A better explanation for the end of ice ages

I’ve been thinking further about this knotty problem, which has vexed climatologists and glaciologists for many years. Finally the light has come on. A little while ago the Hockey Schtick site reported a new paper which had found that the Arctic ocean between 50,000 and 11,000 years ago was warmer than it is now by 1-2C to a considerable depth. The authors think it is due to a reduced fresh water flux.

I think it’s due to the glacial period frozen-year-round Arctic ocean surface providing a skull cap of insulation over the bulk of the Arctic ocean preventing it from losing heat to space.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

 

 

Just in case we get a cold winter this year, the Guardian thought it advisable to warn us that this would no doubt be because of global warming.

The record loss of Arcticsea ice this summer may mean a cold winter for the UK and northern Europe. The region has been prone to bad winters after summers with very low sea ice, such as 2011 and 2007, said Jennifer Francis, a researcher at Rutgers University

Well yes, Jennifer. It has also been prone to mild winters recently. It was also prone to cold winters when the Arctic had more summer ice, and also mild winters in other years at the time. It is actually called “weather”.

Jennifer helpfully explains

"The jet stream is clearly weaker," said Francis. That means weather systems, be it rain or dry conditions, are slow to move on…

View original post 334 more words

The 1940s hump in SST is Real.

Several years ago there was much discussion on Climate Audit and elsewhere regarding the anomalous ‘hump’ in sea surface temperatures during the wartime years in the 1940’s. The argument advanced was that various issues around the prevalence in those years of measurements from American warships which had changed over from using the time honoured technique of chucking a bucket on a rope over the side to get a sample, to using temperature sensors attached to the engine cooling intake pipe. It’s thought that heat conducted along the pipe from the engine might have skewed the readings to the warm side, and that this explains the big ‘hump’ in SST  around the last war years.

There is likely some truth in this, but I think there may be a conflation of two effects, and that we shouldn’t be hasty in ‘adjusting’ the 1940’s temperature downwards, for several reasons. Firstly, there is motivation in this. The ‘hump’ is problematic for the AGW theory.  The ‘hump’ forms the tail end of the 1915-1945 warming period which rivals the modern warm period in length, strength and slope. But CO2 hadn’t been rising significantly during the period according to the Antarctic ice cores. They’d rather we didn’t think about it.

Belfast, Ravenhill Road, Northern Ireland

Belfast, Ravenhill Road, Northern Ireland

Holds two Northern Ireland highest temperature records.

No WMO ID.

54.58376830736669,-5.909843956695321
Altitude 12 metres.

Estimated Class 5. Fails Class 4 on >50% hardstanding and objects within 10 metres and on shadow.

UHI, heavy local, distance, within Belfast.

Russell Cook: The Curious History of ‘Global Climate Disruption’

My thanks to Russell Cook for permission to reproduce this article first published on the ‘American Thinker’ website in 2010. This is well timed given Al Gore’s upcoming ‘Dirty Weather’ 24 hour special broadcast. ‘Weather Weirding’, ‘Climate Disruption’, ‘Dirty Weather’, these are all phrases designed to conjure up worry and fear in the minds of ordinary people. They are promulgated by pseudoscientists who want to link ‘carbon emissions’ with disruptive weather events. That they have no scientific basis to do so is demonstrated in a recent editorial in ‘Nature’, as well as by numerous articles over the years by meteorologists such as Ryan Maue. -TB

With thanks to ‘Minnesotans for Global Warming’

The Curious History of ‘Global Climate Disruption’
By Russell Cook

Global warming alarmists are seriously considering rebranding their fear campaign in the face of public skepticism.

A September 16 Fox News report analyzed the suggestion by Science Czar John Holdren to rename global warming “global climate disruption,” while also offering this tidbit:

In a 2007 presentation, Holdren suggested a similar phrase change — “global climatic disruption.”

The newest suggestion prompted many satirical alternatives, however, his own 2007 variant actually goes back to 1997, revealing a far more serious association with an eco-advocacy group.

WMO03874, Solent

Image Copyright 2012 Microsoft Corporation and their suppliers
Bing maps this view

WMO03874, Solent (Lee-on-Solent, coastguard station / hovercraft museum), also known as Solent MRSC

50 48 29N 01 12 39W
Altitude 9 metres.

Estimated Class 5, deep shadow from building.

UHI, strong local including 2 story building shielding north through south-east, distance, variable depends on wind, otherwise coastal.

Sir Brian Hoskins: Integrative Assessment Modelling – The Economics issue and the Green Deal

The new ‘Green Deal’ logo

My thanks to Ian Laidlaw for drawing my attention to a short ten minute segment on BBC radio 4 which discusses ‘Integrated Assessment Models’. These bring together climate models with social science models such as economic models in order to assist policy makers in decision making. They are designed to enable the effects of decisions to be fed into the model, which then calculate what the feedback to the climate system will be as a result. The model can then provide an outcome which can be compared with the effect of taking a different policy option.

Involved in the discussion, notably, was Sir Brian Hoskins, a very eminent Phd Mathematician with long experience in the field of meteorology and climate modelling. Head of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London for a number of years, he also holds an honorary doctor of science degree from Bristol University. His original PhD thesis was centred around a mathematical description of the formation of warm and cold fronts.

The host of the ‘Material World’ programme didn’t attempt to engage Sir Brian on climate change theory or the physical science, but did point out that  if you put two economists together in a room you’ll get three different economic theories out of it. Sir Brian agreed that this was an important issue and that so far as he is aware, economists don’t test their models against reality in the same way climate scientists do.

What then is the purpose of Integrated Assessment Models? And why would politicians use our money to pay for their development?

University of Reading, meteorological station

University of Reading, meteorological station. Included as a special, a university run met site. (page here, page author has moved)

It ought to be good.

51.44139273296255,-0.9380477212365923 (unofficial, after move)

Altitude 62 metres (unofficial)

Estimated Class 1, marginal ((7.6+212.4+3022.3)-325.9) / 31416 = 9.2% hardstanding or buildings within 100 metres. Note: only valid since 2004 (see text)

UHI, local, extending campus, lake (not typical of the area but artificial lakes after gravel extraction from alluvial beds are fairly common, or filled with rubbish), distance, town urbanising and urban sprawl towards London. There have been significant developments in and close to Reading since this station was built.

Curious OLR anomaly in the Arctic

I’ve been investigating the NOAA OLR (Outgoing Long-wave Radiation) data to try to find where things have changed by more than the global average.  I’ve found a ‘step change’ in the high latitudes which occurred between 2002 and 2006.

figure 1: OLR anomaly 60-90N 2000-2012

Curiously, this increase appears to be mainly in winter rather than summer:

Visit to Scott Polar Research Institute

Ian Laidlaw (left) with old colleague Prof Julian Dowdeswell, Head of the Scott Polar Research Institute

Yesterday I was privileged to make a visit to meet Prof. Julian Dowdeswell, the head of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. This was enabled by one of Julian’s former colleagues at Aberystwyth University, Ian Laidlaw who now lives in my home town of Leeds.  Along with another friend, Susan, we made the four hour journey down in atrocious rain conditions in Ian’s car, battling through near zero visibility as we passed trucks throwing huge spray plumes off the motorway road surface. Julian had an equally difficult drive from his home in Bristol. We laughed it off, when I commented that it wasn’t so bad in comparison to the conditions Scott and his party suffered in the Antarctic.

RHS Wisley

RHS Wisley (Royal Horticultural Society, Wisley, no WMO ID)

BBC: Hottest July day ever in England (see text)

51.3107735694194,-0.4764187065843351 (Google)

Altitude 37 metres (Google)

Estimated Class 3 but arguably is Class 4. Fails Class 1 and 2 on “Ground covered with natural and low vegetation (<10 cm) representative of the region” within 10 metres and surrounded by open space.

UHI, local, orchards, vegetation, polytunnels, medium, 350m new artificial lake and then new visitor centre, 270m a 10 lane part of the Riply bypass (road), 550 metres end of Wisley airfield runway (disused), distance, 31km centres of London, just outside M25 orbital motorway.

Paul Hudson: What happened to global warming?

Our favourite TV meteorologist Paul Hudson wrote this three years ago. It still seems pertinent and fresh.

What happened to global warming?

9 Oct 2009

By Paul Hudson

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.

Jesse Jones: The Boy Who Cried Warming

I would like to extend to you personal invitation to check my feature length documentary on the “cold facts” of Global Warming entitled “The Boy Who Cried Warming,” available in full at http://www.theboywhocriedwarming.com. The virtual premier has been enjoyed by over 12,000 viewers due to a grassroots campaign effort of handing out flyers and emailing people just like you!

Coal and carbon credits on the up

With thanks and respect to Steve Bell

From Bloomberg:

By Mathew Carr – Sep 21, 2012 8:16 PM GMT

European utilities are poised to add more coal-fired power capacity than natural gas in the next four years, boosting emissions just as the era of free carbon permits ends.

Power producers from EON AG to RWE AG (RWE) will open six times more coal-burning plants than gas-fed units by 2015, UBS AG said in a Sept. 5 research note. Profits at coal-fired power stations may more than double by then, according to a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. report published on Sept.  13th.

The new stations, replacing atomic and aging fossil fuel- based plants, will boost demand for emission permits because coal-fired generators need twice as many credits as gas users under climate protection rules. The price of UN credits may rebound 73 percent by the end of next year from an all-time low on Sept. 18, according to the Euro Carbon Macro Fund in Luxembourg, which manages about $32 million.

M Vukcevic: Apparent relations between solar magnetic cycle, lunar nodal cycle, and ocean surface temperature

Our good friend Vukcevic has just posted on a WUWT open thread this spectral analysis of the signed sunspot cycle (solar magnetic cycle) compared to land and sea surface temperature, and the Earth’s geomagnetism. I trust he will be along to explain a little further.

 

Autumn Equinox 2012: A moment in the balance

Autumn equinox takes place at around 2.12pm today. This marking point in the solar year occurs when day and night length are equal. Northerners start thinking about laying in winter fuel and pulling heavy jackets off wardrobe tops – if they didn’t already this cold summer. Southerners start spring cleaning and buying beach towels. But today we should pause to think about a different kind of balance apart from day and night length being equal. We’ve seen a storm in the media and blogosphere this last week over Anthony Watts interview on PBS, the american public service broadcaster. It’s not that he said anything particularly controversial:

 I agree with him [Muller] that global warming exists. However, the ability to attribute the percentage of global warming to CO2 versus other man-made influences is still an open question.

No, the problem for the AGW zealots was that  he was allowed to say anything at all. That upset those who believe in man-made catastrophic climate change who don’t want joe public to hear any contrary views. Outrage was mobilised in the alarmosphere and petitions dropped on the toes of PBS ‘ombudsman’ Michael Getner, along with a lot of spittle flecked email, most of it from familiar names.

“Watts is funded by Big Oil” (He isn’t, but the smear is standard CAGW believer boilerplate rhetoric)

“Watts isn’t a scientist” (As if you need to be a scientist to perform simple stats and analysis)

“Watts the climate denier promotes false uncertainty” (Do these people realise just how uncertain climate change attribution really is?)

“PBS should be ashamed for giving Watts a platform for his lies” (But keep pumping out untruths we approve of)

And so on ad nauseum. Running anything with political overtones in the States near election time gets the screen shouters and window lickers out in force. Journalistic balance requires more than bending to the mob’s wishes. 

Russell Cook: Smearing Global Warming Skeptics

Here’s another repost of an American Thinker article by Russell Cook. I think it’s important we keep reminding the media of the unsubstantiated nature of the ‘In the pay of big oil’ meme that the propagandists in the man-made global warming camp keep pushing.

Meteorologist blogger Anthony Watts normally talks about the crumbling science of man-caused global warming, but recently he described an uninvited office guest demanding to know about his alleged “big oil funding.” The charge that only the lure of big money causes people to question warmist gospel is old but, as it turns out, of highly questionable origin.

Al Gore typifies the central accusation in An Inconvenient Truth, pg 263:

The misconception that there is a serious disagreement among scientists about global warming is actually an illusion that has been deliberately fostered by a relatively small but extremely well-funded cadre of special interests, including Exxon Mobil and a few other oil, coal, and utilities companies. These companies want to prevent any new policies that would interfere with their current business plans…

One of the internal memos prepared by this group to guide the employees they hired to run their disinformation campaign was discovered by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ross Gelbspan. Here was the group’s stated objective: to “reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact.”

WMO03808, Camborne

 

WMO03808, Camborne (a primary Met Office climate and research site)

 

50 13 06N 05 19 39W
Altitude 87 metres

Estimated Class 4. Fails Class 3 on 6.5% hardstanding within 10 metres, limit <=5%,. Note: this is the first site in this project where met enclosure hardstanding has been considered in detail.
Detailed reasoning for failing Class 1 and 2, and evidence within 10 metres is presented below.

UHI, close site, distance, none, coastal site. Note the site is about 300 metres from the recent dual carriageway A30 and single carriageway former A30, about 1km from the outskirts of Camborne town.

A simple logical argument about global warming

Skeptic commenter Jimbo provides a neat summary of the AGW argument:

Co2 is a greenhouse gas.

The world has warmed.

Man’s co2 has had a part in that warming.

But hang on a minute Jimbo:

The ocean heat content rose
The surface air temperature rose (UHI caveat on amount)
The troposphere temp rose

and

Outgoing longwave radiation increased.

Gazprom Rethinks Shale as European Gas Prices Sink

From Oil and Gas Eurasia

Gazprom has admitted it might yet adjust its attitude towards shale gas, as Russian policy makers assess new dangers to the country’s petro-dollar economy. First, Russia’s Economic Ministry warned that the increasing supply of shale gas on world markets will start hurting Gazprom’s pipeline sales to Europe in 2014. And it seems Gazprom might now be weighing the pros and cons of jumping onto the shale gas bandwagon.

By Pat Davis Szymczak, Ben Priddy