100 replies to this topic

[Devonian]

jethro, on 10 August 2010 - 12:24 , said:

Lol.

So in essence, if we have a warm winter it's AGW, if we have a cold one, that's also AGW.

So how do we possible distinguish normal weather if all kinds of weather events are ascribed as a product of AGW? Is there no normal weather any more?

If the climate was cooling would that mean we'd nerver have a warm day or a warm summer?

Edited by Devonian, 10 August 2010 - 12:33 .

[jethro]

I doubt it, which is why I think using weather to demonstrate climate is fraught with danger and that citing such events as proof for or against AGW is little more than superstition. It's a lazy argument IMO.

How many folk sighed with a "for goodness sake" sense of resignation when winter last year was shown to have had a marked impact upon the public perception of climate change? I know I did, I know others on here did.

People cannot have their cake and eat.

[Gray-Wolf]

But you need to be mindful that if AGW is proven to be real and present then we WILL see more and more extreme (hot ,cold ,dry,wet) events across the globe and ,eventually, will have to accept that they are a direct result of a warming world?

[Devonian]

jethro, on 10 August 2010 - 12:37 , said:

I doubt it, which is why I think using weather to demonstrate climate is fraught with danger and that citing such events as proof for or against AGW is little more than superstition. It's a lazy argument IMO.

Well, I'm sorry to be both lazy and superstitious. Otoh you're being somewhat something or other for using the word proof when no one has uttered the word.

Moving on, so in a cooling climate you'd still expect the odd warm day and or season? I think that's right. And in a cooling climte we'd expect LESS warm events then cold? I think so.

And what do we see atm? More warming events (and warmth of greater magnitute) than cool ones. Proof? Nope, such a word would not cross my lips but I think it's evidence.

Quote

How many folk sighed with a "for goodness sake" sense of resignation when winter last year was shown to have had a marked impact upon the public perception of climate change? I know I did, I know others on here did.

People cannot have their cake and eat.

it's a pity neither of us was around as the NW Europe LIA started because we could have dismissed the LIA, and those saying it was happening as superstitious, on the basis of the odd hot summer or warm day...

[jethro]

Devonian, on 10 August 2010 - 12:44 , said:

Well, I'm sorry to be both lazy and superstitious. Otoh you're being somewhat something or other for using the word proof when no one has uttered the word.

Moving on, so in a cooling climate you'd still expect the odd warm day and or season? I think that's right. And in a cooling climte we'd expect LESS warm events then cold? I think so.

And what do we see atm? More warming events (and warmth of greater magnitute) than cool ones. Proof? Nope, such a word would not cross my lips but I think it's evidence.



it's a pity neither of us was around as the NW Europe LIA started because we could have dismissed the LIA, and those saying it was happening as superstitious, on the basis of the odd hot summer or warm day...

Oh for goodness sake, proof, evidence, suggestion....what does it matter what word is used, last post I said proof, the one before I said evidence. And at no point have I directed lazy or superstitious as a direct personal insult to you, stop taking it as such when I've even gone to the lengths of explaining I was being light hearted.

At the time when all individual weather events are collated we'll be able to say whether or not there are less or more cooling or warming events. At the current time, we cannot because the information isn't there to scrutinise.

If anyone here can show me the research and proof/evidence/suggestion that the current drought situation in Russia is directly attributable to AGW, together with the reasons of how and why, I'll gladly retract and grovel. Until then, it's weather in my eyes unless I'm free to say last years cold winter shouldn't have happened in an AGW world and thus AGW isn't happening.

Do we stick to the IPCC standard of 30 years or not? Can't have it both ways.

Greywolf - there's a world of difference between 'will see' and 'are seeing' - we need the benefit of hindsight to first measure and then the dissection of all interactions to attribute.

[Gray-Wolf]

But wouldn't we risk throwing the baby out with the water if we dally and dilly about waiting for evidence? This seems to be the point where we differ J, the magnitude of future impacts depends up on our behaviours now and to give it the 'suck it and see' approach will lead to B.A.U. levels of oil/coal/gas being used. Either we risk millions of lives or we waste money........which would you choose?

