Guest post by Steven Goddard
“April comes in like a lion, and stays that way.”
The University Of Colorado in Boulder and nearby Colorado State University are hotbeds of climate science activity. Famous climate names from both sides of the AGW aisle like NCAR, NSIDC, the Pielkes, Bill Gray and Chris Landsea are associated with these universities. Earlier this extended winter WUWT reported on one forecast by a CU geography professor :
University of Colorado-Boulder geography professor Mark Williams said Monday that the resorts should be in fairly good shape the next 25 years, but after that there will be less snowpack – or no snow at all – at the base areas
No doubt that a geography professor would have the correct skill set to be making ski forecasts 25 years in the future, and that 25 years from now the climate will make a radical switch. It appears that Dr. Williams forecast is correct so far, as Colorado is getting lots of snow.
Wolf Creek Ski Area has received more than 11 metres of snow this winter, and has 118 inches of snow on the ground. (That would be 2.9972 metres deep, using the Catlin tape measure.) Unfortunately, people may be unable to get to most of the ski areas because Interstate 70 is shut down – due to too much snow.
Ahead of the current storm, all of the snowtel sites in Colorado were reporting normal snowpack.
| RIVER BASIN | PERCENT OF AVERAGE | ||
| Snow Water | Accum | ||
| GUNNISON RIVER BASIN | 109 | 108 | |
| UPPER COLORADO RIVER BASIN | 112 | 109 | |
| SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN | 98 | 97 | |
| LARAMIE AND NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASINS | 103 | 105 | |
| YAMPA AND WHITE RIVER BASINS | 113 | 109 | |
| ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN | 107 | 99 | |
| UPPER RIO GRANDE BASIN | 104 | 107 | |
| SAN MIGUEL, DOLORES, ANIMAS & SAN JUAN | 95 | 10 | |
One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow. As can be seen below, this might not be an adequate explanation.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/hprcc/MonthTDeptHPRCC.png
Of course, weather is not climate and the earth has a 50/50 chance of “tipping” in the future – due to reaching some mythical CO2 threshold.
On a more urgent note, a US Navy researcher from told the Beeb that projections of an ice free Arctic by 2013 may be “too conservative.”
“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. “So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
(This California based researcher did not accompany the Catlin expedition on their -40C Arctic camping trip this spring.)
Polar Bear pondering how cap-and-trade may brighten it’s future?
If you want to save the ski industry and the polar bears, you might want to consider sending Al Gore some money – and please quit producing so much of that dangerous pollutant CO2. However, absolutely do not try to apologize to the bears in person. Skiing is much more fun and generally safer than swimming with polar bears, as this woman visiting the Berlin Zoo found out.
PHOTO: WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
I just don’t know how to get to any ski areas without making lots of CO2.
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You are confusing repeatability with usefulness. You are entirely missing the point several people are making here.
Lets go back to my analogy of a machinist measuring a machine part.
He takes the shaft out of his machine tool, and measures a journal on the shaft, using his micrometer. He takes the measurement several times and declares the shaft size is 3.0103 inches.
He hands the shaft to a co-worker who also measures the same journal on the shaft with his own micrometer. After several measurements his co-worker says I get 3.0102 inches. They look at the blue print and the blue print says the shaft must measure 3.0100 inches +/- 0.0005. They smile and slap themselves on the back for a job well done and take the shaft the the quality control inspector.
A half hour later the QC inspector comes back and tells him to re-do the job the shaft is too small. The two machinists are puzzled and asked how that was possible.
The QC inspector tells them the temperature in the machine shop is 96 deg F and the shaft was over 110 deg F when they measured it. Once it acclimated to the 72 deg F temperature in the Inspection shop which is the temperature specified for this jobs measurements, it has shrunk enough that it was out of spec.
They were making highly repeatable flawed measurements. They were not measuring the proper dimension which was the size of the shaft at 72 deg F.
Is a set of measurements that are relatively consistent with each other, what is unknown (and will not be known for years or decades) is:
Are these the correct measurements to make to understand climate?
Are these the correct type of measurements but taken at the wrong resolution?
Are these the correct type of measurements at the proper resolution but need to be corrected for some bias we currently do not know about.
Once we have answers to those questions we still have the question:
Is this data being used properly in the GCM models or are they totally botching up the data processing so that even if you feed them perfect data they puke out garbage. Are they like the Mann hockey stick pre-destined to churn out rubbish?
I am not concerned about the consistency or repeatability of the data, I am concerned that it is the wrong data, being used in the wrong way to make conclusions which have false precision. This false precision gives the uninformed public the perception that they have much greater understanding of very complex processes than actually exist.
The folks that monitor the nations population growth do not give population numbers to exact counts for the simple reason that the population changes on a second by second basis. They give numbers to a precision of a million or a few hundred thousands so the numbers still have meaning by the time they get printed out on someones computer screen. They know what they don’t know. They understand that the uncertainty of their numbers make any higher precision not only useless but misleading.
The AGW folks actively foster a culture of going well beyond what the “know” and making assertions with physically meaningless precision.
You may be able to measure the temperature of a bucket of water to a precision of .1 deg C but you cannot measure the temperature of a million buckets of water to a precision of .1deg c , because by the time you measure bucket #1,000,000 — bucket #1 will be at a different temperature. Likewise by averaging those 1,000,000 bucket temperatures, you cannot assert that you know the “average temperature” of the buckets to a precision of .001 deg, it would be a meaningless number in any physical sense, even though as a mathematical concept it might be useful to discuss the average temperature of those buckets, you can never actually know it.
Larry
“it would be good to have less discussion of weather and more of climates”, true, but we barely have enough data for weather, and struggle with that. Climate is hypothetical, hardly a science. Someday, if we get enough data, and figure out the significant forces at work we can do climate science. Until then, the current climate projections, predictions, prognostications, prestidigitations, etc. are only based on weather, not climate. It goes without saying that it was warmer in the 1990s than the 1970s, and it was warmer than now when the stuff that was growing under the melting glaciers was alive without the presence of the glacier. If one wants to quantify that, and extrapolate it, the sigma from the original WAG expands exponentially and the results are meaningless, with the exception of instilling fear and taxes. It doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it, but to convey a sense of certitude seems delusional.
Fat Man (15:40:07) Sorry for your misfortune, but envisioning that was hilarious.
Western snowpack has been amazing the last few years. Something else of interest:
http://lakepowell.water-data.com/
they had a contest last year to guess when castle point cut-off would be reached by the water last year. it happened around the beginning of summer – after the wettest winter in 6 years. I just looked to see if i could eneter the contest again this year, and there’s already water up to that point, so no contest. reservoirs above powell at >75% capacity, and % of snow/water/precip is well above 100 %.
this of course, wasn’t effected by the latest front range storm, but very good news nonetheless.
Here in Denver, we’re not out of the woods yet (even though the whole state is now > 100% snowpack at this very late date in the season) – I foresee the spin-machines working the angle later this week about front-range floods and how “crazy and unnatural” the weather has been leading up to this.
Tom P (09:08:44) :
“What has caused the CO2 to start to bubble out? Has such a behaviour been seen before under similar circumstances? Is there any work in the literature on this?”
You might consider this as one reason:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm
I tend to agree with Anthony on your MO. You appear to be schooled in circuitous argument which is never an answer to evidence.
Heh, right on schedule the estimable Matt Vooroo has a guest post on icecap.us asking if the PDO and the AMO are the real climate makers for the US. Worth a read.
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That much snow must be the start of another ice age!
Fifty years ago Athens university was of the old european style where there were chairs and the professor ruled unique. He came in ( there were no shes) and gave his lectures twice or three times a week, underlings took care of students in labs, and there was an exam twice a year that the student had to pass and could take it ad infinitum. ( the system started changing after the junta in 1967 towards a more democratice one !! but that is another story). Exams were oral and sometimes arbitrary. A cousin of mine never finished her dentistry course because in the last year in one course she was asked ” how many sewers does Athens have” and was failed being wrong. ( she used to say that the professor was after her for refusing his advances, but that also is another story).
Tom remindeds me of a student of the time, who had studied very well the five favorite lectures of the professor. When the professor asked him ” and what was the law structure in Byzantium” he said ; ” but I would really like to tell you about the law in the Roman empire” and started spewing the perfectly learned speel. He passed.
Yo I am very appalled at those U C professors for spitting the malarkey of the aspen and other ski resorts being good only for the next 25 years and after that,less snow and snowpack. I hope in 25 + years you will be dead wrong when that prediction never comes to fruition!!! You people don’t know what the
PDO ,AMO and other factors will be having a affect .Don’t worry snow lovers and ski enthusiasts, 25 years and beyond will not come true in that manner and these professors have a lot of nuts to talk about and scare people especially skiers and resort owners about something decades away that have nothing to do with what may really be happening, just like in the late 80’s some scientists were saying that in 10 years and beyond (late90’s-2000’s) aspen may be forced to close. now look the world has cooled thanx to the neg PDO and except for a few warm years recently (especially 2002 and 2006) it has cooled since especially the last 2 years. While this has no baring on the future It proves that such predictions shall be taken with a grain of salt.The only certainty for 25 years,50,75 100 and beyond is for decadal variability such as with the PDO and its effects on El nino and the like .Yeah the next 20-25 may be good for snow assuming the neg PDO holds and yeah the PDO may see it’s scheduled shift to positive around then, but only for 20-25 years and then back to Neg PDO after that so there may be Periods with less snow after 25 years but im very sure that more snow 25 or so years after that. and Jagger in a earlier post hits it on the head over this between the PDO, AMO, ENSO’s strength and frequency as well as volcanic eruptions and the solar cycle,
especially if the current min lasts for several decades and does have a cooling and we may very well be overdue for a series of stronger eruptions and increased volcanic activity. who knows another Dalton minimum as well as more volcanic activity might suppress the next Positive PDO and any warming and even more enhance the future Negitive PDO more than the current one.who knows another Ice age or even little one may bring less snow due to the colder weather/climate being much drier as well.
anna v,
As Byzantium law is just an extension of Roman Law, I can see how the student squeaked in 😉
But anyway, the question actually lies with you. What caused these higher temperatures that have produced by far the largest concentrations of CO2 for 400,000 years:
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/6900/co2prehistoric.png
It’s been quite a few degrees warmer over that period without any comparable spike in CO2.
Tom P
Here are alternate plots.
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2_supp.htm
The one you show, cobbles the icecore record to current Mauna Loa measurements. I Mauna Loa sits on top of an active volcano, in an active volcano region, and god only knows how many correction enter before we see the plots. I am putting my money on the JAXA satellite to see what surface CO2 looks like.
Yes, I am doubting the measurements of CO2 to start with.
In addition, in the consistent icecore records in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png CO2 follows in spikes the rise in temperature.
Ice cores are by construction from places where CO2 is minimal. Little biological sources survive in and under the ice to be in the atmosphere. From the AIRS animations we can see that CO2 is not so well mixed as people claim. It circles around following the air currents in parallels to the tropics.
The oceans are heating because we are coming out of the LIA. I attribute the rise measured, which I think has large systematic errors not shown, to this gradual heating of the oceans, and the amplification from the plankton etc biological activity and the biological activity on land. There is a 30% increase in productivity during this warming, and plants exude CO2 at night in addition to using some for their growth during the day.
It is a complicated chaotic system and a single explanation is not only naive but also stupid.
I expect with the continuation of the cool cycle that the measurements will fall. We shall see.
I think this is the last post on this from me. I do not think that your are willing to do any thinking on the matter.
Tom P 01:25:09
Hmmm, maybe disingenuous and dense, a deadly combination. As I’ve said, at least once and perhaps repeatedly, recent CO2 rise is likely anthropogenic. What you are failing to show is a causal link between that CO2 rise and present high temperatures. You are also failing to show a causal link between rising CO2 levels and falling temperatures, but you might try that for your next stupid pet trick.
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anna v,
The paper you cite doesn’t question Charles Keeling’s methodology. In fact Beck writes, “the pioneering efforts of C. Keeling will stand for he has developed a high precision analytical method…” so you’re rather out on a limb there.
But could he be measuring volcanic eruptions? Only if they’ve been steadily increasing over the last sixty years, which I think might have been noticed. As for the biological component, that’s why the measurements are made on top of a barren mountain, though they’re still seen as the oscillation on the trend.
If you wish to doubt the measurements for you own unspecified reasons, go ahead. It’s rather difficult to then argue a scientific basis for your own beliefs.
Tom P 00:08:20
Was that last sentence ironic? Perhaps you’d like to tell us the scientific basis for your own belief that CO2 causes a lot of global warming. Disconfirmed climate models aren’t going to get it. Arrhenius himself has a rather small effect from CO2 itself and we don’t know the feedback effect of water vapor, neither magnitude nor sign. CO2 rises lagging the temperature rises for the last few hundreds of thousands of years isn’t going to get it either. So what is the scientific basis for your faithful beliefs?
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kim,
No faith necessary.
Let’s see first were we agree. There has been a long-term warming trend, about 0.7 degC in the last hundred years. There have been as large and larger temperature excursions in the past associated with the ice age cycles.
We know that Milankovitch cycles have driven temperature changes over the last few hundred thousand years by changing the intensity of the solar energy falling on the Earth through orbital dynamics. This drove up temperatures followed about 800 years later by an increase in CO2 from the warmer oceans that amplified the heating from the initial solar warming. Eventually temperatures stabilised several degrees above present though as the orbits continued to change solar input dropped and temperatures fell. All this is obviously completely natural.
However the current warming spell is different from these previous episodes as it is coincident with the increase in CO2, which itself is higher than at any time seen in the past 400,000 years. It is not unreasonable therefore to investigate if there is a possibility that CO2, caused this time by fossil fuel combustion, might be the cause. No 800-year lag would be expected in this case.
But I freely admit this is all circumstantial evidence. The only way CO2 can hope to raise the temperature is to increase the solar power input through the greenhouse effect. Hence first it is necessary to show that CO2 could produce a sufficient greenhouse effect to cause the observed warming.
Can we agree up to this point?
Tom P (13:47:34) :
The only way CO2 can hope to raise the temperature is to increase the solar power input through the greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect does not in any way increase the solar power input.
Mark
What is the mechanism?
How is it different from H2O in the atmosphere?
Mark T,
The amount of solar power that ends up being put into the atmosphere, as opposed to reflected or emitted into space. This is what is modified by the greenhouse effect. The increased input will cause the temperature to rise until the resulting emission losses match the increased input.
Richard,
No different. The greenhouse effect for H20 is the same mechanism. Of course the magnitude or any warming will depend on the relative strength of the green house effect for this gas and how much the content is changing.
REPLY:
“The amount of solar power that ends up being put into the atmosphere, as opposed to reflected or emitted into space. This is what is modified by the greenhouse effect. The increased input will cause the temperature to rise until the resulting emission losses match the increased input.”
Tom P. “Increased input” ? That is STUNNINGLY WRONG. The “greenhouse effect” related to GHG’s has absolutely nothing to do with solar input, or what wavelenghts of the TSI is allowed to pass through the atmosphere and reach the surface. It has everything to do with retention/reflectance of re-emitted longwave IR from the earth’s surface. GHG’s affect the outbound window, not the inbound.
Perhaps you would care to rephrase so that what you’ve said is a factual statement? – Anthony
Tom P 13:47:34
First of all, there is no proof that CO2 contributed to the warming that continued after the 800 year lag. That is conjecture and based on no evidence. So where do you get ‘obviously completely natural’ except from your faith?
Next, this current warming spell is not ‘coincident’ with the rise of CO2. I’ve shown you repeatedly that neither the steady warming from the end of the Little Ice Age, nor the variations around that rebound, due to the oceanic oscillations, correlate with the CO2 curve. The only exception to that is during the last quarter of the last century, our great Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.
I grant you a little liberality with the meaning of the term ‘solar input’, but you still haven’t demonstrated what is the CO2 effect on that. I suspect there is some, perhaps a degree Fahrenheit per doubling of CO2, but the fact of the matter is that we do not know that effect. It is your ‘faith’ that makes you believe the IPCC’s figure, perhaps an order of magnitude greater than the real effect. The IPCC does not support its calculations. Sorry. This is one of Steve McIntyre’s great hobby horses, that the effect of CO2 on temperature is not established.
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A really great example of the fact that you are depending upon faith for your beliefs is your complete resistance to accepting that the temperature curve since the Little Ice Age does not correlate well with the curve of CO2 concentration. You keep asserting that as fact, when you’ve been shown repeatedly that it is not so. This is faith, brother, simple faith, which, like kind hearts, is greater than coronets. But, it ain’t science. And it is only science than can determine wise policy. At any rate, any policies purporting to be based on science, and needing to be based on science.
If we are cooling long term, and the simple, but well-intentioned, faith of environmentalists has wrong-footed us into mitigating a warming that isn’t happening instead of adapting to the perilous cooling, then there will be Hell to pay, and the environment will only be one of the things that suffers.
So please, re-evaluate your assumptions and your beliefs. The climate is changing, for sure, but warming it isn’t, and CO2 isn’t causing the changes.
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Tom P 14:55:24
Here you get into the water vapor feedback to initial CO2 forcing and it is an important point. The IPCC and the climate models depend for a lot of the supposed effect of rising CO2 on the water vapor feedback being positive and large, in other words, much of the supposed effect of CO2 is based on rising temperature pulling a lot of water vapor into the atmosphere. However, this is not happening. As best as we can tell from the direct measurements of radiosondes, the extra water vapor is not there. As best as we can tell, the signature of that effect, tropospheric tropical warming, is not being shown. And now, as best as Roy Spencer can tell from indirect methods, water vapor is not being shown to have a large positive feedback. This is why the climate models have failed, and why the IPCC is just dead wrong. Now, please reconsider before there are a lot of dead people to go along with this BIG mistake.
==================================
Anthony,
Only a proportion of the solar power hitting the top of the atmosphere ends up heating the atmosphere. That is the overall thermal input into the atmosphere due to the sun and is affected by the strength of the greenhouse effect. Of course there is reflection and reabsorption as part of that process, and this affects the radiative losses.
Input here indicates the overall power balance, not which direction of flow of radiation through the atmosphere is affected. I agree that in both an atmosphere and a greenhouse it is the upwards reradiation that is changed by either gas composition or glass.
REPLY: Your new explanation makes sense in a different context, such as a solar power discussion, but not in a discussion on GHG’s. I think that is your biggest problem here. Plus your discussion is OT, which seems to happen with you a lot. Like the thread you derailed with your boiling milk analogy. The idea is to keep things on topic. – Anthony
Tom P 16:21:46
You are betraying some profound ignorance on one point. The heating in a glass greenhouse is not from the effect of the glass on re-radiation, it is from the physical interruption of convection. ‘Greenhouse effect’ with respect to the gasses in the atmosphere is a huge misnomer and perhaps is contributing to your confusion.
You’ll not find many skeptics who claim that CO2 has no ‘greenhouse’ or warming effect on the atmosphere. The question is how much it has, and that is not settled, despite your faith that it has been settled. Those of us who claim that the paradigm CO2=AGW is wrong mainly claim that CO2’s effect has been exaggerated. We can know that it has been exaggerated, without knowing what it is, because we can’t find its signal in the temperature record. That makes us suspect that it is quite small, probably trivial.
==============================================
kim 15:48:28
OK, I’ll withdraw my objection to your term ‘obviously completely natural’. I still object to your certainty that the temperature rise beyond the 800 year lag is from CO2. It might just as easily, and more likely, be from the same forces that caused the temperature rise in the first place.
Again, we do not know the effect that CO2 has on temperature. The correlation of temperature and CO2 for the last few hundreds of thousands of years is more likely from outgassing of CO2 from a warming ocean and/or from other places in the carbon cycle.
The science? Not settled.
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Tom P (03:28:44) : As you measure the height of a mountain with higher resolution, you get closer and closer to the actual height. The result will converge – it is not fractal.
The AREA is fractal. Since AVERAGE height is a product of AREA at a height the AVERAGE height is also fractal.
Your statement would be true for the PEAK height. As ever finer rulers are used, the peak height converges. Re-read my prior posting.
And yes, temperatures are just like this… And Hansen know it, which is why he has said you can’t measure it. You are wrong. Get over it.
anna v (08:16:20) : But Tom, you have been offered several times an alternative explanation. CO2 bubbles out of the oceans and lands driven by higher temperatures. That is the problem. There exist alternative explanations, including bad measurements as Beck has been arguing for some time:
We can’t know where the CO2 comes from at present. See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-trouble-with-c12-c13-ratios/
But we can know that the quantity nature tosses about is much larger than what we do. 90 / 92 Gigatons / year for the ocean, 121 GT/yr for plants. 5.5 GT/year for fuels and cement… (see the top graphic in the link).
Given a 40:1 ratio of just the big lumps of nature vs. us – I’d look to nature first… Oh, and just a sidebar note: That oil and coal is NOT permanently sequestered. Coal gets eroded out and oxidized or subducted, similarly oil does the same plus natural seeps. Ditto natural gas. It’s coming back, the only question is when…
Frankly, given that there is more C in Clathrate and we have no clue how much it out gasses each year, that alone means we have no clue. (BTW, lots of bacteria eat natural gas and oil to make CO2, so it isn’t just a methane thing…) Heck, we don’t even know how much comes out of black smokers on the ocean floor or if / when it varies.