by A. Watts, July 25, 2018 in WUWT
For those that are sure there’s global warming driving tornadoes and other severe weather events, here’s some inconvenient news. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has updated his tornado loss data via his Twitter account. He writes:
2017 update to our normalized US tornado losses based on our 2013 paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17477891.2012.738642 …
by Tony Heller, July 25, 2018 in TheDeplorableClimateScienceBlog
In 1972, forty-two “top European and American investigators” predicted a rapidly approaching new ice age – based on an increase in snow and ice cover from 1967-1972.
The technique employed ….. depends on the averaging of information from standard and ‘infra-red satellite weather pictures.
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by Dr S. Lüning and Prof. F. Vahrenholt, July 25, 2018 in NoTricksZone
The temperature of the last 100 years was also the topic of a new publication by Folland et al. 2018. The authors are very much at home in the camp of the IPCC and had to admit that there have been phases of cooling, stagnating or even slow warming: 1896 – 1910, 1941 – 1975, and 1998 – 2013.
Climate models struggle with this because CO2 is climbing steadily. So why does climate warming stall under these conditions? Folland and his colleagues examined the models and are convinced that despite the small problems, the models function perfectly well and thus no other climate factors need to be accounted for.
In 1940s it was a bit too warm and the models were unable to reproduce this. Given, the authors say. Greenhouse gases have been responsible for almost all the warming of the last 125 years.
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Now isn’t it a bit odd that the authors made absolutely no mention of the ocean cycles in the abstract? As our regular readers know, the ocean cycles run surprisingly synchronous with the fluctuations in global temperatures, i.e. the key factors here are the AMO and PDO.
PDO ocean cycle and its fluctuations in the global temperature development. Source: Book ‘Die kalte Sonne‘.
by P. Gosselin, July 21, 2018 in NoTricksZone
Recently climate catastrophe non-believers have been pointing out that Arctic sea ice volume has been gaining over the past years and has not trended downward for some dozen years now.
And global warming alarmists have been very silent on the subject of climate change now that global surface temperatures have cooled and Arctic and Greenland snow and ice have rebounded.
Embarrassed, they don’t want to be reminded of all the absurd predictions they made 10 years ago, with some as recently as just five years ago.
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by L. Ojha et al., July 20, 2018 in NatureCommunications (open access)
Transport of fine-grained dust is one of the most widespread sedimentary processes occurring on Mars today. In the present climate, eolian abrasion and deflation of rocks are likely the most pervasive and active dust-forming mechanism. Martian dust is globally enriched in S and Cl and has a distinct mean S:Cl ratio. Here we identify a potential source region for Martian dust based on analysis of elemental abundance data …
by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, July 24, 2018 in ScienceDaily
A new study published in Geophysical Research Journal shows that the so-called Little Ice Age — a period stretching from 1500 to 1850 in which mean temperatures in the northern hemisphere were considerably lower than at present — exerted effects on the climate of South America.
Based on an analysis of speleothems (cave formations) in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso do Sul and Goiás, the study revealed that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the climate of southwestern Brazil was wetter than it is now, for example, while that of the country’s Northeast region was drier.
The same Brazilian cave records showed that the climate was drier in Brazil between 900 and 1100, during a period known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), when the northern hemisphere’s climate was warmer than it is now.
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by Nils-Axel Mörner, November 13, 2017 in WUWT
These are the facts
- Sea level has remained virtually at the present level over the last 200 years
- In the last 50-70 years sea level has remained perfectly stable in Fiji
- This stability is indicated by the growth of corals (stopped to grow vertically, and forced to grow laterally into microatolls) – and corals do not lie
We have (with references at the end)
o Studied your tide gauge records – Mörner & Matlack-Kelin, 2017a
o Studied sites of coastal erosion – Mörner & Matlack-Klein, 2017b
o Documented sea level change during the last 500 years in great details –
Mörner & Matlakc.Kelin, 2917c
o Noted the close similarity to similar records in nations like the Maldives,
Bangladesh and India – Mörner, 2017
o We have presented our data at conferences in Rome (4th WCCC, October 19-21, 2017) and Düsseldorf (11th EIKE, November 9-10, 2017) – see: Clutz, 2017 and Tallbloke’s Talkshop, 2017)
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by A. Watts, July 23, 2018 in WUWT and NatureCommunications
From the University of Helsinki and the “no SUV’s needed” department comes this study which suggests big cold snaps occurred right in the middle of the warm Eemian period. My only concern is perhaps they over-rely on climate models. For reference (and not part of the study) here’s the Eemian graph in context. Data sources listed int he graph.
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by P. Gosselin, July 18, 2018 in NoTricksZone
No matter how hard climate-catastrophe obsessed alarmists attempt to beat out a little doom from the data, their results still fall far way short of their projections. Moreover, the modest warming the planet has seen over the recent decades is tied more to natural cycles.
Chart: P Gosselin, using WoodForTrees data.
by P. Gosselin, July 17, 2018 in NoTricksZone
The upcoming 6th IPCC Sixth Assessment Report will be a “comprehensive assessment of the science” related to climate change and published in 2022. However, don’t expect it to be “comprehensive” at all as hundreds of scientific publications showing profound impacts by sun and oceans will go ignored.
Climate science has turned into a religion that centers on a single act of faith. Human CO2 is changing our climate.
In the past it was always understood that climate was impacted by a vast array of factors, such oceanic cycles, solar cycles, aerosols, cloud cover, etc. to name a few.
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Images: NASA (public domain)
by Jo Nova, July 19, 2018 in JoNova
Remarkably, some Japanese families kept weather record diaries in the 1700 and 1800s, and some for as long as 150 years. The connections they reveal are tantalizing but so incomplete. We are trying to fish out primitive signals from murky water. The Sun turns around on itself every 27 days, so these researchers are looking for repeating patterns in lightning that fit, but the poles of the sun spin slower than the equator and the sun spots can take their own time. Hence, it’s not a neat “27″ days.
During periods of high solar activity, they found regular peaks in lightning activity with the right timing, from May to September when the cold Siberian air mass is not so influential.
Other studies we’ve discussed here have investigated long solar cycles on the 11 year or 200 year scales ….
by P. Homewood, July 22, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
Last week, the BBC seriously misled the public about so-called “heat records”, as I noted in this post here.
In particular the BBC made a song and dance about Southern California, even though the LA records were seriously compromised by siting in car parks or next to air conditioning exhaust vents.
But how does the recent Californian heatwave really compare with historical weather?
Fairmont is a rural USHCN station, just 110 km north of LA, and with a long term record dating back to 1922. (There is some data going back to 1909 as well):
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by Arjen Luijendijk et al., April, 27, 2018 in Nature (Open Access)
Coastal zones constitute one of the most heavily populated and developed land zones in the world. Despite the utility and economic benefits that coasts provide, there is no reliable global-scale assessment of historical shoreline change trends. Here, via the use of freely available optical satellite images captured since 1984, in conjunction with sophisticated image interrogation and analysis methods, we present a global-scale assessment of the occurrence of sandy beaches and rates of shoreline change therein. Applying pixel-based supervised classification, we found that 31% of the world’s ice-free shoreline are sandy. The application of an automated shoreline detection method to the sandy shorelines thus identified resulted in a global dataset of shoreline change rates for the 33 year period 1984–2016. Analysis of the satellite derived shoreline data indicates that 24% of the world’s sandy beaches are eroding at rates exceeding 0.5 m/yr, while 28% are accreting and 48% are stable. The majority of the sandy shorelines in marine protected areas are eroding, raising cause for serious concern.
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by Tim Ball, July 21, 2018 in WUWT
I know there are many articles on this website about sea level, none better than the recent one by David Middleton that speaks about “More nonsense about sea level rise.” I thought his article would make the continuance of this article unnecessary. It doesn’t because it is written for the WUWT readers. Unfortunately, too many of them like most of the public, scientists, and media don’t know what is involved in creating the net result that is sea level. I think because they don’t know, that it is time for something more basic as a citizen’s template for fighting city hall. Citizens of Honolulu are the most recent victims of this as the Mayor of Honolulu directs the City to prepare for a 3-foot sea level rise in some undetermined time period. It was reinforced during a recent radio interview when a caller asked about it because his city was planning to spend millions on structures to anticipate sea level rise. I provided a few facts about changes in sea level, scientifically called eustasy, and all the other mechanisms that could explain that change.
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by Samuel Furfari, 22 juillet 2018, in ScienceClimatEnergie
L’hydrogène est un sujet captivant, mais une terrible illusion si on pense à lui comme combustible alternatif. Le public et le monde politique semblent fascinés par cette molécule perçue comme une panacée pour la politique énergétique. Est-ce parce qu’ils ont appris à l’école que c’est le premier élément du tableau de Mendeleïev ? Est-ce parce que ça sonne plus « scientifique » que le charbon ou le pétrole ? Est-ce parce qu’il y a tellement longtemps qu’on en parle qu’ils pensent qu’il faudra bien un jour qu’il perce ? Toujours est-il que cette « énergie alternative » suscite un tel engouement que tout le monde en parle et qu’il convient donc de revenir aux fondamentaux.
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by McGill University, July 18, 2018 in ScienceDaily
The findings, published in the journal Nature, represent the oldest measurement of atmospheric oxygen isotopes by nearly a billion years. The results support previous research suggesting that oxygen levels in the air during this time in Earth history were a tiny fraction of what they are today due to a much less productive biosphere.
“It has been suggested for many decades now that the composition of the atmosphere has significantly varied through time,” says Peter Crockford, who led the study as a PhD student at McGill University. “We provide unambiguous evidence that it was indeed much different 1.4 billion years ago.”
The study provides the oldest gauge yet of what earth scientists refer to as “primary production,” in which micro-organisms at the base of the food chain — algae, cyanobacteria, and the like — produce organic matter from carbon dioxide and pour oxygen into the air.
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by Kemberlee Kaye, July 19, 2018 in LegaIinsurrection
The Lone Star State is poised to pass up Iraq and Iran becoming the world’s third-largest producer of oil next year.
CNN Money reports the shale boom in the Permian Basin, which covers a large swath of West Texas and Southeast New Mexico, is to thank.
by University of the Basque Country, July 19, 2018 in ScienceDaily
A study conducted in mining areas in Asturias by the Animal Ecotoxicity and Biodiversity group led by Dr Pilar Rodriguez, through collaboration between the Department of Zoology and Animal Cellular Biology and that of Genetics, Physical Anthropology and Animal Physiology of the UPV/EHU’s Faculty of Science and Technology, and the Limnology Laboratory at the University of Vigo has enabled progress to be made in this field and has proposed the ecological threshold concentration for 7 metals (cadmium, chromium, copper, mercury, nickel, lead and zinc) and two metalloids (arsenic and selenium). The study included a number of non-contaminated localities belonging to the reference network of the Nalón river basin as well as other highly contaminated ones. This is a basin with a long history of mining activities due to the high levels of metals naturally occurring in its rocks.
by Anthony Watts, July 18, 2018 in WUWT
In response to a study from the University of Washington posted on WUWT (and elsewhere) today about a shift in the AMOC and a very clear statement about it not collapsing (as posited for collapse by many), including Michael Mann, Dr. Judith Curry gave this response to the Daily Caller’s Mike Bastasch: …
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by Florida State University, July 18, 2018 in ScienceDaily
Deep in the ocean’s twilight zone, swarms of ravenous single-celled organisms may be altering Earth’s carbon cycle in ways scientists never expected, according to a new study from Florida State University researchers.
In the area 100 to 1,000 meters below the ocean’s surface — dubbed the twilight zone because of its largely impenetrable darkness — scientists found that tiny organisms called phaeodarians are consuming sinking, carbon-rich particles before they settle on the seabed, where they would otherwise be stored and sequestered from the atmosphere for millennia.
This discovery, researchers suggest, could indicate the need for a re-evaluation of how carbon circulates throughout the ocean, and a new appraisal of the role these microorganisms might play in Earth’s shifting climate.
The findings were published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.
by NASA, July 18, 2018 in SpaceWeather
The sun has been blank for 21 days–3 whole weeks without sunspots. To find an equal number of consecutive spotless days in the historical record, you have to go back to July-August 2009 when the sun was emerging from an unusually deep solar minimum. Solar minimum, welcome back!
by Anthony Watts, July 17, 2018 in WUWT
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While NBC News might think that 68,000 page views per month is impressive, in comparison to our regular daily traffic on WUWT, it pales in comparison. For example, here is a screencap from my WordPress dashboard from yesterday, July 16th, which was a fairly typical summer day for WUWT. Note that it shows 92,467 page views in one day.
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What’s most interesting is that while there’s been a slow, almost imperceptible increase in the phrase “climate change”, the search phrase “global warming” is getting far less use than it did when data was first collected, back in 2004. Right now, both “climate change”, and “global warming” have low interests.
by Anthony Watts, July 16, 2018 in WUWT
From the American Enterprise Institute via Twitter. h/t to WUWT reader “Latitude”
Last year the United States had the largest decline in CO2 emissions *in the entire world* for the 9th time this century.
From the June 2018 BP Statistical Review of Global Energy (67th edition) here are some details on C02 emissions in 2017: (…)
by Jennifer Chu, July 16 in MITNews
There may be more than a quadrillion tons of diamond hidden in the Earth’s interior, according to a new study from MIT and other universities. But the new results are unlikely to set off a diamond rush. The scientists estimate the precious minerals are buried more than 100 miles below the surface, far deeper than any drilling expedition has ever reached.
The ultradeep cache may be scattered within cratonic roots — the oldest and most immovable sections of rock that lie beneath the center of most continental tectonic plates. Shaped like inverted mountains, cratons can stretch as deep as 200 miles through the Earth’s crust and into its mantle; geologists refer to their deepest sections as “roots.”
In the new study, scientists estimate that cratonic roots may contain 1 to 2 percent diamond. Considering the total volume of cratonic roots in the Earth, the team figures that about a quadrillion (1016) tons of diamond are scattered within these ancient rocks, 90 to 150 miles below the surface.
by Willis Eschenbach, July 16, 2018 in WUWT
Sometimes a chance comment sets off a whole chain of investigation. Somewhere recently, in passing I noted the idea of the slope of the temperature gradient across the Pacific along the Equator. So I decided to take a look at it. Here is the area that I examined.
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I’ve written about this temperature gradient before, in a post called The Tao of El Nino. If you take time to read that post, this one will make more sense. …
