By P Gosselin on 28. January 2024
By Frank Bosse
During weather events, how often are we confronted with the simple claim: “More heat leads to more energy available, which leads to severe storms“?
This is so catchy that it can be understood with just a basic knowledge of physics.
So is the claim: “The warmer the tropical sea the more severe tropical storms, called hurricanes over the Atlantic or typhoons over the Pacific.” is often bandied about. The storms all occur over the ocean, and record surface temperatures were reported in 2023.
The temperatures (orange) already at the start of April 2023 were well above those of a year earlier . (Image: Climate Reanalyzer).
Following this logic, the energy in storms in 2023 should also have been at a record level and there should have been more strong storms than ever before. And we did indeed see a record last year:
Screenshot tweet by Ryan Maue (NOAA) at X.
Since the beginning of systematic satellite-based observations in 1982, the number of severe tropical storms globally has never been as low as it was last year, in 2023. This contradiction between record-high ocean temperatures and record-low severe tropical storm numbers makes it clear that it is never as easy as often suggested. If you look at the relationship between the global ACE (for “accumulated cyclone energy” in storms) and the surface temperatures of the oceans, you will find:
The correlation is highly pronounced in the El Nino region, elsewhere there are only very unclear signatures.
This means: globally many storms with El Nino, few with La Nina. The image was generated with the KNMI Climate Explorer. However, the oscillation there is natural and “modulates” the temperatures with a pattern in the Pacific tropics and subtropics with global effects. Note: In the real climate system, nothing is so simple that it can be explained with elementary school knowledge. Whoever tries to do this: you have to be particularly careful not to be manipulated.
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For every complex problem there is an
answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
“Chaos” rules The Complex Climate System.
There’s a lot we don’t know or understand.
Some have latched onto just one thing and fooled the world into thinking that one thing is the cause of all the bad weather they’ve experienced in their relatively short lifetimes. And that one thing can be controlled by Government because Man is the cause. (They’ve expanded from just CO2 to methane, etc.)
History is full bad and good weather. The best Man can do is be prepared for the bad weather event while not being lulled into the not being prepared by the good.
(If a Major Hurricane is bearing down on you, best to have a couple of gas cans in you’re car than rely on finding a place to recharge your EV in less time than it it would take to dump 5 gallons from your gas can into your tank!)
CO2 is a small part of a complex and chaotic system. “Nature” can handle and has handled CO2 (and methane) in the past.
Weather will continue naturally whether or not Governments try to stop it or not.
The only “Threat!” we face is from those using CO2 as an excuse to have freedom loving nations self-implode.
I took Control Systems Theory during my senior year of an Electrical Engineering bachelor’s program. We modeled multiple order control loops with feedback and perturbation. Linear algebra matrices filled with partial differential equations. Wickedly complex math.
… and that is just a sample of ‘Chaos Theory’, which goes much deeper.
Chaos systems are nonlinear. Most control systems are linear. You’re mixing apples and oranges.
Chaos can exist in a linear system. It merely requires enough variables.
The first chaotic system to be formally recognised was the ‘three body problem
Even under Newtonian modelling, that’s chaotic and linear too.
And of course your claim that Most control systems are linear. is utter bullshit.
Engineers spend millions of man years trying to make them non linear. So they work.
In particular your car will contain hundreds of non-linear control systems. The whole reason we do electronic fuel injection is to make them so.
“Chaos can exist in a linear system.”
If your so-called linear system becomes chaotic, then it wasn’t linear to begin with.
There are three types of systems in physics: linear, non-linear, and non-linear chaotic.
“Even under Newtonian modelling, that’s chaotic and linear too.”
Huh? Since when?
“Engineers spend millions of man years trying to make them non linear. So they work.”
It’s funny. We have many tools that can solve linear differential equations. The number of non-linear differential equations that can be solved is vanishingly small. We usually try to make non-linear systems, linear, so they can be solved–for example, transistors, diodes, vacuum tubes.
Why is the Clay Math Institute offering a prize for finding if there is a solution to the Navier-Stokes Equation?
Some control systems are linear. When perturbations are included, the solutions to the differential equations become non-linear. Imagine controlling a multi axis pendulum with servos.
“Imagine controlling a multi axis pendulum with servos.”
You mean a double pendulum? It’s chaotic and there are no closed-form solutions. I don’t usually imagine controlling one. What would that look like?
Maybe you a talking about control signals. The control signals for our fine motor skill is chaotic. The control signals for heart and breathing are periodic. Sometimes when these systems start to fail, the control signals switch–the fine motor skill signal goes periodic, and the pacemaker signal goes chaotic.
H.L. Mencken said, “For every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, neat, and wrong.”
AGW will cause:
When Schellnhuber and his lickspittles proudly announce an upcoming El Niño (80%) better prepare for 3 years La Niña 😀
The Climate Howlers do not talk about AGW, which has obviously been harmless
They invented CAGW and then made 100% wrong scary claims about it for the past 44 years.
We conservatives should be careful to distinguish between AGW, which has been pleasant and CAGW, which is an imaginary boogeyman.
The IPCC defines CAGW by applying a theoretical water vapor positive feedback to the effects of CO2 alone, that amplify warming by 2x to 4x. They prefer to emphasize the 4x wild guess, which can scare people.
If we conservatives deny AGW, which has at least five different aspects, not just CO2 emissions, then we are science deniers, asking to be fact checked.
If we deny CAGW, then we are climate realists with common sense.
You’re referring to EGE, the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect. It was invented because CO2 couldn’t do the heavy lifting by itself and needed water vapor to help it along. It’s unfortunate for the alarmists, but the effect isn’t occurring.
I don’t even understand the logic of the “more hurricanes due to more CO2” alarmist rhetoric.
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere does NOT heat the oceans, it heats the atmosphere. Now, a warmer atmosphere will transfer some heat to the ocean, so as a secondary effect the oceans also exhibit warming.
However, the atmosphere must necessarily warm more than the ocean. Further, the atmosphere warms more at elevation than it does at sea level.
That situation INHIBITS thunderstorm and hurricane activity!
These storms are heat engines. The greater the lapse rate, the greater atmospheric instability and therefore the greater the likelihood of storms.
This process is so important that actual meteorologists have many different measures of atmospheric instability – such as the lifted index, the K-index, the Bulk Richardson Number, the convective available potential energy, and several others.
The heat engine runs between the warm ocean and a cold troposphere. How in the heck does reducing the temperature differential due to tropospheric warming cause the heat engine to run faster? Basic physics says just the opposite.
“it heats the atmosphere”
There is NO evidence of that. None whatsoever.
….
“the atmosphere warms more at elevation than it does at sea level.”
There is NO evidence of that. None whatsoever.
….
“The greater the lapse rate….. “
No, a larger lapse rate generally means there is less water vapour.
H2O is the only substance that affects the lapse rate, and it decreases it.
A dry lapse rate of 9.8C/km has no chance of rain.
““The greater the lapse rate….. “
No, a larger lapse rate generally means there is less water vapour.
H2O is the only substance that affects the lapse rate, and it decreases it.
A dry lapse rate of 9.8C/km has no chance of rain.”
What? Where did I say “dry” lapse rate? Yes, I agree that the lapse rate of dry air is certainly higher than the lapse rate of saturated air. However, that was not what I was discussing.
The lapse rate certainly is affected by heating from below (among other factors). When the sun comes out and solar radiation begins heating the earth, then the atmospheric temperature at the surface begins to increase. This is increasing the lapse rate in the vernacular that I am used to using. The atmosphere is also becoming less stable at this point.
If the soil was moist, then during the morning solar heating, packets of warm, moist air will begin to rise in the atmosphere. This then leads to further instability in the atmosphere and perhaps afternoon rain showers.
I must be missing something in your statement, because I believe the actual lapse rate definitely increases from 5:00AM until 3:00PM when the thunderstorms begin.
“The lapse rate certainly is affected by heating from below”
NO !!! The lapse rate is only affected by gravity and the specific energy of the constituents of the air.
Only H20 content affects the specific energy of the air.
You seem to not understand what “lapse rate” is.
You’re referring to the ADIABATIC lapse rates, that are ONLY valid for air rising or sinking within an atmosphere that is in hydrostatic equlibrium.
The “environmental” lapse rate is just a measurement of the temperature vs height. Can even be negative as in a temperature inversion.
From your comment, I think you are probably referring to “rate of convection”…
… which is a somewhat different thing.
It is the most simplistic of thinking that assumes “more energy equals more or stronger storms” and proceeds to declare such a hypothesis as established proven dogma. The applicable Latin term for such thinking is “non sequitur”.
There are much known data that suggests the opposite on a planetary basis just within our solar system. Jupiter is believed, on the basis of measured and observed data, to have the stormiest atmosphere of planets in our solar system. Average wind speeds range from 200 mph to over 900 mph. Yet the average atmospheric temperature of the Jovian atmosphere is minus 234 degrees F or minus 145 deg C.
So if storminess, as defined by atmospheric wind speeds, is proportionately related to atmospheric temperature or wind energy content, then Jupiter would be one of the least energetic or stormy of any planet with a gaseous atmosphere.
Conversely, contrast Venus to Jupiter. Venus has the hottest atmosphere of any planet in the solar system, averaging 864 deg F at the surface … yet Venus also has the most stable, non-stormy, and slow moving atmospheres, with average wind speeds at the surface of less than 2.4 mph, far less than on Earth.
So empirical data from our solar system suggests the opposite of what the warmunists claim. Atmospheric warming actually induces a calming effect on atmospheric wind speeds.
“So empirical data from our solar system suggests the opposite of what the warmunists claim. Atmospheric warming actually induces a calming effect on atmospheric wind speeds.”
I believe you are correct. I like your extraterrestrial examples.
Which is indeed the normal explanation given for why mid latitudes have stronger storms in winter, not summer.
Energy flows down temperature gradients in thermo-mechanical systems. The temperatures may be higher in summer, but the (horizontal) temperature gradients are greater in winter.
You appear to be talking about the temperature of the Jovial stratosphere, not the troposphere.
1920px-Structure_of_Jovian_atmosphere.png
“a warmer atmosphere will transfer some heat to the ocean”
No.
There is around one CO2 molecule per million water molecules in the oceans. There is no way that one CO2 molecule will warm up a million water molecules when the IR ground emissions heat the CO2 molecules to around surface temperature.
Climate change is projected to warm the cold place more then the warm places. This will slow down the heat engine that drives earth’s weather. Wind speed will be reduced. This reduction in wind speed has been observed globally and has climate scientists and the IPCC stumped.
I think climate scientists are generally stumped.
Yes, because your typical “climate scientist” is in fact no scientist at all; just an activist who pretends to be a scientist.
Logic and reason interfere with “The zcause,” and they are therefore easily stumped when the real world keeps telling them the “wrong” outcomes.
OTOH,
If a simple experiment shows that a hypothesis has failed, there is no gain from making more and more complicated hypotheses.
Example. You can simply define the hottest 3-day heatwave each year as the average of the hottest 3 consecutive days. Or 5 or 10 day, similarly.
You then find that in most places, the universal popular claim that heatwaves are becoming longer, hotter and more frequent is falsified.
Instead, we now have a cottage industry of academics composing increasingly complex definitions of ‘heatwave’ so that the hypothesis can be kept alive and paying, by ignoring the simple result. Geoff S
Yep, the changing of weather definitions is a major trademark of the AGW scam.
“””composing increasingly complex definitions
= Exactly what they do when they adjust the numbers coming (presently and historically) from thermometers
Holy cow, if they *know* what the readings/temperature **should** be, why even bother with the thermometers?
We can estimate the average height of people in a certain region, say, from limited but spatially distributed samples. And we ‘know’ that if we carry out a random sample within that region that it will be in broad agreement with our original estimate.
There will be the odd anomaly. But in general, our sampling will support our initial estimate. You can extrapolate information regionally without compromising your conclusion.
You still need the initial measurements. So you still have to bother with thermometers, etc.
Another moronically inept attempt at analogy from the fungal toenail.
Hilarious !!!
Thinks we can just “MAKE A GUESS” at temperature data. What a gormless idiot !
The claimed global average temperatures for the 1800s are close to a guess.
Even up to the implementation of ARGO, most of the Southern pacific SSts were just “mostly made up” (Phil Jone. CRU. wording)
That is a HUGE area
Even now, a lot of third world land area doesn’t have much in the way of viable temperature sites.
I keep asking Nick Stokes where the numbers for the South Indian in his pretty globe maps come from—he never answers.
The claimed global average temperatures for the 1800s are close to a guess.
Wouldn’t that make them useless as a baseline for comparison?
TOTALLY USELESS.. in fact…
JUST PLAIN MALINFORMATION…
.. just like the rest of GISS et al. !
Looking back at early human cultures, when the crops failed and it became clear the high priest, mighty works, and human sacrifices could not control the weather, the temples were torn down and the preists sacrificed.
We are following the same pattern of high priest, mighty works, and human sacrifice.
Should we expect a different result?
The cult of climate change “true believers” seem to be taking even more wealth from others to build their temples ever higher and decorate them even more ostentatiously!
I can’t wait until the vast multitudes of people start doubting the high priests.
Is there anything we can all agree on? Are we definitely in a slight ( I know yes averaging SST land temp various parts/ levels of the atmosphere, pockets of water, at different locations levels all tres deficile ) warming trend? And if so , we are still stuck with the possibility of false correlation ( to increase in Co2. So then we’re back to proving/ disproving sensitivity and I have seen people here that seem pretty knowledgeable in the molecular physics department get into some pretty contentious discussions on that that mechanism too here over the years. So…
Is there any table top experiments that can be done to settle this. I was just reading about the story of the discovery/imaging of DNA. Seems like we should be able to solve this.
A statistically significant warming trend, as it happens. According to every global temperature data set, surface or satellite (including UAH).
If the time scale is expanded to include the last 6000 years, we’re in a definite cooling trend.
LOTS of urban warming and mal-adjustment in the urban surface fabrications…
NOT REAL.. NOT GLOBAL… (urban areas are a quite small part of the land area)
UAH shows only warming is at El Nino events.
Still waiting for you to present some evidence of human causation…. (utter FAILURE so far)
Or are you saying this slight beneficial warming is TOTALLY NATURAL. !?
Be that as it may, it appears to be less extreme than former warmings, and because time generally acts as a low-pass filter, we can’t be certain that the change today is faster than previously. That is, we can’t say with certainty that what is happening today is unprecedented.
Before they “adjusted” the data, the warming in the period from the 1920s to 1940 was actually steeper.
Another major reason for their need for data adjustment.
A statistically significant warming trend
≈=======
Statistically significant simply means odds are against it being due to change at some arbitrary confidence level.
Climate science, along with the other social sciences, use 95%, which is not very significant.
It is more formally known as a “spurious correlation.”
There is a nearly 100% scientific consensus that there is a greenhouse effect and CO2 is part of it. That consensus dates back to the 1800s and there has been over 125 years to refute the theory, with no success.
The only consensus since then is that anyone who agrees with your climate theory is brilliant, while anyone who disagrees is a complete fool.
We do not even have a consensus on whether the global warming since 1975 has been good news, or at least better news than global cooling since 1975 would have been.
There is no consensus on whether adding CO2 to the atmosphere has been good news or bad news.
There is no consensus on whether 100 year climate predictions should be taken seriously.
There is a strong consensus here that leftists have the intelligence of farm animals and their CAGW theories are nothing more than a tall, steaming pile of farm animal digestive waste products.
They have had 125 years to prove the CO2 atmospheric warming conjecture.
