Guest opinion; Dr. Tim Ball
“Every wind has its weather.” English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561 –1621)
What happens if the global average wind speed changes by one kilometer per hour? A great deal, including the rate of evaporation from the surface, a major mechanism of energy transfers in the atmosphere. The wind is not part of the official discussion about climate change because it is not part of the greenhouse effect (GE) mechanism. It is the major reason why GE is a false analogy. Wind is a major variable so important in physical mechanisms of the atmosphere. It is also very important in people’s interaction with the atmosphere. But consider what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR5 Physical Science Basis Report says,
AR4 concluded that mid-latitude westerly winds have generally increased in both hemispheres. Because of shortcomings in the observations, SREX stated that confidence in surface wind trends is low. Further studies assessed here confirm this assessment. (My bold)
Lack of adequate temperature and pressure measurements mean the computer models cannot reproduce accurately these mechanisms.
Wind (advection) is created by temperature differences at the surface. This creates pressure differences relatively determined as High and Low. Nature tries to offset the imbalance by moving air from the High to the Low. The strength of the wind is determined by the difference in pressure and the distance between the centres of High and Low known as the Pressure Gradient Force (PGF).
Transport of heat is an extremely important function of the wind, which it does when warm air moves into a cold region. It also does it by the least known and understood, but most important, latent heat.
Evaporation is the process of molecules of water reaching escape velocity and breaking free from the surface of the water into the air. This can increase in three ways, increasing of water temperature, increasing in air temperature or, increasing wind speed. The most important of the three is an increase in wind speed.
The energy used to increase the escape velocity of a water molecule is not lost; rather it is within the molecule as latent heat. The molecule changes from liquid to gas in the escape. When condensation occurs the water as gas goes back to liquid and the latent heat is released to warm the atmosphere. This is why air temperature increases when rain or snow occurs.
Moisture is also put into the air through plants in a process called transpiration. This also varies with heat and wind speed. The volumes of moisture are prodigious The United States Geological Survey say, “An acre of corn gives off about 3,000-4,000 gallons (11,400-15,100 liters) of water each day, and a large oak tree can transpire 40,000 gallons (151,000 liters) per year.” No wonder there is a considerable difference between cleared and forested slopes at the Coweta Experiment Station (Figure 1.)
Figure 1. Comparison of evaporation and run off from
cleared and forested slopes.
The sensationalist media focus on tornadoes and hurricanes, but strong winds constantly and consistently do far more damage. People who lived through the thirties dust bowl talk about the constant winds desiccating everything. Southern Canada saw similar pattern across the Prairies. Figure 2 shows a picture taken in Regina, Saskatchewan in April 1933. Despite this, there are few studies of the wind and its role in aggravating the situation. For example, soil erosion is a natural process, but exacerbated by increased winds.
Figure 2
Most people know about meteorology, but don’t realize it is a subset of climatology, that it only studies physics of the atmosphere. Aristotle wrote a book De Meteorologica that relates to atmospheric processes. He also studied climatology and produced a global climate classification system. The word climate comes from klima, the Greek word for inclination (The spell-checker suggested karma). They mean the angle of incidence, the angle at which the sun’s rays strike the surface. From this Aristotle identified three climate zones (Figure 3).
Figure 3
The Greeks also understood that each region had different wind patterns and seasonal movement of the zones meant changing winds that marked the change of seasons. The wind was so important that in the first century BC Andronicus built the Tower of the Winds in Athens. Each of the eight sides depicts male deities who characterize wind and weather from that direction. The only name familiar to people today is Boreas god of the north wind. We retain two important ideas. The first is that we define winds by the directions from which they come – a north wind comes from the north. For many, especially people whose livelihood like farmers are weather dependent, still use wind direction as a prognosticator of weather conditions. The idea persists because it is observable and a useful method of predicting local conditions. These empirical observations and forecasts were recorded by Theophrastus (371-287 BC), a student of Aristotle’s, in a book Meteorological Phenomena, more commonly known as the Book of Signs.
Wind direction was easily determined, but speed was always much more difficult. Early attempts used a flat board on a spring with a pointer attached set against a scale. Wind pushed the board, and the pointer indicated the force. The major change came with the wind cup or anemometer in 1846, although some earlier instruments existed from about 1450 in the pre-scientific era. It provides an accurate measure, but recording the information for analysis was more difficult. Unlike most weather variables, continuous data is critical because wind speed is extremely variable but the effect is cumulative. Any average is inadequate, except for determining global wind patterns (Figure 4).
Figure 4
George Hadley (1685-1768), lawyer and amateur meteorologist made a major contribution to climatology through an interest in the Trade Winds. He used ships weather logs to produce a theory about a major portion of atmospheric circulation. The Hadley Cell was the only portion of atmospheric circulation we understood in concept for 250 years. Ironically, and sadly, its major role in global weather and climate is still inadequately covered in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer models.
There are also distinctive regional winds that often define a cultural region. For example, hot, dry winds blowing from desert regions such as the Santa Ana winds in California, the Sirocco or Harmattan winds from the Sahara, or the Mistral in southern France. They are harbingers of stressing conditions. In Alberta, the Chinook are warm winds blowing down off the Rockies. The name means “snow eater” which reflects higher temperatures but also stronger winds. That great environmental expert Leonardo DiCaprio was in Calgary for a chinook event and displayed his ignorance by saying it was evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
Ironically, the Agricultural Revolution took people away from the weather into the confines of urban areas. When I lived in Winnipeg, I did a regular program each month on the weather. Every autumn it included warnings about travelling outside city limits. Every year people considered conditions reasonable but were suddenly caught in blowing and drifting snow. The worst was west of the city on the open Prairie. For better control, they installed gates so they could close the highway (Figure 5).
Figure 5
Most people are more removed from agriculture than ever. Those still involved recognize the impact. A book “Weather forecasting: The Country Way” by farmer/author Robin Page says in the preface,
“Yet it is strange to record that as the weather forecasting service has grown in size and expense, so its predictions seem to have become more inaccurate.”
Some of the wind observations still used in the Northern Hemisphere middle latitudes include;
Easterly winds bring rain. Or; When you can see the backs of the leaves, it will rain.
A west wind is a favourable wind.
A veering wind will clear the sky; a backing wind says storms are nigh.
Veering means the wind direction is shifting clockwise, so a wind that changes from west to northwest to north is veering. This is associated with high pressure, which brings clear skies. If the wind is backing it is turning counterclockwise then there is a low pressure bringing clouds and probably precipitation. These comments explain Buys-Ballots law that says in the Northern Hemisphere
With your back to the wind, the low pressure is on your left.
Wind effects are real-time experiences for comfort and survival of plants and animals. Air temperatures are measured in still air, so they don’t express how plants or humans are impacted. A wind chill index tells us the rate at which a body is losing heat, which is useful for avoiding severe conditions. Wind also creates large scale regional precipitation effects. For example, west or northwest winds across the open water of the Great Lakes can bring lake-effect rain or snow to large areas of the Northeast.
A significant climate change was captured in a long-term weather record. Wind was the most consistent entry in the Daily Journals of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Officers were all trained as Mariners maintained the journals. They used a standard logging technique developed by Dr. James Jurin in 1722 and recorded the wind to 32 points of the compass. At no time in the record did they measure wind speed, rather, they used a subjective scale similar to that developed by Admiral Beaufort.
Figure 6 shows plots of the percentage frequency of south winds at York Factory located on the southwest shore of Hudson Bay (Figure 5).
Figure 5
The plot compares percentage of wind directions for two decades over 100 years apart. In the early decade from 1721 to 1731, which is well within the Little Ice Age (LIA), south winds blow less than 7 percent of the time. In the decade from 1841 to 1851, which is outside of the LIA, south winds occur over 12 percent of the time with a peak in 1842 of 27 percent.
Figure 6: Percentage of south winds at York Factory
Source; Ball (1986), Climate Change, Vol. 8 pp. 121-134.
This indicates York Factory was within the zone of the polar easterlies (Figure 4) during the Little Ice Age. Then, as conditions warmed naturally, the Polar Front moved north, and York was in the zone of the Westerlies. The same change did not occur at Churchill approximately 190 km further north (Figure 5).
There are so many variables ignored, underreported or simply not understood in climate science and especially in the computer models that purport to simulate global climate. This destroys any pretense we know or understand weather and climate. James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis, said,
“It’s almost naive, scientifically speaking, to think that we can give relatively accurate predictions for future climate. There are so many unknowns that it’s wrong to do it.”
The degree to which the IPCC and their supporters have fooled the world is amazing. As Jean-Francois Revel said:
“How is it possible for a theory, which is false in its component parts, to be true as a whole.”
With ‘official’ climate science many parts of the whole are simply omitted. Revel explained the mentality of the AGW supporters when he wrote,
“A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence.”
His book, “The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information” tells it all.
I thought for a moment there you were going to talk about dust. A major factor in climate which is much neglected…and you kept up that tradition nicely!
I’m pretty sure we’re reading chapters of an eventual book here, be patient.
Tim B. Surely the Mistral is a cold wind, not a hot one.
I have never understood why a big wind, the tornado, stays ‘coherent’ if I can abuse that term. Why does that energy not dissipate quickly? I have seen little whirlpools made by oars that seem to persist strangely long. But I rationalize that small cell of swirling water is held together by polarity or something or is it a conservation of angular momentum phenomenon? I can imagine two massive wind fronts colliding and causing a rotation and compression of air in the interface which eventually is pulled to the ground by gravity but why does it stay together so long? Does the air surrounding it hold it together by electrostatic repulsion or something?
The quick answer is that eddies in water or air are held together by pressure differences – the low pressure in the center pulls the stuff toward the center, but since the stuff is moving at right angles, the sped doesn’t change, but the direction does. Hence, a circle.
Layers. The fastest path between two separate layers of something is the vortex.
For reasons, allow me to say that I concur with Anthony and just about everyone else on the site that good stewardship of the Earth is important to me.
Now, a thought or two: How vexing it is for temperature to have been allowed to play the role of energy in the important Broadway play of “Man’s Effect on Climate.”
For temperature, patently, is a weak and untalented player, and allows the entire production to fail around him, night after night, week after week, month after month, etc. Astounding that the marquee remains illuminated and the crowds continue to snake around the theater for what, seriously, is one of the poorest performances ever given.
And, of course, it’s not temperature’s fault. He knows not what he does.
I can no longer afford to discuss climate on a regular basis, neither here, nor in my daily life as a teacher, writer, and parent. The price is too high where I am situated. When all employers now Google potential employees and your first Google entry lists you as a denier, it’s not good. Let’s leave it at that.
But the fact that the people who hold power over yours truly in the realm of the Interweb and more importantly that of independent schools where otherwise I fit in nicely haven’t for the most part even the foggiest notion of what temperature has done in the past few millions years is a little hard to take.
And the fact that they don’t know that temperature doesn’t mean what they think it means, don’t know whether wind has increased or decreased during the period of putative energy increase in the vast, layered, chaotic nonlinear system that is our climate, don’t know whether humidity has increased or decreased during the same time (past century and a half, for the sake of argument), don’t know whether river flow has increased or decreased globally during the period, don’t know whether sea ice has ever done what it has been doing in the last few decades (it has), don’t know whether cloudiness has increased or decreased, don’t know whether ocean currents have, in the aggregate, increased or decreased, don’t know whether ocean cycles have favored warming (for the most part couldn’t name a single ocean cycle if offered a million dollars), don’t know how these various factors variably influence one another is, I admit it freely, much harder to take.
To return to the theatrical metaphor, it is akin to watching otherwise intelligent people give a 5-minute standing ovation to the awful fool that is Temperature at the end of each night’s performance of “Man’s Effect on Climate.” Meanwhile, Temp doesn’t know that he has failed because he doesn’t know that he is not the star of the show. He has been celebrated, falsely, for so long, that he thinks he is a genius.
Who wouldn’t, in his place?
We need to build wind containment facilities immediately.
This is a good time to replay this impressive grapg from Eastern Massachusetts.
http://www.bluehill.org/climate/annwind.gif
Very impressive. What is happening?
No one really knows. The BHO wrote an attempt to explain it, but they aren’t very committed to their monograph, see http://www.bluehill.org/climate/200909_Wind_Speed.pdf , nor am I very impressed. I like to compare things to the AMO/PDO cycles, but they don’t really apply here, especially with that century-long period with constant wind at the beginning. It’s frustrating, as you quickly run out of reasonable things to blame.
“What is happening?”
Well obviously it hasta be the same problem as was found with a big majority of the Surface Station Temperature units.
New infrastructure caused an increase in temperatures being measured by thermometers …….. whereas at Blue Hill Observatory there musta been new infrastructure that caused a decrease or diversion in the winds being measured by the anemometer(s).
Excerpted from cited article:
“The contacting anemometer (circa 1960) is calibrated so that a nearly constant 640 spins of the instrument equal one mile of wind passing the Observatory. Each time that count is reached, an electrical contact sends a signal to the indoor recorder, which makes a mark on a moving chart.”
Most electrical “contacts” are super-duper reliable ….. except when they are corroded, dirty, etc., etc.
Ric Werme September 11, 2016 at 10:20 pm “No one really knows.”
WR: I looked at some annual Wunderground data for Boston for the years after 2008 and a continuing decline in wind speed in the same (high) rate was visible. My first thought: less depressions on the average at that latitude? Because the sudden and continuing change, one would expect more literature on this. I would be interested in changing pressure patterns for the North Atlantic for the different seasons. I would like to know whether a same ‘trend break’ around 1980 will be visible.
Did the direction change?
I’ve read that as farms in the mid-west grew, farms in the east were abandoned and allowed to become forest again.
1980 is pretty late for this to be a direct factor, but perhaps trees that were started during that time were reaching a critical height?
Here’s a link to a good review on The Christian Science Monitor.
Many thinkers have twigged to the fact that people will select facts that back up their preconceptions. The people who can do that most effectively are the most educated. Their superior thinking skills enable them to maintain the belief that black is white in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I used to think that education is the antidote to bull crap. That might be true somewhere but not anywhere I have been.
Given that wind is a vector , I guess an “average” speed would be an rms value ?
I would imagine that 1 km%hr would be a larger fraction of that speed than the 0.3% variation we have seen in our temperature .
It depends on what you want to do. If you want to estimate the power from a wind turbine, I would guess that rms would make sense.
On the other hand, for many purposes it is more practical to use wind run, which is first cousin to an arithmetic average of wind speed.
“What happens if the global average wind speed changes by one kilometer per hour?”
I’m sorry but how can anyone calculate to any level of accuracy “global average wind speed”?
And certainly not changes by one kilometer per hour.
With modelling, of course.
He’s asking a hypothetical. He’s not asking anyone to go out and do actual measurements.
Modelling is always the answer.
Unless you wanted to model whether I’m a smart aleck, or not.
I wouldn’t go with “or not”.
Alan,
“Modelling is always the answer.”
Modelling is all they have. The only theoretical support they had was Bode’s analysis showing how positive feedback can amplify something small into something large, but as many posts on this site have shown, the mapping from Bode to the climate is so broken the only theoretical foundation they have is gone.
thanks for the wonderful accounting of wind history. I’d never have known Aristotle needed acknowledgement in this area. good stuff.
Wind speed and direction obviously affect the slant range of air movement and thus energy movement across lines of latitude, IOW the path length of energy movement from the equator toward the poles. And quite as obviously this is how energy picked up at sea in the form of clouds is distributed longitudinally over land or other seas in the form of rain.
My mom remembers her father, a 1940s Missouri sharecropper, going out to check the sky and the wind every evening after supper. If he said, “You kids keep your shoes handy.” when he came back in, my mom would inwardly groan; that meant he thought a bad storm would come during the night and they would need to head for the cellar. And nine times out of ten, he would be right.
Her father had only a 6th grade education. (Though the average 6th grader back then learned a lot more than today’s average 6th grader.) He wouldn’t have been able to explain the underlying physics of why the weather was going to turn sour. But he did have deeply-ingrained experience with the land and the local climate. From having seen hundreds of storms come and go, he unconsciously knew what signs to look for. He was an expert in the truest sense. True experts are defined not by their abstract knowledge, but by the track record of their practical expertise.
The people that pass for experts these days have knowledge dripping out their ears, but precious little expertise.
Good article, with an even better discussion.
‘This is why air temperature increases when rain or snow occurs.’
In the tropics it doesn’t. A sudden drop in temperature is a sure sign it is about to rain heavily.
OT Breaking news — Hillary Clinton “overheated” @ur momisugly 9/11 memorial service. Global warming (to be) blamed.
It was just her allergic reaction to the presence of so many deplorable basket cases. She’ll have forgotten the whole incident by tomorrow.
Anyone want to go in with me on a basket of deplorables that we can send to Hillary along with a get-well card?
I can’t take credit, but this was too good not to post.
https://twitter.com/katewerk/status/774779388835483648/photo/1
See interview @garyfranchi reporting, https:natreon.com/nextnews on youtube someone is trying to block the link, where a retired neurologist has a working knowledge that Hilliary Clinton has Parkinson’s Disease and has had same for the last ten years. The recent events are the prolonged use of a medication that is no longer working. Don’t believe the bullsh*t story that she has pneumonia that’s a cover.
Wind (of course pressure also) is on average more important determining Texas coastal sea level. On the central coast the normal summer low stand this year seems absent, but have not seen the data. Happened before, more area inundated, many biological effects. Seasonal changes in sea level larger than daily or monthly astronomical. Strange intertidal. A few other places similar. Lots of wind here, being captured by windmills that show up on the Corpus Christi Radar to the North.
https://www.wunderground.com/weather-radar/united-states/tx/rockport/crp/?lat=28.00811958&lon=-97.05977631&label=Rockport%2c%20TX
Too much clutter today, but it is there, some days like sun rays.
“Northern Hemisphere atmospheric stilling partly attributed to an increase in surface roughness” (?)
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n11/abs/ngeo979.html
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n11/images_article/ngeo979-f4.jpg
“Northern Hemisphere atmospheric stilling partly attributed to an increase in surface roughness”?
WR: Could be. From the abstract: “regions of pronounced stilling generally coincided with regions where biomass has increased over the past 30 years, supporting the role of vegetation increases in wind slowdown”. Source: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n11/full/ngeo979.html
Upper air winds seem to be a bit in the opposite: fig. 3b,c: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n11/fig_tab/ngeo979_F3.html
After the Dust Bowl in the US 220 million trees were planted to break the winds at the surface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains_Shelterbelt
Vast numbers of the shelterbelts throughout the Great Plains cereal- growing regions have been ripped out, beginning mostly in response to Governmenl programs of the late 70’s and 80’s which paid farmers to not plant crops, as a price support method which only paid for tillable acreage, so the trees were removed to increase acreage. Remaining shelterbelts have been under assault most recently from farmers increasing acreage to plant corn, for ethanol. Borrow ditches have even been discovered to have been leveled in areas and crops drilled out into the county roads a ways, narrowing the roads.
Surface roughness has increased nationwide, due to the fact that there are now more trees than during the Colonial settlement and expansions. Most towns and cities could be considered to be forests in disguise, due to the number of planted trees. Adding to the increase in trees, within the un- plowed grazing regions of the plains, Red Cedars, originally started in the shelterbelts, have become widespread nuisance trees and must be actively managed/removed. Lands owned by absentee holders who spend no time or money on improvements have quickly been overwhelmed by the Cedars and to lesser extent, Locusts and Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera) commonly used as shelterbelt trees. Nature would turn the prairies to forest, given the chance, but ranchers have again taken up the practice of setting prairie fires at certain time of year, which curtails the spread of trees and woody plants. Some have advanced the idea that the natural incorporation of prairie fire char into the soil over millennia helped to build the rich prairie soils, much in the manner of the terra preta soils of South America.
Alan Robertson September 11, 2016 at 1:07 pm
WR: Thanks Alan, interesting information.
Alan Robertson said:
Umm…nature had it’s chance before man showed up (native or otherwise) on the Great Plains & it chose not to. You imply it was the Native Americans which clear-cut the Great Plains forests & that is way they are today & nature would return them to forests. I think not.
JKrob September 11, 2016 at 4:43 pm
“Umm…nature had it’s chance before man showed up (native or otherwise) on the Great Plains & it chose not to. You imply it was the Native Americans which clear-cut the Great Plains forests & that is way they are today & nature would return them to forests. I think not.”
WR: Who looks at the vegetation bands in Russia will find them differing south to north: the prairie goes east to west as taiga does. The taiga (pine trees) you will find more to the north. A matter of temperature controlled evaporation in combination with precipitation. In the US vegetation bands differ more east – west: a matter of moisture as well. From forest to tall grass to short grass when going from the east coast westwards. But, as higher CO2 is diminishing the plant need for H2O, former prairies could turn into an equivalent of savanna’s: a mixture of grass and trees. This seems to happen.
I wandered whether ‘bisons’ could have controlled the ‘outbreak’ of trees. Although they eat some shrub, it is not clear that in the given circumstances it would have been enough to prevent a kind of savanna type vegetation or even reforestation. The last also because the newly introduced tree species are more drought resistent as former native trees (as I think to know, but I am not 100% sure).
JKrob, you said:
“You imply it was the Native Americans which clear-cut the Great Plains forests & that is way they are today & nature would return them to forests. I think not.”
—————————–
I made no such implication. The prairies were building long before man’s arrival. Fire suppressed the trees. The Indians saw how nature handled things and took up the practice of setting prairie fires.The Indians didn’t clearcut anything. Where would you get such an idea? It’s a lot of work to take down a tree with a stone axe.
One needs only look at areas of present day prairie to see where ill- managed pastures turn to trees. My native home is in the remaining Tall Grass Prairie region of Oklahoma and there are more than a few pastures that have turned to small forests, or Savannahs in my lifetime. My Dad calls them lazy ranchers, but in many cases, the owners are absentee and usually lease the land to others, who for whatever reason, allow the trees to spread. Most ranchers do a good job of land management, but there are some who don’t and they eventually have trees all over their grazing lands. Let one Osage Orange in your pasture get big enough to fruit, and next year, you have hundreds of seedlings. Wait five years and you can’t get through the tangle and you have 1000 more starts all over the place. In fifty years, you can go home like me and see those pastures that were mismanaged 50 years ago and since- they’re grown over into forest, fence to fence, where the kids used to hunt rabbits in wind swept snow drifted Winter pasture, with an occasional tree that never fell to saws and axes, progenitors of all that are there now.
There have always been trees in the bottom lands around creeks and such. Many of the species one finds there, such as Pecans and Hickories, send deep taproots that can only thrive where the Limestone bedrock has been pierced by erosion and plate movement, or the soils have built up enough to let the trees mature. Those rich black prairie soils can be over fifteen feet deep, where they haven’t been put to the plow.
The forests at prairie edge are usually an indicator of poor soils; bottom land excepted. Trees in forests have a tendency to remove the nutrients in the soil and store them in the tree, while the soil’s organic content and attendant fertility is greatly diminished The differences between the poor soils of South American forests and North American forests is just a matter of degree. The deepest fertile soils of the planet are found in the prairies and grasslands. If the grasslands turn to forest, then those soils lose their organic matter and fertility and revert to their basic inorganic nature; clay, or whatever with just the thinnest layer of organic matter at top.
It seems to follow the AMO and Arctic warming since the mid 1990’s, which is also in concert with the altitude shift in atmospheric water vapour, with increases for the lower to mid troposphere, and decreases above that.
Very Interesting article and discussion.
From the article: ““How is it possible for a [CAGW] theory, which is false in its component parts, to be true as a whole.”
Because the theory has an entire propaganda industry promoting the idea as being true. The Leftwing Media in the U.S. and other western nations are working hard every day to make people believe in this theory, and the Alarmists are feeding them one study after another seeming to confirm this theory.
It is being done for control and for the big money involved.
Even so, the thermomter is not cooperating with the theory, and has cast serious doubt over the viability of the CAGW theory. They may have gone about as far as they can go with their “Hottest Year Evah!” claims. Let’s see if next year is a “Hottest Year Evah!”.
I remember back in 2009 when some boffins were dumping iron into the Pacific as yet another exercise in engineering climate. In the spring of that year El NIno obliged by doing what it occasionally does in the right conditions: it dumped millions of tonnes of iron-rich silt from the centre of Australia into the Pacific by catching it up on the strong inland westerlies which are a feature of our springs. Nino feeding Nina, as it were.
Probably the iron-seeders went about their business without paying any heed. Maybe, after perusing the Guardian, they made a remark about erosion or a dust disaster over Eastern Australia before they went back to doing iron-seeding the wrong way…while our spring westerlies were doing it the right way.
You can lead a climate activist to weather phenomena but you can’t make him think.
“in the pre-scientific era”???????? Are you serious,or just spouting nonsense?
Ice cores from glacial periods are full of desert sand while those from interglacial periods have almost none. What does that tell you? Cold = desertification and lots of wind. Via la warming!
Winnipeg misses you Doctor.
The main global wind change that I see is a slight decrease in wind speed over the northern hemisphere because the Arctic is warming more than other parts of the world – that is one thing the models got right. Reduced wind speed means evaporative cooling increases less (as a result of warming) than it would if wind speed stays the same.
Donald L. Klipstein, “The main global wind change that I see is a slight decrease in wind speed over the northern hemisphere”.
WR: Where did you see/observe this main global wind change?
Technically, wind is considered, but just in an obfuscated way. Trenberth lumps this in with ‘back radiation’ and of course, wind is energy transported by matter and not energy transported by photons which is the distinguishing feature of radiation.
The source of the energy driving wind, an in fact all weather, is latent heat. This is obvious in the wake of a Hurricane which leaves a trail of cold water where its been and starts to dissipate once it hits land. This is also indicative of the net effect of clouds and weather is to cool. i.e. a negative feedback like effect.
Another non radiative component of Trenberth’s ‘back radiation’ is the heat returned to the liquid water as it condenses and falls as rain. Rain is much warmer than it would be without the latent heat component. Some latent heat is also converted into the potential energy of liquid water lifted against gravity as it condenses which we tap as hydroelectric power.
co2isnotevil “The source of the energy driving wind, an in fact all weather, is latent heat”
WR: More precisely the source of the energy driving wind is in the weight of air columns. This weight is partly by latent heat in the form of H2O that is lighter than N2 and O2. The other weight determining part is the average temperature of the air column. The higher the temperature, the bigger the distance between the molecules and the less molecules / weight that column of air has.
The role of H2O is important in enforcing wind. A warmer column of air will start to rise and in doing so will attract more air at the surface. When at sea, warm moisture surface air is sucked up, lowering the weight of the air column even more – which will attract even more wind. Waves will enhance evaporation etc. etc.
Besides that, the extra H2O will catch extra photons, both at the surface level and in the rising air column itself and in doing so will raise the temperature of both the attracted and the rising air. (So far I did not read about this and I don’t know how big it’s relative role in the process is)
What goes up, must go down. The lowering air in the corresponding descending air columns is dry and because of this, relatively heavy. Because of this, it lowers and the parcels of air warm up just because of this lowering and get an even lower RH. The dry air doesn’t catch much photons and this air column is a window for extra (!) spaceward radiation (open window) because it misses H2O, compared to the situation before the process of convection. In doing so, the dry air column is cooling the Earth.
Convection in itself has an effect on the distribution of H2O, our main greenhouse gas. H2O is responsible for 75% of the total greenhouse effect. As we saw, the dry air column (low H2O) means also an open window for radiation to space. We find relative low humidity not only in deserts like the Sahara, but also (very dry air) on the Poles. The air in a hurricane may contain up to 400 times the precipitable water content of the air at the South Pole: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=0.43,-90.84,508/loc=-25.572,-89.743
H2O is our main greenhouse gas and is in the same time playing its role in cooling the surface as well as the Earth. Should be in the centre of research. Like wind.
“H2O that is lighter than N2 and O2”
Until it condenses into liquid/solid water which is what we see when we look at clouds since water vapor is invisible.
“Besides that, the extra H2O will catch extra photons”
But the H2O will be emitting photons too, so what do you mean by ‘extra’. For the LTE case, which is all we really care about relative to climate change, the energy of the photons emitted by liquid water in the atmosphere will be equal to that of the photons absorbed. Otherwise, that water is destined to either heat or cool without bound.
Wim,
I also like to think of water as the refrigerant in the global heat engine that produces weather. The second law prohibits a heat engine from warming its source of heat, which in this context, is the surface.
In other words, the net effect of the hydrological cycle (evaporation, water vapor GHG effects, clouds, and weather) must be surface cooling which precludes the possibility of net positive feedback consequential to water. Hurricanes are the existence proof of this.
co2isnotevil September 11, 2016 at 1:46 pm “what do you mean by ‘extra’”
WR More precipitable water in the atmosphere is said to enhance the CO2 effect of warming. If that is true, there is also a local effect because H2O (unlike CO2) is very unevenly distributed in the air.
“More precipitable water in the atmosphere is said to enhance the CO2 effect of warming. If that is true”
It should be clear that it isn’t true. First of all, the CO2 effect of warming is a function of CO2 concentration and nothing more. The presumption that higher temperatures results in more water vapor which results in more H2O GGH effects is unfounded, unwarranted and defied by the data.
A prediction of this presumption is that we should expect to see the surface warm significantly when there is a lot of water vapor in the air. The highest local densities of atmospheric water and water vapor is a Hurricane. If water vapor has a significant warming effect, we should expect a Hurricane to leave a trail of warm surface where its been, while the data tells us the complete opposite.
The problem is that they don’t consider the end to end hydro cycle and instead focus only on the GHG effect of water vapor which constitutes only a tiny fraction of the net effect from the hydrological cycle.
co2isnotevil, perhaps we agree more than you think. I also think that the water cycle is a temperature stabilizing system that corrects a large part (if not all) of any initial warming.
My point is, that because H2O/water vapour is unevenly distributed in the atmosphere, the warming of the surrounding by radiation captured by locally available H2O must have a locally differentiated effect that stimulates the correcting water cycle. Convection is stimulated if H2O catches photons. just because H2O is very unevenly distributed.
For convection you need warm and light air columns – those start the convection process. A lot of H2O makes the air column lighter. When (a lot of) H2O is catching photons as well, the resulting warming will make the air column even lighter – and so stimulate convection.
When warming stimulates emission (and it does) this extra emission in combination with the catching by unevenly distributed water vapour is the cause of a stimulated convection cycle. In doing so, emission is helping to correct any warming in an atmosphere that is dominated by H2O. That is my point.
Win,
I agree about the local effects, but when trying to establish the sensitivity, all we care about are long term averages and how these averages are affected by change. Local effects are irrelevant to global behavior that must adhere to first principles physics in the aggregate and for the averages of local effects across the planet to be in LTE, there can be no excess anything and any locally excess ‘absorption’ is cancelled out by locally deficient absorption somewhere else. Thermals go up, cold air is sinking somewhere else. Latent heat goes up with evaporation and returns the surface as heated liquid water and weather. There is a lot more zero sum behavior going on in the climate that is often thought, especially when we are considering the LTE response.
You can draw an arbitrary Gaussian surface enclosing the planet’s solid surface and the long term average flux crossing this surface will, and in fact must, be zero. Otherwise, along that surface will either warm or cool without bounds until the average flux crossing it is zero. This is actually a more formal definition of LTE.
If it is true that wind plays an important role (I believe it does) & a change in windspeed by 1KPH is significant, what impact would the huge windfarms planned have on a) local weather, and b) climate? They must reduce windspeed in the locality.