New Research

[BornFromTheVoid]

http://www.eurekaler...e-wcm090612.php

Wind could meet many times world's total power demand by 2030, researchers say

Using the most sophisticated climate model available, researchers show there's plenty of wind for clean-energy economy

In 2030, if all energy is converted to clean energy, humans will consume about eleven-and-a-half terawatts of power every year, all sources combined. If there is to be a clean-energy economy based on renewable energy, wind power will no doubt have to help meet much of that demand.

In a new study, researchers at Stanford University's School of Engineering and the University of Delaware developed the most sophisticated weather model available to show that not only is there plenty of wind over land and near to shore to provide half the world's power, but there is enough to exceed total demand by several times if need be, even after accounting for reductions in wind speed caused by turbines.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and Cristina Archer, an associate professor of geography and physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware.

[jonboy]

And now we have a goverment minister in charge of the environment and energy policy who hates wind farms!!

[knocker]

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for forecasting seasonal hurricane activity that is 15 percent more accurate than previous techniques.

“This approach should give policymakers more reliable information than current state-of-the-art methods,†says Dr. Nagiza Samatova, an associate professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. “This will hopefully give them more confidence in planning for the hurricane season.â€

http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wms-samatova-activity2012/

[Interitus]

Not particularly new published 2008 - Widening of the tropical belt in a changing climate - can't wait!

Some of the earliest unequivocal signs of climate change have been the warming of the air and ocean, thawing of land and melting of ice in the Arctic. But recent studies are showing that the tropics are also changing. Several lines of evidence show that over the past few decades the tropical belt has expanded. This expansion has potentially important implications for subtropical societies and may lead to profound changes in the global climate system. Most importantly, poleward movement of large-scale atmospheric circulation systems, such as jet streams and storm tracks, could result in shifts in precipitation patterns affecting natural ecosystems, agriculture, and water resources. The implications of the expansion for stratospheric circulation and the distribution of ozone in the atmosphere are as yet poorly understood. The observed recent rate of expansion is greater than climate model projections of expansion over the twenty-first century, which suggests that there is still much to be learned about this aspect of global climate change.

http://www.nature.co...eo.2007.38.html

[Interitus]

From the Met Office Hadley Centre this synthesis would make a good primer on all aspects of Arctic climate change, well worth a look.

"Assessment of Possibility and Impact of Rapid Climate Change in the Arctic"

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/HCTN_91.pdf

[Gray-Wolf]

Oh Dear MetO, methinks a few of your graphs and conclusions need updating in line of this years observations!

It already appears strange to see 07' singled out as an 'extreme' event now we have gone 18% lower in an 'average weather year'?

I wonder how long the paper will remain up before it's dramatically 'updated'?

This can be a problem in a world changing as fast as our is at present. how many papers Have we seen 'out of date' on release due to 'unforeseen' accelerations in the rate of change observed.

[Interitus]

Yes, it's unfortunate for them that although it references papers from this year and was only published in August, it is already behind the curve.

Still would make foundation reading for anyone new to the topic, references in one place lots of the material that you stumble across over a period of time.

[knocker]

Stratosphere targets deep sea to shape climate

North Atlantic 'Achilles heel' lets upper atmosphere affect the abyss

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 23, 2012 – A University of Utah study suggests something amazing: Periodic changes in winds 15 to 30 miles high in the stratosphere influence the seas by striking a vulnerable "Achilles heel" in the North Atlantic and changing mile-deep ocean circulation patterns, which in turn affect Earth's climate.

"We found evidence that what happens in the stratosphere matters for the ocean circulation and therefore for climate," says Thomas Reichler, senior author of the study published online Sunday, Sept. 23 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Scientists already knew that events in the stratosphere, 6 miles to 30 miles above Earth, affect what happens below in the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere from Earth's surface up to 6 miles or about 32,800 feet. Weather occurs in the troposphere.

Researchers also knew that global circulation patterns in the oceans – patterns caused mostly by variations in water temperature and saltiness – affect global climate.

"It is not new that the stratosphere impacts the troposphere," says Reichler, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah. "It also is not new that the troposphere impacts the ocean. But now we actually demonstrated an entire link between the stratosphere, the troposphere and the ocean."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/uou-std091812.php

[laserguy]

Perhaps one day,it'll be a discovery like this that'll make the whole AGW thing look as daft as it really is. Oh,how we'll look back and laugh.

[keithlucky]

And now we have a goverment minister in charge of the environment and energy policy who hates wind farms!!

Good reason too scrap them, they uneconomical and destroy the enviroment thats why Germany are scraping them and switching back to super cooled coal powerstations .Just come down to Wales and see how they smashed there way through villages.

[Methuselah]

Good reason too scrap them, they uneconomical and destroy the enviroment thats why Germany are scraping them and switching back to super cooled coal powerstations .Just come down to Wales and see how they smashed there way through villages.

Coming soon: Attack of the Killer Wind Turbines!

[knocker]

Good reason too scrap them, they uneconomical and destroy the enviroment thats why Germany are scraping them and switching back to super cooled coal powerstations .

They are not exactly scrapping them but I agree I've been advocating nuclear for years. A recent article in the Torygraph.

Germany's wind power chaos should be a warning to the UK

Germany has gone further down the 'renewables' path than any country in the world, and now it's paying the price

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9559656/Germanys-wind-power-chaos-should-be-a-warning-to-the-UK.html

Edited September 23, 2012 by knocker

[BornFromTheVoid]

Good reason too scrap them, they uneconomical and destroy the enviroment thats why Germany are scraping them and switching back to super cooled coal powerstations .Just come down to Wales and see how they smashed there way through villages.

[BornFromTheVoid]

A paper, pre-peer review and by a scientist commonly slated by deniers... but I'm sure it will become a new favourite theirs. Not being sarcastic even!

Mass Gains of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Exceed Losses

During 2003 to 2008, the mass gain of the Antarctic ice sheet from snow accumulation exceeded

the mass loss from ice discharge by 49 Gtlyr (2.5% of input), as derived from ICESat laser

measurements of elevation change. The net gain (86 Gtlyr) over the West Antarctic (WA) and

East Antarctic ice sheets (W A and EA) is essentially unchanged from revised results for 1992 to

2001 from ERS radar altimetry. Imbalances in individual drainage systems (DS) are large

(-68% to +103% of input), as are temporal changes (-39% to +44%). The recent 90 Gtlyr loss

from three DS (Pine Island, Thwaites-Smith, and Marie-Bryd Coast) of WA exceeds the earlier

61 Gtlyr loss, consistent with reports of accelerating ice flow and dynamic thinning. Similarly,

the recent 24 Gtlyr loss from three DS in the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) is consistent with glacier

accelerations following breakup of the Larsen B and other ice shelves. In contrast, net increases

in the five other DS ofWA and AP and three of the 16 DS in East Antarctica (EA) exceed the

increased losses. Alternate interpretations of the mass changes driven by accumulation variations

are given using results from atmospheric-model re-analysis and a parameterization based on 5%

change in accumulation per degree of observed surface temperature change. A slow increase in

snowfall with climate wanning, consistent with model predictions, may be offsetting increased

dynamic losses.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov..._2012013235.pdf

[Gowon]

A new paper ragarding methane.

http://www.geomar.de/index.php?id=4&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=903&tx_ttnews[backPid]=185&L=1

September 19, 2012/Kiel. Marine scientists from Kiel, together with colleagues from Bremen, Great Britain, Switzerland and Norway, spent four and a half weeks examining methane emanation from the sea bed off the coast of Spitsbergen with the German research vessel MARIA S. MERIAN. There they gained a very differentiated picture: Several of the gas outlets have been active for hundreds of years.

[knocker]

Ikaite crystals in melting sea ice – implications for pCO2 and pH levels in Arctic surface waters

http://www.the-cryosphere.net/6/901/2012/tc-6-901-2012.pdf

[knocker]

Link found between cold European winters and solar activity

WASHINGTON—Scientists have long suspected that the Sun’s 11-year cycle influences climate of certain regions on Earth. Yet records of average, seasonal temperatures do not date back far enough to confirm any patterns. Now, armed with a unique proxy, an international team of researchers show that unusually cold winters in Central Europe are related to low solar activity — when sunspot numbers are minimal. The freezing of Germany’s largest river, the Rhine, is the key.

Although the Earth’s surface overall continues to warm, the new analysis has revealed a correlation between periods of low activity of the Sun and of some cooling — on a limited, regional scale in Central Europe, along the Rhine.

“The advantage with studying the Rhine is because it’s a very simple measurement,†said Frank Sirocko lead author of a paper on the study and professor of Sedimentology and Paleoclimatology at the Institute of Geosciences of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. “Freezing is special in that it’s like an on-off mode. Either there is ice or there is no ice.â€

From the early 19th through mid-20th centuries, riverboat men used the Rhine for cargo transport. And so docks along the river have annual records of when ice clogged the waterway and stymied shipping. The scientists used these easily-accessible documents, as well as other additional historical accounts, to determine the number of freezing episodes since 1780.

http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2012/2012-39.shtml

[knocker]

High-Arctic Heat Tops 1,800-Year High, Says Study

Summers on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard are now warmer than at any other time in the last 1,800 years, including during medieval times when parts of the northern hemisphere were as hot as, or hotter, than today, according to a new study in the journal Geology.

“The Medieval Warm Period was not as uniformly warm as we once thought--we can start calling it the Medieval Period again,†said the study’s lead author, William D’Andrea, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “Our record indicates that recent summer temperatures on Svalbard are greater than even the warmest periods at that time.â€

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/high-arctic-heat-tops-1800-year-high-says-study

[jethro]

A new study from Woods Hole documenting the discovery of a hitherto unknown natural cycle in the Pacific:

"Scientists have uncovered evidence for another natural cycle that, like El Niño and La Niña, shifts Pacific Ocean winds and currents and rearranges rainfall and weather patterns around the globe. The newly detected cycle recurs every 100 years, less frequently than the two-to-seven year El Niño-Southern Oscillation. But its existence, if confirmed, offers another fundamental cog to understand the ocean-atmosphere machinery that regulates worldwide rain, droughts, wildfires, floods, landslides, fisheries, and storms."

http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/pco

[Guest]

I read an interesting proposition over the weekend in connection with wind farms.

As you know the electricity gained from this source can be erratic - the winds can blow strong during times of low demand and drop off during the busy periods and as you know there is no efficient way of storing the electricity to even out supply and demand, or is there?

The proposal is that during the quiet periods when there is an excess of supply, this could be used to liquify the ordinary atmospheric air by cooling it so can then be stored until needed, and when it is this, the liquified air is allowed to evaporate, expand and the resultant increase in pressure could be sufficient to drive extra turbines when needed.

I do not know the nuts and bolts or the maths involved in this but if feasible it could make much more of the wind farms which have been discredited because of the erratic current supply.

Any comments?

Edited October 4, 2012 by mike Meehan

[Interitus]

Would there be any excess of supply?

[Guest]

Would there be any excess of supply?

I would have thought so at off peak periods when the wind is blowing fairly well - that is the problem with wind farms, we can't make them perform altogether to order, the best we can do is to shut some down when we reach capacity.

[Interitus]

I would have thought so at off peak periods when the wind is blowing fairly well - that is the problem with wind farms, we can't make them perform altogether to order, the best we can do is to shut some down when we reach capacity.

Yes theoretically the storage of excess energy by liquefying air seems like a good idea, but how many wind turbines would be required that there is an excess of energy produced by them? It's surely so many that resistance against them is too great to install them in the first place.

[Guest]

Yes theoretically the storage of excess energy by liquefying air seems like a good idea, but how many wind turbines would be required that there is an excess of energy produced by them? It's surely so many that resistance against them is too great to install them in the first place.

It's a strange thing really but if we come across an old fashioned wind mill in the countryside it is quaint and attractive but if a modern wind farm is built, it is considered by a selection of people as being a blot on the landscape. However we do need the resources of the energy they provide even though it is currently erratic but if this system were to work it would do something towards addressing this problem.

A week ago I drove right across France from Calais down to our place in Languedoc and the amount of wind farms is quite prolific - there does not appear to be the same amount of antagonism against them on this side of the channel.

The excess current from them all could be fed into the National Grid and the air liquifying/generation plants could be anywhere that have access to this, they do not have to be in an absolute close proximity to the wind farms but obviously need to be close enough that the current is not degraded too much by the distance travelled. Since the suggested location is within the area of the National Grid there would not appear to be too much of a problem in this respect.

Another objection may be that, for example a blocking area of high pressure of high pressure could render them in-operative for extended periods of time through a persistence of dead calm conditions but I would suggest that for such conditions to extend over absolutely all of the UK including those in our waters just off the sea would be an extremely rare event and tehre are always likely to be some working.

They are not the complete answer to our energy problems by any means and what we do need are a variety of renewable energy sources, including a greater take up of domestic PV panelling.

The holy grail of energy surely is its development by 'fusion' but there does not appear to be a simple way of achieving this and its development could still be far off into the future and we cannot afford to wait for this.

The principle of storing such energy is not without precedent - there is a power station in Wales which uses off peak power to transport water to a lake at altitude and use it to generate electricity by a hydro electric station during the peak periods, so any way, in my view, we can find means to store power should be of overall benefit.

Edited October 6, 2012 by mike Meehan

[knocker]

Study maps greenhouse gas emissions to building, street level for US cities

Project to help overcome barriers to an international climate change treaty

TEMPE, Ariz. - Arizona State University researchers have developed a new software system capable of estimating greenhouse gas emissions across entire urban landscapes, all the way down to roads and individual buildings. Until now, scientists quantified carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at a much broader level.

Dubbed "Hestia" after the Greek goddess of the hearth and home, researchers presented the new system in an article published October 9 in Environmental Science and Technology. Hestia combines extensive public database "data-mining" with traffic simulation and building-by-building energy-consumption modeling. Its high-resolution maps clearly identify CO2 emission sources in a way that policy-makers can utilize and the public can understand.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-10/asu-smg100412.php