Climate Letter #1818

The work I have been doing this past year all stems from trying to find answers to one simple question—prompted by reading the Weather Maps—what causes all the changes in the temperature anomalies that we see every day?  The anomalies affect practically every location on the surface.  Some are warm and some are cold. Some quite large, some small, and sometimes none.  For every location they keep changing, back and forth, up and down, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly.  But why?  Doesn’t there have to be a set of specific causation factors behind each and every anomaly?  We’re living in a physical world, governed by physical laws and processes, all subject to human studies.  What can stop us from trying to determine the exact cause of any anomaly, anywhere on the surface, including the daily ones?  This is the goal I have been working toward.  It’s obviously a difficult task, well beyond the capacities of any one individual, and the potential rewards uncertain. As you’ll see, I think it is worth the effort and will urge others to get on board.

Climate scientists are constantly working on anomalies, the kind that unfold over years, decades, centuries and far beyond. They appear to not have much interest at all in the daily ones, which I think is an oversight that needs to be corrected. Meteorologists certainly do have an interest, and indeed it is meteorologists who have created the Weather Maps and other website tools I have been studying that are loaded with useful information. The work they are doing produces weather forecasts having astounding accuracy, their primary mission. That alone should be an incentive for ever-broadening their perspective into the fundamentals of daily anomalies and how they may shift over time. If the conditions producing daily anomalies can in fact all be identified, and if those conditions are subject to evolutionary changes, such information should also be of considerable interest to climate scientists who are likewise involved in making temperature forecasts, in their case extending over much longer time frames. Daily anomalies, when marked by evolving changes, can add up. Big daily anomalies can add up big. We are seeing it happen today, most emphatically in the Arctic.

A key piece of information about how daily anomalies are created, as derived from studying the Weather Maps and the 5-day animation of total precipitable water content in the atmosphere, clearly reveals a situation that is not well-recognized in the sciences. It highlights the dual nature of how the warming of surface temperatures over about two-thirds of the planet is affected by water vapor and its greenhouse energy effects.  One kind of vapor, derived from localized sources of evaporation everywhere, is effective close to the surface.  It will change a little from day to day but is otherwise quite stable.  The other kind is derived by evaporation from only a few selected sources located on the margins of the tropical belt that girdles the globe.  This vapor is formed into numerous concentrated streams that rise to a high altitude and then proceed to deploy at that altitude as bits and pieces that keep moving and diminishing as they proceed throughout the middle and higher latitudes of both hemispheres on journeys that end within five or six days.  Almost every surface location receives a “daily dose” of greenhouse energy from some portion of these bits and pieces as they pass overhead, doses that can differ by a large amount from one day to the next.  The physical power of any one dose on a given day can be relatively large. What I see leads me to believe it is often greater than the power of the surface vapor that it adds to, but that part will need a great deal of confirmation. I also believe this basic dualistic arrangement has most likely been in place for eons of time, with varying intensities.  

The total amount amount of vapor engaged in this unique activity from day to day must certainly be irregular, and the averages of daily totals should be capable of shifting over time as relevant sources of evaporation undergo changes. Moreover, the deployment of high-altitude water vapor is clearly subject to forces that influence its movement, including obstruction, thus affecting its ability to evenly distribute greenhouse energy. Observations make it clear that jetstream activity is prominent among these forces, and can undergo its own behavioral changes. These changes are largely governed by air pressure configuration unique to this altitude, which in turn is subject to alterations of its own from still more external forces. All of this activity, once recognized as a solid possibility, should provide academic climate scientists with ample reasons for expanding their studies. Anything that causes big changes in daily anomalies cannot avoid having an impact on longer-term anomalies. High-altitude water vapor meets that test better than anything else I can see, in a big way and by a wide margin.

Carl