Newsflash? No.

Well, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, 2006 was even warmer than 2005. That means, if you haven't been keeping score, that 2006 was the warmest year on record (for the USA). I didn't find an actual ranking for the global mean temperature, but I think we can safely assume 2006 was in the top 5 (if not the top 2). The press release blames (rightly, for a change) ENSO (which is El Nino) for the getting 2006 into the top seat. It turns out December was really hot, mostly because there weren't very many storms crossing the country. My suspicion is that this El Nino will continue to make this winter much warmer than average, and 2007 will beat 1998 and 2006 as the warmest year in the past 1000+ years.

LINK TO NCDC

meltdown

I don't have time to really think too hard about this story, but it is making the rounds, so I'll at least acknowledge it. Some NCAR simulations now predict essentially no late-summer ice in the Arctic by 2040. See the story at BBC [LINK] or at Nature [LINK]. The actual paper is in Geophysical Research Letters [doi:10.1029/2006GL028024].

What does this mean? Well, I haven't had a chance to look closely at the paper, but I have some first impressions. I did get a sneak-peek of these results this summer, and at the same time was introduced to some of the details of the sea-ice model used in CCSM (NCAR's climate model), so maybe I'll be able to say something halfway meaningful. The paper itself does not predict an ice-free Arctic in 2040, so let's just get that out of the way. This paper is really about the possibility of abrupt decreases in sea-ice in a changing climate, and the current generation of climate models suggest a real possibility of large reductions in perennial ice coverage in the first half of the 21st century. The main focus is a set of CCSM simulations using one of the emissions scenarios from IPCC. They also take a look at some of the results from other IPCC models. The CCSM always has what the authors call "abrupt reductions" in Arctic ice, and several of the other models also show large reductions.

I am willing to accept these results, but I think some skepticism has to be exercised still. First off, this is a GRL paper, which is a journal of short, usually preliminary, work focusing on "sexy" results. The peer-review process for GRL is sometimes thought to be a little lax, and sometimes the quality of the work is questionable. That does not seem to be an issue for this paper; the CCSM is a respected climate model, the authors are top-notch climate scientists, and this work is presented well. That said, this is not the last word on this project; I'm sure that the authors are doing more detailed work and are planning a longer, more careful analysis for another journal (e.g., Journal of Climate, Climate Dynamics). The best thing that could do would be to better quantify what "abrupt changes" really are, and the physical processes that trigger them, which is a big open question in this paper. They say the abrupt changes are driven by thermodynamics, but don't really present evidence of this; I assume they mean that wind patterns/ocean currents are changing to just move ice out of the Arctic, but it is not explained. The other thing to keep in mind is that even in the current generation climate models, the sea-ice models are fairly crude. I don't mean that in a bad way, the people working on these models are doing the best they can. Ice processes are quite complicated, and to properly model sea-ice, much like "properly" modeling clouds, the simulations need to be run in much higher resolutions. That kind of resolution is too expensive right now, and even if the resources were there, it would be a tough sell to dedicate it to the sea-ice component rather than better atmospheric and oceanic components. This particular climate model is known to be fairly sensitive, and when it gets knocked out of equilibrium, the sea-ice is one of the things known to respond fairly erradically. So while I think the CCSM, and several other high-end climate models, can get a lot of important changes correct, we still can't trust the details of these fully coupled simulations. My interpretation is then something like this: in the near future (50 years), it is likely that rapid reductions in perennial Arctic sea-ice will be observed, associated with (but not well-correlated with) increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Would I qualify?

A small story, ultimately of no consequence, suggesting the "need" for a Nobel Prize for the Environment: LINK.

Funny as it may sound, I don't think it would be a very good idea to add such a prize. I would like to see more earth scientists honored for their contributions to understanding physics, chemistry, and dynamical system, but the Nobel prizes are so high profile, and climate change such a charged issue, I think such a prize would be politicized immediately. That would sully the award, because there would always be questions about why people get the prize. Not only that, but it would be difficult to separate scientific achievment in understanding the environment from conservation of the environment, which is more social science or economics or political or who knows what. If conservation groups tended to be awarded the prize, then earth scientists would be even less likely to be honored, since they wouldn't get the environment prize and they'd usually be excluded from the physics or chemistry prizes.

