Volcanic estimate 🌋📈
Initial scientific estimates were 50-million metric tons of water injected into the stratosphere by Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai submarine volcano.
Likely off by a factor of 3.
New research suggests 150-million metric tons or almost 40 Trillion gallons of… https://t.co/BEnfFL2bEr twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The 40 Trillion gallons of water vapor in the stratosphere represents an unprecedented amount injected in the stratosphere.
Volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo blast SO2 into the stratosphere creating a cooling climate shroud for 1-2 years.
But, Hunga Tonga had only 2% of the SO2 as Pinatubo but a gargantuan amount of water vapor, which is well known to WARM the Earth. The question is how much?
Credits: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens using GOES imagery courtesy of NOAA and NESDIS
Global warming caused by Hunga-Tonga is significant.
The eruption of Hunga-Tonga increased the water vapor mass in the stratosphere by 13%, and it will remain there for many years to come.
“The unique nature and magnitude of the global stratospheric perturbation by the Hunga eruption ranks it among the most remarkable climatic events in the modern observation era.”
Earlier in March 2023, scientists reported likelihood of warming from the volcanic injection of water vapor into the stratosphere pushing Earth closer to 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold.
Based upon the last few months, it seems the effect of 🌋 on global temperatures may have been greatly underestimated. It’s straightforward how to run a radiative transfer model to determine the impacts of adding 150M metric tons of water to the stratosphere. But, detailed climate model simulations are needed to disentangle the atmospheric circulation changes that lead to non-linear feedbacks. The climate is “abnormal” right now, aside from the developing El Niño and background climate change. https://eos.org/articles/tonga
Just in time for the lunatic alarmists to start howling at the moon!
They’ll be asking for more wonga to study Hunga-Tonga!
Do you reckon they’d take wonga pigeons as currency?
I’ve read reports that water vapor destroys ozone.
I read that the stratosphere is extremely dry up to 4-10 parts per million. 99% is lower down in the troposphere where the maximum around the equator might be 30,000 ppm
Crystallized water vapor catalyses the destruction of ozone.
Ozone, O₃, is extremely reactive, even with water in all of it’s physical states.
That’s very true. A company I once worked for hired the guy who first discovered the effects of CFC on the ozone layer to compare ozone depletion produced by the exhaust products of various kinds of rockets. The goal was to see which had the least effect. The solid propellants we were using produced exhaust with a lot of HCl. His data showed that LOX/LH2 (liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen) rockets, which produced water, had a greater depletion effect. Ozone is produced by the action of hard UV in the stratosphere on atmospheric oxygen. The formation process itself absorbs a lot of the UV, and the resulting ozone – which has a high UV absorption cross section – blocks the rest.
CFCs destroying ozone is myth. One should be more worried about chlorine – from the oceans and (land based) volcanoes destroying ozone. The issue is one of magnitude. Few CFCs, Loads of Chlorine. Chlorine is a much lighter molecule than any of the CFCs so goes up to higher altitudes more readily. Chlorine makes the dreaded free radicals just as easily as any CFC.
See: “The Holes In The Ozone Scare“, Rogelio Maduro & Ralf Schauerhammer, 1992
What it means is that the models have no reliability in dealing with a discrete event like Hunga Tonga.
And very little reliability dealing with recurring weather event.
What it means is that the models have no reliability
in dealing with a discrete event like Hunga Tonga.Maybe it explains part of the warmth. We’re at 0.38C so maybe without the volcano that would be say 0.24C? Just a guess.
What an interesting idea that the climate is ‘abnormal’ right now.
The ‘background’ climate change, which looks no different to any foreground or background change in the past (ie, it is well within historical patterns) is abnormal.
El Nino, which happens a dozen or more times per century, is abnormal.
A major volcanic eruption, which happens a few times per century, is abnormal.
What ‘abnormal’ appears to mean is that the climate models can’t replicate it.
On that basis, all of climate is abnormal all the time.
It’s a game of telegraph in a climate crisis insane asylum – one looney feeding ideas to the next and so what started off as barely a fraction of a degree per decade turns into an imminent global catastrophe.
Whereas our Beloved Leaders and their academic chums providing us with TheScience (which must be obeyed!) are absolutely Abby Normal. (H/T “Young Frankenstein”).
Bring on the peasants with sharpened pitchforks and flaming torches!
Where, oh where are all the ‘skeptiks’ who ridicule claims that this, that or the other metric is “unprecedented” because we don’t have records going back far enough?
But let’s blame the recent warming on some recent volcano, instead of what it is obviously caused by – enhanced greenhouse warming that scientists have been warning us about for decades.
It’s clear that the research is ongoing with uncertainties in mass water injection amounts of ~ 100 million metric tons.
Khaykin, et. al., described the situation with sufficient qualifiers suggesting uncertainty, “The unique nature and magnitude of the global stratospheric perturbation by the Hunga eruption ranks it among the most remarkable climatic events in the modern observation era.”
There is nothing to ridicule when researchers, rather than claiming something is settled, actually are honest, accept the limitations of their understanding, but seek to improve it.
I’m not ridiculing anything. My understanding is that, all other things being constant, excess water vapour precipitates out of the atmosphere within a few weeks. Therefore it has a very short-term effect on global climate.
How can that explain the global heat-havoc we are now seeing, many months later?
It’s nonsense. Stop falling for nonsense.
It doesn’t readily precipitate out of the stratosphere. Needs to be in the troposphere to do that.
Can you expand on that Stephen, please?
I’m not sure what the relevance is.
Water vapor condenses out due to the cold upper Troposphere. In this case the water vapor injection was accompanied by hot air. The entire plume was too warm for the water vapor to condense.
The Stratosphere is warmer so the water vapor can sit around for years.
Now add in that water vapor is a very light molecule. If it takes SO2 a couple of years to fall back to the surface, then it could take water vapor much longer.
Utter nonsense. Can you support that statement with any peer-reviewed back-up?
Again.. yes.. YOUR statement is utter nonsense.
It is based on deep-seated ignorance about basically everything.
You are one of those unfortunate people, where everything you think you know is demonstrably WRONG.
Why don’t you learn some facts before spouting off? I had to plot inumerable Skew-T diagrams when I was in the the US Air Force – Air Weather Service and learned that the temperature varies as the altitude increases. If you learn a few facts, maybe you’ll be enlightened and realized that AGW is a complete farce. Anyway, here is a chart showing average temperature by altitude.
But your graph shows the troposphere is warmer near the surface than at the warmest part of the stratosphere
Phase Diagram of water:
1024px-Phase_diagram_of_water.svg.png
Tropopause temperature of ~-50ºC so water will be in the solid phase, however in the warmer stratosphere and lower pressures water will be in the vapor phase.
Haha, thank you for telegraphing that you have absolutely zero scientific acumen in the relevant disciplines.
I mean seriously, for anyone who claims to understand how the atmosphere works, to not have any clue, and in fact to disbelieve, that the stratosphere is completely separate from the troposphere, this is proof positive that you are merely a echo box, with no ability to understand what you are saying.
It is flat out impossible for water vapor in the stratosphere to “precipitate out” of the atmosphere.
By definition, there is no weather in the stratosphere.
The troposphere is defined as the region in which weather takes place.
This is the same reason SO2 in the stratosphere effects temperature of the entire globe for years.
Once it gets up there, there is no mechanism to remove it anytime soon.
It is not very often one of you jackasses outs yourself as scientifically illiterate, so thank you.
How cruel you are to donkeys and mules.
Great insight to the hindmost bent sliver of iron!
And not only have you outed yourself as Earth-Science Illiterate, you have shown that you are not in the habit of looking things up when you are utterly clueless about a subject being discussed.
I knew that volcanic gasses injected into the stratosphere will persist there for years, when I was ten years old.
Anyone who has ever read a single book about volcanoes knows this.
Anyone who has ever taken a single class in any of a dozen subjects knows this basic fact which has been known for over a hundred years.
But it is incredible telling these days, since anyone can just ask the AI for the answer, and get a very good answer immediately.
