Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Climate & Climate Change

Divergent Climate Histories for East and West Antarctica Over 14 Million Years

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There is an interesting News Focus story in this week’s Science journal, that helps to confirm the different climate histrories for the East and West Antarctic ice sheets – a phenomenon that persists in modern times:

ANTARCTICA: Freeze-Dried Findings Support a Tale of Two Ancient Climates

A surprising cache of ancient plant material adds evidence for divergent climate histories of the East and West Antarctic ice sheets over the past 14 million years

Excerpt: These findings appear to be contradictory at first glance, but in fact they buttress an evolving view among scientists that the two major features of the continent, the western and eastern ice sheets, have experienced vastly different climate histories. Data from the Dry Valleys reveals an East Antarctic Ice Sheet that is high, dry, cold, and stable, at least in its central area. And the ANDRILL cores suggest a more volatile West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is subject to the changing temperatures of the sea in which it wades. “It reaffirms the fragility of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet [WAIS] and the stability of the central part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet,” says Peter Barrett, a sedimentologist at the Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in New Zealand, who advised the ANDRILL project.

Nature Journal Finally Catches Up with Climate Audit

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I find this really amusing for a number of reasons. I refer to an article in this week’s Nature entitled ‘A large discontinuity in the mid-twentieth century in observed global-mean surface temperature’ by Thompson, Kennedy, Wallace and Phil Jones.

The abstract states:

“Data sets used to monitor the Earth’s climate indicate that the surface of the Earth warmed from approx 1910 to 1940, cooled slightly from approx 1940 to 1970, and then warmed markedly from approx 1970 onward. The weak cooling apparent in the middle part of the century has been interpreted in the context of a variety of physical factors, such as atmosphere–ocean interactions and anthropogenic emissions of sulphate aerosols. Here we call attention to a previously overlooked discontinuity in the record at 1945, which is a prominent feature of the cooling trend in the mid-twentieth century. The discontinuity is evident in published versions of the global-mean temperature time series, but stands out more clearly after the data are filtered for the effects of internal climate variability. We argue that the abrupt temperature drop of approx 0.3 °C in 1945 is the apparent result of uncorrected instrumental biases in the sea surface temperature record. Corrections for the discontinuity are expected to alter the character of mid-twentieth century temperature variability but not estimates of the century-long trend in global-mean temperatures.”

Amusement number one is the fact that AGW supporters have tried to explain the 1940s to 1970s ‘cooling’ using emissions of sulphate aerosols as an excuse – an explanation that I have previously challenged

Amusement number two is the unverifiable data used by Phil Jones et al 1990, which was relied upon by the IPCC to diminish the effect of urbanisation on the surface temperature record.

Amusement number three is that Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit first noted the discontinuity in the sea surface temperature record in June 2005.

Zip over to Climate Audit and read Nature “Discovers” Another Climate Audit Finding

Decline in Victorian Autumn Rainfall

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VICTORIA has suffered a 40 per cent plunge in autumn rainfall since 1950 and climate change is a key factor, a new report has found.

Herald Sun: Victorian Autumn rain down 40 per cent since 1950: CSIRO

Fluctuations in sea-surface temperatures to the north of Australia and changes in atmospheric circulation patterns over the sub-tropical Indian Ocean have been identified as key factors leading to declining rainfalls in south-eastern Australia since 1950.

CSIRO: Understanding autumn rain decline in SE Australia

South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative

Thanks to Gavin and Luke.

Was 1998 the Warmest Year of the Millennium?

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Steve McIntyre’s recent Ohio State University presentation is now available online. This is an excellent summary of the ‘Hockey Stick’ debate and the climate debate in general, which extends to 45 pages (including references).

The presentation concludes:

So where does that leave us?

In my opinion, there are serious and probably fatal problems with the main proxies used as supposed evidence against a warm MWP – the Graybill strip bark chronologies, Briffa’s adjustment to the Tornetrask series, the inconsistency between Briffa’s Yamal substitution and the updated Polar Urals series and so on. For every proxy that supposedly shows a MWP cooler than the present, there seems to be one that is just as good or better evidencing the opposite. For the California and Urals proxies so fundamental to the Hockey Stick, the ecological evidence is further evidence against the Graybill and Briffa chronologies being interpretable as temperature proxies.

The selection of proxies in studies displayed by IPCC seems to me to be biased against proxies with a warm MWP. IPCC itself does not carry out any independent due diligence of the type that might be expected in a prospectus. Further, in 2007, as in 2001, the authors involved in preparing the paleoclimate section were active parties in controversies and, in the end, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report strongly reflects their partisan point of view.

Is there a wider lesson here for engineers? We are often told that the “Science is settled”. But engineers, of all people, know that, even if the “science is settled”, the engineering work may have just begun. One would hardly derive the parameters for a chemical process from an article in Nature without an engineering feasibility study.

The most critical question in climate is the estimation of a parameter – is the sensitivity of climate to doubled CO2 1.5, 2.5 or 3.5 deg C? Or could it be 6 deg C or 0.6 deg C?

In some ways, the estimation of such parameters through the development of complicated computer models is reminiscent of activities carried out by engineers. One important difference is that climate scientists typically report their results in highly summary form in journals like Nature, rather than in the 1000-page or 2000-page engineering studies that an aerospace engineering enterprise would produce.

Viewed from this perspective, a remarkable aspect of the climate debate has been the seeming inability of the climate science community to narrow confidence intervals on this estimate. In 1979, the Charney Report (National Research Council 1979) estimated the impact at 3 deg C with a 1.5 degree range either way. In 2007, IPCC AR4 estimates are virtually unchanged. With all the improvements in scientific knowledge and all the efforts of climate scientists over the years, why has the improvement of these confidence intervals proved so resistant? I don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about.

Climate Change and Institutional Self-fulfilment by Roger Underwood

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I note that the Federal government has created a new agency called “The Department of Climate Change”. The department is not yet 10 months old, but is already well-established with a CEO, two assistant CEOs, four Divisions, thirteen Branches (including one devoted entirely to public affairs), and a large number of full-time public servants.

Given the current hysteria about global warming, and the plethora and complexity of emerging schemes involving carbon-trading, carbon-capping, carbon-off-setting, carbon-emission-minimising and carbon-taxing, I can understand why the government would want a single agency which can keep tabs on all this and drive their political agenda. I am also unsurprised to find that the department’s chief is an economist, and the ranks are studded with economists. This reflects the new focus of the climate change issue: no longer are governments seeking ways to reduce carbon emissions – rather they are seeking to identify the carbon-fighting measures which will have the least possible economic impact.

Nevertheless I am cynical about the creation of a new department whose budget, staffing, political influence and public status is dependent on climate change actually occurring. A Department of Climate Change needs climate change – no climate change will be (for them) a disaster. In other words, the bad-news scenario now has a bureaucratic home, its very own institution, a whole government organisation dedicated to promoting the prophesy of doom to its own advantage.

This phenomenon is not new. I was a junior officer in the Forests Department many years ago, and I recall how the environmentalists accused us of having been “captured” by the timber industry. They also accused the Mines Department of being captured by the mining industry, the Agriculture Department by the agricultural industry and the Fisheries Department by the fishing industry. (Curiously, they never saw any problem with the Department of Environmental Protection being captured by the environmentalist industry).

There is a difference between what the environmentalists call bureaucratic capture, and what I call institutional self-fulfilment. The former involves external influence on an agency by a special interest group to enhance its special interest; the latter is where an agency is working behind the scenes to ensure its own prosperity and survival. A classic historical example of institutional self-fulfilment was the work of the Rabbit Department in Western Australia. The Rabbit Department was created 100 years or so ago to wipe out the rabbit in WA. The agency grew rapidly, attracted a substantial budget, and undertook (on the advice of its senior public servants) a number of massive, expensive and ultimately useless projects. These included two “rabbit-proof” fences thousands of kilometres in length, the construction of which proceeded despite the fact that the rabbit was already west of the surveyed fenceline. I have talked to old farmers and pastoralists who regarded the department as a joke because it was well-known that departmental staff had no intention of eliminating rabbits. To do so would have been to do themselves out of a job. To make matters worse, the WA government (in the way of governments everywhere) was quite happy to come up with the one-off capital cost of building the fences, but not the recurrent costs of maintaining them properly. The fences became a joke amongst rabbits.

Similarly the bushfire issue in Australia is increasingly subject to institutional self-fulfilment. Bushfire responsibilities have been progressively transferred from land management agencies (who are concerned about fire impacts) to Emergency Services (who fight fires). Staff in Emergency Service agencies are trained and equipped for dealing with bushfire emergencies, not for management of the land where bushfires potentially occur. Don’t get me wrong – the firefighters do a great job, and are an essential community service. The trouble is, fire-fighting is their business, their raison d’être. Furthermore, it is well rewarded in terms of favourable media attention, a grateful public, political support and funds. But if there were no bushfires or an insignificant bushfire threat, the fire-fighting services would wither away. Thus their whole focus is on response after a fire starts, with investment in helitaks, water bombers, fire tankers, high tech equipment, super-gizmo headquarters, and lots of staff. What misses out is the essential but unglamorous work of damage mitigation, fire prevention, fuel reduction, fire trail maintenance, community education, law enforcement and so on, i.e., the year-in and year-out recurrent work of minimising the number and impacts of fires, and making them easier and safer to suppress. Far from being rewarded, fuel reduction burning is hated by environmentalists, who depict land management staff who carry out a burning program as irresponsible vandals, effectively undermining their political support. The way the current system is constructed, all the kudos go to the firefighters and none to the fire pre-emptors – a situation very well understood by Emergency Services chiefs.

It seems to me entirely predictable that the processes applying to rabbits and bushfires will also apply to the new Department of Climate Change. If it is to survive and prosper it will need rapidly to become a Department for climate change. I would be very surprised if DCC staff did not already realise that the security of their agency and their opportunities for recognition and promotion will be closely linked to the degree to which the media, community and politicians think that climate change is (i) imminent; (ii) disastrous; (iii) inevitable; and (iv) requiring the sort of complex economic and bureaucratic skills found only among the officers of the Commonwealth Public Service.

I can think of three ways all this might pan out. First, it might become apparent to everyone that climate change is a natural thing governed largely by non-anthropomorphic factors. Second, climate change caused by carbon dioxide emissions might be confirmed, but it will become apparent that there is little Australians can do that will make a significant world-scale difference, even with massive economic self-abuse. Third, the penny might drop that we have real environmental/social problems which demand urgent national attention, i.e., diminishing and more costly oil, management of water resources, declining air quality in cities and killer bushfires. Now there are four issues which each deserve their own Federal department with four divisions, thirteen branches and offices packed with beavering staff!

Roger Underwood is a West Australian forester and writer, Chairman of The Bushfire Front Inc.

Is The Evaluation of IPCC Projections Using Short-Term Data Valid?

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According to Roger Pielke Sr, the answer is YES. He concludes: Thus the value of global warming of the last 4 years fails to agree with the IPCC projections (the values are not even close!). The agrument that this is too short of a time is spurious unless the modellers can account for where else in their model results the missing Joules went.

Moreover, this is not too short of a time period to compare with the models. Heat, unlike temperature at a single level as used to construct a global average surface temperature trend, is a variable in physics that can be assessed at any time period (i.e. a snapshot) to diagnose the climate system heat content. Temperature not only has a time lag, but a single level represents an insignificant amount of mass within the climate system.

The answer to the question on this weblog “Can the IPCC model projections of global warming be evaluated from just several years of observed data” is YES. The conclusion for the past four years is that the model projections are not skillful on this time period.

Roger Pielke Sr’s Climate Science Weblog: Can The IPCC Model Projections Of Global Warming Be Evaluated From Just Several Years Of Data?