A place for discussion
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Open Thread
A place for discussion
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September 6, 2026 2:03 am
It didn’t take long for the media and a few talking heads to pin the blame on climate change – as best they can – for the recent Nepalese disaster.
What we know about the link between Nepal’s flash floods and our climate crisis
scientists warn that a warming Himalayas could mean more deadly hazards
Subsequent satellite analysis showed that bedrock underneath a glacier collapsed, with the landslide registering as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event.
Here comes the killer…
While scientists haven’t definitively linked the Lhende Khola landslide to the climate crisis, they have pointed out that rising temperatures mean permanently frozen mountain slopes are at risk of melting and destabilising.
As climate academic Bill McGuire wrote for the Guardian this week, global heating will “leave no part of the planet untouched.
Really? No part at all?
Antarctica breaks decade-long cold record with Earth’s lowest temperature
The week of July 12 brought a 240-degree temperature swing across the globe, as Antarctica plummeted to more than 100 degrees below zero.
Not that close, and certainly no cigar.
Coming from the Met Office boy that was hilarious. Only alleged record warmth rings your bell. Cold gets a grudging pass or even dismissed altogether.
Are you too in mourning for RCP8.5 – with the Met Office?
Whilst SSP5-8.5 is now considered implausible, it is important to note that higher levels of warming still might be reached if some feedbacks in the climate system turn out to be stronger than current estimates, or there are additional feedbacks not included in typical climate model simulations.– Met Office Email to me.
Excellent stuff. Keep it up.
The Nepal event has created a big problem for the new UN Climate Loss and Damage Fund. It only has $350 million with about 20 modest applications under consideration but Nepal says it should get the money and has asked for an emergency meeting. It could wipe out the Fund. How they handle this will be telling.
September 6, 2026 2:10 am
More about kinetic energy.
The atmosphere is the compressible working fluid of its own circulation, which is driven mainly by horizontal heating gradients (see last week’s Open Thread post) as the daily pulse of incoming solar radiation is experienced at each location on the surface. The atmosphere is thereby energized dynamically throughout its depth. This is in the sense of the kinetic energy computed from the wind velocity. In meteorology, velocity (i.e. wind speed and direction) is figured relative to the coordinate reference frame which is fixed to the surface and rotates with it. The classic definition in physics applies: KE = (m*V^2)/2.
(Bonus – use this prompt in the Google search box for a full explanation about the reference frames. “Please explain why the meteorological discipline uses a rotating reference frame fixed to the surface instead of an inertial frame, and explain the terms used in the computation of velocities to correctly handle the difference in reference frames.”)
(Bonus #2 – use this additional prompt after Google returns the first response. “Now please also explain why the kinetic energy computed using the velocities computed this way, is appropriate for meteorological purposes and for the interaction of the atmosphere with the surface.”)
So how might we conceptualize what is happening kinetically with a minimum of modeling? From the imagers aboard the GOES East geostationary satellite, NOAA computes Derived Motion Winds. Visualizations are generated and overlaid on a background of the GEOCOLOR composite images. This link activates a time-lapse of the most recent 6 hours of images on 15 minute intervals from GOES East for the CONUS region. Wait for the amination to load, then it will keep playing.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/conus_band.php?sat=G19&band=DMW&length=24
Derived Motion Winds key: Red barbs: High level winds: 100 – 400mb, altitude approximately 23,000 – 46,000 ft. (7-14 km). Cyan barbs: Mid-level winds: 400 – 700mb, altitude: approximately 10,000 – 23,000 ft. (3 – 7 km). Yellow barbs: Low-level winds: > 700mb, altitude: approximately < 10,000 ft. (< 3 km)
The NOAA wind symbology is such that each “barb” represents 10 Knots in the direction the symbol points. A pennant represents 50 Knots.
The KE works out to about 212 J/kg at 40 KT. At 100 KT, it is about 1,320 J/kg.
Bottom line: This evidence from earth observation implies that the energy supplied to high altitude to end up dissipated to space as longwave radiation has no unique dependence on radiative transfer up through the atmosphere from the surface. NO ONE KNOWS that the computed radiative “warming” tendency for rising concentrations of CO2 must result in an accumulation of energy in the underlying land and oceans as sensible heat. Logically, there is insufficient physical justification to expect ANY perceptible “climate” influence from emissions of CO2, CH4, N2O, etc.
That is enough for now. Thank you for your patient attention to this matter.
the meteorological discipline uses [requires] a rotating reference frame fixed to the surface instead of an inertial frame [fixed above the surface, along a straight line extending at all times from the center of the Sun, to the center of the planet Earth, which is the Solar-View (true Heliocentric) reference frame adopted in 2010 by WE in his Thunderstorm-Thermostat Hypothesis article.]
This is correct.
Otherwise, your measures of [KE] kinetic energy of the wind & the waves, make no sense (unfelt), they are as nothing as compared to …
… that ‘wave speed’, never felt, of ~ 1,000 MPH at the equator, but diminishing to near ~ 0 MPH, at the North Pole, where they once played an historic baseball game, with the pitcher’s mound at the Pole, so that a base-runner could ‘circumnavigate the globe’, not in 80 days (Magellan) but rather in ~ 80 seconds (not days), or 1,080X faster than the earth’s rotation.
September 6, 2026 3:40 am
Thermo-Metric [Measure] Vexations, in gradations (degrees-Celsius):
the transition from 21 & 1/5, to 22 & 1/2, by way of 17 & 1/2
— What is it that the people want to talk about, when they ask about ‘the warming’?—
Backstory-en-Brevé:
A couple days ago, after the Christy-Spencer (UAH) release of LT thermometry, [we] responded to Bellman’s provocative vexing question what one can (never) measure accurately, across the Holocene’s dodeca-millenium (12-ka) …… with a well-established narrative from 6-ka, invoking a scene from coastal-Thailand, to arrive at a specific Holocene-Optimum global-average Temperature, RH, etc. …Perceiving a negative* reception to [our] this initial entree, [we] tried again early yesterday, but now lacking the ‘True Bellman’, had to invent a character ‘BM’ for a Socratic Dialog [cf. Bastardi-Joe’s method], see below.One starts from a measured one true Surface Temperature (Global Average, present-day) of “21.18 degrees Celsius” …… and then projects a one-true Surface Temperature (Global Average, ultimate future) of “22.5 degrees Celsius”, but only by way of a… Corrected** one-true Surface Temperature (Global-Average, present-day) of “17.5 degrees Celsius”, demonstrating that —Depending on one’s perspective, one faces either —(a) a future (ultimate) temperature-rise of a modest +1.3 C, from present-day; or(b) an ultimate rise extreme +5.0 C — quel horreurs! — from our present-day,… without a meaningful distinction in our subjective experience <=> because ‘Temperature (G.A.T.) is a Deceptive Measure’ [pace J. B.] Q.E.D.Pre-Story, en-brevé
An accurate, yet never-measured, arctic sea-surface temperature of -2 Celsius, is required to ‘complete / correct’ the present-day global-average temperature; this is a metaphoric ‘skating under the ice’ (credit WE) applied.Calorimetry, or enthalpy-change, of polar surface seawater / ice, makes all the difference that one can measure, but never feel, across a phase-change unseen, in surface sea-level rise, yet nonetheless visible, as icemelt-volumetrically.
September 6, 2026 4:29 am
A prevalent meme of Climate Science is that incoming solar radiation, ca. 340 watts/square meter, is balanced by an outgoing flux of thermal and reflected radiation. Some have suggested equatorial heating is balanced by advective fluxes to cooler climes à la Coriolis. But, why should nature prefer a horizontal path of several thousand kilometers to a vertical convective 10-20 kilometers? Are rotational energies in play?
The earth’s moment of inertia, 8.034E+037 kg m2 ; rotational frequency, 2 pi radians/day; ergo a rotational energy of 2.124E+29 joules. Measurements suggest rotation has been slowing 1.33 msec per century, a ratio of 4.21E-13 sec/sec. Multiplying a very large number by a very small number and then dividing by another very large number (surface area, 5.1E+08 km^2), gives 351 watts/square meter, commensurate with solar values. This flux is presumed dissipated by viscous convection in a fluid surface. Are the whirls and swirls of weather maps not visual evidence of rotational dissipation? If the numbers are correct, whither the missing joules? RR The world wonders.
