Nobel Laureate Dr. John Clauser: Climate Models Miss Key Variable – Clouds

Paraphrasing a well-known misquote (‘I thought it sounded so good that I never bothered to deny it’): “A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Why clouds make climate, briefly explained in layman’s terms.
[Start the video at 5 mins. or watch the clip here].
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“This is clearly the most important, the controlling mechanism for the earth’s temperature & climate. And it dwarfs the effect of CO2 & methane.”

Nobel prize winner John Clauser says the complexities of clouds and variations in cloud cover have been largely ignored in climate models—with major implications.

He argues there is no climate emergency, says Climate Depot.

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.

New research suggests plants might be able to absorb more CO2 from human activities than previously expected

Biology has been underestimated. Anything that relies on photosynthesis just takes whatever CO2 molecules it can get for its needs, regardless of current climate theories.
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New research published in Science Advances paints an uncharacteristically upbeat picture for the planet, says Phys.org.

This is because more realistic ecological modeling suggests the world’s plants may be able to take up more atmospheric CO2 from human activities than previously predicted.

Despite this headline finding, the environmental scientists behind the research are quick to underline that this should in no way be taken to mean the world’s governments can take their foot off the brake in their obligations to reduce carbon emissions as fast as possible. [Talkshop comment – smell the fear of losing funding].

Simply planting more trees and protecting existing vegetation is not a golden-bullet solution but the research does underline the multiple benefits to conserving such vegetation.

“Plants take up a substantial amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year, thereby slowing down the detrimental effects of climate change, but the extent to which they will continue this CO2 uptake into the future has been uncertain,” explains Dr. Jürgen Knauer, who headed the research team led by the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University.

“What we found is that a well-established climate model that is used to feed into global climate predictions made by the likes of the IPCC predicts stronger and sustained carbon uptake until the end of the 21st century when it accounts for the impact of some critical physiological processes that govern how plants conduct photosynthesis.

“We accounted for aspects like how efficiently carbon dioxide can move through the interior of the leaf, how plants adjust to changes in temperatures, and how plants most economically distribute nutrients in their canopy. These are three really important mechanisms that affect a plant’s ability to ‘fix’ carbon, yet they are commonly ignored in most global models” said Dr. Knauer.

Photosynthesis is the scientific term for the process in which plants convert—or “fix”—CO2 into the sugars they use for growth and metabolism. This carbon fixing serves as a natural climate change mitigator by reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere; it is this increased uptake of CO2 by vegetation that is the primary driver of an increasing land carbon sink reported over the last few decades.
. . .
Silvia Caldararu, Assistant Professor in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, was involved in the study. Contextualizing the findings and their relevance, she said, “Because the majority of terrestrial biosphere models used to assess the global carbon sink are located at the lower end of this complexity range, accounting only partially for these mechanisms or ignoring them altogether, it is likely that we are currently underestimating climate change effects on vegetation as well as its resilience to changes in climate.

“We often think about climate models as being all about physics, but biology plays a huge role and it is something that we really need to account for.”

Full article here.

Recording the first daily measurements of Earth’s rotation shifts

Credit: NASA/EPIC, edit by Tdadamemd @ Wikipedia

When they say ‘shifts’ they’re measuring in milliseconds or even smaller units of time. Physics Today says ‘The new measurements are relevant to understanding the global water cycle and atmospheric circulation and may provide an important constraint on the effect of all those processes together.’
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Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have succeeded in measuring the Earth’s rotation more exactly than ever before, reports Phys.org.

The ring laser at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell can now be used to capture data at a quality level unsurpassed anywhere in the world.

The measurements will be used to determine the Earth’s position in space, benefit climate research, and make climate models more reliable.

Care to take a quick step down to the basement and see how fast the Earth has been turning in the last few hours?

Melting ice, falling snow: Sea ice declines enhance snowfall over West Antarctica, say researchers

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

There’s still a long way to go though: “We want to know how those factors are impacting the ice sheets.” Researchers conclude “it’s essential to enhance our models, particularly in representing sea ice dynamics.”
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As the world continues to warm, Antarctica is losing ice at an increasing pace, but the loss of sea ice may lead to more snowfall over the ice sheets, partially offsetting contributions to sea level rise, according to Penn State scientists. — Phys.org reporting.

The researchers analyzed the impacts of decreased sea ice in the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica and found the ice-free ocean surface leads to more moisture in the atmosphere and heavier snowfalls on the ice sheet, the team reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

While the additional snowfall is not enough to offset the impacts of melting ice, including it in climate models may improve predictions of things like sea level rise, said Luke Trusel, assistant professor of geography at Penn State and co-author of the study.

Do human greenhouse gas emissions cause significant climate change? Two new papers have serious doubts

Climate hype

The Manhattan Contrarian takes a look at some recently published research. The author of the article says ‘Data appears to refute, and certainly does not prove the endlessly repeated claims of impending climate doom from CO2 emissions’. (First part of article omitted below. See links provided for more about the studies and further discussion).
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The climate science community calls its system for establishing causation “detection and attribution” studies, says Francis Menton (via Climate Change Dispatch).

The basic idea is to come up with a model (i.e., a hypothesis) that predicts global warming based on increased greenhouse gases, and then collect data that show a very close match between what the model predicted and the data.

Correlation with the model’s predictions is the claimed proof of causation. There are hundreds of such studies in the climate literature.

Supercomputer climate model absurdity: ‘extreme global warming could eventually wipe out humans’

The illogical conclusion of tail-wagging-dog climate theories fed into models based on them, with a side order of volcanoes. In any case a lot happened to Earth in the last 250 million years, including periods when CO2 was much higher than today – so whatever comes out of a supercomputer, natural evolution will continue.
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Extreme global warming will likely wipe all mammals – including humans – off the face of the Earth in 250 million years, according to a new scientific study. Sky News reporting.

Temperatures could spiral to 70C (158F) and transform the planet into a “hostile environment devoid of food and water”, the research warns.

The planet would heat up to such an extent that many mammals would be unable to survive – and the Earth’s continents would merge to form one hot, dry, uninhabitable supercontinent.

The apocalyptic projections are from the first-ever supercomputer climate models.

New Paper Reveals Classic Logical Fallacy In IPCC Report

The alarmist media bought it at the time, which may well have been the idea.
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A new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that the IPCC’s 2013 report contained a remarkable logical fallacy, says Climate Change Dispatch.

The author, Professor Norman Fenton, shows that the authors of the Summary for Policymakers claimed, with 95% certainty, that more than half of the warming observed since 1950 had been caused by man.

But as Professor Fenton explains, their logic in reaching this conclusion was fatally flawed.

New research says orbital factors show why and when the Sahara Desert was green

Sahara desert from space [image credit: NASA]

No trace gases required to drive these climate processes. It was found that ‘the North African Humid Periods occurred every 21,000 years and were determined by changes in Earth’s orbital precession.’
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A pioneering study has shed new light on North African humid periods that have occurred over the past 800,000 years and explains why the Sahara Desert was periodically green, says Science Daily.

The research, published in Nature Communications, showed periodic wet phases in the Sahara were driven by changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun and were suppressed during the ice ages.

For the first time, climate scientists simulated the historic intervals of ‘greening’ of the Sahara, offering evidence for how the timing and intensity of these humid events were also influenced remotely by the effects of large, distant, high-latitude ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere.

Dramatic climate action needed to curtail ‘crazy’ extreme weather, say alarmed (or alarmist?) scientists

Photosynthesis [image credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

Where’s the list of ‘the world’s leading climate scientists’ as they’re described below? We should be told. The hysteria bug seems to have got them all, after just one warmer than normal month in some parts of the world. Even climate models are wilting under the strain it seems, as we accelerate to oblivion or something. More drama needed? Or just more self-serving headlines? Reminder: the carbon dioxide they obsess about is a minor but essential trace gas currently occupying around 0.04% of the atmosphere.
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The “crazy” extreme weather rampaging around the globe in 2023 will become the norm within a decade without dramatic climate action, the world’s leading climate scientists have said. – From The Guardian (via Yahoo News).

The heatwaves, wildfires and floods experienced today were just the “tip of the iceberg” compared with even worse effects to come, they said, with limitations in climate models leaving the world “flying partially blind” into the future.

With fears that humanity’s relentless carbon emissions have finally pushed the climate crisis into a new and accelerating phase of destruction, the Guardian sought the expert assessments of more than 40 scientists from around the world.

Walker Circulation study is a damp squib for climate worriers, contradicts models

Walker Circulation – El Niño conditions [image credit: NOAA]

The paper this article is based on informs us that ‘The Pacific Walker circulation (PWC) has an outsized influence on weather and climate worldwide. Yet the PWC response to external forcings is unclear’. Under a headline saying: ‘Greenhouse gases are changing air flow over the Pacific Ocean, raising Australia’s risks of extreme weather’, the article here offers almost nothing to support an argument for any human-caused climate effects ‘in the industrial era’. The paper is somewhat embarrassing for climate models: ‘Most climate models predict that the PWC will ultimately weaken in response to global warming. However, the PWC strengthened from 1992 to 2011, suggesting a significant role for anthropogenic and/or volcanic aerosol forcing, or internal variability’. So that role could be anything or nothing, but the models trended the wrong way anyway. The search for ‘anthropogenic fingerprints’ continues.
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After a rare three-year La Niña event brought heavy rain and flooding to eastern Australia in 2020-22, we’re now bracing for the heat and drought of El Niño at the opposite end of the spectrum, says The Conversation (via Phys.org).

But while the World Meteorological Organization has declared an El Niño event is underway, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology is yet to make a similar declaration. Instead, the Bureau remains on “El Niño alert.”

The reason for this discrepancy is what’s called the Pacific Walker Circulation. The pattern and strength of air flows over the Pacific Ocean, combined with sea surface temperatures, determines whether Australia experiences El Niño or La Niña events.

SITYS: Climate models do not conserve mass or energy – Roy Spencer, PhD.

‘Potentially serious problems’. Advisable to view the linked blog post before commenting, it’s quite short.
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See, I told you so — says Roy Spencer.

One of the most fundamental requirements of any physics-based model of climate change is that it must conserve mass and energy.

This is partly why I (along with Danny Braswell and John Christy) have been using simple 1-dimensional climate models that have simplified calculations and where conservation is not a problem.
. . .
Now, I just stumbled upon a paper from 2021 (Irving et al., A Mass and Energy Conservation Analysis of Drift in the CMIP6 Ensemble) which describes significant problems in the latest (CMIP5 and CMIP6) models regarding not only energy conservation in the ocean but also at the top-of-atmosphere (TOA, thus affecting global warming rates) and even the water vapor budget of the atmosphere (which represents the largest component of the global greenhouse effect).

These represent potentially serious problems when it comes to our reliance on climate models to guide energy policy. [Talkshop note – author’s emphasis]

It boggles my mind that conservation of mass and energy were not requirements of all models before their results were released decades ago.

Full post here.

Giant Alaskan dust storms impact the world’s climate, say scientists

Alaskan dust storm [image credit: NASA]

Although this was already a known effect to some extent, the new research suggests the effect is ‘bigger than previously thought’. Anything linked to cloud formation is significant, including for climate modellers.
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Giant dust storms in the Gulf of Alaska can last for many days and send tons of fine sediment or silt into the atmosphere, and it is having an impact on the global climate system, say scientists.

The storms are so extensive they can be seen by satellites orbiting the Earth, reports Phys.org. An image captured by the Landsat satellite in 2020 shows dust blowing out of the valley and over Alaska’s south coast.

Exactly how the dust may be influencing the global climate system is not yet clear, although new research from the University of Leeds and the National Center for Atmospheric Science suggests the effect is bigger than previously thought.

Climate change is messing with photosynthesis, say ‘carbon neutrality’ seekers

Photosynthesis [image credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

The study abstract claims ‘Their results illustrate one more way in which the adverse effects of climate warming make it more difficult to achieve carbon neutrality.’ Even good news can turn into bad news in glass-half-empty climate modelling land.
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Increases in CO2 in the atmosphere brought about by anthropogenic activity was expected to increase the rate of photosynthesis in plants and perhaps increase plant yield and growth, says Cosmos magazine.

New science has showed the rate of photosynthesis around the globe has been increasing, but now there is evidence the rate has slowed and might soon plateau.

During photosynthesis plants take water and CO2 and convert it into oxygen and carbohydrates – storing carbon inside the plant and soil. A higher availability of CO2 increases the rate of this process, acting as a sort of brake on global warming by sequestering more CO2.

However, a new modelling study, published in the journal Science, has found that the increase in photosynthesis has slowed since 2001 due to an adverse effect of climate change.

Record-Breaking Detection of Solar Photons

The HAWC detector (2014) [image credit: Jordanagoodman @ Wikipedia]

In a related Phys.org article a researcher says: “The sun is more surprising than we knew. We thought we had this star figured out, but that’s not the case.” But it has long been known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down, and vice versa.
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Observations over the past decade or so have shown that the Sun emits many more gamma rays at GeV energies than is expected from modeling, says APS Physics.

Now a collaboration operating the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory in Mexico show that this gamma-ray excess extends up to TeV energies [1].

This finding has implications for our understanding of both stellar atmospheres and astroparticle physics.

Research links climate change to ‘lazier’ jet stream, leading to extreme weather

Credit: The Weather Network

To what extent can ground conditions affect the weather, rather than the other way round? This study claims to have found something new, saying: ‘Since 2000, frequent “stuck” weather patterns have produced heat waves over Greenland, resulting in exceptional melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet’ – which begs the question: What started, or stopped, happening in or around 2000 to cause such patterns? The answer given is: ‘Observations have revealed a more prevalent negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)’. In other words, a natural phenomenon. Getting to the bottom of what the paper says depends partly on interpreting what they mean by statements like this: ‘One question is whether this is a consequence of climate change.’
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Jet streams are relatively narrow bands of strong wind in the upper atmosphere, typically occurring around 30,000 feet, and blowing west to east, says Phys.org.

Their normal flows lead to week-to-week weather variations, modulated in the mid-latitudes by ridges and troughs in the jet stream. A high-pressure ridge, for example, produces clear, warmer weather conditions; a trough is typically followed by stormy conditions.

Together, these form waves in the jet stream that can stall as the waves grow and become more amplified, causing “stuck” weather patterns that produce longer storms and heat waves.

New research published in Nature Communications describes observations linking increased warming at high latitudes and the ever-decreasing snow cover in North America to these stalls in atmospheric circulation.

Understanding the role of the sun in climate change

Variation in solar activity during a recent sunspot cycle [credit: Wikipedia]

Dr. Scafetta offers a new analysis of the sun-climate issue, with fresh research. Clearly a crucially important topic in climate science, where certain pre-conceived ideas have dominated the discussion in recent years, to the point of refusing to even have one.
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Although the sun provides nearly all the energy needed to warm the planet, its contribution to climate change remains widely questioned, says Nicola Scafetta.

Many empirically based studies claim that it has a significant effect on climate, while others (often based on computer global climate simulations) claim that it has a small effect.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports the latter view and estimates that almost 100% of the observed warming of the Earth’s surface from 1850–1900 to 2020 was caused by man-made emissions. This is known as the anthropogenic global warming (AGWT) theory.

I addressed this important paradox in a new study published in Geoscience Frontiers.

New research ponders consequences of ocean iron fertilization

Trawler [image credit: BBC]

Any deliberate large-scale interference in natural processes must be fraught with risks and difficulties. Nevertheless some scientists think they should seek to impose their will on nature, invoking climate models and CO2-obsessed theories as the excuse.
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Removal of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, in addition to major reductions in ongoing emissions, is required to stave off the most severe consequences of climate change, claims EurekAlert [Talkshop comment – without offering any evidence].

Large-scale ocean iron fertilization is one of several strategies that could help remove carbon dioxide, but new research published this week in Global Change Biology by a Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences researcher and colleagues shows that it might also negatively affect marine ecosystems in far corners of the ocean.

Using advanced models of ocean biogeochemistry and ecology, the team showed that iron fertilization in the Southern Ocean could exacerbate climate change-driven nutrient shortages and productivity losses in the tropics, potentially hurting the coastal fisheries on which many people rely.

The findings illustrate both the interconnected nature of the ocean and the need for more objective research on the relative advantages and unintended consequences of marine carbon dioxide removal.

New study reveals abrupt shift in tropical Pacific climate during Little Ice Age

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

Evidence that what is today called ‘climate change’ can naturally occur, and has occurred, over a relatively short timescale – described here as ‘remarkable’. Maybe history is trying to tell us future climate conditions are more unpredictable than advocates of IPCC doctrines would have us believe.
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An El Niño event has officially begun, says Science Daily.

The climate phenomenon, which originates in the tropical Pacific and occurs in intervals of a few years will shape weather across the planet for the next year or more and give rise to various climatic extremes.

El Niño-like conditions can also occur on longer time scales of decades or centuries. This has been shown to have occurred in the recent past by an international research team led by Ana Prohaska of the University of Copenhagen and Dirk Sachse of the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).

Study of Earth’s stratosphere torpedoes another climate change fear

Earth’s atmosphere [image credit – learnweather.com]

Our headline differs slightly from the article below, which glosses over the actual research findings to some extent. Speculation about possible future unwanted climate scenarios is a favourite hobby of climate alarmists, but this one at least has been largely discarded. As a co-author put it “we were able to show that many climate model projections of very large stratospheric water vapour changes are now inconsistent with observational evidence.”
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New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) reduces uncertainty in future climate change linked to the stratosphere, with important implications for life on Earth, says Science Daily.

Man-made climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing us today [Talkshop comment – unsupported assertion], but uncertainty in the exact magnitude of global change hampers effective policy responses.

A significant source of uncertainty relates to future changes to water vapour in the stratosphere, an extremely dry region of the atmosphere 15-50 km above the Earth’s surface.