Summary: One of the great oddities of the 21st C America is our allergy to data about vital issues while being buried in “news”. For example, we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan with little care or information about what we’d face. The public fears al Qaeda while knowing little about its actual nature and capabilities. As for climate, perhaps the largest threat we face, the people most concerned often know the least about it. Carefully fed a narrative, they often reject information from the IPCC and major agencies that contradict the alarmist story. Yet effective public policy requires broader understanding by the public than a simple black-white story — in a democracy, at least. These posts sketch out aspects of climate science that we’ve been told about, but too few have heard. Today we look at our current weather.
Contents
- Looking at the natural cycles shaping our weather
- Status report: what do the satellites tell us about global warming?
- The UK Met Office shows the long-term history
- Who produces this data & analysis?
- About The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT)
- For More Information
To the right is a typical over-the-top image to arouse fear, about a world for a world roughly one °F warmer than the 30-year average.
(1) Looking at the natural cycles shaping our weather
Excerpt from the August 2013 issue of the Browning Newsletter, posted with their generous permission. See section 5 to learn about it.
.
Over the past 20 years, particularly since 2006, two long-term ocean cycle have changed their phases. This article will concentrate on North American but Europe and Asia are also heavily affected.
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) — As noted in the previous article, the AMO has made summers hotter and spring, winters and falls stormier in the Eastern and Central US. It also appears to be making Canadian winters milder and warmer. This phase began in 1995 and will continue another 15 – 20 years.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) — This 50 – 60 year cycle shifts warmer waters from the eastern and tropical waters toward the western and polar Pacific. The PDO began shifting toward the negative phase in late 1999 and tipped in 2006. In general, it makes the western and interior lands of the Americas drier, including reducing snowmelt for the headwaters of major rivers such as the Colorado, Missouri and Amazon. From time to time, this trend will be interrupted by warm El Niños but will last another 20 years.
It has been 14 years since the new climate normal began to form and seven since it became the dominant trend shaping North American climate. We are starting to see the impacts.
One impact: Forest Fires
Excerpt from “Firefighting’s New Reality: Not Every House Should Be Saved“, Christian Science Monitor, 23 July 2013:
The American firefighting community, Professor Pyne notes, spent 50 years trying to convince the US public that forest fires should be suppressed immediately in all cases. “Now,” he says, “we’ve spent the last 50 years trying to put some fires back in.”
The policy reformation has come in stages. In 1968 the National Park Service renounced its so-called 10 a.m. policy (put all fires out by tomorrow morning) that sought to promote quick forest restoration. The US Forest Service did the same in 1978. A common federal policy was adopted in 1995.
America, however, is still reaping the effects of the earlier fire-suppression policy. These include the long-term buildup of biomass that fuels mega-fires …
Back to the Browning Newsletter, describing how things took a turn for the worst at the start of millennium:
Then, starting in 1999, the PDO changed to its negative phase and the West became drier. Forest densities that were appropriate during the wet positive phase were too dense in drier times, particularly in regions prone to drought. The trees in the tightly packed forests became stressed, leaving them more susceptible to disease, insect infestations and wildfires. Policies that were safe and adequate for managing the wilderness in the wet phase of the PDO do not work now. This has led once again to the current disastrous megafires in the western states and the tragedy that killed 19 firefighters in Arizona. As noted by Bill Gabbart of Wildfire Today, “Six of the last nine years had more burned acres than in any year between 1960 and 2003.”
This is not just a Western problem. The cold PDO magnifies the impact of cool La Niñas. This, combined with the warm phase of the AMO, has made drought more common in the South and Midwest. These lands have carefully attempted to encourage the regrowth of the heavily lumbered Eastern woodlands. Wild fires, if not megafires, have become more common in these areas as well.
Another impact: falling water levels in the Great Lakes
“Water Levels Fall in Great Lakes, Taking a Toll on Shipping“, New York Times, 10 June 2013
Drought and other factors have created historically low water marks for the Great Lakes, putting the $34 billion Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway shipping industry in peril, a situation that could send ominous ripples throughout the economy.
Water levels in the Great Lakes have been below their long-term averages during the past 14 years, and this winter the water in Lakes Michigan and Huron, the hardest-hit lakes, dropped to record lows, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Keith Kompoltowicz, the chief of watershed hydrology with the corps’s Detroit district, said that in January “the monthly mean was the lowest ever recorded, going back to 1918.”
{they also mention as a factor lowering water levels: the many dredging projects, such as the 1962 dredging of the St. Clair River}
Back to the Browning Newsletter, describing one possible factor affecting lake levels:
There is no scientific literature that ties the lower Great Lakes levels to the negative PDO, but the two correlate historically. If the negative PDO is a large factor in reducing water levels, then these lower levels will continue another 20 years. The economic impact of these falling levels is hard to overstate. The lower levels pose economic threats to numerous industries that rely on the lakes water supply, including, shipping, electric, especially hydroelectric, power generation, tourism and recreational boating.
Browning’s Conclusion about the New Normal
The “New Normal” with a warm Atlantic and a Pacific that tends to be cool (interrupted by El Niños) is changing US temperature and precipitation patterns. This in turn, has had a major impact on sectors of the US economy. Agriculture and the energy segment are aware of these weather impacts. However, other sectors, from insurance, to real estate to transportation are also feeling the direct impact. Others will see an indirect impact.
Remember, companies doing long-term planning often use records that are only 25 to 30 years in duration. The PDO tipped only 7 years ago. Most of the records that are used by policy-makers are biased towards times when the PDO was wetter than it is today. This has resulted in mistaken ideas of how rare a weather event may be. We saw what a potential disaster this 25-30 year approach could be when NOAA storm concerns were brushed aside by New York and New Jersey because there had been no landfalls since the 1950s.
We are dealing with the same Atlantic and Pacific configurations that shaped the 1950s. Our economy and society will have to learn to cope with this New Normal.
(2) Status report: what do the satellites tell us about global warming in July 2013?
The July 2013 Global Temperature Report
by the Earth System Science Center of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (blue is cold; red warm}
.
Key points from the report:
- Global composite temperature in July: +0.17°C (0.3°F) above the average for July during 1981-2010.
- Global climate trend of temperature starting in 16 November 1978: +0.14°C (0.3°F) per decade.
- Anomalies are computed vs a 30 year base period. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recommends using the latest decade for the 30-year average.
Let’s look at the data since 1979 (the satellite dataset). The following graphs show, very roughly, 2 decades of cool weather, then 15 years of warm:
Roy Spencer (principal scientists on the team) shows another perspective on this data (at his website). Wide swings in temperature; relatively flat trend since 1998. For more about the pause see summaries of the growing body research about it here, and the IPCC’s view here.
Back to the UAH monthly report for details about regional temperatures (color emphasis added):
Compared to seasonal norms, during July the coldest area on the globe was off the coast of East Antarctica near the Ross Sea, where the average temperature was as much as 3.89°C (about 6.99°F) cooler than the Antarctic’s winter seasonal norms. Compared to seasonal norms, the “warmest” area on the globe in July was off the coast of Chile in the South Pacific Ocean, where temperatures were as much as 2.31°C (about 4.16°F) warmer than seasonal norms.
(3) The UK Met Office shows the long-term history — the vital context
Before we start, let’s put these numbers in a historical context, from page 10 of “The Recent Pause in Global Warming” published by the UK Met Office in July. Anthropogenic factors became the largest (not the only) driver since roughly 1950.
(4) Who produces this data and analysis?
(a) About the Browning Newsletter — One of the most acclaimed and accurate climate newsletters in the world.
For over 35 years, The Browning Newsletter has been simply the best, most accurate source for long-term climate forecasts. Our subscribers include a diverse group of people and institutions interested in profiting from opportunities presented by changing climate, and those looking to protect their interests that might be affected by changing climate.
They include farmers and ranchers, commodities brokers, large banks and financial institutions, hedge funds, agricultural supply vendors, and people interested in our global climate.
Download a sample issue here.
(b) About the global satellite data
As part of an ongoing joint project between The University of Alabama in Huntsville, NOAA and NASA, John Christy (professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at U AL-Huntsville) and Dr. Roy Spencer (an ESSC principal scientist) use data gathered by advanced microwave sounding units on NOAA and NASA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for almost all regions of the Earth. This includes remote desert, ocean and rain forest areas where reliable climate data are not otherwise available.
The satellite-based instruments measure the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface up to an altitude of about 8,000 above sea level.
Neither Christy nor Spencer receives any research support or funding from oil, coal or industrial companies or organizations, or from any private or special interest groups. All of their climate research funding comes from federal and state grants or contracts.
(5) About The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT)
Q. What exactly do we mean by Surface Air Temperature?
A. I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.
Q. What do we mean by daily mean SAT ?
A. Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every 2 hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day ? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.
Read the rest here.
(6) For More Information
Other posts about global warming:
- Good news! Global temperatures have stabilized, at least for now., 3 February 2012
- Still good news: global temperatures remain stable, at least for now., 14 October 2012
- When did we start global warming? See the surprising answer (it’s not what you’ve been told)., 18 October 2012
- The IPCC sees the pause in global warming!, 18 December 2012
- Lessons about global warming from Alaska, 9 January 2013
- Secrets about global warming that you must not know, least they ruin the narrative, 22 January 2013
- Lessons about America to be learned from the Climate Wars, 28 June 2013
- Good news about climate change!, 15 July 2013
About forecasts of climate change:
- About those headlines from the past century about global cooling…,
2 November 2009 - The facts about the 1970’s Global Cooling scare, 7 December 2009
- Looking into the past for guidance about warnings of future climate apocalypses, 17 October 2010
- Hurricane Sandy asks when did weather become exceptional?, 28 October 2012
- Checking up on past forecasts about climate change, a guide to the future, 6 January 2013
