Why is the Northwest so warm?

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-is-northwest-so-warm.html

by aaronbrethorst • 11 years ago

50 39 11 years ago

cliffmass.blogspot.com

rando289• 11 years ago

"Let's take a look at a comparison of the temperatures (yellow lines) on both sides of the Cascades (Sea Tac and Yakima) with the normal highs (red lines) and low (blue lines) for the past year."

I assume the author means the average over many years for the "normal." The current phrase is like saying "the normal temperate for 1980 did not match the actual temperature for 1980." Or, "1980 was not a normal 1980." Also annoying that the graph has incomplete labels, with the full explanation buried in text.

oska• 11 years ago

Here is a thought to keep in mind: the more extreme the weather anomaly, the less likely it is to be caused by human-induced (anthropogenic) global warming. The current situation is mega extreme in terms of our temperatures. The reason this aphorism makes sense is that global warming due to increased greenhouse gases should warm the earth in a progressive, slow way---not in huge jumps. Here in the Northwest, temperature increases have been particularly slow (about 1F over the past century) because of the huge thermal inertia of the Pacific Ocean.
And there is something else: the warming influencing our region is localized and does not have the characteristics of the global warming signal seen in climate models. While the Northwest has been hot and dry, much of the eastern U.S. has been much cooler and wetter than normal. Even the Rockies have been wetter than normal. Global warming would warm them as well. This week I was at a weather conference in Chicago....it was quite chilly there at times.

I think this section, particularly the second paragraph, shows the writer has a very poor understanding of what global warming is and how it can and will have different localized effects across different timeframes.

jahnu• 11 years ago

Right. It's like a localised variant of this famous gif...

http://i.imgur.com/34cT2TM.gif

mirimir3• 11 years ago

It's not "global warming". It's "global climate change", in response to increased greenhouse forcing. The "amplification of the upper level wave pattern" (kinked jet stream) is arguably one aspect of global climate change.[0]

[0] http://phys.org/news/2015-02-evidence-link-wavy-jet-stream.h...

mckoss• 11 years ago

Cliff is a highly respected meteorologist in the NW. He debunks your citation in his blog (see his response to comments in this post).

saosebastiao4• 11 years ago

Maybe you should lecture him on it: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~cliff/CliffsVitaeLatest1206...

mirimir3• 11 years ago

From his CV, I get that he's a meteorologist with an agenda about global climate issues. He has coauthored a couple papers in J. Climate, but has mostly published in meteorology journals. That's arguably analogous to a planetary scientist with strong opinions about cosmology.

jrapdx3• 11 years ago

Tell me about it. Here in Portland temperatures have been in the 90's, prompting complaints, but nothing to do about it. OTOH relatives in Texas are complaining about unusually rainy weather in recent weeks, like our respective typical conditions have been exchanged.

I'm guessing in both regions it's associated with El Nino effects. Also now wondering if the drought south of us is an El Nino effect as well. Looks like the drought is creeping its way north, and when it does, it's definitely going to be a source of serious trouble in this part of the US.

DanBC• 11 years ago

Also now wondering if the drought south of us is an El Nino effect as well.

Hasn't the drought lasted several years now? This (poorly dated) page talks about 2011 and the worst drought for 70 years, and it's been drought since then.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14091&ArticleId=4...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/21/us-mexico-drought-...

rndn• 11 years ago

the more extreme the weather anomaly, the less likely it is to be caused by human-induced (anthropogenic) global warming.

Why is that the case? My knowledge is not based on much better sources than this blog post, but isn't the warming of the oceans believed to cause extreme weather anomalies?

tinco3• 11 years ago

I think he's referring to the intuitive idea that how bigger the deviation the less likely it's caused by a small thing. Why should a 0.1C overall increase in temperature lead to a 5C degree difference this summer and the one 5 years ago? Much more likely is some larger timescale larger force dynamic. (Unless of course someone has proven a mechanism for the former).

In the long run yes, warming of the earth will cause more extreme weather. But it has little relation to that of today.

taylodl• 11 years ago

If weather is known to be a nonlinear system then doesn't it make sense that climate would be as well? Why should we expect small changes in climate inputs to have correspondingly small changes in climate results?

graycat• 11 years ago

Supposedly currently there is a sea floor volcano in the western Paciffic that has warmed waters in a Pacific current that flows east

Indeed, in one of the author's graphs, can see a long, line of warmer water from the western Pacific all the way east to the Americas.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 11 years ago

You mean the fourth graph, labeled "Seasonal SST Anomaly", right below "THE BLOB"?

That's El Nino. You're seeing El Nino in that picture.

(also: which volcano? http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/pacific-ocean.html)

Daishiman3• 11 years ago

The author's assertion that this is not anthropogenic is laughably ridiculous. Robert Scribbler writes (https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/strong-west...) that since the last El Niño of similar magnitudes atmospheric CO2 has increased by 45ppm. Global ocean temperatures are much higher and it is definitely causing shifts in air currents all over the world. The Pacific Northwest is just one area out of many that is experiencing considerably higher temperatures.

The fact that we're having two mega El Niño events in the past 17 years is indicative, amongst hundreds of other observations, that the climate is changing at a speed we should be terrified of. The number of global temperature anomalies going is pretty staggering.

Sam McNamara has written (http://arctic-news.blogspot.nl/2015/07/east-siberian-heat-wa...) about 20+ degree anomalies in the Arctic. This is the part where we're playing with the possibility of destabilizing underwater methane clathrate reserves. If that happens, we can just call of all climate change prevention efforts, because that's extinction-event level shit.

tinco3• 11 years ago

I'd like to take your word for it but I'm not a statistician. With what confidence do 2 mega ninos in 17 years reject the hypothesis that anomalies are happening at their usual pace? (Should nt be hard to calculate right?)

Daishiman3• 11 years ago

It's not a matter of confidence, but the fact that climatologists understand very well how increased ocean temperatures affect air currents. What we're seeing is the consequences of greater ocean thermal mass. I would agree that the statistics are easy to calculate, but it's completely irrelevant in the fact that the physical models have predicted this behavior, and the only question now is what new, unpredicted feedback effects await us.

johnchristopher2• 11 years ago

How can there be a temperature reading of 0º on the 2nd of July in NW France ? http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DOcnQQULMfs/VZVSXCvJdiI/AAAAAAAAQu...

What am I reading wrong ?

zimpenfish• 11 years ago

I think that 0º is the "temperature anomaly" - i.e. it's exactly what they're expecting.

wyago• 11 years ago

I'm not totally familiar with this diagram, but I think that by "Temperature Anomaly" they mean the difference between the temperature and what we expected the temperature to be (or something like that), not the absolute temperature.

michaelochurch• 11 years ago

I think his claim is that this particular event should not be called "anthropogenic", in the same way that we can't say that the 2003 European heat wave or Hurricane Katrina or the 2015 snow hell winter (in fact, global warming produces more intense snowstorms) that Boston had are anthropogenic, because the effects of AGW are diffuse, and because erratic and bad weather are not at all new (they'll just become more common with AGW).

Hot weather in Seattle is rare but not that rare. In 2009, we had a beautiful summer in New York (the hottest it got was 93 °F / 34 °C, and most days were around 82 °F / 28 °C) while Seattle shot up to a DC-esque 105 °F (41 °C), setting an all-time record. And for reasons that I don't entirely understand (but are probably related to El Nino) we tend to get a mild summer in the Northeast/Midwest when the Pacific Northwest gets heat, and vice versa (the "vice versa" being the usual pattern). Right now, the Pacific Northwest is baking while it's absolutely beautiful (perhaps a bit cloudy, but I'll never complain about 50s °F in July) in Chicago. Hot weather in Seattle is rare but it isn't a new phenomenon.

Anthropogenic global warming is (almost certainly) real and it's extremely dangerous. The OP is just trying to warn us away from attributing specific climactic events to it. This leads to the "global warming can't be real because it's cold in Buffalo" line of reasoning. Weather has always been erratic, and in a globally connected world, there's always been one kind of hell weather happening somewhere and it's dangerous to try to look for a pattern in it.

Personally, I think it's time to escalate the terminology to climate risk. "Climate change" sounds too mild and climates have been changing forever; the difference is that they're now happening at a level that represents a genuine existential risk, because every time that they've changed this fast for a prolonged period of time, it's triggered an extinction event.

The problem is that most people can't evaluate the risks. Take heat. Most people think that a 10 °F (6 °C) rise in summer temperatures wouldn't kill them. That means that the hottest day in a typical New York summer would be 110 °F (43° C) instead of 100 °F (38 °C). That sounds extremely unpleasant but not fatal, because 110 °F in the desert is no big deal. What few are aware of is that it's not the air temperature ("dry bulb") but the wet-bulb temperature that represents lethality, with 30 °C being acutely dangerous and 35 °C being fatal (the hottest days in the hottest deserts, even with dry-bulb temperatures in the 50s, typically have wet-bulb temperatures in the unpleasant but bearable 20s). One possible risk of global warming is that it'll allow heat/humidity combinations that don't even exist right now (except, on the worst days, in the Persian Gulf). Here's a terrifying link on the matter: http://web.science.unsw.edu.au/~stevensherwood/wetbulb.html . Granted, it puts the numbers at hell settings (12 °C rise) but it still shows us what's possible. This model shows the entire Eastern half of the United States (even stereotypically "cold" places like Bangor, Maine and Milwaukee) becoming uninhabitable, along with almost all of Mexico and four-fifths of South America. Northern Africa, India, the Arabian peninsula, Southeast Asia, Spain and France also become uninhabitable, not to mention the entire Australian continent aside from a southern fringe (which will still be hotter than any place today). Unfortunately, the wet-bulb threat isn't something that most people understand, because when you say "wet bulb temperature of 35 °C (or 95 °F)" most people hear the "35 °C", which doesn't sound that terrifying because, as a dry bulb temperature, that's fairly mild.

abandonliberty• 11 years ago

underwater methane clathrate reserves . . . extinction-event level shit.

For anyone like me who hasn't heard of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

snarfy• 11 years ago

I've noticed the jet stream is shifted. It normally would dip down over the pacific ocean and then back up towards the pacific northwest. Now it's shifted east and the dip down happens over the pacific northwest.

I'm no meteorologist, but it seems like if it were over the ocean there would be wetter and cooler weather on the west coast.

kevin_thibedeau• 11 years ago

Those graphs are useless wiithout standard deviation intervals. The argument that "it's hotter than normal" can't be made without knowing the bounds of normal. The long term average doesn't show that.

fredkbloggs• 11 years ago

At some point, an effect that persists and repeats over an extended period of time ceases to be anomalous and becomes the new normal. We are at (really, well past) that point with hot, dry weather in the West. One could even argue that the hot West/cool East pattern as a whole has become the new normal. Dismissing it as normal variation just means you haven't yet understood a causal link with anything else.

There's no shame in not knowing how something works, especially something that is both complex and chaotic. There is, however, shame in asserting that you do when you don't. The author cannot (or at least does not) explain the root cause of this pattern; therefore he cannot know whether its increased prevalence is ultimately anthropogenic or not. The smart money is on the humans here, but what really matters is figuring it out, not making unsubstantiated assertions as to what it is or isn't.

Gravityloss• 11 years ago

I've found this way of thinking helpful:

"The idea is not: radiative imbalance causes warming everywhere which nudges the climate a bit. So many people think like this but it is wrong. Radiative imbalance pushes the climate around so much that eventually it changes enough to restore the balance. Almost surely surface warming is part of that. But a lot else is part of it."

Michael Tobis at http://initforthegold.blogspot.fi/2011/05/black-birds.html

smutticus• 11 years ago

the more extreme the weather anomaly, the less likely it is to be caused by human-induced (anthropogenic) global warming.

I'm not an expert in this field by any measure. However, this assumption goes against everything I've read from people who are experts.

zackmorris2• 11 years ago

Here in Boise, ID it's been between 100 and 110. I remember these temperatures 15 years ago when I worked outdoors but what I don't remember is the humidity. It's odd to be sitting outside at midnight at 90 degrees and 30% humidity, which feels like midwest weather. It's more usual for the high desert to get down to the 70s or even 50s at night with any altitude.

While this may be more of a random fluctuation than full on global warming, I’m concerned because weather has been strange for years now. We often get excessive rain for months in the spring, which didn’t used to happen. The weather in this location is getting more moderate, while the rest of the country seems to be getting more extreme (this is one of the long term predictions of global warming).

IMHO there is a connection between widespread die offs and weather that hasn’t been studied well yet. I’m too young to remember what the northwest was like before things like wildfire control threw everything out of balance. Imagine 150 years ago - there were large animal herds, dense lush forests, pristine waters, and one of my favorites: 10 foot tall sagebrush as far as the eye could see where now we only have cheatgrass.

If you go out in the wilderness today, there is so little wildlife. Big game is rare, no wolves, a handful of bears, few to no birds, orders of magnitude less fish due to dams. We really have no frame of reference for what settlers witnessed, when life was everywhere they looked.

In these death zones, we are seeing some pretty apocalyptic $#!@:

http://www.cdhd.idaho.gov/news/current/groundsquirrelplague....

The world is so much sicker than anyone realizes. All areas are in decline, so if you look at things like timber and fishing, the numbers are down 50%, even 90% of where they started. What we do have in abundance now is pests. Mosquito abatement for West Nile virus is a requirement here now. Pine beetles scurry everywhere you look, leading to the not-so-distant demise of rocky mountain forests. So it makes sense to me that global warming may show a blip of 3% off normal and result in these wide swings. Think of how missing wetlands affect hurricane flooding, but now apply that to all chaotic systems everywhere. I don’t know how anyone could come to the conclusion that everything is fine (in other words, that chaos is at a stalemate or diminishing).

So that’s my radical environmentalist explanation. Global warming is one thing, but the widespread famine of the natural world is looming within our lifetimes and I find that really uncanny. Unfortunately people generally only ponder what’s right in front of their faces rather than extrapolating how it all plays out. Although in fairness, if doing the projections leads to the same hollow realization that nothing can be done, then there’s something to be said for denial. At least we still have good beer! It’s important to keep a balanced perspective on these things and not let them get you down too much.

My personal solution to this is to live as a hipster and try to make enough money that I can not be too much of a burden on the planet (living close to work etc). Unfortunately there’s a case to be made that income and carbon footprint are relatively synonymous, due to the level of infrastructure needed to acquire it. Living as a hermit doesn’t really help either because we are capable of contributing more than 0 solutions to the problem. So I always find myself back at square one with the struggle against ineffectualism. This may be a natural evolution in global consciousness, but I just hope that it happens fast enough that it’s not all gone before we have the spiritual means to step outside the consumer capitalism matrix and do something.

zackmorris2• 11 years ago

In hindsight this looks like the idle ramblings of someone out of touch with reality. But in truth it's closer to the opposite - I've spent too much time analyzing the repercussions of everything because that's what programmers do.

If someone ever finds this, this video sums up a lot of what I was trying to say:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ysa5OBhXz-Q

Now multiply that by every ecosystem that has been tampered with by humans across the face of the planet and decide for yourself if our climate has been affected.

Why is the Northwest so warm?

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