2015-16 El Nino behind large-scale surface melting event in Antarctica

by Nature Communications, June 15, 2017 in ClimatChangeDispatch


The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, a landbound mass of ice larger than Mexico, experienced substantial surface melt through the austral summer of 2015-2016 during one of the largest El Niño events of the past 50 years, according to scientists who had been conducting the first comprehensive atmospheric measurements in the region since the 1960s.

See also here

Hydroelectric dams may jeopardize the Amazon’s future

by University of Texas at Austin, June 14, 2017 in Science Daily


Hundreds of built and proposed hydroelectric dams may significantly harm life in and around the Amazon by trapping the flow of rich nutrients and modifying the climate from Central America to the Gulf of Mexico. These findings, published in Nature, emerge from a multidisciplinary, international collaboration of researchers from 10 universities, led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.

To meet energy needs, economic developers in South America have proposed 428 hydroelectric dams, with 140 currently built or under construction, in the Amazon basin — the largest and most complex network of river channels in the world, which sustains the highest biodiversity on Earth.

Earth Is Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction

by Peter Brannen, June 14, 2017


“It is absolutely critical to recognize that I am NOT claiming that humans haven’t done great damage to marine and terrestrial [ecosystems], nor that many extinctions have not occurred and more will certainly occur in the near future. But I do think that as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”

Many popular science articles take this as a given, and indeed, there’s something emotionally satisfying about the idea that humans’ hubris and shortsightedness are so profound that we’re bringing down the whole planet with us.

Sables bitumineux

by Connaissances des Energies, 25 février 2015


Dès 1742, dans la région de Pechelbronn en Alsace, des tarières (outils permettant de percer le sol) étaient destinées à localiser les filons de sable bitumineux. L’huile était séparée du sable par lessivage à l’eau bouillante, puis distillée pour obtenir des produits pharmaceutiques, de l’huile pour lampe, de la graisse et de la poix.

C’est en 1778 que Peter Pond a localisé les premières sources de bitume dans la région d’Athabasca, mais c’est Robert Fitzsimmons, un entrepreneur, qui est le premier à avoir séparé le bitume du sable et qui l’a utilisé pour recouvrir les routes et les toitures. Si les Amérindiens ont depuis des siècles utilisé ce bitume pour calfater des embarcations, les sables bitumineux n’ont vraiment attiré l’attention de l’industrie pétrolière qu’après les chocs pétroliers.

Climate cycles and their extrapolation into the future

by Dr. Dietrich Koelle, February 2, 2015 in NoTricksZone


As the reconstruction of the climate’s development in the past by proxy data shows, there’s a series of temperature cycles that appear to be unknown, or ignored by many climate scientists. Among these are the larger climate cycles of 150 million to 180 million years (see Part 1 and Part 2), but also the shorter and for us the more important following cycles:

1000 years (900-1100)    Suess cycle with +/-  0.65°C
230 years (230-250)        deVries cycle with +/-  0.30°C
65  years (60-65)              Ocean cycles with +/- 0.25°C

 

RENEWABLES 2017 GLOBAL STATUS REPORT

by RENEWABLES 2017 GLOBAL STATUS REPORT, June 2017


The 2017 Edition of the REN21 Renewables Global Status Report reveals a global energy transition well underway, with record new additions of installed renewable energy capacity, rapidly falling costs, and the decoupling of economic growth and energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This year’s report continues REN21’s long-standing tradition of providing the most up-to-date data and informative infographics to detail renewable energy’s contribution to the energy transition.

See also here for comments

Winning climate strategy demands details

by Michigan State University, June 12, 2017 in ScienceDaily


Scientists at Michigan State University (MSU) show that examining the daily minutia of climate, not just temperature, but also sunshine, precipitation and soil moisture simultaneously all over a country gives a better understanding of how variable a land’s climate can be. That information is crucial when countries are setting policies aimed at growing food, protecting water supplies and the environment and stemming disease outbreaks. The findings were reported in this week’s Scientific Reports.

Denmark Is Killing Tesla (and Other Electric Cars)

by Peter Levring, June 2, 2017 in Bloomberg


The electric car has dropped out of favor in the country that pioneered renewable energy.

Sales in Denmark of Electrically Chargeable Vehicles (ECV), which include plug-in hybrids, plunged 60.5 percent in the first quarter of the year, compared with the first three months of 2016, according to latest data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). That contrasts with an increase of nearly 80 percent in neighboring Sweden and an average rise of 30 percent in the European Union.

End Game of Climate Wars: Clive James discusses how it plays out (slowly)

by JoNova, 2017


The best way to kill off the Climate Debate is to do what Team-Alarm has done for years — stop talking about whether it’s real, and just project forwards, detailing the collapse. For twenty years others have been saying “the debate is over”. Now the tables are turning. The debate really is over, skeptics won, and what’s left is to watch it continue to unravel. Clive James argues that it won’t collapse like a house of cards… (an extract from the new IPA book Climate Change: The Facts 2017.)

Indirect Effects of the Sun on Earth’s Climate

by Mike Jonas, June 10, 2017 in WUWT


In this article, I explore the scientific literature on possible solar indirect effects on climate, and suggest a reasonable way of looking at them. This should also answer Leif Svalgaard’s question, though it seems rather unlikely that he would be unaware of any of the material cited here. Certainly just about everything in this article has already appeared on WUWT; the aim here is to present it in a single article (sorry it’s so long). I provide some links to the works of people like Jasper Kirkby, Nir Shaviv and Nigel Calder. For those who have time, those works are worth reading in their entirety.

Ocean Warming Dominates The Increase In Energy Stored In the Climate System

by CO2 is Life, May 13, 2017


The basic physics behind CO2 warming the oceans, and therefore the atmosphere simply don’t exist. The only defined mechanism by which CO2 can affect climate change is by “thermalizing” long-wave infrared radiation between 13 and 18-microns. In reality, there is another one, radiation,  but that carries heat away from the earth and results in atmospheric cooling.

A Holocene Temperature Reconstruction Part 4: The global reconstruction

by Andy May, June 9, 2017 in WUWT


In previous posts (here, here and here), we have shown reconstructions for the Antarctic, Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, the tropics, the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, and the Arctic. Here we combine them into a simple global temperature reconstruction. The five regional reconstructions are shown in figure 1. The R code to map the proxy locations, the references and metadata for the proxies, and the global reconstruction spreadsheet can be downloaded here

River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans

by Laurent Lebreton et al., June 7, 2017 in Nature Communication


Plastics in the marine environment have become a major concern because of their persistence at sea, and adverse consequences to marine life and potentially human health. Implementing mitigation strategies requires an understanding and quantification of marine plastic sources, taking spatial and temporal variability into account. Here we present a global model of plastic inputs from rivers into oceans based on waste management, population density and hydrological information.

Evidence of Pangea’s Breakup Found in Our Evolutionary History

by Ryan Mandelbaum, June 8, 2017


Rocks alone seem to show that the breakup happened 180 million years ago. But a team of Australian scientists think that you should be able to see the split and continuing shifts written into the history of how animals have evolved. So that’s what the researchers did, and they accomplished this by analyzing a large group of species’ evolution and compared them to the date of the breakup of Pangea.

NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses

by NASA, October 30, 2015


A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed   to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

A Holocene Temperature Reconstruction Part 3: The NH and Arctic

by Andy May, June 8, 2017 in WUWT


As we did in the previous two posts, we will examine each proxy and reject any that have an average time step greater than 130 years or if it does not cover at least part of the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the Holocene Climatic Optimum (HCO). We are looking for coverage from 9000 BP to 500 BP or very close to these values. Only simple statistical techniques that are easy to explain will be used.

 

The Correlation of Seismic Activity and Recent Global Warming

by Arthur Viterito, April 25, 2016 in J. of Earth Sc. & Climatic Change


Earth’s climate is a remarkably “noisy” system, driven by scores of oscillators, feedback mechanisms, and radiative forcings. Amidst all this noise, identifying a solitary input to the system (i.e., HGFA MAG4/6 seismic activity as a proxy for geothermal heat flux) that explains 62% of the variation in the earth’s surface temperature is a significant finding. Additionally, the 1997/1998 SIENA was a strong signal for subsequent global warming, and this type of seismic jump may provide valuable predictive information

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse