Archive for the ‘Climate’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

La Niña is back and will persist till 2012

August 22, 2011

In February Klaus Wolter came to the conclusion that there was an even chance that La Niña conditions could extend into 2012. He wrote then:

While La Niña conditions are guaranteed well into 2011, it remains to be seen whether it can rally once more to cross the -2 sigma barrier, and/or whether it will indeed last into 2012, as discussed six months ago on this page. I believe the odds for a two-year event remain well above 50%, made even more likely by the continued unabated strength in various ENSO indices.

Bob Tisdale points out at WUWT that

NINO3.4 SST anomalies (a commonly used El Niño-Southern Oscillation Index) have dropped significantly below the -0.5 deg C threshold of a La Niña Event. They are presently at approximately -0.74 deg C.

NINO3.4 SST anomalies

NOAA has yet to update its El Niño / La Niña forecasts but has called a “La Niña watch” but Bob Tisdale is ahead of them in calling the return of La Niña which is not too far away from Wolter’s forecast.

Update!! 8th September: NOAA now calls it:  La Niña is back

But Agriculture.com reports that the money is already betting on La Niña conditions for this winter and into 2012:

Sentiment towards commodities lying in the traditional path of conditions known as La Nina is starting to turn more bullish, exacerbated by supply shortages in a number of products like iron ore and coal.

Forecasting models by the U.S. National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center predict La Nina will redevelop this autumn. “Atmospheric patterns continue to reflect La Nina-like conditions,” the weather body said.

La Nina is a periodic climatic phenomenon that brings more rain to the western Pacific, and to a lesser extent, to the eastern Pacific. Climatologists blamed La Nina for last year’s floods that gripped Australia, resulting in major losses to coal and iron ore stockpiles. 

But while it isn’t clear what impact La Nina might have on the production and shipment of commodities, its return isn’t expected to cause the same serious problems as in 2010. That’s because historically the La Nina weather phenomenon occurs in bursts of three consecutive years, with the first one being the worst and the next two much milder. ……

Joe Vaclavik, grains broker at Chicago-based MF global, said from an agricultural commodity markets perspective, the biggest fear of a second La Nina would be the continuation of the current drought in the U.S. southern plains, causing further damage to the winter wheat crop. ….. Matt Rogers, President of Maryland-based Commodity Weather Group, warned that possible effects from the second round of La Nina could bring above-normal precipitation in eastern Australia, but would actually benefit the wheat and barley crops in terms of moisture. Yet, dryness concerns could be an issue for Argentina and southern Brazil, which would experience lower amounts of rainfall, causing damage to wheat, corn and soybean yields.

And Indian and Japanese forecasters have already called La Niña conditions.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast an active wet spell for northwest India during the next five days and over east and adjoining central India during the next three days. This came about on a day when Japanese scientists assessed that the predicted return of La Nina conditions may already be happening.

Dr Jing-Jia Luo, Senior Scientist with the Climate Variation Predictability and Applicability Research Programme Research at RIGC, wrote to Business Lineon Friday that the La Nina condition is currently on the way back. This condition is forecast to persist until early next year, Dr Jing-Jia says, adding that a weak positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), which mimics EL Nino-La Nina in the Indian Ocean, also may occur during the next few months.

Positive IOD refers to the warming of seas-surface temperatures in the western part of the Indian Ocean, and vice versa. Positive IOD has been found to favour a concurrent monsoon. Regional forecast from the RIGC said that the La Nina would bring cool to wet conditions over southern Africa, Australia, and Brazil during the southern hemisphere summer.

The confirming indicators for a La Niña event are accumulating – from the Indian monsoon to greater evaporation leading to increased rains expected in the Western Pacific in Australia, less rain in the Eastern Pacific on the western coast of S. America (coastal Chile and Peru) but increased rain on the east coast in southern Brazil and  northern Argentina.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Agriculture, Climate, Geosciences, Natural Phenomena, Weather | 2 Comments »

Nonsense speculation posing as science

August 17, 2011

Another example of nonsense speculation which gets published and then drives headlines only because they invoke the magic words “climate change”. A case of speculative IPCC model results being used as inputs for another speculative model about fish extermination and coming to a mildly alarmist conclusion.

Not a measurement in sight. But many pages, lots of statistics, 4 tables, 2 figures and 66 references to come to the amazing conclusion and state the obvious that cold water fish may die out if they are forced to live in warm water. 

As my son would put it “Duh”!!

A new paper in PLOS One.

Comparing Climate Change and Species Invasions as Drivers of Coldwater Fish Population Extirpations

 Sharma S, Vander Zanden MJ, Magnuson JJ, Lyons J (2011), PLoS ONE 6(8): e22906. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022906

The “researchers” actually measured nothing. They took a data-base of the conditions in which populations of a particular kind of fish (the cisco) existed. These parameters include air temperature among many others. They then did a statistical regression to infer how the populations might depend upon air temperature. They then took temperature increase assumptions from the climate change scenarios of the IPCC and applied them to the data base to speculate what that might do to the fish populations. They then reach their conclusions that climate change would extirpate a large section of the fish population and that this would be worse than the impact of invasive species.

And this is considered peer-reviewed science!!!!

They write in their paper:

Coldwater fishes, such as cisco [Corgeonus artedii] require cold water temperatures, high dissolved oxygen concentrations, and oligotrophic conditions, and thereby are sensitive indicators of environmental change. In Wisconsin, cisco are close to the southern edge of their range and are listed as a species of special concern. Cisco live in larger and deeper inland lakes with cold, well-oxygenated deep waters. Under climate change scenarios, as air temperatures increase, epilimnion and hypolimnion water temperatures are expected to increase. As water temperatures increase, the duration of the lake stratification period is expected to increase, isolating the deep waters from exchanges with the atmosphere, making it more likely that metabolic activity will reduce dissolved oxygen concentrations in the hypolimnion to stressful or lethal levels. The combination of warmer water temperatures and lower dissolved oxygen concentrations under climate change scenarios in larger, deeper lakes typically suitable for coldwater fishes could result in their extirpation.

Cisco are sensitive to the introduction of non-native rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax). Rainbow smelt is native to the northeastern coast of North America and was introduced to the Laurentian Great Lakes in the 1920s. In Wisconsin, rainbow smelt have been introduced into lakes deliberately by anglers for sport fishing purposes. Furthermore, fertilized eggs of rainbow smelt may have been unintentionally introduced into lakes by residents cleaning smelt on their piers. When rainbow smelt invade a system, they negatively interact with native species through predation and competition. Invasion of rainbow smelt has been linked directly to changes in zooplankton community composition, decline in recruitment of walleye (Sander vitreus), and extirpation of cisco and yellow perch (Perca flavescens) . For example in Sparkling Lake, Wisconsin, the cisco population was extirpated through predation-induced recruitment within eight years of detection of rainbow smelt. …… 

Geo-referenced lake-specific data were collected for 13,052 lakes in Wisconsin from a variety of sources including the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research (NTL-LTER) program, Wisconsin GAP (Geographic Approach to Planning for Biological Diversity) database, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources databases, refereed publications, government reports, and dissertations. From the aforementioned databases, a suite of variables describing lake morphology, water chemistry, physical habitat, and fish species occurrence were compiled. Environmental variables retained in the final dataset were: surface area (hectares), maximum depth (metres), perimeter (kilometres), Secchi depth (metres), pH, conductivity (µS/cm), and mean annual air temperatures (°C). For water chemistry variables, annual averages were used in the dataset. 

Current air temperatures and scenarios of future mean annual air temperatures were obtained from the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) Climate Working Group. Mean annual air temperatures were statistically downscaled for Wisconsin on a 0.1° latitude ×0.1° longitude grid. Climate data were summarised for three time periods: 1961–2000, 2046–2065, and 2081–2100 and averaged over these three sets of years as suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to reduce temporal variation in climate. Then, projected air temperatures from 15 general circulation models and the IPCCs A1, A2 and B1 scenarios (although not all general circulation models incorporated all three scenarios) totalling 78 climate change scenarios were used to develop future projections of cisco occurrence. The A1, A2 and B1 scenarios incorporate a range of variation in greenhouse gas emissions inferred for various time periods in the 21st century. The A1 scenario is the most extreme and assumes the highest greenhouse gas concentrations, followed by the A2 and B1 scenarios. …….

Our results highlight the threats to coldwater fish species. The probability of cisco extirpations could be reduced in Wisconsin through three interventions. First, the mitigation of climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions could significantly reduce the worst case losses of cisco. ….

Oh dear!!

Needless to say this non-science – since it uses the magic phrase “climate change” and has an alarmist theme – has no difficulty in being published and generating nonsense headlines in Science Daily:

Climate Change Could Drive Native Fish out of Wisconsin Waters 

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2011) — The cisco, a key forage fish found in Wisconsin’s deepest and coldest bodies of water, could become a climate change casualty and disappear from most of the Wisconsin lakes it now inhabits by the year 2100, according to a new study. In a report published online in the journal Public Library of Science One, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources project a gloomy fate for the fish — an important food for many of Wisconsin’s iconic game species — as climate warms and pressure from invasive species grows. ………

In addition to the ecological change that would be prompted by a warmer Wisconsin climate, Sharma notes, the impoverishment of aquatic ecosystems will have potential socio-economic implications, especially in a setting like Wisconsin where recreational fishing is an iconic pastime, not to mention an important industry.

“This could very well impact the fishing experiences we have,” avers the Wisconsin researcher.

But rather than make me concerned about climate change this nonsense report based on idle – but fashionable – speculation makes me much more concerned about the predominance of modelling over measurement and what passes in some quarters for for science.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Non-Science, Science | Comments Off on Nonsense speculation posing as science

One EU Carbon trading scam comes to trial: €5 billion just in lost taxes

August 16, 2011

The amounts of money sloshing around in the EU in carbon trading scams is mind-boggling and puts even drug money into the shade. The EU emissions trading scheme has been one of the major drivers of corruption in the last few years. The latest scam to come to trial is in Germany where just the tax evasion amounts to €5 billion ($7 billion). The total value of the carbon trades involved in this particular fraud probably exceed €50 billion. The frauds revealed so far are just a tiny fraction of all the succesful frauds that have been perpetrated – and all with the undoubted help (and connivance) of EU politicians.

It would not be surprising if the total cost of the EU emissions trading schemes (assuming  a conservative 80:20 principle) exceeded €250 billion. Eventually, the cost of all these carbon trades will have to be borne by EU taxpayers and electricity consumers.

Reuters reports:

A 5 billion euro tax fraud returned to haunt European Union’s emissions trading scheme on Monday as six individuals faced tax evasion charges at a trial which starts in Frankfurt. The case will haul the market’s multiple scandals back into the spotlight but is unlikely to implicate investment banks following a similar case against small firms in Britain.

In an activity which peaked in May 2009, traders bought carbon emissions permits in one country and sold them in another, charging for and then keeping the value-added tax (VAT) which they should have handed to tax authorities.

  • The total value of the fraud was at least 5 billion euros ($7.1 bln) in lost tax receipts, according to Europol
  • Charges have been brought against individuals at small firms. Europol said the fraud was linked to criminal networks operating outside the EU including the Middle East
  • The biggest swoop, initiated by Germany in early 2010, saw more than 2,500 officers involved across European and other countries
  • In Germany, prosecutors said in March that in addition to the six individuals charged, a further 170 suspects including seven Deutsche Bank employees were still under investigation and could be charged later
  • In Britain, the first trial of seven suspects risked delay as the investigation unearthed new evidence
  • It was easier to open an account on the carbon market registry than to open a bank account, allowing less reputable characters to participate.
  • As a new market, tax authorities in EU member states were slower to spot the fraud opportunity
  • The fraud was carried out on an unregulated spot market. Participants in such markets do not have to register with financial authorities, unlike in futures markets
  • As well as making it easier for fraudsters to gain entry, unregulated markets do not force strict know-your-client (KYC) rules on law-abiding participants meaning criminals escaped detection more easily
  • Officials at Paris-based Bluenext have not denied that their spot exchange was used by tax evaders but have maintained that they acted to stop the practice
  • French tax authorities are demanding 355 million euros ($505 million) from Bluenext, owned by NYSE Euronext, in unpaid VAT related to trades that occurred on the exchange
  • The EU’s head of tax, Algirdas Semeta, and of climate change, Connie Hedegaard, in June sent letters to EU states urging them to apply reverse tax charges which would remove the opportunity to buy EUAs VAT-free and then pocket the tax
  • The carbon market has suffered scandals besides VAT fraud, including a phishing attack, the circulation of used emissions permits and cyber theft of EUAs
  • The market has seen near-record low prices in recent weeks as the threat of a new downturn widens a glut in permits

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Business, Climate, Corruption, Energy, Ethics, European Union | Comments Off on One EU Carbon trading scam comes to trial: €5 billion just in lost taxes

Polargate: When peer review is degraded to spouse-review and friend-review

August 13, 2011

An earlier post carried the story of Charles Monnett who apparently when flying over the Arctic to survey whales thought he saw 3 or 4 dead polar bears in the water. He did not get any pictures and did not retrieve any carcases but instead wrote a paper  published in Polar Biology and which was supposedly peer-reviewed. He baldly presented his observations and then speculated that the bears had probably drowned in a storm and that many more of them would drown if global warming led to the melting of Arctic ice in the summers and forced  the poor polar bears to spend more time in open water.

It was all speculation even if one supposes that he actually saw some dead polar bears. His speculations were taken as established fact and blown up by the Global Warming orthodoxy. Al Gore, the almost -President of the US and the self-proclaimed inventor of the internet, picked up the story with gusto which then  played a major part in his science fantasy movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, which helped to win him a Nobel prize.

Panic over the dead bears and Monnett’s wild hypotheses about them helped fuel calls for declaring the bears endangered, despite all evidence that their populations have actually been increasing over the last few years.  Monnett did quite well from the work, parlaying his fame into management of a $50 million study budget, the dream of all academics. – Coyote Blog

Monnet is now being investigated by the Interior Department’s Inspector General’s office for some kind of wrong-doing associated with his award of research contracts which has also led to interrogations about his sightings and his paper and subsequent research grants. Investigators are apparently  examining Monnet’s procurement of one of those research studies on polar bears conducted by Canada’s University of Alberta, as well as the “disclosure of personal relationships and preparation of the scope of work,” according to a July 29 memo from the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office.

In particular, investigators are asking questions about the peer review on Monnett’s drowned polar bear paper, which was done by his wife, Lisa Rotterman, as well as by Andrew Derocher, the lead researcher on the  million dollar Canadian study funded by Monnet’s generosity.

Monnets co-author Jeffrey Gleason is back-pedalling and is in damage-control mode.

Although the four dead bears cited in the paper were observed from 1,500 feet during flights over the Beaufort Sea, and the carcasses were never recovered or examined, Gleason told investigators it is likely the creatures drowned in a sudden windstorm that produced 30-knot winds, not for lack of an ice pack.  
“We never mentioned global warming in the paper,” Gleason told the investigators.
 Gleason told investigators that reaction to his and Monnett’s paper was overblown and spun out of context.

Monnett is being legally defended by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility who have also demanded an investigation of the investigation. They should perhaps pick their causes a little more carefully. Even the New York Times  weighs in but tries to trivialise the impact of the wrong-doing. Though just how they take computer model results to be a  “broad array of evidence” that “polar bear populations — and the health of the planet — will be threatened by climate change in future decades” is just a bit mysterious if not plain gullible.

A modest scientific observation about a few drowning polar bears has enmeshed a government wildlife biologist in an investigation into whether he is guilty of scientific misconduct. The investigation has taken on symbolic importance in the debate over global warming. …… Whatever the ultimate verdict on Dr. Monnett, the controversy over his observations is a minor sideshow in the global warming debate. A broad array of evidence suggests that polar bear populations — and the health of the planet — will be threatened by climate change in future decades even if not a single additional polar bear drowns while swimming far from shore.

That peer-review is often corrupted is not new but Monnet must be congratulated on getting his wife and a “friend” to be the reviewers.

But the Journal Polar Biology has been silent. How were the reviewers chosen?

Monnets original paper is here : Observations of mortality associated with extended open-water swimming  by polar bears in the Arctic Beaufort Sea 


Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Climate, Ethics, scientific misconduct | 5 Comments »

Arctic Ice: “Rapture” of an ice free Arctic now postponed till 2030

August 9, 2011

The ice free Arctic which was to have happened in 2008 according to Mark Serreze of the doomsday crowd has now been postponed till 2030 while scientists find that current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced.

From WUWT’s Quote of the week:

WUWT

We all cringed, then laughed when Dr. Mark Serreze of NSIDC first said it, then marveled about it as it got a life of its own, being the buzzphrase for every alarmist who wanted to shriek about declining Arctic sea ice.

In 2007 we heard him say:

“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colorado.

So far, the “screaming” hasn’t kept anyone awake at night, and we have not returned to the low of 2007 in the last three melt seasons.

In 2008 Serreze made the  bold claim:

The ice is in a “death spiral” and may disappear in the summers within a couple of decades, according to Mark Serreze, an Arctic climate expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

And in 2008 we had the forecast from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze of an “ice free north pole”.  As we know, that didn’t even come close to being true. Summer 2008 had more arctic ice than summer 2007, and summer 2007 was not “ice free” by any measure.

With those failed predictions behind him,  in an interview in The Age just a few weeks ago, Serreze pulled a Harold Camping, and changed his prediction date. Now he’s saying the new date for an ice free summer is 2030.

”There will be ups and downs, but we are on track to see an ice-free summer by 2030. It is an overall downward spiral.”

And in the meantime research reveals that ice levels in the Arctic were about half the present levels some 5000 years ago and had no problems in recovering.

Scientists say current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced. 


Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate | Comments Off on Arctic Ice: “Rapture” of an ice free Arctic now postponed till 2030

UK Financial Regulator warns against carbon credit trading scams

August 8, 2011

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is the regulator of the financial services industry in the UK and has issued a warning against carbon credit trading scams.

The vast sums of money expended on misguided carbon schemes based itself on the misguided attempts to reduce carbon emissions (to what end?) have of course ended up in a few pockets.

I’m tempted to just say “I told you so!!”

FSA Warning 

The Guardian – an ardent supporter of the AGW doctrine – writes:

Carbon credit trading schemes are set to take over from landbanking as a major scam hitting unwary investors. This week the Financial Services Authority issued its first consumer alert on the schemes following an unprecedented 10-fold surge in complaints and queries in July. The watchdog warns that the schemes are unregulated, so anyone can sell them, and UK authorities have no way of controlling their quality or validity.

Investors risk ending up with an overpriced credit which is virtually unsellable – just like the almost worthless agricultural acreage that landbankers push with the promise of planning permission in the near future.

At least one company that was selling land has moved its business model from persuading investors that land will soar in value to concentrating on carbon schemes. 

