Guest “Will climate change also increase our odds of finding a pot of gold?” by David Middleton
Climate change to produce more rainbows
Posted on October 28, 2022 by Marcie GrabowskiClimate change will increase opportunities to see rainbows, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa. The study’s authors estimate that by 2100, the average land location on Earth will experience about 5% more days with rainbows than at the beginning of the 21st century. Northern latitudes and very high elevations, where warming is predicted to lead to less snow and more rain, will experience the greatest gains in rainbow occurrence. However, places with reduced rainfall under climate change—such as the Mediterranean—are projected to lose rainbow days.
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“Living in Hawai‘i, I felt grateful that stunning, ephemeral rainbows were a part of my daily life,” said the lead author of the study, Kimberly Carlson, who is now at New York University’s Department of Environmental Studies. “I wondered how climate change might affect such rainbow viewing opportunities.”
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The Hawaiian Islands, recently dubbed the “rainbow capital of the world”, are predicted to experience a few more days with rainbows per year. The authors stopped short of discussing how changes in rainbow occurrence might affect human wellbeing. However, rainbows are an important part of human culture throughout history and around the world and are aesthetically pleasing.
“Climate change will generate pervasive changes across all aspects of the human experience on Earth. Shifts in intangible parts of our environment—such as sound and light—are part of these changes and deserve more attention from researchers,” said Carlson.
In this case, the overall findings are encouraging—it seems people will have more opportunities to make a rainbow connection under climate change.
Read also on Eurekalert.
The School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
2030? 2050? Nope now we are out to 2100!
There is no weatherman on earth that can tell us with any meaningful precision whether it will rain tomorrow or even this week. But 14 climate “climate scientists” (yes, it took 14 of them to do this) can tell whether rainfall occurring 78 years from now will be 5% greater because of CO2. This amazingly precise work was enabled by a USDA Federal grant. Wow – 5% more 78 years from now! Why don’t these “climate scientists” use their amazing omniscience to inform us whether it will rain this week? They claim to know how to do it and the info will be far more useful than their 78-year hence predictions and they could get good pay as a “climate presenter” on TV as well instead of consuming my tax money.
I am more than certain that I would have passed neither statistics nor ecology with this.
“To assess how climate change might affect rainbow viewing opportunities, we developed a global database of crowd-sourced photographed rainbows, trained an empirical model of rainbow occurrence, and applied this model to present-day climate and three future climate scenarios……Here, we situate rainbows within the ecosystem service cascade (Haines-Young and Potschin, 2010).”
Part of the new STEAM movement, add Art to STEM. American Scientist just had such an article about how art might help solve turbulence. “Heather Massie is bringing legendary actor and inventor Hedy Lamarr to life on stage at the inaugural International Forum on Research Excellence ” Sigma Xi meeting. Hope they don’t ruin art too much.
I try to keep up with modern ‘thought.’
Haines-Young and Potschin, 2010. The links between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. Ecosyst. Ecol.: A New Synthesis, 1 (2010), pp. 110-139.
“Although we can define an ecosystem service in fairly simple terms, as ‘the benefits
ecosystems provide’ (MA, 2005, p.1), it can become quite difficult to be precise about
what an ecosystem service is when we try to apply the idea…….A key theme of the Ecosystem Approach is the emphasis it gives to holistic or ‘joined up’ thinking……Crucially, we would need to show that the maintenance of ecosystem function and the output of ecosystem services are dependent on a wide range of native species. ” Google Scholar said that they have 1819 citations.
…… they were not “natural” therefore “…we seek to end the debate..”
We got that critique (in Proceedings Royal Society London) about an oyster paper we wrote over a decade ago. Was thinking about replying as soon as I could understand what the debate was about. Might be about removing all “unnatural” ecosystems.
STEM was too limiting. Add “A” for arts, “B” for baseball, and “F” for football.
If one degree of warming results in 7% more water vapor….extrapolating….yeah 5% more rainbows by 2100 maybe…..But there are lots of “ifs”, does 7% more water vapor make 7% more storms, or does it make rainfall last 7% longer, or the same duration but 7% heavier, etc….all these having an effect on the number of rainbows….
They can’t predict the “tipping point” of disastrous climate whatever, what makes anyone think that the cultists have a clue about the future of “rainbows”. Except in flags depicting another nutjob cause.
Sheesh.