Pretty easy really. If you are reducing gasses, both warming greenhouse and cooling sullfates, you, we are creating an imbalance because the gg’s are harder to get rid of and stay up in the atmosphere a lot lot longer, perhaps hundreds of years compared to just a few weeks from sulfates.

While we reduce gasses, the differential grows, the cooling gasses are less, the heat increases. What else explains the warming charts over the last two decades. They don’t lie.

As we clean the air, we are in fact making the earth warmer. I am not sure what the answer is, but where does this end? When the UK reaches 45c, maybe more, we don’t know.

Ah, OK. You don’t understand the subject.  

I’m sorry but you have completely misunderstood the processes and the issues.  Where did you get these ideas?

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Ah, OK. You don’t understand the subject.  

I’m sorry but you have completely misunderstood the processes and the issues.  Where did you get these ideas?

No come on. I provided an answer so rather than you ask another question, if you could provide your take on things and we’ll see how this stacks up.

You scrutinised me, let’s scrutinise you for a change.

 

No come on. I provided an answer so rather than you ask another question, if you could provide your take on things and we’ll see how this stacks up.

You scrutinised me, let’s scrutinise you for a change.

I think it’s a fair concern to worry about an increase in heating once sulphate and pollution levels drop, but the cold spots such as they are now are over East and South Asia, and most of the brightening has already happened here and in North America.

The wider point is that aerosol cooling is only ever a fraction of greenhouse warming, that the amount we can reduce warming from cutting emissions is way greater than the amount of compensating warming from cutting aerosols, and finally the human impacts of air pollution in the industrialised and developing worlds - on the lungs and brains of children, on rares of cancer and heart disease, are hideous and need addressing anyway. 

But this thread was intended to be about what’s actually happened to regional climate in the UK, not future policy. This week looks increasingly likely to be another case in point (with apologies to our North and Scotland members).

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I think it’s a fair concern to worry about an increase in heating once sulphate and pollution levels drop, but the cold spots such as they are now are over East and South Asia, and most of the brightening has already happened here and in North America.

The wider point is that aerosol cooling is only ever a fraction of greenhouse warming, that the amount we can reduce warming from cutting emissions is way greater than the amount of compensating warming from cutting aerosols, and finally the human impacts of air pollution in the industrialised and developing worlds - on the lungs and brains of children, on rares of cancer and heart disease, are hideous and need addressing anyway. 

But this thread was intended to be about what’s actually happened to regional climate in the UK, not future policy. This week looks increasingly likely to be another case in point (with apologies to our North and Scotland members).

Thanks very much Tim. Totally agree with the impact on health that needs to be addressed, but I just wonder however how long the warming trend will go on though. It appears more methane is being released from the ground from melting permafrosts. Did we unwittingly cause that by cleaning the air, warming the temps.

Back on topic, in recent years I am sure many members living towards the SE have welcomed ‘useable’ summers and weather. Not been good if you like snow though!

 

Ah, OK. You don’t understand the subject.  

I’m sorry but you have completely misunderstood the processes and the issues.  Where did you get these ideas?

That seems rather unfair. It is pretty well established that the "global dimming" that was seen last century due to sulfate emissions etc has gone into decline. That global dimming did indeed mask some of the background warming, so it is quite right that as sulfate levels drop, some of the "hidden" warming will become evident, thus increasing the rate of warming.

 

eg see this BBC report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml

"We thought we live in a global warming world, but this is actually not right. We lived in a global warming plus a Global Dimming world, and now we are taking out Global Dimming. So we end up with the global warming world, which will be much worse than we thought it will be, much hotter." - that quote is from Dr Beate Liepert, who is not some crank or AGW denier, she is an IPCC contributor.

Sulfate is important, that is the rationale behind the idea of geoengineering: deliberately spraying sulfate into the troposphere to reflect back some sunlight.

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In marginally on-topic news, my purchase of land for a vineyard in Kent fell through this morning, right on the point of exchanging. Very annoying.

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That seems rather unfair. It is pretty well established that the "global dimming" that was seen last century due to sulfate emissions etc has gone into decline. That global dimming did indeed mask some of the background warming, so it is quite right that as sulfate levels drop, some of the "hidden" warming will become evident, thus increasing the rate of warming.

 

eg see this BBC report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml

"We thought we live in a global warming world, but this is actually not right. We lived in a global warming plus a Global Dimming world, and now we are taking out Global Dimming. So we end up with the global warming world, which will be much worse than we thought it will be, much hotter." - that quote is from Dr Beate Liepert, who is not some crank or AGW denier, she is an IPCC contributor.

Sulfate is important, that is the rationale behind the idea of geoengineering: deliberately spraying sulfate into the troposphere to reflect back some sunlight.

Thanks Rob.

And just will we see the end of this warming due to our ‘cleaning’? Will we burn?
I’m all for clean air but the innocent intentions and consequences of achieving that may be more catastrophic for the planet than planned. With higher heat, this will also have an impact on health, sea level rises, worse storms etc.

Could it be that Greta & co are changing the planet and actually taking us towards the precipice at full speed ahead. Have they thought about the flipside of the impact of their actions also?

In marginally on-topic news, my purchase of land for a vineyard in Kent fell through this morning, right on the point of exchanging. Very annoying.

Sorry to hear that Tim. Stop whining 

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In marginally on-topic news, my purchase of land for a vineyard in Kent fell through this morning, right on the point of exchanging. Very annoying.

Sorry to hear that. Where was the land?

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In marginally on-topic news, my purchase of land for a vineyard in Kent fell through this morning, right on the point of exchanging. Very annoying.

That's a shame. Of course you realise that if you had bought it, there would be a sudden climate flip and Kent would see a run of washout summers and damaging bitter frosts in winter, so lucky escape really 

 

I wrote an article a few years ago on vineyard owners in England for the ST property section.

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In marginally on-topic news, my purchase of land for a vineyard in Kent fell through this morning, right on the point of exchanging. Very annoying.

That word fate can sometimes play a hand Tim. For whatever reason it was never meant to be, but something better may turn up in the short term.

 

Thanks Rob.

And just will we see the end of this warming due to our ‘cleaning’? Will we burn?
I’m all for clean air but the innocent intentions and consequences of achieving that may be more catastrophic for the planet than planned. With higher heat, this will also have an impact on health, sea level rises, worse storms etc.

Could it be that Greta & co are changing the planet and actually taking us towards the precipice at full speed ahead. Have they thought about the flipside of the impact of their actions also?

I'm sorry but not only is this off topic - which is supposed to be about regional climate trends here, but the irony of the argument is breathtaking: essentially like the drug dealer warning of the health effects of quitting, or an anti-vaxxer getting excited because a Covid vaccine might cause headaches.

BAU emissions would mean the earth warms 5 or more C this century, and we're all in deep deep trouble. The aerosol impact on global temperature is less than a degree at most, and the majority of that has worked its way out of the system since the 1960s. It's not even close to being a meaningful trade off.

At least we are now beyond the point where people still try to deny the existence of anthropogenic impacts on the climate. But that should mean we can have an interesting discussion about how the South and East have warmed and dried in summer while the North and West have stayed wet and dull. Otherwise this just ends up like the old climate forum (RIP) where everything no matter what the topic, descended into the same old repeating arguments.

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That word fate can sometimes play a hand Tim. For whatever reason it was never meant to be, but something better may turn up in the short term.

That's what I'm hoping. Need to wait until after the harvest when usually a bunch of plots come online.

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I'm sorry but not only is this off topic - which is supposed to be about regional climate trends here, but the irony of the argument is breathtaking: essentially like the drug dealer warning of the health effects of quitting, or an anti-vaxxer getting excited because a Covid vaccine might cause headaches.

BAU emissions would mean the earth warms 5 or more C this century, and we're all in deep deep trouble. The aerosol impact on global temperature is less than a degree at most, and the majority of that has worked its way out of the system since the 1960s. It's not even close to being a meaningful trade off.

At least we are now beyond the point where people still try to deny the existence of anthropogenic impacts on the climate. But that should mean we can have an interesting discussion about how the South and East have warmed and dried in summer while the North and West have stayed wet and dull. Otherwise this just ends up like the old climate forum (RIP) where everything no matter what the topic, descended into the same old repeating arguments.

It wouldn't be a decision for me to make as I'm not on the mods team nowadays, but it would sure be a real shame were this thread to turn into one that resembled many in the former climate forum and, as a result, possibly ended up being locked.

IMO, it would probably be for the best if we all concentrate on the topic in hand and tried to limit mentions of AGW in this thread as much as possible, to be honest.

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I'm sorry but not only is this off topic - which is supposed to be about regional climate trends here, but the irony of the argument is breathtaking: essentially like the drug dealer warning of the health effects of quitting, or an anti-vaxxer getting excited because a Covid vaccine might cause headaches.

BAU emissions would mean the earth warms 5 or more C this century, and we're all in deep deep trouble. The aerosol impact on global temperature is less than a degree at most, and the majority of that has worked its way out of the system since the 1960s. It's not even close to being a meaningful trade off.

At least we are now beyond the point where people still try to deny the existence of anthropogenic impacts on the climate. But that should mean we can have an interesting discussion about how the South and East have warmed and dried in summer while the North and West have stayed wet and dull. Otherwise this just ends up like the old climate forum (RIP) where everything no matter what the topic, descended into the same old repeating arguments.

For down here, I seem to remember as soon as lockdown was announced a high pressure system to the ENE became dominant for months providing our sunniest Spring, temps in the low twenties but you could still feel the edge on that easterly wind. Surely it’s the placement of high and low pressure which is key though?

Again, I can only comment for down here but the weather has actually been changing since the mid seventies. Gone are the fogs, gone are the overnight summer thunderstorms, winters are more miss than hit, we always had a two week cold spell in the sixties where fenland skating was also a gimme at the time. Even the Dutch have lost their canal ice skating in recent years.

I think we are more under the influence of high pressure belts to the south, more useable summers, milder and sometimes wetter winters as the jet stream pushes further south a bit.

I expect we will be having another conversation in the next five years about the weather in that period. I expect from the bit you don’t want to discuss however, heating created by man will be firmly on the agenda.

 

 

That seems rather unfair. It is pretty well established that the "global dimming" that was seen last century due to sulfate emissions etc has gone into decline. That global dimming did indeed mask some of the background warming, so it is quite right that as sulfate levels drop, some of the "hidden" warming will become evident, thus increasing the rate of warming.

 

eg see this BBC report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml

"We thought we live in a global warming world, but this is actually not right. We lived in a global warming plus a Global Dimming world, and now we are taking out Global Dimming. So we end up with the global warming world, which will be much worse than we thought it will be, much hotter." - that quote is from Dr Beate Liepert, who is not some crank or AGW denier, she is an IPCC contributor.

Sulfate is important, that is the rationale behind the idea of geoengineering: deliberately spraying sulfate into the troposphere to reflect back some sunlight.

Not unfair at all. Phil's accusation was that the likes of Greta and the climate activists are responsible for making the warming worse.

The issue of reduced 'global dimming' adding to warming isn't in doubt. But I would have thought that reducing the level of pollution was to be commended; the issue is that we just keep pumping GHGs into the atmosphere and that is what the campaigning is about; and rightly so.

As you know, we have discussed geoengineeering extensively over the years. The problem is that there are winners and losers and adding another anthro forcing into the mix adds another unknown to a complex equation. Plus, it might be seen as an excuse to slow down the rate of decarbonisation, which certainly isn't what's wanted.

 

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No come on. I provided an answer so rather than you ask another question, if you could provide your take on things and we’ll see how this stacks up.

You scrutinised me, let’s scrutinise you for a change.

Your post said that it was the likes of Greta and the climate activists who were responsible for the warming due to reduced global dimming.  That is the point with which I took issue as it is clearly not true.

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It would be interesting to see the stats on summer thunderstorms. There’s been a lot of talk of these having reduced and that’s certainly how it feels anecdotally.

But is this just selective memory? By our nature we remember the exciting weather events and forget the boring periods.

I shall head to Google to take a look.

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It would be interesting to see the stats on summer thunderstorms. There’s been a lot of talk of these having reduced and that’s certainly how it feels anecdotally.

But is this just selective memory? By our nature we remember the exciting weather events and forget the boring periods.

I shall head to Google to take a look.

I will add my anecdotal evidence in support of the proposition that summer thunderstorms are rarer nowadays.  It seems ages since we had a good flash and bang show around here.

I'd be interested to know what stats can be found to confirm or contradict this.

 

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It would be interesting to see the stats on summer thunderstorms. There’s been a lot of talk of these having reduced and that’s certainly how it feels anecdotally.

But is this just selective memory? By our nature we remember the exciting weather events and forget the boring periods.

I shall head to Google to take a look.

Sorry to hear about the vineyard purchase falling through. These things happen for whatever reason.

Mark Diacono planted olives in Devon in 2006 I think but that was a fail because of the wet soil conditions. They tolerate cold and dry but not cold and wet.

I love a good thunderstorm but last summer was a fail on that front and up to this evening not a flash or rumble so far this year. Other parts of the UK seem to have done quite well though from what I've read here on TWO.

I'm hoping Tuesday/Wednesday next week might be able to deliver a French import but I won't hold my breath waiting to see one coming across the Channel. It's quite visual spectacle of course if the timing is right and IF you can reach a vantage point at dusk or in the night it's amazing.

Nick

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