Re: [Phys-l] An interesting fact about global warming.

["David T. Marx" <marx@phy.ilstu.edu>]

Oreske did mention this in her talk as part of the evidence that it is
increased CO2 and not solar forcing.  The variation in the Earth's
albedo is not something that seems to be well understood as of yet.

> Maybe everyone else knows this, but I just came upon it in the last month.
>
> From:
>
> http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#Q1
>
> There has been a general, but not global, tendency toward reduced diurnal
> temperature range (DTR), (the difference between high and low daily
> temperatures) over about 50% of the global land mass since the middle of the
> 20th century. Cloud cover has increased in many of the areas with reduced
> diurnal temperature range. The overall positive trend for maximum daily
> temperature over the period of study (1950-93) is 0.1°C/decade, whereas the
> trend for daily minimum temperatures is 0.2°C/decade. This results in a
> negative trend in the DTR of -0.1°C/decade.
>
>
> In other words, about 2/3 of the observed warming is due to higher night-time temps with only 1/3 due to higher daytime temps.  While, I think, this actually supports 'greenhouse' warming, it might also factor into some of the more extreme 'doomsday' scenarios--to lessen them perhaps?    Not sure....but I find it interesting that seemingly (I may have missed it) this is not the kind of information fed to the public.
>
> Rick
>
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> Richard W. Tarara
> Professor of Physics
> Saint Mary's College
> Notre Dame, IN
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