etudiant

2 hours ago, MJO812 said:

Wow gefs going out to 35 days soon

Even more illuminating than their current longer term forecasts presumably...

On 2/26/2020 at 5:00 PM, LibertyBell said:

what frustrates me is that we've been talking about controllable fusion since the 80s....we've had so many technological advances in so many fields since then, why is it taking so long to develop viable fusion reactors?

 

Actually, there has been good progress, with the performance of the devices improving by about a factor of 10 every decade since the 1950s.

Based on that trend, we should have working prototypes in another decade or so, but the effort is desultory at best. The international centerpiece of fusion is the ITER reactor in France. It was supposed to be ready by 2010, now expected to be finished by 2025, with the first real fusion experiments around 2035 - 2040. Basically a UN managed research effort, makes herding cats look easy.

The problem is that cheap gas and subsidized wind/solar drained any urgency from the search for more energy, so this is run as a hobby effort, no urgency at all. I've visited the ITER site,  no weekend work, single shifts, a handful of workers, lots of visiting dignitaries and probably masses of administrators behind the scenes in Geneva and elsewhere.

3 hours ago, raindancewx said:

The lack of snow pack right now compared to last year implies a much warmer March. The snow-less areas of Montana in some cases will literally be 20F warmer than last year. Billings finished 22 degrees below average last February.

Is there a drought issue, given a warmer than usual climate with a sub par snowpack?

5 hours ago, Isotherm said:

Some snowfall statistics for my location [partially interpolated with New Brunswick, pre-2000].

Even though this winter and last winter have been quite snowless, the decadal running and 30-year running snowfall averages are very good for Monmouth County.

Current 30-year running average [1988/89-2018-19]: 31.2" 

If this winter were to end today snowfall wise, the 1989/90-2019-20 30 year normal would be 31.0" here, a significant increase from 1980-2010, which was 28.9".

My decadal 2010-present snowfall average is 38.7" [the highest of any decade since 1950].

If this winter were to end today, the new 2010-2020 decadal average would be 35.4", which would still be higher than 2000-2010's of 33.8" and the 1960s of 34.1". 

Conclusion: while the past two winters made a decent dent, the overall decadal and 30-year running snowfall average locally is still the best its been since likely the early 1900s.

Thank you, Isotherm, for bringing us all back to the facts!

This is the kind of reality check that is often missing in these discussions.

Presume this is the IBM sponsored weather service. I'll certainly give it a try, there is surely a need for a detailed short term weather service.

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

Another climate scientist who is no longer giving perceived legitimacy to climate change deniers via debates:

https://mobile.twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1228197739760013317

Not a stance that I agree with. Pension money is inherently long term oriented, they are seriously interested in this issue.

I think that a frank discussion in front of a bunch of no BS money managers would be enlightening and I'm sorry the  field was left to the skeptics.

Honestly, at well over 10,000 feet, it does get colder, even in Hawaii.

It does switch to extensive fog during the summer.

4 hours ago, gravitylover said:

What's wrong with oatmeal? Meh...

It's snowing

Nothing at all wrong with KIlbeggan Irish Oats, they are actually delicious. While they are not instant, they are organic.

Can be had as Irish Oatmeal Cookies if instant convenience is essential. Guiness or Harp both go well with them.

4 hours ago, chubbs said:

Watch the video, Australia is a big country. Fires in unpopulated dryland is not the same as fire in forested SE with more towns, people. 

Absolutely correct on the human impact, 74/75 was modest, the worst was in 2009, when 171 people died in Victoria.

A quick look at the record indicates that the 1974-75 fire season in Australia was by far the worst in terms of acreage, with over 100 million acres burned. No other year comes close.

The burn to date for this season is about 15 million acres, still a huge area, but again not in the same league.

