Climate News from the science press

BenBurch

Gatekeeper of The Left
BenBurch
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I'll be posting news articles in here as I see them. Please confine discussion to said articles or post some of your own. Not interested in blog postings, or anything more than one week old for purposes of this thread. Do not flame ware this thread. If a troll :troll posts, ignore the troll. Thank you.
 
Oceans' uptake of manmade carbon may be slowing

http://www.physorg.com/news177772960.html

The oceans play a key role in regulating climate, absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the air. Now, the first year-by-year accounting of this mechanism during the industrial era suggests the oceans are struggling to keep up with rising emissions -- a finding with potentially wide implications for future climate. The study appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature. <SNIP>
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On one hand this is bad because a natural sink is disappearing, and this will accelerate warming. On the other hand this means acidification will not be as great as feared and this will have a less negative effect on ocean biological damage.
 
Fossil fuel CO2 emissions up by 29 percent since 2000

http://www.physorg.com/news177686530.html

The strongest evidence yet that the rise in atmospheric CO2 emissions continues to outstrip the ability of the world's natural 'sinks' to absorb carbon is published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.

An international team of researchers under the umbrella of the Global Carbon Project reports that over the last 50 years the average fraction of global CO2 emissions that remained in the atmosphere each year was around 43 per cent - the rest was absorbed by the Earth's carbon sinks on land and in the oceans. During this time this fraction has likely increased from 40 per cent to 45 per cent, suggesting a decrease in the efficiency of the natural sinks. The team brings evidence that the sinks are responding to climate change and variability.

The scientists report a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008 (the latest year for which figures are available), and that in spite of the global economic downturn emissions increased by 2 per cent during 2008. The use of coal as a fuel has now surpassed oil and developing countries now emit more greenhouse gases than developed countries - with a quarter of their growth in emissions accounted for by increased trade with the West.

<SNIP>
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I whatever emissions targets they have been talking about on the inter-governmental level, we will have outstripped them by the time they are agreed upon.

Note that a consequence of this is that fossil fuel use is up almost 30 percent too, and this means the dwindling stocks of oil and high quality coal are dwindling even faster. Not a good trend!
 
PhysOrg.com) -- A new study of Antarctica's past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages (interglacials) may have been higher than previously thought. The latest analysis of ice core records suggests that Antarctic temperatures may have been up to 6°C warmer than the present day.

<SNIP>

Previous analysis of ice cores has shown that the climate consists of ice ages and warmer interglacial periods roughly every 100,000 years. This new investigation shows temperature 'spikes' within some of the interglacial periods over the last 340,000 years. This suggests Antarctic temperature shows a high level of sensitivity to greenhouse gases at levels similar to those found today.

Lead author Louise Sime of British Antarctic Survey said,
"We didn't expect to see such warm temperatures, and we don't yet know in detail what caused them. But they indicate that Antarctica's climate may have undergone rapid shifts during past periods of high CO2."
During the last warm period, about 125,000 years ago, sea level was around 5 metres higher than today.

<SNIP>
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Emphasis mine.
 
Sort of blows the 'A' out of AGW don't it?

Is there an updated graph of the glacial cycles? ('Eastern European Name' cycles?) What with the higher spikes, it would make it obvious that man didn't do them, and that man ain't the cause of this spike. And the current spike ain't all that high. Earth will survive this one too.
 
casebro said:
Sort of blows the 'A' out of AGW don't it?

Is there an updated graph of the glacial cycles? ('Eastern European Name' cycles?) What with the higher spikes, it would make it obvious that man didn't do them, and that man ain't the cause of this spike. And the current spike ain't all that high. Earth will survive this one too.
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No, it shows the sensitivity to CO2. We will get a rise equivalent to the last interglacial and ADD TO THAT fossil CO2. We can expect more extreme results. Past variability due to natural cycles is what we need to explore to understand the ramifications of an un-natural modification to atmospheric gasses.
 
Since dinosaurs were around and went extinct without anthro involvement I guess we aren't the cause of the 6th Extinction event.....:boggled:
Ever heard of a guy named Milankovitch?

Here ya go
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/milankovitch.html

Quite the application of common sense there boyo....:garfield:

•••••

snip

Record High Temperatures Far Outpace Record Lows Across US

ScienceDaily (Nov. 12, 2009) — Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.
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continues
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 121611.htm

and cooking down under too...

Two years, three record heat waves in southeastern Australia
Posted on 14 November 2009 by Barry Brook

Summer 2009 — 2010 hasn’t even begun in Australia, and yet we are already sweltering under another record heat wave — the third in two years.
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http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/11/14/three-record-heatwaves-seaust/
 
It isn't an article from the "scientific press", but it's quite impressive nonetheless:

Stagnating Temperatures
Spiegel: Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents... By Gerald Traufetter more...
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
 
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5953/716


Evaluating multicomponent climate change mitigation strategies requires knowledge of the diverse direct and indirect effects of emissions. Methane, ozone, and aerosols are linked through atmospheric chemistry so that emissions of a single pollutant can affect several species. We calculated atmospheric composition changes, historical radiative forcing, and forcing per unit of emission due to aerosol and tropospheric ozone precursor emissions in a coupled composition-climate model. We found that gas-aerosol interactions substantially alter the relative importance of the various emissions. In particular, methane emissions have a larger impact than that used in current carbon-trading schemes or in the Kyoto Protocol. Thus, assessments of multigas mitigation policies, as well as any separate efforts to mitigate warming from short-lived pollutants, should include gas-aerosol interactions.
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This found methane to be twice as large a forcing agent than assumed to date, or contained in the modelling results reported in AR4.

That means if these new findings were plugged straight into current climate models, they would revise up their modelled temperature trends over the past.

To "square the circle" again (i.e. bring the models back to track the past historical data again) some previously unidentified offsetting cooling influence is needed. One possibility:

A new or larger negative feedback exists, or a positive one needs to be revised down - e.g. via H2O/clouds etc.
 
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Here's a graph, maybe somebody can link it into this thread:

<http://www.seed.slb.com/uploadedImages/Science/Earth_Science/Global_Climate_Change_and_Energy/Related_Articles/global_temp2.jpg>

Now, per the OP, picture the peaks the six degrees higher. It sort of make the two degree modern peak insignificant.

Does it disprove global warming? No.

Does it disprove ANTHROPOGENIC global warming?
 
Do you have trouble understanding the OP? :garfield:

Current science articles. :mgbanghead

ie

El Nino intensifies Latin America drought

November 20th, 2009 in Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Some 6,000 families were affected by the drought in the Chaco region of Paraguay, particularly indigenous populations

Cracked soil and dead cows are pictured at a ranch in Chaco, Paraguay on November 18. From a devastating food crisis in Guatemala to water cuts in Venezuela, El Nino has compounded drought damage across Latin America this year.

From a devastating food crisis in Guatemala to water cuts in Venezuela, El Nino has compounded drought damage across Latin America this year.
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continues
http://www.physorg.com/print177921078.html
 
Gekko be a bit careful as methane is not cumulative.
The gain was from 25 x to 33 times C02 impact due to a mix with aerosols....so more like a 25% increase in methane's impact for a short duration.

What it does open up is the idea that mitigating methane may have more immediate real world impact on the temps in the short term and so should be looked at closely as part of a AGHG mitigation strategy.

Luckily methane drops out of play early compared to C02 which is cumulative effectively forever.

So methane increases a bad short term multiplier as they are partly due to feedback in the north but if we can offset that with some reduction of methane in agriculture ( eat kangaroo ) and industrial processes then the impact is lessened.

It in no way softens the need to get to carbon neutral right quick.
 
Oliver - that's likely in Ben's zone of acceptance tho the title is a bit of a spin.

The headache with that is it focuses on atmospheric temps which are transient compared to the changes in the total ocean heat content and the cryosphere both of which are much more massive energy sinks due to latent heat and density.

To give you a scale ...over the last 3 years Greenland's net mass loss of ice has doubled....the thermal energy to do that is approximately equivalent of our carpet bombing the the place with 8,000 Hiroshima sized nukes.....a day.:boggled:

2 million nukes a year in thermal equivalent, and that's just for Greenland...the same thermal equation applies elsewhere where long term glaciers melt.
It's enormous energy and fortunately the ocean and cryosphere buffer us from the worst of the gain.

Decadal and multi decadal oscillations of warm and cool pools in the oceans do affect air temps but are only natural variations overlaid on the steady energy gain GHG forces.
 
macdoc said:
Luckily methane drops out of play early compared to C02 which is cumulative effectively forever.
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Demonstrably false. CO2 levels rise and fall annually, as plants use it to make sugars in the warm months and stop doing so when temperatures cool. Larger cycles can be observed over geological time. A period of global glaciation 600 to 800 million years ago seems to have scrubbed CO2 from the air and replaced it with high levels of oxygen. It may be that this happened because the glaciers scraped minerals off of the earth's surface and into the oceans, causing vast algae blooms, and dumping lots of dust and dirt into the ocean to which the algae could become attached and sink to the bottom. Could fertilizing and seeding the oceans be an anthropogenic strategy for scouring the atmosphere again, if that should prove to be necessary?
 
You have an article to contribute? No - then go away. - you have no idea what you are talking about
If you say I'm wrong then prove it and overturn this or edit it out.....
The annual carbon cycle is meaningless in this context it's neutral.
Methane is shortlived in the context of GHG impact within the time frame of AGW - quit trying to pretend knowledge you've demonstrated once more you don't have.

Duration/Residence Time in the Atmosphere refers to the time a GHG stays in the atmosphere. Some GHGs are short-lived while others remain in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years. To properly asses the climate impacts of a combination of gases, the lifetime of each gas has to be taken into account. For example, the warming impacts of CO2 persist for hundreds of years, whereas the warming impacts of ozone or contrails last only days or months.
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http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/aviation/RF.html

Methane duration stay is 12 +/- 3 years and a GWP of 22 (meaning that it has 22 times ... and other greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere each year. ...
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http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Greenhouse_gases/
Now upgraded to a 33 x GWP

Carbon is forever

Carbon dioxide emissions and their associated warming could linger for millennia, according to some climate scientists. Mason Inman looks at why the fallout from burning fossil fuels could last far longer than expected.
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http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

Gekko has the grace to admit an error.....you just blunder....:mgbanghead
 
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