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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“… released the energy of about 2,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons
…
That smoke remained in the stratosphere for more than a year. ….”
They do like to posit scary numbers for consideration, don’t they.
I’m curious, how much energy, in Hiroshima bomb equivalents, does the sun bombard us with every 24 hours? Hmm, 9×10^21, discounted for albedo, I might add, says one site. So the 2000 HBE is 0.00028% of what Sol blasts us with every day. Say, is teensy-tiny a scientifically accurate term?
Anyway, likewise, how many Hiroshima bombs in energy did Krakatoa hit us with in 1883? Couldn’t find anything on that.
Now that I mentioned it, how much particulate did Krakatoa “inject” into the atmosphere, say, maybe, in Australia Wildfire equivalents? Any guesses? Considering Krakatoa climate changed us for at least 5 years, not the measly one year the “Black Summer” supposedly did, I don’t think the Aussie Wildfire Equivalents would bump Krakatoa as the yardstick. And the Pacific Northwest, being much further north than either Krakatoa or the Aussie wildfires, I suspect any effect on temperature from the particulate haze won’t have any significant effect.
Back in 2006, before the infamous “council of 28”..
https://www.theregister.com/2012/10/29/boaden_tribunal_information_refusal/
the BBC made a docu-drama about the Krakatoa eruption.
In the epilogue of the program (from 1:25:00) the narrator lets slip that the eruption caused a global cooling event that lasted well into the 20th century. (co-incidentally proving that any claims of temperature increases since the late 1800’s started from a low point) It sticks in my memory because I’m pretty sure that was the last time that the BBC told anything resembling the truth about climate.
Thanks for that info.
”Claim: Global Cooling – Because of Climate Change Driven Wildfires”
Oh dear, as if we haven’t had wild fires before. And what did the climate do then?? Same as it ever was.
Burning carbon causes cooling now? I suppose soot causes cooling too.
Somebody get this info to Uncle Joe at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave!
Sorry, Joe only follows “the science” that will benefit him the most. Demonizing CO2 is what Biden calls science.
“It will be fascinating to see how long they can keep making such excuses with a straight face.”
As long as the money keeps coming.
Unfortunately, based on past experience, if global temperatures do drop, the Climate Change Alarmists will just carry on regardless, dreaming up new variations to their theme and new excuses and rationales to explain how their religious belief is immune to any counter-evidence.
Michael Mann has already pre-empted this cooling. Mann said some time ago that even if we did experience a few decades of cooling, this would not negate the Human-caused Climate Change hypothesis.
He didn’t explain how that works, but that’s what he said. This is called “covering all the bases”.
They love the words/phrases “feedback” and “climate change” but shy away from saying “negative feedback” (ie. naturally tries to return to average) and they fail to quantify the non-linear effect of smoke on climates. The climate models rely on positive feedbacks to multiply/exaggerate the small effect of CO2. While they try to say they are learning more & the science is settled they prove how much they don’t know and how much is uncertain.
“The climate models rely on positive feedbacks to multiply/exaggerate the small effect of CO2.”
That is correct, and they haven’t found any positive feedbacks in all the decades of looking.
They should have saved themselves some time by studying history.
History would tell them there has never been a runaway greenhouse effect, due to a positive feedback caused by CO2, in the history of the Earth. How do we know this? We know this because plants, animals and human beings are alive on this planet and that would not be the case if there was a positive feedback to CO2, which would cause the Earth to get hotter and hotter over time to the point of snuffing out all life.
Well that’s how the climate systems work. They self regulate.
I see an entire new measurement system taking over.
How many “Hiroshima’s” does it take to melt a Wadham of ice”?
How can firestorms have any impact when CO2 is the control knob. A massive injection of CO2 during a wildfire would surely contribute to warming!
This piece reeks with irony. The fires are allegedly caused by warming and release heat causing further warming, plus aerosols which do what now? Make it worse for years, of course. It’s a vicious cycle.
But that’s not all. The fires emit CO2. Forested acres may contain upwards of 500 tons per acre of carbon, a fraction of which is oxidized by the fire, and the remainder is oxidized by decay over the next 20 years. Multiply that by the millions of acres burned each year. In some states and countries more CO2 is emitted by fires than by use of fossil fuels. Which makes it warmer, causing more fires, and on and on. Whoosh, there goes the wildlife, too. Spiraling out of control. Don’t tell the control freaks.
But that’s not all. Many of those forest acres have been claimed by Big Corps as carbon offsets. Their virtue signalling went up in smoke! Don’t tell the Wokies. It’s going to get worse before it gets even worser. Oh the compounded ironies!
There we have it. The negative feedback they forgot in their models, or one of them.
How about the reduction in aerosols due to Clean Air Act in 60s and 70s and other enviro legislation was the CAUSE of the late 20th c. warming that got everyone so excited.
Similarly volcanic aerosol forcings have been rigged in climate models.
Lacis et al 1992 estimated 30W/m2 per Dobson unit from basic physics modelling and data from El Chichon.
Hansen et al 2006 reduced it to 20 W/m2 having abandonned any pretence at physics and just resorting to arbitrarily tweaking many poorly constrained parameters to make models give the right answer.
That is the same NASA team with authors playing turns a being lead author.
Reducing the forcing allows them to increase other positive feedbacks ( WV, cloud change ) and maintain the same net result. However, this will also amplify the ( opposing ) effects of GHG and thus produce more dramatic future projections.
This is the interest of abandoning physics and going for parameter tweaking. There are so many poorly constrained parameters that you can make the proverbial elephant climb a tree. There are thousands of alternative parameter sets which all produce a vague resemblance to the climate record. You just pick the one which best suits your agenda and provides the most alarming warming.
Weather in uk blamed on anthropogenic climate change https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57988023
Geoengineeringwatch dot org
No free speech here!
I recall one fire season in Southern California (in the 1990s, IIRC) where the smoke canopy was particularly thick, and had well-defined boundaries. I was driving home to Redlands from JPL in Pasadena, and instead of taking the I-210 to the I-10, I took Foothill Blvd, so that I could make a couple of convenient stops on the way home. It was late summer, and the temperature was in the 90s (F) – that is, until I got to around Azusa or maybe Glendora. That was the western terminus of the smoke canopy. I watched my car’s exterior temperature reading go from somewhere in the 90s to the 60s in a matter of half a mile or so. It stayed there until I exited the canopy around Fontana, or maybe Rialto, when it went up into the upper 90s. The respite was amazing, but highly localized. And it had no lasting effect, as far as I know.
meanwhile in the relatively clean air of the Southern Hemisphere , South America is having record cold and snow right into tropical areas of Brazil , South Africa is having record cold and snow , oz is having snow and cold and the antarctic is unusually cold with record sea ice . the Southern Hemisphere is like a woman over fifty – everybody knows its down there but nobody cares
I can hardly wait to see how the northern hemisphere will do in the coming winter!
I can’t find the reference, but I remember reading several years ago a “prediction” that global warming “could” trigger a LIA. They’ve been hedging their bets for quite a while.
How come no one has mentioned the HUGE fires in Siberia?
Last week we had days of white haze in the UP from the fires in Ontario. There’s a whole lot of burning going on……
Surely this merely proves that the pre computer tin can style heat retention models that said clean air would actually cause significant apparent warming was right. Engineers claimed that cleaner air would reduce rainfall so the evaporation would reduce, with an apparent increase in temperatures which was not included in climate science models. They were too arrogant to accept input from, as they called us openly at the time, grease monkeys.
Fire Thunderstorms:
Enter stage left another controllable player in the climate alarm puppet show.
If the Hiroshima nuke was three kilotons then 2000X3kT=6,000 kilotons or six megatons.
Compare that to the hundred megaton energy of a hurricane or the 24megaton Mount Saint Helens blast.
In very large part, the severity of many modern fires is a direct result of forest management practices that emphasize limiting and stopping natural fires. Since forest fires put reflective particulate into the air and reduce insolation that implies that these modern practices have in fact increased warming. The natural conclusion from this is that if they let the fires burn it would reduce the global temperature and the severity of future fires. Presto!
They have their crisis precisely backwards. Again!