From the USA Today Weather Blog
This has been in my inbox for a couple of weeks, so on a fairly quiet day for weather, I thought I’d put this out there. John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville reported earlier this month that the Earth’s climate change over the past 30 years has been rather uneven: It’s gotten much warmer in the Arctic and, at the same time, cooler in the Antarctic.
Christy and his colleague Roy Spencer, who are known in some quarters as global warming skeptics, use data from satellites to measure the temperature of the Earth. The more well-known NASA GISS and National Climatic Data Center data sets primarily measure surface temperatures.
Overall, Christy found that Earth’s atmosphere warmed an average of about about 0.72 degree F in the past 30 years, according to NOAA and NASA satellites. More than 80 percent of the globe warmed by some amount. However, while parts of the Arctic have warmed by as much as 4.6 degrees F in 30 years, Christy says that much of the Antarctic has cooled, with parts of the continent cooling as much as the Arctic has warmed (see map, above; click to enlarge).
“If you look at the 30-year graph of month-to-month temperature anomalies, the most obvious feature is the series of warmer-than-normal months that followed the major El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event of 1997-1998,” says Christy. “Right now we are coming out of one La Nina Pacific Ocean cooling event and we might be heading into another. It should be interesting over the next several years to see whether the post La Nina climate ‘re-sets’ to the cooler seasonal norms we saw before 1997 or the warmer levels seen since then,” he says.
He adds that most of the warming found in the satellite data has taken place since the beginning of the 1997-98 El Nino, and that Earth’s average temperature showed no detectable warming from December 1978 until the 1997 El Nino.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported yesterday that the USA “faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.”
Well, they say that CO2 is a well-mixed trace gas… so I guess not.
Fits in with Svensmark’s GCR cloud theories. Throughout most of the last 10 milllion years or so, when the Arctic/Greenland warms, Antarctica cools.
erlhapp,
I thought the models were based on the idea thatreltive humidity will increase with global warming, forming part of the ‘fast feedback’ system that catastrophic global warming depends upon.
Obama’s recent picks for science advisers suggest skeptics may be in for a rough time. They come with ready-made views on global warming.
From a December 20, A.P. article carried in Denver Post online:
Bill Marsh,
The data for for evolution of humidity over time reveals a decline. There is no gainsaying that. The loss at 300hPa in recent years has been faster than ever as the tropics have cooled. The amount of water vapour in the upper troposphere is a function of the strength of convection in the tropics and the strength of the high pressure cells that return that air to the surface. With cooling in the tropics the supply is reduced and the big high pressure cells at 30° of latitude intensify their circulation as upper atmosphere temperature declines. That sets us up for the next El Nino.
You can’t have precipitation without drying the atmosphere and a La Nina is a big precipitation event because there is cooling all round.
End of the day you must look at the data.
I always liked Buckminster Fuller’s solution to the problem of mapping the surface of the globe unto a surface that can be laid out flat. He called it the Dymaxion map, though it is also called the Fuller map. It takes some getting used to, but it largely eliminates the distortion problems about which concern has been expressed.
Ron, I agree…it’s different. I think it would make a lousy weather map but could be great at representing climate. It would definitely solve the polar distortion/exaggeration problem.
http://www.bfi.org/node/25
Seriously off Topic, albeit climate related, but may provide food for thought. If you believe the British Council, English is spoken as a first language by around 375 million people, ignoring the other 375 million who have English as a second language (according to that same august body) this means that approximately 17 % of native English speakers are UK residents.
Armed with this trivia, I reluctantly pulled myself away from page 125 of the recent “Abrupt Climate Change“ document of the U. S. Geological Survey and , lacking any better distraction, idly Googled specific University Science Courses for the ‘World’ and the UK.
For Biology and Physics the UK was about half of its expected quota (8% versus 17%) although Chemistry managed a creditable 13%. Engineering (all disciplines) sadly managed only a miserable 3% (Just edged out by Maths at 4%) but the real surprise came when I Googled “climate courses university” – The UK hit 58%!!! (229,000 out of 396,000).
I shook my head and re-entered “climatology courses university” To my astonishment the UK now hit 65% (2,110,000 out of 3,240,000)
I’d always taken it as axiomatic that us Brits were obsessed with weather- “Looks like rain- Have a cup a tea” But this was climate- not weather – I gritted my teeth and made one final Google-
“meteorology courses university” – That’s weather isn’t it? The results were disappointing – 30,000 out of 168,000 – 18%
Par, at best, but that didn’t help the sinking feeling in my stomach! Happy New Year to Anthony and all at WUWT!
BTW FWIW This is not a peer-reviewed study- Just a Google
New Political heads have exactly one chance to dig a hole.
Their positional statements might be interesting then they have to sit in it.
In a way this churn of heads is useful, allows change.
I’m not expecting change.
Tut tut tut. You science chaps really must remember the real world.
Of course the Arctic gets warmer, just as a town gets warmer when a new factory is built and starts operating.
All year round Father Christmas and his elves have to make presents for all the boys and girls. As population increases so does the need for festive gifts. They don’t just arrive by magic, you know, they have to be made and that requires extra elves. Extra elves means more elf houses, more elf pubs, elf sports stadia, elf sewage works and elf pole-dancing clubs. It also means more elf hospitals and more advisers on elf and safety. That’s a lot of elves and a lot of buildings. Then there is the heat from the many extra toy making factories.
Ice doesn’t have a hope of surviving at the north pole while population continues to increase.
I simply don’t know why you feel it necessary to confuse things with talk of the sun, clouds, oceans and Al Bedo (whoever he may be). For once please be put aside your science and apply a bit of simple common sense. Think not of yourselves but of your elves.
Sekerob (07:53:17) :
“all trendlines show a near 0.1C LT increase.”
Not on my Excel spreadsheet they don’t. Now I did it only for Jan/July and Dec 97 but I get:
Dec 98 to July 97 (when the El Nino seemed to kick in) the slope is 0.0003/ month ie 0.36 Deg C / Century. (actually later I did Jan to July 97; Dec 97 and then got tired of the exercise)
If you go from Dec 98 to Dec 97 the slope is 0.0004/ month ie 0.48 Deg C / Century.
Considering the variation in the anomaly there is no detectable warming.
Now RSS gives 2X the slope UAH does :]
Oops
Substitute Dec 79 for Dec 98 and
RSS gives 3x the slope UAH does ie 0.0009/month Dec 78 to July 97.
Too tired for this – time to hit the sack!!
[quote]Over the years, I’ve noticed that there seems to be a relatively large number of “sceptics” in Australia and New Zealand. Looking at Christy’s map made me realize why that might be the case. It’s getting colder down there! Matt (14:59:42): [/quote]
Don’t want to spoil the impression Matt, Christy might indicate that Australia is cooling but the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has the opposing view:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=tmean®ion=aus&season=0112
Mind you if you select some sites like Alice Springs, Canberra and Darwin, there is very little difference between 2008 and the historical mean temperatures.
The BOM has some excellent data if you care to delve into it but they are very much committed to AGW so their monthly summaries will always highlight warming rather than cooling.
Anthony: I think we could safely say that La Nina is definitely back and likely to strengthen? (So you were spot on before despite the protests from AGW’s LOL).
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.12.29.2008.gif
Here is a thought, bad management in NASA caused the Challenger and Columbia disasters and we still have Hansen in NASA even with his “constant adjustments” of his climate programs. Shows to me management in NASA has not improved. Now we have Obama’s pick of John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco as science advisors against the daily increasing new information on climate. To me this is bad management and makes me wonder about Obama’s other and upcoming management decisions. John Holdren scares me.
I suspect that there are a couple of reasons for this pattern:
(i) If solar radiation was relatively strong during the past 60 years (until the recent drop-off), one might expect the polar region with lower albedo than clouds to warm, with the reverse occurring on the opposite pole, due to enhanced radiative cooling over the pole with higher surface albedo than clouds. This is related to the Svensmark hypothesis on cosmic radiation, as mentioned above.
(ii) I think we’ve reached a critical point, regardless of the reason for recent warming (AGW or solar or otherwise), where the Arctic ice pack is simply melting off in a vicious cycle that warms surrounding areas due to enhanced release of latent heat and lower albedo. I’m not sure if reduced sunspot activity will be enough to reverse this cycle. I think it could replenish the maximum extent, but not reproduce the deep pack. Large areas of thicker ice have been depleted and the relatively cool summers will probably not be enough to rebuild it. It would take some serious cooling.
This has been staring us in the face ever since this page came up:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
The northern hemisphere dominates the yearly curves. Of course it is Roy Spencer who is contact for these plots.
Don’t want to spoil the impression Matt, Christy might indicate that Australia is cooling but the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has the opposing view:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=tmax®ion=aus&season=0112
Mind you if you select some sites like Alice Springs, Canberra and Darwin, there is very little difference between 2008 and the long term mean temperatures.
The BOM has some excellent data if you care to delve into it but they are very much committed to AGW so their monthly summaries will always highlight warming rather than cooling.
FatBigot, I thought everybody knew that Santa outsources all of his manufacturing to China! (With India as the tech-support hub.)
Is there not some umbrella anti-AGW group that could sue the US Government to prove AGW is real before they do whatever it is they’re planning on doing? It seems to work pretty good in delaying/stopping actions when the AGW group sue the EPA etc.
Ric Werme (10:56:03) :
It’s not a Mercator projection, it’s just an unprojected lat/long cartesian grid. Mercator projections that reach the poles are infintely tall.
Infinitely tall? Citation needed.
RoyfOMR (18:31:15) : You must be wrong. There can’t be any climate or climatology courses. Didn’t you know? The science is settled!!!
Bill Marsh
“I thought the models were based on the idea thatreltive humidity will increase with global warming, forming part of the ‘fast feedback’ system that catastrophic global warming depends upon.”
Speaking of which while hunting for something else I ran across this:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/wvfeedback.htm
Which talks about a NASA-funded study back in 2004 that determined that the humidity has not gone up as much as expected.
Has this gone down the memory hole?
I tracked down the nasa release which is the same text, but on a page with all sorts of charts and graphs about the positive feedback of water vapor. Natch.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0315humidity.html
YET NOWHERE IN THE RELEASE IS THERE ANY FIGURE QUANTIFYING HOW MUCH LESS.
NOWHERE. NADA. NOTHING.
Just vague words.
Makes me want to SCREAM.
Roy
The reasons for the number of climate courses in the UK is our govt’s desire to save the world. We have the Met office and Hadley centre both busy proseltysing, with a chair in climate being funded by them at Exeter University who- as might be expected- have a large climate outreach dept and recently hosted a big climate change conference. They have plans to dramatically increase their courses.
It is this (and our govt’s complete gullibility) that is the tripartite climate bandwagon. We are a very credulous people living in a very credulous world and ‘clamorous to be led to safety’ as HL Mencken reminded us
TonyB
Kum Dollison (13:52:41) :
I saw a figure, once, as to how much water vapor a hardwood tree puts into the atmosphere through evotranspiration. It was an incredible number.
One of the early uses of Eucalyptus trees in California was mosquito control. Planted near swamps – oh, pardon, “wetlands” – they would suck up enough water to drain them after a few years. The scent of the tree is also mildly repellant. They helped eliminate malaria in some areas of California. (So now the purists want to cut them all down as ‘invasive’ and restore all the swamps… I wish they’d read the history of malaria in California…)
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/ac777e/ac777e09.htm
has a chart a ways down that shows .48 L of water per g of Eucalyptus produced. Other species up to .88 L/g. A decent forest of Eucalyptus or Poplar can produce about 50 tons / acre / year of growth. You can do the math for total water…
http://www.etff.org/Articles/Eucalyptus.html
Says it’s 785 L / kg for Eucalyptus with cotton at 3200 L / kg.
These were randomly selected from a Google of “Eucalyptus water consumption”.
Since those cut down trees were replaced with crops, the water balance would have to be figured on a species vs species basis.