Un hobby&#8230;

The Rational Climate e-Book, By Patrice Poyet

P. Homewood, Jan 27, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

I am delighted to give a plug to Patrice Poyet’s new e-Book, The Rational Climate e-Book.

It can be downloaded for free on the link below:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347150306_The_Rational_Climate_e-Book/link/5fe21ddb92851c13feb1763d/download

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Patrice is a geologist, a geochemist and an applied computer scientist with an interest in various domains like Earth and Planetary Sciences, Astronomy, Finance and Trading, Integration in Manufacturing and Design, Simulation and Defense Systems, etc The development of computer systems has given him the chance to take part in a wide variety of projects in very different areas of expertise. Patrice published 37 articles mostly in peer-reviewed scientific journals, 6 books jointly-reviewed with colleagues, 6 peer-reviewed chapters in books, 64 papers in peer-reviewed conferences, one D.Sc. thesis (1986), and 32 scientific and technical reports for demanding public and private clients (e.g. French Navy, EC-funded R&D projects, CIEH, etc.) and acted as an expert reviewer for several EC R&D projects. He is now using his initial training as a geochemist and his passion for Earth and Space sciences to completely revisit the subject of climate and paleo-climates. The result is this free 431 pages e-Book that addresses all aspects of the subject.

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Does “global warming” mean it’s warming everywhere?

by C. Kennedy, Oct 29, 2020 in NOAAClimate.gov

No, “global warming” means Earth’s averageannual air temperature is rising, but not necessarily in every single location during all seasons across the globe. It’s like your grades. If one semester you get all Bs and Cs, and the next you get all As and Cs, your grade point average rises, even though you didn’t improve in every class.

That’s the way it is with Earth’s near-surface temperature as atmospheric greenhouse gas levels climb. Temperature trends across the entire globe aren’t uniform because of the diverse geography on our planet—oceans versus continents, lowlands versus mountains, forests versus deserts versus ice sheets—as well as natural climate variability. When you’re zoomed in on a particular place, you may not be able to see the overall trend.

It is only when scientists calculate the average of temperature changes from every place on Earth over the course of a year to produce a single number, and then look at how that number has changed over time that a very clear, global warming trend emerges. In other words, it’s only when we “zoom out” to the planet-wide scale that the trend is obvious: despite a few, rare areas experiencing an overall cooling trend, the vast majority of places across the globe are warming.

Observed trend in temperature from 1900 to 2012; yellow to red indicates warming, while shades of blue indicate cooling. Gray indicates areas for which there are no data. There are substantial regional variations in trends across the planet, though the overall trend is warming. Map from FAQ appendix of the 2014 National Climate Assessment. Originally provided by NOAA NCDC.

The reason a “zoomed out” view makes the long-term trend so clear is that Earth’s annual average temperatures from year to year are found to be very stable when nothing is forcing it to change. Today, though, every decade since 1960 has been warmer than the last, and the last three decades each have been the warmest on record. Relative to geologic time, the warming that has occurred—1.8°F (1°C) over a span of about 120 years—is an unusually large temperature change in a relatively short span of time.

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climate-debate

Meet The Team Shaking Up Climate Models

by C. Rotter, Jan 26, 2021 in WUWT

A new team tries a new approach to Climate Modeling using AI and machine learning. Time will tell if a positive effort or extremely complicated exercise in curve fitting. Their goal is regional scale predictive models useful for planning. Few admit publicly that these do not exist today despite thousands of “studies” using downscaled GCM’s.

“There are some things where there are very robust results and other things where those results are not so robust,” says Gavin Schmidt, who heads NASA’s respected climate modeling program at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. But the variances push skeptics to dismiss the whole field.

“There’s enough stuff out there that people can sort of cherry-pick to support their preconceptions,” says Dr. Hausfather. “Climate skeptics … were arguing that climate models always predict too much warming.” After studying models done in the past 50 years, Dr. Hausfather says, “it turns out they did remarkably well.”

But climate modelers acknowledge accuracy must improve in order to plot a way through the climate crisis. Now, a team of climatologists, oceanographers, and computer scientists on the East and West U.S. coasts have launched a bold race to do just that.

They have gathered some of the brightest experts from around the world to start to build a new, modern climate model. They hope to corral the vast flow of data from sensors in space, on land, and in the ocean, and enlist “machine learning,” a kind of artificial intelligence, to bring their model alive and provide new insight into what many believe is the most pressing threat facing the planet.

Their goal is accurate climate predictions that can tell local policymakers, builders, and planners what changes to expect by when, with the kind of numerical likelihood that weather forecasters now use to describe, say, a 70% chance of rain.

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climate-debate

Japanese Climate Scientist Kyoji Kimoto: “Climate Change Governed By The Sun”, CO2 Lesser Role!

by P. Gosselin, Jan 22, 2021 in NoTricksZone

I’ve compiled a list of six examples how the sun impacts climate across the globe.

1. Climate periods based on a double Hale (44-45 years) cycle of solar activity.

In 1977 Australian geologist Rhodes W. Fairbridge found a 45-year periodicity of beach ridge located at the Hudson Bay. It has been formed with storms in Hudson Bay caused by a wavier jet stream.

I have found a 44-year periodicity of heavy snowfall in Japan caused by the wavier jet stream as follows. The time series coincide quite well with that of Fairbridge (1977).

1833 Tempo famine, Dalton minimum (1795-1830)
1877 Seinan war (44 years later)
1918 Rice riot, Gleissberg minimum (1898-1923) (41 years later)
1963 38 heavy snowfall (45 years later)
2006 Heisei 18 year heavy snowfall, Gleissberg or Dalton minimum (43 years)

The climate history of 20th century can be divided with the following 5 periods based on the double Hale cycle above using aa-index of geomagnetism associated with solar activity. The Pacific Climate Shift occurred at 1977 with solar activity increase & a positive PDO index.

1900-1918: Little Ice Age (LIA)
1919-1962: 1st Modern Warm Period (1st MWP)
1963-1976: Temporal Cold Period (TCP, New Ice Age Coming, see below)
1977-2005: 2nd Modern Warm Period (2nd MWP)
2006 – present: New Cold Period (NCP)

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climate-debate

Studies Show Glaciers Worldwide Were Smaller Than Today

by Die Late Sonne, Feb 26, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Former Iceland Prime Minister fed up with climate tourism: Glaciers used to be smaller than today

By Die kalte Sonne
[German text translated by P. Gosselin]

Many glaciers are currently shrinking, as they have always done in the past when the climate warmed up. What’s the news on the glacier front?

In August 2019, the Okjokull Glacier disappeared in Iceland with great media attention. The BBC reported:

Climate change: Iceland holds funeral for melted glacier

The glacier called Okjokull is the first in the country to be lost to climate change, after the warmest July ever on record. Iceland loses about 11 billion tonnes of ice per year, and scientists have warned that there are about 400 other glaciers also at risk. They fear all of the island’s glaciers will be gone by 2200. Glaciers cover about 11% of Iceland’s surface.”

Read more at the BBC.

However, the glacier had not formed until the Little Ice Age. See our article “The cycle is full: the death of an Icelandic glacier that did not exist even during the Medieval Warm Period“. Iceland’s prime minister from 2013-2016, David Gunnlaugsson, dislikes activism. In The Spectator, Gunnlaugsson wrote on November 23, 2019:

Iceland’s melting glaciers are nothing to panic about

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“DO NOT TRAVEL” WARNINGS ISSUED AS HEAVY SNOW BLANKETS MAJORITY OF BRITAIN

26 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by Cap Allon, Jan 25, 2021 in Electroverse

According to the UK Met Office, snowfall in Britain will be a thing of the past by 2040-2060 — a ludicrous, fear-mongering prophesy, and one almost as stupid as the claims made by senior climatologist Dr David Viner of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia.

Back in 2000, and as reported by the Telegraph (since deleted), Viner said: within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event,” adding that “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

Frustratingly, these hacks are never called to task, their mistakes and dud-research seldom analysed or investigated. Instead, the cycle is simply one of rinse and repeat: the global warming cabal call-up their next set of “higher-educated” brainwashees who go on to use the exact same flawed upside down pyramid built on the work of just a few climate modelers to make the exact same tired-old doomsday predictions–such as “the end of snow”.

Just yesterday, January 25, a severe weather warning was in place across a large portion of the UK as heavy snow threatened.

The pow-pow duly arrived early Sunday morning with some regions, particularly those in central England and Wales, registering accumulations of 5+ inches (13+ cm) in just an hour and a half.

climate-debate

World’s largest lakes reveal climate change trends

22 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by Michigan Technological University, Jan 21, 2021 in ScienceDaily

NASA-funded research on the 11 largest freshwater lakes in the world coupled field and satellite observations to provide a new understanding of how large bodies of water fix carbon, as well as how a changing climate and lakes interact.

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One of the most remarkable aspects of the results is just how fast changes in these freshwater lakes have occurred — a noticeable amount in fewer than 20 years. The research contributes to NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System’s goal of determining how much freshwater lakes contribute to the global carbon cycle.

“Three of the largest lakes in the world are showing major changes related to climate change, with a 20-25% change in overall biological productivity in just the past 16 years,” Fahnenstiel said.

More Than Algae

In the 16 years of data, Great Bear and Great Slave lakes in northern Canada saw the greatest increases in productivity, while Lake Tanganyika in southeastern Africa has seen decreases. The trends are linked to increases in water temperatures, as well as solar radiation and a reduction in wind speed.

Sayers said looking at productivity, algal abundance, water clarity, water temperature, solar radiation and wind speeds at freshwater lakes provides a richer picture of the overall ecosystem.

“Temperature and solar radiation are factors of climate change,” Sayers said. “Chlorophyll and water transparency changes are not necessarily caused by climate change, but could be caused by eutrophication or invasive species, like quagga mussels.”

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Failing Computer Models

by P. Homewood ,Jan 21, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

If anybody tries to tell you that the computer models are accurately predicting global warming, show them this:

http://www.remss.com/research/climate/#:~:text=The%20RSS%20merged%20lower%20stratospheric%20temperature%20data%20product,in%20well-mixed%20greenhouse%20gases%20causes%20by%20human%20activity.

It comes from RSS, who monitor atmospheric temperatures via satellite observation. They are ardent warmists, and here us what they have to say:

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ANTARCTICA SUFFERING COLDEST JANUARY SINCE 1978 + GLOBAL SEA ICE GROWING EXPONENTIALLY

by Cap Allon, Jan 20, 2021 in Electroverse

The start of 2021 in Antarctica has been an unusually chilly one. In fact, the first half of January has been the coldest since 1978, according to data compiled by @LpdlcRamirez and @peikko763 on Twitter.

As of Jan. 19, the month-to-date temperature anomaly across Antarctic is approx. -0.5C, making this the continents coldest first 3-or-so-weeks of Jan. since 1978 (solar minimum of cycle 20), according to research conducted by @peikko163 on Twitter, who also notes that the Southern Hemisphere as a whole is suffering anomalous January chills not seen since 2012.

But this chill of solar minimum isn’t just confined to the Southern Hemisphere either, the mercury ACROSS the planet is tumbling. In one month global temperatures dropped by a whopping 0.26C: from 0.53C above the 1981-2010 avg. in Nov. 2020 to just 0.27C above the avg. in Dec. 2020 (UAH). This drop was in spite of a warming Arctic–a region expected to “heat” during times of otherwise “global” cooling (more on that below).

