Heat Wave In Russia – Is It From Global Warming?
Guest Post by Dr. Roger Pielke Senior, University of Colorado
Image: NASA Earth Observatory. This map shows temperature anomalies for the Russian Federation from July 20–27, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008. The anomalies are based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Areas with above-average temperatures appear in red and orange, and areas with below-average temperatures appear in shades of blue. Oceans and lakes appear in gray.
There has been considerable discussion of the heat wave in Russia and of the floods in Pakistan and China as to whether these events are from global warming. Examples of this in the media include
Will Russia’s Heat Wave End Its Global-Warming Doubts? By Simon Shuster / Moscow
Climate change whips up floods, fire and ice by Brian Sullivan and Madelene Pearson
The second article starts with the text
CLIMATE change has been blamed for floods that have killed thousands and left millions homeless from Pakistan to North Korea, fires and a heatwave in Russia that have left 5000 dead and disrupted global food markets, and a severe tropical storm threatening Bermuda.
and includes the statements
The weather drew comment from officials and activists at international climate change talks in Bonn.
One US delegate said Russia’s heatwave and the recent floods that have devastated Pakistan are ”consistent with the kind of changes we would expect to see from climate change and they will only get worse unless we act quickly”.
A new article in the Economist
Green View: A taste of things to come
has a more complete discussion for these weather events. Excerpts from the article includes the text
“The immediate cause of the problems is the behaviour of the jet stream, a band of high-level wind that travels east around the world and influences much of the weather below it. Part of the jet stream’s meandering is tied to regular shifts of air towards and away from the pole, called Rossby waves. The Rossby waves set up wiggles in the jet stream, wiggles which, left to themselves, would move westward. Since the jet stream is flowing eastward, though, the net effect of the Rossby waves varies. When the waves are short, they go with the jet’s flow and the resultant wiggling heads downstream to the east. When they are long they go against the flow, and the jet’s wiggling is transmitted upstream to the west. In between, there is a regime in which the waves move neither west nor east, and the weather stays put.”
Part of the straightforwardness of that analysis is that it treats all the previous years equally. When instead Dr van Oldenborgh takes into account that there has been a general warming trend over those past 60 years the heatwave starts to look less improbable—more like the sort of thing you might expect every century. As the warming trend continues in the future, the chances of such events being repeated more frequently will get higher. A single heatwave cannot be said to have been caused by global climate change; but what is known about climate change says such heatwaves are now more probable than they were.
The intensity of this heatwave has been remarkable. It is hotter than at any time in the instrumental record. According to an analysis by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute a straightforward comparison of the temperatures seen this summer with those of the past 60 years suggests that a large patch of Russia is experiencing temperatures which might be expected only once every 400 years or so. Some places within that patch are hotter than might be expected over several millennia.
In a world where greenhouse warming gets stronger, the tropics expand—an effect the beginning of which has already been observed. The paths of the jet streams to the north and south of the tropics will change in response to this. What that means for the interactions between jet streams and Rossby waves that lead to blocking, though, is unclear. Tony Lupo, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Missouri, has been looking at the question with some Russian colleagues. He says their climate modelling provides some reason to believe blocking effects might become more common in a warmer world, but also less forceful.
The attribution of the heat wave to atmospheric blocking this summer is a scientifically sound conclusion. The heat can occur from
- the advection of hot air from lower latitudes on the west side of a warm core anticyclone
- from compressional warming due to sinking air in the troposphere associated with the warm core anticyclone
- from a larger portion of solar insolation going into sensible versus latent surface heating as result of dry soils and stressed vegetation that occurs due to the absence of rainfall associated with the core of these anticyclones
- from added heating of the atmosphere from the absorption of solar insolation by aerosols from forest fires that occur in this dry environment.
[for a discussion of warm core anticyclones, see
Pielke Sr., R.A. 2002: Synoptic Weather Lab Notes. Colorado State University, Department of Atmospheric Science Class Report #1, Final Version, August 20, 2002.]
However, the statements that the tropics have expanded in recent years and the probabilities that such heat waves are becoming more common has not yet convincingly been made.
Indeed we looked at this issue for the heat wave in Europe in 2003 in the paper
Chase, T.N., K. Wolter, R.A. Pielke Sr., and Ichtiaque Rasool, 2006: Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context? Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L23709, doi:10.1029/2006GL027470
where we found that the 2003 heat anomaly was particularly extreme near the surface (perhaps due to dry soil) but less anomalous in the rest of the troposphere. Our conclusions were confirmed in
Connolley W.M. 2008: Comment on “Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context?” by Thomas N. Chase et al. Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L02703, doi:10.1029/2007GL031171.
We updated our analysis in
Chase, T.N., K. Wolter, R.A. Pielke Sr., and Ichtiaque Rasool, 2008: Reply to comment by W.M. Connolley on ‘‘Was the 2003 European summer heat wave unusual in a global context?’’Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L02704, doi:10.1029/2007GL031574.
In the Chase et al 2008 paper we reported that
Figure 1 updates Chase et al. [2006] through 2006 for 2.0 and 3.0 SD levels and adds to our original conclusion that 2003 was not very unusual in terms of the spatial coverage of extreme depth-averaged temperatures.
and
However, the addition of three additional summers (2004– 2006) to the time series, all of which appear to be relatively warm, now indicates the possible emergence of an upward trend as suggested in previous work [Stott et al., 2004]. For example 2.0 SD warm anomalies now appear to have an upward trend (p = 0.05) though this trend should be viewed with caution because of the small sample size and the dominant effect of data points at the end of the series. The rise in 3.0 SD anomalies comparable to the 2003 heat wave is, however, still insignificant (p = 0.16) and so the increased probability of such extremes with time suggested by Stott et al. [2004] is not yet apparent.
Tom Chase will be updating this analysis through August 2010 in early September when the data becomes available. Then, instead of qualitative claims about an expanding tropics and a greater frequency of heat waves, actual climate data will be available to quantify whether or not the claims made concerning the tropospheric temperature anomalies are robust or not.
We have certainly seen a warm troposphere this year. The July lower tropospheric temperature anomalies were presented in my August 5 2010 post and the global spatial plot is reproduced below
The heat wave in western Russia is clear in the data along with a substantial warm anomaly in eastern Russia and part of China, as are smaller warm anomalies in other locations worldwide. Only Antarctica has a large negative anomaly [although interestingly, Pakistan has a modest below average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly]
This warmth presents an opportunity in the coming months to assess whether this is really related to a long term global warming related effect, or is due to some other aspects of the climate system (perhaps as modified by spatially heterogeneous forcing due to human activity including land use change and aerosols).
If it is a long term global warming signature, than the global average tropospheric warm anomaly will persist when the blocking pattern is removed. If, however, the lower tropospheric temperatures cool to or below their long term average and this heat cannot be found in the oceans, long term global warming cannot be the culprit. I will report on this early in 2011.
NeilT says:
“Yes CO2 does heat up the whole planet. That’s why 2010 is hotter than both 1998 and 2005 for the first half of the year (globally).”
Is CO2 the reason that Arctic ice has been in decline?☺
If we are going to blame global warming for the heatwave around Moscow and environs and we are in lockstep with CO2 as the culprit, Gee, the CO2 must have been high there. Ice core data apparently shows that CO2 follows the temperature rise (outgassing from the ocean?). Certainly CO2 follow the fires!! – would the science say that a static body of hot air, full of forest fires would become even more hot because of the increasing CO2 locally? Note the countervailing deep blue cold zones around the area – have these been depleted in CO2. You can see that it aint as simple as Delta T= 4.7Ln(C/Co). You see, this is the kind of nutty stuff that comes from trying to twist CO2 dunnit into centre stage.
NeilT says:
August 14, 2010 at 4:00 am
“Excuse me if I’m being obtuse. But isn’t that absolutely normal for what (it is suggested) is an “extreme” climate event?”
Absolutely, if it happens every 400 to 1,000 years. Russia had one of these (arguably not quite so severe), 80 odd years ago.
How frequent does it have to get to catch your attention? Every other week? By then the biosphere won’t support humans at all. How does that help anything?
—–
Either you are looking at this emotionally for some reason, not analytically, which is a problem most CAGW’ers have, or you don’t understand the science Martin Brumby attempted to confer after his introductory “Excuse me ..”
A one-week 90d+ event might be quantified as a 1- year probability, whereas if it was 100d+ it might be a 25-year event while 105d+ might be a 50-year event. Yet a 3-day 105d+ event might be a 1-year probability and a 4-week 90d event might be 50-year probability. These changing variables in events become curves of probability which can be seen in his attribution the event in Russia might be a 400 year or 1,000 year event.
So, “arguably not quite so severe” heat waves, if proven to be less severe, will have a different probability of occurring and probability will be that they occur more often than ones which are more severe. And when you say the one 80 years ago was arguably not quite so severe, it might be that those are ones which have a probability of occurring every, um, 80 years and has nothing to do with more severe events which Brumby happened to suggest might occur every 400 (or 1000) years.
Also note that they are “probability curves” and inherently there is the possibility that, say a 100 or 1000 year event might occur two years in a row. It is even possible that a 100 and a 1000 might occur in the same year.
The Accuweather article by Gina Cherundolo doesn’t contribute to the understanding and features a graphic that is at the opposite of what satellite animations show.
http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/sat_worldm_640x320_img.htm
shows that the anticyclone agglutination on western Russia is fed by southward moving MPHs coming from the pole and not by an influx of “desert heat”. Accuweather satellite animation of the equally stationnary Hawaiian agglutination this summer has shown its clear replenishing by colder air masses through the west coast, hence the cooler LA summer, dry yet not overly warm western Canada weather.
http://www.accuweather.com/us/satellite/ir/un/satellite.asp?play=true
MPH pulses can be traced and mapped to confirm this.
So much for the predictions of a massive winter in the NH. With all this water vapor the clouds will form and slow the escape of heat. Unless we get a stratosphere reaching volcano or two pretty soon, warmth is roaring back. The AGW alarmists will have a clustergasm!
I note the phrase ‘probability curve’ the art of taking one event and extrapolating a whole series of conclusions on that narrow base, its called gambling odds. The horse that wins a few races has the odds cut because the probability is that the horse might win however this is where the gambling comes in, the favourite does not always or even mostly win, there is a multitude of variables that affect the outcome like wet/dry ground etc and weather and in science gambling is not the basis for a theory. God does not play dice!
If a probability curve was drawn up at the inception of the nylon flared trouser craze it would predict the earth would be covered in them to a depth of several meters by 2100.
The inclusion of a variable in the form of rising temperatures simply means the construction is invalid from the start because it means IF the global average temperatures increase, the whole probability curve hangs on one base variable that is highly unstable, if the GAT does not rise or even falls slightly then the entire construct is false.
The probability curve does not include historical data from observation or data from core samples and solely relies on a base event and a suspect base variable so in reality and effect it is just meaningless waffle, a modern casting of the bones. When the historical record is included in a major and comprehensive way then the probability curve may start to yield interesting results but not until then.
A theory like a house needs solid foundations, a half arsed probability curve fed with wishful thinking and partisan prejudice is like building a house on quicksand IMHO.
Rant time for the redhead.
Climate zones are far more relevant than political boundaries. Weather pattern variations don’t give a tinker’s dam about political boundaries. But they do pay attention to topographical climate zones. I could care less how much or how less Russia is experiencing a heat wave. What matters are climate zones within pressure cell systems along the path of an active jet stream (or in this case, an inactive one), and the weather pattern variations on the outside bands of the pressure cells under the jet stream.
Anyone who thinks in terms of political boundaries has no clue about weather or climate, and even less about the sources, behavior and affects of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. They do, however, have agendas to state, though often couched behind “I’m here to save the day” rhetoric.
And we had the dust bowl that lasted almost a decade, this is just one summer.
Masters over at WhinyUnderground just had to mention global warming. Like a 1/2 degree made any difference.
What exactly do people think happens when the jet stream re-groups?
Very nice post. I especially liked this concluding remark:
“If it is a long term global warming signature, than the global average tropospheric warm anomaly will persist when the blocking pattern is removed. If, however, the lower tropospheric temperatures cool to or below their long term average and this heat cannot be found in the oceans, long term global warming cannot be the culprit. I will report on this early in 2011. ”
But I would ask you whether or not is reasonable to conclude that you could find the heat in the oceans (assuming we saw a lower tropopsheric cooling), or that indeed, there could be other “heat sinks” where this heat could go. With the natural cycle of the growing La Nina, slated to last until early 2011, it seems perhaps an odd time to be looking for missing heat in the oceans, and perhaps a foregone conclusion that you’d not find missing heat during a La Nina episode (if indeed, SST’s were the location in the oceans you’d go looking for this heat).
vukcevic says:
August 14, 2010 at 3:46 am
You show a close relation between GMF and temperatures; this goes in total accord with the following theory:
http://www.milesmathis.com/atmo.html
I am neither young nor impressionable. Certainly I won’t be impressed with a cherry picked chart designed for no other reason than to show a point of view, regardless of reality.
I note that most tend to try and bend what I say to their point of view. Well here it is more simply laid out.
Extreme events are happening more frequently. Catasrophic events will become more common as the sea and the atmosphere heats. Fact, not fiction.
I must admit I find some of responses here quite amusing. Let me put it simply. When the water dries up and the crops die do you think the other 8 billion on the planet are going to go quitely? Think again, they’ll take you all with them in a fit of human revenge as everybody climbs over everybody else in a mad scramble to get to the resources that are left.
Climate science is not in doubt and the more you create graphs to deny it and make long speeches to try and avoid action, the worse the end result will be. For you.
That’s not alarmism. That’s factism.
NeilT says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:03 am
Let me put it simply. When the water dries up and the crops die do you think the other 8 billion on the planet are going to go quitely? Think again, they’ll take you all with them in a fit of human revenge as everybody climbs over everybody else in a mad scramble to get to the resources that are left.
Climate science is not in doubt and the more you create graphs to deny it and make long speeches to try and avoid action, the worse the end result will be. For you.
That’s not alarmism. That’s factism.
“Factism” sounds a lot like hysterical anger.
NeilT says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:03 am
Extreme events are happening more frequently. Catasrophic events will become more common as the sea and the atmosphere heats. Fact, not fiction.
===================================================
Neil, no they’re not.
Hyping things up, and the media reporting them more, does not make them more.
We have had nothing in “extreme events” like we have had in the past.
Perfect example was the American dust bowl that lasted almost a decade.
If something like that happened now, can you just imagine how hyped up it would be?
Cassandra King says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:50 am
——-
Since I was the only one that used “probablility curves” (Brumby implied it, but didn’t use it) it would have been a little more courteous to have directed your rant towards me and concentrated on my comment, rather than mindlessly bringing horse racing, God, dice, and flared trousers into it.
Your generalization of probability curves as art, extrapolations, what it does and doesn’t include, and that it is no better than casting bones, shows that either you like to rant; don’t know much about such things as, for one, rainfall intensity tables; or are well versed in meteorology and just don’t think my constructing one for comparison sake to highlight a relationship between severity and frequency is suitable. If it’s the first, I’ll factor that in for the future. If it’s the second, I’d be happy to educate you. If it’s the third, then I’d appreciate you saying so and stating the reasons why so I can learn something.
R. Gates says:
August 14, 2010 at 9:52 am
Right now, it looks like the heat in the ocean is rather getting exhausted, as El Nino is spent and the upwelling is generally much colder than the present Nino SSTs. This is something to keep an eye on, for the cramped jets streams rule the circulation patterns in a thwarting manner and diminish the W/m2 that the oceans may absorb.
“Earlier this year astrophysicist Mike Lockwood of the University of Reading, UK, showed that winter blocking events were more likely to happen over Europe when solar activity is low – triggering freezing winters (New Scientist, 17 April, p 6). Now he says he has evidence from 350 years of historical records to show that low solar activity is also associated with summer blocking events (Environmental Research Letters, in press). “There’s enough evidence to suspect that the jet stream behaviour is being modulated by the sun,” he says. Blackburn says that blocking events have been unusually common over the last three years, for instance, causing severe floods in the UK and heatwaves in eastern Europe in 2007. Solar activity has been low throughout.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727730.101-frozen-jet-stream-leads-to-flood-fire-and-famine.html
NeilT says:
That’s not alarmism. That’s factism.
———————
Typo: you have added a “t” to your last word.
So let’s see here. CGW is responsible for droughts… and floods. Seems I’ve heard it reported that the monsoon in Pakistan is the worst in 80 years. The heat wave in Russia is the worst in 1000 years as some pundits have claimed, but records show it was worse about 135 years ago. And with the world running a fever—and the prescription is more cowbell NOT more cows–t—have you checked into what’s happening all along the Pacific coast, from Cali to Chile? Brrrrrrrr. I think some parts of Brazil got snow last week.
NeilT,
You appear to exhibit the symptoms of emotional attachment to a political cause, you may have been infected by a kind of hysteria common among alarmists in general. This irrational fear of the future based on wholly hypothetical possibilities feeds itself and infects others, it is a fear of the future and it is truly dangerous because it hinders and sabotages rational debate and cautious common sense. The hysterical fear that the world will end in blood and fire is not new, the bible tells of an end of days.
The oceans are in fact cooling NOT heating up, the poles are stable and there is no death spiral, extreme events are NOT increasing in intensity and frequency as the fall in hurricane/major storm activity proves, droughts are less common and rains are falling where no rains have touched for decades and even centuries, deserts bloom and wildlife follows. Spain is faring well with rains more frequent than in past years and in north Africa the deserts shrink and become more inhabitable and after the ‘big dry’ in Australia the interior is greening on a scale not seen for a century. The bitter winter in the southern hemisphere is being hidden with a fanatical determination because it contradicts the alarmist narrative.
Above all do not panic and do not fear for the future, the greatest enemy of humanity is not some prophesied catastrophe where the world ends in fire and flood, the greatest enemy is fear and ignorance and mob hysteria.
The world is bigger than the MSM/alarmist lobby would have you know, there is more positive and hopeful news than the unholy axis dares admit, the rains come and the winters are still cold, the oceans are cooling and the sea is not going to drown us all.
Take the time and find out the positive news from around the world, look where those with an agenda would prefer you did not and you will find that far from from a biblical disaster there is new hope and new life all governed by a series of wholly natural cycles.
“Extreme events are happening more frequently. Catasrophic events will become more common as the sea and the atmosphere heats. Fact, not fiction.”
I do not wish to be rude but predicted events that have not yet occurred cannot be represented as fact because they have not yet happened, only when an event has occurred can it be accurately portrayed as a fact.
NeilT, you sound a little emotionally driven.
Please supply a link to data that shows that “extreme” weather events are linked to AGW and becoming more frequent.
@NeilT says: August 14, 2010 at 10:03 am
“I am neither young nor impressionable. Certainly I won’t be impressed with a cherry picked chart designed for no other reason than to show a point of view, regardless of reality.”
Hmmm. I know what you mean. But that’s just what Michael Mann, Al Gore and Jim Hansen do all the time. They are little monkeys, aren’t they?!
“Climate science is not in doubt and the more you create graphs to deny it and make long speeches to try and avoid action, the worse the end result will be. For you.”
“That’s not alarmism. That’s factism.”
Yeah, right. But you spelt fascism incorrectly.
“This map shows temperature anomalies for the Russian Federation from July 20–27, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008. The anomalies are based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite”.
Temperature anomalies compared to a recent 8-year record? Surely there must be something wrong if even distinguished scentists such as Dr. Pielke Snr. think that such anomalies are worth further investigation. A similar anomolay in comparison with an 80 year record might, perhaps, justify the hooha.
Ref – NeilT says:
August 14, 2010 at 10:03 am
“I note that most tend to try and bend what I say to their point of view. Well here it is more simply laid out…. Climate science is not in doubt and the more you create graphs to deny it and make long speeches to try and avoid action, the worse the end result will be. For you.”
______________________
You seem to be of the mindset that ‘something must be done before it’s too late or else’. Ok! Who’s going to pull off your miracle? And, what is it again that “”””THEY”””” are going to do? And, what is it that “”””WE”””” have to do?
Not only do you find “doubt” among us, you will also find “anger” at the idea that some idiot like Mann or Gore or Jones is going to tell us/me/you what it is we’re going to do for the rest of our lives.
Normal environmentalists attribute the Pakistani floods to deforestation and destruction of the watershed. That is the real reason, not Al Gores infamous carbon foot print or Streisand’s private jet.
oakwood, thanks for the link
oakwood’s post pretty much settles it. It’s a weather event, not climate.
40 C in Moscow in 1868. That just about puts the wraps on this whole wad of climate change BS. We could all move on to something else if we didn’t have a bunch of leftists trying to use it to do something about the four billion too many of us.