And YOU STILL CAN’T PRODUCE ANY EVIDENCE to back it up !
Why is that ?
There is certainly no evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2 in the satellite data.
Very nice.
When it comes to ocean temperatures, this guy is at the front of the boiling seas.
Working with Trenberth says all that needs to be said.
A manic AGW activist, deep in the climate trough.
He forgets that if seas act as thermometers, sea level rate of change has hardly altered over the last 6000 years.
This immediately causes his theory problems.Geoff S
Actually, there is plenty of evidence from around the world that sea levels were a couple of metres higher only a couple of thousand years ago.
Re the first chart: the black line at the top there, that’s 2024 so far. Highest of all by some margin.
We’re in the foothills of the warming that is coming.
Here is the deal. You made a specific prediction. I bet you are wrong. $1000 on the three year outcome—you win if hotter, I win if same or colder.
If you are so sure, you would take my sucker bet. Deal?
Big call, Rud.
Temperature constructs outcomes are controlled by those who need “The Cause” to be validated.
It’s like meetings –
the minutes show whatever the minutes-taker decided to distribute.
The most powerful person in any meeting is the secretary who gets the job of taking the minutes.
Starting with the hot El Nino year of 2023, very unlikely to repeat in the next three years, makes this an easy to win bet.
NO!! We are in a strong El Nino.
You have shown over and over that there is no human causation.
Any of your other chicken-little type fantasies are totally meaningless. !
I’d like to know where you bought your crystal ball. The one thing that seems to characterize alarmists is the certainty with which they assert what the future holds, despite the fact that the future is virtually unknowable.
If you have seen the 1956 special-effects award-winning film, Forbidden Planet, you can see just poor the future vision of even science fiction writers is. The concept of digital computers and personal digital assistants was completely overlooked in favor of a single robot serving many masters.
The FutileWail knows that now the climate enthusiasts have a thumb on the scales of the ‘Global Average Temperature’ it’s never coming off – no matter what the temperatures say, 2024 will be warmer than 2023 and 2025 will be warmer than 2024. This has to happen now to conform to their spurious ‘warming trend’ and keep in line with their precious climate models.
It’s very simple where it all falls apart =
Temperature is routinely and deliberately confused with Energy
Two lovely examples:
1/ Where the sun is shining down onto muddied ocean-water, said coming out of a river draining a rapidly eroding landscape. As happens constantly nowadays.
The sun’s energy will be absorbed in the top 10 or 20 metres of water instead of the top 100 had the water been crystal clear.
All that energy is a much smaller volume of water will cause a higher temp for the surface waters.
BUT, the deeper water, below 20 metres, wont be getting any energy at all and thus has nothing else to do but get cold and remain cold.
Meanwhile the higher temp of the top layer will be radiating and evaporating away more that it otherwise would.
Hence, muddy ocean water gives the impression of heating but is in fact cooling
2/ Katabatic heating of the land
Caused by the arrival of ‘resistant ridge’ high pressure weather systems.
The skies inside those will be clear blue and the sun will be shining down on a dry water-depleted landscape.
(If it wasn’t already ‘water depleted’ by ploughing, tilling, forest fires, city building and wetland clearance, the ridge itself will soon do the job)
The land will heat rapidly due to its low heat capacity, so will the air close to the surface via conduction and the air above that will be heated by the Foehn Effect of the falling air .
(A land surface temp of 60°C was recorded via Sputnik somewhere in Spain last year)
Asphalt and tarmac in the Urban Island Effect is another major source of heat loss.
Even though the asphalt may be pitch black with a visible Albedo of zero, its albedo as seen by the sun will be approaching unity
But at that sort of temperature, the air and the land will become solar mirrors, they will be radiating away heat as fast as El Sol can throw it at them.
i.e. There will be no energy storage or retention in those landscapes so at night-time, also winter-time, temperatures will plummet
So absolutely YES, Heating (high temps) does in fact equal Cooling (Energy loss)
Heating equals cooling?
What are you smoking?
Didn’t you say La Niña equals El Niño ? 😀
btw: Can we lose the fake ‘self deprecation’ coming from the word Complex
Just because Complex Climate has a nice ring to it does not make it so.
It appears complex when you try to understand or grasp all of it all at the same time.
Wrong
Just like thermometers and the adjustments applied to them, study each one individually & closely to see that the mechanics of it are really very simple and basic.
That is Climate, all those simple things acting out in parallel and the intrinsic reason why (digital) computers will NEVER get a handle on it.
Digital computers, no matter how much hype, ONLY work on serial, one after the other, happenings.
For every weather event likewise.
But we all know what happens.
e.g. Yet another ‘named storm’ arrives at the UK and straight away we get legions of haha ‘weather-people’ on TV and Interweb frantically waving their arms and blaming:
Total confusing garbage – it’s like they don’t even want to understand
Fact of the matter – they don’t – so it’s all just brushed aside with the word ‘Complex’
Like I (the big smart Alec Climate Scientist) understand it but a grubby little lowlife like you hasn’t a hope of doing so
I more often see the word ‘complex’ used by people who deny the obvious changes we are seeing in our climate.
Typically, “The climate is too complex for us to understand – so maybe we aren’t warming”.
That sort of nonsense.
Slight warming at strong El Nino events.
That is all you have. !
Still no evidence of any human causation.
You need to go to a psycho-analyst.. and get your childish anti-science fetishes looked at.
Quite the opposite! I have demonstrated that during El Nino events the ramp-up phase for atmospheric CO2 is steeper and reaches a greater peak than during non EN years, all the while anthropogenic emissions are constant. In general, atmospheric CO2 is anti-correlated with temperature at a seasonal resolution, except during EN years when there is strong amplification of CO2 emissions.
Not seeing how that’s “the opposite.”
You’re talking about CO2 changes, bnice was talking about temperature changes.
The more rapid ramp up of CO2 without any human causation is notable, however.
As the Summer temperatures wane, the seasonal CO2 ramp-up phase starts and accelerates in the depths of the Winter. In May, the CO2 peaks, and continues to decline during the hottest part of the Northern Hemisphere. That is the typical situation. That is, CO2 and temperatures are anti-correlated.
There is a special case of El Ninos where the seasonal ramp-up is faster and reaches a higher peak, but the direction of the relationship is the same. When the northern deciduous plants leaf out, CO2 goes down even when the temperatures are increasing.
“the obvious changes we are seeing in our climate.”
List them.. and prove human causation.
Apart from a slight rise in temperature at strong El Nino events, and warming caused by urbanisation…
… most other indicators are on the low side.
Oh look.. no list from fungal
What a surprise !! 🙂
“Everything looks simple when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Words to live by.
Story Tip.
Australia: Environmental Defenders Office lawyers etc caught doing fraud in cause of AGW/ anti-gas agenda. !!!
(1) Pants on fire: The Environmental Defenders Office get caught. – YouTube
Green defenders overreach themselves in the Tiwi Islands (afr.com)
We can only hope-
Peter Dutton to end federal funding to Environment Defenders Office if Coalition wins the next election | The West Australian
Earth’s climate is warming or cooling depending on what date you use as a starting point.
Our ancestors survived warmer temperatures with the stone age technology. The stones are still there if we need them to conquer climate change.
“The stones are still there “
Yep Mick Jagger still alive… sort of ! 🙂
The living dead.
I think it’s actually Keith Richards who is literally a miracle on two feet in that respect…
What about neutral ENSO. What happens then? During the solar minimum of the 24th cycle we had years of neutral ENSO and lot’s of cool wet weather on the East Coast. El Nino comes and now we had a hot dry summer which was awesome for my subsistence farming….the quality of all my produce was better and my lower garden is no longer a swamp as it was 2018-2020 and part of 2021.
Anyway, for the radical green movement and those funding it’s propaganda, all climate variables are reduced to one single variable…. human civilization.