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Archives for 2018

Let’s check your temperature

26 Dec 2018 by rasmus

The underlying mission of my job is to safeguard lives and property through climate change adaptation based on science. In other words, to help society to prepare itself for risks connected with more extreme rainfall and temperatures.

For many people, “climate” may seem to be an abstract concept. I have had many conversations about climate, and then realised that people often have different interpretations. In my mind, climate is the same as weather statistics (which I realise can be quite abstract to many).

To avoid miscommunication, I want to make sure that we are on the same page when I discuss climate. Maybe it helps if I talk about more familiar and specific aspects, such as the temperature, rainfall, snow, or wind?

[Read more…] about Let’s check your temperature

Filed Under: Climate Science, climate services, Communicating Climate, statistics, Supplemental data

Bending low with Bated breath

22 Dec 2018 by Gavin

“Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness…?”

Shylock (Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3)

As dark nights draw in, the venerable contrarians at the GWPF are still up late commissioning silly pseudo-rebuttals to mainstream science. The latest, [but see update below] which no-one was awaiting with any kind of breath, is by Dr. Ray Bates (rtd.) which purports to be a take-down of the recent #SR15 report. As Peter Thorne (an IPCC author) correctly noted, this report is a “cut-and-paste of long-debunked arguments”. I’ve grown a little weary of diving down to rebut every repetitive piece of nonsense, but this one has a few funny aspects that make it worthwhile to do so.

When they go low, we go “sigh…”.

[Read more…] about Bending low with Bated breath

Filed Under: Climate modelling, Climate Science, Instrumental Record, IPCC, Oceans

Fall AGU Week 2018

11 Dec 2018 by Gavin

Fall AGU is in Washington DC. Follow #AGU18 for twitter discussions and highlights, and live streaming of keynotes and selected sessions. Use this thread to discuss anything arising from the meeting – or it’s controversies.

Filed Under: Climate Science

Scientists: Resolve to Protect Yourself from Harassment in 2019

6 Dec 2018 by group

Guest commentary by Lauren Kurtz

The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) protects the scientific endeavor from anti-science attacks. Since our founding in 2011, we’ve assisted hundreds of scientists with issues ranging from invasive open records requests to death threats.

As part of this work, our staff will be at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting from December 10-14, offering free legal services to scientists and leading sessions on how to get involved in the policymaking process and how to be an expert witness.

For those who won’t be at the meeting — and with 2019 around the corner — we put together a list of suggested New Year’s resolutions for scientists. Adopting these best practices will help you reduce your risk of being harassed or attacked.

[Read more…] about Scientists: Resolve to Protect Yourself from Harassment in 2019

Filed Under: Climate Science, Scientific practice

Forced Responses: Dec 2018

2 Dec 2018 by group

A bimonthly thread for discussions on solutions and responses to climate change. For climate science topics, please comment on the Unforced Variations thread.

Filed Under: Climate Science, Open thread

Unforced variations: Dec 2018

2 Dec 2018 by group

This month’s open thread for climate science topics. Please use the Forced Responses thread for solutions and politics.

Filed Under: Climate Science, Open thread

4th National Climate Assessment report

23 Nov 2018 by Gavin

In possibly the biggest “Friday night news dump” in climate report history, the long awaited 4th National Climate Assessment (#NCA4) was released today (roughly two weeks earlier than everyone had been expecting).

The summaries and FAQ (pdf) are good, and the ClimateNexus briefing is worth reading too. The basic picture is utterly unsurprising, but the real interest in the NCA is the detailed work on vulnerabilities and sectorial impacts in 10 specific regions of the US. The writing teams for those sections include a whole raft of scientists and local stakeholders and so if you think climate reports are the same old, same old, it’s where you should go to read things you might not have seen before.

    Regional Chapters

  • Northeast
  • Southeast
  • U.S. Caribbean
  • Midwest
  • Northern Great Plains
  • Southern Great Plains
  • Northwest
  • Southwest
  • Alaska
  • Hawai‘i & U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands

Obviously, since the report was only released at 2pm today without any serious embargo, most takes you will read today or tomorrow will be pretty superficial, but there should be more considered discussions over the next few days. Feel free to ask specific questions or bring up topics below.

Filed Under: Climate impacts, Climate Science, Communicating Climate

The long story of constraining ocean heat content

21 Nov 2018 by Gavin

Scientists predicted in the 1980s that a key fingerprint of anthropogenic climate change would be found in the ocean. If they were correct that increases in greenhouse gases were changing how much heat was coming into the system, then the component with the biggest heat capacity, the oceans, is where most of that heat would end up.

We have now had almost two decades of attempts to characterize this change, but the path to confirming those predictions has been anything but smooth…

[Read more…] about The long story of constraining ocean heat content

Filed Under: Climate modelling, Climate Science, Oceans

Resplandy et al. correction and response

14 Nov 2018 by group

Guest commentary from Ralph Keeling (UCSD)

I, with the other co-authors of Resplandy et al (2018), want to address two problems that came to our attention since publication of our paper in Nature last week. These problems do not invalidate the methodology or the new insights into ocean biogeochemistry on which it is based, but they do influence the mean rate of warming we infer, and more importantly, the uncertainties of that calculation.

[Read more…] about Resplandy et al. correction and response

References

  1. L. Resplandy, R.F. Keeling, Y. Eddebbar, M.K. Brooks, R. Wang, L. Bopp, M.C. Long, J.P. Dunne, W. Koeve, and A. Oschlies, "Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition", Nature, vol. 563, pp. 105-108, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0651-8

Filed Under: Carbon cycle, Climate Science, Instrumental Record, Oceans

Unforced variations: Nov 2018

1 Nov 2018 by group

This month’s open thread on climate science issues.

A lot of interest in the new Resplandy et al paper (WaPo), with some exploration of the implications on twitter i.e.

Interesting new paper “Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition”
But I’m not sure about their argument on the consequences on future warming. 1/https://t.co/g29m3SzIvN

— Reto Knutti ETH (@Knutti_ETH) November 1, 2018

and

That new ocean heat content estimate https://t.co/3ZQlKcj4jd

— Dr James Annan (@jamesannan) November 1, 2018

Meanwhile, the CMIP6 model output is starting to come out…

Filed Under: Climate Science, Open thread

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