New Research

[Snowyowl9]

Controversial but Solar cells linked to greenhouse gases over 23000 times worse than CO2 according to new book.

http://thedailybell...-Carbon-Dioxide

Edited June 8, 2012 by Snowyowl9

[knocker]

Research shows humans are primary cause of global ocean warming over past 50 years

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- The oceans have warmed in the past 50 years, but not by natural events alone.

New research by a team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and international collaborators shows that the observed ocean warming over the last 50 years is consistent with climate models only if the models include the impacts of observed increases in greenhouse gas during the 20th century.

Though the new research is not the first study to identify a human influence on observed ocean warming, it is the first to provide an in-depth examination of how observational and modeling uncertainties impact the conclusion that humans are primarily responsible.

"We have taken a closer look at factors that influence these results," said Peter Gleckler, an LLNL climate scientist and lead author of the new study that appears in the June 10 edition of the journal, Nature Climate Change. "The bottom line is that this study substantially strengthens the conclusion that most of the observed global ocean warming over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities."

The group looked at the average temperature (or heat content) in the upper layers of the ocean. The observed global average ocean warming (from the surface to 700 meters) is approximately 0.025 degrees Celsius per decade, or slightly more than 1/10th of a degree Celsius over 50 years. The sub-surface ocean warming is noticeably less than the observed Earth surface warming, primarily because of the relatively slow transfer of ocean surface warming to lower depths. Nevertheless, because of the ocean's enormous heat capacity, the oceans likely account for more than 90 percent of the heat accumulated over the past 50 years as the Earth has warmed.

In this study the team, including observational experts from the United States, Japan and Australia, examined the causes of ocean warming using improved observational estimates. They also used results from a large multi-model archive of control simulations (that don't include the effects of humans, but do include natural variability), which were compared to simulations that included the effects of the observed increase in greenhouse gases over the 20th century.

"By using a "multi-model ensemble," we were better able to characterize decadal-scale natural climate variability, which is a critical aspect of the detection and attribution of a human-caused climate change signal. What we are trying to do is determine if the observed warming pattern can be explained by natural variability alone", Gleckler said. "Although we performed a series of tests to account for the impact of various uncertainties, we found no evidence that simultaneous warming of the upper layers of all seven seas can be explained by natural climate variability alone. Humans have played a dominant role."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/dlnl-rsh061112.php

[knocker]

Can't find this study online.

Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find

Study of tree rings, corals and ice cores finds unnatural spike in temperatures that lines up with manmade climate change

The last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according to a new report by scientists that supports the case for a reduction in manmade carbon emissions.

In the first major study of its kind in the region, scientists at the University of Melbourne used natural data from 27 climate indicators, including tree rings, corals and ice cores to map temperature trends over the past 1,000 years.

"Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1,000-year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone, suggesting a strong influence of human-caused climate change in the Australasian region," said the study's lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/17/australasia-hottest-60-years-study

[knocker]

I've no idea whether this paper from 2009 has been posted before.

Attribution of polar warming to human influence

The polar regions have long been expected to warm strongly as a result of anthropogenic climate change, because of the positive feedbacks associated with melting ice and snow^{1, 2}. Several studies have noted a rise in Arctic temperatures over recent decades^{2, 3, 4}, but have not formally attributed the changes to human influence, owing to sparse observations and large natural variability^{5, 6}. Both warming and cooling trends have been observed in Antarctica⁷, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report concludes is the only continent where anthropogenic temperature changes have not been detected so far, possibly as a result of insufficient observational coverage⁸. Here we use an up-to-date gridded data set of land surface temperatures^{9, 10} and simulations from four coupled climate models to assess the causes of the observed polar temperature changes. We find that the observed changes in Arctic and Antarctic temperatures are not consistent with internal climate variability or natural climate drivers alone, and are directly attributable to human influence. Our results demonstrate that human activities have already caused significant warming in both polar regions, with likely impacts on polar biology, indigenous communities², ice-sheet mass balance and global sea level¹¹.

http://www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/papers/ngillett/PDFS/ngeo338.pdf

[knocker]

Climate in northern Europe reconstructed for the past 2,000 years: Cooling trend calculated precisely for the first time

The calculations prepared by Mainz scientists will also influence the way current climate change is perceived / Publication of results in Nature Climate Change

09.07.2012An international team that includes scientists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has published a reconstruction of the climate in northern Europe over the last 2,000 years based on the information provided by tree-rings. Professor Dr. Jan Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC. In so doing, the researchers have been able for the first time to precisely demonstrate that the long-term trend over the past two millennia has been towards climatic cooling. "We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low," says Esper. "Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today's climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods." The new study has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Was the climate during Roman and Medieval times warmer than today? And why are these earlier warm periods important when assessing the global climate changes we are experiencing today? The discipline of paleoclimatology attempts to answer such questions. Scientists analyze indirect evidence of climate variability, such as ice cores and ocean sediments, and so reconstruct the climate of the past. The annual growth rings in trees are the most important witnesses over the past 1,000 to 2,000 years as they indicate how warm and cool past climate conditions were.

