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.
News Radio: UCI maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts. Use of this line is available for a fee to radio news programs/stations that wish to interview UCI faculty and experts. Use of the ISDN line is subject to availability and approval by the university.
UCI maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media. To access, visit www.today.uci.edu/experts. For UCI breaking news, visit www.zotwire.uci.edu.
=========================================
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
Omigod! omigod! omigod…… It’s getting hotter, colder, wetter, dryer, windier, calmer, sunnier, duller…… What are we eva gonna do!?
Quick……. Tax th’ citizenry and hire more bureaucrats. That’ll fix it.
…. sigh 🙁
Okay…this is like shooting fish in a barrel. WUWT readers have already dissected this nonsense very thoroughly. You would think that we could get more of a challenge from the billions spent on AGW research.
Come on, you warming fear mongers! Is this all you got?
Chris1958;
I live in Sydney, and have done so for decades—and visited often from Queensland before that, and I’ve never ever seen Sydney Harbour a ‘silty-brown’ colour—and nor have any other Sydneysiders that I know.
[i]”the evaporation and precipitation cycle taught in grade school is accelerating dangerously”[/i]
This is typically a statement that can be refuted easily and that’s 2500 joule energy required for one gram of water evaporating.
One can see here the annual evaporation:
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/99/53799-004-BE5542D4.gif
So let’s assume an average of 1 cube meter per square meter per year evaporating (conservative), that would mean 1,000,000 ml per 31,536,000 seconds or 0,032 ml/sec. So the evaporation energy of one meter water per year is 2500*0.032 = 80 w/m2. You will see that this value is roughly the same in the IPCC tables.
But now, for every 1% increase in evaporation at the earth surface, obviously an additional 0.8 w/m2 is required. This energy is NOT avaible to heat up the Earth surface. It will become available when condensation is taking place, -cloud forming-, hence higher in the atmosphere and closer to outer space to be radiated out.
So if doubling CO2 is maybe causing an additiona; 3.7 w/m2 at the earth surface, the additional heating will be lessened by latent heat loss due to that evaporation. It would be interesting to see what kind of energy would be required to maintain a constant relative humitidy (RH) as the temperature increases. We can use this online calculator for that:
http://www.humidity-calculator.com/index.php
If I use a temp of 15C and 50% RH I get and absolute humidity of 6.44 gr/m3. Now if we increase the temp to 16C maintaining the 50% RH means now 6.84 gr/m3 an increase of some 6.25%. Clearly if the water cycle would increase by that amount, it would require about 5 w/m2 additional energy to evaporate all that. But doubling CO2 would only give, what?, 3.7 w/m2? and that would be for a few degrees warmer, more than one.
So clearly the figures don’t add up. There is much more energy required to get more water evaporated than increased greenhouse effect might deliver. No such thing as runaway evaporation water cycle and then we did not even take into account additional cloud forming that decreases the insolation to the surface.
Andre
Shorter version:
“OMFG we MAY all be about to DIE! The planet is . . . is. . .OH NOES! Give us plenty of grant money so we can can really agitate you about it by gathering some data that no one else has gathered yet, then making some really, really scary charts with it!”
@ur momisugly Bill Illis … (October 5, 2010 at 5:21 am )
thanks for the links to Trenberth’s article …
@ur momisugly AleaJactaEst …
re. the models … good insight 🙂
Jay Famiglietti, UC Irvine Earth system science professor and principal investigator on the study, … noted that while freshwater is essential to humans and ecosystems, the rain is falling in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons.
Rain now needs a “correct” reason to fall?
“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.”
Since the water that flows back into the ocean came from the ocean in the first place, it’s a closed system. What’s the big deal?
Its a real B.O.G.O.F(buy one get one freee) special with all the fears and alarmist talking points there.
With this you get em all thrown in, a mish mash of hysteria swirled around and mixed up. Its more rain and not enough, its too much rain and too little, regions are drying out and flooding(its your worst fears come alive) with a heating planet making more clouds producing more rain and storms. Its a bumber size super special offer, buy it now(or we will kill you,only joking).
I mean to say, rain is apparently falling on the wrong places for the wrong reasons and that must be bad mustnt it? I thought rain was good as it brings life to everything it touches but then again as a denialist I dont know the difference between correct rain and bad rain.
The evaporation and precipitation cycle is accelerating dangerously? How can more rain be bad when the CAGW orthodoxy/scriptures tell us that CAGW will mean a hot dry planet, will rain be deliberately avoiding the places where its needed and go off and drop somewhere bad?
Now call me cynical but it looks like the author(s) wanted to show their believer credentials so they piled everything into one big pot to make it look like good for the funding agencies above and in doing so they break CAGW scripture many times, just a little too eager to pad out their funding dog whistle with too many CAGW scare stories, a case of over egging the pudding?
It was not long ago that humans were taking too much ground water and too much river water, now call me dull but more rain into rivers means less taken from the ground and more for agriculture does it not? It all seems to pessimistic and doom laden as though the authors were suffering from clinical depression.
How can it rain for the “wrong” reasons and fall in the “wrong” places?
The last line is very telling, more research(funding)is needed. Oh yes there is the pay off line, all the alarmist scare stories pushing all the right funding buttons. Can you imagine then getting funding if the team had been optimistic?
“First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans”
Aside from the fact that they have zero evidence, it’s funny how they don’t even say why this is “alarming”. I guess they just “forgot” to go into the usual Alarmist song and dance about the theorized Younger Dryas event, wherein the gigantic (700 x 200 mi.) Lake Agassiz, held back by an ice dam breached, flooding into the Arctic Ocean and disrupting the thermohaline current. Probably because even they must realize how stupid it is to compare that theorized (and somewhat plausible) event and this completely speculative increase of the flow of freshwater into the oceans. But, this could be a handy way of “explaining” things if in fact we do get a cooling period.
So, if it warms it will be our fault, and if it cools it will be our fault. It’s science!
There has been a lot of noise in the past regarding Africa and drought, which is of course caused by AGW resulting in the greedy west. This noise is underpinned by increased desertification in the sub Sahara. Nobody seems fit to mention that the cause of desertification is farmers being unable to work their land due to war and terror caused by Marxists and their friends, plus food shipments undermining their markets. Without farmers working the land, it reverts back to desert.
BTW, the warmist have been trying for a least five years to come up with arguments to deflect the fact that warmer weather equals more rain. They need to keep up the narrative of AGW caused drought in order to frighten the masses. My first real indication that NASA had gone off the rails, in fact, was a press release for just such a study back in 2001 (or so). It was a blatant pack of nonsense and spin. It just so happened that it focused on the hydrology of the American south-west, which is a field I am a bit familiar with.
Oh, the point of a lack of data? That is pure BS. What I think they actually mean is lack of data that they can manipulate to produce the results they want. Every government monitors its water supply. Holy cow, that’s the main reason governments exist, to control water. Their data has to be accurate (else the people either die, or the government dies). Acurate verifiable data is the last thing that the Gaiaists want running around.
Alan McIntire says: October 5, 2010 at 6:15 am
Here’s a pertinent quote from the actual paper Bill Illis linked to:
“… For the relatively short 13-year period studied here, global discharge increased by 540 km3∕y2, ….”
So the actual increase was 540 / 36,055 = a 1.5% increase over a 13 year period.
No, the conclusion is that the INCREASE in discharge is 540 km^3 /yr = 1.5% EACH YEAR. I don’t t know if the measurements are right, but they are definitely NOT saying 1.5% total in the 13 years.
Surely the press release was not so difficult to understand.
“…if the water cycle is intensifying because of climate change, then we should be seeing increasing river flow.”
A clear prediction.
“Unfortunately, there is no global discharge measurement network, so we have not been able to tell…”
A statement of the limitations of observations up to the present.
“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”
A statement of the new techniques used to overcome the previous observational limitations.
I suppose they could attempt to word their statements in a way that you and your ilk couldn’t possibly misunderstand, misquote, twist or complain about. I suspect you’d always find a way though.
REPLY: “you and your ilk” ??? That’s the sort of thinking that leads to red buttons there in the UK green circles you frequent. I think an apology is in order from you. 13 years isn’t even half the acceptable climatology period (30 years), and they allude to the short length of the record. And they ignore the well established hydrometeorolgical network data. Face it, this is crap.
-Anthony
There are an awful lot of complainers on this site. Here you are provided with information upon which you can take immediate action. But what do we get? Nothing but grousing.
Now that I know that we are getting too much rainfall — I for one will be taking immediate action! You should too! Do not leave it until it is too late!
The people with buttons are watching and waiting for those who do nothing!
JohnH says: October 5, 2010 at 6:27 am
Data for UK from 1961 onwards …
Google found it in 0.2 secs, someone wasn’t looking.
I think the operative word is “global”. The links here are for one country. And even then, the linked page clearly states “The runoff totals are based on gauged river flows only.” It is easy to find some records for some areas, but they were trying to get a global estimate.
That said, it would be interesting to correlate their satellite estimates with the gauged records or actual rivers to see how well they agree. I hope they thought to do this basic background work!
Andre Bijkerk
October 5, 2010 at 7:37 am
“So clearly the figures don’t add up. There is much more energy required to get more water evaporated than increased greenhouse effect might deliver. No such thing as runaway evaporation water cycle and then we did not even take into account additional cloud forming that decreases the insolation to the surface.”
#
But you’re cheating. Its no fair to use science and logic! Gaia is going to be very angry.
Agreed. It is generally recommended that scientists begin with a review of the literature. “A few” scientific measurements were actually taken before satellite data!
W.J.R. Alexander analyzed more than 100 years of river flow and precipitation data from the Southern Africa region, including 183 11 804 cumulateive years of data from 183 stations. Development of a multi-year climate prediction model, W.J.R. Alexander, ISSN 0378-4738 = Water SA Vol. 31 No. 2 April 2005 209-218 http://www.wrc.org.za
Alexander showed an
SOLAR ACTIVITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE — A SUMMARY, W.J.R. Alexander and F. Bailey ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT VOLUME 18 No. 6 2007
Alexander shows dry to wet flow reversals in 1933, 1954, 1973, and 1995. The three lowest years before a sunspot minimum had average flow of 52. The three following years average was 300. i.e. a 577% increase. In 2008 Alexander predicted a major drought in South Africa. That began in 2009.
Alexander WJR, Bailey F, Bredenkamp DB, van der Merwe A and Willemse N, (2007).
Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development. Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, Vol 49, No 2, June 2007, pages 32-44, paper 659. Alexander compiled a “474-page technical report entitled Climate change and its consequences – an African perspective (Alexander 2006). It includes 51 tables, 33 figures and 218 references.” (available on CD.)
Furthermore, W.J.R. Alexander observes:
They must be using flaky data. The error in their estimates often exceeds the estimates. More data with better QA/QC required. Send more money or we’ll all die!
Wow. I’ve lived long enough to live through the years of hype that the world was running out of fresh water to the hype of having too much fresh water. The pendulum has gone through a full swing.
Another example of just starting to measure something, and every new measurement is surprising: “unprecedented” and “worse than we thought”. Are these guys scientists? For real. I’m a scientist. It’s hard for me to comprehend that people that write these types of articles really understand what it means to be an experimental scientist.
In Burrito says:
October 5, 2010 at 7:11 am
Doesn’t this study (insufficient time scale notwithstanding) directly contradict the notion of positive water vapor feedback?
Positive feedbacks (against general ENTROPY) only occur in living organisms.
“Hotter weather above the oceans causes freshwater to evaporate faster, which leads to thicker clouds unleashing more powerful storms over land.”
I swear, climate science is descending into complete idiocy. Oceanic evaporation is enhanced by dry air, not hot air.
In the NH and SH the oceanic evaporation is the greatest during each hemisphere’s winter season, when the air is dry (and cold) not when the air is hot.
Jan to Jun
http://oaflux.whoi.edu/plots/data/figmmean/fig_ave_ev_jan.jpg
Jul to Dec
http://oaflux.whoi.edu/plots/data/figmmean/fig_ave_ev_jul.jpg
In repy to Tim F:
yes, you’re right, I didn’t notice that /y2 which would be per year per year.
1.015^12 = 1.196 for a 19.6 percent increase.
The actual increase was supposedly 1.5%* 12 = 18%, implying a
1.18^ (1/12) = 1.39% increase per year.
As Andre Bijkerk has pointed out, starting with about 78 watts per year absorbed in
the latent heat of evaporation, an increase of 18% would eat up an additional
78 * 0.18 = 14.04 watts. I suppose half of that would be radiated back to earth, so
the net energy increase required would be only 7.02 watts. Consider that a doubling
of CO2 would supposedly increase the surface flux by 3.7 watts, CO2 has increased by
less than a doubling over the last century, and one must conclude that the change in rainfall has nothing to do with CO2 caused global warming.
1. An increase in rainfall supports Richard Lindzen’s theory about the water vapor feedback loop. Evaporation and condensation speed up in response to minor increases in temperature, thereby removing heat from the atmosphere and mitigating serious global warming.
2. Someone tell Ed Begley Jr. that his predicted fresh water shortage crisis has been temporarily put on hold.
3. Sam Kinnison was right. – Thanks Tom in Florida 🙂
David L. says:
October 5, 2010 at 8:11 am
Some people never learn the fine art of measuring thier own paycheck, and are surprised when the money runs out faster than previously imagined.
Anthony Watts posted: “I’m surprised Josh Willis would get involved in this as a co-author.”
I suspect that his name is tacked on as an author simply because he provided some additional data not yet publicly released.
On a related matter, Bob Tisdale has a post about newly updated Ocean Heat Content from NODC: http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/10/october-2010-update-to-nodc-ocean-heat.html
Tom in Florida says:
October 5, 2010 at 5:40 am
Funny and true. Thanks for that one.