Climate models unreliable in predicting wave damage to coral reefs

Australian coral [image credit: heraldsun.com.au]

Probably not much of a shock. One researcher said: “The models are accurate in projecting at a global scale that cyclones in the future are highly likely to be more intense because of climate change. But they are less accurate in projecting how those cyclones will affect individual coral reefs — that is the result of more localised conditions such as the pounding of waves.” But ‘accurately projecting’ that something is ‘highly likely’ in the future sounds more like an assertion than actual science.
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Climate models are unreliable when it comes to predicting the damage that tropical cyclones will do to sensitive coral reefs, according to a study published in the journal Earth’s Future.

With the expectation that tropical cyclones will increase in intensity with climate change, there has been interest among conservationists to use the models to identify the vulnerability of reef communities to storm damage, and to target conservation and protection efforts at those coral reefs that are less likely to be impacted by climate change, says Science Daily.

But a team of researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK, the Australian Institute for Marine Science and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CISRO) is urging caution when using the climate models, arguing they are not yet reliable enough to determine which reefs will be most at risk from cyclone damage.

Updated climate models clouded by scientific biases, researchers find

Southern Ocean surrounds Antarctica [image credit: theozonehole.com]

Another hole in ‘settled’ climate science? Over-sensitivity to changing conditions may sound familiar. Researchers find “The major implication is that, even though the latest CMIP models improve the simulation of their mean states, such as radiation fluxes at the top of the atmosphere, the detailed cloud processes are still of large uncertainty.” Southern Ocean clouds seem to have been ‘improperly simulated’ when compared to data.
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Clouds can cool or warm the planet’s surface, a radiative effect that contributes significantly to the global energy budget and can be altered by human activities, claims Eurekalert.

The world’s southernmost ocean, aptly named the Southern Ocean and far from human pollution but subject to abundant marine gases and aerosols, is about 80% covered by clouds.

How does this body of water and relationship with clouds contribute to the world’s changing climate?

Faster in the Past: New seafloor images of West Antarctic Ice Sheet upend understanding of Thwaites Glacier retreat

Some like to call it the Doomsday Glacier. The research results are probably open to a variety of interpretations, in terms of predictions. But we’re told that whatever is being observed at present is by no means exceptional, making attempts at attribution of its ever-changing condition to human activity even more problematic. Volcanic activity is an obvious confounding factor here.
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The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica — about the size of Florida — has been an elephant in the room for scientists trying to make global sea level rise predictions, says Science Daily.

This massive ice stream is already in a phase of fast retreat (a “collapse” when viewed on geological timescales) leading to widespread concern about exactly how much, or how fast, it may give up its ice to the ocean.

The potential impact of Thwaites’ retreat is spine-chilling: a total loss of the glacier and surrounding icy basins could raise sea level from three to 10 feet.

Global Financial System at Risk From Flawed Climate Models

An unflattering analysis of climate models. Using mean values from numerous models is questioned. Climate attribution studies don’t fare any better: “these approaches are likely to be flawed”.
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A team of Australian scientists, financiers and economists have issued a stark warning over the use of “flawed” climate models to predict financial risk, says Net Zero Watch.

Writing in the journal Environmental Research they say building future strategies on information that is not understood and potentially misleading is likely to expose the global financial system to systemic risks of its own making.

Politicians and policy-makers are increasingly seeking to assess the potential risks to the financial system associated with climate change.

Newly described “solar clock” can precisely predict solar cycle events years in advance

Some bold claims made here. Results needed to back them up.
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New research shows that a “solar clock” based on the sun’s magnetic field, rather than the presence or absence of sunspots, can precisely describe and predict many key changes throughout the solar cycle, says Eurekalert.

The new framework offers a significant improvement over the traditional sunspot method, because it can predict surges in dangerous solar flares or changing weather trends years in advance.

It also accurately describes many more parameters related to the solar cycle than sunspots alone.

NOAA still expects above-normal Atlantic hurricane season

We like a prediction, so we’ll see how this one goes after ‘a relatively slow start to hurricane season, with no major storms developing in the Atlantic’. NOAA’s ENSO blog says ‘La Niña suppresses hurricane activity in the central and eastern Pacific basins, and enhances it in the Atlantic basin’, which influences their thinking. No doubt climate obsessives will be on the lookout for something to wail about.
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Atmospheric and oceanic conditions still favor an above-normal 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, according to NOAA’s annual mid-season update issued today by the Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service. — Phys.org reporting.

