In The News

[Admiral_Bobski]

Good Lord!

Is the Leaky Integrator showing some tentative signs of vindication?

=)

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks Boar (I think???)

It would be right and proper if you got some satisfaction/vindication for all the long hours (and cash!) you put into the exercise. Of all the 'commentators' on here I cannot think of another person who has invested as much of themselves into answering the questions we all muse over.

[jethro]

Good Lord!

Is the Leaky Integrator showing some tentative signs of vindication?

=)

Yeah! You're alive and well!

Afternoon Bobski, long time, no hear, how you diddling?

[Methuselah]

Good Lord!

Is the Leaky Integrator showing some tentative signs of vindication?

=)

Were've you been, bro?

[Admiral_Bobski]

Hey peeps!

I decided all this doom and gloom had got too much for me, so I absconded to the less earth-shattering climes of IGN, where I have been happily blogging and annoying the locals for going on 18 months now.

It occurred to me that this global warming stuff wasn't going to go away - we were destined to just run round and round in circles until such a time as more data had been accumulated. We're still not there yet, so the debate will continue to rage or else the dissenters will all end up doing what I've done and leaving for less infuriating destinations. It is nice to hear that the LI is alive and well, somewhere in the backs of people's minds, though it's sad to hear that VP has been through so much hardship as a result.

Anyway, I shall try to keep a toe in this pool if time allows...

Nice to hear from you guys and gals!

=)

[jethro]

I hope time does allow.

I know it's a bit of a circular debate but it's no where near as fraught as it used to be, there's much more acceptance of the middle ground these days.

[knocker]

Over 30 years of global soil moisture observations for climate applications

19 June 2012

Water held in soil plays an important role in the climate system. The dataset released by ESA is the first remote-sensing soil moisture data record spanning the period 1978 to 2010 – a predecessor of the data now being provided by ESA’s SMOS mission.

The datasets are now available to the science community for feedback analyses and climate model validation.

The amount of water held in global soils makes up only about 0.001% of the total water found on Earth.

It is crucial for plant growth, but is also linked to our weather and climate. This is because soil moisture is a key variable controlling the exchange of water and energy between the land and the atmosphere: dry soil emits little or no moisture to the atmosphere.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/smos/SEME9OAXH3H_0.html

[knocker]

Ancient global warming allowed greening of Antarctica

New research shows that substantial vegetation - including stunted trees - sprouted on the frozen continent 15 million years ago

Ancient Antarctica was warmer and wetter than previously suspected, enough to support vegetation along its edges, according to a new study.

By examining the remnants of plant leaf wax found in sediment cores taken below the Ross Ice Shelf, scientists from the University of Southern California, Louisiana State University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory were able to determine that summer temperatures along the Antarctic coast 15 to 20 million years ago were 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) warmer than they are today, reaching up to about 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius); with several times more precipitation.

This occurred during a period of global warming in the middle Miocene epoch that coincided with increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

http://www.eurekaler...c-agw061712.php

Edited June 19, 2012 by knocker

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/as-the-earth-warms-forest-floors-add-greenhouse-gases-to-the-air/2012/06/11/gJQATcIOVV_story.html

To me it seems a no brainer that a warmer ,damper forrest will be a better composter???

[loafer]

The study does appear to completely ignore the balancing effect of the vegetation growing in the soil which would absorb the carbon dioxide, so it does seem rather incomplete.

[BornFromTheVoid]

The reliability of Arctic climate predictions is currently hampered by insufficient knowledge of natural climate variability in the past. A sediment core from Lake El’gygytgyn (NE Russia) provides a continuous high-resolution record from the Arctic spanning the past 2.8 Ma. The core reveals numerous “super interglacials†during the Quaternary, with maximum summer temperatures and annual precipitation during marine benthic isotope stages (MIS) 11c and 31 ~4-5°C and ~300 mm higher than those of MIS 1 and 5e. Climate simulations show these extreme warm conditions are difficult to explain with greenhouse gas and astronomical forcing alone, implying the importance of amplifying feedbacks and far field influences. The timing of Arctic warming relative to West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreats implies strong interhemispheric climate connectivity.

http://www.sciencema...science.1222135

And for a brief overview with some explanations for the above abstract.

http://arstechnica.c...n-russian-lake/

[knocker]

Climate change and the South Asian summer monsoon

The vagaries of South Asian summer monsoon rainfall impact the lives of more than one billion people. A review in Nature Climate Change (June 24 online issue) of over 100 recent research articles concludes that with continuing rise in CO2 and global warming, the region can expect generally more rainfall, due to the expected increase in atmospheric moisture, as well as more variability in rainfall.

In spite of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 70 parts per million by volume and in global temperatures of about 0.50°C over the last 6 decades, the All India Rainfall index does not yet show the expected increase in rainfall. The reviewers Andrew Turner from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading and H. Annamalai from the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa give several reasons for why the region's observed rainfall has not yet increased, among them are inconsistent rainfall observations, decadal variability of the monsoon, the effects of aerosols resulting from industrialization, and land-use changes.

Regional projections for devastating droughts and floods--which are most meaningful for residents living in South Asia-- are still beyond the reach of current climate models, according to the reviewers' detailed analyses of the present state of research. The authors conclude that in order to make regional projections that can help in disaster mitigation and in adapting to climate change, the following is needed: establishing more consistent rainfall datasets by expanding observations to include, for example, agricultural yield; a better grasp of the complicated thermodynamics over the monsoon region and of the interactions among monsoon rainfall, land-use, aerosols, CO2, and other conditions; and an evaluation in coupled circulation models (which allow feedbacks among variables) of those processes that have been shown in simpler models to affect the monsoon and rainfall.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/uoh-cca062112.php

[knocker]

Significant sea-level rise in a 2-degree warming world

Sea levels around the world can be expected to rise by several meters in coming centuries, if global warming carries on

The study is the first to give a comprehensive projection for this long perspective, based on observed sea-level rise over the past millennium, as well as on scenarios for future greenhouse-gas emissions.

"Sea-level rise is a hard to quantify, yet critical risk of climate change," says Michiel Schaeffer of Climate Analytics and Wageningen University, lead author of the study. "Due to the long time it takes for the world's ice and water masses to react to global warming, our emissions today determine sea levels for centuries to come."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/pifc-ssr062212.php

[knocker]

Remote Siberian Lake Holds Clues to Arctic--and Antarctic--Climate Change

Fates of polar ice sheets appear to be linked

June 21, 2012

Intense warm climate intervals--warmer than scientists thought possible--have occurred in the Arctic over the past 2.8 million years.

That result comes from the first analyses of the longest sediment cores ever retrieved on land. They were obtained from beneath remote, ice-covered Lake El'gygytgyn (pronounced El'gee-git-gin) ("Lake E") in the northeastern Russian Arctic.

The journal Science published the findings this week.

They show that the extreme warm periods in the Arctic correspond closely with times when parts of Antarctica were also ice-free and warm, suggesting a strong connection between Northern and Southern Hemisphere climate.

The polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than researchers thought, say the National Science Foundation-(NSF) funded Lake E project's co-chief scientists: Martin Melles of the University of Cologne, Germany; Julie Brigham-Grette of the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Pavel Minyuk of Russia's North-East Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Institute in Magadan.

The exceptional climate warming in the Arctic, and the inter-hemispheric interdependencies, weren't known before the Lake E studies, the scientists say.

http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=124565&org=NSF&from=news

[knocker]

yet another complication.

Greenland ice may exaggerate magnitude of 13,000-year-old deep freeze

Ice samples pulled from nearly a mile below the surface of Greenland glaciers have long served as a historical thermometer, adding temperature data to studies of the local conditions up to the Northern Hemisphere’s climate.

But the method — comparing the ratio of oxygen isotopes buried as snow fell over millennia — may not be such a straightforward indicator of air temperature.

“We don’t believe the ice cores can be interpreted purely as a signal of temperature,†says Anders Carlson, a University of Wisconsin–Madison geosciences professor. “You have to consider where the precipitation that formed the ice came from.â€

http://www.news.wisc.edu/20811

[knocker]

Astonishing storage capacity.

Seagrass stores more carbon than forests

Coastal seagrass can store more heat-trapping carbon per square kilometre than forests can, which means these coastal plants could be part of the solution to climate change.

Even though seagrasses occupy less than 0.2 per cent of the world's oceans, they can hold up to 83,000 tonne of carbon per square kilometre, a global team of researchers reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.

That is more than twice the 30,000 tonnes of carbon per square kilometre a typical terrestrial forest can store.

Earth's oceans are an important carbon sink, keeping climate-warming carbon dioxide from human-made and natural sources out of the atmosphere. The scientists found that seagrasses account for more than 10 per cent of all the carbon buried in oceans, also known as blue carbon.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/05/22/3508277.htm

[BornFromTheVoid]

Wildfires continue to spread in Colorado.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/27/colorado-wildfires-2012-w_n_1630861.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Record heat has produced a surge of new fires burning throughout Colorado and also provided fuel and devastating growth conditions for the fires already burning. There are a total of six major fires burning in Colorado as of Wednesday, all part of the worst wildfire season in a decade.

"We have got a couple of critical fire days ahead," Steve Segin of the Rocky Mountain fire-incident team told The Denver Post. "It is going to be very active. We haven't had a fire season this bad since certainly 2002."

[BornFromTheVoid]

Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Nearing Critical ‘Tipping Point’

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/greenland-ice-sheet-reflectivity-near-record-low-research-shows/

“It appears that we’re about to cross a threshold in summer . . . you might even call it a tipping point as we go into a net energy absorption†of the higher elevations, Box said. “Then we’ll see the melt area expanding abruptly and potentially covering the entire ice sheet in summer for the first time in observations.

[Gray-Wolf]

Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Nearing Critical ‘Tipping Point’

http://www.climatece...research-shows/

Though I'm sure we'll hear of 'black carbon' (soot) the fact we have lost a lot of the 'nuclear' fingerprint layers in the ice would suggest that a lot of the ice sheet has melted back over 50 years of accumulation ? Thats 50 odd layers of dust now concentrated across some of the surfaces? If you look at the Modis images of the ice sheet you'll note that the fringes, apart from having lots of blue melt ponds, are ever greyer once the snow melt is over (and melt ponds arrive).

[jethro]

Though I'm sure we'll hear of 'black carbon' (soot) the fact we have lost a lot of the 'nuclear' fingerprint layers in the ice would suggest that a lot of the ice sheet has melted back over 50 years of accumulation ? Thats 50 odd layers of dust now concentrated across some of the surfaces? If you look at the Modis images of the ice sheet you'll note that the fringes, apart from having lots of blue melt ponds, are ever greyer once the snow melt is over (and melt ponds arrive).

There's a growing movement to paint surfaces white, roofs, road surfaces and indeed mountains; there's got to be a way to include Greenland ice sheets in that list.

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/03/bill-mckibben-on-the-global-warming-hoax.html

A bit of fun!

[Gray-Wolf]

O.M.G.!

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/03/what-behind-record-heat/

Well fancy that?

[knocker]

Extreme weather conditions cost EU’s transport system at least €15 billion annually

A study carried out by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland indicates that extreme weather conditions cost EU transport system at least €15 billion a year. Currently, the greatest costs incurred are from road accidents, with the associated material damage and psychological suffering. However, costs arising from accidents are expected to decrease in volume, though time-related costs attributable to delays are projected to increase. In part, this is due to climate change, whose impact on extreme weather phenomena was addressed in the study, and because of consequent costs.

In the study conducted by VTT and EWENT project partners, researchers calculated the costs, caused by extreme weather phenomena for the transport system, its users and customers of freight carriers in the 27 EU member states. This marks the first time calculations have been completed on this scale and scope. The study shows that the mode of traffic most vulnerable to extreme weather is road traffic. It continues to have a higher volume than the other modes, with the additional factor of not being centralised or professionally controlled, in contrast to rail or aviation. In particular, the consequences of extreme weather are visible in road traffic in the form of increased road accidents and the cost arising from them. In other traffic modes, far more likely than accidents will be time-related costs with a variety of causes, typically delays. Aviation in particular is prone to time-related costs in extreme weather. The annual net cost in European aviation is on the order of billions of euros, borne by travellers and airline operators. Surprisingly, infrastructure related costs did not have a lion's share of the total costs.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/vtrc-ewc070412.php

[Methuselah]

O.M.G.!

http://www.foxnews.c...nd-record-heat/

Well fancy that?

Ah! So that's why WUWT has gone so quiet?

[knocker]

Arctic warming linked to combination of reduced sea ice and global atmospheric warming

6 Jul 2012

The combination of melting sea ice and global atmospheric warming are contributing to the high rate of warming in the Arctic, where temperatures are increasing up to four times faster than the global average, a new University of Melbourne study has shown.

Professor Ian Simmonds from the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences co-authored the study and said the new information showed this combined effect at both ground and atmospheric level played a key role in increasing the rate of warming in the Arctic.

“Loss of sea ice contributes to ground level warming while global warming intensifies atmospheric circulation and contributes to increased temperatures higher in the Arctic atmosphere,†Professor Simmonds said.

Lead author, Dr James Screen of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne said the sea ice acted like a shiny lid on the Arctic Ocean.

“When it is heated, it reflects most of the incoming sunlight back into space. When the sea ice melts, more heat is absorbed by the water. The warmer water then heats the atmosphere above it,†he said.

Professor Simmonds said as temperatures increase across the globe, so does the intensity of atmospheric circulation.

“This circulation transports energy to the Arctic region, increasing temperatures further up in the atmosphere,†he said.

“Water vapour is a very strong greenhouse gas. As the atmosphere warms it can hold more moisture, which acts as a positive feedback signal, increasing the greenhouse effect. However, in the cold Arctic where there is less moisture in the air, this positive feedback is much weaker hence the ‘direct’ greenhouse effect is smaller in the Arctic than elsewhere.

“Even though the Arctic region has a relatively small greenhouse effect, the effect of the melted ice combined with greater transports of heat from the south are more than enough to make up for this modest ‘local’ greenhouse warming.â€

The study was published in the prestigious Geophysical Research Letters and featured in Nature as one of ‘The most viewed papers in science’.

http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/news/n-848