Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Are Climate activists preparing their excuses in advance, for the imminent plunge in global temperatures predicted by Dr. Willie Soon?
Super-outbreaks of fire thunderstorms could change Earth’s climate, Australian and US experts warn
ABC Weather / By Ben Deacon
Fire thunderstorms — which occur in pyrocumulonimbus clouds — not only create their own weather system but may also be powerful enough to actually change the climate, according to scientists from Australia and the United States.
Key points:
- Fire thunderstorms during Australia’s Black Summer released as much energy as about 2,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosions
- Clusters of fire thunderstorms may be powerful enough to change the climate, scientists say
- Measuring the phenomenon as it occurs in North America and Australia has been used to validate the ‘nuclear winter’ theory
A “super-outbreak” of fire thunderstorms — also known as pyroCb events — during Australia’s Black Summer fires of 2019-20 released the energy of about 2,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons, according to a study published recently in the journal Nature Climate and Atmospheric Science.
“The energy released was just vast,” said Rick McRae from the University of New South Wales, a co-author of the paper.
“It doesn’t matter what units you use, they’re big numbers, far bigger than we’re used to handling.”
…
Mr McRae and a team of researchers — including scientists from the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington — quantified the scale of the Black Summer pyroCb super-outbreak, concluding the fires injected as much smoke into the stratosphere as a moderately sized volcanic eruption. That smoke remained in the stratosphere for more than a year.
…
Is fire now in a climate feedback loop?
Fire thunderstorm super-outbreaks are now emerging as a potential feedback loop in the climate system, according to Mr McRae.
He said climate change could drive an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme fire events that, in turn, could change the climate.
…
Rick McRae is a former firefighter who is associated with the highfire risk project run by University of New South Wales, home of Ship of Fools professor Chris Turney.
I think this excuse for climate prediction failures is clever – it frames any pause or drop in global temperatures as a temporary reprieve caused by our negligent destruction of the planet, and builds on the long term excuse that the global temperature surge predicted by high sensitivity climate models is being masked by aerosol pollution.
Aerosols have long been a convenient excuse, in my opinion, for why global temperatures have failed to surge. They allow climate scientists to crank up their predictions for CO2 forced warming, so long as they counterbalance the predicted CO2 effect by cranking up the predicted cooling effect of aerosols.
Of course, if global temperatures do plunge, it will be fascinating to see how long they can keep making such excuses with a straight face.
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“We have an excuse!”.No matter what happens, heads they win, tails you lose.
Same as “it cools because it warms” 😀
As with the Texas Valentine’s Day freeze being due to global warming?
Using increasing aerosols from fires as an excuse for cooling opens the door to an inconvenient truth that the removal of aerosols due to clean air acts and cleaner burning technology for cooking and home heating will act to cause an increase in temperatures as has been seen. No CO2 boogie man necessary.
Cleaner skies, greater solar influence, increased warming.
That’s been covered on this site…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/19/shocker-global-warming-may-simply-be-an-artifact-of-clean-air-laws/
That is precisely why “they” changed the term Global Warming into Climate Change, so that way it doesn’t matter which way the temperature goes, it’s ALL Climate Change!!! Of course past climate changes were a result of variations in orbital mechanics & Solar output &/or a combination of the two, but this current bout of CC is ONLY due to evil wicked Capitalism being imposed upon the world by the evil wicked USA & what’s left of the democratic free West!!! Globul Warming is a one-way street, Climate Change is a two-way street, perfect for causing anything bad!!! FYI, they’re banging away on the news this morning about all the weather extremes around the world!!! I recall when attending my Institution’s centenary conference in Hong Kong back in January 2008, the talk on many tv channels was all global warming, only one channel showed news reports of the terribly cold winter in China, apparently the worst in 50 years, then within a few days became the worst in 100 years, with all flights cancelled, trains going nowhere, people desperate to get home for the imminent Chinese New Year, all other western channels, absolute zilch!!!
Who do they think they are, epidemiologists or economists or sports forecasters or tabloid psychics or something?
My apologies to the psychics, most of whom are simply deluded or mere charlatans who have no real affect on our day to day lives…
Oh, calling some of the climastrologists deluded or charlatans seems right to me.
“He said climate change could drive an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme fire events that, in turn, could change the climate.
…”
So climate change is going to change the climate!!!
It’s been known for many many years that large fires can and do create their own weather. So fires change weather…..not climate…..well unless a fire lasts for about 30 years maybe/??
“So fires change weather…..not climate…..well unless a fire lasts for about 30 years maybe/??”
Yes, let’s see: The fire burns up all the vegetation and puts a lot of smoke in the air for that season, but the next year there is not as much vegetation growing because of the previous fire the year before, so the amount of smoke put in the atmosphere in the subsequent year would be less. How long would this diminished condition exist? Shouldn’t the big smoke years and small smoke years be averaged?
It does not seem to work that way. Here in California near me we have had a number of big fires in the last 3-4 years. The new fires started next to a previous fire and burned areas not burned for many years. Lots of smoke here now!!
….and since these wildfires are man made…..how does that work?
AGW to AGC equals ACC.
How many Olympic swimming pools in 1 Hiroshima?
ACC stands for Anthropogenic Climate Convulsions (for sara ; )
Thanks!!!
I was going to blame Gwyneth Paltrow candles.
Over 80% of the fires in the western USA are the result of something humans do.
A recent fire along I-90 west of the town of Cle Elum was the result of a boat trailer throwing a tire and causing sparks to ignite the grass at the edge.
https://www.yaktrinews.com/kittitas-county-level-3-evacuations-issues-for-wildfire-burning-along-i-90/
There is an odd diversity of things such as this. It is an interesting list.
And lightning ? I thought that was that where the 80% came from
It seems that in fires in areas that are habited are human related
That was covered in Bambi. Clearly lightening was the cause of a major forest fire in that case… or was it the hunter’s bullet, I’m not sure, I’ll have to revisit that evidence.
Early tactical retreat… 😀
“2,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosions”
I admire the precision measurement … not about 1,999 or 2,001 … but about 2,000.
BTW
What’s the conversion factors to change that ‘about 2,000’ into the more understandable ‘Olympic size pools filled with London buses’; or should it be expressed as ‘Wadams’ ?
“About” is quite exact, isn’t it ? 😀
Well, Yeah. 2000 +/- 2000
This is Climbit Siants (sounds like science); 2000 +/- 3000
Their point isn’t the number of nuclear bombs equivalence … their whole point is to associate these natural weather phenomena in your mind with really scary and evil nuclear weapons.
Well I asked this bloke in the pub and he said it was roughly spot on give or take 😉
More or less!!! 😉
How many bombs in a typical thunderstorm? How about a typical hurricane?
I looked it up on a lark. Some idiot had done an estimate. For the ‘average hurricane’ (there is no such thing) an estimated 10000 Hiroshima’s PER SECOND. Google can take you to several versions of this Wonderland if you are so inclined.
Thanks for your lark, Rud! I propose a new unit of measurement to go along with the Wadham: The Hirosh/sec., or HShit.
I gather that I now boil my kettle with about 0.0235621 of a home serviced give or take a smidge or two. That, of course, being when it is available.
I also gather that these home serviced units are squeaky clean unlike those dreadful Watts which are polluting the planet.
In scientific measurement terms, 2000 has only one significant figure, so it’s really not that precise and it covers the range of about 1500 to 2500.
Actually, precisely 1500 to 2499. Unless you are using Banker’s Rounding.
Do a calculation to translate 2000 Hiroshima bombs into sunshine seconds on the diameter of Earth?
Oddgeir
What’s that in elephants?
African or Asian?
I don’t kn o o o o w!!
