General Climate Discussion

[Angus]

We're talking about global temperatures, not local. If you want to talk local Idaho had a very cold winter lat year. Are you unaware of the overall stability and even decline in global temps worldwide? Egg on the face of the GAW high priests it seems.

My little country has a glacier who stores more thermal energy than the whole of Idaho.
And the oceans store at least 1000 times more thermal energy than the whole atmosphere.
Now THAT is global....

[Angus]

Oh, and an explanation needed....
Why is the SL rising if the Ice is increasing...oh increasing, yes...
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/arctic.shtml
Some more here....we'll have to wait for the autumn to see if the record breaks...
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Even more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/science/21arctic.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
And Antarctica, well the word's been around that the sea ice is increasing. Well, it may be, but not from freezing, but Ice breaking off and scattering as well as plonking into the sea.
Now here's what I found in the Washington post though...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030201712.html
"Melting agead of schedule".
Doh.
And Icing on the cake...Science daily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080229075228.htm
"West Antarctic Glaciers Melting At 20 Times Former Rate, Rock Analysis Shows
"

Another Doh.

[bongaroo]

Well in any case I do not fall into the gloom and doom.  I simply think its silly for people to continue to believe that we aren't "screwing things up" globally.

I DO want the TVA to clean up their act so my home will have air that isn't going to slowly kill me.  Thats something local that we can change.  But entrenched intersts continue to drag their feet and some of my favorite places to visit higher in the mountains continue to die off.  Just sad.

[Angus]

If you'd be a proper doomsday beliver, then you'd want to do nothing. (Except perhaps party).
That's why it always angers me getting called a doomsday sayer for pointing out a problem, - or a fact.

[AKIron]

My little country has a glacier who stores more thermal energy than the whole of Idaho.
And the oceans store at least 1000 times more thermal energy than the whole atmosphere.
Now THAT is global....

Good point about the ocean warming. Tell me again how co2 can cause that without warming the atmosphere?

[Angus]

Water stores thermal energy better than air.
BTW, to repeat myself, I am not completely in on the CO2 as the biggest to blame. It's one of them but the biggest...I don't know....

[bozon]

Good point about the ocean warming. Tell me again how co2 can cause that without warming the atmosphere?

It is quite complicated but the ground is warming the atmosphere more than the atmosphere is warming the ground. The "hand waving" explanation is that the input energy is mostly around visible light wavelengths. The atmosphere is nearly transparent to these wavelengths and so this solar energy hits and heats the ground. The ground then heats the atmosphere by heat conduction and by emitting infra-red radiation that the atmosphere absorbs much better than visible light. 

The temperature difference between the surface and the atmosphere (and also between layers in the atmosphere - this is where most models are faulty) is very sensitive to the details of the radiation transfer as well as evaporation and condensation of water. The effect can be cooling of one and heating of the other and not necessarily "global warming" in the sense of "everything"  getting hotter.

[Angus]

And the temp difference causes...weather. With a "w" like in Wind

[AKIron]

I'm just a layman but it seems to me that the ground and ocean cannot be increasingly warmed by the "greehouse effect" unless the atmosphere is also increasingly warmed.

[Angus]

Well, AFAIK they're both.

[AKIron]

Well, AFAIK they're both.

By both do you mean the atmospehere is currently warming? Now 'm back to the not for the last 10 years it isn't. Has the water been warming durring this period? If so, can it be due to the greenhouse effect?

[Angus]

Is it warming?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q3
Or simply:


BTW, just to tease, my little country broke many temp records yesterday, and more are expected today.
Where I live we had some 30 deg celcius or more. The highest on records were 2007 and 2004, then you have to step back to 1974 and 1960, then the 20's and nada....nothing to compare.
Actually we are now in a cool trend...la nina.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ni%C3%B1a#Effects_of_La_Ni.C3.B1a

[pallero]

Is it warming?

No.
Arctic sea ice is not melting. Why? Is it colder than last year?  *clic*

[MORAY37]

No.
Arctic sea ice is not melting. Why? Is it colder than last year?  *clic*

You're not too smart... your own link show that there is less sea ice than last year.  Please figure out the area just to the north of Canada and relate that to the previous year. See where there was ice... and NOW there isn't, that it is just seawater?  Roughly the size of say, Alaska, relative to the map scale?  Also, move the scale a day in either direction.... you might see a little thing called statistical error crop it's ugly head.  Open ice in July doesn't close in a day, the size of the state of Connecticut.

[pallero]

You're not too smart...

Smart or not, still there is about million square kilometers of sea ice more than last year. *clic*