The forecast: It seems there’s less chance of gloom and doom these days.
For sea level rise, now a maximum of about two feet by 2100. As for climate sensitivity, now for the first time ever, we are seeing mentions of a quadrupling of CO2 rather than a doubling to get scary scenarios. From Reuters:
Ice melt, sea level rise, to be less severe than feared – study
* Melt of Greenland, Antarctica less severe than expected
By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle
OSLO, May 14 (Reuters) – A melt of ice on Greenland and Antarctica is likely to be less severe than expected this century, limiting sea level rise to a maximum of 69 cm (27 inches), an international study said on Tuesday.
Even so, such a rise could dramatically change coastal environments in the lifetimes of people born today with ever more severe storm surges and erosion, according to the ice2sea project by 24, mostly European, scientific institutions.
Some scientific studies have projected sea level rise of up to 2 metres by 2100, a figure that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a worst case that would swamp large tracts of land from Bangladesh to Florida.
Ice2sea, a four-year project to narrow down uncertainties of how melting ice will pour water into the oceans, found that sea levels would rise by between 16.5 and 69 cm under a scenario of moderate global warming this century.
“This is good news” for those who have feared sharper rises, David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey who led the ice2sea project, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Full story here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/14/climate-ice-idUSL6N0DV2V420130514
=================================================================
Now onto climate sensitivity. Pierre Gosselin reports on his blog NoTricksZone this passage from yesterday’s NYT story on climate sensitivity.
Some experts think the level of the heat-trapping gas could triple or even quadruple before emissions are reined in. […] Even if climate sensitivity turns out to be on the low end of the range, total emissions may wind up being so excessive as to drive the earth toward dangerous temperature increases.”
There you have it. Now climate scientists and the catastrophe-obsessed media are now forced, for perhaps the very first time, to talk about CO2 quadrupling in order to get the much wanted catastrophe scenarios.
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I am normally on the strong sceptic side and usually ignore CO2 radiative effect, not likely to change, but could it be another CO2 factor?
Inspired by 400ppm hullabaloo, I plotted de-trended CO2 Mauna Loa against the local SST, they appear to be in anti-phase.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SST-CO2.htm
With small seasonal swing in the SST of about 2.5C, and for CO2 of 7ppm, it is expected that shift of half a cycle in either variable would produce relatively high correlation; I found that if CO2 is given the lead than R2 goes from 0.7 to 0.8.
This would suggest that CO2 level has some effect on the SST about 6 months hence.
If radiative effect is not factor, what is the link?
Looking at various data for the North Pacific’s phytoplankton seasonal growth, is it likely that a bit more of CO2 would produce small increase in the plankton volume, lowering the surface albedo, resulting in a bit more energy absorbed and some extra warming. Consequence of slightly higher SST is an increase in the CO2 oceanic out-gassing (positive feedback loop) until some kind of equilibrium is established.
Possible, but is it likely? An expert opinion will be appreciated.
vukcevic says:
… . but could it be another CO2 factor?
……Possible, but is it likely? An expert opinion will be appreciated.
It is the sun, stupid
More X-class solar flairs:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/rt_plots/Xray.gif
see movies
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3.gif
vukcevic says:
May 15, 2013 at 1:01 am
“I am normally on the strong sceptic side and usually ignore CO2 radiative effect, not likely to change, but could it be another CO2 factor?
Inspired by 400ppm hullabaloo, I plotted de-trended CO2 Mauna Loa against the local SST, they appear to be in anti-phase.”
Vuk, it is a 90 degree phase shift. Which corresponds to the phase shift that happens when you take the derivative of CO2 concentrations.
So do this; compare the derivative of the 12 month average of CO2 with SST. The 12 month average removes the seasonal fluctuation. The derivative shows the change in CO2 seasonal baseline. It corresponds closely to SST due to Henry’s Law.
(The derivative also turns any continuous addition of CO2 due to human activity into a constant offset in the derivative so this does not rule out human contribution to total CO2 level.)
What it boils down to is, you have to compare the CHANGE in CO2 to SST.
Coastlines change all the time. Look at the latest Google Earth addition. Timelapse pictures dated from 1980ish.
Thanks Dirk
I was doing something similar, correlating CO2 and SST annual peaks and then again annual troughs, it does show similar thing. That is enough of the CO2 theory for me, I shall return to the matters solar …..
BTW, there is an object shooting ‘towards’ the sun most likely meteor or may be another satellite
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif
appears at 2013/05/11 21.12 (clock face location 6.30) until 2013/05/12 02.36
“… so excessive as to drive the earth toward dangerous temperature increases.”
Note the wording. Simply going “towards” dangerous temperature increases does not really commit to anything at all but at the same time manages to recycle the “dangerous temperature increases” fearmongering.
If temperatures rise one hundredth of a degree in one hundred years they can still be said to be “moving towards…”
In fact if we also note the use of the conditional “may”:
“… total emissions may wind up being so excessive as to…”
we find that this statement tells us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, while still trying to maintain the spin.
However, it should be noted that this paragraph is just a NYT journo writing, not a quote from a climate scientist.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/science/what-will-a-doubling-of-carbon-dioxide-mean-for-climate.html?_r=0
I really don’t think we need to worry about Greenland. When the colonising Vikings got there in 986 it was lovely and warm. Much warmer than it is today! They cut timber, hunted, fished, and farmed sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, etc. for about 30 generations, and had a flourishing trade in walrus tusk and polar bear skins with Iceland and Norway. The were happily settled in Greenland for about as long as the European has been settled (back) in North America!
But if you look at the site of their most northerly ‘Western Settlement’ of 1,000 years ago, eg. at ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Settlement )
..and then compare that with the same area today (just Satellite Google Earth the town of Nuuk in Greenland – it’s rather small capital city)
..you will see that what little ice-free land still protrudes form beneath the ice cap of present day Greenland is devoid of vegetation and absolutely impossible to farm. It is what is known as an ‘Arctic Desert’ environment. Nothing has re-grown since the last of the poor old Vikings perished there, in the freezing cold, with failing crops and dying stock, cut off from their fishing grounds and exit route by sea ice as the Mediaeval Warm Period waned.
Today the easternmost Viking farm sites of the Western Settlement are still hemmed in by sea ice and glacial outflow for much of the year and are effectively uninhabitable without modern resources or equipment.
Greenland still appears to be a great deal colder than it was 1,000 years ago when the Viking colonies were first established there. You only have to look on Google Earth at the places they once successfully occupied farmed. These are now frozen, bare and completely inhospitable.
From the Reuters article: “Sea levels rose by 17 cm last century and the rate has accelerated to more than 3 mm a year. ”
Another fine example of the warming cosine principal:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=209
The implicit and unfounded implicaiton is that the current rate of change will perisist and probably the acceleration will continue.
The other problem is that what is now presented as “sea level” is not the physical sea level that floods land and against which barriers are needed, but the ghostly GAIA adjusted [sic] mean sea level that hovers mysteriously above the waves.
I don’t know why so many people are seeing this as a climbdown. Much if not all is dependent on the way this paper is reported, and the usual suspects are citing it as more evidence that CO2 emissions have to be curtailed before we all drown! ie business as usual 🙁
This is from the small-circulation but influential newspaper read by teachers, lecturers and opinion formers, and the headline indicates their take on the study:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/sea-levels-rising-so-fast-london-faces-significant-risk-of-flooding-without-thames-barrier-upgrade-8616204.html
“For sea level rise, now a maximum of about two feet by 2100.”
Wow, two feet per century, that’s exactly the average sea level has risen since the end of the last glaciation 20,000 years ago. Two feet per century.
In other words; it’s business as usual.
Damn, I was kinda looking forward to watching the oceans boiling. You don’t see that every day !!
Just as a quick guied, using the sea level graph on Wikipedia, they state a rise of .06 inches (1.5 mm) per year average rise over the period 1870 – 2008. No-one really noticed this going on in the background of our lives for the last 140 years. The Wikipedia graph citation also claims (slightly miseleadingly I think, from eyeballing the graph it looks like they cherry picked a temporary low in 1993 to get such a high rate) that the rate of sea level rise doubled to 0.12 inches per year (3.0 mm/year) over the period 1993 – 2008 (due to global warming).
The range in the article referenced at the top of this post, due to moderate global warming, to the year 2100 is 16.5 – 69 cm over that period, giving rates of 1.9 to 7.9 mm/yr. So at the lower end of that range it would seem that sea level rise would be slowing down, almost to the background level of the last 140 years or so. As for the upper level, it just looks absurd. What will cause the rate to jump by a factor of close to x3 over such a short period? Ice sheets in Antarctica, Greenland etc are way below freezing and are not going to melt anytime soon. That’s why AGW proponents like to show temperature anomalies, to hide the fact that even a 10 degC rise wouldn’t melt ice thats 40 below freezing. Or perhaps they think its all going to sublime somehow?
As an addendum to my comment above, over the period 11,000 yrs to 8,000 yrs BP, the Wikipedia graph would give an approximate (natural) rate of sea level rise of around 15 to 18 mm/yr. Those natural rates are greater than x10 the rate of the last 140 years or so.
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said “We are all just prisoners here,
of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast
Eagles, Hotel California
Blade says:
May 15, 2013 at 12:06 am
Wow! CO2 quadrupling.
Tell you what, now I really would like the answer to a great question posed by Elmer here, and that is this … What other components of air will be displaced from the PPM total by the C02 increase?
In other words, if C02 gets to 1000 ppm, what other gases will be “removed” from the air makeup? If those removed gases are better GHG’s than C02 the net effect with be less greenhouse effect ( naturally assuming air pressure remains constant ). Can’t wait to hear them try to slip out of this one 🙂
Oxygen is removed from the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned, about three molecules of O2 for every molecule of CO2 produced.
Larry Kirk wrote:
“They cut timber, hunted, fished, and farmed sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, etc. for about 30 generations, and had a flourishing trade in walrus tusk and polar bear skins with Iceland and Norway.”
I’m totally with you except the “cut timber” part. Is there any evidence that they cut anything bigger than 15 cm or so in diameter? From the evidence I have seen, arctic birch and willow, which are predominantly shrubby, would have been all they had even in the warmest of times.
ThinkingScientist: (slightly miseleadingly I think, from eyeballing the graph it looks like they cherry picked a temporary low in 1993 to get such a high rate)
Like I said above: “Another fine example of the warming cosine principal:”
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=209
The Independent: “There is significant risk of London being hit by a devastating storm surge in the Thames estuary by 2100 that could breach existing flood defences and cause immense damage to the capital, a study of global sea-level rise has found.”
Wow , so we have 85 years to avoid a 5% risk. On that timescale I would imagine that all our sea defences would be maintained and upgraded anyway, with or without GW.
A complete NON ISSUE.
DirkH: “What it boils down to is, you have to compare the CHANGE in CO2 to SST.”
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=223
Taking this one step further, looking a second diff of CO2 and rate of change of SST.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=225
Not only is there good correlation on the inter-annual scale but perhaps more notably, there is no obvious divergence over the whole period of the record.
That may have interesting implications.
This corruption of climate science is more like a climate of corruption that includes science.
All these revisions to settled science are unsettling.
Hey Canute ; move your damn chair !
All very interesting, but who REALLY thinks there’ll be a change in direction? There’s too much invested in the religion of climate change and the scams arising therefrom.
Re: Jimbo at 4:37PM on 5/14/13 —
Just checked. The Guardian (unless the Thames rose so swiftly that their web server was flooded out!), scrubbed Jimbo’s fine post!
Now, THAT was predictable.