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This is something I've long wondered about. It's always been to me that global warming and climate change will lead to more extreme weather: Pump more energy in

This is something I've long wondered about. It's always been to me that global warming and climate change will lead to more extreme weather: Pump more energy into a system (global warming in a nutshell: more energy retained in the system) and the behaviour of that system will be more extreme even as average and median behaviour edges along. I honestly don't understand why so many people fail to grasp this simple notion. I write this simply from this perspective of naivety: Why is this point rejected or not grasped by so many? FWIW, thanks.

ommunist 10y ago
Comparing to the energy that comes from the Sun to the Earth, all human and technological input is negligible. Comparing to the volcanic activity, humanity is more like a lice on the bears skin, claiming its byte will raise the bear's body temperature. 250 000 underwater volcanoes cannot be wrong. Humanity is not a geological force. There is more more energy striking the earth’s surface in one and a half hours (480 EJ) from the Sun than worldwide energy consumption in the year 2001 from all sources combined (430 EJ).
todd8 10y ago
I am not a climate scientist, but I believe that the connection is a bit more subtle. As I understand it the global circulation models predict that average temperatures will rise but in particular that temperatures at latitudes further from the equator will rise more than those closer to the equator. In other words the temperature differences across the planet will diminish and thus provide less available thermodynamic free energy available to drive weather. This would suggest that extreme weather would decrease. Naturally, things in the real world are much more complex. The oceans are a huge thermal mass and will have temperatures changes that lag the atmospheric changes. Will the atmospheric to ocean temperature differences increase with global warming? I don't know but it sounds plausible. That would mean more energy to drive hurricanes. Yet, there doesn't currently seem to be any increase in the frequency of large hurricanes, see [1] for example amongst many references. I recall incidents of extreme weather from my childhood (over half a century ago) and don't notice any increase in them today, but I simply don't trust myself to be a good judge of the significance of personal experiences and what that says about weather across the globe. (Here in the US, I remember walking to school at -13 F; a few years later I visited my girlfriend's family in Texas and it was more than 125 degrees hotter that that day I walked to school in Detroit. Pretty extreme difference before global warming would have had an effect on weather. If I was younger it might have been easy to attribute this to global warming, but these were cases from over 50 years ago.) I wish I understood climate as well as I understand computer science. [1] http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes.

ommunist 10y ago

Comparing to the energy that comes from the Sun to the Earth, all human and technological input is negligible. Comparing to the volcanic activity, humanity is more like a lice on the bears skin, claiming its byte will raise the bear's body temperature. 250 000 underwater volcanoes cannot be wrong. Humanity is not a geological force. There is more more energy striking the earth’s surface in one and a half hours (480 EJ) from the Sun than worldwide energy consumption in the year 2001 from all sources combined (430 EJ).

todd8 10y ago

I am not a climate scientist, but I believe that the connection is a bit more subtle. As I understand it the global circulation models predict that average temperatures will rise but in particular that temperatures at latitudes further from the equator will rise more than those closer to the equator. In other words the temperature differences across the planet will diminish and thus provide less available thermodynamic free energy available to drive weather. This would suggest that extreme weather would decrease. Naturally, things in the real world are much more complex. The oceans are a huge thermal mass and will have temperatures changes that lag the atmospheric changes. Will the atmospheric to ocean temperature differences increase with global warming? I don't know but it sounds plausible. That would mean more energy to drive hurricanes. Yet, there doesn't currently seem to be any increase in the frequency of large hurricanes, see [1] for example amongst many references. I recall incidents of extreme weather from my childhood (over half a century ago) and don't notice any increase in them today, but I simply don't trust myself to be a good judge of the significance of personal experiences and what that says about weather across the globe. (Here in the US, I remember walking to school at -13 F; a few years later I visited my girlfriend's family in Texas and it was more than 125 degrees hotter that that day I walked to school in Detroit. Pretty extreme difference before global warming would have had an effect on weather. If I was younger it might have been easy to attribute this to global warming, but these were cases from over 50 years ago.) I wish I understood climate as well as I understand computer science. [1] http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes.