East-West shift in El Niños since mid 1970s

The original headline for this article was: ‘Climate warming promises more frequent extreme El Niño events’. But since nothing is ‘promised’ it seems to rely too much on assumptions. For example, we are yet to see the full effects, if any, of the current very low solar minimum and the ‘quiet’ solar cycle expected to follow it.

El Niño events cause serious shifts in weather patterns across the globe, and an important question that scientists have sought to answer is: how will climate change affect the generation of strong El Niño events?

A new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by a team of international climate researchers led by Bin Wang of the University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), has an answer to that question, reports Phys.org.

Climate: Uncertainty in scientific predictions can help and harm credibility

What if anything can ‘uncertain predictions’ about the climate tell us that might be worth taking seriously? Excitable headline-chasing fearmongers do nothing to help, especially when proved wrong.

The ways climate scientists explain their predictions about the impact of global warming can either promote or limit their persuasiveness, reports ScienceDaily.
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The more specific climate scientists are about the uncertainties of global warming, the more the American public trusts their predictions, according to new research by Stanford scholars.

But scientists may want to tread carefully when talking about their predictions, the researchers say, because that trust falters when scientists acknowledge that other unknown factors could come into play.

In a new study published in Nature Climate Change, researchers examined how Americans respond to climate scientists’ predictions about sea level rise.

New method gives first global picture of mutual predictability of atmosphere and ocean

Stating the obvious, but most of the heat is in the oceans if compared to the heat in the atmosphere. Wikipedia says ‘the top 2.5 m of the ocean holds as much heat as the entire atmosphere above it.’ If improved predictions are expected, evidence of that will be needed.

University of Maryland (UMD) scientists have carried out a novel statistical analysis to determine for the first time a global picture of how the ocean helps predict the low-level atmosphere and vice versa, reports Phys.org.

They observed ubiquitous influence of the ocean on the atmosphere in the extratropics, which has been difficult to demonstrate with dynamic models of atmospheric and oceanic circulation.

How The Sun Affects Temperatures On Earth

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

An interview with Professor Valentina Zharkova on the effect of solar activity on terrestrial climate – from Conversations That Matter, with Stuart McNish.

The sun is going through a stage known as a solar or Maunder Minimum. This is where the solar activity that ignites solar flares or sun spots has decreased.

It’s a normal cycle and one that has been linked to the mini ice age that lasted more than 50 years starting in the mid-1600s.

Scientists predict average late winter precipitation in western Europe for the next decade

We like to see a few bold predictions here at the Talkshop, even if they expect things to be ‘average’, but as these go out to ten years ahead we’ll add them to the (imaginary) list. The current very low solar minimum could be a wild card.

In a new study, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) show that the average March precipitation, over the next ten years in western Europe is predictable using a novel method, says Phys.org.

The research team also issued a forecast for the coming years.

Planet Nine: How we’ll find the Solar System’s missing planet

The predicted ninth planet has so far proved elusive, with searches of 50 per cent of the sky in the range where it ‘should’ be having turned up nothing. But planetary theorists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin insist the evidence shows they are on the right track. Others talk of broken glass and fingerprints – shades of Sherlock Holmes.

Beyond Neptune, a handful of small worlds are moving in harmony.

Astronomers think they might be dancing to the tune of a third world lurking in the darkness, one that’s four times bigger than Earth and significant enough to be named our Solar System’s ninth planet.

Now they think they know exactly where to look for it, says Science Focus.

Deep learning application able to predict El Niño events up to 18 months in advance

In 24 out of 34 cases anyway, which is said to be better than existing methods.

A trio of researchers from Chonnam National University, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found that a deep learning convolutional neural network was able to accurately predict El Niño events up to 18 months in advance, reports Phys.org.

In their paper published in the journal Nature, Yoo-Geun Ham, Jeong-Hwan Kim and Jing-Jia Luo, describe their deep learning application, how it was trained and how well it worked in predicting El Niño events.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation events are periods during which water warms above normal temperatures in tropical parts of the Pacific. When that warm water moves east, it leads to more rainfall and other weather events, such as hurricanes, in the Americas, and less rain in Australia and Indonesia.

New Report Shows Decades Of Failed Climate Predictions

Credit: nationalreview.com

Funny how it’s the dire predictions that turn out to be overheated, but the climate…not so much. That doesn’t deter self-styled ‘campaigners’ from spouting the same kind of nonsense ad infinitum though. Doomsayers have been claiming time is running out for humanity since the 1970s at least, and the media still lap it up.

Think tank compiles decades’ worth of failed climate predictions
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently suggested Miami would disappear in “a few years” due to climate change, says Fox News (via The GWPF).

The United Nations is convening a “Climate Action Summit” next week. And climate activist Greta Thunberg is on Capitol Hill this week telling lawmakers they must act soon.

But while data from NASA and other top research agencies confirms global temperatures are indeed rising, a newly compiled retrospective indicates the doomsday rhetoric is perhaps more overheated.

AGU Statement on Climate Change

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‘Climate models predict that global temperatures…’ blah blah. These predictions are invariably out of step with reality by a wide margin, due to human-caused warming biases built-in to the computer software.

Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry

Human induced climate change requires urgent action. – AGU

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‘Terminators’ on the Sun trigger plasma tsunamis and the start of new solar cycles

Sunspots [image credit: NASA]

This looks timely as predictions of the possibly imminent – or not – start of solar cycle 25 jockey for position, so to speak. Is there a new and better method here?

In a pair of new papers, scientists paint a picture of how solar cycles suddenly die, potentially causing tsunamis of plasma to race through the Sun’s interior and trigger the birth of the next sunspot cycle only a few short weeks later, reports EurekAlert.

The new findings provide insight into the mysterious timing of sunspot cycles, which are marked by the waxing and waning of sunspot activity on the solar surface.

While scientists have long known that these cycles last approximately 11 years, predicting when one cycle ends and the next begins has been challenging to pin down with any accuracy. The new research could change that.

In one of the studies, which relies on nearly 140 years of solar observations from the ground and space, the scientists are able to identify “terminator” events that clearly mark the end of a sunspot cycle.

Climate Swindle: Meet the new scare, same as the old scare

The climate apocalypse bandwagon first got going nearly as long ago as the first moon landing, but shows no signs of falling apart despite a dismal record of no-show of its forecasts, as Climate Change Dispatch explains. The urge to blame humans for any and all vagaries, real or imagined, of the climate seems deep-rooted despite this ongoing lack of predictive success.

This month, The Wall Street Journal celebrated its 130th anniversary by republishing salient articles spanning that period, including this retrospectively illuminating report from February 2, 1978:

A climatic disaster, triggered by the continued burning of oil and coal, could result in the submergence of much of Florida, Holland and other low-lying areas in the next 50 years, an Ohio State University scientist predicted… “I contend that a major disaster – a rapid five-meter rise in sea level caused by deglaciation of West Antarctica – may be imminent or in progress, after atmospheric carbon dioxide has only doubled,” John H. Mercer, a glacier geologist, asserted.

By some miracle, fortunately, Florida and Holland were still with us over a decade later.

NASA goes with low Solar Cycle 25 prediction “30-50% lower than cycle 24.”

Quiet sun [image credit: NASA]

NASA finally agrees with our model estimate for cycle 25 published in 2013. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out. Leif Svalgaard predicted that cycle 25 would be higher than 24, but lower than cycle 20.

Research now underway may have found a reliable new method to predict this solar activity. The Sun’s activity rises and falls in an 11-year cycle. The forecast for the next solar cycle says it will be the weakest of the last 200 years. The maximum of this next cycle – measured in terms of sunspot number, a standard measure of solar activity level – could be 30 to 50% lower than the most recent one. The results show that the next cycle will start in 2020 and reach its maximum in 2025.

The new research was led by Irina Kitiashvili, a researcher with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley. It combined observations from two NASA space missions – the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Solar Dynamics Observatory – with data collected since 1976 from the ground-based National Solar Observatory.

More Failed Predictions: May Was The Second Wettest Month In US History

Credit: weather.com

H/T Climate Change Dispatch

An obvious clue in this report is the mention of the jetstream, which is not known to be related to minor trace gases in the atmosphere, despite wishful thinking in some quarters. Why do leaders ignore these failures of climate science, yet listen avidly to misguided doomsayers demanding vast spending and taxes?
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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the month of May was the second wettest and temperatures were in the bottom-third for its 125-year US history, reports American Thinker.

The 2010 publication titled, ‘A Global Overview Of Drought and Heat-Induced Tree Mortality Reveals Emerging Climate Change Risks for Forests’, was accepted by the Obama administration as scientific evidence that climate change had made the Earth:

“…increasingly vulnerable to higher background tree mortality rates and die-off in response to future warming and drought, even in environments that are not normally considered water-limited.”

But NOAA just reported that May US precipitation totaled an average of 4.41 inches, 1.50 inches above average, and ranked second wettest in the 125-year period of record for May as well as second wettest for all months since January 1895.

The only wetter month in US history was May 2015 with 4.44 inches of precipitation.

The Noble Corruption Of Climate Science

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
Is IPCC-oriented climate science running out of road in terms of public credibility, when measured against reality?

This is a story of climate science, tracing from its enthusiastic beginnings as a small field – warning of a global threat – to its rich and increasingly desperate present, writes Larry Kummer @ Fabius Maximus.

It is a long story, with a climax at the end.

The climate change campaign hits a dead end

On 24 June 1988, James Hansen’s testimony to the Senate began the campaign to fight anthropogenic global warming. During the following 31 years we have heard increasingly dire forecasts of doom.

Climate Forecasting: The Big Gap – by The GWPF

Some might not agree with the claim here that ‘The basics of climate change are well known’, but the author spotlights the shortcomings of climate models that almost invariably over-predict warming that fails to occur – which strongly suggests a faulty basis for understanding climate patterns. Even the newest model shows signs of repeating these long-known errors.

There is a gap in climate predictions, says Dr. David Whitehouse.

It is between the annual and decadal.

I was once told by a very eminent climate scientist that he didn’t care what the observations of the real world were, he believed in models, and only models, and they were enough to work out what is going on.

But I wonder?

Garth Paltridge: Climate’s Uncertainty Principle

Fine summer weather [image credit: BBC]

Plenty of assertions, but we’re still no nearer to knowing ‘what fraction of the observed rise in global surface temperature over the last thirty or so years…is attributable to the human-induced increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide’. It could be anything, including nothing. We don’t even have a CO2 number to work with, as any natural increases are hard to quantify. But in many countries national energy policy ploughs on regardless of the huge uncertainties.

The bottom line of politically correct thought on climate alarm is so full of holes that it brings the overall sanity of mankind into question, argues Garth Paltridge.

That is, we need to put a dollar number to the cost of doing something now, a dollar number to the benefit thus obtained by the future generations, and a number to a thing called “discount for the future”—this last being the rate at which our concern for the welfare of future generations falls away as we look further and further ahead.

Only the first of these numbers can be estimated with any degree of reliability.

California’s current earthquake hiatus is an unlikely pause

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damage [image credit: H.G. Wilshire, U.S. Geological Survey]

Smaller quakes seem to have taken over, for the time being at least. The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 in Northern California had a magnitude of 6.9 but was not considered to be ‘major’, despite some deaths and billions of dollars worth of damage.

There have been no major ground rupturing earthquakes along California’s three highest slip rate faults in the past 100 years, reports ScienceDaily.

A new study concludes that this current ‘hiatus’ has no precedent in the past 1000 years.

U.S. Geological Survey researchers Glenn Biasi and Kate Scharer analyzed long paleoseismic records from the San Andreas, San Jacinto and Hayward Faults for the past 1000 years, to determine how likely it might be to have a 100-year gap in earthquakes across the three faults.

They found that the gap was very unlikely — along the lines of a 0.3% chance of occurring, given the seismic record of the past 1000 years.

Why climate predictions are so difficult

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So climate sensitivity… is likely somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees. This result has not changed until today, about 40 years later. And that’s exactly the problem.
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Maybe the problem lies in thinking that that is the problem.

Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry

An insightful interview with Bjorn Stevens.

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Sea level views from SEPP (190309) too superficial to be useful, say experts

This is a critique by Professor Nils-Axel Mörner and two colleagues of a recent article discussing problems with IPCC sea level claims.

The original article by Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) starts:

Rising Seas – At Sea, or Shore? The latest Summary for Policymakers of its full Assessment Report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC, AR-5, SPM, 2014) declared that sea level rise is accelerating.

Numerous studies have come out in support of that view. As shown in the 2008 report of the Nongovernment International Panel for Climate Change (NIPCC, 2008), with the ending of the last Ice Age about 18,000 to 20,000 years ago, sea levels have risen about 400 feet (120 meters).

At first, the rise was slow, then rapid, then for the past several thousand years slowing to about 7 to 8 inches (18 to 20 cm) per century. There is some question about the variation during the Little Ice Age and the period following it called the industrial period since 1850.

The sun is quieter than normal, but don’t panic – says CBC News

Quiet sun [image credit: NASA]

In which we are informed that the Maunder Minimum was ‘an incident’, warming is due to ‘climate change’, and solar cycle 25 may not start until 2020.

Some fear that we could be heading to another Little Ice Age, but scientists say that’s unlikely, reports CBC News.

The sun is quiet … very quiet. In February, for the first time since August 2008, the sun went an entire month without any sunspots.

What does this mean for Earth?