Behave yourselves.
I’ll be checking in from time to time and making reports from the road. Just remember that some comments with links might end up in the spam filter and may take some time before I notice them.
Behave yourselves.
I’ll be checking in from time to time and making reports from the road. Just remember that some comments with links might end up in the spam filter and may take some time before I notice them.
Raven, do you think it’s fair to say that the .03% is largely overwhelmed by a myriad of other processes and can’t have any real measurable effect?
Last Friday ( 2008-04-18) the climate-alarmist Guardian reported that “Greenland’s disappearing lakes leave giant ice sheets largely unmoved” with subcaptions unambiguously stating that meltwater is a marginal player in outlet glacial flow. Citing Woods Hole findings published in Science the dynamics of basal lubrication appear to be more complex than either the original basal lubrication theory or the Guardian article suggest.
Ars Technica reports that although it has a marginal effect on outlet glacier flow – casting doubt on the theory that additional supraglacial water flow would accelerate a rise in sea level – another study sees fairly intense seasonal effects on inland ice sheet glaciers.
Meanwhile ABC news insists on singing the alarmist cant, showing the very same photos published in Science (taken by Woods Hole’s Sarah Dass) with no explanation whatsoever. Take a look at photo #3 and photo #6 and the biggest factor in the formation of these large seasonal lakes can be seen: Heat-absorbent soot that contributes between 1 – 2.4 Watts/m-2 of additional energy into ice and snow packs on glacier surfaces (Charlie Zender, UCI), causing up to 90 percent of the entire boreal melt-off.
In other words James Hansen’s CO2-driven calamitous forecast of the past month should have been tempered by this year old data on soot deposition in the Arctic. After all, Christian Science Monitor reports a NASA-funded team is taking part in a survey of the heating effects of aerosols on the Arctic. Perhaps Hansen didn’t get the memo? V. Ramanathan did.
The more climate science investigates the manifold effects of soot , the more pernicious soot becomes – perhaps beating out CO2 as the big bad climate player.
One alarmist rejoinder to the ongoing decadal temperature plateau is that a spline curve fit isn’t fair statistics – it’s far-too conveniently flattening the trend – but then what is? A a running average?
“Raven” replying on Science Alert “The IPCC – on the run at last,” commented: “…The last 7 years of data is enough to demonstrate statistically that the IPCC 4AR projections are 95% likely to be false. It will take quite a surge in warming over the next few years to get back to where the temps are supposed to be according to the IPCC models.” see: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ipcc-projections-continue-to-falsify/
Thank you Graham H.
January 1950, 57 inches. Yeeeouch.
Looks like snow coming for MN Friday night, with colder air for next week.
New sunspots have formed and they look to be cycle 24. Sun might be getting active now. Guess we’ll see how things go the next couple months.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/512/
ATTN: Raven and Everybody
RE : Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System
GO: http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Monte Hieb is mine safety engineer, and he gives a detailed step-by-step procedure for calculating the contribution of the various greenhouse gases to the so-called greenhouse effect. He assumes an absolute humidity of 1% by volume. He did not actually state the value he used for the concentration of water vapor, but his calculations are correct for this value which is about the mean global average.
`
Brian, it might be a typo, but http://www.solarcycle24 says spot #992 is a cycle 23 spot:
“Sunspot 992 in the northern hemisphere of the sun belongs to Cycle 23.”
The new sunspot labeled today is NOT cycle 24. Cycle 23 keeps on trucking.
An ongoing discussion about the delayed transit between solar cycle #23 & #24 is at solarscience.auditblogs.com .
I’ll crib from a comment I posted there re: A discussion of solar cycle durations (Schwabe Cycles):
For predictive metrics, I have to think it is less a question of the duration of transit from SC#23 to SC#24 than the cumulative number of spotless days (since the first spotless day) and the speed of sunspot movement.
Jan Janssens maintains a “spotless days” page. It’s interesting b/c of the trend analysis halfway down the page. I’ve re-posted his January spotless days chart for convenience:
http://i31.tinypic.com/2emjrqa.jpg
He hasn’t updated it since January, but AFAIK the trend has continued unabated.
http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Spotless/Spotless.html
What’s spectacular about Janssens’ chart is how it correlates with SC’s from the first half of the 19th century (at the end of Dalton minimum).
