Claim: ship exhaust makes oceanic thunderstorms more intense

The researchers say ship exhaust can alter thunderstorm intensity. They seem to have ignored the fact that ships on the open seas have always been a natural target for lightning.

Thunderstorms directly above two of the world’s busiest shipping lanes are significantly more powerful than storms in areas of the ocean where ships don’t travel, according to new research reported at Phys.org.

A new study mapping lightning around the globe finds lightning strokes occur nearly twice as often directly above heavily-trafficked shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea than they do in areas of the ocean adjacent to shipping lanes that have similar climates.

Methane hydrate is not a smoking gun in the Arctic Ocean

Credit: phys.org

If there was any life left in this climate change scare story, this latest research should finally see it off.

Clathrate (hydrate) gun hypothesis stirred quite the controversy when it was posed in 2003, as ScienceDaily reports. It stated that methane hydrates — frozen water cages containing methane gas found below the ocean floor — can melt due to increasing ocean temperatures.

According to the hypothesis this melt can happen in a time span of a human life, dissociating vast amounts of hydrate and releasing methane into the atmosphere.

Consequently, this would lead to a runaway process, where the methane released would add to the global budget of greenhouse gases, and further accelerate the warming of the planet.

The real cause of climate change over the last millennium

Fig 1. Integration of solar data departing from long term average as a proxy for OHC

OK, this the last post before I go. This is a comment I made this morning over at Pierre Gosselin’s place.

To understand the effect of solar variation on a large heat capacity mass like Earth’s oceans, you have to integrate the solar data to get a reasonable proxy for ocean heat content. If you look at empirical comparisons of average sunspot number during periods when the ocean temperature is steady, you can derive a value of approximately 40 sunspots per month. This also happens to be the average sunspot number over the period of record from 1749 to today. Integrating the sunspot numbers as a running total departing from this average produces a reasonable proxy for OHC.

Calibrating the Steinhilber et al TSI reconstruction based on 10Be to the same baseline, we obtain a reconstruction which compares well to the Mann et al 2008 millennial temperature reconstruction, as seen in Fig1.

Understanding multi-decadal global warming rate changes

Credit: sciencedaily.com

Maybe a glimmer of recognition for natural warming from the oceans here, while still believing that alleged man-made effects on air temperatures are somehow warming the water in a cyclical fashion. Could there be a hint of strained logic here? Phys.org reports.

Despite persistently increasing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, the globally averaged surface temperature has shown distinct multi-decadal fluctuations since 1900, including two weak global warming slowdowns in the mid-20th century and early 21st century and two strong global warming accelerations in the early and late 20th century.

The multi-decadal global warming rate changes are primarily attributed to multiple ocean surface temperature changes, according to research by Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Researchers uncover a natural cause for early 20th century Arctic warming

Arctic Ocean

Scientists have surprised themselves by noticing multi-decadal natural variability in the Arctic, and discovering some of its effects, as Phys.org reports. More than a hint of cyclical warming and cooling is implied, although they try to downplay it.

Is a warmer Arctic a canary of global warming? Since the 1970s the northern polar region has warmed faster than global averages by a factor or two or more, in a process of ‘Arctic amplification’ which is linked to a drastic reduction in sea ice.

But then how to explain a similar rapid warming that occurred during the early 20th century, when the effects of greenhouse gases were considerably weaker than today? And what can we prove about the period, given the scarcity of usable data and observations prior to the 1950s?

Now scientists from Kyoto University and UC San Diego have discovered that this phenomenon occurred when the warming phase—’interdecadal variability mode’—of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans coincided.

Delingpole: How I totally crushed the ocean acidification alarmist loons

Well, gave them a black eye at least. Climate whingers have managed to score an own goal by referring JD to the press complaints people and losing the case. Having taken some stick he naturally seizes the opportunity to rub it in.

Meet Dr Phil Williamson: climate ‘scientist’; Breitbart-hater; sorely in need of a family size tube of Anusol to soothe the pain after his second failed attempt to close down free speech by trying to use press regulation laws to silence your humble correspondent.

Williamson – who is attached to the University of East Anglia, home of the Climategate emails – got very upset about some articles I’d written for Breitbart and the Spectator pouring scorn on his junk-scientific field, Ocean Acidification.

In my view Ocean Acidification is little more than a money-making scam for grant-troughing scientists who couldn’t find anything more productive to do with their semi-worthless environmental science degrees. The evidence that Ocean Acidification represents any kind of threat is threadbare – and getting flimsier by the day.

A new look at the “global warming hiatus” as a redistribution of energy in the Earth’s system

A different view – source: ARGO marine atlas [credit: climatedepot.com]

This is from US CLIVAR. If their graph is to be believed the ocean heat content went up by a factor of about 6 between 1980 and 2012. The title of their paper is ‘The global warming hiatus: Slowdown or redistribution? (Earth’s Future)’. Of course ‘missing heat hiding in the ocean’ is not exactly a new claim from climate alarm theorists.

Atmospheric greenhouse gases have continued their steady increase in the new century. Logically, one would expect that global mean surface temperature (GMST) would also continue to increase in the same fashion as experienced in the latter decades of the 20th century.

However, between 1998 and 2013 GMST actually plateaued with much smaller increases than the average over the last 60 years and labeled the “global warming hiatus.” The fact that this slowdown in GMST increase was not predicted by most climate models has led some to question the steady increase in heat predicted under increased greenhouse gas conditions.

Record drop in global temperatures as El Niño warming ends

Credit: NASA climatekids

Another round of claims and counter-claims about climate is underway as natural variation takes its course. Talk of records often relates only to the satellite era.
H/T GWPF

Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record, reports David Rose in The Mail on Sunday. 

According to satellite data, the late 2016 temperatures are returning to the levels they were at after the 1998 El Niño. The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end.

Footage from our recent London Climate Conference

Our recent conference held at Conway Hall in central London was a huge success, with over a hundred attendees being treated to two days of rapid-fire 20 minute presentations and discussion sessions. The footage has now been published online by Mark Windows, and are available for you to view at your leisure.

Another video Mark has produced, introduces the circumstances around the last-minute move from UCL to Conway hall,  and also presents interviews with many of the participants.

I had a short interview with Energy Live News

 

This conference was made possible by the tireless efforts of Nils-Axel Morner in the face of great difficulties, and huge credit is due to him for his determination and organisational ability.

They’re dragging out ocean acidification again

.
.
It’s getting tougher every year for ‘warmists’ to dream up climate scare stories that aren’t obviously just that.

American Elephants

James Delingpole, British writer, rants regularly at Breitbart about the utter goofiness of the world’s climate true believers.  He wrote today about a  climate “science” scam  that keeps on rearing its ugly head, in spite of being debunked thoroughly over and over.

Aside from the need to debunk once more, it’s a classic example of the workings of climate science. In this case, one of Delingpole’s articles was supposedly debunked in The Marine Biologist(the magazine of the marine biologist community). He wrote:

There was a time when I would have just ignored it: the guy who wrote it – one Phil Williamson – is the embodiment of Upton Sinclair’s dictum that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Not only is Williamson based at the “University” of East Anglia – aka Climate Alarmism Central, heavily featured in the Climategate scandal…

View original post 292 more words

Caribbean Sea’s curious ‘whistle’ detected from space

Credit: deepseawaters.com

Scientists have detected a mysterious repeating Rossby wave signal in the Caribbean that has links to the Gulf Stream, reports Livescience.com.

The murmur of lapping ocean waves and the crash of breaking surf are familiar to any beachgoer. But scientists recently discovered a remarkable ocean sound unlike any other, produced by a unique combination of water movement and underwater geography in the Caribbean Sea.

Hemispheric Temperature Anomalies: 1851-1980

.
.
Are we anywhere close to really understanding the strength of natural climate variation and how it works?

We can easily overlook that most temperature measurements are taken on land, but over 70% of the Earth’s surface is deep water.

Frederick Colbourne investigates.

Geoscience - Environment

Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was established in the School of Environmental Sciences (ENV) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich in 1972.

The CRU has collected, collated and archived global climate data for over 40 years.

CRU temperature data

In 1987, the American Meteorological Society published a paper by Stanley Grotch of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, that assessed the robustness of the CRU dataset for land and other datasets.

Monthly Weather Review, Volume 115 No. 7, July 1987, ISSN: 0027-0644; eISSN: 1520-0493

Abstract

Three data bases of gridded surface temperature anomalies were used to assess the sensitivity of the average estimated Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature anomaly to: 1) extreme gridpoint values and 2) zonal band contributions. Over the last 100 year, removal of either the top or bottom 10% of the gridpoint anomalies in any year changes…

View original post 601 more words

Ocean currents push phytoplankton around the globe faster than thought

The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt – blue = deep cold and saltier water current, red = shallower and warmer current
[credit: NWS / NOAA]

Evidence here from researchers of shorter oceanic cycles than expected. They say ‘The general message is that all parts of the ocean surface are connected on surprisingly short time scales’, which could be ‘just 10 years’.

North Atlantic played pivotal role in last great climate tipping point

Rinks Glacier, West Greenland
[image credit: NSIDC]

A new angle on glaciations perhaps, but HeritageDaily quotes one of the researchers: ‘The mechanism driving these expansions of southern sourced water into the deep Atlantic still needs working on.’

The North Atlantic Ocean played a key role in the last great tipping point in Earth’s climate system, pioneering new research has shown. An international research team has discovered ground-breaking new reasons why large continental ice-sheets first grew in North America and Scandinavia during the late Pliocene Epoch era, 2.7 millions of years ago.

Winds hide Atlantic variability from Europe’s winters

Out in the Atlantic Ocean [image credit: NASA]

Researchers claim to have ‘discovered a cycle of heating and cooling at the surface of the ocean’ in the North Atlantic which is modulated – so to speak – by winds, although they are also quick to make the obligatory nod in the direction of assumed future ‘global warming’.

Shifting winds may explain why long-term fluctuations in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures have no apparent influence on Europe’s wintertime temperatures.

Pumping meltwater back on Antarctica would need 850,000 wind turbines

Antarctica [credit: Wikipedia]

Indulging in climate fantasy can lead to some strange ideas, like this one. The idea of articles like this is presumably to infect the minds of the gullible with thoughts of impending crisis, where none should exist.

With sea levels rising and Antarctica’s temperatures well below freezing, some people [i.e. the authors?] have raised the question: What would happen if we took water out of the oceans and pumped it onto the icy continent to freeze?

A group of scientists put that question to the test in a new study that explores the physical possibility and economic feasibility of geoengineering climate solutions in the future.

Are wind turbines killing whales?

Struggling whale [image credit: BBC]

Between January 9 and February 4 this year, 29 sperm whales got stranded and died on English, German and Dutch beaches. Climate Change Dispatch investigates.

Environmentalists and the news media offered multiple explanations – except the most obvious and likely one: offshore wind farms. Indeed, that area has the world’s biggest concentration of offshore wind turbines, and there is ample evidence that their acoustic pollution can interfere with whale communication and navigation.

How Northern European waters soak up carbon dioxide

Carbon cycle [image credit: NASA Earth Observatory]

Somebody seems to have re-discovered the carbon cycle, and true to form the BBC is keen to spread the word by trying to relate it to buses and jumbo jets.

The seas around the UK and the rest of northern Europe take up a staggering 24 million tonnes of carbon each year. It is a mass equivalent to two million double-decker buses or 72,000 747 jets. The number was produced by scientists studying the movement of carbon dioxide into and out of the oceans.

Paul Vaughan: NOAA Corruption of SST records

NOAA’s vandalism of ERSSTv3b2 (good) to ERSSTv4 (corrupted) hinges on a single point.

Visual catalog of the beautiful natural patterns being systematically defaced:

— —

1. Secular

— —

Bill Illis: Formation of the AMOC not linked to Greenland meltwater

H/T to Paul Vaughan for pointing to a series of comments by Bill Illis on wuwt, which describe and differentiate between the under-ice salt induced sinking which forms Arctic deep water and the Greenland-melt surface waters which flow into the Gulf Stream. These were in response to an alarmist paper which claims that increased freshwater flux could weaken the AMOC and thus global circulation.

Bill Illis responds:

And the salinity in the ocean in the area in question has changed by exactly ZERO. The paper doesn’t address this issue one iota.

The AMOC starts under the sea ice throughout the entire Arctic Ocean basin. Somehow climate scientists have convinced themselves that the deep water formation of the AMOC is next to Greenland. There is no way to correct them because they don’t actually care what the facts are, just what gets them published in the climate theology field.

The sea surface temperatures in the Norwegian Sea range from +2.0C to +10.0C.

The Arctic Bottom Water is -0.5C to -1.0C and is 3000 metres deeper. it has nothing to do with the Nowegian Sea.

The Arctic Bottom Water overflows the canyons and chokepoints out of the Arctic Ocean basin, particularly the Fram Strait canyon, the Denmark Strait and the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.