[jethro]

Gray-Wolf, on 10 August 2010 - 13:29 , said:

But wouldn't we risk throwing the baby out with the water if we dally and dilly about waiting for evidence? This seems to be the point where we differ J, the magnitude of future impacts depends up on our behaviours now and to give it the 'suck it and see' approach will lead to B.A.U. levels of oil/coal/gas being used. Either we risk millions of lives or we waste money........which would you choose?

Not at all.

I haven't made any mention of how we manage to live sustainably, nor how we can mitigate climate change. As you can see from the thread about our own personal carbon footprint, I've done more than many whilst renovating my house and live a daily existence of minimum impact as far as is possible.

Arguing for distinguishing between weather and climate, indeed debating the extent of climate change due to AGW or even whether or not AGW is real is a totally separate issue to living sustainably - one does not exclude the other.

[Gray-Wolf]

I was not wishing to narrow this down to 'personal issues' but more the global approach to the problem. We see after Bonn that nations are quite happy to remain 'luke warm' to the risks involved in climate shift and so no targets are adhered to regarding efforts to reduce our pollution.

The Govt's of this world are supposed to reflect the wishes of the people and if the people remain ,as yourself, undecided as to whether or not to be worried about future climate shifts then we signal a green light to those who wish to maintain the current status quo (and so B.A,U, continues, or worse, emissions outstrip B.A.U. predictions as we see currently).

As we saw , through the 80's and 90's, the greening of politics was on the back of the greening of society (and so a vote winner and no more) any move towards the scale of change required to tackle climate shift will make political parties unpopular and so as long as we signal that no change is necessary then they can continue to make grand speeches and make false pledges whilst growth in global emissions continues unfettered.

[sunny starry skies]

Jethro - did you look at some of the links I posted earlier? - that was the point of that earlier post: we don't have to wait for new evidence, as we already have substantial meteorological datasets for many countries round the world. These datasets show the increasing tendency towards warm temperature records over cold ones (in 2010, for national records the ratio is 17:1), and the datasets already cover many decades. There's a similar tendency towards large precipitation events, to be expected if there's more water vapour in the atmosphere.

Is there more water vapour in the atmosphere? Here's an interesting post from Tamino on that one (data from NCDC State of the Climate):
http://tamino.wordpr...ban-wet-island/
Specific humidity is rising in line with rising temperature, exactly as expected. This not only confirms the temperature rise and the presence of the powerful water vapour positive feedback, it also provides the extra moisture for an increased frequency of extreme precipitation events.

Can you directly attribute a single weather event to AGW? Maybe not, but events like those in Russia would be rather less likely without AGW, and are just what was forecast as a consequence of AGW. Every year it is statistically much more likely that hot temperature records will be broken than cold, and this is borne out by the data. Events like those in Russia, Pakistan and elsewhere are entirely consistent with a warming world. Significant snow events in winter are also entirely consistent with a warming world... until the warming in a particular place takes the temperature above freezing. It is intriguing how few cold temperature records were set last winter, yet there were plenty exceptional snowfalls. In what way is this inconsistent with a warming world?

What would I consider as events consistent with a cooling world? Worldwide, for high temperature records to be broken less often, and an increased frequency of breaking of low temperature records. A reduction in the intensity of extreme precipitation events, be they of rain or snow. A persistent reduction in global mean temperatures, both in individual months and in the 12-month running mean. A significant increase in the volume of Arctic sea ice.
sss

[jethro]

Greywolf and SSS - sorry but I'll have to get back to you later, all the work I should have been doing today has caught up with me and bitten my nether regions.

Later, or possibly tomorrow.

[Yorkshiresnows]

Hello All,

Just caught my eye the piece on whether we can call the extreme heatwave of Russia, as evidence of anything.

Clearly not to my mind.

