An increase in the number of extreme cold days in North China during 2003–2012, research finds

The researchers wrestle with the non-correlation of extreme winter weather events and the monotonic increase in CO2 levels, offering a verdict of ‘probable’ natural variation. They try to support IPCC climate assertions, but the article keeps saying ‘however’. One of the study’s authors says: “This is still a challenging issue that needs further exploration to quantify the relative contributions of natural variability and human activity to regional extreme events.”
– – –
A recent study by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, presents robust interdecadal changes in the number of extreme cold days in winter over North China during 1989–2021, and the findings have been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, says EurekAlert.

Specifically, the number of extreme cold days increased around the year 2003 and then decreased around the year 2013, with a value of 8.7 days per year during 1989–2002, 13.5 during 2003–2012, and 6.6 during 2013–2021.

During 2003–2012, the Siberian–Ural High strengthened and the polar jet stream weakened, which favored frequent cold air intrusion into North China, inducing more extreme cold days. In addition, the intensity of extreme cold days in North China showed no significant difference in the three periods.

Can volcanic super eruptions lead to major cooling? Study suggests no

The research came up with ‘relatively modest temperature changes’. One NASA atmospheric scientist commented: “To me, this is another example of why geoengineering via stratospheric aerosol injection is a long, long way from being a viable option.” (Here’s another one). Climate alarmists can imagine doing some things, but so can Hollywood scriptwriters.
– – –
New research suggests that sunlight-blocking particles from an extreme eruption would not cool surface temperatures on Earth as severely as previously estimated, says Phys.org.

Some 74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano in Indonesia exploded with a force 1,000 times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The mystery is what happened after that—namely, to what degree that extreme explosion might have cooled global temperatures.

When it comes to the most powerful volcanoes, researchers have long speculated how post-eruption global cooling—sometimes called volcanic winter—could potentially pose a threat to humanity.

Weird dent in Earth’s magnetic field is messing with auroras in the Southern Hemisphere

The South Atlantic Anomaly is an interesting phenomenon, which varies over time and may be related to a zone of unusually dense rock.
– – –
A bizarre dent in Earth’s magnetic field above the southern Atlantic Ocean weakens the southern lights, new research finds.

The South Atlantic Anomaly is a large, oval-shaped region over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean where Earth’s magnetic field is weakest, says Live Science.

The anomaly is already well known for allowing charged particles from the sun to dip close to Earth’s surface, exposing satellites orbiting above to high levels of ionizing radiation, according to NASA.

Why atmospheric geoengineering is dead in the water

Another idea for slaying imaginary climate dragons runs into trouble, as new research finds ‘an intervention that cools the air would not be able to cool the deep ocean on the same timescale’. So for believers in a climate crisis the desired short-term effectiveness just isn’t there.
– – –
Climate change is heating the oceans, altering currents and circulation patterns responsible for regulating climate on a global scale [Talkshop comment – empty assertions]. If temperatures dropped, some of that damage could theoretically [sic] be undone.

But employing “emergency” atmospheric geoengineering later this century in the face of continuous high carbon emissions would not be able to reverse changes to ocean currents, a new study finds.

This would critically curtail the intervention’s potential effectiveness on human-relevant timescales.

Oceans, especially the deep oceans, absorb and lose heat more slowly than the atmosphere, so an intervention that cools the air would not be able to cool the deep ocean on the same timescale, the authors found.

Flying laboratory measuring cloud chemistry above Australia aims to improve climate model predictions

The German scientists are engaged in an ongoing project intended to help refine climate modelling. One sums up their approach: “To predict it, we really need to understand it.” But ideally that understanding, if or when it occurs, should have preceded many of the dire claims already put forward that the global climate is going downhill due to human activities. Such biases could be a hindrance to research.
– – –
A team of German scientists have been circling the skies above northern Australia and the Pacific Ocean in a high-tech research aircraft studying the atmospheric chemistry occurring above the clouds, says ABC News.

The Chemistry of the Atmosphere: Field Experiment (CAFE) team has tracked weather events and taken samples and measurements up to 15 kilometres above sea level.

Professor Mira Pöhlker from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research and Max Planck Institute for Chemistry said the team’s research would help refine weather and climate models leading to better forecasts and projections.

Is tree planting overrated as a climate benefit? Researchers think so

Nature’s carbon cycle carries on regardless.
– – –
Roughly a third of the climate cooling that forests achieve by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere is offset through changes to atmospheric composition and decreased surface reflectivity, researchers report.

The findings suggest that the benefits of wide-scale forestation efforts may be overestimated and do not represent a single solution for addressing climate change, says EurekAlert.

They also highlight the urgency of simultaneously focusing on emissions reductions. Planting trees has been widely promoted as a nature-based solution to remove anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere to help mitigate ongoing climate warming.

However, wide-scale forest expansion may drive feedbacks within the Earth system that lead to warming.

When the global climate has the hiccups – ‘repeated rapid increases in temperature’

Promoters of a current ‘climate crisis’ often call modern warming and/or events within it, ‘unprecedented’. However, compared to events like this: “A Neanderthal would have experienced increases in the average temperature of several degrees over the course of their life” [explains Prof.], not much is presently going on. Climate variability can happen in different ways, and repeat over long timescales.
– – –
In recent geological history, the so-called Quaternary period, there have been repeated ice ages and warm periods, says Science Daily.

Researchers are able to determine past climate variability from the composition of climate records. In the case of the last glacial period 100,000 years ago, ice cores from Greenland in particular provide researchers with detailed data.

For example, Greenland ice cores show that there were repeated rapid increases in temperature.

“We are talking about increases of 5 to 10 degrees within 30 to 40 years on average in the case of Europe. A Neanderthal would have experienced increases in the average temperature of several degrees over the course of their life,” explains Prof. Dominik Fleitmann, Professor of Quaternary Geology at the University of Basel.

He calls the phenomena “climate hiccups.”

These Dansgaard-Oeschger events are well documented for the last glacial period, but the climate records from Greenland only cover the last 120,000 years.

It was therefore previously unknown whether these Dansgaard-Oeschger events also occurred during the penultimate glacial period 135,000 to 190,000 years ago.

Frederick Held, a PhD candidate in Fleitmann’s research group, was able to show that Dansgaard-Oeschger events also occurred during the penultimate glacial period using isotopic measurements on stalagmites.

He is the lead author of the study which was published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

The North Atlantic as the source of change

The stalagmites examined originate from the Sofular Cave in Turkey, which is located in a region that is very sensitive to climate change.

The researchers therefore refer to it as a key region, as it is influenced by the winds of the North Atlantic and the Black Sea is just a few kilometers away.

“We used the isotopic composition in the stalagmites to determine the moisture sources from which they are formed — the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic,” explains Frederick Held.

For the first time, the evaluations carried out on the stalagmites from the Sofular Cave have proven that Dansgaard-Oeschger events also occurred during the penultimate glacial period.

“It was previously unknown whether these relatively brief temperature events actually happened in earlier glacial periods,” states Held.

However, they occurred less frequently in the penultimate glacial period than in the last one: “The temperature peaks are twice as far apart from one another, meaning there were longer cold phases between them.”

These temperature fluctuations originate in the North Atlantic, as the circulation of the ocean is a global conveyor belt for heat and can sometimes be stronger and sometimes weaker.

“For example, the circulation affects the exchange of heat between the atmosphere and the ocean, which, in turn, impacts the balance of heat in the Northern Hemisphere and air flows and rainfall,” explains Held.

He states that weakened circulation also reduces the quantity of CO2 which the ocean absorbs from the atmosphere.

These ocean currents were different in the penultimate glacial period than in the last one, which explains the different intervals between the Dansgaard-Oeschger events.

This shows that not all glacial periods are the same and not all warm periods are the same.
. . .
The geologist also hopes to clarify any outstanding questions by means of additional analyses. “For example, we do not yet know whether the increases in temperature were periodic or stochastic, in other words random.”

Full article here.

Image: Greenland ice core [credit: K. Makinson @ Wikipedia]

CO2 goes quantum in new research paper

CO2 is not pollution

Extracts from an article on this, below. This is just a heads-up that the paper is about to be published. Pre-print version here, title: Fermi Resonance and the Quantum Mechanical Basis of Global Warming.
– – –
The reason why CO2 is so good at trapping heat [Talkshop comment – according to some theorists] essentially boils down to the way the three-atom molecule vibrates as it absorbs infrared radiation from the Sun, asserts The Conversation (via Science Alert).

“It is remarkable,” Harvard University planetary scientist Robin Wordsworth and colleagues write in their new preprint, “that an apparently accidental quantum resonance in an otherwise ordinary three-atom molecule has had such a large impact on our planet’s climate over geologic time, and will also help determine its future warming due to human activity.”

When hit with incoming rays of light at certain wavelengths, CO2 molecules don’t just jiggle about as one fixed unit as you might expect. Rather, CO2 molecules – which are made up of one carbon atom flanked by two oxygens – bend and stretch in certain ways.

Clouds disappear quickly during a solar eclipse, shows study – ‘a warning for climate engineering’

The research, titled ‘Clouds dissipate quickly during solar eclipses as the land surface cools’, suggests interfering with solar radiation to try and weaken natural warming would be even riskier than previously thought.
– – –
Cumulus clouds over land start to disappear almost instantly during a partial solar eclipse, says Phys.org.

Until recently, satellite measurements during the eclipse resulted in dark spots in the cloud map, but researchers from TU Delft and KNMI were able to recover the satellite measurements by using a new method.

The results may have implications for proposed climate engineering ideas because disappearing clouds can partly oppose the cooling effect of artificial solar eclipses.

Temperatures are rising, but soil is getting wetter, confounding climate theorists

One overlooked factor was the CO2 fertilization effect in plant photosynthesis. The researchers found that “it’s virtually impossible to predict soil moisture in the coming decades”, contrary to some alarmist notions about future droughts.
– – –
Soil moisture can determine how quickly a wildfire spreads, how fast a hill turns into a mudslide and, perhaps most importantly, how productive our food systems are, says Eurekalert.

As temperatures rise due to human-caused climate change [Talkshop comment – evidence-free assertion of cause], some researchers are concerned that soils will dry.

However, between 2011 to 2020, soil moisture increased across 57% of the United States during summer, the warmest time of year.

Why did soil get wetter even as the planet got hotter?

Satellite traffic jams ahead?

Will Satellite Megaconstellations Weaken Earth’s Magnetic Field?

– – –
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.
– – –
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?
– – –
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.
– – –
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’.
– – –
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.
– – –
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.
– – –
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?
– – –
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.
– – –
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.
– – –
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.