Archive
Ars Technica: Why trust climate models?
Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
by Scott K. Johnson with comments from Weaver, Easterbrook, Otto-Bliesner, Schmidt, Del Genio, and Alley.
This is just awesome with awesome sauce on top.
How refreshing to read a lay science piece that’s about the science and not the controversy.
Tasmanian Bushfires
Looks like Colorado.
More than 100 people are missing in catastrophic bushfires that are ravaging the Australian island of Tasmania.
Some 1,000 people were rescued by boat from the east coast after fires cut off roads, but police say they hold ‘grave fears’ for a number of residents who stayed to defend their homes but have not been heard from.
It comes amid the hottest temperatures ever recorded on the island, peaking at 41.8C (107F) on Friday.
As fires continued to burn yesterday, police and rescue experts began the grim search for bodies in the worst-hit towns of Boomer Bay, where 65 properties were lost, and Dunalley, both in the south-east of the island.
More pics at Daily Mail UK: Tasmania-bushfires-Grave-fears-stayed-defend-homes
Jeff Spross @ Climate Progress has more background and details.
‘Sprawling Heat Wave Of Historical Proportions’ Brings ‘Horrendous’ Wildfires To Australia
Joe Romm @ Climate Progress
Off-The-Charts Heat Wave Brings Australia Its Hottest Average Temperature And New Map Colors For Temps Above 122°F!
Jeff Masters @ Wunderground
Historic heat wave brings Australia its hottest average temperature on record
Rep Broun (GA-R): Lies Straight From the Pit of Hell
I have pretty low expectations of politics and politicians in general, but can we at least keep idiots like Rep Broun (GA-R) off the Congressional Committee on Science, Space, and Technology? Please.
Climate News and Blog Recap: 2011 03 05
Professor Bickmore takes a skeptical look at Dr. Spencer’s The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists
Roy Spencer’s Great Blunder, Part 1
Roy Spencer’s Great Blunder, Part 2
Roy Spencer’s Great Blunder, Part 3
(also … Roy Spencer’s six trillion degree warming Smith @ Not Spaghetti
Mathematical analysis of Roy Spencer’s climate model Smith @ Not Spaghetti)
Our JGR Paper on Feedbacks is Published
Spencer @ Spencer
On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing
Spencer and Braswell, 2010
Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Demonstration
Spencer and Braswell, 2008
Looking back a bit …
Natural Warming Id @ the Air Vent
Warming in Last 50 Years Predicted by Natural Climate Cycles Spencer @ Spencer
Evidence for Natural Climate Cycles in the IPCC Climate Models’ 20th Century Temperature Reconstructions Spencer @ Spencer
Skeptical Science looks at the PDO.
Blaming the Pacific Decadal Oscillation Riccardo @ Skeptical Science
Tamino takes a look at Knudsen et al. 2011: Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years.
8,000 years of AMO? Tamino @ Open Mind
Remiss in my duties, I have not been very systematic in my blog science searches. Some older, but not too old, pieces are included here.
For instance, I missed Two Most Excellent Pieces from The Way Things Break
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet decay update
Tropical tropospheric temperature, instrumental and proxy trends
Speaking of slow-to-catch-on, I hope you noticed H.E. Taylor’s GW news recap at Coby’s ScienceBlogs: Illconsidered before I did. If not, hie thee thither. (or goto the source)
Brook looks back at a two year old forecast
A toy model for forecasting global temperatures – 2011 redux, part 1 Barry Brook @ Brave New Climate
Clear Climate Code is sponsoring a Google Summer of Code 2011 project.
Bart touches on the one of the two greatest sources of uncertainty (aside from hand-waving and wand-waving).
Radiative forcing by aerosol used as a wild card: NIPCC vs Lindzen Verheggen @ Our Changing Climate
Gavin discusses a paper by Pinter 2011: The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: A requiem
Requiem for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis? Gavin @ Real Climate
Climate Blog and News Recap: 2011 02 26
A pair of solar-driven climate papers by Weber and Le Mouël …
Strong signature of the active Sun in 100 years of terrestrial insolation data
W. Weber
Article first published online: 21 MAY 2010
DOI: 10.1002/andp.201000019
A solar pattern in the longest temperature series from three stations in Europe
Le Mouël, Jean-Louis; Kossobokov, Vladimir; Courtillot, Vincent
Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Volume 72, Issue 1, p. 62-76.
has come under criticism by Feulner and Legras, respectively.
The Smithsonian solar constant data revisited: no evidence for cosmic-ray induced aerosol formation in terrestrial insolation data
Feulner
Volumes and Issues Contents of Issue 1
Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 11, 2297-2316, 2011
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/2297/2011/
doi:10.5194/acpd-11-2297-201
A critical look at solar-climate relationships from long temperature series
B. Legras, O. Mestre, E. Bard, and P. Yiou
Clim. Past, 6, 745-758, 2010
http://www.clim-past.net/6/745/2010/
doi:10.5194/cp-6-745-2010
Blog Comments:
How easy it is to get fooled Rasmus @ RealClimate
Fooled Again Tamino @ OpenMind
Fooled Yet Again Tamino @ OpenMind
Metadata Eli@RabettRun
Zeke tries to tease out natural -v- anthropogenic attribution in the AMO.
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Modern Warming Hausfather @ The Blackboard
I’ve udpated the previous recap with some work by Stokes on Antarctic warming and Eschenbach on precipitation extremes.
Note: Science Direct is down for maintenance this morning – so some links may not work and some abstracts are missing. Updated
Climate Blog and News Recap: 2011 02 19
Update 20110220: I’ve added both some older and newer technical links to the S09/O10 information and will continue to do so as good links become available (or I find interesting old ones).
The “Tribe-said/Team-said” BS seems to be simmering down some and a couple of blogs are looking under the hood to see what all the fuss is about (technically) in the Steig 2009 / ODonnell 2010 kerfluffle.
kgnd & Cross-Validation: PART II – Parting Thoughts O’Donnell @ the Air Vent
kgnd & Cross-Validation ODonnell @ the Air Vent
Antarctic, RO10, Steig and TempLS Stokes @ Moyhu
Ryan’s Code – testing. Stokes @ Moyhu
Ryan’s Code – S09 with more PCs Stokes @ Moyhu
Ryan’s Code Stokes @ Moyhu
Sensitivity Test: O’Donnell’s idea Lucia @ The Blackboard
A Calmer Conversation with the Nail O’Donnell at The Air Vent
EIV/TLS Regression – Why Use It? RomanM at Statistics and Other Things
The Two-and-One-Half PC Solution RomanM at Statistics and Other Things
Ridge Regression Tamino @ Open Mind
Real Climate and Climate Progress comment on two papers dealing with flooding and precipitation. Dr. Pielke Jr casts these in contrast with flood damage and streamflows. Dr Curry find this kind of analysis “totally unconvincing”. Eschenbach has a reply cast in the usual WUWT scathing tone.:
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000
Pall, Aina, Stone, Stott, Nozawa, Hilberts, Lohmann & Allen (2011)
Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes
Min, Zhang, Zwiers & Heger (2011)
Climate News and Blog Recap: 2011 02 21
As far as the blog recap goes, lets just say that Dr Steig was voted off the Island and leave it at that. He follows in the footsteps of Dr Schmidt last week and Dr Trenberth the week before that.
A simple and coherent framework for partitioning uncertainty in multi-model climate ensembles is presented. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to decompose a measure of total variation additively into scenario uncertainty, model uncertainty and internal variability.
A Simple, Coherent Framework for Partitioning Uncertainty in Climate Predictions (Journal of Climate)
Climate Blog and News Recap: 2011 02 05
Looks like my winter lull at work is over. However, I continue to work on the Huybers 2006b review. I didn’t spend much time cruising the blogosphere. If you have a science based blog entry you would like to share, feel free to add it to the comments. In fact, I strongly encourage you to do so. Links to your own work welcome.
Meanwhile …
Ice Cores Yield Rich History of Climate Change
On Friday, Jan. 28 in Antarctica, a research team investigating the last 100,000 years of Earth’s climate history reached an important milestone completing the main ice core to a depth of 3,331 meters (10,928 feet) at West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS). The project will be completed over the next two years with some additional coring and borehole logging to obtain additional information and samples of the ice for the study of the climate record contained in the core. …
…The WAIS Divide Ice Core Project is specifically investigating the small timing offsets between past changes in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and changes in temperature. By understanding these timing offsets, the research team can determine the role that changes in ocean circulation had in the release of carbon dioxide from the ocean and how an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the planet…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110202114955.htm
Climate Blog and News Recap: 2011 01 28
Tamino @ Open Mind whips out a series on Glacial Cycles
Milankovitch Cycles
Glacial Cycles, part 1
Glacial Cycles, part 1b
Glacial Cycles, part 2
Pielke Ping Pong
Pielkes all the way down, revisited
James Annan Misses The Point (Again!)
And I note that Pielke Sr’s blog is quite a bit more active than I remember. Guess I’ll have to add it my frequent reader list.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com
Real Climate puts out a weekend reading list.
Kelly @ Charts and graphs shows us Comparison of 2011-11 El Nino – La Nina Cycle with Previous Cycle. He also adds a multiple climate series table for public use. Thank you.
========================
Warming North Atlantic Water Tied to Heating Arctic
The temperatures of North Atlantic Ocean water flowing north into the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Greenland — the warmest water in at least 2,000 years — are likely related to the amplification of global warming in the Arctic, says a new international study involving the University of Colorado Boulder.
Led by Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany, the study showed that water from the Fram Strait that runs between Greenland and Svalbard — an archipelago constituting the northernmost part of Norway — has warmed roughly 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century. The Fram Strait water temperatures today are about 2.5 degrees F warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period, which heated the North Atlantic from roughly 900 to 1300 and affected the climate in Northern Europe and northern North America.
The team believes that the rapid warming of the Arctic and recent decrease in Arctic sea ice extent are tied to the enhanced heat transfer from the North Atlantic Ocean, said Spielhagen. According to CU-Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, the total loss of Arctic sea ice extent from 1979 to 2009 was an area larger than the state of Alaska, and some scientists there believe the Arctic will become ice-free during the summers within the next several decades. …
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110127141659.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6016/450.short
Romm @ Climate Progress
UK Telegraph: RTFM IPCC AR4 WG1
The UK Telegraph breathlessly reports …
Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds
Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking. …
…The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that global warming is not the deciding factor in whether a glacier survives or melts.
Sigh. File it under RTFM.
Whereas glaciers in the Asian high mountains have generally shrunk at varying rates (Su and Shi, 2002; Ren et al., 2004; Solomina et al., 2004; Dyurgerov and Meier, 2005), several high glaciers in the central Karakoram are reported to have advanced and/or thickened at their tongues (Hewitt, 2005), probably due to enhanced precipitation.
https://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/wg1-ar4.html
Read more…
The Whiteboard 
