Looking around the web for some kind of sign that Winter might miraculously appear on the West Coast, I found this Sacramento Bee story on our La Niña. The tone, or basic climate assumptions displayed by the reporter (and the editor...do newspapers still employ editors?) really fired me up! NOAA's "Year for the Record Books" isn't as scary as it sounds...Irene was the only hurricane to qualify in the Billion Dollar Club, most of the events are Springtime tornado outbreaks.
Incredibly, the reporter likens our "Pineapple Express" to hurricanes! By definition hurricanes are circular, well organized storms...think our weather makers on steroids.
There is hurricane news: We're enjoying a period of low intensity Atlantic Tropical Cyclone activity. In fact each day that passes sets a new record for Days Without a Major Hurricane landfall on the United States.
This is born out by the historical reanalysis by NOAA of the hurricane records. No December forecast for next season's Hurricane Season was issued, and Colorado State University is not defending the long range models anymore. They noted:
"We strongly believe that the increases in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the 20th century have had little or no significant effect on Atlantic basin or global Tropical Cyclone activity as extensively discussed in our many previous forecast write-ups and recently in Gray (2011). Global tropical cyclone activity has shown no significant trend over the past thirty years."
I cooled off and found another Long Period Cycle turning to the Cold Side:
AMO begins negative (cold) phase "This is the first time the November value has been negative since about 1996. It appears the down cycle has started. This portends a cooler period, especially winters."
La Niña will be weak to moderate through late Spring says NOAA's Climate Prediction Center's 90 Outlook issued today.
AO, the Arctic Oscillation is trending to the cold side, though NOAA has some problem with the data at present.
That's a lot of cold. It's probably bad news precip-wise. Cooler ocean temps mean less convection which is the pipeline that fills weather systems with moisture.
With my head filled with cool thoughts, I decided to stay awake to watch some actual falling snow. I watched the 10 O'clock and 11 O'clock News weathercasts...I watched Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element". Around 2AM I looked at the webcams and saw a little bit of dusting. I looked at my front porch...not a flake yet.
I fired up another SciFi Classic, Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" on Blu-ray I must have fallen asleep around 3AM. I woke up and looked outside a 0430...still no joy. When I looked again, there was a little dust on things, but it wasn't snowing anymore. Blazing sunlight burned through my blinds at 0830. Chain controls were up over Donner Summit for a time, but they'd been lifted in time to cause enough spinouts to cause CalTrans to hold westbound traffic for a time.
I missed the last morning weathercast on the TrainWreck News, so I found one online.
Thanks Channel 8 KOLO Reno!
Showing posts with label AMO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AMO. Show all posts
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Same New Story
Smoking gun:
LATEST GUIDANCE HAS TRENDED A LITTLE DRIER ON PRECIP AMOUNTS AND HAVE LOWERED QPF AMOUNTS TO REFLECT THIS.
CURRENTLY A BAND OF PRECIPITABLE SEEN IN AMSU SATELLITE SOUNDER IMAGERY STRETCHES INTO THE ERN PAC TO NEAR THE OREGON OF UP TO 1.25 INCHES. BUT THIS BAND IS MOVING SOUTH AND WILL NOT LIKELY INTERACT WITH THE THE UPPER TROUGH AND COLD FRONT. IN FACT MODEL PWATS FOR LATE TONIGHT AND
EARLY FRIDAY ARE ONLY ABOUT 0.45 INCHES OR LESS OVER THE REGION.
MOST RECENT STORM SYSTEM WAS OVER FORECAST IN TERMS OF PRECIP AMOUNTS SO THINK THIS ONE MIGHT BE AS WELL.
That's from the Reno NWS 4:21AM PST Thu Nov 17, 2011 Area Forecast Discussion (Italics C/P)...right from "the horse's mouth"
I'm upgrading "MOST RECENT STORM SYSTEM WAS OVER FORECAST IN TERMS OF PRECIP AMOUNTS SO THINK THIS ONE MIGHT BE AS WELL." from chatty 4:21AM remark to the "Season Trend" so far.
So, I made a point of watching the local 10 O'clock News...sure enough Bill Martin, KTVU2's WeatherDude talked about the system (which did produce sprinkles here at the Ancestral Digs around sunset) He ran the models on the screen, and said: "I don't believe it! The models say this system will approach our coast, then just dry up and move southward along the coast. Tune in tomorrow night and I'll have the whole story for you"
Curious, I clicked on the NWS Monterey/San Francisco AFD to see if any forecast trepidation was in evidence. There it was!
"FROM PREVIOUS DISCUSSION...THE NAM AND GFS MODELS TRENDED MUCH DRIER THE LAST 24 HOURS AND KEPT THE MAIN LOW AND ASSOCIATED RAINFALL OFFSHORE. THE ECMWF HAS DEVIATED LITTLE AND BRINGS THE CORE OF THE LOW AND RAINFALL OVER THE DISTRICT...FOCUSED MOST HEAVILY FROM SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS SOUTHWARD THROUGH COASTAL MONTEREY COUNTY OVERNIGHT SATURDAY INTO SUNDAY MORNING. THE CANADIAN MODEL (GEM) IS CLOSER TO THE ECMWF THAN THE GFS AND FORECAST WILL TREND WITH THE WETTER MODEL SOLUTIONS AND THE CNRFC QPF. THIS EVENT IS VERY SIMILAR TO THE VETERANS DAY RAIN AROUND HERE WHEN THE NAM/GFS MODELS DEPICTED A DRY SCENARIO WHILE THE ECMWF BROUGHT THE MAIN FRONTAL BOUNDARY ONSHORE. WILL HOLD ONTO THE WET FORECAST THAT WE`VE HAD OUT BUT WILL BE INTERESTING TO
WATCH THE VERIFICATION OF THE EVENT."
This really got me thinking...so far this season the storms model wet, then slow down, dry out, and "under-perform"...the steering seems at odds with the model runs when all is said and done as well. This is the second storm in the last month that caused the forecasters to make note of model "disagreements".
I'd love to talk to one of these Lead Forecasters! I'd like to know how their models are refined over the years. Now that we're well into the Negative Phase of the PDO, does this become a background assumption factored into the works of the model itself? Maybe it's just another set of data points that weigh on the model's prediction.
Who writes the models? Do frontline forecasters give feedback to the model gurus? How do the models evolve with the long period variability of our climate? What happens when meteorology discovers new climate mechanisms or confirms previously discounted contributing factors?
Models don't agree? The more I ponder this, the more questions I have. Throw in the alphabet soup of oceanic oscillations and I get a headache!
LATEST GUIDANCE HAS TRENDED A LITTLE DRIER ON PRECIP AMOUNTS AND HAVE LOWERED QPF AMOUNTS TO REFLECT THIS.
CURRENTLY A BAND OF PRECIPITABLE SEEN IN AMSU SATELLITE SOUNDER IMAGERY STRETCHES INTO THE ERN PAC TO NEAR THE OREGON OF UP TO 1.25 INCHES. BUT THIS BAND IS MOVING SOUTH AND WILL NOT LIKELY INTERACT WITH THE THE UPPER TROUGH AND COLD FRONT. IN FACT MODEL PWATS FOR LATE TONIGHT AND
EARLY FRIDAY ARE ONLY ABOUT 0.45 INCHES OR LESS OVER THE REGION.
MOST RECENT STORM SYSTEM WAS OVER FORECAST IN TERMS OF PRECIP AMOUNTS SO THINK THIS ONE MIGHT BE AS WELL.
That's from the Reno NWS 4:21AM PST Thu Nov 17, 2011 Area Forecast Discussion (Italics C/P)...right from "the horse's mouth"
I'm upgrading "MOST RECENT STORM SYSTEM WAS OVER FORECAST IN TERMS OF PRECIP AMOUNTS SO THINK THIS ONE MIGHT BE AS WELL." from chatty 4:21AM remark to the "Season Trend" so far.
So, I made a point of watching the local 10 O'clock News...sure enough Bill Martin, KTVU2's WeatherDude talked about the system (which did produce sprinkles here at the Ancestral Digs around sunset) He ran the models on the screen, and said: "I don't believe it! The models say this system will approach our coast, then just dry up and move southward along the coast. Tune in tomorrow night and I'll have the whole story for you"
Curious, I clicked on the NWS Monterey/San Francisco AFD to see if any forecast trepidation was in evidence. There it was!
"FROM PREVIOUS DISCUSSION...THE NAM AND GFS MODELS TRENDED MUCH DRIER THE LAST 24 HOURS AND KEPT THE MAIN LOW AND ASSOCIATED RAINFALL OFFSHORE. THE ECMWF HAS DEVIATED LITTLE AND BRINGS THE CORE OF THE LOW AND RAINFALL OVER THE DISTRICT...FOCUSED MOST HEAVILY FROM SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS SOUTHWARD THROUGH COASTAL MONTEREY COUNTY OVERNIGHT SATURDAY INTO SUNDAY MORNING. THE CANADIAN MODEL (GEM) IS CLOSER TO THE ECMWF THAN THE GFS AND FORECAST WILL TREND WITH THE WETTER MODEL SOLUTIONS AND THE CNRFC QPF. THIS EVENT IS VERY SIMILAR TO THE VETERANS DAY RAIN AROUND HERE WHEN THE NAM/GFS MODELS DEPICTED A DRY SCENARIO WHILE THE ECMWF BROUGHT THE MAIN FRONTAL BOUNDARY ONSHORE. WILL HOLD ONTO THE WET FORECAST THAT WE`VE HAD OUT BUT WILL BE INTERESTING TO
WATCH THE VERIFICATION OF THE EVENT."
This really got me thinking...so far this season the storms model wet, then slow down, dry out, and "under-perform"...the steering seems at odds with the model runs when all is said and done as well. This is the second storm in the last month that caused the forecasters to make note of model "disagreements".
I'd love to talk to one of these Lead Forecasters! I'd like to know how their models are refined over the years. Now that we're well into the Negative Phase of the PDO, does this become a background assumption factored into the works of the model itself? Maybe it's just another set of data points that weigh on the model's prediction.
Who writes the models? Do frontline forecasters give feedback to the model gurus? How do the models evolve with the long period variability of our climate? What happens when meteorology discovers new climate mechanisms or confirms previously discounted contributing factors?
Models don't agree? The more I ponder this, the more questions I have. Throw in the alphabet soup of oceanic oscillations and I get a headache!
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Head Scratching Time Begins
A couple of things came streaming through my social sites today...more precisely, I noticed them today...
KCRA3's @MarkFinan's tweet touting his "La Niña Explainer" on the KCRA 3 Weather Facebook Page
I didn't know Finan had a weather page on facebook, so I searched and liked it. Here it is...it's a good thumbnail sketch of a seriously complex system:
"For those of you that didn't see my explanation of La Nina on the news last night, let me explain here. First the basics... La Nina refers to a period of cooler than average water in the equatorial Pacific. The cooler than average water can set or alter weather patterns for extended periods of time, like for a season.
Based on past episodes, there are tendencies that you can see when we have a La Nina in place. For some parts of the country, like the Southeast and the Pacific Northwest, those tendencies are pretty well defined. The Northwest has a very good chance of having a cool, wet winter. For our area the signals are very mixed.
Last year was a La Nina year and the water year was very impressive in NorCal. Sacramento finished with about 125% of average rain and the Sierra had about 200% average precipitation.
Not all years are like that for us. Some years come in pretty average and some come in very dry. 1975-76 was a La Nina season and was one of the driest years we have ever seen. Sacramento only picked up about 7 inches of rain that season, about 36% of average.
The problem is that there are more forces at work that [effect] the equatorial Pacific. There is the Arctic Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the MJO, the PDO etc. All of these have some influence on our weather patterns at any given time. Research into these is ongoing so seasonal forecasting is still pretty iffy.
So the bottom line is we don't know what sort of Winter we'll have here in NorCal."
Our climate is like an onion in that there are many layers of driving forces that influence the climate in the long term and weather in the short term. You could call these drivers the "Alphabet Soup"...they are all acronyms: AO, ENSO, PDO, MJO, NAO for a start.
ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) is like the onion's skin. It's on the surface and it's the first oscillation that casual observers discover, and it's the shortest period oscillation we've discovered. ENSO is home to El Niño and La Niña.
Mr Finan is right about the forecasting being "iffy", most of the dedevelopment of the computer forecasting models took place in the last 30 years or so...about the same time that the PDO was in the Positive Phase (read warm phase). Now that the PDO has crossed into negative territory, the models will have accuracy problems.
Clearly meteorologists haven't yet found the mechanism that drives Central California Precipitation during La Niña Winters.
Notice all the acronyms end with an "O" for oscillation. These are all cycles of temperature trends for different oceans or regions of oceans. Oceans are where the lion's share of Earth's heat is stored. Most of Earth's heat comes from the Sun, while a fraction comes from the Earth's molten iron core via vulcanism...see deep ocean vents for example.
The Sun has cycles too, though I'd wager we haven't discovered most of these yet. The most familiar cycle is the Sunspot Cycle. It's the first one we noticed. The earliest surviving record of sunspot observation dates from 364BC , based on comments by Chinese astronomer Gan De in a star catalog. The first clear mention of a sunspot in Western literature, around 300 BC, was by Theophrastus, a student of Plato and Aristotle.
I was 50 years old when I saw my first sun spot. I was on The New Seeker a "party boat", off the beach at Pacifica fishing for salmon. The marine layer was just the right thickness to reveal the disc of the Sun which was sporting a huge sunspot several times the size of the Earth.
Solar observers say the Sun is being very quiet, just another monkey wrench in the forecaster's bailiwick to complicate their job.
KCRA3's @MarkFinan's tweet touting his "La Niña Explainer" on the KCRA 3 Weather Facebook Page
I didn't know Finan had a weather page on facebook, so I searched and liked it. Here it is...it's a good thumbnail sketch of a seriously complex system:
"For those of you that didn't see my explanation of La Nina on the news last night, let me explain here. First the basics... La Nina refers to a period of cooler than average water in the equatorial Pacific. The cooler than average water can set or alter weather patterns for extended periods of time, like for a season.
Based on past episodes, there are tendencies that you can see when we have a La Nina in place. For some parts of the country, like the Southeast and the Pacific Northwest, those tendencies are pretty well defined. The Northwest has a very good chance of having a cool, wet winter. For our area the signals are very mixed.
Last year was a La Nina year and the water year was very impressive in NorCal. Sacramento finished with about 125% of average rain and the Sierra had about 200% average precipitation.
Not all years are like that for us. Some years come in pretty average and some come in very dry. 1975-76 was a La Nina season and was one of the driest years we have ever seen. Sacramento only picked up about 7 inches of rain that season, about 36% of average.
The problem is that there are more forces at work that [effect] the equatorial Pacific. There is the Arctic Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the MJO, the PDO etc. All of these have some influence on our weather patterns at any given time. Research into these is ongoing so seasonal forecasting is still pretty iffy.
So the bottom line is we don't know what sort of Winter we'll have here in NorCal."
Our climate is like an onion in that there are many layers of driving forces that influence the climate in the long term and weather in the short term. You could call these drivers the "Alphabet Soup"...they are all acronyms: AO, ENSO, PDO, MJO, NAO for a start.
ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) is like the onion's skin. It's on the surface and it's the first oscillation that casual observers discover, and it's the shortest period oscillation we've discovered. ENSO is home to El Niño and La Niña.
Mr Finan is right about the forecasting being "iffy", most of the dedevelopment of the computer forecasting models took place in the last 30 years or so...about the same time that the PDO was in the Positive Phase (read warm phase). Now that the PDO has crossed into negative territory, the models will have accuracy problems.
Clearly meteorologists haven't yet found the mechanism that drives Central California Precipitation during La Niña Winters.
Notice all the acronyms end with an "O" for oscillation. These are all cycles of temperature trends for different oceans or regions of oceans. Oceans are where the lion's share of Earth's heat is stored. Most of Earth's heat comes from the Sun, while a fraction comes from the Earth's molten iron core via vulcanism...see deep ocean vents for example.
The Sun has cycles too, though I'd wager we haven't discovered most of these yet. The most familiar cycle is the Sunspot Cycle. It's the first one we noticed. The earliest surviving record of sunspot observation dates from 364BC , based on comments by Chinese astronomer Gan De in a star catalog. The first clear mention of a sunspot in Western literature, around 300 BC, was by Theophrastus, a student of Plato and Aristotle.
I was 50 years old when I saw my first sun spot. I was on The New Seeker a "party boat", off the beach at Pacifica fishing for salmon. The marine layer was just the right thickness to reveal the disc of the Sun which was sporting a huge sunspot several times the size of the Earth.
Solar observers say the Sun is being very quiet, just another monkey wrench in the forecaster's bailiwick to complicate their job.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Duck Tuck & Roll
Excuse me while I vent my spleen! I'm getting as tired of whining about this damn weather as you, my gentle readers, are getting from enduring my kvetching!
I stayed up deep into Thursday morning to follow the Tour de France LIVE as the route entered the first stage in the Pyrénées that promised to separate the contenders from the pretenders. There's nowhere to hide on these Hors Catégorie climbs...you've either got the legs that day, or you don't.
To repeat Jonathan Vaughters' exquisitely precise and perceptive tweet from Sunday's crash-marred Stage 9: "Professional cycling is brutal and beautiful. It cannot be one without the other"
Throw in Mother Nature's great equalizer, our lingering La Niña-enhanced rainy season, and Voughter's Axiom becomes brutally prophetic. The tiny French country roads, and steep grades wet with rain, continue to vex the racers. Again Thursday bad luck befell several teams. Team Radioshack/Team CorduroyPlanet's Andreas Klöden and several others including the maillot jaune, hit the ground yet again, on a rain slicked French byway near the beginning of the descent from the first of three huge climbs that defined the first High Mountain stage of the 2011 Tour.
I can't say that the late rain in France is La Niña's fault, in fact there's probably an Atlantic Ocean analogue to our Pacific's La Niña.
Now that I give it a little thought, there might be a corollary between the PDO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the AMO, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. I haven't found any evidence that the two are linked together, because until I watched this year's atypically rainy Tour de France, I never thought to look for a linkage. It seems to me that the the driving forces that drive one could also drive the other.
OK, I remember now...I looked at my own blogs! I searched the AMO tag and found a CorduroyPlanet "Inside Baseball" from September 2010. One of the articles I linked had the smoking gun. The article on Anthony Watts' blog had a chart showing the excellent correlation between the PDO and the AMO. Now I'm no scientist, but isn't it kinda obvious that something is driving both of these long-period cycles. If I had to take an educated guess, I'd say chances are better than good that our sun is in the driver's seat here.
Here's the X's and O's from the article:
I don't know about you, but there's a pattern...not a perfect pattern (it's Nature after all) to the peaks and valleys. On the graph, look at the years that end in 2. With just a little fudge factor, those years are either the peak or the rock bottom of the cycles. The Sunspot Cycle is generally agreed to be 22 years from peak to peak. Close enough for Government Work as Americans used to say.
Sadly if the cycle repeats itself, I'm looking at roughly another 10 years of funky cool Summers. On the bright side, snowmaking seasons should be shorter, and groomers should enjoy extra nights of Hero Snow. Droughts should be mitigated, the glaciers will get well, and the lakes will be full until fall every year until spawning German Brown Trout stir. I'm guessing that bicycle wheel, tire and brake builders will iron out the wet weather performance of their products about the time the climate starts to warm back up.
In the near term, I'm lookin' for a fair weather window to duck up to the DaveCave so I can fix my pickup, and fetch some specialized tools for some projects around the Ancestral Diggins. One look at the satellite images is troubling to say the least...not one, but two wound-up cold low pressure systems are coming out of the Gulf of Alaska. Yeah, I said "duck". The AFD says there isn't "much" moisture associated with the mid-July interlopers...yeah, yeah...I've heard that one before too...
To quote the Prophet Homer Simpson...d'oh!
I stayed up deep into Thursday morning to follow the Tour de France LIVE as the route entered the first stage in the Pyrénées that promised to separate the contenders from the pretenders. There's nowhere to hide on these Hors Catégorie climbs...you've either got the legs that day, or you don't.
To repeat Jonathan Vaughters' exquisitely precise and perceptive tweet from Sunday's crash-marred Stage 9: "Professional cycling is brutal and beautiful. It cannot be one without the other"
Throw in Mother Nature's great equalizer, our lingering La Niña-enhanced rainy season, and Voughter's Axiom becomes brutally prophetic. The tiny French country roads, and steep grades wet with rain, continue to vex the racers. Again Thursday bad luck befell several teams. Team Radioshack/Team CorduroyPlanet's Andreas Klöden and several others including the maillot jaune, hit the ground yet again, on a rain slicked French byway near the beginning of the descent from the first of three huge climbs that defined the first High Mountain stage of the 2011 Tour.
Now that I give it a little thought, there might be a corollary between the PDO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the AMO, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. I haven't found any evidence that the two are linked together, because until I watched this year's atypically rainy Tour de France, I never thought to look for a linkage. It seems to me that the the driving forces that drive one could also drive the other.
OK, I remember now...I looked at my own blogs! I searched the AMO tag and found a CorduroyPlanet "Inside Baseball" from September 2010. One of the articles I linked had the smoking gun. The article on Anthony Watts' blog had a chart showing the excellent correlation between the PDO and the AMO. Now I'm no scientist, but isn't it kinda obvious that something is driving both of these long-period cycles. If I had to take an educated guess, I'd say chances are better than good that our sun is in the driver's seat here.
Here's the X's and O's from the article:
 |
| Tale of the 19X2's? |
Sadly if the cycle repeats itself, I'm looking at roughly another 10 years of funky cool Summers. On the bright side, snowmaking seasons should be shorter, and groomers should enjoy extra nights of Hero Snow. Droughts should be mitigated, the glaciers will get well, and the lakes will be full until fall every year until spawning German Brown Trout stir. I'm guessing that bicycle wheel, tire and brake builders will iron out the wet weather performance of their products about the time the climate starts to warm back up.
In the near term, I'm lookin' for a fair weather window to duck up to the DaveCave so I can fix my pickup, and fetch some specialized tools for some projects around the Ancestral Diggins. One look at the satellite images is troubling to say the least...not one, but two wound-up cold low pressure systems are coming out of the Gulf of Alaska. Yeah, I said "duck". The AFD says there isn't "much" moisture associated with the mid-July interlopers...yeah, yeah...I've heard that one before too...
To quote the Prophet Homer Simpson...d'oh!
Friday, October 1, 2010
Vindication is Such Sweet Succor!
Here's some climate news that I've been waiting for since I became aware of politicized climate science more than two decades ago!
Now, I'm a "Seat of the Pants" Guy...I always have been. You know the type...comfy Levis, rough hands, regards common sense as essential...I'm a German Engineer's Kid too, so I know a thing or two about reality and mathematics.
As I get more massive in my dotage, I give a lot of weight to Mass (groan...sorry!)
I've just never bought into the CO2 theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. The minuscule portion of the atmosphere made up of CO2 molecules just wasn't weighty enough to do all the horrible things the AGW Alarmists were saying it was doing...even if Mankind raised the levels of Atmospheric CO2 tenfold!
It's the water stupid! (to hijack a meme from today's political dust-ups)
Earth's Oceans outweigh Earth's Atmosphere by many orders of magnitude. Oceans are many times more dense, too. Throw in all of Earth's living feedback loops, and the only possible conclusion to the question, "Who's in the Climate Driver's Seat?" is our Oceans powered by the Sun.
Some Science Guys at the Science and Public Policy Institute, published a paper wherein they plotted the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation + the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and compared the resulting plot to North America's temperature record, and voilà, Climate Clarity Illustrated!
There it is! Mystery solved, the Sun runs our climate.
Like photovoltaic solar power, the Sun excites the collectors, and the energy is stored in batteries for on-demand usage. Earth's Oceans are huge "Wet Cell" Battery Analogs, that store that thermal solar energy, making it available to moderate temperature extremes in the short term, and drive continental temps over the long, multidecadal scale, that will be found eventually, to be driven by long-period Solar Cycles! CO2 is but a bit player on the Global stage! Just not enough Mass to store enough energy to deflect a needle of even the most sensitive instrument.
So, everybody, take a break! The sky is not falling, the Planet is not suffering from a fever, mean old Mankind isn't killing the planet or the Polar Bears. Take some time to enjoy our little Blue Jewel of the Solar System...everything is going according to plan (and the Laws of Physics)
Now relax...smell the roses...kick off those shoes...something to drink?
Now, I'm a "Seat of the Pants" Guy...I always have been. You know the type...comfy Levis, rough hands, regards common sense as essential...I'm a German Engineer's Kid too, so I know a thing or two about reality and mathematics.
As I get more massive in my dotage, I give a lot of weight to Mass (groan...sorry!)
I've just never bought into the CO2 theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. The minuscule portion of the atmosphere made up of CO2 molecules just wasn't weighty enough to do all the horrible things the AGW Alarmists were saying it was doing...even if Mankind raised the levels of Atmospheric CO2 tenfold!
It's the water stupid! (to hijack a meme from today's political dust-ups)
Earth's Oceans outweigh Earth's Atmosphere by many orders of magnitude. Oceans are many times more dense, too. Throw in all of Earth's living feedback loops, and the only possible conclusion to the question, "Who's in the Climate Driver's Seat?" is our Oceans powered by the Sun.
Some Science Guys at the Science and Public Policy Institute, published a paper wherein they plotted the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation + the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and compared the resulting plot to North America's temperature record, and voilà, Climate Clarity Illustrated!
There it is! Mystery solved, the Sun runs our climate.
Like photovoltaic solar power, the Sun excites the collectors, and the energy is stored in batteries for on-demand usage. Earth's Oceans are huge "Wet Cell" Battery Analogs, that store that thermal solar energy, making it available to moderate temperature extremes in the short term, and drive continental temps over the long, multidecadal scale, that will be found eventually, to be driven by long-period Solar Cycles! CO2 is but a bit player on the Global stage! Just not enough Mass to store enough energy to deflect a needle of even the most sensitive instrument.
So, everybody, take a break! The sky is not falling, the Planet is not suffering from a fever, mean old Mankind isn't killing the planet or the Polar Bears. Take some time to enjoy our little Blue Jewel of the Solar System...everything is going according to plan (and the Laws of Physics)
Now relax...smell the roses...kick off those shoes...something to drink?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Inside Baseball
A curiously American phrase that one. Perhaps I've chosen a slightly off the mark title for today.
Inside Baseball implies dreaded minutia as it relates to something most can't or don't want to deal with or otherwise relate to.
OK, I can hear the stampede for the doors...I have it coming, I have been going on about September Baseball most of the month...
So here it is. There's just a flood of climate news coming out daily. Most of it huge in significance, too.
It's fair to declare AGW Dead...RIP
Anthropogenic Global Warming isn't happening...period. The Climate Gate Scandal opened the door on reality a little...what with all those leaked emails showing the conspiracy to "hide the decline". That is, to hide the observed global temperature decline while the scientists and the policy makers who fund their research were all shouting "the planet has a fever"
All week long, Anthony Watts' Climate Blog Watts Up With That, has been reporting on climate stories one after another, that all break new ground and show unequivocally than mankind and it's industry are but a flyspeck in the Big Climate Panoply.
Studies cited on WUWT have reported newly discovered Oceanic Cycles that correlate precisely with Europe's weather, and the advance and retreat of the glaciers in the Alps. Cyclic warming and cooling of Atlantic Ocean Sea Surface Temperatures are running on a 65 year periodic cycle, independent of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation! (AMO)
"In the monthly Atlantic SST record, we can observe that the recent warm phase peaked in 2005 and subsequent cooling of North Atlantic started, despite the recent AMO peak as a response to 2009/2010 El Nino. This climate shift is even better visualized in the 0-700m ocean heat content record for the Northern Atlantic. Based on previous records, we can expect the European climate to follow the SST record and to mimic the 1940-1975 cooling trend."
Simple physics says that ocean temps drive terrestrial air temps, not the other way around! The mass of the oceans is several orders of magnitude larger than the mass of the atmosphere...it's a simple matter to do the math...my endothermics and exothermics are a little rusty, but I remember the core principals 40 years on.
What's going on here? Why is so much climate science showing up that goes against the AGW grain?
It's the law of averages, the pendulum swinging to the other side after 30+ years of alarmist gravy-training.
There's also the little matter of increased computing power, and the scientists who "thought outside the box" rather than succumb to the fashionable alarmist orthodoxy of the day.
As I'm always inclined to, I'd venture that the same mechanisms at work in the Atlantic are also at work in the Pacific. ENSO and the PDO, these cyclic temperature fluctuations will likewise be correlated with our Temperature and Glacial Records once some grant money is ponied up to crunch these datasets.
This past week, peer reviewed papers laid waste to Arctic Ice Loss Alarmism, related new understanding of our Sun and it's effects on Earth's Climate Systems, and reported Solar observations so startling as to defy belief.
That's a lot of good news in my book. The debate will go on for several more years, but we will look back on September 2010 as the beginning of our return to climate sanity, when the Western Liberal Democracies began to let go of our Climate Fetishes, and started to get back on a path towards sanity and growth.
Even some of the Media are starting to report the Climate Skeptics' positions...call it what it is: Progress.
I guess it wasn't all that Inside Baseball after all...
Inside Baseball implies dreaded minutia as it relates to something most can't or don't want to deal with or otherwise relate to.
OK, I can hear the stampede for the doors...I have it coming, I have been going on about September Baseball most of the month...
So here it is. There's just a flood of climate news coming out daily. Most of it huge in significance, too.
Anthropogenic Global Warming isn't happening...period. The Climate Gate Scandal opened the door on reality a little...what with all those leaked emails showing the conspiracy to "hide the decline". That is, to hide the observed global temperature decline while the scientists and the policy makers who fund their research were all shouting "the planet has a fever"
All week long, Anthony Watts' Climate Blog Watts Up With That, has been reporting on climate stories one after another, that all break new ground and show unequivocally than mankind and it's industry are but a flyspeck in the Big Climate Panoply.
Studies cited on WUWT have reported newly discovered Oceanic Cycles that correlate precisely with Europe's weather, and the advance and retreat of the glaciers in the Alps. Cyclic warming and cooling of Atlantic Ocean Sea Surface Temperatures are running on a 65 year periodic cycle, independent of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation! (AMO)
"In the monthly Atlantic SST record, we can observe that the recent warm phase peaked in 2005 and subsequent cooling of North Atlantic started, despite the recent AMO peak as a response to 2009/2010 El Nino. This climate shift is even better visualized in the 0-700m ocean heat content record for the Northern Atlantic. Based on previous records, we can expect the European climate to follow the SST record and to mimic the 1940-1975 cooling trend."
Simple physics says that ocean temps drive terrestrial air temps, not the other way around! The mass of the oceans is several orders of magnitude larger than the mass of the atmosphere...it's a simple matter to do the math...my endothermics and exothermics are a little rusty, but I remember the core principals 40 years on.
What's going on here? Why is so much climate science showing up that goes against the AGW grain?
It's the law of averages, the pendulum swinging to the other side after 30+ years of alarmist gravy-training.
There's also the little matter of increased computing power, and the scientists who "thought outside the box" rather than succumb to the fashionable alarmist orthodoxy of the day.
As I'm always inclined to, I'd venture that the same mechanisms at work in the Atlantic are also at work in the Pacific. ENSO and the PDO, these cyclic temperature fluctuations will likewise be correlated with our Temperature and Glacial Records once some grant money is ponied up to crunch these datasets.
This past week, peer reviewed papers laid waste to Arctic Ice Loss Alarmism, related new understanding of our Sun and it's effects on Earth's Climate Systems, and reported Solar observations so startling as to defy belief.
Even some of the Media are starting to report the Climate Skeptics' positions...call it what it is: Progress.
I guess it wasn't all that Inside Baseball after all...
Thursday, August 5, 2010
What's Ahead This Winter?
Watts Up With That? has been a goldmine this week. The Truth be told? I'm procrastinating on the heavy-lifting plumbing project back in the Ancestral Diggins. It's easier to dilly-dally when there's fascinating weather and climate news to ponder!
Today's distraction is: Global Sea Surface Temperature Cooling Continues. In the Comments, I found a new Climate Acronym: AMO is the newly discovered (or newly postulated, I'm not sure which yet) Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. The Atlantic's version of the Pacific's PDO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The AMO is so new, that there hasn't been enough time to compile it's footprints going back into the historical record. This makes any models highly volatile going forward...for the near term, anyway...
It's going to be interesting to follow this new cyclic climate variation as it becomes better understood. Time will tell if this new data set will evolve scientifically, or does become politicized? All the better to beat the fast-fading Human Caused Global Warming Drums!
I can't wait to see the AMO, plotted over 2000 years overlaid with the same plot for the PDO. Do you suppose that the All-Time Record Temps might coincide with the alignment of these cycles at their combined peaks? How long between these alignments...I wonder. What about Atlantic Hurricane Activity, or Intensity. ENSO/El Niño/La Niña, and the Sunspot Cycles all get to play here.
Related comments cited the rapid "rise" of the new La Niña (rise could be confusing, the Pacific is cooling into the La Niña state, and cooling rapidly) Couple the effects of the new La Niña with the PDO getting farther into the Negative (read cool) Phase and we're looking at Winters trending cooler for the next decade or two.
La Niña often results in drought for many regions...usually the American Southwest, and the Southeastern States. The Pacific Northwest gets drenched, and in Central California, it can go either way. Fortunately for My Mountain, La Niña's lower temps are good for snowmaking, in case a dry winter does visit.
What might be shaping up in the years ahead, is the possibility of a big El Niño coming into play to coincide with the forecast Solar Maximum in 2015. If the Sun cooperates, (and that's far from a certainty, given the Sun's capricious nature of late) That El Niño could rival 1998's strong El Niño, that brought all kinds of exotic tropical gamefish into our NorCal waters. There were Striped Marlin taken as far North as Westport off Washington State!
Marlin, Yellowfin Tuna, and Dorado were taken off the San Francisco coast during the 1998 El Niño, and the associated warm water currents brought the White Sea Bass back to Bay Area waters, where they are seen increasingly seen in catch reports every season.
Though still an incidental catch in Bay Area waters. White Sea Bass (WSB) nicknamed "The Grey Ghost" are highly prized for their fighting skills and they make excellent table fare. I can't wait until I catch one. The California State Record WSB is 78 pounds, it was taken in 2002 in Monterey Bay... unverified reports have WSB going to 90 pounds.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)