Just as profound is the evidence on SC#25 (the cycle following the next one, #24), derived from observations of steeply slowing sun spot *motion* across the sun’s surface. This is a metric of a major slowdown of the sun’s own convective layer’s internal conveyor belt. http://www.physorg.com/news66581392.html
By the same metrics SC#24 will be normal or quite strong once it ramps up, but SC#25 may prove the onset of a drop in SC amplitude just as this current transit is demonstrating lowered frequency.
Naive critics of a grand solar minimum will claim that we should expect SC#24 to be a normal (if longer) solar cycle, that forecasts of a grand minimum are thinly veiled assaults on global warming. Such contentions tilt at empty scarecrows, however. The point is that just as SC#24 strength will validate previous observations of sun spot motion (speed), those very same observations predict a weak SC#25.
My WAG is that these will become the classic portents of grand minima — slower sunspot movement, an increase in cumulative spotless days in conjunction with a longer cycle transition. Another slow minimum transit like this one would validate the theory/observation trend, as would SC#25’s projected weak solar max.
My feeling on this – being a lay person – is that much like the inception of the Little Ice Age, starting with the Sporer minimum, we should look first to less bleak scenarios. I don’t believe the world needs more Pied Pipers to lead us on media stampedes.
After all, the sky is always falling down. As it should. Otherwise we’d have no air.
–leebert
I mentioned a few days ago that it’s really pretty silly to be hanging on every little spot that comes across.
Umm, I noticed a little spot on the magnetogram that has a cycle 24 field. It’s not visible yet on the visible light image. http://www.solarcycle24.com/ has a close up of spot 992 (cycle 23) and the new spot. It’s under the headline “You know your [sic] desperate when?” I guess that means they agree with me. 🙂
With respect to Cosmic Ray Flux and cloud formation.
What happens to the heat in water vapor when it condenses to form clouds?
This heat of condensation/heat of vaporization is not trivial and would appear to be the majority of the energy in the atmosphere that contains water vapor. It dwarfs the heat of melting and the specific heat of the condensed water.
How is it released and what is it released into? Is it radiated mostly into space?
Does the increased cloud formation due to increased CRF mean the Earth’s heat pump runs faster due to the greater rate of heat flow out of water vapor?
Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice is dropping like a rock. What’s Up With That? http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
Researchers @ur momisugly NASA/GISS modeled the effects of the Maunder Minimum & concluded it did indeed precipitate the Little Ice Age.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_06/
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20011206/
The result of the Maunder minimum’s multiple cycles of weaker solar maxima & extended minima was a drop in ocean temperatures, stronger Earth-cooling La Ninas, weaker inter-zone convective winds and weaker moist warm ocean weather fronts pushing inland into continental landmasses leading to longer & colder continental winters.
The research at the time did not account in any way to the possible role of more cosmic rays increasing total cloud cover (a possible 25% differential effect in shading & albedo over the past century).
Tim Patterson & Don Easterbrook have both found strong solar cycle correlations in their respective fields in mud & ice core sampling.
Easterbrook has said it’s puzzling to him why the ice core data is being ignored even though his work has been corroborated by other ice core data and the correlations are nothing short of amazing.
Tim Patterson a column on mud-core data which showed a strong correlation between ocean productivity and solar cycles – also anticipating future solar cycles:
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b84068db11f4
In the meantime the “warmists” are busy casting aspersions toward anyone watching the sun as yet a new & improved denialist strategy. If they only knew how we’d rather dicker over the difference of a degree or two of warming & some dirty aerosols than the far-worse prospect of a big cooling trend brought on by a grand solar minimum. On the one hand the warmists remind us to be patient: “A ten-year temperature plateau? That’s not a detrending of CO2 levels from global temperatures, it’s just the lull before the heat wave. You just wait and see! Climate sensitivity is real! Temperatures will catch up with CO2 concentrations real soon now, and you’ll be impressed by the new and improved hockey stick blade.”
And then what of indications of a significant change in long-term solar activity? Should they wait to see what that has in store as well? Well, no, the conclusion is handy: There are no portents there, we just need to be more patient to realize that SC#24 will have no effect on this zooming warming trend that’s coming real soon now.
And they accuse skeptics of facile thinking. It was William James who commented, “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
Such hot-air trends have always been there to observe for anyone who cared to look.
austin:
“With respect to Cosmic Ray Flux and cloud formation.
