From the Australian National University and the department of “claim anything” comes this reversal over what was said two years ago about Antarctica:
“If this rapid warming that we are now seeing continues, we can expect that ice shelves further south along the peninsula that have been stable for thousands of years will also become vulnerable,” said Nerilie Abram, of the Australian National University.
So which is it? Rapid warming, or not warming as much because the winds are “strengthened by carbon dioxide”? I’d love to see proof of that mechanism, and no, models aren’t proof. From Eurekalert:
Ocean winds keep Antarctica cold, Australia dry
Why Antarctica isn’t warming as much as other continents
New Australian National University-led research has explained why Antarctica is not warming as much as other continents, and why southern Australia is recording more droughts.
Researchers have found rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are strengthening the stormy Southern Ocean winds which deliver rain to southern Australia, but pushing them further south towards Antarctica.
Lead researcher Nerilie Abram, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, said the findings explained the mystery over why Antarctica was not warming as much as the Arctic, and why Australia faces more droughts.
“With greenhouse warming, Antarctica is actually stealing more of Australia’s rainfall. It’s not good news – as greenhouse gases continue to rise we’ll get fewer storms chased up into Australia,” Dr Abram said.
“As the westerly winds are getting tighter they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica,” Abram said. “This is why Antarctica has bucked the trend. Every other continent is warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on earth.”
While most of Antarctica is remaining cold, rapid increases in summer ice melt, glacier retreat and ice shelf collapses are being observed in Antarctic Peninsula, where the stronger winds passing through Drake Passage are making the climate warm exceptionally quickly.
Until this study, published in Nature Climate Change, Antarctic climate observations were available only from the middle of last century.
By analysing ice cores from Antarctica, along with data from tree rings and lakes in South America, Dr Abram and her colleagues were able to extend the history of the westerly winds back over the last millennium.
“The Southern Ocean winds are now stronger than at any other time in the past 1,000 years,” Abram said.
“The strengthening of these winds has been particularly prominent over the past 70 years, and by combining our observations with climate models we can clearly link this to rising greenhouse gas levels.”
Study co-authors Dr Robert Mulvaney and Professor Matthew England said the study answered key questions about climate change in Antarctica.
“Strengthening of these westerly winds helps us to explain why large parts of the Antarctic continent are not yet showing evidence of climate warming,” said Dr Mulvaney, from the British Antarctic Survey.
“This new research suggests that climate models do a good job of capturing how the westerly winds respond to increasing greenhouse gases,” added Professor England, from the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW.
“This isn’t good news for farmers reliant on winter rainfall over the southern part of Australia.”
Dear Anthony
Sigh…
I would like some funding to continue my research into historical climates.
I am willing to put anything into the title of the submission in order to secure some funding, no matter how fanciful.
However, official researchers seek to be cornering the market in all possible explanations of what co2 can do. We need a brainstorming session with readers here so they can submit some plausible titles, no matter how daft they are on closer examination. The only rules are that the words ‘co2’ ‘1000 years’, ‘escalating’ and ‘alarming’ should be somewhere in the title.
tonyb
Oh, Matthew England is a co-author.
That tells you everything you need to know.
If this were true we wouldn’t be worrying about global warming at all. It would be ice age time. The problem is, despite this so-called “consensus,” these people can’t keep their stories straight and literally say opposite things which contradict each other. It’s obvious many of these people have no clue what they are talking about.
Could someone please explain how wind speed and direction can be measured from 1000 year old proxy samples?
Climate change is responsible for the kidfnapping of girls in Nigeria, apparently.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/11/UK-Guardian-climate-change-to-blame-for-Nigerian-girls-kidnapping
All hail the mighty CO2!
Yes, Prof England has previously denied that there has been a hiatus in warming in the past 17 years.
Looking forward to seeing his 1000 years of wind data.
Models and the UNSW? Another load of “ship of fools”?