The Sun appears to be sliding into its next Grand Solar Minimum cycle–a multidecadal spell of reduced solar output where the solar disc can be devoid of sunspots for months or even years at a time. The result on Earth’s climate will be one of violent swings between extremes due to a weakening of the jet streams: intense bursts of heat will linger in one area, while a teeth-chattering chill will dominate nearby, and then the regions will “switch” — it is this unpredictable chopping and changing that will hasten the failure of our modern food production systems: crops will fail, on a large scale, and famine could quickly ensue.

Overall, Earth’s temperature trends colder during a Grand Solar Minimum, as the Sun’s output sinks lower and lower (increased cloud nucleation being one likely forcing). However, not ALL regions experience the chill: as with the previous GSM (the Maunder Minimum 1645-1715), areas such as the Arctic, Alaska, and S. Greenland/N. Atlantic actually warmed while the rest of the planet cooled — NASA reveals the phenomenon in their Maunder Minimum temperature reconstruction map:

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climate-debate

The IR absorptive characteristics of “greenhouse” gases–David Coe

co2-the-miracle-molecule-22637

by P. Homewood, Jan 17, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

SUMMARY

Using well documented data on the infra-red absorption spectra of atmospheric gases it is a straight-forward process to infer the overall atmospheric IR absorption and from that the effective global average temperature. The simplest of atmospheric models has been used: the atmosphere is considered to be a uniform thin absorbing layer of gas. The results demonstrate clearly that the warming effect of the atmosphere is almost entirely due to the spectral absorption characteristics of CO2 and H2O. They are both exceptionally strong absorbers of infra-red radiation. It is however this strength which determines the characteristics of the earth’s temperature, and in particular its stability.

70% of the energy radiated from the earth is removed by a mixture of 0.1% H2O and 200ppm of CO2. This alone is sufficient to raise global temperatures from the chilly 255K of the estimated zero atmosphere condition to 284.3K, less than 4deg below current average temperatures. An estimation of the current atmospheric mixture of gases is calculated to deliver a global mean temperature of 286.8K close to the best estimate of 288K for that temperature. Further increases in both H2O and CO2 have relatively small impacts on temperatures. This is due simply to the fact that at current concentrations the spectra of both H2O and CO2 have effectively extracted most of the energy at wavebands corresponding to their molecular absorption spectra. There is little further energy to be extracted by adding more H2O and CO2. This results in climate sensitivity values of less than 0.5degC, in comparison to the 1.5 to 5 degC range quoted by the IPCC.

CO2 levels of 3000ppm will only raise temperatures by a further 1.5K. These temperature increases are in fact well within natural variations seen in the past, including the medieval warm period and the little ice age of some 300 years ago.

The possibility of positive feedback from water vapour is discounted by the simple fact that the H2O spectrum is incapable of absorbing significant further amounts of radiated energy and the modest increase in temperature due to increasing CO2 levels is unable to deliver any significant increase in H2O concentration due to the specific relationship of H2O saturation vapour pressure and temperature. It would take an increase in temperature of 10degC to double the mean H2O atmospheric concentration, and that doubling would only result in a temperature increase of 2degC.

The impact of other known “greenhouse’ gases, CH4 and N2O are also calculated from known IR spectra data. Their absorption spectra are swamped by H2O and CO2. The combined warming caused by current atmospheric concentrations will elevate temperature by only 0.2K and increasing concentrations by a factor of 10 will only result in a further temperature increase of 0.5K.

The “greenhouse effect” is dominated by the absorption spectrum of H2O with a little help from CO2. At current concentrations of both gases it is inconceivable that further increases in concentrations will lead to any significant warming. Increasing CO2 concentration to 3000ppm and doubling the mean H2O level to 2% would result in a global temperature increase of 3.4K.

In short, there is no climate emergency, at least due to “greenhouse gases”.

