Full-time professor at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium
apreat@gmail.com
apreat@ulb.ac.be
• Department of Earth Sciences and Environment
Res. Grp. - Biogeochemistry & Modeling of the Earth System
Sedimentology & Basin Analysis
• Alumnus, Collège des Alumni, Académie Royale de Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique (mars 2013). http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=2a8crwkksq&lg=fr&pag=858&rec=0&frm=0&par=aybabtu&id=4471&flux=8365323
• Prof. Invited, Université de Mons-Hainaut (2010-present-day)
• Prof. Coordinator and invited to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium (Belgian College) (2009-
present day)
• Prof. partim to the DEA (third cycle) led by the University of Lille (9 universities from 1999 to 2004) - Prof. partim at the University of Paris-Sud/Orsay, European-Socrates Agreement (1995-1998)
• Prof. partim at the University of Louvain, Convention ULB-UCL (1993-2000)
• Since 2015 : Member of Comité éditorial de la Revue Géologie de la France http://geolfrance.brgm.fr
• Since 2014 : Regular author of texts for ‘la Revue Science et Pseudosciences’ http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/
• Many field works (several weeks to 2 months) (Meso- and Paleozoic carbonates, Paleo- to Neoproterozoic carbonates) in Europe, USA (Nevada), Papouasia (Holocene), North Africa (Algeria, Morrocco, Tunisia), West Africa (Gabon, DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, South Africa, Angola), Iraq... Recently : field works (3 to 5 weeks) Congo- Brazzaville 2012, 2015, 2016 (carbonate Neoproterozoic).
Degree in geological sciences at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in 1974, I went to Algeria for two years teaching mining geology at the University of Constantine. Back in Belgium I worked for two years as an expert for the EEC (European Commission), first on the prospecting of Pb and Zn in carbonate environments, then the uranium exploration in Belgium. Then Assistant at ULB, Department of Geology I got the degree of Doctor of Sciences (Geology) in 1985. My thesis, devoted to the study of the Devonian carbonate sedimentology of northern France and southern Belgium, comprised a significant portion of field work whose interpretation and synthesis conducted to the establishment of model of carbonate platforms and ramps with reefal constructions.
I then worked for Petrofina SA and shared a little more than two years in Angola as Director of the Research Laboratory of this oil company. The lab included 22 people (micropaleontology, sedimentology, petrophysics). My main activity was to interpret facies reservoirs from drillings in the Cretaceous, sometimes in the Tertiary. I carried out many studies for oil companies operating in this country.
I returned to the ULB in 1988 as First Assistant and was appointed Professor in 1990. I carried out various missions for mining companies in Belgium and oil companies abroad and continued research, particularly through projects of the Scientific Research National Funds (FNRS).
My research still concerns sedimentology, geochemistry and diagenesis of carbonate rocks which leads me to travel many countries in Europe or outside Europe, North Africa, Papua New Guinea and the USA, to conduct field missions.
Since the late 90's, I expanded my field of research in addressing the problem of mass extinctions of organisms from the Upper Devonian series across Euramerica (from North America to Poland) and I also specialized in microbiological and geochemical analyses of ancient carbonate series developing a sustained collaboration with biologists of my university. We are at the origin of a paleoecological model based on the presence of iron-bacterial microfossils, which led me to travel many countries in Europe and North Africa. This model accounts for the red pigmentation of many marble and ornamental stones used in the world. This research also has implications on the emergence of Life from the earliest stages of formation of Earth, as well as in the field of exobiology or extraterrestrial life ...
More recently I invested in the study from the Precambrian series of Gabon and Congo. These works with colleagues from BRGM (Orléans) are as much about the academic side (consequences of the appearance of oxygen in the Paleoproterozoic and study of Neoproterozoic glaciations) that the potential applications in reservoir rocks and source rocks of oil (in collaboration with oil companies).
Finally I recently established a close collaboration with the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium to study the susceptibility magnetic signal from various European Paleozoic series. All these works allowed me to gain a thorough understanding of carbonate rocks (petrology, micropaleontology, geobiology, geochemistry, sequence stratigraphy, diagenesis) as well in Precambrian (2.2 Ga and 0.6 Ga), Paleozoic (from Silurian to Carboniferous) and Mesozoic (Jurassic and Cretaceous) rocks. Recently (2010) I have established a collaboration with Iraqi Kurdistan as part of a government program to boost scientific research in this country.
My research led me to publish about 180 papers in international and national journals and presented more than 170 conference papers. I am a holder of eight courses at the ULB (5 mandatory and 3 optional), excursions and field stages, I taught at the third cycle in several French universities and led or co-managed a score of 20 Doctoral (PhD) and Post-doctoral theses and has been the promotor of more than 50 Masters theses.
The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for February 2023 was +0.08 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean. This is up from the January 2023 anomaly of -0.04 deg. C.
The linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.13 C/decade (+0.11 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).
byC. Morrisson, Mar 3, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch
Billions of people around the world face starvation if Net Zero policies ban the production of nitrogen fertilizer derived from fossil fuels.
This is the stark warning from two top American scientists who say that eliminating fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides “will result in about half the world’s population not having enough food to eat.” [emphasis, links added]
They add that eliminating Net Zero fertilizer will create “worldwide starvation.”
In a wide-ranging paper titled ‘Challenging ‘Net Zero’ with Science‘, Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen of Princeton and MIT respectively, along with geologist Gregory Wrightstone, state that Net Zero – the global movement to eliminate fossil fuels and carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emissions – to be “scientifically invalid and a threat to the lives of billions of people”.
The battle over nitrogen fertilizer is being hard fought by green activists who argue for massive reductions in its use and more organic methods to be mandated.
This can extend to fanaticism, as marked by the Guardian’s George Monbiot, who argues for an end to dependence on farming. The ground for less choice and food is also being prepared in academia.
Also harking back to the days of spam and when spivs controlled parts of the supply chain was the actress Joanna Lumley, who suggested a return to a points distribution system and a form of wartime rationing.
Back on Planet Reality, the authors publish the graph below showing a “remarkable” increase in crop yieldsafter the widespread use of nitrogen fertilizer began around 1950.
Happer and Lindzen state that they are career physicists who have specialized in radiation physics and dynamic heat transfer for decades. These are said to be integral to atmospheric climate science. In their opinion, all Net Zero regulations are scientifically invalid.
CNN are not the only media outlets to report on this years’ record low sea ice around Antarctica in apocalyptic terms, other media extremists are available. For Sky News it’s the accelerating melt of polar regions. For the BBC “There is now less sea-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent than at any time since we began using satellites to measure it in the late 1970s.” All this is technically true, but misleading. When it’s put into context one sees a different picture.
So let’s have a look at the actual satellite data of Antarctic sea ice collected monthly since 1979. The NSIDCgives two data sets for what it calls i) sea ice extent, and ii) sea ice area. So let’s examine both of them.
The first graphs is sea ice area, the second sea ice extent.
From the empirical data it is evident that there is hardly any change of sea ice over the 44-year time span. Since 2016 there is a dip with possibly more variability (of which more later), and the lowest month (February) does show a record low, but by hardly anything (and also look at the data for 1992). Does this actual data look like the beginning of the end to you? Where is CNN’s 90% loss or Sky News acceleration?
Millions of sq km; Source: National Snow & Ice Data Center
The December 1 to February 28 so-called meteorological winter has just ended and the latest data for the mean winter temperature are available for Tokyo and its island Hachijō-jima.
Tokyo winters have been cooling since 1984
With all the news about global warming, surely the decades long winter-trend for the city of Tokyo must be one of strong warming. Yet, looking at the mean DJF winter temperature trend for Tokyo going back 39 years using the untampered data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), we see a trend that has to surprise the global warming bedwetting dolts:
As the chart shows, instead of warming, winters in Tokyo have been cooling (modestly) since the global warming scare began in the 1980s. The average of the last 10 years have definitely been colder than the two preceding ten-year periods. Citizens in Tokyo who have been hearing warming doom for decades have in fact not experienced it. Where’s the warming?
by P. Homewood, March 1, 2023 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
…
The new study uses computer models to assess Atlantic storms going back to 1949, and to peer into the future to see what storms will look like in 2100. The authors, climate scientists at Princeton University, found that the flood and wind risk posed by storms has steadily increased.
The problem will only get worse in the coming decades. “The frequency of intense storms will increase,” explains Ning Lin, a climate scientist at Princeton University and the lead author of the new study.
by P. Homewood, Feb 27, 2023 in NotaLotofpeopleKnowThat
When will Western leaders realise they have been hoodwinked by China?
China approved the construction of another 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity last year, four times higher than a year earlier and the highest since 2015, research shows.
Over the year, 50GW of coal power capacity went into construction across the country – up by more than half compared with the previous year – driven by energy security considerations, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said on Monday.
“The speed at which projects progressed through permitting to construction in 2022 was extraordinary, with many projects sprouting up, gaining permits, obtaining financing and breaking ground apparently in a matter of months,” said GEM analyst Flora Champenois.
The amount of new capacity connected to the grid had slowed in recent years after a decline in new approvals over the 2017-2020 period, but it is set to rebound over the next few years, driven by concerns about power shortages.
Many of the newly approved projects were identified as “supporting” baseload capacity designed to ensure the stability of the power grid and minimise blackout risks, the CREA-GEM report said.
However, many were being built in regions that already had a clear capacity surplus, and power supply problems would be better addressed by improving grid reliability and efficiency, the authors said.
China suffered a wave of blackouts in September 2021 as a result of coal supply shortages, cutting off thousands of homes and factories. A long drought last year also saw a dramatic drop in hydropower generation and the rationing of electricity.
Most people don’t have a clear understanding of the greenhouse effect (GHE). It is not complicated to understand, but it is usually not well explained. It is often described as “heat-trapping,” but that is incorrect. Greenhouse gases (GHG) do not trap heat, even if more heat resides within the climate system due to their presence in the atmosphere. The truth is that after adjusting to a change in GHG levels, the planet still returns all the energy it receives from the Sun. Otherwise, it would continue warming indefinitely. So, there is no change in the energy returned. How do GHGs produce GHE?
GHGs cause the atmosphere to be more opaque to infrared radiation. As solar radiation heats mainly the ocean and land surface of the planet, GHGs absorb thermal emission from the surface at the lower troposphere and immediately pass that energy along to other molecules (typically N2 and O2) through collisions that occur much faster than the time it would take to re-emit the radiation. This warms the lower troposphere. The density and temperature decrease rapidly through the troposphere, so molecules are colder and more separated at the upper troposphere. Now GHGs have a chance to emit IR radiation so when they finally collide with another molecule, they are colder so GHGs have a cooling effect in the upper troposphere and stratosphere.
Because GHGs make the atmosphere more opaque to IR radiation, when they are present the emission to space from the planet normally does not take place from the surface (as happens in the Moon). Part of it still takes place from the surface through the atmospheric window, but most of it takes place from higher in the atmosphere. We can define a theoretical effective emission height as the average height at which the Earth’s outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) is being emitted. The temperature at which the Earth emits is the temperature at the effective emission height in the atmosphere. That temperature, when measured from space is 250 K (-23°C), not 255 which is the calculated temperature for a theoretical blackbody Earth. That temperature corresponds to a height of about 5 km, which we call the effective emission height.
A warming event that spans only one year, with decades of stable temperatures before and after, would not appear to align with rapidly rising human CO2 emissions or a gradually rising atmospheric CO2 concentration.
From 1958 to 2020, as CO2 rose from 320 ppm to 410 ppm, Greenland had a warming period of 1°C that lasted one year – 1994. Over the next 26 years (1994-2020) and spanning the years 1958 to 1993, there have been “relatively constant” temperatures across Greenland (Zhang et al., 2022).
These temperature trends appear to align much better with phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Greenland blocking indexes (GBI), and volcanism better than they do with any anthropogenic causal agents.
Notes
About the Global Warming Policy Foundation 10
Executive summary
It is widely believed that hurricanes are getting worse as a consequence of climate change. This belief is fuelled by the media and some politicians, particularly when a bad storm occurs. This be- lief is reinforced because the damage caused by hurricanes is much greater nowadays, thanks to increasing populations in vulnerable coastal areas and greater wealth more generally.
But is this belief correct, or is it a misconception? This study has carefully analysed official data and assessments by hurricane scientists, and finds:
• 2021 and 2022 recorded the lowest number of both hurricanes and major hurricanes glob- ally for any two year period since 1980.
• The apparent long-term increase in the number of hurricanes since the 19th century has been due to changes in observational practices over the years, rather than a real increase.
• Data show no long-term trends in US landfalling hurricanes since the mid-19th century, when systematic records began, either in terms of frequency or intensity.
• Similarly, after allowing for the fact that many hurricanes were not spotted prior to the sat- ellite era, there are no such trends in Atlantic hurricanes either.
Globally there are also no trends in hurricanes since reliable records began in the 1970s.
Evidence is also presented that wind speeds of the most powerful hurricanes may now be overestimated in comparison to pre-satellite era ones, because of changing methods of meas- urement.
• The increase in Atlantic hurricanes in the last fifty years is not part of a long-term trend, but is simply a recovery from a deep minimum in hurricane activity in the 1970s, associated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
These findings are in line with those of hurricane scientists generally, as well as official bodies such as NOAA and the IPCC.
Geologists doing fieldwork in southeastern Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation found carbon isotope evidence that the site, though on land, experienced the same early Cretaceous carbon-cycle change recorded in marine sedimentary rocks in Europe. This ancient carbon-cycle phenomenon, known as the ‘Weissert Event’ was driven by large, sustained volcanic eruptions in the Southern Hemisphere that greatly increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and produced significant greenhouse climate effects over a prolonged time.
Scientific research in recent decades has confirmed that major changes in the global carbon cycle caused significant changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans 135 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous Period. A range of questions remain about the details of climate change dynamics in that era. This new research, involving wide-ranging chemical and radioactivity-based analyses of rock strata in Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation, helps fill in that knowledge gap by confirming that such carbon-cycle shifts were recorded on land in ancient North America.
The carbon cycle is one of Earth’s fundamental environmental phenomena, involving the ongoing transfer of carbon among the atmosphere, oceans and living organisms, as well as soils, sediments and rocks in the solid Earth. The cycle is crucial to biological processes for living things on land and sea. When large-scale changes in the cycle occur, they can produce major shifts in climate and the oceans’ biological conditions.
“We’re studying how the global carbon cycle has functioned in the past, how changes are recorded in the sedimentary rocks around the world,” said Joeckel, a professor in the School of Natural Resources at Nebraska. The environmental phenomena he and his colleagues analyzed “are exactly the kind of things we’re talking about today, as people increase the input of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a much-accelerated rate by burning fossil fuels.”
Joeckel, the Nebraska state geologist, headed the Utah fieldwork and organized the study, published as a peer-reviewed paper in a special February issue of the journal Geosciences.
A recent paper (M. B. Freund et al 2023, MBF23 thereafter) in “Nature communication earth and environment” investigates the variability of the summer drought events since 1600. It uses the method of “stable isotope analyses C13/O18” to extend the “Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) from 1950 to now back to 1600.
The paper describes and uses a multi proxy network over large parts of Europe (see Fig. 1 of MBF23) to reconstruct the history of summer droughts for a longer historic period. It finds interesting results about the dependency of those events on volcanos and solar forcing. It’s a worthwhile read and we were interested in whether the headline title is justified and likewise this claim in the Abstract:
“We show that the recent European summer drought (2015–2018) is highly unusual in a multi-century context…”
Thanks to the authors the used SPEI reconstruction annual data are available, so we were able to perform calculations to check these assertions.
An apparent first “confirmation” of the headline title of the paper appears in Figure 3a in MBH23:
Fig.1: A reproduction of Fig. 3a of MBH23. Annual European mean SPEI-data in blue/red, the low pass filter output is shown in black.
by R.A. Bishop, Feb 17, 2023 in LifeSite.AmericanThinker
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The comprehensive study found that the current estimated metal reserves are woefully deficient in almost every category. The table below lists base and rare earth metals requirements to build the new grid and E.V.s. Deficits are yellow-highlighted. For example, copper is an integral part of a high-voltage grid system, coming up short by a shocking 3.7 billion tons. Can we dig enough open mile-deep ore pits to meet that shortfall? Improbable.
Table 1 Below is the study’s table estimating the years to produce the required metals at the current production rates. For example, lithium would take almost 10 millennia to achieve. In addition, these scarce minerals must be mined, transported, and processed, relying exclusively on fossil fuels, which would create more carbon emissions and deplete hydrocarbon reserves.
Fourteen years ago, a new climate myth was born. A grand solar minimum (GSM) was in the making that would not only reverse global warming but plunge the planet into a new Little Ice Age, surprising the warming alarmists and causing undue suffering. The time has come to bury that myth.
1. The origin of the myth
The deep solar minimum of 2008-2009 was a complete surprise to solar physicists. They did not know that solar activity could become so low because it had not occurred during the time of solar observations with modern instrumentation. In 2009, a solar scientist named Habibullo Abdussamatov published a paper in Russian in which he argued that the following years would see a major cooling based on the onset of a new GSM. His evidence was
The low solar activity of the then ongoing solar cycle (SC) minimum 23-24.
A bicentennial cycle in solar activity that supposedly decreased solar activity after 1600 and after 1800
The pause in global warming since 1998
Figure 1. From Abdussamatov 2009. “The Sun defines the climate”. Nauka i Zhizn, N1, pp. 34-42.
This prediction reached the West and became very popular, like any catastrophic prediction, actually. Articles about the arrival of a GSM proliferated on climate blogs, such as the one on WUWT: The ‘Baby Grand’ has arrived.
Other scientists, such as Livingston & Penn and de Jager & Duhau, joined Abdussamatov in 2009 in proposing the arrival of a GSM, though being more cautious about its climatic effects. It went so far as to threaten the global warming narrative at a time under assault from the Pause and Climategate. Thus, none other than Stefan Rahmstorf came to their defense saying that according to the models
“a new Maunder-type solar activity minimum cannot compensate for global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.”
Despite being small, microbes, and especially bacteria, contribute a lot to the global carbon cycle — the movement of carbon in various forms through nature. Its level in the atmosphere, and so its influence on climate change, is controlled by a series of sources and sinks, such as respiration and photosynthesis respectively.
Now, new research from Imperial College London and University of Exeter scientists has shown that, when warmed, bacterial communities that have matured to co-operate release more carbon dioxide (CO2) than communities that are in competition with each other.
The results are published in Nature Microbiology.
Co-author Dr Tom Clegg, who led the theory development from the Department of Life Sciences (Silwood Park) at Imperial, said: “Our findings have far-reaching implications given the significant contributions that bacterial communities make to the carbon cycle. We show that changes in bacterial species interactions can rapidly and substantially increase the carbon emissions from natural ecosystems worldwide.”
Bacteria — like humans — respire, taking in oxygen and releasing CO2. Of the many factors that control their level of respiration, temperature is particularly important.
Bacteria form communities of different species in all habitable environments, including in soil, puddles, and in our guts. When communities first form, the bacterial species are often ‘competitive’, each trying to get the best resources.
by R. Pielke, Feb 13, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch
This is the latest post in an ongoing series, titled “what the media won’t tell you about…”, which is motivated by the apparent systemic inability of the legacy media to play things straight when it comes to extreme weather and disasters.
Climate change is real and important, but its importance is not an excuse for the pervasive climate misinformation found across the legacy media. [emphasis, links added]
Here are the previous installments in the series, which are among my most popular posts and which have gone unchallenged.
Today’s post focuses on U.S. tornadoes. This year so far has seen a lot of tornadoes — 178 were reportedthrough February 11th, the 2nd most since 2005 and well above the 2005-2022 mean of 66 to date.
For instance, after a tornado outbreak last month, the Associated Press reported that the tornadoes had been “juiced by climate change.”
Similarly, The Washington Post said that in the past it was difficult to tie tornadoes to climate change but now, “science is accumulating to support the linkage.”
Neither reported any of the data and science I share below. So, let’s take a look
A new paperpublished by the Global Warming Policy Foundation refutes alarmist claims about the state of the world’s coral reefs.
According to the author, eminent reef scientist Peter Ridd, the official data show no signs of any long-term trends in reef health. [emphasis, links added]
Dr. Ridd suggests that rather than being seen as under threat from climate change, corals should actually be recognized as one of the organisms least likely to suffer harm in a warming world.
“Corals get energy from a symbiotic relationship with various species of algae. When environmental conditions change, they [coral] can rapidly switch to a different species that is better suited to the new conditions. This shapeshifting means that most setbacks they suffer will be short-lived.”
The GWPF invited responses to this paper from authors likely to dissent from its conclusions. None of the authors who were contacted accepted this invitation.
by N. Scafetta, Feb 3, 2023 in MDPI, Earth Science
Global climate models (GCMs) from the sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phases (CMIP6) have been employed to simulate the twenty-first-century temperatures for the risk assessment of future climate change. However, their transient climate response (TCR) ranges from 1.2 to 2.8 °C, whereas their equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) ranges from 1.8 to 5.7 °C, leading to large variations in the climatic impact of an anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 levels. Moreover, there is growing evidence that many GCMs are running “too hot” and are hence unreliable for directing policies for future climate changes. Here, I rank 41 CMIP6 GCMs according to how successfully they hindcast the global surface warming between 1980 and 2021 using both their published equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) and transient climate response (TCR) estimates. The sub-ensemble of GCMs with the best performance appears to be composed of the models with ECS ranging between 1.8 and 3.0 °C (which confirms previous studies) and TCR ranging between 1.2 and 1.8 °C. This GCM sub-ensemble is made up of a total of 17 models. Depending on the emission scenarios, these GCMs predict a 2045–2055 warming of 1.5–2.5 °C compared to the pre-industrial era (1850–1900). As a result, the global aggregated impact and risk estimates seem to be moderate, which implies that any negative effects of future climate change may be adequately addressed by adaptation programs. However, there are also doubts regarding the actual magnitude of global warming, which might be exaggerated because of urban heat contamination and other local non-climatic biases. A final section is dedicated to highlighting the divergences observed between the global surface temperature records and a number of alternative temperature reconstructions from lower troposphere satellite measurements, three-ring-width chronologies, and surface temperature records based on rural stations alone. If the global warming reported by the climate records is overestimated, the real ECS and TCR may be significantly lower than what is produced by the CMIP6 GCMs, as some independent studies have already suggested, which would invalidate all of the CMIP6 GCMs.
Claims the Swedish Scandes are unprecedentedly warm and tree-covered today “appear as large and unfounded exaggerations,” as the “climate and arboreal responses” of the last few decades “are still inside the frames of natural historical variation.” – Kullman, 2022 and Kullman, 2022a
Extensive birch forest fossils can be dated to the early- to mid-Holocene in northern Scandinavian regions, indicating these warmth-sensitive trees could exist in climates that are too cold for them to grow in today. This documents a much warmer period, “at least 3°C higher than during the past few decades,” 3000 to 10,000 years ago, or when CO2 was about 265 ppm (Kullman, 2022).
Contrary to modeler opinions, “there is little factual nourishment” to support modern projections that the Swedish Scandes will soon be returning to the subalpine birch forest climates of past millennia. The observed forest advancement in recent decades “is so small” that these modeling claims appear to be “unfounded exaggerations.”
“In the southernmost Swedish Scandes, pine has already “leap-frogged” over receding the birch forest-limit (Kullman 2014, 2019). That scenario would mimic the arboreal landscape during the early Holocene and shift to a landscape unseen for thousands of years (cf. Blűthgen 1942; MacDonald et al. 2008, Macias-Fauria et al. 2012). During that epoch, summer temperatures are inferred to have been at least 3°C higher than during the past few decades.”
“At the landscape level, the obtained changes contribute to a greater and lusher landscape, in contrast to the dire conditions during the Little Ice Age, more than 100 years ago (Kullman 2010, 2015). Currently, there is little factual nourishment to flourishing projections stating that a major part of Swedish alpine areas is on verge of transformation to subalpine birch forest (e.g. Moen et al. 2004). Apparently, climate and arboreal responses are still inside the frames of natural historical variation, as inferred by several authors (e,g. Hammarlund et al. 2004; Bergman et al. 2005; Kullman 2013, 2017a, b; Kullman & Öberg 2018, 2020).”
“Given that the current relatively warm climate phase continues, the subalpine birch forest belt may eventually recede and give way to a subalpine pine belt. The obtained modest forest-limit advancement is so small that flourishing model simulations of extensive birch forest expansion over most of the current alpine tundra appear as large and unfounded exaggerations.”
Tree remnants (trunks, cones, roots, etc.) found at northern Sweden mountain sites 500 to 700 meters atop where the 21st century tree line ends imply the early-Holocene (~13,000 to 7000 years ago) climate was significantly warmer than today in this region (Kullman, 2022a).
The temperature lapse rate for the Swedish Lapland region is 0.6°C/100 m. Accounting for glacio-isostatic uplift, this tree line elevation implies surface air temperatures were 3.6°C higher than today during the Early Holocene.
Chimneys of a coal-fired power plant are pictured in New Delhi, India, July 20, 2017. Picture taken July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
NEW DELHI, Jan 30 (Reuters) – India plans to use an emergency law next month to force power plants that run on imported coal to maximise output, two government sources told Reuters on Monday, in preparation for expected record consumption this summer.
Many Indian coal-fired plants, including those those owned by Adani Power (ADAN.NS) and Tata Power (TTPW.NS) in India’s western Gujarat state, have not operated at full capacity in the recent years because they have found it difficult to compete with power generated from cheap domestic coal.
The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for January 2023 was -0.04 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean. This is down from the December 2022 anomaly of +0.05 deg. C.
The linear warming trend since January, 1979 now stands at +0.13 C/decade (+0.11 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).
Various regional LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 13 months are:
YEAR
MO
GLOBE
NHEM.
SHEM.
TROPIC
USA48
ARCTIC
AUST
2022
Jan
+0.03
+0.06
-0.00
-0.23
-0.13
+0.68
+0.10
2022
Feb
-0.00
+0.01
-0.01
-0.24
-0.04
-0.30
-0.50
2022
Mar
+0.15
+0.27
+0.03
-0.07
+0.22
+0.74
+0.02
2022
Apr
+0.26
+0.35
+0.18
-0.04
-0.26
+0.45
+0.61
2022
May
+0.17
+0.25
+0.10
+0.01
+0.59
+0.23
+0.20
2022
Jun
+0.06
+0.08
+0.05
-0.36
+0.46
+0.33
+0.11
2022
Jul
+0.36
+0.37
+0.35
+0.13
+0.84
+0.55
+0.65
2022
Aug
+0.28
+0.31
+0.24
-0.03
+0.60
+0.50
-0.00
2022
Sep
+0.24
+0.43
+0.06
+0.03
+0.88
+0.69
-0.28
2022
Oct
+0.32
+0.43
+0.21
+0.04
+0.16
+0.93
+0.04
2022
Nov
+0.17
+0.21
+0.13
-0.16
-0.51
+0.51
-0.56
2022
Dec
+0.05
+0.13
-0.03
-0.35
-0.21
+0.80
-0.38
2023
Jan
-0.04
+0.05
-0.14
-0.38
+0.12
-0.12
-0.50
The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for January, 2023 should be available within the next several days here.
The global and regional monthly anomalies for the various atmospheric layers we monitor should be available in the next few days at the following locations:
The mean temperature data for December, 2022, for the city of Tokyo, Japan and its Hachijō-jima island in the Pacific are now available from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).
These data now allow us to look at the newest annual mean temperature trends for the two locations.
First we look at latest annual mean temperature plots for Tokyo since 1994:
According to the alarmists, the increase in CO2 is supposed to be heating up the entire planet. Strangely, using data from the JMA, Tokyo has in fact cooled modestly since 1994 – despite the urban heat sink effect from all the concrete, asphalt, steel and waste heat.
Independent analyses from multiple independent sources indicate Arctic Siberia was 3 to 5°C warmer than today during the peak of the last glacial, or when CO2 levels were below 200 ppm.
Measurements from Antarctica’s ice sheet are almost invariably used to characterize both the global-scale atmospheric CO2 levels and climate for the last 10s to 100s of thousands of years.
But it is rather odd that Antarctica’s climate is considered globally representative (i.e., “global warming”) since there has been no warming here for the last seven decades.
Further, ice samples from Antarctica have CO2 values that range between 900 and 2900 ppm (Matsuo and Miyake, 1966) for the modern period (i.e., the 1960s). These values are far outside the range of the accepted modern global atmospheric values (~300 to 400 ppm).
Large-igneous-province volcanic activity during the mid-Cretaceous triggered a global-scale episode of reduced marine oxygen levels known as Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 approximately 94.5 million years ago. It has been hypothesized that this geologically rapid degassing of volcanic carbon dioxide altered seawater carbonate chemistry, affecting marine ecosystems, geochemical cycles and sedimentation. Here we report on two sites drilled by the International Ocean Discovery Program offshore of southwest Australia that exhibit clear evidence for suppressed pelagic carbonate sedimentation in the form of a stratigraphic interval barren of carbonate minerals, recording ocean acidification during the event. We then use the osmium isotopic composition of bulk sediments to directly link this protracted ~600 kyr shoaling of the marine calcite compensation depth to the onset of volcanic activity. This decrease in marine pH was prolonged by biogeochemical feedbacks in highly productive regions where elevated heterotrophic respiration added carbon dioxide to the water column. A compilation of mid-Cretaceous marine stratigraphic records reveals a contemporaneous decrease of sedimentary carbonate content at continental slope sites globally. Thus, we contend that changes in marine carbonate chemistry are a primary ecological stress and important consequence of rapid emission of carbon dioxide during many large-igneous-province eruptions in the geologic past.
by R. Barmby, Jan 23; 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch
Most people have a firm opinion on whether human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing unnatural global warming, and hold that opinion without understanding how the molecule physically absorbs and then releases heat energy.
Understanding that mechanism reveals why today’s significant global CO2 emissions are insignificant to future global warming.
Analogies are a great way to explain science, and I’m going to share the worst and best analogies for how carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas. I will also share why the warming effect of CO2 is limited.
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Why Today’s Carbon Dioxide Emissions Are Insignificant To Global Warming
As more CO2 molecules are added as potential absorbers for the fixed amount of the specific band of infrared radiation, there is less chance that any CO2 molecule will be hit. If the additional CO2 molecules do not absorb infrared radiation, they cannot contribute to global warming.
The ever-reducing CO2 contribution to global warming looks like this graph, which, ironically, is based on the IPCC’s formula (from Inconvenient Facts by Gregory Wrightstone):
On the graph above, consider that the pre-industrial (circa 1875) atmospheric CO2 level was about 280 parts per million (ppm), and today it is about 420 ppm—an increase of 140 ppm.
As a rough approximation, the three bars labeled 350, 400, and 450 ppm represent this past increase in CO2, and the sum of the global warming temperature increases associated with those three bars is about 0.7°C.
The next four bars (500, 550, 600, and 650 ppm) represent a future CO2 increase of 200 ppm, which at today’s rate of 2.5 ppm increase each year would take from now to about 2100.
I chose bars 350 through 650 ppm to highlight that the IPCC’s formula predicts that global warming from current CO2 emissions held flat (1.35°C) would still beat the IPCC’s target of 1.5°C of human-caused global warming from preindustrial times to the year 2100.
The above graph suggests global warming from increasing CO2 never stops, but we know from ancient climates that even 12 times today’s CO2 concentrations did not cause runaway global warming.
Drs. Happer, Koonin, and Lindzen submitted to the U.S. (Northern California) District Court in 2021 that minor changes in cloud cover and convection currents can have a bigger effect on the Earth’s surface temperature than major increases in CO2.
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La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
Fig.1: A reproduction of Fig. 3a of MBH23. Annual European mean SPEI-data in blue/red, the low pass filter output is shown in black.
