Just in time for summer heat waves in the USA, worrisome model outputs from Stanford with the all important could qualifier. No mention of UHI, asphalt, or heat waves of the past. No mention of weather stations that read hot in Tucson. Just CO2 driven modeling. Stanford’s Press Release is here. No published paper was provided with the press release, but there is a link to GRL in the body of the PR. – Anthony
Heat waves could be commonplace in the US by 2039, Stanford study finds
The effects of global warming will be felt sooner than expected, say Stanford researchers.
BY MARK SHWARTZ, Stanford
Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.
“Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study.
Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Diffenbaugh concluded that hot temperature extremes could become frequent events in the U.S. by 2039, posing serious risks to agriculture and human health.
“In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heat waves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities,” said Diffenbaugh, a center fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “Those kinds of severe heat events also put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields.”
The GRL study took two years to complete and is co-authored by Moetasim Ashfaq, a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow now at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The study comes on the heels of a recent NASA report, which concluded that the previous decade, January 2000 to December 2009, was the warmest on record.
2-degree threshold
In the study, Diffenbaugh and Ashfaq used two dozen climate models to project what could happen in the U.S. if increased carbon dioxide emissions raised the Earth’s temperature by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) between 2010 and 2039 – a likely scenario, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.
In that scenario, the mean global temperature in 30 years would be about 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) hotter than in the preindustrial era of the 1850s. Many climate scientists and policymakers have targeted a 2-degree C temperature increase as the maximum threshold beyond which the planet is likely to experience serious environmental damage. For example, in the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Accord, the United States and more than 100 other countries agreed to consider action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius.”
But that target may be too high to avoid dangerous climate change, Diffenbaugh said, noting that millions of Americans could see a sharp rise in the number of extreme temperature events before 2039, when the 2-degree threshold is expected to be reached.
“Our results suggest that limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial conditions may not be sufficient to avoid serious increases in severely hot conditions,” Diffenbaugh said.
Record heat
For the GRL study, the researchers analyzed temperature data for the continental U.S. from 1951-1999. Their goal was to determine the longest heat waves and hottest seasons on record in the second half of the 20th century.
Those results were fed into an ensemble of climate forecasting models, including the high-resolution RegCM3, which is capable of simulating daily temperatures across small sections of the U.S.
“This was an unprecedented experiment,” Diffenbaugh said. “With the high-resolution climate model, we can analyze geographic quadrants that are only 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) to a side. No one has ever completed this kind of climate analysis at such a high resolution.”
The results were surprising. According to the climate models, an intense heat wave – equal to the longest on record from 1951 to 1999 – is likely to occur as many as five times between 2020 and 2029 over areas of the western and central United States.
The 2030s are projected to be even hotter. “Occurrence of the longest historical heat wave further intensifies in the 2030-2039 period, including greater than five occurrences per decade over much of the western U.S. and greater than three exceedences per decade over much of the eastern U.S.,” the authors wrote.
Seasonal records
The Stanford team also forecast a dramatic spike in extreme seasonal temperatures during the current decade. Temperatures equaling the hottest season on record from 1951 to 1999 could occur four times between now and 2019 over much of the U.S., according to the researchers.
The 2020s and 2030s could be even hotter, particularly in the American West. From 2030 to 2039, most areas of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico could endure at least seven seasons equally as intense as the hottest season ever recorded between 1951 and 1999, the researchers concluded.
“Frankly, I was expecting that we’d see large temperature increases later this century with higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming,” Diffenbaugh said. “I did not expect to see anything this large within the next three decades. This was definitely a surprise.”
The researchers also determined that the hottest daily temperatures of the year from 1980 to 1999 are likely to occur at least twice as often across much of the U.S. during the decade of the 2030s.
“By the decade of the 2030s, we see persistent, drier conditions over most of the U.S.,” Diffenbaugh said. “Not only will the atmosphere heat up from more greenhouse gases, but we also expect changes in the precipitation and soil moisture that are very similar to what we see in hot, dry periods historically. In our results for the U.S., these conditions amplify the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Besides harming human health and agriculture, these hot, dry conditions could lead to more droughts and wildfires in the near future, he said. And many of these climate change impacts could occur within the next two decades – years before the planet is likely to reach the 2-degree C threshold targeted by some governments and climate experts, he added.
“It’s up to the policymakers to decide the most appropriate action,” Diffenbaugh said. “But our results suggest that limiting global warming to 2 degrees C does not guarantee that there won’t be damaging impacts from climate change.”
The GRL study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. The high-resolution climate model simulations were generated and analyzed at Purdue University. GRL is a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
Mark Shwartz is communications manager at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.
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Let’s consider an analogy in the computer modeling business. Flight characteristics of aircraft. Say a bright aerodynamics engineer has a brilliant insight into how to modify a jumbo jet to greatly reduce drag. He modifies the extant design on his engineering workstation and runs the hypothetical aircraft through a flight simulator. Sure enough it flies more efficiently in the computer simulation. Keep in mind that flight simulation models are a HELLUVA lot better than any climate model.
So following the post-scientific method of skipping past the experiments he doesn’t do any wind tunnel testing and his company immediately starts retrofitting all extant aircraft in service. They skips doing any actual flight tests and immediately put these modified aircraft into service fully loaded with paying passengers.
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? That’s exactly what the climate boffins are doing except that their models, unlike aircraft flight models, are virtually untested to begin with and have no history of predictive success.
This isn’t science. It isn’t engineering. It’s wool gathering. Damn dangerous and expensive wool gathering if the untested conclusions are acted upon. I don’t have too much of a problem with academic wool gathering per se. If someone wants to devote their time to, say, making informed guesses about whether dinosaurs were warm or cold blooded, or whether homo sapiens and homo neandertalensis interbred 100,000 years ago, that’s fine so long as the pursuit of that knowledge isn’t being funded on the public dime and any tentative conclusions have no practical impact on the modern world. It’s a waste of time and money in my opinion but as long as it isn’t my tax dollars being wasted I have no right to interfere.
In the case of CO2 driven AGW I am compelled to interfere. Not so much because of the cost of the research but because of the comtemplated, hideously expensive actions based on incomplete, unreliable, cherry picked observations and shoddy alarmist conclusions obtained therefrom. These actions could easily cause vast harm while doing no good whatsoever.
The Met Office has the largest computer. Their forcasts have been wrong 10 ot the last 10 years. They were much hotter than actual 9 times. They have proven forecasting is wrong if done by warmistas.
My appreciation of science has been so damaged by CAGW now that I instantly switch off every time I see the word “could”.
@Henry
I’ve been thinking for some time now that a much better use of the Met Office computers, if “saving the world” was their genuine concern, would be to use the processing power to aid in the efforts to track asteroids.
tallbloke says:
July 9, 2010 at 1:08 am
“I know America is a litigious place. Can these people be sued for inducing unwarranted stress in worried members of the public?”
Only when our Department of Justice begins defending the public:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/06/justice-department-file-suit-arizona-early-tuesday/
Here they sue Arizona whose law supports federal law, but ignore Sanctuary cities whose laws Refutes federal law.
Jimbo says: July 9, 2010 at 5:35 am
Does the NOAA show both poles cooling over the next 8 months???? Maybe it’s my monitor.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/glbT2mSea.gif
Interesting, compare that with this also from NOAA, the first six in the left columns match the same graphs but for the US only.
http://i28.tinypic.com/2vbq1i1.jpg
The forecasts from the same agency look nothing alike for the US. While I was at it, I also included the the next six forecasts for the US. It appears the forecast for the 2010-11 winter is similar to the one past in the NW, but the SW gets warm. Didn’t work that way last winter.
