Archives mensuelles : décembre 2020

better to know...?, climate and geology

Newly discovered Greenland plume drives thermal activities in the Arctic

by Tohoku University, Dec 7, 2020 in ScienceDaily

A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. They discovered a flow of hot rocks, known as a mantle plume, rising from the core-mantle boundary beneath central Greenland that melts the ice from below.

The results of their two-part study were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

“Knowledge about the Greenland plume will bolster our understanding of volcanic activities in these regions and the problematic issue of global sea-level rising caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet,” said Dr. Genti Toyokuni, co-author of the studies.

The North Atlantic region is awash with geothermal activity. Iceland and Jan Mayen contain active volcanoes with their own distinct mantle plumes, whilst Svalbard — a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean — is a geothermal area. However, the origin of these activities and their interconnectedness has largely been unexplored

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climate-debate

L’effet de serre et le bilan énergétique de la Terre

by G. Gueskens, Dec 11, 2020 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Dans presque toutes les sciences, les notions élémentaires sont les plus difficiles et elles sont parfois mal comprises. Par la suite, elles sont souvent  négligées car elles ne s’opposent pas à la publication d’articles dans des domaines spécialisés où les auteurs, à la recherche de notoriété ou de subsides, sont jugés par leurs pairs. La climatologie, science récente et pluridisciplinaire par essence, n’échappe pas à cette règle. C’est ainsi que beaucoup de climatologues, réputés tels ou simples amateurs, développent des théories dont les hypothèses sont contraires aux principes fondamentaux de la chimie et de la physique. Néanmoins,  sur la base de ces théories mal étayées, des modèles informatiques sont élaborés qui conduisent, avec une précision rassurante, à des prévisions alarmantes. Dans cette note nous rappellerons d’abord quelques notions élémentaires concernant l’émission et l’absorption de rayonnements par la Terre et par les gaz atmosphériques avant de revoir d’un point de vue critique les notions généralement admises à propos de l’effet de serre et du bilan énergétique de la Terre.

1. Deux types de rayonnement à ne pas confondre.

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Fig. 1 Rayonnement thermique d’un corps solide à différentes températures

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climate-debate

SUMMER SNOW FALLING IN NEW ZEALAND + GLOBAL COOLING

by Cap Allon, Dec 11, 2020 in Electroverse

A ‘white Christmas’ is an absurd prospect in New Zealand, but Southlanders could be forgiven for placing a bet or two this year after rare summer snow blanketed regions below 200m (650ft) Friday, December 11.

As originally reported by stuff.co.nz, temperatures plummeted overnight and snow, quite substantial in some parts, was falling in Northern Southland Friday morning–on State Highway 6 between Lumsden and Kingston, on Gorge Hill between Te Anau and Mossburn, and in hill country in the province.

There was also snow on the Remarkables mountain range in Queenstown, and flakes had settled in Arrowtown and in Garston. Photos of the snowfall were posted on the South Proud NZ Facebook Page with the caption: “Garston having a bit of a snow day today! So much for Summer huh?”

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climate-debate

The natural ‘Himalayan aerosol factory’ can affect climate

by University of Helsinki, Dec 10, 2020 in WUWT

Large amounts of new particles can form in the valleys of the Himalayas from naturally emitted gases and can be transported to high altitudes by the mountain winds and injected into the upper atmosphere.

The emitted particles may eventually affect climate by acting as nuclei for cloud condensation. These new findings about particles formation and sources will contribute to a better understanding of past and future climate.

“To understand how the climate has changed over the last century we need to know as reliably as possible the natural atmospheric conditions before the industrialization,” says Associate Professor Federico Bianchi from the University of Helsinki’s Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR).

In order to do that scientists are looking for pristine locations around the world where human influence is minimal. An international group of researchers has now completed a comprehensive study at the Nepal Climate Observatory at Pyramid station, located in the proximity of the Everest base camp at 5050 m above sea level. There, they were able to investigate the formation of atmospheric particles far from human activities. The results were published today in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience.

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better to know...?

The Guardian: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is – AGAIN

by E. Worall, Dec 8, 2020 in WUWT

h/t James Delingpole / Breitbart; One of the most widely mocked alarmist predictions ever :- In the year 2000, Dr. David Viner beclowned himself by announcing that thanks to Global Warming, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is” (see the web archive – the original was deleted). Now Dr Lizzie Kendon of the UK MET office has followed Viner’s footsteps, by suggesting “much of the snow will have disappeared entirely” by the end of the century.

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biology+acidification, climate-debate

Peter Ridd: It’s the science that’s rotten, not the Great Barrier Reef

by P. Homewood, Dec 7, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has released its latest report on the state of the Great Barrier Reef. It has turned up the volume by one notch, claiming the threat to the reef has gone from “significant concern” to “critical”. It blames climate change, agricultural pollution, coastal development, industry, mining, shipping, overfishing, disease, problematic native species, coal dust — you name it, it is killing the reef.

But the report is just a rehash of old, mostly wrong or misleading information produced by generally untrustworthy scientific institutions with an activist agenda and no commitment to quality assurance.

It is remarkable that the world has been convinced that one of its most pristine ecosystems is on its last legs. Part of the problem is that, being underwater and a long way from the coast, very few people visit the reef. The truth is hidden. Those of us in North Queensland living adjacent to the reef, and tourists from elsewhere, can report the water is iridescent clear blue and totally unpolluted. The fish and coral are fabulous.

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climate-debate

CO2 Coalition: “The Global Mean Temperature Anomaly Record How it works and why it is misleading”

by D. Middleton,  Dec 8, 2020 in WUWT

Our friends at the CO2 Coalition have published another excellent report.

This white paper by Richard Lindzen and John Christy explores the global mean temperature anomaly record. Their focus isn’t on whether it’s right or wrong; it’s on its significance relative to natural variability and its inherently low signal-to-noise ratio. Here’s the executive summary:

STUDIES AND RESOURCES, WHITE PAPERS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS

4 DEC, 2020
The Global Mean Temperature Anomaly Record
How it works and why it is misleading
by Richard S. Lindzen and John R. Christy

The CO2 Coalition is honored to present this Climate Issues in Depth paper by two of America’s most respected and prolific atmospheric physicists, MIT professor emeritus Richard Lindzen, who is a longtime member of the Coalition, and University of Alabama in Huntsville professor John Christy.

Professor Lindzen has published over 200 scientific articles and books over a five-decade career. He has held professorships at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. He is a fellow and award recipient of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. He is also a member of the National Academy of Science and was a lead author of the UN IPCC’s third assessment report’s scientific volume. His research has highlighted the scientific uncertainties about the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on temperature and climate more generally.

Professor Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, began studying global climate issues in 1987. He has been Alabama’s State Climatologist since 2000 and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society since 2002. He and CO2 Coalition member Dr. Roy W. Spencer developed and have maintained one of the key global temperature data sets relied on by scientists and government bodies, using microwave data observed in the troposphere from satellites since 1979. For this achievement, they were awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the data set that is referred to by policy-makers and the media as the global surface temperature record is actually obtained, and where it fits into the popular narrative associated with climate alarm.

Executive Summary
At the center of most discussions of global warming is the record of the global mean surface temperature anomaly—often somewhat misleadingly referred to as the global mean temperature record. This paper addresses two aspects of this record. First, we note that this record is only one link in a fairly long chain of inference leading to the claimed need for worldwide reduction in CO2 emissions. Second, we explore the implications of the way the record is constructed and presented, and show why the record is misleading.

This is because the record is often treated as a kind of single, direct instrumental measurement. However, as the late Stan Grotch of the Laurence Livermore Laboratory pointed out 30 years ago, it is really the average of widely scattered station data, where the actual data points are almost evenly spread between large positive and negative values.

The average is simply the small difference of these positive and negative excursions, with the usual problem associated with small differences of large numbers: at least thus far, the one-degree Celsius increase in the global mean since 1900 is swamped by the normal variations at individual stations, and so bears little relation to what is actually going on at a particular one.

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climate-debate

Climate Activism: How Democracy Dies

by Donna Laframboise, Dec 6, 2020 in BigPicturesNews

Tomorrow night, Friends of Science will broadcast my speech, Climate Activism: Undermining Free Speech, Free Thought & Free Choice. Click here for details. (If you aren’t able to tune in then, purchasing a ticket will permit you to stream the event later, at your convenience.)

40 minutes in length, this talk explores how prominent members of the establishment have worked to shut down climate-related dialogue and debate. Those who express minority opinions have been cast as defective, depraved individuals on a par with Holocaust deniers.

The people fueling this incredible intolerance are prime ministers, vice presidents, UN officials, Nobel laureates, and Pulitzer Prize winners. There’s nothing admirable about silencing non-conformist perspectives. That’s how democracy dies.

The cancel culture now on full display on social media, in newsrooms, and on university campuses took root early in the climate world. Perhaps if more people had objected – loudly and on principal – to that improper behaviour, we’d be in a healthier, more tolerant place today.

Here’s a quote from my speech:

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climate and geology, climate-debate

Claim: The climate changed rapidly alongside sea ice decline in the north

by University of Copenhagen, Dec 6, 2020 in WUWT

Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen have, in collaboration with Norwegian researchers in the ERC Synergy project, ICE2ICE, shown that abrupt climate change occurred as a result of widespread decrease of sea ice. This scientific breakthrough concludes a long-lasting debate on the mechanisms causing abrupt climate change during the glacial period. It also documents that the cause of the swiftness and extent of sudden climate change must be found in the oceans.

Scientific evidence for abrupt climate change in the past finally achieved

During the last glacial period, app. 10,000 – 110,000 years ago the northern hemisphere was covered in glacial ice and extensive sea ice, covering the Nordic seas. The cold glacial climate was interrupted by periods of fast warmup of up to 16.5 degrees Celsius over the Greenland ice sheet, the so called Dansgaard Oeschger events (D-O).

These rapid glacial climate fluctuations were discovered in the Greenland ice core drillings decades ago, but the cause of them have been hotly contested. D-O events are of particular significance today as the rate of warming seems to be very much like what can be observed in large parts of the Arctic nowadays. The new results show that the abrupt climate change in the past was closely linked to the quick and extensive decline in sea ice cover in the Nordic seas. Very important knowledge as sea ice is presently decreasing each year.

“Our, up until now, most extensive and detailed reconstruction of sea ice documents the importance of the rapid decrease of sea ice cover and the connected feedback mechanisms causing abrupt climate change”, says Henrik Sadatzki, first author of the study.

Sediment core and ice core data were combined in order to achieve the result

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climate and geology

In Geological Terms, Today’s Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations Are Still Uncomfortably Low

by P. Gosselin, Dec 5, 2020 in NoTricksZone

Under 180 ppm atmospheric CO2 concentration, life on earth begins to die.

The earth came very close to that point not long ago during the Ice Ages (20,000 years ago). Then the planet warmed naturally, and an increase in atmospheric CO2 to over 200 ppm followed (new study here).

The earth saw CO2 levels of close to 8000 ppm in the past, i.e. about 20 times more than today. The following chart shows the earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentrations for the past 600 million years.

Today, thanks in large part to mankind, concentrations have risen to over 400 ppm, yet historically this remains at the very low end of the scale compared to the thousands of ppm seen naturally earlier in history.

Greening planet

Today, definitely a safer level would be near 1000 ppm. Studies unanimously show plant growth at these higher levels is far enhanced. Already today we see clear evidence the planet is greening Zhu et al. (2016), in part due to the fertilizations taking place through human emissions:

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climate-debate

No, It Was Not A Record Hurricane Season!

by P. Homewood, Dec 3, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Inevitably the busy hurricane season this year is getting blamed on global warming:

But first of all, let’s get one thing clear – there was not a record number of hurricanes this year in the Atlantic. There were 13 hurricanes, compared to 15 in 2005:

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd-faq/#tcs-after-1930

 

It is true that there were more named storms, which includes tropical storms as well as hurricanes, this season than in any other year, but this is quite meaningless. Over the years, reporting practices have drastically changed, so that more storms are spotted and named now.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

CAGW failed ‘Predictions’

by R. Istvan, Dec 4, 2020 in WUWT

My last ruminating climate guest post compared ‘big’ climate science issues to ‘weeds’. This is a follow on big picture post, from a different perspective, albeit partly overlapping the first. (First perspective was basic science claims, this is resulting predictions.) I am tired of whack-a-mole minutia, and think that detailed rebuttals to garbage climate alarm papers no longer matter in our politicized ‘GND’ environment.

This post incorporates by reference (not by links [lazy me], just by key WUWT search words or other occasional generic mentions) many previous WUWT guest posts plus other writings that relative newbies can review for your selves. All the previous referenced posts and other writings have many linked reference footnotes for your personal follow up. Trolls, beware.

Since the Charney and Hanson 1988 climate alarm proceedings, there have been many dire climate prognostications. NONE have come true.  Lets review some of the most salient. (We skip trivial stuff like Dr. Viner’s since disappeared 1990 prediction that ‘UK children will not know snow’—since they soon did.)

  1. Temperatures have recently suddenly risen. This was the essence of MBH’s 1999 hockey stick, and later 2013’s Marcott’s equivalent. Both ‘observations’ have been fully discredited. (I personally proved Marcott’s academic misconduct in essay ‘High Stick Foul’ in ebook Blowing Smoke in late 2014.)  True, temperatures have risen since the last Thames Ice Fair in 1814, as the world warmed out of the Little Ice Age (LIA). Climate changes… How much, we dunno for three reasons:
    • In the US, early data is sparse, and later data is contaminated by multiple surface station siting issues. The latter issue proven here at WUWT by 2009.
    • Outside the US and Europe, land temp data is worse than just sparse, it often does not exist at all, or only recently.
    • Over oceans comprising 71% of the Earth surface, data is worse than just sparse. It is mostly non-existent (SH). Where it does exist (until ARGO) it is contaminated by trade routes and ladings.
  2. Temperatures will increase unsustainably. This is based on the IPCC nominal ECS of about 3, recently goosed up by forthcoming CMIP6. Except, temps have NOT. As just one example of predictive model falsification, the CMIP4/5 models predicted tropical troposphere hotspot simply does NOT exist. There are several reasons why these models have abjectly failed, explained in several previous posts.
  3. Sea level rise accelerates. Except it hasn’t. And the most accurate SLR dGPS corrected tide gauges not only show no acceleration, they show it with ~closure (thermosteric rise plus ice sheet melt). And, the present rise rate is no different from the peak of the previous interglacial, the Eemian. (Details are in previous WUWT posts and in essay PseudoPrecision in eBook Blowing Smoke)
  4. Polar bears will go extinct from lack of summer sea ice. Except as Dr. Crockford has amply explained, this is an alarmist misconception at two levels. First, polar bears do not depend on summer sea ice. They depend on spring ice during the seal welping season, their main feeding cycle. No one suggests that is diminishing. Second, Arctic sea ice is cyclical, and the notion that it is spiraling ever down (Wadham’s alarm) is just factually wrong. (Essay Northwest Passage in ebook Blowing Smoke covers the Arctic Ice cycle issue in historical detail.)
  5. Extreme weather increases. Except per IPCC SRES (2012) it has NOT, anywhere, in any form. (Climate is rigorously defined as the envelope of weather [like temp, rainfall] over at least 30 years.) All the annual recent climate ‘extremes’ in the press are just weather (like this year’s accurately predicted overactive Atlantic hurricane season). As an example, landfalling US hurricane ACE over 30 years has NOT increased as a recent paper claimed—by falsely including hurricanes that touched land but then went back out to sea and re-intensified.

There are also a lot of unworkable ‘Green New Deal solutions’ to this non-problem. The most prominent are ‘renewable electric generation’ and EV’s.

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climate-debate

SUBSTANTIAL EARLY-DECEMBER SNOW FORECAST TO BLANKET THE UK AND EUROPE: 11 FOOT (3.28 METRES) PREDICTED IN THE ALPS

by Cap Allon, Dec 2, 2020 in Electroverse

The UK is set for a flurry of heavy and rare early-December snow this week, with even far southern regions on course for disruptive accumulations.

The first dusting is expected to arrive across the northern half of the UK today, Dec. 2, and more will follow in the coming days, to more southern regions, too, as a descending Arctic blast tightens its grip on the nation.

Heavy snow is likely to have buried vast swathes of the country by Friday, with forecasters suggesting the bitter wintry mix could even rage on until the middle of next week -at least- with hard frosts also expected: “In the clear periods between bands of wintry showers, frosts are likely and these could be sharp or even severe in prolonged clear conditions in north-western parts of the UK,” warns Steve Ramsdale, Chief Meteorologist at the Met Office.

Over the next 5 days alone, latest GFS runs reveal Britain will be hit by a substantial smattering of early-season snow as frigid polar air rides anonymously-far south on the back of a meridional jet stream—a setup shown to increase during times of low solar activity–such as we’re suffering now:

 

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better to know...?, climate and geology

New Paleoclimatology Finding Shows Earth’s Climate Was Typically Warmer than Today

by H.S. Sterling, Dec2, 2020 in WUWT

Archaeologists have published a new paper in The Holocene, DOI: 10.1177/0959683620972775 that confirms what previous research has shown: numerous periods during recent history have been as warm as or warmer than the present.

The press release was covered in The New Scientist, “Climate change has revealed a huge haul of ancient arrows in Norway,”  and discusses the findings of researchers from the Universities of Cambridge, Oslo, and Bergen. The researchers discovered a “treasure trove” of arrows, arrowheads, clothing, and other artifacts, recently uncovered by a receding ice in a mountainous region of southern Norway. The oldest arrows and artifacts date from around 4100 BC. The youngest artifacts date from approximately AD 1300, at the end of the Medieval Warm Period. Because present temperatures are only now exposing some of the artifacts were deposited when no ice covered the ground, temperatures were clearly warmer during the many periods when artifacts were deposited.

Along with the arrows and other artifacts, the researchers found nearly 300 specimens of reindeer antler and bone exposed by receding ice. Because reindeer presently frequent the area, the archaeologists say they are confident the area has served as an important hunting ground, off and on, for millennia.

The fact that artifacts were found from several different periods separated by hundreds and thousands of years in time indicates the ice and snow in the region has expanded and receded several times over the current interglacial period.

Elsewhere in Norway, scientists also recently uncovered what they have labeled a “Viking highway,” a route the ancient peoples inhabiting the region used to travel regularly. The route had for approximately 2,000 years been covered by snow and ice that expanded as the region’s climate shifted from a relatively warm period, comparable to present temperatures, to a colder period during which “permanent” thick snow and ice cover formed. This erected the equivalent of a “highway closed” sign.

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energy and fields

Belgique : la sortie du nucléaire en questions

by Connaissance des Energies, Dec 1, 2020

En Belgique, l’exploitant du parc nucléaire Electrabel a annoncé en interne son intention de cesser les investissements nécessaires à la prolongation (hypothétique) de réacteurs. Il est prévu que les derniers réacteurs nucléaires du pays soient arrêtés d’ici à fin 2025 sauf si…

Combien y a-t-il de réacteurs nucléaires en service en Belgique ?

Le parc nucléaire belge est composé de 7 réacteurs à eau pressurisée tous exploités par Electrabel, filiale du groupe français Engie(1). Connectés au réseau électrique entre 1974 et 1985, ces réacteurs sont répartis entre 2 centrales :

  • la centrale de Doel en Flandre (à 15 km du port d’Anvers et près de la frontière néerlandaise), composée de 4 réacteurs d’une puissance cumulée de 2 934 MW ;
  • la centrale de Tihange en Wallonie (à 30 km de Liège), composée de 3 réacteurs d’une puissance cumulée de 3 008 MW.

En 2019, le parc nucléaire belge a généré près de 41,4 TWh, soit environ 46,5% de la production électrique totale du pays(2). « Sur base d’une analyse temporelle plus étendue, on observe que la contribution du nucléaire à la consommation finale d’électricité varie selon les année entre grosso modo 35%(3) et 50% selon la disponibilité des unités », précise Michel Huart, maître de conférences à l’ULB, spécialiste en « énergie et durabilité ».

Vue de la centrale nucléaire de Doel. (©Electrabel)

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better to know...?, energy and fields

Are governments able to deliver the energy transition?

by S. Furfari, Nov 16, 2020 in EuropeanScientist

On 4 December 2019, in her first Brussels press conference the newly appointed president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she will lead a ‘geopolitical Commission’. One year later, we are still waiting for some ‘geopolitical’ results. Indeed, it is rather a ‘green Commission’, as even the Covid crisis – though its cause is totally unrelated to energy – is used to reinforce the ‘energy transition’, wanted by the German Chancellor. In September 1999, arriving as president of the European Commission Mr Romano Prodi has been convinced that energy was not so important and that it did not deserve to be managed by an energy general directorate. It merged it with the transport energy directorate. What a difference twenty later: energy is now the centre of all interest, not for its own merits, but because it is at the centre of the climate change debate. But are politicians able to drive the vast, complex and multi-dependent energy system? Is their willingness’s able to master it effective?

Not surprisingly, this concept of ‘energy transition’ was invented in Germany in the early 1980s. In a book entitled ‘Energie-Wende, Wachstum und Wohlstand ohne Erdöl und Uran’ published in 1980, researchers from a German environmentalist organisation, the Öko-Institut, proposed to stop using oil and uranium. The simplified term ‘EnergieWende’ was quickly coined to refer to the fight against climate change and the abandonment of nuclear energy. Germany has firmly followed this track since the beginning of the 21st century, aiming at a radical change in its energy policy. The German population has also adhered to this concept because, after 40 years of green nuclear bashing, it has become widely opposed tonuclear energy.

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Figure 1Correlation of electricity price for dwellings with intermittent renewable electricity production
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better to know...?, climate-debate

Covid-19 et émissions de CO2

by Prof. Jean N., Dec. 1, 2020 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Début avril 2020, sans que personne ne s’en rende compte, une expérience scientifique très intéressante a été menée, et ce de manière involontaire. En effet, 3,9 milliards de personnes dans le monde ont été placées en confinement suite à l’expansion du virus Covid-19. Il en a résulté une très forte diminution du trafic aérien et automobile accompagné d’une fermeture temporaire de nombreuses industries dans le monde entier. Cette expérience a évidemment provoqué une chute drastique des émissions de CO2 anthropique. Mais pendant l’expérience, les détecteurs mesurant le taux de CO2 atmosphérique ont continué à tourner. Nous disposons maintenant des résultats. Cette diminution abrupte des émissions a-t-elle eu un impact sur le taux de CO2 atmosphérique, ou sur la température globale? C’est ce dont nous allons discuter dans le présent article.

1. Bref rappel concernant la mesure du taux de CO2 atmosphérique.

L’observatoire de Mauna Loa à Hawaii est l’un des plus célèbres sites mesurant en continu le taux de CO2 atmosphérique. Ce taux est mesuré avec précision depuis 1959 par une méthode de spectrométrie infra-rouges, et depuis 2019 par la méthode CRDS (Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy). La courbe obtenue est croissante avec des oscillations régulières (Figure 1). De ± 320 ppm en 1959 on arrive à ± 410 ppm en 2020. SCE a d’ailleurs publié une suite d’articles sur ce sujet[1].

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Figure 3. Taux de CO2 mesuré à Mauna Loa depuis 2017. Source : Koutsoyiannis & Kundzewicz (2020) Sci 2020, 2, 72

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