Via Eurekalert, a press release about projections of “Melting Marches” from the Heidi Cullen frozone team who says loss of freezing zones is “worse than we thought”. Minnesotans for Global Warming say “YES!”.
New Climate Central projection map shows local and national retreat of freezing temperatures in March
PRINCETON, NJ. On the last day of the month, Climate Central has just published an interactive animated map showing what we might expect in Marches to come as the climate warms. Developed by Climate Central scientists, the map uses special high-resolution projections covering the Lower 48 states to show where average March temperatures are expected to be above or below freezing each decade this century. The map also compares projections under a low, reduced carbon pollution scenario versus a high one that extends current trends.
Under the high scenario, Climate Central’s work shows majority or complete loss, by the end of the century, of these freezing zones in every state analyzed. Minnesota, Montana and North Dakota would lose the most total below-freezing area, while seven other states, from Arizona to Wisconsin, are projected to lose all they currently have. A table on the group’s website lists details state by state.
The projections promise earlier starts for gardeners, farmers, and golf enthusiasts. At the same time, they would mean earlier snowmelt. In the American West, early snowmelt years have already been linked to drier rivers and forests later in the summer, and very much higher wildfire activity – projected to intensify with further warming. Scientists also expect challenges for irrigation supplies and cold-water stream life like trout.
“These maps imply future changes the research community is only beginning to appreciate,” said Climate Central scientist Dr. Ben Strauss.
Climate Central is a nonprofit group of journalists and scientists dedicated to communicating the best and latest climate science.
Can someone answer me why people fear the idea that cold freezing weather may be going away? Each winter everyone is anxiously anticipating the warm weather of spring and summer so they can enjoy the outdoors and some people can start gardening.
People literally celebrate in the streets the first warm day when you don’t need to wear a jacket and you can wear t-shirts and shorts.
We are mammals and need warmth. Inthe winter nobody laments the coming of the warm spring and summer. So why do we lament a warming globe? These nuts are sad that there won’t be freezing weather in March. Most people are happy when there isn’t freezing weather..
It’s just fear mongoring that changes will be bad for us.
Tom W (04:38:00) :
“While that is certainly the case for earlier coarse resolution GCMs there is no reason in principle why it should be true of modern GCMs with sub-synoptic scale resolutions provided the factors that determine those climatic scales (e.g. surface inhomogeneities like elevation, changes in surface characteristics, albedo etc.) are included.”
The real problem is that the equations being solved are highly coupled and non-linear, meaning that there are no guarantees that a solution (numerical or otherwise) is even possible for a given set of initial and boundary conditions. We don’t even know if the problem being solved well-posed, mathematically.
Unfortunately, some groups like NASA GISS are so sloppy in the documentation of their algorithms that one doesn’t even know what equations their codes are even solving – much less boundary and intial conditions, coupling with other models, etc. (they probably don’t know either – and they don’t appear to care)!
“…they do not instill fear, but hope…”
Dave Wendt (21:17:04) :
This March was well above average here in southern Minnesota. I don’t recall hearing a single complaint.
Yes, and yesterday (4/1) here in Rochester the high temperature was 82F (about 35F above average). Not only were there no complaints, but I saw people out jogging in shorts, biking and playing golf. They seemed to be quite happy.
Our March was over 7F above normal (so, it appears we don’t need to wait until 2090) and farmers were able to get out in the fields and harvest corn that they couldn’t get to because of the wet October. I doubt any of them are complaining. In fact, I’d bet that vast majority of people would prefer to see the warmer climate shown in the maps. Right now farmers would be out planting if they thought it wasn’t going to freeze in late April (but they won’t because they know better).
On the flip side we also had a record number of days this winter when the temperature failed to reach 40F … close to 80 days.
Please:
a) “very much higher wildfire activity”
b) “much higher wildfire activity”
c) “higher wildfire activity”
d) “more wildfires”
With 60% fewer words, the last beats the first in impact as well as clarity.
