NOAA’s new ‘climate service’ – not a sure thing yet

8 02 2010

Here’s a chance to tell your congressperson not to waste more taxpayer money on repetitive services already handled by NCDC. This looks to be nothing more than a fast track press release service. Given how badly Tom Karl has handled PR in the past, such as the disastrous NCDC Climate Change Synthesis report with photoshopped images of floods that didn’t happen.

Image above taken directly from the CCSP report. Read more here

They had to hold the report to fix errors.  I don’t expect this agency to be much better.  – Anthony

From NOAA NEWS: Commerce Department Proposes Establishment of NOAA Climate Service

New office would target nation’s fast-accelerating climate information needs
NOAA launches www.climate.gov as portal for climate science and services

February 8, 2010

Individuals and decision-makers across widely diverse sectors – from agriculture to energy to transportation – increasingly are asking NOAA for information about climate change in order to make the best choices for their families, communities and businesses. To meet the rising tide of these requests, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the intent to create a NOAA Climate Service line office dedicated to bringing together the agency’s strong climate science and service delivery capabilities. Read the rest of this entry »



Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

UCAR: Roof white out helps UHI

8 02 2010

I find it humorous thatUCAR had to resort to modeling to prove something that can be measured empirically. But then again this is UCAR, and they have a big computer at their NCAR office. Painting roofs white would probably help cool NOAA weather stations that are positioned on rooftops, like this one on the roof of the Santa Ana fire station in southern California, with surroundings that look a lot like the photo provided with the press release shown below. – Anthony


Santa Ana Station looking North.  Click for a larger image

Computer model demonstrates that white roofs may successfully cool cities

January 28, 2010

BOULDER—Painting the roofs of buildings white has the potential to significantly cool cities and mitigate some impacts of global warming, a new study indicates. The new NCAR-led research suggests there may be merit to an idea advanced by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu that white roofs can be an important tool to help society adjust to climate change.

But the study team, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), cautions that there are still many hurdles between the concept and actual use of white roofs to counteract rising temperatures.

painting white roofs

A construction crew works on a white roof in Washington, D.C. (©American Geophysical Union, photo by Maria-José Viñas. Reproduction permitted with credit.) Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 94 Comments »

Categories : Land use land cover change, UHI, modeling

IPCC Gate Du Jour: Aussie Droughtgate

8 02 2010

Map of the Murray-Darling Basin - Wikimedia

Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun digs up another issue with non peer reviewed World Wildlife Fund reports in the IPCC AR4. It turns out a new paper in GRL handily disputes the cause of the drought.

He writes:

Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:

This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:

BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…

In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.

“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

But the latest evidence shows that Rudd and Karoly were wrong. In fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, this new study: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 133 Comments »

Categories : IPCC

The Superbowl “Green Police” commercial

7 02 2010

My story today on changing out my incandescent recessed lighting for high efficiency LED units couldn’t have come too soon. I don’t have to worry now.

This video below is one of the most talked about Superbowl commercials today. You have to watch it more than once to catch all the visual gags in it. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 169 Comments »

Categories : satire

Munging Madagascar

7 02 2010

http://www.jmu.edu/international/images/map_madagascar.jpgSince we’ve been talking about IPCC’s “Africagate” recently, it seemed like an opportune time to point out what sort of GISS station adjustment goes on in data from it’s nearby neighbor island. Welcome Verity Jones first guest post on WUWT. FYI for those who don’t get the implied data munging  title, “Munge” is sometimes backronymmed as Modify Until Not Guessed Easily. – Anthony

Guest post by Verity Jones

This started out as a discussion point following E.M. Smith’s blog post Mysterious Madagascar Muse. The gist of the original article centered around the availability of data after 1990 in the GHCN dataset and the NASA/GISS treatment of temperature on the island. Well Madagascar has a bit of a further story to tell. I had offered to plot a ’spaghetti’ graph of the temperatures from the ten stations used on Madagascar, and this has proven interesting as an example of how data is adjusted and filled in by GISS.

To start, the annual mean temperatures plotted on a graph (Figure 1) show clearly the differences between the stations – Antananarivo is high altitude and relatively cool, with a cooling trend; of the other stations, some have cooling trends, most are warming. Also noticeable is the very sparse data after 1990. Note the darker blue data for Maintirano, of which more later. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 48 Comments »

Categories : climate data

Swapping my lights: fantastic!

7 02 2010

No more twisty bulbs for me! I’ve installed a new LED lighting system for my home that beats twisty bulbs in every way. It has been awhile since I discussed technology here, so this will be an interesting diversion for many readers.

I had considered solving my hallway power consumption problem with twisty bulbs, then I found this new LED solution.

I’ve always been a fan of alternate energy and improved energy efficiency, and I don’t just write about it like some people we know, I do things about it. I try out new things, I do the work. Longtime readers of my blog know that I’ve done two solar power projects, drive an electric car for my local short distance jaunts (I have two now, a really sharp new model, but that’s another story). I’ve put a 10KW solar array on my home, plus a 125 KW solar array on one of our local schools when I was a school trustee. I’ve retrofitted my home with CFL’s in some places, as well as installed timer switches on many of our most commonly used lights. I live in an an Energy Star rated home. However, I’ve not been all that pleased with the lighting that came with the house. Now I’ve changed the largest wattage draw of lighting in my house from incandescent to LED lighting.

No matter what you think about the veracity of global warming claims, there’s really not much of an argument anyone can make against improved energy efficiency as a way of reducing all emissions, not just CO2. Literally, CO2 sucks all the oxygen out of the energy efficiency issue. The goals of full spectrum pollutant reduction can also be accomplished via improved energy efficiency, and with much less rancor, in my opinion.

I’ve never liked the twisty fluorescent bulbs, even when practically given away. They are slow to illuminate, don’t live up to manufacturer’s lifetime claims, and contain toxic mercury making them a disposal hazard. Watts to like?

Up until now, I hadn’t liked the color temperature of the light that LED bulbs had put out. They were mostly a harsh blue-white. Now, that’s been solved. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 216 Comments »

Categories : Technology, energy

New study using satellite data: Alaskan glacier melt overestimated

7 02 2010

From a press release provided by Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, France:

Improved estimate of glacier decline in Alaska.

From the CNRS photo library, provided with the press release: Field campaign on the Saint Elias glaciers (Alaska and Yukon Territory) © M. J. Hambrey (Aberystwyth University)

Glaciologists at the Laboratory for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography (LEGOS – CNRS/CNES/IRD/Université Toulouse 3) and their US and Canadian colleagues (1) have shown that previous studies have largely overestimated mass loss from Alaskan glaciers over the past 40 years. Recent data from the SPOT 5 and ASTER satellites have enabled researchers to extensively map mass loss in these glaciers, which contributed 0.12 mm/year to sea-level rise between 1962 and 2006, rather than 0.17 mm/year as previously estimated.

Mountain glaciers cover between 500 000 and 600 000 km2 of the Earth’s surface (around the size of France), which is little compared to the area of the Greenland (1.6 million km2) and Antarctic (12.3 million km2) ice sheets. Despite their small size, mountain glaciers have played a major role in recent sea-level rise due to their rapid melting in response to global climate warming. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 66 Comments »

Categories : Science, glaciers, sea level

Tracking the Earth’s orbit: looking for warming signs

7 02 2010

From a press release by: National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS)

Understanding past and future climate

Image by permission: Ben Moat (NOCS)

Understanding past and future climate

The notion that scientists understand how changes in Earth’s orbit affect climate well enough for estimating long-term natural climate trends that underlie any anthropogenic climate change is challenged by findings published this week. The new research was conducted by a team led by Professor Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science hosted at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.

“Understanding how climate has responded to past change should help reveal how human activities may have affected, or will affect, Earth’s climate. One approach for this is to study past interglacials, the warm periods between glacial periods within an ice age,” said Rohling.

He continued: “Note that we have here focused on the long-term natural climate trends that are related to changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Our study is therefore relevant to the long-term climate future, and not so much for the next decades or century.”

The team, which included scientists from the Universities of Tuebingen (Germany) and Bristol, compared the current warm interglacial period with one 400,000 years ago (marine isotope stage 11, or MIS-11). Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 111 Comments »

Categories : Climate News, Science, earth

Snow totals for Washington DC storm

6 02 2010

The storm is over, the totals and reports are in.

click for a larger image

Here’s the lowdown on the snowfall records from the Baltimore NWS: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 128 Comments »

Categories : records, snowfall, weather

IPCC’s “Africagate” blunder as told by Dr. Richard North

6 02 2010

Dr. Richard North, who does investigative journalism at the EU referendum blog, has a comprehensive analysis and backgrounder on the latest in a series of blunders by the IPCC that have been uncovered. It complements the just released story by Jonathan Leake of The Sunday Times that highlights a leading British scientist calling for IPPC to “tackle the blunders or lose all credibility“

Here is Dr. North’s introduction to the issue:

And now for Africagate

Following an investigation by this blog (and with the story also told in The Sunday Times), another major “mistake” in the IPCC’s benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.

Similar in effect to the erroneous “2035″ claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.

At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 184 Comments »

Categories : IPCC

The Times: Top British scientist says IPCC is losing credibility

6 02 2010

Scientist says IPCC claims about African rainfall reductions due to global warming have no supporting data.

Click to enlarge

African Annual Rainfall Image - UNEP FAO/Agrhymet Network and ESRI

By Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

Excerpt:

A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.

Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.

The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 72 Comments »

Categories : IPCC

Blizzard Warning for DC, NYT: “Capital Is Crippled as Blizzard Continues “

6 02 2010

Let it snow… let it snow… let it snow…biggest snowstorm since 1922, and still not over.

From the New York Times, a crippled government. Even the post office gave up.

Snow covers a decorative iron fence at the White House in Washington, on Saturday, during a snow storm in the Washington area. Photo: AP.

Snow covers a decorative iron fence at the White House in Washington, on Saturday, during a snow storm in the Washington area. Photo: AP via The Hindu

Capital Is Crippled as Blizzard Continues

By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: February 6, 2010

A winter storm continued its blizzard rage in some parts of the Mid-Atlantic region on Saturday morning, dumping nearly two feet of wet, heavy snow that cut power to about 200,000 residents, caused the roof of a private jet hangar to collapse at Washington Dulles International Airport and forced the nation’s capital into quiet hibernation.

All postal operations in the Washington area, including the suburbs in Northern Virginia and Maryland were canceled on Saturday.

Full story at NYT here

CBS news calls the storm “epic”. See video report below. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 139 Comments »

Categories : snowfall, weather

Inconvenient truth in Britain – scepticism on the rise – only 26% believe climate change to be man-made

5 02 2010

Climate scepticism ‘on the rise’, BBC poll shows

The number of British people who are sceptical about climate change is rising, a poll for BBC News suggests.

The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, a rise of 8% since a similar poll was conducted in November.

The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month.

BBC graphic (Image: BBC)

And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and “now established as largely man-made”.

The findings are based on interviews carried out on 3-4 February. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 140 Comments »

Categories : Climate News, Opinion

NOAA: All time record snowfall for DC and Baltimore?

5 02 2010

From the “weather is not climate department”, it seems that the biggest snowstorm of all time is targeting the nation’s capitol. Here’s the current radar image:

via NOAA/NWS

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
1234 PM EST FRI FEB 5 2010

DCZ001-MDZ004>007-009>011-013-014-016>018-VAZ042-050>057-501-502-
060145-
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA-FREDERICK MD-CARROLL-NORTHERN BALTIMORE-
1234 PM EST FRI FEB 5 2010

...RECORD SNOWFALL FORECAST IN THE BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON DC REGION...

...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS DEVELOPING TONIGHT... Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 169 Comments »

Categories : records, snowfall, weather

Flashback to 2007 – SST to plunge again?

5 02 2010

Steve Goddard points out that warm SST events often have a downside. My view: something like capacitor discharge in an RC circuit. – Anthony

http://www.amusementtoday.com/2009_new_site/image/May2009/Plunge03.jpg

Pilgrims Plunge - photo from Amusement Today - click for details

Dr. Roy Spencer reported that January, 2010 was the warmest on record at +0.72C anomaly after a relatively cool +0.28 in December.  Dr. Spencer is one of the most trustworthy players in climate science and clearly does not have a warming agenda. So is earth’s climate warming out of control after all?

To answer this question, it is worth looking back at the “second warmest January” which came in 2007. Like 2010, January, 2007 also took a big jump up from the previous month and was at the peak of an El Nino.  The warm weather led the Met Office and to forecast a record warm year.  Hansen also speculated about the possibility of a “Super El Nino.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 165 Comments »

Categories : Sea Surface Temperature

Spencer: Record January warmth is mostly sea

5 02 2010

NASA Aqua Sea Surface Temperatures Support a Very Warm January, 2010

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

When I saw the “record” warmth of our UAH global-average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) product (warmest January in the 32-year satellite record), I figured I was in for a flurry of e-mails: “But this is the coldest winter I’ve seen since there were only 3 TV channels! How can it be a record warm January?”

Sorry, folks, we don’t make the climate…we just report it.

But, I will admit I was surprised. So, I decided to look at the AMSR-E sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that Remote Sensing Systems has been producing from NASA’s Aqua satellite since June of 2002. Even though the SST data record is short, and an average for the global ice-free oceans is not the same as global, the two do tend to vary together on monthly or longer time scales.

The following graph shows that January, 2010, was indeed warm in the sea surface temperature data:
AMSR-E-SST-thru-Jan-2010
But it is difficult to compare the SST product directly with the tropospheric temperature anomalies because (1) they are each relative to different base periods, and (2) tropospheric temperature variations are usually larger than SST variations. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 181 Comments »

Categories : Sea Surface Temperature, climate data

More on Ocean Heat Content and recent revisions to the data

5 02 2010
OHC Linear Trends and Recent Update of NODC OHC (0-700 Meters) Data

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

[This is a follow up post to the first one on WUWT where Bob first examined the recent OHC revision, seen below  - Anthony]


http://i48.tinypic.com/14e6wjn.gif

The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) presented its Ocean Heat Content (OHC) data in conjunction with the Levitus et al (2009) Paper. The NODC makes the data available to the public and maintains it at their GLOBAL OCEAN HEAT CONTENT webpage. About January 20, 2010, the NODC added its 4th quarter and annual 2009 OHC data so that it covered the period of 1955 to 2009. On January 29 and February 1, 2010, the NODC also updated its 2006-and-later data. The KNMI Climate Explorer was updated in response to the 4th quarter NODC OHC additions and, on February 1, to the 2006-and-later revisions. (Thanks to Tim and Geert Jan for the timely updates.)

This post presents:
1. A brief look at impact of the revisions (corrections) to the 2006-and-later OHC data
2. OHC Trend Comparisons for individual ocean basins and hemispheres
3. An update of the global, hemispheric, and basin OHC data through December 2009

A Note About The Data Presented In This Post: This data used in the graphs (except Figure 2) was downloaded through the KNMI Climate Explorer website, which allows users to define the coordinates of the desired data subset. The data is presented in Gigajoules per square meter (GJ/m^2), not in 10^22 Joules like the NODC. In the GJ/m^2 format, subsets are easier to compare, since adjustments for surface area do not have to be made (they’ve already been made). The NODC presents quarterly data. KNMI includes those quarterly values for each corresponding month. This “squares off” the monthly data in the graphs, since the one value is the same for three consecutive months, but it permits comparisons to other monthly datasets, such as NINO3.4 SST anomalies.

REVISIONS (Corrections) TO THE 2006-AND-LATER NODC OHC DATA Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 47 Comments »

Categories : oceans

Israeli study shows variable sea level in past 2500 years

4 02 2010

From the University of Haifa via Eurekalert

The sea level has been rising and falling over the last 2,500 years

IMAGE: Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today…

Click here for more information.

“Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today is in fact nothing new,” explains Dr. Dorit Sivan, who supervised the research.*

The sea level in Israel has been rising and falling over the past 2,500 years, with a one-meter difference between the highest and lowest levels, most of the time below the present-day level. This has been shown in a new study supervised by Dr. Dorit Sivan, Head of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. “Rises and falls in sea level over relatively short periods do not testify to a long-term trend. It is early yet to conclude from the short-term increases in sea level that this is a set course that will not take a change in direction,” explains Dr. Sivan. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 84 Comments »

Categories : sea level

Ummm Charles, about that train thingy you arrived on…

4 02 2010

From the UK Express

PRINCE CHARLES ON CLIMATE CHANGE: GLOBAL WARMING SCEPTICS ARE ALL LIARS

Charles, who has campaigned on global warming for more than 20 years, said: “I have watched with growing dismay and alarm the glee with which the sceptics have leapt upon the recent news stories that question the science that climate change is man-made and suggesting it is nothing more than a myth.

Prince Charles: ‘I’m not willing to play Russian Roulette over climate change’

“Well, if it is but a myth, and the global scientific community is involved in some sort of conspiracy, why is it then that around the globe sea levels are more than six inches higher than they were 100 years ago? Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 285 Comments »

Categories : ridiculae, sea level

Major snowstorm headed for eastern US

4 02 2010

This national radar mosaic shows huge amounts of gathering moisture ready to collide with frigid air. The storm gets the label “Nor’easter“.

Click image for an animated version

Forecasters all over are watching this storm with concern.

From Accuweather.com a forecast for the mid-Atlantic suggests Washington DC might get dumped on big time: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 96 Comments »

Categories : snowfall, weather

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