What happens to the heat in water vapor when it condenses to form clouds?”
The “latent heat” is converted to “sensible heat” and the air parcel warms up. Depending on the temperature profile of the air column, the air will rise ala puffy cumulus clouds, or it won’t rise, ala flat stratocumulus clouds.
I think the main area expected to be impacted is maritime, as the air mass over land has a lot of condensation nuclei already, e.g. dust, smoke, etc. Maritime air is often stable, so the result may be more stratocumulus reflecting sunlight from the surface, and hence keeping the air mass stable. Without convection, the cloud droplets will grow slowly and won’t rain out. Or something like that.
So, blame dreary weather on the seacoast on global cooling.
Increased water vapor is the keystone of the IPCC positive feedback equation. If it does not form low level clouds, it goes to vapor and increases the greenhouse effect. But if it forms low level clouds, albedo is increased and there is a negative feedback resulting in homeostasis.
The irony is that the Aqua Satellite was supposed to prove anthropogenic global warming. Instead it is proving homeostasis.
An Inquirer (20:51:16) :
“Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice is dropping like a rock. What’s Up With That? http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg”
My first guess is that ice on the southern fringe would be melting first. I tried loading cryosphere’s “30 day” animation, but it hung after loading 20 of 24 images. Sigh. I’ll try another system. I really wish they’d show two years worth of data on their graphs, I went to two days data on my home weather station plots and like the longer trend.
However, both their northern and southern hemisphere plots show more ice than last year, especially southern. I won’t be surprised if there is quick melting in the northern hemisphere, I’d expect, but have no data, that the sea ice is relatively thin. Just another year in these interesting times.
Hmmm, this from spaceweatherdotcom:
SOLAR ACTIVITY: “Is this the last gasp of dying Solar Cycle 23? It sure looks that way,” reports Paul Haese who sends a dramatic picture of the sun taken just hours ago from Blackwood, South Australia. The sun is criss-crossed by dark magnetic filaments and peppered with active regions that are not quite sunspots but seething nevertheless. “What a great show,” he says. Readers with solar telescopes, you know what to do.
re: NH sea ice? Could it be because it always does around this time of year? Afterall, the earth continues to cycle through it’s tilt, ignoring the noise of humans.
“Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice is dropping like a rock. What’s Up With That?”
Uhh. It’s spring in the NH. It does that. :shrug:
Meanwhile, expect absolutely no one to recognize that the SH ice coverage is almost 2 million km^2 above same time last year:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
Place your bets on shattering last year’s record. Double or nothing not one news source outside Fox says a peep….
Which happens regardless of CO2 levels.
I saw an article in the New Scientist today (normally very pro AGW) that a change in Ocean currents could be causing a lot of the abnormal warming in the Arctic that has caused so much hullabaloo about melting ice caps. A cyclical ocean current appears to have warmed the arctic which in turn causes the whole Northern Hemisphere to warm up. The figure quoted in the article was 0.2 of the 0.5oC warming we’ve seen over the last 30 years in the NH. I’ll try to find a link if I can
Here’s the link:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19826533.900-arctic-currents-may-be-warming-the-world.html
(can this be merged?)
Well, well, well. Someone who is capable of making inroads into global warming models will be developing the piece of the puzzle related to solar influences on the middle atmosphere. Heavy reading but worth the time.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/4099/2008/acpd-8-4099-2008.pdf
Pamela Gray and Matt N,
Thanks for your comments, 🙂 but the issue is not that spring brings declining ice cover, but rather the decline is faster than last year, and if the plummeting rate keeps up for a few more days, the ice level will be back to the level it was at last year at a similar time. Perhaps the cause for the rapid drop is that the the last million sq km did not freeze very thick — this last million sq km did not freeze at all last year. Perhaps that is why it is melting so fast now. But that certainly is only a speculative guess.
Yes, total global ice is much above normal. Only 6 times since satellites began measuring the sea ice has global ice been as extensive as it is now.
So what you are saying is the extent of the ice shelf that hasn’t been there for many, many, many years is now melting it’s edge off at a very fast rate. An educated guess is that whenever the ice shelf freezes this far out, the edge rapidly melts away as the NH tilts to the sun, more so than when the ice shelf was not as extensive.