by Fusa Miyake et al., January 31, 2017
An international team led by researchers at Nagoya University, along with US and Swiss colleagues, has identified a new type of solar event and dated it to the year 5480 BC.
by Hermann Harde, Global and Planetary Change, 24 February 2017
Highlights
An alternative carbon cycle is presented in agreement with the carbon 14 decay.
The CO2 uptake rate scales proportional to the CO2 concentration.
Temperature dependent natural emission and absorption rates are considered.
The average residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is found to be 4 years.
Paleoclimatic CO2 variations and the actual CO2 growth rate are well-reproduced.
The anthropogenic fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere is only 4.3%.
Human emissions only contribute 15% to the CO2 increase over the Industrial Era.
Science Daily, February 23, 2017
A study of tiny mineral ‘inclusions’ within diamonds from Botswana has shown that diamond crystals can take billions of years to grow. One diamond was found to contain silicate material that formed 2.3 billion years ago in its interior and a 250 million-year-old garnet crystal towards its outer rim, the largest age range ever detected in a single specimen. Analysis of the inclusions also suggests that the way that carbon is exchanged and deposited between the atmosphere, biosphere, oceans and geosphere may have changed significantly over the past 2.5 billion years.
S. Timmerman, J.M. Koornneef, I.L. Chinn, G.R. Davies. Dated eclogitic diamond growth zones reveal variable recycling of crustal carbon through time. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2017; 463: 178 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2017.02.001
by Polar Bear Science, February 15, 2017
The 2016 Scientific Working Group report on Baffin Bay and Kane Basin polar bears was released online without fanfare last week, confirming what local Inuit have been saying for years: contrary to the assertions of Polar Bear Specialist Group scientists, Baffin Bay and Kane Basin subpopulations have not been declining but are stable.
par Christophe Magdelaine, 27 juillet 2015
Les principales hypothèses avancées vont des extra-terrestres à l'effondrement du pergélisol, sous l'action du réchauffement climatique, en passant par une nouvelle chute de météorite.
par Christophe Magdelaine, 20 février 2017
Savez-vous combien y a-t-il de continents sur Terre ? 5 ou 6 ? Alors que la question divise encore certaines personnes, un nouveau continent caché en partie sous l'océan Pacifique vient d'être confirmé par une équipe de scientifiques après des dizaines d'années de recherche. Le 7e continent : Zealandia est maintenant officiellement reconnu. Source : notre-planete.info, http://www.notre-planete.info/actualites/4586-nombre-continents-Terre-Zealandia
The American Interest, February 22, 2017
That’s a big turnaround—producers have succeeded not only in halting a slide predicted by a corresponding fall in global oil prices, but they’ve also been able to once again
by Judith Curry, Feb 2017
Professor Judith A. Curry is the author of over 180 scienti c papers on weather and climate and is a recipient of the Henry G. Houghton Research Award from the Amer- ican Meteorological Society in 1992. She recently retired from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she held the positions of Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. She is currently President of Climate Forecast Appli- cations Network.
by David Middleton, petroleum geologist/geophysicist, February 18, 2017
As the biomass is buried more deeply in the sedimentary column, increasing pressure compacts it, increasing temperature cooks it and over time, the hydrocarbons slowly migrate toward the surface because they are less dense than connate/formation water. The kerogen first cooks to heavy oil, then light oil, then wet thermogenic gas, then thermogenic light gas, then high temperature methane…
By Andy May, February 17, 2017
In November, 2016 the USGS (United States Geological Survey) reported their assessment of the recent discovery of 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent (technically recoverable) in the Midland Basin of West Texas. About the same time IHS researcher Peter Blomquist published an estimate of 35 billion barrels. Compare these estimates with Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia, the largest conventional oil field in the world, which contained 80 billion barrels when discovered. There is an old saying in the oil and gas exploration business “big discoveries get bigger and small discoveries get smaller.” …
by Saswata Hier-Majumder et al., February 2017
Pervasive upper mantle melting beneath the western US, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2016.12.041
New research published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters describes how scientists have used the world’s largest array of seismic sensors to map a deep-Earth area of melting carbon covering 1.8 million square kilometres. Situated under the Western US, 350km beneath the Earth’s surface, the discovered melting region challenges accepted understanding of how much carbon the Earth contains – much more than previously understood …
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-scientists-uncover-huge-reservoir-carbon.html#jCp
par Ales Bartos, 16 février 2017
Étant très marginalisées sur le champ médiatique, les problématiques liées aux sols échappent largement à l'attention du public. Pourtant, la pollution et l'érosion des sols fait annuellement baisser la capacité des sols de produire des aliments en qualité et quantité suffisantes pour nourrir une population mondiale croissante. Cet article tente d'ouvrir des pistes vers une meilleure gestion des sols, physique et réglementaire, s'inscrivant dans les logiques du développement durable. ...
