Week in review – science edition

Posted on January 4, 2020 by | 188 Comments

by Judith Curry

A few things that caught my eye this past week.

Decadal changes of the reflected solar radiation and the Earth’s energy imbalance [link] Over the 2000–2018 period the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) appears to have a downward trend of −0.16 ± 0.11 W/m2dec.

Links between tropical Pacific seasonal, interannual and orbital variability during the Holocene [link]

Mean total overland rainfall amounts associated with Hurricane Florence’s core were increased by 4.9 ± 4.6% with local maximum amounts experiencing increases of 3.8 ± 5.7% due to climate change. [link]

Mann-splaining away the AMO, PDO:  Atlantic and Pacific oscillations lost in the noise [link]

A dynamical perspective on Atmospheric variability and its response to climate change [link]

Sensitivity of India’s climate to irrigation [link]

Glacial cooling and climate sensitivity revisited [link]

Wintertime North American weather regimes and the Arctic stratospheric polar vortex. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10

Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather [link]

Quantifiying the effects of nutrient enrichment and freshwater mixing on coastal ocean acidification [link]

Reconstructing 150 million years of Arctic climate [link]

A new study indicates that major heat waves may be influenced as much by soil moisture as by atmospheric circulation [link]

Soil moisture information could improve assessments of wildfire probabilities and fuel conditions, resulting in better fire danger ratings. [link]

Policy & technology

Important essay from Eric Winsberg: War and Climate Change [link]

“Sustainable minerals and metals for a low-carbon energy future” [link]

Comparing the annual waste produced by a coal-burning power plant and a nuclear generating station [link]

Good discussion of coal use in steel making [link]

It bears repeating: renewables alone won’t end the climate crisis [link]

Scientists say they’ve figured out how to store solar power for decades, a major energy breakthrough [link]

The downside of solar energy: growing waste problem [link]

As planet warms, unusual crops could become climate saviours [link]

Booming oil and lower emissions: The decade that blew up energy predictions [link]

Pielke Jr:  Hitting the climate reset button [link]

The rights and wrongs of central-bank greenery [link]

About science & scientists

Pielke Jr:  How billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg corrupted climate science [link]

Nature: Scientific criticism must not be conflated with bullying.  A toast to the error detectors [link]

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188 responses to “Week in review – science edition”

    • Earl | January 5, 2020 at 4:42 pm |

      Judy, I followed the link to the details about the Mann model eliminating el Nino and la Nina. I thought I had seen some zealots before but that was eye opeing.

  2. Robert Clark | January 4, 2020 at 1:16 pm |

    I will try this simple explination of the Ice Age is incorrect.
    Mother Nature, a Woman of simple design!
    I believe the earth has a constant surface temperature of the middle 60’F. l will select 63’F. That means the surface of the earth is radiating a constant amount of heat daily to the black sky. The black sky is considered absolute or -459’F. That is a difference of 522’F.
    The maximum temperature of the surface of the sun is 10,000’F. The lowest temperature of the surface of the sun is 7,300 ‘F. I will assume the average surface temperature of the sun is 8,650’F. The surface of the sun is radiating heat to the earth and striking an area equal to the area of the great circle of the earth. I assume the average temperature of the sun’s surface varies up or down a few hundred degrees over the centuries.
    I assume the amount of radiant heat striking the earth daily is greater than that lost by the earth to the black sky.
    Water reflects radiant heat. As the oceans rise the amount of radiant heat from the sun reflected to the black sky increases. As the oceans drop the reverse happens.
    During the Ice Making stage of an Ice Age, as we are in now, Mother Nature takes heat from the oceans and deposits frozen water at the poles, thus keeping the average surface temperature of the earth relatively constant. During the Ice Melting stage, the reverse happens putting the excess heat in the oceans.
    The above are three laws of science. They explain the Ice Ages and Man will never change them and never over ride them.

    • Robert Clark | January 6, 2020 at 7:22 am |

      At the present time Mother Nature is in the Ice Making stage of the new Ice Age. That means the Earth is losing more radiant heat to the black sky than it retains from the sun. She is taking the water vapor from the oceans, moving it to the poles, freezing it and dropping it at the poles.
      Look at the big picture of Nature. She takes water vapor from the oceans with the sea breeze. That explains the California and Australia fires.

  3. jungletrunks | January 4, 2020 at 1:35 pm |

    “Mann-splaining”

    Gotta love the wit here. The climate debate in two words.

  4. Turbulent Eddie | January 4, 2020 at 1:52 pm |

    I recently came across this 2019 paper, a review, by Manabe:

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333837663_Role_of_greenhouse_gas_in_climate_change

    A key point is that Manabe suggested and always did focus on qualitative aspects ( Arctic maxima, global increased precip, etc. ) rather than the global mean temperature trend ( so called ECS ).

    Another point is Manabe’s reflections are not about what gets spun as disaster scenarios, but rather, his main concern appears to be that the increase of evaporation will exceed the increase of precipitation for the sub-tropical regions ( but not so much elsewhere ). This is somewhat of a change from earlier models where it was thought mid-latitude dryness might occur.

    I’m somewhat skeptical about the explanation, and also the unverified nature of the claim:

    “A meaningful and direct comparison of modelled soil
    moisture with observations is not possible, because of dif-
    ficulties in defining the plant-available water-holding cap-
    acity of the soil, and because of the extreme
    heterogeneity of soil moisture, soil properties and vegeta-
    tion rooting characteristics.”

    The models could still be correct, of course, but having a theory but no validations should always be grounds for skepticism.

  5. jungletrunks | January 4, 2020 at 1:53 pm |

    I posted the below late in the previous last “week in review” post, it may be a better fit here per the article: “Soil moisture information could improve assessments of wildfire probabilities”. I see much misinformation/disinformation in the press relative to wildfires; perhaps the experts here can provide insights.

    According to NASA, data published August 28, 2019; the amount of land burned by wildfires worldwide has plummeted by 25% since 2003. https://www.thegwpf.com/nasa-area-burned-by-global-wildfires-dropped-by-25-since-2003/

  6. frankclimate | January 4, 2020 at 2:02 pm |

    Thanks Judy for mentioning the “Nature” comment: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03909-2 and I think it’s also dedicated to Nic who corrected the science ( Resplandy et al (2019)) in the case of OHU, with the summarizing comment here on your outstanding blog: https://judithcurry.com/2019/09/25/resplandy-et-al-part-5-final-outcome/ . It was a science-story at it’s best. Thanks for participating!

  7. dougbadgero | January 4, 2020 at 2:13 pm |

    Regarding the Pielke Jr article:
    Climate science has taken a disturbing turn in the same direction as eugenics over a century ago. An elementary school understanding of the science, proved to be far too simplistic after just a few years of research. Some researchers sound the alarm and are mostly ignored since the socio-political movement has usurped the science already. Soon everything from poverty to promiscuity is blamed on genetics.

    50000+ people were sterilized against their will in the United States alone, an order of magnitude more in Europe. The US Supreme Court decision that allowed this, written by OW Holmes, stands to this day. The practice having just fallen out of fashion after WWII.

  8. matthewrmarler | January 4, 2020 at 2:14 pm |

    Scientists say they’ve figured out how to store solar power for decades, a major energy breakthrough

    It looks like a potentially useful product, but my first thought was of cellulose and sugar.

  9. Chris Morris | January 4, 2020 at 3:04 pm |

    The steel making substitution of coal for charred wood might be theoretically possible, but it won’t work in reality, especially not at the quantities needed to be viable. The big boilers at Kinleith pulp mill run on waste wood. They need supplemental gas firing as there is usually a fuel shortage and the thermal quality of the waste is so variable. Even though they are surrounded by thousands of hectares of plantation forest, it is not economic for the mill to bring the wood waste in from the .surrounding forests to run the boilers. Transportation costs are higher than the heat value.The waste also contains a lot more than just carbon, silica being a major issue. The waste is generally 50% water when it comes in. That has to be driven off before combustion.
    If it isn’t economic there, it won’t be for turning that waste to char for steel making at remote sites. Britain’s Industrial Revolution happened because they didn’t need to cut down forests any more to make steel. Can we be so stupid as to not learn from the past?

  10. Stephen Nixey | January 4, 2020 at 3:54 pm |

    I just thank Judith Curry for all of her work and enjoy watching/reading a calm person dealing with some ‘fools’ (although she may be frustrated as hell inside) but all this Mann-made climate change is an unknow unless you combine history into the science as history has a direct way of destroying scientific thesis and theory! and this history people try and deny as happened at all and talk over it when mentioned. Thank you, Judith, for your dedication to mankind and adding some calmness to the controlling fearmongers stories

  11. Peter Lang | January 4, 2020 at 5:23 pm |

    The High Country News article “Comparing the annual waste produced by a coal-burning power plant and a nuclear generating station [ https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.1/nuclear-energy-nuclear-power-is-emissions-free-but-at-what-cost-waste ]” is a biased rubbish article. It does not compare thew emissions and waste from coal and nuclear on a comparable basis. To be a fair comparison coal and nuclear should be compared on the basis of mass, volume, longevity and the health impacts per TWh of electricity generated.

    • Beta Blocker | January 5, 2020 at 9:46 am |

      Peter, the anti-nuclear activists don’t want to make a fair comparison. Strictly for purposes of persuasion, they want to push a list of nuclear waste talking points that has the look and feel of scientific rationality.

      Here in the US, the smart thing to do is to store the spent fuel rods on the surface until such time as fuel reprocessing becomes economic, or else it is decided as a matter of public policy to dispose of the spent fuel permanently in a geologic repository.

