Week in review – science edition

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

Uncertainty quantification of the multi-centennial response of the Antarctic ice sheet to climate change  https://buff.ly/2IFU26o 
“India’s Depleting Groundwater: When Science Meets Policy” https://doi.org/10.1002/app5.269
Regime shift of global oceanic evaporation in the late 1990s [link]
2018 Florida Red Tide caused by ocean circulation, not climate change https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/24/another-climate-lie-bites-the-dust-2018-florida-red-tide-caused-by-ocean-circulation-not-climate-change/ …
Ito et al. (2019) “used a computational model of circulation and cycling of elements in the ocean to simulate [changes in seawater oxygen levels in the North Pacific] for the last approximately 70 years” and to understand their causes.  https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GB005987 …
A new 200‐year spatial reconstruction of West Antarctic surface mass balance https://buff.ly/2vhnczT 
Regime shifts of Mediterranean forest carbon uptake and reduced resilience driven by multidecadal ocean surface temperatures https://buff.ly/2vhuiUT 
Identifying strong signals between low‐frequency climate oscillations and annual precipitation using long‐window correlation analysis https://buff.ly/2Gro5uL 
Observation-based estimate of global and basin ocean meridional heat transport time series https://buff.ly/2XBMKny 
Constraining the aerosol influence on cloud liquid water path https://buff.ly/2vcW2tS 
A key factor initiating surface ablation of Arctic sea ice: earlier and increasing liquid precipitation (open access) https://buff.ly/2VNFt3i 
Effects of deforestation on the onset of the rainy season and the duration of dry spells in southern Amazonia https://buff.ly/2XBeLLL 
Non-uniform contribution of internal variability to recent Arctic sea ice loss https://buff.ly/2vigslu 
Impacts of exposure to ambient temperature on burden of disease: a systematic review of epidemiological evidence [link]
“wicked problems require a range of difficult perspectives, which should not only be included in the agenda setting of science but also in the assessment of scientific products.” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963662519840934
Evaluating climate model simulations of the radiative forcing and radiative response at the Earth’s surface https://buff.ly/2VhQgWK 
Water Vapor, Clouds, and Saturation in the Tropical Tropopause Layer – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD029849#.XL3hM8-bhFs.twitter
Risks of hydroclimatic regime shifts across the western United States [link]
Late Cretaceous extreme warmth at high southern latitudes [link]
An unexpected spike in methane emissions threatens to negate or reverse efforts to stave off climate change by reducing CO2 emissions. https://eos.org/research-spotlights/rising-methane-emissions-could-derail-the-paris-agreement
“We show that the changing coverage of weather stations in the Indian rainfall data leads to spurious increases in extreme rainfall. This suggests that previously reported trends of extreme rainfall are biased positive.” https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL079709
Annual variability of ice-nucleating particle concentrations at different Arctic locations (open access) https://buff.ly/2Pl2JU8 
Volume, heat and freshwater divergences in the subpolar North Atlantic suggest the Nordic Seas as key to the state of the meridional overturning circulation https://buff.ly/2V95xZG 
On the spectrum of variability in climate models [link]
Factors affecting interdecadal variability of air–sea CO2 fluxes in the tropical Pacific, revealed by an ocean physical–biogeochemical model [link]
Inter-annual variability of wind and solar electricity generation and capacity values in Texas (open access) https://buff.ly/2UGA6Xi 
A large uptick in dust activity in northern Mesopotamia roughly 4,200 years ago coincided with the decline of the Akkadian Empire. [link]
Variable external forcing obscures the weak relationship between the NAO and North Atlantic multi-decadal SST variability https://buff.ly/2KSwBZa 
“Most models largely underestimate photosynthetic carbon fixation and therefore likely overestimate future atmospheric CO2 abundance and ensuing climate change, though not proportionately”. [link]
Extreme precipitation is increasing, so why aren’t #floods? https://eos.org/research-spotlights/if-precipitation-extremes-are-increasing-why-arent-floods
Atlantic Zonal Mode: An emerging source of Indian summer monsoon variability in a warming world https://buff.ly/2UQaK9p 
Introducing ‘(un)safe (un)certainty’ as a framework for climate adaptation. Embracing uncertainty: A discursive approach to understanding pathways for climate adaptation in Senegal. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10113-019-01495-7 …
Responses of soil carbon sequestration to climate smart agriculture practices: A meta‐analysis https://buff.ly/2vf0eJR 
Formation of snow cover anomalies over the Tibetan Plateau in cold seasons https://buff.ly/2GiCiKz 
The Indian Ocean’s gravity has a huge dent in it, and seismologists are trying to figure out why.  https://eos.org/project-updates/seismologists-search-for-the-indian-oceans-missing-mass …

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Social Science, technology & policy
On the financial viability of negative emissions [link]
Material efficiency strategies to reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with buildings, vehicles, and electronics—a review (open access) https://buff.ly/2Gn9pwO 
A new study in Nature Climate Change finds an even stronger case for reducing CO2 emissions to stabilize climate change through a shift from coal to natural gas. Findings are robust under range of leakage rates and uncertainties in emissions data. [link]
New Study Confirms EVs Considerably Worse For Climate Than Diesel Cars https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-21/new-study-shocks-electric-cars-considerably-worse-climate-diesel-cars
Rand Corp: Deep decarbonization as a risk management challenge [link]
Unreliable Nature Of Solar And Wind Makes Electricity Much More Expensive [link]
U of Chicago:  Do renewable portfolio standards deliver? [link]
Pricing Carbon Isn’t Enough https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/pricing-carbon-isnt-enough/
About science and scientists
Being a black academic in America [link]
The Dearth of conservatives in academic philosophy [link]
Is it right to use intuition as evidence? [link]
A review of research on human errors in probabilistic reasoning and judgement biases https://www.nber.org/papers/w25200 
Drawing the line against campus radicals [link]
Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics? [link]
Recent study of academic flying (N = 705) finds “no relationship between air travel emissions and metrics of academic productivity” [link]ory
Peter Ridd (Australia) wins huge victory for academic free speech, against climate ‘science’  [link]
Smith and Mount Holyoke colleges put new joint chief of police on leave after he “likes” conservative tweets. [link]

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