There is also the issue of the maturity of the fields of meteorology, oceanography, climate dynamics, environmental sciences, and such. While those of us in the field could come up with a list of deserving people, it would be difficult after a few years to say with confidence that a person(s) have made a lasting positive contribution. This comes up in the other science prizes when people complain that awardees get the award decades after the work, but the defense is that it takes that long to figure out what work needs to be honored. We don't really have very many decades of work to choose from (of course, excluding the early pioneers like Bjerknes, Charney, Richardson, Ekman, von Neuman, and many other dead folks).

Down under, where the carbon is.

Today's little tidbit is a short news story about a Journal of Climate paper [LINK]. The paper is about a climate simulation that includes an ocean (and presumably a carbon cycle model). The bottom line is that they think they have a credible southern hemisphere atmospheric circulation, with then drives a realistic Antarctic circumpolar current. If you have never done so, go get a globe and look at it from the "bottom," so you are looking right at the south pole; notice that there is a ring of water around Antarctica. That's the only place where that happens, and it makes a big difference to the world's climate. Anyway, they say that as the winds around Antarctica move south, they change the uptake of carbon dioxide into the ocean, which partially offsets the climate change associated with the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. That's good! Unfortunately, it also accelerates sea level rise (by pumping heat into the ocean, raising the temperature faster) and ocean acidification (which might feed back onto the carbon cycle if critters start dying off). So there you go. Maybe I'll try to tap Nikki for more nuianced insight, since this is closely related to her work.

mid-term updates

The dearth of posts here for the last month should be taken as an indication of progress and stress here at the home base. It is difficult to save the world one simulated cloud at a time, but it will be worth it. The blog will likely continue to suffer in coming months, but I will try to put up interesting tidbits on a weekly-ish basis.

Today's tidbit is about supercomputers. What do I know about supercomputers? Not too much, but sometimes I use them. Okay, sometimes I use small little chunks of them (anywhere from 8 to 128 processors right now, maybe more in the near future). However, people who do know about high-performance computing are abuzz about the new rankings of the top 500 supercomputers [LINK]. The IBM machine at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab is destroying its competition, running at an impressive 280.6 teraflops. That is 280.6 trillion operations per second, where an operation is basically adding or multiplying some numbers. A nice desktop computer can usually crank out about one billion operations per second (1 gigaflops), which is 280,600 times less than the BlueGene/L at LLNL. The next closest speed to the BlueGene/L is at Sandia National Lab, which runs a Cray (called "red storm") that gets 101.4 teraflops. That seems like nothing in comparison, but it is only the second system to break the 100 TFLOPS barrier.

For comparison, the Earth-Simulator in Japan (made from NEC parts, 5120 processors) is now ranked 14th at about 35 TFLOPS. That facility is still considered an amazing feat, and the atmospheric simulations coming from them are still astounding people in the atmospheric sciences [EXAMPLE]. NCAR's newest machine (one I definitely do not have access to) is "blueice," an IBM machine running 1696 processors at 10.5 TFLOPS.... I think this machine is getting expanded very soon, too. They also have a BlueGene to play with that is ranked 144, using 2048 processors, and IBM machines (1600, 608 processors) at numers 193 and 213.

Why does any of this matter? Well, for one thing, we are inching closer and closer to the ultimate goal. Also, we are on the brink of "peta-scale" computing, which is probably going to change the way computational science gets done. We'll be able to do simulations much faster with much finer resolutions, which will produce incredible amounts of data. It will be a challenge over the next few years to develop ways to deal with all that data. It will require different software approaches as well as new hardware. With standard desktop technology of today, the file I/O (that is, just reading the data from the hard disk) is far too slow to deal with the amount of information that we're going to be dealing with. Crunching the numbers and then visualizing the model output is going to be tremendously difficult without an incredible amount of support from computer-savvy folks who can help the scientists. The technology is coming, money is already being spent, projects are being planned, so now is the time to start thinking about how to deal with the output.

The Ozone Hole is confusing

I've been seeing small news items over the past week or two saying that this year's Antarctic ozone hole has matched the previous record, and that the amount of ozone is the lowest ever [e.g., LINK]. While this is interesting and important news, I'm wondering if it might confuse people. Afterall, a lot, way more than you think, of people think there is a direct link between anthropogenic global warming and the ozone hole. Not just laypeople on the street either, smart and usually-informed people think this. Climate scientists everywhere are constantly being forced to correct people at cocktail parties and other social events. "No, the ozone hole is due to chemicals called CFCs in the upper atmosphere; global warming has to do with burning fossil fuels."

