Settled Science? New Climate Study Shifts the Goalposts to 2.6-3.9C

by Eric Worall, July 24, 2020 in WUWT


A new climate study has dismissed utterly implausible high end climate models. But the new study also seeks to raise the low end of the range of estimated climate sensitivity into the discomfort zone.

The treatment of cloud feedback is interesting. The study acknowledges large cloud feedback uncertainties, mentions the Lindzen et al. (2001) “iris effect”, and admits GCMs cannot be trusted to reproduce observed cloud response, yet still appears to attempt to derive a cloud feedback factor based on satellite observations, and mix this observational cloud factor with model predictions.

The treatment of clouds may turn out to be one of the most controversial assumptions in the study – as Pat Frank has pointed out on a number of occasions, the magnitude of model cloud response error is significantly greater than the CO2 driven warming which models attempt to project, which calls into question whether climate models have any predictive skill whatsoever.

To the author’s credit they have described their method in great detail, so I’m looking forward to detailed responses to this study.

Persistent warm Mediterranean surface waters during the Roman period

by Margaritelli G. et al., June20, 2020 in Nature OPEN ACESS


Abstract

Reconstruction of last millennia Sea Surface Temperature (SST) evolution is challenging due to the difficulty retrieving good resolution marine records and to the several uncertainties in the available proxy tools. In this regard, the Roman Period (1 CE to 500 CE) was particularly relevant in the socio-cultural development of the Mediterranean region while its climatic characteristics remain uncertain. Here we present a new SST reconstruction from the Sicily Channel based in Mg/Ca ratios measured on the planktonic foraminifer Globigerinoides ruber. This new record is framed in the context of other previously published Mediterranean SST records from the Alboran Sea, Minorca Basin and Aegean Sea and also compared to a north Hemisphere temperature reconstruction. The most solid image that emerges of this trans-Mediterranean comparison is the persistent regional occurrence of a distinct warm phase during the Roman Period. This record comparison consistently shows the Roman as the warmest period of the last 2 kyr, about 2 °C warmer than average values for the late centuries for the Sicily and Western Mediterranean regions. After the Roman Period a general cooling trend developed in the region with several minor oscillations. We hypothesis the potential link between this Roman Climatic Optimum and the expansion and subsequent decline of the Roman Empire.

See also  Roman Warm Period Was 3.6°F Warmer Than Today, New Study Shows

 See also here (GWPF)