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climate modelling and weather modelling
Weather modelling can be confused with climate modelling, but they are very different.
Weather modelling
"They take the analysis as the starting point and evolve the state of the atmosphere forward in time using understanding of physics and fluid dynamics."
[Quoted from sciencedaily.com]
Weather models are based on local (in time and place)
fluid dynamics.
Climate models (as is explained here) are based on macro
elements such as mountain features and ocean currents.
Weather models do not concern themselves with Milankovich
cycles or greenhouse gas concentrations!
As a crude analogy,
examining the way fuels ('fluids') behave in a car engine
is very different from examining traffic patterns. Traffic patterns can be treated as flows (similar
to fluids),
but very different factors are used. That does not mean that similar types of maths cannot
be used in both forms ('models').
Numeracy does not mean being able to turn the handle
on the machine (model) and being able to read off the
numbers. It means understanding what the numbers mean in the
real world.
Humans would be wiped out by too much CO2. but no worries. That won't come until CO2. levels are 50 to 150 times higher than at present.
The filthy fossil fuel industry, after running out of arguments, now tries to sell., "carbon dioxide is good for plants".
This
a gross and misleading over-simplification:
"However, this "more is better" philosophy is not the way things work in the real world. There is an older, wiser saying that goes, "Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing." For example, if a doctor tells you to take one pill of a certain medicine, taking four is not likely to heal you four times faster or make you four times better. It's more likely to make you sick.
"It is possible to help increase the growth of some plants with extra CO2, under controlled conditions, inside of greenhouses. It is based on this that 'skeptics' make their claims. However, such claims are simplistic. They fail to take into account that once you increase one substance that plants need, you automatically increase their requirements for other substances. It also fails to take into account that a warmer earth will have an increase in deserts and other arid lands which would reduce the area available for crops.
"Plants cannot live on CO2 alone."
—
"In conclusion, it would be reckless to keep adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Assuming there are any positive impacts on agriculture in the short term, they will be overwhelmed by the negative impacts of climate change
"It will simply increase the size of deserts and decrease the amount of arable land. It will also increase the requirements for water and soil fertility as well as plant damage from insects.
"Increasing CO2 levels would only be beneficial inside of highly controlled, enclosed spaces like greenhouses." [Quoted from skepticalscience.com]
Even if you could remove the 'excess' CO2 from the atmosphere, oceanic catastrophe is still on the board because acidification would continue as the oceans build up acid levels.3
"Conclusions
"The oceans are currently taking up about one tonne of human-derived CO2 per year for each
person on the planet. Almost a half of the CO2 produced in the past 200 years from burning
fossil fuels and cement manufacture has been absorbed by the oceans. Calculations based on
measurements of the surface oceans and our understanding of ocean chemistry indicate that
this uptake of CO2 has already reduced surface seawater pH by about 0.1 units, which corresponds
to an increase of about 30% in the concentration of hydrogen ions
"As CO2 continues to enter the atmosphere from human activity, a proportion will be taken up
by the oceans. If CO2 emissions are not regulated, this could result in the pH decreasing
by 0.5 units by the year 2100. This is beyond the range of current natural variability and
probably to a level not experienced for at least hundreds of thousands of years and possibly much longer.
Critically, the rate of change is also probably at least 100 times higher than the maximum rate
during this time period. These changes are so rapid that they will significantly reduce the buffering capacity of
the natural processes that have moderated
changes in ocean chemistry over most of geological time." [Quoted from coralreef.noaa.gov, p.39]
"The fact that sources of PM2.5 match those of sulfur implies that
most of the pollution comes from coal. Worldwide, air pollution kills
over three million people per year-more than AIDS, malaria, diabetes
or tuberculosis.
"Air pollution is the greatest environmental disaster in the world
today,” says Richard Muller, Scientific Director of Berkeley Earth,
coauthor of the paper. “When I was last in Beijing, pollution was
at the hazardous level; every hour of exposure reduced my life expectancy by 20 minutes.
It’s as if every man, women, and child smoked 1.5 cigarettes each hour,” he said."
1. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us
that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and
a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to
you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and
governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and
herbs”.[1]
2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have
inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with
which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords
and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in
our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of
sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all
forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste,
is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in
travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of
the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements,
we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her
waters."
Generally, what Francis is saying is not bad, but it could be better in places.
For instance, in the first part, global warming is tackled, but this tackling is let down by a lack of scientific knowledge.
"Though he criticised water privatisation, nowhere in the document did
the Pope mention fossil fuel energy subsidies – in other words, the
policy of paying people to emit greenhouses gases. As The Economist
put it: “It would be hard to find a worse [mistake] than energy
subsidies. Recent research has shown that they enrich middlemen,
depress economic output and help the rich, who use lots of energy,
more than they do the poor… But now a new working paper by the
International Monetary Fund highlights another cost too: damage to the
environment. Including this, the authors reckon that the total drag on
the global economy caused by fuel subsidies now amounts to a stonking
$5.3 trillion each year…Poorer countries dole out the largest amount
of subsidies; some spend up to 18 per cent of their GDP a year on
them.”
—
"There is much to debate, but that is not the impression given in the
document. Nowhere is it recognised that the models of development that
are criticised have led to rapidly falling rates of poverty, global
inequality and deaths from natural disasters whilst access to
education and healthcare has improved. Furthermore, nowhere is it
acknowledged that the natural resource intensity of production falls
dramatically as countries develop. The carbon intensity of production
falls; we stop using whales for oil; we stop plundering forests and
instead nurture them; and so on. ..."
This unrealistic anti-science leaning is troubling.
Weather models are being made by comparing statistical historic data against recent anomalous weather events, with and without changes in anthropogenic greenhouse gases [GHGs].
It is being found that the anomalous events are statistically very unlikely without the added GHGs.
"The impacts of the drought are wide-ranging, and continue to intensify with each passing month. Curtailment of state and federal water project deliveries for agricultural irrigation have already resulted multi-billion dollar losses as thousands of acres of farmland are fallowed. Small communities in some regions have started to run out of water entirely, and increasingly stringent urban conservation measures have been enacted over the summer as reservoir storage drops to critically low levels. Thousands of new water wells have been constructed on an emergency basis over the past year, and skyrocketing rates of groundwater pumping have led to rapid land subsidence in the San Joaquin Valley. Not to be outdone, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains was almost nonexistent for much of 2013-2014, and at least one of California’s major rivers is no longer reaching the Pacific Ocean."
—
"In addition to extremely low precipitation, California has also been experiencing exceptional warmth over much of the past year. 2014 is currently California’s record warmest year to date by a wide margin—meaning that it has been warmer during the current drought than during any previous drought since at least the 1800s. Warm temperatures increase the rate of evaporation from parched soils and critically dry rivers, lakes, and streams—exacerbating the impacts of existing precipitation deficits. In fact, primary metrics of overall drought severity—including the widely-used Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI)—have now reached their lowest levels since at least the 1800s."
[Quoted from weatherwest.com]
"All five research groups came to the conclusion that last year’s heat waves could not have been as severe without the long-term climatic warming caused by human emissions.
" “When we look at the heat across the whole of Australia and the whole 12 months of 2013, we can say that this was virtually impossible without climate change,” said David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne who led some of the research." [Quoted from nytimes.com]
‘Global cooling’ shown as a temporary blip in overall global warming.
Image: Keenleyside et al.
Recently, I have seen several reports
suggesting that La Niña will cause a hiatus in
the rises of global temperatures [black line]. However,
if you look at the longer-term temperature predictions,
you will see that the hiatus [green line] returns to trend
line over a few years. In other words, it is not a slowing
in global temperature rise, but merely an artefact of
the way in which that particular temperature average is
being calculated. Note, our measuring sophistication is
growing rapidly, as are our technical means of obtaining
local temperature samples (in this case, a sample means
a single measurement). We now have satellites, ever-improving
instrumentation and the means to put sensors in remote
places.
