HOW THE SUN AND INTERTROPICAL CONVERGENCE ZONE (ITCZ) CONTROLLED CLIMATE AND CIVILIZATION COLLAPSES

       How Pressure Systems Control Climate Part 3: 

HOW THE SUN AND INTERTROPICAL CONVERGENCE ZONE (ITCZ) CONTROLLED CLIMATE AND 

CIVILIZATION COLLAPSE

watch the video at

https://youtu.be/ivVTf1_EZH8

To find all my videos and the earlier parts of this series,  go to youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7XNHEz2QCJ_Phf2mvDFk0Q/videos

the transcript is below

Welcome back and best wishes for the new year

Today in part 3 of how pressure systems control the climate, I look at how the sun controls the location of the intertropical convergence zone or ITCZ and how a shifting ITCZ and its linked high-pressure systems have led to the rise and fall of many civilizations.

To ensure we properly adapt to future devastating weather events, we must correctly understand natural climate change. Natural weather disasters, much worse than those in recent times, have happened throughout history and will continue to happen regardless of any changes in human CO2 emissions.

Warming from the sun, affects climate very differently than warming from a CO2 greenhouse effect.

Solar radiation can penetrate the ocean as deeply as 200 meters compared to CO2's infrared radiation that barely penetrates a micron of the ocean surface.

Due to changes in the earth's orbit, the direct rays of the sun which can heat the earth's surface up to 1000 w/m2 at noon on a cloudless day. The sun's orbit shifts the location of that warming by 5000 kilometers in a year. By shifting the ITCZ, atmospheric and ocean circulations are also altered.

In contrast well-mixed CO2 warms the earth's surfaces equally.

So, let’s examine the sun's relationship to climate

The Hadley circulation discussed in part 2, links the rainy ITCZ and dry high-pressure systems, and provides the general framework and background for all the more transitory weather events.

The sun's orbital cycles (the Milankovitch cycles) shift the ITCZ and Hadley circulation. Here I focus on the ITCZ shifts since the end of the ice age's last glacial maximum, a time when the ITCZ had been shifted further southward than it is today.

As the ITCZ moved northward, driven by changes in solar heating, the glaciers began melting and the northern hemisphere experienced what scientists call the Holocene Thermal Maximum, roughly lasting between 6 and 10 thousand years ago. Temperatures rose about 3 degrees Celsius warmer than today. Subsequently, the ITCZ and its tropical rainfall shifted much further north than today

Driven by the sun's Milankovitch cycles, a steady 6000-year migration of the ITCZ towards it last glacial maximum southern extent then ensued, coinciding with a cooling trend known as the neo-glaciation. That ITCZ migration and its linked high-pressure systems also changed the locations of the earth's deserts and droughts and civilization collapses.

As the ITCZ migrated southward it also caused greater climate variability.

The ITCZ’s southward migration increased the number of El Nino events, and those events altered the earth's temperature balance, which in turn created feedbacks that further altered the ITCZ 's location.

How evolving El Ninos and other ocean oscillations altered pressure systems and generated the greater weather variability seen today will be discussed in part 4.

Milankovitch's obliquity cycle refers to the changes in the tilt of the earth's axis. If the axis was perpendicular to the sun's rays, there would be no seasons and the arctic would be in a perpetual twilight.

However, currently the earth's axis is tilted 23.5 degrees which causes more sunlight and warmer temperatures to move northward, producing summer conditions when the northern axis is pointed towards the sun. Over the course of about 41,000 years the earth's axis oscillates between 24.5 degrees, which will cause the warmest artic summers, then shifts to 22 degrees causing the coolest arctic summers

While keeping the same tilt, the axis also wobbles. This wobble is Milankovitch's precession cycle causing the axis to go from pointing at the north star, Polaris, as it does today, then circling to point at other stars over a period of about 26,000 years

In June the earth's axis points towards the sun causing our northern hemisphere's summer. As the earth revolves around the sun the northern axis continues to point towards the north star but by December it points away from the sun causing the northern hemisphere's winter while summer conditions shift to the southern hemisphere.

Surprisingly, the northern hemisphere experiences winter even though the earth's orbit is closer to the sun than at any other time.

Due to precession, 13,000 years into the future, as well as 13,000 years ago, the north axis was pointed towards the sun at the same time it was closest to the sun. It is believed that such an alignment of obliquity and precession maximized the Arctic's solar heating and triggered the melting of the ice age glaciers.

