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About extreme weather

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by bwilson4web, Feb 24, 2023.

  1. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    About 9 years ago, persistent global warming deniers kept pestering this Prius owner with their nonsense. They didn’t realize I bought it to save gas. So I took an online course with the text book.

    Even then and today, serious people do not blame any individual storm on global warming. But the models predicted the mid-latitude jet stream would become unstable … reaching further South and North. This leads to cold spells in Dixie and warm weather events up North.

    Weather is like dice, often a random component. But global warming is loading the dice with more extreme weather … record setting events.

    Bob Wilson
     
  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    it's no fun, and there's no fix
     
  3. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    There are choices between "make it less worse" and "keep making it more worse".
     
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  4. wxman

    wxman Active Member

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    Hope you don't consider me to be one of the "deniers." I was only presenting my opinion based on my training and experience as a meteorologist.

    Do you have any specific references regarding a jet stream that is becoming more amplified (if I understand your point correctly)? That would not be what would be expected from a regime in which the poles are warming relatively faster than the tropics, and thus weakening the poles-to-tropics temperature gradient.

    The IPCC concluded in the latest assessment report (AR6) that the stratospheric polar vortex has apparently become weaker and more unstable, but confidence is "low" in how this affects tropospheric weather events.
     
  5. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    iirc - the pioneer of formal logic Aristotle wrote, "the more you know, the more you realize you don't know".
    Does that make him a skeptic? A Debbie Downer? Inquisitive? A denier? a realist? or? .....
    labels are a funny thing that way
    .
     
    #5 hill, Feb 25, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2023
  6. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    Heat wave here in Florida
     
  7. AzWxGuy

    AzWxGuy Weather Guy

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    I keep an open mind about all the available information, as postulated by the scientific method. I also consider the objective proof thus far collected to be incomplete and in some cases corrupted. Victims of the post-truth era. It will be interesting to see how much more evidence is required to tip the balance of world opinion toward the proper response to this threat.
     
  8. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    I was remembering the old "mojo" character. Your posts have always had excellent technical content ... even when we disagreed.

    About the polar vortex and my miss use of Jet Stream:
    https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/12/what-on-earth-is-a-polar-vortex-and-whats-global-warming-got-to-do-with-it/

    Henson: When it’s dark 24 hours a day, in and near the North Pole, you can build up a lot of cold air really easily. Now, at times, that cold air stays near the poles, and we can have relatively mild weather in the United States, for example. But every so often, the jet stream will dip southward and yank some of that cold air down toward the U.S. Typically, that’s when the stratospheric polar vortex is either stretched downward from the poles toward lower latitudes, or a piece of the vortex breaks off and moves bodily toward the United States. So those are the circumstances where the polar vortex can help bring colder air to the US.

    [​IMG]


    Bob Wilson
     
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  9. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    There is a lot of disagreement among climatologists about that. That's pretty much all I can say. Here are 3 publications that provide some sense of the scope

    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2104105118
    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018MS001492
    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay2880

    It seems slightly separable from distribution functions of temperature and precipitation. With those we can observe or anticipate changes of median values. Or we can observe one tail or the other getting fatter without median changing. All that without identifying a causal mechanism among several possibilities.

    My forecast is for continued disagreement.

    Bob started by mentioning that no single event is proof. Such is violated by observations (rare or unprecedented), and 'both sides' can be seen playing that game poorly. It is a complicated system and one can confront it, or not. Easier not to, and receptive audiences can be found for any simplistic point of view.
     
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  10. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Are cold spells any more frequent, or more cold, now than back in the old era?

    I've had the impression that the cold side hasn't become worse, at least as seen in weather records. Instead, severe cold spells may have become less frequent, causing common memory to fade, young people to not remember them at all, and a lot more new buildings and infrastructure to be getting their first severe cold tests all at the same time.
     
    #10 fuzzy1, Feb 25, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2023
  11. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    We are seeing a scattering of record high temperatures outside of summer. As for cold spells, well I like them but locals hate them. We do seem to vacillate between droughts and flooding. But I've only been in Huntsville since 1985.

    Bob Wilson
     
  12. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    Reading a book of stories about old Florida, the weather in the late 1800’s seems about the same as today
     
  13. Montgomery

    Montgomery Senior Member

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    I would like to ask a question. And please, I am not a meteorologist, scientists or anything like that. I am asking because I don't know much. One thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned is the effect that our sun has on our climate. The sun seems to be completely ignored. Doesn't the solar winds and the 11 year cycle influence our weather patterns at all? The reason why I ask this is that whenever you study the gas giant planets (which are hundreds of millions of miles away from our sun) the topic of how the solar winds affects their cloud patterns and chemical interactions is always mentioned. With the earth, the sun is not mentioned even in the slightest. Why? Would it not make sense that our sun affects our polar regions even in the slightest? And isn't the ozone in the polar regions thinner than in other areas of our planet? I am not in disagreement with global warming, but, I have to believe that being only 93 million miles for the most powerful heat and solar wind blower out there, it has to be doing something to our atmosphere.
     
  14. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Seeking knowledge is always welcome. I would suggest visiting this site which led to credible global warming studies:
    https://skepticalscience.com/

    They have an excellent search function that easily brings credible papers and articles on global warming subjects.

    When you research (or even Google) credible sources, you find a lot of solar modeling data. This includes solar ejection storms. The global warming models start with solar illumination.

    Yes and no. The sun is the source of illumination and heat for our planet. But there have been some dodgy claims that solar cycles were headed into a low activity period that will negate the effect of the growing CO{2} blanket.

    Bob Wilson
     
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  15. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Ignored by whom? To whom does it 'seem' to be getting ignored? Does it seem to you that it's being ignored? How did it end up seeming that way to you?

    As Bob already pointed out, the people doing the work don't seem to be ignoring it.
     
  16. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    It isn't getting much play in the popular press, because it isn't very news worthy. The solar impact on climate is being studied. It has always played a part, but its effect is being overshadowed by CO2 now. So, it isn't being discussed in non-technical sources. Unless that source is claiming man has no impact.
     
    #16 Trollbait, Feb 26, 2023
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2023
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  17. Montgomery

    Montgomery Senior Member

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    Thanks Trollbait. This helps me understand it overall. When you see how the sun impacts the north pole of Saturn which is over 950 million miles away, one can't see how the sun would not be impacting us when we are only 93 million miles away. Science is science, unless ignored. Thank you.
     
  18. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Is anybody saying it doesn't impact us? I mean, literally, anybody?

    There may be people saying they have seriously run the numbers on that and on the effect of heat-trapping gases and compared the urgency of both effects in our current situation.

    That's not, by a country mile, the same thing.
     
  19. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    There are several climate patterns apparently associated with 11-year solar cycle. It is more difficult to identify a mechanism/causal factor, but some progress there as well.
     
  20. Montgomery

    Montgomery Senior Member

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    950 million miles..............93 million miles..............