Just Temperature Redux: What about the Cherries and Apples?
Just Temperature Redux: What about the Cherries and Apples?
March and April were very warm in the United States, and especially in March when it was 86 degrees F in Detroit, there was a lot of press attention to the heat (my blog at the time). Following the March heat wave I watched with interest the caster that has weather events and earthquakes on the homepage. There was a period of time when there were record highs and, a couple of hundred miles away, record lows. There were these waves moving (very) warm air north and (very) cool air south (another old Rood blog Warm, Cold, Warm, Cold). This is what weather does, moves heat from the tropics to the poles; it tries to smooth out the distribution of temperature, heat, energy. The climate of the Earth is strongly linked to the Equator to Pole temperature contrast. (I note that, at this writing, a May 20 record high in Holland, MI, of 92 F. In fact, May 20 is pretty much coast-to-coast high.)
So I am watching these highs and lows, expecting someone to write to me and tell me how cold it was in Tennessee, and what do you say to that you alarmist?
The past few months provide us a nice example of climate, and a useful framing for thinking about the future. Scientists are always explaining that just because the globe is, on average, warming, that does not mean that it no longer gets cold. When I have written about this in the past, I always start with the Sun still goes away at the winter pole; it gets cold; the pole is relatively isolated, so there are cold pockets of air up north. (Yes, I am presuming a Northern Hemisphere bias.) So it’s cold up north, and down south it’s hot. If you think about the Earth, the seasons, the distribution of land and ocean, an increase in average global temperature suggests an increase in the average temperature between, say, 30 degrees latitude south and north. Half of the Earth’s area lies in those bounds, and, well, the Sun is always there.
Next if we think about weather and climate, the contrast between the temperature at the equator and the pole is a measure of the amount of mixing that the atmosphere and ocean need to do to work towards a balance. If someplace up north is still getting about as cold as it used to get, because the Sun is down and it is a bit isolated, and there is more and more build up of heat in the tropics, then something has to give. Using climate and weather models as a guide, we see large mixing events in the late winter, perhaps more characteristic of events of, historically, early spring.
Figure 1: From an old, but good, blog: Warm, Cold, Warm, Cold. A schematic picture that represents a wave in temperature. There are hot and cold parts of the wave.
So there are bursts of warm air north in late winter or earlier in the spring. But there are still pockets of cold air and these get pushed south. The variability, hot and cold contrast in this case, actually increases. The bursts of warm air appear as the onset of spring, leaves and flowers come out. And there they sit waiting for the return of the cold air. This year’s warm spring did great damage to the sour cherry crop (Michigan, Wisconsin, New York) and the apple crop all across the upper Midwest. (Iowa, Michigan).
This scenario of a warm period followed by a frost that kills fruit blossoms is not new. I grew up in the South, and just about every year there was some strip of peach-growing land that was damaged by the onset of spring, followed by a frost. What this current case study lets us think about is what does a warming climate bring to table? Earlier warm spells extending farther north. Increased vulnerability as larger areas of land are impacted by the mixing of the increasing temperature contrasts. Increased crop risk as new weather threats encroach on new regions. There are adaptation strategies for these risks, but they come at a cost.
So I want to finish this blog with something of a change of gears. It relies on a paper brought to my attention by Chris Burt. It is a paper in Nature entitled Warming experiments underpredict plant phenological responses to climate change by E. M. Wolkovich (2012) and many others. There are a couple of points I want to make about this paper.
First, the paper is a nice exposition about how biological scientists think about the intersection of their field with climate change. Advancing onset of leafing and flowering is one of the most sensitive indicators of the onset of spring. Though many factors influence when plants start to leaf out and flower, temperature is the predominate factor. The variable that is used as a proxy for climate is mean annual temperature, and variability of the mean annual temperature represents the variability in the onset of spring.
The second point I want to make about the paper is a clarification – perhaps a translation between different scientific fields. As pointed out in Wolkovich et al. (2012), there is substantial observational evidence that spring is coming earlier. This move to earlier times is especially evident in the northern hemisphere and more evident at higher latitudes, say, in Michigan or Canada. When Wolkovich et al. (2012) talk about “warming experiments” they are not talking about experiments with climate models. They are talking about experiments that artificially warm plant communities to investigate their sensitivity to increased temperatures. In this paper, they find that such experiments do not explain the observations of the onset of spring in natural plant communities.
Returning to climate change - Wolkovich et al. (2012) estimate that for each degree C that mean annual temperature increases the onset of leafing and flowering will move forward by 5-6 days. Given temperature trends for the past forty years, this translates to 1.1 to 3.3 days per decade. And returning to the cherries and apples, these types of trees are especially vulnerable to bloom followed by a frost, especially in high latitudes. So if you are an orchard fruit grower, how do you use this information? Do you treat this year as a simple fluke of weather, or do you look to start a replacement program with different types of fruit or different hybrids as the orchard is refurbished? Or do you look to ways to manage the temperature in the orchard, and perhaps a market advantage with earlier fruit?
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Figure 2: Larger image Ripe by Jennifer Bruce from Absolute Michigan
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Up to three inches' snow fell over the Highlands on Thursday Photo: PETER JOLLY
Britain is colder than winter as the country faces a late spring washout weekend
By Alistair Grant
5:08PM BST 17 May 2012
After rain for the South and North and downpours for the Midlands on Friday the Met Office said heavy weekend showers will hit the South.
Weather Channel forecaster Leon Brown said: %u201CIt%u2019s cold in the North due to a plunge of Arctic air.%u201D
"So if you are an orchard fruit grower, how do you use this information? Do you treat this year as a simple fluke of weather, or do you look to start a replacement program with different types of fruit or different hybrids as the orchard is refurbished? Or do you look to ways to manage the temperature in the orchard, and perhaps a market advantage with earlier fruit?"
If we resort to this because of the climate we are changing with GHGs isn't that forced evolution?
In other words we have to genetically change our crops (hybrids) so we can evolve as a species to cope with the climate we are changing in the first place due to our GHG emissions. How insane is that?
Do any of you here understand the tunnels and how we can get them to work for us and not against us and prevent this insanity?
END QUOTE from our friend TEMPLES OF SYRINX
You could help a great deal by not posting bizarre, unproven conspiracy theories, which are useful only as SCARY STORIES meant to frighten paranoid guests at TEA PARTIES, which as we know are held only for Little Girls and Their Imaginary Friends
This blog is intended for serious discussions about the science and research regarding climate change. At times these discussions, by necessity, must address policy issues and the politics that impedes the implementation of sound policies.
Your posts add nothing to the scientific discussions nor are they useful when it comes to rational discussions regarding policy issues at any governmental level.
Full Article from the The Guardian at the below link:
Link
It would appear that the Heartland Institute's latest despicable ad campaign is blowing up in their face. It's about time that the voices of reason begin to stand up for the truth. We can only hope that this small victory is just the opening salvo in a long campaign to let the "Denialists" know that the voices of concerned citizens and the knowledge of dedicated scientists will prevail.
Thanks again for an informative post.
We know that globally temperatures have been increasing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We also know that the temperature is increasing faster at the higher latitudes. Do you have any empirical data data as to what the temperatures increases are at various latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere? That might be an interesting graphic.
I'd do it myself, but I'm feeling extraordinarily lazy today.
NSIDC censors me and my Tunnel idea? WHY?
Cyclonebuster,
1. I admire your perserverence in pursuing your idea!!
2. I also sincerely admire your skills as a graphic designer!!
However, after having spent much of my civilian career in a marine environment, aboard many naval vessels in severe weather, include conducting wave-loading tests in extreme sea-states in the South China Sea, I have serious concerns about the survivability of your design concept. Among them are:
1. Your structure looks to have a footprint at-least 2-5 times larger than the typical off-shore oil platform. Which means that the production cost of a single structure would be 3-10 times the cost of an oil platform. At a minimum $1 Billion per unit.
2. We know that oil platforms are very vulnerable to hurricanes. The larger the structure the greater the vulnerability and the more structural reinforcemnt that is required.
3. I've worked on many multi-billion dollar development programs in my life. To develop your concept into a working prototype would take 10-12 years and cost no less that $10-15 Billion.
Sorry to burst your bubble like this because I know how concerned you are about a critical problem that needs to be addressed.
Again, in closing, I must say how much I admire your perserverence.
Sorry but Dr. Willoughby already calculated the total costs at 20 billion for all of them............ That is many times less than one Katrina......
I have no doubt that Dr. Willoughby has some credentials in his field, but I seriously doubt that he has ever designed anything that was meant to be operated in a severe marine environment. I will use some rough data on approximate costs of building and operating Oil Rigs:
Production Costs (New)
Swamp Barge - $10-$100 Million
Jack Up (Shallow Off-shore) - $75-175 Million
Semi-Submersible (Deep Off-Shore)- Approx $400 Million
Drill Ship - $300-500 Million
Annual Operating Expenses - Off Shore Platforms
$8-10 Million per year
Why would building and operating your device be so much cheaper than other structures that are used in the same marine environment?
Do your oil rigs generate electrical power for the entire East coast?
Sadly, the oil rigs are used to pump the petroleum which is currenlty being burned, in a variety of ways in support of transportation and industry. Unfortunateley, the burning of these fossile fuels is elevating the CO2 levels across the globe and causing the AGW that we all are worried about.
They are not "my" oil platforms. I'm using them as a comparison for determining development, construction and opeartional cost purposes. Remember the off-shore oil industry has been building these structures to wihstand severe weather events, including hurricanes. These are the same environmental conditions that your structures must be able to operate in. If you were fortunate enough to get support and funding for your concept, the only places with the capability to manufacture your structures are the same shipbuilding facilities that currently build oil platforms and off-shore support vessels, which you will also need. You will need the support and expertise of the same marine architects that have designed these structures.
I'm not trying to be argumentative. If you've read many many posts, you will see that I am very alarmed about the dramatic changes occuring to the Global Climate as a result of the AGW caused by the burning of fossil fuels. I consider myself your cohort in the efforts to curtail the impacts of AGW. I'm just offering you my professional opinion about what the true costs of your design would be and the many hurdles you would face.
Understand I am on your side. Dr. Hugh Willoughby worked out my concept somewhat but I wanted to incorporate power generation with them also. I figured if your going out there to this you should also use power generation to offset the costs of building them. Combining both ideas into one to return our climate back to what it was prior to the industrial revolution.
Professor Hugh Willoughby http://www2.fiu.edu/~geology/Content/People/Facult y/willoughby.htm has spoken to me about my tunnel idea via phone conversation and has told me this about them.
The scheme that we discussed involved an array of several rows devices across the Gulfstream. Each device would be a rectangular duct 140 m long and 10 by 14 m in cross section. Normally the devices would be moored horizontally at a depth of 100m with their long axes aligned with the current flow. They would be nearly neutrally buoyant. When a hurricane approached, ballast at the downstream end of the channel would be released, allowing the device to float up to a 45 deg angle. Cold water entering the upstream end would flow up to the surface and mix with the warmer water there. Since the mixture would be negatively buoyant, it would sink. But mixing due to several (3-10) lines of these devices could cool the surface waters of the Gulfstream by 1-2C, enough to weaken an Andrew-like hurricane from category 5 to category 3. A rough calculation indicates that a device every 100 m on each line of moorings (~1000 devices per ~100 km line) and 3-10 lines of moorings would be required. My guess is that it would cost $250K to fabricate and deploy a single device, but there might be economies of scale. One might also be able to optimize the size and spacing of the devices.
Let's say that careful calculation told us that 4 lines of 1000 devices each would do the trick. At $0.25M per device, the cost works out to 4*1000*($0.25M) = $1000M. The actual cost might range from a few hundred million to a small multiple of a (US = 1000M) billion. One would want to do a detailed simulation before defining the scope of the project, but the basic notion is conversion of some of the kinetic energy of the Gulfstream into gravitational potential energy of the mixed water column. Again, I've not done that detailed simulation, only back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Activation of the array would require accurate forecasting since it would take several days for the effect to make its way from south of the Dry Tortugas (optimum location for protecting the maximum amount of shoreline) to the landfall point.
South Florida gets hit by a category 4 or 5 hurricane at every few years, but the really damaging ones like Andrew tend to be once-a-generation events, or less frequent. The array would need to be deployed and maintained for a long time between activations that actually safeguard property, although false alarms would not be particularly costly. Annual maintenance could easily exceed 10% of initial deployment cost. Bear in mind that Key West to Jacksonville is the only stretch of US coastline where this strategy would work. The other vulnerable sites, Houston-Galveston and New Orleans, lack the necessary strong offshore currents. While Georgia and the Carolinas also experience many hurricane landfalls and have the Gulfstream offshore, most of these cyclones are already weakening because of vertical shear of the horizontal wind so that a second installation north of Jacksonville would be much less useful.
There has been a lot of talk about using wave and current energy to cool the ocean ahead of hurricanes. My general conclusion is that while these ideas might be made to work, the proponents underestimate the scope of the required effort, as well as the political will and recurring cost necessary to keep the project going in the long intervals between really damaging hurricanes. Skeptic that I am, I think that wiser land-use policy and more rigorous building standards are much more cost-effective and more politically feasible. A proof-of-concept that might entail deploying a half dozen devices has some appeal, but I think that there are more promising ways to spend disaster-prevention money.
Best regards,
Hugh Willoughby
Anyways, he did his calculations without the power generation that they can produce which will pay fo them in the long run and make a profit as well as lower GHGs to prevent further ice melt.
As you are aware there are many non-renewable electrical generation projects being propsed for off-shore use (windpower, tidal power, etc.). While doing some research on the cost of laying underwater electrical cables, I came across a very informative brochure (pdf. format) which describes in detail how undersea cables are layed and everything thes projects entail, including the use of the same services used by the off-shore oil industry. I highly recommend that you read the following link:
Submarine Cable Laying and Installation Services For the Off Shore Alternative Energy Industry
Link
Good Luck!!
Correct the generators could be underwater but I would prefer them to be above water for ease of maintenance. It could be done either way these days...........
FAU has them like this.
FAU is now one step closer to generating power from the Gulf Stream.
The universitys renewable energy center (also known as the Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center SNMREC) applied for a lease of 17,080 acres off the coast to test underwater turbines. Now, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is hearing what the public has to say about the project before moving forward with it. The turbines would be deployed nine to 15 miles offshore from Fort Lauderdale and theyd be able to harness energy from the Gulf Stream ocean current over a five year period.
The SNMREC is the first in the nation to apply for this kind of lease, according to Susan Skemp, Executive Director of the SNMREC. It could be years, however, before hydrokinetic technology is powering communities in South Florida.
Link
Either way they can work with the Tunnels..............
Link
Your link doesn't support your babble.
And your babble is self-delusion based on nothing more than your feelings.
If I may be of further assistance, please don't hesitate to get lost.
Snort! If you only knew. LOL In point of fact, I'm an average size man.
I suspect that your problem with AGW/CC has little to do with science. ;^D
What he means is if you pollute the commons you have to pay for it. If you don't then we, John and Jane Q. Public, have to pick up the tab. Actually it usually isn't John and Jane Q. Public, its usually John and Jane Q. Public Jr. that have to pick up the tab....well after the original users who received the benefits are long gone and all that is left is the negative consequences of the earlier decision. No one, not the teanderthals in Arizona, Kansas, Alabama, Louisiana, or Tennessee nor anyone else deserve that right and it would be an egregious failure on the part of elected representative and ourselves if we let it happened.
Bumped. After seeing how many articles from Tinfoilandia you Temple/BeCool (in full, I might add, rather than a snippet or preview) have posted on this forum in your short time here I think we have a right to know since this is a forum specifically to talk about the science of global warming as opposed to innuendo about Agenda 21, the UN, or whoever Alex Jones has decided is the NWO boogie man we are supposed to hate this week.
A Russian speaking German and then translated to English by P. Gosselin? Do ya think something may have been lost in the translation? You know, like how they broke the Laws of Physics to arrive at this conclusion. Do ya think he might throw that bit of information in as well?
This is a link to a New Scientist page with some articles about denialism. Unfortunatly you have to join to read. Still, thought there was some interesting points in the articles and so worth posting.
Peter Gleick cleared of forging documents in Heartland expose -- Scientist who admitted to deception to obtain internal Heartland documents was found in investigation not to have faked material
A review has cleared the scientist Peter Gleick of forging any documents in his expose of the rightwing Heartland Institute's strategy and finances, the Guardian has learned.
Gleick's sting on Heartland brought unwelcome scrutiny to the organisation's efforts to block action on climate change, and prompted a walk-out of corporate donors that has created uncertainty about its financial future.
Gleick, founder of the Pacific Institute and a well-regarded water expert, admitted and apologised for using deception to obtain internal Heartland documents last February.
He has been on leave from the institute pending an external investigation into the unauthorised release of the documents, although it is not entirely clear what the investigation entailed. That investigation is now complete, and the conclusions will be made public.
It was not immediately clear the findings would allow Gleick to make an early return to his job at the Pacific Institute. However, despite the official leave, Gleick has remained professionally active, appearing at public events and accepting speaking engagements. He delivered an Oxford Amnesty lecture on water in April.
The leaked Heartland documents included a list of donors and plans to instill doubts in school children on the existence of climate change.
They brought new scrutiny to the efforts by Heartland to block action on global warming, and to the existence of a shadowy network of rightwing organisations working to discredit climate science.
Hooray for another nail in the coffin of industrialized denialism. It's just too bad it's such a big coffin--because it's gonna take a whole lot of nails...
"Hooray for another nail in the coffin of industrialized denialism. It's just too bad there are so many more..."
That's OK because Home Depot has billions of more nails for those coffin's.
Neopolitan,
What data set are you using for your numbers. I've been using the IARC-JAXA numbers and plotting them against 2007, 2008 and 2011, the three lowest years.
There is a small difference in the numbers I have and what you just posted. Not a big enough difference to quibble about however.
I won't get excited about this years numbers unless I see that the 2012 Ice Extent numbers are tracking 5-7 days ahead of all three years when we get into the peak melt season in mid-June.
I'm also anxiously awaiting the May methane measurements for the Northern hemisphere from Dr. Yurganov.
So far as area goes, it's telling that 2012's area is actually below 2007. While 2011 dropped below 10 million km2 six days before 2007 did, both 2007 and 2011 dropped below 9 million, 8 million, and 7 million km on the same day of the year, and below 6, 5, 4, and 3 million km2 within a day or two of each other. Given that this year's ice is even more thin and patchy than was last year's or 2007's, I expect we'll see either a new record low minimum of area this year, or a figure very close to it. And given both the late maximum and how much more ice there was this year than last, that would be truly extraordinary.
I, too, await the methane numbers... ;-)
Thanks for the information. My concern was that I may have made a mistake when I input the raw data from IARC-JAXA. Basically, we are on the same page when it comes to what we are doing.
Thanks Again!!
Long as you're ice watching, any thoughts on the polyana at the north end of Baffin Bay?
I compared a few earlier years for around the same date and didn't see anything.
I was wondering what an early open Baffin bay would do to glaciers in the area and for transport south.
To my eyes, this year already looks worse than 2007, even if the numbers are better.
I haven't look closely at that yet. When I have more time I will pay more attention to the Baffin Bay area.
My gut instinct, as opposed to scientific knowledge, would be that the sooner the passage is clear of icebergs the warmer waters will have a greater impact on the remaining glaciers.
Don't forget that both extent and area are two dimensional measurements of the ice. 2007 extent/area drops came with the melting of much thicker ice than what we now are watching melt.
Spring 2012 produced a late, consequently, thin extent/area increase.
--
One difference to watch this year is the transport through the Fram. The 'fast ice' on the NW side of the Svalbard Islands is missing this year which widens the passage. A few days of strong wind could blow massive amounts of ice to its death.
No prob.
It seemed like the conversation was developing a life of its own without people looking back to see your 'disclaimers'.
Personally I don't find those bar graphs easy to read. Wonder if there isn't a line graph version possible?
I guess I was also wondering about cause. Why is it open? Currents? Warm temps? Land run off?
I surmised that maybe the melt in the north east Atlantic might have been caused by currents that flowed through the strait and caused the polyana. Similar currents, now cold, helped increase the ice in the Pacific side. But that is a very loose surmise. I haven't really followed currents in the arctic.
Well, I can't be everywhere, you know.
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