Since I am mostly interested in learning things and teaching others, I’ll give you the answer you should have been able and willing to get for yourself before making a jackass of yourself:
“That’s a great question! Volcanic gases injected into the stratosphere persist there for a long time because they are above the troposphere, where most of the weather and atmospheric circulation occurs. The stratosphere is a stable layer of the atmosphere that has very little vertical mixing. This means that the volcanic gases can spread horizontally and form thin layers of aerosols that reflect sunlight and cool the Earth’s surface. 12
The persistence of volcanic gases in the stratosphere also depends on the type and amount of gases released, the height and duration of the eruption, and the latitude of the volcano. For example, sulfur dioxide (SO2) is the most important gas for climate cooling, because it reacts with water vapor to form sulfuric acid droplets that can stay in the stratosphere for months or even years13 However, not all eruptions emit enough SO2 to reach the stratosphere, or they may do so only briefly. The eruption cloud also needs to be high enough to penetrate into the stratosphere…”
Weather is restricted to the Troposphere. The stratosphere has no weather and no precipitation.
The injected water vapor will condense into ice-clouds. They’ll stay in the stratosphere for decades, likely.
Stratospheric ice-clouds are well-known to retain tropospheric heat by reflecting back out-going IR.
Data.. try it one day, Foolish Numbskull
Yes. The stratosphere is extremely dry under 10 ppm of water vapour
My equator sea level numbers could be 20-30,000 ppm
“Stop falling for nonsense.”
That should be a heading for your posts… every one of them.
There is NOT a global heat havoc.
There are isolated moving spots of warmth.
“Your understanding”… lol… well that settles it! 😉
The world must be hallucinating then, but whatever you say…
The patch of warmth is actually quite small, just intense.
It is moving across Europe.
It is a WEATHER event.
It is NOT global in any respect.
If you bothered to even try to understand anything, you would know this.
Let’s se what the global July temps are then..
Certainly not here in New Zealand. Whatever our misguided politicians may claim!
There’s no reason whatever to conclude the warming of the climate is due to human CO2 emissions.
Except for religious dedication to getting rid of coal-fired electricity generation.
You’re right. We need an Enlightenment v.2, to defang to secular religions.
You’re right.
That’s WEATHER in EUROPE.
Besides, it’s pretty cool in FRANCE this week.
The heat waves are just in medias.
Certainly, there are abject and gullible fools falling for the continuous HYPE.
Find a new crash hat, chicken-little, that one is not letting either of your brain cells function.
Winter storm continues to wreak havoc on southern U.S. 1 Feb 2023
More than 60 killed in blizzard wreaking havoc across U.S. 27 Dec 2022
Winter storm causes havoc across Canada 23 Dec 2022
Hawaii sees ‘very unusual’ snow as US storms wreak havoc 11 Feb 2019
Major winter storm wreaks havoc on travel 20 Jan 2019Deadly winter storm wreaks havoc in Europe, 13 killed 8 Jan 2019
Snow Chaos: Heavy snowfall wreaks havoc across Europe 12 Jan 2019
Severe snow storms wreak havoc across central Europe 10 Jan 2017
TheFinalNail, you wouldn’t be a headline writer for The Guardian by any chance?
Sardina max was 47.2 at Sestu.. the same as reach at an official site in Muravera in August 1957.
Thing is, Sestu is not an official site.. and thus, is of unknown quality. Pictures of Sestu show a rapidly expanding urban landscape.
The nearest official site is Cagliari Airport , only 3 miles away, which recorded only 42C
Even if it is the case that some places have matched or slightly exceeded the high temp record for a particular date, it is almost always the case that those previous records were set many decades ago.
So, how it is proof of global warming that it has taken many decades, just to match the temps that were recorded before CO2 had accumulated in the air?
If there was anything to the whole idea, it should be hot everywhere, with record highs for every location every Summer, for weeks on end.
Not one or two obscure places getting close to or slightly above records that were set 50 to 100 years ago.
Breaking a record set 50 years ago, means it was hotter 50 years ago that every single day since then!
And most high temp records were set between 1920 and 1955, the last time there was a thirty year global warming trend.
It is not the whole world, it is the mainstream media.
And it is not a hallucination, for the most part, but outright purposeful deception.
This summer is the LEAST HOT Summer in the US on record, with by far the3 lowest fraction of weather stations getting to 95°F than has every been seen in the history of record keeping.
In the hottest part of Summer, no one thinks it is unusual for it to be hot, and in some locations, for it to be very hot.
It is July, dufus.
When I was a kid it was common for it to get above 100 degrees in one or more locations near where I lived.
No one thought it was a disaster, because adults at the time recalled well how hot it was in the 1930s and 1950s…way hotter!
For several decades now, it has rarely if ever been above 100 degrees in the Philadelphia area.
“How can that explain the global heat-havoc we are now seeing, many months later?”
Global heat havoc? ~0.4°C on the plus side on a 1/2 century timescale? Longer growing seasons, more crops, less acres burned, hurricanes trend down, and in fact the whole about 15% greener. Even the whales and polar bears are doing fantastic.
Why don’t you stop the nonsense?
I was referring to the widely publicised heatwaves that you appear to have missed.
But you said “global” – maybe you missed that. And the ambulance casing media conveniently ignored all the places with cooler than normal temps or that the heat waves were of course temporary – hence the word ‘wave’.
If El Nino continues working up to a tantrum then July could very well turn out to be on the high side – but then that’s because of the El Nino.
China and the rest of the non-“western” world has been on a coal burning binge for about 2 decades at least, as well as burning anything else useful, and until the ‘little boy’ woke up temps were flat – except for a step up ~.2°C during the last El Nino. CO2 witchcraft doesn’t explain that.
If you have some non-trolly remarks, some actual science or theory feel free to discuss, or else just STFU.
The widely HYPED misinformation, you mean. !
You mean normal summer weather?
A lot of these so-called maximum temperatures appear to come from unofficial surface sites of highly dubious quality.
But data quality is not what the AGW scammers want.. they want data that is heavily tainted to start with, so it is easier to adjust .
In fact, given the absolute desperation of the AGW cult for some actual warming…
… it would not surprise me at all if thermometers were being DELIBERATELY put in places where there would be a large amount of localised warming effect.
Heatwaves are PERFECTLY NORMAL. They’ve been around forever- you make it seem like a new thing. How old are you, 18?
Nobody could possibly miss the intense, desperate and utterly dishonest propaganda surrounding otherwise unremarkable summer weather, Rusty.
You obviously know your Climastrology catechism yet somehow you don’t think doubling the greenhouse gas water vapor in the stratosphere could have any effect?
Not that there’s any dire effect of a slightly milder climate. If human activity has helped bring on slightly longer growing seasons and arable land area, that’s a human achievement.
If a volcano contributes to our good fortune, just count it as good luck!
TheFinalNail: “I was referring to the widely publicised heatwaves that you appear to have missed.” Just in case, you did not include any link. Are you afraid of a falsification?
Rusty Nail is so dumb he believes what he reads in
The Guardian!
There was no heatwave. The panic started when the MSM reported surface temperatures, not air temperatures. It gets hot in Summer in Southern Europe, but you clearly didn’t know that.
There is no “global heat-havoc.” It’s called summer in the northern hemisphere.
Is that the new Leftist scary climate meme; global heat-havoc? I thought the fear-mongering dial was already turned up to 11 but I guess climate hustlers can always invent new hyperbole.
Something the Ministers of Fear like TFN LOVE to do
“I’m not ridiculing anything”
Yes you are… YOURSELF !!
Would that ‘heat-havoc’ 😂 be unprecedented?
Heat-havoc happens every year. it’s weather. One has to be very young not to realize this.
Try reading the linked NASA article before you spout your ossified opinions. Then argue with NASA researchers at CalTech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory about how long water vapor remains in the stratosphere. From the NASA article:
…the water vapor from both previous eruptions dissipated quickly. The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano, on the other hand, could remain in the stratosphere for several years.
From the research paper:
We estimate the mass of H2O injected into the stratosphere to be 146 ± 5 Tg, or ∼10% of the stratospheric burden. It may take several years for the H2O plume to dissipate.
Damn those pesky scientists; always ruining a great Leftist narrative that scares the bejesus out of those Low-Information-Voters.
Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of War…… Act 3, Scene 1, line 273 of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
Where exactly is this global heat havoc of which you speak? If you are referring to things like news coverage of forest fires on Greek islands? Then can you name a single year in the past 100 where there has not been such events?
Good point.
History is not kind to climate alarmists. So they ignore it.
Yes, and when they can’t ignore it they simply erase it.
Jolly climate middle age hockey sticks and all that.
Since the eruption Antarctic sea ice has been at record lows, could be an effect of the eruption.
