No change in atmospheric CO2, but:
THE drought-breaking La Nina weather pattern has finally kicked in, bringing flooding rains along the eastern coast and filling the tributaries that feed into the dying Murray-Darling river system.
Forecasters are predicting a wet summer and autumn but remain unwilling, at least officially, to call the end of the worst drought in living memory. And they warn it would still take rains of “biblical proportions” to fill the dams of cities and towns.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
David – this is stated publicly, and again (as before) this is said with ALL sincerity: I REALLY appreciate that you take the time and make the effort to post and communicate with us – the great unwashed.
But, sheesh – you are so with the negative vibes…
“Large reservoirs in the southeast have been drawn down over the last decade and at this stage it’s DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE those returning to pre-drought conditions in any FORSEEABLE time frame, Dr Jones said”.
OK – what’s the foreseeable timeframe? Is it a month? Six? Less than one year?
Most [large] dam volumes, with the exception of the SEQ catchments and the [smaller] Eildon and Hume dams, have increased over the winter. If the current rains continue over the summer and next winter – is it not possible that ALL the SE Australia dams can get to 80%+ by the end of next year? With the continuation of the current flooding of the Darling tributaries and the very heavy rainfall in Sth NSW – is it not possible that the Murray Darling will flow all the way to SA within the next couple of months?
——————–
The CPC/NCEP Nino SST Nino indices have again dropped over November.
YR MON NINO1+2 ANOM NINO3 ANOM NINO4 ANOM NINO3.4 ANOM
2007 8 19.16 -1.64 23.86 -1.1 28.58 0.12 26.2 -0.5
2007 9 18.57 -1.92 23.52 -1.31 28.12 -0.36 25.77 -0.87
2007 10 18.8 -2.11 23.36 -1.54 27.86 -0.55 25.22 -1.38
2007 11 19.45 -2.19 23.16 -1.79 27.42 -0.94 25.06 -1.45
All areas show a larger negative temp anomaly than that in October!
If December is a better than a -1.5 average for the month we will still have a +5 90 day SOI average!
The latest MEI is FLAT for Sept Oct & Nov – when historically ALL the Ninas in this period have gone up. It has more potential!
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/comp.gif
The current sub surface temp anomalies are over 2C below normal – in some regions 3C below normal! These will continue to keep the surface cool for months!
http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/ocean/results/ocean_anals/NCC_Pacific/2007/Dec.gif
We are in an extended solar-minimum, the PDO is in a negative phase and the IOD is slowly creeping negative as well. All these historically have reinforced La Nina events / rainfall here in Australia.
——————
What will – nay – what CAN stop this event before the next equinox (when the sun moves over the northern hemisphere) and prevent it from being a multi-year La Nina?
And if this La Nina continues well into next year (and realistically we should expect at least cold neutral into the year after) – why is it therefore SO DIFFICULT to imagine that the “large reservoirs in the southeast [can’t return] to pre-drought conditions in ANY FORESEEABLE time frame”?
sincerely
Arnost
Because, Arnost, all we are getting now is the average. We have had below average, for so long, a brief return to average is going to achieve much.
Arnost, to make meaningful gains we need to have inflows far above allocations/usage. That means that averages flows will see little if any increase in levels across many systems. After 11 years of below average rainfall across much of southern Australia this is very difficult to imagine. Statistically speaking, the recent drought across large parts of the south marks a statistically significant change to a new drier climate. Time will tell if this is “permanent” (like the SW WA decline), but given that we are in unchartered waters we simply have no historical perspective on when things might turn around. Many of our major storages have seen inflows in recent years which have seen hydrologists rewriting the record books, and devising management plans to handle flows so low they were previous unimaginable.
We also know it is getting a lot hotter over Australia and that AGW will lead to less inflows on average, so the odds are increasingly stacked against (particularly) southern Australia seeing a return to the good old times of high inflows. This year alone will see SA, NSW, Victoria and probably the MDB and Tasmania have there hottest years on record (some by huge margins).
As for Hume and Eildon etc. the state of the Murray Darling is dire. Inflows this year have been running at near record lows despite a modest improvement in rainfall, and the major storages will be near empty without massive rainfalls over summer. Last years inflows were half the previous record low and we have had 24 months of below average inflows in a row.
The MDBC will give a detailed update on Monday, so you can hear it from the officials who manage the system.
I have no interest in talking things up or down – the simple fact is the current drought is beyond our experiences on a range of levels (heat, duration, severity, seasonality) and probably a sign of where Australia is heading under AGW.
AGW? How long are the records?
Thanks David
You’ve made a couple of good points wrt the MDB – maybe it will take more than a season of high inflows if there’s high water allocations in the upper system.
But the point I was making was about next year – the SE Aust dam catchments are pretty much well saturated now – and any big rain events are going to be mostly runoff. I still think that it is entirely possible that the dams may be near capacity IF this rain continues for a couple of months – so I think it is “forseeable”.
Thanks for the reply.
cheers
Arnost
Arnost
it’s also entirely possible that AGW is real and there will be more droughts in Australia.
It’s also entirely within the realms of “possible” that AGW is real and there will be less droughts in Australia.
Arnost
so anything is “possible”, but that line of reasoning is not really going to get us anywhere, is it?
Any fool who can access the excellent BoM site, can see that the long term (100 year) rainfall trend for S.E. Australia, indeed for most of Australia, is positive.
Now I know the hysterics will claim that the trend from 1950 (for SE Australia) is negative.
But that is clearly due to unusually wet periods in the 50s, 70s and early 90s.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/trendmaps.cgi
It is entirely possible or even probable that AGW is real, to some extent, but it is not apparent in the long term rainfall record for SE Australia.
Any is indeed the operative word.
That’s why the producers are totally happy and have never had it so good. In fact they’ve been able to handle worst on record inflows without even raising a sweat.
Haven’t we been over this?
Is it realy a prediction after the event has started. Like backing a horse halfway down the finishing straight.
?
We have also, Luke, been over the fact that the barrier reef corral cores prove that 300 years ago, we had a drought, somewhat drier than this one, which lasted 23 years.
I think you can understand that this was before enhanced CO2.
Now, I am aware that the proof is only for the Rockhampton area, but its not likely that such a deep, & prolonged dry, could be a local event.
So, come off the grass, & stop ignoring facts. You will get a much better hearing if you add a little truth to your arguments.
Hasbeen
there have been large variations in the earths climate throughout it’s history. And always for a reason.
This time, the reason is us.
SJT, prove it!!
I see that the RSS MSU data for November is now out. Temperatures have been declining since 2005, with a La Nina now in full swing, the decline has accelerated. November was the coldest month since Jan 2000 and temperatures are now virtually unchanged from a decade ago!
Dont expect to read about it in the SMH, but you can see for yourself on Lubos Motl, Junkscience or the RSS
Since La Nina may last until at least the beginning of autumn, temperatures may fall further as well – but we will have to wait and see.
There seems to be increasing evidence that AGW is fairly slight – despite ever increasing gusts of hot air.
This is backed up by the latest HADSST2 numbers. The average November sea surface temperature anomaly is now at 0.15 degrees C. We are starting to see current temperatures equal to or below a number of months as recorded in the 1940’s, over 60 years ago. Goodbye AGW, hello natural variability!
1941/04 0.233
1941/06 0.154
1941/07 0.150
1941/10 0.322
1941/11 0.296
1941/12 0.236
1942/01 0.242
1942/05 0.161
1944/05 0.156
1944/06 0.186
1944/07 0.233
Dudes has a look at the data sets in themselves – have a look at the ups and downs. You’re quoting a global SST measurement now to 3 decimal places in WWW II. And we have a bloody big La Nina in effect with a whooping cool anomaly across a large slab of the Earth’s surface.
As they say on parade “wait for it!”.
HELLO natural variability indeed is the point.
So you guys reckon AGW will STOP all natural variation do you? Says who and when? Have a look a GCM control run – it’s noisy stuff with decadal moves. Have you ever seen a time series of climate data that’s a nice straight line?
Just hope the trend continues guys coz if it doesn’t we’ll be cutting and pasting these for a decade.
Wiggle watchers.
Hasbeen – yes sure and I have posted on such in the last year. Actually it’s another 600km north, much closer to Townsville than Rockhamption (reefs offshore Burdekin River outflow). So you’re actually reporting a proxy for very low flows for the Burdekin River system for 23 years. Of course this is a long way from the Murray River. And you’re comparing temperate regions versus the tropics. You need some paleo records for Lake George sediments. But yes we could indulge it as a possibility.
The difference is that there are IMO a number of explanatory contributions to the southern drought which are reflected in changes in Antarctic circulation. Explains why non-El Nino years also didn’t rain. Which we have also been over here on the blog 3-4 times. So yep its equivocal.
Reality is to have enough statistics to convince you, we’ll need another 40 years of data. At which point I don’t think we’ll have any options for managing the situation.
Actually Hasbo – It don’t think 40 years would even convince you. I reckon nothing will.
And again Hasbeen you’re trappied in “either or” – has to be one or the other. What about a bit of both happening. Do you think AGW would STOP all natural variability or ADD to it !?
So you want to consider THE FACTS do you?
Luke,
Accepted that temperatures do indeed vary! So you can start chewing on my ass once we see any sort of significant upward trend in temperature that takes us into record territory for more than a couple of months. However, seeing that we haven’t seen any notable upward trend in temperatures since the early 80’s once we take volcanic activity into account and we are headed into a couple of cycles of low solar activity, my buttocks are feeling pretty safe right now. So let us have our fun while we watch the temperature plummet. God knows the Alarmist clarions were screaming loudly during every El Nino wiggle over the last 10 years!
Come on – your volcanic stuff is pure bulldust. Put up the optical depth data.
Well check this out then – and this is from an Alarmist source. Note figure 2 for the temperature impact profile. Some bulldust.
http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu.RdXltHXQgBQW5XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTE4dGllM2g4BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2FjMgR2dGlkA0Y3NTVfNzkEbANXUzE-/SIG=12jhk3df4/EXP=1197256669/**http%3a//climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/VEAChapter1_Robocknew.pdf
Also note:
From: Self, et.al., 1996, The Atmospheric Impact of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo Eruption: IN: Newhall and Punongbayan, (eds.), 1996, Fire and Mud: Eruptions and Lahars of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines: University of Washington Press
Several experiments have measured the radiative climate forcing of the Pinatubo aerosols. The NASA Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) recently provided the first unambiguous direct measurement of the climate forcing on a large scale in both hemispheres (Minnis and others, 1993), an average radiative cooling of 2.7 W/m2 by August 1991. Direct solar beam reductions of 25 to 30 percent were measured at widely distributed stations by Dutton and Christy (1992), while Stowe and others (1992) showed from AVHRR-derived optical depth measurements that the globally averaged net radiation at the top of the atmosphere may have decreased by about 2.5 W/m2 in late 1991. These values translate into a global cooling of at least 0.5 to 0.7 degrees C, as seen in the global and Northern Hemisphere temperature records by September 1992 (Dutton and Christy, 1992). A net cooling effect of approximately 0.3 degrees C was estimated as a result of the El Chichon aerosol (Angell and Korshover, 1983; Handler, 1989), but the overall potential cooling caused by the El Chichon cloud was moderated by warming assiciated with El-Nino-Southern Oscillation (Angell, 1988, 1990). Pinatubo had a much larger radiative influence than El Chichon in the Southern Hemisphere (Dutton and Christy, 1992). Pinatubo’s cloud caused about 1.7 times the global radiative forcing of El Chichon, making the estimated cooling of 0.5 degrees C a more robust figure.
Check out Figure 1 here to see the volcanic climate impact profiles for both El Chichon and Pinatubo.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/archive/previous_issues/vol3/v3n19/feature.htm
Get it now Hasbeen?
You see the current drought (the worst since 1937 – 45 when the Hunter ceased to flow, the Hawkesbury was dry at North Richmond, most Victorian water storages were empty, the Murray had ceased to flow at Echuca http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/drought3.htm ) is not further evidence of AGW (that over 90%GW is due to us, is ESTABLISHED SCIENCE), nor is it necessarily another example of the devastation that AGW causes (droughts are ‘natural variation’).
The take-home message is that AGW will make droughts in future much worse than they would otherwise be – ESTABLISHED FACT.
Got it now Hasbeen you ignorant, good for nothing moronic old redneck blow-hard who should get back to the pig farm and leave comments on climate science (which is beyond your meager intelligence) to we Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Experts who can cut and paste with alacrity.
Chris
if you’re going to pretend to be someone who accepts the science behind AGW is basically correct, at least get it right.
Gee Chrisgo – dam it – we’re stumped – dam it. hehehehehe
Mark – yes of course volcanoes have an impact but so what? Youe reference and others indicate that modellers use them to check their predictions and certain behaviour like water vapor feedback. Your last reference invalidated by being an up the creek version of the MSU data. Early data sets were flawed.
Let’s just ignore volcanic impacts then. That’s good science!
Didn’t say that. And that are not ignored.
David, you said
“We also know it is getting a lot hotter over Australia and that AGW will lead to less inflows on average, so the odds are increasingly stacked against (particularly) southern Australia seeing a return to the good old times of high inflows.”
It is worth returning to reality. Even the IPCC says that global temperature has increased by six tenths of a degree in the past 100 years.
This is not my idea of “a lot hotter”. It is my idea of a very little bit warmer.
If the trend continues over the next 10 years, we are looking at an increase of about six one hundredths of a degree.
To claim or infer that this is a lot hotter, and will lead to radical change in climate is madness.
Take a reality check.
PP
The BOM are being prudent by restricting their outlook to a few months whilst NOAA are being more bullish saying that la Nina will persist well into 2008.
Some pundits are observing that this trend will continue for a decade but they would just be guessing eh Luke?
I would say so – are these public pundits or private persons?
Explain the difference..
Anyway, RC say that climate can be predicted
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/short-and-simple-arguments-for-why-climate-can-be-predicted/
Difference – some public institution or your mates or private consultant.
Yes a future climate might be calculated but not an individual year. All they’re saying it is possible to predict a background climate. Similarly you can predict the average tide years in advance but you won’t have an idea of exact water level on 13 June 2020. Could be anywhere from calm, to rough seas, to a storm surge. But on average it will be right.
One of the big problems with future climate scenarios – what will humanity do about CO2 growth – anything? – a bit? – heaps?.
Weather forecasts lose skill out past 10 days, seasonal forecasts lose skill out past 3-6 months. And seasonal forecasts don’t predict specific days – at best they predict high, medium or low rainfall. It might all arrive in a few weeks or be evenly spread over the time period being predicted.
How much skill you need to be useful depends on your problem decision.
Read the RC article carefully – it’s sage advice.
Having read the RC article through, it seems to verify many of the statements made in this blog that climate modellers using GCM’s are unable to demonstrate the validity of their methods. The point is made in numerous posts in the RC thread that the modellers have yet to demonstrate that measured data agrees with modellers results. Hence there can be no confidence in the ability of modellers to predict climate over long periods.
This is pretty much what the AGW critics have been saying.
PP
You go that out of it did you – wow !
Coz that’s 100% not what it’s saying.
of course you can’t predict the climate over long periods. But you can predict (or at least conceptually attempt) to predict “A CLIMATE” state in the future which will of course have considerable year to year variation (as you would expect).
The RC piece is simply an attempt at answering the old “well if you can’t predict the weather more than 10 days in davance how can you predict the climate”.
It’s called boundary conditions ….
Is RC a public institution?
A predictable high level comment.
Meanwhile back at the drought ….
http://www.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/20/River_Murray_System_Drought_Update_11_December_2007_7_Dec.pdf
Thanks for that link, Mark. Some of the rankings seem to put the volume of El Chichon much smaller than Pinatubo. The news that Pinatubo was only 1.7 times greater than El Chichon makes it quite clear that without volcanism the global temperature would have plateaued (with ENSO wibbles) in 1983, not 1992 as I had earlier concluded.
And that would make it 24 years of zero evidence of global warming. And 24 years in which atmospheric CO2 has gone from 340ppm to 381ppm. So despite an extra 41ppm or 213Gt CO2 there appears, at best, only marginal warming. Sort of knocks the sensitivity assumptions around, don’t you think?
So how are volcanos affecting the temperature again? What’s your forcing calculation (and no hand waving now) on the effects over how many years. So you’ll be putting together no effect for CO2, none for solar – any evidence, with volcanism. Wow !
Seems we are now arguing for a step-function in temperature which has just “happened” for no reason.
I mean this is remarkable science by Motty here – will there be a Nature paper – OK too hard – how about a duet with David Archibald at E&E?
I certainly think sensibilities more than sensitivities are being knocked around.
I mean this is remarakble that a bloke from Byron Bay has single handly beaten the entire world’s climate science community with carbon stick and and an envelope.
Extraordinary stuff. Will probably soon be in all the world’s papers. Surely an op-ed for the Australian newspaper is coming. Bob Carter could get it published for you. I mean this is critical national interest material here. Marc Morano could get it a run in the USA – “Aussie single handly falsifies AGW – Gore hands back Nobel – I was gutted says Al – I just can’t believe it.”
This simulation has just been trashed. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/104/10/3713
“New mystery forcing mechanism discovered”
Of course if we’re trimming those horrid El Ninos downs we should give this year an increase for La Nina (only fair!).
But if you’re not sure and just frothing on I can understand – that you won’t be making any public announcements except here in the back swamps.
Mosaic burn all catchments every 2-4 years. That will increase runoff, improve biodiversity, and make the bush safer. Easy.
Getting back to the front with “Drought Breaker” also Arnost & Co: Despite all the rain and green in the lawn areas around my place in the “centre” of our MDB catchment I had the need to dig out my spruce stump hole again last week.
With a big dead Siamese in a carboard box beside the hole and the crowbar I found completely dry soil lumps with the spade les than 50 mm deep. The bottom of the spade had struck ground harder than old concrete. In fact, the heavy rains failed to wet any part of that big stump hole that I completely dug out only weeks before.
Planting a memorial shrub was not an option, even a token garden is impossible in my new rockery (dog proofed) mound.
Millions of cicadas have hatched all the same. A red ironbark opposite side of the walk became their roost. Brown snakes come into the garden hence the dead pet chore.
A while ago a post mentioned how unusual it was to have a drought in an apparently La Nina cycle. Cooler than normal waters to the north and west of Australia were blamed, noting that the last time this pattern had happened was in 1967. (Bad drought followed by two exceptionally wet years.) The ocean temps have obviously warmed, as the rain bearing cloud bands have been moving across central and northern Australia.
You lot can argue the academics all you like. I am waiting for the next year’s rainfall, with hopeful anticipation. I would like to know how far back the ocean temps go, as this multi-year heavy rainfall pattern also followed the droughts of 1930 and 1914.
Perhaps someone will peruse this cat and mouse game, the cicada natural cycles and come in to the debate on the side of rainfall arguments with this drought being part of a greater cycle. See pursuit models etc.
http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/12/colyvan.html
Gavin, are you trying to tell me that models trump observations? Someone has modelled an explanation why 2007 did not ‘perform’ as a La Nina year, citing 1967.
On that model, I am waiting for next year’s rainfall observations to come in … and indicated a couple of past droughts that could fit, if this model is supported by rainfall evidence to come.
Volcanoes are random, unless the vegans have come up with a new conspiracy, and hence, can be removed from temp records to determine underlying trends. Funny, I don’t recall claiming that El Ninos should be taken out. So why is the Duke of Doofus raving on about adjusting for La Ninas?
And as usual he simply doesn’t get the significance of sudden jumps to a plateau. Because the jump took place much earlier than we have been led to believe it follows that recent emissions have had nothing to do with the temperature rise. They couldn’t possibly have contributed because they took place AFTER THE FACT.
And while the reason for the jump remains indeterminate, it is much more likely the case that the critical rise was nothing more than a continuation of the rise from the sixties and seventies.
And poor old skywanker must have really had his dags rattled if all he can come up with is a line that I must be in error because I haven’t been published in Nature. The irony is that neither has he so, by his logic, he must be just as wrong.
The difference, of course, is that I am actually willing to put a real name to what I write. Skywanker apparently doesn’t believe his mutterings deserve a real name. And on reflection, I must agree with him on that point.
Just a quick observation: Since January the globe has cooled by something like 0.4C. This is apparently as a consequence of going from an El Nino to a La Nina conditions. In 1998 from the peak of the big El Nino to the La Nina conditions a year later the cooling was in the order of 0.7C.
Where does all this extra cooling / warming come from on a “global” scale. The East Pac areas directly affected by the El Nino / La Nina covers a small percentage of the worlds surface – yet its effects “apparently” over one year are on a global scale are (esp. in the case of the temp change in 98/98) of the same magnitude as that attributed to the total temperature increase over the last century.
Where does this extra heat come from or go? It is obviously not just a case of some areas getting warmer and some correspondingly cooler – i.e. it’s not a heat transport / redistribution mechanism. Otherwise the “global” temperature will be unaffected. It is also not a function of GHGs.
Something else is in play.
Do an op-ed for the national newspaper Ian – expose those frauds for what they are – I dare you ! Don’t waste your talents here on backwater central. But I know you’re not serious.
The trouble with putting a real name is that there is no room for a team list.
Arnost: please explain your quick observations with respect to this lot-
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/oct/oct07.html
Helen: No rainfall charts needed here. Unfortunatly drought prevails. Wild poppies are a great indicator of surface moisture. Catchment dryness can also be measured while pulling up weeds by hand.
Gavin – I’m not quite sure what you want me to explain… NCDC hasn’t got out Nov numbers yet, but even basing it on the ones you provide then Jan to Oct the decrease is almost 0.4C…
Jan 2007 0.8328 => Oct 2007 0.4826
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land_and_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
It is expected that Nov will be cooler than Oct (both MSU and even GISS temps took a big downtick in Nov)
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
One right back at you – please explain why should we ignore HadCRU and satelite temps (which both match the sonde temps) and rely on NCDC / GISS which is some 0.2 – 0.3C higher?
Oh, by the way – did you know that when adjusting for UHI and such USHCN / GHCN (which both NCDC and GISS base their temps on) they conveniently increase the temps by something like 0.2 – 0.3C…?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
Arnost c’mon, oranges v apples Jan 07 v Oct 07 indeed! Wait till Jan 08 data is up to scratch with some summer heat downunder backed by the extra degrees round oz.
hey regardless of 07-08 figures, Jan is the swinging month year to year
Back on theme, “Forecasters are predicting a wet summer and autumn but remain unwilling, at least officially, to call the end of the worst drought in living memory. And they warn it would still take rains of “biblical proportions” to fill the dams of cities and towns”.
Try digging holes through this fragile green stuff. At this point there is nothing underneath to last through summer.
Some extracts from the Perth Gazette.
“Rain is much wanted in the pastoral districts” May 1838
“… serious apprehensions are entertained by experienced flock owners that considerable losses will take place among the larger flocks owing to the drought in the course of the summer. This, we believe, is the first season since the formation of the establishments over the hill – a period upwards of seven years – that such apprehensions have been warranted … there appears to have been a diminution (of rainfall) beyond the Darling Ranges,” October 1838
“The country is unusually dry.” January 1839
“Hot and dry weather severely affected sheep farmers, 50 per cent. lambs were lost and ploughing retarded.” May 1856
“The breakup of the long-continued drought occurred” May 1858
Good one Arnost, it’s part of the natural cycle called the seasons. Try pulling the other one.
SJT… are you serious?