by P.A.E. Pogge von Strandmann et al., August 2017, in WUWT and Geochemical Perspectives Letters
(…) “Nevertheless, we need to be clear that the changes in temperature are gradual, and that recovery can take hundreds of thousands of years. Given the rapid increase in the rate of global warming at present, this kind of wait is not an option for us”.
by Alex Barral et al., 2017 (U. Lyon-CNRS)
La comparaison des fluctuations du CO2 atmosphérique retracées à partir de ces estimations avec des courbes des changements de température a révélé de fortes baisses du CO2 atmosphérique (200-300 ppm), couplées à de fortes hausses de la température moyenne à la surface du globe (5-8°C) à l’échelle de quelques millions d’années.
by James E Kamis, August 23, in ClimateChangeDispatch
The now three-year-old Plate Climatology Theory is on the brink of total confirmation. This is the result of two just-released and very telling Antarctic research studies. Combining the results of these two studies with the massive amounts of pre-existing data it is possible to show with very high certainty that melting of West Antarctic glaciers is directly related to bedrock heat flow and chemically charged heated fluid flow from the 5,000-mile-long West Antarctic Rift System (see Figure 1).
by Paul Voosen, August 15, 2017
Scientists announced today that a core drilled in Antarctica has yielded 2.7-million-year-old ice, an astonishing find 1.7 million years older than the previous record-holder
(…)
If the new result holds up, says Yige Zhang, a paleoclimatologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, the proxies will need to be recalibrated. “We have some work to do.”
by Larry Kummer, August 15, 2017
While we obsess about climate change and debate if we live in the Anthropocene, we prepare poorly or not at all for natural forces like volcanoes that can level cities. This is folly we can no longer afford. Experts recommend a simple first step to better protect ourselves. Let’s start listening, or nature will teach us an expensive lesson.
California is the State most at risk due to its volcanoes near major cities, as shown in this map from the website of the California Volcano Observatory
by Kenneth Richard, August 14, 2017 in NoTricksZone
by Robin McKie, August 12, 2017 The Guardian
The Edinburgh volcano survey, reported in the Geological Society’s special publications series, involved studying the underside of the west Antarctica ice sheet for hidden peaks of basalt rock similar to those produced by the region’s other volcanoes. Their tips actually lie above the ice and have been spotted by polar explorers over the past century.
Des scientifiques découvrent 91 nouveaux volcans sous les glaciers de l’Antarctique
by Wim Röst, August 13, in WUWT (Andy May)
Five million years ago, average temperatures were higher than they are now. During the Pliocene, the era just before the period of the Quaternary Ice Ages, ‘glacials’ did not yet exist because temperatures were too high. As cooling of the deep seas continued, temperatures became that low that large surfaces of the Northern Hemisphere became covered with snow. The earth’s albedo grew fast and large ice sheets started to develop
by Howard Lee, geologist, August 9, 2017 in WUWT
Earth’s most severe mass extinction, the “Great Dying,” began 251.94 million years ago at the end of the Permian period, with the loss of more than 90% of marine species. Precise rock dates published in 2014 and 2015 proved that the extinction coincided with the Siberian Traps LIP, an epic outpouring of lava and intrusions of underground magma covering an area of northern Asia the size of Europe.
But those rock dates presented science with a new puzzle: why was the mass extinction event much shorter than the eruptions? And why did the extinction happen some 300,000 years after the lava began to flow?
by Andy May, August 8, 2017 in WUWT
The Bray cycle is about 2450 years from beginning to end and the Bray Lows, which are the coldest portion of the cycle, are the most important events.
The world is currently within the Quaternary Ice Age and nearly as cold as it has ever been. The normal average temperature of the world is around 20°C, some 5°C warmer than today. To keep recent warming in perspective, it is important to understand that even if the worse predictions of the IPCC were to occur, we would only be returning to the average temperature of the last 560 million years
Phanerozoic Global Temperature from Scotese 2015,
link in the post (.pdf)
by Geological Society of America, August 8, 2017 in ScienceDaily
Earlier studies had documented little change in the western Ross coastline prior to 1995, and the new study both confirmed the earlier work and extended the analysis to the present time.
This work underscores the complexity of Antarctic climate change and glacier response.
See also here
by Renee Hannon, August 4, 2017 in WUWT
Detailed pattern correlation of Earth’s temperature changes during the past 450 kyrs reveals observations about several cyclic climate patterns. The past four glacial cycles are increasing in duration from 89 kyrs to 119 kyrs. Within these glacial cycles, two warm periods occur about 200 kyrs apart and have strikingly similar temperature characteristics.
During the last 450 kyrs, the five major warm onsets with rapidly increasing temperatures are triggered by increases in the eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of Earth’s orbit. The nearly concurrent increase in these three astronomical forces appears a necessary component for a major warm onset. Obliquity is the dominate control for ending these major warm periods and entering a cooling phase.
by Wim Röst, August 1, 2017 in WUWT
Today ‘warm’ is strongly connected with ‘climate change’, if not with ‘dangerous climate change’. In the minds of people ‘cold’ should be more stable. But, paleo data show that it is‘cold’ that is unstable. While ‘warm’ always shows a high stability in climatic conditions.
by Rice University, July 31, 2017 in ScienceDaily
Weathering of Earth by glaciers may have warmed the planet over eons by aiding the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A new study shows the cumulative effect may have created negative feedback that prevented runaway glaciation.
See also here
by M. Allan et al., July 11, 2017, in Climate of the Past
We present a decadal-centennial scale Holocene climate record based on trace elements contents from a 65 cm stalagmite (“Père Noël”) from Belgian Père Noël cave. Père Noël (PN) stalagmite covers the last 12.7 ka according to U/Th dating. High spatial resolution measurements of trace elements (Sr, Ba, Mg and Al) were done by Laser- Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Trace elements profiles were interpreted as environmental and climate changes in the Han-sur-Lesse region.
See also here
by David Middleton, July 17, 2017 in WUWT
The Tethys Sea couldn’t have been a better place for petroleum source rock deposition even if it had been designed for such a purpose. The “Tethyan realm” encompassed much of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods…
by Javier, July 11, 2017 in ClimatEtc.
In our attempt to better understand the nature of our planet’s abrupt climate changes I have already reviewed the glacial-interglacial cycle, and the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle’s that take place during glacial periods. I now start reviewing the millennial climate cycles that abruptly impact the slowly changing Holocene climate. The most significant and regular one is the ~ 2400-year Bray cycle.
by James Edward Kamis, January 19, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch
Progressive bottom melting and break-up of West Antarctica’s seafloor hugging Larsen Ice Shelf is fueled by heat and heated fluid flow from numerous very active geological features, and not climate change.
by Ed Hoskins, June1, 2015
When considering the scale of temperature changes that alarmists anticipate because of Man-made Global Warming and their view of the disastrous effects of additional Man-made Carbon Dioxide emissions in this century, it is useful to look at climate change from a longer term, century by century and even on a millennial perspective.
(i) See also here
(ii) See also here
by Kenneth Richard, July 11, in ClimateChangeDispatch
It’s official. According to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, Greenland has been cooling slightly since 2005.
This trend development may be a harbinger of what may be in store for the coming years. Shifts in North Atlantic temperatures typically lead changes in the Arctic by a few years. And throughout the North Atlantic, rapid cooling has been underway since 2005, plunging below the levels reached in the 1950s
by James Kamis, July 4, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch
Geological heat flow is fueling bottom melting and associated cracks across West Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf, having little to do with man-made global warming. Significant amounts of high-quality data and relevant geological observations support this revelation, given historical and current geological mapping efforts done in Antarctica.
see here, image credit NASA
See also here (in French)
by Dennis T. Avery, June 30, 2017 in WUWT
Carbon dioxide truly is “the gas of life.” The plants that feed us and wildlife can’t live without inhaling CO2, and then they exhale the oxygen that lets humans and animals keep breathing.
Our crop plants evolved about 400 million years ago, when CO2 in the atmosphere was about 5000 parts per million! Our evergreen trees and shrubs evolved about 360 million years ago, with CO2 levels at about 4,000 ppm. When our deciduous trees evolved about 160 million years ago, the CO2 level was about 2,200 ppm – still five times the current level.
See also here (in French)
by Maja Sojtaric, June 27, 2017
The Eurasian ice sheet was an enormous conveyor of ice that covered most of northern Europe some 23,000 years ago. Its extent was such that one could have skied 4,500 km continuously across it – from the far southwestern isles in Britain to Franz Josef Land in the Siberian Arctic. Suffice to say its existence had a massive and extremely hostile impact on Europe at the time.
This ice sheet alone lowered global sea-level by over 20 meters. As it melted and collapsed, it caused severe flooding across the continent, led to dramatic sea-level rise, and diverted mega-rivers that raged on the continent. A new model, investigating the retreat of this ice sheet and its many impacts has just been published in Quaternary Science Reviews.
by Andy May, June 19, 2017 i
Last week, I posted a global temperature reconstruction based mostly on Marcott, et al. 2013 proxies. The post can be found here. In the comments on the Wattsupwiththat post there was considerable discussion about the difference between my Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude (30°N to 60°N) and the GISP2 Richard Alley central Greenland temperature reconstruction (see here for the reference and data). See the comments by Dr. Don Easterbrook and Joachim Seifert (weltklima) here and here, as well as their earlier comments.
by Peter Brannen, June 14, 2017
“It is absolutely critical to recognize that I am NOT claiming that humans haven’t done great damage to marine and terrestrial [ecosystems], nor that many extinctions have not occurred and more will certainly occur in the near future. But I do think that as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”
Many popular science articles take this as a given, and indeed, there’s something emotionally satisfying about the idea that humans’ hubris and shortsightedness are so profound that we’re bringing down the whole planet with us.
