Carl's Climate Letters

In yesterday’s letter I started something that left me wondering about how, or whether, to continue on that course with more regularity.  It could mean making substantial changes in the content of these letters, which might be refreshing to some readers but bothersome to others.  In my mind the answer is now clear—make the change, for one good reason.  I have been taking time to study Today’s Weather Maps, a section of The Climate Reanalyzer, published daily by a department of the University of Maine, for four or five years now, and have made comments here on their content any number of times.  The information they contain is almost entirely visual, which is perfectly fine by me.  The amount of information is absolutely enormous, clearly presented and easy to absorb.  Moreover, I have never found a reason to question its accuracy.  And the way the information is broken down into a number of maps, all laid out within the same general format, allows correspondences to easily be observed, facilitated by the neat technique for fast toggling and switching that I described in some detail yesterday.  The opportunities for making connections are unbounded, and the kind of information that can be constructed from that simple procedure will not always be found to have content of a familiar type.  That suggests the possibility of its’ having real value in some cases.

It has occurred to me that perhaps not many individuals have been going about this particular activity in a regular way, as I have been doing, or are even aware of the opportunities for learning new things.  If they exist we never hear from them, at least not in any of the publications, including scientific studies, that are out there for review every day.  More people ought to become more engaged, and if I can help to promote a higher level of interest the effort may prove to be worthwhile in unexpected ways.  So I am going to make more use of these letters as a kind of teaching platform, however rough it may be, in an attempt to get others involved.  If you are not personally comfortable with this kind of activity perhaps you know someone who might be, and could provide them with a reference.  Old or young makes no difference.  Retired scientists from any field of study, looking for a new challenge, would be great.

Now I want to do a quick follow-up on the exercise recommended yesterday, dealing with knowledge about the operations of the jetstream, or rather, the three major jetstream pathways, each of them independent from the others, bearing wind currents that are highly spasmodic in pulses of speed, and which sometimes interconnect in a way that produces greatly accelerated velocities.  The Weather Maps have a unique capability for displaying the exact locations of these pathways, and the exact conditions required for their presence in those locations, all tightly connected to upper atmosphere changes in air pressure.  You will need to do this exercise quite often in order to become proficient in gaining a full understanding of what can only be thought of as superficial in character, yet serving as an essential prerequisite for going forward.  Let’s open up the two most appropriate maps, as published today, which exhibit a bit of difference from similar images seen yesterday, and then mention a few pointers.

Following all of the instructions given yesterday, you can go to a live screen and toggle back and forth between these same two images, and with a little practice, gain the ability to look at either screen on any given day and form a prediction of what will be found on the other with respect to certain specific features and locations.  But first, let me show you some things to look for as found in the above two images. For example, in the upper screen shot, while looking at the southern region, check out the shifting relationship between the upper edge of the thin blue streak and the upper edge of dark green streak, representing two of the three principal jetstream wind pathways.  See how they are closest together at regions having locations identified by certain meridians, such as those which are centered at about 10E and 90E. This closeness is enough to enable an overlap that produces strong bursts of wind acceleration, at once verified by looking at the other chart. You can actually predict either of these features just by looking at the other, because the connection never fails!  There is also an easily spotted spread in the gap between the same two pathways at around 45E, that should let you predict a corresponding gap between the two strong jets at that point, and there it is.  This same kind of relationship holds from one end of this pair of lines to the other, along with imagery of all the bends and twists that occur with direction changes.  See how the close relationship completely falls apart to the east of 135E, but at that same point the green pathway and the dark red pathway to its north close in on each other enough to create a small jet that you see in bright yellow just under Australia.  The dark red pathway gets an even stronger reaction when it encounters the anomalous patch of plain green shaped like a ball at 90W.

The dark red pathway is a bit of an outlier compared to the blue and green ones, but still quite powerful.  As an added consideration, it appears that wherever the red is deepest and darkest the associated wind along either of its edge-lines (north side or south side of the large red zone) will be the strongest.  There is today a feature in the north where the edge area of the red zone is very dark over a long stretch just below the United States, and not too distant from the northern green edge, generating a fairly strong burst of jetting. Discovering these relationships can be thought of as an adventure, one that you may find not lacking for its own brand of excitement.

Carl

3.  We still need to look into the reason, or reasons, for why jetstream winds are so intermittent, which is a very important consideration with respect to what ultimately happens to air temperatures down below.  One reason probably has to do with how closely the true isobars would be packed together, as determined by relative changes in air pressure at a single level of high altitude, if we were able to see them.  Instead, what we can see is how far apart or close together the three main pathways are that carry these winds that have relatively more power than those existing between these special pathways.  Whenever the paths get really close the winds they carry tend to converge, and when they do this their combined speed tends to accelerate for some reason.  This is an easy thing to observe in the exercise that will follow, so let’s get on with it.

For this exercise you will need to open up live maps, which change every day, giving you the opportunity to quickly toggle back and forth between any two maps covering different subject matter.  There is no better way to see their relationships, and you can do this conveniently with lots of toggling, covering any number of tiny details.  It’s a kind of art, and takes a little practice, but the results are often amazing.  Today we will do it with just two maps, looking for the links between jetstream winds and high altitude air pressure, with a focus on the South polar region because it is usually less complicated than the North, but otherwise the same.  Start by opening the main website at this link—https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#gph500 —and then scroll down to the lower level, which should look the same as, or much like, this image from today:

Notice how much more regular the outlines are in the South, and also how much larger the blue zone is, while the reverse is true for the green zone–this being a matter of separate interest, but not today.  You will want to pay attention right away to the close proximity of the outer edges of the thin light blue line and the deep green line in many places because those are the places where the most rapid bursts of jetstream wind speed are going to be found.  Next, locate and click on the link to the Jetstream map from the upper area and see how easy it is to toggle back and forth between the two maps.  If you shrink the overall image size it is very easy to toggle between these two adjacent links while keeping eyes fixed on either of the maps as seen globally on the low level, for a perfect view of how same-position details match up.  Don’t forget to also check out the weaker bursts of wind in the third pathway that borders the edge of the dark reddish area.  That stream is less important except for situations where it converges with the green line, the best examples of which are more likely to be seen in the northern counterpart, as is the case today. Take some time, and have good luck!

Carl

A new study compares the results from the latest climate models and older versions with respect to projections of future drought conditions all over the world (Earth’s Future – AGU pubs).  There is considerable variation among regions, with those of most concern named in this passage:  “… the latest state‐of‐the‐art climate model projections from CMIP6 show robust drying and increases in extreme drought occurrence across many regions by the end of the 21^st century, including western North America, Central America, Europe and the Mediterranean, the Amazon, southern Africa, China, Southeast Asia, and Australia. While these changes occur even under the most aggressive climate mitigation pathways, the models show substantial increases in the extent and severity of this drying under higher warming levels…..adaptation to a new, drier baseline will likely be required even under the most optimistic scenarios.”  In addition, a quite interesting—and troubling—point is made comparing drought conditions to precipitation, both of which are generally expected to be increasing as they alternate:  “Soil moisture and runoff drying is more widespread and robust than precipitation, with the severity increasing strongly with warming.”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019EF001461

An analysis of the globe-wide food system that is effectively now in place shows an extraordinary degree of vulnerability to climate disturbances (The Conversation).  The three authors use computer simulations to expand on how changes made since the time of the Dust Bowl would have worsened its actual outcome. For example, “Food trade has been increasing rapidly since the mid 1900s, and 80% of the world population now lives in countries that import more food calories than they export…..a decline in US wheat production of the same magnitude as occurred during the Dust Bowl (about 30% over four consecutive years), would deplete nearly all wheat reserves in the US and reduce global stocks by 31%. Since the US is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and has many trade links, nearly all countries would be affected.”  
https://theconversation.com/we-simulated-how-a-modern-dust-bowl-would-impact-global-food-supplies-and-the-result-is-devastating-133662

Phytoplankton are responding to climate change in ways that are critically important, yet widely underrated (The Revelator).  Their story needs to be told, and this article is the best I have ever seen for performing that task with a full summary of reasons.  Concerning their future, one expert has reached this conclusion:  “Global modeling studies using historical data have revealed declines in phytoplankton over the last few decades, but with variability between oceans and regions, and even some patches where phytoplankton have increased….Based on these data, studies using computer models to project future conditions conclude that in many parts of the ocean, phytoplankton will decline as seas warm and water mixing patterns change.”
https://therevelator.org/phytoplankton-climate-change/

New materials show great promise for improving onboard storage of the hydrogen required by fuel-cell vehicles (Northwestern University).  “The designer materials, a type of a metal-organic framework (MOF), can store significantly more hydrogen and methane than conventional adsorbent materials at much safer pressures and at much lower costs…..Thanks to its nanoscopic pores, a one-gram sample of the Northwestern material (with a volume of six M&Ms) has a surface area that would cover 1.3 football fields.”  That sounds like a truly revolutionary development, adding yet more woe to the problems of the oil industry?
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-gas-storage-method-next-generation-energy.html

Carl

Extreme coastal flooding events that are now rarely seen will in this century become more common at an exponential rate due to expected sea level rise (EurekAlert).  A scientific report from Nature Research has found evidence linking these two phenomena in such a way that the damage from this particular effect tends to increase at a much more rapid rate than the underlying cause.  Thus, “The authors’ model predicted that before 2050, current extreme water levels transitioned from 50-year, once-in-a-lifetime flooding events to annual events in 70% of US coastal regions. Before the end of 2100, once-in-a-lifetime extremes were predicted to be exceeded almost daily for 93% of the sites measured…..At the most susceptible sites, along the Hawaiian and Caribbean coast, the rate at which extreme water levels occur may double with every centimetre of sea-level rise.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/sr-cce041420.php……. The full study has open access at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62188-4

A great many studies have been made for the purpose of determining to what extent an extreme weather event can be attributed to changes in climate caused by human activity.  Carbon Brief has created an extensive review of how this work is accomplished together with a synopsis of the results.  Also, specific information related to each of 355 extreme events that have occurred around the globe is made available.  One conclusion:  “…of the extreme weather events scientists have studied so far, climate change has made almost 70% of them more likely or more damaging. The majority of these events have been heatwaves, but the fingerprint of climate change has also been felt on drought, heavy rain, wildfires and, indeed, even tropical cyclones.”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world

Policies that regularly seek the pursuit of continued economic growth are criticized for doing harm to biodiversity, and seven practical alternatives are offered (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona).  “Taking the last 170 years in the United States as an example, the research team speculates about the meaning of continued economic growth that is clearly associated with biodiversity loss but whose contribution to social progress has become stagnant since the late 1970s.”  The authors make a good argument, but do not explain how control over policymaking can be wrestled away from the shrinking number of beneficiaries of economic growth, who may not agree.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/uadb-egi041420.php

Carl

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The changes in color represent changes in altitude as measured for one specific air pressure level, 500 mb, which is about half of the pressure at sea level.  As the altitude of 500 mb changes gradients are set up, faintly displayed on the map as isobars, like those seen at surface pressures except that here everything is recorded in a 3D mode.  A key point is that upper level winds follow exactly along courses set by the isobars, always in an easterly direction, around and around the central pole.  Another key point—the winds tend to be stiffest on certain specific courses, three in particular.  One of these tracks follows along the outer edge of the light blue ring you can see.  Another tracks the outer edge of the green ring, which is a little broader and more scrambled in places.  The third follows the broad edge where the light reddish tone becomes dark, with still more irregularities and maybe a bit weaker.  Whenever two of these tracks come close together, allowing these speedy winds to merge, their combined speeds tend to reinforce each other by accelerating, which can be observed in a prominent way as found on the Jetstream map.
Today I want to focus mainly on the light blue ring, which is totally encompassed by its own lane for sturdy winds to track, because those winds are sturdy enough to largely block the efforts of any winds approaching from the outside to enter into any part of the sizeable area that lies within the light blue perimeter.  Those outside winds are often carriers of unusual amounts of water vapor, and they are generally heading in a direction leading toward the pole, but on this map we see them being partly or completely blocked from crossing a border corresponding to the light blue ring in the map above.  (The thin white line you can see is fairly similar to the shape of the blue ring.)

The first thing to notice is that nearly all of the darkest gray and black, having a Pwat value mostly below 4 kg plus a lesser amount above, falls within the same area as that of the light blue ring above.  You can also see how a number of movements of currents of wind having higher Pwat values are held back from penetrating, including a few that look much more aggressive than others.  It’s as if the blue zone has set up a line of defense for some reason.  That in itself is a big story, but there is more, and this part is so extraordinary that I could not let it pass beyond today without recording.  Look closely at the shades of Pwat that lie within the blue zone and you see a remarkable degree of uniformity that run from the US Upper Midwest all the way through Canada and into the heart of the still-frozen Arctic Ocean.  It has all been kind of mixed into one big pool, as if whatever was there before had been put through a blender, leaving it oblivious to the effects of sunshine, or latitude, or any other such sort of thing. The result, as we see here, is a variety of major temperature anomalies:

The range we are seeing, from -10C in the southern part to +15-18C in the north, mostly tied to a very tight spread of Pwat values around 2-5 kg, is a roundabout way of telling us that “normal” Pwat values on this date would range from less than 2 in the north to around 10 in the south. Today, with everything mixed together, those values have been doubled in some of these places, halved or less in others. I regret that there is no record available for what is precisely normal in all these places, but estimating, with practice, is not terribly difficult. Again, what is so interesting is the unusual amount of Pwat uniformity that has been achieved within the large confines of the blue zone. Things will soon be changing, since today’s blue zone is sure to look quite different in size and shape in the near future, and probably still more different in the far-off future. You are invited to do a quick map study just like this at both poles on any or every day, using “live” daily maps, to check out the ongoing consistency of the relationships we are now seeing.

Carl

A new analysis describes the importance of wetlands as a source of methane emissions when global temperatures are warming (Phys.org).  “A team of researchers at the European Commission Joint Research Centre, in Italy has found that if global warming is not curbed by 2100, methane emissions from the world’s wetlands could increase by 50% to 80%…..the amount of methane emitted by bog ecosystems is strongly related to air temperature, the depth of the water and the unique characteristics of organic substances they contain. Prior research has also shown that all three characteristics are impacted by warming temperatures.”  Wetlands tend to absorb CO2 and then process the carbon into CH4 prior to emission.  “Because of the multiple feedbacks between climate and the drivers of CH₄ emissions, wetlands have the potential to substantially amplify human-induced climate change and are therefore ecosystems of major concern for prediction of future climate trajectories.”  This work could potentially alter the way climate models describe future warming pathways, including a small addition to expected.temperature gains in this century.
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-global-methane-emissions-wetlands-percent.html ——The full report has open access:  https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/15/eaay4444

Plans are advancing toward conversion of the primary global shipping industry fuel source to hydrogen from dirty bunker oil (The Driven).  “Swiss-Swedish electronic manufacturing giant ABB has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with French hydrogen technologies specialist Hydrogène de France to jointly manufacture megawatt-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems for ocean-going vessels…..the global shipping industry – accounting for 2.5% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions – is under increasing pressure to similarly transition to more sustainable power sources…..HDF is very excited to cooperate with ABB to assemble and produce megawatt-scale fuel cell systems for the marine market based on Ballard technology.”  These are real production plans, not just pie in the sky.
https://thedriven.io/2020/04/13/abb-moves-step-closer-to-megawatt-scale-fuel-cells-for-ships/

Carl

This first map gives you a picture of the pattern of high and low air pressure differences over the South polar region at altitudes between 5,000 and 6,000 meters, as extracted from this (always-temporal) link on April 13:  https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#gph500  There is a somewhat similar pattern over the Arctic pole, but different in detail, and both of them make a variety of changes every day.  Air pressure in the upper atmosphere is interesting because it differs quite a bit from the pattern at the surface directly below, which means there is quite a bit of difference in the wind patterns and velocities that are generated.  More on that some other day, but for now just take note of the shape of the main central feature:

 

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Next, a map of Precipitable Water (Pwat) measurements over exactly the same area, same day.  Focusing on just the gray-toned area, you should have no trouble seeing how much the two maps have in common with respect to shape, in this case the shape of a pattern of considerable differences in the amount of water (as measured by weight in vertical columns) held in the air above a universal array of surface locations.  Weight changes range, for example, from 10 kg in the lightest brown ring to just 1 kg in the very dark core.  The core itself also holds changes which are not visible on the map, usually expressed in grams rather than kilograms, which at this season of the year probably drop to at least 250 gm and below—more on that later.

 

 

So why is there so much similarity in the shapes of the main features in these two maps?  Or, what is the connection between air pressure and precipitable water, the main component of which is just plain vapor in this part of the world?  There is really only one reasonable answer, and that is wind, specifically upper atmosphere winds, being those that follow courses established by air pressure patterns set up in the upper atmosphere rather than the winds that do their twisting and turning close to the surface where air pressure patterns are so different.  (Compare with maps of sea level pressure from elsewhere in the main website at your own convenience.) .

Now let’s take a look at what happened to surface air temperatures over Antarctica while the above actions were in place.  This map displays three regions of anomalous warming, two of which, the lower ones, are fairly large and show portions of warming that are close to 20C above normal.  With close examination you should be able to see from the map above that all three anomalies were consequences of the greenhouse effect created by overhead intrusions of relatively large amounts of water vapor—vapor that most likely originated from evaporation of tropical seas, was quickly lofted several miles upward, and then transported poleward by a combination of winds that happened to work things out quite successfully.  

How do you get an anomaly of 20 degrees C, when nothing changes except for the amount of overhead water vapor?  It’s easy in places where the Pwat measurement is normally around 1-2 kg, or even less, and is suddenly elevated to the 6-7 kg level we see in this instance, and if each and every double has the full potential (not always realized) of adding 10C to the air temperature of the surface directly below.  This is not often mentioned outside of these letters, but I think it is very real, and can be seen in one place or another every day on these incredible maps.  Today, by the way, the minimum actual temperature in the center of Antarctica is recorded on another map at about minus-50C.  I would wager that the corresponding water vapor was around 250 grams at the time.  I also can see a place where average land air temperatures varied from -30C to +5C over a distance of only about 100 miles, accompanied by three corresponding doubles in the Pwat measure as mapped, starting from a low at the 1 kg area border.

Carl

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