By Bradley J. Fikes
According to climate change scientists:
— An earth warmed by man-released CO2 will experience great climate disruptions such as warmer winters in the Northern Hemisphere.
— An earth warmed by man-released CO2 will experience great climate disruptions such as colder winters in the Northern Hemisphere.
This isn’t an either-or choice. Peer-reviewed scientific papers by those believing in man-caused climate change make both cases.
“NASA scientists input all of these factors in a climate model and concluded that greenhouse gases are the primary factor driving warmer winter climates in North America, Europe and Asia over the last 30 years. They found that greenhouse gases, more than any of the other factors, increase the strength of the polar winds that regulate northern hemisphere climate in winter.
“Using a computer model that simulates climate through interactions of ocean and atmosphere, scientists input current and past levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor and nitrous oxide. They found that greenhouse gases such as those increase the strength of polar wind circulation around the North Pole.
“The polar winds play a large role in the wintertime climate of the northern hemisphere. The winds blow from high up in the stratosphere down to the troposphere and eventually the Earth’s surface. When they strengthen, as they do from increases in greenhouse gases, they blow stronger over the warm, moist oceans picking up and transporting warmer air to the continents. Thus, warm air from the Pacific Ocean warms western North America, and the Atlantic Ocean warmth is shared with Eurasia. When winds are stronger, winters are warmer because air picks up heat as the winds blow over the oceans. When winds become weak winters become colder.”
According to that particular NASA computer model, anyway. NASA also published similar research predicting warmer winters in 1999.
But according to research released in 2010 by at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference, we’re due for colder winters from climate change.
“Cold and snowy winters will be the rule, rather than the exception,” says Dr James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States. Dr Overland is at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference (IPY-OSC) to chair a session on polar climate feedbacks, amplification and teleconnections, including impacts on mid-latitudes …
“While the emerging impact of greenhouse gases is an important factor in the changing Arctic, what was not fully recognised until now is that a combination of an unusual warm period due to natural variability, loss of sea ice reflectivity, ocean heat storage and changing wind patterns working together has disrupted the memory and stability of the Arctic climate system, resulting in greater ice loss than earlier climate models predicted,” says Dr Overland.
“The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic,” he says.
This purported effect of climate change is getting a lot of press now, with the intense winter weather we’re experiencing. Bryan Walsh, a loyal supporter of climate change theory at Time magazine, this month wrote the obligatory story informing the masses that yes, the frigid weather is consistent with global warming.
“The theory seems counterintuitive, but as Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who writes the great Wunder Blog at Weather Underground, put it in a recent post, it makes sense: ‘This pattern is kind of like leaving the refrigerator door ajar — the refrigerator warms up, but all the cold air spills out into the house.’ The planet overall is still warming — and the Arctic fastest of all — but the cold air from the far north can result in biting winter weather and major storms, for a while at least.
That’s not the only theory. Judah Cohen, the director of seasonal forecasting at the environmental research firm AER, has written that increasing seasonal snow cover in Siberia may drive extreme winter weather. Even as the planet has continued to warm and the Arctic has melted, seasonal snow cover has increased in Siberia, especially north of high Asian mountain ranges like the Himalayas. (As the climate warms overall, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, which can lead to more precipitation — falling as snow in places like Siberia that remain relatively cold.) All that Siberian snow creates a dome of cold air near the mountains, which bends the passing jet stream. Instead of flowing west to east, the jet stream moves in a more north to south fashion, carrying cold air south from the Arctic in the eastern U.S. and in Europe.”
Warmer winters or colder winters — those advocating global warming theory have certainly covered their bases.
In another version of this post, I said Time’s Bryan Walsh deserved an award for climatological contortionism, for earlier reciting the premise that climate change would be bringing warmer winters. Here’s one of his posts saying so, in 2009. Excerpts:
Bradley, when the glaciers begin to peep out of the Santa Monica Mountains, they too will be due to global warming. These guys have painted themselves into a corner and it will be interesting to see how they get out. They are a bit like uneducated stock market investors or 21 players who keep hoping for their luck to turn.