climate-debate

More food for Polar Bears: Arctic report card 2020 highlights the huge benefit of less summer sea ice

by Polar Bear Science, Jan 8, 2021 in WUWT

As well as summarizing sea ice changes, NOAA’s 2020 Arctic Report Card features two reports that document the biggest advantage of much less summer sea ice than there was before 2003: increased primary productivity. Being at the top of the Arctic food chain, polar bears have been beneficiaries of this phenomenon because the Arctic marine mammals they depend on for food – seals, walrus and bowhead whales – have been thriving despite less ice in summer.

In the sea ice chapter (Perovich et al. 2020), my favourite of all the figures published is the graph of September vs. March sea ice (above). As you can see, March ice extent has been virtually flat (no declining trend) since 2004. And as the graph below shows, September extent has been without a trend since 2007, as NSIDC ice expert Walt Meier demonstrated last year (see below): it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the value for 2020 from the graph above (the second-lowest after 2012) hasn’t changed the flat-trend line.

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climate-debate

CITY OF BEIJING JUST RECORDED ITS COLDEST TEMPERATURE SINCE 1966

by Cap Allon, Jan 7, 2021 in Electroverse

The mercury in China’s capital Beijing plunged to -19.6C (-3.3F) on Thursday morning, January 7 as the powerful Arctic air mass currently gripping the majority of Asia intensified further.

The reading marked the capital’s coldest temperature since 1966 (solar minimum of cycle 19), in record-books dating back to 1912.

Furthermore, 10 out the 20 national-level meteorological stations in Beijing registered their lowest-ever early-January temperatures Thursday morning.

Blue alerts remain in effect across much of China as record low temperature and heavy snow are forecast to linger, at least until the weekend.

 

The intense cold wave began in mid-December, and is the result of Arctic air spilling down over the Asian continent (see low solar activity and meridional jet stream). Many all-time cold records have fallen across China of late…

See also : LNG Prices hit Record Highs as Severe Cold Intensifies across Asia and Europe

better to know...?

Just How Accurate Are Weather And Climate Measurements?

by Dr J. Lehr & T. Ciccone, Jan 5, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The accuracy and integrity of weather and climate measurements have always been a concern. However, errors and omissions were not as consequential in the past as they are now.

A hundred or even fifty years ago, our major weather concerns were more limited to local weather. When we have a flight from NYC to LAX, we need to know more detailed and reliable weather information, like is it snowing in St. Louis where we have a layover?

Or the farmer in Nebraska who needs to see the spring wheat production forecast in Ukraine. He needs the best possible information to better estimate the number of acres of winter wheat he should plant for today’s global markets.

We especially need better and more reliable information to decide what actions we should consider preparing for climate changes.

While scientists, engineers, and software programmers know the importance and the need for this data accuracy, the general public is not aware of how challenging these tasks can be.

When looking at long term climate data, we may have to use multiple proxies (indirect measures that we hope vary directly with weather), which add an extra layer of complexities, costs, and sources of error.

One of the most commonly used proxies is the ancient temperature and CO2 levels from ice core samples. Also, for the last few hundred years, tree-ring data was a primary source of annual temperatures.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Climate Change Causation: Was The Medieval Warm Period ‘Regional?’

by F. Menton, Jan 5, 2021 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Some commenters yesterday noted that the climate establishment has not just completely ignored the threat to their orthodoxy posed by the Medieval Warm Period and other similarly-warm pre-human-emissions eras.

Initially, there was a recognition that this issue could be important, and there was definitely some attempt to deal with it.

However, over time, the accumulation of evidence, particularly as to the existence Medieval Warm Period as a global phenomenon, gradually became overwhelming.

So — in the face of evidence that, under the normal precepts of the scientific method, would be deemed to invalidate the hypothesis that only human CO2 emissions could be causing current warming — how can the orthodoxy be kept alive?

The answer, almost entirely, has been to resort to the hand-waving of “detection and attribution” studies, and hope nobody notices. And, to a remarkable extent, nobody notices.

Readers may be interested in a short history of this issue.

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See also  A prequel to the Dantean Anomaly: the precipitation seesaw and droughts of 1302 to 1307 in Europe

better to know...?, minerals and ores, pollution-contamination

The Dark Side of Clean Energy and Digital Technologies by Guillaume Pitron, review — our dirty future

by P. Homewood, Jan 6, 2021 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

When Donald Trump offered to buy Greenland from Denmark in 2019 it was dismissed as illegal and absurd. However, the president’s expression of interest was far from absurd, says Guillaume Pitron. Under its soil Greenland boasts one of the largest concentrations of the rare metals that the world will need to power electric cars, computers, mobile phones, robots, solar power plants, artificial intelligence and many high-tech “green” innovations that have not been dreamt up yet. If Trump were after those minerals, buying Greenland would have been a smart move.

The global production and sales of rare metals are dominated by China. It mines so much of them on home soil and controls so much of their extraction in Africa and elsewhere that it oversees up to 95 per cent of the global production of certain minerals. This puts Beijing in charge of “the oil of the 21st century”, writes Pitron, which is a problem for western nations because it means China can restrict supply and drive prices up or down at will, as Opec does with oil. We have “entrusted a precious monopoly of mineral sovereignty to potential rivals”, he notes.

Discarded devices waiting to have their precious metals extracted

CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/GETTY IMAGES

Rare earth minerals production is very energy intensive. Extracting a single kilogram of some requires mining as much as 1,200 tonnes of rock. “Clean energy is a dirty affair,” Pitron writes. He drives home his point by touring villages near polluted lakes in China that are known locally as “cancer villages”.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

La fin du réchauffement… Pas du changement climatique!

by B. Van Vliet-Lanoë, Jan 1, 2021 in ScienceClimatEnergie

Un hiver froid s’annonce : le premier d’une série qui devrait durer au moins jusqu’en 2053 (Youssef et al., 2009 ; Zharkova et al.  2015 ; Van Vliet, 2019), période où les médias nous assènent une disparition de la banquise estivale, des ours polaires et des phoques ! Ceci est favorisé par l’activité solaire réduite depuis et le minimum solaire actuel (Fig.1). Le cycle solaire suivant (n°25) devrait aussi être faible. Nous y sommes entrés sans un Minimum d’activité aussi profond que celui Dalton (1790-1830) qui a présidé à la « Bérézina ».

 

Fig. 1: Intensité des cycles solaires depuis 1975 et la prédiction du cycle 25 (calculés avec le nombre de taches solaires  2018 * ANRPFD ).  B) évolution de l’extension en km2 des banquises arctique et antarctique depuis 1978 par rapport à la déviation standard 1981-2010 (NSDIC).

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better to know...?

10 Failed Predictions: Video

by C. Rotter, Jan 2, 2021 in WUWT

From Climate Resistance

Many climate alarmist’s failed predictions were centered around 2020. This video examines just ten, and argues that they were produced not by science, but by ideology. This is proved by the fact that rather than suffering any consequences to their careers or public standing, fearmongering individuals and institutions enjoy continued and undeserved success. The analysis of the ten predictions was produced by Steve Milloy and can be read at his website:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Number Of Global Wild Fires Trending Down Since 2003. Northern Ocean Heat Content Drops Since 2010

In his latest video the veteran geologist looks at wild fires worldwide and the CO2 they emit. He reports that both have been decreasing.

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Citing the results of the European Copernicus satellite atmosphere monitoring service (CAMS), total wildfires globally have fallen steadily, along with their corresponding CO2 emissions:

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climate-debate

UAH Global Temperature Update for December 2020: +0.27 deg. C

by R. Spencer, Jan 2, 2020 in WUWT

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for December, 2020 was +0.27 deg. C, down substantially from the November, 2020 value of +0.53 deg. C.For comparison, the CDAS global surface temperature anomaly for the last 30 days at Weatherbell.com was +0.31 deg. C.

2020 ended as the 2nd warmest year in the 42-year satellite tropospheric temperature record at +0.49 deg. C, behind the 2016 value of +0.53 deg. C.

