Is the atmosphere a chaotic or complex system?

You ask about half-a-dozen questions. Yes, the atmosphere is a complex system. What I mean by that is that apparent structure arises (fronts, mesoscale convective systems, hurricanes) where none might have been there initially. So that answers the next question, there definitely is a lot of structure, on various scales, in the atmosphere. Generally, the same types of structures appear again and again so they are repeatable, but not in any sense where you can say "This same situation happened 27 years ago, so we can just forecast what happened then."

Atmospheric and climate systems absolutely adhere to the laws of physics. That doesn't necessarily make them predictable, however.

Yes, slight changes in starting conditions can make big changes on the synoptic scale. This was first identified in work of Edward Lorenz on some very simplified atmosphere models. He found that rounding errors caused large changes in model output after sufficient time. That's why weather is not believed to be predictable on time scales greater than a few weeks or a month. Some improvement can be made, though, by running the models many times with starting conditions that have been "tweaked" in various ways. This is the basis for ensemble forecasting which is in current practice.

http://wwwt.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/gmb/ens/

Climate forcing will also absolutely adhere to the laws of physics. However, that does not necessarily make something perfectly predictable, since that depends on knowing initial conditions with infinite accuracy, which is impossible. That's true both classically and quantum mechanically.

I am always skeptical. Many people that do not believe in AGW, such as The Weather Channel founder John Coleman, call themselves deniers. I see very few skeptics on here, most of the people on YA that do not believe in AGW either are ignorant of science, or deny it because they do not agree with AGW mitigation policy. Neither of those things makes one a skeptic.

EDIT: It's not clear we're talking about the same sort of stability. What I was discussing was the predictability of weather, and it seems clear from our extant models that the atmosphere is not stable to small perturbations. However, I think your question may be directed more at the global circulation patterns in the mean rather than at any instant in time. I doubt that the atmospheric system is perfectly stable, I think it may have more neutral stability, making adjustments to small permanent changes due to forcings. There is some evidence that change is already occurring in the barotropic/baroclinic boundary, with the jet stream seemingly having moved poleward in past decades. Large forcings may push the general circulation into other regimes. There was an interesting exchange at the AMS national meeting in San Diego, where Lorenz was showing such regime shifts in his "toy" atmospheric models and William Gray was questioning him about them.

The atmosphere is both a chaotic and complex system that not only includes the atmosphere, but the land and water masses to regulate not only gas concentrations but also over all temperatures.

I for one would prefer being called a skeptic rather than a denier. A denier is if there is substantial proof that something is real but you deny it's existence. For me, man made climate change is so far a falsehood since the "climate scientists" have only been trying to proof that it's man's fault. Only now are some of these scientists looking at the more complex interactions to figure out what is happening.

Careful. We have got to upload chlorine periodically, due to the fact that chlorine evaporates. Your analogy does not account for the time aspect. A bigger analogy could be if we dripped chlorine into the fountain to compare the detailed quantity of evaporation, and speak to that the baseline. Also, we keep one hundred% humidity to make water evaporation negligible, to simplify matters. Now, expand the chlorine drip by way of a small percent. Over time, the chlorine concentrations within the water will expand, due to the fact that enter now exceeds evaporation. Eventually, chlorine attention within the water reaches the factor wherein evaporation catches as much as and balances the further enter (bad suggestions), and a brand new equilibrium is reached at that greater attention. Of path, we might argue that the evaporation of the chlorine is a speedy and tremendously responsive bad suggestions, for this reason no longer a exceptional mannequin for gradual greenhouse fuel reabsorption feedbacks, however that is delving too deeply in the main points, I feel. The elementary thought of a few volume larger enter over the years main to a couple volume greater equilibrium attention is sound.

Skeptic is more accurate. Denier implies that you are denying something that is certain when in fact it is highly dubious that humans will ever cause serious or dangerous warming.

Judging by the fact that the climate models have no history of successfully predicting the future climate, it is obviously both complex and chaotic. Even if you are able to predict thunderstorms, you will never be able to predict exactly where they will form or how powerful they will be. That is much simpler than predicting the climate. It is chaotic in that regard.

CO2 acts in a perfectly predictable way when it is confined in a laboratory. It also maintains the same physical properties in the atmosphere. The problem comes when you try to predict the effect of increasing the CO2 on the climate. Then it is obviously not predictable and they don't even understand it well enough to model the effect. There is no way to know what effects it will have on cloud formation and other feedback mechanism. Warming caused by CO2 might and logically would cause the same negative feedback mechanisms that warming causes. If warming from CO2 caused a positive feedback, increased water vapor because it is warmer, that increased warming would likely be cause by water vapor acting as a greenhouse gas also. That obviously hasn't happened or there would be times of runaway warming in the geological record. The point is that there are obviously feedback mechanisms that control the climate. We don't completely understand them or we would know why there was a medieval warm period and little ice age. That seems to be based on the sun but it isn't known how exactly.

We had times when it was much warmer. The AGW crowd tried to revise history to erase it because they were times of prosperity and it points to a huge weakness in their argument. The climate obviously varies and it gets much warmer than it is today. The temperature is obviously not driven by CO2 concentrations. The concentration has been increasing rather dramatically with no warming showing up in the climate models as increased greenhouse warming. That is pretty strong evidence that the climate sensitivity to CO2 is dramatically overstated. It is an undeniable fact that increased CO2 is very beneficial to plants in spite of the true deniers trying to pretend it is pollution.

The laws of physics are perfectly maintained. The problem is that you can measure the changes after they happen but you can't predict what the changes will be. Alarmists base their argument on the assumption that they can predict the climate in the future but they have never demonstrated that ability. They don't even seem to have the basics right as far as increasing CO2 levels goes. Much of that is probably because they don't want to get it right because they are driven purely by a political agenda and what is true, based on the data, is probably contrary to their agenda.

BOTH. And possibly neither. PS: I think denier refers to the compactness of weave of a fabric. I could be wrong though. Dont think I understand the Q. tho- Would I rather by called a skeptic or someone who denys? And of WHAT? Of the truth or falsehood of g. warming? A bit vague. Shows a curious mind tho. Keep questioning! -Al

it is a complex system.

composed of mostly nitrogen and oxygen and water that sneaks in in the form of water vapor (clouds)

we've all seen what water can do when too much gets above our heads, a violent equilibrium must be reached via storm. what would happen if too much co2 got in the atmosphere? its a completly different molecule with different intensive properties, makes you wonder how the equilibrium will establish itself.

you mention "slight change" but it is the "quick change" that we should be freaking out about

It is fully chaotic and susceptible to change from uncounted internal and external contributing forces none of them subject to the control of humans.

http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd/RESEARCH/research_dy...

http://books.google.com/books?id=qIm9d03LWScC&pg=P...

All life on this planet adapts to the climate to survive.

No life on this planet can expect theclimate to change for them.

I think the climate is ordered chaos.

Both.

The "Chaos" is the result of the fact that the amount we know about the atmosphere is dwarfed by the amount we don't know.

The term "denier" is carefully chosen to equate people who doubt man-made global warming with those who are apologists for the Holocaust.

Both because everything is random . Man cannot control the weather.