Posted on 03/04/2007 10:26:32 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Is global warming making our local weather weirder?
Climatologists would like to be able to answer that question. Unfortunately, they can't.
When unusual weather hits, it's become de rigueur to wonder: Is the atmosphere sending us another signal?
The past few years have given us plenty of weather to wonder about.
In 2001-02, San Diego got just 3.02 inches of rain. That was the driest year in the city's rainfall history, which dates to 1850.
In 2003, the city set a record for most consecutive days – 181 – without measurable rainfall. The Cedar and Paradise fires began at the tail end of that dry spell.
The next year, 2004, the city went 182 days without rain.
When that record dry spell ended Oct. 17, 2004, the atmosphere did a 180. San Diego got its wettest October ever, with 4.98 inches. The year's total was 22.49 inches, making it the wettest since 1940-41.
On July 22, San Diego's official high hit 99 degrees, a record for the date. Escondido (112 degrees), El Cajon (113) and the Wild Animal Park (114) had their hottest days ever recorded.
In January, San Diego's official temperature dipped to 35 for the first time in 44 years, and inland readings fell to as low as 12 degrees in Campo. By Feb. 5, the atmosphere had reversed course, and San Diego set a record daily high of 83.
Can we pin such swings and extremes on global warming?
Ray Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of several books on climate change, hears that question a lot.
Like most climatologists, he believes global warming will contribute to greater and more frequent extremes of precipitation and temperature. But he also says natural variability will always be a big part of the equation. The anthropogenic (man-caused) effects on weather will heighten natural variability, and extremes that used to be rare will become more common, he says.
“The changes are gradual,” Bradley said, “so it's difficult to say whether what you are observing 'now' is anthropogenic or not.”
Dan Cayan, director of Scripps' Climate Research Division, said the precipitation extremes San Diego has experienced since 2001-02 don't seem out of line with the area's limited climate history. Very dry years often closely follow very wet ones, or vice versa, because of the El Niño/La Niña cycle, which tends to create rainfall extremes.
Cayan said climate scientists don't have enough data to determine if what has happened recently is truly out of the ordinary.
“If we'd been around since the early Holocene (10,000 years ago) and we'd been recording everything, we'd be in much better shape,” he said.
Upping the odds
Rather than directly blame a particular event on global warming, many climatologists emphasize that global warming may increase the odds of such events occurring. Amy Leurs, a climate-impacts scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, cited a study published in the journal Nature that found it was very likely that human influence at least doubled the risk of the European heat wave of 2003, which killed an estimated 35,000 people. That heat wave is believed to have been the most severe in the region since at least 1500.
A study by Scripps and Anthony Westerling, a fire climatologist at the University of California Merced, concluded that wildfires in the West have increased in severity and frequency because of global warming.
Bradley said it could be 25 more years or so before we have enough detailed climate data to determine if a specific extreme event is related to global warming.
Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climatologist at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is a little more blunt.
“You'd be crazy to connect one-or two-year events to global warming,” he said. “We really don't know enough to say whether it's related or not.”
Ramanathan was one of the editors for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that was released to much fanfare early last month. He said scientists are just beginning to understand global warming's effects on a national scale, and that zooming in on an area the size of a state or a county is still years away.
David Pierce, another Scripps climate researcher, is working on a report on potential climate-change impacts on the western United States.
“The smaller the region you look at, the more random fluctuations you see,” said Pierce, who expects the report to be completed within a year. “The smaller the region, the longer you have to wait to be sure the change has happened.
“But I don't want people to think that just because you can't see it (climate change) yet in California, it's not happening on a larger scale.”
Regardless of global warming's role in current weather oddities, climatologists stress the need to realize the extent of our vulnerability.
“These extreme events remind us of how important climate is to our way of life,” Leurs said. “We need to be aware that these extremes are likely to increase.”
Long-range computer models suggest coming climate changes won't be subtle, said Cayan, with Scripps' Climate Research Division. He said heat waves will be longer and stronger, and rain and snowfall patterns will change drastically.
“As time goes on, we will be able to attribute changes to anthropogenic causes,” Cayan said. “What we'd have trouble saying is that the climate has already moved in that direction.”
