But the paper ignores land use and land cover change
From NOAA Headquarters and the “its the evil gases wot dun it and nothing else” department, comes more modeling madness via another poorly written press release by Monica Allen monica.allen@noaa.gov that doesn’t mention the name and/or DOI of the paper, making me hunt for it, but worries about useless details like telling me the image below is “embargoed until 1 p.m. ET, July 13, 2014 “. – as it that matters when the press release today included it anyway. To add insult to the injury, this paper funded by the taxpayers of the United States is paywalled.
New NOAA climate model zeroes in on regional climate trends
NOAA scientists have developed a new high-resolution climate model that shows southwestern Australia’s long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall is caused by increases in manmade greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience.
“This new high-resolution climate model is able to simulate regional-scale precipitation with considerably improved accuracy compared to previous generation models,” said Tom Delworth, a research scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., who helped develop the new model and is co-author of the paper. “This model is a major step forward in our effort to improve the prediction of regional climate change, particularly involving water resources.”
NOAA researchers conducted several climate simulations using this global climate model to study long-term changes in rainfall in various regions across the globe. One of the most striking signals of change emerged over Australia, where a long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall has been observed over parts of southern Australia. Simulating natural and manmade climate drivers, scientists showed that the decline in rainfall is primarily a response to manmade increases in greenhouse gases as well as a thinning of the ozone caused by manmade aerosol emissions. Several natural causes were tested with the model, including volcano eruptions and changes in the sun’s radiation. But none of these natural climate drivers reproduced the long-term observed drying, indicating this trend is due to human activity.
Southern Australia’s decline in rainfall began around 1970 and has increased over the last four decades. The model projects a continued decline in winter rainfall throughout the rest of the 21st century, with significant implications for regional water resources. The drying is most severe over southwest Australia where the model forecasts a 40 percent decline in average rainfall by the late 21st century.
“Predicting potential future changes in water resources, including drought, are an immense societal challenge,” said Delworth. “This new climate model will help us more accurately and quickly provide resource planners with environmental intelligence at the regional level. The study of Australian drought helps to validate this new model, and thus builds confidence in this model for ongoing studies of North American drought.”
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Here is the paper I chased down:
Regional rainfall decline in Australia attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gases and ozone levels
Thomas L. Delworth & Fanrong Zeng Nature Geoscience (2014) doi:10.1038/ngeo2201
Precipitation in austral autumn and winter has declined over parts of southern and especially southwestern Australia in the past few decades1, 2, 3, 4. According to observations and climate models, at least part of this decline is associated with changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, including a poleward movement of the westerly winds and increasing atmospheric surface pressure over parts of southern Australia. Here we use a high-resolution global climate model to analyse the causes of this rainfall decline. In our simulations, many aspects of the observed regional rainfall decline over southern and southwest Australia are reproduced in response to anthropogenic changes in levels of greenhouse gases and ozone in the atmosphere, whereas anthropogenic aerosols do not contribute to the simulated precipitation decline. Simulations of future climate with this model suggest amplified winter drying over most parts of southern Australia in the coming decades in response to a high-end scenario of changes in radiative forcing. The drying is most pronounced over southwest Australia, with total reductions in austral autumn and winter precipitation of approximately 40% by the late twenty-first century.
Paywalled here at the expense of the public: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2201.html
This paywalling of publicly funded science, combined with the recent developments surrounding the failure of peer review, which seems to be little more than pal review in some cases, is why we need a sea-change in science review and publication.
Now while I can’t properly criticize what I can’t read, it seems to me that land use and land cover change might play a big role, if not bigger than GHG’s. But land use and land cover change isn’t mentioned in the abstract and press release, and so it seems to me that the paper is myopic in scope.
This paper (which isn’t paywalled) was discussed at Jo Nova’s forum last year:
The effect of land clearing on rainfall and fresh water resources in Western
Australia: A multi-functional sustainability analysis
Mark A. Andrich & Jörg Imberger DOI: 10.1080/13504509.2013.850752
Abstract (excerpt)
It is widely recognized that southwest Western Australia has experienced approximately a
30% decline in rainfall, in areas inland from the coastal margin, over the last forty years or
more. It is generally thought that this decline was due to changes induced by global warming, but recently evidence has emerged suggesting that a substantial part of the decline may be attributed to changes in land use. These changes involved extensive logging close to the coast and the clearing of native vegetation for wheat planting on the higher ground. We present a methodology that compares coastal and inland rainfall to show that 50 – 80% of the observed decline in rainfall is the result of land clearing.
Read it here: Andrich_and_Imberger_(2012a)
Let’s all ignore the fact that the GAT has been stalled for years while CO2 keeps on its steady rise and make a higher resolution CO2-driven regional model, shall we?
Of course we shall! How the @#%$! else are we going to get funding?
Harrumph!
“improved accuracy compared to previous generation models”
Now that’s a mighty low bar to meet.
So, the models which were designed to have CO2 be the main driver of climate show that CO2 is the main driver of climate? That’s what I call science!
[golf clap]
GIGO. Well it’s a model, so I suppose that’s all right then.
IT’S BULLDUST! We are currently in a VERY wet winter. The Dams are all full. We are still paying for the useless desalination plants that the previous Labor/Greens alliance insisted that we needed because CAGW was going to make Australia very dry. This sort of model-sourced crap makes me very angry, because we (the taxpayer) seem to always foot the bill the generally results from these model-driven guesses.
Did this model predict a “pause”? Of course not – it is a new one; did not exist in year 2000. It was “trained” to reflect the “pause” accurately. So it was also trained to reflect recent Australia temperatures accurately. No prediction at all.
Actually, according to Jared Diamond, Australia has a long record of variable climate. When it was initially settled by Europeans it was during a period when rainfall was relatively high. Then I think (from memory) around 1820 there was a dry period lasting a couple of decades where many otherwise successful farms failed due to drought. The rains came back, the farms got going again until the next big drought.
What appears to be the problem is that despite this long record of changing climate from wetter to drier and back again, society seems able not to learn to adapt appropriately. It’s fair to say that since there is a record of long periods of relative dry compared to relative wet, that that constitutes the climate to which societies infrastructure ought to be robust enough to withstand, regardless of whether mans influence on the climate is something to be concerned about.
And right now it is pissing down in Perth.
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR704.loop.shtml#skip
This is real time, so it may be gone inland by the time you get to see the rain.
I was working in the water supply industry in 2000 in New South Wales during the last big drought when the regional Water Board received a geological report on the rivers of southeastern
Australia that showed that the last 200 odd years had been abnormally WET. That was a more than the time Australia had been settled by the British, so colour me surprised to find now it’s greenhouse gases!!!! ( no I don’t have reference for the paper, sorry)
Bollocks.
well that’s a relief…..
CO2 doesn’t affect temperatures…
…it only affects rainfall
Now if they ever figure out where the moisture comes from…they might actually get somewhere
I agree with Jimbo – It is cold and wet here
A recent model study was released by the British Columbia government a few days ago which claimed that our infrastructure along the Fraser river needed 10 billion dollars of upgrades, mainly by raising the height of the dikes. Sorry I don’t have any links as I only saw the report on global TV news. In a province the size of Washington state, Oregon and California combined with a population of a little over 4 million, that’s a lot of money per person. The same cost of building the site-C dam that can provide electricity for 430 thousand homes.
It appears that a scare tactic of high costs are to make it look cheaper to have the world spend 50 trillion dollars, as the IEA (or some such) claims than it is to adapt to any changes as they occur.
The dikes that I will be riding home on (bicycle) after my outing to the coffee shop today have had millions of dollars of height raising after the last scare of a flood, which didn’t happen after all.
These high resolution models use 1.0000000 and 0.00000000.
The fundamental problem with this drivel of course is that while it is true that SW of Western Australian has dried, the rest of southern Australia , except for Tasmania, has not but has got a bit wetter. The continent as a whole has got wetter by about 20% over the past century or so as has the Eastern seaboard and the Murray Darling Basin.
In SW of WA the poor land clearing and land management practices have had a significant impact and that part of the country is also very much influenced by the long period changes in behaviour of the mechanisms in both the Indian and Southern Oceans.
The conclusion of this paper and the models ( 🙂 !! ) is risible and out there with the sky is falling and Tim Flannery’s predictions that all the east coast dams would dry up ( they are pretty full atr the moment).
Having just returned to Tasmania from 10 days in Perth while colder it is a lot dryer here than last week in Perth as Chris from Queensland attests above.
I would give it 4.5 Flannery’s for speculative nonsense, 2 Mann’s for modellers madness ( it has all been done before) and 5 NOAA’s for administrative dystopia.
from NOAA in 2003 – claim – Polar Vortex to blame for Aussie drought
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s948858.htm
” So one thing looks certain – we’d better get used to living with less water.
That prediction failed too. Yawn.
And we just had a thread about the spread of misinformation through academic journals… perfect.
“The model projects a continued decline in winter rainfall throughout the rest of the 21st century… The drying is most severe over southwest Australia where the model forecasts a 40 percent decline in average rainfall by the late 21st century.”
_____
At least they make a projection that is falsifiable, although this study will likely be forgotten by then.
Does anyone know how ozone depletion contributes to a decline in winter rainfall?
Great to see the ozone layer making a comeback,
Go NOAA!!
For sure, the USA leads the world in “Departments of Silly Walks”.
Crank up those treasury printing presses – more greenbacks required.
Hey, there’s a thought, my favourite printer here does most of the USA’s bibles, i am sure they can be trusted to knock out a few billion notes a month, for sure they have the latest Ryobi kit – happy to act as a responsible print broker..
