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.

Drought study raises tricky questions for UN’s climate loss and damage fund

What defines a ‘climate victim’? The impossible conundrum for the UN, facing claims for any climate-related disaster, is: would/could it have happened (to the same magnitude) anyway, for example due to natural factors or mistakes of some kind, regardless of unproven theories about possible human causes behind weather events? Eligibility for compensation depends on the answer, but funds obviously aren’t unlimited and nobody will readily accept a refusal.
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Since January, swathes of southern Africa have been suffering from a severe drought, which has destroyed crops, spread disease and caused mass hunger.

But its causes have raised tough questions for the new UN fund for climate change losses, says Climate Home News.

Christopher Dabu, a priest in Lusitu parish in southern Zambia, one of the affected regions, said that because of the drought, his parishioners “have nothing”- including their staple food.

“Almost every day, there’s somebody who comes here to knock on this gate asking for mielie meal, [saying] ‘Father, I am dying of hunger’,” Dabu told Climate Home outside his church last month.

The government and some humanitarian agencies were quick to blame the lack of rain on climate change.

El Niño ends with uncertainty over cooler future, says BBC

The BBC likes to lace articles like this with ‘climate change’ as though it’s a brand, without ever defining it. As usual an obvious case of a natural cycle is infected by some preconceived ideas and assertions of alarmists. But their high hopes and predictions of a lengthy El Niño have faded on this occasion, as potential La Niña conditions start to appear. There’s talk of uncharted territory ahead due to last year’s unexpected ‘heat spike’.
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The powerful El Niño weather event which along with climate change has helped push global temperatures to new highs, has ended, say scientists.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology says the Pacific Ocean has “cooled substantially” in the past week.

This naturally occurring episode that began last June brought warmer waters to the surface of the Pacific, adding extra heat to the atmosphere, says BBC News.

But what happens next is uncertain, say researchers.

Swiss climate policy – a case of failing to do the impossible?

Phrases like ‘action against climate change’ and ‘climate protection’ are uttered without any clear idea of what, if anything, they might mean. Natural variation at all timescales is an ongoing process, but difficult to measure or predict with any accuracy. Warming has followed the lengthy Little Ice Age, but now some countries – even those with glaciers and ‘snow-capped’ peaks like Switzerland – are being saddled with a legal obligation to attempt to put the brakes on that, by swallowing the argument that a trace gas in the atmosphere is the main source of a supposedly solvable problem of slightly rising temperatures.
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Switzerland, known for pristine countryside and snow-capped [sic] peaks, is facing scrutiny of its environmental policies after becoming the first country faulted by an international court for failing to do enough against climate change, says Phys.org.

The European Court of Human Rights’s ruling last week highlighted a number of failings in Swiss policies, but experts stressed that the wealthy Alpine country was not necessarily doing much worse than its peers.

“The judgment made it really clear that there are critical gaps in the Swiss domestic regulatory framework,” said Tiffanie Chan, a policy analyst at the London School of Economics and Political Science specializing in climate change laws.

“But it’s definitely not a Switzerland-only case,” she told AFP.

Carbon dioxide, methane levels in the atmosphere hit ‘record highs’ last year – but only since 1959!

We’ll ignore any climate-related assertions in this article and try to look at actual information. How much of the variation of the trace gases mentioned would have occurred anyway, regardless of human activities? As the article says: ‘Carbon dioxide and methane levels have been higher in the far ancient past’. The world obviously didn’t self-destruct back then, so maybe a bit of context there for these latest ‘records’. It’s also known that warmer oceans absorb less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – an entirely natural process.
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The 2.8 parts per million increase in carbon dioxide airborne levels from January 2023 to December, wasn’t as high as the jumps were in 2014 and 2015, but they were larger than every other year since 1959, when precise records started, says PBS Online.

Carbon dioxide’s average level for 2023 was 419.3 parts per million, up 50% from pre-industrial times.

Last year’s methane’s jump of 11.1 parts per billion was lower than record annual rises from 2020 to 2022. It averaged 1922.6 parts per billion last year.

Need for a rethink of ‘the critical role’ of atmospheric dust in Earth’s climate

It seems ‘classical dust cycle models have over-estimated the amount of dust emission.’ This in turn affects the results from climate models, which ‘have only been providing a fraction of the story’. This ‘has significant implications’ for reconstructions of past climate.
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You may think of dust as an annoyance to be vacuumed and disposed of, but actually, on a grander scale, it is far more important than most people realize, says Phys.org.

Globally, dust plays a critical role in regulating our climate, radiation balance, nutrient cycles, soil formation, air quality and even human health.

But our understanding of it has been hampered by limitations in current mathematical models. These models, built on methods developed decades ago, struggle to accurately simulate the properties and quantities of dust.

Climate change ‘could’ affect timekeeping, study says

The BBC wants this to be all about the climate, but the study is also pushing the propaganda boat out a long way by claiming that ‘we’ are the cause. It’s known that the Earth’s rotation isn’t constant. ‘In 2022 the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), the organization responsible for global timekeeping, voted to abolish leap seconds by 2035. How this new research could impact such a decision remains to be seen.’ Source – Scientific American, which also has this:
“Despite our perceptions as humans, the Earth is not a perfect timekeeper,” says Harvard University geophysicist Jerry X. Mitrovica, who reviewed the new study and co-wrote a commentary on it for Nature. He says these findings highlight the divide between our lived experience and the technology that surrounds us. “How do we handle that divide?” he says. “Do we continue to address this divide by adding or subtracting seconds from our definition of a day, or do we accept this irregular difference as normal and give up the bother of continuously correcting?” — If it’s normal, the human causation argument looks even weaker.
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Climate change is affecting the speed of the Earth’s rotation and could impact how we keep time, a study says.

Accelerating melt from Greenland and Antarctica is adding extra water to the world’s seas, redistributing mass, reports BBC News.

That is very slightly slowing the Earth’s rotation. But the planet is still spinning faster than it used to.

The effect is that global timekeepers may need to subtract a second from our clocks later than would otherwise have been the case.

“Global warming is already affecting global timekeeping,” says the study, published in the journal Nature.

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) – which is used by most of the world to regulate clocks and time – is calculated by the Earth’s rotation.

But the Earth’s rotation rate is not constant and can therefore have an effect on how long our days and nights are.

As a result, since the 1970s around 27 seconds – known as leap seconds – have been added on to keep our time accurate.

The study finds that a “negative leap second” – subtracting a second from world clocks – would have been needed in 2026 without accelerating polar ice melt.

But now, with ice sheets losing mass five times faster than they were 30 years ago, this change is needed in 2029, the study suggests.

“It’s kind of impressive, even to me, we’ve done something that measurably changes how fast the Earth rotates,” Duncan Agnew, the author of the study, told NBC News. [Talkshop comment – ‘we’?]

Full report here.

Polar vortex is ‘spinning backwards’ above Arctic after major reversal event

The new polar vortex blog hosted by NOAA says ‘some winters come and go without a single interesting thing happening in the stratosphere’, but this one wasn’t one of those. The blog also notes: ‘Odds of polar vortex collapse boosted during El Niño…But not all the El Niños’. The article below says ‘Changes to the polar vortex influence the jet stream, which can in turn impact weather across the Northern Hemisphere’ (caption to NOAA graphic).
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The polar vortex circling the Arctic is swirling in the wrong direction after surprise warming in the upper atmosphere triggered a major reversal event earlier this month, says Live Science.

It is one of the most extreme atmospheric U-turns seen in recent memory.

In the past, disruptions to the polar vortex — a rotating mass of cold air that circles the Arctic — have triggered extremely cold weather and storms across large parts of the U.S.

The current change in the vortex’s direction probably won’t lead to a similar “big freeze.” But the sudden switch-up has caused a record-breaking “ozone spike” above the North Pole.

Climate the Movie is here.

Eight years ago, talkshop readers helped film maker Martin Durkin finance ‘Brexit the Movie‘, raising over £8000 towards the total cost of production. Now, Martin has made the long awaited sequel to ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle‘ with help from long time fellow sceptic Tom Nelson. It’s called ‘Climate the Movie: the Cold Truth’ and you can watch it for free here, right now. Enjoy!

Available at Vimeo vimeo.com/924719370
On X at twitter.com/TomANelson/status/1771682333738848477
On Youtube at youtube.com/watch?v=zmfRG8-RHEI
On Rumble at rumble.com/v4kl0dn-climate-the-movie-the-cold-truth-martin-durkin.html

Scientists divided over ‘record heat’

Is ‘speed of change’ a problem? Climate models make predictions, but the reality is quite often something else. Solar activity including flares has been high in the last year or so, but this is often ignored. CO2 theory struggles with anomalies.
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Record temperatures in 2024 on land and at sea have prompted scientists to question whether these anomalies are in line with predicted global heating patterns or if they represent a concerning acceleration of climate breakdown, says The Guardian.

Heat above the oceans remains persistently, freakishly high, despite a weakening of El Niño, which has been one of the major drivers of record global temperatures over the past year.

Scientists are divided about the extraordinary temperatures of marine air.

An increase in the number of extreme cold days in North China during 2003–2012, research finds

The researchers wrestle with the non-correlation of extreme winter weather events and the monotonic increase in CO2 levels, offering a verdict of ‘probable’ natural variation. They try to support IPCC climate assertions, but the article keeps saying ‘however’. One of the study’s authors says: “This is still a challenging issue that needs further exploration to quantify the relative contributions of natural variability and human activity to regional extreme events.”
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A recent study by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, presents robust interdecadal changes in the number of extreme cold days in winter over North China during 1989–2021, and the findings have been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, says EurekAlert.

Specifically, the number of extreme cold days increased around the year 2003 and then decreased around the year 2013, with a value of 8.7 days per year during 1989–2002, 13.5 during 2003–2012, and 6.6 during 2013–2021.

During 2003–2012, the Siberian–Ural High strengthened and the polar jet stream weakened, which favored frequent cold air intrusion into North China, inducing more extreme cold days. In addition, the intensity of extreme cold days in North China showed no significant difference in the three periods.

‘Very Bizarre’: Scientists Expose Major Problems With Climate Change Data

“Climate activism has become the new religion of the 21st century – heretics are not welcome and not allowed to ask questions,” says astrophysicist Willie Soon. But data manipulation, or tampering, is rife. Most climate models over-predict warming, while natural variations continue.
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Temperature records used by climate scientists and governments to build models that then forecast dangerous manmade global warming repercussions have serious problems and even corruption in the data, multiple scientists who have published recent studies on the issue told The Epoch Times. — Zerohedge reporting.

The Biden administration leans on its latest National Climate Assessment report as evidence that global warming is accelerating because of human activities. The document states that human emissions of “greenhouse gases” such as carbon dioxide are dangerously warming the Earth.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) holds the same view, and its leaders are pushing major global policy changes in response.

But scientific experts from around the world in a variety of fields are pushing back.

When the global climate has the hiccups – ‘repeated rapid increases in temperature’

Promoters of a current ‘climate crisis’ often call modern warming and/or events within it, ‘unprecedented’. However, compared to events like this: “A Neanderthal would have experienced increases in the average temperature of several degrees over the course of their life” [explains Prof.], not much is presently going on. Climate variability can happen in different ways, and repeat over long timescales.
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In recent geological history, the so-called Quaternary period, there have been repeated ice ages and warm periods, says Science Daily.

Researchers are able to determine past climate variability from the composition of climate records. In the case of the last glacial period 100,000 years ago, ice cores from Greenland in particular provide researchers with detailed data.

For example, Greenland ice cores show that there were repeated rapid increases in temperature.

“We are talking about increases of 5 to 10 degrees within 30 to 40 years on average in the case of Europe. A Neanderthal would have experienced increases in the average temperature of several degrees over the course of their life,” explains Prof. Dominik Fleitmann, Professor of Quaternary Geology at the University of Basel.

He calls the phenomena “climate hiccups.”

These Dansgaard-Oeschger events are well documented for the last glacial period, but the climate records from Greenland only cover the last 120,000 years.

It was therefore previously unknown whether these Dansgaard-Oeschger events also occurred during the penultimate glacial period 135,000 to 190,000 years ago.

Frederick Held, a PhD candidate in Fleitmann’s research group, was able to show that Dansgaard-Oeschger events also occurred during the penultimate glacial period using isotopic measurements on stalagmites.

He is the lead author of the study which was published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

The North Atlantic as the source of change

The stalagmites examined originate from the Sofular Cave in Turkey, which is located in a region that is very sensitive to climate change.

The researchers therefore refer to it as a key region, as it is influenced by the winds of the North Atlantic and the Black Sea is just a few kilometers away.

“We used the isotopic composition in the stalagmites to determine the moisture sources from which they are formed — the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic,” explains Frederick Held.

For the first time, the evaluations carried out on the stalagmites from the Sofular Cave have proven that Dansgaard-Oeschger events also occurred during the penultimate glacial period.

“It was previously unknown whether these relatively brief temperature events actually happened in earlier glacial periods,” states Held.

However, they occurred less frequently in the penultimate glacial period than in the last one: “The temperature peaks are twice as far apart from one another, meaning there were longer cold phases between them.”

These temperature fluctuations originate in the North Atlantic, as the circulation of the ocean is a global conveyor belt for heat and can sometimes be stronger and sometimes weaker.

“For example, the circulation affects the exchange of heat between the atmosphere and the ocean, which, in turn, impacts the balance of heat in the Northern Hemisphere and air flows and rainfall,” explains Held.

He states that weakened circulation also reduces the quantity of CO2 which the ocean absorbs from the atmosphere.

These ocean currents were different in the penultimate glacial period than in the last one, which explains the different intervals between the Dansgaard-Oeschger events.

This shows that not all glacial periods are the same and not all warm periods are the same.
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The geologist also hopes to clarify any outstanding questions by means of additional analyses. “For example, we do not yet know whether the increases in temperature were periodic or stochastic, in other words random.”

Full article here.

Image: Greenland ice core [credit: K. Makinson @ Wikipedia]

February Arctic ice ahead of recent comparisons

February Arctic Ice Jumps Over 15 Wadhams a Month Early

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Let’s see how this plays out over the full season.

Clouds disappear quickly during a solar eclipse, shows study – ‘a warning for climate engineering’

The research, titled ‘Clouds dissipate quickly during solar eclipses as the land surface cools’, suggests interfering with solar radiation to try and weaken natural warming would be even riskier than previously thought.
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Cumulus clouds over land start to disappear almost instantly during a partial solar eclipse, says Phys.org.

Until recently, satellite measurements during the eclipse resulted in dark spots in the cloud map, but researchers from TU Delft and KNMI were able to recover the satellite measurements by using a new method.

The results may have implications for proposed climate engineering ideas because disappearing clouds can partly oppose the cooling effect of artificial solar eclipses.

Researchers probe a conundrum: If the world is warming, why are our winters getting colder?

Gulf Stream flows

Some recent cold weather events are puzzling to global warming researchers, in terms of climate model expectations. Especially so for the ‘Center for Irreversible Climate Change’ in South Korea. Temporary natural variation seems to be the conclusion. What else could they say without casting doubt on human-caused warming theories?
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If the world is warming, why are our winters getting colder?

Indeed, East Asia and North America have experienced frequent extreme weather events since the 2000s that defy average climate change projections, says Phys.org.

Many experts have blamed Arctic warming and a weakening jet stream due to declining Arctic sea ice, but climate model experiments have not adequately demonstrated their validity.

The massive power outage in Texas in February 2021 was caused by an unusual cold snap, and climate models are needed to accurately predict the risk of extreme weather events in order to prevent massive socioeconomic damage.

Oldie but Goldie: Climategate: how the conspirators gagged on their deceptions

Andrew Bolt Herald Sun Dec 6 2009

I’ve wondered whether Climategate scientist Tom Wigley, an Australian, finally choked on all the fraud, fiddling and coverups he was witnessing from fellow members of his Climategate cabal. Steven Hayward points out that many other Climategate scientists privately had trouble swallowing the practices of their colleagues:

In 1998 three scientists from American universities–Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes–unveiled in Nature magazine what was regarded as a signal breakthrough in paleoclimatology–the now notorious “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction (picture a flat “handle” extending from the year 1000 to roughly 1900, and a sharply upsloping “blade” from 1900 to 2000). Their paper purported to prove that current global temperatures are the highest in the last thousand years by a large margin–far outside the range of natural variability. The medieval warm period (MWP) and the little ice (LIA) age both disappeared.

2023’s record heat partly driven by ‘mystery’ process: NASA scientist

It’s warming, but not as they thought they knew it. ‘Everybody has lots of ideas, but it doesn’t quite add up.’ Aerosols, undersea volcano, El Niño, ‘new processes’ – the list of suspects goes on, but nothing convincing so far. Settled science has been unsettled, but persists with its usual assertions blaming humans anyway.
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It’s no secret human activity is warming the planet, driving more frequent and intense extreme weather events and transforming ecosystems at an extraordinary rate, claims Phys.org.

But the record-shattering temperatures of 2023 have nonetheless alarmed scientists, and hint at some “mysterious” new processes that may be under way, NASA’s top climatologist Gavin Schmidt tells AFP.

US: Winter storm brings ‘life-threatening’ cold

Instead of imagining dire global warming, many US citizens can step outside for a sharp dose of a different reality. “EVERY state in the US has an active NWS watch, warning, or advisory”. One to remember when summer heatwaves come around and UN-led warmist miserablism fires up again.
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The mercury was plummeting across the US Midwest on Saturday as a biting winter storm left hundreds of thousands without power and threatened to disrupt the first key event in the 2024 presidential election campaign, says DW.com.

Over a quarter of a million people in Michigan and Wisconsin were left without power as freezing temperatures spread across the region, according to the PowerOutage.US website.

Winds and heavy snow also grounded planes at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport with some 7,600 flights delayed across the country.

Study finds oceanic carbon cycle still works for carbon dioxide uptake

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

Of course it does, but there seems a hint of surprise in the findings. It’s long been known that colder water absorbs more atmospheric CO2, just as warmer water absorbs less. Anyone familiar with fizzy drinks knows the story, or ought to. The article here announces that ‘the oceans present vast and promising potential for storing carbon dioxide’. Surely this is not regarded as news? As for potential, it’s always happened.
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The recent cold spell has plunged South Korea into a deep freeze, resulting in the closure of 247 national parks, the cancellation of 14 domestic flights, and the scrapping of 107 cruise ship voyages, says Phys.org.

While the cold snap brought relief by significantly reducing the prevalence of particulate matter obscuring our surroundings, a recent study indicates that, besides diminishing particulate matter, it significantly contributes to the heightened uptake of carbon dioxide by the East Sea.

According to research conducted by a team of researchers, including Professor Kitack Lee from the Division of Environmental Science & Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) and Professor Tongsup Lee and So-Yun Kim from the Department of Oceanography at Pusan National University, the cold atmosphere in the Arctic is influencing the absorption of carbon dioxide by the East Sea.