Week in review – science edition

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

On the climate sensitivity and historical warming evolurion in recent coupled model ensembles [link]
Greenland’s largest glacier (Jakobshavn) has rapidly thickened since 2016. Thickening has been so profound the ice elevations are nearly back to 2010-2011 levels. The nearby ocean has cooled ~1.5°C – a return to 1980s temperatures.  https://the-cryosphere.net/14/211/2020/tc-14-211-2020.pdf
Could the Atlantic overturning circulation shut down? [link]
Could climate change and deforestation spark Amazon ‘dieback’? [link]
Update: Are CMIP6 models running too hot? [link]
An ice sheet’s footprint on ancient shorelines [link]
Are ocean currents speeding up or slowing down? [link]
Cold water on hot models [link]
Southern California climate change over 100,000 years [link]
Energy budget constraints on historical radiative forcing [link]
Jim Hansen:  climate models versus the real world [link]
CO2 fertilisation effect on plant growth bigger than in previous studies: improved attribution of current terrestrial carbon sink. [link]….
The deglaciation of the Americas during the last glacial termination [link]
Impact of sea ice floe size distribution on seasonal fragmentation and melt of Arctic sea ice https://the-cryosphere.net/14/403/2020/
Competing Topographic Mechanisms for the Summer Indo‐Asian Monsoon [link]
Carbon release through abrupt permafrost thaw [link]
A new (2020) 5680-year tree-ring temperature reconstruction for southern South America – the longest ever for the Southern Hemisphere – shows the warmest era of the last millennium was the 1700s-1800s. The region has had no net warming from 1979-2009. https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379119306924
Sea level pressure has, historically, worked as a better predictor of continental US #hurricane damage than maximum sustained wind: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0062.1
The contrasting response of outlet glaciers to interior and ocean forcing [link]
New research article: Interannual variability of summer surface mass balance and surface melting in the Amundsen sector, West Antarctica https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-229-2020
Policy & technologies
Welcome to the era of supercharged lithium-ion batteries [link]
We need to get serious about ‘critical materials’ [link]
The green swan [link]
Cutting ozone-generating gas emissions from the largest human-made sources, including road transportation and energy production, could improve conditions for plants, allowing them to grow faster and capture more carbon, [link]
A climate catastrophe in Scotland 300 years ago contributed to widespread famine, an (unsuccessful) attempt to colonize Panama, and unification with England. [link]
For most things, recycling harms the environment [link]
Pielke Jr.: Why You Can’t Trust The Insurance Industry’s Secret Science On Climate Catastrophes [link]
“Weather, Climate, and Catastrophe Insight: 2019 Annual Report” http://aon.com/catastropheinsights…
How much is a climate solution ‘worth’? [link]
About science & scientists
Model explanation versus model-induced explanation [link]
How the clouds got their names and how Goethe popularized them with his poems [link]
Climate scientists are not priests or prophets [link]
Pielke Jr:  Blacklist – the pernicious shenanigans of SkS [link] How academic blacklists impede climate research
The jerks of academe [link]
What happens when badly needed science is ignored? People get hurt. Undone Science: When Research Fails Polluted Communities https://undark.org/2020/02/03/undone-science-pollution-avalon-shenango/

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