maybe we are not all aware of Desslocks anti AGW stance on most of the posts this thread is about (or just take that same view on the topic perhaps)? There is history here that needed addressing, i read his post about concerns over nuclear being more important than AGW in that context, just another post of his that goes against the science of the subject at hand, which is very typical from people like himself (Republican/Right-wing/Pro Big Oil etc).
And while indeed concerns over nuclear power are valid it is neither an either or situation, AGW is set to be the biggest self-made disaster for the human race and it’s effects are already being felt (and this thread is full of scientifically peer reviewed examples), so complacency is not a solution, unless you fit into a very specific kind of demographic that i painted by way of example. I was not calling anyone here that demographic btw, just putting something out there for consideration by the denial branch of AGW.
Anyway Desslock is allowed to think what he likes about me, that is his freedom and i would not think to stop that, and people have good and bad days and life can sometimes be frustrating, so i really took nothing he said personally, and why would i?
But on with the topic at hand:
‘Why is 2016 smashing heat records?’:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/04/is-el-nino-or-climate-change-behind-the-run-of-record-temperatures
January and February have both broken temperature records. Karl Mathiesen examines how much is down to El Niño versus manmade climate change.
Yet another global heat record has been beaten. It appears January 2016 - the most abnormally hot month in history, according to Nasa - will be comprehensively trounced once official figures come in for February.
Initial satellite measurements, compiled by Eric Holthaus at Slate, put February’s anomaly from the pre-industrial average between 1.15C and 1.4C. The UN Paris climate agreement struck in December seeks to limit warming to 1.5C if possible.
“Even the lower part of that range is extraordinary,” said Will Steffen, an emeritus professor of climate science at Australian National University and a councillor at Australia’s Climate Council.
It appears that on Wednesday, the northern hemisphere even slipped above the milestone 2C average for the first time in recorded history. This is the arbitrary limit above which scientists believe global temperature rise will be “dangerous”.
The Arctic in particular experienced terrific warmth throughout the winter. Temperatures at the north pole approached 0C in late December – 30C to 35C above average.
Mark Serreze, the director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, described the conditions as “absurd”.
“The heat has been unrelenting over the entire season,” he said. “I’ve been studying Arctic climate for 35 years and have never seen anything like this before”.
All this weirdness follows the record-smashing year of 2015, which was 0.9C above the 20th century average. This beat the previous record warmth of 2014 by 0.16C.
These tumbling temperature records are often accompanied in media reports by the caveat that we are experiencing a particularly strong El Niño - perhaps the largest in history. But should El Niño and climate change be given equal billing?
No, according to Professor Michael Mann, the director of Penn State Earth System Science Centre. He said it was possible to look back over the temperature records and assess the impact of an El Niño on global temperatures.
“A number of folks have done this,” he said, “and come to the conclusion it was responsible for less than 0.1C of the anomalous warmth. In other words, we would have set an all-time global temperature record [in 2015] even without any help from El Niño.”
Global surface temperature is the major yardstick used to track how we are changing the climate. It is the average the UN Paris agreement refers to.
But the atmosphere doesn’t stop at the surface. In fact 93% of the extra energy trapped by the greenhouse gases humans have emitted gets sunk into the oceans – just 1% ends up in the atmosphere where temperature is most often and most thoroughly measured. During El Niño, which occurs every three to six years, currents in the Pacific Ocean bring warm water to the surface and heat up the air.
Jeff Knight from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, said their modelling set the additional heat from a big El Niño, like the current one, at about 0.2C. He said wind patterns in the northern hemisphere had added another 0.1C to recent monthly readings.
“The bottom line is that the contributions of the current El Niño and wind patterns to the very warm conditions globally over the last couple of months are relatively small compared to the anthropogenically driven increase in global temperature since pre-industrial times,” he added.
Steffen said the definitive assessment of this El Niño and its effect on the world’s temperature would only be possible once the event had run its course (it has now peaked and is expected to end in the second quarter of this year). But he agreed that past El Niño cycles could be an appropriate guide for the order of magnitude of the effect.
