Posted on 04/03/2002 9:57:45 AM PST by cogitator
Effects of Climate Warming Already in Evidence
WASHINGTON, DC, March 29, 2002 (ENS) - Ecosystems around the globe are showing the effects of climate warming. Earlier arrival of migrant birds, earlier appearance of butterflies, earlier spawning in amphibians, earlier flowering of plants - spring has been coming sooner every year since the 1960s, researchers reported Wednesday.
The report from German scientists investigates all regions of the globe. They predict some species will vanish because they cannot expand into new areas when their native climate heats up.
"Although we are only at an early stage in the projected trends of global warming, ecological responses to recent climate change are already clearly visible," write Gian-Reto Walther of the University of Hanover, Germany, and colleagues in this week's issue of the journal "Nature."
After reviewing changes in various animal and plant populations over the past 30 years of warming at the end of the 20th century, the authors found "a coherent pattern of ecological change across systems" from the poles to the equatorial seas.
"There is now ample evidence that these recent climatic changes have affected a broad range of organisms with diverse geographical distributions," Walther and his team report.
"The implications of such large scale, consistent responses to relatively low average rates of climate change are large," the researchers warn, adding that, "the projected warming for the coming decades raises even more concern about its ecological and socio-economic consequences."
The Earth's climate has warmed by about 0.6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, the researchers note. Starting around 1976, the rate of global warming more than doubled, changing faster than at any other time during the last 1,000 years.
However, average global climate has far less effect on local ecosystems than do local and regional climate changes.
The reproduction of amphibians and reptiles is disrupted by changes in temperature and humidity. In painted turtles, the ration of male to female offspring is related to the mean July temperature, said Walther, and the production of male offspring could be compromised even by modest temperature increases.
In the polar regions, winter freezes are now occurring later and ending earlier, leading to a 10 percent decrease in snow and ice cover since the late 1960s.
These dramatic local changes are having equally dramatic effects on cold weather species such as penguins, seals and polar bears, the researchers found.
Miniscule Southern Ocean crustaceans called krill, a key food source for higher predators such as penguins and other seabirds, whales, seals, as well as a fishery target, are being influenced by climate change. Walther's team found the warming climate is affecting the reproductive grounds of krill by reducing the area of sea ice formed near the Antarctic Peninsula, which leads to both food web and human economic consequences.
Rapid environmental warming has been reported over the last 30 to 50 years at a number of stations in the Antarctic, particularly in the Antarctic Peninsula region and on sub-Antarctic islands, along with changes in precipitation patterns.
Likewise, tropical oceans have increased in temperature by up to eight degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, the research team has found, triggering widespread coral bleaching.
Climate linked invasions of warm weather species into traditionally colder areas includes the immigration of unwanted neighbors - epidemic diseases. "There is much evidence that a steady rise in annual temperatures has been associated with expanding mosquito borne diseases in the highlands of Asia, East Africa and Latin America," the study says.
Geographical differences are evident for both plants and birds, with delayed rather than earlier onset of spring phases in southeastern Europe, including later bird arrival in the Slovak Republic, and a later start of the growing season in the Balkan region, the team has found.
Later onset of autumn changes were recorded, too, but these shifts are less pronounced and show a more variable pattern. In Europe, for example, the length of the growing season has increased in some areas by up to 3.6 days per decade over the past 50 years.
Overall, Walther's team reports, "trends of range changes show remarkable internal consistency between studies relating to glaciers, plant and insect ranges and shifting isotherms," which are lines of constant temperature.
The study concludes that based on the evidence "only 30 years of warmer temperatures at the end of the 20th century have affected the phenology [timing of seasonal activities] of organisms, the range and distribution of species, and the composition and dynamics of communities."
Winter isn't ending late. It's ending earlier. You can read the article that kicked off this thread, for one thing, and these:
Warming Trend Seen In Late Freeze, Early Thaw
150 Year Record of Freezes Shows Warming Trend
Here's some of the data from the paper.
By citing both Hansen (who described his "Alternative Scenario" before Jacobson's paper was published) and Jacobson, I was providing support for the idea of controlling black soot emissions as a more effective way of addressing global warming than restricting CO2 emissions. Hansen puts a lot of emphasis on this point as part of the "Alternative Scenario", and therefore I felt/feel that there is a decent amount of backing for it. That said, one of the reasons Hansen states that it would be easier to implement globally is that Third World nations could be "sold" on the health benefits of controlling black soot emissions, considering the impact of pulmonary health problems on their economies. So they could actually gain an economic and environmental benefit. On my one brief trip to China, I can attest to the haziness of the cities and countryside, and there have been some neat satellite pictures that show how bad it can be.
