By Paul
Thanks to Luke Walker for alerting me to this story:
WESTERN EUROPE’S HIGHEST SUMMIT GETS TALLER
CHARMONIX, France, Oct 13, 2007 (AFP) – Western Europe’s highest mountain Mont Blanc is taller than ever due to snow piled atop its summit, in what experts meeting in France Saturday described as a climate-change related phenomenon.
By Paul
From the Sunday Herald Sun:
THE award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the UN’s top climate panel on Friday has prompted a fresh chorus of criticism from global warming sceptics — with one dubbing the award “a political gimmick”.
By jennifer
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.
Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.
Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming. Whereas in the 1980s global warming seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent.
Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world’s leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.
By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.
By Paul
Australia’s leading climate alarmist was recently quoted in the Herald Tribune on the IPCC report due to be released in November:
Scientist: Global greenhouse gas emissions already beyond ‘worst-case’ scenario
SYDNEY, Australia: Strong worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert.
Scientist Tim Flannery said a report by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due to be released in November will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.
RealCliimate disagrees slightly:
By Paul
The errors are listed in this article:
Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore’s ‘alarmist’ climate change film
Another brief article here:
By Paul
A new paper predictably makes a big splash in this week’s Nature magazine:
Attribution of observed surface humidity changes to human influence
Katharine M. Willett1,2, Nathan P. Gillett1, Philip D. Jones1 & Peter W. Thorne2
Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK
Water vapour is the most important contributor to the natural greenhouse effect, and the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is expected to increase under conditions of greenhouse-gas-induced warming, leading to a significant feedback on anthropogenic climate change. Theoretical and modelling studies predict that relative humidity will remain approximately constant at the global scale as the climate warms, leading to an increase in specific humidity. Although significant increases in surface specific humidity have been identified in several regions and on the global scale in non-homogenized data, it has not been shown whether these changes are due to natural or human influences on climate. Here we use a new quality-controlled and homogenized gridded observational data set of surface humidity, with output from a coupled climate model, to identify and explore the causes of changes in surface specific humidity over the late twentieth century. We identify a significant global-scale increase in surface specific humidity that is attributable mainly to human influence. Specific humidity is found to have increased in response to rising temperatures, with relative humidity remaining approximately constant. These changes may have important implications, because atmospheric humidity is a key variable in determining the geographical distribution and maximum intensity of precipitation, the potential maximum intensity of tropical cyclones, and human heat stress16, and has important effects on the biosphere and surface hydrology.
Also in Nature News:
Humans have made the skies more moist
Study models rises in atmospheric water vapour.
Human activity is behind the rising levels of water vapour in the lower atmosphere over the past few decades, climatologists have concluded. The rises in humidity could affect patterns of extreme storms, they warn.
Nature’s editor likes it too:
………using a new data set of surface specific humidity observations, along with output from a coupled climate model, Willett et al. identify a significant increase in global mean surface specific humidity during the late twentieth century that is mainly attributable to human influence.
Luke Walker thinks the paper is significant and sent a link to ABC’s predictable take:
Rising humidity fuels greenhouse effect
We also had this report from the BBC in November 2005:
Water builds the heat in Europe
“Water vapour rather than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main reason why Europe’s climate is warming, according to a new study.”
The BBC are up to speed with the new Nature paper:
Warmth makes the world more humid
I wonder how evaporation equalling precipitation globally over the past 20 years fits into this?
The paper also tries to make a link with increased tropical cyclones, but the case for a link is weak.
Scant publicity by comaprison for the recent Spencer et al paper ‘Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations’. Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 34, No. 15, 9 August 2007.
Read the article ‘Global Warming and Nature’s Thermostat’ by Roy W. Spencer:
August 9, 2007 RESEARCH UPDATE!: Our peer-reviewed paper showing the natural cooling behavior of tropical cirrus clouds in response to warming has been published today in Geophysical Research Letters. (The UAH news release is here.) This natural cooling mechanism constitiutes a strong “negative feedback” (reducing warming tendencies), while all leading climate models have cirrus clouds behaving in a positive feedback manner (amplifying warming tendencies). As is usually the case in this business, however, there is no way to know with any level of confidence whether this mechanism is operating in the context of manmade global warming………
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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