SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-earth-energy.html
A recent report from the World Meteorological Organization about the state of the climate indicates that the global mean temperature in 2022 was 1.15°C above the 1850-1900 (preindustrial reference period) average. Moreover, the last eight years have been the warmest since the beginning of instrumental temperature records 173 years ago.
In other words, the climate system has been out of balance for several decades.
[...] Earth's energy imbalance -- Solar radiation is virtually Earth's only energy source, the other energy sources—such as Earth's interior heat and tidal energy—being negligible. The Earth reflects around 30 percent of the solar radiation and emits radiation towards space.
The greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane) let solar radiation pass, but not the radiation emitted by the Earth, thus trapping this energy. Earth's near-surface temperature, which is 15°C, would be around -19°C without the greenhouse effect.
If the difference between the incoming energy—solar radiation—and outgoing energy—the sum of the solar radiation reflected by the Earth and the radiation emitted by the Earth—is not equal to zero, as is the case currently, we refer to this as Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI).
It is human activity, through the emission of greenhouse gases (generating an additional greenhouse effect), that has caused the Earth energy imbalance.
But where does the excess energy accumulate? It accumulates under the form of heat in the different components of the climate system (atmosphere, land, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere). And this is what explains why the Earth is warming, or more globally, climate change.
Such an inventory corresponding to the period 1960-2020 has been provided by a recently published study. This study shows that the Earth system has been accumulating heat since 1971. Moreover, the rate of heat accumulation corresponding to the period 2006-2020 is higher than that corresponding to 1971-2020. Most of the excess heat is stored in the ocean (89 percent), mainly in the upper ocean (0-700 metres in depth). The rest of the excess heat is stored in the land (six percent) and the atmosphere (one percent), and has led to the melting of the components of the cryosphere—glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice (four percent).
In addition to storing excess heat, the ocean is also an important CO₂ sink, thus playing an essential role in the regulation of the climate. However, the ocean will become less efficient at capturing CO₂ with the increase in the cumulative emissions of this gas. Why? Because of the positive feedback between the ocean warming and the decrease in the capacity of the oceans to absorb CO₂.
Unfortunately, the current state of the ocean is concerning. In 2022, the ocean heat content reached a record high, and 58 percent of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine heatwave. Since mid-March this year, the mean ocean surface temperature is the highest ever observed since the beginning of the satellite era. Among other negative impacts on the marine ecosystems, marine heatwaves cause coral bleaching events.
(Score: 1) by dalek on Friday June 02 2023, @04:04AM (9 children)
Let's get rid of the simplifying assumptions. We don't have direct observations of the climate with CO2 concentrations above present day levels. We'll have to use the models.
The IPCC AR6 emissions scenarios are described in figure TS.4 on page 53 of https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_TS.pdf [www.ipcc.ch].
A graph of the warming is shown in figure 4.2 on page 571 (PDF page 19 of 120) of https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter04.pdf [www.ipcc.ch].
Doubling the CO2 versus preindustrial levels is approximately scenario SSP2-4.5. Although there are a range of possibilities, the most likely warming is around 3 degrees Celsius. If you want a scenario where the high end is around 6 degrees, that's the SSP3-7.0 scenario, which is much closer to tripling CO2 concentrations versus preindustrial levels. Even so, the warming is more likely to be around 4.5 degrees by 2100.
Like I said, the Earth is absorbing heat quite rapidly compared to other warming events during the Cenozoic era, meaning that the Earth is warming faster.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @04:52AM (8 children)
"Using the models" is such a simplifying assumption. My take is that we can just run the clock out and see what happens. Then we're back to the much more reliable direct observation.
Even though we're well below that level of warming? I think that makes it less than most likely.
Pretty confident for having no measurements of the necessary time scale to make that determination.
(Score: 1) by dalek on Friday June 02 2023, @05:43AM (7 children)
You can have whatever take you like on a situation, but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable take.
Now, you have correctly said that we are, indeed, locked in for some additional warming because of the radiative imbalance. You have also correctly said that there is going to be additional warming beyond that because of additional greenhouse gas emissions and other human activities, and this is larger than the additional warming due to the radiative imbalance. To summarize, the radiative imbalance does mean that we are locked in for additional warming, and human activities will probably push the warming significantly beyond what we're locked in for due to the radiative imbalance. These are all things you have said, and they're true.
Your primary criticism of models has been that they underestimate carbon sinks. Practically, you're saying that the models overestimate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere given a particular rate of emissions. Except that your typical criticism isn't relevant to this discussion. I'm not focused on the rate of emissions. In the SSP2-4.5 scenario, the atmospheric CO2 concentration is roughly twice preindustrial levels. Given that concentration, the model predicts roughly 3 degrees Celsius of warming. The models parameterize radiative transfer, with one scheme for incoming solar radiation and another for outgoing longwave radiation. The parameterization for outgoing longwave radiation takes greenhouse gas concentrations as an input, then calculate their effects on radiative transfer. This isn't just important for climate. We need to represent this process properly to accurately forecast the weather, and weather models also have such parameterizations. If these parameterizations were wrong, we would have issues forecasting temperatures. The radiative transfer schemes really aren't concerned with sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, just their concentrations at a particular time. Your standard criticism of models just doesn't apply here.
Given the CO2 concentrations in the SSP2-4.5 scenario, it corresponds to a warming of around 3 degrees. This is based on many model simulations, and the yellowish line in the graph is in the middle of the range of possibilities from modeling that scenario. It is reasonable to say that this is probably the most likely outcome for warming given CO2 concentrations that are approximately double the preindustrial level of 280 ppm.
We actually do have a pretty good record of warming events during much of the Quaternary period from data derived from sources like ice cores. The resolution isn't as good and the errors are larger going farther back in time, but we do have a pretty good idea how much warming occurred during events like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and how long it took to happen. From there, we can infer what CO2 concentrations would have been needed to achieve that warming and what the radiative forcing was. It involves prescribing CO2 concentrations and simulating the impact on climate to try to match what we know conditions were like during that period. Again, your standard criticism of models just doesn't apply here. In this case, they don't simulate sources and sinks of greenhouse gases. That step is skipped, the CO2 concentrations are prescribed, and then the impact on climate is tested.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @12:49PM (6 children)
So it could be an unreasonable take? We have any reason to suppose that could be the case?
I quite agree that we're on track for warming beyond what merely hasn't happened yet. But here you already gloss over a problem that I've repeatedly noted - the 3 C per doubling assumes a degree of positive feedback that hasn't been observed yet. You can't get there from short term warming plus radiative imbalance. Human activity isn't considered a feedback either. A modest decline in the climate sensitivity number significantly improves our options. That combined with a greater tolerance for warming (beyond the hard 1.5 C cut off) means we have much greater flexibility in the near future than the official narrative that we have to hard stop greenhouse gases emissions now.
Indirectly, that "primary criticism" still has some relevance since the climate sensitivity of 3 C per doubling of CO2 is partially dependent on an unsupported assumption of very low long term sinking of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. But where did I rely on that argument in this thread? Should I be dredging up irrelevant arguments from your past which you aren't using in this thread either?
Instead, I did the obvious thing which hadn't been done to this point - come up with a reasonable estimate as to the amount of future warming due from the effect of radiative imbalance. Why wasn't this discussed before? My take is because it was an attempt to bamboozle the audience, not discuss an interesting feature of global warming.
(Score: 1) by dalek on Friday June 02 2023, @07:17PM (5 children)
We have good records of the Quaternary period from data sources like ice cores. We know that CO2 levels during the last glacial maximum were around 200 ppm instead of the 280 ppm preindustrial levels. We also know that the last glacial maximum was about 6 degrees Celsius colder than the present day. Following the last glacial maximum, the Earth warmed at a rate of around 1 degree per thousand years over the span of a few thousand years. This brings us to the Holocene epoch, which should be a relatively brief warm interlude before temperatures start declining and CO2 levels decrease.
CO2 increased by a factor of around 1.4 from the last glacial maximum to the Holocene period, corresponding with a warming of several degrees. The temperature change with respect to CO2 concentrations is significantly larger than the numbers you're discussing. Some of this might be due to melting the ice cover at mid-latitudes instead of high latitudes, where more surface area is involved and the sunlight tends to be more direct. Still, the quality of data from the Quaternary period is superior compared with our understanding of climate farther back in time. And the sensitivity is much larger than what you're describing.
You're correct that climate models do not represent the full complexity of the climate system, but they are still useful tools for understanding the behavior of the system. For the doubling of CO2 you're describing, they do project around a 3 degree increase in global temperatures. You're quick to point out the uncertainty of the models, and this is true. We have a better understanding of the climate system during the present day and the colder conditions that are typical of the Quaternary period than we do of the warmer climates that occurred earlier in the Cenozoic era. We're using climate models as a sophisticated way to extrapolate what the climate will be with greenhouse gas concentrations that are greater than at any point in human history. As a general rule, the uncertainty is always larger when you're extrapolating data, even with a very complex extrapolation scheme.
Then you say things like this:
You're saying that we should throw out the models altogether because the uncertainty is too large. This is a remarkably arrogant statement, more or less dismissing that climate change is going to be a serious problem in the near future, and that carry on with our greenhouse gas emissions for the foreseeable future. Based on other comments you've made in other discussions, this is not misrepresenting your "take" on the situation.
There is a significant amount of uncertainty in projecting future climates. But you're effectively saying that despite all the uncertainty, you're confident that the models are overestimating the warming that will occur. That's a ridiculous statement. For all the uncertainty that you say exists in climate change projections, you are remarkably confident in the sign of the error. Your confidence is absolutely unwarranted. Yes, it's possible the Earth might warm less than what the models are predicting. It's just as possible that the warming could be larger than the models are projecting.
You're entitled to your own opinion. But it doesn't mean that everyone else has to accept your opinion as reasonable. A much more rational approach is that we ought to be cautious and do our best to mitigate climate change.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:00AM (4 children)
Rather because they are already failing. We have a nasty combination of large conflict of interest and models veering off the rails from the get-go. The extreme false confidence in these models is just another warning sign.
Note the narrative presented here. We must follow "the models" because that allegedly is the best we have, but whenever one points out the pitfalls in doing so, only then is it noted that the future is uncertain. I'll note that I've been following models as well. They lead to less aggressive results, but accurately model the present quite well.
My take is that the primary role of most models is to propagate a particular message not to accurate model the climate. They wouldn't be significantly funded otherwise.
When you spoke of IPCC scenarios earlier in this thread, did any of those scenarios consider human adaptation strategies - particularly making trade offs between better human prosperity and somewhat more pronounced climate change? Or what could happen with partial rather than full mitigation? I can already tell you that there's a lot of willful blindness when it comes to consideration of alternate strategies. That's reflected in the model construction as well.
(Score: 1) by dalek on Saturday June 03 2023, @02:23AM (3 children)
Ah yes, when the discussion isn't going your way, appeal to a conspiracy theory and of course provide no actual evidence to support this alleged conspiracy. That's a really strong indication that you're not here to discuss the matter in good faith, and that there's no point in continuing this conversation.
For the benefit of others who are reading this conversation in good faith, I'll address the false statements you wrote about emission scenarios:
Whether we're talking about a weather model or a climate model, they need to predict the transfer of radiation. There aren't nice partial differential equations that we can integrate to determine this, so these effects are parameterized. There are typically two radiative transfer paramaterization schemes, one for incoming shortwave radiation and a second for outgoing longwave radiation. These schemes have to take into account several things including clouds, aerosols, and greenhouse gas concentrations. These are needed to accurately forecast temperatures both on weather and climate time scales. In fact, the same parameterization schemes are often used in both weather and climate models.
WRF is a model that's primarily used for weather forecasting, hence the name Weather Research & Forecasting Model. It's widely used for forecasting the weather, and a lot of our regional models use WRF with various settings. Here's a link to the radiation parameterization schemes available: https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/physics/phys_references.html#RAD [ucar.edu]. Many of these schemes like the CAM and Goddard schemes were developed for use in climate models, and the code has been adapted to also work with weather models like WRF. If these parameterizations didn't work well, we would have serious issues with forecasting the weather accurately.
For these parameterizations to work properly, they need to be informed about greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations. The radiative transfer parameterizations don't directly calculate either of these, so they need to be calculated elsewhere in the model or prescribed. Aerosol concentrations can be calculated from atmospheric chemistry models. The emission scenarios, are prescribed by the person running the model, either directly specifying greenhouse gas concentrations or having a more sophisticated way to calculate the concentrations. The results of those emissions scenarios are the inputs to the radiative transfer parameterizations. The radiation parameterizations don't need to know about adaptation. They just need to know the greenhouse gas concentrations so they can accurately predict the outgoing longwave radiation.
Adaptation is not explicitly considered in the scenarios because it's irrelevant to running the models. The emissions are relevant because they determine the greenhouse gas concentrations, and those are needed for the radiation paramterization schemes. However, it's implicit that the higher end emissions scenarios would almost certainly require substantial degrees of adaptation. Moreover, partial mitigation is exactly what happens in the SSP2-4.5 scenario that I've been discussing.
That said, since Mr. Khallow has decided to post unsubstantiated and unfounded conspiracy theories about climate models, there's exactly zero chance of anything productive coming from this discussion. I have direct experience with WRF, which is used as both a weather and a climate model. I've run it on supercomputers to produce weather simulations, which is why I'm familiar with the parameterization schemes. WRF is a huge code base, with two separate dynamical cores (the Advanced Research WRF core and the Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model core) and a very large amount of parameterizations. The code is completely open source, including all of the paramterization schemes. In principle, anyone can download and compile the code, even with GNU compilers. As with any large and complex code base, it's entirely possible that there are inadvertent coding errors that can lead to incorrect results under some circumstances, but the results are close enough to not be obvious. In fact, I'm aware of instances of exactly this happening, where there were coding errors, but the results were close enough that it took a long time for someone to catch the error.. When the models are wrong, that's a much more likely explanation than Mr. Khallow's conspiracy.
I'm done with this discussion. Perhaps I'll speak up next time there's a climate discussion, but I see no point in continuing to engage with someone who posts unfounded conspiracy theories. We're done here.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2023, @04:48AM (2 children)
Is the discussion not going my way somehow? As to the conspiracy, it's pretty damn blatant. For a glaring example [yale.edu], this story complains about the propensity of a large number of people to automatically blame the climate when bad things happen.
A strange obsession to blame extreme flooding on climate change when the real problem is drainage. I'll note that the story then quotes several scientists who confirm that there is indeed a conspiracy of sorts.
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
Numerous cases where researchers complain about various parties eagerly blaming climate change for mostly unrelated problems. There's plenty of evidence for the "conspiracy" if you choose to look.
As I noted in my previous post, another example of this "conspiracy" is the IPCC's inability to consider either effective climate change adaptation or strategies to deal with warming above above 2 C. Basically, when it comes to considering humanity's response to climate change, all they can do is portray climate change as a huge, near future threat and advocate for radical decarbonization. Well, the world isn't heading that way so why won't they think about more likely scenarios/strategies of coping and recovery?
Finally, there's the watershed event Climategate [wikipedia.org] which among other things shows several examples of deception (for example, the "hiding the decline" [climateaudit.org] thing where tree ring data was cut off in 1960 and some tricks used to hide that it had been ended there) and hypocrisy (saying different things in private than public, several examples cited in the second link of this paragraph), including a bit of genuine conspiracy - Dr. Phil Jones illegally blocking a UK FOIA request. A lot of the present day resistance to climate change action comes from back then - a display of good reasons not to trust climate research.
I think a tell is the widespread need to blame outside forces for the failure of advocacy of climate change advocacy. On SN, it is common to allege that climate change skepticism is solely due to Big Oil/fossil fuel propaganda or the like. They have yet to find propaganda worthy of a industry with trillions of dollars in revenue.
My take is that we're past peak climate change. So much of what goes on now is just ridiculous showboating like the Greta Thunberg phenomenon of a few years back (the Joan of Arc fallacy) or the recent pretense to ban internal combustion engines - we'll see if anyone actually follows through on that and how well they fare compared to those who don't attempt economic suicide.
(Score: 1) by dalek on Saturday June 03 2023, @10:23AM (1 child)
Since you wrote a long post, I figured I'd take a look and see what it's about.
Nothing you've said is actually about the climate models. You criticized climate models, then didn't discuss them in any of the examples you presented. I just want to point that out. Also, Climategate has been pretty much debunked.
The bulk of what you've said is that modifying the environment in other ways and building in disaster-prone areas contributes a lot to really expensive disasters. But there's no conspiracy to suppress this. Hurricane experts attribute most of the rise in really expensive disasters to building along the coasts in areas that are prone to storm surge. Wildfire experts readily criticize fire suppression policies like the 10 AM policy that the USFS once had as being a factor in the recent major wildfires. Engineers readily state that river engineering practices like building artificial levees have contributed to flooding disasters.
Take levees for example: https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/610945127/levees-make-mississippi-river-floods-worse-but-we-keep-building-them [npr.org]
Or hurricanes: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/hurricanes-gotten-destructive-rcna100 [nbcnews.com]
Or fire suppression: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/good-fire-bad-fire-indigenous-practice-may-key-preventing-wildfires [nationalgeographic.com]
Since the experts readily implicate these other factors that you're talking about, we can safely conclude that there is no conspiracy at all, and there isn't large scale misrepresentation of climate change hazards.
Because there's no evidence of this conspiracy, there really is no reason to continue this discussion.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2023, @11:56AM
I already addressed said climate models earlier. You mentioned conspiracies, so I mentioned conspiracies, including a fair number of researchers who believe in them with good reason as well as a host of other longstanding problems associated with that. And when there's such widespread and consistent problems with areas that are much less complex than climate models, including data collection and interpretation BTW, then that indicates similar problems with the stuff that is too complex.
When you "debunk" problems rather than address them, you end up with more problems - like losing a lot of credibility. All the stuff I mentioned is still there, no matter how debunked people think it is. And it shows a bad faith process that is much more willing to "debunk" criticism than to fix problems that criticism showed.