Hello, li'l ZENers...
I missed you also, friends... ZEN Central has been highly mobile, gauging the waters, so to speak, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. These highly-scientific undertakings have given us new insights to 'water' in America, as a former raft guide who lived and lives in a dry, snow-dependant State (Colorado).With the weekly photographic email-announcements received at ZEN Central, from NASA, a certain 'photo-map' haunts us, which displays the water temperatures in the two Oceans, and Gulf, from which hurricanes are born; check it out!
(photo credit: Japan’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer
for EOS (AMSR-E) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite)
Looks like a recipe for disaster, n'est-ce pas? Read the prediction that accompanies the photo-map above:
On May 27, 2010, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast an “active to extremely active” hurricane season for 2010. NOAA projected a 70 percent probability for 14 to 23 named storms, 8 to 14 hurricanes, and 3 to 7 major hurricanes.
Ready, Florida? Louisiana? Is this summer to be the sequel most media sources have 'predicted' since Katrina in 2005? Years ago, we here at ZEN Central wrote a rambling piece that discussed a new way of looking at the problem of 'Global Warming', also known as 'Climate Change' OR AGW ('Anthropogenic Global Warming'). As we try often, we thought (we think we thought!) 'outside the box', and came up with a new angle, under an understandable label:
See our original text here, which is not the most coherent piece this author has produced. Yet the concept remains simple: we live on a Planet that has (indubitably) a majority of its surface covered in water.
Any planet (a non-scientist would think) that is 71 percent covered in water would display the tendency, when warmed, to propel more water vapour into the atmosphere: to become more Humid.
Thus our original idea became this: is 'Global Warming' (Naysayers brushed aside for the moment, for their motivations are not shared here) the Symptom, or the Disease?
Consider a 'burn victim'; although the heat that scorched their skin was the incident, what remains is the ugly scar of the burn area. If our analogy holds, the effect (man-derived or cyclic thus normal) of 'global warming' on our Water-Planet is going to increase the overall humidity... non?
NB: when we wrote our piece, in June of 2008, there were very few 'google hits' to be found concerning 'global humidification'; however new attempts do find others, going as far back as 1991! This article, by Dr A. G. Georgiadi of the Institute of Geography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, discussed in simple terms what has become one of our central tenets:
The predicted climate warming will bring significant changes not only in the thermal regime of the Earth, but also in the regime of its atmospheric moisture cycle as well as in the zonal structure and biophysical properties of the vegetation cover. All this will lead to substantial changes in the hydrological cycle of the Earth.
"... the hydrological cycle of the Earth." (aka 'Global Humidification')... what have we seen in these nineteen years since Dr Georgiadi wrote on behalf of the Soviet scientists?
Certain alpine or mountainous zones seem to have increasingly bizarre weather/snow patterns: the Colorado Rockies experienced minimal snowfall until mid-February, and then snow began to fall which only ended at the end of May. Similar patterns were observed in the Northwestern Alps this spring, as well.
Will 'naysayers' (who tend to be 'anti-conspiracy-theorists' of the First Order: which is not to say that every topic they oppose is based in a 'conspiracy theory') persuade, through vociferous adherence to nearly-nonsensical positions, the unthinking or unknowing individual to 'scoff' at any notion of catastrophic changes? hmmm?
Behold the studies of Swiss, or global glaciers, now in retreat since the late 1880s: since the second generation of oil-users appeared on earth, and commensurate with the booming Earth population (for which one can applaud or condemn the wide transport of food via oil-burning transportation paradigms), Alpine glaciers have lost vast percentages of their surface area, and total volume. Here's what one study had to say (from the Abstract of a pay-to-view article):
A significant ice loss since the end of the 19th century was observed in the ablation area, while the changes in the accumulation area were small. We found moderate negative secular rates until the 1960s, followed by steady to positive rates for about two decades and strong ice loss starting in the 1980s which has lasted until the present. An evaluation of 19 glaciers revealed a total ice volume loss of about 13 km3 since the 1870s, of which 8.7 km3 occurred since the 1920s and 3.5 km3 since 1980. Decadal mean net balance rates for the periods 1920-60, 1960-80 and 1980-present are −0.29, −0.03 and −0.53 m a−1 w.e., respectively.
(Authors: Kääb, Andreas; Paul, Frank; Maisch, Max; Hoelzle, Martin; Haeberli, Wilfried
Source: Annals of Glaciology, Volume 34, Number 1, 1 January 2002 , pp. 362-366(5))
So, ZEN Audience, this author leaves you to ponder the long range effect of 'Global Humidification'; a profound change of the hydrological cycle on our Earth: is this a 'by-product' of AGW, or is it the real 'Disease', and 'AGW' is a symptom causing it?
Scientists? We want to hear from you, at crystelZENmud !
//**** crystelZENmud ****\\
© 2010
