Rapid Arctic Warming Causing Polar Jet Stream Shifts

Weather in Australia this year is hot, weird and erratic. It seems high temp records are being broken repeatedly here down-under.

My favorite article on global warming was written by Isaac Asimov for the T V guide in 1975. It was reprinted in his book The Beginning and the End. He explains how the environment is balanced by positive feedback from greenho use gasses and negative feedback from the Earth's albedo. As the earth warm s up, the seas warm and the north pole melts. This causes greater snow fall in the North American continent. We eventually get an ice age which freeze s the north pole and cools the seas. The glaciers start to recede and the p lanet warms up again. This has happened over and over again in the past.

It's sort of like a PID or a lead lag circuit. Human activity is not changi ng the circuitry of the environment. We are tweaking variables in the circu it. It's like twisting pots to tune a circuit. Are we causing climate change? No. Are we affecting climate change? Yes. Is there anything we can do to stop climate change? No.

Human activity might be speeding up the coming of the next ice age. It migh t be delaying the next ice age and causing the earth to have a higher peak temperature and higher sea levels. But the earth without human activity wou ld not be a garden of Eden with a stable in environment.

TV guide in 1975.

Back in 1975, rather fewer of the facts were accessible.

e environment is balanced by positive feedback from greenhouse gasses and n egative feedback from the Earth's albedo. As the earth warms up, the seas w arm and the north pole melts. This causes greater snow fall in the North Am erican continent. We eventually get an ice age which freezes the north pole and cools the seas. The glaciers start to recede and the planet warms up a gain. This has happened over and over again in the past.

Not quite this way. The nearest approximation to what is going on now is th e

which happened some 55.8 million years ago. It's not entirely clear why the average global temperature shot up by 5C and why there was a large decreas e in 13C/12C ratio of marine and terrestrial carbonates and of organic carb on deposited on ocean basins.

It probably reflects a massive methane injection into the atmosphere.

Temperature rise back then was almost as fast we are seeing now.

ging the circuitry of the environment.

In fact we are. Burning lots of fossil carbon and dumping the CO2 produced in the atmosphere is changing the environment quite enough to matter a lot.

a circuit.

Wrong. We've increased atmosphere CO2 from about 270ppm at the start of the industrial revolution to some 400ppm now, half of that since 1980. It's ma king a real and measurable difference.

Actually there is. Cutting right back on burning coal, oil and natural gas, and getting most of our energy from solar farms and windmills would drasti cally slow the rate at which the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere ros e.

Since renewable energy is - at the moment - roughly twice as expensive - pe r kilowatt hour - as energy generated by burning fossil carbon, this would put a crimp in the economy, but not as much of a crimp as persisting global warming. By the time we'd built enough renewable generating plant to cover our energy needs, the economies of scale would have a least halved the pri ce.

It isn't. Human actvity might provoke a re-run of the Younger Dryas, which would look rather like an ice age on either side of where the Gulf Stream u sed to run, but there would be compensating warming in the southern oceans.

her peak temperature and higher sea levels. But the earth without human act ivity would not be a garden of Eden with a stable in environment.

Perfectly true. Anthropogenic global warming has already probably put off t he next ice age indefinitely. Melting the Arctic ice may make more snow fal l in the centres of the norther continents, but if it all melts every summe r, it doesn't stick around to lower the earth's albedo.

In fact the cyclic switching between ice ages and interglacials over the la st 2.58 million years is an atypical instability. Over most of the planet's history there haven't been ice caps at the poles, and it's been appreciabl y warmer.

If we can melt the antarctic ice cap, it will probably be long time before it comes back. We don't want to, because sea levels would be 60 metres high er if we did.

It's wonderful how adaptive scientific theories can be to random, chaotic processes.

There doesn't seem to be anything radical going on here.

That last point is a partial season.

Yup- ain't nuttin more to it 'n that there- I sed allong them there atmoszeric scienntists lack basic common sense.

Great Lakes ?likely to have the most ice since records began,? says meteorologist

Hundreds of daily record lows and at least three all-time record lows have been set as a frigid air mass

But Australia is warm. :-)

Florida is not, two nights in a row had to let all the outdoor faucets and hoses drip, Had an icicle hanging from one of my hoses last night. Mikek

One of the best precip records is the Sierra snowpack depth, measured the same places and the same way since about 1860, when the railroad came in. It's very noisy year to year, but there's no longterm trend.

The arctic records are only reliable since satellite data was available, and that's not a very long baseline to pick out longterm trends.

Them atmoszeric scienntists are faced with simulating a wildly nonlinear chaotic system with unknown dynamics and unknown forcings and mediocre past records. Don't matter how much sense they have.

Oh how I've tried to forget.

Gore-bull Warming Song (sung to the tune of Let it Snow!)

Oh, the weather outside is warming, And the fear is so alarming, We haven?t a place to go -- Where?s the snow, where?s the snow, where?s the snow?

Oh, what?s that white stuff falling? It seems we need some hauling? To help get rid of the snow, Where?d Al go? Where?d Al go? Where?d Al go?

When we finally crank up the heat So we don?t freeze our Christmas ba!!s off As we try to make sense of this, We?ll sit around the fire and scoff!

Oh, the global warming crowd is hiding But I bet we?ll hear some chiding The proof of warming, you know, Is the snow, Is the snow, Is the snow!

By Babiesgrandma (Written 4 years ago)

In John Larkin's ever-so-well-informed opinion - which seems to have been formed by denialist propaganda planted in the Murdoch media (it is a cheap way of filling column inches - if less titillating than bare breasts on page 3).

Everything looks random and chaotic to John Larkin, who doesn't know much and really doesn't want to learn.

And there is always the possibility that things look random and chaotic because they are random and chaotic.

Dan

Do you have hair piece? :-)

But that doesn't stop people from explaining them. All the past models were wrong, but the new simulations are so much better!

ch and really doesn't want to learn.

ecause they are random and chaotic.

Weather is quasi-random and chaotic. Climate is a lot more predictable. And chaotic doesn't mean entirely unpredictable - the solar system is chaotic, but large chunks of it run like clockwork for a long time.

John Larkin's claims about "random and unpredictable" aren't observations a bout reality, but excuses for failing take any trouble to understand what t he observation do tell us. It's much easier for him to take Anthony Watts s eriously that it is to learn enough to be aware that Anthony Watts is a fla ke.

What John would mean - if he knew what he was talking about - was that all the past models were imperfect (all mathematical models are over-simplifications), but the new simulations are less imperfect than the old ones.

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szeric scienntists lack basic common sense.

You're just shooting your mouth off with a bunch of buzzwords, and, like a typical mechanic, you do a data dump of some apparently relevant factoids, with no coherence or understanding whatsoever. The SA article was about a diminishing temperature difference, due to arcti c warming, measurably slow the jet stream velocity and some observable cons equences. That is basic physics, not conjecture. Just because you're incapa ble of learning or understanding anything about the wave functions under st udy does not mean it's unimportant.