Tag: education

Eli’s Three Laws or Hansen Simply Explained There is an interesting to and fro over at Real Climate about the recent Hansen, Ruedy and Sato paper on an increase in climate extremes.  Eli had a go at the preprint.  Tamino has entered a demurral, which Eli suspects has an answer in what is below.  Now some, not Eli to be sure, think the Rabett is on occasion cryptic.  So be it, but in this case he has not quite worked through all the implications and it is better to be thought mysterious than foolish.  Still the Bunny is somewhat skilled in boiling things down, and at RC pointed out that there are three simple points in the Hansen paper First if there is an increasing/decreasing linear trend on a noisy series, the probability of reaching new maxima or minima increases with time Second, if you put more energy into a system variability increases. Third , if you put more energy into a system variability increases asymmetrically towards the direction favored by higher energy   Hank added a codicil Fourth, if you keep going in the direction you’re headed, you’ll get there.  The first point has been a standard here at RR and also in various comments about the web in the recent discussions about why there are more temperature maxima than minima.  The second is related to the idea that if the parametric landscape affecting anything is not smooth, excursions from a stable state require additional energy to overcome "attractions".