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)
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.