Guardian in sensible comment shocker

Take a look at Nicola Davies' article about the floods and the recent Met Office/CEH report. This is rather level-headed stuff, with none of the wailing and gnashing of teeth that usually accompany the paper's utterances on the subject. Here's the conclusion:

Is climate change ultimately the cause?

It is not possible to link the current floods definitively to climate change. "In terms of the number of storms there is scant evidence that has been increasing due to climate change so far," said Scaife. "[But] we do expect that winter rainfall is likely to increase in the future." This is in part down to a warming planet. "As the air warms it can hold more water."

That seems to me a scientifically supportable case. I wonder how much more water the air can hold if it's, say, 2 degrees warmer?

Comments

[David S]

A lot better than Hugo Rifkind's drivel in the Times yesterday.

[cjcjc]

Except we were told to expect...colder, drier winters!

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/14/met-office-arctic-sea-ice-loss-winter

[Radical Rodent]

Perhaps the BBC gave us one of the reasons for the problems on the Breakfast show, this morning (I paraphrase, so the English may be better than the BBC can give us): “The flood level is nearly as high as in 2007, and may even reach that of 1947. However, flood defences are set a little bit lower, so these could be overwhelmed…”

D’oh!

Now, I am not a scientist, and certainly not a flood expert, but it seems obvious that any flood defences should be built higher than history has shown levels can reach. A good rule of thumb could be, say, at least 10% higher?

[Ivor Ward]

The fact that warm air can hold more water does not mean it will rain more. Does it rain more in summer than it does in winter? (expletive resisted)

[Martin]

Warming planet ??? - not for the last 17 years !

[not banned yet]

Ivor +1

[Schrodinger's Cat]

There is no doubt that warmer air can hold more water.

Warmer planet, more evaporation, more atmospheric water vapour, more absorption of outgoing IR.are the main elements of CAGW. However, it seems that humidity has not increased, I understand it has declined. That, together with the current lack of warming suggests that either negative feedbacks counteract the GHG effect or there is something seriously wrong with the hypothesis.

Climate scientist seem to be unwilling to contemplate these logical conclusions and spend all their time trying to find some other explanation that keeps alarmism intact. so it may be a long time before we get a sensible answer.

[Latimer Alder]

If warmer air holds more water, why should it rain (= unhold water) more? Non sequitur.

[Phillip Bratby]

Who said more extreme weather events occurred during the Little Ice Age? I remember - Paul Homewood

[Neil Hampshire]

I decided to check the Met Office rainfall data for England.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasets

I looked at the top 35 wettest winters in England in the last 100 years.
The split is as follows:-

1910-1945 16 very wet winters
1946-1980 13 very wet winters
1981-2014 only 6 very wet winters

Hmm!
Only 6 of the wettest winters occurred in the last 35 years
Very wet winters were almost 3 times more frequent in the early part of the 20th. century.
This analysis is not very sophisticated, but it seems very difficult to make these wild claims regarding extreme weather due to climate change.

[John Marshall]

Warmer air holds more water is a model prediction but history would falsify that. The LIA was far wetter and stormier than the MWP.

I think it is dew point that is important.

[Green Sand]

But hasn't it been reported that global atmospheric water vapour is actually reducing?

Is Water Vapor in the Stratosphere Slowing Global Warming?

"A mysterious drop in water vapor in the lower stratosphere might be slowing climate change "
Jan 29, 2010

" ....All told, stratospheric water vapor declined by 10 percent since 2000, based on satellite and balloon measurements, yet that was enough to appreciably affect temperatures at ground level according to climate models. "Reduce the water vapor and you have less long-wave radiation coming back down to warm the troposphere," Rosenlof says. Conversely, an apparent increase in water vapor in this region in the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated global warming. ....."

And:-

Atmospheric water vapour

" ....Most climate models assume that as an increasing amount of atmospheric CO2 induces slightly increasing atmospheric temperatures, the overall evaporation will increase from the planet surface, and thereby the specific humidity of the lower part of the atmosphere (the Troposphere) will increase as well. As water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, additional warming will come about, resulting in a much larger temperature increase than that induced from CO2 alone. Climate models therefore, in general, assume the relative Tropospheric humidity to remain more or less stable, as increasing air temperatures are compensated by increasing specific humidity.

The above diagrams indicate that none of this has been the case since 1948. ....."

And

NASA satellite data shows a decline in water vapor

Suppose it all depends on which way and how strong the trade winds are blowing today:-)

[johanna]

Ivor, nby & Latimer, that struck me as well. Bit of an over-simplification, to put it mildly.

I guess they are trying to make us think that it is analogous to the tropics. But most of the world will not be like the tropics, even under their worst case scenarios. Besides, even in the tropics there is a "wet" and a "dry" season, where the temperatures are not very different, but there is an absence or presence of monsoons.

Where I live it is wetter in winter than in summer, and Mediterranean climates are the same.

How do they get away with this "Dick and Jane" rendition of climate?

[Henry Galt]

Feb 12, 2014 at 10:11 AM | Green Sand

Nice, thanks.

Good luck with trying to post any of that on CiF ;)

[Phil Andersen]

Two apposite links from Watts Up With That:
Regarding Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer

Precipitation rates and storm snow or rainfall totals at most latitudes of earth are dependent upon the DIFFERENCE in temperature of two bordering air masses

Cold winter may actually cause Great Lakes water levels to rise

While examining meteorological data from an island on Lake Superior, Lenters found that evaporation rates during December 2013, a cold month, were about 60 percent higher than they were in December 2011, a much warmer month.

'Most people would find this counterintuitive,' Lenters said. 'Why would a lake evaporate more rapidly during a colder month? The answer, it turns out, lies within the lake itself.'

Relative to the air, December and January water temperatures can be surprisingly warm in deep lakes like Superior. In early January 2014, the lake was 30 to 40 degrees warmer than the overlying air, according to Lenters. That large temperature contrast caused a steep moisture difference which, in turn, led to high evaporation rates, he said.

[tilting@windmills]

The first-order approximation of an answer to your question, Bishop, is around 6.5% per degree, so 13% for two degrees. That's on the basis of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation which is good old Victorian-era thermodynamics. In practice though the atmosphere is more complicated than that, and various models all seem to show about half the increase.

Schrodinger's Cat - global average humidity has in fact been increasing slightly over the last few decades: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcruh/.

[tonyb]

The Met Office report says;

“Although no individual storm can be regarded as exceptional, the clustering and persistence of the storms is highly unusual. December and January were exceptionally wet. For England and Wales this was one of, if not the most, exceptional periods of winter rainfall in at least 248 years. The two-month total (December + January) of 372.2mm for the southeast and central southern England region is the wettest any 2-month period in the series from 1910. ”

A meaningful England and Wales rainfall record back to 1760 simply does not exist. The Met office maintain the records to this date largely produced by our old friends Wigley and Jones.

tonyb

[tonyb]

Philip Bratby says;

'Who said more extreme weather events occurred during the Little Ice Age? I remember - Paul Homewood.'

Actually Hubert Lamb, Jean Groves and many others including myself have been saying that. I frequently post historic observations that demonstrate the appalling weather experienced during the LIA, as opposed to the mostly benign MWP.

The more people that can spread this observation based fact the better, but its an uphill job against the consensus that warming must mean wetter/stormier.
tonyb

[stewgreen]

More warming causes more vapor
more vapor causes more cloud shade
. which causes more heat to reflected ack into space
... just like a thermostat effect
...that possible ?

[Doug McNeall]

About 7% per degree of warming.

e.g

http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr_oa/c047p123.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_thermodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius-Clapeyron_relation

[not banned yet]

tonyb - AFAICT the "consensus" means anything and everything at anytime and all-time, built on single "supportable" elements from "CO2 is a dipole molecule" upwards. Observations that don't follow simply mean one is looking in the wrong place....

[not banned yet]

For Doug - another link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara

[stewgreen]

Actually I think the UK rainfall is usualy higher in summer than winter
.. am I wrong ?

[Schrodinger's Cat]

http://www.humiditycontrol.co.uk/psychrometric-chart.htm

Psychrometric charts are used by people in industry to see at a glance the water holding capacity of air. There is an example at the link above. It is well known technology and nothing to do with climate models.

The jet stream getting stuck at a lower latitude is unusual, but as a Scot living in the South I am resigned to the fact that when I make a trip back to the Scottish Western Isles the jet stream is often stuck in that region, bringing in endless rain storms like the ones currently taking place in the West Country. It happens quite frequently and hardly gets a mention.

The jet stream is known to meander since it flows between the cold northern air mass and the warm southerly one and these are always moving around to a degree. It is surprising that the jet stream doesn't visit the south more often. Blaming it on climate change is just a cynical ploy by the Met Office. Judith Curry has reviewed the Met Office claim and her diplomatic comment at the end speaks volumes. I'm afraid that the Met Office is becoming a laughing stock, having forecast a dry winter just in November and having warned 2 years ago that climate change would cause dry winters and drought. Now they are claiming the opposite. Jo Nova also finds it amusing in her blog.

The main reason for the flooding is well documented by Richard North and Christopher Booker who report that under EU directives the policy is to allow flooding of that area in order to increase biodiversity. The labour leader of the EA at that time obeyed instructions from Brussels and downgraded the flood protection by turning off the pumps and stopping dredging. As she said at the time, biodiversity is easy to achieve, "Just add water".

They obviously didn't anticipate the degree of flooding that might ensue in extreme cases. Then again, when policies are made by unelected officials elsewhere, our politicians don't have to bother thinking about them. The politicians, press and BBC avoid mention of the EU involvement partly through ignorance but mainly because as Europhiles they avoid alerting the public to the extent that Brussels controls all aspects of our lives. The policy for decades has been for EU policies to be adopted quietly so that integration with the EU project is achieved through stealth to avoid resistance by the more Eurosceptical public..

[not banned yet]

stewgreen - recent data here:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate/city-of-london-greater-london#?tab=climateTables

[Mailman]

Of course this is all predicated on the air temperature actually getting warmer? Sadly for the Mann Made Global Warming (tm) catastrophiliacs this appears not to be the case since 98.

Regards

Mailman

[tonyb]

stew green

Here are the so called rainfall statistics to 1760 which are the ones being touted, even though they don't exist in any meaningful or reliable manner.

http://ukclimateprojections.metoffice.gov.uk/22862

The first diagram illustrates winter rainfall and the second summer rainfall. The first shows a slight upwards trend the second a slight downwards trend. Best to rely on the 1910 record though even that has many holes.
tonyb

[D.M.]

stewgreen you are right on the mark. Have a look at this article which shows better correlation of temperature with cloud cover than the CO2 nonsense.

http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/01/ipcc-finds-the-important-natural-climate-driver-solar-surface-radiation-intensity-but-then-ignores-and-buries-it/

[Paul Dennis]

It's possible to build a very simple model of the water cycle based on the Clausius-Clapeyron equation for the liquid-vapour phase boundary. It's even possible to build in isotope fractionation via a Rayleigh distillation process. Remarkably such a model predicts very closely patterns in precipitation isotope distribution. The amount of rainfall or rain-out is dependent on the temperature difference between the source regions (globally the tropics) and the region of interest. As I understand it a warming planet results in smaller latitudinal temperature gradients with very little increase in the temperature of the tropics. Hence, one might expect to find lower precipitation associated with a warming climate and somewhat more precipitation with a cooling climate.

[Harry Passfield]

This is what the MO said about Dec-Feb rainfall - which I posted at the DT 10 days ago):

""SUMMARY - PRECIPITATION:

Confidence in the forecast for precipitation across the UK over the next three months is relatively low. For the December-January-February period as a whole there is a slight signal for below-average precipitation.
The probability that UK precipitation for December-January-February will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 25% and the probability that it will fall into the wettest category is around 15% (the 1981-2010 probability for each of these categories is 20%)."

So, they say, sure it's going to get wetter, except it won't, probably, maybe, etc

[Jeremy Poynton]

And this post at Not a Lot of People Know that exemplifies what I wrote above

http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/the-tale-of-two-reports/

Met Office January report explains the stormy and wet weather as being down to the jet stream shifting. No mention of climate change.

February report. All change.

And last April, this - "“climate change was loading the dice towards freezing, drier weather.”

And we PAY for this mendacity.

[retireddave]

Neil Hampshire

"but it seems very difficult to make these wild claims regarding extreme weather due to climate change."

No Neil it is very easy for climate scientists to talk complete Steer Droppings, it comes with the territory when you are having to grasp every straw that comes your way, to keep the AGW show on the road.

I also think that Pointman's recent advice to never use "climate change" but always refer to Global Warming is sound, after all if CO2 has any effect it is warming.

It seems obvious to me that the atmosphere will be more energetic during period when the poles are coldest, after all the atmospheric circulation is driven by the contrast in temperature between poles and equator. The 17th century seems to have had the highest number of severe typhoons in the NE Pacific and the USA had more severe Hurricanes in the same century.

[not banned yet]

Doug - perhaps you could flag up Paul Dennis's comment to Prof Scaife? If you do speak to him, please can you also ask him for his "scant" evidence? Does he have anything at all, or did he mean to say there is no evidence of change in "storminess"?

[Rich]

"In terms of the number of storms there is scant evidence that has been increasing due to climate change so far"

I get fed up with reading nonsense like this. An increase in storms is climate change fer cryin out loud. They switched the "accepted language" from "global warming" and then forgot that it actually meant something. So when some twonk attributes a change in climate to "climate change" it's a sure sign that he's a True Believer who isn't actually thinking about what comes out of his mouth.

[Green Sand]

Doug McNeall

Doug, many thanks for the link to "Changes in precipitation with climate change"
Kevin E. Trenberth - 2011

Could you please help with clarifying the following excerpt

" One consequence of increased heating from the human-induced greenhouse effect is an increase in temperature. However, another consequence is increased evaporation of surface moisture (Yu & Weller 2007), thereby changing the hydrological cycle, provided that adequate surface moisture is available (as it always is over the oceans and other wet surfaces) ."

Is the "another consequence" as a result of "an increase in temperature" or is it being claimed there is another mechanism in play whereby evaporation is expected to increase without an increase in temperature? Or is it an either or? So "The human-induced greenhouse effect" may increase temperature and/or evaporation? I might have missed it but can't find clarification in the paper.

TIA

[retireddave]

stewgreen

Yes the wettest month is on average August, but that is total rainfall. So the amount is less to do with low pressure storms (although we know they occur - Fastnet storm for example) and more to do with convective showers and thunderstorms. For a full picture you have to look at amount and duration of rainfall.

[jamesp]

Rich

+1

'Climate change' has become shorthand for the man-made variety, although it was happening naturally long before man was invented. I wish speakers would make it clear, but either they haven't considered the difference, or they prefer not to consider it at all.

[jamesp]

"One consequence of increased heating .. is an increase in temperature."

Where would we be without climate science..?

[tonyb]

Jeremy

Can I endorse your reference above to Paul Homewood's article;

http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/the-tale-of-two-reports/

It appears that a lower ranking Met Office researcher wrote a perfectly sensible and factual article which a month later has been trumped by a report from Julia.

tonyb

[retireddave]

Paul Dennis

Did you have to remind me of Clausius-Clapeyron?!

I still wake up at night in a sweat (half-a-century later) thinking I might have to derive the equation from first principals at an exam the next day!!!

Your deductions seem sound to me.

[Charlie]

The RSPB has been pushing for extending wetlands since the mid 90s but this does not increase bio-diversity. Marsh areas have a thin layer of aerobic water at the upper surface below which the water is anaerobic and supports little life. If one takes the total volume of a marsh - surface area multiplied by depth the bio-diversity is minimal compared to a hedgerow.

A field which is flooded for a few weeks in winter; is surrounded by a hedge which is a few hundred years old and a strip of grass which is allowed to remain fallow; is likely to support a greater range and mass of organisms than a marsh of the same area whose upper 0.2m- 0.3m of upper surface is aerobic while below the water is anaerobic.

Marshes are characterised by acidic and low nutrient loving plants. Increasing the area of marsh will increase the habitats of wading birds but the eco system around an oak tree supports the widest variety of animals, plants,bacteria and fungi of any habitats found in the UK. When an oak tree dies it still supports an eco-system full of organism whereas in marsh the tree falls into anaerobic and acidic water and is preserved. The reason why corpses found in fens survive is that they are in effect pickled , there are few organisms to feed on them.

[tom0mason]

Panic it's a drought.... "more droughts likely"
Panic it's snowing.... "colder winters likely"
Panic it's raining .... "more flooding likely"

We live in interesting times....

[JamesG]

Quite correct and it has led to 4% more water vapour in the air since the 70's according to Trenberth. Not enough for a drizzle so no justification to tie it into any event anywhere.

And by the way, warmer water releases more CO2 - ah but the ocean is apparently a net carbon sink. Funny how simple physics gets jettisoned when it doesn't support pessimism.

But hey wet areas get wetter and dry areas get drier under global warming says shaman Stott of the MO. But the MO predicted both for the UK so are we a wet or dry area? All I know is that global cooling must be really nice if Stott is correct. Or are they just making stuff up as the weather suits?

[Tim Channon]

Rain is a symptom of prior heat loss to space.

Cause is radiation, effect is rain. This includes the case of remotely cooled cold air.

[Sherlock1]

Wouldn't it be nice, just for once, if when politicians or Met Office bigwigs have a microphone thrust in their faces and asked whether this weather (did you see what I did there..? 'A' level English Language) is due to climate change, they couldn't just say: 'Frankly, mate, I haven't got a clue...'
It would, after all, be the truth...

[Peter C]

I am reminded of the Great Famine of 1315–1317 that marked the end of the Medieval Warm period when it was reported that torrential rain and violent storms frequently affected the whole of the NH for two years causing crop failures from the Nordic countries down to Italy. It is estimated that the European population fell by 50% (between 40% and 70% in local areas) and only returned to the previous levels in the 19th century. Of course, that population had seen a huge expansion during the balmy days of the MWP. It is believed that many of our current day myths, fables and legends come from those hard times, Hansel and Gretel, St. Swithin's Day, etc.

The cause is not known, of course, and as usual speculation surrounds volcanism (there is evidence of a big eruption in New Zealand at the rightish time) or asteroid impact and so on.

The site, http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/histclimat.htm, has some interesting reports that put 'weather' into perspective. Items are based on all kinds of resources, from ice cores and tree rings to monastic records.

[jaffa]

Please don't look at historical rainfall data to determine whether it was wetter in the past. Much of that data is still 'raw', it can't be used until climate experts have adjusted it for quality and homogeneity at which point it will be on message.

[Alan the Brit]

I concur with retireddave!

Global Warming is what they have promised, Global Warming is what they are going to deliver! Don't ever let them get away with it!

I recall that back at the tail of the last century, every time a chunk of sea wall at Dawlish fell into the sea, the Aljabeeba would trawl Exeter or Plymouth Unis for an environmental scientist, to say "this is what we must expect from Climate Change, wetter warmer winters, & hotter drier summers!" So far I recal very few great summers, some wet warm winters, & a couple of cold dry ones since, but that of course was the onset of the hiatus!

[Keith Macdonald]

What with all this obsession with rain "down south", there's been bugger-all BBC coverage of the snowfall in the Scottish Highlands. It might even be enough to form a permanent snow cap that will last the year.

See http://www.winterhighland.info/weather/

While the rain wets the pants of the Foolish Floodplain Fanciers in Southern England, in Highland Scotland it might go into glacier formation. Thin end of the new Little Ice Age wedge?

[TerryS]

Re: tonyb

From the Met Office:

The two-month total (December + January) of 372.2mm for the southeast and central southern England region is the wettest any 2-month period in the series from 1910

There are nine regions (central, north, south, southwest etc), 16 possible adjacent pairs (central + north, south+southeast etc) and 12 possible 2 month periods (Dec+Jan, Mar+Apr etc). This gives the Met Office 192 opportunities for a 100 year rain record to be set every year.