About RickyRood
I'm a professor at U Michigan and lead a course on climate change problem solving. These articles often come from and contribute to the course.
By: Dr. Ricky Rood , 10:22 PM GMT on February 09, 2015
Headlining Again: Flirting with Insufferable
Two weeks ago, on January 25, a public affairs representative asked me if I wanted to make a statement in advance of the historic blizzard predicted for the Northeast. After that conversation, a little write up was released offering me up as an expert for the press. My comment was that I didn’t think the storm should be conflated with climate change, and I had doubts about it being “historic.” This, of course, assured that no one would call me in advance of the blizzard. My more pithy comment, that it would be historic in the sense that it was consistent with history, did not carry the day either. Given the way the forecast and the reporting unfolded, I have been given an opportunity to be completely insufferable.
Here’s a little record of the news cycle on my Tumblr site.
Given that my last blog was on the role that we scientists sometimes play in fueling climate-science controversies, the blizzard seems like a natural follow on. In fact, the 2011 piece with Christine Shearer, “Changing the Media Discussion on Climate and Extreme Weather,” used the example of event attribution as a place where scientists fuel headlines that are not always productive.
Here are the three reasons that I declined to conflate the storm with climate change and to talk about a potential “historic” event.
1. The practice of trying to attribute some portion of a storm to climate change is a no-win practice. I understand the curiosity that leads to public interest. I understand the curiosity of the scientific investigation of event attribution. I am not convinced that there is any policy relevance of event attribution.
We have one climate, the Earth’s climate. We have one atmosphere. If we focus on the atmosphere, then we have weather that occurs in the atmosphere, and we have the climate of that atmosphere. Weather and climate are both ways that humans describe temperature, moisture, winds, etc., in this case, associated with the atmosphere. Weather and climate are not separate and independent things; they are different descriptions of the same measures of the atmosphere. If climate changes, weather changes. If weather changes, climate changes. Therefore, every weather event occurs in our changing climate on our warming Earth. Since our understanding and description of weather relies on temperature, moisture, wind, and how they vary, it is unrealistic to imagine that weather events are not influenced by the changing climate.
The questions of how an event differs, today, in our warmer climate from a similar event in the past, can be addressed, but such a determination relies upon statistics and statements of probability and likelihood. Conclusions are never definitively verifiable. Probability and likelihood are notoriously difficult ways to communicate in quiet consultation, and even more difficult in newspapers, on the radio, television and online. Probability and risk are just made for conflicting headlines. The conclusions are, therefore, by definition, uncertain, and uncertainty can always fuel both sides of a rhetorical or a political argument. Therefore, as with marking one temperature record after another, attribution headlines obscure what is important about climate change.
2. As in my series on the not so “super El Nino,” predicting an extreme event as super, historic or unprecedented mostly sets the predictor up as a foil to those interested in maintaining the turmoil of conflicting headlines. Extreme events are rare, and an event that is more extreme than any previous extreme event is rarer. Therefore, many things have to come together to justify such a prediction. I count on the dispassionate language of science-based organizations to describe model forecasts. The appearance of imprecise adjectives of extremes should be expected to fuel an extreme-fascinated society into its next exercise of false urgency and compulsion for crisis management. When I was asked to comment on whether or not a historic storm was likely for a particular place at a particular time, the forecast was far too distant in the future; too many things had to come together, perfectly, to justify such a prediction.
3. I am not a weather forecaster. I have worked with outstanding forecasters. I have managed the building and verification of weather-forecasting systems and climate models. There were a number of attributes of the model prediction that raised yellow flags. This included the fact that weather-forecast reporting, now, has the gamesmanship of Euro versus U.S.
What were the yellow flags? The forecast was for a fast moving disturbance to move across the continent, to interact with a front off of the East Coast, to grow, and to move to the north and east. The first yellow flags were a lot of moving parts and growing. Then, there is a set of aspects that put up more warning flags. There is the need to get water from the warmer-than-normal ocean, transport that water, and convert it to rain and snow. These are aspects of modeling that are difficult to represent and more different to link together.
Within the model, there are events occurring on different measures (scales) of space and time. The evaporation of water is represented in the models in areas on the Earth’s surface that are a few kilometers on their sides. The actual evaporation occurs in much smaller representative areas and depends on many unrepresented details of the Earth’s surface. The evaporation, the transport, and the conversion of water from liquid to vapor, from vapor to water, ice and snow, must be organized into moving and growing storms whose geographical extent is from 10 to 100 times larger. We want to know the transition line between rain, sleet and snow. Then, after all of these elements of a storm are collected together and forecast into the future, we ask the model to give us an answer that distinguishes Manhattan from Queens from Hauppauge. We want answers separated by smaller distances than the smallest distances that the models represent. The expectations are not in realistic alignment with possibility. There are too many things that have to come together in the 24-48 hours of the forecast to justify the hyperbole of super, historic and unprecedented.
Weather and climate models are amazing and powerful tools. They help us think about what the weather and climate will do. They help us think about how to prepare. They also have intrinsic, sometime irreducible limitations. With regard to this weather forecast, if a model represents the surface of the Earth with patches of surface than are 10 km on the side, then the uncertainty associated with a particular weather event is more like 50 to 100 km (Recent effective resolution paper). Within that range of uncertainty, the forecast of the 2015 Northeast blizzard was spot on.
Weather and climate models are powerful and dispassionate tools. They have no control over how we take that information, determine knowledge content, describe that knowledge, react to that knowledge and use that knowledge. There are those trained in interpretation of forecasts and the prediction of weather events. There are those trained in the identification of vulnerabilities and assessment of risk. There are those trained in response to perceived risk and in response to realized risk. There are those trained in communication, and those trained in capturing audience. Increasingly, we allow our communication to be framed by those experts in capturing audience; we watch stories flame in news cycles that are rife with inaccuracy and incompleteness. We allow the foibles of communication to damage the chain of expertise for making and using forecasts.
This weekend Dean Smith died. Dean Smith has a larger-than-life iconography in sport, society and life. Smith was notorious for causing chaos at the end of basketball games when Carolina was trailing. In that chaos was opportunity. Weather, climate and the relationship of weather and climate play out in public, where there are many chattering voices looking for attention and audience – mine included. The desire to predict, for rightness and for attention motivates us to take distinguishing positions that differentiate us from others. This is chaotic. Then there are those in the climate-change conversation who are deliberately chaotic. As scientists claiming to advocate knowledge-based decisions, we must understand that we step into this world of natural and manufactured chaos. There are things we do repeatedly, record marking and event attribution amongst them, which help fuel the chaos, and obscure what is important about climate change.
r
The views of the author are his/her own and do not necessarily represent the position of The Weather Company or its parent, IBM.
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143. atifa
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142. WunderAlertBot (Admin)
7:07 AM GMT on February 17, 2015141. BaltimoreBrian
2:05 AM GMT on February 17, 2015140. JohnLonergan
1:30 AM GMT on February 17, 2015It all started when Sou posted this at HotWhopper:
well Dame Judith wasn't too happy and called Sou out on twitter; Eli Rabett takes it from there click to view twitter feed
Commenter George montgomery is the early favorite to win the internet with
Dame Judith seemingly has given up all pretense of being a legitimate scientist.
139. Xandra
12:51 AM GMT on February 17, 2015"I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people's politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true."
138. RevElvis
12:31 AM GMT on February 17, 2015As the catastrophic Ebola outbreak showed the world recently, the modern age of global air travel has made it far easier for disease to spread. But climate change, which is shuffling habitable zones for pathogen-carrying animals, is poised to make future outbreaks of infectious diseases such as Ebola, H1N1 and TB worse, and more frequent.
In an article published Sunday in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, two zoologists studying parasites in drastically different environments--one in the Arctic, the other in tropical zones--relay what 30 years of research have taught them about the future of disease,...
Article At Newsweek.com
137. JohnLonergan
12:22 AM GMT on February 17, 2015In related news:
Singing Industry’s Tune: How Rep. Jeff Denham Plans to Delay Oil-by-Rail Safety Improvements
Federal Court Order: Explosive DOT-111 "Bomb Train" Oil Tank Cars Can Continue to Roll
Report Reveals Cost Cutting Measures At Heart Of Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster
Oil-by-Rail Reality: Watch What Industry Does, Not What They Say
Dangerous Oil Trains To Return to Lac-Megantic While Town Still Recovers
Calls to Ban Bomb Trains Ramp Up While Communities Await New Regulations
California Communities Fighting Back Against Prospect Of 25-Fold Crude-By-Rail Increase
North Dakota's Meaningless New Bakken Oil Regulations Will Keep Bomb Trains Rolling
Call For Crude-By-Rail Moratorium In California After Train Derailment
Read lots more at DeSmogBlog ...
136. JohnLonergan
12:16 AM GMT on February 17, 2015135. Xandra
12:01 AM GMT on February 17, 2015Doug Craig:
Michael Mann tells it like it is
What I love about science and scientists like Michael Mann is the focus on reality. As a psychologist, I don’t want to waste time on fiction. I can’t help someone who lies to themselves and me about their issues and concerns. My interventions are successful when we address what we know to be true and what we can actually control.
When it comes to human-caused global warming, conservatives live in a bubble where they create their own version of reality. As Dr. Mann so aptly stated, they don’t just deny the reality of our changing climate, they deny the basic physics taught in our high school and college classrooms. And the maddening part is they are completely comfortable doing so while they deny that they are denying. They love it inside their bubble because they can keep physical reality somewhere else.
Remember global warming means hotter atmosphere over land and ocean and hotter oceans.
And hotter oceans means bigger storms and our hotter atmosphere means more moisture which increases precipitation volume associated with rain and snow storm events. Physics. Basic science.
Read more >>
134. BaltimoreBrian
11:14 PM GMT on February 16, 2015*** Fiery oil train crash forces W Virginia towns to evacuate
133. barbamz
11:01 PM GMT on February 16, 2015Fox Glacier's spectacular retreat from Brian Anderson on Vimeo.
More:
Fox Glacier – a time lapse video of slope failures as the glacier retreats
Landslide Blog, 15 February 2015
The spectacular Fox Glacier in New Zealand is a very popular tourist attraction on the South Island – Wikipedia estimates that around 1000 people visit per day. Sadly, the Fax Glacier is retreating rapidly, in common with most glaciers as they respond to the effects of climate change. ...
132. BaltimoreBrian
9:56 PM GMT on February 16, 2015*** The Number of U.S. Oil Rigs Continues to Tumble: No End in Sight
London, L.A., Beijing, Delhi, Nairobi… Is Smog an Inevitable Urban Growing Pain?
*** Delhi Wakes Up to an Air Pollution Problem It Cannot Ignore
Mystery Mars haze baffles scientists
X-ray machine opens new frontier
* Satellites track snail disease risk
*** Climate and health suffer as gas still goes up in smoke
Ancient rocks show life could have flourished on Earth 3.2 billion years ago
* Sexual reproduction has another benefit: It makes humans less prone to disease over time
*** New ozone-destroying gases on the rise; not controlled by treaty
Satellite images reveal ocean acidification from space
!!! First-ever evidence of climate change of Northern China region dating back thousands of years
Larger area analysis needed to understand patterns in ancient prehistory
Judge dismisses Louisiana wetlands suit against big oil firms
* U.S. approves first biotech apple that resists browning
As US debates oil export ban, questions over what's actually banned
*** Cancer Can Be Tough Case to Prove
* Mystical amphibian venerated by Aztecs nears extinction
Oil rumors spread through rural Alabama
California rolls back use of rat poison in bid to protect wildlife, kids
131. JohnLonergan
8:23 PM GMT on February 16, 2015More ...
130. JohnLonergan
6:13 PM GMT on February 16, 2015The inscription on top reads "Teach your children well'
129. Naga5000
4:56 PM GMT on February 16, 2015What do we win if they are right? Oh...wait...nevermind :(
128. Xandra
4:40 PM GMT on February 16, 2015Satellite images reveal ocean acidification from space
Total ocean alkalinity from space. Credit: Ifremer/ESA/CNES
Pioneering techniques that use satellites to monitor ocean acidification are set to revolutionise the way that marine biologists and climate scientists study the ocean. This new approach, that will be published on the 17 February 2015 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, offers remote monitoring of large swathes of inaccessible ocean from satellites that orbit the Earth some 700 km above our heads.
Each year more than a quarter of global CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and cement production are taken up by the Earth's oceans. This process turns the seawater more acidic, making it more difficult for some marine life to live. Rising CO2 emissions, and the increasing acidity of seawater over the next century, has the potential to devastate some marine ecosystems, a food resource on which we rely, and so careful monitoring of changes in ocean acidity is crucial.
Researchers at the University of Exeter, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer (Ifremer), the European Space Agency and a team of international collaborators are developing new methods that allow them to monitor the acidity of the oceans from space.
Dr Jamie Shutler from the University of Exeter who is leading the research said: "Satellites are likely to become increasingly important for the monitoring of ocean acidification, especially in remote and often dangerous waters like the Arctic. It can be both difficult and expensive to take year-round direct measurements in such inaccessible locations. We are pioneering these techniques so that we can monitor large areas of the Earth's oceans allowing us to quickly and easily identify those areas most at risk from the increasing acidification."
Read more >>
127. JohnLonergan
4:39 PM GMT on February 16, 2015Eight related commentaries written by Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition since mid-December are packed them with distortions, errors, hypocrisy, and more.
Read more ...
126. ILwthrfan
4:36 PM GMT on February 16, 2015And almost every one of those listed are interconnected or a result of Climate Change in one way or another it's only a matter to what degree.
125. RevElvis
4:31 PM GMT on February 16, 20151. Extreme climate change
2. Nuclear war
3. Global pandemic
4. Major asteroid impact
5. Super volcano
6. Ecological catastrophe
7. Global system catastrophe
8. Synthetic biology
9. Nanotechnology
10. Artificial intelligence
11. Future bad global governance
12. Unknown consequences
independent.co.uk (LINK)
124. JohnLonergan
2:35 PM GMT on February 16, 2015123. JohnLonergan
1:22 PM GMT on February 16, 2015...From the University of Maine Climate Reanalyzer, here are land temperature anomalies:
and sea surface temperature anomalies:
122. JohnLonergan
12:51 PM GMT on February 16, 2015The vast majority of scientists -- 87 percent -- think they should play an active role in debates on public policy, according to a poll of US scientists released Sunday.
Forty-three percent of those queried by the Pew Research poll also felt it was important to engage with the media.
The survey was given to 3,748 US-based scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes the journal Science and is holding its annual meeting in San Jose, California.
More ...
121. JohnLonergan
12:43 PM GMT on February 16, 2015On climate change Chomsky states:
120. JohnLonergan
12:04 PM GMT on February 16, 2015January GISS up from 0.72 to 0.75°C
119. Xyrus2000
8:08 AM GMT on February 16, 2015No, your links are being removed because most people on here have have functioning cerebral cortexes and olfactory bulbs. They know when they smell bovine excrement and conscientiously remove it so other people won't have the unpleasant experience of stepping in it.
If you don't want your links removed, then stop citing biased idiotic garbage from political ideologues and known paid shills. Post some real science.
118. riverat544
5:51 AM GMT on February 16, 2015You're right, in the global picture on climatological time scales global warming does not lead to more snow. But it does lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere which means more moisture is available for precipitation which may fall as rain or snow depending on local temperature conditions. In a study of extreme precipitation (the top 1% of storms) they found that precipitation in them in the Northeast contiguous US has increased by 71% from 1958 to 2012. Sometimes that will come in the form of snow if conditions are right.
One other point, if you took all of the excess snow they have in New England it still wouldn't be enough to make up for the missing snow in the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges this year.
117. ColoradoBob1
2:31 AM GMT on February 16, 2015This is statement of fact , not an attack.
116. ColoradoBob1
2:24 AM GMT on February 16, 2015Your links are rantings of a fool. And poorly educated at that.
115. JohnLonergan
2:15 AM GMT on February 16, 2015Anthony Watts has finally written a promo for a book put out last month by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) (archived here). The book is called, somewhat ambiguously: Climate Change the Facts 2014. Given the publisher and the contributors, the meaning is pretty obvious: Climate - change the facts - 2014.
Read more at Hotwhopper ...
The reaction to the IPA publication is slightly underwhelming.
Richard Dinatalie on twitter:
The IPA just sent me their Climate Change: The Facts book. Have already put it to good use.
114. ColoradoBob1
2:12 AM GMT on February 16, 2015113. FLwolverine
1:13 AM GMT on February 16, 2015112. Xulonn
10:50 PM GMT on February 15, 2015Here's my cursory overview of the travesty you posted:
1. Snowfall is related precipitation at certain temperature in real time, and not to monthly average temperatures. To relate it to average temperatures - and a rising average of temperatures - is a logical fallacy - and not science
2. "...the temperature/snowfall relationship along the entire Atlantic coast of the U.S. is negative - on average, the warmer it is, the less it snows." That may be a trend for some period of time, but without a mechanism and an examination of and understanding of the dynamics and processes involved, it is simply a short trem correlation without meaning. When I read the quotes form the 16-year-old paper on which the article was based, the point was that it snows less when the temperature is more often above freezing! Duh!!
3. The entire article does not even address the jet stream, arctic cold air masses and other factors related to AGW/CC that are the real "causes" of these storms in New England - and they are strongly linked to AGW/CC.
4. New England likely have will have some winters below normal in temperatures, and some above normal, depending on the meanderings of the jetstream and location and persistence of blocking highs. So, even with an overall increase in average monthly or annual surface temperatures, Arctic air mass intrusions can still cause epic snowstorms.
5. There is a statement in the linked article that says "Warm years tend to be low-snow years and vice-versa." So the authors say if it's colder - and it is - it's likely to snow more - and it is! Double Duh!!
111. JohnLonergan
10:50 PM GMT on February 15, 2015110. Naga5000
10:35 PM GMT on February 15, 2015108. Creideiki
9:21 PM GMT on February 15, 2015Interesting picture, but something to keep in mind, as I live in Denver now, I'm not certain that we have soil that goes down 30 cm. It's mostly an alkaline chalky clay that needs tons of remediation every year. It's far different from what I grew up with in Northern Illinois. So what moisture 30 cm down, really, would one expect alkaline chalky clay to reliably hold?
107. ColoradoBob1
8:31 PM GMT on February 15, 2015This has been the case from California up into B.C. all season long. Very little snow has fallen below 8,000 feet. If a mountain is water tower, we're watching the ones on the west coast shrink.
106. ColoradoBob1
8:02 PM GMT on February 15, 2015BAD SNOW YEAR: Snowpack in Olympic Mountains is at record low — and authorities are worried about water woes this summer
Although the Olympic Mountains have had plenty of rain this winter, snow is at a record low.
The Olympic Mountain snowpack had melted down by Saturday to 3 percent of average — the lowest in the state — possibly endangering the area's summer water supply and river flows for salmon runs.
The snowpack at Hurricane Ridge was measured Saturday at a mere 7.9 percent of average — 7 inches at the measurement station.
That location's annual average is 88 inches of snow on the ground on Feb. 15, according to data from the Northwest Avalanche Center in Seattle.
The previous record-low snowpack for Feb. 15 was 17 inches in 2005, said Kenny Kramer, director of the avalanche center.
The Dungeness weather station south of Sequim had no snow Thursday. Ordinarily, it would have about 15 inches in mid-February.
“There are going to be some water shortages,” said Scott Pattee, water supply specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Mount Vernon.
Link
Not really a drought per se , they have been getting storms , the kicker is the snow line has been mostly above 8,000 feet all winter. And the tallest mountain in the range is Mount Olympus' 7,979 feet,
105. Patrap
6:57 PM GMT on February 15, 2015February 16, 2015 - 12:15AM
Brian Schmidt
The body of evidence on climate change is not contained in one paper, one set of observations, or by one person, but encompasses thousands of people's ideas and observations. Photo: Jonathan Carroll
As a Nobel Prize winner, I travel the world meeting all kinds of people.
Most of the policy, business and political leaders I meet immediately apologise for their lack of knowledge of science.
Except when it comes to climate science. Whenever this subject comes up, it never ceases to amaze me how each person I meet suddenly becomes an expert.
Facts are then bandied to fit an argument for or against climate change, and on all sides, misconceptions abound.
The confusion is not surprising – climate science is a very broad and complicated subject with experts working on different aspects of it worldwide.
No single person knows everything about climate change. And for the average punter, it's hard to keep up with all the latest research and what it means.
More surprising is the supreme confidence that non-experts (scientists and non-scientists alike) have in their own understanding of the subject.
I am a full-time scientist whose area of expertise intersects with certain aspects of climate science. I, too, am not an expert on climate science.
But I do understand how science works. I understand that the current consensus has been reached by thousands of scientists working for decades. And I understand that the vast majority of scientists and scientific bodies, including the Australian Academy of Science, have reached broadly the same conclusions.
The academy's "The science of climate change: questions and answers" report – a document written and reviewed by Australia's most expert climate scientists – explains what we know, what we don't know and how we might mediate future changes.
These are the real experts on climate change and this is what they're saying:
Earth's climate has changed over the past century. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, sea levels have risen, and glaciers and ice sheets have decreased in size.
The best available evidence indicates that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause.
Continuing increases in greenhouse gases will produce further warming and other changes in Earth's physical environment and ecosystems.
My own scientific opinions in my areas of expertise are consistent with their conclusions.
Does that mean the academy's view above is endorsed by every expert? No. Like all areas of science, ideas are meant to be contested. The facts and conclusions in this document will be challenged – this is the scientific process that has served humanity so well.
But this scientific process has led to a lot of confusion and, in some cases, I dare say, delusion within the broader community.
The body of evidence on climate change is not contained in one paper, one set of observations, or by one person – rather it encompasses thousands of people's ideas and observations.
This is why it is so important for the country's pre-eminent scientific body to write this document, synthesising all of this disparate information into a coherent assessment of the science.
It's much like getting a medical diagnosis from a panel of the country's best doctors. And while some might search around for a different opinion until they get the answer they want to hear, that is not the best way to treat the underlying problem.
Having this information in one place means that the nation's decision-makers have the best scientific opinion on the subject, so that they can stop arguing about the science, and instead focus on their job, which is figuring out the most appropriate policy response to climate change, given the best available knowledge.
The evidence is clear: human activities are changing the Earth's climate, and what we do now and into the future will strongly influence the world's weather in the decades and centuries to come.
For the future health of our world and our country, Australians, let's quit self-diagnosing on climate change, and act on the expert opinion.
Brian Schmidt is a Nobel Laureate and Academy of Science fellow and council member.
104. JohnLonergan
6:52 PM GMT on February 15, 2015103. ColoradoBob1
5:25 PM GMT on February 15, 2015Huge snows in New England , but they moved the Iditarod starting point.
Similar conditions forced the race’s restart to move from Willow to Fairbanks in 2003, bypassing the Alaska Range but keeping it roughly the same distance. The move to Fairbanks was considered in snow-starved 2014, too, and after the board’s decision kept mushers on the traditional southern route, the bruised and beaten up dog drivers criticized officials for not avoiding what some of them described as a catastrophe. ................................. Trail Committee board member Rick Swenson, the winningest Iditarod musher with five first-place finishes, said the Dalzell Gorge coming out of Rainy Pass in the Alaska Range was passable when the board made its decision in 2014 — a week closer to the race than this year — but that it was too dangerous based on the look he got at it Tuesday. The troublesome areas had half as much snow as in 2014, and the bad spots were twice as long, Swenson said.
Swenson and other board members, including Nome musher Aaron Burmeister, flew in a fixed-wing plane Tuesday to a landing strip in the area and flew in a helicopter to hover over the boulders Burmeister said mushers and sleds bounced off of last year. There would be no bouncing in 2015, he said.
“This year, you can’t go through a rock,” Burmeister said. “There’s boulders and rocks that we’ve never seen there in 20-some years that are littering all the gorge, places that you’d never even see a rock because you’re going over feet of snow going through there. This year, you’re looking at bare ground.”
Link
102. RevElvis
5:19 PM GMT on February 15, 2015US expert Alan Robock raises concern over who would control climate-altering technologies if research is paid for by intelligence agencies
A senior US scientist has expressed concern that the intelligence services are funding climate change research to learn if new technologies could be used as potential weapons.
Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has called on secretive government agencies to be open about their interest in radical work that explores how to alter the world’s climate.
Robock, who has contributed to reports for the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC), uses computer models to study how stratospheric aerosols could cool the planet in the way massive volcanic eruptions do.
But he was worried about who would control such climate-altering technologies should they prove effective, he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose.
The $600,000 report was part-funded by the US intelligence services, but Robock said the CIA and other agencies had not fully explained their interest in the work.
“The CIA was a major funder of the National Academies report so that makes me really worried who is going to be in control,” he said. Other funders included Nasa, the US Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Guardian (Link)
101. Xandra
1:35 PM GMT on February 15, 2015100. LAbonbon
12:56 PM GMT on February 15, 2015Carbon Emissions Could Dramatically Increase Risk of U.S. Megadroughts
Droughts in the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains during the second half of the 21st century could be drier and longer than any droughts seen in those regions over the past 1,000 years. In a new study published in the journal Science Advances on February 12, 2015, scientists found that continued increases in manmade greenhouse gas emissions will drive up the risk of severe droughts. The study is based on projections from several climate models, including one sponsored by NASA.
“Natural droughts like the 1930s Dust Bowl and the current drought in the Southwest have historically lasted maybe a decade or a little less,” said Ben Cook, climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and at Columbia University. “What these results are saying is we’re going to get a drought similar to those events, but it is probably going to last at least 30 to 35 years.”
According to Cook and colleagues, the current likelihood of a megadrought—one lasting more than three decades—is 12 percent. If greenhouse gas emissions level off by the middle of the 21st century, the likelihood of megadrought will be more than 60 percent. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase along current trajectories throughout the 21st century, there is an 80 percent likelihood of a decades-long megadrought in the Southwest and Central Plains between the years 2050 and 2099.
The scientists ran 17 climate models using both emissions scenarios and then analyzed a drought severity index and two soil moisture data sets. The high-emissions scenario projects an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of 1,370 parts per million (ppm) by 2100, while the moderate emissions scenario projects the equivalent of 650 ppm by 2100. Currently, the atmosphere contains 400 ppm of CO2.
The maps above depict soil moisture at 30 centimeters below the land surface in the years 2090 to 2999. The top image shows a high emissions, “business as usual” scenario, while the second image reflects reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the 21st century. Brown areas are is drier than the 20th century average, while blue areas are wetter. The soil moisture data are standardized to the Palmer Drought Severity Index. Read more (includes video)
99. ColoradoBob1
12:53 PM GMT on February 15, 2015Sea lions desperate for nourishment dying off in alarming numbers on California coast
Each day, crates with sick sea lions arrive here and at four other locations from San Luis Obispo to Fort Bragg in what’s alarmingly become a third year of massive sea lion pup die-offs. And if the trend continues, marine biologists warn, it could deplete an entire generation of California sea lions.
One desperate and hungry pup was found Wednesday beside busy Skyline Boulevard in San Francisco, more than 1,000 feet from the ocean.
Scientists say changes in the California Current have pushed fish farther from the sea lion rookeries in the Channel Islands, where the pups are born around June. And the diminishing number of sardines and anchovies have forced nursing mothers to switch to rockfish and squid. These changes are believed to have contributed to a lower quality of milk and higher number of malnourished pups.
Link
98. ColoradoBob1
12:40 PM GMT on February 15, 2015Future Arctic: Field Notes from a World on the Edge,
by Edward Struzik. Copyright © 2015, Island Press.
A Stormy Arctic Is the New Normal [Excerpt]
The Arctic is changing fast
In the summer of 2000, Canadian national park warden Angus Simpson and his colleagues were camped along the north coast of the Yukon Territory near the Alaskan border, conducting a survey of archeological sites along the coast. The sea was dead calm at the time. But they could see in the inky blue sky over the Beaufort Seas the telltale signs of a storm advancing. An hour or so after they turned in that night, the first big gust of wind blew in, completely flattening their tent and forcing them to take refuge in the cubbyhole of their boat.
It was just the beginning of a summer storm that some people in the western Arctic of Alaska, Yukon and Northwest Territories remember as the worst they had seen before the Great Cyclone of 2012 ripped through the region. At the height of this gale in 2000, dozens of Inuvialuit people camped on low-lying land along the Arctic coast had to be airlifted out by helicopter. The park wardens, exposed on the same stretch of low lying tundra, were forced to make a harrowing trip through 12-foot high waves to get to the safety of a ranger station that was located on Herschel Island a few miles away.
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97. RevElvis
1:52 AM GMT on February 15, 2015LONDON—As Arctic sea ice continues to melt at an alarming rate, maritime traffic is set to increase—and with it the pollution emitted by ships’ engines.
A paper published by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) says emissions of pollutants from vessels in the US area of the high Arctic could increase by between 150% and 600% by 2025.
Ships typically burn bunker fuel with a high sulphur content. As well as various greenhouse gases (GHGs), the engines also emit soot, or black carbon. And when this covers snow and ice, it reduces their ability to reflect sunlight away from the Earth, and so raises temperatures.
The ICCT paper says ship-borne pollutants—which include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide (NOx), oxides of sulphur [SOx], particulate matter (PM) and soot—affect local air quality and human health, as well as the global climate.
Without new pollution controls, it is estimated that global soot emissions from shipping may more than quintuple from 2004 to 2050, to a total of more than 744,000 tonnes, because of increased shipping demand.
A growing share of those emissions will occur in the Arctic, because of vessels being diverted to the much shorter Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage to cut the length of voyages
Article at TruthDig.com
96. RevElvis
1:47 AM GMT on February 15, 2015Almost every one has heard of ice-ages and many understand the term usually refers to glaciation events during the Pleistocene Epoch that started about 2.5 million years ago and ended just 12,000 years ago. Not as many are familiar with its nearest older sibling, the epoch that preceded it, called the Pliocene. But the Pliocene is of great interest to climate scientists because it's the most geologically recent analogue we have in terms of the plants and animals alive, where the continents are positioned, the amount of carbon-dioxide in the air and how much warmer it actually got as a result.
Unfortunately, ice cores and other records from the Pliocene aren't as readily available as they are for other times. But scientists working with one ancient relic, a class of tiny organisms called foraminifera, have been able to determine with precision how sensitive the Earth was to carbon-dioxide levels back then:
The result? A number that fell somewhere in that 1.5 to 4.5 degrees (Celsuis) for the Pliocene, the researchers found. Then researchers did the same calculation for the late Pleistocene ... based on a range of carbon dioxide records including ice cores. Temperatures actually changed twice as much in the late Pleistocene as in the Pliocene for a given carbon dioxide change, the researchers found.
Why? That%u2019s because the planet was also experiencing large fluctuations in the size of its ice sheets, which reflect sunlight back to space. The melting of ice as the planet warmed would have amplified the warming due to carbon dioxide concentration increases alone. When researchers subtracted out the ice sheets%u2019 contribution, though, they found that carbon dioxide%u2019s effect on warming was about the same as it was in the Pliocene.
In layperson's terms, the study bolsters the consensus of climate scientists about our immediate future, right down to polar amplification, ice sheet collapse and sea level rise.
Article at DailyKos.com
95. FLwolverine
10:06 PM GMT on February 14, 2015Meanwhile, all (I think I'm safe in saying all) of us AGW/CC "realists" would be eternally grateful for factual scientific information that would prove us wrong. But the denialists have nothing to offer. NOTHNG!
94. JohnLonergan
9:27 PM GMT on February 14, 2015Summary: Sea ice increases in Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last decades, a new study finds. As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.
Comparing Arctic sea ice loss to Antarctic sea ice gain shows that the planet has-been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.
Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens and Jesse Allen
Read more ...
Journal Reference:
Claire L. Parkinson. Global Sea Ice Coverage from Satellite Data: Annual Cycle and 35-Yr Trends. Journal of Climate, 2014; 27 (24): 9377 DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00605.1