On 1/13/2020 at 12:28 PM, frankdp23 said:

This is a general question that just popped into my head when looking at my weather channel calendar.  The one fact on it for Jan 25th was stating that the global land/ocean surface temp in Jan 2019 tied 2007 for the 3rd warmed (going back to 1880).  How many global stations (I'm not sure what they are really called) were there in 1880 compared to now? Was there 1000 stations back then, and 10000 now?  Do they try to use the same number?  I'm guessing if they are using that stat, they aren't using sat temps?  Thanks for the input in advance. 

It is a serious issue that the researchers recognize by widening the error bars on the older data.

There are so many changes to take into account, in the instrumentation as well as the environmental transformation over the past 140 years. Add to this that many places were not monitored consistently, so putting it all together is a massive task involving lots of judgments. For instance, a site that has a continuous record since 1880 is valuable, as there are not that many, but that location may have gone from rural to midtown during that interval.

There has been an effort to select a relatively small number of stations, in the 1000 range iirc, which are deemed representative, so many fewer stations are used for the more recent data than are available. 

Trying to translate this measurement into actual temperature impact, I estimate as follows.

The increased heat content since 1990 of 300 or so zettajoules (300x10**21 joules) is spread over perhaps the top one third of the oceanic volume of roughly 1.3 billion cubic kilometers.

That is roughly 400 million cubic kilometers. (400x10**6 cubic kilometers).  A cubic kilometer contains 10**9 cubic meters, each of which contains 10**6 cubic centimeters of water, so the relevant ocean volume is about 400 zettacubic centimeters (10**21 cubic centimeters) of water. Rounding, it means the added heat content is about a joule per cubic centimeter.

It takes about 4 joules to raise the temperature of 1 cubic centimeter of water 1 degree C, so the added heat increases the temperature by about a quarter of a degree C.

At first glance, that does not seem much, but it really highlights how massively important the oceans are to our survival. They buffer the imbalances hugely.

7 hours ago, bdgwx said:

Using my +0.7 W/m^2 figure above and dividing by 240 W/m^2 yields = 0.7 / 240 = 0.3% of the surface budget. However, keep in mind that +0.7 W/m^2 is just the imbalance that still needs to equilibriate. The energy imbalance from the past that has caused 1.1C of warming has already equilibriated so is not included in my +0.7 W/m^2 value. This additional energy is probably in the 1.5-2.0 W/m^2 'ish range (just guessing right now). If you include that then we're probably close to 1% of the surface budget.

Thank you! That is both informative and very helpful.

Powerful stuff! 

Can anyone help put the heat content change into perspective? The increase of roughly 300 Zetta Joules since the 1980s is what percentage of the annual global heat budget?

On 1/5/2020 at 1:09 PM, superjames1992 said:

I'm surprised 2012 isn't higher.

Thought the ice melt was accelerated that year by a significant storm, so it is actually somewhat a cautionary input.

Combine such a storm with a really warm ocean influx, it would set dramatic new lows.

2 hours ago, Gray-Wolf said:

It's another cynical manipulation of the general public aimed at leaving folk 'unalarmed' by the fires (as it's not 'definitely AGW' driving the conditions that increasingly allow for such to occur so 'no worries'?)

As long as folk 'Think' the jury's still out on the peril we are ambling into (via our polluting of the planet/atmosphere) then their 'fight or flight' responses will not be triggered and so the 'Mass Movement' of folk globally demanding for radical actions to 'mitigate' all that we already have coming will not occur...... and so the folk 'profiting' from The Many not 'recognising the crisis' continue on B.A.U.

There will come the first of the (to us public?) 'Black Swan Events' that does trigger most folks 'fight or flight' responses...... 

 

Suspect that here in the US, it won't be till Mar-a- Lago is flooded, not sure what a comparable event would be in China, but perhaps Hong Kong might serve,,,

4 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

There has definitely been arson. However, the disinformation being circulated is a claim that 90% or more of the fires are the result of arson (not lightning, not accident, etc.).

Arson seems very far fetched, who by and for what purpose are obvious questions, plus this is a nation wide problem, too big for a bunch of fire bugs imho.

What does however seem plausible is that poor range management is a major factor. Afaik, the aborigines used fire as a control tool, preventing the kind of fuel load buildup thatsupports massive fires. More recent policy has been to prevent fires more aggressively, so the vegetation has not been thinned as before. This seems quite similar to the recent California fires, likewise made more intense by the abundance of fuel resulting from an extended period without fires. That unchecked growth combined with a super hot summer is a recipe for disaster, as is now apparent.

28 minutes ago, Nibor said:

Is it garbage or is taking a weather model output verbatim ill advised? 

Why blame the model? The weather has been very volatile the past couple of months, so I think it is not unreasonable if the models behave similarly.

Sadly the actual paper is paywalled, we just get the summary.

It seems a very interesting approach, apparently using some historical weather statistics to show current results deviate from those.

It would take more statistical and meteorological capability than most can muster to assess this result, but if it verifies, it should be very powerful.

9 hours ago, Ottawa Blizzard said:

Hi Don, with regard to The Weather Network's forecast, please see the link below.

 

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/canadas-winter-forecast-update-2019-2020-winter-pattern-locks-in-for-january

 

I think it goes without saying that their forecast is in trouble.

The forecast map suggests a warmer than usual Alaska, which was indeed the case until recently. However, there appears to have been a shift towards much colder since about the start of winter on Dec 22, with much below normal temperatures. So perhaps there will be some revision in the near future..

1 hour ago, BillT said:

multi year old ice IS increasing.......https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/huge-increase-in-oldthick-arctic-sea-ice/

Careful about that, that was in 2015. 

The Arctic ice is in continuous flux, rotating around the pole with the older ice getting dumped down the Fram Strait between Greenland and Iceland.

Very little Arctic ice is permanently fixed to the shores, mainly it gradually circulates around the pole. That is why the north coast of Iceland is littered with driftwood originating in Siberia.

Afaik, there is nothing like the really old (100,000 to 2,000,000 years old) ice found in Antarctica in the north polar ice. That ice is all sea ice, totally vulnerable to a warm summer melt and it is not very useful to focus on the bits that are 3-5 years old, they just reflect whether the last few summers have been warmer or colder than usual.

1 minute ago, sussexcountyobs said:

If those temperatures are right? And I'll say say for sake of arguement they are. Temps over a 113 yr time spand mean nothing over the age of the Earth. It's a blip in time. Its meaningless if anyone is going to talk about MAN made climate change. Man made climate change is a hoax. 

Man has surely changed the climate, it is just not plausible that the massive changes we have implemented on the earth's surface and the associated biosphere would not impact the heat flows. There is argument about how much change,  whether that change is reversible and what are the relevant time frames, but just calling it a hoax is unlikely to convince anyone.

3 hours ago, iluvsnow said:

Well there's no lack of cold in Alaska now.....its weather....it happens.

While that is a forecast for Jan 1-6 of 2020, not of the temperatures now, it is pretty chilly already, with Fairbanks around 25 below zero F. Quite a swing from earlier.

6 hours ago, Vice-Regent said:

Exactly but I don't quite see it in the same light. It's a convincing argument but as it stands now humans are not separate from the natural processes.

I think we're basically in violent agreement, but really all you need to do is to fly over the western US.

The landscape is blighted as far as the eye can see from 35000 feet by 1000 foot diameter irrigated fields, cooling the atmosphere and draining the aquifers to produce crops no one wants.

I cannot see that as a natural process, no matter how hard I try.

5 hours ago, Vice-Regent said:

So true. We live in dire times that demand extreme measures but if you know that global warming will eliminate everything but sub-lethal carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 then there's reason to be complacent. Yes it's a less than ideal situation but we will take what we can get.

Geoengineering is the only thing that scares me to be honest. I think Dane Wigington is right on the "money". The difference between me and Dane is that I don't believe there is an active aerosol injection program ongoing. All current aerosol emissions are unintentional. (a byproduct of global industrial civilization)

Perhaps it would be easier if we accept that humans are in fact geoengineering right now. That may help put the risk of deliberate geoengineering into perspective.