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Learning Global Warming facts and fiction

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It's a lose-lose argument; can anybody deny the "trends" over the last 30 -40 years or so; no. I can draw on my own experience of being able to skate on the ponds and C&O Canal up in the DC area back in the 70's routinely; sledding down a hill onto the country club lake that had ice 2 feet thick, etc. Doubtful there's been many years that's been done lately.

On the other hand is the "science" settled as claimed; highly doubtful. Man in his arrogance thinks he can say for certain he has caused the climate to change; has he really? There is no such thing as settled science, science is a process.

At the end of the day does a slightly warming planet really hurt mankind? Greenland was farmed centuries ago; is that a bad thing? Was the land mass where coastal cities now exist underwater during that timeframe, no. Have we further encroached into coastal areas that for centuries helped protect the land mass further inland, yes. Does that encroachment allow for the possibility of disaster, absolutely.

Does what is going on justify hundreds of billions of dollars being spent when that money could've been used for education/farming techniques/irrigation techniques/etc, I say no. Should we develop alternative sources of energy, absolutely. Is that energy reliable, without quantum leaps in storage capacity, it is not. Should there be a blend of technologies, yes.

I do find one hypothesis about the current state of earths weather extremely intriguing which is the enhanced solar activity over the last hundred years or so has greatly contributed to the warming of the oceans thus potentially vastly affecting the natural weather cycles to such a degree that it has contributed to the warming. There appears to be a lag effect with that enhanced activity so the current solar decrease could potentially affect the cycles however it will be many years before that effect can be quantified or observed.

At the end of the day it's a no-win argument, I firmly believe the man-made argument helps justify huge expenses that in the end contribute zero to the betterment of mankind and only help line the pockets of a few when those resources could be expended towards the actual betterment of mankind.
Bingo! And as for the previous post that "I once was a climate change denier"........this proves my point..it's like a religion one finds to some, but...no one is saying there isn't and hasn't and won't be climate change so big deal. You aren't some enlightened, "save" person, you just want to blame mankind and take trillions of dollars and cost jobs,etc to transfer wealth for maybe a tiny, tiny change to anything...that's the difference.
 
Bingo! And as for the previous post that "I once was a climate change denier"........this proves my point..it's like a religion one finds to some, but...no one is saying there isn't and hasn't and won't be climate change so big deal. You aren't some enlightened, "save" person, you just want to blame mankind and take trillions of dollars and cost jobs,etc to transfer wealth for maybe a tiny, tiny change to anything...that's the difference.

What are you blabbering about... I really don't understand why you're trying to make a big deal about the fact that carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs, etc. are greenhouse gases that intercept outgoing longwave radiation emitted from earth's surface and result in a net warming of the planet, this fact has actually been settled time and time again in the lab, academia, and verified by actual observations, if you want to argue about it, then conduct your own research and get it published. Of course, instead of acknowledging that I've delved into the appreciable uncertainties associated w/ climate change (including cloud, albedo feedbacks, etc) you decided take this aforementioned statement about GHGs completely out of context and erroneously spew garbage that we're trying to insinuate the entire "argument" is settled. Smh... I'm literally an undergraduate college atmospheric sciences/meteorology student who's fascinated by the science of climate change, and have been for several years, a) this is not a "religion" b) where do you think I'm going to transfer trillions of dollars c) I really don't care about the politics of AGW, over long periods of time, the science eventually wins out and drives policies and policy makers d) Natural variability alone or constituting a majority of the forcing can not explained the observed alterations to the climate in the last several decades and hence, mankind is at the very least somewhat responsible for the observed & verifiable warming in the past few centuries e) could really care less what you think about me...
It's a lose-lose argument; can anybody deny the "trends" over the last 30 -40 years or so; no. I can draw on my own experience of being able to skate on the ponds and C&O Canal up in the DC area back in the 70's routinely; sledding down a hill onto the country club lake that had ice 2 feet thick, etc. Doubtful there's been many years that's been done lately.

On the other hand is the "science" settled as claimed; highly doubtful. Man in his arrogance thinks he can say for certain he has caused the climate to change; has he really? There is no such thing as settled science, science is a process.

At the end of the day does a slightly warming planet really hurt mankind? Greenland was farmed centuries ago; is that a bad thing? Was the land mass where coastal cities now exist underwater during that timeframe, no. Have we further encroached into coastal areas that for centuries helped protect the land mass further inland, yes. Does that encroachment allow for the possibility of disaster, absolutely.

Does what is going on justify hundreds of billions of dollars being spent when that money could've been used for education/farming techniques/irrigation techniques/etc, I say no. Should we develop alternative sources of energy, absolutely. Is that energy reliable, without quantum leaps in storage capacity, it is not. Should there be a blend of technologies, yes.

I do find one hypothesis about the current state of earths weather extremely intriguing which is the enhanced solar activity over the last hundred years or so has greatly contributed to the warming of the oceans thus potentially vastly affecting the natural weather cycles to such a degree that it has contributed to the warming. There appears to be a lag effect with that enhanced activity so the current solar decrease could potentially affect the cycles however it will be many years before that effect can be quantified or observed.

At the end of the day it's a no-win argument, I firmly believe the man-made argument helps justify huge expenses that in the end contribute zero to the betterment of mankind and only help line the pockets of a few when those resources could be expended towards the actual betterment of mankind.

I've heard this line a billion times... Solar activity has been declining since the 1960s and we're currently nearing lows that we haven't seen in at least a few hundred years. Any connection between tropospheric variability and solar activity is elusive at best. AGW skeptics also tried to pull this same argument (again I was one of them) at the beginning of the 2010s when we came out of the deepest solar minimum in over a century, and ironically global temperatures have reached all-time record highs within several years, the likes of which haven't been observed since at least the medieval warming period, if not longer. If there was any *very* significant, direct impact on surface temperatures, we would have seen it already, but instead temperatures have continued to warm, and they're warming at a faster rate now than they were in the 1960s and 70s when solar activity was higher. If you want to discuss the potential implications of ultraviolet radiation across a solar cycle (which varies on the order of 6-9%) and its impact on ozone concentrations, the Brewer Dobson Circulation, Stratospheric Semi-Annual Oscillation, Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, the polar vortex, cloudiness, and trace constituents and aerosols in the stratosphere, mesosphere, and even upper troposphere modulated by some of these aforementioned processes that's far more reasonable than total irradiance.
 
I've heard this line a billion times... Solar activity has been declining since the 1960s and we're currently nearing lows that we haven't seen in at least a few hundred years. Any connection between tropospheric variability and solar activity is elusive at best. AGW skeptics also tried to pull this same argument (again I was one of them) at the beginning of the 2010s when we came out of the deepest solar minimum in over a century, and ironically global temperatures have reached all-time record highs within several years, the likes of which haven't been observed since at least the medieval warming period, if not longer. If there was any *very* significant, direct impact on surface temperatures, we would have seen it already, but instead temperatures have continued to warm, and they're warming at a faster rate now than they were in the 1960s and 70s when solar activity was higher.

Since the globe has yet to cool, I'm growing more and more skeptical about the sun having a nontrivial role as time goes on without cooling. However, I'm still not yet giving up on it. That includes the idea that a reduced solar wind could indirectly cause cooling in addition to the direct influence of reduced total flux. (Example: I've read about a theory that a decreased protective solar wind leads to increases in cosmic rays (CR's) reaching Earth, which in turns results in increased cloudcover due to the increased cloud nuclei provided by the increase in CR's. This increased cloudcover then cools ground temperatures...again just an unproven theory but it sounds interesting.)

The main thing I'd like you to comment on is lag. We just had the most active 50 years of sunspots (1950-2000) of the last 400++ years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png

Could there be a delayed reaction to the warming peak caused by this?
Here's why I ask:

1. On a sunny day with no clouds or changes in airmass/wind direction, the high temperature of the day is typically several hours after the sun hits its highest point as opposed to being at the same time. So, there's an obvious several hour lag.

2. Daily warmest normals in much of the country are typically a good month or so after the summer solstice. So, that's another lag.

So, wouldn't it possibly make sense that there could be a multiyear lag before warming stopped after the most active 50 years of sun in 350+ years?

Please try to answer this in as simple a way as you can so as to not go over my nongenius head lol. ;) By the way, I consider myself a skeptic of some of the more alarmist predictions rather than an AGW "denier". I believe that the warming has been due to an unknown % from AGW and an unknown % from natural cycles including solar.
 
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Since the globe has yet to cool, I'm growing more and more skeptical about the sun having a nontrivial role as time goes on without cooling. However, I'm still not yet giving up on it. That includes the idea that a reduced solar wind could indirectly cause cooling in addition to the direct influence of reduced total flux. (Example: I've read about a theory that a decreased protective solar wind leads to increases in cosmic rays (CR's) reaching Earth, which in turns results in increased cloudcover due to the increased cloud nuclei provided by the increase in CR's. This increased cloudcover then cools ground temperatures...again just an unproven theory but it sounds interesting.)

The main thing I'd like you to comment on is lag. We just had the most active 50 years of sunspots (1950-2000) of the last 400++ years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png

Could there be a delayed reaction to the warming peak caused by this?
Here's why I ask:

1. On a sunny day with no clouds or changes in airmass/wind direction, the high temperature of the day is typically several hours after the sun hits its highest point as opposed to being at the same time. So, there's an obvious several hour lag.

2. Daily warmest normals in much of the country are typically a good month or so after the summer solstice. So, that's another lag.

So, wouldn't it possibly make sense that there could be a multiyear lag before warming stopped after the most active 50 years of sun in 350+ years?

Please try to answer this in as simple a way as you can so as to not go over my nongenius head lol. ;) By the way, I consider myself a skeptic of some of the more alarmist predictions rather than an AGW "denier". I believe that the warming has been due to an unknown % from AGW and an unknown % from natural cycles including solar.

We certainly can't entirely rule out solar variability has having a non-negligible role in earth's climate and there's definitely some intrinsic memory in the coupled climate system w/ some appreciable lags, while other phenomena such as energetic particle fluxes (protons), (which can cause sudden and rather swift alterations in the stratospheric polar &/or tropospheric Greenland vortex), variations in earth's Van Allen radiation belts, and electrostatic charges (these are generated by high energy solar radiation in the middle-upper atmosphere that can create electric charges that stimulate the production of water vapor CCN (cloud condensation nuclei)), and even ozone variability, are more immediate. In fact, in the mid-upper atmosphere (where ironically few observations exist and GCMs struggle) many coupled models actually struggle (at least in comparison to the troposphere), but this is where the impacts from solar variability are more immediate. The vast scale of the climate system, multitude of associated, sources, sinks, and relatively inefficient phenomena that re-distribute, sequester, and express the internal energy and the heat in the system contribute to a lag effect wrt solar activity. The lag on both the diurnal, seasonal, inter annual scales is due to the amount of incoming heat in the system outpacing outgoing radiation (due in part to thermal inertia (esp of the Ocean), vertical and horizontal mixing of air masses, local/regional albedo, adjacent topography, aerosols ?, etc) and is what leads to this observed lags. On the other hand, this balance and lag has been undoubtedly (& increasingly) disrupted by the increase in the concentrations of gases like CO2, NO2, H2O (indirectly), CH4, etc. Although I've really tried to boil things down some here, the harsh and rather unfortunate reality is, esp when it comes to climate, there is no truly simple way answer to these questions, and much of the solar research actually still remains over my head and the field pertaining to solar activity relatively speaking is still very primitive and misunderstood. While uncertainty remains regarding the contributions of natural and anthropogenic forcings on climate (as is the case w/ most things in meteorology) it's at least probable if not likely, that integrated "direct irradiance-based solar variations" induce appreciably less significant radiative forcing than anthroprogenic greenhouse gas emissions and by an order of magnitude or more...
 
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Here's a few nice solar papers that would definitely be worth your time
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.1812.pdf
https://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/publikationen/Reports/WEB_BzE_113.pdf
Amazingly, some of the concepts I gleaned in the latter paper several years ago actually worked for the most recent multi-year Super El Nino

Thanks for these links! I found them to be interesting, especially the first one. i noticed the mention of increase in GCR's during sunspot downturns. So, it is apparently more well-known than I realized.
 
I just had a chance to read this web site's CC thread today for the first time and I will add that anyone could make a compelling argument for climate change as a whole. However, I do not support some of the hyperbole that is associated with the political stance. Our polar ice caps and glaciers are melting. There's no denying this. I believe this is one data set that is fairly solid.
Having said that, I agree that some of the continental landmass and global temperature data has been manipulated in the past to fit into a certain group's agenda. On the flip side, Webber eloquently explained why we can't ignore the ramifications of increased GHGs that continues to be dumped into our atmosphere.
We all know that there is a vast difference between weather and long-term climate, but just look at our current state, as compared to the 1970's, and wonder if it will continue to warm or will we see a cooling trend due to some natural variable. I have a feeling that some interesting or possibly troubling times lie ahead.
Remember, there are some great minds on both sides of the fence and it's important to keep our feelings out of the equation when trying to understand the science.
 
Here is a link that I don"t recall having seen before now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Sunspots_11000_years.svg

IF this is accurate, the sun just had its most active 100 years of sunspots averaged out in over 2,000 years!! I had already known that 1950-2000 was the most active 50 year period in 400++ years. However, this is even more telling IF accurate and further leads me to not discount the possibility that the sun has been at least a nontrivial contributor to the 2-3 F global warming over the last 100 years. If so, it could very well be that there is a multiyear lag before significant grand solar related minimum cooling starts to show up.

Eric and others, any comments about this graph? Have you seen this before?
 
Despite the Arctic being warmer than normal every single day this past fall (easily the warmest Sep-Dec back at least to 1958....just click on each year to see this), winter (warmest Jan-Feb at least back to 1958), and early spring, it has actually been a little colder than normal for every day of about the last 3 weeks. Currently, it is nearly 2C colder than normal. Anomalies as we head toward summer are almost always small. Regardless, every little bit helps as far as preserving Arctic ice/minimizing worldwide sea level rise is concerned, especially after such a ridiculously warm fall and winter:

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

Aside: Note that the coldest month's normal is, interestingly enough, in Feb. rather than in Jan.
 
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Despite the Arctic being warmer than normal every single day this past fall (easily the warmest Sep-Dec back at least to 1958....just click on each year to see this), winter (warmest Jan-Feb at least back to 1958), and early spring, it has actually been a little colder than normal for every day of about the last 3 weeks. Currently, it is nearly 2C colder than normal. Anomalies as we head toward summer are almost always small. Regardless, every little bit helps as far as preserving Arctic ice/minimizing worldwide sea level rise is concerned, especially after such a ridiculously warm fall and winter:

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

Aside: Note that the coldest month's normal is, interestingly enough, in Feb. rather than in Jan.
Thanks for the data, Larry!
 
Hey, I just want to jump in and say that not everyone in Huntsville, AL is so intellectually dishonest with themselves about the realities of climate change...

It's too bad as a species we couldn't further refine and take advantage of nuclear energy.
 
Thanks for the data, Larry!

You're welcome.

To reiterate: Some good news regarding what had been a record warm (since at least 1958) 6 month period as a whole (Sept. of 2016 through Feb. of 2017):

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

If you click on the year by year graphs, you can clearly see two things:

1. The period 9/1/2016 through 2/28/2017 was easily the warmest of all of the years linked here (back to 1958) assuming this data is accurate. Look at how every single day was warmer than normal and was in many cases much warmer than normal.

(I do have a concern about the inconsistency of the anomalies when going from 12/31 of each year to 1/1 of the subsequent year. A dozen or so years had a rise or fall of 7C+, which bothers me because no other consecutive days throughout the year ever had nearly that much of a change, but I'll assume that isn't enough to call the entire dataset into question).

2. Interestingly enough, however, note that every day of the last month or so has actually been COLDER than normal (as much as 2C colder than normal).

(Keep in mind that anomalies in May through August are almost always much smaller than that for fall through early spring. So, 2C anomalies are actually rather significant in May. 1958-present record cold in May is only ~-4C.)

That's a very impressive cold recovery for Arctic temperatures with regard to normals though it doesn't mean the Arctic has actually been colder for the last 30 days averaged out (~261 K) vs the prior period. Instead, what has happened is that the Arctic has warmed much more slowly than normal. Jan-Feb of 2017 averaged a record warm (back to 1958) near 251-252 K. But the last 30 days have averaged near 261 K, which means a warming of only about 10 K. The average rise 1958-2002 has been nearly double that.

One last statistical item to note, which is related to some of what I said above: notice how regardless of how warm the Arctic has gotten anomalywise in winter, it has always gotten very close to normal by summer. It doesn't seem to matter much how mild the prior winter. Record warm anomalies back to 1958
on just about every summer day are only ~+1C! Anyone can see this by just clicking on every year from 1958-2016. I think that is really neat!

This chart updates daily and is one worth following, especially due to the very important upcoming summer. If it can somehow stay mainly colder than normal for much of the upcoming crucial next 6 weeks or so, that could very well be enough to prevent the peak of the Arctic ice melt season from being as bad as it was looking to be. Fingers are crossed, especially since coastal residents would be in much better shape if Arctic ice, in general, doesn't dwindle as fast since that would mean slower sea level rises overall.
 
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Further to the above, the Arctic has remained colder than normal every day since that post (one week ago). Virtually the entire month of May to date has been that way. All of this is crucial to the primetime melt season, which is in its early stages.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
 
Further to the above, the Arctic has remained colder than normal every day since that post (one week ago). Virtually the entire month of May to date has been that way. All of this is crucial to the primetime melt season, which is in its early stages.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

I definitely would be cautious in utilizing the DMI Arctic temperatures, ERA-40 that's used for the climatological period is noted to have spurious trends in the arctic esp below the mid troposphere, henceforth it's climatological base period is also likely in error... JRA-55 daily temperatures are significantly warmer and are actually running about 1C above average poleward of 80N.

jra55_80N_t2m_2017.png

See this short paper by Screen and Simmonds (2010) "Erroneous Arctic Temperature Trends in the ERA-40 Reanalysis: A Closer Look"
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010JCLI4054.1
 
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