Online: For a summary of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, go to:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/WG1AR4_SPM_PlenaryApproved.pdf
For a discussion of climate science led by climate scientists, go to:
http://www.realclimate.org/
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Many moons ago, people used to make human sacrifices when they thought that the wind, rain and sun gods were mad at them because of something they did. It looks like we've almost come full circle. This "wacky" weather has to be occurring because of something WE did. The "gods" are mad at us again. It looks like it's time to build an alter and pick out a few "volunteers."
Heresey!
Any one who doubts global warming is a denier... to be compared to Holocaust deniers. Global warming is the new age religion. Anyone who doesn't follow is stupid, self centered and evil. A denier should be shunned at best, perhaps even jailed.
Sadly, that bit of sarcasm is very nearly the truth with the global warming idiots.
For a discussion of climate science led by climate scientists, go to:
You are aware that realclimate is a creation of Michael Mann ("climate scientist"), set up primarily to defend his very much discredited Hockey Stick graph of temperatures and UN/IPCC line of bull. Interesting that even the IPCC has dropped that Hockey Stick from its latest reports as being valueless.
If one is looking for climate information, one would be better off going to the IPCC straight out, at least there they can make no pretense of who they are.
For a blog covering climate science actually by climate scientists interested in the science rather than the pushing the political fiction one is much better of going to a website such as:
Where actual discussion among working scientists in the field takes place rather than propaganda.
Thanks for the links and comments..
gorebull warming is a sucker's game
socialists, communists and islamofascists need us to self-annihilate to compete with us
welcome to our society's own suicide bombers - the greenies
Online: For a summary of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, go to:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/WG1AR4_SPM_PlenaryApproved.pdf
For the draft of the actual science report UN/IPCC and governmental groups (aka politicians) in the process of changing to match the political "summary", perhaps it would be wiser to go to:
IPCC Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC Second
And keep an eye on what ends up changing.
Climatologists would like to be able to answer that question. Unfortunately, they can't.
But Super Algore can!!! Even though in his Nashville home Super Algore uses 20 times the average U.S. home's electricity use, Super Algore has all of the answers and will tell us, no demand that we live in squalor using MUCH less power.
Back to your private jet now Super Algore..
A far more comprehensive survey of the related issues is availabe at:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/sun_weather_010828-1.html
bump
Why don't we set aside this foolishness and concentrate on the real issue:
If global warming is still imperfectly understood, how is the concept of "carbon credits" justified? How does the new world wealth redistribution scam fit into the current political hysteria?
Who's on first?
Aren't we very lucky to live in a time when the simple purchase of a Carbon Offset Certificate will help the situation.
I don't think so...
This group is clearly pursuing an agenda; pushing conclusions and fixes before clearly defining the problem.
In short, a fraudulent political group masquerading as science.
Unfortunately, the level of ignorance about science and statistics in the general population makes it almost certain that the hysteria continues.
Climate scientists? sure. How many? 12? 100?
I would recommend some exposure to the "other" side; How about these skeptics?
The skeptics now include the 85 climate experts who signed the 1995 Leipzig Declaration; the 4,000 scientists from around the world (including 70 Nobel laureates) who signed the Heidelberg Appeal, and the 17,000 American scientists who signed the Oregon Petition.
Yeah. Like I would trust this guy's website.
He is the "Cindy Sheehan" of the global warming debate. Even when demonstrated to be a charlatan and incompetent in a field outside his axperience and expertise, he continues beating the dead horse.
I have been unable to find the lnk to the Wegman Report, destroying totally and conclusively Mann's competence at statistics. I will post it as aoon as I find it.
In the meantime, here's this other jewel from another skeptic:
All this is part of the guerrilla warfare that is going on between proponents and skeptics of global warming. Dennis Deming, a climate scientist at the University of Oklahoma, recently told the Senate about his experience in the field:
In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years.
The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.
With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them.... One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." ---Nir J. Shaviv
I have been unable to find the lnk to the Wegman Report, destroying totally and conclusively Mann's competence at statistics
Here yah go, found dat bugger :O)
http://energycommerce.house.gov/reparchives/108/Hearings/07192006hearing1987/hearing.htm
Dr. Edward J. Wegman
Center for Computational Statistics
George Mason UniversityQuestions Surrounding the 'Hockey Stick' Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
July 19, 2006
http://energycommerce.house.gov/reparchives/108/Hearings/07192006hearing1987/Wegman.pdf
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