Hammer. Nail.
Perth Australia rainfall over the past year (in the south west of Australia, the main area this model was simulating). Slightly above average.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/precipitation/sn94610_1yr.gif
Inland Southwest Australia at Kalgoorlie. Well above average.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/precipitation/sn94637_1yr.gif
The issue is, what good is this climate model and these climate scientists (Delworth would be considered one of the leading scientists) when they essentially ignore the actual climate observations.
They are drifting farther and farther from reality. At some point, they should all have major breakdowns it seems.
Here’s a graph of rainfall very near to my house which is almost at the southernmost point of mainland australia since about 1900.
Bit hard to see much of a trend there!
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=090061&p_nccObsCode=139&p_month=13
I suppose I’ll have to and pull out the monthly data to replicate their analysis, but March-August is a funny choice, it rains through to December.
Darn wet in Perth this morning. Been a very wet winter so far despite the supposed ‘long-term’ trend. It’s been a relatively cold winter as well … close to freezing several mornings so far, but Gore was in Australia recently…
Less than a year ago, another model-based study by Prof. Sarah Kang from UNIST linked ozone depletion to extreme precipitation. This is a summary of what they found:
“In this research they discovered that the ozone depletion in the Antarctic area is associated with extreme rain in the austral summer and it would be used to forecast heavy rain and the natural disasters in the future.” (see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829093405.htm)
My, what a difference a year makes! So does ozone depletion cause more or less rainfall? Or does it do both by causing “extreme rain in the austral summer” and a “long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall”? What could be the mechanism behind that?
Well folks, let’s take this study and see if we can’t just accept this study and spin it a slightly different way. Let’s suppose for a moment (just a moment) that they got it right:
NOAA researchers conducted several climate simulations using this global climate model to study long-term changes in rainfall in various regions across the globe. One of the most striking signals of change emerged over Australia, where a long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall has been observed over parts of southern Australia.
So, given that they developed this model and applied it to various regions all over the world, and only southern Australia came up as a problem, we could re-write the headline as follows:
New Study by NOAA: World Wide Precipitation Expected to be Unchanged Due to Global Warming with Southern Australia as Possible Exception
The following paper was delivered by Jennifer Marohasy at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change in Las Vegas on Wednesday 9th July 2013 in Panel 13.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/07/the-need-for-a-new-paradigm-including-for-rainfall-forecasting/
I wonder, did they include the figures from the Ibuku satellite?
Following Willis’ article on the Ibuku, I sent an email to the Australian Minister for the Environment. Still waiting for any form of response.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology rainfall trends from 1900 to present show most of Oz in positive territory.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps&tQ%5Bmap%5D=rain&tQ%5Barea%5D=aus&tQ%5Bseason%5D=0112&tQ%5Bperiod%5D=1900
Here’s a study highlighted on JoNova which suggests the decline is down to massive land use changes. http://joannenova.com.au/2013/12/land-clearing-responsible-for-most-of-rainfall-decline-in-south-west-western-australia/
At various times Australia has had insane land use policies. For example, when Australia hit on the idea of handing out farms to war veterans, as a reward for their service. The new farmers were encouraged to completely clear their land. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_settlement_(Australia)
This mornings couriermail newspaper reports that farmers are giving up planting wheat, too dry. Our summer rains did not arrive 2013-2014.
We have had to remove all our cattle, and leave our property to itself, the creek is dry, it ran once this last summer and only for about 2 weeks, so even the kangaroos don’t have running water. We have left water troughs filling from our 25000 Gallon, household and vege garden tank water supply for the birds and kanga’s, and we have witnessed them using for bathing and drinking, but and until we get rain, even our tank water will not last forever, then we will have to buy water at $200.00+ for 5000 Gallons.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/farmers-abandon-planting-as-drought-turns-wheat-fields-to-dust/story-fnihsrf2-1226987526832
Holy Globull Warming Batman! It is DEEPLY paywalled! I can usually find a preprint somewhere, even for these two guys, but not for this particular paper. However, it is interesting that in their other papers, both men see anthropogenic substances forcing large scale intrinsic oceanic-atmospheric systems to shift in such a way to bring AGW affects to bare on climate regions, either directly or indirectly in fuzzy amplified ways and by using pingpong fudge factors in new and improved super duper better than buttered bread futuristic supercalifragilistic-expialidocious regional scale climate models. Goodness gracious!
If I can’t read it, I get to pan it.
[The mods call first dibs on Pam’s pan of the hot buttered bread and amplified fudge factors! (Everybody else gets the fuzzy factors and the bare pingpong scaled models.) 8<) .mod]
Abject nonsense. Carbon dioxide has nothing to do with rainfall over Australia. It has nothing to do with rainfall anywhere else either because it is not the cause of global warming. Have these guys not heard that there has been no warming at all for the last 17 years while carbon dioxide at the same time kept increasing? The Arrhenius greenhouse theory predicts that the latter will cause warming but unfortunately nothing is happening. If your theory predicts warming and nothing happens for 17 years you know it is worthless and needs to be cast into the waste basket of history. There is a place for it there, right next to phlogiston of yore. The only theory that can accurately forecast the global temperature pause is MGT (Miskolczi greenhouse theory). It predicts exactly what we see: rising carbon dioxide does not cause greenhouse warming. Trying to prove that it does leads to the absurdity that we see in CMIP5 climate forecasts for the 21st century. The real temperature has been an unchanging horizontal straight line while all the CMIP5 threads, each from a supercomputer, turn up and predict warming. It is easy enough see where this stupidity comes from: built into their model code is the assumption that raising carbon dioxide level means rising global temperature. This has been untrue for the last 17 years but these modelers don’t seem to understand that nature, not their million line code, determines what happens in the world. We are dealing here with the laws of nature that cannot be changed at will. If rising carbon dioxide did not cause any warming for 17 years it never has caused any warming at all. Any claims that there was greenhouse warming before this hiatus/pause started are simply misinterpretations of natural warming that over-eager climate scientists indulged in to prove that their beloved greenhouse warming exists.
Admad says:July 13, 2014 at 3:01 pm
GIGO. Well it’s a model, so I suppose that’s all right then.
Speaking of models,I can’t remember who, but someone wrote; ‘a pretty face is forgiven anything’.
Good thing I’m a desert creature, adapted for long pauses and hiatus of rainfall. Sucks to be a mountain gorilla or a monkey, rather than hairless ape.
OZ dry! surely not!
I have been told XXXX has left our northern shores, but OZ?
It all depends. Right now we are probably facing less rainfall, but only because the amount of snow is increasing. It seems to be only a temporary Gore Effect, but it is quite marked. We’ve had snow in Eungella this weekend, and that is tropical rainforest.
Long-range weather forecaster Piers Corbyn explains that in order to predict world temperature we need to better understand solar activity, magnetic connections and lunar modulation of the same.
Interestingly, towards the end of this presentation Mr Corbyn, who has a first-class honours degree in physics from Imperial College, London, states that it was as hot in the 1930s and 1940s as it is now. Indeed, this is also what the unadjusted raw temperature data for many places in Australia shows.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/05/lunar-modulation-of-weather-and-climate-piers-corbyn/
Computer models? Another paper with a pre-determined conclusion by the “researchers.” Pfft!
It’s déjà vu all over again. (Sorry Yogi.)
I wonder if their model also show that CO2 is the cause for no trend in precipitation across the ditch in NZ?
The decline in rainfall in South West Australia has more to do with the concentration in Perth of PBMCHO’s over the years than anything else.
That one factor alone gave rise to a proliferation of UTI’s whom have had a detrimental effect on the RDofEBC around the world and directly contributed to the rise of WWF.
Glossary:
PBMCHO : `Perth Based Mining COmpany Head Office;
UTI: University Trained Idiots;
RDofEBC: Rapid Deployment of Empty Brain Cells; and
WWF: Wild and Wooly Farts.
This opinion is peer reviewed by myself and I and we are currently seeking funding from a bloke that can write hot and racy novels while driving a train up a tunnel.
“in response to a high-end scenario of changes in radiative forcing”
Well, that will not happen and even if Obama forces all employees and contractors of NOAA to abstain from hard liqueur and illegal narcotics for at least 36 hours relative to the start of work-schift-schedule … it just will not happen.
Also very cold in most places in Aus. 10.30 AM in Sth Aust; 7.7 degrees C. AGW yeah, right.
Can’t hindcast, can’t forecast, but their GCM is good for a small region?
Give me strength.
Double irony. Bozos from the same US agencies published three papers since 2010 claiming that the perceived recent slowdown in SLR was due to Extraordinarily heavy Australian rainfall that had not yet had time to drain back to the sea. Hard to have it both ways at the same time. Except in climate science that seems to be the norm.
I think that the startling biodiversity of SW Australia gives a clue to long term rainfall and nutrientdeficiency. From Jo’s site
. The wildflowers are simply stunning when in flower.
This biodiversity is attractive to us but it indicates a long term struggle to adapt to minimal nutrition and rainfall.
Charles Darwin had this to say on the biota in February 1836 visiting Albany returning to England on the Beagle.
I think he just wanted to go home……..
“But the paper ignores land use and land cover change”
And ” what we don’t know” ? is it impossible thet we don’t just unknow?
Do these guys even bother to check the rainfall data ?
100 years of BoM rainfall data shows NO CHANGE :
Southern Australia :
http://www.bom.gov.au/tmp/cc/rain.saus.0112.31780.png
South Eastern Australia :
http://www.bom.gov.au/tmp/cc/rain.seaus.0112.26572.png
Murray Darling Basin :
http://www.bom.gov.au/tmp/cc/rain.mdb.0112.13853.png
Infact, in some of those areas, the data clearly shows a slight increase ??!!
