Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for May 1, 2008

Global Warming Takes a Break, Naturally

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Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged. This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.

UK Telegraph: Global warming may ‘stop’, scientists predict

BBC News website: Next decade ‘may see no warming’

Nature: Climate change: Natural ups and downs

Editor’s Summary: Decadal climate prediction

Warming Antarctic waters begin to cool

Antarctica’s deep ocean waters are getting colder after years of warming, say researchers who have just returned from a Southern Ocean voyage aboard the German research vessel Polarstern.

NASA JPL: Larger Pacific Climate Event Helps Current La Nina Linger

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PASADENA, Calif. – Boosted by the influence of a larger climate event in the Pacific, one of the strongest La Niñas in many years is slowly weakening but continues to blanket the Pacific Ocean near the equator, as shown by new sea-level height data collected by the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite.

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This La Niña, which has persisted for the past year, is indicated by the blue area in the center of the image along the equator. Blue indicates lower than normal sea level (cold water). The data were gathered in early April.

The image also shows that this La Niña is occurring within the context of a larger climate event, the early stages of a cool phase of the basin-wide Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a long-term fluctuation of the Pacific Ocean that waxes and wanes between cool and warm phases approximately every five to 20 years. In the cool phase, higher than normal sea-surface heights caused by warm water form a horseshoe pattern that connects the north, west and southern Pacific, with cool water in the middle. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the Pacific was locked in the oscillation’s warm phase, during which these warm and cool regions are reversed. For an explanation of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and its present state, see: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ and http://www.esr.org/pdo_index.html .

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A La Niña is essentially the opposite of an El Niño. During El Niño, trade winds weaken and warm water occupies the entire tropical Pacific Ocean. Heavy rains tied to the warm water move into the central Pacific Ocean and cause drought in Indonesia and Australia while altering the path of the atmospheric jet stream over North and South America. During La Niña, trade winds are stronger than normal. Cold water that usually sits along the coast of South America is pushed to the middle of the equatorial Pacific. A La Niña changes global weather patterns and is associated with less moisture in the air, and less rain along the coasts of North and South America.

“This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”

Sea surface temperature satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also clearly show a cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern, as seen at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/sst/sst.anom.gif . The shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, with its widespread Pacific Ocean temperature changes, will have significant implications for global climate. It can affect Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, marine ecosystems and global land temperature patterns.

“The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer, ongoing change in global climate,” said Josh Willis, a JPL oceanographer and climate scientist. Sea level rise and global warming due to increases in greenhouse gases can be strongly affected by large natural climate phenomenon such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. “In fact,” said Willis, “these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

Jason’s follow-on mission, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, is scheduled for launch this June and will extend to two decades the continuous data record of sea surface heights begun by Topex/Poseidon in 1992. JPL manages the U.S. portion of the Jason mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

For more information on NASA’s ocean surface topography missions, see: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/ ; or to view the latest Jason data, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/jason1-quick-look/ .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

News Releases: Larger Pacific Climate Event Helps Current La Nina Linger
April 21, 2008

The Tropical Troposphere Temperature Tax

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The tropical troposphere is where we should see the ‘fingerprint’ of greenhouse warming according to climate models, so Ross McKitrick has devised a Tropical Troposphere Temperature Tax, or ‘T3’ tax. The explanation below is a composite from various T3 tax articles on his website:

Recently I came up with a policy proposal that reconciles my skepticism with the policy activism of the alarmists: calibrate a carbon tax to the average temperature of the region of the atmosphere predicted by climatologists to be most sensitive to CO2. I call it the ‘T3’ tax, and I think the proposal should make everyone happy, except the most extreme alarmists and the Trojan horse-types who see the global warming issue as a vehicle for imposing a set of anti-growth policies that they would want even if global warming fizzles as a pretext.

My “T3” formula – short for Temperature of the Tropical Troposphere – guarantees that, if carbon emissions do not cause global warming, the charge will not go up. The IPCC predicts a warming rate in the tropical troposphere of about double that at the surface, implying about 0.2C to 1.2C per decade in the tropical troposphere under greenhouse-forcing scenarios. That implies the tax will climb by $4 to $24 per tonne per decade, a much more aggressive schedule of emission fee increases than most current proposals. At the upper end of warming forecasts, the tax could reach $200 per tonne of CO2 by 2100, forcing major carbon-emission reductions and a global shift to non-carbon energy sources.

Some people have responded to my T3 idea with the concern that essential increases in the carbon fee might be delayed due to lags in the climate system. But the lags are associated with oceanic responses. According to models, the tropical troposphere responds relatively quickly to carbon emissions. And even if there is a short delay, it is better to learn with a lag than not to learn at all, which is the problem with all other policy plans.

Another advantage of the T3 tax is that it would create a market for accurate climate forecasting. Someone building a billion-dollar power plant would want an objective estimate of the likely carbon emissions price five or 10 years out. Competition would create strong incentives to get the science right. The T3 rule would create market incentives for climate modelers to eliminate sources of exaggeration in their models. And investors would search out the best forecasts to guide their current planning, thereby factoring long-term greenhouse warming changes into today’s investment decisions.

Nor would we need politicians to argue about how weak or strong the long-term policy should be – the atmosphere would decide. If the policy turns out to be too weak to force emission reductions, it would indicate that the climate is not sensitive to emissions.

Climate policy needs to shift from static to dynamic thinking. This requires tying policy to actual greenhouse warming. Anything else is like taking a shot in the dark.

Read Ross McKitrick’s articles on the ‘T3’ tax on his publications website.

Steve McIntyre has plotted a graph over at Climate Audit which shows the UAH (black) and RSS (red) data for the tropics (both divided by 1.2 to synchronize to the surface variations – an adjustment factor that John Christy is said to use in an email). Allso collated is the most recent CRU gridded data and calculated a tropical average for 20S to 20N, shown in green. All series have been centered on a common interval:

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Steve notes that there have only been a few months in the past 30 years which have been as cold in the tropical troposphere as March 2008.

In comment 118, Ross McKitrick says, “…when I wrote that chapter last year the T3 tax rate was $4.67. It’s now $3.33 and falling. If this trend continues it could indeed become a subsidy, but to oppose it on the grounds that it might end up as a subsidy for CO2 emissions is to admit that one actually expects global cooling.”

As Ross McKitrick says – Why not tie carbon taxes to actual levels of warming? Both skeptics and alarmists should
expect their wishes to be answered.

Guess Who Just Closed a $683 Million Fund

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The investment vehicle headed by Al Gore has closed a new $683m fund to invest in early-stage environmental companies and has mounted a robust defence of green investing.

The Climate Solutions Fund will be one of the biggest in the growing market for investment funds with an environmental slant.

The fund will be focused on equity investments in small companies in four sectors: renewable energy; energy efficiency technologies; energy from biofuels and biomass; and the carbon trading markets.

The Financial Times: Gore investment body closes $683m fund

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