NASA mission flies over Arctic to study sea ice melt causes – calling ‘settled science’ into question?

NASA says: “There are many different factors that influence the sea ice. We’re measuring them to determine which were most important to melting ice this summer.” Where does that leave so-called ‘state-of-the-art’ climate models? They’re only going to be measuring seasonal factors, not longer-term cycles for example, but it’s at least an attempt to look harder at the whole topic.
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It’s not just rising air and water temperatures influencing the decades-long decline of Arctic sea ice, says NASA (via Phys.org).

Clouds, aerosols, even the bumps and dips on the ice itself can play a role.

To explore how these factors interact and impact sea ice melting, NASA is flying two aircraft equipped with scientific instruments over the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland this summer.

Satellite mission to ‘unravel’ how clouds impact future climate change?

Let’s hope this is not going to be used as another excuse to pretend alarmist predictions from climate models have improved, just because some extra data is being fed in.
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A brand new satellite that will revolutionize our understanding of the role clouds and aerosol particles play in climate change is set to launch after more than 30 years of planning, says the University of Reading (via Phys.org).

The EarthCARE satellite is the brainchild of the University of Reading’s Professor Anthony Illingworth. Conceived in 1993, the project was adopted by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2004.

The satellite is set to blast off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on board one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets, scheduled for launch no earlier than Tuesday 28 May 2024.

The mission is a testament to the power of U.K. and international collaboration and the importance of long-term, dedicated research. The satellite, equipped with four cutting-edge instruments, will provide unprecedented insights into the complex interactions between clouds, aerosols, and Earth’s climate.

This data will be invaluable in shaping our understanding of climate change and informing future climate adaptation and mitigation policies.

Professor Anthony Illingworth, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Reading, said, “When we first started dreaming up this project, I never imagined I would be flying out to the United States to watch our satellite launch 30 years later.

“It’s been a long and challenging journey with an amazing team of dedicated scientists and engineers from the U.K. and abroad. Together, we’ve created something truly remarkable that will change the way we understand our planet.

“The data we gather from EarthCARE will be invaluable in helping us observe the precise mechanisms involved in how clouds and dust reflect and absorb heat. This will make our predictions for the future of our climate even more precise, meaning we can make more informed decisions about how to mitigate and adapt to the challenges posed by a warming world.

“The extraordinary data we receive will help us create a more sustainable future for our planet. It’s a humbling and thrilling experience to be part of something so significant.”
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Currently, climate models do not agree on how effective clouds and aerosols are at influencing the impact of global warming. For example, if there were fewer cloudy days in the future, less energy from the sun would be reflected back into space, which would increase the rate of climate warming.

EarthCARE’s new observations will help scientists to develop more precise climate models, which will significantly improve climate predictions and lead to more informed policy decisions.

Full article here.

New climate study: Size matters to sensitive clouds

Henrik Svensmark’s research group has been busy again. This article says clouds are ‘the largest source of uncertainty in predicting future climate change’. Climate models may need another revision.
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Cloud cover, one of the biggest regulators of Earth’s climate, is easier to affect than previously thought, says Eurekalert.

A new analysis of cloud measurements from outside the coast of California, combined with global satellite measurements, reveals that even aerosol particles as small as 25-30 nanometers may contribute to cloud formation.

Hence, the climate impact of small aerosols may be underestimated.

Clouds are among the least understood entities in the climate system and the largest source of uncertainty in predicting future climate change.

Can volcanic super eruptions lead to major cooling? Study suggests no

The research came up with ‘relatively modest temperature changes’. One NASA atmospheric scientist commented: “To me, this is another example of why geoengineering via stratospheric aerosol injection is a long, long way from being a viable option.” (Here’s another one). Climate alarmists can imagine doing some things, but so can Hollywood scriptwriters.
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New research suggests that sunlight-blocking particles from an extreme eruption would not cool surface temperatures on Earth as severely as previously estimated, says Phys.org.

Some 74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano in Indonesia exploded with a force 1,000 times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The mystery is what happened after that—namely, to what degree that extreme explosion might have cooled global temperatures.

When it comes to the most powerful volcanoes, researchers have long speculated how post-eruption global cooling—sometimes called volcanic winter—could potentially pose a threat to humanity.

Why atmospheric geoengineering is dead in the water

Another idea for slaying imaginary climate dragons runs into trouble, as new research finds ‘an intervention that cools the air would not be able to cool the deep ocean on the same timescale’. So for believers in a climate crisis the desired short-term effectiveness just isn’t there.
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Climate change is heating the oceans, altering currents and circulation patterns responsible for regulating climate on a global scale [Talkshop comment – empty assertions]. If temperatures dropped, some of that damage could theoretically [sic] be undone.

But employing “emergency” atmospheric geoengineering later this century in the face of continuous high carbon emissions would not be able to reverse changes to ocean currents, a new study finds.

This would critically curtail the intervention’s potential effectiveness on human-relevant timescales.

Oceans, especially the deep oceans, absorb and lose heat more slowly than the atmosphere, so an intervention that cools the air would not be able to cool the deep ocean on the same timescale, the authors found.

More cloud uncertainties: researching the effect of aerosol particles on clouds and the climate

Again it turns out that climate modellers don’t understand cloud effects too well. As this article bluntly puts it: ‘The interactions of atmospheric aerosols with solar radiation and clouds continue to be inadequately understood and are among the greatest uncertainties in the model description and forecasting of changes to the climate. One reason for this is the many unanswered questions about the hygroscopicity of aerosol particles.’ — Other reasons aren’t discussed here. Why do we keep reading about ‘state-of-the-art’ climate models when they clearly have a long way to go to merit such a description? Any forecasts they produce should be treated with great caution, to say the least.
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The extent to which aerosol particles affect the climate depends on how much water the particles can hold in the atmosphere, says Phys.org.

The capacity to hold water is referred to as hygroscopicity (K) and, in turn, depends on further factors—particularly the size and chemical composition of the particles, which can be extremely variable and complex.

Through extensive investigations, an international research team under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) and the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) was able to reduce the relationship between the chemical composition and the hygroscopicity of aerosol particles to a simple linear formula.

Climate’s ‘Catch-22’: Cutting air pollution heats up the planet — more confusion ahead?

Chinese smog
[image credit: BBC]

A choice between overheating and lung damage doesn’t appeal much, giving would-be climate controllers a new conundrum for their models to grapple with. Another excuse to wheel out catastrophe fears again.
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Air pollution, a global scourge that kills millions of people a year, is shielding us from the full force of the sun, says Euractiv.

Getting rid of it will accelerate climate change. That’s the unpalatable conclusion reached by scientists poring over the results of China’s decade-long and highly effective “war on pollution”, according to six leading climate experts.

The drive to banish pollution, caused mainly by sulphur dioxide (SO2) spewed from coal plants, has cut SO2 emissions by close to 90% and saved hundreds of thousands of lives, Chinese official data and health studies show.

Hanson et al paper claims ‘climate is more sensitive than usually assumed’

Here we go again. Sound the alarm – louder! So far most climate models have consistently over-estimated temperature rises, compared to observations. The paper goes online shortly (see below for full details).
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According to a new paper in Oxford Open Climate Change, the strategies humanity must pursue to reduce climate change will have to include more than reducing greenhouse gases.

This comes from an analysis of climate data led by researcher James Hansen, says the press release (@ EurekAlert!).

Scientists have known since the 1800s that infrared-absorbing (greenhouse) gases warm the Earth’s surface and that the abundance of greenhouse gases changes naturally as well as from human actions. [Talkshop comment – the human actions part at least is still a theory].

Roger Revelle, who was one of the early scientists to study global warming, wrote in 1965 that industrialization meant that human beings were conducting a “vast geophysical experiment” by burning fossil fuels, which adds carbon dioxide (CO2) to the air.

Disappearing clouds blamed for ‘crazy’ rise in ocean temperatures

Is this a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’? In a world of unproven climate assumptions masquerading as facts, the potential for unintended consequences is unlimited.
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Disappearing clouds are to blame for the “crazy” rise in ocean temperatures, scientists have warned.

A policy introduced in 2020 to cut the amount of sulphur emitted by ships resulted in an 80 per cent reduction of the element in the Earth’s atmosphere, says The Telegraph.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) demanded that the sulphur content in fuel be cut from 3.5 per cent to 0.5 per cent for all vessels operating worldwide.

The policy resulted in fewer build-ups of the element in clouds and less cloud coverage overall.

Beware the habitual El Niño hype – Net Zero Watch

Not hard to imagine so-called climate reporters with fingers hovering over the alarm button, ready to press it as soon as the first hint of an El Niño is mentioned somewhere.
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The world is once again in the grip of a semi-regular climate alarm, says David Whitehouse @ Net Zero Watch.

I’m not referring to the latest onset of the El Niño cycle, declared in action on July 4th by the United Nations, but the amplified rhetoric about the pace and scale of warming temperatures that always accompanies such El Niño periods.

Do you remember what happened last time we had a record El Niño in 2015/16? Global temperatures increased rapidly – as they do during such an event – and, according to some, it was full speed ahead to a runaway thermal apocalypse … until global temperatures started to fall again.

Effect of volcanic eruptions significantly underestimated in climate projections, study shows

Volcanic eruption

The idea proposed here of climate model forecasts becoming ‘more robust’ by including smaller effects depends on them being robust to some degree in the first place, which is open to question given their output to date.
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Researchers have found that the cooling effect that volcanic eruptions have on Earth’s surface temperature is likely underestimated by a factor of two, and potentially as much as a factor of four, in standard climate projections, says Phys.org.

While this effect is far from enough to offset the effects of global temperature rise caused by human activity [Talkshop comment – unsupported assertion], the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, say that small-magnitude eruptions are responsible for as much as half of all the sulfur gases emitted into the upper atmosphere by volcanoes.

The results, reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggest that improving the representation of volcanic eruptions of all magnitudes will in turn make climate projections more robust.

Benzene and toluene in polar oceans have a biological origin, study finds

Natural aerosols, not ‘human pollution’. Another climate assumption gets blown out of the water.
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In addition to oxygen, nitrogen or carbon dioxide, the air we breathe contains small amounts of organic gases, such as benzene and toluene, says Phys.org.

These oxidize into small particles or aerosols that contribute to the condensation of water in the droplets that form clouds.

Now, a study by the Institut de Cièncias del Mar (ICM-CSIC), the Instituto de Química Física Rocasolano (IQFR-CSIC) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) stresses the importance of clouds, which filter solar radiation, for understanding past and future climate changes.

“If we don’t get the clouds right, we won’t get the climate right,” says Charel Wohl, ICM-CSIC researcher and lead author of the study. “We are just beginning to unveil the multiple ingredients that form cloud seeds,” he adds.

21st century warming trend change may not be due to greenhouse gasses, leading climate scientists say – Net Zero Watch

It’s ‘study suggests’ time again. NZW: They say (p 4283) it’s a credible hypothesis that global temperature trend changes since 2000 could be “arising largely from internal variability.”
— These results definitely won’t please the climate obsessive tendency.
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A new study by a team of leading climate scientists suggests that the effect of carbon dioxide this century might be small when compared to natural climate variability, says Net Zero Watch.

Global surface temperature is, and always has been, the key climate parameter.

Whatever is happening to the Earth’s climate balance, it must, sooner or later, be reflected in the global annual average temperature, and not just in regional variations.

But therein lies what is to some an inconvenience, as the changes in the global temperature this century is open to differing interpretations including the suggestion that increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are not needed to explain the changes we have seen in the last 20 years or so.

It’s a conclusion that many would dismiss as coming from climate “sceptics,” or downright deniers. But what if it’s the view of scientists from two of the world’s leading institutes researching climate change; the University of Oxford and the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. Then it must be taken seriously and not dismissed offhand.

It is important research because it is the trend in the increase of global temperature caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that is most important variable for policymakers considering the scale and timescale of action in the coming decades.

However, this vital parameter is uncertain because recent decades have shown that we are living through a period of considerable natural climate variability.

Full article here.

International research team cracks chemical code on how iodine helps form clouds

Cumulus clouds over the Atlantic Ocean [image credit: Tiago Fioreze @ Wikipedia]

The article says iodine’s ‘catalytic role in particle formation enhances its effects in the atmosphere wherever it goes, whether that role is eliminating protective ozone molecules or increasing cloud cover.’ But it’s not clear why this claim would be correct: ‘As sea ice melts in the Arctic, more iodine can enter the atmosphere, increase cloud cover and enhance warming effects on the region.’ Effects of cloud cover differ between high and low cloud, for example.
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An international team led by CU Boulder researchers has cracked the chemical code driving the formation of iodine particles in the atmosphere, revealing how the element contributes to increased cloud cover and depletes molecules in the Earth’s protective ozone layer, says Phys.org.

The research, conducted at the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), was published today in the journal Nature Chemistry.

It’s the first time that any experiment in the world has demonstrated the mechanism for how the gas-phase form of iodine—known as iodic acid—forms, and suggests it has an significant role in atmospheric particle formation.

Small sulfate aerosol may have masked effects of climate change in 1970s, say researchers

These researchers seem to have forgotten about the dominant role of water vapour when referring to so-called greenhouse gases – which is odd considering the topic of their study. Are they still promoting an excuse for 1970s cooling?
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Small sulfate particles of diameters 0.4 µm or less from anthropogenic sources could have had a cooling effect on the climate in the 1970s, by triggering cloud formation and reflection radiation, says Hokkaido University (via Phys.org).

Global warming and climate change are one of the most pressing issues of this century.

It is well known that carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas [Talkshop comment – no it isn’t, that’s water vapour by far], but what is less known is that a few anthropogenic aerosols retard the effects of greenhouse gases.

One such chemical is sulfate, which is more infamous for its role in acid rain.

Scientists evaluate Earth-cooling strategies with geoengineering simulations

Layers of Earth’s atmosphere

Q: What could possibly go wrong? A: Even the sky’s not the limit.
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A group of international scientists led by Cornell University is—more rigorously and systematically than ever before—evaluating if and how the stratosphere could be made just a little bit “brighter,” reflecting more incoming sunlight so that an ever-warming Earth maintains its cool, says Phys.org.

Their work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Solar radiation modification—or solar geoengineering, as it is sometimes called—is a potential climate change mitigation strategy that involves injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, so more sunlight bounces off the Earth’s atmosphere.

Climate models: Wildfire-smoke observations may help ‘fill gap’ in estimating soot’s role, researchers hope

California wildfire [image credit: NASA]

Another day, another topic of model uncertainty. ‘Refining’ an admitted high level of uncertainty is an odd concept, but researchers assert the issue will be ‘cleared up’. However, their belief in ‘potent climate-warming agents’ doesn’t inspire confidence.
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New research refining the amount of sunlight absorbed by black carbon in smoke from wildfires will help clear up a long-time weak spot in earth system models, enabling more accurate forecasting of global climate change, says Phys.org.

“Black carbon or soot is the next most potent climate-warming agent after CO2 and methane, despite a short lifetime of weeks, but its impact in climate models is still highly uncertain,” said James Lee, a climate researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and corresponding author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters on light absorption by wildfire smoke. “Our research will clear up that uncertainty.”

The Los Alamos research resolves a long-time disconnect between the observations of the amount of light absorbed by black carbon in smoke and the amount predicted by models, given how black carbon is mixed with other material such as condensed organic aerosols that are present in plumes.