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Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change


donsutherland1
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On 7/21/2023 at 2:02 AM, raindancewx said:

I don't understand the point in using heat waves or cool snaps as a climate change argument either way.

Just to illustrate the fact that there were 5x more daily record high temperatures than low temperatures in 2022. This was similar to previous years at the longer period of record threadex stations. What climate change does is load the dice for a higher ratio of record highs to lows. We’ll still see record lows at times even later this century. But the ratio of record highs to lows will continue to increase. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Fortunately, it is mostly a myth that Europe is warmed by the Gulf Stream. In fact, the relative winter warmth is driven principally by stationary waves in the atmospheric flow driven by the Rocky Mountains in North America, and the atmospheric transport of heat released by the oceans that had been stored in the summertime. Actual oceanic heat transfer is only a minor contributor. Warming from rising greenhouse gases would probably exceed any cooling from an AMOC collapse. You have to be skeptical of a paper that predicts a colder future for Europe, when it contradicts our existing knowledge.

See: The Gulf Stream Myth (columbia.edu)

The Gulf Stream and future climate change
A slowdown of the Gulf Stream and ocean circulation in the future, induced by freshening of the waters caused by anthropogenic climate change (via melting glaciers and increased water vapor transport into high latitudes) or simply by warming, would thus introduce a modest cooling tendency. This would leave the temperature contrast across the Atlantic unchanged and not plunge Europe back into the ice age or anything like it. In fact the cooling tendency would probably be overwhelmed by the direct radiatively-driven warming by rising greenhouse gases.
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What about its effect and impact on the monsoons? I’ve read it has the potential to greatly disrupt that. 

The Younger Dryas featured a sharp temperature drop likely from the AMOC shutting down from the melting Laurentide, though that was a much bigger injection of freshwater than what’s happening today from Greenland. The mechanisms are different today (or at least there’s a multitude of causes), but I do believe it would trigger significant climate disruption. 

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Climate change deniers are desperately trying to erase Phoenix's high-visibility 31-day heatwave from the record. The dishonesty involved has moved from attempts at deflection to citing sources that do not provide support for the inaccurate claims being made.

Today, one found one of the more dishonest attempts on Twitter. The denier attributed urban heat island (UHI) effect data to the Arizona State Climate Office. UHI is real and its overwhelming impact is at night.

The denier referenced a nighttime statistic (available on the Climate Office's website) and then inserted a daytime statistic (asserting that days are 2°-4° warmer) that is not provided on the website to advance his claim that the heatwave was not greater than the 1974 one (previous longest on record at 18 days) and that climate change didn't play any role in the longevity and intensity of the heat. In effect, the denier attempted to leverage the Climate Office's credibility to support a position that has no credibility.

A Worldwide Weather Attribution Initiative study links the heat to climate change noting that the heat would have been "virtually impossible" without it. A separate Climate Central study also provides linkage to climate change.

In response, I posted the below redacted information (highlights are mine) and notified the Arizona State Climate Office about the act of intellectual dishonesty in which its name was used improperly.

image.thumb.png.09e6574371403b08cbd5525193a40c8c.png

Climate change deniers can make bogus claims and push falsehoods, but they do not have license to associate others with their claims. Manufacturing statistics and attributing them to credible sources that have nothing to do with those statistics, goes beyond speech. Doing so is dishonest, unethical, and damaging to the credibility of the abused sources.

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1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

Climate change deniers are desperately trying to erase Phoenix's high-visibility 31-day heatwave from the record. The dishonesty involved has moved from attempts at deflection to citing sources that do not provide support for the inaccurate claims being made.

Today, one found one of the more dishonest attempts on Twitter. The denier attributed urban heat island (UHI) effect data to the Arizona State Climate Office. UHI is real and its overwhelming impact is at night.

The denier referenced a nighttime statistic (available on the Climate Office's website) and then inserted a daytime statistic (asserting that days are 2°-4° warmer) that is not provided on the website to advance his claim that the heatwave was not greater than the 1974 one (previous longest on record at 18 days) and that climate change didn't play any role in the longevity and intensity of the heat. In effect, the denier attempted to leverage the Climate Office's credibility to support a position that has no credibility.

A Worldwide Weather Attribution Initiative study links the heat to climate change noting that the heat would have been "virtually impossible" without it. A separate Climate Central study also provides linkage to climate change.

In response, I posted the below redacted information (highlights are mine) and notified the Arizona State Climate Office about the act of intellectual dishonesty in which its name was used improperly.

image.thumb.png.09e6574371403b08cbd5525193a40c8c.png

Climate change deniers can make bogus claims and push falsehoods, but they do not have license to associate others with their claims. Manufacturing statistics and attributing them to credible sources that have nothing to do with those statistics, goes beyond speech. Doing so is dishonest, unethical, and damaging to the credibility of the abused sources.

July temperatures at Grand Canyon National Park Airport and Phoenix, from 1996-2023. There may be a small UHI component to the warming trend, but it's still clearly warming very rapidly even in places where nobody lives.

Grand Canyon N.P. - Warming at 9.9F/century since 1996

image.png.f1ea615ef6d4e0422d9685f998a6504d.png

Phoenix - Warming at 12.2F/century since 1996

image.png.75f3152db6ba496e4a6cf46e5509af4f.png

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18 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

July temperatures at Grand Canyon National Park Airport and Phoenix, from 1996-2023. There may be a small UHI component to the warming trend, but it's still clearly warming very rapidly even in places where nobody lives.

Grand Canyon N.P. - Warming at 9.9F/century since 1996

image.png.f1ea615ef6d4e0422d9685f998a6504d.png

Phoenix - Warming at 12.2F/century since 1996

image.png.75f3152db6ba496e4a6cf46e5509af4f.png

Yes, it’s small. Unfortunately, the tweet made an exaggerated claim and associated it with the Arizona State Climate Center. 

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4 hours ago, chubbs said:

 

"Pyrocene"?    what -

is that a sub-classification for 'The Anthropocene' that's recently been codified by the general consortium?  ...

Not that it needs elaboration ...but the idea of the Anthropocene is that we the people, of the united state of humanity's innovation having outpaced the checks and balances of the back ground various planetary systems, have breached the point where fucking up said planet, in order to form a more perfect world for ourselves, is officially substantial. And hence forth, we are now proven enough in doing so that we're actually definable as geologically significant force - thus, and epoch known as the Anthropocene.  Nice loaded run-on sentence -

It just seems logical that trying to define Fire ... Flood, heat and even cold craziness, when these systemic symptoms are really indirectly if not directly causally related to the former, is just reductive and inflammatory (pun intended for purposes of annoying  haha).

But he may have been tongue-in-cheek anyway.  LOL   Yeah, kidding aside, ...I don't think it takes much of an idiot (really) to see that we are getting these conflagration explosions like never before. The old mantra/assumption that bad land management is contributory...? doesn't work.  How was midriff Canadian continental space a product of poor land management?

And ...doing so on every continent at the same time.   I gotta say, maybe Maui was just bad timing... but a firestorm on an island is something pretty significantly chilling (sorry) when its surrounded by thousands of miles of water.  If we can do it in that geologic setting... we can do it over continental expanses. 

One aspect I have not seen researched/printed ...is any publication that discusses the carbon footprint of the global surge of fires and the C02 exhaust - the integrated. 

See, not that you or anyone else reading this asked... but, this is part of the "uncertainty curve" of the Climate Change "feed-back" loop.  The CC models that attempt(ed) to project the future world given various degrees of temperature increase, are (sure) vastly more sophisticated compared to those 1990s versions, but ... I don't think any of them are that discrete.  Like did they predict fire storms, per se?  Certainly not when and extent. Did they predict Methane Hydrate release/explosive out-gassing from ancient permafrost thawing?  Did they subsequently release enough green-house gas emissions from these ( as well as the CO2 from all the square-mouthed enraged climate deniers) to the bake? 

I'm asking here - not declaring.  But it seems intuitive that there are unknown feed-backs that have been/are taking place; they can cause this thing to be accelerated. And, we all know that observations of, therein, as well as the attribution sciences tending more and more to confirm, all point to an acceleration display.

 

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7 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

"Pyrocene"?    what -

is that a sub-classification for 'The Anthropocene' that's recently been codified by the general consortium?  ...

Not that it needs elaboration ...but the idea of the Anthropocene is that we the people, of the united state of humanity's innovation having outpaced the checks and balances of the back ground various planetary systems, have breached the point where fucking up said planet, in order to form a more perfect world for ourselves, is officially substantial. And hence forth, we are now proven enough in doing so that we're actually definable as geologically significant force - thus, and epoch known as the Anthropocene.  Nice loaded run-on sentence -

It just seems logical that trying to define Fire ... Flood, heat and even cold craziness, when these systemic symptoms are really indirectly if not directly causally related to the former, is just reductive and inflammatory (pun intended for purposes of annoying  haha).

But he may have been tongue-in-cheek anyway.  LOL   Yeah, kidding aside, ...I don't think it takes much of an idiot (really) to see that we are getting these conflagration explosions like never before. The old mantra/assumption that bad land management is contributory...? doesn't work.  How was midriff Canadian continental space a product of poor land management?

And ...doing so on every continent at the same time.   I gotta say, maybe Maui was just bad timing... but a firestorm on an island is something pretty significantly chilling (sorry) when its surrounded by thousands of miles of water.  If we can do it in that geologic setting... we can do it over continental expanses. 

One aspect I have not seen researched/printed ...is any publication that discusses the carbon footprint of the global surge of fires and the C02 exhaust - the integrated. 

See, not that you or anyone else reading this asked... but, this is part of the "uncertainty curve" of the Climate Change "feed-back" loop.  The CC models that attempt(ed) to project the future world given various degrees of temperature increase, are (sure) vastly more sophisticated compared to those 1990s versions, but ... I don't think any of them are that discrete.  Like did they predict fire storms, per se?  Certainly not when and extent. Did they predict Methane Hydrate release/explosive out-gassing from ancient permafrost thawing?  Did they subsequently release enough green-house gas emissions from these ( as well as the CO2 from all the square-mouthed enraged climate deniers) to the bake? 

I'm asking here - not declaring.  But it seems intuitive that there are unknown feed-backs that have been/are taking place; they can cause this thing to be accelerated. And, we all know that observations of, therein, as well as the attribution sciences tending more and more to confirm, all point to an acceleration display.

 

Dr. Otto usually chooses her words carefully. Googled  "Pyrocene"  - the term was coined by  fire expert Steven Pyne in 2015. Below is a link to his website which has info on his publications.

https://www.stephenpyne.com/bio.htm

 

Below is a good blog article on Canadian fires and climate change.

https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/canadian-wildfires-and-climate-change

 

Finally believe that the CO2 emissions from forest fires are included in carbon cycle models but don't know the details. Would guess that uncertainty in future wildfire CO2 and CH4 emissions is large.

 

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Not sure if it will hold, but in the wake of Idalia, Naples Municipal Airport (APF) appears to have had a low of only 87F this morning. Short period of record, but looking back on the records, which date to 2003, this appears to be the warmest low over those 21 years. The daily mean of 90F, should it hold, is also the highest in the 21 year period.

Naples, Naples Municipal Airport (weather.gov)

image.png.4327f848a9e24d604f1b43375a4097d0.png

 

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18 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Not sure if it will hold, but in the wake of Idalia, Naples Municipal Airport (APF) appears to have had a low of only 87F this morning. Short period of record, but looking back on the records, which date to 2003, this appears to be the warmest low over those 21 years. The daily mean of 90F, should it hold, is also the highest in the 21 year period.

Naples, Naples Municipal Airport (weather.gov)

image.png.4327f848a9e24d604f1b43375a4097d0.png

 

The temperature at Naples dropped to 86F yesterday, which still was the warmest minimum on record at the airport. Using the expanded records for Naples area, which extend back to 1942, we can find one more alleged instance of an 86F low temperature, which is said to have occurred on August 17, 1943 (see below).

image.png.6d8d35171d5c7a5f69096bd0f65afd07.png

image.png.a129a0bf3958d647d8cac10b08c84c1f.png

 

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Also, of note, Miami's low of 83F was just one shy of the all-time record warmest minimum temperature there. This was an unusual 12:24 a.m. reading, so just at the very beginning of the calendar day. The rest of the day was 84F+.

What is interesting is Wikipedia indicates that the all-time record warm low of 84F occurred twice - on August 4, 1993 & September 7, 1897. You can tell this was authored several years ago. In the new normal, an 84F low occurs pretty much every single year, often multiple times in a year.

image.png.40d922fdfbef286978a6b3b7f4b5c77b.png

Since this article was written, a low of 84F has been observed nine times at Miami  (August 5, 2017, September 8, 2017, July 14, 2019, June 25, 2020, June 27, 2020, June 29, 2020, July 31, 2020, September 3, 2020, and July 20, 2023).

 

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Some observations I have shared on the Lakes/OV subforum regarding the ongoing heat wave. I figured I'd share here for a larger audience with the climate buffs. More to come in the coming days, no doubt.

I found the data from Denver quite shocking, with no readings above 97 degrees prior to 2019 in the month of September, and now 9 of them since then. Also, very impressive heat in northern Minnesota today, with Duluth easily eclipsing the September monthly record. There has not been a hotter day than today at Brainerd since July 1936, and this is now the third year in a row with a 100F or better reading there, which is unprecedented in the historical record.

September 1

Quote

Although outside this subforum, worth noting Denver reached 99 today. I checked on NowData, and that was a daily record and equals the third warmest reading on record in the month of September.

The only warmer readings were 100 on September 2, 2019, and 101 on September 5, 2020. It also reached 99 on September 7 & 8, 2022, and September 10, 2021.

Prior to 2019, it had never reached 98 in Denver in the month of September. With today’s high of 99, it has now reached 98 or better on nine occasions in the past 5 years.

In the context of the past five years, a pretty typical early September heat wave in Denver. But it would have been a new monthly record high prior to 2019. Records for Denver date to 1872.

September 2

Quote

Impressive heat in parts of South Dakota today. Winner reached 107F, one shy of the all-time record for the month of September set on September 9, 1931, and the second warmest reading on record for the month. The low of 76F was also the second warmest of record, behind 78F on September 7, 1945. The daily mean of 91.5F was easily the hottest of record in the month of September. The old record was 89.0F, set on September 2, 1983 & September 8, 1931.

In fact, the 91.5F daily mean is the easily the latest in the calendar year that value was attained. A daily mean of 91.5F was reached on August 16, 1988, which is the latest date other than today on which a daily mean equal to or greater than today’s value was attained at Winner, SD.

 

Quote

A couple other observations. The high of 101 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota was the first 100+ reading in the month of September at that location since 1976, and only the seventh year to achieve that figure. The high is again forecast to be around 101F today, and if it achieves that, this would be the first year with more than one 100+ readings in over 100 years (1922 was the last year with that distinction). 
 

The high of 102F at Sioux City, IA was the first 100+ reading in the month of September at that location since 2000, and was also just one shy of the monthly all-time record of 103F. This was also only the eighth year that has reached 100 in September. Should it reach 100 today, it would be the first year with more than one 100 degree reading in September since 1939, and third overall (1895, being the other).

September 3

Quote

Okay, so Duluth might be the most impressive record yet. Hit 97 today, breaking the previous September all-time monthly record by 2 degrees set on September 7, 1976. It shattered the daily record by 8 degrees. Prior to today, the latest 97 or higher reading at Duluth was on August 1, 1930, when it also reached 97 degrees. Which is to say, yes, this would have tied the August monthly record as well.

The low of 71, should it hold, would be just one shy of the highest on record for the month. And the mean of 84F easily bearing the prior record of 82F. Both of those records are from September 11, 1931, I believe.

I do say “should it hold” since I am aware Duluth is prone to lake breezes which can result in rapid temperature swings. I don’t believe that’s the case today, but I didn’t investigate.

 

Quote

Brainerd reached 102F today, one shy of the September monthly record set on September 10, 1931. It was the hottest day since July 15, 2006, and would have matched the August monthly record which was set on August 4, 1947. Only four days in recorded history were hotter than today at Brainerd - the aforementioned 103F reading from September 10, 1931; July 10, 1936 (106F); July 11, 1936 (103F) and July 12, 1936 (103F). Which is to say it has not been hotter than today at Brainerd since July 12, 1936, during the most impressive heat wave of the Dust Bowl. At more than 87 years ago, I would venture to guess few living Brainerdians have experienced a day hotter than today, and fewer still would have been old enough to recall it.

It has now reached 100F or better three years in a row - it was 100F on June 4, 2021 (earliest on record) and 100F on June 20, 2022. Both of those dates tied the June monthly record of 100F set on June 19, 1988. It does not appear there had ever been two years in a row with a 100+ reading prior to the current stretch of 3 years.

This in a place better known for snow and the Coen brothers cult classic, Fargo, which, of course, featured plenty of snow and a gory wood chipper.

 

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@donsutherland1

Wow, and the earlier records are likely illegitimate.

See 1991 New York Times article on the erroneous temperature readings from the faulty HO-83 hygrothermometer in Tuscon during that era: 

In Tucson, It's Not the Heat, It's the Thermometers - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

This would be like someone not only breaking the baseball steroid-era home run records, but knocking 100 out of the park.

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For more context, the HO-83 artificially inflated daytime maxima by up to 2C in the southwest US on sunny days with light winds (the kind of days characteristic of a place like Tuscon). 2C is huge... it's possible with current instrumentation, there may have only been 4-6 days of 110F+ in those summers. So this is incredibly impressive to be blowing away these old records like this.

The HO-83 Hygro- thermometer « Climate AuditThe HO-83 Hygro- thermometer « Climate Audit

Inside the HO83 Hygrothermometer « Climate Audit

Note: I don't normally link to Climate Audit, but they had some excellent information on this bias in 2007/2008, with a number of links to scientific papers exploring the issue. Their angle was the recent warming was biased by this issue, but obviously time has shown this to be nonsense as it has continued to warm even with improved instrumentation. Of course, as they noted, these ASOS sites are only about 5% of the USHCN sites, so it was a negligible issue to begin with. With that said, it does give reason to be a bit skeptical of some of the extreme heat records set in that era, and there were a number of them.

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1 hour ago, TheClimateChanger said:

 

@donsutherland1

Wow, and the earlier records are likely illegitimate.

See 1991 New York Times article on the erroneous temperature readings from the faulty HO-83 hygrothermometer in Tuscon during that era: 

In Tucson, It's Not the Heat, It's the Thermometers - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

This would be like someone not only breaking the baseball steroid-era home run records, but knocking 100 out of the park.

Yes. Unfortunately, some of those earlier records likely overstate the high temperatures. And yet, those records are now being surpassed.

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More climate mayhem. The mighty Mississippi is drying up for a second consecutive year.

Current gage level on the Mississippi River down to -9.9 feet. This is already third lowest on record, behind 10/21/2022 (-10.81') and 7/10/1988 (-10.70'), but is forecast to continue falling to -10.6 feet by Wednesday. Next week, the river level is supposed to continue below -10 feet, so we could see the lowest flow on record at Memphis in two consecutive autumns. The long-range forecast favors drier than normal conditions across almost the entire basin in the 6-10 day and 8-14 day periods.

image.png.07f215d2563158fb17d3dc4639f3abf0.png

image.png.aa6fcf9b0fcf3b157cfd2659f3afa72e.png

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Was reading up on the Mississippi levels last year, and came across this gem from the New Orleans media published in December.

The Mississippi River is low, but nowhere near its record | Environment | nola.com

Do they realize the Mississippi River is a tidal reach at New Orleans? The levels are maintained by the tides. And sea levels have risen considerably since 1872. It's not at all comparing apples to apples. :rolleyes:

Here is the past several days worth of river levels at NOLA, which illustrates the tidal component. Levels dropped below 2' overnight, approaching the 1.6' from last year. These values cannot be compared to 19th century values, as sea level rises would prevent those numbers from being possible (except perhaps if drought were to be accompanied by a period of extreme northerly winds and/or a tsunami wave that would pull the water out to sea).

image.png.fae8af77f7b8220bc0053c48642a9849.png

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https://phys.org/news/2023-09-life-threatening-events-world.html

"The model showed more places experiencing heat events that would not be considered survivable under the wet bulb test as the planet grows warmer. A global increase of 2°C, for example, would result in 25% more places experiencing such events. Those increases, the model showed, would sometimes be in places not accustomed to such heat, such as parts of the East Coast and Midwest in the U.S., and in central Europe. "

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