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."
I see precious few reports from the Global Warming crowd say that climate variability could be from natural fluctuations - even though the climate record over the last 10,000 years are rife with natural fluctations. That is the point I am making here.
Nobody insists on or expects that climate would be in steady-state if there was no human activity.
Oh, really? Then why are we constantly barraged with reports showing that increases in temperatures over the last few decades are proof of human-induced global warming?
All I can do is cite what appear to be reputable sources.
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.
But there's no doubt about that! The question is whether or not changes in solar flux can appreciably affect climate. That's the reason for the whole search for a climate forcing mechanism related to solar variability. The Bond paper found a linkage because they also looked at radionuclides that are related to solar activity.
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.
I've been over this with a lot of people. Until very recently, the evidence for the Medieval Warm Period was not as strong as for the Little Ice Age. The recent tree-ring data record of Esper (just published in Nature or Science) strengthens the "strength" of the MWP. Nobody ever really doubted there was one, because the Vikings couldn't have settled in Greenland without one. The Mann tree-ring reconstruction cited by the IPCC didn't eliminate the Little Ice Age (as some skeptics have claimed): it integrated records in which it was quite strong (England and some locations in Europe) with other records where it wasn't as strong or it was timed differently. In fact, Mann has an encyclopedia article on the Little Ice Age online that shows a number of these data sets (it's a PDF document):
Look at the figure on page 5. How anyone can look at this data and say that Mann and the IPCC tried to get rid of the "Little Ice Age" is incomprehensible.
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.
And that's quite likely true for the full range of solar variability, including the Maunder Minimum. But the question that needs to be better addressed is what's happening now.
You will not find one scientific paper that states the warming that has occurred since approximately the 1970s is "proof" of human-induced global warming. For one thing, real scientists don't use words like "proof". What you will find are papers that suggest that the warming observed both over the 20th century and more noticeably in the past few decades is consistent with what would be expected from a contribution due to human activities. Models have to be used to try and extract the human contribution from the natural variability.
The media frequently overstates what scientists say. And that's where you're probably reading about the issue. It's a good idea to try and get more of the original sources. The WWW makes that much easier now than even five years ago.
I should probably have addressed this comment together with the other one.
If by the "Global Warming" crowd you mean Greenpeacers and Sierra Clubbers, you're right, you won't hear about natural fluctuations, because they are mostly idiots who can't adjust to reality. The reality, and this is what reputable scientists will tell you, is that there is always going to be a background of natural variability. When you examine the record of the 20th century (and if you go to reply 46 in this thread, you can see a generally-agreed-upon version of what's happened), you see what appears to be a strong warming at the end of the century. I can point you to several articles by climate scientists who will cite this and other data sets (such as from global borehole data) that indicate such a rapid warming is not seen in the past 10,000 years EXCEPT during the actual emergence from the Ice Age, when there were some abrupt 5-10 degree C changes due to reorganization of ocean circulation. In the 10,000 year record, it is rare to find temperature changes exceeding 1 degree C per century. The rate for the 20th century in toto was 0.6 degrees C (most skeptics with a decent science background accept that). The moderation of the rate that occurred mid-century helped slow it down. The rate over the past 25 years is around 2.5 degrees C per century (and that's what the best predictions for the next century are converging on). This rate is essentially out of the range for normal climate variability, and that's why it's suspicious. And that's why more research is needed; and that's why we should listen to the scientists and not the panicky alarmists who are trying to translate what they are saying.
A small increase in total energy will not result in significant changes in local temps, because the energy, or temp., of any particular location in the atmosphere is a random variable. Random variables follow a gaussian dist and the center of that dist is the average E. Storms are due to pressure differentials from atmospheric locations with different E's. So if the number of locations with different E, NEi, of a particular Ei, are plotted against Ei for the initial and final E's, in this case the higher temp envelope will be the same as the lower temp envelope, shifted around the higher average E2. The 1% change in avg. E isn't going to effect sigma, the std dev, for the 2 systems, because nothing significant was introduced to effect variability. So storm intensity will scale proportional to the avg E's for the 2 temps.
I copied this from elsewhere, but the same thing holds true for pressure, temps, or energy. They are random variables and sigma isn't effected, by what in this case can be certainly no more than a 0.2% change in E(0.6oC). The reason for these observed changes is to be found elsewhere, either in normal variability, or in some other cyclical changes. There is no way that introducing a few tenths of a degree from the overall average is going to result in a large change in a local system.
The link to a John Daly site mentioned in post 47 of this thread cited some strong evidence of the global nature of the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age seems much more pronounced globally than Mann's temperature curve would lead one to believe. In effect, Mann averaged the Little Ice Age out of the data, when many other sets of data he didn't use seem to indicate it was real and global in extent. I had read a number of the original articles cited by Daly when they came out, so I was floored when I saw the temperature history the IPCC uses (Mann's).
I'm all for letting Mann's temperature curve be thrashed out in peer review. In a sense, Daly is giving the Mann tenperature curve a public peer review, and it doesn't pass his criteria. He's an expert in the field; I'm not. Peer review can be a flawed process, as you no doubt know. If your paper is sent only to people who agree with you, your paper gets accepted with little constructive criticism. It is almost a useless process when that happens. I have no idea what peer review Mann's papers went through.
I've seen statements to the effect that a correlation between the solar indices and modeled solar irradiance with the earth's temperature has a significant confidence level exceeding 99% (Hoyt and Schatten, The role of the Sun in Climate Change, pg 195). That is a very high statistical confidence level for the period since about 1700. The model they cite doesn't include greenhouse gas or aerosols.
That is not to say people have determined in detail the mechanism behind the correlation. They haven't.
Some correlations, like the one you cited above, show a small difference between their solar parameters and the observed temperature during the last part of the 20th century. Perhaps this is the effect of greenhouse gases. Whatever it is, the effect is relatively small. If solar radiation is indeed beginning to decrease, we'll need even that small amount of heating to minimize crop failures. Having the sun go into a prolonged down cycle seems worse to me than a relatively minor temperature increase.
Daly's an intelligent observer, but he doesn't qualify as an expert in my book. He hasn't published any original research in the field. (Not that everyone who does that qualifies as an expert, but I think it's a necessary prerequisite to be considered an expert.)
Now that the Esper et al. data is out, I think there's going to be a really serious examination of the entire tree-ring proxy temperature data issue. If you haven't seen the article about the Esper data, here's a link to the World Climate Report article about it.
You made a good point about peer-review. Geophysical Research Letters, where Mann published his data, is not as rigorous as Science, where Esper published his. However, if you look at his record, Mann has two first-author papers in Nature.
Looking at his list, and thinking about solar variability, I was reminded about this paper, which I'd seen on the Goddard Institute of Space Studies Web site. Daly mentioned it in a recent comment about Mann and the "Hockey Stick".
Shindell, D.T., Schmidt, G.A., Mann, M.E., Rind, D., Waple, A., Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum, Science, 294, 2149-2152, 2001.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/gpol/abstracts/2001/ShindellSchmidtM1.html">Shindell et al. 2001 (has a link to the complete PDF document)
Here's Daly's take on it:
Sorry.
I went to Idaho over the weekend and talked to some old farmer friends who have been keeping ground and frost temperature records for over 50 years. The consensus was that the growing season is getting shorter, but that the reason was because the water table was getting lower (consequently the ground would get colder in the winter especially with less snow cover). Utah,Wyoming and Idaho are facing drought situations and the Snake river may not flow continuously this year. But they stressed that all of this is normal, if they don’t have enough water then they have too much, or its too hot or too cold, but I digress.
So to sum it all up. All of the predictions I have seen have been wrong or meaningless (like the ocean levels will rise, lower or stay the same :) ) or they are so far in the future that they are again meaningless. Kind of like predicting where an airplane is going to land based on its current heading just after it takes off. So, do you know of any computer model that has accurately predicted the last 150 years with prior data within a tolerance of less than 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit? In fact I would settle for a program that would accurately predict the direction of the temperature change each year based on prior years data.
If you can produce this program I will make a considerable investment in the company or back the University or do whatever it takes to get my hands on the source code. But I have been down this road before, with perpetually energy, fusion, voice recognition (some hope here), fuel cells (they work but gas is too cheap), etc. My internal alarm is screaming SCAM. The reason I want this program is with very little modification it should be able to predict the stock market - the stock market has a lot fewer variables and one of the biggest is the weather :).
Short of having a program with this capability, can you show me the mathematical proof of how you can isolate one variable out of thousands of variables and attribute any meaning to that variable, ie prove that that variable is the most statistically meaningful or even how meaningful it is. All of this without knowing what all the variables are. You seem to like Soot and CO2, my choices are blacktop, clouds and solar radiation ( I used to live in Phoenix and it was always much cooler out in the desert ) other people seem to like deforestation, CFC,s, irrigation, snow cover, dams, solar flares, the earths orbit, black body radiation, volcanoes, butterflies in the Sudan, ocean currents, etc.
I am guessing that you can’t come up with the Computer program or Mathematical proof, so maybe we can simplify it further. Has the amount of cloud coverage world wide increased or decreased over the years? What is it? Does cloud coverage cause an increase or decrease in the temperature? Above or below the clouds? Does an increase in the temperature increase the amount of cloud coverage? Are clouds and water vapor the number one greenhouse gas? How much water vapor is in the atmosphere? Is it constant or is it temperature dependent? It seems to me that any climate study or computer modeling would have to definitively answer these questions before they could possibly progress to anything like aerosols or emissions. When I look, what I find is yes, no and maybe, am I missing anything? Could it be that introducing particulates in the atmosphere helps the water vapor to condense and rain (cloud seeding). Thus soot may help cool the world by pulling out the number one greenhouse gas?
By the way when I fly above a cloud level the temperature is generally higher than flying at the same altitude without the clouds.
I went to Idaho over the weekend and talked to some old farmer friends who have been keeping ground and frost temperature records for over 50 years. The consensus was that the growing season is getting shorter, but that the reason was because the water table was getting lower (consequently the ground would get colder in the winter especially with less snow cover). Utah,Wyoming and Idaho are facing drought situations and the Snake river may not flow continuously this year. But they stressed that all of this is normal, if they don’t have enough water then they have too much, or its too hot or too cold, but I digress.
Only one comment: the last time it was this hot (consistently) in the United States was in the 1930s. The "Dust Bowl" period. Since we're facing a drought in Maryland, and I just read that the Colorado snowpack is way down, it may bear watching.
So to sum it all up. All of the predictions I have seen have been wrong or meaningless (like the ocean levels will rise, lower or stay the same :) ) or they are so far in the future that they are again meaningless. Kind of like predicting where an airplane is going to land based on its current heading just after it takes off. So, do you know of any computer model that has accurately predicted the last 150 years with prior data within a tolerance of less than 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit? In fact I would settle for a program that would accurately predict the direction of the temperature change each year based on prior years data.
Predicting the future and postdicting the past are too different things because you can specify what the input variables were for the past, and you can't do that reliably for the future. As for predicting each year's weather based on last year's, fuggedaboudit. But you might look into how Dr. Gray formulates his hurricane forecasts. And you'll get a sense of how accurate such things are.
If you can produce this program I will make a considerable investment in the company or back the University or do whatever it takes to get my hands on the source code. But I have been down this road before, with perpetually energy, fusion, voice recognition (some hope here), fuel cells (they work but gas is too cheap), etc. My internal alarm is screaming SCAM. The reason I want this program is with very little modification it should be able to predict the stock market - the stock market has a lot fewer variables and one of the biggest is the weather :).
Climate predictions don't work that way. They are basically indications of the probability that future variables will fall within a given range. And note that I am not a modeler or mathematician, that's just how the modelers describe them.
Short of having a program with this capability, can you show me the mathematical proof of how you can isolate one variable out of thousands of variables and attribute any meaning to that variable, ie prove that that variable is the most statistically meaningful or even how meaningful it is. All of this without knowing what all the variables are. You seem to like Soot and CO2, my choices are blacktop, clouds and solar radiation ( I used to live in Phoenix and it was always much cooler out in the desert ) other people seem to like deforestation, CFC,s, irrigation, snow cover, dams, solar flares, the earths orbit, black body radiation, volcanoes, butterflies in the Sudan, ocean currents, etc.
That's a bit of a stretch to answer. It's all about examining correlation. Is one input variable more strongly correlated with another? It's similar to how epidemiologists determine probable cause and effect (like the recent study that showed a higher incidence of fetal deformities in urban areas with higher ozone and carbon monoxide levels). After correlation comes testing to see if the observed correlation has a related mechanism that is explanatory of the apparent linkage.
I am guessing that you can’t come up with the Computer program or Mathematical proof, so maybe we can simplify it further.
Has the amount of cloud coverage world wide increased or decreased over the years? What is it?
Apparently a slight increase.
Does cloud coverage cause an increase or decrease in the temperature? Above or below the clouds?
Depends on the altitude of the clouds.
Does an increase in the temperature increase the amount of cloud coverage? Are clouds and water vapor the number one greenhouse gas?
Water vapor is the number one greenhouse gas. An increase in temperature increases the relative humidity. That doesn't necessarily mean more cloud coverage.
How much water vapor is in the atmosphere? Is it constant or is it temperature dependent?
It's temperature-dependent.
It seems to me that any climate study or computer modeling would have to definitively answer these questions before they could possibly progress to anything like aerosols or emissions. When I look, what I find is yes, no and maybe, am I missing anything? Could it be that introducing particulates in the atmosphere helps the water vapor to condense and rain (cloud seeding). Thus soot may help cool the world by pulling out the number one greenhouse gas?
Soot aerosols appear to be cloud nuclei. The main way that they would cool is by increasing cloud cover, which increases the albedo of the Earth. But black soot actually should absorb radiation, which increases the temperature. For black soot, the function is supposedly positive (increasing temperature). But not all aerosol emissions are black soot.
Final note: Clouds are the number one variable that is difficult to characterize in climate models.
By the way when I fly above a cloud level the temperature is generally higher than flying at the same altitude without the clouds.
Yes, that seems like an important component of the model.
How do they handle increasing rock density and compaction with depth? For example, shales may lose some of the layers of water between clay platelets with compaction. Did they measure thermal conductivity of the rock with depth? Hopefully they did.
If rocks become more conductive with depth and the effect is not taken into account, temperature should curve upward slightly with increasing depth, making it seem like a record of past colder temperatures.
That is the perspective I take. Personally, I am really coming to hate cars, especially in the city. It is coming to the point where you risk your life to ride a bike, you cannot take a walk without the incessant buzz of passing cars, and kids can no longer play games in the streets.
And then my stomach is turned when I hear how forest rangers wear resporatories in Yellow Stone Park because of the snowmobiles. Some toys we can do without. The National Parks and Forests are for me sanctuaries preserved from the noise of machines to be enjoyed by man.
The problem with the environmentalists taking up such causes (except the last) is that for them it is a religion, and as in most religions they worship something other than man, in fact the whole movement is quite antihuman. Man is the parasite in paradise.
Boy, that was pretty bungled.
I really liked your statement “ As for predicting each year's weather based on last year's, fuggedaboudit.” So if we can’t reliably predict each years weather then how can we possibly determine if some variable is a causal or a coincidental factor? That determination always requires some form of a baseline or steady state to compare it with. If the baseline is variable then a normal range has to be established and anything out of the normal range may then be attributed to that variable (if that is the only variable that has changed) and I haven’t seen anything that shows me that the climate is outside its normal range. Trying to spot trends inside the normal range is both trivial and meaningless, like trying to predict heads or tails on a coin toss.
I actually use this method in trading by setting up a straddle (using puts and calls) so that if the stock stays within its normal range I make money whether it goes up or down. Right now the stock market is perfect for straddles :)
It seems that the weather acts a lot like the stock market, purely coincidental I assure you. If there is anything I have learned, it is that the forecasters are always wrong, especially the Gloom and Doomers. It also appears that the Gloom and Doomers in the investing world have a lot more “evidence” than the Gloom and Doomers in the weather forecasting world do.
Having said all that. It appears that the Northwest is facing a serious drought in the next few years if the precipitation doesn’t increase :( I wonder, do you think a little more or a little less pollution would help? Or do you think that maybe we just can’t effect the weather much anyway?
Good questions, and I am utterly unqualified to answer them. But the Web page that I found (link below) provides a lot of information that may help.
Temperature Measurements in Boreholes: An Overview of Engineering and Scientific Applications
The section on paleoclimatology indicates (via references) that this aspect of borehole temperature logging, which is a common measurement, has been examined since 1923.
I'm going to save that quote and use it when some of my harsher critics accuse me of being dishonest.
I really liked your statement “ As for predicting each year's weather based on last year's, fuggedaboudit.” So if we can’t reliably predict each years weather then how can we possibly determine if some variable is a causal or a coincidental factor? determination always requires some form of a baseline or steady state to compare it with. If the baseline is variable then a normal range has to be established and anything out of the normal range may then be attributed to that variable (if that is the only variable that has changed) and I haven’t seen anything that shows me that the climate is outside its normal range. Trying to spot trends inside the normal range is both trivial and meaningless, like trying to predict heads or tails on a coin toss.
I was on a Web site recently that showed precipitation expectations based on what has happened for previous El Niño years, given that there is a developing El Niño condition in the Pacific now. Might have been the NOAA site. The one below isn't what I was thinking of but it is similar, and it provides an idea of what might be somewhat predictable. It also indicates what aspects of the climate system are examined to make predictions.
Current Monthly/Seasonal Outlook
I actually use this method in trading by setting up a straddle (using puts and calls) so that if the stock stays within its normal range I make money whether it goes up or down. Right now the stock market is perfect for straddles :)
I'm glad it works for you!
It seems that the weather acts a lot like the stock market, purely coincidental I assure you. If there is anything I have learned, it is that the forecasters are always wrong, especially the Gloom and Doomers. It also appears that the Gloom and Doomers in the investing world have a lot more “evidence” than the Gloom and Doomers in the weather forecasting world do.
Let me provide another link, speaking of Gloom and Doom:
Quote: "Good fortune has been manifest during the last seven years in the form of a persistent upper-air trough along the U.S. East Coast during much of each hurricane season. The presence of this upper-level trough has caused a large portion of otherwise northwest moving major hurricanes to recurve to the north before they reached the U.S. coastline as is evident in Fig. 4. Also, more systems have formed at higher latitudes and these storms tended to move away from the U.S. Note that though many major hurricanes passed close to the U.S. coastline, only three made landfall. This run of good luck cannot be expected to continue."
If I was a mutual fund manager, I'd be slowly reducing my holdings of major insurance providers.
Having said all that. It appears that the Northwest is facing a serious drought in the next few years if the precipitation doesn’t increase :( I wonder, do you think a little more or a little less pollution would help? Or do you think that maybe we just can’t effect the weather much anyway?
It's funny you should ask. Yesterday I replied to you with something that I was thinking, which is that the previous warmest part of the century was the 1930s, when the "Dust Bowl" took place. On the radio today I heard that agricultural scientists in Virginia are examining the 1930s to try and figure out what might happen with the current drought. Also heard on the radio that the Potomac (which is about 20 miles south of me) was measured at its lowest March level ever. These are not good signs. On the East Coast we could use a couple of landfalling tropical storms this summer.
Do I think a little more or a little less pollution could help? I would normally say less is better. There may be a slight link between Midwest industrial emissions and precipitation, but it's minimal. I don't think there is much that we can do to control the weather; what I think we can do is control our use of resources. Given what they are facing in many parts of the country right now, I think a lot of farmers may be examining the use of drip irrigation and other techniques that are a lot more efficient. If agriculture, industry, and household use can significantly reduce water use, it can have an impact.
There was a lot of derision about the lower-volume toilets that were mandated a few years ago. But I'm pleased that I'm only flushing away about 50% of the water that I'd otherwise use. I'd say that I only need to flush twice about 10% of the time, so that's a substantial water savings when multiplied by the number of households with such new appliances. If showers, dishwashers, washing machines, etc. were updated (suitable tax incentives would help GREATLY), then a lot of the problem would (ahem) dry up.
And you asked ME questions about it? I'm much better on results than techniques!
My work on this was over 30 years ago. I didn't work in temperature logging. I and others conceptualized how to build a borehole temperature tool to do certain things, and the company got a patent.
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