As climate
change warms sea surfaces, the heat available to power hurricanes has increased, raising the limit for potential hurricane wind speed and with that an exponential increase in potential wind damage.
Not exact matches
So while it may take decades for
warming at the
sea surface to
change deep -
sea temperatures, alterations in wind - driven events may have more immediate effects.
The unfavorable
changes in the plankton ecosystem parallel a
warming of the
sea surface, Beaugrand says.
Kevin Trenbeth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the study didn't account for
changes in
sea surface temperatures, which are the main drivers of
changes in the position of the rain belts (as is seen during an El Nino event, when Pacific
warming pushes the subtropical jet over the Western U.S. southward).
Thanks to natural
warming and cooling, oxygen concentrations at the
sea surface are constantly
changing — and those
changes can linger for years or even decades deeper in the ocean.
The study stops short of attributing California's latest drought to
changes in Arctic
sea ice, partly because there are other phenomena that play a role, like
warm sea surface temperatures and
changes to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, an atmospheric climate pattern that typically shifts every 20 to 30 years.
Consistent with observed
changes in
surface temperature, there has been an almost worldwide reduction in glacier and small ice cap (not including Antarctica and Greenland) mass and extent in the 20th century; snow cover has decreased in many regions of the Northern Hemisphere;
sea ice extents have decreased in the Arctic, particularly in spring and summer (Chapter 4); the oceans are
warming; and
sea level is rising (Chapter 5).
Long - term (decadal and multi-decadal) variation in total annual streamflow is largely influenced by quasi-cyclic
changes in
sea -
surface temperatures and resulting climate conditions; the influence of climate
warming on these patterns is uncertain.
A large ensemble of Earth system model simulations, constrained by geological and historical observations of past climate
change, demonstrates our self ‐ adjusting mitigation approach for a range of climate stabilization targets ranging from 1.5 to 4.5 °C, and generates AMP scenarios up to year 2300 for
surface warming, carbon emissions, atmospheric CO2, global mean
sea level, and
surface ocean acidification.
When this model is run with a standard, idealised global
warming scenario you get the following result for global
sea surface temperature
changes.
Moreover,
warmer sea surface temperatures may
change the frequency and intensity of those storms.
In contrast to historical droughts, future drying is not linked to any particular pattern of
change in
sea surface temperature but seems to be the result of an overall
surface warming driven by rising greenhouse gases.
The first is to emphasize your point that degassing of CO2 from the oceans is not simply a matter of
warmer water reducing CO2 solubility, and that important additional factors include
changes in wind patterns, reduction in
sea ice cover to reveal a larger
surface for gas escape, and upwelling of CO2 from depths consequent to the
changing climate patterns.
Other factors would include: — albedo shifts (both from ice > water, and from increased biological activity, and from edge melt revealing more land, and from more old dust coming to the
surface...); — direct effect of CO2 on ice (the former weakens the latter); — increasing, and increasingly
warm, rain fall on ice; — «stuck» weather systems bringing more and more
warm tropical air ever further toward the poles; — melting of
sea ice shelf increasing mobility of glaciers; —
sea water getting under parts of the ice sheets where the base is below
sea level; — melt water lubricating the ice sheet base; —
changes in ocean currents -LRB-?)
Even in the absence of huge amounts of carbon dioxide as a forcing mechanism, he said, there still appear to be trigger points that, once passed, can produce rapid
warming through feedbacks such as
changes in
sea ice and the reflectivity of the Earth's
surface.
As the authors point out, even if the whole story comes down to precipitation
changes which favor ablation, the persistence of these conditions throughout the 20th century still might be an indirect effect of global
warming, via the remote effect of
sea surface temperature on atmospheric circulation.
«Somewhat counter-intuitively, a land —
sea surface warming ratio greater than unity during transient climate
change is actually not mainly a result of the differing thermal inertias of land and ocean, but primarily originates in the differing properties of the
surface and boundary layer (henceforth BL) over land and ocean (Manabe et al. 1991; Sutton et al. 2007; Joshi et al. 2008 (henceforth JGW08), Dong et al. 2009) as well as differing cloud feedbacks (Fasullo 2010; Andrews et al. 2010).»
Numerous denier arguments involving slight fluctuations in the global distribution of
warmer vs cooler
sea surface areas as supposed explanations of climate
change neglect all the energy that goes into ocean heat content, melting large ice deposits and so forth.
