"The implication of nonradiative energy fluxes dominating Greenland ice sheet exceptional ablation area surface melt in 2012," by Robert Fausto et al., GRL 43 (2016); doi: 10.1002/2016GL067720

Geophysical Research Letters, 43 (March 2016), DOI: 10.1002/2016GL067720

The implication of nonradiative energy fluxes dominating Greenland ice sheet exceptional ablation area surface melt in 2012

Robert Fausto, Dirk van As, Jason E. Box and Ruth Mottram

Abstract

During two exceptionally large, July 2012, multi-day, Greenland ice sheet, melt episodes, non-radiative energy fluxes (sensible, latent, rain, and subsurface collectively) dominated the ablation area surface energy budget of the southern and western ice sheet. On average, the non-radiative energy fluxes contributed up to 76% of daily melt energy at nine automatic weather station sites in Greenland. Comprising 6% of the ablation period, these powerful melt episodes resulted in 12–15% of the south and west Greenland automatic weather station annual ablation totals. Analysis of high resolution (~5 km) HIRHAM5 regional climate model output indicates widespread dominance of non-radiative energy fluxes across the western ablation area during these episodes. Yet HIRHAM5 still underestimates melt by up to 56% during these episodes due to a systematic underestimation of turbulent energy fluxes typical of regional climate models. This has implications for underestimating future melt, when exceptional melt episodes are expected to occur more frequently.

Introduction 

Understanding the Greenland ice sheet surface climate response is crucial for reducing uncertainties in future predictions of both magnitude and rate of global sea level change [Dutton et al., 2015] and freshwater flux [Lenaerts et al., 2015]. The rate of Greenland ice sheet mass loss has accelerated over the past decades [Tedesco et al., 2013; Khan et al., 2015], and in recent years, the surface components of the ice sheet’s mass budget have become the dominant source of ice loss, outpacing the ice dynamic component [Enderlin et al., 2014; Andersen et al., 2015]. Partly due to two exceptional melt episodes in July 2012, new records for ice sheet surface melt area and ice mass loss were set [Tedesco et al., 2013]. Satellite observations revealed more than 98% of the ice sheet surface was melting on 12 July 2012, which was unprecedented in the 1978 to present satellite record [Nghiem et al., 2012]. This widespread melt in the accumulation area was enhanced by low-level liquid clouds [Bennartz et al., 2013] promoted by the advection of anomalously warm and moist air over Greenland [Neff et al., 2014], which decreased the firn’s ability to retain meltwater [Machguth et al., 2016]. Deposition of wildfire black carbon further promoted melt through enhanced sunlight absorption [Keegan et al., 2014]. Projections suggest that such melt episodes will become increasingly frequent in coming decades [Collins et al., 2013; McGrath et al., 2013].

John Abraham: Why Greenland's darkening ice has become a hot topic in climate science

Darkening causes the snow to absorb more sunlight which in turn increases melting 

 

Climate scientist Jason Box during an expedition in Greenland in July 2008. Photograph: Byrd Polar Research Center 

 

by John Abraham, Climate Consensus: the 97%, The Guardian, June 12, 2013

Last July, a record melting occurred on the Greenland ice sheet. Even in some of the highest and coldest areas, field parties observed rainfall with air temperatures several degrees above the freezing point. A month before, it was as though Greenland expert Jason Box had a crystal ball; he predicted this complete surface melting in a scientific publication. Box's research then got broader public visibility after climate activist and writer Bill McKibben covered it in Rolling Stone magazine.

The basic premise of Box's study was that observations reveal a progressive darkening of Greenland ice. Darkening causes the white snow surface to absorb more sunlight which in turn increases melting. Given that this process is likely to continue, the impact on Greenland melt, and subsequent sea level rise, will be profound.

There are several mechanisms that are known to darken arctic ice, including desert dust, pollen, soot from natural forest fires, and human biomass burning for land clearing and domestic use. Industrial, shipping, and aircraft pollution also play a role. Some of these effects are increasing. As climate change accelerates, more areas are being burned by wildfire each year. Box wondered how much increasing wildfires with resulting soot landing on the northern ice might amplify what scientists call a "positive feedback" (a self-reinforcing cycle) increasing Greenland melting. The cycle starts with initial warming, leading to more fires, more soot, and in turn more warming and more melt. The feedback is important, particularly in polar regions where observed warming is twice the rate of more southerly locations around the globe. Box calculates this effect has doubled Greenland surface melting since year 2000.

The topic has become hot among ice experts as new observations of ice melt continue to outstrip projections from just a few years ago. Arctic sea ice, another key measure of global heating, is now 60 years ahead of worst-case projections from the last report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Arctic snow cover on land has also been declining more rapidly than projected, even faster than sea ice. While mass loss of the enormous Greenland sheet is difficult to measure, satellite data indicate it has doubled in the last decade. If this acceleration continues, sea level rise could be even higher this century than the 1 or 2 meters that mainstream scientists now project – possibly much higher. Despite a recent study that projected Greenland outflow glaciers to slow, surface melting has increased faster than ice flow. The albedo feedback is a critical piece of physics that enables surface melting to continue dominating the loss.

To test his hypothesis, Box has assembled a team of scientists and communicators to collect and analyze samples from key locations on the ice sheet, and report those results directly to the public. The plan is to arrive in Greenland in late June, just as the peak melting season and fire season coincide. Box will be joined by Bill McKibben, who will be covering the research for Rolling Stone, and videographer Peter Sinclair, whose series of climate change videos on YouTube has gained high praise from climate scientists.

The scientific team includes Sara McKenzie Skiles, a researcher at UCLA and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Marek Stibal, a biogeochemist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Dr Stibal will be looking at yet another potential source of darkening, the activity of microorganisms that produce their own darkening pigments, which may be increasing due to atmospheric warming and fertilization by pollutants.

While government funding contracted, Box decided to push forward with a new approach, financing the research as a "citizen science" initiative, funded by internet crowd sourcing. His project is aptly named DARK SNOW and financial support is being collected online.

It is exciting to watch emerging science collide with novel scientific fundraising initiatives. It is possible that this emergence will grow in the coming years as scientific projects grow in cost and complexity, while more traditional funding sources diminish. The costs of funding projects like DARK SNOW are miniscule compared to the costs we endure from climate-change-related weather disasters. The penny-wise pound-foolish attitude we've taken toward science funding is a complicated issue that I'll deal with in a future post.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/jun/12/greenland-darkening-ice-climate-science

"Contrail ice particles in aircraft wakes and their climatic importance," by Ulrich Schumann et al., GRL (2013); doi:10.1002/grl.50539

Geophysical Research Letters, in press; doi:10.1002/grl.50539

Contrail ice particles in aircraft wakes and their climatic importance

1. Ulrich Schumann^1,*, 
2. Philipp Jeßberger¹, and 
3. Christiane Voigt^1,2

Abstract

Measurements of gaseous (NO, NO_y, SO₂, HONO) and ice particle concentrations in young contrails in primary and secondary wakes of aircraft of different sizes (B737, A319, A340, A380) are used to investigate ice particle formation behind aircraft. The gas concentrations are largest in the primary wake and decrease with increasing altitude in the secondary wake, as expected for passive trace gases and aircraft-dependent dilution. In contrast, the measured ice particle concentrations were found larger in the secondary wake than in the primary wake. The contrails contain more ice particles than expected for previous black carbon (soot) estimates. The ice concentrations may result from soot induced ice nucleation for a soot number emission index of 10¹⁵ kg^-1. For a doubled ice particle concentration in young contrails, a contrail cirrus model computes about 60% increases of global radiative forcing by contrail cirrus because of simultaneous increases in optical depth, age and cover.

http://0-onlinelibrary.wiley.com.library.hct.ac.ae/doi/10.1002/grl.50539/abstract

Jason Box and the Dark Snow Project, Part 2

The second video in a series about Dr. Jason Box and his “Dark Snow Project” - an effort to enlist the power of crowd sourcing and citizen science to pursue some of the most critical issues affecting arctic melt and sea level rise.

In the first video we heard from Bill Mckibben, whose article in Rolling Stone jumpstarted interest in Dr Box’s research. Following the shocking melt over nearly the full surface of the Greenland ice cap in July, 2012, it was clear that Dr. Box and his team had published a stunningly prescient paper, predicting melt over the whole surface of Greenland, within 10 years – What was stunning is that the melt materialized mere days after the paper came out.


Mckibben wrote:

Box had conservatively predicted that it might take up to a decade before the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet melted all at once. That it actually happened in just a few weeks only underscores how consistently cautious ice scientists have been in forecasting the threat posed by global warming. Now, however, that caution is being replaced by well-founded alarm. “Greenland is a sleeping giant that’s waking,” says Box. “In this new climate, the ice sheet is going to keep shrinking – the only question is how fast.”

The new data from Greenland matters for every corner of the planet. Water pouring into the North Atlantic will not only raise sea levels, but is also likely to modify weather patterns. “If the world allows a substantial fraction of the Greenland ice sheet to disintegrate, all hell breaks loose for eastern North America and Europe,” says NASA’s James Hansen, the world’s foremost climatologist.

In this new video, you’ll see Dark Snow team member Dr. Tom Painter of NASA JPL explain his work on dust in the Rocky Mountain snow fields, and Phd student Mckenzie Skiles describe how samples will be obtained – IF a large enough cohort of citizen scientists, activists, and just plain folks go to Darksnowproject.org and kick in a tax deductible donation. Now is a critical moment, as commitments must soon be made for all the moving parts that go into making an expedition work. This science will have to be done – someone will have to do the ground truth sampling to tease out the secret of the ice.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

http://climatecrocks.com/2013/02/18/dark-snow-project-needs-your-help-send-citizen-science-to-greenland/

'Dark Snow' project turns to crowd funding for Greenland expedition

Researchers seek $150,000 in donations to fund trip to ice sheet to better understand climatic impact of black carbon

by Leo Hickman, The Guardian, January 17, 2013

There is already much excitement in the arts, media and beyond about the potential of crowdfunding – via sites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo – to finance projects that might others have remained an unfulfilled dream. To date, though, few scientific expeditions have successfully utilised crowd-funding.

The Dark Snow Project hopes to change this. Jason Box, a climatologist based at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, is hoping to raise $150,000 over the coming months to pay for an expedition this summer up onto the "ice dome" of Greenland to gather samples of snow. The project's website explains:

Dark Snow is a field and lab project to measure the impact of changing wildfire and industrial soot on snow and ice reflectivity. Soot darkens snow and ice, increasing solar energy absorption, hastening the melt of the "cryosphere."

The climatic impact of "black carbon" and wildfire smoke is much in the news and yet remains little understood. Last year, Box presented satellite observations (pdf) showing how soot particles drifting from tundra wildfires spread across Greenland. The big as-yet-unanswered question is whether this soot contributed towards the region's record melt during the summer of 2012. And, if so, by how much.

"We saw complete surface melting of the [Greenland] ice sheet for the first time in observation. Would that have happened without the wildfire soot of 2012?" Box told The Guardian in December. "We don't know. We have got to get up there and make those measurements."

Box has already raised more than $60,000, but is now turning to crowd-funding via the expedition's website to try and secure the remaining amount. Roughly two-thirds of this money, he says, will be spent on renting a plane to transport the team up onto the ice sheet. Here's the planned itinerary:

1. Prepare and gather science equipment including a field spectrometer, snow and ice coring device, and snow metrics kit.
2. Travel to Iqualuit, on Baffin Island, Nunavut from home locales in California, Ohio, Michigan, Vermont and rendezvous with Dash-6 "Twin Otter" ski-equipped airplane and flight crew.
3. Organize cold weather survival kit.
4. Ferry team from Iqualuit to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.
5. Fly to and land at sampling sites high on the inland ice sheet.
6. At each site collect snow samples from a snow pit and obtain snow cores to a minimum depth of the previous year's snow surface, and record snow properties.
7. Transport of team and snow samples to Greenland's capital Nuuk, where the team will rest after hustling at field sites.
8. Return to Iqualuit, then to respective home locales to start the data analysis and reporting phase of campaign.

Box has also invited Peter Sinclair along as a team-member, who, as "Greenman3610," is probably best known for his consistently excellent YouTube videos on climate change. (Sinclair produced the video above.) In the first instance, this will ensure that anyone who has made a donation will be kept up-to-date with the researchers' progress. But it will also mean the wider world will gain a better insight into not just the science being conducted, but also the environmental implications of soot settling on the Arctic snow and ice.

