Official Global Warming thread (merged)

#6,126
#6,126
More on the 'Godzilla El Niño'
The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that all computer models are predicting a strong El Niño to peak in the late fall or early winter. A host of observations have led scientists to conclude that “collectively, these atmospheric and oceanic features reflect a significant and strengthening El Niño.”

“This definitely has the potential of being the Godzilla El Niño,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

Patzert said El Niño’s signal in the ocean “right now is stronger than it was in 1997,” the summer in which the most powerful El Niño on record developed.

“Everything now is going to the right way for El Niño,” Patzert said. “If this lives up to its potential, this thing can bring a lot of floods, mudslides and mayhem.”

Overall, the Climate Prediction Center forecast a greater-than-90% chance that El Niño will continue through this winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and about an 85% chance it will last into the early spring.
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#6,129
#6,129
BigOrangeTrain said:
I bet you think this is all our fault right? I mean El Niño cannot be a natural phenomenon right?
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El Nino isn’t our fault, but it is our fault that this El Nino will once again coincide with a record hot year. I just think it’s amusing in the context of people claiming that global warming “stopped” in 1998 and thus climate models are all bunk.

I mean, it’s always been obvious that the so-called “pause” is largely an artifact of cherrypicking 1998 as your starting date; that was the year of the strongest El Nino on record and a huge spike in global surface temperature (an otherwise excellent year :rock:). You can cherrypick several pauses in the modern temperature record but still the long-term warming trend continues.

We’ve frequently talked about internal variability and the role of El Nino/La Nina cycles specifically. During La Nina years the Pacific Ocean buries more heat and during El Nino years it releases more heat to the atmosphere. Since 1998 the ENSO has been in mostly La Nina or neutral states, which contributed to the apparent short-term slowdown in surface temperatures. And indeed, we did observe a resulting increase in ocean heating (like SandVol was referring to). But last year was a borderline El Nino and now a full-blown El Nino is burping all that heat back into the atmosphere.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is the other big cycle in the Pacific and it, too, recently turned from a cool phase to a warm phase. There are other phenomena that contribute to internal climate variability, but those two cycles in the Pacific Ocean -- our largest ocean -- are probably the most significant. Like I showed, though, internal variability is not that big compared to anthropogenic climate change. It only adds small wiggles to the overall warming trend.

Statistics says the long-term global warming trend continues

Bump for relevance
BartW said:
Thought this was interesting

ENSO Temperature Trends

ENSO_Temps_500.gif
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And how are climate models faring these days?

2015 global temperatures are right in line with climate model predictions

Climate models are even more accurate than you thought
 
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#6,130
#6,130
Meanwhile

As California fires rage, the Forest Service sounds the alarm about sharply rising wildfire costs
In a new report released Wednesday, the agency says that while it spent 16 percent of its total budget on preparing for and fighting fires in 1995, it will spend more than half its budget this year on the same task — and a projected 67 percent or more by 2025 under current funding arrangements.

By ten years from now, the agency’s expenditures for fighting wildfires as they flare up — dubbed fire suppression — are projected to increase from just under $1.1 billion in 2014 to nearly $1.8 billion. And that’s just one of a number of fire related costs; there is also an annual, fixed fire “preparedness” budget that exceeds $1 billion each year.

The Forest Service report says the agency’s very mission is “threatened” by this trend of increased fires, which is having a “debilitating impact” on other Forest Service responsibilities due to a phenomenon where funds for other priorities get shifted towards immediate wildfire emergencies.

“With a warming climate, fire seasons are now on average 78 days longer than in 1970,” the document reads. “The U.S. burns twice as many acres as three decades ago and Forest Service scientists believe the acreage burned may double again by mid-century.”


The Forest Service is not the only federal agency charged with fighting fires. The Interior Department also manages many wildland areas, and its agencies are charged with about a third of total federal wildland firefighting.

Overall, according to a 2013 study by Headwater Economics, federal wildfire expenditures have increased from under $1 billion per year on average before 1990 to more than $3 billion per year since 2002. And the new Forest Service report suggests they’re still rising.
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And…

The U.S. is now at wildfire preparedness level 5 — the highest there is
At preparedness level 5, the nation can request additional firefighting aid from the military or international partners, like Canada.
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Sure enough,

U.S. Army Soldiers Mobilized To Help Suppress Wildfires For First Time Since 2006
The Army is deploying 200 soldiers to help fight wildfires that are burning through about 1.1 million acres across the Western United States. That's according to a press release from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

"It's been nine years since wildfire was so widespread all at once that active military troops joined firefighters battling blazes," NPR's Howard Berkes reports. "Four military C-130 cargo planes are also in use as air tankers."


Howard notes that National Guard troops have already been called in to help. The soldiers will be joining nearly 30,000 firefighters and support crews. He says that there are talks underway that may bring in firefighters from New Zealand and Australia.
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#6,131
#6,131
Libs believe if you tell a lie often enough and long enough then most people will start believing it and that is probably true.
 
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#6,132
#6,132
#6,134
#6,134
VolsNSkinsFan said:
So was July the hottest eva? Or no?
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You were even righter than I thought!

July Was Earth’s Hottest Month Ever Recorded

Earlier this week, data from NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency showed July was the hottest July on record, globally. Thanks to a particularly strong El Niño, these sorts of monthly records have been coming fast and furiously lately, so that news like this almost seemed like nbd. But then, on Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that not only was last month the hottest July on record globally, it was also the hottest month on record overall. Since NOAA started keeping track in 1880, there has never been a hotter month. That’s a very big deal.
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Then Slate starts getting dramatic...
This is mostly due to a near-record strength El Niño, but the current state of the global oceans has little historical precedent. Since it takes several months for the oceanic warmth of an El Niño to fully reach the atmosphere, 2016 will likely be warmer—perhaps much warmer—than 2015. And that poses grave implications for the world’s ecosystems as well as humans.

We’ve recently entered a new point in the Earth’s climate history. According to reconstructions using tree rings, corals, and ice cores, global temperatures are currently approaching—if not already past—the maximum temperatures commonly observed over the past 11,000 years (i.e., the time period in which humans developed agriculture), and flirting with levels not seen in more than 100,000 years.

But this is the scary part: The current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any point since humans first evolved millions of years ago. Since carbon dioxide emissions lead to warming, the fact that emissions are increasing means there’s much more warming yet to come. What’s more, carbon dioxide levels are increasing really quickly. The rate of change is faster than at any point in Earth’s entire 4.5 billion year history, likely 10 times faster than during Earth’s worst mass extinction—the “Great Dying”—in which more than 90 percent of ocean species perished. Our planet has simply never undergone the kind of stress we’re currently putting on it.
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We try to be a little more optimistic though :)
 
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#6,135
#6,135
BigOrangeTrain said:
Hmmmm I thought human caused climate change was largely responsible for events like these?

How Much Of California's Drought Was Caused By Climate Change? Scientists Now Have The Answer. | ThinkProgress

I mean this says that us humans only accounted for 27 and 18% of the problem. So I wonder, what accounts for the other 73 and 82%? Also why arent we to blame for the majority of this?
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Couple of relevant quotes from the article:
Natural weather variability means temperatures, precipitation levels, and humidity are constantly changing — but they’re changing while the undercurrent of climate change steadily brings temperatures up. Climate change, Williams said, “is like a bully that demands part of your money every year, and every year it demands more of your money than the year before. Every year, the bully — or atmosphere — is demanding more resources — or water — than ever before.”


Thursday’s study “supports the previous work showing that temperature makes it harder for drought to break, and increases the long-term risk,” climatologist Noah Diffenbaugh, who led the Stanford research, said in a statement.

That finding from the study — that droughts like the one in California are becoming increasingly likely in many areas because of climate change — is one of the study’s most important conclusions, Williams said. According to the study, higher levels of evaporation — driven by higher temperatures — will overtake any increases in rain that California is expected to have over the next few decades.

“Severe drought years in California should occur 7 percent of time in warming-free scenario,” he said. “We now find that under the current amount of warming, the probability of a severe drought year has approximately doubled. So even though it may be argued that the human-induced part of the drought sounds small at 20 percent, it seems worse when you consider the probability of extreme drought has increased by 100 percent.”
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So what exactly is your question? This appears to be consistent (or at least, not inconsistent) with the general body of knowledge on the topic. Their result may sound odd but it doesn't seem too crazy to me.

I would caution though that this is just one study, and sort of a first-of-it’s-kind study at that. I wouldn’t read too much into it. Interesting article, though
 
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#6,136
#6,136
LouderVol said:
SIAP, this seems relevant. Carbon credits undercut climate change actions says report - BBC News
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Crap like that was a large reason for the failure of the 2009 cap-and-trade bill imo. Too many loopholes, too much fudging. I know it's Russia and Ukraine but I don't expect much better from our own oligarchy.

Cap-and-trade can be done right, but I believe a type of revenue-neutral carbon tax would be simpler and more efficient, not to mention politically palatable. Either return the tax dollars directly to the people via rebate or make equivalent cuts in corporate and personal income taxes, capital gains tax, etc.

:twocents:
 
#6,137
#6,137
Wildfires have now burned a massive 8 million acres across the U.S.
And the numbers are still growing: 66 large fires are currently raging across the country, particularly in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. That includes two Washington state fire complexes that are larger than 100,000 acres burned.

As of this writing, the United States remains at wildfire preparedness level 5 — the highest level — where it has been since Aug. 13.

There are only six other years that have seen more than 8 million acres burned — 2012, 2011, 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004 — based on National Interagency Fire Center records that date back to 1960. It is hard not to notice that all of these years came since the year 2000.

2015 has already surpassed 2004’s total of 8,097,880 acres burned. The worst year of them all, 2006, saw 9,873,745 acres consumed.

But here’s the thing — as of the end of August, 2015 was ahead of the pace of 2006 and all other years. While 2015 has seen 8,122,876 acres burned thus far, 2006 had only seen 7,663,928 acres burned as of that date.

So is it sensible to raise the possibility of a new record by the end of the year? I called Jennifer Jones, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service, who agreed with me that it’s a possibility.

“While nobody around here really likes to make bets with where we’ll end up with fire season, there’s certainly the potential to hit that record mark,” Jones said.
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And locally,

Obama declares state of emergency at site of out-of-control Washington fires

Washington wildfires now largest in state's history
 
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