The problem here is that estimates of
changes in
sea surface temperature and the depth of the
warm mixed layer might be very unreliable, since the general behavior of the Atlantic circulation is only now being directly observed — and the most recent findings are that flow rates vary over a whole order of magnitude:
Changes here have a long term effect, affecting the strength of the north - ward horizontal flow of the Atlantic's upper
warm layer, thereby altering the oceanic poleward heat transport and the distribution of
sea surface temperature (SST — AMO), the presumed source of the (climate) natural variability.
In terms of power integrated over area, only northern Eurasia has a higher regional
warming in absolute terms — which suggests to me that
sea surface warming in the Arctic west of the Canadian archipelago might
change the total
sea energy balance by quite a bit.
Given all the independent lines of evidence pointing to average
surface warming over the last few decades (satellite measurements, ocean temperatures,
sea - level rise, retreating glaciers, phenological
changes, shifts in the ranges of temperature - sensitive species), it is highly implausible that it would lead to more than very minor refinements to the current overall picture.
Long term
changes in the way
sea surface temperatures are measured also tend to introduce
warming.
It simply argues that impacts of
changes in wind shear could at least partially offset increases due to
warming sea surface temperatures.
Re 9 wili — I know of a paper suggesting, as I recall, that enhanced «backradiation» (downward radiation reaching the
surface emitted by the air / clouds) contributed more to Arctic amplification specifically in the cold part of the year (just to be clear, backradiation should generally increase with any
warming (aside from greenhouse feedbacks) and more so with a
warming due to an increase in the greenhouse effect (including feedbacks like water vapor and, if positive, clouds, though regional
changes in water vapor and clouds can go against the global trend); otherwise it was always my understanding that the albedo feedback was key (while
sea ice decreases so far have been more a summer phenomenon (when it would be
warmer to begin with), the heat capacity of the
sea prevents much temperature response, but there is a greater build up of heat from the albedo feedback, and this is released in the cold part of the year when ice forms later or would have formed or would have been thicker; the seasonal effect of reduced winter snow cover decreasing at those latitudes which still recieve sunlight in the winter would not be so delayed).
The second aspect of climate
change that is likely affecting Alaska more and more is the apparent tendency of
warming in the Arctic and
warmer sea surface temperatures in the Pacific to contribute to larger waves in the jet stream.
But it does say; «Natural climate variations, which tend to involve localized
changes in
sea surface temperature, may have a larger effect on hurricane activity than the more uniform patterns of global
warming...»
They then looked at the challenges that
warmer oceans delivered for crustaceans, molluscs, sponges, deep
sea invertebrates, the
warm and cold water corals that provide habitat for one - fourth of the ocean's variety, the pelagic or
surface - swimming fish, and the demersal or deep -
sea denizens that live longer, reproduce more slowly and are thus less likely to evolve and adapt to
changing conditions.
The results suggest that
warm Atlantic water never ceased to flow into the Nordic
seas during the glacial period; inflow at the
surface during the Holocene and
warm interstadials
changed to subsurface and intermediate inflow during cold stadials.
They describe abnormally
warm or cool
sea surface temperatures in the South Pacific that are caused by
changing ocean currents.
However, detection of a
change in air —
sea fluxes responsible for the long - term ocean
warming remains beyond the ability of currently available
surface flux data sets.»
Surface warming / ocean warming: «A reassessment of temperature variations and trends from global reanalyses and monthly surface climatological datasets» «Estimating changes in global temperature since the pre-industrial period» «Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus» «Assessing the impact of satellite - based observations in sea surface temperature trends
Surface warming / ocean
warming: «A reassessment of temperature variations and trends from global reanalyses and monthly
surface climatological datasets» «Estimating changes in global temperature since the pre-industrial period» «Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus» «Assessing the impact of satellite - based observations in sea surface temperature trends
surface climatological datasets» «Estimating
changes in global temperature since the pre-industrial period» «Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global
surface warming hiatus» «Assessing the impact of satellite - based observations in sea surface temperature trends
surface warming hiatus» «Assessing the impact of satellite - based observations in
sea surface temperature trends
surface temperature trends»
Moreover,
warmer sea surface temperatures may
change the frequency and intensity of those storms.