Researchers from Germany, Finland, Scotland, and Switzerland examined tree-ring density profiles in trees from Finnish Lapland. In this cold environment, trees often collapse into one of the numerous lakes, where they remain well preserved for thousands of years.

The international research team used these density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees in northern Scandinavia to create a sequence reaching back to 138 BC. The density measurements correlate closely with the summer temperatures in this area on the edge of the Nordic taiga; the researchers were thus able to create a temperature reconstruction of unprecedented quality. The reconstruction provides a high-resolution representation of temperature patterns in the Roman and Medieval Warm periods, but also shows the cold phases that occurred during the Migration Period and the later Little Ice Age.

In addition to the cold and warm phases, the new climate curve also exhibits a phenomenon that was not expected in this form. For the first time, researchers have now been able to use the data derived from tree-rings to precisely calculate a much longer-term cooling trend that has been playing out over the past 2,000 years. Their findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.

"This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant," says Esper, "however, it is also not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C. Our results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few millennia."

http://www.uni-mainz.de/eng/15491.php

The paper.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nclimate1589.pdf

[knocker]

Perhaps it's not a paradox after all. Should be good news for some.

Climate Change May Lead to Fewer -- But More Violent -- Thunderstorm

Number of flash floods and forest fires could increase with temperature, says TAU researcher

Researchers are working to identify exactly how a changing climate will impact specific elements of weather, such as clouds, rainfall, and lightning. A Tel Aviv University researcher has predicted that for every one degree Celsius of warming, there will be approximately a 10 percent increase in lightning activity.

This could have negative consequences in the form of flash floods, wild fires, or damage to power lines and other infrastructure, says Prof. Colin Price, Head of the Department of Geophysics, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University. In an ongoing project to determine the impact of climate change on the world's lightning and thunderstorm patterns, he and his colleagues have run computer climate models and studied real-life examples of climate change, such as the El Nino cycle in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, to determine how changing weather conditions impact storms.

http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=16927

[Methuselah]

A wee bitty more on tree-ring analysis: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/07/tree-rings-and-climate-some-recent-developments/#more-12427

[knocker]

Rising carbon dioxide in atmosphere also speeds carbon loss from forest soils, IU-led research finds

Underappreciated player in carbon storage should be included in global change models, researcher says

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/22755.html?emailID=22755

[loafer]

I think that breaks back to saying that CO2 makes trees grow bigger, quicker?

[jethro]

Climate forecasting: A break in the clouds

Clouds and aerosol particles have bedevilled climate modellers for decades. Now researchers are starting to gain the upper hand.

http://www.nature.co...-clouds-1.10593

[BornFromTheVoid]

Climate forecasting: A break in the clouds

Clouds and aerosol particles have bedevilled climate modellers for decades. Now researchers are starting to gain the upper hand.

http://www.nature.co...-clouds-1.10593

It would really be something if the AMO turned out to be mainly caused by aerosol pollution

The Hadley Centre's results seem to overturn the prevailing wisdom in climate circles, which holds that the ups and downs in sea surface temperatures result from a natural ocean cycle dubbed the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO). Earlier research suggested that the cooler Atlantic temperatures associated with the AMO could have contributed to droughts over the Sahel in Africa during the latter half of the twentieth century; the same cooling effect may have led to a reduction in the force of tropical storms and hurricanes steaming towards America². But on the basis of the new picture, human pollution could be causing these climate disruptions instead.

[jethro]

It would really be something if the AMO turned out to be mainly caused by aerosol pollution

Strange though it may seem, GW and I actually agree on one aspect of all this - we both concluded long ago that the hike in temperatures coinciding with the Clean Air act was too much of a coincidence to not be linked. Although it's too soon to get too excited (this is only one model), I think the role of both aerosols and clouds will take a few people by surprise when we come closer to unravelling a fuller picture. This snippet from the report highlights one of the issues of Arctic ice loss that we were discussing the other day.

Early results from the new models suggest that the addition of the more complex clouds and aerosols to simulations could help to provide an explanation. NCAR's new atmospheric model produced more warming and sea-ice loss than the previous iteration³, and the culprit seems to be clouds — a result that caught researchers by surprise. “I'm a cloud girl, but I didn't go into this thinking that clouds were going to play the lead role,†says Jennifer Kay, an atmospheric scientist at NCAR.

Also of interest is a new study on volcanic eruptions. Previous research concluded that large eruptions were needed in order to influence weather/climate, new research shows that smaller eruptions can have an impact too.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112651244/smaller-volcanoes-could-cool-climate-according-to-satellite-research/

[BornFromTheVoid]

Weather, Climate and Worldviews: The Sources and Consequences of Public Perceptions of Changes in Local Weather Patterns

http://journals.amet...AS-D-11-00044.1

In this paper we analyze the changes Americans perceive to be taking place in their local weather, and test a series of hypotheses about why they hold these perceptions. Using data from annual nationwide surveys of representative samples of the American public taken from 2008 to 2011, coupled with geographically specific measures of temperature and precipitation changes over that same period, we evaluate the relationship between perceptions of weather changes and actual changes in local weather. In addition, the survey data includes measures of, individual level characteristics (age, education level, gender, income) as well as cultural worldview and political ideology. We test rival hypotheses about the origins of Americans’ perceptions of weather change, and find that actual weather changes are less predictive of perceived changes in local temperatures, but better predictors of perceived flooding and droughts. Cultural biases and political ideology also shape perceptions of changes in local weather. Overall, our analysis indicates that beliefs about changes in local temperatures have been more heavily politicized than is true for beliefs about local precipitation patterns. Therefore risk communications linking changes in local patterns of precipitation to broader changes in the climate are more likely penetrate identity-protective cognitions about climate.

A review of the paper here http://arstechnica.c...e-temperatures/

The results show that not all weather events are created equal. When it comes to things like flood and droughts, most people seem to have accurately registered the recent trends in their area. But when the subject shifts to temperatures, the actual trends become irrelevant, and ideology and political beliefs shape how people perceive things. As the authors put it, "the contentious nature of the climate change debate has influenced the way in which Americans perceive their local weather."...

...the actual trends in temperatures had nothing to do with how people perceived them. If you graphed the predictive power of people's perceptions against the actual temperatures, the resulting line was flat—it showed no trend at all. In the statistical model, the actual weather had little impact on people's perception of recent temperatures. Education continued to have a positive impact on whether they got it right, but its magnitude was dwarfed by the influences of political affiliation and cultural beliefs...

...And those cultural affiliations had about the effect you'd expect. Individualists, who often object to environmental regulations as an infringement on their freedoms, tended to think the temperatures hadn't gone up in their area, regardless of whether they had. Strong egalitarians, in contrast, tended to believe the temperatures had gone up...

...The authors conclude that climate change has become perceived as a form of cultural affiliation for most people: their acceptance of it is mostly a way of reinforcing their ties to the political and ideological communities they belong to. And, since temperatures have become the primary thing the public associates with climate change, people now interpret the temperatures through a filter based on their affiliations, a process termed "cultural cognition." In other words, we tend to interpret the temperatures in a way that reinforces our identity, and our connections with others who share similar political persuasions

[knocker]

Sounds like a conspiricy theory to me.

Rise in temperatures and CO2 follow each other closely in climate change

The greatest climate change the world has seen in the last 100,000 years was the transition from the ice age to the warm interglacial period. New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen indicates that, contrary to previous opinion, the rise in temperature and the rise in the atmospheric CO₂ follow each other closely in terms of time. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Climate of the Past.

In the warmer climate the atmospheric content of CO₂ is naturally higher. The gas CO₂ (carbon dioxide) is a green-house gas that absorbs heat radiation from the Earth and thus keeps the Earth warm. In the shift between ice ages and interglacial periods the atmospheric content of CO₂ helps to intensify the natural climate variations.

It had previously been thought that as the temperature began to rise at the end of the ice age approximately 19,000 years ago, an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere followed with a delay of up to 1,000 years.

“Our analyses of ice cores from the ice sheet in Antarctica shows that the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere follows the rise in Antarctic temperatures very closely and is staggered by a few hundred years at most,†explains Sune Olander Rasmussen, Associate Professor and centre coordinator at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2012/2012.7/rise_in_temperatures_and_co2/

The paper.

http://www.clim-past.net/8/1213/2012/cp-8-1213-2012.pdf

[BornFromTheVoid]

Sources of multi-decadal variability in Arctic sea ice extent

There is little evidence of a relationship between the AO

and SIE in the models. However, we find that both the AMO and AMOC indices are

significantly correlated with SIE in all the models considered. Using sensitivity statistics

derived from the models, assuming a linear relationship, we attribute 0:5–3:1%=decade of the

10:1%=decade decline in September SIE (1979–2010) to AMO driven variability.

Full pdf here

Edited July 26, 2012 by BornFromTheVoid

[knocker]

Climate concerns

Harvard researchers find link between climate change, ozone loss and possible increase in skin cancer incidence

For decades, scientists have known that the effects of global climate change could have a potentially devastating impact across the globe, but Harvard researchers say there is now evidence that it may also have a dramatic impact on public health.

As reported in a paper published in the July 27 issue of Science, a team of researchers led by James G. Anderson, the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, are warning that a newly-discovered connection between climate change and depletion of the ozone layer over the U.S. could allow more damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach the Earth's surface, leading to increased incidence of skin cancer.

In the system described by Anderson and his team, water vapor injected into the stratosphere by powerful thunderstorms converts stable forms of chlorine and bromine into free radicals capable of transforming ozone molecules into oxygen. Recent studies have suggested that the number and intensity of such storms are linked to climate changes, Anderson said, which could in turn lead to increased ozone loss and greater levels of harmful UV radiation reaching the Earth's surface, and potentially higher rates of skin cancer.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/hu-cc072612.php

[jethro]

New study shows the Earth is currently keeping pace with emissions and hasn't reached a tipping point; although with current knowledge and projected increases in emissions, there is a possibility we may reach this point by 2030-2050 if emissions are not reduced.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/new-study-shows-planet-keeping-pace-with-co2-emissions/

[knocker]

Researchers unlock secret of the rare 'twinned rainbow'

ZURICH — Scientists have yet to fully unravel the mysteries of rainbows, but a group of researchers from Disney Research, Zürich, UC San Diego, Universidad de Zaragoza, and Horley, UK, have used simulations of these natural wonders to unlock the secret to a rare optical phenomenon known as the twinned rainbow.

Unlike the more common double-rainbow, which consists of two separate and concentric rainbow arcs, the elusive twinned rainbow appears as two rainbows arcs that split from a single base rainbow. Sometimes it is even observed in combination with a double rainbow.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/dr-rus080612.php

[Coast]

Something I have followed in the Space, Science and Nature thread, but here is an interesting twist on the Curiosity rover mission:

What can the Mars rover tell us about climate change on Earth?

Nasa's new rover will hunt for signs of martian climate change, and in doing so will shed light on what's going on back home

Scientists have made great strides in predicting what will happen to Earth's climate, but there is a fundamental problem: we only have one climate to test our hypotheses in. We can't irreversibly hack Earth's climate (by pumping it full of toxic gases, for example) to test whether our assumptions are right or wrong—that, obviously, would be disastrous for Earth's inhabitants. That means climate models are loaded with historical and empirical data to make them function.

If only we could take the model to another planet to really test the underpinning physics. Bingo. Curiosity, the car-sized mobile chemistry lab that dropped spectacularly onto the surface of Mars yesterday, will give scientists a rare chance to test their assumptions about how climate change works on Earth. It will hunt the surface of Mars for sediment to pick up and drop into its sophisticated onboard machinery, then send back critical insights into how the climate of Mars—once warmer, with rain, rivers, and deltas—has changed over billions of years, lashed by solar winds.

"You learn about how to understand an atmosphere by seeing different atmospheres," said Mark Lemmon, a planetary scientist from Texas A&M University who is part of Curiosity's climate team. "And the more we know about Mars' atmosphere, the better we can really understand our own." Curiosity allows scientists to "break the model," he said. "We find out much, much more about our place in the universe than we could know just by contemplating ourselves." All with the latest bells and whistles: "We can remotely look at a rock with a laser beam, vaporize it, and see what elements are in it," Lemmon said in a telephone interview from Pasadena, the morning after the historic landing.

This has happened before, Lemmon explains. When scientists first ran Earth's climate models against the climate of Venus, winds on Venus ground to a theoretical halt within days. Something in Earth's modeling wasn't accounting for how wind worked on that distant planet. By tinkering with new physics, scientists finally accommodated for Venus' winds, thus reducing the margin of error in Earth's climate models.

"Realistically, we cannot sit here on Earth and deliberately mess our climate in order to test the models," Lemmon said. "And that's what I think the real power of the climate part of the Mars program is all about." Specifically, Curiosity will study how carbon flows through the Martian world, something that will help scientists compare the two planets.Paul Niles is also working with the NASA team. He is a planetary geologist and analytical geochemist at NASA's Johnson Space Center who watched the touch-down with his family in Los Angeles. "One of the things that Curiosity is going to help us learn much more about is... How does carbon cycle through the system? Where does it go? Where does it end up? Does it ever come back again? Is it ever buried deep enough that it come back again from volcanoes?"

Even though Mars' atmosphere is completely different from Earth's, the answers to these questions could shed light on how carbon cycles are now contributing to climate change on Earth. After initial rounds of analysis, "we might be in a better position to make direct comparisons with what happens on Earth," Niles said. Both Niles and Lemmon said that, with the dramatic landing complete, the real work has only just begun. Lemmon texted one word to his wife from Pasadena when Curiosity kissed Mars's surface for the first time: "Joy." "We know there's stuff out there and we need to see what it is!" he said. "I think space exploration is a critical piece of pushing the boundaries," Niles said. "The best part about it is it makes us address problems that we maybe wouldn't have addressed, and solve problems we may have not solved otherwise."

http://www.guardian....h?newsfeed=true

[keithlucky]

Australia's Great Barrier Reef Healthy & Unaffected By Climate Change, Peer-Reviewed Study Determines

Read here. A new study by coral reef experts was just published regarding the health of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The concern worldwide, and especially in Australia, is that human activities are destroying the GBR. Global warming alarmists have claimed, hysterically, that global warming was causing the GBR coral to die and the reef to shrink.

As Osborne et al. determined in their study, the GBR is alive and well in contrast to the non-scientific, alarmist hysteria.

"The authors write that "coral decline is frequently described as ongoing with the integrity and persistence of the reef system threatened by a number of different stressors,"...that "climate change is widely regarded as the single greatest threat to coral reef ecosystems."...they decided to quantify the trend in live coral cover of the GBR over the critical temporal interval of 1995-2009, which climate alarmists contend was the warmest decade and a half experienced by the planet to that point in time over the past millennium...four researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science report that "coral cover increased in six sub-regions and decreased in seven sub-regions," with some of the changes "being very dynamic and others changing little." But with respect to the entire reef system, they report that "overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009." And to emphasize this fact, they forthrightly state that they found "no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995."" [Kate Osborne, Andrew M. Dolman, Scott C. Burgess, Kerryn A. Johns 2011: PLoS ONE]

Additional coral reef and peer-reviewed postings.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Australia's Great Barrier Reef Healthy & Unaffected By Climate Change, Peer-Reviewed Study Determines

Read here. A new study by coral reef experts was just published regarding the health of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The concern worldwide, and especially in Australia, is that human activities are destroying the GBR. Global warming alarmists have claimed, hysterically, that global warming was causing the GBR coral to die and the reef to shrink.

As Osborne et al. determined in their study, the GBR is alive and well in contrast to the non-scientific, alarmist hysteria.

"The authors write that "coral decline is frequently described as ongoing with the integrity and persistence of the reef system threatened by a number of different stressors,"...that "climate change is widely regarded as the single greatest threat to coral reef ecosystems."...they decided to quantify the trend in live coral cover of the GBR over the critical temporal interval of 1995-2009, which climate alarmists contend was the warmest decade and a half experienced by the planet to that point in time over the past millennium...four researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science report that "coral cover increased in six sub-regions and decreased in seven sub-regions," with some of the changes "being very dynamic and others changing little." But with respect to the entire reef system, they report that "overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009." And to emphasize this fact, they forthrightly state that they found "no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995."" [Kate Osborne, Andrew M. Dolman, Scott C. Burgess, Kerryn A. Johns 2011: PLoS ONE]

Additional coral reef and peer-reviewed postings.

That's not really "new research". It was published in March 2011...

[jethro]

That's not really "new research". It was published in March 2011...

It was new to me.

[knocker]

It was new to me.

Using that logic some research from 1995 that you missed would be new to you.

[jethro]

Using that logic some research from 1995 that you missed would be new to you.

Yup.

I can't see any harm in it myself, whether it's from now or ten years ago - if it's relevant and interesting, what's the harm in bringing it to people's attention? How old's the last IPCC report? It's still referred to, as are the previous IPCC reports.

The thread title may be 'New Research' but like all the other threads where a certain amount of leeway is given/taken by folks, there's no rigid criteria nor cut off/before/since date for relevant research.

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011JD016985.shtml

This is 'New' research (Aug 4th 2012) and is very timely for the 'odd' cyclone over the pole presently (upper low stacked over surface low....now where do we normally see this set up?)