All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

[Meandering]

Is your stupid study sense tingling? Oxford researchers conclude Spider-Man could NOT have superpowers following bizarre research on superhero

• Researchers say silk threads don't seem thick enough to hold Peter Parker
• Spidey's spinning system is something not found in nature
• Researcher will not be seeking funds to peruse study further

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3353290/Is-stupid-study-sense-tingling-Oxford-researchers-conclude-Spider-Man-NOT-superpowers-reality-following-research-superhero.html#ixzz3tyISZaZT

Not really climate related, but how can you pass up "stupid study senses tingling" for this thread?

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[Randolph Kinney]

Looks like natural phenomena exert more influence on weather and temperature that CO2 levels.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Models overestimate rainfall increases due to climate change
December 10, 2015

Lawrence Livermore researchers and collaborators have found that most climate models overestimate the increase in global precipitation due to climate change.

Specifically, the team looked at 25 models and found they underestimate the increase in absorption of sunlight by water vapor as the atmosphere becomes moister, and therefore overestimate increases in global precipitation.

The team found global precipitation increase per degree of global warming at the end of the 21st century may be about 40 percent smaller than what the models, on average, currently predict.

The research appears in the Dec. 10 edition of the journal Nature.

The team found that the increase in global precipitation simulated by models is strongly controlled by how much additional sunlight is absorbed by water vapor as the planet warms: Models in which more sunlight is absorbed by water vapor tend to have smaller increases in precipitation. They demonstrated that model-to-model differences in increased absorption of sunlight were not controlled by how much their humidity increased, but by how much additional sunlight was trapped in the atmosphere for a given increase in humidity. Conveniently, this quantity can be measured from space, allowing the team to assess how well the models capture the physics controlling changes in global precipitation.

"This comparison with observations allowed us to see quite clearly that most models underestimate the increased absorption of sunlight as water vapor increases," Zelinka said. "Because this acts as such a strong lever on global precipitation changes, the models are likely overestimating the increase in global precipitation with global warming."

"We sought to understand the sources of this uncertainty and use the best available observations to narrow- in on the most likely response," Zelinka said. "We cannot expect to make useful predictions of local water cycle changes that are most relevant for societal impacts if we do not understand and accurately simulate the change in globally averaged precipitation."

The absorption of sunlight by water vapor is vital to understand future global precipitation changes.

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-overestimate-rainfall-due-climate.html

Shocking! The models are wrong, don't accurately predict, because climate scientists don't understand that CO2 is not the controlling variable. How do they know? Reality does not agree with prediction. Turns out that water vapor has a much greater impact than CO2 on the absorption of sunlight. That translates into heat.

That goes back to Pete's understanding of science: "warmer air carries more water vapor". Maybe Pete can make the connection that these climate scientists missed.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Cold, hot or dry: Persistent weather extremes associated with decreased storm activity
December 11, 2015

A decrease in storm activity over large parts of the US, Europe, Russia, and China is found to influence weather extremes—cold ones in winter, hot or dry ones in summer. This is now shown in a study by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The observed changes in storm activity are likely related to changes in other atmospheric dynamics like the jet stream—strong westerly winds circling the Northern hemisphere high up in the sky.

"Less or less severe storms in the mid-latitudes, this at first sight seems to be good news - but unfortunately it isn't," says lead-author Jascha Lehmann. "These storms have a moderating effect on land temperatures as they bring maritime air from the oceans to the continents and a lack of them can thus favor extreme temperatures."

In the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, much of the day-to-day weather variability is determined by the storm track regions located over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Here, weather systems, including storms, are generated and travel eastwards to the continents. In winter, storms bring air from the relatively warm oceans to the continents and thus have a warming effect. In summer, the effect reverses with winds bringing relatively cool and moist air from the sea. The authors show that a lack of such weather systems can thus favor more persistent heat and drought events in summer, and cold spells in winter.

"This summer a severe drought in China's northern bread basket region Liaoning threatened crop yields, while California has been experiencing a prolonged drought for no less than three consecutive years," says Lehmann. Comprehensive analysis of satellite weather data shows that these are indeed regions where significant reductions in storm activity are detected during the rainy season. In summer, storm activity calmed down over as much as 80 percent of the land area in the mid-latitudes. In winter the changes are more patchy, yet pronounced reductions are found over eastern US and large parts of Europe and Asia. This includes regions like New York and Chicago which suffered from record-breaking cold temperatures in recent winters.

These detected changes in mid-latitude storm tracks are likely linked to changes in the jet stream and planetary waves in the atmosphere. Such dynamical changes favor certain types of weather situations in some regions and others elsewhere. "Regional changes are mostly due to natural variability but on top of that we see this pronounced overall weakening in summer storm activity," says co-author Dim Coumou, "This is also something projected by climate models under future emission scenarios. However, the data so far is not sufficient to say whether the storm activity changes are caused by climate change - this has to be investigated further."

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-cold-hot-persistent-weather-extremes.html

Interesting that nowhere in the article is CO2 levels in the atmosphere is mentioned but the phrase "climate change" is. Natural variability, namely the jet stream, El Nino, and other phenomena are not understood and cannot be accurately predicted. Ergo, insufficient data. But, the article in post #1463 clearly states the climate model is wrong because the understanding is wrong.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

US Pacific Northwest's extreme rainfall tallied by NASA's IMERG

As moisture from the tropics has been streaming into the Pacific Northwest by the "Pineapple Express" NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission and a cadre of other satellites have been gathering data on the extreme rainfall. The continued "training" of rainfall into the area has caused flooding in the Portland, Oregon area with at least one death reported. Western Washington is also on flood alert due to the deluge.

"Riding a pumped up jet stream, a convoy of wet storms have pummeled and drenched the Pacific Northwest for the past week," said Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Following a couple of years of regional drought, all this rain and mountain snow has whiplashed many Washington and Oregon communities from extremely dry conditions into flooding and even landslides. Once again, the old adage, 'Great droughts end in great floods' comes to mind.'"

Patzert said that this hose of heavy moisture is originating in the far Western Pacific Ocean. Sweeping out of the tropics, meteorologists refer to these relatively narrow, moisture laden rain and snow producers as atmospheric rivers. For the U.S. West coast states, these storms supply up to 50% of their water supply. "They can be 'fast and furious' and damaging, but play a large role in sustaining our water supplies in the normally dry West," said Patzert.

Rainfall that occurred from December 2 to 9, 2015 was measured with data from NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG). IMERG found that many areas from northern California through the state of Washington had rainfall totals greater than 160 mm (6.3 inches). Even more extreme rainfall was measured by IMERG over the open waters of the Pacific Ocean where rainfall totals during the past week were found to be over 310 mm (12.2 inches).

The Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) creates a merged precipitation product from the GPM constellation of satellites. These satellites include DMSPs from the U.S. Department of Defense, GCOM-W from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Megha-Tropiques from the Centre National D'etudies Spatiales (CNES) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), NOAA series from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Suomi-NPP from NOAA-NASA, and MetOps from the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). All of the instruments (radiometers) onboard the constellation partners are intercalibrated with information from the GPM Core Observatory's GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR).

On Dec. 9, there were a lot of watches and warnings in the region. Flood watches, warnings and flood advisories were in effect for portions of the Pacific Northwest as well as parts of northern California and northern Idaho. Winter storm watches and warnings were in effect for the Sierra Nevada Range in California and parts of the intermountain west. High wind watches, warnings and wind advisories were in effect for portions of the northwest U.S., especially in the higher terrain.

Showers and thunderstorms are in the forecast for the Pacific Northwest during the next week so rainfall totals will continue to increase.

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-pacific-northwest-extreme-rainfall-tallied.html

Pineapple Express is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon characterized by a strong and persistent flow of atmospheric moisture and associated with heavy precipitation from the waters adjacent to the Hawaiian Islands and extending to any location along the Pacific coast of North America. A Pineapple Express is an example of an atmospheric river, which is a more general term for such narrow corridors of enhanced water vapor transport at mid-latitudes around the world.

A Pineapple Express is driven by a strong, southern branch of the polar jetstream and is marked by the presence of a surface frontal boundary which is typically either slow or stationary, with waves of low pressure traveling along its axis. Each of these low pressure systems brings enhanced rainfall.

The conditions are often created by the Madden-Julian oscillation, an equatorial rainfall pattern which feeds its moisture into this pattern. They are also present during an El Niño episode.

It has nothing to do with climate change. These are historical repeating weather patterns that are not well understood.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Cloudy with a chance of warming
December 10, 2015

Clouds can increase warming in the changing Arctic region more than scientists expected, by delivering an unexpected double-whammy to the climate system, according to a new study by researchers at NOAA, the University of Colorado Boulder and colleagues.

"As the Arctic atmosphere warms and moistens, it becomes a better insulator. While we expected this to reduce the influence from clouds, which provide additional insulation, we find that clouds forming in the Arctic in these conditions appear to further warm the surface, especially in the fall and winter," said Christopher Cox, lead author of the new paper published today in Nature Communications. Cox is a research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), who works at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

Clouds are a complicated character in the climate change story: They can cool the planet's surface by reflecting sunlight, and they can insulate it and keep it warm.

"To understand why and where Earth is warming, you have to understand the overall effect of clouds," Cox said.

Head north to the Arctic, and clouds' impact on climate is particularly difficult to understand, he said. The amount and manner in which clouds warm the surface is determined by an intricate dance between moisture (relative humidity), temperatures and the properties of the clouds—and that dance "is different in the Arctic, where the air is colder and drier than at lower latitudes," Cox said.

To nail down the overarching influence of Arctic clouds on temperatures, he and colleagues from CIRES, NOAA, Washington State University, Idaho and Chile analyzed measurements from three science research stations in the far north: Barrow, Alaska; Eureka, Canada; and Summit, Greenland.

They assessed things like temperature, relative humidity, and a measure of the cloud insulating properties ("the downwelling infrared cloud radiative effect"), and they looked at how those factors interacted with one another (in different parts of the infrared spectrum).

Previous work suggested that as the atmosphere itself warms and becomes more moist it becomes a better insulator, so the clouds themselves have a diminishing contribution to warming. This is likely true on a global scale: It's as if a person is already warm under a blanket and adding another blanket has little additional effect.

However, this team found a different behavior when temperature and humidity increase in the cold Arctic. There, clouds can retain their ability to warm the surface, and actually appear to be amplifying regional warming. In this cold, dry region, adding a second "blanket" can, in fact, make it even warmer.

The effect—strongest in autumn and winter—is related to the way that temperature and moisture are changing relative to each other in the region, according to the new analysis, which relied on climate modeling as well as observations. Because there is little sunlight in the Arctic in autumn and winter, the insulating properties of clouds far outweigh their shading properties, making this result all the more important, said co-author Matthew Shupe, also a CIRES researcher who works at NOAA.

He and his colleagues said their findings call for better monitoring of changes in the Arctic atmosphere, including temperature and moisture levels as well as cloud properties, and continued work to improve the representation of clouds in computer models designed to understand the rapidly evolving Arctic region.

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-cloudy-chance.html

Just another admission that the climate computer models are wrong and these climate scientists don't understand what's happening, or the cause and effects relating to all the variables that they assume are uniform or constant. Nowhere is there a connection to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Iceland volcano's eruption shows how sulfur particles influence clouds

It has long been suspected that sulfur emissions can brighten clouds. Water droplets tend to clump around particles of sulfuric acid, causing smaller droplets that form brighter, more reflective clouds.

But while humans have pumped sulfur into Earth's atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, it's been hard to measure how this affects the clouds above. New University of Washington research uses a huge volcanic eruption in Iceland to measure the change.

The new study, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, shows that sulfur emissions do indeed result in smaller cloud droplet size, leading to brighter clouds that reflect significantly more sunlight.

"This eruption is a chance to nail down one of the big uncertainties in climate models," said first author Daniel McCoy, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences.

The study takes advantage of a unique geologic event. During six months from summer 2014 until early 2015, a crack in the Bardarbunga volcano seeped lava and sulfur gas. This was not one of Iceland's huge explosive eruptions that fill the skies with ash and shut down airplane routes. Instead it was a long, slow, low-elevation seep of sulfur emissions that produced an amount of lava second only to Laki in the recent history of Iceland eruptions.

The UW researchers looked at data for that region recorded by NASA's MODIS, or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, instrument to measure the size of droplets in the marine cloud layer. While the volcano was spewing sulfur, the droplets were the smallest in the 14-year record of observations.

"You can see the effect over an entire ocean for a two-month period," McCoy said. "It was a pretty unique geophysical event within the satellite record."

The results confirm that volcanoes cool the planet not just by emitting particles high in the atmosphere, but also by releasing low-level sulfur to influence cloud formation.

When the air contains aerosol particles, the same amount of water vapor condenses into many small drops, whose larger surface area reflects more sunlight. The difference in reflected solar radiation for September and October 2014 was 2 watts per square meter in the region over Iceland.

"The effect of volcanic emissions on clouds has been a difficult one to quantify because of the ephemeral nature of most events," said co-author Dennis Hartmann, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences. "This eruption provides a natural laboratory that lets us test how clouds respond to aerosols."

The results may help understand humans' impact on clouds. Human pollution since the Industrial Revolution is believed to have altered skies in the Northern Hemisphere. One uncertainty in climate models is how much human pollution has brightened the clouds, shielding the planet from the effects of the simultaneous rise in carbon dioxide.

"One of the big uncertainties regarding climate change is how much human-produced aerosols have offset the warming until now," Hartmann said. "We hope the data from this eruption will improve the model simulations of cloud effects, and narrow the uncertainties in projections of the future."

The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was the first to include a chapter on clouds and aerosols, one of the biggest uncertainties in global climate models. This study will provide a benchmark for modelers to check their simulations of clouds and aerosols and improve their algorithms for the next generation of climate models.

"The same way that the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 was a big on-off signal that allowed us to evaluate models' response to volcanic forcings, I think this Iceland eruption is a unique event that will help us to better understand the interaction between aerosols and clouds," McCoy said.

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-iceland-volcano-eruption-sulfur-particles.html

Just another admission that the climate computer models are wrong because they don't understand the impact of clouds on the weather and climate systems. But, they make a good excuse for why CO2 is not having the predicted impact on warming.

One take away from this article would be CO2 is being offset; less human air pollution causes the planet to warm; more human air pollution causes the planet to cool.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

New data helps show El Nino occurrences during the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age

A team of researchers with affiliations to several universities in the U.S. has helped uncover the frequency of El Niño events during the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age by obtaining Eastern Pacific Ocean sediment samples. As they note in their paper published in the journal Science, the new data helps to better understand El Niño events in general and may help to predict their occurrences and impact in the future.

Understanding how El Niño events come about would go a long way towards predicting when they might occur, helping people living in countries that are impacted by such events better prepare—those in places such as Indonesia typically experience hotter and dryer temperature conditions (leading to widespread fires), while those places like North and South America experience the opposite (leading to storms and flooding). To that end, the researchers with this new effort sought to fill in a gap in the historical record regarding such events—the time during and just before the Little Ice Age. Such information has been scarce due to the difficulty in obtaining seafloor sediment samples in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. In this new effort, the researchers report on their successful efforts to gather such examples off the shores of the Galapagos Islands, what the samples revealed, and how they helped reveal the history of El Niño events during a time period from approximately five hundred to fifteen hundred years ago.

The team reports that the sediment samples showed that the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean warmed during the period 900 to 1150 CE (the Medieval Climate Anomaly), but then cooled from 1150 to 1500 CE (during the Little Ice Age)—that would have led to increased volatility, more El Niño events and a change to the surface temperature gradient, because of cooling occurring more rapidly in the east. After that, things quieted, but, the team notes, the changes in surface temperatures would have caused the Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zones to shift at the point where the trade winds run into each other.

The more historical data scientists can collect regarding surface temperatures the better they will be able to plot El Niño events over time, making it easier to predict them in the future.

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-el-nino-occurrences-medieval-climate.html

Needless to say, CO2 levels in the atmosphere had nothing to do with the warming and cooling in the past pre-industrialization periods. It was all driven by ocean temperature (that would mean the sun). That means the climate scientists do not understand and their computer models are wrong on their predictions. They don't factor in ocean temperature. It's all about CO2 and wrong assumptions on clouds and water vapor.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Kerry admits futility of US CO2 cuts in Paris speech

Secretary of State John Kerry made an astounding confession today at the COP-21 climate conference in Paris: Emissions cuts by the U.S. and other industrialized nations will make no difference to global climate, he said.

Here are Kerry’s exact words:

… The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what – that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.

If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions –- remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions -– it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.

This is the first time such a senior government official has admitted the utter futility of American carbon dioxide emissions cuts. That’s a consequential admission even if you believe the claims of climate alarmists about the danger of emissions.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...-admits-american-co2-cuts-would-be-pointless/

Sobering admission, the futility of controlling the climate by controlling human CO2 emissions. Especially knowing the climate computer models are wrong.

 

[Meandering]

That goes back to Pete's understanding of science: "warmer air carries more water vapor". Maybe Pete can make the connection that these climate scientists missed.

Not unless you make him pay for a class, tell him the answer, make him memorize the answer, write a paper about the answer, then take a test with the question that makes him reproduce the answer he was to memorize. Old school college "learning".