nflwxman

I'm not sure what's the point of discussing a paper with an ECS under 1.5C. Unless you don't believe the surface temperature record, any value under that doesn't even match reality. We are currently 0.9C warmer than preindustrial times. Unless you think warming stops now abruptly for decades...

Expecting a BIG abrupt feedback is not supported by literature, I agree. Expecting an exponentially increasing feedback is, however. Wildfires, Ice sheet darkening, permafrost melting, ect. Whether there is a major tipping point before 560 ppm is unknown, but these empirical studies essentially ignore the exponential nature of these small, but sizable feedbacks. GCMs probably won't be running significantly warm in 10 years, FWIW. Just my personal prediction.

This also ignores any potential rapidly ampliying feedbacks such as albedo, methane, etc. We can't assume that these feedbacks will be increasing linearly since the paleoclimatic evidence suggests otherwise. I agree a hybrid approach should be taken when determining ECS, but I think several here have incorrectly dismissed ECS amounts of >3C due to static boundary condition empirical studies. Who says the albedo drops on our ice sheets won't show a more dramatic drop between 400ppm-560ppm as compared to 280ppm-400ppm. These empirical studies assume linearity, which is an inherent flaw.

Agreed. And for the most part they still fall in the 2.2-3C range for ECS. The whole debate about ECS becomes a bit more muddied when one considers increasing feedbacks ala methane, albedo drops. To date these feedbacks have been likely muted, but tipping points will make a generally linear temperature rise more exponential in the future.

Those studies seem to place a lot of emphasis on the empirical style and generally do not address the paleoclimatic evidence. As we've seen, small timeframes of surface temperature can be subject to too many natural factors and/or coverage bias (ie. Arctic) to be used to create a stable ECS. We've risen 120 ppm of CO2 concentration and the temperature has risen about 0.9C. Would another 180 ppm only lead to a temperature rise of 0.6C? It just doesn't add up, especially when you consider ECS is lagging behind CO2 several decades (at least).

It's the banter thread. Whether the CC forum should have a banter thread is another story

ORH can defend himself but he never said the oceans weren't collecting heat. Not sure why you'd think he did. We have our disagreements about climate sensitivity, but OHC is actually not where the argument lies...

Very few knowledgeable mets are calling for a "super nino." Could it happen? Sure. As we all know, the dynamic models tend to overdo change in the equatorial pacific SSTas pretty much during every event this early in the year. I could personally see a 1.6-1.8C trimonthly peak for 3.4 occurring this year, but nothing like 97-98. That being said, there is a real badboy EKW that is about to surface.

Good video from Peter Sinclair on the "blob" https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=374&v=R6RaAYA9OMA

I don't see how this can happen anytime soon. The PDO was strongly negative no more than 2 years ago...

Yeah, there are a lot of people in here that are skeptical of the long term prediction of major global problems, but fully acknowledge global warming continues on. If anyone in here thinks that sea level will drop anytime soon or next decades' temperatures will be cooler than this decade, they are just in lala land. The 2020s will be much warmer than the 2010s. In addition, sea level will be higher, heat waves will get worse,forest fires will get worse, extreme precipitation will continue to become more common. This of course is barring some major volcanic eruption or geoengineering project. I think Weatherguy needs to keep an openmind to honest skeptics that are not convinced of the doomsday scenarios. Skeptic does not automatically mean denier.

Lol.

SoC, you seems to get in one major nasty debate a day with someone here. Often someone on the realist/alarmist side. Why?

I always love the "trace gas" argument. I wonder if these same people would be okay with ingesting a "trace" amount of cyanide every other day. It's really a silly point to make.

You are very belligerent for holding such a minority view. Don't forget, even the satellite datasets you prop up show significant warming since 1979. Hardly enough to suggest the AGW "theory" is going down in flames.

They don't. Quite simply stated. Seriously, what is your motivation? There are a several things to be skeptical about in climate science, but you keep picking the losing arguments. Try working on ECS or TCR instead. I'd gladly have those debates with you. This is nonsense though. SOC, I expect a detailed rebuttal from you on Blizzard's post, since you are an academic.

Blizzard, you know the CFSv2 is not meant to be used for climate trends. NOAA, which runs the reanalysis dataset, unequivocally documents that fact in the peer reviewed paper about the data set. Joe Bastardi and co are CLEARLY misusing it for decadal trends. I'll give you a meteorology analogy- Using the CFSv2 for climate trends is like trying to extrapolate an 84 hour NAM run for a snowstorm 5 days out. It's not what the model is intended for. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010BAMS3001.1 The direct measure surface datasets (GISS, HadCrut4, NOAA, and JMA) all have much lower uncertainty than the reanalysis or satellite data. Thus, those datasets should be the bellweather of climate change statistics and research. I don't really know what else to say on this topic at this point.

Having a redtag in here doesn't mean much other than the fact you are scientist. Climatology and Meteorology are very different fields. The software used is quite different the variables analyzed are quite different. The only thing that really links them is the laws of physics and thermodynamics. There are extremely talented meteorologists and weather hobbyists in here that inexplicably deny that global warming is problem.

Truth be told, it's probably going to be very hard to attribute these types of events to climate change in the short term. My personal feeling? The drought is being made worse by AGW due to the anomalous NPAC and GOA anomalies that have really pumped the ridge in the west the last decade. Would the "ridiculously resilient ridge" still exist without AGW? Probably. It's often a feature in a -PDO regime. However, if the graph below is not compelling enough to suggest something is "off," i'm not sure what is.

Yeah, I strongly agree with that. The media is generally to blame on poor AGW reporting. I don't blame the media and public asking those questions post-Sandy, but the scientists should be intellectually honest and just say the truth: We just don't know.

Another point ORH is that the climate models show a 1-3% increase in intensity globally. That does not mean some basins or storms with not get disproportionately affected by climate change. It may not be as easy as saying Katrina would have been 4 weaker without AGW. We just don't know. Remember how many global surface temperature models were tuned to account for arctic amplification observed? That will likely be the future of regional and extreme climate models.

Yeah, that's probably weather. But we don't know for sure. That's really my sole statement here. There are physical reasons why extremes could increase, but too little of a sample size to prove it (for hurricanes, tornadoes, severe storms) at this juncture.

I agree, but that's simply because its very hard to statistically prove it as this juncture at time. Unlike the idea of surface temperature forcing (which has it's own uncertainties), hurricanes are inherently complex issues that require quite a few variables to drive track, strength, and formation. Those variables can't be isolated statistically right now. I'm not so sure why you would be so quick dismiss a potential physical basis because the lack of sample size. Most of the papers you site as refuting attribution are statistically derived analysis with uncertainty bands that reach on both sides of the moon. We are not going to solve this question anytime soon on the statistical side. But that doesn't mean it's not a possibility.

Blaming the hurricane formation, I agree. It almost certainly would have been a tropical cyclone in the absence of AGW. Suggesting they were stronger and more damaging than the otherwise would be? I disagree. I think there is a physical basis there that one can't overlook. In fact, to write off a potential correlation is very foolhardy given the small amount of data we have. As I said before, whether or not it's actually occurring in practicality can not be proven given the small dataset we have in many of these basins. This is just about hurricanes though. As other extremes have been statistically proven to have increased. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/climate-change-sandy.html

See, if the physical basis makes sense, I'm willing to give many of attribution theories the benefit of the doubt. To be honest, higher SSTs and more water vapor intuitively would fuel stronger hurricanes. Yes, shear could increase and it could counteract much of that. Unlike temperature data, we just don't have the dataset frequency to statistically attribute more extreme events to AGW. HOWEVER, the fact that there is physical backing should give many pause. The truth is we probably won't have a hurricane dataset large enough to definitively say anything until 2050. At that point, it's too late. Until then, we are just going to have physical studies suggesting one thing and statistical studies throwing a bucket of cold uncertainty on the whole issue. Anyone who thinks that AGW absolutely had no influence whatsoever on the intensity of Katrina or Sandy is missing the point. The truth is we don't know for sure and pointing to similar storms in the past doesn't really change that.