Is this year what we can expect?
Is this year what we can expect?
In recent weeks a question I have been asked often, “is this year, the last couple of years, like what we can expect in the future?” The question is often asked quietly, perhaps by a planner, say, someone worried about water in their city. The question follows from not only a perception that the weather is getting “weird,”, but also some small aspect of experience in their job. For example, a water manager recently said they were seeing their local river showing a distinct change to sporadically high flow in the winter, smaller spring flows, and extremely small flow late in the summer. Is this what I should expect in the future? The short answer is yes.
This question of expectation has rolled around in my head for years. I am a gardener with aspirations for small farmer. Over the last 30 years, I have definitely pushed my planting earlier in the year. When I was in Maryland, I felt wet, cool Mays were becoming the “norm,” with my tomatoes sitting in sodden soil. At the same time I would recall plots I had seen in some recent presentation that showed modeled shifts in the warm-cold patterns suggesting springtime cooling in northeastern North America. These are the sorts of casual correlations that lead people to think are we seeing a new “normal.”
In 2008 I wrote a blog about the changes in the hardiness zones that are reported on the back of seed packages. These are the maps that tell us the last frost date, and there were big changes between 1990 and 2006. These changes in the seed packets caught the attention of a lot of people. Recently, NOAA published the “new normal.” This normal relies on the definition of climate as a 30 year average. (AMS Glossary) What was done - at the completion of the decade NOAA recalculated a 30 year average. That is, 1981-2010 rather than 1971-2000. This average changed a lot, with notable warming of nighttime minima. There was some regional reduction of summertime maxima; that is, cooling. All in all, the average temperature went up, with most of the increase in nighttime minimum, a fact that is consistent with both model simulations and fundamental physics. This also came with another update of those hardiness zones.
When trying to interpret climate information and determining how has climate changed and how will it change, the combination of observations, fundamental physics, and models provide three sources of information. The combination of this information and the determination of the quality of that information is subject to interpretation. In the case of determining whether or not we are already experiencing the climate of warming world and how that change will be realized in the next decades it depends on how we use the models.
In my previous entry on heat waves, I implied how to use these pieces of information together. There are fundamental physics in the relationship between temperature and moisture in the air; hot air holds more water; warm water evaporates more quickly. The question of the model is - how well does the model represent the movement of that moisture? For the heat wave example, it is important how well do the models represent persistent high pressure systems over North America in the summer? Are these high pressure systems represented well by the models for the right reasons? The answer to the model question has a range of answers. The model does represent these systems, but if you are an expert in summertime persistent high pressure systems, then you can provide a long list of inadequacies. How can we glean information about the quality of the model? If we look at weather models, then we were able to predict the heat wave – even with the inadequacies that the expert or skeptic can list. Returning to the climate model, do we see like events in the current climate, and do these events change as the planet warms? The answer is yes. Then can we use this to guide our development of plans to adapt to climate change? The answer is yes, if we can connect the model back to data and the fundamental physics. This does become a matter of interpretation – how strong or weak is that connection?
The more I work with planners the more I hear the need for interpretive information, expert guidance, advisories about climate and climate change. People start with the notion that they want digital data from climate models that looks like current weather data. Once presented with 1) the logistical challenges of using that data, 2) the complex nature of the uncertainties associated with that data, and 3) the relative importance of climate to other parts of their decision package – once presented with these facts, they move to the need for advice. This makes sense - most of us want a narrative weather forecast, rather than model output. And the models play the same role in the use of weather forecasts as they do in climate projection. The models guide our thinking, with the ultimate forecast based on that guidance refined by observations and fundamental physics.
This entry started with the question I hear more and more – is this year what we can expect more of in the future? I have a mantra which is that on average the surface of the Earth will warm, ice will melt, sea level will rise, and the weather will change. What we are seeing here is weather changing in a warming, more energy laden, environment. The extraordinary extremes that we have seen in the last year and are seeing this year are quite solidly connected to both fundamental physics and the guidance from climate and weather models. Hence, my answer, as I walk around my garden, thinking how to get better tomatoes next year, thinking about my irrigation system in my doddering retirement, is yes, what we are seeing this year tells me about what to expect in a future that is relevant to me - not something far off.
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There was no surfacing by any submarine at the North Pole in 1958. And the picture given in post 333 doesn't give a location, only the blogger does.
When the Nautilus traversed the Arctic Ocean under the sea ice, they found continuous ice cover 10 to 50 feet thick. And they did not surface at the North Pole. I've read accounts of the voyage, from Pearl Harbor to Iceland. The journey began July 23, 1958 and ended in Iceland August 7.
I've read some detailed accounts, but this site give an accurate summary.
The submarine traveled at a depth of about 500 feet, and the ice cap above varied in thickness from 10 to 50 feet, with the midnight sun of the Arctic shining in varying degrees through the blue ice. At 11:15 p.m. EDT on August 3, 1958, Commander Anderson announced to his crew: "For the world, our country, and the Navy--the North Pole." The Nautilus passed under the geographic North Pole without pausing. The submarine next surfaced in the Greenland Sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland on August 5. Two days later, it ended its historic journey at Iceland. For the command during the historic journey, President Dwight D. Eisenhower decorated Anderson with the Legion of Merit.
A little fact checking would be good. Where did this fake meme come from?
How hot was the month of July in 2011? So hot that just by plotting the location of each daily heat record that was broken, a nearly complete image of the contiguous United States is visible. Almost 9,000 daily records were broken or tied last month, including 2,755 highest maximum temperatures and 6,171 highest minimum temperatures (i.e., nighttime records). It should be noted that the tally of records collected so far is not complete – more are expected to come in as station data from across the U.S. is mailed to the National Climatic Data Center. The statistics reported here only include weather stations with real-time electronic reporting, which accounts for about two-thirds of the locations. Final numbers should be available later in August.
This image plots how many times a heat record was broken or tied in a given location. Some cities reached daily high temperatures 19 out of the 31 days in the month. The largest concentration of these records occur in the southern Plains, Midwest, and Northeast U.S., which were gripped by a series of heat waves pushing heat indices well into the 100’s (Fahrenheit) for many days at a time.
Temperature records are based on historical data from NCDC’s Cooperative Summary of the Day data set and the preliminary reports from the Cooperative Observers and National Weather Service stations around the country. All stations have at least 30 years of data upon which these records are based.
Related Information: U.S. Weather Records Archived by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center
Copyright: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (NOAA Logo)
Keywords: weather, heat, NCDC, 2011.08.04
Size: 0.4 MB
Resolution: 3840 x 2160
Subject: Atmospheric Science
Environmental Science
Audience: Informal Education
General Public
View Heat Defines the Country in July - High Resolution Version
Link
You might be better placing this in the ACC, less Cruise ships, unfortunately less current, but possibly bigger waves to deal with across 40 miles.
Do you plan on putting an airport on it?
Could do well in the short term, until the waves, or current, create Lego parts from it no matter where it is located.
This will be my last F1>F2 comment :)
Gotta have some EvenFlow........no?
See how Mighty F1>F2 is?
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About 1958, the wiki article put Skate at the north pole very near the same date and year as Nautilus, in 1958. A bit odd on the timing, there.
(Yeah, maybe wiki is wrong.)
Lastly, as the photo clearly shows SSN 578, not SSN 571, "a little fact checking would be good" before before suggesting that "a little fact checking would be good". Just sayin. (Again, unless #333 was modified).
As to the equinox comment, that's a good point. The sun should be just beyond the horizon. It wouldn't be dark, though right? Neither should one have distinct shadows. Right? Not sure if the shadows in the picture prove that it isn't just before the equinox.
BostInnovation Article...
Oh, sure it's easy to predict the big picture: it'll be gone in summer in under ten years.
What I take away from your comment si that because of some economic response, we shouldn't believe in global warming? Given the context of the original comment, it is a relevant response but it is a bit lite weight. Green energy and energy conservation is not only cap and trade (which i know nothing about and don-t want to know just because my head is already too full of stuff), green energy and energy conservation is about a cleaner environment and being free. Remember the Land of the Free? Oil has sucked us into slavery. If believing in global warming gets us free of that, more power to the 'myth'. If you don't like cap and trade, fine, work to other ways but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Personally I believe in global warming. I believe people like you are killing the world and America. I don't understand your position that cap and trade is so horrible that you have to take a stand against global warming. Why not just take a stand against cap and trade?
Link
The point of the story was that the thermometers in the temperature stations are being exposed to direct sunlight, which was causing an artificial temperature increase of up to ten degrees in many of the stations. The same thing is happening in US temperature stations placed next to jet engine exhaust, a/c exhaust, on cement or asphalt, etc. The improper placement increases the heat measured by stations. Some bloggers on this site would have you believe that the improper placement has no effect or a cooling effect, which is laughable. You see, in the world of climate "science," the laws of physics are suspended.
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