Here in Austin, the number of weeks without freezing temperatures has been higher than average for the four years that I’ve lived here, with first frost coming early and last frost coming late. In ’07 we had a lengthy ice storm in April; in ’09, we recorded the coldest-ever temperature for the month of April. So, we seem not to have gotten the memo.
On the other hand, we had a nice family dinner at an East Side eatery the other night where they grow their own vegetables right in the center of Austin. The winter garden prospers in the significant urban heat island and would not be possible at my home closer to the outskirts of town. By the way, the airport temperatures are frequently more than ten degrees colder than those at the station of record — which is Camp Mabry, alongside one of our two largest highways.
I find it disturbing, if not surprising, how some warmists appear to be rooting for disaster and the concomitant rise in their own importance.
With all due respect Ms. Cullen,
It is not a good idea to regale the public with wildly speculative projections 80 years into the future,on a climate system that is chaotic in the long run.
You and others of your AGW believing camp need to get over the absurd infatuation of using computer modeling runs and then speculate on them and in time treat like it is valid data.When actually there is no verification OR real data to use for such foolish speculations.
I really wish you would go to a treatment center and get weaned off on the absurd reliance on climate models for your propaganda reporting.It is damaging science AND your credibility as a credentialed climatologist.
STOP IT!
Extrapolating is my hobby too:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/extrapolating.png
I make it a point to stop reading any further if an article includes the phrase “worse than we thought”. It is my spam filter.
a) “very much higher wildfire activity”
b) “much higher wildfire activity”
c) “higher wildfire activity”
d) “more wildfires”
With 60% fewer words, the last beats the first in impact as well as clarity. – Kevin
I think that they were going for vagueness or trying to impress us by shear word count.
I am thoroughly convinced that those who use models to “see” what the future holds are akin to those who read the last chapter of a mystery novel first. They do not want to wait their entire life time to see what really happens, they want to “know” NOW! Most understand that they will die before any of their predictions come to pass so they want to be “proven” right now so they can be heros in their own minds.
Aside from that, I only wish the warming would continue as they say it will. Perhaps then we won’t get so many retirees down here in Florida.
The weather forecast for four days from now is usually wrong. The forecast for 80 years from now will certainly be wrong.
But people can make a good living from making these computer forecast models. It doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong.
It’s easy being green.
But we should listen to Sarah Palin—-“Drill, baby, drill!”
Though seemingly a 1st.april joke, better leave it to GW BELIEVERS BLOGS, WUWT is expected to present, instead, the most probable scenario about the consequences of the current solar minimum.
Earlier melts in the continental US are associated with drier forest *in today’s climate*
Earlier melts in a warmer climate may not maintain this association. A warmer climate could result in a longer spring and wetter Western US.
Get back to us when you have usable cloud and water vapor models.
From Richard Holle
“”It is important to remember that climate model outputs are always projections and never predictions; we can use them to anticipate general trends, but never to foretell the exact temperature or precipitation at a particular place and time.””
“They have done what I do by generating detail in the fine scale by using fine detailed input.”
Bucky Fuller’s magnum opus, Synergetics, starts out with this definition:
“Synergy means behaviour of whole systems unpredicted by the behaviour of their parts taken separately.” (Synergetics 101.01)
It seems to me a great deal of the ‘climate projection’ work is based on a belief that whole systems do /not/ behave differently from their constituent parts. How many times have we heard that “CO2 trapped in a an irradiated bottle heats up”? As if a tiny closed system is somehow representive of a complex open system. I have always been mystified at excessive simplicity like this. Such an experiment basically makes a claim implicit in finite element analysis: if we understand everything from First Principles, we can predict complex system behaviour. Fuller’s point is that entirely new behaviours emerge. This is hardly news.
Much of the climate debate seems to be between people of two approximately definable world views: they largely accept or reject synergistic behaviours. This prediction of the spring thaw in 80 years falls into the latter category.
Lip service acceptance of synery often precedes a claim for a First Principles argument without a twitch of the eyebrow!
Well, nice map. That settles it for me. Excuse me while I run wildly screaming “the sky is falling!!!!” and “We’re all gonna die!!!!”
Back in reality world, the U.S. feds have decided to give Dr. Hansen some more money to play with. 62% more, probably for the great works he’s done so far. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/01/nasa-planning-billions-climate-research/
sigh
“Climate Central is a progressive funded group of journalists and activists with PhD’s dedicated to communicating the best and latest climate propaganda.”
My post should say “In Austin, Texas, the number of weeks with freezing temperatures has been higher than average for the four years that I’ve lived here.”
Frank K. (05:48:38): We don’t even know if the problem being solved well-posed, mathematically.
This is true of the equations of fluid mechanics in general and the subject of acoustics, plasma, physics, aeronautics, etc. Don’t you find it strange that no one is attacking those subjects, only climatology?
The lack of a proof of well-posedness does not mean the equations are not well posed. In fact the incredible success of the Navier-Stokes equations in many different areas suggests there is a high probability that they are.
Frozone…heh, heh.
This is no more credible than a review by members of a religious movment declaring an alleged relic to not obnly be real, but to contain magical powers.
JohnH (05:14:27) :
…you now have…the Robin Hood fund.
“We need to find ways to extract payment from those who cause that damage and then use that money to fund developing nations so that they can protect themselves from the worst effects of global warming,”[said Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the LSE.]
Send those extracted payments *today*, folks, to
The Fund For Protecting Third World Nations From Gaia Damagers LLC,
c/o Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change
Attn: Bob Ward…
As usual when ice goes up as in DMI, Arctic-roos.org disappears for a few days and then comes back with “re-adjusted” downwards ice areas. Check it yourselves.. happens every time…. what a joke!
Tom W:
“This is true of the equations of fluid mechanics in general and the subject of acoustics, plasma, physics, aeronautics, etc. Dont you find it strange that no one is attacking those subjects, only climatology?”
“The lack of a proof of well-posedness does not mean the equations are not well posed. In fact the incredible success of the Navier-Stokes equations in many different areas suggests there is a high probability that they are.”
However, Tom, climate models are NOT just solving the conservation equations for mass, momentum, energy, species, etc. They have a myriad of sub-models (e.g. ocean circulation, turbulence, radiation, clouds, land effects etc.) all of which are coupled to the basic equations of fluid mechanics. Then there are all those BCs. Even in “basic” fluid mechanics applications, there are lots of “simple” problems which can be very difficult to solve numerically – how about transition to turbulence on an airfoil at high angle of attack? Anyway, if you demonstrate to me that the mathematical problem as defined by the differential equations (and that means all of them, not just the “Navier-Stokes” equations) and initial/boundary conditions used in modern climate models are well-posed and solvable numerically, that would be wonderful. Take your time…
After that, we can talk about the numerical stability of the time-marching scheme, advection discretizations, dissipation, error accumulation, leap-frog methods…
“Tom W (07:51:15) :
Frank K. (05:48:38): We don’t even know if the problem being solved well-posed, mathematically.
This is true of the equations of fluid mechanics in general and the subject of acoustics, plasma, physics, aeronautics, etc. Don’t you find it strange that no one is attacking those subjects, only climatology?”
They work well when the underlying mechanisms are representative of what happens in the real world. This is not so in climate science.
1) The influence of aerosols is to this day guesswork and the modelers fine-tune their guesses to improve their hindcasting which is nothing but curve-fitting.
2) the spatial resolution of GCM’s is not sufficient to model cloud formation realistically as this happens on small spatial resolution. Cloud formation is thus parameterized, again, guesswork, see 1).
3) I don’t think they even attempt by now to realistically simulate changes in humidity. Or maybe they try but still fail. Given that H2O is way more important as a GHG, this results in a completely failed simulation.