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By Kenneth Richard on 26. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterFrom 1979-2018 East Antarctica cooled -0.70°C/decade (-2.8°C), West Antarctica cooled -0.42°C/decade (-1.68°C), but the Antarctic Peninsula warmed 0.18°C/decade (0.72°C). Thus, as a whole, the Antarctic continent has cooled by about -1.5°C to -2°C during the same period CO2 rose from 337 to 410 ppm. Zhu et al., 2021 “The temperature trend from ERA5 is […]
Posted in Misc. |
By Kenneth Richard on 22. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterForty to 50 years ago there was “general agreement” in estimates of the resulting radiative forcing (1 to 2 W/m²) and surface temperature change (0.5°C ±0.3°C) when directly doubling CO2 concentrations from 280 to 560 ppm. By the late 1980s the “consensus” estimates doubled to 3.7 W/m² forcing and 1.2°C warming instead. Apparently “basic […]
Posted in Climate Sensitivity, CO2 and GHG |
By Kenneth Richard on 19. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterSince the last day of 2001 CO2 has risen from 372 to 419 ppm. However, there have been two cooling periods of 12 years (2002-2014) and 7.5 years (2014-2021), separated by a 1.5-year El Niño-induced warming event (2015-2016). Temperature changes that proceed in step- or event-like fashion do not seem to correlate well with […]
Posted in Cooling/Temperature |
By Kenneth Richard on 15. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterA new study warns that “a massive expansion of impervious surfaces” is an inevitable consequence of having electric vehicles reach a 40% share of citizens’ driving needs. A land area the size of Croatia (in the European Union) or West Virginia (in the United States) must be completely covered with wind turbines to meet […]
Posted in Emissions, Green Follies, Wind Power |
By Kenneth Richard on 12. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterExcept for a few pockets of warming along the West Antarctic coast, surface air temperatures have cooled profoundly across East Antarctica – most of the continent, as well as the surrounding Southern Ocean – in the last 40 years (1979-2018). About 30% of the cooling can be explained by Madden-Julian Oscillation forcing. Atmospheric CO2 […]
Posted in Antarctic, Cooling/Temperature |
By Kenneth Richard on 8. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterThere has been no net warming in the Rocky Mountains in the last 500 years. The southern Rocky Mountains were as warm or warmer than recent decades during the 1600s and 1700s and they have been cooling since the 1950s (Berkelhammer and Stott, 2012, Heeter et al., 2020). Image Source: Berkelhammer and Stott, 2012 […]
Posted in Cooling/Temperature, Medieval Warm Period, Paleo-climatology |
By Kenneth Richard on 5. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterChina’s climate history includes multiple climate warming and cooling fluctuations of 4°C within centuries, with cold periods aligning with declines in solar irradiance. According to a new study (Zhang et al., 2021), northern China’s coldest temperatures of the last 5000 years occurred 300 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP), coinciding with the Little […]
Posted in Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, Paleo-climatology, Solar Sciences |
By Kenneth Richard on 1. July 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterA new study reports that during Pleistocene cold stages, when CO2 concentrations dipped below 200 ppm, Arctic Siberia had much more fertile soil and productive vegetation than exists today. Extensive grassland ecosystems could sustain year-round grazers: horses, mammoths, bison. Today this region’s large herbivores must be fed by humans to secure survival due to […]
Posted in Arctic, Paleo-climatology |
By Kenneth Richard on 28. June 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterBy ending funding for energy infrastructure projects that rely on natural gas, Europe and the United States have executed a “blanket ban” on supplying inexpensive and reliable energy to people living in poor countries. As Dr. Ramachandran details in Nature, a de facto natural gas ban effectively does nothing to propel growth in intermittently-available […]
Posted in Climate Politics, Green Follies, Solar, Wind Power |
By Kenneth Richard on 24. June 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterDue primarily to land uplift, markings on “seal rocks” show dramatic declines in relative sea level along Sweden’s coasts in the last 290 years. The explanation for falling sea levels throughout much of Northern Europe is that the land in this region of the world is rising faster than eustatic sea levels are. Written […]
Posted in Cooling/Temperature, Paleo-climatology, Sea Levels |
By Kenneth Richard on 21. June 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterSea ice has been declining in the Canadian North Atlantic since the 1970s, and yet the harp seal population has been estimated to have risen from a little over 1 million in 1971 to about 7.5 million in 2012 to 2019. But model projections suggest the seal populations will decrease in the future due […]
Posted in Arctic, Sea Ice |
By Kenneth Richard on 17. June 2021
Share this…FacebookTwitterIt has been assumed COVID lockdowns and their associated reductions in human CO2 emissions would be a “step in the right direction” with regard to climate change mitigation. But a new study finds the particulate (aerosol) pollution reductions from less industrial and transportation activity in Europe during the months of March to May (2020) […]
Posted in Climate Sensitivity, Cloud Climate Influence, CO2 and GHG |
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