Disqus - Latest Comments for jfleck

Re: ABQJournal Online » La Nina, the climate pattern responsible for drought, has returned

John Fleck — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:06:21 -0000

Bill - Also, going back to Hansen's original from which this quote was pulled, it's clear that he's not using GCM's at all, but rather doing empirical forecasting - the second, non-model-based type of forecast done for ENSO, where statistics of past ENSO patterns are used to forecast future ENSO behavior.

Re: ABQJournal Online » La Nina, the climate pattern responsible for drought, has returned

John Fleck — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:27:58 -0000

The GCM's aren't used to forecast ENSO. GCM's look at forcings and conditions over much longer time scales. So I guess the answer to your question is "no, not a GCM failure". The ENSO models, which are a different beast entirely, are notoriously bad at forecasting past the "spring prediction barrier". Different tools for different tasks.

Also, Hansen's not an ENSO specialist, and is not the guy I'd turn to for discussion of ENSO. The real ENSO experts back in March were quite clear in highlighting the uncertainties of forecasting at that time of year.

Re: ABQJournal Online » New Mexico’s remarkable 2011 weather year

John Fleck — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:47:14 -0000

Jubal et all -

Thanks for dropping by and for the comments. First, re the "we live in a desert": Wherever one lives (desert, swamp, etc.), it's changes from normal conditions that drive societal effects. So, given that we live in a desert, we've sized our societal infrastructure - water delivery systems, etc. - based on a climate that delivers on average (for the purposes of the notes above) 9+ inches of precip a year over the relevant time period. When we only get half that, it's a problem.

Re the sun, there's a lot of scientific research examining this question, which has concluded that solar variability (direct energy from sunlight, cosmic ray flux, solar magnetic fields) is insufficient to explain the changes we've seen over the last half century. There's a nice summary of the research here:

http://www.skepticalscience...

Re: Climate-change deniers ignore science - The Santa Fe New Mexican

John Fleck — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:16:24 -0000

Lou - You might be interested in Menne et al., "On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record", which reviews the questions you raise: "In summary, we find no evidence that the CONUS average temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting."

Menne, M. J., C. N. Williams, and M. A. Palecki (2010), On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D11108, doi:10.1029/2009JD013094.

http://europa.agu.org/?view...

Re: Climate skeptics lack support from young voters

John Fleck — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:23:16 -0000

What "criminalsRstupid" says is simply false.

There's a nice new summary of research into the field of solar variability and climate in the most recent edition of the peer-reviewed publication "Reviews of Geophysics":

http://www.agu.org/pubs/cro...

It discusses the literally decades of research into the role of the sun that stands behind scientists' assertion that solar variability is insufficient to explain climate changes seen in recent decades.

Re: News from around New Mexico

John Fleck — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:12:43 -0000

Thanks for the shout-out, and I scored a bunch of green tomatoes from a friend last night, even before my story thunked on people's driveways!

Re: ABQNews: Rio Rancho Police To Take Back Pharmaceuticals

John Fleck — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:00:47 -0000

Tim - Thanks for the comment. It's important not to put pharmaceuticals down the sink, to prevent them from ending up in the Rio Grande. Pharmaceuticals and personal care products, which are tough to remove in sewage treatment, pose a growing contamination problem.

Re: ABQNews: Funds Sought For Return of Cyclist's Body

John Fleck — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:03:54 -0000

Link corrected, thanks for the help.

Re: Scott McInnis: The waterlogged years (Pt. 1)

John Fleck — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:50:00 -0000

Alan -

I appreciate your efforts at literary criticism, sparing the rest of us the effort. But as a card-carrying water wonk, I had to jump in anyway, just for the fun of it. Until I got to Twain and gagged.

We need to come up with some sort of drinking game around the Twain non-quote, which McInnis recycles, about drinkin' whiskey and fightin' over water. (Twain seems never to have said it: http://www.twainquotes.com/... )

Re: Critiquing and appraising the McInnis water articles

John Fleck — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:23:14 -0000

Re: ABQNews: Water Assembly Sketches Stark Scenario

John Fleck — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:47:41 -0000

Thanks for reading all the way to the end! Typo corrected :-)

Re: ABQNews: 6:20am -- Orion Launchpad Escape Vehicle Test Today

John Fleck — Thu, 06 May 2010 17:12:48 -0000

Clark_Nova -

As the story notes, it's a launch pad abort system, not an ISS escape system.

Re: ABQNews: The Climate Emails: Chick Keller

John Fleck — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:28:49 -0000

Chick Keller emailed the following, which he asked me to post for him:
********
One reader is concerned about model prediction of the current (and future) periods of little or no warming. Here one has to distinguish between general model runs that start back 100 or 50 years ago and ones carefully initialized only a decade ago. The former simulations aren't expected to get the precise temperature variations over short time frames because the climate is chaotic. They instead usually are an average of a number of runs each slightly different due to different starting conditions. However, in my climate review (available on in electronic form upon request) I referenced one of the latter, from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office modeling team (Smith et al, 2007, "Improved surface temperature prediction for the coming decade from a global climate model", Science, 317:796-799). It's this one that made the prediction of current lack of warming. It goes on to predict rapid warming in the next decade with another stillstand after that. I recall another team did something similar. So, if you very carefully get the starting conditions right from weather and especially ocean data it seems possible to make fairly accurate predictions of near term temperatures. My point was that such a period of no warming is to be expected under the normal circumstances of natural variation of ocean currents, etc, but that ultimately AGHG warming will show itself.