Anyone wishing to make a donation can do so on the expedition's "Give Now" webpage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/17/dark-snow-project-kicktstarter-greenland

Jason Box: Tundra fire soot darkening Greenland, changing its albedo, increasing melt

Fire and ice: Wildfires darkening Greenland snowpack, increasing melting 

by Pam Frost Gorder, phys.org, December 5, 2012 

Satellite observations have revealed the first direct evidence of smoke from Arctic wildfires drifting over the Greenland ice sheet, tarnishing the ice with soot and making it more likely to melt under the sun.

At the American Geophysical Union meeting this week, an Ohio State University researcher presented images from NASA's Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite, which captured smoke from Arctic fires billowing out over Greenland during the summer of 2012. 

Jason Box, associate professor of geography at Ohio State, said that researchers have long been concerned with how the Greenland landscape is losing its sparkly reflective quality as temperatures rise. The surface is darkening as ice melts away, and, since dark surfaces are less reflective than light ones, the surface captures more heat, which leads to stronger and more prolonged melting. 

Researchers previously recorded a 6% drop in reflectivity in Greenland over the last decade, which Box calculates will cause enough warming to bring the entire surface of the ice sheet to melting each summer, as it did in 2012. 

But along with the melting, researchers believe that there is a second environmental effect that is darkening polar ice: soot from wildfires, which may be becoming more common in the Arctic. 

"Soot is an extremely powerful light absorber," Box said. "It settles over the ice and captures the sun's heat. That's why increasing tundra wildfires have the potential to accelerate the melting in Greenland." 

Box was inspired to investigate tundra fires after his home state of Colorado suffered devastating wildfires this past year. According to officials, those fires were driven in part by high temperatures. 

Meanwhile, in the Arctic, rising temperatures may be causing tundra wildfires to become more common. 

To find evidence of soot deposition from these fires, Box and his team first used thermal images from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to identify large fires in the region. Then they used computer models to project possible smoke particle trajectories, which suggested that the smoke from various fires could indeed reach Greenland. Finally, they used that information to examine the CALIPSO data, and pinpoint sooty aerosols—smoke clouds—over Greenland. 

Because the only way to truly measure the extent to which soot particles enhance melting is to take ice sheet surface samples, Box is organizing a Greenland ice sheet expedition for 2013. The Dark Snow Project (http://www.darksnowproject.org) expedition is to be the first of its kind, made possible by crowd-source funding. 

The analysis of the MODIS and CALIPSO data was supported by the Ohio State University's Climate, Water and Carbon initiative. Collaborators on the fire study include Thomas Painter of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and graduate student McKenzie Skiles of the University of California, Los Angeles.

http://phys.org/news/2012-12-ice-wildfires-darkening-greenland-snowpack.html

Arctic ice shrinks 18% against record, sounding climate change alarm bells

Scientists and environment groups say the fall is unprecedented and the clearest signal yet of global warming

by John Vidal, in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, The Guardian, September 19, 2012

"Our response [so far] has not been alarm, or panic, or a sense of emergency. It has been: ‘Let’s go up there and drill for oil.’ There is no more perfect indictment of our failure to get to grips with the greatest problem we’ve ever faced," says author and environmental campaigner Bill McKibben. Photograph: Paul Souders/Corbis

Sea ice in the Arctic shrank a dramatic 18% this year on the previous record set in 2007 to a record low of 3.41 million sq. km, according to the official US monitoring organisation the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado.

Scientists and environment groups last night said the fall was unprecedented and the clearest signal yet of climate change.

The data released showed the arctic sea beginning to refreeze again in the last few days after the most dramatic melt observed since satellite observations started in 1979.

This year's sea ice extent was 700,000 sq. km below the previous minimum of 4.17 million sq. km set in 2007.

"We are now in uncharted territory," said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. "While we've long known that as the planet warms up, changes would be seen first and be most pronounced in the Arctic, few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur."

Julienne Stroeve, an NSIDC ice research scientist who has been monitoring ice conditions aboard the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise, said the data suggested the Arctic sea ice cover was fundamentally changing and predicted more extreme weather.

"We can expect more summers like 2012 as the ice cover continues to thin. The loss of summer sea ice has led to unusual warming of the Arctic atmosphere, that in turn impacts weather patterns in the northern hemisphere, that can result in persistent extreme weather such as droughts, heatwaves and flooding," she said.

Arctic sea ice extent for September 16, 2012 was 3.41m sq km. The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Photograph: National Snow and Ice Data Center

Other leading ice scientists this week predicted the complete collapse of sea ice in the Arctic within four years. "The final collapse ... is now happening and will probably be complete by 2015/16," said Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University.

Sea ice in the Arctic is seen as a key indicator of global climate change because of its sensitivity to warming and its role in amplifying climate change. According to the NSIDC, the warming of Arctic areas is now increasing at around 10% a decade.

Along with the extent of the sea ice, its thickness, or volume, has also significantly decreased in the last two decades. While this is harder to measure accurately, it is believed to have decreased around 40% since 1979.

The collapse of the ice cap was last night interpreted by environment groups as a signal of long-term climate warming caused by man.

"I hope that future generations will mark this day as a turning point, when a new spirit of global cooperation emerged to tackle the huge challenges we face. We must work together to protect the Arctic from the effects of climate change and unchecked corporate greed. This is now the defining environmental battle of our era," said Kumi Naidoo, director of Greenpeace International.

Other groups called on the UK government, and industries across the world to heed the warning signs from the Arctic and act "with urgency and ambition" to tackle climate change.

Rod Downie, polar expert at WWF-UK said: "With the speed of change we are now witnessing in the Arctic, the UK government must show national and global leadership in the urgent transition away from fossil fuels to a low carbon economy.

"This is further evidence that Shell's pursuit of hydrocarbons in the Arctic is reckless. It is completely irresponsible to drill for oil in such a fragile environment; there are simply too many unmanageable risks."

Author and environmental campaigner Bill McKibben said: "Our response [so far] has not been alarm, or panic, or a sense of emergency. It has been: 'Let's go up there and drill for oil'. There is no more perfect indictment of our failure to get to grips with the greatest problem we've ever faced."

Arctic sea ice follows an annual cycle of melting through the warm summer months and refreezing in the winter. It has shown a dramatic overall decline over the past 30 years.

Sea ice is known to play a critical role in regulating climate, acting as a giant mirror that reflects much of the sun's energy, helping to cool the Earth.

The UN Environment programme warned that the extra shipping and industry likely to result from the thawing of sea ice could further accelerate sea ice melting.

"There is an urgent need to calculate risks of local pollutants such as soot, or black carbon, in the Arctic. Soot darkens ice, making it soak up more of the sun's heat and quickening a melt," said UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall in Nairobi.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/19/arctic-ice-shrinks

Richard Black, BBC: Climate -- cherries are not the only fruit

Climate: Cherries are not the only fruit

Accusations of selective data use abound... but who's right?

• Nuclear: A tortuous timescale
• 'Fatigue' in the climate system
• Nuclear reviews leave open questions
• Solar predictions bring heat and light

by Richard Black, environmental correspondent, BBC News, July 7, 2011

Just about the most predictable event of the week was the tempest of opinion created by the analysis of global temperature changes published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on Monday.

As we (and a number of other mainstream news outlets) reported, Robert Kaufmann and colleagues analysed the impact of growing coal use, particularly in China, and the cooling effect of the sulphate aerosol particles emitted into the atmosphere.

They concluded that with a bit of help from changes in solar output and natural climatic cycles such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the growth in the volume of aerosols being pumped up power station chimneys was probably enough to block the warming effect of rising greenhouse gas emissions over the period 1998-2008.

For some commentators, such as the UK Daily Mail's Christopher Brooker [whom most readers should already know as an infamous liar about climate change -- hence George Monbiot's Christopher Brooker Prize awarded to the journalist who can fit the most misrepresentations about global warming into a single article], this was further proof that the "climate scaremongers" had got it wrong.

"Global warming? A new ice age? YOU'RE paying for the hysteria of our politicians," the headline - er - whispered.

On the other side of the opinionosphere, Climate Progress's chosen headline was "Study: Hottest Decade on Record Would Have Been Even Hotter But for Chinese Coal Plant Sulfur Pollution"... which is consistent with what Kaufmann and his colleagues are saying, although they said it in more restrained tones.

Although it doesn't slam the study, in fact calling it "clever," Climate Progress also asks whether doing the research was wise: "What's not clever about this study is that it repeats the myth that there was a 'hiatus' [in global warming] in the first place."

Rising coal use put more warming CO2 into the atmosphere - but also more cooling aerosol particles

According to some e-mails I've had, the same point is being raised between climate scientists.

Whether the conclusions of the study are right or wrong, the argument goes, you're stepping into factually shaky ground -- and the belief-systems of your "opponents" -- if you start from the argument that temperatures haven't risen since 1998, the strongest El Nino year on record.

Concern was exacerbated by the wording of the PNAS press release, whose first sentence read: "The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide increased steadily between 1998 and 2008 even as the Earth's temperature declined..." - a line that reporters unfamiliar to the issue might not have seen fit to question.

The next few paragraphs will be so familiar to anyone who follows this stuff that I almost apologise for including them... but the point about it is that if you want to deduce the underlying trend, you have to remove the annual bumps caused by things such as ENSO.

A common method of doing this is to use a "moving average" (aka "running mean"), where -- for example -- each year's data point is the average of the 10 years around that year.

And when you do that, you see clearly that the underlying trend of temperature rise continues.

This has been the standard approach of mainstream scientists - and their standard response when challenged that 1998 remains, depending on your dataset, the warmest single year on record.

Cherry in the pie

One thing that everyone in the climate blogosphere seems to agree on is that the best fruit in the world is the cherry, judging by the number that are picked.

Temperature changes in recent decades, from NASA

• 1991-2001: +0.12C
• 1992-2002: +0.43C
• 1993-2003: +0.42C
• 1994-2004: +0.25C
• 1995-2005: +0.26C
• 1996-2006: +0.26C
• 1997-2007: +0.19C
• 1998-2008: -0.12C
• 1999-2009: +0.25C
• 2000-2010: +0.30C

And the Kaufmann paper has brought a few more down from the tree.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GPWF), the UK-based pressure group, said researchers "tweak an out-of-date computer model and cherry-pick the outcome to get their desired result."

To which the opponents' rejoinder is, and long had been: "well, choosing 1998 as the baseline is cherry-picking, to start with."

To illustrate the point, I've been through a quick exercise using the approach that groups such as GPWF favour -- and that Kaufmann's research group adopted -- of using annual temperatures rather than any kind of smoothed average, and looking for the temperature change over a decade.

I took the record of global temperatures maintained by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) which is one of the three main global datasets, and calculated the rate of change over each of the most recent 10 decades -- i.e., 1991-2001, 1992-2002, and so on up to 2000-2010.

I've summarised the results in a table on this page. What it basically shows is two things:

• the numbers vary quite a bit from year to year, and
• all but one give a temperature rise -- the only one that shows a small drop being 1998-2008.

Seeing as it's logically impossible that the world warmed between 1997 and 2007, cooled between 1998 and 2008, and warmed again from 1999 to 2009, one conclusion you might reach is that using annual temperatures is not a sensible thing to do as it gives you a set of answers that does not make sense.

... which is why most scientists use the running mean approach.

Annual data (black line) are smoothed by a five-year running mean (red) -- a 10-year mean would smooth more. Graph from NASA-GISS

But if you do go with the annual method -- does it show that global warming has stopped?

Only if you use the one dataset that starts in 1998, and ignore the other nine that give the contradictory answer; which sounds like quite a good definition of "cherry-picking" to me, and certainly nothing to indicate a coming ice age.

And in case anyone feels like arguing that I've cherry-picked a favourable dataset, I went through the same exercise with the UK Hadley Centre/University of East Anglia record, which shows the same thing -- lots of annual variability, and only one of the 10 periods that indicates a global cooling.

Whether Robert Kaufmann's analysis of coal's impact is eventually adopted or refuted through the formal avenues of science is hard to predict at the moment.

Prolific commentators such as Judith Curry [once a scientist and now notable for being incredibly confused and unable to engage in the simplest discussion about climate science] suggest there are flaws; and Climate Central has a good discussion of counter-arguments to the coal theory.

When I spoke to Dr Kaufmann, he flagged up a few areas himself where data was lacking, such as the rate at which China and other developing countries were fitting their power stations with equipment that removes the cooling sulphate particles while allowing the warming carbon dioxide through.

However this plays out, I suspect the majority of researchers will go back to the use of long-term, smoothed temperature curves, and stay away from annual datasets -- especially if they begin in 1998.

Cherries may be delicious when they're fresh; but the shelf life of this one has surely been exceeded.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14054650

THE CLIMATE SHOW #14: VOLCANOES, BLACK CARBON AND CROCKS FROM CHRISTY

by GARETH renowden, hot topic, JUNE 16, 2011

Abusy news week sees Glenn and Gareth discussing volcanoes in Chile and Africa, busy pumping ash into the atmosphere and disrupting flights in South America, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East, an extreme spring in the USA, drought in Europe and a warm autumn in NZ, a new UN report on black carbon and how a reduction could cut future warming, Aussie scientists fighting back against climate denial, and forecasts for the summer ice minimum in the Arctic. John Cook from Skeptical Science deals with their new series on John Christy’s climate crocks, and introduces a great new graphic front end for the SkS climate literature database, plus we cover price reductions on solar panels, LEDs on streetlights in San Francisco and MIT’s Cambridge crude.

Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast viaiTunes, or listen direct/download here:

The Climate Show

Follow The Climate Show at The Climate Show web site, and on Facebook and Twitter.

News & commentary: [0:05:50]

Chile volcano: Southern Hemisphere’s turn to experience what happened last year in Europe – doesn’t threaten climate cooling (at least, not yet).

Earth Observatory

Wikipedia

NZ ash forecasts from the Met Service.

But there’s one nearer the equator: Nabro in Eritrea.

Follow the action at Dr Erik Klemmeti’s Eruptions blog.

Jeff Masters on extreme weather in the US:

Nature’s fury reached new extremes in the U.S. during the spring of 2011, as a punishing series of billion-dollar disasters brought the greatest flood in recorded history to the Lower Mississippi River, an astonishingly deadly tornado season, the worst drought in Texas history, and the worst fire season in recorded history. There’s never been a spring this extreme for combined wet and dry extremes in the U.S. since record keeping began over a century ago, statistics released last week by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reveal.

And one consequence (among many): NOAA predicts that the annual “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico will be the biggest since records begin…

And a dry spring in Europe and SE Britain could mean France has to shut down some nuclear power stations because of a lack of cooling water.

p.s. May was the warmest ever recorded in New Zealand… 2.2 ºC warmer than 1971-2000 average (Mt. Hutt webcams here).

New UN report on “black carbon” just released.

Guardian: UN – curbing black carbon would bring dramatic, quick benefits to all

UNEP press release

Report PDF

CLEARING UP THE CLIMATE DEBATE

Aussie scientists hit back at sceptics with series of strongly worded articles at The Conversation

Open Letter.

The greenhouse effect is real.

Speaking science to climate policy.

And finally: First batch of forecasts for the Arctic summer sea ice minimum released.

NASA Arctic Mosaic, and the Arctic Sea Ice blog.

Debunking the sceptic, with John Cook of Skeptical Science [0:42:20]

Christy Crocks

“I think there’s been too much jumping to conclusions about seeing something happening in the climate and saying ‘well the only way that can happen is human effects”

“I think most of all, [current temperatures] are part of the normal ups and downs of climate.”

“We are finding that the climate is not very sensitive to CO2 and those kind of gases”

http://sks.to/christy

An Interactive History of Climate Science

http://sks.to/history

Solutions [1:05:00]

Solar PV changing the game? Joe Romm reports:
Solar is Ready Now: ‘Ferocious Cost Reductions’ Make Solar PV Competitive

China Plans to Double Solar Capacity Target for 2015

Google funding rooftop solar PVs

Battery breakthrough (again): MIT Team build liquid fuelled batteries for cars – Cambridge crude!

Another kind of energy storage: an “energy bag”

And energy efficiency: San Francisco replacing sodium streelt lights with LEDs – saves 50% energy…

Thanks to our media partners: Celsias.co.nz, Scoop and KiwiFM.

Theme music: A Drop In The Ocean by The Bads.

http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-climate-show-14-volcanoes-black-carbon-and-crocks-from-christy/