I'll provide the link below and preface it by saying that it's a big image.
China Pollution, 2 January 2000
Maybe if the Chinese are presented with a few more images like this, they'll start to understand the magnitude of the problem (which is only one of several pressing environmental problems in China).
You're begging a second question: even if global warming is real, is it on average a bad thing or not? My position is that it's a good thing, on the whole. It will increase the amount of habitable land on earth, increase agricultural productivity, and make the world, on average, a more pleasant place. The earth, compared with geological history, is still very cold, even ignoring the ice-ages which have been disturbingly frequent in our recent past. 9 million years ago, a mere instant of geological time, there were rhinoceri and camels roaming Nebraska. Even the most extreme projections don't forecast us reaching that level of warming.
In my opinion the real culprit is the evolution of type II photosynthesis, a hundred or so million years ago. That was what reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide down to its present very low levels. Back in the time of the dinosaurs, CO2 was probably close to a percent of the atmosphere.
we ought to be doing what we can to explore alternative energy sources and get ourselves weaned from dependency on fossil fuels, much of which are under the control of unstable and unfriendly governments.
There are good other reasons for looking at other fuel sources, I agree.
Also, some conservation would go a long way- there is no excuse for the excessive consumption patterns in this country. That is hardly "conservative" behavior.....
I'm not sure what you mean by 'excessive consumption patterns'. Who gets to say what's excessive? I live on a gravel road in the country, and I do a lot of outdoor stuff, so I drive a Jeep. I'd undoubtedly use less gas driving a Neon, but I'm willing to pay the extra for gas for the improvement in the way I live. Why shouldn't I?
There are others who think the solar contribution is much larger. Observe the plot from a 1991 paper in the journal Science Correlation with solar cycle that correlates global temperature with the solar cycle. This explains the ups and owns of the global temperature record without having to rely on CO2 concentrations.
Variations in the length of the solar cycle affect the amount of energy reaching earth from the sun, the primary driver of global temperature. This appears to explain the major features of the temperature record, not just 1/3 of the warming. This correlation has been extended back centuries by others and it provides a pretty good match with the reconstructed global temperature record.
This is my first attempt at a link. The web address is http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html in case the link doesn't work.
Solar blow to low cloud could be warming planet
And below is how the IPCC evaluated it. One thing that I think is of interest when you read this (if you choose to) is that it shows how much research is considered by the scientific arm of the IPCC. Many of the criticisms of the IPCC process are of the "politicization" of the science findings when they attempt to translate them into policy recommendations. I agree with much of that criticism. But I also think that the IPCC does a pretty good job of evaluating the state of climate science. Where they've gone overboard is in not stating maximum likelihood parameters for their predictive models, and that allows the media to run wild with the worst-case (and usually quite implausible) scenarios.
I believe the IPCC accepts the hockey stick temperature record (temperature is flat over the last 1000 years until about 1900) and ignores the medieval warm period and the little ice age as supposedly not being representative of the globe as a whole. If they recognized these earlier temperature excursions, they would have to admit that things other than greenhouse gases affect temperature, namely variation in solar radiation.
Prof. Lindzen of MIT, who participated in the IPCC study, described the IPCC process as follows,
"The preparation of the report, itself, was subject to pressure. There were usually several people working on every few pages. Naturally there were disagreements, but these were usually hammered out in a civilized manner. However, throughout the drafting sessions, IPCC 'coordinators' would go around insisting that criticisms of models be toned down, and that 'motherhood' statements be inserted to the effect that models might still be correct despite the cited faults. Refusals were usually met with ad hominem attacks. I personally witnessed coauthors forced to assert their 'green' credentials in defense of their statements."
This sounds like a debate on evolution chaired by a fundamentalist church.
Your link to the IPCC discussion of the correlation between solar activity and global temperature actually referred to discussions they had about how the sun might influence cloud cover. Cloud cover may indeed be one of the mechanisms at work here, but perhaps not the only one. Nowhere did I see where the IPCC refuted the correlation between solar activity and global temperature. They are just finding fault with theories about how the sun could cause this to happen. That is not the same as refuting that it happens.
Energy balance calculations show that solar radiation explains most of the earth's temperature level. When variations in the sun's behavior correlate with global temperatures for hundreds of years without any need to invoke soot, aerosol particles, volcanic eruptions, el Ninos, etc., it is a strong argument in favor of the sun being the main cause of global warming.
Some wags have suggested that human activity on earth must be causing the corresponding variations in solar behavior. That makes as much sense as attributing the bulk of global temperature variations to greenhouse gas.
This might constitute a refutation:
On the length of the solar cycle and the Earth's climate
This appears to be from Ralph Cicerone, who was the chair of the National Academy of Sciences panel that evaluated the "state of the science" regarding global warming at the behest of the Bush Administration.
It also appears that the 1991 paper showed the correlation without proposing a mechanism. The 1997 paper proposed a mechanism. The IPCC section that I provided examined (by looking at quite a few research papers) whether the proposed mechanism was viable, and they concluded that the evidence supporting it was weak.
Note that there have been other papers recently (notably one by Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) that strengthened the case for solar forcing of global temperature, particularly for such events as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Here's the paper reference:
Bond, G., Kromer, B., Beer, J., Muscheler, R., Evans, M.N., Showers, W., Hoffmann, S., Lotti-Bond, R., Hajdas, I. and Bonani, G. 2001. Persistent solar influence on North Atlantic climate during the Holocene. Science 294: 2130-2136.
Here's the abstract of that paper:
"Surface winds and surface ocean hydrography in the subpolar North Atlantic appear to have been influenced by variations in solar output through the entire Holocene. The evidence comes from a close correlation between inferred changes in production rates of the cosmogenic nuclides carbon-14 and beryllium-10 and centennial to millennial time scale changes in proxies of drift ice measured in deep-sea sediment cores. A solar forcing mechanism therefore may underlie at least the Holocene segment of the North Atlantic's "1500-year" cycle. The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the solar signals and transmitting them globally."
So he's got a mechanism and data that shows it works. So the main "bone of contention" (and one that I don't think has been entirely resolved) is whether the currently observed warming is still primarily a consequence of emegence from the Little Ice Age solar minimum period or whether it is a combination of solar and human effects. The main factor weighing against the "emergence from the LIA" scenario is that the Sun has been active and hasn't had a sunspot minimum similar to the Maunder Minimum, a 400-year period in which there were virtually no sunspots.
Also, the Bond paper cites a paper by Shindell et al. in which model results indicate that small changes in solar output can affect the stratosphere and influence global climate.
So... where does that leave us? Essentially this: there's NO doubt that the Earth is warming. Solar variability could be part of that. So also could greenhouse gas-induced warming. If both are important (which I suspect is the case), then we would be making any warming caused by the Sun (which we can't control) worse due to our activities (which we can probably to some extent control). The difference between what we can control and what we choose to control might be the difference between the survival or demise of many of Earth's ecosystems. And that brings us back to the subject of the paper that kicked off this thread: whatever the cause of the warming, it is being felt, and responded to, by many components of major ecoysystems around the world.
The chart shows a pronounced retardation of thawing over the time period shown. I.E., most of the curves, if fitted to a straight line, would have a positive slope (toward later thaws). Only if one ignores the bulk of the data and focuses on the (extremely) recent past, does any "early thaw" show. In fact, these curves constitute persuasive evidence that nothing whatever has changed, and that any variation shown "recently" is part of the normal "random walk" nature of the data.
--Boris
The spike was caused by "El Nino". This is a well-known fact.
--Boris
I'd never want to be one to interpret (or misinterpret) the conclusions of the authors. Each of these is a different body of water (or river), and they behave differently. We wouldn't expect the climate in Europe to be the same as that of the United States, would we? The analysis of all 26 sites studied provides an amalgamated summary of earlier spring thaws and later autumnal/winter freezes. It's more pronounced for some sites than others. Many more of the records are for spring thaw than for winter freeze.
The graph is also a subset of all the reporting sites. For one thing, the site in Japan (Lake Suwa), which was the only site with a trend opposite to that of the other 25 sites, is not shown in this graph. It appears as a separate figure in the paper.
Note that the Illinois last freeze temperature data cited by Michaels in the World Climate Report (which I know you read) supports the amalgamated trend. And Michaels even provides the mechanism.
Now, if you want to do your own statistical analysis of the data, why don't you contact Dr. Magnuson and request the opportunity? Here's his Web page, which has his email address listed:
I'm sorry, but the new link you provided refutting the correlation between solar behavior and global temperature was not on a server my provider accesses. So, I'm in dark about the argument you cite.
The correlation exists; I've seen it in plots extending back centuries. One can't refute such a correlation by saying you don't understand it or that proposed mechanisms don't explain it. Maybe the proposed mechanisms are wrong -- that doesn't invalidate the correlation. This sounds like a 'bumblebees can't fly' argument. I know you can get strange apparent correlations between various thing that fall apart with additional data, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
I agree with those who argue that high correlation between surface temperatures and solar irradiance (or its proxies such as length of the solar cycle) can be expected only if solar variability has been the dominant source of climate change.
Statements like this have been made by George Reid of NOAA, a supporter of an anthropogenic effect in recent decades. However, if Reid were correct about human effects in recent decades, then Friis-Christensen and Lassen's 1991 correlation would not be able to cover the 19th and 20th centuries as well as it does. It covers this period very well without any anthropogenic effect or addition of short-term contributions like volcanoes, el Ninos, or shiny Cadillac hood ornaments. etc.
If a significant greenhouse gas effect were added to the Friis-Christensen and Lassen correlation, then the resulting combined correlation could not match both the pre-industrial and post industrial periods. This is the math modeler in me speaking.
I was commenting on the article. The article was published and presented to the general public. At FR folks post and comment on these articles as they effect what the general public gets as the info that shapes their thinking.
The article claims observation of extensive range changes for as much species of wildlife w/o commenting on any other possible cause, only warming by a few tenths of a degree. Since I'm quite familiar with a few tenths of a degree change in temp in physical systems and biological systems, I find it unbelievable that animals and plants could tell the difference. There has to be other explanations for the range change.
Try entering it directly rather than with my link:
http://www.cicero.uio.no/media/1157.pdf
Also, this link is to one of the papers that is cited in the above paper. It's quite interesting. Since I can, I'll take the liberty of copying the abstract here (the page provides a link to another PDF). Don't miss the last sentence.
Solar cycle length hypothesis appears to support the IPCC on global warming
"Since the discovery of a striking correlation between 1-2-2-2-1 filtered solar cycle lengths and the 11-year running average of Northern Hemisphere land air temperatures there have been widespread speculations as to whether these findings would rule out any significant contributions to global warming from the enhanced concentrations of greenhouse gases. The "solar hypothesis" (as we will term this assumption) claims that solar activity causes a significant component of the global mean temperature to vary in phase opposite to the filtered solar cycle lengths. In an earlier paper we have demonstrated that for data covering the period 1860-1980 the solar hypothesis does not rule out any significant contribution from man-made greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols. The present analysis goes a step further. We analyse the period 1579-1987 and find that the solar hypothesis - instead of contradicting - appears to support the assumption of a significant warming due to human activities. We have tentatively "corrected" the historical Northern Hemisphere land air temperature anomalies by removing the assumed effects of human activities. These are represented by Northern Hemisphere land air temperature anomalies calculated as the contributions from man-made greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols by using an upwelling diffusion-energy balance model similar to the model of Wigley and Raper employed in the Second Assessment Report of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It turns out that the agreement of the filtered solar cycle lengths with the "corrected" temperature anomalies is substantially better than with the historical anomalies, with the mean square deviation reduced by 36 % for a climate sensitivity of 2.5 oC, the central value of the IPCC assessment, and by 43 % for the best-fit value of 1.7 oC. Therefore our findings support a total reversal of the common assumption that a verification of the solar hypothesis would challenge the IPCC assessment of man-made global warming."
The correlation exists; I've seen it in plots extending back centuries. One can't refute such a correlation by saying you don't understand it or that proposed mechanisms don't explain it. Maybe the proposed mechanisms are wrong -- that doesn't invalidate the correlation. This sounds like a 'bumblebees can't fly' argument. I know you can get strange apparent correlations between various thing that fall apart with additional data, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
See the above abstract. Apparently the correlation does exist; and it's a better correlation if you add in the effects of greenhouse gases. Meaning that the solar+greenhouse effect may be quite potent. Meaning that if greenhouse gases are accentuating a solar effect, we might have something to be concerned about.
I agree with those who argue that high correlation between surface temperatures and solar irradiance (or its proxies such as length of the solar cycle) can be expected only if solar variability has been the dominant source of climate change.
I can't tell. Certainly if you read Hansen, albedo effects are a dominant forcing. I.e., reflection or absorption of solar radiation. Any change in solar variability would accentuate any albedo changes.
Statements like this have been made by George Reid of NOAA, a supporter of an anthropogenic effect in recent decades. However, if Reid were correct about human effects in recent decades, then Friis-Christensen and Lassen's 1991 correlation would not be able to cover the 19th and 20th centuries as well as it does. It covers this period very well without any anthropogenic effect or addition of short-term contributions like volcanoes, el Ninos, or shiny Cadillac hood ornaments. etc.
Again, having only read parts of these papers, I can't say for sure. The previous Laut and Gundermann paper (cited in the link that didn't work) supposedly demonstrated "if fictitious temperature trends were added to the correct temperature series, then the correlations from Lassen and Friis-Christensen's method were equally convincing." This constitutes a questioning of the methodology -- never a good thing to see. There's also a reference given in the first link to a paper by Seip and Fuglestvedt that questions the forcing mechanism. Unfortunately it looks like you're going to have to read Norwegian to figure out what they're saying.
An aside: it appears that examining the solar effects on climate has been a fierce battle in Norwegian science for some reason.
If a significant greenhouse gas effect were added to the Friis-Christensen and Lassen correlation, then the resulting combined correlation could not match both the pre-industrial and post industrial periods. This is the math modeler in me speaking.
Well, according to what Laut and Gundermann are apparently saying, the match is better with greenhouse gas effects than without them. So I'll have to settle for thinking that the solar-climate correlations described by Bond et al. are better than the Friis-Christensen theory for now.
It always seems like these discussions are acrimonious. I want to thank you for the opportunity to learn more about this aspect of the climate system. I think there is still more to be discovered in this facet of the Earth's complicated climate system, so I don't want you to think that I've dismissed the concept. Based on what I can find, it appears that there is significant criticism of Friis-Christensen et al. But I took pains to cite Bond et al. to show that current climate research is still discovering previously unknown correlations between solar activity and climate, and there may be more yet to be discovered.
Two short ideas: one, the article mentions the change in the timing of the seasons as one factor. Two, just a few tenths of a degree could significantly affect temperature ranges on the slopes of mountains, which can affect both the plants living at a certain altitude and the range of altitudes that given plant species can exist in. An example from last week in Maryland; we had some late spring freezes, which harm the fruit tree flowers. If that kept happening in the wild, there would be less new growth of a particular kind of tree due to less seed crop. An example from Florida in 1984, which I remember because of the spike in orange juice prices: a disastrous freeze virtually wiped out all of the citrus groves north of Tampa (actually the latitude of Tampa). There had been citrus groves around Gainesville; there aren't now. Slight changes in mean temperature allow/indicate greater excursions in maxima and minima. Just one "bad" maximum or minimum could significantly alter an ecosystem.
I have serious doubts that the effect of a century of rising CO2 shows up basically in the last ten-year period. I know the temperature record is imperfect, but I feel it is it is unrealistic to relate this sudden surge to CO2. Also, it would be interesting to see even more recent data than that in the link you provided. There was a large el Nino underway about the end of their timeframe.
Another explanation may be the very high solar flux levels of sunspot cycles 21 and 22. Cycle 22 peaked in 1991 or thereabouts. They were much higher than previous cycles if I remember correctly. Isn't solar flux basically the energy going through a unit area, like watts per square meter? Fortunately, cycle 23 currently underway now has a lower solar flux level than cycles 21 and 22. This has led folks to speculate that we may be entering a period of cooling.
The comments you cite about problems with the methodology of the Friss-Christensen and Lassen correlation are troubling. I need to look into them. Thanks.
With respect to solar radiation, take a look at Solar flux and sunspots. This site presents data on solar flux, sunspot numbers and a measure of magnetism called the A Index. Click on year 2000 and scroll down through the plots. Observe the striking correlation between solar flux and sunspot numbers. When sunspot numbers go up, so does solar flux. Then look at some year near the bottom of a sunspot cycle when there are few sunspots, like 1985. The level of solar flux is much lower in 1985 than in 2000.
The strong relation between sunspot numbers and solar flux would seem to explain the correlation between the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum period that had almost no sunspots. Oh, I forgot. The IPCC has thrown out the Little Ice Age as a local phenomenon despite its appearance in temperature proxies all over the globe. Can't have that sun doing things to global temperatures.
Someone from the Wilson Observatory made the comment that doubling the CO2 concentration would have roughly the same effect as a 0.1% change in solar radiation. That is certainly in the range of what has been observed for solar variability.
Please show in the last 10,000 years where the climate was in any kind of long-term steady-state climate. We've had warming. And cooling. And a Little Ice Age not very long ago.
Why is a steady-state climate a requirement? One of the main reasons researchers are doing research is to try and separate natural climate variability from human-caused variability. Nobody insists on or expects that climate would be in steady-state if there was no human activity.
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