Why are hundreds of Pacific Islands growing despite rising sea levels?

In the Maldives

Just as the late Nils-Axel Mörner, a lifelong sea levels researcher, explained in an interview about two years ago. Let’s hope the climate miserablists now give up on their ‘drowning islands’ nonsense.
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New research says hundreds of islands in the Pacific are growing in land size, even as climate change-related sea level rises threaten the region, says ABC News Australia.

Scientists at the University of Auckland found atolls in the Pacific nations of Marshall Islands and Kiribati, as well as the Maldives archipelago in the Indian Ocean, have grown up to 8 per cent in size over the past six decades despite sea level rise.

They say their research could help climate-vulnerable nations adapt to global warming in the future.

Hollywood scenarios ruled out in north Atlantic Ocean study

Credit: NASA – GISS

The researchers conclude that “the AMOC states in both the subpolar and subtropical North Atlantic between the 1990s and 2010s are indistinguishably different from each other”. In effect: nothing to see here, put the alarm bells away.
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Ocean vertical structures are changing as a result of global warming, says Phys.org.

Whether these changes are in pace with the ocean circulation is unknown.

Now, an international team of scientists from the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology (SCSIO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S., and GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany, gave an answer to the question.

According to their study published in Science Advances on Nov. 27, ocean circulation changes and ocean interior property changes may not occur at the same pace as it was previously suggested.

Refutation of Michael Mann’s latest statistical shenanigans

Pacific ocean [image credit: Wikipedia]

In climate propaganda land anything to do with the natural variation that is always going on is bad news, and liable to be maligned or ignored, as we see here. The PDO for example is well known to government agencies like NOAA, but that doesn’t matter to CO2-obsessed warmists trying to claim the atmospheric tail wags the oceanic dog.
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An opinion article published yesterday in Frontiers in Earth Science rebuts a recent paper by Michael E. Mann et al. who deny the existence of long known drivers of natural climate variability like the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO), reports The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

Applying habitual methodological shenanigans, they claim that the PDO is not distinguishable from noise and that the AMO is due to anthropogenic aerosol emissions rather than any intrinsic climate oscillation.

In her critique, Professor Müller-Plath not only highlights the methodological flaws in the Mann et al. paper but also shows that their aerosol hypothesis has long been rejected in the scientific literature, research papers Mann et al. simply ignore.

‘Moderate to strong’ La Niña weather event develops in the Pacific

Credit: concernusa.org

Even the normally alarmist BBC has to admit that ‘a La Niña event normally exerts a cooling influence on the world’. Add in a deep solar minimum and things could get interesting, with varying regional effects.
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A moderate to strong La Niña weather event has developed in the Pacific Ocean, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The naturally occurring phenomenon results in the large scale cooling of ocean surface temperature, says BBC News.

This La Niña, which is set to last through the first quarter of 2021, will likely have a cooling effect on global temperatures.

But it won’t prevent 2020 from being one of the warmest years on record.

La Niña is described as one of the three phases of the weather occurrence known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

This includes the warm phase called El Niño, the cooler La Niña and a neutral phase.

Niklas Mörner: 1938-2020

Our friend Niklas Mörner has passed away. We must raise our game and work to honour the memory of this bright, brave and brilliant man. The energy and clarity of purpose he brought to science is an inspiration to us all. The humour and kind hearted cameraderie he exuded bound all the events we organised together. His enthusiasm was infectious, his expertise unparalleled in his field. His ability to engage audiences and communicate complex topics in a way that left participants with new insight is legendary.

He swung the sword of truth with grace.

Large-scale changes in Earth’s climate may originate in the Pacific

Some interesting theorising arises from this research, but as one expert commented: “These new data may raise more questions than they answer.” At least one existing belief about long-term climate change finds itself challenged.
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The retreat of North America’s ice sheets in the latter years of the last ice age may have begun with “catastrophic” losses of ice into the North Pacific Ocean along the coast of modern-day British Columbia and Alaska, scientists say.
[Science News reporting].

In a new study published October 1 in Science, researchers find that these pulses of rapid ice loss from what’s known as the western Cordilleran ice sheet contributed to, and perhaps triggered, the massive calving of the Laurentide ice sheet into the North Atlantic Ocean thousands of years ago.

That collapse of the Laurentide ice sheet, which at one point covered large swaths of Canada and parts of the United States, ultimately led to major disturbances in the global climate (SN: 11/5/12).

The new findings cast doubt on the long-held assumption that hemispheric-scale changes in Earth’s climate originate in the North Atlantic (SN: 1/31/19).

Ocean carbon uptake widely underestimated, say researchers

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

Shockingly – for some – nature’s ocean carbon cycle is functioning quite well, despite constant attempts by feckless humans to undermine it [/sarc]. Time to revisit those troublesome computer models yet again.
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The world’s oceans soak up more carbon than most scientific models suggest, according to new research, reports Phys.org.

Previous estimates of the movement of carbon (known as “flux”) between the atmosphere and oceans have not accounted for temperature differences at the water’s surface and a few metres below.

The new study, led by the University of Exeter, includes this—and finds significantly higher net flux of carbon into the oceans.

It calculates CO2 fluxes from 1992 to 2018, finding up to twice as much net flux in certain times and locations, compared to uncorrected models.

Florida current is weaker now than at any point in the past century

Image credit: NASA

And by coincidence (?) so is the sun.
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A key component of the Gulf Stream has markedly slowed over the past century—that’s the conclusion of a new research paper in Nature Communications published on August 7, says Phys.org.

The study develops a method of tracking the strength of near-shore ocean currents using measurements made at the coast, offering the potential to reduce one of the biggest uncertainties related to observations of climate change over the past century.

“In the ocean, almost everything is connected,” said Christopher Piecuch, an assistant scientist in the Physical Oceanography Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and author of the study. “We can use those connections to look at things in the past or far from shore, giving us a more complete view of the ocean and how it changes across space and time.”

Piecuch, who specializes in coastal and regional sea level change, used a connection between coastal sea level and the strength of near-shore currents to trace the evolution of the Florida Current, which forms the beginning of the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream flows north along the Southeast Atlantic Coast of the United States and eventually east into the North Atlantic Ocean, carrying heat, salt, momentum, and other properties that influence Earth’s climate.

Because nearly continuous records of sea level stretch back more than a century along Florida’s Atlantic Coast and in some parts of the Caribbean, he was able to use mathematical models and simple physics to extend the reach of direct measurements of the Gulf Stream to conclude that it has weakened steadily and is weaker now than at any other point in the past 110 years.

One of the biggest uncertainties in climate models is the behavior of ocean currents either leading to or responding to changes in Earth’s climate. Of these, one of the most important is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, which is a large system or “conveyor belt” of ocean currents in the Atlantic that includes the Gulf Stream and that helps regulate global climate.

Piecuch’s analysis agrees with relationships seen in models between the deeper branches of the AMOC and the Gulf Stream, and it corroborates studies suggesting that the deeper branches of AMOC have slowed in recent years.

Full article here.

Solar cycle 14 – was the fourteenth solar cycle since 1755, when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began. The solar cycle lasted 11.5 years, beginning in January 1902 and ending in July 1913. The maximum smoothed sunspot number (SIDC formula) observed during the solar cycle was 107.1, in February 1906 (the lowest since the Dalton Minimum) – Wikipedia

Still waiting for greenhouse: No response to my last email to Roy Spencer

Before the last time I had to dive deeply into politics to defend the EU referendum result, I had an email conversation with Roy Spencer in an attempt to resolve the conflict between physicists like himself, who believe the radiative greenhouse theory is correct, but it’s effect small, and physicists like Ned Nikolov, who contend that the theory is fundamentally incorrect.

After a couple of to and fro emails I sent this response in Feb 2019, to which I never received a reply. It’s time we got this discussion back out in the open, because Boris’ green reset #netzero plan for the UK post Brexit and post pandemic is set to ruin our economy and cause untold suffering, deprivation, and death.

the lukewarmers have utterly failed to convince the fanatics that although they think their theory is correct (it isn’t, but that’s their misguided opinion), they’ve overestimated the magnitude of the effect.

It’s time they stopped supporting the fanatics by deploying false arguments against better theory which will exonerate CO2 and move the debate away from ridiculous and expensive ‘mitigation’, and forward to adaption to the effects of natural climatic change.

Island ‘drowning’ is not inevitable as sea levels rise

Another bunch of climate alarmist predictions get exposed as over-the-top doom-mongering — literally, in this case.

Coral reef islands across the world could naturally adapt to survive the impact of rising sea levels, according to new research reported at Phys.org.

Coral reef islands across the world could naturally adapt to survive the impact of rising sea levels, according to new research.

The increased flooding caused by the changing global climate has been predicted to render such communities—where sandy or gravel islands sit on top of coral reef platforms—uninhabitable within decades.

However, an international study led by the University of Plymouth (UK) suggests that perceived fate is far from a foregone conclusion.

Climate scientists praise global warming ‘hiatus’ science boost

So when global temperatures failed to behave as models expected due to inevitable but hard to predict natural variation, they were forced to re-think – or just think? The GWPF concludes, at the risk of stating the obvious: ‘The lesson of the hiatus is that we do not understand internal climatic variability as much as many think we do, and our predictive power is less than many believe.’
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Researchers from the Universities of Princeton, California, Tokyo, Kyushu and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, say the recent hiatus in global temperature increase has led to a surge in climate science.

The global effort to understand the global warming hiatus they say has led to increased understanding of some of the key metrics of global climate change such as global temperature and ice-cover.

Searching for an answer to the hiatus, they say, meant that the scientific community grappled with difficulties with these climate metrics, in particular the fact that they do not unequivocally portray the same story about global warming.

Hundreds of towering hydrothermal chimneys discovered on seafloor off Washington

Base of “black smoker” chimney, Pacific Ocean [image credit: USGS]

How many more such discoveries could be waiting to be made? The report says ‘Geologic evidence…suggests that hydrothermal activity is part of a cycle that reshapes the seafloor over many thousands of years’.

An autonomous diving robot captured the vents in unprecedented detail, reports Live Science.

In the dark ocean depths off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, a magical fairyland of towering spires and hydrothermal chimneys sprout from the seafloor, a stunning new underwater map reveals.

These towers belch superheated liquid warmed by magma deep inside Earth.

The field of hydrothermal chimneys stretches along the ocean bottom on the Juan de Fuca Ridge to the northwest of coastal Washington state, in an area known as the Endeavor Segment.

Scientists try ‘cloud brightening’ to protect Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef, Australia [image credit: BBC]

Research continues, but what other ‘futuristic’ climate-related plans might they want to conjure up if this trial is deemed a success?
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An ambitious “cloud brightening” experiment has been carried out over Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in an early-stage trial that scientists hope could become a futuristic way to protect coral from global warming, says Phys.org.

In an attempt to cool waters around the reef by making clouds reflect more sunlight, researchers said they used a boat-mounted fan similar to a snow cannon to shoot salt crystals into the air.

Results from the trial were “really, really encouraging”, the project’s lead scientist Daniel Harrison from Southern Cross University said on Friday.

Causes of the Rapid Warming of the North Atlantic Ocean in the Mid-1990s

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Pointing to any natural factors is frowned on by climate alarmists. But these factors have always been in play and always will be, and some researchers at least will find and discuss them.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php

Most of us are probably familiar with the pattern of Arctic sea ice decline between 1979 and 2007, followed by a period of relative stability. Most of the decline took place after the mid 1990s.

The decline is nearly always explained away as the result of global warming, but a couple of old studies show this not to be the case.

In 2011, Robson & Sutton found that the sub polar gyre underwent remarkable and rapid warming in the mid 1990s, and that this was linked to changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00443.1

View original post 853 more words

NASA study adds a pinch of salt to El Niño models

Credit: concernusa.org

Accurate ENSO forecasts without salinity data only extend out 4 months, while those with it cover 7 months, researchers believe.
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When modeling the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) ocean-climate cycle, adding satellite sea surface salinity—or saltiness—data significantly improves model accuracy, according to a new NASA study.

ENSO is an irregular cycle of warm and cold climate events called El Niño and La Niña, says Phys.org.

In normal years, strong easterly trade winds blow from the Americas toward southeast Asia, but in an El Niño year, those winds are reduced and sometimes even reversed.

Warm water that was “piled up” in the western Pacific flows back toward the Americas, changing atmospheric pressure and moisture to produce droughts in Asia and more frequent storms and floods in the Americas.

The reverse pattern is called a La Niña, in which the ocean in the eastern Pacific is cooler than normal.

The ocean’s ‘biological pump’ captures twice as much carbon as expected

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

The Woods Hole researchers find ‘the efficiency of the ocean’s “biological carbon pump” has been drastically underestimated’, with inevitable implications for climate modelling and assessments. Given that the oceans hold 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere, this must matter.
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Every spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the ocean surface erupts in a massive bloom of phytoplankton, says Phys.org.

Like plants, these single-celled floating organisms use photosynthesis to turn light into energy, consuming carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen in the process.

When phytoplankton die or are eaten by zooplankton, the carbon-rich fragments sinks deeper into the ocean, where it is, in turn, eaten by other creatures or buried in sediments.

This process is key to the “biological carbon pump,” an important part of the global carbon cycle.

Like Polar Bears, Coral Reefs Are Doing Fine

Posted on PAPundits
By Dr. Jay Lehr ~

Corals are animals, actually closely related to jelly fish but of course differing in that they have a limestone skeleton made up of calcium carbonate. Their growth rates can be studied to give us knowledge of the ocean and its sea level over thousands of years.

They have lived throughout the oceans of our planet for many thousand years. Over those many years they have experienced both much warmer and much colder periods of geologic time. The bleaching that they have experienced in the view of many climate alarmists is not a sign of their destruction or in fact ill health. It is not a sign that the end of the world as we know it is in sight.

Geologic heat linked to East Coast ocean warming trend

Hydrothermal vent [image credit: USGS]

The author argues: “In summary, evidence substantiates that a well-defined, persistent and non-moving ocean warm trend originating off the East Coast of the United States is the result of super-heated and methane enriched fluids emitted from numerous seafloor hydrothermal vents/hot springs. This has far-reaching implications concerning the root cause of current worldwide ocean warming.”
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A well-defined ocean warming trend originating off the United States East Coast is likely from super-heated and methane-enriched fluids emitted from numerous seafloor hydrothermal vents/hot springs, says James Kamis at Climate Change Dispatch.

Supporting evidence:

This trend has shown up on shallow Sea Surface (SST) maps since their advent in 1997 and has likely been present for thousands of years.

Study shows acceleration of global mean ocean circulation since 1990s

Map of prevailing trade winds over Earth [credit: Wikipedia]

A change to about 0.01% of the atmosphere is now claimed to be speeding up the oceans by making winds stronger. Really? They used to claim global warming was weakening the Pacific trade winds:
“The researchers predict another 10 percent decrease by the end of the 21st century. The effect, attributed at least in part to human-induced climate change, could disrupt food chains and reduce the biological productivity of the Pacific Ocean, scientists said.” (2006 report)

A study published today in the journal Science Advances, suggests global ocean circulation has accelerated during the past two decades, reports Phys.org.

The research team found that oceanic kinetic energy shows a statistically significant increase since early 1990s, calculating a 36-percent acceleration of global mean ocean circulation.

The trend is particularly prominent in the global tropical oceans, reaching depths of thousands of meters.

The deep-reaching acceleration of the ocean circulation is mainly induced by a planetary intensification of surface winds, authors said.

How did life survive in the Snowball Earth? Scientists might have cracked the mystery

The researchers do admit that ‘Snowball Earth is just a hypothesis’, but that period seems to have been an era of the most extreme long-term cold spell(s) ever detected on Earth.

There is very little life in Arctic tundras and glaciers. However that was the situation in a big portion of the world during Ice Ages, says Technology.org.

How did life survive these difficult periods? How didn’t everything just die, being cut off from any kind of sources of nutrition and oxygen?

Scientists examined the chemistry of the iron formations in Australia, Namibia, and California to get a window into the environmental conditions during the ice age. They selected rocks left there by the ice age, because they are representative of the conditions during that difficult period for life.

By analysing these rocks scientists from the McGill University were able to estimate the amount of oxygen in the oceans around 700 million years ago.