature anomalies were presented in my August 5 2010 post and the global spatial plot is reproduced below
The heat wave in western Russia is clear in the data along with a substantial warm anomaly in eastern Russia and part of China, as are smaller warm anomalies in other locations worldwide. Only Antarctica has a large negative anomaly [although interestingly, Pakistan has a modest below average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly]
This warmth presents an opportunity in the coming months to assess whether this is really related to a long term global warming related effect, or is due to some other aspects of the climate system (perhaps as modified by spatially heterogeneous forcing due to human activity including land use change and aerosols).
If it is a long term global warming signature, than the global average tropospheric warm anomaly will persist when the blocking pattern is removed. If, however, the lower tropospheric temperatures cool to or below their long term average and this heat cannot be found in the oceans, long term global warming cannot be the culprit. I will report on this early in 2011.
And all this is due to an increase of only 0.6 degC since the year 1900?
I was amused by the areas of anomalous cold immediately adjacent to the anomalous warm area.
Overall, science at its best. Advance a testable proposition, with a clear description of a future test. Nicely done, my thanks, I await the outcome.
w.
Missing from DrPielke’s post was what I personally would consider an essential part of the discussion: how often is a similar heatwave likely to occur according to the best knwoledge of out climatic normals, or in other words, how likely was it that one should emerge this very year according to normal climatology?
Watching national TV news here in the UK yesterday (not the BBC admittedly) I saw a lengthy studio presentation on the Russian and Pakistani weather extremes which included explanation of the current “stalled standing wave” state of the jetstream.
The anchor asked the inevitable global warming question, to be told that any possible link was “not proven” by current models. The meteorologist then went on to talk about theories linking jetstream behaviour to solar activity.
Never heard this mentioned on our MSM before. Never thought I would. It seems not everybody concerned is determinedly singing from the officially approved hymn sheet.
Accuweather have an article explaining the recent heat wave in Russia. More of a weather event than global warming perhaps?
http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/34926/the-russian-heat-wave-why-is-i.asp
Their interpretation suggests the action of the jet stream and a significant high pressure cell is to blame. The jet stream will be responsible for many extreme weather events in the near future and some say this occurs in the same time frame as low UV output. We have already seen the results of unusual jet stream activity in Sth America recently….. the northern winter is shaping up to do the same.
In a recent Guardian article relating to the Russia fires, there was an interesting post by Trofim, indicating the fires a not all unusual.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/12/heatwave-record-temperatures-world?showallcomments=true#start-of-comments
Trofim’s post:
Here are some interesting historical accounts of forest and peat fires in Russia dating back to the 13th century. There occur every few decades. I can’t be bothered to translate it all, but have translated a selection. If you have any doubts, you can find yourself a translator.
As for death rates, one can only guess.
http://therese-phil.livejournal.com/171196.html
1298: There was a wholesale death of animals. In the same year there was a drought, and the woods and peat bogs burnt.
1364: Halfway through summer there was a complete smoke haze, the heat was dreadful, the forests, bogs and earth were burning, rivers dried up. The same thing happened the following year . . .
1431: following a blotting out of the sky, and pillars of fire, there was a drought – “the earth and the bogs smouldered, there was no clear sky for 6 weeks, nobody saw the sun, fishes, animals and birds died of the smoke.
1735: Empress Anna wrote to General Ushakov: “Andrei Ivanovich, here in St Petersburg it is so smoky that one cannot open the windows, and all because, just like last year, the forests are burning. We are surprised that no-one has thought about how to stem the fires, which are burning for the second year in a row”.
1831: Summer was unbearably hot, and as a consequence of numerous fires in the forests, there was a constant haze of smoke in the air, through which the sun appeared a red hot ball; the smell of burning was so strong, that it was difficult to breathe.
The years of 1839-1841 were known as the “hungry years”. In the spring of 1840, the spring sowings of corn disappeared in many places. From midway through April until the end of August not a drop of rain fell. From the beginning of summer the fields were covered with a dirty grey film of dust. All the plants wilted, dying from the heat and lack of water. It was extraordinarily hot and close, even though the sun, being covered in haze, shone very weakly through the haze of smoke. Here and there in various regions of Russia the forests and peat bogs were burning (the firest had begun already in 1939). there was a reddish haze, partially covering the sun, and there were dark, menacing clouds on the horizon. There was a choking stench of smoke which penetrated everywhere, even into houses where the windows remained closed.
1868: the weather was murderous. It rained once during the summer. There was a drought. The sun, like a red hot cinder, glowed through the clouds of smoke from the peat bogs. Near Peterhoff the forests and peat workings burnt, and troops dug trenches and flooded the subterranean fire. It was 40 centigrade in the open, and 28 in the shade.
1868: a prolonged drought in the northern regions was accompanied by devastating fires in various regions. Apart from the cities and villages affected by this catastrophe, the forests, peat workings and dried-up marshes were burning. In St Petersburg region smoke filled the city and its outlying districts for several weeks.
1875: While in western europe there is continual rain and they complain about the cold summer, here in Russia there is a terrible drought. In southern Russia all the cereal and fruit crops have died, and around St Petersburg the forest fires are such that in the city itself, especially in the evening, there is a thick haze of smoke and a smell of burning. Yesterday, the burning woods and peat bogs threatened the ammunitiion stores of the artillery range and even Okhtensk gunpowder factory.
1885: (in a letter from Peter Tchaikovsky, composer): I’m writing to you at three oclock in the afternoon in such darkness, you would think it was nine oclock at night. For several days, the horizon has been enveloped in a smoke haze, arising, they say, from fires in the forest and peat bogs. Visibility is diminishing by the day, and I’m starting to fear that we might even die of suffocation.
1917 (diary of Aleksandr Blok, poet): There is a smell of burning, as it seems, all around the city peat bogs, undergrowth and trees are burning. And no-one can extinguish it. That will be done only by rain and the winter. Yellowish-brown clouds of smoke envelope the villages, wide swaithes of undergrowth are burning, and God sends no rain, and what wheat there is in the fields is burning.
That’s what science should look like:
Collect the facts, develope falsifiable theories, show caution and restraint in early assessment and continue the research, until your results are sound and proven bbeyond doubt.
It’s a pity one has to applaude to something which should, in fact, be the state-of-the-art in Climatology.
Personally I try not to read anything which “analyses” the current event. Climate science says it cannot predict any single event. However it can predict that these single events will be more frequent and more severe over the whole world generally. Which meand that some people may be shivering in a colder than average, but not record, year, but others will by dying in much higher temperatures which are a record.
AND these events will happen much more often. Think once a decade instead of once every 100 years.
I’m fully aware that once per decade is way, way too much concentration time for the masses; but; if it saves you life??? What’s the effort worth then?
I like to look at older articles which predict these things are going to happen then try and see if they match what is happening.
http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Regional-Impacts-Midwest.pdf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6929668.stm
You know the only way to be absolutely 100% sure that the predictions are correct on AGW is to carry on the way we are going and see if the predictions are true.
Then we’ll be dead.
Now I don’t know about you but that doesn’t seem quite reasonable to me. But then I’m not suicidally minded.
“According to an analysis by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute a straightforward comparison of the temperatures seen this summer with those of the past 60 years suggests that a large patch of Russia is experiencing temperatures which might be expected only once every 400 years or so. Some places within that patch are hotter than might be expected over several millennia.”
Are we seriously supposed to start panicking because somewhere on the surface of Planet Earth experiences some climatic condition that “might be expected only once every 400 years or so”? Or even “over several millenia”?
Excuse me if I’m being obtuse. But isn’t that absolutely normal for what (it is suggested) is an “extreme” climate event?
After all, in civil engineering, large dams are routinely designed to safely withstand the (projected) effects of a “one in ten thousand year” flood. Now, we don’t actually have accurate rainfall and river guaging data from before the time of Noah and the Gopher Wood. What we are actually trying to do is to design dams to withstand a 0.01% probability of occurring in any year. Standards in the nuclear industry are even higher. And, by the very nature of the exercise, no one can predict with absolute confidence how any structure (even a natural structure) might actually perform in the face of a very extreme condition. You just have to do your best to reduce risk to an acceptable level.
So it is a commonplace that there can and will be “extreme” events somewhere. And, without evidence (even a plausible hypothesis would be good) that CO2 has any effect whatever either on the “extreme event” itself, or even any effect on the probability of any given “extreme event” occurring (perhaps increasing the probability of some defined event from 0.01% to 0.011%), then this is debate that may appear to be interesting but is actually predicated on a complete falacy.
A 400 year heat wave in an area in Russia? Wow! This is about as exciting as the apocryphal news story “small earthquake in Paruguay, few killed.” Obviously, if you happen to be in Paruguay at the time your perspective changes.
But as an excuse for going to a Low Carbon Energy Policy, NOW, it is absolutely too silly to laugh at.
Did heat create conditions for the wildfires or did the wildfires create the heat?
Many sources put the start of the summer fires in May, worsening in June continuing throughout July.
So this excessive heat is caused by a blocking event resulting from a ‘standing wave’ in the jet stream. Both strong wave (westward propagating) and weak wave (moving East) conditions are known. Conditions happen to be ‘just right’ for the sationary wave to form. Presumably temperature differentials help to determine the strength of the Rossby waves. The globe does not warm evenly – the Arctic will warm (and cool) more than lower latitudes – does it necessarily follow that warming will create more ‘just right’ conditions for blocking events to occur?
We’re back to what climate models say again. If this was using weather models not climate models I’d have a little more confidence.
This is another thread highly relevant to my ‘New Climate Model’.
The thing is that the jets can only meander about so much when they move equatorward during a period of tropical contraction.
When the tropics expand the jets get pushed poleward and are unable to meander around so much hence less blocking the more poleward the jets move.
Now at present, the jets are well equatorward despite the recent El Nino and they have lots of room to meander about with lots of blocking going on.
The thing is that during the late 20th Century warming spell El Ninos of a similar intensity sent the jets much further poleward.
The only change since then is the level of solar activity and I have been proposing for some time that lower solar activity leads to a more negative polar oscillation with stronger polar high pressure cells and jets pushed equatorward.
So all this is confirming my hypothesis that the climate depends on an interplay between the oceans below and the level of solar impact on the atmosphere from above determining the size position and intensities of all the air circulation systems. Those sizes positions and intensities then have an effect on global albedo and determine the rates of warming or cooling of ocean and atmosphere (which usually vary independently of one another and often in opposite directions)
For the many implications that follow from that I suggest a re reading of my NCM hypothesis in the light of recent and current events here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/06/a-new-and-effective-climate-model/#comments
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa2.jpg
This pic is worth a 1000 words. The ice pool in the foreground has been freezing more and more this last week. The artic refreeze has begun even before the thaw was over. This is going to be a mamouth year.
You know the only way to be absolutely 100% sure that the predictions are correct on AGW is to carry on the way we are going and see if the predictions are true.
Then we’ll be dead.
A few degrees will not kill the whole planet you silly man! The worst it will do is make some parts hard to live in (and currently cold places better, of course).
If we over-compensate for CO2 generation we will doom billions of people to continued poverty, as they will not have the power generation that is an essential part of a rising economy. Until the advent of fusion power, we need carbon to run the world. Once fusion comes along we won’t need silly treaties to stop burning oil anyway.
I personally am not willing to kill billions of people on the “precautionary principle”. I will need good,
robustproof before I start to thing CO2 is a bigger problem than world poverty.But then again, I don’t think you have to be dirt poor to be good.
oakwood says: August 14, 2010 at 1:32 am) Here are some interesting historical accounts of forest and peat fires in Russia …
Many thanks for this perspective check, oakwood,
But the hypothesis is Anthropogenic Global Warming…..
It’s not unexpected that Russia, or anywhere for that matter, would have a hotter summer than usual. It’s been getting warmer globally since about 1850-ish….
What was the mechanism for causing a warming during the Medieval Warm Period, prior to substantial Anthropogenic CO2 releases from industry?…. What cooled the atmosphere prior to 1850-ish? What caused the warming from 1850-ish to 1940?
…. and why can’t those same unknown reasons be causing warming now?
What stuns me most, is the almost REGULAR distribution of “heat cells” over the medium (?) latitudes of the globe in the second picture.
It reminds me very much of the distribution of sunspots on the Sun’s surface, when it’s in a phase of high activity (which it is not, actually).
So we might witness a larger principle at work here -i.e. patterns of latitudinal gas flow in rotating, spheric systems.
Under this premise, the “heat cells” would be more attributable to adiabatic heating of descending masses of air in anti-cyclonic high pressure cells, which are modulated and separated by the meandering jetstream.
“NeilT says:
August 14, 2010 at 1:57 am
You know the only way to be absolutely 100% sure that the predictions are correct on AGW is to carry on the way we are going and see if the predictions are true.”
You can see for yourself a couple of threads down from this one how a 30 year old prediction is shaping up.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/13/is-jim-hansens-global-temperature-skillful/
Has the “blocking”, which caused the Russian Heat Wave 2010, something to do with the ocean and seas? Prof. R.Pielke Sr has not listed this option. Some ocean regions are getting colder, see:
___ N. S. Keenlyside, M. Latif, J. , u.a. (2008) ; “Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector”; NATURE, Vol 453, 1 May 2008,
“……….we make the following forecast: over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly,….”
____http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/is-the-cold-weather-coming/, Guest Post by Bryan Leyland: El Nino/La Nina effect (SOI) predicts global cooling by the end of 2010.
Furthermore, the winter 2009/10 was the coldest in North Europe for about 30 years. After a cold winter the Baltic Sea is colder than usually. The colder the Baltic Sea (and other regional waters) during spring and early summer are, the more they support continental conditions, resulting in less humidity, less clouds, but more sun shine in Russia. Even if this scenario contributed only to a small percentage to the current Russian summer, it should be investigated and named.
At least it is to little when the Russian scientist Michail Kabanov says: It’s more just a temporary natural occurrence.
At: http://notrickszone.com/2010/08/12/russian-scientist-extreme-central-russian-heat-wave-not-an-indication-of-a-future-climate-change/
“You can see for yourself a couple of threads down from this one how a 30 year old prediction is shaping up.”
Apologies. A 20(ish) year old prediction..
Very interesting post, I like how dr. Pielke makes this testable in a real scientific way!
According to an analysis by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute a straightforward comparison of the temperatures seen this summer with those of the past 60 years suggests that a large patch of Russia is experiencing temperatures which might be expected only once every 400 years or so.
Aha, but if you only use the last 60 years, you’re including a large cold period. How about using the last 80 years? Or how about the last 2000? This is why Steve McIntyre’s work on the hockey stick is so immensely important, because if the hockey stick were real, claims like these would be far less controversial. IMHO our current knowledge of past climate events do not warrant computing any meaningful such confidence intervals at all.
Extreme weather events are part of a probability distribution – if you plot, say, the maximum daily temperatures for July in Moscow over a few decades, I presume you will see something like a normal distribution, with the most common values at the peak and the rarest values at the tails. Those rarest events are necessarily the most difficult to assess over time, since by definition we have to wait a long time to record a small amount of data. That makes it difficult to say with any confidence that extreme warm or cold weather is showing any change in frequency over time.
However… it’s much easier to detect changes in the most common values – a shifting of the probability distribution towards one of the two tails, i.e. warmer or colder. My reading of the IPCC reports is that we are already seeing widespread shifting of probabilities towards more warm days and nights, and fewer cold days and nights. If that is the case then we can be fairly confident that those extreme values on the tails of the distribution are going to be changing too, even though there may not be enough data from those rare events alone to prove it.
The reasonable conclusion, I think, is that we don’t have to wait for lots more extreme weather events to come along before we can say that the probability of such events has increased – we can see that the whole probability distribution has shifted and conclude with confidence that the extremes are changing too.
With the rise in intensity of the Siberian branch (and decline of the Hudson Bay) of the Northern hemisphere’s magnetic bifurcation
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/data/mag_maps/pdf/Z_map_mf_2005.pdf
the jet stream is altering its path, which may last for many decades to come
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PS.htm
NeilT says:
August 14, 2010 at 1:57 am
You sound young and impressionable.
This is not the first time an ‘expert’ predicted disaster(s) using some handy trends.
Read this and you’ll feel safer:
http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/ehrlich.html
“Excuse me if I’m being obtuse. But isn’t that absolutely normal for what (it is suggested) is an “extreme” climate event?”
Absolutely, if it happens every 400 to 1,000 years. Russia had one of these (arguably not quite so severe), 80 odd years ago.
How frequent does it have to get to catch your attention? Every other week? By then the biosphere won’t support humans at all. How does that help anything?