'Hurricane Sandy: The next climate wake-up call?'

[The_Global_Warmer]

Here ya go.

http://marine.rutger...L051000_pub.pdf

Here are her other resources, including videos of the presentations she's given recently on it: http://marine.rutger...pubs_10-05.html

Edit: This may also be of interest (though I have not read it) - http://marine.rutger...009GL037274.pdf

As always Dr. Francis is on the right path. Besides the logical common sense approach to this given what we know about weather the evidence(PHYSICAL EVIDENCE) is over-whelming.

And I read again the incredible amount of doubt casted by folks who "believe" the AMO does insert significant, strong, large something, even though this area of study pertaining to AGW has very conclusive physical evidence of it's existence and high statistical probability of it happening far higher than anything about the AMO.

We can't tell how it exactly interacts with the other players in the Earth's climate game, nor what is amplified and when but we do know it exists physically and since we know where it's mechanism of action comes from(it's mechanism of action is increased radiative forcing causing increased snow and ice loss causing increasing energy uptake causing AA warming and we have a real substantial cause and effect of a change in our sensible weather patterns because the Earth's climate has shifted.

Since the late

1980s when rapid ice loss and enhanced warming began,

poleward thickness differences have decreased in all seasons,

especially during fall and winter (10% with > 95% confidence

in fall trend).

The steady northward progression of ridge peaks supports

the hypothesis that AA is contributing to ridge elongation;

confidence in these trends exceeds 99%.

While the significance of the trends in ridge points or

wave amplitude at any one longitude often falls short of a

90% confidence level (marked with red asterisks), the probability

is near zero (p < 105) that the population of positive

trends in ridging and amplitudes for all longitudes can be

random.

Figure 1. Seasonal anomalies in 1000-500 hPa thicknesses (m) north of 40N during 2000–2010 relative to 1970–1999:

(a) autumn (OND), ( winter (JFM), © spring (AMJ), and (d) summer (JAS). White asterisks indicate significance with

p < 0.05. Data are from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis.

3. Conclusions

[14] In summary, the observational analysis presented in

this study provides evidence supporting two hypothesized

mechanisms by which Arctic amplification – enhanced Arctic

warming relative to that in mid-latitudes – may cause more

persistent weather patterns in mid-latitudes that can lead to

extreme weather. One effect is a reduced poleward gradient

in 1000-500 hPa thicknesses, which weakens the zonal

upper-level flow. According to Rossby wave theory, a

weaker flow slows the eastward wave progression and tends

to follow a higher amplitude trajectory, resulting in slower

moving circulation systems. More prolonged weather conditions

enhance the probability for extreme weather due to

drought, flooding, cold spells, and heat waves. The second

effect is a northward elongation of ridge peaks in 500 hPa

waves, which amplifies the flow trajectory and further

exacerbates the increased probability of slow-moving

weather patterns. While Arctic amplification during autumn

and winter is largely driven by sea-ice loss and the subsequent

transfer of additional energy from the ocean into the

high-latitude atmosphere, the increasing tendency for highamplitude

patterns in summer is consistent with enhanced

warming over high-latitude land caused by earlier snow melt

and drying of the soil. Enhanced 500-hPa ridging observed

over the eastern N. Atlantic is consistent with more persistent

high surface pressure over western Europe. This effect has

been implicated as contributing to record heat waves in Europe

during recent summers [Jaeger and Seneviratne, 2011].

[15] Can the persistent weather conditions associated with

recent severe events such as the snowy winters of 2009/2010

and 2010/2011 in the eastern U.S. and Europe, the historic

drought and heat-wave in Texas during summer 2011, or

record-breaking rains in the northeast U.S. of summer 2011

be attributed to enhanced high-latitude warming? Particular

causes are difficult to implicate, but these sorts of occurrences

are consistent with the analysis and mechanism presented

in this study. As the Arctic sea-ice cover continues to

disappear and the snow cover melts ever earlier over vast

regions of Eurasia and North America [brown et al., 2010],

it is expected that large-scale circulation patterns throughout

the northern hemisphere will become increasingly influenced

by Arctic Amplification. Gradual warming of the globe may

not be noticed by most, but everyone – either directly or

indirectly – will be affected to some degree by changes in the

frequency and intensity of extreme weather events as greenhouse

gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. Further

research will elucidate the types, locations, timing, and

character of the weather changes, which will provide valuable

guidance to decision-makers in vulnerable regions.

[csnavywx]

Great article on the AMO and what it's not:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/amo/

[TerryM]

Great article on the AMO and what it's not:

http://tamino.wordpr...2011/01/30/amo/

Great Link!

Terry

[The_Global_Warmer]

Great article on the AMO and what it's not:

http://tamino.wordpr...2011/01/30/amo/

Great Link!

Terry

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/decadal-variations-and-amo-part-i/

The fact that the AMO lags the GISS temperature record obviously means "both are driven by another force like the earth's energy balance, the sun, GHGs, pretty much put's a damper on how much of an impact the AMO has if it is even some independent phenomenon because unlike the great work by Dr. Francis and others, we have absolutely nothing on the "AMO" bringing the same kind of data or "evidence".

Even further:

If using the entire "AMO" region. It accounts for roughly 8 percent of the Earth's surface or 1/12th or so of the Earth's surface.

If we just focus on the Northern part of the "AMO" region it's down to 2-3% of the Earths' surface. Similar to the arctic region. But people who champion the AMO as a force in our climate system are far more skeptical that the arctic region is having an impact, like an impact at all of substance. Yet the energy differences coming from both regions are night and day with the arctic region making a far bigger impact.

So it just doesn't make much sense how anyone can "believe" and be so confident in the major impact of the AMO but qquestion far more vigorously or dismiss the work of Dr. Francis and others when they have brought FAR FARRRR more to the table to back their claims.

[tacoman25]

Friv, I haven't seen anyone arguing that the AMO is a major force in the global climate system. However, there is plenty of evidence that it has a significant affect on the Arctic, as well as East Coast tropical systems.

[Snow_Miser]

Friv, I haven't seen anyone arguing that the AMO is a major force in the global climate system. However, there is plenty of evidence that it has a significant affect on the Arctic, as well as East Coast tropical systems.

A decrease in albedo in the Arctic from the positive phase of the AMO would be a climate forcing. How much of a forcing though, and how much this forcing impacts the Global Climate is yet to be seen. We should have a better grasp on how big the AMO effect is when it starts to go into it's negative phase over the next decade or two.

[ORH_wxman]

Friv, I haven't seen anyone arguing that the AMO is a major force in the global climate system. However, there is plenty of evidence that it has a significant affect on the Arctic, as well as East Coast tropical systems.

This is the biggest problem with climate science discussion in general. The minute somebody brings up any factor that may go into our climate, some people automatically go into meltdown mode thinking that we are claiming AGW doesn't exist all of the sudden or it has no impact.

When we are discussing hurricanes in the Atlantic, and blocking patterns in the arctic, such natural oscillations like the AO/NAO are very relevant.

[tacoman25]

This is the biggest problem with climate science discussion in general. The minute somebody brings up any factor that may go into our climate, some people automatically go into meltdown mode thinking that we are claiming AGW doesn't exist all of the sudden or it has no impact.

When we are discussing hurricanes in the Atlantic, and blocking patterns in the arctic, such natural oscillations like the AO/NAO are very relevant.

Yes. It's frustrating, because it makes it very hard to have reasonable discussion. Would be nice if said people were able to view the issue with a bit more balance and nuance.

[TerryM]

This is the biggest problem with climate science discussion in general. The minute somebody brings up any factor that may go into our climate, some people automatically go into meltdown mode thinking that we are claiming AGW doesn't exist all of the sudden or it has no impact.

When we are discussing hurricanes in the Atlantic, and blocking patterns in the arctic, such natural oscillations like the AO/NAO are very relevant.

True - but hardly to the point. Taco was specifically referencing AMO, which you had just yesterday said was outside this thread's topic.

The AMO ...

Regardless, that isn't really the topic in this thread. Attribution of AGW to weather events like big storms or blocking patterns that cause them is.

Terry

[ORH_wxman]

True - but hardly to the point. Taco was specifically referencing AMO, which you had just yesterday said was outside this thread's topic.

The AMO ...

Regardless, that isn't really the topic in this thread. Attribution of AGW to weather events like big storms or blocking patterns that cause them is.

Terry

I didn't want to turn this thread into another discussion about the arctic and AMO...but it seems most threads head that direction these days. The AMO is important for hurricane attribution studies in the Atlantic. There has been a very clear oscillation in Atlantic hurricane activity that seem to have peaks every 60 years or so. A point that was brought up earlier in this thread when some were asking about frequency of hurricanes along the east coast.

[tacoman25]

True - but hardly to the point. Taco was specifically referencing AMO, which you had just yesterday said was outside this thread's topic.

The AMO ...

Regardless, that isn't really the topic in this thread. Attribution of AGW to weather events like big storms or blocking patterns that cause them is.

Terry

I was responding to what Friv said. Look at the chain of posts leading up to what I posted.

[TerryM]

I didn't want to turn this thread into another discussion about the arctic and AMO...but it seems most threads head that direction these days. The AMO is important for hurricane attribution studies in the Atlantic. There has been a very clear oscillation in Atlantic hurricane activity that seem to have peaks every 60 years or so. A point that was brought up earlier in this thread when some were asking about frequency of hurricanes along the east coast.

Don't put a periodicity on the AMO of it will bite you.

Terry

[Amped]

As for the formation of Sandy it'self, that is rather normal. In fact a storm usually develops in the Carribien between Oct15th and Oct30th every year.

The blocking pattern is unusual though, the fact that none of these storms ever end up in NJ moving 270 says something about the rarity of the blocking. If the blocking can be linked to sea ice melt you'd have a good case for this one or at least a much better one than Katrina.

[WXheights]

Percentages of natural variation AO, NAO, recent sea ice melt influence % intertwine large enough to make the statement accurately that some portion of AGW contributed Sandy. Dismissing the connection is likely "more outrageous" than its opposite. I'm pretty confident that in the next year few years, we'll have a better look on the %'s. As far ramifications of certain parameters of Sandy - extra's concerning sea level rise due glacial melt, and what many miss -- "thermal expansion" can certainly be connected up with AGW.

[tacoman25]

Percentages of natural variation AO, NAO, recent sea ice melt influence % intertwine large enough to make the statement accurately that some portion of AGW contributed Sandy. Dismissing the connection is likely "more outrageous" than its opposite. I'm pretty confident that in the next year few years, we'll have a better look on the %'s. As far ramifications of certain parameters of Sandy - extra's concerning sea level rise due glacial melt, and what many miss -- "thermal expansion" can certainly be connected up with AGW.

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with this due to lack of evidence. There are only unproven theories about the AO/NAO being influenced by sea ice melt, and from what I've seen they pertain more to winter than fall. So I think what most people can agree on is that the main influence on Sandy's impact by AGW is higher sea levels. It is likely that Sandy would have still been a major disaster regardless, but the higher sea levels almost certainly worsened it to some degree.

[Vergent]

Thus, all major components of this superstorm show the signature of human-induced climate change to varying degrees, and without global warming the chance of the three occurring together like this would have a probability of about zero. So, let's make it simple, and just say climate change caused this storm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-currier/climate-change_b_2032363.html

[WeatherRusty]

http://www.huffingto..._b_2032363.html

Good article.

Forget about proving direct causation. It can not be done as an outgrowth or emergent property of a complex system. That's why we must turn to theory and physics as a means for determining what to expect, and then look to the real world for statistical confirmation of theory.

Theoretical expectations are that as the climate is actively warming the production of entropy is increased. This means a more turbulent and chaotic system as the system becomes more efficient at smoothing out differences.

[tacoman25]

http://www.huffingto..._b_2032363.html

Too bad weather and climate are not so simple.

If climate change was responsible for Sandy, then storms like Sandy should be becoming more common. There should be a long term trend demonstrating this. There is not.

I've said it before: if you look for something hard enough, you will find it. If you want to find a connection/causation from AGW, you eventually will. But I could use the same logic they do in that article to link ANY weather to climate change.

The only reason people are trying so hard with Sandy is because it was such a big deal.

[WeatherRusty]

Too bad weather and climate are not so simple.

If climate change was responsible for Sandy, then storms like Sandy should be becoming more common. There should be a long term trend demonstrating this. There is not.

I've said it before: if you look for something hard enough, you will find it. If you want to find a connection/causation from AGW, you eventually will. But I could use the same logic they do in that article to link ANY weather to climate change.

The only reason people are trying so hard with Sandy is because it was such a big deal.

And you would be correct. The weather we get is what is supported by the current climate.

[The_Global_Warmer]

This is where a big mis understanding comes to play.

The first paper posted b

[tacoman25]

We've been over this. It's like assigning god-like attributes to AGW...this mysterious force that influences everything, though exactly how and to what degree we aren't sure. The same could be said of chaos theory - one small event in a random place could have far-reaching affects, but it would be almost impossible to trace back to the source or know what would have happened otherwise.

AGW may in some way have some sort of affect on all sorts of weather to a certain degree, but in a general sense, it doesn't significantly change the fundamental factors that create the weather and events we see every day. And if we don't see some sort of longterm trend that shows a possible correlation to AGW, then it is highly unlikely AGW played much of a role in that weather event occurring.

Again.

[skierinvermont]

But again we have to be careful not to draw to large of conclusions from one location. Sure, snowfall overall in NYC has gone down in November, but if it can still snow in late October/early November in NYC, than surely the climate is still cold enough for November snows to be more common than they have the past few decades, given the right patterns.

In addition, one could look at another city like Seattle, where they had major and unusual Arctic events with snowfall in November in a couple recent years, and conclude that the climate is becoming more conducive to earlier snowfalls there. But it's just too small of a sample size.

In the case of NYC, the sample size is more than large enough. There has been a large statistically significant decline in November snowfall over a 100+ year period.

[The_Global_Warmer]

This is why the AMO issue get's brought up so much.

the AMO is thrown out as 30% or so the cause of the ice decline. Some even go further than that. It is also attributed to many other things.

Some even attribute it as some strong force on global temps, arctic temps, and different regions of the Earth.

It's also brought up how the AMO influences hurricanes or precipitation averages in South Central Florida.

That is all nice but these are correlations.

Dr. Francis work is causative, proven to be non-random happening. We have physical evidence it's real. We even have ways to discern to a certain degree of it's influence.

Can we prove it's the reason Sandy existed? No. Can we show within a close proximity how much it effected Sandy? No.

Can we prove that this increases the chances for Sandy's parameter's to be met? Yep. This isn't debatable.

If you want to debate if GHG warming has caused the ice loss go for it, I guess that would be your only way out, you would have to tie the physical proven changes to another cause.

The other major change is the Summer pattern and the -NAO for the last 6 years. We also have nothing like this in our record books either, I haven't the direct physical cause of it like the papers discussed in this thread.

But I would think any rational person would see that as a major red flag that the changes go together with the overall changes we have seen.

[FPizz]

Again.

Amen!

[WeatherRusty]

Again.

Again, the weather we get in a world 0.8C warmer than 100 years ago will not be the same weather we would experience absent that warming. As a general rule, things only occur given the exact time and set of conditions they happen within. If a pitcher in baseball gives up a home run, it can be said that if he had thrown the pitch one second before or after he did, that home run would not have occurred. Maybe a different home run would have happened, or the batter could have swung and missed....everything changes.

Due to physics, it is expected that as the climate warms the weather should become more variable as entropy production is enhanced. This expectation does not just fall out of the sky.

[tacoman25]

Again, the weather we get in a world 0.8C warmer than 100 years ago will not be the same weather we would experience absent that warming. As a general rule, things only occur given the exact time and set of conditions they happen within. If a pitcher in baseball gives up a home run, it can be said that if he had thrown the pitch one second before or after he did, that home run would not have occurred. Maybe a different home run would have happened, or the batter could have swung and missed....everything changes.

Due to physics, it is expected that as the climate warms the weather should become more variable as entropy production is enhanced. This expectation does not just fall out of the sky.

To the first bolded part: yes, the weather will be a little warmer overall.

To the second: once again a vague concept similar to chaos theory. You can not define how exactly AGW will affect the weather. Therefore, we must look at longterm trends that correspond with AGW.

[The_Global_Warmer]

Again, the weather we get in a world 0.8C warmer than 100 years ago will not be the same weather we would experience absent that warming. As a general rule, things only occur given the exact time and set of conditions they happen within. If a pitcher in baseball gives up a home run, it can be said that if he had thrown the pitch one second before or after he did, that home run would not have occurred. Maybe a different home run would have happened, or the batter could have swung and missed....everything changes.

Due to physics, it is expected that as the climate warms the weather should become more variable as entropy production is enhanced. This expectation does not just fall out of the sky.

It's more than that. Mechanisms of actions and the physical parameters they exist in are not balanced. Variability plays a big role.

That 0.8C, even if we use global as the main parameter, which we both know is wrong. While the butterfly effect is real. Things everywhere matter. Obviously things directly related to said event matter more. Especially ones that enhance, influence said event directly through whatever means they do.

The changes in the arctic region that have shown to effect October the most or some period around that time of whatever length where energy uptake has ended or is ending not just in the highest regions of the arctic but South of that as well. We know what is happening. Over the 2002-2011 period we see H5 heights out of whack, in one October of course the balance is more even but this shows the overall imbalance vs the past very well.

But this also shows how crazy 2012 has been.

GISSTEMP for OCT from 2002-2012 by Latitude. Pretty clear situation by looking at that. that is a clean and large imbalance.

The ground work for this starts well before the min. And we have been using 2002 as the reference point to start analyzing the big pattern changes in October. Ironically 2002 is the last year before the bottom drops out within 2 years for all of these graphs. Which only give us an idea of a block of time when surface albedo in the arctic region not only changed they changed dramatically over a short period of time.

Considering this albedo change was needed for the mechanism of action of what is being observed to take place, it's hardly a coincidence.

This covers 60-90N for the entire month of October. and 0-360E so not just the hot spots. Extremely impressive. awesome display of the heat being released. We know in October at 80N, solar isn't doing this.

[WeatherRusty]

To the first bolded part: yes, the weather will be a little warmer overall.

To the second: once again a vague concept similar to chaos theory. You can not define how exactly AGW will affect the weather. Therefore, we must look at longterm trends that correspond with AGW.

Of course you are correct, but this is a macro scale generalization of theory. What it implies is that the general circulation will become more efficient at dissipating thermal differences as the climate is actively warming. This physics has some predictive value. It helps explain the generation of order out of chaos, why there are galaxies, stars and planets and the eddies in planetary atmospheres we refer to as storms. Entropy production is a fundamental concept in physics. I am not saying that this is THE reason for Sandy, only that our weather should vary from what we consider normal as the world actively warms.

[skierinvermont]

FWIW I thought the Huffpo piece was a generally poor simplistic and over the top article.

[Amped]

My concern is if less sea ice mans more blocking in October and more Carribien activity in october, this setup may become more commonMaybe a storm backs into the Northeast coast once every 20 year instead of once every 300 years. We'll just have to wait another couple decades and see.