Short Period Climate Variability

One of my frustrations with the climate science community has been a certain dodginess about the sources of short term climate variability - stuff like the more or less static behavior of global temperature over the past dozen years. So it was a big relief for me when Real Climate succeeded that stupid and defensive The IPCC is not infallible (shock!) headline with a new article on the recent paper by Solomon et. al. (I'm not so impressed by their headline for it either, but...).

Susan Solomon is a chemist and no newcomer to making important discoveries in atmospheric science. She was one of the first to unravel the connection between clorofluorocarbons and the ozone hole.

Her teams discovery this time is revealing the role that stratospheric water plays in regulating the atmospheric temperature. Water doesn't get to the stratosphere easily - it condenses out at lower levels - but the tiny amount that does get there keeps a significant amount of heat in. The stratosphere has been dry for the past decade, and that has played a role in slowing the temperature increase.

There is little reason to believe that this is likely to continue, though. The water in the stratosphere seems to be driven by a couple of processes - one of which is oxidation of methane, a green house gas likely to increase, and the other is lofting by very powerful tropical thunderstorms, which are likely to vary unpredictably.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more