      The WIPP facility in New Mexico and the Salado Formation which underlies it is the perfect place for geologic disposal of the spent fuel if a public policy decision is eventually made to dispose rather than to reprocess.

      Here is a slide-show presentation given by NuScale’s chief operating officer in May, 2019, to the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) which describes their SMR project in some good level of detail.

      https://naseo.org/Data/Sites/1/atkinson_naseo-may-22,-2019.pdf

      As outlined in this presentation, NuScale has dealt with the controversy over how to deal with spent nuclear fuel by addressing the question directly and unambiguously.

      The sensible thing they plan to do is to store their spent fuel onsite for the projected 60 year life of the facility, first in wet storage and then in dry cask storage as decay reduces the level of its radioactivity.

      After that, the spent fuel can be dealt with in whatever manner public policy has decided upon when the facility eventually reaches the end of its useful life.

  12. Nabil Swedan | January 4, 2020 at 6:19 pm |

    “A modelling exploration of the sensitivity of the India’s climate to irrigation”
    “Mann-splaining away the AMO, PDO: Atlantic and Pacific oscillations lost in the noise”

    Climate models are used in the simulations and conclusions. So the work is not transparent and cannot be verified by the reader. Therefore, the work is questionable. This is typical for all papers making up the so called “body” of climate science.I understand that professionals for profit may do what ever they want, but I do not understand why would any journal publish something potentially questionable?

    • joe_da | January 5, 2020 at 2:36 pm |

      Mann should be able to get rid of the AMO and PDO – he did the same with the MWP.

      Curious how he was able to delete the AMO & PDO via calling it noise. Both the AMO and PDO show up prominently in the temp records since circa 1850. (at least some form natural oscillation shows up prominently ).

      • JCH | January 5, 2020 at 3:19 pm |

        Can you point to the studies done before 1998 that established the MWP was warmer than 1998?

      • joe_da | January 5, 2020 at 3:37 pm |

        JCH’s comment – “Can you point to the studies done before 1998 that established the MWP was warmer than 1998?”

        No I can’t point to any studies that show to the MWP was warmer –

        Nor can you point to any study where the resolution of the proxy data is high enough to provide a reasonable conclusion as to which period was warmer.

  13. nabilswedan | January 4, 2020 at 6:53 pm |

    “Booming oil and lower emissions”

    The sources do not account for deforestation in carbon dioxide emissions; the studies are, therefore, incomplete and inaccurate. Deforestation has been decreasing and its contribution to total CO2 emission and surface warming has been decreasing.

  14. Nabil Swedan | January 4, 2020 at 6:54 pm |

    “Booming oil and lower emissions”

    The sources do not account for deforestation in carbon dioxide emissions; the studies are, therefore, incomplete and inaccurate. Deforestation has been decreasing and its contribution to total CO2 emission and surface warming has been decreasing.

  15. sheldonjwalker | January 4, 2020 at 8:24 pm |

    If you are interested in seeing the temperature for the hottest month, for every 5 x 5 latitude-longitude cell, then have a look at this coloured map:

    https://agree-to-disagree.com/rats-average-daily-high-for-the-hottest-month

    The temperature for the hottest month is the average daily high for the hottest month.

    Notice how India, the Middle East, and northern Africa, get hotter than Australia.

    Also, if you are interested, you can see the Winter-Summer temperature difference for every 5 x 5 latitude-longitude cell, on this coloured map:

    https://agree-to-disagree.com/rats-winter-summer-temperature-difference

    Have a look at the Winter-Summer temperature difference for Britain, compared to other countries at that latitude. The Gulf Stream stops Britain getting cold in Winter, and hot in Summer.

  16. JCH | January 4, 2020 at 10:46 pm |

    Mann-splaining away the AMO, PDO: Atlantic and Pacific oscillations lost in the noise [link]

    Just checked Wood for Trees to see if the AMO and PDO still exist.

    https://i.imgur.com/VttAUAK.png

    https://i.imgur.com/56iOLPC.png

  17. Steven Mosher | January 5, 2020 at 1:56 am |

    “Glacial cooling and climate sensitivity revisited [link]”

    most important ECS estimate revisited and tightened.

    Hint: 2.2–4.3C

    The one thing about paleo estimate of ECS is that we know they contain all known physics

    • RickA | January 5, 2020 at 10:51 am |

      Steven says “The one thing about paleo estimate of ECS is that we know they contain all known physics”.

      Yes – and also unknown physics (which is even better).

    • Ragnaar | January 5, 2020 at 10:57 am |

      “The IPCC literature assessment estimates that TCR likely lies between 1 °C and 2.5 °C.” Collins et al. 2013, Executive Summary; p.1033 – AR5

      So there’s an argument for TCR being half of the ECS. Then when you add time frames as controlling for policy decisions, we favor the TCR. The Federal budget is unknown by 10 years into the future. The Federal government shifts problems into the future all the time.

      The ECS is not for policy. It is for proving one is right. Which fixes nothing.

      Yes, paleo has a lot going for it. Contains all known physics. Nature is always right.

    • Curious George | January 5, 2020 at 7:25 pm |

      “.. we know they contain all known physics.” Count me out of “we”.

    • kribaez | January 7, 2020 at 5:41 am |

      “The one thing about paleo estimate of ECS is that we know they contain all known physics” … and almost no credible data,

      Fundamentally, you need to be able to estimate the cooling and the forcing for a credible CI..

      From Annan and Hargreaves 2013:-
      “An early reconstruction of the global sea surface temperature
      (SST) anomaly at the LGM was made by the CLIMAP
      project (Climap Project Members, 1976), which estimated a
      globally-averaged value of 2.3 and 0.8 deg C in the tropics (all
      temperature anomalies are presented here as pre-industrial
      climate minus LGM). However, these values were argued
      to be substantially too small by subsequent analyses, which
      presented tropical LGM SST estimates of around 2.5–3 deg C
      colder than present (Crowley, 2000; Ballantyne et al., 2005).
      Simulations of the LGM using state of the art atmosphere–
      ocean global climate models (GCMs) generally generate
      global mean surface air temperature (SAT) anomalies in the
      range of 3–5 deg C colder than present (Braconnot et al., 2007),
      but these values are thought to be biased warm due to the experimental
      design, which omits the likely negative forcings
      of vegetation and dust changes (Crucifix and Hewitt, 2005;
      Schneider von Deimling et al., 2006a). These results can be
      interpreted as implying a model-based range of around 4–
      7 deg C if these extra forcings were to be accounted for (Jansen
      et al., 2007).
      The first attempts at directly constraining model results
      with proxy data produced results consistent with this range,
      with resulting best estimates for the global mean SAT
      anomaly of around 6 deg C (Schneider von Deimling et al.,
      2006a; Holden et al., 2009). However, a new analysis has recently
      challenged this emerging consensus with a remarkably
      mild estimate of 3.0 deg C (90% range 1.7–3.7 deg C) (Schmittner
      et al., 2011), based on the fit of an intermediate complexity
      climate model to the most recent comprehensive proxy
      syntheses. Such a mild climate state, if confirmed in other
      studies, would be difficult to reconcile with GCM simulations.
      The response of the climate system to a large forcing
      is of fundamental importance to understanding future climate
      change, and therefore the large discrepancy between these
      analyses requires further investigation.”

      A&H2013 went on to estimate a “spatially complete” reconstruction with median estimates of 4 deg C of cooling and ECS of 1.7 deg C.
      So now DeWitte et al have produced a new model for spatial reconstruction of temperature which produces a 50% higher median estimate of delta cooling and have then considered a 50% smaller median estimate of delta forcing, effectively doubling the ECS estimate from the A&H2013 study, The resulting CI fails to recognise and account for model uncertainty. If you believe that this represents a “tightening” of the ECS estimate then I have a bridge for sale at a bargain price which you might like to consider.

  18. fernandoleanme | January 5, 2020 at 3:06 am |

    The “Booming oil and lower emissions: The decade that blew up energy predictions” is US centric, ignores the unique US geology, regulations, financing and entrepreneurship which allowed a very fast development in several key oil resources (North Dakota’s Bakken, Texas Eagle Ford and Texas Permian). The geologic conditions leading to giant oil pools aren’t seen anywhere else except in Argentina’s Neuquen Province. And even these giant oil pools will be insufficient to do more than extend the ability to meet world market demands for more than a decade.

    I should add that industry braggarts like to tout “new technology” as an enabler, but this is mere propaganda to sell stock and convince bankers. I’ve been observing what they do, and it has taken them about 15 years to rediscover the wheel, putting in place technology and methods large companies knew about but felt wouldn’t yield adequate returns.

    The issue is too complicated for this blog, let’s just summarize by explaining the biggest enabler the oil frackers have is the higher oil price environment (today oil sells for $60, 20 years ago it sold for $15), Texas and North Dakota regulations which allow an obscene amount of natural gas flaring, and naive investors who don’t realize the tight oil developments are like Russian Roulette.

  19. phil salmon | January 5, 2020 at 3:31 am |

    The billionaire-funded RCP 8.5 fairy tale is directly responsible for Extinction Rebellion. The most stupid and useless organised program of activity in the entire history of the species Homo “sapiens”.

  21. cerescokid | January 5, 2020 at 8:55 am |

    When Chief Activist, Public Relations Guru says the AMO doesn’t exist, then poof it’s deep fixed forever, never mind the last 8,000 years.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1186

    Or the entire Holocene

    https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00667.1?download=true

    Or it possibly affects Eurasian Cooling

    https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa8de8/meta

    Or it possibly has affected China for the last 1000 years

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260671386_The_relationship_between_the_Atlantic_Multidecadal_Oscillation_and_temperature_variability_in_China_during_the_last_millennium

    Nothing matters but getting rid of the AMO, just like the MWP, LIA, 1930s Heat, pre 1900 Australian temperatures, early 20th Century Arctic warmth and US forest fires in the 1930s.

  22. Ireneusz Palmowski | January 5, 2020 at 9:15 am |

    Increase in magnetic activity in the southern solar hemisphere.
    https://images.tinypic.pl/i/00995/iyygy9klh6zl.png

  23. Mark Silbert | January 5, 2020 at 10:20 am |

    Pielke Jr. has and continues to make excellent contributions to the climate policy debate.

    It’s a shame that he feels obligated to continually display his anti Trump feelings as a disclaimer in everything he writes.

    • Ragnaar | January 5, 2020 at 11:25 am |

      https://townhall.com/columnists/evansayet/2017/07/13/he-fights-n2354580 After years of surrendering, a lot of people want someone who fights. The never Trumpers aren’t worth a lot in my book. Where did all these foreign entanglements, and green subsidies come from? Who allowed high corporate tax rates?

    • Dan Hughes | January 5, 2020 at 12:50 pm |

      Yesterday and today the TWITTER info, up in the top RHS of the CE opening page, mentioned a paper that Pielke Jr. found. His Twitter Twits (?) can be found here.

      The original paper is here: Study confirms climate change impacted Hurricane Florence’s precipitation and size

      A follow-up on the original paper with a focus on comparing the forecast to a hindcast: Forecasted attribution of the human influence on Hurricane Florence

      The last sentence in the Abstract says: This work reviews our forecasted attribution statement with the benefit of hindsight, demonstrating credibility of advance attribution statements for tropical cyclones.

      Part way through the Discussion are these statements:

      The quantitative aspects of our forecasted attribution statements fall outside broad confidence intervals of our hindcasted statements and are quite different from the hindcasted best estimates. This discrepancy is, in part, due to the discovery during the refining of the hindcast framework that the forecasted Counterfactual ensemble incorrectly set the lower boundary condition for sea surface temperatures while correctly setting the initial conditions, having the effect of increasing the climate change signal by 1° to 3° off the coast of North Carolina. [bold by edh]

      The second sentence, about incorrectly setting the boundary conditions for the sea surface temperature, is an example of failure to Verify the Calculation: Patrick J. Roache, Verification of Codes and Calculations.

      Independent Verification of code and calculations is required for all calculations the results of which impact public health and safety.

      Application of the assumption that the feedback from the atmosphere to the ocean can be neglected is a feature of treating slow modes as boundary conditions. An illustration of the effect on the surface energy balance: Revisiting the surface-energy-flux perspective on the sensitivity of global precipitation to climate change. For the precent situation, it might be a good idea to show that use of the assumption did not adversely affect the forecast and hindcast.

      Today, the Twit discussion points to this article. About which Pielke Jr. says: When the initial (and we now know deeply flawed) attribution estimate was made the lead author admitted to both a political motivation and a desire to ride the news cycle

      This is of course not unique here and incredibly problematic for climate science

      • Dan Hughes | January 7, 2020 at 6:28 am |

        Professor Pielke Jr. has expanded his discussion Three Rules For Accepting Climate “Event Attribution” Studies.

        Unfortunately, Verification of Calculations is not mentioned.

      • jungletrunks | January 7, 2020 at 8:54 am |

        “The quantitative aspects of our forecasted attribution statements fall outside broad confidence intervals of our hindcasted statements and are quite different from the hindcasted best estimates. This discrepancy is, in part, due to the discovery during the refining of the hindcast framework that the forecasted Counterfactual ensemble incorrectly set the lower boundary condition for sea surface temperatures while correctly setting the initial conditions, having the effect of increasing the climate change signal by 1° to 3° off the coast of North Carolina.”

        There’s a famous comedy routine by Abbott & Costello called “Who’s on First”, that the before paragraph reminds me of. Not to pour too much salt on the wound, the lead author at least made a confession.

        “When the initial (and we now know deeply flawed) attribution estimate was made the lead author admitted to both a political motivation and a desire to ride the news cycle.”

        There’s still integrity in climate science, yet it never quite rises above the din of hurricane force media Greta-isms. The confession very likely could have been left unsaid, unfortunately so, and the author little scathed based in todays politically driven “forgiving” media culture, the evidence: how about all the other renegade scientists who feed the press with climate political fodder? So the confession is an important one, I respect the author for it.

  24. Ragnaar | January 5, 2020 at 11:21 am |

    Eschenbach has something at WUWT about Australia and fires. MSM is pretty uniform in blaming it on climate change. Assume it’s true. Solar panels in Australia are not going to help.

    The problem with their movement is they aren’t addressing the problem. They’re fighting with skeptics. Pushing conspiracy theories. Granted there are those on both sides.

  25. M Anderson | January 5, 2020 at 12:15 pm |

    I was intrigued by the paper on waste in nuclear power – and its main unstated assumption that all nuclear power must be spread at massive scale – which is where the authors derive their toxic waste metrics/assumptions.

    For a number of years, part of my job was to participate in the annual release of DOD, DOE technology to the private sector for development.

    Learned tons

    Got to participate as scientists and experienced business people/developers worked together to test ‘pie in sky’ (or ‘eye in sky’) advanced research in real pilots.

    Extreme experience in what happens when theory and lab hit real world. Success rate of commercializing the lab theories bounced around from 2% to maybe 10% (when all the planets aligned magically)

    So what?

    One defense tech team recommended developing a network of tiny distributed local nuclear ‘power plants’ – based on the scale of energy in EXISTING nuclear submarines.

    In simple terms this would be a nuclear “battery”. Basically a tiny speck of nuclear fuel/reactor combo encased in a cement cylinder about 1.5 meters wide by 8 meters high. Buried in ground. Past submarine experience suggested this battery could power about 25,000 homes, in harsh US climates for about 5 years.

    Then dig up ‘battery’ – and deal with tiny bit of nuclear waste.

    System math was very similar to current rooftop solar at shared neighborhood level. Cut big grid and tune the system only to local dynamic need – not big grid “reliability”.

    Get rid of the massive utility network/grid which is where the big energy/fuel waste is. Big grid promotes waste fraud and abuse. Local system make users more efficient and skilled at managing their own consumption.

    This ‘nuclear battery’ showed that most nuclear solutions SEEM so wasteful because the ‘experts’ all said that it needs to be run on massive grid like coal, oil, etc – TO REACH THEORETICAL ‘ECONOMIES OF SCALE’.

    This is why economists and other theorists should not be allowed to experiment with new innovations – they jump to old mental models. This is also the main problem with letting IPCC recommend real-world “innovations”.

    (This may also be why the most successful business people tend to get “B” grades in college. :-) )

    The risk of prototyping this nuclear battery was near zero.

    But the prototype was killed – by all the people who had vested interest the massive electric grid, and the theoretical economists who said this distributed power device would never meet their models of economic scale.

    This kind of innovative work has now moved to China, where they are deep into innovations in many sciences that US/EU experts argue are impossible.

    • Ragnaar | January 5, 2020 at 1:10 pm |

      Good comment. Small modular nuclear while supporting a big grid also threatens it. Solar that can’t back itself up. Pay the big grid to do that. Wind turbines? More power lines. Electic utilities are regulated. The regulators don’t have a clue. We are Green. Beyond criticism except for nukes.

      We still have the grid we have. We will have it for at least 20 years. Breaking off and gaining local independence, would be good.

  26. Steinar Midtskogen | January 5, 2020 at 12:18 pm |

    Mann really wants to shoot down the stadium-wave hypothesis, doesn’t he?

    I hope Judith can find time to discuss Mann’s article.

  27. Kevin O’Rawe | January 5, 2020 at 12:29 pm |

    Have you reviewed Climatologist John L. Casey’s premises?

  28. stevenreincarnated | January 5, 2020 at 1:33 pm |

    I couldn’t finish the Mannsplaining article. I couldn’t stop laughing once I hit the if the AMO and PDO existed they’d show up in the models line.

  29. Ireneusz Palmowski | January 5, 2020 at 2:43 pm |

    There is a chance for further rainfall in the south of Australia. Cold fronts are moving east faster.

  30. Robert I. Ellison | January 5, 2020 at 5:57 pm |

    “Expanded low-carbon baseload power production through the use of nuclear fission can be enabled by recycling long-lived actinide isotopes within the nuclear fuel cycle. This approach provides the benefits of (a) more completely utilizing the energy potential of mined uranium, (b) reducing the footprint of nuclear geological repositories, and (c) reducing the time required for the radiotoxicity of the disposed waste to decrease to the level of uranium ore from one hundred thousand years to a few hundred years.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48619-x

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/em2-waste-reduction.png

    “Burn and convert” in epithermal reactors is a feature of a number of SMR – and all the micro-piles I am aware of. Following a burn cycle short half life fission products can be separated from long lived transuranic elements using any of a number of processes. What’s left can be returned to a further burn cycle. The waste volume is reduced to some 3% of once through waste.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5leqBLATMqQ

  31. Dan Pangburn | January 5, 2020 at 6:13 pm |

    “A modelling exploration of the sensitivity of the India’s climate to irrigation” might create the false perception that increased irrigation causes global cooling. Cooling in the local area of the evaporation from the irrigation is expected. But the WV has to produce warming somewhere else as the WV condenses. More importantly, the increased WV, a ghg, produces long-term warming over a lot of the rest of the planet for a global average temperature increase.

    The increased GHE from the increased WV from increased irrigation has been about 10 times more effective at increasing ground level temperature than the increased CO2 https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com .

