Ledgers, Graphics, and Carvings
Ledgers, Graphics, and Carvings: Models, Water, and Temperature (4)
This is a series of blogs on models, water, and temperature (see Intro). I am starting with models. In this series, I am trying to develop a way to build a foundation for nonscientists to feel comfortable about models and their use in scientific investigation. I expect to get some feedback on how to do this better from the comments. In order to keep a solid climate theme, I am going to have two sections to the entries. One section will be on models, and the other will be on a research result, new or old, that I think is of particular interest.
Doing Science with Models 1.1: In the previous entry of this series I argued that if one considered the types of models used in design and engineering, then we use models all of the time. In fact, when we build or do just about anything, we use some sort of model to get us started. I ended the previous entry with the example of building a simple picnic bench that would hold three, two-hundred-pound men. Not only do the materials need to be of sufficient strength, but the legs of the bench need to be attached in a way that they form a solid and stable foundation. If the bench wobbles and the legs spread apart, then it will be unsafe. If we have experience of some sort, we construct a model from this experience. For example, if we have built or repaired tables and benches we have some ideas of good and bad construction. If we have no direct experience then we can find or ask about plans. These plans might be a schematic, a graphic model of the bench.
For those who do not build benches, but who, say, balance their checkbooks, there are models as well. The forms in a ledger represent models that have proven usable through practice or that have become standard approaches. Information is collected and organized: the check number, the date, the payee, the amount, the purpose and the category of expenditure.
These graphic, tabular, or touchable models are common enough that we develop intuition about their use. Introductory materials to climate models often use the words “mathematical,” “numerical,” and “computational.” These words take us not only away from our intuitive notions of models, but also into subjects that many of us find difficult and obscure. However, in the past couple of decades we have seen the tabular models of checkbook balancing coded as computational products such as Quicken. Design and architecture move to tools such as Computer-assisted Design. Recently, we have seen this combination of the world of digital models and touchable products come full circle with the advent of three-dimensional printing. In three-dimensional printing, solid objects made of plastic and metal are rendered from mathematical descriptions of the objects. I will return to this idea of mathematical descriptions of objects later. The point that I would like to make now is that using computers as tools to represent the real world has in the last two decades become routine. Therefore, in and of itself, the use of computers to make numerical calculations of the real world is common. It might not be as universally intuitive to people as a ledger or a wooden design of a boat, but there is large body of experience that affirms the value of computer-based modeling.
There are a number of steps that need to be taken from here to climate models. So far, I have been talking about models that are in the spirit of a work or a structure used in testing or perfecting a final product. In climate modeling, the final product of the construction is a model. It is the purpose of that model to provide a credible representation of the climate. That representation has a number of attributes. There is the attribute of representing what we have already observed. There is also the attribute of predicting what we will observe, that is, predicting the future. Therefore, the final product of the whole process is the simulation of and the prediction of the climate.
As with many words, there is more than one definition of model in the dictionary. Another relevant definition from my print edition (third) of the American Heritage Dictionary is “A schematic description of a system, theory, or phenomenon that accounts for its known or inferred properties and may be used for further studies of its characteristics.” (American Heritage Dictionary online) This definition is directly descriptive of a climate model. But like those introductions to climate models that I referred to above, it quickly goes to words like “system” and “theory” that are not quite as intuitive as I would like. This is where I will start next time.
Interesting Research: Attribution of 2011 Extreme Weather to Climate Change - Some might recall in 2011, I wandered into the contentious subject of the attribution of climate change to humans (collected here) and talking about communicating extreme weather events in the media (Shearer and Rood). The paper I highlight in today’s blog is a compilation of efforts to understand the role of planetary warming in some of the extreme events of 2011. The paper is Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective edited by Tom Peterson and others and published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. This paper looks at six of the extreme events of 2011 and tries to attribute, in a variety of ways, the role played by human-caused global warming. (nice summary in New Scientist)
I want to focus on the part of the paper that discusses the extreme heat and drought in Texas in the summer of 2011. Much of that discussion is based on evaluating the effect of sea surface temperature, and specifically, the role of El Nino and La Nina. El Nino and La Nina are the names given to recurring patterns of sea surface temperature distributions in the eastern, tropical Pacific Ocean. The approach to this problem is to use models to make many simulations with sea surface temperature distributions similar to the La Nina conditions of 2011. Simulations were made for times in the 1960s and for the year 2008. The simulations provide an ensemble of many plausible outcomes, and it is possible to investigate the odds of a drought of similar extreme attributes as the 2011 drought occurring in the 1960s. The authors conclude that the warming climate made the 2011 drought 20 times more likely to occur now than in the 1960s. The authors point out that they cannot make statements about absolute probability. That is, they cannot state that in the absence of carbon dioxide increases and associated warming, that the drought would not have occurred.
This approach of using probability to discuss the impact of warming is an active area of research as well as an emerging way to communicate the relation between extreme weather and global warming. In the Washington Post, Jim Hansen has an op-ed piece that describes a paper which was released on Monday, August 6 (reference at end). In this paper Hansen revisits his metaphor that compares extreme weather in a warming climate with playing a dice game with loaded dice. That is, the dice are loaded in a way such that what used to be “extreme” will more likely occur. Going back to the Texas drought, that result mentioned in the previous paragraph says that the dice are loaded so that the extreme attributes of the 2011 drought are 20 times more likely. The takeaway message from Hansen is that we have, so far, underestimated how much the dice are loaded and that we have underestimated the probability of extreme events such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and yes perhaps, persistent cold snaps.
r
Hansen, Early Edition, PNAS, Perception of Climate Change
Hansen, Perception of Climate Change, Public Summary
Reader Comments
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Seems to me that we've got plenty of room to try harder.
If I counted correctly, we're number 22....
do we lead with ethenol blending??? looks like germany is leading for new tech for alternate power..
I'd say that we are not leading the world.
We were in the lead. We were the people who figured out how to harvest sunshine and wind and turn them into electricity, but we let ourselves get passed by a heck of a lot of other countries.
We've given up the lead in installation and now we're giving up manufacturing of what we (largely) invented.
That's what the data tells me.
Of course using data makes me a socialist....
i did not know ya were a socialist....but it's cool i don't judge people...
I don't have the data in hand, but we might. Brazil is a big ethanol producer. I don't know who else is in the game.
However leading in ethanol production might be about as good as leading in the number of self-inflicted gun shots to foot.
If we continue to have 'weather weirding' cut into our corn production we may have to kick ethanol to the curb in order to keep food on our tables.
I really think we need to get past the worry over whether the US is "Number 1!!!" and focus on what we need to do to make our country better. We've let so much stuff slip over the years. We've got so many serious problems to solve. Time to act less like football cheerleaders and more like engineers.
You missed yesterday's fun and games?
After being called a socialist in about 150 posts I've started to suspect myself. I'm thinking about reporting myself to the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Suspicious use of facts. Lack of adequate Jingoism....
Saw a few fellow socialist there as well.
From 3-4 Wars too.
wow don't let it get to ya...
i know here in louisiana brazil tried to get an ethanol plant going using sugarcane but did not seem to work out...
It didn't. At all.
It's kind of sad watching someone melt down like our friend did. I expect we'll see more of that as those who have painted themselves so thoroughly into the corner realize their predicament.
Hopefully most of those who bought into the denier belief system will find a way to ease themselves out. We're seeing some do it by using processes such as "Well, humans may be playing a role but there's natural forces as well" and "The climate is changing, we're not sure why, but we better start adapting".
If they take those routes they can save face. Those who don't are likely to get pretty emotional. I would expect that years from now there will be a very small, but very well entrenched group of deniers. The Flat Earth Society still hangs on....
Use sugarcane for sugar.
Use corn for food (and not as a second rate sweetener).
Use electricity to move us around.
Average US miles driven per year = 13,000.
Nissan Leaf 0.31/kWh per mile.
4,030 kWh per year. 11 kWh per day.
Most of the lower 48 gets at least 4.5 solar hours per day.
2.5 kW of solar panels would produce enough electricity to power an EV for 13,000 miles a year.
In Germany installed PV solar now costs less than $2.25/Watt. No subsidies included.
At $2.25/Watt you could purchase all your EV "fuel" for the next 40+ years for $5,625.
That's $11.72 per month to fuel your ride. Fixed price for the next 40+ years.
And I used solar only because the numbers are more accessible. Wind generated electricity is considerably cheaper.
Link
i know bmw has a car they working on now that 1 gallon of gas will charge batteries for 150 hrs could be out in 2017
Thanks Rookie for all of these links.
I am well aware that climatologists are doing research on the solar effects on climate. I think you meant to spell out "SORCE" instead of "SCORE" :).
I think we will get our answer concerning the solar impacts on Climate over the next 30 years. The most extreme Skeptics (David Archibald, Jan-Erik Solheim, Ole Humlum etc.) are predicting a major cooldown at the time when Solar Cycle 24 ends, and Solar Cycle 24 may last for a long time. (Solheim et. al 2012).
I don't think we will cool this much by any means. If the solar hypothesis as I view it is correct, I can see how we can cool over the next 20-30 years by a couple tenths of a Degree, but to say that temperatures will go down a Degree C as Solheim et. al are arguing seems extreme, and arguably alarmist IMO.
The NCAR links are interesting, but those models have used the PMOD TSI dataset, which disagrees with many solar variables (GCRs, magnetic activity etc.), including another TSI dataset, ACRIM.
I am curious how attribution with these models would have been different if the ACRIM TSI dataset were to be used, and if the models properly accounted for the amplification mechanism observed.
CommonDreams.com
Arctic sea ice could completely vanish within 10 years, a rate much faster than previously thought, according to new measurements from the European Space Agency.
900 cubic kilometers of ice have disappeared every year since 2004, according to the study. The scientists used data obtained from NASA planes flying over the Arctic and submarines using sonar measurements from beneath the ice, combined with purpose-built satellite technology -- the CryoSat-2 probe -- the first of its kind to measure the thickness of Arctic ice.
"Very soon we may experience the iconic moment when, one day in the summer, we look at satellite images and see no sea ice coverage in the Arctic, just open water," Dr. Seymour Laxon, with London's Center for Polar Observation and Modelling, told the Guardian.
Not only has the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic rapidly shrunk, but the new measurements find that this remaining ice has also been thinning drastically.
NASA.gov
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color mosaic image on Aug. 6, 2012. The center of the storm at that date was located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.
The storm had an unusually low central pressure area. Paul A. Newman, chief scientist for Atmospheric Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., estimates that there have only been about eight storms of similar strength during the month of August in the last 34 years of satellite records. “It’s an uncommon event, especially because it’s occurring in the summer. Polar lows are more usual in the winter,” Newman said.
Arctic storms such as this one can have a large impact on the sea ice, causing it to melt rapidly through many mechanisms, such as tearing off large swaths of ice and pushing them to warmer sites, churning the ice and making it slushier, or lifting warmer waters from the depths of the Arctic Ocean.
Tunnels anyone?
Ten years is a very high estimate, IMHO. The Arctic sea ice has taken a huge beating this year and it's well within possibilities of a meltout next year.
Look at the area and extent graphs in the third and fourth rows on this page.
Notice how the slope of the drop is not leveling out as in most previous years, but is angled strongly downward.
We've lost a lot of volume, which means that the remaining ice is thin and much of it is broken up into separate chunks. Conditions are setting up for flushing a bunch of those chunks out into the Atlantic over the next week. Some of the flush will likely be thicker, older ice.
And while the 'top melt' season is coming to an end as the Sun drops lower, there are still several more weeks of 'bottom melt' caused by the heat stored in the open water over the summer.
We could open next year's melt season with very little ice > two years old. That would mean a remarkably thin ice cap and thin ice is easier to melt and transport out of the Arctic.
A 'bad weather' year next summer could do in the ice.
We saw a significant summer Arctic cyclone just a few days ago. Lack of ice/open water helps create the conditions for more of these storms which usually occur outside the main melt season. Give the ice no unusual cold periods and another big storm like this one and the ice could go in one more year.
Make it another melt year like this one, but without a summer cyclone and the year after could be 'it'.
Ten years? Hard to see the ice lasting that long. Lasting that long would require some very unusual weather or the emergence of some fairly significant force working to slow the cooling. The only candidate I've heard about would be massive increases in summer cloud cover which would block some incoming sunshine. But as far as I know there has been no observed ramping up of clouds as the ice melted.
They post from a fixed camera on the ship every hour. You can follow them here.
Follow the crashing and burning of Archibald et cie here.
Re ACRIM, you're sadly out of date. That's what you get for depending on denialist secondary sources; when adjustment happens (in this case instrument error identified for ACRIM) they tend not to mention it. Anyway, look up the details.
GCRs and magnetic activity disagree with the direct measures of solar activity? Um, no, not especially, although for you, to borrow from Hemingway, "Isn't it pretty to think so."
BTW, if you had any actual belief in all this solar fantasizing rather than just using it as a talking point, you'd be willing to make a short-term prediction. 30 years proves your lack of sincerity.
"You are also correct that time will tell how much forcing is involved with the TSI."
As it turns out, Rookie, there's no time like the present. Solar irradiance and forcing are well-known quantities.
I know you're trying to be nice, but please don't just agree with such blather unless you have independent knowledge that it's true.
Here is a link to Healy Track Map.
- What happens to Santa Claus when there's no more North Pole? What about Mrs. Claus, the elves, reindeer, sleigh, and toy shop?
- How about Santa Claus' home? Where are they going to live? What Happens to Christmas?
Arctic Sea Ice Could Vanish in 10 Years
This is the monthly 'death spiral' graph for Arctic sea ice volume. The bottom-most black line-set is actual/projected volume for September. If the September actual minimum hits the projection line there will be about 3 thousand km3 of ice remaining.
Since the initial late spring freeze melted out the monthly data points have fallen at or below the projected line. And it looks like August will be below.
A common definition of "ice free Arctic Ocean" is when there is less than 1 thousand km3 remaining. Taking it to absolute zero is not an important point, some remaining ice here and there is not very important.
Now take a look at the annual minimums for the last 37 years. Loosing 2 thousand km3 in a single year is something we've seen before more than once.
3 - 2 = something less than 1. A big melt next year an we will have melted the Arctic Ocean.
A prediction? No, just a focusing-in....
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eta: That's why a ten year prediction seems so long to me. Loosing a thousand km3 in a year is pretty routine. And we only need to loose a couple thousand.
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eta: Those "2"s are supposed to be "2plus". The software thinks I made a mistake with the plus sign, I suppose. It won't even let me write the 2 and plus sign inside quotation marks.
BoingBoing.net
Chocolate and high school football are being affected by climate change, according to two stories published on the Scientific American website yesterday. In the case of chocolate, the cocoa its made from is grown in several countries in West Africa, a region heavily affected by higher temperatures and extreme weather patterns. By 2020, there will likely be a 1.5 million ton shortage in cocoa production. As for football, the problem is the fact that, across the United States, cool weather season is kicking in later in the year than it used to. That affects football practice. Specifically, schools are increasingly concerned about the health risks of forcing high school students to get really physical, while fully suited and padded, in today's warmer Augusts and Septembers.
Well, arrangements seem to have already been made for the rescue. After that it's anybody's guess, but the smart money is on the Claus summer estate in the scenic Gamburtsevs, although there looks to be rather a lot of work ahead getting the driveway shoveled out so they can get the sleigh into the garage.
Sorry to have to beat a dead horse, but that crackpot solar stuff has been tested (and found wanting).
To be fair, some was at one time part of the body of scientific knowledge. What we're dealing with here is a field (solar physics) whose views have shifted greatly in the last 30-40 years.
In recognition of that rapid change and progress, and please excuse me if someone already provided this link, the solar physics community developed a peer-reviewed wiki, Living Reviews in Solar Physics, that gets constantly updated to reflect the latest science. It's the ideal resource for anyone wanting to learn about the subject.
And what about Supermans Northern home?
Well, I'm glad you're getting some benefit out of it, but give new lurkers too much dross to wade through and they'll find someplace to lurk where they don't have to do that. I suspect more of the latter goes on than you imagine, but since it's an invisible effect I suppose there's no real way of knowing. And of course I can't speak for Jim (Nea) but I have to say I find that sort of repeat whack-a-mole utterly tedious, especially when it's with someone (as snowblower) who it's clear is just here to jerk chains. It's why I pop in only irregularly.
I can understand - so many Nazis to battle, so little time.
Thanks for that link. It looks extremely useful. I've now added it to my arsenal.
Still don't understand Godwin's Law? Make up your own! Oh wait, you did...
ClimateCentral.org
The melting season is now fully under way in the high Arctic. Months of relatively warm temperatures and nearly continuous sunshine have taken their toll on the ice that blankets the Arctic Ocean. By mid-September, the sea ice will reach its low point for the year, before starting its annual re-freeze. All of this is normal, but the conditions scientists are seeing this year are anything but normal. “Right now,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., in an interview, “we’re on a record pace for ice loss. If the melt stopped today, we’d have the fourth lowest ice coverage on record.”
That’s worrisome enough by itself: the less ice covering the Arctic Ocean, the more of the Sun’s energy the underlying seawater absorbs, which ultimately leads to even more melting, along with generally higher Arctic temperatures overall. But preliminary readings from the European CryoSat-2 show that the remaining ice is far thinner than normal, which means that an especially warm spell, either now or sometime in the next few years, could melt a huge area of ice very quickly.
DMI, meanwhile, extent has a little further to fall, but there seems to be plenty of time:
And Cryosphere Today area has fewer than 200k km2 to lose before a new record is set:
But one thing that's really fascinating/disturbing/telling is that this year's low numbers are happening despite the lack, for the most part, of the near-perfect melting/flushing conditions that existed in 2007. From this week's Arcus sea ice outlook:
Except for early June, the weather was not particularly favorable for sea ice loss in summer 2012 as it was in 2007 and some other recent years. Given the lack of meteorological support and several indications that the sea ice was rather thin, we note that thermodynamic melting of thin, mobile sea ice is now a dominant process...
IOW: it's going, going...and soon to be gone.
A summer storm in the Arctic
August 14, 2012
Arctic sea ice extent during the first two weeks of August continued to track below 2007 record low daily ice extents. As of August 13, ice extent was already among the four lowest summer minimum extents in the satellite record, with about five weeks still remaining in the melt season. Sea ice extent dropped rapidly between August 4 and August 8. While this drop coincided with an intense storm over the central Arctic Ocean, it is unclear if the storm prompted the rapid ice loss. Overall, weather patterns in the Arctic Ocean through the summer of 2012 have been a mixed bag, with no consistent pattern.
Arctic sea ice extent on August 13 was 4.90 million square kilometers (1.9 million square miles). This is 2.81 million square kilometers (1.08 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average extent for the date, and is 450,000 square kilometers (173,745 square miles) below the previous record low for the date, which occurred in 2007. Low extent for the Arctic as a whole is driven by extensive open water on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, the Beaufort Sea, and—due to rapid ice loss over the past two weeks—the East Siberian Sea. Ice is near its normal (1979 to 2000) extent only off the northeastern Greenland coast. Ice near the coast in eastern Siberia continues to block sections of the Northern Sea Route. The western entrance to the Northwest Passage via McClure Strait remains blocked.The average pace of ice loss since late June has been rapid at just over 100,000 square kilometers (38,000 square miles) per day. However, this pace nearly doubled for a few days in early August during a major Arctic cyclonic storm, discussed below. Unlike the summer of 2007 when a persistent pattern of high pressure was present over the central Arctic Ocean and a pattern of low pressure was over the northern Eurasian coast, the summer of 2012 has been characterized by variable conditions. Air tempertures at the 925 hPa level (about 3000 feet above the ocean surface) of 1 to 3 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981 to 2012 average have been the rule from central Greenland, northern Canada, and Alaska northward into the central Arctic Ocean. Cooler than average conditions (1 to 2 degrees Celsius or 1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) were observed in a small region of eastern Siberia extending into the East Siberian Sea, helping explain the persistence of low concentration ice in this region through early August.A low pressure system entered the Arctic Ocean from the eastern Siberian coast on August 4 and then strengthened rapidly over the central Arctic Ocean. On August 6 the central pressure of the cyclone reached 964 hPa, an extremely low value for this region. It persisted over the central Arctic Ocean over the next several days, and slowly dissipated. The storm initially brought warm and very windy conditions to the Chukchi and East Siberian seas (August 5), but low temperatures prevailed later.Low pressure systems over the Arctic Ocean tend to cause the ice to diverge or spread out and cover a larger area. These storms often bring cool conditions and even snowfall. In contrast, high pressure systems over the Arctic cause the sea ice to converge. Summers dominated by low pressure systems over the central Arctic Ocean tend to end up with greater ice extent than summers dominated by high pressure systems.
However, the effects of an individual strong storm, like that observed in early August, can be complex. While much of the region influenced by the August cyclone experienced a sudden drop in temperature, areas influenced by winds from the south experienced a rise in temperature. Coincident with the storm, a large area of low concentration ice in the East Siberian Sea (concentrations typically below 50%) rapidly melted out. On three consecutive days (August 7, 8, and 9), sea ice extent dropped by nearly 200,000 square kilometers (77,220 square miles). This could be due to mechanical break up of the ice and increased melting by strong winds and wave action during the storm. However, it may be simply a coincidence of timing, given that the low concentration ice in the region was already poised to rapidly melt out.
Link
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While we all know that that weather is the predominant factor in determining the actual date when the annual minimum SIE is achieved, I thought I'd look at the past 32 years of satellite data to look for any trends.
I will add that I am not a statistician, so all comments, and suggestions are very welcome.
In a very simple Excel plot of the end dates of the annual SIE, I performed a linear trend analysis, which seems to show that the melt season is tending to be longer. However, because of the dependency on weather, the standard deviation is 6 days.
Anyone want to venture a prediction of when this year's melt season ends?
Do the same for the day of maximum freeze/first day of melt. You may have a picture of the lengthening melt season.
Just as spring is coming earlier and fall later 'down here' we shouldn't be surprised if the ice isn't getting less opportunity to form and more to melt.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll work on that.
Enjoy your week.
ARE WE READY FOR CATASTROPHE??
Link
Run this loop to see what I am talking about........
Link
Will the flowing water in the McClure Strait melt that ice quicker than it normally would if it did not get repositioned there?? That is a huge mass of ice that is going to melt out and will place us below the 2007 level.........
This promises to be new record PLUS.
(Software thinks I made a mistake putting in a plus sign.)
Link
eta: Unlike melting sea ice, this stuff does raise sea levels. Melting Greenland, that's a really big mistake....
Link
It has been stuck here for the past few days near 3.100
But if you run the loop here you can clearly see the trend is still downward and the Cryosphere graphs don't represent that..
WHY?
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