Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog

Quoting EnergyMoron:


The Purgen project is commericially viable even without subsidies owing to the high cost of electricity in the New Jersey area.

There are a lot of venture capitalists out there who would be more than happy to fund a demonstratably potentially viable energy project.

PG&E just cancelled their wave power trial a few weeks ago...

Again Calculate the Kinetic Energy in the Gulfstream! Ya'll still don't get it yet do you?

Ouch!

NASA reports 2010 hottest year on record so far
November 11, 2010

Last month, NASA reported it was the hottest January-September on record. That followed a terrific analysis, “July 2010 — What Global Warming Looks Like,” which noted that 2010 is “likely” to be warmest year on record.

This month continues the trend of 2010 outpacing previous years, according to NASA:

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Warmest January to October Period on Record
Nov 11, 2010; 3:51 PM ET

The period from January 2010 to October 2010 was the warmest Jan-Oct period on record globally, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Records go back to 1880.

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Quoting MichaelSTL:
Just wow... I can't imagine flooding so severe that almost half a year after it started, many places are STILL flooded - and it may be another half year before it goes down:

Up to six more months of Pakistan flood water: EU official

(AFP) – 2 days ago

ISLAMABAD — A senior EU aid official warned Friday that flood waters could linger up to another six months in Pakistan, where he said the magnitude of the crisis meant people were still going without aid.

"There is nearly water everywhere," Peter Zangl, the director general of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), told a news conference in Islamabad after a five-day visit to Pakistan.

Unprecedented monsoon rains triggered catastrophic flooding across Pakistan in July and August, ravaging an area roughly the size of England and affecting 21 million people in the poverty-stricken country's worst natural disaster.

Parts of Sindh province remain under water in southern Pakistan, where people are still camping on roadsides after the floods washed away their homes and swallowed up rice and wheat fields.

"The only perspective of getting rid of the water is evaporation. Depending on depth and climate conditions, this will take between two and six months," Zangl told reporters.

Fact is, something on that scale is probably connected to climate change more than just casually (warming results in more moisture and thus heavier rainfall). The last part in particular is striking - if the water can only evaporate, then that makes an even stronger case for the rains being so unprecedented - otherwise those areas would be lakes if such rains were normal. And yes, the rains were unprecedented, up to 16 feet in several days, and in an area that is already pretty wet (see previous sentence regarding standing water and lakes):

In more than 60 hours of non-stop torrential rainfall, the floods washed all that away. The north-west normally receives 500mm (20in) of rain in the month of July; over one five-day period 5,000mm fell. "It was incredible," said Sameenullah Afridi, a local United Nations official.

To much heat causes to much water vapor which can cause to much flooding! Thanks GHGs! We need to cool it just like the movie. I showed you how to cool it! Now will you all listen to me?

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Cool it get it?

The only way our planet cools now is through massive upwelling events and those must be man made! I just don't see us stopping GHGs.

Top priority is to cool the oceans then stop GHGs.

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No wonder Michael!
Below 2007 again! Ouch!

Would someone please give the North Arctic a shot of more freon so as to cool the Northern hemisphere some more?

Quoting JFLORIDA:
CB -JHEEEZ!

Anyway the Dengue situation in Pakistan in most assuredly worse than is being reported and state run hospitals don't seem to have the necessary supplies to deal with it:

Journalist dies of dengue fever

As per details obtained from his family members, Saud Malik was admitted to Services Hospital Lahore some five days back with symptoms of dengue fever.

The doctors asked his relatives to take the patient to some private clinic, saying the hospital had run short of necessary platelets kits.

LOL! I know just a figure of speech! Some So2 may work however.BTW just how much cooler could all that deep cold ocean water make the Earth?

Heat Stress to Caribbean Corals in 2005 Worst on Record
Caribbean Reef Ecosystems May Not Survive Repeated Stress

November 15, 2010

NOAA diver with a one square meter quadrat examining a bleached reef (Montastraea) colony in St. Croix, USVI in Oct., 2005.

NOAA diver with a one square meter quadrat examining a bleached reef (Montastraea) colony in St. Croix, USVI in Oct., 2005.

High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

Coral reefs suffered record losses as a consequence of high ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean in 2005 according to the most comprehensive documentation of basin-scale bleaching to date. Collaborators from 22 countries report that more than 80 percent of surveyed corals bleached and over 40 percent of the total surveyed died, making this the most severe bleaching event ever recorded in the basin. The study appears in PLoS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication.

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How long would it take a catagory 5 hurricane parked in one spot over the Gulfstream to upwell enough cold water to restore the Northern Arctic Ice during the summer to pre-industrial revolution extents?

So if the hurricane stayed parked in the same spot for ten years and upwelled waters 20 degrees cooler to the surface it would have no cooling effect for the rest of the Atlantic Basin? I find that very very hard to believe Michael!

Earth's Lower Atmosphere Is Warming, Review of Four Decades of Scientific Literature Concludes

ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — The troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere closest to the Earth, is warming and this warming is broadly consistent with both theoretical expectations and climate models, according to a new scientific study that reviews the history of understanding of temperature changes and their causes in this key atmospheric layer.Scientists at NOAA, the NOAA-funded Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS), the United Kingdom Met Office, and the University of Reading in the United Kingdom contributed to the paper, "Tropospheric Temperature Trends: History of an Ongoing Controversy," a review of four decades of data and scientific papers to be published by Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, a peer-reviewed journal.

The paper documents how, since the development of the very first climate models in the early 1960s, the troposphere has been projected to warm along with the Earth's surface because of the increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This expectation has not significantly changed even with major advances in climate models and is in accord with our basic physical understanding of atmospheric processes.

In the 1990s, observations did not show the troposphere, particularly in the tropics, to be warming, even though surface temperatures were rapidly warming. This lack of tropospheric warming was used by some to question both the reality of the surface warming trend and the reliability of climate models as tools. This new paper extensively reviews the relevant scientific analyses -- 195 cited papers, model results and atmospheric data sets -- and finds that there is no longer evidence for a fundamental discrepancy and that the troposphere is warming.

"Looking at observed changes in tropospheric temperature and climate model expectations over time, the current evidence indicates that no fundamental discrepancy exists, after accounting for uncertainties in both the models and observations," said Peter Thorne, a senior scientist with CICS in Asheville, N.C., and a senior researcher at North Carolina State University. CICS is a consortium jointly led by the University of Maryland and North Carolina State University.

This paper demonstrates the value of having various types of measurements -- from surface stations to weather balloons to satellites -- as well as multiple independent analyses of data from these observation systems.

Link

What's the white dot and box around it represent?

Quoting MichaelSTL:


That is the latest reading; the reason why it is by itself is because the previous days were missing and the graphing program only connects adjacent days with data, skipping missing days. Here are the last few days as indicated in the text file (temperature in Kelvins):

11/08 252.712
11/09 252.694
11/10 252.680
11/11 -999.000
11/12 -999.000
11/13 -999.000
11/14 252.424

Sometimes, instead of marking missing data as -999, it uses 0, which then screws up the calculation of this year relative to last year (that is why it sometimes shows readings that are hundreds of degrees warmer or cooler, mainly for SST data, which incidentally, has gone up again).

A few more data points and we should get the line back correct?

Quoting JFLORIDA:
If the deep dark red is cold anomaly it looks like its absolutely frigid. I better fire up my bituminous coal tv set tonight.  

I think Martini is reading that chart bassackwards! LOL!

Quoting DoverWxwatchter:



Wow.

Personal attacks, calling people morons. Neither MichaelSTL nor cyclonebuster are morons.

Furthermore, the earth is warmer than last year and 2010 will be the warmest year on record.

So you personally attack people and lie and tell people to shut up.

martinitony is just a worthless troll. And henceforth ignored. Or maybe not, might be good to keep an eye on the troll.

DoverWxwatcher,

Thanks for your response to this individual who needs more tutoring!

Cool It movie question?

If you cool the oceans does this cool the planet?

Yes or No and why?

What holds more heat Earths Oceans or Earths crust?

that talk by Rodger Pilke Jr. was very challenging. His change in perspective on the challenges, motivations, and issues is refreshing. I was glad to see our energy/unit produced has been on a reduction trend.

His formula for balancing the intractable Carbon issue, with Population, GDP, and Technology development is also useful for the intractable water resource shortage issue.
Population, Growth, and technology are all in the same parts of the equation and conservation/technology is the only part that can viably be manipulated with any chance of success. It has produced drip irrigation, low flow toilets and showerheads, Zeriscaping, etc.
Similar to the carbon problem, we need a grip on how rapidly we need to improve conservation, reuse, and wise use infrastructure.

Quoting JFLORIDA:
How do you say "tunnel" in Japanese?:

"submarine"


Japanese Company Hopes to Deploy Fleets of Submarines to Stop Typhoons


Typhoons threaten the western Pacific relentlessly year-round,
dogging coastal cities along the eastern coast of Asia and sometimes
unleashing devastating power that can cost human lives. But even as
Taiwan and China clean up after Typhoon Fanapi flooded streets and
claimed a handful of lives earlier this month, a Japanese company has
patented a scheme that uses submarines to downgrade the force of typhoons as they threaten to make landfall.
Under the plan, a fleet of about 20 subs would dive some 100 feet
below the surface just in front of an approaching storm. Each submarine
would be fitted with eight pumps capable of quickly dumping more than
500 tons of chilled water per minute into the water above.

JFLORIDA,
I already thought of this idea long ago to place scoops on a fleet of nuclear subs that would thrust cold water upward in front of the storms. However, they didn't produce electrical power to reduce GHGs and the fuel they burn would also warm the oceans thus causing more global warming. The Tunnels are a better option according to the hurricane center!

oops

As Arctic Temperatures Rise, Tundra Fires Increase

ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2010) — In September, 2007, the Anaktuvuk River Fire burned more than 1,000 square kilometers of tundra on Alaska's North Slope, doubling the area burned in that region since record keeping began in 1950. A new analysis of sediment cores from the burned area revealed that this was the most destructive tundra fire at that site for at least 5,000 years. Models built on 60 years of climate and fire data found that even moderate increases in warm-season temperatures in the region dramatically increase the likelihood of such fires.

Quoting JFLORIDA:
you did it again?

JFLORIDA,

Sorry! LOL!

As Arctic Temperatures Rise, Tundra Fires Increase

ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2010) — In September, 2007, the Anaktuvuk River Fire burned more than 1,000 square kilometers of tundra on Alaska's North Slope, doubling the area burned in that region since record keeping began in 1950. A new analysis of sediment cores from the burned area revealed that this was the most destructive tundra fire at that site for at least 5,000 years. Models built on 60 years of climate and fire data found that even moderate increases in warm-season temperatures in the region dramatically increase the likelihood of such fires.The study was published this October in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

After the Anaktuvuk fire, University of Illinois plant biology professor Feng Sheng Hu sought to answer a simple question: Was this seemingly historic fire an anomaly, or were large fires a regular occurrence in the region?

"If such fires occur every 200 years or every 500 years, it's a natural event," Hu said. "But another possibility is that these are truly unprecedented events caused by, say, greenhouse warming."

On a trip to Alaska in 2008, Hu chartered a helicopter to the region of the Anaktuvuk fire and collected sediment cores from two affected lakes. He and his colleagues analyzed the distribution of charcoal particles in these cores and used established techniques to determine the approximate ages of different sediment layers.

The team found no evidence of a fire of similar scale and intensity in sediments representing roughly 5,000 years at that locale.

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