Comments on: Marc Morano’s banner headline: “Did global warming help bring down Air France flight 447?”

By: Seth Masia

Seth Masia — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:40:43 +0000

Hey Skipper doesn’t understand what a feedback mechanism is. Tropical storms do move sea-surface heat into the upper atmosphere, but the heat does not then simply disappear — it’s carried poleward. The ocean and atmosphere together form a great heat conveyor moving solar radiation away from the tropics. That’s why the arctic regions are warming faster than the equatorial zones, and will continue to do so. There is NO logical reason to think that “negative feedbacks” can compensate for warming mechanisms as GHG levels rise.

By: Alex J

Alex J — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:35:42 +0000

By “assessment”, I meant in terms of estimating any net radiative change as a result, not whether the mechanism exists. Models that simulate both climate and regional weather aside, if there are trends in those avenues of convection sufficient to represent a strong negative feedback to anthropogenic warming, that becomes a matter of climate. And something of interest to those working on radiative-convective models.

By: Hey Skipper

Hey Skipper — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:08:46 +0000

So where’s the successfully reviewed scientific paper assessing this negative feedback?

Is this a trick question? There isn’t one because it is obvious. Thunderstorms and hurricanes are really giant heat engines that propel warm surface air skyward, often all the way to the stratosphere, where the heat can radiate almost directly to space.

Now, whether that negative feedback is sufficiently proportional to surface temperatures to balance, the books, who knows.

But what is equally true is that climate models do not (because they cannot) include what we consider weather into climate.

By: Alex J

Alex J — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:10:42 +0000

Actually, maybe a more straightforward question would be where’s the reviewed research suggesting that ANY negative feedback is likely to suppress warming to 2 or 3 degrees C this century/that positive feedbacks don’t dominate long-term. And if we want to be consistent with the standards of many contrarians, maybe it shouldn’t involve testing via a scientific model. Now THERE’S a challenge.

By: Alex J

Alex J — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:55:46 +0000

So where’s the successfully reviewed scientific paper assessing this negative feedback? How much do strongly convective events on X percent of the Earth’s surface compensate for increased radiative forcing over most of the planet? And how many of those events are strong enough to send water vapor into the stratosphere, where it can become a forcing factor (a POSITIVE feedback)? Like this:
http://carbon-based-ghg.blogspot.com/ 2009/ 05/ positive-feedback-hint-between-tropical.html

Maybe not so basic after all. And why didn’t this negative feedback offset geologically-driven warming events (even those from slower GHG accumulation) in prehistory?

By: Hey Skipper

Hey Skipper — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:46:56 +0000

Speaking as an airline pilot, I can tell you that suggestions that this mishap is in any way connected to climate change are nonsense. As it happens, I recently wrote about both the AFR 447 and Buffalo mishaps. I'm providing the links as as to avoid imposing a wall of words here. If you use the noodle, what regulates water vapor concentration? Temperature. Thus making water vapor a reactive greenhouse gas. A temperature increase allows more of it to remain uncondensed in the atmosphere, right? So water vapor is one of the amplifiers of CO2-induced warming. Pretty basic. Here is what else that is basic. Increased water vapor concentration causes an increase in convective activity. What brought down AFR447 was a particularly violent, but not the least uncommon example of that. Now, what does convective activity do? Through releasing the latent heat of evaporation, it hurls warm, humid air unto the upper atmosphere, where it is in a position to radiate that heat into space (which accounts for the IR sensors on weather satellites.) That is called negative feedback.

By: riverat

riverat — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:28:52 +0000

I’ve seen little evidence that points to icing being the cause of the Air France crash. It was crossing the Intertropical Convergence Zone where the Northern and Southern Hemisphere winds meet and heavy turbulence is common. I read somewhere that 3 weather cells came together at the same time the flight was entering the area. It seems to me the most likely cause was the airplane broke up in flight. Maybe lightning caused failures of the fly-by-wire systems and the pilots lost control. Maybe the flew too fast into turbulence and over stressed the airframe. Those seem most likely to me. I saw speculation that maybe a meteor hit it. In the absence of evidence that seems unlikely but an average of 3000 meteors a day survive the plunge through the atmosphere to hit the earth and become meteorites so it’s possible.

By: Mossy

Mossy — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 03:49:15 +0000

Thanks for your kind “Everyone should click on Mossy,” and other wise comments, Gail, and for your helpful pilot’s view of AF-447’s fate, Seth.

Getting back to what happened to 447, it is fair, based on what facts are available (some of which are mentioned in my prior post), to set forth the hypothesis that unusual icing conditions contributed to the crash.

Unusual icing conditions seem to be occuring more frequently with climate change. Today’s front page Wall Street Journal story about 447 mentions unusual icing, leading to improper readings for air speed, as a possible contributing factor to the crash. Yes, climate change is a clear suspect.

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:41:20 +0000

Several years ago Hadley Centre pointed out that global warming implies more extreme weather events.

By: Susan

Susan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:20:08 +0000

Thanks Seth Masia. I had been suspicious that the new Airbus was as you describe. You also say “climate severity will be part of” “system complexity”. How straightforward!