Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist living in London, has just written in an article "Viva the almost perfectly useless COP":
"How did everybody fail to factor the probability of a big El Nino into their estimates of the speed of warming? Well, lots of people knew it was due around now, but nobody had the job of watching for it and adjusting the climate predictions accordingly.
How did nobody foresee that the cleanup of pollution in Chinese cities and the International Maritime Organisation’s 2020 decision to cut the sulphur dioxide content in the fuel emissions of 60,000 merchant ships from 3.5% to only 0.5% would lead to cloudless skies and a big jump in sunlight reaching the surface?
It’s the practical equivalent to a 0.5°C jump in average global temperature in just three years, but nobody saw it coming because nobody was tasked to look for that kind of unintended side effect."
I was a but surprised as Dwyer is usually reliable; I intend writing to the Otago Daily Times where I read it, but the article will appear worldwide.
You make a couple statements that seem somewhat contradictory.
"So if 2023 ends up being a record-breaking year, it won’t be due to the El Nino."
and
"This may mean that El Nino is having a bigger impact this year than it would on average."
For me it comes to down to looking for a suspect that can cause this kind of rapid increase and the only one that seems capable of such a change is ENSO.
Yeah, what I wrote was unclear. I meant that, based on the traditional method of estimating ENSO impact, it will have a small impact on 2023. If something different is happening, then all bets are off. Yes, that post by Dan Neuman is good.
If I may be so bold, it seems to me if Dan's analysis is correct and holds up to expert review, maybe we have found our smoking gun??? Looking at his combined temperature effect for all ENSO regions, this year's effect is bigger and faster than either ENSO 1998 or 2016. This correlates with my observation regarding the large, rapid change for global surface temperatures. I'm not an expert, but I am an engineer with 34 years of experience working alongside scientists, so I am not a novice when it comes to looking at data.
Zeke OpEd has 0.1°C aerosol forcing. James Hansen estimate is much larger it is 0.3/0.4°C. If 0.4 is correct, that'd explain a lot of this year's weather.
Seems to be it's likely a number of quite different factors coinciding by chance not some undiscovered new phenomenon or artefact in the data. Next year will be interesting as El Nino lasts longer - will it be hotter? Maybe not.
Yes, certainly there were some instrumental issues. That said, I think it is unarguable that the rate of warming was a lot less over that period than the actual underlying rate of global warming.
The new Mika Rantanen and Ari Laaksonen paper argues that the IMO 2020 regulations and Hunga Tonga could have plausibly contributed about .1 degrees to the September record—does that align with this summary? "Based on literature, we estimate that the reduction of sulphur emissions from shipping may have increased the temperature difference between September 2020 and 2023 by 0.05–0.075 °C"—that seems like a more sudden increase than .1 degrees over the past ten years. They also had an estimate for the volcanic eruptions that were way higher than I would have expected (0.02–0.07, nearly as high as the aerosol effects!). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00582-9
Unfortunately common sense has to do with what we are both saying. Why is the Arctic heating 4x faster than the rest of the planet? Is there no difference between stagnant fresh water and constantly moving salt water? in the 1950's with the extensive introduction of many, many large hydroelectric dams and their imprisoned sea-sized rivers in the subarctic/arctic there's no historical prescidence for this happening any time in recent, 1000's of years history, there .
These impacts completely encircle the subarctic regions, and force rivers to flow all winter long, and trap them stagnant all summer in floodlands over permafrost. again something that has never in recent geologic history ever occurred here. And you seem to be completely discounting any of these effects? Why does scientists keep moving the goal posts toward disaster, moving up more serious effects coming sooner? Common sense right? Scientists look at after effects and they say it's positive feedbacks loops now causing this issue. What initially started the feedbacks? of course we can point at the obvious, but just maybe something else not so obvious has been accelerating this. But maybe common sense prevents us from considering these other things affecting a larger area than previously considered? I'd hope that we can keep talking. Check out: arcticbluedeserts.com
This book and study chronicles the work of Canadian Oceanographer Hans Neu head of the Bedford institute for 23 years, early 1960's to the 1980's. I'd hope to continue a dialogue with you.
