donsutherland1

Morning thoughts... Today will be partly to mostly sunny, but quite cool. Temperatures will likely top out in the lower and middle 70s across much of the region. Likely high temperatures around the region include: New York City (Central Park): 72° Newark: 73° Philadelphia: 74° Much of next week will feel like early autumn as the coolest air so far this season moves into the region.

Arctic sea ice extent was 3.562 million square kilometers on 9/11, which is by far the second lowest figure on record. In addition, it is at a record low in the central Arctic region. https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1304545195820748800?s=20

The combination of rising minimum temperatures and decreasing low temperature variability in recent decades, with the warming especially pronounced for the 30-year period ending 2010 or later, has diminished the probability of September minimum temperatures below 50°. Moreover, the recent warming has been occurring during a time when New York City has had a mature urban footprint. New York City's September Minimum Temperatures:

Sunshine and cool conditions are likely for the start of the weekend. The season's coolest air mass so far could arrive next week. Generally below normal readings could persist into the last week of September. Beyond that, some of the guidance is hinting at a possible dramatic and sharp decline in the PNA. Such a pattern, should it develop, would favor a return to warmer and perhaps much warmer than normal conditions late in the month. The ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly was -1.6°C and the Region 3.4 anomaly was -0.9°C for the week centered around September 2. For the past six weeks, the ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly has averaged -1.08°C and the ENSO Region 3.4 anomaly has averaged -0.72°C. La Niña conditions have developed and will likely prevail through the remainder of autumn. The SOI was +1.25. Today, the preliminary Arctic Oscillation (AO) figure was +1.599. On September 10, the MJO was in Phase 4 at an amplitude of 0.901 (RMM). The September 9-adjusted amplitude was 0.689. Since 1990, there have been 11 La Niña events, 6 of which followed an El Niño winter. 10/11 (91%) case saw warmer than normal September. All 6 following an El Niño winter were warmer than normal. September mean temperatures for New York City for those cases were: 11 cases: 69.9°; Subset of 6 cases: 70.8°; Entire 1990-2019 period: 69.0°. The September mean temperature for all La Niña and neutral-cool cases following an El Niño winter (1950-2019: n=13) was 69.9°. Overall, the evolution of ENSO, along with the observed ongoing monthly warming (1.6°/decade in NYC and 1.5°/decade in the Northeast Region during September 1990-2019), favors a warmer than normal September. Since 1950, there have been five cases where a La Niña developed during June-July-August or afterward following an El Niño winter. 4/5 (80%) of those cases saw a predominant EPO+/AO+ winter pattern. The most recent such case was 2016-17. 9/10 (90%) of the La Niña winters that followed an El Niño winter featured a predominantly positive EPO. Based on sensitivity analysis applied to the latest guidance, there is an implied 55% probability that New York City will have a warmer than normal September. September will likely finish with a mean temperature near 69.1°. Finally,on September 10, Arctic sea ice extent was 3.571 million square kilometers (JAXA). Based on 2010-2019 data, the highest 25% bound was 3.742 million square kilometers. The lowest 25% bound was 3.581 million square kilometers. The lowest 10% bound is 3.465 million square kilometers. 2020 is the second consecutive year with a minimum extent figure below 4.000 million square kilometers and the third such year on record. 2020 also has, by far, the second lowest figure on record.

From LiveScience.com: Now, in a new study published today (Sept. 10) in the journal Science, researchers have analyzed the chemical elements in thousands of foram samples to build the most detailed climate record of Earth ever — and it reveals just how dire our current climate situation is... According to the researchers, the current pace of anthropogenic global warming far exceeds the natural climate fluctuations seen at any other point in the Cenozoic era, and has the potential to hyper-drive our planet out of a long icehouse phase into a searing hothouse state. "Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural climate variability, we can see that the projected anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that," study co-author James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections for 2300 in the 'business-as-usual' scenario will potentially bring global temperature to a level the planet has not seen in 50 million years." https://www.livescience.com/oldest-climate-record-ever-cenozoic-era.html

This is a key point. ENSO does not explain either the observed ongoing warming or the larger issue of the earth’s persistent energy imbalance. Foster and Rahmstorf also found that when the effects of factors such as ENSO were removed from the global temperature record, the warming signal remained. In fact, it was stronger. There is no alternative physical basis to explain the warming being driven by increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing.

For context, here are the courses taught in Penn State’s atmospheric science major. I chose Penn State, because of its outstanding program: http://www.met.psu.edu/academics/undergraduate-studies/options-within-the-major/atmospheric-science Here’s the description of Meteo 436: “This course covers radiation and how it interacts with the atmosphere and earth's surface to drive motions in the atmosphere. The fundamentals of radiative transfer at the molecular level, including absorption, scattering, transmission, and emission of radiation by matter, are discussed and applied to help describe the earth's energy budget. Crucial to understanding these processes in the atmosphere are the interactions of radiation with water in the vapor, liquid, and solid states. Applications of radiative transfer to the understanding of seasons and of climate and climate change are presented as well.” http://www.met.psu.edu/intranet/course-syllabi-repository/fall-2015-syllabi/meteo-436-syllabus In short, atmospheric science is, in general, overly narrow for a broad climate science focus. It is highly specialized in its nature. The narrow but specialized focus is a big part of the reason that Penn State graduates excellent meteorologists.

Morning thoughts... At 8:35 am, considerable clouds covered southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of southeastern New York State. Mainly sunny skies prevailed across parts of Connecticut and eastern Long Island. During the morning, clouds will gradually dissipate across the rest of area. The remainder of the day will be partly to mostly sunny. Temperatures will likely reach mainly the upper 70s with a few lower 80s across much of the region. Likely high temperatures around the region include: New York City (Central Park): 76° Newark: 78° Philadelphia: 80° Even cooler air will arrive this weekend. Much of next week will feel like early autumn as the coolest air so far this season moves into the region.

For starters, the climate system is much broader than the atmosphere. It includes the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere. Climate scientists are not meteorologists. They don’t engage in operational weather forecasting. Their work is much broader and it involves long timescales from past to future (projecting scenarios). It is research-intensive. Modeling, as is the case in an array of scientific and non-scientific fields, is increasingly important in climate science. Thus, taking into consideration the broad nature and high research focus of their work, it is not surprising to see the degrees possessed by climate scientists. Andrew Dessler: Physics, chemistry James Hansen: Physics, mathematics, astronomy Michael Mann: Physics, applied mathematics, geology/geophysics Gavin Schmidt (who specializes in modeling): Mathematics and applied mathematics Jessica Tierney (paleoclimatology): Geology

This period will add to the literature. Influence can be skewed by, among other things, personality and capacity for reach. Examples include the numerous demagogic figures in history, the role of certain companies such as the East India Company that impacted British policy or more recently the tobacco companies (and currently fossil fuel companies) and their impact on public policy, and contemporary talk radio hosts who command large audiences despite possessing no expertise in the fields they usually comment on e.g., they all deny climate change. They have built their audiences through a combination of tapping into and festering senses of perceived grievance. Incitement to fear and envy has worked before in fomenting almost tribal divisions and tribal identity, now it is being applied on radio and also select cable TV outlets.

The State of Delaware has filed a lawsuit against 31 fossil fuel organizations seeking compensation for harm caused from greenhouse gas emissions and for harm likely to unfold. The lawsuit notes that the companies being sued knew for 50 years about the adverse consequences of dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It notes that despite this knowledge, the defendants engaged in a campaign of deception and misleading information to undermine public support for addressing greenhouse gas pollution. The complaint can be found here: https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/wdel.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/2c/32c98e72-f3aa-11ea-8767-a3c54f1f6015/5f5a9699de2fd.pdf.pdf

It’s far too soon to conclude that clouds will alleviate some of humanity’s burden of addressing climate change. In a few years, the answers to key cloud-related questions might become clearer. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2936/clouds-arctic-crocodiles-and-a-new-climate-model/

A general 0.50"-1.50" rain fell across the region today with locally higher amounts. Rainfall totals through 8 pm included: Atlantic City: 3.67" (old record: 1.21", 2018) Bridgeport: 1.95" (old record: 1.67", 1999) Islip: 2.68" (old record: 2.30", 2015) New York City-JFK: 1.13" New York City-LGA: 0.91" New York City-NYC: 0.66" Newark: 1.07" Philadelphia: 0.69" Wantagh, NY: 4.66" Sunshine will return tomorrow. Readings will likely reach the upper 70s and lower 80s across the area. Sunshine and cooler conditions are likely for the start of the weekend. The season's coolest air mass so far could arrive next week. Nevertheless, the first half of September will likely wind up somewhat warmer than normal. Beyond that, some of the guidance is hinting at a possible dramatic and sharp decline in the PNA. Such a pattern, should it develop, would favor a return to warmer and perhaps much warmer than normal conditions late in the month. The ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly was -1.6°C and the Region 3.4 anomaly was -0.9°C for the week centered around September 2. For the past six weeks, the ENSO Region 1+2 anomaly has averaged -1.08°C and the ENSO Region 3.4 anomaly has averaged -0.72°C. La Niña conditions are now developing. The SOI was +0.12. Today, the preliminary Arctic Oscillation (AO) figure was +1.826. That is the highest figure since March 26 when the AO was +1.934. On September 9, the MJO was in Phase 4 at an amplitude of 0.683 (RMM). The September 8-adjusted amplitude was 0.605. Since 1990, there have been 11 La Niña events, 6 of which followed an El Niño winter. 10/11 (91%) case saw warmer than normal September. All 6 following an El Niño winter were warmer than normal. September mean temperatures for New York City for those cases were: 11 cases: 69.9°; Subset of 6 cases: 70.8°; Entire 1990-2019 period: 69.0°. The September mean temperature for all La Niña and neutral-cool cases following an El Niño winter (1950-2019: n=13) was 69.9°. Overall, the evolution of ENSO, along with the observed ongoing monthly warming (1.6°/decade in NYC and 1.5°/decade in the Northeast Region during September 1990-2019), favors a warmer than normal September. Since 1950, there have been five cases where a La Niña developed during June-July-August or afterward following an El Niño winter. 4/5 (80%) of those cases saw a predominant EPO+/AO+ winter pattern. The most recent such case was 2016-17. 9/10 (90%) of the La Niña winters that followed an El Niño winter featured a predominantly positive EPO. Based on sensitivity analysis applied to the latest guidance, there is an implied 58% probability that New York City will have a warmer than normal September. September will likely finish with a mean temperature near 69.3°. Finally,on September 9, Arctic sea ice extent was 3.586 million square kilometers (JAXA). Based on 2010-2019 data, the highest 25% bound is 3.742 million square kilometers. The lowest 25% bound is 3.581 million square kilometers. 2020 is the second consecutive year with a minimum extent figure below 4.000 million square kilometers and the third such year on record. 2020 also has, by far, the second lowest figure on record.

Thanks Skierinvermont. I made the correction.

No. Implied TCR should not be confused with TCR associated with a doubling of CO2. From the paper’s supporting information: Implied TCR is defined as the ratio between the change in temperature and the change in external forcing over the model projection period, for both models and observations. It is referred to as ‘implied’ as it differs from the traditional definition of TCR, which is typically based on idealized experiments where CO2 is increased by 1% per year (IPCC 2001).

A paper on the performance of the climate models: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL085378

Actually, it is the UAH data that is likely flawed: https://journals.ametsoc.org/jtech/article/34/1/225/342433/A-Comparative-Analysis-of-Data-Derived-from

Here is a key finding from a relevant paper that removed the impact of ENSO: We analyze five prominent time series of global temperature (over land and ocean) for their common time interval since 1979: three surface temperature records (from NASA/GISS, NOAA/NCDC and HadCRU) and two lower-troposphere (LT) temperature records based on satellite microwave sensors (from RSS and UAH). All five series show consistent global warming trends ranging from 0.014 to 0.018 K yr−1. When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors on short-term temperature variations (El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability), the global warming signal becomes even more evident as noise is reduced. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022

It seems like a tiny number, but it’s cumulative impact has been profound: dramatic rise in global temperatures since 1950, large rise in OHC, sea level rise (thermal expansion and melting ice from Greenland, Antarctica, etc.), loss of mass from Greenland/Antarctica, diminishing Arctic sea ice extent, shifts in flora, etc. All of this has happened within a few decades, not a long geological timeframe. These changes in a compressed timeframe are astonishing.

Argo floats, satellite measurements of solar irradiance, satellite measurements of ice melt, etc. all provide data for measuring the energy imbalance.

Great point regarding the energy imbalance. The recent paper revealing the energy imbalance had an error bar of 0.12 w/m2. That the earth has already experienced dramatic and sustained warming is evidence of that imbalance. The idea that a significant imbalance might not exist (be an error) is implausible.

Over the past hour, Islip picked up 1.95" rain. That brought today's total to 2.53". That surpasses the previous daily record of 2.30", which was set in 2015.

Morning thoughts... At 8:40 am, a batch of heavy rain was moving northeastward across Long Island and into eastern New England. Another batch of heavy rain was located in eastern Virginia and southern Maryland. Through 8 am, daily rainfall amounts included: Atlantic City: 1.36" (old record: 1.21", 2018) Bridgeport: 0.29" Islip: 0.58" New York City: 0.29" Newark: 0.41" Today will be mainly cloudy with periods of rain and perhaps some thunderstorms. Some of the rain could be heavy. While much of the region will pick up 0.50"-1.50" rain, there will be an area of 1"-3" rainfall that will cut across parts of the region. Temperatures will likely reach mainly the upper 70s and lower 80s across much of the region. Likely high temperatures around the region include: New York City (Central Park): 79° Newark: 80° Philadelphia: 81° Somewhat warmer than normal conditions will likely prevail through much of the week. Cooler air could arrive late in the week providing for an early taste of autumn this weekend.

Thanks for sharing this personal account. I do remember some of the past discussions at Eastern on the topic of climate change. To be fair, even as the body of evidence at the time turns out to have been fairly substantial, there was much less access to research papers and data sets back then. I think that the biggest test for anyone intellectually is the capacity to change one’s view to fit the evidence. The easier and more destructive path is to filter or reject the evidence to maintain one’s view. Where one winds up based on the evidence is far more important than one’s starting point. The problem of climate change and its urgency is of even greater magnitude than what I had thought back then. IMO, with hindsight from what happened over the years, the skeptics never really had a body of scientific work on which to base their position. As each one of their hypotheses—bad temperature measurements, claims that the energy imbalance was an artifact of measurement limitations, the sun had caused the warming, the oceans were responsible, cosmic rays were to blame, etc.—were blown out of the water, the futility of their position was exposed. As that happened, they increasingly resorted to attacks on the climate scientists, with some even claiming that climate scientists are not real “scientists.” Their evasions of the issue grew more desperate. Today, their remaining shield is comprised of appeals to uncertainty in detail and appeals to hopeless complexity, along with labeling (attaching the prefix “catastrophic” to “AGW” to denigrate scientific understanding). Uncertainties exist. Nuances exist. Details at the smaller-scale e.g., cloud responses, are still not well understood (although in this area, early evidence also does not favor the skeptics given data on northward shifts in clouds and high clouds forming at higher altitudes). For all that, the scientific verdict is unambiguous and unequivocal: the observed warming is real and significant and anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the prime driver of this warming. There is no other plausible alternative explanation. Despite the lines of evidence in paleoclimatology (ice cores, coral, sediments, tree rings, pollen, leaf wax, etc.) and nature’s observed response to warming (shifting flora, receding glaciers, falling summer and annual Arctic sea ice extent, rising sea levels, increased frequency of extreme weather or fires), the reality is many of the loudest skeptics ignore all of this evidence. Many now principally found on Social Media (especially Twitter) have become prisoners of their own biases and wishes. Long story short, people who allow their thinking to evolve based on the growing body of evidence deserve credit. There is never any shame in one’s having changed or adjusted one’s positions in light of evidence. That is a courageous and enlightened intellectual approach. That’s what learning is. Defending and maintaining one’s positions despite the evidence—even when they are no longer sustainable in any reasonable examination of affairs—is the far worse course.

On the issue of oceans, here’s a link to a paper that was published earlier this year: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00376-020-9283-7.pdf