Image Credits: Soft Pixel – clker.com – Cagel.com
By WUWT Regular “Just The Facts”
For anyone who was witness to the absurdity of the recent warming makes it cold meme, it should come as no surprise that even ardent Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming believers are trying to distance themselves from the meme before it causes more damage. After the White House took a run at it, and the willfully gullible media, e.g. Bloomberg Businessweek, BBC and NPR lapped it up, now everyone, including the scientist credited with starting it, are walking away. Let us start with this Washington Post – Capital Weather Gang article yesterday, “Scientists: Don’t make “extreme cold” centerpiece of global warming argument“:
“It’s an intriguing theory – that recently has gotten legs: the melting Arctic – spurred by global warming – is causing the weather’s steering flow, the jet stream, to become more extreme. This extreme jet stream – rather than zipping around the world in a straight circle (right below) – is more frequently meandering off course (left below) and getting stuck in place, sending bitter, prolonged blasts of cold southward and conversely, see-sawing strong heat domes northward. It’s a fascinating paradox: global warming as the culprit for bone-chilling cold.
But more and more scientists are expressing reservations about this hypothesis, first proposed by Rutgers climate scientist Jennifer Francis and collaborators.
“It’s an interesting idea, but alternative observational analyses and simulations with climate models have not confirmed the hypothesis, and we do not view the theoretical arguments underlying it as compelling,” write five preeminent climate scientists (John Wallace, Isaac Held, David Thompson, Kevin Trenberth, and John Walsh) in a recent letter published in Science Magazine.
Elizabeth Barnes, an atmospheric scientists from Colorado State University, after an attempt to dismantle Francis’ theory last summer, published a second challenge in January.
“…the link between recent Arctic warming and increased Northern Hemisphere blocking is currently not supported by observations,” Barnes’ study concludes.”
Funny stuff and it gets even better, from this Princetonian article from two days ago, “U. lecturer argues global warming doesn’t cause polar vortex”
“The polar vortex is a ring of Westerlies, prevailing winds that blow from west to east around the poles that are strongest in the winter, Wallace explained. Wallace is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.
Wallace noted that the vortex continually changes its shape, and when its lobes sweep down over temperate areas, those regions get periods of cold weather.
“I don’t think the slowing down of the polar vortex is enough to really affect behavior of the vortex very much,” he said.
He also noted that the belief that human-induced climate change could cause more extreme cold was, in fact, held by only a small minority of researchers.”
“Like Held, University Physics professor William Happer said this year’s weather is not anomalous.
“It’s exactly the same as weather we’ve had in my own lifetime many times,” Happer said. “Why should it suddenly be climate change?”
Happer explained that this year’s record lows have been emphasized in order to support the climate change “myth.”
“You know, for years we were told we’re going to fry, and the earth refused to cooperate. And so they desperately look for something else to hang their hat on,” he said, referring to supporters of the global warming theory.
Held also said this year’s extreme cold is most likely part of natural fluctuations in global climate.”
And then, to top it all off, Jennifer Francis, who first proposed the warming causes cold meme, and had previously blessed us with pearls of wisdom like;
“‘It’s basically the jet stream on a drunken path going around the Northern Hemisphere,’ explains Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis.” Grist
“Scientists tend to call the jet stream a “polar vortex,” Francis says.” Bloomberg Businessweek
has now has seen the light:
“The media certainly had a field day with the “attack of the polar vortex” in early January, and in their hyping of the story, some misquoted me (and others) by saying that climate change caused the unusual cold spell. Of course this sort of event has happened before, and this one wasn’t unprecedented.
I also agree that greenhouse-gas induced warming will reduce, not increase, the likelihood of breaking cold temperature records — the data already show this.” New York Times – Dot Earth
Gotta love when we can all agree on something. If you would like to learn more about what might actually have caused the recent “weak vortex event” and associated “cold-air outbreaks”, this article and associated comments offers a reasonably detailed analysis.
You don’t get it. The AGW opinion leaders never cared about the facts. The President and his team are still going to claim that this cold was caused by AGW. In the UK, they are still going to falsely blame their floods on AGW. The IPCC, if it came out and said that there is no significant danger from CO2, would simply be ignored.
This seems like a thinly veiled reason to say global warming, therefore, isn’t happening. Which it is. We just choose to argue other subjects to bolster our false beliefs as humans prefer to do. Artic ice melting way too fast. Seas storing up immense heat. Let’s debate those and watch. The disbelief of humans too.
The current weather patterns in the UK and USA are typical of those developed by the more meridional path of the jet stream on a cooling earth. The Fagan book “The Little Ice Age ” is a useful guide from the past to the future. The frequency of these weather patterns, e.g. for the USA the PDO related drought in California and the Polar Vortex excursions to the South will increase as cooling continues
The views of the establishment scientists in the USA and the UK Met office’s publicity in this matter reveals their continued refusal to recognize and admit the total failure of the climate models in the face of the empirical data of the last 15 years. It is time for the climate community to move to another approach based on pattern recognition in the temperature and driver data and also on the recognition of the different frequencies of different regional weather patterns on a cooling ( more meridional jet stream ) and warming (more latitudinal jet stream ) world.
For forecasts of the coming cooling based on the 60 year (PDO) and the 1000 year quasi-periodicities seen in the temperature data and the neutron count as a proxy for solar activity in general see several posts at
climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
For a review of a 3 year update of a 30 year forecast see
climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2013/07/skillful-so-far-thirty-year-climate.html
For an estimate of future NH temperature trends see the latest post at
climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
justthefactswuwt says:
February 21, 2014 at 7:01 pm
“the Polar Vortex occurs in the mesosphere and stratosphere, explain how heat, convection or otherwise in the ionosphere propagates downward into the mesosphere, when atmospheric pressure in the ionosphere is essentially nil.”
Well, since you asked, the interaction may take place lower down in the atmosphere, where the aurorae are seen and the electrons and protons traversing the D layer between the poles intersect with the descending Brewer-Dobson circulation, transferring their energy to and warming the descending gas This changes the vertical temperature profile, producing the well-known polar temperature inversions. This effect acts in parallel with stratospheric heating induced by UV absorption in the ozone layer. When present and strong, temperature inversions are stable as anyone who has experienced LA smog can attest. The return flow from the Brewer-Dobson circulation is diverted from the surface to the altitude of the radiating zone, where by warming the upper troposphere it warms the surface as well, by increasing the temperature in the region that anchors the lapse rate. The polar vortex is strengthened, sealing the arctic cold inside the so-called ozone hole. And we get Global Warming, only CO2 has nothing to do with it.
There is tons of evidence for all of the aspects I have mentioned, except that the behavior of the return flow of the Brewer-Dobson circulation is speculative.
Polar vortex controlled by Magnetosphere activity and solar wind…
Bill says: February 21, 2014 at 7:55 pm
This seems like a thinly veiled reason to say global warming, therefore, isn’t happening. Which it is.
There has been no “Global Warming” since the late 1990s or early 2000s, The Pause, which has been acknowledged by all loosely credible news sources, i.e.:
In fact, looking at the Werner Broznak’s recent article, the Pause in each major temperature data set is as follows:
WoodForTrees.org – Paul Clark – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
For GISS, the slope is flat since July 2001 or 12 years, 6 months.
For Hadcrut3, the slope is flat since July 1997 or 16 years, 6 months.
For Hadcrut4, the slope is flat since December 2000 or 13 years, 1 month.
For Hadsst3, the slope is flat since December 2000 or 13 years, 1 month.
For UAH, the slope is flat since October 2004 or 9 years, 3 months. (goes to December using version 5.5)
For RSS, the slope is flat since September 1996 or 17 years, 4 months.”
Shown graphically, that looks like this:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"]
Are you familiar with the Pause?
We just choose to argue other subjects to bolster our false beliefs as humans prefer to do.
Speak for yourself…
Artic ice melting way too fast.
Actually;
This animation demonstrates the increase in ice thickness measured by CryoSat over the last four Octobers:
European Space Agency – CryoSat – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Cryosphere Today – Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="564"]
Also, Arctic Sea Ice Extent recently dropped below 2 standard deviations after remaining within two standard deviations of the 1981 – 2010 average for the entirety of 2013;
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"]
and Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area saw its smallest decline in 2013 since 2006, with a decline less than half of the prior year:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"]
And regardless there is ample evidence that the earlier decline in Arctic Sea Ice was primarily associated with wind and atmospheric oscillations.
Seas storing up immense heat.
Prior to the completion deployment of Argo in 2007 our deep ocean measurement capabilities were very limited, i.e.:
And even if the claimed deep ocean warming isn’t a measurement or adjustment artifact, I have seen no plausible mechanism whereby CO2 greenhouse warming can cause deep ocean warming. Can you please share with us how you think this process works?
Let’s debate those and watch.
Sure, I await your responses with bated breath.
Francis theory as explained by her on YouTube is simply great… for a good laugh. She manages to pack so much meteorological misunderstanding that she should deserve some medal for that.
Jeff F @ur momisugly 7:09p.m.: The argument from your true CAGW believer was the exact argument parrotted by Obama’s “Science Czar” John Holdren. This is utter nonsense. All the great arctic outbreaks of the past featured a meridional jet stream that brought Siberian air over the Pole and drove it southward into North America. The great winters of 1936, 1963, 1977 and 1979 all had this happen repeatedly.
@Dale Rainwater Norman Page
“drought in California”
Pet peeve: 3/4ths of the state of California, including both of it’s megalopolises is officially desert. The “drought” in California is more than 10000 years old. The only reason California has water problems is that the Federal government built massive water projects to bring CA water from out of state and gives that water to Californians at 1/10th of the real cost of delivery, encouraging massive over development and farming of water intensive crops in a desert.
@Bill: It doesn’t seem like you are interested in the merits of the science that is being discussed herein. Even if you are given the fact that the earth is warming and that the deep ocean is somehow accumulating massive amounts of heat (which many here would fundamentally disagree with), there is still little to no direct evidence that these would be caused by the additional CO2 added to the atmosphere by mankind’s activities. Note that a well established causal link, shown through the use of prediction and validation is mandatory in science.
All that you are describing are the effects of a heretofore unproven hypothesis. You are very simply confusing evidence with establishing cause and effect. Put another way, there are a great many ways that the effects (if they are in fact occurring) that you discussed could have arisen. Human knowledge of the behavior of the atmosphere over long time scales is insufficient to pinpoint a cause for these effects. Any other conclusion that comes from climate science on this matter at this time is just hubris.
hunter says: February 21, 2014 at 7:43 pm
You don’t get it. The AGW opinion leaders never cared about the facts.
I disagree. I think the “AGW opinion leaders” care very much about the facts, they are afraid of them.
The President and his team are still going to claim that this cold was caused by AGW. In the UK, they are still going to falsely blame their floods on AGW.
I doubt it, they probably read that Washington Post article too and got the message that the warming causes cooling meme isn’t polling well in the frozen tundra that is a decent part of the US right now.
The IPCC, if it came out and said that there is no significant danger from CO2, would simply be ignored.
Probably, but more and more people are learning that Global Warming stopped in the late 1990s or early 2000s, and in the US a growing majority of the electorate are becoming skeptical of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming narrative and associated increased energy costs, taxes and regulation. Eventually this will be reflected in politicians positions and future legislative actions.
The cyclical nature of climate, not global warming, is what’s at play here. We’ve got a neighborhood that got flooded last month for the first time in over 35 years … folks had paid off their mortgages and let flood insurance lapse when the nearby creek flooded the area as a result of an ice dam. Over time, institutional memories fade and hard lessons are unlearned. It’s not just the Great Lakes that are frozen … so too are the creeks and streams that drain into the lakes. The last couple days, as temps went above freezing again and rain fell, everyone’s attention turned again to frozen creeks and streams … this time acting to break up the ice to prevent the build up of ice dams and the resulting flooding. Wish this global warming religion was for real because this cold really sucks.
@Karl Horrex: It is precisely this notion of “driving” the cold air south that makes me, intuitively, align with the argument that you presented – due to the persistence of the pattern and the distance that the cold air penetrated southward. What amazed me is that some can be presented an argument like the “meandering jet” concept and accept that it causes a persistent pattern when there is a fundamental flaw in the logic.
Well when you guys erase my comments and then wright me a comment telling me there is no causal link to co2 and the atmosphere then it is suspect. Especially since science has shown over and over the link between co2 and ozone depletion.
The link between the polar vortex and solar activity is much more complex than suggested. When solar activity is weak the occasional Earth directed CME can be far more influential than when solar activity is strong. It depends on the timing. If the sun’s magnetic field strength is weak at the time that the CME hits Earth then according to NASA the sun’s magnetic field lines and Earth’s magnetic field lines combine and channel greatly increased amounts of charged particles into the ionosphere and then later into the mesosphere and stratosphere above the North Pole. Two days after the CME of March 15, 2013 the solar magnetic field strength was very weak and the resultant combined magnetic field lines caused so much plasma to be absorbed that the stratosphere above the north pole warmed by some 50 deg C. The AO went below -5 for 3 days (March 20-22) and this has happened only 4 other times since the AO has been recorded (Feb 1969, March 1970, Dec 2009 and Feb 2010). This indicates that the polar vortex had basically stopped and the near polar jet streams then weakened substantially leaving cold air to flow over many parts of the northern hemisphere. An enormous high pressure system also formed over Greenland. It was biggest high ever recorded over Greenland and only very slightly less than a highest high pressure system ever recorded (Siberia Dec 31, 1968).
I think there is much more to learn about the mechanisms that influence polar vortexes before we will understand them.
Winter returns to Europe. Polar vortex will be inhibited over North America.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t100_nh_f72.gif
What may be over looked here is as the Earth cools from the lack of sunspot activity, no real observations spring the first post mini-Ice Age; minimum of the 1800s; and the preceding period period to the Mini-Ice Age, is the atmospheric events that took place to absorb heat out of the winter months and strengthen the impact of Global Cooling.
What events lead up to a Mini-Ice Age? Increased glacier activity. Reduced Topography capture of abundance carbons in the atmosphere by the oceans and Polar Ice Caps to name a few.
This moving Vortex may become a common characteristic of global cooling through out the next two decades.
Paul
Maybe someone wants to read it?
http://translate.google.com/translate?depth=3&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://losyziemi.pl/przyczyny-nietypowego-przebiegu-zimy
Be continued.
Gary Pearse states: “The desperation, the hollow feeling of having spent a whole career building a false theory, will now have them scrambling and me-tooing when they get a chance to criticize CO2-climate theory.”
Is there a counter document to that which many of us signed against AGW? If not, there should be a central repository built somewhere where the names of the “97%” are associated with their pro AGW statements / articles / documentaries / inane blathering / etc. so that they can’t get away with “me-tooing” their way back to reality.
“I think there is much more to learn about the mechanisms that influence polar vortexes before we will understand them”. Truer words were never spoken. In fact, they should be spoken about many more elements of climatology. Once the idea that CO2 was the global thermostat was entrenched by Lacis et. al., a lot of lazy scholarship ensued.
pochas says: February 21, 2014 at 8:33 pm
Well, since you asked, the interaction may take place lower down in the atmosphere, where the aurorae are seen and the electrons and protons traversing the D layer between the poles intersect with the descending Brewer-Dobson circulation, transferring their energy to and warming the descending gas
Aurora occur:
Whereas:
The two phenomena occur, at closest, within ~40 km of each other:
kowoma.de- Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Nordian Aviation Training Systems – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_54067" align="alignnone" width="568"]
How does the energy from the ionosphere and upper mesosphere propagate downward at least ~40 km when atmospheric pressure above 50 km is essentially nil?
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="440"]
One is left to wonder what an end-extreme interglacial glacial-inception looks like……?
Climatologist acknowledge reality, admit that warming has stopped and is not responsible for 17 years of cooling….
Wow! Wow!!!! I’m shocked… shocked, I tell you! Scientist acknowledge reality and challenge climate model’s irrational outputs.
A thin ray of hope has lanced through the national/global consciousness…… a sharp piercing of mann’s false dogma! Pray that this trend of rational thought continues…
When I read the first claim I wondered what was the climate like in the USA last time the North West Passage was open?
justthefactswuwt says:
February 21, 2014 at 10:22 pm
Nice diagram of the atmospheric layers. I think the Anatov AN2 is a nice touch.
So this polar bear vortex takes our nice winter weather and sends it off to where no one understands or appreciates it. Florida says, “For six hours a couple weeks ago we were colder than you”. How does that make us who put up with all day sun for most of the summer so we can finally get back to a nice winter in the fall make us feel any better?