The Biggest Control Knob: CO2 in Earth's Climate History
It's been a busy past two months of weather and climate change news, and I haven't found time to blog about the research presented at December's American Geophysical (AGU) meeting in San Francisco. That is the world's largest scientific conference on climate change, and the place to be if you want to get the pulse of the planet. The keynote speech at the AGU meeting was given by Dr. Richard Alley of Penn State University. Dr. Alley is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University, and one of the most respected and widely published world experts on climate change. Dr. Alley has testified before Congress on climate change issues, served as lead author of "Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground" for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is author of more than 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles on Earth's climate. He is also the author of a book I highly recommend--The Two Mile Time Machine, a superb account of Earth's climate history as deduced from the 2-mile long Greenland ice cores. A standing-room only audience of over 2,000 scientists packed the lecture hall Dr. Alley spoke at, and it was easy to see why--Alley is an excellent and engaging speaker. I highly recommend listening to his 45-minute talk via a very watchable recording showing his slides as he speaks in one corner of the video. If you want to understand why scientists are so certain of the link between CO2 and Earth's climate, this is a must-see lecture.
Figure 1. Dr. Richard Alley of Penn State University, delivering the keynote speech at the 2009 AGU conference on climate change.
The Biggest Control Knob: CO2 in Earth's Climate History
Earth's past climate has been shaped by a number of key "control knobs"--solar energy, greenhouse gas levels, and dust from volcanic eruptions, to name the three main ones. The main thrust of Dr. Alley's speech is that we have solid evidence now--some of it very new--that CO2 has dominated Earth's climate over the past 400 million years, making it the climate's "biggest control knob". Dr. Alley opens his talk by humorously discussing a letter from an irate Penn State alumnus. The alumnus complains that data of temperatures and CO2 levels from ice cores in Antarctica don't match:
"CO2 lags Earth's temperature...This one scientific fact which proves that CO2 is not the cause of recent warming, yet...Dr. Alley continues to mislead the scientific community and the general public about 'global warming'. His crimes against the scientific community, PSU, the citizens of this great country, and the citizens of the world are significant and must be dealt with severely to stop such shameful activities in the future".
Dr. Alley explains that the irate alumnus is talking about the Antarctic ice core record, which shows that as we emerged from each ice age, the temperature began increasing before the CO2 did, so increased CO2 was not responsible for the warmings that brought us out of these ice ages. Climate change scientists and skeptics alike agree that Earth's ice ages are caused by periodic variations in Earth's orbit called Milankovich Cycles. "There's no doubt that the ice ages are paced by the orbits", says Dr. Alley. "No way that the orbit knows to dial up CO2, and say 'change'. So it shouldn't be terribly surprising if the CO2 lags the temperature change. The temperature never goes very far without the CO2. The CO2 adds to the warming. How do we know that the CO2 adds to the warming? It's physics!"
Dr. Alley then discusses that the physics that govern how CO2 absorbs and re-emits heat energy, when plugged into state-of-the-art climate models, show that about half of the observed 5 - 6°C natural warming that occurred since the last ice age ended was due to extra CO2 added to the atmosphere. At the peak of the Ice Age, CO2 was about 190 ppm. By the end, it was about 280 ppm (Figure 1). Earth's orbital variations "forced" a warming, which caused more CO2 to escape from swamps and oceans, with a time lag of several centuries. The increased CO2 reinforced the warming, to double what it would have been otherwise--a positive feedback loop. "Higher CO2 may be forcing or feedback--a CO2 molecule is radiatively active regardless of how it got there", says Dr. Alley. "A CO2 molecule does not remember why it is there--it only remembers that it is there". In other words, the fact that higher CO2 levels did not trigger an end to the Ice Age does not mean that the CO2 had no warming effect. Half of the the observed 5 - 6°C natural warming that occurred since the last ice age ended was due to the extra CO2 added to the atmosphere. So, the irate PSU alumnus was half right. The CO2 does lag temperature. However, we can only explain approximately half of the warming since the last ice age ended if we leave out the increase in CO2 that has occurred. "If higher CO2 warms, Earth's climate history makes sense, with CO2 having caused or amplified the main changes. If CO2 doesn't warm, we have to explain why the physicists are so stupid, and we also have no way to explain how a lot of really inexplicable climate events happened over Earth's history. It's really that simple. We don't have any plausible alternative to that at this point".
