by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
UN Report: 3-5C of Arctic warming is now locked in [link]
Factcheck: is 3-5C of Arctic warming now locked in? [link]
The oceanic sink for anthropogenic CO2 from 1994 to 2007 [link]
New report by Svensmark: The sun’s role in climate change [link]
Relative sea-level rise and the influence of vertical land motion at Tropical Pacific Islands https://buff.ly/2CqUNeF
How RCP8.5, a valuable worst-case scenario, has been misrepresented to incite fear in the American public. https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/03/15/rcp85-climate-science-corruption/
Predictable and Unpredictable Aspects of US West Coast Rainfall and El Niño: Understanding the 2015-2016 Event https://buff.ly/2tYvUSU
Deep diving robots find warming accelerating in South Pacific Ocean waters [link]
A submarine wall protecting the Amundsen Sea intensifies melting of neighboring ice shelves https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2019-32
Evolution of ocean heat content related to ENSO https://buff.ly/2F1F3PU
Deciphering patterns and drivers of heat and carbon storage in the Southern Ocean https://buff.ly/2J79Vnj
Lenny Smith and Erica Thompson: Escape from model land [link]
Youtube of Nic Lewis lecture on climate sensitivity [link]
Widespread global peatland establishment and persistence over the last 130,000 yrs [link]
Nonlinear impacts of future anthropogenic aerosol emissions on Arctic warming [link]
Attributing the 2017 floods in Bangladesh to climate change gave unexpected results: no trend in extreme rainfall up to now, but a trend towards more extremes is projected as the aerosol cooling is reduced. Hydrological models show the same for discharge. https://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/23/1409/2019/
Does air pollution really kill nearly 800,000 people in Europe and 9 million worldwide each year? https://www.newscientist.com/article/2196238-does-air-pollution-really-kill-nearly-9-million-people-each-year/
An ambitious roadmap for developing next-generation extreme-scale computing systems for weather and climate simulations: http://bit.ly/2Chfvhb
A historical Southern Ocean climate dataset from whaling ships’ logbooks https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gdj3.65
Estimating Climate Feedbacks Using a Neural Network https://buff.ly/2JacKE3
Recent strengthening of Greenland blocking drives summertime surface warming over northern Canada and eastern Siberia https://buff.ly/2VRTtsq
Impacts of the North Atlantic subtropical high on interannual variation of summertime heat stress over the conterminous United States [link]
Social science, technology & policy
MIT has demonstrated that nuclear is required in any energy mix that attempts to achieve an optimal zero-carbon outcome. The stricter the CO2 target, the more nuclear is required. If no nuclear is employed at all, costs increase two- to fourfold. [link]
Scientific leaders have no monopoly on expertise, nor do they have a privileged ethical standpoint, for evaluating the social consequences of science and of science policies [link]
The right way to deal with extreme weather. In setting out a plan to make Manhattan better prepared for extreme weather, Mayor Bill de Blasio is delivering a sorely needed message on climate change. [link]
As costs skyrocket, more U.S. cities stop recycling [link]
Stemming the tide of trash: 5 essential reads on recycling [link]
Weather has a major effect on the productivity of wind turbines. Both the Polar Vortex and El Niño have reduced the output of wind turbines in the Midwest. [link]
One big challenge to the Green New Deal – rapid decarbonization will require closing down working equipment [link]
The mounting solar panel waste problem [link]
Large-scale carbon dioxide removal, negative emissions, may be unfeasible, but is reducing global emissions to zero by 2030 any more feasible? “We need to explore all options, then society can decide if one or another is more attractive than another” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/climate-change-model-warns-of-difficult-future/
How CA can adapt to fire risk. In short, there shouldn’t be a grid in the severe fire zone. People who live there can generate their own renewable power and use batteries to store it. https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/only-who-should-prevent-forest-fires/
We need radical thinking on climate change [link]
The largest county in the country by land area (San Bernardino County, California) has banned big renewable-energy projects. [link]
About science & scientists
The environment is too important to leave to environmentalists [link]
Rebels without a clue [link]
Sarah Lawrence: A Professor Spoke the Truth, He Still Pays the Price [link]
Sarah Lawrence Students Demand Tenure Review Of Conservative Professor, No-Whites Scholarships, And Free Detergent https://jonathanturley.org/2019/03/16/sarah-lawrence-students-demand-tenure-review-of-conservative-professor-no-whites-scholarships-and-free-detergent/
Teaching to Transgress: Rage and Entitlement at Evergreen College [link]
Motivated or manipulated? Rise of youth climate activism fuels alarm over exploitation [link]
Do beliefs yield to evidence? Examining belief perseverance vs change in response to congruent empirical findings [link]
Twilight of the humanities [link]
Interview with David Spiegelhalter: Accessible, comprehensible, usable – are your facts trustworthy? [link]
Down the rabbit hole of political intolerance in Silicon Valley [link]
It’s time to teach young people how to stop being so offended [link]