(A little Monty Python reference)
This formulation they use is misleading, intentionally so, obviously. They say “the energy released …” as if this is new energy in the system. It is merely the transference of already absorbed energy from the earth’s surface to the middle atmosphere. No additional energy is released, such as is released from nuclear fission or fusion.
The Guardian uses the unit known as “The Size of Wales” for its innumerate readers when discussing land area.
The yield of the Hiroshima bomb isn’t known with great accuracy. It was a one-off item, and no weapon of the same design was ever tested. Estimates in the literature range from 12 kilotons to 16 kilotons – so 14 +/- 2 kilotons, or +/- 14.3%.
Stipulate that it was 16 kt. That’s 6.7E13 J, a very big number, no? Yes. 2,000 of them would release 1.3E17 J, which would, of course, be an even bigger number (2,000 times bigger).
Australia’s land area is 7.7 million km^2, or 7.7E12 m^2. For a (bogus) insolation of 342 W/m^2, assuming 8 hours/day sunlight, Australia would receive 7.6E19 J sunlight per day, or 2.8 E22 J per year. That really, really huge 2,000 Hiroshima bombs of energy released is 0.0046% of the sunlight arriving in Oz each year.
“The energy released was just vast,” said Rick McRae from the University of New South Wales, a co-author of the paper.
“It doesn’t matter what units you use, they’re big numbers, far bigger than we’re used to handling.”
If they’re not used to handling the “big” 2,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of energy, they’d certainly be completely helpless when it comes to the numbers Nature gives us. Which speaks volumes about their competence to even opine about, let alone give accurate predictions regarding, how human activity may affect the climate.
“That really, really huge 2,000 Hiroshima bombs of energy released is 0.0046% of the sunlight arriving in Oz each year.”
What do you know about that.
This is why I come to WUWT: There is always someone here who can put things in perspective. Thanks, Michael.
As usual, Willis was right…. 😀
Thunderstorms cool the planet 😀 – confirmed by climate science 😀
Exactly. They’ve finally discovered negative feedbacks!
“It doesn’t matter what units you use, they’re big numbers, far bigger than we’re used to handling.”
Yeah, it’s like, you know, math is hard and stuff. I can’t count that high.
One, two, many 😀
One too many!
* hic *
Climate Scientologists, the Baldricks of mathematics
https://youtu.be/ycjhqN4LTq4
(skip the into of abot 35 seconds)
Arts grads…..
” 2,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosions”
To how many Olympic sized swimming pools, filled with gasoline set alight, would that be equivalent?
What’s that in candle power and how many light houses is that? I’ll accept nothing less than an exact approximation.
Bring Giga-tons into the equation and remind that lightning happens 3 to 4 times per second worldwide 24/7…..appears to be a constant fireworks display to the ISS.
So… that’s a feedback?
The imminent global cooling can be attributed to the success of the Paris Agreement and the consequent reduction in global carbon dioxide. Well done everybody!
Exactly, so now drink your taxpayer-funded champagne and F-off and leave us alone you climate crackpots.
Flipping this on its head – could 19th and 20th century fire suppression have had any impact on climate of the recent past? Just thinking out loud…
So, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that the greenies policy of forest mismanagement actually caused global warming by not allowing all that energy to be released in smaller, more manageable controlled burns? Well it’s a radical idea, for sure.
Two sides of the same cracked pot, I reckon.
“Are Climate activists preparing their excuses in advance, for the imminent plunge in global temperatures predicted by Dr. Willie Soon?”
Depends on where bears . . deposit stool.
The bears will deposit it exactly where these people will step in it. 🙂
What, bears use stools?
Sure, what else are they supposed to sit on to eat their porridge?
Which reminds of an old farside cartoon doctor to patient: “your stool is too hard”
That one that went into a bar, you know the one with the big paws, he might have sat on one.
Mark, you really do need to get a life.
IIRC, the worst Australian fire season on record was 1974-75, when more than 5 times the area burned than in 2019-20. These people probably weren’t around back then, so 2019-20 must be “unprecedented”
And in 1976 in the UK we had the best summer ever. Thanks for cooling the planet back then, Australia.
Speaking of great summer weather, check out Cliff Mass blog about Seattle having the best “goldilocks” summer weather so far for July that he can find in the records – sunny, calm, dry, smokeless, low humidity, just perfect.
Yet in the comments section, the perpetually-outraged climate alarmists can’t help carrying on about how there was a few days of heatwave conditions back in June.
This despite the fact that Cliff has already meticulously, scientifically explained how even taking account of 1.1C warming for the NW Pacific region of Nth America since 1950, temps in the June heat-dome event would still have exceeded previous contemporary weather records by 1 – 3C.
So global warming wasn’t the guilty party, it was just weather (again!), and instead natural variation should get 60 years (as a serial offender)
Here in calgary we are having the nicest summer in over two decades, about time, except for smoke from bc fires of course.
Finally
Back to the 90’s.
I was in London that June. Very pleasant temperatures. I laughed when the TV informed us that they had to slow down the trains because of heat-warping of the tracks.
Trump was right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3C93ZWCmvM
On so many topics.
Apparently due to frosts in southeastern Brazil, arabica coffee prices will increase?
Yes. Arabica futures for this years Brazil crop are up about 30% after the frost. It matters because Brazil, rather than Columbia, is the biggest arabica producer.
Well, they finally did it. They proved that they are almost as smart as my cat.
I am gobsmacked at their cleverness.
I had a pretty smart Manx cat. I have a picture of him reading the Wall Street Journal.
His portfolio never did quite as well as mine. Yeah, he was pretty smart, but like most cats, a bit impulsive and stubborn. Didn’t always know when to cut his losses because he “just knew better.”
😁
Nowhere near as smart as my loopy lurcher.
Since these fires were caused by lightning I shall [not serious;y] suggest that Earth Mother Gia has decided to invoke homeostasis to restore balance.
I was skeptical about ‘pryoCB’ reaching the stratosphere. Ordinarily that takes a VEI 5 or 6; many VEI 4 do not. But FN 1 claims the recent Australian event did reach up to 35 km, so lower stratosphere. And they had some satellite measurements showing fairly low density aerosols not highly dispersed. They also have a graphic showing full washout in about 1 year, with about half washout in about 4 months.
So either we reburn what has already been burned recently (very difficult), or there is no persistent pyroCB cooling effect—unlike tropical thunderstorms.
Pyrocumulonimbus clouds (pyroCb) are relatively dry thunderstorms produced by intense wildfires that transport smoke plumes into the upper troposphere. Often these plumes reach into the lower stratosphere, whereupon the smoke can be transported thousands of kilometers from the source region in a matter of days. The documentation of these pyroCb events has increased during the last few years with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These cases have been documented with near-real-time imagery from different geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites as well as ancillary data (http://pyrocb.ssec.wisc.edu). From these documented cases we investigate different meteorological conditions that may be conducive to a pyroCb event occurring. To better characterize an atmosphere that is more favorable for pryoCb generation, we examine the mid-level water vapor, upper-level divergence, and Haines Index (Peterson et al. 2014). In addition, convective available potential energy (CAPE) is investigated, but is determined to be ineffective for determining if a pyroCb event might occur. We will summarize the documentation of pyroCb events over the last few years, as well as show what meteorological conditions appear to be more conducive to pyroCb events forming.
The Documentation and Investigation of Pyrocumulonimbus Events
Would it be in earlier times when wildfires were left to burn unchecked that any buildup of fuel loads were less between events, and it has been the more recent intervention in dousing small fires that ultimately leads to increasingly intense fires.
Plausible hypothesis, but the data isn’t fully supportive. There were much worse forest fires (burn acreage/year) back in the 1920’s and 1930’s, data since suppressed by USFS to pretend things only started in the 1960’s. Several blogs (RCS—Heller, and previously WUWT) have posted the since disappeared early historical data. There was not a lot of effective forest fire suppression (Smokey Bear stuff) back then.
It is difficult to make comparisons, the area burnt doesn’t necessarily indicate greater intensity which appears to be a factor conducive to pyroCb events forming. I think that at times we do more damage to the environment but putting fires out rather than letting them burn out naturally, but increasingly we have no choice but to do so to protect the ever increasing presence of lives and assets. The land surface of the planet is covered in an extremely flammable fuel, could there been anywhere that has, or had such coverage that has never ever burnt at some point in time?
Well, its been done:
https://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Probably good News OT, sorry again
Highly potent, stable nanobodies stop Sars-CoV-2
Göttingen researchers have developed mini-antibodies that efficiently block the coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 and its dangerous new variants. These so-called nanobodies bind and neutralize the virus up to 1000 times better than previously developed mini-antibodies. In addition, the scientists optimized their mini-antibodies for stability and resistance to extreme heat. This unique combination makes them promising agents to treat Covid-19. Since nanobodies can be produced at low costs in large quantities, they could meet the global demand for Covid-19 therapeutics. The new nanobodies are currently in preparation for clinical trials.
That won’t do! Now they’ll need covid-22. Ring up Wuhan will you, Tony?
No, can’t be true. Surely everyone knows that the science is settled!?
I thought they had changed “Global Warming” into “Climate Change” just so they could blame more things on CO2? Cold, hot, wet, dry – it doesn’t matter, it’s all CO2’s fault.
Even life is CO2 fault, imagine ! 😀
temperatures has been dropping for the last 18 months , about 0.6 -0.7 degrees , As La Niña is about to deepen again temps will drop further. Areosols from fire may contribute but La Niña is the primary mover as less Waterwapour enters the atmosphere.
Okay but don’t encourage the arsonists in the process of playing more global warming media card tricks.
Doubt it.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/27/the-real-climate-crisis-is-not-global-warming-it-is-cooling-and-it-may-have-already-started/#comment-2836262
Based on my research, you are incorrect. Major volcanoes (some VEI5 eruptions like El Chichon 1982 and most VEI6 events like Pinatubo 1991+) cause significant (~0.5C) global cooling – but industrial emission and smaller volcanoes don’t have much impact. Even Mt. St. Helens (VEI5, 1980) did not have much cooling impact because it blew mostly sideways, not up into the stratosphere.
Supporting evidence is in Section 5 of this paper.
CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., June 15, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
Excel: https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rev_CO2-Global-Warming-Climate-and-Energy-June2019-FINAL.xlsx
Just a question, as it has to do with gassy volcanoes: how much influence on the atmosphere does an ongoing eruption like Iceland’s newest member of the Fraternity of Vulcan (Geldingadalir) have on the atmosphere and on the weather? While Ejafjallajokul was more of an ash blaster that shut down air traffic, the volume of gassiness was never brought up, and this bouncing baby burper Geldingadalir is exhaling very viscous magma along with a very high volume of gases and not much ash.
Thanks for any feedback.
Have not studied these – probably little effect on climate – takes a century-scale volcano to impact climate, as stated above.
Hey Sara, is that the Icelandic volcano you’ve been watching via webcam, that has temporarily? run out of magma? I saw a picture today of it, and there’s no magma down in the bottom. I imagine that won’t last long.
So shouldn’t we bring back bonfire days? Imagine 20 million people all creating bonfires to save the planet.
We used to have a bonfire and sparklers and firecrackers on the 4th of July. Now, we can’t have any of than fun, because someone’s house might get lit up, even if it’s a half mile away in the middle of a cornfield.
Everyone should get a new wood-burning stove and lots of wood. That will cool the planet off.