Mindblown

  • Bathtub Analogy: Why the Global Temperature Giggles

    JohnMashey posted this at Skeptical Science. A bathtub is being filled [sun], slightly faster than it is being drained [heat radiation]. You have a few floats, measuring the depth of the water. The depth would go up smoothly, except there’s a kid splashing around in the bath. Sometimes the kid lies back in the water, in…

  • Water Vapor Measurements during the North American Monsoon

    Precipitation in the Southwest United States comes in two flavors: winter and summer. During the winter, the precipitation is mostly from the passage of mid-latitude storms. And during the summer, the precipitation comes from what is colloquially called “the monsoon”. What is a monsoon? The word monsoon derives its name from the Arabic word ’season’. Sailers…

  • CO2 is Still Rising – Even at Locations other than Mauna Loa

    Every once in a while, someone will try to argue with me that the observed rise in the concentration of CO2 is because it’s “measured on a volcano”. But is it? The most frequently cited CO2 measurements are from Dr. Keeling’s measurements on Mauna Loa. Yes, this is a volcano. But Keeling took measurements at…

  • Sea Level Rise due to Thermal Expansion

    This is a simple model of sea level heights that may be appropriate for very introductory level students studying climate change. For this model I will assume that the ocean consists of two parts: the surface ocean and the deep ocean. The surface ocean is uniform in depth, temperature, and salinity. The depth of the…

  • More on Tucson USHCN

    Our Response To Recent Comments On Anthony Watts’ Blog by Ben Herman and Cyrus Jones The accompanying Fig 1 shows a comparison of our data with the official NOAA data taken at Tucson International airport. From 1993 to 1996, the data was from our old site at the Medical School, taken with a non-aspirated temperature sensor. In…

  • Tropical cyclones over the Mediterranean Sea in climate change simulations

    Gaertner, M. A., D. Jacob, V. Gil, M. Dominguez, E. Padorno, E. Sanchez, and M. Castro (2007), Tropical cyclones over the Mediterranean Sea in climate change simulations [PDF, requires subscription], Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L14711, doi:10.1029/2007GL029977. Tropical cyclones form only under specific environmental conditions. Anthropogenic climate change might alter the geographical areas where tropical cyclones can develop.…

  • Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects

    Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner, arXiv:0707.1161v1 [physics.ao-ph]. [PDF] I don’t actually recommend reading this. But one gem that they propose is that there isn’t a thing called an average temperature. Of course there is. When attempting to derive such a temperature, Gerlich…

  • Aerosol Number Concentration and Cloud Droplet Dispersion

    This is the fourth article in the spectral dispersion series. I’ll be summarizing / reviewing the 2006 paper by Lu and Seinfeld in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Effect of aerosol number concentration on cloud droplet dispersion: A large-eddy simulation study and implications for aerosol indirect forcing. Abstract: Through three-dimensional large-eddy simulations of marine stratocumulus we…

  • Aerosol Indirect Effect in Marine Stratocumulus

    This is the third in a series of articles on spectral dispersion. This paper is a little off-topic, but it’s important for understanding the next post. Lu and Seinfeld in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Study of the Aerosol Indirect Effect by Large-Eddy Simulation of Marine Stratocumulus [PDF]. Abbreviated Abstract: A total of 98 three-dimensional large-eddy…

  • Spectral Dispersion and Cloud Droplet Effective Radius

    This is the second in a series of posts on the effects of cloud droplet spectral dispersion. Today we’ll look at a 2000 paper by Liu and Daum in Geophysical Research Letters, Spectral dispersion of cloud droplet size distributions and the parameterization of cloud droplet effective radius. Abstract: Parameterization of effective radius (re) as proportional to the…