(SPIEGEL online) – … Das könnte Skeptiker des vom Menschen verursachten Klimawandels bestärken – doch genau davor warnen die Autoren. …

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,663835,00.html

En mi último artículo hable de la inseguridad, de cómo nos está comiendo, avasallando, modificando nuestras rutinas y llegando hasta el punto de que no estamos usando el celular mientras manejamos por miedo a que nos lo roben y no porque es bien peligroso y nos distrae con las consecuencias que eso trae en el manejo; de hecho pienso que las muy interesantes campañas de la Fundación Seguros Caracas y de MOVILNET pidiéndonos que tengamos la cabeza donde es y no en el celular mientras manejamos serían más útiles si cultivaran o impulsaran valores humanos como el respeto a la propiedad privada, a la persona, a las normas que nos hace más falta… Como añoro los 30 años y más de 1200 episodios de Valores Humanos… Pero bueno, continuemos con el desarrollo de los temas nacionales que me ocupan y que hoy es el del agua y la electricidad que están íntimamente ligados por cierto.

Aquí les va el problema a ver qué solución le consiguen, no hay agua porque se fue la luz y no hay luz porque no hay agua… ¿Qué tal? Pues si, como se los digo, no hay agua porque se fue la luz o más bien se ha reducido la capacidad de producción de electricidad del sistema de generación hidroeléctrica del medio y bajo Caroní porque no hay agua suficiente en el rio Caroní por menores precipitaciones y periodos de sequia más largos con altas temperaturas que generan a su vez mayor evaporación en el Guri. Esto en principio se resolvería si empieza a llover, pero no es así, no es tan fácil la cosa.

El tema Guri/Caroní, generación de hidroelectricidad es uno, pero otro es el de la incapacidad y carencia total de previsión de este gobierno y solo de este gobierno (los otros si invirtieron, prueba es Guri, las Macaguas, Caruachi, Planta Centro, Uribante/Caparo y otras) en no continuar con el plan de expansión, mantenimiento y mejora de la infraestructura de generación que tanto EDELCA, como CADAFE y filiales y la EDC tenían o más bien tienen y que no puede detenerse porque el crecimiento poblacional no se detiene, a menos claro que estemos en Japón donde por ahí leí que hasta están prediciendo decrecimiento en su población.

El todo del problema es lo que digo, no se invirtió, no se pensó ni se calculó el impacto del aumento del poder adquisitivo de la población, el crecimiento poblacional y la migración a centros urbanos de 2do y 1er nivel donde aumentó el consumo de electricidad y claro, el de agua también y nos quedamos pensando que el Guri daba para todo eso y más y no es así, nos viene avisando desde hace cási dos años con los apagones, las interrupciones en el sistema interconectado, pero nada, no le paramos y no se nos ocurrió suplir el déficit o por lo menos prever suplirlo con una planta adicional en el centro del país, algo como una expansión de Planta Centro que funcione con gas o carbón u orimulsión, no somos los reyes del gas ahora pues? Pero no, no se nos ocurrió y como ahora resulta que está haciendo más calor, que somos más y tenemos más real, compramos mas luces y ponemos más aires acondicionados y zas… se nos dispara el breaker porque la luz no da pa´tanto y no nos dimos cuenta… Típico…

Con el agua pasa más o menos lo mismo, no nos preocupamos por fomentar su conservación ni por mantener y mejorar la infraestructura de almacenamiento, distribución y bombeo, ni por ejecutar planes efectivos de control de fugas. Es normal y bien triste también saber cuando está llegando el agua a varias de las zonas de nuestras ciudades por la cantidad de botes que hay cuando las bombas están trabajando y por supuesto que así no hay embalse que sea suficiente, ni lluvia que lo reponga. No le han gastado al sistema y el resultado es este, se puso dura la lluvia, hace más calor, hay más gente y upa!!! Ahora nos falta el agua también, bello pues!!!

Pura y simple ineptitud y desidia porque total, ese rollo es de otro y habrá alguien o algo que lo resuelva temporalmente y no permanentemente que es lo que debemos proponernos y seguro que sale un genio oportunista y montan una siembre de arboles de tapara para las totumas que nos receto el ídolo de las masas.

Creo que la solución no es tan complicada, es más bien sencilla y se resuelve en un quinquenio con el uso de algo que nos sobra, billete. Si, billete proveniente de los impuestos que pagamos todos y de los dólares que ingresan por la venta de petróleo. Si solo invirtiéramos eficientemente el 2% del ingreso petrolero y 5% de la captación de impuestos nacionales en desarrollo y mantenimiento de los sistemas de generación eléctrica y de distribución y procesamiento de aguas se nos acabarían los problemas, y si a eso le sumamos un 0,5% del presupuesto nacional en educación para el consumo racional de los recursos, estaríamos hechos.

Ahí se los dejo… y por cierto para mis estimadas lumbreras del liderazgo revolucionario, esto es más fácil y más amigable con el ambiente que montar bancos de plantas eléctricas diesel para generar electricidad en las urbanizaciones y pueblos. Genios ambientales que tenemos aquí en Corpoelec…. Bestias!!!  ¿O será que leyeron que el Ché no usaba medias y era bien cochinote porque bañarse y usar medias era de capitalistas y ahora nos van a forzar esa también?

What follows is a general theory of natural climate variation supported by observation of the changing temperature of the atmosphere and the sea between 1948 and September 2009. This work suggests that strong warming after 1978 is an entirely natural phenomenon.

Imagine a small planet about the size of the Earth orbiting a sun just like our own. The planet has an atmosphere composed of nitrogen (76%), oxygen (23%) and trace gases (1%) of which argon makes up half of that one percent.

Let us further imagine that the sun bombards the Earth with radiation so energetic as to destroy the integrity of nitrogen and oxygen in the planet’s upper atmosphere. The region where this occurs may be called the ‘ionosphere’. When superheated at the highest elevations it can be known as the ‘thermosphere’.  The electrically unbalanced particles of the ionosphere possess negative or a positive polarity. Like iron filings scattered across a piece of paper atop a magnetized iron bar, atmospheric ions orient themselves according to the lines of the planets magnetic field. Rotating with the planet, the ionosphere is a place of constant flux.  Particles are energized on the dayside and dragged into a long tail on the night-side by the pressure of the solar wind, a highly magnetized stream of helium and hydrogen emanating from the sun. There is an exchange of energy between the wind and the ionosphere and particles are accelerated in one direction or the other and re-distributed according to the tension imposed by the constantly changing electromagnetic medium.

As ionized particles radiate energy and cool they will join up with particles of opposite polarity. The junction of one with the other moves the union closer to a ‘neutral’ state.  The orgy of irradiation, excitement, and reorientation, begins anew each day as the sun appears above the horizon. Recombination occurs mainly at night.

Nitrogen requires the most energetic short wave radiation to achieve the ionic state. This energy is available at a higher altitude. Oxygen ions are scarce at altitudes where nitrogen ions are formed because when the music stops, ions of nitrogen grab oxygen partners just as happily as nitrogen partners and there are many more nitrogen partners than oxygen partners.

Where free oxygen ions exist, they do so at a lower level where there is insufficient very short wave radiation to ionize nitrogen.

So, we have two regions of an ionosphere, the lower oxygen rich and the upper oxygen poor and nitrogen rich, ‘ionically’ speaking.

Ions of oxygen will hold hands in groups of three in a molecule called ozone. Although this happens only to a limited extent, it nevertheless creates an ozone rich layer. We call it the stratosphere.

The cumbersome ozone molecule has an ability to trap the relatively long wave radiation of the planet and also some radiation from the sun at the long end of the short wave spectrum.  Consequently this ozone rich layer is warmer than the atmosphere above and below it.

The depth of the atmosphere beneath the ozone rich layer is, in the context of the size of the earth, hardly skin deep (only 10Km at mid latitudes and 15Km at the equator) but nevertheless sufficient to effectively cool the Earth. In dry air the lapse rate is 10°C per kilometer. The upper troposphere is very much colder than the surface of the planet. So we must (reluctantly perhaps) conclude that the atmosphere is a very effective vent for surface heat.

Though about three quarters of the atmosphere is below the stratosphere and free of the influence of an electromagnetic field, the remaining portion of the atmosphere is very much under its influence. That part is much more than half of one percent, the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The tropical troposphere tends to lose energy by decompression associated with uplift whereas the subtropical latitudes is a place of descending, compressing air where long wave radiation is the chief means of energy removal. Where decompression is vigorous, the upper troposphere cools to minus 85°C. Elsewhere it reaches a temperature of about minus 55°C. As the equatorial region has warmed the quantum of long wave radiation from the near equatorial zone has diminished while in the subtropics where the air is descending, it has increased.

The surface of the planet is 70% water and the atmosphere near the surface is water vapor rich. Because the air at 1000 meters elevation is already between 6 and 10°C cooler than the surface, clouds of moisture form in rising air. At an elevation of two to four kilometers condensing moisture forms, not water droplets, but ice crystals of many and varied patterns and considerable surface area. Ice crystals populate the atmosphere at a density so low as to make them virtually invisible. But, the ice crystal zone stretches from about 2km to 25km in elevation and it is therefore very much deeper and potentially more reflective than the water droplet zone.

Sensibly therefore, we might expect the temperature at the surface of the planet to relate strongly to the extent of ice crystal formation. Since the upper atmosphere tends to have much the same level of moisture all the time, the population of ice crystals varies inversely with air temperature.

How could the temperature of the ice cloud region change?

The concentration of ozone in the stratosphere and upper troposphere depends upon the rate of mixing of oxygen hungry, mesospheric nitrogen ions into the stratosphere. Where does this mixing occur?

Most of the land is in the northern hemisphere but there is none at the northern pole. Strangely there is a massive landmass at the southern pole. Here the surface is very cold all the year round and particularly so in winter.

The temperature of the Antarctic ice mound is always below the freezing point of water. Any precipitation that falls upon it is trapped. Ice surface area doubles in winter by virtue of the freezing of the sea on its margin. A downdraft is present at all times and it is particularly powerful in winter.

The circulation of the atmosphere is driven by differences in surface temperature and the release of latent heat giving rise to columns of rising air particularly over the tropical rain forests. Air descends over the cold oceans in the subtropics and also over the Polar Regions especially in their winter season when the pole is dark and the surface is at its coldest.

The column of descending air over the Antarctic continent stretches into the mesosphere.

Because nitrogen from the mesosphere enters the stratosphere primarily over the Antarctic continent there is less ozone in the southern hemisphere than the northern hemisphere. But when the downward flow of air within the vortex stalls, ozone builds up throughout the stratosphere and to a more limited but very influential extent in the upper troposphere. The mixing rate of ozone into the upper troposphere varies with latitude.

As the ozone content of the ice cloud region rises, so does its temperature. This depletes ice cloud allowing more solar radiation to reach the surface.

Can a reorientation in the direction, mass density or speed of the ‘solar wind’ or perhaps a change in the intensity of ionizing radiation or a change in the Earth’s magnetic field or a mix of all three shift air from high to low latitudes, lowering surface pressure there and raising it somewhere else? Unambiguously, the answer is yes. There is no process internal to the Earth itself that could account for this shift in the atmosphere. It depends wholly upon the magnetic fields in the ionosphere and the exchange of energy between the solar wind and the ionized atmsophere. So, the distribution of the atmosphere by latitude is determined by the sun and the earth together.

Figure 1 shows the loss of atmospheric pressure at 70-90° south latitude after 1948. Most of the depletion occurred before 1976. However, the forces that created this changed state have continued to maintain it.  Not only can the atmosphere move, it can be held in position by the electromagnetic force and it will stay in place until that force relaxes.

Figure 1

Change in surface atmsopheric pressure

Where and when did surface pressure change?

Figure 2 compares the period of global warming after 1977 to the period of relatively stable or cooling temperature prior to 1977. After 1977 we see much lower pressure in winter and spring with the loss of pressure increasing with latitude between 40° and 90° south latitude.

Between the equator and 30° south latitude surface atmospheric pressure has increased. At 40-50° south, which may be a transition zone, surface pressure increased in summer and fell in winter with greatest loss in September. Very similar dynamics manifest at 30-40° south but by and large this latitude has been once of increasing atmospheric pressure.

Figure 2

Looking now at the northern hemisphere as represented in figure 3, we observe a loss of pressure in the winter months at high latitudes with losses also in June, August and September. However, the loss of pressure is no more than 1mb, much less than in the southern hemisphere where pressure fell by 2 to 8mb south of 50° south latitude.

After 1977 atmospheric pressure increased in mid year between the equator and 50° north latitude. There is obviously a tendency for pressure to increase at high latitudes in the northern summer at the same time as pressure falls in the southern hemisphere. This represents an atmospheric shift from high latitudes of the southern hemisphere into the entirety of the northern hemisphere in northern summer. This should tend to increase northern vortex activity in the wing months of the northern winter.

Peak months for loss of pressure in high latitudes of the northern hemisphere are November through to February. At this time pressure rises at 40-50° south latitude (aqua line in figure 2). This represents an atmospheric shift from the northern to the southern hemisphere in northern winter. However, there is another contributing factor. It is probable that the Arctic vortex suffers from competitive downdraft activity over the very cold Siberian and North American land masses. It is noticeable that pressure loss in midwinter is greater at 60-70°N (olive green) than at 80-90°N (red).

The ‘Arctic Oscillation Index’ records change in the relationship between surface pressure close to the northern pole and that at mid latitudes in the northern hemisphere. Change in the index goes along with change in the nature of western European weather.  It is apparent that there are complex influences driving the Arctic Oscillation and paradoxically the most important of these influences is the state of the competing downdrafts over Antarctica, continental Asia and North America. But in physical terms, the real driving force is electromagnetic.

Figure 3

The relationship between pressure and surface temperature in the tropics

Figure 4 shows the relationship between atmospheric pressure near the equator and sea surface temperature at 20° north to 20° south globally. Warming of the tropics goes hand in hand with increased surface atmospheric pressure. This is a key understanding. It is counter-intuitive because hot air is less dense and will rise in the middle of a low pressure area. But here we have hot air under increased pressure. We are accustomed to observing high pressure air that is associated with subsidence and cloud free skies in the subtropics. This is different. This pressure regime is determined by a shift in the atmosphere from high to low latitudes.

The relationship between these variables is mediated by the change in atmospheric moisture levels. An illustration of this relationship is the failure of the tropics to warm when pressure increased in the year 1999-2000. The precipitation event that followed the marked increase in atmospheric moisture during the El Nino event of 1997-8 created its own momentum (increased atmospheric moisture and cloud cover) and overwhelmed the possibility of a response to the increase in pressure a year later, itself a response to electromagnetic activity in the upper atmosphere. If one appreciates this, we can dispense with the usual statistical tests, proceeding according to logic and the eye. Many a baby has been thrown out with the bathwater after the application of an inappropriate statistical test.

Figure 4

We know that El Nino activity in the Pacific is accompanied by a slackening of the Trades as the pressure difference between the south east Pacific (high pressure) and Indonesia (low pressure) falls away. Figure 5shows that, when pressure rises in the Indonesian region, it falls very strongly in the waters off the coast of Chile. The weakening of the trade winds is a marker for El Nino activity in the Pacific. The change in pressure relations driving the trade winds is due to the movement of the atmosphere. That movement has its origin in electromagnetic activity in the upper atmosphere.

A glance at figure 5 reveals that the globe cools when surface atmospheric pressure in the Indonesian region falls below its long term mean.  There is much greater activity in terms of pressure change in the waters off Chile than in the Indonesian theatre.  Change in Chilean waters appears to precede change in Indonesia.

A shift in the atmosphere from high to low latitudes increases pressure at 30-40° south latitude. However, in the waters off Chile, we see a loss of pressure as pressure builds at the equator and this is particularly noticeable in March and September when geomagnetic activity peaks due to the favorable orientation of the Earth to the sun at the equinoxes. Surface pressure off Chile at 30-40° south behaves atypically for the latitude. It moves with polar pressure rather than low latitude pressure. This makes the Pacific particularly susceptible to influence from shifts in the atmosphere.

Figure 5

Figure 6 shows that when atmospheric pressure falls off Chile (in figure 6 pressure is inverted so that a rise in the pressure line actually represents falling pressure) sea surface temperature in the intake region for Nino 1 and Nino 2 warms. An increase in the temperature of tropical waters follows as a matter of course. The thing that controls the atmospheric pressure controls the temperature of tropical waters and ultimately the globe. That ‘thing’ is the electromagnetic force in the upper atmosphere. The change in surface temperature is due to a change in the ratio between radiation received at the limits of the atmosphere (almost a constant) and radiation reflected by ice crystals. Variation in reflection is responsible for change in the intensity of radiation received at the surface.

Figure 6

The temperature of the polar stratosphere increases at the time of the year when atmospheric pressure falls.

Figure 7 indicates a marked increase in stratospheric temperature at 10hPa post 1977 that is coincident with the fall in atmospheric pressure illustrated in figure 2.

There can be no shadow of doubt that the increase in the temperature of the upper stratosphere over Antarctica is associated with falling atmospheric pressure, the collapse of the vortex and a diminution of the flow of mesospheric nitrogen ions into the stratosphere. This allows an increase in ozone concentration which accounts for the increase in temperature both in the stratosphere and at the surface.

Ozone absorbs long wave radiation from the earth and UVB from the sun and this energy is rapidly transmitted to adjacent molecules. The upper atmosphere warms and as ice crystal population falls in southern winter and spring, the temperature of the sea increases in the intake zones for the equatorial currents. In the Pacific this is called El Nino. The conventional explanation of this warming is at odds with reality. Most of the warming activity occurs outside the tropics. It is most pronounced in late winter and spring in the southern hemisphere and it is patently a phenomenon that shows up with greater intensity after the climate shift of 1978. Indeed, the increased frequency and intensity of southern hemisphere warming in spring lies at the heart of the warming of the globe after 1978.

Figure 7

Figure 8 shows that the warming of the northern stratosphere at 10hpa in the middle of northern winter is insignificant if compared to the warming of the southern stratosphere. Stratospheric warming and cooling is just as lopsided as the distribution of the land between the hemispheres.

Some observers attribute sudden stratospheric warming in the polar night to ‘planetary waves’. But planetary waves are more evident in the northern than the southern hemisphere. These observers  maintain that the Earthly climate system is free of external influences.  Copernicus feared the response of the keepers of the conventional wisdom when he suggested that the sun was at the centre of the solar system rather than the Earth. He kept his opinions to himself until his theories were published close to his death in 1543. Galileo supported the Copernican viewpoint in a forthright fashion in 1632, was tried by his peers in the ‘Inquisition’ and spent the rest of his life in detention.  Geo-centrism is alive and well to this day and it thrives in the field of climate science. Trial by ones peers can be a harrowing affair. As Galileo would no doubt observe, if he were here to tell us:  ‘Most of them are a bunch of ignorant ******.

Figure 8

The extent of warming of the polar stratosphere in winter increases with elevation

Figure 9 reveals that temperature gain in the Antarctic stratosphere after 1977 increases with elevation. This is in conformity with the notion that a mesospheric influence on stratospheric ozone is the driver of stratospheric temperature at the poles and it acts via a variation in vortex activity brought on by change in the weight of the atmospheric column as expressed in changing surface pressure.

Figure 9

Figure 10, relating to the northern hemisphere shows temperature gain increasing with altitude as is the case in the southern hemisphere. Peak temperature gain is in February when surface pressure loss after 1977 is maximal (see figure 3).

Figure 10

Figure 11 shows the relationship between surface atmospheric pressure in the tropics and the aa index of geomagnetic activity. Anomalies are calculated with respect to mean monthly data for the period 1948-2009. The trend lines are third order polynomials selected for best fit.  It appears that this cycle may be about 80 years from trough to trough. A cycle of about this length has been called the Gleissburg cycle. The currently falling pressure at the equator heralds cooling. A simple projection of trend indicates perhaps thirty years of cooling ahead.

In considering figure 11 one must bear in mind that the atmosphere must first be ionized before it comes under the influence of the solar wind. We know little about the cycles in very short wave ionizing radiation. Nor, it seems do we know much about the driving force behind the change in the Earth’s magnetic field. The electromagnetic movement of the atmosphere is a multi-factorial phenomenon. Figure 11 deals with a single contributing factor and compares its oscillation with surface pressure near the equator. The field of change is much wider than the equator. The dynamics of pressure change are driven by many factors including the tilt of the Earth’s axis of rotation, the revolution of the earth around the sun, the distribution of the land and the sea, the variation in the temperature of the sea at the same latitude, variations in the magnetic emanations from the Sun and variations in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field from place to place. At times surface pressure at both poles moves in the same direction and at other times pressure increases at one pole and decreases at the other. The atmosphere behaves quite differently when the earth is warm to when it is cool. The pressure systems move at quite different latitudes along with the jet stream.

Accordingly, one cannot say that geomagnetic activity drives surface temperature. It contributes as one element of a complex matrix in a constantly changing climate system. Do the climate modelers realize this?

Figure 11

Figure 12 is astonishing in its symmetry.  Prior to 1977 peak anomalies in 30hpa temperature at 80-90°S latitude occurred in April-May. After 1977 peak anomalies occur in October.  After 1977 October anomalies are as strongly positive as they were negative prior to 1977. This change relates directly to the warming of the southern oceans in southern winter-spring that is expressed in El Nino activity in the Pacific. But the Pacific is only one of the theatres of action in the global tropics. All theatres of action are affected by change in atmospheric pressure in Antarctica.

Figure 12

Figure 13 shows 30hpa temperature anomalies at 80-90°north in the Arctic. Again the symmetry is astonishing. Let there be no mistake. Here is evidence that the climate system is alternating between two very different modes of activity. One is a cooling mode and the other a warming mode. Temperature anomalies are positive only for a period of time, and they move to the  negative. When October anomalies are positive in Antarctica they are negative in the Arctic and vice versa.

Figure 13

Consequences of the warming mode of 1977-2009 for the temperature in the ice cloud zone of the upper troposphere

Figure 14 shows the character of the warming mode that prevailed after 1977 in the northern upper troposphere at 200hPa. There is sufficient ozone at this level for temperature to be driven by vortex phenomena rather than surface phenomena. At 200hPa, temperature change seems to be an amplified version of what happens at the surface. Of course this is nonsense. Changes at the surface reflect in miniature the more exaggerated and independently determined change that occurs above. But I diverge, and must return to the narrative.

In relation to the northern hemisphere: After 1977, at latitudes greater than 50° north, the upper troposphere warmed slightly in summer between June and November but is actually cooler during the winter months.  At low latitudes the troposphere is warmer all year but particularly so in northern winter. I hope some greenhouse theorists read this. Perhaps they can explain how the upper troposphere can warm when outgoing long wave radiation is at its annual minimum.

Figure 14

Figure 15 illustrates the dramatic influence of the warm mode on temperature in the southern hemisphere upper troposphere. Strong warming occurs between 20 and 70° south latitude. Peak warming occurs about the time of the equinoxes when the coupling of the solar wind with the Earth’s atmosphere is strongest.

When the polar vortex stalls, it allows ozone levels to rise at high altitudes above the pole. A strong peak in 200hpa temperature occurs in September at 80-90° south latitude and this peak appears at mid latitudes within a month, testifying to the speedy rate of mixing of ozone into the upper troposphere at 200hpa.

Figure 15

Surface temperature follows the lead of the stratosphere via change in ice cloud density

Figure 16 shows the relationship between the 20hpa temperature anomaly at 10° north to 10° south latitude on the one hand and  sea surface temperature in the in-feed zone in the south east Pacific near Chile on the other. The obvious way that the stratosphere and upper troposphere can affect surface temperature is via change in ice cloud density affecting the reflectivity of the atmosphere. An increase in temperature reduces ice cloud density allowing more radiation to reach the surface.

High amplitude variation in 20hPa temperature is seen between 1950 and 1976 when geomagnetic activity, stratospheric and surface temperature was depressed. This phenomenon might be interpreted this way: When stratospheric temperature is low due to low ozone content (high surface pressure at the pole and strong vortex) a small reduction in the inflow of nitrogen ions from the mesosphere can produce a large change in ozone and 20hpa temperature. The law of diminishing returns applies.  In periods where ozone levels are already high (low atmospheric pressure and collapsed vortex), the extent of change in 20hpa temperature from further collapse in the vortex is small.

After the year 2000 the flux in 20hpa temperature is large as it was during the cooling period prior to 1977.

Sea surface temperature in the south east Pacific follows 20hpa temperature with more fidelity and vigour after 1978 when change in southern hemisphere 200hpa temperature became the dominant mode of ENSO variation. Patently, the heating trend between 1977 and 2000 is due to a marked increase in the temperature of the ice cloud zone.

Figure 16

Figure 17 shows the relationship between 200 hPa (upper troposphere ice cloud zone) temperature and sea surface temperature at 40-50° north.

When the upper troposphere warms strongly, relative humidity must fall and the surface temperature response to high amplitude change in upper troposphere temperature then lacks coherence and vigour. Compare the cooling period after 1998 with the warming period ten years earlier. This observation suggests there is little increase in atmospheric moisture content as the troposphere warms. Moisture content, if it increases at all, lags the temperature increase. There is no amplifier here for a greenhouse effect.

Figure 17

Figure 18 shows the increase in surface pressure that accompanies warming at 40-50° north latitude.  The increase in pressure relates to falling pressure at the poles and an increase in the temperature of the stratosphere as ozone content builds.

Figure 18

Figure 19 shows the repeating pattern of positive anomalies in 20hpa temperature in southern spring  at 70-90° south and the frequent symmetry in the rise in sea surface temperature at 40-50° north. The relationship between these two variables will never be absolutely deterministic because of the other influences that impinge. Firstly, there is the independent activity in the northern vortex as it becomes more or less active leading into northern winter. Secondly, the flux in high altitude specific humidity determines the response rate. Thirdly, the atmosphere is never homogeneous consisting as it does of a series of traveling pressure cells responding to forces that move them as a band either towards or away from the poles.

Repeating positive anomalies in southern spring is the essence of the change that occurred in the climate system after 1978. When these anomalies disappear, the earth will cool. This can only happen as the atmospheric shift away from Antarctica goes into reverse.

Figure 19

There is great interest in the driver of sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. Enormous  store is put in the notion that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is capable of influencing global temperatures and potentially reversing the trend in global warming. However, the actual forces determining sea surface and global temperature lie in the upper atmosphere rather than in the oceans themselves. There is no mystery as to where warm water appears or does not appear. It is always at the surface and it is always dissipating into the atmosphere via evaporative transfer, surface contact and radiation. There is only one thing that can warm the surface of the sea on a large scale and that is solar radiation.

The temperature of the southern stratosphere increased much more than the northern stratosphere after 1977

In line with the dominance of the southern vortex in determining stratospheric temperature we would expect a strong increase in temperature in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere over the period of study. Figure 20 shows a 12 month moving average of 30hpa temperature in selected latitude bands of the southern hemisphere. It is apparent that the last great rise in 30hpa temperature at 80-90° south occurred just prior to the climate shift of 1978. Can planetary wave theorists explain this warming of the stratosphere above Antarctica at this time?

What theory explains why the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere have warmed so strongly while in low latitudes the stratosphere has cooled? Changes in gas composition will not suffice. Planetary waves will not suffice.

As the atmosphere shifts to mid and low latitudes the zone of heaviest ozone concentration in the stratosphere moves a little further away from the earth. This produces cooling. There has been a continuous fall in 30hpa temperature at 0-10° south latitude over the period. This may be due in part to the reduction in outgoing long wave radiation as cooling via decompression has become more important close to the equator. But, between 20° and 40° south the cooling of the stratosphere is likely related to the local thickening of the atmosphere.

Figure 20

Figure 21 shows that, as the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere has ‘thickened’, due to the atmospheric shift, 30hpa temperature has declined slightly at all latitudes. This has nothing to do with greenhouse gas activity in the troposphere. Greenhouse theorists who maintain that the stratosphere cools while the troposphere increases in temperature may care to comment on the rise in the temperature of the rctic stratosphere between 1948 and 1978!

Figure 21

Two climate modes

“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. The sun is much too sultry and one must avoid its ultry violet rays”. Noel Coward 1932.

Perhaps Noel Coward’s observation is particularly pertinent in the southern hemispherewhere there is less ozone to absorb UVB. During the warming mode, protective ice crystals evaporate, allowing the surface to warm. Most of the warming activity post 1978 has been in the southern hemisphere in late winter and spring. This warming activity is plainly driven by shifts in atmospheric pressure affecting vortex activity.

The warming mode:

1. There is a shift of the atmosphere from the poles towards mid and low latitudes under electromagnetic forcing of ionized air.
2. Weakening of the polar vortexes curtails the flow of ionized nitrogen into the upper stratosphere allowing the survival of oxygen ions and increased ozone formation.
3. Intermixing of ozone into the upper troposphere raises temperature in the ice cloud zone. Ice crystals evaporate.
4. More solar radiation reaches the surface which warms.
5. In the southern hemisphere 200hpa temperature rises much more than in the northern hemisphere exhibiting strong equinoctial maxima.
6. Peak anomalies in stratospheric temperature occur in September-October rather than March.
7. A southern spring deficit in ice cloud density promotes warming across all southern latitudes which promotes the El Nino pattern of sea surface temperature at the equator.

The Cooling Mode

1. Surface atmospheric pressure increases at the poles as the electromagnetic force in the ionosphere/thermosphere relaxes.  This happens at solar minimum as the quantum of ionizing radiation falls to its lowest levels. It also tends to happen at solar maximum as the suns magnetic polarity reverses and magnetic fields emanating from the sun tend to be self cancelling. The manifestation in the Pacific Ocean is La Nina cooling.
2. Strengthening of the polar vortexes introduces ionized nitrogen into the stratosphere reducing the population of oxygen ions and ozone.
3. A loss of ozone in the ice cloud zone reduces temperature enhancing the formation of reflective ice crystals.
4. Less solar radiation reaches the surface which cools.
5. A generally low ozone level in the stratosphere results in high amplitude change in stratospheric temperature during the ENSO cycle. This is expressed in high amplitude variation in 20hpa temperature at the equator. At the surface the swing from El Nino warming to La Nina cooling is more violent and extreme.
6. Change is more extreme in the southern hemisphere where the polar vortex is generally cooler especially at the highest altitudes. In the cool mode stratospheric temperature exhibits a March maximum probably in line with enhancement of orbital rather than geomagnetic influences on stratospheric temperature. The earth is closest to the sun in January.
7. A cooler stratosphere and upper troposphere in southern spring promotes ice cloud formation reducing the flux of solar radiation to the surface establishing a La Nina dominant regime in the Pacific Ocean.

The pattern of change from the cool to the warm mode and back again is well expressed in figure 22 showing the pattern of change of the (Darwin –Tahiti) Southern Oscillation Index when compartmentalized according to solar cycle time intervals. A fall in this index represents warming. A dramatic fall in the index occurred about 1978. With the end of solar cycle 23 the globe is emerging from the strongest period of warming in the period of the instrumental record. The Southern Oscillation Index, based on barometric pressure, is not affected by the distortions present in the temperature record.

Figure 22

The smoking gun for natural climate variation is an increase in the temperature of the southern stratosphere and troposphere increasing with latitude all the way to the southern pole with a marked variation in southern hemisphere temperature in winter/spring between cool and warm episodes. This determines the strength of El Nino warming events across the tropics.

The smoking gun for greenhouse effects should be a generalized warming at all latitudes without any marked seasonal bias. If there were to be a seasonal bias it should be present as an increase in temperature above the norm when outgoing long wave radiation is maximal in the summer season. There should be no great difference between the hemispheres. That is far from what is actually observed. The evidence suggests that natural variation rather than anthropogenic influences drives climate change.

Conclusion

Between 1948 and 1976 the tropics and the globe as a whole was fairly stable in temperature with obvious cooling discernable in the decade prior to 1976. From 1977 through to 2000 the tropics and the globe warmed. By comparing data from the earlier period with that for the later period one can discern change in the atmosphere that resulted in more solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth causing it to warm.

Atmospheric conditions in the near earth environment are strongly influenced by the sun. The observed warming of the last decades of the twentieth century can be attributed to natural influences. There is no evidence of any warming signature due to the increased presence of so called ‘greenhouses gases’. It is suggested that the greenhouse hypothesis takes little cognizance of the manner in which the atmosphere actually functions. The atmosphere cools the planet but a change in its temperature causes a change in ice crystal density and the quantum of radiation reaching the surface.

Climatic models suggest that any greenhouse effect should be strongest in the tropical upper troposphere where water vapor is in higher concentration. In point of fact warming of the upper troposphere at the equator is less likely as the globe warms because the quantum of outgoing radiation diminishes as convection and de-compressive cooling is enhanced. It is in the subtropics that outgoing long wave radiation increases and in particular in the high pressure cells where the air is descending and warming and the sky tends to be cloud -free both in terms of liquid and ice crystal density.  A water vapor feedback mechanism would require an increase in specific humidity levels in these high pressure areas. The reverse is observed. If a greenhouse effect were present it would be unamplified and tiny. Any warming tendency in these areas is more likely to be due to a loss of ice cloud density than a greenhouse effect.

If the Earth enters a period of cooling, as it has since 1998, it suggests that the natural factor is pre-eminent. If there is a strong relationship between ice cloud density and surface temperature it confirms the point that moisture in the upper troposphere cools rather than warms the planet and the basis of the greenhouse feedback mechanism is negated. Without a water vapor amplifier a change in so called ‘greenhouse gas’ levels can have little or no effect upon surface temperature.

If we can rid ourselves of the foolish mantra that surface temperature is governed by so called greenhouse gas, much unnecessary pain can be avoided. We are threatened by zealous governments keen to interfere in markets, raise taxation and redistribute incomes. The absurd notion that carbon is a pollutant is daily promoted.  ‘Will of the wisp’ schemes to generate renewable energy burden the public purse. Nothing is to be gained by these stratagems. Innovation has its own rewards and investment in all forms of innovation is already well enough subsidized and feverishly exploited. Man needs no urging to innovate and will do so quite happily in the absence of artificially inflated monetary incentives. The introduction of market distorting incentives and disincentives destroys rather than creates wealth. This is the tool of the central planner, the social activist, the miscreant.

Distraction and absurdity are our unhappy lot, parading as morality and virtue. Snake oil salesmen multiply by the minute. These are unfortunate times.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. The authority of ‘Science’ and the United Nations organization has been subverted to the activists cause. This is a sorry time for mankind. It is a time when belief is substituted for science and the two are irretrievably tangled and confused.

DATA

The data used in this study can be downloaded from: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl

As I understand it the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis project uses a computer model to cross check the validity of data from many sources with the aim of representing the surface and the atmosphere of the entire globe. Data for one atmospheric parameter is related to other parameters that vary together in a known fashion. When a temperature recording station shifts site there is a discontinuity in the data. The reanalysis project is designed to overcome this sort of problem. This dataset is particularly valuable for research on climate change.

The sea surface data from the NCEP/NCAR dataset exhibits much greater variability than other datasets. The NCEP/NCAR data reflecs skin temperatures that respond to atmospheric change. Winter minima are lower while summer maxima are similar. Change is faster in the skin data with earlier seasonal maxima and minima. Sea surface temperature data incorporates ice and land surface temperature at high latitudes.

I understand that satellite derived sea surface temperature data for areas beyond about 60° latitude requires an adjustment for the extent of floating ice. Some SST datasets do not extend to higher latitudes. Because the NCEP/NCAR dataset provides skin temperature it covers all latitudes.

Some sources of SST data relate more to a near surface rather than a skin temperature reflecting the origin of data in the measurement of water temperature from engine intake, bucket or floating buoy. This is not the case with the NCEP/NCAR dataset.

Tiempo ha… tiempo de verdad que no escribía en este, mi blog personal, la extensión particular de mi mente. No es que no he escrito más, es más bien que me dedique a escribir en mi otro blog, en Rafael Nava @ SOMOS CMD que es mi voz digital y además que por un tiempo decidí no preocuparme tanto por lo que nos pasa en esta vida o más bien no quise angustiarme, preocuparme más de lo necesario, pero creo que el momento paso y la necesidad de usar este “outlet” es mayor cada día así que plomo…

Hoy, como tengo muchas cosas que decir y compartir de lo que nos pasa, ha pasado y quizás pasará, el blog va a ser bastante raro, como un purgatorio de ideas y pensamientos un poco atropellado quizás, así que si les gusta buenísimo y sino por lo menos terminen de leer y me dan su opinión.

Hay varios temas en la mesa nacional en estos días, la inseguridad que es para mi el más importante y grave y al que menos atención le presta en gobierno local, regional y nacional y la prensa que solo lo reseña los lunes, el asunto eléctrico que no tiene nada que ver con El Niño, ni La Niña sino con la ineptitud y el desinterés y finalmente el del agua que si tiene que ver en parte con El Niño y con la misma desidia e ineptitud de todos los mismo gobiernos que reseño antes.

Hablando entonces de la inseguridad, para mi el real y verdadero problema no está en que haya maleantes, malvivientes, delincuentes o como los quieran llamar, de esos siempre ha habido y habrá, el verdadero nudo de la cosa es que o hubo ningún tipo de esfuerzo en los últimos 25 años en tener una fuerza policial efectiva a nivel nacional. No hubo ni hay esfuerzo de nadie, ni de los gobiernos regionales y del nacional, solo ha habido inversiones espasmódicas producto del comandante de turno que tenga ganas de hacer algo, de modernizar un poco, de entrenar, y del gobernante de turno que sea o no amigo o consciente de la necesidad y le de los reales, pero como el rollo era de “los barrios”, entonces que se jodan porque son pobres…  y así fue y será hasta que nosotros como pueblo reclamemos de manera más enérgica, de la forma más enérgica, que el gobierno responda y responda bien y por el tiempo que sea necesario, o sea siempre, por la seguridad ciudadana que es una de las cuatro responsabilidad primarias de todo gobierno.

El plan Caracas Segura o más bien Venezuela Segura empieza por aplicar los siguientes puntos:

• Eliminar el facilísimo acceso a las armas y el aún más fácil acceso a las municiones que salen con total impunidad de los cuarteles y comandancias policiales y son vendidas baratas en los barrios de todas las ciudades
• Profesionalizar, equipar, depurar y remunerar de verdad a los policías. Desde que el policía paso de ser un servidor público honorable, bien remunerado, equipado, seleccionado con criterio y bien entrenado a ser un empleado mal pagado, mal entrenado,  mal seleccionado y sin moral (no es la generalidad pero abundan), entonces dejamos de tener un cuerpo de protectores y servidores y nos hicimos de unas patotas de convives, “el mio´s” y panitas que lejos de querer proteger, lo que quieren es que no los maten y ver como hacen para meterse uno reales porque “tu sabes cómo es todo”-
• Tener un sistema judicial y penal eficiente, el actual, se modificó en los últimos 10 años para hacer tan fácil que no te juzguen o que pagues pena y tan complicado para detener a alguien que la cosa es como el nirvana de los choros. Yo creo que hasta los abogados penales se van a quedar sin trabajo de lo fácil que es que no te hagan preso y si lo hacen de que te liberen. De la cárceles y centros de detención ni hablar, mejor pasemos este punto para otro artículo porque de verdad que lo que tenemos no es.
• Educación y prevención, que no hay, es cero, nulo, nada, aquí no hay ningún tipo de educación en prevención, en moralidad y civilidad, nadie, pero nadie de verdad se dedica o pone seriedad en educar a la ciudadanía a la población en prevención del delito y eso es evidente que tiene su efecto porque hay como que una línea difusa entre lo que es legal y lo que no lo es y en cuanto a prevención, hay que meterle billete, plata, mucha plata para poner circuitos de seguridad, cámaras en las calles, luces, mas alumbrado, más patrullaje, fomentar las brigadas ciudadanas de seguridad vecinal que estén atentas y vigilantes y denuncien.
• Consecuencias, esto está bien, pero bien ligado al punto previo al anterior, no hay consecuencia ni para el que comete el delito ni para el que lo presencia y no dice nada. Yo me pondría en una de guerra a muerte con la inseguridad y el delito con real y verdadera tolerancia cero. Por ahí en algún momento vi un video en YouTube donde unos policías criollos le daban unos palazos por las nalgas a unos choros y la gente se escandalizo, que si brutalidad policial, que si es inhumano, ahora me pregunto yo, es humano y no es brutal que esos tipejos despojen a alguien de sus pertenencias y hasta de su vida? Yo institucionalizaría la práctica tipo Singapur. Intento de atraco, preso y 10 fuetazos de estos por las nalgas, te agarran por narco en la calle, preso y 50 palazos y así hasta que le tengan miedo a la cosa. Cuando Gomez, Perez Jimenez y hasta en el odiado régimen soviético y cubano, la inseguridad es bajísima porque el estado se preocupo de que no la hubiera. Mano dura.
• Y finalmente reclamo, reclamo de la población, apoyo de la prensa, reclamo y apoyo. Marcha y más marcha, protesta y más protesta totalmente pacífica contra la inseguridad, contra el robo, la extorsión, la matazón, el secuestro y propaganda y prensa, el titular de los periódicos y por lo menos el 20% de los noticieros y prensa deberían dedicarse a poner en primerísima plana las cifras de muertos, secuestros y robos, no solo los lunes sino todos los días y además deberíamos poner un medidor publico de crímenes en la principales avenidas de cada ciudad del país para que tengamos bien, pero bien claro lo que esta pasando y ver si generamos conciencia.

Estoy seguro de que habrá muchos otros puntos que ustedes pensaran con relevantes, pero yo creo que estos son los que nos sacaran del hoyo poco a poco porque no podemos permitirnos seguir así.

Creo que con lo extenso del artículo dejamos lo de la electricidad y el agua para el próximo porque son bien, pero bien largos los dos temas…  Ahí me cuentan… Saludos!

Dejé esta parte para un artículo por separado para poder desarrollarlo independientemente y con mucho más espacio. En este voy a intentar explicar algunos fenómenos sobre el clima, que se suceden de forma natural y cíclica.

El clima está relacionado, como mencioné de forma rápida en el artículo anterior, con la actividad solar, rayos cósmicos, y, para los cambios bruscos que suceden de forma cíclica, impactos de asteroides y rotación del eje de los polos, entre otros factores que son consecuencias producen lo anteriormente dicho, es decir, las glaciaciones [1]. Las grandes extinciones de la historia de la Tierra pueden ser explicadas por cambios bruscos de clima provocados por colisión de cometas, como en el caso de los dinosaurios y el 65% de las especies que vivían hace unos 60 millones de años, provocándose una glaciación, aunque existen varias teorías al respecto [2]. Hace 12000 años de la última glaciación, aunque hace 8200 años hubiera otra de menos duración, y ahora se predice una menor actividad solar [3], encontrándonos actualmente en un período interglaciar. Otros ejemplos de glaciaciones ocurrió hace 700 millones de años, cuando la tierra era, literalmente, una bola de hielo cubierta de polo a polo con temperaturas medias de -40º C [4].

La Corriente del Golfo hace que las temperaturas suban de 5 a 8ºC, distribuyendo calidez en el Atlántico Norte, con dirección hacia el nordeste. También influye impidiendo que el mar de Barents, en el Ártico, permanezca descongelado la mayor parte del año [5]. Otros fenómenos que hacen que el clima cambie son El Niño y La Niña, consecuencia de un calentamiento y enfriamiento periódico en la superficie del océano Pacífico central y oriental. El Niño, que es producto de el descenso de la influencia de las corrientes de aguas frías, hace que las temperaturas en la superficie del océano ser mayor,  provocando fuertes lluvias en América del Sur, pero sequías en África y el este de Australia [6]. El proceso inverso sería La Niña, que es causado por el aumento en la influencia de estas corrientes frías, y provocando sequías en América del Sur y lluvias intensas en el este de Australia [7]. Desde Julio se está previendo que en el invierno entre 2009 y 2010 habrá el denominado Niño [8], que no ocurría desde 2006, y está resultando bastante débil hasta el momento [9], incluso llegándose a estimar que podría ser uno de los inviernos más fríos de la época [10].

En cuanto al futuro nos acercamos al mínimo de Gleissberg, entre 2023 y 2029, lo que mencionaré en el próximo artículo sobre el clima con más claridad.

Fuentes:

[1] Calor Glacial; Luís Carlos Campos.

[2] Historia del Clima; Antón Uriarte.

[3] Ciclos Solares, no el CO2, determinan el Clima; Zbigniew Jaworowski.

[4] Ciclos Solares, no el CO2, determinan el Clima; Zbigniew Jaworowski.

[5] La Corriente del Golfo; Antón Uriarte.

[6] El Niño - Oscilación del Sur; John Daly.

[7] El Niño - Oscilación del Sur; John Daly.

[8] El Niño Arrives; Expected to Persist through Winter 2009-10.

[9] El Niño/Oscilación Norte-Sur; Centro de Predicciones Climáticas.

[10] Un Niño Débil y Quizá el Invierno Más Frío en una Década; Todd Zeranski y Erik Schatzker.

Let me tell you about my internet situation.  On most days, I live in a one-room apartment on the hillside in Clifton.  Internet access is sporadic and unreliable.  However, if I sit in front of the sliding glass doors, I get a literal window of internet power–I receive a consistently “very low” signal, and sometimes even just a “low” signal from “Tri Health Public”.  Sometimes service may be slow, but darn it, I use that internet, and I’m grateful for it. 

Today I was especially grateful, because I received a message in my inbox that answered my long-standing question:  Why do people keep trying to tell me there is a global cooling trend?  I have not yet found a blog entry that addresses this, nor has anyone adequately answered my question (except for one article I stumbled across HERE after I already wrote this article, and it’s really good). 

As bloggers, we tend to preach to the choir; and as environmentalists who fully understand the issues at hand, we tend not to realize that the general public still has no idea what to think.

It took an AP news report to set the record straight for me, and I would like to summarize it.  Because if I lay it down here, I will never again be at a loss for the answer.

So, in recent months I’ve run into several people who’ve said, You do know the world is actually cooling? as if they had some type of inside information.  To which I would respond, That’s a new one on me!

It turns out, there *appears* to be a recent downward trend in global temperatures if you know how to manipulate data.

The year 1998 was the hottest on record, followed by 2005.  If you use 1998 as your starting point, the years up through 2008 are all cooler than that outstanding year.  Temperatures appear to be declining.

HOWEVER–if you start with 1997, 1999, or any other year in the century, it nullifies the “1998 and beyond” trend.  There is in fact a warming trend since the mid-20th century.  Indisputably.

They gave a group of statiticians the temperature data, without telling them what it stood for, just the raw numbers, and asked them if they could detect any trends.  Everyone in the group agreed that there was an indisputable trend upwards over time (hence global temperature increase).

So, here were my countrymen hurling figurative rocks at each other, each accusing the other of some hidden agenda.  Blogs were alive with science proving that global warming existed because of ocean temperatures and that global cooling was based only on atmospheric temperatures (which I never saw the data for incidently), El-Nino and La Nina, sunspots, etc.; or else shrilly decrying those who had heard about “global cooling” as some sort of mentally-inferior nutcase.  Now given that, because I care about the environment and my own future, I am branded a socialist who wants The Government to take over what remains of our political rights in the USA, I think I can do better than brand my skeptical fellow citizens: I can address the reasons behind why they may have heard of “global cooling”, and consequently dismantle it.

Someone (who really might have had an agenda) looked over the last one decade (1998-2008) and since there was a huge spike in the starting year, concluded that the world was therefore cooling.  And then told as many people as possible. 

That’s where the current global cooling myth originated.  Why did I have to rely on the news media to tell me this?

Dilluns passat vam decidir anar a passar el dia a Sitges. Després d’una banyadeta accidentada, vam deicir que el millor era solucionar el dia fotent-nos una paella com Déu mana davant de la platja.

Craso error, my friend!

El restaurant La Niña (situat al costat dels restaurants La Pinta i la Santa Maria) semblava fantàstic i com que ja era tardet, cap a les 15.30, hi vam trobar lloc de seguida.

Ens vam demanar una paella marinera per a dos i es van portar…

1) La paella més salada que hagis menjat mai

2) La paella amb més llar que hagis menjat mai

3) La paella amb el pitjor servei que t’hagis trobat mai.

Exemples de mal servei:

- No ens van dur tovallons!

- Arribem, ens senten parlar en anglès i “Here’s the menu in English“, ens diu el cambrer, d’aspecte sudamericà. “Ah, gracias“, li contesto. “Ah, tú la carta la quieres en español?“, em diu. “O en catalán“, m’aventuro jo. “Hahaha uy, en catalán no tenemos haha“

- Li pregunto la diferència entre la paella marinera i la Can Parellada i em dispara “uy, pero tú eres de aquí, no? Tú eres catalan, deberías saberlo!!“

- Hem de demanar quatre vegades el compte per poder pagar

Al final, no li deixem gens de propina i em quedo el boli bic que m’havia donat per firmar el rebut de la Visa.

4) La paella se’ns va posar fatal. Ens va donar una somnolència terrible i a mi em va sentar com un totxo!!!

Conclusió: no aneu mai al Restaurant La Niña!!!!

PS. Malgrat tot, ens vam divertir, com demostren les fotos

El Nino and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO) seems to be perceived as a change in the state of the tropical oceans, the focus being on the ENSO 3.4 region in the Pacific.  It is thought that change in the Pacific feeds into temperature change elsewhere. The word ‘teleconnections’, is a mantra of climate science. It seems to be shorthand for “we know not how this happens but its regular’. There is also an opinion that ENSO change is temperature neutral on decadal and longer timescales.

I want to tip this perception of ENSO on its head. ENSO is the tropical manifestation of change in sea surface temperature that is most vigorous away from the equator. It is only when we look outside the 10°N to 10°S latitude band that we see the forces that create the phenomenon that we know as the El Nino Southern Oscillation.

A person unfamiliar with the way in which an automobile works might suggest that the turning of the wheels is responsible, via the ‘transmission’, for the up and down motion of the pistons. This is the case while the fuel supply is cut off but not so during acceleration. I assert that ‘wheels moving pistons’ is the mindset in relation to ENSO.

The end point of this essay is a realization that ENSO is not a tropical phenomenon at all. It is a driven by conditions at the poles, particularly Antarctica, and ultimately by the interaction between the mesosphere and the stratosphere.

All data is obtained from the very useful NCEP/NCAR reanalysis that is referenced as: Kalnay, E. and Coauthors, 1996: The NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 40-year Project. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 77, 437-471. Thus data is available at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl

In this work the average monthly temperature between January 1948 and August 2009 is computed. The difference between that average and the actual figure for each month is then obtained. That difference is referred to as an ‘anomaly’. What is shown here is therefore de-seasonalised data. It is de-seasonalised only in the sense that the method identifies change from the average for the entire period of record for this dataset. The anomaly thus calculated is occasionally presented as a five month running mean centred on the third month and this statistic is shown in the graphs as ‘5MMA’. This average is computed rather than relying on the function in Excel so as to preserve the integrity of the time axis. The figure is centred on the third month.

Sea surface temperature depends upon the stratosphere

Figure 1 shows the five month moving average of 20hPa temperature over Antarctica (in maroon) driving sea surface temperature (henceforth SST) in the Arctic (in blue). Relatively large changes in 20hpa temperature drive relatively large changes in sea surface temperature. Temperature in the stratosphere clearly leads the temperature at the sea surface. The lag is variable but it is of the order of a month or two and sometimes longer. The peak in 20hpa temperature occurs between September and November. I have confidence  in asserting a strong causal relationship here. The mechanics of that causal relationship will be discussed later.

Fig 1

Figure 2 shows the five month moving average of 20hpa temperature in the Arctic stratosphere (in red) driving sea surface temperature in the 20-30°S latitude band (in blue). Here, smaller changes in 20hpa temperature drive minor changes in sea surface temperature with a range of about 1°C in the five month moving average (more on a monthly basis). The rhythm is not as regular, well defined or as consistent as in figure 1. There are good reasons for this that will become apparent. Clearly, the upper turning points in stratospheric temperature lead the upper turning points in sea surface temperature. Peaks in 20hpa temperature in the Arctic stratosphere occur between February and March. Occasionally a peak in 20hpa temperature occurs in mid year as in 1994, 1997, 2004 and 2006. This is likely an effect of the southern vortex which varies in strength in mid winter.

Fig 2

The questions that arise include: By what mechanism does the stratosphere drive surface temperature? If the Antarctic stratosphere drives Arctic sea surface temperature why does the Arctic stratosphere not drive SST in the Antarctic? What drives stratospheric temperature over the poles? Does change in temperature at the poles regulate the temperature of the stratosphere at lower latitudes. If so, how does this affect the flux of stratospheric and sea surface temperature at different latitudes?

First, let’s look at the way surface temperature varies at different latitudes. In the graphs that follow the vertical scale is the same in both hemispheres. The Northern hemisphere appears first and the same latitudes of the Southern hemisphere appear immediately below.

Fig 3

Fig 4

Comparing figures 3 and 4:

Marked SST increase occurred early in the period (1994 through to 1997) in both hemispheres. This generated the warmth for the El Nino of 1997-8. The ocean does not care where the warming occurs.

In general, the more sustained and bulky increases in SST over the widest latitude band occurred in the southern hemisphere in mid year.

The higher the latitude, the more extreme is the temperature fluctuation.

Fig 5

Fig 6

Comparing figures 5 and 6:

SST shows much more flux in the mid latitudes of the northern hemisphere than the southern.

Warm anomalies occur in December to January (winter) in the northern hemisphere.

In the southern hemisphere warm anomalies predominantly occur early in the year (summer) but the anomaly peak is later (during winter) at higher southern latitudes. The mid latitudes of the southern hemisphere are a transition point where a weak northern vortex competes with a strong and more persistent southern vortex in regulating stratospheric and sea surface temperature.

Fig 7

Fig 8

Comparing figures 7 and 8:

The most defined and seemingly erratic fluctuations (matching the pattern that prevails at higher latitudes) occur away from the equator at 20-30° latitude (in black)

The fluctuation of SST between equator and 10° south latitude is frequently out of sync with other southern latitudes occasionally peaking prior to year end like the SST of the northern tropics. This is likely due to the mixing of northern and southern waters.

The peaks of SST variation at the equator are much broader, rather amorphous and less well defined than at higher latitudes.

The equatorial fluctuation is atypical of other latitudes and is not a fair indication of the degree of warming of the sea globally.

Looking at the SST data as a whole

The most extreme variations in SST are at higher latitudes.

In mid latitudes the northern hemisphere shows much heavier fluctuations than the southern. The effect of the Arctic vortex on SST appears to be much diminished beyond about 30S latitude but these high latitude southern waters vary in temperature more than anywhere else on the globe. The variation here is in the middle of winter.

The seas in the two hemispheres experience peak warming activity at different times but these times are fairly consistent from year to year.

The only way in which the sea can warm simultaneously at all latitudes within a hemisphere is via a loss of cloud cover.

There is a unifying force dictating the pattern of sea surface temperature increase and this is the force that regulates stratospheric temperature.

What are these anomalies telling us about natural climate cycles?

The figure below shows the march of raw sea surface temperature in near equatorial latitudes. The strongest peak is in February-April while a secondary peak shows up in September to November in northern waters. A February-April peak is in the middle of the time of peak anomalies in SST in the Southern Hemisphere. The anomaly will be earlier if driven by the northern stratosphere and later if it is driven by the Antarctic stratosphere.

The secondary peak that shows up in September-November in the northern tropics is driven in part by the global reduction in cloud cover in northern summer and secondary effects from the state of the Antarctic (winter) vortex that shows strongly positive anomalies between September and December in the entire period after 1978.

The movement of southern water temperature prior to the strong El Nino of 1997-1998 shows how an expansive southern ocean can warm equatorial waters while the contribution from the restricted volume of northern hemisphere waters is relatively minor.

Fig 9 Sea surface temperature in close equatorial waters. Raw data.

There is no other force than the sun that will warm the oceans in such an expansive fashion on this relatively rhythmic schedule. There is no chaos in this system. There is order and regulation. The largest sea surface temperature responses are at higher latitudes and the smallest responses are at low latitudes. This mirrors the pattern of temperature variation in the stratosphere.

What we witness in the period 1994-2009 is a simple amplification of the normal pattern of seasonal warming due to an amplification of stratospheric temperature.

Does change in temperature at the poles affect the stratosphere at lower latitudes and how does this affect the flux of temperature at different latitudes?

It is at the highest latitudes that 20hpa temperature fluctuates to the greatest extent. Figure 10 shows the primacy of stratospheric temperature change at the poles in relation to that at the equator. Vertical blue lines show precedence for polar temperature fluctuations. In the mixing process between poles and equator, ozone content and temperature fluctuations are damped. A further, little understood process tends to produce the quasi-biennial oscillation in ozone content, temperature and stratospheric wind that is apparent at 10°N to 10°S. In low latitudes the influx of moisture from overshooting convection erodes ozone because ozone is soluble in water. A further factor influencing conditions in the tropical stratosphere is the enigma of a rise in surface pressure at the equator during SST warming events accompanied by falling temperature at the highest levels of the equatorial stratosphere and a fall in surface pressure at the poles, the subject of my next post.

The unifying force that controls sea surface temperature is the changing concentration of ozone in the upper atmosphere. Change in ozone is a polar phenomenon because that is where the exchange with the mesosphere predominantly occurs.

Adding the anomaly of 20hPa temperature for the north and south accounts for a push pull relationship between the vortexes. Notice the decline in the summed anomalies from 1960 to 1976, a period when the seas cooled.

Fig 10

The question remains: Why does SST follow the temperature of the stratosphere.

This is a subject for speculation. My guess is that ice cloud in the atmosphere above 200hpa (where there is sufficient ozone and the rise and fall in temperature is consequently several times that at the surface), simply varies with temperature. As the upper air warms, relative humidity falls, less water is condensed as ice and consequently more sunlight gets through the atmosphere to reach the surface of the absorbing sea. It is the winter hemisphere vortex that determines the flux in ozone in the global stratosphere. It is in the summer hemisphere that the sun is shining on high latitudes.The relative weakness of the northern vortex vis a vis the southern means that it’s influence is weak beyond 30°S latitude. Between 30S latitude and Antarctica the southern vortex determines the issue.

It will not be easy to verify this hypothesis because the change in ice cloud density in the atmosphere above 200hpa is light and the change tiny.

Why bother? Why is it important to know how it works?

Fig 11

The Antarctic vortex exhibits the greatest change over the period of record. The origin of the climate shift of 1978 is apparent in figure 11. The greater change is at 10hpa  indicating the influence of the mesosphere. The warming of the sea between 1978 and 2003 is wholly explicable. The sea warmed because the Antarctic stratosphere warmed. The documented cooling of the sea after 2003 has occurred because the Antarctic stratosphere began to cool about 2003.

In my next post I will look at inverse relationships between atmospheric pressure at the poles and the equator confirming that change in vortex strength lies behind the change in ozone and air temperature above the poles rather than the prevailing idea of ‘planetary waves’ generated by change in SST at the equator and the increase in convection that results from that. The latter is another instance where the wheels are seen to be causing the pistons to move up and down.

The warming and cooling of the globe is due to influences that have been in operation long before the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels. The atmosphere is not capable of retaining warmth like a greenhouse. It is a very efficient vent for surface warmth. It should be compared to a collection of chimneys. Those who disagree with this assessment need to have a closer look at how the atmosphere functions.

Pod koniec czerwca NOAA (czyli amerykański Krajowy Instytutu do spraw Oceanów i Atmosfery) wydał oświadczenie a zarazem ostrzeżenie o nadejściu anomalii El Nino. Według prognozy NOAA tegoroczne El Nino ma być wyjątkowo silne (z anomalią sięgającą nawet do ok. +2 oC a szczyt ma nastąpić na przełomie roku 2009/10).

Rozpoczął się październik, warto więc zapoznać się z aktualną sytuacją.

• Wskaźnik SOI- czyli tzw. Oscylacja Południowa, już od dłuższego czasu oscyluje w okolicach “warunków neutralnych”.

Indeks oscylacji południowej jest wyliczany z różnic/ zmian ciśnień atmosferycznych (miesięcznych lub sezonowych) pomiędzy wyspami Tahiti a wyspami Darwina. Podczas panowania warunków El Nino wyższe niż zazwyczaj ciśnienie panuje w zachodniej części (Darwin) i w okolicach Indonezji, a ciśnienie niższe niż zazwyczaj występuje po wschodniej stronie okołorównikowego obszaru Oceanu Spokojnego (Thaiti). Podczas panowania La Nina sytuacja jest odwrotna.

Dla przypomnienia dodam, że w czasie panowania warunków El Nino- wskaźnik ten przyjmuje wartości ujemne. Podczas panowania warunków La Nina- wskaźnik ten przyjmuje wartości dodatnie.

• Okołorównikowy Pacyfik, anomalie temperatury
• 5.07; 17.08; 13.09 oraz 1.10:

5. LIPIEC:

17 SIERPIEŃ:

13 WRZESIEŃ:

1 PAŹDZIERNIK:

OK, not really. But the headline is kind of catchy, no?

El Nino is, in fact, back. And to hear some of the early prognostications about it, we would all melt like the Wicked Witch of the West mighty soon. And this was going to prove once and for all that global warming was real, because – we heard – the recent cooler temperatures were a byproduct of recent La Ninas. (Please forgive my laziness in not including the squiggly lines over my n).

I admit to not quite understanding that argument. The skeptics among us have pointed out that the increase in global temperatures that took place a decade ago were driven by a Super El Nino. And at the time, we heard that global warming was causing more severe El Ninos. But then the severity decreased and we had La Nina, and we were told that such statements were never really made. Or, at least, not by serious scientists. Which, if true, would mean that they should have agreed that the increase in warming at that time was exacerbated by the big and mean El Ninos. (Which, as an aside, brought very enjoyable winters in the Midwest. Why do people want to send us really cold weather all the time?) But other than some footnoted statements on page 23 of the reference section in a boring document, few people have been told the story about how El Nino affects should be viewed independently from overall warming.

That is, they didn’t know this until La Nina affects brought us some cooler temperatures. Then, suddenly, we heard about some “unusually cold” La Ninas, and how this affected global temperatures, and skeptics were being disingenuous by not properly considering that. And to the extent that such a criticism is true, they are right. But there is a strange thing that happens when ideology is part of the equation: you fail to heed your own criticism when the reverse occurs.

And so we have now seen three consecutive measures above 0.5 in the ENSO index. This is hardly unusual, but it does qualify – to my understanding – as a true El Nino. And before that, the La Nina waned, so we had a relatively neutral index for a couple months leading up to El Nino. So it’s been 5 consecutive measurements now since the La Nina has ceased. I remember when it became evident that an El Nino was on the way. This was going to prove skeptics wrong! Why? I have no idea. If El Nino had an anomaly of 1.00, 2.00, or 5,432.00 it would not prove anything other than when there is a natural warming of the Ocean, it warms our global temps. Wow… there’s a revelation. The fact that this has nothing to do with Carbon emissions is beside the point when it fits the argument.

Even stranger, skeptics tend to accept the cyclic variations as the legitimate explanation for warming. We don’t dispute warming periods. So, the skeptic will nod and agree that an elevated ENSO index will probably lead to warmer global temperatures. But then, we kindly point out, don’t blame carbon. Or people. And don’t get all in a tizzy when a La Nina comes around and we see cooler temperatures. What the hell do you expect? Sorry it doesn’t fit the model.

Having said all that, I certainly don’t expect any records to be broken in this recent El Nino. Sorry, experts. I base this simply on data analysis, admittedly knowing very little about all the climatolological influences that could prove me wrong. But what does the data indicate? Looks like it’s time for a chart:

ENSO Data as of 200908

The first observation from the data is that we’ve had four consecutive positive anomalies, and three consecutive positive anomalies greater than 0.5. Note here that a single data point is actually a two-month running average, which helps smooth out month-to-month fluctuations. The latest reading is 0.978, which is the largest of the four positive anomalies. Prior to this period, there were 9 consecutive negative anomalies, with a stretch of 7 months less than -0.50. This was on the heels of only a two month set of barely positive anomalies after a stretch of 12 consecutive negative anomalies that included an eith-month stretch less than -0.5.

So, it is pretty clear that after some real solid La Nina-esque reality, we’ve now flipped to El Nino. What is not clear is the ultimate magnitude and persistence of our new friend, Mr. Nino. But we can talk likelihoods. And for that, we observe the path of the best-fit sine wave.

The red curve below has been fitted in accordance with the other Ocean Oscillations I have observed. Take a sine wave and manipulate it in a few ways in order to ascertain the minimum least-squares deviation from the curve. You see, while El Nino exhibits noticeable short-term variation, it seems to do so about a longer-term cyclical pattern. Thus, a large deviation in one direction at point A on the curve will not produce the same magnitude El Nino at point B on the curve.

The specifics of the best-fit curve are as follows: The 1950 starting point in the data looks to be at 268 degrees in the full 360 degree cycle. The length of the best-fit curve appears to be 102 years for a full cycle. This is an imperfect estimate, since we don’t even have 102 years of data. It is also a longer fit than what was made last year when I did a similar exercise. But the calculation is what it is.

You can see from the chart that the magnitude of ENSO events can have quite a range: -2 to +3 in the data provided. The scale factor applied to the wave is +1.24 in order to achieve the best fit. However, it looks as if the anomalies in the index may be significantly overstated, at least near the beginning of the curve. The best fit line requires an upward shift of all values of the curve of +0.98. This means that the early part of the curve should have appeared “colder” than it did. The interesting thing to me is that, despite the apparent rise in the average ENSO index levels, the best-fit curve actually has a negative linear slope element to it that is pretty significant: -0.00316, or -3.792 degrees Celsius per Century. This actually means that those high El Nino anomalies are centered around a curve that, without that negative trend line, would have been significantly higher – possibly as much as a degree and a half.

So, where are we now? We are 122 degrees into the cycle, which means we have a ways to go into the negative yet, if this best-fit curve is correct. While it appears to the eye that we’re past the 180-degree point, this is not so because of the negative linear slope the curve lies along. No, if this is right, we will not reach the minimum depth of the ENSO curve until around 2050. The curve itself has a staggering implication of coldness – what was a depth of around -0.4 degrees in the 1950s would be -4.0 degrees in 2050. Should we proceed along these lines, we can continue to expect positive and negative significant deviations from the curve, as we see today. But the positive deviations will produce fewer, shorter and less severe El Ninos while the negative deviations produce more, greater and more persistent La Ninas.

OK, here’s the good news: unlike climate modelers, I don’t proclaim this analysis to be infallible. First of all, we’re fitting the best curve to data that is quite variable in its short-term fluctuations. Second of all, the best-fit curve tells us that the cycle period is a longer period than the data period for which we are evaluating. I already know that this supposed cycle period has fluctuated quite a bit from analysis a year ago.

If I had to rank my certainty on the subject, I would bet confidently that (1) there is a long-term ENSO cycle of somewhat indeterminate period, probably somewhere between 60 and 100 years, (2) that we are entering the negative phase of the cycle and we can expect less severe El Ninos and more severe La Ninas.

I am far less certain about the linear trend of the cycle, and the extent of any such trend, as I am about the shift of the curve. These elements are probably much better measured as more data arises over time.

However, in any case, I think it looks very unlikely that we will see any record-breaking El Ninos for quite some time, in either persistence or in magnitude. We may, however, see some major La Ninas surface over the next few decades.

And that won’t be our fault, either.

By F. William Engdahl, author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

23 September 2009

President Obama just made a melodramatic appeal at the United Nations for global measures to dramatically curb what he called “the climate threat,” current euphemism for what is more popularly known as Global Warming, the theory that man-made CO2 emissions from cars, coal plants and other man-made sources are causing the earth to warm to the point the polar icecaps are irreversibly melting and threatening to flood a quarter or more of the earth’s surface. There’s only one thing wrong with Mr. Obama’s dramatic scenario: it is scientifically utterly wrong. Since 2007 the polar icecaps have been growing not melting and the earth has been cooling, not warming.

If the fear of death from a fictitious Swine Flu were not enough, the scare stories on world media such as BBC or CNN, showing melting icebergs are dramatic enough to cause one sleepless nights. The Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon even made a recent appeal while standing on an Arctic ice-flow, claiming that man-made CO2 emissions were causing “100 billion tons” of polar ice to melt each year, so that in 30 years the Arctic would be “ice-free”. One organization, the WWF, claimed that the Arctic ice was melting so fast that in eighty years sea-levels would rise by 1.2 meters, creating “floods affecting a quarter of the world.” Wow! That’s scary. Goodbye Hamburg, New York, Amsterdam…

The publicity stunt of Ban Ki-Moon was carefully orchestrated. It was not said that his ship could only come within 700 miles of the North Pole owing to frozen ice. Nor that he made his stunt in the summer when Arctic ice always melts before refreezing beginning September.

The reality about Arctic ice is quite different. Although some 10 million square kilometres of sea-ice melts each summer, each September the Arctic starts to freeze again. The extent of the ice now is 500,000 sq km greater than it was this same time last year – which was, in turn, 500,000 sq km more than in September 2007, the lowest point recently recorded (see Cryosphere Today of the University of Illinois, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ ).

By next April, after months of darkness, it will be back up to 14 million sq km or likely more. As British science writer Christopher Booker remarks, “even if all that sea-ice were to melt, this would no more raise sea-levels than a cube of ice melting in a gin and tonic increases the volume of liquid in the glass.”

Sunbeams from cucumbers?

The current global warming propaganda scare is being hyped by politicians and special interests such as Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street financial firms that stand to reap billions trading new carbon credit financial futures. They are making an all-out effort to scare the world into a deal at the December Copenhagen Global Warming summit, the successor to the Kyoto agreement on CO2 emission reduction. It’s been estimated that the Global Warming bill supported by Barack Obama and his Wall Street patrons, passed by the House of Representatives but not by the more conservative US Senate, would cost US taxpayers some $10 trillion.

In the UK, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown is fully on the global warming bandwagon, the BBC, the Royal Society are proposing wild schemes for “climate engineering,” including putting up mirrors in space to keep out the sun’s rays, or lining the highways with artificial trees to suck CO2 out of the air, to be taken away and buried in holes in the ground. Perhaps it would provide make-work for a few thousand Britons unemployed by the ravages of the recent financial collapse, but it would do nothing else than waste taxpayer money already stretched to the limits in bank bailouts. The entire farce has been compared to satirist Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver who meets a fictional character trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.

A major new study published in the respected Journal of Geophysical Research of the American Geophysical Union, Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, by scientists Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature

J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas of the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland in New Zealand and R.M. Carter (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml), confirms that over the past fifty years, since 1950, fully 81% of tropical climate change can be linked to the Pacific weather phenomenon known as El Nino. And the remaining 19% they linked to increased solar radiation. No man made emissions played a role.

El Ninos, termed by scientists El Nino Southern Oscillations or ENSOs, are believed by climatologists and astrophysicists to be related to eruptions in solar activity which occur periodically.

Dr. Theodor Landscheidt of Canada’s Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity, says ENSO is the “strongest source of natural variability in the global climate system. During the severe ENSO event 1982/1983, when the sea surface off Peru warmed by more than 7° C, it was discovered that there are strong links to weather in other regions as, for instance, floods in California and intensified drought in Africa.”

Landscheidt adds, “El Niño and La Niña are subjected to external forcing by the sun’s varying activity to such a degree that it explains nearly all of ENSO’s irregularities and makes long-range forecasts beyond the 1-year limit possible. This is no mere theory. My forecasts of the last two El Niños turned out correct and that of the last one was made more than two years ahead of the event…” (Solar Activity Controls El Niño and La Niña, in http://www.john-daly.com/sun-enso/sun-enso.htm.). Even James Hansen, one of the outspoken protagonists of the Global Warming idea admits, “The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change…The natural forcing due to solar irradiance changes may play a larger role in long-term climate change than inferred from comparisons with general circulation models alone.”

El Ninos are linked to floods, droughts and other weather disturbances in many regions of the world. In the Atlantic Ocean, effects lag behind those in the Pacific by 12 to 18 months. They tend to occur every three to eight years. La Ninas are the associated cooling phase of the Pacific Ocean cycles.

According to the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, in North America, El Niño creates warmer-than-average winters in the upper Midwest states and the Northeast. California and the southwestern US become significantly wetter, while the northern Gulf of Mexico states and northeast Mexico are wetter and cooler than average during the El Niño phase of the oscillation. In Asia and parts of Australia El Nino causes drier conditions, increasing bush fires.

This sounds remarkably like what the Global Warming scare chorus claims is the result of manmade CI2 emissions or as they now slyly term it, “climate change.”

Warmer 1000 years ago?

In Sweden a new study (, in published by Haakan Grudd of the University of Stockholm’s Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology confirms that the Arctic today is not warmer than in previous historical periods centuries ago before coal power plants or automobiles. Grudd’s study concludes that “The late-twentieth century is not exceptionally warm in the new record: On decadal-to-centennial timescales, periods around a.d. 750, 1000, 1400, and 1750 were equally warm, or warmer. The 200-year long warm period centered on a.d. 1000 was significantly warmer than the late-twentieth century and is supported by other local and regional paleoclimate data.” (H. Grudd, Torneträsk tree-ring width and density ad 500–2004: a test of climatic sensitivity and a new 1500-year reconstruction of north Fennoscandian summers, Climate Dynamics, Volume 31, Numbers 7-8 / December, 2008, in http://www.springerlink.com/content/8j71453650116753/?p=fcd6adbe04ff4cc29b7131b5184282eb&pi=0.) Put simply, the earth was warmer one thousand years ago than today. And there were no records of SUVs or coal plants belching CO2 into the atmosphere back then.

The only problem with these serious scientific studies is that mainstream media entirely ignores them, preferring dramatic scare story scenarios such as Barack Obama presented in his UN speech or the UN’s Ban Ki-Moon in his staged Arctic ice drama.

Strangely enough, none of the Global Warming proponents that I am aware of have tried to correlate ENSO activity with global temperature changes. Should we instead be proposing to outlaw El Ninos or forbid solar eruptions? It makes as much scientific sense as banning or capping CO2 emissions. Global Warming as a new religion is one thing, but we should be clear that the high priests are the same Gods of Money who brought us Peak Oil religion a few years ago and the current trillion dollar financial meltdown known as asset securitization. The reality is that Global Warming like Peak Oil and other scares are but another attempt by powerful vested interests to convince the world to sacrifice that they remain in control of the events of this planet. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to misuse climate to argue for a new Malthusian reduction of living standards for the majority of the world while a tiny elite gains more power.

This guy doesn’t have nearly enough subscribers on youtube.  He regularly posts excellent videos like these:

These days each global catastrophe seems to be blamed on Global Warming.  Once upon a time, it was the ‘Act of God’.  Now it’s the ‘Acts of Man’.

The immense California wildfires are the latest calamity to receive the blame.  Environmentalists (really?), elected politicians (surprise, surprise) and others have recently made the claim that these California wildfires were caused by conditions created by Global Warming.

Let’s forget that the fires could be “attributed to a cooling Pacific, two years of La Niña, and environmental mismanagement.”

ICECAP has posted a brilliant analysis by Joseph D’Aleo – California’s Fires Result of a Cooling Pacific, Two Years of La Niña and Environmental Mismanagement.

The article explains that La Niña’s usually mean dryness in the southwest.  Combine the ‘natural cyclical lack of rainfall’ with environmental blunders and you have a recipe for disaster.   

Environmental blunder #1 was caused by the Sierra Club and others who insisted that brush not be cleared from the areas surrounding housing developments.

Environmental blunders #2 were the environmental restrictions imposed on the amount of water that could be used by the Central Valley agricultural farmers.

Let’s see.  We’ve got dry air, dried brush and reduced water and people are surprised that there are fires.  Add an arsonist and you’ve got a massive wildfire.

This article also delves into the Pacific multidecadal warming and cooling cycle. 

For the full story, go to ICECAP or click [here].

California fires as seen from satellite

Krisis pangan dunia yang dipicu lonjakan harga minyak mentah setahun berlalu. Harga pangan kembali stabil meski tidak kembali ke tingkatan harga sebelum krisis berlangsung.

Peristiwa dramatis tahun 2007/2008 itu telah menyentakkan negara-negara di dunia untuk memberikan perhatian yang lebih pada ketahanan pangan bangsanya, terutama dari aspek ketersediaan pangan.

Negara-negara di dunia yang memiliki potensi sumber daya pertanian berlomba meningkatkan produksi pangan. Filipina yang selama ini terbuai oleh pasokan pangan, terutama beras impor, mulai membuat langkah-langkah penting dalam produksi pangan. Begitu juga dengan Malaysia. Cina dan India sudah lebih dulu.

Bagaimana dengan Indonesia ? Dalam menjaga ketahanan pangan berbasis beras, Indonesia jauh dianggap lebih mampu. Organisasi Pangan Dunia (FAO) juga mengakuinya.

Lihat saja sepanjang tahun 2008 hampri tidak ada gejolak harga beras. Ketika harga beras dunia melonjak hingga 1.000 dollar AS per ton, setara dengan Rp 12.000 per kilogram untuk nilai tukar saat itu, pasar beras Indonesia mampu mengisolasi diri dengan menjaga harga beras untuk jenis beras yang sama pada posisi Rp 5.000 per kilogram. Selain keberhasilan peran Bulog, itu juga karena adanya peningkatan produksi beras yang fenomenal.

Lantas bagaimana dengan pangan nonberas ? Stabilitas harga pangan nonberas, seperti gandum, kedelai, susu, gula dan daging sapi, memang terjadi.

Tetapi, itu lebih karena dampak melesunya ekonomi dunia yang menyebabkan jatuhnya harga minyak tanah hingga di bawah nilai keekonomian untuk memproduksi bioenergi.

Apakah Indonesia akan terus berada pada level aman ? Mungkinkah gejolak harga pangan tidak berulang ?

El Nino dan kebangkitan ekonomi

Menteri Pertanian Anton Apriyantono mengisyaratkan adanya tantangan lebih besar di masa mendatang. Fenomena musim kemarau yang semakin panjang, baik karena dampak perubahan iklim global maupun karena fenomena iklim El Nino, bisa mengancam produksi pangan kapan saja.

Apalagi sepuluh tahun belakangan ini fenomena iklim El Nino semakin sering terjadi. Dalam waktu tiga tahun sampai tahun ini bahkan terjadi dua kali kemarau panjang sebagai dampak El Nino.

Faktor eksternal yang juga penting adalah harapan akan membaiknya perekonomian global pascakrisis keungan, yang diprediksi bakal mulai menunjukan gejala membaik pada tahun 2010.

Banyak kalangan melihat Cina akan memegang peranan penting dalam pemulihan ekonomi global, menyusul semakin berhantungnya Amerika Serikat sebagai negara adidaya pada perekonomian negeri tirai bambu itu.

Indikasinya defisit anggaran AS tahun 2009 melebihi 1,8 triliun dollar AS, dengan utang 12 triliun dollar AS. Dosen Ekonomi Politik Internasional Fakultas Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik Universitas Indonesia, Syamsul Hadi, menulis Cina diperkirakan mewakili 83 persen dari defisit perdagangan nonminyak AS.

Selain itu, defisit perdagangan AS justru ‘ditanggung’ Cina yang mengakumulasi pembelian surat berharga AS senilai 763,5 miliar dollar AS. Melihat indikasi tersebut, bukan tidak mungkin kebangkitan ekonomi global akan berawal dari Cina.

Jika kebangkitan ekonomi seperti yang diharapkan terjadi, bukan tidak mungkin membawa konsekuensi berupa menggeliatnya kembali sektor industri, yang tentunya akan menambah permintaan akan minyak dunia.

Hukum permintaan dan penawaran berlaku. Harga minyak akan kembali melambung, substitusi minyak bumi ke bioenergi yang bersumber dari komoditas biji-bijian pertanian bergairah dan harga pangan kembali bergejolak. Karena produksi komoditas pertanian akan banyak terserap untuk bioenergi guna menyubstitusi minyak bumi yang harganya melambung.

Semakin sulit diprediksi lagi karena komoditas pangan ekspor nyatanya masuk pasar komoditas. Naiknya harga minyak bisa segera memicu spekulan mengambil untung besar dari perdagangan komoditas pertanian di pasar berjangka.

Lampu kuning akan mulai menyala. Indonesia sulit menghindar dari dampak fluktuasi harga komoditas pertanian karena sebagian kebutuhan pangan bangsa kita dipenuhi dari impor, seperti gandum, kedelai, gula, daging sapi, susu, bahkan yang menyedihkan juga garam.

Pangan impor tersebut hampir 100 persen didatangkan dalam dalam bentuk komoditas primer. Gejolak harga yang terjadi akan langsung memengaruhi sendi-sendi perekonomian bangsa kita karena banyak industri dan usaha kecil menengah yang hidupnya bergantung sepenuhnya pada komoditas itu.

Apabila pertumbuhan ekonomi Indonesia kalah cepat dibandingkan dengan ekonomi kawasan maupun global, nilai tukar rupiah akan semakin rendah. Devisa negara yang akan digunakan untuk membeli produk pangan impor semakin ketat, menyusul semakin kompetitifnya produk Cina menghegemoni pasar dunia.

Bersambutnya ‘momentum’ kebangkitan ekonomi global dengan dampak fenomena iklim El Nino semakin memunculkan kewaspadaan akan ketersediaan pangan.

Solusi yang tidak biasa

Meski begitu, kita tidak perlu berkecil hati. Masih ada peluang untuk menjadikan Indonesia sebagai basis produksi pangan, termasuk mimpi menjadi lumbung pangan dunia. Apalagi potensi lahan yang bisa dimanfaatkan untuk sektor pertanian, khususnya tanaman pangan, masih besar. Tinggal bagaimana mengelola potensi dengan baik sehingga produksi pangan bisa meningkat terus.

Direktur Jenderal Pengelolaan Lahan dan Air Departemen Pertanian Hilman Manan menyatakan perlunya bangsa Indonesia berpikir dan mencari solusi yang tidak biasa.

Selama ini mengatasi persoalan pangan selalu melalui pendekatan jangka pendek, yang biasa-biasa saja. Misalnya mengoptimalkan teknik budidaya pertanian serta melakukan penguatan ekonomi petani melalui permodalan dan kelembagaan.

Masalah itu memang penting. Tetapi, dalam jangka panjang, yang jauh lebih penting adalah memperbaiki daya dukung alam dalam bentuk lahan dan air sebagai jaminan memproduksi pangan yang berkelanjutan. Bagaimana penyusutan lahan pertanian ditekan, kesuburan lahan ditingkatkan, dan pasokan air untuk pertanian dipulihkan kembali.

Bangsa kita harus melakukan penataan sumber daya pertanian untuk memberikan jaminan ketersediaan lahan, air, infrastruktur terkait rantai pasokan, hingga adanya jaminan pasar dan harga. Jangan mengandalkan isi perut bangsa pada negara lain.

Peluang bagi bangsa Indonesia masih besar mengingat sumber daya alamnya yang bagus. Terkait El Nino atau La Nina, Hilman mengatakan, sesungguhnya Indonesia masih memiliki banyak cara untuk meredam dampak buruknya agar tidak banyak memengaruhi persediaan pangan dalam negeri.

Strateginya meredam persoalan global dengan pendekatan lokal. Ini dimungkinkan karena Indonesia bukanlah negara daratan yang lahan pertanian kebanyakan dalam bentuk hamparan seperti Australia dan AS. Indonesia adalah negara berpulau lengkap dengan pegunungan yang menjulang, dengan lahan pertanian tersebar dan ada di setiap pulau.

Topografi seperti ini memungkinkan bangsa kita mengelola alam secara lokal. Lihat saja kondisi alam hampir semua kawasan barat dari setiap pulau di Indonesia jauh lebih subur dibandingkan wilayah timur.

Jawa Barat lebih banyak hujan daripada Jawa Timur, begitu pula wilayah barat NTT lebih subur dari wilayah timur. Irian bagian barat lebih subur dibandingkan Irian bagian timur, begitu pula dengan Sumatera, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, dan pulau-pulau lain. Wilayah-wilayah barat dari setiap kepulauan itulah yang seharusnya menjadi basis produksi pangan pokok.

Melihat fenomena itu, pengelolaan tata ruang yang propangan menjadi penting. Guru besar ilmu ekonomi Institut Pertanian Bogor, Hermanto Siregar, mengatakan, peningkatan produksi pangan bisa dilakukan dengan cepat manakala bangsa ini mau mengubah orientasi kebijakan pembangunan ekonomi ke industri berbasis pertanian.

Selama pertanian tidak menjadi prioritas, keinginan menjadikan Indonesia lumbung pangan dunia hanya akan menjadi isapan jempol.

Sumber  :

Jadilah Lumbung Pangan Dunia !, Hermas E Prabowo | Kompas, 19.08.2009

This essay addresses the question of whether tropical waters are likely to warm or cool in the last half of 2009. Necessarily it also addresses matters such as:

• The character of warming cycles in the tropics.
• The usefulness of the ENSO 3.4 Index as a proxy for tropical warming events.
• The driver of sea surface temperature change in the tropics.
• Change in the nature of this driver over time.
• The contribution of warming cycles in the tropics to global temperature change.
• The place of greenhouse theory in explaining global temperature change.

For a description of the data used for this analysis see Kalnay, E. and Coauthors, 1996: The NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis 40-year Project. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 77, 437-471. This data can be accessed at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl

Global temperature is strongly influenced by change in sea surface temperature in the global tropics. There is a lag of about six months from tropical to global peak. There is no argument as to the driver of global temperature on a year to year basis. Until recently many observers (including the UNIPCC) have maintained (without any justification whatsoever) that the ENSO oscillation is temperature neutral on decadal and longer time scales. That assertion is now widely questioned. We must ask how much, and whether all of the change in global temperature can be attributed to the cycles of warming and cooling in the tropics. The strong temperature gain between 1978 and 1998 has been attributed to man’s influence on the basis that “we know of no other reason for the change that has been observed.” That logic is now in question. Was something really obvious simply overlooked? There is still no evidence for the greenhouse induced ‘hot spots’ in the upper atmosphere. Is the UNIPCC assertion that the recent warming is due to the activities of man classic case of jumping to premature conclusions in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary.

Frequently the collapse of a solar cycle is associated with cooling in the tropics while the onset of a new cycle is associated with the initiation of a strong warming event. However, Cycle 24 is unusual. The sun is spotless even though 10.7cm radio flux has been increasing since late 1998. Just when is the big warming event to be expected and will it be as big as 1997-8?

Those who believe that anthropogenic greenhouse gases drive a relentless increase in atmospheric temperature eagerly await the next El Niño to re-establish their predicted warming trend.

In previous posts, and again here, I demonstrate a deterministic relationship between temperatures in the tropical STRATOSPHERE and sea surface temperature. Temperature in the tropical stratosphere varies with its ozone content. An increase in stratospheric ozone is associated with the slackening of the Antarctic vortex  between July and January and the collapse of the Arctic vortex in March April, an event that varies in significance with the oscillating strength of the latter.  Modulating the strength of the annual cycle there is  an exaggerated biennial flux in temperature associated with a wind reversal in the equatorial stratosphere described as the Quasi Biennial Oscillation. On a much longer time scale, a strong increase in the temperature of the southern stratosphere occurred between 1948 and 1978 and a decline thereafter. The resulting climate shift of 1978 was manifestly responsible for the 20 year warming trend in sea surface temperature that ran through to 1998.

It is possible to demonstrate that the temperature of the tropical atmosphere between 200hpa and about 10hPa moves in a synchronous fashion. As it moves, the (very hard to measure) opacity of ice cloud above 200hPa must vary in such a way as to admit more or less sunlight. The fact that sea surface temperature is locked directly to the temperature of the atmosphere above 200hPa strongly suggests that the flux in ice cloud opacity is the factor involved in modulating albedo.

The tropics between 30°north and 30°south tends to be relatively free of low cloud. The map of the globe below shows amazingly low levels of outgoing long wave radiation from the cloudiest areas of the tropics where convection and resulting de-compressive cooling is the defining characteristic. Conversely, high levels of outgoing long wave radiation emanate from locations where descending, warming, relatively cloud free air lie over the vast expanses of the southern ocean and the subtropical North Atlantic. It is these cloud free areas that will expand and contract as the centres of tropical convection wax and wane in their activity.

Operationally, when the ozone content of the upper troposphere and stratosphere increases, the upper atmosphere warms, cirrus cloud evaporates allowing more sunlight to reach the ocean. As the ocean delivers more evaporation to the atmosphere the centers of ascent and descent see intensified activity. As the centers of descending air expand, so also is there an expansion of the cloud free area. The ocean warms. This warming and cooling activity, depending upon cloud cover, is modulated by a wholly autonomous process that changes the concentration of stratospheric ozone.

This post identifies the southern hemisphere locations that exhibit  strong warming that initiates or contributes to generalized warming events.

Figure 1

Figure 1 Pattern of outgoing long wave radiation from the Earth in April 1985 at the height of the warming period that began with solar cycle 21 in 1976

Where is the warming activity concentrated?

Figure 2 compares global tropical sea surface temperature and sea surface temperature between 10° north and 10° south latitude. At issue is the question of what latitude sees the greatest warming. Is the warming confined to the Pacific and Indian Oceans? Is the warming confined to close equatorial latitudes? Is it due to a change in currents in the close equatorial zone? Is it due to the spreading of western Pacific Warm Pool waters over a greater surface area as the trade winds slacken?  Is it due to reduced upwelling of cool waters along the western coasts of the great continents as the trade winds slacken? Is it due to warming of the ocean floor? In truth it is none of these as a moments examination of figure 2 will reveal.

Figure 2

Figure 2 Anomaly in monthly Sea Surface temperature in relation to the 1948-2009 average. Close equatorial zones compared with the global tropics 30°N to 30°S

Figure 2 shows that warming in the wider zone between 30°N and 30°S precedes that in the close equatorial zone.  Accordingly, it must be change in the latitudes outside the close equatorial zone that accounts for the flux in temperature at the equator. All waters between 30°N and 30°S are driven equator-wards by the trade winds. The atmosphere can not warm the ocean except at the very surface but sunlight penetrates to 200-300 metres. Logic dictates that it is the flux in cloud cover outside the very cloudy Inter-tropical Convergence Zone that is responsible for warming cycles in tropical temperature.

Secondly, let’s note that tropical temperatures between 30°N and 30°S have been very close to the long term (January 1948- August 2009) average since 1999. The cooling event of 2008 plumbed a depth unreached in 2000 and the cooling event of 2009, brief as it was, all but matched it, if not in duration then certainly in terms of the temperature reached. Where is the warming?

Thirdly we note that peaks in temperature in the global tropics occur in the main at  the end of southern summer (blue arrows). The sun is closest to the earth on December 21^st. The southern ocean is more extensive and much cooler than the northern ocean at all latitudes. Furthermore, the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone is located north of the Equator for most of the year and the southern Trades and the configuration of the continents ensure that the northern hemisphere is the recipient of most of the benefit from the warming of the southern ocean. Figure 2 shows that the zone 0-10°north is slightly warmer than the zone 0-10°south most of the time, although manifestly not so in the strongest warming events like that of 1997-8. Given this dynamic, tropical waters must be expected to cool strongly during southern hemisphere winter in mid year.

However, it is apparent that the tropical ocean sometimes experiences anachronistic warming in mid and late year (blue circles and red arrows). How can this be? What causes it?

Warming late in the year

Figure 3

Figure 3 Anomaly in monthly Sea Surface temperature in relation to the 1948-2009 average Southern latitudes compared with the global tropics 30°N to 30°S

Figure 3 confirms the point that the early annual peak in tropical sea surface temperature (blue arrows) is always associated with strong warming of waters between 20° and 40° south latitude. It is therefore the warming of the southern waters that drives this annual peak.  However it is also plain that the southern tropics do occasionally warm in mid and late year (see the green arrows). But, omplicating the picture is the presence of late year warmings (see red arrows) that are clearly not associated with generalized warming between 20° and 40° south.

Late year warming not associated with warming in subtropical waters in general

Figure 4

Figure 4 Anomaly in monthly Sea Surface temperature in relation to the 1948-2009 average. Global tropics 30°N to 30°S compared to the index of SST in the ENSO 3.4 region

Figure 4 shows the relationship between global tropical sea surface temperature and sea surface temperatures in the ENSO 3.4 zone in the mid Pacific. The Niño-3.4 region is located at 5°N-5°S, 170°W-120W.

It is notable that when temperature in the ENSO 3.4 region is elevated we have late year heating events that are not associated with the warming of southern waters in winter. Notice that the early annual peak in global tropical temperatures frequently finds the ENSO 3.4  index at a minimum. Given the difference between the two data streams it is apparent that an index of ENSO 3.4 temperatures relates poorly to tropical and global temperature. ENSO 3.4 is a Pacific phenomenon that does not relate at all well to warming phenomena in the rest of the tropics or the globe as a whole. In terms of global temperature dynamics it’s a distraction and something of a red herring. The dynamics driving ENSO 3.4 temperature are not the same as those driving temperature in the global tropics.

This however, is not to say that what happens in the Pacific is irrelevant to the dynamics of tropical temperature change. The Pacific is an important theater, but not the only one.

Warming in the in-feed zone of the south east Pacific

Figure 5

Anomaly in monthly Sea Surface temperature in relation to the 1948-2009 average. Waters of the South East Pacific compared to the global tropics 30°N to 30°S

Figure 5 compares anomalies in sea surface temperature in the global tropics with those in the in-feed zone in the south east Pacific. The in-feed zone is partitioned into two areas by latitude, separating 30-40°south from 20-30°south.  Figure 5 also identifies late season warming events with red and green circles. A strong warming of the in-feed zone of the equatorial waters coincides with early annual warming events. But this in-feed warming also occurs and is responsible for late year warming on six of eight occasions.

Strong in-feed warming has been uniquely responsible for the spectacular increase in tropical sea surface temperature in both 2008 and 2009. The resulting increase in tropical temperatures will however be short lived because the south east Pacific is already cooling. On the other hand successive minima show an advancing trend from 2005 suggesting that, if this trend continues, strong warming of the in-feed and the equatorial zone zone may be possible next time round late in 2010.

Cause of warming in the in-feed zone

Figure 6

Figure 6 Anomaly in monthly Sea Surface temperature in relation to the 1948-2009 average Waters of the south east Pacific 30-40°S. 260-275°E compared with 250-280°E

Figure 6 shows that in-feed warming  extends over thirty degrees of longitude in northward trending waters at latitude 30-40° south. Figure 6 also identifies with red arrows warming associated with the  periodic collapse of either the Arctic or Antarctic vortex customarily described either as a ’sudden’ or a ‘final’ stratospheric warming. This phenomenon is described in the post: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/the-atmosphere-dancing-in-the-solar-wind-el-nino-shows-his-face/

Figure 7

Figure 7 Anomaly in monthly Sea Surface temperature in relation to the 1948-2009 average

The changing nature of the forces driving sea surface temperature in the south east Pacific in-feed zone is apparent in figure 7. After 1978 the range of latitudes responsive to change in stratospheric ozone increased to take in 30-40° south. The increase in the temperature of the upper troposphere and stratosphere prior to time was responsible (via change in ice cloud cover) for the increased extent, frequency and intensity of warming events that raised global temperatures between 1978 and 1998. However, 200hpaand 20hPa temperature in the global tropics and in the south east Pacific in particular has actually been in slow decline since 1983 and cloud cover in the upper troposphere must be expected to respond accordingly just so long as upper atmosphere moisture levels are adequate.

Figure 8

Figure 8 Sea surface temperature in the south east Pacific at 250-280° East and 20-30° south compared to the temperature of the stratosphere at 20hPa

Figure 8 shows how sea surface temperature in the in-feed zone is locked to stratospheric temperature at 20hPa.

Change in the parameter driving cycles of sea surface warming and cooling

Figure 9

Figure 9 Moving 12 month average of 20hPa temperature centered on seventh month and the anomaly in monthly temperature with respect to the average monthly temperature (period 1948 to 2009).

Figure 9 plots the moving 12 month average of 20hPa temperature at 10°north to 10°south and also the departure of each month’s mean from the period average for that month. This is a very important graph. It shows the dramatic change in the forces driving sea surface temperature over the period of record. And indeed, what changes there have been! Here is a list of the patterns that emerge.

• There are four, five or six warming cycles in stratospheric temperature per solar cycle. The nature of these warming cycles has changed over time.
• Cycle 18 produced relatively stable temperatures in the stratosphere.
• Strong peaks in stratospheric temperature occurred in 1963, 1971, 1983, 1992 and 2007.
• The strongest advances in stratospheric temperature occurred in the early stages of odd numbered cycles 19, 21 and 23.
• Much enhanced variability in temperature from month to month is seen to develop in solar cycles 22 and 23.
• Stratospheric temperatures are again on the increase in the last half of cycle 23.
• Cycle 20, when the globe cooled, was marked by declining temperatures in the stratosphere after solar maximum as was cycle 22.

It is abundantly evident that the basic parameter driving the warming of the tropical sea has changed dramatically over the period of record. Conventional climate science and the UNIPCC knows nothing of this.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

It is apparent that cycles of warming in the tropics contributed strongly to the increase in global temperatures between 1978 and 1998. The forces that control the temperature of the stratosphere influence the flux in ice cloud cover in the subtropics and thereby the frequency and intensity of warming events in the tropics. The role of cirrus cloud in determining the flux of temperature at the surface is currently misunderstood. This misunderstanding is a product of reliance on greenhouse theory in complete defiance of the evidence that other factors overwhelm and negate the response to the increase in trace gas content.  As the upper atmosphere warms in  subtropical latitudes cirrus evaporates and the surface manifestly warms. It does not cool. The IPCC has it the other way round. It maintains that cirrus cloud traps heat and warms the surface. This theory is completely at odds with observation. It should be consigned to the scrapheap of intellectual thought along with Lysenkoism. It is Junk Science.

The behaviour of  stratospheric temperature since 1948 is inconsistent with the notion of a closed system. Solar influences and in particular the condition of the polar vortexes is critical in determining the temperature of the stratosphere. Temperature change in the stratosphere propagates from high to low latitudes. The dynamic whereby water vapor is lifted into the stratosphere from a warm tropical ocean, influential because it dissolves ozone, is important in damping change in stratospheric temperature in equatorial latitudes. But, the temperature of the stratosphere at high latitudes is externally driven. Geomagnetic events and the intensity of solar irradiance are known to affect the concentration of erosive nitrogen oxides that enter the stratosphere via the polar vortexes and deplete stratospheric ozone.

Until the dynamics that control the ozone content of the upper atmosphere are fully elucidated the future of tropical and global sea surface temperature will remain unclear. Some atmospheric scientists assert that planetary waves generated by internal processes control the temperature of the tropical and polar stratosphere. The thread of that argument is fragile in the extreme.

In general, our understanding of the atmosphere is weak. Compartmentalizing of the atmosphere into discrete regions known as troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and thermosphere tends to inhibit focus on the all important interaction zones. This categorization is no more valid or useful than the notion that there are discrete zones characterized by quite different and stable climates on the surface of the Earth.

The influence of solar activity is plainly important in driving air temperature above the 200hPa level (about two thirds of the way into the troposphere). Ice  cloud is also found in the stratosphere..

The upper atmosphere has an electrodynamic dimension (related to the increasing presence of plasma with elevation) that renders it susceptible to the influence of the flow of charged particles from the sun. This may be responsible for the change in surface pressure at the poles in relation to that at the equator and the phenomena whereby the upper tropical stratosphere suddenly cools as the polar stratosphere warms.

The atmosphere is asymmetric between north and south in part due to the presence of the Antarctic ice mound and the relative abundance of land at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. The distribution of land and sea is a strong contributor to atmospheric dynamics. So, the hemispheres are essentially very different, a strong factor influencing atmospheric dynamics.

The atmosphere is not amenable to modeling that treats the globe as a closed system. Our understanding of atmospheric processes is elementary. Mathematicians who do not appreciate that the basic parameters driving climate are externally imposed and forever changing, are a hindrance to progress and best employed elsewhere.

It is unnecessary to invoke the increase in the concentration of trace gas concentration in the atmosphere as a cause of surface temperature change. This pattern of thought is nonsense. Natural processes are at work and these owe nothing to the activities of man. It is the height of folly to drive up the price of fossil fuels in pursuit of a furphy.

Footnote: A furphy, also commonly spelled furfie, is Australian slang for a rumour, or an erroneous or improbable story.

Quote:

SEPP Editorial #26-2009 (8/22/09)
The Big Global Warming Debate
By S. Fred Singer, President, SEPP

Solar power is good for hot water systems, remote properties, navigation beacons, recharging portable  batteries, growing grass and drying the washing.  Wind power is good for pumping water, flying kites and racing yachts. Neither can be relied on to run the trains, the factories, the smelters or the hospitals. Any society foolish enough to rely on these medieval energy sources deserves to freeze in the dark.
Naturally, if enough money is extracted from consumers or taxpayers, we could build enough storage capacity or backup generating capacity to provide continuous power from these intermittent power sources. But the cost is prohibitive because the backup facility needs to cope with 100% of the Green Power capacity. This duplication doubles the capital cost of Green Power, but neither the Green Plant nor the backup plant is used efficiently: one or the other is always idle.
If Australia is stupid enough to mandate 20% of the electricity market for Green Power, electricity costs  will escalate, backup gas prices will soar, industry will emigrate and jobs will disappear. If the market is unwilling to build Green Power facilities without mandates or subsidies, there is a good reason for it.

Guest Post from Dan Satterfield

A lot of tropical news this week. The 2009 hurricane season in the Atlantic has stirred to life quickly with two (Update Sunday: 3 !) tropical storms forming on Saturday. It’s not at all unusual to have little hurricane activity until August. The season runs from June 1st to November 30, but the prime season is from Aug, 1st to mid September. American forecasters have an old saying that there will almost always be a hurricane on the weather maps when Labour Day arrives.

These storms form in very warm ocean. The National Climate Data Center (NOAA) released the July global land and ocean temperatures on Saturday. Ocean temps were the warmest on record for July. The land and ocean temps were the 5th warmest on the instrumental record. This follows June 2009 which also came in as warmest.

Another interesting bit of tropical news this week is a new paper published in Nature on hurricanes of the past. One of the great debates in science right now is the question of whether climate change will bring more hurricanes or fewer. The debate has raged between two opposing groups. Kerry Emanuel of MIT has produced interesting evidence that we have seen an increase in hurricanes already due to the warming of the past 50 years.

Chris Landsea of NOAA has produced evidence that we are just detecting more tropical storms, and that there has not been an increase. I had a chance a couple of years ago to hear both of them present at the AMS meeting in San Antonio. I left with the firm conviction that the question remains open. Understand here, that this debate is not about climate change in general.Despite what you read on the Internet, science has moved on from that.

One thing that does seem very certain now is that hurricanes in the warmer world of late this century, will be wetter. Perhaps considerably wetter. The kind of catastrophic flooding we saw in Taiwan this past week, will likely be more common in the future.

Why you ask? Water vapour.

If the average temperature of the air over the oceans rises 1 degree F, the air can hold 4% more water. (This is one reason why more snow is likely in Antarctica as it warms, not less. A 3C rise in temp. by late this century would bring an increase of around 22% in the amount of water held in the atmosphere! (You won’t see that bit of science on these junk science sites)

Sea surface temperatures are a major factor in hurricane formation. If the sea surface temperature is below about 27C then hurricanes are not likely. Upper level wind shear and atmospheric water vapour are other important ingredients.

Other factors like wind shear in the upper atmosphere act to inhibit hurricanes. The El Nino that develops every 4-7 years in the Pacific, increases the wind shear over the Atlantic, and we usually see fewer storms. Will there be more wind shear in a warmer world? Possibly. Conditions could combine to produce about the same number of storms in the future. (Much wetter ones though)

Micheal Mann of Penn State University is the lead author of a fascinating paper in this weeks NATURE. His team used soil/silt cores in a series of locations to estimate past hurricanes. If a hurricane hits a coastline, the overwash of sea water will leave a deposit that can be identified in the cores. They used these sediment cores to estimate hurricane activity over the last 1500 years. In addition, they used a statistical model that factored in variables like sea surface temperature to estimate storms as well.

They found that during a period of rather warm Atlantic Ocean water around 1000 years ago, we saw as many hurricanes as we have over the past 15 years. This is a good confirmation that warmer seas, do give more hurricanes and perhaps more intense ones.

Chris Landsea of NOAA argues that the increase in storms over the past century is just an artifact of spotting them more easily with satellites and aircraft. One thing seems likely here, the hurricanes did increase in the past during a period of warmer oceans.

Whether or not a warmer world caused by human means, instead of natural ones, will do the same is still open for debate. The science, however, might just be beginning to tilt in favor of Mann and Emanuel.

Either way, with sea level now rising 3mm per year, and increasing, future hurricanes, will be wetter and cause more destruction. The current thinking is the IPCC will be adjusting their forecast of sea level rise up considerably in the next report.

This back and forth in the peer reviewed literature is how science advances. When we can answer the question of hurricanes in a warmer world, we will have gleamed another piece of fundamental knowledge of how are planet works.

I end with a book recommendation. Kerry Emanuel of MIT is one of the leading experts on hurricanes. He has written a fabulous book called Divine Wind. It combines poetry and science. It’s one of the best general audience  science books ever written.

Note this is a dual post- I wrote it as a guest post on Skywarn 256’s Weather Blog as well.

Sebagai negara tropis, musim hujan dan kemarau akan datang silih berganti. Dlam periode tertentu terjadi anomali klim berupa La Nina atau El Nino.

Sayang, meski kekeringan (dan banjir) selalu berulang, kemampuan antisipasi dan mitigasi masih bersifat reaktif, temporer, ad hoc, berorientasi proyek, tidak menyentuh akar masalahnya.

Ilustrasinya bisa dibaca dari  ‘dramatisasi’ El Nino. Begitu otoritas resmi (Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, dan Geofisika) menyatakan El Nino berpeluang terjadi Agustus 2009 – Januari 2010 (Kompas, 18/7), hampir semua sektor terkait berlomba dan berpacu memanfaatkan legitimasi untuk memuluskan proyek sektoral.

Lalu muncul program pompanisasi, hujan buatan, perbaikan embung, bantuan air bersih, dan pengadaan traktor. Padahal, peluang intensitas terjadinya El Nino rendah. Pendekatan ini nyaris selalu berulang tiap tahun seolah segalanya sama dan ajek.

Dari tiga sektor (minicipal, pertanian, dan industri) penggunaan air, pertanian akan paling terpukul dengan dampak El Nino. Sebab, El Nino akan menambah cekaman kekeringan. Ini ditandai panjangnya musim kemarau di satu sisi dan pendeknya musim hujan di sisi lain. Aktifitas pertanian amat tergantung alam yang tidak sepenuhnya bisa dikendalikan teknologi. Saat air yang tersedia tidak memadai, apa gunanya bantuan pompa dan traktor ? Akibatnya, pompa dan traktor akan underutilized. Ini pemborosan.

Peluang

Kekeringan, banjir, dan anomali iklim lain selalu identik dengan keterbatasan dan penderitaan. Ini terjadi karena semua diposisikan sebagai faktor pembatas. Berbeda halnya bila kita menganggapnya sebagai peluang. Kekeringan akibat El Nino sebenarnya merupakan peluang, bahkan berkah, yang bisa dimanfaatkan. Bagi tanah, periode kering merupakan masa istirahat atau puasa untuk proses pemulihan. Masa itu berguna untuk memperbaiki sifat fisik (struktur, aerasi, permeabilitas), kimia, dan biologi tanah setelah terus dieksploitasi dalam kondisi anaerob.

Pada musim kemarau, tanah menjadi aerobik, sirkulasi udara pun lebih baik, zat-zat beracun yang mengganggu pertumbuhan tanaman terekspos. Periode bera atau istirahat ini akan memutus siklus hama sekaligus mentransformasi posfit (yang tidak tersedia bagi tanaman) menjadi posfat (yang siap diserap akar).

Setelah El Nino, produksi padi pada tanah demikian haris dipacu karena produksinya pasti akan lebih tinggi dari tahun normal. Praktik ini dilakukan sebagian petani di Jawa Timur dan Jawa Tengah.

Kedaulatan pangan

Masalahnya, periode kekeringan akibat El Nino akan lebih panjang dari kondisi normal. Akibatnya, tidak hanya produksi pangan menurun, petani akan jatuh miskin karena sawah satu-satunya sandaran hidup. Jumlah pengangguran meningkat, arus urbanisasi tak terbendung. Yang paling mencemaskan adalah rapuhnya kedaulatan pangan, lalu kita tergantung pangan impor. Politik akan terguncang jika hal-hal itu terkendalikan.

Meski demikian, hal ini bisa disiasati, tergantung kondisinya. Intinya, petani harus diyakinkan praktik cocok tanam diubah. Cara bertani dengan mengandalkan Pranata Mangsa  dan menentang alam harus ditinggalkan. Saat ini, masih banyak petani berpikir harus menanam padi saat air menggenang di sawah tanpa berhitung sebulan atau dua bulan bakal kekeringan. Karena itu, perlu becermin pada keberhasilan Sekolah Lapang Pengendalian Hama Terpadu, Sekolah Lapang Iklmim perlu dimassalkan. Dari sekolah ini, petani belajar ‘membaca’ peta iklim, menyusun pola tanam, dan memperkirakan hasil.

Di wilayah dengan pola tanam padi-padi-padi, harus diubah jadi pola padi-padi-palawija atau padi-palawija-palawija. Padi bisa dipilih varietas genjah, berdaya hasil tinggi dan tidak rakus air, seperti Memberami dan Way Apo Buru. Praktik tanam System Rice Intensification (SRI) terbukti tahan cekaman air dengan hasil produksi tetap tinggi. Menanam varietas berumur pendek dan yang mengonsumsi air terbatas, seperti kacang hijau dan jagung, juga menekan risiko kekeringan. Di beberapa wilayah Jatim, petani memanfaatkan musim kemarau untuk menanam hortikultura, seperti semangka, melon, dan sayuran. Cara-cara ini selain menekan risiko juga akan menjaga pendapatan.

Di daerah kering dan cuaca lebih panas, petani perlu mengganti tanaman yang lebih toleran pada kekeringan. Perlu dipertimbangkan padi gogo dengan sistem gogo rancah di daerah yang terbatas airnya atau sawah lahan kering yang mengandalkan tadah hujan.

Konsep re-use, re-cycling, dan re-duce harus diimplimentasikan. Kita bisa memetik berkah El Nino bila bisa menyediakan air kapan dan di mana pun. Itu bisa terjadi bila paradigma melihat El Nino berubah.

Sumber :

Memandang El Nino sebagai Berkah, Khudori | Penulis buku Ironi Negeri Beras
Kompas, 11.08.2009

Catatan :

Bagi Anda yang tertarik untuk mengetahui konsep pikir serta pandangan Pak Khudori, ada buku bagus karya beliau yang disajikan dengan bahasa yang awam nan mudah dicerna – sehingga saya dan Anda yang tidak paham dengan teknis dan masalah pertanian akan dengan mudah menyerapnya. Buku dengan judul Ironi Negeri Beras adalah sebuah buku yang luar biasa, yang amat  saya rekomendasikan bagi Anda untuk memiliki dan menikmatinya. Terima kasih.

Nunca en los últimos 1.000 años se había registrado una frecuencia tan alta de huracanes en el Atlántico como en la actualidad, según las conclusiones de un estudio de la Penn State University de EEUU publicado en la revista “Nature”.

Científicos de esta Universidad, dirigidos por el profesor Michael Mann, examinaron los sedimentos de los huracanes que han atravesado la costa de Norteamérica y del Caribe, y constataron que el número actual de huracanes es históricamente alto.

En la última década se ha registrado una media de 17 huracanes y tormentas tropicales, el doble que a principios del siglo XX y una cifra sólo comparable e incluso superada, según el estudio, durante la anomalía climática que se produjo durante el medievo (el Periodo de Calentamiento Medieval) hace aproximadamente 1.000 años.

La investigación no evalúa si existe una relación entre el incremento de los episodios de este fenómeno meteorológico y el cambio climático y se limita a ofrecer los datos empíricos.

El procedimiento para elaborar la serie histórica fue estudiar los sedimentos que dejan tierra adentro, especialmente en las lagunas próximas a la costa, los vientos de hasta 300 kilómetros por hora de los huracanes que llegan a impactar en la tierra.

Se analizaron los sedimentos de siete lagunas en la costa de EEUU y de una laguna en Puerto Rico, y se hizo un cálculo aproximado del número de huracanes ocurrido en cada época a partir del numero de ellos que alcanzó la costa -muchos se pierden en el mar.

El equipo del profesor Mann también estudió modelos previos de ordenador sobre generación de huracanes y tuvo en cuenta los principales factores que influyen en la virulencia del fenómeno: la temperatura de la superficie en la franja tropical del océano Atlántico, los ciclos de El Niño y La Niña, que se generan en la costa este del océano Pacífico, y la Oscilación del Atlántico Norte.

La investigación sugiere que pese a que la frecuencia e intensidad de los huracanes de hoy y de hace 1.000 años son las mismas, no tienen detrás las mismas causas ni características.

Hace 1.000 años, explicó Mann, un prolongado desarrollo de “La Niña” (circunstancia que influye en la generación de huracanes) coincidió con una climatología relativamente cálida en el Atlántico, lo que convirtió el fenómeno en algo más azaroso y circunstancial…[]

Fuente AFP en www.google.com

Por otro lado www.bbc.co.uk informa:
Los huracanes en el Océano Atlántico son ahora más frecuentes que en cualquier otro periodo de los últimos 1.000 años, según una investigación publicada en la revista Nature.

Para este estudio, los científicos examinaron los sedimentos depositados a lo largo de los siglos en lagos y pantanos por huracanes que atravesaron la costa este de Norteamérica y el Caribe.

Los registros sugieren que la actividad de los huracanes en la actualidad es inusual, aunque podría haber sido similar o incluso mayor hace unos 1.000 años.

El director de la investigación, Michael Mann, de la Universidad Estatal de Pensilvania, en Estados Unidos, cree que pese a que esta no proporciona una respuesta definitiva sobre influencia del cambio climático en la frecuencia de los huracanes, ofrece información importante.

Los huracanes golpean las costas con vientos que alcanzan los 300 kilómetros por hora, lo suficientemente fuertes como para transportar tierra adentro arena y otros restos de la costa que se depositan en lagos y pantanos.

Los investigadores han estudiado ocho de esas lagunas en costas en las que los huracanes regularmente tocan tierra, siete de ellas en EE.UU. y una en Puerto Rico.

El equipo del doctor Mann cree que el número de huracanes que toca tierra en esos lugares debe ser proporcional al número total de huracanes formados, por lo que estas zonas proporcionan un registro fiable sobre el cambio en la frecuencia de los huracanes a lo largo de los siglos.

Anomalía climática

Los registros sugieren que la actividad de los huracanes en la actualidad es inusual.
En la última década se han producido anualmente una media de 17 huracanes y tormentas tropicales en el Atlántico, el doble de los registrados a principios del siglo XX.

Pero los niveles actuales fueron igualados o incluso superados hace unos 1.000 años, durante el llamado Periodo Cálido Medieval, una época en la Edad Media en el que se produjo una anomalía climática.

“Creo una de las conclusiones destacables de este estudio es que el alto número de tormentas que hemos registrado en los últimos 10 o 15 años pudo haber sido igualado o superado en periodos anteriores”, le dijo a la BBC Julian Heming, especialista en tormentas tropicales de la Oficina Meteorológica del Reino Unido.

“Así que vale la pena alimentar el debate sobre si lo que estamos experimentando ahora es excepcional o está relacionado con la variabilidad de varias décadas o incluso siglos”, señaló Heming.

El equipo del doctor Mann utilizó un modelo computacional preexistente de generación de huracanes para calcular la actividad de los huracanes en un periodo de 1.500 años.

El modelo incluye tres factores que se cree son importantes para determinar la formación de los huracanes: la temperatura de la superficie del agua en el Océano Atlántico tropical, el ciclo de El Niño y La Niña en el Pacífico Oriental y la Oscilación del Antártico Norte, otro ciclo climático natural.

Circunstancias diferentes

Los niveles actuales fueron igualados o incluso superados hace unos 1.000 años.
Este análisis sugiere, según el doctor Mann, que el pico de huracanes de hace 1.000 años y la actual actividad no están producidos por el mismo conjunto de circunstancias.

Mann también afirma que en la Edad Media, un largo periodo de condiciones de La Niña en el Pacífico, que contribuyen a la formación de huracanes, coincidió con condiciones relativamente cálidas en el Atlántico.

www.bbc.co.uk

Sin embargo lo cierto es que segun informa europa Press:

La actividad más elevada de huracanes se produjo en tiempos medievales

La actividad de los huracanes en el Océano Atlántico alcanzó su periodo máximo en los tiempos medievales para dar luego paso a una época de calma, según un estudio de la Universidad del Estado de Pensilvania en Estados Unidos que se publica en la revista ‘Nature’.

El registro, que se traslada hasta 1.500 años atrás, muestra que este máximo medieval rivaliza e incluso excede la actividad reciente de huracanes y apunta a una ‘tormenta perfecta’ de condiciones similares al fenómeno climático de La Niña y al calentamiento atlántico asociado.

Los científicos, dirigidos por Michael Mann, han producido un registro empírico de la actividad pasada de los huracanes al combinar información de registros sedimentarios con modelos estadísticos de indicadores climáticos, como El Niño/Oscilación Sur, temperaturas de la superficie marina del Atlántico tropical y la Oscilación del Atlántico Norte.

Los investigadores descubrieron que los dos registros independientes eran estadísticamente similares, solapándose en un 95 por ciento de sus intervalos. Ambos registros sugieren que la actividad reciente es inusualmente alta pero que posiblemente una actividad superior se produjo durante la era medieval, entre el año 900 y el 1100, seguida por una disminución general en la actividad hacia el año 1200.

Los investigadores creen que el pico de actividad fue causado por las condiciones de La Niña en el Océano Pacífico y por temperaturas de la superficie marina superiores a las habituales en el Atlántico…[]

www.europapress.es

Menghadapi musim depan agaknya Liverpool masih mempercayakan lini depannya pada striker Timnas Spanyol Fernando El-Nino Toress. Walau musim ini bermunculan pesaing baru dan lama yang bangun tidur, Elnino masihlah striker yang harus diwaspadai setiap pemain di lini belakang tim lawan.

Lho-lho-lho ki bukanne blog hijau mas??

Iya Hijau Lapangan hijau…. hehe bercanda dikit…Yo serius yo. Emm El nino

El nino oh elnino, seakan terus menjadi perbincangan yang hangat di bulan-bulan di pertengahan tahun ini. Apakah gerangan itu? Makanan apa itu? Enakkah? Kayakna, lha wong namanya keren “El-Nino”

Tapi ternyata dampak dari Elnino ini tak sekeren namanya. Wah-wah bahkan mungkin efeknya sama ketika gawang kita dijebol oleh Elnino Torres sanz….

Pengaruh El nino yang berdampak pada pengurangan curah hujan di Indonesia tidak hanya menjadikan musim kemarau lebih panjang,  tetapi juga menimbulkan kekhawatiran bagi kalangan petani. Yaiyalah, ketika elnino benar-benar terjadi, selain petani mengalami kemungkinan gagal panen juga memngakibatkan beberapa daerah benar-benar akan kekurangan air. Yuk sekarang pada dihemat airnya!

Sek-sek sebentar dah pada tahu elnino yang dimaksud kan?? Belum? Wah untung aku belum ngoceh kepanjangan. Anu itu lho sebuah fenomena yang terjadi di bagian timur dan tengah samudra pasifik, fenomena ini berupa panasnya permukaan air laut di samudra pasifik yang biasanya diatas suhu normal. Nah itu menyebabkan musim kemarau panjang di indonesia. Ada lagi lawan dari fenomena itu yang disebut La-nina (haduh!! Isterinya kali ya?). itu menyebabkan curah hujan tinggi di Indonesia..

Lanjut? Yuuu marii.

Kata pak Kepala Pusat Studi Bencana Alam (PSBA) UGM Dr Sunarto MS. Diliput KR sich sebenarnya aku Cuma ngutip. “El-Nino tidak terjadi tiap tahun (rata-rata 4 tahunan). Untuk tahun 2009-2010 diperkirakan ada pengaruh El-Nino. Yang mengakibatkan kemarau panjang.”

Dijelaskan untuk mengantisipasi dampak dari El-Nino diperlukan seorang bek tangguh yang bisa… dah bercanda-bercanda ayo benang merahnya mana? (OVJ mode) sampe mana tadi? Untuk mengantisipasinya pemda kudu memperhatikan pengelolaan selokan Mataram. (tuk DIY) itu kata pak Dr Sunarto MS bukan kata saya.

Seandainya pengaruh El-Nino benar-benar sampai ke Indonesia, Dikhawatirkan wilayah DIY akaan dilanda kemarau panjang. Bahkan diprediksi hingga maret 2010 belum akan turun hujan. Walau Cuma prediksi, ga ada salahnya ta pihak terkait mewaspadai hal tersebut.

Selama ini banyak masyarakat yang beranggapan bahwa kekeringan dapat diatasi dengan hujan buatan. Padahal untuk menciptakan hujan buatan tidak mudah. Karena hujan buatan baru bisa terjadi jika awannya Comolonimbus,” (nahlo awan comolonimbus kayak apa tuh) jelasnya sambil mengatakan bahwa hujan buatan bukan berarti membuat hujan tetapi menebari awan dengan garam sehingga terangsang untuk menimbulkan hujan.

Sementara kepala Seksi Data dan Informasi, BMKG stasiun Geofisika Yogyakarta Tony Agus Wijaya Ssi menjelaskan, pengaruh El-Nino terhadap pengurangan curah hujan di Indonesia sangat ditentukan pada suhu perairan pada september 2009. Berdasarkan pengamatan dan dataa-data yang ada di BMKG, saat ini tekanan udaranya tidak cukup untuk mendorong masa uap air ke pasifik tengah. Nah tadi kan dah dijelasin kalau el nino adalah fenomena yang terjadi di bagian timur dan tengah samudra pasifik, fenomena ini berupa panasnya permukaan air laut di samudra pasifik yang biasanya diatas suhu normal sedangkan suhu perairan indonesia mendingin. Nah ini menyebabkan tekanan udara di perairan Indonesia lebih tinggi. Sehingga masa udara yang penuh dengan uap air tertarik dan mengalir ke arah pasifik. Dampaknya ya jelas curah hujan di Indonesia kan berkurang..

Terangnya lagi “El-Nino pernah terjadi di Indonesia pada Seeptember 2007. Dimana Anomali suhu perairan Indonesia minus 0,6 derajat Celcius atau lebih dingin daei perairan pasifik (2,3 derajat C).”

Terkait itu tak ada salahnya seluruh pihak yang terkait untuk tetap waspada kalau-kalau Fenomema itu terjadi di Indonesia. Diharapkan hal-hal yang tidak diinginkan bisa terantisipasi sejak dini.

So far this year Barack Obama has been very lucky.  In his first year he is fortunate to be in an El Nino season.

El Nino description from NOAA.

And no you are wrong Al Gore. Global warming does not influence El Nino and La Nina conditions. It is a natural occurring event that has been going on for centuries.

“El Nino is first recorded in the early 1500s, and it happens every four years at that time. It usually lasts for a few weeks, but major events lasts for a little longer than a year. Recent events occur in 1957, 1965, 1972, 1976, 1982, 1983, and 1997. A powerful El Nino in 1982 and 1983 caused severe droughts in Australia and Indonesia. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, it brought an unusually large number of storms in California, USA. There were also violent rains and destructive floods in Ecuador and Peru.”

What this means is that the Atlantic Ocean is cool (Reduced fuel for hurricanes) thus far at this time there have been no named hurricane systems in the Atlantic to threaten the Southern States.

However when there is an EL Nino in effect then there is a history of torrential rains for the West Coast of the US when El Nino is active. Also at this time there is a possibility of Hurricane Felicia (8-7-09) affecting Hawaii. However the prognosis is that this hurricane will be reduced to tropical storm Felicia by the time it gets to Hawaii

So here is the point of my writings:

Barack Obama is concentrating on spending trillions of dollars for his Pork Barrel projects like Nationalized Heath Care and there will be no money available to help the people in the near future for what could possibly be a very bad flood and series of heavy rain events that may plague the Western Pacific States.  Recently it has been very hot and dry in the Pacific Northwest. That means that the jet stream has dropped further south.

http://www.intellicast.com/National/Wind/JetStream.aspx

More importantly when the El Nino subsides and La Nina returns, the number of named Hurricanes will increase again in the Atlantic. These storms as you know have caused the most severe damage to largely populated areas.

Here are the questions that I have:

1. Where is the money going to come from to help people recover from potentially devastating hurricanes in the future?

2. Where is the money going to come from to repair any damage from the “Pineapple Express” if it occurs again in the West Coast of the United States.

3. How will Barack Obama respond to these natural disasters in a timely manor?

4. How much experience does he have with dealing with a natural disaster like Katrina?

5. Will Barack Obama blame his shortfalls in FEMA’s response on George W. Bush?

6. Who will Barack Obama choose as the “Hurricane Czar” to be in charge of managing and directing hurricanes and being the official PIO for the hurricanes that may come ashore in the future?

Hopefully FEMA has learned a lot about Hurricane Response.  Maybe it will be better this time around if there is another Katrina. It is always possible that a CAT 5 storm could hit the continental US again in the future.

It seems that Barack Obama is taking the “Out of Sight Out of Mind” approach to the future on this topic.  Oh I know. Barack Obama will deal with that when and if necessary.

Just food for thought.

STMARIE