Climate Impacts

Fear Not for Arctic Ice New Year 2024

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Impressive Arctic ice recovery continued in December as seen in the animation below:

The month of December 2023 shows Hudson Bay (lower right) starting with some western shore ice and ending 92% ice covered, adding in that basin ~800k km2. Just above Hudson, you can see the Gulf of St. Lawrence icing over, and Baffin Bay adding ice as well, now up to 50% of its annual maximum.

At the extreme and lower left, Okhotsk and Bering Seas also start with little shore ice. Okhotsk grew ice extent from 57k km2 up to 530k, 62% of its max last March.  Bering grew from 48k up to 478k km2, 56% of its max.  At the top Kara freezes over and Barents and Greenland Seas add ice to their margins. The graph below shows the December ice recovery. (Day 365 coming, and may be delayed by holiday.)

Note the average year adds 2M km2 while 2023 added ~2.5M, now 361k km2 above average. SII started 200k km2 lower than MASIE and ended up with the same deficit. Note that the other years are not far from the 17-year average at year end.

The table below shows year-end ice extents in the various Arctic basins compared to the 17-year averages and some recent years.

Region 2023364 Day 364 2023-Ave. 2007364 2023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 13335688 12974817  360871  13049737 285951 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1070352  614  1069711 1255 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 963344  2662  965971 35 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087133  4  1087120 17 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897841  4  897845 0 
 (5) Kara_Sea 923106 880831  42275  871851 51255 
 (6) Barents_Sea 423772 415592  8179  334577 89194 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 739662 579776  159886  666135 73528 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 911691 965051  -53360  1074827 -163136 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854860 853421  1439  852556 2304 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1165656 1234412  -68757  1260856 -95201 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3218074 3205662  12412  3199726 18348 
 (12) Bering_Sea 472476 391321  81155  373942 98534 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 44969 27442  17527  9972 34997 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 530117 377911  152206  371241 158876 

This year’s ice extent is 361k km2 or 2.8% above average.  Only Baffin Bay and Hudson have deficits to average, more than offset by surpluses elsewhere, espcially Greenland, Bering and Okhotsk seas. Many of the others are already maxed out.

Comparing Arctic Ice at End of Years

At  the bottom is a discussion of statistics on year-end Arctic Sea Ice extents.  The values are averages of the last five days of each year.  End of December is a neutral point in the melting-freezing cycle, midway between September minimum and March maximum extents.

Background from Previous Post Updated to Year-End 2023

Some years ago reading a thread on global warming at WUWT, I was struck by one person’s comment: “I’m an actuary with limited knowledge of climate metrics, but it seems to me if you want to understand temperature changes, you should analyze the changes, not the temperatures.” That rang bells for me, and I applied that insight in a series of Temperature Trend Analysis studies of surface station temperature records. Those posts are available under this heading. Climate Compilation Part I Temperatures

This post seeks to understand Arctic Sea Ice fluctuations using a similar approach: Focusing on the rates of extent changes rather than the usual study of the ice extents themselves. Fortunately, Sea Ice Index (SII) from NOAA provides a suitable dataset for this project. As many know, SII relies on satellite passive microwave sensors to produce charts of Arctic Ice extents going back to 1979.  The current Version 3 has become more closely aligned with MASIE, the modern form of Naval ice charting in support of Arctic navigation. The SII User Guide is here.

There are statistical analyses available, and the one of interest (table below) is called Sea Ice Index Rates of Change (here). As indicated by the title, this spreadsheet consists not of monthly extents, but changes of extents from the previous month. Specifically, a monthly value is calculated by subtracting the average of the last five days of the previous month from this month’s average of final five days. So the value presents the amount of ice gained or lost during the present month.

These monthly rates of change have been compiled into a baseline for the period 1980 to 2010, which shows the fluctuations of Arctic ice extents over the course of a calendar year. Below is a graph of those averages of monthly changes up to and including this year. Those familiar with Arctic Ice studies will not be surprised at the sine wave form. December end is a relatively neutral point in the cycle, midway between the September Minimum and March Maximum.

The graph makes evident the six spring/summer months of melting and the six autumn/winter months of freezing.  Note that June-August produce the bulk of losses, while October-December show the bulk of gains. Also the peak and valley months of March and September show very little change in extent from beginning to end.

The table of monthly data reveals the variability of ice extents over the last 4 decades.

The values in January show changes from the end of the previous December, and by summing twelve consecutive months we can calculate an annual rate of change for the years 1979 to 2023.

As many know, there has been a decline of Arctic ice extent over these 40 years, averaging 70k km2 per year. But year over year, the changes shift constantly between gains and losses, ranging up to +/- 500k km2.  Since 1989 the average yearend gain/loss is nearly zero, -0.033k km2 to be exact.

Moreover, it seems random as to which months are determinative for a given year. For example, much ado was printed about 2023 losing more ice than usual June through September. But then the final 3 months of 2023 more than made up for those summer losses, resulting in a sizeable gain for the year.

As it happens in this dataset, October has the highest rate of adding ice. The table below shows the variety of monthly rates in the record as anomalies from the 1980-2010 baseline. In this exhibit a red cell is a negative anomaly (less than baseline for that month) and blue is positive (higher than baseline).

Note that the  +/ –  rate anomalies are distributed all across the grid, sequences of different months in different years, with gains and losses offsetting one another.  As noted earlier,  in 2023 the outlier negative months were June through September where unusual amounts of ice were lost.  Then unusally strong gains in October and December resulted in a large annual gain, compared to the baseline. The bottom line presents the average anomalies for each month over the period 1979-2021.  Note the rates of gains and losses mostly offset, and the average of all months in the bottom right cell is virtually zero.

A final observation: The graph below shows the Yearend Arctic Ice Extents for the last 34 years.

