Satellite traffic jams ahead?

Will Satellite Megaconstellations Weaken Earth’s Magnetic Field?

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Researcher: “We absolutely cannot dump endless amounts of conductive dust into the magnetosphere and not expect some kind of impact. Multidisciplinary studies of this pollution are urgently needed.”

Study: Potential Perturbation of the Ionosphere by Megaconstellations and Corresponding
Artificial Re-entry Plasma Dust

New study reports that Greenland is a methane sink rather than a source

Greenland settlement [image credit: climatechangepost.com]

A large dent goes in to thawing permafrost scares, as another ‘ticking time bomb’ based on greenhouse gas theories turns out to be a dud. As for carbon dioxide, the professor leading the study commented: “…the ice-free parts of Greenland have only been without ice since the last ice age, meaning that they never stored much carbon”. Climate models will have to be revised.
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Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have concluded that the methane uptake in dry landscapes exceeds methane emissions from wet areas across the ice-free part of Greenland.

The results of the new study contribute important knowledge to climate models, says Phys.org.

The researchers are now investigating whether the same finding applies to other polar regions.

Researchers probe a conundrum: If the world is warming, why are our winters getting colder?

Gulf Stream flows

Some recent cold weather events are puzzling to global warming researchers, in terms of climate model expectations. Especially so for the ‘Center for Irreversible Climate Change’ in South Korea. Temporary natural variation seems to be the conclusion. What else could they say without casting doubt on human-caused warming theories?
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If the world is warming, why are our winters getting colder?

Indeed, East Asia and North America have experienced frequent extreme weather events since the 2000s that defy average climate change projections, says Phys.org.

Many experts have blamed Arctic warming and a weakening jet stream due to declining Arctic sea ice, but climate model experiments have not adequately demonstrated their validity.

The massive power outage in Texas in February 2021 was caused by an unusual cold snap, and climate models are needed to accurately predict the risk of extreme weather events in order to prevent massive socioeconomic damage.

Send more funds: Earth system models are missing key piece of future climate puzzle, researchers say

Alaskan permafrost: [image credit: insideclimatenews.org]

The ’emissions’ obsessives of climate research seek greater financing for the endless quest for evidence that might support their theories. The subject here is permafrost, but it also reads like an admission that climate is more complicated than current models can cope with, for a number of reasons.
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The way science is funded is hampering Earth system models, and may be skewing important climate predictions, according to a new comment published in Nature Climate Change by Woodwell Climate Research Center and an international team of model experts, says Phys.org.

Emissions from thawing permafrost, frozen ground in the North that contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does and is thawing due to human-caused climate warming [Talkshop comment – the usual empty assertion], are one of the largest uncertainties in future climate projections.

But accurate representation of permafrost dynamics is missing from the major models that project future carbon emissions.

Aircraft observations show northern tropical Africa is not the large source of CO2 that satellite data ‘suggested’

This must put a dent in the credibility of at least some supposedly climate-related satellite data. On the positive side, a significant chunk of the alleged global carbon dioxide problem disappears, as the carbon cycle of a large region turns out to be self-balancing. The CO2 struck off, so to speak, is ‘equivalent to about 10% of annual emissions from the burning of fossil fuels’.
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The forests and grasslands of northern tropical Africa take in about as much carbon dioxide in the wet season as they release in the dry season, according to a new study based on observations from aircraft.

The findings contradict earlier research that relied on satellite data and found that these ecosystems may be adding significantly more carbon to the atmosphere than they absorb over the course of a year, says Phys.org.

The research, published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, highlights the difficulty of measuring carbon dioxide from space and the need for more frequent and robust observations from both the air and ground.

Study finds oceanic carbon cycle still works for carbon dioxide uptake

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

Of course it does, but there seems a hint of surprise in the findings. It’s long been known that colder water absorbs more atmospheric CO2, just as warmer water absorbs less. Anyone familiar with fizzy drinks knows the story, or ought to. The article here announces that ‘the oceans present vast and promising potential for storing carbon dioxide’. Surely this is not regarded as news? As for potential, it’s always happened.
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The recent cold spell has plunged South Korea into a deep freeze, resulting in the closure of 247 national parks, the cancellation of 14 domestic flights, and the scrapping of 107 cruise ship voyages, says Phys.org.

While the cold snap brought relief by significantly reducing the prevalence of particulate matter obscuring our surroundings, a recent study indicates that, besides diminishing particulate matter, it significantly contributes to the heightened uptake of carbon dioxide by the East Sea.

According to research conducted by a team of researchers, including Professor Kitack Lee from the Division of Environmental Science & Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) and Professor Tongsup Lee and So-Yun Kim from the Department of Oceanography at Pusan National University, the cold atmosphere in the Arctic is influencing the absorption of carbon dioxide by the East Sea.

The Sahara Desert used to be a green savannah : Research explains why – it’s a climate cycle

Sahara desert from space [image credit: NASA]

We’re informed that ‘scientists have identified more than 230 of these greenings occurring about every 21,000 years over the past eight million years.’ (Ice ages may account for the numerical shortfall). Climate models aren't able to simulate these greenings, or at least not their magnitude. The period they identify is the combined precession cycle, i.e. the beat period of the tropical and anomalistic orbits (years) of the Earth (when the difference between the number of each reaches 1). Inevitably it’s about the energy received from the Sun.
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Algeria’s Tassili N’Ajjer plateau is Africa’s largest national park, says The Conversation (via Phys.org).

Among its vast sandstone formations is perhaps the world’s largest art museum. Over 15,000 etchings and paintings are exhibited there, some as much as 11,000 years old according to scientific dating techniques, representing a unique ethnological and climatological record of the region.

Curiously, however, these images do not depict the arid, barren landscape that is present in the Tassili N’Ajjer today.

Climate scare of the day: warming shown to cause methane to be released from the deep ocean

Burning hydrate [image credit: US Office of Naval Research]

This was found to have been going on ‘during past warm periods’ (what caused those?), so we may wonder what difference a bit more now is likely to make. It’s admitted that scientists need to ‘understand better the role of hydrates in the climate system’ – or if they have one worth getting agitated about?
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An international team of researchers led by Newcastle University found that as frozen methane and ice melts, methane – a potent greenhouse gas – is released and moves from the deepest parts of the continental slope to the edge of the underwater shelf, says EurekAlert.

They even discovered a pocket which had moved 25 miles (40 kilometres).

Publishing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this means that much more methane could potentially be vulnerable and released into the atmosphere as a result of climate warming.

Methane hydrate

Methane hydrate, also known as fire-ice, is an ice-like structure found buried in the ocean floor that contains methane. Vast amounts of methane are stored as marine methane under oceans.

Himalayan Glaciers ‘fight back’ with cooling mechanism, researchers find

Himalayan glaciers [image credit: earth.com]

Time to dial down some over-excitable climate claims perhaps. The actual mechanism has been observed elsewhere before, but ‘not all downslope winds are katabatic‘. Effects can vary according to local conditions.
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Himalayan Glaciers fight back to preserve themselves, but for how long? — asks Eurekalert.

An international team of researchers, co-led by Professor Francesca Pellicciotti of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), explains a stunning phenomenon: rising global temperatures have led Himalayan glaciers to increasingly cool the air in contact with the ice surface.

The ensuing cold winds might help cool the glaciers and preserve the surrounding ecosystems. The results, found across the Himalayan range, were published in Nature Geoscience.

Antarctic ozone hole moving in mysterious ways, research suggests

Credit: earthhow.com

At least one expert was ‘not convinced’ by the study’s results. The theory that the ozone hole’s seasonal size was/is strongly related to human activity is left looking a bit threadbare, even if the study doesn’t exactly say that. But if the alleged cause has been mostly removed and the hole persists, to a significant extent at least, what other conclusion is there? ‘Rare events’ is one suggestion.
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The hole in the Antarctic ozone layer has been getting deeper in mid-spring over the last two decades, despite a global ban on chemicals that deplete Earth’s shield from deadly solar radiation, new research suggested Tuesday.

The ozone layer 11 to 40 kilometers (seven to 25 miles) above Earth’s surface filters out most of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, which can cause skin cancer and cataracts, says Phys.org..

From the mid-1970s, chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—once widely used in aerosols and refrigerators—were found to be reducing ozone levels, creating annual holes largely over the Antarctica region.

More cloud uncertainties: researching the effect of aerosol particles on clouds and the climate

Again it turns out that climate modellers don’t understand cloud effects too well. As this article bluntly puts it: ‘The interactions of atmospheric aerosols with solar radiation and clouds continue to be inadequately understood and are among the greatest uncertainties in the model description and forecasting of changes to the climate. One reason for this is the many unanswered questions about the hygroscopicity of aerosol particles.’ — Other reasons aren’t discussed here. Why do we keep reading about ‘state-of-the-art’ climate models when they clearly have a long way to go to merit such a description? Any forecasts they produce should be treated with great caution, to say the least.
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The extent to which aerosol particles affect the climate depends on how much water the particles can hold in the atmosphere, says Phys.org.

The capacity to hold water is referred to as hygroscopicity (K) and, in turn, depends on further factors—particularly the size and chemical composition of the particles, which can be extremely variable and complex.

Through extensive investigations, an international research team under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) and the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) was able to reduce the relationship between the chemical composition and the hygroscopicity of aerosol particles to a simple linear formula.

New research suggests plants might be able to absorb more CO2 from human activities than previously expected

Biology has been underestimated. Anything that relies on photosynthesis just takes whatever CO2 molecules it can get for its needs, regardless of current climate theories.
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New research published in Science Advances paints an uncharacteristically upbeat picture for the planet, says Phys.org.

This is because more realistic ecological modeling suggests the world’s plants may be able to take up more atmospheric CO2 from human activities than previously predicted.

Despite this headline finding, the environmental scientists behind the research are quick to underline that this should in no way be taken to mean the world’s governments can take their foot off the brake in their obligations to reduce carbon emissions as fast as possible. [Talkshop comment – smell the fear of losing funding].

Simply planting more trees and protecting existing vegetation is not a golden-bullet solution but the research does underline the multiple benefits to conserving such vegetation.

“Plants take up a substantial amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year, thereby slowing down the detrimental effects of climate change, but the extent to which they will continue this CO2 uptake into the future has been uncertain,” explains Dr. Jürgen Knauer, who headed the research team led by the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University.

“What we found is that a well-established climate model that is used to feed into global climate predictions made by the likes of the IPCC predicts stronger and sustained carbon uptake until the end of the 21st century when it accounts for the impact of some critical physiological processes that govern how plants conduct photosynthesis.

“We accounted for aspects like how efficiently carbon dioxide can move through the interior of the leaf, how plants adjust to changes in temperatures, and how plants most economically distribute nutrients in their canopy. These are three really important mechanisms that affect a plant’s ability to ‘fix’ carbon, yet they are commonly ignored in most global models” said Dr. Knauer.

Photosynthesis is the scientific term for the process in which plants convert—or “fix”—CO2 into the sugars they use for growth and metabolism. This carbon fixing serves as a natural climate change mitigator by reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere; it is this increased uptake of CO2 by vegetation that is the primary driver of an increasing land carbon sink reported over the last few decades.
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Silvia Caldararu, Assistant Professor in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, was involved in the study. Contextualizing the findings and their relevance, she said, “Because the majority of terrestrial biosphere models used to assess the global carbon sink are located at the lower end of this complexity range, accounting only partially for these mechanisms or ignoring them altogether, it is likely that we are currently underestimating climate change effects on vegetation as well as its resilience to changes in climate.

“We often think about climate models as being all about physics, but biology plays a huge role and it is something that we really need to account for.”

Full article here.

Recording the first daily measurements of Earth’s rotation shifts

Credit: NASA/EPIC, edit by Tdadamemd @ Wikipedia

When they say ‘shifts’ they’re measuring in milliseconds or even smaller units of time. Physics Today says ‘The new measurements are relevant to understanding the global water cycle and atmospheric circulation and may provide an important constraint on the effect of all those processes together.’
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Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have succeeded in measuring the Earth’s rotation more exactly than ever before, reports Phys.org.

The ring laser at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell can now be used to capture data at a quality level unsurpassed anywhere in the world.

The measurements will be used to determine the Earth’s position in space, benefit climate research, and make climate models more reliable.

Care to take a quick step down to the basement and see how fast the Earth has been turning in the last few hours?

Melting ice, falling snow: Sea ice declines enhance snowfall over West Antarctica, say researchers

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

There’s still a long way to go though: “We want to know how those factors are impacting the ice sheets.” Researchers conclude “it’s essential to enhance our models, particularly in representing sea ice dynamics.”
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As the world continues to warm, Antarctica is losing ice at an increasing pace, but the loss of sea ice may lead to more snowfall over the ice sheets, partially offsetting contributions to sea level rise, according to Penn State scientists. — Phys.org reporting.

The researchers analyzed the impacts of decreased sea ice in the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica and found the ice-free ocean surface leads to more moisture in the atmosphere and heavier snowfalls on the ice sheet, the team reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

While the additional snowfall is not enough to offset the impacts of melting ice, including it in climate models may improve predictions of things like sea level rise, said Luke Trusel, assistant professor of geography at Penn State and co-author of the study.

Is the jet stream changing? Probably the wrong question

Forecaster highlights the jetstream over the UK [image credit: BBC]

The research here finds ‘no significant change to the phase speed of waves in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly over Europe, in the last 40 years’. But in the Southern Hemisphere it’s a somewhat different picture.
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Heavy precipitation, wind storms, heat waves—when severe weather events such as these occur they are frequently attributed to a wavy jet stream, says Phys.org.

The jet stream is a powerful air current in the upper troposphere that balances the pressure gradient and Coriolis forces. It is still not known whether the jet stream is really undergoing changes at decadal timescales and, if so, to what extent.

“There are various theories as to what we can expect from the jet stream in future. However, these are all based on highly idealized assumptions,” said Dr. Georgios Fragkoulidis of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).

Enceladus, Previous Speedster – AAS Nova

Three of Saturn’s moons — Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas — as seen from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft [image credit: NASA/JPL]

Enceladus is in a 2:1 resonance with a moon named Dione, but Tethys – another major moon of Saturn – orbits between them and is in a 1:2 resonance with Mimas, whose orbit lies inside that of Enceladus. So the order of proximity to the planet is Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione. The study looks at how the Enceladus-Dione part of this unusual set-up could have come into being. Talking of speed, all four moons orbit their very large planet in less than three days (Mimas in less than one day).
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Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, is currently being tugged around and heated up by another moon named Dione, says AAS Nova.

How the two ended up in this arrangement is a mystery, since to get there, Enceladus must have avoided getting caught up in a resonance with another moon named Tethys.

A recent article offers a possible explanation: Enceladus may have blitzed over to its current position in a short-lived burst of speed.

Dynamic Moons
We typically imagine that moons circle their host planets with clockwork regularity, meaning that they precisely trace out the same path at the same speed for all time. However, true reality cannot be described by a system composed of rigid gears.

Do human greenhouse gas emissions cause significant climate change? Two new papers have serious doubts

Climate hype

The Manhattan Contrarian takes a look at some recently published research. The author of the article says ‘Data appears to refute, and certainly does not prove the endlessly repeated claims of impending climate doom from CO2 emissions’. (First part of article omitted below. See links provided for more about the studies and further discussion).
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The climate science community calls its system for establishing causation “detection and attribution” studies, says Francis Menton (via Climate Change Dispatch).

The basic idea is to come up with a model (i.e., a hypothesis) that predicts global warming based on increased greenhouse gases, and then collect data that show a very close match between what the model predicted and the data.

Correlation with the model’s predictions is the claimed proof of causation. There are hundreds of such studies in the climate literature.

Strange anomaly in sun’s solar cycle discovered in centuries-old texts from Korea

Perhaps we should be looking out for an anomalously short solar cycle to provide support for predictions of an approaching return to
cooler planetary conditions? The aurora-based result doesn’t appear in the 2021 tree ring study reported here, which goes back as far as AD 969.
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The sun’s solar cycles were once around three years shorter than they are today, a new analysis of centuries-old Korean chronicles reveals.

This previously unknown anomaly occurred during a mysterious solar epoch known as the “Maunder Minimum,” more than 300 years ago, says LiveScience.

The sun is constantly in a state of flux. Our home star cycles through periods of increased activity, known as solar maximum, when solar storms become more frequent and powerful, as well as spells of reduced activity, known as solar minimum, when solar storms almost completely disappear.

Carbon dioxide ‘pollution’ nonsense reaches record high

Photosynthesis [image credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

Funny how plants, trees, vegetation etc. rely on ‘pollution’ for photosynthesis, according to so-called climate science. Meanwhile the costly renewables craze mandated by politicians can’t even keep pace with the inexorable global rise in demand for coal, oil and gas.
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Global emissions of planet-heating carbon dioxide [Talkshop comment – a tiny 0.04% of the atmosphere] are expected to rise around one percent to reach a new all-time high in 2023, the climate scientist behind the preliminary research said Tuesday.

Scientists say carbon pollution will need to be cut almost in half this decade to meet the world’s targets of limiting global warming and avoiding catastrophic climate impacts, parrots Phys.org.

Global CO2 emissions should be falling by around five percent this year, said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO climate research institute in Norway.

Instead they have continued to rise, according to his research, with current expectations that the year will see emissions up between 0.5 percent and 1.5 percent.

Beer faces unbitter future due to climate change, study claims

Another day, another manufactured climate scare! This time it features a popular (in the UK and Ireland at least) style of beer, but before crying bitter tears, note the last sentence of the article: ‘Brewers can also try to modify their methods to adapt to the reduced bitterness in hops’.
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Climate change threatens the cultivation in Europe of aromatic hops which gives beer its bitterness, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

European varieties of hops are prized and used by brewers around the world, but rising temperatures and less rain are reducing yields and the concentration of the compounds that provide beer its refreshing tartness, says Phys.org.

The researchers observed this trend by analyzing data from five sites in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Slovakia, which along with Poland are the primary hops growers in Europe, study co-author Miroslav Trnka said.