    Increased cooling from added CO2 above the tropopause counters the increased warming from added CO2 at ground level resulting in CS being not significantly different from zero.

  32. Robert I. Ellison | January 5, 2020 at 9:30 pm |

    I think I am disappearing into spam. Here’s a preview that might work. 😊

    https://wordpress.com/post/watertechbyrie.com/4569

  33. JCH | January 6, 2020 at 12:05 am |

    Insights into Atlantic multidecadal variability using the Last Millennium Reanalysis framework

    Abstract. The Last Millennium Reanalysis (LMR) employs a data assimilation approach to reconstruct climate fields from annually resolved proxy data over years 0–2000CE. We use the LMR to examine Atlantic multidecadal variabil- ity (AMV) over the last 2 millennia and find several ro- bust thermodynamic features associated with a positive At- lantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index that reveal a dynamically consistent pattern of variability: the Atlantic and most continents warm; sea ice thins over the Arctic and re- treats over the Greenland, Iceland, and Norwegian seas; and equatorial precipitation shifts northward. …

    While we do not find a statistically significant multidecadal spectral peak in the AMO index, we do find a significant 3- to 4-year spectral peak (Fig. 10b). We suggest that this peak may be a result of teleconnections with the tropical Pacific and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability therein, which has a similar timescale (see, e.g., Dong et al., 2006). …

    .

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 6, 2020 at 3:17 pm |

      “Studies of the observational and paleoproxy records provide evidence of multidecadal variability centered over the Atlantic. The Central England Temperature record, the longest observational temperature time series, suggests a 65-year timescale of variability over the last 350 years (Tung
      and Zhou, 2013). Evidence of multidecadal Atlantic variability (with timescales anywhere between 20 and 80 years) has also been found in proxy tree ring records (Delworth and Mann, 2000; Gray et al., 2004), annually resolved ice cores(Chylek et al., 2011), and coral isotope records (Hetzinger et al., 2008). Lengthy proxy records extending over the last
      8000 years also show multidecadal spectral power, though this power is not stationary over space or time (Knudsen et al., 2011).” from JCH’s favorite citation.

      I suspect a solar trigger for this NH mode of climate variability.

      e.g. – https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535 – https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta

      And the link to AMOC may be the governing very long term factor.

      https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-72-e1518284539722.png
      https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076350

      Although beyond astrology and cyclomania – the evolution of Sol may be a little uncertain.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 6, 2020 at 6:39 pm |

        🤣 It is the difference between data and your ineptly framed and poorly expressed memes. But we might note the coupling mentioned between Atlantic and Pacific modes.

      • aaron | January 8, 2020 at 10:51 am |

        Looks like we are at a point similar to late 50s early 60s, just before we began to regain ice in the arctic. IIRC, the arctic ice gain weren’t gradual/consistent, they happened is several large jumps over about a decade and a half.

        This also reminds of the norther pacific warming in 2013/14. When it was all the rage, Capt Dallas (IIRC) pointed out that the warming was barely larger than similar warming in the late 50s/early 60s, before the arctic sea resurgences. I hypothesized that periodically dud el Ninos warm the north pacific and the warm water gets pushed into the arctic, the heat eventually is released by increased evaporation, precipitation and ice formation, warming the atmosphere as ice grows. I think that the ice growth is often missed by analysis based on extent measurement as the breaking and piling of ice will reduce extent even as mass increases.

  34. jimmww | January 6, 2020 at 3:01 am |

    Several of these papers assume a causal link, rather than simple correlation, between CO2 and global temperature in the modern era.
    There is however no evidence that CO2 at this time, at these levels, is in control of climate. Nor is there any evidence that we are in control of CO2 in the atmosphere. Indeed, the natural experiment of 1929-1931 discredits both assumptions.

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 6, 2020 at 3:20 pm |

      We have a working hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming is superimposed on intense internal variability at many scales. In the case of the former – physics and data seem undeniable.

      “Here we analyse the difference between the spectra of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth as measured by orbiting spacecraft in 1970 and 1997. We find differences in the spectra that point to long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2 and O3 as well as CFC-11 and CFC-12. Our results provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.” https://www.nature.com/articles/35066553

      The hypothesis there is of increasing randomization of photon paths in the atmosphere – as theory suggests – with an increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. This empirical proof of concept has been replicated. It is more than enough to be going on with if you believe that science is a guide to action. Not what action – but action in ways that accomodate society and economics, culture and environment.

      Internal variability is a less tractable and therefore a more interesting problem. In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’

      Here the instrumental record is far too short to sample the extremes climate is capable of. Extremes exponentially increase with time. A 1000 year flood is not 10 times a 100 year flood but much more. The engineering challenge is to make human systems resilient whatever happens for whatever reason.

      • matthewrmarler | January 6, 2020 at 5:09 pm |

        Robert I Ellison: Extremes exponentially increase with time.

        Where exactly does that come from? For a chaotic system with an attractor, the extremes stay within the smallest closed set that contains the attractor. A system whose extremes increase exponentially with time will not be chaotic, unless the exponential increase is only for short time spans.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 6, 2020 at 6:34 pm |

        “It also is only natural and perfectly in order for the mathematician to concentrate on the formal geometric structure of a hydrologic series, to treat it as a series of numbers and view it in the context of a set of mathematically consistent assumptions unbiased by the peculiarities of physical causation. It is, however, disturbing if the hydrologist adopts the mathematician’s attitude and fails to see that his mission is to view the series in its physical context, to seek explanations of its peculiarities in the underlying physical mechanism rather than to postulate the physical mechanism from a mathematical description of these peculiarities.” Quoted in – https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02626667.2015.1125998

        https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simeon_Benson/publication/270507675/figure/fig10/AS:392034461470735@1470479707900/3-Sulphur-River-flood-frequency-analysis-with-full-period-of-record.png

        It is the difference between a hydrologist and a stastistician. You declared so what to the L^0.5 quote – keep wondering.

      • matthewrmarler | January 6, 2020 at 9:39 pm |

        Robert I Ellison: It is, however, disturbing if the hydrologist adopts the mathematician’s attitude and fails to see that his mission is to view the series in its physical context, to seek explanations of its peculiarities in the underlying physical mechanism rather than to postulate the physical mechanism from a mathematical description of these peculiarities.”

        Good quote. On exponential growth of extremes you have one lake over a short time span? To justify a claim about 1000 year time spans generally: Here the instrumental record is far too short to sample the extremes climate is capable of. Extremes exponentially increase with time. A 1000 year flood is not 10 times a 100 year flood but much more.

        Are there underlying physical mechanisms supporting that quote about 1000 vs 100 year time spans? Nile River flooding perhaps?

      • jimmww | January 11, 2020 at 3:12 am |

        There is no anthropogenic greenhouse.
        Not a greenhouse because there is no impedance to convection. Not anthropogenic because our activity has little effect, so far, on global temperatures. Our CO2 contribution is only slightly north of 4%, and as 1929-1931 demonstrated, cutting that by 30% had no effect on the continued increase in temperature.

        Indeed, the ups and downs after 1840 were not preceded by CO2 changes, and the prodigious CO2 production in WWII and post-war reconstruction was associated with a slight decline in temperatures – enough to generate the NEW ICE AGE! alarms in Time, Newsweek, and ScienceNews in the early ’70s.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 11, 2020 at 3:27 am |

        Comprehensive sky dragon slater nonsense.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 11, 2020 at 3:54 pm |

        There are several hundred years of science that Jimmy has missed. I cannot fill in the gaps in his education. Moreover – attempting to do so with sky dragon slayers is a waste of everyone’s time. At some stage we need to move beyond these fundamental misconceptions.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 12, 2020 at 11:20 pm |

        There are not many skeptics who believe you Jimmy. You may call it invective – but it is not worth any effort to argue what I regard as your fundamental misconceptions. So excuse me if I agree to disagree and move on to something more interesting.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/slowed-photon.gif

      • jimmww | January 13, 2020 at 7:25 pm |

        People who use “fundamental misconceptions” as a handwave to dismiss statements of fact are dealing in ad hominem invective and not scientific discussion. It would be reasonable, despite the difficulty, to take one of the statements being dismissed and provide an equally non-controversial contravailing factual statement. I doubt that will happen.

      • jimmww | January 14, 2020 at 2:43 am |

        Emphasis: factual statement.

      • jimmww | January 14, 2020 at 3:08 am |

        Not the usual invective, please. If you can.

      • jimmww | January 18, 2020 at 11:47 pm |

        Ah. No joy, eh? Pity, cobber. Maybe now you’ll stuff it.

  35. Ireneusz Palmowski | January 6, 2020 at 5:26 am |

    SOI has risen sharply for two days, which promises rainfall in Australia. Tropical storm in the northwest.
    https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/soi/

  36. chaamjamal | January 6, 2020 at 7:24 am |

    “How billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg corrupted climate science”

    how can climate science be corrupted when climate scientists know so much and so well?
    https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/25/earth-day-wisdom/

  37. Christos Vournas | January 6, 2020 at 4:21 pm |

    The air temperature measurements by thermometers sheltered in the standardized Stevenson’s screens are not air temperature precise measurements. These measurements and the data they provide are not reliable for the long time scale very small climate changes estimation.

    http://www.cristos-vournas.com

  38. Bengt Abelsson | January 6, 2020 at 5:24 pm |

    There is some work in progress in Sweden to look into the possibility to use hydrogen (instead of coal) to reduce iron oxide / ore into iron.
    There are quite a lot of questions left, hydrogen embrittlement but one of them.
    A demonstrator could be built in the next 4-5 years.
    Code name Hybrit.

  39. Robert I. Ellison | January 6, 2020 at 6:13 pm |

    ““The pines came up ten thousand to the hectare. ‘One year the stockmen saw the little pines just up to the top of the horses ‘hooves’, one man told me. ‘The next year the pine tops brushed their boots as they rode. And a year or two after that – those old stockmen used to ride at ten past ten, knees cocked up from the saddle like wings – well they had to jam their knees in hard behind the pads or the pines would have pushed them backwards out of the saddle. Soon they just mustered their stock and got out. There was no room for grass to grow’. Eric Rolls – A million wild acres

    Aborigenes have fire stick farmed Australia for 60,000 years. Even now – despite the trials and tribulations of the past 200 years – they are custodians of by far the oldest continuous human culture on Earth. The dreamtime songlines go back to and beyond the marine transgression at the end of the last glacial.

    “One of the most complex and contentious issues in Australian ecology concerns the environmental impact of aboriginal landscape burning. This issue is not only important for the development of a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics and evolution of the Australian biota, but is central to the formulation of appropriate strategies for the conservation of the nation’s biodiversity. Ethnographic evidence leaves little doubt that Aboriginal burning played a central role in the maintenance of the landscapes subsequently colonized by Europeans. Both 19th century European colonists and anthropologists in the 20th century documented the indispensability of fire as a tool in traditional Aboriginal economies, which have aptly been described as ‘fire-stick farming’. Aborigines used fire to achieve short-term outcomes such as providing favourable habitats for herbivores or increasing the local abundance of food plants, but it is not clear whether or not Aborigines had a predictive ecological knowledge of the long-term consequences of their use of fire. A large body of ecological evidence suggests that Aboriginal burning resulted in substantial changes in the geographic range and demographic structure of many vegetation types. Aboriginal burning was important in creating habitat mosaics that favoured the abundance of some mammal species and in the maintenance of infrequently burnt habitats upon which the survival of specialized fauna depends.” https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1469-8137.1998.00289.x

    Following European settlement open woodland was replaced by closed shrubby woodland. Valueless for any practical purpose, biologically depauperate and subject to intense, hot season burns. But we did learn – fire ecology is a very extensive field in a fire adapted Australia. We continue to learn from 60.000 years of experience.

    https://www.clc.org.au/images/sized/files/news/burning_mosaic-400×0.jpg
    The mosaic produced by aerial and ground burning by rangers and traditional owners in the Tanami in the 2009-10 season
    https://www.clc.org.au/articles/info/fire-management1

    That changed over much of the country – however – with the Kyoto protocol. Maintenance of open woodland was discouraged. Prescribed burning was included in emissions – wildfires were not. It resulted in a modern landscape transformation that I have seen with my own eyes. To landscapes of woody weeds susceptible to intense, hot season fires across vast areas of the nation.

    Fires in extreme hot and dry conditions – as we are now experiencing – may be a unstoppable force of nature. But we have brought a lot of it on ourselves by going along with bureaucratic notions that had no regard for fire science or bitterly won experience. The irony is that hot season fires release far more carbon and nitrous oxides to the atmosphere than cool season mosaic burning.

  40. phil salmon | January 7, 2020 at 11:52 am |

    Mann-splaining away the AMO, PDO: Atlantic and Pacific oscillations lost in the noise [link]

    One sad fact about being a climate alarmist is that you can’t surf.

    At a beach facing a long expanse of ocean, one can see the sea water impacting on the shoreline. Some people look at this interface between sea and sand, and claim to discern discreet “waves” [sic] crashing on the shore – that is, the noisy and turbulent sea movement impacts the shore in periodic maxima of energy, alternating with periods of less energetic interaction. Some will even claim that during the “wave” impacts, the sea water extends further up the beach than in between such “waves”.

    Of course anyone with a modicum of statistical understanding will realise that this is an illusion, that all this is only noise. A stochastically textured sea surface causes fluctuating energy exchange at the shoreline, and any impression of periodicity to this interaction is only creative pattern-finding in one’s imagination.

    Nevertheless, some noise-denying folks go so far as to claim that the sea shore energy interactions are so strongly periodic, that these so-called “waves” are so real, that they can physically “ride” them. That is, they make elliptical shaped fiberglass boards and ride on these objects from the sea into the shore – claiming as they do so to be “riding the wave”. Of course, any educated person will tell these poor simple folk that they are just riding illusions. There are no waves – only noise.

    https://images.app.goo.gl/7WtaEQWWdoCUgUcF9

    • jimmww | January 13, 2020 at 10:29 pm |

      Oh come on, Phil! You be kiddin’ us, right?

    • matthewrmarler | January 17, 2020 at 2:34 am |

      Phil Salmon: A stochastically textured sea surface causes fluctuating energy exchange at the shoreline, and any impression of periodicity to this interaction is only creative pattern-finding in one’s imagination.

      Interesting analogy. Really. But yes, the waves that the surfers surf are not periodic.

  44. Ulric Lyons | January 7, 2020 at 5:46 pm |

    “The researchers simulated global climate patterns using the Community Earth System Model. However, “normally in a climate model, everything is interacting and computing all the winds and all soil moisture conditions,” Seneviratne said. “It doesn’t represent the weather of a given year because the weather is, to some extent, random.”

    Far from it, 2015 and 2019 summers had periods of weaker indirect solar leading to negative NAO conditions, which results in brief omega block heatwaves typically as Saharan plumes, while 2018 had stronger solar resulting in strongly positive NAO conditions and more sustained heatwaves.

  45. JCH | January 7, 2020 at 6:08 pm |

    Decadal changes of the reflected solar radiation and the Earth’s energy imbalance [link] Over the 2000–2018 period the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) appears to have a downward trend of −0.16 ± 0.11 W/m2dec. …

    https://i.imgur.com/t7xLIuP.png

  46. Robert I. Ellison | January 7, 2020 at 10:03 pm |

    Both the simple calculation of energy imbalance (I presume) – copied by JCH from some echo chamber ot other – and the EEI study are wrong for the same reason. They make unjustifiable assumptions – a ‘one off adjustment’ and ‘anchoring’ – to close the energy in less energy out budget. Intercalibration imprecision is an order of magnitude greater than the energy imbalance they are attempting to calculate.

    It is simpler to ignore small changes in effective TSI and focus on what more precisely measured – and order of magnitude greater changes – in OLR and RSW reveal.

    Net is warming up by convention. Less RSW and more OLR. With RSW dominating largely the result of low level marine boundary layer stratocumulus changes over the eastern tropical and subtropical Pacific. Post ‘hiatus’ changes are most apparent. – https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62 –

    Net = -RSW -OLR

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4.1_anom_toa_net_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojune-2019.png
    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4.1_anom_toa_shortwave_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojune-2019.png
    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4.1_anom_toa_longwave_flux-all-sky_march-2000tojune-2019.png

    And then look at OCH . Note the cutoff date for OHC data in the EEI study – and then claim correlation.

    https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/lin4.jpg

    • JCH | January 7, 2020 at 11:16 pm |

      Yes, I copied it from an echo chamber called Climate Etc.:

      Decadal changes of the reflected solar radiation and the Earth’s energy imbalance [link] Over the 2000–2018 period the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) appears to have a downward trend of −0.16 ± 0.11 W/m2dec. … – included by Judith Curry in a list of interesting science papers up above

      In late 2013, extremely warm sea surface temperatures (known as “The Blob”) associated with anomalously higher than average sea level pressures appeared over the northeast Pacific [18]. This was followed in spring 2014 by a shift in the sign of the PDO from negative to positive. – N Loeb

      How do you like them apples? From your own link. The PDO shifted from negative to positive. Right when I said it would. Back when you were claiming La Niña for decades: aping Tsonis, Etc.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 8, 2020 at 12:07 am |

        “If as suggested here, a dynamically driven climate shift has occurred, the duration of similar shifts during the 20th century suggests the new global mean temperature trend may persist for several decades. Of course, it is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time.” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008GL037022

        Tsonis understands why the Earth system shifts – unlike JCH. It is of course purely speculative to suggest that climate states have again shifted. And claiming that these things are predictable is vainglorious delusion.

      • JCH | January 8, 2020 at 9:19 am |

        The shift has been reported by scientists who study the PDO, including the scientists you have quoted: Nathan Loeb; Tapio Schneider, Etc. Just proof you pick and choose only those things that support your Frankenstein theory: made of body parts you cut from various studies and paste together into your one-angry-man-from-Australia-that-nobody-has-ever-heard-of “theory”. As of late you have added TN Palmer and Tapio “Get Out and Vote Out Trump” Schneider, two men who, just let me guess here, hold Boink Dumberg in utter and total contempt.

        You said flat for decades, and you were wrong. You also predicting La Niña conditions were on the horizon (I pushed back,) and a La Niña did not happen: possibly a billion to a billion and a half animals killed by global warming in Australia in 2019. You’re fantastic.

        But the cargo cult should keep praying for stadium wave cooling.

      • kribaez | January 8, 2020 at 2:51 pm |

        See below my comment on DeWitte et al.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 8, 2020 at 3:04 pm |

        Wow. What a rant. The essence – in the midst of all the repeated, angry disparagement – seems to be that someone has claimed a switch to a warm multidecadal phase of the PDO. Something JCH happily declared was nonexistent above.

        Not only is this not AGW – post hiatus warming over a couple of years was largely the result of SST/cloud feedback over the upwelling region of the eastern Pacific (Loeb et al 2018) – but no scientist would be so foolish as to do more than note short term variability.

        My Frankenstein theory involves polar annular modes as drivers of gyre circulation in the Pacific. It emerges from a breadth of reading of the domain literature over decades. The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006)Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947). The polar annular modes are modulated – inter alia – by solar variability. (e.g. Ineson et al, 2015, Lockwood et al, 2010)

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/ocean-gyre.png
        https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/gsofacpubs/140/

        The system evolves over moments to eons. As I said above – Australia may be the driest we have been for a thousand years. Surface temps may be as warm as they have been for even longer. The two are related through simple physics.

        “The heat content of surface air (i.e.,z right above ground level, so that z = 0 can be assumed) can be expressed as:

        H = CpT + Lq

        where Cp is the specific heat of air at constant pressure,T is the air temperature, L is the latent heat of vaporization, and q is the specific humidity [Haltiner and Williams, 1980].
        The quantity, H, is called moist static energy and can be expressed in units of Joules/kg”. (Pielke Sn. 2004)

        There are other things happening in climate than AGW. The cognitively dissonant rejection of that is the basic problem with JCH’s congealed (Palmer and Stevens, 2019) consensus.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 9, 2020 at 12:05 am |

        Oh – and as I said above – fire in such extreme conditions – natural or otherwise – may be inevitable. However – the intensity of the conflagration was an unintended but completely predictable – to anyone with any knowledge of Australian bushfire – outcome of the Kyoto protocol.

        e.g. https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/20090202-1.pdf

  47. Ireneusz Palmowski | January 8, 2020 at 4:09 am |

    There are no sunspot regions on the earth-facing solar disc today.
    https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/sunspot-regions

  48. chaamjamal | January 8, 2020 at 7:27 am |

    “Mean total overland rainfall amounts associated with Hurricane Florence’s core were increased by 4.9 ± 4.6% with local maximum amounts experiencing increases of 3.8 ± 5.7% due to climate change”

    The single minded focus on the North Atlantic Basin (NA) for the detection of the impact of climate change on tropical cyclones during periods when NA is particularly active or when it has spawned a particularly destructive tropical cyclone is a form of circular reasoning; particularly so because NA by itself is not a globally important source of tropical cyclones, generating no more than 14% of global cyclone energy measured as ACE.

    Knutson etal (2010) and others have found that total cyclone energy variance for a single basin is too large to come to meaningful conclusions about the impact of AGW and recommended that only the aggregate of all six basins could contain useful information in that regard.

    Here, the authors selected not only one basin but from that basin selected a single season, and from that single season, a single tropical cyclone – as this is an Event Attribution study that suffers not only from circular reasoning but also from confirmation bias.

    The Event Attribution methodology derives from a UN bureaucratic procedure called the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) devised for the sole purpose of appeasing potential donors to the Green Climate Fund that climate impact funds are given to non-Annex countries only when the role of AGW in that impact has been assessed and not otherwise.

    Briefly, a large number of climate model runs are made for “the world as it is” (emissions and AGW) and “the world that might have been” (no emissions and no AGW) and the probability of the event is computed for these two conditions from the large number of model runs. If the probability of the event with emissions is sufficiently larger than the probability without emissions (as decided in the Warsaw meeting), the destructive weather event is considered fundable.

    Not long after the Warsaw meeting, climate science adopted the WIM procedure as a scientific tool called “Event Attribution Science” and raised the stature of the funding rule to that of scientific empirical evidence of climate change impacts. Note that the assessment is made after the fact. This is a grotesque corruption of science.

    Four links below…

    https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/07/10/event-attribution-science-a-case-study/

    https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/03/confirmationbias/

    https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/09/18/climate-change-hurricanes/

    https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/14/hurricane-obsession/

  51. kribaez | January 8, 2020 at 4:50 pm |

    The Dewitte et al paper “Decadal Changes of the Reflected Solar Radiation
    and the Earth Energy Imbalance” merits some attention.
    I have no idea if the data adjustments to CERES are justified or not. However, if they are, then the implications of the paper for climate sensitivity are quite profound.
    The authors comment that:-
    “At first sight it seems surprising that the EEI is decreasing during a period of continued greenhouse gas emission.”
    This is an understatememt.
    We can quantify the “surprising” nature of the results on climate sensitivity.
    The derivative of the energy balance equation yields the instantaneous net flux balance.
    Change in net flux(t) = Forcing(t) + Restorative Temperature-dependent flux(t).
    <In all cases we adopt the convention that flux downwards is positive, hence the Restorative Temperature-dependent flux is normally negative for a positive forcing.
    If we consider the above equations for two different times, t1 and t2, and take the difference, we obtain:-
    ΔN= ΔF + Δ(RTDF) Eq 1.
    In every case, the Δ implies the difference between our two chosen times t1 and t2. We further make the assumption here of constant linear feedback, i.e. that ΔRTDF = (Total feedback) * ΔT, where the feedback is the SIGNED feedback.
    The data allows us to apply Eq 1 to the total flux or to partition the responses between the shortwave and the longwave. I assume 3.2 W/m2 for the Planck response. The TSI variation is a forcing on the shortwave.

    Taking the year 2000 and 2018 as my values of t1 and t2, total anthropogenic forcing change over the period is 3.101 -2.466 = 0.635. Total temperature change (Hadcrut4) = 0.4 deg C. Total TSI change (SW forcing) = 340.28-340.5 = -0.22. The results of this analysis are summarised below:-
    LW Feedback = Planck Feedback + Other LW Feedback = -3.2 + -0.0125 = -3.2125 W/m2/deg C
    SW Feedback = 0.4 W/m2/deg C
    Total Signed Feedback = -3.2125 +0.4 = -2.8125 W/m2/deg C
    Effective ECS = 3.7/2.8125 = 1.32 deg C
    Check on total:-
    SW Net flux change = TSI Change – RSR Change = -0.22 – (-0.16) = -0.06
    LW Net Flux change = -(OLR(2018) – OLR(2000)) = -(238.21-237.56) = -0.65 W/m2
    Total net flux change = -0.06 + (-0.65) = -0.71 W/m2
    Total Forcing Change = GHG change+ TSI change = 0.635 -0.22 = 0.415 W/m2
    Total net flux change = Total Forcing change + Total feedback * Temperature change
    Total net flux change = -0.71 W/m2
    RHS of equation = 0.415 + (-2.8125) * 0.4 = -0.71 W/m2
    It will come as no surprise that using the UAH LT temperature will reduce the implied ECS effective well below the Planck response – implying an overall net negative feedback to Planck.
    If I were Dewitte, I might consider buying a tinfoil hat to protect myself against my colleagues.

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 8, 2020 at 5:14 pm |

      The ‘anchoring’ cannot be justified rigorously and the result is inconsistent with OHC. Contrary to their truncated claim. Nor can you include annual to decadal variability in cloud change in ‘sensitivity’ calculations.

      • kribaez | January 9, 2020 at 4:31 am |

        If, by “anchoring”, you mean the choice of the start and end years, then I would agree with you that there are alternative ways of approaching the calculation. However, the fundamental problem remains if I pick different start and end points or fit a trend over each of the contributing datasets and use the trend lines to estimate the changes over the period. The fundamental problem for mainstream interpretation of this CERES construction is that the net flux response is apparently decreasing during a period of increasing forcing – even after accounting for the “offset” of decreasing TSI. These data will always suggest a very small modification to Planck response in the LW and a smallish positive feedback in the SW. Net total result is a low climate sensitivity.
        I agree with you that the data are not entirely compatible with ARGO OHC data over the period. I also agree with you that my analysis assumes that variability in cloud change is a temperature-dependent phenomenon, and not subject to exogenous change, but this is identical with mainstream epistemology.
        So, either this CERES construction is wrong, or mainstream epistemology is wrong or climate sensitivity is low. Take your pick.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 9, 2020 at 1:00 pm |

        They anchor to to an emission not a period.

      • frankclimate | January 9, 2020 at 6:57 am |

        RIE: “The ‘anchoring’ cannot be justified rigorously and the result is inconsistent with OHC. Contrary to their truncated claim. ”

        In this case you are wrong.

      • frankclimate | January 9, 2020 at 8:16 am |

        kribaez: The data are in agreement with in situ observations of the OHC. The time deviates of the OHC data show the EEI, not the absolute OHC. This is also included in the paper. Hopefully we can read more in near future ;)

      • frankclimate | January 9, 2020 at 10:53 am |

        PS: I meant “time derivative”. Sorry 4 typo

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 9, 2020 at 1:14 pm |

        “Figure 7 shows the global average RSR without (green curve) and with the drift correction (blue curve). For comparison also the independent ERA 5 RSR [10] is shown (purple curve). In all cases the measurements are anchored to a global average RSR value of 101.4 W/m2 over the period 2005–2014 following [5]. ”

        “Figure 12 shows the yearly running means of the outgoing earth radiation terms, namely the RSR (purple curve) and the OLR (green curve) as measured by CERES for the period 2000–2018. Following [14], the OLR is anchored to a value of 238 W/m2 over the period 2005–2014.”

        Using CERES data with its one off adjustment will give something different.

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/ceres-v-argo2-e1545527245498.png

        Both are required because the intercalibration – between incoming and outgoing energy – imprecision is an order of magnitude greater than EEI.

        Δ(ocean heat) ≈ Ein – Eout

        Which is of course the derivative.

      • kribaez | January 9, 2020 at 10:20 pm |

        RIE,
        The “anchoring” that you are talking about has no relevance to the analysis I carried out above. The analysis I carried out requires only a knowledge of the differential values of the (six) timeseries involved from the start to the end of the period. They could each be arbitrarily translated along their ordinates and it would have zero effect on the estimated climate sensitivity.
        The absolute values are only of interest if you wish to tune the absolute value of net flux imbalance to OHC (derivative) data.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 10, 2020 at 12:36 am |

        There is one way of realistically estimating the planetary energy imbalance – and that is with changes in ocean heat. Transient imbalances between incoming and outgoing energy changes with positive SST/MBL stratocumulus feedback, greenhouse gases, water vapor, ice, dust, vegetation, volcanoes…

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/argo-to-dec-2018-1.jpg

        Greenhouse gas theory says that the atmosphere warms and the oceans warm through very slow isopycnal mixing until the whole planet is warm enough that energy in equals energy out. NASA assumes that a simplistically calculated rate of ocean warming is the energy imbalance resulting from a slow – 1000’s of years – adjustment to atmospheric warming. Your guys assume that the cumulative greenhouse gas imbalance at TOA is zero. Neither assumption is rigorously justifiable. But the oceans have warmed in recent years – while your guys truncate OHC at 2010.

  52. Robert I. Ellison | January 9, 2020 at 12:36 am |

    “This echoes comments made in the wake of the bushfire that destroyed the town of Yarloop in Western Australia in 2016. The conditions were described by authorities as “unprecedented”. And following the 2018 Queensland bushfires, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters “If you want to know what caused those conditions, I’ll give you an answer – it’s called climate change”. Greens leader Richard de Natali and Greens MP Adam Brandt are both blaming the current fires in NSW on climate change.” https://www.bushfirefront.org.au/the-eastern-states-bushfires-2019/

    Now I’m angry. A billion and a half creatures dead of global warming – as uncritically reported by JCH. Let’s put the responsibility for this environmental and human tragedy where it belongs. At the feet of activists and greens.

  53. Ireneusz Palmowski | January 9, 2020 at 2:39 am |

    There is a chance of rain in the south of Australia.
    https://pl.sat24.com/pl/au

  54. Christos Vournas | January 9, 2020 at 8:57 am |

    Phobos’ (Mars’ moon) Effective Temperature Calculation:
    Te.phobos
    (1/R²) = (1/1,524²) = 1/2,32
    Phobos has 2,32 times less solar irradiation intensity than Earth has
    Phobos’ albedo: aphobos = 0,071
    N = 24/7,7 rotations/per day, Phobos completes one rotation around its axis in about 7,7 hours
    Phobos is a rocky moon, Phobos’ surface irradiation accepting factor: Φphobos = 0,47
    cp.phobos = 0,19cal/gr oC, on Phobos’ surface is a rock
    β = 150 days*gr*oC/rotation*cal – it is a Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law constant
    σ = 5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant
    Phobos’ Effective Temperature Complete Formula is:
    Te.phobos = [ Φ (1-a) So (1/R²) (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴
    Phobos’ Effective Temperature Te.phobos is:
    Te.phobos = { 0,47 (1-0,071) 1.362 W/m²*(1/2,32)*[(150*(24/7.7)*0,19]¹∕ ⁴ /4*5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴ }¹∕ ⁴ =
    Te.phobos = 242,14 K

    Deimos’ (Mars’ moon) Effective Temperature Calculation:
    Te.deimos
    (1/R²) = (1/1,524²) = 1/2,32
    Deimos has 2,32 times less solar irradiation intensity than Earth has
    Deimos’ albedo: adeimos = 0,068
    N = 24/30,3 rotations/per day, Deimos completes one rotation around its axis in about 30,3 hours
    Deimos is a rocky moon, Deimos’ surface irradiation accepting factor: Φdeimos = 0,47
    cp.deimos = 0,19cal/gr oC, on Deimos’ surface is a rock
    β = 150 days*gr*oC/rotation*cal – it is a Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law constant
    σ = 5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant
    Deimos’ Effective Temperature Complete Formula is:
    Te.deimos = [ Φ (1-a) So (1/R²) (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴
    Deimos’ Effective Temperature Te.deimos is:
    Te.deimos = { 0,47 (1-0,068) 1.362 W/m²*(1/2,32)*[150*(24/30,3)*0,19]¹∕ ⁴ /4*5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴ }¹∕ ⁴ =
    Te.deimos = 222,98 K

    Let’s compare the Effective Temperatures
    Te.mars : Te deimos : Te phobos
    213,59 K : 222,98 K : 242,14 K
    1………….. 24/30.3….. 24/7,7…. rotation/day
    amars = 0,25 : adeimos = 0,068 : aphobos = 0,071

    Mars and Deimos have close rotational speed but Mars has a higher albedo,
    Phobos and Deimos have close albedos but Phobos has a higher rotational speed.

    Thus we conclude now that the Phobos’ and Deimos’ Effective Temperatures calculated with the Planet Effective Temperature Complete Formula are the correct Phobos’ and Deimos’ effective temperatures.

    http://www.cristos-vournas.com

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 9, 2020 at 1:42 pm |

      Even 10% of fires as arson is far too much.

      https://10daily.com.au/ip/s3/2019/12/30/62976d147a1252163973e1c8660cb0fe-813316.jpg
      https://10daily.com.au/news/australia/a200109ykhpu/separating-fact-from-fiction-a-breakdown-of-the-small-role-arson-played-this-bushfire-season-20200109

      But as I said above – fire in such extreme conditions – natural or otherwise – may be inevitable. However – the intensity of the conflagration was an unintended but completely predictable – to anyone with any knowledge of Australian bushfire – outcome of pig ignorant bureaucrats, climate activists, greens and the Kyoto protocol.

      e.g. https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/20090202-1.pdf

    • cerescokid | January 9, 2020 at 2:43 pm |

      This is an OFFICIAL release from NSW Police. It’s for a year. But the larger point is that arson is a problem regardless of the numbers or how many have been involved in these latest fires. The reality is that many variables are involved including that the ecosystem is prone to fires, there has been a history of major fires, that forest management has been a contributor, that a population explosion over the last 100 years and concomitant development have added to the risk of major bushfires and that fire mitigation systems and resources might be inadequate.

      Instead, the usual tunnel vision suspects can only see 1 cause. Should we expect anything more out of them? That is too much to expect.

      https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news/news_article?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGZWJpenByZC5wb2xpY2UubnN3Lmdvdi5hdSUyRm1lZGlhJTJGODIyNjQuaHRtbCZhbGw9MQ%3D%3D

      • cerescokid | January 10, 2020 at 3:03 pm |

        Back on the home front in California

        “A panel of experts said Wednesday that California’s devastating wildfires were caused primarily by “the way we manage lands and develop our landscape” rather than climate change.”

        Speaking at the annual conference of the National Council for Science and the Environment in Washington D.C., Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at the University of California, Berkeley, said that perhaps 20 to 25 percent of the wildfire damage resulted from climate change, whereas “75 percent is the way we manage lands and develop our landscape.”

        Stephens noted that in past centuries, wildfires were far more widespread than they are today, and played a vital role in California’s ecosystem by helping to thin forests.

        In the 18th century, for instance, when California was occupied by indigenous communities, wildfires would burn up some 4.5 million acres a year, said Stephens, whereas from 2013 through 2019, wildfires burned an average of just 935,000 acres annually in California.

        Even in 2018, the worst year for California fires, blazes consumed just 2 million acres. Stephens noted that in past centuries, wildfires were far more widespread than they are today, and played a vital role in California’s ecosystem by helping to thin forests,

        In the 18th century, for instance, when California was occupied by indigenous communities, wildfires would burn up some 4.5 million acres a year, said Stephens, whereas from 2013 through 2019, wildfires burned an average of just 935,000 acres annually in California.

        Even in 2018, the worst year for California fires, blazes consumed just 2 million acres.”

        So, if warming is 20 to 25 percent responsible of the damage, then depending on what portion of the warming you want to believe is anthropogenic, an estimate can be made as to what percent can be attributed to AGW .

    • Tony Banton | January 10, 2020 at 10:30 am |

      JCH:
      I see that my post to you saying that your post that the above referred to had disappeared……
      Has been disappeared.
      Judith, I am increasingly of the opinion that this is not an honest forum.
      And as such I expect this will be disappeared as well.

      • JCH | January 10, 2020 at 10:46 am |

        I think she should suppress free speech and maintain safe zones for her denizens in the manner she sees fit. No complaints from me.

  56. Turbulent Eddie | January 9, 2020 at 9:48 am |

    If you haven’t already seen it, Spencer analysis on why Aussie fires are probably dynamic fluctuation and most certainly not anthro climate change:
    https://i1.wp.com/www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Australia-yearly-precip-vs-41-climate-models-scaled.jpg

    • JCH | January 9, 2020 at 10:09 am |

      Oh my, what a surprise.

    • Robert I. Ellison | January 9, 2020 at 2:27 pm |

      Trends are misleading. To me it suggests a phase shift in the mid 1970’s to more extreme variance.

      http://www.bom.gov.au/tmp/cc/rranom.aus.0112.24060.png

      • Turbulent Eddie | January 9, 2020 at 2:48 pm |

        Also, stations come and go.

        I’m pretty sure very few of the stations included were complete from 1900 through 2020.

        Never-the-less, the graphic is very significant in that:

        1. The fires are correlated with lowest observed precipitation.
        2. Climate models indicate little change of precipitation.
        3. Climate models do not replicate the observed variance.
        3. Long term observed trends are positive for precipitation.

        Everyone has confirmation bias, but ascribing the Aussie burn to climate change appears to depict climate change bias in spades.

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 9, 2020 at 3:55 pm |

        Long term proxy series suggests that Australia may be the driest it has been for a considerable period. but the shift in mean and variance in the mid 1970’s in seen in many climate series – and an anthropogenic component – against a backdrop of extreme variability – is a possibility.

        “In this study, an atmospheric teleconnection in the Indian Ocean midlatitudes linking East Antarctica and Australia is exploited to produce the first accurate, annually dated millennial‐length IPO reconstruction from the Law Dome (East Antarctica) ice core. Combined with an eastern Australian rainfall proxy from Law Dome, the first millennial‐length Australian megadrought (>5 year duration) reconstruction is presented. Eight megadroughts are identified including one 39 year drought (A.D. 1174–1212), which occurred during an unprecedented century of aridity (A.D. 1102–1212).” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL062447

        https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/attachment/ce58435e-61c4-4fd1-ab51-521b70f8d813/grl52452-fig-0004-m.jpg
        (a) LD summer sea‐salt record Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) annual (January–December) rainfall correlation for IPO positive phases (1924–1941 and 1979–1997) (significance at contour r = 0.325, p < 0.05, unreliable data masked [Gallant et al., 2013]). M, S, T, and W denote long‐record rainfall stations [Vance et al., 2013]; (b) 13 year window sliding correlations for LD summer sea‐salt rainfall station data (p 0.5 for both reconstructions) highlighted (blue banding). (e) Annual LD summer sea‐salt time series [Vance et al., 2013] (grey) with 13 year Gaussian smooth (thick black) and drought periods (>5 year duration, >0.5 for both IPO reconstructions) identified (pink banding).

  57. Ireneusz Palmowski | January 10, 2020 at 4:56 am |

    Rain in the south of Australia.
    https://files.tinypic.pl/i/00995/ocj119qdc2x7.png

  58. Dimitris Poulos | January 12, 2020 at 12:53 pm |

    In my papers I have shown how important the Earth-Venus resonance is. Because it is a resonance it causes this infinite oscillation in the solar surface called the solar wind. I have well documented the solar variations through climate time series. My climate model based on solar variations predicts extremely accurately the climate variations. Especially if you add the AMO oscillation too, that counts for internal system variability. Others of course may remain in their old incomplete approaches…
    This the ResearchGate link to my papers https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dimitris_Poulos

  59. Dimitris Poulos | January 13, 2020 at 2:46 pm |

    in my papers I have also accuratelly quantified the solar wind phenomenon. My explanation is sound and there are no other alternative explanations proposed. As I have quantified solar wind AND solar activity, my succesfull climate model has arisen.

  60. Ragnaar | January 15, 2020 at 8:25 pm |

    https://www.podcastone.com/episode/01/15/20-John-Abraham-professor-in-Mechanical-Engineering-and-Thermal-Sciences-at-UST

    John Abraham. Contributor to The Guardian. He over matches the host. He’s peddling solar as cheaper. He gets money for his solar panels. He shouldn’t talk about money. Big discussion of things that go boom. He dodges a question about religion. He works at Saint Thomas, a Catholic college for rich kids. He works on the climate for free.

  61. Ragnaar | January 16, 2020 at 3:01 pm |

    “A new Cheng et al. (2020) paper describing record warm ocean temperatures in 2019 has been discussed by Willis Eschenbach who correctly reminds us that such “record setting” changes in the 0-2000 m ocean heat content (reported in Zettajoules, which is 10^^21 Joules) amount to exceedingly small temperature changes. I calculate from their data that 2019 was only 0.009 deg. C warmer than 2018.”
    – Roy Spencer
    So in ten years going forward of setting records, we get 0.1 C in total. The thing about it it, the oceans will never quit. As the atmosphere warms, the oceans will effectively warm hardly at all. Then we expect the atmosphere to become untethered from the oceans? No we don’t, unless we are frauds. To do so is a shell game. And to say, don’t look how slowly the oceans warm. And have a parade for 0.009 degree C and declare victory for your alarmism. It is say, I cannot count, but don’t worry about it. I have a PhD. First they ignored the oceans. Then they used them to explain the pause. But they are still in denial. Denial of the mass of the oceans. The more CO2 warms the atmosphere, the more it pushes joules back into the oceans. Opening a 2nd escape path. You get sea level rise.

    • JCH | January 16, 2020 at 5:09 pm |

      Again, in Hansen’s very first papers he said warming would be found in the oceans. They planned the ARGO project to measure it.

      Absolutely nobody ignored the oceans.

      There was a DaPaws, but there was no pause in the warming of the earth system:

      https://i.imgur.com/0KNwz5j.png

      • Robert I. Ellison | January 16, 2020 at 6:09 pm |

        The pause followed by reduced cloud albedo in the eastern Pacific followed by another pause. Gee whiz – I wonder what that means?

        https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/steric_height.png

      • Ragnaar | January 16, 2020 at 9:08 pm |

        JCH:
        The land temperature plus the SSTs is not the oceans. The SSTs are not the oceans. Banner number: GMST. Still not the oceans.
        Banner statement from the IPCC: We caused at least half the warming of, not the oceans. 5 years ago, no one wrote a story about the warmest oceans ever. All the GMST. They are in sales. They sold the GMST. Yes, you can find 100 people mentioning the oceans. They haven’t been selling that until quite recently. But it’s like a Ken doll – the oceans. They sell Barbie. Ken will own.

      • Ragnaar | January 17, 2020 at 12:21 pm |

        3700 meters of average ocean depth. Warm the top 2000 meters. The top warms 0.1 C per decade. Put 1700 meters of water right underneath the top. The 0.1 C new differential pushes joules down. That ought to give us another decade at least. It’s generally agreed it hasn’t warmed much in the last 20 years. The bottom 1700 meters. Moving 2000 or 1700 meters of water over 2/3s of the surface of the Earth 0.1 C is going to limit changes. And the more whacked out the atmosphere gets, the more the oceans will pull back in the past direction. The problem with the atmosphere is mitigated by the sea surface, which is mitigated by the top 2000 meters which is mitigated by the bottom 1700 meters. If I had to pick one thing to make things not so bad, its our ocean’s water. Ignoring this water is like ignoring gravity. Let’s say I am wrong and the GMST is plus 4.0 C. What’s the temperature of the oceans? Plus 0.5 C. What happens then? Plus 8.0 C GMST? It’s physics, isn’t it? The plan seems to me to identify the most sensitive thing, and ignore the least sensitive things. The oceans to their full depth are insensitive generally while drawing joules like a mofo. We don’t want to chip off some ice from a glacier and say, look, it melted. The rest the glacier is still there.

    • JCH | January 16, 2020 at 9:59 pm |

      Yes, that’s why I used to ask people “how deep is your ocean?” Because they kept talking about sagging SST’s.

      Hansen – 2005:

      https://i.imgur.com/2ZGT6xB.png

  62. antonk2 | January 18, 2020 at 5:08 am |

    Ugly: http://www.Nature.com wades into pure Politics, this time in India about which they are ill informed. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00085-6

    The law provides a path to citizenship for recent refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. It is a means to providing permanent sanctuary for religious minorities fleeing hardship or persecution in these countries — an intention that is to be commended. What is troubling is that decisions on who can — and cannot — apply for citizenship will be made on the basis of religious belief. Muslims are to be excluded, which is a violation of the foundational principle that people of all faiths and none must be equal in law.
    Yes, India gets scolded for wanting to shelter persecuted minority victims next door while Pakistan, Afghanistan plus Bangladesh stay un-mentioned although they protect the perps unofficially and officially for decades. They are self declared Islamic states. Leftwing students from New Delhi’s JNU campus first destroyed the CCTV server room and later complained about police actions against them. https://swarajyamag.com/insta/jnusu-president-aishe-ghosh-booked-for-violently-attacking-jnu-security-guards-vandalising-server-room
    Again Politics cloud Nature’s observation and reasoning capacities.

  63. Ragnaar | January 19, 2020 at 8:25 pm |

    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-prediction-and-the-disc/id1469999563?i=1000462975502
    You’ll have to be patient with the podcast. He takes hard shots at academia. Peer review. The way we do STEM in the United States.
    Eric Weinstein is an American mathematical physicist, the managing director of Thiel Capital since 2015…

  64. JCH | January 20, 2020 at 3:31 pm |

    Pending recovery in the strength of the meridional overturning circulation at 26° N

    Abstract.

    The strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) at 26° N has now been continuously measured by the RAPID array over the period Apr 2004–Sept 2018. This record provides unique insight into the variability of the large-scale ocean circulation, previously only measured by sporadic snapshots of basin-wide transports from hydrographic sections. The continuous measurements have unveiled striking variability on timescales of days to a decade, driven largely by wind-forcing, contrasting with previous expectations about a slowly-varying, buoyancy forced large-scale ocean circulation. However, these measurements were primarily observed during a warm state of the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) which has been steadily declining since a peak in 2008–2010. In 2013–2015, a period of strong buoyancy-forcing by the atmosphere drove intense watermass transformation in the subpolar North Atlantic and provides a unique opportunity to investigate the response of the large-scale ocean circulation to buoyancy forcing. Modelling studies suggest that the AMOC in the subtropics responds to such events with an increase in overturning transport, after a lag of 3–9 years. At 45° N, observations suggest that the AMOC my already be increasing. We have therefore examined the record of transports at 26° N to see whether the AMOC in the subtropical North Atlantic is now recovering from a previously reported low period commencing in 2009. Comparing the two latitudes, the AMOC at 26° N is higher than its previous low. Extending the record at 26° N with ocean reanalysis from GloSea5, the transport fluctuations follow those at 45° N by 0–2 years, albeit with lower magnitude. Given the short span of time and anticipated delays in the signal from the subpolar to subtropical gyres, it is not yet possible to determine whether the subtropical AMOC strength is recovering.