“Must be due to G-l-o-b-a-l W-a-r-m-i-n-g” series

[marchesarosa]

Another post in the “Must be due to G-l-o-b-a-l W-a-r-m-i-n-g” series.


NOAA satellites say – coldest day for a decade – at 14,000 ft

January 23rd, 2012 by Warwick Hughes www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=1304
Thanks to Dave Brewer for the heads-up.





This University of Alabama at Huntsville web page discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ where you can graph daily NOAA satellite temperature data – for various altitudes – over the last decade – shows clearly that Earth has just entered into a series of coldest ever days at 14,000 feet altitude – since 2002, that is.

[marchesarosa]

David Brewer said
January 25th, 2012 at 8:22 am
Thanks for posting this up properly, Warwick.

It fell again today. So the last four days have been the four coldest in ten years. Dunno how unusual this is, but surely it’s unlikely if temperatures are really rising a quarter of a degree a decade as the IPCC models propose.

This Channel 5 is the lowest-altitude one currently working. It shows mid-troposphere temps (which should be warming the most) and is also used to estimate lower-troposphere temps. See Roy Spencer’s explanations here. www.drroyspencer.com/2010/01/how-the-uah-global-temperatures-are-produced/

[fascinating]

I thought it was a prediction of most AGW models that, as the troposphere trapped more heat due to the greenhouse gases, then the upper atmosphere would cool.

[marchesarosa]

Climate is not an exact science, but even I know that AGW models predict a "hot spot" in the tropical troposphere, not cooling.

The unusually cold data currently under discussion is at 14,000 feet (or 4.2672 km). That is well under half the height at which commercial planes fly. 14,000 feet IS the troposphere.

The tropospause is between 36,000 feet at the Poles to 56,000 feet at the Equator.

The Troposphere is where all weather occurs. The base of this layer is warmer than its top because the air is heated by the surface of the Earth, which absorbs the Sun’s energy. Or something like that! But contrary to the certainties expressed by climate alarmists, no-one really knows how or why the atmospheric temperature varies in response to convection, conduction and radiation. Some are claiming that gravity (variation in air pressure) plays a greater role in warming than hitherto acknowledged.



So much to learn, so little time (in the human lifetime, that is)!

[marchesarosa]

EARTH is starting to crumble under the strain of climate change.

Over the last decade, rock avalanches and landslides have become more common in high mountain ranges, apparently coinciding with the increase in exceptionally warm periods (see "Early signs"). The collapses are triggered by melting glaciers and permafrost, which remove the glue that holds steep mountain slopes together.

Worse may be to come. Thinning glaciers on volcanoes could destabilise vast chunks of their summit cones, triggering mega-landslides capable of flattening cities such as Seattle and devastating local infrastructure.

For Earth this phenomenon is nothing new, but the last time it happened, few humans were around to witness it. Several studies have shown that around 10,000 years ago, as the planet came out of the last ice age, vast portions of volcanic summit cones collapsed, leading to enormous landslides.

To assess the risk of this happening again, Daniel Tormey of ENTRIX, an environmental consultancy based in Los Angeles, studied a huge landslide that occurred 11,000 years ago on Planchón-Peteroa. He focused on this glaciated volcano in Chile because its altitude and latitude make it likely to feel the effects of climate change before others.

"Around one-third of the volcanic cone collapsed," Tormey says. Ten billion cubic metres of rock crashed down the mountain and smothered 370 square kilometres of land, travelling 95 kilometres in total (Global and Planetary Change, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2010.08.003). Studies have suggested that intense rain cannot provide the lubrication needed for this to happen, so Tormey concludes that glacier melt must have been to blame.

With global temperatures on a steady rise, Tormey is concerned that history will repeat itself on volcanoes all over the world. He thinks that many volcanoes in temperate zones could be at risk, including in the Ring of Fire - the horseshoe of volcanoes that surrounds the Pacific Ocean (see map). "There are far more human settlements and activities near the slopes of glaciated active volcanoes today than there were 10,000 years ago, so the effects could be catastrophic," he says.

The first volcanoes to go will most likely be in the Andes, where temperatures are rising fastest as a result of global warming. Any movement here could be an early sign of trouble to come elsewhere. David Pyle, a volcanologist at the University of Oxford, agrees. "This is a real risk and a particularly serious hazard along the Andes," he says.

Meanwhile, ongoing studies by Bill McGuire of University College London and Rachel Lowe at the University of Exeter, UK, are showing that non-glaciated volcanoes could also be at greater risk of catastrophic collapse if climate change increases rainfall.

"We have found that 39 cities with populations greater than 100,000 are situated within 100 kilometres of a volcano that has collapsed in the past and which may, therefore, be capable of collapsing in the future," says McGuire.

Early signs
Mount Cook (Aoraki), New Zealand

Just after midnight on 14 December 1991, 12 million cubic metres of rock and ice peeled away from the summit of New Zealand's highest mountain. The landslide travelled 7.5 kilometres and narrowly missed slumbering hikers in an alpine hut. It occurred after an exceptionally warm week, when temperatures were 8.5 °C above average, and reduced the height of the mountain by around 10 metres.

Mount Dzhimarai-Khokh, Russia

More than 100 people were killed on 20 September 2002 when their villages were swept away after part of the peak, in the north Caucasus mountains, collapsed. Over 100 million cubic metres of debris travelled 20 kilometres. Warming permafrost is thought to have been partly to blame.

Mount Rosa, Italy

Following an unusual spring heatwave across Europe in 2007, the Alpine mountain suffered a spectacular rock avalanche, in which 300,000 cubic metres of rock fell, landing in a dry seasonal lake. Had the lake contained water, the avalanche would have generated a massive outpouring, with catastrophic consequences for the village of Macugnaga downstream.

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Know who published this rubbish? New Scientist OF COURSE!

[nickrr]

Know who published this rubbish?

What evidence do you have that this is rubbish?