Argos -Automated Buoys Predict Climate Change from Land & Ocean Links

Odd as it might seem, it is easier to predict changes in the climate 100 years from now than one decade from now, say scientists from major climate computing centers in the United States, England, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada are gathering at the Aspen Global Change Institute to determine if and how scientists can create models to make short-term climate predictions.

Worldwide climate change over the long term will matter more to the human experience than year-to-year oscillations. But over the short term, drought conditions will have a greater impact than global warming

Most humans — whether they work in agriculture, biology or a skiing resort— have more riding on what their local climate will look like next year than in the distant future.

At Wednesday's public lecture, Dr. Lisa Goddard, a research scientist at Columbia University's Earth Institute, explained that scientists are making progress in their understanding of how oceans affect short-term climate change.

Due to a large network of automated buoys, called Argos, which measure the temperature and salinity of the oceans, scientists have grown in their understanding of ocean patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. By combining this oceanic data with other climate data and modeling, they’ve gained insight into the connections between land and oceans — and how they may relate to short-term climate change.

Oceans are an equal partner with the atmosphere in producing the weather, and the dominant partner with regard to long-range weather patterns.

The oceans play an important role in heat storage and transport, and are vital to the transportation of heat from the equator to the poles. They are essential to the hydrological cycle as well. Covering 70% of the Earth's surface, the oceans have 1,100 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. They contain 97% of the free water on the planet—90,000 times as much water as the atmosphere. And they receive 78% of global precipitation. Unfortunately, oceanic processes have not been studied nearly so well as atmospheric processes; even environmentally crucial properties such as salinity and heat transference at depth have been relatively neglected until recently. Abrupt climate change has everything to do with “thermohaline” dynamics in the ocean depths; that term is a compound of two ancient Greek roots meaning “heat” and “salt.”

The visiting scientists warn not to expect a working model by the end of the week. “Right now, they're just trying to sort out 'how do you know what you know?' explained institute director John Katzenberg. The attendees are exploring how to approach short-term climate prediction.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

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Source: http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20080628/NEWS/449137992/1058/AE&parentprofile=-1

Comments

[Michelle]

So what's the climate prediction in 100 years?

[Al Fin]

The funny thing is that until Argos came online, most "climate scientists" strongly believed that the oceans were warming along with the atmospheric warming of the late 1970s through 1998. Then they got the Argos data and found the oceans were cooling. What a shock. Since most of the planetary heat available to the atmosphere is stored in the oceans, the heat trends in the oceans are far more important than yearly or decadal oscillations of atmospheric temperatures. They haven't got a clue.

[Fred X]

The MSG ( Militant Stalinist Greens ) are about as uncool as they get. If you believe in MMGW you are such a square. When liberals live like Amish I will take them more seriously. Until then I can only deduce they are insincere about global warming.

[jer35mx]

I think the Argos system is primordially checking the currents of the northern hemisphery, I wish to know if they take in account the El Niño, La Niña conditions that affects LatinoAmérica.