Week in review – science edition

by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.

An overview of studies of observed climate change in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region [link]
Study: sea level rise acceleration still uncertain, we won’t have statistical certainty until 2020-2030 [link]
Four Studies Find ‘No Observable Sea-Level Effect’ From Man-Made Global Warming [link]
Sea level rising faster now than in the 1990’s [link]
Against the odds: Calif. rebound frm deep #drought in just 2 yrs is rarity in historical record.  [link] 
Newly identified climate pattern may have caused California’s drought [link]
Uncertainties in Future Projections of Summer Droughts and Heat Waves over United States [link]
A New High-Resolution Sea Surface Temperature Blended Analysis [link] 
Predictability of Week 3-4 Average Temperature and Precipitation over the Continental US [link]
Characteristics of southern California atmospheric rivers [link]
Cloud feedback mechanisms and their representation in global climate models [link]
The Antarctic Circumpolar Wave: Its Presence and Interdecadal Changes during the last 142 years [link]
Ocean Heat Content low-frequency variability: atmospheric forcing versus oceanic chaos [link]
Arctic waters absorb vast amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere — PNAS [link] 
A comparative analysis of surface temperature retrievals from orbiting MSU/AMSU instruments [link]
Optimum air temperature for tropical forest photosynthesis: implications for climate warming [link] 
Long-term fate of tropical forests may not be so dire [link]
Nature: local temperature response to land cover and management change driven by non-radiative processes [link]
Sea ice trends in climate models only accurate in runs with biased global warming [link] 
Amplified Arctic warming and mid-latitude weather: new perspectives on emerging connections [link]
Observational evidence of a long term increase in precipitation due to urbanization effects [link]
Why is there so much carbon dioxide in rivers? [link]
If climate models have trouble w/internal low freq variability, their use in attribution studies is limited. [link]
Snowball Earth: asynchronous coupling of sea-glacier flow with a global climate model [link]

Basinwide response of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to interannual wind forcing [link]
Interdecadal change between the Arctic Oscillation and East Asian climate during 1900–2015 winters [link]
On the causes of mass extinctions [link]
Multi-model precipitation responses to removal of U.S. sulfur dioxide emissions [link]
The 20th century featured longer wet spells & shorter dry spells compared with preceding 450 years. [link]
Variability, reduced amplitude seasons in late 20th C. tied to large-scale atmospheric forcing. [link] 
Arctic Oscillation & Arctic Dipole influence wintertime Arctic surface radiation & sea ice [link]
Reconstructions of the 1900–2015 Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance [link] 
Stratospheric temperature trends from AIRS and AMSU-A (2003-2012) [link] 
Planetary waves, extreme weather, climate change [link] …
China’s Climate-Change Scientists Find Links to Solar Winds [link]
China Cooled Nearly 0.2°C During Global Warming Hiatus [link]
The subtle origins of surface-warming hiatuses [link]
“The Impact of the AMO on Multidecadal ENSO Variability” [link]
Recent progress in understanding Atlantic decadal climate variability [link]
A new view of weather and climate models? New paper on stochastic modelling techniques. [link]
#Solar activity exerted greater effect than PDO on Southwest #droughts of past 120 years. [link] 
Watching the planet breathe: Studying Earth’s carbon cycle from space. [link]
An interesting new approach for attribution of climate change.Pairwise-Rotated EOFs of Global SST [link]  (ENSO, PDO, AMO, and global warming)

Striking Seasonality in the Secular Warming of the Northern Continents: Structure and Mechanisms [link] 
North American extreme temperature events and related large scale meteorological patterns [link]
Evolutionary methodology produces more accurate long-term weather forecasts [link] 
Are opposite trends in Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice linked? [link]

Social science and policy
1.5°C has triple the carbon price & doubled the mitigation cost compared to 2°C, optimal cost-benefit gives 2.5°C http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000492/epdf …
Untapped potential of energy efficiency – op-ed by IEA Noé van Hulst, Ambassador of The Netherlands https://goo.gl/IFXEaY 
Climate-conflict link debunked [link]
Roger Pielke Jr’s Newsletter on Climate and Energy Issues:  Paris, Trump and the climate wars [link]
U.S. spy agencies wimp out on science of climate change, but still say it’s a security threat [link]
New book by Paul Hawken:  ‘Drawdown’, which ranks climate solutions for their efficacy [link]
How to make decisions when making decisions is really tough – strategies for individuals, companies, governments.  [link]
Cost of energy efficiency subsidy far higher than benefit, major new study by MIT-U-Chicago-UC-Berkeley finds. [link …
About science
Preface from Sophie Lewis’ excellent new book A Changing Climate for Science [link]
Daryl Bem proved ESP is real. Which means science is broken.[link]
Nature: Beware the anti-science label. Presenting science as battle for truth against ignorance is unhelpful exaggeration. [link]
Is the media now giving scientists lessons in research integrity? [link]
Yes, we must listen to experts, but which ones? [link]
 

“The treatment of divergent viewpoints is an inherent challenge for [scientific] assessments” [link …
How Science Can Help Us Disagree. A dose of humility helps [link]
Potemkin universities [link]
Nature: integrity starts with the help of research groups [link]
Science is immensely important, but it has a hubris problem [link]
What a modern day witch hunt looks like.  A bunch of academics are spreading false information about one of their own [link]
Ethics of claiming a faulty 97% consensus [link] …
Fibonacci and his magic numbers [link]

National Academies Releases Sweeping Review of Research Misconduct and ‘Detrimental’ Practices  [link]
A meaty article about the philosophy of information: Why Information Matters [link]

Filed under: Week in review

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