Have we lost the battle against global warming?

Drummerboy, I'm gonna say the same thing to you now as I said last year. You simply do not understand how this stuff works. It's not an opinion, its a fact. The atmosphere is a lot more complicated than what you see on Vox. This type of thing has happened for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Yes, daily weather is impacted. And if you want to make any argument about the hurricanes here, you've chosen completely incorrectly as to the one that is most valid. But I'm absolutely sure you know that, right?

Wait so you think that because it's happened in back to back years that all of a sudden that's proof? What about all of the years between 2005 and 2017? What happened during those years? Where were all the hurricanes Drummerboy? Where'd they go? Or does that just not fit your narrative?

Oh and to restate this, lets consider once again the observational platforms available before say, 1970. Of course this occurred more times than just the years listed. We just had no way of seeing it. You're confusing signal and noise, plain and simple.

WxNut2.0 said:

tjohn said:

WxNut2.0 said:
And for the record: yes, we have lost the battle. But this is not the evidence that should be used to argue that.

 I don't like saying we have lost the battle since there is still a need for us to become carbon neutral even if we are going to experience the consequences of not being carbon neutral for the last 300 years or so.

Unfortunately, given that the ocean is a tremendous heat sink, there is little we can do to stop the effects now. That's not at all to say we shouldn't stop trying of course. But we will see a sea-level rise of a meter by the end of the century even if we permanently stopped emitting carbon today.

 Yes, I agree, but I assume that it is also the cause that if we keep pouring CO2 into the atmosphere, effects will just get worse and worse.

drummerboy said:

tjohn said:

I think people need to start thinking about where they want to live 10-20 years from now, but they need to decide that pretty soon. 

I'm a bit more unsettled by the hundreds of millions of people who will die due to the collapse of agriculture in parts of the word.

tjohn said:

drummerboy said:

tjohn said:

I think people need to start thinking about where they want to live 10-20 years from now, but they need to decide that pretty soon. 

I'm a bit more unsettled by the hundreds of millions of people who will die due to the collapse of agriculture in parts of the word.

 well, yes, there's that too.

WxNut2.0 said:
Wait so you think that because it's happened in back to back years that all of a sudden that's proof? What about all of the years between 2005 and 2017? What happened during those years? Where were all the hurricanes Drummerboy? Where'd they go? Or does that just not fit your narrative?

yeesh. If we get 3 hurricanes this year, coupled with 2010 and 2017, it will be  a statistical anomaly that has not occurred since we've kept records. Coupled with all of the other "statistical anomalies"  that are occurring with such an increasing frequency that they're no longer anomalies, why doesn't it make sense to talk about the fact that these events can be directly attributable to GW? 

And why are more and more climatologists increasingly confident in ascribing weather to GW? Are they all as clueless as I am?

Let me ask you this. Can any of our weather be ascribed to GW?

I’ve never understood why novices challenge the knowledge and experience of experts.

Especially when those experts have clearly explained and supported their arguments with data and have cited studies supporting their position.

Is it just about winning an argument?

jimmurphy said:
I’ve never understood why novices challenge the knowledge and experience of experts.

When the pros are 11-20 since Aug. 6, what else am I supposed to do?

But, yeah. A little humility can go a long way.

jimmurphy said:
I’ve never understood why novices challenge the knowledge and experience of experts.


Especially when those experts have clearly explained and supported their arguments with data and have cited studies supporting their position.


Is it just about winning an argument?

wxnut is not the only expert that has thoughts on the matter. Nor is his position necessarily the correct one. Much has been written in the past year about how many climatologists are feeling increasingly more confident in ascribing individual weather events to GW.

I can be easily convinced by a good counter-argument. I just haven't seen it yet.

Take my example of pointing out the occurrence of 3 simultaneous hurricanes in the Atlantic. (and apparently our 3 storms are now all hurricanes) Rather than prove his point by offering me data, he proved mine by showing that we've seen a singular, anomalous pattern since 2010.

Then again, I also don't take kindly to experts lording over their expertise.

DaveSchmidt said:

jimmurphy said:
I’ve never understood why novices challenge the knowledge and experience of experts.

