From RESEARCH ORGANIZATION OF INFORMATION AND SYSTEMS and the “goodbye climate disruption” department, comes this study that might very well explain why we have less landfalling U.S. hurricanes, less tornadoes, and extreme weather of all kinds seems to be waning.
Climate instability over the past 720,000 years
Ice core analysis from Dome Fuji, Antarctica and climate simulation
A research group formed by 64 researchers from the National Institute of Polar Research, the University of Tokyo, and other organizations analyzed atmospheric temperatures and dust for the past 720,000 years using an ice core obtained at Dome Fuji in Antarctica. Results indicate that when intermediate temperatures occurred within a glacial period, the climate was highly unstable and fluctuated. A climate simulation was also performed based on the Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model, which revealed that the major cause of the observed climate instability was global cooling by a decline in the greenhouse effect.
Climate instability severely impacts both the Earth’s natural environment and human society. In the continued effort for understanding how global warming could affect climate instability, it is important to identify periods in the past that experienced climate instability. These periods need to be studied and modeled to clarify any potential causes of the observed instability. However, little progress has been made in improving our documenting and understanding of climate instability prior to the last glacial period.
The research groups of Dr. Kenji Kawamura and Dr. Hideaki Motoyama (National Institute of Polar Research) analyzed the Second Dome Fuji ice core (Fig. 1, left) that were obtained as part of the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE) between 2003 and 2007. Their team reproduced fluctuations in the air temperature and dust (solid particulate matter carried by the atmosphere) in the Antarctic for the past 720,000 years (Fig. 1, right).
They combined this with data from the Dome C ice core drilled by a European team to obtain highly robust paleoclimate data. They examined these data, discovering that for the past 720,000 years, the intermediate climate within glacial periods was marked by frequent climate fluctuations (Fig. 2).
This raised a question: Why does the most instability occur when there is an intermediate climate during a glacial period, rather than during an interglacial period, such as we are currently experiencing, or during the coldest part of a glacial period? The research group of Dr. Ayako Abe-Ouchi (University of Tokyo) used a climate model (MIROC) to first reproduce three types of background climate conditions–the interglacial period, intermediate climate within a glacial period, and the coldest part of a glacial period. They then performed a simulation that added the same quantity of fresh water to the northern part of the North Atlantic Ocean in each of the three climate conditions. This simulation was performed using the Earth Simulator supercomputer at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). The simulation results indicated that the response to freshwater inflow is maximized during the intermediate climate that occurs within glacial periods, causing the climate to become unstable (Fig. 3 A-C).
An important factor affecting climate instability is the vulnerability of Atlantic deep water circulation during global cooling resulting from a decrease in the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (Fig. 3 D-E). Until now, the primary factor for climatic instability was thought to be the existence and instability of continental ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere, but this experiment has revealed that carbon dioxide is another important factor, determining not only the average state of the climate, but also the long-term stability of the climate. These results also suggest that future stability in the present interglacial period, which has continued for more than 10,000 years, is not guaranteed. Indeed, if significant melting of the Greenland ice sheet occurs due to anthropogenic warming, it might destabilize the climate.
According to Dr. Kawamura, “Due to anthropogenic emissions, the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have reached a level not seen over the past million years. Large climate components, such as ice sheets and the oceans that have vast size and longtime scales for variations, will undoubtedly change. It will become even more important to combine the climate reconstructions and numerical simulations for the periods when the global environment was much different than it is today, to understand the Earth system by verifying its mechanisms.”
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The study results have been published in the on-line journal, Science Advances.
Full study, open access is here: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/2/e1600446.full
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Dr. Kenji Kawamura? Is there something we’re not being told, Anthony? 😉
Anthony’s Kenji would be Kenji Watts. Though I don’t know if he’s a doctor or not.
He’s a card-carrying member of the UCS, so he’s obviously a scientist!
He’s a scientist, but that doesn’t mean he has a doctorate.
How were they able to model northern hemisphere climate from a single Antarctic proxy? It would seem that they would need more data points that one mountain in the southern hemisphere to accurately model global climate.
“They then performed a simulation that added the same quantity of fresh water to the northern part of the North Atlantic Ocean in each of the three climate conditions. ”
Of course they probably have no idea if the quantity of fresh water they simulated is even remotely close to what actually could have happened.
See my comment below. Florida minds thinking alike. Ma Nature ran the experiment for real during the last interglacial, the Eemian. We even know how much delta fresh water added or subtracted from the oceans from the two Eemian high stands and the intervening low. (~ 2-2.5 meters SLR first highstand over 3 millennia, back to present over 4 millennia, then up ~1 meter over 3 millennia, then down into the just past ice age, from which SLR rose ~150 meters in ~ 10 millennia ending ~8 millennia ago). Amazing what modelers do not know that semi-retired climate writers do.
slightly OT.
EPICA CO2 v GRIP Temperature
CO2 Low: Temperature HIGH
CO2 High: Temperature LOW.. like it is currently, barely a small bump above the COLDEST period in 10,000 years.
And the recent small spike in CO2, from whatever cause…
…great for the planets plant and other life, more please.
No use at all for warming anything, unfortunately.
No warming from CO2 over oceans
No warming in our convective gravity/pressure/density controlled atmosphere.
We are destined to remain at the less-warm part of the current interglacial.
I see four or five lines of data traced on that image, and not a single one of them is identified as to what it is.
Nor is the source identified.
Not nice.
source is obvious… EPICA core CO2 (black overlay)
and GISP temperatures.. a graph that has been around for ages..
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/01/ice-core-data-shows-the-much-feared-2c-climate-tipping-point-has-already-occurred/
When you overlay one graph on top of another, of course it gets messy.
Shows I have not tampered with the given data in any way.
I think the color coding is given away by the borders of the temperature boxes: Red and Dark Red. By a process of elimination, the other two curves, Orange and Dun, are carbon dioxide for the corresponding dates.
AndyG55, you are mixing two hemispheres. Greenland and Antarctica. Dunno if that works or not. Sufficiently interesting chart to maybe write up with more explanation as a possible longer guest post here?
Are you saying that CO2 is not well mixed in the atmosphere ? 😉
No. That temps are not.
temperature pattern is similar in many places.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/03/20/50-inverted-hockey-sticks-scientists-find-earth-cools-as-co2-rises/#sthash.tSLrdyoy.dpbs
Holocene OPTIMUM -> cooling through Neoglaciation -> MWP -> cooling to LIA -> very slight bump to now.
Another similar graph
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GAOgOInKk7I/VI9wifApBrI/AAAAAAAAAGU/U_CJdGcUYJ0/s1600/GISP2%2Bvs%2BCO2%2Bprez%2Bflipped.png
That one is from Jim Steele.
That’s a good one.
Thanks.
Well, I’m stumped. The polar axis has moved another degree through the night sky out of Ophiuchus, toward the Teapot, and that wobble hasn’t even been mentioned.
The birds come back from the south on time, but there’s no food for them, so I have to be Bird Mom and put out food for the little darlin’s, the grackles, brownheaded cowbirds, redwinged blackbirds – all common field birds that no one pays attention to – and they want to know WHY ARE THERE NO BUGS FOR THEM TO EAT??????
They appreciate my including dried mealworms in the menu, too, but they just do not understand why, why, why there are no bugs or worms for them when it is the end of frakkin’ March and they are hungry. Yes, I have pictures, dates embedded in the photo files.
I do not understand why, when there is so much more to a planet like this, why these so-called scientists can’t see past the grant money and get out of their cloistered habitats to see the real world occasionally. If they did that, they might be better scientists, and they might actually understand that this planet is actually bigger than they are, and they have no control over what it does. I guess grant money and cozy computer labs count for more. It’s like an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ at times.
I couldn’t even read it……1/2 or even 1 degree, even if you believe that, did not make one bit of difference
I knew it! It is the clashing of hot and cold systems that create storms. If the cold warms up a little and the hot cools off there is less difference and less severe storms.
This could turn out to be a really inconvenient science study for the CAGW believers (faithful).
Read the entire paper plus SI (many scientific bodies buried in SIs, see essays By Land or by Sea and Shell Games for examples). Hard to argue with the ice core evidence plotted in fig. 2. Easy to argue with the causitive explanation developed by this paper using climate models–changes in fresh water ocean influx, primarily NH NA. Were this the case, then the two highstand Eemian interglacial with its intervening ‘lowstand’ should have produced corresponding 3x climate shifts on order of 3000 years each. But it didn’t, according to fig. 2. Dunno what the cause for the ice core observations might be, but it isn’t interstadial meltwater. Ma Nature already ran that experiment.
Lapse rate?
“Until now, … but this experiment has revealed that carbon dioxide is another important factor”
Good Grief. There was not experiment. Simulations are not experiments. CO2 is an important factor in their simulations because that is the way they were programed.
No experiments were conducted and no data was generated. Like the rest of “Climate Science” it was an elaborate act of mathematical onanism.
Experiment ?
I just still want to see an experimentally demonstrated course in the most basic quantitative equations of heat transfer I would expect as fundamentals in any course in planetary physics as rigorous as I would expect in an undergraduate course in any other branch of applied physics like , eg : semiconductors .
That’s why I’ve set up a prize fund for best YouTube demo at http://cosy.com/Science/ComputationalEarthPhysics.html#YouTubePhysicsDemoFund . Join me .
before reading this my understanding of thermodynamics is a warming earth would manifest in the cold temperatures not being as cold because the warmth seeks cold, that would mean lesser differential between the air masses of warm and cold and weaker storms…….
The ten Aprils 1998-2007, inclusive, were significantly warmer than the ten most recent Aprils. Both intervals included super El Ninos. UAH April anomalies, degrees C:
1998: 0.74 W
1999: 0.01 C
2000: 0.05 W
2001: 0.20 Warmer
2002: 0.23 W
2003: 0.15 Cooler
2004: 0.14 C
2005: 0.33 W
2006: 0.07 C
2007: 0.14 W
10-Yr Mean: 0.206
2008: -0.13 C
2009: -0.01 C
2010: 0.32 W
2011: -0.04 C
2012: 0.11 W
2013: 0.05 C
2014: 0.11 W
2015: 0.08 C
2016: 0.71 W
2017: 0.27 C
10-Yr Mean: 0.147
Taking whole years, as computed and rounded by Dr. Spencer, the past ten years have averaged slightly warmer than the prior ten. Obviously can’t include 2017 yet.
RANK YEAR deg.C.
01 2016 +0.50 (Super El Nino)
04 2015 +0.26
08 2014 +0.18
10 2013 +0.13
16 2012 +0.06
19 2011 +0.02
03 2010 +0.34
13 2009 +0.10
29 2008 -0.10
09 2007 +0.16
10-Year Mean: 0.165
12 2006 +0.11
06 2005 +0.20
14 2004 +0.08
07 2003 +0.19
05 2002 +0.22
11 2001 +0.12
25 2000 -0.02
24 1999 -0.02
02 1998 +0.48 (Super El Nino)
22 1997 -0.01
10-Year Mean: 0.135
23 1996 -0.01
15 1995 +0.07
28 1994 -0.06
31 1993 -0.20
36 1992 -0.28 (Pinatubo Effect)
20 1991 +0.02
21 1990 +0.01
32 1989 -0.21
18 1988 +0.04 (Year of Hansen)
17 1987 +0.05
34 1986 -0.22
38 1985 -0.36
35 1984 -0.24
26 1983 -0.04
37 1982 -0.30
30 1981 -0.11
27 1980 -0.04
33 1979 -0.21
For the 20 years, 1997-2016, thus the average anomaly is 0.15, or 0.0075 per year. At that rate, we’d warm 0.63 degrees by AD 2100. Scary!
wrote these 2 blogs on this matter, though a much shorter term observation
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/43756 Why a Warming World May Be the Cause of Less Weather Woes
and this
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/48170
Is the Current Climate Cycle Thwarting Major U.S. Hurricane Hits?
Thanks for those articles, Joe.
I’m a believer that the weather is definitely getting milder, and the explanation that the poles are warming while the tropics are not or just barely, makes sense, but I’m not clear as to what would cause this difference.
You mention CO2 as a possible cause. My question is how can CO2 warm one section of the globe and not another, at the same time?
On topic, we have to be ready for worse weather (it seems to be starting, maybe) as the cooling gathers strength. The warmists are already skewing their story to claim it (eg Rutgers), so it behooves us to get our act together. The Quiet Sun’s , wild jetstreams/polar vortices will get rough and cold, off and on, with much storm damage and loss of crops. Arguing about less or fewer or ancient symbols will not cut it. Plenty of fossil fuels and distributed thorium reactors, for instance, can make a huge difference. With energy, we can do wonders. Without it, we perish.
Caution, this is a move to explain away the lack of increasing magnitude and frequency for droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes.
“Uh, we meant that CO2 causes what we see NOW. Ignore all the fire and brimstone Obama touted.”
“A climate simulation was also performed based on the Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model, which revealed that the major cause of the observed climate instability was global cooling by a decline in the greenhouse effect.”
Impressing! Physics do change over time – NOT! There’s no “greenhouse effect” today as there was no “greenhouse effect” last year.
“An important factor affecting climate instability is the vulnerability of Atlantic deep water circulation during global cooling resulting from a decrease in the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration ..”
So now CO2 also controls the deep oceans?
This is alarmist propaganda, pure and simple. What ever they are milking the tax payers, it is too much!
Yes with “intermediate temperatures” “the climate was highly instabil”:
“Results indicate that when intermediate temperatures occurred within a glacial period, the climate was highly unstable and fluctuated. A climate simulation was also performed based on the Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model, which revealed that the major cause of the observed climate instability was global cooling by a decline in the greenhouse effect.”
______________________________________
NO – where’s the connection with
“global cooling by a decline in the greenhouse effect”:
SHOULDN’T THAT BE
“decline in the greenhouse effect BY GLOBAL COOLING” !
The cooling driver “intermediate climate during a glacial period”
drives to
“decline in the greenhouse effect.”
There’ll be no more funding or grants for these honest scientists after this scientific study which came to the politically incorrect finding.
A warm planet is a happy planet
CO2 is a beneficial trace gas that feeds plants and greens the planet. It may have a negligible to small warming effect, which is also beneficial, as noted in the article. Life on earth has always prospered during warmer times, and has suffered during colder times. Attempts to demonize CO2 are money-making scams from Global Warming of Doom cultists.
” Life on earth has always prospered during warmer times, and has suffered during colder times. ”
Not only that, life clearly wants more CO2 or it wouldn’t be sucking it up twice as fast as it did only 50 years back. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13428
“Over the past 50 years, the amount of CO2 absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial biosphere annually has more than doubled”
Isn’t that like how an aquarium responds if you aren’t giving enough fish food then start increasing the amount?
Anthony:
Your site is exhibiting sporadic cursor/page reset that seems to be related to Google ads. It makes continuous reading very difficult.
Some places in the tropics see more diurnal temperature variation than annual temperature variation. I think the key is not temperature itself but humidity (water as vapor or clouds) which keeps temperature higher at night.