But as the orbital factors transitioned to their cooler phases, arctic sea ice and glaciers began to return and the earth entered its recent 6,000-year cooling trend, the neoglaciation, and the ITCZ migrated southwards

The extent of the location of the sun's hottest direct rays defines the tropics and the tilt of the earth's axis determines how far poleward that maximum solar radiation, as well as the ITCZ, can migrate.

The current 23.5-degree tilt of the axis causes the sun to be directly over the Tropic of Cancer, 23.5 degrees north of the equator, during the northern hemisphere's summer.

Due to ocean circulation effects, the ITCZ does not reach the Tropic of Cancer over the ocean as it does over land. During the southern hemisphere's summer, the direct rays reach the tropic of Capricorn 23.5 degrees south of the equator

Due to high obliquity, 7000 years ago the ITCZ and the north Atlantic subtropical high-pressure system referred to here as the NASH, was located much further north than today. The clockwise circulation of the NASH forces the westerly winds northward, shown here as the dashed line. Without rains from the ITCZ or westerlies, the Iberian Peninsula was extremely arid. Elsewhere, the northerly migration of the summer ITCZ and strengthened NASH also moved the rainy westerlies away from Scandinavia and towards Iceland

By 5000 years ago, Iberia's Mediterranean climate began to evolve as the ITCZ, and NASH migrated further southward. When ITCZ and NASH moved further south over Africa in the winter, the westerly winds could bring rains to Iberia

However, when the ITCZ and NASH moved northward in summer, the westerly winds were pushed northward causing Iberia to experience dry summers So, like California, as discussed in part 2, Iberia similarly evolved into a Mediterranean climate with hot dry summers and cool wet winters.

But the ITCZ 's southward migration now devastated northern Africa

When the ITCZ was centered closer to northern Africa the Sahara Desert was a lush grassland with large lakes. Cave drawings from southern Algiers depict abundant grazing antelope and cattle and giraffes. But driven by decreasing obliquity and precession, the steady southward shift of the ITCZ and NASH, initiated the earth's greatest drought known to humans, converting a humid African savannah

Into the greatest desert on earth --the Sahara Desert

It should be noted, because the ITCZ today is not as far south as it was during the ice age's glacial maximum, today's Sahara is not quite as extensive as it was during the ice age. If obliquity is indeed the primary controller of the ITCZ, expanding desertification can be expected over the next 10,000 years

As the rich grasslands of northern Africa converted to desert, the large human populations it supported were forced to migrate. The genetics of Mediterranean people suggest many Africans moved into southern Europe.

The increasing dryness forced other people to settle in the major river valleys where reliable water could be obtained such as the Nile Valley.

This great drying happened at similar latitudes, and other great river civilizations developed, in Mesopotamia, the Indus River valley, and yellow river valley.

The once lush region just south of the Sahara, known as the Sahel, seen here in light orange, did not turn to desert, but became increasingly vulnerable to small migrations of the ITCZ and the increasing climate variability.

That forced the Bantu speaking people of northwest Africa to migrate southward Either conquering or integrating with existing tribes throughout southern Africa

The summer warmth currently moves the ITCZ far enough to the north, that rains from the summer monsoons can reach the Sahel. But in the winter the ITCZ moves south again. While gifting southern Africa with rain, the Sahel experiences a cool season drought. And whenever the ITCZ remains too far south, either driven by ocean oscillations or changes in sunspots, it has brought major devastating droughts to the Sahel every century since the 1600s.

The tragic Sahel droughts of the 1960s to 1980s required massive world-wide relief funds to minimize the starvation experienced by people of the Sahel who depended on rainfall for farming and grazing.

Why did the ITCZ move further south?

One explanation is the ITCZ always migrates away from cooler regions and towards warmer regions. The most relevant studies pointed to the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation that caused cooling waters in the north Atlantic (as illustrated here in blue) and warming waters in the south Atlantic.

Climate scientists from NOAA also tested for effects from greenhouse gases but reported that the IPCC’s climate models failed to simulate those contrasting ocean temperatures or the ITCZ 's southern shift suggesting the droughts were "likely of natural origin"

The major drought events also coincided with small reductions of solar radiation associated with sunspot minimums

The Sahel's major Little Ice Age droughts of the 1600s and 1700s coincided with the Maunder sunspot minimum

The 1830s drought with the Dalton Minimum.

The 1910s drought again with low sunspots. Then as sunspots increased the Sahel received more rain culminating with a decade of steady rains in the 1950s.

But sunspots declined again resulting in the droughts of the 60s and 70s Then wetter weather returned in the 90s as sunspots increased

But as 21st century sunspots have approached the same low numbers as the 1910s, the Sahel has recently experienced 3 droughts between 2002 and 2012

The ITCZ and solar cycles are global phenomena, so as expected, the ITCZ shifts also affected people of the Americas. The Mayan population centers occupied Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. There, situated at the northern limits of the ITCZ, summers brought abundant rains.

But during winter the ITCZ moved far to the south bringing winter drought. So, the Mayans adapted to winter dryness and increasing ITCZ variability by building extensive reservoirs and irrigations canals

But as the ITCZ continued to move southward, the Mayans began abandoning their cities around 200AD. And Mayan society finally collapsed by 800AD

As the southward migrating ITCZ approached the Little Ice Age between 1500 and 1800 AD, the Yucatan experienced increasing dryness and weather variability.

Droughts that devastated the people of the Sahel during the little ice age also happened all around the sub-tropical latitudes. In the 1400s the Mayan culture, and Aztecs of central Mexico suffered massive drought-induced famines . The Little Ice Age reduced the North American monsoons, and droughts devastated New Mexico's Pueblo culture. The drought of 1638 prompted a revolt by Pueblo people against the Spanish. . Little Ice Age droughts brought by the contraction of the Asian monsoons caused Cambodia's Khmer empire to abandon its capital of Angkor in 1431

And as the Little Ice Age droughts dislocated more and more societies, china's Ming dynasty expanded and fortified the great wall to prevent a growing number of invaders. But the droughts finally triggered the downfall of the Ming dynasty in 166 The changes in the ITCZ have increased the El Nino cycles which also alter the locations of dry and wet pressure systems which exacerbates droughts and floods around the world So up next: part 4 of how pressure systems control the climate: how El Nino and ocean oscillations influence droughts and floods

Until then embrace renowned scientist Thomas Huxley’s advice: 

 “Skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin"

HOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS CONTROL CLIMATE PART 2: ITCZ, RAINFOREST AND DESERTS

Please watch the video: 

How Pressure Systems Control Climate- Part 2. ITCZ, Rainforests and Deserts 

https://youtu.be/HZfqawrY4_k

The transcript is below.

See part 1 

HOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS CONTROL THE CLIMATE PART 1 – DECLINE IN EXTREME WEATHER

Welcome back & Happy New Year 

Today I'm presenting part 2: how pressure systems control climate, focusing on the shifts in the intertropical convergence zone, or ITCZ, and why warmer temperatures attract more rain and thus why the ITCZ determines the location of both rainforests and deserts

Mainstream media's narrative suggests that global warming increases evaporation and thus makes worse droughts

But science flips that warming narrative on its head. As you will see conclusively, it is drought that causes higher temperatures.

And it is the reduced transport of moisture from the oceans to the land that causes drought.

You will see that during the coldest periods of the last 10,000 years, societies experienced the worst droughts, and contrary to media narratives, the science shows warmer temperatures will bring more rain

The ITCZ is easily recognized from satellite imagery showing a belt of clouds encircling the earth. It moves northward and southward with the seasonal position of the sun and determines what tropical regions experience a wet season or a dry season

In the northern hemisphere as summertime warmth moves north, the ITCZ, seen in red, brings the rainy season to the northern tropics, while south of the equator, cooler temperatures experience seasonal drought

In the southern hemisphere's summer, the ITCZ then moves southward, as seen in orange, while regions north of the equator experience seasonal drought On average the ITCZ migrates between 9 degrees north and 2 degrees north over the pacific and Atlantic oceans, but it migrates further north and south over Asia and Africa because land masses heat up faster than the ocean

Thus, over the lands bordering the Indian ocean, the ITCZ brings rainfall further poleward, on average migrating between 20 degrees north and 8 degrees south,

Published science shows that during cooler periods, such as the little ice age, that great width of the tropical rain bands contract, reducing the extent of monsoon rains

The little ice age was the earth's coldest period in over 10,000 years, yet despite global warming theory, it created some of the worst droughts, droughts that caused the collapse of many societies such as the Ming dynasty in china and the Khmer empire in Cambodia

The ITCZ represents the dynamical region that drives energy and momentum from the equator towards the poles and drives the Hadley atmospheric circulation

The ITCZ is the region of intense convection where moist air rises, then cools & precipitates heavy rainfall to regions below, enabling the world's tropical rainforests

The remaining dry air then diverges towards the poles where it sinks between 20 & 40 degrees poleward of the equator, generating regions of dry high-pressure that marks the edge of the Hadley circulation

This global map of precipitation illustrates the location of heavy rainfall from convergence zones (seen in reds and dark blue) around the equator And the regions of dry high-pressure systems symmetrically located north and south of the equator shown in yellow

A map of the earth’s great desert regions shows the correlation between deserts and the Hadley high pressure systems

I've overlayed the pressure systems to see this more clearly The high-pressure systems border the western edge of the USA’s western deserts and South America's Atacama They border west of the Sahara in northern Africa and the Kalahari in southern Africa And border the west of Australia's deserts

High pressure systems create warmer temperatures in several ways. The dry descending air in a high-pressure system produces clear skies

Without clouds or mist to block out sunlight, surfaces are heated more strongly by solar radiation

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. So, without clouds and reduced water vapor more infrared heat escapes directly to space so clear skies also reduce the greenhouse effect. Nonetheless increased solar heating has a greater warming impact and offsets any decreased greenhouse effects

Even if there was no increase in solar or greenhouse radiation an increase in dryness amplifies temperatures

Known as specific heat, scientists determined that different substances require different amounts of energy to increase that substance's temperature To raise one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius requires 4200 joules. Joules is just a measure of energy.

To raise one kilogram of sand one degree requires much less energy, just 830 joules. Thus, by removing a kilogram of water from the land's surface the energy that would have raised water by one degree, will instead, raise the sand by 5 degrees.

In addition, over 2 million joules of energy are required to evaporate a kilogram of water without raising the temperature. These dynamics are just one reason why average temperatures can be unreliable science. An average temperature does not reflect changes in radiation from added carbon dioxide, unless all temperature effects induced by dryness are first accounted for. And that is not being done.

High pressure systems further generate regions of dryness by blocking the westerly flow of moist winds from the ocean to the land

High pressure systems cause the winds in the northern hemisphere to circulate in a clockwise manner, thus deflecting moist winds from the west northwards. For example, the pacific high-pressure system strengthens each summer because descending winds more readily descend over a cooler ocean relative to the warmer land.

By deflecting moisture northwards, the strengthened summer high causes California to be dry from June thru October, while simultaneously bringing summer rains to drench the coasts from Oregon to Alaska

Because this dryness amplifies temperatures, Death Valley in southeastern California still holds the record for hottest observed air temperature, reaching 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10th, 1913, long before any significant rise in CO2

The world's Mediterranean climates (shown here in red) are symmetrically located around the equator centered between 30 & 40 degrees north and south of the equator.

All Mediterranean climates are characterized by hot dry summers and cool wet winters. The opposite of tropical seasons As the ITCZ moves northward each summer, so do the high-pressure systems of the Hadley circulation cooler ocean surfaces relative to warmer land intensifies the highs which block the flow of moisture from the ocean to the land This is why the naturally dry summers in California and Greece and all Mediterranean climates are highly susceptible to wildfire As the ITCZ moves southward during the winter, so do the high-pressure systems, and as the highs weaken it allows ocean moisture to bring winter rains to the land

What might seem peculiar is that Mediterranean climates are restricted to relatively narrow bands along the coast

The reason Mediterranean climates don’t expand further inland is because the warmer land temperatures of summer create a low-pressure system that draws in the monsoonal rains from elsewhere

The North American monsoons draw moisture from the Gulf of California and Gulf of Mexico As seen by the weather data from Albuquerque, New Mexico, the greatest precipitation is brought inland during the hottest months of July thru September. 

Like the ITCZ transport of rains, summer monsoons illustrate how higher temperatures bring more moisture, not drought.

So up next: Part 3 How the Sun Controls the ITCZ 

Until then embrace renowned scientist Thomas Huxley’s advice:

“Skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin"

Colorado’s Marshall Fire: Has Funding Needs Corrupted Climate Science?

 

I was totally shocked to hear the claims by a fire scientist I had once admired and often quoted in my blog posts about wildfire. 

In a National Public Radio interview Jennifer Balch said, “Climate change has lengthened the state's fire season”. Then she said “"Climate change is essentially keeping our fuels drier longer. These grasses that were burning, they've been baked all fall and all winter.” 

 Having studied fire ecology for 30 years and knowing her published science, I could only believe she had been corrupted by the need to attract large amounts of funding, and these days that comes to those who blame the climate crisis. And here’s why I now hold that opinion so strongly. 

