From Harvard University
An early sign of spring, earlier than ever
Researchers say record-high temperatures led to earliest spring flowering in history
Record warm temperatures in 2010 and 2012 resulted in the earliest spring flowering in the eastern United States in more than 150 years, researchers at Harvard University, Boston University and the University of Wisconsin have found.
“We’re seeing plants that are now flowering on average over three weeks earlier than when they were first observed – and some species are flowering as much as six weeks earlier,” said Charles Davis, a Harvard Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the study’s senior author. “Spring is arriving much earlier today than it has in the past.”
To explain spring’s early arrival, Davis and his co-authors, Boston University biology Professor Richard Primack, BU postdoctoral researcher Elizabeth Ellwood and Professor Stanley Temple at the University of Wisconsin, point to temperature increases resulting from global climate change. Using data collected in Massachusetts and Wisconsin from the mid-1800s to the present day, they show that the two warmest years on record – 2010 and 2012 – also featured record breaking early spring flowering.
Significantly, researchers found that the early arrival of spring was predicted by historical records, and that plants haven’t shown any sign of reaching a threshold for adjusting to warming temperatures.
“It appears that many spring plants keep pushing things earlier and earlier”, Davis said.
To conduct the study, Davis and colleagues relied on two “incredibly unique” data sets.
“The data were initiated by Henry David Thoreau in the mid-1800s,” Davis said. “He was making observations on flowering times across Concord, Massachusetts for nearly a decade. In central Wisconsin, the data were collected by environmental pioneer Aldo Leopold beginning in the mid-1930s.
“The striking finding is that we see the same pattern in Wisconsin as we see in Massachusetts,” Davis said. “It’s amazing that these areas are so far apart and yet we’re seeing the same things–it speaks to a larger phenomenon taking place in the eastern United States.”
“Thoreau and Leopold are icons of the American environmental movement and it is astonishing that the records both kept decades ago can be used today to demonstrate the impacts of climate change on plant flowering times,” Primack said.
While it’s clear that continued monitoring of flowering times is needed, Davis also expressed hope that the study provides a tangible example of the potential consequences of climate change.
“The problem of climate change is so massive, the temptation is for people to tune out,” Davis said. “But I think being aware that this is indeed happening is one step in the right direction of good stewardship of our planet.” Davis continued. “When we talk about future climate change, it can be difficult to grasp. Humans may weather these changes reasonably well in the short-term, but many organisms in the tree of life will not fare nearly as well.”
These scientists rely on laypeople not knowing a whole mess of facts:
1. The current interglacial has seen cooling for the past 6,000 years
2. Forest ringed the Arctic across Siberia during the Holocene Optimum
3. “Perma”frost melt at that time did not yield a runaway positive feedback via methane release.
4. The Little Ice Age, which was global and generally destructive, ended in 1850 or so (round about the time we started seeing the terrifying warming)
5. Sea level during the interglacial one before ours was @15 feet higher than today
6. The Holocene is the coolest of the last five interglacials
And on and on and on.
I wrote a book to arm interested laypersons against such assaults on their dignity.
Thoreau’s era 1830s to 1840s was an exceptionally cold time for the modern period.
NE Oregon -spring of 2010 was late here. 2011, and a fairly normal but cold and wet one in 2012. 2013 well we havent seen above 36f mostly 25f as highs for the last 3 weeks. Yes an
early spring in NE Oregon would be nice.Something good happens and its a problem.
“A Puritan is someone who goes to be at night with the gnawing fear that somewhere,
someone, is happy.”-HL Menken …
Oh,one more thing I lived for a number of years in Coos Bay Oregon.I had a greenie neighbor
that said;”DO you Know that within TEN years Coos Bay will have the climate of Santa Barbra!!!”
Looked at my wife and said:” We don’t think that is a problem..”
BTW no Santa Barbra there yet…it’s been 12 years..
Plants growing…the horror
The Japanese consider the flowering of the cherry trees to be of special importance and have records going back 1000 years http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cherry-Trees-Japan.pdf. They find that the recent earlier flowering is due to urbanization [1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius].
We have had thirty some years of disaster predicted because of global warming. Nothing could be further from the truth. The earth is in much better shape than it was then. The trees are by and large healthier and greener. Yes there are exceptions but there will always be. More CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to be a great benefit for greater crop yields and when plants do better we all do better. Cold is our enemy and while we need some we don’t want to promote it. I don’t know what the optimun climate might be but more hospitable land available around the world is not a bad thing. Warmer is better. The earth has a pretty good thermostat. Leave it alone.
Oh no you DON’T, Harvard!
Skeptical Science says spring coming earlier is going DOWN!
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Warming_Indicators_500.jpg
Just how is this warming from 1880 a bad thing? pg
Why do they need to refer to flowering times when we have temperature records? From CO2 science:
http://www.co2science.org//articles/V5/N8/B3.php
Johnson, S.L. and Lincoln, D.E. 2000. Allocation responses to CO2 enrichment and defoliation by a native annual plant Heterotheca subaxillaris. Global Change Biology 6: 767-778.
“elevated CO2 increased reproductive flower biomass and caused flowering to occur much earlier than it did in ambiently-grown plants.” How many other direct effects of CO2 have been assigned to temperature changes?
From 1912 through 2012, warming in MA has been 0.09F/decade.
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-Jan1622:03:174351196289.gif
Peter Hartley says: How many other direct effects of CO2 have been assigned to temperature changes?
My guess is that CO2 may be causing tress to hang on longer into the Fall because they can remain productive in slightly less sunlight. Not good for Fall leaf peeper tourist revenue though.
Oh yes, that early spring thing with low 20’s F in May killed my cherry trees last spring. DEAD! Go CAGW! If only it was true…I could plant those tropical fruits. Oh darn.Siberian pine nuts?
Translation:
During the Little Ice Age, it was colder and flowers bloomed later in the year than today.
Read that last paragraph again. Problems? An apriori assumption without justification? Since past swings in temperature were much larger and most species have adapted and survived (based on fossil records), where is their proof?
Feed Me Seymour, Feed Me!
and that plants haven’t shown any sign of reaching a threshold for adjusting to warming temperatures.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Almost like they think it is natural, they like it. Sorta how they like high levels of CO2 as well. Almost like they evolved in a warmer, CO2 rich atmosphere. Of course there must be a different reason because that would be impossible.
Spring starting early? Hurray! Longer growing time.
Once again, owning a Doctorate is an excuse for jumping to stupid conclusions…when was temperature the sole indicator of earlier flowering?
Using data collected in Massachusetts and Wisconsin from the mid-1800s to the present day
Are they saying it was warming up WAY BEFORE our generous (and beneficial) increases in atmospheric CO2? No… couldn’t be. They are admitting climate factors are at work that have little or nothing to do with anthropogenic fossil fuel consumption. How bizzare!
OMG! I was reading about this very thing all day, while eventually not being assigned to a jury……
So I got tucked into my MIS-5e subfolder, with 266 files and 4 subfolders lower. Although I read all of them before, you would be surprised what you pick up on the second or third time through.
Made it through about a dozen papers, but one really came to mind as I read the above press release. http://eprints.ucm.es/15767/1/2011_1_Millennial-submillennial_QSR_01.pdf
Some salient quoutes from the paper:
“This interglacial includes three highstands (Zazo et al., 2003)…………”Each subunit records a relatively rapid rise of sea level……..”The minimum sea-level variation (fall and subsequent rise) required to generate the observed features is 4 m.”
“Rapid sea-level changes during the early part of MIS 5e have been reported from the Gulf of Corinth (Greece). There, the early MIS 5e highstand (∼137 to ∼135 ka) was punctuated by two significant (>10 m) eustatic sea-level falls, which probably occurred in less than 1000 yr (Andrews et al., 2007)”
“During the first part of the phase of high sea level, minor (tens of centimeters high) fluctuations of sea level were recorded as vertical and lateral shifts of the plunge-step facies, as observed at the “classical” quarry”
“This pattern was repeated at least seven times producing erosion surfaces I to VII that limit the successive subunits”
“In summary, the relatively rapid rises of sea level that begun sedimentation of subunits were followed by a period of essentially high level, with minor oscillations recorded as shift of plunge-step facies, and later gentle, relatively slow fall. Therefore, the investigated sequences record at least two orders of small-scale changes of sea level………”
“This pattern of more or less homogeneous, repeated fluctuations was interrupted by a notable fall of sea level of at least 3-3.5m that produced the prominent erosion surface IV (Fig. 6) that cuts across the underlying deposits, separating Units 2 and 3.”
“This implies a total sea-level change of at least 6-7 m occurred during the fall and subsequent rise between Units 2 and 3.”
“Unfortunately, no reports of similar changes of sea level in interglacials older than MIS 5e have been published. The only comparable case-study available is a Holocene coastal plain, where a barrier-spit system prograded in Roquetas (Almeria coast) during the most stable part (the last 7 ka) of the present interglacial. Goy et al. (2003), Zazo et al. (2008), and Fernández-Salas et al. (2009) distinguished six periods of remarkable progradation (H1 to H6), repeated more or less every 1.4 to 3.0 ka, punctuated by shorter, centennial periods (lasting 600 to 270 yrs) of reduced progradation. These recurring short periods were interpreted as climatically-influenced and record increased aridity and relative low sea level, coincident with cold Bond events (Bond et al., 1997) and low sea surface temperatures (De Menocal et al., 2000; Cacho et al., 2001).”
From the conclusions:
“Evidence of rapid changes of sea level during the second MIS 5e highstand, comparable to the “sustained MIS 5e highstand” with a duration of 10 2 ka, has been recognized in a prograding barrierspit system located at La Marina-El Pinet (Alicante)……….It involved a minimum total sea level variation of 6-7 m. These units include eight prograding subunits separated by less prominent erosion surfaces.”
“……the erosion surfaces are the result of repetitive relatively slow falls of sea level followed by rapid sea-level rise. The minimum amplitude deduced for fluctuations is 2 m, which represents a total change (fall and subsequent rise) in sea-water of 4 m. After each fall and erosion the sea level rose to similar topographic elevations.We propose a millennial or submillennial periodicity (∼1 ka) for these fluctuations, and disregard storm surges as a likely generating mechanism. The large magnitude of the repeated sea-level fluctuations suggests a contribution by rapid ice sheets melting and build-up.”
“The smaller-scaled (tens of centimeters) order of oscillations of sea level has been recognized inside the subunits from shifts of the foreshore and uppermost shoreface facies, and a decadal periodicity is suggested.”
At what would have to be a long list of takeaway points here are a few Occam’s Razors.
1 Climate “stuff” happens on decadal to millenial scales that almost always starts with a rapid warming and slow fall. Anthropogenic utilization of beans to produce methane gas was still an interglacial away. As was salsa and probably chili peppers.
2 Sea levels coming and going all the time in the +2-4m range.
3 “The smaller-scaled (tens of centimeters) order of oscillations of sea level….” The IPCC’s AR4 worst-case estimate of sea level rise by 2100 is just shy of 6 tens of centimeters. And, you know, those were “the smaller scaled” ones. Here you should consider that even during the highstands, of which there were at least 3, had variation (noise) in this same range.
4 Anybody else notice that the periodicity of the constant “millenial” class cycles are eerily close to “repetitive relatively slow falls of sea level followed by rapid sea-level rise” which characterize the 24-25 Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations observed in many locales within the last glacial, this interglacial, and now the last one back?
5 Sorry. A month and a half earlier “spring” for plants just doesn’t figure into discussion of the climate variability observed/recorded during this interglacial, or the 10’s of centimeters millennial to sub-millenial variation in sea level (meaning up AND down) present on the smallest scale during the last interglacial. You must at least exceed this, up AND down, if you think you are going to get my attention. This is about both signal to noise ratio and baseline. http://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/136605.pdf just happened to be a tad higher in the Eemian.
Understanding is all about perspective. If you have nothing to compare a 6-week earlier “spring” with, such as the low-end “tens of centimeters” we lived through in the Eemian, then maybe the warming since the LIA appears contaminated. The problem here is that the “Anthropogene” actually falls in the low-end of the things climate that just seem to keep happening. If you want to really get a feel for what seems to happen at the ends of the other eccentricity-minima interglacials anyway, you should revisit http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/16/the-end-holocene-or-how-to-make-out-like-a-madoff-climate-change-insurer/
The first sentence “in 150 years”. So, it has happened before. Stop reading there.
thisisnotgoodtogo,
You are right! And if Skeptical Science says so it must be true: early flowering is a sign of global cooling.
Notice also the absence of an arrow for cloud cover against a global warming indicator of increasing humidity. This means that cloud cover is independent both of humidity and thus global temperatures. That’s great because then those pesky white things do not have to be incorporated in the secret models which determine our tax rates.
Wow! Thank Goodness for Skeptical Science, at last I have an explanation for the blooming roses pushing up through the snow drifts in my back yard.
Stay Cool!
Early Spring in the Eastern US in 2010? They must be from Counter-Earth, that imaginary world on the other side of the sun. That was the Jan-Feb-Mar when Philly, Baltimore, and DC set snowfall records.
http://www.weatherwise.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2010/July-August%202010/mega-snow-full.html
Changes in plant phenology are global and are affecting cropping plants as well as non-cultivated plants.
This study is consistent with the global trends in plant phenology so it is no big deal, except if you are a Kooler, in which case you need to explain why thousands of plants worldwide are ignoring global cooling and behaving as if the earth is getting warmer.
I understand that vintners have had to be fairly nifty because the vintages have been brought forward (in Australia by up to a month, on average). I also understand that chill factors are a headache for some cherry growers. But these are minor crops and most people can sort of live with crap wine (the vintners are agile so that would only be a short term issues). Some cherry growers will have to relocate.
An interesting thing would be to see whether there have been studies in changes in phenology of major crop types such as winter wheat and the consequent impacts.
Can’t say this is happening in New Zealand. Quite the opposite- spring is later and summer is shorter.
Way back in very early 70’s ( remember those long hot summers of Beachboys, Morris minor convertibles with the surfboard stuck up in the back?) I worked in a footwear distribution warehouse and our reps were asked by The UK based (well most imported footwear then was produced in UK) marketing office why it was that more children’s sandals were sold here than than closed footwear, whereas in UK and Europe they sold mainly closed shoes. So the rep sent off his report explaining that unlike UK/Europe our Spring/Summer was our longest season, winter’s shortest.
Can’t say the same now. Sure fashions have changed but the fact now is most kids wear closed shoes most of the year, sneakers etc, and interspersed with jandals or thongs.
Global warming? Ummm… there’s a huge storm coming through and more rain. Where is summer?
It’s better than we thought!
Peter Hartley says:
January 16, 2013 at 7:00 pm
“. . . and caused flowering to occur much earlier”
And that isn’t necessarily good.
What the so called GHGs fail to do is hold the temperature up on clear nights at an elevated (say >2,000 feet) site. In the past few years I’ve had walnut trees leaf out and then lose all their leaves from cold. Even some of the native plants have suffered this fate, arrowleaf balsamroot being one.
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/regions/intermountain/Greendale/images/arrowleaf_balsamroot_lg.jpg
Bloom early =1; 2 = freeze; 3 = flowers, fruit, and leaves turn black; 4 = they drop; 5 = some things grow a 2nd set.
They say you can’t do just one thing. Seems appropriate in this context.
“The problem of climate change is so massive, the temptation is for people to tune out,” Davis said. “But I think being aware that this is indeed happening is one step in the right direction of good stewardship of our planet.” Davis continued. “When we talk about future climate change, it can be difficult to grasp. Humans may weather these changes reasonably well in the short-term, but many organisms in the tree of life will not fare nearly as well.”
I am going to have to brush my teeth again, can’t get the taste of vomit out of my mouth. I keep having a visual of a 120 lb weakling skipping across a meadow with a hand full of flowers…
Early springtime flowering in the Eastern US? You would think the gardeners and farmers there must have already noticed!
“jimshu says:
January 16, 2013 at 9:58 pm
Can’t say this is happening in New Zealand. Quite the opposite- spring is later and summer is shorter.”
Well I don’t know what is happening just across the Tasman Sea, but here in Australia we are experiencing a continent wide record breaking heat wave with attendant bushfires. Here in Melbourne it was 41 C (106 F) today, and the January rainfaill has been a fraction of the long term average.
Some people may take a parochial view in that global warming gives them earlier blooming flowers (and presumably earlier die off of those flowers), but Australia is facing a dryiing out of the food bowl of the south east, and none of us are keen to move to sunny Siberia.
Leif Svalgaard says: January 16, 2013 at 6:54 pm re Japan cherry blossoms
These indirect indicators are interesting, so long as odd effects are recognised and can be accounted for, such as the CO2 fertilizer question.
We spent 20 days from 23 March 1992 following the cherry season from Kagoshima in the south to Maizuru in the centre of Japan & even sat where one of your referenced images shows.
For interest, recently, the opening of the first blossoms in Kyoto was 31 March 2001 and 3 April 2012 in the hills behind the city. I have not tried to plot these on the graph because the opening time is not defined too clearly.
> but Australia is facing a dryiing [sic] out of the food bowl of the south east
Tell that to the people affected by the 2010-11 and Feb/Mar 2012 floods in NSW and Victoria
An unusual -5C here in UK, Big fall of snow forecast for the next few days. Daily life to be severely affected (*)
And spring coming early is supposed to be a massive problem? Go figure.
(*) Not because we are stupid or incapable, but because until recently snow was pretty unusual in SE England. And local authorities took seriously the words of David Viner from UEA ‘Snowfall will be a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is’.
I live in Mass, not far from Concord, the site of Thereau’s data collection. Last winter/spring was pretty unusual. Golf courses in my area were open for play in March…as opposed to the “usual” time frame of late April. At the time, everyone you talked/listened to spoke of this as being unprecedented. Us “old timers” could be heard saying “Haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.” News media were fairly smitten with the story, frequently ignoring the fact that to the south of us, as previously mentioned above, parts o PA/Md were being hammered with winter storms that all passed to our south. Last winter (2011/2012) I plowed my driveway once. As in one time. That, too, was “unprecedented”. Many people in the media failed to make mention of the fact that in Oct 2011, that same winter, we had a devastating snow storm around Halloween. The reason it caused a tremendous amount of damage was that most trees still had most of their leaves, and we got hit with about 12″ of heavy, wet snow. My street was without power for 4 days. National Grid had tree crews here from thousands of miles away. That kind of snowfall in this area is very rare. I can’t remember it happening in the 20yrs I’ve lived in my current home.
So…when it was happening, it was unprecedented, and now, a year later, it’s apparently the norm, and it seems that now plants always flower 3-6wks early. And the only thing that gets called out is the early spring…no mention of the early “winter” just 5mos earlier.
Biased? Nah…us lay people that plant the flowers and gardens and play golf from time to time just don’t understand.
One of the things that jumped out at me was this statement: “Significantly, researchers found that the early arrival of spring was predicted by historical records, and that plants haven’t shown any sign of reaching a threshold for adjusting to warming temperatures.”
So this unprecedented spring was actually “predicted”?…funny, I don’t recall a single news item or press release that told folks “Hey…you’re not going to believe this, but your tulips are going to be up 6wks early next spring!”
This type of observational study is akin to saying “70% of people who died last year, died in a hospital. If you don’t want to die, avoid them at all costs.”
JimB
Philip Shehan:
The concluding paragraph of your post at January 16, 2013 at 11:59 pm says
Your paragraph includes two logical errors.
Firstly, it does NOT follow that earlier flowering implies earlier “die off” .
You are presuming that the growing season has moved to an earlier time of year. However, if – as the article and you assume – the earlier flowering is from warmer climate then the earlier flowering is an indication of a longer growing season .
In either case (i.e. altered time or altered length of the growing season), the earlier flowering is a result of a climate change.
Secondly, you are confusing weather and climate .
An individual weather record is set somewhere almost every day because there are many places and records have only been obtained for about a century. On the first day that a measurement site records temperature, precipitation and rainfall then it sets a record for each of those parameters. The following day it has three chances of breaking one of those records. And this is true for every measurement site. However, as time goes by there is an increase to the period between new records at each site.
There are 365 days in a year and hundreds of measurement sites. Records have not been kept at most of the sites for more than decades. Hence, a new weather record is set somewhere on most days.
The high temperatures in Australia are a weather event, and – as the WUWT thread on Tench’s data reports – it is a rare but not unprecedented Australian weather event.
Weather events can affect plant growth; e.g. a sharp frost can kill a crop. But these are individual events which occur in an individual year.
The climate of a site is the range of expected weather events at that site. A change to climate can also affect plants; e.g. increased frequency of droughts will increase the ratio of plants with drought resistance to plants which lack drought resistance.
A change to the growing season over several years is an indication of a variation (change?) in climate. And climate changes everywhere all the time: it always has and it always will.
In conclusion, your post I am answering is as mistaken as your silly assertions (on two WUWT threads) that global warming is “accelerating” when global warming has stalled for 15+ years.
Richard
richards courtney: I was responding to what jimshu claimed is happening in New Zealand. He says the sping is loger there and the summers shorter. This is not the experience here in Australia, the southern part of which covers the same latitude as New Zealand. I can assure you as I look at my garden and the plants and trees across the road that the plants are struggling and the spring blooms prematurely dying off. The purple blooms on my Bouganvillia have already turned brown. Native plants in my garden, which evolved to cope with local conditions are in fact dying. As far as the climate here goes:
“The evidence for an increase in such [extreme] weather is clear. The CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have reported that Australia has experienced fewer very cold days and more very hot days than it did 50 years ago.
The current heatwave is breaking many temperature records. The nation’s hottest day occurred on Monday, January 7. For seven days in a row, from January 2-8, the average maximum temperature across Australia was above 39 degrees. And with the extreme heat has come bushfires, destruction, health problems, and disruption of infrastructure.
Record-breaking heat is, by definition, weather not experienced for as long as records have been kept. But it’s not just unprecedented heat the nation is facing…
This weekend the Climate Commission published a report by some of Australia’s most eminent climate scientists on the connection between climate change and the extreme heat Australia is experiencing.
The report concluded that: “The length, extent and severity of this heatwave are unprecedented in the measurement record. Although Australia has always had heatwaves, hot days and bushfires, climate change has increased the risk of more intense heatwaves and extreme hot days, as well as exacerbated bushfire conditions. Scientists have concluded that climate change is making extreme hot days, heatwaves and bushfire weather worse.”
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/rising-temperatures-make-mockery-of-rising-scepticism-20130114-2cpnz.html
richardscourtney:
with regard your assertion:
“In conclusion, your post I am answering is as mistaken as your silly assertions (on two WUWT threads) that global warming is “accelerating” when global warming has stalled for 15+ years.”
You issued a challenge at the end of this post to me:
“You say
‘I have never claimed that examination of the last 17 years shows continued acceleration. It does not. But the point I have been making over and over and over again is that choosing subsets of data, whether they go, up, down or level (and you can choose multiple subsets that do any of these things) simply cannot be generalised to a statement of the about 1880-2007 as a whole. Again, the 17 year period from 1940 to 1957 does not show an increase in the upward slope of the data (acceleration). It does not show an upward slope at all. It actually shows a decrease in temperature over that time. It is multidecadal trends I have been discussing.’
Absolutely not!
“Your major claim – disputed by D Böehm and myself – has been that global warming IS accelerating.
You have peddled that lie on two threads. That is what we have been discussing.
Now you say, “I have never claimed that examination of the last 17 years shows continued acceleration. It does not.”
YES YOU DID!
Your claim has been that global warming IS accelerating: it was NOT that global warming WAS accelerating.
I could search the threads and quote your pertinent statements but it is not worth the bother (unless, of course, you choose to contend the matter).”
I did so contend the matter as follows and you have failed to produce the pertinent statements.
“clivebest says:
January 12, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Philip,
Using IPCC’s new interpretation of calculus – temperatures are now decelerating !!
see here….
Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 3:56 pm
clivebest, Again I don’t see any point of difference between us on the data, or the interpretation over the short time period you mention.
As I wrote earlier:
“Philip Shehan says:
January 12, 2013 at 7:04 am
clivebest:
I do not disagree with much of what you write. But as I pointed out in my post to Werner it is possible to overinterpret the data by going into too fine a detail…”
To suggest that “direct effects of CO2 have been assigned to temperature” is incorrectly assuming naivety on the part of scientists assessing the possible effects of changes in climate on crops / plants. Springer and Ward (2007) reviewed the effect of elevated CO2 on flowering time and they report results for a large range of plants. Earlier flowering due to increased CO2 is by no means a response seen in all plant species (particularly not in wild species, less so in crops); in some crops and many wild plant species no response or even delays have been reported. More importantly, studies indicate that both in crops and most wild plant species earlier flowering is largely due to increased temperatures rather than elevated CO2 (e.g. Bloor et al. 2010; Hovenden et al. 2008; Craufurd and Wheeler, 2009)
Sources:
Springer and Ward, 2007 http://people.sju.edu/~cspringe/pdfs/tansley.pdf
Craufurd and Wheeler, 2009 http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/9/2529.full#sec-4
Hovenden et al. 2008 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2008.02419.x/full
Bloor et al. 2010 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10021-010-9363-0?LI=true
Warmists are always amazed when they “discover” that plants adapt, and do better when it’s warmer. Imagine how amazed they’d be if they “discovered” that plants love the higher C02 levels.
@Climate “Ace”, nice strawman argument. BTW, have you noticed that your C02 “thermostat” seems to be broken? Temperatures have flatlined for at least the past 16 years now, and counting. You Warmists better get to work on that, as it doesn’t bode well for your ideology/religion.
richardscourtney
D Boehm (now calling himself D Boehm Stealy) is the other person who has misrepresented my position over and over again, describing me as a liar and a fraud.
I have been commenting on a data set presented by the authors of a paper showing temperature trends form 1880 to 2007. Boehm and (richardscourtney) have been taking about subsets of data (and even data sets in central England).
When Boehm does stick to the point and discusess the entire data set he presents a doctored and deceptive graph.
He has repeatedly refused to answer a simple question:
“Philip Shehan says:
January 16, 2013 at 2:10 am
Once again, Boehm refuses point blank to answer a direct question:
What is the purpose of series 7 and the horizontal yellow line at 9 units on the y-axis?”
I will explain Boehm’s refusal to answer the question. In order to make his repeated attacks on me as a fraud and a liar, he needs to be able to claim:
“D Böehm Stealey says:
January 15, 2013 at 6:59 am
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
That chart shows unequivocally that there has been no acceleration in global warming.”
His doctoring of the chart by including entirely irrelevant components such as series 7 which places a line at 9 on the y-axis means that the temperature data is compressed, making any deviation from a straight line fit less noticeable. He wants to give us a demagnifying glass with which to view the data, so he can claim it is “unequivocally” fitted by a straight line.
Without Boehm’s demagnification the graph looks like this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2010/trend/offset
Even Boehm does not want to try telling anyone that the temperature data is fit “unequivocally” by the straight line. And indeed it is better fit by a curve:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
Graham W is not fooled by Boehm’s claim that the straight line fit is “unequivocal”
“Graham W says:
January 14, 2013 at 5:35 am
Philip Shehan: When drawing a straight line through the data from 1880 to 2007, compared to an exponential curve through the same data…Yes, the exponential curve fits the data better than the straight line.”
Boehm does not call Graham W a liar and a fraud.
He cannot admit that he placed series 7 and the yellow line on his chart solely for the purpose of demagnification in order to put one over on the viewer
The only fraudster in this matter is Boehm himself.
Not only do flowers like warmer weather, but so do humans.
I just finished an analysis of springtime arrival times by studying historical records going back to 1797 and pollen counts going back 4000 years. An extrapolation of the linear regression of springtime arrival date conculsively proves that the spring of 2042 will actually arrive in the summer of 2037 (July 12 to be exact).
Memorial Drive runs along the banks of the Charles River past Harvard. Just down the river is MIT. When my father attended MIT in the late 1930’s there was a spring snow, and the students were all going a bit mad due to Spring Fever and due to studying too hard for final exams. There was enough of a lull after the morning traffic for the students to build a wall of snow across Memorial Drive. The police came, and there was one heck of a snowball fight, before the students were driven back to their dorms.
I’d like to see anyone attempt to build a wall of snow across Memorial Drive nowadays.
Urban heat island, anyone?
Philip Shehan:
This is a reply to your three posts addressed to me in this thread.
re your two posts addressed to me at January 17, 2013 at 3:29 am and January 17, 2013 at 5:11 am.
On two threads you mounted a campaign claiming that global warming is “accelerating”. I and others refuted that nonsense.
I will NOT flatter you by wasting time on your daft assertion in this thread.
I shall ignore any further attempts you make to try and deflect this thread onto that.
You were wrong. Live with it.
As to your post addressed to me at January 17, 2013 at 3:18 am, please note that your first sentence admits Australia is differing from New Zealand. You say Australia is experiencing an unusual heat wave: nobody doubts that but Australia is not the world. Please read my post at January 17, 2013 at 2:57 am which you claim to be answering: it explains about the difference between “records” and “unprecedented”.
As I explained, Australia is having one of its rare but not unprecedented heat waves which is breaking records while global temperature rise has stalled.
Richard
It has long been my humble opinion that climate “science” is lacking in a good dose of humour.
We have an expresssion in Ireland and Scotland to describe this condition – it is Pofaced – this can be used as a generic term to apply to most catastropists.
This is a littel peon which i wrote some time ago and seems appropriate for this thread.
THE PLEADING ROSE
I am a vivid flowering rose
Delighting eye and balm to nose,
I thrive on heat of morning dew
But most of all on Co2;
So please don’t limit it the nigh
Or else I will just wilt and die,
I grow in rain and sun from skies
And gas to photosynthesize.
I’m not a scientist like you
With mega grants and pal review,
Please explain to a plant like me
The workings of I PCC;
Can it be wise to stop the clock
And turn it back to an epoch,
When i was cold and half this size
– true scientists helped me hybridize.
All those air-miles and pulp from trees
To promulgate your treatise,
Designed to spread alarm and fear
Of a trace-gas which I hold dear;
Your past deliberations show
If you were honest – ‘you don’t know’
What future temperatures will be
I hope it’s warmer – just for me.
patthepoet
Except when they don’t. Out here in the Skagit Valley in Western Washington they have Tulip and Daffodil festivals. In recent years they’ve been late due to the abnormally cold springs. Maybe some places are earlier, but not everywhere. That’s the problem with averaging temperatures and calling the average a record. Necessarily, half the temps will be lower than the average. The average gives a false impression.
OH MY! THE SKY IS FALLING! I guess these “scientists” do not subscribe to the theory of EVOLUTION! hmmm…. What shall we do? Everything is changing!!!!!
tgmccoy says:
January 16, 2013 at 6:50 pm
NE Oregon -spring of 2010 was late here. 2011, and a fairly normal but cold and wet one in 2012. 2013 well we havent seen above 36f mostly 25f as highs for the last 3 weeks…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am in NC located where we see snow maybe once every five years…. They are predicting for tonight
Yuck!
I have seen this type of weather three times in the 19 years I have been here.
If spring was consistently starting 6 weeks early we would have noticed by now.
Justa Joe says:
January 17, 2013 at 8:30 am
If spring was consistently starting 6 weeks early we would have noticed by now.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It would show up in the Köppen climate classification. The mid west 20th Century graph by decade (bottom) shows climate boundary movement. The boundaries cluster together for nine of the ten decades The outlier is 1970 not 1990. The top graph showing the quartiles vs the century average, shows the first two quartiles, 1900 to 1924 and 1924 to 1946 as WARMER than the second two quartiles!
This agrees somewhat with Hansen’s graph of global temperatures produced in 1980. The first half of the 20th century was warmer than the second half before the Climastrologists started dicking around with the data and adjusting it UP.
Early spring…huh, not around here.
Our winters are getting longer, and the springs MUCH colder.
I suppose the extra CO2 could make the flowers bloom early, if they weren’t still covered in snow 😉
richardscourtney
“I shall ignore any further attempts you make to try and deflect this thread onto that.”
Fine,
But you introduced the deflection, (in bold typescript):
“In conclusion, your post I am answering is as mistaken as your silly assertions (on two WUWT threads) that global warming is “accelerating” when global warming has stalled for 15+ years.”
Don’t expect me to remain silent when you constantly misrepresent me and call me a liar. Do as you said you would. Go find the post(s) or stop your false accusations.
So we essentially have a study with limited data from two out of the lower 48. Excellent. And the location of said results were collated from where geographically? I’m going to hazard a guess that some of those locations weren’t quite so urbanized in the 1930s, and definitely not the mid 1850s.
CO2 increases alone can easily account for most of the earlier Spring flowers in the UK where warming has not occurred. Higher CO2 makes these plants more temperature tolerant and thus able to grow and bloom earlier with no need for earlier warming. As temperatures have not come at all close to the highs of the 1930s, this earlier blooming is a last-half of the century thing. I wonder when they started observing flowers. I bet it was quite some time ago and in the 1930s Spring was much earlier. But, we must remember that nothing existed before their short memories noticed it.
@ Philip Shehan, in response to your-
Philip Shehan says:
January 17, 2013 at 3:18 am
richards courtney: I was responding to what jimshu claimed is happening in New Zealand. He says the sping is loger there and the summers shorter. This is not the experience here in Australia, the southern part of which covers the same latitude as New Zealand.
Sorry that’s not what I said.
I said-
“Can’t say this is happening in New Zealand. Quite the opposite- spring is later and summer is shorter.”
And the point of my original post was that in the late 60’s/early 70’s our warm months were the longer part of our year, whereas, now our warm months start later and are shorter, and the cooler months prevail. The shoe anecdote was to verify that it is not just age giving me a golden view of my sunburnt youth.
Philip Shehan:
You disrupted two WUWT threads with your silly claim that global warming is accelerating. I and others repeatedly showed you that global warming has reduced to being indiscernible from zero trend over the most recent 15+ years which shows recent deceleration and NOT acceleration.
Now, in this thread you have presented a series of posts which attempt similar disruption but have the brass neck to pretend you did not make the claim.
And, in your post in this thread at January 17, 2013 at 11:05 am, you demand me to provide evidence that you did! OK, below I copy the first of your series of posts on the matter from each of the earlier two threads.
Please note that in one you say
and in the other you say
Jimshu: Yes I recognised that along with the typos I had not repeated your statement accurately but I understood your point to be what you wrote – spring is later there and the summers shorter.
Again, that may be so but it is not what we are experiencing on this side of the Tasman. That said of course I don’t know what the bureau of meteorology says about whether there will be an early end to this summer. But it’s been a stinker so far.
Again Richard, it is you who went off topic, and I will defend myself against false claims.
Again Richard, you are misrepresenting me, so I shall respond:
Thank you for quoting directly what I argued at the very beginning of the thread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/03/agw-bombshell-a-new-paper-shows-statistical-tests-for-global-warming-fails-to-find-statistically-significantly-anthropogenic-forcing/
Philip Shehan says:
January 4, 2013 at 8:43 am
Quoting from the paper:
“3.1 Time series properties of the data
Informal inspection of Fig. 1 suggests that the time series properties of greenhouse gas forcings (panels a and b) are visibly different to those for temperature and solar irradiance (panel c). In panels a and b there is evidence of acceleration, whereas in panel c the two time series appear more stable.”
Informal inspection of the temperature data of panel c does show acceleration, matching that of the greenhouse gas forcing plots in a and b. The temperature rise appears less dramatic due to different scaling factors used in the 3 plots, but the acceleration of the temperature in the last 40 years compared to the previous 80 is clear to the naked eye. This is confirmed by a formal fit of temperature data to a nonlinear equation.
The discussion is about what the authors claim an “informal” inspection of the entire data set from 1880 to 2007 shows.
In that post I said that comparing the last 40 years with the previous 80 (actually closer to 90) did not support the claim that the temperature was “more stable” ie closer to a linear fit than the data in the other panels.
You and Boehm then banged on incessantly about what was occurring over short periods of time. I replied that shorter periods of time, say 17 years could not be taken as representative of the entire period, which is what I was discussing.
You fail to give the context of the other quote from me:
“informal examination shows an increase in the rate of warming over the period”
The period in question is 1880 to 2007.
There is nothing in the quotes given that supports your reply (“Absolutely not!”) that this statement by me was inaccurate:
‘I have never claimed that examination of the last 17 years shows continued acceleration. It does not. But the point I have been making over and over and over again is that choosing subsets of data, whether they go, up, down or level (and you can choose multiple subsets that do any of these things) simply cannot be generalised to a statement of the about 1880-2007 as a whole. Again, the 17 year period from 1940 to 1957 does not show an increase in the upward slope of the data (acceleration). It does not show an upward slope at all. It actually shows a decrease in temperature over that time. It is multidecadal trends I have been discussing.’
Flowers, huh? Punxsutawney Phil is the expert on when spring starts. He doesn’t pay any attention to this flower BS; the message from Gobbler’s Knob is the one to watch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punxsutawney_Phil
Philip Shehan:
re your post at January 17, 2013 at 2:04 pm.
Whatever. You were wrong then and you are wrong now.
I repeat that this thread is about the growing season and NOT you.
Keep to the topic because it is interesting.
Richard
Where I live, in midway in the province of Alberta. Lovely springs we have where for the last 9 years my pear tree would have blackened blooms and new leaves, it has only been two years now that we have had fruit from the tree.
The springs are still cool, we get snow in May still, but last year we were lucky and it missed us. So we planted early and people don’t plant until June in my area, because killing frosts still happen. Normal dates for planting were the third weekend of May, but we moved it to second week of June ourselves (10 years ago), many gardeners have done the same thing too. It really is the luck of the draw to have your garden survive if you plant too early.
Alberta is many regions of differing climate, and having lived in Lesser Slave Lake town, and Calgary. Now living over 250 km north east of Edmonton. I ended up travelling twice a week, and did get to see the seasons arrive. Most of them have been arriving early, but plant growth didn’t show it during supposed early springs except for some hardier trees except the white spruce trees (we call them swamp spruce) which has been late the last 5 years or so in some areas. Except for the autumn which starts to show itself second week of August (for the last 4 years), when it normally started Second week of September in previous years.
I still wouldn’t trade living here for city living, just have to learn to live within the climate means of any region, just as you learn to live within your monetary means.
The mango season here in South Florida is being messed up due to not enough cold hours to make the mango trees want to flower and fruit. It has been warm enough that some trees are have bloomed prematurely. Just my report from here…. I am not a “warmist”
BTW Southern California has been unusually cold the last two months
“We’re seeing plants that are now flowering on average over three weeks earlier than when they were first observed – and some species are flowering as much as six weeks earlier,”
And this is a problem because ….?
I was able to put in my tomatoes in March this last year. That’s a month early. So I had fresh tomatoes from my garden a month earlier than usual. What’s the problem with that? (Of course, there was that week in April when I had to go cover up the plants every night ….)
Barbara, as I stated earlier viewpoints such as yours are highly parochial.
Were I still living in Syracuse New York I may have a similar outlook. However, now I am back in Australia I have a different perspective. In spite of the good news about ticks not being able to cope with the heat here, (see that thread above) I and others have been pointing out the downside here, not the least of which is the continent wide record heatwave that is causing extreme fires.
Pacific Islanders whose homes are 2 metres or less above current sea level and are suffering from more frequent inundations with storm surges do not consider global warming a good thing. Nor do those in other agricultural areas that are undergoing change and many other people who are already coping with the downside of temperatures which have increased less than 1 degree C over the last century, with predictions of several, perhaps as much as 5 degrees to come.
The recent flooding of the coastal North East of the USA are also awarning of things to come.
.
Philip Shehan:
At January 17, 2013 at 11:34 pm you say
Really? How do you know?
Richard
Richard,
Because with the warming that will bring those nice early springs, sea levels will rise and storm surges will become more frequent.
Barbara, I also have my own copy of Watkin Tench’s account.
I am of partial aboriginal ancestry, but I have had the following letter published in anewspaper disabusing the politically correct who insist that there was sweetness and light on this continent prior to the arrival of the white man, giving Tench’s account of the ferocious intertribal warfare that was going on here when the white man arrived. Bennelong point where the Sydney Opera House now stands is named after the aboriginal Bennelong who became something of as favourite with the first governor Arthur Phillip:
Not all of those killers were white
Richard Frankland’s call for recognition of Australia’s first wars at the Australian War Memorial (“Australia’s first war needs remembering”, Letters 16/5) fails to correctly identify the belligerents.
Captain Watkin Tench of the First Fleet writes of the warrior Bennelong: “Love and war seemed his favourite pursuits, in both of which he had suffered severely. His head was disfigured by several scars; a spear had passed through his arm and another through his leg.
“Half of one of his thumbs was carried away, and the mark of a wound appeared on the back of his hand. Whenever he recounted his battles, poised his lance and showed how fields were won, the most violent exclamations of rage against his competitors in arms, those from the tribe called Cameeragal in particular, would burst from him.
“And he never failed at such times to solicit the governor to accompany him, with a body of soldiers, in order that he might exterminate this hated name.”
Philip Shehan, Brunswick
Unless I am mistaken, Shehan holds the belief that global warming is still accelerating. It is not. Since the end of the LIA, warming has never accelerated.
That belief is nonsense. It has no basis in reality. Now, even GISS, and Hansen, and the Met Office all admit that not only has global warming not accelerated, but that it has stopped.
Shehan’s wild-eyed rants are due to the fact that Planet Earth is flatly contradicting his belief system. Global warming is not “accelerating”, and anyone who claims it is is either crazy, or lying. I don’t think Shehan is crazy. Only Shehan knows the motives behind his false claims.
This comment sets the record straight: global warming is not accelerating.
Philip Shehan:
Your post at January 18, 2013 at 4:48 am says to me
It will? You know that? How?
“The warming”? What warming?
There has been no discernible (at 95% confidence) global warming for over 16 years.
But everything changes so either warming or cooling will set in sometime.
You say you know it will be warming. How? Did you ‘see’ it in a dream?
The altered growing seasons differ from place to place (as posts in this thread report), and this is because climate changes. It always has and always will everywhere.
And we need to hope warming will set in to provide the benign conditions of the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods because no sane person would welcome return to the terrible conditions of the Dark Age and Little Ice Age cool periods.
Cooling is especially bad because it increases storms and those storm surges you fear: warming reduces them because warming reduces temperature differences which cause storms.
Sea level has been rising for 12,000 years since the last glaciation. The rate of sea level rise has slowed recently probably because global warming has decelerated to zero.
In conclusion, I would be interested if you were to provide more details of the dream or ‘vision’ or etc. which has induced you to think you have supernatural powers to predict the future. I desire this information because I suspect your powers are as mistaken as your notion that global warming is accelerating.
Richard
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 16, 2013 at 6:54 pm
The Japanese consider the flowering of the cherry trees to be of special importance and have records going back 1000 years http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cherry-Trees-Japan.pdf. They find that the recent earlier flowering is due to urbanization [1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius].
*******************************************************************************************
Is this an example of cherry picking?
Sorry, couldn’t resist it 🙂
Steve T
Shehan says:
“Pacific Islanders whose homes are 2 metres or less above current sea level and are suffering from more frequent inundations with storm surges do not consider global warming a good thing. Nor do those in other agricultural areas that are undergoing change and many other people who are already coping with the downside of temperatures which have increased less than 1 degree C over the last century, with predictions of several, perhaps as much as 5 degrees to come. The recent flooding of the coastal North East of the USA are also awarning of things to come.”
Baloney. Willis Eschenbach has repeatedly demolished the horse manure about fast-rising sea levels, as did the late, great John Daly. Sea levels are not rising any more in the South Pacific than anywhere else. The global SL rise since the LIA is entirely natural. There is no testable, verifiable human signal in SL rise. None.
Further, the claimed “predictions” of rapidly rising global temperatures are similar horse manure. Repeating that bunkum might fly at thinly-trafficked alarmist blogs, but here at the internet’s “Best Science” site, we require testable scientific evidence. But there is no evidence that the extremely mild, 0.7ºC rise in temperature is anything but the natural recovery from the LIA. And there is zero empirical evidence that the planet is going to warm by 5ºC. That is simply a scary alarmist assertion, without any corroborating evidence. If anything, the opposite is true. Global temperatures have stopped rising.
Empirical evidence covering the past decade and a half indicates that global warming has stalled out. The dominoes are finally falling: Hansen, the Met, GISS, etc., are all being forced to admit that there has been no real global warming. Sorry about that failed conjecture, but then, it was always just a conjecture.
We had an early spring once, about ten years ago, after a mild winter. The red buds opened, the foliage burst out, flowers blossomed, very nice, two weeks ahead of the usual schedule. Then a late season freeze put a screeching halt to that baloney.
None of the atolls are threatened. Go ask the people in the Maldives. They say that everything is just fine.
D Boehm Stealey:
Richard Courtney demands that I stay on topic. He says that this thread is not about ME. This in spite of his spite of him introducing the topic of our previous discussion on other threads, (He was so keen to make sure people noticed he put it in boldface type):
“In conclusion, your post I am answering is as mistaken as your silly assertions (on two WUWT threads) that global warming is “accelerating” when global warming has stalled for 15+ years.”
(Richard: Don’t be too hard on Boehm for submitting a post which has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion here.)
Therefore, I am not permitted to defend myself from your collective misrepresentations.
I will therefore simply direct you to my comments on Courtney’s and your inability to comprehend that I was discussing the temperature data from 1880 to 2007 as presented by the authors of the paper in the discussion of the earlier thread:
Philip Shehan says:
January 17, 2013 at 3:29 am
And my discussion of your blatantly fraudulent activities in data manipulation
Philip Shehan says:
January 17, 2013 at 5:11 am
mpainter, The Maldives are in the Indian Ocean. Go aske the people of Kiribati. They are deeply concerned.
Shehan is complaining for only one reason: we are holding his feet to the fire. There is no acceleration of global warming. None. Even his cronies at GISS and the Met Office have had to climb down off of that nonsense.
And:
“The Maldives are in the Indian Ocean. Go ask the people of Kiribati. They are deeply concerned.”
So what? There is no unusual sea level rise in the Maldives, none at all. If folks are upset it is because climate alarmists like Shehan are feeding them nonsense.
“D Böehm Stealey says:
January 18, 2013 at 3:28 pm
Shehan says:
“Pacific Islanders whose homes are 2 metres or less above current sea level and are suffering from more frequent inundations with storm surges do not consider global warming a good thing.”
I was discussing pacific Islands. The Maldives are not on the Pacific.
The people of the Pacific islands of Kiribati are not reacting to nonsense. They are reacting to their own experience:
Villagers with seawater lapping at their feet have been forced to abandon settlements. Freshwater supplies and crops have been ruined by salt water, while storms are causing shoreline erosion…
”This is the last resort, there’s no way out of this one,” Mr Tong said. ”Our people will have to move as the tides have reached our homes and villages.”
Mr Tong, who said the effects of climate change were a daily battle for his people,
In response to your off topic attack on me I once again I ask:
What is the purpose of series 7 and the entirely superfluous yellow line on this graph if not to hide the truth about the magnitude and rate of global temeprature rise?
http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or
Pardon me. Left out the link on Kiribati:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sea-levels-force-kiribati-to-ask-fijians-for-new-home-20120308-1unan.html
@William Howard McClenney:
Per “anyone else”: Yes. Me.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/lunar-cycles-more-than-one/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/d-o-ride-my-see-saw-mr-bond/
Shows up at a 1/2 period as well in history:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/intermediate-period-half-bond-events/
Externally driven, multi-factor. Primary driver, planetary orbital gravity shifts. Orbital resonance then turns that into at least 2 major secondary effects.
1) Lunar tidal ( that lunar cycle link)
2) Solar variations ( that then cause things like cloud changes)
both coordinated in onset and direction of effect (so endless arguing over sun vs not and total TSI is pointless )
These are then reflected in weather cycle changes (that cause some folks to attribute the changes to ‘natural cycles’ and ‘ocean cycles’) via things like changes in ENSO / PDO / AMO and the bipolar see-saw (that may have some direct tidal component) and that whole loopy vs flat jet stream change… For major cold Europe events, it is a slow down of the gulf stream.
Cycles times happen on all scales, with known common periods matching various lunar / solar cycles (as they are driven by common causes). So 10-12 year 20 year, 58-60 year, 178 year and 1800 year (with variations each way) that give a 1470 / 1500 year average but some harmonics show up at about 900 years ( half 1800 ) and on it goes.
D.O., and Bond events are the same cause / process just in different contexts ( glacial or not) while Heinrich Events are longer cycle.
Most likely we are not due for a Bond Event this time, but we are at a peak of a warming cycle and it is all down hill toward cold for the next 40 years, minimum. Then we get a small warming (but not back to where we are now) and that’s when we head down hard. My best guess is about 300 years. Once we start down on that “dip”, it’s non-recoverable. Doesn’t matter if the next “short” 1500 year Bond Event comes later, or not, we’re past the stability point on insolation north of 60 degrees. Next significant cold excursion, we start the ice cycle…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/annoying-lead-time-graph/
There is a very very small chance we can put this off to 700 years, but that is highly unlikely. IFF we can do that, we might make it all the way to the next larger down cycle, but don’t hold your breath. We just don’t have the sunshine up north to make it happen without major coercion
Enjoy..
Notice to Climate Ace, Shehan and others who peddle panic over coral atolls: No Sale
Here’s why- there are thousands of these and none are over a few feet above sea level. If one is being inundated by rising sea levels, then they all must be.
But in fact, none of them are threatened by rising sea levels. One or two might be threatened by subsidence, however.
Shehan and the rest like to frighten themselves. But here is the truth: atolls are coral platforms built atop of ancient volcanos and these giant, weighty masses slowly subside into the oceanic crust of the planet- very slowly. Ordinarily, the growth of the coral keeps pace with the subsidence. But sometimes a sudden tectonic shift will quicken the subsidence. Such shifts are unusual, but do happen.
One such inexplicable tectonic movement involved the Maldives about a half century ago. This time the movement was up, not down, and the Maldives rose about 20 cm in just a decade.
So Shehan, Climate Ace, the rest, go peddle your climate panic elsewhere, please. You will have better luck at SKS or RealClimate or with Joe Romm. Why not try that Laden creep? He would be glad to hear it.
Philip Shehan:
My post at January 18, 2013 at 7:26 am replied to your post at January 18, 2013 at 4:48 am which was addressed to me.
My reply debunked the silly assertions in your post and concluded by asking you
Since then you have mentioned my post but not provided the requested details.
I again ask you to explain what has induced you to think you have supernatural powers to predict the future.
Alternatively, of course, it would be acceptable if
(a) you were to admit you have wasted space on this thread with your nonsense
and
(b) you were to provide readers of the thread with an apology for your nonsense.
Richard
Richard Courtney
I did not answer your post on my supernatural powers as that it was clearly rhetorical and sarcastic and invites the obvoius answer:
I rely on the findings of climate scientists.
By the way your mate D. Boehm Stealey posted this:
“D Böehm Stealey says:
January 18, 2013 at 6:44 am
Unless I am mistaken, Shehan holds the belief that global warming is still accelerating…”
Not a word on the topic of this thread.
You also introduced the subject of my posts on other threads with this statement ( and you bolded it to make sure everyone noticed)
“In conclusion, your post I am answering is as mistaken as your silly assertions (on two WUWT threads) that global warming is “accelerating” when global warming has stalled for 15+ years.”
I responded to your accusation regarding my “silly assertions”.
You come back berating me from mounting a defence of my position, telling me not to go “off topic”.
Well Boehm has gone off topic with an attack on me.
I await your admonition of his conduct.
Philip Shehan:
At January 19, 2013 at 2:57 pm you at last answer my questions concerning your supernatural powers to predict the future saying to me
Oh! So you are relying on the supernatural powers of unstated others?
OK, for sake of argument I will accept that, and I rephrase my question into an alternative set of questions; i.e.
What “findings”?
How is it ;possible to have “findings” about the future?
Are the “climate scientists” who made these “findings” astrologers or are they palmistry readers?
Who are they?
Thanking you in anticipation of your answers
Richard
DDP says:
January 17, 2013 at 11:52 am
So we essentially have a study with limited data from two out of the lower 48. Excellent. And the location of said results were collated from where geographically? I’m going to hazard a guess that some of those locations weren’t quite so urbanized in the 1930s, and definitely not the mid 1850s.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That triggered a memory. Last spring or the spring before WUWT had a thread on cherry trees in DC maybe? blooming early but it was linked to the Urban Heat Island Effect….
FOUND THESE:
Trees do 8 times better in the New York City Urban Heat Island
Rainfall has a greater impact than rising temperature on crop yields
While looking I found this June 2009 First Ever Ice Wine in Brazil
To make Ice wine the grape have to freeze on the vine just before harvest.
Richard Courtney:
Now let me get this straight.
You tell me off for “disrupting this thread” by responding to your your remarks concerning another thread, tell me to stick to the topic of early flowering plants because “it’s interesting”, refuse to admonish your mate D Boehm Stealey for posting a comment that attacks me and has nothing whatsover to do with the topic, and now you wiant me to answer some stupid question on the entire basis of the climate change question.
People, you see what I am up against here.
Shehan says:
“The people of the Pacific islands of Kiribati are not reacting to nonsense.”
Yes, they are.
Shehan, you are such a complete know-nothing. Here is a thorough explanation of Micronesian islands and sea levels. They are not being inundated by sea level rise, no matter what nonsense you may have been led to believe. Fast-rising sea levels simply are not happening.
And here are more articles debunking all your globaloney nonsense regarding fast-rising sea levels in the South Pacific. It isn’t happening. The fact is that nothing unprecedented or unusual is happening, so quit trying to sell your stupid anti-science alarmism here. We know better. Honestly, you come across like a cult member, trying to convince everyone that your world view is connected to reality. It isn’t.
Shehan, you have swallowed some panic peddling concerning coral atolls, and that is the trouble with you global warmers. You swallow everything uncritically except the truth.
The one thing that is clearly demonstrated, for those who are unfamiliar with D. Boehm Stealey’s missives, is his complete inability to conduct a scientific discussion without descending into personal abuse. But as you can see he has plenty of mates, like mpainter and Richard Courtney.
Boehm’s first link shows a graph indicating that sea levels are rising. It starts at 1992, and the author claims the rise is not “a whole lot”.
A longer term view is available in Figure 3 of this article which explains global sea temperature rises:
http://academics.eckerd.edu/instructor/hastindw/MS1410-001_FA08/handouts/2008SLRSustain.pdf
The highest point on many of these islands is two metres above sea level
The claim that sea water cannot contaminate fresh water in coral islands from below has nothing to do with contamination from storm surges that wash over the islands with increasing frequency as sea levels rise.
The idea that coral atolls “float” is correct, coral island build up over time in response to sea level changes. However this takes time. Time that is not available to Pacific islanders when the sea level rise is rapid due to anthropogenic global warming.
Shehan, the atolls are not threatened by sea level rise. Not the Gilberts, not the Maldives, not Tuvalu, none of them.
You are trying to peddle panic and sell it for science, and you get offended when you are called out. That is your measure.
Philip Shehan:
I am copying all your post at January 19, 2013 at 5:35 pm so it is clear that I am not misrepresenting anything.
NO!
You are disrupting this thread (and other threads) by spouting unsubstantiated nonsense, and I am trying (with no success so far) to get you to consider why your assertions are – and can only be – nonsense.
Your problem is that you are “up against” your own gullibility which has induced you to unquestioningly accept superstitious drivel.
And you have demonstrated your problem in this thread by claiming certain things “will happen”.
For example, at January 18, 2013 at 4:48 am you wrote to me
I replied by demanding you to explain how you can know what “will” happen unless you have supernatural powers to foretell the future.
Eventually, I got you to admit that you were trusting the supernatural powers of unstated “climatologists”.
Let us be clear. NOBODY CAN KNOW WHAT “WILL” HAPPEN.
So, your fears are without foundation.
At best, we can assess possibilities and probabilities. But you are promoting irrational fears of what “will” happen because you have accepted the sales pitch of pseudoscientists.
In this thread, several people have replied to your irrational fears by explaining why and how we know there is no threat of e.g. sea level rise inundating coral atolls. But you are failing to consider these explanations.
In summation:
You are incapable of considering reality because you have adopted superstitious assertions of hucksters. I am trying to help you to escape from their thrall because you will then stop disrupting WUWT threads by spouting their superstitious nonsense.
Richard
The best article explaining in simple terms what is going on with coral island is Here and a companion here and here
The sea level rise is not accelerating, because for one reason there just isn’t much ice left and you also have isostatic rebound due to the weight of tons and tons of ice disappearing. The earth is dynamic anyway with subduction zones and mountain building and erosion.
Article on Is Sea Level Rise Accelerating?
Even that article missed the real point. The true look of sea level rise is show in these
graph 1 and graph 2 the legend to the two graphs states
I really really wish the panicking types could learn the one point that the earth is ALWAYS changing and we have been DARN lucky during the Holocene that it has changes so very very LITTLE. graph 1 and graph 2
They really need to take a couple of courses in geology.
Richard Courtney,
I replied to your sarcastic rhetorical question in as much detail as it deserved, which is very little.
Your response shows what a waste of time responding even that much was with your idiotic rendering of my remarks:
‘Eventually, I got you to admit that you were trusting the supernatural powers of unstated “climatologists”.’
Of course there are uncertainties involved in any prediction based on scientific theories. That is simply a statement of the bleeding obvious to a scientist who also has a postgraduate qualification in the history of science and the nature of scientific knowledge.
I will again provide a link on scientific understanding of sea level rises. http://academics.eckerd.edu/instructor/hastindw/MS1410-001_FA08/handouts/2008SLRSustain.pdf
The paper is somewhat outdated (2008) in that it points out there was a considerable doubt as how much melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets was contributing or will contribute to sea level rise. So much so that the alarmists at the IPCC left out such a contribution to their forecasts of sea level rises to 2100 and the projections relate largely to thermal expansion.
Recently however, measurements have affirmed that Greenland and West Antarctica are losing ice. So I’m afraid Gail Combs statement that “The sea level rise is not accelerating, because for one reason there just isn’t much ice left” is a bit wide of the mark.
http://www.businessinsider.com/antarctica-and-greenland-are-melting-2012-11
Philip Shehan:
Your post at January 20, 2013 at 4:19 am in reply to my post at January 20, 2013 at 3:04 am says
(a) you interpret serious questions as being “sarcasm”
and
(b) you are so locked in your delusions that you reject attempts at help in escaping them.
OK. You have my sympathy for that.
However, since you refuse to even question your superstitious beliefs, it would be helpful if you were to refrain from wasting space on WUWT threads by spouting them.
This is a science blog where superstitious drivel is treated with the contempt which it deserves.
Richard
Richard Courtney: Your colossal arrogance is once again on display. You think this blog should be confined only to comments that agree with your world view.
You claim that I was being “disruptive” because I would not bow to your and Stealey’s hysterical denunciations of my argument that the line in this graph:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
fits the temperature data in this graph:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2010/trend/offset
One of the skeptics on this blog capable of engaging in civil discussion, Graham W, conceded my point:
“Philip Shehan: When drawing a straight line through the data from 1880 to 2007, compared to an exponential curve through the same data…Yes, the exponential curve fits the data better than the straight line. “
Your own and Stealey’s attempts to shut down discussion by arrogance, bombast, abuse and misrepresentation will not work on me.
Philip Shehan:
I read your silly post at January 20, 2013 at 2:11 pm.
It wasted seconds of my life. Since you claim to know the unknowable, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me how I can get those seconds back?
Richard
Philip Shehan says:
January 19, 2013 at 8:45 pm
…..The idea that coral atolls “float” is correct, coral island build up over time in response to sea level changes. However this takes time. Time that is not available to Pacific islanders when the sea level rise is rapid due to anthropogenic global warming.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
RAPID??? It can not be a rapid sea level rise. At least not compared to the onset of a interstadial.
Phillip go take a geology course before you have a heart attack brought on by swallowing this BS.
Shehan says:
“The one thing that is clearly demonstrated, for those who are unfamiliar with D. Boehm Stealey’s missives, is his complete inability to conduct a scientific discussion without descending into personal abuse. But as you can see he has plenty of mates, like mpainter and Richard Courtney.”
Those names are only a very few of those who disagree with Shehan. The list is long.
Note that the rest of us do not snivel and cry over perceived slights. Rather, we are interested in the real world. To the extent that Shehan complains about “bombast”, etc., he is avoiding facing the verifiable fact that sea levels are not rising any more than they have since the LIA. Thus, Shehan’s argument fails.
Stealey again misses the point.
I am a scientist and disagreement is part of normal scientific discourse. I have no problem with those who disagree with me. It is unsurprising that on a website run and populated by climate skeptics, many will disagree with me. So what?
My problem is with people like Stealey and Courtney who are unable to engage in reasoned scientific debate. The fact that Stealey writes about “snivelling” and “crying” over “percieved slights” when I object to repeated accusations that I am a fraud and a liar and many other personal insults shows just what these characters think normal scientific discussion is about.
These people are not skeptics. They have an utter intolerance of any argument with disagrees with their fixed position and resort to abuse and misrepresentation.
Courtney call the entire field of climate science “pseudoscience” and “superstition” . He also writes:
“This is a science blog where superstitious drivel is treated with the contempt which it deserves.”
That is not skepticism. That is outright antiscience nonsense.
True skeptics critically examine the science, without rancour, and are prepared to change their ideas in the light of the examination of the evidence.
As a professional scientist I have always been and remain a skeptic. I was for a long time unconvinced that AGW was real. Skeptical enquiry cased me to change my opinion. Further evidence may cause me to change my opinion again.
This is impossible for fanatics like Courtney and Stealey.
Actually, Shehan, if you would only look into the matter, you will find that atolls can evolve quite rapidly. They will change shape, grow in area or diminish, as storm and storm tide move coral debris onshore or offshore. The slight rise in sea level is no sweat for an atoll- if you would only look into it. But, Shehan, if it don’t spell panic you are not interested. I know your type well.
@mpainter is right, Shehan really should learn about atolls. I used to think exactly like he did, that SLR would in fact be a problem for Kiribati and places like it, then I learned how atolls work. Even the government of the islands doesn’t believe the SLR claims. As evidence, they’ve gone on a building campaign to put in more airports, without fear of inundation. See here:
http://www.maldivestourismupdate.com/2009/07/11-new-airports-to-be-constructed-in.html
http://doingadvancework.blogspot.com/2011/09/maldives-crying-for-climate-reparations.html
Shehan says:
“I am a scientist …”
Not a very good one. The only honest kind of scientist is a skeptical scientist, and Shehan is anything but skeptical. He believes in catastrophic AGW, but without any credible, verifiable facts supporting his belief. AGW may exist to some minor extent. But it is so minuscule that it can be completely disregarded.
A scientific skeptic rigorously follows the scientific method. Shehan does not; he follows the alarmist and unreliable SkS blog instead. A corollary of the scientific method is the Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified [cf: Dr. Roy Spencer]. The climate Null Hypothesis states that current climate parameters have been routinely exceeded in the past. Therefore, current conditions are neither unprecedented, nor unusual. The very minor 0.7ºC natural global warming rise over the past century and a half is extremely benign by the standards of the Holocene — during which global temperatures have abruptly changed by tens of degrees over short, decadal time scales — without CO2 being a factor. Direct observation shows that CO2 simply does not matter at current or projected levels. That is why global temperatures are not rising, despite CO2 being at 395 ppmv. Any effect from CO2 on global temperature is just too small to measure.
Shehan is not a good scientist because his mind is made up and closed air tight. He is a True Believer in the repeatedly debunked runaway global warming fantasy. The CO2=CAGW conjecture has been shown to be nonsense by the ultimate Authority: Planet Earth. But some folks are so fixated on “carbon” that they are incapable of accepting reality: global warming is not accelerating. It is decelerating. Most folks can deal with that fact. But not all.
Thank You Mr Watts I will read the links.
However I still have concerns based on the links I provided including the 2008 paper on sea level rise and the recent studies showing the loss of Ice from the Greenland and the Antarctic.
The matter of sea levels is different for different islands in different oceans as islands can go up or down with local subsidence or uplift of the seabed or the building of more coral reefs.
The Maldives may be unconcerned but that of Kiribati clearly is as its leader was shown at the recent climate change meeting pleading that the issue of AGW was a matter of his country’s survival. He may be wrong but he is certainly concerned.
@Philip Shehan – the president is paid to be concerned. Follow the money.
[ SNIP – that was over the top Mr. Shehan, stop putting words like that in other commenters mouths they did not write, I will not tolerate it. Take a 24 hour time out – Anthony Watts]
Mr Watts I am aware this will not be posted but I am unsure now of what the comment you are referring to. I doubt that I put words in anyone elses mouth but given that Courtney and Boehm have been doing that to me constantly I confess to being confused.
Philip Shehan:
Your entire post at January 21, 2013 at 1:35 am says
NO!
I have repeatedly quoted you verbatim then stated my understandings of your quoted words.
I have NOT ‘put words in your mouth’ at any time. On the other hand, you …
Richard
Philip Shehan says: January 20, 2013 at 6:56 pm
The matter of sea levels is different for different islands in different oceans as islands can go up or down with local subsidence or uplift of the seabed or the building of more coral reefs.
The Maldives may be unconcerned but that of Kiribati clearly is as its leader was shown at the recent climate change meeting pleading that the issue of AGW was a matter of his country’s survival. He may be wrong but he is certainly concerned.
============================
Please consider that these Islanders might not be so innocent as one might think. The case of the Maldives is instructive. Last year a new president declared that the Maldives are in no danger from rising sea levels, after all. It seems that potential investors were worried about the “threat of rising sea levels”. Who wants to see their new hotel flooded by the salty tide?
We know that the Maldives were never threatened. We know this because of studies conducted by a specialist Dr. Nils Axel-Morner, a Swedish specialist in sea-level and coastal evolution. He studied the Maldives circa 1965 and again around 2000.
Now come the Kiribati as the new poster child of threatened atolls. Similarly, the president of the Kiribati knows that his pleas of danger will find fertile ground in the media, with CAGW types, etc. In a world of believers and profligate governments, who can blame these Islanders for their happy expectations? Very likely it would be an interesting tale, if it were told how these Islanders conceived these hopes.
Philip Shehan:
I see that at January 21, 2013 at 3:01 am you again attempt to disrupt with misrepresentation.
At January 17, 2013 at 12:45 pm I replied to your outrageous claim that you had not disrupted two previous threads with your daft assertion that global warming is accelerating. In that post I quoted in full each of the first posts in each of those two threads in which you repeatedly peddled that nonsense. Anybody can scroll up to that post and read the facts for themselves.
You are without honour and your only purpose seems to be to disrupt threads of WUWT.
Don’t bother me with your falsehoods again.
Richard
[snip. — mod.]
(snip)
The whole Courtney/Shehan exchange is becoming pointless and tiresome, I’m going to say both of you need a 24 hour time out.
Anthony:
It is your blog and if you choose to ban me from your ‘home’ then that is your decision which, of course, I accept.
However, I think you decision lacks fairness.
Richard
REPLY: Don’t put words in my mouth, “ban” is a whole different thing from “time out”. I said you BOTH need to take a 24 hour time out, because I’m weary of the argument between you two. That’s fair to both, and especially to me and my moderation staff. – Anthony
Anthony:
I apologise that my choice of words has caused offence. I did not intend to “put words in [your] mouth”. I understood “a 24 hour time out” to be a “ban” from posting for 24 hours and that is all I meant to say.
Richard