I’m surprised Josh Willis would get involved in this as a co-author. Ok… here’s the press release title:
First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans
And here’s a quote from the body of the press release:
“Many scientists and models have suggested that if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow. Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell,” wrote Famiglietti and lead author Tajdarul Syed of the Indian School of Mines, formerly of UCI.
Do these guys even read their own press releases? I want my California State taxes back.From UC Irvine:
First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans
UCI-led team cites global warming, accelerated cycle of evaporation, precipitation
Irvine, Calif. — Freshwater is flowing into Earth’s oceans in greater amounts every year, a team of researchers has found, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms linked to global warming. All told, 18 percent more water fed into the world’s oceans from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than in 1994, with an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.
“That might not sound like much – 1.5 percent a year – but after a few decades, it’s huge,” said Jay Famiglietti, UC Irvine Earth system science professor and principal investigator on the study, which will be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He noted that while freshwater is essential to humans and ecosystems, the rain is falling in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons.
“In general, more water is good,” Famiglietti said. “But here’s the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it. What we’re seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted – that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
In essence, he said, the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously because of greenhouse gas-fueled higher temperatures, triggering monsoons and hurricanes. Hotter weather above the oceans causes freshwater to evaporate faster, which leads to thicker clouds unleashing more powerful storms over land. The rainfall then travels via rivers to the sea in ever-larger amounts, and the cycle begins again.
The pioneering study, which is ongoing, employs NASA and other world-scale satellite observations rather than computer models to track total water volume each month flowing from the continents into the oceans.
“Many scientists and models have suggested that if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow. Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell,” wrote Famiglietti and lead author Tajdarul Syed of the Indian School of Mines, formerly of UCI.
“This paper uses satellite records of sea level rise, precipitation and evaporation to put together a unique 13-year record – the longest and first of its kind. The trends were all the same: increased evaporation from the ocean that led to increased precipitation on land and more flow back into the ocean.”
The researchers cautioned that although they had analyzed more than a decade of data, it was still a relatively short time frame. Natural ups and downs that appear in climate data make detecting long-term trends challenging. Further study is needed, they said, and is under way.
Other authors are Don Chambers of the University of South Florida, Joshua Willis of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and Kyle Hilburn of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif. Funding is provided by NASA.
About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County’s largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.9 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.
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The paper that the article is based on can be found here. (Thanks to Bill Illis)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/09/28/1003292107.full.pdf+html
This type of research is the equivalent of the drunk looking for his lost car keys under a streetlight. We have 13 years of data but we can detect trends for the next 90 years.
Those handing out grant money have a lot to answer for with respect to the corruption and debasement of scientific research.
* “accelerating dangerously” – What is dangerous about this acceleration? Are the Australians worried about drought complaining about more rain?
* “because of greenhouse gas” – Does this study show that greenhouse gases are responsible? Which greenhouse gas – water vapor?
* “higher temperatures” – Did this study show that higher temperatures are the reason for increased precipitation, or did this study only show higher precipitation may exist?
* “triggering monsoons and hurricanes” – Some studies have found no increase in these.
“hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
The Sahel is greening.
“Many scientists and models…….”
Why would the likes of Eva Herzigova or Kate Moss be commenting on such high fallutin’ things as freshwater input into oceans?
Might spruce up the odd scientific journal if they appeared ex camera……
Trenberth has a new paper which shows nothing is really going on with global precipitation numbers (since 1980) or global river discharge and land precipitation levels (since 1950). (Ice-sheets are melting enough to add a few tenths of millimetre per year to sea level according to other estimates).
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8974/trenberthprecipitation.png
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/2026/riverdischargeandprecip.png
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/ClimateChangeWaterCycle-rev.pdf
I think he needs to get over his “Grade School” Mentality to understand that climate on a regional basis changes over time. One should expect changing water flow in an ever changing world and by picking dates and regions one can show what ever pattern one wants to see. Hydrologists have shown that this condition has been experienced throughout history. Further research will only end with the same results.
‘accelerating dangerously’ and ‘no evidence’ seem to make this paper more of an outline for another big Hollywood movie than a paper that has anything to do with the real world.
I wonder how many AGW promoters are frustrated movie producers?
Strange! According to our old friend, Stevie-boy, the levels are dropping – how come?
If all these rivers and glaciers are poring H2O into the sea, surely…..??
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/sea-level-falling-in-2010/
We DO live in challenging times, don’t we?
On the contrary, precipitation is an important potential feedback in climatology. Turning off the thermohaline circulation is one potential consequence. The results could go either way possibly even functioning as a negative feedback in AWG.
Just take a look at Sydney Harbour after a few days heavy rain and see the pristine blue green turn transformed into a silty brown and you’ll immediately see the relevance. Equally, think of fertiliser washed onto coral reefs (potentially a greater and more immediate threat to these environments than warming).
So, it’s raining more, but we have more heat induced droughts, even though there is more rain…. Because?… Maybe it’s the wrong kind of rain. Maybe it’s “rotten rain”…
“But here’s the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it.”
So if nature doesn’t cooperate, it’s ‘wrong’ somehow? It’d also be nice if these people would take a moment to think about what’s stopping water from getting to these regions. Last I checked the governments of the world virtually controlled water supplies, and these are the people who are supposed to solve the ‘problem’.
“What we’re seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted – that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms.”
I also recall a prediction which said snow would be a thing of the past and that northern hemisphere snow cover would recede, which is kind of at odds with increased precipitation. But hey, if you predict everything, anything counts as validation.
“Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
You’d think the Sahara was always a desert the way these people talk. One has to wonder if they realize that the Earth isn’t a static system. It changes. It has changed in the past, it will change in the future. I wonder when they’re going to blame tectonic drift on global warming. Oh wait, they already have…
So confirmation that the hydrological cycle is doing it’s work by speeding up and releasing more energy to space – no surprise there! The energy dissipated by this massive global heat pump dwarfs any puny effect from CO2 and prevents the possibility of runaway warming. It is negative feedback.
As this turbulent process is driven by deterministic chaos, where the extra precipitation will fall cannot be predicted and any trend seen in the data is just an artefact of the choice of time period.
The paper that the article is based on can be found here.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/09/28/1003292107.full.pdf+html
Nonsense.
Height gauge measurements on all major rivers have been available for many, many years. To suggest otherwise is a blatent lie. Why not just analyse them? My guess is that they don’t show any such trend! Lies, damned lies and computer generated model inaccuracies.
They should write their report as a one panel toon, save paper.
“Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
Perhaps they could use some advice:
So where do these people think this extra rain (even given the possibility their numbers are right, which doesn’t appear to be the case) comes from? THE MOON?
For crying out loud, folks, these dolts don’t realize the vast majority comes from the OCEAN, to which it will return (evaporation from continents and lakes along with ice fields being about the only other source).
This would only be a problem is the water didn’t RETURN to the oceans (I shudder to think they may read this, get the wrong impression, and geoengineer some way to put all this “extra” water back on the moon).
Funny, but to think it over:
http://thezodiacgrill.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/aquarius-personality-traits.jpg
It happened 12,000 years ago too. 🙂
The satellite SLR is probably overstated by at least a factor of two but they assume the evaporation rate has doubled because of assumed SLR, then they don’t know the flow rate of rivers but again assume the water cycle has intensified.
When their LOSU gets above the bottom level maybe we could listen.
” the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously”
NO ONE ON THIS PLANET HAS THE EXPERTISE TO MAKE THIS STATEMENT !!!!!!!
SHEER OPINION & wishful thinking.
What if the water cycle is not closed but opened up?. During summer time mainly above the south pole and due to increased radiation, atmosphere´s oxygen is turned into Ozone (O3), which during winter time and specially when there are proton flares from the sun or increased cosmic rays, as during solar minimums (mainly composed of protons-90%-, which, btw, we must remember are Hydrogen Nucleii), then these react with ozone to produce water :
2H+…O3=H2O+O2
and increase the “Ozone Hole” once again …….
So, . . . more fresh water is a bad thing? I’m so confused (not!).
FWIW, regional river flow is well tracked for the northeast at http://www.erh.noaa.gov/nerfc/ . They also have data from the flood control dams built after the extreme rains in the 1920s and 30s, which are probably not in that 13 year satellite reconstruction. They have some really good data, I assume data of equal quality exists for the rest of the lower 48. Don’t know about the rest of the world.
There is historical precip data from the NWS Coop observers program. You’d think someone could get the NCDC to “clean” that up and infer runoff rates from that. (Yes, I realize that data has to be in far, far, worse shape than the temperature data, but it would give the community something else to argue about for years!)
“Sound and fury, signifying nothing”!
Now, colour me stupid, but how on earth does an increased cycle ( increased evaporation from the ocean that led to increased precipitation on land and more flow back into the ocean) of water cause an increase in ocean levels that can be measured?
Ah! The penny (or solid gold coin) drops!