Monday, January 6, 2014

The Damaged Global Climate System

A blogger in the East (NC) posted:
"Good grief, it's like talking to a freaking wall!

...Global warming is actually expected to increase “heavy precipitation in winter storms,” and for the northern hemisphere, there is evidence that these storms are already more frequent and intense, according to the draft U.S. National Climate Assessment....

When it’s winter on Earth, it’s also summer on Earth … somewhere else. Thus, allow us to counter anecdotal evidence about cold weather with more anecdotal evidence: It’s blazing hot in Australia, with temperatures, in some regions, set to possibly soar above 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming days....

Also see this."
(The Mills River Progressive, "Earth to Scientific Illiterates: Winter Does NOT Mean No Global Warming!"). That is a very timely and very astute observation.

It is a subject Dredd Blog has also alluded to (Snowpocalypse Goes Up & Comes Down) at similar times and/or events.

The reality of the arctic cold incursion is that we have yet another indicator of a damaged global climate system:
The strife caused by the extreme weather is being blamed on a “polar vortex", a spinning wind that in normal years has a beneficial effect in that it keeps sub-zero air trapped above the North Pole. A weakened polar vortex has allowed the trapped air to spill out of the Arctic and hurtle south in an anti-clockwise movement across the face of the US.

Just why the polar vortex has proved to be too weak to contain the cold air this winter will be a matter for intense scientific study and debate for some time to come. The phenomenon might in large part be explained by the natural changes in climate that occur in the Arctic in winter, including the North Atlantic Oscillation that has a dominant impact on wind patterns and storm tracks in the region.

But Noaa, a federal agency, has also floated the possibility that a reduction in summer sea ice cover caused by climate change could be a factor behind the weakening of the polar vortex. That would have the paradoxical effect that while Arctic waters are getting warmer, North America experiences much colder snaps such as the present severe weather as a result of Arctic air spilling out from the North Pole and moving south.
(Guardian, emphasis added; cf. NOAA). We have discussed the issue in the sense of systems science in previous posts, pointing out that a system has characteristics:
All single weather events are systemic indicators of the global climate system which any single weather event is an integral part of.

That global climate system which has been damaged by global warming creates our local weather, including every single weather event, therefore all single weather events are part of the global climate system that has been damaged by global warming pollution.

We can only have an impact on our local weather, or on any single weather event, by fixing the global climate system that has been damaged by pollution.
(False Climate Change Meme Infects The President). Reductionist arguments are not the way to deal with systemic problems of a damaged system (Government Climate Change Report - 3).

A competent, world-wide, concerted effort ... in other words a macro response, is what we need to accomplish.

On the lighter side:
Once upon a time the Earth was flat, causing the stars and planets to orbit around it, because it was also the center of the universe.

Weather on the flat Earth was stable, in that, it was always either winter, summer, fall, or spring at the same time on the vast flatness.

Then the Earth was changed into a globe by librul scientists.

So, all those planets went into orbit around stars like our Sun, and now even the stars are no longer orbiting the Earth.

Additionally, ever since the Earth became no longer flat, instead becoming a globe orbiting the Sun, there has been both summer and winter at the same time on Earth.

For example, now as we speak “it” has been threating to become 122 deg. F. (50 deg. C) in Australia, while “it” is super cold at the very same time in the flat lands in the U.S. Midwest.

Libruls have made it difficult for some to “get it” now, because “it” is summer near Antarctica and “it” is winter in Kansas at the same time.

Now, let's get back to the science of the Damaged Global Climate System.

The polar vortex is part of that damaged global system.

The damage at some point is likely to affect all parts of the system in one degree or another.

I am working on a hypothesis that the vortex is becoming unbalanced by the damage to the global system.

That damage causes it to malfunction like a washer or dryer that has all the clothes on one side, so it begins to wobble.

At some point the wobbling can become violent, and at some point even throw off parts of itself.

In this polar vortex case the part of that cold vortex which is thrown off is a spinning cold arctic air mass.

That cold arctic air mass then goes wherever the jet streams guide it.

The absence of an adequate amount of cold arctic air mass may eventually develop, because the cold air mass is being thrown out of the arctic vortex part by part, to end up south of there, then morph into warmer winds.

This is likely to eventually allow more arctic warming due to an insufficient amount of cold arctic air mass to keep the ice caps frozen, which in turn throws off more cold.

Eventually, the ice will be gone and so will the traditional extreme arctic cold.

The next post in this series is here.

Polar vortex:



1 comment: