Firstly let me say that I am not one of the most technical writers you will see here. I regard myself pretty much as a layman despite studying Geology, Mathematics and Computer Science at University.
So you won’t find all the references to papers (well not many), nor exact scientific formulae. I simply write what I have logically deduced. For any who disagree, or have value to add, please use the Comments below.
How cities heat up The way streets and buildings are arranged makes a big difference in how heat builds up, study shows
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The arrangement of a city’s streets and buildings plays a crucial role in the local urban heat island effect, which causes cities to be hotter than their surroundings, researchers have found. The new finding could provide city planners and officials with new ways to influence those effects.
Some cities, such as New York and Chicago, are laid out on a precise grid, like the atoms in a crystal, while others such as Boston or London are arranged more chaotically, like the disordered atoms in a liquid or glass. The researchers found that the “crystalline” cities had a far greater buildup of heat compared to their surroundings than did the “glass-like” ones.
A vicious cold blast is about to invade Europe from the Russian Front and shock freeze the continent.
Interestingly some people – meteorologists among them – have been poking fun at the “hype” or even have blasted media outlets and other private meteorologists for “sensationalizing” the forecast Cold Beast from the East.
Sure, a number of locations over Germany for example may not even see temperatures drop below -10°C. What’s the big deal? It’s winter after all, they are saying. Just put on an extra coat. Some of these critics have even called the loud warnings of the Siberian cold “shrill, dumbass, click-baiting headlines“.
According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC) and computer modeling, the Sun’s role in modern-era climate change checks in at somewhere slightly above nothing.
And yet it is increasingly evident that more and more scientists across the globe do not take the position that the Sun’s influence on climate change is negligible.
In 2016 and 2017, for example, over 250 papers (see here and here) linking the Sun to climate changes were published in scientific journals.
by P. Homewood, February 22, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
These are the highlights:
The speed of the energy transition is uncertain and the new Outlook considers a range of scenarios. Its evolving transition (ET) scenario, which assumes that government policies, technologies and societal preferences evolve in a manner and speed similar to the recent past, expects
The long term forecast for Europe, where it is already colder than normal, shows temperatures plummeting to near -20°C in parts of Central Europe by early next week, extending what has been already a brutal winter.
Europeans longing for spring will just have to be patient for awhile. Indeed this winter has been a harsh one across the northern hemisphere with record cold temperatures being set from Siberia to North America to Japan. Also a number of places have seen record snowfalls.
The European Alps have had one of the snowiest winters in years as snow continues to pile up meters high.
The bizarre issue of climate catastrophism has been around suf ciently long that it has become possible to trace its history in detail, and, indeed, several excellent re- cent books do this, placing the issue in the context of a variety of environmental, economic and political trends.
by P. Homewood, February 21, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
The Arctic Ocean once froze reliably every year. Those days are over.
Arctic sea ice extent has been measured by satellites since the 1970s. And scientists can sample ice cores, permafrost records, and tree rings to make some assumptions about the sea ice extent going back 1,500 years. And when you put that all on a chart, well, it looks a little scary (…)
From the EUROPEAN COMMISSION JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE and the “Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. was right” department. I suspect a whole bunch of climate models that don’t take this into consideration, and think CO2 is the dominant climate driver, are going to need to be revised.
Land use change has warmed the Earth’s surface
Natural ecosystems play a crucial role in helping combat climate change, air pollution and soil erosion. A new study by a team of researchers from the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, sheds light on another, less well-known aspect of how these ecosystems, and forests in particular, can protect our planet against global warming.
From Keele University and the “It’s like deja vu all over again” department with the leader of the “ship of fools” thrown in for comic relief. Long-time WUWT readers surely remember the single “Most influential tree in the world” from the Yamal fiasco, where the “signal” in one tree (YAD06) biased an entire paper with a hockey stick shape, making it worthless. Well, here we are again with another single tree used to define the entire globe. Obviously they’ve learned nothing, then again, it’s Chris Turney.
