[CTRL] chemtrail or contrail (?)...or atmospheric research?

ulrich stuart Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:21:09 -0700

-Caveat Lector-

as you read this below, a short time after i wrote it, coming in from under chontrails galore...i have never seen as much of this experimentation as i do when in boulder, home to the national center for atmospheric research...many disaster relief agencies, conveniently, situate in boulder - i once saw photos someone had taken of the skies over the University of Colorado..they showed, apparently recordable by film but relatively invisible to naked eye, lasers - bright red beams across the sky...this person took his own pictures and, imo, had not the technical capabilities to fake them..he often spoke of his readings that he managed, in trying to decipher his results and he often spoke of mirrors - satellite-bound ones...as i think of that and look at the sky, it sure seems that when these contrails (highly compressed steam?) hit the area of the sky OVER the Univ. of Colorado they take on a wave effect...visibly...like something invisible is hitting it and making them ripple...some portions even seem to be steaming UPWARD...

shh...this MIGHT be classified }:-)~

~snip~

As a consortium of universities dedicated to education and research to
enrich our understanding of the earth system, UCAR manages the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the UCAR Office of Programs
(UOP).

Under the primary sponsorship from the National Science Foundation,
NCAR and UOP complement and extend the universities' capabilities with
collaborative research and community services and tools.

from http://www.ucar.edu/ucar/

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the following is copied from http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/ncar/factsheet.htm

Recent Progress in Climate-Related Research at NCAR

At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, dozens of scientists are investigating and integrating many facets of climate: its evolution, its relation to other parts of the Earth system, its impact on humanity. Below are some highlights from NCAR's recent climate research. More details on each topic can be found at the indicated Web sites. Much of this work is carried out through the comprehensive NCAR Climate System Model (CSM). It will be succeeded in the winter of 2001-02 by the Community Climate System Model (CCSM). This expansion of the original NSF-funded CSM will enhance the participation of the university community and the U.S. Department of Energy.

New simulations of 20th century climate

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> This simulation of 20th century climate incorporates variability from solar output, volcanoes, sulfates, and greenhouse gases. The modeled global average in surface temperature (red) captures most of the major rises and falls in the observed temperature (blue).

Earth's surface warmed more than 0.6°C (1.0°F) in the 20th century. Much of the warming occurred from 1910 to 1940 and after 1970. Other periods showed little or no temperature increase. In an effort to explain this uneven warming sequence, Caspar Ammann (NCAR/University of Massachusetts) and Jeffrey Kiehl and Bette Otto-Bliesner (NCAR), together with Charles Zender (University of California, Irvine), have examined the last century's climate using the CSM. These are among the first global simulations to include each of four major elements: long-term solar changes, volcanic eruptions, anthropogenic sulfate aerosol, and observed greenhouse-gas concentrations. With these factors in play, the model successfully reproduces most of the peaks and valleys in the last century's global temperature record. According to the model, a rise in incoming solar energy since 1970 was offset by the effects of several large volcanic eruptions. This leaves human-produced greenhouse gases as the most likely cause of warming over the past 30 years.

Moving heat to the poles: a fresh look at the atmosphere's role

The latitudinal imbalance in the net radiation reaching Earth (graphic at left) is alleviated more by the atmosphere than by the ocean, according to a new study.

The atmosphere and oceans help to even out the planet's temperatures by carrying vast amounts of solar heat from the equator toward both poles, primarily during winter in each hemisphere. In the late 1970s it was believed the ocean and atmosphere conveyed about the same amounts of heat poleward on a global scale. Through a reanalysis of data gathered in 1985-89, Kevin Trenberth and Julie Caron have now shown that the atmosphere appears to carry a higher proportion of the load than previously thought. Across 35°N and S, the latitudes of peak poleward heat transport, the atmosphere carried 78 percent of the total heat in the Northern Hemisphere (mostly through warm southerly winds and cold northerlies) and 92 percent in the Southern Hemisphere (warm northerlies and cold southerlies). Only between 0 and 17°N did the ocean carry more heat than the atmosphere, according to the study. The atmosphere's role may have been slighted in the past because of a lack of data in the atmosphere above the oceans; satellites have helped to fill that gap.

Politics, flood damage, and climate

Flooding is the world's deadliest weather hazard after heat and cold. It kills about 100 Americans each year-more than tornadoes, lightning, or hurricane winds. Adjusted for inflation, flood costs have increased fivefold across the United States since the 1940s. Roger Pielke, Jr. (University of Colorado at Boulder) and Mary Downton (NCAR) have analyzed changes in U.S. population, wealth, and rainfall patterns from 1932 to 1997. They found that the rise in U.S. flood costs is related to both climatic and socioeconomic factors. U.S. flood damage has not risen when measured as a percentage of the nation's overall wealth, even though heavy rain events have become more common. The use of absolute thresholds (such as 2 inches in 24 hours) to define "heavy rainfall" is brought into question by the finding that flood damage is more closely related to how far a given area's rainfall departs from average. The authors also found that societal interpretations of flooding and flood damage are highly subject to politics. For instance, after adjusting for the year-by-year severity of precipitation and flood damage, the study showed that U.S. presidents are 50 percent more likely to issue flood disaster declarations in years when they are running for reelection.

El Niño through the ages

The cycles of El Nino and La Nina, indicated here by sea-surface temperatures from the Niño3 region (in degrees C), were substantially stronger during the last ice age (top) than during the post-glacial era about 9,000 BCE (bottom).

How did El Nino and its counterpart, La Nina, behave in past millennia? NCAR modelers, led by Bette Otto-Bliesner, are addressing this question through a special version of the CSM tailored to simulate prehistoric conditions. One recent set of simulations looked at seven climatic intervals over the last 21,000 years. At each interval, the model follows a century's worth of climate while also tracking sea-surface temperatures across a stretch of the tropical Pacific where El Niño warming and La Niña cooling is most evident. The model depicts at least three distinct modes of behavior. At 19,000 BCE, toward the end of the last ice age, many more strong El Niño and La Niña events appear than are seen today. After the ice has retreated (9,000 BCE), the opposite is true-the modeled El Niños and La Niñas are weaker than the modern-day average. These trends appear to be related to changes in the Asian monsoon. A strong monsoon intensifies the easterly trade winds across the tropical Pacific, which in turn helps limit the intensity of El Niño and La Niña events. Ice-age glaciers may have helped diminish the monsoon's typical strength, thus allowing for stronger El Niños and La Niñas. Another factor came into play immediately after the ice age: Earth's orbit was passing closest to the Sun during the Northern Hemisphere summer (rather than during January, as is now the case). This could have accentuated the monsoon and tempered the El Niño cycle during that era.

Behind the rise in IPCC projections

Scientists Tom Wigley and Sarah Raper used several mathematical procedures to arrive at the probability density curves shown above for Earth's surface temperature during the periods 1990-2100 (green curve) and 1990-2030 (blue curve).

NCAR scientists are active in the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). In the IPCC's Third Assessment Report, issued in 2001, the range of projected increase in global average temperature was substantially greater than in the Second Assessment Report (1996). That report had projected an increase between 0.9 and 3.5°C over the next century, assuming no global plan for emissions reduction, while the 2001 report anticipates a rise of between 1.4 and 5.8°C. The same computer model was used to generate both sets of numbers. Tom Wigley (NCAR) and Sarah Raper (University of East Anglia), who were primarily responsible for producing both the 1996 and 2001 results, have carefully analyzed the methods and data used for both reports to give a breakdown of the reasons the numbers went up. More realistic treatment of interactive processes within the model increased the warming power of greenhouse gases overall. Also, the IPCC now anticipates an even greater climb in greenhouse-gas concentrations than previously expected. At the same time, sulfur dioxide emissions used in the model generally decrease over the 21st century in the more recent analysis, compared with an increase in the previous one. Because sulfates act to cool the climate, the effect was to raise the projected temperature range, especially at the high end. In a separate study, the researchers assigned probabilities to the 2001 IPCC projections. According to their work, the odds are 90 percent that the rise in the global average by 2100 will fall between 1.7° and 4.9°C, with even odds that warming will lie in the range of 2.4-3.8°C.

A flying leap through the carbon budget

As part of its biogeosciences initiative, NCAR is collaborating on a study-dubbed the Flying Leap for its bold strategy-to model the global interactions of the carbon cycle and climate. Previous CSM work has simulated 20th-century climate using specified levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) as observed in the atmosphere. In the Flying Leap, the model will vary CO2 concentrations based on fossil-fuel emissions and on model depictions of CO2 exchange with the land and oceans, including thermal, dynamical, and biological mechanisms. The goal is to see how accurately the model simulates actual changes in CO2 and climate over the 20th century, and what it projects for the 21st. Further studies (some at regional scales) will follow the effects of terrestrial dust on climate and the oceans. Led by Inez Fung (University of California, Berkeley), the Flying Leap also involves Scott Doney, David Schimel, and Gordon Bonan (NCAR) and Robert Dickinson (Georgia Institute of Technology).

More power for climate modeling

The first installment of a new Advanced Research Computing System arrived at NCAR in October. To be implemented in several stages over the next three to five years, ARCS will provide a significant boost in the ability of NCAR's university community and science divisions to simulate global climate. The initial equipment from IBM is more than doubling the computational capacity of NCAR's blackforest system, from 0.9 to 2.0 peak teraflops, as well as bringing disk storage capacity up to 10.1 terabytes, a fivefold increase. A second delivery in September 2002 will provide next-generation processor, node, and switch technologies from IBM, along with a tripling of computational speed and disk storage. Through a corollary agreement, NCAR will be participating in IBM's Blue Light project, exploring the potential of supercomputing to provide petaflop speeds.

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[CTRL] chemtrail or contrail (?)...or atmospheric research?

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