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THE GROWING CLIMATE CRISIS Dr. Sam Miller Professor of Meteorology

Explore the intricate world of climate change with Dr. Sam Miller, an expert meteorologist. Learn about peer review, scientific methods, and how to discern reliable sources in this vital discussion.

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THE GROWING CLIMATE CRISIS Dr. Sam Miller Professor of Meteorology

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  1. THE GROWING CLIMATE CRISIS Dr. Sam Miller Professor of Meteorology AMS Certified Consulting Meteorologist

  2. Relevant Education: • 1982:Diploma, Weather Observing, USAF Technical College. • 1984: Diploma (Honors), Weather Forecasting, USAF Technical College. • 1996:B.Sc. (Summa Cum Laude), Physics; Applied Mathematics, University of New Hampshire. • 1999:M.Sc., Earth Sciences – Oceanography; Air-Sea Interaction, University of New Hampshire. • Thesis: Air-Sea Heat Flux in the Gulf of Maine: Meteorological Forcing and Oceanic Response • 2003:Ph.D. Earth Sciences – Coastal Oceanography; Sea Breeze, University of New Hampshire. • Dissertation: The Central New England Sea Breeze Study. • 2017:MBA, Plymouth State University.

  3. Relevant Work Experience: • 1982 – 1989:Weather Forecaster/Observer, United States Air Force. • 1990 – 2003:Weather Observer, Pease Air National Guard Base. • 1991 – Present:Meteorology and Physics Consultant/Software Developer, C-10 Research and Education Foundation. • 1999 – 2000: Research Scientist/Programmer, Ocean Process Analysis Laboratory, University of New Hampshire. • 2000 – 2003:Research Scientist, Climate Change Research Center, University of New Hampshire. • 2003 – 2005:Meteorologist, Anchorage Forecast Office, National Weather Service (NOAA), Anchorage, Alaska. • 2005 – Present:Assistant/Associate/Professor of Meteorology, Plymouth State University. Department chair 2016 – June 30, 2018.  • 2006 – Present: Consulting Meteorologist. CCM status in 2017.

  4. Selected Publications: • Miller, S.T.K., and B.D. Keim, 2003: Synoptic-Scale Controls on the Sea Breeze of the Central New England Coast, Weather and Forecasting, 18, 236 – 248. • Miller, S.T.K., B.D. Keim, R.W. Talbot, and H. Mao, 2003: The Sea Breeze - Structure, Forecasting, and Impacts, Reviews of Geophysics, 41 (3), 1 - 31. • Angevine, W.M., C.J. Senff, A.B. White, E.J. Williams, J. Koermer, S.T.K. Miller, R. Talbot, P.E. Johnston, S.A. McKeen, and T. Downs, 2004: Coastal Boundary Layer Influence on Pollutant Transport in New England, Journal of Applied Meteorology, 43, 1425 – 1437. • Mofidi, A., I. Soltanzadeh, Y. Yousefi, A. Zarrin, M. Soltani, J.M. Samakosh, G. Azizi, and S.T.K. Miller, 2014: Modeling the exceptional south Foehn event (Garmij) over the Alborz Mountains during the extreme forest fire of December 2005, Natural Hazards, 74, doi 10.1007/s11069-014-1440-9. • Miller, S.T.K., 2015: Applied Thermodynamics for Meteorologists, Cambridge University Press, 382 pgs. • Miller, S.T.K., 2017: Methods for Computing the Boiling Temperature of Water at Varying Pressures, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 98 (7), doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0174.1, 1485 - 1491. • Miller, S.T.K., J. Cordeira, C. Hohman, A. Jacques, P. Johnston, P. Poyner, A. Small, and D. St. Jean, 2019: Applied Radar Meteorology, in preparation.

  5. Sources for this presentation: • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), American Meteorological Society (AMS), American Geophysical Union (AGU), National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and other professional organizations • Other peer-reviewed scientific papers • U.S. Government agencies (NOAA, NASA, etc.) • Mainstream news articles derived from peer-reviewed scientific papers • Paul Mayewski – UNH Climate Change Research Center • “The Glacial World According to Wally” (Wallace S. Broecker) • “A Brain for All Seasons” (William H. Calvin) • “The Long Summer” (Brian Fagan)

  6. A matter of belief?

  7. Climate change is an extremely complex subject Who do you believe?

  8. Global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R – OK)

  9. “The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.” U.S. National Academy of Sciences http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer

  10. Climate change is an extremely complex subject Who do you believe? How do you decide who to believe?

  11. Climate change is an extremely complex subject Who do you believe? How do you decide who to believe? PEER REVIEW

  12. Does the question have a sound theoretical* basis? • Data to answer question are drawn from the observational record • Results are produced via sound scientific methods; can be reproduced from the same data by someone with a similar background • Conclusions are drawn from results via deductive reasoning Climate change is an extremely complex subject Who do you believe? How do you decide who to believe? PEER REVIEW *Means “law of nature.” For example, the Law of Gravity is a “theory.”

  13. Physical science is not “belief” or ideology Conclusions are logically drawn from results, derived by the careful analysis of data to answer specific questions

  14. Discussion topics: • Natural climate variations • Greenhouse effect and human-induced variation • Projections for the next century • Is warming actually happening? • Complex determinism • Thermohaline circulation • Global climate experiment: Can we induce a repeat of the Younger Dryas Event?

  15. Natural climate variations

  16. When asked, one answer given to the question of the causes of climate change is that all climate variations seen in the instrumental and proxy records are entirely natural. • This has sometimes been phrased as “the climate is always changing.” • Another answer to the question has been “I’m not a scientist.”

  17. MILANKOVITCH CYCLES Milutin Milankovic Serbian civil engineer and geophysicist Worked in Scandinavia (1879 – 1958)

  18. MILANKOVITCH CYCLES • Originally formulated in an attempt to explain ice ages noted in the geologic record • Astronomical variations that cause changes in the amount of sunlight reaching a given point on the Earth’s surface • Account for some (more than half) – but NOT all – of natural range of climate variation

  19. MILANKOVITCH CYCLES • Variations in the shape of the Earth’s orbit (eccentricity)

  20. MILANKOVITCH CYCLES 2. Precession of the Perihelion with respect to the seasons

  21. MILANKOVITCH CYCLES 3. Variations in the tilt of the axis (obliquity)

  22. MILANKOVITCH CYCLES 4. Precession of the axis

  23. MILANKOVITCH CYCLES Variations add up to net Solar Forcing NET

  24. MILANKOVITCH CYCLES Variations are not enough to account for all observed climate variations NET OBSERVED

  25. THERE ARE OTHER FORCES AT WORK • Variations in the Solar “constant.” (Scale is years – centuries for oscillations; billions of years for long-term increase) 2. Variations in global ocean circulation. (Scale is decades – millennia) • Variations in arrangement of land masses. (Scale is millions of years – hundreds of millions of years) • “Other” – Volcanic activity, natural oscillations like El Nino, collisions with celestial objects, etc. (All scales.)

  26. HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT THE ACTUAL CLIMATE VARIATIONS ARE?

  27. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD VOSTOK ICE CORE

  28. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD • TEMPERATURE RECORD DERIVED BY SEVERAL MEANS, SOME OF WHICH ARE: • Ratio of Oxygen-18 to Oxygen-16 isotopes (d18O) in benthic foramanifera and ice cores • Mg/Ca ratios in benthic foramanifera • Alkenones • Pollen distributions • Carbon-13/Oxygen-18 bonds in CO2 gas bubbles

  29. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD • DATING ALSO PERFORMED BY SEVERAL MEANS: • Counting annual layers in ice cores • (GISP2 Ice Core) • Seasonal chemical transport • Isotopic/radioisotopic methods

  30. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD MILANKOVITCH-DERIVED SOLAR FORCING NOT A VERY GOOD INDICATOR OF TEMPERATURE

  31. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD CO2 BUBBLES IN ICE SAMPLES ARE A BETTER INDICATOR OF AIR TEMPERATURE

  32. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD CO2 BUBBLES IN ICE SAMPLES ARE A BETTER INDICATOR OF AIR TEMPERATURE THERE IS A VERY HIGH DEGREE OF CORRELATION BETWEEN THE TWO, AND NO ASSOCIATED TIME LAG

  33. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD 2015 Berkeley study confirms direct physical link between CO2 gas and global warming in Earth’s atmosphere (originally proposed by Svante Arrhenius in 19th Century) Scientists used an array of extremely precise instruments that the U.S. Department of Energy installed at climate research facilities in Barrow, AK, and Lamont, OK. Instruments measured the amount of infrared radiation coming down to the Earth’s surface from the Sun, and the amount of heat radiation the Earth emits back up.  (http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Berkeley-experts-study-strengthens-human-link-6101054.php)

  34. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD HOLOCENE RECORD ENDS BEFORE BEGINNING OF INDUSTRIAL AGE

  35. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD LAST GLACIAL MAXIMUM (LGM) 20,000 YEARS AGO

  36. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD LAST INTERGLACIAL 120,000 YEARS AGO

  37. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD BEGINNING OF MIGRATION OUT OF AFRICA BY MODERN HUMANS BEGAN DURING THE LAST INTERGLACIAL

  38. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD 2019: This is an extremely complex story that we are just beginning to understand. There is much more to the human story than we have time to discuss here. BEGINNING OF MIGRATION OUT OF AFRICA BY MODERN HUMANS BEGAN DURING THE LAST INTERGLACIAL

  39. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD MIGRATION CONTINUED THROUGHOUT THE LAST ICE AGE

  40. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD INTERGLACIAL ~250,000 YEARS AGO

  41. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD MODERN HUMANS NOW NEANDERTHAL 40 kY HUMAN SPECIATION EVENT 250 kY HOMO ERECTUS

  42. 40 kY MODERN HUMANS NEANDERTHAL 250 kY HOMO ERECTUS

  43. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD MODERN HUMANS NOW NEANDERTHAL 40 kY THE OTHER TWO SPECIES OF HUMANS DID NOT SURVIVE THE MOST RECENT ICE AGE 250 kY HOMO ERECTUS

  44. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD GLACIAL/INTERGLACIAL A REPEATING PATTERN

  45. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD Longer record indicates about 8 interglacials over last 800,000 years (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica - EPICA)

  46. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD NATURAL RANGE OF CO2 VARIABILITY

  47. ANTARCTIC ICE CORES ONE TYPE OF CLIMATE RECORD WARMING AFTER LGM NOT A SMOOTH TRANSITION TO HOLOCENE CLIMATE

  48. Greenhouse effect and human-induced variations

  49. GLOBAL RADIATIVE BALANCE Incoming Terms Solar “constant” ≈ 1367 Wm-2 30 % bounces off About half makes it to the surface

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