I had to laugh at this statement from the press release below:
“What we found is that during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks.”
Gosh,”frozen patterns” like Rex blocks have been known for decades.Wikipedia has a good summary:
Blocks in meteorology are large-scale patterns in the atmospheric pressure field that are nearly stationary, effectively “blocking” or redirecting migratory cyclones. They are also known as blocking highs or blocking anticyclones. These blocks can remain in place for several days or even weeks, causing the areas affected by them to have the same kind of weather for an extended period of time (e.g. precipitation for some areas, clear skies for others).[2] In the Northern Hemisphere, extended blocking occurs most frequently in the spring over the eastern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
NCAR also has a good explanation of it here. An example: – NOAA on the Russian heat wave of 2010:
The heat wave was due primarily to a natural phenomenon called an atmospheric “blocking pattern”, in which a strong high pressure system developed and remained stationary over western Russia…”
One of the hottest summers the USA ever experienced in 1936 was due to a blocking high:
The 1936 blocking ridge happened several times in that year & had occurred in 1934, as well. By comparison, record-breaking warmth occurred in March 1986, only to return in mid April with 88-93 setting records. – See more at: http://blogs.wlfi.com/2012/03/20/55894/#sthash.7p8c5pWX.dpuf
Now, according to PIK, suddenly such atmospheric blocks are caused by “climate change”. What a load of tosh. Thank our old alarmist buddy Hans Joachim Schellnhuber for turning mundane meteorology into something sinister.
Weather extremes provoked by trapping of giant waves in the atmosphere
02/2572013 – The world has suffered from severe regional weather extremes in recent years, such as the heat wave in the United States in 2011 or the one in Russia 2010 coinciding with the unprecedented Pakistan flood. Behind these devastating individual events there is a common physical cause, propose scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The study will be published this week in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and suggests that man-made climate change repeatedly disturbs the patterns of atmospheric flow around the globe’s Northern hemisphere through a subtle resonance mechanism.
“An important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes of the Earth normally takes the form of waves wandering around the planet, oscillating between the tropical and the Arctic regions. So when they swing up, these waves suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US, and when they swing down, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic,” explains lead author Vladimir Petoukhov.
“What we found is that during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks. So instead of bringing in cool air after having brought warm air in before, the heat just stays. In fact, we observe a strong amplification of the usually weak, slowly moving component of these waves,” says Petoukhov. Time is critical here: two or three days of 30 degrees Celsius are no problem, but twenty or more days lead to extreme heat stress. Since many ecosystems and cities are not adapted to this, prolonged hot periods can result in a high death toll, forest fires, and dramatic harvest losses.
Anomalous surface temperatures are disturbing the air flows
Climate change caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning does not mean uniform global warming – in the Arctic, the relative increase of temperatures, amplified by the loss of snow and ice, is higher than on average. This in turn reduces the temperature difference between the Arctic and, for example, Europe, yet temperature differences are a main driver of air flow. Additionally, continents generally warm and cool more readily than the oceans. “These two factors are crucial for the mechanism we detected,” says Petoukhov. “They result in an unnatural pattern of the mid-latitude air flow, so that for extended periods the slow synoptic waves get trapped.”
The authors of the study developed equations that describe the wave motions in the extra-tropical atmosphere and show under what conditions those waves can grind to a halt and get amplified. They tested their assumptions using standard daily weather data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). During recent periods in which several major weather extremes occurred, the trapping and strong amplification of particular waves – like “wave seven” (which has seven troughs and crests spanning the globe) – was indeed observed. The data show an increase in the occurrence of these specific atmospheric patterns, which is statistically significant at the 90 percent confidence level.
The probability of extremes increases – but other factors come in as well
“Our dynamical analysis helps to explain the increasing number of novel weather extremes. It complements previous research that already linked such phenomena to climate change, but did not yet identify a mechanism behind it,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of PIK and co-author of the study. “This is quite a breakthrough, even though things are not at all simple – the suggested physical process increases the probability of weather extremes, but additional factors certainly play a role as well, including natural variability.” Also, the 32-year period studied in the project provides a good indication of the mechanism involved, yet is too short for definite conclusions.
