The wind is a bother,and it is a bit of a gambit, but our vegi patch is well sheltered. I blame my inner Canberran, who doesn’t feel too cold.

Re the solar cycle and warming; the way it was explained to me, back in the bright but hazy early ninties, was that during the solar maximum the sun delivers more energy to the earth. during the solar minima there is less energy delivered to the earth. ( wellduh). the greenhouse gases help trap that energy in the earth’s atmosphere. all other factors being neutral there will be a considerable lag time, after an injection of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, before the maximum temperature range is reached. the temp was expected to rise in steps associated with the solar cycle, highest temps around the solar maxima, lower around the minima. The analogy that was offered was late summer. the temps around the summer solstice are rarely the highest of the season, they often occur in the following months. i hope that that made sense.

To the commenter above with the tomato seedlings – I’m very glad I haven’t done that, with the wild tornadoes yesterday and more predicted for today! We did however get a bit of a rain deluge in our area, for which I’m hugely grateful.

The USGS article is fine, as far as it goes, except that they give 8m for West Antarctica instead of the usual 5. Glaciologists used to think that it would take about 6000 years for ice sheets like Greenland to melt. Hansen et al are saying “considerably less” but I don’t recall them being too specific.

As to the paleoclimate record, have a look at the third image in this post and the first image in this one. Note especially the dot for Pliocene 3 million years ago when the sea level was 25 metres up on now, plus or minus 10.

I’m no longer inclined to be as formulaic as I was in the five statements just after the second figure on that post, but each has a basis in what has happened. We’ve had a lot of icy climate in the last 3 million years and now east Antarctica in 4k high, which becomes a factor in itself. The elevation makes it extra cold and it’s very dry, only a few mm each year. So now that it’s there it’s probably got some extra stability. It will probably melt a bit around the edges, but there’s likely to be extra precipitation further inland.

Another factor going a long way back is the shape of the ocean basins. So at some stage the sea level was considerably more than 80m higher than now.

I haven’t studied the sea levels during the Holocene, but what Grumphy said @ 38 makes sense. The temperature was a bit higher back then. But the bottom line is that if the temp goes up by a degree or two and stays there for centuries you can expect quite alarming sea level changes to follow. We just don’t know how quickly.

I mentioned the study last year that predicted a pause in warming because it’s there, but I’m inclined to think the criticism of it was valid.

I was a little surprised that in the most recent study the change in the solar cycle was given such prominence, but my job here is to report what scientists are saying. It doesn’t mean the whole AGW thing is overturned, so settle down!

It could be related to the expansion of the tropics, which I understand involves stronger uplift in the centre of the tropical band with dry air then coming down at the extended edge of the band. Hard to explain without a diagram, but try this one or put “hadley circulation” into google image -eg this or this.

That’s definitely associated with AGW.

At 12 Roger Jones said:

SE Australia stepped up in max temp in 1998, stepped down in rainfall. At the moment causes can only be inferred but I’d be willing to bet there’s a strong anthropogenic influence in what’s going on at the regional scale.

In Brisbane we definitely stepped down in rainfall in 2000 after good rain in 1998 and 1999. But I read somewhere recently that Qld’s millenium drought is only just longer/worse than the federation drought. So I’ll wait until the climate scientists declare it AGW. Meanwhile in the post about the recent report by Will Steffen Climate change 2009: faster change & more serious risks I summarised what he said this way:

Progress has been made in sorting out what is happening with the climate in Australia. The shorter story is that there is a clear climate change signal in the drying pattern in south-west Australia in recent decades and in the lower edge of the Murray-Darling Basin. There is some evidence of a climate change signal in the drying trend in Victoria and the lower half of South Australia. In Northern NSW and Queensland it is too early to say. There is evidence of increased rainfall in the north-west from the Asian brown cloud. There is no clear pattern yet of changes in El Nino.

In the case of El Nino, I think he meant in relation to AGW. I didn’t try to summarise what he said about the Indian Ocean Dipole.