Tous les articles par Alain Préat

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.

Greenland’s 2021 spring: more snow, less melt

by C. Rotter, July 14, 2021 in WUWTfromNSIDC


Surface melt and total melt-day area for the Greenland Ice Sheet at the end of the 2021 spring season was below the 1981 to 2010 average. Snowfall and rain (minus runoff) added mass to the ice sheet. As of June 20, total mass gain for the ice sheet since September 2020 was slightly above average. The spike from June 25 to June 27 will be discussed in later a post.

ANTARCTIC SEA ICE EXTENT LARGEST SINCE 2015, AND GROWING

by Cap Allon, July 14, 2021 in Electrroverse


According to the June, 2021 report recently released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), it is revealed that the ice locked at Earth’s poles is actually GROWING.

The opening paragraph of the report reads: “Sea ice in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica was well above the 1981 to 2010 average extent in June, rising above the ninetieth percentile near the end of the month”.

But that’s as far as the NSIDC go…

They have plenty to say on the Arctic –which is experiencing its sixth lowest extent on record (big whoop)– but when it comes to Antarctica, I hear nothing but “crickets” — clearly, the icy continent GROWING in mass, and so offsetting the comparatively small losses registered by its northern cousin, is seen as a dampener to the AGW party.

Or perhaps the NSIDC are just letting the data speak for itself:

… it is revealed that Antarctic sea ice extent, as of June 12 (or day 193), is at an impressive 15.808 million square kilometres (6.104 million square miles) — this is the largest extent at this time of year since 2015, and also sees it tracking well-above the 1979-1990 average.

This news, if you’re an alarmist, is surely something to be celebrated.

The icy continent holds 90% of Earth’s freshwater — so, if you’re one of the gullible that have been conditioned to lose sleep over ‘sea level rise’ then this latest datapoint should quell those fears.

Unfortunately though, alarmists selectively ignore ‘good news’ and instead accumulate only bad news–the news that supports their fears, which, thanks to the likes of the IPCC and their MSM lapdogs, is rammed down our collective throats on a daily basis — it is impossible to ignore.

It’s a type of cognitive dissonance, I guess — people are rejecting new information that conflicts with their existing beliefs, even when the new information is positive: this isn’t how science is supposed to work.

Oh, and the NSIDC has more.

Looking at their historical chart which runs back to 1979, an overall trend of growth is shown here, too.

According to the data, ice around the southern pole has been increasing at ≈1 percent per decade:

Curry: The State of Climate Science in 5 Minutes

by Kip Hansen, July 14, 2021 in WUWT


Dr. Judith Curry has treated the world to a marvelous 5-minute synopsis of climate science on her blog Climate Etc. It is absolutely brilliant and makes a great bit to share with friends, family, neighbors and colleagues who would benefit from a more pragmatic view of the Climate Science field.

With her permission, I share it here — just the synopsis without her introduction.


“Let me start with a quick summary of what is referred to as the ‘climate crisis:’

Its warming.  The warming is caused by us.  Warming is dangerous.  We need to urgently transition to renewable energy to stop the warming.  Once we do that, sea level rise will stop and the weather won’t be so extreme.

So what’s wrong with this narrative?  In a nutshell, we’ve vastly oversimplified both the problem and its solutions.  The complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity of the existing knowledge about climate change is being kept away from the policy and public debate. The solutions that have been proposed are technologically and politically infeasible on a global scale.

Specifically with regards to climate science. The sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of carbon dioxide has a factor of three uncertainty.  Climate model predictions of alarming impacts for the 21st century are driven by an emissions scenario, RCP8.5, that is highly implausible. Climate model predictions neglect scenarios of natural climate variability, which dominate regional climate variability on interannual to multidecadal time scales.  And finally, emissions reductions will do little to improve the climate of the 21st century; if you believe the climate models, most of the impacts of emissions reductions will be felt in the 22nd century and beyond.

Whether or not warming is ‘dangerous‘ is an issue of values, about which science has nothing to say.  According to the IPCC, there is not yet evidence of changes in the global frequency or intensity of hurricanes, droughts, floods or wildfires.  In the U.S., the states with by far the largest population growth are Florida and Texas, which are warm, southern states.  Property along the coast is skyrocketing in value.  Personal preference and market value do not yet regard global warming as ‘dangerous.’

Climate change is a grand narrative in which manmade climate change has become the dominant cause of societal problems. Everything that goes wrong reinforces the conviction that that there is only one thing we can do prevent societal problems – stop burning fossil fuels. This grand narrative misleads us to think that if we solve the problem of manmade climate change, then these other problems would also be solved. This belief leads us away from a deeper investigation of the true causes of these problems. The end result is narrowing of the viewpoints and policy options that we are willing to consider in dealing with complex issues such as public health, water resources, weather disasters and national security.

Does all this mean we should do nothing about climate change?  No. We should work to minimize our impact on the planet, which isn’t simple for a planet with 7 billion inhabitants.  We should work to minimize air and water pollution.  From time immemorial, humans have adapted to climate change.  Whether or not we manage to drastically curtail our carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades, we need to reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events.

With regards to energy.  All other things being equal, everyone would prefer clean over dirty energy.  However, all other things are not equal. We need secure, reliable, and economic energy systems for all countries in the world. This includes Africa, which is currently lacking grid electricity in many countries. We need a 21st century infrastructure for our electricity and transportation systems, to support continued and growing prosperity. The urgency of rushing to implement 20th century renewable technologies risks wastingresources on an inadequate energy infrastructure and increasing our vulnerability to weather and climate extremes.

How the climate of the 21st century will play out is a topic of deep uncertainty. Once natural climate variability is accounted for, it may turn out to be relatively benign.  Or we may be faced with unanticipated surprises.  We need to increase our resiliency to whatever the future climate presents us with.  We are shooting ourselves in the foot if we sacrifice economic prosperity and overall societal resilience on the altar of urgently transitioning to 20th century renewable energy technologies.

We need to remind ourselves that addressing climate change isn’t an end in itself, and that climate change is not the only problem that the world is facing.  The objective should be to improve human well being in the 21st century, while protecting the environment as much as we can.”


I couldn’t agree more. I might adjust a few details but would share this with anyone who wanted a straight shooting from the hip version of the climate situation.

Thank you, Dr. Curry.

The Truth About Heat Waves

by Jime Steele, July 12, 2021 in WUWT


For those who truly want to be guided by science, put aside the climate crisis hysteria. We can explain the natural dynamics of all heat waves by simply knowing 1) how heat is transported along the earth’s surface; 2) how heat is transported vertically; 3) how solar heating changes; and 4) how the greenhouse effect varies.

Below is a map of global temperature anomalies for the year 2014 that illustrates natural climate dynamics. There is no uniform warming that might be expected from a global blanket of greenhouse gases. Across the globe, surface temperatures alternate between regions of above average warmth (red) with regions of below average (blue). (Gray regions lack sufficient data). Indeed, the observed cooler eastern USA is dubbed a “warming hole” by climate scientists because its cooling trend contradicts global warming theory. It requires a natural climate dynamic explanation.

The temperature pattern is associated with regions where warmer air from the south more frequently intruded northward, while simultaneously, cold air from the north intruded southward. This pattern is due to a naturally wavy jet stream and associated pressure systems. The warm red regions indicate regions where high‑pressure systems dominate. In the northern hemisphere, high pressure systems cause clockwise atmospheric circulation that pulls warm air northward on its western side, and cold air southward on its eastern side.  Low pressure systems circulate counter-clockwise, conversely pulling cold air southward on its western side. These combined circulation patterns partly explain both the extreme cold that dropped Texas temperatures as much as 50° F below average in February 2021, as well as extreme heating that raised USA’s northwest temperatures 30°- 40° F above normal the following June. Similarly in 2019, northward transport of heated air from the Sahara desert caused heat waves over Europe and Greenland. Such natural heat transport can also cause coastal Alaska to be warmer than Florida.

USA Heatwave reality check: Global temps below 30-year avg & ‘75% of the states recorded their hottest temperature prior to 1955’ – Worst U.S. heat waves happened in 1930s

by M. Morano, July 8, 2021 in CO2Coalition


Here we go again! Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming according to climate model simulations

Model Based Study: Northwest heat wave impossible without climate change: “They logged observations of what happened and fed them into 21 computer models and ran numerous simulations. They then simulated a world without greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The difference between the two scenarios is the climate change portion.”

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano & author of Green Fraud:

“Here we go again. Any heatwave, hurricane, tornado outbreak, etc. are always used by the media and other climate activists as some kind of ‘proof” of a climate emergency.  At least these claims are more plausible than claims that building collapses or illegal immigration are caused by “climate change.”

But currently, the global satellite temperature for June 2021 is below the 30-year average. And despite the U.S. heatwave, there are plenty of record cold outbreaks happening around the globe, (See: Unusually strong cold weather outbreak spreads from Antarctica into central South America, bringing early winter temperature records and first snowfall after decades)

The media gaslights anyone who mocks ‘global warming’ on a record cold or snowy day but has no problem doing the exact same thing whenever it’s hot. As University of Alabama climate scientist John Christy’s research has found: “About 75% of the states recorded their hottest temperature prior to 1955, and over 50 percent of the states experienced their record cold temperatures after 1940.”

In addition, the EPA’s own data has shown that the 1930s U.S. heatwaves were far more severe than current temperatures. (2021 Update: EPA puts inconvenient data on 1930s drought and heat wave down the memory hole)

In short, it is unscientific and nothing short of political lobbying to jump on a heatwave to claim ‘proof’ of man-made global warming. Climate activists’ new motto should be: Never let an opportunity go to waste to blame a heatwave or a flood or hurricane or building collapse or immigration — on ‘climate change.’

New Study: A ‘Profound’ ~1°C Cooling Trend Across East Antarctica Since 1979 Is ‘Likely To Accelerate’

by K. Richard, July 12, 2021 in NoTricksZone


Except for a few pockets of warming along the West Antarctic coast, surface air temperatures have cooled profoundly across East Antarctica – most of the continent, as well as the surrounding Southern Ocean – in the last 40 years (1979-2018). About 30% of the cooling can be explained by Madden-Julian Oscillation forcing.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose from 337 ppm in 1979 to 408 ppm in 2018.

But according to graphical illustrations of surface air temperature (SAT) trends from satellite observations documented in a new study (Hsu et al., 2021), nearly the entire continent of Antarctica and much of the surrounding Southern Ocean have undergone about -0.02°C/year (-0.2°C per decade) SAT cooling during this period.

East Antarctica’s temperatures have fallen by about 1°C in the last 40 years, with approximately -0.4°C cooling from 1999-2018 relative to 1979-1998.

Per the authors, one-third of this 40-year cooling trend can be attributed to Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) forcing. The MJO influence is “likely to accelerate” the long-term cooling trend for East Antarctica in the coming decades.

New Study Defies Alarmists, Finds “No Notable Changes” Between Present And Future Cyclone Energy

by P. Gosselin, July 10, 2021 in NoTricksZone


Good news: a warmer, likely tamer climate, is in the future recent science shows. A new study projects no  future increase in tropical storm energy.

Lots of government-funded climate scientists like claiming tropical cyclones are getting worse and that in the future we need to expect one supercharged storm after another – due to man heating the climate with carbon dioxide emissions.

But as we noted yesterday here, Zoe Phin found that hurricanes have not gone along with this dubious doomsday science over the past 25 years. Now a new study confirms things will continue that way.

Today German site Die kalte Sonne (DkS) presents its 49th video on climate and energy, featuring tropical storm energy.

Present vs future scenario

In the segment, DkS cites a new study appearing in the Geophysical Research Letters, where a team of scientists led by Philip Kreussler used three different global climate models to investigate tropical cyclone integrated kinetic energy which is closely associated with their damage potential.

No notable changes

Global Warming Stalls Again – Back To Levels Seen 20 Years Ago

by P. Gosselin & Kirye, July 6, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Before we begin, Dr. Roy Spencer just published that Version 6 of the University of Alabama-Huntsville satellite-based global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June 2021 was -0.01 deg. C, down from the May 2021 value of +0.08 deg. C.

As Dr. Spencer’s chart above shows, temperatures are back within the range seen 20 years ago. The hiatus in global temperature rise appears to have resumed.

June cooling in Tokyo

 

Source: JMA

Read more at No Tricks Zone

Leaked diplomatic cables show ‘limited progress’ in Energy Charter Treaty reform talks

by K. Taylor, July 6, 2021 in Euractiv


Little progress has been made to modernise a controversial agreement on energy investments that activists warn could derail decarbonisation efforts in Europe and across the globe, according to leaked documents.

The fifth round of negotiations on reforming the Energy Charter Treaty – an international agreement that allows energy companies to sue governments for decisions impacting their investments – took place in early June.

But attempts by the European Commission to bring the treaty in line with international climate goals have so far fallen flat, according to two leaked diplomatic cables.

“The atmosphere was constructive, but progress was limited, especially on energy issues,” reads one of the leaked diplomatic cables, which was written after a meeting the EU Council’s Working Party on Energy, where the European Commission recently gave EU countries an overview of progress made in the negotiations.

“No substantial progress was made on the definition of economic activity in the energy sector,” the cable says, referring to a section listing which types of energy infrastructure are protected under the treaty.

At the moment, that definition includes almost all energy sources, from coal to renewables. The European Commission, which negotiates on behalf of the 27 EU member states, has proposed gradually reducing protection for fossil fuel investments but has seen little support from other treaty signatories.

Unanimity is required to modify the treaty, whose 54 members include countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, which are heavily reliant on fossil fuel export revenues and have little incentive to reform.

A sixth round of negotiations to reform the Energy Charter Treaty is opening on Tuesday (6 July) by which point the European Commission hopes to have rallied more support from non-EU states, like the UK and Balkan countries.

However, support for the EU’s reform plan was close to non-existent in the last negotiation round, where only six signatories even expressed views on the Commission’s proposal.

Kazakhstan was the only country to express an official position on the EU proposal and it “openly rejected” it, the documents show.

“After two hours of negotiations, it was clear that the EU proposal did not have enough support. None of the larger contracting parties was prepared to support the EU proposal in its current form. It would be necessary to examine where the EU’s flexibility could lie,” one of the leaked cables says.

Climate Sensitivity to CO2, what do we know? Part 2.

by A. May, July 8, 2021 in WUWT


In Part 1, we introduced the concepts of climate sensitivity to CO2, often called ECS or TCR. The IPCC prefers a TCR of about 1.8°C/2xCO2 (IPCC, 2013, p. 818). TCR is the short-term, century scale, response of surface temperature to a doubling of CO2, we abbreviate the units as “°C/2xCO2.” In these posts we review lower estimates of climate sensitivity, estimates below 1°C/2xCO2. In parallel, we also review estimates of the surface air temperature sensitivity (SATS) to radiative forcing (RF, the units are °C per W/m2 or Watts per square meter). The IPCC estimates this value to be ~0.49°C per W/m2.

The previous post discussed two modern climate sensitivity estimates, by Richard Lindzen and Willie Soon, that range below 1°C/2xCO2. Next, we review climate sensitivity estimates by Sherwood Idso, Reginald Newell and their colleagues.

Many comments to part 1 tried to discredit the “ECS” or “TCR” estimates made by Lindzen and Soon, completely missing their point and my point. ECS and TCR are artificial climate model constructs, with little meaning outside the confines of computer modeling. TCR is a little more realistic since we might be able to observe or measure something close to it over the next century. But ECS, or the “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” is a totally abstract and unworldly number that could never be measured. It means if CO2 doubled suddenly, and nothing else changed for several hundred years while the oceans came into equilibrium with the new surface air temperature, what would the final surface temperature be? Air temperature would never be close to equilibrium for several hundred years, even 70 to 100 years (TCR) is a stretch.

Climate models are not the real world and the numbers that come out of them, like ECS or TCR, can be useful for showing the likely direction of temperature movement in response to changes in parameters or different model scenarios, but the numbers themselves are meaningless unless the models have previously been validated against the real world. With the possible exception of the Russian INM-CM4 model, no other IPCC model has successfully predicted future global surface temperatures. Ron Clutz discusses INM-CM4 here.

Model calculations are not observations. ECS and TCR are not real numbers, real numbers are based on observations. Thus, the model extracted values of ECS and TCR are not information, they can be used to detect the direction of change in climate forcing, if the climate model is an accurate reflection of that portion of the real world. The direction of movement of ECS and TCR, when model parameters or data tables change, is the information, not the computed value. I’m often amazed, as a former petrophysical modeler of 42 years, how often otherwise intelligent people confuse unvalidated model calculations with observations.

Claim: Machine Learning can Detect Anthropogenic Climate Change

E. Worrall, July 8, 2021 in WUWT


According to the big computer we are doomed to suffer ever more damaging weather extremes. But researchers can’t tell us exactly why, because their black box neural net won’t explain its prediction.

As an IT expert who has built commercial AI systems, I find it incredible that the researchers seem so naive as to think their AI machine output has value, without corroborating evidence. They admit they are going to try to understand how their AI works – but in my opinion they have jumped the gun, making big claims on the basis of a black box result.

Consider the following;

….

Fishy Business: Alleged Fraud over Ocean Acidification Research, Reversal on Coral Extinction

by R. Alexander, June 28, 2021 in ScienceUnderAttack


In the news recently have been two revelations about the sometimes controversial world of coral reef research. The first is fraud allegations against research claiming that ocean acidification from global warming impairs the behavior of coral reef fish. The second is an about-face on inflated estimates for the extinction risk of Pacific Ocean coral species due to climate change.

The alleged fraud involves 22 research papers authored by Philip Munday, a marine ecologist at JCU (James Cook University) in Townsville, Australia and Danielle Dixson, a U.S. biologist who completed her PhD under Munday’s supervision in 2012. The fraud charges were made in August 2020 by three of an international group of mostly biological and environmental scientists, plus the group leader, fish physiologist Timothy Clark of Deakin University in Geelong, Australia. The Clark group says it will publicize the alleged data problems shortly.

The research in question studied the behavior of coral reef fish in slightly acidified seawater, in order to simulate the effect of ocean acidification caused by the absorption of up to 30% of humanity’s CO2 emissions. The additional CO2 has so far lowered the average pH – a measure of acidity – of ocean surface water from about 8.2 to 8.1 since industrialization began in the 18th century.

Munday and Dixson claim that the extra CO2 causes reef fish to be attracted by chemical cues from predators, instead of avoiding them; to become hyperactive and disoriented; and to suffer loss of vision and hearing. But Clark and his fellow scientists, in their own paper published in January 2020, debunk all of these conclusions. Most damningly of all, the researchers find that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behavior of coral reef fish are not reproducible – the basis for their fraud allegations against the JCU work.

Strong Link Between Solar Activity And Rapid Cooling (2-3°C/Century) In China During The Last 5000 Years

by K. Richard , July 5, 2021 in NoTricksZone


China’s climate history includes multiple climate warming and cooling fluctuations of 4°C within centuries, with cold periods aligning with declines in solar irradiance.

According to a new study (Zhang et al., 2021), northern China’s coldest temperatures of the last 5000 years occurred 300 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP), coinciding with the Little Ice Age and a decrease in solar irradiance. This  frigid period was was followed by a ~4°C  warm-up (from about 3.5°C to 7.5°C) within the span of about 150 years during the middle of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912 CE), which was well before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began sharply rising.

The warmest temperatures of the last millennium occurred during the Medieval Warm Period (Song Dynasty, 960-1279 CE).

Rapid cooling periods of multiple degrees per century also coincided with the collapse of ancient civilizations, or dynasties, as wars and social unrest were often associated with competition for access to natural resources (such as water during droughts).

Was Global Warming The Cause of the Great Northwest Heatwave? Science Says No.

by C. Rotter, July 6, 2021 in WUWT


Reposted from The Cliff Mass Weather Blog

During the past week, the Pacific Northwest experienced the most severe heat event of the past century.

All-time high-temperature records were broken throughout the region, often by large margins. Many in the media, several local and national politicians, and some activist environmental scientists have claimed that this event was “driven by” or predominantly forced by human-inspired global warming (usually referred to as “climate change”).But such global warming claims are not supported by the facts and our best scientific understanding.  

Truth and Rigorous Science About Climate Change is Necessary for Wise Decisions
In this blog, I will use observations, modeling, climatological data, and the peer-reviewed scientific literature to demonstrate that human-caused global warming played a very small role in the extreme heat event that we just experienced here in the Pacific Northwest.I will describe the origins of a meteorological black swan eventand how the atmosphere is capable of attaining extreme, unusual conditions without any aid from our species.As you read this, consider that I have actively pursued research on Northwest heatwaves, published several papers in the peer-reviewed literature on this specific topic, and have run both weather prediction and climate models that simulate such events.  This subject is in my wheelhouse.

I also discuss the seriousness of misinformation.   You and others can not make wise decisions when the information provided to you is not based on truth and science.

NEW NASA STUDY: SATELLITES SEE COOLING IN THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE

Cap Allon, July 1, 2021 in Electroverse


NASA satellites have revealed that the mesosphere –the layer of the atmosphere some 30-50 miles above our heads– is COOLING and contracting.

Using decades of data and a number of satallites, a team at NASA have identified a cooling mesosphere.

“We had to put together three satellites’ worth of data,” said Scott Bailey, atmospheric scientist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, head of the new research, published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.

“You need several decades to get a handle on these trends and isolate what’s happening,” continued Bailey, who goes on to blame the usual “greenhouse gas emissions” for the observed changes –well how else would they have obtained funding– however, Bailey also mentions “solar cycle changes, and other effects”.

Together, the satellites provided about 30 years of observations, indicating that the summer mesosphere over Earth’s poles is cooling four to five degrees Fahrenheit and contracting 500 to 650 feet per decade.

Unusually strong cold weather outbreak spreads from Antarctica into central South America, bringing early winter temperature records and first snowfall after decades

by A. Flis, July 4, 2021 in SevereWeatherEurope


Winter in the Southern Hemisphere has brought an unusual cold weather outbreak from Antarctica into South America. Low-temperature records were broken, with snowfall returning to parts of south Brazil after decades.

The source of the cold air was Antarctica, which is quite colder than normal this season. As you will also see, the Southern Hemisphere is also colder than normal, bringing down the 2021 global temperatures to the lowest in the past 6 years. All that, while record heatwaves are raging across the United States and Canada.

ACCUWEATHER METEOROLOGIST: GLOBAL WARMING NOT TO BLAME FOR NORTHWEST’S HEATWAVE

by Cap Allon, June 30, 2021 in Elecroverse


Record heat has been felt across the the Pacific Northwest this week, which has led the MSM and their placard-brandishing, sandal wearing EOTW groupies to draw the connection to ‘global warming’ aka ‘the climate crisis’ aka ‘terrifying terra firma broiling’.

However, AccuWeather Meteorologist Joe Lundberg is on the record as saying that AGW isn’t to blame here.

Risking a backlash from his bosses, and from those faceless elites on high, Lundberg very reasonably states: “I just think that right now we’re seeing a very unusual pattern across most of the northern hemisphere where there’s a lot of extremes.”

Lunberg sees erratic jet streams as the main culprit here, which, as Electroverse has been saying for years, are weakening due to historically low solar activity — and while Lunberg doesn’t touch on solar output, he does reference a “big upper level trough that’s in the Aleutians”.

Right now, weather patterns across the country are very unusual, explains Lundberg: “Downstream, there’s a massive upper level ridge that’s in the Northwest, that’s why they’re seeing the record heat there.

“And then downstream along the eastern seaboard, we’re also seeing another upper level ridge.

“But not everyone’s getting this heat,” adds Lundberg — far from it, “across the deep south, for example, it’s actually cooler than average and looks like its gonna stay that way for the foreseeable future.”

Latest GFS runs see temperature departures some 16-20C below the seasonal average across vast regions, particularly in New Mexico:

El Niño and the lengthening New Pause: now 6 years 10 months

by C. Monckton of Brenchley, July 3, 2021 in WUWT


The latest UAH temperature anomalies show that the New Pause has lengthened by another two months to 6 years 10 months. As usual, the Pause is defined as the longest period, up to the most recent month for which data are available, during which the linear-regression trend on the monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies shows no increase.

….

Pauses have no predictive purpose. Just because there has been no global warming for more than seven years (HadCRUT4) or almost seven years (UAH), that does not mean there will be no global warming in future.

see also:  Global Warming Stalls Again – Back To Levels Seen 20 Years Ago! And: No Warming In Tokyo This Century

Heatwave Reporting Shows How Science Has Been Corrupted By Climate Groupthinktch

by A. Watts, July 1, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch


The headline in E&E News, WOWT-TV, Scientific American, WorldNewsNetwork, and other media outlets this week, “Unprecedented Heat Wave in Pacific Northwest Driven by Climate Change” couldn’t possibly be more unscientific.

With absolutely no analysis, no historical context, and nothing but conjecture, author Anne. C. Mulkern eschewed science for advocacy in her reporting of the brief Pacific Northwest (PNW) heatwave this week.

Yes, the heatwave set all-time high-temperature records in Washington, Oregon, and Canada. But consider this: At best, we have about 150 years of reliable weather records for the PNW, so a “black swan” outlier eventlike this isn’t surprising.

It’s happened before, most certainly. We just weren’t around to observe it. After all, Native Americans did not keep written weather records.

High- (and low-) temperature records are nothing new. But it is important to look at the past because data shows us that more high-temperature records were set during the first half of the twentieth century than during the past 50 years.

Even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirms this.

SANTA CATARINA, BRAZIL LOGS ITS THIRD CONSECUTIVE DAY OF RARE SNOW AND SUB-ZERO COLD

by Cap Allon, July 2, 2021 in Elecrroverse


Santa Catarina recorded snowfall in Urupema and Sao Joaquim on Wednesday — the third consecutive day of the rare phenomenon, which also included unusually chilly sub-zero temperatures.

Santa Catarina is the southernmost state of Brazil.

Temperatures across the state have plunged to a record-challenging -7.5C (18.5F), and beyond, this week, and heavy snow has been registered.

According to the Information Center of Environmental Resources and Hydrometeorology of Santa Catarina (Epagri / Ciram), this is the first year since 2000 that snow has been recorded on three consecutive days.

As reported by riotimesonline.com, plunging temperatures and favorable humidity levels have brought substantial accumulations of snow to the towns and cities located in and around the Santa Catarina Mountains

 

Five Asian countries account for 80% of new coal power investment

by J. Ambrose, One 30, 2021 in TheGuradian


Five Asian countries are jeopardising global climate ambitions by investing in 80% of the world’s planned new coal plants, according to a report.

Carbon Tracker, a financial thinktank, has found that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units, even though renewable energy is cheaper than most new coal plants.

The investments in one of the most environmentally damaging sources of energy could generate a total of 300 gigawatts of energy – enough to power the UK more than three times over – despite calls from climate experts at the UN for all new coal plants to be cancelled.

Catharina Hillenbrand von der Neyen, the author of the report, said: “These last bastions of coal power are swimming against the tide, when renewables offer a cheaper solution that supports global climate targets. Investors should steer clear of new coal projects, many of which are likely to generate negative returns from the outset.”

Greenland Ice Core CO2 during the past 1,000 years


by R. Hannon, July 2, 2021 in WUWT


Introduction
This post compares CO2 ice core measurements from Greenland to those from Antarctica over the last millennium. Paleoclimate studies typically use only Antarctic ice cores to evaluate past CO2 fluctuations. This is because the entire Greenland CO2 datasets were deemed unreliable due to chemical reactions with impurities in the ice and therefore have not been used in studies since the late 1990’s. This post will demonstrate that CO2 data from Greenland ice cores have scientific value and respond to key paleoclimate events such as the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period.

Antarctic Ice Core CO2 Trends
Antarctic ice CO2 data is readily available and has been studied extensively (Bauska, 2015, Ahn, 2012, Siegenthaler, 2005 and Rubino, 2019). Most of the focus of recent studies has been on high snow accumulation sites which tend to have higher resolution and less smoothing of the trapped gas age in ice bubbles due to the firn to ice transition. Gas age width and resolution ranges from 10 years in Law Dome ice cores to 65 years in Dronning Maud Land DML. Figure 1 shows CO2 data from Antarctic high-resolution ice cores over the past millennium.

Ahn et al, 2012, compiled CO2 records from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and compared them to other key datasets such as Dronning Maud Land (DML), and Law Dome. Their study recognizes and discusses elevated CO2 during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) at 1000 AD, decrease of CO2 around 1600 AD during the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the subsequent rapid increase beginning around 1850 AD.

UAH Global Temperature Update for June 2021: -0.01 deg. C

by Roy Spencer, July 3, 2021 in WUWT


The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June, 2021 was -0.01 deg. C, down from the May, 2021 value of +0.08 deg. C.

REMINDER: We have changed the 30-year averaging period from which we compute anomalies to 1991-2020, from the old period 1981-2010. This change does not affect the temperature trends.

The linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.14 C/decade (+0.12 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).

 

Greenland Temperatures & The AMO

by P. Homewood, June 13, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat


It’s not new, but it’s worth going over it again.

We have seen how Greenland temperatures rose sharply in the 1920s, and remained at levels similar to the last decade until the 1960s, when they fell equally sharply. This change in climate is closely interlinked with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which switches from cold to warm phase, and back again, roughly every 50 to 60 years: