This month’s open thread on climate science issues. Remember that discussions about climate solutions go here.
Alpine glaciers: Another decade of loss
Guest Commentary by Mauri Pelto (Nichols College)
Preliminary data reported from the reference glaciers of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) in 2018 from Argentina, Austria, China, France, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and United States indicate that 2018 will be the 30th consecutive year of significant negative annual balance (> -200mm); with a mean balance of -1247 mm for the 25 reporting reference glaciers, with only one glacier reporting a positive mass balance (WGMS, 2018).
References
The Crank Shaft
Unforced variations: Mar 2019
Forced Responses: Feb 2019
A bimonthly thread on societal responses to climate change. Note that there is another open thread for climate science topics. Please stick to specifics as opposed to arguments about ethics, politics or morality in general.
Unforced variations: Feb 2019
New Ocean Heat Content Histories
Guest commentary from Laure Zanna (U. Oxford) and G. Jake Gebbie (WHOI)
Two recent papers, Zanna et al. (2019) (hereafter ZKGIH19) and Gebbie & Huybers (2019) (hereafter GH19), independently reconstructed ocean heat content (OHC) changes prior to the instrumentally-based records (which start ~1950). The goals (and methodologies) of the two papers were quite different – ZKGIH19 investigated regional patterns of ocean warming and thermal sea level rise, while GH19 analyzed the long-term memory of the deep ocean – but they both touch on the same key questions of climate forcing and response.
[Read more…] about New Ocean Heat Content HistoriesReferences
- L. Zanna, S. Khatiwala, J.M. Gregory, J. Ison, and P. Heimbach, "Global reconstruction of historical ocean heat storage and transport", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116, pp. 1126-1131, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1808838115
- G. Gebbie, and P. Huybers, "The Little Ice Age and 20th-century deep Pacific cooling", Science, vol. 363, pp. 70-74, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aar8413
The Climate Scientists are Alright
Guest commentary from Eric Guilyardi (IPSL) and Valérie Masson-Delmotte (IPSL/IPCC)
[This is a translation of an article in Le Monde (Jan 11).]
In recent weeks in France, there has been a profusion of articles about the “climate scientist blues” (Le Monde 21/Dec, JDD 9/Dec, France Info 26/Sep), which has apparently affecting them “scientifically”. This follows a spate of similar articles in the US and Australian media (Esquire, 2015; The Monthly, 2018; Sierra Club Magazine, 2018). But what is the point of knowing the mood of scientists, or whether so-and-so is optimistic or pessimistic?
[Read more…] about The Climate Scientists are AlrightUnforced Variations: Jan 2019
Scientists: Resolve to Protect Yourself from Harassment in 2019
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