Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/23/2009 8:43:01 PM PDT by cogitator
Scientists at Harvard University have found that tropical cyclones readily inject ice far into the stratosphere, possibly feeding global warming.
The finding, published in Geophysical Research Letters, provides more evidence of the intertwining of severe weather and global warming by demonstrating a mechanism by which storms could drive climate change. Many scientists now believe that global warming, in turn, is likely to increase the severity of tropical cyclones.
"Since water vapor is an important greenhouse gas, an increase of water vapor in the stratosphere would warm the Earth's surface," says David M. Romps, a research associate in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Science.
"Our finding that tropical cyclones are responsible for many of the clouds in the stratosphere opens up the possibility that these storms could affect global climate, in addition to the oft-mentioned possibility of climate change affecting the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones."
Romps and co-author Zhiming Kuang, assistant professor of climate science in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, were intrigued by earlier data suggesting that the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere has grown by roughly 50 percent over the past 50 years.
Scientists are currently unsure why this increase has occurred; the Harvard researchers sought to examine the possibility that tropical cyclones might have contributed by sending a large fraction of their clouds into the stratosphere.
Using infrared satellite data gathered from 1983 to 2006, Romps and Kuang analyzed towering cloud tops associated with thousands of tropical cyclones, many of them near the Philippines, Mexico, and Central America.
Their analysis demonstrated that in a cyclone, narrow plumes of miles-tall storm clouds can rise so explosively through the atmosphere that they often push into the stratosphere.
Romps and Kuang found that tropical cyclones are twice as likely as other storms to punch into the normally cloud-free stratosphere, and four times as likely to inject ice deep into the stratosphere.
"It is ... widely believed that global warming will lead to changes in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones," Romps and Kuang write in Geophysical Research Letters.
"Therefore, the results presented here establish the possibility for a feedback between tropical cyclones and global climate."
Typically, very little water is allowed passage through the stratosphere's lower boundary, known as the tropopause. Located some 6 to 11 miles above the Earth's surface, the tropopause is the coldest part of the Earth's atmosphere, making it a barrier to the lifting of water vapor into the stratosphere: As air passes slowly through the tropopause, it gets so cold that most of its water vapor freezes out and falls away.
But if very deep clouds, such as those in a tropical cyclone that can rise through the atmosphere at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, can punch through the tropopause too quickly for this to happen, they can deposit their ice in the warmer overlying stratosphere, where it then evaporates.
"This suggests that tropical cyclones could play an important role in setting the humidity of the stratosphere," Romps and Kuang write.
I hope it feels good to be proven right. Weather is definitely important to the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere.
So the problem is not here in the US. We need to ban the Philippines, Mexico, and Central America. That'll do it.
In time, you'll probably come to understand the adminstration's new strategy which brilliantly combines global security as well as global climate change concerns. We could, in fact, ban those countries, but not before we apologize to them. Especially the Phillipines. We sure did them drity getting those benevolent Japanese outta there in the 1940's. That was practically a genocide, one among many; yet another dark chapter in a sordid history we can be nothing but ashamed of until of course we're shown and change our ways to the Way of 0bama./s
This is a hidden secret of the entire principle of MMGW. Scientists understand that CO2 is a trace gas. And mankind’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 is a fraction of that. So how could it push around the forces within the immensity of the atmosphere?
The only way is if all CO2 is carefully balanced, and if a tiny amount is added or taken away, some natural system will come along and amplify the increase or decrease of CO2.
This is an admission that mankind is not powerful enough to change the climate in this manner—it has to be a natural system that does it.
But it also means a search for the now dozen or more possible natural systems that could multiply the effect. And so far, they have struck out. They keep trying to find a natural system that will either release vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, or strongly limit the re-uptake of CO2 into the sea and the land.
Mankind just can’t do it. We just aren’t that powerful.
Failing miserably to find such a system, the advocates of MMGW are in an ungainly situation: they refuse to admit *any* circumstance in which MMGW is NOT happening. That is, everything “proves” MMGW.
And as you might realize, that argument is nonsensical.
No, you missed the point. We need to ban hurricanes and typhoons.
Everything freezes in my microwave. What a bizarro world.
Well, at least until 0bama is out of office, if ever. Wouldn't want anyone blaming lack of preparedness on 0bama, would we?
This is good. We are learning to speak the language of the cult, like the Stalinists in Russia and the Maoists in China spoke of their heroes. We will need such skills in the brilliant future that Chairman 0bamao has planned for us!
(Although I will admit that we got one great thing out of the Phillipine insurrection. We got a great .45 cal pistol out of it!)
ban hurricanes and typhoons
no ban the Phillipines etc
no- ban o and be done with the whole phonen mess.
O being the great o however will go for the first..banning hurricanes and typhoons.
Well, of course I agree on the .45, but I believe the Maori’s were New Zealandish, more 1900 than 1945. A mere quibble, really.
Here are some tasty pictures of their many tattoos, and come to think of it, perhaps those too are harbingers of what we can expect in times to come. Except, I am thinking about more numerical themes, perhaps on our forearms, instead of the artistic motifs represented in the linked pix.
No great gun or history expert am I; Nevertheless, I applaud and admire your positive outlook. We’ll be needing it, I suspect.
“Therefore, the results presented here establish the possibility for a feedback between tropical cyclones and global climate.”
Ahh... more “maybe” data to add to their models. More GI for the GIGO models...
One day they will have to admit they don't really know what the climate is actually doing, and modeling it is too difficult...:^)
Well not exactly right yet. My theory is mainly that this deeper convection has the opposite effect, creating subsidence which, especially in the tropics, is cooling. The effect can be nicely on satellite images of most hurricanes, the storm is in the middle pumping water vapor into the stratosphere, but for thousands of miles around it is sinking air (what goes up must come down) causing a much larger dry area free of high clouds (high clouds are net warming in general). Basically a mature hurricane is a smallish but intense low pressure underneath a vast high pressure system.
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