Temperature and other aspects related to global warming (none of which is likely to enlighten skeptics);
a one-page report on continued warming which includes an excellent 14-second 'movie' showing six decades of a warming earth, from NASA:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20140121/

Joint presentation by NASA and NOAA (PDF, slides, some with side-by-side comparisons of NASA AND NOAA findings):
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/NOAA_NASA_2013_Global_Temperatures_Joint_Briefing.pdf

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"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

Met Office UK. The Recent Storms and Floods in the UK. February 2014

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/1/2/Recent_Storms_Briefing_Final_SLR_20140211.pdf

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Interesting piece from the BBC here. It makes re-forestation of temperate climes even more important.

[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26340038 [/url]

I have just watched a doumentary I would like to share with everyone. Most of have of course heard about global dimming but it is amazing to see the changes in the temerature after the airplanes were grounded after 9/11 and again the quick changes when they started flying again.
More scary than amazing what impact it has when we stop emitting aerosoles and other things with the same effect

http://documentaryheaven.com/global-dimming/

Please move this post if posted in the wrong place

Steinar

Not directly climate change but well worth a listen Chief Scientist at the met office in, "The life Scientific" on Radio4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zr00k

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/16apr_teleconnections/
NASA Science News. April 6, 2014

Unexpected Teleconnections in Noctilucent Clouds

New data from NASA's AIM spacecraft have revealed "teleconnections" in Earth's atmosphere that stretch all the way from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again, linking weather and climate more closely than simple geography would suggest.

For example, says Cora Randall, AIM science team member and Chair of the Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado, "we have found that the winter air temperature in Indianapolis, Indiana, is well correlated with the frequency of noctilucent clouds over Antarctica."

Noctilucent clouds, or "NLCs," are Earth's highest clouds. They form at the edge of space 83 km above our planet's polar regions in a layer of the atmosphere called the mesosphere. Seeded by "meteor smoke," NLCs are made of tiny ice crystals that glow electric blue when sunlight lances through their cloud-tops. ....

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"BBC has lost its balance over climate change"

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4140381.ece

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Funny couple of days:

Lawson's climate-sceptic group hit by charity status row

Cabinet reshuffle: It is right that Owen Paterson is going, but green groups shouldn't gloat

... and for people who believe 2 + 2 is something like 4 ...

BBC Two: Operation Cloud Lab

I was reading this article in the (London) Guardian the other day:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/aug/11/extreme-weather-common-blocking-patterns

It talks about how blocking patterns in the jet stream are linked to extreme weather events, such as the UK's recent winter flooding, the drought in the western US and the heat waves that hit Russia in 2010 and Europe in 2003.

This is relevant to our crunching operations:

"[Dr Dim] Coumou, [at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research] acknowledges his study shows a correlation � not causation � between more frequent summer blocking patterns and Arctic warming. �To show causality, computer modelling studies are needed, but it is questionable how well current climate models can capture these effects,� he said."

"Prof Tim Palmer, at the University of Oxford, wrote in a PNAS article in 2013 that understanding changes to blocking patterns may well be the key to understanding changes in extreme weather, and therefore to understanding the worst impacts of climate change on society. But he said climate models might have to run down to scales of 1km to do so. �Currently, national climate institutes do not have the high-performance computing capability to simulate climate with 20km resolution, let alone 1km,�"

This actually goes back to something I asked a few months ago.

HadAM3 has a horizontal resolution of 3.75 � 2.5 degrees in longitude � latitude (or about 300km), which means that to reach Professor Palmer's requirements, we would need a model with roughly 300x300=90,000 times finer resolution (unless I'm even worse at maths than I thought, which is always possible), which is absolutely non-trivial. That kind of model just couldn't be run on a domestic system. I doubt it could be run on one of the Met Office's supercomputers.

That said, if the models are not properly showing the blocking patterns, just how reliable are the attribution studies? If Dr Coumou and Professor Palmer are correct (and I don't know enough to even think about debating with them) it looks to me as if these extreme events are considerably more likely than would be suggested by anything a HadAM3 ensemble is capable of picking up.

Or am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong...

I personally don't think you are wrong and what you are discussing is certainly plausable. Engineers use a system based on the same principle- Finite Element Analysis- which used a series of points to create a 3D model and springs between these points to represent the stiffness of a material. The finer the "grain" (for use of a better word), the more accurate the analysis of a structural design/ design of an aircraft frame. The same goes for atmospheric analysis. The finer the grain, the more fluid the liquid, the more detail that can be considered and the more accurate the analysis.

I also live in the Fens (East Anglia) and used to get to experience the effects of the jet stream as it moved north every spring and south again every autumn. The changes in weather conditions as this happened would consist of very high gusting winds followed by sudden changes in temperature. The jet stream certainly does have an impact on the UK's weather and the hypothesis that kinks in it could trap a weather pattern locally is certainly plausable.

Sea level rises due to climate change could cost Australia $200b, Climate Council report finds

"You're looking at anywhere from three tenths of a per cent of loss of GDP per year, all the way up to 9 per cent loss of GDP per year," Professor Steffen said.

"That upper scenario is higher than the growth rate of GDP per year, so you're looking basically at staggering economic costs if we don't get this under control."

The Victorian coast, the south-east corner of Queensland and Sydney would be the hardest hit by rising sea levels, the report found.

With more than 75 per cent of Australians living near the coast, Professor Steffen said large swathes of infrastructure were at risk.

"Much of our road, rail, port facilities, airports and so on are on the coast," he said.

Rockefellers to switch investments to 'clean energy'

Heirs to the Rockefeller family, which made its vast fortune from oil, are to sell investments in fossil fuels and reinvest in clean energy, reports say.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is joining a coalition of philanthropists pledging to rid themselves of more than $50bn (�31bn) in fossil fuel assets.

The announcement was made on Monday, a day before the UN climate change summit opens on Tuesday.

Some 650 individuals and 180 institutions have joined the coalition.

It is part of a growing global initiative called Global Divest-Invest, which began on university campuses several years ago, the New York Times reports.

Pledges from pension funds, religious groups and big universities have reportedly doubled since the start of 2014.

Coal has no future in the world's energy mix, UN warns, ahead of New York summit

The Federal Government says coal will serve as an affordable, dependable energy source for decades to come, but the UN's climate chief has questioned whether that is in Australia's best interests long term.

"It is certainly within Australia's purview to decide how Australia is going to pursue its energy generation and energy growth," Christiana Figueres said.

"It is just a question of really thinking through very carefully what is in the best long-term interest of Australia and of the Australian population, making careful decisions that are informed both by today�s reality of climate change impacts as well as tomorrow's but very soon reality of a low-carbon society."

National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change

Actions by the United States and the International community have been insufficient to adapt to the challenges associated with projected climate change. Strengthening resilience to climate impacts already locked into the system is critical, but this will reduce long-term risk only if improvements in resilience are accompanied by actionable agreements on ways to stabilize climate.

In other words, "wake-up and smell the roses" before it's way too late!

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6,000?? Give it a rest.

G�bekli Tepe is more than 10,000 years old. And quite intricate I might add.

Explain that!

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Greenland-Ice-Sheet-vulnerable-expected-according/story-23005707-detail/story.html

More on Greenland Ice Sheet. Story also covered in Daily Mail but I chose to ignore that one.

Is 2 Degrees the Right Limit for Global Warming? Some Scientists Say No

Victor and other critics, however, say that as the target becomes effectively unachievable, it threatens the relevance of the process it's intended to catalyze. Though some models show that the target can still be met, those make "heroic assumptions"�immediate global cooperation, for instance, or the sudden, wide availability of new technologies.

"Pretending that they are chasing this unattainable goal has also allowed governments to ignore the need for massive adaptation to climate change," Victor and Kennel write.

Victor also points out that average global surface temperatures doesn't fully represent the changing global climate. Although the increase in average surface temperature has stalled over the past 16 years, average temperatures in the deep ocean�where most of the extra heat in the climate system is stored�has continued to rise.

"We think it's an error to boil it all down to a single goal, given how complex the climate system is," he says.

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6,000?? Give it a rest.

G�bekli Tepe is more than 10,000 years old. And quite intricate I might add.

Explain that!

A nice collection of videos and links to various resouces related to climate change can be found here.

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6,000?? Give it a rest.

G�bekli Tepe is more than 10,000 years old. And quite intricate I might add.

Explain that!

Myles Allen, the project leader is giving a talk tomorrow morning, and I've been asked to pass this on to anyone who might be interested. Should be good, as Myles is an interesting and thought-provoking speaker.

Live stream: IPCC AR5: Three numbers that matter, and numbers that matter less than you think
A talk by Professor Myles Allen, Tuesday 14 October, 9 am BST


Watch it live. Tweet using #ecilive

What the IPCC 5th Assessment Report has to say to the negotiators in Paris 2015

This lecture provides an overview of the climate change issue, highlighting what are, in my view, the most important findings of the latest IPCC report and their implications for climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We will focus on three numbers that matter a lot, and mention along the way some other numbers that matter rather less than you might think.

The first important number is 95%, the level of confidence the climate science community now has that human influence is the dominant cause of the warming observed over the past 60 years. I will explain where this number comes from, with a quick (and colourful) introduction to the methods used for 'detection and attribution' in the IPCC Working Group I report, and explain why the apparent 'pause' in ocean surface warming over the past decade or so doesn't really change the big picture.

The second important number is 40.3 degrees C (105 degrees F), the national average temperature high over Australia on January 7th, 2013. While bad enough for Australia, the significance of that 'Angry Summer' for the rest of the world is as an example of the kind of damaging weather event that, subsequent studies have shown, was made substantially more probable by human influence on climate. With the IPCC Working Group II finding that the impacts of climate change on human and natural systems are now evident on all continents and across the oceans, understanding the links between climate change and harmful weather events is becoming important for the UNFCCC's new 'Loss and Damage' agenda, and a key focus of Oxford's climateprediction.net/weatherathome project.

The third number is the big one: one trillion tonnes. That is the total amount of fossil carbon that the IPCC estimates can be dumped into the atmosphere over the entire Anthropocene epoch while keeping the resulting warming to likely less than two degrees Celcius. Over half a trillion tonnes has already been emitted, and accounting for warming due to other forms of pollution cuts down the remaining 'carbon budget' further still. This puts the mitigation challenge into perspective, and helps explain why the IPCC Working Group III report found such a pivotal role for carbon capture and storage in scenarios that have some chance of meeting the two degree goal.

What are the numbers that matter less than you might think? One of them, although much tweeted, is '97% of scientists agree'. I'll explain how this kind of opinion poll isn't really relevant to how science, or the IPCC, actually works. Another over-rated number is the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (the subject of earlier climateprediction.net experiments), which turns out to matter much less than people thought. Finally, if you are hoping for a purely scientific argument that two degrees is the threshold for dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system, you will be disappointed: the IPCC reports make it clear that the assessment of what is dangerous has an ethical and moral dimension and cannot be resolved by any purely technical assessment.

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Jonathan Miller
CPDN SysAdmin

2014 Headed Toward Hottest Year On Record � Here�s Why That�s Remarkable

by Joe Romm Posted on December 3, 2014 at 10:18 am

2014 is currently on track to be hottest year on record, according to new reports from both the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the U.K.�s Met Office Wednesday. Similarly, NOAA reported two weeks ago that 2014 is all but certain to be the hottest year on record.

It is not remarkable that we keep setting new records for global temperatures � 2005 and then 2010 and likely 2014. Humans are, after all, emitting record amounts of heat-trapping carbon pollution into the air, and carbon dioxide levels in the air are at levels not seen for millions of years, when the planet was far warmer and sea levels tens of feet higher. The figure above from the Met Office makes clear that humans continue to warm the planet.

�The provisional information for 2014 means that fourteen of the fifteen warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century,� said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. �There is no standstill in global warming.�

As Peter Stott, Head of Climate Attribution at the Met Office, explained: �Our research shows current global average temperatures are highly unlikely in a world without human influence on the climate.� While it has been on the cool side in parts of the United States, the Met Office reported that the United Kingdom is headed toward its hottest year on record. Stott noted that, �human influence has also made breaking the current UK temperature record about ten times more likely.�

What is remarkable, as the WMO explains, is that we�re headed toward record high global temps �in the absence of a full El Ni�o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).� We get an El Ni�o �when warmer than average sea-surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific combine, in a self-reinforcing loop, with atmospheric pressure systems,� which affects weather patterns around the world.

It�s usually the combination of the long-term manmade warming trend and the regional El Ni�o warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records. But not this year.

Here�s a revealing chart from Skeptical Science courtesy of environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli of NASA�s temperature data (with the projection for 2014 in black and white):

ENSO temps v2 wTrends
This year we are poised to set the global temperature record in an ENSO-neutral year. And while eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures have been warmer than normal in recent months, those temperatures were colder than normal in the beginning months of the year, so the net effect of ENSO on 2014 global temperatures has been minimal.

As one caveat, different climate-tracking groups around the world use different data sets, so it is possible that at the end of the year, some will merely show 2014 tied for the hottest year on record depending on how warm December turns out to be. For NOAA, however, it�s all but certain 2014 will be the hottest year on record. Either way, it�s remarkable this is happening in an ENSO-neutral year.

Finally, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology reported Friday that their models indicate �at least a 70% chance that El Ni�o will be declared in the coming months.� If so, then 2015 will very likely top 2014 to become the hottest year on record.

The only way to stop setting new annual temperature records on an increasingly regular basis � until large parts of the planet are uninhabitable � is to sharply change the world�s carbon dioxide emissions path starting ASAP.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/03/3598698/2014-hottest-year-on-record/

Most fossil fuels 'unburnable' under 2C climate target

Most of the world's fossil fuel reserves will need to stay in the ground if dangerous global warming is to be avoided, modelling work suggests.

Over 80% of coal, 50% of gas and 30% of oil reserves are "unburnable" under the goal to limit global warming to no more than 2C, say scientists.

University College London research, published in Nature journal, rules out drilling in the Arctic.

And it points to heavy restrictions on coal to limit temperature rises.