Jonathan Phelan, head of the unauthorised business department at the FSA, says: “Since June, we’ve seen a significant rise in consumers reporting carbon credit trading schemes to the FSA. While carbon credit trading schemes don’t automatically amount to investment schemes that require FSA authorisation, we are concerned that the majority of the firms being reported to us are using high pressure sales tactics and targeting vulnerable consumers with little or no knowledge of commodities and derivatives trading.

“We suspect that many of these firms are essentially overseas boiler rooms or landbanking firms simply selling a highly dubious new investment product and jumping upon the green/eco-friendly bandwagon. We strongly recommend that consumers seek advice from an FSA-authorised independent financial adviser before getting involved in the carbon credit trading market.”

Well, I told you so.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Fraud | Comments Off on UK Financial Regulator warns against carbon credit trading scams

New Scientist: Climate change led to the “golden age” of human evolution

August 8, 2011

The New Scientist has been one of the high priests of the AGW doctrine and “global warming” has been a dirty word. It represents politically correct “establishment science” and generally shuns the scepticism and irreverence of the true scientist. It has been – and still is – extremely reluctant to admit to any weaknesses in AGW dogma or in any possible benefits of global warming. But as “global warming” has morphed to the less emotive “climate change” and it is becoming clearer that man-made emissions don’t even control global CO2 levels – let alone the climate – the “settled science” is being shown to be anything but settled. There are some slight signs that the New Scientist is positioning itself so that it can be found to be on the side of the good guys no matter what surprises the climate may have in store.

Change and variability in Plio-Pleistocene climates: Modelling the hominin response by Matt Grove is a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

  • The research expands a technique originally developed by theoretical biologists.
  • The technique distinguishes between climatic change and climatic variability.
  • Change results in directional selection; variability selects for plasticity.
  • Results suggest selection for plasticity increases c.2.3-2.5 mya.
  • This date range coincides with the evolution of Homo and the spread of the Oldowan.

The New Scientist writes.

Thank climate change for the rise of humans 05 August 2011 by Andy Coghlan

SOME claim climate change will destroy our species; now it seems it also helped forge it. The rapid fluctuations in temperature that characterised the global climate between 2 and 3 million years ago coincided with a golden age in human evolution.

Australopithecus africanus

The fossil record shows that eight distinct species emerged from one hominin species, Australopithecus africanus, alive 2.7 million years ago. The first members of our genus appeared between 2.4 and 2.5 million years ago, while Homo erectus, the first hominin to leave Africa, had evolved by 1.8 million years ago.

To work out whether climate had a hand in the speciation spurt, Matt Grove of the University of Liverpool in the UK turned to a global temperature data set compiled by Lorraine Lisiecki at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Lisiecki analysed oxygen isotopes in the shells of fossilised marine organisms called foraminifera. During glacial periods, the forams’ shells contain more of the heavier of two oxygen isotopes, as the lighter one is preferentially accumulated in snow and ice rather than the ocean.

Grove found that the mean temperature changed suddenly on three occasions during the last 5 million years. Each change was equivalent to the difference between glacial and interglacial temperatures – but none of these episodes coincided with the hominin “golden age”. What marked out this period was a greater range of recorded temperatures, suggesting it was a time of rapid but short-lived fluctuations in climate. Grove says such conditions would have favoured the evolution of adaptability that is a hallmark of the genus Homo (Journal of Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2011.07.002). Grove says the classic survival traits of H. erectus, forged during this period of change, include teeth suited for generalised diets and a large brain – both of which should have been advantageous at a time of swift climate change.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Anthropology, Climate, Evolution | 1 Comment »

Carbon dioxide follows temperature – what else?

August 6, 2011

The lecture given by  at the Sydney Institute is causing waves and he has a new paper in the works. Professor Murry Salby is Chair of Climate Science at Macquarie University. He’s been a visiting professor at Paris, Stockholm, Jerusalem, and Kyoto and has been deputed to the Bureau of Meterology in Australia.

