APOD: 130 Years of Earth Surface Temperatures (2013 Jul 31)

[geckzilla]

It's nearly impossible to convey inflection with text. It leads to a lot of confusion. But BMA has always been one to try and look on the bright side of global warming.

[Beyond]

The "bright side" of global warming I would have thought that there would be more clouds from the extra water vapor in the air.

[mjimih]

Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming
Rainforest similar to ours flourished at 3-5° hotter
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/13 ... s_were_ok/

Fossil boffins say that dense triple-canopy rainforests, home among other things to gigantic one-tonne boa constrictors, flourished millions of years ago in temperatures 3-5°C warmer than those seen today - as hot as some of the more dire global-warming projections.

Just like a modern jungle. Except with bloody enormous snakes.

[mjimih]

The "bright side" of global warming I would have thought that there would be more clouds from the extra water vapor in the air.

Interesting detailed page about water vapor & clouds.
Global Warming, Clouds, and Albedo: Feedback Loops
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/c ... dback.html

Here are the "short versions" of these two effects. Rising global temperatures are expected to cause greater evaporation of water vapor into the atmosphere, primarily from the oceans. On one hand, we know that water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, so an increase in water vapor might be expected to produce yet more warming through an enhanced greenhouse effect. This warming should further enhance evaporation, producing more water vapor, and leading to a "vicious cycle" (or "positive feedback loop") of more and more warming... and eventually to a "runaway greenhouse effect". There is, however, another side to this tale

On the other hand, more water vapor in the air is likely to cause more clouds to form. The presence of clouds dramatically increases Earth's overall albedo, reflecting a lot of the incoming sunlight back into space. Increased cloudiness would be expected to further reduce the amount of sunlight reaching our planet's surface, thus providing a net cooling effect. Thus an increase in water vapor, and hence cloudiness, might actually serve as a "self correcting" mechanism (or "negative feedback loop") that would "put the brakes on" global warming; or possibly induce a period of "global cooling".

[BDanielMayfield]

Well, there is something to be said for looking on the bright side. A warmer world would be good news for many cold blooded reptiles, plants, insects, the animals that eat them, and the animals that eat herbivores too. The problem isn’t really change, it’s change that happens so fast that ecosystems collapse before the species that they are composed of can adapt. The progression that BMA describes is logical over the long term, but if the change occurs too rapidly species and even genera can be cut off before adaptation can occur.

[Chris Peterson]

The problem isn’t really change, it’s change that happens so fast that ecosystems collapse before the species that they are composed of can adapt.

Very true. It's why there is no "ideal" temperature for the Earth. And not really for humans, either, who manage to thrive in polar, temperate, tropical, and desert environments. From a human standpoint, the problems occur when climate changes faster than our culture can adapt, and there's every indication that is already happening. We do not tolerate environmental change over a decadal scale very well at all. Biologically, there is no problem. But socially...

[Eamon Shute]

On the other hand, more water vapor in the air is likely to cause more clouds to form. The presence of clouds dramatically increases Earth's overall albedo, reflecting a lot of the incoming sunlight back into space. Increased cloudiness would be expected to further reduce the amount of sunlight reaching our planet's surface, thus providing a net cooling effect. Thus an increase in water vapor, and hence cloudiness, might actually serve as a "self correcting" mechanism (or "negative feedback loop") that would "put the brakes on" global warming; or possibly induce a period of "global cooling".

Cloud not only reflects incoming sunlight, it also reflects outgoing radiation. The net effect looks likely to produce increased, not decreased, warming:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/clouds- ... edback.htm

[Chris Peterson]

Cloud not only reflects incoming sunlight, it also reflects outgoing radiation. The net effect looks likely to produce increased, not decreased, warming:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/clouds- ... edback.htm

Understanding the impact of clouds and water vapor is currently one of the most active areas of climate research. This is an area with many uncertainties, and is the weakest aspect of existing models. The problem is that both water vapor and water droplets can act in ways that create both positive and negative feedbacks, and untangling the two in order to arrive at a net effect is complex.

[rstevenson]

... The return of Mega Flora and Mega Fauna

Some people, at least, think it's possible not only to get back some of the megafauna and flora we had, but to do it deliberately. I'm not sure I'd be as comfortable with "a beaver the size of a black bear: eight feet from nose to tail" on my back deck as I am with the family of raccoons that like to vacation there from time to time.

See George Monbiot's article, A Manifesto for Rewilding the World.

Rob

[geckzilla]

There's no bringing back giant beavers but the Great Plains once had herds roaming it that could rival even the herds of the African Savannah. It's a shame that we failed to share the land with them. At the same time we push conservation efforts on African and Asian countries to make sure their poachers don't kill the last elephant, rhino, tiger, etc. What a ridiculous double standard.

[mjimih]

I worry about Africa. What tribes are strong enough to preserve it's nature against encrouching civilization?

Would it be true that AGW might not be as intense in Africa bc it is already hot there, centered on the equator?
There are river beds under the Sahara, I wonder how Africa would fair if the Earth keeps heating up?

http://www.youtube.com/user/AfricanWild ... ture=watch

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Chris Peterson]

Would it be true that AGW might not be as intense in Africa bc it is already hot there, centered on the equator?

Local warming may present less of an impact in much of Africa than it does in high latitude regions, but the overall warming of the planet affects air and ocean currents, profoundly changing rainfall patterns. The result in Africa appears to be a substantial increase in areas experiencing drought.

Many of the negative effects of global warming are related more to changes in precipitation than to shifts in temperature.

[mjimih]

Droughts and deserts are both intense.

[Beyond]

In places with a lot of rainfall and flooding, droughts and deserts are but dreams. In deserts and places with prolonged droughts, rain and flooding are but dreams. In places with normal rainfall and little to no flooding, they wonder what all the fuss is about.

[neufer]

• According to a study of West African drought based on Ghanaian lake sediments
  (not eyewitness historical accounts) published in the journal Science in April 2009:
  

"The most recent of [Sahel multicentury droughts] occurred between 1400 and 1750 CE (550 to 200 yr B.P.), similar in timing to the Little Ice Age (LIA, 1400 to 1850 CE), a well-known interval when Northern Hemisphere temperatures were cooler than at present. In contrast with earlier studies, which reconstructed wetter conditions in East Africa during this period, evidence from Lake Bosumtwi supports more recent studies suggesting that this interval was dry. Evidence for LIA drought is not restricted to Africa, however. Records from throughout the tropics, including the western Pacific warm pool, the Arabian Sea, continental Asia, and tropical South America all show evidence for dry conditions during this time period.".

Africa might be one of the few places to actually benefit from global warming.

[img3="Recent "Greening" of the Sahel: The results of trend analyses of time series over the Sahel region of seasonally integrated NDVI using NOAA AVHRR NDVI-data from 1982 to 1999. Areas with trends of <95% probability in white."]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... 2-1999.jpg[/img3]

[color=#0000FF]A century of rainfall data in the Sahel show an unusually wet period from 1950 until 1970 (positive index values), followed by extremely dry years from 1970 to 1990 (negative index values). From 1990 until present rainfall returned to levels slightly below the 1898–1993 average, but year-to-year variability was high.[/color]

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[b][color=#FF0000]Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (temperature) Timeseries, 1856–2009[/color][/b]

---

<<The Sahel drought was a series of historic droughts, beginning in at least the 17th century affecting the Sahel region, a climate zone sandwiched between the African savanna grasslands to the south and the Sahara desert to the north, across West and Central Africa. While the frequency of drought in the region is thought to have increased from the end of the 19th century, three long droughts have had dramatic environmental and societal effects upon the Sahel nations. Famine followed severe droughts in the 1910s, the 1940s, and the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, although a partial recovery occurred from 1975-80. While at least one particularly severe drought has been confirmed each century since the 17th century, the frequency and severity of recent Sahelian droughts stands out. Famine and dislocation on a massive scale—from 1968 to 1974 and again in the early and mid-1980s—was blamed on two spikes in the severity of the 1960-1980s drought period. From the late 1960s to early 1980s famine killed 100,000 people, left 750,000 dependent on food aid, and affected most of the Sahel's 50 million people. The economies, agriculture, livestock and human populations of much of Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso (known as Upper Volta during the time of the drought) were severely impacted. As disruptive as the droughts of the late 20th century were, evidence of past droughts recorded in Ghanaian lake sediments suggest that multi-decadal megadroughts were common in West Africa over the past 3,000 years and that several droughts lasted far longer and were far more severe.

Because the Sahel's rainfall is heavily concentrated in a very small period of the year, the region has been prone to dislocation when droughts have occurred ever since agriculture developed around 5,000 years ago. The Sahel is marked by rainfalls of less than 100 mm a year, all of which occurs in a season which can run from several weeks to two months.

Despite this vulnerability, the history of drought and famine in the Sahel do not perfectly correlate. While modern scientific climate and rainfall studies have been able to identify trends and even specific periods of drought in the region, oral and written records over the last millennium do not record famine in all places at all times of drought. One 1997 study, in attempting to map long scale rainfall records to historical accounts of famine in Northern Nigeria, concluded that "the most disruptive historical famines occurred when the cumulative deficit of rainfall fell below 1.3 times the standard deviation of long-term mean annual rainfall for a particular place." The 1982-84 period, for instance, was particularly destructive to the pastoral Fula people of Senegal, Mali and Niger, and the Tuareg of northern Mali and Niger. The populations had not only suffered in the 1968-74 period, but the inability of many to rebuild herds destroyed a decade earlier, along with factors as various as the shift of political power to settled populations with independence in the 1960s, Senegalese-Mauritanian border relations, and Niger's dependence upon falling world uranium prices coinciding in a destructive famine.>>

[Climb Mate Conned]

It seems my ban for "rudeness and inability to face reality" has been lifted quite a bit early. Never fear though, I promise to always face the reality of AGW in the future and to never question my fellow believers. You know, I'm starting to see how scientific consensus is made. Just ban anyone that asks difficult questions and thinks the climate models are flawed, right?

[geckzilla]

No, that's not how it works. You were mistaken for another user who remains banned. Please do not discuss moderator actions in public. If you wish to discuss them, email the board admin or create an account so that we can talk via PM's.

[mjimih]

Worst heat wave in at least 140 years hits parts of China; dozens of deaths reported
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013 ... eat-stroke
August 01, 2013

SHANGHAI — It’s been so hot in China that people are grilling shrimp on manhole covers, eggs are hatching without incubators and a highway billboard has mysteriously caught fire by itself.

The heat wave — the worst in at least 140 years in some parts — has left dozens of people dead and pushed thermometers above 40 degrees C (104 F) in at least 40 cities and counties, mostly in the south and east. Authorities for the first time have declared the heat a “level 2” weather emergency— a label normally invoked for typhoons and flooding.

“It is just hot! Like in a food steamer!” 17-year-old student Xu Sichen said outside the doors of a shopping mall in the southern financial hub of Shanghai while her friend He Jiali, also 17, complained that her mobile phone had in recent days turned into a “grenade.” “I’m so worried that the phone will explode while I’m using it,” He said.

Extreme heat began hitting Shanghai and several eastern and southern provinces in early July and is expected to grip much of China through mid-August.

Shanghai set its record high temperature of 40.6 C (105 F) on July 26, and Thursday’s heat marked the city’s 28th day above 35 C. At least 10 people died of heat stroke in the city over the past month, including a 64-year-old Taiwanese sailor, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Climate scientists usually caution that they can’t attribute a single weather event like the Chinese heat wave to man-made global warming. But “human-caused warming sure ups the odds of heat waves like this one,” said Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona. The Chinese heat wave “gives a very real face to what global warming is all about,” he wrote in an email.

“This is the future. Get used to it,” Andrew Dressler of Texas A&M University told The Associated Press by email. “You often hear people say, ‘Oh, we’ll just adapt to the changing climate.’ It turns out that that’s a lot harder than it sounds, as the people in China are finding out now.”

Wu Guiyun, 50, who has a part-time job making food deliveries in Shanghai, said she has been trying to linger inside air-conditioned offices for as long as possible whenever she brings in a takeout order. Outside, she said: “It’s so hot that I can hardly breathe.”The highest temperature overall was recorded in the eastern city of Fenghua, which recorded its historic high of 42.7 degrees (108.9 F) on July 24.

On Tuesday, the director of the China Meteorological Administration activated a “level 2” emergency response to the persistent heat wave. This level requires around-the-clock staffing, the establishment of an emergency command center and frequent briefings.

Some Chinese in heat-stricken cities have been cooking shrimps, eggs and bacon in skillets placed directly on manhole covers or on road pavement that has in some cases heated up to 60 degrees C (140 F).

In one photo displayed prominently in the China Daily newspaper, a boy tended to shrimps and an egg in a pan over a manhole cover in eastern Chinese city of Jinan.

In the port city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province, glass has cracked in the heat, vehicles have self-combusted, and a highway billboard caught fire by itself, sending up black smoke in the air, according to China Central Television. The broadcaster said the heat might have shorted an electrical circuit on the billboard.

In the southern province of Hunan, a housewife grabbed several eggs stored at room temperature only to find half-hatched chicks, state media reported.

A joke making the rounds: The only difference between me and barbequed meat is a little bit of cumin.

Heat waves are no laughing matter...

[neufer]

Worst heat wave in at least 140 years hits parts of China; dozens of deaths reported
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013 ... eat-stroke
August 01, 2013

[b][color=#FF0000][size=150]Recent lack of either typhoons or monsoons in China[/size][/color][/b]

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<<The East Asian monsoon is a monsoonal flow that carries moist air from the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean to East Asia. It affects approximately one-third of the global population, influencing the climate of Japan (including Okinawa), the Koreas, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, Indo-China, and much of mainland China. It is driven by temperature differences between the Asian continent and the Pacific Ocean. The East Asian monsoon is divided into a warm and wet summer monsoon and a cold and dry winter monsoon.

In most years, the monsoonal flow shifts in a very predictable pattern, with winds being southeasterly in late June, bringing significant rainfall to the Korean peninsula and Japan (in Taiwan and Okinawa this flow starts in May). This leads to a reliable precipitation spike in July and August. However, this pattern occasionally fails, leading to drought and crop failure.>>

[neufer]

I love lists like this. It's fun going thru them honestly.

Since you said you love these lists Mark I thought you might like the latest addition to this list: Discovery’s shark week show ‘Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives’ that aired last night suggested a link between global warming and the possible (read unproven) reappearance of this prehistoric mega shark.

Discovery Channel Provokes Outrage with Fake Shark Week Documentary
By Jacob Davidson Aug. 07, 20130

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<On Sunday, [The Discovery Channel] kicked off Shark Week—their annual (and immensely popular) block of programs showcasing everyone’s favorite aquatic predator—with a program called Megalodon: The Monster Shark That Lives.

It sounds like a great premise. With a maximum length of 60 feet and teeth the size of butchers’ knives, the megalodon (not pictured at right) is one of history’s most fearsome predators. There’s only one problem: Despite what the show’s title may claim, this “monster shark” has been extinct for more than one million years.

Those watching the “documentary,” however, were not burdened with such inconvenient truths. Instead, Discovery hired actors to play marine biologists on a hunt for the megalodon around the coast of South Africa. Their expedition is mounted following the release of (faked) footage showing a fishing vessel taken down by a massive sea-dwelling predator (nicknamed “submarine”).

More fabricated “evidence” supporting the creature’s existence is presented, including a whale whose tail has been bitten off by an unknown animal, and a Coast Guard video showing a giant, shark-like shape moving through the water.

Viewers, perhaps accustomed to trusting a channel that calls itself “the world’s #1 non-fiction media company” (as Christie Wilcox of Discover magazine points out), were apparently convinced by all the smoke and mirrors (and CGI). A post-show poll shows 79 percent of respondents, as of Tuesday evening. believed the megalodon is still alive after watching the documentary. Only 27 percent said they thought the shark was extinct and “the scientists are right.”

Discovery is not new to the business of creating fake documentaries claiming to prove the existence of the strange and supernatural, In 2012, Animal Planet—like the Discovery Channel, part of the vast Discovery Communications empire—aired a piece of so-called ‘docufiction’ entitled Mermaids: The Body Found. The immensely popular special featured footage of a “mermaid” that had supposedly washed up on a beach, and told of a government conspiracy to cover up the findings. However, Mermaids concludes with an admission that the program was fictional.

However, unlike Mermaids, Discovery’s Megalodon does not reveal its fantastical nature. In the closing seconds of the documentary, a brief disclaimer flashes across the screen stating:

None of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents.

This confusing statement — an organization not being officially “affiliated” with a film is very different than completely making up their involvement — is tempered by the remainder of the statement, which hints that the events of the program may be real after all:

Though certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized, sightings of “Submarine” continue to this day.

Megalodon was a real shark. Legends of giant sharks persist all over the world. There is still a debate about what they may be.

At no point are the fake scientists or doctored footage mentioned.

It’s this apparently successful deception that has the internet up in arms. Discovery’s Facebook page was awash in criticism following the program, and geek icon Wil Wheaton penned a widely disseminated blog post slamming the network for abusing its viewer’s trust: [Discovery] had a chance to even show what could possibly happen if there were something that large and predatory in the ocean today … but Discovery Channel did not do that. In a cynical ploy for ratings, the network deliberately lied to its audience and presented fiction as fact. Discovery Channel betrayed its audience.

Even after the hoax was revealed, Discovery has remained coy, essentially maintaining that, since a contemporary megalodon cannot be disproven, the jury is out on its continued existence. “It’s one of the most debated shark discussions of all time, can Megalodon exist today?” said Shark Week executive produce Michael Sorensen to Fox News. “The stories have been out there for years and with 95% of the ocean unexplored, who really knows?”

But as Boston Magazine has cataloged, many actual marine biologists aren’t too happy that Discovery is playing fast and loose with the truth. David Shiffman, a marine biologist who runs the twitter account @WhySharksMatter tweeted: Please RT. I am a professional #shark #scientist and can unequivocally state that #Megaladon is extinct. #SharkWeek — David Shiffman (@WhySharksMatter) August 5, 2013

Wilcox, who wrote an open letter to Discovery criticizing the network, expressed a similar sentiment: .@Discovery You need to fact-check before you talk to the media. There is no debate whether #Megalodon is extinct. http://t.co/ZUdo80hsxo — Christie Wilcox (@NerdyChristie) August 6, 2013

Despite the criticism, the show’s explosive ratings make it clear why Discovery was willing to risk alienating so many of its longtime fans. Megalodon attracted 4.8 million viewers and is the most popular Shark Week episode since the network began the programming block in 1988.

This success surely came as no surprise to Discovery executives, who watched a double feature of Mermaids: The Body Found and its sequel, Mermaids: The New Evidence, become the highest rated Animal Planet broadcast of all time.

With fictional programming proving so lucrative, Discovery is in the awkward position of staying true to its core science-oriented fan base or broadening its appeal and reaping the resulting profits. If Megalodon is indicative of the network’s future, a Loch Ness Monster documentary might not be too far away.>>

Art Neuendorffer
(MIT, Univ. of Maryland, the U.S. Army, and NOAA all deny being affiliated with this man in any way.)

[bystander]

Denying Climate Change Is Bad for Your Electoral Health
Slate Blogs | Bad Astronomy | Phil Plait | 2013 Aug 08

Some good news for a change when it comes to global warming: A new bipartisan poll shows strong support among young voters for taking action about climate change.

The poll was jointly run by the (Democratic) Benenson Strategy Group and the (Republican) GS Strategy Group, who conducted 600 telephone interviews (giving a 4 percent margin of error at the 95 percent level—in other words, there’s good confidence the numbers found are accurate to ±4 percent. It found that 66 percent of young voters think that we must address the problem of climate change, and a similar number think it is already affecting us (and it is).

A whopping 80 percent of the respondents support President Obama taking action, and even among those who are unfavorable of the President over half support action being taken.

That’s incredibly encouraging. And it gets better: 79 percent say they are more likely to vote for someone who supports action on climate change, and 73 percent say they would vote against someone who opposed it. ...

Hmm, wonder if congress is listening.

[Chris Peterson]

Hmm, wonder if congress is listening.

Misposted. There is another forum for humor (or attempts at humor).

[Beyond]

[neufer]

Hmm, wonder if congress is listening.

Misposted. There is another forum for humor (or attempts at humor).

• Who knew?

[mjimih]

I think GW heat will put a huge strain on fresh water resources. Already I'm sure fracking in America is ruining well water all over the place. If the aquifers get polluted what then?
Where the good water is, is where the future wars will be fought unless we learn to share it or make it with desalinization plants.