After the gigantic ozone hole of 2000, the size has actually decreased, leading most to believe that the Montreal Protocol of 1987 was a smashing success, and that the hole would disappear in 50 years or so. Actually, that is still what most people in the know are thinking.

So what's with the new big ozone hole? Well, it may have something to do with global warming. Sigh.

Basically, every winter (in Antarctica the winter is during June-July-August) it gets really, really, really cold around and over Antarctica. Because of the geography of the southern hemisphere, there are incredibly strong winds that essentially circle around the continent of Antarctica. Cold air basically gets trapped inside this huge votex, and has nothing better to do than get even colder, all winter. During this deep freeze, polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) can form, in which molecular chlorine can form (Cl2), and the stronger the vortex, the larger the PSCs and the more Cl2 can form.

When the spring comes, sunlight is added to the equation. Sunlight easily breaks the molecular chlorine into atmoic chlorine. The atomic chlorine (Cl) quickly reacts in a chain of events that destroys ozone; it's a catalytic reaction; a single chlorine atom can tear apart many ozone molecules. This is why the ozone hole appears suddenly in September, when the sun finally shines on the pole.

How is this related to global warming? Well, the same course of events happens year in and year out, but there is variability, of course. Because of the international agreement to eliminate the use of CFCs, every year the amount of CFCs decreases. As a side note, CFCs get absorbed by the upper ocean, and are used as a great passive tracer to study ocean motion. Even with the decrease, the coldness of the winter is still quite variable. The colder the winter, the stronger the polar vortex, the more PSCs can form and condition the stratosphere for ozone depletion. It is possible that the large-scale circulation pattern of the southern hemisphere could adjust to make the polar night colder even as the global surface temperature rises. A paper from 2000 explores some of these issues of synergy between stratospheric ozone depletion and greenhouse gas warming (Hartmann et al, 2000, PNAS). This is ongoing research, as the question of how the circulation will adjust to a warmer world is hard to answer, but my feeling is that more and more people seem to think that the change might favor these extremely cold winters with a strong polar vortex and favorable conditions for ozone depletion.

By the way, Cambridge has a nice ozone hole web site: LINK

Slate misunderstands wine AND global warming

Last friday, Slate.com posted an article by Joel Waldfogel called "Go North, Young Grapes: The effect of global warming on the world's vineyards." I was excited to see it, since I'm really interested in both global warming and wine. However, after reading it, I find several major deficiencies, some of which are obvious errors in understanding what global warming is and how plants, specifically grape vines, work.

The article reports on something called a "working paper" by Orley Ashenfelter and Karl Storchmann, who I think are economists. The paper is called "Using a Hedonic Model of Solar Radiation to Assess the Economic Effect of Climate Change: The Case of Mosel Valley Vineyards," written for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., whatever that is. I have looked at this paper, which you can find through the RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) web site [LINK,pdf], and so I will let Joel Waldfogel off the hook for a time while we discuss the paper itself.

Section 2B of the paper states, "it is apparent that
total solar radiation is highly dependent on the amount, kind and density of clouds, and varies
with time and place. For the sake of simplicity engineers often calculate the so-called
extraterrestrial radiation, that is, the radiation that would be available if there were no
atmosphere (Duffie and Beckman, 1991)." What this means to me is that they don't want to account for variations in the atmosphere (weather and such, you know, that's not important), so they are going to use what I would call solar insolation. However, that varies only with latitude and time of year, and they are calculating it at the ground, so they ignore the atmosphere but take into account the slope of the ground. Okay, well, I'll tell you why that is a poor assumption shortly.

Let me now quote from section 2D:
"D. Other Factors that Affect Vineyard Sites Gladstones (1992) provides a detailed analysis of several other factors that make specific geographic sites more or less suitable for the production of high quality grapes. Important factors include those that reduce diurnal (night-day) temperature differences. Nearness to a body of water and, especially, soil type are important determinants of diurnal fluctuations..."
Hold on to this for our discussion below.