Colorado’s Marshall Fire was a grassfire that happened with temperatures hovering around freezing. All fire experts and fire managers know grasses are 1-hour lag fuels. That means in dry conditions grasses can become flammable within hours. Attempting to link CO2 global warming, she and other alarmists were now blaming the Boulder area’s grass flammability on the warm dry conditions from July through November. But dry conditions in the past months are totally irrelevant. Those months could have also been cold and wet, but just one day of dry conditions is all that is needed for grasses to burn. 

To minimize recklessly set fire that often occur as people burn away unwanted dead vegetation, the Nova Scotia government felt the need to counter the misunderstanding writing:

The Myth:  “It's safe to burn grass as long as there is still some snow on the ground.” 

The Fact: “Within hours of snow melting, dead grass becomes flammable, especially if there have been drying winds. Grass fires burn hot and fast and spread quickly around, and even over, patches of snow.” 

That’s a fact that Balch and every other fire expert should know! Apparently, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Los Angeles and the Nature Conservancy and acolyte of climate alarmist Michael Mann and Noah Diffenbaugh, also failed to understand grasses are 1-hour fuel.  He stated in an interview for NBC’s article How climate change primed Colorado for a rare December wildfire that “Climate change is clearly making the pre-conditions for wildfires worse a cross most fire-prone regions of the world,” 

But dry grasses are not the pre-condition to be worried about. The pre-conditions that neither Swain nor Balch shared with the public is well known: Boulder County’s invasive grasses increase fire danger. The “main offender is cheatgrass, which was likely introduced to the area alongside agriculture and ranching” and “is increasing fire danger by 29%” 

 In fact, in 2013 Balch published, Introduced annual grass increases regional fire activity across the arid western USA (1980–2009), writing “Cheatgrass was disproportionately represented in the largest fires, comprising 24% of the land area of the 50 largest fires” and that “multi-date fires that burned across multiple vegetation types were significantly more likely to have started in cheatgrass.” 

 It was also very disingenuous for Balch to say ““Climate change has lengthened the state's fire season”. It is the very same meme that every climate alarmist regurgitates that climate change has made “a year-long fire season the new normal”. But in 2017 Balch published in Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States that human ignitions “have vastly expanded the spatial and seasonal “fire niche” in the coterminous United States, accounting for 84% of all wildfires”. 

Balch’s published graph clearly shows that human ignitions have extended fire season all year long. Based on her own research, a more relevant comment would have mentioned that Louisville, Colorado’s population had jumped 10-fold; from 2,000 in 1950 to about 20,000 today. Does a 10-fold increase in population create a 10-fold increase in fire probability. The Marshall Fire was not naturally started by Lightning. 

In 2015, Balch created the Earth Lab program at Colorado University. In 2017 it became part of CIRES, a partnership of NOAA and CU Boulder. Earth Lab, got increasing attention from mass media that’s always seeking click-bait. As Earth Lab’s team began blaming more fires on climate change, it got more attention and Balch got more interviews. 

 Earth Lab hired Natasha Stavros as Earth Lab’s Analytics Hub Director. In videos posted by the Washington Post, she claimed climate change causes “longer, hotter, and drier fire seasons” reflecting Balch’s conversion to a climate crisis narrative. To get around Balch’s earlier scientific research Stavros deflected, “We are not talking about the ignition source” or the “availability of fuels”, “what we are talking about are the conditions of those fuels”. But in the case of the Marshall Fire, 1-hour grass fuels have nothing to do with climate change. It only takes a few hours to be in highly flammable conditions. That’s weather, not climate! 

 Although lacking in scientific integrity, pivoting to a climate crisis narrative worked in Balch’s favor. The U.S. Geological Survey has selected the University of Colorado Boulder to host the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NCCASC) for the next five years. Balch, as director of CIRES’ Earth Lab, and now NCCASC Director had attracted $4.5 million in funding. Universities around the country similarly create such centers to attract such major funding. Certainly, blaming fires on a climate crisis attracts more funding than if its director sounded like a “denier” blaming invasive grasses and human ignitions. 

 The politics of funding research requires a major level of group think. Daniel Shechtman won the Nobel Prize for discovering quasi-crystals that are now used in surgical instruments. But when he first announced his observations, he was kicked out of his lab by his colleagues. They saw him as a threat to the lab’s prestige and funding because observing quasi-crystals contradicted the consensus that was enforced by Linus Pauling that quasi-crystal did NOT exist. 

 Similarly, esteemed atmospheric scientist Dr Cliff Mass was criticized by Washington University administrator’s for detailing how an episode of problematic acidic waters that had been pumped into the state’s oyster’s hatcheries, was due to natural upwelling events, not climate change. But contradicting the climate crisis angle threatened funding to WU’s Ocean Acidification Center. Up until then Mass had been the Seattle Times go-to person for all weather events, but that stopped when his one analysis didn’t support climate crisis groupthink. Dr Peter Ridd was fired for presenting evidence showing his colleague's claims of coral reef destruction were exaggerated. So, all savvy university professors know you can’t contradict the meme if you want funding, or worse, keep your job. 

 Climate crisis groupthink, also ignores natural climate change, as did Balch and Swain. But one meteorologist confidently blamed the lack of snow and dryness on a natural La Nina. The science is well established that depending on how colder Pacific surface waters set up during a La Nina, atmospheric currents can carry higher or lower amounts of moisture to different regions. California had record snowfall this December while Colorado snowfall was very low. And if the Marshall Fire had been ignited just 2 days later, there would have been a snowfall to suppress the fire.

However too often, alarmists scientists cherry-pick one-year events. They weaponized this year’s low snowfall while ignoring that last year’s Colorado snowfall was far above normal. In November last year, Fort Collins received more than 15 inches of snow on its way to 80 inches, which is 25 inches more than normal. Again, such variations in snowfall are weather, not climate. 

Alarmists also weaponized the dry conditions as solely due to global warming drought. They ignored the drying and warming effects of the Chinook winds that are very common in Colorado. Chinooks are known as “snow eaters” because as the winds pass over the mountains of the western USA they are forced upward and precipitate all their moisture. When those winds descend from the Rockies down to Boulder, temperatures rise adiabatically (due to pressure not added heat) and the warm dry air quickly removes moisture or snow from the surface. Southern California’s Santa Anna winds are similar and drive large fires. 

Sometimes Boulder’s winds reach speeds of 100+ mile per hour. NOAA reported The Chinook Wind Events Winter of 1982 during which peak wind gusts more than 100 mph damaged areas around Boulder. Weatherwise journal reported 100+MPH winds over Boulder on January 7, 1969, which snapped power poles and toppled planes as seen in the photographs below. In November 2021 the weather service gave a red flag warming due to the high winds from a Chinook event. But without a coinciding human ignition, there was no rapidly spreading fire.

 

I would like to believe that Balch’s Earth Lab scientists have been campaigning for the housing developments in Boulder’s suburbs of Louisville and Superior to create a system of firebreaks and defensible space. Those suburbs had built into easily ignited grassland in a region where fires are rapidly spread by the dry Chinooks descending from the Rockies. Such natural fire danger is not always obvious to the public looking for affordable housing. But it is not obvious that was ever done, at least not as obvious as faulty climate change narratives. 

 Fire experts should have pushed for building codes, requiring adequate spacing between new houses. As a story in Wildfire Today reported today, one common feature of the surviving homes was they were more distant from neighboring homes. Many houses in the devastated subdivisions were only 10 to 20 feet apart. Without adequate fire breaks or defensible space, if just one house allowed the fire to reach it, the heat of that burning house is enough to ignite any house next to it. Similar dynamics were seen in California’s Tubbs and Camp Fires that demolished neighborhoods.

 

But perhaps local governments were greedy. Eager to build a tax base a growing Louisville population was most important. Politicians had worked hard to present Louisville as one of the top 10 most livable little cities. Putting natural fire danger front and center, might put a damper on the city’s attractiveness. And not surprisingly the Denver Democrats didn’t waste time to capitalize on the Marshall Fire devastation. The released a statement claiming “This fire has also punctuated our climate crisis and made abundantly clear the need for bold action. The science is clear, and the impacts are very real. We will continue to work with our community and legislators to ensure climate change is treated with the urgency and attention it deserves.” 

But the science does not show a connection between the Marshall Fire and Climate Change. And due to the greed of the media, politicians, and selfish scientists, only scientific integrity is facing a real crisis. 

 Finally, it is worth noting that some scientists are acutely aware of the increasing fire danger presented by the build-up of dead vegetation. To remove that hazard prescribed burns are being performed. But sometimes prescribed burns get away and burn down people’s homes. So prescribed burns are carefully planned for times when fires are most easily controlled. So, one must wonder just how unusually dangerous local conditions were if the City of Boulder planned a prescribed burn on Monday, December 13, 2021, just 2 weeks before the Marshall Fire. Had climate change really made conditions so dangerous? 

......

an addendum  1/3/22

Here are Boulder's December temperature and precipitation  trends since 1893 from NOAA. https://psl.noaa.gov/boulder/

No sign of global warming or drying trends

 Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism, and proud member of the CO2 Coalition.

HOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS CONTROL THE CLIMATE: PART 1 – THE DECLINE IN EXTREME WEATHER

Watch my video: 

HOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS CONTROL THE CLIMATE: PART 1 – THE DECLINE IN EXTREME WEATHER 

at https://youtu.be/67ie20cjJxU

The transcript is below

Unlike the effects of carbon dioxide, variations in the earth’s pressure systems directly affect climate and weather changes. Furthermore, new scientific research contradicts the climate crisis modeling claims that global warming is causing more extreme weather by increasing convective energy

In response to public questioning of how global warming could possibly cause both floods and droughts, scientists who were obsessed with a climate crisis, pushed a simplistic meme that wet regions will get wetter and dry regions will get driers. Unlike the absurd claims that rising co2 is causing everything from more wars and prostitution to more wildfires and higher divorce rates in albatrosses, their wet gets wetter – dry gets drier meme has some basis in reality

As scientists studying clouds on a microscale of 5 kilometers report, convection is in part initiated by solar heated earth surfaces that contact the air making the air warmer, less dense and more buoyant, and causing it to rise.

The exact same dynamics are at work on larger scales. The Hadley Circulation cell covering 7000 kilometers, its driven by intense solar heating around the equator, resulting in an area of low pressure with rising moist air. That air cools and condenses as it rises, resulting in the earth’s heaviest rainfall.  

What goes up must come down, and having lost it moisture while rising, regions of dry sinking air happen a few thousand kilometers to the north and south, creating a large area of exceptional dryness beneath high-pressure systems. Therefore, assuming rising CO2 is warming the planet, it was then logical to believe a warming planet would increase convection And increase rain-making but also increase the sinking air elsewhere that fosters dryness

So their models were constructed accordingly. 

The problem is, as research reveals,  observations do not support their CO2 connection.

Here I simultaneously present two views of the earth's major circulation patterns. Upper panel shows a cross-section of the northern hemisphere.    The lower illustration shows the average position of quasi-permanent pressure systems across the globe, here for the month of January

 Here I only focus on the pressure systems most implicated in the wet gets wetter dry gets drier narrative. Other pressure systems are discussed in other videos

The rising convection at the equator results in a global belt of low pressure known as the intertropical convergence zone or ITCZ and represented by the dashed red line And that generates the tropical rain forest ecosystems

The descending air happens about 30 degrees poleward of the equator and is focused over the oceans, and can reduce the transport of moisture which results in the earth's great desert regions

Recent results from an international team of scientists, referred to here as taszarek et al 2021, Examined trends in global rainfall based on observational data and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts' global reanalysis model from 1979–2019. 

 Research results suggested just the opposite of what global crisis warming theory predicts. On average the earth is experiencing declining convective energy, and thus declining extreme storms and rainfall. The wettest regions are getting drier. 

 This research was not trumpeted by the mainstream media, because it did not promote the click-bait climate crises the media seeks to profit from.

This map from their results illustrates the earth's regions with the greatest precipitation. As expected from the Hadley Circulation, the regions of the greatest annual rainfall exist in the low-pressure ITCZ regions around the equator, supporting the tropical rainforest ecosystems of the Amazon, central Africa and southeast Asia’s maritime continent consisting of Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo and the Philippines and seas of the Coral Triangle, all colored in reds. 

Areas in green to white are low rainfall areas, beneath dry high-pressure areas in the sub-tropics

The trends from precipitation data suggests those wet areas are getting drier as seen here in blue. Significant drying is shown with hatched marks suggesting a decrease in evaporation contrary to global warming models There are also some non-significant wetter regions illustrated in light yellow but dry areas show very little increased rainfall  

Convective storms like hurricanes, tornadoes, heavy rain, hail & lightning are most destructive. So, to better predict these storms, scientists track changes in, CAPE, C-A-P-E, abbreviated for Convection Available Potential Energy. CAPE is driven by the warmer and moisture conditions of an air mass relative to its surrounding environment. As would be expected, the greatest annually averaged amount of potential energy for convection coincides with the warm moist regions where the greatest rainfall is observed .

But again, contrary to climate crises predictions the energy for convection and more extreme storms has declined for most regions. 

The cause for higher potential energy outside the tropics over the USA’s Great Plains and southern Europe requires some additIonal explanation. The high CAPE is partially driven by the result of warm moist air lying below dry cold air, dry due to crossing the mountains of western USA or arriving from the Sahara Desert.

Air freely rises only if it is warmer than its surrounding. Warm smoke from a chimney in winter rises at first but suddenly hits a glass ceiling and goes sideways. This is because the air above is warmer than the smoke. During the winter, the land cools much faster than the air above so the lowest atmospheric layers, the boundary layer, is colder than the air above it and this is referred to as an inversion layer. The smoke mixes with the cold air, and no longer becomes warmer than the air above.

The question then arises, if the smoke here doesn’t rise much higher than a thousand feet, how can warm air in the tropics rise to 14,000 meters? The answers has to do with the interaction of moist air with dry air

As known from the gas laws, dry air temperature drops by 10C for every 1000 meters it rises, solely due to the decrease in air pressure (referred to as adiabatic cooling). 

 For example, air on the surface at 10 C (50F) cools to minus -20 C (-4F) after rising 3000 meters. Likewise rising smoke was also cooled adiabatically.

However, moist air does not cool so rapidly. As moist air rises and cools it reaches a temperature that causes the water vapor to saturate and convert to liquid rain, which releases the extra heat the water vapor acquired during evaporation. 

 That released heat energy causes rising moist air to cool more slowly than surrounding dry air. Moist air cools at a rate of just 6C for every 1000 meters of altitude. It is that release of heat from water vapor that allows moist air in the tropics to remain warmer than its surrounding and allows rising air currents to reach 14,000 m in altitude, as well as providing more convective energy. 

 Thus warm moist air rising in an environment of dry cold air increases convective potential energy and enables more thunderstorms and tornados in the USA’s Great Plains and southeastern USA.

Accordingly, Taszarek 2021 found the highest frequency of thunderstorms in the in the warm moist tropics, but also reported a relatively high rate in the eastern USA. This is because the Pacific high-pressure system reduces moisture flowing from the ocean over the western USA. The eastward moving air is further dried as it passes over the western mountains. After passing over the rocky mountains, the resulting dry air often rides above the warm humid air being pushed into the great plains and eastern USA by the Atlantic high-pressure system, setting the stage for intense convective thunderstorms and tornados.

Yet despite the global warming narrative that global warming increases humidity and increases convective energy thus intensifying storms, thunderstorm frequency around the world, except for over India, has been declining.

Some of the most severe thunderstorms happen in regions where air is moving across mountain ranges and interacting with moist air causing the greatest duration of severe thunderstorms Yet again, in contrast to climate crises narratives, most of those regions have experienced fewer severe storms 

This decline might seem counter intuitive only because the mainstream media and politicians try to focus the public's attention on any destructive storms that still naturally happen as evidence of a climate crises

This scientifically documented decrease in convective potential energy and thunderstorms correlates with the decreasing trend in severe USA tornadoes.

Despite the data, the chief climate alarmist and digital book burner, the Joeseph Goebbels of climate change, Michael Mann, has been the media's go to person for click-bait climate crisis narratives

In an interview with USA today he falsely said “the latest science indicates that we can expect more of these huge (tornado) outbreaks because of human caused climate change"

To push that alarmist narrative Mann tweeted the graph from AEI showing declining intense tornadoes was denialist propaganda.

But the graph is just an extension of the very same declining trend NOAA had produced until 2014.

What NOAA’s website likes to now show are graphs of total counts, and 75% of that count is due to additions of very weak tornadoes that often escaped detection in the past.

Total counts had suggested the same declining trend from the 70s to 1980s, as the declining counts of just severe tornadoes

The sharp increase since the 1980s was the result of the Weather Service employing more storm spotters which added more very weak tornadoes to the count. According to a NOAA research paper tornado detection probabilities since 1987 increased from 30% to 75% in 2002

And despite increased detection, total counts have declined over the past 2 decades

So trust the science, not alarmists media nor wayward scientists like Michael Mann

Lastly, Severe convective storms are not always simplistically driven by warm moist air. Sometimes an air mass requires a disturbance that raises moist air to an altitude at which water vapor converts to liquid to initiate free convection. 

Other disturbances increase the dry air One such disturbance is caused by El Nino events during which the regions of tropical convection shift across the pacific altering regions of dry high-pressure systems and wet low-pressure systems as seen here. That pattern changes during La Ninas which increase dry air masses in the western USA and enhances convective energy potential for tornado weather 

Future videos will examine the varying ways pressure systems change, resulting in naturally occurring extreme weather events that have sadly been weaponized to fear monger a climate crisis. .

Up next HOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS CONTROL THE CLIMATE: PART 2 - DESERTS AND DROUGHTS

Until then embrace Thomas Huxley's sage advice: skepticism is the highest of duties and blind faith the one unpardonable sin

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