I’m convinced of global warming. But recently I read a letter to the editor in our local paper wherein a “science educator” claimed that there is a “weather shift” occurring. He wrote “The northern hemisphere is slowly warming while at the same time the southern hemisphere is getting colder. Why are the global-warming people not bringing up the southern hemisphere’s increase in freezing?” He finishes by saying, “It is not global warming. It is a weather shift.” I’ve never heard this before. Is there any truth to it?
Well, the correct term is really Climate Change. Some places will get colder and wetter and some will get hotter and drier. On average, though, the earth will get hotter.
The problem is, we’ve populated the earth for the current climate, not the future one. Sea levels rise, and lots of farmland becomes useless. It’s nice to know that there will be some places that might have an improved climate (for humans), but how do you get all the people from the current, bad places to the new, good places?
No.
The problem is there strong disagreement about how much warming will occur as increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The problem is that CO2 isn’t a very strong greenhouse gas. The models that predict strong warming are based on feedback where a small increase in warming caused by CO2 will cause a much stronger warming by increasing the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
The problem is aggravated because we only have a few decades of reliable measurements of the earth surface temperature measured by satellites. Prior temperature measurements were based on a tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface which was distorted by urban heat island effect. The actual differences in measurements are a fraction of a degree centigrade, which is inside the noise band.
The current global temperature measurements seem to indicate a warming of 1 to 1.5 degrees centigrade by the year 2100.
No…Temperatures are rising in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, although the temperature rise is faster in the Northern Hemisphere, I believe mainly due to the fact that there is more land and less ocean in the Northern Hemisphere (although there could be other issues such as trends in the amount of aerosol pollutants).
It is possible that the garbled letter to the editor is trying to reference the fact that Antarctic sea ice has been increasing, a somewhat different issue discussed here.
More-or-less true: A doubling of CO2 without any feedbacks would result in about a 1.2 C temperature rise. With feedbacks, the best estimate is a 2 to 4.5 C temperature rise. However, it is worth noting that the water vapor feedback is now well-confirmed (see, for example here and here.
The only thing that could potentially save us from a very significant warming effect due to CO2 is a negative cloud feedback…and, while clouds remain the biggest source of uncertainty, there has been no credible evidence that the cloud feedback is negative and, in fact, it becomes hard to explain past events such as the glacial - interglacial oscillations with a negative cloud feedback.
There is no evidence that the urban heat island effect is distorting the global temperature record that has been independently produced from the data by various groups, with the most recent being the BEST analysis, which was funded in part by the infamous Koch Brothers who have spent considerable amounts of money to support groups that attack the science of anthropogenic global warming.
That may be your personal opinion but is not the opinion of the scientific community, which would say your numbers are at best at the lower end of realistic estimates. (Although I am not even sure what the baseline year you are comparing to is.)
A related question: here in the NE USA, we have had several winters where the normal flow of cold Arctic air south, has been blocked by the jet stream. This has given us mild and snowless winters. My question…such a scenario will always result in higher surface temperatures (in the NE), because earth without snow cover absorbs more solar energy. This is why we had an early spring here (we had daytime highs in the 70’s in late March).
My question: when the cold air stays in the Arctic region, doesn’t this cause it to become colder? (Due to the increased snow cover albedo). All of this happens without any global warming trend.
The continued loss of Arctic ice strongly suggests that your scenario is not causing anything to be colder.
Your assumption that the weather patterns you noted have no connection to Global Warming do not seem to have any basis.
I have to wonder if disrutption of some of the worlds rivers may be a contributing factor to weather change. I know ocean currents are major contributors to weather patterns and I would think the rivers affect the temps of ocean currents.
Not quite. The winter of 2011-12 was preceded by the winter of 2010-11, which was cold and snowy-we had snowfall from November to March. During that winter, the jet stream moved south, enabling arctic air to flow down continually.
I’m not a meteorologist, but I’d assume that the albedo with 6 inches of snow cover is much the same as the albedo with 6 feet of snow cover. As long as the coverage is 100%, the increasing the depth won’t raise the albedo.
It isn’t my opinion. It is a linear regression for the last 40 years for GISS, UAH, CRU and RSS. The satellite data only goes back to 1970, which is my starting date. You can check it easily by using this web site.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/
I just don’t see any justification for using someone’s computer model over the actual measurements. Remember, the range represents all 4 major temperature indexes. BEST doesn’t have a global index yet, just the land mean.
I find this fascinating since the first Microwave Sounding Units for measuring atmospheric temperatures from satellites were launched with the TIROS-N satellite in 1978.
What has woodfortrees substituted for satellite measurements to make the data stretch back to 8 years before the instruments were in orbit?
Cite:
Sorry I meant 79, not 70.
And since the measurements only go up to 2011 for whole years, 2012 if you’re using partial years, how do you get up to 2100? What are you using to estimate future temperature changes?
I’m a child of the 80s, 90s and no other generation was bombarded with the onslaught of the threat of GLOBAL WARMING more than mine. In high school, my debate topic for 2 years running was GLOBAL WARMING. Even back then, as I actually READ research studies and opposing views, I questioned the concept of man made/created atmospheric changes. One only needs to look back to the 70s to see that the “scare” of the times then was GLOBAL COOLING! Yes my friend, at one point in recent American history the rhetoric read “Scientists worry that lack of CO2 in the atmosphere could cause American wheat belt to fail = widespread famine!”
Fast forward only a few decades to today and my favorite asthma inhaler (the ONLY over the counter one) is being banned b/c the chemicals I inhale from them directly into my lungs allegedly damage the ozone layer by increasing CO2 levels in the upper stratosphere by .01%. Let me clarify, MY inhaler doesn’t increase CO2 by .01%, ALL inhalers worldwide, collectively, together have the potential to increase CO2 by .01% in the upper stratosphere. And an increase of .01% of CO2 has been shown to be NOTHING when you taken into consideration the PLUMES OF millions of gallons of CO2 that are released annually by completely natural occurences like oh, I don’t know, VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS? To listen to the fundies today you’d think CO2 was a manmade invention, nevermind the fact that every biologically living thing, including 100% of all plant, bacteria, and algea matter has relied on CO2 to LIVE for millions of years and that it is a naturally occuring gas replete through every layer of the atmosphere at imeasurable and volumous levels beyond human comprehension …
Are things out of control? Yes, yes they are.
The ONLY indisputable FACT is that:
- The Earth was covered completely in molten lava BEFORE man ever lit his first fire and it was covered completely in ice BEFORE man ever took his first breath. We did not invent the weather/temperature variations that have existed at every degree for MILLIONS of years, and we did not cause molten lava or ice and we aren’t going to now.
We will, however, choke the land with our giant piles of trash and pollute the water with industrial solvents BUT big business would like for you to kindly disregard that and focus on taking inhalers away from the asthmatics b/c we really NEED to focus on that .01% of CO2 we injected into the existing and self sustaining OCEAN of CO2 in the sky!!! .01% people!!!
Nothing to see her folks.
Joel, let me help you with those temperature recordings … Quite naturally, before humans ever existed, the Earth was nearly covered in molten lava. We can assume it was the hotest it’s has ever been - not due to mankind. At some point later, the Earth was almost completely covered in ice. We can assume it was the coldest it’s ever been - not due to mankind. We can also assume that over the millions of years between molten lava period and ice period, every other temperature had it’s 15 minutes of fame - not due to activities directly attributable to mankind.
Luckily the Earth has been hospitable to mankind for a time period that could be described visually as a “sticky note affixed to the highest point of Mt. Everest.” So, if in the next decade Earth changes even 20 degrees, yes that is bad news for mankind, but it would be nothing monumental at all in the big picture of Earth’s MILLIONS Of years of temperature variations. Focusing on the minutia of a couple of of 100 of years of 70 or so degree weather does not represent an accurate picture of Earth’s “climate change” at all.
Even the “classic” Global warming swindle movie had to remove that bit from the movie in subsequent releases because it was not based in reality.
That is actually my line, I’m getting tired that many ignore the scientific information that it is out there and rely on media that has no clue at all and sometimes it has an interest on keeping many in the dark on this subject.
You forgot to address GLOBAL COOLING! That means scientists were really concerned about it, right? Right? They were so concerned that they typed it in all caps: that meant they were really SERIOUS!
Going for the George Carlin “the earth will be fine, we are ******?” Incidentally, what you are saying here assumes that scientists have not looked at the big picture, they have and it is also what they see in the past that tells them what we can expect from the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.