Global warming discussion IV

[lomiller]

Sigh

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/c...-walk-the-plank-by-csiro-20160513-gov0k9.html

 

[Trakar]

Sigh

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/c...-walk-the-plank-by-csiro-20160513-gov0k9.html

Sad, but unfortunately, not unexpected.

 

[macdoc]

He'll have a hell of a nice superannuation pay out and perhaps be MORE outspoken. Hansen left NASA and yet stays deeply engaged and far more outspoken.
Sometimes more can be accomplished outside the system.

 

[Trakar]

He'll have a hell of a nice superannuation pay out and perhaps be MORE outspoken. Hansen left NASA and yet stays deeply engaged and far more outspoken.
Sometimes more can be accomplished outside the system.

True, but Hansen has multiple streams of support that few others have developed as well as they evidently should.

 

[macdoc]

From the sounds of it - this guy will as well. I can see him being snagged as Prof Emeritus by any number of uni ..or great catch for an NGO - even the UN.

This is top drawer. It's the lesser lights that might have a harder time ....tho Aus safety net is substantial.

 

[Pixel42]

NOAA's state of the climate report for April.

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for April 2016 was 1.10°C (1.98°F) above the 20th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F)—the highest temperature departure for April since global records began in 1880. This value surpassed the previous record set in 2010 by 0.28°C (0.50°F). This was also the fourth highest monthly temperature departure among all 1,636 months on record, behind March 2016 (1.23°C/2.21°F), February 2016 (1.19°C/2.14°F), and December 2015 (1.12°C/2.02°F). Overall, 13 out of the 15 highest monthly temperature departures in the record have all occurred since February 2015, with February 1998 and January 2007 among the 15 highest monthly temperature departures. April 2016 also marks the fifth consecutive month (since December 2015) that the global monthly temperature departure from average has surpassed 1.0°C (1.8°F) and it is the 12th consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken, the longest such streak in NOAA's 137 years of record keeping.

A record warm January, February, March, and April resulted in the highest global land and ocean average temperature for January–April at 1.14°C (2.05°F) above the 20th century average—besting the previous record set in 2015 by 0.30°C (0.54°F) and surpassing January-April 1998, the last time a similar strength El Niño occurred during this period, by 0.45°C (0.81°F).

 

[Trakar]

Climate science: Earth's narrow escape from a big freeze

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v529/n7585/full/529162a.html

Editor's summary (when I get back home this next week, I'll put up a more thorough set of quotes from the article).

Despite decades of research, the conditions responsible for the inception of a glacial period have remained unclear. Why, for example, did the Earth not enter a glacial period in recent times, when Northern Hemisphere insolation patterns resembled those often associated with other inceptions? These authors use a climate model of intermediate complexity, constrained by evidence from ice cores, to quantify the insolation required to trigger a glacial period for any level of atmospheric CO2: high CO2 levels, such as in the late Holocene, demand that insolation fall below an unusually low level. The simulations suggest that in the absence of human perturbations to the climate system, the present interglacial would persist for tens of thousands of years. With human-generated releases of carbon, there appears to be little chance of a new glacial period over the next 100,000 years.

 

[macdoc]

Spring Has Sprung In The Arctic ... But It's Way Too Early For It
NOAA just reported the earliest snowmelt in 78 years of recorded history.
21/05/2016 9:48 AM AEST | Updated 21/05/2016 9:48 AM AEST
843
Chris D'Angelo Associate Editor, HuffPost Hawaii

NOAA
One of the coldest places on Earth is already starting to see signs of spring -- a good month or two before it should, according to researchers.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Friday that Barrow Observatory, located 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle, just reported the earliest snowmelt in 78 years of recorded history.

“It looks like late June or early July right now,” David Douglas, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a statement.

The remote Alaska observatory is usually one of the last places in the United States to see its snow begin to vanish. This year, however, the snowmelt began May 13, a full 10 days earlier than the previous record set in 2002.

more
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/en...=Science&section=australia&utm_hp_ref=science

 

[macdoc]

ouch all around

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...limate-change-emergency-today-scientists-warn

and snip ....

Furthermore, there may be more to the record-breaking series than meets the eye. “There is something more going on than the usual global warming trend and El Niño, because in the past El Niño has led to single years breaking records, but it has not caused several years in a row to break records,” says Rahmstorf.

“There is some unexplained part to this and it is concerning, because we don’t understand it and it is hotter than expected,” he says. “I hope the data coming in the next six months or so will bring us some important clues.”

I wonder about methane....

 

[Fudbucker]

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for May 2016 was the highest for May in the 137-year period of record, at 0.87°C (1.57°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F), besting the previous record set in 2015 by 0.02°C (0.04°F). May 2016 marks the 13th consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken—the longest such streak since global temperature records began in 1880.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201605

 

[stanfr]

All sorts of records falling in Colorado today...Colorado Springs hit 101, tying the all-time record. of the 8 times it has hit 100+ since records started in 1894, 5 of the 8 have occurred in 2012 (3) and 2016 (2). Other records: Pueblo 105, Lamar 107
June is almost certainly going to go into the record books, adding to the long string of record months.

 

[lomiller]

The effect of El Nino is starting to fade. In spite of it being record setting, May was the coolest month since last Sept. This June may not be much warmer than last years. Of course last June holds the record for the warmest recorded.

 

[Trakar]

Warning from the past: Future global warming could be even warmer

University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute. "Warning from the past: Future global warming could be even warmer." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 June 2016. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160623112206.htm

...Reconstructions of past temperatures show that even before the PETM the Earth was about 10 degrees warmer than today and then warmed an additional 5 degrees during the PETM. In addition, they combined data about minerals, isotopes and the carbon cycle with climate models to estimate the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere -- both before and during the period. From this, they could estimate the climate sensitivity and the result was that where it was about 4.5 degrees C before the PETM, the temperature rose to about 5.1 degrees during the PETM. Climate sensitivity is currently around 3 degrees.

"Our results show that the amount of carbon that drove the PETM warming was about the same amount as the current 'easily accessible' fossil fuel reserves of about 4,000 billion tons. But the warming that would result from adding such large amounts of carbon to the climate system would be much greater today than during the PETM and could reach up to 10 degrees. This is partly due to the current atmosphere containing much less CO2 -- approximately 400 ppm (parts per million) -- compared to before the PETM, where the concentration was about 1,000 ppm and partly because we emit carbon into the atmosphere at a much faster rate than during the PETM. If we then also take into account the fact that climate sensitivity increases with the temperature, it means that it is all the more urgent to limit global warming as soon as possible by reducing the human-made emissions of greenhouse gases," explains Professor Gary Shaffer, who conducted the study in collaboration with researchers from Purdue University, USA, the University of Chile and the Technical University of Denmark.

positively scandalous.

 

[Trakar]

Windows are shutting...

The Window for Avoiding a Dangerous Climate Change Has Closed
http://gizmodo.com/the-window-for-avoiding-a-dangerous-climate-change-has-1782836113

Barring some incredible new carbon capture technology, the window for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius appears to have closed. That’s the stark conclusion of a report out in Nature today, which finds that the carbon reductions pledges penned into the Paris Agreement are ridiculously inadequate for keeping our climate within a safe and stable boundary...

But I don't take the proclamation of pop-sci any more seriously than it deserves, at the least, they do (hyper)link a few references:

Paris Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v534/n7609/full/nature18307.html

Picture = lots of words

 

[stanfr]

This has been lighting up social media today: (claim that the jet stream crossing the equator is a sign of impending doom...)

http://http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/unprecedented-scientists-declare-global-climate-emergency-after-jet-stream-crosses-equator/

Unfortunately for them, it is total nonsense, as exposed by the Capitol Weather Gang among other sources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/06/30/claim-that-jet-stream-crossing-equator-is-climate-emergency-is-utter-nonsense/

It's apparently fairly common for these excursions, which are related to convection, a la Kelvin wave...

It's unfortunate that a few self-proclaimed experts give the rest of us who feel that GW is a serious problem a bad name...

 

[macdoc]

Yet the Washington Post takes a quote from Roy Spencer ???

Despite his penchant for hyperbolic statements RS articles are well sourced and explained. The breakdown of seasonal boundaries is obvious to many given the weather extremes.

 

[Trakar]

Yet the Washington Post takes a quote from Roy Spencer ???

Despite his penchant for hyperbolic statements RS articles are well sourced and explained. The breakdown of seasonal boundaries is obvious to many given the weather extremes.

This, isn't an issue of the article (or in this case a blog post --- and we all know about the problems with blog science, even when it is discussed and described by legitimately qualified scientists speaking in their field of expertise) being grossly in error, so much as it is that the interpretation by others about an unusual phenomenon being wrong and the following casual discussion between author and knowledgeable reader being hyperbole laden.

It is not terrible for casual, lay discussion of possibilities and potentialities, but it wouldn't cut the mustard in published science which is why those serious about climate science (or much of any type of science) don't use pop-sci articles or blog posts as anything other than places to pick up references concerning researchers and new study name indicators of potential innovative field science findings and considerations.

Researchers are necessarily conservative and cautious in their professional writing, but being excited about their work, they are not beyond getting caught up in the moment in their more casual discussions with peers about their work. In blogs, many forget that they aren't speaking to each other personally or in private list-serv discussions, and that those with axes to grind and alternative convictions to support will mine and distort such discussions for their own purposes.

 

[macdoc]

I view RS as a needed reminder of the serious pace of change as there appears a complacency setting in ..ho hum ....just another off the walls, season, month , year, storm series, Arctic ice level....

How then when La Nina sets in ....to keep the interest in CO2 emission reduction....which is actually progessing surprisingly well even in the US and should continue barring some Trump win and despite the obstruction of the GOP.

The conservative language of the climate science establishment does not fuel the needed anger for change.
One reason Hanson resigned NASA and took to the streets. We don't need more dry information.
We need passion against the unfolding consequences.

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change

 

[Trakar]

I view RS as a needed reminder of the serious pace of change as there appears a complacency setting in ..ho hum ....just another off the walls, season, month , year, storm series, Arctic ice level....

How then when La Nina sets in ....to keep the interest in CO2 emission reduction....which is actually progessing surprisingly well even in the US and should continue barring some Trump win and despite the obstruction of the GOP.

The conservative language of the climate science establishment does not fuel the needed anger for change.
One reason Hanson resigned NASA and took to the streets. We don't need more dry information.
We need passion against the unfolding consequences.

[qimg]https://tarynfisher.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/james-hansen-arrested.png[/qimg]
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change

I don't disagree with you, but this isn't an issue of science, so much as an issue of public policy advocacy. Scientists can and often should be among the leading advocates for rational and dedicated public policy action on issues where the science they know best is a relevant factor of that public policy discussion.

 

[macdoc]

Except when they are officially muzzled as they were in Canada until recently. Indeed they SHOULD be the voices to listen to regarding policy.

Manufactured controversy thanks to Koch and Exxon and others has made sure the vested fossil interests got the policies THEY wanted.