University of Toronto study finds atmosphere will adapt to hotter, wetter climate
TORONTO, ON – A study led by atmospheric physicists at the University of Toronto finds that global warming will not lead to an overall increasingly stormy atmosphere, a topic debated by scientists for decades. Instead, strong storms will become stronger while weak storms become weaker, and the cumulative result of the number of storms will remain unchanged.
“We know that with global warming we’ll get more evaporation of the oceans,” said Frederic Laliberte, a research associate at U of T’s physics department and lead author of a study published this week in Science. “But circulation in the atmosphere is like a heat engine that requires fuel to do work, just like any combustion engine or a convection engine.”
The atmosphere’s work as a heat engine occurs when an air mass near the surface takes up water through evaporation as it is warmed by the Sun and moves closer to the Equator. The warmer the air mass is, the more water it takes up. As it reaches the Equator, it begins to ascend through the atmosphere, eventually cooling as it radiates heat out into space. Cool air can hold less moisture than warm air, so as the air cools, condensation occurs, which releases heat. When enough heat is released, air begins to rise even further, pulling more air behind it producing a thunderstorm. The ultimate “output” of this atmospheric engine is the amount of heat and moisture that is redistributed between the Equator and the North and South Poles.
“By viewing the atmospheric circulation as a heat engine, we were able to rely on the laws of thermodynamics to analyze how the circulation would change in a simulation of global warming,” said Laliberte. “We used these laws to quantify how the increase in water vapour that would result from global warming would influence the strength of the atmospheric circulation.”
The researchers borrowed techniques from oceanography and looked at observations and climate simulations. Their approach allowed them to test global warming scenarios and measure the output of atmospheric circulation under warming conditions.
“We came up with an improved technique to comprehensively describe how air masses change as they move from the Equator to the poles and back, which let us put a number on the energy efficiency of the atmospheric heat engine and measure its output,” said Laliberte.
The scientists concluded that the increase in water vapour was making the process less efficient by evaporating water into air that is not already saturated with water vapour. They showed that this inefficiency limited the strengthening of atmospheric circulation, though not in a uniform manner. Air masses that are able to reach the top of the atmosphere are strengthened, while those that can not are weakened.
“Put more simply, powerful storms are strengthened at the expense of weaker storms,” said Laliberte. “We believe atmospheric circulation will adapt to this less efficient form of heat transfer and we will see either fewer storms overall or at least a weakening of the most common, weaker storms.”
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The findings are reported in the paper “Constrained work output of the moist atmospheric heat engine in a warming climate” published January 30 in Science. The work was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
F. Laliberte, J. Zika, L. Mudryk, P. J. Kushner, J. Kjellsson, K. Doos. Constrained work output of the moist atmospheric heat engine in a warming climate. Science, 2015; 347 (6221): 540 DOI: 10.1126/science.1257103
This link may be able to show us what the future may hold in regards to weather patterns when the temp is up by 1 to 1.5 C on the current average. Scroll down the page to the Medieval bit.
http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_me.html
Grapes growing in Yorkshire, bumper harvests, mild weather conditions which allowed the Vikings to get to Iceland, Greenland and very likely (97%) North America.
What is there not to like about it.
Not to mention what happened to civilization both before and after the MWP when it was colder.
Instead of using computer models to predict weather why don’t these guys look at the past and learn from it. What happened then is very likely to happen again, ah of course, that would stop the funding.
Ah but Archaeology is an “old science” and people who do it aren’t qualified to understand the “new science” of climate change which uses computers. Computers are modern and really high tech and much better than trowels.
(Do I really need to put a “sarc” tag on this?)
In my experience there is no study that is so big or so true or so well supported by data that the climate banshees cannot find or contrive a report that supports their own position against the study.
There is no Pythia who cannot be shouted down by a chorus of Hectors.
Well Pythia on you too, and the Trojan Horse you rode in on! 🙂
Hint – this is a study ONLY based on model simulations. A lot like astrology vaguely enough to claim weak is weak and more intense is more intense than weak . How can you go wrong here?
Thanks, for that, now weak becomes weakerstier and intense is now intensestier
tadchem
This is precisely why guys like Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Feynman were so sticky about the scientific method: (translated form the original Latin…) “In order to have a big-boy theory, IT MUST MAKE FALSIFIABLE PREDICTIONS”.
That way the scientist has to define the metric and the predicted behavior. What we have now is computer-generated ad hoc crap – nobody knows what causes what and, oh by the way, is any of this material.
This is slightly unusual for settled science, but it’s the very heart of snake oil salesmanship.
“We know that with global warming we’ll get more evaporation of the oceans,”
Um.
Abstract
Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000–2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% as compared to estimates neglecting this change. These findings show that stratospheric water vapor is an important driver of decadal global surface climate change.
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.abstract
“Strong storms will become stronger, weak storms weaker and the overall number of storms will remain the same”. Excuse me, but if a weak storm gets weaker, won’t that declassify it so that it no longer counts as a storm? So according to the logic, fewer storms but stronger ones.
How’s that going in real life right now? Hurricane season giving anyone a problem in the U.S.A. recently?
Strong storms will become stronger and weak storms will become weaker. How does a weak storm become weaker? In the same proportion for a net of zero? What the hell are they talking about? Where’s the point of reference for any of this stuff? So ten years from now in a rain storm you tell your kid “back in the day, this storm would have been weaker”. Or “See this weak storm son? Ten years ago it have been a little less weak.”
Morons!!
OT but i really hope this story has “legs”
http://stopthesethings.com/2015/01/23/steven-coopers-cape-bridgewater-wind-farm-study-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-wind-industry/
Every body that thinks the sun drives evaporation has it wrong. Evaporation on earth happens the same way evaporation happens in a pot of water on the stove. Ocean salinity allows current to flow and create evaporation just like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwGx7qqQe-Y
Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky …
I saw this paper on Hockey Schtick and mentioned it in a comment here some time ago.
The Editors summary
“Global warming is expected to intensify the hydrological cycle, but it might also make the atmosphere less energetic. Laliberté et al. modeled the atmosphere as a classical heat engine in order to evaluate how much energy it contains and how much work it can do (see the Perspective by Pauluis). They then used a global climate model to project how that might change as climate warms. Although the hydrological cycle may increase in intensity, it does so at the expense of its ability to do work, such as powering large-scale atmospheric circulation or fueling more very intense storms. ”
I’m too cheap to read the paper but I suspect that if clouds form lower in the atmosphere because of greater humidity, that storms will be weaker. Storms are stronger where the cloud tops are higher and if on average the upper troposphere is warmer than before, they could increase in height for large storms. With an average temp gradient of 6°C/km, a 1°C warmer world means about a 2% more powerful cat. 4-5 storms (170m higher cloud).
I’ll take the less frequent smaller storms.
“I suspect that if clouds form lower in the atmosphere because of greater humidity, that storms will be weaker.”
Clouds form where the relative humidity (RH) exceeds 100 percent. If you heat air and do not add more water, the dew point will exist at a higher, not lower, elevation. If you add more water commensurate with the heating, cloud height won’t change.
It is the latent heat of water vapor (the heat that went into evaporating it in the first place) that is the fuel for the atmospheric engine. The engine won’t run unless there’s an exhaust pipe somewhere to dump the heat. That requires a cold spot in close proximity capable of drawing the heat away from the process of condensation. If you don’t dump the heat somewhere it will simply stay in the atmosphere, raise the temperature and stop the process of condensation.
To put things in perspective, the vapor capacity of air is not going to be increased much by a fractional degree of temperature change and once the vapor has rained or snowed out of the atmosphere there’s nothing left to condense. What that means is more than a few miles from the sea or large lake you won’t have a noticeable increase in precipitation; but close to large bodies of water you might be able to notice a barely perceptible increase in precipitation with global warming.
There is a correlation with cloud height and storm strength and its going to be more complex than what I wrote, namely how cold the air mass is that humid air interacts with. It was not well written but the point was more about how I’d rather have fewer cat 2-3 storms than 2% weaker cat 4-5 storms.
Nope:
Don’t be fooled, it’s models all the way down, baby.
The main source of energy for windstorms other than tropical cyclones is horizontal temperature gradient. Since global warming warms the Arctic more than other parts of the world, horizontal temperature gradient in the extratropical northern hemisphere will decrease from global warming. This will reduce the wind intensity of Nor’Easters (including Sandy-like storms), severe thunderstorms, most tornadoes F2/EF2 and stronger, and other northern hemisphere extratropical windstorms in general.
“Because the Earth is a small charged body moving in a large cell of plasma, explanations of all physical phenomena in, on, and near the Earth must take the electrical behavior of plasma into account”
https://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040917electric-weather.htm
“We believe atmospheric circulation will adapt to this less efficient form of heat transfer
Life “adapts.”
