A new paper published in Nature Climate Change finds warming of sea surface temperatures in the Indian and Pacific Ocean 'warm pool' is causing less water vapor to enter the top of the troposphere and could cause global cooling from this negative feedback.
The study
"reveals that recent warming in the Indian Ocean and in the Pacific 'warm pool' has caused a cooling near the top of the tropical troposphere above, leading to less water vapour entering the stratosphere."
"Water vapour in the stratosphere is a greenhouse gas. It is constrained from entering the stratosphere in the tropics by the thermal boundary between the stratosphere and troposphere1 — the tropical tropopause, the coldest point in the lower atmosphere. Cold-point temperatures at the tropical tropopause (Fig. 1a) have important implications for both stratospheric chemistry2 and global climate change3."
"The model simulation shows that less water vapour enters the stratosphere as a result of the cooling near the cold-point tropopause over the Indo-Pacific warm pool, driven by the increased SST there."
"Garfinkel et al. show that there is a cooling near the tropical tropopause over the Indo-Pacific warm-pool region and thus less water vapour entering the stratosphere. This response to the SST change is due to the enhanced equatorial planetary waves. A decrease in stratospheric water vapour may lead to a slight cooling of global surface temperatures. This study demonstrates that it is of paramount importance to pay attention to, and understand the cause of, the patterns of SST changes that are related to global warming."
Water vapour in the stratosphere is a greenhouse gas. It is constrained from entering the stratosphere in the tropics by the thermal boundary between the stratosphere and troposphere1 — the tropical tropopause, the coldest point in the lower atmosphere. Cold-point temperatures at the tropical tropopause (Fig. 1a) have important implications for both stratospheric chemistry2 and global climate change3. The importance of the spatial distribution of temperature (Fig. 1b) is well recognized, as the temperature minimum is relevant to cloud formation and subsequent dehydration through atmospheric circulation4. In the boreal winter, for example, the lowest cold-point temperatures over the warm pool in the tropical western Pacific govern the amount of water vapour that enters the stratosphere5. It is thus critically important to understand how the zonal (longitudinal) structure of the tropical cold-point temperature would respond to global warming. Now, reporting in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Garfinkel and co-workers6 find that the warming in the tropical upper troposphere over the past 30 years has been strongest over the Indo-Pacific warm pool, where cooling near the tropopause has been strongest. They suggest that warming in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific warm pool has led to zonal asymmetry in atmospheric temperature trends, and that such trends may continue in the future.
Figure 1: Temperature near the tropopause in the tropics.
a, Vertical profile of temperature. b, Horizontal distributions of temperature (contours) and winds (vectors) at 100 hPa from reanalysis data. Cloud fractions for clouds with bases higher than 15 km are also shown (colour scale). c, Temporal variations in temperature at 100 hPa, cloud fractions for clouds with bases higher than 15 km (averaged over the tropics) and the BDC index11 are shown. The tick mark for each year indicates 1 January. Data from ref. 14.
Temperatures near the tropical tropopause are determined by a complex combination of stratospheric (top-down) and tropospheric (bottom-up) processes7.
...Temperatures in the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere have been changing during the past few decades. Although many studies have focused on the zonal mean component of temperature trends12, Garfinkel and co-workers concentrate on the zonally asymmetric component, and in particular on trends near the coldest point in the tropopause region. Satellite observations are used to document the zonal structure of the temperature trends, which is strongest in January, February and March. The lower stratosphere over the warm-pool region is found to have cooled more than the zonal mean, whereas the central and eastern Pacific have cooled less. However, the structure of the upper tropospheric trends is opposite in phase, with the largest warming over the warm pool. All atmospheric chemistry–climate models that are driven by observed sea surface temperature (SST) and external forcings are shown to accurately capture the observed zonal variations of these trends.
To understand the cause of the zonal structure of atmospheric temperature trends in January–March, Garfinkel et al. use an atmospheric chemistry–climate model with observed SST as the only forcing that varies over time. The simulated structure of temperature trends is similar to those from more comprehensive model integrations and satellite observations, indicating that the SST changes have driven the zonal asymmetry. An increase in SST over the Indian Ocean and the far western Pacific enhances the deep convection and thus the latent heat release in the upper troposphere that increases the amplitude of the equatorial planetary waves. This leads to warming near 250 hPa, but cooling near 100 hPa, over the Indo-Pacific warm pool. Their study represents the first effort to document and understand the cause of zonal structures in tropical atmospheric temperature trends since 1980.