Year-end Arctic ice extents (last 5 days of December) show three distinct regimes: 1988-1998, 1998-2010, 2010-2022. The average year-end extent 1989-2010 is 13.4M km2. In the last decade, 2011 was 13.0M km2, and six years later, 2017 was 12.3M km2. 2021 rose back to 13.06  2022 slipped back to 12.6M, and 2023 is back up to 13.0M. So for all the the fluctuations, the net is zero, or a gain of half a Wadham (0.5M) from 2010. Talk of an Arctic ice death spiral is fanciful.

These data show a noisy, highly variable natural phenomenon. Clearly, unpredictable factors are in play, principally water structure and circulation, atmospheric circulation regimes, and also incursions and storms. And in the longer view, today’s extents are not unusual.

 

 

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.

 

No, NATO Chief, Climates Don’t Start Wars, People do

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In his American Thinker article Chris J. Krisinger reports on another distortion proclaimed at COP28  World Leaders’ Terror of Climate Change.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

[During his Air Force career, Colonel Krisinger served as military advisor to the assistant secretary of state for European affairs at the Department of State while working from the NATO Policy Office.  He is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Naval War College and was also a National Defense Fellow at Harvard University. ]

Playing to what amounted to a friendly home crowd at the Dubai U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28), NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg went there to deliver a message touting a relationship between global security and climate change, while emphasizing the necessity of shifting military resources to combat global warming.

In his speech, set against a backdrop of the Ukraine war, he was adamant about the influence of climate change on international security with conflict actually undermining “our capability to combat climate change because resources that we should have used to combat climate change are spent on our protecting our security with our military forces.”  He would even become apologetic about the Alliance’s reliance on fossil fuel–intensive military machinery, telling the audience, “If you look at big battle tanks and the big battleships and fighter jets, they are very advanced and great in many ways, but they’re not very environmentally friendly.  They pollute a lot, so we need to get down the emissions.”

Stoltenberg’s address at COP28 comes not long after President Biden’s September declaration in Vietnam that “the only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming.”  Then, just two days after the October 7 attack on Israel, instead of talking about hostages and the U.S. response, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby went in front of TV cameras defending that statement: “the president believes wholeheartedly that climate change is an existential threat to all of human life on the planet.”

But do world events — present or past — justify such inordinate interest by political leaders in climate change shaping the global security environment who go so far as to deem it an “existential threat to humankind”?  Does the still uncertain and arguable science of climate change cross a threshold to influence, even justify, Alliance or national decision-making to link defense and security policy, actions, and investments?  World events reminds us it does not.

The current century’s major conflicts — Iraq, Afghanistan, Assad’s Syria, Ethiopia’s Tigray war, Yemen’s and South Sudan’s civil wars, and more recently Ukraine and Israel’s war against Hamas — have no compelling environmental or climatological links, just as all other international conflicts in the post-WWII era did not.  ISIL, which once controlled large swaths of some of the planet’s most inhospitable desert areas in Syria and Iraq, professed no regard for “climate change” in its worldview, nor has Hamas or Hezbollah today, both of which also inhabit arid, hot desert lands.

Arguably, no conflict in human history, modern or otherwise, has a causal
(or effectual) relationship with climate change, despite the planet
undergoing periods of both warming and cooling.

Today’s foremost security threats — e.g., great power competition, cyber-attacks, piracy, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, financial crises, dictatorships, nationalism, drug-trafficking, insurgencies, revolutions, Iran, North Korea, etc. — all continue to fester.  None can be persuasively linked to climate change, even as a worsening effect.  Further, climate change does not appear to drive the agendas or motives of global antagonists like Putin, Xi, Al-Shabaab, the Taliban, Kim, Khomeini, Assad, al-Qaeda, cartels, Hezb’allah, Hamas, the Houthis, Boko Haram, or others.

Instead, consider that environmental factors rarely incite
conflict within or between nations.  

In fact, the opposite — international cooperation — is the more likely outcome in concert with the human race’s innate ability to adapt to its environment.  The climate-security link Stoltenberg wants us to accept can be greatly overstated and instead aimed to serve political agendas and economics more than addressing real security threats.  What climate advocates further ignore or overlook is the slow, gradual process over years, decades, even centuries by which environmental phenomena occur, while ignoring empirical evidence of the pace, causes, and drivers of current events.  Climate change is not the catalyst determining whether conflict occurs or its severity.

Of more practical importance is that, should a military response be required,
military forces must be prepared to operate and prevail in
whatever weather extremes are encountered at that moment.  

Their equipment and resources must best perform their military function, regardless of environmental sensibilities.  In one telling example, if U.S. or NATO forces had been required to operate in Russia in 2012 along similar routes as the Wehrmacht in 1941 and Napoleon in 1812, they would have encountered worse cold and weather than in either of those campaigns, so infamously ravaged by winter.

In fact, Russia endured its harshest winter in over 70 years and had not experienced such a long cold spell since 1938, with temperatures 10–15 degrees below seasonal norms nationwide.  Like Russia, China’s 2012 winter temperatures were the lowest in almost three decades, cold enough to freeze coastal waters and trap hundreds of ships in ice.  Even today, had the COP28 conference been held at a European location, Stoltenberg may have become snowbound while traveling, with more of the continent under snow cover in December’s first week than in any year for more than a decade.

A Lufthansa aircraft at the snow-covered Munich airport on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023. Photograph: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AP

A NATO alliance currently facing epic regional challenges cannot lose focus on core security and defense priorities or its profound grasp of the true origins, causes, and motives for human conflict.  Both military and political leaders cannot be distracted from true security threats — i.e., antagonists and competitors willfully and purposefully directing adversarial, often military, actions against a member nation with malicious intent — or not be prepared to operate and prevail in whatever weather or climatic conditions are encountered at that time.

With such clarity — absent the narrative, politics, uncertainty, and rhetoric of climate change — NATO, its member nations, and their leaders can then best direct its substantial enterprise towards those more numerous, serious, and pressing security threats facing the Alliance.

Background Food, Conflict and Climate

From data versus models department, a recent study contradicts claims linking human conflict to climate change by means of food shortages. From Dartmouth College March 1, 2018 comes Food Abundance and Violent Conflict in Africa.  by Ore Koren.  American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2018; Synopsis is from Science Daily (here) with my bolds.

Food abundance driving conflict in Africa, not food scarcity

The study refutes the notion that climate change will increase the frequency of civil war in Africa as a result of food scarcity triggered by rising temperatures and drought. Most troops in Africa are unable to sustain themselves due to limited access to logistics and state support, and must live off locally sourced food. The findings reveal that the actors are often drawn to areas with abundant food resources, whereby, they aim to exert control over such resources.

To examine how the availability of food may have affected armed conflict in Africa, the study relies on PRIO-Grid data from over 10,600 grid cells in Africa from 1998 to 2008, new agricultural yields data from EarthStat and Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset, which documents incidents of political violence, including those with and without casualties. The data was used to estimate how annual local wheat and maize yields (two staple crops) at a local village/town level may have affected the frequency of conflict. To capture only the effects of agricultural productivity on conflict rather than the opposite, the analysis incorporates the role of droughts using the Standardized Precipitation Index, which aggregates monthly precipitation by cell year.

The study identifies four categories in which conflicts may arise over food resources in Africa, which reflect the interests and motivations of the respective group:

  1. State and military forces that do not receive regular support from the state are likely to gravitate towards areas, where food resources are abundant in order to feed themselves.
  2. Rebel groups and non-state actors opposing the government may be drawn to food rich areas, where they can exploit the resources for profit.
  3. Self-defense militias and civil defense forces representing agricultural communities in rural regions, may protect their communities against raiders and expand their control into other areas with arable land and food resources.
  4. Militias representing pastoralists communities live in mainly arid regions and are highly mobile, following their cattle or other livestock, rather than relying on crops. To replenish herds or obtain food crops, they may raid other agriculturalist communities.

These actors may resort to violence to seek access to food, as the communities that they represent may not have enough food resources or the economic means to purchase livestock or drought-resistant seeds. Although droughts can lead to violence, such as in urban areas; this was found not to be the case for rural areas, where the majority of armed conflicts occurred where food crops were abundant.

Food scarcity can actually have a pacifying effect.“Examining food availability and the competition over such resources, especially where food is abundant, is essential to understanding the frequency of civil war in Africa,” says Ore Koren, a U.S. foreign policy and international security fellow at Dartmouth College and Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Minnesota. “Understanding how climate change will affect food productivity and access is vital; yet, predictions of how drought may affect conflict may be overstated in Africa and do not get to the root of the problem. Instead, we should focus on reducing inequality and improving local infrastructure, alongside traditional conflict resolution and peace building initiatives,” explains Koren.

Summary:

In Africa, food abundance may be driving violent conflict rather than food scarcity, according to a new study. The study refutes the notion that climate change will increase the frequency of civil war in Africa as a result of food scarcity triggered by rising temperatures and drought.

Reading the study itself shows considerable rigor in sorting out dependent and independent variables.  It is certain that armed conflicts destroy food resources, while it is claimed that food shortages from climate events like drought cause the conflicts in the first place.  From Koren:

Moreover, in addition to illustrating the validity of this mechanism by the process of elimination—that is, by empirically accounting for a variety of alternative mechanisms— figure 2 further highlights the interactions between economic inequality, food resources, and conflict. Here, nonparametric regression plots—which do not enforce a modeling structure on the data and hence provide a more flexible method of visualizing relationships between different factors—show the correlations of local yields and conflict with respect to economic development as approximated using nighttime light levels. As shown, conflict occurs more frequently in cells with more crop productivity, but relatively low levels of economic development, where—based on anecdotal evidence at least—limitations on food access are more likely (Roncoli, Ingram, and Kirshen 2001).

In Addition

https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/updated-climates-dont-start-wars-people-do/

 

 

After COP28: What Transition From Hydrocarbons?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

How Do You Want Your Energy ‘Transition’?

Mario Loyola wrote at The Wall Street Journal The Impossible Energy ‘Transition’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

After two weeks of negotiation, the United Nations climate conference in Dubai agreed last week to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Left unanswered is whether governments are supposed to do that by reducing supply, reducing demand or both. A lot rides on the answer, but neither would affect the climate much.

In the demand-side scenario, technology saves the day with cost-competitive renewables. This is the vision of the International Energy Agency, according to which the more rapid the transition from fossil fuels, the more precipitous the decline in fossil-fuel prices. In its “Net Zero Emissions” scenario, oil demand drops faster than supply this decade, pushing oil prices below $30 a barrel soon after 2030, which corresponds to $1-a-gallon gasoline.

Yet even with fossil-fuel prices near historic highs, effective renewable substitutes are nowhere near cost-competitive. They’d have to get cheaper still to compete with $30-a-barrel oil. And in developed countries, especially the U.S., it’s impossible to get permits quickly enough for the staggering amount of renewable capacity that would be needed.

In the supply-side approach, governments would slash oil production or impose rationing, hoping to make fossil fuels so expensive that renewables are the only option. This is the dark vision of “Stop Oil” and Greta Thunberg. But as long as renewable substitutes aren’t immediately available and oil and gas remain necessary, a small reduction in supply causes prices to soar. That means windfall profits for energy companies, scarcity for everyone else, and electoral danger for the governments responsible. Ms. Thunberg claims that climate change is a “death sentence” for the poor, but the poor are far more vulnerable to disruptions in energy supply. In the 1970s, an oil boycott aimed at the U.S. caused famines in Africa.

Putting into context the desire to stop consumption of fossil fuels. The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965 oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 82% in 2022. Note that in 2020, PE dropped 21 EJ (4%) below 2019 consumption, then increased 31 EJ in 2021. WFFC for 2020 dropped 24 EJ (5%), then in 2021 gained back 26 EJ to slightly exceed 2019 WFFC consumption. (Source: Energy Institute)

While the stop-oil view was popular at Dubai, there were enough adults in the room to keep the conference from committing to it. “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5 C” (the Paris Agreement’s proposed limit on 21st-century temperature increases), said conference president Ahmed al Jaber, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.” Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman dared countries to try to choke off the oil supply: “Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”

Poor countries are clear-eyed about the danger of energy poverty. “We are not going to compromise with the availability of power for growth,” said India’s minister for power, R.K. Singh. China has more coal plants under construction than are in operation in the U.S. Few rich countries have announced plans to stop drilling for oil or gas, and none of those are major producers. Even President Biden ran away from increasing the gasoline tax as soon as prices went above $3 a gallon in the summer of 2021.

The administration’s answer to this conundrum is to defer political consequences via the regulatory state. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to require that all coal and natural-gas plants shut down or adopt unproven zero-carbon technologies by 2038. Another EPA proposal would require 62% of all cars sold in America to be fully electric by 2032.

Assuming they survive court challenges and future administrations, they would impose soaring prices and reduced mobility on Americans. They would have almost no impact on global temperatures unless other countries, including China and India, also commit to energy poverty. The question is how much damage these policies will do before they’re abandoned.

Mr. Loyola teaches environmental law at Florida International University and is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Foornote:  Advice from Berkeley Earth

Winter Solstice Teaches Us About Climate Change

Posted on by Ron Clutz

With Winter Solstice due this week (December 21) the shortest NH day of the year demonstrates the sun’s role in seasonal climate change.  I am reposting an analysis looking into global warming in relation to our empirical knowledge of solar orbital patterns.

From Previous Post When Is It Warming?

On June 21, 2015 E.M. Smith made an intriguing comment on the occasion of Summer Solstice (NH) and Winter Solstice (SH):

“This is the time when the sun stops the apparent drift in the sky toward one pole, reverses, and heads toward the other. For about 2 more months, temperatures lag this change of trend. That is the total heat storage capacity of the planet. Heat is not stored beyond that point and there can not be any persistent warming as long as winter brings a return to cold.

I’d actually assert that there are only two measurements needed to show the existence or absence of global warming. Highs in the hottest month must get hotter and lows in the coldest month must get warmer. BOTH must happen, and no other months matter as they are just transitional.

I’m also pretty sure that the comparison of dates of peaks between locations could also be interesting. If one hemisphere is having a drift to, say, longer springs while the other is having longer falls, that’s more orbital mechanics than CO2 driven and ought to be reflected in different temperature trends / rates of drift.” Source: Summer Solstice is here at chiefio

Monthly Temps NH and SH

Notice that the global temperature tracks with the seasons of the NH. The reason for this is simple. The NH has twice as much land as the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Oceans have greater heat capacity and thus do not change temperatures as much as land does. So every year when there is almost a 4 °C swing in the temperature of the Earth, it follows the seasons of the NH. This is especially interesting because the Earth gets the most energy from the sun in January presently. That is because of the orbit of the Earth. The perihelion is when the Earth is closest to the sun and that currently takes place in January.

sun-distances

Observations and Analysis:

At the time my curiosity was piqued by Chiefio’s comment, so I went looking for data to analyze to test his proposition. As it happens, Berkeley Earth provides data tables for monthly Tmax and Tmin by hemisphere (NH and SH), from land station records. Setting aside any concerns about adjustments or infilling I did the analysis taking the BEST data tables at face value. Since land surface temperatures are more variable than sea surface temps, it seems like a reasonable dataset to analyze for the mentioned patterns. In the analysis below, all years refers to data for the years 1877 through 2013.

Tmax Records

NH and SH long-term trends are the same 0.07C/decade, and in both there was cooling before 1979 and above average warming since. However, since 1950 NH warmed more strongly, and mostly prior to 1998, while SH has warmed strongly since 1998. (Trends below are in C/yr.)

 Tmax Trends NH Tmax SH Tmax
All years 0.007 0.007
1998-2013 0.018 0.030
1979-1998 0.029 0.017
1950-1979 -0.003 -0.003
1950-2013 0.020 0.014

Summer Comparisons:

NH summer months are June, July, August, (6-8) and SH summer is December, January, February (12-2). The trends for each of those months were computed and the annual trends subtracted to show if summer months were warming more than the rest of the year (Trends below are in C/yr.).

Month less Annual NH
Tmax		 NH Tmax NH Tmax SH Tmax SH Tmax SH Tmax
Summer Trends

6

 7 8 12 1

2
All years -0.002 -0.004 -0.004 0.000 0.003 0.002
1998-2013 0.026 0.002 0.006 0.022 0.004 -0.029
1979-1998 0.003 -0.004 -0.003 -0.014 -0.029 0.001
1950-1979 -0.002 -0.002 -0.005 0.004 0.005 -0.005
1950-2013 -0.002 -0.003 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002

NH summer months are cooler than average overall and since 1950. Warming does appear since 1998 with a large anomaly in June and also warming in August.  SH shows no strong pattern of Tmax warming in summer months. A hot December trend since 1998 is offset by a cold February. Overall SH summers are just above average, and since 1950 have been slightly cooler.

Tmin Records

Both NH and SH show Tmin rising 0.12C/decade, much more strongly warming than Tmax. SH shows average warming persisting throughout the record, slightly higher prior to 1979. NH Tmin is more variable, showing a large jump 1979-1998, a rate of 0.25 C/decade (Trends below are in C/yr.).

 Trends NH Tmin SH Tmin
All years 0.012 0.012
1998-2013 0.010 0.010
1979-1998 0.025 0.011
1950-1979 0.006 0.014
1950-2013 0.022 0.014

Winter Comparisons:

SH winter months are June, July, August, (6-8) and NH winter is December, January, February (12-2). The trends for each of those months were computed and the annual trends subtracted to show if winter months were warming more than the rest of the year (Trends below are in C/yr.).

Month less Annual NH Tmin NH Tmin NH Tmin SH Tmin SH Tmin SH Tmin
Winter Trends

12

 1 2 6 7

8
All years 0.007 0.008 0.007 0.005 0.003 0.004
1998-2013 -0.045 -0.035 -0.076 -0.043 -0.024 -0.019
1979-1998 -0.018 -0.005 0.024 0.034 0.008 -0.008
1950-1979 0.008 0.005 0.007 0.008 0.012 0.013
1950-2013 0.001 0.007 0.008 -0.001 -0.002 0.002

NH winter Tmin warming is stronger than SH Tmin trends, but shows quite strong cooling since 1998. An anomalously warm February is the exception in the period 1979-1998.  Both NH and SH show higher Tmin warming in winter months, with some irregularities. Most of the SH Tmin warming was before 1979, with strong cooling since 1998. June was anomalously warming in the period 1979 to 1998.

Summary

Tmin did trend higher in winter months but not consistently. Mostly winter Tmin warmed 1950 to 1979, and was much cooler than other months since 1998.

Tmax has not warmed in summer more than in other months, with the exception of two anomalous months since 1998: NH June and SH December.

Conclusion:

I find no convincing pattern of summer Tmax warming carrying over into winter Tmin warming. In other words, summers are not adding warming more than other seasons. There is no support for concerns over summer heat waves increasing as a pattern.

It is interesting to note that the plateau in temperatures since the 1998 El Nino is matched by winter months cooler than average during that period, leading to my discovering the real reason for lack of warming recently.

The Real Reason for the Pause in Global Warming?

These data suggest warming trends are coming from less cold overnight temperatures as measured at land weather stations. Since stations exposed to urban heat sources typically show higher minimums overnight and in winter months, this pattern is likely an artifact of human settlement activity rather than CO2 from fossil fuels.

uhi_profile-rev-big

Thus the Pause (more correctly the Plateau) in global warming is caused by end of the century completion of urbanization around most surface stations. With no additional warming from additional urban heat sources, temperatures have remained flat for more than 15 years.

Note on Data:

I thought about updating this analysis, but discovered that the BEST tables have not been updated since 2018.  The sources have also moved, now located here:

https://berkeleyearth.org/temperature-region/southern-hemisphere

https://berkeleyearth.org/temperature-region/northern-hemisphere

Happy Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice farolito labyrinth in Santa Fe

COP28 Stabilizes Mid-Dec. Arctic Ice

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

As COP28 began, Arctic ice extrent grew rapidly and by its end the Arctic was completely normal. On lower left, Chukchi sea filled in and below Bering sea started serious freezing. Lower right Hudson Bay more than doubled up to 800k km2, 2/3 of its maximum extent.  Center right Baffin Bay grew to 45% of max.

A Lufthansa aircraft at the snow-covered Munich airport on Saturday. Photograph: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AP

Coincidently, COP28 also triggered heavy snow bringing chaos to southern Germany causing Munich to suspend flights to anywhere, including Dubai.

The graph below shows the gains in ice extent mid-November to Mid December for 2023, the 17 year average and some other recent years, as well as SII (Sea Ice Index)

MASIE showed 2023 and 2022 tracking the 17 year average and ending very close together.  2007 fluctuated a lot, well below average in December before rising at the end.  SII tracked ~400k km2 lower most of this period, before rising to match MASIE in the last few days.

 

The table below shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic Ocean basins.

Region 2023349 Day 349 2023-Ave. 2007349 2023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 12104311 12162108  -57797  12000124 104187 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1070103  863  1069711 1255 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 948805 934827  13978  796459 152347 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1086539  598  1077192 9945 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897835  9  897845 0 
 (5) Kara_Sea 826874 847433  -20559  842174 -15300 
 (6) Barents_Sea 370088 335870  34218  285179 84909 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 688238 546548  141690  571916 116322 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 819365 824803  -5438  852443 -33079 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854860 853420  1440  852556 2304 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 800760 1101080  -300320  1248305 -447546 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3212059 3204043  8016  3192331 19728 
 (12) Bering_Sea 226652 236725  -10073  93340 133312 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 55323 11920  43403  10353 44970 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 231640 200090  31550  206342 25297 

Note that Arctic ice now exceeds 12M km2, or 80% of last March maximum.  As shown in the table above, the main deficit to average is in Hudson Bay, likely to be overcome with the current rapid growth. Offsetting are surpluses elsewhere, mostly in Greenland sea, along with Barents and Baltic seas.

 

 

Fighting Global Warming: All Cash, No Cooling

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Through Dec. 12, the “Climate!” crowd is swarming COP28, Dubai’s carbophobia cavalcade. The fact that these global-warming alarmists are surrounded by Earth’s deepest pools of fossil fuels makes their Hajj infinitely ironic.

Also astonishing is the nearly immeasurable impact of these people’s gyrations. They blow trillions of dollars, bludgeon human freedom, and yet do shockingly little to fix their vaunted “climate crisis.”

One practically needs an electron microscope to find their promised
reductions in allegedly venomous CO2 or supposedly lethal temperatures.

According to #ActInTime’s Climate Clock, high above Manhattan’s Union Square, humans have — at this writing — five years and 227 days until we boil to death in a cauldron of steaming carbon. Since The End is scheduled for Saturday, July 21, 2029 (mark your calendars!)

Big Government Democrats offer jaw-droppingly paltry climate benefits,
despite their spine-chilling predictions and unbridled interventionism.

Clean Power Plan Cost/Benefit

Obama-Biden’s proposed Clean Power Plan was a diamond-encrusted specimen of do-nothingism. According to a May 2015 analysis by their own Energy Information Agency, between 2015 and 2025, the CPP would have slashed real GDP by $993 billion, or an average of $39.7 billion per year.

It would have sliced real disposable income by $382 billion, or $15.3 billion annually. It also would have chopped manufacturing shipments by $1.13 trillion, or $45.4 billion per year.

EIA forecast a decrease of 0.035° Fahrenheit. This would have cranked a thermometer from 72° F way down to 71.965°.  As Billy Joel once sang, “Is that all you get for your money?”

IRA Funded Green Energy Projects Cost/Benefit

Biden’s blessed Inflation Reduction Act budgeted $369 billion for green-energy projects. Goldman Sachs subsequently slapped a $1.2 trillion price tag on the IRA.

Danish environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg ran the IRA through the United Nations’ climate models. “Impact of new climate legislation,” Lomborg specified.  “Unnoticeable: 0.0009°F to 0.028°F in 2100.”  This would chill thermostats from 72° to 71.9991°. If we get lucky: 71.972°.

Biden said on Jan. 31 that “if we don’t stay under 1.5° Celsius” or 2.7° Fahrenheit, “we’re going to have a real problem.” If a 0.0009° F reduction costs $369 billion, then Biden’s 2.7° F goal would devour — brace yourself — $1.107 quadrillion — with a Q.

Biden EV Mandate Cost/Benefit

Emperor Biden’s electric-vehicle decree would require that at least 67% of new cars sold in 2032 be electric. This edict already is stalling the auto industry. On Nov. 29, 3,902 U.S. car dealers in all 50 states wrote Biden. Message: Stop tailgating!  “Already, electric vehicles are stacking up on our lots,” the dealers complained.  “The majority of customers are simply not ready to make the change.”

This chaos aside, Biden’s mandate would limit CO2 by 10 billion tons through 2055. Alas, China is expected to generate 320 billion tons of carbon in the next 32 years. So, Biden’s “savings” will asphyxiate in a giant Chinese carbon cloud.

Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal calculates that Biden’s EV order will decrease planetary emissions by a whopping 0.18%. “The climate effect of the extravagantly expensive Biden plan will steadily approach zero,” Jenkins anticipates.

Bans on Gas Stoves and Heaters Cost/Benefit

Rather than jail criminals or deport illegal aliens, Governor Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., bans gas stoves and demands that gas heaters yield to electric heat pumps — never mind that her constituents freeze to death during post-blizzard blackouts.

“The global effect of the costly program of compulsory electrification will be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of less than 0.05%,” the Empire Center for Public Policy calculates.

Summation

Obama, Biden, Hochul and their comrades might respond that no single bauble will fix everything, and every shiny object helps.  Maybe.  But these four schemes alone carry an enormously high price in shredded freedom and incinerated taxpayer dollars, yet still leave at least 99.82% of emissions untouched.

To quote another Briton, William Shakespeare, perhaps this “sound and fury, signifying nothing” is not about cutting emissions or curbing Earth’s temperatures.

Maybe it’s designed to help Democrats spend trillions of dollars to signal virtue, bark orders at the American people, and lavish taxpayers’ hard-earned cash on their politically connected pals — from the Potomac to the Persian Gulf.

Footnote:  

The estimates of lowering temperatures come from IPCC-approved models, which presume that Global Mean Temperature (GMT) rises in response to rising atmospheric CO2.  In fact that premise is itself dubious since basic physics requires that a cause precede an effect in time. The evidence points to changes in CO2 lagging rather than leading GMT changes.  This is true on all time scales, from last month’s observations to ice cores spanning millenia.

Confirmed: Temperature Drives CO2, not the Reverse

COP28 Triggers Leap in Arctic Ice

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The animation shows remarkable growth of Arctic ice extent just since COP28 began.  As noted in the previous Arctic ice post, Hudson Bay (lower right) was a lagging region, but freezing accelerated there. At the top, Barents and Greenland sea added ice. As well, both Bering and Okhotsk seas (far left) added fast ice on coastlines. In all, half a Wadham, 517k km2 of ice extent was added in just three days.

A Lufthansa aircraft at the snow-covered Munich airport on Saturday. Photograph: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AP

Coincidently, COP28 also triggered heavy snow bringing chaos to southern Germany causing Munich to suspend flights to anywhere, including Dubai.

The graph below shows the gains in ice extent erasing a brief deficit to average.

MASIE shows a gain of ~0.5M km2 from day 334 to 336, now exceeding average after being lower briefly.  SII (Sea Ice Index) also rose but is still estimating ice extent ~500k km2 lower.

The table below shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic Ocean basins.

Region 2023336 Day 336 2023-Ave. 2007336 2023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 11113626 11059843  53782  10853632 259993 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1069301  1665  1054586 16380 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 765844 797154  -31311  607874 157970 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1080765  6372  1023256 63882 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897835  9  897845 0 
 (5) Kara_Sea 812779 796332  16446  829462 -16683 
 (6) Barents_Sea 350616 259899  90717  222769 127847 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 711570 538651  172919  541176 170393 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 571757 697517  -125760  755390 -183633 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854860 853409  1451  852556 2304 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 553841 636088  -82247  812965 -259124 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3220281 3198662  21619  3177278 43003 
 (12) Bering_Sea 82391 154107  -71716  27916 54475 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 23276 4889  18387  2898 20378 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 106202 70731  35471  46377 59826 

Note that Arctic ice now exceeds 11M km2, or 74% of last March maximum.  As shown in the table above, the main deficits to average are in Hudson and Baffin Bays, along with less ice in Bering Sea. Offsetting are surpluses elsewhere, especially in Barents and Greenland seas.

 

 

November 2023 Arctic Ice Doing Well

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The animation shows the continuing growth of Arctic ice extent during November 2023, from day 305 to yesterday, day 334.  For all of the fuss over the September minimum, little is said about Arctic ice growing back rapidly; that’s 4 Wadhams in October, plus another 2,2M in Nov to total 10.6M km2, or 10.6 Wadhams.  The Russian side on the left froze over in October, and now at the center bottom you can see Beaufort sea and Canadian Archipelago icing over completely. At top center Kara and Barents are adding normal ice extents. On the right side are the two lagging basins: Baffin and Hudson Bays, though freezing has started in Hudson bay in the last ten days.  That basin is shallow and likely to freeze over in the next two weeks.

The graph below shows the 30 days of November 2023 compared to the 17 year average (2006 to 2022 inclusive), to SII (Sea Ice Index) and some notable years.

 

Taking the average extent for the final 5 days of October 2023 compared to same for end of November, the added ice extent is 2.2M km2.  The growth slowed at the end resulting in a 290k km2 deficit to average.  Sea Ice Index (SII) is ~200k km2 lower than MASIE. 

The table below shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic Ocean basins.

Region 2023334 Day 334 2023-Ave. 2007334 2023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 10626375 10921303  -294928  11009948 -383574 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1069463  1503  1058872 12094 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 722477 788533  -66056  687829 34649 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1083567  3570  1082015 5122 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897822  23  897613 232 
 (5) Kara_Sea 799640 792930  6710  826319 -26679 
 (6) Barents_Sea 262074 248861  13213  216525 45549 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 607148 533255  73893  618844 -11696 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 591970 671268  -79298  708497 -116527 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854826 853266  1560  850249 4577 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 379047 574308  -195261  751382 -372335 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3220511 3192296  28215  3183073 37438 
 (12) Bering_Sea 47829 145731  -97902  72645 -24816 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 16936 3593  13343  0 16936 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 63947 62153  1794  53052 10895 

As shown in the table above, the deficit is due to lagging growth in Hudson and Baffin Bays, along with less ice in Chukchi and Bering Seas. Typically these basins are among the last to freeze.

 

 

Climate Tipping Points Are Fantasy, Not Science

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Sahara has been shrinking over the past decades. Image: NASA

P Gosselin provides an english translation for an interview with prominent German geologist and Sahara expert Dr. Stefan Kröpelin.  The NoTricksZone article is Sahara Expert Says Desert Shrinking, Calls Alarmist Tipping Points “Complete Nonsense”.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Climate tipping points are much more fantasy than science

Dr. Kröpelin is an award-wining geologist and climate researcher at the University of Cologne and specializes in studying the eastern Sahara desert and its climatic history. He’s been active out in the field there for more than 40 years.

In the Auf 1 interview, Dr. Kröpelin contradicts the alarmist claims of growing deserts and rapidly approaching climate tipping points. He says that already in the late 1980s rains had begun spreading into northern Sudan and have since indeed developed into a trend. Since then, rains have increased and vegetation has spread northwards. “The desert is shrinking; it is not growing.”

Kröpelin confirms that when the last ice age ended some 12,000 years ago, the eastern Sahara turned green with vegetation, teemed with wildlife and had numerous bodies of water 5000 – 10,000 years ago (more here).

Later in the interview Kröpelin explains how the eastern Sahara climate was reconstructed using a vast multitude of sediment cores and the proxy data they yielded. According to the German geology expert: “The most important studies that we conducted all show that after the ice age, when global temperatures rose, the Sahara greened”…”the monsoon rains increased, the ground water rose”. This all led to vegetation and wildlife taking hold over thousands of year.

Then over the past few thousands of years, the region dried out. It didn’t happen all of a sudden like climate models suggest.

Modelers don’t understand climate complexity

When asked about dramatic tipping points (8:00) such as those claimed to be approaching by the Potsdam Institute (PIK), Kröpelin says he’s very skeptical and doesn’t believe crisis scenarios such as those proposed by former PIK head, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber. He says people making such claims “never did any studies themselves in any climate zone on the earth and they don’t understand how complex climate change is.”

Except for catastrophic geological events, “it’s not how nature works,” Kröpelin says. “Things change gradually.”

The claims that “we have to be careful that things
don’t get half a degree warmer, otherwise everything will collapse,
is of course complete nonsense.”

“I would say this concept [tipping points] is baseless. Much more indicates that they won’t happen than that they will happen.”

Late last year in Munich, he called the notion of CO2-induced climate tipping points scientifically outlandish. He also called the prospect of the Sahara spreading into Europe preposterous.

Another example is the fluctuating cycles of Alpine glaciers, waxing and waning over periods of time.

Background Post

Bogus Talk about Climate Tipping Points

Finally, as the critique shows, tipping points are like climate change itself: Applying labels to something that has already happened, with no predictive utility.

 

Climatists Deniers of Reality

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Glenn Spitzer turns the table on alarmists in his American Thinker article Who Are the Real Climate Change Deniers? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Who are these “climate change deniers” we hear so much about? Does anyone really doubt the climate changes?   Well, yes.  There are climate change deniers — a lot of them.  They live right under our noses, and they are celebrated.  Here’s a quote from one of the most famous climate change deniers:

Our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this. Today’s climate pattern has existed throughout the entire history of human civilization.

