by University of Maryland, in Nature, February 27, 2017
in ScienceDaily
New research suggests that plate tectonics began later in Earth’s history
But new research suggests that this was not always the case. Instead, shortly after Earth formed and began to cool, the planet’s first outer layer was a single, solid but deformable shell. Later, this shell began to fold and crack more widely, giving rise to modern plate tectonics.
by Carlos Jaramillo et al., Science Advances, May 3, 2017
The Neogene history of Amazonia is essential for understanding the evolution of the rainforest and associated fauna living in one of the most diverse places on Earth. A central question about our understanding of Amazonia remains unsolved: Did continental-scale marine flooding occur in western Amazonia during the Neogene? Miocene marine transgressions in the continental interior would have had a profound effect on the diversification and structuring of both terrestrial and aquatic Neotropical communities
by Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor, May 4, 2017
A new paper has been published in the Analysis section of Nature called Reconciling controversies about the ‘global warming hiatus.’ It confirms that the ‘hiatus’ or ‘pause’ is real. It is also rather revealing.
It attempts to explain the ‘Pause’ by looking into what is known about climate variability. They say that four years after the release of the IPCC AR5 report, which contained much about the ‘hiatus’ it is time to see what can be learned.
One could be a little sarcastic in saying why would Nature devote seven of its desirable pages to an event that some vehemently say never existed and maintain its existence has been disproved long ago. Now, however, as the El Nino spike of the past few years levels off, analysing the ‘pause’ seems to be coming back into fashion.
by Yves Goddéris et al., April 10, 2017, Nature Geoscience
The onset of the late Palaeozoic ice age about 340 million years ago has been attributed to a decrease in atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with expansion of land plants, as plants both enhance silicate rock weathering—which consumes CO2—and increase the storage of organic carbon on land. However, plant expansion and carbon uptake substantially predate glaciation
by M. Duncan and R. Dasgupta, April 25, 2017, Nature Geoscience
We suggest that immobilization of organic carbon in subduction zones and deep sequestration in the mantle facilitated the rise (~103–5 fold) and maintenance of atmospheric oxygen since the Palaeoproterozoic and is causally linked to the Great Oxidation Event. Our modelling shows that episodic recycling of organic carbon before the Great Oxidation Event may also explain occasional whiffs of atmospheric oxygen observed in the Archaean.
by Michael Cooper, May 2, 2017
Anyone with doubts about China’s demand for energy including for thermal coal needed to sustain its gigantic economy should cast their eyes over the latest statistics for power generation from Beijing’s National Statistics Bureau.
These data are a treasure trove in terms of revealing trends in China’s energy production and appetite for thermal coal sourced from both inside China and from imports shipped from countries including, Australia, Indonesia and Russia.
by Bergen University, March 17, 2016
in ScienceDaily
At the peak of the last ice age, a vast ice sheet covered northern Europe, spanning from the British Isles, across Scandinavia and into Russia in the east and the Barents Sea in the north. A new reconstruction of this ice sheet shows the interaction between climate and glaciers — how the ice sheet grows and retreats
by University of Leeds, May 2, 2017
in ScienceDaily
An international team of researchers, led by the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, are the first to map the change in ice speed. The team collated measurements recorded by five different satellites to track changes in the speed of more than 30 glaciers since 1992.
Glacier flow at the southern Antarctic Peninsula has increased since the 1990s, but a new study has found the change to be only a third of what was recently reported.
by Nicholas T. Arndt et al., April 2017, Geochemical Perspectives
Some scientists and journalists, and many members of the general public, have been led to believe that the world is rapidly running out of the metals on which our modern society is based. Advocates of the peak metal concept have predicted for many decades that increasing consumption will soon lead to exhaustion of mineral resources. Yet, despite ever-increasing production and consumption, supplies of minerals have continued to meet the needs of industry and society, and lifetimes of reserves remain similar to what they were 30-40 years ago.
Full text (171 pages) pdf, here
by MIT Prof. Richard Lindzen, April 25, 2017
Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For over 30 years, I have been giving talks on the science of climate change. When, however, I speak to a non-expert audience, and attempt to explain such matters as climate sensitivity, the relation of global mean temperature anomaly to extreme weather, that warming has decreased profoundly for the past 18 years, etc., it is obvious that the audience’s eyes are glazing over.
by Connaissance des Energies, 21 avril 2017
L ’énergéticien allemand E.ON a annoncé le 11 avril son investissement dans un futur site de démonstration en Irlande où sera testée une éolienne « aéroportée » de la société Ampyx Power. Explications.
by Connaissance des Energies, 28 avril 2017
L’ Agence internationale de l’énergie (AIE) a fait part hier de son inquiétude sur le niveau historiquement bas des découvertes de nouvelles réserves de pétrole « conventionnel ». Le schiste américain pourra-t-il à lui seul compenser le déséquilibre résultant de la baisse des investissements sur le marché ?
by Anthony Watts, May 1, 2017
Global temperatures have dropped 0.5° Celsius in April according to Dr. Ryan Maue. In the Northern Hemisphere they plunged a massive 1°C . As the record 2015/16 El Nino levels off, the global warming hiatus aka “the pause” is back with a vengeance.
by Dr. Ryan N. Maue, May 01, 1017
Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40-years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large-scale climate mechanisms including the El Nino Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one-third of the overall calendar year global ACE.
by Kenneth Richard, April 27, 2017
Just in the last few weeks alone, another 20 scientific papers were identified which link solar variations to climate changes, which means 58 papers have already been published in 2017.
by David Middleton, April 28, 2017
The Department of Energy gave a Texas-based energy company permission Tuesday to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries with which the U.S. does not have free trade agreements.
While low U.S. natural gas prices are currently a drag on production and reserve growth, they also provide an advantage to domestic gas producers. U.S. natural gas is extremely competitive in the global market.
by University of Adelaide, April 28, 2017, in Science News
Special ‘nugget-producing’ bacteria may hold the key to more efficient processing of gold ore, mine tailings and recycled electronics, as well as aid in exploration for new deposits, University of Adelaide research has shown.
Now they have shown for the first time, just how long this biogeochemical cycle takes and they hope to make to it even faster in the future.
by Javier, September 20, 2016
The role of solar variability on climate change, despite having a very long scientific tradition, is currently downplayed as a climatic factor within the most popular hypothesis for climate change.
As the root of this neglect lie two fundamental problems. Solar variability is quite small (about 0.1% of total irradiation), and there is no generally accepted mechanism by which the solar variability signal could be amplified by the climate system
by Kenneth Richard, April 20, 2017
Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere Temperatures indicate Medieval Period was as Warm as Recent Decades
with 5 papers (web links inside)
by co2is life blog, April 15, 2017
The theory goes that over time CO2 increases resulting in an increase in temperature, put another way, temperature is a function of CO2, or T=f(CO2). This model, however, is deeply flawed and demonstrates a disturbing ignorance of science, modeling, and the physics behind the greenhouse gas effect.
by Clyde Spencer, April 23, 2017
By convention, climate is usually defined as the average of meteorological parameters over a period of 30 years. How can we use the available temperature data, intended for weather monitoring and forecasting, to characterize climate? The approach currently used is to calculate the arithmetic mean for an arbitrary base period, and subtract modern temperatures (either individual temperatures or averages) to determine what is called an anomaly. However, just what does it mean to collect all the temperature data and calculate the mean?
USGS, April 13, 2017
The Bossier and Haynesville Formations of the onshore and State waters portion of the U.S. Gulf Coast contain estimated means of 4.0 billion barrels of oil, 304.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.9 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to updated assessments by the U.S. Geological Survey. These estimates, the largest continuous natural gas assessment USGS has yet conducted, include petroleum in both conventional and continuous accumulations, and consist of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources.
by P. Ventura et al., 2016,
Writing as background for their work, Ventura et al. (2016) say that “non-calcifying photosynthetic anthozoans have emerged as a group that may thrive under high carbon dioxide partial pressure (pCO2) conditions via increased productivity,” yet they add that “the physiological mechanisms underlying this potential success are unclear.”
by Nic Lewis, April 18, 2017
There is as yet no observational evidence that climate sensitivity increases with time in the real climate system – although this cannot be ruled out – nor is it fully understood why it increases in most AOGCMs. In any event, even if real-world climate sensitivity does increase with time, in the longer run other factors that are not reflected in ECS, such as melting ice sheets, are probably more important. Therefore, while time-varying climate sensitivity is of considerable interest from a theoretical point of view, for practical purposes its influence is likely to be very modest.
by JoNova, April 2017
The Arctic is the most sensitive place to man-made emissions on Earth, which is why it has barely warmed since 1944? Well, it makes sense if CO2 is largely irrelevant. Humans have made 90% of all their CO2 in the last 70 years and nothing much happened in the place where it was supposed to hurt the most.