New paper finds global & Australian sea levels rising less than 8 inches per century

A new paper published in Earth-Science Reviews finds sea level trends in Australia agree closely with global average sea level rise from tide gauge data of 2 mm/yr [7.9 inches per century] during the period 1966 to 2009. The authors find 69% of the variance in sea level trends related to the natural El Nino Southern Oscillation [ENSO].

According to the authors,

"A generalized additive model of Australia’s two longest records (Fremantle and Sydney) reveals the presence of both linear and non-linear long-term sea-level trends, with both records showing larger rates of rise between 1920 and 1950, relatively stable mean sea levels between 1960 and 1990 and an increased rate of rise from the early 1990s."

Australia's two longest sea level records: Rate of sea level rise in Freemantle is slightly higher than peak in 1920's and slightly lower in Sydney than peak in ~1950

Australian Sea Levels – Trends, Regional Variability and Influencing Factors

• Neil J. White^a, , 
• Ivan D. Haigh^b, c, , 
• John A. Church^a, , 
• Terry Koen^d, , 
• Christopher S. Watson^e, , 
• Tim R. Pritchard^d, , 
• Phil J. Watson^d, , 
• Reed J. Burgette^e, f, , 
• Kathleen L. McInnes^a, , 
• Zai-Jin You^g, , 
• Xuebin Zhang^a, , 
• Paul Tregoning
• 
  

There has been significant progress in describing and understanding global-mean sea-level rise, but the regional departures from this global-mean rise are more poorly described and understood. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of Australian sea-level data from the 1880s to the present, including an assessment of satellite-altimeter data since 1993. Sea levels around the Australian coast are well sampled from 1966 to the present. The first Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) of data from 16 sites around the coast explains 69% of the variance, and is closely related to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), with the strongest influence on the northern and western coasts. Removing the variability in this EOF correlated with the Southern Oscillation Index reduces the differences in the trends between locations. After the influence of ENSO is removed and allowing for the impact of Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) and atmospheric pressure effects, Australian mean sea-level trends are close to global-mean trends from 1966 to 2010, including an increase in the rate of rise in the early 1990s. Since 1993, there is good agreement between trends calculated from tide-gauge records and altimetry data, with some notable exceptions, some of which are related to localised vertical-land motions. For the periods 1966 to 2009 and 1993 to 2009, the average trends of relative sea level around the coastline are 1.4 ± 0.3 mm yr^- 1 and 4.5 ± 1.3 mm yr^- 1, which become 1.6 ± 0.2 mm yr^- 1 and 2.7 ± 0.6 mm yr^- 1 after removal of the signal correlated with ENSO. After further correcting for GIA and changes in atmospheric pressure, the corresponding trends are 2.1 ± 0.2 mm yr^- 1 and 3.1 ± 0.6 mm yr^- 1, comparable with the global-average rise over the same periods of 2.0 ± 0.3 mm yr^- 1 (from tide gauges) and 3.4 ± 0.4 mm yr^- 1 (from satellite altimeters). Given that past changes in Australian sea level are similar to global-mean changes over the last 45 years, it is likely that future changes over the 21st century will be consistent with global changes. A generalized additive model of Australia’s two longest records (Fremantle and Sydney) reveals the presence of both linear and non-linear long-term sea-level trends, with both records showing larger rates of rise between 1920 and 1950, relatively stable mean sea levels between 1960 and 1990 and an increased rate of rise from the early 1990s.

Geologist argues climate 'tipping point' fears are overblown

How Will Climate Change Affect the Sahara?

A geologist's findings in Africa challenge the way scientists think about the threat of desertification

By GAUTAM NAIK
May 30, 2014 6:42 p.m. ET    THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Stefan Kropelin, a 62-year-old geologist at the University of Cologne, is one of the world's preeminent explorers of the Sahara desert. He's created a storm by challenging the extent to which man-made global warming is having on the region. See video

At the end of the last ice age, about 11,000 years ago, northern Africa became a grassland, home to fish, elephants and thousands of people. Then, 5,000 years ago, scientists say, it abruptly turned into an enormous wasteland—the vast desert that we now call the Sahara.

The shift from savanna to sand was the result of natural climate change, triggered by a cyclical alteration in the sun's orbit. The decline in rainfall pushed residents south and east and perhaps contributed to the rise of the Egyptian civilization. Today, scientists say, the region is again feeling the heat, this time from man-made climate change.

USING SAMPLES from Chad's Lake Yoa, above, Dr. Kröpelin can see the origins of the Sahara

Climate models for north Africa often come to contradictory conclusions. Nonetheless, mainstream science holds that global warming will typically make wet places wetter and dry places drier -and at a rapid clip [recently falsified]. That is because increased greenhouse gases trigger feedback mechanisms that push the climate system beyond various "tipping points." In north Africa, this view suggests an expanding Sahara, the potential displacement of millions of people on the great desert's borders and increased conflict over scarce resources.

One scientist, however, is challenging this dire view, with evidence chiefly drawn from the Sahara's prehistoric past. Stefan Kröpelin, a geologist at the University of Cologne, has collected samples of ancient pollen and other material that suggest that the earlier episode of natural climate change, which created the Sahara, happened gradually over millennia—not over a mere century or two, as the prevailing view holds. That is why, he says, the various "tipping point" scenarios for the future of the Sahara are overblown.

The 62-year-old Dr. Kröpelin, one of the pre-eminent explorers of the Sahara, has traveled into its forbidding interior for more than four decades. Along the way he has endured weeklong dust storms, a car chase by armed troops and a parasitic disease, bilharzia, that nearly killed him.

Six of those expeditions were to Lake Yoa in Chad, hundreds of miles from civilization. It is a singular desert lake not only because it is deep and therefore undisturbed but also because it has been around for millennia, despite the intense evaporation in the region.

Over that time, pollen from Saharan flora has landed on its surface, sunk to the bottom and become part of the sediment. In 2010, when Dr. Kröpelin pulled up a sedimentary core from 50 feet below the lake bottom, he had a largely pristine record of the Saharan climate going back 11,000 years. It took nearly a year of preparation and field work to obtain the core and then transport it back to Cologne.

Now 27 of those cores, each encased in a 3-foot-long Plexiglas tube, sit in a freezer at his lab. Each millimeter of sediment corresponds roughly to a year's climate record.

For the past four years, Dr. Kröpelin and his team of some 20 researchers have been using a spectrometer, an electron microscope and lasers to analyze the cores and build a climatic history of the Sahara. "It is geological treasure," he says.

Many scientists contend that about 5,000 years ago, as rainfall declined due to natural cycles, the verdant grasslands of north Africa abruptly changed to lifeless sand in a mere century or two. This was the conclusion of a 2000 study by Peter B. deMenocal of Columbia University and others, which analyzed ocean cores drilled off the northwest African coast. They found that a large amount of dust had blown off the continent over that time, suggesting a rapid shift to desert.

A 2013 study found evidence of a similar abrupt shift in northeast Africa. Another published analysis of core samples from northwest Africa echoed the general view. "It suggests some kind of tipping point" in the Sahara, brought on by gradual climate change, says David McGee, a paleoclimatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-wrote the study on northwest African sediments.

But Dr. Kröpelin's analysis of the Lake Yoa samples suggests that there was no tipping point and that the change was gradual. He says that his argument is also supported by archaeological evidence. Digs in the Sahara, conducted by various archaeologists over the years, indicate that the people of the region migrated south over millennia, not just in a few desperate decades. "Humans are very sensitive climate indicators because we can't live without water," he says. If the Sahara had turned to desert quickly, the human migration pattern "would have been completely different."

The dispute is unresolved for now, but Dr. Kröpelin's expertise on the Sahara means that even detractors are paying attention. Says Dr. deMenocal of Columbia University: "Stefan's is not a majority view, but if I could go back in a time machine, it may be that what he sees [in the geological record] is really what happened."

New paper finds the 17th century had more extreme weather than the 20th century

A new paper published in Climate Dynamics reconstructs Fennoscandian floods and droughts over the past 1,000 years and finds the 17th century [during the Little Ice Age] was the most extreme "period of frequent severe and widespread hydroclimatic anomalies" over the past millennium.

However, droughts, floods, and extreme weather in the 20th century were not found to be unusual or extreme in comparison to the past 1,000 years. 

"The twentieth century is not anomalous in terms of the number of severe and spatially extensive hydro climatic extremes in the context of the last millennium."

The paper adds to hundreds of other peer-reviewed publications finding there is nothing unusual, unprecedented or unnatural with respect to extreme weather, droughts, and floods during the past century in comparison to the past millennium. In addition to this paper, many other studies find that droughts and floods were more extreme during cold periods such as the Little Ice Age in comparison to warm periods.

A tree-ring field reconstruction of Fennoscandian summer hydroclimate variability for the last millennium

Kristina Seftigen, Jesper Björklund, Edward R. Cook, Hans W. Linderholm

Hydroclimatological extremes, such as droughts and floods, are expected to increase in frequency and intensity with global climate change. An improved knowledge of its natural variability and the underlying physical mechanisms for changes in the hydrological cycle will help understand the response of extreme hydroclimatic events to climate warming. This study presents the first gridded hydroclimatic reconstruction (0.5° × 0.5° grid resolution), as expressed by the warm season Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), for most of Fennoscandia. A point-by-point regression approach is used to develop the reconstruction from a network of moisture sensitive tree-ring chronologies spanning over the past millennium. The reconstruction gives a unique opportunity to examine the frequency, severity, persistence, and spatial characteristics of Fennoscandian hydroclimatic variability in the context of the last 1,000 years. The full SPEI reconstruction highlights the seventeenth century as a period of frequent severe and widespread hydroclimatic anomalies. Although some severe extremes have occurred locally throughout the domain over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the period is surprisingly free from any spatially extensive anomalies. The twentieth century is not anomalous in terms of the number of severe and spatially extensive hydro climatic extremes in the context of the last millennium. Principle component analysis reveals that there are two dominant modes of spatial moisture variability across Fennoscandia. The same patterns are evident in the observational record and in the reconstructed dataset over the instrumental era and two paleoperiods. The 500 mb pressure patterns associated with the two modes suggests the importance of the summer North Atlantic Oscillation.

New paper finds Atlantic Ocean warming since 1975 was natural, not due to greenhouse gases

A paper published today in Climate Dynamics finds that warming of the surface of tropical Atlantic Ocean since 1975 was not due to an increase of greenhouse gases, and was instead due to natural ocean and atmospheric oscillations. 

According to the authors, 

"After a decrease of SST by about 1 °C during 1964–1975, most apparent in the northern tropical region, the entire tropical basin warmed up. That warming was the most substantial (>1 °C) in the eastern tropical ocean and in the longitudinal band of the intertropical convergence zone."  

"Examining data sets of surface heat flux during the last few decades for the same region, we find that the SST [sea surface temperature] warming was not a consequence of atmospheric heat flux forcing.  

In other words, sea surface temperatures did not rise as a consequence of increased "radiative forcing" from greenhouse gases.  

"Conversely, we suggest that long-term SST warming drives changes in atmosphere parameters at the sea surface, most notably an increase in latent heat flux, and that an acceleration of the hydrological cycle induces a strengthening of the trade winds and an acceleration of the Hadley circulation. These trends are also accompanied by rising sea levels and upper ocean heat content over similar multi-decadal time scales in the tropical Atlantic."

"...it is likely that changes in ocean circulation involving some combination of the [natural] Atlantic meridional overtuning circulation [AMOC] and the subtropical cells are required to explain the observations."

Indeed, increases in greenhouse gases cannot significantly heat the oceans.  

Recent climatic trends in the tropical Atlantic

Jacques Servain, Guy Caniaux, Yves K. Kouadio, Michael J. McPhaden, Moacyr Araujo

A homogeneous monthly data set of sea surface temperature (SST) and pseudo wind stress based on in situ observations is used to investigate the climatic trends over the tropical Atlantic during the last five decades (1964–2012). After a decrease of SST by about 1 °C during 1964–1975, most apparent in the northern tropical region, the entire tropical basin warmed up. That warming was the most substantial (>1 °C) in the eastern tropical ocean and in the longitudinal band of the intertropical convergence zone. Surprisingly, the trade wind system also strengthened over the period 1964–2012. Complementary information extracted from other observational data sources confirms the simultaneity of SST warming and the strengthening of the surface winds. Examining data sets of surface heat flux during the last few decades for the same region, we find that the SST [sea surface temperature] warming was not a consequence of atmospheric heat flux forcing. Conversely, we suggest that long-term SST warming drives changes in atmosphere parameters at the sea surface, most notably an increase in latent heat flux, and that an acceleration of the hydrological cycle induces a strengthening of the trade winds and an acceleration of the Hadley circulation. These trends are also accompanied by rising sea levels and upper ocean heat content over similar multi-decadal time scales in the tropical Atlantic. Though more work is needed to fully understand these long term trends, especially what happens from the mid-1970’s, it is likely that changes in ocean circulation involving some combination of the [natural] Atlantic meridional overtuning circulation [AMOC] and the subtropical cells are required to explain the observations.

Review finds warming is beneficial to ocean productivity

A new SPPI and CO2 Science review of the scientific literature on the response of ocean productivity to warming concludes, "In light of the many real-world observations cited above, not only does there appear to be no indications of any widespread decline in oceanic productivity over the twentieth century in response to increases in air temperature, evidence indicates that just the opposite is occurring, thanks to the very same environmental change, which is actually proving to be beneficial."

For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here.

[Illustrations, footnotes and references available in PDF version]

Excerpts:

According to the IPCC, CO2-induced global warming will be net harmful to the world's marine species. One consequence of such harm, is a projected decline in ocean productivity. And in light of what the IPCC frequently refers to as the unprecedented modern rise in global temperature, it might reasonably be expected there should already be signs of a major negative impact on oceanic productivity. Yet the studies highlighted in this summary yield little evidence in support of the IPCC point of view.

It would appear that by enhancing the upwelling of cooler nutrient-rich waters along the eastern margins of major ocean basins, global warming helps to significantly enhance global-ocean primary productivity, which leads in turn to an increase in global-ocean secondary productivity, as represented by the global fish catch. 

WSJ: EPA's Approach on Carbon Limits to Spark Lawsuits

EPA's Approach on Carbon Limits to Spark Lawsuits

Agency to Rely on Little-Used Provision to Cut Power Plants' Greenhouse Gases
By BRENT KENDALL and ALICIA MUNDY
May 29, 2014 7:41 p.m. ET   

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The expected legal battle over the Obama administration's coming limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants could provide a rarity for environmental litigation: a case for which there is scant court precedent.

The Environmental Protection Agency is turning to a little-used provision of the Clean Air Act for its new rules, because carbon dioxide isn't regulated under major Clean Air Act programs that address air pollutants. The EPA says it has only used the section, called 111(d), to regulate five sources of pollutants since the provision was enacted in 1970—and none on the scale of CO2, a major greenhouse gas.

Because the provision has been invoked so rarely, courts have had little opportunity to weigh in on it, creating the unusual circumstance in which potential challengers to the carbon rules would be litigating largely on a blank slate against the EPA. The Clean Air Act provision gives the agency authority to regulate pollutants emitted by facilities already in operation, but the expected lawsuits from states and industry could test how far a president can go in using the long-standing air-pollution law to try to address climate change.

The coming EPA regulation "is in many ways unprecedented, so it will attract a challenge to its core," said Jody Freeman, a Harvard University law professor and former adviser to President Barack Obama on energy and climate issues.

The administration's approach is expected to generate stiff legal pushback from industry groups and states such as West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Alaska and Texas, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.

Potential challengers face hurdles in court. Under long-standing legal principles, courts give deference to administrative agencies like the EPA as long as they don't regulate in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

The looming fights also come amid a legal winning streak for the EPA, in which courts have upheld an array of agency actions in recent years. The Supreme Court last month revived agency regulations that curbed power-plant emissions blowing across state lines, reversing a lower-court ruling that went against the agency. And a key appeals court has ruled for the EPA on several occasions in recent months, in cases brought both by industry groups and by environmentalists. Among the decisions, it upheld EPA regulations of mercury emissions from power plants.

The same appeals court previously upheld the EPA's 2009 conclusion that CO2 and other greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health, and it upheld subsequent rules on automobile emissions. A ruling from the Supreme Court is expected next month on one issue related to the EPA's imposition of greenhouse-gas permitting requirements for some facilities.

The CO2 rules expected to be announced Monday will set emissions benchmarks and give the states flexibility in meeting them—a partnership mandated by the Clean Air Act. The administration plans to allow states to use cap-and-trade systems, renewable energy and other measures to meet aggressive goals for reducing power plants' carbon emissions.

An EPA spokesman declined to comment on the legal underpinnings of the coming regulations, but an informational video posted on the agency's website has top officials saying Congress wrote Section 111(d) broadly, with the intention of giving the EPA leeway to address air-pollution problems not covered by other Clean Air Act programs.

The section "gives us room to be creative, innovative and flexible as we think about how to design a cost-effective program to reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants," said Janet McCabe, an acting EPA assistant administrator, in the video.

Legal objections from industry are likely to center on the EPA's expected interpretation that it can set pollution standards across fleets of power plants, instead of directing individual plants to meet the standard by installing pollution technology or taking other steps at each facility to cut emissions, said Jeff Holmstead, an attorney who represents coal-industry interests at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP.

Mr. Holmstead, a former EPA assistant administrator under President George W. Bush, said that because there is so little precedent, the EPA is going to be "as creative as possible," but he noted that it "creates more openings" for industry and states to challenge the agency in court.

Washington environmental lawyer Sean Donahue said the lack of court precedent could cut in the EPA's favor: "There's more room to make legal arguments because the courts haven't specified what the statute means and doesn't mean, but it also leaves more room for the agency's judgment."

While the specific bounds of the EPA's authority to regulate power plants' carbon emissions haven't been tested in court, a 2011 Supreme Court opinion said the agency had the power to take action to curb emissions. That came in a pro-industry ruling barring a group of states from proceeding with a public-nuisance lawsuit seeking abatement of power-plant emissions.

Next week's EPA rules come as the agency is separately proposing greenhouse-gas regulations for future power plants that are more stringent. Those rules are also likely to be challenged in court, and that litigation could affect the agency's regulations for existing plants.

The court challenges could for last years, potentially beyond Mr. Obama's second term.

Study finds 29% of world population is overweight or obese, 2/3rds live in developing countries

Paging Paul Ehrlich:

Study Finds Nearly 29% of World Population Is Overweight or Obese

Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity Jumped 27.5% for Adults, 47.1% for Kids From 1980 to 2013

By BETSY MCKAY
May 29, 2014 8:11 a.m. ET   THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sara Murray and Maria Ng discuss the global prevalence of obesity, and Kirk Danos looks at an job-recruiting algorithm to help boost diversity in the workplace

The obesity epidemic is global: 2.1 billion people, or about 29% of the world's population, were either overweight or obese in 2013, and nearly two out of three of the obese live in developing countries, according to a study released Thursday.

The prevalence of overweight and obese people rose by 27.5% for adults and 47.1% for children between 1980 and 2013, according to the study, led by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and published Thursday in the journal the Lancet. In 1980, 857 million people were overweight or obese.

Read More: Chinese Kids Are Now Almost as Fat as American Ones

The increases in overweight and obese people "have been substantial, widespread, and have arisen over a short time," said the study, which analyzed data that included the heights and weights of people in 183 countries. Today, it said, 36.9% of the world's men and 38% of women are overweight or obese.

No nation reported a significant decrease in obesity during that period, said Christopher Murray, director of IHME. "The fact that no country has had a statistically significant reduction in the time period was a surprise," he said, showing that policies to address the epidemic haven't had an effect yet.

The study didn't examine reasons for the sharp rise, though it cited a well-known litany of possible factors: diet, physical inactivity, and one that hasn't gotten as much attention—changes in the gut microbiome that affect metabolism.

Obesity is generally thought of as a disease of prosperity. Indeed, the U.S. had the heftiest population in 2013, with 13% of the world's obese, according to the IHME study. And obesity rates are highest in the developed world.

But while North America and Europe stood out as the world's heavyweights in 1980, increases in the prevalence of adult obesity there have slowed since 2006, and now "you see the share in the rest of the world going up very dramatically," Dr. Murray said.

He cited South Africa as an extreme case: 42% of women are obese, meaning that a country battling malnutrition and a substantial burden of HIV/AIDS also grapples with chronic conditions linked to excess weight.

More than 50% of the world's 671 million obese people live in 10 countries, the study said, ranking them in order: the U.S., China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan and Indonesia.

In Tonga, 52.4% of men are obese. More than 50% of women are obese in Tonga, Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, and other countries.

In 2013, 23.8% of boys and 22.6% of girls were overweight or obese in developed countries. In developing countries, 12.9% of boys and 13.4% of girls were overweight or obese. Middle Eastern and North African countries had particularly high rates of childhood obesity, the authors said.

The authors said a goal set by the World Health Organization to halt the rise in obesity by 2025 is "very ambitious and unlikely to be attained without concerted action and further research."

"I think of obesity as uniquely concerning because it's one of the top health risks, and among the top risks it's the only one going up," said Dr. Murray. Other significant risks include smoking, alcohol consumption and high blood pressure, he noted.

The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is the most comprehensive to date on global obesity trends,examining obesity data country by country over time, he said.

Twenty-three climate models can't all be wrong...or can they?

A new paper published in Climate Dynamics examines 23 different climate models to determine if any were able to hind-cast temperature, sea level pressure, and precipitation of the 19th and 20th centuries, finding 

"not only do the models not agree well with each other, they do not agree with reality" 

"the models are not capable to simulate the spatial structure of the temperature, sea level pressure, and precipitation field in a reliable and consistent way" 

"no model or models emerge as superior"

Nevertheless, climate scientists claim the entire global economy must be restructured on the basis of the overheated projections from models that are unable to reproduce the known history of climate over the past 2 centuries. 

Twenty-three climate models can't all be wrong...or can they?

Source: NIPCC Report, CO2 Science 5/27/14

Reference: Steinhaeuser, K. and Tsonis, A.A. 2014. A climate model intercomparison at the dynamics level. Climate Dynamics 42: 1665-1670.

According to Steinhaeuser and Tsonis, today "there are more than two dozen different climate models which are used to make climate simulations and future climate projections." But although it has been said that "there is strength in numbers," most rational people would still like to know how well this specific set of models does at simulating what has already occurred in the way of historical climate change, before they would be ready to accept what the models predict about Earth's future climate. The two researchers thus proceed to do just that. Specifically, they examined 28 pre-industrial control runs, as well as 70 20th-century forced runs, derived from 23 different climate models, by analyzing how well the models did in hind-casting "networks for the 500 hPa, surface air temperature (SAT), sea level pressure (SLP), and precipitation for each run."

In the words of Steinhaeuser and Tsonis, the results indicate (1) "the models are in significant disagreement when it comes to their SLP, SAT, and precipitation community structure," (2) "none of the models comes close to the community structure of the actual observations," (3) "not only do the models not agree well with each other, they do not agree with reality," (4) "the models are not capable to simulate the spatial structure of the temperature, sea level pressure, and precipitation field in a reliable and consistent way," and (5) "no model or models emerge as superior."

In light of their several sad findings, the team of two suggests "maybe the time has come to correct this modeling Babel and to seek a consensus climate model by developing methods which will combine ingredients from several models or a supermodel made up of a network of different models." But with all of the models they tested proving to be incapable of replicating any of the tested aspects of past reality, even this approach would not appear to have any promise of success.

New paper finds climate models violate the 'basic physics' of the 2nd law of thermodynamics

A paper published today in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society finds climate models violate the 'basic physics' of the Second Law of Thermodynamics with respect to simulating conventional turbulent heat flow, one of the most important mechanisms of heat transfer in the atmosphere. 

According to the authors, 

"Numerical models of the atmosphere should fulfill fundamental physical laws. The Second Law of thermodynamics is associated with positive local entropy production and dissipation of available energy."

i.e. entropy always increases and energy always dissipates per the second law of thermodynamics.

"Inspecting commonly used parameterizations for subgrid-fluxes, we find that some of them obey the Second Law of thermodynamics, and some do not... Conventional turbulent heat flux parameterizations do not conform with the Second Law. A new water vapor flux formulation is derived from the requirement of locally positive entropy production. The conventional and the new water vapor fluxes are compared using high-resolution radiosonde data. Conventional water vapor fluxes are wrong by up to 10% and exhibit a negative bias." 

"...Both test cases indicate that negative thermal dissipation can occur for the conventional heat flux. Obviously, the additional energy made available by this negative dissipation to the resolved turbulence is later on dissipated by friction, so that the total dissipation is again comparable [for the wrong physical reasons], at least for the boundary layer experiment."

In other words, the computer models falsely claim that entropy can decrease, heat can "negatively dissipate" [i.e. concentrate itself], and that "additional energy [a violation of the 1st law of thermodynamics] is made available by this "negative dissipation" [a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics]." Thus, the climate models violate the basic physics of both the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics.

The finding is quite ironic given the climate alarmist meme that computer-modeled global warming is just "elementary basic physics" and "settled science" upon which all scientists agree. However, it is doubtful that many scientists know that the black-box climate models aren't even programmed to obey the most fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

UPDATE: Dr. Roy Spencer explains why IPCC climate models violate the basic physics of conservation of energy (1st Law of Thermodynamics).


How is local material entropy production represented in a numerical model?

Almut Gassmann and Hans-Joachim Herzog

Numerical models of the atmosphere should fulfill fundamental physical laws. The Second Law of thermodynamics is associated with positive local entropy production and dissipation of available energy. In order to guarantee this positivity in numerical simulations, subgrid-scale turbulent fluxes of heat, water vapor, and momentum are required to depend on numerically resolved gradients in a unique way. The task of parameterization remains to deliver phenomenological coefficients.

Inspecting commonly used parameterizations for subgrid-fluxes, we find that some of them obey the Second Law of thermodynamics, and some do not. The conforming approaches are the Smagorinsky momentum diffusion, phase changes, and sedimentation fluxes for hydrometeors. Conventional turbulent heat flux parameterizations do not conform with the Second Law. A new water vapor flux formulation is derived from the requirement of locally positive entropy production. The conventional and the new water vapor fluxes are compared using high-resolution radiosonde data. Conventional water vapor fluxes are wrong by up to 10% and exhibit a negative bias.

Two numerical tests (the Boulder windstorm testc ase and a convective boundary layer experiment) are performed with the ICON-IAP model. The experiments compare conventional and entropy-consistent heat flux parameterizations. Both test cases indicate that negative thermal dissipation can occur for the conventional heat flux. Obviously, the additional energy made available by this negative dissipation to the resolved turbulence is later on dissipated by friction, so that the total dissipation is again comparable [for the wrong reasons], at least for the boundary layer experiment.

Related: 

Why the AGW "Hot Spot" Won't Happen

New paper finds IPCC climate models don't realistically simulate convection

Dr. Noor van Andel: The data does not agree with the theory of greenhouse gas induced global warming

Lawyers do an end run around the Supreme Court for the climate scam

Revenge of the Climate Tort
The trial bar does an end run around the Supreme Court.

May 27, 2014 7:14 p.m. ET    THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Supreme Court has done its best to kill a harmful theory that merges the worst instincts of the tort bar and green lobby, but the idea won't stay dead. The Justices now need to polish off this legal zombie for good.

For years environmentalists have sued utilities on the claim that their emissions are a "public nuisance" under common law and therefore the courts should make U.S. climate change policy. In 2011 an unusual 8-0 majority of Justices held in American Electric Power v. Connecticut that this question belongs to the political branches and the Court "remains mindful that it does not have creative power akin to that vested in Congress."

That case turned on federal common law, but class-action plaintiffs revived the nuisance doctrine under state common law—and for some reason the Third Circuit Court of Appeals accepted this nondistinction. In GenOn Power v. Bell, a group of homeowners argued the traditional air pollutants of a local Pennsylvania power plant damaged their property values, but if allowed to stand the decision could also apply to carbon dioxide.

The plant was permitted and in full compliance with all federal and state standards under the Clear Air Act, which Congress passed in the 1970s precisely to pre-empt such common-law pollution nuisance suits. The point was to establish one uniform, predictable regulatory regime, and—whatever its faults in practice—this system is preferable to ad hoc, case-by-case injunctions that substitute the judiciary's judgment for that of Congress and federal agencies.

Green torts copying the Bell argument have already proliferated within the Third Circuit, and the tort bar is bidding to import the same logic into the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Circuits as well. Failing to reverse the decision could expose U.S. industry to billion of dollars of liability and lead to a state-by-state chopped salad of pollution controls as judges make what are quintessentially political decisions. The Bell defendants are asking the Supreme Court to take the case, and the Justices should take the opportunity to close the state common-law loophole before more damage is done.

New paper debunks alarmist claims that Atlantic Ocean circulation will shut down

The cli-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow, based on claims by real climate alarmists, proposed all manner of climate chaos will occur from an alleged effect of man-made greenhouse gases shutting down the natural ocean oscillation the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation [AMOC]. In the movie, shutdown of the AMOC somehow results in 300 foot waves overtaking the Statue of Liberty and Sydney Opera House, a Northern Hemisphere polar-vortex ice age, and catastrophic global climate destruction everywhere.

Where will you be on the day after tomorrow?

The claims of AMOC shutdown have been made for years on the basis of [falsified] climate models. However, a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters uses a newer ocean sea-ice model projecting that warming of deep waters around Antarctica will instead strengthen the AMOC and that "this process may counteract the projected decrease of the AMOC in the next decades."

Whew, the Statue of Liberty is safe after all

Other recent papers find the scare about AMOC shutdown could instead 'just be part of natural ocean fluctuations', the natural AMOC significantly contributed to ocean warming since 1850, climate model projections are "not realistic" due to inability to model ocean oscillations such as the AMOC, and that natural variation of the AMOC is one of 12+ excuses for the "pause" of global warming. 

Longwave infrared radiation from greenhouse gases cannot significantly heat the oceans, thus, these projections will remain computer modeling games and cli-fi. 

Abyssal ocean warming around Antarctica strengthens the Atlantic Overturning Circulation

Lavinia Patara and Claus W. Böning

The abyssal warming around Antarctica is one of the most prominent multi-decadal signals of change in the global ocean. Here we investigate its dynamical impacts on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) by performing a set of experiments with the ocean-sea ice model NEMO-LIM2 at ½° horizontal resolution. The simulations suggest that the ongoing warming of AABW, already affecting much of the Southern Hemisphere with a rate of up to 0.05 °C decade-1, has important implications for the large-scale meridional overturning circulation in the Atlantic Ocean. While the abyssal northward flow of AABW is weakening, we find the upper AMOC cell to progressively strengthen by 5-10% in response to deep density changes in the South Atlantic. The simulations suggest that the AABW-induced strengthening of the AMOC is already extending into the subtropical North Atlantic, implying that the process may counteract the projected decrease of the AMOC in the next decades.

New paper finds Antarctic temperatures were warmer in 1800's and 1940's

A new paper published in the Annals of Glaciology shows Antarctic air temperatures were warmer during the early 1800's and 1940's in comparison to the end of the 20th century. The authors find evidence of a quasi-periodic climate cycle lasting 30-50 years, with at least 5 climate shifts over the past 350 years, the last beginning during the 1970's. 

According to the authors, "The correlation of the newly obtained record with the circulation indices of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) shows that the central Antarctic climate is mainly governed by the type of [natural] circulation in the Southern Hemisphere: under conditions of zonal circulation, negative anomalies of temperature and precipitation rate are observed, whereas the sign of the anomalies is positive during meridional circulation."

The paper adds to many others finding nothing unusual or unprecedented regarding the natural and cyclical changes of Antarctic climate over the past century. 

Brown line is air temperature anomaly for Antarctica since 1800 calculated by Schneider et al. Red line is Nov-January [summer] temperature anomalies at Antarctic Vostok station near the South Pole. Yellow line is sea surface temperatures of S Hemisphere. 

Multiple climate shifts in the Southern Hemisphere over the past three centuries based on central Antarctic snow pits and core studies


A.A. EKAYKIN, A.V. KOZACHEK, V.Ya. LIPENKOV, Yu.A. SHIBAEV
Climate and Environment Research Laboratory, Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St Petersburg, Russia


ABSTRACT. Based on the results of geochemical and glaciological investigations in snow pits and shallow cores, regional stack series of air temperature in central Antarctica (in the southern part of Vostok Subglacial Lake) were obtained, covering the last 350 years. It is shown that this parameter varied quasi-periodically with a wavelength of 30–50 years. The correlation of the newly obtained record with the circulation indices of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) shows that the central Antarctic climate is mainly governed by the type of circulation in the SH: under conditions of zonal circulation, negative anomalies of temperature and precipitation rate are observed, whereas the sign of the anomalies is positive during meridional circulation. In the 1970s the sign of the relationship between many climatic parameters changed, which is likely related to the rearrangement of the climatic system of the SH. The data suggest that during the past 350 years such events have taken place at least five times. The stable water isotope content of the central Antarctic snow is governed by the summer temperature rather than the mean annual temperature, which is interpreted as the influence of ‘postdepositional’ effects.

New paper finds Ross Sea ice in Antarctica has increased 5% since 1993

A new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters reconstructs sea-ice area in the Ross Sea, Antarctica from a 130 year coastal ice-core record. The authors find the "data show prevailing stable SIA from the 1880s until the 1950s, a 2–5% reduction from the mid-1950s to the early-1990s, and a 5% increase after 1993." 

Thus, the overall trend in the Ross Sea, Antarctica over the past 130 years would be stable to increasing. 

Twentieth century sea-ice trends in the Ross Sea from a high-resolution, coastal ice-core record

Kate E. Sinclair et al

We present the first proxy record of sea-ice area (SIA) in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, from a 130 year coastal ice-core record. High-resolution deuterium excess data show prevailing stable SIA from the 1880s until the 1950s, a 2–5% reduction from the mid-1950s to the early-1990s, and a 5% increase after 1993. Additional support for this reconstruction is derived from ice-core methanesulphonic acid concentrations and whaling records. While SIA has continued to decline around much of the West Antarctic coastline since the 1950s, concurrent with increasing air and ocean temperatures, the underlying trend is masked in the Ross Sea by a switch to positive SIA anomalies since the early-1990s. This increase is associated with a strengthening of southerly winds and the enhanced northward advection of sea ice.

EPA Set to Unveil Rules to Force States to Cap & Trade, Renewable Energy

EPA Set to Unveil Climate Proposal

States Would Get Flexibility in Meeting Emissions Benchmarks

By AMY HARDER
May 26, 2014 8:04 p.m. ET    THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration will next week unveil a cornerstone of its climate-change initiative with a proposed rule aimed at allowing states to use cap-and-trade systems, renewable energy and other measures to meet aggressive goals for reducing carbon emissions by existing power plants.

Energy companies and others affected by the proposal will be watching for key details, including the percentage by which companies and states must reduce carbon emissions, which is expected to be proposed in a range instead of a single number. The baseline year against which those reductions are calculated will also be closely monitored.

"A 25% reduction with a 2005 baseline might be business as usual," said Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a policy research organization founded by former Senate leaders from both parties. "A 25% reduction with a 2015 baseline might make it impossible for some companies to operate."

But the proposal is designed to give states, which will administer the regulations, flexibility to meet the benchmarks, as opposed to placing emissions limits on individual plants, according to people familiar with the Environmental Protection Agency's work on the rule.


Central to the strategy of flexibility: the option to include a cap-and-trade component where a limit is set on emissions and companies can trade allowances or credits for emissions as a way of staying under different benchmarks the EPA sets for each state. Power-plant operators could trade emissions credits or use other offsets in the power sector, such as renewable energy or energy-efficiency programs, to meet the target.

The proposed rule is "going to enable states to move forward in a way that works best for them with the energy resources they have," said Dan Utech, special assistant to Mr. Obama for energy and climate issues.

Still, the June 2 release is likely to reverberate across the nation's political, legal and environmental policy landscape as competing interests debate the economic cost and the science of climate change. The EPA is scheduled to complete the rule by June 2015, and states must submit their implementation plans the following year, according to the timeline Mr. Obama set last summer. The likelihood of lawsuits and political opposition could upend this schedule.

This week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is expected to release a report estimating how much the EPA proposal could cost the U.S. economy, including its potential impact on gross domestic product and jobs.

The proposed rule would affect hundreds of power plants nationwide and is expected to be challenging for utilities with a large number of coal-fired generators, which the EPA says account for about one-third of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. Burning coal produces more carbon dioxide than oil and natural gas, but it is also the cheapest and most plentiful source for power, providing 40% of the nation's electricity.

Politicians from coal-producing states are likely to fight the proposal, as are power companies that burn coal and business groups that say the rule could increase costs. The proposed regulation could also create political difficulties for Democratic candidates running this year, including incumbents Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, a top coal-producing state, and Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, where energy already has emerged as a campaign issue.

Congressional Republicans and conservative groups have criticized cap-and-trade policies as "cap-and-tax," saying that if companies have to pay for emissions allowances, it amounts to a hidden tax on them, which could be passed to customers.

"The impact will not only be to greatly increase electricity rates, putting U.S. manufacturing at a competitive disadvantage, but [also to] jeopardize reliability of the nation's electric grid," said Hal Quinn, president and chief executive of the National Mining Association, a trade group representing coal-mining companies including Alpha Natural Resources LLC, Arch Coal Inc. and Peabody Energy Corp.

Aware of the controversy, one person familiar with the drafting of the rule said it would probably use the phrase "budget program," instead of the more politically charged "cap-and-trade," even though it will mean the same thing.

Aware of the political perils, last week 45 senators, including several Democrats up for re-election, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy urging her to double the amount of time allowed for public comments, from two months to four.

In public speeches and in meetings with power-plant operators, state officials and environmental groups over the past year, Ms. McCarthy has emphasized that the rule will provide compliance flexibility for states and utilities.

Carol Browner, a former top energy and climate adviser to Mr. Obama and a former EPA administrator, said the rule would likely allow states and companies to join existing cap-and-trade systems, such as those used in California or the Northeast, or create new ones.

"For some companies and states, a trading program may make the most sense," said Ms. Browner, adding that they may choose to "create some new regional" trading systems in order to meet the carbon emissions standard set by EPA.

Some utilities supported cap-and-trade legislation that failed in Congress a few years ago because it was the most flexible way to cut emissions. The House of Representatives in 2009, controlled by Democrats at the time, passed cap-and-trade legislation but it ended up dying in the Senate in 2010 where criticism gained traction and scuttled the initiative even though Democrats were in the majority.

Nick Akins, CEO of American Electric Power Co. , whose generating capacity throughout the Midwest is roughly 60% coal, said in an interview that his company supported that bill because "it was a tradable activity that could occur that really answered the greenhouse-gas question in a cost-effective manner."

The new Obama initiative could also garner support from the company. "Any approach that includes flexibility, such as cap and trade, would be better than a prescriptive limit on unit emissions," said AEP spokeswoman Melissa McHenry. "But we'd have to see the approach before we could say whether or not we'd support it."

Experts representing coal interests and environmental groups said the regulation would likely reflect suggestions from a report by environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council. "The point of our analysis is to emphasize flexibility," said David Doniger, policy director of NRDC's climate center. "EPA sets the benchmark, but the states develop the plans."

WSJ: The Myth of the Climate Change '97%'; What is the origin of the false belief that almost all scientists agree about global warming?

The Myth of the Climate Change '97%'

What is the origin of the false belief—constantly repeated—that almost all scientists agree about global warming?

By JOSEPH BAST And ROY SPENCER 

May 26, 2014 7:13 p.m. ET    THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the "crippling consequences" of climate change. "Ninety-seven percent of the world's scientists," he added, "tell us this is urgent."

Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities."

Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.

One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.

Ms. Oreskes's definition of consensus covered "man-made" but left out "dangerous"—and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year in Nature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren't substantiated in the papers.

Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 article in "Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union" by Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master's thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman claimed "97 percent of climate scientists agree" that global temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing factor.

The survey's questions don't reveal much of interest. Most scientists who are skeptical of catastrophic global warming nevertheless would answer "yes" to both questions. The survey was silent on whether the human impact is large enough to constitute a problem. Nor did it include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.

The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.

In 2010, William R. Love Anderegg, then a student at Stanford University, used Google Scholar to identify the views of the most prolific writers on climate change. His findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Mr. Love Anderegg found that 97% to 98% of the 200 most prolific writers on climate change believe "anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for 'most' of the 'unequivocal' warming." There was no mention of how dangerous this climate change might be; and, of course, 200 researchers out of the thousands who have contributed to the climate science debate is not evidence of consensus.

In 2013, John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011. Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming. His findings were published in Environmental Research Letters.

Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils- Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.

Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch —most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010—have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.

Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.

Finally, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—which claims to speak for more than 2,500 scientists—is probably the most frequently cited source for the consensus. Its latest report claims that "human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems." Yet relatively few have either written on or reviewed research having to do with the key question: How much of the temperature increase and other climate changes observed in the 20th century was caused by man-made greenhouse-gas emissions? The IPCC lists only 41 authors and editors of the relevant chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report addressing "anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing."

Of the various petitions on global warming circulated for signatures by scientists, the one by the Petition Project, a group of physicists and physical chemists based in La Jolla, Calif., has by far the most signatures—more than 31,000 (more than 9,000 with a Ph.D.). It was most recently published in 2009, and most signers were added or reaffirmed since 2007. The petition states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

We could go on, but the larger point is plain. There is no basis for the claim that 97% of scientists believe that man-made climate change is a dangerous problem.

Mr. Bast is president of the Heartland Institute. Dr. Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA's Aqua satellite.