“I urge everyone to remain vigilant as we enter the peak months of hurricane season,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

“The experts at NOAA will continue to provide the science, data and services needed to help communities become hurricane resilient and climate-ready for the remainder of hurricane season and beyond.”

Climate models: Wildfire-smoke observations may help ‘fill gap’ in estimating soot’s role, researchers hope

California wildfire [image credit: NASA]

Another day, another topic of model uncertainty. ‘Refining’ an admitted high level of uncertainty is an odd concept, but researchers assert the issue will be ‘cleared up’. However, their belief in ‘potent climate-warming agents’ doesn’t inspire confidence.
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New research refining the amount of sunlight absorbed by black carbon in smoke from wildfires will help clear up a long-time weak spot in earth system models, enabling more accurate forecasting of global climate change, says Phys.org.

“Black carbon or soot is the next most potent climate-warming agent after CO2 and methane, despite a short lifetime of weeks, but its impact in climate models is still highly uncertain,” said James Lee, a climate researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and corresponding author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters on light absorption by wildfire smoke. “Our research will clear up that uncertainty.”

The Los Alamos research resolves a long-time disconnect between the observations of the amount of light absorbed by black carbon in smoke and the amount predicted by models, given how black carbon is mixed with other material such as condensed organic aerosols that are present in plumes.

Future temperature growth in Asia is being overestimated by between 3.4% and 11.6%, say researchers

Monsoon region

A familiar story of inaccurate climate models. The overestimates would undermine various predictions.
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Global climate tools being used to predict future temperature rises and rainfall across Asia are significantly overestimating their potential growth and impact, according to new research.

A study published in Nature Communications suggests predictions by the World Climate Research Program’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) are overestimating future temperature growth by between 3.4% and 11.6%, says Phys.org.

Based on revised calculations, an international team of researchers say this could result in the rate of snow cover loss in Asia, notably in the Himalayas, being between 10.5% and 40.2% lower than previously predicted.

As well as the physical effects on the landscape, this, they add, could have significant knock-on effects on both predicted future climate warming and water availability in Asia.

Plankton will store more carbon as Earth’s climate warms, but ‘Twilight Zone’ uncertainties remain say researchers

CO2 is not pollution

The researchers are not going overboard with positivity, but seem clear that the Earth’s carbon cycle is still working much as expected. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they theorise problems might occur by 2100 if some presently unknown limit is approached, but say ‘the Twilight Zone region of the ocean’ needs more research. In short, so far so good.
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The amount of carbon stored by microscopic plankton will increase in the coming century, predict researchers at the University of Bristol and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC).

Using the latest IPCC models (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the team expects the “biological pump”—a process where microscopic plants, often called phytoplankton, take up carbon and then die and sink into the deep ocean where carbon is stored for hundreds of years—to account for between 5 and 17% of the total increase in carbon uptake by the oceans by 2100.

Their findings were published today in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), says Phys.org.

Lead author Dr. Jamie Wilson, of the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, explained, “The biological pump stores roughly double the amount of carbon dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere in the deep ocean. Because plankton are sensitive to climate change, this carbon pool is likely to change in size, so we set out to understand how this would change in the future in response to climate change by looking at the latest future projections by IPCC models.”

Microscopic organisms called plankton, living in the sunlit surface of the ocean, use carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. When these plankton die, their remains rapidly sink down through the “Twilight Zone” of the ocean (200–1000m), where environmental factors, such as temperature and oxygen concentration, and ecological factors, such as being eaten by other plankton, control how much reaches the deep ocean where the carbon from their bodies is stored away from the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.

Warming of the oceans slows down the circulation, increasing the time that carbon is stored in the deep ocean.

Contributing author Dr. Anna Katavouta, who worked alongside early-career scientist Dr. Chelsey Baker, both from the National Oceanography Centre, added, “Our research found a consistent increase in the carbon stored in the ocean by the biological carbon pump over the 21st century in the latest IPCC model projections. In contrast, we found a decline in the global export production (the amount of organic matter, such as dead plankton, sinking below the ocean surface), which suggests that export production may not be as accurate a metric for the biological carbon pump than previously thought. We demonstrated that the organic matter flux at 1000 meters is instead a better predictor of long-term carbon sequestration associated with the biological carbon pump. This outcome will help us to better understand the processes that control the biological carbon pump and to predict more reliably how much of the carbon released due to human activity will be stored in the ocean in the future.”

However, the IPCC models have no consistent representation of the environmental and ecological processes in the Twilight Zone. This leads to a large uncertainty in how much carbon dioxide originating from the atmosphere the biological pump will store beyond the end of the century.

In theory, after 2100, carbon storage by the biological pump could stall and instead may start acting as a source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which could exacerbate climate change further.

Full article here.

‘Settled science’ news: DOE awards $14 million to improve climate change predictions

Welcome to another round of evidence-free alarmist climate assertions and propaganda, such as these gems: ‘climate-fueled weather events’ and ‘greenhouse gas pollution’. The summary says ‘Projects will give better understanding of Earth’s atmosphere’. But wasn’t it all supposed to be settled a long time ago?
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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $14 million in funding for 22 projects aimed at improving climate change predictions, says Eurekalert.

As extreme weather events and impacts of climate change continue to escalate, the research projects will advance fundamental scientific understanding of atmospheric processes, ranging from cloud formation to Arctic weather.

Expanding the scientific understanding of extreme weather and climate patterns is key to tackling the climate crisis and meeting President Biden’s climate goals like slashing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Computer models ‘greatly overestimate’ summer Arctic melt pond formation, say researchers

Arctic sea ice [image credit: Geoscience Daily]

Hardly surprising, given the endless overestimates of global warming by climate models. They found that ‘Melt ponds covered 21% of the observed area during the summer, while the two models indicated 41% and 51%’.
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New research shows two widely used computer models that predict summer melt pond formation on sea ice greatly overestimate their extent, a key finding as scientists work to make accurate projections about Arctic climate change, says Phys.org.

The finding comes from measurements made during a year-long expedition aboard the research vessel Polarstern.

For the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate expedition, or MOSAiC, the ship was allowed to freeze into place in the Arctic and drift with the ice pack from September 2019 to October 2020.

The Sun Is Being Weird. It Could Be Because We’re Looking at It All Wrong

Solar flare erupting from a sunspot [image credit: space.com]

Who knew!? – asks ScienceAlert. The article links to an interesting new paper on solar cycles, which makes some predictions for the current SC 25 (see section 3.2: Forecasting Using the Solar Unit Cycle). One of those is that it should end in October 2031 ± 9 months, and the authors go on to suggest forthcoming NASA and ESA missions make it probable that ‘Cycle 25 will be the last solar activity cycle that is not fully understood.’
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Something weird is going on with the Sun.

So far, almost every day in 2022 it has erupted in flares and coronal mass ejections, some of which were the most powerful eruptions our star is capable of.

By itself, an erupting Sun is not weird. It erupts regularly as it goes through periods of high and low activity, in cycles that last roughly 11 years.

The current activity is significantly higher than the official NASA and NOAA predictions for the current solar cycle, and solar activity has consistently exceeded predictions as far back as September 2020.

But a solar scientist will tell you that even this isn’t all that weird.

Have climate models outlived their usefulness? – Net Zero Watch

Is more computing power just getting us the wrong results from overheated models faster?
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Outside of their academic fascination, looked at in terms of their contribution to climate policy, it seems that we may have reached the useful limit of computer climate modelling, says Dr. David Whitehouse.

The first computers built in the 1950s allowed climate scientists to think about modelling the climate using this new technology.

The first usable computer climate models were developed in the mid-1970s.

Shortly afterwards the US National Academy of Sciences used their outcomes to estimate a crucial climate parameter we still calculate today – the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) – how much the world would warm (from ‘pre-industrial’ levels) with a doubling of CO2 — and concluded that it had a range of 1.5 – 4.5°C.

Weather’s unwanted guest: Nasty La Niña keeps popping up, confounding climate modellers

When observations show modellers ‘the opposite of what their best computer model simulations say should be happening with human-caused climate change’, it’s surely time to revisit their assumptions. Meanwhile, much head-scratching.
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Something weird is up with La Nina, the natural but potent weather event linked to more drought and wildfires in the western United States and more Atlantic hurricanes, says Phys.org.

It’s becoming the nation’s unwanted weather guest and meteorologists said the West’s megadrought won’t go away until La Nina does.

The current double-dip La Nina set a record for strength last month and is forecast to likely be around for a rare but not quite unprecedented third straight winter. And it’s not just this one.

Active Hurricane Season Expected in the Atlantic Ocean

Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com

Unusually, this is the third year in a row under La Niña.
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La Niña conditions and warm ocean temperatures have set the stage for another busy tropical storm year, says Eos.

If forecasts are correct, this season will mark the seventh consecutive above-normal hurricane season for the Atlantic.

NOAA forecasts out today predict a 65% chance of an above-average season, a 25% chance of a normal season, and a 10% chance of a below-normal season. The ranges account for uncertainty in the data and models of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

The Sun Is Waking Up — Right On Schedule?

Sunspots [image credit: NASA]

The Sun may still have a surprise or two for solar cycle 25 theorists, but what we hear is: “I believe this will likely be the best forecast to come out of one of the NOAA/NASA Cycle prediction panels.” The article below doesn’t include the question mark in its headline.
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The Sun is waking up, says Sky and Telescope.

In recent weeks, NASA has announced X-class solar flares, observers have seen large sunspot groups with the unaided eye, and online services have issued multiple aurora alerts even for mid-latitudes.

After years of quiescence — the Sun was more often spotless than not in 2018, 2019, and 2020 — the change of pace is exciting solar observers.

Researchers find biases in warming patterns in climate models of monsoons

Are ‘corrections’ the answer? Avoiding the need for them might be better. The researchers observe that ‘the projected warming in response to greenhouse gases is too great’. This has been known for years but the penny of reliance on a certain climate theory has yet to drop, it seems.
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Climate projections are crucial for adaptation and mitigation planning says Eurekalert.

The output of the latest round of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, phase 6 (CMIP6) has been widely used in climate projections.

However, a subset of CMIP6 models is “too hot” and the projected warming in response to greenhouse gases is too great.

How to tackle the “hot model” problem at the regional scale had previously been unclear.

Use of ‘too hot’ climate models exaggerates impacts of global warming

Too much hot air

We’ve been hearing this for years, but here it is again. It seems hard to get climate science to follow best practice and discard models that perform poorly against observational data, or at least the worst ones. Time’s up now as it’s getting too embarrassing, with the climate clearly failing to comply with ultra-warmist predictions. But over-optimistic belief that the models are nearly on course is still rife.
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U.N. report authors say researchers should avoid suspect models – from Science.org.

One study suggests Arctic rainfall will become dominant in the 2060s, decades earlier than expected. Another claims air pollution from forest fires in the western United States could triple by 2100. A third says a mass ocean extinction could arrive in just a few centuries.

All three studies, published in the past year, rely on projections of the future produced by some of the world’s next-generation climate models.

But even the modelmakers acknowledge that many of these models have a glaring problem: predicting a future that gets too hot too fast.

Solar Cycle Update: The Gap is Growing

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Trend or blip? The former looks more likely at the moment, but the sun can cause surprises.

Spaceweather.com

April 5, 2022: New sunspot counts from NOAA confirm that Solar Cycle 25 is racing ahead of the official forecast–and the gap is growing:

See the complete labeled plot or play with an interactive version from NOAA

Sunspot counts have now exceeded predictions for 18 straight months. The monthly value at the end of March was more than twice the forecast, and the highest in nearly 7 years.

The “official forecast” comes from the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel, a group of scientists representing NOAA, NASA and International Space Environmental Services (ISES). The Panel predicted that Solar Cycle 25 would peak in July 2025 as a relatively weak cycle, similar in magnitude to its predecessor Solar Cycle 24. Instead, Solar Cycle 25 is shaping up to be stronger.

In March 2022, the sun produced 146 solar flares, including one X-flare and 13 M-flares. Auroras were sighted as far south…

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IPCC scientists say it’s ‘now or never’ to limit warming — but such powers don’t exist?

Summertime [image credit: BBC]

What evidence is there that such powers do exist? An air of unreality is palpable here, with talk of extreme dangers and use of decimal point temperature statements while brushing aside all uncertainties. Endless alarmism creates fatigue, not the fear they crave.
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UN scientists have unveiled a plan that they believe can limit the root causes of dangerous climate change, says BBC News.

A key UN body says in a report that there must be “rapid, deep and immediate” cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Even then, the world would also need technology to suck CO2 from the skies by mid-century.