Post by NFA on May 31, 2022 19:36:27 GMT 8
Another La Nina? Climate models just flummoxed. This is not supposed to happen!
We can hear the angst and confusion — Another “nasty La Nina?”, “Something weird is going on”, “They (La Ninas) don’t know when to leave”. Oh no!
These are not the words we’d expect to hear from experts who can 97% predict the climate a century from now. The bad news for the modelers is that the climate on Earth seems to be controlled more by the Pacific Oscillation than anything else and they have no idea what drives that pattern, so they can’t predict it more than a few months ahead, and sometimes not even then. And if they can’t predict the Pacific — they can’t predict anything. The hottest of hot years are El Nino, and the coldest years are La Nina and the greatest modelers the world-has-ever-known still get their barbecue summers wrong. The droughts, the floods and the bushfires follow the swinging surface water of the worlds largest ocean. Whenever they happen, the models say “climate change” but the models never tell us which will hit us this time next year.
So here we are with hints that there might be another La Nina, a third in a row, and Oh-the-disappointment! The modelers thought there would be more El Ninos — oh Queen of Global Heating. Instead, in the last 40 years, La Nina’s seem to be getting more common. The models were wrong.
And this failure is of the Grande Mal kind.
Holy Smoke — the Pacific matters
As William Kinninmonth so incisively pointed out — the oceans are 4 kilometers deep and most of the water is only a few degrees above freezing, even under the tropical Pacific. There is a world of cold down there, and the layer of warm water on top is but a thin skin. If that thin skin of warm water rests undisturbed, the air can heat above. But all it takes is a change in dominant currents, or tradewinds, or some new deep sea magma vent to stir up the ocean and the top layers mix. The gargantuan deep blue blob of 3 kilometer thick salty cold water promptly rises up and sucks the warmth out of the sky.
The insipid weak vapor above is no match for the vast energy sink below.
These are not the words we’d expect to hear from experts who can 97% predict the climate a century from now. The bad news for the modelers is that the climate on Earth seems to be controlled more by the Pacific Oscillation than anything else and they have no idea what drives that pattern, so they can’t predict it more than a few months ahead, and sometimes not even then. And if they can’t predict the Pacific — they can’t predict anything. The hottest of hot years are El Nino, and the coldest years are La Nina and the greatest modelers the world-has-ever-known still get their barbecue summers wrong. The droughts, the floods and the bushfires follow the swinging surface water of the worlds largest ocean. Whenever they happen, the models say “climate change” but the models never tell us which will hit us this time next year.
So here we are with hints that there might be another La Nina, a third in a row, and Oh-the-disappointment! The modelers thought there would be more El Ninos — oh Queen of Global Heating. Instead, in the last 40 years, La Nina’s seem to be getting more common. The models were wrong.
And this failure is of the Grande Mal kind.
Holy Smoke — the Pacific matters
As William Kinninmonth so incisively pointed out — the oceans are 4 kilometers deep and most of the water is only a few degrees above freezing, even under the tropical Pacific. There is a world of cold down there, and the layer of warm water on top is but a thin skin. If that thin skin of warm water rests undisturbed, the air can heat above. But all it takes is a change in dominant currents, or tradewinds, or some new deep sea magma vent to stir up the ocean and the top layers mix. The gargantuan deep blue blob of 3 kilometer thick salty cold water promptly rises up and sucks the warmth out of the sky.
The insipid weak vapor above is no match for the vast energy sink below.
...