Climate Letter #1602

Posted on January 29, 2020 by Carl Campbell
George Monbiot makes a case for abandoning climate targets, favoring a maximization of emergency response measures (The Guardian).  A prominent British activist constructs arguments that cannot easily be faulted, based on the premise that a catastrophe is already in progress and escalating.  “There is no safe level of global heating: every increment kills…..We have arrived at the burning building. The only humane and reasonable aim is to rescue everyone inside.”

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An expert opinion on what precise steps must be taken to accomplish full mobilization of the resources required for successful climate mitigation (Yale e360).  David Victor is a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California at San Diego and chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Governance for Sustainability at the World Economic Forum. He is also co-chair of the Brookings Initiative on Energy & Climate.  He writes with great clarity, providing a realistic pathway toward realizing the advanced kind of activity called for by George Monbiot in the story above.
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A senior editor at MIT Technology Review explains why planting billions of trees is a good idea with many benefits but should never be thought of as a weapon of major importance for tackling climate change when the need is for immediate results.  He lays out a complete list of scientifically-based reasons.  “So yes, trees can and will need to play some role in sequestering carbon already in the atmosphere, at least for a while. But that’s all the more reason we can’t rely on trees as a stand-in for the separate monumental task of cutting emissions from our energy, transportation, and agricultural systems.  And it’s hard to read Republican’s sudden enthusiasm for tree planting as anything other than a cynical effort to dampen growing calls for the sorts of regulations and taxes required to bring about those changes.“
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A meat substitute made from a type of fungus is shown to have many benefits for the environment as well as for health (Anthropocene).  “Familiar to many consumers as the meat alternative, ‘Quorn’, mycoproteins are gaining a foothold in the meat-replacement market, as people switch to vegetarianism and veganism, or opt to reduce their meat consumption for health reasons…..On top of all this, the researchers found that when compared to other meat alternatives, mycoprotein products already have a high consumer acceptance ranking. With this existing social and cultural acceptance in place, there’s the potential for the food to expand further into the market, and become a more influential alternative to conventional meat.” http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2020/01/clean-green-mycoprotein-the-benefits-of-alternative-meats-for-our-planet-and-our-health/
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An interesting new idea could reduce the thawing of Arctic permafrost by restoring an ancient ecosystem (University of Oxford).  “The wide-scale introduction of large herbivores to the Arctic tundra to restore the “mammoth steppe” grassland ecosystem and mitigate global warming is economically viable…..Grazing animals such as horses and bison are known to engineer the landscape around them…..When this process is harnessed to restore an ecosystem to a previous state it is called rewilding. It can also be used to change one ecosystem into a different but more desirable state.”  The study claims that, with effort, this could actually be done in the Arctic with a beneficial impact.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1601

Posted on January 28, 2020 by Carl Campbell
An important new study shows how the loss of Arctic sea ice can effect weather patterns in the tropics (Inside Climate News).  The main consequence is an increase in the development of El Nino events, which go on to have major effects on weather patterns in many other parts of the world.  “The study…detected a pattern that links sea ice decline since the late 1990s with more frequent warm cycles in the Central Pacific Ocean. The surges of ocean heating in that region can disrupt the climate, affecting drought, flood and hurricane patterns around the world…..The study found a secondary effect. The atmospheric roller coaster rebounds back north, and may weaken a weather pattern near Alaska that steers Pacific storms toward the West Coast.”  In addition, strong El Nino events are invariably associated with an extra surge in CO2 emissions and to high peaks in the course of global temperature trends.

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–Mongabay also has an extensive write-up on the study with additional commentary.  “Scientists worry that in the future, when one bioregion reaches a climate tipping point, a domino effect could occur, triggering tipping points in other faraway places.”
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A new study is full of information about all terrestrial biomes and how they either add to or subtract from the activity of nature’s carbon sink (Carbon Brief).  One finding stands out as the most important:  “This study gives us an insight in how this CO2 uptake is distributed across the world – and we show that the contribution of the tropical forests is substantially decreasing. At the same time, the contribution of boreal forests is increasing.”  Tropical forests mainly suffer from a high rate of deforestation; boreal forests get maximum benefit from the “fertilization effect” of CO2 and probably also from a longer growing season.  The researchers have doubts about how long those benefits will be able to continue at the same magnitude.
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A leader in the research of atmospheric rivers provides much useful information about their prevalence and the nature of their impact (The Conversation).  “We found that while many of these events are benign, the largest of them cause most of the flooding damage in the western U.S. And atmospheric rivers are predicted to grow longer, wetter and wider in a warming climate.”
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The 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2019 (Care International).  All but one (North Korea) were African, with Madagascar at the top of this list.  There were actually 40 humanitarianism crises being monitored, in each of which at least one million persons were critically affected.  The main report found a correlation between media coverage and the amount of funding received.
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Researchers from MIT and the NREL have found a better and much cheaper way to make silicon solar cells (Renew Economy).  Using modern manufacturing methods, the team found that substantial cuts could be made in the amount of hyper-pure silicon needed without loss of efficiency or performance and that capital expenditures could also be sharply reduced.  The changes “could lead to substantial cost reductions and significantly accelerate the rate of manufacture of solar modules.”
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Carl

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Climate Letter #1600

Posted on January 27, 2020 by Carl Campbell

What Moody’s is telling the business and financial community about climate change and the implied financial risks (Four Twenty Seven – an affiliate of Moody’s).  This paper covers all the important considerations that Moody’s is now incorporating into its credit ratings, in a manner that  will have to be taken seriously by the entire community.  Every business operation will need to inform its investors about how it is now responding to these threats and making appropriate plans for the future.  Anyone who reads this report can learn quite a bit about what climate science has to say, and regular updates are to be expected.  The scientific content is persuasive enough for even the most conservative listeners to start taking these matters seriously.  It will not be easy for the Trump administration to do anything but fall in line.  http://427mt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Demystifying-Scenario-Analysis_427_2019.pdf

Amy Harder, writing for Axios, describes how economics, politics and climate change are now converging into a major movement.  “To what degree the current economic status quo of corporate profits becomes threatened seriously enough that businesses really start to lobby Congress for new policy. Big action on climate change is never going to come from pure altruism or activism; an existing economic reason must exist too.”  (And is indeed happening.)   https://www.axios.com/climate-change-business-politics-public-action-41150a96-21ec-45db-9df8-f4c7e10324cc.html

Effects of climate change were involved in the recent decision by the Atomic Scientists to advance their Doomsday Clock closer to midnight (The Hill).  The author of this story learned that the tensions in recent years, in two different regions, both rooted in conflicts involving climate disasters, have escalated concerns over the possibility of a nuclear outbreak.  “The current humanitarian crisis in Syria is playing out as the first climate war in history, bringing the nuclear armed nations of the United States and Russia into direct conflict. Similarly, the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir territory is further heightened over water access from the shared Indus River and its tributaries flowing between the two nuclear armed states. This is a potential flashpoint for the world as agriculture is threatened either by water scarcity from drought, potential damming, or severe flooding during the monsoon seasons with potential crop loss and starvation.”  He also notes that much greater climate disasters would follow even a small exchange, this time on a global scale.

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The decline of Arctic sea ice causes a chain reaction that results in more warm water flowing from the Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean (Geophysical Research Letters).  The result can only contribute to a still higher rate of thinning and melting of the sea ice.  A new study contains a brief summary of the sequence of steps that make it happen.
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Researchers have found a way to convert solar energy into hydrogen with extremely high efficiency (The Ohio State University).  “Scientists for the first time have developed a single molecule that can absorb sunlight efficiently and also act as a catalyst to transform solar energy into hydrogen, a clean alternative to fuel for things like gas-powered vehicles.  This new molecule collects energy from the entire visible spectrum, and can harness more than 50% more solar energy than current solar cells can.”  There is more work to be done, but the goal of making hydrogen more fully competitive with oil and gas to meet many kinds of energy demand seems to be getting closer every day.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1599

Posted on January 24, 2020 by Carl Campbell
Even with more rainfall, rising temperatures mean less water flowing into the reservoirs behind dams (University of New South Wales).  Researchers say it is happening now and sure to increase.  “Why this happens is because the higher temperatures are drying out the soils faster than before. So now when it rains, a lot of the water that would have previously ended up in the dams is now being absorbed into the parched soil. And so these frequent flood events are now delivering less water to natural reservoirs…..we found that for each degree rise in temperature, you have roughly 10 to 15% reduction in the flood peak.”  That means growing shortages may be coming for many places that are vulnerable.
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Why scientists have growing concern over the CO2 released by permafrost thawing (Argonne National Laboratory). This new story refers to a study released last October about an unexpected finding, that emissions were released in winter as well as summer. (See CL#1537, published on.October 22.) We have just now received the first news release with a public evaluation of the meaning of the discovery. Currently, the net gain of all permafrost-related CO2 in the atmosphere, after accounting for reabsorption by plants, is equal to 7% of human additions based on burning fossil fuels. That is a fairly recent addition, starting only a few decades ago, and there is nothing to stop it from growing further in this century. It helps to explain the acceleration we have recently been seeing in the atmospheric CO2 reports from Mauna Loa. It also adds to the challenges we face in attempting to slow down that growth, in the hope of reaching the goals set in Paris.  https://phys.org/news/2020-01-global-temperatures-northern-permafrost-region.html

There is an even bigger reason for thinking the Paris goals may be out of reach (Climate News Network). This story is all about the way new climate models are predicting a still greater amount of future warming based only on the way cloud formations may change as temperatures rise above current levels. The post here has a good summary of the main content of this previously reported news, but we still don’t have any idea of whether or how it will be incorporated into the next IPCC report. Not all models are in agreement. “The jury is still out, but it is worrying,” said Rockstrom. “Climate sensitivity has been in the range of 1.5°C to 4.5°C for more than 30 years. If it is now moving to between 3°C and 7°C, that would be tremendously dangerous.”  https://climatenewsnetwork.net/paris-climate-goals-may-be-beyond-reach/

A thorough analysis of the damages wrought by the massive employment of agricultural fertilizer (The Center for Public Integrity). Among other things, this story is an unusually good source of information related to nitrous oxide, the third most important greenhouse gas—and a meaningful contributor to rising temperatures. N2O has increased at a higher rate than CO2 since pre-industrial times, and the essential role of fertilizer in food production makes it especially difficult to curb future growth. We should expect to hear more calls for a reduction in the number of farm animals, which are also widely implicated in the growth of CO2 emissions. https://publicintegrity.org/environment/unintended-consequences-farming-fertilizer-climate-health-water-nitrogen/

A new study reviews a wide range of different means that can effectively lead toward climate stabilization (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research). “Limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees C requires a decarbonized world by 2050 at the latest, and a corresponding global transformation of the energy and land use systems of societies around the world. To achieve this goal of net-zero carbon by 2050, emissions need to be cut by half every decade from now on.” That is a very ambitious goal. This high-level group of authors thinks it can be done, and tells us how, with a long list of recommendations.   https://phys.org/news/2020-01-mechanisms-societal-climate-stabilization.html

–The full report is available:  https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/01/14/1900577117?

Carl

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Climate Letter #1598

Posted on January 22, 2020 by Carl Campbell

A very good summary of practically everything we know about the danger of melting permafrost (Yale e360). Here is one key paragraph: “The rapid thawing of permafrost has enormous implications for climate change. There are an estimated 1,400 gigatons of carbon frozen in permafrost, making the Arctic one of the largest carbon sinks in the world. That’s about four times more than humans have emitted since the Industrial Revolution, and nearly twice as much as is currently contained in the atmosphere. According to a recent report, a 3.6-degrees Fahrenheit ( 2 degrees Celsius) increase in temperature — expected by the end of the century — will result in a loss of about 40 percent of the world’s permafrost by 2100.” Some part of that, still unknown, will end up as additions to CO2 and methane gases in the atmosphere, amplifying temperatures even more.  https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-melting-permafrost-is-beginning-to-transform-the-arctic

A new study finds that reforestation near rivers substantially and permanently reduces their flow (Climate News Network).  The study’s intent is to warn about this consequence when replanting programs are being planned.  The study also tells us, but only by inference, about the consequences of cutting down forests that currently exist, no matter how far from any river.  The water they now hold back, and which is now evaporating in place by transpiration, will instead just run off to the sea via the fastest route of streams and rivers.  That is a critical matter of concern for the preservation of large rainforests.  
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/new-forests-mean-permanently-lower-river-flows/

Is global temperature rise now trending into a pace of acceleration? (Open Mind).  A new analysis from “Tamino,” a scientist often referred to in these letters, does not quite draw conclusions but provides useful information that has a bearing on the subject.  The most important chart is the one that takes out all the effects of temporary disturbances like major El Nino events, volcanoes and more, leaving just the warming impact of human activity.  Using NASA’s database, the result shows not just acceleration but a new record annual high for 2019.  2016 was demoted from first place through the loss of its strong El Nino effect.  Fundamentally, human activity may have caused accelerated growth in recent years not necessarily because of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, but more from the measured upswing noted for several kinds of methane sources and possibly also from the emergence of significant emissions released by thawing of permafrost. 
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2020/01/22/is-the-apparent-recent-acceleration-in-temperature-significant/

An outbreak of massive locust swarms in East Africa is said to be unprecedented (reliefweb).  From a UN report that has not been well-publicized, “Desert Locust swarms in Ethiopia. Kenya and Somalia – already unprecedented in their size and destructive potential – could swell exponentially and spill over into more countries in East Africa if efforts to deal with the voracious pest are not massively scaled up across the region…..This has become a situation of international dimensions that threatens the food security of the entire subregion.”  Apart from smoke damage, how does a plague of that size, or its consequences, differ from the wildfire experience in Australia?
https://reliefweb.int/report/ethiopia/massive-border-spanning-campaign-needed-combat-locust-upsurge-east-africa

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Crop damage caused by insects increases as temperatures rise (Michigan State University).  New research has found that the damage may be even worse than expected.  Stories describing how the interaction between plants and insects is conducted are quite fascinating.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200121133319.htm

Carl

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Climate Letter #1597

Posted on January 21, 2020 by Carl Campbell

Refrigeration gases had a substantial effect on Arctic warming and overall climate change in the second half of the last century (Earth Institute at Columbia University).   This remarkable research is important because it changes the way we look at the way global temperatures rose during that period, especially so during the years following 1970, which is about the beginning point of the strong upward linear trend we see on all familiar charts.  “A study published today in Nature Climate Change by researchers at Columbia University examines the greenhouse warming effects of ozone-depleting substances and finds that they caused about a third of all global warming from 1955 to 2005, and half of Arctic warming and sea ice loss during that period. They thus acted as a strong supplement to carbon dioxide, the most pervasive greenhouse gas; their effects have since started to fade, as they are no longer produced and slowly dissolve.”  The study contains a chart showing the impact of ozone-depleting gases, which mostly ended by 1995.  Without that growth, temperatures would have risen more slowly, and even today, again without that growth, temperatures would not be quite as high as what we are getting, nor would the Arctic have warmed or melted as much as we see.  Without the Montreal Protocol taking effect we would really be in a horrible mess right now.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/eiac-osc011720.php
Link to the Abstract of the article, which is worth reading and has availability to the chart I mentioned as a Figure.  Nature Climate Change is a highly-rated journal.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0677-4

What some new models are saying about future temperature increases (Phys.org).  “New climate models show carbon dioxide is a more potent greenhouse gas than previously understood, a finding that could push the Paris treaty goals for capping global warming out of reach, scientists have told AFP.”  (AFP is a French news agency.)  This story has a good explanation of the effect that clouds have on models of the future, which is still uncertain but clearly something to worry about according to the latest models.
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-climate-paris-goals.html

–Before long we may get more definitive knowledge about the way cloud cover evolves in a highly sensitivity region (University of Leeds).  As for the importance, “Currently, calculations of future global warming disagree by several degrees. The largest cause of disagreements between predictions is the challenge of accurately representing the mechanics of clouds in our climate systems.”
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-cloudy-climate.html

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How much should we depend on geoengineering to solve the climate problem (Wits University – Johannesburg).  An expert provides a brief survey of a variety of projects and proposals, with no outstanding revelations to speak of.
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-expert-discusses-prospects-climate.html?


How the world warmed in 2019 (Carbon Brief).  This post has an extensive analysis with many charts.  There is one particular chart, seldom seen, that I want to draw your attention to, separating the record of land, ocean and global temperatures back to 1880.  It is interactive, with data from NASA GISTEMP, and uses the equivalent of a pre-industrial baseline.  Through 2019, land average comes in at plus-1.89C, the oceans at 0.81C and global 1.19C.  The global average is weighted by 70% on the side of oceans, and oceans are low because they swallow so much of the energy they absorb at the surface and mix it with the deeper waters below, something that cannot be accomplished by the continents.  You will need to scroll down quite a ways to find the chart.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-how-the-world-warmed-in-2019

Carl

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Climate Letter #1596

Posted on January 20, 2020 by Carl Campbell
Does the atmosphere store heat?  Or, does it transport heat?  It’s easy to get the impression that it does both, but I have come to believe otherwise, all because the atmosphere functions so much like a highway.  Highways are full of cars and trucks that are constantly rushing from end to end in both directions  They sometimes pause for a spell along the way, but in no sense are they ‘stored’ by the highway.  By comparison the atmosphere is serving pretty much the same function, this time by movement of radiant energy in the form of photons, that are coming and going in two primary directions, about like cars and trucks except for a few extra complications that stand in the way.  In spite of the complications, in no sense can we say that the atmosphere serves as a store of photons for any length of time.  At every moment there are about as many photons leaving the atmosphere as there are entering, whether or not they have all actually reached the surface, and in every case their speed of travel is assumed to be the same as the measured speed of light, leaving no time to be wasted in any of the movement.   Now we need to talk about heat.

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So where does heat fit in?  Heat is not a ‘thing’ that can exist by itself.  Heat is always a property of something else, more specifically, at least in this case, the property of a bit of matter that has been slammed into and absorbed by a fast-moving photon, which is potent enough to make it vibrate.  The atmospheric highway is by definition loaded with matter, matter of a special type, in the form of gases and tiny particles that have the ability to stay aloft.  Most of the gas molecules, like those of oxygen and nitrogen, are for the most part able to avoid being run into by photons, and thus stay unheated.  Others are not so fortunate.  They exist in a way that might be described as like potholes on the road.  As such, whenever a ‘pothole’ is hit it absorbs the photon, starts to vibrate from the impact and also reacts by sending off a photon of its own which can move in any direction of its own choice.  The pothole doesn’t go anywhere as a result, but can expect to get hit again very soon thereafter with the same kind of result.
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I believe those vibrations are the source of the property we call heat.  When you hook up a sensor to the molecule, or better yet to a whole lot of molecules that are having the same kind of experience, the sensor will ‘feel’ those vibrations by catching the photons that are given off at the same moment, then registering very similar vibrations within its own molecules for convenient readout.  The question that remains is how long does a relevant vibration last within any one molecule that has been hit by any one of the photons mentioned?  I am not sure of whether it has actually been measured, but my guess for the answer is not very long.  There is still the possibility that any one molecule could be struck repeatedly in a fast-moving situation, with collisions and vibrations strung together quickly enough to give the appearance of constant heat.  Thereafter, any kind of interruption that changes the pace should immediately be translated into a change in heat sensation.  Under that scenario there is no time available for heat storage, nor any place to store it that is not subject to either constant renewal or a degree of change.  I can see why this would be true when the state of matter is gaseous, as true of the atmosphere, and released photons are free to roam.  It may be quite another story when the molecules of matter are densely packed and energy mobility is ruled by conduction and confinement, where photons have no highway at hand and are only liberated on a space-bound track much less often.
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The atmosphere, of course, is not a stationary highway in whole or in part.  Most of the time it is moving and mixing, propelled by winds, some up high and some down low, always with the result of alterations in the position of air above Earth’s surface.  From the air’s point of view the surface below will keep changing and the amount of radiation coming off the surface will also change, and thus a new number of photons will be entering the highway plus a new number of pothole collisions that cause heat to be created in the atmosphere.  From the surface’s point of view the radiation given off may have stayed the same but the molecular makeup of the air above will probably have changed, so because there are a new number of molecules (especially water vapor) serving as potholes that have been hit, followed by a normal reaction, a new number of photons will be returning to the surface, thence to serve as a new source of heat.   Moist air by itself will ‘feel’ warmer than drier air at any spot above the surface because of more photon-molecule collisions, and will also redirect a certain amount of photon movement back toward the surface, where possibilities include the reabsorbing of energy back into dense surface matter and an extended waiting period before its eventual release.
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In summary, I think the heating and cooling of any parcel of air is always a continuous process, existing only from moment to moment.  The mechanism that makes it so—involving the variable presence of greenhouse gases—is precisely the same mechanism that is used in explaining the evolution of climate change, as discussed in these letters last week.

Carl

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Climate Letter #1595

Posted on January 17, 2020 by Carl Campbell
Why is water vapor distributed so unevenly in the atmosphere, and what does it mean?  Yesterday’s letter just touched on the subject.  Let’s take a closer look.

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Typical of all well-mixed greenhouses gases, the concentration of CO2 in the air, measured in parts per million from carefully collected air samples, is almost always about the same, everywhere.  At all of the official measuring stations, over the course of a typical year, the difference between the highest and lowest of the year’s daily readings, unless corrupted in some manner, will always be less than ten percent.  (At Mauna Loa it is around three percent.)  Water vapor, alone among these gases, is different in every way.  It is measured not by ppm, etc., but by finding the weight of one-square-meter columns of precipitable water content between the surface and the top of the atmosphere, which can be done with accuracy over every bit of the globe using radio waves tied to satellite responders.  Results are reported either by weight in kilograms or by volume in milliliters, both having the same number.  They range from around 15 grams up to more than 75 kilograms, for a remarkable differential of no less than 5000 times!  In a place like Antarctica the whole continent can stay mostly below 1 kg for months in the winter, while on all of those same days there are many places in the tropics aiming for the other extreme.  In terms of quantity of airborne substance, precipitable water, largely composed of vapor, is simply prodigious.
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Now we need to look at another statistic, namely, that the average life of a water vapor molecule as a gas is only about ten days.  During this brief span it will all, on average, have both condensed and precipitated back to the surface.  So here we have a gas that in total weighs out prodigiously day after day in spite of a very short lifespan per molecule, a good indication that its source of production is equally prodigious as well as unfailing in regularity.  Where does it all come from?  No study that I know of has come up with a rigorously detailed answer, so I will give you my own rough guess.  I think that around 80% of all the water vapor in the atmosphere, and posibly more, originates by evaporation from certain ocean water surfaces in the tropical zone.  The particular surfaces I have in mind are basically located within the ruddy-colored portions of this weather map from Climate Reanalyzer.org, with extra emphasis on the darkly-shaded areas within those portions (one of the darkest of which, by the way, is just to the north of Australia):
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx_frames/gfs/ds/gfs_world-ced_sst_1-day.png
Here is another map from the same source that should help you understand why I see such a strong relationship between surface water temperature and its evaporation rate:
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx_frames/gfs/ds/gfs_world-ced_pwtr_1-day.png
Water vapor cannot actually “originate” over any land area, as the map might seems to suggest, when there is no large, preexisting body of water to draw from.  It can, however, be lofted high into the atmosphere over its point of origin and then be carried by upper-level winds that happen to be moving in a direction that heads its way over any nearby land area.  Good examples of such action are on display in the lower map, as seen in much of South America, lower parts of Africa and many smaller regions, like southern parts of the US.  A close study of the map strongly suggests that the same kind of dispersal activity goes on across selective portions of ocean water as well.  One can see oceanic zones in mid to higher latitudes that exhibit high readings even though it is most unlikely that they serve as major originators of the vapor in their own right.  That kind of power may well be limited to the waters in the ruddy-colored zone that we see in the top map.
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The role of upper-level wind in the dispersal of water vapor from its tropical sources toward the poles is most likely the key to getting the rest of the job done, and there are only so many days available for moving and spreading before each new batch of vapor is exhausted by precipitation.  Those winds are not especially dependable in any one place, thus not always cooperative, which is enough to explain why the final distribution is so uneven.  By the time of exhaustion there is usually little vapor left to add much moistening to air in the polar regions.  On that note, let me leave you with the thought that those upper-level winds may have their own way of being modified as conditions change.  There is no reason why they cannot change their habits in ways that are more friendly to the movement of new vapor into the polar regions, thus bringing opportunities for new and different kinds of weather, including more warm air as well as more clouds and precipitation, and so on.
Carl

Posted in Daily Climate Letters | Comments Off on Climate Letter #1595

Climate Letter #1594

Posted on January 16, 2020 by Carl Campbell
What is the difference between water vapor and all the other greenhouse gases, and how are they alike?

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The fundamentals are quite clear and well-known, but let’s make a quick review anyway, with the aim of  putting everything in the best perspective.  The so-called greenhouse gases all absorb incoming infrared energy, but unlike the denser forms of matter, like the solids and ordinary water on the planet’s surface, they are all unable to capture more than a fraction of the many different wavelengths that radiant energy is composed of.  Every gas has its own list of favorite wavelengths, each list being longer and stronger for some than for others.  Water vapor is known to be the leader in that respect, covering the largest part of the spectrum, with carbon dioxide second.
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Water vapor also has the highest concentration in the atmosphere of any of the gases, but that circumstance is complicated and mainly highlights the biggest difference of all.  That is, water vapor’s actual concentration varies all over the place, from just a little more than nothing (during winter in the heart of Antarctica) to many times the total of all other greenhouse gases.  Moreover, the variations are highly noticeable throughout the world at all times, and as a further complication they are always subject everywhere to changes that may come along in rapid order.  Every one of the other gases has a completely different way of life, starting with regularly even distribution around the globe, plus little capacity for making changes in concentration at anything more than a snail’s pace.  As an aside, all of the gases, including water vapor, just like the main body of air in its entirety, tend to thin out and fall off in quantity the farther away they are from sea level, purely as a result of gravitational reduction.
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The enormous disparities in concentration leave us with two main classes of greenhouse gas.  Those that have great stability are in one class, often simply designated as ‘well-mixed,’ while water vapor is in a class by itself, with no special name.  Because of these fundamental differences, the very strong and highly variable greenhouse effect of water vapor is able to produce big changes in local temperatures, hour by hour, day by day, season by season, and even year by year, while all of the other gases can only sit passively by, doing no more than their same old regular thing.  And besides all of that, which is only about temperature remember, water vapor has a deeply dominating role in both cloud formation and precipitation activity, making it the true ‘work horse’ of all weather change.  No other greenhouse gas comes even close.
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Now, what more can we say about those other gases?  What, if anything, do they do besides adding a more or less ‘fixed’ amount of greenhouse-type heating to Earth’s atmosphere—which by the way is not a small thing—day after day, without fail, over stretches of time that go on for eons without end?  Maybe it is not really so fixed after all.  Rather, the two strongest of them, carbon dioxide and methane, and to a lesser extent nitrous oxide, have a longstanding habit of slowly changing their respective concentrations, for any number of reasons.  The changes are often large enough to have a material effect on both air and ocean temperatures over hundreds or thousands of years.  More recently, for truly unusual reasons, that timing factor has dropped down to where it is just decades or less.  They still don’t compete directly in the making of everyday weather, but the extra heat they are continually adding to the oceans keeps accumulating, facilitating changes in its everyday surface temperature.  That particular kind of warming action translates by evaporation into an important new source of water vapor, thereby adding great potential to its muscle power as a weather maker.  This entire process underlies the step-by-step reality of what we call climate change.
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We must not forget that putting more water vapor into the air, along with its powerful greenhouse effect, also helps to heat up the oceans to a significant degree, augmenting what the well-mixed gases have already been doing, with similar results.  It is also worth noting that if the well-mixed gases were unable to keep warming up the ocean water for any reason there is no other known pathway that would lead to meaningful increases in water vapor.  That dog would stay leashed.  Or, if the oceans were allowed an opportunity to cool off, we could expect to see declines in the production and airborne concentration of water vapor.
Carl

Posted in Daily Climate Letters | Comments Off on Climate Letter #1594

Climate Letter #1593

Posted on January 15, 2020 by Carl Campbell
Why am I so interested in the effects of water vapor on Earth’s present and future temperature?  Most public discussion tends to focus on water vapor as a source of precipitation, or perhaps humidity, not so much on temperature.  That’s true even in the climate science community, where discussions about temperature are dominated by reference to carbon dioxide and other “well-mixed” greenhouse gases.  In my view their indifference to water vapor could lead to a gap in the full amount of knowledge we need to properly contend with the prospect of future climate changes.

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I would encourage you to open the IPCC link in yesterday’s letter and go to the FAQ 8.1 section on p. 666, bearing the title How Important is Water Vapour to Climate Change?  It includes these sentences:  “Therefore, although CO2 is the main anthropogenic control knob on climate, water vapour is a strong and fast feedback that amplifies any initial forcing by a typical factor between two and three. Water vapour is not a significant initial forcing, but is nevertheless a fundamental agent of climate change.”  The stated amount of amplification is, I believe, significant, indeed very much so.  Moreover, think about the phrase, between two and three.  That sounds to me like a loose end.  What conclusions can be drawn when there is an unresolved loose end of that extent hanging around?  Any prediction that is made about Earth’s future temperature must therefore show a wide range of estimated results based on a potential doubling of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, with low confidence that any part of the range is correct.  Setting up a reliable carbon budget based on any such prediction is simply not possible.  We need to know much more about the actual power of water vapor, relative to the power of CO2 and other forcings, along with the assumption that we really know how much water vapor we can always expect to be dealing with.  (More on that point later.)  Are you now wondering what scientists are actually doing these days, in order to tighten up the given wide range assigned to the power of water vapor, hoping to improve on any prediction that is made?
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There is a story on the web today, from Imperial College London, about a newly published study that deals with another loose end, future cloud cover, which gets exactly the same kind of treatment as water vapor with respect to climate predictions, but far more attention at the research level.  Go ahead and read the story, because it is quite interesting:  https://phys.org/news/2020-01-clouds-climate-simulations-predecessors.html?  The study itself has open access, was conducted in a proper manner and has a Plain Language Summary:
I would love to see studies of this type, which are so common in the case of clouds, conducted much more often about water vapor, the potential impact of which happens to be on about the same scale of differences.
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In FAQ 8.1 from the IPCC (see above) there is another sentence of interest to this discussion:  “With every extra degree of air temperature, the atmosphere can retain around 7% more water vapour.”  This familiar bit of datum is commonly employed by climate scientists in many applications.  It also has an implication that for some reason is seldom mentioned.  Suppose you found yourself in a place where the atmosphere contained twice as much water vapor as it normally does.  What do you think the temperature would be, with all other conditions unchanged?  The only possible answer is about ten degrees (Celsius) above normal.because the 7% gain has to be compounded ten times in order to reach the assumed vapor double.  As a matter of fact, every single day there are sizeable regions on the planet where the water vapor reading is two times the average for that day and the average temperature is also much higher than usual, maybe not ten degrees but pretty close.  I have seen enough graphic data to figure that plus 8C is a better number, which is close enough for comparison when possible adjustments for “noise” are taken into consideration.  (That figure is only for temperatures over land.  Oceans are quite a bit lower because of the different way they absorb heat.)  I also have seen temperature anomalies of around 16C when water vapor is measured at around four times normal, which often happens in places near either one of the poles.
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So here we are—why is my attitude toward water vapor so different from that of mainstream climate science?  It goes back to what I said yesterday:  The scientists say that water vapor content is completely determined by, and therefore limited by, the temperature of the air, while I believe the exact opposite is true, or that, all other things being equal, the temperature of the air is determined by the amount of water vapor it contains.  That simply means, if water vapor goes up for any reason, temperature will follow, at a logarithmic rate that is somewhere around 8C or 10C per double, my preference being the former.
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From what I can see, the scientific viewpoint on this subject is for the most part established by making reference to a principle called The Clausius-Clapeyron Equation, as originally derived from the laws of thermodynamics back in the 19th century.  (You can readily do a search and get complete information.)  The principle is undoubtedly correct—where applicable.  I just have some doubts about its applicability in this situation, where a wide open atmosphere, many variables, and large amounts of turbulence are involved.
Carl

Posted in Daily Climate Letters | Comments Off on Climate Letter #1593