Guest weather analysis by Joe D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow.
It has been for northern Europe a hot summer. Is it climate change as the media would like to have us believe? Or, is it something much simpler? For example, ocean patterns. Off the coast of Africa, water was coldest in the entire record back to 1950. A temperature change in one place of the oceans, means a change elsewhere also.
The UK July ranked 3rd warmest since 1950 in the very long term (starting 1659) temperature data-base from Central England.
The last 30 days has been warm in most of Europe but cooler in Iberia, Italy and the Balkans
The heat intensified the last week.
Anomalies were very large Wednesday in the northeast.
Portugal was in the news because of developing heat though they actually had an unusually cool summer.
The driver for the warmth was the cold tripole in the Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies. Off Africa, water was coldest in the entire record back to 1950.
The TNA (Tropical Northern Atlantic) Index will update for July in a few days but June was a record negative (cold) in sharp contrast to 2017. This should lead to a quieter hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin.
For years with greater than 1 STD negative TNA in June, the ACE Index was negative.
But it has major impacts also downstream. See how in the upper atmosphere low heights were seen over colder water and positive anomalies over warm water. Downstream from the North Atlantic trough, a ridge built in the north.
Surface pressure matched the 500mb heights.
Warmth built in the ridges, cooler than normal temperatures lingered in the troughs.
In southern Europe in the lower pressures, it was wet, while it was dry in the northern ridges.
The EPS seems to be trying to evolve the pattern to one less extreme after the heat today with an impressive transient trough. Given the ocean patterns, it probably will be brief or limited as the ensemble model shows.
Why does the Pacific have a El Nino/La Nina…..and not the Atlantic? /snark
I was surprised to find that the Atlantic isn’t that much smaller than the Pacific. The Pacific is about 165 million square km. The Atlantic is about 106 million square km. The width, on the other hand, is no contest. The Atlantic is a mere 3,000 km between Brazil and Sierra Leone. The Pacific is about 18,000 km from Panama to the Malay peninsula.
My guess is that the Pacific has much more room for east-west currents to develop. The El Nino regions wouldn’t come close to fitting in the Atlantic at the equator.
well….they both look, act, and flow exactly the same way…and everyone ignores the Atlantic
Seems to me that the Gulf Stream bleeds off heat from S. Atlantic surface waters Northward constantly whereas heat accumulates in Western Pacific surface waters until it moves en masse during el Nino.
Um, 165-106 = 59. (59/106) * 100 = 55.7%.
56% larger area is “not that much smaller”?
Just eyeballing it on the map, I always thought the difference was greater.
The Atlantic is 64% of the size of the Pacific using the numbers cited.
106/165 = .642 or 64%
Is that why the Pacific is less salty than the Atlantic?
Why do fish swim in salt water?
Because pepper makes them sneeze.
Why is the sea salty?
Because it has codfish.
But if you do the relationship the other way: 59/165 => The Atlantic is only 35% smaller than the Pacific. I can see his point. The way most people talk, it would seem the Atlantic is less than half the size of the Pacific.
59/165= 35.7% smaller
According to NOAA Atlantic is just over 50% the area of the Pacific Ocean.
This checks out with other inet entries (Atlantic about 85 million sq km).
Pacific 169 million sq km. Atlantic 85 million sq km. About half the size.
There are ways of monitoring warm and cool phases of the Atlantic ocean/atmosphere so it is not being ignored.
The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the less well known Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
Actually, your queston has profound implications. It’s poorly understood, and there’s more speculation than is healthy, but it looks like the closing of the Panama Seaway led to our current ice age. The world was a warmer place when the Atlantic and Pacific could exchange water near the equator. Was there an El Nino then? I have no clue. It’s pretty much guaranteed that whatever was in place changed when the isthmus was created.
Isn’t it because there is no warm pool on the coast of South America to accumulate heated water unlike the Pacific where the archipelagos of southeast Asia store the heated water? When the Pacific trade winds stop the water flows eastward along the suface and dumps lots of energy into the atmosphere. Nothing like this can happen in the Atlantic because there is no stroage.
The warm pool is the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. The warm water there does not appear to flow eastward like the El Nino/La Nina cycle. The Gulf Stream moves the water north and east. Perhaps the difference is in the strength of the Gulf Stream versus the Japan current.
Well, we are having a hurricane in the Pacific. I mean that musta been caused by gorebull warming, right?
You mean that one that is no bigger than a little Hectar
Convective activity in the Atlantic Main Development Region has been very suppressed with large outbreaks of the Saharan Air Layer. Things will change as we move toward the peak of the season in late August/early September, but it’s really quiet now.
Joe,
Welcome back and thanks for posting.
“This should lead to a quieter hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin.”
Is there also a possibility that we will see more meridional tracking storms producing heavy snowfall in Greenland as per the track of Hurricane Nicole in 2016?
https://watchers.news/2016/10/18/hurricane-nicole-greenland-iceland-2016/
Already happened, hardly a single day with normal melt:
“Already happened, hardly a single day with normal melt”
Hi tty,
I agree. I have been watching the BBC weather graphics over the past month showing storm tracks producing snow over Greenland, as your graph confirms. Looks like the natural climate shift from warming zonal flow to cooling meridional flow is becoming entrenched. I am not looking forward to this coming winter.
I find it such a relief to have some sane reporting, and to look at real factors. It is downright refreshing, (even on a hot and muggy summer day). Thanks, Joe.
In the ordinary media the reports always have to tie in to Global Warming somehow, and stress that things are worse than ever, (even “the worst since civilization began”, as California’s governor suggested the other day). This makes me have to go look, and it always turns out you can find some prior event in history that was worse. So that proves the worst-ever news is “fake news”. But the next day the media goes and does the same thing all over again.
I was talking to an acquaintance, and he mentioned it takes him only fifteen minutes now to fact-check a sensational weather headline and see it is false. We’ve had so much practice we are getting good at it. But that doesn’t make it fun. It’s basically a headache. It’s just the same old nonsense over and over and over and….
Worst is getting screamed at, and called a “denier”, for simply pointing out we’ve had worse storms in the past, such as the 1938 hurricane. With so many summer houses built along the shore since then, a repeat of that hurricane might be a trillion dollar storm.
I thought back, and decided it was 2002 that I first got screamed at for not being politically-correct concerning Global Warming. 16 years! So I wrote a history of the screeching, and my approach to handling it:
http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/screamers-or-how-to-lose-friends-and-irritate-people/
To escape all that yakking, and just read an analysis of meteorological realities, is like a breath of fresh air!
[“the worst since civilization began”, as California’s governor suggested ]
I wasn’t aware California had any civilization
I believe California just lacks much civilized civilization.
It is reported that Ghandi was asked what he thought of western civilization. He replied that it would be nice. link Perhaps he knew about California.
Caleb
Unlikely to get a visit from Ralph in the Arctic this year.
Regards
Caleb, I read your entire “Appendix”. I myself was amazed when a first cousin called me Racist. So I said I would stipulate that just to save time and get back to the question I had asked? Next thing I know she had blocked me, and still hasn’t answered the question I asked. So I see I’m not the only one who has encountered this behavior. Been Screamed-At in other words.
I told you it is globally cooling. More rain and clouds at the lower lats and drier at the higher lats.
Simple physics. This will continue for the next 8 years or so.
Warm and dry summers and cooler and dry winters.
Nobody ever heard of the dust bowl drought?
Curiously enough…
I just saw the first dust storm, here on the news,
somewhere in Phoenix, if I remember correctly?
…much more to come up in the years ahead!!
The monsoon season starts in the Sonora Desert in early-July. There are many storms throughout the month, with winds capable of snapping power-line poles. Since there may be winds outside of where it is actually raining, dust storms are the usual result. When it isn’t dust, it is muddy torrential flood waters in the arroyos — and sometimes in the underpasses. People in Phoenix and Tucson are warned not to drive into water on the roads because the road bed may be washed out and they and their car are at risk of being washed out also.
To me this is a no-brainer. Take a look at:
and
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44935152
Join the dots ………….
I have been observing sea surface temperatures in relation to land surface temperatures on a regular basis since a warm pool in the Tasman Sea caused a record high LST for January 2018 in New Zealand. It has dispersed and we are now back to average or below
Its pretty hard getting info on Chile but just look at what they have in their back yard. I find one report of ruined vegetable and fruit crops by frosts in June 2018
SE Australia has been getting some cold snaps too:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-15/temperatures-plummet-as-cold-snap-hits-nsw/9995858
Its the sea, silly
Regards
M
true. It is whatever UV (mostly) the sun gives to the sea – going through the window of the atmosphere.
