Climate Letter #1972

What is meant by a “heat dome?”  We see this term being used more and more often when explanations are needed for extreme heating events, like the one that recently struck the Pacific Northwest.  There are some variations in the definition of a heat dome, but they all have one specific thing in common—a means of trapping hot air as it is being created somewhere, making it accumulate in higher reaches of the atmosphere rather than disperse in a normal way.  The trapping is said to occur as a result of unusual pressures being applied from outside the region of accumulation.  These pressures can then tend to hold the region of accumulation in one particular place for longer than normal period of time.  Once trapped there is a continuing transmission of energy back to the surface, by one means or another, with a marked absence of cloud formation commonly noted as an important factor favoring the highest possible heating.  A NOAA website just updated on June 30 gives us one basic version of how this sets up and proceeds:  https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/heat-dome.html

CarbonBrief posted a lengthy explainer on that same day, at https://www.carbonbrief.org/media-reaction-pacific-north-west-heat-dome-and-the-role-of-climate-change, covering many aspects of the heat wave including a section devoted to what numerous other atmospheric scientists have to say about the characteristics of a heat dome.  It includes direct quotes and also links to still more sources.  Stories posted at the Vox site https://www.vox.com/22538401/heat-wave-record-temperature-extreme-climate-change-drought and The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/portland-seattle-heatwave-warning/619313/ are perhaps the most interesting in an imaginative sense.

The heat dome ideas all represent attempts to explain extremely hot temperature anomalies without recognizing any need to call upon additional sources of greenhouse energy inputs in order to supply the required amount of heat. I believe there is a good reason for why this is so. Mainstream science simply does not have anything in its toolbox that would explain where this extra greenhouse energy would come from. Concentrations of CO2 and the other well-mixed gases all change at a pace that is much to slow in the short term. Water vapor is thought to be locked in to their heating effect as a non-variable linear feedback. Part 2 of Carl’s theory differs from this view. It offers an explanation for events like this (and many more) in the form of high concentrations of precipitable water (PW) molecules that are able to accumulate in certain upper parts of the atmosphere. Climate Letter #1966, published on June 25, the Friday just preceding the weekend when the latest heat wave intensified, includes written details and visual evidence of the process that was just then being set up for a climax. It’s still there in the archive, so you can go back and read it right now!

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The image that I find most memorable is the one of the jetstream wind curling around in the form of an inwardly bound spiral. This wind was still well-loaded with PW, the remnants of whatever did not rain out while the combination of wind and vapor streams were crossing the Pacific on the way to North America. The rain had stopped when the coastline was reached, and we know from later observations that clouds were quickly cleared away as well, leaving practically pure water vapor concentrations at that level as the primary source of greenhouse energy. This idea runs contrary to the prevailing dogmas of science, which are based on19th century concepts of condensation. The Clausius/Clapeyron equation may be fully understandable at the planetary surface, but does it really hold true in those parts of the upper-level atmosphere where a uniquely different system of pressure and temperature gradients and peculiar wind behavior has been activated? The good professors would have had scant knowledge of this regime and no way to perform tests. Now that we have the wonderfully informative Climate Maps available to compare and study perhaps it is time to consider possible limitations for the accepted rules of condensation and to review the potential implications for the known quantities of water vapor that are exposed to the extraordinary environment that exists high in the sky.

Carl

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