Posted on 12/08/2014 6:03:15 PM PST by CedarDave
California's ongoing drought is due primarily to natural variability in the Pacific Ocean, not human-induced global warming, a government report released Monday argues.
But whether that variation in ocean conditions is truly "natural" or is driven by a changing climate remains a major matter of debate among scientists.
The new study, conducted by Columbia University for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), concludes that "natural oceanic and atmospheric patterns are the primary drivers behind California's ongoing drought," according to a NOAA press release. Human-induced climate change, on the other hand, was not found to be a significant factor, concludes the report.
The worst drought in the state's recorded weather history is actually not a complete outlier when compared with older events preserved in the records of tree rings, says Richard Seager, the new report's lead author and a professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "Events like this have happened before, although this is the most severe drought since records began in the 1850s."
According to the new NOAA report, the drought's primary cause is a high-pressure ridge that has remained parked over the Pacific off California for much of the past three years. That ridge has diverted storms that would normally bring precipitation to the state.
Seager says the problem is that the leading computer models of future climate predict that low pressure will dominate off California, leading to more precipitation, not less.
"According to the models," he adds, "increases in greenhouse gases should lead to relatively uniform increases in temperature in the Pacific Ocean." But over the past three years of the drought, the Pacific has seen unusual patterns of heating and cooling.
Those anomalous patterns are best explained by natural variability in the ocean and in atmospheric cycles, not by human-induced global warming, says Seager.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
Wow! Amazing that there are still climate scientists at a major US university that admit that nature not man is the cause of an extreme weather phenomenon.
This HONEST acadamecian will probably lose his job.
Climate Change Denier Alert.
Film at 11.
The horror!
Maybe people are worried that the people in the fields bending over to pick the crops will get their backs ...
Never mind.
It’s nice to see that there are some real scientists left in this country who haven’t been brainwashed by a bunch of loony, Marxist college “professors”.
Heads are gonna roll for this travesty!
Models? As in many models? Has any model predicted the climate accurately?
Physicist Howard Hayden's one-letter disproof of global warming claims [pre-Climategate]Dear Administrator Jackson:
I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called "Endangerment Finding."
It has been often said that the "science is settled" on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.
The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.
Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.
We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.
(excerpted from Professor Hayden's letter to Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator Environmental Protection Agency. More at link.)
Yeah, and that ridge - which I’ve been watching for the last 3 years - has broken down.
Rained here nicely for about the last week and a serious new storm is imminent.
Glad I got the new drainage system in!!
Storm gate is open. Tahoe will be fab for Christmas...
Gorons will be sad.
Sadly, you are correct.
>>The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.<<
That is the most succinct disposition of the AGW nazis I have ever read.
Short, sweet, accurate and to the point. And my new tagline.
Keep that in mind, all...
re: the tagline, nicely done!
Thank YOU for the inspiration :)
This was a NOAA sponsored report so it's unlikely he will be receiving large grants in the future.
A dissenting viewpoint in the story was left out due to FR's excerpt length restrictions. Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at California's Stanford University not involved in the NOAA report was quoted saying:
"We are trying to understand whether the global warming that has already happened is increasing the probability of such extremes
In September, Diffenbaugh published a study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society concluding that such a high-pressure ridge off California is indeed more likely to develop in a warming atmosphere.
California And New York least free states in US, followed closely by Washington & Oregon
“This was a NOAA sponsored report so it’s unlikely he will be receiving large grants in the future”
Very true. Not the answer they were looking for.
Thanks for that but the real thanks should go to Physicist Howard Hayden. His disproof of AGW was done some time back but I just ran across it a couple of months ago. No real scientist can refute it without throwing science itself in the trash.
3 and a half inches of ‘climate change’ fell here last week, more to come..
I wish there was room in the tag for citation in this case.
But I steal shamelessly so oh well :)
Astounding!
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