Guest essay by Eric Worrall
And both increased and decreased cloud cover is bad.
Global heating warming up ‘nights faster than days’
Effect seen across much of world will have profound consequences, warn scientists
Damian Carrington
Environment editorThe climate crisis is heating up nights faster than days in many parts of the world, according to the first worldwide assessment of how global heating is differently affecting days and nights.
The findings have “profound consequences” for wildlife and their ability to adapt to the climate emergency, the researchers said, and for the ability of people to cool off at night during dangerous heatwaves.
The scientists compared the rises in daytime and night-time temperatures over the 35 years up to 2017. Global heating is increasing both, but they found that over more than half of the world’s land there was a difference of at least 0.25C between the day and night rises.
…
The changes are the result of global heating causing changes to clouds. Where cloud cover increases, sunlight is blocked during the day but the clouds retain more heat and humidity at night, like a blanket.
This leads to nights getting increasingly hotter compared with days. Where cloud cover is decreasing, mostly in regions that are already dry, there is more sunlight during the day, which pushes temperatures up more rapidly.
..,.
Cox’s team also looked at vegetation growth and found that it was reduced where nights were getting warmer faster than days, probably because the increased cloud cover blocks the sun.
However, plant growth was also reduced in places where the days warmed more, as there were fewer clouds and less rainfall. Both effects are likely to cut crop yields and, for example, reduce nectar and pollen production that many insects rely on.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/01/global-heating-warming-up-nights-faster-than-days
The study is available here.
Trying to claim that any change is bad is where in my opinion climate science really jumps the shark.
There have to be winners from any shift in global climate, up or down. There are many places in the world where temperature and climatic conditions are suboptimal, and a little warming or cooling would improve quality of life and growing conditions.
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The climate may be getting less cold. Is that a bad thing?
no
They left off the end of this sentence” Where cloud cover is decreasing, mostly in regions that are already dry, there is more sunlight during the day, which pushes temperatures up more rapidly.”and more rapidly cools at night. We have been experiencing 50° swings for the past couple of weeks, where 30-35° is the norm in west central Colorado.
And if the daytime temperatures refuse to reach inferno-like levels (Ed Z, hadn´t you commented like that, I would have, we know “our” Guardian too well… How silly can it become…?) …. You can always send in our latest
climate activists : Swedish Cows! I kid you not! 2020, Sept 15 was a very warm day in the south of Sweden around 25C in a couple of places IIRC but in the outskirts of Växjö the SMHI weather station showed 28,6C (!)
So SMHI got suspicious and went out and checked: The curious cows had forced themselves into the closure of the weather station … and thereby destroying the radiation protection, more or less…
This story was on the SMHI blog, albeit with no headline of its own but second part of the recently acknowledged NH cold record of 69,6C Dec 22 1991… It took WHO 29 years…. Mitribah +54,0C took 3 years It took me 3 seconds to dismiss it…. THE UNIVERSE IS A CONSPIRACY PERIOD 🙂
It’s very, very sad that this kind of tripe gets to the media who dutifully report it without a whimper.
I long for the days of real journalism when things got scrutinized at some level, some of the time. Where it wasn’t career ending heresy to question something.
From the above article’s boxed excerpts: “The findings have ‘profound consequences’ for wildlife and their ability to adapt to the climate emergency . . .”—Damian Carrington, environment editor for The Guardian.
“Climate emergency”, what climate emergency? Has anyone called 9-1-1? How much time do we have to react? What triage is needed? Who you gonna call (with apologies to the movie “Ghostbusters”)?
I nearly stopped reading the rest of the article right then and there, but I needed a good laugh today.
First, from the above article’s boxed excerpts of The Guardian article: “The climate crisis is heating up nights faster than days in many parts of the world.” Such stupidity . . . the “climate crisis” is nothing other than one conclusion drawn from observations by certain humans. The “climate crisis” is not a forcing function, physical property or parameter, or objective entity capable of heating anything.
Next, from the above article’s boxed excerpts of The Guardian article: “Global heating is increasing both, but they found that over more than half of the world’s land there was a difference of at least 0.25C between the day and night rises.”
Hmmmm . . . why no mention of the day/night differences over the world’s oceans, seas and lakes, which . . . wait a minute, let me check . . . yeah, comprise 71% of Earth’s surface area. Why is that globally-more-significant comparison not mentioned?
And, as other’s have pointed out, there has to be consideration that the reported change in day/night temperature differences over land is due to nothing more than urban heat island (UHI) contamination of the data over the 35 years leading up to 2017, said effect not being corrected in the data studied.
As to the sophomoric logic employed: “Where cloud cover increases, sunlight is blocked during the day but the clouds retain more heat and humidity at night, like a blanket.” This is a ridiculously simplistic statement on its face. Where cloud cover increases, clouds also absorb more (essentially all) of the sunlight energy that is not reflected from cloud tops (i.e., increase in albedo), and this results in warmer clouds radiating more energy directly to space and to Earth’s surface during BOTH day and night, beyond just the fact that clouds reduce sunlight that actually reaches Earth’s surface (both land and sea). Perhaps most significantly, increasing cloud cover causes additional blocking of LWIR radiation from Earth’s surface (both land and water) and near-surface atmosphere that would otherwise escape directly to space during BOTH day and night.
The balance of all these competing factors is not easily obtained, nor is the conclusion to be drawn from such.
Oh, really? I thought global cloud cover was declining? Which then would offset some of the “dangerous” CO2 warming?! And now the opposite is true for… convenience? Give me a break!
Here is some real science on clouds:
https://notrickszone.com/2020/09/11/austrian-analyst-things-with-greenhouse-effect-ghe-arent-adding-up-something-totally-wrong/
UHI anyone? I guess that was written for the happily uninformed lot.
“ There have to be winners from any shift in global climate, up or down…”
Isn’t it unusual that some countries (such as Canada) will benefit tremendously from nights warming slightly, but their leaders are the most vocal to prevent global warming. I can understand why Maldives is concerned about global warming, but Canada !?!
Hi, I’m a PhD Environmental Science, MS/BS Chemist, expert in drugs/medicines and chemical toxicity. We scientists of research, especially those outside the climate change agenda, are asking technical questions about these studies. For example, no one knows what is the “perfect” environmental set up for human life and the rest of the animal and flora diversity to thrive, there are doubts about the data collection technique, the accuracy of computer models, how advanced is the statistical analyses, the method to reach conclusions, margins of errors, and even thermodynamics. As a chemist and college organic chemistry professor, I have questioned the ability of CO2 to actually create the doomsday scenario that they depict for a molecule that is in an amount of PPb’s and below (less than 0.001% of the atmospheric gases). As a comparison to hormones (steroids), which are needed in very minuscule amounts (nanograms) to cause a huge biological change, do have a more complex molecular structure of fused benzene rings with delocalized pi-electrons in circular motions creating an enhanced electromagnetic character; in addition, steroids have distinct groups attached to greatly change their function. The molecule of CO2 does not have such a structural ability. Another comparison like to heavy metal/metalloids such as Arsenic, which is also needed in minuscule ppb amounts to cause a huge toxic damage/death, has a biological function of disrupting the system by substituting phosphorus like in DNA and ATP. So, by thought experiments of analogies of chemical structure, minuscule amounts, function, and destruction, I don’t see how CO2 can do what they pretend us to believe as in capable of changing such an extensive thermo property as temperature, without going back and double check the claims with sound thermodynamics. A science that refuses to re-search/revise/ confirm an issue, is really pseudo science. I wrote a longer post here: https://www.facebook.com/1910619765873958/posts/2732938876975372/?extid=0&d=n
Thanks. Dr. Vigo
Jvigo@elp.rr.com
Dr. Vigo, you posted: “As a chemist and college organic chemistry professor, I have questioned the ability of CO2 to actually create the doomsday scenario that they depict for a molecule that is in an amount of PPb’s and below (less than 0.001% of the atmospheric gases).”
Actually, atmospheric CO2 at the present level of about 413 ppmv is equivalent to a concentration of 0.041% in Earth’s atmosphere of mixed gases in the troposphere; specifically, it is NOT less than 0.001%.