Eastern US temps to be 110F in 2080

Lookie lookie - the sky is falling the sky is falling - oh what can we do now, please save us . .

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18601954/

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/extreme_summer.html

I read the article. I have some questions, and I posed them in an email to the principal researcher - see what you think. If he answers me, I'll post it here -

Professor Lynn - as an amateur astronomer, pilot and weather buff who has a home weather station and a decade of records, I am sorry that I could only view your article in the April 2007 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate with incredulity. While of course you are credentialed researcher and I am but a poor smuck on the street, your conclusion that somehow summer average temperatures will increase by 10F over the course the next 80 years strains my mental faculties. It moreover makes no sense based on obervable criteria.

Your computer models may tell you what your research published, but the conclusion is contradictory both internally and externally.

In order to make your conclusion viable, essentially, global warming must create a semi-permanent La Nina. In effect, the warming atmosphere will cause the ocean under it to cool across a vast area of the Pacific Ocean and allows a trough to form over the eastren Pacific, which encourages the development of a downstream ridge over the Eastern CONUS. Thereafter, that La Nina will not cause a heat imbalance, which would assist in reversing the pressures and then the temperature, but, remain a semi-permanent feature of summer, which downstream causes a teleconnection that pumps up the Azores / Bermuda High causing a decrease in precipiation which allows the ground to warm in a closed loop.

I'll state again that I am not a climate scientist, but your conclusion makes no sense based on 50 years of living in the northeast and watching what happen when temperatures warm in the area. You know for a fact that air becomes more able to carry moisture as it warms. So, where do your models show dewpoints in 80 years? There is no way that 70F+ dewpoints will not create at least airmass TSRA even in the absence of cold fronts. What will happen is that the influence of these warms temps and the Bermuda High will warm the ocean under it, which, as we know, will weaken the High, allowing cooler air from the poles to come south into this incredibly moist airmass. The TSRA will be spectacular and the droughts and high temps ended as the TSRA moisten the ground. What you are essentially stating is the summer climate of the Carolinas will come north 7-8 degrees latitude. What do we see every single day in the Carolinas from the Solstice to late August? Afternoon airmass TSRA. And that’s what you'll get in this situation. Efectively limiting the heating by the cloud cover in afternoon.

Every other study I have seen shows El Nino becoming predominant in a global warming scenario, not a La Nina. El nino summers are generally cool and damp the northeast USA since the warm air over the eastern Pacific creates a down stream trough in the atmosphere. You are essentially arguing that this will not happen since if an El nino becomes a semi=permanent phenomenom the normal consequence of that will not happen in the atmosphere because of 'Global Warming.' That is not a good enough excuse. The laws of physics and the way the atmosphere works do not change because someone has a computer model. You admit that the teleconnection between the EastPac trough and Eastern CONUS ridge exists, so if an El Nino forms, a trough will predominate over the Eastern CONUS, bringing cooler and not warmer temps.

In order to scientificablly viable, a global warming model, and in fact the entire argument for human caused global warming, needs to explain how global 'cooling' existed in the 1960's and 1970's. If a model cannot explain already known phenomena, then it cannot satisfy any reasonably rigorous scientific review. We should be able to wind the global warming models back to 1900, add the CO2 and recreate the climate that we KNOW happened. If we can't do that, then the models are wrong.

Finally, I have one question that I have NEVER seen answered simply and coherently. If one looks at the blackbody absorption spectra of water vapor and CO2, they overlap. Logically, if water vapor is already absorbing all of the radiation at a certain frequency, how is CO2 going to add to the absorbtion of re-radiated infrared? It is akin to adding a piece of paper to aluminum foil covering a window; the room gets no darker. Every purported explanation begs the question, and uses as an example the planet Venus, with its' dense CO2 atmosphere and high temperatures. However, Venus has orders of magnitude less water vapor than Earth. It is akin to looking at an apple and calling it an orange because it is a fruit.

I am not one of those deniers of global warming. I simply have an open mind and want to be convinced of the Science before I start tinkering as a species with the climate of a planet whose largess we need to continue to survive.

I look forward to your scholarly input -