Rainfall variation during a year

A post by Paul Homewood expressed surprise at comment by Philip Eden in his Sunday Telegraph newspaper column about August rainfall. Eden missed a trick, reality is more interesting. I’m responding here with a lengthy item.

How rainfall varies over the year by area for a few regional datasets. Includes data from 1770 to date. (data is provided if the details matter)

Eden is I think pushing reality in finding subset areas where August is the wettest month. Read Paul’s article here.

As I read it autumn storms originate in the tropical Atlantic bringing water which has infamy[*]. As the Atlantic cools there are fewer storms and colder air. As the year progresses into what passes as summer airflow may bring warm wet air from the south, continental Europe drying out, more infamy. We have an Indian summer lull, the Atlantic calls.

Why Phi? – a Jupiter-Neptune model

Neptune (top), Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter (bottom)

Continuing our long-term series researching Fibonacci and/or Phi based ratios in planetary conjunction periods, it’s time for a look at the inner- and outer-most gas giants of our solar system: Jupiter and Neptune.

Initial analysis shows the period of 14 Jupiter orbits is close to that of one Neptune orbit of the Sun, and even closer to the period of 13 (14 less 1) Jupiter-Neptune (J-N) conjunctions.

It also turns out that there’s a multiple of 13 J-N that equates to a whole number of Earth orbits:
Jupiter-Neptune(J-N) average conjunction period = 12.782793 years
221 J-N = ~2825 years (2824.9972y)
(221 = 13 x 17)

But this period is not a whole number of either Jupiter or Neptune orbits.
This is resolved by multiplying by a factor of 7.

Climate model predictions, seasonal to decadal.

Can climate models predict? A few months ago a lecture given by a senior member of the Met Office, describing where the models are at. What they can do, and more problematically, what they cannot.

QBO rough analysis

This is a quick rough and ready analysis of an QBO data since Paul Vaughan asked. Here are all the things you never wanted to know.

QBO ( Quasi-Biennial Oscillation) is a strange entity, wind direction alternates. The data is an index, artificial computation and in this case part of a reanalysis. This article might add some insight http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/ag/strat/produkte/qbo

A problem I see with simple data such as at one pressure level and location is the many other changes over time. Perhaps the pressure level should vary a little. It’s a multi-dimension entity anyway.

I’m taking it as-is with no more comment.

Figure 1, straight plot of monthly data, which runs from 1948. No units are given so assume metres/second. Data used

The author has several bespoke software works useful for analysis, in C, unpublished so reproducing this work would be difficult.

On considering the data the period before 1970 is ignored. There is no information on technology changes or data reliability.

The Maunder minimum (1645 .. 1715) was indeed a grand minimum

This grand paper examines many lines of evidence, many well known authors, enjoy the feast

The Maunder minimum (1645–1715) was indeed a grand minimum:
A reassessment of multiple datasets
Ilya G. Usoskin, Rainer Arlt , Eleanna Asvestari, Ed Hawkins, Maarit Käpylä, Gennady A. Kovaltsov, Natalie Krivova, Michael Lockwood, Kalevi Mursula, Jezebel O’Reilly, Matthew Owens, Chris J. Scott, Dmitry D. Sokoloff, Sami K. Solanki, Willie Soon and José M. Vaquero

Astronomy & Astrophysics, accepted July 2015, 19 pages, access on registration
http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201526652

ABSTRACT
Aims. Although the time of the Maunder minimum (1645–1715) is widely known as a period of extremely low solar activity, it is still being debated whether solar activity during that period might have been moderate or even higher than the current solar cycle #24. We have revisited all existing evidence and datasets, both direct and indirect, to assess the level of solar activity during the Maunder minimum.
…
Conclusions. We conclude that solar activity was indeed at an exceptionally low level during the Maunder minimum. Although the exact level is still unclear, it was definitely lower than during the Dalton minimum of around 1800 and significantly below that of the current solar cycle #24. Claims of a moderate-to-high level of solar activity during the Maunder minimum are rejected with a high confidence level.

GWPF: Fracking Update

Roundup of fresh finds on the fracking front from the GWPF

A high-profile Scottish environmental campaigner has given his backing to fracking as long as safeguards are in place and key conditions are met. In a significant intervention that will help to undermine opposition to the energy source, Robin Harper, the first Green MSP and now the chairman of a major environmental trust, said that he would be prepared to give his cautious backing if it could be proved that it was an improvement on the burning of coal and oil. His comments will be a major setback for anti-fracking campaigners, who have argued that anything other than a complete ban would damage the environment. Mr Harper’s powerful green credentials mean that they will not be able to dismiss his views easily. –Hamish Macdonell, The Times, 10 September 2015

New Pluto Images from NASA’s New Horizons: It’s Complicated

Feast your eyes and let the guesswork commence…

“Complicated” surface of Pluto Image credit: NASA New Horizons

Cheeky Pukitee: nicking knowledge without acknowledgement

Last week I told Paul Pukite where he was going wrong with his ENSO model:

@WHUT @LittleIceAge You still don't have the prime mover for your oscillation, no matter how you attempt to derail the convo to hide that.

— Rog Tallbloke (Righto/Chief) 🇬🇧 (@RogTallbloke) September 3, 2015

@WHUT @LittleIceAge And what do you think the prime movers behind tides and the CW are? 😉
QBO is a long way up in the sky, & of tiny mass

— Rog Tallbloke (Righto/Chief) 🇬🇧 (@RogTallbloke) September 3, 2015

@WHUT @LittleIceAge I did that ages ago. Look: https://t.co/dSw9I1YGmm Tides not mentioned in your abstract by the way…

— Rog Tallbloke (Righto/Chief) 🇬🇧 (@RogTallbloke) September 3, 2015

This week, he’s ‘discovered’ that The Moon and the tides it raises underlie both The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and  the Quasi Biennial Oscillation (QBO), which he previously thought was the driver of ENSO along with the Chandler Wobble (CW), as seen in the tweets above. He hastily added ‘tides’ though they get no mention in his original post.

Oops: New study finds radiocarbon dating can be wildly inaccurate

H/T to ‘Scottish Sceptic’ for this story from SCMP.com

Radiocarbon dating, which is used to calculate the age of certain organic materials, has been found to be unreliable, and sometimes wildly so – a discovery that could upset previous studies on climate change, scientists from China and Germany said in a new paper.

Their recent analysis of sediment from the largest freshwater lake in northeast China showed that its carbon clock stopped ticking as early as 30,000 years ago, or nearly half as long as was hitherto thought.

A Discussion of Physics and Chemistry in Robinson and Catling (2014)

[update: Tyler Robinson has replied in comments  — Tim /update]

Talkshop contributor ‘Cementafriend’ has emailed me with an interesting critique of parts the 2013 Robinson & Catling paper Common 0.1 bar tropopause in thick atmospheres set by pressure-dependent infrared transparency 

. He is an engineer and tells me that:

I have had actual experience with combustion and heat transfer. I have designed burners for coal, gas, oil and waste fuel materials. I have measured CO2 in exhaust gases, down coal mines and even in the atmosphere.

The presence of OH in the atmosphere is due to the reaction CH4 +O3 > CH3OH +O2 (of course other organics can also be oxidised by O3 but the quantity of these is tiny).
The reaction claimed CH4 +OH> CH3 +H2O is not correct. CH3OH (methanol or methyl alcohol sometimes known as wood alcohol which is poisonous) can exist as a molecule. In water this can form the ions CH3+ and OH-.
CH3OH is highly soluble in water at ocean/lake surfaces and also in drops of water in clouds. However, there is little O3 in the atmosphere up to 11,000 km and that is why CH4 persists in the atmosphere now at around 1.7 ppm.

It seems that just as there are “Climate Scientists” making up false relations in physics, thermodynamics & heat transfer (luckily they have not touched mass transfer), there also seem to be “astrophysicists” and “astrochemists” making up new chemistry & reaction kinetics.

Blast from the Past: Seitz and Singer on the tampering of IPCC AR 2

Fred Singer

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Letters to the Editor:

Coverup in the Greenhouse? Wall Street Journal; New York; Jul 11, 1996;
Edition: Eastern edition Start Page: A15 ISSN: 00999660 Abstract:

My June 12 editorial-page article “A Major Deception on Global Warming” presents facts indicating that Benjamin D. Santer, and possibly others, made major unauthorized changes in a key technical chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report after that report had b,een accepted by governments. The consequence of these changes was to delete the expressions of skepticism with which many scientists react to global warming claims. Dr. Santer’s June 25 Letter to the Editor in reply attempts to confuse the basic issue: Was the scientific report changed after the governments had formally approved it?

Climate Ignorami in last minute bid to derail world economy at Paris

World leaders must step into the ongoing UN climate change negotiations, to remove roadblocks and ensure their negotiating teams can lay the groundwork for an agreement at landmark talk in December, an influential group of former leaders has urged. The Elders – a group including former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, the Mozambican politician and widow of Nelson Mandela, and Mary Robinson, formerly president of Ireland and a UN high commissioner – made their call on Friday, as the latest round of pre-Paris negotiations ended with many key issues left open. –Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 4 September 2015

Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on the Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century

Willie Soon, Ronan Connolly & Michael Connolly have reviewed the ongoing solar variability debate, constructed and assessed a new Northern Hemisphere rural temperature trend and find a close match with the Scafetta & Wilson update to the Hoyte & Schatten TSI reconstruction.

The long descent toward cycle 25

Our sometimes contributor Michele has posted an article on his Italian language blog.

 

Watching solar: The long descent of solar cycle SC24 has started!
(hopefully Google Translate will kick in automatically (see top of page), or use Bing translation)

Do I (Tim) agree with Michele, yes, will be about now.

We have the most uncertain solar situation in living memory.

Yet another coal fired power station forced to close

Image Crdeit: Dave ‘Watertowers’ – click for more

Eggborough is the latest of three coal fired power stations to announce plans to close, DECC insists they have a plan.

Anastassia Makarieva: Empirical evidence for the condensational theory of hurricanes

Makarieva and Gorschov

Our old friend Anastassia Makarieva has a new paper in press with her colleagues Victor Gorschov and A.V. Nefiodov: ‘Empirical evidence for the condensational theory of hurricanes’. A preprint is available here. This theory is an extension of her earlier work on where winds come from, which we discussed a couple of years ago.

The new paper concludes with this:

We derived the relationship between the gravitational power of precipitation and air velocity in the windwall from the previously developed theory of condensation-induced dynamics [3,5]. We emphasize that the gravitational power of precipitation exists irrespective of the dissipation of the kinetic energy of hurricanes (distinct from the interpretation given in work [2]). The hurricane power budget would remain the same even if precipitation occurred in free fall with rain drops not interacting with atmospheric air.

How will you care for your 422 trees?

I won’t be letting these goats anywhere near mine…

From Science daily:

A new Yale-led study estimates that there are more than 3 trillion trees on Earth, about seven and a half times more than some previous estimates. But the total number of trees has plummeted by roughly 46 percent since the start of human civilization, the study estimates.

Using a combination of satellite imagery, forest inventories, and supercomputer technologies, the international team of researchers was able to map tree populations worldwide at the square-kilometer level.

Accurate formula for calculating environmental lapse rate on three worlds

A commenter on another site with the handle ‘Agent009’ has come up with an interesting formula for calculating the environmental lapse rate on three solar system bodies with atmospheres. Talkshoppers might offer some ideas as to why it works. H/T to Stuart ‘Oldbrew’ for flagging this one up.

I’ve been trying to solve a puzzle… dry adiabatic lapse rate is normally calculated as following:
Γ = g·M/cp
where Γ is lapse rate, g is surface gravity acceleration, M is mole mass and cp is molar heat capacity.
However, if you calculate this for Earth, you arrive at 9.77 K/km, but actual environmental lapse rate, as defined in the ISA, is 6.49 K/km, which is about 9.77 * 0.665. So, I decided to take a look at how this works on Venus and Titan – the only two other worlds in the Sol System that actually have tropospheres.
On Venus (assuming tropopause at 55 km), the average lapse rate is about 7.9 K/km, but the above formula gives you 10.46 K/km, which means that you must multiply the result by 0.756 to get the actual value. On Titan (assuming tropopause at 42 km), actual average lapse rate appears to be around 0.5 K/km, but predicted lapse rate is 1.26 K/km – which gives you the coefficient 0.427. So I’ve been trying to figure what this mysterious coefficient depends upon – and, I think, I’ve found it. The following expression gives you almost exactly those numbers (using SI units, that is):

³√(12·g·M·(1/R – 1/cp))
where R is the ideal gas constant.

Clues emerge to help solve red planet riddle

Repost from the JPL website

This view combines information from two instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to map color-coded composition over the shape of the ground in a small portion of the Nili Fossae plains region of Mars’ northern hemisphere.
This site is part of the largest known carbonate-rich deposit on Mars. In the color coding used for this map, green indicates a carbonate-rich composition, brown indicates olivine-rich sands, and purple indicates basaltic composition. Image credit: JPL Click image for more info.

Scientists may be closer to solving the mystery of how Mars changed from a world with surface water billions of years ago to the arid Red Planet of today.

A new analysis of the largest known deposit of carbonate minerals on Mars suggests that the original Martian atmosphere may have already lost most of its carbon dioxide by the era of valley network formation.

“The biggest carbonate deposit on Mars has, at most, twice as much carbon in it as the current Mars atmosphere,” said Bethany Ehlmann of the California Institute of Technology and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena. “Even if you combined all known carbon reservoirs together, it is still nowhere near enough to sequester the thick atmosphere that has been proposed for the time when there were rivers flowing on the Martian surface.”

MET Office: Forecasting months/seasons ahead “Still in its infancy”.

Roundup of comment on MET Office performance with UK summer weather forecasting from Benny Peiser at GWPF:

 Image Credit: Cartoons by Josh

The Met Office has defended its forecast for a hot, dry summer despite some areas looking set to have the most rain since records began. As summer officially came to a close amid extreme downpours on Monday, the forecaster was left facing questions about why it predicted a ‘drier-than-average’ season even though a strong El Nino climate event was expected. In May the Met Office said that it ‘wouldn’t expect (El Nino) to be the dominant driver of our weather’ in the summer months. Yet this weekend Met Office chief scientist Professor Dame Julia Slingo said that the El Nino phenomenon had disturbed weather patterns, which might have been predicted. “We all know that forecasting months and seasons ahead is still in its infancy and much more research needs to be done.”–Sarah Knapton, The Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2015