OK Idunno, I've enjoyed the commenting on the Curry/Wyatt paper. I did a critique on what this commenter contributed:
Posted by:
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000035525134 | October 12, 2013 at 06:41
"We found that the stadium-wave signal propagates through four different stages of
climate regime evolution. I sure haven’t read the paper, but I try to imagine what they could mean with a “stadium-wave” as anything physical in the atmosphere to be noticed.
See, I have spent some hard time working on the pattern of ridges/troughs propagating through the mid-atmosphere last winter. These Rossby-waves are real. But WOE are the ‘stadia’? Something in time? How could they be identified? Like a regime in the atmosphere based on the AMO, the stochastic on and off called PDO or even ENSO? Do the stadia relate to long-range measurements, like on GISS-temp, or mean SLP or anything else?
IMHO there’s no clear, general oscillation to be picked out of natural variance. It is all stochastic chaos within a variance on geological timescales. The only clear trend is our relentless dump of fossil fuel based carbohydrates into the biosphere.
Each stage reflects a particular behavior or a particular set of sub-process interactions.
OK I’m here. It’s not a ‘stadium’, it’s a stage. Not a noticeable period in time showing similar trends, but a particular situation of the physical processes in time and space. Assuming the “stadium-wave signal” scientists ignore our carbon-dump, they fixate on certain combinations of stochastic natural processes.
And at each stage, activity is heightened in a particular geographic region. Right, now I’m picking up an image. So the natural processes add up their positive/negative feedbacks and hey, they’re being positive right here! Where? Maybe FI over Greenland? The preferred ridging through ’07-’12 leading to strong Fram ice loss and GIS melt?
We’ve no evidence of losses like the ones I mentioned in such a short period for over the last 1400 years. Paleo-climatologic studies haven’t come up with something alike for at least the whole Pleistocene. Oh yeah, the Heinrich – and Dansgaard-Oeschger events? Or the Lake Toba-eruption? Those were temporally sudden events, yes. But I can’t imagine them being triggered by culminating positive feedbacks from cyclic oscillations in the ocean/atmosphere. They are geological catastrophes at the end of clear morphological forcing or plate tectonics.
600 At all stages, seeds of regime reversal are embedded within the collection of sub-processes
regulating the Arctic freshwater balance, thereby subtly and incrementally imposing ‘curbs’ on
the prevailing trend of sea ice coverage, assuring an inevitable regime reversal years in the
future. Yes, now we assume a whole set of “all” stages. And they propagate into ‘collections’ of ‘sub-processes’. Boy, I think I can hear Rubik laughing. But hear, something concrete is mentioned: the ‘Arctic freshwater balance’. Sure, ice formation is dependant on that balance. Within all subtlety and incrementality, what would be annoyingly interfering? Oh, it’s us… but we’re so small… all of us could easily be buried in the Grand Canyon…How on earth we could be responsible for derailing creation….
These negative feedbacks modify the Arctic freshwater balance through:
i) sea ice related shifts in the Arctic Front and associated zones of precipitation and continental runoff;Yeah, it’s the sea ice itself, that has stochastic oscillations that make the Arctic Front shift. It’s all promoted within natural variance… yes, I see how precipitation is influenced. The Ob, the Yenisej, the Lena… they’re all dumping more fresh water now. OMG maybe the permafrost is melting… shrug… happened before. It’s the freshwater balance! And it is a negative feedback! Pretty soon, you’ll see the Siberian Arctic sector producing much more sea ice and cooling it!
ii) ice-605 cover associated sea-level-pressure changes that reorganize winds and thereby direction of freshwater and sea ice export between the Arctic Basin and marginal seas;Oh yeah… it is all balanced out. No worries about ‘incremental’ curbs on trends…it ‘ll pretty soon reverse!
iii) modified influx of warm, saline water into the marginal seas, particularly in the Atlantic sector; Sure. Maybe you read the Arthun UniBergen report on Atlantic heat. At least, here we ‘ve got something real. Make sure it’s incremental.
iv) and Pacific atmospheric circulation anomalies negatively feeding back onto the Atlantic freshwater balance 609 through remote modification of precipitation regimes."Remote? Like Lake Eyre in Australia filling up in ’12 after decades of drought? You’re flattering Dr. Rupert Sheldrake?
Look here, my knowledge of the physical processes in our biosphere is very limited. There are people much better qualified to make reliable points in this matter. But with what I’ve got, I get a strong sense that we’re being lured into a sort of limitless distraction with properties much like the famous Rubik Cube.
Keep ‘m busy as long as you can. By the time they get themselves together, we, the Very Important People, will have made nice profit and provided ourselves a nice technological shelter that we can sustain against a wasted Mother Nature.
Thanks for staying with me; I love some irony every now and then.