Earlier this month, the authors of a new paper (Partridge et al., 2018) published in Geophysical Research Letters promulgated the term “warming hole” to describe the cooling temperatures gripping most of the Eastern half of the United States from the late 1950s through 2015
I missed this report at the time, but it is a comprehensive account of how large scale adjustments of temperatures have made global temperature datasets virtually worthless. (…)
by Eck, February 15, 2018 in K. Richard NoTricksZone
A new scientific study says surface temperatures in the Northeastern U.S. (Appalachian Mountains) have undergone a significant long-term cooling trend since the early 20th century, complicating the detection of a clear anthropogenic global warming (AGW) signal for the region.
According to Eck (2018), the two coldest Appalachian winters since 1910 were recorded in recent years (2009-’10 and 2010-’11), and 9 of the 10 warmest winters occurred prior to 1960.
In the early 1930s, Appalachian winters were 4.7°C warmer than they have been during the last 30 years (1987-2017).
A recently highlighted paper published by atmospheric scientists Scafetta et al., (2017) featured a graph (above) documenting post-2000 trends in the published estimates of the Earth’s climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 concentrations (from 280 parts per million to 560 ppm).
Prologue: I have been writing recently about Sea Level Rise, both as particular local examples ( Guam, Canton, Miami, New York, and NY/NJ ) and in the series SEA LEVEL: Rise and Fall, of which this is the fourth-plus installment.
Different sea level reconstructions show a spread in sea level rise over the last six decades and it is not yet certain whether the sum of contributors explains the reconstructed rise (…)
The record snowfalls of 2018 that are sweeping across the Northern Hemisphere and continuing the growth trend in winter snowfall levels provide yet more compelling evidence that the UN IPCC AR5 WG1 climate report and models are flawed because this report concludes that future snowfall level trends will only decline.(…)
by Dr S. Crockford, February 12, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch
It acknowledges that polar bear numbers have not declined in recent years even though summer sea ice dropped dramatically but goes on to perpetuate a number of myths that might not have happened if the author had done his homework or quizzed his other experts as thoroughly as he did me.
Rankin Inlet, Nunavut gets cold in the winter. Located on the northwestern shore of the Hudson Bay at 62 degrees north and between Chesterfield Inlet and Arviat, the town is definitely in a remote yet exposed region. Weather is just a part of life and recently the weather has been colder than cold.
A synthesis of paleotemperature reconstructions from published case studies suggests warm onshore temperatures persisted across most of Afro-Arabia between 1000 and 1200 CE. (…)
1. During the first 2000 years of our 5000-year civilization, most of the time, the annual average temperature was 2ºC higher than now. The temperature in January was 3-5ºC higher than now.
2. From then on, there was a series of temperature fluctuations. The lowest temperatures occurred in AD 1000, 400, 1200, and 1700. The range of fluctuation was 1-2ºC.
3. In every 400-800 period, a smaller cycle lasting 50 to 100 years can be detected with a temperature range of 0.5 -1ºC.
4. During the above cycles, it seems that any coldest period started from the Pacific coast of East Asia. The cold waves then moved westward to Europe and the Atlantic coasts. And at the same time, there were also trends from the North to the South.
Surprise! Poster child for sea level rise, Tuvalu, is actually growing!
From the “we told you so, again, and again” department. We’ve had several articles about the island of Tuvalu and the ridiculous claims of sea level rise causing it to disappear, while at the same time they are building new hotels and airports to attract tourists. Willis has also had several articles on how Pacific atolls grow, and float, rather than sink as sea level advances.
Now, a study confirms what we’ve already known – atolls, and in particular Tuvalu is growing, and increasing land area. So much for climate alarmism. From Nature communications:
The sun is the natural source of heat and light for our planet. Without our sun, the earth would be a cold dead planet adrift in space. But the sun is not constant. It changes and these subtle changes affect the Earth’s climate and weather.
At the end of solar cycle 23, sunspot activity declined to a level not seen since the year 1913. [Comparing Yearly Mean Total Sunspot Numbers1]
The following was observed during the solar cycle 24: (…)
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse