Paul

A new paper has been published in Science, 3rd January, that uses the words ‘natural variability,’ the abstract copied below is self explanatory:

The Spatial Pattern and Mechanisms of Heat Content Change in the North Atlantic

M. Susan Lozier 1, Susan Leadbetter 2, Richard G. Williams 2, Vassil Roussenov 2, Mark S. C. Reed 1, Nathan J. Moore 3

1 Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
2 Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Liverpool University, Liverpool, L69 3GP U.K.
3 Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; Current affiliation: Department of Geography, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48823 USA.

Abstract:

The total heat gained by the North Atlantic Ocean over the past fifty years is equivalent to a basin-wide increase in the flux of heat across the ocean surface of 0.4 ±0.05 Wm-2. We show, however, that this basin has not warmed uniformly: though the tropics and subtropics have warmed, the subpolar ocean has cooled. These regional differences require local surface heat flux changes (±4 Wm-2) much larger than the basin-wide average. Model investigations show that these regional differences can be explained by large-scale, decadal variability in wind and buoyancy forcing, as measured by the North Atlantic Oscillation index. Whether the overall heat gain is due to anthropogenic warming is difficult to confirm, since strong natural variability in this ocean basin is potentially masking such input at the present time.

The man-made global warming fear machine continues to collapse scientifically with new blockbuster peer-reviewed studies.

Climate Fears Debunked! – Arctic Warming Naturally Caused – Russian scientist urges ‘stock up on fur coats’ to face upcoming global cooling

January 3, 2008 – Round Up

1) Another new peer-reviewed study debunks man-made climate claims: see: Study finds natural causes for recent Arctic warming

Excerpt: A new study’s found a natural cause may account for much of the recent dramatic thawing of the Arctic region in addition to man-made global warming. New research published in the journal Nature indicates a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle .

http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/01/03/Study_finds_natural_causes_for_recent_Arctic_warming

Note: This studies follows two other peer-reviewed studies on the Arctic in 2007: 1) A NASA study published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters on October 4, 2007, found “unusual winds” in the Arctic blew “older thicker” ice to warmer southern waters. (LINK) & 2) A November 2007 peer-reviewed study conducted by a team of NASA and university experts found cyclical changes in ocean currents impacting the Arctic . (LINK) – 3) Also for a detailed fact sheet debunking Greenland (cooled since 1940’s), Antarctica (ice growing to record levels in 2007) and the North Pole’s ice conditions, please see: (LINK)

2) Russian scientist urges ‘stock up on fur coats’ to face upcoming global cooling

(By Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, (also translated to spell Sorochtin) Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute. – Also featured in new U.S. Senate Report on over 400 scientists who dispute man-made global warming claims. See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb

Link to Full Article by Sorochtin below:

Excerpt: Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world. Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases. The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.

Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer. This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.

A cold spell soon to replace global warming:

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html

Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction.

You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet.

Read the rest of the article here.

Apologies for my lack of blogging activity of late – I’ve had a busy Christmas period on both the work and home fronts. Some friends even managed to hold a pre-Chrsitmas BBQ on 22nd December – no, not a result of global warming in the UK, just a cool, pleasant evening and the heat from the BBQ itself.

Despite science historian Naomi Oreskes’s claim, repeated ad nauseum by greenhouse industry beneficiaries that there are few or no peer reviewed papers that dispute the still undefined ‘consensus’ on anthropogenic global climate change, such papers have not been hard to find during 2007. Some of the more recent papers containing inconvenient results, that I haven’t previously blogged, are briefly described below:

Surface:troposphere warming

According to climate models of enhanced greenhouse warming, the tropical troposphere should warm more than the surface. Recent publications have contradictory results despite using essentially the same data. The latest paper on this subject, by Douglass et al, suggests that model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere.

Interestingly, a poster presented by Penner and Andronova at the recent AGU meeting, entitled ‘Tropical atmosphere radiative budget 1985-2005’ seems to reconcile the differences between surface and troposheric warming, supporting the Douglass et al data, without necessarily disproving enhanced greenhouse warming.

Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit attended the conference and the following is extracted from his write-up:

“the tropical atmosphere has absorbed less energy and the Earth’s surface has gained energy which is consistent with the temperature increase in the tropics;

the tropical atmosphere has recently become less reflective and more absorbing while the Earth’s surface gained radiative energy; thus, the tropical atmosphere had recently become more transparent to the incoming radiation and there is an overall brightening of the Earth’s system;

none of the IPCC AR4 models simulates the overall brightening of the Earth system. The majority of the models show a loss of radiative energy by the tropical energy in the post-Pinatubo period, suggesting that the models have still not properly captured the feedbacks between temperature change and clouds.”

Of course, there are also unresolved issues regarding a potential warm bias in the surface temperature data.

Climate sensitivity to CO2

A new paper by Chylek et al entitled:

Limits on climate sensitivity derived from recent satellite and surface observations

The climate sensitivity of 0.29 to 0.48 K/Wm-2 translates to warming between 1.1 and 1.8 deg C for doubling of CO2, supporting values close to the lower end of the IPCC range of 2 to 4.5 deg C. – Petr Chylek

Hurricanes

HURRICANES HAVE NOT INCREASED IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC

By William M. Briggs, Statistician

My paper on this subject will finally appear in the Journal of Climate soon. Download it here.

The gist is that the evidence shows that hurricanes have not increased in either number of intensity in the North Atlantic. I’ve only used data through 2006; which is to say, not this year’s. But if I were to, then, since the number and intensity of storms this past year were nothing special, the evidence would be even more conclusive that not much is going on.

Now, I did find that there were some changes in certain characteristics of North Atlantic storms. There is some evidence that the probability that strong (what are called Category 4 or 5) storms evolving from ordinary hurricanes has increased. But, there has also been an increase in storms not reaching hurricane level. Which is to say, that the only clear signal is that there has been an increase in the variability of intensity of tropical cyclones.

Of course, I do not say why this increase has happened. Well, I suggest why it has: changes in instrumentation quality and frequency since the late 1960s (which is when satellites first went up, allowing us to finally observe better). This is in line with what others, like Chris Landsea at the Hurricane Center, have found.

I also have done the same set of models of global hurricanes. I found the same thing. I’m scheduled to give a talk on this at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in January 2008 in New Orleans. That paper is here.

In another paper, Vecchi and Soden find natural climate variations have bigger effect on hurricane activity than global warming:

Vecchi, G.A. and B.J. Soden. 2007. Effect of remote sea surface temperature change on tropical cyclone potential intensity. Nature, 450, 1066-1071.

I’m off to Reading in Berkshire for my wife’s employer’s annual Christmas party – so much to my wife’s delight, I’ll be well over 100 miles away from my laptop for most of the weekend. Meanwhile, here are a few bits and bobs:

Magma May Be Melting Greenland Ice

SAN FRANCISCO—Global warming may not be the only thing melting Greenland. Scientists have found at least one natural magma hotspot under the Arctic island that could be pitching in.

Carbon cost of Christmas dinner (yawn!)

A carbon footprint equivalent to 6,000 car journeys around the world will be produced by the UK tucking into Christmas dinner, researchers say (yawn again!)

And a yawn for Oz:

Xmas trees ‘not immune to climate change’

The survey of 1000 Australians revealed more than half would take environmental concerns into account when choosing presents for their loved ones.

Do the Rich Owe the Poor Climate Change Reparations?

In one scenario, Americans would pay the equivalent of a $780 per person luxury tax annually, which amounts to sending $212 billion per year in climate reparations to poor countries to aid their development and help them adapt to climate change. In this scenario, the total climate reparations that the rich must transfer annually is over $600 billion. This contrasts with a new report commissioned by the U.N. Development Program that only demands $86 billion per year to avoid “adaptation apartheid.”

Max Mayfield: ‘No One Forced Me to Say Anything’

Former Hurricane Center Director Contradicts Democrats’ Political Pressure Claims

The former director of the National Hurricane Center says political pressure did not cause him to change his congressional testimony to downplay the link between global warming and hurricanes, contradicting the findings of a Democratic led investigation released Monday.

“I can truthfully say that no one told me at any time what to say in regard to possible impacts of climate change on tropical cyclones,” said Max Mayfield in an e-mail to ABC News. This design characterizes the state’s jobs, like controller or guarantor of advanced personalities (or not one or the other), obligations in getting sorted out information, applications, framework, and the basic standards and working techniques for the computerized character environment as a unified personality the executives foundation. Moreover, new technologies and innovations can help establishments curb the use of a fake id. read more about fake id.

Fiinally, for those wishing to critique the Douglass et al paper:

Welcome to the International Journal of Climatology manuscript submission and peer review website

Have a hysterical weekend!

Regards,

Paul Biggs