One thought on “Inside The Climate Model Black Box”
I think it’s easy to predict global climate, but not global weather.
Start from basic fact, we are in icehouse global climate or also called an Ice Age. And have been for millions of years and last couple million of couple million years as been the coldest. Some say our Ice Age has only going on for last few million of years. It’s true that Greenland’s ice sheets started becoming more permanent in last couple million years, but our Ice Age started when Antarctic ice sheets began being 33.9 million years ago and when our ocean began becoming cooler. And called, Late Cenozoic Ice Age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Cenozoic_Ice_Age
And Earth has had 5 Ice Ages:
There are five known Icehouse periods in Earth’s climate history… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth
What causes Earth to be cooler is having a cold ocean, the average temperature of our ocean is about 3.5 C and it’s said our ocean has warmer in recent past interglacial period: 4 C or warmer.
And a .5 C change in our ocean average temperature would have a large effect upon Earth’s global climate.
NASA and NOAA say: More than 90% of all recent warming has warmed our cold ocean, and has been about .1 C of warming.
.5 C has large effect, .1 C has significant or measurable effect upon global average temperature.
It takes decades to warm the ocean by .1 C though generally a matter of centuries, and such changes have occurred over last few thousands of year, such warmer period and cooling of recent period called the Little Ice Age which lasted for many centuries and said had ended in 1850 AD, as was the time that glaciers started retreating, globally.
And it seems to me, we have had ocean warm and are recovering from LIA, but compared past warm periods of past interglacial, we are currently quite cool and does seem we could get as warm as we have been, within centuries of time.
Warmer periods have warmer ocean, and as result a higher global water vapor, which results in less of land areas being desert.
So, a significant sign of significant warming, would be to have less areas being deserts.
And another measure is having higher sea levels. Earlier in our Holocene, sea levels were 1 to 2 meters higher than they are now.
So we have left the little ice age, which was coldest time in last 5000 years, we have been gradually cooling for about 5000 year. And the Sahara started become more of desert that we have today, about 5000 year ago.
Or appears we have past the peak warm period of our
Holocene interglacial period, and some imagine higher CO2 level will stop and slow our entry back into another glaciation period- which appears dubious to me.
But historical it takes a very long time [thousands of years] to get to the very cold periods of a glaciation period, so we not going to get another ice sheet in North America within, say 2000 years, and more likely more than 5000 years.
So, not going to return to conditions like the Little Ice Age, within a century, but maybe in few decades we return to such cooler periods as we had in 1970s.
But one can hope we stay around our current global air temperature, or even warm a bit more.
I think it’s easy to predict global climate, but not global weather.
Start from basic fact, we are in icehouse global climate or also called an Ice Age. And have been for millions of years and last couple million of couple million years as been the coldest. Some say our Ice Age has only going on for last few million of years. It’s true that Greenland’s ice sheets started becoming more permanent in last couple million years, but our Ice Age started when Antarctic ice sheets began being 33.9 million years ago and when our ocean began becoming cooler. And called, Late Cenozoic Ice Age:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Cenozoic_Ice_Age
And Earth has had 5 Ice Ages:
There are five known Icehouse periods in Earth’s climate history…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth
What causes Earth to be cooler is having a cold ocean, the average temperature of our ocean is about 3.5 C and it’s said our ocean has warmer in recent past interglacial period: 4 C or warmer.
And a .5 C change in our ocean average temperature would have a large effect upon Earth’s global climate.
NASA and NOAA say: More than 90% of all recent warming has warmed our cold ocean, and has been about .1 C of warming.
.5 C has large effect, .1 C has significant or measurable effect upon global average temperature.
It takes decades to warm the ocean by .1 C though generally a matter of centuries, and such changes have occurred over last few thousands of year, such warmer period and cooling of recent period called the Little Ice Age which lasted for many centuries and said had ended in 1850 AD, as was the time that glaciers started retreating, globally.
And it seems to me, we have had ocean warm and are recovering from LIA, but compared past warm periods of past interglacial, we are currently quite cool and does seem we could get as warm as we have been, within centuries of time.
Warmer periods have warmer ocean, and as result a higher global water vapor, which results in less of land areas being desert.
So, a significant sign of significant warming, would be to have less areas being deserts.
And another measure is having higher sea levels. Earlier in our Holocene, sea levels were 1 to 2 meters higher than they are now.
So we have left the little ice age, which was coldest time in last 5000 years, we have been gradually cooling for about 5000 year. And the Sahara started become more of desert that we have today, about 5000 year ago.
Or appears we have past the peak warm period of our
Holocene interglacial period, and some imagine higher CO2 level will stop and slow our entry back into another glaciation period- which appears dubious to me.
But historical it takes a very long time [thousands of years] to get to the very cold periods of a glaciation period, so we not going to get another ice sheet in North America within, say 2000 years, and more likely more than 5000 years.
So, not going to return to conditions like the Little Ice Age, within a century, but maybe in few decades we return to such cooler periods as we had in 1970s.
But one can hope we stay around our current global air temperature, or even warm a bit more.