Archives mensuelles : octobre 2018

climate-debate

Weak sun and El Nino events may create a colder and snowier than normal winter season in much of the eastern half of the USA

by Anthony Watts, October 22, 2018 in WUWT

The fast approaching solar minimum and its potential impact on the upcoming winter season

By Meteorologist Paul Dorian

Overview

In the long term, the sun is the main driver of all weather and climate and multi-decadal trends in solar activity can have major impacts on oceanic and atmospheric temperatures. In addition, empirical observations have shown that the sun can have important ramifications on weather and climate on shorter time scales including those associated with the average solar cycle of around 11-years. For example, there is evidence that low solar activity during solar minimum years tend to be well-correlated with more frequent “high-latitude blocking” events compared to normal and this type of atmospheric phenomenon can play an important role in the winter season.

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his plot shows the daily observations of the number of sunspots during the last four solar cycles back to 1 January 1977 according to Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC). The thin blue line indicates the daily sunspot number, while the dark blue line indicates the running annual average. The current low sunspot activity is indicated by the arrow at the lower right of the plot. Last day shown: 30 Sep 2018. Data source: climate4you.com.

climate-debate

Evidence of the Medieval Warm Period in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania

by S. Lüning, January 9, 2018 in WUWT

The climate of the pre-industrial past is of greatest importance to the ongoing climate discussion. Current climate can only be understood when interpreting it in the paleoclimatological context of the past few thousand years. Until not too long ago it was thought that the pre-industrial climate was monotonous and constant. This idea was e.g. promoted by Mann et al. whose famous hockey stick curve featured prominently in the IPCC report of 2001. Over the last 15 years, however, a large number of studies changed this view by providing robust evidence for the existence of significant natural climate variability. Of particular interest are the past 1000 years which commenced with the generally warm ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’ (MCA, aka ‘Medieval Warm Period’, MWP), that eventually passed into the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA), before returning to the warm climate of the current ‘Modern Warm Period’ of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

There have been controversial debates about the existence of the MWP, …

unclassified

Higher sea surface temperature in the northern South China Sea during the natural warm periods of late Holocene than recent decades

by Hong Yan et al., November 2014, in ChineseSciBull

The large-scale syntheses of global mean temperatures in IPCC fourth report suggested that the Northern Hemisphere temperature in the second half of the 20th century was likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years and the 1990s was likely the warmest decade. However, this remains debated and the controversy is centered on whether temperatures during the recent half century were higher than those during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA, AD 800–1300) and the Roman Warm Period (RWP, BC 200–AD 400), the most recent two natural warm periods of the late Holocene. Here the high resolution sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of two time windows around AD 990 (±40) and AD 50 (±40), which located in the MCA and RWP respectively, were reconstructed by the Sr/Ca ratio and δ 18O of Tradacna gigas shells from the northern South China Sea. The results suggested that the mean SSTs around AD 990 (±40) and AD 50 (±40) were 28.1 °C and 28.7 °C, 0.8 °C and 1.4 °C higher than that during AD 1994–2005, respectively. These records, together with the tree ring, lake sediment and literature records from the eastern China and northwest China, imply that the temperatures in recent decades do not seem to exceed the natural changes in MCA, at least in eastern Asia from northwest China to northern SCS.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Le réchauffement climatique pour les deux cultures

by Richard Lindzen, 21 octobre 2018, Conférence GWPF, in Skyfall

Traduction par Volauvent.

Il y a plus d’un demi-siècle, C.P. Snow (romancier et physicien anglais qui a également occupé plusieurs postes importants dans la fonction publique britannique et brièvement au sein du gouvernement britannique) a examiné de manière célèbre les implications de « deux cultures » :

Bien des fois, j’ai assisté à des rassemblements de personnes qui, selon les normes de la culture traditionnelle, sont considérées comme très éduquées et qui ont exprimé leur incrédulité face à l’analphabétisme des scientifiques. Une ou deux fois, j’ai été provoqué et j’ai demandé à la compagnie combien d’entre eux pourraient décrire la deuxième loi de la thermodynamique. Ils répondaient froidement : c’était aussi toujours négatif. Pourtant, je demandais quelque chose qui était l’équivalent scientifique de : avez-vous lu un ouvrage de Shakespeare ?

Je crois maintenant que si j’avais posé une question encore plus simple – telle que : que voulez-vous dire par masse ou accélération, qui est l’équivalent scientifique de : pouvez-vous lire ? – pas plus d’un diplômé sur dix aurait eu l’impression que je parlais la même langue que lui. Ainsi, le grand édifice de la physique moderne se construit, et la majorité des personnes les plus intelligentes du monde occidental en ont à peu près le même aperçu que leurs ancêtres néolithiques en auraient eu.

Je crains que peu de choses n’aient changé depuis l’évaluation de Snow, il y a 60 ans. Certains pourraient soutenir que l’ignorance de la physique n’a pas d’incidence sur la capacité politique, mais elle a très certainement une incidence sur la capacité des politiciens non scientifiques à traiter des problèmes théoriquement fondés sur la science. Le manque de compréhension est également une invitation à l’exploitation malveillante. Compte tenu de la nécessité démocratique pour les non-scientifiques de prendre position sur des problèmes scientifiques, la croyance et la foi remplacent inévitablement la compréhension, même si des récits simplifiés à outrance de façon triviale rassurent les non-scientifiques sur le fait qu’ils ne sont pas totalement dénués de « compréhension scientifique ». Le sujet du « réchauffement global » offre de nombreux exemples de tout cela.

Je voudrais commencer cette conférence par une tentative visant à forcer les scientifiques du public à se familiariser avec la nature réelle du système climatique et à aider les non-scientifiques motivés de ce public susceptibles de faire partie du groupe « Un sur dix » de Snow à aller au-delà des simplifications excessivement triviales.

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better to know...?

Pas d’erreurs pour l’Arctique!

by Paul Berth, 21 octobre 2018 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Comme mentionné dans un article précédent, le DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute) publie régulièrement l’évolution temporelle, mois par mois, de l’étendue de la glace de l’Arctique en millions de km2. Le dernier graphique publié (Fig. 1) nous montre l’étendue de la glace au mois de septembre entre 1979 et 2018 (c’est au mois de septembre que l’étendue de glace arctique est la plus faible, moins de 10 millions de km2). Une droite, dont la pente est négative, est tracée parmi les points : tous les 10 ans, la surface semble diminuer de 11,4%. Si l’on extrapole la droite ont peut calculer qu’il n’y aura plus de glace en Arctique dans 60 ans. Cependant, ne remarquez-vous rien d’étrange sur ce graphique?

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climate-debate

New Science: Arctic AND Antarctic Sea Ice More Extensive Today Than Nearly All Of The Last 10,000 Years

by K. Richard, October 18, 2018 in NoTricksZone

It is often claimed that modern day sea ice changes are “unprecedented”, alarming, and well outside the range of natural variability.  Yet scientists are increasingly finding that biomarker proxies used to reconstruct both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice conditions since the Early Holocene reveal that today’s sea ice changes are not only not unusual, there is more extensive Arctic and Antarctic sea ice during recent decades than there has been for nearly all of the last 10,000 years.

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climate-debate

Trump s’interroge sur les causes du changement climatique

by Tom Harris & Jay Lehr, 20 octobre 2018 in Contrepoints

Le 14 octobre dernier, durant une interview sur la chaine de télévision CBS, le président américain a exprimé à juste titre son scepticisme concernant le rôle de l’homme sur le changement climatique.

Contrairement à l’affirmation d’Al Gore daté du 12 octobre selon laquelle seuls « quelques rares marginaux » dans la communauté scientifique ne partageraient pas l’avis du GIEC, de nombreux chercheurs sont en désaccord avec les conclusions faites par l’agence internationale.

En effet, c’était un euphémisme pour le président américain de déclarer durant l’interview « qu’il y a des scientifiques qui réfutent cela », en parlant d’un lien entre la fonte de glace au Groenlandet du changement climatique anthropique.

Le 8 octobre dernier, durant sa conférence devant la Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) située à Londres, le professeur Richard Lindzen a mentionné « la découverte faite conjointement par la NOAA (la National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) et l’Institut Météorologique Danois, à savoir que la masse de glace du Groenland a effectivement augmenté ».

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climate-debate

CNN: “Climate change endangers dozens of World Heritage sites”… Unmitigated horst schist

by David Middleton, October 19, 2018 in WUWT

Holocene Sea Level

I didn’t take the time to look up the dates of these World Heritage sites… But I’m going to guess they’re OLD.  Many of them probably date back to the Early to Mid-Holocene.  [My bad… That was a bad guess.  The Late Holocene (Meghalayan Age) begins in 4200 BP (2250 BC)]  Here’s a Holocene sea level reconstruction for the Arabian Gulf, with a recent reconstruction of global sea level since 1800 (Jevrejeva et al., 2014) and the satellite sea level trend from CU…

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better to know...?

LES EVENEMENTS CLIMATIQUES EXTREMES DU PASSE (19)

by John Moreau, 20 octobre 2018 in Belgotopia

« Le contenu de la mémoire est fonction de la vitesse de l’oubli »

Désormais, chaque inondation quelque peu catastrophique, chaque tornade, chaque anomalie météorologique est rattachée au réchauffement climatique qui parait-il nous menace, mais dont en plus l’homme serait responsable !

Pourtant, la consultation de chroniques ou récits anciens est révélatrice de précédents tout aussi apocalyptiques,  et relativise la notion même de « changements climatiques », ainsi que la définition d’un « climat stable » qui n’a jamais existé mais qu’on voudrait instaurer à tout prix.

 

AUX ENVIRONS DE 1850, FIN DU « PETIT AGE GLACIAIRE » et début d’un réchauffement du climat, surtout perceptible en hiver.

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Pour l’ensemble des épisodes :

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/sur-les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-1/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/sur-les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-2/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/sur-les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-3/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/sur-les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-4/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/sur-les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-5/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/sur-les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-6/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/sur-les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-7/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/sur-les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-8/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-dans-lhistoire-9/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-10/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-11/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2015/11/25/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-12/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-13/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2017/03/21/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-14/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2017/05/23/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-15/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2017/09/04/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-16/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-17/

https://belgotopia.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-18/

https://belgotopia.com/2018/10/20/les-evenements-climatiques-extremes-du-passe-19/

 

better to know...?

Claim: Air Pollution, Not Greenhouse Gases, Is the Main Cause of Global Warming

by Anthony Watts, October 19, 2018 in WUWT

NOTE: I don’t necessarily agree with this [at all], but I thought it worth exposing – Anthony

In a recent article in the Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, Transdyne Corporation geoscientist J. Marvin Herndon makes the startling claim that climate scientists, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have been chasing the wrong culprit for global warming and climate change.

From the article, “Fig. 3 is a copy of [Gottschalk’s] Fig. 2 to which has been added three relative-value proxies that represent major activities that produce particulate pollution.”

From the article, “Fig. 3 is a copy of [Gottschalk’s] Fig. 2 to which has been added three relative-value proxies that represent major activities that produce particulate pollution.”

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climate-debate

September 2018 Global Surface (Land+Ocean) and Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomaly Update

by Bob Tisdale, October 18, 2018 in WUWT

This post provides updates of the values for the three primary suppliers of global land+ocean surface temperature reconstructions—GISS through September 2018 and HADCRUT4 and NOAA NCEI (formerly NOAA NCDC) through August 2018—and of the two suppliers of satellite-based lower troposphere temperature composites (RSS and UAH) through September 2018. It also includes a few model-data comparisons.

This is simply an update, but it includes a good amount of background information for those new to the datasets. Because it is an update, there is no overview or summary for this post. There are, however, simple monthly summaries for the individual datasets. So for those familiar with the datasets, simply fast-forward to the graphs and read the summaries under the headings of “Update”.

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climate-debate

THE UN’S DOOMSDAY CLIMATE CLOCK

by GWPF, October 18, 2018 TheWallStreetJournal

In case you hadn’t heard we’re all doomed, yet the world mostly yawned. This is less complacency than creeping scientific and political realism.

The U.N. panel says the apocalypse is nigh—literally. According to its calculations, global carbon emissions must fall 45% by 2030—twice as much as its earlier forecasts—and the world must wean itself entirely off fossil fuels over three decades to prevent a climate catastrophe that will include underwater coastlines and widespread drought and disease.

These reductions are “possible within the laws of chemistry and physics,” said the report’s co-author Jim Skea, and that’s a relief. But he added: “Doing so would require unprecedented changes,” and the report said some methods “are at different stages of development and some are more conceptual than others, as they have not been tested at scale.”

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pollution-contamination

Substantial changes in air pollution across China during 2015 to 2017

by University of Leeds, October 17, 2018 in ScienceDaily

A study by the University of Leeds has examined measurements from more than 1600 locations in China and found that more than 50 per cent of the locations showed a significant decrease in concentrations of sulphur dioxide and fine particulates that make up a large portion of air pollution.

The team used datasets from 2015 to 2017 consisting of hourly assessments of concentrations of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Ozone (O3), and fine particles measuring less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5).

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energy and fields

Les limites des lois de la physique dans la transition énergétique

by Alain Préat, 17 octobre 2018, in ScienceClimatEnergie

Bertrand Cassoret a récemment publié un excellent ouvrage [1] sur le sujet. Cet auteur est ingénieur et docteur en génie électrique et s’est lancé sans a priori dans le dédale des ‘promesses’ des énergies vertes en tentant de préciser ce qu’il en est à partir d’une quantification rigoureuse des rendements énergétiques réels. Pourquoi ‘réels’ ? Simplement parce qu’il faut débusquer tout ce qui n’est pas mis en avant (principalement pertes énergétiques cachées) et surtout mettre à plat les ordres de grandeurs du monde de l’énergie. Sa conclusion sera sans appel « même si l’efficacité énergétique est utile et même indispensable, elle ne sera pas suffisante… il est nécessaire de modifier l’usage que l’on fait des appareils consommateurs ». Autre conclusion sans appel « mon objectif n’est pas de critiquer les énergies renouvelables, ni les nécessaires mesures d’efficacité, mais plutôt de montrer qu’elles pèsent bien peu face à l’ampleur des problèmes ».

…Figure 1 : Image du trafic aérien du 29/06/2018 par le site    FlightRadar24 (©Filght Radar14) [4]

energy and fields

Oil Production at 100 million bbl/d: “Twin peaks straining the system to the limit”? Or just another day at the office in a highly resilient industry?

by  David Middleton, October 15, 2018 in WUWT

From the International Energy Agency’s Oil Market Report (OMR):

Home » Newsroom » News » 2018 » October

OMR: Twin Peaks

12 October 2018

Both global oil demand and supply are now close to new, historically significant peaks at 100 mb/d, and neither show signs of ceasing to grow any time soon. Fifteen years ago, forecasts of peak supply were all the rage, with production from non-OPEC countries supposed to have started declining by now.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Le catastrophisme climatique des années 60 à 80 à l’épreuve des faits

by Cédric Moro, 15 octobre 2018 in MythesMancies&Mathématiques

Les discours alarmistes sur le climat ne datent pas d’hier. Grâce à la numérisation des archives audio-visuelles et à leur mise en ligne sur internet, il est possible aujourd’hui de démentir les prévisions climato-catastrophistes assénées de manière très officielle dans la deuxième moitié du siècle dernier. Beaucoup des déformations de nos discours sur la réalité tendent à puiser leurs racines dans nos représentations mentales du monde. Nous verrons donc que ces représentations alarmistes naissent dans un contexte idéologique nouveau : mutation de l’eugénisme, collapsologisme et décroissance.

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climate-debate

IPCC achieves net zero credibility

by Barry Brill, October 14, 2018 in WUWT

The recently released IPCC SR15 reports (at A1) that global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2032 and 2050 and (at B) will probably bring species extinction, weather extremes and risks to food supply, health and economic growth. If we are to avoid this, net CO2 emissions will need to decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero by 2050 (C1), followed by extensive removals (C5). The required energy investment alone will be $2.4 trillion per year.

Is this possible?

As at 2015, which was not materially different from 2010, more than half the planet’s total CO2 emissions (36Gt) were sourced from just three countries:

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climate-debate

Reliable? CRU, NASA, BEST, NOAA Land Temp Data Conflict By Up To 90% (0.8°C), Spawning ‘Large Uncertainty’

by K. Richard, October 8, 2018 in NoTricksZone

A new paper documents “remarkably different” land temperatures from one instrumental data set to another. In some regions there is as much as an 0.8°C conflict in recorded temperature anomalies for CRU, NASA, BEST, and NOAA. The relative temperature trend differences can reach 90% when comparing instrumental records. Consequently, the uncertainty in instrumental temperature trends — “0.097–0.305°C per decade for recent decades (i.e., 1981–2017)” —  is as large or larger than the alleged overall warming trend itself for this period.

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climate-debate

Reconstruction of Prehistoric Landfall Frequencies of Catastrophic Hurricanes in Northwestern Florida from Lake Sediment Records

by Kam-biu Liu & Miriam L. Fearn, September 2000,  in QuaternaryResearch

Sediment cores from Western Lake provide a 7000-yr record of coastal environmental changes and catastrophic hurricane landfalls along the Gulf Coast of the Florida Panhandle. Using Hurricane Opal as a modern analog, we infer that overwash sand layers occurring near the center of the lake were caused by catastrophic hurricanes of category 4 or 5 intensity. Few catastrophic hurricanes struck the Western Lake area during two quiescent periods 3400–5000 and 0–1000 14C yr B.P. The landfall probabilities increased dramatically to ca. 0.5% per yr during an “hyperactive” period from 1000–3400 14C yr B.P., especially in the first millennium A.D. The millennial-scale variability in catastrophic hurricane landfalls along the Gulf Coast is probably controlled by shifts in the position of the jet stream and the Bermuda High.

climate and geology

Study: climate was more variable during the last inter-glacial period

by Anthony Watts, October 12, 2018 in WUWT

Century-scale climate variability was enhanced when the Earth was warmer during the Last Interglacial period (129-116 thousand years ago) compared to the current interglacial (the last 11,700 years), according to a new UCL-led study.

The findings, published today in Nature Communications and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC), reveal that the Last Interglacial period was punctuated by a series of century-scale arid events in southern Europe and cold water-mass expansions in the North Atlantic.

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renewable energy

Failure of ‘World’s Biggest Solar Project’ in Saudi Arabia Is No Surprise

by Jason Deign, October 2, 2018 in gym

Renewables developers eyeing Saudi Arabia remain wary of the market following the news that the world’s biggest solar project has been canceled.

The $200 billion, 200-gigawatt solar plant planned by SoftBank and the Saudi Public Investment Fund had raised skepticism among developers when it was announced in March, partly because of technical concerns over how it might be integrated into the grid.

The main worry, though, was that the megaproject appeared to have been approved independently of plans for an orderly ramp-up of solar through a tender program managed by the Saudi Renewable Energy Project Development Office (REPDO).

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climate-debate

Ocean Temperatures Have Been Rising Since 19thC

by P. Homewood, October 12, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120401135345.htm

 

The significance of course is that the warming of the oceans began long before any impact from CO2 emissions.

HH Lamb has written extensively about how sea temperatures in the Atlantic fell radically during the LIA. Is the warming trend since then merely a return to earlier conditions?