Since the 1950s the number of lives and the amount of money lost to floods have declined, despite little change to the frequency of catastrophic floods, according to the first comprehensive study of European historical records.
Academics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands found that the number of flood deaths across Europe has been falling by about 5 per cent a year for the past six decades. Financial losses to flooding have declined by 2 per cent a year, according to their paper in Nature Communications.
There is a continuing debate over sea level rise, especially how much will occur in the future. The most annoying part of the news media reporting on the issue is that they imply sea level rise is all the fault of humans.
This is why the acceleration of sea level rise is what is usually debated, because sea level has been rising naturally, for at least 100 years before humans could be blamed. So, the two questions really are (1) Has sea level rise accelerated?, and (2) how much of the acceleration is due to humans?
Yesterday’s spat between Gavin Schmidt and Willis Eschenbach dealt with the question of whether sea level rise has accelerated or not. Gavin says it has. Willis says not, or at least not by a statistically significant amount. (…)
by Paul Homewood, May 30, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleknowThat
China’s carbon emissions growth has accelerated since the beginning of the year, leading to warnings that the country could be headed for its largest annual increase in climate pollution since 2011.
Led by increased demand for coal, oil and gas, China’s CO2 emissions for the first three months of 2018 were 4% higher than they were for the same period in 2017, according to an Unearthed analysis of new government figures.
Analysts have suggested the country’s carbon emissions could rise this year by 5% — the largest annual increase in seven years, back when the airpocalypse was at its peak (…)
Corals around Japan are fleeing northwards, according to a new study. One type has been spotted ‘sprinting’ at 14 kilometres a year, thanks to a lift from ocean currents. That means ocean ecosystems could shift rapidly in the face of climate-change impacts such as warming seas, the authors say.
Most estimates of Chinese regional Surface Air Temperatures since the late-19th century have identified two relatively warm periods – 1920s–40s and 1990s–present. However, there is considerable debate over how the two periods compare to each other. Some argue the current warm period is much warmer than the earlier warm period. Others argue the earlier warm period was comparable to the present. In this collaborative paper, including authors from both camps, the reasons for this ongoing debate are discussed. Several different estimates of Chinese temperature trends, both new and previously published, are considered. A study of the effects of urbanization bias on Chinese temperature trends was carried out using the new updated version of the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) – version 4 (currently in beta production)
Over millennia, the reef has adapted to sudden changes in environment by migrating across the sea floor as the oceans rose and fell.
The study published today in Nature Geoscience, led by University of Sydney’s Associate Professor Jody Webster, is the first of its kind to reconstruct the evolution of the reef over the past 30 millennia in response to major, abrupt environmental change.
The 10-year, multinational effort has shown the reef is more resilient to major environmental changes such as sea-level rise and sea-temperature change than previously thought but also showed a high sensitivity to increased sediment input and poor water quality. (…)
This manntastic event looms large. With the irascible Dr. Mann pitted against Moore and Curry, fireworks are almost guaranteed. Titley is a lightweight and he’ll be overshadowed by Mann’s huge ego and need to control the conversation. Their idea to hear a “collegial and balanced” discussion may very well be a pipe dream, especially after what happened the last time when Mann and Curry were testifying before congress.
BIG PICTURE: The Population Bomb was first published in May 1968 – 50 years ago this month. Page one of my copy, printed in 1970, describes its author as “a qualified scientist.” The back cover provides further detail: (…)
A landmark paper by warmist scientists in Nature Geosciencenow concedes the world has indeed not warmed as predicted, thanks to a slowdown in the first 15 years of this century. One of its authors, Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change at University College London, admits his past predictions of runaway warming were too alarmist.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. We are in a better place than I thought.”
ANOTHER author, Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at Oxford, confessed that too many of the mathematical models used by climate scientists to predict future warming “were on the hot side” — meaning they exaggerated.
“We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models.”
The sun was inactive in April, as we currently find ourselves in the minimum between solar cycle (SC) 24 and the coming solar cycle 25.
The recorded mean sunspot number (SSN) for April was 8.9, which is only 28% of what is usual 113 months into a solar cycle. In April, 16 days were spotless. The following chart shows sunspot activity (…)
In describing their findings, Lovell et al. state that “between 1972 and 2013, 36% of glacier termini in the entire study area advanced and 25% of glacier termini retreated, with the remainder showing no discernible change outside of the measurement error (± 66 m or ± 1.6 m yr-1) and classified as ‘no change'” (see figure below). Although there were some regional differences in glacier termini changes, these regions over the last four decades were more closely linked to non-climatic drivers, such as terminus type and geometry, than any obvious climatic or oceanic forcing.”
Writing as background for their study, Duvat et al. (2017) state that “it has commonly been considered that atoll reef islands would disappear under climate change, as a result of sea-level rise and induced accelerating shoreline erosion,” citing the works of Connell (2003), Dickinson (2009) and McAdam (2010). This perception is based on model predictions, which have been hyped all over the globe, especially among politicians and the media, some of whom demand reparations for small island States who they fear will be forced to abandon their islands within decades.
But how much faith should one place in such projections and concerns?
Have you been keeping an eye on Sol lately? One of the top astronomy stories for 2018 may be what’s not happening, and how inactive our host star has become.
The strange tale of Solar Cycle #24 is ending with an expected whimper: as of May 8th, the Earthward face of the Sun had been spotless for 73 out of 128 days thus far for 2018, or more than 57% of the time. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, as the solar minimum between solar cycle #23 and #24 saw 260 spotless days in 2009 – the most recorded in a single year since 1913.
Cycle #24 got off to a late and sputtering start, and though it produced some whopper sunspots reminiscent of the Sol we knew and loved on 20th century cycles past, it was a chronic under-performer overall. Mid-2018 may see the end of cycle #24 and the start of Cycle #25… or will it?
In Figure 29 of that paper, Hansen claims to show that sea level rise has been accelerating, from 0.6 mm/year from 1900 to 1930, to 1.4 mm/year from 1930 to 1992, and 2.6 mm/year from 1993 to 2015.
by Li M. et al., 2017 in CO2Science/Int.J.Biometeorology
In discussing the characteristics of their three-century temperature proxy, the authors report the existence of two prominent decadal-scale cold periods (1801-1833 and 1961-2003) and two prominent decadal-scale warm periods (1730-1800 and 1928-1960). They also note that “fifteen extreme cold years (< -1.5σ) were identified and most occurred within 1-2 years after major volcanic eruptions,” contrasting with the finding that the two decadal-scale warm periods both occurred during “gaps in volcanic activities.”
Perhaps the most significant observation made by the authors, however, is that “none of the extreme warm years [< 1.5σ] or decades occurred in the most recent 30 years,” which fact runs counter to anthropogenic global warming claims that temperatures of the past few decades have been the warmest of the past thousand years (…)
Iran’s deputy environment chief Karim Shafie has warned that Iran’s participation in the Paris Agreement is at risk if they don’t get their climate money.
by Tony Heller, May 22, 2018 in TheDeplorableClimateScienceBlog
Settled science at NASA means constantly rewriting the past. Here are a few of the NASA Reykjavik, Iceland temperature graphs I have captured over the past six years.
Al Gore wrote in the Huffington Post (August 28, 2014) that the need for “bold action” to curtail “old dirty sources of energy … is obvious and urgent.” The proper scientific response to an assertion like that is why? How can I test this idea? Science is not a belief, it is a method of testing ideas. We use an idea to make predictions and then we gather data to see if the predictions are correct. If the predictions are accurate, the idea survives. If any of the predictions fail, the idea is disproven, and it must be modified or simply rejected.
Thanks to GWPF for publishing posthumously Bill Gray’s understanding of global warming/climate change. The paper was compiled at his request, completed and now available as Flaws in applying greenhouse warming to Climate Variability This post provides some excerpts in italics with my bolds and some headers. Readers will learn much from the entire document (title above is link to pdf).
The Fundamental Correction
The critical argument that is made by many in the global climate modeling (GCM) community is that an increase in CO2 warming leads to an increase in atmospheric water vapor, resulting in more warming from the absorption of outgoing infrared radiation (IR) by the water vapor (…)
Figure 14: Global surface temperature change since 1880. The dotted blue and dotted red lines illustrate how much error one would have made by extrapolating a multi-decadal cooling or warming trend beyond a typical 25-35 year period. Note the recent 1975-2000 warming trend has not continued, and the global temperature remained relatively constant until 2014.
The effects of past land-cover changes on climate are disputed. Previous modelling studies have generally concluded that the biogeophysical effects of historical deforestation led to an annual mean cooling in the northern mid-latitudes, in line with the albedo-induced negative radiative forcing from land-cover changes since pre-industrial time reported in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. However, further observational and modelling studies have highlighted strong seasonal and diurnal contrasts in the temperature response to deforestation
I should know. I’m a former climate research scientist at Environment Canada. And I was an expert reviewer for the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its 2007 Climate Change Report.
The wintry weather held its grip over most of Canada well into April, from Vancouver to St. John’s, as snow, freezing rain, ice pellets and ferocious winds hammered everyone. A few noteworthy wintry tales:
Calgary is set for record snowfall.
Edmonton set a record for continuous days of below-freezing temperatures this winter.
Most of the Canadian Prairies were still in winter-like weather mode in mid-April.
Toronto has recorded one of the highest numbers of Heating Degree Days at 3,485 and counting.
Atlantic Canada braced for more wintry weather with snow accumulation of 10 to 25 cm in mid-month.
This year’s winter could be the longest, snowiest and coldest in 40 years.
(…)
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
