2020 02/27

Southwest Michigan AMS/NWA

27 Feb 2020

West Michigan Aviation Academy

5363 44th St.

Grand Rapids, MI 49512

President Warren Wheeler called the meeting to order at 7:15 PM. All of the board members were present with the exception of Treasurer William Marino due to his work schedule. Total attendance was 10 people.

I gave William Marino’s treasurer’s report. As of the beginning of the meeting we had a cash total of $710.04. We have 16 paid members for this year. We do encourage paid memberships to help defray costs of speakers, prizes and other incidentals.

Our speaker for the evening was Sophia Macarewich, a PhD candidate from the Earth and Mineral Sciences Department at the University of Michigan with a specialty in Paleoclimatology.  Her talk was titled “Tracking CO2 in the Past: the Earth’s Best Thermometer.”She stated you cannot understand future climate with just a few decades of observations, you need both computer models and analogues from paleoclimate studies.These studies indicate that current CO2 levels in the atmosphere are higher than they have been in the past 800,000 years. However, there has not been an equivalent rise in temperatures. These studies also indicate that in the past, temperature rises have preceded the rise in CO2, therefore CO2 could not then have been the cause of the temperature rise.There have been many times in the even more distant past with higher levels of atmospheric CO2 than now. However, the concern is that the current rate of rise of CO2 concentrations is unprecedented. We have no other examples from the past to compare with what is occurring today. We must depend upon computer models to forecast what our future climate may look like.This led to a discussion about the uncertainty of computer models since they do not handle clouds and precipitation very well. There are also assumptions made in the models as to what our future emissions will be, which she agreed entails a great deal of speculation and uncertainty.Her talk generated a good deal of discussion, which likely could have continued for quite some time beyond our 8:30 adjournment.I will be the speaker at our next meeting at 7PM on Thursday, March 26th, again at the West Michigan Aviation Academy. If you like hearing about amazing severe weather events of the past, please try to attend. I have a map of high temperatures across the Midwest and southern Canada from July 13, 1936 that is quite amazing. My point of the talk will be to show that today’s weather has not become more extreme.

Respectfully submitted

Craig James Woods

Secretary