Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Climate & Climate Change

Financial Crisis Has EU Climate Plans in Crisis

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“The fallout from the financial crisis might be ready to claim another casualty: Europe’s ambitious plans to tackle climate change… Or, as Germany’s foreign minister said last week: “This crisis changes priorities.” And where Europe’s biggest economies lead, others follow. The British, French, and Italians are also all getting cold feet about imposing more-expensive climate legislation on European businesses. The British, dependent as an island nation on air travel, don’t want aviation included in emissions schemes. The Germans want an out for heavy industry… That contrasts with newfound enthusiasm for climate-change policy in the U.S., which seems more likely to pass Congress if energy prices keep falling. Both presidential candidates, if not quite both vice-presidential candidates, have plans to fight global warming.”  Read more here.

How Melbourne’s Climate Has Changed: A reply to Dr David Jones (Part 1)

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“THESE days, it can be hard to imagine how Melbourne ever earned a reputation as the gloomy, rain-filled capital of the south. But, growing up in the 1970s, my memories are full of muddy ovals, local creeks in flood and catching tadpoles in puddles that lasted for months on end. How things have changed.”

This is how David Jones, head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology, began an opinion piece entitled ‘Our hot, dry future’ published by Melbourne’s The Age newspaper on October 6, 2008.

The piece continued,

“Since 1996, each successive calendar year has brought the city below-average rainfall. With 299 millimetres recorded so far this year, and with just three months to go, it seems virtually certain that this year will become the 12th in a row that has failed to get to the average of 650 millimetres. September 2008 was the driest on record in Melbourne, and the outlook for the remainder of the year suggests that below-average rainfall will continue…

“We also know that over the past 11 years Melbourne’s rainfall has been about 20% below the long-term average, and that south-east Australia as a whole has now missed out on more than a year’s worth of its normal rainfall over the duration of the event. The run-off into Melbourne’s dams has been 40% below average over this drought period compared with the longer term, while regional areas have fared even worse. And the drought hasn’t ended.”

Dr Jones goes on to blame climate change for the drought and warns there is worse to come.

I recognise that Dr Jones is an expert on predicting future climates, but I am not sure he has adequately explained the recent past climate of Melbourne.

Climate always changes and in a country like Australia climate tends to naturally cycle between periods where there is a dominance of wet La Nina conditions and then dry El Nino. The 1950s and 1960s were very wet along the entire east coast of Australia, but since 1976 the median state of the Pacific Ocean has been towards El Nino that is dry conditions. Indeed Dr Jones was a young boy when it was relatively wet while his adult life has been dominated by El Nino conditions. Of course the built environment has also changed. Melbourne is a much more affluent city now than it was 30 years ago and along with affluence comes laser levelling of sporting venues and much improved drainage and flood mitigation so ovals dry out relatively quickly, creeks are slowed and puddles in public places now a thing of the past.

But there is more to this story.

Bill Kininmonth, a meteorologist formerly with the Bureau, has made the following comment about how the recording of Melbourne’s weather has changed over the years and how the rain gauge in Melbourne’s central business district is now sheltered from the rain bearing winds of the southwest:

“Although Melbourne’s observations commenced in 1851 the location and environment have changed over that time. The earliest observations commenced at Flagstaff Hill and then they changed to the Observatory site south of the Yarra. For more than 100 years the observations have been taken from the present site on the corner of Victoria Parade and Latrobe Street. However there has been urbanisation. The site has clearly lost exposure to the cooling southerly winds and the rain gauge is sheltered from the rain bearing winds of the southwest.

“Clearly it is difficult to draw a conclusion about Melbourne’s climate and the possibility that it might be changing. The urbanisation of the site should make the record indicate a hotter and dryer climate, whether or not that has occurred. Essendon airport was a previous non-urban locality in the vicinity but that closed in the early 1970s. Tullamarine is the current site but was not open during the dry periods of the first half of the 20th century. Laverton, likewise an early site with long data has also been closed.”

I shall post more tomorrow on Melbourne’s total catchment rainfall and water storage levels in Part 2 of ‘How Melbourne’s Climate Has Changed: A reply to Dr David Jones’

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Our hot, dry future, by David Jones, October 6, 200, The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/our-hot-dry-future-20081005-4udg.html

Aynsley Kellow on Popular Nonsense in Perth

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A couple of weeks ago Aynsley Kellow, Professor and Head of the Department of Government at the University of Tasmania, gave a lecture in Perth. He said: 

“I am pleased to present this lecture today in Perth.I am particularly pleased to find that Perth is still here. I last visited here in 2005 – the year that Professor Tim Flannery suggested that Perth could become the first ‘ghost metropolis’ due to reductions in rainfall because of climate change.  I must confess that I was somewhat bemused by this statement, because my visit to Perth was to present a paper on water policy under climate uncertainty. I knew from my research for that paper that Perth was in fact better adapted to uncertainty in its water supply than any other capital city. 

Perth and the south-west of the state have suffered a decline in rainfall, which appears to have shifted to the north-east. The cause appears to be not the gradual accumulation of greenhouse gases, but a sudden shift in ocean currents. This decline in rainfall has translated into a marked decline in catchment yields thanks to changed catchment management, and an increased yield can be obtained by thinning catchments. 

Regardless, Perth has adapted to its natural environment with a number of responses: demand management; use of aquifers; the construction of the Kwinana industrial recycling plant; and now a desalination plant.  Professor Flannery was, of course, talking nonsense – but, as sales of his book The Weathermakers and his subsequent selection as ‘Australian of the Year’ showed, this is popular nonsense.”   

Read more here: The 2008 Harold Clough Lecture: ‘The Politics and Science of Climate Change: The Wrong Stuff’

Proof of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect: Arthur Smith

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Arthurs Smith does not explain the specific contribution of carbon dioxide to global warming, nor does he deal with the issue of convective overturning, but in ‘Proof of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect’ he elegantly explains the greenhouse effect in harmony with “the scientific standards of theoretical physics”.  In particular he first defines basic terms and relevant equation for energy flow, considers a planet with no infrared-absorbing atmosphere, and then shows that by adding a simple infrared-absorbing layer it is possible to explain why we are not all freezing here on planet earth.

Read more here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.4324

Leading Climate Scientists Don’t Really Believe Their Climate Theory (Part 1)

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Belief in the truth of a theory is inversely proportional to the precision of the science.  At least that is what someone called Harris once said.

Modern climate science theory seems to be a case in point with imprecise extrapolation from often poorly understood variables to what have become generally accepted General Circulation Models which many scientists claim can predict future climate.  

But do the leading climate scientists, in particular the United Nation’s IPCC scientists, really believe in this theory? 

Not really. 

As their last big report was being assembled, The Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007, lead authors who asked what they really thought by way of a questionnaire. 

Climate scientist Ann Henderson-Sellers then pulled together these responses for a workshop held in Sydney in October 2007.   

Following are some of the responses from the climate scientists which fall into the category of ‘Serious inadequacies in climate change prediction that are of real concern’:

“The rush to emphasize regional climate does not have a scientifically sound basis.

“Prioritize the models so that weaker ones do not confuse/dilute the signals.

“Until and unless major oscillations in the Earth System (El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) etc.) can be predicted to the extent that they are predictable, regional climate is not a well defined problem. It may never be. If that is the case then we should say so. It is not just the forecast but the confidence and uncertainty that are just as much a key.

“Climate models need to be exercised for weather prediction; there are necessary but not sufficient things that can best be tested in this framework, which is just beginning to be exploited.

“Energy budget is really worrisome; we should have had 20 years of ERBE [Earth Radiation Budget Experiment] type data by now- this would have told us about cloud feedback and climate sensitivity. I’m worried that we’ll never have a reliable long-term measurement. This combined with accurate ocean heat uptake data would really help constrain the big-picture climate change outcome, and then we can work on the details.

“[Analyse] the response of models to a single transient 20th century forcing construction. The factors leading to the spread in the responses of models over the 20th century can then be better ascertained, with forcing separated out thus from the mix of the uncertainty factors. The Fourth Assessment Report missed doing this owing essentially to the timelines that were arranged.

“Adding complexity to models, when some basic elements are not working right (e.g. the hydrological cycle) is not sound science. A hierarchy of models can help in this regard.”

So here, in the words of leading climate scientists who are part of the so-called consensus, we have recognition that there are some major problems with the climate theory on which many of the world’s governments, including the Australian government, are making major interventions into our lives and our economies.

Interestingly the issues raised by the IPCC scientists are similar to those often discussed at this blog, including the issue of cloud feedback and climate sensitivity.  There have been recent major breakthroughs in this area by Dr Roy Spencer a so-called climate change skeptic who’s research findings, if incorporated into the climate theory of the IPCC, could significantly improve it and also perhaps go some way to helping develop a more scientifically sound basis for regional climate.   

Roy Spencer’s website with links to his key published scientific papers is here:
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm

[Thanks to Luke Walker for the link to the opinion of Ann Henderson-Sellers with the quotes from the lead authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.]