Changes in the cold-point temperature would be expected to alter the amount of water vapour entering the stratosphere. The model simulation shows that less water vapour enters the stratosphere as a result of the cooling near the cold-point tropopause over the Indo-Pacific warm pool, driven by the increased SST there6. However, their work does not explain the changes in lower-stratospheric water vapour content that have been observed in the past few decades. This could partly be because other factors — such as the change of the BDC13 — would also affect the cold point-temperatures (Fig. 1c). In addition, the impact of the equatorial planetary waves and upward motion associated with the BDC on tropical thin cirrus clouds need to be investigated, and could have a warming feedback to the climate system14.
Past increases in the Indian Ocean SST have been directly linked to the global warming15 and may continue in the future. Garfinkel et al. show that there is a cooling near the tropical tropopause over the Indo-Pacific warm-pool region and thus less water vapour entering the stratosphere. This response to the SST change is due to the enhanced equatorial planetary waves. A decrease in stratospheric water vapour may lead to a slight cooling of global surface temperatures.This study demonstrates that it is of paramount importance to pay attention to, and understand the cause of, the patterns of SST changes that are related to global warming.
A new paper under open review for Climate of the Past finds severe droughts in Eastern China were much more common during the Little Ice Age than during the current warm period, and that no severe droughts occurred in E. China during the past 357 years from 1642-1999. Data from the paper demonstrates there is nothing unusual, unprecedented, or unnatural regarding 20th century drought in Eastern China. The authors also find solar activity was the primary driver of most of the severe droughts over the past millennium.
Reconstructed droughts shown in first column, computer modelled droughts shown in second column
There have been no severe droughts since 1642 and current precipitation levels [year 2000] are only slightly below the mean of the past millennium.There is nothing unusual, unprecedented, or unnatural regarding current drought.
1Department of Earth Environmental Science, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China 2Key Laboratory of Plateau Lake Ecology and Global Change, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, China 3Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China 4Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA 5Laboratory for Climate Studies, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China
Abstract. We use proxy data and modeled data from 1000 yr model simulations with a variety of climate forcings to examine the occurrence of severe events of persistent drought over eastern China during the last millennium and to diagnose the mechanisms. Results show that the model was able to simulate many aspects of the low-frequency (periods greater than 10 yr) variations of precipitation over eastern China during the last millennium, including most of the severe persistent droughts such as those in the 1130s, 1200s, 1350s, 1430s, 1480s, and the late 1630s–mid-1640s. These six droughts are identified both in the proxy data and in the modeled data and are consistent with each other in terms of drought intensity, duration, and spatial coverage.
Our analyses suggest that monsoon circulation can lock into a drought-prone mode that may last for years to decades and supports the suggestion that generally reduced monsoon in eastern Asia were associated with the land–sea thermal contrast. Study on the wavelet transform and spectral analysis reveals six well-captured events occurred all at the drought stages of statistically significant 15–35 yr timescale. A modeled data intercomparison suggests that solar activity is the primary driver in the occurrence of the 1130s, 1350s, 1480s, and late 1630s–mid-1640s droughts. Although the El-Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) plays an important role in monsoon variability, a temporally consistent relationship between the droughts and SST pattern in the Pacific Ocean could not be found in the model. Our analyses also indicate that large volcanic eruptions play a role as an amplifier in the drought of 1635–1645 and caused the model to overestimate the decreasing trends in summer precipitation over eastern China during the mid-1830s and the mid-1960s .
The year 2013 has been a great year for global agriculture. Record world production of rice and healthy production of wheat and corn produced strong harvests across the world. These gains were achieved despite continuing predictions that world agricultural output is headed for a decline.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that world rice harvests for 2012/2013 were a record 469 million metric tons. Corn and wheat harvests were also strong, following record harvests for both grains during the 2011/2012 season. The USDA is now projecting world record harvests for corn, wheat, and rice for 2013/2014.
These numbers cap a 50-year trend of remarkable growth in world grain production. Since 1960, global wheat and rice production has tripled, and corn production is almost five times higher.
For decades, doomsayers predicted that food production would fail to keep up with the needs of humanity. In 1972, Donella Meadows and others of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published The Limits to Growth, which asked the question, “Do these rather dismal statistics mean that the limits of food production on the earth have already been reached?” Paul Ehrlich wrote in The End of Affluence in 1974, “Due to a combination of ignorance, greed and callousness, a situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death.”
But Norman Borlaug’s development of disease-resistant, high-yield strains of wheat and rice had already revolutionized twentieth century agriculture. A few years before Meadows and Ehrlich warned about coming famines, Borlaug’s wheat and rice were introduced into Latin America and Asia with astounding results. Mexico’s wheat production soared six-fold by 1970 from levels in the 1940s. India’s wheat production jumped from a huge deficit in 1965 to a surplus only five years later.
Food production continues to grow faster than population. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations shows a 30 percent gain in the per capita agricultural production index from 1980 to 2010. World citizens have access to more grain, meat, dairy products, and fruits and vegetables. Even fish production is climbing with large gains in aquaculture fish farming.
The increased availability of food reduced the undernourished portion of the world’s population from 18.6 percent in 1990 to 12.5 percent in 2010, according to the FAO. A total of 868 million people are still classified as undernourished.
Today’s leading agriculture alarmists are proponents of the ideology of Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. Earlier this month, a leaked draft report from Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that man-made climate change would reduce global agricultural production yields by up to two percent per decade throughout the twenty-first century.
Lester Brown’s Earth Policy Institute has long been a predictor of agricultural collapse. His website states, “…climate change is heightening the likelihood of weather extremes, like heat waves, droughts, and flooding, that can so easily decimate harvests.” Even the USDA warns that man-made climate change threatens US agriculture.
Yet, one must wonder when the climate-damaging effects on agriculture will appear. The IPCC states that 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period in the Northern Hemisphere of the last 1,400 years. Certainly we should have seen some negative agricultural impact by now?
Maybe rising agricultural production is like rising polar bear populations―the decline begins tomorrow.
A new paper published in Nature finds inland waters such as rivers and lakes are large annual net sources of CO2 to the atmosphere. The authors find inland waters contribute 2.1 Petagrams/yr of CO2 to the atmosphere, which is much larger than previously thought and equivalent to 35% of man-made CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels of 6 Petagrams/yr.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) transfer from inland waters to the atmosphere, known as CO2 evasion, is a component of the global carbon cycle. Global estimates of CO2 evasion have been hampered, however, by the lack of a framework for estimating the inland water surface area and gas transfer velocity and by the absence of a global CO2 database. Here we report regional variations in global inland water surface area, dissolved CO2 and gas transfer velocity. We obtain global CO2 evasion rates of 1.8 petagrams of carbon (PgC) per year from streams and rivers and 0.32PgCyr−1 from lakes and reservoirs, where the upper and lower limits are respectively the 5th and 95th confidence interval percentiles. The resulting global evasion rate of 2.1PgCyr−1 is higher than previous estimates owing to a larger stream and river evasion rate. Our analysis predicts global hotspots in stream and river evasion, with about 70 per cent of the flux occurring over just 20 per cent of the land surface. The source of inland water CO2 is still not known with certainty and new studies are needed to research the mechanisms controlling CO2 evasion globally.
A paper published today in Advances in Space Research predicts that if the current lull in solar activity "endures in the 21st century the Sun shall enter a Dalton-like grand minimum. It was a period of global cooling."
The author uses a new "empirical technique invoking three-cycle quasi-periodicity (TCQP) in Ap index" of solar geomagnetic activity to predict sunspot activity several years in advance.
The author notes solar activity was particularly active during the latter 20th century, stating, "the Sun has emerged from a Grand Maximum, which includes solar cycle 19, the most active solar cycle in the last 400 years. Earth was cooler in Grand Minima. The trend line indicates we have entered a period of low solar activity."
Indeed, the added red horizontal lines on the author's Annual Mean Sunspot Numbers show 50-year mean solar activity was at the highest levels of the past 300 years during the latter half of the 20th century:
Added red horizontal lines show 50-year mean sunspot numbers were highest during the solar Grand Maximum in the latter half of the 20th century. DM= Dalton Minimum of solar activity during the Little Ice Age.
University of New Mexico, Department of Physics & Astronomy, MSC07 4220, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
Abstract
The common methodologies used to predict the smooth sunspot number (SSN) at peak (Rmax) and the rise time (Tr) for a cycle are noted. The estimates based on geomagnetic precursors give the best prediction of Rmax for five SSN cycles (20-24). In particular, an empirical technique invoking three-cycle quasi-periodicity (TCQP) in Ap index has made accurate predictions of Rmax and Tr for two consecutive SSN cycles (23 and 24). The dynamo theories are unable to account for TCQP. If it endures in the 21st century the Sun shall enter a Dalton-like grand minimum. It was a period of global cooling. The current status of the ascending phase of cycle 24 is described and the delayed reversal of the solar polar field reversal in the southern hemisphere in September 2013 is noted.
Waves break on a jetty holding wind turbines in the Channel port of Boulogne-sur-mer, France.
Today’s policies to combat climate change cost much more than the benefits they produce. Unfortunately, bad political choices often make these policies even less cost-effective.
Consider the European Union’s 20-20 policy, which targets a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions below 1990 levels by 2020. It is important to examine this approach, not only because the EU is pursuing the world’s largest and most ambitious climate policy, but also because other climate policies suffer from similar shortcomings.
The most cost-efficient way to achieve the 20 percent target would be to operate a single, EU-wide carbon-market, which would cost the EU about $96 billion annually by 2020. But the benefits to the entire world would be much lower. Indeed, the onlypeer-reviewed overview of EU climate policy estimates that it can avoid climate-related damage of about $10 billion per year. So, for every dollar spent, the EU stands to avoid about 10 cents of damage.
This does not mean that climate change is not important; it means only that the EU’s climate policy is not smart. Over the course of this century, the ideal EU policy would cost more than $7 trillion, yet it would reduce the temperature rise by just 0.05 degrees Celsius and lower sea levels by a trivial 9 millimeters [note even these tiny changes based on flawed models are highly exaggerated]. After spending all that money, we would not even be able to tell the difference.
Advocates of the EU’s policy often argue that we should pursue such policies nonetheless, because there is a risk that global warming will be much more severe than currently expected. But, though this argument is valid in principle, economic models show that this risk has only a moderate effect on the best policy. Moreover, the absence of any temperature increase over the past 10-17 years has made such worse-than-expected outcomes extremely unlikely.
The real risk concerns the potential for bad political choices to make climate policies worse than necessary. The EU did not just implement a single carbon market in order to meet its target for CO2 emissions. Instead, the EU made a bad deal a lot costlier through a host of partly contradictory policies.
For example, the EU demanded that renewables like wind and solar account for 20 percent of energy supplies by 2020, though this is by no means the cheapest way to cut emissions. In fact, putting up a wind turbine cuts no extra CO2, because total emissions are already capped under the EU-wide carbon-trading scheme. It simply means that when Great Britain installs a wind turbine, it becomes cheaper to burn coal in Portugal or Poland.
Taking into account such poor policies and averaging all macroeconomic models, the EU is more likely to pay around $280 billion per year to avert $10 billion in damage. In other words, the poor design of EU climate policies triples the cost and prevents only three cents of climate damage per dollar spent.
But it gets worse, because these models still assume that the EU picks the cheapest renewables to fulfill its requirements. Instead, most EU countries give higher subsidies to the most costly renewables.
For example, cutting a ton of CO2 with on-shore wind turbines in Germany probably costs about $35, avoiding about 14 cents of climate damage per dollar. But offshore wind turbines cost about $150 per ton of CO2, avoiding just three cents of climate damage per dollar.
Biofuels are even less efficient, costing more than $300 per ton of CO2 avoided, while doing just over one cent of good per dollar. And solar takes the absolute prize, costing more than $800 per ton of CO2 to do less than a cent of good per dollar spent.
These prices are not unique to Europe. China pays $38 per ton of CO2 avoided with wind power, for example, while the US pays around $600 for cutting a ton of CO2 with biofuels. Moreover, when the EU decides to cut its domestic emissions, part of the reduction simply migrates elsewhere. If making a product in the EU costs more because of higher energy costs, the product will likely be made somewhere else, where energy is cheaper, and then imported into the EU.
In fact, new studies show that 38 percent of the EU carbon cuts leak elsewhere, meaning that European climate policy avoids not three cents of climate damage per dollar spent, but less than two. From 1990 to 2008, the EU cut its emissions by about 270 million metric tons of CO2. But it turns out that the increase in imports from China alone implied an almost equal volume of extra emissions outside the EU. Essentially, the EU had simply shipped part of its emissions offshore.
We need a smarter approach to tackling climate change. Rather than relying on cutting a few tons of incredibly overpriced CO2 now, we need to invest in research and development aimed at innovating down the cost of green energy in the long run, so that everyone will switch.
