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)
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,
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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?