I'd be happy to mail you a copy and we can take this discussion off-line if you want or not
"In the extreme, the planet Venus is thought to have experienced a very large increase in greenhouse effect over its lifetime,[3] so much so that its poles have warmed sufficiently to render its surface temperature effectively isothermal (no difference between poles and equator).[4][5] On Earth, water vapor and trace gasses provide a lesser greenhouse effect, and the atmosphere and extensive oceans provide efficient poleward heat transport. Both palaeoclimate changes and recent global warming changes have exhibited strong polar amplification, as described below. " [continues]
This is my final word on the matter for now. Following the science and the consensus: polar amplification and the present leap in mean global surface temperature is NOT caused by dams/reservoirs.
Professor Dessler has let you have your say, so I suggest you try getting opinions somewhere else for a while, eg www.realclimate.org
Youre telling us that Global warming exists as a separate entity like an emissions of Co2 or Methane , separate from human impacts.? .....RUBBISH, Thanks for sharing more misinformation .
You give almost no reasons for why it is not due to global warming, and the one you give is erroneous. You are assuming a linear growth in temperature - 0.2 degrees per decade. No facts to back this up. I am not a scientist, but have read many papers, including that by James Hansen et al., that cast doubt on such a simple figure. It is nonsense to come up with a simple linear growth figure like this, see that 2023 is way higher than this, and conclude, oh, it can’t be global warming, then!
Andrew, always good work however you might consider answering the questions coming at you with:
Nobody is monitoring or has ever really monitored the amount of water vapor that humans are emittting into the atmosphere. also
Alan Buis of NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory as described in his Feb 8, 2022 article “Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Supercharges Earth’s Greenhouse Effect.” This is corroborated in an on-line publication from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group which states: “The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is very large. All of this water comes from condensation of vapor in the atmosphere. For each ton of water that condenses, almost 2 million BTU’s of latent heat is released to the atmosphere.”
Please keep in mind that for nearly 70 years, within the Arctic regions, rates of evaporation and water vapor emissions have been enormous due to the creation of these mega dams that imprison the major rivers, of the northern latitudes keeping them stagnating and being irradiated for months, leading to high rates of evaporation( WV) than releasing massive volumes of water, 10-15 x the normal yearly discharges in a 5-6 month period only in winter, and discharging from dams at a velocity much greater than normal river flow rate. The entire Arctic /subarctic is encircled by huge seas-size reservoir dams from Siberia to Labrador emitting huge amounts of Water Vapor into the atmosphere.
The most fresh water on this planet originates in the northern latitudes...subarctic
The smallest ocean on the planet with the most impact on our planet is the Arctic ocean. Once a closed system, BUT now rapidly Melting permafrost under these reservoirs are adding lots more fresh water to the system. Fresh water that is saturated with methane and carbon. the great increases of fresh water entering this little ocean is changing the dynamics, salinity and the currents. There is more much more to say but we will leave it at this. Let me know Andrew if you'd like one of our books or for that matter anyone out there. We need to get this information out. There's lots going on behind our back and NOT in our backyards.
About 7-8 years since the last el Nino - even if the oscillation is around 3-5 years it doesn't always swing strongly enough to be an el Nino - minus some aerosols, plus a bit of extra volcanic water vapor. And perhaps some other ocean oscillation and internal variables that are transient are lining up with warming. If nothing else we are likely to see studies to work out what has been going on, that better quantify the energy flows and further reduce the uncertainties. If there is some missing elements or poor quantification I expect it will be found.
Of course climate science already makes it abundantly clear that committing to drastic emissions reductions is urgent.
Whats missing is- water vapor emissions: and by a loooong shot
Nobody is monitoring or has ever really monitored the amount of water vapor that humans are emitting into the atmosphere.
