Joe Bastardi On Water Vapour & El Ninos

By Paul Homewood

Joe Bastardi develops the his ideas on how oceans affect global temperatures, in a guest post at Climate Change Dispatch:

Given it’s the number one greenhouse gas (GHG), one would naturally think water vapor (WV) is the big powerhouse in global weather and climate.

It’s why I am a lone voice in the wilderness who supports Dr. John Cahir’s idea from year’s ago that the real metric to measure global warming is saturation mixing ratios.

Unfortunately, such an idea is about as popular as an outbreak of influenza with so many scientists pushing CO2-driven warming.

Why? Well, what is the number one source of thermal energy on the planet, with 99.9%? The oceans. What is the prime source of water vapor (and arguably CO2)? The oceans.

The recent Super El Nino sent an immense amount of water vapor into the pattern. I have already opined that this has a very long life as far as the effect on the planetary temperature goes because very tiny amounts of water vapor left over in the pattern have their biggest effect on the arctic temps in their cold season.

So, while the Earth’s temperatures, where it’s above freezing much of the time, return to normal, the amount of warmth left in the Arctic areas continue to skew the Earth’s temperatures.

It also leads to interesting other feedback aspects, which we have to deal with in forecasting. So, it is very important to us. But also understanding the source and those implications are important.

But the Super Nino and where we are now in the Arctic, and in fact, the entire state of the oceans, should make a big point,

Once again, as we see almost every year since the warming began, as we head into the warmest time of the year, the Arctic temps go below normal!

Daily mean temperature and climate north of the 80th parallel, as a function of the day of the year.

You can go to this site and go back and review what is going on:

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

You can see what I am talking about here. Notice the bulk of Antarctica in its winter is warm, while the Arctic has flipped to cold.

While the NCEP CFSR has the current temp at plus 185C vs the 30-year mean, if not for the major warmth over the Antarctic and again, remember how small it increased in WV when and where it’s very cold and dry really have a big effect on temperature, the rest of the planet is at average or below.

What is impressive is the amount of cold over northern Antarctica and over the water just to the north That is not easy to do, Of the three continents in the southern hemisphere (south of the equator), only Australia is warm.

In any case, if we look at the saturation mixing ratio tables, what happens if extra water vapor (only very tiny amounts) get pushed into the Arctic.

Well, it’s going to snow more but it’s going to be warmer (more clouds) have to form.

January, in spite of all the warming, was still very cold. So, look what has been going on with snow in the past 30 years–green line. Not much change, but since the colder times (red line) it has INCREASED! What could the cause be? There has to be extra moisture (water vapor):