[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> There would be a rapid increase in forcing, but in broad terms this
>> would only result in a change in the _rate_ of warming, not a step
>> change in the temperature itself.
>
> Presumably because of thermal lag of the oceans.
>
> Is that sufficient though to prevent a step change (?), thermal
> inertia of the atmosphere is virtually zero, and I am not sure how
> efficient heat transfer to the oceans would be.
The atmosphere is pretty tightly coupled to the ocean, especially the
surface. I suppose it's possible that some altitudes would be affected
more significantly, depending on the details of aerosol behaviour (a
point that I'm not at all expert on).
> Thermal lag gets me to an interesting point I've recently seen made
> about cosmic rays: It's not necessary for (at least much or some of)
> recent warming to be explainable by cosmic rays that there's a recent
> trend in cosmic rays. It's entirely sufficient for them to have gone
> up a few decades ago, and thermal (and other?) lags will mean
> continued temperature increases.
Well unless one postulates an extremely high sensitivity to such forcing
(but not to other forcings), one would expect the warming to be
levelling off - and there's no sign of that except through some rather
specious cherry-picking vis a vis 1998...
James
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
