From NOAA News, Susan Solomon predicts the future with certainty. In other news, on the same day Caterpillar, Sprint, Texas Instruments, and Home Depot announce massive layoff plans to the tune of 50,000 people, unemployed climate modelers get a government bailout today courtesy of our new president to the tune of 140 million dollars. That should be just enough to pay the electric power bill for the new supercomputer I’m sure NOAA will just “have to have” now to keep up with the new toy for the Brits at Hadley. (h/t to Ed Scott for the NOAA pr)
New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible
January 26, 2009
A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there’s no going back.
The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped. The findings appear during the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” said Solomon, who is based at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
“It has long been known that some of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years,” Solomon said. “But the new study advances the understanding of how this affects the climate system.”
The study examines the consequences of allowing CO2 to build up to several different peak levels beyond present-day concentrations of 385 parts per million and then completely halting the emissions after the peak. The authors found that the scientific evidence is strong enough to quantify some irreversible climate impacts, including rainfall changes in certain key regions, and global sea level rise.
If CO2 is allowed to peak at 450-600 parts per million, the results would include persistent decreases in dry-season rainfall that are comparable to the 1930s North American Dust Bowl in zones including southern Europe, northern Africa, southwestern North America, southern Africa and western Australia.
The study notes that decreases in rainfall that last not just for a few decades but over centuries are expected to have a range of impacts that differ by region. Such regional impacts include decreasing human water supplies, increased fire frequency, ecosystem change and expanded deserts. Dry-season wheat and maize agriculture in regions of rain-fed farming, such as Africa, would also be affected.
Climate impacts were less severe at lower peak levels. But at all levels added carbon dioxide and its climate effects linger because of the ocean.
“In the long run, both carbon dioxide loss and heat transfer depend on the same physics of deep-ocean mixing. The two work against each other to keep temperatures almost constant for more than a thousand years, and that makes carbon dioxide unique among the major climate gases,” said Solomon.
The scientists emphasize that increases in CO2 that occur in this century “lock in” sea level rise that would slowly follow in the next 1,000 years. Considering just the expansion of warming ocean waters—without melting glaciers and polar ice sheets—the authors find that the irreversible global average sea level rise by the year 3000 would be at least 1.3–3.2 feet (0.4–1.0 meter) if CO2 peaks at 600 parts per million, and double that amount if CO2 peaks at 1,000 parts per million.
“Additional contributions to sea level rise from the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets are too uncertain to quantify in the same way,” said Solomon. “They could be even larger but we just don’t have the same level of knowledge about those terms. We presented the minimum sea level rise that we can expect from well-understood physics, and we were surprised that it was so large.”
Rising sea levels would cause “…irreversible commitments to future changes in the geography of the Earth, since many coastal and island features would ultimately become submerged,” the authors write.
Geoengineering to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was not considered in the study. “Ideas about taking the carbon dioxide away after the world puts it in have been proposed, but right now those are very speculative,” said Solomon.
The authors relied on measurements as well as many different models to support the understanding of their results. They focused on drying of particular regions and on thermal expansion of the ocean because observations suggest that humans are contributing to changes that have already been measured.
Besides Solomon, the study’s authors are Gian-Kasper Plattner and Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Pierre Friedlingstein of Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
“” John Galt (14:32:28) :
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Ric Werme (21:08:15) :
evanjones (20:38:12) :
It takes a high IQ to be that stupid and blind. I have often felt that so-called “superior” intelligence leads many (most) those who have it right off the intellectual cliff.
I shudder to imagine a world where 160+ IQ types made all the decisions. Arrogance and lack of (and contempt for) common sense is a disastrous combination.
Being a long time member of Mensa (thank whomever that there is no periodic retest), I’ve concluded that intelligence is the MSG of aptitudes. I.e. it lets you do more with the other aptitudes you have. If you don’t have any other aptitudes (I think “common sense” is one), you’re just a waste of carbon footprint.
Mensa was originally founded to provide a resource for the British government to help solve all its problems. People quickly discovered that more than intelligence was required, but a lot of people had interests other than solving all the British government’s problems.
BTW, I think a lot of people here would readily qualify for Mensa (Evan, for example). You’d be surprised at how average we are. 🙂
I can think of a few Mensans who’d make or are good leaders. They generally lack the patience for dealing with politics and have enough intelligence to not want the job….
BTW, Icecap seems to take a dim view of this work too.
That 1000 year forecast comes with a moneyback guarantee from NOAA. Too bad they don’t offer the same on their seasonal forecasts. the last two winters were forecast to be warm in Alaska and the lower 48 states. Susan can’t help but keep embarrassing herself first with her work on the ozone hole, then the IPCC AR4 report for which she was a Lead Author and now this.
Ouch.
”
My wife likes it when I take her to Mensa meetings. It makes her feel that I am much more normal. (I’ve been a Mensa member for 25 years.) “”
Not sure who said what above; but I once asked my Mother in law (she’s Mexican Indian) if she would like to join Mensa (which I believe means “Table” in Latin); and she damn near died laughing.
“Why would I want to join an organisation for crazy ladies?” was her response.
It seems that in Spanish table is MESA, not Mensa.
And Mensa comes from a different Latin root from which we get Month, Menses, Menstruation and the like.
Anyhow, in colloquial Mexican lingo, it literally means a crazy lady; one who has gone lala; probably something to do with the moon or the month.
So i though it was priceless, that this organisation for high IQ special people evidently are unaware what their organisation name means in other languages.
I asked a SFSC language professor, who was interviewing the SF chapter of Mensa President, or whatever they call their leader, on a talk radio program; did Mensa have very many Mexican women in their organisation.
He cut me off, and never did aks why I asked such a weird question (and he’s the language prof). the Mensa chap said they were not a racist organisation, and anyone could join who met the IQ requirement.
Ah well; language can do funny things to us.
“” Harold Pierce Jr (00:57:14) :
RE: 385 ppmv
The concentration of the various components in air taken at any site after analysis is computed and reported for a defined reference state known as “Standard Dry Air” (SDA), which is bone-dry air that is comprised only of nitrogen, oxygen, the inert gases and carbon dioxide (i.e, the so-called fixed gases) and is at standard temperature and pressure (STP, i.e., 273.2 K and 1 atm pressure). One cubic meter of SDA contains 385 ml or 17.2 millimoles of pure carbon dioxide. However, SDA exists at no place on the earth because “real air” is never at STP and always contains water vapor and clouds, the climatologists’ worst nightmares. The term “real air” is used by engineers for local air at the intake ports of air separation plants. “”
That has to be the dumbest way of specifying gas mixtures, I’ve ever heard of. For a start, there’s that 385 ppm !!-V-!! . Really wonderful; as you rise up through the atmosphere form ground level you have to keep recalculating the amount of gas in a volume, and then try to partition it among the component gases.
At least if they said 385ppmW or ppmM you would have some chance of figuring oit out.
What is so darn hard about specifying the concentration as simply the ratio of the numbers of each moleclular species.
Then you would know there are 78 N2 molecules for every 21 O2 molecules, and 1 Ar molecule, and 385 out of every million molecules was CO2.
Well evidently those are the wrong numbers; and you need a computer and a PhD to figure it out.
Next time I see atmospheric concentrations specified as ppmv, I am going to pull alol my hair out.
When they teach climatology in college, don’t they ever mention the atomic theory of matter ?
No wonder the science is in such a mess.
OT, but speaking of climate models, I ran across this interesting article on Wired:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/supercomputer.html
Worlds fastest supercomputer being built for Lawrence Livermore.
A few interesting tidbits:
“The progress they make in quantifying the range of error in their models could have far reaching impacts in the branches of science that use predictive models extensively, like modeling climate change or the protein interactions inside cells. ”
“Initially, Sequoia will be dedicated to the National Nuclear Safety Administration work. That means some of the exciting weather science will have to wait. With 20 petaflops of computing power, meteorologists could predict local weather down to the 100-meter range. For an event like a tornado, that could mean being able to predict the path that the twister takes through a town, allowing for targeted evacuations that save lives.
It’s performance like that, Seager argues, that’s changing the way that science is done, making simulation another branch of the scientific method along with theory and experiment.
“Scientific simulation is the telescope of the mind,” Seeger said. “We work with highly non-linear systems that have very complicated mathematics and models. It’s just too difficult to hold all that in our brain and analyze it. So by simulating them, we’re extending our brains’ capabilities.”
I really like the “making simulation another branch of scientific method” bit.
Does that mean that’s NOT happening now, and life will be much better when it does?
JimB
Ok…another OT, and from the same source, actually, but this article does a great job of positioning the discussions we frequently have with AGWers both here and in 3D.
Clive Thompson on How More Info Lead To Less Knowledge”
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_thompson
“As Farhad Manjoo notes in True Enough: … if we argue about what a fact means, we’re having a debate. If we argue about what the facts are, it’s agnotological Armageddon, where reality dies screaming.”
JimB
JimB (15:47:48) :
“ For an event like a tornado, that could mean being able to predict the path that the twister takes through a town, allowing for targeted evacuations that save lives.”
Will all the folks on the East side of Maple street please evacuate to the West side… 8-}
I’d rather know with more warning that the tornado was coming; don’t bother with that 50 feet better precision… If the thing hits anywhere in my town, I’m bookin’ it out!
One of the things that I find interesting about such claims regarding new-found compute power is that no one seems to pay any attention to how/what data will be collected to accomplish this.
JimB