Ask a Climatologist

[RickG]

That's OK.

Here's another: Distinguish for the layman, e.g., me, the difference between a meteorologist and a climatologist.

Thanks.

P.S. As soon as I saw your answer, I grasped my mistake. Still it would be nice to have your answer to as to that distinction.

Meteorology deals with day to day weather and weather is very chaotic. That is why forecasts beyond 7 to 10 days seldom pan out. Conversely, climate is based on long term trends. The World Meteorological Organization defines climate as the average trend of weather over a period of 30 years or longer. What the long term trend essentially does is remove the noise from the overall climate system. Things like ENSO (El Nino & La Nina) and PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) are oscillations and affect climate on the short term only. They do not add or take anything from Earth's overall energy budget.

Source: NASA/GISS

Looking at year to year or even decade to decade is very noisy, no real trends stick out. But look at "the whole picture" and the trend is obvious.

 

[Criada]

Mod Hat On

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This thread has been cleaned.
Stay on topic, please.
Thanks

Mod Hat Off​

 

[razeontherock]

U.N. climate talks seal legal pact on global warming - Yahoo! News

Anybody know what they accomplished? This article is ... a little thin on detail

 

[Jazer]

Global warming, or climate change if you prefer, is a highly charged debate, especially in political arenas and agenda based groups.

That is where the rubber meets the road. For example, global warming has caused more water and less ice. That creates a issue of what country does that water belong to. Who is going to provide assistance if a ship gets into trouble for example. Right now they opening commerical shipping lanes only and no cruise ships are allowed because it would be to much if they had to go in to rescue a cruise ship if it got in trouble.

 

[Jazer]

If you have a climate science question ask it,

I have a question, can man use HAARP to control the weather?

 

[acropolis]

What kind of work has been done to establish the dominating factor in the rise in average temperature?

 

[Jazer]

If the science is settled why isn't anything substantial being done about global warming?

London has taken action to protect themselves from Storm surges.

 

[RickG]

U.N. climate talks seal legal pact on global warming - Yahoo! News

Anybody know what they accomplished? This article is ... a little thin on detail

Actually it is just political maneuvering. The Durban conference is solely for the policy makers who can do little more than suggest what needs to be done. It is up to the individual countries to carry them out, but one can always hope. Concerning their recommendations are, I haven't look at them yet.

Don't confuse them with the actual IPCC work groups which is comprised entirely of practicing climate scientists. BTW, many of the climate scientists were in San Francisco at the annual AGU (American Geophysical Union) conference which is only concerned with science, not politics.

 

[RickG]

That is where the rubber meets the road. For example, global warming has caused more water and less ice. That creates a issue of what country does that water belong to. Who is going to provide assistance if a ship gets into trouble for example. Right now they opening commerical shipping lanes only and no cruise ships are allowed because it would be to much if they had to go in to rescue a cruise ship if it got in trouble.

I don't quite understand what you are saying. Could you restate it? Thanks.

 

[RickG]

I have a question, can man use HAARP to control the weather?

By HAARP are you referring to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program? Honestly, I'm not familiar with that program. As for any program controlling weather, I don't think so.

 

[RickG]

What kind of work has been done to establish the dominating factor in the rise in average temperature?

Quite a bit. Joseph Fourier was first to discover the greenhouse effect in 1824 (Annales de chimie et de physique). It was carried on further by John Tyndall in 1858 who discovered that CO2 absorbed IR radiation and thus affected temperature on Earth. In 1898 Svante Arrhenius quantified CO2 as a GHG and predicted that it could cause global temperatures to increase by 4 to 5 deg. C per doubling of atmospheric CO2. The modern consensus among climatologists is now 3.5 deg. C per doubling. So, in a nutshell, the physics of CO2 has been well known for well over a century and recognized as a greenhouse gas that can affect global temperatures dramatically.

As you might guess, yes CO2 is the dominating factor in global average temperature. It is well documented in the paleo record and verified with both earth based instrumentation and satellite data. For the previous 600,000 years, CO2 has not exceed 280 ppm nor do proxy records show temperatures exceeding to days current levels. In 1850 atmospheric CO2 was 280 ppm, today it is 390 ppm, right on schedule to a 3.5 deg C doubling (560 ppm) by the end of the century or early next century.

That is not to say that CO2 has been the only factor causing warming, it indeed has not. From 1850 to 1940 increase in total solar irradiation (TSI) can account for about 30% of the warming. From 1970 to present, almost all of the warming is contributed to GHGs, most of which is CO2.

Green line is carbon dioxide levels from ice cores obtained at Law Dome, East Antarctica (CDIAC). Blue line is carbon dioxide levels measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii (NOAA). Red line is annual global temperature anomaly (GISS).

 

[razeontherock]

Actually it is just political maneuvering. The Durban conference is solely for the policy makers who can do little more than suggest what needs to be done.

Thanks. The quotes in that article sound so encouraging! Figures it's just smoke and mirrors ...

 

[Jazer]

I don't quite understand what you are saying. Could you restate it? Thanks.

This was just a discussion about how Global Warming is Opening up the Northwest Passage. You can run a google search to see the lastest information regarding the impact Global Warming has on the Shipping routes.

 

[Jazer]

By HAARP are you referring to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program? Honestly, I'm not familiar with that program. As for any program controlling weather, I don't think so.

Conspiracy people like to Harp on HAARP. As a result they have had to resort to a very open door policy. Scientists without security clearances, even foreign nationals, are routinely allowed on site. The HAARP facility regularly (yearly) hosts open houses, when any civilian may tour the entire facility.

There are a lot of different ways man can control the weather. But if you have never done a study on it then I suppose you do not know much about that.

 

[CabVet]

There are a lot of different ways man can control the weather.

Am I really reading this?

 

[RickG]

This was just a discussion about how Global Warming is Opening up the Northwest Passage. You can run a google search to see the lastest information regarding the impact Global Warming has on the Shipping routes.

It is becoming somewhat navigational occasionally and is sure to become more so in the next decade. Keep in mind this is a summer thing, not year round. There are estimates of the Arctic becoming ice free during summer months in as little as 10 years, other estimates are a little longer. Much of the Arctic is already termed as what is called "rotten ice". Where ice breakers once navigated slowly, they can now move along at near flank speed through the ice.

 

[RickG]

Conspiracy people like to Harp on HAARP. As a result they have had to resort to a very open door policy. Scientists without security clearances, even foreign nationals, are routinely allowed on site. The HAARP facility regularly (yearly) hosts open houses, when any civilian may tour the entire facility.

There are a lot of different ways man can control the weather. But if you have never done a study on it then I suppose you do not know much about that.

The weather cannot be controlled. PERIOD! Don't get caught up in that garbage.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

The weather cannot be controlled. PERIOD! Don't get caught up in that garbage.

The (supposed) problem is the overall climate, not the weather per se.

We are dealing with it the way we always do, trying to jawbone someone else into action instead of being proactive.

Imagine the problem this way: A mother wants her child's toys put away. The child is incapable of doing it himself. She stands there, hands on hips, insisting that the incapable child pick up the toys. Clearly if she wants the toys picked up she must do it herself.

In my example the toys are the carbon dioxide, the child is industry and other CO2 sources, and the mother is the government. Instead of insisting that the polluters clean up their mess (which they are clearly incapable of doing) the government should just go ahead and do it. Not rocket science this is. (Yoda)

 

[TemperateSeaIsland]

What do you make of this?

Link

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

 

[Cabal]

I thought some forms of weather "control" were possible - in that if you seed a cloud with a material that allows rain to condense out of it you can get the cloud to rain out.

It's "control" in the sense that it's dependent on there being enough vapour in the air in the first place and only results in one effect, but I was under the impression that this does in fact work. Was I wrong?