That was Al Gore in 2007.  According to Gore, the climate was “shiftless” for thousands of years — a paradigm of stability.

Gore’s quote was a restatement of Michael Mann’s 1998 “hockey stick.”  Mann argued that the Earth’s climate held steady for all of human history (the hockey stick handle), until suddenly, in the 1900s, the temperatures increased, representing the upturned blade of the hockey stick.

Mann’s theory is the basis of the modern CO2-focused “global warming” movement, which ironically morphed into the “climate change” movement.  Mann’s theory informs the positions taken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the agency dictating policy to your local, state, and federal governments.

The most important assumption in Mann’s theory is that there was no climate change prior to the 20th century.  But this assumption is false.  It is climate change denial; it is the sacrifice of truth for a desired outcome.

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.

Mann’s 1998 study intentionally ignored several thousand scientific publications showing other periods of climate change throughout human history, such as the Medieval Warm Period (about A.D. 900 to 1300), the Little Ice Age (about 1300 to 1915), and the Roman Warm Period (about A.D. 1 to 500).  Despite claims of perpetual stability, it turns out the climate is always changing.

Scientists estimate that, during the Medieval Warm Period, for example, the temperatures in parts of Europe were 1.0–1.4° Celsius (1.8–2.5° Fahrenheit) warmer than they are now.  Oxygen isotope studies in China, Germany, Greenland, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Tibet, as well as tree ring data from many sites throughout the world, confirm the Medieval Warm Period.  The studies are so numerous (several thousand published papers confirming this warming) that it raises the obvious question: “Why do climate activists deny that the climate is always changing?”

 

There are two important reasons why activists deny climate change.  First, the acceptance of prior warming periods undermines the argument that a modern warming is an existential threat, and second, prior warming periods undermine the idea that anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 is the primary cause of climate change.

The Medieval Warm Period is a particularly inconvenient truth for the modern climate activists because it shows that warming has beneficial effects on humanity.  As the European region became warmer, agriculture spread and generated food surpluses.  The European population doubled.  In short, the Medieval Warm Period underscores the reality that, while humans struggle in colder weather, we generally thrive in warmer weather.

In other words: no crisis justifying extraordinary intervention.

But more importantly, what does a constantly changing climate say about the effects of anthropogenic CO2?

The fact that the climate has been changing significantly for thousands of years (actually millions) raises the question: what causes climate change?  This is a messy question.  Activists seek to foreclose options by addressing causation through simple correlation.  If climate change is only a recent phenomenon, one that began coincidentally with the rise in anthropogenic CO2, then causation is simple.

However, if this fact pattern is a fiction, then the correlation argument falls apart.  When we understand the climate is always changing, and was changing well before the rise of anthropogenic CO2, then we are confronted with the reality that other factors are at play.  Anthropogenic CO2 is placed in proper context as a potential factor of uncertain significance.  Importantly, when simple correlation no longer drives our analysis, we are freed to assess other causal factors more seriously.

When people acknowledge that anthropogenic CO2 could not possibly cause climate change throughout human history, they are forced to question their religion.  When guided by truth instead of ideology, the following questions become more interesting:

  • How is it that the last six great ice ages started with far more CO2 in the atmosphere than we have now?

Figure 16. The geological history of CO2 level and temperature proxy for the past 400 million years. CO2 levels now are ~ 400ppm

  • Is it true, as many experts note, that temperatures drive CO2 levels, and not the other way around?

Highlights ► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature. ► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature. ► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature. ► Changes in ocean temperatures explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980. ► Changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.

  • How does anthropogenic CO2 drive climate when it makes up less than 5% of total CO2 (with most coming from the oceans, volcanoes, decaying vegetation, and forest fires)?

  • Isn’t the sun the most important cause of climate, and what effects follow from sun spots and solar flares?

  • If greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the most significant drivers of climate change, then why do we focus on CO2, when water vapor (i.e., clouds) is a far more impactful GHG?  (In fact, there have been a flurry of recent published studies on the effects of clouds.)

For many in science, self-preservation and status remain subordinate to truth and courage.  Many have sacrificed research funding and reputation to criticize Mann’s theories, including IPCC lead authors John Christy (former NASA climatologist) and Richard Lindzen (former MIT professor).  In fact, numerous climate experts upended their professional lives by pointing out that Mann’s theory is more activism than fact (including Professors Tim Ball, Ian Clark, Ian Plimer, NirShaviv, Piers Corbyn, Steven Koonin, Judith Curry, and William Happer — to name a few).

Experts Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick presented a detailed analysis of the flaws of Mann’s 1998 theory in a series of studies in 2003 and 2005, detailing the numerous technical flaws with Mann’s analysis.  They found that Mann’s theory was invalid “due to collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects.”

Hockey stick graph corrected by McKitrick and McIntyre after removing Mann’s errors.

In a 2014 paper, McKitrick summarized the theory’s most significant problem as an issue of unreliable proxy data.  Namely, Mann relied on a small and controversial subset of tree ring records of bristlecone pine cores from high and arid mountains in the U.S. Southwest.  The scientists who published the tree ring data on which Mann relied (published by Graybill and Idso in 1993) specifically warned that the data should not be used for temperature reconstruction and that the 20th-century data had regional anomalies.

The overarching takeaway here is that we cannot cede the power of thought to the  “experts.” Experts serve an important role in that they assist us in analyzing matters beyond our common understanding.  But experts are mere fallible humans.  When they are controlled by their biases, flawed in their analysis, or misguided by incorrect data, then we must reject their conclusions.