Peter Davies | October 14, 2012 at 7:48 pm |
On their chaotic spans, any field will share the issues of Economics and weather prediction.. which isn’t to say Economics and Meteorology lack entirely predictability on some spans. But there we get into hairy stuff full of ambiguity, so I’m content to leave it as you’ve said.
Ocean heat content is heading upwards. There are two ways of knowing this.
1) the measurements of OHC
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
2) the measurements of sea level rise
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.png
Sea level rise being largely the sum of
a) ice melt
b) thermal expansion due to increase in OHC
Chief Hydrologist says: “ENSO has its thermal origins in the Humoldt Current. This brings cold water from Antarctica to the ocean upwelling region of the eastern Pacific…”
The warm water that fuels an El Niño is supplied from the west Pacific Warm Pool and that supply of warm water is replenished by the trailing La Niña through increased downward shortwave radiation associated with reduced cloud cover, which is in turn caused by the stronger-than-normal trade winds associated with the La Niña.
Occasionally, a La Niña event creates much more warm water than was released by the previous El Niño. This happened during the 1995/96 La Niña, which supplied the fuel for the 1997/98 El Niño. The 1995/96 La Niña wasn’t strong any sense of the word in the NINO3.4 region, but the trade winds in the western tropical Pacific were strong enough to push aside the cloud cover and allow all that wonderful tropical Pacific to warm the west Pacific Warm Pool. See McPhaden (1999):
http://lightning.sbs.ohio-state.edu/geo622/paper_enso_McPhaden1999.pdf
WHT says,
Lang, No read? Your loss. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Is that your hypocrisy you are referring to?
Did you read this? http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/ If so, and if you think you have found a substantial error, why haven’t you asked for clarification?
By the way, I’ve just done a rough calculation of the cost of the transmission lines (not the generators) to connect the world as you suggested in your comment above:
The sun is always shining somewhere. … .
My rough cost estimate is $2,000 trillion!
WHT lacks any sense of perspective. He lacks what is called “engineering judgement”.
WHT ends his comment with his usual belief ridden comments followed by his usual vitriol:
Every intelligent politician is using climate change as a smokescreen to make the bitter pill of switching to alternatives easier to swallow.
Is there no room for optimism? A lot of you sound like the Luddites of centuries past.
So you don’t have an answer? I am shocked…shocked.
R. Gates,
If my “translation” of your progressivese comment was incorrect, you should be able to give me an example of a short term trend that would contradict the CAGW consensus.
Otherwise, my “translation” is spot on.
My understanding today is that the problem of integrating wind comes when you get over 15-20% unless you have a lot of hydro that can do the balancing for you. The Oklahoma wind farm referenced means the utility company can meet about 10 percent of its customer requirements with wind.
Bob Tisdale claims “There’s no reason to make predictions of sea level rise since ENSO cannot be predicted and it is the primary cause of the decadal sea level variability, or aren’t you aware of that?”
Golly Bob Tisdale, don’t Hansen and colleagues provide us with a simple, physically well-grounded, and rationally compelling argument to the contrary? 
Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implication
Is there closure with observed sea level change?Walter Munk (2002, 2003) drew attention to the fact that melting ice and thermal expansion of the ocean did not seem to be sufficient to account for observed sea level rise. This issue now can be reexamined with the help of Argo data and improving data on the rate of ice melt. …
Based on our inferred planetary energy imbalance, we conclude that the rate of sea level rise should accelerate during the next several years. Reasons for that conclusion are as follows.
First, the contribution of thermal expansion to sea level is likely to increase above recent rates. Solar minimum and a diminishing Pinatubo rebound effect both contributed to a declining rate of thermal expansion during the past several years. But the Pinatubo effect is now essentially spent and solar irradiance change should now work in the opposite sense.
Second, the rate of ice melt is likely to continue to accelerate. Planetary energy imbalance now is positive, substantial, and likely to increase as greenhouse gases and solar irradiance increase. Thus, despite year-to-year fluctuations, global temperature will increase this decade and there will be a substantial flux of energy into the ocean.
Increasing ocean heat content provides energy for melting sea ice and ice shelves. Sea ice protects the ice sheets from heating and ice shelves mechanically buttress the ice sheets. It has been argued that loss of these protections of the surrounding ice may be the most important factor causing more rapid discharge from ice sheets to the ocean.
The key to Hansen’s reasoning is that energy is conserved globally (not locally), and so one we have global measures of
• ice-mass loss, and
• ocean temperature, and
• sea-level rise,
… then from any two of these data-sets, we can predict the remaining data-set.
And *that*’s how Hansen and his colleagues combine theory with observation to make confident predictions regarding accelerating sea-level rise!
Now, ain’t that prediction admirably elegant and wonderfully simple Bob Tisdale?
you asked why focus on the arctic not the antarctic.
It’s because changes are happening fast in the arctic that will impact the upper northern hemisphere. The antarctic has no bearing on this.
I agree with Matt. It doesn’t make much difference in the conclusion. I thought the response of Phil Jones tells you all you need to know. It’s amazing how people forget their previous pronouncements when confronted with new data.
What does the weather say about trends in extreme events? ACE, tornadoes? A building built to the most exacting standards will still suffer more financial damage than unimproved wilderness.
The claims of increased severe events due to AGW is no more scientifically justified than claims that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. In fact, since these events are thermodynamic heat engines, the expected signal from warming would likely be a reduction in number and severity of events.
Judith,
You claim ” A few years ago, I was branded as a ‘heretic‘ for losing faith in the IPCC”
You mean you just said something like “I don’t know about the IPCC anymore, I’ve lately lost a bit of faith in them”, and they branded (I hope not literally) you a heretic? How intolerant of them! Do they think you should count yourself lucky you were weren’t burnt at the stake?
But wait a minute. Are you sure that was all there was to it? You weren’t saying anything else that might have upset them?
“Science Challenge: Show how visible light from the Sun heats intensely the land and water at the equator which is what gives us our great and dramatic wind and weather systems.”
I was considering do a simple experiment with magnifying lens and attempting warm water [which is transparent] . Idea was use a big enough lens to try to see any affect. But it was late in day and I didn’t have any large magnifying glass. So I wondered as anyone tried it and put it on internet. No Luck. But in this brief search I found this:
“I receive viewer mail weekly asking, “With all that heat produced by a Fresnel Lens, can I point a lens at my swimming pool a few hours a day and heat it?” The simple answer is no. Water is clear and any light collected from the Fresnel lens will simply pass the focal point and continue into a wide pattern exiting as reflective light bouncing off the bottom of the pool. The big misconception regarding any magnifying glass or Fresnel lens it the belief that they “magnify or amplify the sunlight” when all they really do is concentrate it.”
Which didn’t answer my question, because I knew the simple answer was no- it’s beyond stupid to think it could warm a swimming pool, the question is how much could such concentrated sunlight have on a small quantity of water. But next part was slightly more interesting:
“”What if I focused the lens on a dark object just below the water surface?”
While that would be much better, you would transfer more heat to your pool if you simply got a black object the size of your lens and sunk it to the bottom, no lens needed. Square footage or square meters are what counts when it comes to sunlight. A one meter by one meter (39″ x39″) Fresnel lens concentrates sunlight to produce roughly 1000 watts of heat energy to a very small point. A sheet of heavy black plastic absorbs the same amount of solar energy but over a large area. Since plastic or almost any material transfers heat effectively when submerged in water, the 1M x 1M black plastic sheet would add 1000 watts of solar heating. The sheet is heating water at the bottom of the pool so you are taking advantage of the thermal layer above. Several black sheets can add a lot of heat assuming sunlight reaches the bottom of your pool. Many pools do not get direct sunlight to the bottom especially in the winter months due to the angle of the Sun.”
Now, he probably wrong that 1000 watts gets to the bottom of pool, but is correct [probably] that fair amount of 1000 watt could reach the bottom of pool. The question is how much.
Solar ponds seem to a have limit to how deep they can be, but if you only talking about say 2′ depth one can approach temperature equal or greater than any dark substance not under water [around 80 C]. Or what that means is probably on the order of say 90% or more of sunlight [all the 1000 watts] reaches below a foot of water depth- which would mean both visible and near infrared light.
Which is something I kind of forgot about- I general assumed that skin surface of water was absorbing a sizable amount of near infrared light- or blocking from from reaching deeper in the water.
But we do have the issue of top skin of ocean getting quite a bit warmer- and if not due radiant [solar flux] that means, due to convection??
Anyhow this next part is also interesting:
“I know of a person who incorporated 300 Fresnel page magnifiers into a solar blanket for a pool and tested it against a normal clear solar blanket. He was thinking of applying for a patent but was confused with the negative results he was generating. The non-Fresnel blanket was better insulated so it kept the heat in. The Fresnel Lenses basically did nothing other than provide an escape route for heat. I am not sure what came of his project.”
http://greenpowerscience.com/BLOGGER111/BLOG1SWIMMINGPOOL.html
If you believe Munich RE, then perhaps you believe Merck on VIOXX. Of course, they want to make the case damages are increasing so they can increase rates. It reminds me of Muller’s examination of the claims in Gore’s movie on hurricanes. In the 1930′s there seem to be no hurricanes in the middle of the Atlantic because as Muller points out we had no satellites and ships avoided those areas because there might be hurricanes. Damage claims for ships depend on lots of other variables, including maintainance and how careful operators are to avoid potentially damaging weather events.
timg56 asserts “Smiley faces and non-relevant links do not count as citations. As such I believe you provide citations for few of your comments.”
LOL … Climate Etc readers are invited to verify that, in regard to the topic at-hand, my post [above] provided in-context, scrupulously verbatim quotes of climate-change predictions, with links provided to the multi-author peer-reviewed articles in which those predictions appeared.
Uhhh … and then, check to see whether commenters that included J Martin, Brandon Shollenberger, timg56 (and even Judith Curry herself) put forth the effort to do the same.
Golly!
I have this theory about evaluating people based on whether or not you would have a drink with the person and not whether or not you agree with their opinions.
Climate pattern according to HADCRUT4, HADCRUT3, GISTEMP, RSS MSU, and UAH NSSTC => http://bit.ly/S0otl3
ok,
this is pretty funny.
And the risk to me in Brisbane is … ?
Marvelous metaphor. Have we the space ship to reach the stricken experiment? Cap’n Stormfield’s for hire, I hear, and what a guide!
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