Ocean
warming: «Assessing recent
warming using instrumentally homogeneous
sea surface temperature records» «Tracking ocean heat uptake during the
surface warming hiatus» «A review of global ocean temperature observations: Implications for ocean heat content estimates and climate
change» «Unabated planetary
warming and its ocean structure since 2006»
A new methodology (combined Pacific variability mode) is developed to objectively analyze how climate
change may be synergistically interacting with Pacific
sea surface temperature associated
warm season teleconnections in North America.
Combine the satellite trend with the
surface observations and the umpteen non-temperature based records that reflect temperature
change (from glaciers to phenology to lake freeze dates to snow - cover extent in spring & fall to
sea level rise to stratospheric temps) and the evidence for recent gradual
warming is, well, unequivocal.
And that event of climate
change led to ocean
surface warming,
sea level rise, and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations as
changing ocean circulation delivered gases to the atmosphere.
They explain how, overall, Antarctic
sea ice cover (frozen
sea surface), for separate reasons involving wind
changing in relation to the location of certain
warming sea water currents, shows a slight upward trend, though it also shows significant melting in some areas.
How hurricanes develop also depends on how the local atmosphere responds to
changes in local
sea surface temperatures, and this atmospheric response depends critically on the cause of the
change.23, 24 For example, the atmosphere responds differently when local
sea surface temperatures increase due to a local decrease of particulate pollution that allows more sunlight through to
warm the ocean, versus when
sea surface temperatures increase more uniformly around the world due to increased amounts of human - caused heat - trapping gases.25, 26,27,28
There has been an overall
warming of
surface waters (in the Bellingshausen and Scotia
seas) by ∼ 1 °C in the last 50 years, but so far there is no evidence of any biologically meaningful temperature
change in waters below about 100 m deep.
This
change in
sea level occurred in the context of different orbital forcing and with high latitude
surface temperature, averaged over several thousand years, at least 2 °C
warmer than present.
2.10 All model simulations, whether they were forced with increased concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols or with increased concentrations of greenhouse gases alone, show the follow - ing features: greater
surface warming of the land than of the
sea in winter; a maximum
surface warming in high northern latitudes in winter... All these
changes are associated with identifiable physical mechanisms.
There is growing evidence that
warmer sea surface temperatures, associated with climate
change, will produce stronger tropical cyclones.
THERE HAS BEEN A
WARMING TREND FROM THE 70s THRU THE LATE 90s,... accompanied by other changes tied to a warming trend (record low arctic sea ice extent & thickness, retreating glaciers, retreating snow lines, warming ocean surface temps, increases in sea height, de-alkalinizing o
WARMING TREND FROM THE 70s THRU THE LATE 90s,... accompanied by other
changes tied to a
warming trend (record low arctic sea ice extent & thickness, retreating glaciers, retreating snow lines, warming ocean surface temps, increases in sea height, de-alkalinizing o
warming trend (record low arctic
sea ice extent & thickness, retreating glaciers, retreating snow lines,
warming ocean surface temps, increases in sea height, de-alkalinizing o
warming ocean
surface temps, increases in
sea height, de-alkalinizing oceans).
Sea surface temperature anomalies that persist over many years can be signals of regional or global climate
change, such as global
warming.
That suggests that the 1940s tropical
warming could have started the
changes in the Amundsen
Sea ice shelves that are being observed now... He emphasized that natural variations in tropical sea - surface temperatures associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation play a significant role.&raq
Sea ice shelves that are being observed now... He emphasized that natural variations in tropical
sea - surface temperatures associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation play a significant role.&raq
sea -
surface temperatures associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation play a significant role.»
«Assessing recent
warming using instrumentally homogeneous
sea surface temperature records» «Tracking ocean heat uptake during the
surface warming hiatus» «A review of global ocean temperature observations: Implications for ocean heat content estimates and climate
change» «Unabated planetary
warming and its ocean structure since 2006»
This basin - wide
change in the Atlantic climate (both
warming and cooling) induces a basin - scale
sea surface temperature seesaw with the Pacific Ocean, which in turn modifies the position of the Walker circulation (the language by which the tropical basins communicate) and the strength of the Pacific trade winds.
280 Though I can not find any literature on equatorial
warming triggering reorganization for the D - O events, there are reports, for the glacial - interglacial transition, that Pacific
sea surface temperatures
warmed 3,000 years before
changes in ice volumes.
Global
warming also causes
sea surface temperatures to rise, precipitation patterns to
change, etc..