Nevertheless, the study significantly advances the understanding of the relation between weather extremes and man-made climate change. Scientists were surprised by how far outside past experience some of the recent extremes have been. The new data show that the emergence of extraordinary weather is not just a linear response to the mean warming trend, and the proposed mechanism could explain that.
Article: Petoukhov, V., Rahmstorf, S., Petri, S., Schellnhuber, H. J. (2013): Quasi-resonant amplification of planetary waves and recent Northern Hemisphere weather extremes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Early Edition) [doi:10.1073/pnas.1222000110]
Weblink to the article (once it is published): www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1222000110
I suppose Noah could have built his ark in response to a prediction of a blocking weather pattern. Now that is what I call climate change!
I wouldn’t pooh-pooh this. The sun’s irradiance is nearly constant, so the earth’s radiating temperature must also be nearly constant. Any variation (from UV, cosmic rays, solar particles, magnetics, etc) is must be constrained to produce local effects only, absent major volcanism.
Alarmists will hitch their wagon to this study and implicate CO2, even though there is nothing in the study that supports this. Notice that the wind fields in the figure tend to be located inshore of western coastlines and offshore of eastern coastlines. This may be cherry-picking but if valid it does suggest that blocking mechanisms may be involved.
We shouldn’t dismiss this, but we should expect alarmists to confabulate a connection with global warming and be prepared to counter it.
High pressure systems will be either hotter or colder than average. With slow moving air at the equator heat will come in from the sun with little horizontal movement to reduce heat. With slow moving air nearer the poles there is little heat coming in from the sun and with the system pushing air outwards and any surface heat radiated to space through clear skys I would expect temps to go down.
Rahmstorf……..why am I not surprised!
WOW! The old becomes the new. Talk about changing the history books.
Also, I wondered if Dr. Roy Spencer woud have anything to say on the matter. When I went over to his site, I get on the screen “tested by gabby”, and music plays. The tab heading reads “u have just got kissed”. WUWT? Was he hacked?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
Remember 89-93 period had very nice springs-early ones on the South coast of Oregon,
then off to fight fire. at Medford, Or. However,’92 had a wet summer thrown in for good measure.
We never turned a Propeller except for water drops and a few local fires…Making
blanket about “unprecedented” or “worst ever” never sems to be quite the way it really is.
Humans think that in their own short life it is all about them…
The lead author notes that some ecosystems (like apparently single species agricultural areas) and cities are poorly equipped to handle extended weather “extremes”. This sounds to me more like poor planning and management, not some new climate problem we have never seen before. Well, DUH! as the kids say.
Brent Walker says:
They are talking about the Rossby waves of Jet streams aren’t they.
+++++++++++++++
I was debating an alarmist about this issue earlier this week and he posted this guardian piece on the Petoukhov study,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/26/global-warming-planetary-airflow-extreme-weather-us-eu
He then said: “AGW naysayers cannot present a plausible theory…..”
So I countered with this.
Possible Effect of Solar Wind on Rossby Wave Propagation and Breaking
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012EGUGA..1410210L
Its ENSO and 60-year ocean cycles in play.
The temperature difference between the equator and the poles governs the nature of the jet stream. That temperature difference is controlled by ENSO and the 60-year ocean cycles.
In El Nino winters, the temperature difference is greater and the jet stream is stronger. It flows more zonally (west to east) with little chance of developing persistent blocking highs. If any blocking pattern develops, the stronger El Nino jet will blow right through it and change the pattern. In La Nina winters the temperature difference is less and the jet stream is generally weaker. Blocking patterns are more likely, but will tend to be further north and a little less likely to produce high amplitude ridges and extreme weather patterns.
It is the ENSO Neutral winters that give you a better chance of persistent blocking patterns while still providing the energy to produce more high amplitude ridges and troughs. Those are the conditions in which extreme weather occurs.
Blocking patterns have always been very common in the summer months, particularly in La Nina summers, when the jet stream becomes very weak. This tends to increase the occurrence of localized heat waves and drought.
Over the last 20 years we have been slowly transitioning from a predominant El Nino pattern to a predominant La Nina pattern, which increases the the likelihood of blocking weather systems and localized extreme events (due to persistence), while decreasing the number of severe weather events (due to powerful storms).
The overall cycle repeats about every 60 years, regardless of how much CO2 is in the air. The only thing we can do about it is learn to live with it. Regulating CO2 emissions to control this would be no more effective than sacrificing virgins, and probably more barbaric, as the artificial escalation of energy prices would likely cause more deaths!
Some of these patterns have names. Like “Bermuda High”.
tonyb
I skimmed through your article found here:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
Very interesting and enjoyable read. I plan to go back and really read it when I have a minute. Thanks.
I am old enough to realize that much of the “extreme” weather we have seen in the past 30 years is probably only “extreme” in its higher visibility and impact on an increasing and spreading population.
Bernie
The data show an increase in the occurrence of these specific atmospheric patterns, which is statistically significant at the 90 percent confidence level.
=============
Assuming that climate data is normally distributed with a constant mean and deviation. Something that is highly unlikely to be true.
But then again, statistics never were a strong suit in climatology. Where deserts and rainforests are considered to have the same climate because they have the same average temperature.
Jim Clarke says:
February 28, 2013 at 7:04 am
Its ENSO and 60-year ocean cycles in play.
==============
the harmonic of the oceans oscillating with the orbits of jupiter and saturn (12yr, 30yr), in phase with the longer 182 year cycle of solar system.
long term climate is more predictable using the position of the planets in the sky (the same way we calculate the ocean tides) than it is based on first principles. the reason is simple. over thousands and millions of years harmonics have developed throughout the solar system that cannot be explained simply as chance occurrences.
while we don’t have a satisfactory mathematical explanation of why this happens, we can certainly make accurate predictions based on observations. early humans learned to make accurate predictions about the coming of winter and summer by observing the position of the sun in the sky, long before they understood why the earth had seasons.
we know from observation that climate also exhibits cyclical behavior over longer time scales and that from the paleo records large swings in climate are an early warning of the next ice age approaching. we also know from the records that our 10k+ years of the interglacial is about how long they last on average.
We also know from human history that humans have repeatedly acted with superstitious belief that their actions are the cause of climate change, and the universal solution throughout history has been human sacrifice. We are the descendants of these humans, and there is nothing to indicate we are any less prone to superstition.
The global warming craze is no different. It is the high priests calling down from the temple for more sacrifice to appease the gods so that the rest of us will be spared. No different.
And like the high priests of old, it is always the rest of us that are expected to sacrifice. Never the priests. They continue to sit in the temple, high on the hill, until the day of reckoning – which always comes eventually if history is any indication. On that day the temples are burned to the ground and the priests put to the sword. Until the next time.
As the temp is not going anywhere these days it is paramount to find other reasons to keep the cash coming in. This should tickle the fancy of a few more government agencies or of those who continue to benefit from the industry created around the hype.
Give the report with one hand, take the money with the other. Better still, put the report on the table and take the money with both hands in order to have a firm grip on the cash since they don’t on the conclusions.
In the courts of old the jester was paid by the lord (government) of the house, he had to please to get paid/fed.
Be outrageous, funny, make a song and dance.
Nothing has changed.
I wonder if this thought process is representative of all climatologists &/or climate alarmists. If so, their grasp on the very basics of meteorology is shockingly poor. I mean , come on, Rex blocks are taught in Met 101.
I have written often over the years about changing patterns of the Rossby Waves and how you can have entire decades and even most of centuries predominantly Zonal or Meridional. The 14th century was predominantly Meridional as the world cooled from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. Weather patterns were surprisingly similar to what we currently experience. Marcel Leroux briefly reintroduced the concept calling the blocking High systems Mobile Polar Highs (MPH), but they were the same as the old cA (Continental Arctic) air mass when air mass classifications dominated understanding of air movement.
The term often used for a Blocking High was an Omega Block because the inverted greek letter omega Ω was the shape of the Polar Front on a weather map.
Here are a couple of the articles I have written on the subject. One includes reference to an article similar to the Harvard paper, referenced in an earlier comment, and originally posted on John Daly’s site about the impact of the Solar Wind on the Magnetosphere and subsequent connections to the changing upper level winds.
http://www.john-daly.com/guests/tim-ball.htm
Other articles on the topic are posted to my web site and include variously.
http://drtimball.com/2012/current-global-weather-patterns-normal-despite-government-and-media-distortions/
http://drtimball.com/2012/claims-global-warming-increases-severe-weather-are-scientifically-incorrect/
Here is an article that talks to the recent German model study that showed the IPCC models don’t deal with El Nino or the Indian Monsoon.
http://drtimball.com/2012/what-causes-el-nino-la-nina-ipcc-doesnt-know-but-builds-models-and-makes-projections-anyway/
Another on how they distort temperature extremes.
http://drtimball.com/2012/jet-stream-wave-patterns-further-distort-the-official-global-temperatures/
Finally, one on the historical development about knowledge of the atmosphere. There is no way the models are simulating, even with parameterization, what is happening either at the surface, but especially at the Troposphere.
http://drtimball.com/2012/static-climate-models-in-a-virtually-unknown-dynamic-atmosphere/
As i keep reiterating, the IPCC set climate science back 30 years and this discussion is further proof.
ferdberple says: (February 28, 2013 at 7:22 am)
I’ll drink to that!
Blocking patterns are well described in Chapter 1 of John Gribbin’s book ‘The Climatic Threat’ (1978). How the hell can Potsdam claim to have just discovered them? I’m speechless!
Leftists/Progressives rely on fear, anger, envy, and a mal-educated populace to spread their lies.
We are now in a social “perfect storm.” Will we survive?
Don’t tempt Her !!
“biblical proportions” are only recent (written) history.
She has been benevolent, of late.
Such heat waves occur from time to time. There was a terrible heat wave in 1896.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/worst_heat_ever_AODrk6IWtHsutybJvVvvVL
If we look at the GISS, HadCRUT, and NOAA surface temperature data, that was during a cool period. In New York City, there was an estimated 1,300 people that died. It was also estimated that 200 horses a day died from the heat. We are now at approximately 0.0396 % (395.55 ppm). In 1972, we were at approximately 0.0327% (326.88 ppm). Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) espousers blame that approximately seven thousandths of a percentage point increase for virtually everything bad that happens (68.67 ppm increase).
If heat waves now are caused by anthropogenic CO2, what caused the heat waves before anthropogenic CO2 could have been the cause?
The Russians pioneered an index for this I believe in the sixties. We have a similar index at NCDC for meridional amplitude that I think goes back to the eighties. The kids writing this stuff don’t even know basic geography. They are programers.
“I had to laugh at this statement from the press release below: “
And I had to laugh in turn at this blog post from WUWT.
“Gosh,”frozen patterns” like Rex blocks have been known for decades.”
Gosh, that was not the point!
They were not talking about the existence of such features, but the magnitude of such features.
“Now, according to PIK, suddenly such atmospheric blocks are caused by “climate change”. What a load of tosh.
What a load of tosh indeed! Let me fix that …
“Now, according to PIK, s̶u̶d̶d̶e̶n̶l̶y̶ gradually such atmospheric blocks are c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ disturbed by “climate change”. (” … suggests that man-made climate change repeatedly disturbs the patterns …”.)
Fortunately, several reader offered some valuable insights (maybe this is just part of some ~60 year cycle; maybe such things were related to the MWP and LIA; maybe it is related to changes in the solar cycles; maybe there is no true change but only a slight change in luck). That made the post worth reading. WUWT does have some dedicated readers who provide considerable “value-added” to the top posts.
First they called it global warming, but it stopped warming. Then they called it climate change, but it didn’t cause enough panic. Then they tried calling it extreme weather, but nobody believes that anymore. Where to now? I say that CO2 is behind increasing antibiotic resistance, alternatively it makes fast food more fattening. There’s also a strong link with extreme financial crises and the size of the federal deficit.
It would seem in an easily or voluntarily alarmed persons world view, one must wake each morning absolved of all memory of days past.
This wailing about the weather being new, strange, “unprecedented” reflects well on these propagandists.
People paying zero attention to the climate info wars, look at these authorities of climatology and snicker.
The alarmist world view is only credible, if one was born yesterday.
We who are doubtful of the veracity of both the claims and the claimants need to sweetly encourage this blather that blames weather upon acts of man.
Scepticism of that particular meme is in all humanities DNA.
The cause was lost, when they decided that the public are stupid.
That assumption will always lead to a failure to communicate.