By: Ken Gregory, BASc.

 

CliSci # 416                                        2024-09-16

 

Friends of Science Special Event – October 1, 2024

Randy Stubbings has more than 40 years experience as a professional engineer in the Alberta electricity industry. He discusses the challenges of achieving reliability, affordability and net zero emissions. Randy also asks fundamental questions about what we are trying to accomplish as we struggle to be climate leaders in the race to Net Zero. What are the costs? What are the expected benefits? What are the pitfalls? See our promotional video about this special event. Tickets are $20 for Friends of Science members and $25 for non-members.

For more information and to purchase tickets click on this Link.

 

Africa Prospers Despite Gloom from the UK’s ‘The Telegraph’

The Telegraph published an article claiming that climate change is causing people to emigrate from Africa to Europe, mostly due to drought. “Two years ago, for example, drought said to be exacerbated by climate change forced a million Somalis to leave their homes and look for food.” I looked at the Palmer Drought Severity Index for Africa accessed from Climate Explorer. The index indicates [see graph] generally wetter conditions 1955-1970, drier 1983-2015 and wetter during 2017-2023. In Somalia and eastern Ethiopia has generally been getting wetter from 1992 to 2023 [see graph]. So drought is not a cause of recent emigration. Paul Homewood wrote, “Meanwhile back in the real world, Africa continues to enjoy ever increasing food production, longer lives, record low deaths from malnutrition and steadily growing GDP. All of this has been made possible by fossil fuels.” He presents graph showing African cereal production increased from 50 million tonnes in 1965 to 218 million tonnes in 2022. Life expectancy increased from 37.6 years in 1950 to 61.7 years in 2021. Deaths from malnutrition decreased from 40 deaths per 100,000 in 1985 to 8.4 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021, and the gross domestic product increased from US$2.3 trillion in 2017 to 3.1 trillion in 2023.

 

Study Quantifies Germany’s Disastrous Switch Away From Nuclear Power

Germany launched an ambitious plan to transition to wind and solar power which resulted in a 25% reduction in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission from 2002 to 2022.    Following a major earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan, causing a nuclear accident beginning on 11 March 2011. There have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident, but there were about 19,500 people killed by the earthquake or tsunami. Nuclear power supplied one-fifth of Germany’s electricity in 2002. Following the nuclear accident, Germany phased out its fleet of safe, carbon-free nuclear power plants.     

A new analysis shows that if Germans simply maintained their 2002 fleet of reactors through 2022, they could have saved themselves roughly $600 billion Euros while having nearly identical reductions in CO₂ emissions. Wind and solar is very expensive because in addition to their construction costs, renewables required expensive grid upgrades and subsidies. If Germany had used the money spent on wind and solar power to instead construct new nuclear capacity then they would have “slashed carbon emissions a further 73% on top of their cuts in 2022, while simultaneously enjoying a savings of 330 billion Euros.

 

Florida Current Transport Observations Reveal Four Decades of Steady State

The media and many climate scientists have been warning of a slowing Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in response to global warming. It is alleged that this could cause a cooling of the northeast Atlantic Ocean. A recent study published in Nature shows that these fears are just the result of bad data. “A key AMOC component, the Florida Current (FC), has been measured using submarine cables between Florida and the Bahamas at 27°N nearly continuously since 1982.” The abstract says “Here, we reassess motion-induced voltages measured on a submarine cable and reevaluate the overall trend in the inferred FC transport. We find that the cable record beginning in 2000 requires a correction for the secular change in the geomagnetic field. This correction removes a spurious trend in the record, revealing that the FC has remained remarkably stable.” The voltage variations induced in the cable by the varying FC flow through the Earth’s magnetic field are calibrated into volume flow estimates using  PEGASUS acoustic current profilers, free-falling dropsonde floats, and with lowered and shipboard acoustic Doppler current profilers. Before correction, the FC flow rate record exhibited a small negative trend from 1982 of about −0.4 ± 0.2 Sv per decade, but was -0.7 ± 0.4 Sv/decade from 2000 to 2023, where 1 Sv = 10⁶ m³/s. The north magnetic pole has moved from the Canadian Archipelago towards Russia over the last century, and it is now located about 450 km away from the geographic North Pole. Applying the correction to account for the change in the geomagnetic field, the FC flow trend from 2000 to 2023 changed to 0.0 ± 0.3 Sv/decade and the overall FC 1982-2023 trend changed to -0.1 ± 0.2 Sv per decade. The trend is statistically insignificant. This result impacts the recently made assertion of the robust weakening of the FC. The use of the corrected FC transport time series reduces the negative trend in the AMOC from 2004 to 2022 by about 40% and makes it only marginally significant in the statistical sense.

 

This Hurricane Season is Confounding Experts and Defying Forecasts

The 2024 hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 to November 30, was forecast to be extremely active but instead the Atlantic has been strangely calm.  The Colorada State University released its forecast in April 2024 of 11 Atlantic hurricanes including 5 major (category 3+) hurricanes. A CCN Meteorologist wrote (Sept. 6) “Despite ideal conditions that fueled pre-season predictions of upwards of 20 named storms, the immediate prospects for one are low, and none have formed in the Atlantic since Ernesto in mid-August – a streak unmatched in 56 years.” The conditions are ideal for hurricane development. There are warm ocean water, minimal upper winds and plenty of moist air, but the storms aren’t happening. The African monsoon is charged with lots of moisture, which can delay tropical storm development. It turns out there’s a Goldilocks zone for hurricanes –This new study found that dry conditions will starve thunderstorms of the fuel they need, but too much can make them so messy that they can’t organize into a cyclone. The abstract says “African easterly waves which can serve as tropical cyclone precursors, remain an active area of research. … We found that more moisture can intensify the West African Monsoon system, but shifts the African easterly jet (the source of energy for AEWs) further north inhibiting wave growth over land. … More moisture results in less favorable types of clouds close to the wave, which weakens the system.”

US meteorologist Ryan Maue suspects the reasons for the lack to tropical storms and hurricanes include the eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano or a lot of Saharan dust over the Atlantic. Maue wrote “Our models no longer work, forecasters can't figure it out.  This is not normal. … The massive submarine Hunga Tonga volcano in 2022 is the obvious culprit for tampering with the Hadley Cell and ITCZ.” The Sahel region is currently experiencing rare heavy rainfall. There is an “anomalous northward shift of African monsoon and ITCZ into the Sahel. “ [ITCZ is the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone.]

 

Critique: Roles of Earth’s Albedo Variations and Top-of-the-Atmosphere Energy Imbalance in Recent Warming

This new paper by Ned Nikolov and Karl F. Zeller point out the importance of the recent declining albedo to global warming, but it also contains major errors. The abstract  says “Here, we quantify the effect of the observed albedo decrease on Earth’s Global Surface Air Temperature (GSAT) since 2000 using measurements by the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) project .…” The author report that according to CERES observations, the Earth’s all-sky albedo has declined by 0.79% from March 2000 to 2023 causing an increase of solar radiation absorption of 2.7 W/m².

The authors convert that flux to temperature using an equation derived from a curve fitted to the ratio of the average surface temperature (Tb in the paper) to the calculated temperature without an atmosphere (Tna) versus atmospheric pressure of 3 planets and 3 moons. The authors assume that a surface temperature change is due to only a change in incoming solar radiation and a change of albedo, which is the ratio of reflected solar to incoming solar. That is, no greenhouse gas induced warming is considered. This leads to a modeled surface temperature trend from changes of albedo and incoming solar of 0.24 °C/decade, while the observed trend in 0.23 °C/decade. The authors conclude that solar and albedo forcing explains the entire multi-decadal warming trend from 2000 to 2023. Note that they assume the temperature is determined only by absorbed solar energy, and then calculate that the recent temperature trend is due to only the trend of absorbed solar energy, which circular reasoning. This means that the conclusion is invalid.

A planet without greenhouse gases (GHG) would not have an elevated surface temperature (Tb/Tna > 1).  If GHG on Earth were replace with the same mass of N2, Earth's surface temperature would be much colder. Pressure by itself can't cause an elevated surface temperature. Pumping up a flat tire causes the tire to warm up because the compressor is adding energy, but soon after the tire is inflated, the tire returns to the temperature of the surrounding air. Likewise, a planet without GHG would have the same temperature as the planet would have without any atmosphere.  Gravity caused the pressure gradient. Gravity and GHG together causes the Earth's tropospheric temperature gradient, or lapse rate, about -6.5 °C/km. Without GHG, there can't be a temperature gradient, and there can't be a greenhouse effect without a temperature gradient. Radiative transfer by GHGs through the troposphere drives convection towards the lapse rate.

The centre of mass of the atmosphere corresponds to a height with a pressure of half that of the surface pressure. This is also exactly where the number of CO₂ molecules below and above is equal. Therefore you would expect this to approximately coincide with the effective emission height – but for a different reason. It is because above this level the IR ‘fog’ clears and photons can escape freely to space. It is not surprizing that a few planets and moons have elevated temperatures that roughly fit a curve of pressures. See this article by Clive Best.

The surface measurements are significantly affected by the urban heat island effect (UHIE). The surface temperature trend should be reduced to account for the UHIE. The first paragraph of the introduction says that figure 7.3 of the IPCC WG1 report shows a “positive trend in the Earth’s reflected solar radiation …” However, the figure's caption says " All flux anomalies are defined as positive downwards ... ". The authors of the paper apparently failed to read the caption to the figure and didn't realize that increasing values means decreasing solar reflection.

 

Correction to CliSci # 415

In the article “A Review of Challenges with Using the Natural Gas System for Hydrogen” of CliSci #415, I wrote “CO₂” instead of “CH₄” (methane) in two sentences. The corrected sentences with the changes in bold are; “The temperature at which H₂ becomes a liquid is far lower than natural gas, which is mostly CH₄, so it takes far more energy to create liquid H₂ than liquid CH₄. H₂ is much more reactive than CH₄.”

 

CliSci # 415                                        2024-09-04

 

Fijian Coral Reveals the Pacific Ocean Was As Warm 600 Years Ago

An international team of climate scientists have used a 627-year coral record from Fiji to reveal unprecedented insights into ocean temperatures and climate variability across the Pacific Ocean since 1370. The new coral record shows that the local ocean temperature was warm between 1380 and 1553, comparable to the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Ocean temperatures influence coral growth, and thus corals preserve records of past environmental conditions over centuries. This 627-year coral record (1370–1997) provides the longest continuous sea surface temperature reconstruction to date. The new record is based on a geochemical analysis of the Sr/Ca ratio in coral—a proxy for past ocean temperature. The data shows that natural climate variability is greater than previously believed, implying that a part of the recent warming is due to natural causes.

 

Atlantic Niña on the Verge of Developing

Since the beginning of June, sea surface temperature (SST) in the central equatorial Atlantic has been 0.5–1.0 degrees Celsius colder than average for this time of the year. If these cold conditions persist to the end of August, NOOA may declare an Atlantic Niña which is the cold phase of a natural climate pattern. The warmest waters of the year occur in spring, while the coolest waters of the year, below 25 °C, occur from July to August. This summer cooling is because of winds that act on the ocean surface. Driven by stronger solar heating, a rainfall band migrates northward during the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This causes southeasterly winds that drag surface waters away for the equator, which brings cold water from the deeper ocean to the surface.  2024 began with extremely warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Atlantic during February to March. Never before in the observed record has the eastern equatorial Atlantic swung so quickly from one to another extreme event. Reduced rainfall over the Sahel region, increased rainfall over the Gulf of Guinea, and seasonal shifts of the rainy season in northeastern South America have all been attributed to Atlantic Niño events.

 

Electric Buses Not a Panacea

Electric buses have suffered so many failures that many transit operators are taking them out of service. “The Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) may be the largest agency to have practically given up on electric buses. It pulled its 25-bus electric fleet out of service in 2021 when the buses were just five years old.” In early August the city of Seneca, South Carolina decided to shut down its electric bus fleet. After a few years of operation, two thirds of its expensive electric buses had broken down and the company that made them went bankrupt so parts are no longer available. Austin Texas has given up plans to electrify its bus fleet by 2030. Austin’s transit agency said that electric bus technology hasn’t progressed far enough to replace Diesels.

 

A Review of Challenges with Using the Natural Gas System for Hydrogen

Green hydrogen is often proposed for use as an energy carrier and for energy backup to intermittent wind and solar power.  Green hydrogen is created by electrolysis using wind and solar power. Governments are making efforts to pilot blending hydrogen into existing natural gas systems, many with the goal of eventually shifting to pure hydrogen. This paper reviews the suitability of using existing natural gas infrastructure for distribution of hydrogen. The review finds that a transition to pure hydrogen (H₂) is not possible without significant retrofits and replacements. Currently, 99% of dedicated H₂ production relies on fossil fuels. Renewable energy displacement or high methane emissions can make hydrogen applications worse for the climate in the near-term than the fossil fuel systems they are replacing. The heating value of H₂ by volume is 1/3 of natural gas. H₂ is the smallest molecule, so it can rapidly leak from infrastructure and permeate through materials. The temperature at which H₂ becomes a liquid is far lower than natural gas, which is mostly CH₄, so it takes far more energy to create liquid H₂ than liquid CH₄. H₂ is much more reactive than CH₄. It reacts with cement and is hard to store underground. H₂ leakage is more likely to reach a potential source of ignition within the range of ignitable mixture concentrations than natural gas. The climate warming potential of H₂ is 37 times more than CO₂ over a 20-year period.

H₂ accelerated fatigue cracking is the primary concern in converting existing natural gas pipelines for H₂ because the atoms diffuse into the steel. Pipe failure is of concern due to potential asphyxiation and fire and explosion. Consequently, there is a considerable risk of premature failure if natural gas pipes are repurposed for H₂ service. Natural gas appliances are incompatible with pure H₂ because of the physical and chemical differences between CH₄ and H₂. The risk of damage and injury due to fires and explosions would increase in frequency and severity if H₂ is used in homes.

 

Record Agricultural Yields Should Allay Climate Fear

Vijay Jayaraj writes “Countries all over the world are surpassing previous records for production of food crops. This is good news that stands in stark contrast to the apocalyptic picture that the media paints daily in reports on climate and weather.” Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition and holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences. “Because food is fundamental to human survival, even a slight increase in its price can significantly affect millions – even billions – of people.” Climate alarmists present climate change as the biggest threat to the world’s food security. However, in the real world, data show historically high crop production all over the globe. This is because climate change has aided in the proliferation of food crops, as well as other vegetation. In Africa, Zimbabwe produced a record 375,000 tons of wheat in 2022, making the country self-sufficient. The new record is 13 percent higher than the previous year. India is second only to China in wheat production. The Indian government reports that wheat production will reach an all-time high of 112 million tons in the 2022-23 crop year. Globally, there has been a steady increase in yields of wheat as measured in tons per hectare, with some of the highest being in China. Greater warmth has allowed for longer growing seasons and the cultivation of a wider variety of crops. Higher CO₂ concentrations have helped plants to photosynthesize more efficiently, resulting in increased growth and crop yields. This graph shows wheat yields of the world and four countries.

 

New Research May Lead to More Accurate Hurricane Forecasts

A new study shows that twice as many hurricanes form two days after the passing of large-scale atmospheric waves called Kelvin waves than in the days before. This finding may enable forecasters and emergency managers to anticipate clusters of hurricanes days to weeks in advance. The research team focused on a specific type of atmospheric wave, known as Kelvin Waves, which are massive waves over 1,000-miles long that travel in Earth’s atmosphere along the equator and significantly influence global rainfall patterns. Kelvin waves are now recognized for their role in increasing the likelihood of hurricane formation and triggering extreme rainfall events. This study uses an idealized modeling framework—called an aquaplanet—to uniquely isolate the effects of Kelvin waves on tropical storm formation. The simplified world without land or seasons acts like a lab and makes it easier to isolate the effects of Kelvin waves on hurricane formation. The abstract says “In contrast to previous studies, our results demonstrate that Kelvin waves modulate both kinematic and thermodynamic synoptic-scale conditions that are necessary for tropical cyclone formation. These results suggest that numerical models must capture the three-dimensional structure of Kelvin waves to produce accurate subseasonal predictions of tropical cyclone activity.”

 

CliSci # 414                                        2024-08-19

 

Energy Sound Bites on Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein

Alex Epstein published fossil fuel energy talking point in three parts. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

1. We must think about fossil fuels in a balanced way. Don’t ignore the huge positives or exaggerate the negatives. Many “experts” ignore that much of the world would starve without fertilizer from natural gas and oil-powered agricultural machines. We can’t just look at how warming increases heat waves; we also must look at lives saved from cold. The climate death rate has decreased by 98% over the last century as fossil fuel use has risen.
2. Only by using fossil fuels can 8 billion people have the energy they need to survive and flourish. Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective and scalable source of energy. They provide 80%+ of the world’s energy and are growing fast. Solar/wind only provide <6% of world energy and they depend on huge subsidies and 24/7 life support from reliable power. They can go near-zero at any time. Since Earth is naturally dangerous, we must use energy to make it safe. Fossil fuels make possible an unprecedented high quality of life. Thanks to cost-effective fossil fuels, extreme poverty has plummeted to <10% from 42% in 1980. Most of the world’s 8 billion people lack the energy they need to flourish. 1/3 of the world uses wood and animal dung for heating and cooking.
3. The climate positives of fossil fuels far outweigh the climate negatives. Warming saves far more lives from cold than it causes deaths from heat. Fossil fueled cooling and heating allows us to dramatically reduce the danger from excessive heat and cold, respectively. The climate death rate is 98% less than it was 100 years ago. The drought death rate is 99% less than it was 100 years ago due to fossil-fueled irrigation. Warming from CO₂ is concentrated in the coldest parts of the world during the coldest times (nighttime winter). Without fossil fuels, climate danger will get worse along with everything else.

 

Elevated CO₂ Concentrations Contribute to Greater Vegetation Growth and Water Availability

This new study explores the relationship between vegetation growth and water availability and its drivers in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes (equator to 60°N) between 1982 and 2015. The authors used a satellite-derived vegetation index (VI) and the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) to represent vegetation growth and water availability, respectively. The study found that most croplands and grasslands were constrained by water deficit and most forests were constrained by water surplus. The CO₂ fertilization effect has benefits for both vegetation growth and water use efficiency. The dominant driver of changes in the VI-PDSI correlation was atmospheric CO₂ in more than 45% of grid cells of size 0.1° × 0.1°. The results showed that 74%, 66%, and 66% of grid cells had a positive correlation between atmospheric CO₂ and vegetation growth for croplands, grasslands, and forests, respectively. There was hardly any correlation between CO₂ levels and drought. The study found that 68%, 53% and 75% of grid cells had a positive correlation between atmospheric CO₂ and water use efficiency for croplands, grasslands and forests, respectively. Increasing CO₂ concentrations played an important role in improving the water use efficiency thereby enhancing water availability.

 

Antarctic Cold Spells Shattered Records in July-August, 2023

Extreme cold temperatures were observed across most of Antarctica in July and August 2023, adversely impacting aircraft operations into McMurdo Station and Phoenix Airfield. With temperatures below −50 °C, safe flight operation was not possible because of the risk of failing hydraulics and fuel turning to gel onboard the aircraft. Examination of composite geopotential height anomalies during each of four cold phases suggests various factors leading to cold temperatures, including both southerly flows from the continent and calm atmospheric conditions. Thirteen weather stations recorded record low temperatures. The Margaret station recorded -66.4 °C on August 21, 2023, 1.7 °C colder than the previous record set in July 18, 2017.  The highest point, Kunlun Station, recorded its lowest temperature ever observed at -79.4°C, which was about 5°C lower than the monthly average," added Prof. Minghu Ding from State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences.

 

Offshore Wind Turbines May Kill You

Allen Brooks wrote for RealClear Energy “The monster wind turbines erected off the East Coast create problems for airplanes flying into and out of coastal airports. The issues are so serious that planes could crash, and people could die.” Radar interference creates the greatest risk for humans, affecting both maritime vessels and aircraft. The U.K. commissioned its first farm in 2000 off the Northumberland coast and operated until being decommissioned in 2019. Wind turbine radar interference was discovered soon after commercial-scale wind farms were built. The issue was initially addressed by repositioning turbines to provide wider spacing and by blanking areas of the radar to improve visualization. However, radar clutter – the unwanted return (echoes) from the wind turbine blades – was not eliminated by the placement adjustments and blanking. It was thought that new radar technology could reduce the radar clutter issue to manageable levels. In 2007, a US Department of Defense study concluded “Utility class wind farms could have a significant impact on radars, including the missile defense early warning radars…” The Coast Guard has noted that radar interference will prevent it from conducting search-and-rescue operations within wind farms. Additionally, the Coast Guard cannot use low-flying helicopters in wind farms to search for missing vessels or people. The radar clutter is known to impair the ability to detect, monitor, and safely conduct air operations. A government working group was formed in 2014 to study the wind turbine radar interference problem. It reported in 2023 that “there is no single solution. Wind turbine-radar interference issues are complex, and a full resolution may be difficult to achieve.”

 

Sea Ice Choke Points Reduce the Length of the Shipping Season in the Northwest Passage

This new paper analyzes recent changes to shipping season lengths along individual sections of the Northwest Passage (NWP) routes from 2007 to 2021. The NWP comprises of a southern shallow water route which passes to the south of Victoria Island, and the northern deep-water route which extends through the Parry Channel. The paper’s abstract says “Results show that multi-year ice flushed southward from high-latitude regions maintains the so-called choke points along certain route sections, reducing overall shipping season length. There is considerable spatiotemporal variability in shipping season lengths along the southern and northern routes. Specifically, parts of the northern route exhibit a decrease of up to 14 weeks over the 15 years.” Currently, 97% of ships use the southern route of the NWP (see figure 1), but the northern route is shorter and considered more efficient. Sea ice has been the primary obstacle to timely navigation through the NWP. In the Canadian Arctic, sea ice area has declined by 5–20% per decade (depending on the region) between 1968 and 2016. The number of ship voyages has quadrupled since 1990 across the Canadian Arctic. The ships become susceptible to the southward flow of thick multi-year ice from the northern Arctic Ocean. Southward flowing multi-year ice can create decreases in safe shipping across the Arctic due to the increase in sea ice mobility that tends to be highly hazardous for ships.

The study found (see figure 2) that the Eastern Beaufort Sea, close to the west side of Banks Island, has shown a considerable reduction in season length, from 20–25 weeks in early years (2007–2011), reducing to 10–15 weeks in recent years (2017–2021). A similar reduction in season length is seen in M’Clure Strait, which had a length of 10–15 weeks in early years, reducing to only 3-5 weeks in recent years. The shipping season in Viscount Melville Sound has reduced from 5-10 week in early years to only 2–4 weeks in recent years.

 

CliSci # 413                                        2024-07-31

 

Economic Impact and GHG Effects of the Federal Government's Emissions Reduction Plan through 2030

The Canadian federal government has set a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target of at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030, equivalent to 38.5% below 2022 levels. This report by Dr. Ross McKitrick examines proposed policies aimed at achieving these goals and evaluates their potential impact, aiming to address the gap left by the federal government’s lack of efforts in this matter. The paper uses a macroeconomic model to assess the federal government’s Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP), including carbon pricing, Clean Fuel Regulations, and other regulatory measures such as EV mandates. It is estimated that the ERP will reduce Canada’s GHG emissions by about 26.5% between 2019 and 2030 and will cause a 6.2% reduction in Canada’s economy (i.e., real GDP) compared to the base case by 2030. The ERP costs $7,900 per worker annually (in 2024 dollars) by 2030, which is more than five times the cost per worker compared to the carbon tax alone. The benefit of Canada’s emissions reduction is such a small number as to be practically zero.

 

IPCC’s AR6 Spouts Urban Heat Island Effect Nonsense

Section 2.3.1.1.3  page 324 of Chapter 2 of the Working Group 1 report says;

No recent literature has emerged to alter the AR5 finding that it is unlikely that any uncorrected effects from urbanization (Box 10.3), or from changes in land use or land cover (Section 2.2.7), have raised global Land Surface Air Temperature (LSAT) trends by more than 10%, although larger signals have been identified in some specific regions, especially rapidly urbanizing areas such as eastern China.

Section 10.1.3.1 page 1374 of Chapter 10 says;

It is very likely that the global land surface air temperature response to urbanization is negligible.

Both statements are false. Several studies have shown that the urban heat island effect (UHIE) over land is about 40% to 50% (McKitrick and Michaels (2007); De Laat and Maurellis (2006)). The claim that the UHIE accounts for less than 10% of the global temperature trend was “a baseless claim that originated in Jones’ 1990 paper as an offhand conjecture”.

In review comments submitted to the IPCC for the sixth assessment report (AR6), Dr. Ross McKitrick wrote “AR5 went a small way to acknowledging a scandalous fabrication in AR4. In AR4 the Lead Authors invented evidence to dismiss a pair of papers finding evidence of correlation between warming rates and industrialization.” The IPCC falsely claimed that the results were insignificant. Later, AR5 (ch 2 p. 34) conceded the AR4 claim was groundless and conceded that McKitrick and others had shown significant evidence for UHIE contamination of the surface record. A paper by McKitrick and Tole (2012) also shows a strong UHIE. After AR5, McKitrick (2013) showed that two papers that claimed the UHIE was negligible are faulty. A Financial Post article by McKitrick discusses these issues.

 

Hunga Tonga Volcano: Impact on Record Warming

The UK HadCRUT5 global temperature dataset indicates that the 2023 year average temperature was 1.46 °C above the pre-industrial 1859-1900 average baseline. Paris Agreement goal to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.”  The HadCRUT5 2023 temperature anomaly is 0.04 °C below the 1.5 °C target. The Berkeley Earth data set has exceeded the 1.5 °C target for a calendar year for the first time by 0.04°C, while the NOAA dataset is 0.16 °C below the target. The HadCRUT5 2023 temperature was 0.30 °C above 2022 and 0.17 °C above 2016. Javier Vinós wrote this article which explains that the sudden temperature increase was mostly caused by the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption. Vinós first shows that “El Niño is unlikely to be responsible for the simple reason that such abrupt global warming is unprecedented in our records, and El Niño has many precedents.” He then shows that sulfate aerosols reduction due to the change in marine fuel regulations in 2020 could not have been a major factor in the abrupt warming in 2023. A recent study estimated that sulfur emission reduction from 2020 could cause a global warming of 0.02 °C in the first decade. There has been a steady increase in atmospheric CO₂, so CO₂ emissions couldn’t have caused a large, abrupt warming.

The Hunga Tonga eruption was a submarine explosion at very shallow depths, about 150 m below the sea surface. It ejected 150 million tons of water into the stratosphere. It was at the right depth to inject this large volume into the stratosphere. The water vapour increase at 45 °N appears one year after the Hunga Tonga January 2022 eruption as shown in this graph. Delayed climate effects from major volcanic eruptions are common. Clearly, this eruption is the major cause of the large 2023 warming.

 

An Unusually Warm Year or Two Cannot be Blamed on Climate Change

Dr. Roy Spencer wrote “Yes, in a warming world due to increasing CO₂ there will be a statistical increase in “unusually warm” years. But assuming the warming is entirely due to steadily increasing CO₂ causing a slight (currently ~1%) energy imbalance in the climate system, then the warming that results is about ~0.02 deg. C per year. Anything different from that small 0.02 deg. C per year warming is due to natural climate variability.” The UAH6 lower troposphere 2023 year average temperature was 0.51 °C above the 1991 – 2020 average. Using the linear trend of 0.14 °C/decade, the 2023 should have been 0.25 °C above the baseline. Instead, it was twice as warm as that. So, about half that warmth was natural (assuming the background warming trend is 100% due to humans).

 

Climate Activists Are Wrong About Which Energy Source Reduces Air Pollution

During the 1950s, five days after a winter snowfall, the snow in Chicago was covered with a visible black film of dust from coal furnaces. Every spring, homeowners would wash their inside walls to remove coal dust. Steve Goreham wrote “It was the rising use of gas fuel, primarily natural gas along with propane, that produced the greatest reduction in air pollution in the United States and across the world. Gas furnaces and stoves have replaced wood in businesses and homes in developed nations. And natural gas power plants have replaced coal-fired plants to generate electricity, with gas becoming the leading fuel for industry. Natural gas and propane are clean-burning fuels that emit no harmful pollutants when burned. When gas heating is substituted for coal or wood heating, indoor particulate pollution is reduced by 1,000 times.” The World Health Organization estimates that 2 billion people in developing nations still cook using open fires or stoves burning wood, coal and animal dung. These fuels generate harmful indoor air pollution that kills an estimate 3 million people per year. Goreham wrote “The great news is that gas fuels are increasingly used in developing nations, reducing illness and death from cooking.” But net zero advocates demand the elimination of natural gas to reduce CO₂ emissions. Many jurisdictions have banned the use of natural gas in new construction. However, world total natural gas consumption has doubled from 1992 (2006 billion m³) to 2023 (4010 billion m³) according to the Energy Institute.

 

New York City Local Law; Electric Heat Mandate – Don’t Do It

A new report was prepared for New York Co-op and Condo Boards and Trade Associations regarding New York City Local Law 97 mandated conversion to electric heat. Roger Caiazza announced the report on WUWT. The law mandates that “most buildings over 25,000 square feet are required to meet new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions limits as of 2024, with stricter limits coming into effect in 2030.” The three authors of the report, Francis Menton, Roger Caiazza and Richard Ellenbogen, have complementary expertise about energy and the proposed energy transition. Building owners are starting to evaluate of enormous cost of converting from fossil fuel heating to inferior electric heat pump systems at costs starting at $100,000 per housing unit. Menton wrote “Few of them realize that the State at the same time has no credible plan to generate enough electricity to make the heat conversion mandate work.” He recommend the Report to readers who are interested in the depths of ignorance and incompetence of the New York legislators and regulators who are pushing the impossible “energy transition.”

The Executive Summary includes: “the statutory mandates have been enacted without any detailed Feasibility Study of whether this transition is possible under basic physics and existing technology, or any Demonstration Project showing how an electrical grid can function relying on mostly on wind and solar and without emissions-creating resources for back-up of intermittency; or any detailed analysis or projection of the costs to New Yorkers of this transition.”

 

CliSci # 412                                        2024-07-16

 

Why Hurricanes Intensify!

Hurricane Beryl was a destructive category 5 Atlantic hurricane that impacted parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and the USA in late June and early July 2024. The hurricane strengthened from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in only 42 hours. Jim Steele wrote “Hurricane intensification is controlled by 3 dynamics. 1) Energy supplied by sea surface temperatures; 2) Wind shear that increases during El Nino and ENSO neutral years and disrupts the storm structure needed to become a strong hurricane; 3) Ocean Barrier Layers that prevent the storm from sucking up colder subsurface waters that usually prevents intensification, as well as creating a layer of warmer than normal subsurface water that supplies the extra heat needed to intensify the storms.” The ocean barrier layers block the upward movement of cold water to the surface. Steele wrote “Barrier Layers form when fresh-water overlays warmer saltier water preventing convection that ventilates subsurface heat and causes subsurface heat to accumulate. In the Caribbean, Barrier Layers commonly form when the freshwater plumes from the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers flow northward into the Caribbean. Those river discharges peak in June, so Beryl’s intensification off the Venezuelan coast in June is not unusual!”

 

Net Zero Averted Temperature Increase

The adoption and implementation of net zero policies prevent a surprisingly little amount of warming. A paper published by R. Lindzen, W. Happer and W. van Wijngaarden estimates the warming abated by net zero polices for the USA and the world. The papers abstract says “Using feedback-free estimates of the warming by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and observed rates of increase, we estimate that if the United States (U.S.) eliminated net CO2 emissions by the year 2050, this would avert a warming of 0.0084 ◦C (0.015 ◦F), which is below our ability to accurately measure. If the entire world forced net zero CO2 emissions by the year 2050, a warming of only 0.070 ◦C (0.13 ◦F) would be averted. If one assumes that the warming is a factor of 4 larger because of positive feedbacks, as asserted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the warming averted by a net zero U.S. policy would still be very small, 0.034 ◦C (0.061 ◦F). For worldwide net zero emissions by 2050 and the 4-times larger IPCC climate sensitivity, the averted warming would be 0.28 ◦C (0.50 ◦F).”

 

Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate Are Not Problems

This paper by Andy May and Marcel Crok was published in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Crok and May coordinated the ambitious Clintel project to analyse the IPCC AR6 report, which last year led to the publication of the Clintel book The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC. In the book they document serious errors and biases in the latest IPCC report. The new paper is largely based on the many interesting findings of that book. Here is part of the paper’s abstract;  “The Little Ice Age, a phrase rarely used in AR6, extends from about 1300 to 1850. It was a very cold and miserable time for humanity, with a lot of well documented extreme weather in the historical record from all over the Northern Hemisphere. It was also a time of frequent famines and pandemics. Arguably today’s climate is better than then, not worse. Some extreme weather events, such as the land area under extreme drought, is decreasing, not increasing. Globally the incidence of hurricanes shows no significant trend. Since the current climate is arguably better than the pre-industrial climate and we have observed no increase in extreme weather or climate mortality, we conclude that we can plan to adapt to any future changes. Until a danger is identified, there is no need to eliminate fossil fuel use.”

 

Scientists Debate Gulf Stream's Role in North Atlantic Currents

A new study questions the coherence of the circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean, as researchers show that the Gulf Stream exists, but variations off the coast of Florida do not necessarily reach Norway. The Gulf Stream flows northward off the coast of North America, turning northeast across the Atlantic Ocean into the Norwegian Sea. Part of the Gulf Stream waters flows westward, south of Iceland and Greenland, circulating in the sub-polar gyre. The northern waters become denser, sinking and returning south as a deep ocean current, in total, a meridional overturning circulation. Scientists show in the study that the connection between variations in the Gulf Stream and the water reaching the Nordic Seas is small on timescales of years or decades. While the current outside North America weakened in the decade following 2005, the inflow to the Norwegian Sea increased. Comparisons show that variations in the current strength in each gyre rarely propagate to the next. As the air pressures near the Azores and Iceland vary, they steer the wind. Changes in high or low pressure can explain how a gyre can be strengthened without more water being carried on to the next gyre.

 

Powering Human Advancement: Why the World Needs Affordable and Reliable Energy

Four authors wrote a report for the Heritage Foundation about the need for affordable and reliable energy. The summary says “U.S. public policy researchers should inform the public and international institutions about the necessity of expanding energy access. Depriving people in any society of reliable and affordable energy denies them access to clean water, adequate medical care, affordable transportation, and economic opportunities, which will limit any human advancement, especially in the most vulnerable of countries. Use of these technologies, common in high-energy nations, should be encouraged in all nations. Human progress requires access to energy, whether harnessed via steam engine, internal combustion engine, or electricity. Therefore, U.S. policymakers should advance access to affordable and reliable energy at home and abroad so that its benefits can be enjoyed by all.”

 

Battery Baloney, Hydrogen Hype and Green Fairy Tales

Viv Forbes wrote this amusing article for the website the Saltbush Club. He criticizes green politicians who want “No Coal, No Gas, No Nuclear” and the Australian energy market operator who is telling consumers the wind and solar with batteries and standby gas can power the nation. He wrote “There are two troublesome Green Energy Unions – the Solar Workers down tools every night and cloudy day, and the Turbine Crews stop work if winds are too weak or too strong. And wind droughts can last for days. The reliable Coal and Gas Crews spend sunny days playing cards, but are expected to keep their turbines revving up and down to keep stable power in the lines.”

 

The Energy Institute Publishes Misleading Primary Energy Data

The Energy Institute published its Statistical Review of World Energy in June 2024, featuring the 2023 primary energy of the various energy sources.  The report’s news release says “Global primary energy consumption overall was at a record absolute high, up 2% on the previous year to 620 Exajoules (EJ).” A footnote to the primary energy tables says “Energy from all sources of non-fossil power generation is accounted for on an input-equivalent basis.”  The methodology section says “the primary energy of non-fossil based electricity (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass in power and other renewables sources) has been calculated on an ‘input-equivalent’ basis – i.e. based on the equivalent amount of fossil fuel input required to generate that amount of electricity in a standard thermal power plant. For example, if nuclear power output for a country was 100 TWh, and the efficiency of a standard thermal power plant was 38%, the input equivalent primary energy would be 100/0.38 = 263 TWh (terawatt hours) or about 0.95 EJ.

This table compares the gross energy produced to the reported primary energy of four power sources. Gross energy means the energy output from the facility without deducting the transmission losses to the consumer.

Source	Gross Energy Production (EJ)	Primary Energy Reported (EJ)	Energy Production % of Primary Energy	Primary Energy/ Energy Production
Wind	8.37	21.75	38.5%	2.60
Solar	5.91	15.35	38.5%	2.60
Hydro	15.26	39.65	38.5%	2.60
Nuclear	9.86	24.57	40.1%	2.49
Total	39.40	101.32	38.9%	2.57

 

The gross energy production from all sources is 552 GJ, which is significantly less than the reported world primary energy of 620 EJ. Note; 1 EJ = 277.77 TWh. Wind and Solar combined produce 2.6% of the total energy used, calculated as (8.37+5.91)/553.  Wind, solar and hydro primary energy was determined as the gross energy production divided by 38.5%, which is deemed to be the thermal efficiency of a fossil fuel power plant, so the reported primary energy is 2.6 times the gross energy production.  The appendix says the thermal efficiency factor used to convert non-fossil electricity to primary energy for 2023 is 41.0%. I have asked the Energy Institute to explain why the apparent efficiency factors used for the four sources in the table are much less that the 41% given in the methodology section of the report. I wait for their response. I don't object to the concept of primary energy; I object to the report conflating primary energy with gross energy production.

 

 

CliSci # 411                                        2024-07-02

 

Global CO₂ Emissions are Tracking Well Below the Climate Scenarios Used to Scare People

The UN IPCC makes exaggerated greenhouse gas emission scenarios for use in climate models as reported in its assessment reports. Dr. Roy Spencer says that “as climate models are run that produce extreme amounts of climate change, few people will question the assumptions that went into those model projections. Peoples’ careers now depend upon the continuing fear of a ‘climate crisis’ (which has yet to materialize).” Spencer produced a graph showing how actual global CO₂ emissions compare to those emission scenarios. The graph shows actual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel (FF) use through 2023 and the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) projections every 5 years through 2025. It also shows the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSP) CO₂ emission from fossil fuels used in the latest IPCC report AR6.

The average increase in global FF CO₂ emissions from 2018 to 2023 was 0.8% per year. The EIA projects emissions to increase from 36.0 Gt in 2023 to 41.0 Gt in 2050, which is an average annual increase of 0.5%/yr. The SSP8.5 CO₂ emission scenario in 2023 is 21% greater than the EIA projection. The discrepancy increases to 39% in 2030 and to 100% in 2050. That is, SSP8.5 projects that CO₂ emissions in 2050 will be double the EIA forecast. The SSP7.0 scenario is 47% higher than the EIA forecast.

 

Scientific Integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters”

For more than two decades, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published a count of weather-related disasters in the United States that it estimates have exceeded one billion dollars (inflation adjusted) in each calendar year starting in 1980. This paper performs an evaluation of the dataset under criteria of procedure and substance defined under NOAA’s Information Quality and Scientific Integrity policies. The NOAA dataset fails to meet these criteria. NOAA incorrectly claims that for some types of extreme weather, the dataset demonstrates detection and attribution of changes on climate timescales. The increasing count of disasters is not a consequence of human caused climate change.

