Climate Impacts

Climatists Deny Natural Warming Factors

Posted on by Ron Clutz

After a recent contretemps at Climate Etc. with CO2 warmists, I was again reminded how insistent are zero carbon zealots to deny multiple natural climate factors, in order to attribute all modern warming to humans burning hydrocarbons. A large part of this blindness comes from constraints dictated by the IPCC to climate model builders.  Simply put, natural causes of warming (and cooling) are systematically excluded from CIMP models for the sake of the narrative blaming humans for all climate activity: “Climate Change is real, dangerous and man-made.”  A previous post later on analyzes how models deceive by excluding natural forcings.

Let’s start with a paper that seeks objectively to consider both internal and external climate forcings, including human and natural processes.  The paper by Bokuchava & Semenov was published last October and is behind a paywall at Springer.  An open access copy is here:  Factors of natural climate variability contributing to the Early 20th Century Warming in the Arctic.  Excerpt in italics with my bolds and added images.

Abstract

The warming in the first half of the 20th century in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) (early 20th century warming (ETCW)) was comparable in magnitude to the current warming, but occurred at a time when the growth rate of the greenhouse gas (GG) concentration in the atmosphere was 4–5 times slower than in recent decades. The mechanisms of the early warming are still a subject of discussion. The ETCW was most pronounced in the high latitudes of the NH, and the recent reconstructions consistently indicate a significant negative anomaly of the Arctic sea ice area during early warming period linked with enhanced Atlantic water inflow to the Arctic and amplified warming in high latitudes of the NH.

Assessing the contributions of internal variability and external natural and anthropogenic factors to this climatic anomaly is key for understanding historical and modern climate dynamics. This paper considers mechanisms of ETCW associated with various internal variability and external anthropogenic and natural factors. An analysis of the findings on the topic of long-term studies of climate variations in the NH during the period of instrumental observations does not allow one to attribute the ETCW to one particular mechanism of internal climate variability or external forcing of the climate.

Most likely, this event was caused by a combined effect of long-term climatic fluctuations in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific with a noticeable contribution of external radiative forcing associated with a decrease in volcanic activity, changes in solar activity, and an increase in GG concentration in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic emissions. Furthermore, this climate variation in high latitudes of the NH has been enhanced by a number of positive feedbacks. An overview of existing research is given, as are the main mechanisms of internal and external climate variability in the NH in the early 20th century. Despite the fact that the internal variability of the climate system is apparently the main mechanism that explains the ETCW, the quantitative assessment of the contribution of each factor remains uncertain, since it significantly depends on the initial conditions in the models and the lack of instrumental data in the early 20th century, especially in polar latitudes.

Figure 1. 30-year moving trends in global surface air temperature
(°C / 30 years) according to Berkley dataset [4]

The main cause of the recent warming is considered to be due to the anthropogenic forcing  primarily the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration growth causing a greenhouse effect [5]. But the role of CO2 for ETCW could not be as important since this period precedes the time of the accelerating growth of radiative forcing by greenhouse gases (GHG). This GHG increase after 1950s is also inconsistent with the global SAT decline from 1940s to 1970s.

Numerical experiments with different climate model generations [6,7] show that modern warming is well reproduced when averaged over model ensembles (indicating external influence as major factor). The ETCW amplitude, despite the increasing accuracy of model simulations, still differs significantly in climate models. This may indicate the important role of internal climate variability [2], as well as the uncertainty of results of model experiments due to incorrectly specified forcing.

The majority of studies [8,9] agree that such a strong warming can be explained by a combination of internal climate system variability as quasi-periodic oscillation or random climate fluctuation with increasing global temperature in the background associated with external anthropogenic and natural forcings (increased GHGs emissions and a pause in volcanic eruptions, in particular).

This paper provides an overview of the existing hypotheses that may explain ECTW, describes the main mechanisms of internal climate variability during the twentieth century, in particular in the Arctic region.

Figure 2. Average annual SAT (°C) anomalies in the period 1900-2015,
according to Berkley observational dataset (5-year running mean), global (black curve),
Northern Hemisphere (blue curve), Southern Hemisphere (orange curve),
NH high latitudes (60°-90° N) (red curve), and NH high latitudes
without 5-yr running mean smoothing (gray curve)

Internal variability in the Arctic can be enhanced by positive radiation feedbacks [12], including surface albedo – temperature feedback, which can strongly impact the absorption of solar shortwave radiation. This mechanism manifests itself during prolonged warm periods, mainly in autumn, when a growing ice-free ocean surface with low albedo absorbs more solar radiation and warms the upper ocean layer that leads to further sea ice melting [10]. This positive radiation feedback contributes to the faster temperature increase in the Arctic. This phenomenon is now well-known as “Arctic (or Polar) Amplification”.

However, other positive feedbacks also play major roles in the Arctic Amplification. There are positive feedbacks related to long-wave radiation, for instance, an increase of water vapor content and cloud cover leads to a greenhouse effect, which is more pronounced at high latitudes [13], as well as dynamic feedbacks, which imply strengthened oceanic and atmospheric ocean heat transfer to the Arctic in the conditions of the shrinking sea ice extent [14,15].

Arctic Amplification may also be a consequence of non-local mechanisms such as enhanced northward latent heat transfer in the warmer atmosphere [16] Quasi-periodic fluctuations of North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) of 60-80 year time scale [17] suggest a possible role of oceanic heat transfer as a driver of long-term SAT anomalies in the Arctic that can be enhanced by positive feedbacks [18].

Thus, the amplitude of SST oscillations in the NH polar latitudes can be a combination of both regional response to global climate change and the formation of internal oscillations in the ocean atmosphere system.

Natural internal factors – ocean-atmosphere system variability
Atmosphere circulation variability

Figure 3. Winter Arctic (60°-90°N) SAT anomalies for according to
Berkley observations (5-year running mean) (black curve); NAO index (pink curve),
PNA index (blue curve) according to HadSLP2.0 dataset [25]

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the closely related Arctic Oscillation (AO) is the dominant mode of large-scale winter atmospheric variability in the North Atlantic, characterized by sea level pressure dipole with one center over Greenland (Icelandic minimum) and another center of the opposite sign in the North Atlantic mid latitudes (Azores maximum). NAO controls the strength and direction of westerly winds and the position of storm tracks in the North Atlantic sector, thus crucially impacting the European climate [23].

During the first two decades of the 20th century, the positive phase of NAO was expressed in a stronger than usual zonal circulation over the North Atlantic (Fig. 3). The long-term dominance of these atmospheric circulation pattern led to an advection of heat to the northeastern part of the North Atlantic. However, the NAO transition to the negative phase after 1920s and in general inconsistency between NAO and Arctic SAT variations in the first half of the 20th century do not support an hypothesis of NAO contribution to the ETCW warming [24].

The Pacific North American Oscillation index (PNA) characterizes the pressure gradient between the North Pacific (Aleutian minimum) and the East of North America (Canadian maximum) and is related to fluctuations of North Pacific zonal flow. An important feature of PNA in the context of the ETCW is that both (positive and negative) PNA phases may contribute to atmospheric heat advection to the Arctic. In the 1930s and 1950s, the negative phase (Fig. 3) led to the transfer of warm air masses to the pole across the northwestern Pacific Ocean, and the positive phase of the 1940s forced increased zonal transfer to the Western coast of Canada and Alaska [8]. PNA is strongly influenced by the Pacific Southern Oscillation (El Nino Southern Oscillation – ENSO) – the positive index phase is associated with the El Nino phenomena, and the negative with La Niña events.

Atmospheric circulation in the mid-latitudes of the Pacific Ocean may also depend on fluctuations of the Pacific trade winds [28]. The trade winds weakening is manifested in the SAT growth in Pacific mid-latitudes, which coincides on the time scale with the warming of 1910-1940s in the high Arctic latitudes and in the lowering of temperatures during the cooling period between 1940s and 1970s when the strength of the trade winds had been increasing.

Ocean circulation variability

Figure 4. Winter Arctic (60°-90°N) SAT anomalies according to
Berkley dataset (5-year running mean, black curve); AMO index (pink curve),
PDO index (blue curve) according to HadiSST2.0 dataset [37]

Arctic Amplification in the 20th century, including ETCW period can be associated not only with an increase of atmospheric heat transport, but also with an enhancement of ocean heat inflow in the North Atlantic to the extratropical latitudes of the NH from its equatorial part [30].

Instrumental data show that SST variability in the North Atlantic during the 20th century was dominated by cyclic fluctuations on time scales of 50-80 years, showing two warm periods in the 1930s-1940s and at the end of the 20th century and two cold periods in the beginning of the century and in the 1960s-1970s. SST oscillations in the North Atlantic are called Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The observational data also indicate AMO-like cycles in the Arctic SAT (Fig. 4).

Paleo-reconstructions of AMO [33] demonstrate that strong, low-frequency (60-100 years) SSTnvariability is a robust feature of the North Atlantic climate over the past five centuries. There are also indications of a significant correlation between Arctic sea ice area and AMO index including a sharp change during ECTW period [34].

There is another pronounced internal climate variability that may act synchronously with AMO. This is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which reflects a variability of the Pacific SSTs north of 20° N and has 20-40 years periodicity [35]. PDO might have played an equally important role in the heat advection to the Arctic in the middle of the century. Several current studies [36,29] suggest the synchronous phase shift of AMO and PDO largely contributed to the accelerated Arctic warming, both the ongoing and ETCW.

Сonclusions

Understanding the mechanisms of ETCW and subsequent cooling is a key to determine the relative contribution of internal natural variability to global climate change on multi-decadal time scale. Studies of climate changes in high latitudes in the mid-twentieth century allows us to identify a number of possible mechanisms involving natural variability and positive feedbacks in the Arctic climate system that may partially explain ETCW.

Based on the recent literature it can be concluded that internal oceanic variability, together with additional impact of natural atmospheric circulation variations are important factors for ETCW. Recently, a number of results indicating the Pacific Ocean as a source of multidecadal fluctuation both on a global scale and in high latitudes has increased. Howewer, assessment of a relative contribution to ETCW in the Atlantic and Pacific sectors remains uncertain.

Climate model simulations [9,43,44] argue that the internal variability of the ocean-atmosphere system cannot explain the entire amplitude of temperature fluctuations in the first half of the 20th century as a single factor, and must act in combination with external forcings (solar and volcanic activity), positive feedbacks in the Arctic climate system, and anthropogenic factors. Quantifying the contribution of each factor still remains a matter of debate.

Climate Deception:  Models Hide the Paleo Incline

Figure 1. Anthropgenic and natural contributions. (a) Locked scaling factors, weak Pre Industrial Climate Anomalies (PCA). (b) Free scaling, strong PCA

In  2009, the iconic email from the Climategate leak included a comment by Phil Jones about the “trick” used by Michael Mann to “hide the decline,” in his Hockey Stick graph, referring to tree proxy temperatures  cooling rather than warming in modern times.  Now we have an important paper demonstrating that climate models insist on man-made global warming only by hiding the incline of natural warming in Pre-Industrial times.  The paper is From Behavioral Climate Models and Millennial Data to AGW Reassessment by Philippe de Larminat.  H/T No Tricks Zone. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Abstract

Context. The so called AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming), is based on thousands of climate simulations indicating that human activity is virtually solely responsible for the recent global warming. The climate models used are derived from the meteorological models used for short-term predictions. They are based on the fundamental and empirical physical laws that govern the myriad of atmospheric and oceanic cells integrated by the finite element technique. Numerical approximations, empiricism and the inherent chaos in fluid circulations make these models questionable for validating the anthropogenic principle, given the accuracy required (better than one per thousand) in determining the Earth energy balance.

Aims and methods. The purpose is to quantify and simulate behavioral models of weak complexity, without referring to predefined parameters of the underlying physical laws, but relying exclusively on generally accepted historical and paleoclimate series.

Results. These models perform global temperature simulations that are consistent with those from the more complex physical models. However, the repartition of contributions in the present warming depends strongly on the retained temperature reconstructions, in particular the magnitudes of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. It also depends on the level of the solar activity series. It results from these observations and climate reconstructions that the anthropogenic principle only holds for climate profiles assuming almost no PCA neither significant variations in solar activity. Otherwise, it reduces to a weak principle where global warming is not only the result of human activity, but is largely due to solar activity.

Discussion

GCMs (short acronym for AOCGM: Atmosphere Ocean General Circulation Models, or for Global Climate model) are fed by series related to climate drivers. Some are of human origin: fossil fuel combustion, industrial aerosols, changes in land use, condensation trails, etc. Others are of natural origin: solar and volcanic activities, Earth’s orbital parameters, geomagnetism, internal variability generated by atmospheric and oceanic chaos. These drivers, or forcing factors, are expressed in their own units: total solar irradiance (W m–2), atmospheric concentrations of GHG (ppm), optical depth of industrial or volcanic aerosols (dimless), oceanic indexes (ENSO, AMO…), or by annual growth rates (%). Climate scientists have introduced a metric in order to characterize the relative impact of the different climate drivers on climate change. This metric is that of radiative forcings (RF), designed to quantify climate drivers through their effects on the terrestrial radiation budget at the top of the atmosphere (TOA).

However, independently of the physical units and associated energy properties of the RFs, one can recognize their signatures in the output and deduce their contributions. For example, volcanic eruptions are identifiable events whose contributions can be quantified without reference to either their assumed radiative forcings, or to physical modeling of aerosol diffusion in the atmosphere. Similarly, the Preindustrial Climate Anomalies (PCA) gathering the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA), shows a profile similar to that of the solar forcing reconstructions. Per the methodology proposed in this paper, the respective contributions of the RF inputs are quantified through behavior models, or black-box models.

Now, Figures 1-a and 1-b presents simulations obtained from the models identified under two different sets of assumptions, detailed in sections 6 and 7 respectively.

Figure 1. Anthropgenic and natural contributions. (a) Locked scaling factors, weak Pre Industrial Climate Anomalies (PCA). (b) Free scaling, strong PCA

In both cases, the overall result for the global temperature simulation (red) fits fairly well with the observations (black).  Curves also show the forcing contributions to modern warming (since 1850). From this perspective, the natural (green) and anthropogenic (blue) contributions are in strong contradiction between panels (a) and (b). This incompatibility is at the heart of our work.

Simulations in panel (a) are calculated per section 6, where the scaling multipliers planned in the model are locked to unity, so that the radiative forcing inputs are constrained to strictly comply with the IPCC quantification. The remaining parameters of the black-box model are adjusted in order to minimize the deviation between the observations (black curve) and the simulated outputs (red). Per these assumptions, the resulting contributions (blue vs. green) comply with the AGW principle. Also, the conformity of the results with those of the CMIP supports the validity of the type of behavioral model adopted for our simulations.

Paleoclimate Temperatures

Although historically documented the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA) don’t make consensus about their amplitudes and geographic extensions [2, 3]. In Fig. 7.1-c of the First Assessment Report of IPCC, a reconstruction from showed a peak PCA amplitude of about 1.2 °C [4]. Then later on, a reconstruction by the so-called ‘hockey stick graph’, was reproduced five times in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001), wherein there was no longer any significant MWP [5].

After, 2003 controversies reference to this reconstruction had disappeared from subsequent IPCC reports:it is not included among the fifteen paleoclimate reconstructions covering the millennium period listed in the fifth report (AR5, 2013) [6]. Nevertheless, AR6 (2021) revived a hockey stick graph reconstruction from a consortium initiated by a network “PAst climate chanGES” [7,8]. The IPCC assures (AR6, 2.3.1.1.2): “this synthesis is generally in agreement with the AR5 assessment”.

Figure 2 below puts this claim into perspective. It shows the fifteen reconstructions covering the preindustrial period accredited by the IPCC in AR5 (2013, Fig. 5.7 to 5.9, and table 5.A.6), compiled (Pangaea database) by [7]. Visibly, the claimed agreement of the PAGES2k reconstruction (blue) with the AR5 green lines does not hold.

Figure 2. Weak and strong preindustrial climate anomalies, respectively from AR5 (2013) in green and AR6 (2021) in blue.

Conclusion

In section 8 above, a set of consistent climate series is explored, from which solar activity appears to be the main driver of climate change. To eradicate this hypothesis, the anthropogenic principle requires four simultaneous assessments:

♦  A strong anthropogenic forcing, able to account for all of the current warming.
♦  A low solar forcing.
♦  A low internal variability.
♦  The nonexistence of significant pre-industrial climate anomalies, which could indeed be explained by strong solar forcing or high internal variability.

None of these conditions is strongly established, neither by theoretical knowledge nor by historical and paleoclimatic observations. On the contrary, our analysis challenges them through a weak complexity model, fed by accepted forcing profiles, which are recalibrated owning to climate observations. The simulations show that solar activity contributes to current climate warming in proportions depending on the assessed pre-industrial climate anomalies.

Therefore, adherence to the anthropogenic principle requires that when reconstructing climate data, the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age be reduced to nothing, and that any series of strongly varying solar forcing be discarded. 

Background on Disappearing Paleo Global Warming

The first graph appeared in the IPCC 1990 First Assessment Report (FAR) credited to H.H.Lamb, first director of CRU-UEA. The second graph was featured in 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) the famous hockey stick credited to M. Mann.

Rise and Fall of the Modern Warming Spike

 

Good News About Our Climate

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Good News about Climate Change by Judith Curry

Is climate change an existential crisis? Judith Curry, former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has spent her career studying this question. Her answer might surprise you.

A good and recent example of climate and energy realism.

Transcript

Let’s start with the good news.

All things considered, planet Earth is doing fine. In fact, humans are doing better than at any other time in history.  Over the last hundred years, when temperatures have warmed by about two degrees Fahrenheit:

Global population has increased by 6 billion people…

While Global poverty has substantially declined.

And the number of people killed from weather disasters has decreased by 97% on a per capita basis.

We are obviously not facing an existential crisis.

Anyone who tells you that we are is not paying attention to the historical data.  Instead, they are concerned about what “might” happen in the future, based on predictions from inadequate climate models, driven by unrealistic assumptions.

I offer this positive diagnosis after a lifetime of study on the issue. Until recently, I was a professor of climate science and Chair of the  School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

But it’s not all good news.

The biggest problem with climate change is not climate change, per se, it’s how we’re dealing with it.

We’re attempting to control the uncontrollable, at great cost, by urgently eliminating fossil fuels. We’ve failed to properly place the risks from climate change in context of other challenges the world is facing.

Climate change has become a convenient scapegoat.  As a result, we’re neglecting the real causes of these problems.

There are countless examples, but let me give you just one.

Lake Chad in Africa is shrinking. Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari blames it on you-know-what. “Climate change,” he pronounced, “is largely responsible for the drying up of Lake Chad…”

But it’s not.

Yes, the initial water level decline was caused by long droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. But the lake has remained virtually empty over the past two decades, even while rainfall has recovered. During this time, rivers flowing into the lake from Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria have been diverted by government agencies to irrigate inefficient rice farms.

In short, climate change has little to do with the declining water level of Lake Chad. Instead, bad human decisions are the cause. Climate Change is just a convenient excuse, hiding poor management and governance.

Blaming every major weather disaster on man-made global warming defies common sense, as well as the historical data record.

For the past 50 years, the global climate has been fairly benign. In the US, the worst heat waves, droughts, and hurricane landfalls occurred in the 1930s—much worse than anything we’ve experienced so far in the 21st century.

Population growth, where and how people live, and how governments manage resources are much more likely to create conditions for a disaster than the climate itself. We’ve always had hurricanes, droughts, and floods, and we always will.

Maybe you think I’m being too cavalier about the dangers we face. Isn’t it true that 97% of scientists agree that humans are causing dangerous climate change?

Well, here’s what all climate scientists actually agree on:

•  The average global surface temperature has increased over the last 150 years.

•  Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

•  And carbon dioxide emissions have a warming effect on the planet.

However, climate scientists disagree about the most consequential issues:

•  How much warming is associated with our emissions

•  Whether this warming is larger than natural climate variability.

•  And how much the climate will change in the future.

There’s a lot that we still don’t understand about how the climate works.  Ocean circulation patterns and variations in clouds have a large impact. But climate models do a poor job of predicting these.  Variations in the sun and volcanic eruptions also have a substantial impact, but these are simply unpredictable.

The fact is, we can’t predict the future climate. It’s simply not possible. And everybody should acknowledge that. And every scientist does.

While humans do influence the climate, we can’t control the climate. To think we can is the height of hubris, the Greek word for overconfidence.

What we can do is adapt to whatever Mother Nature throws our way. Human beings have a long history of being very good at that. We can build sea walls, we can better manage our water resources, and implement better disaster warning and management protocols.

These are things we can control.

If we focus on that, there’s every reason to be optimistic about our future.

I’m Judith Curry for Prager University.

Footnote:  Dr. Curry deals with alarmist pushback at her blog:

Fact checking the fact checkers on my Prager U video

Doomsday Glacier 2024 Hot News (again)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

With the potential to raise global sea levels, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier has been widely nicknamed the ‘Doomsday Glacier’

Climate alarmists are known to recycle memes to frighten the public into supporting their agenda. The climate news control desk calls the plays and the media fills the air and print with the scare du jour.

‘Doomsday glacier’ rapid melt could lead to higher sea level rise than thought: study
Vancouver Sun on MSN.com (3 hours ago)

Thwaites ‘Doomsday Glacier’ in Antarctica is melting much faster than predicted
USA Today (10 hours ago)

For the first time, there’s visual evidence warm sea water is pushing under doomsday glacier: Study
CBC.ca  (11 hours ago)

‘Doomsday Glacier’ Explained: Why Scientists Believe It Predicts Devastating Sea Levels—Which Might Happen Faster Than Thought
Forbes on MSN.com (4 days ago)

Scientists worry so-called “Doomsday Glacier” is near collapse, satellite data reveals
Yahoo (2 days ago)

The doomsday glacier is undergoing “vigorous ice melt” that could reshape sea level rise projections
CBS News on MSN.com (3 days ago)

We’ve underestimated the ‘Doomsday’ glacier – and the consequences could be devastating
The Independent on MSN.com (4 days ago)

Etc., Etc., Etc.,

This torrent of concern was on the front burner in 2022, rested for awhile, and now it’s back.  Below is what you need to know and not be bamboozled.

OMG! Doomsday Glacier Melting. Again.

Climate alarms often involve big numbers in far away places threatening you in your backyard.  Today’s example of such a scare comes from Daily Mail  Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is melting at the fastest rate for 5,500 YEARS – and could raise global sea levels by up to 11 FEET, study warns.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

‘Although these vulnerable glaciers were relatively stable during the past few millennia, their current rate of retreat is accelerating and already raising global sea level,’ said Dr Dylan Rood of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, who co-authored the study.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is home to the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers, and has been thinning over the past few decades amid rising global temperatures.  The Thwaites glacier currently measures 74,131 square miles (192,000 square kilometres) – around the same size as Great Britain.  Meanwhile, at 62,662 square miles (162,300 square kilometres), the Pine Island glacier is around the same size as Florida.  Together, the pair have the potential to cause enormous rises in global sea level as they melt.

‘These currently elevated rates of ice melting may signal that those vital arteries from the heart of the WAIS have been ruptured, leading to accelerating flow into the ocean that is potentially disastrous for future global sea level in a warming world,’ Dr Rood said.

‘We now urgently need to work out if it’s too late to stop the bleeding.’

On the Contrary

From Volcano Active Foundation:  West Antarctica hides almost a hundred volcanoes under the ice:

The colossal West Antarctic ice sheet hides what appears to be the largest volcanic region on the planet, according to the results of a study carried out by researchers at the University of Edinburgh (UK) and reported in the journal Geological Society.

Experts have discovered as many as 91 volcanoes under Antarctic ice, the largest of which is as high as Switzerland’s Eiger volcano, rising 3,970 meters above sea level.

“We found 180 peaks, but we discounted 50 because they didn’t match the other data,” explains Robert Bingham, co-author of the paper. They eventually found 138 peaks under the West Antarctic ice sheet, including 47 volcanoes already known because their peaks protrude through the ice, leaving the figure of 91 newly discovered.

Source: volcanofoundation with glacier locations added

The media narrative blames glacier changes on a “warming world,” code for our fault for burning fossil fuels.  And as usual, it is lying by omission.  Researcher chaam jamal explains in his article A Climate Science Obsession with the Thwaites Glacier.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

It appears that costly and sophisticated research by these very dedicated climate scientists has made the amazing discovery that maps the deep channels on the seafloor bathymetry by which warm water reaches the underside of the Thwaites glacier and thus explains how this Doomsday glacier melts.

Yet another consideration, not given much attention in this research, is the issue not of identifying the channels by which the deep ocean waters flow to the bottom of the Doomsday Glacier, but of identifying the source of the heat that makes the water warm. Only if that source of heat is anthropogenic global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions that can be moderated by taking climate action, can the observed melt at the bottom of the Thwaites glacier be attributed to AGW climate change.

However, no such finding is made in this research project possibly because these researchers know, as do most researchers who study Antarctica, that this region of Antarctica is extremely geologically active. It is located directly above the West Antarctic Rift system with 150 active volcanoes on the sea floor and right in the middle of the Marie Byrd Mantle Plume with hot magma seeping up from the mantle.

Ralph Alexander updates the situation in 2022 with his article No Evidence That Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica Is about to Collapse.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Contrary to recent widespread media reports and dire predictions by a team of earth scientists, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier – the second fastest melting glacier on the continent – is not on the brink of collapse. The notion that catastrophe is imminent stems from a basic misunderstanding of ice sheet dynamics in West Antarctica.

Because the ice shelf already floats on the ocean, collapse of the shelf itself and release of a flotilla of icebergs wouldn’t cause global sea levels to rise. But the researchers argue that loss of the ice shelf would speed up glacier flow, increasing the contribution to sea level rise of the Thwaites Glacier – often dubbed the “doomsday glacier” – from 4% to 25%.

But such a drastic scenario is highly unlikely, says geologist and UN IPCC expert reviewer Don Easterbrook. The misconception is about the submarine “grounding” of the glacier terminus, the boundary between the glacier and its ice shelf extending out over the surrounding ocean, as illustrated in the next figure.

A glacier is not restrained by ice at its terminus. Rather, the terminus is established by a balance between ice gains from snow accumulation and losses from melting and iceberg calving. The removal of ice beyond the terminus will not cause unstoppable collapse of either the glacier or the ice sheet behind it.

Other factors are important too, one of which is the source area of Antarctic glaciers. Ice draining into the Thwaites Glacier is shown in the right figure above in dark green, while ice draining into the Pine Island glacier is shown in light green; light and dark blue represent ice draining into the Ross Sea to the south of the two glaciers.

The two glaciers between them drain only a relatively small portion of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the total width of the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers constitutes only about 170 kilometers (100 miles) of the 4,000 kilometers (2,500) miles of West Antarctic coastline.

Of more importance are possible grounding lines for the glacier terminus. The retreat of the present grounding line doesn’t mean an impending calamity because, as Easterbrook points out, multiple other grounding lines exist. Although the base of much of the West Antarctic ice sheet, including the Thwaites glacier, lies below sea level, there are at least six potential grounding lines above sea level, as depicted in the following figure showing the ice sheet profile. A receding glacier could stabilize at any of these lines, contrary to the claims of the recent research study.

As can be seen, the deepest parts of the subglacial basin lie beneath the central portion of the ice sheet where the ice is thickest. What is significant is the ice thickness relative to its depth below sea level. While the subglacial floor at its deepest is 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) below sea level, almost all the subglacial floor in the above profile is less than 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) below the sea. Since the ice is mostly more than 2,500 meters (8,200 ft) thick, it couldn’t float in 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) of water anyway.

2024 Hurricane GWO Predictions

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From the Press Release February 1, 2024

2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season – will be very active
with 20 Named Storms and 6 landfall Hot-Spots.

Tampa-Ocala, Florida, United States, February 1, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ —

The Atlantic Hurricane Seasons have been extremely active since 2016 – and will continue to be abnormally active for the next several years. This is not due to a global warming cycle – but instead– it is due to the naturally occurring Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) that enhances a cyclical ClimatePulse Cycle.

During the current AMO warm ocean cycle (warmest portion in 2016), the United States has experienced 40 named storms making landfall, with 20 of them being hurricanes – 9 of which were major hurricane landfalls. This very active hurricane cycle – will likely continue for another 10 years.

What Should We Expect in 2024

An average hurricane season has 12-13 named storms and 6 hurricanes. The combination of the AMO warm ocean water cycle, favorable atmospheric conditions, and the enhanced ClimatePulse Cycle – will provide favorable conditions for a very active and destructive hurricane season in 2024.

Professor David Dilley is predicting 20 named storms, 8 hurricanes with 3 to 4 of them being major hurricanes. The United States and Caribbean will have 6 Hot-Spots with 3 to 4 United States hurricane landfalls expected, and 1 or 2 in the Caribbean. In addition, there is the potential for 1 or 2 major hurricane landfalls.

GWO’s Hot-Spot Predictions 2023

Background Post: David Dilley: Signals of Global Cooling

Tom Nelson interviewed David Dilley last month and the video is above.  For those who prefer reading I provide below a transcript from the closed captions, along with the key exhibits from the presentation.

Synopsis: Between the two oceans cooling down and the natural global cooling cycle coming down we’re going to see a big dip in the temperatures worldwide during the next 10, 15 years. The cold cycle’s going to take about 20 years to bottom out. We’re going to be in an extremely cold period during that time, colder than the 1960s and 50s here in the United States. So it’s going to be very cold.

TN: I have David Dilly here, and David could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

DD: I’m a meteorologist, climatologist, for which I have about 52 years of experience, and I’m still trying to figure that out because I’m only 30 years old. But but I’ve been in the business a long time. I was a weather officer in the Air Force in the National Weather Service. Then I left to set up my own company called Global Weather Oscillations; the easiest way to remember it is global weather cycles.com.

So we’re going to take a look today at something that NOAA is really talking about: the Carbon Dioxide and Climate Cycles. They’re just talking about today’s carbon dioxide values as far as the fossil fuel is concerned. You’re not going to see this out there anywhere on the web. It’s 78% of the atmospheric gases is nitrogen of all things, 21% is oxygen, 0.9 is argon that is 99.99 percent the atmospheric gases. That doesn’t leave much that’s just about all of what we call dry air. To be non-dry air includes the greenhouse gases. The greenhouse gases now are variable regarding how much of it is water vapor how much of it is carbon dioxide. Water vapor is anywhere from one to four percent of the atmospheric gases, that’s quite a bit. It can be zero percent of the Arctic and Antarctic because that’s a desert, but it can be all the way up to four percent. So one to four percent we’ll say.

Carbon dioxide of all things it’s a trace gas it’s less than .05%, a lot less than than water vapor. less than .05 now to put it in perspective, let’s just look at the greenhouse gases here and what we see is water vapor we’re gonna do the average of it two percent that’s 20 000 parts per million. Natural carbon dioxide what I’m going to show you later on in the presentation is 380 parts per million.

Now NOAA and the IPCC say it (natural CO2) is down around 285 parts per million,
we’re going to show you that’s false.

And so the natural is point zero four percent of the atmospheric gases, while fossil fuel I’m going to show you it’s only 35 parts per million; that’s point zero zero four percent or four one thousands of a one percent. And do you think that can cause climate change?

Of course not.  We go down to Vostok in the Antarctic and there is a very deep frozen lake where they drill down fifteen thousand eight five hundred and eighty eight feet down to the bottom. That’s a long ways down over 500 000 years. So I take core samples and with the core samples they figure out how how much it is carbon dioxide what the temperatures are. These are approximate, but what they they get from a core sample is a an estimate of the temperatures and carbon dioxide during the past 500 000 years.

If we go back say 450 000 years, the red line is temperature. So what happened, we came quickly just in a few thousand years out of a deep Ice Age into a interglacial warm period. You can see the temperatures really slid up and the ice cores estimate the carbon dioxide to be right around 280 parts per million. Then we slide down out of the warm period into a deep Ice Age and you can see that the carbon dioxide is actually staying up high there. If carbon dioxide caused global warming, why did the temperatures drop; it does not make sense.

Eventually the carbon dioxide goes down because it’s being absorbed by the oceans. The oceans keep absorbing it over the course of a hundred thousand years. Then when you come up on your next interglacial warm period 338 000 years ago, the temperature goes up and the carbon dioxide is released from the oceans back into the atmosphere. And you can see the carbon dioxide lags behind the temperature rise and actually when you hit the peak of the temperature back 338 000 years ago, the carbon dioxide does not Peak out until 7000 years later. It takes quite a while but carbon dioxide peaked out at 298 parts per million. But look at that temperature then dropping quickly into an ice age while carbon dioxide is at its peak.

That’s proof right there the carbon dioxide does not cause global warming.

As we come over on the right hand side of the graphic this is about 18 000 years ago. It’s 11 000 years ago we came out of the glacial period, we warmed up quickly, we got up to about to 190 parts per million.

Then we started to take records in Hawaii in the 1950s and the instruments there said: Wow, all of a sudden now we’re up to 412 parts per million. We’ve never been that high before.  This is what we’re going to investigate: what is going on with the glacial periods and also the core samples. This is a graphic of the carbon dioxide. The peak of The inter glacial warm periods is every 120 000 years ago we’re going back 800 000 years.

Now do we have other research that will confirm what I’m saying. This is about a year ago and they’ve been adding papers to it and this corrects NOAA’s calculations of the rise in carbon dioxide since 1850. It’s in a radiation safety Journal Health physics journal and this is the name of the paper itself. The authors are professors of radiological Sciences. They’re retired and that’s a big thing because if you’re not retired, if you’re at a university, you can’t do research like this because of federal grants and everything. You have to wait until you’re retired and then you can do real science when they were working they were at the department of physics at University of Massachusetts. It’s Kenneth Skrable, George Chabot, and Clayton French and here is what they found.

This is extremely important. Since 1850 the red here is saying the increase due to fossil fuel,  and they’re showing all of that is the increase due to fossil fuel. Now how do we determine that well up on a high mountain in Hawaii we have a infrared spectrometer since 1958 it’s been been taking measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide. However three Isotopes of Carbon are 12, 13 and 14. and the spectrometer is taking the total of all three. It’s not separating what is natural from what is fossil fuel.

Because the ice core samples say we’ve never been above 300 parts per million
NOAA is assuming that the rise above 300 parts per million is all fossil fuel.

An assumption is all it is. It’s assumed by trying to take averages of how much CO2 is taken back in by the oceans how much of it is a given not from industry. Taking those assumptions some physicists made a formula to determine how much is fossil fuel and how much is natural going back all the way back to 1750. These red lines again are what NOAA says is the increase by fossil fuel.

Well their formula separates the carbon 12, 13 and 14 to determine what is what and this is their findings as I switched everything over to green. Green is the natural increase in carbon dioxide all the way up to 1958. Now remember it’s a paper going back to 2018, but it says the increase has been from 280 parts per million up to 408 and NOAA says it is all from fossil fuel. This research paper says No, it is nearly 80% natural just like what I showed on my formulations, eighty percent natural, onlyabout 20% industrial. That’s not enough to cause climate change.

[Note: My synopsis of Skrable et al. is On CO2 Sources and Isotopes.]

Now I’m going to show you one last paper that will also verify the findings and this is using a different method fossilized plant leaflets and as you can see in this picture there’s little cells in there they call these stomata cells which are like the lungs in a human being. So they look at the fossilized plant leaflets and unlike the ice core samples where you’re taking an average over one thousand or four thousand years, the fossilized plant leaflets can give you the exact year going back the past thousand years so you can determine each year what is going on.

So the stomata cells are like the lungs in a human being or in animals but he’d found that if the leaflet has a lot of stomata cells it means a lot less carbon dioxide in the air at that time. When CO2 is plentiful, plants don’t need more oxygen lung power to get the carbon dioxide; if it has fewer cells that means there was a lot of carbon dioxide in the air.

And the beautiful thing about plant life taking in carbon dioxide is the byproduct is oxygen which we drastically need. What the plant stomata cells show during the past 1200 years: back in 800 A.D it says we were way up to 375 parts per million natural carbon dioxide and then dipped way down to 325 in one thousand A.D. Then it dipped way down to 230 and it dipped up down, up down, up down up, down. In year 2010 it was up at 375 parts per million.

Let’s look at the plant stomata that could be pretty darn real and also if you take a mean value of the plant stomata over the course of a thousand years you come out 301 parts per million. The main value of ice cores over a thousand year period 297 parts per million really darn close to being the same as now. Let’s take the plant stomata readings of the atmospheric carbon dioxide and overlay it onto our global warming and cooling Cycles during the past 1200 years. We have had six global warming Cycles during the past 1200 years as noted here in the red. This is back around 850 A.D and then you can see it cools down then we warm up again, cool down warm up cool way down and so on for six global warming cycles. People don’t talk about that but we have had six of them.

When we overlay the plant stomata atmospheric carbon dioxide, guess what: We see a perfect fit. The high values in carbon dioxide peak on global warming cycles, so that brings a lot more credibility into the plants stomata cells for recording carbon dioxide.

So putting it all together we since 1850 NOAA and the IPCC say that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is 100% due to fossil fuel and human activity. The three studies I just showed you and the corrections I made on the ice core samples all show it’s 80% natural rise. Far too little fossil fuel effects to cause climate change, it is almost all natural.

Here we are today over here on the right the average is a global cooling cycle comes about every 230 years and the global cooling cycles last for a good 100, 150 years. So here we are right now, average for the return of the global cooling cycle is 230 years and the last global cooling cycle began in 1794. Add 230 to that and you calculate the year 2024.

This is 2023. so we should be sliding into a global cooling cycle, a natural global cooling cycle.

And we have signals that it is beginning. Global warming Cycles begin in the Arctic and the Antarctic when they warm up over the course of 20, 30 years or so. And as the Arctic and Antarctic warm up there’s less cold air available through the mid-latitudes. So over time the mid-latitudes warm up so that’s where global warming spreads.

In the next phase, global cooling also begins at the Arctic and the Antarctic.

What has happened just this past year, the spring and summer in the Arctic was the coldest on record. You had that during a global warming period, so that’s a signal that the Arctic is drastically cooling down. In 2021 the Antarctic had the coldest winter on record. How you have two records like that if you’re not sliding into global cooling? There’s more cold air available and it’s going to cool down the mid-latitudes and that starts our global cooling cycle. And we’re coming into that right now. Winter 2020 was a third coldest January and February on record from Alaska through Central Northern Canada into Greenland.  Antarctica as I indicated winter of 2021 coldest on record. Arctic 2022 coldest spring and summer on record since 1958, and the most Arctic Ice extent in 8 to 16 years. 

The real main point is carbon dioxide increase is mainly natural, it is not causing a global warming cycle. It’s a natural global warming cycle and we’re sliding back into a natural global cooling cycle.

TN: If you had to make a prediction what would you think of the cooling between now and 2050. Do you think it will cool between now and 2050 are you fairly confident?

DD: Actually we’re going to see a pretty good cool down here into January. The whole atmospheric circulation is beginning to change the La Nina out in the Pacific is now fading it’s going to be gone here by mid to end of January, and we can see changes in the atmospheric circulation going on now.
The cold air in Canada is going to start making its way down more into the United States during late January.

For this year we do see the drastic change and what we’re going to see really well through 2050 or so. The IPCC and NOAA say that the oceans are going to rise anywhere from eight to 26 inches during that time period. I say it may rise an inch, maybe not even that much because we’re going into a global cooling cycle now. The poles are cooling down.

Pacific Ocean has phases going back to the year 1580. For past 500 years we’ve seen these warm phase and cold phase Cycles in the Pacific Ocean which last for anywhere from about 25 to 40 years. The Pacific has been in a 40-year warm cycle which ties the record going back uh 500 years. Pacific is sliding into a cold or a cool phase ocean water cycle, and that’s going to help to cool down ,especially up around Alaska. And the Atlantic Ocean will be going into a cool phase of its own right after 2030 or so.

Between the two oceans cooling down and the natural global cooling cycle coming in
 we’re going to see a big dip in the temperatures worldwide during the next 10 to 15 years.

The global warming cycle took about a 20-year period to peek out warming from about the year 2000 up to about 2021 so it took 20 years to hit the peak; the cold cycle is going to take about 20 years to bottom out also at the coldest and that’s going to be around 2040 or so. Unitil the late 2030s so we’re going to be in an extremely cold period during that time, colder than the 1960s and 50s here in the United States.

TN: Is there any sort of a simple explanation as to what causes that 230 year cycle that you mentioned?

DD: The simple explanation is our glacial periods and interglatial periods become about every 120 000 years are due to the Earth path around the Sun; where the Earth swings out further away from the Sun and also the tilt of the earth also changes.

New data out is showing that we’ve actually been cooling down during the past five to six years. So this is all looking like we are already going gradually into a global cooling Cycle. But we’re going to see a more dramatic change in the cooling cycle.

What NOAA and IPCC are doing, their science is political science while we’re looking here today at real science. There’s a huge difference. Keep your eyes open the next few years and all of a sudden in a few years people are going to be saying: Wait a minute, what are we doing here? We’re down the wrong path we need to wake up.

Comment:

The underlying issue is the assumption that the future can only be warmer than the present. Once you accept the notion that CO2 makes the earth’s surface warmer (an unproven conjecture), then temperatures can only go higher since CO2 keeps rising. The present plateau in temperatures is inconvenient, but actual cooling would directly contradict the CO2 doctrine. Some excuses can be fabricated for a time, but an extended period of cooling undermines the whole global warming mantra.

It’s not a matter of fearing a new ice age. That will come eventually, according to our planet’s history, but the warning will come from increasing ice extent in the Northern Hemisphere. Presently infrastructures in many places are not ready to meet a return of 1950s weather, let alone something unprecedented.

Public policy must include preparations for cooling since that is the greater hazard. Cold harms the biosphere: plants, animals and humans. And it is expensive and energy intensive to protect life from the ravages of cold. Society can not afford to be in denial about the prospect of the current temperature plateau ending with cooling.

Background Post: By the Numbers: CO2 Mostly Natural

See Also: What If It’s Global Cooling, Not Warming?

Climatism Substitutes for Solving Problems

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Cambridge professor Mike Hulme explains in an interview with Daily Mail Why climate change ISN’T going to end the world and why we need to stop obsessing about net-zero.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  H\T John Ray

Young people are terrified that climate change will destroy Earth by the time they grow up, but the world is not actually ending, argues Cambridge professor Mike Hulme.

Humanity is not teetering on a cliff’s edge, he says,
at risk of imminent catastrophe if we don’t reach
net-zero carbon emissions by a certain date.

And he has made it his mission to call out the people who claim we are. In his most recent book, Climate Change Isn’t Everything, Hulme argued that belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology.

Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, dubs this ideology ‘climatism,’ and he argues that it can distort the way society approaches the world’s ills, placing too much focus on slowing Earth from warming.

The problem, he said, is this narrow focus takes attention away from
other important moral, ethical, and political objectives –
like helping people in the developing world rise out of poverty.

DailyMail.com spoke with Hulme about why he thinks climatism is a problem, how it should be balanced out, and what keeps him hopeful about the future of humanity.

As with other ‘isms’ – like cubism or romanticism – ideologies provide a way of thinking about things, explained Hulme.  ‘They’re like spectacles that help us to make sense of the world, according to a predefined framework or structure,’ he said

To be clear, Hulme does not claim that all ideologies are wrong.  ‘We all need ideologies, and we all have them – whether you’re a Marxist or a nationalist, you’re likely to hold an ideology of some form or other,’ he added.

As Hulme sees it, many journalists, advocates, and casual observers of climate change have become devotees of climatism, inaccurately attributing many events that happen in the world as being caused by climate change.

He gives the examples of a fire, flood, or damaging hurricane.  ‘No matter how complex a particular causal chain might be, it’s a very convenient shorthand to say, ‘Oh, well, this was caused by climate change,” Hulme said.

‘It’s a very shallow and simplistic way, I would argue,
to try to describe events that are happening in the world.’

Researchers have shown that warming oceans do lead to more frequent and more severe storms: Twice as many cyclones now become category 4 or 5 as they did in the 1970s, scientists have found, and Atlantic storms are three times as likely to become hurricanes.

Hulme doesn’t argue that the effects of climate change are not happening, though, just that stopping climate change won’t stop disasters from happening altogether.

‘Fundamentally, we’re going to have to deal with hurricanes, and
we’re not going to deal with them just by cutting our carbon emissions.’ 

The solutions, he argues, will include better forecasting, better early warning systems, better emergency plans, and better infrastructure.  ‘There are all sorts of things that we can do to minimize the risks and dangers of hurricanes, that are way more effective in the short term than trying to cut our carbon emissions,’ said Hulme.

The danger of climatism, he pointed out, is that it leads people down a false chain of events: If all of these things happening in the world are caused by climate change, then all we have to do is stop climate change, and all the other things will stop themselves.

‘And that clearly is a very inadequate way of thinking about the complexities of most of the problems we we face in the world today.’  This distorted thinking can make people forget about other important concerns, he argues.

As an example, Hulme points to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 17 areas that the world’s governments have identified as top priorities for humanity.  The SDGs include building peace and justice, eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, and ensuring clean sanitation and water for billions of people on the planet.

If society were to put climate change priorities into their proper proportions then, Hulme said it would still be on the list.  It just wouldn’t be the only item on the list, and it wouldn’t be at the top.  ‘There’s 17 SDGs, and two of them are related to climate. So that begins to rebalance, or re-proportion, the amount of effort and attention we might wish to pay,’ said Hulme.

Beyond these mixed up priorities, Hulme also takes issue with what he sees as an obsession with deadlines: ‘There’s this idea of the ticking clock counting down to Ground Zero – we’ve only got five years, 10 years, two years – however long different commentators put the deadline.’

Doomsday was predicted but failed to happen at midnight.

Hulme disputed the idea that he is over-egging the pudding on climatism – after all, the whole basis of his argument is that climatists are the ones making a bigger deal out of it than they should be.  ‘I’ve been observing concerns about how climate change is talked about, framed, and reacted to in public for many, many years.’  And this public framing has led to a phenomenon called ‘eco-anxiety,’ which Hulme said he sees among his students at Cambridge University

‘They have absorbed these claims of tipping points, and they take these things literally, and feel that there is no future for them because the climate is going to go out of control,’ he said. ‘They feel that it will be too late, and everything will collapse.’

See Also Climate Delusional Disorder

Climate Delusional Disorder (CDD) 2021 Update

2024 To Be the Hottest Ever? Hold On!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

For sure you’ve seen the headlines declaring 2024 likely to be the Hottest year ever.  If you’re like me, your response is: That’s not the way it’s going down where I live.  Fortunately there is a website that allows anyone to check their personal experience with the weather station data nearby.  weatherspark.com provides data summaries for you to judge what’s going on in weather history where you live.  In my case a modern weather station is a few miles away  April 2024 Weather History at Montréal–Mirabel International Airport.  The story about April 2024 is evident below in charts and graphs from this site.  There’s a map that allows you to find your locale.

First, consider above the norms for April from the period 1980 to 2016.

Then, there’s April 2024 compared to the normal observations.

The graph shows April had some warm days, some cool days and overall was pretty normal.  But since climate is more than temperature, consider cloudiness.

Woah!  Most of the month was cloudy, which in spring means blocking the warming sun from hitting the surface.   And with all those clouds, let’s look at precipitation:

So, a major snowstorm April 3-4, 12 days when it rained, including heavy rain, and a couple of thunderstorms.  Given what we know about the hydrology cycles, that means a lot of heat removed upward from the surface.

So the implications for April temperatures in my locale.

There you have it before your eyes. Mostly Cool, Cold and
Very Cold, with freezing on numerous mornings.
Only five days with a few hours of comfortable temperatures.

Summary:

Claims of hottest this or that month or year are based on averages of averages of temperatures, which in principle is an intrinsic quality and distinctive to a locale.  The claim involves selecting some places and time periods where warming appears, while ignoring other places where it has been cooling.

Remember:  They want you to panic.  Before doing so, check out what the data says in your neck of the woods.  For example, NOAA declared that March 2024 was “Earth’s Warmest March on Record.”

 

 

Pope Francis Speaks as Climate Bigot

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. reports at Climate Change Dispatch Unchristian: Pope Francis Says Climate Deniers Are ‘Stupid’, Skepticism ‘Perverse’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Pope Francis told CBS News this week that climate change deniers are “stupid” to refute compelling evidence of a climate emergency. [emphasis, links added]

“Some people are stupid (necios), and stupid even if you show them research, they don’t believe it,” the pontiff told CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell when asked what he would say to the deniers of climate change.  “Why? Because they don’t understand the situation, or because of their interests, but climate change exists,” the 87-year-old pope asserted.

Pope Francis had never before sat down for an extensive interview, one-on-one, with a U.S. television network during his 11-year pontificate.

Pope Francis has been a vocal enthusiast for the war on climate change, calling global warming “one of the most serious and worrying phenomena of our time” and urging “drastic measures” to combat climate change.

He has expressed his opinion that any skepticism regarding an alleged “climate emergency” is “perverse.”

The pope has also singled out the United States as particularly to blame for the “climate emergency,” even though it is one of the countries with the cleanest air in the world.

“If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” he stated last October.

Among the “fools” denounced by the pope for their “perverse” skepticism of the climate crisis are a group of over 1,600 prominent scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners, who issued the “World Climate Declaration” last August, refuting the existence of a so-called “climate emergency.”

Among other things, the Declaration asserted that climate models have proven inadequate for predicting global warming, that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant, and that climate change has not increased natural disasters.

The world has warmed “significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing,” the text states, and the gap between the real world and the modeled world “tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.”

“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts, and such like natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” the document declared. “However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.”

“There is no climate emergency,” it concluded. “Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm.”

“We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it added.

IPCC Still Deceiving with the Hockey Stick

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Fig. 1: Common Era temperature reconstructions
featured in IPCC reports since 2001.

Source Esper et al 2024  Note:  In each graph, instrumental global annual mean land and marine temperatures are shown in a red spike, while lower resolution proxy estimates are in blue.

Just published today at Nature Communications is this paper  The IPCC’s reductive Common Era temperature history  by Esper et al.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Abstract

Common Era temperature variability has been a prominent component in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports over the last several decades and was twice featured in their Summary for Policymakers. A single reconstruction of mean Northern Hemisphere temperature variability was first highlighted in the 2001 Summary for Policymakers, despite other estimates that existed at the time. Subsequent reports assessed many large-scale temperature reconstructions, but the entirety of Common Era temperature history in the most recent Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was restricted to a single estimate of mean annual global temperatures. We argue that this focus on a single reconstruction is an insufficient summary of our understanding of temperature variability over the Common Era. We provide a complementary perspective by offering an alternative assessment of the state of our understanding in high-resolution paleoclimatology for the Common Era and call for future reports to present a more accurate and comprehensive assessment of our knowledge about this important period of human and climate history.

Fig. 5: Standard deviations in observed temperature data
and Common Era temperature reconstructions.

Estimates for the observed and reconstructed temperatures are determined over the 1878-2000 CE (blue), 1001-1877 CE (orange) and 1-1000 CE (gray) periods. Instrumental records shown on the left side include mean annual temperatures averaged over 90°S-90°N land and marine areas (global), mean annual temperatures averaged over 0°−90°S land and marine areas (SH), and mean summer (JJA) temperatures averaged over 30°−90°N land-only areas (NH).

While interpretations of the similarities and differences across the various domains and reconstructions, as shown in Fig. 5, remains the subject of important and interesting research, diagnosing the differences is not the focus of our commentary herein. Our primary concern is that substantial uncertainty exists. The consequence is that there are notable differences in the representation of large-scale estimates of CE temperature variability, as shown in Figs. 2 and 3, that were overlooked and poorly communicated by the 2021 IPCC WGI report. Both the different summary of the global P2k19 ensemble provided in Figs. 2b and 3c, and the inclusion of the additionally available NH and SH temperature reconstruction estimates in Fig. 3, imply substantial uncertainties in large-scale temperature reconstructions that better summarize the existing challenges associated with the science.

Fig. 3: Reconstructions of large-scale temperature variability
over the last 2000 years published since AR5 of the IPCC.

Reconstructions variably target seasonal to annual mean temperatures in the (a) Northern Hemisphere (Sch15, Sto15, Wil16, Xin16, Gui17, Bün20), and annual temperatures for the (b) Southern Hemisphere (Neu14) and (c) globally (P2k19; as shown in Fig. 2) over varying periods of the Common Era (see Table 1 for details). All reconstructions were smoothed using a 20-year low-pass filter and temperatures are shown as anomalies from their 1850–1900 means. Hemispheric and global means of land and ocean temperatures derived from HadCRUT5 instrumental analysis1 are also shown in each respective panel from 1850-2020 (red). Instrumental temperatures were also referenced to zero mean in the 1850–1900 interval and filtered with a 20-year lowpass filter. These instrumental representations are all consistent with the 2021 IPCC report.

Conclusions and future priorities

We propose that a visualization of the contemporary research, as in Fig. 3, offers a more accurate depiction of the uncertainty and temporal evolution of CE temperature variability compared to any single reconstruction. A general feature of Fig. 3 is that long-term trends during the second millennium CE are more coherent and robust, but major discrepancies still exist during the first millennium CE. These uncertainties in the first millennium are the product of severe reductions in the availability of high-resolution proxy records, which affects all large-scale temperature reconstructions. The SH also remains grossly under-sampled.

It is therefore premature, and possibly incorrect, to conclude that
the first millennium was free of centennial-scale temperature trends
and that the decadal variations were systematically smaller
than during subsequent centuries, as detailed in the 2021 SPM.

Regarding global temperature reconstructions specifically, we also highlight the following limitations that must continue to be contextualized in consensus reports on CE temperature reconstructions:

(i) warm season biases due to the dominance of tree-ring records during the CE,
(ii) spatial biases in proxy sampling, with a persistent lack of high-resolution proxy records from the tropics and SH, which are needed for accurately representing lower-latitude and SH temperatures over the past 2000 years,
(iii) the likely loss of variability when including time-uncertain and smoothed proxies in a large-scale reconstruction,
(iv) the potential limited ability of conventional tree-ring records to capture millennial-scale trends in climate, and
(v) the need to more accurately estimate reconstruction uncertainties that reflect changes in replication and statistical model fidelity of the underlying proxy network back in time (a constant uncertainty range back in time is unlikely to accurately represent the increasing uncertainties that exist).

With any set of methods, however, their outcome is ultimately dependent on the data that they incorporate and the assumptions that underpin the statistical model. A major initiative to produce new high-resolution proxy records that span the entire CE is therefore necessary if we are to fundamentally improve our understanding of pre-instrumental temperature variations at policy-relevant timescales. It otherwise remains uncertain how warm and cold first millennium CE temperatures actually were and what caused these earlier changes at hemispheric to global scales, with implications for our understanding of the true range of externally and internally forced variability.

My Comment:

Among the references in the paper is that of Moberg et al (2005) Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data.  The graph below shows one example of how more recent high quality reconstructions contradict the Mann depiction of a flat hockey stick handle during the centuries prior to the 20th.

Background of the Mann Hockey Stick Saga

Rise and Fall of the Modern Warming Spike

The first graph appeared in the IPCC 1990 First Assessment Report (FAR) credited to H.H.Lamb, first director of CRU-UEA. The second graph was featured in 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) the famous hockey stick credited to M. Mann.

Green Ideologues Vs. Farmers (and All of Us)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ben Pile explains the climatists’ war on farming at Daily Sceptic Farmers’ Biggest Problems are Green Ideologues, not Climate Change. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The recent autumn and winter months have seen Britain beset by more than the usual number of storms, and more than average amount of rainfall. For most of us, this has been merely unpleasant weather, but it has seemingly caused rivers to breach their banks and put much farmland under water. This is a real problem in its own right. Predictably, now the waters are receding, adherents of green ideology are turning the farming drama into the climate crisis, with talk of “failed harvests” and predictions of our imminent hunger. But where is the evidence?

The Guardian, as we would expect, has been leading the alarmist chorus. “The U.K. faces food shortages and price rises as extreme weather linked to climate breakdown causes low yields on farms locally and abroad,” it proclaimed, adding that “scientists have said this is just the beginning of shocks to the food supply chain caused by climate breakdown”. “I wish people understood the urgent climate threat to our near-term food security,” mourned Associate Professor of Environmental Change at Leiden University in the Netherlands to the newspaper.

Citing his experiences as a carrot farmer, Extinction Rebellion (XR) co-founder Roger Hallam declared on X that, “I know what is going to happen – not because of these particularly bad years, but because of the speed at which things are getting worse now.” Only “urgent revolution” can save us. And this in a nutshell is what the entire green movement has long been warning us of – extreme weather that will force us into hunger, which will drive us into political extremism and social breakdown and the end of civilisation. So are these floods a warning from Gaia that she made no covenant with us, unlike that other God, and that clouds stand ready to unleash her revenge on us for our SUV sins?

Are these greens latter-day Noahs, or just a ship of fools?

The problem for Hallam is that carrot production in the U.K. shows very little sign of sensitivity to climate change. Since the 1950s, carrot and turnip production has quadrupled. More significantly, yield per hectare – the indicator which is more sensitive to climate and weather – has more than tripled. If Britain was experiencing a climate-related carrot crisis, we would see this indicator plunge, rather than rise. Consequently, and contrary to fears about price rises, supermarkets are selling a kilo of British-grown carrots for 65p. ‘Wonky’ or ‘imperfect’ carrots are being sold at 45p/Kg. The struggle for carrot farmers may therefore be less high water than low prices for their products.

And the same story is revealed in UN data for nearly all British-grown vegetables. Inspection of the data reveals nothing resembling a pattern of climate change for the yield of wheat, oats, and cereals in general, onions, apples and pears, dry peas and other pulses, plums, potatoes and other roots and tubers, rapeseed, raspberries and strawberries, sugar beet and tomatoes. The only reductions in yield relate to the production of cauliflower and broccoli, and green peas. However, given that these data are significant outliers, we can for the moment assume that other reasons, perhaps economic or regulatory, better account for apparent declines in yield. Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence in the U.K. and beyond that the era of global warming – or climate crisis – has been an era of bumper harvests.

Caution is required here. The point that sceptics rightly make to alarmists is that weather is not climate. It would be foolish to say that just because there exists no climate signal in agricultural production statistics, there is no evidence of weather affecting farming. There is.

In the 60 years of data about the production of potatoes in the U.K. there have been two unquestionable impacts of weather. The first occurred in the drought and heat years of 1975 and ’76. The second occurred in the washout year of 2012, though not, curiously, in the non-summer of 2008 and the ‘barbecue summer’ of 2009, which left the U.K. Met Office with egg on its face. However, the consequences of these disappointing years for society more broadly is very far from famine. Whereas potato famers produced 100kg of their crop per person in the U.K. in 2011, in 2012 this fell to 72Kg, the difference being made up by imports, mostly the following year. Chips and crisps may have cost slightly more, but nobody went hungry. And imports are perhaps the explanation for the gradual decline of overall production of the crop, too. Despite the ‘crisis’, potatoes are retailing for as little as 75p/kg in supermarkets.

It remains to be seen whether or not, and to what extent, recent weather events have affected agricultural production statistics. Nonetheless, farmers across the U.K. are reporting real problems. A mostly sober article in January’s Farmer’s Guide features the experiences of farmers from Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Essex and Lincolnshire following the deluge delivered by Storm Henk, leaving in some places the “highest flood level in more than 70 years”. Again, these are reports of serious problems that can ruin a farm. But the climate change narrative distracts from this necessary discussion. The article concludes with the words of Dr. Jonathan Clarke from the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick, who claims that “there is an urgent need to consider how our society can become more resilient to the worst effects of a changing climate”. But weather conditions the same as we experienced 70 years ago are not evidence of an “urgent need” as much as they are a reminder of weather being a constant problem, and therefore of academics’ and scientists’ recent departure from both reality and historical fact.

So what has been the signal from weather? The Met Office’s data show that, for the country as a whole, March, February, December, October and September of last year brought significantly more than average rainfall. In a series of monthly data spanning 188 years, those months respectively were the 19th, 4th, 11th, 8th, and 63rd wettest of those months for England, and the 31st, 11th, 9th, 7th, and 32nd for the U.K. as a whole. Nasty for all of us, and especially difficult for famers. But does it even stand as evidence of “extreme weather”, as the Guardian claims, let alone man-made climate change-induced “extreme weather”, requiring “urgent” interventions to prevent it getting worse? Isn’t it just… you know… weather?

The worst of those months for the U.K. – the ninth wettest December – can be seen in its historical context. The Met Office provides a running average, which would seem to stand as an approximation of ‘climate change’. But despite that moving trendline, there were plenty of comparable Decembers in the mid to late 19th Century, and in the early and late 20th Century.

Moreover, the inter-annual variation of December rainfall spans nearly an entire order of magnitude, from 25mm to just under 225mm. The averaging of such noisy data does not and cannot reveal any underlying changing reality because it does not and cannot tell us anything useful – the trend is a phantom. Even if we were to follow on the Guardian’s and scientists’ injunction to eliminate emissions from fossil fuels, farmers would be no better protected from either drought or deluge. Moreover, if those trends were to be interpreted as probabilistic forecasts on which decisions are based, farmers would go bust in short order, because gambling on either more or less rain is guaranteed to produce a busted flush.

Farmers are not automata whose cyclic programming requires the same conditions each year. Farming is not a process with narrow operating thresholds that have been exceeded. Farming is an art, which requires careful judgement based on experience acquired by generations of farmers developing expertise in coping with hostile circumstances, including both different weather and market conditions.

The evidence clearly shows that continuous and increasing supplies of food are produced despite radical interannual monthly, seasonal and yearly shifts in weather, regardless of any semblance of trends in those variations. It has no doubt been a wet winter and spring. And this wetness may well have an effect on this year’s harvests.

But the notion that this has anything to do with climate change,
as per the framing of the Guardian‘s radical activists and equally
ideologically-driven scientists, puts ideology before reality.

Many farmers have taken to social media to show videos of their submerged farms. And this speaks to the absurdity of framing first-order problems like flooding as extremely abstract climate-related phenomena, for which there exist little if any evidence. The extant raw data, which span 188 years, tell us all that we need to know: some months there is very little rain, and these months may coincide; some months there is a great deal more rain, and likewise this can add up to create a backlog that needs to be drained. That is the full extent of the data that policymakers require to develop drought and flood mitigation strategies, and those parameters are completely unchanged by climate change, if any climate metrics can be squeezed out of the data at all.

In other words, we already know how dry it can be, and we already know how wet it can be. Therefore, we know what we need to do to ensure that there is sufficient water in drought and sufficient drainage in times of excess rainfall. We know, therefore, how badly politicians are already failing at their job. Their preferences for saving us with policies that ban cars and domestic gas boilers, tax flights and cover agricultural land with turbines and solar panels will not change these parameters. And by pushing up the prices of energy and feedstocks, it will likely create an agricultural crisis where none needs to exist.

Climate change is a massive distraction from our real and present problems.

 

Still Surplus Arctic Ice Mid April 2024

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The animation shows  Arctic ice melting season picking up first half of April 2024.  Typically, the Pacific side goes to water first, this year Okhotsk (top left) is ahead of schedule.  Also Baffin Bay (bottom right) is opening up early. Elsewhere Arctic drift ice remains, and Barents Sea ice (top center) is well above average for mid April.

The graph below shows mid-March to mid-April daily ice extents for 2024 compared to 18 year averages, and some years of note.

 

The black line shows on average Arctic ice extents decline from a maximum near 14.9M km2 on day 76 down to ~14.1M Km2 by day 105. Exceptionally 2024 started with 15.1M km2 and exceeded the 18-year average throughout.  SII was somewhat lower than MASIE in most of April until ending nearly the same. Both 2021 melted faster than average, while 2006 ice started and ended much in deficit.

Why is this important?  All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels.  The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post UAH February 2024: SH Saves Global Warming.

The lack of acceleration in sea levels along coastlines has been discussed also.  See USCS Warnings of Coastal Flooding

Also, a longer term perspective is informative:

post-glacial_sea_levelThe table below shows the distribution of Sea Ice on day 105 across the Arctic Regions, on average, this year and 2006.

Region 2024105 Day 105 Ave 2024-Ave. 2006105 2024-2006
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14244041 14119733 124309 13589226 654815
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070983 1069820 1163 1068683 2301
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 964681 1325 965591 415
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1085571 1567 1083591 3546
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 893528 4316 896528 1317
 (5) Kara_Sea 935023 922957 12066 912379 22645
 (6) Barents_Sea 856908 608844 248064 495112 361796
 (7) Greenland_Sea 802111 653203 148908 599062 203049
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1179443 1279861 -100418 1042266 137178
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854860 852951 1909 851056 3804
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1231701 1247129 -15428 1235951 -4250
 (11) Central_Arctic 3247180 3233303 13877 3168930 78250
 (12) Bering_Sea 639179 647219 -8040 667951 -28772
 (13) Baltic_Sea 31107 44493 -13386 84568 -53461
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 442660 610735 -168075 507143 -64483

The overall surplus to average is 124k km2, (1%).  The only major deficits are in Baffin Bay and in Sea of Okhotsk, the latter going to open water quite early.  Those are more than offset by surpluses everywhere, especially in Barents and Greenland seas.  In fact, Barents is 120% of  its 2023 maximum.

bathymetric_map_arctic_ocean

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents.

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