Figure 2. Ice core record from Vostok, Antarctica, showing the near-simultaneous rise and fall of Antarctic temperature and CO2 levels through the last 350,00 years, spanning three ice age cycles. However, there is a lag of several centuries between the time the temperature increases and when the CO2 starts to increase. Image credit: Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences: Global Warming Facts and Our Futures, originally provided to that site by Kurt Cuffey, University of California, Berkely.
CO2 and temperatures rise and fall in synch
Dr. Alley continues with a discussion of how CO2 and temperature levels have risen and fallen in synch over most of geologic time. But for many years there was still a mystery: occasionally there were eras when temperature changes did not match CO2 changes. But new paleoclimate research, much of it just in the past two years, has shown that nearly all of these mis-matches were probably due to suspect data. For example, the mismatch in the Miocene Era has significantly improved, thanks to a new study published this year by Tripati et al. Another example occurs during the Ordovician Era 444 million years ago, as discussed in a recent post at the excellent skepticalscience.com blog.
Figure 3. Atmospheric CO2 and continental glaciation, 400 million years ago to the present. The vertical blue bars mark where ice ages have occurred. The length of the blue bars corresponds to how close to the Equator the ice sheets got (palaeolatitude, scale on the right side of the plot). The left scale shows atmospheric CO2 over the past 400 million years, as inferred from a model (green area) and from four different "proxy" fossil sources of CO2 information. This is Figure 6.1 of the Palaeoclimate chapter of the 2007 IPCC report.
Is there anything else we should be worried about?
Dr. Alley continues with a discussion of other influences that may be able to explain global warming, such as volcanos, changes in solar output, and cosmic rays. A whole bunch of the competing hypotheses don't work", says Dr. Alley. "When there's a bunch of big volcanos, they make it cool. If volcanos could get organized, they'd rule the world. There might be a tiny bit of organization due to flexing of the crust, but they're not controlling the world".
Regarding solar changes: "When the sun changes, it does seem to show up in the temperature record. As far back as we can see well, the sun is friendly, it doesn't change much. If the sun changed a lot, it would control things hugely. But it only changes really slowly--as far as we can tell. The record doesn't go back as far as we'd like, and there's work to be done here--but it just doesn't seem to be doing much".
Figure 4. Greenland ice core proxy measurements of temperature (top curve) and cosmic ray flux (bottom curve) for the past 60,000 years. The Earth's magnetic field weakened by 90% 40,000 years ago, for a period of about 1,000 years, but there was no change seen in the temperatures in Greenland.
Regarding cosmic rays: "The sun doesn't change much, but the sun modulates the cosmic rays, the cosmic rays modulate the clouds, the clouds modulate the temperature, and so the sun is amplified hugely. It's really interesting hypothesis, there's really good science to be done on this, but there's reason to think its a fine-tuning knob". He goes on to show an ice core example from a period 40,000 years ago (Figure 4) where the Earth magnetic field had near-zero strength for hundreds of years. This allowed a massive flux of cosmic rays to penetrate to the Earth's surface, creating a huge spike in ice core Beryllium-10, a radionuclide made by cosmic rays. If cosmic rays were important to climate, we would expect to see a corresponding major swing in temperature, but the ice core shows no change during the period of enhanced cosmic ray bombardment 40,000 years ago. "We had a big cosmic ray signal, and the climate ignores it", Dr. Alley comments.
How sensitive is climate to a doubling of CO2?
The IPCC report talks extensively about computer climate models' calculations of "climate sensitivity"--how much Earth's climate would warm if CO2 doubled from pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm, to 560 ppm (we're currently at 390 ppm). A mid-range number from the 2007 IPCC report often used by climatologists is that the climate sensitivity is 3°C for a doubling of CO2. Dr. Alley takes a look at what paleoclimate has to say about the climate sensitivity to CO2. "The models actually do pretty well when you compare them to the past. The best fit is 2.8°C.
Dr. Alley concludes, "Where we really stand now, is, we're not quite at the pound on the table, this story is very clearly not done. But an increasing body of science indicates that CO2 has been the most important controller of global average climate of the Earth."
I'll have a new post Sunday or Monday.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Post #45 gets da "!" and a "-"
cue the Talking Heads....
After 110 days of almost no rain, people in Perth welcomed the forecast of rain, but a devastating rainfall reaching over 0.9 inches in only 30 minutes and strong winds caused millions in dollars of damage to the region.
The average rainfall for March is 0.8 inches. With peaks on Sunday and Monday night, the biggest storm in 50 years saw some places receive four times the normal monthly average. Local media report that Tuesday morning 85,000 homes were without power, roads were flooded, a landslide crushed two cars, plus many other incidents.
With damage estimated up to $83 million, Collin Barnett, Western Australia premier, declared the storm a "natural disaster," thereby making funds available through the WA natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/31945/
Richard Alley on Earth's Biggest Climate Control Knob
Posted on Dec 28, 2009 11:19:29 PM | Michael Carlowicz | 3 Comments
Scientists aren't known for being the savviest of public speakers, but Penn State's Richard Alley is that rare researcher who knows how to give a talk. Alley -- who's willing to sing, dance, and gesticulate vigorously to get a point across -- gave a lecture about carbon dioxide to an overflow crowd of scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting this year that's well worth watching.
Blogger and University of Toronto computer scientist Steve Easterbrook has an excellent blow-by-blow of the talk, but the heart of it came down to this point, which Alley made on his last slide:
An increasing body of science indicates that CO2 has been the most important controller of Earth's climate.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORT WORTH TX
629 PM CDT WED MAR 24 2010
TXC439-242345-
/O.CON.KFWD.SV.W.0035.000000T0000Z-100324T2345Z/
TARRANT TX-
629 PM CDT WED MAR 24 2010
...A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 645 PM CDT
FOR TARRANT COUNTY...
AT 629 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS DETECTED A
LINE OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING DAMAGING WINDS IN
EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THESE STORMS WERE LOCATED ALONG A LINE EXTENDING
FROM WESTLAKE TO 6 MILES SOUTH OF BENBROOK...MOVING EAST AT 25 MPH.
SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WILL BE NEAR...
RICHLAND HILLS...HURST...EDGECLIFF AND COLLEYVILLE BY 635 PM CDT...
GRAPEVINE...CROWLEY AND BEDFORD BY 640 PM CDT...
EULESS...KENNEDALE AND PANTEGO BY 645 PM CDT...
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1000 PM CDT
WEDNESDAY EVENING FOR NORTH CENTRAL TEXAS.
Take this quiz to test your knowledge of carbon dioxide and why it's so important to climate stability and our quality of life.
1. In the 10,000 years before the Industrial Revolution in 1751, carbon dioxide levels rose less than 1%. Since then they've risen by:
Every year.
NASA Outlines Recent Breakthroughs in Greenhouse Gas Research
December 15, 2009
WASHINGTON Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft.
Moustafa Chahine, the instrument's science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., unveiled the new product at a briefing on recent breakthroughs in greenhouse gas, weather and climate research from AIRS at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. The new data, which span the seven-plus years of the AIRS mission, measure the concentration and distribution of carbon dioxide in the mid-troposphere--the region of Earth's atmosphere that is located between 5 to 12 kilometers, or 3 to 7 miles, above Earth's surface. They also track its global transport. The product represents the first-ever release of global carbon dioxide data that are based solely on observations. The data have been extensively validated against both aircraft and ground-based observations.
"AIRS provides the highest accuracy and yield of any global carbon dioxide data set available to the research community, now and for the immediate future," said Chahine. "It will help researchers understand how this elusive, long-lived greenhouse gas is distributed and transported, and can be used to develop better models to identify 'sinks,' regions of the Earth system that store carbon dioxide. It's important to study carbon dioxide in all levels of the troposphere."
Chahine said previous AIRS research data have led to some key findings about mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide. For example, the data have shown that, contrary to prior assumptions, carbon dioxide is not well mixed in the troposphere, but is rather "lumpy." Until now, models of carbon dioxide transport have assumed its distribution was uniform.
Carbon dioxide is transported in the mid-troposphere from its sources to its eventual sinks. More carbon dioxide is emitted in the heavily populated northern hemisphere than in its less populated southern counterpart. As a result, the southern hemisphere is a net recipient, or sink, for carbon dioxide from the north. AIRS data have previously shown the complexity of the southern hemisphere's carbon dioxide cycle, revealing a never-before-seen belt of carbon dioxide that circles the globe and is not reflected in transport models.
In another major finding, scientists using AIRS data have removed most of the uncertainty about the role of water vapor in atmospheric models. The data are the strongest observational evidence to date for how water vapor responds to a warming climate.
"AIRS temperature and water vapor observations have corroborated climate model predictions that the warming of our climate produced as carbon dioxide levels rise will be greatly exacerbated -- in fact, more than doubled -- by water vapor," said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.
Dessler explained that most of the warming caused by carbon dioxide does not come directly from carbon dioxide, but from effects known as feedbacks. Water vapor is a particularly important feedback. As the climate warms, the atmosphere becomes more humid. Since water is a greenhouse gas, it serves as a powerful positive feedback to the climate system, amplifying the initial warming. AIRS measurements of water vapor reveal that water greatly amplifies warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide. Comparisons of AIRS data with models and re-analyses are in excellent agreement.
"The implication of these studies is that, should greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current course of increase, we are virtually certain to see Earth's climate warm by several degrees Celsius in the next century, unless some strong negative feedback mechanism emerges elsewhere in Earth's climate system," Dessler said.
Originally designed to observe atmospheric temperature and water vapor, AIRS data are already responsible for the greatest improvement to five to six-day weather forecasts than any other single instrument, said Chahine. JPL scientists have shown a major consequence of global warming will be an increase in the frequency and strength of severe storms. Earlier this year, a team of NASA researchers showed how AIRS can significantly improve tropical cyclone forecasting. The researchers studied deadly Typhoon Nargis in Burma (Myanmar) in May 2008. They found the uncertainty in the cyclone's landfall position could have been reduced by a factor of six had more sophisticated AIRS temperature data been used in the forecasts.
AIRS observes and records the global daily distribution of temperature, water vapor, clouds and several atmospheric gases including ozone, methane and carbon monoxide. With the addition of the mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide data set this week, a seven-year digital record is now complete for use by the scientific community and the public.
For more on AIRS, see http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ .
MESOSCALE DISCUSSION 0209
NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER NORMAN OK
0629 PM CDT WED MAR 24 2010
AREAS AFFECTED...N CNTRL AND CNTRL TX
CONCERNING...SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH 34...
VALID 242329Z - 250030Z
THE SEVERE WEATHER THREAT FOR SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH 34
CONTINUES.
AN ISOLATED SEVERE THREAT WILL BE MAINTAINED ACROSS THE ERN HALF OF
THE SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH. THE GREATEST THREAT WILL SHIFT SWD
INTO CNTRL TX LATER THIS EVENING...BUT IS EXPECTED TO REMAIN TOO
MARGINAL TO WARRANT AN ADDITIONAL SEVERE WW.
A LINE OF THUNDERSTORMS NEARLY COINCIDENT WITH THE ANALYZED SFC COLD
FRONT WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE EWD ACROSS N CNTRL TX...INCLUDING THE
DFW METROPLEX DURING THE NEXT HOUR. LATEST SFC ANALYSIS INDICATES A
NARROW INSTABILITY/THETA-E CORRIDOR IMMEDIATELY AHEAD OF THE
FRONT...CHARACTERIZED BY DEWPOINTS IN THE UPPER 50S AND LOWER 60S.
STRONGER CONVECTION HAS DEVELOPED FARTHER S ACROSS CNTRL TX...WHILE
STORMS N OF DFW HAVE EXHIBITED A NOTABLE WEAKENING TREND OVER THE
PAST HOUR.
WITH THE LOSS OF SOLAR HEATING...INSTABILITY WILL DECREASE TO AROUND
500 J/KG MUCAPE AND WILL BECOME MAXIMIZED FARTHER S IN CNTRL TX.
HOWEVER...INCREASING FORCED ASCENT ASSOCIATED WITH A MID-LEVEL VORT
MAX SHOULD HELP MAINTAIN CONVECTION AFTER SUNSET. ALTHOUGH LOW-LEVEL
WINDS ARE WEAK...SUFFICIENT DEEP LAYER SHEAR SHOULD SUPPORT EMBEDDED
SUPERCELL STRUCTURES WITHIN THE CONVECTIVE LINE. A MARGINAL
WIND/HAIL THREAT MAY STILL EXIST...BUT WILL LIKELY NOT REQUIRE AN
ADDITIONAL WW.
..ROGERS.. 03/24/2010
First of all they completely ignore the countering negative feedback of increased water vapor. More water vapor means more clouds that reflect sunlight. It has been shown that a completely clouded-over world would be colder than a cloud-free world.
Also, they can't explain why water vapor content has been flat or decreasing at all levels above 850mb in the troposphere since 1950. The surface layer has moistened with the warming SSTs, but the layers above are doing the opposite. They can't explain it, and it doesn't fit their models or predictions.
Right thru to Friday and the weekend.
..the new Entry is going to drive some to well,new heights lets say as science,the science to date comes to bear on our Favorite topic globally.
Besides American Idol..
or Survivor,..
Im gonna ride shotgun with the data and current peer reviewed Papers and sit back and enjoy the cliff jumpers..
LOL
Been linking Dr Allen's NASA article since Dec so Im up todate on his work easily
But be advised..
If he had a wu-mail that he describes,I wouldnt be here right now.
And perpetuating a slander is not a good course for anyone.
I will flag the Quote as well.
..with that,I bid the entry adieu
Current efforts to deny climate science are part of an organized campaign that dates back 20 years, when the fossil fuel industry first formed a lobbying apparatus to stifle action on global warming, the environment group Greenpeace said on Wednesday.
In a report titled "Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science," the group accused ExxonMobil of being the ringleader of what it called a "campaign of denial."
Exxon was a prominent member of the now-defunct Global Climate Coalition, one of the first industry groups established in 1989 to refute findings of the then-newly formed UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Since Exxon's 1998 merger with Mobil, the oil giant has spent $23 million on stoking opposition to climate action, Greenpeace said. It continues to fund 28 groups that run denial campaigns, according to the report, though the oil giant is hardly alone in betting against climate change.
The report said that industry front groups and think tanks at the forefront of challenging the science of warming — such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Heartland Institute and the Cato Institute — receive a majority of their climate-related funds from a raft of utility, coal, oil and car interests.
No. 1 Target: UN IPCC
The denial industry's main target from the get-go, according to Greenpeace, was the IPCC.
"The aim was to discredit the process by which the IPCC worked," it said.
Key moments, Greenpeace said, include:
• In 1990, fossil fuel interests launched a public push to refute the main finding of the first IPCC assessment that greenhouse gas emissions would "certainly" lead to warming.
• In 1995, following the second IPCC assessment, which concluded there is a "discernible human influence on global climate," attacks shifted from the science to the scientists themselves.
• In 1997, Bert Bolin, the chair of both the World Meteorological Organization and the IPCC for nine years, was forced to release a statement denying claims that he had flip-flopped on human-caused climate change.
• In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute, a trade and lobbying group, began a communications campaign to inform the media and citizens about "uncertainties in climate science," with the goal of thwarting Kyoto Protocol-like climate measures.
With the release of the IPCC's third and fourth assessments in 2001 and 2007, climate skeptics ramped up efforts, Greenpeace said.
The report details memos, press junkets, petitions, recent denier conferences led by the Heartland Institute, and a CEI book — all allegedly aimed at questioning the consensus view on climate change.
The report also identified a "central team of spokespeople" that for years has been used to challenge the science. They include: Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, both Harvard-Smithsonian Institute astrophysicists; Richard Lindzen, a climatologist at MIT; Patrick Michaels, a climatologist and scholar at the free-market Cato Institute; and Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and former professor at the University of Virginia.
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100324/greenpeace-says-climate-denialism-20-year-industry
Odd?
"Following the Nor'easter 'parade of blizzards' in February this year, another week-long parade of storms flooded the upper Midwest and Northeastern U.S. in March," said Dennis Chesters of the NASA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The merge of three storms in the Midwest was unusual, where the normal pattern is a series of spring storms carried by the prevailing westerlies (winds)."
The GOES-12 operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) captures images of U.S. East Coast weather. Those images from March 8-16, 2010 were compiled into a movie by the NASA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
This late winter rain event will go down in history and the 2010 severe weather season is just beginning.
http://www.physorg.com/news188674351.html
Lol you really gonna go there? The good doctor's purpose for posting this entry was to highlight the main points of Dr. Alley's talk. How many posters here do you think actually spent an hour watching that thing before posting? Look at all the opinions flying around right after they visited the blog. I read the whole entry as I always do. The petty arguments you come up with continually amaze me.
A few blogs ago someone noted that certain bloggers are personal involved in oil buisness.
If you then read the coverage of denial on climate science ... no wonder that the usal suspects use the same arguments as the denial industry.
I wonder how long such people keep on fooling themself with lame execuses ;)
Tropical Cyclone Advisory Number ELEVEN
FORTE TEMPETE TROPICALE IMANI (14-20092010)
4:00 AM Réunion March 25 2010
===================================
At 0:00 AM UTC, Severe Tropical Storm Imani (973 hPa) located at 18.2S 85.1E has 10 minute sustained winds of 60 knots with gusts of 85 knots. The storm is reported as moving south southwest at 6 knots.
Storm Force Winds
=================
30 NM from the center
Gale Force Winds
================
40 NM from the center extending up to 60 NM in the northeastern quadrant and up to 80 NM in the southern semi-circle
Near Gale Force Winds
=======================
80 NM from the center and up to 110 NM in the northeastern quadrant and up to 130 NM in the southern semi-circle
Dvorak Intensity: T4.0/4.0/D1.0/24HRS
Forecast and Intensity
======================
12 HRS: 19.2S 84.8E - 60 knots (Forte Tempête Tropicale)
24 HRS: 20.3S 84.6E - 40 knots (Tempête Tropicale Modereé)
48 HRS: 22.2S 84.3E - 30 knots (Depression Tropicale)
72 HRS: 23.7S 82.9E - 25 knots (Perturbation Tropicale)
Additional Information
========================
Imany has stopped intensifying. AQUA 36 and 89 ghz 1940z shows an upper level circulation center located 10 NM souther than the low level one. Wind shear constraint is not expected to strengthen significantly within the next 12 hours, system should therefore stay at severe tropical storm stage maybe temporarily tropical cyclone stage. It is then expected to undergo a strengthening northwesterly vertical wind shear and to weaken rapidly. It should keep on tracking globally southward within the next 48 hours then is expected to recurve southwestward on Saturday and southeastward on and after Sunday towards polar trough.
Yeah run a background check on me or something. I don't think many teenagers are employed in the oil industry rofl.
Pat, you didn't put this as a jab at me, right? You've talked a cubicle in my direction before...
I would call myself pretty down to earth...and if I am overpaid, I want to know whom is cashing those checks...dat dude owes me.
Tropical Cyclone Advisory #19
TROPICAL STORM OMAIS (T1001)
9:00 AM JST March 25 2010
=============================
SUBJECT: Category One Typhoon In Sea East Of The Philippines
At 0:00 AM UTC, Tropical Storm Omais (998 hPa) located at 14.8N 132.3E has 10 minute sustained winds of 35 knots with gusts of 50 knots. The typhoon is reported as moving north at 10 knots.
Gale Force Winds
===============
90 NM from the center in northeast quadrant
70 NM from the center in southwest quadrant
Dvorak Intensity: T2.5
Forecast and Intensity
=====================
24 HRS: 16.9N 131.4E - 35 knots (CAT 1/Tropical Storm)
48 HRS: 17.6N 131.3E - 40 knots (CAT 1/Tropical Storm)
72 HRS: 19.1N 132.0E - 35 knots (CAT 1/Tropical Storm)
That's me.
I got a Christmas present from someone that indirectly works for Exxon Chemicals. I liked it so very much that I decided to spend hours here taking up the cause on behalf of Exxon.
So, how long have you worked for Greenpiece?
But sometimes I think that you post these things just to see how weird the responses can get.
I cannot believe that some people still, well, er, never mind all that.....
May the Status Quo rule, at any cost.
ONWARD, to Irrational Bliss!
Scientists in Wisconsin are discovering that increased greenhouse gases are having some unexpected effects ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2010/jan/21/climate-change-forests
Goodness, I'm laughing myself silly here.
ya'll have a good evening!!
No atmo,..thats a generic term for paper processing in da related fields.
Post 15 in my wunderblog explains it a in a Graphic video format that use daily for myself usually.
And if I see dat Guy Ill tell him you deserve a raise.
Anything for a Homie.
LOL! That's funny Aqua. Actually, I hate Halo =)
green peace
what's Halo????
I think it is a game of Righteous Indignation.
In the US, we are enjoying a blissful, severely lacking, um, severe WX season...so far.
Of course, it WILL pick up eventually, but serious doubts about catching the yearly average on the tornado counts are warranted.
You hate Halo ~ Levi! C'mon now! Halo is the greatest thing ever created, Imagine I used to suffer from Insomnia from playing it soo much! I haven't played my xbox since last summer, since I 'm so tied up with school and stuff.
That's what I said.
(snicker, snicker)
Heatwave in india, worst rain in 50 years in perth (last 2 days), some named systems, melt and evacuation in iceland from erupting volcano, US has some flood warnings ... just a few ;)
Nah, I hate xbox lol. There are a couple PC games I like. Can't really get addicted to them though when I'm already addicted to the weather...lol.
National Weather Service New Orleans la
803 PM CDT Wednesday Mar 24 2010
Update...
..sounding discussion...
No problems with the flight this evening. Moisture slowly on the
increase with the precipitable water up to 0.89 inches. However...still very dry
above 750 millibars. Winds primarily from the south and southeast
at the lowest levels...returning low level moisture to the region. A
low deck of stratus clouds between 980 and around 860 millibars
keeping temperatures on the cool side this afternoon.
&&
Previous discussion... /issued 411 PM CDT Wednesday Mar 24 2010/
Short term...
main concern in short term is the threat of severe thunderstorms
on Thursday. Fog should not be a problem tonight due to
combination of fairly thick cloud cover and mixing due to higher
winds than last night. Will have to watch this though since
more moister laden air will be passing over cooler water surfaces.
Water vapor imagery shows a potent vorticity maximum moving east southeast
across New Mexico with thunderstorms erupting along the cold
front across portions of central and southwest Texas. The upper
level system will move steadily east across Texas tonight while
the cold front pushes into western Louisiana after midnight. An
area of diffluence ahead of the upper shortwave and warm air
advection will cause scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms
to develop late tonight...mainly north and west of Lake
Pontchartrain.
The best deep later lifting from positive vorticity advection and upper divergence will
pass through most of the forecast area during the morning while
the cold front moves slower...clearing the eastern portions of the
forecast area late in the afternoon. Showers and thunderstorms are
expected to be numerous in the morning...but then end fairly
quickly from the west during the afternoon and drier air sweeps
in. There will be slight surface based instability...and slightly
better elevated cape...however...like the last few thunderstorm
events...surface based instability will likely be limited by
marine influences...namely the continued below normal sea surface
temperatures. Shear is not overly impressive either...but
supportive of a few strong to severe thunderstorms if individual
storms can tap some better instability. Drier and slightly cooler
air will move in Thursday night leading to a mostly sunny and
mild day on Friday as surface high pressure builds in.
Long term...
dry weather will prevail most of Saturday...then the next system
will bring increased return flow moisture Saturday night. This
system will take a track a bit farther north of the one moving
through in the short term. Also...the wavelength separating the
two systems is rather short to get deeper low level moisture back
to the forecast area Saturday night. There will be a good chance
of showers and thunderstorms with this system...but areal coverage
and chances of strong to severe thunderstorms are rather uncertain
at this time. Any lingering showers on Sunday morning should end
over the eastern sections early...then dry and mild weather can be
expected again later on Sunday through the early part of next
week. 22/dew point
By JON GAMBRELL (AP) – 8 hours ago
LAGOS, Nigeria — The yellow haze descended across Nigeria, blotting out the sun, canceling airline flights and coating everything with a fine layer of dust.
The sudden storm sparked frightened text messages about supposedly killer acid rain, but meteorologists say the weather comes from the harmattan, a yearly trade wind that brings dust from the Sahara Desert through Nigeria and the rest of West Africa. This year, however, the harmattan has come at an abnormal time, a possible result of global warming. Experts say it may delay the rainy season in Africa's most populous nation and there are worries it may even throw off future seasonal changes.
"It is part of the changes of the climate," said Temi Ologunorisa, a professor of climatology at Osun State University. "With the coming of this dust, you cannot have rain."
The harmattan, caused by shifting weather patterns, means "tears your breath apart" in Twi, a West African language. The harmattan season typically begins in late November, as Nigeria's dry season begins to end. The winds carry the sands and dust of the Sahara southward, and pick up the loose crop soil of Nigeria's arid northern Sahel with it.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iK-axrnlJ2mnccJXdVSlAABpsNBAD9EL3T9O2
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