Program: The Great Global Warming Swindle

Return of the dust bowl? Climate change set to make the arid southwest even drier

The drought that spawned the great American Dust Bowl of the 1930s may become the new climatic norm for much of the southwestern United States and other subtropical regions of the world. In a report published today, (5april 07) researchers in the United States and Israel project an imminent increase in aridity in subtropical regions over the next century, which will affect several important agricultural regions.

The results indicate that growing drought in the southwest is a problem that is likely to affect agriculture. "This is something that is already under way. It's not an end of the twenty-first century thing where we have the luxury to sit around and wait," says Richard Seager, a climatologist with the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, who led the 13-member research team.

Seager and his colleagues looked at data from a number of computer climate models used in the International Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) most recent report. Under the IPCC's 'business as usual' emission scenario, in which carbon dioxide emissions increase until mid-century and level off at around 720 parts per million by 2100, these models had already predicted a general increase in global mean temperature and in the likelihood of droughts over the twenty-first century. But Seager's team delved deeper, to see how arid the subtropical regions are likely to become.

They focused specifically on the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, because those areas are already showing signs of drying. But their findings are also applicable to the arid and semi-arid regions of southern Europe, Mediterranean northern Africa and the Middle East.

The result, published in Science1, shows a reduction in moisture in these areas — on the order of 15% over the next two or three decades, says Seager. Moisture is defined as the mean annual rainfall minus the amount of water expected to be lost to evaporation, a measure that reflects the amount of water useful for agriculture.

"It's important to remember that for the Dust Bowl, the precipitation over the western United States was only about 15% less than normal — so you don't need a lot," says Seager.

Seager points out that this does not mean that the southwest will necessarily relive the disastrous effects of the 1930s drought. The catastrophic dust storms of the Dirty Thirties were more the result of poor farming practice and land management, he says, than the drought alone.

Winds of change

The study attributes the increased aridity to the poleward expansion of the Hadley cell, an atmospheric circulation system that today transports moist, warm air from the equator to the northern and southern mid-latitudes. The result is an expansion of subtropical arid regions, and a poleward push of the rain bands that provide precipitation in the higher latitudes. "This is not part of a regional peculiarity," says Seager, "but part of a hemispheric pattern."

Lending credence to Seager's study is evidence that the Hadley cell is already expanding2.

"This is a robust prediction that's been backed by observation," says Dennis Hartmann, a climatologist in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. "It seems like a reasonable scenario for the future."

The implications for such a drying are far-reaching. California, for instance, accounts for approximately 16% of all US agricultural exports. Seager suggests that North American farmers need to rethink certain agricultural practices, including adopting more water-efficient irrigation systems such as those being used in Israel.

And, where there are water shortages, there is also the potential for political conflict. "As Mark Twain wrote, 'Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over'," says Seager. Mexico depends on water originating from the Colorado River, he notes, whereas Iraq and Syria depend on the waters of the Euphrates, which originate in Turkey. Cross-border conflicts are likely to arise as these streams of water dry up

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Hot times in the Solar System
The warming of other solar bodies has been seized upon by climate sceptics; but oh how wrong they are, says Oliver Morton.

The sceptical 'argument' — using the word loosely — in question is that global warming on Earth should be seen as a natural, as opposed to anthropogenic, phenomenon because other planets and moons in the Solar System are getting warmer, too (which, indeed, they are). Since what the planets have in common is the Sun, they say, it must thus be the Sun that is driving the warming.

This idea, which I remember first coming across when there were reports of climate change on Mars some years back, regained a certain prominence in February when, a propos nothing much at all, National Geographic's website dredged up the belief of a Russian astronomer, Habibullo Abdussamatov, that the warming on Mars shows that the Sun is driving climate change on Earth.

This not-really-news (no mention of new observations or publications) was seized on by columnists in a few right-wing papers and bundled together with other reports of climate change throughout the Solar System.

Lorne Gunter, in the National Post, pointed to warmings on Pluto, Neptune's moon Triton, Jupiter and Mars, promising his readers oh-so-wryly that he hadn't left his SUV idling on any of these planets or moons (if you can face it, you can find this article archived under 'Fact of the Day' on the web pages of the US Senate's Environment and Public Works committee, thanks to the committee's ranking minority member, James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma)).

Former Senator for Tennessee and possible Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson expanded on this theme on a radio programme a few days later. In an unexpected demonstration of astronomical acumen he referred to change on "planets, dwarf planets and moons", showing that he — or someone — paid enough attention to such matters to have noticed the recent reclassification of Pluto. Unfortunately, he rather undermined the effect by then comparing, absurdly, the treatment of today's climate sceptics to the inquisition's treatment of Galileo.

Solar spin. Before we take a quick spin around the Solar System looking at these ideas, it is worth noting that the said system contains, in all, ten bodies with atmospheres thick enough to provide something we might call a climate. If these ten climates are all subject to a little natural variation, as the climate on Earth is, then finding that half of them are showing some warming at any given time is hardly surprising.

It is also worth noting that the Sun's radiance is measured from Earth orbit, and these records do not show it increasing over the past few decades, except with the regular rise and fall of the solar cycle. [ presumably the 11 year cycle]. This second fact, you might think, should be enough to scupper the theory about system-wide solar warming on its own; strangely it is notably absent from accounts of the matter.

Moving on to the particulars, in the cases of Pluto and Triton, Neptune's largest moon, the observed warming is due to their current orientation to and distance from the Sun — technically known as summer.

Pluto was closest to the Sun in 1989 and is now moving away, but it is still relatively close. It's not that surprising for the greatest warmth to come a little after the closest approach, any more than it is for afternoons to be warmer than noons. And Triton's orbit is giving its southern hemisphere a particularly hot summer, boiling off frozen material from the southern pole and thickening the atmosphere, keeping in even more heat.

On Jupiter, things are a little different. The patterns of circulation seem to be changing, such that heat at the equator is stuck there, and higher latitudes are getting a little cooler.

On Mars, the warming seems to be down to dust blowing around and uncovering big patches of black basaltic rock that heat up in the day (see 'Mars hots up'). No change in sunshine required.

To take this disparate hodge-podge of phenomena and try to construct a theory of solar influence from it is the sort of foolishness people get driven to when desperate to support a failed theory, or just for a chance to muddy the waters.

The weather elsewhere. What's saddening is that people should miss what these various phenomena really have in common — their explicability. They show that our ideas of atmospheric physics are applicable and useful on bodies that range from the tiny (Pluto, the atmosphere of which is hardly worth mentioning) to the gigantic (Jupiter, the atmosphere of which outweighs a hundred solid Earths).

And computer models based on the ones used to study the climate on Earth provide results even when applied to the hugely different conditions on Mars. That is truly impressive.

So what these disparate observations actually tell us is that the scientific community — the scientific community that enjoys a firm consensus on the causes of Earthly climatic change — has a fairly impressive grasp of the fundamentals of how weather works elsewhere, as well. It's a rather inspiring insight. But it is not the lesson that climate sceptics want their readers to learn

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BradK said:

At this point in the program, there is alot of discussion about using global warming as a way to continue the subjucation of the world's poorest people.

I like the points they make;

1. Only use of solar power - can't power industry like that.
2. The fact that wood fires cause respitory diseases and causes greatly dimiinshed life expectancy.

Very interesting

Brad

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websman said:

Global warming is a fraud and Al Gore is an idiot....

I've been noticing my rights slipping away. America is no longer a free country. I'm immigrating to Australia as soon as possible...but I need a job.

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websman said:

I've been noticing my rights slipping away. America is no longer a free country. I'm immigrating to Australia as soon as possible...but I need a job.

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• "If you want to blame global warming for these weather extremes, show me the formula and I'll agree with you, but no one's got the formula to show the correlation between weather extremes and global warming.
• "The River Thames froze up for six weeks and dried up for six weeks in the early centuries and there was no industrial revolution back then," he said.
• He said the sun started to warm up in 2009, and in 2010 there were floods, blizzards, earthquakes and volcanic explosions around the world.
• "If you have high sun spot activity, you find you get high rainfall, no drought conditions," Mr Walker said.

Whiskers said:

I whole heartedly agree with Hayden Walker on this. It may have been discussed earlier, but certainly worth bumping again to stimulate more rational thinking.



From an article published in the Northern Star, March 2011;

• "If you want to blame global warming for these weather extremes, show me the formula and I'll agree with you, but no one's got the formula to show the correlation between weather extremes and global warming.
• "The River Thames froze up for six weeks and dried up for six weeks in the early centuries and there was no industrial revolution back then," he said.
• He said the sun started to warm up in 2009, and in 2010 there were floods, blizzards, earthquakes and volcanic explosions around the world.
• "If you have high sun spot activity, you find you get high rainfall, no drought conditions," Mr Walker said.

Haven't we had more severe sunspot activity of late? Soo... expect more wet and extreme weather.

The other factor that has an influence on sunspot and solar flare activity is the planetary (gravitational) cycles, ie how and when they line up. Walker understands this, but as yet (as far as I know) does not have a precise formula for predicting this.

Imo his methodology is much closer to understanding the cause and consequently the longer term weather outlook than many others who just monitor cycles and patterns here on earth.

http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2011/03/10/hayden-walker-weather-man-cool-on-warming/

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medicowallet said:

No,

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our sunspot activity has ramped up from its minimum, but is still low... which

probably explains the cooling over the past 10 years.

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Whiskers said:

no what? Are you still bent on dissagreeing with me :.



Well, yes... I thought that much was self evident for anyone with an open mind.

It's why the 'movement' has changed from calling it Global Warming to Climate Change and now more emphasis on CO2 or carbon emissions, no doubt because temperatures were flattening off and even declining over the last decade and the 'warming' arguement was not sustainable even with their dodgy data.

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ONE hundred years after Douglas Mawson's first Australian-led Antarctic expedition was almost defeated by thick pack ice, the same problem has stumped those seeking to follow in his wake.

Unusually dense ice floes off the coast of East Antarctica, and particularly Mawson's landing spot of January 1912, Commonwealth Bay, have in recent days repelled private expeditions seeking to commemorate the centenary of the historic event.

Three tourist expeditions have been unable to make planned visits to Mawson's Hut, the timber shack used as a base for the landmark 1911-1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition.

Instead they have been treated to a vast sea of densely compacted ice floes that experienced expeditioners describe as unprecedented in recent history.

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UN climate chief Christiana Figueres calls for global action amid NSW bushfires

The United Nations says the New South Wales bushfires are an example of "the doom and gloom" the world may be facing without vigorous action on climate change.

The executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, says the fires prove the world is "already paying the price of carbon".

"The World Meteorological Organisation has not established the direct link between this wildfire and climate change yet, but what is absolutely clear is that the science is telling us there are increasing heatwaves in Asia, Europe and Australia," she told CNN.

"These [heatwaves] will continue. They will continue in their intensity and in their frequency."

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