Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
From the eMail Bag: Abrupt Climate Change in Greenland's Past?
Posted on 25 January 2017 by David Kirtley
We occasionally receive excellent questions and/or comments by email or via our contact form and have then usually corresponded with the emailer directly. But, some of the questions and answers deserve a broader audience, so we decided to highlight some of them in a new series of blog posts.
In 2008 the U.S. Department of Energy's six National Laboratories began a new research program investigating "abrupt climate change" called IMPACTS: Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions. A blogpost on the Lawrence Berkeley Lab's website describing this program had this to say about the Younger Dryas, one of Earth's best-known periods of abrupt climate change:
[C]limate change has occurred with frightening rapidity in the past and will almost certainly do so again. Perhaps the most famous example is the reverse hiccup in a warming trend that began 15,000 years ago and eventually ended the last ice age. Roughly 2,000 years after it started, the warming trend suddenly reversed, and temperatures fell back to near-glacial conditions; Earth stayed cold for over a thousand years, a period called the Younger Dryas (named for an alpine wildflower). Then warming resumed so abruptly that global temperatures shot up 10 °C in just 10 years.
A Skeptical Science reader noticed this passage and wrote to us asking if this was accurate, especially that last sentence about an alarming 10 degree jump in just 10 years. I googled around a bit and came upon a NOAA Paleoclimatology webpage (also from 2008) which had a very similar passage:
About 14,500 years ago, the Earth's climate began to shift from a cold glacial world to a warmer interglacial state. Partway through this transition, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere suddenly returned to near-glacial conditions (Figure 6). This near-glacial period is called the Younger Dryas, named after a flower (Dryas octopetala) that grows in cold conditions and became common in Europe during this time. The end of the Younger Dryas, about 11,500 years ago, was particularly abrupt. In Greenland, temperatures rose 10° C (18° F) in a decade.
The NOAA webpage had a "Figure 6" showing graphs of Greenland temperatures, snow accumulation and other climatological measurements. This graph also listed a number of references, including Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19: 213-226. In that paper Alley described the abrupt increase in Greenland temperature at the end of the Younger Dryas as a "5-10°C step warming...with much of the change in a few decades or less".
Figure 1. Locations of Greenland Ice Core Stations. From: 800,000 Year Ice-Core Records of Isotopes 2H, 18O, and other isotopic species, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy.
Study: real facts can beat 'alternative facts' if boosted by inoculation
Posted on 24 January 2017 by dana1981
It’s fitting that as Donald Trump continues to flirt with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, inoculation may provide the key to effectively debunking this sort of misinformation.
That’s the finding of a new study published in Global Challenges by Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal, and Edward Maibach. The paper tested what’s known as “inoculation theory,” explained in the video below by John Cook, who’s also published research on the subject. The video is a lecture from the Denial101x free online course, which itself is structured based on inoculation theory:
According to inoculation theory, facts are important but by themselves aren’t sufficient to convince people as long as misinformation is also present. People also have to be inoculated against the misinformation, for example through an explanation of the logical fallacy underpinning the myth.
To test the theory, the study authors ran an experiment using a fact that’s been subjected to a tremendous misinformation campaign: the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming. There’s been some debate among social scientists about consensus messaging, with most research suggesting it’s effective and important at convincing people about the importance of climate change.
However, Dan Kahan has argued that given science communicators’ efforts over the past decade to inform the public about the expert consensus, the fact that so few people are aware of it suggests that consensus messaging is a dud. If it were going to work, it should have worked by now, the argument goes.
This new study guts that argument.
We’re now breaking global temperature records once every three years
Posted on 23 January 2017 by dana1981
According to Nasa, in 2016 the Earth’s surface temperature shattered the previous record for hottest year by 0.12°C. That record was set in 2015, which broke the previous record by 0.13°C. That record had been set in 2014, beating out 2010, which in turn had broken the previous record set in 2005.
If you think that seems like a lot of record-breaking hot years, you’re right. The streak of three consecutive record hot years is unprecedented since measurements began in 1880. In the 35 years between 1945 and 1979, there were no record-breakers. In the 37 years since 1980, there have been 12. The video below illustrates all of the record-breaking years in the Nasa global surface temperature record since 1880.
Nasa global surface temperature data, with record-breaking years shown in red. Created by Dana Nuccitelli.
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #3
Posted on 22 January 2017 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
Scientists caution that a four- or eight-year delay in reducing greenhouse gas emissions could lead to dangerously higher global temperatures and long-term adverse impacts. (See article and Q&A with scientist Ben Sanderson)
Precisely how the incoming Trump administration will deal with climate change remains uncertain. But Donald Trump’s statements during the campaign and since his election – and also his Cabinet nominations and his immediately purging the whitehouse.gov website of climate science information – signal, at a minimum, that he will not make addressing climate change a priority.
And that the administration likely will move to shelve federal government mitigation efforts.
Throughout his campaign and during the transition leading up to his January 20th inauguration, Trump frequently had been dismissive of the science and bullish on coal and fossil fuels generally. Proponents for aggressive action and many in the climate science research community have expressed increasing concerns.
In recent months, two climate modelers – Ben Sanderson, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado, and Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich, Switzerland – examined how Trump administration inaction and actions might influence future planetary warming. They concluded that a four- or eight-year delay in mitigation could lead to substantially exceeding global temperature limits for dangerous levels of emissions and concentrations, perhaps indefinitely.
Two scientists' concerns over years of climate inaction by Daniel Grossman & Bud Ward, Yale Climate Communications, Jan 21, 2017
Toon of the Week...
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #3
Posted on 21 January 2017 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Jan 15, 2017
- Are the billionaire American Koch brothers playing climate politics in Alberta? by Elizabeth McSheffry, Race Against Climate Change, National Observer, Jan 13, 2017
- Wyoming Bill Would All But Outlaw Clean Energy by Preventing Utilities From Using It by Zahra Hirji, InsideClimate News, Jan 13, 2017
- Guest post: Coal price surge will not stop China’s drive to reduce emissions by Wu Lixin, Carbon Brief, Jan 11, 2017
- Scott Pruitt, Trump’s E.P.A. Pick, Backed Industry Donors Over Regulators by Eric Lipton & Coral Davenport, New York Times, Jan 14, 2017
- Davos Elite Focus on Climate Change, Ignoring Trump’s Skepticism by Javier Blas & Jeff Shankleman, Bloomberg News, Jan 14. 2017
- U.S. EPA locks in 2025 fuel efficiency rules by David Shepardson, Reuters, Jan 13, 2017
- Climate change: 90% of rural Australians say their lives are already affected by Calla Wahlquist, Guardian, Jan 15, 2017
- Leading scientists urge May to pressure Trump over climate change by Ian Sample, Guardian, Jan 15, 2017
John Cook: Opportunity or “New Dark Age of Denial”
Posted on 20 January 2017 by greenman3610
John Cook at a private roundtable in San Francisco, December 2016.
So what did-in the dinosaurs? An update.
Posted on 19 January 2017 by howardlee
Of all the great mass extinctions, the end-Cretaceous is the only one credibly linked to an asteroid impact. It’s also the one that most people have heard about – the one that got the dinosaurs.
Most people accept that the asteroid impact at Chicxulub in Mexico caused the mass extinction, but in my article in early 2015, I showed that a number of scientists have cast doubt on the globally lethal impact of the Chicxulub impact, and that new rock dates had put the Deccan eruptions at just the right time to cause the extinction. This made the end-Cretaceous similar to all the other major extinctions ever since the evolution of animals (except the end-Ordovician extinction), which have been linked to the effects (including CO2-driven climate change) of massive volcanic eruptions from a rare geological phenomenon called a “Large Igneous Province” or “LIP.”
Since then, several papers have strengthened the case for the Chicxulub impact’s role in the extinction, and several others support the role of the Deccan eruptions, so the debate over what was the principal cause of the extinction, and how the killing was done, continues. Last year an international project drilled directly into the Chicxulub impact crater, and the first results are just beginning to emerge from that. There will be more to report in the months to come, but what follows is an update of some of the advances over the last two years in our understanding the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
Synchronicity
Despite a 100-fold improvement in rock dating precision in the last 5 years, high-precision rock dating has not yet been able to separate either the Deccan eruptions or the Chicxulub impact from the extinction. In my 2015 article I outlined evidence, exposed in a Mexican hillside, that the extinction post-dated the Chicxulub impact by an estimated 100,000 years (without the benefit of high precision dates). New rock dates show that the Deccan eruptions persisted through and after the impact, straddling the extinction, and they all happened within a few tens of thousands of years of each other. This led to the idea proposed in 2015 by Richards et al (including Walter Alvarez, an author of the original impact hypothesis paper in 1980) that the impact actually triggered a much more vigorous phase of eruption in the Deccan Large Igneous Province.
I asked Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, one of the scientists leading the Chicxulub Drilling project, about this in a Press Conference at the AGU Fall meeting in December. She didn’t give the theory much credence:
Video: NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt on 2016 as the hottest year on record
Posted on 17 January 2017 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Roz Pidcock
On Wednesday, the world’s three major meteorological organisations will reveal how global temperature in 2016 stacked up against previous years. Given exceptional warmth in most months, it is all but guaranteed that scientists will confirm 2016 as the hottest year on record.
During his brief lecture tour of the UK last week, Carbon Brief caught up with Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Science. NASA is one of the three agencies due to release their findings this week. The others are the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the UK Met Office/University of East Anglia.
What’s behind the record warmth in 2016? Starting the year with a strong El Niño is worth about an extra 0.1 or 0.2C on top of the long-term trend from greenhouse gases, says Schmidt.
He tells Carbon Brief:
“Why did we have a record year? It’s 80-90% because of the long-term trend and 10% because of El Niño…We’re on a rising trend and when we have anomalously warm trends on top of a rising trend, those are going to be record years.”
Looking forward, we shouldn’t expect each year in succession to be warmer than the last, Schmidt notes:
“We don’t anticipate that 2017 will be a record year because we’re starting off with less of an El Niño signal and more of a neutral/La Niña signal.”
While pinpointing whether one year is hotter than another is interesting from a scientific standpoint, it doesn’t alter the bottom line that the climate is warming, Schmidt says:
“The difference between whether 2016 was the first or second warmest doesn’t make any difference to the impacts that we anticipate over time, and it doesn’t really make any difference to the predictions we’re making for the future. The bottom line is the planet is warming, we’re in a period of exceptional warmth historically.”
Parts of United States are heating faster than globe as a whole
Posted on 17 January 2017 by John Abraham
Global warming obviously refers to temperature increases across the entire globe. We know the Earth is warming, we know it is human-caused, we have a pretty good idea about how much the warming will be in the future and what some of the consequences are. In fact, when it comes to the Earth’s average climate, scientists have a pretty good understanding.
On the other hand, no one lives in the average climate. We live spread out north, west, east, and south. On islands, large continents, inland or in coastal regions. Many of us want to know what’s going to happen to the climate where we live. How will my life be affected in the future?
This type of question is answered in a very recent study published by scientists from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The team, which includes Dr. Raymond Bradley and researcher Dr. Ambarish Karmalkar looked specifically at the Northeastern United States. They found that this area will warm much more rapidly than the globe as a whole. In fact, it will warm faster than any other United States region. The authors expect the Northeast US will warm 50% faster than the planet as a whole. They also find that the United States will reach a 2 degree Celsius warming 10–20 years before the globe as a whole.
So why does this matter? Well first, it matters because some of the effects people will experience are directly tied to the temperature increase in their region. For instance, we know that warmer air leads to more intense precipitation. In fact, we are already observing increases in very heavy rainfall across the United States (especially in the Northeast). Based on this new research, that trend will only get worse. It means that winters in this region will get warmer and wetter – more winter precipitation will likely occur as rain rather than snow. This affects the availability of water into the spring months. It also means that summers will have more intense heat waves which will lead to more severe droughts.
Fact Check: Rex Tillerson on Climate Risks
Posted on 16 January 2017 by dana1981
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State – and until recently the CEO of ExxonMobil – Rex Tillerson was given a confirmation hearing by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. In his testimony, Tillerson accepted the reality of human-caused global warming and that “The risk of climate change does exist and the consequences of it could be serious enough that action should be taken.”
While he accepted the problem exists, Tillerson nevertheless proceeded to downplay its risks, saying:
The increase in the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are having an effect, our ability to predict that effect is very limited.
Many climate scientists took issue with that statement, and for good reason. Climate models have been very accurate in their projections about many consequences of human carbon pollution. It’s true that there’s uncertainty in just how quickly some of those consequences will be triggered. The bad news is that recent studies have shown that many of those consequences are happening more quickly than climate scientists anticipated. Greater climate uncertainty translates into more urgency to tackle the problem, not less.
The Gulf Stream could shut down sooner than anticipated
The Gulf Stream – which keeps the UK and surrounding area significantly warmer than it would otherwise be – is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Research has shown it could shut down as a result of global warming:
In 1997, the oceanographer Wallace Broecker, of Columbia University in New York, suggested that if the Gulf stream turned off, winter temperatures in the British Isles could fall by an average of 11°C - plunging Blackpool or Berwick to the same temperatures as Spitsbergen, inside the Arctic circle. Any dramatic drop in temperature could have devastating implications for agriculture - and for Europe’s ability to feed itself.
Just how quickly such a shutdown could happen has been a subject of debate and research among climate scientists. A study published in Science Advances in early January corrected for a bias recently identified in climate models that acted to keep the AMOC and Gulf Stream more stable than it appears to be in reality:
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #2
Posted on 15 January 2017 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
The rise of the machines isn’t the biggest threat to humanity. It’s climate change, extreme weather and other environmental factors.
The World Economic Forum surveyed 750 experts on what the most likely and impactful risks facing humanity are in 2017. In a report released Thursday, they ranked extreme weather as the most likely risk and the second-most impactful, trailing only the use of weapons of mass destruction. Climate change is responsible for driving an increase in the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events, notably heat waves.
Failing to adapt to or mitigate climate change and a host of other climate-connected risks including water and food crises and involuntary migration also rank in the top 10.
A matrix outlining the most likely and most impactful risks facing the world in 2017. Credit: World Economic Forum
Climate Change Is the World’s Biggest Risk, in 3 Charts by Brian Kahn, Climate Central, Jan 12, 2017
Toon of the Week...
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Posted on 14 January 2017 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Jan 8, 2017
- California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe by B Lynn Ingram, Scientific American, Jan 1, 2017
- Meet the Obscure Group Influencing Trump's Energy Policy by Jennifer A Dlouhy, Bloomberg News, Jan 5, 2017
- Beware of nice weather — it may be playing tricks on your mind by Marlene Cimons, Think Progress, Jan 4, 2017
- The Atlantic Ocean and an Actual Debate in Climate Science by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, Jan 7, 2017
- Muted La Niña Follows Potent El Niño, NASA's Earth Observatory, Jan 6, 2017
- Global warming: Have we lost our chilly winters in north India? by Urmi Goswami, Economic Times, Jan 8, 2017
- China cementing global dominance of renewable energy and technology by Michael Slezak, Guardian, Jan 6, 2016
- Will We Miss Our Last Chance to Save the World From Climate Change? by Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, Dec 22, 2016
Zika outbreak ‘fuelled by’ El Niño and climate change
Posted on 13 January 2017 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Robert McSweeney
The combination of a strong El Niño event and human-caused climate change created optimal conditions for the recent outbreak of the Zika virus in South America, a new study says.
The spread of Zika during 2015-16 caused hundreds of thousands of infections, a surge in cases of birth defects linked to the disease, and saw athletes withdrawing from the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The warm conditions of 2015-16 were “exceptionally conducive” to mosquitoes spreading the disease across the continent, the researchers say, helped by the lack of natural immunity in the South American population.
And their results suggest there is a significant risk of summer outbreaks of Zika in the southeastern states of the US, southern China and southern Europe.
Public health emergency
First identified in Uganda in 1947, the Zika virus has gradually spread through the tropics – from Africa into southeast Asia and then across many small Pacific islands.
The main carrier of the disease is the Aedes aegypti mosquito, but other species such as Aedes albopictus and Aedes hensilli spread Zika as well.
Scientists estimate that the virus first entered South America through Brazil in late 2013, though the first infection wasn’t officially recorded until May 2015. In the months that followed, Zika spread throughout South and Central America and even into the US.
In February this year, the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The designation was lifted about a month ago, but Zika remains a “significant enduring public health challenge requiring intense action.”
Countries with recorded cases of the Zika virus for 2015-16 (red shading) and earlier (yellow). Source: Caminade et al. (2016)
Press complaints process is ‘exercise in futility’ for scientists
Posted on 12 January 2017 by Guest Author
This is a comment article authored for Carbon Brief by two scientists who have made complaints to regulators about coverage of climate science in the media. The first case is written by Dr Phil Williamson, associate fellow of the University of East Anglia and Science Coordinator of the UK Ocean Acidification research programme from 2010-2016. The second case is written by Prof Terry Sloan, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Lancaster and author of Introductory Climate Science; Global Warming Explained.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), a self-regulator for the newspaper and magazine industry, sets out the rules that many UK publishers have agreed to follow.
IPSO’s starting point is promising. The Editor’s Code of Practice and the committee’s own vision – to “support those who feel wronged by the press, uphold the highest professional standards” and “provide redress” where standards have been breached – provide as good a basis as any for balancing freedom of the press with ethics, honesty and the public interest.
But something goes badly wrong in Ipso’s decision-making, at least in our experiences. Engagement with Ipso on issues of scientific accuracy would seem an exercise in futility.
Case 1: Williamson v The Spectator – ocean acidification
On 30 April 2016, climate-skeptic writer James Delingpole published an article in the Spectator under the headline, “Ocean acidification: yet another wobbly pillar of climate alarmism”.
Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 8
Posted on 11 January 2017 by Guest Author
Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher, Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.
Conservative media can't stop denying there was no global warming 'pause'
Posted on 10 January 2017 by dana1981
Scientists have proven time and time again that global warming continues unabated. Most recently, a study published last week showed that over the past two decades, the oceans have warmed faster than prior estimates. This study affirmed the findings of a 2015 NOAA paper – not surprisingly attacked by deniers – that removed a cool bias in the data, finding there never was a global warming “pause.”
This particular myth has been a favorite of deniers over the past decade for one simple reason – if people can be convinced that global warming stopped, they won’t consider it a threat that we need to urgently address by cutting fossil fuel consumption. It’s thus become one of the most common myths peddled by carbon polluters and their allies.
One of those allies is the anti-climate policy advocacy group Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which tries to make the case that aggressive climate policy isn’t needed. This weekend, its “science” editor David Whitehouse wrote for the conservative UK Spectator periodical – which often promotes climate denial – denying that the “pause” is dead:
their case rests on the El Nino temperature increase and will be destroyed when the El Nino subsides, as it is currently doing. A temporary victory over the ‘pause’.
The ‘pause’ can be accommodated into global warming – but not for very much longer. The world’s temperature has to increase outside the El Nino effect.
Testing the myth
If Whitehouse is correct and temperatures are not increasing outside the El Niño effect, then 2015 and 2016 should be no hotter than previous El Niño years. It’s a relatively simple test to run. In the video below, I’ve broken out the temperature data into years with an El Niño warming influence, years with a La Niña cooling influence, and neutral years.
Global Warming: Global Hoax?
Posted on 9 January 2017 by Guest Author
If global warming is one big hoax, who's behind the joke? And why are the vast majority of climate scientists in on it? Plus, why do they all look so much like ClimateAdam?
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #1
Posted on 8 January 2017 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
In this visualization of the Earth's oceans, distinctive white lines trace the flow of surface currents around the world. (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
Intense future climate change could have a far different impact on the world than current models predict, suggests a thought-provoking new study just out in the journal Science Advances. If atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were to double in the future, it finds, a major ocean current — one that helps regulate climate and weather patterns all over the world — could collapse. And that could paint a very different picture of the future than what we’ve assumed so far.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC, is often described as a large oceanic conveyor belt. It’s a system of water currents that transports warm water northward from the Atlantic toward the Arctic, contributing to the mild climate conditions found in places like Western Europe. In the Northern Atlantic, the northward flowing surface water eventually cools and sinks down toward the bottom of the ocean, and another current brings that cooler water back down south again. The whole process is part of a much larger system of overturning currents that circulates all over the world, from pole to pole.
But some scientists have begun to worry that the AMOC isn’t accurately represented in current climate models. They say that many models portray the current as being more stable than real-life observations suggest it actually is. Recent studies have suggested that the AMOC is weakening, although there’s some scientific debate about how much of this has been caused by human activities and how much by natural variations.
Scientists say the global ocean circulation may be more vulnerable to shutdown than we thought by Chelsea Harvey, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Jan 4, 2017
More reading:
- The underestimated danger of a breakdown of the Gulf Stream System by Stefan Rahmstorf, Real Climate, Jan 4, 2017
- The Atlantic Ocean and an Actual Debate in Climate Science by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, Jan 7, 2017
La Niña Update...
One year ago, the central and eastern parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean were pulsing with heat, a result of one of the most intense El Niño events on record. One year later, La Niña has been relatively quiet, and she does not seem to be staying for long.
La Niña is the cool sister pattern to El Niño. While El Niño knocks down the easterly trade winds and sloshes warm water from the western Pacific to the Americas, La Niña pulls up cool water from the depths of the eastern Pacific, energizes the easterlies, and pushes the warm water back toward Asia. Regions that often get drenched with rain and snow during El Niño often go dry during La Niña events, and vice versa, as atmospheric circulation and jet streams shift with the changing heat and moisture supply from the vast Pacific Ocean.
The maps above compare sea surface height anomalies in the Pacific Ocean as observed by NASA scientists on November 4, 2016, near the peak of the current La Niña, and on January 18, 2016, near the peak of last winter’s El Niño. The measurements were made by altimeters on the Jason-2 and Jason-3 satellites, and show averaged sea surface height anomalies. Shades of red indicate areas where the ocean stood higher than the normal sea level; surface height is a good proxy for temperatures because warmer water expands to fill more volume. Shades of blue show where sea level and temperatures were lower than average (water contraction). Normal sea-level conditions appear in white.
In a report issued in December 2016, the NOAA Climate Prediction Center described the latest La Niña as “weak” and likely changing to neutral conditions in early 2017. La Niña conditions—with surface water temperatures at least 0.5° Celsius below normal in the central and eastern Pacific (the Niño 3.4 region from 170° to 120° West longitude)—began to surface in July and August 2016. During last year’s El Niño, surface water temperatures were as much as 2.5°C above the 1981-2010 norm. During the current La Niña, temperatures have not dropped more than 1 degree below normal.
“Last year’s Niño was huge in area, duration, and magnitude,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “My take is that because it lasted so long and covered such a large area, it damped the return of strong trade winds needed for a healthy Niña. Note the strong positive heat content north of the equator—the entire tropical Pacific between Central America and Hawaii—that lingered into the fall.”
Muted La Niña Follows Potent El Niño, NASA's Earth Observatory, Jan 6, 2017
2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1
Posted on 7 January 2017 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Jan 1, 2017
- The 15 Most Ridiculous Things That Media Figures Said About Environmental Issues In 2016 by Kevin Kalhoefer & Andrew Seifter, Media Matters, Dec 28, 2017
- 2016, the year that was: Environment & Energy by Michael Hopkin, The Conversation AU, Dec 27, 2016
- Growing mega-cities will displace vast tracts of farmland by 2030, study says by Emma Bryce, Environment, Guardian, Dec 27, 2016
- Conservationist Terry Tempest Williams puts herself on frontline of climate fight by Ben Goldfarb, Environment, Guardian, Dec 31, 2016
- Happy New Tropical Earth Orbital Period! Kinda! by Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy, Slate, Jan 1, 2017
- Heat Is On for 2017, Just Not Record-Setting by Andrea Thompson, Climate Central, Dec 30, 2016
- Can a federal government scientist in California convince Trump that climate change is real? by Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times, Jan 1, 2017
- ‘Complex’ Climate Fund Procedures Hindering Development by Mahfuzur Rahman, Inter Press Service (IPS), Dec 20, 2016
Prepare for reanimation of the zombie myth ‘no global warming since 2016’
Posted on 6 January 2017 by dana1981
Climate myths are like zombies – you shoot them through the heart, walk away thinking they’re dead, and then they pop back up behind you and try once again to eat your brain.
So it is with Stage 1 climate denial and the myth that the Earth isn’t warming. It’s so persistent that it’s related to the 5th, 9th, and 49th-most popular myths in the Skeptical Science database. Climate deniers have been peddling the myth ‘no warming since [insert date]’ for over a decade.
It’s a popular myth among those who benefit from maintaining the status quo because if the problem doesn’t exist, obviously there’s no need for action to solve it. And it’s an incredibly easy argument that can be made at any time, using the telltale technique of climate denial known as cherry picking.
I created a video to illustrate this point. The key is that the Earth has natural short-term temperature oscillations caused by factors like the El Niño/La Niña cycle. El Niño events temporarily warm temperatures at the Earth’s surface, while La Niña events cause temporary surface cooling. When you combine these up-and-down cycles with a long-term human-caused global warming trend and various other noisy influences, you get a bumpy temperature rise that allows for cherry picking of periods without warming:
