John Abraham on Climate, Science, and Evapotranspiration.

I’ve profiled John Abraham here before. Abraham vaulted to international prominence with his searing, point by point, no-stone-unturned,  scorched earth destruction of “Lord” Christopher Monckton’s climate disinforming nonsense.  He is a founding member of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, which assists media in connecting with real science and scientists on climate stories.

Futuredude:

FutureDude: So, tell me a little about what you do?

John Abraham: I’m a professor of thermal sciences at the University of Saint Thomas, which is in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Much of my research is on clean and renewable energy especially for the developing and impoverished parts of the world. We want to bring them clean and reliable energy to create a positive impact on their lives.

I also do research on climate change both in education and via my own basic research. I‘m involved in oceanography. I’m working with a team who are trying to measure how much heat is going into the ocean. Because that can tell us where our environment is heading. So I do basic research and public education.

So you live and breathe science every day. Did you have any interest in the future when you were growing up?

The future is where our possibilities lie. The future presents opportunities as well as challenges. It challenges us today and it provides opportunities in the future. What can we do today to ensure that we have the greatest possibilities for ourselves and for coming generations, so that we can live fulfilled and happy lives in the future?

I firmly believe that the actions we take now will have direct consequences in the future. We can make things better or we can make things worse.

Some people believe in fate. Things are just going to happen. I don’t believe that. I believe that we make our own fate. And it’s the responsibility of a scientist to try to help us all understand how the things we do today impact where we’re going to go tomorrow.

Absolutely! I agree 100%. It’s of supreme importance how information is gathered and ultimately how it’s disseminated. I really see scientists as interpreters of the natural world. So, that said, there are a couple of major reasons why I wanted to talk with you.

Where are we right now? We are obviously living in some very extreme times when it comes to our atmosphere. Things seem downright volatile. I hear talk about the weather and I hear talk about the overall climate. It might be helpful to get a sense of the difference. Can you define that?

There is no strict distinction, but I’ll give you a working definition. ‘Weather’ is what you see on a day-to-day basis. You stick your head out the window and it’s hot and sunny. Maybe it’s humid. Maybe it’s dry. Maybe it’s snowy. We get weather patterns that last a few days or weeks.

‘Climate’ is different. Climate is long term trends in the weather over wide areas.

Minneapolis might be hotter or colder tomorrow or the next day. That’s weather. Climate asks a different question: what’s going to happen to weather over the Upper Midwest over the next 30 to 40 years? They are very different questions. But they’re related to each other. Climate is the background of weather.

We’re sitting here in July and we’ve just gone through an incredible heat wave in the United States; I think another one is coming in the next couple of days. That you can view as a pattern, but it’s set upon a warming climate. So, long term trends verses short term fluctuations.

Once of the confusing things is that, for weather, small differences don’t matter. If it’s 95 or 96 degrees Fahrenheit tomorrow, it’s not going to make that much of a difference. In fact, in Minnesota, we see temperatures go from below zero in the winter to 100 degrees in the summer.

But for climate, small changes matter. If we have a climate that changes by 8 or 9 degrees Fahrenheit that’s the difference between the weather we have now and ice sheets over Minneapolis throughout the year. Small temperature changes really matter from a climate standpoint.

So, the heat wave we just endured is a weather event that was driven by climate?

Exactly. I’ll use an analogy. Let’s say you go to an amusement park and you ride on a kid’s rollercoaster. It’s got ups and down but they aren’t very big. They’re sort of short and gentle. That’s a normal weather pattern. When climate change is happening, the ups and downs become much bigger. Your droughts become drier and longer. Heat waves become hotter and longer. Your precipitation is heavier.

We had a major, major flood in Duluth a few weeks ago that cost Minnesota $100 million. There may have been a flood without climate change, but it wouldn’t have been as likely and it wouldn’t have been as severe. So, the bottom line: climate change makes weather patterns unstable and more severe.

I observe the weather radar several times a day. I find weather intriguing. I have since I was a kid. I noticed a shift in the overall pattern over about a week and a half literally toward the Duluth area. They were inundated while, down in Indianapolis, my mother has had less than an inch of rain since May 1st.

Like I said, climate change affects weather patterns, but, how? One of the key areas is that, as the atmosphere warms, it does two things to water. First of all, it evaporates things faster, so if you have lakes they’ll evaporate faster in a warmer climate. If you have trees or plants they lose a tremendous amount of water through their leaves. It’s called ‘evapotranspiration’. That happens faster in a warmer climate.

Wow… Evapotranspiration.

Yeah, try using that word at a cocktail party next Friday night.

(laughs)

That process tends to dry things out. And that makes sense if it gets hotter it gets drier. Another thing that climate change does is that since it causes increased evaporation, it puts more water in the air. It is more humid in July than it is in January. That’s because warmer air can hold more moisture. So, you are sucking water away from the ground and you’re sticking it in the air.

Now, that does two things. It dries out the ground, which promotes droughts. But, also, because you have more moisture in the air, it causes heavier downpours. Heavier precipitation.

So, these two things are happening with a warming climate. More severe droughts, but when rains occur you have much heavier downpours. And that’s exactly what we are seeing.

I’ve been noticing that. I had a recent drive across the country from Washington DC to Minnesota and I encountered a number of severe weather moments. Each time is was some of the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen. It was crazy. It’s like, when it rains, it REALLY, really rains!

In 2011, Texas had a severe drought and heat wave. It cost that state over $5 billion dollars. By the way, if people think there isn’t an economic cost to global warming, just take a look at Texas. Recently, they had tremendous downpours and flooding. Again, it’s these swings going from hot and dry to hot and wet.

It’s the rollercoaster analogy. You go up and down in wild swings, and we’re going to see more of that as the climate continues to warm.