2011: Earth's 11th warmest year; where is the climate headed?
The year 2011 tied with 1997 as the 11th warmest year since records began in 1880, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center said last week. NASA rated 2011 as the 9th warmest on record. Land temperatures were the 8th warmest on record, and ocean temperatures, the 11th warmest. For the Arctic, which has warmed about twice as much as the rest of the planet, 2011 was the warmest year on record (between 64°N and 90°N latitude.) The year 2011 was also the 2nd wettest year over land on record, as evidenced by some of the unprecedented flooding Earth witnessed. The wettest year over land was the previous year, 2010.
Figure 1. Departure of global temperature from average for 2011. The Arctic was the warmest region, relative to average. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory.
How much of the warming in recent decades is due to natural causes?
The El Niño/La Niña cycle causes cyclical changes in global temperatures that average out to zero over the course of several decades. La Niña events bring a large amount of cold water to the surface in the equatorial Eastern Pacific, which cools global temperatures by up to 0.2°C. El Niño events have the opposite effect. The year 2011 was the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present. Global temperatures were 0.12°C (0.2°F) cooler than the record warmest year for the planet (2010), and would very likely have been the warmest on record had an El Niño event been present instead.
Figure 2. Departure from average of annual global temperatures between 1950 - 2011, classified by phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The year 2011 was the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present. ENSO is a natural episodic fluctuation in sea surface temperature (El Niño/La Niña) and the air pressure of the overlying atmosphere (Southern Oscillation) across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Over a period of months to a few years, ENSO fluctuates between warmer-than-average ocean surface waters (El Niño) and cooler-than-average ocean surface waters (La Niña) in that region. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.
Correcting for natural causes to find the human contribution
We know that natural episodes of global warming or cooling in the distant past have been caused by changes in sunlight and volcanic dust. So, it is good to remove these natural causes of global temperature change over the past 33 years we have satellite data, to see what the human influence might have been during that time span. The three major surface temperature data sets (NCDC, GISS, and HadCRU) all show global temperatures have warmed by 0.16 - 0.17°C (0.28 - 0.30°F) per decade since satellite measurements began in 1979. The two satellite-based data sets of the lower atmosphere (UAH and RSS) give slightly less warming, about 0.14 - 0.15°C (.25 - .27°F) per decade (keep in mind that satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere temperature are affected much more strongly by volcanic eruptions and the El Niño phenomena than are surface-based measurements taken by weather stations.) A 2011 paper published by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Global temperature evolution 1979 - 2010, took the five major global temperature data sets and adjusted them to remove the influences of natural variations in sunlight, volcanic dust, and the El Niño/La Niña cycle. The researchers found that adjusting for these natural effects did not change the observed trend in global temperatures, which remained between 0.14 - 0.17°C (0.25 - 0.31°F) per decade in all five data sets. The warmest years since 1979 were 2010 and 2009 in all five adjusted data sets. Since the known natural causes of global warming have little to do with the observed increase in global temperatures over the past 33 years, either human activity or some unknown natural source is responsible for the global warming during that time period.
Figure 3. Departure from average of annual global temperatures between 1979 - 2010, adjusted to remove natural variations due to fluctuations in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, dust from volcanic eruptions, and changes in sunlight. The five most frequently-cited global temperature records are presented: surface temperature estimates by NASA's GISS, HadCRU from the UK, and NOAA's NCDC, and satellite-based lower-atmosphere estimates from Remote Sensing Systems, Inc. (RSS) and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH.) Image credit Global temperature evolution 1979- 2010 by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 2011, 044022 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022.
Commentary: what do climate scientists think?
Some scientists have proposed that previously unknown natural causes could be responsible for global warming, such as a decrease in cloud-producing galactic cosmic rays. Others have proposed that the climate may be responding to the heat-trapping effects of carbon dioxide by producing more clouds, which reflect away sunlight and offset the added heat-trapping gases. These theories have little support among actively publishing climate scientists. Despite public belief that climate scientists are divided about the human contribution to our changing climate, polling data show high agreement among climate scientists that humans are significantly affecting the climate. A 2008 poll of actively publishing climate scientists found that 97% said yes to the question, "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" In my personal experience interacting with climate scientists, I have found near-universal support for this position. For example, I am confident that all 23 climate scientists and meteorologists whom I am personally acquainted with at the University of Michigan's Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Science would agree that "human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures." It is good that we have scientists skeptical of the prevailing consensus challenging it, though, because that is how scientific progress is made. It may be that one of the scientists making these challenges will turn out to be the next Einstein or Galileo, and overthrow the conventional scientific wisdom on climate change. But Einsteins and Galileos don't come along very often. The history of science is littered with tens of thousands of discredited scientific papers that challenged the accepted scientific consensus and lost. If we rely on hopes that the next Einstein or Galileo will successfully overthrow the current scientific consensus on climate change, we are making a high-stakes, low-probability-of-success gamble on the future of civilization. The richest and most powerful corporations in world history, the oil companies, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to push us to take this gamble, and their efforts have been very successful. Advertising works, particularly when your competition has little money to spend to oppose you.
Where is the climate headed?
The 2007 United Nations-sponsored IPCC report predicted that global temperatures between 2007 and 2030 should rise by an average of 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade. The observed warming over the past 30 years is 15 - 30% below that (but within the range of uncertainty given by the 2007 IPCC climate models.) Most of the increase in global temperatures during the past 30 years occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. The 2000s have seen relatively flat temperatures, despite increasing CO2 emissions by humans. The lower-than-expected warming may be partially due to a sharp decrease in stratospheric water vapor that began after 2000. The missing heat may also be going into the deep ocean waters below about 1,000 feet (300 meters), as part of a decades-long cycle that will bring extra heat to the surface years from now. Regardless, the laws of physics demand that the huge amount of heat-trapping gases humans are pumping into the atmosphere must be significantly altering the weather and climate, even if we are seeing a lower than predicted warming. As wunderground's climate change blogger, Dr. Ricky Rood said in a recent post,Changing the Conversation: Extreme Weather and Climate: "Given that greenhouse gases are well-known to hold energy close to the Earth, those who deny a human-caused impact on weather need to pose a viable mechanism of how the Earth can hold in more energy and the weather not be changed. Think about it."
Our recent unusual weather has made me think about this a lot. The natural weather rhythms I've grown to used to during my 30 years as a meteorologist have become significantly disrupted over the past few years. Many of Earth's major atmospheric circulation patterns have seen significant shifts and unprecedented behavior; new patterns that were unknown have emerged, and extreme weather events were incredibly intense and numerous during 2010 - 2011. It boggles my mind that in 2011, the U.S. saw 14 - 17 billion-dollar weather disasters, three of which matched or exceeded some of the most iconic and destructive weather events in U.S. history--the "Super" tornado outbreak of 1974, the Dust Bowl summer of 1936, and the great Mississippi River flood of 1927. I appeared on PBS News Hour on December 28 (video here) to argue that watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids--an analogy used in the past by climate scientists Tony Broccoli and Jerry Meehl. We're used to seeing the slugger hit the ball out of the park, but not with the frequency he's hitting them now that he's on steroids. Moreover, some of the home runs now land way back in the seats where no one has ever been able to hit a home run before. We can't say that any particular home run would not have occurred without the steroids, but the increase in home runs and the unprecedented ultra-long balls are highly suspicious. Similarly, Earth's 0.6°C (1°F) warming and 4% increase in global water vapor since 1970 have created an atmosphere on steroids. A warmer atmosphere has more energy to power stronger storms, hotter heat waves, more intense droughts, and heavier flooding rains. Natural weather patterns could have caused some of the extreme events we witnessed during 2010 - 2011, and these years likely would have been naturally extreme years even without climate change. But it strains the bounds of credulity that all of the extreme weather events--some of them 1-in-1000-year type events--could have occurred without a significant change to the base climate state. Mother Nature is now able to hit the ball out of the park more often, and with much more power, thanks to the extra energy global warming has put into the atmosphere.
Extreme weather years like 2010 and 2011 are very likely to increase in frequency, since there is a delay of several decades between when we put heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere and when the climate fully responds. This is because Earth's oceans take so long to heat up when extra heat is added to the atmosphere (think about how long it takes it takes for a lake to heat up during summer.) Due to this lag, we are just now experiencing the full effect of CO2 emitted by the late 1980s; since CO2 has been increasing by 1 - 3% per year since then, there is a lot more climate change "in the pipeline" we cannot avoid. We've set in motion a dangerous boulder of climate change that is rolling downhill, and it is too late to avoid major damage when it hits full-force several decades from now. However, we can reduce the ultimate severity of the damage with strong and rapid action. A boulder rolling downhill can be deflected in its path more readily early in its course, before it gains too much momentum in its downward rush. For example, the International Energy Agency estimates that every dollar we invest in alternative energy before 2020 will save $4.30 later. There are many talented and dedicated people working very hard to deflect the downhill-rolling boulder of climate change--but they need a lot more help very soon.
Jeff Masters
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Tropical Disturbance Advisory #1
TROPICAL DEPRESSION 07F
9:00 AM FST January 30 2012
======================================
At 21:00 PM UTC, Tropical Depression 07F (999 hPa) located at 16.0S 167.0E has 10 minute sustained winds of 25 knots. The depression is reported as drifting slowly southeast. Position poor based on multisatellite infrared/visible imagery with animation and peripheral surface observations.
Organization has improved slightly in the past 12 hours. Convection remains persistent in the past 24 hours. System lies just east of an upper trough under an upper diffluent region in a moderate to high
Sheared environment. SST is around 29-30C. System expected to be steered southeast by deep layer mean northwesterly. Global models are gradually intensifying the system and move it southeast.
Potential for this system to develop into a tropical cyclone in the next 24 to 48 hours in moderate to high.
The next tropical cyclone advisory from Fiji Meteorological Services will be issued at 2:30 AM UTC..
Looks like nice warm weather for South Florida next weekend:
Anyway, while accusing people who insist on telling the scientific truth of being socialists and communists is the last refuge of the desperate, can't we at least try to avoid such nonsensical accusations here? Please?
Freeze Warning criteria changes depending on the issuing NWS WFO. Some WFOs only issue it for the first freeze of the year, which signals the end of the growing season. Some WFOs in more mild areas will issue them for each freeze because the events tend to be rare.
I would imagine that Florida counts in the latter, and thus even with near record cold temperatures covering most of the CONUS, Florida would be one of the few places to have Freeze Warnings in effect.
Always fascinates me how the climate confusionists and denialists can twist the truth. This one ranks near the top... take a press release that clearly indicates that solar activity lulls are unlikely to affect long term climate, and somehow manage to do a complete 180 on it.
That's not something you can do as an honest mistake, that is something you do when you are deliberately - and with malice - attempting to distort the truth and mislead people. This should serve as a lesson for those that fell for it, as long as they still want to maintain credibility as skeptical scientists or enthusiasts.
Link
One bad result of the eddy breaking off is that now we have an extra source of heat energy for passing hurricanes during the upcoming hurricane season. Loop Current eddies have high-temperature water that extends to great depth, and hurricanes passing over such eddies often undergo rapid intensification. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005 both underwent rapid intensification as they passed over warm Loop Current eddies in 2005. The formation of a Loop Current Eddy during hurricane season means that a much greater portion of the Gulf of Mexico has deep, warm water capable of fueling rapid intensification of hurricanes.
JB,,the "anti-met" tweet ?
The 384 Hr GFS showed that days ago..
Tropical Cyclone Advice #27
TROPICAL CYCLONE IGGY, CATEGORY ONE (11U)
9:00 AM WST January 30 2012
=================================
At 8:00 AM WST, Tropical Cyclone Iggy, Category One (977 hPa) located at 19.8S 110.6E or 435 km west northwest of Exmouth and 650 km north northwest of Carnarvon has 10 minute sustained winds of 45 knots with gusts of 65 knots. The cyclone is reported as moving west at 4 knots.
Dvorak Intensity: T3.0/3.0/W0.5/24 HRS
Gale Force Winds
--------------------
90 NM from the center
Tropical Cyclone Iggy which has been moving very slowly over the last 24 hours, has recently started moving to the west. With this recent westward movement, gales are no longer expected to affect mainland locations of Western Australia.
Tropical Cyclone Iggy is expected to take a southwest track over the next 48 hours, before weakening below cyclone intensity during Wednesday.
Tides, however, will be higher than expected along the upper west coast.
Tropical Cyclone Watches/Warnings
=================================
The Cyclone WARNING from Onslow to Coral Bay has been cancelled.
Forecast and Intensity
======================
12 HRS: 20.2S 110.0E - 40 knots (CAT 1)
24 HRS: 21.2S 108.9E - 35 knots (CAT 1)
48 HRS: 24.4S 107.1E - 35 knots (CAT 1)
72 HRS: 26.6S 108.1E - 25 knots (TROPICAL LOW)
Additional Information
=======================
The system has been located by a combination of microwave imagery and enhance infrared. Although shear remains low, there has been little sign of intensification. DT remains at 3.0 based on wrap averaging 0.6, PAT agrees, so FT and CI is held at 3.0. CIMSS AMSU intensity estimate at 20Z indicated 57 knots 1-min, ADT is now at 51 knots 1-min and SATCON 57 knots 1-min, all showing a recent decreasing trend. Final intensity estimate remains at 45 knots 10-min mean.
TC Iggy has remained near stationary for much of the last 24 hours but a westerly movement has recently commenced. General consensus is for a southwesterly track over the next 48 hours, taking it over cooler waters with weakening expected. By late Tuesday and early Wednesday the system will be moving over much cooler sea surface temperature and may be experiencing stronger wind shear.
It is possible the remnants of Iggy may move back towards the west coast later in the week but it is very unlikely that Iggy would still be a cyclone at this time.
The next tropical cyclone advice from Perth Tropical Cyclone Warning Center on TC IGGY will be issued at 7:30 AM UTC..
That would be completely nuts.
A named system on February 10...
Has anything like that ever happened in the past records?
I don't think you can attribute malice on the part of the author with certainty. They may just be doing their job or are zealously after the lulz. (I hear it is important to enjoy your work.) Hard to say, but I agree it was deliberate.
Feb 2nd.
Jan 18th.
March and April storms are also fairly rare, but January and February storms are the rarest in the NAtl.
An early start to 2012 is totally possible considering the warmth in the Caribbean and GoM.
Hydrus has been all over that.
By BNO News
MEXICO CITY (BNO NEWS) -- An ongoing swine flu outbreak in Mexico has left at least 29 people dead and nearly 1,500 others infected, health officials confirmed on Saturday. Thousands more are also ill as the country faces several types of flu this season.
Since the start of the ongoing winter season, at least 7,069 people have reported suffering from symptoms similar to those of swine flu. Lab tests are still underway and have so far confirmed 1,456 cases of the disease, which is officially known as A/H1N1.
According to Mexico's Health Ministry (SSA), at least twenty-nine people have died of swine flu so far this season. While no health emergency has been declared, officials expect the death toll will rise in the coming weeks as Mexico also faces A/H3N2 and B influenza.
The H1N1 influenza virus emerged in the Mexican state of Veracruz in April 2009 and quickly spread around the world, causing the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global flu pandemic in June 2009. At least 18,000 people have died of the disease since, although the actual number is believed to be far higher.
In August 2010, the WHO declared that the swine flu pandemic was over. "In the post-pandemic period, influenza disease activity will have returned to levels normally seen for seasonal influenza," the WHO said at the time. "It is expected that the pandemic virus will behave as a seasonal influenza A virus."
(Copyright 2012 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: sales@bnonews.com.)
It has but it is very rare. The earliest tropical storm ever recorded was 2/2/1952. The earliest hurricane was 3/6/1908. The earliest major hurricane was hurricane Abel in 1951.
These of course are discounting storms and hurricanes that may have carried over from the previous years (for example, Zeta from 2005 which spanned 2005 to 2006).
Accumulating 'microplastic' threat to shores
By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News
Microscopic plastic debris from washing clothes is accumulating in the marine environment and could be entering the food chain, a study has warned.
Researchers traced the "microplastic" back to synthetic clothes, which released up to 1,900 tiny fibres per garment every time they were washed.
Earlier research showed plastic smaller than 1mm were being eaten by animals and getting into the food chain.
The findings appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
"Research we had done before... showed that when we looked at all the bits of plastic in the environment, about 80% was made up from smaller bits of plastic," said co-author Mark Browne, an ecologist now based at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
"This really led us to the idea of what sorts of plastic are there and where did they come from."
Dr Browne, a member of the US-based research network National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, said the tiny plastic was a concern because evidence showed that it was making its way into the food chain.
"Once the plastics had been eaten, it transferred from [the animals'] stomachs to their circulation system and actually accumulated in their cells," he told BBC News.
In order to identify how widespread the presence of microplastic was on shorelines, the team took samples from 18 beaches around the globe, including the UK, India and Singapore.
"We found that there was no sample from around the world that did not contain pieces of microplastic."
Dr Browne added: "Most of the plastic seemed to be fibrous.
"When we looked at the different types of polymers we were finding, we were finding that polyester, acrylic and polyamides (nylon) were the major ones that we were finding."
The data also showed that the concentration of microplastic was greatest in areas near large urban centres.
In order to test the idea that sewerage discharges were the source of the plastic discharges, the team worked with a local authority in New South Wales, Australia.
"We found exactly the same proportion of plastics," Dr Browne revealed, which led the team to conclude that their suspicions had been correct.
As a result, Dr Browne his colleague Professor Richard Thompson from the University of Plymouth, UK carried out a number of experiments to see what fibres were contained in the water discharge from washing machines.
"We were quite surprised. Some polyester garments released more than 1,900 fibres per garment, per wash," Dr Browne observed.
"It may not sound like an awful lot, but if that is from a single item from a single wash, it shows how things can build up.
"It suggests to us that a large proportion of the fibres we were finding in the environment, in the strongest evidence yet, was derived from the sewerage as a consequence from washing clothes."
Climate Confuscius say: The planet is not getting warmer. You're just getting colder.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) — After years of relative somnolence, the sun is beginning to stir. By the time it's fully awake in about 20 months, the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., charged with researching and tracking solar activity, will have at their dispoal a greatly enhanced forecasting capability.
Goddard's Space Weather Laboratory recently received support under NASA's Space Technology Program Game Changing Program to implement "ensemble forecasting," a computer technique already used by meteorologists to track potential paths and impacts of hurricanes and other severe weather events.
Instead of analyzing one set of solar-storm conditions, as is the case now, Goddard forecasters will be able to simultaneously produce as many as 100 computerized forecasts by calculating multiple possible conditions or, in the parlance of Heliophysicists, parameters. Just as important, they will be able to do this quickly and use the information to provide alerts of space weather storms that could potentially be harmful to astronauts and NASA spacecraft.
"Space weather alerts are available now, but we want to make them better," said Michael Hesse, chief of Goddard's Space Weather Laboratory and the recently named director of the Center's Heliophysics Science Division. "Ensemble forecasting will provide a distribution of arrival times, which will improve the reliability of forecasts. This is important. Society is relying more so than ever on space. Communications, navigation, electrical-power generation, all are all susceptible to space weather." Once it's implemented, "there will be nothing like this in the world. No one has done ensemble forecasting for space weather."
SEE FULL ARTICLE Link
Forgot about that...because, if there was a freeze warning issued everytime we went below 32, 4/5 of the country would be under a freeze warning for months, lol. Thx for pointing that out and reminding me.
Iggy went from 65 knots...to 50 knotz.
I never thought it had cyclone intensity in the first place.
The author David Rose often distort the truth to mislead people.
Rosegate: Rose hides the incline
Looks subtropical for a while.
Wait, what? Tropical storms in February? I'm confused...
I've noticed that you're not interested in reading scientific literature, but if you love plants and trees, I recommend you to at least watch this video.
Sorry if it was not obvious that I take his apparent job to be to hide the truth. I just don't know what his emotional state is when he does that. Is he happy, sad, full of malice? No clue.
Where does the model show that wave's orgin?
I don't see anything that looks like a potential wave on infrared right now.
Because the system doesn't come out of the west like a regular low-pressure system this time of the year, it comes out of the tropics.
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