Bombshell from Bristol: Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing? – study says “no”

10 11 2009

Controversial new climate change results

University of Bristol Press release issued 9 November 2009

bristol_university_logo

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models. Read the rest of this entry »



Comments : 334 Comments »

Categories : Carbon dioxide, paleoclimatology

New geologic evidence of past periods of oscillating, abrupt warming, and cooling

10 11 2009

Guest post by Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Emeritus Professor at Western Washington University

Two hundred years ago, Charles Lyell coined the phrase “The present is the key to the past.” In today’s highly contentious issues of global climate change, we might well add “The past is the key to the future, i.e., to forecast future geologic events, we must understand past climate changes.  This paper documents past global climate changes in the geologic and historic past.

Recent laser imaging of the Earth’s surface provides new evidence for abrupt, fluctuating, warm and cool climatic episodes that could not have been caused by changes in atmospheric CO2.  In a paper presented at the national meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, OR, Professor Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University, presented new data from airborne laser imagery showing well-defined, previously unknown, multiple moraines deposited by glaciers 11,700 to 10,250 years ago.

At least 9 significant, abrupt periods of warming that resulted in retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet are documented by moraines from successive glacial retreats in the Fraser Lowland of NW Washington l(Fig. 1).  In addition, smaller multiple glacier recessions are found within the more prominent episodes of glacier retreat.  As indicated by the amount of glacier recession between each of the successive moraines, the warming events were of greater magnitude than those observed in recent centuries.

oscillating_climate1

Figure 1.  Successive terminal moraines from short–term glacier recessions caused by climatic warming between 11,700 and 10,250 years ago.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 31 Comments »

Categories : paleoclimatology

Countdown to an “unprecedented warm decade” – 2 months to go

10 11 2009

Global Temperatures This Decade Will Be The Warmest On Record…

…And It Will Be Exploited By Those Who Fail To Understand The Reasons For The Rise

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

snowman_forecaster

INITIAL NOTES

For some visitors to this blog, this post will be a merging and rehashing of a few of my earlier posts. But this post is different in a very important way. I have attempted to simplify the discussion of El Nino-caused step changes for those with less technical backgrounds.

The post does assume the reader knows of El Nino and La Nina events. If not, here are links to two NOAA El Nino Frequently Asked Question web pages:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/enso_faq/
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/occasionally-asked-questions.html

The following narrated video “Visualizing El Nino” from the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio provides an excellent overview of the 1997/98 E; Nino, one of the El Nino events that created the aftereffects illustrated in this post.

YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbNzw1CCKHo

I have provided links to the referenced studies and to the posts that provide more detailed explanations at the end of the following. They do not appear within the general discussion of this post.

Many of the illustrations in the following are .gif animations, with 5- to 10-second pauses between cells. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 77 Comments »

Categories : ENSO, climate data

Lindzen and McIntyre’s Finnish TV interview – issues that US journalists fail to investigate

10 11 2009

The video showing the climate research work of Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT and Steven McIntyre of Climate Audit is now up on YouTube. One of the most compelling portions of the program has to do with the erroneous reversal of the Tiljander sediments, and Dr. Michael Mann’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge his error, even though other authors of peer reviewed papers have done so. In my opinion, salvation of the hockey stick seems to trump the salvation of good science practice.

The investigative journalism here is refreshing, and well done. It’s the sort of thing CBS 60 minutes used to do.

Here is part 1, a transcript link follows:

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 57 Comments »

Categories : Climate News, media

2009 shaping up to be a “normal” temperature year in the USA

9 11 2009

While we find cooling trends now in RSS and UAH global data from 2002, the US contiguous temperature record for 2009 seems to be returning to very near the normal baseline for temperature in the last century.

From World Climate Report: Another Normal Year for U.S. Temperatures?

Early last January, when the final 2008 numbers were in for the U.S. annual average temperature, we ran an article titled “U.S. Temperatures 2008: Back to the Future?” in which we noted that “The temperature in 2008 dropped back down to the range that characterized most of the 20th century.”

2009 seems to be following in 2008’s footsteps.

The national average temperature had been elevated ever since the big 1998 El Niño, which was leading some folks to clamor that global warming was finally showing up in the U.S. temperature record. “Finally,” because prior to 1998, there was little sign that anything unusual was going on with U.S. average temperatures (Figure 1). The end of the record was hardly any different than any other portion of the record. The slight overall trend arose from a couple of cool decades at the start of the 20th century rather than any unusual warmth towards the end.


Figure 1. United States annual average temperature, 1895-1997 (data source: National Climate Data Center).

Then along came the 1998 El Niño, which raised both global and U.S. temperatures to record values, and our national temperatures remained elevated for 10 years thereafter (Figure 2). Instead of looking for some explanation of this unusual run of very warm years in the (naturally) changing patterns of atmospheric/ocean circulation in the Pacific Ocean, it was often chalked up to “global warming.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 81 Comments »

Categories : climate data

A statistically significant cooling trend in RSS and UAH satellite data

9 11 2009

Statistical Significance in Satellite Data

Guest post by Jeff Id of The Air Vent

If you’ve been following along here you probably suspected the difference between UAH and RSS are substantial enough to reach 95% significance. In this short post, you can see you were right. Significance is a measure of likelihood that the short term noise is creating the slope we see. Now since we’re looking at a difference between two series measuring the same thing, a simple reasonable method is to take the difference between the two series and look at the residuals for significance.

Global RSS and UAH temperature anomalies look like this.

UAH full Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 39 Comments »

Categories : climate data

Shindell, Methane, and Uncertainty

9 11 2009

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/earth/pictures/hansen010302/methane.jpg

Image: NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center

A recent study by Shindell et. al, entitled Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions, (Science Magazine, 30 October 2009, Vol. 326) reports on interactions between aerosols and methane and other greenhouse gases. It has been discussed on Watts Up With That here <http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/31/an-idea-i-can-get-behind-regulate-methane-first/>, as well as on other blogs. The Shindell study gives new values for the “radiative forcing” of various greenhouse gases. The “radiative forcing” is the increase in greenhouse radiation which is due to the increases in greenhouse gases since 1750.

UPDATE: The remainder of this article has been removed at the request of the guest author, Willis Eschenbach. During discussion, an error was discovered (see comments) and rather than leave this article with that error in place which may possibly mislead somebody in the future (if they didn’t read through comments) I’m honoring Willis’ request for removal. The comments remain intact. – Anthony


Comments : 105 Comments »

Categories : Methane

McIntyre and Lindzen to appear on Finnish TV documentary – transcript

9 11 2009

Transcript in English from the TV network website here (h/t to Goran Frojdh)

MOT: Climate catastrophe cancelled
Finnish Broadcasting Co. YLE, TV1, Nov 11th 2009 at 8.00 pm.

Voiceover (VO), reporter Martti Backman: Governments around the world are preparing for a grand climate conference, which should decide how humanity responds to the threat of a climate catastrophe. Negotiations are under way to replace the Kyoto treaty with a new treaty of Copenhagen.

VO: The threat is based on assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. According to the panel, the Earth is going through an unprecedented period of temperature increase, caused by man and his carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal and oil.

(Pictures from An Incovenient Truth)

The Earth’s climate has always been changing. But now we are told that warming is happening faster than ever. The view is based on this figure.


(Picture: The global warming hockey stick graph. Music: Electric organ sounds from an ice-hockey game)

VO: This ten-year-old figure, dubbed as the hockey stick, was meant to revolutionize the dominant view of global climate history. The stick’s handle stretches for almost a thousand years, creating an impression of a steady climate, and its’ rising blade in the late 1900’s is proof of sudden, strong warming, which is caused by man.

According to the older view, climate has naturally varied considerably over the past millennium, and in the middle ages it was clearly warmer than today. But in the hockey stick graph, the Medieval Warm Period and the little ice age after it have disappeared. The hockey stick was promoted to honorary status in the IPCC’s third assessment report’s cover. It became the logo of catastrophic climate change. The stick was used to back up the claim that, 1998 was the warmest year of the millennium. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 134 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, media

No longer the ENVI of the green revolution, Chrysler drops electric vehicle plan

9 11 2009

The ENVI line can be seen here. This is rather sad really, I like electric cars. I drive one myself. From Reuters:

Chrysler dismantles electric car plans under Fiat

The Chrysler ENVI line of electric vehicles - dropped

By Kevin Krolicki

DETROIT (Reuters) – Chrysler has disbanded a team of engineers dedicated to rushing a range of electric vehicles to showrooms and dropped ambitious sales targets for battery-powered cars set as it was sliding toward bankruptcy and seeking government aid.

The move by Fiat SpA marks a major reversal for Chrysler, which had used its electric car program as part of the case for a $12.5 billion federal aid package.

As late as August, Chrysler took $70 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a test fleet of 220 hybrid pickup trucks and minivans, vehicles now scrapped in the sweeping turnaround plan for Chrysler announced this week by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne.

Chrysler spokesman Nick Cappa said on Friday that an in-house team of electric car development engineers had been disbanded in favor of a more traditional organization. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 57 Comments »

Categories : Technology

EPA sends CO2 endangerment finding to the White House

9 11 2009

Excerpts from Reuters story: EPA C02 endangerment finding to White House

By Tom Doggett

http://www.nps.gov/piro/parkmgmt/images/WhiteHouse.jpg

Image: National Park Service

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has sent its final proposal on whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to human health and welfare to the White House for review, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told Reuters on Monday. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 78 Comments »

Categories : Carbon dioxide

The climate engine

9 11 2009

Guest post by Erl Happ

stirling_solar_engine

Solar Powered Stirling Cycle Engine

What follows is a general theory of natural climate variation supported by observation of the changing temperature of the atmosphere and the sea between 1948 and September 2009. This work suggests that strong warming after 1978 is an entirely natural phenomenon.

Imagine a small planet about the size of the Earth orbiting a sun just like our own. The planet has an atmosphere composed of nitrogen (76%), oxygen (23%) and trace gases (1%) of which argon makes up half of that one percent.

Let us further imagine that the sun bombards the Earth with radiation so energetic as to destroy the integrity of nitrogen and oxygen in the planet’s upper atmosphere. The region where this occurs may be called the ‘ionosphere’. When superheated at the highest elevations it can be known as the ‘thermosphere’.  The electrically unbalanced particles of the ionosphere possess negative or a positive polarity. Like iron filings scattered across a piece of paper atop a magnetized iron bar, atmospheric ions orient themselves according to the lines of the planets magnetic field. Rotating with the planet, the ionosphere is a place of constant flux.  Particles are energized on the dayside and dragged into a long tail on the night-side by the pressure of the solar wind, a highly magnetized stream of helium and hydrogen emanating from the sun. There is an exchange of energy between the wind and the ionosphere and particles are accelerated in one direction or the other and re-distributed according to the tension imposed by the constantly changing electromagnetic medium. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 113 Comments »

Categories : climate_change

RSS Global Temperature out for October – down, nearly identical to UAH

8 11 2009

Here’s the plot from RSS – October is 0.282°C

RSS_Oct09

Click for a larger image

The RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA) Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) lower troposphere global temperature anomaly data for March 2009 was published yesterday and has dropped after peaking in January.   The change from September with a value of 0.476°C to October’s 0.282°C is a (∆T) of  -0.194°C.

Recent RSS anomalies

2009 01 0.322
2009 02 0.230
2009 03 0.172
2009 04 0.202
2009 05 0.090
2009 06 0.081
2009 07 0.388
2009 08 0.270
2009 09 0.476
2009 10 0.282

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 75 Comments »

Categories : climate data

MIT takes on the politics of climate fixes

8 11 2009

Photo - Graphic: Christine Daniloff MIT

Judith Layzer says there’s no easy way out when it comes to climate change — but that geo-engineering might be a last-ditch solution.

From David Chandler, MIT News Office

In the middle of a day filled with a stream of information-packed PowerPoint displays and alarming projections of what the future holds for our planet and our civilization, Judith Layzer’s talk was something of an anomaly.

Layzer, an assistant professor of environmental policy in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, was among the speakers at last Friday’s daylong symposium on “Engineering a Cooler Earth.” She immediately changed the tone of the day’s presentations by dispensing with graphs and charts and speaking only with the aid of her quite expressive gestures.

The symposium was a detailed exploration of a subject that has long been nearly taboo even for polite discussion: that instead of, or in addition to, the emissions-reduction strategies usually looked at as a way to stave off the dangers of global climate change, there might be other ways of solving or at least reducing some of the effects faster, more inexpensively or both, through grand schemes collectively known as geo-engineering. These include two major approaches: pulling carbon dioxide right out of the air, or blocking some percentage of incoming sunlight to reduce temperatures. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 101 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

USA Today: Expanding cities contribute to global warming

8 11 2009

From Roger Pielke Sr.

A very good news article titled Expanding cities contribute to global warming by Doyle Rice has been published on USA Today.

The article is based on our paper

Fall, S., D. Niyogi, A. Gluhovsky, R. A. Pielke Sr., E. Kalnay, and G. Rochon, 2009: Impacts of land use land cover on temperature trends over the continental United States: Assessment using the North American Regional Reanalysis. Int. J. Climatol., DOI: 10.1002/joc.1996.

The USA Today article reads

http://blogs.usatoday.com/.a/6a00d83451b46269e20120a65d9532970b-pi

Photo: Interstate 15 cuts between new homes and mountains in Corona, Calif. (Ric Francis, AP)

The USA’s expanding cities and suburbs are contributing more to global warming than previously thought, says a new study in the Royal Meteorological Society’s International Journal of Climatology.

“We found that most land-use changes, especially urbanization, result in warming,” said study co-author Eugenia Kalnay of the University of Maryland.

Most scientists believe man-made climate change is primarily the result of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So, does this mean rising temperatures due to greenhouse gases are less significant? No, say study authors.

“I think that greenhouse warming is incredibly important, but land use should not be neglected,” Kalnay said. “It clearly contributes to warming, especially in urban and arid areas.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 41 Comments »

Categories : Land use land cover change

Watching Ida – back to a tropical storm

8 11 2009

BUMPED, UPDATED:

TS Ida, once hurricane Ida and a Cat 2 storm last night, has now fallen apart.

To help you keep an eye on it, I have the satellite imagery here along with animated loops.

Animate this image: Loop it >>>

Here’s the latest advisory and trajectory map from the National Hurricane Center:

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 39 Comments »

Categories : hurricanes, weather

Jan Janssen’s presentation on Solar Cycle 24 hints at Dalton or Maunder type minimum ahead

8 11 2009

David Archibald forwarded me this PowerPoint presentation from Jan Janssens which he presented on October 22nd. It has some very interesting slides and is a good summary of the current debate over solar cycle 24.

I’ve put the entire slide show online in the post below at 50% size, as the PDF download of the PowerPoint document is quite large. For those that want it, you’ll find it at the end of the post mirrored on WUWT’s file system so that better bandwidth can help out.

Janssens1

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 152 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

Antimatter signature spotted in Earth’s lightning

8 11 2009

Personally, I think this has to do with thunderstorms being essentially linear accelerators, vertical SLAC’s if you will. Huge charge differentials from top of cloud to bottom makes for a nice particle slingshot. There’s plenty of opportunity for antimatter (positrons) to be created in energetic collisions from particles coming out of the tops of thunderstorms. Sprites and blue jets for example, may be indicators for energetic particles.

It could also be very energetic photons from lightning as seen in the diagram below. At the high photon energies (twice the rest energy of electrons at 511 keV) and above 1.022 MeV positron-electron pair production may take place. Getting energies of 1.022 million electron volts certainly seems easy enough in thunderstorms. – Anthony

File:Pairproduction.png

From Sciencenews.org: Signature of antimatter detected in lightning

Fermi telescope finds evidence that positrons, not just electrons, are in storms on Earth

By Ron Cowen

 

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/49330/name/Antimatter_lightning.jpg

During two recent lightning storms, the Fermi telescope found evidence that positrons, not just electrons, are in storms on Earth.Axel Rouvin/Flickr

Washington — Designed to scan the heavens thousands to billions of light-years beyond the solar system for gamma rays, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has also picked up a shocking vibe from Earth. During its first 14 months of operation, the flying observatory has detected 17 gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial storms — and some of those flashes have contained a surprising signature of antimatter. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 66 Comments »

Categories : Science

A tale of two overkills

7 11 2009

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9511/Binczewski-9511.fig.5.large.gifThe pyramid of aluminum shown in the photograph figures greatly in our nation’s history. This once rare metal was so prized that it was placed into a national monument by a grateful nation. Can you guess where? Now, aluminum is so common, thanks to an electrical refining process and plentiful, cheap electricity, that we throw it away in soda cans.

Two seemingly unrelated events on opposite sides of the globe occurred this past week.

One was the closure of an aluminum plant in Montana, and the other is the president of a European metals association threatened to move production overseas citing environmental rules and energy costs escalating due to emissions trading schemes.

Both stories are presented below. At the end, is the story of our “Aluminum Pyramid”, now in a  national monument.

cfalls_aluminum_co_aerial_lg

The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company in Montana - click for larger image

Google Map of above is here

First, Montana.

How They Are Turning Off the Lights in America

by Edwin X. Berry

On October 31, 2009, the once largest aluminum plant in the world will shut down. With it goes another American industry and more American jobs. The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company in Montana will shut down its aluminum production because it cannot purchase the necessary electrical power to continue its operations.

How did this happen in America? America was once the envy of the world in its industrial capability. America’s industrial capacity built America into the most productive nation the world had ever known. Its standard of living rose to levels never before accomplished. Its currency became valuable and powerful, allowing Americans to purchase imported goods at relatively cheap prices.

America grew because of innovation and hard work by the pioneers of the industrial revolution, and because America has vast natural resources. A great economy, as America once was, is founded on the ability to produce electrical energy at low cost. This ability has been extinguished. Why?

Columbia Falls Aluminum negotiated a contract with Bonneville Power Administration in 2006 for Bonneville to supply electrical power until September 30, 2011. But, responding to lawsuits, the 9th US Circuit Court ruled the contract was invalid because it was incompatible with the Northwest Power Act. Therefore, the combination of the Northwest Power Act and a US Circuit Court were the final villains that caused the shutdown of Columbia Falls Aluminum.

But the real reasons are much more complicated. Why was it not possible for Columbia Falls Aluminum to find sources of electricity other than Bonneville? Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 191 Comments »

Categories : energy

Chilled Kiwi’s: Coldest October since 1945

7 11 2009

From the weather is not climate department, it seems that the USA is not the only country experiencing an October cold snap.

http://www.christchurchnz.com/media/1007616/Bus_mountains_snow.jpg

Bus tour to the mountains. Undated image from: christchurchnz.com

Coldest October in 64 years

LATEST: It will come as little surprise to most New Zealanders that the country shivered through the coldest October in 64 years.

In its climate summary for the month, the Niwa said the average temperature nationwide was 10.6degC _ 1.4degC below average.

Such a cold October has occurred only four times in the past 100 years, the last time in 1945. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 47 Comments »

Categories : records, weather

Quote of the week #22 – Experts say that fears surrounding climate change are overblown

7 11 2009

The Times posted a surprising story this weekend that has skeptics cheering and alarmists hopping mad. It’s deja vu all over again. (See QOTW#21) Roger Pielke Sr. will be happy, because land use change is prominently mentioned.

qotw_cropped

Here’s the line:

“The evidence of climate change-driven extinctions have really been overplayed,”

Here’s the article, highlights mine: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 69 Comments »

Categories : Alarmism, Land use land cover change

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