Seattle Times: "The truth about global warming"

I can’t resist adding my bit to this discussion. I talked to the local National Weather Service Science Officer (Brad Colman) about some of the issues I saw raised in this series of posts.

Regarding how early climate models used in the 1970’s predicted a cooling trend: these earlier models were very crude by current standards and did not include effects from GH gases. Current models are hugely improved and include GH gas effects.

Both the early models and current models have been tested on past climate trends. The early models perform poorly in these tests. Current models perform well in these tests.

Individual glaciers such as those at Glacier Bay are poor indicators of climate trends because there are many other factors that influence their advance or recession. Apparently the Taku Glacier near Juneau is currently advancing into timber. What is important is the overall loss of snow and ice and recession of the overwhelming majority of glaciers.

My own comment about the PDO. This is a phenomenon of shorter time and geographic scale than the global climate trend under discussion.

Brad allowed me to browse a draft of the upcoming 4th IPCC report (unfortunately not yet available to the public but I hope so soon). I think this report is the best, credible scientific information available on the subject. I do not believe the authors are invested in a particular outcome of the research. The message of the 15 page summary is clear: GH gases associated with human activities are relatively rapidly warming the planet.

Some factors such as aerosols or cloud properties are acknowledged to produce cooling effects (dimming?) but the warming influences of GH gases are dominant.

The evidence is before us: decreasing Arctic sea ice, glacial recession, permafrost melting, warming global surface and ocean temperatures, etc.

It seems to me that to continue to argue that global warming isn’t occurring, and I am just gonna go skiing, is putting one’s head in the sand. We also can’t go back to living in caves. Granted the Kyoto Protocal even if completely adopted will have little effect.

The US (that’s all of us folks) is the world’s leading producer of GH gases (NPR, 25 April 2006). We need government leaders that are willing to help us all begin to take collective action to minimize future disruptions on a local, national and global scale.

Wow my longest TAY post ever.

Here are some excerpts from today's front page article in the Seattle Times:

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews...utureweather05m.html

An even grayer Seattle from global warming?

For those harboring the guilty hope that global warming will transform Seattle into a sun lovers' paradise on par with the Côte d'Azur, meteorologist Cliff Mass has some bad news: It might actually get cloudier.

Mass and his colleagues at the University of Washington recently completed the most detailed computer simulation ever conducted of the region's future weather. Among the surprises was a big boost in cloud cover in March, April and May.

"The spring is going to be gunkier — if you believe this — under global warming," he said.

The model also predicts that the number of summer days when temperatures soar into the 90s will more than triple before the end of the century, if greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and industry continue unabated.

[...]

"It's going to warm up pretty much everywhere, but some places are going to warm up a lot more than others — and that has all kinds of implications," Mass said.
 
While earlier forecasts predicted significant declines in snowpack, the new analysis shows that the most intense warming will occur on the windward slopes of the Cascade and Olympic mountains, with the biggest spikes coming in the spring. By 2090, mountain temperatures could rise 10 degrees or more, with snowpacks reduced to about 20 percent of current levels.

[...]

Earlier forecasts relied primarily on global climate models, which give a planetary view of the way temperatures will rise as global warming continues. But those models lack any detail about the mountains and inland waters that play such an important role in local weather.

So, using a global model as a starting point, Mass fine-tuned those projections with a high-resolution regional model that can distinguish topographical features down to a scale of a few miles.

"If you're going to play the game around here, you've got to have the resolution to see local terrain," he said.

Even with the university's enormous data-processing capacity, it took two months of continuous computer runs to simulate each decade into the future. The researchers also factored in things such as changes in soil temperature, which can affect weather.

[...]

The extreme heating on mountain slopes is probably the result of a feedback loop that kicks in as snow melts, Mass said. While snow reflects sunlight, bare ground absorbs it. So as snow disappears, the ground gets warmer, which accelerates the melting and leads to more heat absorption.

Total precipitation doesn't change much across the region, according to the model. But without a snowpack to hold moisture and slowly release it in spring, the region could be facing pronounced dry spells.

"When the precipitation falls as rain, unless you have a massive reservoir to recover it all, it just runs off," said Bob Burns, deputy director of the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks.

That was a good article. I also enjoyed reading the article inside of the paper about scientists who disagree with global warming enthusiasts' theories.

That was a good article. I also enjoyed reading the article inside of the paper about scientists who disagree with global warming enthusiasts' theories.

Yes, the Bill Gray article in particular.


Who is Bill Gray?

Bill Gray of the atmospheric-science
department at Colorado State University
calls the scientific "consensus" on global
warming "one of the greatest hoaxes
ever perpetrated on the American people."

Who is Bill Gray?

Bill Gray of the atmospheric-science
department at Colorado State University
calls the scientific "consensus" on global
warming "one of the greatest hoaxes
ever perpetrated on the American people."

Yes, it was an interesting article.

I actually felt that Bill Gray didn't present a very good face for global warming skeptics, especially when reading this article alongside the one about the U.W. computer study directed by Cliff Mass. Bill Gray is described several times as disparaging the use of computer models for weather forecasting. Next to him (in the other article) you have Cliff Mass, who is one of the foremost experts on modeling in the Northwest. My layman's impression is that Northwest weather forecasting has gotten vastly more accurate in the past few years, and the reason is--you guessed it--the use of computer models.

From this admittedly layman's point of view, Bill Gray came across as sort of a cranky dinosaur.

Way to go - the thread lives on!!

Interesting and amusing to see a simultaneous and separate mention of Cliff Mass in the TRs , with multiple mentions of how accurate his (computer model assisted) forecasts are...