Jo Nova reports that Salby was once an IPCC reviewer, and he comments, damningly, that if these results had been available in 2007, “the IPCC could not have drawn the conclusion that it did.” After speaking in carefully selected phrases, he  finished his presentation saying that “anyone who thinks the science is settled on this topic, is in fantasia”.

His talk is available here:  “Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources”

“It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels”.

article image

CO2 variations do not correlate with man-made emissions. Peaks and falls correlate with hot years (e.g. 1998) and cold years (1991-92). No graphs are available from Salby's speech or paper yet. This graph comes from Tom Quirk's related work.: image via joannenova.com.au

Jo Nova posts a comprehensive report.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Science | 2 Comments »

Global Warming has “paused” and climate change forecasts are “flawed”

August 6, 2011

The Times They Are a-changin’

1. The UK Met Office is an ardent follower of the Global Warming Doctrine but even they have had to now admit that global warming has “paused”.

“Two research papers shed new light on why the upper layers of the world’s oceans have seen a recent pause in warming despite continued increases in greenhouse gases.”

But the religion of global warming need not worry. The pause is – conveniently – only due to “natural variability”. The Met Office does however admit that the science is a long way from being settled and that with more measurements (and perhaps with a little less slavish acceptance of model results) “it would be possible to account for movement of heat within the ocean and do a better job of monitoring future climate change”.  One can hope that they may be returning to a science based on observations leading to models leading to further measurements to validate the models , but religions are not cast aside so easily! 

The independent studies from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the Met Office show how natural climate variability can temporarily mask longer-term trends in upper ocean heat content and sea surface temperature.

The upper 700 metres of the global ocean has seen a rise in temperature since reliable records began in the late 1960s. However, there has been a pause in this warming during the period from 2003 to 2010. The papers published this week offer explanations for this.

Climate model simulations from KNMI show that such pauses in upper ocean warming occur regularly as part of the climate system’s natural variability. … A different set of model simulations from the Met Office supports the idea of heat moving to the deeper ocean explaining the recent pause in upper ocean warming.

The same research also suggests that with deeper ocean observations it would be possible to account for movement of heat within the ocean and do a better job of monitoring future climate change.

GRL website (KNMI paper)(Katsman, C.A. and G.J. van Oldenborgh)

GRL website (Met Office paper) (Palmer, M. D., D. J. McNeall, and N. J. Dunstone)

2. In the meantime a study at Lancaster University charges that “inaccurate climate forecasts costs the world considerable money” and “the overwhelming focus on limiting green house gases alone may well be mis-guided”.

​Climate change forecasts used to set policy and billions of pounds in investment are flawed, according to new research from Lancaster University Management School (LUMS).

Complex climate models have been used by scientists to reach a consensus (through the International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC) of global warming of 0.2 °C per decade. But this fundamental finding for governments and the global population continues to be fiercely contested by sceptics of the role of human activity in climate change. The competing interest groups involved have led to a decline in confidence generally in the wake of claims of manipulated data from the University of East Anglia, and incorrect projections – such as Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 .

The new study by Robert Fildes and Nikolaos Kourentzes at the Lancaster Centre for Forecasting applies the latest thinking on forecasting to the work of climate change scientists, in a bid to make 10 and 20 year ahead climate predictions more accurate and trustworthy for policy-makers, and help address growing doubts over the realities of climate change. Such decadal forecasts have the most relevance to current thinking and policy plans and if they are to be credible and useful, they need to demonstrate their accuracy.  But the forecasts produced by the current models do not achieve this.

The authors set out a new basis for ‘decadal’ forecasting which is to be a major component of the next IPCC assessment report. Using a combination of models, with statistical  benchmarking as checks,  current forecasts prove almost certainly less accurate than they could be. Inaccurate climate forecasts costs the world considerable money. The implication is that the climate modelling community needs to open up its research agenda. As yet it has not demonstrated that it can produce better forecasts than simpler statistical methods. A consequence of this, explored by Fildes and Kourentzes, is that the overwhelming focus on limiting green house gases alone may well be mis-guided. The hydrologist Keith Beven’s work on modelling carried out in the Lancaster Environment Centre leads to the same conclusion. In short, eclectic forecasting methods and a wide range of policy responses are what is needed if we are to overcome the problems of emerging warming. 


Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Science | 1 Comment »

Antarctic sea ice is increasing and rate of increase is accelerating

August 4, 2011

An instance of actual measurements over the last 30 years rather than just model results. Overall, sea ice extent is increasing in the Antarctic, contrary to climate model predictions for the 21st century, and this increase is accelerating and has strong regional and seasonal signatures.

A new paper in Climate Dynamics, DOI: 10.1007/s00382-011-1143-9 

(H/T The Hockey Schtick)

Sea Ice Trends in the Antarctic and Their Relationship to Surface Air Temperature during 1979 to 2009 by Qi Shu, Fangli Qiao, Zhenya Song and Chunzai Wang

Sea ice trends in the Antarctic and their relationship to surface air temperature during 1979–2009

Abstract: 

Surface air temperature (SAT) from four reanalysis/analysis datasets are analyzed and compared with the observed SAT from 11 stations in the Antarctic. It is found that the SAT variation from Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is the best to represent the observed SAT. Then we use the sea ice concentration (SIC) data from satellite measurements, the SAT data from the GISS dataset and station observations to examine the trends and variations of sea ice and SAT in the Antarctic during 1979–2009. The Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) shows an increased trend during 1979–2009, with a trend rate of 1.36 ± 0.43% per decade. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition analysis shows that the rate of the increased trend has been accelerating in the past decade. Antarctic SIE trend depends on the season, with the maximum increase occurring in autumn. If the relationship between SIC and GISS SAT trends is examined regionally, Antarctic SIC trends agree well with the local SAT trends in the most Antarctic regions. That is, Antarctic SIC and SAT show an inverse relationship: a cooling (warming) SAT trend is associated with an upward (downward) SIC trend. It is also concluded that the relationship between sea ice and SAT trends in the Antarctic should be examined regionally rather than integrally.

As put by Skeptical Science – “The most common misconception regarding Antarctic sea ice is that sea ice is increasing because it’s cooling around Antarctica. The reality is the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica has shown strong warming over the same period that sea ice has been increasing. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean (specifically the region where Antarctic sea ice forms) has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it’s warming faster than the global trend. This warming trend is apparent in satellite measurements of temperature trends over Antarctica”.

Antarctic Climate and Sea Ice Variability – a Brief Review by Marilyn Raphael, UCLA Geography, WRCP Workshop on Seasonal to MultiDecadal Predictability of Polar Climate, October 2010

ABSTRACT

Antarctica’s remoteness, the difficulty of conducting research there and the paucity of observations, are some reasons why the Antarctic climate and sea ice variability are not as well understood as in the Arctic. However, research has shown that the climate of Antarctica including its sea ice is dictated by numerous influences with origins ranging from the Tropics to local atmosphere/surface interactions. Over the period of record indications are that much of Antarctica is warming, led by the Antarctic Peninsula. Regional changes in atmospheric circulation, sea surface temperatures and sea ice may explain this warming. Overall, sea ice extent is increasing, contrary to climate model predictions for the 21st century, and this increase has strong regional and seasonal signatures. Sea ice variability is strongly influenced by ENSO, Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) and by zonal wave three (ZW3) among other large scale atmospheric circulation mechanisms. The Antarctic climate and sea ice variability are reviewed with respect to the atmospheric and oceanic mechanisms that influence them.

 

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Antarctic, Climate, Science | Comments Off on Antarctic sea ice is increasing and rate of increase is accelerating

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »