Is Iceland entering a new volcanic era?

Scientists think there’s some evidence of a centuries-long periodic pattern or cycle, but aren’t sure what it is or what determines the length of it. The graphic shows the most recent two of the five marked phases are west of the earlier ones, plus some apparent north-east to south-west alignments, but otherwise it’s open to intepretation.
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This week, Iceland woke up to yet another day of fire, as towering fountains of lava lit up the dark morning sky, says BBC News.

This time the evacuated town of Grindavik was spared, but the molten rock still wrought havoc – engulfing a pipe that provides heat and hot water to thousands living in the area and cutting off a road to the Blue Lagoon tourist attraction.

It is the third short-lived eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula since December 2023 and the sixth since 2021. But scientists think this is just the start of a period of volcanic activity that could last for decades or even centuries.

So what is going on?

New Model Explains The Water Cycles of Mars’s Swiss Cheese-Looking South Pole

Mars [image credit: NASA]

It’s said to be related to the current obliquity cycle period of about 100,000 years. Mystery solved?
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Seen from space, regions of Mars around the south pole have a bizarre, pitted “Swiss cheese” appearance, says ScienceAlert.

These formations come from alternating massive deposits of CO2 ice and water ice, similar to different layers of a cake.

For decades, planetary scientists wondered how this formation was possible, as it was long believed that this layering would not be stable for long periods of time.

UK weather: The atmospheric ‘seesaw’ partly responsible for this week’s cold snap

Meteorology time. Why the ‘partly’ in the headline? Climate change pokes its nose in at the end of the article, but all that’s offered is uncertainty.
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The “seesaw” is bordered by a high-pressure area west of Portugal and a low-pressure area centred over Iceland.

When the balance changes, so does the weather, says Sky News.

An atmospheric “seesaw” is partly responsible for the snow that much of the UK will likely see this week.

Spain, Portugal dryness ‘unprecedented’ in 1,200 years – or maybe not, say critics

Credit: NOAA

Some scientists contacted by Carbon Brief have their doubts about the reasons given for the reported expansion of the Azores high. An assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, warns that “the title statement is not justified by the study”. Another assistant professor, at the University of Dartmouth, told Carbon Brief ‘that changes in the size and intensity of the Azores high could also have been driven by changes in aerosol levels, rather than changes in greenhouse gases emissions. (For example, the passing of the US Clean Air Act in the 1970s saw pollution levels drop significantly, causing localised warming.) That the authors did not investigate this factor is “a curious omission” he says.’ On top of that, Prof Richard Seagar – a research professor at Columbia University – told Carbon Brief that the expansion in the Azores high could also “easily be explained by the long-term variability and changes of the North Atlantic Oscillation”.
In short, this attempt to put the blame on humans for the more recent climatic conditions related to this phenomenon is already starting to look shaky.
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Parts of Portugal and Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to research published Monday, warning of severe implications for wine and olive production.

The Azores High, an area of high pressure that rotates clockwise over parts of the North Atlantic, has a major effect on weather and long-term climate trends in western Europe says Phys.org.

But in a new modeling study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers in the United States found this high-pressure system “has changed dramatically in the past century and that these changes in North Atlantic climate are unprecedented within the past millennium”.

Ned Nikolov & Karl Zeller: Exact Calculations of Climate Sensitivities Reveal the True Cause of Recent Warming

I’m delighted Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller have chosen the Talkshop as the venue for the publication of this new open peer review paper on climate sensitivity. Scientific advance at the cutting edge has always been the most important aim of this blog, and I think this paper truly is an advance in our understanding of the climate system and the factors which support and modulate surface temperature on Earth and other rocky planets. 

The paper is mathematically rigorous, but is also accessible to everyone, thanks to Ned and Karl’s exemplary effort to fully explain their concepts and definitions in terms which can be understood by any interested reader who has some familiarity with the climate debate. Building on the bedrock of their 2014 and 2017 papers, this new work extends the applicability and validates the postulates of those previous papers by examining the causes of variability in planetary surface temperature and incorporating the previous findings in quantifying and deriving equations to model them. They find that Earth is sensitive to changes in cloud cover, which affects the amount of solar shortwave radiation reaching the surface, but not very sensitive to changes in Total Solar Irradiance arriving at the top of the atmosphere. They also find that the sensitivity to changes in CO₂ levels has been heavily overestimated by current climate models. They show that a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ concentration from 280 ppm to 560 ppm will cause an undetectable global warming of 0.004K.

A PDF of the paper can be downloaded here:  ECS_Universal_Equations.

______________________________________________________________________

Exact Formulas for Estimating the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity of Rocky Planets & Moons to Total Solar Irradiance, Absorbed Shortwave Radiation, Planetary Albedo and Surface Atmospheric Pressure.
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. and Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
April, 2022

1. Introduction

The term “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” (ECS) has become a synonym for the steady-state response of global surface temperature to a modeled long-wave radiative forcing caused by a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ concentration with respect to an assumed pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. According to climate models based on the Greenhouse theory, an increase of atmospheric CO₂ from 280 ppm to 560 ppm would produce a net radiative forcing (i.e. an atmospheric radiant-heat trapping) of 3.74 W m^-2 (Gregory et al. 2004) resulting in a global surface warming between 2.5 K and 4.0 K with a central estimate of 3.0 K according to IPCC AR6 (see p. 11 in Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Summary for Policymakers). This implies an average unit ECS of 3.0/3.74 = 0.8 K / (W m^-2) with a range of 0.67 ≤ ECS ≤ 1.07 K / (W m^-2). Contemporary climate science and IPCC Assessment Reports do not discuss global temperature sensitivities to changes in cloud albedo, absorbed solar radiation or total surface atmospheric pressure. Consequently, no equations have been derived/proposed thus far to calculate these sensitivities. Part of the reason is that variations of cloud albedo are typically viewed in modern climate science as internal feedback to a climatic change induced by external forcing such as increasing anthropogenic carbon emissions. This notion is based on the 19^th-Century Greenhouse theory (Arrhenius 1896) adopted by IPCC, which attributes most of the observed warming during the 20^th Century and especially over the past 40 years to rising atmospheric  CO₂ concentrations believed to trap outgoing long-wave radiation in the Earth’s troposphere and reduce the rate of surface infrared cooling to Space.

However, a plethora of studies published during the past 15 years have shown through both satellite and surface observations that the absorption of solar radiation by the Earth-atmosphere system has increased significantly since 1982 due to a decreased cloud cover/albedo, a phenomenon often referred to as “global brightening” (e.g. Goode & Pallé 2007; Wild 2009; Herman et al. 2013; Stanhill et al. 2014; Hofer et al. 2017; Pfeifroth et al. 2018; Pokrovsky 2019;  Delgado-Bonal et al. 2020; Dübal & Vahrenholt 2021;  Yuan et al. 2021).

Ned Nikolov: Demystifying the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect

Tallbloke writes:
Ned Nikolov has produced a video explaining what’s wrong with the currently fashionable radiative greenhouse effect hypothesis and laying out his and Karl Zeller’s better alternative theory which is supported by empirical data from across the solar system, rather than relying on the conjectures of C19th scientists.

Everyone should make the time to watch the whole presentation right through, but knowing how hard it is to find 75 uninterrupted minutes in the frenetic world we live in, Ned has kindly provided these links to the sub-sections:

00:00 – Introduction
01:46 – The Greenhouse-Effect Hypothesis
06:28 – Critical Analysis of the Greenhouse Hypothesis
19:56 – The Enhanced Greenhouse Effect
43:27 – Greenhouse-Effect-In-a-Bottle Experiment
52:11 – Summary of Greenhouse-Effect Issues
56:23 – Nikolov-Zeller Climate Discovery
01:04:13 – Implications of the Nikolov-Zeller Discovery
01:08:07 – Nikolov-Zeller Peer-Reviewed Paper
01:08:43 – Pressure Heating & Cooling in the Atmosphere
01:12:48 – Expansion of the Nikolov-Zeller Model
01:14:21 – Greenhouse Hypothesis vs. NZ Climate Concept
01:16:44 – Conclusion

This video is also available on Vimeo:

Please review and comment on the presentation. Ned will be around to provide answers to questions and argue his case, so have at it. Support, criticism, suggestions for improvement are all welcome in our open peer review here at the Talkshop.
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Ned Nikolov comments:
This video convincingly demonstrates the physical insolvency of the current climate theory and the COP26 attendees need to pay attention. They should reconsider the present societal response to climate change, which needs to be based on a new understanding of how the Solar system’s climatic systems really work.

Ned Nikolov: What Can NASA Planetary Data Tell Us about Drivers of Earth’s Climate?

Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. Has written to me with news of the presentations he made at this years AMS meeting. It’s vital we get people to understand the implications of the discoveries he and Karl Zeller have made. With our western governments jumping aboard the ‘Green New Deal’ and ‘NetZero’ bandwagons, we will need to work hard to rise awareness of viable alternative hypotheses for ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ which better explain the phenomena we can measure around us. Ned and Karl’s work should be given proper attention, because it strives for universality and general application of physics solar system wide, rather then treating Earth as a ‘special case’.

Two studies presented at the American Meteorological Society’s 34^th Conference on Climate Variability and Change in January 2021 employed a novel approach to identify the forcing of Earth’s climate at various time scales. The new method, never attempted in climate science before, relies on the fundamental premise that the laws of nature are invariant across spacetime.

Another conversation with Roger Pielke Senior : What causes Earth’s Greenhouse Effect?

It’s always good to chat with Roger Pielke Senior. He’s informative, and more open minded than most climate scientists. Here’s a transcript of the conversation we just had on twitter.

 

Rog Tallbloke 

@RogTallbloke

 

Roger. Mt Everest summit winter avg -30C. Base camp -17C. Air pressure difference 20kPa. What really causes Earth’s ‘greenhouse effect’, 1% of water vapour + 0.04% CO2 or 100% of atmospheric MASS. Think man, think! CC @RogerAPielkeSr

 

Roger A. Pielke Sr

@RogerAPielkeSr

 

The LW radiative effect of CO2 and water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere is succinctly summarized in https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2006/05/05/co2h2o/… and https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2007/08/24/further-analysis-of-radiatve-forcing-by-norm-woods/…

 

 

Relative Roles of CO2 and Water Vapor in Radiative Forcing

In the second edition of our book “Cotton, W.R. and R.A. Pielke, 2007: Human impacts on weather and climate, Cambridge University Press, 330 pp”, we present a new analysis completed for…

pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com

 

 

New study detects ringing of the global atmosphere

Researchers now want to ‘understand both the processes that excite the waves and the processes that act to damp the waves.’
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A ringing bell vibrates simultaneously at a low-pitched fundamental tone and at many higher-pitched overtones, producing a pleasant musical sound, says Phys.org.

A recent study, just published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences by scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, shows that the Earth’s entire atmosphere vibrates in an analogous manner, in a striking confirmation of theories developed by physicists over the last two centuries.

In the case of the atmosphere, the “music” comes not as a sound we could hear, but in the form of large-scale waves of atmospheric pressure spanning the globe and traveling around the equator, some moving east-to-west and others west-to-east.

Each of these waves is a resonant vibration of the global atmosphere, analogous to one of the resonant pitches of a bell.

The basic understanding of these atmospheric resonances began with seminal insights at the beginning of the 19th century by one of history’s greatest scientists, the French physicist and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace.

Research by physicists over the subsequent two centuries refined the theory and led to detailed predictions of the wave frequencies that should be present in the atmosphere. However, the actual detection of such waves in the real world has lagged behind the theory.

Now in a new study by Takatoshi Sakazaki, an assistant professor at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Science, and Kevin Hamilton, an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, the authors present a detailed analysis of observed atmospheric pressure over the globe every hour for 38 years.

The results clearly revealed the presence of dozens of the predicted wave modes.

Full article here.

Basic Physics of the climate: A short debate with Roger Pielke Sr.

It’s always a pleasure to interact with Roger Pielke Sr. A climate scientist who is open to debate, respectful of honestly held opinion, and willing to concede ground where the facts dictate.

Roger A. Pielke Sr@RogerAPielkeSr·1hNice to see sfc moist enthalpy that we proposed being added to the assessment of heat. “Outdoor Thermal Comfort and Building Energy Use Potential in Different Land-Use Areas in Tropical Cities: Case of Kuala Lumpur” https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/atmosphere/atmosphere-11-00652/article_deploy/atmosphere-11-00652.pdf… Our paper is https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-290.pdf…

Rog Tallbloke @RogTallbloke·1hMy experiment ended today Roger. It took 25ml of water at 20C at sfc pressure 12 days to evaporate compared to 2.5 hours at 20C in 266 times less pressure. What do you think really makes Earth’s surface ~90K warmer than the moon’s; GHGs or atmospheric pressure?

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.

Earth’s Ancient Barometric Pressure

Image credit: theonlinefisherman.com

A rare chance to brush up on your *vesicle paleobarometry* — or to put it another way, learn that air pressure at sea level has not always been around the 1 bar (1000 mb) that we expect to find nowadays. According to the ideal gas law, pressure and temperature are closely related, implying historic climate variability, but results so far seem inconclusive.

NASA says:
Researchers supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Program have attempted to better understand global barometric pressure on Earth during the Archaean by studying vesicle sizes in 2.9 billion year-old lavas that erupted near sea level.

Today, Earth’s global barometric pressure is 1 bar at sea level. However, barometric pressure has changed throughout the planet’s history.

Barometric pressure in London ‘highest in 300 years’ at least

High pressure over the UK

This is happening at the time of the deepest solar minimum for over a century. A Met Office tweet shown in the article states the record was set in January 1902: ‘UK record of 1053.6 hPa, Aberdeen 31.1.1902’.

Wikipedia says: ‘solar cycle [14] 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)’.

The obvious similarity between January 1902 and January 2020, and indeed between solar cycles 14 and 24, could be a coincidence – but is it?
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The weather forecasters have just given us an impressive display of their skill by predicting the scale of the current high pressure zone over the UK, says BBC News.

Overnight, Sunday into Monday, London’s Heathrow Airport recorded a barometric pressure of 1,049.6 millibars (mbar).

It’s very likely the highest pressure ever recorded in London, with records dating back to 1692.

But the UK Met Office and the European Centre for Medium Range Forecasts had seen it coming well ahead of time.

Trump turns the screws on Nordstream 2.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldtrodi/status/1208333825769689088

DW.com has this

US sanctions targeting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany became law on Friday evening after President Donald Trump signed off on a massive defense bill.

The sanctions target companies involved in constructing the $11 billion (€9.93 billion) energy project, which will transport Russian gas under the Baltic Sea and deliver it directly to Germany.

The bill describes Nord Stream 2 as a “tool of coercion and political leverage” that Moscow could use against Berlin — and says it risks significantly weakening US ties to Germany and other European allies.

US lawmakers in both houses of Congress overwhelmingly approved the sanctions.

Does the Nikolov and Zeller discovery violate energy conservation?

Ned and Karl often run into people on twitter who tell them that their ‘theory’ violates the 1st Law of thermodynamics. Firstly, as Ned points out, their empirical work is not a theory, but a discovery. But let’s allow Paul to develop his argument, and then we’ll pick it apart and see if it ‘holds water’.

Paul Alter@PAlterBoy1 writes: I wrote this up with the help of a physicist and a climate scientist. You have a gas in a cylinder with a piston. Kinetic energy is applied to the piston. The piston adds energy to the gas through its work: the work by a force is the force times the distance the force (work).

2/ point is moved into the direction of the force. The piston exerts a force on the gas and when it moves to compress the gas it “works” and hence adds energy. The energy that the moving piston adds to the gas is converted into heat, to the effect that total energy is conserved.