Meteorologist Chuck Wiese just took the alarmists to task and exposed their Al Gore-like deceitfulness.
Will any of them provide counter-arguments on a par with Wiese’s scientific explanation for the heat wave?
Will they deign to answer his six questions with scientific proof?
One thing for sure:
their usual alarmist hysterics, emotions, and hyperbole won’t help their case with thinking Americans.
DETAILS:
... "The alarmists’ latest claim is that “climate change” is what underlies the heat wave from which the Pacific Northwest has been suffering for the past several weeks.
The usual alarmist cheerleaders in the legacy media have weighed in on the subject with boring predictability (and blarney): The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, etc. A taste from The Guardian:
The days-long heatwave was a taste of the future as climate change reshapes global weather patterns, said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington who studies global warming and its effects on public health.
And the Democrats are already exploiting the heat wave to pass Green New Deal-related legislation in Oregon and other states.
As previously discussed here, Oregon wants to convert the electric grid completely to green energy and hydroelectric sources by 2040.
Sane Oregonians are shaking their heads at the non-science that drives Oregon Democrats and other GND advocates in their infrastructure planning dreams.
And make no mistake, The Hologram’s $6 trillion infrastructure agenda contains a heavy dose of GND boondoggles.
If that legislation is thwarted, The Hologram is prepared to back-door GND items via executive order ...
One of those Oregonians who is publicly questioning the green machinations of Oregon Democrats is the inimitable meteorologist, Chuck Wiese.
He exposes their chicanery in the below email explaining the heat wave and heat domes in scientific terms, and then challenges their legislative prescriptions with a series of insightful questions.
He has consented to passing it to a wider audience in order to help cut through the fog being manufactured constantly by the climate alarmists.
Here is what he said:
With the continued and terrible politicization of atmospheric science and climate, I thought I would take a look at the true cause of this historic Pacific Northwest heat wave we just experienced that is now being terminated west of the cascades by a strong push of marine air from off the ocean.
For starters, the synoptic weather pattern that set itself up over our region was handled quite well by the short-term numerical weather forecast models.
Before the onset, we saw nearly identical pressure patterns forecast to generate as we typically see with our severest high temperatures.
In the climate records, those for Portland were found to occur on July 30, 1965, and both August 8th and August 10th of 1981 at 107 degrees Fahrenheit (degF).
These records occurred at the Portland National Weather Service Office located then at the Marine Drive location at the Portland International Airport.
The complete records in Portland go back to 1940 for the airport location and downtown Portland back to 1890, but these records at the airport exceeded or equaled any of the records in the downtown location.
So they were considered all-time records back to 1890.
At the peak of this heat wave in Portland which was on June 28, the maximum temperature reached 116 degF, a new all-time high temperature record going back to 1890.
Several other all-time records were established as well in Oregon and Washington.
This is astonishing if you are caught off guard into believing the old records could not be broken by an obscure factor most meteorologists don’t think about on a day-to-day basis.
It’s summer, and so pressure patterns that generate the heat were thought of as a comparative to old records with identical synoptic set-ups.
This is at least how I looked at things initially along with others who saw the “suspiciously high temperature forecasts” given by the numerical model prediction output that actually forecasted the extreme temperatures accurately.
These only became believable as the model output became repetitious in several runs as we got within 2 days of the expected extreme temperatures.
This is common practice in operational meteorology to become suspicious of model output extremes especially since we have seen many occasions where extremes in temperature or precipitation given by models back off from those predictions and self-correct within a couple of days of an extreme event.
But it turns out the numerical model output in this situation was correct several days in advance.
... What caused the extremes?
Was it really “climate change” related to atmospheric CO2 as some are claiming, or was it something else?
When I looked into the specifics, it turns out that “climate change” or atmospheric CO2 had nothing to do with this heat wave.
First off, I looked at the “greenhouse gases”.
The water vapor optical depths of the 1981 heat wave and today’s extremes were nearly identical as taken off the atmospheric soundings from Salem, OR.
Therefore, that wasn’t the reason.
What about atmospheric CO2?
In 1981, the Mauna Loa CO2 level was given as 341 ppmv (parts per million volume) whereas today it is 416 ppmv.
In calculating the change in radiative forcing from CO2 as a stand-alone constituent, the difference from 1981 to now is only 1.07 Wm-2. (Watts per square meter).
Next, I took the mean temperature of the daily temperature delta or deviation, which was about 90 degF, and plugged that into the derivative of the Stefan Boltzmann equation, dF/dT which gives 6.45 Wm-2K-1 or 6.45 Watts per square meter per degree Kelvin.
Using this relationship, if CO2 acts alone as permitted in this special case, we get .963 Wm-2 with a ground emissivity of .9 divided by the rate of change of flux with respect to temperature or the 6.45 Wm-2K-1 number which gives .15 degrees Centigrade (degC) or a possible contribution of +.27 degF to the heating total.
Therefore, CO2’s contribution to this heat wave is far too small to even move the thermometer upwards from the 107 degF old records to a measurable whole degree F.
And this is not even measurable with many of the degree of accuracy specifications on many thermometers.
But if you examine the solar radiation dynamics, you get an entirely different picture that explains how we achieved the new records, and these numbers were obviously incorporated into the numerical weather model outputs several days in advance.
It is important to recognize that when we compare the old records to the new, the atmospheric dynamics in 1965, 1981 and today were nearly identical, meaning the subsiding air that sets the convective temperature cap or potential temperature of the surface started the same.
This dynamic is what the TV guys were calling the “upper air heat dome” to simplify the concept to the lay person.
But the timing of these heat waves was different.
In 1981, they occurred in the first week of August and at the end of July in 1965.
Today, we are at the end of June or just past the summer solstice or highest sun angle of the year.
It turns out this difference of dates is a big deal and actually explains the severity of this heat wave and new maximum temperature all-time records when combined with the upper air dynamics.
The solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface can be calculated anywhere from the relation: sin(beta) = cos(L) cos(delta) cos (H) + sin(L) sin (delta),
where beta is the solar angle above azimuth or the horizon being solved for,
L is earth latitude, delta is the declination angle of the earth to the solar ecliptic plane, and
H is the hour angle, taken as 15 degrees per hour from solar noon.
... Solar radiation was the clear driver in causing these new all-time temperature records and little else.
Now a word about “heat domes”.
We must remember these systems are NOT created by greenhouse gases!
They are connected by the dynamic westerly wind belt surrounding the earth that has the jet stream winds contained within it.
This means the creation of a “heat dome” is directly proportional to the strength of the low-pressure systems upstream or downstream or both and those are also referenced as the “cold” areas of low pressure aloft.
Further, it is the low-pressure system generation that causes the strength of the high-pressure system, and its residing subsidence that creates the “heat dome” within the high pressure.
Therefore, a stronger heat dome means a stronger low pressure and a stronger low-pressure system is fed by COLD air from high latitudes being accelerated southward by the decreasing Coriolis force associated with northerly winds.
... if atmospheric CO2 was truly causing the climate to change, then the temperature extremes just experienced would not be possible because the gradient of temperature across the latitude lines would lessen, thus reducing the potential energy otherwise available to generate low- and high-pressure systems.
The physics of this demands that the storms and high-pressure systems weaken, thus reducing the subsidence or strength of the “heat dome,” thus setting the potential temperature of the surface LOWER, not higher.
The incorrect climate propaganda tries to assert the latter, and further, the mean position of the jet stream MUST migrate to higher latitudes causing the distribution of atmospheric mass and pressure to become more uniform across the earth decreasing wind speed on average world-wide.
This means extreme weather of every kind inclusive of temperatures would be lessened, but the mean earth temperature would be increased.
World-wide drought would also become a symptom of this, not regional drought that we now experience and that is part of ocean cycles that drive the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO.)
This does not fit anything we are seeing happening today.
These strong high-pressure systems are an indication of a robust supply of cold air at higher latitude given the season which we see on the daily weather maps, and it is noteworthy again that global air temperatures are at only +.08 degC over the 30-year mean.
The global air temperatures have cooled sharply since the beginning of this year due to the La Niña conditions of the tropical Pacific.
It is also worth noting that these pressure patterns are created through chaotic and random variation within the atmospheric system and are not predictable in general terms more than about a week ahead of time with any reliability.
It is unlikely we will see any repeat pattern of this within the next week to 10 days and no assurance that this warm and hot weather pattern will even persist for the latter part of the summer.
Sometimes the summers can end cooler and wetter and other times hot and dry like now.
There is simply no predictability to this except in very general terms as related to the ocean cycles, and they are not even correct at all times.
But from this data, a later summer heat wave will never reach the records we just set.
... I have several questions for those like ringleader Democrat Senator Michael Dembrow who are promoting this climate hysteria in light of the fact that serious actions are being undertaken by the radical Oregon legislature to ruin Oregon’s electric grid by replacing coal and natural gas sources with hydro and renewable energy.
If Oregon’s energy grid is converted to just renewables of solar and wind plus hydro, the load on the electric grid will not meet demand from the increasing number of charging electric vehicles and growing population, particularly from peak load spikes that occur during hot and cold weather.
... Oregon will be facing energy rationing, rolling blackouts and automobile driving rationing, similar but worse than what we are now seeing in California.
Here are my questions:
What is the payback to every Oregon and Northwest citizen for sacrificing this standard of living we now enjoy for this horrible mess being created?
This means what will any of this accomplish with respect to our climate?
... What about extreme temperatures we just experienced?
How many declining days of 90-degree or higher temperatures can we expect for this sacrifice?
What about precipitation?
How much will any droughts decrease and what will the yearly precipitation levels increase to?
What about flooding?
How much will this be reduced in future events and what could we expect the cresting levels to decline to?
What about severe windstorms?
Can you assure us that future storms like Columbus Day will be stopped?
Be specific and show your work to “prove” your arguments.
Chuck Wiese, Meteorologist'
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Thursday, July 8, 2021
"Is Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Really the Cause of the Great Pacific Northwest Heat Wave?"
Source:
"CONCLUSION:
Yes, there is real science behind the Pacific Northwest heatwave, but not that put forth by the climate alarmists who are hell-bent on pulling the wool over Americans’ eyes and rushing to wreak the economic havoc associated with their Green New Deal.