…..says Final Nail (version 1 of the water retention story)
But the head post (which Final Nail seems to approve of) says this
That is version 2 of the water retention story
Then consider the amount of water vapour added to the stratosphere by commercial jet aircraft (a rough estimate using open source data and conservative assumptions is 150 to 200 million tonnes annually). If version 2 were true, the water vapour content of the stratosphere would keep going up and up and up. 1 kg of kerosene will produce 1.35 kg of H2O and 3.1 kg of CO2.
I strongly suspect that the truth is somewhere between those two extremes, and that no one really has a clue how long water vapour stays in the upper atmosphere.
NB I have read the stratospheric CO2 has a net cooling effect on the planet. Strange that stratospheric H2O would have a warming effect. I wonder…..
The stratosphere starts at about 30,000 feet at the poles, but it is 56,000 feet or so near the equator.
AFAIK, commercial jetliners do not fly into the stratosphere very often, if ever.
If they could, they would not have to fly around thunderstorms so often…they could just go over them. In fact, they would almost always be above them except at takeoff and landing.
I know one thing about stratospheric H2O, and that is that it reacts with SO2 when it gets injected up to there by volcanoes, and we are kind of long overdue for such an event.
I wonder if having a bunch of extra water will cause the next global cooling caused by a volcano, to be that much worse?
IIRC, additional CO2 only cools the stratosphere. There was speculation that such cooling would warm the troposphere, but that idea seems to have been busted. [Too lazy to go look up this shit.]
“How can that explain the global heat-havoc we are now seeing, many months later?”
You are either a lying jackass or an extremely gullible head-nodding fool.
Heat havoc?
That is just laughable.
Warmistas have been spouting this chicken little garbage every summer for 40 years. The only thing new is the variety of new ways they invent to try to scare people into thinking that warm weather is an emergency that has never happened before.
Seriously…there have been these lies every Summer for many many years now, so how can it be that the records that they talk about breaking are from 50 to 100 years ago and more?
NEWSFLASH: Being a gullible head-nodder that uncritically accepts as fact, every single thing the alarmist media is bleating about, is not a virtue, it is an intellectual failing.
“How can that explain the global heat-havoc we are now seeing, many months later?”
So all of a sudden global warming/climate change, switched to a heat-havoc!
That certainly is nonsense.
“I am not ridiculing anything”.
No, you are, as always, just making yourself look ridiculous.
It is indeed unprecedented since the last submarine volcanic eruption of comparable magnitude and depth.
It’s just physics! And geology and chemistry.
Submarine Anak Krakatau eruptions of 1927 to 2023 don’t hold a candle to it..
What does this mean?
Why don’t you go back to primary school…
… and try to get a basic education this time !
Anak Krakatau (“Child of Krakatoa”) is the submarine volcano erupting in the crater of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. It’s the biggest submarine eruption in the historical record before the titanically more massive 2022 Tonga event.
What ”recent warming” do you mean? This summer in some parts of the NH? Last summer?
2016? 1989? since 1998? The El Nino?
Where is it obvious? I must have missed that part…..
Maybe you mean ”obvious” as in – it’s obvious suntan lotion causes more shark attacks?
The widely publicised warming across Europe, Asia and the US.
Yeah, that’s common. How much attention have you been paying?
So not global warming then.
”instead of what it is obviously caused by – enhanced greenhouse warming”
Seems to be common that you refuse to answer a simple question.
Let’s see what the global data sets have to say about July 2023, shall we? Including UAH.
That little 2nd decimal place percentage of the global surface warming up urban thermometers. as it moves across Europe.
And FN goes into his usual manic-panic chicken-little mode. !
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pitiful !
I’m not the scared one here, as I have recently realised.
Starting to feel sorry for you guys.
You should start a support group. Call it WUWT or something…
Your comments show that you are utterly petrified.
All built on child-like gullibility.
It is hilarious to watch.
Perhaps you could start a support group to help you find some actual science that proves CO2 causes warming.
You certainly haven’t managed anything on your own..
Being as horrified as you are with a trivial warming- you might start a support group. Call it- THE FINAL NAIL.
Rusty Fastener Technology
No, you are the scared one here when it comes to climate.
I have never seen any evidence regarding the climate that would cause me to feel fear. Got any?
Tom Abbott:
Unless I am mistaken, we have a LOT to fear!
https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2023.19.1.1329
Let’s not give Rusty so much attention. Maybe he/she/ze’ll go away. For all we know, it’s a bot.
One thing for sure, “they’re” not here with an open mind.
You can’t point to a minor regional weather event and project it across the entire world – that would be bonkers, wouldn’t it? If this was happening all over the world at the same time – y’know, ‘global’ – that might be different, but it’s not, it’s not even happening across the whole of the northern hemisphere. Basically it’s just a limited area of Southern Europe.
What about the widely unpublished cooling in the other parts of those same areas and here in southern Ontario.
Don’t believe everything you read – you’ll drive yourself crazy thinking that a fraction of a degree over a half century is the end of the world, and that this cold, dry world returning slowly to the warm, moist weather that the world is used to, is somehow a bad, awful and unnatural thing.
“What about the widely unpublished cooling in the other parts of those same areas and here in southern Ontario.”
Yes, if we were back in the 1970’s Human-caused Global Cooling days, the alarmists would be hyping the cold (see, we told yo so!) and ignoring the heat.
the WARMING! Sounds horrible.
goes with the SCIENCE.
.. which also seems to be totally missing.
Pathetic isn’t it – the Final Nail seems terrified of the recent warming, and forgot it’s summer and there’s also an El Nino going on. And that “recent warming” is barely measurable.
Hunga Tonga and El Nino and we still don’t know if the temperature will go up or down next month. The Pause still holds to this point.
There is absolutely no scientific evidence that enhanced atmospheric CO2 causes warming.
If you think there is.. produce it. !
You have failed completely in your attempts so far.
Or have you just given up, because you know there isn’t any.
But he said it was obvious. I’m still waiting for him to show me…….
Let me rephrase that.
There is absolutely no scientific evidence that I will accept, under any circumstances, even if it hits me smack in the face, that enhanced atmospheric CO2 causes warming.
You wouldn’t accept it, no matter how clear it is. Your line it is drawn…
TFN, show us the measurements of tropospheric hot spots demanded by the enhanced greenhouse warming hypothesis. I’d accept it then.
Balloon data shows that IT DOESN’T EXIST !
As does satellite data. The infamous Mr. Santer proved it existed with wind patterns smeared in incomprehensible red-smeared graphs. Even his
friendsacquaintances laughed at that “study.”Well present some actual science… coward.
Why keep running around like a mindless chicken little.
Dodging and weaving, trying to avoid your own emptyness.
Is it that you are basically clueless what science actually is?
Or is it that you can’t find any.. is that what you are telling us !
A very weak and pathetic excuse. !
Yeah, UN IPCC CliSciFi climate models are not scientific proof of anything; only experimentation works. True experiments conducted by radiosondes and satellite MSUs prove that the enhanced greenhouse warming hypothesis is falsified.
Observation is probably equally important. Some fields are purely observational by necessity.
You say that Rusty, yet you don’t see the line that you have set. You refuse under any circumstances to entertain the idea that a slightly milder climate—caused by whatever proves to be the true cause—is not a problem.
The majority of the commenters and certainly authors on WUWT acknowledge that there is indeed both a natural greenhouse effect and an enhanced GHE. It is you who holds the simplistic unsophisticated view that if there’s any enhanced GHE, then it is catastrophic. We cite empirical evidence such as Curry & Lewis that CO2 climate sensitivity is a harmless 1.7K per doubling.
But you prefer to joust with those who take the position that most of us disagree with (actually we are not “disagreeing” as much as not confident in the exact degree of irrelevance that the enhanced GHE may have on climate).
If you were not here to advance political goals and enhance the hysterical agitprop spewing from the Climatariat, then you would understand that the proposed cure is a life-threatening treatment for a largely psychosomatic illness.
Yeah, I’d love to see those measurements of tropospheric hot spots demanded by the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis, TFN.
Do you have a point to make? Or did you get lonely under the bridge? 🧌
You’ve proven yet again that people who give themselves stupid names, make very stupid remarks. Well done
Each comment he makes is a “final” nail in his own mental coffin.
He has got to the stage where he can never get back to any sort of sanity.
Yeah, they’ve been running UN IPCC CliSciFi climate models that show tropospheric hot spots that the enhanced greenhouse warming should be creating. Trouble is, no hot spots. None.
CliSciFi fails in its fundamental prediction, but you still keep hoping. When experimentation (measurements) falsifies your hypothesis, you’re supposed to revisit it not double down on the alarmist caterwauling.
You miss the point of the article. It was not to claim that the volcano caused recent warming, rather to demonstrate that there are so many confounding factors, volcanoes being just one, that it is impossible to ascribe causation to the warming with any confidence.
“instead of what is obviously caused” is a figment of magical thinking and demonstrates ignorance of the concept of scepticism. The point of sceptical thinking is to admit that there are things we don’t know and cannot know.
Unprecedented is the right word, a significant amount of the ocean was blasted to the edge of space. This has never been observed, and you nor anyone else on this planet has any idea what the effects will be and how long it will last, there are no rules on the back of a napkin that apply here.
“Where, oh where are all the ‘skeptiks’ who ridicule claims that this, that or the other metric is “unprecedented” because we don’t have records going back far enough?”
All that is true. We don’t have records that go back far enough, and it’s a good bet that in the past a similar event has occurred of equal or greater magnitude.
Care to duspute that?
Does my position classify me as a “skeptik”?
What if it is more than one recent eruption? What if there has been an increase in underwater volcanic activity over the past decade(s)? Wouldn’t this also increase the sea water’s temperature and thus emit more water vapor. Combine this with rebound from the LIA and man’s growing urban heat wells is a better theory than CO2 caused warming. Measuring temperatures where man does affect the temperature with mechanization and hard surfaces will certainly adjust the reading higher. The recent Antarctic ocean readings maybe more related to seismic activity than the increase in CO2.
It’s always “scientists say” or in this case “scientists have been warning us about” as if all or “the vast majority” of scientists are on board with alarmist climate nonsense.
I would put a Nobel Prize winner in physics against a hundred of your gravy train mediocrities, your soi-disant “scientists.
2022 Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. John Clauser declares his climate dissent: ‘There is no real climate crisis’ – Warns ‘climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience’
and you think that stopping the burning of fossil fuels, which amounts to a miniscule portion of the atmosphere will somehow magically solve all climate issues – let’s hope you regain some common sense if you ever had any
Oh, you must be talking about all the warming that has occurred since January 2022 when the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted.
That recent warming—if such occurred at all—would properly be called “weather” impact, not climate impact.
“enhanced greenhouse warming that scientists have been warning us about for decades.”
For which there is no evidence whatever.
And the people you call scientists do not even rise to the level of methodological hacks. The best of them are mathematically adept dilettantes. None of them know what they’re talking about. And neither do you.
They are not even dilettantes. When simple arithmetic averaging, without analyzing the affect of data variance, is used, they don’t even understand statistics. It is appalling.
It is, isn’t it, Jim. Their incompetence was the biggest shock discovery. Followed by the craven (or corrupt) silence of the APS.
Seems like this might be a good opportunity to tune the radiative-transfer models.
That’s science right there!
Right on. Let’s grasp at any straw available!
No. I’m calling that statement bullshit (note the use of the word ”seems” and ”may”) as well as whatever you write.
Do you really think that an underwater eruption a few months ago is the cause of the current global heat?
If so it’s a sad state of affairs and an indictment of scientist’s current ability to communicate with folk.
Do you really still think CO2 causes warming…
… despite KNOWING that you have absolutely no scientific evidence that it does.
That is RELIGIOUS DOGMA.. which is all you have.
Science-free mantra cultism and panic is certainly a sad state for you to be in. !
”Do you really think that an underwater eruption a few months ago is the cause of the current global heat?”
I really said no such thing.
“Let’s grasp at any straw available!“
Yep, that what your claimate cult chiefs are doing.
Grabbing onto rotten mouldy straws and getting hysterical about it.
Now… where’s that scientific evidence… still MIA !
Why would the water vapor ‘injected’ into the stratosphere take ‘many’ years to dissipate? Also, wow, 13% sounds pretty massive. No doubt this is the finalnail in the global crisis… this just stokes the fire more,….. we better mann the battlements.
Rainfall is confined to the troposphere.
That said, I am not sure that any warming has actually occurred. The warmth at present is only fractionally warmer in small areas south of a wavy jet stream track whereas there are larger areas of cooler than average north of the jet stream tracks and cold outbreaks in the southern hemisphere winter.
Waiting to see how this shows up at UAH.
Agreed. I think it will be a short-lived blip on the UAH.
SH is still cold. We have had no frosts this year (usually 3 or 4) but the day temps are very cool – as normal for winter.
The “warm” area moving across Europe is actually quite small… just rather intense.
It was warm in the UK .. then in Spain… now in Greece.
There is nothing unusual about this sort of WEATHER pattern.
Yes, high-pressure systems generally move from west to east and in the area underneath them the temperatures rise, and then the system drifts eastward where it warms up areas farther east. If the high-pressure system movement stalls out over an area, the temperatures can get very high underneath.
It’s been over a year and there’s barely an El Nino signature.
Still has not been called by the BoM
Because rain. You know about rain, right?
Might also be snow. Just water that falls out of the sky in one form or another.
That stuff.
Good answer! 🙁
chuckle… what more can you say !
To form rain water vapor needs to condense. The stratosphere is warmer than the upper troposphere and it doesn’t have the necessary particles of dust to form a nuclei.
NO.. just no.
Stratospheric water vapour stays there for a long time.
It is not part of the normal rain cycle.
” “Why would the water vapor ‘injected’ into the stratosphere take ‘many’ years to dissipate?”
Because rain. You know about rain, right?”
You know about the Stratosphere right? That it’s above the Troposphere, above the weather like rain and snow?
Actually, I don’t think the poor little fella has the vaguest clue about anything to do with the atmosphere. !
Ya, you’re right as it is quite apparent that the Final Nail is only familiar with the underside of a bridge. 🧌
Sorry to throw in a little contrary stuff into your guys’ fun like gravity and possibility dissipation into space. Its the old “what goes up must come down.” But, then again, I have no effing idea of what is going on.
I know about rain.
Do you know about boiling?
The pressure of the stratosphere ranges from 2.9 psi to 0.014 psi. I suggest you look up the boiling point of water at those pressure before making sarcastic comments about rain.
At .014 PSI the boiling point of water is -24.7 DegC.
Your apology is accepted.
I doubt he/she will understand a single word of the science that you typed, David.
That’s She/He/IT to us grumpy old white guys. I was once accused of having toxic masculinity. I responded with; “No, I just have Testy Cals.”
I thought the end of snow was nigh. The Newspaper of Record said so. https://dailycaller.com/2017/12/28/flashback-its-been-four-years-since-nyt-announced-the-end-of-snow/
My thoughts exactly. The stratosphere is just as cold as the upper troposphere for many parts. Water vapor will cool, through radiation and convection, and it will fall out. We should see relatively humidity of the stratosphere go up noticeably if that’s not true. Didn’t read the paper of course…
Measurements … try them ! Notice how slowly the SWV is decreasing.
Could take quite a few years to get back down to the normal background mass.
Read David’s comment a few above.
Try to learn !
Champagne comedy.
Could have been phrased better
No.
🧌
No, it would have been arrant nonsense no matter how it was phrased !
How so?
(Please paraphrase for me so I can understand)
You’ll have to wait until he can find someone to explain to him what paraphrase means.
The Final Nail,
I write to provide phrasing that may help you to overcome your problem.
In science, ‘evidence’ is provided by observation of reality (empiricism).
e.g. The evidence that human urbanisation causes local climate change is that urban areas are warmer than their surroundings.
Global climate varies: it always has and it always will.
There is no evidence that human activities discernibly alter global climate and/or variations to global climate.
A claim that human activity causes global climate change is an assertion: it is not fact and it is not evidence. And the assertion is not converted to become fact and/or evidence by being stated, written in words, and/or written in computer code.
So, your comments are obtaining derision because they contain assertions but no evidence.
I hope this helps and will solve the ‘log jam’ you are in.
Richard
Please proofread before posting.
Nothingburger, without the bun.
Based on what data? Define Climate. Define weather. Define background “climate change.” Is it Climate Change or Global Warming this week?
…
Dr. Roy Spencer,
5 June 2023. https://www.drroyspencer.com/ and
7 June 2023 https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/06/uah-global-temperature-update-for-june-2023-0-38-deg-c/
Abnormal seems pretty normal since March.
What one should have is a greater-than-seasonal-normal increase in global average temp, not a vague definition of climate. Lacking such data, it is more than likely that global average temperatures for July will plot along the same trend as from 1979 to present.
If global average daily high temperatures are along the same trend line as previous decades, will it mean that SO2 and water vapor have even less effect on the temperatture than previous estimates?
If not my questions, perhaps Ryan Maue could answer his(hers, its) own.
Yeah, and I thought stratospheric cooling warmed the troposphere. I’ll wait for an atmosphere physicist to come along and explain it.
I think they figured that if the troposphere held back more heat then there would be less to reach the stratosphere. It’s not that a cooler stratosphere makes the troposphere warmer.
I thought that additional CO2 increased radiative transfer to outer space, cooling the stratosphere. I will bow to others’ expertise, though.
The original estimate I saw was around 0.2 C of warming. It it is actually 3 times as high then it could well be significant for several years to come.
-Water vapor is a light molecule so it won’t fall out of the stratosphere very fast.
-To condense requires a cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Any available in the stratosphere?
-The water vapor greenhouse effect is saturated low in the atmosphere. However, in the stratosphere it is not. This is exactly where it can have a strong effect.
If it’s really having an influence we should see some warming in the lower stratosphere. It’s been around 18 months. What does the data show?
“To condense requires a cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Any available in the stratosphere?”
The volcano chucked the water up there, maybe it chucked some other stuff too? Just asking, I don’t know the answer.
It hasn’t occurred, as shown by the satellite monthly temperature records, and the trend line doesn’t tend to support warming as a result of this eruption alone.
Maybe 4 Trillion tons isn’t really significant or unprecedented? How much water vapor is in the atmosphere at any given time, and how much change does it take to increase solar warming by 1° (F,C, or K, pick your favorite scale).
Could it be that stratospheric water vapor increases cooling through reflection of radiation, and the whole thing is a wash? Or maybe the whole system is more stable than is previously thought?
A threefold difference in the starting quantity doesn’t matter much if the theory (or guess work) behind the prediction is completely wrong.
If you’re going to ask what the GHG affect of water vapour injected into the stratosphere had, you might also want to ask what the cooling effect is of water vapour absorbing sunlight on its way down, absorbing it and reradiating it before it even gets to earth surface in the first place. It is scientific folly to focus on a single effect.
+100 Climate Idiocy only focuses on the small effect of CO2 and only on the energy’s way from ground to outer space, and never seems to care about the way in from the Sun (where there is substantially more energy to consider) and all the other gases and vapors in the atmosphere. Thank you for this.
You’re definitely the smart goats on top of the bridge, of which “TheFinalNail” is under.
Atmospheric temperature profiles are easy to find so I won’t bother. It is measured that temperature increases in the Stratosphere. It is still quite cold by human standards, but the pressure and density are less. The troposphere contains about 75% of the gases in the atmosphere, and the stratosphere, which has a larger volume, contains about 19% of atmospheric gases.
For water vapor to leave the Stratosphere either the H2O molecules need to combine or coalesce into an entity (liquid or ice) and then to be heavy enough to fall into the Troposphere, or the individual molecule (1 H2O) has to be mixed into the Troposphere. The Stratosphere is about 11 to 50 km thick. Once in the Troposphere, the normal processes of weather can take place.
Maybe someone with “atmospheric” credentials can clarify and expand on this idea.
Not that it matters, but temperature in central Washington State have been well within the expected bounds.
https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/climate/temp_graphs.php?stn=KYKM&wfo=pdt
The whole subject is complicated by the fact that the tropopause is not at specific height, but is instead defined by physical parameters.
It is stated that the troposphere is where most weather takes place, but it is also true that severe thunderstorms commonly reach 50,000 to 60,000 feet, and some in the US have been measured to 70,000 feet.
At the ITCZ, thunderstorms can and commonly do reach 80,000 feet.
One definition defines the tropopause the hence the stratosphere as the place where the lapse rate gets below 2.0°C, and another says the stratosphere begins where the lapse rate reverses and temperatures begin to rise.
So, do we define the places where storms get really high, as temporarily increasing the height of the tropopause?
And is the tropopause a line, or a zone? Is it the entire layer between 2.0 and zero lapse rate, IOW, the layer from 2.0 to where the temp once again starts to rise?
This volcano actually shot a plume well up into the mesosphere, 58 kilometers high.
So, it did not just inject some water vapor into the stratosphere, but into the WHOLE stratosphere, including the parts that extend to hundreds of thousands of feet.
If a volcano inject SO2 to a height that is just a little bit into the stratosphere, it seems very likely it will not cause the global and years long effect that these eruptions are known for, but a far lesser effect of more limited scope.
I think the troposphere is a very wide zone, and the upper reaches of it are a different sort of place than the lower reaches, just above the tropopause.
If a cloud of water vapor or SO2 gets lofted to a height that the entire extent of the stratosphere is filled with the stuff, it is a layer than is several times the thickness of the entire troposphere. And the material in the upper half is many tens of thousands feet above of the level that it can be scrubbed out by normal weather events thunderstorms.
When Thunderstorms project above the normal height of the tropopause, they are called “overshooting tops”. Presumably what they have overshot is the normal cap on altitude of a thunderstorm.
So, if I was defining terms, I would give the zone between the tropopause and that max height of thunderstorms a separate designation.
I am fairly certain that when events cause gasses to stay suspended in the stratosphere for long periods of time, it is because they are in the parts of the stratosphere that these overshooting tops never reach.
The reason the lapse rate is so important in all of this is because when air is rising, it cools at either the wet or dry adiabatic rate, and so for thunderstorms to form, the air must be unstable, or conditionally instable, meaning that air that begins to rise will be able to keep rising for some considerable height. When the lapse rate exceeds both the wet and dry adiabatic rates, air is unstable, and thunderstorms can form, because as the air rises, it will continue to be in an environment that is cooler than the rising air. When the lapse rate gets very low, 2.0 degrees, or goes negative, as it does in the stratosphere, it can only keep going up by momentum, since it will quickly enter an environment in which the surrounding air is warmer than the rising air, and thus the rising air will no longer be buoyant.
Nicholas.. I don’t know if you have seen this video, but it is a direct analysis of millions of sets of balloon data, with some very interesting outcomes.
eg… watch how rapidly the height of the tropopause can change and by how much.
https://youtu.be/XfRBr7PEawY?t=1503
Air enters the stratosphere at the tropical tropopause cold point where it is dehydrated through freeze-drying. Air leaves the stratosphere by crossing the tropopause into the troposphere outside the tropics. Over a certain number of years, all the air in the stratosphere cycles back into the troposphere.
There is no rain in the stratosphere. Most of the water is generated in the upper stratosphere from methane oxidation. The amount of water in the stratosphere goes down as altitude decreases.
the water vapor from the Hunga Tonga eruption will take a few years to move back into the troposphere. It has two main effects:
It absorbs in the solar near-infrared warming the stratosphere.
It emits in the longwave infrared cooling the stratosphere.
The first effect dominates in the tropical stratosphere. The second effect dominates in the extratropical stratosphere.
The Brewer-Dobson circulation moves the water vapor poleward and downward within the stratosphere shifting from the first effect to the second effect. Depending on how active the Brewer-Dobson circulation the situation will shift sooner or later.
The temperature trend in the stratosphere is inverted with respect to the troposphere. If the stratosphere warms one would expect the troposphere to cool.
However, the situation created by Hunga Tonga has no precedent, so it is a great opportunity to learn more about the stratosphere, and any prediction should be taken with a lot of uncertainty.
Question:
Since the typical temperature at the Tropopause is -38 F or so, any water vapor injected into the lower Stratosphere would still be well below freezing. Is that why it remains up there so long?
Possible Nit-pick [that doesn’t alter the underlying issues]:
1 MetricTon ~ 2204 lb; 1 gal (water) ~ 8.3 lb; So, 1 Mton ~ 263 gal of water
Thus, 150,000,000 x 263 = 39.4 billion gal [not trillion]
Did I miss something?
Googling and my calculator both get me the same answer as you. Maybe the article writer got confused by “teragrams” of water? I believe the science article mentioned 50 Tg which the sciency, popular article changed erroneously to 50 million short tons and then conveniently mentions it is 45 million metric tons.
So sloppy math all around – which is typical for anything involving Climate Alarmist science and technology.
Because at the pressure and temperature of the stratosphere the state of water is vapor, the ‘freezing point’ under those conditions would be about -50ºC.
I think at thee very top of the stratosphere, when the air pressure is only 100 pascals, the temperature at which water vapor will sublimate to ice crystals is about -20°C.
Liquid water can only exist down to a pressure of 611 pascals, and at that pressure, any water below 0.0 C is considered “supercooled”.
Above 20,000, the level at which “high clouds” is defined, all clouds are predominantly ice crystals. In thunderstorms above this height, there are also supercooled water droplets.
Stratospheric clouds come in a few types, but the most common are nacreous clouds, and they are ice crystals.
But it is not that they are ice crystals. After all, cirrus clouds are ice crystals, and they form from 20,000 feet and up.
Above about 15,000 feet, all clouds are ice or supercooled water, since that is the highest level that ever gets above freezing. Above about 5000 meters, it is always below freezing, even in the tropics.
The reason is that the stratosphere is very stable, with very little in the way of vertical air movement. And there are no physical processes that can remove anything from up there very quickly, unless it is heavy enough to just fall.
I think the way stuff gets removed from the stratosphere is by chemical reactions, and a gradual drift downwards. For SO2, it reacts with H2O to from droplets of sulfuric acid, which is heavier than O2 and N2, but H2O is lighter than those gases, so it is gonna take awhile for H2O in the upper stratosphere especially, to make it’s way out of there.
My guess is that this entire field of inquiry is one that still needs plenty of study.
See phase diagram above
Uh, I think the article actually said a few years residence in the stratosphere, not many years. I’m not going to go back and sort through it, though.
very low atmospheric pressure also affects the state of the water vapour.
zFAQn.png (700×591) (imgur.com)
actual phase diagram
There are times I feel that TheFinalNail is a reincarnation of griff.
I may be wrong..
griff occasionally made a sensible comment. (if by accident or not)
This is something the bent nail has never managed…
So … no !
Let’s not be too hard on him. New visitors who, like him, have swallowed every last drop of grauniad propaganda, will learn how easily refuted all the alarmism is using only logic for the main part. No need to get too “sciency”, which can put some people off. Like griff before him, he performs a valuable service.
Yeah, somebody has to be the alarmist.
Alarmists try to make the case for Alarmism, and then skeptics take the argument apart piece by piece, and then everybody learns something.
Trouble is, TFN like Griffy before him, fails to learn anything – just keeps parroting stuff he’s read on the alarmist sites.
Yes, but there are a lot of other people reading WUWT than just TFN.
Our arguments are not made for the closed mind.
Trivia
Minutia
Irrelevance
Nobody can know what NASA claim to know to that sort, or any sort, of accuracy. It is speculation, exaggeration and junk,
If anything was going to affect the Stratosphere so as to affect anywhere else, the noticeable effect would be it would no longer ‘be stratified‘
So is it?
Is the Stratosphere less stratified that it was before = because unless anyone can demonstrate that it is, this was a Total Non Event.
In any case, can someone please explain where an underwater volcano explosion managed to find that much Laboratory Grade Distilled/Purified Water AND hoist it through an ocean without acquiring any salt and then loft it through the stinking dirty pollution filled Troposphere while keeping it so pristine, pure and clean.
Much worse: That NASA are promoting and wildly exaggerating this trivia at a time when everybody in the West is at everybody else’s throats over this contrived Junk Science of Climate is nothing less than out-and-out Terrorism
How is it possible for anybody to be so ignorant, thoughtless, dumb and ugly.
<thinks ‘Brandon’ and shudders>
Simple answer….
Trivia <> PowerMinutia <> ControlExaggeration (lies) <> Money
IOW Somebody paid NASA to produce this garbage in the exact same way Dupont shelled out ($250million?) for the Montreal bash that created the Ozone vs CFC scare.
So entirely that Dupont could continue their rip-off racket producing patented refrigerant gases.
That since then, every fridge/freezer and air-con now uses twice the electric it needs to since Freon was banned is irrelevant in the quest for Gold
With due respect to Ryan, who is an outstanding meteorologist, I’m not buying this at all.
First, it says that:
Here are all the recent volcanoes. The effect of each of them is different. The claim that they all cooled the globe is a joke, as is the claim that the Hunga-Tonga eruption is warming the globe.
From left to right, the globe warmed after El Chichón; cooled after Pinatubo; warmed after Shishaldin; was already warming during Redoubt; and mixed after Hunga-Tonga. Berkeley Earth says a bit warmer, UAH MSU says a bit cooler. Time will tell.
Not warmed after Hunga-Tonga.
Over a year with no significant trend. Time will tell, but early indications are not supporting the warming claim.
Next, the Hunga-Tonga eruption is estimated to have ejected 150 million tonnes of water into the atmosphere. While this sounds like a lot, it’s only a cube of seawater that’s 500 meters on a side. An eighth of a cubic km. Meanwhile, the ocean contains 1,300,000,000 cubic km. of water …
Not only that but the total precipitable water in the atmosphere is estimated at ~ 25 kg/square meter of surface. That’s about 12.8 MILLION million tonnes of water. So the 150 million tonnes ejected by the Hunga-Tonga volcano only increased atmospheric water by 0.001% (one-thousandth of one measly percent).
Now, it’s true that this is in the stratosphere, not the total atmosphere. The Hunga-Tonga water still only increased stratospheric water by 10%. And I’m not seeing the issue. Is water in the stratosphere especially warming, and if so, what are the physics of that?
Or we can look at it another way. Global average precipitation is about one meter. Over the surface of the planet, that’s 511 TRILLION tonnes of water. So the Hunga-Tonga water would increase total rainfall by 0.00003% … for a single year.
That’s a one-year rainfall increase of three one-hundredths of a millimeter.
Not seeing any of that making much difference in the grand scheme of things.
[UPDATE] An alert commenter noted below that I should have posted up the stratospheric temperature from UAH. Here’s that graphic:
Still no sign of the purported warming.
Best to all,
w.
Agree see my postto Ryan
And how much SO2 has been deposited in the ocean to fertilize phytoplankton and produce more DMS?
I just love your figures!!
The date of the H-T eruption was January 15th, 2022. Your graph appears to show early 2020. If you moved the line over to it’s proper position, it looks like warming to me.
Grrr … I had it right, rewrote some of the code, and there ya go.
Fixed. No warming, though, to date at least
Thanks for checking.
w.
It’s estimated to have injected 150 million tonnes into the stratosphere not the atmosphere, this has increased the water content of the stratosphere by ~10%.
Hunga-Tonga-strat-WV-1690170650.0971.jpg
It will not effect the precipitation since H2O in the stratosphere is in the vapor phase.
Thanks, Phil. I added a visible graphic to your post. Looks like my reference overestimated stratospheric water. I’m still not seeing the issue. Is water in the stratosphere especially warming, and if so, what are the physics of that?
Finally, the comparison to rainwater was to give a sense of scale. And yes, eventually that water will re-enter the troposphere and rejoin the great H20 circulation. So yes, eventually it will add to the rain.
Regards, and thanks for the correction. That’s what this place is for, public peer review.
w.
Thanks Willis, for some reason when I try to attach an image to this web site it just shows as a link, it doesn’t happen on other sites. My understanding is that that they expect a greenhouse effect, the difference in the stratosphere is that there is no liquid or solid H2O. Also in the troposphere if a water molecule is excited it can lose energy to the atmosphere by collisional deactivation which won’t happen in the stratosphere because of the low pressure. Also the water will have washed out the SO2 and particles into the troposphere. In most eruptions much more SO2 reaches the Stratosphere than in this case which causes less light to reach the surface due to scattering, that negative energy process won’t occur in this case making it an atypical one when compared with e.g. Pinatubo. Ultimately it will end up as rainfall but very slowly over several years
Willis,
Keep in mind that when it is said that volcanic activity cools the planet that 1) it is a ceteris paribus statement and 2) is dependent on how much SO2 got injected into the stratosphere. Shisaldin and Redoubt were relatively small eruptions in which very little SO2 got injected into the stratosphere. El Chichon was significant, but it was coincident with a transition into a strong El Nino.
Hunga Tonga erupted in January 2022; not 2020. It was a very unique kind of eruption in which relatively little SO2 was injected into the stratosphere but huge amounts of H2O got injected instead.
Take a look at how significantly HT altered the stratosphere.
I was going to make the same two observations…only Pinatubo and el Chichon injected a large amount of SO2 into the stratosphere.
And any effect a certain event might have, is going to be superimposed on what was going to occur had that even not occurred.
It is only warmistas that think that all other processes stop when some new factor is added to the equation, or so I thought.
So, yes, major el nino that occurred starting around the exact same time as the volcano…
One thing is for sure, sunsets in Florida were really colorful for a few years.
I had just moved there for college that year. Montana may be the state called big sky country, but for a city kid, north Tampa was serious Big Sky Country.
Is there actually a discernible signal after an eruption? The scale on the diagram might be too large to see small details but it looks as though it would look the same with or without the eruptions? Or am I completely missing the point here?
Richard, I’ve held for a long time that there is very little effect from eruptions.
My theory is that the reduction in sunlight is offset by a reduction in clouds, which makes the net change very small.
Here are some of my investigations into the question.
Overshoot and Undershoot 2010-11-29
Today I thought I’d discuss my research into what is put forward as one of the key pieces of evidence that GCMs (global climate models) are able to accurately reproduce the climate. This is the claim that the GCMs are able to reproduce the effects of volcanoes on the climate.…
Prediction is hard, especially of the future. 2010-12-29
[UPDATE]: I have added a discussion of the size of the model error at the end of this post. Over at Judith Curry’s climate blog, the NASA climate scientist Dr. Andrew Lacis has been providing some comments. He was asked: Please provide 5- 10 recent ‘proof points’ which you would…
Volcanic Disruptions 2012-03-16
The claim is often made that volcanoes support the theory that forcing rules temperature. The aerosols from the eruptions are injected into the stratosphere. This reflects additional sunlight, and cuts the amount of sunshine that strikes the surface. As a result of this reduction in forcing, the biggest volcanic eruptions…
Dronning Maud Meets the Little Ice Age 2012-04-13
I have to learn to keep my blood pressure down … this new paper, “Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks“, hereinafter M2012, has me shaking my head. It has gotten favorable reports in the scientific blogs … I don’t see it at…
Missing the Missing Summer 2012-04-15
Since I was a kid I’ve been reading stories about “The Year Without A Summer”. This was the summer of 1816, one year after the great eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia. The Tambora eruption, in April of 1815, was so huge it could be heard from 2,600 km…
New Data, Old Claims About Volcanoes 2012-07-30
Richard Muller and the good folks over at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project have released their temperature analysis back to 1750, and are making their usual unsupportable claims. I don’t mean his risible statements that the temperature changes are due to CO2 because the curves look alike—that joke has…
BEST, Volcanoes and Climate Sensitivity 2012-08-13
I’ve argued in a variety of posts that the usual canonical estimate of climate sensitivity, which is 3°C of warming for a doubling of CO2, is an order of magnitude too large. Today, at the urging of Steven Mosher in a thread on Lucia Liljegren’s excellent blog “The Blackboard”, I’ve…
Volcanic Corroboration 2012-09-10
Back in 2010, I wrote a post called “Prediction is hard, especially of the future“. It turned out to be the first of a series of posts that I ended up writing on the inability of climate models to successfully replicate the effects of volcanoes. It was an investigation occasioned…
Volcanoes: Active, Inactive, and Retroactive 2013-05-22
Anthony put up a post titled “Why the new Otto et al climate sensitivity paper is important – it’s a sea change for some IPCC authors” The paper in question is “Energy budget constraints on climate response” (free registration required), supplementary online information (SOI) here, by Otto et alia, sixteen…
Stacked Volcanoes Falsify Models 2013-05-25
Well, this has been a circuitous journey. I started out to research volcanoes. First I got distracted by the question of model sensitivity, as I described in Model Climate Sensitivity Calculated Directly From Model Results. Then I was diverted by the question of smoothing of the Otto data, as I reported…
The Eruption Over the IPCC AR5 2013-09-22
In the leaked version of the upcoming United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Chapter 1, we find the following claims regarding volcanoes. The forcing from stratospheric volcanic aerosols can have a large impact on the climate for some years after volcanic eruptions. Several…
Volcanoes Erupt Again 2014-02-24
I see that Susan Solomon and her climate police have rounded up the usual suspects, which in this case are volcanic eruptions, in their desperation to explain the so-called “pause” in global warming that’s stretching towards two decades now. Their problem is that for a long while the climate alarmists…
Eruptions and Ocean Heat Content 2014-04-06
I was out trolling for science the other day at the AGW Observer site. It’s a great place, they list lots and lots of science including the good, the bad, and the ugly, like for example all the references from the UN IPCC AR5. The beauty part is that the…
Volcanoes and Drought In Asia 2014-08-09
There’s a recent study in AGU Atmospheres entitled “Proxy evidence for China’s monsoon precipitation response to volcanic aerosols over the past seven centuries”, by Zhou et al, paywalled here. The study was highlighted by Anthony here. It makes the claim that volcanic eruptions cause droughts in China. Is this possible?…
Get Laki, Get Unlaki 2014-11-18
Well, we haven’t had a game of “Spot The Volcano” in a while, so I thought I’d take a look at what is likely the earliest volcanic eruption for which we have actual temperature records. This was the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki in June of 1783. It is claimed to…
Volcanoes Once Again, Again 2015-01-09
[also, see update at the end of the post] Anthony recently highlighted a couple of new papers claiming to explain the current plateau in global warming. This time, it’s volcanoes, but the claim this time is that it’s not the big volcanoes. It’s the small volcanoes. The studies both seem to…
Volcanic Legends Keep Erupting 2015-07-22
Once again, Anthony has highlighted a paper claiming that volcanoes have great power over the global temperature. Indeed, they go so far as to say: “From the reconstruction it can be seen that large eruptions, such as Mount Tambora in 1815, or clusters of eruptions, may …
Why Volcanoes Dont Matter Much 2015-07-29
The word “forcing” is what is called a “term of art” in climate science. A term of art means a word that is used in a special or unusual sense in a particular field of science or other activity. This unusual meaning for the word may or may not be …
As you can see, I’ve given it some thought and provided all kinds of evidence to back up my ideas.
w.
Every tropical volcanic eruption that places a substantial amount of SO2 in the stratosphere causes surface cooling. It is a straightforward, well-known mechanism.
Thanks, Javier. Yes, and the effect of CO2 on downwelling forcing is also a “straightforward, well-known mechanism” … but that’s only a small part of the story.
If only the climate were that simple and one-dimensional, that would be the end of it in both cases. But it’s not.
I say that the climate actively responds to things like eruptions, and shifts its states to counteract the effect of the volcanoes. See my long list of analyses of actual observations of eruptions and temperatures above.
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Ryan
afew questions
1 the temper@ture in the stratosphere increases with height. Putting more H2O there will cause the effective level at which occurs black body emission to space to rise resulting in more radiation to space i.e. global cooling
2 Krakatoa. In 1817 injected a huge amount of water vapour into the stratosphere causing cooling over many years or so we are told
3 we were told that supersonic jet contrails in the stratosphere would cause clouds which would reflect visible and UV back into space So too with any water vapour in stratosphere – causing coolingq
so in summary increased water vapour in the stratosphere should cause cooling
SO2 is the gas which is thought to cause global cooling when a large amount of it gets injected into the stratosphere. Because it reacts with H2O to form an aerosol of sulfuric acid.
Here in New Zealand we had a very wet summer (December to February) and the rain has continued unrelentingly since. I guess what goes up must come down
This volcano must have been caused by AGW- since it causes everything!
It seems plausible, at least to me, that the sudden injection of a massive amount of water vapour into the stratosphere would lead to some sort of perturbation(s) to normal weather patterns. The polar vortex and the jet stream in the NH seem to have developed quite wavy southward excursions since the Hunga-Tonga event leading to greater temperature variations, depending on whether one is north or south of the jet stream. In the UK, we experienced above average temperatures in June while the jet stream was north of the British Isles but July has been cooler, wetter and windier than average since it moved well to the south of us. Could the southward positioning of the jet stream trapping warm air from Africa be the cause of recent above average temperatures in Spain, Southern France, Italy, Greece, etc?
Perhaps, the effect of the Hunga-Tonga submarine eruption will decay over time, the polar vortex/jet stream will become less wavier and be confined to higher latitudes.
“Could the southward positioning of the jet stream trapping warm air from Africa be the cause of recent above average temperatures in Spain, Southern France, Italy, Greece, etc?”
The high-pressure system currently hovering over the area is bringing warm air from Africa into Italy and Greece and is what is causing the heatwaves in Italy and Greece and surrounding areas. See the link below which shows the location of the high-pressure system (center marked).
The UK is north of the jet stream and experiencing cooler weather, and the high-pressure system bringing heat to Italy and Greece is south of the jet stream.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=12.60,33.90,264/loc=13.402,35.638
The first I did was looking up stratospheric temperatures from Roy Spencer.
I could nor find any warming from January 2022.
Yeah, I should have shown that as well. Here it is. I’ve added it to my head comment as well.
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I’ve come to the conclusion that TheFinalNail has got to be a ChatBox AI. No one can be this stupid and incomprehensible and completely wrong. Well, maybe except for ALGORE and Greta.
I wanted to know if tropical storms etc reach the stratosphere. apparently they do.
“The tropical cyclones with deep convective synoptic scale systems persisting for a few days to week, play an important role on the mass exchange between the troposphere and the stratosphere, and vice versa”
Leading to:
“Even very small changes in lower stratospheric water vapor could affect the surface climate”
From https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2015-988/acp-2015-988-manuscript-version7.pdf
So there are clear paths between the layers in the atmosphere.
This paper suggests the effects of the Hunga eruption may last for a few years.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00652-x
Yeah, but climate models do NOT correctly model any part of the water cycle which determines Earth’s climate so what the hell point is there in trying ?
We do not understand, evaporation, advection, nucleation, cloud formation or precipitation in a cell by cell mathematical equation.
Interesting thought, but no data to back it up. When the Enso state changes to El-Nino it generally gets hotter and that is probably what this is. There is no data showing a change in atmospheric water vapor that looks anomalous compared to the last few decades.
The 9 km water vapor did show an increase almost exactly at the time of the eruption. Nothing outside normal levels though.
Yes I saw that, I guess the next question is what should a 10% bump in stratospheric water vapor look like on the available data.
It looks like this.
Interesting, it would appear that the data that I showed does not show such a dramatic increase, or 9Km is not the correct altitude to see it.
Actually, I am not sure what is being plotted, could you provide the link?
https://acd-ext.gsfc.nasa.gov/Data_services/met/qbo/qbo.html
It is the ppm anomaly at 10 mb. The stratosphere has about 5 ppm of H2O through most of it’s depth for reference.
Hunga-Tonga injected the water vapor into the upper part of the stratosphere and lower part of the mesosphere beyond 25 km.
The graph you posted is at 300 mb (~9 km) within the troposphere.
Because all that water vapor just stays up there forever, right?
Someone smarter than me explain why that water vapor won’t simply condense or freeze?
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-6a60082f18be995a9a551464ef74f81b.webp
Because at the pressures and temperatures of the stratosphere water is a gas, takes temperatures below -50ºC to freeze.
Try to interpret the H2O phase diagram.
At the temps and pressures in the Stratosphere, it will be borderline vapour/solid
No, that’s the pH2O not the atmospheric pressure. Polar stratospheric clouds require temperatures below -78ºC to form.
Not a question of smartness. The stratosphere is extremely dry. There is not enough water vapor to condense or freeze. Only under the extremely cold conditions of the polar stratosphere (-80ºC) can clouds form. These polar stratospheric clouds usually contain nitric and sulphuric acid and include supercooled water (type I). Type II polar stratospheric clouds are made only of water ice and are very rare. Perhaps they’ll become more common after Hunga Tonga.
Whoa. I had to do a double-take to make sure I was actually on the WUWT site reading this.
BTW…Here’s what Hunga Tonga did to the stratosphere.
https://acd-ext.gsfc.nasa.gov/Data_services/met/qbo/qbo.html
While the graphic you presented is nice and appears quite alarming on first glance w.r.t. beginning-2022 onward, it suffers from the following problems:
1) the legend only shows relative (“anomaly”) H2O concentrations in ppm against some undefined baseline absolute value of total H2O at the 10 hPa equivalent altitude . . . note the negative values (brown shadings) in the color code legend. Therefore, there’s no way from this graphic to know the % change in the absolute concentration of H2O vapor at this altitude.
2) If just considering the relative change from January 2022 onward, the graph show perhaps as much as a 1.25 ppm increase above the global average from mid-2004 thru end-2021. 1.25 ppm is equivalent to 0.000125% . . . does this incremental change really merit concern?
1) The general rule is about 5 ppm in the stratosphere. There is some variability both in terms of height, latitude, and time of year. But generally speaking 5 ppm is the baseline.
2) Yeah, so about a 20% increase in water vapor at this level. At the tropopause there is almost no change. Rough average through the depth of the stratosphere is about +10% give or take. This is probably good for about +0.1 to +0.2 W/m2 of radiative force. To put that into perspective the CERES Earth energy imbalance as of 2023/04 came in at +1.8 W/m2.
I believe 10 pascals is the very top of the stratosphere.
Way up there.
It is a wide payer.
From the initial reports of the height of the eruptive column, this volcano reached well into the mesosphere.
Thunderstorms routinely poke well into the lower stratosphere, to 80,000 feet or so.
But rarely does any event put stuff up to the top of the stratosphere, let alone the mesosphere.
I see very little in the way of anyone pointing out that “the stratosphere” is a very large and, on the bottom end, not a particularly well defined layer.
1 hPa = 100 Pa = 1 mb. The top of the stratosphere is about 1 mb or 100 Pa. 10 mb is roughly in the middle or maybe slightly higher in the stratosphere.
Like you say though the upper and bottom boundaries are not well defined at least in terms of height or pressure levels.
The injection of SEAWATER into the stratosphere and even the mesosphere during the Tonga Hunga Tonga Haa’apai volcanic eruption on January 15, 2022 means that numerous elements and compounds were also expelled, among them: sodium, chlorine, magnesium, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, iron, mercury, uranium, iodine, bromine, fluorine, sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen and silica to name but a few. Also bear in mind that the entrained CO2, chlorine & fluorine along with high blast temperature & pressure must have formed ozone-destroying CFC’s. What effect all this will have on global weather is anybody’s guess.
One direct effect, which doesn’t require a GCM climate model to ascertain, is the injection of a HUGE amount of cloud condensation nuclei—in addition to the noted injection of water vapor—into the troposphere and stratosphere. Overall result of such will be an increase in percentage cloud coverage over Earth.
But you’re right: “What effect all this will have on global weather is anybody’s guess.”
AFAIK, nobody, including the modelers of CC for the IPCC, knows how to properly assess the impact of various type of clouds on Earth’s climate. I’ve read of debates that cirrus clouds clouds cause global cooling but lower clouds (e.g., cumulus and stratus) produce global warming . . . some of this is captured in Richard Lindzen’s “Iris hypothesis” concerning climate (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_hypothesis ) and in Willis Eschenbach’s many excellent articles posted to WUWT concerning global cloud formation, evolution and possible direct impacts and feed-back couplings (ref: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/15/clouds-from-both-sides-now/ and many others).
But the scientific community “jury” is still out . . . NOBODY KNOWS!
However, I do believe it is logical to ask if the hot weather experienced this summer in the Northern Hemisphere, could possible be associated with the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Submarine Volcano, even though I personally do not buy into MSM claims that it is “record breaking” or “unprecedented”.
Note in particular this from the author of the above article (third- and second-to-last sentences of his/her text:
“It’s straightforward how to run a radiative transfer model to determine the impacts of adding 150M metric tons of water to the stratosphere. But, detailed climate model simulations are needed to disentangle the atmospheric circulation changes that lead to non-linear feedbacks.”
(my bold emphasis added)
It’s models all the way down . . .
If there is one useful thing the IPCC has produced, it is definitive proof that atmospheric climate models are far and wide (possible exception for one Russian model) USELESS in predicting climate, disagreeing with each other by a factor of at least eight as well as over-predicting incremental global warming by an average factor of 3 compared to actual measurements taken for the duration of such predictions.
Consequently, IMHO, one should take the above article with a grain of salt water.
There is no sign of a temperature rise in the lower stratosphere.
Even the ~month-long bumps in the plotted lines representing “max” and the 70% statistical values for Jan-Feb 2022 (volcano eruption time) and Jan-Feb 2023 (no volcano) appear to be similar . . . what’s up with that???
Greenhouse gases in the stratosphere radiate into space and cannot raise the global temperature in the troposphere. The temperature in the tropopause is constant and lowest. Ozone radiation in the higher layers is radiation into space.