Garbage: …
{“With greenhouse warming, Antarctica is actually stealing more of Australia’s rainfall. It’s not good news – as greenhouse gases continue to rise we’ll get fewer storms chased up into Australia,” Dr Abram said.
“As the westerly winds are getting tighter they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica,” Abram said. “This is why Antarctica has bucked the trend. Every other continent is warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on earth.”}
Even smellier garbage:
{“This new research suggests that climate models do a good job of capturing how the westerly winds respond to increasing greenhouse gases,” added Professor England, from the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW.}
Caustic comments at
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/05/antarctica-stealing-australian-rain-prof-matthew-england-anu-unsw-nature-struggle-to-get-cause-and-effect/
Wait… CO2 is trapping cold air over the Antarctic…. but CO2 is causing cold air to break free and flow all over, from the Arctic……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………?
Magical
‘By analysing ice cores from Antarctica, along with data from tree rings and lakes in South America, Dr Abram and her colleagues were able to extend the history of the westerly winds back over the last millennium.’
Isn’t there anything dendrochronology can’t do? Not only temperatures but wind strength too.
Get your magical tree he -ere.
Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have a uni degree, being a mere ex-tradie. (retired)
And on the same day, the Australian provides a fact that renders the UNSW “paper” irrelevant and akin to “throwing the bones”. My alma mater is becoming a laughing stock and these dills are devaluing my degree, when they publish absolute rubbish.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/antarctic-sea-ice-at-record-levels/story-e6frg8y6-1226913708208#mm-premium
Arctic Multi year sea ice is increasing and the Antarctic sea ice is massive. Can anyone say “albedo”? “Climate experts” are at a loss to explain this. Meteorologists, on the other hand, can.
http://www.boston.com/news/weather/weather_wisdom/2014/05/how_is_the_arctic_and_antarcti.html
ACtually it is only SW Western Australia and Tasmania that have had their rainfall reduced which started in about 1960. WA has been otherwise attributed to land clearing. The rest on the continent is a bit to a lot wetter.
Maybe I’m a bit thick, but I thought that Australia had been experiencing unprecedented flooding that was all the fault of AGW?
What’s the logic founding this hypothesis? The CO2 and/or it’s absorbed heat is unevenly distributed in the troposphere?
Would this also be the same voodoo maintaining the Himalayan glaciers?
I only ask………
Only that the Earth has not experienced warming in the last 13-17 years, depending on temperature data sets.
RR –
Australia is, always was, and doubtless will continue to be a frustrating succession of droughts and floods.
It’s essentially just a big desert island with a green fringe and 90% of us sensibly live on the green fringe. I think you’d like it.
Of course, the Israelis figured out how to raise crops in a desert several decades ago…
One could hastily deduct that CO2 is evenly distributed in the troposphere and so would it’s absorbed heat. What’s driving the winds again?
i thought that GHG’s are supposed to increase storm events across the globe not reduce rainfall.
Those dammed models again. How many times do we have to repeat:- If models do not follow reality it is the model that is wrong not reality.
Forget Mother Gaia, it seems CO2 rules the world.
I understand how you could develop theories about temperatures and precipitation, etc from analysis of ice cores, tree rings and lakes. But I have no clue how you would deduce wind speed from 1,000 years ago.
Does anyone know what caused the “variations in sea surface temperature in the eastern South Pacific Ocean”?
Here is a Spring observation. It’s Ozone!
‘By analysing ice cores from Antarctica, along with data from tree rings and lakes in South America, Dr Abram and her colleagues were able to extend the history of the westerly winds back over the last millennium.’ eh?
So what was the wind speed and direction for 1760 in the area ?
Of course they can do such thing , guess work and models all the way with more calls for funding , in reality it’s the authors homage to ‘the cause’ and letting others know there on side. Sooner of later if you doing real science you have to admit your basic claim was wrong when all the evidenced goes against you. Its only little children that stick to ‘because I said so ‘ and think up new crazy ideas to explain reality away.
