“Now the researchers propose that the record warmth was due to an abnormally low amount of the low-level cloud. Compared to high clouds, tops of the low-level clouds are warm, so they do not impede thermal radiation that much, but reflect a lot of sunlight thus contributing to net cooling.”
I’m confused about the moving parts here. Could you please explain? What happened with cloud cover and what would you expect to result from that?
“If we as a planetary community urgently develop an understanding of this complexity, and based on this understanding, protect the biosphere, we will likely fulfil our evolutionary mission as a thinking species.”
I couldn’t agree more, and this is so powerfully stated.
Thank you, Hart. Low clouds have relatively warm tops, from which a lot of thermal radiation is emitted to space. Thus they do not increase the greenhouse effect as much as high clouds, with cold tops, could. Thus when you reduce low clouds, the dominant effect is the decrease of albedo, i.e. warming.
I love that you are calling out a profound lack of science in current reporting. Another issue for the Amazon is the fires they had this year. There was no stopping them, it was horrific and surely that contributed to the loss of cloud cover.
Thank you, Kathryn. With fires, a prominent issue is that even when they are not set by people directly, still previous clearing disturbs the moisture regime, dries out the land surface and increases fire probability. Fires follow logging.
There is no doubt that melting the permafrost throughout the subarctic regions is the main reason for these large uncontrolled forest fires. So Anastassia, why have you not mentioned that with the introduction of sea-size impoundment reservoirs for hydroelectric generation, from the former rivers, that now the heat and humidity index of these regions has increased so greatly over several decades that it is causing local climate changes, leading to polar feedbacks Amplification, and melting permafrost below these reservoirs as well as the land areas around these impoundments. The loss of cooler permafrost ground as it melts and ground warms and dries out is the main reason that propels these wildfires.
From my perspective, the main reason that propels these wildfires is the disruption of natural vegetation cover by humans. This includes logging and mining activities as well as indeed the hydropower construction.
Yes Anastassia the forest fires in these regions certainly have been enhanced by changes to forests and vegetations but the longer the ground remains cooler and moist the less likely fire can spread. Temperature and available moisture or lack of it greatly adds to the spreading of fire. The melting of permafrost has been ongoing and really jumpstarted with dam reservoirs have increased amounts of available heat and humidity in the surrounding atmosphere.
This is particularly true as many studies bear this out.- the subarctic regions are actually warming faster in the winter and the main reason is that most of the hydroelectric generation occurs in winter months. Warmer waters stored well below the thermocline in and below dams(here waters are around 40 F)these warmed waters are discharged after going thru turbines then out into dead of winter cold in a region that daytime temperatures, although are now warming, are often severely cold, 40-50 degrees colder than the water discharged. This huge temperature differential is pouring out warmer moist water vapor into the surrounding atmosphere and regions. This has been going on now for almost 70 years And water vapor is known by scientists to intensify the GHG effects.
So where are all the scientists that should have been on top of this years ago? Just about all the studies point to climate change as the cause for Arctic Amplification. This answer is rubbish. This is a big question that many of us are grappling with. Why are the scientists not paying attention to some of the local effects that occur in highly climate sensitive zones like rain forests ,tropics, Arctic, and subarctic that have major global impact?
Money, greed, and the misinformation machine. If you get a chance please check our research group at hydrodamtruth.org. If you'd like I can email documents to you- some of our most recent research. The Prevailing winds are carrying warm moist air from Canadian dams alll winter long straight to Greenland. And have detailed information from weather stations thru Siberia that document temperature and humidity changes that came along with the introduction of hydro there. We appreciate all your work but do not forget what is going on in your own backyard.
So where is mention about the hydrologic disaster still unfolding in Russian Siberia, closer to home. From the early 1950s into 1970s many of the major Siberian rivers were dammed and forced inland burying forests, tundra, and over permafrost. This was just the beginning of a hydrological alteration and weakening of the natural pumps- rivers historically flowing undetained directly into the Arctic Ocean and Kara Sea. The subarctic and Arctic used to be home to the largest amount of fresh water rivers flowing 24 x7 but by the 1970's many of these rivers were impounded behind dams for 6 months at a time.
If we as a planetary community urgently develop an understanding of this complexity, and based on this understanding, protect the biosphere, we will likely fulfill our evolutionary mission as a thinking species.
Fritjof Capra tasked his Systems View of Life classes with making it our first priority to increase 'ecolacy' or 'ecoliteracy.' I have dedicated my time to his admonition, and now yours.
So far as our mission, I'd expand that to an urgent need for a shared Vision for humanity.
And thinking? We've done 200 years of that (and much more) which separated us from Gaia, to our common detriment. I'd expand this to making us compassionate, caring and humble to make our existence symbiotic with every other creature.
Thank you so much for making way for these important shifts in our world view.
I am thinking that if we used to be compassionate and caring about nature in the past, apparently such a state was not stable and degraded in what we are having now.
On the other hand, with the scientific knowledge that we have got, we have a chance to ultimately understand something about Life and formulate this understanding in the form of a scientific law. This more formalized knowledge could help us stabilize our new culture of caring for nature.
And note the title: "Even Nasa can't explain..." The assumption is that a space agency naturally has the penultimate view of the climate, the logic apparently being that the climate is best "seen" from space. It has been that way since the beginning with James Hansen. One could argue, however, that the climate is best seen from the ground up, as something upheld by living systems.
Rob, I genuinely appreciate your perspective of this "inner" view on climate stability as something "upheld by living systems". At the same time, the space view is also very important as it is often the only source of information about intact ecosystems (which remain intact because there is nobody there).
I remember how you mentioned that Lovelock came to the appreciation of life stability from "above" (from space), while Gorshkov did it from "within". This is very keen.
He came to the idea of biotic regulation from the consideration of the energy and matter flows in the biosphere, in particular, considering the tight correlation between synthesis and decomposition that is required to keep the environment stable on any significant scale. In his view, the capacity to buffer external environmental perturbations is a natural by-product of the capacity of the ecosystem to self-stabilize, which is the main principle of life organization.
Firstly in relation to the biotic pump the principle behind the mechanistic view and why it was discredited by some scientists is that it does not seem to take into account the fact that many plants work on stored energy and the lower light conditions due to clouds favor their growth and hence humidity will still increase over a forest compared to over the ocean as the clouds increase and should create an earlier tipping point into rain. Secondly due to the fact the world cools from east to west as we rotate how would this play into the biotic pump and land clearing in a warmer world in the amazon. My view is that it may reverse and rain more over the ocean and draw moisture away from the land adding to the el nino and hence the level of drought conditions we are seeing now. We do not see a net decrease in cloud in the near costal regions of the ocean where we see drought and add to this the fact that plants under heat stress start to shut down as this study and many others are pointing out https://theconversation.com/study-shows-hot-leaves-cant-catch-carbon-from-the-air-its-bad-news-for-rainforests-and-earth-246975 If the biotic pump then draws moisture away from the forests we see rivers quickly dry as we are witnessing.
Dear Anastassia,
I am eternally grateful for your work.
I have a question about this paragraph:
“Now the researchers propose that the record warmth was due to an abnormally low amount of the low-level cloud. Compared to high clouds, tops of the low-level clouds are warm, so they do not impede thermal radiation that much, but reflect a lot of sunlight thus contributing to net cooling.”
I’m confused about the moving parts here. Could you please explain? What happened with cloud cover and what would you expect to result from that?
“If we as a planetary community urgently develop an understanding of this complexity, and based on this understanding, protect the biosphere, we will likely fulfil our evolutionary mission as a thinking species.”
I couldn’t agree more, and this is so powerfully stated.
Thank you, Hart. Low clouds have relatively warm tops, from which a lot of thermal radiation is emitted to space. Thus they do not increase the greenhouse effect as much as high clouds, with cold tops, could. Thus when you reduce low clouds, the dominant effect is the decrease of albedo, i.e. warming.
In my opinion these two diagrams show nicely the climatic difference between high and low clouds https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Clouds/clouds4.php
Thank you.
I love that you are calling out a profound lack of science in current reporting. Another issue for the Amazon is the fires they had this year. There was no stopping them, it was horrific and surely that contributed to the loss of cloud cover.
Thank you, Kathryn. With fires, a prominent issue is that even when they are not set by people directly, still previous clearing disturbs the moisture regime, dries out the land surface and increases fire probability. Fires follow logging.
There is no doubt that melting the permafrost throughout the subarctic regions is the main reason for these large uncontrolled forest fires. So Anastassia, why have you not mentioned that with the introduction of sea-size impoundment reservoirs for hydroelectric generation, from the former rivers, that now the heat and humidity index of these regions has increased so greatly over several decades that it is causing local climate changes, leading to polar feedbacks Amplification, and melting permafrost below these reservoirs as well as the land areas around these impoundments. The loss of cooler permafrost ground as it melts and ground warms and dries out is the main reason that propels these wildfires.
From my perspective, the main reason that propels these wildfires is the disruption of natural vegetation cover by humans. This includes logging and mining activities as well as indeed the hydropower construction.
Yes Anastassia the forest fires in these regions certainly have been enhanced by changes to forests and vegetations but the longer the ground remains cooler and moist the less likely fire can spread. Temperature and available moisture or lack of it greatly adds to the spreading of fire. The melting of permafrost has been ongoing and really jumpstarted with dam reservoirs have increased amounts of available heat and humidity in the surrounding atmosphere.
This is particularly true as many studies bear this out.- the subarctic regions are actually warming faster in the winter and the main reason is that most of the hydroelectric generation occurs in winter months. Warmer waters stored well below the thermocline in and below dams(here waters are around 40 F)these warmed waters are discharged after going thru turbines then out into dead of winter cold in a region that daytime temperatures, although are now warming, are often severely cold, 40-50 degrees colder than the water discharged. This huge temperature differential is pouring out warmer moist water vapor into the surrounding atmosphere and regions. This has been going on now for almost 70 years And water vapor is known by scientists to intensify the GHG effects.
So where are all the scientists that should have been on top of this years ago? Just about all the studies point to climate change as the cause for Arctic Amplification. This answer is rubbish. This is a big question that many of us are grappling with. Why are the scientists not paying attention to some of the local effects that occur in highly climate sensitive zones like rain forests ,tropics, Arctic, and subarctic that have major global impact?
Money, greed, and the misinformation machine. If you get a chance please check our research group at hydrodamtruth.org. If you'd like I can email documents to you- some of our most recent research. The Prevailing winds are carrying warm moist air from Canadian dams alll winter long straight to Greenland. And have detailed information from weather stations thru Siberia that document temperature and humidity changes that came along with the introduction of hydro there. We appreciate all your work but do not forget what is going on in your own backyard.
So where is mention about the hydrologic disaster still unfolding in Russian Siberia, closer to home. From the early 1950s into 1970s many of the major Siberian rivers were dammed and forced inland burying forests, tundra, and over permafrost. This was just the beginning of a hydrological alteration and weakening of the natural pumps- rivers historically flowing undetained directly into the Arctic Ocean and Kara Sea. The subarctic and Arctic used to be home to the largest amount of fresh water rivers flowing 24 x7 but by the 1970's many of these rivers were impounded behind dams for 6 months at a time.
Thank You, Anastassia. I'm pleased to be able to subscribe to your blog.
If we as a planetary community urgently develop an understanding of this complexity, and based on this understanding, protect the biosphere, we will likely fulfill our evolutionary mission as a thinking species.
Fritjof Capra tasked his Systems View of Life classes with making it our first priority to increase 'ecolacy' or 'ecoliteracy.' I have dedicated my time to his admonition, and now yours.
So far as our mission, I'd expand that to an urgent need for a shared Vision for humanity.
And thinking? We've done 200 years of that (and much more) which separated us from Gaia, to our common detriment. I'd expand this to making us compassionate, caring and humble to make our existence symbiotic with every other creature.
Thank you so much for making way for these important shifts in our world view.
Sorry, forgot to put quote marks on Anastassia's paragraph at the very beginning.
Mark, thank you for your support.
I am thinking that if we used to be compassionate and caring about nature in the past, apparently such a state was not stable and degraded in what we are having now.
On the other hand, with the scientific knowledge that we have got, we have a chance to ultimately understand something about Life and formulate this understanding in the form of a scientific law. This more formalized knowledge could help us stabilize our new culture of caring for nature.
Here's another piece that wonders over the heat anomaly with no mention of water, land change or ecosystem loss. https://www.sciencealert.com/even-nasa-cant-explain-the-alarming-surge-in-global-heat-were-seeing
And note the title: "Even Nasa can't explain..." The assumption is that a space agency naturally has the penultimate view of the climate, the logic apparently being that the climate is best "seen" from space. It has been that way since the beginning with James Hansen. One could argue, however, that the climate is best seen from the ground up, as something upheld by living systems.
Rob, I genuinely appreciate your perspective of this "inner" view on climate stability as something "upheld by living systems". At the same time, the space view is also very important as it is often the only source of information about intact ecosystems (which remain intact because there is nobody there).
I remember how you mentioned that Lovelock came to the appreciation of life stability from "above" (from space), while Gorshkov did it from "within". This is very keen.
Victor Gorshkov gradually turned from his successful career in theoretical physics (we talked a little about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlRSR18DEpU&t=1432s , slides here https://bioticregulation.ru/ab.php?id=lect2021) to ecology in the mid 1970s.
He came to the idea of biotic regulation from the consideration of the energy and matter flows in the biosphere, in particular, considering the tight correlation between synthesis and decomposition that is required to keep the environment stable on any significant scale. In his view, the capacity to buffer external environmental perturbations is a natural by-product of the capacity of the ecosystem to self-stabilize, which is the main principle of life organization.
Firstly in relation to the biotic pump the principle behind the mechanistic view and why it was discredited by some scientists is that it does not seem to take into account the fact that many plants work on stored energy and the lower light conditions due to clouds favor their growth and hence humidity will still increase over a forest compared to over the ocean as the clouds increase and should create an earlier tipping point into rain. Secondly due to the fact the world cools from east to west as we rotate how would this play into the biotic pump and land clearing in a warmer world in the amazon. My view is that it may reverse and rain more over the ocean and draw moisture away from the land adding to the el nino and hence the level of drought conditions we are seeing now. We do not see a net decrease in cloud in the near costal regions of the ocean where we see drought and add to this the fact that plants under heat stress start to shut down as this study and many others are pointing out https://theconversation.com/study-shows-hot-leaves-cant-catch-carbon-from-the-air-its-bad-news-for-rainforests-and-earth-246975 If the biotic pump then draws moisture away from the forests we see rivers quickly dry as we are witnessing.