bdgwx

So if I'm reading this right the quasi resonant amplification events can be expected to increase at a relatively slow rate in a regime where aerosol emissions decline and are slowly depleted from the atmosphere. This creates an effect opposite of Arctic amplification because more solar radiation is able to penetrate in the mid latitudes (where aerosols have typically had the highest densities in the past) causing them to warm faster than the Arctic region. Once aerosols are fully depleted, however, we return back to the greenhouse gas dominated regime of Arctic amplification. It's the Arctic amplification that causes the polar jet to slow down thus allowing it to wander down lower in latitude while simultaneously getting "wavier". Note that the research cited doesn't say the QRA event recurrence intervals will stablize (in the short term anyway) because the warming is slowing down. What they are saying is that they expect the warming to be more homogeneous in the coming decades thus suppressing the growth rate of QRA event frequencies at least until aerosols have been fully depleted.

The St. Louis airport only record 3.9". There were several 8"+ reports on the west side of the metro area though.

St. Louis got a pretty decent snow. I'm sitting at around 3.0", but I'm on the low side of the range that has been reported around the metro area.

10 hours ago, BillT said:

the incoming is both short and long wave radiation, and there is NO balance never has been, thermodynamics means the system seeks to find balance but because factors constantly change that balance is never found.......

I only mean that CO2 is adjusting the overall energy budget by perturbing some of the longwave channels as opposed to the other channels. As a result its effect is more pronounced on the Qout side than the Qin side due to its spectral behavior in relation to the precise nature of the Earth/Sun radiation fluxes. I'm not sure what your point was about "there is NO balance never". Anyway, we're starting to digress here as the physical process behind polyatomic molecule's propensity to trap heat isn't directly related to the subject of this thread. We're trying to discuss Arctic sea ice extents here. If you have questions or comments regarding other topics of climate change maybe it would be better to post them in another thread? There's a whole forum dedicated to this.

13.1" at St. Louis?

0Z NAM - Cobb method

StnID: kstl    Profile Thermal Adjust:  0.0       Cloud RH threshold:  85%    Average Hourly Sounding: NO

 Date/hour    FHr  Wind    SfcT   Ptype   SR |Snow||Sleet|| FZRA|| QPF    CumSR|TotSN||TotPL||TotZR|| TQPF   S%| I%| L%
============================================================================================================================
181115/0100Z  25  03006KT  32.1F          0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.000    0:1|  0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.00    0|  0|  0
181115/0200Z  26  03009KT  31.9F          0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.000    0:1|  0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.00    0|  0|  0
181115/0300Z  27  03009KT  31.7F          0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.000    0:1|  0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.00    0|  0|  0
181115/0400Z  28  04007KT  31.7F          0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.000    0:1|  0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.00    0|  0|  0
181115/0500Z  29  04007KT  31.4F          0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.000    0:1|  0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.00    0|  0|  0
181115/0600Z  30  02007KT  28.8F  SNOW   12:1| 1.5|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.126   12:1|  1.5|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.13  100|  0|  0
----------------------------------------------+----++-----+-------------++--------------++-------------++-----------+---+---
181115/0700Z  31  01008KT  28.8F  SNOW   11:1| 1.7|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.153   12:1|  3.2|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.28  100|  0|  0
181115/0800Z  32  01008KT  28.8F  SNOW   12:1| 1.4|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.117   12:1|  4.6|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.40  100|  0|  0
181115/0900Z  33  01009KT  28.8F  SNOW   11:1| 1.5|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.141   11:1|  6.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.54  100|  0|  0
181115/1000Z  34  01009KT  28.7F  SNOW   13:1| 1.5|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.120   12:1|  7.6|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.66  100|  0|  0
181115/1100Z  35  01008KT  28.7F  SNOW   14:1| 1.5|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.104   12:1|  9.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.76  100|  0|  0
181115/1200Z  36  01007KT  28.8F  SNOW   15:1| 1.2|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.081   12:1| 10.3|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.84  100|  0|  0
----------------------------------------------+----++-----+-------------++--------------++-------------++-----------+---+---
181115/1300Z  37  36006KT  29.0F  SNOW   13:1| 0.5|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.041   12:1| 10.8|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.88  100|  0|  0
181115/1400Z  38  35006KT  29.4F  SNOW   10:1| 0.3|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.026   12:1| 11.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.91  100|  0|  0
181115/1500Z  39  34006KT  29.7F  SNOW    9:1| 0.2|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.024   12:1| 11.3|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.93  100|  0|  0
181115/1600Z  40  33007KT  30.5F  SNOW    9:1| 0.2|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.021   12:1| 11.5|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.95  100|  0|  0
181115/1700Z  41  32007KT  30.8F  SNOW   11:1| 0.3|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.030   12:1| 11.8|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.98  100|  0|  0
181115/1800Z  42  31007KT  31.0F  SNOW   12:1| 0.4|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.031   12:1| 12.2|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 1.02  100|  0|  0
----------------------------------------------+----++-----+-------------++--------------++-------------++-----------+---+---
181115/1900Z  43  30007KT  31.4F  SNOW   15:1| 0.6|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.037   12:1| 12.8|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 1.05  100|  0|  0
181115/2000Z  44  30007KT  31.5F  SNOW    7:1| 0.3|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.036   12:1| 13.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 1.09  100|  0|  0
181115/2100Z  45  29007KT  32.3F  SNOW    7:1| 0.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.015   12:1| 13.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 1.10  100|  0|  0
181115/2200Z  46  27005KT  32.6F          0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.000   12:1| 13.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 1.10    0|  0|  0
181115/2300Z  47  26005KT  32.3F          0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.000   12:1| 13.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 1.10    0|  0|  0
181116/0000Z  48  25005KT  31.7F          0:1| 0.0|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 0.000   12:1| 13.1|| 0.00|| 0.00|| 1.10    0|  0|  0
============================================================================================================================

14 hours ago, BillT said:

since there was more ice this past summer than in 2007 where is this continuing decline in the arctic sea ice please?????....also the greenhouse effect is an insulating effect, please name one insulator than adds extra heat to any system????? i ask because seems to me co2 in no way adds to the total heat in our atmosphere.

It's true. The 2007 summer minimum was lower than in 2018. However, if you integrate the sea ice extents over the entire year and assuming 2018 follows the 2017 trajectory the remainder of the year (a reasonable assumption) you'll find that 2018 results in less ice than in 2007. Except that's really moot anyway. Keep in mind that when we say "decline" we are talking about a longterm secular decrease in sea ice extents. We are not in any way implying that every year will necessarily be lower than the previous. Natural variation is still very much in play. And we aren't necessarily even focused on just the summer minimum. The winter maximum and, of course, the yearly mean are equally important metrics.

Regarding your second point there may be some confusion as to what a greenhouse gas does.  CO2 and other polyatomic molecules (like H20, CH4, and CFCs) aren't sources of heat. What they do is disrupt the balance between Qin (the incoming shortwave radiation) and Qout (the outgoing longwave radiation). This imbalance creates a net positive gain in heat uptake in the geosphere (90% goes into the hydrosphere) until a new equilibrium is achieved such that Qin = Qout once again. It's really not much different at a conceptual level with the insulation in your home. All other things being equal your house will achieve an equilibrium at a lower temperature if there is no insulation. Again, CO2 is not a source of heat. What it does is impede the transmission of heat.

7 hours ago, BillT said:

when a person mentions "consensus science" as evidence they are admitting they know NOTHING about the most basic concepts of science......

Let me clarify something. Consensus is not itself a form of evidence. Rather it is born out of the abundance of evidence. Specifically it is the consilience of evidence from which a consensus is born.

In other words the reality tends to land in the spot where there is the best overlap of available evidence. What I find often in the blogosphere is that they are brainwashing people into believing that consensus is bad and outlier is good. They do this in a variety of guises but the main issue is that they simply don't tell you about the abundance of evidence from which the consensus came and instead focus solely on outlier lines of evidence. Of course it doesn't help that evidence supporting the consensus is often misrepresented or misinterpreted and that the outlier evidence often has significant issues which is also not presented to you. This is actually a big problem with the internet today in general but specifically with climate science.

The fact is that the Earth is going to experience a persistent net positive radiative forcing as a result of human activities (including but not limited to CO2). And baring any significant and unpredictable events like significant volcanic eruptions or other cataclysms the entire geosphere will respond with an increase in heat uptake and an increase in temperature. This will put longterm downward pressure on sea ice (especially in the Arctic region) resulting in ice-free conditions in the summer months with the most likely timing being around mid century assuming a business-as-usual representative climate pathway. Different RCPs yield different amounts of warming at different times. Dismissing the abundance of evidence (a mountain of evidence in fact) that has been collected over the last 150+ years isn't going to stop CO2 from producing a positive radiative forcing on the planet or stop the declining trend of Arctic sea ice extents.

17 hours ago, snowlover91 said:

I think it’s relevent here since the CO2 relationship is an important aspect of the discussion and no one really is posting much about sea ice right now since it’s about on pace with recent years so far. I’m not really a fan of starting new threads personally. 

I get that, but this thread is focused on Arctic sea ice. Judith Curry makes several points in her blog and none of them were directly related to sea ice. Don't get me wrong. They're good talking points, but they deserve their own thread. That way we can address each talking point via several posts without taking this thread too far off course. That's what the climate change subforum is for afterall. Post another thread and I'll participate as I get time.

7 hours ago, snowlover91 said:

@bdgwx Have you had a chance to read this yet regarding CO2? What are your thoughts?

Can you post a new thread? I was trying to avoid hijacking the Arctic Sea Ice thread to talk about non sea ice specific stuff.

From the NSIDC...

"Why extent remains so low in the Barents Sea is not immediately clear from patterns of atmospheric circulation and temperature. October air temperatures at the 925 hPa level were only 1 to 3 degrees Celsius (2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, associated with a trough of low pressure at sea level extending from Iceland into the region. While further investigation is warranted, this lack of ice growth may relate to the observed “Atlantification” of the Barents Sea, in which the cold, low density surface layer of the Arctic Ocean has weakened, allowing the heat from the warm Atlantic waters to more readily inhibit ice formation. It will be instructive to monitor ice growth rates in this area through the coming winter."

On 11/5/2018 at 8:20 PM, snowlover91 said:

For me personally I believe everything here on the earth operates in cyclical periods of decades, centuries and millennia in which a combination of various atmospheric cycles, tipping points and other phenomena combine to push the earth either significantly warmer or colder. It is certainly possible that manmade CO2 is enhancing these cycles as well but at the end of the day shifts in the ice could be predominantly explained by some natural cycles. There are various postulations as to what, why and how natural cycles affect ice growth over extended periods that are quite interesting and worthy of further research. The problem is so much attention is given to AGW that many may be missing the real drivers for important aspects of our climate in the process. IMO far too much research is being devoted to AGW as the sole cause and not enough exploration into alternative possibilities. 

I guess where I was going with my post was that if we are to accept that sea ice was broadly lower in the holocene when temperature were also likely lower than that supports or is at least consistent with future sea ice decline predictions. Afterall, if we can show that sea ice was lower with lower temperatures in the past then there's no reason to think sea ice can't be at least equally as low or even lower with higher temperatures today. In other words, that's not really a good line of evidence to present if the point is to challenge sea ice decline predictions.

Also, there may be some confusion as to what AGW actually is. Modern climate science has built a consensus around the idea that there are a lot of physical processes in play that modulate the climate and that these process ebb and flow with respect to their individual radiative forcings. AGW is just the moniker given to how the accepted model plays out in regards to the state of the climate system today. It doesn't ignore any physical process that is modulated wholly by natural cycles. It's just that the natural modulation has been dwarfed by the anthroprogenic modulation mainly after WWII. Remember, the laws of physics don't really care if a CO2 molecule was emitted by man or by nature. It still gets it's molecular vibrational modes activated and send radiation back to the surface all the same. It's the same with any greenhouse gas species or aerosol particle. They behave the same and with the same magnitude regardless of how they entered the atmosphere. That's why modern climate science theory can be applied equally to both the past and the present. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not under any illusion that the current model is perfect. It isn't and it never will be. That's par for the course in any scientific discipline. However, the current model does have demonstrable explanatory and predictive power. It works very well all things considered. And if you remove a component (say CO2) from consideration the usefulness of the accepted model is weakened. Afterall, ignoring CO2 or even assuming the climate sensitivity to it is lower than the accepted consensus just makes it more difficult to explain both past and present climate change. If you have a proposal for lessening the radiative forcing or sensitivity of CO2 then it needs to be replaced with something else. Can that something else explain the faint young Sun problem? Can it explain the cooling stratosphere simultaneous with a warming troposphere? Can it explain heat uptake by the geosphere (mostly hydrosphere) in the presence of flat to declining total solar irradation? Nevermind that we'd still need a good reason to replace CO2 in the first place. Those are just some of the questions that need to be answered convincingly if you want to me dispense with 120 years of research culminating in a mountain of evidence that supports the idea that CO2 really can have a significant influence in climate change today.

Let's assume for a moment that this new biomarker proxy evidence for global sea ice extents can be accepted as consensus. That's a big if by the way, but let's go with it for now. What do you think this would suggest in terms of explaining the aggressive declines in the Arctic and the relatively flat trend in the Antarctic in recent decades? Even more importantly what would it say about future trend trajectories? 

4 hours ago, snowlover91 said:

Did you not read the statement cited in the article? See below since you seemed to miss this chart and statement. This goes through 2017 which was 1 year ago and btw the climate models have not been accurate here as mentioned below.

"Comiso Et Al., 2017     “The Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Has Been Slowly Increasing Contrary To Expected Trends Due To Global Warming And Results From Coupled Climate Models. After A Record High Extent In 2012 The Extent Was Even Higher In 2014 When The Magnitude Exceeded 20 × 10⁶ Km² For The First Time During The Satellite Era. … [T]He Trend In Sea Ice Cover Is Strongly Influenced By The Trend In Surface Temperature [Cooling].”

Note that Comiso does not include data after 2015 which saw anomalously low sea ice extents. And to provide some balance to the quote above this also appears in the article.

"The positive trend, however, should not be regarded as unexpected despite global warming and the strong negative trend in the Arctic ice cover because the distribution of global surface temperature trend is not uniform."

The authors note that the positive trend from 1979 to 2015 could be linked to 1) higher frequency of cool phase ENSO cycles 2) freshening of sea water and/or 3) ozone depletion by CFCs.

It seems as though there are two mains points to the publication. First, the positive trend is real. Second, it's difficult to test the various hypothesis to explain the trend because the CMIP5 suite of models does not adequately predict the trend as-is in the first place.

The Euro has some similar eye candy as well.

That's a great writeup bluewave. It's interesting how the variability in OHC declines through the years. By the 2000's the upward trend is very steady with little variation. Is there an explanation for this effect?

On 10/21/2018 at 4:58 PM, WarmNose said:

I stopped reading after this asinine little “factoid”

Why is this happening?

 “We don’t know,” Gensini said. “This is super consistent with climate change.”

The following quote clears up Gensini's statements above.

“This is what you would expect in a climate change scenario, we just have no way of confirming it at the moment,”

He's saying they don't know why STP values are increasing/decreasing the way they are, but the effect is consistent with the expectations of climate change. Being consistent with an expectation doesn't validate the hypothesis behind the expectation though. More (and different kinds) of research need to be done to definitively link the cause with the effect.

Last night's Euro run was +4.5 SD at 168 right over the pole.

So by their estimate ice-free conditions will happen sometime between 2030 and 2045. That's not really out of line with other estimates. With each new study it's looking more and more likely that it'll take a miracle to make it to 2050. The IPCC is probably going to have to quicken the pace on their estimates for the AR6 report due out in 2020 or 2021.

I don't have the latest data, but the last RMS HWind post on twitter had Florence at 60 TJ of energy at 18Z.

On 9/10/2018 at 1:07 PM, Glenn M said:

Should we be cleaner in our energy use? Yes. Not because of climate change but simply because it gives us cleaner air and water and healthier lives. But if we think its going to stop the climate from changing to a more normal state for Earth, we're delusional. 

We should definitely encourage cleaner energy sources regardless of one's views on climate change. But, we know for an absolute fact that many polyatomic molecules (like CO2) have heat trapping properties that necessarily cause the geosphere to warm. More GHG emissions necessarily mean more radiative forcing. That's not to say that naturally modulated processes aren't in play, but reducing man made emissions would reduce the anthroprogenic modulation which as of the present represents the vast majority of the total modulating effect. That's not delusional. That's fact.

Regarding whether or not "old school" farming techniques can significantly mitigate the anthroprogenic element...I'm skeptical.

Anyone have low down as to how Mangkhut figured out a way to break the HWRF?

It looks like the core is starting to come into range of KMHX. The angle of approach is putting that right flank parallel to the beam. I'm getting 80 kt winds at 25,000 ft in that region. Not that we didn't already know, but making some guesstimates based on what little is in range I'll say hurricane force winds extend 55nm from the center on the right flank and 30nm from the center on the left flank.

I just wanted to say that I learn a lot from Stebo and the other degreed mets on this forum. Actually I can extend that to many other non-degreed posters as well. So thank you all for the wealth of information you provide and stoking my interest in weather.

12Z SHIPS RI probability is 5% for 20 kts in 12 hours. It is essentially 0% for all other time frames.

If history has taught us anything it's that integrated kinetic energy is a better discriminator for storm surge than the maximum wind speed. And Florence has a lot of IKE right now.