Observed warming 1901-2012 from IPCC AR5. Particularly concentrated in high northern latitudes, especially Siberia and Canada, and in a couple of more equatorial regions (Brazil, northwest Africa).pic.twitter.com/pnMVyWlVGO
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Curious to see two spots where it has cooled: north Atlantic, and in the American South (with, perhaps, concomitant political impact).
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Fascinating to see that the Antarctic February sea ice hasn't changed much. Admittedly, over a short baseline.pic.twitter.com/0fV2DIAWI8
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Matches my anecdotal impression: my beloved Australian east coast really is seeing much less rain. And it wasn't seeing much to begin with. Looks like a drop of 10-20% in my home town of Brisbane.pic.twitter.com/2qtrgzOkFR
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Where the extra energy is being stored: mostly (60+%) in the upper ocean (top 700m), and most of the remainder in the deep ocean. Water is an absolutely amazing heat sink (and has an extraordinary specific heat).pic.twitter.com/NhZPXKXWoQ
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Worth noting the total there - almost 3 by 10^23 Joules (half a mole of Joules, to mix domains!)
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Just for comparison (& my own curiosity), Wikipedia reports world power consumption at about 150,000 TW hr/ year. That's about 5*10^20 Joules per year, so roughly 1000 times smaller.
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Hmm. Was wondering why most of the observed warming was over land, but most of the heat is in the ocean surface. Of course, the very high specific heat of water is the reason! Can dump huge amounts of heat there, and get only a small change.
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That fact + high circulation / mixing of ocean water seems likely to be the reason the warming over the oceans is so much more uniform.
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Interesting to contrast the average temperature anomaly with the sea level change. Some correlation, but the sea level change is much more smoothed out. I don't understand why.pic.twitter.com/4Dj4I2QjAQ
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I guess the sea level change is likely responsive to local changes in temperature in polar regions. Which may be more smoothed than global temperature anomaly. (But I don't see why. Also: don't have a good model of the relationship between temp change & sea-level rise, anyway)
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Actually, that world energy consumption graph is really fascinating. From Wikipedia: Surprised not to see natural gas rising more. Goes against the common narrative I hear around the rise of fracking / natural gas.pic.twitter.com/MC6BB5Epuy
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Curious to contrast with this paper showing evidence that CO2 emissions have peaked (mostly due to fracking):https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/674738150367993856 …
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TIL: Nitrous oxide - laughing gas - is an important greenhouse gas. (I wish water vapour was on this graph.)pic.twitter.com/Nk2Zaa1fTR
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Interesting that methane is apparently levelling out. I don't know why.
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Also, an estimate I heard in a talk by David Keith: the atmospheric half-life of CO2 is about 1000 years. So without some type of reclamation / sequestration technology, just keeps rising, except over very long time scales.
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This graph is one of the most fascinating I know of, period (and the error bars are outright the most fascinating I know of). It's the IPCC report's estimate of the radiative forcing due to several sources, with 95% CI's.pic.twitter.com/8H8qMhkO1V
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A few comments: total estimated forcing is 2.3 Watts per square meter. That's about 0.17% of the solar constant (about 1367 Watts per square meter), a truly tiny (but nonetheless monumental) change!
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I wish the error bars were discussed a LOT more. A funny thing: in popular writing about climate change, the writer often effectively yells loudly "we KNOW this is going on, anyone who doesn't think so is an anti-science ignoramus." This turns me off.
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Anyone who discusses a complex subject and turns it into simple slogans, and evinces complete certainty & dismissal of opponents, is someone I have a lot of trouble trusting.
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Feynman: "In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.”
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In any case, I find those error bars - and the enormous effort the IPCC has put into really understanding them (and great care in reducing them) - absolutely fascinating.
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I'd be curious to know the effect of the Montreal protocol (banning CFCs) on radiative forcing, since - I believe - CFCs are an aerosol reducing radiative forcing. While banning CFCs was a good thing, did it contribute to global warming?
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End of conversation
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