by JoNova, March 18, 2018
A funny thing happens when you line up satellite and surface temperatures over Australia. A lot of the time they are very close, but some years the surface records from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) are cooler by a full half a degree than the UAH satellite readings. Before anyone yells “adjustments”, this appears to be a real difference of instruments, but solving this mystery turns up a rather major flaw in climate models (…)
by K. Richard, March 22, 2018 in NoTricksZone
During 2017, there were 150 graphs from 122 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals indicating modern temperatures are not unprecedented, unusual, or hockey-stick-shaped — nor do they fall outside the range of natural variability.
We are less than 3 months into the new publication year. Already 46 new graphs from 40+ scientific papers undermine claims that modern era warming — or, in some regions, modern cooling — is climatically unusual.
by University of Exeter, March 20, 2018 in PhysOrg
Periods of extreme cold winter weather and perilous snowfall, similar to those that gripped the UK in a deep freeze with the arrival of the ‘Beast from the East’, could be linked to the solar cycle, pioneering new research has shown.
A new study, led by Dr Indrani Roy from the University of Exeter, has revealed when the solar cycle is in its ‘weaker’ phase, there are warm spells across the Arctic in winter, as well as heavy snowfall across the Eurasian sector.
by P. Homewood, March 23, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
Global carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.4 percent in 2017 to a record-setting 32.5 gigatonnes, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Emissions rose after stalling for three years in a row, IEA reported. The Paris climate accord was signed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, which went into effect a year later. One year into the Paris accord, and emissions are on the rise.
IEA’s report echoes findings published by the Global Carbon Project late last year, predicting global emissions would rise 2 percent. The group projected emissions to rise again in 2018.
by Anthony Watts, March 23, 2018 in WUWT
From NASA Goddard:
Sea ice in the Arctic grew to its annual maximum extent last week, and joined 2015, 2016 and 2017 as the four lowest maximum extents on record, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.
On March 17, the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 5.59 million square miles (14.48 million square kilometers), making it the second lowest maximum on record, at about 23,200 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) larger than the record low maximum reached on March 7, 2017 (…)
by De Santis et al., 2017 in Int.J.RemoteSensing/in CO2Science
Over the past several years, many researchers have examined the spatial extent of sea ice around Antarctica, consistently reporting an increasing trend (see, for example, our reviews on the previously published works of Yuan and Martinson, 2000, Watkins and Simmonds, 2000, Hanna, 2001, Zwally et al., 2002, Vyas et al., 2003, Cavalieri et al., 2003, Liu et al., 2004, Parkinson, 2004, Comiso and Nishio, 2008, Cavalieri and Parkinson, 2008, Turner et al., 2009, Pezza et al., 2012, Reid et al., 2013, Reid et al., 2015, Simmonds, 2015, He et al., 2016 and Comiso et al., 2017). The latest study to confirm this ongoing expanse comes from the South American research team of De Santis et al. (2017).
by Willis Eschenbach, March 24, 2018 in WUWT
I got to thinking about the “hiatus” in warming in the 21st Century, and I realized that the CERES satellite dataset covers the period since the year 2000. So I’ve graphed up a few views of the temperature changes over the period of the CERES record, which at present is May 2000 to February 2017. No great insights, just a good overview and some interesting findings.
by Willis Eschenbach, March 24, 2018 in WUWT
Much has been made of the argument that natural forcings alone are not sufficient to explain the 20th Century temperature variations. Here’s the IPCC on the subject:
(…)
I’m sure you can see the problems with this. The computer model has been optimized to hindcast the past temperature changes using both natural and anthropogenic forcings … so of course, when you pull a random group of forcings out of the inputs, it will perform more poorly.
by D. Middleton, March 22, 2018 in WUWT
How Does the Recent Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet Compare to the Early Holocene?
Short answer: Same as it ever was. Vinther et al., 2009 reconstructed the elevations of four ice core sites over the Holocene. There has been very little change in elevation of the two interior ice core sites (NGRIP and GRIP), while the two outboard sites (Camp Century and DYE3) have lost 546 and 342 m of ice respectively.
by P. Homewood, March 22, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
You may recall the above report by the BBC, which described how bad last year’s Atlantic hurricane season was, before commenting at the end:
A warmer world is bringing us a greater number of hurricanes and a greater risk of a hurricane becoming the most powerful category 5.
As I promised, I fired off a complaint, which at first they did their best to dodge. After my refusal to accept their reply, they have now been forced to back down.
The above sentence now no longer appears, and instead they now say:
Scientists are still analysing what this data will mean, but a warmer world may bring us a greater number of more powerful category 4 and 5 hurricanes and could bring more extreme rainfall.
Correction 29 January 2018: This story has been updated to clarify that it is modelling rather than historical data that predicts stronger and wetter hurricanes.
(…)
by Kip Hansen, March 20, 2018 in WUWT
What Exactly is Relative Sea Level (rise or fall)?
Tide stations measure Local (Relative) Sea Level, which refers to the height of the water as measured along the coast relative to a specific point on land
There are three possible combinations of relative sea level rise under current geological conditions (…)
by tonyheller, March 20, 2018 in TheDeplorableClimSciBlog
NOAA’s US temperature record shows that US was warmest in the 1930’s and has generally cooled as CO2 has increased. This wrecks greenhouse gas theory, so they “adjust” the data to make it look like the US is warming.
by F. Bosse and Prof. F. Vahrenholt, March 20, 2018 in NoTricksZone
The sunspot number for February 2018 was 10.6 and thus was some 30% below the meanfor this time into the cycle. At the moment solar activity is close to quiet.
Just 10 years ago, all the talk was about the Arctic sea ice “death spiral”, with some of scientists hysterically predicting the sea ice would soon disappear altogether in the summertime. Ten years later the scientists are now scratching their heads as sea ice has stabilized and is showing some clear signs of a rebound.
by M. Bastach, March 19, 2018 in TheDailyCaller
U.S. exported more natural gas in 2017 than it imported for the first time in 60 years, according to the Energy Department.
Natural gas production has boomed in recent years, particularly in Pennsylvania and other parts of Appalachia, thanks to hydraulic fracturing or fracking and horizontal drilling. The boom has offset Canadian imports and allowed U.S. companies to ship more fuel abroad.
by University of California-Berkeley, March 19, 2018 in ScienceDaily
A new theory about how oceans and volcanoes interacted during the early history of Mars supports the idea that liquid water was once abundant and may still exist underground. Geophysicists propose that the oceans originated several hundred million years earlier than thought, as the volcanic province Tharsis formed, and that greenhouse gases enabled the oceans. The theory predicts smaller oceans, more in line with estimates of water underground and at the poles today.
by K. Richard, March 19, 2018 in NoTricksZone
In the last 10 years, overseers of the NASA GISS global temperature data set have been busy utilizing cool-the-past-and-warm-the-present adjustment techniques to alter the slope of the overall warming trend.
For example, as the climate4you graph illustrates above, there was a +0.45°Cdifference between the 1910 temperature anomaly and the 2000 temperature anomaly as of May, 2008.
Today (March, 2018), NASA GISS has tendentiously adjusted up the difference between 1910 and 2000 to +0.69°C, a 53% increase.
by Polar Bear Science, March 12, 2018
Polar bear specialists Andrew Derocher and Steven Amstrup recently spent inordinate energy trying to refute the opinion piece I’d written for the Financial Post in celebration of International Polar Bear Day last month, ignoring my fully referenced State of the Polar Bear Report for 2017 that was released the same day (Crockford 2018) and the scientific manuscript I’d posted last year at PeerJ Preprints (Crockford 2017). (…)
by Willy Eschenbach, March 18, 2018 in WUWT
Well, folks were complaining that my graph of the CET compared to the centennial solar minima was just one location, England. So here are the five European temperature records which start before 1815. Now, if the theory of the solar/temperature connection is correct, the temperatures should start trending downward when the solar minima start, and they shouldn’t start warming back up until the sunspots get numerous again after the end of the minima. Here are the records so you can see if they agree with the theory.
(…) As you can see, there is no obvious sign that the solar minima have caused any change in the temperature. Some go up, some go down, some go nowhere.(…)
See also here Approaching ‘grand solar minimum’ could cause global cooling
by Jo Moreau, 19 mars, 2018 in Belgotopia
La question est posée dans un excellent article de Pierre Gosselin paru en juin 2017 sur son site incontournable (1).
Personnellement, et je ne suis évidemment pas le seul, je n’accorde aucun crédit aux annonces tonitruantes d’ “année la plus chaude”, de “record de température” dont sont si friands nos médias, et je conserve un scepticisme identique pour la détermination de la température globale moyenne de la planète. En effet, pour qui s’intéresse à l’actualité climatique, les contradictions et manipulations dans les relevés de température terrestre sont monnaie courante, sous prétexte bien souvent d’ajustements et de mise à niveau, que ce soit pour les relevés actuels ou “l’actualisation” de données anciennes…
“L’avenir est connu, il suffit de modifier le passé“.(…)
by P. Homewood, March 18, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
GWPF brings us the story, originally published by the Daily Maverick, of how South African academics are pushing the frontiers of clean coal (…)
by L’essentiel, 18 mars 2018
Grâce à une production de pétrole en plein boom, les États-Unis exportent désormais sans complexe leur or noir dans le monde, entraînant une refonte des infrastructures sur leur territoire et rebattant les cartes sur le marché mondial. En pompant actuellement plus de 10 millions de barils par jour, le pays est devenu le deuxième producteur de brut au monde, derrière la Russie et devant l’Arabie saoudite. Un essor lié aux nouvelles techniques permettant d’extraire à moindre coût du pétrole de schiste
by J. Cartwright, March 16, 2018 in A. Watts WUWT
WUWT readers may recall this chart which clearly illustrates just how uncertain climate science really is.
t seems that some climate academics are a bit embarrassed that they haven’t been able to pin down climate sensitivity. From EU Horizon Magazine
Climate sensitivity – reducing the uncertainty of uncertainty
by Jon Cartwright
A study published in January 2018 claims to halve the uncertainty around how much our planet’s temperature will change in response to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, potentially giving governments more confidence to prepare for the future.
by Willis Eschenbach, March 16, 2018 in WUWT
Finally, we have the IPCC Likelihood Scale:
Virtually certain – “All my cool scientist friends agree”.
Very likely – “We really hope this is true”.
Likely – “Two climate models out of three agree”.
About as likely as not – “Nobody has a clue”.
Unlikely – “This outcome offends us”.
Very unlikely – “We really don’t want you going down that path”.
Exceptionally unlikely – “Stephen McIntyre said it first so it can’t possibly be true.”
by A. Watts, March 15, 2018 in WUWT
This paper deals with the central argument that skeptics bring up about claims of global warming: How do you separate the temperature signal from the base components like natural variation, human land-use influence, micro-site bias, measurement errors and biases, and other factors to get the “true” global warming signal?
The answer is that you can’t, at least not easily.
With the surface temperature record, it’s somewhat easier since you can observe some of those elements directly and separate them (such as we’ve done in our surfacestations project for land-use microsite biases), but in the ocean, everything is homogenized by the ocean itself. All you can look for is patterns, and try to disentangle based on pattern recognition. That’s what they are trying to do here.
Disentangling Global Warming, Multidecadal Variability, and El Niño in Pacific Temperatures
Authors
Robert C. Wills, Tapio Schneider, John M. Wallace, David S. Battisti, Dennis L. Hartmann
(…)
