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chubbs

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Everything posted by chubbs

  1. From Kris Karnauskas twitter, tropical mean SST anomaly averaged on latitude bands. Shows the impact of long-term warming and enso on tropical and sub-tropical SST. Ninos warm the tropics and sub-tropics while La Nina cooling is more focused on the tropics with less impact on the sub-tropics. The subtropics haven't been the same since the 15/16 nino. We'll see what the aftermath of this nino is. edit: Added a plot showing trends for the east and west Pacific. Of course the east Pacific has the biggest enso effects.
  2. Spot checking the Philadelphia airport, there is no trend in the highest march temperature. Max is 87 in 1945. No wonder Martz and Chesco like this stat. Funny because Chesco's other favorite is the philly airport heat island. Edit: Added the minimum temperature for March at the airport. Here there does appear to be a rising trend in recent decades, but the warmest is 30F back in 1942.
  3. In January ERA broke the record by 0.15C, while GISS only broke by 0.03C, Berkeley Earth by 0.05C and NOAA by 0.07C. ERA broke the February record by 0.12C, a little lower than Jan. We'll see how the obs come in Feb, probably another record month across the board but not guaranteed.
  4. This nino is having an unusually large impact on UAH. The red 13-month average will continue to rise for several months as cool months come off. Clear now that the period after the 2016 nino is different in UAH than the period after the 1998 nino. I see 2 explanations: 1) we have better satellites now that are not impacted by diurnal drift, or 2) The urban heat island is starting to impact satellite measurements
  5. Below is an interview with the lead author, which provides good background for understanding the study implications. The unrealistic modeling scenario is needed because current models are inadequate. Not the best position to be in with the system trending toward less stability. .
  6. This nino continues to have atypical timing. Global temperature anomalies have plateaued since September, instead of continuing to rise into a typical Feb/March peak. Don't think a record is a slam dunk this year. Will depend on how fast and far the decay is as nino----> nina. Also note the warming since 2014, roughly 0.8C, or 10-20% of an ice age. An unusual decade. That may help explain why there is much more discussion of where our winters are headed vs 10 years ago.
  7. Yes, capitalism isn't the problem. The problem is that vested fossil fuel interests don't want capitalism to solve the climate problem and work to keep the deck stacked in their favor. A carbon tax has been a no-brainer for decades as a conservative solution. Also agree that people have a hard time connecting the dots on climate change. One factor, we've never seen climate change before and don't know what it looks like.
  8. This paper indicates that man-made aerosol effects on enso can be prolonged, well after the emissions have been reduced. Could help explain recent favoring of la nina. The discrepancy between the observed lack of surface warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific and climate model projections of an El Niño-like warming pattern confronts the climate research community. While anthropogenic aerosols have been suggested as a cause, the prolonged cooling trend over the equatorial Pacific appears in conflict with Northern Hemisphere aerosol emission reduction since the 1980s. Here, using CESM, we show that the superposition of fast and slow responses to aerosol emission change—an increase followed by a decrease—can sustain the La Niña-like condition for a longer time than expected. https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2315124121
  9. Clean energy has become an economic growth engine for China as costs continue to tumble and foreign uptake increases. We are a laggard in an increasingly important economic race. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-was-top-driver-of-chinas-economic-growth-in-2023/
  10. A spot check of East/Gulf coast tide gauges shows an acceleration starting around 2010. Sea rise is accelerating globally, but not this fast. Change in ocean currents, as discussed above, a possible contributor. St Petersburg, FL Virginia Key, FL Ft Pulaski, GA Charleston, SC Atlantic City, NJ
  11. Ironically, in this case resisting change is accelerating change.
  12. Hasn't peaked yet, but rate of increase has slowed. Will peak by 2030 according to IEA. Need to speed things up to hit climate targets. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/10/iea-energy-peak-fossil-fuel-demand-by-2030/
  13. Here's a good free review article on tropical cyclone frequency. Bottom-line: we don't know whether the number of storms will change with climate change. The 78F threshold will tend to increase however because the upper troposphere is also warming. Has to be warmer at the surface to generate the same amount of convection in a warmer world. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2021EF002275
  14. Like batteries, solar is ramping rapidly as costs continue to drop on a well established learning curve. Under this recent forecast, solar will be roughly 10% of global energy use in 2030. This forecast also follows the IEA net zero scenario which has 1000 GW of yearly solar AND wind installation by 2030. Moreover solar could do better, forecasters have been underestimating solar growth since solar forecasting began. Solar exponential growth wouldn't have to continue too much longer beyond 2024 to rapidly turn down fossil fuel use.
  15. Tamino's latest on removing 3 main natural factors from global temperature series: enso, volcanoes and sun. Makes the recent acceleration easier to see and statistically significant. My only quibble is whether he has removed all of the enso variation. I don't think that would change the result though, removing more year-to-year variation should make it easier to detect acceleration. https://tamino.wordpress.com/2024/02/16/adjusted-global-temperature-data/
  16. Yes the free-market system isn't going to ditch fossil fuels on its own, at least not quickly. The incumbent has large competitive advantage. Everything from installed infrastructure, favorable laws and regulations, to brainwashed media and bought politicians. However, we wouldn't have solar, wind, and EV without past government support. I'd argue that government support is likely to increase, now that commercial success has been achieved. Who wants to be left behind? For instance in the US, IRA has spurred record-breaking investment in the past year. I suppose we could pull the rug out from under clean-energy technologies in the US, but China, Europe and others would plow ahead without us. On a global basis, investment in clean energy technologies has become much larger than fossil fuel investment. I expect the gap to continue to widen. There are tipping points in economics also.
  17. Per this study, steep SST gradients near Gulf stream and downstream of East Asia act as winter thermostats under climate change. The SST gradients evolve slowly producing uneven winter warming: relatively cool hiatus decades followed by decades with rapid warming. One more factor to throw into the pot when discussing our winter weather fortunes. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43686-1
  18. A report on batteries came out recently. Would be concerned if I worked in the fossil-fuel industry or any industry based on use of fossil fuels. Climate and energy technology are going to continue to change rapidly, whether we are ready or not. https://www.theclimatebrink.com/cp/141643938 https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/12/xchange_batteries_the_battery_domino_effect.pdf
  19. Blog article on study. Including an update at the end that clarifies the implications of the model simulations. Update 10. February: In the reactions to the paper, I see some misunderstand this as an unrealistic model scenario for the future. It is not. This type of experiment is not a future projection at all, but rather done to trace the equilibrium stability curve (that’s the quasi-equlibrium approach mentioned above). In order to trace the equlibrium response, the freshwater input must be ramped up extremely slowly, which is why this experiment uses so much computer time. After the model’s tipping point was found in this way, it was used to identify precursors that could warn us before reaching the tipping point, so-called “early warning signals”. Then, the scientists turned to reanalysis data (observations-based products, shown in Fig. 6 of the paper) to check for an early warning signal. The headline conclusion that the AMOC is „on tipping course“ is based on these data. In other words: it’s observational data from the South Atlantic which suggest the AMOC is on tipping course. Not the model simulation, which is just there to get a better understanding of which early warning signals work, and why. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/02/new-study-suggests-the-atlantic-overturning-circulation-amoc-is-on-tipping-course/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-study-suggests-the-atlantic-overturning-circulation-amoc-is-on-tipping-course
  20. Yes, media is doing a lousy job informing the public on climate science. Science has a good handle on the likely temperature changes vs man-made CO2 emissions. There is no scientific debate than man-made emissions are changing the climate at a rapid rate. The big uncertainty is how will the Earth's systems respond. We are conducting a big science experiment in that regard. Nothing in nature or man-made is designed for the climate we are rapidly headed for. Change is going to continue to accelerate as we pull away from our historical climate. The funny thing is. A world without fossil fuels is looking better and better from an economic standpoint. We are giving ourselves climate angst for no reason, other than we are uncomfortable facing the facts.
  21. Well you views are much different than mine. Fossil fuels are steadily losing competitive advantage. Wind, solar, EV are all much cheaper than they were a decade ago and growing rapidly on a global basis, often without subsidies. I think we will be kicking ourselves in a decade for not ditching fossil-fuels earlier.
  22. I would love to see a conservative solution to climate change. For instance a carbon tax with the monies used to reduce income taxes or the deficit. Has been a no-brainer for decades. By letting the problem fester, conservatives are inviting a big government solution
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