Paul

Yes, not a recent newspaper article, but the page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post, discovered by John Lockwood at the Library of Congress in Washington DC – a reminder that the 1920’s and 1930’s were warm. In fact, 1934 has overtaken 1998 as the warmest US year following a recent data correction, with 1921 coming third.

The global cooling of the 1940’s to 1970’s prompted The Cooling World article in Newsweek on 28th April 1975. This all goes to illustrate how lightweight some sections of the media are. The post 1970’s warming is now well established and the media are much more climate aware, so similar scary headlines are now a weekly occurrance, with the Arctic sea ice featuring prominently. However, the Arctic situation represents regional change, rather than global – there is no equivalent loss of sea ice in the Antarctic. Dust, black carbon, aerosols and Ozone are being implicated in Arctic warming, in addition to greenhouse gases.

Thanks to Luke for alerting us to this new research.

Following hot on the heels of recent climate revelations, such as the warming aerosols of Asian Brown Clouds, Climate Shifts, 1934 replacing 1998 as the warmest recorded year in the USA, and the new evidence for a large negative feedback due to the thinning of heat trapping clouds, Australian scientists at CSIRO have discovered a previously unrecognised deep ocean pathway linking the 3 southern hemisphere ocean basins, which is part of the global conveyer belt, or thermohaline circulation. Very important to global climate.

This is where I came in to the climate debate by initilally believing scare stories that the Gulf Stream was about to shut down and give europe a climate similar to Alaska. It turned out that the slowing down was a mis-calculation, plus ‘mean wind advection’ and the earth’s rotation are important factors in driving ocean circulations, according to Carl Wunsch.

The CSIRO news release is here:

Ocean ‘supergyre’ link to climate regulator

Also on CNN who unfortunately saw fit to introduce the now customary alarmism:

“The best known of the global ocean currents is the North Atlantic loop of the Great Ocean Conveyer, which brings warm water from the Equator to waters off northern Europe, ensuring relatively mild weather there. Scientists say if the conveyor collapsed, northern Europe would be plunged into an ice age.”

Of course, this new ocean ‘supergyre’ will have to be incorporated into those diagnostic tools known as ‘climate models,’ along with the results of other recent research.

There’s an interesting article in The New York Times entitled ‘At Australia’s Bunny Fence, Variable Cloudiness Prompts Climate Study.’

“A fence built to prevent rabbits from entering the Australian outback has unintentionally allowed scientists to study the effects of land use on regional climates.

The rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia was completed in 1907 and stretches about 2,000 miles. It acts as a boundary separating native vegetation from farmland. Within the fence area, scientists have observed a strange phenomenon: above the native vegetation, the sky is rich in rain-producing clouds. But the sky on the farmland side is clear.

Researchers led by Tom Lyons of Murdoch University in Australia and Udaysankar S. Nair of the University of Alabama in Huntsville have come up with three possible explanations for this difference in cloudiness.

One theory is that the dark native vegetation absorbs and releases more heat into the atmosphere than the light-colored crops. These native plants release heat that combines with water vapor from the lower atmosphere, resulting in cloud formation.

Another hypothesis is that the warmer air on the native scrubland rises, creating a vacuum in the lower atmosphere that is then filled by cooler air from cropland across the fence. As a result, clouds form on the scrubland side.

A third idea is that a high concentration of aerosols — particles suspended in the atmosphere — on the agricultural side results in small water droplets and a decrease in the probability of rainfall. On the native landscape, the concentration of aerosols is lower, translating into larger droplets and more rainfall.

Within the last few decades, about 32 million acres of native vegetation have been converted to croplands west of the bunny fence. On the agricultural side of the fence, rainfall has been reduced by 20 percent since the 1970s.”

CANBERRA, Australia: Four Australian governing party lawmakers rejected on Monday the idea that humans are causing global warming, the conclusion reached by their colleagues on a parliamentary committee.

Read more here:

Coalition MPs dispute climate finding

Garrett questions PM’s climate change stance

Australian governing party lawmakers doubt human contribution to global warming

Heat on Australia PM over climate sceptic MPs

The allegations by British mathematician Douglas J Keenan concern the following 2 papers co-authored by Wei-Chyung Wang, a professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York:

Jones P.D., Groisman P.Y., Coughlan M., Plummer N., Wang W.-C., Karl T.R. (1990), “Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land”, Nature, 347: 169-172.

Wang W.-C., Zeng Z., Karl T.R. (1990), “Urban heat islands in China”, Geophysical Research Letters, 17: 2377-2380.

The pdf of Keenan’s report is here and an appraisal is here.

The report concludes:

First, there has been a marked lack of integrity in some important work on global warming that is relied upon by the IPCC. Second, the insignificance of urbanization effects on temperature measurements has not been established as reliably as the IPCC assessment report assumes.

Science, 10th August 2007

News Focus

CLIMATE CHANGE:

Humans and Nature Duel Over the Next Decade’s Climate
Richard A. Kerr

Rising greenhouse gases are changing global climate, but during the next few decades natural climate variations will have a say as well, so researchers, including a team reporting on page 796 of this week’s issue of Science, are scrambling to factor them in.

Science Magazine
REPORTS
Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model
Doug M. Smith, Stephen Cusack, Andrew W. Colman, Chris K. Folland, Glen R. Harris, and James M. Murphy (10 August 2007)
Science 317 (5839), 796. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1139540]

Abstract
Previous climate model projections of climate change accounted for external forcing from natural and anthropogenic sources but did not attempt to predict internally generated natural variability. We present a new modeling system that predicts both internal variability and externally forced changes and hence forecasts surface temperature with substantially improved skill throughout a decade, both globally and in many regions. Our system predicts that internal variability will partially offset the anthropogenic global warming signal for the next few years. However, climate will continue to warm, with at least half of the years after 2009 predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record.

Met office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, Ex1 3PB, UK.

From the BBC website:

Ten-year climate model unveiled

The warmest year ‘currently on record’ is 1998, helped by a very strong El Nino.

Hat tip to Bob Carter/Walter Starck for the note alerting us to this insightful analysis by the ‘American Thinker’ entitled Twisting Science to Fit the Global Warming Template.

The global warming crowd does not take kindly to being contradicted, either by critics or data. Of course, critics can be defamed and data can be skewed. But unless the critics can be silenced, they can fight back and expose phony data. When it begins to look like predictions of doom are not turning out sufficiently catastrophic, a full Orwell is called for. The media mobilize their templates to completely re-cast the information.

This process was fully in evidence yesterday when the global news service Reuters spun a report in Science magazine (which has been quietly starting to warn its readership that maybe it would be prudent to come in a bit from the end of the global warming limb) as if it confirmed the seriousness of global warning, when in fact the report contained devastating information of flaws in the doomsters methodology and warned that the disaster has been postponed………..