THE BEST CLIMATE SCIENCE THERE IS SAYS IT'S HOT

NOAA: Past Decade Warmest on Record According to Scientists in 48 Countries; Earth has been growing warmer for more than fifty years
July 28, 2010 (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

THE POINT
A meteorologist, an oceanographer and a biologist go into a bar. “What’ll it be?” the bartender asks. “More severe weather events,” says the meteorologist. “More sea level rise,” says the oceanographer. “More extinctions and migrations,” says the biologist. The shaken bartender breaks into a nervous sweat. “Is it getting hot,” he exclaims, wiping his brow with a bar rag, “Or is it just me?” “It’s getting hot,” the scientists reply grimly in unison.

It’s not a joke. It’s a summary of the just released State of the Climate in 2009, a report assimilated by a meteorologist, an oceanographer and a biologist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Based on the findings of more than 300 scientists from 48 countries and analyses of data drawn from 37 crucial climate indicators, the report says its getting hotter.

Of the report’s ten Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), all ten are consistent with a warming world. The seven that warming would cause to rise are rising: (1) air temperature over land, (2) sea-surface temperature, (3) air temperature over oceans, (4) sea level, (5) ocean heat, (6) humidity and (7) tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. The three that would be expected to decline with warming are: (1) Arctic sea ice, (2) glaciers and (3) spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.

There are two key points to be drawn from this report. The first is that whatever politicians in the pay of vested interests may say, the climate is changing and global weirding – associated with a one degree Fahrenheit global average temperature rise – has already begun. There is simply no debating the point.

The last three decades have been the hottest in recorded history and each has been hotter than the one before. A contention of ignorant deniers that there was a cooling trend after 1998 is simply an unscientific “cherry-picking” of data. If last winter was particularly cold or this summer is particularly hot, it only confirms Mark Twain’s prescient observation that “Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.”

Weather varies because of short-term natural phenomena like the El Niño/La Niña events. Climate is the product of grinding, long-term processes. The data leaves irrefutable the conclusion that the earth’s temperature has been rising in a centuries-long process. The data also shows that, on a planetary scale, the temperature rise since the advent of the industrial revolution has been too rapid to be explained only by natural causes.

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Example of weather versus climate: A warming climate will have cold spells but they will be localized and less frequent. In the 2009/10 winter, a warm air mass moved into Canada. It pushed cold air south. Canadians had a mild winter and other regions were unusually warm but the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast was extremely cold and snowy. The world as a whole had one of the warmest winters on record.

The second key point in the report answers an observation recently made to NewEnergyNews by a hard-working, rough talking Texas cattle rancher. Living close to the land, the rancher admitted he could not deny there is something unusual going on with this good earth’s climate. But, because most of what he knows is from his hard life, his church and the rural Texas media, he doubts that what is going on has anything to do with what humans are doing.

The rancher’s experience and data are limited. If he understood the greenhouse effect and had the time to read the new NOAA report, he would find ample data verifying the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GhGs) in a way that leaves little room for doubt. Concentrations in the upper atmosphere and the ocean are increasing at an ever-faster rate.

More importantly, the Texas rancher would find in the report that samples taken in the oceans and studied in detail show the carbon there is not the result of nature’s processes (like his cattle’s flatulence or plant decay) but was largely generated by human fossil fuel-burning (anthropogenic) activity. The samples also show the oceans’ GhG-absorbing and heat-absorbing abilities to protect the atmosphere is rapidly being exhausted.

Now if only the rancher would go into that bar and chat with the bartender and both of them would demand of their elected representatives that they stop doing obeisance to the vested interests and start acting on behalf of this good earth.

The NOAA Climate Portal

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THE DETAILS
The report focuses especially on data for 10 Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), defined as economically and technically feasible to acquire and required for international exchange. The data was collected by 300+ scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries. The sum of their conclusions is that the Earth has been growing progressively warmer for at least a half-century.

The backgrounds of the report’s three editors (meteorology, oceanography, and biology) demonstrate how climate change impacts and influences the physical climate system and the climate system then impacts and influences the entire natural world.

Warming is creating a climate different than that in which humans evolved. More extreme events (severe drought, torrential rain, violent storms) are expected.

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Increasing:
(1) air temperature over land,
(2) sea-surface temperature,
(3) air temperature over oceans,
(4) sea level,
(5) ocean heat,
(6) humidity, and
(7) tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface.

Decreasing:
(1) Arctic sea ice,
(2) glaciers, and
(3) spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.

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The 1980s was the hottest decade ever recorded. Every year in the 1990s was hotter than any in the 1980s. The first decade of this century was even hotter.

Presently observable U.S. impacts: (1) Sea-level rise, (2) longer growing seasons, (3) changes in river flows, (4) increases in heavy downpours, (5) earlier snowmelt and (6) extended ice-free seasons.

The 2009 weather was about a transition from a La Niña to an El Niño, beginning last June.

By December, Sea Surface temperatures (SSTs) were >2.0°C above average over large parts of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. Eastward surface current anomalies, associated with the El Niño, were strong across the Pacific around the equator.

The transition from La Niña to El Niño was associated with a variety of weather anomalies like fewer Atlantic basin hurricanes and more surface and tropospheric heat.

There has been significant warming in the mid- and high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere (Canada, Europe, the Arctic) and there was record heat in New Zealand and Australia.

Atmospheric greenhouse gas (GhG) concentrations increased at a rate above the 1978 to 2008 average.

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The global ocean CO2 uptake for 2008, the most recent year for which there is analyzed data, was ~20% smaller than the long-term average and the lowest ocean uptake in 27 years.

The hole in the ozone layer is not getting bigger but is still much bigger than it was before the 1990s. Ozone concentrations, which responded to early 1990s hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HFC) control efforts, remain below pre-1980 levels, though they are now declining more slowly and some HFCs are increasing.

The upper-ocean, which normally absorbs a lot of the planet’s excess heat, is hotter than at anytime on record. Excluding the effects of the El Niño, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) transitioned to a positive phase during the fall/winter 2009. There were explainable anomalies in SSTs.

Global chlorophyll continues the decline observed since 1999 and is now approaching a record low but science will not draw a conclusion on the implications of the decline for several decades.

Extreme warming was widely recorded. There were severe cold snaps in the UK, China, and the Russian Federation. There was drought in large parts of southern North America, the Caribbean, South America, and Asia. There was heavy rainfall and floods in Canada, the United States, the Amazonia and southern South America, many countries along the east and west coasts of Africa, the UK and Turkey.

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Sea level rise was anomalous (as were other phenomena) due to countervailing impacts from the transition from La Niña to El Niño conditions.

Cloud and moisture were up and surface salinity reflected the evaporation and precipitation of an enhanced hydrological cycle.

Arctic summer ice was the third-lowest recorded since 1979. The 2008/09 snow cover season was shorter than normal with an early disappearance of snow cover in spring.

Preliminary data indicates 2009 will likely be the 19th consecutive year glaciers have lost mass. Permafrost temperatures in Alaska, northwest Canada, Siberia, and Northern Europe continue to rise and tundra green-up and senescence in the High and Low Arctic continue to shift toward a longer green season. The Antarctic Peninsula continues to warm five times faster than the global average temperature rise.

The key climate indicators, 37 in total, leave no doubt the earth’s average temperature is rising. The 10 ECVs, selected because they are clearly and directly related to surface temperature, are in complete agreement. The data was thoroughly checked. An example: The surface air temperature was collected from weather stations around the world and analyzed by four different institutions which all concluded there is an unmistakable global upward trend.

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The data also shows that more than 90% of the last half-century’s warming has acted on the earth’s oceans. Because water holds temperature more constant than air, it is dulling the immediate impacts of climate change but not preventing them.

Temperature readings as far as 6,000 feet below the surface are elevated though most of the increase is accumulating in the oceans’ near-surface layers. This is causing water to expand and sea-levels to rise. (The balance of sea-level rise is due to the melting of land ice.)

The one-fifth of a degree Fahrenheit global temperature increase in each of the last five decades has added up to a 1 degree rise that has already altered the earth. Glaciers and sea ice are melting. Rainfall is intensifying. Heat waves are harsher and more common. Already at risk are: Coastal cities and infrastructure, water supply and agriculture.

The El Niño/La Niña phenomenon – understood but not entirely predictable – is a natural part of weather. Every few years, El Niño brings warmer water to the Pacific Ocean along the equator. Other times, La Niña brings cooler water. Both change normal ocean currents and interrupt normal weather patterns worldwide.

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Extreme Weather 2009 (not necessarily warming but likely caused by climate change): (1) Brazil - extreme rainfall in the Amazon basin caused the worst flood in a century. forty people killed, 376,000 left homeless;
(2) Southeastern South America - the wettest November in 30 years, thousands displaced;
(3) Northwest England, Lake District heavy rainfall and flooding, new records for river flows, 1,500 properties damaged;
(4) Northern Iberia/Southern France - a North Atlantic storm, record winds, downed power lines, closed airports, blocked railroads;
(5) Australia - three intense heat waves set high temp records, one with high winds that drove bushfires and killed 173;
(6) North-central Pacific (including Hawaii) - tropical cyclones after years of calm.

Digitally engaged weather stations (7,000+), weather balloons, ships and buoys to track weather better than in decades and computer technology (high-speed data communications, global positioning systems) allow rapid assimilation and detailed analysis of both local weather patterns and global climate trends.

A 15-year average rise in sea-level of one-eighth of an inch per year has been tracked precisely with water level gauges and satellite instrumentation. It is twice the rise rate of the preceding century. There was no sea-level rise for 2,000 years before that. Already impacting New Orleans and its Gulf Coast environs, it will have more far-reaching affects in the coming decades.

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QUOTES
- Jane Lubchenco, Under-Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere/Administrator, NOAA: “For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean…The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming,”

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- Peter Stott, Ph.D./report contributor/Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution, UK Met Office Hadley Centre: “Despite the variability caused by short-term changes, the analysis conducted for this report illustrates why we are so confident the world is warming…When we look at air temperature and other indicators of climate, we see highs and lows in the data from year to year because of natural variability. Understanding climate change requires looking at the longer-term record. When we follow decade-to-decade trends using multiple data sets and independent analyses from around the world, we see clear and unmistakable signs of a warming world.”

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- Deke Arndt, report co-editor/Chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch, NOAA National Climatic Data Center: “The temperature increase of one degree Fahrenheit over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet…Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common. And, as the new report tells us, there is now evidence that over 90 percent of warming over the past 50 years has gone into our ocean.”