Is El Niño to blame for the big Southern storm?

Credit: NASA climatekids

The official view of US experts on the current status of El Niño will be delivered on Thursday.

Heavy rain in California and piles of snow in the Southeast may be signs another El Niño weather phenomenon is upon us, says CBS News.
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Heavy rain and mudslides in California, flooding in Texas, and up to 2 feet of snow in North Carolina — all these recent weather events are symptoms of the infamous climate phenomena called El Niño.

For months now we have been on the verge of an official El Niño, but so far the climate community has not pulled the El Niño trigger.

Ian Wilson: Is the Next Big Westerly Wind Burst On Its Way?

‘I am really sticking my neck out on this one!’ – IW. Indeed – good luck, results next week.
Note: El Niño link added, includes short video.

Information on the progress of the latest MJO that started on 02/12/2018
[As of 09/12/2018]
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mjo/ – last accessed at 7:00 P.M. EAST 09/12/2018

Hypothesis: During periods leading up to the onset of El Niño events, nascent Typhoon/Cyclone pairs associated with the active phase of Madden Julian Oscillations are reinforced either at or 1-2 days after the maxima or minima in the Earth’s rotation rate that are induced by the monthly lunar tides.

Visualization of Pacific ocean temperatures shows El Niño brewing

Ocean currents
[image credit: SPL/BBC]

The latest NOAA synopsis says: ‘Overall, the oceanic and atmospheric conditions reflected ENSO-neutral, but with recent trends indicative of a developing El Niño.’ Sounds like a ‘definite maybe’ there, with models now forecasting a relatively weak El Niño.

Warming waters in the equatorial Pacific give increasing confidence that El Niño will be here soon, says Discover magazine.

It’s still not here yet, but El Niño sure looks like it’s coming.

In its latest forecast, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says there is a 70 to 75 percent chance that El Niño will form “in the next couple of months and continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2018-19.”

Met-Office invents infallible climate prediction method

The Met-Office has issued a ‘decadal’ climate forecast which runs from 2018 to 2023. Maybe it should be called a ‘semi-decadal forecast’ instead, but we’ll let it pass, as that’s not the most amusing aspect of it by a long chalk.

For starters, there’s the baseline period chosen. 1850-1900. They’ve gone for this so they can scare us with the upper end of the blue prediction envelope exceeding the Dangerous! Global! Warming! politically chosen figure of 1.5C above “pre-industrial”.

Here’s the global measuring station coverage between 1891 and 1920. There was a lot less in 1850.

I thought it would be fun to see how the Met-O forecast is doing after 10 months, so I plotted the latest annually averaged HadCRUt 4 global data using Wood For Trees in red and overlaid it on the Met-O prediction plot:

Historic space weather could clarify what’s next

Solar flare [image credit: NASA/SDO]

Quoting from the research article’s plain language summary: ‘We find that some aspects of the space weather climate are in fact reproducible, they can be inferred from that of previous solar maxima. This may help understand the behaviour of future solar maxima.’ Solar wind variation is highlighted.

Historic space weather may help us understand what’s coming next, according to new research by the University of Warwick, says Phys.org.

Professor Sandra Chapman, from Warwick’s Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics, led a project which charted the space weather in previous solar cycles across the last half century, and discovered an underlying repeatable pattern in how space weather activity changes with the solar cycle.

Nature Unbound IX – 21st Century Climate Change

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A wide-ranging discussion of climate scenarios here, including the likely efficiency of global carbon sinks and the pros and cons of a forthcoming solar grand minimum.

Climate Etc.

by Javier

A conservative outlook on 21st century climate change

View original post 8,424 more words

A Greener Future Starts With Natural Gas, World Energy Chiefs Say

Bloomberg:

By

Jonathan Gilbert

and

Jennifer A Dlouhy

16 June 2018

World energy ministers representing about two thirds of the global population tussled over how the world can achieve a cleaner energy future. The compromise answer: Natural gas, at least for now.

A consensus statement from G20 energy ministers meeting in Argentina cited the potential of natural gas “to expand significantly over the coming decades.” Meanwhile, the group said that nations that “opt to enhance their renewable energy strategies” should boost investment and financing within that arena.

Rick Salvador’s 2013 Pattern Recognition in Physics solar prediction now validated

Our hypothesis that solar variation is affected by planetary motion, developed over the last 10 years here at the talkshop received a boost today when one of its main detractors, Anthony Watts, published an article declaring that solar cycle 24 is entering minimum.

I’ve left a comment there, something I rarely do since the debacle back in 2014 when Anthony and his sidekick Willis attacked our work and banned discussion of our solar-planetary theory. I’ll be interested to see if it passes moderation.

Here’s the plot I linked. It shows that Rick Salvador’s model is spot on track over the last 5 years.

Media starting to pick up on our Solar slowdown warnings: Food production could be hit soon.

As we’ve been warning for years on the talkshop, the incoming solar grand minimum is likely to hit world food production negatively.

@dbirch214 @GrizzlyGovFan @RogTallbloke @canberroo @andyoz2 @climaterra @climatempo @metsul @SMN_Argentina @ClimaFlorida @boleadorcharrua @CharlesAmorin @navegoYpirateo @Balinteractive https://t.co/z75RREF6Vd

— gddcunha1961 (@gddcunha1961) May 23, 2018

Politicians and policy makers have no excuses here. They’ve been enthralled by the scientists they pay to tell them what they want to hear for years.

Met Office Predicted The Cold Weather That They Did Not Predict!

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Met Office seasonal forecasting skill turns out to be below average – heading towards the lowest 20%.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Conditions over the weekend and into the early part of next week will become increasingly cold, possibly exceptionally cold.

Yellow National Severe Weather Warnings for snow are in force for parts of eastern and southeast England from 4pm on Monday and for large parts of the UK through Tuesday and Wednesday.

Snow showers are expected to develop widely during the start of the week, with some locations likely to see accumulations of 5 to 10 cm. Although other sites may see less frequent showers leading to much smaller accumulations up to 2 cm.

The very cold conditions, which are likely to be the coldest spell of weather for several years, are likely to remain in place for the remainder of next week. The cold easterly wind will persist bringing a significant wind chill which will make it feel several degrees colder than thermometers indicate. Even without…

View original post 211 more words

Researchers find way to give advanced notice for hailstorms

Credit: NOAA

It’s those wavy jet streams again.

A new study identifies a method for predicting the likelihood of damaging hailstorms in the United States—up to three weeks in advance, reports Phys.org.

Hail is the most economically destructive hazard posed by severe thunderstorms, producing on average billions of dollars in U.S. losses each year, including damage to roofs, homes and especially crops.

“We found a really strong relationship between jet stream patterns over the Pacific Ocean and U.S. hail frequency,” said Victor Gensini, a meteorologist at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois and lead author of the new study. “In simple terms, when the jet stream is really wavy, the likelihood of experiencing hail greatly increases.”

Wet summer warning system developed

Forecaster highlights the jetstream over the UK [image credit: BBC]

It’s more predictable than we thought, they say – at least in some ways. The test of time awaits.

Researchers in the UK have developed a method of improving the long range accuracy of summer weather in the UK and Europe, says the BBC.

The scientists found a connection between sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic in March and April and the subsequent summer’s rain or shine.

The researchers say the new method may benefit agriculture, tourism and construction.

Alan Carlin: None of the climate alarmist apocalypses have occurred or are even possible

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

Lack of predictive success is a strong warning sign that something is amiss in the world of climate science in general and its modelling in particular.

The climate alarmists have long tried to sell their apocalyptic scam by claiming that their policies will avoid catastrophic increases in global temperatures, writes Alan Carlin.

The Daily Caller has recently inventoried some of the widely publicized such climate apocalypses predicted over the last 30 years by examining 12 of them.

The alarmists’ 12 apocalyptic predictions have proved uniformly wrong. That’s zero percent correct.

Why you shouldn’t believe a UK snow forecast more than three days ahead

Channel 4’s Liam Dutton

TV weather presenter Liam Dutton runs through some of the pitfalls awaiting UK forecasters.

Predicting snow in the UK is difficult and weather computer models rarely get it right more than a few days ahead. But why is this the case?

The past week has seen Arctic air and snow affect the UK, and with another cold blast later this week, there is much excitement about the prospect of snow.

Twitter has been awash with graphics from various weather computer models showing large swathes of the UK covered in snow in a week’s time.

However, the bottom line is that you should never believe a detailed UK snow forecast more than three days ahead.

Warren Buffett Bets On The Fossil-Fuel Highway

No certainties, but some bets are better than others in the mixed-up world of climate-related government policies.

The sage of Omaha knows a policy bubble when he sees it—and electric vehicles are a prime case, reports the GWPF.

A sucker is born every minute, and Warren Buffett just proved it. He agreed to spend an undisclosed sum of his shareholders’ money to buy a controlling stake in Pilot Flying J, the truck-stop chain that sells food, coffee and diesel fuel to truckers.

After all, aren’t truckers about to be replaced by robots, and diesel by battery power? The sucker in this scenario, we add, is anyone who believed such futuristic forecasts in the first place.

The global warming backpedalling begins. “It’s less worse than we thought”

Computer modelling used a decade ago to predict how quickly global average temperatures would rise may have forecast too much warming, a study has found.

Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford and one of the study’s authors told The Times: “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations.”

Half-mile wide asteroid close approach on Wednesday

Credit: VIRTUAL TELESCOPE [click to enlarge]

Dr Roy Spencer discusses today’s asteroid approach, the closest for 13 years.

An asteroid capable of destroying Washington D.C. and New York City at the same time will be making its closest approach to Earth on April 19.

At a half-mile wide, it will have over 30,000 times as much mass as the 2013 meteor which exploded over Russia in 2013.

The current asteroid, called “2014 JO25“, is traveling at the unimaginably fast speed of 75,000 mph. It has been estimated that an asteroid of this size is capable of wiping out an area the size of New England, and causing global cooling from the dust that would be lofted into the stratosphere.

“2014 JO25” will be the closest approach asteroid of this size in the last 13 years.

We really don′t know clouds at all

Despite confessing to being ‘baffled by clouds’, climate science and its media followers are still prone to assertions like ‘as the world warms’ – as though it’s bound to do so indefinitely.

Though we see them every day, clouds remain such a mystery to scientists that they are inhibiting climate change predictions. But a new atlas could be a game changer, thinks DW.COM.

Nothing beats a lazy afternoon sitting on the grass and watching the clouds roll by. These white fluffy friends can feel like a constant and comforting presence in life. And since the dawn of air travel, as folk singer Joni Mitchell once sang, we’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.

But as Mitchell cautioned, somewhow we still don’t know clouds at all. Her words were true in 1969, and they are still true today.

Forecasters predict El Niño may return by summer

The El Niño of 1997-8

The report says ‘the possible return of El Niño this year would present a unique situation’. Is there still excess heat in the system as sunspots go further into ‘quiet mode’?
H/T GWPF

The path to another round of El Niño in 2017 appears to be shortening, as tropical Pacific Ocean waters have been warming at a substantial rate. Several models suggest that El Niño could be comfortably in place as early as May.

Weather forecasters have been eyeing for a couple of months a possible return this year of El Niño, which normally comes around every two to seven years and last occurred in 2015/16.

GWPF: Computer predictions of climate alarm are flawed

Image credit: relativelyinteresting.com

Results so far from climate models are very unconvincing, despite huge resources of manpower and technology.

London, 21 February: Claims that the planet is threatened by man-made global warming are based on science that is based on inadequate computer modelling. That is the conclusion of a new briefing paper published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).   

The report’s author, eminent American climatologist Professor Judith Curry, explains that climate alarm depends on highly complex computer simulations of the Earth’s climate. 

But although scientists have expended decades of effort developing them, these simulations still have to be “tuned” to get them to match the real climate. This makes them essentially useless for trying to find out what is causing changes in the climate and unreliable for making predictions about what will happen in the future.