Like this one:
![britainAR[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/britainar1.png?quality=75)
Image from NOAA ESRL
From the Institute of Physics
Atmospheric rivers set to increase UK winter flooding
The prolonged heat wave that has bathed the UK in sunshine over the past month has given the country an unexpected taste of summer that has seemed to be missing in recent years.
However, a new study published today, 24 July, in IOP Publishing’s Environmental Research Letters, has provided warnings that will chime with those accustomed to more typical British weather.
According to the study, winter flooding in the UK is set to get more severe and more frequent under the influence of climate change as a result of a change in the characteristics of atmospheric rivers (ARs).
ARs are narrow regions of intense moisture flows in the lower troposphere of the atmosphere that deliver sustained and heavy rainfall to mid-latitude regions such as the UK.
They are responsible for many of the largest winter floods in the mid-latitudes and can carry extremely large amounts of water: the AR responsible for flooding in the northwest of the UK in 2009 transported 4500 times more water than the average flow in the River Thames in London.
The researchers, from the University of Reading and University of Iowa, found that large parts of the projected changes in AR frequency and intensity would be down to thermodynamic changes in the atmosphere, rather than the natural variability of the climate, suggesting that it is a response to anthropogenic climate change.
To reach these conclusions, the researchers used simulations from five state-of-the-art climate models to investigate how the characteristics of ARs may change under future climate change scenarios.
Firstly, they used the climate models to see how accurately they could simulate the ARs that occurred between 1980 and 2005. The five models did this successfully and were deemed capable of projecting how future ARs will develop under different scenarios.
The models were then used to simulate future conditions under two scenarios – RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 – that represent different, yet equally plausible, scenarios for future increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. They projected changes that would occur between 2074 and 2099.
Each of the five models simulated an increase in AR frequency. For the RCP8.5 projections, which represents stronger increases in greenhouse gas concentrations than RCP4.5, there was a striking level of consistency in the magnitude of change in AR frequency – all models showed an approximate doubling of the number of future ARs compared to the simulations for 1980 – 2005.
The models also projected an increase in intensity of the ARs, meaning an AR impacting the UK in the future is projected to deliver more moisture, potentially causing larger precipitation totals.
Lead author of the research, Dr David Lavers, said: “ARs could become stronger in terms of their moisture transport. In a warming world, atmospheric water vapour content is expected to rise due to an increase in saturation water vapour pressure with air temperature. This is likely to result in increased water vapour transport.
“The link between ARs and flooding is already well established, so an increase in AR frequency is likely to lead an increased number of heavy winter rainfall events and floods. More intense ARs are likely to lead to higher rainfall totals, and thus larger flood events.”
From Wednesday 24 July, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034010/article
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Steve Oregon said “On it’s face this is so unbelievable it almost hurts. The authors appear to have supplanted the jet stream with an entirely invented phenomenon.”
I agree with that and other commenters that the authors seem to lack a basic understanding of weather. These types of authors make up new terms or pervert old ones in an attempt to ascribe real world meaning to some speculative or downright erroneous dynamics within climate models. This is an age-old problem from the earliest climate models that showed some real world effects, but could not be validated in any way:
“Look, it’s generating a monsoon!” says one incredulous researcher about a model.
“Great, let’s run it into the future to see what will happen to monsoons!” says another.
The key to the error in this study is when they refer to thermodynamics as in “A sensitivity analysis was also employed to determine the thermodynamic contribution to future AR changes.” The “AR” (or jet stream as Steve points out) is not driven by thermodynamics, but atmospheric dynamics, a much more complex physics. One consequence is that atmospheric dynamics are controlled by factors that are not resolved in climate models (e.g. clouds) or not in climate models (e.g. solar spectrum). Also the “AR” cannot manifest in rainfall without lift at the receiving end.
These researchers are like many other contemporary climate researchers being paid to look at current weather and attempt to attribute “extremes” to global warming regardless of facts or history. They appear to not have read the prior work of climate modelers that say the opposite, that one effect of global warming may be that the jet streams increase in velocity and move poleward. Thus the “AR”s and other extremes may become less frequent.
Are there any grants available other than Garbage Grants?
But they told us to expect colder, more snowy winters. It must be true because it was reported in the Independent! /sarc
Warm air holds more water than cold air. If the atmosphere warms…more rain…otherwise less rain. Pretty simple.
Firstly, they used the climate models to see how accurately they could simulate the ARs that occurred between 1980 and 2005. The five models did this successfully and were deemed capable of projecting how future ARs will develop under different scenarios.
====
uh duh…..those same models missed the “pause”
How about seeing how well the models simulate current conditions
“To reach these conclusions, the researchers used simulations from five state-of-the-art climate models to investigate how the characteristics of ARs may change under future climate change scenarios.”
MODELS? The same ones which are coded to include the effects of the human induced global warming theory. OF COURSE they got that result. The computer is programmed to produce that result.
It is worthless and the scientific output from it is worthless and so the entire theory of “atmospheric rivers” has no basis in fact until it can be measured in the real world.
That is not experimental data, it is a manifestation of the theory and nothing more. now the only way to validat the “Atmospheric rivers” is to wait and actually measure the atmosheric transport of water. A model is NOT scientific validation or verification of a theory. Incomplete, or to use their proper name, flawed models do not produce experimental data outputs. They produce elaborate descriptions of the theory.
In both OZ and England in the recent past AGW was the cause of ever lasting drought.
Now it would seem that endless sky rivers are inundating our countries caused by AGW.
AGW was also the reason that we would have no snow season and no skiing.
Now AGW is the cause of more snow.
Dear me, now the missing heat is hiding in .001 of degrees in the deep ocean.
I can only conjecture but these climate experts seem some what misguided.
Their position changes with the wind to cover their posterior, not a good look for some one professing to be scientific.
Sometime in the early 21st century global warming science devolved into current events modeling and real time prognosis and automated PR releases. It was subsequently recast with an old term and called the weather.
George Lawson says:
July 23, 2013 at 11:55 pm
:” the AR responsible for flooding in the northwest of the UK in 2009 transported 4500 times more water than the average flow in the River Thames in London.”
can somebody help me out on this one?
My BS meter pegged on that one too. I equate it to their use of units of measurement such as “Manhattans” or “Hiroshimas”, and relying on peoples’ ignorance of numbers generally in order simply to shock and scare, rather than educate.
I agree Climate Change is happening and is showing up in the U.K. first.
Just one little fact: it is not caused by “anthropogenic climate change” [“ACC”]; it is caused by the changes in the reduced Solar output especially in the Ultraviolet spectrum.
The well documented reduced Solar output [look at the reduced area under the curve of Solar Cycle 24] will have the following effects:
1) Less trade winds [ reduced Solar input, reduced Hadley Cell strength]
2) Less Indonesia, Gulf of Mexico ocean bulge [pile up of water caused by the trade winds].
3) Less ocean current warmth and flow [monitor the reduced Gulf Stream].
4) Less heat being transferred to the North and South Poles [less energy available from the Sun].
5) More cold and wet weather for England and Northern Europe [Hadley cell size reduction, Gulf Stream reduction].
6) More movement of the Jet Stream toward the Equator [Hadley cell reduction].
7) More flawed model output from East Anglia [models based on CO2 with no Solar forcing].
8) More flawed publications showing that “ACC” is the cause and the heat is “hiding”.
Oh, how smart that heat is!!!! It is able to outsmart all of those PhD climate scientists…
Don’t worry, this came out today.
CIA wants to control the weather, climate change
Global warming is over, the CIA is going to fix it.
that’s as funny as Obama being president
“suggesting that it is a response to anthropogenic climate change”
The UK is safe, then, because we are not altering the climate and the climate is not warming. That was really easy.
What warming? Where is it? Aaahh Hiding in the deep ocean LOL
Atmospheric rivers, is not the same thing as prevailing winds? And as I understand it it was a change in prevailing winds that change the Sahara from a jungle to a desert, it sure was not caused by .anthropogenic climate change way back then.
I’m a little curious about this “AR” theory, because it seems to contradict what the Met office have to say regarding winters becoming colder and dryer due to climate change.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/11/climate-change-colder-winter-met-office-chief-scientist-_n_3059116.html
Copied this from the BBC Web page Posted it up on Bishophill .More for the US Spectics .Goggle BBC I player stream it from the search bar “Stephen Sackur Hardtalk Alaska”
“Watch part one of Stephen Sackur’s HARDtalk on the Road (climate change) on Thursday 25 July 2013 at 10:30 BST on BBC Two
Part two of HARDtalk on the Road (salmon and mining) is broadcast on Tuesday 30 July 2013 at 10:35 BST on BBC Two”
Usual BBC Climate Change propaganda drive (The ice is thinning in the Arctic conveniently don’t mention the Antarctic filmed it in summer etc) . Worth checking out on BBC Iplayer site tomorrow.
They missed the following sequel from the study: “… and the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading troughs: and the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants”.
We’ve been here before, surely: Exodus 8 v3?
Predictions of 2074 to 2099???????
We can’t be worried about a prediction of 71 years from now if we can’t say about anything a little sooner that would indicate the later prediction had some merit.
What about 2014 to 2074, or is that a typo?
We have one of these AR’s during the wet summer last year.
l was following it on the fulldisk satellite image. lt was a long band of cloud and rain that started off in the eastern Pacific moved NW and joined the Polar jet in the north Atlantic. lt was one factor that gave the UK its very wet spring/summer last year. To give you some idea of what they are talking about take a look over on BBC weather page and have a look at the “Rain contrasts with drought in China” video.
P.S. There is a cloud formation worth watching that is moving across the mid Atlantic at the moment. lt looks like it may develop into something as it tracks across the Atlantic.
Stephen Richards on July 24, 2013 at 1:22 am
Well I may be wrong but NOAA uses the”Pinapple Express” as an example of an AR and I believe it was similarly referenced in the 2011 article in WUWT. I think the joining of highs and lows in pumping action has been known for a very long time (all my life anyway).. Right now there is one dumping rain over Klawock Alaska all the way to Prince George BC, you can see it on the weather satellites AND the NOAA moisture forecast. Nothing new but the name. I think there is some good science here. In fact, the recent flooding in Alberta was predicted by the weather models but no one realized the damage impact (or admitted to it). But they did send out warnings several days in advance. I think that is remarkable. The forecasters told us what was going to happen and many people were shocked to discover the forecasts to be correct. That, is the other side of the coin. We get so used to ignoring forecasts and weather warnings that we can lose everything. Now Alberta is going to have to spend 5 or 6 billion moving folks off a known historical flood plain and probably drought proofing downtown Calgary. And yet we knew 100 years ago that these areas flood during torrential rains as reported in the turn if the century nespapers. But all the grant grifters are blaming it on Global Warming. I won’t write that off, but it hasn’t exactly been warm I. This part of the woods this year and there is still lots of snow on the nort slopes of the mountains. So, it was most likely a low stuck between two highs for several days, just as the weather forecasters said and predicted and advised that a large amount of moisture was coming at us.
A lot of people will get (have gotten) on the AGW band wagon. But they have incentives. They want the government to pay them for their houses; insurance companies want to escape liability and raise rates…. ad infinitum. We like to be able to blame someone else for our folly. It’s a human condition. And AGW is a great scapegoat. No individual is looted out and you can avoid taking direct responsibility. I don’t know much about AR’s except what I have read. But I sure ’nuff have watched lots of interaction twixt highs and lows and in the winter, I know where the powder flows. Have a great day.
Do these models hindcast the catastrophic AR floods in California during the cold 19th century?
In 2006 Reading University closed its Physics department due to lack of funding.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/sep/29/highereducation.education
In the same year Reading University opened the Walker Institute which would provide it with more government funding. (In the UK, pseudo science attracts more funds than real science).
http://www.walker-institute.ac.uk/about/index.htm.
The university used to be known as a leader in estate management, including most aspects of agriculture, but the College of Estate Management separated from Reading University in 2010. This has left Reading University with precious little about which to claim excellence but it does boast:
“Meteorology at Reading is world-renowned for its pioneering research on weather, climate and earth observation. The status of our dynamic and productive research environment is reflected in the long-standing presence of staff from the UK Met Office, and major elements of the NERC funded National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO). We are also part of the Met Office Academic Partnership. Our Department is a major part of the University’s Walker Institute for Climate System Research. We also work closely with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) located close to the University. ”
The Walker Institute is run as an adjunct of the Met Office:
“Julia became Met Office Chief Scientist in February 2009. Before joining the Met Office she was the Director of Climate Research in NERC’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science, at the University of Reading, where she is still a Professor of Meteorology. In 2006 she founded the Walker Institute for Climate System Research at Reading, aimed at addressing the cross disciplinary challenges of climate change and its impacts.”
Is it really surprising that a post doc research scientist has produced a paper, based on climate models rather than data, which forecasts that yet more disasters will be caused by CAGW? After all unless the Walker Institute keeps producing scary science fiction how will Professor Sligo justify the grants?
UK winter rainfall is highly thermodynamic, warmer = wetter, but the intensity and frequency of events are completely determined by short term external forcing. There is very little climatic trend in the UK, apart from Scotland.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/actualmonthly/16/Rainfall/England.gif
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/actualmonthly/
@chris Edwards says:
“All this tax money spent to determine what will happen in a warming climate! must have some ace computer models, a Sinclair Z80 or older!”
They used a Commodore 64 and GeoBASIC.
“And the Nobel Prize for Comedy goes to ………………”