by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on net photosynthesis and dark respiration rates [link]
Identifying key driving processes of major recent heat waves [link]
Reassessing Southern Ocean air-sea CO2 flux estimates [link]
How and why will planetary-scale waves in the atmosphere change in response to global warming? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40641-019-00147-6
Detected global agricultural greening from satellite [link]
New paper by Scafetta and Wilson addressing the discrepancies in total solar irradiance during 1980-2018. https://mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/21/2569
Gavin Schmidt on climate sensitivity: Sensitive but unclassified [link]
New paper evaluating UKESM1 climate model https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019MS001739?af=R… High ECS (5.4K) and poor fit to historic observations (see below). Does this mean its ECS is too high? are the runs of the future using this model going to be too warm?
Will plants help make the planet wetter or drier in a changing climate? | http://j.mp/36yx5dU
Marine ice cliff instability mitigated by slow removal of ice shelves [link]
Recent increases in drought frequency cause observed multi-year drought legacies in the tree rings of semi-arid forests [link]
Sensitivity of projected long-term CO2 emissions across the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways [link]
Not all carbon dioxide emission scenarios are equally likely: a subjective expert assessment [link]
The blue holes are revered among divers for their deep, clear waters. They are also important keepers of the scientific record. [link]
Ancient air challenges prominent explanation for a shift in glacial cycles https://nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03199-8
New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea level rise and coastal flooding [link] Rud Istvan’s takedown at WUWT [link]
Western Mediterranean SSTs were warmer than today when CO2 levels were 200-230 ppm (50-110K yrs ago, last glacial) and ~260 ppm (5K-10K yrs ago), when the Sahara had lakes, trees, humans. Abrupt climate shifts (°C/century) occurred without CO2 changes. https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818118301784
How climate change could shift California’s Santa Ana winds [link]
Oceans vented CO2 during the last deglaciation [link]
Variations in the Intensity and Spatial Extent of Tropical Cyclone Precipitation. Geophysical Research Letters. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2019GL083452…
Intense hurricane activity over the past 1500 years at South Andros Island, The Bahamas [link]
A 2-Million-Year-Old Ice Core from Antarctica Reveals Ancient Climate Clues https://e360.yale.edu/digest/a-2-million-year-old-ice-core-from-antarctica-reveals-ancient-climate-clues…
Reframing Antarctica’s meltwater pond dangers to ice shelves and sea level [link]
“Land plant evolution decreased, rather than increased, weathering rates” https://doi.org/10.1130/G46776.1…
Goodwin et al (2019): “Conventionally, definitions of climate feedback & climate sensitivity […] do not include carbon cycle feedbacks. [We provide] a new framework to incorporate carbon feedback into the definitions of climate feedback and sensitivity.” https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082887
Enhanced ENSO variability in recent decades [link]
“The Southern Ocean is getting greener because the amount of marine plants (#phytoplankton) has been increasing in the last 21 years. These changes appear to be happening faster during the winter.” https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL083163
Global warming displaces the East-Asian subtropical monsoon southward as enhanced equatorial warming causes Hadley contraction in June-July. [link]
Glacial rivers absorb carbon faster than rainforests [link]
How life blossomed after the dinosaurs died [link]
Uncertainty in the evolution of climate feedback traced to the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation [link]
A new 800-year reconstruction of W. Arctic Ocean sea ice coverage indicates sea ice has been “relatively stable” since 1800, the W. Arctic was ice free for 2-5 months per year during the 1500s-1700s vs. <1 month today, and temps were warmer in the 1930s. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019JD031023
Marine ice cliff instability mitigated by slow removal of ice shelves [link]
Recent #droughts in India have been less severe but more detrimental! Long-term (1870-2018) drought reconstruction in context of surface water security in India https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169419309631?dgcid=raven_sd_aip_email…
The role of atmospheric nuclear explosions on the stagnation of warming in the mid 20th century [link[
Policy, impacts & technologies
Be cautious with the precautionary principle [link]
A new study examines how people’s opinions on climate change affect real estate prices: denier vs believer neighborhoods [link]
Healthy wetlands could stave off rising seas [link]
Roger Pielke Jr: Everything you hear about billion dollar disasters is wrong [link]
Roger Pielke Jr: The impact of flooding depends more on societal change than on climate change [link]
Roger Pielke Jr: Democrat climate policies are ambitious but fail the reality test [link]
Roger Pielke Jr: The surprising good news on the economic cost of disasters [link]
Roger Pielke Jr: The word is not going to halve carbon emissions by 2030, so now what? [link]
Schellenberger: Why everything they say about California fires – including that climate matters most – is wrong [link]
Wildfires and wildland development [link]
Wildfires are causing California to become net CO2 emitters, owing to poor timber management [link]
This is a staggering turn of events in California: “Only about 163,000 acres have burned this year, a fraction of the 632,000 or so scorched in the same period last year.” Did the PCG blackout help? https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-18/after-years-of-fiery-hell-california-gets-less-of-a-scorching?srnd=climate-changed
The radical reforms necessary to prepare California’s power system for the 21st century [link]
The smoldering state [link]
Read to the end to catch Adam Sobel’s and Park Williams’ explanations of causes of the CA fires. https://nytimes.com/2019/10/28/us/california-fires-getty-kincade-tick-sonoma-county.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share…
Parts of California are too wildfire prone to insure [link]
Our nitrogen footprint: We’ve changed a life-giving nutrient into a deadly pollutant. How can we change it back? https://ensia.com/features/nitrogen-footprint/…
A carbon-neutral land sector by 2040? Here’s how to get there [link]
Tibet’s rivers will determine Asia’s future [link]
India’s CO2 emissions are poised to slow sharply in 2019 [link]
Geopolitical gains and losses after the energy transition [link]
Valuing the Flood Risk Reduction Benefits of Florida’s Mangroves [link]
Since the 1950s, Florida authorities have spent $1.3 billion periodically bringing in sand. Despite a huge effort, nearly half the state’s 825 miles of beaches are now considered “critically eroded”. [link]
Robert Stavins: 50 years of policy evolution under the Clean Air Act [link]
The Department of Energy’s ‘super grid’ proposal for renewables[link]
“Energy and the military: Convergence of security, economic, and environmental decision-making.” [link]
A lawsuit was filed at the Court of Justice seeking to stop the European Union from counting wood as a renewable energy source. [link]
Promoting innovation for low carbon technologies [link]
The secret plan for decarbonization: how demand flexibility can save our grid [link]
Energy Futures Initiative new report on carbon renewal technologies [link]
Understanding the water-energy-food nexus in a warming climate http://j.mp/2PukUIT
Mike Hulme: Is it too late to stop dangerous climate change? [link]
Energy efficiency can cut US energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 [link]
1.5 million packages a day: the internet brings chaos to New York City streets [link]
Complex system models are hard to understand fully because: 1) they have many component parts, many local variables & many system states https://i2insights.org/2017/03/07/complexity-and-agent-based-modelling/…
About science & scientists
Looking in the right places to identify ‘unknown unknowns’ [link]
An entertaining spat among the climate alarmists: Michael Mann actually has the more defensible position on this one [link]
Dagfinn Reiersol: Assessing the worst case scenario [link]
Research – who needs it? [link]
High suicide rates: elite colleges reconsidered [link]
NASA’s next 50 years [link]
Academics have internalised the culture of censorship on campus. [link]
Ross Gelbspan’s takedown of Naomi Oreskes [link]
Long read but worth it: We must confront climate change with reason rather than emotion. [link]
“Bayesian Estimation with Informative Priors is Indistinguishable from Data Falsification.” With uninformative priors, Bayesian estimation produces essentially the same results as null hypothesis significance tests. New paper. http://ow.ly/J4PT50wYxP3
Experiments in nurturing classroom curiosity [link]
Academic travel culture is not only bad for the planet, it is also bad for the diversity and equity of research. [link]
The truth is not in the middle: Journalistic norms of climate change bloggers [link]
Peter Gluckman: Science in a global perspective – challenges ahead [link]
Shellenberger: Channelling the Malthusian Roots of Climate Extremism [link]
Math is racist according to Seattle Public Schools [link]
I argue here that greater emphasis needs to be placed on the relationship between the psychological biases of scientists, the validity of scientific research, and the advancement of scientific progress.” [link]