Cooling in December was largest over land, with 1-month drop of 0.60 deg. C, which is the 6th largest drop out of 504 months. This is likely the result of the La Nina now in progress.

The linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.14 C/decade (+0.12 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).

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The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for December, 2020 should be available within the next few days here.

The global and regional monthly anomalies for the various atmospheric layers we monitor should be available in the next few days at the following locations:

Lower Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
Mid-Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tmt/uahncdc_mt_6.0.txt
Tropopause: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/ttp/uahncdc_tp_6.0.txt
Lower Stratosphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tls/uahncdc_ls_6.0.txt

better to know...?, climate-debate

A New Year’s Look At WUWT

by  W. Essenbach, Dec 31, 2020 in WUWT

 

Today, as the result of a series of wrong turns and bad choices, I ended up at the Wikipedia entry for Watts Up With That. It says:

Watts Up With That? (WUWT) is a blog promoting climate change denial that was created by Anthony Watts in 2006.  

The blog predominantly discusses climate issues with a focus on anthropogenic climate change, generally accommodating beliefs that are in opposition to the scientific consensus on climate change. 

Appalled by the misrepresentations in that, I thought I might comment on them.

First, the blog doesn’t “promote climate change denial”. I always laugh when I read about “denial” because none of the authors of such nonsense ever get around to telling us exactly what we’re supposed to be “denying”. Me, I deny nothing. I disagree with some of the revealed wisdom of those who believe in “consensus science” but that’s a very different thing. And for those who would like a full explanation of why “consensus” has nothing to do with science, let me recommend a wonderful paper entitled AliensCause Global Warming.

The real misunderstanding, however, is that WUWT doesn’t “promote” anything. Instead, it serves a very different purpose. Let me explain what WUWT really is, which will require a bit of a digression. But then if you know me, you’ll know that I’m susceptible to being sidetractored …

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climate-debate, energy and fields

The Middle East Doubles Down on Oil and Gas As the UN Warns of “Climate Emergency”

by T. Doshi, Dec 31, 2020 in WUWT

At the virtual “Climate Ambition Summit” co-hosted by the UN and UK and attended by over 70 world leaders on December 12th, Secretary-General António Guterres issued a stark warning: the world is facing a catastrophe ahead as it is on track to warm by more than 30 C by the end of the century “unless all countries declare climate emergency”. He expressed disappointment at the summit that the G-20 countries are “spending 50% more in their stimulus and rescue packages on sectors linked to fossil fuel production and consumption than on low carbon energy…This is unacceptable”.

The Secretary-General asked earnestly “Can anybody still deny we are facing a dramatic emergency”? The question poses the vast gulf between the policy positions of key Western governments and the oil and gas producers in the Middle East. For the Middle East hydrocarbon producers hit by the ‘double whammy’ of sharply reduced oil and gas price – the mainstay of government revenues — and the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns on domestic economic activity, the strategy for national survival is clear and could not be more opposed to the UN Secretary-General’s: sharply increasing the pace of monetizing the oil and gas reserves that their countries are blessed with.

Middle East To Supply More Oil And Gas

Within two weeks of the UN summit, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister announced on December 27th  the discovery of four new oil and gas fields, including unconventional resources. The discoveries will boost the country’s plans to increase its maximum sustained crude production capacity from the current 12 million b/d to 13 million b/d as well as developing its gas resources to free up more oil for export instead of burning it for power generation.

climate-debate

Egg on Their Faces: 10 Climate Alarmist Predictions for 2020 That Went Horribly Wrong

by T. O’Neil, Dec 28, 2020, in PJMedia

Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize. It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical.

Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020. Those predictions also failed, some rather spectacularly.

Steve Milloy, a former Trump/Pence EPA transition team member and founder of JunkScience.com, compiled ten climate predictions for 2020 that fell far off the mark.

1. Average global temperature up 3 degrees Celsius

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10. Glaciers gone at Glacier National Park

In March 2009, U.S. Geological Survey ecologist Daniel Fagre predicted that the glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020.