The only area that shows a decline at all is South Western Australia :
http://www.bom.gov.au/tmp/cc/rain.swaus.0112.30961.png
This is nothing more than deliberate and pre-meditated fraud.
Sorry for my mistake:
And ” what we don’t know” ? is it impossible that we just don’t know?
Well well well – they must not have bothered to check the rainfall we have had since 2009. The dams in my state Victoria that Flannery said would never fill again when they were 20percent full are now 80% and rising and the desalination plant is the biggest white elephant legacy we could ever have hoped for. We had massive floods in 2010/11, and having moved back into the dividing range this year, we have had the coldest, wettest start to winter that I can remember. The snow we were never going to get are now at their best in the ski fields for many years. I dont know where these people get it from? probably some orifice or other.
Melbourne Resident
Australian children soon won’t know what water looks like.
Another classic case of cherry-picking; here the cherries are the brackets of decades to subtract and infer a long-term trend. John in Oz is onto it, when he points out that the “trend” changes radically and bears little resemblance to the putative model when the start point is shifted back one decade to 1901. Why else would the authors choose 1911 when reliable records extend back to the turn of the century? Not to mention choosing an interval commencing with a notably wet decade to compare with this base. Decadal rainfall patterns are so variable in Australia that a combination can be found to match almost any modelled, or fabricated, distribution.
The decline in rainfall in SW WA makes sense due to climate change, as the area is peripheral to a rather large desert. The borders of this desert encroach on the SW of WA, so it doesn’t take much to tip it towards lower rainfall. If you go a little north, desert conditions appear on the coast, so any migration of latitudinal climate zones would affect the SW. However this climate change doesn’t have to be due to humans, it’s more likely due to natural variation such as changes in solar output, which has made the lower rainfall to the north migrate southwards.
I don’t buy the land use change idea. The main factor here is the location on the margins of a desert, it doesn’t take much climate shift to tip it over the edge.
“Several natural causes were tested with the model, including volcano eruptions and changes in the sun’s radiation. But none of these natural climate drivers reproduced the long-term observed drying, indicating this trend is due to human activity.”
Or in other words, “if we can’t guess at the cause It’s logical to conclude that our guess about human activity is correct”
***posting this at 1pm Eastern Australia time:
14 July: Sky News: Carbon bill changes get Palmer nod
The Palmer United Party (PUP) has settled on changes to the carbon tax repeal bills and expects them to pass the Senate within days.
PUP leader Clive Palmer held talks with government figures on Monday ahead of the carbon tax repeal bills returning to the House of Representatives just after noon***…
It’s now expected the bills could go back to the Senate on Monday evening and pass by Tuesday…
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2014/07/14/carbon-bill-changes-get-palmer-nod.html
fingers crossed. u can’t rely on politicians til the fat man signs on…
Here in the Upper Great Southern of WA, about equidistant Perth, Albany, Bunbury- on the inland side :), we have had about 150mm of rain since March. About average.
What winter is most places is dryer than summer! With two thirds of our continent considered desert, but there is lots of subterranean water. No trees no transpiration, therefore, no clouds so far from the coast. Usually 50 miles from the coast, precipitation does gradually lessen. But altitude also has to do with it.
Pam I am crossing my legs too, LOL.
As always, let’s follow the money, even potential money.
Who benefits is Australia is perceived as a drought-stricken area in the coming decades of the 21st century? No wheat, sheep dying, two things I can think of from a NAmerican knowledge base. Where would you put your investment dollar?
NOAA is an arm of the American government. No arm says anything that the brain doesn’t want said. So, what does the American government want if the Australians are thought to be lame-o in a few years from now?
That is the question that needs to be considered.
The reasons why cities get water restrictions is because – the dams are not coping with the population of water wasters. Like having 3 showers a day, sprinklers on all day to keep gardens green. If one travels to the bush and regional towns, some still depend on rainwater or rain to replenish supplies. Now I have lived in the bush with no tap water other than from rain tanks. And it is common to share a bath, with the most dirty going in last. Rain water is soft, but some piped mains water can be very very hard. I have a rain water tank as well as tapped water, but our tap water is sometimes 8.4 and too alkaline for some of my bonsai. I wonder how much these jokers were paid to write this. Drought and floods are characteristic of Australia. Look towards the top end, no rain, then monsoon rains.
When the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand knows…..
The concentration of reactive halogen in the mid-latitude stratosphere (EESC-ML) is currently smaller than in the Antarctic stratosphere because halocarbons have had less time to become degraded by high-energy solar radiation in the younger mid-latitude stratosphere (the mean age of mid-latitude stratospheric air is ~3 years) . But EESC-ML values have decreased relatively further back to 1980 levels primarily because they more closely track tropospheric trends given the shorter transport times for moving air from the troposphere to mid-latitude stratosphere. Another factor contributing to the larger relative decrease in EESC-ML arises because reactive halogen levels in mid-latitudes are more sensitive to short-lived chemicals that have decreased quite rapidly in the lower atmosphere in the past decade (e.g., CH3CCl3).The NOAA Ozone Depleting Gas Index: Guiding Recovery of the Ozone Layer 2013
Lake Eyre is the lowest point in Australia, below sea level. It dries up and then fills again. Now that’s happened before the area was even colonized.(I use that term loosely as few live near it. It rarely rains in some desert areas, but it is a known fact when rain comes, within days and weeks wild flowers, frogs and mud skippers that have been buried revive, and the desert is transformed into fields of wild flowers and billabongs.. But they germinate, flower and seed within weeks. They stay dormant until the next down pour. One video I watched recently was very good until they blamed the Aborigines for Lake Eyre disappearing etc. Because —— they used fire to burn grasses to generate new growth to attract marsupials. Sort of farming really. How could that effect Lake Eyre for goodness sake. Lack of rain is caused by lack of water vapour the biggest greenhouse gas component.
Fred Love 7:34 pm said :
“Why else would the authors choose 1911 when reliable records extend back to the turn of the century?”
This is becuase the Australan Bureau of Meteorology has homogenised and pasteurised all its data so that nothing exists before 1910. All records are deemed to have now started in that year. Apparently temperature readings and rainfall were not reliable before then.
This means that there may have been higher or lower temps or rainfall before then, but they are no longer relevant. This of course does not stop computerised chicken entrail modellers, sorry I mean climate scientists, claiming that temperatures are now higher than in the past 100, 200 or 1000 years.
It is easy to become frustrated because we are dealing with government entitlement. In silicon valley these guys would have been gone twelve years ago because if your model fails for five years you are GONE. And that is generous. Ironic that support for these turkeys comes from the very place where private industry has the most brutal standards in the nation.
2003 — “It appears that the circulation of the entire Southern Hemisphere is changing to suck our rain away. The reason is the Antarctic Vortex – a natural tornado of 30km high, super-cold, super-fast winds spiralling around Antarctica. The vortex is not new; it’s one of the engines that drive climate in the Southern Hemisphere. But now it appears the vortex is shifting gear, and is spinning faster and faster, and getting tighter. As it does it’s pulling the climate bands further south dragging rain away from the continent out into the southern ocean. Most disturbing of all we might be responsible for shifting the speed of the vortex. Scientists at the US Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research believe the speeding up of the vortex is caused by the combined effect of global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica.” – drought vortex, abc catalyst
2011 — Ozone Hole May Have Caused Australian Floods [!]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ozone-hole-may-have-cause-australian-floods/
2013 — Australian floods of 2010 and 2011 caused global sea level to drop [!]
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/23/australian-floods-global-sea-level
2014 — “Simulating natural and manmade climate drivers, scientists showed that the decline in rainfall is primarily a response to manmade increases in greenhouse gases as well as a thinning of the ozone caused by manmade aerosol emissions.”
May the “forcing” be with you.
53% of Australians want the carbon dioxide tax to go, so the leader of the Opposition insults them, & the “classy” Lenore no doubt had a smirk on her face as she typed it up:
14 July: Guardian: Lenore Taylor: Carbon tax repeal almost certain as PUP seals amendments deal
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Australia’s response to global warming must “sooner rather than later include an emissions trading system”, saying an ETS guaranteed the lowest price greenhouse gas abatement for families and for businesses…
He accused the prime minister of “sleepwalking his way into a major climate policy disaster, a disaster for the Australian economy and for our environment, a disaster that guarantees that forever more Tony Abbott will be remembered as an environmental vandal”.
Shorten described the opposition’s alternative “direct action” plan as “an amateur, ill-conceived, centralist Soviet-style voucher system that will give the nation’s biggest polluters great wads of taxpayers money to keep polluting”.
“Direct Action is a policy designed solely for the PM’s personal core constituency, the Flat Earth Society. It is a policy concocted purely to appease … the cranky radio shock jocks and extreme columnists,” he said.
Shorten said Abbott was leading “the most ignorant government”, driven by “book-burning instincts and ideology”…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/14/carbon-tax-repeal-almost-certain
A Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian after last Thursday’s chaos in the Senate saw the repeal bills rejected, reveals 53 per cent want the controversial tax to be abolished…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/voters-tell-clive-palmer-axe-the-tax/story-fn59niix-1226987607104
“The only area that shows a decline at all is South Western Australia :”
There is pretty good research that shows this could actually be caused by man,..
The denuding of the old jarrah forests is pointed to as the main culprit.
Places further south that still have forests don’t show anywhere near as much rainfall drop as the cleared areas.
bushbunny says:
July 13, 2014 at 8:39 pm
“If one travels to the bush and regional towns, some still depend on rainwater or rain to replenish supplies. Now I have lived in the bush with no tap water other than from rain tanks. And it is common to share a bath, with the most dirty going in last.”
______________________
Life in the Yabba…
garymount says:
July 13, 2014 at 3:30 pm
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Ah Gary. Don’t forget that those dykes are built on unconsolidated silt so the higher you pile them, the more they sink. The river that used to flood across the whole valley from Chilliwack to Delta (aptly named) is now confined so it has to rise higher than ever. Look back at the history of flooding in the lower mainland. Anyway, since the dykes are always sinking a bit, they require constant topping up and maintenance. Gradually the weight consolidates the soil underneath and the sinking slows, but never stops. And the dykes are leaky, and much of the storm water has to be pumped over them, the ditch water rises and falls with the tides. The lower mainland BC dykes are a great make work project that never ends, can’t end with all the development on the ever sinking delta.
These weather cycles are common around the world and well documented in geological and geographic records.
If water vapor is missing then yes, GHG are responsible for the dryness. That seems to be the case here. I confess I’m not convinced a trace amount (the human amount) of a trace gas (CO2) can dehydrate a continent. They must agree because they don’t mention it. So the blame falls solidly on the missing water vapor. I’ll also wager the dryness has precedence.
Bill Illis says:
July 13, 2014 at 3:55 pm
Perth Australia rainfall over the past year (in the south west of Australia, the main area this model was simulating). Slightly above average.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/precipitation/sn94610_1yr.gif
Inland Southwest Australia at Kalgoorlie. Well above average.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/precipitation/sn94637_1yr.gif
The issue is, what good is this climate model and these climate scientists (Delworth would be considered one of the leading scientists) when they essentially ignore the actual climate observations,
============================================\
Bill, I think you know what good the model is. it is purely political for the statist CAGW agenda.
Scientifically speaking, it is of course phooey.
Drying? Is there really? Since El Nino’s departed & La Nina conditions kicked in around 2009?
I can’t access the paper but the graphics of observed measurements don’t appear to support their hypothesis? The modelling O.T.O.H’s a whole ‘nother world…
Can anyone enlighten me as to whether or not they are reporting cyclical change or permanent climate shift?
Steve Keohane says:
July 13, 2014 at 4:41 pm
Admad says:July 13, 2014 at 3:01 pm
GIGO. Well it’s a model, so I suppose that’s all right then.
Speaking of models,I can’t remember who, but someone wrote; ‘a pretty face is forgiven anything’
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Steve, Steve, Steve, do not let the sunlight in on these models in the morning, they are ugly FUBAR..
The South West has seen a doubling of population in less than 40 years and a consequent large increase in coastal urbanization.
Urbanization suppresses rainfall. This is well documented and studies from Israel which has a similar climate and large increase in coastal urbanization show the reduction is as much as 40% over the same period.
Inland where the dam catchments are and for practical purposes no one lives has had no significant decline in rainfall.
http://pindanpost.com/2012/12/05/drought-fallacy-in-the-west/
The problem here is that the Warmist CSIRO is so desperate for ‘evidence’ of global warming that they have been running this deceptive campaign of a drying southwest due to global warming for decades.
Hang on a moment? Wasn’t the magic gas supposed to cause MORE water Vapour?
Well I don’t care what these jokers are stipulating. They’ll be insistent that rain dancers try to cut greenhouse gases! Instead of the reverse. I mean I have seen and read so much bullshit, this must top it. You can smell ozone after a thunderstorm so blame mother nature. In or around 2003 Perth was rain starved. But our lecturer said, the rain will come when the solar activity (sun spots) quietens down. Anyone who lives in Australia will tell you on the change of seasons we get more active weather, and sub tropical and tropical regions get plenty of rain. That’s Oz. And during winter unless we get snow, on the highlands, rain is reduced because it cold and most trees including evergreens go dormant. Less transpiration. No trees – and the desert, less CO2 and water vapor.
Rubert Murdoch has suddenly become a sceptic. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2690828/The-Maldives-disappear-News-Corporation-boss-Rupert-Murdoch-says-climate-change-real-cares-sea-level-rises-wipe-Maldives.html
It is a great pity that his News International newspapers were not running that line these past 15 or so years when they had some influence over British politics.
.
hm?
I suggest that author and mates do some origami on the sheets of that report
start shaped multiple points
and then?
Jam em where the sun dont shine!!
had a gutful of their crap science concerning their own land
butt outta aus.
we got enough morons with Flimflamflannery and the Bom
Southern Australia rainfall since 1900 here.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rranom&area=saus&season=0112&ave_yr=6
1970 was an extremely wet decade. But check prior to 1950. What a farce.
Before global warming there were droughts and storms. After global warming ended we were left with droughts and storms. There’s really not much for the alarmists to work with, of course they come off looking silly.
This is typical of the scare stories that we in Australia have grown used to. I just checked the current dam levels here:
http://water.bom.gov.au/waterstorage/awris/
And there is a heck of a lot of rain due this week across the south of the country from Perth to Adelaide to Melbourne.
The rainfall measurements I believe are just as corrupt as the temperature measurements. There have been many days where it has absolutely bucketed down and you check the weather and only 5mm have been recorded.
The BOM is infested with those on the alarmist pay check.
Anthony– I have access to the paywalled paper. Contact me at the email on my post to arrange getting a .pdf if you need it still. Glad to help out.
–Doug
Thanks Dougmanxx for the offer, I have obtained access from another source.
Simulating natural and manmade climate drivers, scientists showed that the decline in rainfall is primarily a response to manmade increases in greenhouse gases as well as a thinning of the ozone caused by manmade aerosol emissions. Several natural causes were tested with the model, including volcano eruptions and changes in the sun’s radiation. But none of these natural climate drivers reproduced the long-term observed drying, indicating this trend is due to human activity..
I read this and thought, ‘gee the PDO and AMO affect rainfall, does the Indian Ocean happen to have one of these cycles?’ Page 1 of my web search came up with Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).
Dr Ummenhofer’s research looked at 130 years of data, showing the effect of the IOD over multi-decadal timescales.
Broadly, the data indicated that:
When an El Niño event occurred independently without a positive IOD, the monsoon season broke down and the rains failed.
When a positive IOD occurred with an El Niño event, rainfall during the monsoon season was generally average.
When a positive IOD occurred without an El Niño event, rainfall was generally above average.
Based on these findings, the recent weakening of the El Niño effect on the Indian monsoon from 1975-2006 can be explained in large part by the fact that many El Niños during this period occurred along side a positive IOD.
http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/news/news/2011-08-03_indian_ocean_dipole.html
and
For the first time a team of Australian scientists has described how the IOD – a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water – dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia. The work explains the current record-breaking drought in south-eastern Australia and why a string of La Niña events in the Pacific Ocean, which usually bring rain, have failed to break it. It also reveals the causes of other iconic extreme droughts in recorded history, notably the World War II Drought from 1937 to 1945 and the Federation Drought from 1895 to 1902, and challenges the accepted understanding of the key drivers of Australia’s climate. When the IOD is in its negative phase, a pattern occurs with cool Indian Ocean water west of Australia and warm Timor Sea water to the north. This generates winds that pick up moisture from the ocean and then sweep down towards southern Australia to deliver wet conditions. In its positive phase, the pattern of ocean temperatures is reversed, weakening the winds and reducing the amount of moisture picked up and transported across Australia. So the south-east misses out on its usual quota of rain. The study notes that the IOD has been in its positive or neutral phase since 1992, the longest period of its kind since records began in the late 19th century. And to make matters worse, this period has coincided with a trend towards higher average air temperatures over the land, which may be linked to human-induced climate change. – See more at: http://www.grdc.com.au/Media-Centre/Ground-Cover/Ground-Cover-Issue-79-March-April-2009/Indian-Ocean-cycle-explains-unbreakable-drought#sthash.QWq8iQ79.dpuf
http://www.grdc.com.au/Media-Centre/Ground-Cover/Ground-Cover-Issue-79-March-April-2009/Indian-Ocean-cycle-explains-unbreakable-drought
But NOAA cannot find any natural causes. Sorry all you ‘down under’ folks, but we really don’t have any control of NOAA. Never mind.
My farm was once near a mountain range which are now just hills. There was time when the view from my back paddock would be of a white sand beach with a large inland sea lapping at the shore. The area would have abounded with wildlife when a huge freshwater lake covered my land. Cold and barren when the great dust storms blew in from central Australia covering my land with a deep layer of fine clay soil.
Time and tide, my friends.
“NOAA scientists have developed a new high-resolution climate model that shows southwestern Australia’s long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall”
Long term decline? 30 years out of a whopping 103 year of BOM data, long term? Pfft…whatever. Haven’t the number of surface stations also similarly declined in WA in the same time period as well? What about pre-1911 data?
So basically it’s a claim that an area which is mostly made up of desert, will be come slightly more desert. I guess WA has really pissed off those dastardly greenhouse gases as they appear to be completely ignoring the rest of the country. If I was a snake or a bush, I might give a toss. But then they have had it for hundreds of thousands of years. So probably not.
Whoever generated that NOAA report is probably aware that
this is make-or-break week for the Carbon Tax in our federal parliament .
One suspects it was created specifically for use by our alarmist media
as an unimpeachable scientific source . No scientific reference paper is
quoted to inhibit rebuttal .
It didn’t work though. Passed 39 to 35. Whoopee. “One small step by Aussies, a huge leap forward for humankind.”
Top news indeed, now we need leadership teams, consultants and publishers to get the message too.