18 April 2012
Weird Spring Weather- Related To Diminishing Arctic Sea Ice??
Posted by Dan Satterfield
Every meteorologist I know is talking about the crazy weather of the last few months: Records broken by margins I would have dismissed as impossible a few years ago. A Texas summer far worse than the brutal heat of 1980, and now a growing drought nationwide. I’ve attended a couple of very interesting seminars recently, and talked with a lot of fellow meteorologists about it. There seems to be growing evidence that the increased water vapour in the atmosphere and diminishing sea ice are now causing the normal swings of weather to change to a point that is noticeable to the average person.
Arctic Sea Ice has diminished considerably over the past 30 years. This from NOAA. Click for more info from the Arctic Report Card 2011.
Research by Dr. Jennifer Francis and others may very well have hit on at least part of the answer.
The disappearing Arctic Sea ice.
I’ve written two posts about this before and now Bud Ward, at the Yale Forum on Climate Change and The Media, has posted a video with some of those I have talked with, including Dr. Francis at Rutgers, and my friend Stu Ostro (Senior Metr. at the Weather Channel). Paul Douglas is also in it. It’s well worth a watch.
You can see all the talk (some amazing research) by Dr. Francis at the Gerberg Weather and Climate Summit in January here:
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
Would seasons be easy to identify anymore without a calender? I have a more personal belief of why the weather has been crazier than usual.
Based upon his recent statements, do you think James Lovelock’s current opinion of climate change is right/wrong?
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite
I read what was written on MSNBC but I have no way of knowing how accurate it is. I tend not to pay much attention to this kind of thing. What counts is the science.
Am not sure what he said in the past, but the predictions made in peer reviewed science over the last 30 years have been uncannily accurate, although in te cases where there were errors they have been almost invariably too conservative. It’s not uncommon for science to take the blame for someone’s predictions that were not published in a journal but were published in the press/media.
He also criticizes Inconv. Truth, but did not say specifically what was incorrect.
If he did claim in the past that billions would die in this century, then that was plainly silly and no predictions I have seen make anything like that.
A good look at the prediction by James Hansen from 1981 ctsy. of NASA Climate expert Gavin Schmidt is here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/evaluating-a-1981-temperature-projection/
This kind of story is used by those who do not like climate predictions because it conflicts with their political/world view. Doesn’t mean much in terms of science.
James Lovelock has published several books where he predicted that by the end of this century there would be perhaps 1 to 2 billion humans left alive on the planet and they would all live mostly at the poles. Also that a large band around the equator would be so hot, above 120 F, that essentially little or no life could live there. So he represents the other extreme from climate denialism. The problem is that a fair number of progressives, I’ve no idea how many, believe him and take him seriously.
Mr. Lovelock is also a proponent of the strong Gaia hypothesis which is the claim that the global biosphere is a living, intelligent organism. The weak version is that the global biosphere is self regulating. Mr. Lovelock constantly anthropomorphizes the Earth, refers to it as “she” non-ironically and talks as if the Earth is capable of intentional actions.
The reference to An Inconvenient Truth is the claim that Al Gore deliberately misrepresented a certain graph to make global warming appear more of a threat than it is. I don’t know the truth about that. I suspect the graph was altered but probably not in order to deceive but rather just for clarity.
thank you for your effort