par D. Swingedouw et al., CNRS, 15 février 2017
Dans le cadre du projet européen EMBRACE, une équipe d’océanographes a réexaminé ces 40 projections climatiques en se focalisant sur un point névralgique au nord-ouest de l’Atlantique Nord : la mer du Labrador. Cette mer est le siège d’un phénomène de convection, qui nourrit à plus grande échelle la circulation océanique de retournement. Ses eaux de surface se refroidissent fortement en hiver, deviennent plus denses que les eaux de profondeur et plongent vers le fond. La chaleur des eaux profondes est transférée vers la surface et empêche la formation de banquise
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by Ph.F. Sexton et al., Nature, 2011
‘Hyperthermals’ are intervals of rapid, pronounced global warming known from six episodes within the Palaeocene and Eocene epochs (~65–34 million years (Myr) ago)1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. The most extreme hyperthermal was the ~170 thousand year (kyr) interval2 of 5–7 °C global warming3 during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56 Myr ago). The PETM is widely attributed to massive release of greenhouse gases from buried sedimentary carbon reservoirs1, 3, 6, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, and other, comparatively modest, hyperthermals have also been linked to the release of sedimentary carbon3, 6, 11, 16, 17
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Egalement, une synthèse en français
Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), February 2017
Greenland has gained 500 Gt of ice this winter (2016-2017)
Here you can follow the daily surface mass balance on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The snow and ice model from one of DMI’s climate models is driven every six hours with snowfall, sunlight and other parameters from a research weather model for Greenland, Hirlam-Newsnow.
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by C.D. Ruppel and J.D. Kessler, 8 February 2017
Gas hydrate, a frozen, naturally-occurring, and highly-concentrated form of methane, sequesters significant carbon in the global system and is stable only over a range of low-temperature and moderate-pressure conditions. Gas hydrate is widespread in the sediments of marine continental margins and permafrost areas, locations where ocean and atmospheric warming may perturb the hydrate stability field and lead to release of the sequestered methane into the overlying sediments and soils. Methane and methane-derived carbon that escape from sediments and soils and reach the atmosphere could exacerbate greenhouse warming.
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John Turner et al., Nature, July 2016
Here we use a stacked temperature record to show an absence of regional warming since the late 1990s. The annual mean temperature has decreased at a statistically significant rate, with the most rapid cooling during the Austral summer. Temperatures have decreased as a consequence of a greater frequency of cold, east-to-southeasterly winds, resulting from more cyclonic conditions in the northern Weddell Sea associated with a strengthening mid-latitude jet.
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by Seth Borenstein, January 7, 2017
Scambos, who is about to travel to Antarctica for research, and other scientists said they don’t see other key signs that this growing crack would result in a catastrophic collapse of the entire shelf. A chunk of ice will break off, “But it’s not going to lead to a runaway disintegration,” he said Friday.
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Benoît Rittaud, 9 février 2017, Université Paris-13
La nouvelle affaire sur le front du climat prend de l’ampleur. Puisqu’il ne faut certainement pas compter sur un compte-rendu loyal par les grands médias français, voici ce qui, je crois, peut en être dit quatre jours après son déclenchement. L’affaire étant susceptible d’avoir des retentissements importants, j’ai choisi de faire un point complet, qui reprend tout depuis le début.
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Mark Imisides, December 07, 2009
Carbon dioxide, we are told, traps heat that has been irradiated by the oceans, and this warms the oceans and melts the polar ice caps. While this seems a plausible proposition at first glance, when one actually examines it closely a major flaw emerges.
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by Ryan Casey, February 15, 2015
Oxygen was a poisonous element to the dominant life on the planet at the time, anaerobic bacteria. In the primordial waters, oxygen molecules would normally be absorbed by decomposing organisms or would bind with iron in the water to create rust, so oxygen did not have time to accumulate. We can see in the geological record that 2.3 billion years ago, there was a highly unusual amount of rust being deposited on the ocean floor. We know based on this evidence that there was a huge spike of oxygen in ocean at this time. It is thought that Cyanobacteria werw producing so much oxygen that it reached complete global saturation. With this, oxygen began to leave the waters and accumulate in the atmosphere, which would have profound effects on the planet.
See also : Evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis half a billion years before the Great Oxidation Event
by John Bates, February 4, 2017
from Judith Curry (blog)
The most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015 (hereafter referred to as the Karl study or K15), purporting to show no ‘hiatus’ in global warming in the 2000s (Federal scientists say there never was any global warming “pause”). The study drew criticism from other climate scientists, who disagreed with K15’s conclusion about the ‘hiatus.’ (Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown)
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M.J. Nadeau, Conseil mondial de l’énergie, 2016-2017
Réunis au congrès triennal du Conseil mondial de l’énergie (CME) à Istanbul en octobre 2016, les leaders du secteur de l’énergie ont tous témoigné de l’importance des bouleversements auxquels l’industrie est confrontée. Pour nous aider à comprendre les phénomènes qui prévalent et leurs impacts sur le secteur, le CME a publié fin 2016 son dernier rapport sur les scénarios énergétiques mondiaux(1). Ce rapport explore trois scénarios possibles à l’horizon 2060 et fournit aux experts un cadre de réflexion utile.
by Gabs McHugh, Feb 2017
Tom O’Sullivan, a Tokyo based energy consultant with Mathyos Global Advisory, said in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Japan started importing more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Australia.
But he said the move to more coal fired power was because coal was cheaper than LNG, and the energy security was priority for the government.
Also : Japan Infuriating Enviros by Building 45 New Coal Power Plants
Earth’s magnetic field is unstable. Not only does it vary in intensity, but from time to time it flips, with the poles reversing sign. Much of this behaviour remains a mystery, but a combination of geomagnetic observations with theoretical studies has been providing enlightenment.
See also : Earth’s Magnetic Field May Be About To Reverse, devastating Humanity