 

Ocean Paradox: New Data Challenges Decades-Old Science

An international team of researcher directly measured the upwelling of cold, deep water through turbulent mixing along the slope of a submarine canyon in the Atlantic Ocean. This article says “The pace of upwelling the researchers observed was more than 10,000 times the global average rate predicted by the late renowned oceanographer Walter Munk in the 1960s.”  The meridional overturning circulation (MOC) is major part of the global ocean circulation in which seawater becomes cold and dense near the poles, sinks into the deep, moves towards the tropics and eventually rises back up to the surface where it warms.  The cold water “upwelling has been theorized and inferred but never directly measured.”  Munk calculated a global average pace of upwelling of one centimeter per day across the entire global ocean. Measurements show that undersea turbulence was higher near the seafloor, but this presented a paradox. The stronger mixing near the bottom would make the bottom water even colder and denser, pushing water down instead of lifting it toward the surface. It was proposed that steep slopes on the walls of underwater canyons might produce the right kind of turbulence to cause upwelling. The researchers lowered a drum of fluorescent green dye from a ship into an undersea canyon and released the dye. Tracking the dye revealed turbulent upwelling along the canyon’s slope at 100 meters per day. A senior author of the study said “This work is the first step to adding in missing ocean physics to our climate models that will ultimately improve the ability of those models to predict climate change.”

 

The Resilient Great Barrier Reef: the Surprising Recovery Amidst Climate Alarmism

Charles Rotter wrote “For years, the Great Barrier Reef has been the poster child for environmentalists warning about the dire consequences of climate change. Predictions of its imminent demise have been frequent, with a focus on coral bleaching events, ocean acidification, and rising sea temperatures attributed to increasing CO₂ emissions. However, recent reports indicate that the Great Barrier Reef has hit record coral cover for the third year in a row, challenging these prevailing narratives.” The data collected by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) suggests a thriving ecosystem, with coral cover significantly higher than predicted. Rotter quotes Jo Nova who wrote “AIMS have been dragging divers thousands of kilometers over the reefs to inspect the coral cover. These are the most detailed underwater surveys on the largest reef system in the world, and they show that far from being bleached to hell, the corals are more abundant than we have ever seen them.” Coral bleaching is often cited as the most visible sign of climate change’s impact on marine ecosystems. However, it’s common for corals to throw out the zooanthellae as temperatures change and let in newer house-guests that are better acclimatized. Bleaching is a natural response mechanism for corals, allowing them to adapt to changing environmental conditions rather than a straightforward indicator of environmental decline. Dr. Peter Ridd says the biggest threats to the reef are cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish plagues, neither of which appears to be any worse now than they were years ago. 

 

Wind Turbines: Vacated/Abandoned Homes Study- Observed Effects on Pets, Animals, and Well Water

This study documents the detrimental effects of living within 10 km of wind turbines. The paper’s abstract says “Neighbors living within 10 km of industrial wind turbines have reported occurrences of adverse health effects and contemplated vacating their homes. Some participants described concerns for wildlife and effects on their pets, animals, and well water.” The authors interviewed 67 participants in Ontario, Canada who had previously lived, or were currently living within 10 km of wind turbines. They described concerned for their own health and for wildlife, pets and farm animals. The study says “In some instances, unusual animal behavior included aggressiveness, birthing problems, and a decline in fertility of their farm animals.” Examples include, limb deformities in horses, birth defects, erratic behavior in pets and livestock, stillbirths and miscarriages.

 

Video: The Urban Heat Island - Implications for Global Warming

This video was produced by Ben Soon, a son of Willie Soon of the CERES-Science team. Most people today live in urban areas, including cities. Cities tend to be hotter than their surrounding rural areas. This means that the local climate change experienced by most people is different from the global climate changes experienced by the rest of the world. The video compares rural and urban weather station data to explain “urbanization bias” in cities along with possible solutions to urban heating.

 

CliSci # 410                                        2024-06-08

 

Long-term Climate Impacts of Large Stratospheric Water Vapor Perturbations

The amount of water vapour injected into the stratosphere (SWV) after the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) was unprecedented. This new paper evaluated the surface temperature and precipitation impacts of the HTHH water vapour perturbation using a chemistry climate model simulation. The paper’s abstract says “The simulations show that the SWV anomalies lead to strong and persistent warming of Northern Hemisphere landmasses in boreal winter, and austral winter cooling over Australia, years after eruption, demonstrating that large SWV forcing  can have surface impacts on a decadal timescale. We also emphasize that the surface response to SWV anomalies is more complex than simple warming due to greenhouse forcing and is influenced by factors such as regional circulation patterns and cloud feedbacks.”  The consequences of the SWV increase is that surface temperatures across large regions of Northern Hemisphere increase by over 1.5 °C for several years, although Australia experience cooling close to 1 °C.

 

Reduction in Shipping Emissions Produces Substantial Warming

Human activities cause global warming by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, by the urban heat island effect that artificially inflates surface land temperature measurement and by land use changes. These effects are offset somewhat by aerosol emissions that have a cooling effect. World fuel regulations were changed in 2020 which abruptly reduced the emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) from international shipping by about 80%. The regulations reduced the maximum sulfur content of the fuel from 3.5% to 0.5%. SO₂ emissions from ships react in the atmosphere to create small aerosol particle which reflect sun light thereby cooling the Earth. The aerosols also act as seeds on which cloud droplets form, increasing the amount of clouds that also cools the Earth. Therefore, reducing the SO₂ emissions from ships causes an abrupt warming. This paper estimates the fuel regulation leads to a radiative forcing of about 0.2 W/m² averaged over the global oceans. The paper says this could lead to a doubling of the warming rate in the 2020s compared with the rate since 1980.  The authors used satellite observation and a chemical transport model to quantify the radiative forcing and its climate impacts. The largest impacts are in the North Atlantic, the Caribbean and the South China Sea. The North Atlantic experiences the strongest radiative forcing peaking around 1.4 W/m².

 

Svalbard Polar Bears Are Fatter in 2024 Than They Were in 1993

Polar bear researcher Susan Crockford wrote about polar bear health conditions in the Svalbard archipelago. She said “Researchers at the Norwegian Polar Institute have finally updated their spring data, which show male polar bears in 2024 were even fatter than they were in 1993 and litter sizes of new cubs were just as high, despite continued low sea ice in the region over the summer months especially.” Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The number of cubs per litter was as high in 2024 as it has ever been and just as high as it was in 1993 before sea ice declines began, although in 2023 it was the lowest since 1993. The Norwegian authors of the 2024 report wrote “Even though the loss of sea ice has been marked around Svalbard in recent years, and is expected to continue in the coming decades, the size of the subpopulation may still be below the carrying capacity.” Crockford says “less sea ice in summer causes increased primary productivity — more plankton feeds more fish, which feeds more seals — which produces an abundance of seals for polar bears to feed on when sea ice is present in the spring.”

 

2,000 km of Antarctic Ice-covered Coastline Has Been Stable for 85 Years

Hundreds of aerial photos dating back to 1937 have given researchers at the University of Copenhagen the most detailed picture of the ice evolution in East Antarctica to date. The images provide a unique record of 21 outlet glaciers along the coastline. Phys.org wrote “The results show that the ice has remained stable and even grown slightly over almost a century.” The area covers approximately 2,000 km of coastline. The paper’s abstract says “In all regions, the long-term changes in ice thickness correspond with the trends in snowfall since 1940. Our results demonstrate that the stability and growth in ice elevations observed in terrestrial basins over the past few decades are part of a trend spanning at least a century, and highlight the importance of understanding long-term changes when interpreting current dynamics.” The Norwegian images were supplemented with Australian survey images of the same glaciers taken between 1950 and 1974. The researchers combined the historical photos with modern satellite data to create 3D reconstructions of the glaciers.

 

New Offshore Wind Turbines Take Away Energy from Existing Ones

 A ScienceDaily article summarizes a new paper that evaluates the wake effect down stream of Atlantic offshore wind turbines. The paper estimates that offshore wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean region would take away wind from other turbines nearby, potentially reducing the wind farms' power output by more than 30%. When wind passes through turbines, they extract some energy from the wind, making the wind slower and more turbulent behind the turbines. The turbines downstream get slower wind, resulting in lower power generation. Under certain weather conditions, wakes could reach turbines as far as 55 km downwind and affect other wind farms. The lead author said “The wake effect is particularly prominent offshore, because there are no houses or trees that stir up the air, which helps dissipate the wakes.”  The article said “Using computer simulations and observational data of the atmosphere, the team calculated that the wake effect reduces total power generation by 34% to 38% at a proposed wind farm off the East Coast.”

 

Heat from the Global Energy Use Contributes How Much to Global Warming?

A CliSic reader asked about the influence of waste heat on global warming.  The Energy Institute latest latest review of world energy shows that the 2022 global energy consumption was 604 Exajoules (EJ).  Using the linear extrapolation from 2012 to 2022, the estimated energy consumption for 2023 is 610 EJ. [Note; EJ = 10¹⁸ Joules. A 25 Watt electric bulb produces 25 Joules of energy every second.] All energy consumed by humans, including useful energy that does work, is converted to heat energy. NOAA’s NCEI group produced this graph of ocean heat content of the top 2000 m. I used the best fit quadratic line to calculate the trend form 2015 to 2023.5 which is 11,240 EJ/yr. Figure 8 from this 2023 paper shows that the 0-2000 m ocean heat storage represents 84% of the total Earth's energy storage, based on values from 2010 to 2020. Therefore the total Earth energy storage is currently 11,240/0.84 = 13,370 EJ/yr.  The human energy use contribution fraction is 610 EJ/13,370 EJ = 4.56%.   Therefore, human energy consumption contributes about 4.6% to the energy accumulation in the Earth’s climate system and the surface temperature increase. That is a significant effect.

 

CliSci # 409                                        2024-05-24

 

The Overlooked Sub-Grid Air-Sea Flux in Climate Models

A pre-print paper evaluates the bias of the heat flux at the ocean surface arising in coarse grid computer climate models that are unable to resolve small scale air and ocean variability. These models exhibit global and regional errors in sea surface temperatures. For example, the linear trend of modelled sea surface temperatures in the tropics (10°S to 10°N) from 1982 to 2022 of 0.192 °C/decade is 2.8 times the measured trend of 0.069 °C/decade [See graph]. Small scale variability such as ocean eddies can impact the large-scale air-sea exchange. The air-sea heat exchange plays a central role in climate change. Climate models use parameterizations to account for many missing sub-grid scale process, but no parameterization accounts for all the components of spatial heterogeneity at the air-sea interface.  The authors use a high resolution computer model to quantify the effects of this small-scale heterogeneity on the large-scale air-sea heat exchange. The abstract says “This effect systematically cools the ocean by about 4W/m² globally—with large spatio-temporal variations—and mostly enhances the large-scale heat flux.”

 

Heat Waves in North Pacific may be due to China Reducing Aerosols

A team of oceanographers and planetary scientists has found via computer modelling that recent heat waves in the north Pacific may be due to a large reduction in aerosols emitted by factories in China. Over the past decade, the north Pacific has experienced multiple heat waves that have been generally attributed to increasing greenhouse gases. However, no one could explain how increasing GHG could cause the warming in a specific part of the Earth. Beginning around 2010, factories and power generating plants in China began dramatically reducing emissions of aerosols such as sulfate, resulting in much cleaner air. Aerosols can act like mirrors floating in the air, reflecting heat from the sun back into space, so reducing sulfate emissions can cause warming. To find out if reducing aerosols in China can cause heat waves in the north Pacific, the team ran climate computer models with constant aerosol emissions and with reducing emission corresponding to what has happened. The model runs with reducing aerosols produced heat waves in the north Pacific. The reduced aerosols cause warming in the coastal regions of Asia which cause high air pressures systems. These cause low pressure systems in the middle Pacific to become more intense and the Aleutian Low to move south which weakened the westerly winds that typically cool the sea surface. The result was warmer north Pacific sea surface temperatures.

 

Supersaturation and Critical Size of Cloud Condensation Nuclei

Clouds are of fundamental importance for the climate by regulating the reflection of sunlight into space and interacting with thermal radiation from the Earth. Clouds form when moist air ascends and gets supersaturated with water vapor that condenses on aerosol particles of sufficient sizes, called cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), which then grow into cloud droplets. The aerosol number-density and size spectrum influence the resulting cloud properties, and the supersaturation determines which aerosols can be activated into cloud drops. A new paper by Henrik Svensmark et al shows that “high supersaturation >0.5% persists over the oceans with a critical CCN size of 25–30 nanometres (nm), which is smaller than the conventional wisdom of 60 nm.” The authors determined a relationship between the number of CCN and supersaturation using satellite observations of marine stratus clouds in clean air. The abstract says “Independent support for such high supersaturation in the marine cloud is obtained from CCN measurements provided by the ‘Atmospheric Tomography Mission.’ Higher supersaturation implies smaller activation size for CCN making cloud formation more sensitive to changes in aerosol nucleation.”

 

EPA Gets Precipitation Changes Wrong for SCC Estimates

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a report on their estimates of the social cost of carbon dioxide (SCC) which is used to set policy to restrict fossil fuel use. One included climate impact is changes in precipitation. The report includes a global map (fig. 3.2.2) of the projected changes in precipitation over land to 2100. These changes are used to estimate damages allegedly caused by greenhouse gas emissions. While global land precipitation is expected to increase, the EPA projects that dry areas in general will receive less precipitation with warming. Australia is shown in brown on the map, indicating that warming will cause a reduction in precipitation. However, this graph shows that the precipitation in Australia (brown line), which averages about 1.4 mm/day, has increased over the last century at 0.14 mm/day per century. The global average land precipitation (in blue) is about 2.3 mm/day and is increasing at a very small 0.05 mm/day per century. Contrary to the projections of Australia getting drier, its precipitation is increasing 2.7 times as fast as the global average.  

The map indicates that the EPA expects the precipitation in northeast Brazil will significantly decline by 2100. However, this graph shows a very small increasing precipitation trend (in blue) since 1920 while the climate models show a significant declining trend of 0.19 mm/day per century. The actual precipitation rate of 6.4 mm/day is much greater than the modelled rate of 5.0 mm/day. These large differences between actual and modelled precipitation rates and trends imply that the projected damages from droughts are very unreliable. Considering that increasing CO₂ makes plants use water more efficiently, it is unlikely that CO₂ emissions will cause drought damages.

 

Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO₂ Concentrations

Our planet is thriving because of modest warming and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂). The purveyors of climate doom have sensationalized research findings that increased plant volume from CO₂ fertilization results in lower concentrations of nutrients in food. However, this effect can easily be countered by a small increase in fertilizer. The CO₂ Coalition has published a scientific paper that gives an optimistic vision for Earth and its inhabitants as summarized by Gregory Wrightstone. He wrote “The boost in atmospheric CO₂ since 1940 alone is linked to yield increases for corn, soybeans and wheat of 10%, 30% and 40%, respectively.”

The paper’s executive summary says in part: “In the present article, we strongly argue against the published notion that enhanced atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (eCO₂) threaten human nutrition. We review literature and provide arguments that arrive at quite a contrary view. In accordance with Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, more vigorous growth of vegetation in eCO₂ will increase plants’ need for more of other nutrients. However, the resulting nutrient deficiencies caused by eCO₂ are small, compared to the nutrient shortages that agriculture and livestock routinely face because of natural phenomena, such as severe soil fertility differences, nutrient dilution in plants due to rainfall or irrigation, and even aging of crops. These problems have been satisfactorily dealt with for generations through adequate use of mineral fertilizers, most importantly nitrogen; by proper species and cultivar selection; and with food supplements for livestock and humans. The same agricultural practices will ensure that the more abundant crops that result from eCO₂ will also provide good nutrition.”

 

CliSci # 408                                        2024-05-07

 

Annual GWPF Lecture: Climate Uncertainty and Risk – Judith Curry

Dr. Judith Curry gave the annual lecture to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) about climate uncertainty and risk. She gave a brief history of the climate movement and the net zero targets. She wrote “With the help of a small number of well-positioned activist climate scientists, a 1988 UN conference in Toronto recommended that the world ‘reduce CO₂ emissions by approximately 20% by the year 2005 as an initial global goal.’” CO₂ emissions actually increase by 34% over that period. The first assessment report (FAR) from the IPCC in 1990 concluded that the recent warming was within the magnitude of natural variability. Despite this finding, 196 countries signed a UN treaty in 1992 to restrict emissions to prevent dangerous climate change. The second IPCC assessment in 1995 found much the same thing as the FAR. However, the policy makers changed the proposed summary to claim that CO₂ had a “discernible” effect, and the main report was changed to agree with the summary report. At that point, the IPCC lost any pretense of being independent or uninfluenced by politics.

Curry goes on to show how activist climate scientists misuse policy-relevant science. They conflate expert judgment with evidence, entangle disputed facts with values and intimidate scientists whose research interferes with their political agendas. Climate scientists associated with the IPCC have oversimplified the climate change problem and its solution. The climate change includes natural causes such as the sun, volcanoes, slow circulations in the ocean and unknown processes. It is now known that the extreme emissions scenario RCP8.5 is implausible. The IPCC’s latest report acknowledges that human caused climate change can’t be attributed to most extreme weather events. Reducing emissions exacerbates energy poverty and unreliability, which increases emergency risk. UN climate policies are hampering the UN Sustainable Development Goals that focus on currently living humans. International funds are being redirected away from reducing poverty to reducing carbon emission, which increases energy poverty and increases the harm of weather events. World hunger is being worsened by restrictions on livestock and fertilizer. Many people fear a future without cheap, abundant fuel and continued economic expansion, far more than they fear climate change. Rather than reducing carbon emissions, the goal should be abundant, secure, reliable, cheap & clean energy.

 

BBC Uses Corrupted Airport Data to Circulate Scares About Extreme Heat

An article in the Daily Sceptic criticized a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) story with the headline “London seeing more days above 30°C, experts say”.  The author of the Daily Sceptic article says the aim of the BBC story is to catastrophize the climate and push society to accept the global Net Zero collectivization.  The so-called experts used only “airport data for consistency across worldwide cities, including City Airport in London”. Chris Morison wrote “It is difficult to think of a more unsuitable dataset to promote notions of “extreme heat”, other than perhaps to take measurements next to the door of a blast furnace.”  The analysis was done by a green activist group that receives money from governmental sources. The analysis collated measurements next to exhausts of multiple jet aircraft. The use of temperature data from unsuitable sites has contaminated datasets from most meteorological operations around the world. The World Meteorological Organization rates weather station sites from class 1 to 5 based on the amount of human-caused heat corruption that is likely to occur. “Class 4 comes with ‘uncertainties’ of 2 °C and these accounted for 48.7% of the Met Office’s 380 recording stations. Class 5 comes with ‘uncertainties’ of 5 °C and these applied to 29.2% of the total, with many of the stations set down the runways at local airports.” The BBC report claims that extreme temperatures have become more frequent in the past three decades. Meanwhile, passenger numbers at the London City Airport have tripled over that period.

In 2022, Dr. Spencer and Dr. Christy found human-caused heat distortions in the temperature record across the United States, especially at airports. For example, the warming trend at the Orlando, Florida airport since 1973 is 0.3 °C/decade. This trend is slashed to just 0.07 °C/decade after applying an urban heat correction.

 

JP Morgan, BlackRock Drop Out of Climate Banker Cabal

In February, three of the four largest financial houses in the world, left the giant financial cabal called ‘Climate 100+’ and the fourth one left a year ago.  Joanne Nova wrote “In the two months since then, two of their CEO’s have put out ‘letters to shareholders’ predicting how the transition is going to be slower and harder and how we still need fossil fuels.” There are several reasons for this. The firms are threatened with antitrust because the banker club looks like a monopolistic cabal colluding to reduce competition. Green funds have lost a lot a value. The financial houses have a fiduciary duty to invest their clients’ funds wisely. The firms were advocating for renewable energy a few years ago, but the renewables bubble is deflating fast. The CEO’s behaviour looks like a pump and dump scheme. “Right now smart bankers are smoothing the exit ramp out of the bubble they created and hoping no one notices how wrong all their previous statements were.” Only last year JP Moran Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that the US government should consider seizing private property to boost the number of green energy projects coming through the pipeline. Dimon’s letter to shareholder in 2024 says “One of the best ways to reduce CO₂ for the next few decades is to use gas to replace coal. … The strength of our domestic production of energy gives us a ‘power advantage’ — cheaper and more reliable energy, which creates economic and geopolitical advantages.”

 

Discovered 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Reveal Higher Sea Levels

A new paper reports the discovery of 85 human footprints on a hard beach surface on the coast of Morocco, Africa. The footprints were dated at 90,000 years ago and are the oldest attributed to humans in Northern Africa and the Southern Mediterranean. The footprints are embedded into rock that used to be a sand beach at the high tide zone and are 20 to 30 m above the present sea level. Kenneth Richards wrote “The water limit, or shoreline, very likely reached this elevation at that time, as the requisite conditions for ‘salt-crusting,’ the preservation of footprints, involve a location at ‘the landward limits of the spring high tidal zone’ and at the ‘limits of swash flow’.”  Another paper presented a study of the Greenland Ice Sheet. It found “During the Last Interglacial, approximately 129 to 116 ka (thousand years ago), the Arctic summer climate was warmer than the present, and the Greenland Ice Sheet retreated to a smaller extent than its current state. The Greenland Ice Sheet reaches a minimum extent at 121.9 ka with a contribution of 3.0 m sea-level equivalent relative to present day when CO₂ concentrations in the air was about 275 ppm. These facts demonstrate the world was much warmer in the past (90 to 129 ka) despite very low CO₂ levels.

 

Conrad Black: Washing away the Climate Lunatics

Charles Rotter wrote a summary of this article published in the National Post. The recent piece by Conrad Black titled “Washing away the climate lunatics: Canada at risk of turning into Europe” offers a poignant commentary on the current state and potential pitfalls of climate change policies, especially those aimed at achieving net zero carbon emissions. It provides a stark warning to Canada, drawing on the troubles Europe has experienced with similar policies. Black’s article, which references Dr. Benny Peiser’s address to the Friends of Science Society in Calgary, delves deep into the socio-economic and political upheavals triggered by these policies, particularly in Europe, and forecasts the implications for Canada if it follows suit. “Once they had fully committed themselves to the boondoggle of electric vehicles (EV’s), and forced the powerful automobile industries of Germany, France, and Italy into conversion of gas powered vehicles to EV’s, sales of EV’s plummeted after the customary faddish start, just as much cheaper Chinese EV’s flooded into Europe,”

Dr. Benny Peiser’s presentation is on the Friends of Science website. See also this playlist of 12 short video clips of a Dr. Peiser interview.

 

CliSci # 407                                        2024-04-20

 

Dr. Benny Peiser: Europe’s Net Zero Rebellion and the implications for Canada

Dr. Benny Peiser of the UK Global Warming Policy Foundation gave an enlightening climate policy presentation to an audience in Calgary, Canada on April 9, 2024 about Europe’s Net Zero Rebellion. Dr. Peiser told them about the dire consequences of Net Zero policies. Europe set stringent climate policies decades ago which, by 2013, were causing 'an industrial massacre' as industry and jobs moved offshore. They then adopted Net Zero climate targets and things got much worse! See a video of the presentation.

 

Net Zero CO₂ Emissions: A Damaging and Totally Unnecessary Goal

Dr. Roy Spencer wrote “Atmospheric CO₂ levels will start to fall even with modest reductions in anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.” This is a very important fact that hasn’t received enough discussion. The net zero goal of many nations is extremely costly and unnecessary.  The more CO₂ there is in the atmosphere, the more quickly nature removes the excess. Roughly 50% of the emissions of CO₂ from fossil fuels and industry are removed from the atmosphere each year despite ever increasing emissions. This has resulted in a dramatic greening of the Earth as shown by satellite imagery since 1980. Last year Spencer published a paper showing each year nature removes an average of 2% of the atmospheric CO₂ that is in excess of 295 part per million (ppm). The 2% sink rate has remained remarkably constant over the last 60+ years. Spencer shows that a modest 1% per year reduction in CO₂ emissions would cause atmospheric CO₂ levels to start to fall around 2060 when CO₂ levels are 450 ppm and emission had declined by 33%. CO₂ level would fall to 450 ppm by 2100 and to 360 by 2200.  Even though the CO₂ emissions continue, atmospheric CO₂ levels would fall from 2060 through 2300. Spencer wrote “The message here is that CO₂ emissions don’t have to be cut very much for atmospheric CO₂ levels to reverse their climb, and start to fall. The reason is that nature removes CO₂ in proportion to how much excess CO₂ resides in the atmosphere, and that rate of removal can actually exceed our CO₂ emissions with modest cuts in emissions.”

 

GWP versus GTP for Determining CO₂-eq and Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Each greenhouse gas (GHG) has a unique atmospheric lifetime and heat-trapping potential. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) metric represents each greenhouse gas’s ability to trap heat in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide (CO₂). This is determined over a specified time horizon from the year of emissions, usually over 20 and 100 years. GWP values are used to convert the amount of emissions of a non-CO₂ GHG to an equivalent amount of CO₂ that has the same radiative forcing, which is the ability to trap energy in the climate system. Canada reported that its total GHG emissions in 2021 was 670 Megatonnes (Mt) of CO₂ equivalent (CO₂-eq) based on GWP values and a 100-year time horizon (GWP-100). This includes emissions of 3.64 Mt CH₄ which was converted to 91 Mt CO₂-eq using a GWP-100 of 25 (3.64 Mt CH₄ X 25 = 91 Mt CO₂-eq of CH₄). However, the 100-year radiative forcing ratio of a tonne of CH₄ to a tonne of CO₂ is very different from the temperature change ratio.

The Global Temperature Potential (GTP) metric represents each GHG’s ability to cause a temperature change compared to CO₂ at a specified time period. The IPCC’s AR6 report gives the 100-year GTP of CH₄ as 7.5 ± 2.9. This means that emissions today of one Mt of CH₄ would cause in 100 years about 7.5 times the temperature change that one Mt of CO₂ emissions would cause. The GTP of CH₄ at 100 years (GTP-100) is only 25% of its GWP-100.  A pulse of CH₄ has a lifetime of 12 years according to IPCC’s 6^th assessment report (AR6). CH₄ is converted by chemical reactions to CO₂ and H₂0, while a pulse of CO₂ is removed from the atmosphere very slowly. This article shows that the temperature equilibrium response time of the oceans at the depth of 3 km to doubling of CO₂ is about 1500 years. Changes in radiative forcings cause a delayed temperature response due to the large heat capacity of the oceans. The GWP metric is very misleading as it fails to account for the long temperature response time to the change in radiative forcing. It is much more appropriate to use the GTP to compare the warming effects of emissions of greenhouse gases to that of CO₂.  If the GTP-100 was used, Canada’s emission in 2021 would have been 637 Mt CO₂-eq instead of 670 Mt CO₂-eq, or 5% less than reported using GWP-100. Canada should use the GTP to calculate CO₂-eq values for CH₄ and other minor GHG rather than using the GWP.

 

Last Glacial Maximum Pattern Effects Reduce Climate Sensitivity Estimates

A new paper suggests that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) provides a stronger constraint on equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), the equilibrium global warming from increasing greenhouse gases, after accounting for temperature patterns. The paper claims that feedbacks governing ECS depend on spatial patterns of surface temperature; hence, using the LGM to constrain future warming requires quantifying how temperature patterns produce different feedbacks during LGM cooling versus modern-day warming.  The researchers report that accounting for LGM surface temperature pattern effects yields a median modern-day ECS of 2.4 °C, with a likely range of 1.7 °C to 3.5 °C. This contrasts with the IPCC’s 6^th assessment report’s (AR6) ECS median estimate using only Paleoclimate methods of 3.3 to 3.4 °C. The AR6 overall assessment of ECS is a median value of 3.0 °C with a likely range of 2.5 °C to 4.0 °C. The median ECS value of this study is less than the lower likely bound of IPCC’s current ECS estimate.

 

Pandemics in Roman Empire Correlate with Cooling Climates

A new temperature and precipitation proxy record shows that periods of rapid cooling align with the civilization’s three worst disease outbreaks. This new study used a sediment core recovered from the Gulf of Taranto off the coast of Italy to reconstruct the regional climate from 200 BCE to 600 CE. The record reveals that periods of rapid cooling and drying in the heart of the Roman Empire align with documented major disease outbreaks. Temperatures can be determined by measuring the ratios of fossils of various plankton species that thrive at different temperatures. The authors wrote “The researchers found that after a few hundred years of a warm, wet, stable climate known as the Roman Climate Optimum, a sharp downward temperature trend began around 130 CE and continued well past the arrival of the Antonine Plague in 165 CE. Temperatures never returned to the warmth or stability of the early Roman Empire. The Plague of Cyprian hit around 251 CE amid another rapid temperature decline that lasted half a century. The first plague pandemic arrived in roughly 541 CE, when temperatures were near the lowest measured over the entire record.”  The study indicates the warm climates are healthier than cold climates.

 

Comprehensive Russian Temperature Reconstruction Shows Warmer Temperatures 1000 Years Ago!

A paper published by the Russian Academy of Sciences presents a quantitative reconstruction of the mean annual temperatures of northeastern Europe for the last two millennia. Pierre Gosselin wrote about the study “The reconstruction of the mean annual temperatures is based on dendrochronological, palynological and historical information, and shows the comparative chronology of climatic and historical events over a large region of Northeast Europe.” The paper’s abstract says “In the pre-industrial era, the maximum annual mean temperatures in 981-990 were 1°C higher and minimum temperatures in 1811-1820 were 1.3°C lower than on average for 1951-1980. The constructed chronology has a noticeably larger amplitude of variability compared to hemispheric and pan-Arctic reconstructions.”

 

CliSci # 406                                        2024-04-04

 

Last Chance to Purchase Tickets for this FOS Speaking Event

Click HERE for the event details and to order tickets; $20 for members, $25 for non-members.

 

The Climate Case Expert Opinion - The Hague Court of Appeals

Three career physicists who specialized in climate submitted an expert opinion to the Hague Court of Appeals in the case Shell v. Milieudefensie et al.  The opinion states the court’s “findings that ‘dangerous’ climate change and extreme weather are caused by CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels are contradicted by the scientific method and only supported by the unscientific methods of government opinions, consensus, peer review, and cherry-picked or falsified data.”  The scientists warn that “there will be disastrous consequences for people worldwide if fossil fuels and CO₂ emissions are reduced to ‘net zero’, including mass starvation.” The opinion was written by Richard Lindzen, William Happer and Steven Koonin.

The climate scientists are highly critical of the court for relying on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They demonstrate that the IPCC’s report have no value as science because the IPCC is government controlled. Thousands of experimental results demonstrate that more CO₂ usually increases the amount of food that plants produce. The 120 ppm increase in CO₂ concentration since the start of the Industrial Revolution increased agricultural production per unit land area on average by 46%.  A further 100 ppm increase of CO₂ would result in about a 15% increase in food supply worldwide. Nitrogen fertilizer, which is made from natural gas, has greatly alleviated the problem of food scarcity.

The climate models used by the IPCC simulate temperature trends that greatly exceed that of measurements so they provide no scientific basis for concluding that CO₂ emissions will cause dangerous climate change and extreme weather.

 

The Climate Movie

This new movie exposes the climate alarm as an invented scare without any basis in science. It shows that there has been no increase in most extreme weather events. Neither temperatures nor sea levels are increasing at worrying rates.  The film explores the nature of the consensus behind climate change. It describes the origins of the climate funding bandwagon and the rise of the trillion-dollar climate industry. It describes the hundreds of thousands of jobs that depend on the climate crisis. The movie includes interviews with a number of very prominent scientists. The movie was written and directed by Martin Durkin. It follows his movie “The Great Global Warming Swindle” that was released in 2007.

 

Evolutionary Dynamics of Island Shoreline with Climate Change

The paper by a group of scientists from China used remote sensing to analyze the changes of island shorelines in Southeast Asia (including the Philippines and Indonesia), the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea from 1990 to 2020. Approximately 12% of the 13,000 islands examined experienced significant shifts in shoreline positions. The paper’s abstract reports “The total shoreline length of these islands approaches 200,000 km, with 7.57% showing signs of landward erosion and 6.05% expanding seaward. Human activities, particularly reclamation and land filling, were identified as primary drivers of local shoreline transformations, while natural factors have a comparatively minor impact. Moreover, the ongoing rise in sea levels is identified as an exacerbating factor for coastal erosion rather than the primary cause.” For coral islands, erosion and expansion affected 13.5% and 15.84% of shorelines, respectively. Over the past three decades, the entire region experienced a cumulative increase in land area of 157 km² across more than 13,000 islands. There were net increases of island area of 370 km² from 2000 to 2010 and 33 km² from 2010 to 2020.

 

Another Solar Farm Gets Wrecked by a Hailstorm

On March 16th, thousands of solar panels were destroyed by a powerful hailstorm, causing significant damage to a large 10,000-acre solar farm near Needville, Texas. Pierre Gosselin wrote “The storm brought baseball-sized hail and smashed the solar panels at the Fighting Jays Solar Farm. Though the panels are made of tempered glass, which is designed to shatter safely upon impact, the hail’s size was enough to crack the photovoltaic cells underneath and thus render them useless and possibly environmentally dangerous.”  This incident shows that solar farms are vulnerable to weather events. There is concern that dangerous chemicals could now leak into the ground and contaminate the site. “Similar hail damage to a solar farm in Texas in 2019 resulted in over $75 million in losses. That particular farm had a capacity of 178 megawatts, while the Fighting Jays Solar Farm is even larger at 350 megawatts.”

 

Met Office Uses Junk Temperature Measurements to Fill “World Treasure” 350-Year Temperature Record

William Happer described the Central England Temperature (CET) record as a “world treasure” since it provides continuous recordings from 1659 – over 350 years. Chris Morrison wrote for the Daily Sceptic “Recent revisions have retrospectively cooled the near past and boosted readings from the last 20 years. In addition, the Daily Sceptic can reveal that two of the three measuring stations currently used to add to this scientific treasure are taken from near-junk class 4 sites that come with official ‘uncertainties’ of up to 2 °C.” Measurement site quality classifications are set by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). Two class 4 sites were added to the network in 2006. The third site is a pristine class 1 site located away from artificial heat corruptions. A recent freedom of information request shows that nearly 8 out of 10 Met Office measuring stations across the United Kingdom were sited in near-junk class 4 and junk class 5 locations. Class 1 sites number just 24 and make up only 6.3% of the total.

Science writer Paul Homewood last year discovered data tampering in 2022 with the recent CET record. In a recent version of the dataset, the years from 1970 to 2003 had been cooled and years from 2004 to 2022 had been warmed compared to the previous version. The Met Office promotes a 60 second temperature spike to 40.3 °C at an airport on July 19, 2022 as a U.K. temperature record despite knowing that the spike occurred when jets were landing near the measurement station at the same time. Last month, the Daily Sceptic analyzed all the heat records declared by the Met Office since 2000 and found that all except two should be disqualified. Many of them had been set in junk class 5 and most of the rest were in class 4 locations.

 

CliSci # 405                                        2024-03-06

 

Projection of Amazon Rainfall Dominated by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation

The Amazon basin experienced a prolonged drought condition during the 2010s. The analysis using a climate model presented in this paper finds a negative-to-positive phase transition of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) explains about 45% of the observed drought since 2010, much greater than the role of external forcing of about 12%. The IPO evolution substantially affects the near-term projection of Amazon rainfall, introducing large uncertainty to the near-term projection. Such uncertainty reduces by about38% after removing the IPO’s influence from the computer simulation. Thus, predicting the near-term phase transition of the IPO would greatly improve the projection of Amazon rainfall change in the coming decades. The IOP is defined as the 9-year running mean of the difference between the December through April (D-A) sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly averaged over central-eastern equatorial Pacific and the average of the  D-A SST anomaly in the northwestern and southwestern Pacific.

 

IPCC’s New “Hockey Stick” Temperature Graph

A new blog post discusses a hockey stick temperature graph that appears in the latest IPCC report (AR6) after being absent in the fourth and fifth reports. A hockey stick graph produced by Michael Mann and his colleagues was published multiple times in the IPCC’s third assessment report. Two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick showed that the graph was very flawed. The algorithm used to produce the graph mined for hockey stick shaped tree-ring proxy data.  The graph is called a hockey stick graph because the shape resembles an ice hockey stick with a long, flat “shaft” and a big “blade” shooting up at the end. AR4 and AR5 presented multiple temperature estimates but AR6 relies on just one temperature estimate for the past 2000 years from a group called  PAGES 2k. Clintel published a book that criticized the PAGES 2k temperature graph. Clintel wrote “Evidence suggests that a significant part of the original PAGES 2k researchers could not technically support the new hockey stick and seem to have left the group in dispute. Meanwhile, the dropouts published a competing temperature curve with significant pre-industrial temperature variability.” It shows “that summer temperatures had already reached today’s levels several times in the pre-industrial past.” Clintel says that the PAGES 2k graph is based on a large number of poorly documented tree ring data with uncertain temperature sensitivity. Some proxies used reflect changes of precipitation and not temperature.

A paper published in 2022 criticized the IPCC for not considering other multi-proxy temperature reconstructions and that the uncertainty range of the new graph is far too narrow, especially in early times.  Tree ring width proxies are good at capturing short frequency variability abut are not good at capturing long-term variability. AR6 compared recent annual extremes against past centennial averages. Such unequal comparison can mislead the public. Steve McIntyre wrote that many chronologies were introduced without having been reviewed. The ones that made it into the latest PAGES 2k version were the ones that were the most hockey stick-shaped. Like the Mann hockey stick, the algorithm used by PAGES 2k adds upticks at the end, making hockey stick from non-hockey stick data.

 

The Elevation of the Early Holocene’s W. Antarctic Ice Sheet Plunged 450 m in 200 Years

A new paper reports that the elevation of the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) fell by about 450 m within 200 years, from 8,200 to 8,000 years before 1950. The authors attribute this elevation change to dynamic thinning due to flow changes induced by the ungrounding of ice in the area. An Ice core record from grounded ice at Skytrain Ice Rise (SIR) was used to estimate the speed of the early Holocene ice sheet retreat. Kenneth Richard wrote “No modern WAIS recession rates are even remotely comparable to those achieved naturally during the Early to Mid Holocene.” The elevation change was estimated from changes in ¹⁸Oxygen and total air content changes. The ¹⁸O record shows a major shift in a span of about 180 years, diverging from an otherwise stable record throughout the Holocene. Changes in ¹⁸O are strongly related to changes of temperature. However, there is no similar abrupt shift in northern temperature reconstructions of the Holocene or in other WAIS ice core ¹⁸O records. Therefore, it is unlikely that the SIR abrupt shift is reflective of wider regional climatic change. The authors interpreted the ¹⁸O change as a decrease in elevation due to the surface lapse rate effect.

 

Late Holocene coastal dynamics, eastern Gulf of Thailand

A new study reveals that sea levels were 2 to -5 m higher than present 4000-7000 years ago in the tropics (Thailand) before they gradually fell to present levels over the last millennia. These higher sea levels are evidenced by beach ridges dated to 3500 years at 4 m elevations found 6 km inland from current shorelines. Beach ridges are depositional features that allow reconstruction of past sea-level variations, sediment dynamics, and storm activity. The seaward set of beach ridges apparently reflects a millennium of slowly retreating coastline until the modern beach ridge formed. There was significantly less water locked up on land in the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets and in glaciers than today. As the temperatures declined to temperatures of the 1600s the ice sheet expanded and the sea levels fell.

 

Top Climate Model Improved to Show ENSO Skill

Ron Clutz provides a summary of a paper published in a Russian journal which demonstrates improvement of the ability of Russian climate model INMCM6 to replicate El Niño–Southern Oscillations (ENSO) in the Pacific Ocean. ENSO is a key mode of inter-annual climate variability and it impacts the weather across most of the world. Some important aspects of ENSO are still not satisfactorily simulated by most of the climate models. ENSO’s hot and cold states are asymmetrical but are phase-locked to the annual cycle. The authors assess and compare predictability of observed and simulated ENSO and they “find that the improved INMCM6 model has significant benefits in simulating described features of observed ENSO as compared with the previous INMCM5 model. … We argue that proper cloud parametrization scheme is crucial for accurate simulation of ENSO dynamics with numerical climate models.” The difference in the amplitude of the ocean heat content associated with ENSO between INMCM5 and INMCM6 can be explained mainly by the difference in cloud parameterization in these models. The decrease in low clouds and increase in high clouds in INMCM6 over El-Nino region during positive phase of ENSO lead to further upper ocean warming.

 

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles: UNSALABLE

According the Car & Driver, there are only about 15,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles on U.S. roads (September 2022), and all of them are in California.  Electric vehicles (EV) compete against hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (HFCV) in California which has about 100 hydrogen dispensing stations. For HFCV, unless you stay within California, road trips are impossible. Robert Bradley Jr. says that the range and fill-time is competitive with EVs but even with $60,000 in total discounts the Toyota Mirai Limited HFCV is still a bad deal. One problem is that access to hydrogen fuel is getting harder. The price of the Mirai Limited begins at US$66,000. Toyota is offering US$40,000 discounts on the 2023 Mirai Limited models and zero percent financing for qualifying buyers. The financing incentive is valued at US$6,500. All new Mirais models include $15,000 in complimentary hydrogen fuel. This is equivalent to more than US$60,000 in incentives. James Carter wrote “I've been around automotive for a long time, but I've NEVER seen incentives that represent 90% of new vehicle price.” This car will cost $56,000 over 5 years, which is roughly the same as a Tesla Model Y EV mostly charged from home. At the end of 5 years, that Model Y will be worth about $25,000.  The Mirai will likely be worth $2,000 to $3,000. In related news, Shell USA, Inc. announced it would permanently close or divest of all of its H₂ refuelling stations. Hydrogen fuel prices have skyrocketed in the past year amid supply disruption.

 

CliSci # 404                                        2024-02-21

 

Observed Humidity Trends Contradict Climate Models

A new paper has demonstrated a major discrepancy between observation-based and climate model-based historical trends in near-surface atmospheric water vapour in arid and semi-arid regions. A discrepancy between modelled and observed humidity trends is also present in more humid regions during the most arid times of the year. The models predict that water vapour should have increased over arid and semi-arid regions. In reality, atmospheric water vapour over these regions has essentially remained constant over the last four decades on average, which is strongly at odds with climate models’ projections. The authors wrote “It indicates a major gap in our understanding and modelling capabilities which could have severe implications for hydroclimate projections.”

This discrepancy between observations and models has been previously reported by several authors. Nevertheless, Ken Richards says “this is a devastating finding, as water vapour is the most significant greenhouse gas due to its alleged ‘feedback’ capacity, accelerating warming well beyond what CO₂ is said to be capable of alone.”

Climate models simulate only a very small decline in relative humidity from 1980 to 2020 in arid/semi-arid regions, while the observation record shows relative humidity has declined by about an order of magnitude more than the models on average.  The paper presents evidence that the discrepancies are very likely due to some process being misrepresented in the models rather than due to a problem with the observations.

The graphs are from the paper’s figure 5. The observations of specific humidity (SH) and relative humidity (RH) from the ERA5 dataset are shown in black.  

 

 The Hockey Stick Trial: Science Dies in a DC Courtroom

Rupert Darwall wrote an excellent article about the hockey stick trial. Science is a process where theories are subjected to criticism. Climate scientist Michael Mann is the lead author of the hockey stick graph which is a temperature reconstruction over the previous millennium using selected tree ring data. The graph purportedly shows slightly falling temperatures for many centuries then suddenly shooting upwards  with the advent of the Industrial Revolution based on the assumption that tree ring are accurate proxies for temperature and are not contaminated by factors such as rainfall and levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere. “What previous generations of climatologists called the Medieval Warm Period had disappeared.” A rival temperature reconstruction by Keith Briffa also using tree ring data showed a significant decline in temperatures over the latter part of the 20^th century opening up a divergence with the instrumental record. This divergence implies that tree rings are not a reliable indicator of temperatures. Analysis by Canadians Steve McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick found that running statistically trendless “red noise” on Mann’s computer code produced hockey stick shapes 99% of the time. Mann used tree types that were particularly sensitive to CO₂ fertilization. Darwall describes how Mann hid the decline of the Briffa data and the use of a proxy data series upside-down.

Michael Mann brought a defamation suit against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn in 2012. They had described Mann’s hockey stick as fraudulent. Now, 12 years later, a jury in Washington, DC has ruled in favor of Michael Mann, imposing $1,000 in punitive damages on Simberg but $1 million on Steyn. Darwall wrote “The massive differential in punishments the jury meted out to the two defendants can only be explained by the jury’s political bias. Steyn has a high profile as one of the most accomplished of conservative commentators. Evidently, the DC jury decided to make an example of Steyn and discourage any public questioning of today’s consensus of human-caused climate change.”

 

Dutch Climate Expert Dr. Guus Berkhout: “There is No Climate Emergency; it is a Hoax”

Journalist Arthur Blok interviewed climate expert Dr. Guus Berkhout, the president of Clintel, about climate and the alleged climate emergency. “We tell a truthful story, not just one side,” said Clintel founder emeritus professor Guus Berkhout. Clintel published the ‘World Climate Declaration’, which has an impressive list of over 1890 signatories worldwide, including Nobel Prize laureates and leading scientists and climate experts. Berkhout says “The climate system is very complex, and we still know little about how it works. Fake scientists claim that ‘the science is settled,’ but honest scientists say the opposite. They acknowledge that current theoretical models are still primitive and must not be used in climate policies. In other words, climate models are not fit for purpose!” Many climate parameter simulated by climate models are contradicted by measurements. “How does the science of IPCC work? They started 30 years ago with the claim, ‘Global warming is caused by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (CO₂). Next, they created a theoretical model that confirms their claim. An approach that is a mortal sin in science”, he explained. “There is a massive subsidy-driven machine behind the climate madness. You will be excommunicated as a scientist if you don’t go along. Clintel is fighting as David against Goliath.”

 

Impact of Changing Greenhouse Gases on Ontario’s Climate

William van Wijngaarden is a climate scientist and physicist at York University in Toronto, Ontario and is a member of the CO₂ Coalition. He published a 46-page report on the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on Ontario’s climate. The abstract is here. He says that Ontario was responsible for only 0.35% of the world’s CO2 emissions in 2019 and this amount was 20% lower than in 2005. Sea level along Ontario’s Hudson Bay coast is decreasing due to isostatic rebound of the land following the last Ice Age. The change to ocean acidity due to CO2 absorption from the atmosphere is negligible compared to that due to tides, ocean depth and seasonal effects. No changes in precipitation in North America over the 19th and 20th centuries, nor at Toronto since 1843, were found. The Great Lake levels are remarkably constant over the past century showing no evidence of a change in the incidence of flooding. No evidence was found that the frequency of extreme events such as hurricanes or tornadoes increased during recent decades. The number of forest fires in Canada and Ontario decreased during 1990 to 2020.

 

Satellite Observations Reveal a Decreasing Albedo Trend of Cities

A new paper examines the urban surface albedo (reflectivity) changes for 3037 large cities worldwide for the period from 1986 to 2020. The authors created an annual high-resolution albedo dataset using a direct estimation approach and Landsat imagery. The dataset reveals an overall decreasing trend of albedo during the 35-year evaluation period. Urban greening can well explain the total variances in the albedo trend by tree planting, CO₂ fertilization and urban warming-enhanced vegetation growth. The decrease in urban albedo caused a warming effect indicated by positive surface radiative forcing. Around 70% of cities world-wide witnessed an urban greening phenomenon with increasing vegetation coverage.

 

CliSci # 403                                        2024-02-06

 

Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models

Dr. Roy Spencer wrote for The Heritage Foundation “Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy.” [See graph]  Spencer explains that the warming that has occurred over that last 50 years is due to an imbalance of 0.6 W/m² of average energy flows into and out of the climate system. This is about ¼ of a percent of the 220 W/m² natural energy flows. The accuracy of this energy flow is about 1 %, or four times larger than the imbalance. Much of the warming could be caused by natural climate change. Climate models blame the entire imbalance on burning fossil fuels, but this can’t be demonstrated by science. Numerous studies show that the trend of the measurements are strongly biased high due to the urban heat island effect, so the real discrepancy is likely greater than shown.

The climate models are adjusted or tuned to produce long-term climate charge without changing greenhouse gases (GHG), assuming that all climate change is unnatural. Without tuning and with constant GHG, the model’s temperature would drift over time becoming warmer or cooler. With historical GHG the models produce warming rates which vary by a factor of three, from 1.8 °C to 5.6 °C in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO₂. Despite the tuning, most models don’t conserve energy. Spencer says “Energy conservation should be a necessary requirement of any model used for energy policy decisions.”

The average summer temperature trend simulated by 36 climate models of the 12-state U.S. Corn Belt region for 1973-2022 is 4.0 times the observed temperature trend [graph]. The observations or measured warming is 0.13 °C/decade. The most extreme model produces 7.1 times too much warming. CO₂ fertilization and warming has contributed to global food production increasing faster than population growth in the past 60 years.

Satellites have been measuring the global lower atmosphere temperature since 1979. As shown by this graph, climate models on average produce 43% too much warming compared to weather balloons, 55% too much compared to reanalysis datasets and 75% compared to satellite datasets. Spencer concludes with “Finally, possible chaotic internal variations will always lead to uncertainty in both global warming projections and explanation of past changes. Given these uncertainties, policymakers should proceed cautiously and not allow themselves to be influenced by exaggerated claims based on demonstrably faulty climate models.’

 

Global Plant Growth Accelerates Thanks to Higher Carbon Dioxide Levels

A new study shows that the rate of global greening caused by recent increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) has accelerated during the last two decades. About 55% of global vegetated land area has experience an “accelerated rate” of vegetation growth or ‘greening’, compared with only 7.3% showing increased decline or ‘browning’ as explained in this article. The study used four leaf area index (LAI) datasets calculated from satellite data. The global greening trend from 2000 to 2020 is about 0.05 m²/m²/decade. That means the leaf area of a given land area increases by 5% every decade. All four datasets indicated a small acceleration of the greening trends. Only 14% of the land area was browning, with the accelerating and slowing down portions being roughly equal. The dominant driver of the LAI trend was increasing CO₂ over 76% of the land area. Rising temperatures was the dominant driver of the LAI trend on 11% of the land area, which were mainly in the high altitude areas of the northern hemisphere. Earlier studied have confirmed the fact of global greening since 1982 to 2000. Some studies have suggested that browning had increased since 2000. However, those results are due to degradation of some satellite sensors and due to orbital drift. These sensors have been recalibrated in subsequent versions which greatly reduce the uncertainty of the datasets used in this study.

 

Global Tropical Cyclones

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. published a review of global tropical landfalling cyclones including 2023 data. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based only on a hurricane's maximum sustained wind speed. This scale does not take into account other potentially deadly hazards such as storm surge, rainfall flooding, and tornadoes. Categories 1 and 2 have wind speed between 119 to 177 km/h. Categories 3 to 5 are major cyclones with wind speed of 178 to 305 km/h. Pielke presents several graphs of cyclone activity. Since 1970 when data became reliable, there has been a small declining trend of global number of categories 1 and 2 cyclones and an increasing trend of the global number of categories 3, 4, 5 cyclones. During 2023 the running three-year sum of major hurricanes was at its lowest since 1980. The global accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is another important metric which takes into account the cyclones’ frequency, intensity and longevity. The global ACE of all hurricanes from 1980 to 2023 indicates an insignificant declining trend.  

The Western North Pacific and North Atlantic regions together saw 67% of all global hurricane landfalls from 1970 to 2023. These regions have good data from 1950. From 1950 to 2023, the frequency of major (Cat 3+) landfall cyclones show an insignificant downward trend and the frequency of minor (cat 1,2) cyclones have no trend. [See graph] There has been no detection of a change of either minor or major cyclone frequencies, so no attribution of cyclone changes can be linked to global warming or GHG emissions.

 

Greenland is a Methane Sink Rather than a Source

Climate alarmists have long told the public that the Arctic might release large quantities of methane due to rising temperatures which would accelerate the warming.  A new study by scientists from the University of Copenhagen has concluded that Greenland consumes much more methane (CH₄) than it releases. Since 2000, dry landscapes of the ice-free part of Greenland have consumed more than 65,000 tons of methane annually from the atmosphere, while wet areas have released 9,000 tons of methane annually. The scientists analyzed soil samples from 11 areas across Greenland and measured the methane uptake. They used a dynamic methane model to quantity the methane budget for all of Greenland. Greenland has widespread dry landscapes representative of 78% of the ice-free area, where methane from the atmosphere is consumed into the upper layers of soil. The study says the dry upland landscapes cover 87% of the northern circumpolar region, suggesting that that all of the Arctic region may by a net consumer of methane.

 

Penguin Population Increases as Warming Leads to More Mating

Penguins living on Phillip Island, off Australia's southern coast, are having so much sex there are now more than 40,000 of them. As sea surface temperatures increased, the number of fish around the island has increased too. The increased food supply gives the penguins more time and energy to mate. A marine scientist said “The birds are breeding one-and-a-half months earlier than they used to.” With more energy, the penguins are mating twice each season, often with different partners.  Warming is beneficial to most species, but the scientist reporting on the happy penguins spins the story by claiming the increase in penguin population may “lead to the extinction of species”! 

 

CliSci # 402                                        2024-01-22

 

Arctic Sea Ice

The media and government websites often report on declining Arctic sea ice extent as an important indicator of greenhouse gas induced climate change. NASA’s Arctic sea ice page reports that “Summer Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking by 12.2% per decade due to warmer temperatures.”  This value is for the month of September only from 1979 to 2023 and it obscures the fact that the trend of Arctic sea ice has changed in recent years. This graph shows that the annual average Arctic sea ice extent trend from 2015 to 2023 is a positive 0.21 million square kilometres (km²) per decade. The full satellite era monthly data is shown below.

The Antarctic and global sea ice extent are displayed on the FoSS website at Library > Climate Science > Polar Regions & Glaciers > Polar Region Sea Ice.

An article at The Daily Skeptic says “Arctic sea ice on January 8th stood at its highest level [for that date] in 21 years.”   This graph show the January 20, 2024 Arctic sea ice extent is at the highest at that date since 2010.  The declining sea ice extent from 1982 to 2007 has been blamed on GHG alone. Jim Steele wrote “But any critical thinking person can see warm Arctic temperatures are due to inflows of warm Atlantic water not a CO₂ climate crisis.” The Atlantic waters have warmed partly due to CO₂, but the sea ice extent decline to 2007, which is almost identical to the 2023 average sea ice extent, can’t be explained by GHG alone. In much of the Arctic, winter temperatures decline by 30 °C to 33 °C from summer temperatures. Steele says “Where Atlantic waters enter the Arctic at 70 degrees north latitude, summer temperatures reach +8.1 °C, and despite winter cooling, temperatures don’t drop below freezing averaging +2.5 °C.” The inflow of warm Atlantic waters raises the Arctic temperatures by around 30 °C higher than what would be expected from the Arctic’s normal greenhouse effect. The natural Arctic Oscillation and its 1990s shift in wind direction drove out much of the Arctic’s multi-year sea ice. Steele expects that as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation switches to its cool phase less Atlantic water will enter the Arctic Ocean.

 

Drax Carbon Capture Could Cost Bill Payers £43 Billion

The Drax power station is a large wood pellet biomass power station in North Yorkshire, England. The station was converted from burning coal to wood pellets over 2010 to 2018. It has a capacity of 2.6 GW and is providing 6% of the United Kingdom’s electricity. A carbon capture pilot scheme was started in 2019 to capture 1.0 tonne CO₂ per day. The Guardian reported that Drax has received permission from the government to install carbon capture facilities at two of the four wood burning units. The cost subsidy over 25 years of the bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) project is estimated at £43 billion (C$73 billion) according to Ember, a climate thinktank, if the company acts on plans to fit all four units with carbon capture. The BECCS project would consume about 25% of the electrical power generated by the biomass units. Ember estimates that Drax would require an annual subsidy of £1.7 billion. The Drax website says the total project would require a CO₂ pipeline from the plant to store CO₂ deep under the seabed and injection and monitoring wells. Ember says the Drax BECCS is an expensive gamble as it would be the first commercial-scale BECCS plant in the world. Drax expects the project to deliver negative emissions based on the assumption the burning wood to generate power is carbon neutral. However, scientific evidence shows that the process is not carbon neutral and can cause more warming than burning coal. This is because the time for a cut forest to regrow is many decades. The Ember report gives a warning: “The CCS projects that are in existence do suggest actual costs are likely to be much higher than we have indicated here.”

 

The Polar Vortex Is Acting Up

A blog post published January 16 explains how the stratospheric polar vortex has contributed to the extreme cold temperatures experienced recently in Canada and U.S.A. The polar vortex winds are 30 km above us over the Arctic. These winds are far above the tropospheric jet streams which are winds at about 9 km altitude. The polar vortex over the last two weeks was more disrupted at the lower levels, closer to the stratosphere-troposphere boundary. High pressure has been sitting in the troposphere over Greenland. The recent minor stratosphere warming may have reinforced this Greenland high pressure, which then drove a wedge into the stretched-out polar vortex in the lowest part of the stratosphere, splitting it into two lobes. This disturbance became just strong enough to fully reverse the winds of the polar vortex in the mid-stratosphere, causing a sudden stratospheric warming. The disturbance caused the cold air outbreak over North America. A disrupted polar vortex increases the odds that the tropospheric jet stream will stay shifted farther south, which increases the risk for cold air outbreaks. Other climate processes like the ongoing El Niño also impact the location of the jet stream throughout the winter.

Calgary’s minimum daily temperatures at the airport plunged from -15.4 °C on January 9 to -36.2 °C on January 14, 2024.

 

CO₂ Is Not Pollution. It’s The Currency of Life

Joseph Fournier, a member of the CO₂ Coalition, wrote an article about the benefits of CO₂. He says that CO₂ is not a pollutant, contrary to claims by the media and politicians. Fournier wrote “I seriously doubt the average person would accept this perspective, if they understood that CO₂ is in fact a prerequisite of Life, and that global food production will expand by trillions of dollars in the coming decades as CO₂ levels continue to rise.” Svante Arrhenius, the father of the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis wrote “By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid [i.e. CO₂] in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.” That is, Arrhenius argued that rising CO₂ concentrations would benefit planet Earth and people.

We are experiencing the expanding plant kingdom, the acceleration of agricultural productivity and a stabilizing climate. The CO₂ fertilization effect increases both the rate of photosynthesis and the water use efficiency. Remote sensing data from satellites have shown the expansion of green plants from 1982 to 2015 was equivalent to adding over 20 million km² of leaf surface area or twice the size of the United States. The current CO₂ concentrations are around 425 ppm and that the saturation limit of the CO₂ fertilization effect in most species of plants is in the 1,100 to 1,300 ppm range, it is reasonable to suggest that humanity has only begun to realize this benefit in food production. There is also the climate stabilization effect that occurs from plant biomass accumulation, which includes enhanced soil moisture retention, cloud seeding, and higher rainfall recycling rates. Recent studies have estimated that the natural cooling influence of the global greening has limited the global warming since the 1970s by upwards of 0.5 °C.

 

CliSci # 401                                        2024-01-06

 

“Realistic” Global Warming Projections for the 21st Century

A new paper by Nicola Scafetta demonstrates that a realistic emissions scenario and climate sensitivity value produce non-alarming and benign scenarios of 21^st century climate. The paper shows that “net-zero emission policies are not necessary because SSP2-4.5 is sufficient to limit climate change hazards to manageable levels.” Scafetta shows that most of the latest climate models run too hot because they are too sensitive to greenhouse gases. When considering the impact of urban warming contamination and the millennial natural climate oscillations on surface temperature datasets, the expected global surface warming to 2100 will be likely less than 2.0 °C above pre-industrial temperatures and less than 0.8 °C above 2020-2022 temperatures. Scafetta’s blog post gives a summary of his paper. He wrote that according to recent scientific literature, the SSP2-4.5 scenario is the most plausible, which is a moderate and pragmatic scenario in which CO₂ emission rates maintain around present levels until 2050, then reduce but do not reach net-zero by 2100. Climate alarmism is based on unrealistic scenarios like SSP-8.5.

The warming rate of surface temperature records are significantly influenced by non-climatic warm biases from the urban heat island effect among others. Satellite lower troposphere temperature records show a warming rate that is 30% lower than recent surface records, but the models expect that the troposphere should have warmed faster than the surface, not less. This means that all the climate models “are running ‘too hot’, indicating a very low actual value of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of 1 to 2 °C. In contrast, the climate models likely range of ECS is 2.5 to 4.0 °C. The climate models can’t reproduce the quasi-millennial climate oscillation with a likely solar origin that characterizes the entire Holocene and is responsible for the Roman and Medieval warm periods. Rescaling the models to the lower warming rate of the lower troposphere temperature records and adopting semi-empirical models of natural climate variability projects warming for the 21^st century that is congruent with the projected warming of the net-zero scenario SSP-2.6. Therefore the 2.0 Paris agreement target for 2100 can likely be met without implementing rapid, extremely expensive, and technologically likely impossible net-zero decarbonization policies.

 

Life-Years Lost Due to Heat and Cold in European Cities

A paper published last year shows that the ratio of cold to heat related deaths in European cities is 10.1 as reported in CliSci # 392 of 2023-07-27. The study determined the excess deaths for adults aged 20 years and older in 5 age groups in 854 cities in Europe due to temperatures lower and higher than the optimal temperatures at which the death rates were at a minimum.  Cities with higher average temperature have lower cold related death rates and higher heat-related death rates. The reduction in cold-related deaths is 2.2 times the increase of heat-related deaths per degree of temperature change.

The ratio of 10.1 cold-related deaths to each heat-related death treats the death of an old person the same as the death of a young person. However, the social cost of a death is related to the years of life lost, not a simple count of deaths.

The paper’s supplemental information includes data on life expectancy by city and age, so I calculated the excess years of life lost due to cold and heat for each of the 30 European countries. The life expectancy at birth in Europe has increased from 77.4 years in year 2000 to 81.1 years in 2019. The remaining life expectancy in 2019 of a person aged 85 in Europe is 6.9 years, giving a total life of 91.9 years. Persons of age 20 have remaining life expectancies by country varying from 55.7 to 64.5 years.

I calculate that in Europe there are 8.3 times more years of life lost due to cold than due to heat. This ratio is less than the ratio of deaths because old people have a higher risk of death from non-optimal temperatures than young people. A one C° temperature increase is estimate to reduce the years of life lost by about 18 life-years per 100,000 population, or about 29,000 life-years in Europe.

 

Change in Antarctic Ice Shelf Area from 2009 to 2019

A new paper used satellite data to measure the ice shelf calving front position and area on 34 ice shelves in Antarctica from 2009 to 2019. The paper’s abstract reports “Overall, the Antarctic ice shelf area has grown by 5305 km² since 2009, with 18 ice shelves retreating and 16 larger shelves growing in area.” This gain is a modest 0.4% of the total ice shelves in Antarctica. The ice shelves gained 661 billion tonne (Gt) of ice mass over the past decade. The largest area increase was observed on Ronne Ice Shelf in East Antarctica which was a 5889 km² gain from 2009 to 2019. East Antarctic ice shelves gained 3532 km² of ice. The large Ross, Ronne and Filchner ice shelves grew in total by 14,028 km².  The ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica lost areas of 6693 km² and 5563 km², respectively. The authors used over 350 multispectral optical images acquired by the MODIS instrument on board the NASA Terra and Aqua satellites.

 

On German Floods: “Difference Between Facts And Political Narratives Is Breathtaking.”

Germany has experienced more than average rainfall over the last three months leading a significant flooding. The news media in Germany has claimed that the extensive flooding is proof of the climate crisis. Hundreds of people have been evacuated from flooded regions where rivers have overflowed their banks and damaged homes. Professor Stefan Homburg pointed out on X as reported by Pierre Gossselin “More rain than usual, but not a record. The number of heavy rain days was also within the normal range. Neither ‘droughts’ nor ‘extreme weather’ are recognizable in the official statistics. The difference between facts and political narratives is breathtaking.” Homburg presents graph of rainfall from the German weather service showing rainfall since 1881. It shows a slight increase in rainfall over the last 143 years, but the 2023 rainfall is not close to the record. There was five years since 1960 with greater rainfall than in 2023.

 

UK Health Security Agency Boss Criticized for False Tropical Disease Claim

Professor Paul Reiter, professor of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, ridiculed the head of the UK Health Security Agency, calling her recent pronouncements on mosquito-transmitted diseases “entirely fictional” and “shameless”.  Dame Harries, head of the UK health agency claimed that rising temperatures will make tropical diseases common in the UK by 2040. She claimed that the Asian Tiger mosquito which can transmit dengue, yellow fever and other diseases will become endemic in London. There has been a global spread of the mosquito mainly by global trade in used tires. Professor Reiter says that it is beyond doubt that this has nothing to do with temperature. Reiter also lambasted fearmongering about malaria, noting that this was a major cause of death in England during the Little Ice Age. Meanwhile, global malaria deaths have declined from 896,000 in 2000 to 608,000 in 2022. About 95% of malaria deaths are in Africa. 

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