When the pros are 11-20 since Aug. 6, what else am I supposed to do?
But, yeah. A little humility can go a long way.

 yes, someone should probably be a little more humble about their expertise. was thinking the same thing.

drummerboy said:

WxNut2.0 said:
Wait so you think that because it's happened in back to back years that all of a sudden that's proof? What about all of the years between 2005 and 2017? What happened during those years? Where were all the hurricanes Drummerboy? Where'd they go? Or does that just not fit your narrative?

yeesh. If we get 3 hurricanes this year, coupled with 2010 and 2017, it will be  a statistical anomaly that has not occurred since we've kept records. Coupled with all of the other "statistical anomalies"  that are occurring with such an increasing frequency that they're no longer anomalies, why doesn't it make sense to talk about the fact that these events can be directly attributable to GW? 


And why are more and more climatologists increasingly confident in ascribing weather to GW? Are they all as clueless as I am?
Let me ask you this. Can any of our weather be ascribed to GW?

Its curious to me that you chose 2010, 2017 and 2018 as your sample years, but ignored other instances in which this phenomenon either occurred twice in one year, or occurred more than once over the same 8 year span. I'm also curious how much peer-reviewed literature you've read on the subject vs. how much anecdotal evidence like tweets from guys who work at FEMA you're willing to provide.

But you know what? This is all pretty silly. We're arguing the same thing and it doesn't make sense for me to sit here and try to explain it like this. So I'll attempt to take a less standoffish tone and explain to you what exactly makes this hurricane season, and particularly Florence so abnormal, and then explain to you the things that we can attribute to climate change. 

First of all, anthropogenic global climate change (AGCC) is the greatest threat to life on earth since the meteor that took out the dinosaurs. There's absolutely no denying that. But again, to start calling every single thing that appears abnormal to you (which, lets be honest, how much of this did you really pay attention to when these storms weren't hitting the US?) is just plain unscientific. So lets dig in:

There are multiple time-scales upon which the atmosphere works. Theres the microscale which is seconds to minutes; the mesoscale which is minutes to perhaps a day; synoptic scale which is days to about a week and finally the climatological scale, which is weeks to months to years to centuries, etc. So as you can probably see, there's a lot of disparity here on what phenomena occur on multiple scales, and how we can attribute anything in terms of one scale vs. another. Of course, there is a feedback between these scales that goes in both directions. For instance, El Nino is a climatological scale phenomenon. It promotes a feedback in which thunderstorms over the equatorial pacific (mesoscale) are shifted east and west based upon the El Nino (La Nina) phase. The thunderstorms then deposit energy into the upper-troposphere, which causes shifts to the jet stream (synoptic scale) and ultimately impacts our every day weather. So of course there is a cascade here. No one doubts that. 

Now, hurricanes are somewhere between the mesoscale and the synoptic scale. If you'd like to argue that AGCC is warming the oceans, I'd 100% agree with you. Warming oceans will aid in more intense hurricanes. But its not that simple. The reason for this is that warm water helps promote thunderstorm development, which ultimately is what drives tropical cyclogenesis and hurricane maintenance. Hurricanes, just like any other meteorological phenomenon, are a complex system that can be disrupted or enhanced by a number of things. The biggest mitigator in hurricane intensity is wind shear. Wind shear is simply the difference in speed and direction of the wind with height. Simulations have shown that in a warming planet, wind shear may increase, thus prohibiting super-active hurricane seasons. Furthermore, while the surface will warm under AGCC, so too will the upper-troposphere. Thunderstorms are what's know as a convective process where warm air near the surface rises and replaces the cold air above it, which is forced to sink. It's the same process that causes a pot of water to boil. Now, if we warm the top of that atmosphere as well, that warm air will be prohibited from rising, thus mitigating the convection necessary for hurricane development.

So what exactly is it that might link Florence to AGCC? Its the track. The track of this hurricane is highly anomalous. In fact, its the first of its kind in recorded history. No tropical cyclone (TC) has ever developed so far north and made landfall in the United States. TC's that develop where Florence did almost always go out to sea. So what's causing that? Theres an anomalously strong ridge of high pressure in the upper-troposphere over SE Canada. This is perhaps a symptom of climate change. We are talking about a significant, anomalous shift in the jet stream that is steering the hurricane into the east coast. What's more, there are several of these anomalously high pressure upper-tropospheric ridges occurring around the globe right now. That is likely a symptom of AGCC. Not the hurricanes, but the shift in the jet-stream.

So if we want to look for symptoms of climate change, aiming at every anomalous event is not the way to do it. What you're consistently arguing is the same as when deniers start yelling about how cold it is in the winter, and therefore AGCC must not be occurring. This is exactly what we can expect to happen on September 10, the statistical peak of northern hemisphere hurricane season. Some seasons are more active than others, and up until this week this one was pretty quiet in the Atlantic basin. We didn't have a significant hurricane strike the US mainland between 2006 and 2016. That's a climatological time-scale, and yet no one seems to think about that anomalously quiet period when considering AGCC. It doesn't fit a narrative, and was beneficial to the US. 

What can you attribute to AGCC? Like I said in an earlier post: 

• Arctic Sea Ice loss over the past 25+ years
• High-latitude land ice loss and resulting sea level rise over the past 25+ years
• Significant shifts in the jet stream and increased upper-atmospheric "blockiness"
• changes to the configuration of climatological patterns like El Nino (there are many flavors of El Nino, some of which appear to be unique to more recent years)
• Extreme precipitation events (if you want to attribute some of the extreme rain we may see from Florence to AGCC, fine I can buy that)
• Extreme drought
• Shifts in climatological precipitation maxima (look up the 100th meridian).

There are tons and tons of more relevant, climatological impacts that easily prove the existence of AGCC. But an increase in hurricane frequency simply is not one. Or at least not one we have a good handle on. That said, it is likely that the number if intense hurricanes increases. 

A peer reviewed paper that appeared in Science that backs this up can be found here:

http://www.ask-force.org/web/Global-Warming/Bender-Modeled-Impact-Hurricanes-2010.pdf

Edit: A more contemporary paper can be found here published in an American Meteorological Society Journal:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0129.1

So all I ask is this: if you're going to make claims about how climate change impacts things like this, be prepared to be able to back up, physically, your claims. Anecdotal evidence and links to cnn.com articles doesn't do that. A thorough understanding of the phenomena in question, as well as peer-reviewed scientific articles does.

drummerboy said:

jimmurphy said:
I’ve never understood why novices challenge the knowledge and experience of experts.


Especially when those experts have clearly explained and supported their arguments with data and have cited studies supporting their position.


Is it just about winning an argument?

wxnut is not the only expert that has thoughts on the matter. Nor is his position necessarily the correct one. Much has been written in the past year about how many climatologists are feeling increasingly more confident in ascribing individual weather events to GW.

I can be easily convinced by a good counter-argument. I just haven't seen it yet.
Take my example of pointing out the occurrence of 3 simultaneous hurricanes in the Atlantic. (and apparently our 3 storms are now all hurricanes) Rather than prove his point by offering me data, he proved mine by showing that we've seen a singular, anomalous pattern since 2010.

Then again, I also don't take kindly to experts lording over their expertise.

 I'm going to wait until you read my last post before responding to this. 

Thanks for the long and detailed response. It will take me some time to digest.

wxnut, while I digest, perhaps you can offer your opinion on this article

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/

WxNut2.0 said:

drummerboy said:

WxNut2.0 said:
Wait so you think that because it's happened in back to back years that all of a sudden that's proof? What about all of the years between 2005 and 2017? What happened during those years? Where were all the hurricanes Drummerboy? Where'd they go? Or does that just not fit your narrative?

yeesh. If we get 3 hurricanes this year, coupled with 2010 and 2017, it will be  a statistical anomaly that has not occurred since we've kept records. Coupled with all of the other "statistical anomalies"  that are occurring with such an increasing frequency that they're no longer anomalies, why doesn't it make sense to talk about the fact that these events can be directly attributable to GW? 


And why are more and more climatologists increasingly confident in ascribing weather to GW? Are they all as clueless as I am?
Let me ask you this. Can any of our weather be ascribed to GW?

Its curious to me that you chose 2010, 2017 and 2018 as your sample years, but ignored other instances in which this phenomenon either occurred twice in one year, or occurred more than once over the same 8 year span. I'm also curious how much peer-reviewed literature you've read on the subject vs. how much anecdotal evidence like tweets from guys who work at FEMA you're willing to provide.


But you know what? This is all pretty silly. We're arguing the same thing and it doesn't make sense for me to sit here and try to explain it like this. So I'll attempt to take a less standoffish tone and explain to you what exactly makes this hurricane season, and particularly Florence so abnormal, and then explain to you the things that we can attribute to climate change. 
First of all, anthropogenic global climate change (AGCC) is the greatest threat to life on earth since the meteor that took out the dinosaurs. There's absolutely no denying that. But again, to start calling every single thing that appears abnormal to you (which, lets be honest, how much of this did you really pay attention to when these storms weren't hitting the US?) is just plain unscientific. So lets dig in:
There are multiple time-scales upon which the atmosphere works. Theres the microscale which is seconds to minutes; the mesoscale which is minutes to perhaps a day; synoptic scale which is days to about a week and finally the climatological scale, which is weeks to months to years to centuries, etc. So as you can probably see, there's a lot of disparity here on what phenomena occur on multiple scales, and how we can attribute anything in terms of one scale vs. another. Of course, there is a feedback between these scales that goes in both directions. For instance, El Nino is a climatological scale phenomenon. It promotes a feedback in which thunderstorms over the equatorial pacific (mesoscale) are shifted east and west based upon the El Nino (La Nina) phase. The thunderstorms then deposit energy into the upper-troposphere, which causes shifts to the jet stream (synoptic scale) and ultimately impacts our every day weather. So of course there is a cascade here. No one doubts that. 
Now, hurricanes are somewhere between the mesoscale and the synoptic scale. If you'd like to argue that AGCC is warming the oceans, I'd 100% agree with you. Warming oceans will aid in more intense hurricanes. But its not that simple. The reason for this is that warm water helps promote thunderstorm development, which ultimately is what drives tropical cyclogenesis and hurricane maintenance. Hurricanes, just like any other meteorological phenomenon, are a complex system that can be disrupted or enhanced by a number of things. The biggest mitigator in hurricane intensity is wind shear. Wind shear is simply the difference in speed and direction of the wind with height. Simulations have shown that in a warming planet, wind shear may increase, thus prohibiting super-active hurricane seasons. Furthermore, while the surface will warm under AGCC, so too will the upper-troposphere. Thunderstorms are what's know as a convective process where warm air near the surface rises and replaces the cold air above it, which is forced to sink. It's the same process that causes a pot of water to boil. Now, if we warm the top of that atmosphere as well, that warm air will be prohibited from rising, thus mitigating the convection necessary for hurricane development.
So what exactly is it that might link Florence to AGCC? Its the track. The track of this hurricane is highly anomalous. In fact, its the first of its kind in recorded history. No tropical cyclone (TC) has ever developed so far north and made landfall in the United States. TC's that develop where Florence did almost always go out to sea. So what's causing that? Theres an anomalously strong ridge of high pressure in the upper-troposphere over SE Canada. This is perhaps a symptom of climate change. We are talking about a significant, anomalous shift in the jet stream that is steering the hurricane into the east coast. What's more, there are several of these anomalously high pressure upper-tropospheric ridges occurring around the globe right now. That is likely a symptom of AGCC. Not the hurricanes, but the shift in the jet-stream.
So if we want to look for symptoms of climate change, aiming at every anomalous event is not the way to do it. What you're consistently arguing is the same as when deniers start yelling about how cold it is in the winter, and therefore AGCC must not be occurring. This is exactly what we can expect to happen on September 10, the statistical peak of northern hemisphere hurricane season. Some seasons are more active than others, and up until this week this one was pretty quiet in the Atlantic basin. We didn't have a significant hurricane strike the US mainland between 2006 and 2016. That's a climatological time-scale, and yet no one seems to think about that anomalously quiet period when considering AGCC. It doesn't fit a narrative, and was beneficial to the US. 
What can you attribute to AGCC? Like I said in an earlier post: 

• Arctic Sea Ice loss over the past 25+ years
• High-latitude land ice loss and resulting sea level rise over the past 25+ years
• Significant shifts in the jet stream and increased upper-atmospheric "blockiness"
• changes to the configuration of climatological patterns like El Nino (there are many flavors of El Nino, some of which appear to be unique to more recent years)
• Extreme precipitation events (if you want to attribute some of the extreme rain we may see from Florence to AGCC, fine I can buy that)
• Extreme drought
• Shifts in climatological precipitation maxima (look up the 100th meridian).

There are tons and tons of more relevant, climatological impacts that easily prove the existence of AGCC. But an increase in hurricane frequency simply is not one. Or at least not one we have a good handle on. That said, it is likely that the number if intense hurricanes increases. 

A peer reviewed paper that appeared in Science that backs this up can be found here:
http://www.ask-force.org/web/Global-Warming/Bender-Modeled-Impact-Hurricanes-2010.pdf
Edit: A more contemporary paper can be found here published in an American Meteorological Society Journal:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0129.1

So all I ask is this: if you're going to make claims about how climate change impacts things like this, be prepared to be able to back up, physically, your claims. Anecdotal evidence and links to cnn.com articles doesn't do that. A thorough understanding of the phenomena in question, as well as peer-reviewed scientific articles does.

 Thanks for your explanation.  I am going to read up your links and to further understand it.

drummerboy said:
wxnut, while I digest, perhaps you can offer your opinion on this article


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/

I have no issue with anything in this article. We can do statistical event attributions. But the events they're talking about are much larger scale. They also say this:

"Certain types of events lend themselves to analysis better than others. For instance, researchers have high confidence when investigating heat waves, droughts or heavy precipitation. But they have less confidence when it comes to hurricanes and other more complex phenomena."

This is entirely the point I'm trying to make. Larger scale, less complicated phenomena are much easier to attribute to climate change as they are not dictated by highly non-linear, small-scale processes like hurricanes or tornadoes for instance.

I'm actually a little confused now about what our disagreement is about. Am I just being too forward about talking about a single event like a hurricane?

drummerboy said:
I'm actually a little confused now about what our disagreement is about. Am I just being too forward about talking about a single event like a hurricane?

Yes, that's simply the point I'm trying to make. That individual hurricanes, or even a series of hurricanes, should not be immediately attributed to AGCC. Now if we start to see seasons like this every single year, then that's something. If we start to see every hurricane achieve cat 4-5 intensity, that's something. The former, given what's in the literature, is unlikely whereas the latter may in fact happen as we continue in a warming climate. But at this point in time, especially given the short data record with respect to hurricanes, its hard to make an attribution. They're too small scale. But show me an historic drought or a record breaking south asian monsoon and I have no issue making the attribution. 

I apologize for being nasty earlier here. But in order to arm people with the ability to better argue the existence of AGCC to deniers, we need to be able to make sound, scientifically backed arguments that have been proven. I've had so many arguments with deniers about how in the winter its cold so climate change is a joke. This is a similar thing; it's peak hurricane season and although it may be at the tail of the distribution, it's not necessarily something we shouldn't expect. 

Going forward, if you want to make attributions to AGCC just think about the scales you're considering. If we're talking about oscillations on very large spatial and temporal scales its probably safe. But a hurricane is relatively small and transient and therefore is very difficult to directly attribute to AGCC. It's kind of like looking at a temperature vs. time plot. You see a general warming trend, but also high frequency noisiness that is simply normal seasonal variation in temperature. Two things that are relatively independent of one another.

So this is a good report that came out  a couple of months ago from NOAA, I included some snippets, the bolding is theirs not mine. https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

A review of existing studies, including the ones cited above, lead us to conclude that: it is likely that greenhouse warming will cause hurricanes in the coming century to be more intense globally and have higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes.

The model also supports the notion of a substantial decrease (~25%) in the overall number of Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms with projected 21st century climate warming. However, using the CMIP3 and CMIP5 multi-model climate projections, the hurricane model also projects that the lifetime maximum intensity of Atlantic hurricanes will increase by about 5% during the 21st century in general agreement with previous studies.