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climate-debate

New Climate Models (CMIP6) Offer No Improvement, Model Discrepancies As Large As The Last Version (CMIP5)

by K. Richard, Dec 24, 2020 in NoTricksZone

The “unsatisfactorily large” magnitude of the discrepancies between models in estimating the various radiative contributions to Earth’s energy imbalance serves to undermine confidence that CO2’s small impact could even be detected amid all the uncertainty.

Scientists have engaged in offering their educated guesses, or estimates, of cloud radiative effects for decades.

In the latest models, CMIP6, the top of atmosphere (TOA) net cloud radiative effects (CRE) when considering clouds’ longwave and shortwave combined impact is somewhere between -17 W/m² and -31 W/m² (Wild, 2020). That’s a 14 W/m²spread in CRE modeling.

The discrepancy range between modeled estimates for downward longwave clear-sky radiation is 22.5 W/m². This is the component where CO2’s underwhelming 0.2 W/m² per decade impact (Feldman et al., 2015) is manifested. Modeling discrepancies are thus more than 100 times larger than CO2’s forcing contribution over a 10-year period.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

ELEVEN YEARS AGO TODAY AL GORE PREDICTED THE NORTH POLE WOULD BE COMPLETELY ICE FREE IN FIVE YEARSp

by Cap Allon, Dec 13, 2020 in Electroverse

On December 13 & 14, 2009, professor, prophet, and soothsayer Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap could be completely ice free within the next five to seven years.

 

Gore made his prediction at COP15 Copenhagen which ran from Dec 7 – Dec 18, 2009, where he repeatedly referenced “state-of-the-art” computer modeling to suggest that the north polar ice cap may lose all of its ice by 2014.

“Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore claimed.

“Join me in asking president Obama and the US Senate to set a deadline of 22 April for final action in the US Senate,” he said. “I do not believe we can wait till next November or December.”

The Guardian wrote on Dec 16, 2009 in an article entitled “Al Gore rallies the troops in Copenhagen“:

[Gore] kept up the pace by calling for the international community to sign up to a fully fledged climate change treaty by July 2010 – and then announcing that Mexico was prepared to host a deal-making summit.

He scolded rich countries for demanding the developing world offer evidence of emissions cuts while at the same time trying to inflate the funds they were prepared to offer poor countries to deal with climate change. And he was just as tough on activists who have embraced him as a hero, demanding they set aside their pride and their principles and embrace a deal – no matter how imperfect. He said he recognized their frustration with the glacial pace of negotiations. He agreed that cap-and-trade schemes to cut carbon emissions were an imperfect solution – Gore confessed to favoring a carbon tax – but the current efforts for a deal were the best prospect of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

And there was no trace of sympathy for opponents of action on climate change. Gore began with a brief run-through of the latest science on melting of the Arctic ice cap, evidence he said “only reckless fools would ignore.”

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climate-debate

2020 Review: Observational And Modeling Studies Show Temperature Falls As CO2 Rises

by K. Richard, Dec 28, 2020 in NoTricksZone

A 2020 observational study (Zhang et al., 2020) determined “temperatures of atmospheric air with substantially higher CO2 concentration (ranging from 3200 ppm to 16,900 ppm) were lower than that with the lower CO2 concentration (480 ppm)” and a 2020 modeling study (Drotos et al., 2020) assessed that when CO2 goes beyond 4 times preindustrial – 1,120 ppm – “climate sensitivity decreases to nearly zero” because the climate cyclically cools by 10 K.

So the science is settled, right?

 

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climate-debate

Greenland Fall Temperatures Unchanged. Proxy Data Show No Warming At 8 Of 9 Antarctic Peninsula Sites Since 1830!

by Kyrie, Dec 29, 2020 in NoTricksZone

Before looking at Antarctica Peninsula, we first take a look at Greenland, which also is considered by the global warming alarmists to be part of the most threatening tipping points. If the ice on Greenland ever melted, like they warn it will, sea levels globally would rise some 6 meters. (Never mind this scenario would take many centuries).