For now, our current climate policies are poor—and our politicians consistently find ways to make them even poorer. They may please farmers and other interest groups, but overall they simply drive up costs and reduce already-minimal benefits.
The US set nearly 1,000 record cold temps over the Thanksgiving break, suggesting to some that the Old Farmer’s Almanac may be right about its prediction of a long, bitter winter.
Workers with Duncan Tree Service remove a tree that fell Sunday on Jack Sullivan's Cutlass parked in the driveway of his Odessa, Texas home. Wintry weather with freezing rain, sleet and snow swept through much of West Texas over the weekend, causing power outages and many tree limbs to break under the weight of the ice.
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / November 30, 2013 at 4:35 pm EST
ATLANTA
Scientists and skeptics continue to quibble over global warming, but meanwhile Americans and Europeans are bracing for what could be a mean ol’ winter, given early signs – including 1,000 low temp records set in the US over Thanksgiving break – that Winter 2014 could be a real teeth-chatterer.
The trend has been most noticeable here in the South, where an already below-average summer – including a stretch of record low max temperatures in the Deep South in late July and August – has given way to snow in Texas, ice in Atlanta, and mittens in Jacksonville, Fla.
Americans aren’t alone in wondering about what’s ahead, given that record lows have largely kept pace with record highs this year. Across the pond, British tabloids, citing a government report, warned Saturday of a “three-month killer freeze” in a series of headlines that the Met climate office quickly criticized as hyperbolic.
True, Seattle saw a record high this week, but most of the rest of the country huffed, puffed, and shivered through Thanksgiving, Gray Thursday and Black Friday, reasserting predictions from several quarters that the coming winter, still three weeks away, could be a doozy.
(More immediately the weekend will warm up in many parts of the country, thanks to a bit of cloud cover and moisture being pulled in behind the big cold front, but another cold, clear Arctic blast is expected to drape across the land late next week.)
Not all weather forecasters are in agreement that a particularly bitter winter is looming, however. Some, including the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, suggested last month that early winter record colds will give way to warmer-than-normal temperatures especially across the southern half of the country starting in January and into the spring.
But the good folks at the prediction center reeled back some of that earlier prognosis this week, suggesting that “this year’s outlook has proven to be quite challenging … We’re not seeing strong climate signals and patterns that often give us clues as to what the season will bring.”
The new report also addresses the global warming implications, noting that, “While you might expect trends to always be up in a warming climate, the reality is that temperature trends are often different for different regions during different seasons.”
Finally, the center concedes that “atmospheric patterns can change from week to week and have the potential to deliver cold, snowy weather throughout the season.”
The Old Farmer’s Almanac hasn’t been so wishy-washy, noting colloquially that “global warming will soon be taking a vacation.”
“This winter is shaping up to be a rough one,” Janice Stillman, editor of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, says on the almanac’s website. “Sweaters and snow shovels should be unpacked early and kept close by throughout the season. The good news is that the extra precipitation—which will fall as rain or snow depending where you are—will help with any drought issues left over from the summer.”
More broadly, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration reports that global mean temperatures were up slightly this year (across the globe, August 2013 tied August 2003 for the sixth-warmest on record). But a UN report earlier this year acknowledged that air temperatures bucked predictions by pretty much flattening after record-hot 1998 even as carbon emissions, which are mostly blamed for warming, continued to rise thanks largely to growing Asian economies.
Some scientists have blamed the surprising non-rise in temperatures over the past decade on a “very plausible scenario” where all that extra heat is being stored a half mile below the surface of the Pacific, from where it could suddenly be released. [false]
NOAA reported last week that at least “sea surface temperatures across the central Pacific have not been consistently warm or cool since Spring 2012, and we expect this to continue at least through next spring.”
Others suggest the connection between the cold weather and broader climate trends may be more substantial and direct, especially given that the US saw one of the slowest hurricane years on record, with a mere 13 tropical storms, and two Atlantic hurricanes, neither of them major.
“Global warming caused the very cool US summer, and the very cold US winter,” writes warming skeptic and blogger Stephen Goddard, presumably with his tongue in his cheek. “It makes everything more extreme.”
All we know out here in the heartland is that it feels awful cold for this time of year. And it is.
This past week, the US recorded 969 low max temps, 203 record lows, and 205 record snowfalls (many in north Texas), according to reports from HAMweather, a conglomeration of personal weather stations. There were 17 record highs reported in the same time period.
petagrams of carbon (Pg
Pg