If you look at the analogues of El Nino Years on the wane (sorry, at work and do not have the data to hand) you can clearly see that for the last 5 El-Nino events, there has been hot dry summers in Europe ... particularly to the East.

There's a nice video link that dicusses this very point.

http://www.accuweath...hannel=vbbastaj

What we are seeing are just patterns of weather than can be more or less predicted (though this summers weather was predicted to be cool from the climate models !).

Sure, as we are warmer now than 30 years ago, the chances that these patterns of weather will deliver hotter or more extreme periods than previously would seem right ... I'd agree with that.

Its been a pretty brutal winter in the Southern hemisphere, but of course there are less areas of population close to the antarctic regions and hence we see less news reports concerning this as opposed to heat in Europe .... or indeed cold and snow as per this past winter.

Its still been one of the coldest summers in the high arctic for many a year ...... you have to go back to 1958 for something similar.

With LA Nina now looking to be a strong event, cooling off would seem a dead cert for the latter part of this year and into next. Quite where we will end up next year will be very interesting to see.

Y.S

Edited by Yorkshiresnows, 10 August 2010 - 15:33 .

[weather eater]

Gray-Wolf, on 10 August 2010 - 09:20 , said:

http://news.yahoo.co...9/wl_csm/318660

Seems the scale of the Russian fires tripled last week! It also appears that Moscows daily 'death rate' has doubled since the smog came in so folk are now taking them more serious with an apparent 'greening' of the population as they turn to AGW as a reason for the extended drought.

As we've always suspected when bad things happen climate questions appear more like climate answers to the folk involved be they Inuit, Muscovich or chinese?

EDIT: And the russians saying that their fires and the Asian floods are 'in line' with what to expect from climate shift.....

http://news.mongabay...ussia_asia.html

Climate change partly to blame for Russian heat wave, this on the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-10919460

The Chinese are saying that the floods in China are the worse in decade, whether that means its just a 1 in 10 year event or that they consider these events are becoming more regular is unclear. Incidentally GW the Boscastle flood is another that cannot be called, a 1 in 100 year event, because a similar event happened in 1952 at Lynmouth. While it is more than likely that AGW is contributing to freak weather events, it is patently not the only factor and frankly at with nearly 50 years on the planet, I remain unconvinced that these are becoming worse or more frequent at least not yet. Yes SSS heat records are more often being broken than cold ones, even the sceptics admit the planet is warming. on a personal level I have no doubt that man is more likely to be the major contributor to that warming. I do, as I said in my earlier post ,feel that the constant referring to climate change every time the weather does something unusual is counter productive and making the public less accepting of the science, rather than more.

[weather eater]

On the subject of Notable British deluges, we can add

8 inches at Seathwaite, 12th November 1897

8.1 inches in 48hrs, Brundell near Norwich August 1912

8.2 inches at Kinlochquoich 11th October 1916

9.6 inches Bruton (Somerset) 28th June 1917

7.9 inches Bridgewater 18th August 1924, that was in 5 hours,

11 inches Martinstown Dorset 15 July 1955

And I could list a whole host more

The Boscastle rainfall was about 7 inches. So actually nowhere near a 1 in a 100 year event, Incidentally the Rainfall that caused the Flood in Lynmouth was even heavier at 8.9 inches.

[Devonian]

weather eater, on 10 August 2010 - 19:27 , said:

On the subject of Notable British deluges, we can add

8 inches at Seathwaite, 12th November 1897

8.1 inches in 48hrs, Brundell near Norwich August 1912

8.2 inches at Kinlochquoich 11th October 1916

9.6 inches Bruton (Somerset) 28th June 1917

7.9 inches Bridgewater 18th August 1924, that was in 5 hours,

11 inches Martinstown Dorset 15 July 1955

And I could list a whole host more

The Boscastle rainfall was about 7 inches. So actually nowhere near a 1 in a 100 year event, Incidentally the Rainfall that caused the Flood in Lynmouth was even heavier at 8.9 inches.

Oh, yes, indeed.
But (and I can't find the issue concerned ) I seem to remember that the Boscastle record was a smidgeon over 200mm and a likely point total of 300mm? And on the subject of points, aren't these return periods for point localities not national?

[weather eater]

Devonian, on 10 August 2010 - 20:48 , said:

Oh, yes, indeed.
But (and I can't find the issue concerned ) I seem to remember that the Boscastle record was a smidgeon over 200mm and a likely point total of 300mm? And on the subject of points, aren't these return periods for point localities not national?

200mm is 7.67 inches.

On your second point, you might well be right, but even if that is how these things are judged, then a flood in Boscastle of that magnitude still remains a 1 in a 100 year event and thus it still says nothing about AGW, unless of course Boscastle suffers a similar situation between now and 2104. Just to add to that, Boscastle suffered significant floods in, 1847, 1957, 1958, 1963, and 1996, although not on the magnitude of 2004. There is another reason we should be wary of using flash floods as pointers to AGW, as all to often the reasons for them is down to other human activities, re routing river courses etc, this was a significant factor in the Lynmouth disaster. The point Is DEV that the Boscastle flood has no significance in terms of AGW, Similar types of deluge happen somewhere in UK on a regular basis, given its position surrounded by sea that should be no surprise, even despite our small size.

I also think its a mistake to read too much into clusters of events, What’s the old saying, bad things come in threes, they also come in fours fives sixes etc. I’m always put in mind of that period in the late 80s, 87, 88, 89.

The capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise,
The Marchioness disaster,
The kings Cross fire,
The M1 plane crash at Kegworth,
The Lockerbie bomb,
The Hungerford massacre,
The Remembrance Day Bombing,
The piper alpha disaster,
The Clapham junction train crash,
The Purley rail crash,
The Hillsborough football disaster,
The deal barracks bombing,
And lets not forget the great storm.

All of these in three years, and affecting the UK, I can remember thinking at the time, what on earth is going on.

Don’t get me wrong DEV I am not saying that recent weather events that we have seen, have defiantly nothing to do with AGW, just that we should not fall into the trap of thinking that because we know that AGW is happening then it falls into place that all unusual weather events are only happening or are all enhanced because of it. The public need to make informed opinions based on accurate science, not on gut feelings or guess work even if those guesses are well intentioned.

At the moment its hardly a surprise that the public is becoming increasingly sceptical about AGW stories in the media, when mostly what they are being dished up is not explained science, its just sound bites of the sort that our politicians would be proud of. That scepticism should be of enormous concern, especially as the public appear to becoming sceptical off their own backs. Frankly I doubt most are aware of who the AGW sceptics are, or what they believe ( or at least purport to believe).

Edited by weather eater, 10 August 2010 - 23:24 .

[Devonian]

weather eater, on 10 August 2010 - 22:36 , said:

200mm is 7.67 inches.

On your second point...

Well, in fact I suspect we agree more than might be obvious - though I don't see why you think none weather related disasters are being put down to AGW?. I do have concerns about how 'AGW' is presented. But, for me it's about trying to tell the truth. And for me the truth is that, yes, there have always been weather events but that now there is an increasing factor (forcing) in the mix. If asked I'm not, if I'm going to be honest, going to deny that. Perhaps the weather should be presented differently in the media - but how could they do that and be honest about what the science(tists) say? (OK, they could listen to the very small minorities more but if they did that with AGW they'd have to have an Moon landings deniers on 'The Sky at Night' every month as well...).

So, yes, I do think the evidence is there is a human element to weather now. It's like when you slowly add a colour to a mix. For the point you start to add colour you are changing the mix, the point when the colour change becomes apparent is later on. I don't have, much, doubt everyone will soon (this century) notice that change in weather and climate. I've though for decades that the sooner we stop adding 'colour' the less the change (here the parallel breaks down but I hope you get my gist) to weather and climate will be. And, yes, I also think we need to make big changes now if (IF) we want to mitigate the changes later this century (and I would because I don't want to be part of changing the climate radically because it all just toooo difficult to stop doing - lazy bloomin' monkeys we are). Again, I'd be being dishonest to myself if I said anything other.

[Solar Sausage]

Devonian, on 10 August 2010 - 10:13 , said:

Jethro, I think it's better to address the reasoning, the evidence, the science presented by people who think there is at least a possible linkage between AGW and extreme weather events rather than using words to discredit them (them, not what they say) like 'superstitious'?

Your use of 'superstitious' make me feel like I'm going to get called superstitious for daring to post anything other that a outright dismissal of any possible link between AGW and extreme weather - though it wont stop me so doing if that what I think (and that there may well be a link is what I think ).

Hi Dev,

I don't think anyone's outrightly dismissing anything? As to my own position, all I'm trying to do is to caution against a priori outright attribution...

[Ladyofthestorm]

Im going to come back to this thread, looks interesting!


I did environmental science as my degree at Stirling Uni, and with that II studied environmental hazardsquaternary environmental change and land degradation at Hons Uni level.....so I do have some threads of my own thoughts on this and one thing I will say its not global warming we should all be whispering about, its the affect of toxic waste and poor/ slipshod environmental management practices that will be the end of us. Whilst the floods and wildfires in continental Asia are devasting, they are perfectly natural... what do you think shaped the valleys in Paskistan in the first place? Wildfores are part of the ecosystem on Steppes, its actually needed so that it can release nutrients back into the ground....its a problem because it affects humans.


But I wont go into the limitations of global climate prediction models.. it will send you all to sleep.
But right now I have the clan to feed!

[Devonian]

Pete Tattum, on 11 August 2010 - 08:40 , said:

Hi Dev,

I don't think anyone's outrightly dismissing anything? As to my own position, all I'm trying to do is to caution against a priori outright attribution...

I'm not sure I want to go through this again but...

It's complicated yet simple - as we both know. There is a human contribution to weather and climate - we've changed the radiative properties of the atmosphere (increasingly too) and made other climate changing changes to the environment, that changes the weather and climate. But we're not the entire cause of anything weather climate wise, just part of it - the part that is change due to us.

What grates is claims the whole of an weather event is being attributed to AGW (they're not - otoh ( ), the globe warms by a degree or two, but locally you see a heatwave several degrees warmer? and that changes the jet stream? which then causes stronger monsoon rain? - smallish global effect bigger local ones? - the complicated bit...) and that the people (NOT me specifically) who do their darndest to be scientific are deemed superstitious.

Ladyofthestorm, on 11 August 2010 - 09:14 , said:

Im going to come back to this thread, looks interesting!


I did environmental science as my degree at Stirling Uni, and with that II studied environmental hazardsquaternary environmental change and land degradation at Hons Uni level.....so I do have some threads of my own thoughts on this and one thing I will say its not global warming we should all be whispering about, its the affect of toxic waste and poor/ slipshod environmental management practices that will be the end of us. Whilst the floods and wildfires in continental Asia are devasting, they are perfectly natural... what do you think shaped the valleys in Paskistan in the first place? Wildfores are part of the ecosystem on Steppes, its actually needed so that it can release nutrients back into the ground....its a problem because it affects humans.


But I wont go into the limitations of global climate prediction models.. it will send you all to sleep.
But right now I have the clan to feed!

I agree there have and will be floods caused by heavy monsoon rains. Otoh, I think we have to be open to the possibilities I've outlined about the human effect on climate. Tbh, I don't think they (the russian heatwave, the monsoon rain, last years cold winter) are entirely, 100% natural. I don't, can't, know how big the human contribution is but it is there..

Edited by Devonian, 11 August 2010 - 09:23 .

[Solar Sausage]

Devonian, on 11 August 2010 - 09:22 , said:

I agree there have and will be floods caused by heavy monsoon rains. Otoh, I think we have to be open to the possibilities I've outlined about the human effect on climate. Tbh, I don't think they are entirely, 100% natural. I don't, can't, know how big the human contribution is but it is there..

Now that I'm in 100% agreement with. I can't believe it's all natural, either.