This is my third attempt at a time lapse video of Comet ISON from this morning, Nov. 11, 2013, near New Market, Alabama.

I used a Canon 6D with Canon 200mm f/2.8 lens with Canon 2x extender, at f/16, ISO 1600, 77 60-sec exposures. Tracking with Astrotrac on a Ravelli tripod. Temperature was about 43 deg F.

My second attempt at a time lapse video of Comet ISON, this time from a dark sky location on a mountaintop near New Market, Alabama, morning of Nov. 8, 2013.

I’m learning how frustrating astrophotography with a telephoto lens can be. This time I learned the hard way: double-check the focus!! Focusing on stars with a telephoto lens is difficult, especially when working at 400 mm focal length. This video would have been so much better with crisp focus, I could have zoomed in considerably through cropping.

I will try again in a few days, weather permitting, before the pre-dawn sky gets too bright. Maybe ISON will also brighten in the meantime. (After the video loads, it should loop by itself):

There is an aspect of weather generation and storminess that I never see discussed, and which I think could be important to understand when discussing possible changes in weather with climate change.

It has long been known that the atmosphere is a very inefficient heat engine. The rate of kinetic energy generation supporting the atmospheric circulation is only about 1% of the rate of solar heating (e.g. Peixoto J P and Oort A H 1992 Physics of Climate). Since most of what we perceive as weather is related to wind, one way or another, we can roughly say that only 1% of the solar energy absorbed by the Earth goes into the creation of weather systems.

I suspect that when we see periods of greater or lesser storminess on a global basis, we are seeing fluctuations in this efficiency. If air mass temperature differences build up over a period of days or weeks, say with cold winter air masses over N. America or Asia intensifying in the winter, the temperature contrast (available energy) for the creation of storms increases. (I would imagine that storminess was considerably more energetic during the ice age(s)…I’m sure someone has researched this issue before.)

Since it takes time for low pressure systems to form and draw upon this potential energy from the temperature contrast between air masses, there is a time lag involved in the cycles of storminess. The potential energy built up is released as low pressure areas form and their circulations cause warm air to rise up and flow over the cold air masses, and the cold air slides under and displaces the warm air masses.

Global warming theory has traditionally expected that the equator-to-pole gradient in temperature would be reduced during warming. Observations suggest this has indeed occurred, at least over the Northern Hemisphere. So, the energy available for storm formation has decreased. I suspect the effect is small, though. (Storminess is also related to the tropospheric vertical temperature lapse rate…a steeper lapse rate can support more kinetic energy generation).

[By the way, I don’t think the decrease in the equator-to-pole temperature contrast is a fingerprint of human-induced warming…it’s a reflection of the geographic distribution of land, which will warm faster than the ocean no matter the cause of the warming.]

What is interesting about the 1% efficiency is how small that number is, which is related to the fact that weather is driven by relatively small temperature contrasts over relatively large distances: a few degrees over hundreds or thousands of kilometers. In a car engine, which can also be considered a heat engine with about 25% efficiency, the mechanical work that is done is drawing on temperature differences of hundreds of degrees over a few inches.

If the atmospheric heat engine efficiency were to increase from an average of 1% to 2%, that would be a doubling of the kinetic energy involved in weather systems…yet the thermodynamic efficiency would still be very low.

What does all of this have to do with global warming? I don’t know…I just think it’s interesting.

I’ve been curious whether I could pull off a time lapse video of Comet ISON using relatively modest camera equipment and a telephoto lens. Professional photographer Justin Ng used a 20 inch (!) telescope and a monochrome CCD camera to do the same thing several days ago. I told him about attempting it with a 400 mm lens and camera and he was (justifiably) skeptical, but wished me luck.

My first attempt was this morning, and the results seem good enough to try again in a couple days at a dark sky location. Despite moderate city light pollution and some clouds, I captured the green glow of Comet ISON in 52 frames (try the “full screen” icon):

Comet ISON time lapse – first attempt from Roy Spencer on Vimeo.

I had difficulty finding the comet at first…I forgot my binoculars and had to guess where it was based upon online tracking maps…it’s currently near the back “foot” of Leo. I doubt I would have seen it in the binoculars anyway because it is still so faint.

I’m also using an AstroTrac for the first time, which allows you to track the stars with a camera tripod. My polar alignment wasn’t the best, so the stars are still moving across the camera’s field of view, but it was good enough to keep the stars from trailing in the individual 60 sec exposures.

For reference, here’s Justin Ng’s time lapse using that humongous telescope and B&W CCD camera:

Journey of Comet ISON on 27 October 2013 from Justin Ng Photo on Vimeo.

What a coincidence. Seven days ago I noted a big blow coming to the UK for today (Monday) when I announced our new WeatherStreet.com pages for the GFS model output:

New Europe, Australia, etc., 10-day forecast products

On second thought…it’s probably safer to stick with climate forecasts…few people will remember that you were wrong.

After working in this field for a few decades one thing that has been crystal-clear is the obvious bias of climate research funding toward anthropogenic effects and away from natural influences on climate.

So this news story about the Nebraska state legislature wanting to fund a (relatively small, $44,000) study of natural climate cycles might seem like a welcome (albeit small) step in the right direction.

The problem is…so far, no Nebraska researchers will touch research money that doesn’t have humans-to-blame as a theme. According to the article,

“For one thing, “cyclical” isn’t a scientific term, said Barbara Mayes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.”

Oh, really? Gee, that’s news to me. Maybe “oscillation” is used more, but “cycles” implies pretty much the same thing to scientists, engineers, and mathematicians alike.

I would guess today’s research funding lopsidedness is currently running at least 100 to 1, humans versus nature. Is that really how the public would like their tax dollars spent?

Here’s the news story:

Omaha.com: State climate change study may [sic] go begging for scientists

NOTE: If you are wondering why I dinged the journalist on grammar, I believe “may” is ambiguous…it could imply ‘permission’ was being sought, rather than what I believe was intended, which was just a ‘possibility’. “Might” would have been a better choice.

This is just for our friends in Europe and Australia…or anyone traveling there.

(UPDATE: added Asia and South America, too.)

In our first foray into non-U.S. weather, I’ve added 10-day GFS model forecast animations to WeatherStreet.com. My personal favorite is the air mass temperature (850 mb) forecasts:

Europe 850mb Temp & winds (looks like quite a blow coming thru the UK next Monday)

Australia 850 mb Temp & winds

Asia 850 mb Temp & winds

South America 850 mb Temp & winds

Other forecast fields have links from the above; mouseover the blue bar to animate.

The model field graphics are from Unisys weather…we just make them easier to visualize.

Craig Idso, an expert on the fertilization effects of elevated CO2 levels on various plant species, has done a new study of the positive externality (unintended economic consequence) of increasing CO2.

In the 50 year period, 1961-2011, he estimates that there has been a $3.5 trillion benefit resulting from increased agricultural productivity. The projected benefits in the coming decades are even larger.

Egad! How could any by-product of human activity possibly be good? That sure wasn’t what I was taught in school!

In our modern age of self-flagellating hand-wringing do-gooders with too much time on their hands and anxious to find some cause to convince others to pay for assuaging their self-imposed guilt (phew), it is seldom we hear any good news about anything related to climate change.

And if just the agricultural benefits of increasing CO2 is in the multi-trillion dollar range, what about the prosperity enabled over the last 100 years by access to abundant, affordable energy? How many gazillions of dollars would that be?

Yet, the government continues to try to justify a wide range of regulations punishing the use of fossil fuels based upon the silly idea of “social cost of carbon” (SCC), the supposed overwhelming negative externalities resulting from fossil fuel use.

When are real economists with some gonads going to stand up for the social benefits of carbon (SBC)? People like Matt Ridley are speaking out on the subject. Where are the economists? Have they (like most climate researchers) been bought off, too?

Until we get an unbiased accounting of BOTH costs AND benefits of using fossil fuels, there is little hope in getting rational public policy that won’t do more harm than good.

I’ve been watching the 10-day GFS forecast for the U.S., and each run is reinforcing the previous one, with a major cold air outbreak for most of the U.S. late next week:

I’m reminded of when I started the graduate program in meteorology at UW-Madison in the fall of 1978. We were getting an unusual string of cold fronts which all the professors were claiming could not last. Eventually, warmer Pacific air would come in from the west…it always does.

Except during winter ’78-’79…it didn’t. The cold air just kept coming.

I’m not making a winter forecast here…just reminiscing. But I will say that I’ve been watching the model forecasts nearly every day for decades (since I’m co-developer of WeatherStreet.com, and still a weather weenie at heart), and for many years the model forecast tendency has been to over-forecast these cold air outbreaks.

The model would predict a cold front coming through our neck of the woods (N. Alabama) 5-7 days in advance…but the front would almost never make it, or it would not plunge as far south (or be as cold) as originally forecast.

But this model error tendency seems to have changed in the last couple years, with that cold air not only making it, but reaching the Gulf coast and beyond. This has been a record cold summer in Alabama, and we had cool fronts pass through regularly all summer long. I don’t recall that ever happening in the 30 years we have lived here. The lawn stayed spring-green all summer, when usually we have to work to keep it alive.

Maybe my friend Joe Bastardi will chime in and say whether he has seen a similar change in the model error in recent years.

At least we can be thankful that when the cold air does arrive, it will be slightly warmer than it would have been without global warming. Ha-ha.

I was working up some global comparisons between the CMIP5 models (provided by the KNMI Climate Explorer via John Christy) and the HadCRUT4 surface temperatures, as well as our UAH lower tropospheric temperatures.

And I think I discovered what the IPCC meant regarding 95% certainty and global warming. I’m sure it was an honest mistake on their part.

As seen in the following graphic, over the period of the satellite record (1979-2012), both the surface and satellite observations produce linear temperature trends which are below 87 of the 90 climate models used in the comparison.

So, about 95% (actually, 96.7%) of the climate models warm faster than the observations. While they said they were 95% certain that most of the warming since the 1950s was due to human greenhouse gas emissions, what they meant to say was that they are 95% sure their climate models are warming too much.

Honest mistake. Don’t you think? Maybe?