Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

Red dots are areas with warmer than normal temps. Blue dots are colder than the average from 1971-2000.

August 2010 was the third warmest on record worldwide.

1998 and 2009 are at the top.

The January through August temperatures are still running at the hottest levels ever recorded. If it stays as warm as it ha sbeen, then 2010 will go down as the hottest year ever recorded. If it does, it will be espcially noteworthy because of the developing La Nina in the Pacific.

1998 is the hottest year on record. It was helped by a massive El Nino that year. El Nino’s warm the planet because there is so much warm water in the Pacific. La Nina’s are in some ways the opposite. Colder waters across the Tropical Pacific tend to make a record high year unlikely.

A moderate La Nina is now developing. IF 2010 does indeed turn out to be the warmest, it will be a stunning signal from Mother Nature that greenhouse gases are truly becoming the major player in our climate.

Tip of the hat to my friend and fellow meteorologist T.J. Malone for this incredible view of the eye of Hurricane Igor.

Igor is packing 150 mph winds and almost a cat 5 storm. Igor will not affect the U.S. and it’s unlikely to hit Canada either. Bermuda residents should keep an eye on it (Pardon the pun).

Click for full resolution (Highly Advised). From NOAA and U. Wisconsin CIMMS.

The first few frames are the usual every 30 minutes but then the GOES is switched to rapid scan mode.

Later,

Dan

From NASA GISS

From NASA GISS

NASA released the July global temp data this evening. The last 7 months are the warmest January – July on record. The thermometer record goes back to 1880. Before 1880 there are proxies for temperature. Tree rings and ice cores for example. These proxies  (See Oldest Ice Core Recovered from Greenland) indicate we are very possibly in the warmest period in at least one thousand years.

The temperature anomalies map shows that the higher latitudes are continuing to warm the fastest. This comes on the 30th anniversary of a now famous paper by Wally Broecker back in 1980. Broecker predicted in 1975 that the slight cooling trend of the 1970′s would reverse itself and a significant warming trend would begin due to increasing greenhouse gases. The blog Real Climate (written by several climate experts) has details on this. You can also read the paper for yourself.

July 2010 was the warmest July on the record for the Northern Hemisphere as well.

Colder than normal water is already appearing in the Equatorial Pacific (NOAA)

One of the reasons for the forecasts of a an active hurricane season is the predictions that La Nina would develop this summer. Remember that La Nina is an ocean circulation phase that brings unusually cold water to the surface of the Tropical Pacific.

These are the temperature probabilities for a normal/above/below normal autumn (September through Novermber). Click for full resolution image.

Well, it has started and most of the ocean atmosphere models are predicting a moderate to strong event.

This has more impact than just the number of hurricanes. NOAA revised their 2010 hurricane prediction down somewhat today but they are still predicting a 70% chance of 4-6 major hurricanes (Earlier typo said 406- that would be exceptionally bad ). La Nina is a big factor in that.

The colder tropical waters cause a shift in the jet stream. This makes it possible to make a decent prediction of the fall and winter ahead. Here in the Southeastern USA we tend to have a dry fall with normal to above normal  temps. The winter tends to be drier than  normal and sometimes a bit on the mild side.

What about where you live?
The chart at the right shows the probabilities for temperatures during a La Nina event. The image is for the period from September through November.

Take a look at the Northeast USA and Eastern Canada. The chart shows that during a La Nina year the odds are VERY low that the autumn will be below normal. The odds are higher that it will be near normal and the odds are higher still that it will be a warm autumn.

This does not mean that it will not be colder than normal. It just means that in the past this happened rarely.

You can see more of these graphics for your part of the world at the IRI website here. Precipitation maps are also available.

Dome at NEEM on the Greenland Icecap- courtesy NEEM

While the lower 48 bakes this summer, a group of 30 researchers are drilling a big hole in the ice at the top of the world. It’s all in the name of science. The North Greenland Eemian ice core project is not the first ice core to be drilled through the Greenland icecap. It may be the most important though.

Rewriting Earth’s Climate History

Earlier cores have rewritten the climate text books. This core will likely do the same. Especially, if the group at NEEM are lucky enough to get a good core of ice from the Eemian.

The Eemian is the name for the warm period BEFORE the last ice age. Knowing how the climate behaved then, and in the transition to the ice last ice age, will tell us a lot about what we are facing in the future.

VOSTOK Ice Core showing the temperature over the last 500,000 years. The temperature data was derived using oxygen isotopes.

Playing With Fire and Ice

We are without doubt fiddling with the Earth’s thermostat. In spite of what you may think, the ice cores and sediment cores we have already tell us that our climate is not nearly as stable as written human history would indicate.

The last ten thousand years have been very unusual. The climate has been very benign and stable. Brian Fagan wrote a book about this period called “The Long Summer”.

Look at the data from previous ice cores. The Vostok ice core from Antarctica shows very well how stable the last 10,000 years have been and how unstable the previous 500,000 years before it were! The red line in the graphic shows a very stable climate for the past 10,000 years. Before that the climate is a roller coaster.

The Lines Go Up and Down Together For A Reason

You can also see how closely related to temperature the amount of carbon dioxide and methane (CH4) are. Both of these gases are called greenhouse gases and they act to magnify greatly any minor warming from changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun.

There is a growing acceptance among evolutionary biologists that the reason our African ancestors evolved much larger brains is climate related. The changing climate that kicked in about 3 million years ago forced it. NOVA did an especially interesting program on this in 2009.

Oxygen isotope record from two Greenland Ice Cores called GRIP and North GRIP. The stable climate called the Long summer is clearly visible from the left of the graph until about 10,000 ybp. The NEEM drill site is hoping to get higher resolution data back in the Eemian (115-130K ybp)

You might be wondering (and you should be) just how it is possible to tell what the temperature and levels of CO2 were in the atmosphere from an ice core? The answers lie in bubbles and isotopes.

The Technical Bit

The ice in these cores contain bubbles of gas that are filled with the air at around the time the snow fell. These bubbles actually disappear in the deeper core as the gas bubbles get merged into the ice. The gases are still detectable and readable though.

Oxygen comes in two main forms O18 has two extra neutrons but it's still Oxygen. Image from NASA. NASA has a detailed explanation of how this fact is used to measure temperatures thousands of years ago.

The temperature can be obtained by looking at the ratio of two types of Oxygen. Oxygen has 8 protons in each atom. That is why it’s called Oxygen. The oxygen we breath is actually O2 which is two atoms of Oxygen bonded together. O2 has 16 protons and 16 Neutrons. However, a very tiny percentage of oxygen that you breath has 2 extra neutrons.

This is not a big deal as your body thinks it is oxygen and it really is. It still has 16 protons and that’s all that counts. Atoms of the same element that have differing numbers of neutrons are called ISOTOPES. Oxygen has O16 and O18 isotopes.

O18 is 12.5% heavier than the usual O16 molecule. The heavier molecule falls out in rain or snow more quickly. How quickly is dependent on temperature and this means you can measure the ratio of O16 to O18 in the ice core and deduce the temperature of the ocean the snow evaporated from! Click the rotating molecules for a more detailed explanation.

Cocktail Party Advice From Dan

So, next time you hear someone say something like “How could they possibly know what the temperature was like 50,000 years ago”, you can tell them. If my experience is any guide, you will just get a mean look.

CFA lab at NEEM- image ctsy. NEEM

Continuous Flow Analyzer

At NEEM this year, they are using a device called a continuous flow analyzer to measure the properties of the ice core. This is very helpful. It lets them know in near real time about what the age of the ice they are pulling up from the drill is. Only a part of the ice core is used for this. Much of the core will be kept intact and used for research for many years.

Dave Jones, the President of Storm Center Communications, has asked me to go up to the ice sheet and help tell the story. Dave is a Meteorologist. Those of you in the Washington DC area may remember him from WRC – TV a few years back.  His company is heavily involved in showing real science to a wider world.

The folks at NEEM will reach bedrock in a week or so. There is rock beneath all that ice. Those rocks have not seen the light of day for well over 100,000 years and probably much longer.

I may get to see some of those rocks come into the sunshine of the 21st century in person. I will leave for NEEM Monday.

It should be quite an adventure, and I will take plenty of pictures.