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
Reader Comments
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Patrap, recognize you're not really talking about humans and their "nature", you're talking about one culture in all of human history, our culture. Modern human history stretches back over 100,000 years. Our culture dates back to about 10,000 years ago. For some reason, this culture has taken upon itself to control all of nature and to rid the world of other cultures that got in the way. Many other cultures have been destroyed in those 10,000 years including several here in the US. The writings of Daniel Quinn bring to light a lot of ideas that are sorely needed in today's world.
Humanity is not the problem. Other cultures of humans have lived sustainably on this planet even while our culture cannot or seemingly cannot. So again, humanity is not the problem. Our culture is.
We don't have to change humans. We have to change or abandon one culture, ours. Soon.
And that, for those who think about it, is going to be the best news you get today.
900 Tons of Fossil Fuel exhaust a day will do dat.
Winter 11-2012 has been lost to Novelty.
The Time Wave dosent split Novelty between Nature and technology, it comes as it comes. And in the Planets Balance of Chaos, this is "High Novelty"..caused by Human Thought.
Forget the afterlife; hell and heaven be damned, and reincarnation wouldn't be known if it happened anyway. So live your lives with the simple code of respecting the beliefs of your fellow man, and remember that they are almost exactly like you, whether they admit it or not. Befriend your enemy in your hearts, and then your only enemy is Death itself. But accept that he cannot be defeated, so there is nothing you can do about it besides accept that it will happen and enjoy the time you have before your end comes.
If we all hold these truths to be evident and unite, Republican and Democrat, Muslim and Jew, Man and Woman, Black and White, and Rich and Poor, then the goal of mankind reaching its potential will be within reach. Imagine a place where people don't argue over who started the fight, where people don't label another a terrorist for believing in something they know little about. Mankind will reach the stars, and it will be because of a single word: Respect. Respect your friend, Respect your enemy, Respect your neighbor, Respect those of who you never knew and never will know. For that is the door of which behind the future of Homo Sapiens as a singular race is located.
Now let us step through it together, hand in hand, and Respect in our hearts. Go into the world, and think, “What makes me better than him/her?” And if you think about it, you will come to the conclusion that absolutely nothing is the answer. Be the one to say, “You are exactly as right as me.” even if they are obviously incorrect, because you will make one step towards tolerance every time that you do it.
Excluding GlobalWarming due to excess greenhouse gases, "...if solar output [were] reduced below that seen in the Maunder Minimum - a period between 1645 and 1715 when solar activity was at its lowest observed level - the global temperature reduction would be 0.13C" by 2100
HOWEVER, "This compares to an expected warming of about 2.5degreesCelsius over the same period due to greenhouse gases."
Presentation contained in this zip file, needs to be downloaded to your computer and unzipped.
Summary page:
Levi agrees with you in his post #103.
marriage should last lifetime. this day in time peopl are so concerned on theirselves that 1/2 are divorced :(. nuff said.
congrats on ChillinInTheKeys for 27!
SPLbeater;
You have posted a map that shows data derived from satellites and statistics. If you don't believe statistics that other people post, why would you believe that the map you have posted is correct. I personally don't believe that your map is accurate because you don't agree with my political perspective.
Well said. That January morning in 1986 politics out-voted the scientists on the Challenger launch but nature (physics) voted with the scientists. Today, politics continues to out-vote the scientists on climate change, but nature still is not paying the least attention to politics. The question becomes, "When will we accept the observations of science and stop believing the lies of the politicians?" Will it take a planet-sized Challenger explosion? One would hope not.
Up until maybe 5 generations ago, a "lifetime" was about 40 years or so for average people, unless you were rich or a noble or something.
Since a significant portion of women died in labor having their first child, it's highly likely men re-married often, and "real" marriages rarely lasted for decades, even in the allegedly most morally conservative of cultures.
If a person then got married at 20 years old, they'd probably die by the time of their 20 to 25th anniversary, or else the wife did, and then they re-married.
So maybe half your life in a relationship with one person.
Antibiotics, Vaccine, and Refrigeration have doubled human life expectancy.
Today, if you get married at 20, you will be spending 75% of your life expectancy in one relationship with one person, assuming you never get divorced.
Really?
There's 3.5 billion people of the opposite sex on the planet, and your SURE you want to spend every day of the next 60 years with this one person?
Ironicaly, marriage doesn't even actually make sense in terms of genetic diversity.
Rationally, if you wanted a population to have maximum genetic diversity, you'd actually want all of a woman's children to have a different father, preferrably of a different nationality, and you'd want all of a man's children to have a different mother and again, preferably of a different nationality.
Farmers don't even breed animals the way humans breed, because it's bad for genetics and eventually leads to curly calf syndrome and other crap like that.
NOthing really wrong with it at all, if you really love one another.
I've observed several couples in my family who stayed married for decades when divorce was what they should have done, and they were miserable, and other family members were miserable because of their so-called relationship.
Do you know that the number one thing police do in America is domestic violence; drive to people's house and break up or mediate arguments and fights between the husband and wife?
Not murder. Not drugs. Not traffic violations.
It's man and woman who have no business being in a relationship with one another ruining one another's lives and their family around them, because all they do is fight and argue.
THE WORLD IS THE WAY THE WORLD IS NO MATTER HOW YOU THINK THE WORLD IS.
SPLbeater, hope you were being sarcastic here. .5 degrees in 60 years is absolutely mind-boggling. Remember, we're heating the biosphere of a planet almost solely with the waste materials of humans. And geologically speaking, 60 years is instantaneous. But you were being sarcastic, right??
Until relatively recently, marriage was little more than a business deal.
Marriages, in the cultures that had them, were used primarily as an exchange of wealth, power, and/or prestige. And as you pointed out, most didn't last very long either through natural causes or human causes (She can't bear a son? OFF WITH HER HEAD!)
In just about every single science or fantasy story I've read with long-lived or immortal humans/species, they either did not have arrangements like marriage or had limited contracts, at the end of which they could choose to renew the contract or move on.
In fact, monogamy is exceedingly rare in the natural world, since it reduces diversity and increases the risk of less desirable traits being passed along.
Marriages often fail because people have unrealistic expectations. When the initial high wears of and life sets in, people start discovering the less desirable traits of their mate. Most divorces happen within the first ten years for a reason.
We celebrate anniversaries because after the first few it takes a lot of work and patience to make a long term marriage successful. They ARE accomplishments. It shows a tireless dedication to another human being.
I'm coming up on anniversary number 12 this year. But 27? Congrats and keep up the good work. :)
Peak intensity:
Cyclone Funso kills 12 in Mozambique
Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog
Category 4 Funso kills 12 in Mozambique;
i dont have to agree with anybody. You dont have to agree with me. If you dont, go to the bottom left corner and hit "ignore User" :)
I am not going to bother argueing. Dont feel like it today:D
If I love somebody, I want to spend my life with them. In biblical times (when Christ came to earth in human form, and before in B.C.) people lived to be hudreds of years old. the longest living one, Methuselah, lived to be a wopping 969 years old o.0
Again. Not arguing.
Not sarcastic. 0.5 in 60 years is..barely anything.
goodbye xD
I disagree. Check out the polar orbiting satellite image archive for 98s (that storm that looked like a tropical storm over land in Australia) from 1/22-1/25...just about all the satellites recorded temperatures below -90C. The geostationary satellite archive also recorded temperatures below -90C.
I find it highly unlikely that all of these satellites are somehow incorrect. Besides, seeing cloud tops below -90C is actually very common in that part of the world as sea surface temperatures are much warmer there then they are in the Atlantic.
My parents been married for......uh....somewheres between 25 and 30. they git into it every now and then, but of course they git over it ask each other to forgiv them and leave that in the past :D
Forecast high of 82 degrees and it's January! Not too uncommon, but certainly unseasonably warm.
Link
Sunspot 1402 is rotating onto the far side of the sun, so the blast site was not facing Earth. Nevertheless, energetic protons accelerated by the blast are now surrounding our planet, and an S2-class radiation storm is in progress.
The explosion also produced a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME). A movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory shows the cloud racing away from the sun at 2500 km/s or 5.6 million mph. Update: Work by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab shows that the CME will just miss Earth when its edge passes by our planet on Jan. 30-31. Click to view an animated forecast track:
Better than a Lava Lamp.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions outside of demography. The current (as of 2005) divorce rate per year is 2.9 out of 1,000, the current marriage rate is about 7.5 out of 1,000. While the divorce rate for first marriages is around 41%, this does occur during the first year of marriage (the average length is 7.8 years), but over the course of a lifetime. The actual percentage of the population that is divorced is around 10%, compared to about 59% of the population that is married.
Go to the page
Youtube/whitehouse and search for this and like it.
Dear President Obama, Over the last few months, there has been a lot of debate about climate change. We feel that the U.S. Government is not doing enough to prove/disprove the issue, and I am wondering what you could do to address it. Thank you.
Thanks in advance.
Good.
You're not ready to listen anyway.
Been down the "conservative christian" theology road, bought the T-shirts, and found out it didn't work, not in the least.
I've learned enough by now to know that whatever truth there used to be in the thing has been so corrupted over the millenia as to be nearly indistinguishable from the lies.
Do you think Samuel was obeying some benevolent God when he ordered Saul to massacre an entire village, and specifically INCLUDING the "Infants and sucklings"?
Do you think Ezekiel was obeying the same God as Samuel, when he wrote that God would not punish the sons for the sins of the fathers? But wait...Samuel's "God" butchered the "infants and sucklings" for what their parents did, even though Ezekiel's "God," supposedly the same God, said he would never do that.
But wait, Jesus (and Paul) claim Samuel and Ezekiel were both real prophets, even though they have ireconcilable doctrines, with exact contradictory historical teachings and events.
Give it up man.
Inspiration and infallibilty is a false doctrine, and at least half the Biblical authors are false prophets.
You can't have one guy telling you "God would never do that thing," while another one says, "God told you to do just that very thing."
At least one of them was a complete fake.
And that's like two of the most important authors and characters in the entire Bible.
The government doesn't prove anything. It provides funds for science and research. And unfortunately, those funds are rather skimpy when it comes to climate science in particular.
Unless your willing to have tax dollars spent on giving the scientists a PR department comparable to the BigDinoFuel companies, there really isn't anything the government can do. The science is there. The science is solid. Everything else is just a PR battle, and scientists have much better things to do with their limited funds than to go on campaign trail.
MODIS Satellite Photo
"The people who see the world split into two opposing factions are also most likely to vote and become politically active, Chambers said in a talk at the meeting. This means that while real growing polarization is illusory, the perception of polarization could drive the political process."
Also:
"They found that actual polarization has remained steady since the 1970s. The historical responses also showed that people have always overestimated polarization. Even decades ago, in times now remembered as cooperative and cordial, people pegged political disagreements as much more vast than they really were.
"When the researchers broke down the respondents by political positions, they found that not everyone judges polarization in the same way. Everyone overestimates it, but political independents are much closer to the mark than strong Republicans or strong Democrats, who tend to see the gulf between themselves and the other party as impossibly wide. Moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats were in-between, perceiving more polarization than independents but less than the extreme ends of the parties."
i've seen a few pollution photos like this in recent weeks. how can you tell that it's air pollution? ..to me it just looks like higher level clouds over a break in the lower level clouds
"In a separate study also presented here, University of Colorado, Boulder, psychology professor Leaf Van Boven looked at why people at the political extremes might overestimate polarization. The answer seems to be that they project their own strong, emotional thought processes onto others"
Sounds a bit like this blog bite:
"your full of hot air. POOF."
i see contrails an high level clouds
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