27 July 2015, The Guardian, The Daily Mail and Telegraph get it wrong on Arctic sea ice, again: Coverage of a recent paper on Arctic sea ice and climate change suggests conservative media can’t seem to grasp the concept of long-term trends. Cherry-picking is one of the five telltale techniques of climate change denial. By focusing on short-term blips in noisy data, those who want to maintain the status quo can distract from the long-term threats posed by climate change. Climate contrarians most frequently deploy this strategy using global temperature and Arctic sea ice data. A recent study in Nature Geoscience concluded that, not surprisingly, there is a strong relationship between the summer temperatures in the Arctic (specifically the number of “melting degree days”), and the amount of sea ice that melts in a given year. 2013 happened to be a relatively cool year in the Arctic – the coolest since 2004. As a result, there was relatively little ice melt in 2013. The annual minimum Arctic sea ice extent and volume were their largest since at least 2009, or perhaps as far back as 2005, according to the data used in this new study. The following figure from the paper is as clear as ice – while there was a short-term increase from 2012 to 2013, the Arctic has lost more than half its sea ice over the past three decades. Read More here
Category Archives: The Science
27/7/2015, The Vane, El Niño Probably Won’t Solve California’s Dire Drought: If anyone is eagerly following news of the strengthening El Niño in the Pacific, it’s California. Strong El Niño events have a history of bringing drenching rain to the West Coast during the winter months, and we could see that play out this year. However, don’t get too wrapped-up in the hype—it’s going to take more than one rainy stretch to ease the damage done by the lasting drought. In order to understand what El Niño may or may not do for California, we need to understand El Niño itself, and shockingly (!!!) the national media doesn’t do a great job explaining things that could get them a lot of ratings if they spin it just right (see: polar vortex)….
….The latest update of the drought monitor doesn’t paint a pretty picture across the western United States. Believe it or not, the drought has improved by a hair since September 30—California started the water year with 58% of the state in an exceptional drought, which is the worst of the five categories. As of last Tuesday, only (“only”) 46% of the state is in an exceptional drought. Any progress is progress, I guess.The intensity and duration of this drought is unprecedented in the modern era, and it’s going to take more than a month or two of rain to fix what’s gone so horribly wrong over the past couple of years. The problem with the potential of seeing big bursts of heavy rain is that much of the rain will run off, helping reservoirs and bodies of water no doubt, but causing floods, mud and landslides in the process, not to mention the water being unable to seep into and rejuvenate the soil. This doesn’t even begin to cover the fact that (currently non-existent) snowpack is a huge water resource in the state.Read More here
24 July 2015, The Conversation, The ‘mini ice age’ hoopla is a giant failure of science communication. This month there’s been a hoopla about a mini ice age, and unfortunately it tells us more about failures of science communication than the climate. Such failures can maintain the illusion of doubt and uncertainty, even when there’s a scientific consensus that the world is warming. The story starts benignly with a peer-reviewed paper and a presentation in early July by Professor Valentina Zharkova, from Northumbria University, at Britain’s National Astronomy Meeting. The paper presents a model for the sun’s magnetic field and sunspots, which predicts a 60% fall in sunspot numbers when extrapolated to the 2030s. Crucially, the paper makes no mention of climate. The first failure of science communication is present in the Royal Astronomical Society press release from July 9. It says that “solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s” without clarifying that this “solar activity” refers to a fall in the number of sunspots, not a dramatic fall in the life-sustaining light emitted by the sun. The press release also omits crucial details. It does say that the drop in sunspots may resemble the Maunder minimum, a 17th century lull in solar activity, and includes a link to the Wikipedia article on the subject. The press release also notes that the Maunder minimum coincided with a mini ice age. But that mini ice age began before the Maunder minimum and may have had multiple causes, including volcanism. Crucially, the press release doesn’t say what the implications of a future Maunder minimum are for climate. Read More here
23 July 2015, New York Times, Whiplash Warning When Climate Science is Publicized Before Peer Review and Publication: The study is “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that 2°C Global Warming is Highly Dangerous.” The 66-page “discussion paper” (the authors’ description) was posted Thursday in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, the discussion forum of the European Geosciences Union journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The paper was was written by 17 prominent climate, ice and ocean scientists, led by James E. Hansen, the pioneering climatologist who since 2007 has argued that most of his peers have been too reticent in their projections of the possible pace of sea-level rise in a warming world. It is a sweeping and valuable cross-disciplinary description of ways in which climate and ocean dynamics, pushed by the planet’s human-amplified greenhouse effect, could accelerate sea level rise far beyond the range seen as plausible in the last report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the most recent review of what leading experts on sea level think, this 2014 paper: “Expert assessment of sea-level rise by AD 2100 and AD 2300.” Read More here