But to be fair their not doing real science , their doing that very special climate ‘science’
“The Southern Ocean winds are now stronger than at any other time in the past 1,000 years,”
So just who was measuring this, or is there a paleo-proxy for wind? So obviously “no” to both of those options, which just leaves a dodgy model, which nobody can prove right or wrong. I doubt even His Manniness would claim there was a proxy for the wind.
So in typical climate science fashion, even if a statement is obviously complete BS, but cannot be proven to be wrong, it therefore is right.
Sigh………………………….
Co2 causes warming in the Peninsula and cooling everywhere else. The IPCC models predicted more snow on Antarctica towards the end of this century. The only problem is that it’s happening now. Blame co2. The models predicted reduced sea ice extent in Antarctica. It is on an increasing trend since 1979 and near record high anomalies. Blame co2.
It’s amazing, CO2 and Global Warming appear to be universal cause of all the World’s problems, if only we could find an antidote then we’d all be living in Nirvana.
Meanwhile, Australia has been getting wetter in recent years and decades.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/australias-droughts-decreasing-contrary-to-warmists-claims/
But climate scientists these days don’t seem to be interested in facts!
And of course, droughts have NEVER happened in Australia before.. Never-ever !!!
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/droughthistory.html
Do they really, actually, truly believe that they can know what winds have been like over the past 1,000 years?
Seriously?
And maybe CO2 is causing “Wind Stilling” in the northern hemisphere.
http://www.knmi.nl/cms/content/89566/wind_stilling_over_the_continents_of_the_northern_hemisphere_in_the_last_30_years
Or maybe there is a oscillation between the 2 hemispheres tied to PDO and/or AMO or some chaotic resonance of the two. The total angular momentum of earth + atmosphere will vary in relationship to the moon and lesser extent sun and planets…but hey it must be CO2 causing the observations because what else? (;>)
Anybody know the name of this 1000 year old Aboriginie they have been consulting? Are they sure his memory isn’t failing him/her? Did he/she know Skippy’s ancestors, & could they also tell people, “What’s that Skippy? The children are trapped down the old mine shaft & the ground water is rising fast, & the bank robbers hid the loot there too before they switched cars & drove back into town to avoid suspicion?” Clever kangaroo, was Skippy!
This is the thing she is talking about.
Nature Climate Change (2014)
doi: 10.1038/nclimate2235
Evolution of the Southern Annular Mode during the past millennium
+ Supplementary Information
Nerilie J. Abram, Robert Mulvaney, Françoise Vimeux, Steven J. Phipps, John Turner & Matthew H. England
15th century, right.
What is the next scare? Maybe Magnetic Reversals are caused by CO2. Or has that been covered? If not, Geophysicists out there, this is your is the basis for your next grant.
Global warming is keeping Australia dry. Yet the decline in sea level in 10/11 was (by one account) attributed to all the water being stored in the continent of Australia. The only way it could have gotten ON the continent is through precipitation. And yet 10/11 was supposed to be a very hot year.
I think that calls for a jabberwocky alert.
Wasn’t it only a year or two ago that they were fudging the data to show that ALL of Antarctica was warming?
Now that they have had to admit that most of Antarctica isn’t warming, up pops an explanation for how the lack of warming is actually caused by CO2.
It is like a game of Whack-a-Mole. Every time the CAGW crowd has to admit that actual real science and data shows one of their poster children of AGW is a lie, they pop up a new theory that ‘proves’ with magic trees and computer models that it is worse than we thought.
The Southern Annular Mode seems to have gone positive since the mid 1990’s, the same time as the AO/NAO started going negative. It takes a decline on forcing for the AO/NAO to go negative.
The only thing “strengthened by carbon dioxide” is the funding for this nonsense. Another Aussie University looses its credibility. Unbelievable.! I also love the “researchers have found” bit.
“Do they really, actually, truly believe that they can know what winds have been like over the past 1,000 years?
Seriously”?
Of course they do.
They read the tree rings…
They are describing the more zonal jets of the (now past) warming period.
The jets are now more meridional so the paper is already out of date.
The change from zonal to meridional occurred DESPITE increasing CO2 whereas it is not long since they said the more zonal jets were BECAUSE of increasing CO2.
Total confusion in the AGW camp.
There is not much upward trend in AAO since 1979 (+0.08/decade), none in the last 17 years (-0.06/decade).
note: AAO is the same as SAM
“We find that the SAM has undergone a progressive shift towards its positive phase since the fifteenth century, causing cooling of the main Antarctic continent at the same time that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed.”
That will be the recovery from the LIA as the recovery led to progressively more zonal and poleward jets.
Since the commencement of the apparent shift predates the industrial revolution how can it be caused by our emissions of CO2 ?
I have previously mentioned that a tighter zonal flow around the Antarctic tends to wear away the Antarctic Peninsula.
In contrast the Peninsula tends to grow when the jets are more meridional since the landmass distribution favours outflow of cold air in that direction.
Pfft on you skeptics! Everyone knows that the Aborigines had a network of anemometers set up 1000 years ago
Those who have pointed out that climate obsession thinking is very similar to naive religious thinking are once again proven to be correct.
That is bizarre! As soon as I heard this I said to myself – “I bet CO2 has something to do with this.”
And I was RIGHT!!!!!!!!
What are the odds!?!?
Here is a series on longer-term temperature measurements for Antarctica.
A sample of stations to April 2014, more-or-less the most recognized ones – Amundsen-Scott at the south pole, Vostok the coldest weather station on Earth at -55.2C, Mawson on the coast at 70S, and Faraday on the Antarctic Peninsula which was warming until 1985 or 2000 but is not any longer, just like the Antarctic sea ice.
http://s11.postimg.org/y4hh29cn7/Amund_Scott_April14.png
http://s18.postimg.org/s5lxefai1/Vostok_April14.png
http://s23.postimg.org/edkk79bor/Mawson_April14.png
http://s28.postimg.org/r41s9qt3x/Faraday_April14.png
The continent is flat or cooling, the Peninsula was warming until the last two decades.
Southern Ocean temperatures are also flat, or exhibit some long-term cycles. It has really started cooling down in the last decade. If one matched up the Peninsula temps with the southern ocean temps, one might see that we started putting stations here at the bottom of the cycle which has now started on a down cycle.
Southern Ocean SSTs back to 1854.
http://s28.postimg.org/vxwnmnp3x/iersstv3b_180_180_E_55_70_N_na.png
How about a longer period Here is the high resolution (nearly every year) isotope record from Law Dome (thanks to Steve McIntyre for digging this important ice core record out of the dustbins. They did not want you to see the MWP. It is still an unpublished series although all of the GHG trends from the core are available).
The study is the usual pro-AGW made-up science-fiction again.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/ld2_1kyr1.png
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/lawdome.gif
“Will this wind…”
It’s the angle the fossilised penguins were frozen at
So if it’s bad news for Tasmanian farmers, does that mean we have an actual disprovable prediction of CAGW hypothesis??? If it rained well for 5/10/20 years in the southern winters, and the dams were kept full, would CAGW be officially dead?
Tree rings give you wind speed and direction? Really?
I hope someone is collecting the names of all these wonderful scientists. In the future we should make an honor board of all the climate scientists with egg on their faces, like the honor boards of office bearers that adorn the walls of institutions.
I would like to see the anemometer readings from year 1014. Oh…wait….
Ah yes, that Matthew England, well of course our kids were raised on the magic pudding tales, fascinating stuff and it seems our universities are rife with alarmists, scared of losing their slice of that new magic pudding of funding set up by our previous wasteful government and protected by useful idiots that were inserted into the quango of education and teaching. Their cage has been rattled so bring on the Alarm in the hope that the green zealots will somehow slide into a balance of power and keep the slices coming their way.
can’t wait for the dismantling of the whole network of fools who think they run the ship of science and knowledge in this countries academic zoo. Time for the real scientists to call Bull on this lot and get back the trust that the ship of fools squandered, and upend the cosy pal grant system and the you pat my back and I will recommend you also for a fine sounding award, that has so corrupted perhaps “Cooked the scientific chook” once too often to the point that honest scientists may never be trusted in the eyes of the Australian public.
The world map on this link paints a different picture of Australia, Seems like it has been greening over the last 30 years according to satellite data.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130708103521.htm
Whoa. Standard deviation of daily AAO indices since the beginning of 1979 is 1.38. Compared to this change over the last 35.3 years (0.27) is negligible, nothing but pure weather noise. For God’s sake, 19% of one standard deviation is not a trend, is it?
“Here we use sedimentological and pollen records to reconstruct precipitation patterns over the past 12,500 yr from sites along the windward side of the Andes. Precipitation at the sites, located in the present core and northern margin of the westerlies, is driven almost entirely by the wind belt5, and can be used to reconstruct its intensity. ”
This fascinates me. The pollen records are used to reconstruct precipitation patterns, which I might find acceptable, but just HOW do you determine wind intensity from precipitation patterns? I have stood in an absolute downpour with no wind blowing at all, and in one that was falling at about 10 degrees to the horizonatal because of the wind. I’ll be damned if I could tell you how hard the wind was blowing by the water collected in a collection tube. And how do you differentiate pollen that has drifted on a breeze from heavily blooming plants from pollen that was grounded by hard, wind driven rains? This is why I have to question “proxy” data, and how truly useful it really is. I accept that it gives an indication of what might be the case that the data is a proxy for, but I refuse to accept it as equivalent to instrumented data, or even anecdotal data derived from writings from a prior period where instrumental data may be more susceptable to error.
Not sure anything new has happened in the Antarctic since 1953, They build the stations and they get buried by snow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley_Research_Station
1956!
CO2 is awesome. Is there nothing it can’t do?
We definitely need more not less of it.
I’m going out right now and letting my truck idle for a few hours.
That explains what happened in the recent Australian summer in southern Australia. The thief felt repentant.
February 15, 2014
South Australia’s rural towns cop a drenching after Adelaide’s wettest day in 45 years
adelaidenow.com
GALLERY: Amazing photos of the rain in SA
2013
“Rainfall for South Australia as a whole near average”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/sa/summary.shtml
And that is precisely the effect that can be attributed to CO2.
Now, I know “clearly” falls short of “settled,” but does it lie above or below “consensus”?
Sorry for getting lost on all this scientific jargon.
According to this chart, Australia is trending towards +74 mm per century:
http://ber.parawag.net/images/Annual_Rainfall_in_Australia.jpg
I wonder when CO2 is going to start stealing the moisture from Australia?
Level Gaze: (May 12, 2014 at 2:28 am): I know that. Curiously, I found Australia fascinating enough to stay awake during geography lessons, and some of the info has stuck. What puzzles me is how CO2 is now causing droughts AND floods in the same area more or less at the same time; it is almost as though the intense cold North America recently endured was caused by warming, heat waves caused the Egyptian pyramids to be clad in snow, or a melting Antarctica causes more sea-ice. I mean, what kind of idiot would propose such ridiculous ideas?
Radical Rodent says:
May 12, 2014 at 8:44 am
What puzzles me is how CO2 is now causing droughts AND floods in the same area more or less at the same time;
———————–
co2 is like elasticated pants, one size fits all.
Why am I seeing less negative in recent years. It looks far worse in the past.
[Southern Australia rainfall anomaly.]
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rranom&area=saus&season=0112&ave_yr=10
President of the US? You know, government of the people, by the people, for the people &. stuff.
Sigh…
I would like some funding to continue my research into natural climate change.
Clearly, we are cooling http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
from the top [latitudes] down
Antarctica becoming drier is expected when it gets cooler…..Alaska is getting cooler, too.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
Nerlie Abram says
As the westerly winds are getting tighter they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica,” Abram said. “This is why Antarctica has bucked the trend. Every other continent is warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on earth.
Henry says
Wrong. It is cooling in arctic (inland) as well
My own results show that it has been cooling significantly in Alaska, at a rate of -0.55K per decade since 1998 (Average of ten weather stations).
http://oi40.tinypic.com/2ql5zq8.jpg
That is almost one whole degree C since 1998. And it seems NOBODY is telling the poor farmers there that it is not going to get any better.
Just last year we had this devastating news from Australia’s CSIRO agency about the effects of excess co2 poisoning. They have become more drought resistant via stomatal reduction apparently.
South and west Australia have been adversely affected by greening in recent decades. It’s worse than we thought.
Berényi Péter says:
May 12, 2014 at 4:57 am
There is not much upward trend in AAO since 1979 (+0.08/decade), none in the last 17 years (-0.06/decade).
note: AAO is the same as SAM
AAO is further known (from your link) as the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode or SHAM. What a coincidence – you couldn’t make it up.
Winds like ‘the westerlies’ are a function of the temperature difference between the poles and the equator. The bigger the temperature difference, the stronger the winds will be. It is contrary to the most basic atmospheric physics to proclaim that the temperature difference between the equators and the poles is decreasing due to global warming, and the westerly winds are increasing due to global warming. It is akin to your car engine going faster the less gasoline you give it.
For those that don’t get my post above. Dictionary definition of ‘sham’:
1.something fake: something that is presented as genuine but that is not
2.impostor: somebody who pretends to be something that he or she is not
3.not genuine: not genuine and used for deception
Dumb question: if a globe starts cooling at one pole for some reason, on whole, will the heat in it migrate to the other pole if it’s not cooling?
In the UK some Roma use tea leaves to tell the past and to forecast the future. In the Middle East, coffee dregs were used for the same purpose. Drs. Nerlie Abram, Robert Mukvaney and Professor Matthew England have found that these can be replaced by tree rings. Why grudge them their corner of fame in the world of Mumbo Jumbo?.
Meanwhile the growing season continues to shorten in both hemispheres.
I only want add to Jimbo comments:
Commenting of Anderson et al., 2009: Wind-Driven Upwelling in the Southern Ocean and the Deglacial Rise in Atmospheric CO2, (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5920/1443.abstract),( http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2397) the authors write:
“The faster the ocean turns over, the more deep water rises to the surface to release CO2,” said lead author Robert Anderson, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty. “It’s this rate of overturning that regulates CO2 in the atmosphere.” In the last 40 years, the winds have shifted south much as they did 17,000 years ago, said Anderson.”
Varma et al., 2011. (http://www.clim-past.net/7/339/2011/cp-7-339-2011.html) write:
“The Southern Hemisphere Westerly Winds (SWW)…”
“The 200-year period was chosen to mimic the de Vries solar cycle, which is one of the most prominent solar cycles during the Holocene …”
“Variations in their intensity and latitudinal position have been suggested to exert a strong influence on the CO2 budget in the Southern Ocean, thus making them a potential factor affecting the global climate.”
“Taken together, the proxy and model results suggest that centennial-scale periods of lower (higher) solar activity caused equatorward (southward) shifts of the annual mean SWW.”
”… we propose that the role of the sun in modifying Southern Hemisphere tropospheric circulation patterns has probably been nderestimated in model simulations of past climate change. The potential role of solar forcing, long with feedbacks involving ocean and sea-ice dynamics …”
Varma et al. 2012. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL053403/abstract): “The SWW shift is more intense and robust for the simulation with varying stratospheric ozone, suggesting an important influence of solar-induced stratospheric ozone variations on mid-latitude troposphere dynamics.”
Mayr et al., 2013. (http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/41/8/831.abstract): „… phenomenon with CO2 release from the deep ocean. [in the past]” “This is in agreement with an increase in zonal wind strength extending to the southern mid-latitudes …”
There is no place for anthropogenic global warming (here). It is only the Sun …. The authors (commenting here paper) confuse causes with effects …
Christchurch NZ last year 2013 had 112 days of West to Northwest wind days which was near record numbers. We had a very warm year.
In 2012 we had only 65 West to Northwest day and it was a cool year.
It was the number of West – Northwest day that gave the warm year as the temp of these winds was still normal. As a west to Northwest wind is always +5-8c warmer than the over all long term avg.
I’ve been wondering how they were going to explain the failure of an Arctic meltdown, and probably a recovery. Now it’s becoming clearer. Except that they’re going to have to perform this next legerdemain while holding onto the idea that the Arctic is warming. It should be an interesting act.
Is this before or after they adjusted the historical records downward?
Oh wait, they don’t actually have historical data.
“””””””……..Researchers have found rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are strengthening the stormy Southern Ocean winds which deliver rain to southern Australia, but pushing them further south towards Antarctica.
Lead researcher Nerilie Abram, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, said the findings explained the mystery over why Antarctica was not warming as much as the Arctic, and why Australia faces more droughts……..”””””””
Well no it may explain why Australia warms faster than Antarctica, but there’s more CO2 in the Arctic, than the Antarctic (that’s an experimental fact). So the Arctic should also have stronger winds pushing more rain to the arctic, and away from California.
So Nerilie Nearly got it correct but she Narrolie missed it by just this much.
CO2 has virtually NO annual cyclic change in the Antarctic, but it has three times the Mauna Loa cyclic change in the arctic, and the southern hemisphere isn’t warming as fast as the north, so nyet on warming causing more extreme winds in the SH, but not the north.
Drivel. Pseudoscience. Garbage.
College drop-out logic:
Anarctica stealing rain from Australia=more snow=larger glaciers pushing the ice shelves farther to sea? Not to mention the water locked up in the larger glaciers make MSLs drop? Help me here.
Many here wonder how the authors determined wind speed from ice cores. Easy. The insects trapped in the ice will show varying degrees of windsweptness; the laying back of antennae for example. These insects have been swept in from Patagonia by the Antarctic vortex in case you were wondering.
A few days ago there was a link to a nice cartoon.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/05/monday-mirthiness-the-science-news-cycle/#comments
Perhaps you should have a look again, and think about what i going on in this thread.
An actual link to the paper was given by Berényi Péter 12 May 3:53am. Did anyone read it?
To add to jimbo’s post above, here are the actual average rainfall figures for Southern Australia’s rainfall since 1901 in 30-year periods. These are the yearly averages for each period (23 years for last period).
1901-1930 371ml/year
1931-1960 378ml/year
1961-1990 395ml/year
1991-2013 397ml/year
Hardly a decline in rainfall. Didn’t the researchers check the rainfall records before making such claims.
“Definition: SAM is defined as the normalised difference mean sea-level pressure between 40°S and 65°S. A high SAM index is associated with stronger westerlies in a broad band around 55°S and anomalously dry conditions over southern South America, New Zealand and Tasmania and wet conditions over much of Australia and South Africa. Over the ocean, the stronger westerly winds tend to generate stronger eastward currents which diverge at the ocean surface due to enhanced wind-driven Ekman transport leading to stronger upwelling in ˜60°S. The departures of SAM from its annular pattern enhance meridional exchanges and thus large heat transport.”
http://icdc.zmaw.de/606.html?&L=1
Straw grabbing is a skill that is particular to those in a panic.