The full paper can be read here:

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See this Addendum

climate-debate

Committed warming and the pattern effect

Continuer la lecture de Warmer Than Thought? GWPF Science Editor Sceptical About New Ocean-Warming Paper →

by Nic Lewis, Jan 19, 2021 in ClilmateEtc.

Key points

The pattern effect is the dependence of outgoing radiation to space on the spatial pattern of surface warming.

A pattern effect, relative to that in equilibrium, can be caused both by evolution over time in the climate system’s response to forcing and by its internal variability.

The paper fails to distinguish between a historical period pattern effect that is forced, which will unwind very slowly, and one that is caused by internal variability, which can quickly unwind, causing rapid warming.

The forced pattern effect is very small in CAM5.3

The pattern effect found in the paper is greatly affected by being estimated during the hiatus.

The estimated post-hiatus unforced historical pattern effect is non-negligible in CAM5.3 when using the AMIP2 sea surface temperature dataset, as in the paper, but negligible when using the UK Met Office HadISST1 dataset.

The historical pattern effect is not robust; it varies hugely between models and SST datasets.

The paper’s claims about greater committed warming directly reflect its estimate of the size of the historical pattern effect.

Introduction

A new paper “Greater committed warming after accounting for the pattern effect” led by Chen Zhou (Zhou et al.[1]) has recently been published in Nature Climate Change. Here is the accompanying press release.

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climate-debate, to keep an eye on...

Warmer Than Thought? GWPF Science Editor Sceptical About New Ocean-Warming Paper

17 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by RFI, Jan 12, 2021 in GWPF

A new report published in the US journal Science, led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, suggests the world’s oceans are warming 40 percent faster than what a UN panel predicted five years ago. Although data collection is more accurate than in the past, some experts advise against jumping to hasty conclusions.

About 93 percent of excess heat trapped around the Earth by greenhouse gases that come from the burning of fossil fuels accumulates in the world’s oceans.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says ocean warming has led to rising sea levels and contributes to increases in rainfall intensity, more violent storms and the destruction of coral reefs.

It is also a threat to biodiversity and one of the earth’s major food supplies.

“Ocean heating is a very important indicator of climate change, and we have robust evidence that it is warming more rapidly than we thought,” said co-author Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.

Their report relied on four studies, published between 2014 and 2017 whose conclusions are based on measurements recorded by a fleet of some 4,000 floating robot monitors called Argo.

The robots drift throughout the world’s oceans, every few days diving to a depth of 2,000 meters and measuring the ocean’s temperature, pH, salinity and other information.

Argo “has provided consistent and widespread data on ocean heat content since the mid-2000s,” the report said.

The new analysis shows warming in the oceans is on pace with measurements of rising air temperature.

And if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gases, “models predict that the temperature of the top 2,000 meters of the world’s oceans will rise 0.78 degrees Celsius by the end of the century,” it said.

Caution needed when interpreting results

David Whitehouse, the science editor for the Global Warming Policy Forum, based in the UK says we must very careful when drawing conclusions.

climate-debate

Peer-Reviewed Study Confirms Antarctica Has Not Warmed in Last Seven Decades

17 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by P. Homewood, Jan 16, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Cancel all the claims by climate activists that global warming is decimating Antarctica. A peer-reviewed study recently published in one of the most prominent science journals destroys one of the most frequently asserted claims by climate activists – that climate change is warming Antarctica and melting the Antarctic ice sheet. The recent study confirms Antarctica has not warmed in the past 70 years and Antarctic ice cover is expanding rather than shrinking.

Writing in the journal Nature, scientists at Columbia University and the University of Victoria, British Columbia report, “The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.”

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AT LEAST 13 DEAD, HUNDREDS HOSPITALIZED AS RECORD SNOWSTORMS SWEEP JAPAN

12 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by Cap Allon, Jan 23, 2021 in Electroverse

Following the historic snowstorms of the past few weeks, Japan has been hit again: at least 13 people died and more than 250 were injured as record snowfall blanketed regions along the Sea of Japan coast, according to the latest report by the nation’s Disaster Management Agency.

Among those to have lost their lives were three people in Fukui Prefecture, and four in Niigata Prefecture, all reportedly while trying to remove the snow which topped a whopping 3.13 meters (10.3 feet) in some areas.

According to Japan’s Meteorological Agency (JMA), at least 10 monitoring stations along the Sea of Japan set new all-time 72-hour snowfall records late on Jan. 10, and many more busted all-time low temperature records, including in Furue, Kamigoori, and Kuzakai–with the latter logging a bone-chilling -24C (-11F).

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Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios

12 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by R. Pielke & J. Richtie, 2020 in EnergyRes&SocScience

Abstract

Climate science research and assessments under the umbrella of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have misused scenarios for more than a decade. Symptoms of misuse have included the treatment of an unrealistic, extreme scenario as the world’s most likely future in the absence of climate policy and the illogical comparison of climate projections across inconsistent global development trajectories. Reasons why such misuse arose include (a) competing demands for scenarios from users in diverse academic disciplines that ultimately conflated exploratory and policy relevant pathways, (b) the evolving role of the IPCC – which extended its mandate in a way that creates an inter-relationship between literature assessment and literature coordination, (c) unforeseen consequences of employing a temporary approach to scenario development, (d) maintaining research practices that normalize careless use of scenarios, and (e) the inherent complexity and technicality of scenarios in model-based research and in support of policy. Consequently, much of the climate research community is presently off-track from scientific coherence and policy-relevance. Attempts to address scenario misuse within the community have thus far not worked. The result has been the widespread production of myopic or misleading perspectives on future climate change and climate policy. Until reform is implemented, we can expect the production of such perspectives to continue, threatening the overall credibility of the IPCC and associated climate research. However, because many aspects of climate change discourse are contingent on scenarios, there is considerable momentum that will make such a course correction difficult and contested – even as efforts to improve scenarios have informed research that will be included in the IPCC 6th Assessment.

climate-debate

Claim: The Temperature Spike Just Prior to the Little Ice Age can Teach Us about Modern Global Warming

12 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by E. Worall, Jan 7, 2021 in WUWT

According to Patric Seifert, a tropospheric researcher at the Leibniz Institute in Germany, a large scale temperature spike occurred just before the onset of the Little Ice Age. Seifert does not think global temperatures are about to crash, but he thinks conditions in Europe are similar enough to the 14th century that historical reconstructions of this medieval heatwave, the Dantean Anomaly, can help us understand what we will face as the world continues to warm.

Extreme 14th Century Droughts May Provide Insight Into Our Climate Change Crisis

CARLY CASSELLA
9 JANUARY 2021

Scientists are studying a major, once-in-a-century drought from Medieval Europe to better understand how extreme weather events indicate rapid climate changes.

In the years leading up to the Little Ice Age, between 1302 and 1307, many regions on the European continent were facing exceptional heat and drought, according to historical records and data collected from tree rings and sediment cores.

These extreme natural events, while not driven by human emissions, hold similar characteristics to recent weather anomalies, and they could help us better predict the course of modern-day climate change.

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“Even if it was a phase of cooling in the Middle Ages and we are now living in a phase of [hu]man-made warming, there could be parallels,” says Patric Seifert, a tropospheric researcher at the Leibniz Institute in Germany.

“The transitional period between two climate phases could be characterized by smaller temperature differences between the latitudes and cause longer-lasting large-scale weather patterns, which could explain an increase in extreme events.“

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climate-debate

Very Inconvenient Alps Glacier History…Top Glaciologists: Alps Were Ice-Free 6000 Years Ago

9 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by C. Rotter, Jan 7, 2021 in WUWT

Alps ice-free…6000 years ago, when CO2 was much lower than today’s levels.

Dr. Sebastian Lüning earlier today released his latest Klimaschau report, No. 6. In the first part he looks at glaciers in the Alps over the course of much the Holocene.

See the video

It turns out that Most of the Alps were ice-free 6000 years ago, glaciologists have discovered.

In his video, the German geologist presents a new paper authored by glaciologists Bohleber et al, 2020 of the Austrian Academy of Science. The Austrian-Swiss team discovered from ice cores that the 3500-meter high Weißseespitze summit was ice free 5900 years ago.

Much warmer in the early Holocene

Lüning next shows why the Alps were ice-free 6000 years ago by using a chart by Heiri et al 2015, which shows it was some 2°C warmer than today.

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climate-debate

More food for Polar Bears: Arctic report card 2020 highlights the huge benefit of less summer sea ice

9 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by Polar Bear Science, Jan 8, 2021 in WUWT

As well as summarizing sea ice changes, NOAA’s 2020 Arctic Report Card features two reports that document the biggest advantage of much less summer sea ice than there was before 2003: increased primary productivity. Being at the top of the Arctic food chain, polar bears have been beneficiaries of this phenomenon because the Arctic marine mammals they depend on for food – seals, walrus and bowhead whales – have been thriving despite less ice in summer.

In the sea ice chapter (Perovich et al. 2020), my favourite of all the figures published is the graph of September vs. March sea ice (above). As you can see, March ice extent has been virtually flat (no declining trend) since 2004. And as the graph below shows, September extent has been without a trend since 2007, as NSIDC ice expert Walt Meier demonstrated last year (see below): it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the value for 2020 from the graph above (the second-lowest after 2012) hasn’t changed the flat-trend line.

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climate-debate

CITY OF BEIJING JUST RECORDED ITS COLDEST TEMPERATURE SINCE 1966

9 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by Cap Allon, Jan 7, 2021 in Electroverse

The mercury in China’s capital Beijing plunged to -19.6C (-3.3F) on Thursday morning, January 7 as the powerful Arctic air mass currently gripping the majority of Asia intensified further.

The reading marked the capital’s coldest temperature since 1966 (solar minimum of cycle 19), in record-books dating back to 1912.

Furthermore, 10 out the 20 national-level meteorological stations in Beijing registered their lowest-ever early-January temperatures Thursday morning.

Blue alerts remain in effect across much of China as record low temperature and heavy snow are forecast to linger, at least until the weekend.

The intense cold wave began in mid-December, and is the result of Arctic air spilling down over the Asian continent (see low solar activity and meridional jet stream). Many all-time cold records have fallen across China of late…

Climate Change Causation: Was The Medieval Warm Period ‘Regional?’

6 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by F. Menton, Jan 5, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Some commenters yesterday noted that the climate establishment has not just completely ignored the threat to their orthodoxy posed by the Medieval Warm Period and other similarly-warm pre-human-emissions eras.

Initially, there was a recognition that this issue could be important, and there was definitely some attempt to deal with it.

However, over time, the accumulation of evidence, particularly as to the existence Medieval Warm Period as a global phenomenon, gradually became overwhelming.

So — in the face of evidence that, under the normal precepts of the scientific method, would be deemed to invalidate the hypothesis that only human CO2 emissions could be causing current warming — how can the orthodoxy be kept alive?

The answer, almost entirely, has been to resort to the hand-waving of “detection and attribution” studies, and hope nobody notices. And, to a remarkable extent, nobody notices.

Readers may be interested in a short history of this issue.

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A CO2 Oddity

6 janvier 2021 Alain Préat

by W. Eschenbach, Jan 6, 2021 in WUWT

saw an article’s headline the other day. It said “Is COVID Or Nature Slowing The Increase In CO2”.

So Go to the figure

So I thought I’d take a look. Here’s the Mauna Loa data. Top panel is the increase in CO2. Bottom panel is the month-over-month change in CO2.