Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

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.

Current Surface Mass Budget of the Greenland Ice Sheet

by DMI, July 2017


The model has been updated in 2014 to better account for meltwater refreezing in the snow, and again in 2015 to account for the lower reflectivity of sunlight in bare ice than in snow. Finally, it has been updated again in 2017 with a more advanced representation of percolation and refreezing of meltwater. At the same time, we have extended the reference period to 1981-2010. The update means that the new maps, values and curves will deviate from the previous ones. Everything shown on this site, however, is calculated with this new model, so that all curves and values are comparable.

See also here

Trente épisodes caniculaires entre 1850 et 2006

by Guillaume Séchet, 3 juillet 2017,  in AssociationClimatoRéalistes


… dont août 1911 l’un des mois les plus chauds de l’histoire et 1947 (40°C à Paris les 27 et 28 juillet, record absolu depuis 1873). Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie indique qu’au dix-huitième siècle siècle les canicules pouvaient se répéter plusieurs étés consécutifs : ainsi les années 1705, 1706 et 1707, et le « couple brûlant » (sic) des années 1718 et 1719 « avec sauterelles africaines jusqu’au Languedoc ».

Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States

by S. Hsiang et al., June 2017,  Science 


Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change.

Deaths and Death Rates from Extreme Weather Events: 1900-2008

by  Indur M. Golkany, Ph.D., 2009, in  J. of America. Phys.&Surgeons


Proponents of drastic greenhouse gas controls claim that human greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, which then exacerbates the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including extreme heat, droughts, floods, and storms such as hurricanes and cyclones.

In fact, even though reporting of such events is more complete than in the past, morbidity and mortality attributed to them has declined globally by 93%–98% since the 1920s

RSS Adjust Their Temperatures–Guess Which Way?

by  Paul Homewood, June 30, 2017


For years, RSS have been an embarrassment to the climate establishment. Their satellite data has consistently shown the pause in global temperatures since 1998, which so many scientists have attempted to explain.

At the same time, the surface datasets of GISS, NOAA and HADCRUT have diverged, with the help of adjustments, to show much greater warming.

The pressure on RSS to conform has been immense, and now the inevitable has happened. Highly conveniently they have found huge errors in their previous version, and have now adjusted to a new version, v4, which miraculously finds that global warming has continued unabated after all!

How too little CO2 nearly doomed humankind

by Dennis T. Avery, June 30, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Statistician Bjorn Lomborg had already pointed out that the Paris CO2 emission promises would cost $100 trillion dollars that no one has, and make only a 0.05-degree difference in Earth’s 2100 AD temperature. Others say perhaps a 0.2 degree C (0.3 degrees F) difference, and even that would hold only in the highly unlikely event that all parties actually kept their voluntary pledges.

Evidence Review Suggests Humans May Not Be The Primary Drivers Of CO2 Concentration Changes

by Kenneth Richard, June 29, 2017 in NoTricksZone


For the last 3 years, human CO2 emissions rates have not risen.  In fact, according to the IEA, we burned slightly more fossil fuels in 2014 than we did in both 2015 and 2016.

Despite the lack of growth – even slight decline – in human emissions rates during 2014 – 2016, the atmospheric CO2 parts per million (ppm) concentration grew rapidly – by more than 8 ppm (397 ppm to 405 ppm).

The truth about the global warming pause

by David Whitehouse, June 29, 2017


Between the start of 1997 and the end of 2014, average global surface temperature stalled. This 18-year period is known as the global warming pause, also sometimes referred to as the global warming hiatus. The rise in global temperatures that alarmed climate campaigners in the 1990s had slowed so much that the trend was no longer statistically significant. It has been the subject of much research and debate in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

More Evidence of the Great 21st Century Warming Pause

by Y. Xie, J. Huang and Y. Liu, June 26, 2017 in CO2Science


One of the many conundrums facing climate alarmists — who predict that dangerous future global warming will result from increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 — is the existence of the aptly-named “warming hiatus.” Also referred to as the “warming pause,” this phenomenon describes a nearly two-decade-long leveling off of global temperatures despite a ten percent increase in atmospheric COconcentration since 1998. The significance of these observations resides in the fact that all climate models project that temperatures should not be levelling off, but should be increasing (despite interannual variability) in direct consequence of the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2.

“No evidence” is a useful scientific finding

by Michel de Rougemont, June 28, 2017 in WUWT


We hear that global warming is highly dependent on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, this gas that is required to sustain life on Earth and that is also emitted when burning flammable stuff, such as wood, coal, mineral and organic oils, or methane.

If you are told “this depends on that”, you are invited to examine available data observed over time to draw a representation of this on the y-axis vs. that on the x-axis.

So, in all logic, you should be interested in a representation of the temperature evolution in dependence of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Yes, you should, but, looking hard into the latest IPCC Report (the fifth of Working Group I, to be precise), no diagram of that sort can be found among its 1535 pages.