I’m surprised Josh Willis would get involved in this as a co-author. Ok… here’s the press release title:
First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans
And here’s a quote from the body of the press release:
“Many scientists and models have suggested that if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow. Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell,” wrote Famiglietti and lead author Tajdarul Syed of the Indian School of Mines, formerly of UCI.
Do these guys even read their own press releases? I want my California State taxes back.From UC Irvine:
First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans
UCI-led team cites global warming, accelerated cycle of evaporation, precipitation
Irvine, Calif. — Freshwater is flowing into Earth’s oceans in greater amounts every year, a team of researchers has found, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms linked to global warming. All told, 18 percent more water fed into the world’s oceans from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than in 1994, with an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.
“That might not sound like much – 1.5 percent a year – but after a few decades, it’s huge,” said Jay Famiglietti, UC Irvine Earth system science professor and principal investigator on the study, which will be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He noted that while freshwater is essential to humans and ecosystems, the rain is falling in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons.
“In general, more water is good,” Famiglietti said. “But here’s the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it. What we’re seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted – that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”
In essence, he said, the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously because of greenhouse gas-fueled higher temperatures, triggering monsoons and hurricanes. Hotter weather above the oceans causes freshwater to evaporate faster, which leads to thicker clouds unleashing more powerful storms over land. The rainfall then travels via rivers to the sea in ever-larger amounts, and the cycle begins again.
The pioneering study, which is ongoing, employs NASA and other world-scale satellite observations rather than computer models to track total water volume each month flowing from the continents into the oceans.
“Many scientists and models have suggested that if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow. Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell,” wrote Famiglietti and lead author Tajdarul Syed of the Indian School of Mines, formerly of UCI.
“This paper uses satellite records of sea level rise, precipitation and evaporation to put together a unique 13-year record – the longest and first of its kind. The trends were all the same: increased evaporation from the ocean that led to increased precipitation on land and more flow back into the ocean.”
The researchers cautioned that although they had analyzed more than a decade of data, it was still a relatively short time frame. Natural ups and downs that appear in climate data make detecting long-term trends challenging. Further study is needed, they said, and is under way.
Other authors are Don Chambers of the University of South Florida, Joshua Willis of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and Kyle Hilburn of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif. Funding is provided by NASA.
About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County’s largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.9 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.
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The paper that the article is based on can be found here. (Thanks to Bill Illis)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/09/28/1003292107.full.pdf+html
Chris1958 says:
“Turning off the thermohaline circulation is one potential consequence.”
Studies of the sediments in the Gulf of Mexico indicate that the Gulf Stream flow is higher in warmer times and slower with colder – the opposite of the alarmist unfounded assumption. This actually makes sense as the water would be more viscous and the temperature differential possibly less steep in a cool phase.
“The researchers cautioned that although they had analyzed more than a decade of data, it was still a relatively short time frame. Natural ups and downs that appear in climate data make detecting long-term trends challenging. Further study is needed, they said, and is under way.”
Grant Money!!!
“I’m Rich! I’m socially secure! woowowowooo!”
-Daffy Duck.
I recall reading somewhere that speeding up of the hydrological cycle is what should happen INSTEAD OF global warming.
2010: the year rivers were discovered.
PNAS = the Big Box Mart for pal review tabloid science.
“Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.””
Not too worried about Scottsdale, but last time I checked, there were lots of news items and papers online that said rainfall in the Sahel was on the increase, and that the southern limit to the Sahara was moving north. This was several years ago, and made me think that more global warming would be a good thing. Is anyone tracking this currently?
Here’s a pertinent quote from the actual paper Bill Illis linked to:
“Surprisingly, owing to a number of socioeconomic and political obstacles,
a comprehensive global river discharge observing system
does not yet exist. Here we use 13 years (1994–2006) of satellite
precipitation, evaporation, and sea level data in an ocean mass
balance to estimate freshwater discharge into the global ocean.
Results indicate that global freshwater discharge averaged
36,055 km3∕y for the study period while exhibiting significant
interannual variability driven primarily by El Niño Southern Oscillation
cycles. The method described here can ultimately be used to
estimate long-term global discharge trends as the records of
sea level rise and ocean temperature lengthen. For the relatively
short 13-year period studied here, global discharge increased by
540 km3∕y2, which was largely attributed to an increase of globalocean
evaporation (768 km3∕y2). Sustained growth of these flux
rates into long-term trends would provide evidence for increasing
intensity of the hydrologic cycle.”
So the actual increase was 540 / 36,055 = a 1.5% increase over a 13 year period.
Take into consideration that the difference in rainfall is significantly different in El Nino and La Nina years, and that there is roughly a 60 year cycle in El Nino/ La Nina activity, and there’s nothing to get excited about in the actual paper.
The authors note that the variability is correlated with the ENSO. One can clearly see the 1997-98 El Nino in their results.
So, the period chosen is going to influence the results. The 1994 to 2006 period has a slight upward trend in the ENSO and the proxies of precipitation.
This is 1994-2006 covering the Nino 3.4 index and Out-Going Long-Wave Radiation (OLR) 20S-20N – which is very closely correlated with cloud cover and precipitation [most of the rain falls in the wide-tropics of 20S-20N and most of the global variability could be expected to occur here as well so OLR should be a reasonable proxy for global precip. and the numbers are quite similar to the paper’s charts].
Thus, it is mainly the period chosen since the data in this chart has no trend at all when taken over the long-term.
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/4691/ensoolr2020942006.png
Has there been a decrease in salinity of seawater because of this? Mixing times notwithstanding this much fresh water would have an effect there, perhaps in isotopic signature as well.
Data for UK from 1961 onwards
http://www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/ih/nrfa/hydrological_trends/hydrological_var61.htm
http://www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/ih/nrfa/river_flow_data/nrfa_retrievals.htm
Google found it in 0.2 secs, someone wasn’t looking
So increasing human population is considered to be a closed system, thus can’t be causing increased CO2 at Mauna Loa, but bygawdamighty the hydrological cycle is an open system and must be, what, taxed?
The current state of climatology reminds me of a card game my kids used to play. The rules were made up and changed throughout the play. The kid that won was the person that got mad the most, tore up the cards, and/or hit his kid brother. At which time I sent the lot of em to bed for a much deserved nap. These people who make up the so called “esteemed” published climate researchers list need to be sent to their room.
Bill Illis says: “Trenberth has a new paper which shows nothing is really going on with global precipitation numbers (since 1980) or global river discharge and land precipitation levels (since 1950).”
Thanks for the links. Trenberth Figure 5…
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/2026/riverdischargeandprecip.png
…shows why Syed et al (2010) picked 1994 as a start year: Global precipitation was still on the rebound from the Mount Pinatubo dip.
Remarkable.
If you ask me, it kinda ties up with the ground water story.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/29/pielke-on-ground-water-extraction-causing-sea-level-rise/
So I guess the Amazon is filled up again and the Great Lakes – there was a lot rain and snow thee the last few years.I wonder what their new research will show.
OMG The land is weeping; the Earth is crying!! We must find a way to push back the rivers as well as the tides!
When the water cycle accelerates the air circulation systems move poleward as was indeed observed during the recent natural tropospheric warming period.
When it decelerates the air circulation systems move equatorward as they have been doing since 2000. We are now at the start of a natural tropospheric cooling period.
Given the observed fact that the process of poleward shifting has now gone into reverse despite increasing CO2 the fears about AGW are already falsified.
If precipitation does appear to have been increasing over the past ten years or so then it will be because a cooling troposphere can hold less vapour as water so precipitation increases whilst at the same time evaporation is decreasing due to the slower water cycle overall. For the time being the former prevails over the latter and will do so until the cooling process ceases.
During a natural warming spell evaporation increases but precipitation lags behind because a warming troposphere holds more water in vapour form. However one still gets increasing precipitation in a warming world as well because increasing precipitation is a consequence of CHANGE whether it be towards warming OR cooling. That is because both a warming and a cooling troposphere are a result of increasing temperature differentials arising from temperature changes on the ocean surfaces below or in the the stratosphere above.
The least precipitation is when there is neither cooling nor warming of the troposphere which is when temperature differentials between sea surface and tropopause are at a minimum. That never lasts long.
Looking at the effect of CO2 in isolation a faster hydrological cycle prevents extra downward IR from more CO2 from becoming measurable sensible heat by converting it immediately into unmeasurable latent heat which is then accelerated upward by faster convection in order to radiate it away into space faster from a higher level with zero effect on surface temperatures.
Since water vapour is lighter than air one doesn’t even need higher surface temperatures to give more convection. Increased evaporation giving rise to more water vapour is sufficient on it’s own.
They are complaining about the very process that negates and disposes of any AGW warming. However the natural cycles are far, far larger hence the equatorward shift of the air circulation syatems and the consequent slowing of the water cycle despite more CO2 in the air.
All regional climate changes including increasing or decreasing rainfall are simply a result of the individual region changing it’s position relative to the nearest air circulation systems.
Total precipitation changes globally as a result of natural tropospheric warming and cooling cycles are much too large for any human contribution to be measurable. Regional changes in precipitation from changing relative geographical positions between localities and the air circulations above or near them are much too large for any contribution provided by global precipitation changes to be measurable.
The real value of this article is in it’s recognition (at last) that the SPEED of the hydrological cycle has relevance to the global energy budget.
The alarming defect is that for all their scientific credentials the writers fail to see the obvious connection with the effects of the phase changes of water and the consequent stabilising effect on temperatures (wholly negative, highly effective and almost infinitely scaleable).
This water vapour, cloud and precipitation, shifting air circulation (especially jet streams) blind spot in the minds of AGW proponents is what I find most difficult to understand.
“Further study is needed, they said, and is under way.”
Of course, get it while you can…………………until retirement. LOL!
Since fresh water is pH neutral(ish) then the additional dilution of the oceans will result in even more acidification!!!
Anyroads, I was swimming in the Atlantic last week off the Canaries, and it tasted just as salty to me, so clearly it isn’t happening (there, real evidence!)
Doesn’t more rain mean more cloud so higher albedo which cools the Earth leading to less evaporation and less cloud and lower albedo leading to higher temps so more evaporation and more cloud and…..
OMG… IT’S A CYCLE
The rain and evaporation cycle is accelerating because the models say so. The models say it is accelerating because those that write the models write it into the models. They write the acceleration into the models because the models show it is accelerating.
Doesn’t this study (insufficient time scale notwithstanding) directly contradict the notion of positive water vapor feedback?
I fail to see how we can simultaneously have positive water vapor feedback (self perpetuating temp increase due to increased greenhouse water vapor and reduced cloud albedo), yet still see an increase in precipitation.
Climate disruption really is worse than we thought! Now it’s violating conservation of mass and energy!
Over on Discovery they are talking about the oceans getting saltier as a result of Global Warming. Now the oceans are going to get too much fresh water. They need to keep their stories straight.
Are they not aware that it takes 22% of the incoming energy from the sun to cause the current evaporation rate? The energy needed to cause a significant increase in evaporation is enormous. Slightly more than 1 m per year of the oceans evaporates. That dwarfs all the energy that mankind has ever produced.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Chris1958
The Indian Ocean around the Seychelles turns cloudy during and after each monsoon season too. It’s caused by algae blooms which in turn cause fish from over a large area of the Indian Ocean to congregate there around those times.
Could the “browning” of Sydney Harbour be in part a similar phenomenon and equally benign?
Its good to track rainfall and how it flows to rivers and the oceans. As someone wrote in their comments river flow is measurable. But the claim rain is falling in all the wrong places for all the wrong reasons is difficult to understand. How can rain fall for the wrong reason.
Global warming is a political agenda and so is redustribution by the government for equality and it should not be in a scientific report or press release. The reputation of a university and title of professor should not be used in such a fashion.
And California can’t meet its financial obligations so don’t expect any tax refunds anytime soon. Just try to get a refund on anything overpaid to California.
What increased Hurricanes and Monsoon’s are they referring too? Hasn’t Hurricane activity been at 100 year lows the last few years?