Alan Buis of NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory as described in his Feb 8, 2022 article “Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Supercharges Earth’s Greenhouse Effect.” This is corroborated in an on-line publication from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group which states: “The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is very large. All of this water comes from condensation of vapor in the atmosphere. For each ton of water that condenses, almost 2 million BTU’s of latent heat is released to the atmosphere.”
Please keep in mind that for nearly 70 years, within the Arctic regions, rates of evaporation and water vapor emissions have been enormous due to the creation of these mega dams that imprison the major rivers, of the northern latitudes keeping them stagnating and being irradiated for months, leading to high rates of evaporation( WV) than releasing massive volumes of water, 10-15 x the normal yearly discharges in a 5-6 month period only in winter, and discharging from dams at a velocity much greater than normal river flow rate. The entire Arctic /subarctic is encircled by huge seas-size reservoir dams from Siberia to Labrador emitting huge amounts of Water Vapor into the atmosphere.
NOT water vapor emissions, sorry. The single largest cause of rising water vapor content is global warming itself, from other causes ie GHG rises. This feedback is well known to amplify the warming.
Nothing else we do can cause an enduring increase in global water vapor content like raising CO2 does and if raising water vapor were somehow essential then burning lots of fossil fuels (that also make water vapor, as combustion product as well by power plant cooling towers and ponds btw) would be the best way to do it. Not by the cooling towers or combustion products but by warming the atmosphere, so that warmer air takes up and holds more water vapor.
Far from being neglected taking account of changes to water vapor - climate feedbacks - are fundamental to understanding how much the increases in CO2 and Methane will affect global temperatures.
Climate feedback loops were 1st identifyed by scientists in the Arctic in the early 1970's this was shortly after a large number of these vaporizing dams and their seas-size reservoirs were initially commissioned
Cliff: Nothing you seem to think is actually correct. Humans alter water vapor by adding CO2 to the atmosphere, triggering the water vapor feedback. You're welcome to continue reading and enjoying the substack, but if you keep spamming the comments with aggressive nonsense, you will be banned. You have been warned.
I can agree with you and certainly will stop spamming anyone further , however there will continue as you have seen to be disagreements and respecfull from here on out on my end. If we disagree respectfully it is on each of us to proove the other incorrect or to permit disagreements
I certainly can believe the affect Co2 has on triggering additional feedbacks for atmospheric water vapor. if you run a model long enough: heated water or ground or atmosphere over any permafrost this eventually triggers more p- melting and so feedbacks begin. Seems like, So what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Is it the latent BTU's in Watervapor ,or quantity of water vapor, or is it Co2.
I would be happy to share this kind of discussion with you off line. Why are we here anyway? As far as I can tell we're all here to make sure all bases are covered and all possible stones are overturned to get to the bottom of the climate issues and it may be a number of significant human impacts all pulling together that is still continuing to destabilize the climate. Here are some very interesting links that when you have the time I think would be helpful. But you might think not. And everyone is entitled to a opinion.
The soviets at the time were dam serious and they had important scientists developing models. Of course a 55 mile dam never made it to the table but they developed a model that over years would lead to heating Siberia and partly opening the Kara Sea for a port. Of course over 70 years they have built some 20 megs dams using their scientists model of how you can heat an entire region and create feedbacks.
Common sense tells you the evaporation from reservoirs is inconsequential compared with that from the oceans - that cover 70% of Earth's surface, and most of the sunlight falls in the low altitudes where the surface is perpendicular to it.
How much water vapour would you guess there would be in the atmosphere without the non-condensable gases -- principally CO2 "in nature" -- when Earth is at -18C, as it would be without the greenhouse effect?
Can you see now why water vapour is never more than a feedback?
The effect you propose could not affect the mean global surface temperature.
Speaking as someone who bought your textbook years ago ... I am not sure that people with ideas should not be answered not banned. Cliff Krolick will never change his mind but he might change others if he is not seen to be corrected. Of course it's your blog... and I appreciate that.