Inanimate objects “respond” and “react”
“We know that with global warming we’ll get more evaporation of the oceans,” said Frederic Laliberte, a research associate at U of T’s physics department and lead author of a study published this week in Science. “But circulation in the atmosphere is like a heat engine that requires fuel to do work, just like any combustion engine or a convection engine.”
I am beginning to worry about the quality of teaching at the famous U of T. If the whole planet is warmer, then the condensing of water vapour will cease at a higher temperature and higher absolute humidity than it would on a colder planet. This is basic physics. Frederic Laliberte is speaking as if the temperature rise will ‘be there’ for the evaporation then it ‘wont be there’ when the rain falls. The forces of nature acting on the atmosphere will still be between two points: high and low pressure with the Delta T being the driver. If BOTH rise in a warmer world, then there is no net change in energy.
And he has the gall to cite a ‘any combustion engine’! If the pressure inside the engine increases exactly as much as the pressure into which the cylinder is venting, there is no net change in power. Duh. Come on Frederic, the atmospheric movements are driven by a heat engine and if you don’t increase the Delta T you cannot increase the extractable energy.
The only condition that would result in the scenario painted is if the world is hotter when it is evaporating and cooler when it is condensing. If you can arrange that, patent it!! For therein lies a free source of energy and perpetual motion.
“if you don’t increase the Delta T you cannot increase the extractable energy.”
I’ve been having basically the same conversation at ATTP. An implicit assumption, but only by AGW advocates, seems to exist that the cold sink stays cold even as the Earth warms. Yet the same advocates argue that the cold sink warms faster than the warm parts reducing this differential.
List of blizzards (Nothing new!)
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0886098.html
Michael 2. Right on.
With winters warming and summers staying the same, where is the Delta T that is driving these ‘extra strong’ storms?
For a group that is supposed to be teaching us unwashed plebeians science, they sure have some ‘creative thermodynamics’ underlying their claims.
Hotter world means more evaporation. Really? From the oceans or the land?
Hotter world means more rainfall. Really? Like it used to rain in the Gobi and Sahara?
Hotter world means stronger storms from the additional heat. Really? Meaning the cold side will remain cold and the hot side will get hotter? What happened to GLOBAL warming?
It hasn’t warmed in Waterloo CA or Auckland NZ in 100 years. Will it rain more here because it is not warming? That at least could make thermodynamic sense. The rest, not so much.
Crispin in Waterloo,
And yet today, more droughts in India: http://news.yahoo.com/world-not-woken-water-crisis-caused-climate-change-130410305.html
Thought you might enjoy.
Who (not W.H.O.) knows?
Given that the whole claimed back radiation energy scheme can be completely offset by a 1% increase in annual precipitation, is anyone measuring the global precipitation increase (or decrease)? I think we have another loser in the modeling department.
A very interesting post.
As far as I can tell this should have been a very much more considered issue as far as climate change and climatology concerned.
In my opinion and in my view this happens to be a very concerning matter.
The paper in question addresses an issue by a fair angle so to speak, and tries to evaluate the impact of the climate change in the increase or the variation of the strength of storms.
The only problem that I see is the approach only from the Global Warming fair angle.
As far as the GW angle considered the estimation could be right in general.
The only problem with that as far as I can tell is that it is based in some kind of energy distribution, configuration, circulation or and energy balance, so to speak.
When energy in atmosphere considered in this particular case, the problem arises when that GW energy can not account for the “missing heat” which if seen closely means that a lot of energy remains unaccounted for when these guys try to estimate the impact of it in the strength variation of the storms.
So if such unaccounted energy would be playing a part in the storms strength variation, the estimate or the evaluation tried as per this paper it could be in a high error, meaning that it could be in many other different ways possible, even with a much higher problem for humanity, than estimated as in this case solely through the GW .angle.
cheers.
1. Global warming theory claims, that arctic will warm faster then tropics.
2. From 1. follows that average horizontal temperature gradient towards poles decrease.
3.The average horizontal temperature gradient towards poles plays major role in polar jet stream Higher temperature gradient cause stronger polar jet.
4. Stronger polar jet causes more intense mid latitude cyclones
5. From all above follows – higher global temperature weakens mid latitude cyclones.
Of course this is simplified model and trivial logic, To contest the claim it is necessary to each of claims 1-5 🙂
But this can be challenging, because claims are generic and simple, and it is necessary to fight against atmospheric physic basics. 🙂