bluewave

Katharine Hayhoe September 4, 2017 · Is there such a strong consensus in the scientific community on climate change simply because anyone proposing alternate explanations is black-balled and suppressed? This is one of the most frequent questions I get here on Facebook. It's a lot easier for someone to claim they've been suppressed than to admit that maybe they can't find the scientific evidence to support their political ideology that requires them to reject climate solutions and, to be consistent, 150 years of solid, peer-reviewed science, too. But over the last 10 years, at least 38 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals, each claiming various reasons why climate wasn't changing, or if it was, it wasn't humans, or it wasn't bad. They weren't suppressed. They're out there, where anyone can find them. So we took those papers and - thanks to the superhuman efforts of my colleague Rasmus Benestad - recalculated all their analyses. From scratch. And you know what we found? Every single one of those analyses had an error - in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis - that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus. It's real, it's us, it's serious. Learning from mistakes in climate research https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00704-015-1597-5

Warmest melt season resulted in the second lowest minimum sea ice extent and a new record low in the Central Arctic.

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/07/30/co2-drives-global-warming/ Earth absorbs energy from sunlight, but as the surface warms, it also emits energy in the form of infrared radiation (which we know of as heat) out into space. Water vapor and CO2, however, act like a cap, making it more difficult for Earth to get rid of this energy. Without gases like these to absorb the energy, our planet’s average surface temperature would have been near zero degrees Fahrenheit. About 99 percent of the atmosphere is made of oxygen and nitrogen, which cannot absorb the infrared radiation the Earth emits. Of the remaining 1 percent, the main molecules that can absorb infrared radiation are CO2 and water vapor, because their atoms are able to vibrate in just the right way to absorb the energy that the Earth gives off. After these gases absorb the energy, they emit half of it back to Earth and half of it into space, trapping some of the heat within the atmosphere. This trapping of heat is what we call the greenhouse effect. Because of the greenhouse effect created by these trace gases, the average temperature of the Earth is around 15˚C, or 59˚F, which allows for life to exist. CO2 makes up only about 0.04% of the atmosphere, and water vapor can vary from 0 to 4%. But while water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, it has “windows” that allow some of the infrared energy to escape without being absorbed. In addition, water vapor is concentrated lower in the atmosphere, whereas CO2 mixes well all the way to about 50 kilometers up. The higher the greenhouse gas, the more effective it is at trapping heat from the Earth’s surface. The burning of fossil fuels affects the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Before the industrial revolution, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 288 ppm. We have now reached about 414 ppm, so we are on the way to doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by the end of this century. Scientists say that if CO2 doubles, it could raise the average global temperature of the Earth between two and five degrees Celsius. We are already increasing the amount of energy that bounces back to the Earth. Because of the greenhouse effect, this is causing global warming with its many destructive impacts. Both water vapor and CO2 are responsible for global warming, and once we increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, the oceans warm up, which inevitably triggers an increase in water vapor. But while we have no way to control water vapor, we can control CO2. And because we are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by continuing to burn fossil fuels, even in relatively small amounts compared to the entire mass of the atmosphere, we are disturbing the entire heat balance of the planet.

Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming By Warren CornwallDec. 4, 2019 , 12:00 PM Climate change doubters have a favorite target: climate models. They claim that computer simulations conducted decades ago didn’t accurately predict current warming, so the public should be wary of the predictive power of newer models. Now, the most sweeping evaluation of these older models—some half a century old—shows most of them were indeed accurate. “How much warming we are having today is pretty much right on where models have predicted,” says the study’s lead author, Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. Climate scientists first began to use computers to predict future global temperatures in the early 1970s. That’s when newfound computing power coincided with a growing realization that rising carbon dioxide levels could boost global temperatures. As the issue gained public attention, critics questioned the reliability of rudimentary model predictions. Even a 1989 news article in Science radiated skepticism, stating that “climatologists may have a gut feeling that the greenhouse effect is heating up Today, the models are much more sophisticated. Mainframe computers driven by paper punch cards have given way to supercomputers running trillions of calculations in 1 second. Modern models account for myriad interactions, including ice and snow, changes in forest coverage, and cloud formation—things that early modelers could only dream of doing. But Hausfather and his colleagues still wanted to see how accurate those bygone models really were. The researchers compared annual average surface temperatures across the globe to the surface temperatures predicted in 17 forecasts. Those predictions were drawn from 14 separate computer models released between 1970 and 2001. In some cases, the studies and their computer codes were so old that the team had to extract data published in papers, using special software to gauge the exact numbers represented by points on a printed graph. Most of the models accurately predicted recent global surface temperatures, which have risen approximately 0.9°C since 1970. For 10 forecasts, there was no statistically significant difference between their output and historic observations, the team reports today in Geophysical Research Letters. Global temperatures have risen approximately 0.9°C since 1970, though some areas have warmed much more than others. BERKELEY EARTH Seven older models missed the mark by as much as 0.1°C per decade. But the accuracy of five of those forecasts improved enough to match observations when the scientists adjusted a key input to the models: how much climate-changing pollution humans have emitted over the years. That includes greenhouse gases and aerosols, tiny particles that reflect sunlight. Pollution levels hinge on a host of unpredictable factors. Emissions might rise or fall because of regulations, technological advances, or economic booms and busts. To take one example, Hausfather points to a famous 1988 model overseen by then–NASA scientist James Hansen. The model predicted that if climate pollution kept rising at an even pace, average global temperatures today would be approximately 0.3°C warmer than they actually are. That has helped make Hansen’s work a popular target for critics of climate science. Hausfather found that most of this overshoot was caused not by a flaw in the model’s basic physics, however. Instead, it arose because pollution levels changed in ways Hansen didn’t predict. For example, the model overestimated the amount of methane—a potent greenhouse gas—that would go into the atmosphere in future years. It also didn’t foresee a precipitous drop in planet-warming refrigerants like some Freon compounds after international regulations from the Montreal Protocol became effective in 1989. When Hausfather’s team set pollution inputs in Hansen’s model to correspond to actual historical levels, its projected temperature increases lined up with observed temperatures. The new findings echo what many in the climate science world already know, says Piers Forster, an expert in climate modeling at the United Kingdom’s University of Leeds. Still, he says, “It’s nice to see it confirmed.” Forster notes that even today’s computer programs have some uncertainties. But, “We know enough to trust our climate models” and their message that urgent action is needed, he says. The new research is a useful exercise that “should provide some confidence that models can be used to help provide guidance regarding energy policies,” adds Hansen, now director of the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program at Columbia University. He communicated with Science from Madrid, where world leaders are gathering this week for the 25th annual United Nations climate conference. Delegates from around the world are negotiating how to implement emissions cuts agreed to at the 2016 meeting in Paris. Meanwhile, a U.N. report issued last month showed greenhouse gas emissions have continued to climb since then, and that many of the biggest polluting countries aren’t on track to meet their promises.

It will be fun to see what the convergence of the rapid software improvements and miniaturization look like. Smartphones have taken the lead on computational photography. While DSLR and mirrorless still appeal to many who like the larger sensor size and lens selections. Maybe the smartphone and mirrorless tech will merge in the coming decade or two. The gap is already narrowing.

Excellent points from Rclab and Liberty Bell. I remember the old days of photography when I would do all my own black and white darkroom printing after taking the photos. Switching over to digital allowed me to do more extensive color post processing. Smartphones really opened up the world of photography to many more people. There are some great photographers now who do much of their work on a iPhone or Android. But a dedicated bunch are still working on DSLR and mirrorless cameras. The old saying is the best camera is the one that you have with you.

That was the great episode that the starfish clip posted above was from. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-serengeti-rules-41dfru/20105/

Yeah, they believe that it’s related to the record marine heatwave. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/

Changes to nature that seem small can have very big consequences.

https://wcd.copernicus.org/preprints/wcd-2020-40/ https://wcd.copernicus.org/preprints/wcd-2020-40/wcd-2020-40.pdf Global warming makes weather in boreal summer more persistent Dim Coumou1,2† and Paolo De Luca1† 1Department of Water and Climate Risk, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1081 HV, the Netherlands 5 2Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, 3730 AE, the Netherlands †These authors contributed equally to the work Correspondence to: Dim Coumou ([email protected]) Abstract. Extreme summer weather often has devastating impacts on society when it lasts for many days. Stalling cyclones can lead to flooding and persistent hot-dry conditions can lead to health impacts and harvest losses. Global warming weakens the hemispheric-wide circulation in boreal summer, which has been shown in both observations and models using multiple circulation metrics. Until now, it is still largely unclear what this weakening implies for regional weather conditions, including their persistence. Using an advanced persistence metric, we show that summer weather has become more-persistent over 1979-2019. State-of-the-art climate models reproduce this upward trend in persistence indicating that it can be attributed to greenhouse gas forcing. Our persistence metric accounts for the full state of the atmosphere at any given moment and is strongly rooted in dynamical systems theory. Thereby it is able to detect dynamical changes previously unseen in more widely used clustering analyses that sharply reduce the amount of information used. We show that under future high-emission scenarios, summer weather will become increasingly more-persistent due to a weakening of the circulation. Most of this increase in persistence, and the associated societal risks, is avoided under an emission scenario compatible with the Paris agreement.

New lowest extent record for the Central Arctic.

https://www.njherald.com/news/20200909/summer-2020-was-second-hottest-on-record-in-new-jersey New Jersey experienced its second-hottest summer on record, continuing a long-term warming trend in the Garden State and across the planet that has seen sea levels rise and extreme weather become more common. The average temperature statewide soared to 75.3 degrees from June through August, ranking only behind 2010′s record-setting heat, according to a report released Tuesday by Rutgers University. Climate change is being felt increasingly in New Jersey, with the 10 hottest summers having all occurred since 1999, including seven since 2010, said David Robinson, the state climatologist and author of the report. A full list is below. “It’s indicative of what we’re seeing in other seasons in New Jersey, what we’re seeing nationally and what we’re seeing globally,” Robinson said. “It’s just another sign that climate change is here.” This summer’s milestone was not much of a surprise considering that July was the hottest month ever recorded in New Jersey. August 2020 was tied for the sixth-warmest August on record, and June was the 10th-warmest it’s been since record-keeping began in 1895.

50 years is not cherry picking. It represents the time of most rapid global warming as emissions have increased. The actual charts with trend lines are available at the NCDC site. New Jersey is one of the sates that you posted and summers have been warming at 0.3° F decade since 1895. This year was the 2nd warmest summer on record in NJ. Notice how many of the top 10 warmest summers have occurred in recent years. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/statewide/time-series/28/tavg/3/8/1895-2020?trend=true&trend_base=10&begtrendyear=1895&endtrendyear=2020 201006 - 201008 75.7°F 126 202006 - 202008 75.3°F 125 201606 - 201608 74.9°F 124 200506 - 200508 74.8°F 123 201106 - 201108 74.6°F 122 201806 - 201808 74.4°F 121 201906 - 201908 74.4°F 121 199906 - 199908 74.3°F 119 201206 - 201208 74.2°F 118 200206 - 200208 74.0°F 117

It will be interesting to see how much longer this continues before it gets overpowered by warming. But how does agriculture cause increased rainfall and decreased temperatures? The team suspects it has to do with photosynthesis, which leads to more water vapor in the air. When a plant’s pores, called stomata, open to allow carbon dioxide to enter, they simultaneously allow water to escape. This increases the amount of water going into the atmosphere and returning as rainfall. The cycle may continue as that rainwater eventually moves back into the atmosphere and causes more rainfall downwind from the original agricultural area. Rong Fu, a climate scientist at UC Los Angeles, agrees with the team’s assessment. She also thinks that though human influence might be “greater than we realize,” this regional climate change is probably caused by many factors, including increased irrigation in the region. “This squares with a lot of other evidence,” says Peter Huybers, a climate scientist at Harvard University, who calls the new study convincing. But he warns that such benefits may not last if greenhouse gas emissions eventually overpower the mitigating effect of agriculture. Alter agrees, and says it’s unlikely that the large increases in U.S. crop production during the 20th century will continue. Other scientists have voiced concern that agricultural production could soon be reaching its limit in many parts of the world. “Food production is arguably what we’re more concerned about with climate change,” Mueller says. And understanding how agriculture and climate will continue to affect one another is crucial for developing projections for both climate and agricultural yields. “It’s not just greenhouse gasses that we need to be thinking about. While the cooling effect of irrigation mitigates global climate change on the regional scale, climate models suggest that regional warming attributed to the global trend will eventually overcome the magnitude of mitigation offered by irrigated agriculture. Farmers, who are partially buffered for now from more extreme heat, would quickly face increasing stress in that scenario. “Farmers in irrigated regions may experience more abrupt temperature increases that will cause them to have to adapt more quickly than other groups who are already coping with a warming climate,” says Kucharik. “It’s that timeframe in which people have time to adapt that concerns me.” The current study is the first to definitively link irrigation in the Midwest U.S. to an altered regional climate. These results could improve weather and climate forecasts, help farmers plan better, and, the researchers hope, better prepare agricultural areas to deal with a warming climate when the irrigation effect is washed out. “Irrigation is a land use with effects on climate in the Midwest, and we need to account for this in our climate models,” says Nocco.

Updated for 9-10. 9-10....Pt Lookout....6.47.....Massapequa....5.41...Wantagh Mesonet...4.64....Amityville....4.04....Copaigue....4.05

The dust bowl was a localized rather than global event. The heat and drought were amplified by the poor land use practices which lead to the extreme soil erosion. The modern localized summer cooler high temperatures in the corn belt are also a result of farming practices. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/383102 Abstract We provide a new and more complete analysis of the origins of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, one of the most severe environmental crises in North America in the twentieth century. Severe drought and wind erosion hit the Great Plains in 1930 and lasted through 1940. There were similar droughts in the 1950s and 1970s, but no comparable level of wind erosion. We explain why. The prevalence of small farms in the 1930s limited private solutions for controlling the downwind externalities associated with wind erosion. Drifting sand from unprotected fields damaged neighboring farms. Small farmers cultivated more of their land and were less likely to invest in erosion control than larger farmers. Soil conservation districts, established by the government after 1937, helped coordinate erosion control. This “unitized” solution for collective action is similar to that used in other natural resource/environmental settings. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/america-s-corn-belt-making-its-own-weather The Great Plains of the central United States—the Corn Belt—is one of the most fertile regions on Earth, producing more than 10 billion bushels of corn each year. It’s also home to some mysterious weather: Whereas the rest of the world has warmed, the region’s summer temperatures have dropped as much as a full degree Celsius, and rainfall has increased up to 35%, the largest spike anywhere in the world. The culprit, according to a new study, isn’t greenhouse gas emissions or sea surface temperature—it’s the corn itself. https://news.wisc.edu/irrigated-farming-in-wisconsins-central-sands-cools-the-regions-climate/ New research finds that irrigated farms within Wisconsin’s vegetable-growing Central Sands region significantly cool the local climate compared to nearby rain-fed farms or forests. Irrigation dropped maximum temperatures by one to three degrees Fahrenheit on average while increasing minimum temperatures up to four degrees compared to unirrigated farms or forests. In all, irrigated farms experienced a three- to seven-degree smaller range in daily temperatures compared to other land uses. These effects persisted throughout the year.

First time since 2012 that the 5 day NSIDC extent dropped below 4 million sq km. Also the first 5 year period with 3 years below 4.2 million sq km. 9-6-20.......3.928 September 5-day date 3.387 2012-09-17 4.155 2007-09-18 4.165 2016-09-10 4.192 2019-09-18

A recent study was able to determine just how extreme the Bering wintertime sea ice low in 2018 was.

This was the warmest melt season on record. A new paper is out on the continuing Atlantification of the Arctic Ocean. This year the sea ice edge made it to 85°N on the Atlantic side. https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ Atlantification continues As discussed in a recent paper in the Journal of Climate led by colleague Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska, the process of “Atlantification” of the Arctic Ocean, first noted in the Barents Sea, is continuing, with significant effects on the sea ice cover during the winter season in the Eastern Eurasian Basin. The relatively fresh surface layer of the Arctic Ocean is underlain by warm, salty water that is imported from the northern Atlantic Ocean. The cold fresh surface layer, because of its lower density, largely prevents the warm, salty Atlantic waters from mixing upwards. However, the underlying Atlantic water appears to have moved closer to the surface in recent years, reducing the density contrast with the water above it. Recent observations show this warm water “blob,” usually found at about 150 meters (492 feet) below the surface, has shifted within 80 meters (263 feet) of the surface. This has resulted in an increase in the upward winter ocean heat flow to the underside of the ice from typical values of 3 to 4 watts per square meter in 2007 to 2008 to greater than 10 watts per square meter from 2016 to 2018. Polyakov estimates that this is equivalent to a two-fold reduction in winter ice growth.

Updated for August 2020. 8....2020...EWR...10..LGA...5...BDR...3...ISP....6

I agree that the MYI loss is the big story. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2817/with-thick-ice-gone-arctic-sea-ice-changes-more-slowly/ With thick ice gone, Arctic sea ice changes more slowly The Arctic Ocean's blanket of sea ice has changed since 1958 from predominantly older, thicker ice to mostly younger, thinner ice, according to new research published by NASA scientist Ron Kwok of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. With so little thick, old ice left, the rate of decrease in ice thickness has slowed. New ice grows faster but is more vulnerable to weather and wind, so ice thickness is now more variable, rather than dominated by the effect of global warming. Working from a combination of satellite records and declassified submarine sonar data, NASA scientists have constructed a 60-year record of Arctic sea ice thickness. Right now, Arctic sea ice is the youngest and thinnest its been since we started keeping records. More than 70 percent of Arctic sea ice is now seasonal, which means it grows in the winter and melts in the summer, but doesn't last from year to year. This seasonal ice melts faster and breaks up easier, making it much more susceptible to wind and atmospheric conditions. Working from a combination of satellite records and declassified submarine sonar data, NASA scientists have constructed a 60-year record of Arctic sea ice thickness. Right now, Arctic sea ice is the youngest and thinnest its been since we started keeping records. More than 70 percent of Arctic sea ice is now seasonal, which means it grows in the winter and melts in the summer, but doesn't last from year to year. This seasonal ice melts faster and breaks up easier, making it much more susceptible to wind and atmospheric conditions. Kwok's research, published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, combined decades of declassified U.S. Navy submarine measurements with more recent data from four satellites to create the 60-year record of changes in Arctic sea ice thickness. He found that since 1958, Arctic ice cover has lost about two-thirds of its thickness, as averaged across the Arctic at the end of summer. Older ice has shrunk in area by almost 800,000 square miles (more than 2 million square kilometers). Today, 70 percent of the ice cover consists of ice that forms and melts within a single year, which scientists call seasonal ice. Sea ice of any age is frozen ocean water. However, as sea ice survives through several melt seasons, its characteristics change. Multiyear ice is thicker, stronger and rougher than seasonal ice. It is much less salty than seasonal ice; Arctic explorers used it as drinking water. Satellite sensors observe enough of these differences that scientists can use spaceborne data to distinguish between the two types of ice. Thinner, weaker seasonal ice is innately more vulnerable to weather than thick, multiyear ice. It can be pushed around more easily by wind, as happened in the summer of 2013. During that time, prevailing winds piled up the ice cover against coastlines, which made the ice cover thicker for months. The ice's vulnerability may also be demonstrated by the increased variation in Arctic sea ice thickness and extent from year to year over the last decade. In the past, sea ice rarely melted in the Arctic Ocean. Each year, some multiyear ice flowed out of the ocean into the East Greenland Sea and melted there, and some ice grew thick enough to survive the melt season and become multiyear ice. As air temperatures in the polar regions have warmed in recent decades, however, large amounts of multiyear ice now melt within the Arctic Ocean itself. Far less seasonal ice now thickens enough over the winter to survive the summer. As a result, not only is there less ice overall, but the proportions of multiyear ice to seasonal ice have also changed in favor of the young ice. Seasonal ice now grows to a depth of about six feet (two meters) in winter, and most of it melts in summer. That basic pattern is likely to continue, Kwok said. "The thickness and coverage in the Arctic are now dominated by the growth, melting and deformation of seasonal ice." The increase in seasonal ice also means record-breaking changes in ice cover such as those of the 1990s and 2000s are likely to be less common, Kwok noted. In fact, there has not been a new record sea ice minimum since 2012, despite years of warm weather in the Arctic. "We've lost so much of the thick ice that changes in thickness are going to be slower due to the different behavior of this ice type," Kwok said. Kwok used data from U.S. Navy submarine sonars from 1958 to 2000; satellite altimeters on NASA's ICESat and the European CryoSat-2, which span from 2003 to 2018; and scatterometer measurements from NASA's QuikSCAT and the European ASCAT from 1999 to 2017.

Updated for July 2020. 7....2020...EWR...5...NYC...7...LGA...1.....JFK...4...BDR....1...ISP....4