I just don't see how we can make any determination without looking at the actual evidence presented on scene. Oh look! There is a murder weapon under a box. Hmmm how do we check it? Do we have fingerprints on the box? why yes! we do! We observed a rapid rise in earth energy imbalance over the past 16 months! We also noticed a 3-year successive rise in sea surface temperatures in the northern hemisphere at around 40-45 degree latitude during the spring and summer months!
While not conclusive, there is a strong indication that reduction in shipping aerosols are at least partly to blame and that some kind of aerosol-cloud interaction within unstable adiabats in these regions is happening that has yet to be understood and incorporated into the models.
That's certainly contributing, particularly in regional warming, but in the global average it's not a big factor. Naive correlation arguments (aerosols are going down and temperature is going up, so they must be related) is not a good way to figure out what's going on — you need to see if the energy flows balance.
I agree, the energy flow balance observed indicates that the rapid rise in SW absorbed radiation, particularly in this region (see total albedo graph here: https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1728443739184501184/photo/1 ) indicates that a positive cloud feedback has been suppressed. There is no other way we achieve a +2.0 Watts per meter squared energy imbalance as current EEI.
My totally layman's idea on this: We have the aerosol change mainly from shipping in 2020. That was offset by grounding many planes the same year (due to Covid; high clouds from planes: warming - less off those: cooling). This year aviation rebounded and now we're seeing the newish energy imbalance from aerosol reduction (together with El Niño and solar maximum).
Could this make sense or is the plane thingy too insignificant?
Hello, are things like the methane released from permafrosts taken into account as part of the gradual increase of global warming? Also there was the large and sudden release of methane when some pipelines of NS1 and NS2 were blown up.
If the recent warming has been absorbed in the oceans and El NIno is now moving all this heat around, would that account for the increase?
Forced warming (from things like increases in greenhouse gases) is not occurring fast enough to give you 0.5 degrees in a year, even with all of these increases in methane.
Yes, ENSO moving heat around is clearly playing a big role in this.
What is happening at rapid speeds around the globe is massive increases in Water Vapor. This is particularly blatant in upper latitudes of the N. Hemisphere. Globally in the past 4-5 decades imprisoning large rivers behind dams has changed the hydrological cycles on this planet. We know the Arctic is heating at least 4 x faster than the rest of the planet. The Arctic ,starting in the 1950's continuing almost to 2000 has had the largest profusion of large mega dam commissioning than anywhere else on the globe! Feel free to look up the huge amounts of Dams in Canada, Siberian Russia, and the Norway and Greenland regions. The Arctic Ocean is small but it's location makes it extremely impactful on the planet. The International Hydroelectric Association wants us to believe that these super-sized dams and their sea-sized imprisoned river reservoirs are clean and renewable. This is blatant lies. All...All large hydro is a false solution to asssist us to combat climate destabilization.
Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist living in London, has just written in an article "Viva the almost perfectly useless COP":
"How did everybody fail to factor the probability of a big El Nino into their estimates of the speed of warming? Well, lots of people knew it was due around now, but nobody had the job of watching for it and adjusting the climate predictions accordingly.
How did nobody foresee that the cleanup of pollution in Chinese cities and the International Maritime Organisation’s 2020 decision to cut the sulphur dioxide content in the fuel emissions of 60,000 merchant ships from 3.5% to only 0.5% would lead to cloudless skies and a big jump in sunlight reaching the surface?
It’s the practical equivalent to a 0.5°C jump in average global temperature in just three years, but nobody saw it coming because nobody was tasked to look for that kind of unintended side effect."
I was a but surprised as Dwyer is usually reliable; I intend writing to the Otago Daily Times where I read it, but the article will appear worldwide.
You make a couple statements that seem somewhat contradictory.
"So if 2023 ends up being a record-breaking year, it won’t be due to the El Nino."
and
"This may mean that El Nino is having a bigger impact this year than it would on average."
For me it comes to down to looking for a suspect that can cause this kind of rapid increase and the only one that seems capable of such a change is ENSO.
When I look at the plot of average temperatures in Zeke's post from 23.10.23 at carbonbrief.org, https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-global-temperatures-throughout-mid-2023-shatter-records/ , 2023 looks to me a lot like the ENSO transition years of 1997 and 2015, only bigger.
I will point you to another interesting analysis that was referenced at andthentheresphysics.com by Dan Neuman, https://dmn613.wordpress.com/2023/11/20/more-details-on-sep-oct/ . It is pretty impressive for a retired engineer, https://mstdn.ca/@dan613/109529967802520094 .
I guess I think the jury is still out on ENSO.
Yeah, what I wrote was unclear. I meant that, based on the traditional method of estimating ENSO impact, it will have a small impact on 2023. If something different is happening, then all bets are off. Yes, that post by Dan Neuman is good.
Yes, it may be time to reconsider what regions are included in defining/determining ENSO.
If I may be so bold, it seems to me if Dan's analysis is correct and holds up to expert review, maybe we have found our smoking gun??? Looking at his combined temperature effect for all ENSO regions, this year's effect is bigger and faster than either ENSO 1998 or 2016. This correlates with my observation regarding the large, rapid change for global surface temperatures. I'm not an expert, but I am an engineer with 34 years of experience working alongside scientists, so I am not a novice when it comes to looking at data.
Zeke OpEd has 0.1°C aerosol forcing. James Hansen estimate is much larger it is 0.3/0.4°C. If 0.4 is correct, that'd explain a lot of this year's weather.
https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/Miracle.2023.12.07.pdf
The issue is the time scale. Even 0.4C over 10 or 20 years is not very much compared to the warming of 2023.
*whispers* the pause in surface air temperature wasn't real but was largely a reflection of incomplete sampling of the warming Arctic.
Seems to be it's likely a number of quite different factors coinciding by chance not some undiscovered new phenomenon or artefact in the data. Next year will be interesting as El Nino lasts longer - will it be hotter? Maybe not.
Yes, certainly there were some instrumental issues. That said, I think it is unarguable that the rate of warming was a lot less over that period than the actual underlying rate of global warming.
Does “global warming” in this case include nonlinear jumps from things like saturation of previous carbon sinks (like the oceans)?
"global warming" in this post refers to forced changes in the climate, due almost entirely to the build up of greenhouse gases.
Ok thanks - so I’m curious, what role (if any) do the oceans’ diminishing ability to absorb greenhouse gases play in the current spike in warming?
The new Mika Rantanen and Ari Laaksonen paper argues that the IMO 2020 regulations and Hunga Tonga could have plausibly contributed about .1 degrees to the September record—does that align with this summary? "Based on literature, we estimate that the reduction of sulphur emissions from shipping may have increased the temperature difference between September 2020 and 2023 by 0.05–0.075 °C"—that seems like a more sudden increase than .1 degrees over the past ten years. They also had an estimate for the volcanic eruptions that were way higher than I would have expected (0.02–0.07, nearly as high as the aerosol effects!). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00582-9
Pease remove us from your substack
Unfortunately common sense has to do with what we are both saying. Why is the Arctic heating 4x faster than the rest of the planet? Is there no difference between stagnant fresh water and constantly moving salt water? in the 1950's with the extensive introduction of many, many large hydroelectric dams and their imprisoned sea-sized rivers in the subarctic/arctic there's no historical prescidence for this happening any time in recent, 1000's of years history, there .
These impacts completely encircle the subarctic regions, and force rivers to flow all winter long, and trap them stagnant all summer in floodlands over permafrost. again something that has never in recent geologic history ever occurred here. And you seem to be completely discounting any of these effects? Why does scientists keep moving the goal posts toward disaster, moving up more serious effects coming sooner? Common sense right? Scientists look at after effects and they say it's positive feedbacks loops now causing this issue. What initially started the feedbacks? of course we can point at the obvious, but just maybe something else not so obvious has been accelerating this. But maybe common sense prevents us from considering these other things affecting a larger area than previously considered? I'd hope that we can keep talking. Check out: arcticbluedeserts.com
This book and study chronicles the work of Canadian Oceanographer Hans Neu head of the Bedford institute for 23 years, early 1960's to the 1980's. I'd hope to continue a dialogue with you.
I'd be happy to mail you a copy and we can take this discussion off-line if you want or not
Where are the dams and reservoirs in the Antarctic - or is it not exhibiting polar amplification?
https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/12/1139/2019/
This paragraph might give you some insight. The poles of Venus are the same temperature as the equator - was this caused by dams/reservoirs?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_amplification
"In the extreme, the planet Venus is thought to have experienced a very large increase in greenhouse effect over its lifetime,[3] so much so that its poles have warmed sufficiently to render its surface temperature effectively isothermal (no difference between poles and equator).[4][5] On Earth, water vapor and trace gasses provide a lesser greenhouse effect, and the atmosphere and extensive oceans provide efficient poleward heat transport. Both palaeoclimate changes and recent global warming changes have exhibited strong polar amplification, as described below. " [continues]
This is my final word on the matter for now. Following the science and the consensus: polar amplification and the present leap in mean global surface temperature is NOT caused by dams/reservoirs.
Professor Dessler has let you have your say, so I suggest you try getting opinions somewhere else for a while, eg www.realclimate.org
Youre telling us that Global warming exists as a separate entity like an emissions of Co2 or Methane , separate from human impacts.? .....RUBBISH, Thanks for sharing more misinformation .
Tell you assumptions to NASA !
You give almost no reasons for why it is not due to global warming, and the one you give is erroneous. You are assuming a linear growth in temperature - 0.2 degrees per decade. No facts to back this up. I am not a scientist, but have read many papers, including that by James Hansen et al., that cast doubt on such a simple figure. It is nonsense to come up with a simple linear growth figure like this, see that 2023 is way higher than this, and conclude, oh, it can’t be global warming, then!
You misunderstand the argument. It is manmade global warming but something unexplained is happening - the jump in temperature is not solely El Nino.
Andrew, always good work however you might consider answering the questions coming at you with:
Nobody is monitoring or has ever really monitored the amount of water vapor that humans are emittting into the atmosphere. also
Alan Buis of NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory as described in his Feb 8, 2022 article “Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Supercharges Earth’s Greenhouse Effect.” This is corroborated in an on-line publication from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group which states: “The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is very large. All of this water comes from condensation of vapor in the atmosphere. For each ton of water that condenses, almost 2 million BTU’s of latent heat is released to the atmosphere.”
Please keep in mind that for nearly 70 years, within the Arctic regions, rates of evaporation and water vapor emissions have been enormous due to the creation of these mega dams that imprison the major rivers, of the northern latitudes keeping them stagnating and being irradiated for months, leading to high rates of evaporation( WV) than releasing massive volumes of water, 10-15 x the normal yearly discharges in a 5-6 month period only in winter, and discharging from dams at a velocity much greater than normal river flow rate. The entire Arctic /subarctic is encircled by huge seas-size reservoir dams from Siberia to Labrador emitting huge amounts of Water Vapor into the atmosphere.
The most fresh water on this planet originates in the northern latitudes...subarctic
The smallest ocean on the planet with the most impact on our planet is the Arctic ocean. Once a closed system, BUT now rapidly Melting permafrost under these reservoirs are adding lots more fresh water to the system. Fresh water that is saturated with methane and carbon. the great increases of fresh water entering this little ocean is changing the dynamics, salinity and the currents. There is more much more to say but we will leave it at this. Let me know Andrew if you'd like one of our books or for that matter anyone out there. We need to get this information out. There's lots going on behind our back and NOT in our backyards.
Melting ice is a different matter to dams/reservoirs.
About 7-8 years since the last el Nino - even if the oscillation is around 3-5 years it doesn't always swing strongly enough to be an el Nino - minus some aerosols, plus a bit of extra volcanic water vapor. And perhaps some other ocean oscillation and internal variables that are transient are lining up with warming. If nothing else we are likely to see studies to work out what has been going on, that better quantify the energy flows and further reduce the uncertainties. If there is some missing elements or poor quantification I expect it will be found.
Of course climate science already makes it abundantly clear that committing to drastic emissions reductions is urgent.
Whats missing is- water vapor emissions: and by a loooong shot
Nobody is monitoring or has ever really monitored the amount of water vapor that humans are emitting into the atmosphere.
Alan Buis of NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory as described in his Feb 8, 2022 article “Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Supercharges Earth’s Greenhouse Effect.” This is corroborated in an on-line publication from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group which states: “The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is very large. All of this water comes from condensation of vapor in the atmosphere. For each ton of water that condenses, almost 2 million BTU’s of latent heat is released to the atmosphere.”
Please keep in mind that for nearly 70 years, within the Arctic regions, rates of evaporation and water vapor emissions have been enormous due to the creation of these mega dams that imprison the major rivers, of the northern latitudes keeping them stagnating and being irradiated for months, leading to high rates of evaporation( WV) than releasing massive volumes of water, 10-15 x the normal yearly discharges in a 5-6 month period only in winter, and discharging from dams at a velocity much greater than normal river flow rate. The entire Arctic /subarctic is encircled by huge seas-size reservoir dams from Siberia to Labrador emitting huge amounts of Water Vapor into the atmosphere.
NOT water vapor emissions, sorry. The single largest cause of rising water vapor content is global warming itself, from other causes ie GHG rises. This feedback is well known to amplify the warming.
Nothing else we do can cause an enduring increase in global water vapor content like raising CO2 does and if raising water vapor were somehow essential then burning lots of fossil fuels (that also make water vapor, as combustion product as well by power plant cooling towers and ponds btw) would be the best way to do it. Not by the cooling towers or combustion products but by warming the atmosphere, so that warmer air takes up and holds more water vapor.
Far from being neglected taking account of changes to water vapor - climate feedbacks - are fundamental to understanding how much the increases in CO2 and Methane will affect global temperatures.
Climate feedback loops were 1st identifyed by scientists in the Arctic in the early 1970's this was shortly after a large number of these vaporizing dams and their seas-size reservoirs were initially commissioned
Cliff: Nothing you seem to think is actually correct. Humans alter water vapor by adding CO2 to the atmosphere, triggering the water vapor feedback. You're welcome to continue reading and enjoying the substack, but if you keep spamming the comments with aggressive nonsense, you will be banned. You have been warned.
I can agree with you and certainly will stop spamming anyone further , however there will continue as you have seen to be disagreements and respecfull from here on out on my end. If we disagree respectfully it is on each of us to proove the other incorrect or to permit disagreements
I certainly can believe the affect Co2 has on triggering additional feedbacks for atmospheric water vapor. if you run a model long enough: heated water or ground or atmosphere over any permafrost this eventually triggers more p- melting and so feedbacks begin. Seems like, So what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Is it the latent BTU's in Watervapor ,or quantity of water vapor, or is it Co2.
I would be happy to share this kind of discussion with you off line. Why are we here anyway? As far as I can tell we're all here to make sure all bases are covered and all possible stones are overturned to get to the bottom of the climate issues and it may be a number of significant human impacts all pulling together that is still continuing to destabilize the climate. Here are some very interesting links that when you have the time I think would be helpful. But you might think not. And everyone is entitled to a opinion.
https://arcticbluedeserts.com/images/PDFs/Arctic_Blue_Deserts-Introduction.pdf
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xyy97w/the-soviet-scientist-who-dreamed-of-melting-the-arctic-with-a-55-mile-dam-5886b6e3b70b0245b1239331
The soviets at the time were dam serious and they had important scientists developing models. Of course a 55 mile dam never made it to the table but they developed a model that over years would lead to heating Siberia and partly opening the Kara Sea for a port. Of course over 70 years they have built some 20 megs dams using their scientists model of how you can heat an entire region and create feedbacks.
Common sense tells you the evaporation from reservoirs is inconsequential compared with that from the oceans - that cover 70% of Earth's surface, and most of the sunlight falls in the low altitudes where the surface is perpendicular to it.
How much water vapour would you guess there would be in the atmosphere without the non-condensable gases -- principally CO2 "in nature" -- when Earth is at -18C, as it would be without the greenhouse effect?
Can you see now why water vapour is never more than a feedback?
The effect you propose could not affect the mean global surface temperature.
Professor Dessler,
Speaking as someone who bought your textbook years ago ... I am not sure that people with ideas should not be answered not banned. Cliff Krolick will never change his mind but he might change others if he is not seen to be corrected. Of course it's your blog... and I appreciate that.
I just don't see how we can make any determination without looking at the actual evidence presented on scene. Oh look! There is a murder weapon under a box. Hmmm how do we check it? Do we have fingerprints on the box? why yes! we do! We observed a rapid rise in earth energy imbalance over the past 16 months! We also noticed a 3-year successive rise in sea surface temperatures in the northern hemisphere at around 40-45 degree latitude during the spring and summer months!
While not conclusive, there is a strong indication that reduction in shipping aerosols are at least partly to blame and that some kind of aerosol-cloud interaction within unstable adiabats in these regions is happening that has yet to be understood and incorporated into the models.
This paper may provide some additional insights. https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/22/5743/2022/
That's certainly contributing, particularly in regional warming, but in the global average it's not a big factor. Naive correlation arguments (aerosols are going down and temperature is going up, so they must be related) is not a good way to figure out what's going on — you need to see if the energy flows balance.
I agree, the energy flow balance observed indicates that the rapid rise in SW absorbed radiation, particularly in this region (see total albedo graph here: https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1728443739184501184/photo/1 ) indicates that a positive cloud feedback has been suppressed. There is no other way we achieve a +2.0 Watts per meter squared energy imbalance as current EEI.
My totally layman's idea on this: We have the aerosol change mainly from shipping in 2020. That was offset by grounding many planes the same year (due to Covid; high clouds from planes: warming - less off those: cooling). This year aviation rebounded and now we're seeing the newish energy imbalance from aerosol reduction (together with El Niño and solar maximum).
Could this make sense or is the plane thingy too insignificant?
More water vapor?
https://www.tuwien.at/en/tu-wien/news/news-articles/news/wasserkrisen-durch-klimawandel-gefaehrlicher-als-bisher-gedacht
Less of clouds?
https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-clouds-are-the-key-to-new-troubling-projections-on-warming
Hello, are things like the methane released from permafrosts taken into account as part of the gradual increase of global warming? Also there was the large and sudden release of methane when some pipelines of NS1 and NS2 were blown up.
If the recent warming has been absorbed in the oceans and El NIno is now moving all this heat around, would that account for the increase?
Thank you.
Forced warming (from things like increases in greenhouse gases) is not occurring fast enough to give you 0.5 degrees in a year, even with all of these increases in methane.
Yes, ENSO moving heat around is clearly playing a big role in this.
What is happening at rapid speeds around the globe is massive increases in Water Vapor. This is particularly blatant in upper latitudes of the N. Hemisphere. Globally in the past 4-5 decades imprisoning large rivers behind dams has changed the hydrological cycles on this planet. We know the Arctic is heating at least 4 x faster than the rest of the planet. The Arctic ,starting in the 1950's continuing almost to 2000 has had the largest profusion of large mega dam commissioning than anywhere else on the globe! Feel free to look up the huge amounts of Dams in Canada, Siberian Russia, and the Norway and Greenland regions. The Arctic Ocean is small but it's location makes it extremely impactful on the planet. The International Hydroelectric Association wants us to believe that these super-sized dams and their sea-sized imprisoned river reservoirs are clean and renewable. This is blatant lies. All...All large hydro is a false solution to asssist us to combat climate destabilization.
Thank you.
CH4?
Cheers & thanks.
CH4 is warming the climate, but not fast enough to explain 2023. in general, this can't be caused by any forcing, the warming is just too fast.