Re: ABQNews: Around the Tubes

John Fleck — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:16:40 -0000

Bill -

Thanks for the comment. I think the study by Fergus, Roger and James is an important contribution to our understanding of what climate scientists broadly think. (I followed their attempts to get it published and was disappointed they did not succeed.)

The details of what they found are important. 65 percent of the climate scientists they surveyed in general agreed with the IPCC's Fourth Assessment. Of those who took issue with it, roughly half felt it overstated the anthropogenic influence, and the other half felt the IPCC understated it. This is, I think precisely what we should expect from a consensus process like the IPCC's - capturing the broad middle, with smaller tails of disagreement on either side.

It's also notable, as James has pointed out, that their finding that 97 percent of climate scientists agree with the statement that "the human addition of CO2 into the atmosphere is an important component of the climate system and has contributed to some extent in recent observed global average warming" is consistent with the recent study by Peter Doran published in Eos.

Re: ABQNews: Monday Bird Blogging, Hummingbird Genome Edition

John Fleck — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:53:24 -0000

Bill -

Good question. I took a quick look at the paper, and it looks like they did not do the calliope. They did 37, which is a little less than 10 percent of all hummingbird species. But one of the interesting things they found is that there was little variation in size among the hummingbirds, suggesting that the reduction in genome size preceded the diversification, and didn't change much once hummingbirds branched off of the bird family tree.

Re: ABQNews: But It's a Dry Heat

John Fleck — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:57:24 -0000

Great question, Dan. The answer is almost certainly yes.

The "official" city number comes from the Weather Service station, which is in an open area out at the airport, away from the warmer "urban heat island" in the city. There are two other official reporting stations in the city that report daily, one in the foothills near Tramway and one in the south valley, neither of which has had a 100-degree day yet. Some of the personal weather stations around town are reading above 100, and they probably are accurate, but you never know whether it's really that hot or whether the thermometer isn't properly calibrated:

http://www.wunderground.com...

Re: ABQNews: Federal scientists say climate change in southwest "well underway"

John Fleck — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:46:07 -0000

Brutha -

Thanks for you contributions, and especially for bringing the "650 dissenting voices" report into the discussion. As a science journalist, I have the privilege and responsibility of interviewing scientists and reading the scientific literature, so I've naturally spent a good deal of time with Morano's report, along with the reports of the IPCC, the latest USGCRP report and many, many more. Your confident invocation of Morano's list suggests that you might be well served by giving it a closer look. It's a bit of a hodge-podge of quotes from a remarkably diverse assortment of people. Many of them, when interviewed (as I have), or when their work is read in full (as I have), in fact agree with the IPCC's position. Many more have no qualification whatsoever as climate scientists. It is not, in other words, what you seem to think it is. It may be useful as a political talking point, but it is useless as a guide to the science.

Michael Tobis has suggested a reasonable test of where the bulk of the science lies, which is to go to the scientific meetings, read the journals, listen to what scientists working in the field actually say. That's what I do, and I'm quite comfortable with Michael's characterization of where the vast bulk of the science lies. It's pretty darn easy to get an abstract onto the agenda at an AGU or AMS meeting. The resulting scientific discussions, and in the journals - where the real science is discussed, not on Internet forums - is quite clear. Your suggestion of some hidden controversy simply hasn't borne up to my journalistic scrutiny. I stand by my coverage of this issue.

Re: ABQNews: No news is good news on the runoff front

John Fleck — Sat, 09 May 2009 10:38:39 -0000

Two places to go for that information:

The USGS provides current runoff:

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/n...

Click on the map for the state you're interested in.

For snow pack:

http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.go...

Re: ABQNews: Sunday Bird Blogging

John Fleck — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:28:19 -0000

Alison - I had to wear real shoes (bike safe) but I wore shorts. Not quite flip-flops, but the same idea.

Re: ABQNews: Old Hippies Call, Young Hippies Tweet

John Fleck — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:32:35 -0000

Trip - We're still both old, Twitter or not.

Re: ABQNews: News Conference to Discuss Snow Pack Cancelled Because of Snow

John Fleck — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:16:35 -0000

Danny -

The key areas for snow pack to feed the Rio Grande are the mountains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The snow monitoring stations up around Chama are average to below-average. The Sangres around Taos are similar. The numbers in this map are "percent of normal" for this date:

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/sno...

Re: How Many Homegrown News Stories Are in Your Daily Paper?

John Fleck — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:58:31 -0000

Albuquerque Journal, 3/27/2009

Local news/features: 12

Friday entertainment section (only appears once a week): 11

Sports: 7

Zoned Northern New Mexico edition: 5

Re: How Many Homegrown News Stories Are in Your Daily Paper?

John Fleck — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:58:31 -0000

Albuquerque Journal, 3/27/2009

Local news/features: 12

Friday entertainment section (only appears once a week): 11

Sports: 7

Zoned Northern New Mexico edition: 5

Re: ABQNews: News Conference to Discuss Snow Pack Cancelled Because of Snow

John Fleck — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:59:32 -0000

Scott - Great question. In fact, I'd be more than happy to skip the theater of news conferences entirely for subjects like this (in fact, I often do). For those putting on the show, the in-person theater is needed to try to create a "visual" for the TV people.

Re: BigTweet - Surf the Web and Post to Twitter

John Fleck — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:16:19 -0000

Sweet!