Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

Three New Papers: Greenland 3-5°C Warmer With 40 Kilometers Less Ice Area 4,000-10,000 Years Ago

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

Tangier Island

by Paul Homewood, July 10, 2017


CBS have a report on rising sea levels at Tangier Island, in Chesapeake Bay here

The video is worth watching. The CBS reporter makes the usual attempts to blame it on “climate change”, but the locals know too much to fall for that old pony.
They know that sea levels have been rising, and land eroding, since 1850.

And they are right. Tide gauges in the area, such Sewell Point, Norfolk, confirm that sea levels have been steadily rising for a long time, long before recent rises in emissions of CO2.

IMPRESSIVE COLD IN GREENLAND AND NEAR RECORD ACCUMULATIONS OF SNOW AND ICE

by Vencore Weather, July 4, 2017


Much of Greenland has been colder-than-normal for the year so far and has had record or near record levels of accumulated snow and ice since the fall of last year. The first week of this month was especially brutal in Greenland resulting in the record low July temperature and it also contributed to an uptick in snow and ice extent – despite the fact that it is now well into their summer season.

Does a new paper really reconcile instrumental and model-based climate sensitivity estimates

by Nic Lewis, July 8, 2017 in Climate Audit


A new paper in Science Advances by Cristian Proistosescu and Peter Huybers “Slow climate mode reconciles historical and model-based estimates of climate sensitivity” (hereafter PH17) claims that accounting for the decline in feedback strength over time that occurs in most CMIP5 coupled global climate models (GCMs), brings observationally-based climate sensitivity estimates from historical records into line with model-derived estimates. It is not the first paper to attempt to do so, but it makes a rather bold claim and, partly because Science Advances seeks press coverage for its articles, has been attracting considerable attention.

Methane Emissions: from blind spot to spotlight

by The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, July 2017


Very comprehensive file, 39 pages .pdf

Methane emissions influence but do not undermine the environmental case for gas. If the industry can build on the progress to date and deliver a clearer picture on the level of emissions and actions to address them, the arguments for gas displacing coal in power generation and oil products in transport become much stronger.

Responsiveness of Atmospheric CO2 to Fossil Fuel Emissions: Updated

by Jamal Munshi, July 5, 2017 in SSRN

The IPCC carbon budget concludes that changes in atmospheric CO2 are driven by fossil fuel emissions on a year by year basis. A testable implication of the validity of this carbon budget is that changes in atmospheric CO2 should be correlated with fossil fuel emissions at an annual time scale net of long term trends. A test of this relationship with insitu CO2 data from Mauna Loa 1958-2016 and flask CO2 data from twenty three stations around the world 1967-2015 is presented. The test fails to show that annual changes in atmospheric CO2 levels can be attributed to annual emissions.


 

Bombshell study: Temperature Adjustments Account For ‘Nearly All Of The Warming’ In Government Climate Data

by Michael Bastasch, July 6, 2017, in WUWT


A new study found adjustments made to global surface temperature readings by scientists in recent years “are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.”

“Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming,” according to a study published June 27 by two scientists and a veteran statistician.

Despite Paris accord, G-20 countries invest four times as much in fossil fuels as green energy

by Ben Wolfgang, July 5, 2017,  in The Washington Times


The biggest critics of President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord are also the world’s biggest hypocrites on energy policy, top environmental groups charged Wednesday in a report that found many top nations’ rhetoric on cutting emissions doesn’t line up with how and where they spend their money.

The key finding: The G-20 nations spend roughly four times as much in public financing for fossil fuels as they do supporting renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The report examines loans, grants, guarantees, insurance and other types of public finance offered either by the governments, government-owned financial institutions and credit agencies, and multilateral groups made up of G-20 countries.

On Sunday, Goulburn got colder than the BOM thought was possible (and a raw data record was “adjusted”)

by JoNova, July 2017


The BOM got caught this week auto-adjusting cold extremes to be less cold. Lance Pidgeon of the unofficial BOM audit team noticed that the thermometer at Goulburn airport recorded – 10.4°C at 6.17am on Sunday morning, but the official BOM climate records said it was -10.0°C. (What’s the point of that decimal place?) Either way this was a new record for Goulburn in July. (The previous  coldest ever July morning was -9.1°C. The oldest day in Goulburn was in August 1994 when it reached -10.9°C).

Coal Boom: 1600 new plants in 62 countries around the world – increasing 43%

by JoNova, July 2017


“End-Coal” Global Coal Tracker  does a magnificent job of showing how essential coal is around the world, and which countries are pathetically backwards in developing new coal plants. It’s probably not what the “CoalSwarm” team was hoping to achieve, but this map is a real asset to those of us who want to show how tiny Australia’s coal fired assets are compared to the rest of the world

Skillful prediction of northern climate provided by the ocean

by M. Arthur et al., June 20, 2017, in Nature Communication


We show that variations in ocean temperature in the high latitude North Atlantic and Nordic Seas are reflected in the climate of northwestern Europe and in winter Arctic sea ice extent. Statistical regression models show that a significant part of northern climate variability thus can be skillfully predicted up to a decade in advance based on the state of the ocean. Particularly, we predict that Norwegian air temperature will decrease over the coming years, although staying above the long-term (1981–2010) average. Winter Arctic sea ice extent will remain low but with a general increase towards 2020.

Pronounced differences between observed and CMIP5-simulated multidecadal climate variability in the twentieth century

by Sergey Kravtsov, June 15, 2017


The observed internal variability so estimated exhibits a pronounced multidecadal mode with a distinctive spatiotemporal signature, which is altogether absent in model simulations. This single mode explains a major fraction of model-data differences over the entire climate index network considered; it may reflect either biases in the models’ forced response or models’ lack of requisite internal dynamics, or a combination of both.

…Importance of CO2…

by Donn Dears, July 2017


Here is a summary of the graph’s salient points:

  • The CO2 safe limit for US Navy submarines is 8,000 ppm (Dotted red line)
  • The CO2 safe limit for the space station is 5,000 ppm (Dotted blue line)
  • A line depicting the gradual doubling of CO2 is near the bottom of the graph
  • The minimum atmospheric CO2 requirements to sustain plant growth is 150 ppm (Dotted green line)

In addition, atmospheric CO2 has been as high as 7,000 ppm approximately 550 million years ago, and as high as 2,000 ppm as recently as 150 million years ago. (Also here in French)

What the graph clearly shows is how close mankind came to extinction when atmospheric CO2 levels dropped to 183 ppm during the last ice age.

China Met Office Confirms Global Warming Hiatus

by Dr David Whitehouse, July 4, 2017 in GWPF


The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) has recently developed a new global monthly land-surface air temperature data set called CMA GLSAT. Using it researchers from the administration reanalysed the change in global annual mean land-surface air temperature during three time periods (1901–2014, 1979–2014 and 1998–2014) to see if there was any evidence of a hiatus or pause in recent surface global warming.

The researchers find very clear evidence for the recent warming hiatus. Their results show linear trends of 0.104 °C per decade, 0.247 °C per decade and 0.098 °C per decade for the three periods, respectively. The trends were statistically significant except for the period 1998–2014, the period that is also known as the ‘‘warming hiatus”.

Closely Coupled: Solar Activity and Sea Level

by David Archibald, July 3, 2017


From a post a couple of days ago: “an F10.7 flux above 100 causes warming and below that level causes cooling.” Greg asked “Can you prove that?” I already had in this WUWT post from 2012. But it is worth revisiting the subject because it answers the big question – If all the energy that stops the Earth from looking like Pluto comes from the Sun, what is the solar activity level that corresponds to our average climate? Because solar activity is falling and climate will follow.

As Beijing Joins Climate Fight, Chinese Companies Build Coal Plants

by Hiroko Tabuchi, July 1, 2017


When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world (…)

A Growing Volume Of Evidence Undercuts ‘Consensus’ Science

by Kenneth Richard, July 3, 2017 in NoTricksZone


During the first 6 months of 2017, 285 scientific papers have already been published that cast doubt on the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions function as the climate’s fundamental control knob…or that otherwise question the efficacy of climate models or the related “consensus” positions commonly endorsed by policymakers and mainstream media.

These 285 new papers support the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties inherent in our understanding of climate and climate changes.  Climate science is not settled.

97% de scientifiques d’accord avec la théorie du dérèglement climatique ?

by Christian Gérondeau, 18 juin 2017, in Atlantico


Les hommes politiques, à l’image de Barack Obama avancent que 97% des scientifiques sont d’accord sur les causes humaines et les dangers du réchauffement climatique. Des chercheurs ont étudié l’ensemble des 11 944 publications sur le climat parues entre 1991 et 2011. Les résultats publiés en 2013 montrent que près de 66% des publications n’expriment pas d’avis, ni positif, ni négatif sur le réchauffement climatique.

AGU: Extraordinary storms caused massive Antarctic sea ice loss in 2016

by Lauren Lipuma, June 23, 2017


In a new study, scientists puzzled by the sudden ice loss matched satellite images of Antarctica with weather data from the second half of 2016 to figure out what caused so much of the ice to melt. They found that a series of remarkable storms during September, October and November brought warm air and strong winds from the north that melted 75,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) of ice per day. That’s like losing a South Carolina-sized chunk of ice every 24 hours.