And Dr. Jeff Masters, the Weather Underground‘s king of climate nerds, stands atop the ice trying to explain to climate deniers: Yes, it’s cold this winter. No, that doesn’t mean global warming is a liberal conspiracy.
“If There’s Global Warming … Why Is It So Cold?” is a video for the Yale Forum‘s “This Is Not Cool” series, and it does an excellent job breaking down why what may seem like an average cold snap might actually be an alarming symptom of global warming.
The roads are so bad that schools in the area have suspended bus service. Parents are having a hard time getting to schools to pick up their kids, so hundreds of students might have to stay overnight.
Steve Lombardo, PA/crisis chair at Burson-Marsteller in Washington since April, is moving to Koch Industries next month for the chief communications/marketing officer slot.
The 53-year-old sees an opportunity to showcase how the $115B Wichita-based conglomerate works to improve the lives of people around the world, according to Politico.
Prior to B-M, Lombardo helmed Edelman’s StrategyOne research operation, ran his own shop for an eight-year span and served as vice chairman of Blue Worldwide, Edelman’s advertising unit.
Lombardo has been involved in Republican politics, recently serving as senior research and communications director for Mitt Romney presidential run.
KI is the firm of conservative activists Charles and David Koch. Their empire includes Georgia-Pacific, Koch Pipeline/Fertilizer, Molex (electronic components), Flint Hills Resources, INVISTA (chemicals), Matador Cattle and Odessa Power.
Dave Robertson is COO. Lombardo and Edelman colleague Jackie Cooper wrote about the “Republican Brand Problem” in O’Dwyer’s in December 2012.
“Who’s Burson-Marsteller? Well, let me put it this way — when Blackwater killed those 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, they called Burson-Marsteller. When there was a nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, Bobcock & Wilcox, who built that plant, called Burson-Marsteller.
“[After the] Bhopal chemical disaster that killed thousands of people in India, Union Carbide called Burson-Marsteller. Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu — Burson-Marsteller. The government of Saudi Arabia, three days after 9/11 — Burson-Marsteller.
President Obama got it exactly right last night at the beginning of his State of the Union address when he said it is the hard-working citizens of our great nation that make the state of our Union strong, and that the United States is the best positioned country in the world to succeed in the 21st Century.
This is in spite of divisions within our great nation that continue to hold us back from achieving our full potential.
Social scientist Robert Putnam, of “bowling alone” fame, and his colleagues have done extensive research on the current attitudes and values of Americans. They have confirmed what many of us know in our gut: the greatest thing that divides us today is politics or political ideology – not religion, not race, the two main things that divided us in our fairly recent past. As Putnam said in a 2010 interview about his book, American Grace, “the underlying division [in America today] is not actually mostly about religion. It’s mostly about politics.”
And as a Pew poll just found, at the heart of this divide is protecting the environment: 65% of Democrats consider it a top priority, but only 28% of Republicans do – a yawning gulch of 37 points.
Gallup headlined on 28 January 2014,“Democrats and Republicans Differ on Top Priorities,” and reported that the biggest difference between supporters of the two Parties concerned “The environment,” where 71% of Democrats said it’s important to them, versus only 32% of Republicans who did: a whopping difference of 39%, between the two Parties, considered that issue to be important. The second-biggest difference was on “The distribution of income and wealth”: 72% of Democrats, versus only 38% of Republicans – a 34% difference. Third came “Poverty and homelessness”: 82% of Democrats, versus 53% of Republicans – a 29% difference. Fourth came “Education”: 91% of Democrats, versus 70% of Republicans – a 21% difference. Continue reading “I’m a Republican that Agrees with President Obama on Climate”
The global temperature data for 2013 are now published.2010 and 2005 remain the warmest years since records began in the 19thCentury.1998 ranks third in two records, and in the analysis of Cowtan & Way, which interpolates the data-poor region in the Arctic with a better method, 2013 is warmer than 1998 (even though 1998 was a record El Nino year, and 2013 was neutral).
The end of January, when the temperature measurements of the previous year are in, is always the time to take a look at the global temperature trend. (And, as the Guardian noted aptly, also the time where the “climate science denialists feverishly yell […] that global warming stopped in 1998.”) Here is the ranking of the warmest years in the four available data sets of the global near-surface temperatures (1):
New this year: for the first time there is a careful analysis of geographical data gaps – especially in the Arctic there’s a gaping hole – and their interpolation for the HadCRUT4 data. Thus there are now two surface temperature data sets with global coverage (the GISTEMP data from NASA have always filled gaps by interpolation). In these two data series 2007 is ranked 3rd. Their direct comparison looks like this:
In the past, about 15 years, there is an observed change in the atmosphere of the Arctic sea-level pressure (see previous blog). The pressure is slightly higher, which leads to a weakening of the stream of air that flows around the North Pole. I wrote a tutorial about this in Wobbles in the Barrier. Also in the past decade there have a number of papers, for example, Liu et al. (2012) who in Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall – noted circulation patterns that have “ … some resemblance to the negative phase of the winter Arctic oscillation. However, the atmospheric circulation change linked to the reduction of sea ice shows much broader meridional meanders in midlatitudes and clearly different interannual variability than the classical Arctic oscillation.”
On the graph above, orange and red stuff is warmer than average, “average” being defined as the average on this date between 1979 and 2000. Blue/purple stuff is colder.
…ALL-TIME JANUARY HIGH TEMPERATURES SET IN NORTHERN ALASKA…
A RECORD WARM AIRMASS HAS RESULTED IN MANY LOCATIONS TYING OR
SETTING RECORD DAILY TEMPERATURES ACROSS NORTHERN ALASKA THE PAST
SEVERAL DAYS. SOME LONG TERM STATIONS HAVE BROKEN ALL-TIME
JANUARY HIGH TEMPERATURES…INCLUDING DENALI NATIONAL PARK
HEADQUARTERS AND NOME. JANUARY RECORDS WERE LIKELY SET AT SOME
OTHER LOCATIONS BUT THEY EITHER LACK A LONG PERIOD OF RECORD OR
OBSERVED TEMPERATURES.
ON SUNDAY THE 26TH THE TEMPERATURE CLIMBED TO A SCORCHING 52
DEGREES AT DENALI NATIONAL PARK HEADQUARTERS. THIS IS THE WARMEST
TEMPERATURE EVER RECORDED AT THE PARK HEADQUARTERS IN JANUARY
DURING THE PAST 92 YEARS OF OBSERVATIONS. THE PREVIOUS RECORD FOR
THE MONTH WAS 51 DEGREES SET ON JANUARY 21ST 1961. FOR
REFERENCE…52 DEGREES IS THE NORMAL HIGH TEMPERATURE IN MID MAY
AT THE PARK HEADQUARTERS. THE NORMAL HIGH FOR JANUARY 26TH IS 11
DEGREES ABOVE ZERO.
Figure 1: Adapted from Jim Hurrell – This picture is a schematic representation of the positive and negative phases of the Arctic Oscillation. In the positive phase the pressure is low at the pole and high at middle latitudes. This is the positive phase because if you calculate the difference between middle and high latitudes it is large. In the negative phase the pressure is not as low at the pole and not as high at middle latitudes. This is the negative phase because if you calculate the difference between middle and high latitudes it is small. The refrigerator suggests that this is like opening and closing the refrigerator door
Schools closed here in mid-Michigan due to wind chill. Alaska setting all time warm records.
Now that the planet has our attention for a moment, its a great time to learn about the stick we’re being beaten with.
I’m running some posts from Dr. Ricky Rood’s series that originally appeared on WeatherUnderground. See yesterday’s post here.
First and foremost, I post stuff because I want to learn stuff, and Dr. Rood’s pieces fit that bill.
In the previous blogs I used the CPC Climate Glossary to give the definition of the Arctic Oscillation. “The Arctic Oscillation is a pattern in which atmospheric pressure at polar and middle latitudes fluctuates between negative and positive phases.” This definition does not really do much for me. It’s one of those definitions that I imagine if I ask 10 atmospheric scientists to tell me what it means, I will get 12 answers. Therefore, I will draw a picture.(see above)
This figure helps me with the definition. I want to focus on the low pressure at high latitudes, which in this figure is drawn idealistically at the pole. In reality, it is likely to wander off the pole, a fact that will be important in the next blog. When the pressure is low at the pole, then there is a stronger vortex of air circulating around the pole. When the pressure at the pole is not as low, then there is a weaker vortex. In both cases, strong or weak vortex, the air generally moves from west to east.
For clarity, vorticity is a parameter that describes rotation in a fluid. A vortex is a feature in a fluid dominated by vorticity – that is it is rotationally dominated. Tornadoes and hurricanes are weather features that we often call vortices; there is an obvious circulation of air in these features. In the Earth’s atmosphere at middle and high latitudes rotation is an important characteristic of the flow, due to the rotation of the Earth. The reason air moves in the west to east direction for both the weak and strong vortex cases of Figure 1 is that the rotation of the Earth is important to the flow.
In Figure 2 I have set up an even more idealized figure. I also provide this link to a Powerpoint animation, that I am not smart enough to incorporate into the blog. In the animation I have five slides that clarify the point that I make in Figure 2.
Figure 2: A vortex and a ball. In the center of the figure is low pressure, meant to be an analogue to the vortex over the pole in Figure 1. Parcels of air move around the low pressure system. If it takes the same amount of time for a parcel farther away from the low pressure center to go around the vortex as a parcel nearer the center, then the parcel farther away has to go faster because the distance it has to go is longer. That is why I drew that arrow, saying that air moves “faster” at the outside edge of the vortex.
The 53-year-old sees an opportunity to showcase how the $115B Wichita-based conglomerate works to improve the lives of people around the world, according to Politico.