Today we look at the November and autumn trends in Greenland. First we look at November mean temperatures for which the Japan meteorological Agency (JMA) has sufficient data to compute a trend going back to 1999.

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Four of the 6 stations examined show cooling or no warming trend.

But that’s only for one month, and so doesn’t really tell us a whole lot. So next we look at autumn mean temperatures for these six stations. If autumn is warming then we no that is not ideal for the overall ice formation season.

energy and fields

China And Iran Start Drilling In This Super Giant Gas Field

by P. Homewood, Dec 27, 2020 in NotalotofPeopleKnowThat

Drilling operations of the first well of the game-changing but highly-controversial Phase 11 of Iran’s supergiant South Pars non-associated natural gas field officially began last week. Significant gas recovery from the enormous resource will commence in the second half of the next Iranian calendar year that begins on 21 March 2021. The long-stalled Phase 11 development supposedly saw the withdrawal of all Chinese involvement in October 2019. In reality, though, China is still intimately involved in its development and is looking to further scale up its activities following the inauguration of Joe Biden as U.S. President on 20 January.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/China-And-Iran-Start-Drilling-In-This-Super-Giant-Gas-Field.html

The new field is expected to eventually produce 57 million cubic metres per day (mcm/d), about a tenth of Iran’s current output.

The article goes on to describe how China got around US sanctions on Iran, after taking over Total’s 50.1% stake in the project in 2018:

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better to know...?, climate and geology, climate-debate

Newly Discovered Greenland Plume Drives Thermal Activities in the Arctic

by C. Rotter, Dec 29, 2020  in WUWT

A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. They discovered a flow of hot rocks, known as a mantle plume, rising from the core-mantle boundary beneath central Greenland that melts the ice from below.

The results of their two-part study were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

“Knowledge about the Greenland plume will bolster our understanding of volcanic activities in these regions and the problematic issue of global sea-level rising caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet,” said Dr. Genti Toyokuni, co-author of the studies.

The North Atlantic region is awash with geothermal activity. Iceland and Jan Mayen contain active volcanoes with their own distinct mantle plumes, whilst Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean – is a geothermal area. However, the origin of these activities and their interconnectedness has largely been unexplored.

The research team discovered that the Greenland plume rose from the core-mantle boundary to the mantle transition zone beneath Greenland. The plume also has two branches in the lower mantle that feed into other plumes in the region

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Alarmism Dies In The Maldives: 97% Of 186 Island Coasts Have Grown (59%) Or Not Changed (38%) Since 2005

by C. Rotter, Dec 22, 2020 in WUWT

Reposted from NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard on 21. December 2020

Despite sea level rise, a 2019 global analysis (Duvat, 2019) found 89% of 709 island coasts have been either stable or growing in size in recent decades. A new Maldives-only study (Duvat, 2020) finds rapid (>3 to >50%) coastal growth in 110 of 186 Maldives islands from 2005 to 2016. Just 5 islands – 2.7% – actually contracted in size during this period.

Last year Dr. Virginie Duvat published a global assessment of how the Earth’s islands and atolls are faring against the ongoing challenge of sea level rise since satellite monitoring began in the 1980s.

Fortunately she found “no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea-level rise.” In fact, a) none of the 30 atolls analyzed lost land area, b) 88.6% of the 709 islands studied were either stable or increased in area, c) no island larger than 10 hectare (ha) decreased in size, and d) only 4 of 334 islands (1.2%) larger than 5 ha had decreased in size.

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biology+acidification

Volcanic eruptions directly triggered ocean acidification during Early Cretaceous

by Northwestern University, Dec 21, 2020 in ScienceDaily

Around 120 million years ago, the earth experienced an extreme environmental disruption that choked oxygen from its oceans.

Known as oceanic anoxic event (OAE) 1a, the oxygen-deprived water led to a minor — but significant — mass extinction that affected the entire globe. During this age in the Early Cretaceous Period, an entire family of sea-dwelling nannoplankton virtually disappeared.

By measuring calcium and strontium isotope abundances in nannoplankton fossils, Northwestern earth scientists have concluded the eruption of the Ontong Java Plateau large igneous province (LIP) directly triggered OAE1a. Roughly the size of Alaska, the Ontong Java LIP erupted for seven million years, making it one of the largest known LIP events ever. During this time, it spewed tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, pushing Earth into a greenhouse period that acidified seawater and suffocated the oceans.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

The World’s Greatest Climate Hypocrite

by GWPF, 2019

Competition is fierce for this year’s Climate Hypocrite of the Year Awards; no more so than in the Luvvie Section. Past winner Leonardo DiCaprio is, as ever, one of the frontrunners. When he’s not lecturing us on climate change, our Leo (`Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species’) is cruising on his private yacht or flying between his four luxury homes in New York and California.

Even by Hollywood luvvie standards, DiCap-
rio’s appetite for private jet travel is legendary.
Yet despite his ostentatious lifestyle, he has, for some strange reason, been a board member
of WWF and the National Resources Defense Council, and a UN representative on climate change

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better to know...?, climate-debate

NYT: “What happened to Global Warming?”

by E. Worrall, Dec 17, 2020 in WUWT

NYT rolling out the tired global warming makes winter storms more extreme narrative.

How climate change is affecting winter storms.


By John Schwartz

The major winter storm that hit the Eastern United States on Wednesday and Thursday probably prompted some people to ask, “What happened to global warming?”

But although it’s becoming increasingly clear that climate change does have an effect on storms, the relationship can be complex and, yes, counterintuitive. “There were these expectations that winter was basically going to disappear on us,” said Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at AER, a company that provides information to clients about weather and climate-related risk.

Although winters are becoming warmer and somewhat milder over all, extreme weather events have also been on the increase, and especially in the Northeastern United States, as Dr. Cohen pointed out in a recent paper in the journal Nature Climate Change. From the winter of 2008-9 until 2017-18, there were 27 major Northeast winter storms, three to four times the totals for each of the previous five decades.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/climate/climate-change-winter.html

If global warming to date has caused a three to four fold increase in severe winter storms, imagine the bitterly cold weather the next few decades of global warming will bring.

We must act now, before global warming causes us all to freeze to death!

better to know...?, climate-debate

Eastern Alps may have been ice-free in the time of Ötzi the Iceman

by C. Rotter, Dec 21, 2020 in WUWT

From The New Scientist

Glaciers in the Ötztal Alps in Austria are currently melting and may be lost within two decades, but this might not be the first time humans have seen this kind of change. A new analysis reveals that glaciers in this region formed just before or perhaps even within the lifetime of Ötzi the Iceman, a mummified body found just 12 kilometres away in 1991.

Pascal Bohleber at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and his colleagues drilled 11 metres into the Weißseespitze summit glacier, down to the bedrock, at 3500 metres altitude and collected two ice cores. They then used radiocarbon dating to  analyse microscopic bits of organic material extracted from the ice cores and found that the glacier is 5200 to 6600 years old. Ötzi is thought to have lived between 5100 and 5300 years ago, and his body was found preserved in ice.

The glacier’s age means it formed during a time called the mid-Holocene warm period, when Earth’s climate was warmer than it is now. It is also dome-shaped, which Bohleber says is rare in the Alps and means that the ice has seen very little movement over time, meaning we can use it to study the climate when it formed.

Read more: Ötzi the Iceman’s last journey revealed by moss found in his stomach

“More information on the mid-Holocene warm period, when the glaciers were smaller than today, is direly needed so that we can better predict how the glaciers will respond to the anticipated future climate over the next 50 years,” says Bethan Davies at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Comparing ice cores from different sites tells us quite a bit about the past climate in that region, says Bohleber, but that gets harder as the glaciers thaw. Meltwater makes it more difficult to drill for ice cores and causes the glaciers to slide downhill, exposing the ancient ice to modern contaminants.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2263399-eastern-alps-may-have-been-ice-free-in-the-time-of-otzi-the-iceman/#ixzz6hDkuLfkW

See also  in GWPF

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse