Readers asked what a good extended metaphor was for global warming.  Here’s one, courtesy of the National Center for Atmospheric Research:

AtmosNews takes a lighthearted look at an unexpected analogy, explaining why some people call carbon dioxide (and the other greenhouse gases) the steroids of the climate system. Statistics and extreme behavior are involved, whether we’re talking about baseball or Earth’s atmosphere. NCAR scientist Gerald “Jerry” Meehl explains why.

NCAR has puts it together an very informative website on global warming and extreme weather, which I highly recommend.

Related Post:

• PBS Covers Link Between 2011′s “Mind-Boggling” Extreme Weather and Global Warming: It’s Like “Being on Steroids”

An Interview with Weather Underground’s Dr. Jeff Masters

The laws of physics demand that the huge amount of heat-trapping gases humans are pumping into the atmosphere must be significantly altering the fundamental large-scale circulation pattern of the atmosphere.

Stronger hurricanes, bigger floods, more intense heat waves, and sea level rise have been getting many of the headlines with regards to potential climate change impacts, but drought should be our main concern. Drought is capable of crashing a civilization.

by Christine Shearer, reposted from the Conducive Chronicle

If you are interested in weather, chances are you have visited Weather Underground and read the posts of its director of meteorology, Dr. Jeff Masters. The consistently reliable Masters has been a rare voice in helping make sense of, rather than cloud (zing!), the increasingly strange weather events hitting the planet.

Masters has studied weather both on the ground and in the air. He received his bachelors and masters degrees in meteorology from the University of Michigan, and then worked as a Miami-based flight meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Hurricane Hunters team. It was there that Masters and his crew, having lost temporary control of their radar and thinking they were heading toward a mild twister, flew right into the eye of Hurricane Hugo — a category 5 storm and the most destructive of its time.

Masters later wrote of the event in “Hunting Hugo“: “I look out my window, and behold the eye of Hurricane Hugo in its full fury. It is awesome, terrifying, supernatural.”

Although two engines of the plane were damaged, the crew made it out, which Masters attributes to the navigating of the team, the strength of the P3 plane, and luck. Masters returned to Ann Arbor for his PhD at U-M in 1991, continuing his work on the more applied science of air pollution meteorology: “I had a lot of concerns back then about how human activities were harming the environment and people who rely on the environment for jobs or for a strong economy.” He studied smog, but his attention soon turned to the growing issue of climate change.

He also started an earlier version of Wunderground in 1991, before it went online as the first weather site in 1995. Today, Wunderground.com is fed by the world’s largest network of 17,000 individual weather stations, and is the second most visited weather site in the world.

Masters shared some of his thoughts on meteorology, the effect of increasing greenhouse gases on weather and weather cycles, and the future of the earth’s climate.

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Next Up: The Droughts, Heat Waves, and Floods from the Last Two Decades’ Surge in CO2 Levels

JR: Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters said in June that, driven by global warming, “It Is Quite Possible That 2010 Was The Most Extreme Weather Year Globally Since 1816.″ In a late December PBS story on the link between 2011′s “mind-boggling” extreme weather and global warming, Masters said it’s like “being on steroids … for the atmosphere.” Now Masters examines “Where is the climate headed?”

by Jeff Masters, cross-posted from the WunderBlog

The year 2011 tied with 1997 as the 11th warmest year since records began in 1880, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center said last week. NASA rated 2011 as the 9th warmest on record. Land temperatures were the 8th warmest on record, and ocean temperatures, the 11th warmest. For the Arctic, which has warmed about twice as much as the rest of the planet, 2011 was the warmest year on record (between 64°N and 90°N latitude.) The year 2011 was also the 2nd wettest year over land on record, as evidenced by some of the unprecedented flooding Earth witnessed. The wettest year over land was the previous year, 2010.

Figure 1. Departure of global temperature from average for 2011. The Arctic was the warmest region, relative to average. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

How much of the warming in recent decades is due to natural causes?

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Seven countries and one territory set all-time hottest temperature records in 2011, and one nation set an all-time coldest temperature record. Image credit: Ilissa Ocko, Princeton University.

By Dr. Jeff Masters, in a Wunderblog repost

The year 2011 was the tenth warmest year on record for the globe, but the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present (Ricky Rood has a discussion of this in his lastest post.) Seven nations and one territory broke all-time hottest temperature records. This is a far cry from 2010 (which tied for the warmest year on record), when twenty nations (plus one UK territory) set all-time hottest temperature records. One all-time coldest temperature record was set in 2011; this was the first time since 2009 one of these records was set. The all-time cold record occurred in Zambia, which ironically also set an all-time hottest temperature record in 2011. Here, then, are the most most notable extreme temperatures globally in 2011, courtesy of weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera:

1. Hottest temperature in the world in 2011: 53.3°C (127.9°F) in Mitrabah, Kuwait, August 3
2. Coldest temperature in the world in 2011: -80.2°C (-112.4°F) at Dome Fuji, Antarctica, September 18
3. Hottest temperature in the Southern Hemisphere: 49.4°C (120.9°F) at Roebourne, Australia, on December 21
4. Coldest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere: -67.2°C (-89°F) at Summit, Greenland, March 18. This is also the coldest March temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.
5. Hottest undisputed 24-hour minimum temperature in world history: A minimum temperature of 41.7°C (107°F) measured at Khasab Airport in Oman on June 27

New country hottest temperature records set in 2011

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Remarkably, more than half of the country (58%) experienced either a top-ten driest or top-ten wettest year, a new record.

Percentage of the contiguous U.S. either in severe or greater drought (top 10% dryness) or extremely wet (top 10% wetness) during 2011, as computed using NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index. Image credit: NOAA/NCDC.

by Jeff Masters, cross-posted from the WunderBlog.

Rains unprecedented in 117 years of record keeping set new yearly precipitation totals in seven states during 2011, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center revealed in its preliminary year-end report for 2011.

Precipitation rankings for U.S. states in 2011. Seven states had their wettest year on record, and an additional ten states had a top-ten wettest year. Texas had its driest year on record, and four other states had a top-ten driest year. Image credit: NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

An extraordinary twenty major U.S. cities had their wettest year on record during 2011. This smashes the previous record of ten cities with a wettest year, set in 1996, according to a comprehensive data base of 303 U.S. cities that have 90% of the U.S. population, maintained by Wunderground’s weather historian Christopher C. Burt. Despite the remarkable number of new wettest year records set, precipitation averaged across the contiguous U.S. during 2011 was near-average, ranking as the 45th driest year in the 117-year record. This occurred because of unprecedented dry conditions across much of the South, where Texas had its driest year on record.

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Remarkably Dry and Warm Winter Due to “Most Extreme Configuration of the Jet Stream Ever Recorded”

by Jeff Masters, reposted from WunderBlog

Flowers are sprouting in January in New Hampshire, the Sierra Mountains in California are nearly snow-free, and lakes in much of Michigan still have not frozen.

It’s 2012, and the new year is ringing in another ridiculously wacky winter for the U.S. In Fargo, North Dakota [Thursday], the mercury soared to 55°F, breaking a 1908 record for warmest January day in recorded history. More than 99% of North Dakota had no snow on the ground this morning, and over 95% of the country that normally has snow at this time of year had below-average snow cover.

Departure of snow depth from average on January 6, 2011. More than 95% of the country that normally has snow at this time of year had below-average snow cover (yellow and orange colors.) Image credit: NOAA.

High temperatures in Nebraska yesterday were in the 60s, more than 30° above average. Storm activity has been almost nil over the past week over the entire U.S., with the jet stream bottled up far to the north in Canada. It has been remarkable to look at the radar display day after day and see virtually no echoes, and it is very likely that this has been the driest first week of January in U.S. recorded history.

Portions of northern New England, the Upper Midwest, and the mountains of the Western U.S. that are normally under a foot of more of snow by now have no snow, or just a dusting of less than an inch. Approximately half of the U.S. had temperatures at least 5°F above average during the month of December, with portions of North Dakota and Minnesota seeing temperatures 9°F above average. The strangely warm and dry start to winter is not limited to the U.S–all of continental Europe experienced well above-average temperatures during December.
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“Climate dice,” describing the chance of unusually warm or cool seasons relative to climatology, have become progressively “loaded” in the past 30 years, coincident with rapid global warming.   The distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies has shifted toward higher temperatures and the range of anomalies has increased.  An important change is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (σ) warmer than climatology.

This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth’s surface in the period of climatology [1951-1980], now typically covers about 10% of the land area.  We conclude that extreme heat waves, such as that in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, were “caused” by global warming, because their likelihood was negligible prior to the recent rapid global warming.  We discuss practical implications of this substantial, growing climate change.

That’s the finding of a detailed climatological analysis by NASA’s James Hansen along with Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy in which they attribute some of the uber-extreme heat waves to global warming.

Here’s a key figure from “Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice“:

Percent area covered by temperature anomalies in categories defined as hot (> 0.43σ), very hot (> 2σ), and extremely hot (> 3σ).  Anomalies are relative to 1951-1980.  A normal distribution of variability has 68% of the anomalies falling within one standard deviation (σ) of the mean value.  The tails decrease quite rapidly so there is only a 2.3% chance of the temperature exceeding +2σ.  The chance of exceeding +3σ is only 0.13% for a normal distribution of variability.

This analysis builds on some of the recent new papers on the subject, such as “Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming” [see figure below]

The entire Hansen et al paper is a must-read.  The authors explain why they focus on summer:

Summer, when most biological productivity occurs, is the most important season for humanity and thus the season when climate change may have its biggest impact.  Global warming causes spring warmth to come earlier and it causes cooler conditions that initiate fall to be delayed.  Thus global warming not only increases summer warmth, it also protracts summer-like conditions, stealing from both spring and fall.  Our study therefore places emphasis on study of how summer temperature anomalies have been changing.

The paper also explains the ‘dice’ metaphor and why they are not fans of using a new climatological period, such as 1981-2010 in place of 1951-1980.  I will excerpt some key parts and post some key figures.

First, you may be wondering why the top chart of summer hot area percentage doesn’t have as clear a trend for the United States as it does for  North America or the globe.  As the authors explain:

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AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan

While a number of U.S. utilities are actively embracing an energy transition, rural electric cooperatives have yet to begin leading the fight action on climate change.

In fact, because co-ops own a large portfolio of coal plants across the country, they have often been at the forefront of opposing federal climate policy.

The Virginia Association of Electric Cooperatives, recently put together a petition demanding Congress stop Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that Congress should do it. But when Congress tried to do it in 2009, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) dragged its heels and declined to support the efforts.

This mindset at NRECA, the Washington, DC-based association, originates with its members. For example, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, has been reportedly working to oust a member of the board who is considered “green” and who stopped the group from sending tends of thousands of dollars to fund climate deniers. And the anti-action messaging from a Virginia rural electric cooperative caused one member to criticize the organization for “wasting members’ money challenging the world’s scientific community.”

Given this history of behavior, it was quite a shock to read the latest piece of news from NRECA lamenting the expensive impact that extreme weather had on co-ops around the country:

Big natural disasters added up to big money in 2011, and many of the nation’s electric cooperatives could be including projects to repair the damage permanently in their construction plans for 2012.

“The year 2011 is already in the record books as a year of historic extreme events,” Undersecretary of Commerce Jane Lubchenco said recently. “There have now been 12 extreme weather events [each] totaling at least $1 billion in damages.”

We’ve seen some failure to connect the dots on climate and extreme weather in the press, but this is a completely different level of absurdity.

At a time when climate and meteorological experts are calling climate change the “steroids” for extreme weather, electric cooperatives are busy trying to downplay the problem in order to avoid the consequences of transitioning away from coal — even while recognizing the immense economic costs already incurred by electricity infrastructure.

In fact, a recent study published in the American Economic Review showed that the true cost of coal is actually about $0.17 cents per kilowatt-hour when factoring in the health and environmental consequences.

How high do those costs need to be before cooperatives, which have so much at stake, start recognizing the need to take action?

by Jeff Masters, cross-posted from WunderBlog

A remarkable blitz of extreme weather events during 2011 caused a total of 32 weather disasters costing at least $1 billion worldwide. Five nations experienced their most expensive weather-related natural disasters on record during 2011 — Thailand, Australia, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia.

According to insurance broker AON Benfield’s November Catastrophe Report, the U.S. was hit by no less than seventeen punishing multi-billion dollar extreme weather disasters in 2011; NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center official total is lower–twelve–but is likely to grow in number as additional damage statistics are tallied. Brazil experienced its deadliest weather-related natural disaster — a flash flood that killed 902 people in January, and the Philippines had its second deadliest flood ever, when Tropical Storm Washi killed over 1200 people in December.

It was difficult to pick a top ten list of top weather events of 2011 from this bewildering list of candidates, and I cheated a bit by giving a tie for tenth place, so that eleven events would make the list. My list of top weather events were chosen based on their impact to society and meteorological significance. Damage estimates and death tolls for the 2011 disasters were mostly taken from AON Benfield’s November Catastrophe Report, and records for damages and death tolls from disasters in previous years was taken from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED.)

Here, then, is this year’s top ten list. I’ve included links to some of my blogs posts made at the time of the disaster.

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