Won’t Diffenbaugh et al be surprised when we will be cooler in 2030 than now…
3. Results
We find that the exceedence of the historical hottest-season threshold increases over the next three decades in the A1B scenario (Fig. 1). The intensification of hot extremes emerges quickly in the RegCM3 simulations, with 3 to 4 exceedences per decade over large areas of the U.S. in the 2010-2019 period (Fig. 1) (with an intra-ensemble standard deviation (S.D.) of 2 to 3 exceedences per decade over most of the U.S.; Fig. S2). This emergence intensifies in the 2020-2029 period, with up to 8 exceedences per decade over the western U.S. (S.D. of 3 to 4), and up to 4 exceedences per decade over much of the eastern U.S (S.D. of 2 to 3). Further, in the 2030-2039 period, most areas of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico experience at least 7 exceedences per decade (S.D. of 3 to 4), and much of the rest of the U.S. experiences at least 4
exceedences per decade (S.D. of 2 to 5 over most areas). The summer warming in the RegCM3 ensemble is not uniform, with greater increases in the mean in the eastern U.S. than the western U.S. (Fig. S3), along with increased variance in the northcentral U.S., increased skewness in the southwestern and southeastern U.S., and decreased kurtosis throughout most of the continental U.S. (Fig. S3). The intensification of hottest-season exceedence is similar in the CMIP3 ensemble (compared with the RegCM3 ensemble), including up to 6 exceedences per decade over the western and northeastern U.S. in the 2030-2039 period, and up to 8 exceedences per decade over parts of the southeastern U.S. (with S.D. of 4 over most of the western and eastern U.S., and 3 over most of the central U.S.). However, the intensification of seasonal hot extremes emerges more quickly and strongly in the RegCM3 ensemble, particularly over the western U.S., where the higher-resolution topographic boundary condition leads to a more accurate representation of extreme seasonal temperature values (Fig. S1).
———-
Well, they reported the standard deviation at least…be nice to see a map of it between the ensemble runs. Not very impressive when your error is almost as large as your result.
They also run the climate model from the 1950-2040 period, which is where they get their baseline hot extremes for the 1950-1999 period, yet there is no validation of the model output for that time period.
“We first calculate the hottest season of the 1951-1999 period at each grid point. Both the CMIP3 and RegCM3 ensembles are able to capture the observed magnitude and pattern of hottest-season and mean-summer temperature in the U.S. (Fig. S1). The simulation of interannual variance of summer temperature is less accurate, with over-estimation of variance in the central U.S. (Fig. S1).”
That’s always nice to have bad variance, yeah, because that leads to stable model runs. There is no Fig. S1 in the manuscript, btw.
It is not really suprising that they get the result they get from their 2 dozen models, because they all contain the same assumption – global warming will reduce cloud cover which will lead to more warming. Observation does indeed show a slight reduction in cloud cover has occurred in recent decades. However –
Dr. Spencer has pointed out that these models have got cause and effect the wrong way round. Rather than the current warming having led to reduced cloud cover, he suggests that it is the reduced cloud cover that has led to the current warming. If he is correct, then it wouldn’t matter if they ran 2 dozen or 40 thousand. The models are basically crap.
Here’s the actual article:
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2010/07/08/14654631.html
Last evening on BBC TV 1 in London, UK, we were warned of a ‘heat wave’, warning complete with health alerts!
Forecast max temps… 31C!
July 08, 2010
“Despite June 2010 being one of the warmest U.S. Junes since 1895, the twelve-month period ending June 30 was tied (with 2001) as the coldest since 1998. Of course, the U.S. cooling trend will eventually revert to a warming trend, but the current decade-long plus global cooling trend has not yet abated, which has been a major surprise for all global warming alarmists. ”
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/07/last-12-mths-ending-june-is-coldest-since-1998-us-temps-cooling-at-81f-rate-per-century.html
Darn, and just 35 years ago I was reading about how we were going to go into the next ice age. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
From Gail Combs: “In a nut shell CO2 causes warming. Warming increases evaporation of water. Water is a very powerful greenhouse gas and causes further warming. This simple model however does not take into account the negative feedbacks caused by water such as cloud albedo and the rapid thermal energy transport from the oceans to space by thunderheads as shown ….”
Thanks for the links.
A question:
The explanations for CO2 and Water IR absorbtion always depict the heat exchange energy transfer models for daytime, when these IR sensitive gases add heat to the atmosphere. Why do we never see the same kind of model for the nightime, i.e. without solar input, when the ‘greenhouse’ gases become net emitters of IR, that is they become ‘coolant’ gases for the atmosphere?
Ed
There is only one thing capable of causing the substantial US heating referred to in the press release. El Nino’s. Otherwise, heat waves under neutral or cool SST conditions are simply temporary weather related events (the current heat wave is a weather related event). And we all know and have been told multiple times that weather related events have nothing to do with climate. The model must cause CO2 radiation of long wave infrared to heat oceans deep enough to produce El Nino’s, that evaporate enough water that turns into enough increased water vapor, that stays in the atmosphere long enough, to cause further longwave radiation, that warms the planet more, that produces more El Nino’s.
In summary, increasing CO2 must produce more frequent, stronger, and longer El Nino’s. Trouble is, so far, there is no correlation to increasing CO2 and increasing El Nino’s. Reason? Simple. Longwave infrared cannot warm oceans deep enough to cause an El Nino. Physically can’t do it. El Nino’s are caused by naturally occurring events we have no control over whatsoever.
So many interesting points in this article…
First, the definition of heat waves is ill-formed if you want to talk about the dangers of heat. An heat wave is actually defined as a temperature sufficiently warmer than this historic average. The real danger of heat waves should be about how much warmer it is compared to the last month average, because the body get accustomed pretty fast to warmer temps. So if climate gets warmer, our body will get used to it and 100 degrees F won’t be as dangerous.
Second, the 2 degrees of warming target, I have never seen any good argument for it.
Third, they focus on the 1951-1999 portion of the record. In the USA, it is a segment which exhibits an acceleration of the warming. Make it longer on any side and you lose this illusion. Why focus on this period?
Fourth, they expect 1.8 degrees F of warming in the next three decades. It probably fits right with the “acceleration of warming” or the period 1951-1999. But if you look at a longer record, let say 1920-2010, this level of warming seems much less probable.
I’m glad to see the phrase “sooner than expected” being used with greater frequency. This means that the entire AGW enterprise may collapse sooner than they could possibly expect. (It’s not wise to raise the ante too casually in a game that depends on the cooperation of Mother Nature.)
It’s also amusing (and a little hair-raising) to note that “sooner than expected” in this case refers to expectations contrasted with other expectations, since the events under consideration all take place the future. Talk about living in a mirror-world!
evanmjones says:
July 9, 2010 at 12:36 am
“an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science
Gosh! Well, I guess the word is in.”
I once interviewed a person with a PHD in Environmental Sciences for a position we had open that was to deal with industrial water pollution in Lake Erie. She had NO chemistry, physics or math courses but plenty of tree planting, horseback riding, plant identification, etc. “education”. This was called environmental sciences by here educational institution. Anyone can obtain any level degree in any field today if they have the time and money. It may, of course, be meaningless.
I am seeking funding for a very important project:
But first I need a subject, a new and really scary one on how global warming is going to dramatically affect …………………………… I want something good for at least 10 years’ funding and unlikely to be proven right or wrong in my lifetime.
Unfortunately, hundreds of other scientists have been quicker than me to milk this public teat, so I need to move quickly before the bubble bursts.
Any ideas, as well as substantial financial contributions, would be most welcome.
“…according to Stanford University climate scientists. In most of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, the number of extremely hot seasons could be as high as seven.”
Wow — Gorebull Worming will heat up Teh Planet so much that the *year* will expand beyond the usual four seasons to seven!
How much more worse-than-we-thought can it get?
It is hot every summer.
I am convinced these are dishonest people because they are arguing forecasts as being actual facts which they are not. They also don’t have records of forecasts from 20, 30, 40 years ago to show us if they have forecasting accuracy.
When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards. Maybe we need to print cards on forecasters.
Noah Diffenbaugh, spoke at last US Mensa’s Annual Colloquium last year. (I would’ve preferred going to the ICCC, but they had James Hansen as the keynote speaker and I figured I’d better look after my “flock.” Hansen looked exhausted and left early to get to Washington before the snow – he spoke at the Capitol Hill power plant protest and I got stuck in Atlanta for a couple days. I may have brought home bedbugs, too. Sigh.)
See http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Mensa.htm for a good summary from someone who wasn’t there.
Diffenbaugh spoke about the projected warm up in the southwest. It was the first I had heard of either the man or the research (some model output he showed was only days old), so there wasn’t much I could question. IIRC, one of the things the models came up with was that the “semi-permanent summer low” over the southwest would turn into high pressure and subsidence would reduce clouds and rain. This struck me as very odd as the summer low comes from low density hot air and I couldn’t figure out how it could turn in high pressure in a hotter environment. The best I was able to come up with is if the hot area expands, then maybe there could be a low pressure ring and subsiding very dry air in the center.
At any rate, I figured in the the short term it might be another area to watch during the negative PDO phase. And what was behind the past drought that forced the Anasazi Indians out of the area anyway?
This is the first I’ve seen about Diffenbaugh’s work since the Colloquium, it’s nice to see some form of paper trail for his near-term predictions.
mikelorrey says:
July 9, 2010 at 1:04 am
Nashua broke 100 earlier this week. I set up watering for raspberries and part of our back yard this week, I know we didn’t water the yard last year and likely not the year before. It’s really just weather – a well placed storm could have negated that and the forecast for Saturday is calling for some rain.
I didn’t move to New England until 1974, the only 100 degree weather I remember was the stretch in in 1975 that set the all time high temp in Massachusetts. Some coworkers and I were going to climb Mt Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts, but decided doing that day was really stupid, so we hiked up overnight and watched the dawn at the top. Much more sensible.
We’ve had a few summers recently that didn’t break 90. I liked those, though sometimes the humidity made up for it.
Say, might it be possible that increasing CO2 causes weather changes but leaves climate alone? If all the climate indices continue their hide and seek with AGW scientists, they may have to come up with a new acronym for the newly discovered (I love this) CO2 relationship to weather related events, and can thus continue with the panic inducing press releases!
Human-Induced Bad Weather
Now I know there are clever folks out there. Let’s come up with a really catchy acronym and ask for coinage to further study the problem!!!
It’s all a matter of perspective when it comes to weather. Saskatchewan is suffering under one of the coolest spring/summers anyone can remember and more rain than we’ve ever seen in the Eastern part of the province. Sure we’re not as populated as most of those singing the heatwave blues but our cool spring/summer is affecting a very LARGE area. We’re in desperate need of unrestricted sunshine without a cloud or drop in sight. In some areas its been too cool for too long. Rain is fine if its being mitigated by sun and wind but without the breezy warmth to carry off much of that sitting moisture we get crops rotting in the ground which can’t be made up for with a hot and sunny August. Others here have said it and here’s the truth of it. Hotter we’re able to offset with irrigation and the hardier hybrid grains we grow but cooler is a shorter season with unworkable moisture levels and that means less production overall. I’ve never in 30 years here had the smell of mold overcome the air freshener hanging off the mirror in the truck until last year and this one will be worse yet. I’d bet that doesn’t make the news anywhere but here.
The crying hasn’t even begun yet. Wait until the harvest yields are reported and some governmental pinhead pushes more ethanol production to get off that evil oil. Maybe “big oil” will have a poster with a malnourished child having gone without so fuel in B.C. could be lauded as “green” and slap the caption on it “Grain into gas. Green enough for you but what about him?”
jorgekafkazar says:
July 9, 2010 at 12:26 am
i agree with jorgekafkazar.
That is how most models are generated. you take your model, use the past data, and tweak all the parameters, and then use them to move forward.
but there ARE SO SO many parameters. an old saying in the modeling world is ” Give me 18 parameters, i can model an elephant!!!”
People on the wall street take their new-fangled Risk models and “validate” them using the past data, acting as if they are “forecasting from the past”.
now, after the last couple of years…… i wonder how many people think that will do a bang-up jobof predicting the future!!! and the climate is lot more complex than financial markets.