extreme weather

The Hansen et al in PNAS

doi/10.1073/pnas.1205276109

Is under discussion here. The authors provide their own justification for starting in 1951. I don't defend or dispute it.

But as the available global data set is much longer, and I'd rather see this type of 'data distibution' technique appled to that. I would have been more compelled by a justification for an 1850 start date, along the lines of 'spatial coverage of thermometers was quite poor before then'.

The instrumental records are surely available (except Poland and some Carib. island I'm forgetting). Computers are cheap. R statistics is free. So the thing I'd rather discuss seems entirely doable. Perhaps it will get done.

The Rowe and Derry (I mentioned before) started in 1931, so it covers AustinG's objection, but it is only US48 states.

To perform attribution in an (even somewhat) satisfying way, these longer looks also seem essential. Only then can one detect the regional signals of ENSO, PDO, AMO in some index period. Then compare it to your recent decades, and see what's 'left over'.

I think Muller's attribution, as far as volcanic cooling was OK. I know that not all share that opinion. But to find the natural temperature signals of ENSO, etc. one must divide land into regions and work at a subdecadal scale. Again I don't see why could not be done.

If anyone has a better way to do attribution, please describe.

 

As a former NOAA (NWS) employee, I'm glad that Mr. Karl stopped short of linking extreme severe weather events (e.g., tornado outbreaks, derechos, severe MCSs) with AGW. As was discussed here last year, these events are not a "symptom" of AGW in my opinion, at least not with the polar amplification premise that IPCC concludes.

 

I think the volcanic aerosols are better modeled than any other aerosols. A defined source, a chemical signature that the satellites (like TOMS but now there are newer ones) can handle, and the washout is slow or fast depending on stratospheric injection.

All other aerosols are more difficult but there has been recent progress. Example Penner et al in Geophysical Research Letters
doi:10.1029/2012GL051870

Decadal T averages make sense (to me) for long term trends, because you are trying to get the ENSO. PDO AMO (and any other O's) to average out. That would be a bad plan if the O's were getting stronger or weaker, but there isn't evidence for that. The O's themselves are not strictly decadal, so other intervals or 'calming statistics' should be considered.

AustinG suggests treating precip and T extremes together, not separately. This seems reasonable to me but I'm not sure how to do it.

For attribution, I think it is necessary to use regions and short time windows. Necessary to know 'where you are' in terms of forcing by the O's. Helpful to include aerosols and solar cycle. The former must be much larger than the latter, but if they are not explicitly included, somebody is going to squawk.

All that was done in IPCC AR4 and refs cited, but on the global scale. Needs to be regional or subregional. Clearly there are computational and data limitations on 'downscaling' climate models but that seems to be a very active area now. Surely they can come up with something.

In this sense I am exactly like climate sceptics (or substitute a term you prefer). I poke holes in current attribution studies, but make no personal effort to improve them. Me bad.

++
Spaghetti diagrams probably deserve the criticisms received but I hope you'll take a look at this one
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/us/2012/jul/YTD_allyears_Jul2012.png

US desparately needs a cool down to 1934 levels.

 

Back to US ongoing drought and suppressed corn crop.

UNFAO asks US to not follow the rule that 40% must be converted to ethanol

BBC News - US biofuel production should be suspended, UN says

There are other ag export countries now looking at shortfalls - you can find them. For me it is down to recognizing that if extremes (from whatever cause) are interefering with what people need, more agility may be required at the govt-policy level.

In a complacent world where each year resembles the previous, we might not need better science and responsive governments. Earth is not that world. Maybe it never has been.

 

Don't burn food to fuel vehicles!

Icarus

 

I agree, grain could be used to support the food supply, or at least, used for livestock feed. Unfortunately, the strong ethanol lobbyist in Washington are intent to keeping the status quo. It will be interesting to see how the above turns out.

DBCassidy

 

a little corn i can handle. most of it too small to effectively use as food anyway... this??

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/10/news/economy/kansas-oil-boom-drought/index.html

first they take our air to burn the fuel
then the food supply to bolster the supply
now the water??

so its the basic needs of Humanity verses a 3 Trillion dollar Oil Industry; wow, we are screwed

 

I posted that just before Hansen's publicity. Now, Mass is getting even more annoyed with Hansen and the mass media:

Read the rest at: Climate Distortion

 

This is accurate, however, the limited time frame to observe changes needs to be taken into account. As of right now it seems that climate change is mostly driving changes in precipitation, eg a 100-year drought/flood every 20-years or whatever the specifics are, but that could change with more data and time, especially since many of the studies looking at GHG induced weather event changes are years old.

 

although our weather is not making the news, it is still near several records. we had our "100 year" heatwave in 2009 which realistically took our highs into the same level as most of the country when before our records were pretty mundane.

things like 3 consecutive days of 90º or more, high temp of 100, etc. all those were smashed in 2009 making any record attempts unlikely but for the first 16 days of August we have had 4 days at or below normal, 12 days over including 8 days that were more than 10º above normal. this realistically marks the beginning of Summer for us since there were only a few days in July that got more than 2º higher than the expected

but with all that, we were the only area of the country to not see record summer temps. but i guess, summer aint over yet

 

FYI, the weather has been extremely nice in Huntsville the past week. Temperatures in the low 90s with low humidity and passing rain showers. Yeap, extremely nice ... for Alabama in mid-August.

Bob Wilson

 

that is right; it is just a statistic. but the real question is how much statistics do we need to make a larger judgment?
a 6 to 1 ratio of record highs verses record lows (2 years ago the ratio was only 4 to 1) do we need it to be 10 to 1? 20 to 1?

the problem with weather and climate on such a far reaching scale like the massiveness of the continental US is there is still singular events that can cause HUGE changes like El ninos and so on. so now we look at these and how they occur and we find that it reads like Genesis in the Bible. one begats the other

we look at El ninos that come around on average once every 5 years and last 5-8 months but all of a sudden, they are coming around every 3 years and lasting for two years... can we still continue to call it el nino?

its like doubling the size of a Focus and continuing to call it a compact.

 

I saw an article about the current drought suggesting the current corn strains are more tolerant of drought. About the same time there was a story about raising sorgum as a second 'insurance' crop. Perhaps not as profitable as corn, having a sorgum crop if the corn fails is a sensible alternative.

Bob Wilson

 

From sites like

Genetic Families Key

One gets the impression that there are corn varieties very good at a, b, c, d, e, f, or g, etc. But you don't get to choose them all at once. Similar to your engineering three-way, but with more ways.

AustinG, months before planting, I am going to consult a climate-prediction model and from that, chose a crop, variety, or even to go fallow. Is this the future you forsee? There may be no fundamental reason why models cannot do that, but it does not describe current batch.

Also it may not be enough for the farmer to be convinced. A banker holds the land mortage, maybe a different one is going to loan for this year's action. If both of them get their science smarts from 'Watt's up with that'? Man o man.

 

Mario Molina (most famous for ozone-hole chemistry) gave the keynote at American Chemical Society meeting. I suppose he could have talked about several things, but he talked about extreme events

Nobel prize-winning scientist cites evidence of link between extreme weather, global warming

It may be possible to find more about that online, and see if he is referring to the recent Mann and Meehl papers, or something else.

...

I don't find anything at the ACS website beyond the presentation title "Chemistry and Climate"

BTW this is not to be confused with the American Chemistry Council.