DataStreme ECS WEEK THREE: 6-10 February 2012

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Bright lights across the Northeast seen from space -- A digital photograph taken by one of the astronauts onboard the International Space Station last weekend shows the city lights across the nighttime Northeast, stretching from the Philadelphia (PA) metropolitan area northeastward across New York City and to Boston, MA, as well as across eastern Canada that includes Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. The photograph also shows high altitude Aurora Borealis (or "northern lights") appearing on the upper limb of the Earth's disc. [NASA Multimedia]
• "Google Earth" gets major update in seafloor maps -- The newest version of Google Earth, a highly popular virtual globe, map and geographical information program, contains updated bathymetry data obtained from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center that provides a sharper resolution of seafloor maps. [Scripps News]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

• Record cold January in Alaska --While most of the "Lower 48" states experienced an unseasonably warm January 2012, residents of Alaska encountered a month that was one of the coldest since records began across the 49th State in the early 20th Century. Strong high pressure persisted across northwestern Alaska along with an arctic air mass that resulted in the January 2012 monthly average temperature at Galena to be 32.6 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), the lowest monthly average temperature of any month on record since weather records commenced there in 1942. Nome reported a monthly average temperature of 16.6 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) for January 2012, the lowest January temperature since records began in Nome in 1907. [Washington Post Blog]
  The recently publicized low temperature of 79 degrees below zero reading set last week at the Alaska Department of Transportation's Jim River Maintenance camp at Mile Marker 138 along the Dalton Highway (or Haul Road), a non-standard observing station south of Deadhorse, appears to be in error due to a failing battery. The all time record lowest temperature in Alaska and the United States remains at 80 degrees below zero set in January 1971 at Prospect Creek. [Anchorage Daily News]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• First images obtained from new satellite instrument -- The NASA/NOAA team responsible for the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument onboard NASA's new Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite released the first images that this instrument scanned of Earth. The CERES instrument is providing a continuation of measurements of the energy leaving the Earth-atmosphere system that should provide scientists a long term record of the components of the Earth's energy budget. [NASA Langley Research Center]
• Field campaign designed to remotely sense snow -- Scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Environment Canada are conducting the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Cold-season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx), a large field experiment in southern Ontario that is designed to improve the remote detection of snow from instruments that will be placed on orbiting satellite, such as the Core satellite scheduled to be launched in 2014. These scientists are attempting to gain a better understanding of snow dynamics inside a cloud. The international GPM mission is to provide more detailed worldwide observations of rain and snow every three hours. [NASA GSFC]
• An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAAWatch]
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]

CLIMATE FORCING

• Correlation found between summer Arctic sea ice and Central European winter weather -- Scientists at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research report that they have found a correlation between summertime sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and winter weather across winter weather in Central Europe, with an increased probability for cold winters with more snow occurring when the Arctic has less sea ice coverage in summer. They attribute this apparent correlation to changes in the atmospheric pressure patterns across the region associated with the shrinking sea ice cover. [Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research]
• Increased permafrost thaw in Arctic driven by climate-related expansion of shrubs -- Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) using the Community Earth System Model have found that an increase in shrubs across the Arctic tundra because of increased temperatures in the last several decades have caused increased thawing of the region's permafrost. A change in the surface albedo or reflectivity appears to be a major factor in this increased thaw. [NCAR/UCAR Atmos News]

• First land plants may have caused early ice ages -- In research conducted by scientists at the United Kingdom's Universities of Exeter, Oxford and East Anglia, the appearance of the first plants on land approximately 470 million years ago during the Ordovician Period may have triggered a series of ice ages. The researchers reason that a period of global cooling ensued culminating in a series of ice ages near the end of the Ordovician (444 million years ago) was due to a dramatic reduction in atmospheric carbon compounds, especially carbon dioxide. The researchers based their conclusions on chemical analysis of ancient rocks and numerical Earth system models. [University of Exeter]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

• Little Ice Age being studied -- Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and several other research institutions in the US, Iceland and Scotland have been studying the onset and persistence of the Little Ice Age, a several century long period of widespread cooling that developed in the late 13th century and continued through the 19th Century. Using computer simulations run on NCAR's Community Climate System Model, the researchers point to an unusual episode with four massive tropical volcanic eruptions that appear to have triggered the Little Ice Age between 1275 and 1300 AD, which resulted in cold summers and a subsequent expansion of sea ice and a related weakening of Atlantic currents.  [NCAR/UCAR AtmosNews]
• Sediments for Spanish lake reveal 13,500 years of climate history -- A team of researchers from several Spanish universities have been reconstructing the climate history of the Holocene period from a collection of geological samples that were obtained from sediments at the bottom of Lake Enol in the northern Iberian Peninsula. The researchers found that this post glacial period had more climate variability than previously assumed. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

• Future tropical cyclones could cause increased damage -- Based upon research conducted at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIR), scientists warn that tropical cyclones (such as hurricanes, typhoons or tropical storms) could cause $109 billion in damages by the end of the 21st century due to a combination of factors that would include increased vulnerability from increased population and economic growth and also changes in global climate that would result in more frequent and intense tropical cyclones due to higher temperatures. They estimate that damages associated with population vulnerability would increase to $56 billion by 2100, while changing climate would cause $53 billion in damage. The United States and China would be the hardest hit according to their forecasts. [Yale School Forestry & Environmental Studies]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

• Website for human dimensions of climate change -- An interagency effort within the US federal government that included NOAA, the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service, has resulted in a website called HD.gov (for HumanDimensions.gov) that provides users, such as natural resource managers, with information on the human dimensions on a variety of topics of interest such as climate change. [HD.gov]
• Earthweek --
Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Climate sensitivity is a relatively new and powerful concept in climate science. It is a measure of how responsive the temperature of Earth's climate system is to a change in radiative forcing due to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas, combined with the contributions of feedbacks within the system. Specifically, the term is defined as how much the global mean surface temperature will increase if there is a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gases (in terms of equivalent CO₂), once the planet has had a chance to settle into a new equilibrium after the increase occurs. In other words, it is an assessment of how Earth's climate will respond to that doubling.

According to NASA climate scientist James Hansen, the concept of climate sensitivity has its origins in a request made by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to report on the potential impact on climate of the increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. Jule G. Charney (1917-1981) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) led the Academy investigation team. He designed a now classic experiment where computer models of Earth's climate system had the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ doubled while all other variables (except temperature) were held constant.

The addition of CO₂ makes the atmosphere more opaque for outgoing infrared radiation (heat), warming the lower atmosphere and cooling the upper atmosphere. Applying basic radiation laws, Charney found that doubling the atmospheric CO₂ concentration would reduce the net radiative flux (from Earth to space) at the tropopause by a global average of about 4 watts per square meter (W/m²). How much warmer would Earth's surface become as a consequence of this enhanced greenhouse effect? According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law, the radiation emitted by an object is directly proportional to the fourth power of the object's absolute temperature. To reestablish radiative equilibrium following a doubling of atmospheric CO₂, Earth must radiate to space an additional 4 W/m², brought about by a global warming of 1.2 Celsius degrees (or 0.3 Celsius degrees per W/m²).

Charney's initial experiment accounted for the effect of a forcing agent (i.e., atmospheric CO₂) on global climate but not the influence of feedbacks. As noted in the Concept of the Week for Week 2, forcing agents and mechanisms drive climate change, while feedbacks determine the magnitude of climate change. Hence, Charney's "no-feedback" experiment significantly underestimates the amount of global warming likely to accompany a doubling of atmospheric CO₂. With inclusion of feedbacks, the 1979 Academy study indicated that global warming could range from 2 to 3.5 Celsius degrees. The most recent IPCC report (AR4) estimates the magnitude of warming with feedbacks incorporated as 3 Celsius degrees with a range of uncertainty of 2 to 4.5 Celsius degrees. This greater sensitivity depends primarily on all the different feedbacks, both positive and negative, that either amplify or diminish the greenhouse effect. The three primary feedbacks involve clouds, sea ice, and water vapor.

In summary, climate sensitivity is usually expressed in terms of the equilibrium change in global mean annual surface temperature caused by an increment in downward infrared radiative flux that would result from sustained doubling of atmospheric CO₂ concentration compared to its pre-industrial level (taken to be 280 ppmv).

Concept of the Week: Questions

1. All other factors being equal, the addition of CO₂ to the atmosphere [(increases) (decreases)(has no effect upon)] the flux of infrared radiation from Earth's surface to space.
2. Charney's initial estimate of the amount of global warming that would accompany a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ [(did)(did not)] account for the temperature change(s) likely to accompany feedbacks in Earth's climate system.

Historical Events:

• 7 February 1892...The lowest temperature ever recorded to that time in Asia was reported from Verkhoyansk, Russia with a 90-degree below zero reading. This record was subsequently tied in 1933. (The Weather Doctor)
• 7 February 1989...The low of 43 degrees below zero at Boca, CA was a state record for the month of February. In Utah, lows of -32 degrees at Bryce Canyon, -27 degrees at Delta, -29 degrees at Dugway, and -38 degrees at Vernal were all-time records for those locations. (The National Weather Summary)
• 8 February 1933...The record low temperature for the state of Texas was set at Seminole when the mercury dropped to 23 degrees below zero. (Intellicast)
• 8 February 1936...The temperature at Denver, CO plunged to its all-time record low temperature of 30 degrees below zero. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
• 9 February 1899...Norway House, Manitoba reported a temperature of 63 degrees below zero to set the province's record for lowest temperature. (The Weather Doctor)
• 9 February 1933...The temperature at Moran, WY, located next to Teton National Park, plunged to 63 degrees below zero to establish a state record. The temperature at the Riverside Ranger Station in Montana near West Yellowstone, MT dipped to 66 below zero to establish a record for the state, and a record for the nation, which stood until 1954. (David Ludlum)
• 9 February 1934...The mercury dipped to 51 degrees below zero at Vanderbilt to establish a record for the state of Michigan. The temperature at Stillwater Reservoir plunged to 52 degrees below zero to establish a record for the state of New York; this record was subsequently tied in February 1979. (David Ludlum) (NCDC)
• 10 February 1899...The record low temperature for the state of Ohio was set at Milligan when the mercury dipped to 39 degrees below zero. The record low temperature for Virginia was also set at Monterey with 29 degrees below zero; this record has been broken in January 1985. (Intellicast) (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
• 11 February 1895...Braemar (Grampian), Scotland reported a temperature of 17 degrees below zero, the lowest temperature ever measured in the United Kingdom. (The Weather Doctor)
• 11 February 1899...Perhaps the greatest of all arctic outbreaks commenced on this date. The record low temperature for Washington, DC was set when the temperature fell to 15 degrees below zero. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
• 11 February 1935...Temperature of 11 degrees below zero at Ifrane, Morocco was the lowest temperature ever in Africa. (The Weather Doctor)
• 11 February 1970...Mount Washington, NH, the highest point in New England, recorded 10.38 inches during a 24-hour span (10^th-11^th) to set a statewide 24 hour maximum precipitation record. (NCDC)
• 11 February 1999...Tahtsa Lake, located in the Whitesail Range of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia reported 57 inches of snow, which set a new 24-hour snowfall record for Canada, eclipsing the old record of 46.5 inches of snow that fell at Lakelse, BC on 17 January 1974. This former record replaced a 44.0 inch summertime snowfall on 29 June 1963 at Livingston Ranger Station, AB. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (The Weather Doctor)
• 12 February 1899...Texas and the eastern Great Plains experienced their coldest morning of modern record. The temperature at Camp Clarke, NE plunged to 47 degrees below zero to establish a record for the Cornhusker State; this record has been tied in December 1989. (David Ludlum)

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2012, The American Meteorological Society.