Energy flow is driven by differences in energy.
- Rocks fall from high potential energy to low potential energy
- Electricity flows between negative and positive
- Heat flows from warm places to cold places
- Wind blows from high pressure to low pressure
If the Arctic warms faster than the equator, that reduces the temperature gradient and reduces the ability for heat to flow. It means fewer storms, fewer cold fronts, warmer air, etc. Consider Venus. It has a uniform hot temperature, and essentially no weather.
People who claim that a warming Arctic produces more cold air and storms, are scientific imbeciles. Enter Obama’s science adviser. We are truly dealing with the stupidest people who ever walked the planet.
It the Arctic warms, the polar vortex has to form over Arkansas because the pole is too warm for it. I mean, it has to form somewhere. Jeesh.
We are truly dealing with the stupidest people who ever walked the planet.
Who are we talking about?
The people in Washington, or the people who voted for them?
Well, we have made the transition from weather being an afterthought to the evening news broadcast. i.e. the last 2 to 5 minutes of the news broadcast to weather being a 24 hour x 7 days focus.
Thus they have to invent crisis after crisis to fill the broadcast time.
Thus you have the makings of manufactured climate “news”.
Without CAGW, they would have nothing to report…..
So on with the fakery, and to hell with the truth or facts.
Yes.
Steve – Richard Muller agrees with you: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/opinion/the-truth-about-tornadoes.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=2&
40 years ago every climatologist agreed, too. I don’t have the references at hand, but one that I recall was an article by Reid Bryson in The Ecologist, 1976. It laid out the same argument regarding the temperature gradient between the equator and the poles and its relation to frequency of extreme events. He didn’t cite anybody in support of this, because he didn’t have to; this was general (and obvious) knowledge.
“Variability of the polar vortex over the twenty-first century has been examined using a state-of-the-art climate model which has both a fully resolved stratosphere and fully coupled ocean, combined with some recently developed vortex-specific diagnostics…”
“The centroid latitude shows a shift in its mean state to a more equatorward position, but with no clear change in its variability. Combining the diagnostics suggests that the vortex becomes consistently weaker and displaced more equatorward toward the end of the twenty first century.”
http://www.capitaloffice.net.au/gw/MitEA12.pdf
You had me at “state-of-the-art climate model”. The “fully resolved stratosphere” and “fully coupled ocean, combined with some recently developed vortex-specific diagnostics” was just icing on the cake!
Clear as mud pseudo-science babble.
Holdren has some competition down under. Professor Robert Stone is running around saying we are in for a severe El Niño drought, because his climate scam models say so. Yet BOM says neutral for 2014. It’s a full court press by the loonie left (sponsored by london’s carbon credit bunch) on Tony Abbott to drop the carbon tax repeal by April.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Climate science seems to invert normal physics so why wouldn’t a decrease in temperature differential result in an an increase in the driving force for some unprecedented polar vortex? Maybe it is a climate quantum effect. Or good for growing roses.
The Weather Channel in 1994 had it figured out- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hGi3Lk3zo4
No Mann Made Global Warming. Just seasons.
Reblogged this on CACA.
Stupidest EVER? Lemme see… 107 Billion who have ever lived…
Yeah, pretty tough to argue against those probabilities…
The Polar Vortex explained in 1913.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/108162419
“Both Scott’s and Amundsen’s show that at the South Pole
itself1” scarcely any wind blows’/’ and only
very little snow falls. The reason is that
probably the South Pole is situated near
the centre of a great high-level y^ircum
.polar whirl of air — a huge aerial mqtelstrom
— -which is carrying the higher atmosphere
along at a rapid rate from west to east, ‘and
at the same time slanting gradually in ‘ a
spiral manner towards the South Pole. Near
the Pole this hisrft tevel vortex descends
much like the water in the Dasin when the,
plug is pulled up — gyrating round and
round — and delivering the air straight down
wards on the top of the high pleateau near
the South Pole itself. The air accumulating
on the surface of this vast plateau from
time to time breaks away in vast cold mat
ters of nature — vast air avalanches. These
vast air avalanches constitute the blizzards,
and in travelling from the South Pole
northwards they are deflected, like the
south-east trade winds of the southern
hemisphere, and so mostly blow from the
south-east to the north-west. The mainFix this text
circum-polar whirl has several, in fact a
small belt of smaller whirls circulating
around the margin of the Antarctic contin
ent. These latter ‘are spread over the su r
lace of the ocean near the Antai-ctic circle,
and are of the -nature of cyclonic disturb
ances, often of great extent and intense
character. These Antarctic disturbances
have far-reaching influences, and exercise
considerable influence on the weather con-.,
ditions both in Australia and New Zealand.”
Of course the South Pole has very little wind. You can’t have a wind there coming out of the south, the east or the west. The only place you can get wind from is the north. That cuts down your wind possibilities by 3/4 right there.
Wow! This climatology stuff is easy! I should get a grant!
You may have forgotten one relationship….the flow of money to places of greatest greed.
“We are truly dealing with the stupidest people who ever walked the planet.”
Or the least honest…
Well, there is one mechanism by which global warming could produce more storms. Warmer surface temperatures increase evaporation. What goes up must come down, so increased evaporation increases rainfall.
The remarkable thing to me is that the CAGW alarmist all understand that, even to the point of exaggerating it. Yet they don’t understand (or at least never admit to) the obvious corollary.
When water evaporates at the surface, it absorbs a great deal of latent heat. Since moist air is lighter than dry air (H2O molecular weight = 18, N2 molecular weight = 28, O2 molecular weight = 32), the moist air rises. When it condenses into clouds in the middle troposphere, that latent heat is released, having been transported away from the surface.
That’s a classic refrigeration cycle, just like your air conditioner (except using water instead of Freon as the coolant). It is a very important mechanism for cooling the surface of the earth.
It is called the “water cycle.” Evaporation increases strongly with temperature, which means that the cooling effect increases strongly with temperature. That’s a strong negative feedback mechanism.
Just as all positive temperature feedbacks amplify the effects of other forcings and destabilize temperatures, negative temperature feedbacks stabilize* temperatures and attenuate the effects of other forcings.
A negative feedback mechanism attenuates the effect of any forcing which increases temperature, like this:
Higher ground temperature -> increased evaporation & more heat transport to the middle troposphere -> lower ground temperature
A negative feedback mechanism also attenuates the effect of any forcing which decreases temperature, like this:
Lower ground temperature -> decreased evaporation & less heat transport to the middle troposphere -> higher ground temperature
Negative feedbacks are the main reason that the alarmists’ hypothesized extreme climate sensitivities are implausible.
* Exception: delayed feedbacks of cyclical forcings can have very different effects, depending on how the delay compares to the cyclical period.
Not necessarily. Higher temperatures lead to increased humidity, which leads to decreased evaporation and rainfall.
Steven,
Decreased humidity also leads to decreased rainfall. It simply doesn’t rain at zero percent humidity. If you are correct, and rainfall also decreases with increased humidity, then there is a sweet spot for humidity at which maximum rainfall will occur. What is that perfect level of humidity to maximize rainfall?
I assume you are correct, so why then do the following lists share so many cities? It appears that high average humidity = high average precipitation
Highest average annual humidity
Highest average annual precipitation
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c485.html
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c462.html
Juneau, Alaska is one of the wettest and one of the coldest cities in the US. The absolute humidity there is generally not very high, but the intrusions of cold air allows it to condense.
I lived in Houston, and it could go for months at a time in the summer with high humidity and not a drop of rain.
Thanks
Dave, the situation is a little more complicated than what you describe. For one thing, as the higher latitudes warm relative to the tropics there will be weaker wind patterns. So if there are more rain clouds they will more commonly drop their rain over the seas, not onto the continents.
NASA describes the following factors:
Clouds cool Earth’s surface by reflecting incoming sunlight.
Clouds warm Earth’s surface by absorbing heat emitted from the surface and re-radiating it back down toward the surface.
Clouds warm or cool Earth’s atmosphere by absorbing heat emitted from the surface and radiating it to space.
Clouds warm and dry Earth’s atmosphere and supply water to the surface by forming precipitation.
Clouds are themselves created by the motions of the atmosphere that are caused by the warming or cooling of radiation and precipitation.
If the climate should change, then clouds would also change, altering all of the effects listed above. What is important is the sum of all these separate effects, the net radiative cooling or warming effect of all clouds on Earth. For example, if Earth’s climate should warm due to the greenhouse effect , the weather patterns and the associated clouds would change; but it is not known whether the resulting cloud changes would diminish the warming (a negative feedback) or enhance the warming (a positive feedback). Moreover, it is not known whether these cloud changes would involve increased or decreased precipitation and water supplies in particular regions. Improving our understanding of the role of clouds in climate is crucial to understanding the effects of global warming.
Yeah, but they are saying the extra H2O in the air is a greenhouse gas. They fail to mention that the tropics have not warmed, claim the poles have, and forget that there is almost no water vapor in the air at the poles. And one of the poles is getting colder anyway.
Quite so, Stephen. “If the Arctic warms faster than the equator, that reduces the temperature gradient and reduces the ability for heat to flow. It means fewer storms, fewer cold fronts, warmer air, etc.”
The famous Polar Vortex is just a cyclone that forms every winter over the Arctic. It’s fed by the energy inherent in cold air meeting warm. The resulting high winds keep the frigid air within fairly tight bounds. But if the temp gradient is weaker, due to a warmer Arctic, the cyclone weakens and destabilizes. Huge gobs of warm air lurch into the Arctic and frigid air consequently swoops down as far south, this time, as Alabama. Because there is less energy in the system.
Antarctica has polar vortices. And little to no wind at the South Pole.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-264.70,-91.08,388
The average voter is a brain dead zombie who follows the leader. Universal suffrage is a disaster for every nation that allows it.
Well, where is the optimum place on the spectrum between that and total dictatorship to be…? Aye, there’s the conundrum!