Before going on to the analysis, the authors discuss the data for vineyard prices, and how they take into account non-south-facing slopes, altitude, and soil characteristics. There are gross assumptions built into these choices, which I will ignore here. However, let's just say that vineyards don't necessarily suffer from being farther away from bodies of water, despite the authors' assumption. One aspect that might be worth mentioning here is that the authors state that they think vineyards far from large bodies of water will be hurt because they don't have smaller diurnal temperature fluctuations; as I understand it, grapes do extremely well in conditions where there is large diurnal variation.... the hot days and cool nights of California's Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties come to mind.

So how do they do global warming without an atmosphere? Well, they don't. They do a very simple energy flux calculation using blackbody radiation, albedo (reflectivity) and an "emissivity." Fair, except that instead of actually considering something resembling an emissivity, the authors choose to assume that the energy emitted from the surface is half of that emitted from the atmosphere. Crude to say the least, especially when it would have been easy to do much better. So they are sort of taking account of the greenhouse effect, since they'll get temperatures that are way too cold if they don't. They then plug in a temperature change associated with global warming, and get the amount of "radiation energy" that must be associated with that change, and they continue to assert this is "solar radiation" (actually in their figure they say "positive net radiation" which is correct).

Here's the thing. They set up their model using solar insolation, or atmosphere-free radiative flux at the surface, but then they try to apply a climate change that relies on a crude assumption about the atmosphere. This is inconsistent. They could have done better, but let us accept it. A greater problem is that they are making a model based on how agriculture should use incident solar radiation, which is visible light. Yes, there is a connection between sunshine and temperature, but plants are highly dependent on the actual sunshine for photosynthesis, not temperature alone. This is a complex biological relationship the authors fail to take into account.

They mention that there are other factors that affect vineyards, as quoted above. A critical one is the night-day temperature variation. The model punishes vineyards for having a large/larger diurnal variation, including an assumption that higher altitude vineyards are farther from water, must have larger day-night temperature variations, and therefore suffer more from "global warming." I'm just not sure why they do that, as I've learned that wine grapes are better with large diurnal cycles, and also wines made from mountainside vineyards are among the most prized/collected wines in the world. This is actually going to be important too, because in global warming scenarios, the diurnal variation is often affected more than the actual maximum temperature. That is because the effect is in the infrared, not the visible light, so after the sun goes down the surface can't cool as efficiently because the atmosphere is warmed. That means minimum temperatures get higher, and they change more than daytime maximum temperatures, which reduces the diurnal variation. The authors ignore this fact.

The major deficiency of the paper is the assumption that plants will thrive under warmer conditions based on energy input arguments. While it is true that there will be a larger energy flux into the surface under global warming, this energy will be in the infrared, which does not necessarily benefit plants. In marginal growing areas where occasional freezing conditions damage crops during the growing season, increases in daily minimum temperatures might reduce the occurence of these freezes, but the increased energy flux will not increase photosynthetic activity. Vineyards will not benefit directly from global warming by absorbing more radiant energy.

A more appropriate hypothesis to test is whether the changes in growing season length might affect vineyards. Since "spring" will start earlier, plants might respond by starting their growth cycle earlier. Autumn-like temperatures will come slightly later, so the growing season my be extended further. In the case of vineyards, this might allow grapes to ripen more, which increases the sugar content of the berries and increases the alcohol content of the wine. More importantly, different grape varieties might benefit by a longer growing season, so areas that only grow grapes with a short "hang time" now might be able to expand to other longer "hang time" varieties. Regions that don't have a long enough growing season to properly ripen grapes might get a boost and obtain growing seasons long enough to produce them (thinking especially of regions of Oregon and Washington).

Existing vineyards are unlikely to be affected by global warming, especially in established regions with strong control on growing practices (e.g., Bordeaux, Burgundy). It is possible that the nature of the wine will change, as warmer days and nights might change the sugar levels of grapes, or various other aspects of the fruit. It is also possible that changes in rainfall patterns will significantly alter the agricultural practices, and the possibility of severe droughts and floods putting more vintages in jeopardy in the future is a distinct threat.

Sun spots only predict hemlines

This week's Nature has a short review article about the effect of variations in the Sun's luminosity on Earth's climate. In fact, most of the article is about trying to understand the Sun's luminosity and the solar physics at work. In the end, I think the important thing to glean is that there is a well-known 11-year sunspot cycle, and sunspots are cooler than the solar surface. However, when there are lots of sunspots, the sun is actually a bit brighter than normal because of faculae and the "magnetic network" of bright thermal "leaks," that let more energy escape the solar surface. All the evidence points to variations is luminosity (brightness or energy flux) being due almost entirely to magnetic field variations. Not so surprising perhaps. More surprising is that as hard as people try to find secular variability in the luminosity, it doesn't seem to change much. Even less surprising is that the variations that are observed, and inferred from proxies, should have a minimal influence on Earth's climate. This, despite global warming denialists always talking about "solar variability" as if it were a well-known, well understood phenomenon.

Here's something that hardly ever gets said out loud: climate scientists know at least as much about climate as solar physicists know about the sun. There, I said it. The two fields are covered in very different ways in popular press, though. Why? My little theory goes like this: People (general public, policymakers, media) can associate solar physics with astrophysics, which is like physics, which they (usually) didn't understand when they took it in high school/college compared; climate science, on the other hand, is not like physics (to them), and maybe it is more like meteorology, which is like the weather report, which is always wrong (right? Actually, no, but that is the perception.) So there is this tendency to not believe the "climate scientists" or "climatologists" (an even worse term) when they publish a new result, and this skepticism is amplified because there are so often controversial policy consequences/implications that bring out more vocal opposition and "fair and balanced" sort of treatment in the media. Contrast that with findings about the sun or stars or astronomy in general, which is mostly covered as amazing and important new scientific facts (unless it has to do with defining planets!). So that sort of sums up my pet theory.

Most Important Science Story of the Month

The observational confirmation of dark matter. [LINK] Far and away the most important science story for the month, and will definitely be in the top 10 for the year.

This is a great example of how science works. A set of physical rules seemed to make sense, but something didn't fit. Physicists thought they understood how gravity worked (at large scales), but galaxies and clusters of galaxies didn't seem to obey it. It was as if there were more mass that could be measured. A lot of explanations were presented, but one called dark matter seemed to come to the fore. The idea is that there is matter that interacts gravitationally, but we can't actually see it. This conjecture seems to be proved now with observations.

Guess what, science works!

Someone tell Congress.

Deniers try to misrepresent science.

A nice blog entry has been posted over on Deltoid, of ScienceBlogs [LINK]. It shows Hansen's 1988 climate model predictions of global warming along with observed global temperature. Despite how crude climate models were in 1988, Hansen's predictions are pretty much spot on. It is especially interesting to look at 1993, where the observations take a nosedive because of Mt. Pinatubo. They "recover" in about 2 years. Note that the credit on the figure is to the GISS page [LINK], but neither the blue line nor the extension of the red line (both observations) from 1998 to 2005 is on that page, and I don't know where that data come from. I tend to believe it though. If I find a better reference, I'll post it.

UPDATE: The red line (observations) actually isn't extended. Instead another dataset (blue) is just overlaid.

Crutzen's sulfur ideas

"Wait, don't do it!"

That was my first reaction after reading about Paul Crutzen's semi-crazy idea to ameliorate anthropogenic global warming by filling the stratosphere with sulfur. In case you've missed the story, there's a wired article that covers the main points [LINK]. It all stems from an editorial Crutzen published in Climatic Change, [LINK] . The idea is that putting sulfur into the stratosphere (about 20 km above you, say) would reflect sunlight, reducing the amount of energy reaching Earth's surface. That would cool the globe, no doubt, but there are problems.

We know it will work. Volcanoes do this same thing, more or less. We also know it would be temporary, because the sulfur would only float around the stratosphere for a few years before being used up in chemical reactions and slowly deposited back into the troposphere and back to the surface. Crutzen covers all this in the paper, which is mostly a quick back-of-the-envelop calculation mixed with some previous results. Crutzen, it should be pointed out, is not actually in favor of the idea; the media doesn't really seem to be mentioning that so much. In the paper he is extremely hesitant, saying essentially that if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere we may start to experience catostrophic warming (~5 degrees C), which would necessitate rapid action to reduce the global temperature. To that end, he proposes a community wide, multidisciplinary effort to test this geo-engineering scenario. He thinks we need to model the effects, but also consider possible ecological consequences.

So what are the problems with reducing the sunlight getting to the surface? Well, one that is pointed out by the Wired article is that it will directly impact plants and photosynthesis. This might be especially pronounced in the tropics, where plants have evolved to expect a lot of sunlight. Changing the amount of light reaching the surface might give some plants a benefit and others a disadvantage, which could potentially throw the natural balance out of whack. Land-use issues aside, we don't have any idea really what the distribution of plant species in the tropics means for the global carbon cycle, not to mention the hydrological cycle. A second potential problem is that the additional sulfur in the stratosphere might change the stratospheric heating rates, which would change the temperature distribution, which would alter the large-scale temperature gradients, and might impact the Brewer-Dobson circulation. This would have unknown effects on the general circulation of the midlatitudes, possibly altering large-scale weather patterns (think El Nino or North Atlantic Oscillation). A third issue, also mentioned by Crutzen, is that cooling the surface won't save the ocean. As CO2 increases, it will continue to be taken up by the ocean. Unfortunately, that increases the acidity of the upper ocean, where lots of little creatures grow. Many of those little creatures grow calcium carbonate shells, but they can't do it in acidic conditions. That means they die. Not only do those organisms play an important role in the carbon cycle (and other biogeochemical cycles), but they are also the foundation of the entire marine food chain. If they die, then large species suffer, and larger ones suffer even more, and even humans who like to eat seafood will suffer.

So those are my first three potential problems with this plan. However, I'll take Crutzen's side. He basically says that our policy makers have their heads in their behinds, partly because they don't have good solutions and partly because they are not forward thinking, and so there is not going to be a reduction in greenhouse gas concentrations any time soon. Since we know we will face global warming, we need to figure out what to do if the warming starts to get out of control. This sulfur parasol effect is one possibility, and it should be investigated. Along the way, we will continue to learn important things about the climate system, even if the sulfur parasol turns out to be an untenable solution.


Additional reading

1. BioEd Online: Should we flood the air with sulphur? [LINK]

2. Crutzen, Paul J., 2006: Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A contribution to resolve a policy dilemma? Climatic Change doi: 10.1007/s10584-006-9101-y [possible LINK]

3. Geo-engineering in vogue, on RealClimate [LINK]

cheap movies

Having just spent my second consecutive night appreciating Brick on DVD, I wanted to take a moment out of our usual foray into climate science to talk about movies. A few posts ago, I raved a little bit about Clerks II, which I still highly recommend, but today I want to do something different. I've always appreciated low budget, indie movies, but I've recently seen a few that really struck my fancy. These have also mostly been first efforts (or at least first feature films) from the writer/directors. These are movies that you watch, or at least I watch, and then I just have to wonder how they got it done for hardly any money, and unde adverse filmmaking conditions. My intention is not to review or analyze these films, but just to note them, marke them as different from most movies, even different from most "indie" movies. I'm no expert on this, of course, but I can name a couple off the top of my head. Please feel free to add/recommend movies I've missed.

• El Mariachi (1992) - Robert Rodriguez - $7,000


• Clerks (1994) - Kevin Smith - $27,000


• Primer (2004) - Shane Carruth - $7,000


• Brick (2005) - Rian Johnson - $500,000


• Honorable mentions:
  
  
• Slacker (1991) - Richard Linklater - $23,000


• Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - Tobe Hooper - $84,000


• Roger & Me (1989) - Michael Moore - $160,000 (but it is a documentary)


• THX 1138 (1971) - George Lucas - $777,000 (a little pricey)

UPDATE: I just realized that The Brothers McMullen (1995) by Ed Burns was made for just $23,800. I haven't actually seen it, but I know a lot of people swear by it.

Planets, Dwarf planets, plutons, and apathy

The international astronomical union is going to vote on a new system for classifying heavenly bodies as planets [LINK]. Essentially the new rule is if a thing orbits a star, but is not a star or a moon, and it has enough mass to make it round, then yes, it is a planet. Well done, boys. Here's a potential new schematic of the solar system (LATimes):

People always have to make up labels and categories, despite the fact that nature certainly has shades of grey. We deal with it in clouds classification schemes all the time... cumulus, altocumulus, altostratus, cirrostratus, stratocumulus, and it goes on ad nauseam. Some things are categorized easily. Mammals are different from birds, and both are different from reptiles. Animals are different from plants. Galaxies are different from stars, and both are different from rocks (planet or not). Water clouds are different from dust clouds. Lakes are different from oceans. You get my point. Yet, at some level, the system starts to break down. Is Pluto a planet? Is Ceres? Does it matter what we call them at all? Is this the right way to spend our time? Instead of arguing over whether to have an official definition for planet or dwarf planet or "pluton," why don't we get back to work and figure out some meaningful scientific questions. As for elementary school science books, well, if you grew up in public schools like I did, you know it doesn't matter what the new books say, because the students won't see them until they are obsolete too.

A new feature here on FtF

If you ever scroll down the page, take note of a new feature here on Facing the Fire: "An Idiot List." It is just a static list of people, especially those in the media, who consistently seem to say stupid things about climate change. It's not comprehensive, of course, and I welcome suggestions. It's also not a "deniers hit list," even though I did have to add Pat Michaels. I'll be expanding the list as new idiots appear, so keep your eyes peeled.

Competitive Enterprise Institute Ad - parody on Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel took the CEI add and spoofed it. The first half of the video is the actual add, which is funny enough. The second half is Kimmel's version. It's hard to tell which one is really the parody (except the midget gives it away).

The Committee on Energy and Commerce

Because I missed it on 19 July, I've been watching parts of the webcast of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing called Questions Surrounding the ‘Hockey Stick’ Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments [
LINK]. Other sites have already been covering the proceedings in more detail (esp. RealClimate), so I won't go into any details. All I'll say is that I have discovered a new villian in the House, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, whose opening statements to the proceedings (about minute 55 or so of the webcast) are among the most ill-informed, partisan, ignorant, and dangerous views on climate change that I have heard in the past few years.

Inhofe adds insult to injury

During my morning procrastination, I came across two blog entries about Senator Inhofe's recent appearance on CNN. He is amazingly wrong on just about every point. Deltoid was the first post I saw, and he points out Inhofe is lying about when (and why) he started denying global warming [LINK]. Deltoid in turn links to Judd Legum at Think Progress, who even has the video clip [LINK]. I recommend going over to see it, just to see how ridiculously wrong-minded he is. And this is one of the most influential people in Congress? Something needs to be done.

Op-Ed madness

Somehow I missed this Op-Ed in the LA Times yesterday by Naomi Oreskes [LINK]. It is called "Global Warming -- Signed, Sealed, and Delivered," and it a defense of her work -- which found an overwhelming scientific consensus that scientists believe global warming is real and humans have played a large role in it -- and also an explanation that there are always people who refuse to accept new ideas and facts. That second point is directed at the few remaining global warming deniers in the real scientific community (i.e., Richard Lindzen) and those outside science who cling to these "experts" as evidence that there is still some kind of debate about whether humans have influenced Earth's climate. Ms. Oreskes uses a classic example to show that this is not a new phenomenon; she points out that Harold Jeffreys, an eminent geophysicist in the early 20th Century, who was a brilliant and talented person, never believed in plate tectonics or continental drift. He just didn't think it was possible. As evidence mounted, he never bought into it, and railed against the idea. Despite the fact that by the time he died almost everyone in the geosciences believed in plate tectonics, Jeffreys refused. Of course, whether continents drift or not had no bearing on public policy in the 1950s or 1960s, and the "debate" was never sensationalized by the popular media and no lobbying groups rallied to quash the well-accepted science of continental drift. Undoubtedly there were religious types who found the thought unappealing, there still are people who don't want to believe in plate tectonics... for that there are a few out there who still believe Earth is hollow, but they were unable to stop the progress of science. With anthropogenic global warming, solid science faces a serious obstacle because the results of innumerable studies point directly toward humans and fossil fuels as the cause for global climate change, and that butts up against policy decisions. Worse yet, the most obvious way to mitigate climate change is to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but to do so would affect how business is conducted, and Business (with a capital B) has the money and influence to alter the policy-making process.

Go read the Oreskes' op-ed, it is quite clear and doesn't digress like I always do.

three quick notes

First, I want to let you know that I am still interested in these "atmospheric rivers." I've tracked down some additional references, and even some data, but haven't had a chance to look into it yet. On that note, I should also mention that I did at least learn that I was wrong about the Pineapple Express being more frequent in the spring. One reference (that I'll cite eventually) finds that these events are centered in January and February. More on this stuff later

Second, there's a story in the NYTimes about NASA changing their mission statement [LINK]. It seems a little troubling, but I'm not sure if it really means anything right now.

Finally, and off topic, I highly recommend Clerks II. It is the sequel to Kevin Smith's 1994 film, Clerks. If you haven't seen Clerks, you need to see it, and see it first. Smith has made a series of movies centered on characters in New Jersey, sometimes with slightly overlapping stories. There are a lot of "in jokes," in Clerks II, but I think as long as you've seen Clerks, you're good to go. The clerks are in their early 30s now, and haven't made the life changes hinted at in Clerks. Clerks II is a hilarious rehashing of some of the same themes from the original, but it is also a new look at life from an older point of view. It isn't a perfect movie, there are a few gags and a scene or two that could have been more effective, but on the whole it is funny and even emotionally resonant at times. The NYTimes gives a positive, though not completely consistent review [LINK], and it has been getting a slightly "Fresh" rating on RottenTomatoes.com (from critics, very fresh from users). While I'm pimping Clerks II, you can also see a featurette about the making of the movie on the Apple site [LINK], and there's even more at the official site Clerks2.com.

rivers in the sky

Well, in a small step toward more focused posts, I wanted to write a few thoughts about a short paper that is in Geophysical Research Letters this month. The reference is:
Ralph, F. M., P. J. Neiman, G. A. Wick, S. I. Gutman, M. D. Dettinger, D. R. Cayan, and A. B. White (2006), Flooding on California's Russian River: Role of atmospheric rivers, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L13801, doi:10.1029/2006GL026689. [LINK]
The authors are using satellite observations of atmospheric moisture, and comparing coherent (but transient) structures to precipitation events (storms), with particular emphasis on flood events. These coherent structures are called atmospheric rivers by the authors, who have been championing the term for a couple of years. Residents of California will recognize the particular events discussed in the paper as the "pineapple connection" or the "pineapple express." This is basically a narrow band of very moist air that stretches from the tropical central to eastern Pacific northeastward toward California. When these atmospheric rivers form, they tend to bring humid, more tropical conditions to California. I've always thought of these events happening in spring, and delivering warm, humid conditions, usually associated with mid-level to high-level clouds. The authors are looking at winter storms though, and they find that atmospheric rivers are associated with the warm-sector of storms, and also they are associated with strong low-level winds (a low-level jet).


When the low-level jet gets wrapped up with a developing storm, forming the connection between the tropics and the extratropics manifest as an atmospheric river, it can deliver a lot of precipitation to coastal areas. This study is an attempt to show that atmospheric rivers are associated with floods in the Russian River area of northern California. The way it works is that the storm approaches the coast, with the atmospheric river sort of preceding it (or riding on the warm sector). The atmospheric river is confined to the lower levels in that low-level jet, which then intersects the land. The trouble with land is that it isn't flat, and when the low-level jet meets the coastal mountains, it has to go somewhere. It turns out that relatively low mountains don't deflect the flow very much, but instead the jet goes up and over the mountains (that's the dynamics). As the moist air rises, it cools, and cooler air has a lower saturation humidity so the water begins to condense and rain out (that's the physics). This is orographic precipitation. So as long as that low-level jet is carrying such warm, moist air and is intersecting the mountains, there's going to be serious rain. The paper shows a case study from February 2004, and it is clear that as long as there is upslope winds (the low-level jet going over the mountains), it is raining like crazy.

The authors suggest, not very strongly (because this is kind of a new way of thinking about this), that a large fraction of coastal flooding in California is connected with these filaments of moist air originating in the tropics and attached to winter storms.

What does this have to do with climate and/or climate change? Well, a lot of people like to talk about changes in the distribution of extreme events in a warming world... like more/stronger hurricanes, more frequent floods and droughts, etc. This is a possible mechanism for flooding along coastal areas (where most people live), so if we want to understand how flood events will change in the future, we need to understand this connection between atmospheric rivers and orographic precipitation. That includes better understanding of both the dynamics (how and why the atmospheric rivers form) and the physics (how mountains force precipitation). Even more interesting for some of us... well, me... is that a lot of the water in the atmosphere comes from the tropics, and there is some evidence that a large fraction of that transport is in the form of these narrow filaments. If the formation or characteristics of atmospheric rivers are sensitive to, say the distribution of moist convection in the deep tropics, or the structure of the north-south atmospheric circulation (the Hadley circulation), then there might be important consequences for extratropical atmospheric moisture in a changing environment. That's just a poorly-formed idea rattling around in my head though, so don't take it too seriously, but these atmospheric rivers are probably playing a more important role in the distribution of water in the climate system than has been appreciated before, and that is interesting.