Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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What Drives Change in Antarctic Sea Ice Cover?

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THE modern meteorologist relies on computer models for forecasting. Coupled atmospheric-ocean models, known as general circulation models, are favoured for medium to long-range forecasting with these models forecasting an overall and quite rapid general warming at the north and south poles. In accordance with this forecast, there has been a general decline in the extent of sea ice at the Arctic. At the Antarctic, however, sea ice has increased in extent, at least over the period of the satellite record, Figure 1.[1] Sea Ice Cover

I’m interested to know what might have driven the overall decline in the sea ice at the Arctic, and increase at the Antarctic, over the last thirty or so years. According to mainstream climate science, increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide would drive the melt. But what would drive the increase?

A long-range weather forecaster who relies on a knowledge of solar and lunar cycles, rather than computer models, is Kevin Long. He claims that when there is more sea ice at the Antarctic there is generally below-average rainfall and heavier late season frosts in central Victoria.[2]

In an explanation of the origins of our understanding of the Southern Oscillation, which the mainstream climate science community believes has a major affect on rainfall over eastern Australia, Donald R. Mock from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suggests early researchers dismissed any direct influence of solar activity on the phases of the Southern Oscillation, but took an interest in the possibility of a connection with the polar circulation particularly the extent of sea ice at the Antarctic [4]. Nowhere in this explanation, however, is an extraterrestrial link, whether lunar, solar or planetary, offered.

A fellow I know who takes an interest in solar-terrestrial physics because his business of installing radio and television antennae depends on it, claims a relationship between the global sea ice anomaly and lunar cycles. In particular, Siliggy claims that the global sea ice anomaly goes up when the moon is new at apogee and down when the moon is full at apogee.[3] On January 1 and January 30, 2014 there was synchrony between perigee and the new moon.[3]. I can’t see a period when there is synchronoy between new or full moons at apogee until March 5, 2015, when the moon will be full at apogee.[3]

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[1] Ole Humlum Climate4You update for January 2014 http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_January_2014.pdf
[2] Kevin Long summer forecast http://thelongview.com.au/documents/FORECAST-2014-No1-SUMMER-Kevin-Long.pdf
[3] The moon orbits the earth in an ellipse, not a circle, and so there are period when it is closer (perigee) and further away (apogee) in each one-month cycle. Also during this cycle there are periods when the moon is the same side of the earth as the sun (new moon) and on the opposite side of the earth to the sun (full moon). For new and full moon phases and perigees and apogees for 2014 see Lunar perigee and apogee calculator at https://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html
[4] The Southern Oscillation: Historical Origins by Donald R. Mock, written 1981. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/misc/hxsoi.html

What is Wilderness (Part 13)

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What is wilderness? Dave W provides some insights…

IT is a place that is not under human control: a place where people might pass through, but not stay: a land where the wild beasts rule. Before people existed, the world was one vast wilderness. Since we’ve been around, wild areas are less and less common. An antonym would be city or any other noun defining more or less permanent human habitations, e.g. town, village, campsite. A campfire is a very basic method of keeping wilderness at bay.

This, I think, has been the generally accepted meaning of wilderness. I find it a more robust and useful word than ‘nature’, which is usually debased by the attempt to exclude people from the definition. People are part of Nature – we evolved here and we haven’t left yet. People are not part of a wilderness.

Of course, once ‘wilderness’ has been defined by legislation, other definitions may apply, but at least the US Wilderness Act (1964) seemed to follow the general sense: “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

I think it is reasonable to define wilderness as a continuum, rather than an absolute. Areas are more or less wild depending on how much control people are able to exert. I don’t think that pollution, exotic weeds, or similar effluvia of human life are of any relevance to defining wilderness. Those do not result from attempts to control an area. Also, I don’t demand that everyone respond the same to wilderness. Some may find it exhilarating and renewing, others may find it terrifying. I’ve been lost in wild areas, so I’ve felt both extremes.

Wilderness Dave

The picture/image is of a wild place, but not a wilderness: White Spruce regenerating in Alberta Aspen Parkland thanks to fire suppression regime (favours spruce), the reintroduction of beaver (eat aspen), and increasing moose populations (eat aspen before spruce) thanks to hunting regulation and extermination of wolves. Click on the image to see more, to gain perspective.

Dave W is a biologist who has worked in North America and Au​stralia and has about 150 scientific publications including one in Ecological Modelling on climate change that Google Scholar tells him is his 13th most significant publication, but that he thinks was just an interesting ‘what if?’ exercise with little or no relevance to any actual ecosystem.

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For some other perspectives on wilderness click and scroll here https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/tag/wilderness/

Perhaps send me your thoughts on wilderness…
jennifermarohasy at gmail.com

Myth and the Bureau of Meteorology

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WE know that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology can’t forecast weather more than a few days out. So why should we believe a climate forecast to 2030?

According to Sara Phillips, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Bureau’s new State of the Climate 2014 report is a reliable source of information because it distils hundreds of experiments into three consistent reports.BOM

In fact there are few if any experiments that have been distilled in the writing of the reports. Rather Bureau staff have ran some computer simulations designed to produce a particular output, and combined this with homogenised and adjusted historical records again designed to produce a particular result. Conclusions include:

1. Australia’s climate has warmed by 0.9°C since 1910, and the frequency of extreme weather has changed, with more extreme heat and fewer cool extremes.

2. Global mean temperature has risen by 0.85°C from 1880 to 2012.

When I wrote to the Bureau in January asking why the national average is only calculated back to 1910, I received a reply explaining that data prior to 1910 “is often fragmented and of uncertain or low quality”. If this were the case, it begs the question how a global mean temperature can be calculated back to 1880?

This is one of seven questions I’ve put to Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment, in a letter dated 4th March 2014. Minister Hunt is ultimately responsible for the operations of the Bureau and I’m of the opinion their operations deserve close scrutiny.

There is this myth that the Bureau is comprised of hard working scientists providing, like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, information without bias or agenda. More likely the Bureau, like the mainstream climate science community more generally, has become somewhat compromised.

Of particular concern to me, is the Bureau’s decision of last June, to discard the statistical models that had been used to generate seasonal rainfall forecasts in favour of a general circulation model that has no predictive skill at all. I have documented the absence of skill in the general circulation model in a peer-reviewed paper recently published in the journal Atmospheric Research (Volume 138, Pages 166-178).

I conclude my letter to Minster Hunt with comment that:

If the temperature record for Australia can be extended back to 1860, providing an additional 50 years of data, then this should be a priority. This information is more important than the calculation of a national average temperature. If data is to be adjusted and homogenized then the methodology applied needs to be clearly stated. Indeed having access to all the available records as far back as possible is important because it helps unravel the true features of the natural climate cycle, a goal that meteorologists and astronomers were working towards well before the establishment of the Bureau in 1908.

In arriving at theories that explain the natural world, the best scientists always use all the available data, not just the data that happens to fit a particular viewpoint. Furthermore, long historical data series are critical for statistical methods of rainfall forecasts, including the application of artificial neural networks that can currently provide more skillful forecasts than POAMA, the general circulation model currently used by the Bureau to produce the official forecasts. That the Bureau persists with POAMA, while failing to disclose to the Australian public the absence of any measurable skill in its monthly and seasonal forecasts, should be of grave concern to the Australian parliament.

My letter to the Minister can be read in its entirety here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/questions-for-the-australian-bureau-of-meteorology/

Flowers Can Follow Fire in Forests: David Ward

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SOME say that fuel reduction burning harms the bush. Others say it creates and maintains healthy vegetation, and avoids uncontrollable wildfires. Natural science is unlikely to resolve the debate, since both sides can produce refereed papers to support their views. Clearly, not all refereed papers are correct, but it is a mammoth task to track down all errors, and those with poor philosophy may be swayed by numbers of papers, rather than quality. Others may be fooled by authors with high sounding academic titles. A professor must be right. Some papers are statistically dodgy, and others simply omit part of the truth.

At the same time, the news media offer their partial truth with pictures of leaping flames, swooping water bombers, and convoys of fire trucks. Politicians see photo opportunities, and offer carefully selected sound bites. We see little of the post-fire benefits of bushfire. Does philosophy have a role to play?

In a multi-cultural society, why not borrow from the Hindus? Their trinity is Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Conservator, and Shiva the Destroyer. Bushfire includes all these processes, but the news media, environmentalists, and some research scientists, usually show us only the face of Shiva, or even that of his cruel wife Kali.

The Australian public need to know the creative and conservative roles of Brahma and Vishnu, in the form of nutrient release, improved vegetation health, growth, flowering, seed production and germination, and the innocuous nature of fires in light fuels. Saraswati and Lakshmi have roles to play too, in bushfire research, education, and human well being.

The news media can help to restore some philosophical balance, by shedding the shackles of boring sensationalism. I realise that twenty metre flames are more exciting, to many, than mild flames, less than a metre high. Blackened forest is more visually startling than tiny emergent post-fire seedlings. But is it not important for journalists to tell the whole truth?wildflowers

© David J. Ward (aka Green Davey) March 2014
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Picture of wildflowers in John Forrest National Park, Perth, one year after a mild spring fire.

Other posts from David Ward include:
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2009/04/the-mathematics-of-connectivity-and-bushfire/
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2005/06/noongars-knew-best/

Open Thread

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Until March 2014, Jennifer Marohasy rarely edited comment threads instead asking for tolerance including of offensive comments. At about that time she decided to ‘reclaim’ her blog that was by now dominated by some intent on wrecking any attempt at rational and constructive dialogue, which was not in accordance with the mainstream consensus on climate change.

https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog-info/

Not a Natural Disaster, Just another Rainfall Deficit

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In announcing yesterday’s $320 million drought assistance package for farmers there was some mention of the situation out west being akin to a natural disaster. A more accurate description would be that its part of a natural cycle – not a natural disaster.

There are many reasons why landholders may be particularly vulnerable to this drought, but they mostly relate to government initiatives that have over the last couple of decades significantly eroded the resilience of farming communities, rather than exceptional climate.

We live in a land of highly variable rainfall that has historically experienced regular drought often broken with big floods.

The Bureau of Meteorology has been defining the drought as a rainfall deficient for a 16-month period (October 2012-January 2014) relative to a long-term average defined as the years 1961-1990. So according to the Bureau there has been a severe rainfall deficiencies (lowest 10% to 5% of records) in place across much of inland Queensland, central northern New South Wales and in a small area on the coast of Western Australia near Shark Bay. Also, most of Queensland west of the ranges, northern New South Wales, northeastern South Australia and the southeastern Northern Territory has received less than 65% of the long-term (1961–1990) average rainfall for the 16-month period.

While I am sympathetic to farmers struggling to make ends meet, and I don’t begrudge anyone some government support when the chips are really down, to suggest there is a natural disaster because rainfall is less than 65% of what it was during the period 1961-1990 for a period of a bit over a year is absurd. Australian rainfall

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