I liked this part:
According to the study an important issue remains as to why the poleward expansion is largest in autumn, and there is still uncertainty about the role of external forcings – such as greenhouse gases – as climate models underestimate the southward expansion of the Hadley cell edge.
From CSIRO Australia
Southern Hemisphere becoming drier
A decline in April-May rainfall over south-east Australia is associated with a southward expansion of the subtropical dry-zone according to research published today in Scientific Reports, a primary research journal from the publishers of Nature.
CSIRO scientists Wenju Cai, Tim Cowan and Marcus Thatcher explored why autumn rainfall has been in decline across south-eastern Australia since the 1970s, a period that included the devastating Millennium drought from 1997-2009.
Previous research into what has been driving the decline in autumn rainfall across regions like southern Australia has pointed the finger at a southward shift in the storm tracks and weather systems during the late 20th century. However, the extent to which these regional rainfall reductions are attributable to the poleward expansion of the subtropical dry-zone has not been clarified before now.
Mr Cowan said rainfall patterns in the subtropics are known to be influenced by the Hadley cell, the large-scale atmospheric circulation that transports heat from the tropics to the sub-tropics.
“There has been a southward expansion of the edge of the Hadley cell – also called subtropical dry-zone – over the past 30 years, with the strongest expansion occurring in mid-late autumn, or April to May, ranging from 200 to 400 kilometres,” Mr Cowan said. The CSIRO researchers found that the autumn southward expansion of the subtropical dry-zone is greatest over south-eastern Australia, and to a lesser extent, over the Southern Ocean to the south of Africa.
“The Hadley cell is comprised of a number of individual branches, so the impact of a southward shift of the subtropical dry-zone on rainfall is not the same across the different semi-arid regions of the Southern Hemisphere,” says CSIRO’s Dr Wenju Cai.
The researchers tested the hypothesis that the dry-zone expansion would give rise to a southward shift in the average rainfall during April and May, and questioned how rainfall across semi-arid regions, including southern-coastal Chile and southern Africa, would be affected.
“During April and May, when the dry-zone expansion is strong, rainfall over south-eastern Africa, south-eastern Australia and southern-coastal Chile is higher than over regions immediately to their north,” Dr Cai said.
Using high-quality observations and an atmospheric model the CSIRO team found that for south-eastern Australia, up to 85% of recent rainfall reduction can be accounted for by replacing south-eastern Australia rainfall with rainfall 400km to the north. Such a southward shift of rainfall can explain only a small portion of the southern Africa rainfall trend, but none of the autumn drying observed over southern Chile.
“For south-east Australia, autumn is an important wetting season,” Dr Cai explained. “Good autumn rainfall wets the soil and effectively allows for vital runoff from follow-on winter and spring rain to flow into catchments.”
According to the study an important issue remains as to why the poleward expansion is largest in autumn, and there is still uncertainty about the role of external forcings – such as greenhouse gases – as climate models underestimate the southward expansion of the Hadley cell edge.
This research was conducted through CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, and was funded by the Goyder Institute for Water Research and the Australian Climate Change Science Programme. Wenju Cai, Tim Cowan and Marcus Thatcher are from CSIRO’s Marine and Atmospheric Research division.
UPDATE:
Some commenters can’t look beyond the title and see the bigger picture, so here’s an update just for them. Note that the study deals with the Hadley cell, which is NOT regional, but hemispherical. They looked not only at Australia, but also rainfall in southern-coastal Chile and southern Africa.
This is where I was coming from, which I thought would be obvious to anyone who’s been following the positive water vapor feedback issue for any length of time.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/hall0001.pdf
===============
Abstract. Using two versions of the GFDL coupled ocean-atmosphere model, one where
water vapor anomalies are allowed to affect the longwave radiation calculation and one
where they are not, we examine the role of water vapor feedback in internal precipitation
variability and greenhouse-gas-forced intensification of the hydrologic cycle. Without
external forcing, the experiment with water vapor feedback produces 44% more annualmean, global-mean precipitation variability than the one without.
We diagnose the reason for this difference: In both experiments, global-mean surface temperature anomalies are associated with water vapor anomalies. However, when water vapor interacts with longwave radiation, the temperature anomalies are associated with larger anomalies in surface downward longwave radiation. This increases the temperature anomaly damping through latent heat flux, creating an evaporation anomaly.
The evaporation anomaly, in turn, leads to an anomaly of nearly the same magnitude in precipitation. In the experiment without water vapor feedback, this mechanism is absent. While the interaction between longwave and water vapor has a large impact on the global hydrologic cycle internal variations, its effect decreases as spatial scales decrease, so water vapor feedback has only a very small impact on grid-scale hydrologic variability. Water vapor feedback also affects the hydrologic cycle intensification when greenhouse gas concentrations increase. By the 5th century of global warming experiments where CO2 is increased and then fixed at its doubled value, the global-mean precipitation increase is nearly an order of magnitude larger when water vapor feedback is present.
The cause of this difference is similar to the cause of the difference in internal precipitation variability: When water vapor feedback is present, the increase in water vapor associated with a warmer climate enhances downward longwave radiation. To maintain surface heat balance, evaporation increases, leading to a similar increase in precipitation. This effect is absent in the experiment without water vapor feedback. The large impact of water vapor feedback on hydrologic cycle intensification does not weaken as spatial scales decrease, unlike the internal variability case. Accurate representations of water vapor feedback are therefore necessary to simulate global-scale hydrologic variability and intensification of the hydrologic cycle in global warming.
=================
So if positive water vapor feedback were occurring, based on this idea, we’d see an “intensification of the hydrologic cycle”, i.e. more rainfall, runoff, and evaporation. That would apply to the southern hemisphere continents too.
And the researchers by their own admission can’t even fit GHG feedbacks into the Hadley cell migration equation successfully. It is just more evidence of uncertainty in the “settled science” of AGW.
Please Mr. RichardsCourtney,
Do you not know !!!!! that it takes a long time (several decades) for a CF2Cl2 molecule that happens to find itself tranported into the lower stratosphere to then diffuse high enough into the upper stratosphere where one of its C-Cl bonds will be ruptures by UV light.
That is why the total effective half life of CF2Cl2 is about 100 years – nothing happens to it in the troposphere and it takes so long for any molecule emitted at the surface to find itself in the upper stratosphere.
That is also why: YES, the CFC’s are being destroyed when they get to the upper stratosphere while that loss due to that process occurs so slowly that the background level to today is only slightly less than it was 20 years ago. So that is the simple and well known reason behind “Grimsrud’s explanation of this magical ability of CFCs to be destroyed but continue to exist.”
EricGrimsod, can you quote references to support your argument, rather than just attack the previous and renown writers, i.e., Prof. Tim Ball and Dr Richard Courtney. This is the problem with posters like you, you can’t provide any scholarly argument that justifies your comments. If you went to University you would not pass a first year unit in science or arts without quoting references to back up your argument.
To the moderator: RichardsCourtney says “I await Grimsrud’s explanation of this magical ability of CFCs to be destroyed but continue to exist”. So if you will allow this one to go through (my previous one did not make it), I will provide that explanation. Warning: the answer might still prove to be quite embarrassing to RC because it profound simplicity. In any case, here is it:
A given chemical reactant can “continue to exit” for a very long time if the rate of that reaction is sufficently process as to cause the concentration of that reagent to decrease very slowly.
That is the case for stratospheric ozone depletion caused by the CFC’s. The rate is very slow in this case because it takes a several decades for any molecule to diffuse from the lower to the upper stratosphere – where UV intensity is large enough to break the C-Cl bonds of the CFCs. Thus, the CFC’s destroy ozone in the upper startosphere while the % loss of that CFC throughout the total atmosphere is very small over a given time period. Thus about half of CF2Cl2, for example, will disappear from our background atmosphere in about 100 years.
I hope this lesson provided to Mr. RC is sufficient to answer Mr. RC’s question and does not prove to be too embarrassing WUWT, its moderator or to its frequent climate expert as to block its submission.
tty says: October 4, 2012 at 11:43 pm
These people badly need to read up on world climates:
“semi-arid regions, including southern-coastal Chile”
Southern coastal Chile is one of the wettest places in the World. Presumable they are thinking of northern coastal Chile, which is indeed arid.
Tty – I have not been to southern Chile, but can attest that northern coastal Chile is very dry – in fact the Atacama Desert is reputed to be the driest place on Earth. When I was there in the early 1990’s it supported NO apparent life – I mean nothing – probably not even bacteria and maybe not even viruses.
Wiki:
The Atacama Desert is commonly known as the driest place in the world.
On another topic, Bill Illis and Ken Gregory have posted some very interesting information on this thread.
No matter how many times ericgrimsrud is proven to be wrong, he keeps posting his nonsense.
grimsrud is to science as astrology is to astronomy.
Dear Pushbunny, Who is this Prof Tim Ball that I have supposedly offended. I have never heard of the man, but when you see him, please offer my profound applogies. Concerning the inclusion references for everything we say on blogs like this, would you please show us how that is done by providing references to your numerous statements offered at 6:19 pm? Alternatively, here’s another idea that might work: if you see something that someone says and want to know the reference behind it, just ask the author to provided it. If he knows that which he talks, he should be able to provide.
Ericgrimsod,
Look at Tim Ball’s comment *4 Oct 8.45 am* he puts references, and if you have more informed knowledge, that I doubt you do, as these gentlemen are specialists in their field and published on the subject of climate AGW change. Understand that anyone can make a comment without references to scholarly papers of course, but when you criticize published scholars you must make your point more than just saying they don’t know what they are talking about! And you do? That is ignorant opinionated bullshhhh in my book and you have to take a minus – 10 for the arguments you raise. Oh – by argument I refer to the tertiary scholarly terminology, means also hypothesis or thesis is an ‘argument’ not a set two of just name calling. Better men/women have tried to down grade intelligent and informed scholars on this site, that they fear contradicts their hypothesis if one can call it, or their green political agenda. You know most of us here have a green mentality and push for sustainability and against pollution, that occurs when you have too many people living in a small area and without sufficient resources to clean up after themselves, they pollute. But it doesn’t change the global climate. So when you graduate from high school and go to college or university, you will thank me for giving you that advice. Cheers from Oz. I don’t mind being labelled ‘pushbunny’. It’s funny isn’t it folks?
Concerning D Böehm who shared with us at 7:09 pm,
“No matter how many times ericgrimsrud is proven to be wrong, he keeps posting his nonsense.
grimsrud is to science as astrology is to astronomy”.
I am wondering why the moderator allows such silly, meaningless ditties through. So let me respond in kind to Mr. Boehm with “my dad is stronger than your dad” So there!
PS – Eric wot’s your name, you could have pulled me up on my comment 5 Oct – South East Australia Perth is SW Australia. My mistake, but we still have flooding in North NSW, as I live there. Sure the El Nina seems to have finished for a while, but usually our continent has a habit of drying up and then getting a surplus of rain. It is does not have a predictable precipitation pattern. And Eric the watt, there is really nothing d…n all we can do to effect it to our liking. Climate is what we ‘expect’ but weather is what we get, and weather and natural calaminities, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, typhoons is what is recorded as killing us in large numbers.
ericgrimsrud says:
Richard Courtney “has no demonstratable background in science, in general, and certainly no record of contribution to climate science.”
grimsrud is as wrong about that statement as he is wrong about every other statement. He is nothing but a wild-eyed alarmist troll.
Retract your lie, grimsmud. Or everyone will see you as the alarmist propagandist that you are.
From ericgrimsrud on October 5, 2012 at 9:13 pm:
Concerning D Böehm who shared with us at 7:09 pm,
Who’s your daddy?
;-)——-===8
D.B.,
Richard is asleep right now living in UK, and so is Tim in Canada, I presume.. I am sure they won’t lose any sleep over Eric the Red, (If you follow a well known TV series you’ll know whom I am referring) Eric might live in America, I’m not sure of the timelines around the globe, but in Oz it is 2.37 pm in NSW. And 3 hours behind in Western Australia. Oh dear, his/her timeline is the same as mine on this site, not in reality, he’s a Aussie or Kiwi?
Sorry I was out, I would have responded sooner. But we can see from the discussion above that ericgrimsrud doesn’t wish to enlighten lay people with facts. Instead his book states that the life of CFC is very long but fails to point out “YES, the CFC’s are being destroyed when they get to the upper stratosphere” He admits it here, but not in his book. His book is mostly propaganda for readers who don’t know any better.
Regarding solar energy, you pointed out the graph at colli239.fts.educ.msu.edu/2003/12/31/solar-activity-2003/ which shows a clear rise up to 1950 and then it stays high. You ask “As to your suggestion that the additional increase of about 1 watt/m2 observed before 1950 has caused recent temperature increases, I’ll leave you to explain and provide support for that one.”
The solar energy is mainly deposited in the ocean. Some immediately warms the atmosphere, some increases the water cycle (no net effect) and some is stored in the ocean. Net storage is mostly during La Nina, and subsequent release during El Nino (Bob Tisdale writes a lot on that in this blog). A lot of heat was stored in the 80’s, some released in the early 80’s El Nino, and a lot was released the 1997/8 El Nino. The satellite temperature record shows a nice step up at that El Nino and a good amount of that warming was stored solar. Of course there was also CO2 warming during that interval but obviously slow and steady. The recent dip in solar energy has yet to manifest as much cooling, there is still plenty of leftover heat in the ocean. Of course there is ongoing CO2 warming, but slow, steady and very modest.
What book has he/she written. CSIRO have a few problems with ex-staff who didn’t toe the line on climate change and actually there are a few challenging them on unfair dismissal charges.
Bushbunny, according to his book the other Eric lives in Montana. No, he didn’t says lives. He said “during the author’s recent existence in rural Montana” whatever that means. It is typical of the whole book, full of pontifications but woefully inadequate on specifics, much of it misleading.
Read some more of the book. Lots of Montana this and Montana that. So I supposed the author actually does live in Montana. It is somewhat surprising that he wishing for colder weather, but to each his own I guess. What is most noteworthy about this book is how thin the author’s knowledge is and how he repeats every cliche that the catastrophic alarmists have published on the internet especially the one about how AGW = CAGW.
He claims in his book to have studied “skeptical” websites. I find no evidence of that. In fact he mostly seems to have cribbed SkepSci which we all know is not the least bit skeptical about CAGW. Any mention of skeptical arguments is “myths” very similar the list at SkepSci or a straw man or red herring.
ericgrimsrud:
I am writing in response to your post which fails to answer a question I posed to you at October 5, 2012 at 3:32 pm; viz.
At October 5, 2012 at 6:20 pm you respond to that but do not answer the question.
Your answer says;
OK. You say “about half of CF2Cl2, for example, will disappear from our background atmosphere in about 100 years”. So, assuming linearity, about a fifth will disappear in about 20 years (in reality much more will disappear because the decay rate is exponential and not linear). And please note that I am accepting your statements about decay rate for clarity and not because they are right.
I asked my question because at October 5, 2012 at 2:17 pm you said to eric1skeptic,
So, you said the levels now and 20 years ago were “essentially the same” and – my having questioned that – you now say they differ by (much) more than 20% because their destruction of ozone depletes them.
In other words, you said CFCs are not noticeably destroyed over the 20 year period but now you admit that is not true because failure to admit that falsehood would refute your claim that CFCs are destroying the ozone layer.
Perhaps you will – for the first time on record – admit you were wrong and apologise for making such misleading statements.
Your apology should be easy in this case because your exageration is a relatively minor error when compared to most falsehoods you present.
Richard
PS I shall be leaving for one of my frequent periods when I am out of communication so I shall be unable to educate you further in your mistakes, misunderstandings and bad behaviour for about a week.
Ericgrimsrud
Thank you for your reply regarding the ozone hole.
It still doesn’t get away from the fact that we have no idea of the nature of the ozone hole prior to the 1950’s.
Please take a look at the second graph of my artice here whereby I compared BEST with CET;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/14/little-ice-age-thermometers-historic-variations-in-temperatures-part-3-best-confirms-extended-period-of-warming/
If you were taking these measurements in the 1690’s you would surmise that the natural state of things was that it was very cold. Therefore around 1700 you would become alarmed when the temperature rose rapidly and surmise that something strange was happenng. Indeed, this see saw against a slowly rising temperature trend throughout the instrumental record helps put the latter part of the 17th century into context.
From it we would surmise that;
* sometimes the temperatures are very cold and sometimes very warm
* They have neen rising for 350 years
* There are sometimes dramatic changes-the period around 1690 is the sharpest rise in the instrumental record.
If we were to produce this as an analogy of the ozone hole might it not be reasonable to surmise that perhaps-like temperatures-it oscillates in size considerably and taking the 1950’s as a start point, merely because that is when we first had instruments, doesn’t tell us whether or not a hole hasnt always existed?
tonyb
The lifetime of CFC’s is well known in my view and the mechanisms are well described. Prof Li in Waterloo has a really good description of CFC’s over Antarctica in his papers on the effect of GCR on ozone which is where ‘all the damage’ is supposed to have been. Turns out to be alarmism I see. Quelle surprise.
If the trolls haven’t heard of Tim Ball and RC they have not surveyed ‘skeptical’ sites. Simple as that. It is not sites that are skeptical, it is scientists, real ones, who won’t swallow what they are offered without first checking it for pathogens.
To Tonyp,
You are correct, of course. We can not say for sure that an ozone hole never existed prior to 1950 because we then did not have the means of measuring one. All we can say is that an ozone hole did develop between the years 1950 and the present. Due to the more comprehensive set of measures of ozone, CFC’s, ClO and Cl atom, along with stratospheric cloulds made since 1985 we now also know why the hole forms each springtime. Note also that the development of the ozone hole paralleled the addtion of the CFC’s to the atmosphere of that same period.
So if the hole is caused by CFC’s it seems unlikely that a hole occurred prior to 1950, but there are other possibitlies that might interest you (but not me). For example, perhaps the Romans or even the Neanderthals produced CFC’s so that we had an ozone hole then. Or perhaps Mother Nature put our CFC’s at any other futhere time – possibly from volcanoes, now extinct. Or better still perhaps the suggestion that the ozone holes are produced by the CFC’s is all a big hoax. So Tonyp, take you pick and carry on with that line of thought if you wish.
To RC,
Some more detail here concerning the conc of CFC’s in the atmosphere. First pull up the data for the most abundant of these, CF2Cl2, at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Ozone_cfc_trends.png
This graph shows that its conc 20 years ago was about the same as today. Looking more closely one sees that it reached a slightly higher value, about 540 ppm, its all time max, about 10 years ago which just happens to be when also all industrial production around the world is thought to have been finally stopped. Even after 2000, however, there were undoubedly some residual emissions occurring due to folks who had saved some and then used it after that date. Also there are still rogue nations that don’t pay any attention to world wide environmental issues.
Understanding these additional details enables one to see why the turnaround from slight increase to slight decay in the F12 conc shown in this figure occurred. The real situation was not one in which the emission of CF2Cl2 was immediately stopped at one specific point in time. Thus the Conc of F12 happens to be about the same today as it was 20 years ago and one of the primary reasons for this is that it has a very long livetime in the atmosphere. Go forward from the present date we might expect to see a decay rate that is in near perfect agreement with its expected half life. This, because eventually we will run out of our “leftover” CF2Cl2.
AS I stated before: what is still clear in all of this is that while F12 is destroyed itself in the process of destroying ozone in the upper stratosphere, it still persist in our background atmosphere for a very long time. Hopefully, what I just said if no longer a “mystery”.
To Cripspin,
You are right and I plead guily. I do tend to pay far more attention to the peer-reviewed literature than I do the information provided on websites.
That possibly explains why I feel like a black man and a KKK rally while participating on this web site. Nevertheless, I thank WUWT for at least letting me in the door. The only complaint I would have is that when some of the WUWT regulars heap personal insults on me, I am not always allowed to respond in kind. I can take to abuse because I have a wife and dog that appear to like me quite a lot. As Harry Truman once said, if you want to have a friend is Wash DC, get a dog (note that Harry’s wife, Bess, preferred to stay back in Missouri).
Concerning eric1skeptic’s comments onOctober 5, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Read some more of the book. Lots of Montana this and Montana that. So I supposed the author actually does live in Montana. It is somewhat surprising that he wishing for colder weather, but to each his own I guess. What is most noteworthy about this book is how thin the author’s knowledge is and how he repeats every cliche that the catastrophic alarmists have published on the internet especially the one about how AGW = CAGW.
He claims in his book to have studied “skeptical” websites. I find no evidence of that. In fact he mostly seems to have cribbed SkepSci which we all know is not the least bit skeptical about CAGW. Any mention of skeptical arguments is “myths” very similar the list at SkepSci or a straw man or red herring.
Yes, I do love Montana and have lived here for some 37 years in total. I am also indebted to the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washingtion and Alberta, Canada where I spent at least 4 years in each working at their major Universities and loved every minute of it. All seemed have an abundance level headed and appropriately progessive people.
If you did read my book you apparently missed one of its major chapters, chapter 3 in which I searched for a major flaw in the notion of AGW. I went through about 20 of the most ofter seen in the sceptic’s “literature”. You say I pick only a “straw men” to shoot down. I am sure, however, if I have picked 100 of them, you would undoubedly dismissed them all in the same way. Your “review” of my book was quite shallow. Why not try the free short course offered on my website, ericgrimsrud.com. It goes further into the science involved and deals with subjects described everywhere in the official scientific but not so famiar to many of the sceptics who frequent this web site.
To RC, Let me separately here respond to you additional comments in you last request to explain CFC chemistry. You said:
“Perhaps you will – for the first time on record – admit you were wrong and apologise for making such misleading statements. Your apology should be easy in this case because your exageration is a relatively minor error when compared to most falsehoods you present.”
As you have now noted, I did provide with something of greater value – an explanation of CFC chemistry with additional supportive details. I suspect, however, that you will not satify you. You appear to be far more interested in non-scientific, personal issues such as domination, if possible, and face saving, when necessay. While I can’t help you with those latter issues, I hope that you were able to see that I did help you with the former. If you place any value on understanding the science involved, I might expect a thank you from you. But instead, I fully expect to be treated with yet more requests for some sort of apology from either you your devotee, Mr. Boehm.
ericgrimsrud: re the ozone hole
I suspect that you and other ozone hole experts are largely unaware that the magnetic susceptibilities of oxygen and ozone are quite different: that of O2 is paramagnetic and attracted to a magnetic field whereas O3 is diamagnetic and is pushed away from a magnetic field. This effect would be to create an ozone hole at the poles. Maybe CFCs also have the celebrated effect, but magnetics might just be enough to account for it!