Nope, not much UV – mostly visible light:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Solar_spectrum_en.svg
The sea is good at absorbing light – it is quite dark seen from above.
You are kidding me. Right?. Have you ever tried heating water with flash light? How did that work?
Henry …. I believe he is referring to short wave radiation vs long wave radiation. SW penetrates to depth …. LW can only warm the surface skin and gets eaten up in the evaporation process.
No it is the UV light which is most important when it comes to sea surface temperatures.
True.
I too am very sceptical about the ability of visible light to heat anything. I was once silly enough to place a briefcase in front of an IR heater for a few seconds. Fortunately there was no fire, but it got very hot and parts of it melted. This would not have happened if I had placed it in front of a normal visible light source.
both UV and IR heat water as it gets absorbed and eventually transformed to heat.
Visible light does nothing.
UV is more important than IR as it contains more energy.
Good heavens, henryrp, are you changing physics?
Water absorbs all wavelengths (except of course reflected light), and all wavelengths contribute to warming (down to some limit that depends on the temperature of the water, but that limit is way down there). How much any particular wavelength band contributes to warming depends on two things: the intensity of the light in that band, and the energy of an individual photon in that band. As you say, UV photons contain more energy than visible, and also visible light photons carry more energy than IR photons. But this intensity per photon is countered by the distribution of photons at different wavelengths, which is a function of how much light the Sun puts out at different wavelengths (which depends in turn mostly on its surface temperature), and on wavelengths that get absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere (including clouds). The net result is shown by a graph here: http://solarjourneyusa.com/sunlight.php (and many similar ones elsewhere on the web).
To decide how much heating different wavelengths contribute, you’d compute the area under the curve for that band. As I think you can see from the graph referenced above, visible sunlight and near IR contribute much more to warming than UV, because the UV is so attenuated (relatively few photons of it reach the Earth’s surface). If the Sun were a class O or B star, instead of a class G star, that would be different.
mcswell
looking at the spectra, water has [some] absorption in the UV and the IR..
I suspect this absorption effect is stronger and enhanced in sea water. Pity I cannot find the spectra of seawater. Nobody figured that one out , it seems.
Anyway….
Where there is absorption there is re-radition and subsequent change to kinetic energy as in the oceans there is a lot of water mass.
So it is not the incoming radiation that determines the behavior we see of a substance that is being exposed to it. It is the spectrum of the substance that is important.
Must make the remark that the lecture you quoted me is of course incorrect in blaming CO2 for global warming.
CO2 has absorptions in the UV, in the 1-2 um and 4-5 um range which is in the suns/’ spectrum. Hence the dents it makes in the picture you are showing us – CO2 is cooling the atmosphere here
Click on my name to find the results of my investigations into AGW.
An IR heater radiates anywhere from 1.5 to 3 kW whereas a residential light is normally less than 0.1 kW. Place your briefcase in front of a 1.5 kW visible light source (such as a 1.5 kW visible laser) and watch what happens. Don’t leave any important papers in the briefcase.
Bill,
I have 4 lamps (total 1kW) in my bathroom to warm me and evaporate the water off my skin when I step out of the bath. … Now, obviously, I could put in 4 x 10W LED’s to give me the same amount of light in my bathroom, but will it evaporate the water off my skin and warm me anything at all?
The moral of my story?
Henryp: The moral of the story is that there is a 2 order of magnitude difference in energy between the 1kW lamps and the 10W LED’s. The 1kW of incandescent put most of their energy out as IR, while the LED’s put most of their energy out as visible light such that the total visible light energy of the LED’s is close to the visible light energy of the 1kW lamps, BUT the point is the total energy of the system. One kW is obviously going to warm more than 10W. If you put 100 10W LED bulbs in for a total of 1kW light you would warm just as fast, but would probably go blind pretty quickly. My point about the laser. A visible laser is mono chromatic visible light, yet it can melt steel and start fires. It’s all about Watts per unit area and amount of reflection vs. absorption.
Bill, you say
The 1kW of incandescent put most of their energy out as IR, while the LED’s put most of their energy out as visible light such that the total visible light energy of the LED’s is close to the visible light energy of the 1kW lamps
Henry says
What you say, indeed, agreed.
The moral of the story is that the 4 x 0.25kW not only give out light but much IR as well.
and \it is the UV and the IR that will burn you, although in the case of UV you will not notice it immediately.
100 x 10W LED’s visible light would still have no effect on my skin and still not heat you. It goes through the water, albeit refracted.
You can take the analogy of the UV burning the top of your skin one step further. Namely, it makes sense to believe that whatever UV is allowed through the atmosphere [which depends on the ozone, peroxide and N-O concentrations TOA] , it will heat the top layer of the water molecules of the oceans to boiling point thereby immediately evaporating from liquid to vapor. Hence my argument that it is probably by a large degree the amount of UV coming through the atmosphere that determines global T.
Imagine that the sun did not set for at least a month and the ocean thereby accumulated all of the sun’s radiation 24/7. What would happen to the seawater?:
a) Boil uncontrollably
b) Temperature increase by considerable amount
c) All of the sea ice would melt
d) The heat would be dissipated by ocean currents to other lattitudes
e) The heat would hide in the depths of the sea
e) None of the above
Oh wait…….
Imagine that there was a large lake located on the African equator (thereby ruling out the effects of depth, currents and sun incident angle in one fell stroke) that was subjected to intense solar radiation. What would happen to the water?:
a) Boil uncontrollably
b) Water temperature would increase by considerable amount
c) Water temperature would depend primarily upon the elevation (altitude) of the body of water
e) None of the above
reductio ad absurdum
1350 W/sq m, 10 hours a day, absorbed more than 80%. That’ll do nicely.
Incidently Henry, have you ever tried to boil a pan of water by heating the air above it with a bunsen burner, for instance. Now that is one idea that really doesn’t work.
Hi Ed
If you hold a block of iced water above the burner I am pretty sure it will kill the fire from your Bunsen burner dead.
Never mind that. This was not the argument.
To predict if radiation is transformed to heat [as we know it] we have to look at the spectra of the substances receiving it, not so? either it goes through or it does not ….and what happens exactly when it does not go through?
The only thing one needs to know is how much energy is absorbed. Everything that is not reflected is absorbed. It depends perhaps on wavelength at what depth it is absorbed but in the end all non-refected radiation becomes part of the heat content of the water.
Incidently, if you hold the bunsen burner above the ice, not as you mention below, it may melt some ice on top but very, very slowly. The idea that it is the atmosphere that by warming indirectly warms the underlaying ocean is just nonsense.
Forget about the ice. I was just joking. Indeed, you are right about the amount of energy being absorbed. But I doubt if you understand why and how much radiation is deflected /reflected out to space.
For example, for proof that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine, see here:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec
They measured the re-radiation from CO2 as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth-moon -earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um. It all comes back in fig. 7
This paper here shows that there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
http://www.nat.vu.nl/en/sec/atom/Publications/pdf/DUV-CO2.pdf
There are other papers that I can look for again that will show that there are also absorptions of CO2 at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has big absorption between 4 and 5 um.
So, to sum it up, we know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-15 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine) but as shown and proved above it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by re-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results?
Michael
I am on the east of the South island. Over the last few years the intensity and duration of the westerly, nor westerly winds winds has dropped during the September to November period. The warm peak has passed.
Regards
True.
There you go supplying us with data and an intelligent scientific explanation. It’s so much easier to go medieval and blame everything on angering the pagan god Climate Change.
Thank you for the detailed information. I will happily link to this when I tilt against the climate change worshipers on social media.
Hi Joe, your comment “Off the coast of Africa, water was coldest in the entire record back to 1950”. This is a period when I think sea-ice extent was also very low in the NH. I believe through latent heat exchange with the arctic vortex we get a quasi 60 -70 year oscillation in the ice extent/ NAO/ AMO and PDO. This is modulated by solar influences on the stratospheric vortex, which can also effect the NAO.
There are MANY experts here at WUWT of which you are definitely one. If any of you see any merit in the above then you should publish this so it could be considered by the wider scientific community. However I have been wrong before and no doubt will be wrong again.
sincerely -Bruce.
Joe always is right on.
I’m guessing a lot of people don’t know Joe D’Aleo was one of the founders of The Weather Channel way, way back when.
I subscribe to WeatherBell where he puts out a daily short on lots of different things as well as a video now and then (this essay was put there earlier). I will say between him and Bastardi, I have learned a lot about weather, weather patterns, causal phenomena and all kinds of things.
Joe A and Joe B are the best in their field, based on their strong predictive track record.
I keep hearing that Australia is having an exceptionally cold winter. Well, in the south east anyway. But the BOM say that July was the 2nd warmest ever. What’s going on?
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml
This is why because numerous stations were deliberately cooled in the past. It then makes it virtually impossible to not record near record temperatures most of the time. With Australia’s environment being mainly one huge desert with little change in weather patterns. It makes it more or less impossible even with record cold to get below normal temperatures.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/bom-finally-explains-cooling-changed-to-warming-trends-because-stations-might-have-moved/
Cooling of the past are just not supported.
Australia (Cloncurry), Queensland Jan. 16, 1889 128f 53c
“Longest hot spell (world): Marble Bar, W. Australia, 100 °F (38 °C) (or above) for 162 consecutive days, Oct. 30, 1923 to Apr. 7, 1924.”
https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/MichaelLevin.shtml
Also cold in WA.
“The tail end of yesterday’s strong cold front ripped through much of Western Australia overnight and delivered damaging winds and widespread hail, as well as snow to one of the state’s highest peaks.”
Perth weather 02 August 2018: Snow falls at Bluff Knoll as cold front knocks out power to WA homes
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-02/perth-weather-snow-bluff-knoll-cold-front-power-wa-homes/10064746
On the western side of Australia, the cooler summers, now two in a row, have been more noticeable, with an absence of the hot morning winds from the interior being replaced by cool humid air from the cold southern ocean. But yes, the western winter this year has been a lot colder with a lot of rain. Our useless BOM is of course not mentioning how cold it has become.
August winds are back, the system seems to be operating normally once again.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/a-windy-week-for-southern-australia/528261
Almost all of Australia has had one of the warmest winters on record.
BoM is not mentioning that the subtropical ridge collapsed this time last year, allowing for blocking highs and a return of winter rains to southern Australia. NSW and western Queensland have missed out.
South Africa’s drought also eased, so I’m calling this a hemispheric cooling signal.
This weak jet stream over the Atlantic can persist during solar minimum. Europe is threatened by a dry and frosty winter this year.
Yes, if the pattern remains stubborn as it has since February, Europe will be in for a cold winter and maybe even severe. Last time a pattern like this remained throughout the winter was 1962/63, but these are very rare because the jet stream usually gets stronger during winter.
The surface temperature of the North Atlantic is still very low.
Geomagnetic activity dropped very much.
A strong solar wind transmits energy to the upper atmosphere.
Small fluctuations in neutrons indicate a minimum of solar activity.
The monthly average exceeded 6,700 counts.
That is my opinion as well. Cool and dry winter coming up. In Europe. And North America as well.
CET Summer 2018 vs 1976
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CET1976-2018.htm
42 years equals 2 Hale cycles. That is half a GB cycle. It means if 1976 is zero 2018 is back to zero. 87 years GB cycle is one whole sine wave.
I just have to chuckle at “3rd warmest July ever for central England” Their warmest July ever @19.7 C is colder than Portland Oregon (where I live) **Average** July temperature of 20.4C. And the Pacific Northwest is considered one of the cooler areas of the US. It is all a matter of perspective.
“Is it climate change as the media would like to have us believe? Or, is it something much simpler? For example, ocean patterns. ”
False dichotomy fallacy.
To Mr d’Aleo : “it has been… a hot summer…”; sorry Sir, it is a hot summer, and it is not over yet. It’s funny when you write about the temperature in July ranking third highest since 1950 in “the very long term record of Central England Temperature (since 1659!)”. What sort of stable animal manure are you getting in print?
A simple rule for simple fools: don’t correct a native speaker on the idiom of their mother tongue when you speak it so poorly yourself.
Sure, Ryan, a change in ocean currents could cause (or be caused by) a change in climate (if climate is just the average weather over some arbitrary time period such as 30 years).
The obvious intent of that question is whether the current unusual conditions are going to be near the average going forward or if they are explained by mechanisms that periodically occur and ultimately reverse so that the long term average isn’t changing much.
More to the point, even though the climate is changing (because it is never staying the same), the relevant question is whether the change is a natural phenomenon that we can only adapt to, or is it something we are causing and so, we should change our activities?
Of course, that is also a false dichotomy, because human activity changing the atmosphere must have some effect even if it may be trivial or even counter to the natural warming trend. And natural factors have a 4.5 billion year history of causing major climate change, so even if counterintuitively they are suddenly less important than human effects, they must still always be present. Obviously it’s both human-caused and natural effects in play.
We’re asked to believe that burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change which it seems to me is absurd. There is a short-term warming trend that reversed a short term cooling trend. But this is superimposed on a long-term cooling trend of climate optimums that are each successively cooler. But there is an even longer-term warming trend since the last ice age. Most of these trends are obviously natural trends. How did those natural factors suddenly become irrelevant?
If excess CO2 is the master control knob that overwhelmed all natural factors, how would we explain cooling from the late 40s to 70s as CO2 emissions became significant? How do we explain the first one and a half decades of the current century where CO2 emissions accelerated and temperatures hardly changed? You can dream up stories about aerosols cooling the atmosphere followed by pollution controls reducing the effect, followed by China re-polluting the atmosphere with aerosols. I guess now the claim is that China has cleaned up their act?
The bottom line is that we just need to adapt to whatever temperatures come. Even if fossil fuel burning has caused a degree of warming, the cure is far worse than the disease.
I found it interesting to see that Cyprus was in a cooler area on each of the first three graphics. We were in Cyprus in 1976 where we had a rather cooler summer than usual while my family baked in that long hot summer in England. Same pattern perchance?
yes
“Simpler?”
Yes!
“Climate” is an illusion!
Ha ha jajajajajajaj
Evapotranspiration from water cycle gives 486000 km^3/year. WIKI gives 503000 but we will use the lower figure.
1 km^3 = 10^12 kg
Heat of vapourization of water at 20C = 2,450,000 Joules/kg
Number of seconds in a year = 3.1536 x 10^7
1 watt = 1 Joule /second
Surface area of earth = 5.1x 10^11 m^2
NASA graph gives evapotranspiration = 86.4W/m^2 Check their Earth’s energy budget graph on their website
The task is to convert the latent heat that is represented inside the water molecule from the water cycle upon evaporation to a W/m^2 equivalent of NASA’s figure of 86.4 W/m^2. I want to see if NASA’s figure has any basis in reality.
Solution : Total evapotranspiration = 486000 km^3/year * 10^12kg = 4.86 x 10^17 kg/year
Total number of Joules = 2,450,000 Joules/kg * 4.86 x 10^17 kg/year
= 1.1907 x 10 ^24 Joules/year
Number of Joules/second = 1.1907 x 10 ^24 Joules/year divided by 3.1536 x 10^7 sec/year
= 3.775684932 x 10^16 Joules /sec
= 3.775684932 x 10^16 Watts
W/m^2 from surface = (3.775684932 x 10^16 Watts) divided by 5.1x 10^11 m^2
= 7.403303788 x10^4 W/m^2
~ 74,033
divide by 4 because the earth is a sphere and is diurnal = ~18,508 W/m^2
which is 214.2 times the NASA figure. Where did I go wrong?
You maybe forgot that 2 gazinta 4, 2 times, per the Bodine-Method. 😉
Very low surface temperature of the tropical Atlantic in the area of formation of hurricanes.
Excellent review of the weather situation.
However, without panic it is useless in today’s world.
OK, I’ll bite, where is it driving Hurricane season to?
The hurricane in the Eastern Pacific is heading towards Hawaii.
To drink, of course…
I knew someone would get into the spirit!
Where does the jet stream fit in please?
who knows which way the wind will be blowing, exactly?
click on my name and figure it out
more or less
Along with the dry air, Stratospheric Intrusions bring high amounts of ozone into the tropospheric column and possibly near the surface.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/gif_files/gfs_o3mr_250_NA_f00.png
Where are the hurricanes?
Climate change demands that hurricanes are more numerous and onerous 🙂
Not every year, as factors such as upper wind shear and dry Saharan air intrusion come into play also.
It’s interesting how the very small areas of Europe that are cooler than average are only cooler by about 1 to 3 degrees, whereas the rest of the continent is about 5 to 7 degrees above normal (and that’s Celcius as well- that’s a big difference). When was the last time a European summer was appreciably cooler than average (relative to say the 80s)? It seems to me that over the last 20 years the summers across most of the continent have been far warmer than “normal”?
The Pacific is wide enough for complete gyres to establish themselves. You need at least 5000 km unobstructed width. With it comes the sloshing that we call the El Nino/LaNina quasi cycles. The Atlantic is not big enough for similar. Therefore the gyre that tries to form in the North Atlantic, for instance, is hemmed in by the adjacent landmasses of Northern Europe and warped into what we call the Gulfstream.