Self-isolation proves a boon to rainfall project

OCR software isn’t up to the job apparently. Let’s hope they don’t resort to data ‘adjustments’ after all the public’s efforts. Rain is a popular topic in the UK.

Scientists have been amazed at the public’s response to help digitise the UK’s old rainfall records, reports BBC News.

Handwritten numbers on documents dating back 200 years are being transferred to a spreadsheet format so that computers can analyse past weather patterns.

The volunteers blitzed their way through rain gauge data from the 1950s, 40s and 30s in just four days.

Project leader Prof Ed Hawkins had suggested the work might be a good way for people to use self-isolation time.

“It’s been incredible. I thought we might get this far after three or four weeks, not three or four days,” he told BBC News.

England’s water resource muddle

Mixed messages ahead. Can anyone explain the apparent discrepancies?

The UK Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs has issued a warning: large areas of England will face significant risk of drought due to climate change, and water companies need to find billions of extra liters per day by 2050 to keep up, reports New Atlas.

But days earlier we had this from the Met Office Press Office:
Climate change to bring heavier rainfall events.

Flashback to 2009: Researchers Say Sun Cycle Alters Earth’s Climate

Variation in solar activity during a recent sunspot cycle [credit: Wikipedia]

This seems worth another airing in the face of today’s insistent, but evidence-light, claims from climate obsessives that the world’s present and future weather is going to be largely determined by human activities.

If the energy from the sun varies by only 0.1 percent during the 11-year solar cycle, could such a small variation drive major changes in weather patterns on Earth? – asks Universe Today.

Yes, say researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) who used more than a century of weather observations and three powerful computer models in their study.

They found subtle connections between solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean that work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe.

Scientists say this will help in predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance.

Germany’s weather service starts ten-year forecast ‘to improve climate adaptation’

Credit: geologycafe.com [click on image to enlarge]

That’s the idea anyway. They expect warmer weather to lead to drier conditions upto 2025. Perhaps a bit odd on the face of it, as the steamy tropics have rainforests whereas icy Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth.
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A new decade-long weather forecast made by Germany’s Meteorological Service (DWD) is supposed to improve the country’s climate change adaptation capabilities, says Clean Energy Wire.

“Our new forecast for the next ten years fills the gap between existing climate forecasts for the next months and long-term climate projections until the end of the century,” said DWD climatology head Tobias Fuchs.

The forecast project, supported by Germany’s research ministry, could be used by policymakers, business leaders and others to adapt their investment decisions to climate change, he added.

Get Ready for Sprite Season

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Includes a beginner’s guide to the various types of sprite now known to occur.

Spaceweather.com

March 7, 2020: Sprite season is coming. Spring thunderstorms often produce the year’s first big bursts of upward-directed lightning. To get ready, Puerto Rican sprite chaser Frankie Lucena has prepared a chart to identify the different forms, including a newly-discovered type of sprite called “the Ghost.”

“This chart provides just a glimpse of what can be seen and photographed above very strong thunderstorms,” says Lucena. “I used actual images, enhanced and slightly modified to better show what they actually look like.”

“This is the first chart to show the Ghost and a Negative Sprite event,” he continues. “The Ghost is a green colored shadow that appears above some sprites. The green color is caused by electrons exciting oxygen molecules in the mesosphere, approximately 80 km high. A Negative Sprite is triggered by a -CG lightning discharge as opposed to a regular sprite which is triggered by a +CG lightning discharge.”…

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ARCTIC SEA ICE –Icebreaker Trapped Resupplying MOSAiC–

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The MOSAiC crowd ignored the fact they would be in the Arctic at solar minimum, and a deeper than usual one at that. Here’s the result.

Sunrise's Swansong

In my last post I mentioned that the Russian icebreaker  Kapitan Dranitsyn had to battle thick sea-ice to resupply the Polarstern at the MOSAiC site. Contact was successful, and cranes began to  unload and load supplies that were hauled by tractor between the two ships.

A fresh crew of scientists relieved the crew that has been working there.

With temperatures down around -30ºC, the open water in the wake of the Kapitan Dranitsyn froze over swiftly. Men could walk on the new ice within 24 hours.

By the time the transfer of men and supplies was complete the ship was frozen so fast it could not extract itself. The news is now that the Russians are sending a second icebreaker, the Admiral Makarov, to help the first icebreaker free itself. (Note the twilight in the above picture. The are located close enough to the Pole to see a very swift…

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Storm Dennis: Minister says climate change means government can’t protect everyone from flooding

Image credit: Newsyworld

Not sure where the 90 mph winds were supposed to be (the report says ‘parts of the UK’), but it has been blustery on and off for a few days. Enough for politicians to raise the spectre of ‘climate change’ once again, anyway. The video of an A380 Airbus making a hairy ‘crab’ landing at Heathrow, ending on the grass off the main runway, gives some indication of wind strength.

One reporter jokingly suggested watching the massive plane struggling to get on the ground could help climate campaigners, by putting people off flying altogether.
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Storm Dennis battered the UK with flooding, heavy rain and 90mph winds at the weekend.

A minister has said climate change means the government cannot protect every household from flooding, reports Yahoo News.

New environment minister George Eustice claimed the government had not been caught off-guard by the floods caused by Storm Dennis.

Met Office forecasters set for ‘billion pound’ supercomputer

A beefier computer is still just a computer. The report says ‘Around half of the processing work – the research devoted to climate change – could be located in countries blessed with easy sources of clean energy. Iceland with its geothermal sources and Norway with its hydropower are both possibilities’.

Ever wondered why your village was suddenly flooded by a thunderstorm the weather forecasters hadn’t mentioned? Or why they failed to warn you about the dense fog shrouding your home in the morning?

The fact is that predicting the “big picture” of future conditions has got a lot better – Storm Dennis was spotted six days before it arrived, says BBC News.

But getting local forecasts right – street by street and hour by hour – is still a massive challenge.

And that might now change as the Met Office secures the help of a supercomputer project costing £1.2bn.

On Cue — After Droughts And Fires, Then Come The Floods

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Once again old-fashioned weather has blown up in the faces of know-it-all climate alarm propagandists.

PA Pundits - International

From the team at CFACT ~

By Joanne Nova~

So much for the “hotter drier” Australian future they were warning us about 3 weeks ago.

As predicted, droughts in Australia often end in floods. It is the way it has always been. Today people are already being rescued from the rising water and possibly another 200 -300mm of rain may fall before Sunday warns the BOM. Many fires have been extinguished.

Climate change has made no difference to the drought trends in Australia in the last 178 years and climate models are totally skilless at rainfall. When will the climate modelers admit that these are natural cycles?

‘We’re only half way through’: East coast smashed by flashflooding and heavy winds

Forecasters become increasingly concerned that even more rain could fall even faster than expected as five people have been rescued from floods.

The NSW State Emergency Service issued a…

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Venice canals almost run dry just two months after flooding

Low tide in Venice

This so-called man-made climate change thing must be a versatile beast, if it exists outside of myths. Wednesday’s rare super blue blood moon gets some of the blame here, but recent low rainfall also played a part.

Although the water levels in the city’s famous canals rise and fall with the tide, exceptionally low tides have left canals bare, reports Sky News.

Two months ago the high tide in Venice peaked at 187cm (6.14ft), leaving around 70% of the lagoon city centre under salt water.

Australian Bushfires Much Worse In 1974/5

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Note to climate doomers: weather can, and does, vary without assistance from humans.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

An important and, as usual, forensic contribution from Roy Spencer:

Summary Points

1) Global wildfire activity has decreased in recent decades, making any localized increase (or decrease) in wildfire activity difficult to attribute to ‘global climate change’.

2) Like California, Australia is prone to bushfires every year during the dry season. Ample fuel and dry weather exists for devastating fires each year, even without excessive heat or drought, as illustrated by the record number of hectares burned (over 100 million) during 1974-75 when above-average precipitation and below-average temperatures existed.

3) Australian average temperatures in 2019 were well above what global warming theory can explain, illustrating the importance of natural year-to-year variability in weather patterns (e.g. drought and excessively high temperatures).

4) Australia precipitation was at a record low in 2019, but climate models predict no long-term trend in Australia precipitation, while the observed trend has been upward…

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Claim: newly identified jet-stream pattern could imperil global food supplies

Omega blocking highs can remain in place for several days or even weeks [image credit: UK Met Office]

Another day, another attempt at a climate scare story. That’s a well-identified pattern too. But is this jet-stream pattern really ‘newly’ identified, or was it described by NASA nine years ago? Meteorology uses the term omega block. Which side of the block a region is on determines whether it’s warmer or colder than normal for the duration.

Scientists have identified systematic meanders in the globe-circling northern jet stream that have caused simultaneous crop-damaging heat waves in widely separated breadbasket regions-a previously unquantified threat to global food production that, they say, could worsen with global warming.

The research shows that certain kinds of waves in the atmospheric circulation can become amplified and then lock in place for extended periods, triggering the concurrent heat waves, reports Phys.org.

Affected parts of North America, Europe and Asia together produce a quarter of the world food supply. The study appears this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Saturn’s moon Titan may help decode climate change on Earth: Study

View from Titan [artist’s impression]

From the report: ‘the researchers said, learning more about the energy budget of Titan can add to the understanding of climate change on Earth.’ Indeed – and help could be at hand with that.

Researchers have found that Saturn’s largest moon Titan undergoes significant seasonal changes in its energy budget — the amount of solar energy it absorbs, and the heat it emits — an advance that may lead to new insights about climate fluctuations on the Earth, reports Financial Express.

The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, noted that Titan is the only body in the solar system, other than Earth, with a significant atmosphere and liquid surface lakes.

The researchers, including those from the University of Houston in the US, said Titan’s dynamically-varying energy budget has important impacts on its weather and climate systems.

Study Shows Electric Cars Become Practically Useless In Cold Weather

Teslas in Norway [image credit: Norsk Elbilforening (Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association)]

EVs are looking like yet another ‘save the planet’ fiasco in the making. Some of the points made here were already known, but these studies reinforce them. As many EVs on the road are still relatively new, the full extent of any problems may not yet be clear. With the help of large subsidies and other incentives they sell well in Norway despite the cold winters there.

According to recent studies, cold temperatures significantly reduce the performance of electric cars, especially when it comes to battery life.

One study by AAA suggested that cold temperatures can reduce the range of the batteries in most electric cars by over 40 percent, reports Anonymous News.

It was also noted that the performance can be even worse when the interior heaters are used.

Indo-Pacific Ocean warming is changing global rainfall patterns, say researchers

It’s ‘according to a new study’ time again, as the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) goes under the microscope. Another causes and effects puzzle.

New research by NOAA and a visiting scientist from India shows that warming of the Indo-Pacific Ocean is altering rainfall patterns from the tropics to the United States, contributing to declines in rainfall on the United States west and east coasts, reports Phys.org.

In a study published this week in the journal Nature, researchers report a doubling in the size of a warm pool of water spanning the western Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean in recent years.

This Indo-Pacific warm pool in what is already the warmest part of the global ocean is expanding each year by an area the size of California.

‘Stay put,’ officials warn: Winter storms slam US as 50 million people travel for Thanksgiving

Credit: BBC News

One minor problem with that Yahoo News headline – it isn’t even winter yet.

Two powerful winter storms hammered the West Coast and Midwest on Wednesday, shutting down highways and snarling travel plans on one of the nation’s busiest travel days.

Weather watches, warnings and alerts were posted across much of the western half of the nation after a storm that had been a “bomb cyclone” marched westward from the California coast, AccuWeather reported.

Hundreds of stranded cars were removed from Interstate 5 headed north from California into Oregon in the aftermath of the storm that dumped snow and created whiteout conditions on both sides of the California-Oregon border.

Pielke Jr.: Just the facts on hurricanes

Hurricane Katrina [image credit: NASA]

In his own style the author tries to point out some of the excesses of climate hotheads who often prefer cries of alarm to observations based on reality. [Below are a few extracts from the full Forbes article].

Summary: Hurricanes have come to occupy a starring role in the political theater that is climate change. As a result, sorting fact from fiction can be difficult.
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The 2019 North Atlantic hurricane season ends officially later this week. Here I am going to give you the straight scoop on hurricanes.

Everything that follows is fully consistent with recent scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, U.S. National Climate Assessment and World Meteorological Organization.

In fact, the information below comes straight out of these authoritative assessment reports.

Chris Martz: No, global warming is not causing more frequent Arctic outbreaks

Credit: weather.com

By what known physics could a few molecules of carbon dioxide upset the jet stream? A meteorologist is not impressed by such claims.

By Chris Martz | November 9, 2019
INTRODUCTION Just when wildfires weren’t enough, we now have people blaming cold weather on a warming climate, which seems quite contradictory.

In light of the Arctic outbreak in forecast this coming week, people like Phil Plait (who has since blocked me) took to Twitter (Figure 1) to claim that man-made climate change is causing frigid, Arctic air to be displaced south into the United States, Europe, and Asia.

His argument, which is supported by some climate scientists, suggests that man-made global warming causes the polar jet stream to destabilize causing it to become wavy rather than zonal, sending Arctic air southward into the mid-latitude regions.

He also stated that without global warming, the polar air would stay near the north pole.

Both of these claims are exactly backwards from reality and are not supported by weather dynamics, the global warming theory, or statistical observations in long-term temperature data.

Electric-Car Owners Hard Hit by Massive California Power Shutdown

Smoke from a California wildfire [image credit: BBC]

Drastic loss of mobility. Recharging directly from solar panels is not an option either.

Tesla’s Elon Musk promises battery and solar solutions for the many EV owners who can’t charge their cars, reports Yahoo News.
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From Car and Driver

— Nearly a million Californians are now without power as the electric company deliberately shut it off this week, fearing high winds would spark wildfire.

— The affected area in Northern California surrounds Fremont, home of Tesla, and a great many electric-car owners who can’t charge their vehicles as usual.

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.