Man Bites Dog: Extreme Weather and Climate Change Lead National Newscast

The lead story of last night's PBS NewsHour covered recent extreme weather events in the context of global climate change. The 8-minute segment included an extensive interview with Thomas Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center. In a stunning reversal of recent churnalistic practices, the message was not diluted by representation of phony skepticism (except in the spittle-flecked comments online). The real question, of course, is what happens to coverage of the issue when records are not being broken so spectacularly.

The intro:

JUDY WOODRUFF: The past 12 months are the warmest ever recorded in the United States since record-keeping began in 1895. That word comes as a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says climate change, including human factors, has increased the odds of extreme weather. . .

Watch Extreme Weather Records 'Like a Baseball Player on Steroids' on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Michael Mann Interview on NewsChannel 8

Dr. Michael Mann was interviewed on Washington's NewsChannel 8 this morning regarding his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. The climate scientist received top billing over the tax cut food fight.

Scientist Discusses Role of Climate Change in Recent Extreme Weather Events

Following a report on the extreme heat and damage caused by intense storms in the Mid Atlantic region and the wildfires in Colorado, the PBS NewsHour tonight had an interview with NCAR climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, in which he said, "And now we're going outside of the realm of conditions previously experienced."

Climate Change Curriculum: Teachers on the Front Lines

The PBS News Hour reports on science teachers' attempts to present the subject of climate change without political interference. Teachers share their stories in an online extension of the story.

Watch Teachers Endure Balancing Act Over Climate Change Curriculum on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Conversation: Confronting the Climate Change Challenge

Prof. Michael Mann on "Conversations From Penn State":



Full video here.

Steaming Toad Settles Some Science

May I have some more CO2, please?

Study Indicates Increasing El Niño/La Niña Intensity

One of the favorite memes of the global warming deniosphere is that "It's all just natural cycles." With a strong La Niña expected to follow this winter hard on the heels of last year's strong El Niño, it's reasonable to ask whether these events may be increasing in frequency or intensity. A Twitch from Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe points to an interesting study published in the refereed journal Climate Change: A history of ENSO events since A.D. 1525: implications for future climate change, by J. L. Gergis and A. M. Fowler.

Using a variety of proxy records (tree-ring, coral, ice-core and documentary) to reconstruct the "most comprehensive La Niña event record compiled to date", the authors found evidence that the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) cycle has indeed increased in intensity during the most recent century:

Despite their limitations, reconstructions of past climate are unique in their ability to provide a long-term context for evaluating 20th century climate change. The unusual nature of late 20th century ENSO is evident. The height of La Niña activity occurred during the 16th and 19th centuries, while the 20th century is identified as the peak period of El Niño activity. Overall, 55% of extreme El Niño event years reconstructed since A.D. 1525 occur within the 20th century. Although extreme ENSO events are seen throughout the 478-year ENSO reconstruction, approximately 43% of extreme and 28% of all protracted ENSO events reconstructed occur in the 20th century. Of particular note, the post-1940 period alone accounts for 30% of extreme ENSO years noted since A.D. 1525.

The image (click to enlarge), from the paper by Gergis and Fowler (Climatic Change (2009) 92:343–387, DOI 10.1007/s10584-008-9476-z), shows the distribution of ENSO events by century, from the 1500s through the 1900s. The intensity is classified by percentile: extreme (>90th percentile), very strong (70th–90th percentile), strong (50th–70th), moderate (50th–30th) and weak (<30th).

Climate Scientist Awarded National Science Medal

The White House announced today that climate scientist Warren Washington of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has been selected as one of the this year's ten recipients of the National Medal of Science, one of the "the highest honors bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers, and inventors."

A statement by NCAR reported:

Washington is an internationally recognized expert on atmospheric science and climate research and a pioneer in using computer models, which employ fundamental laws of physics to predict future states of the atmosphere, to study Earth’s climate. He has served as a science advisor to former presidents Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush, published almost 200 papers in professional journals, and garnered dozens of national and international awards. He also served on the National Science Board for 12 years and was its chair for 2002 to 2006.

Washington became one of the first developers of groundbreaking atmospheric computer models in collaboration with his colleague, Akira Kasahara, when he came to NCAR in the early 1960s. With support from NSF and the Department of Energy, Washington subsequently worked to incorporate the oceans and sea ice into climate models. Such models were used extensively in the 2007 assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which Washington and a number of scientists at NCAR and around the world shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Washington was born and grew up in Portland, Oregon. He became interested in science in grade school, going on to earn a bachelor’s degree in physics and master’s degree in meteorology from Oregon State University, and then a doctorate in meteorology from Pennsylvania State University. In 1963, he joined NCAR as a research scientist.

Image: Warren Washington, ©UCAR, photo by Carlye Calvin; from University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Video: Global Warming: Is it True?

Here's an excellent video summarizing the scientific data behind the global warming story, posted yesterday:



The author is a former professor of geology who has also held the following posts: Acting President of Oberlin, President of Franklin and Marshall College, President of Reed College, President of the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, and President and Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

Climate Catfight 2.0: Long Term Vs. Short Term

The Weekday program on KUOW radio in Seattle today had a discussion of the disagreement between many broadcast meteorologists and climatologists on the subject of global warming.

The participants:

• John Coleman is a weather forecaster in San Diego. He is one of the founders of The Weather Channel.
• Bob Henson is a science writer for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, who trained as a meteorologist. His book "Weather on the Air" about the history of TV weather is coming out in June.
• Nate Mantua is the co–director for the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group and a professor at the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences.

Time-Lapse History of Human Global CO2 Emissions

From the posted description at YouTube:

Animated time-lapse video of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in map form, spanning the 18th century until this current first decade of the 21st century. Shows the start in England and radiating to Europe, US and then Asia.

The video makes it easy to visualize the geographical distribution and trends in post industrial revolution anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions over 255 years.

Whether you are worried about the consequences of carbon pollution or a sceptic of global warming, you should take a look, since this data is based on recorded use of fossil fuels, gas flaring and cement production, but not land-use changes.

The majority of anthropogenic CO2 emissions are represented in this video by Robert W. Corkery using data from ORNL on a Nasa Blue Marble background image. Music copyright Robert W. Corkery 2007.

Climate Chief Q & A

Thomas Karl, Director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, held an online Q & A session on Friday. His concluding comments:

What I hope we all got out of this is that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented pace, that there is ample evidence for that, and that human activity is largely to blame. It is now up to the United Nations Framework Convention, 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen, to help us solve this problem.

Full text is at the silicon-based WaPo.

AMS Responds to Service-of-Denial Climate Hack

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has issued a statement in response to the recent deniosphere blog storm over the theft and distribution of emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia. The AMS reaffirms its commitment to its Statement on Climate Change, originally drafted in late 2006:

It was developed following a rigorous procedure that included drafting and review by experts in the field, comments by the membership, and careful review by the AMS Council prior to approval as a statement of the Society. The statement is based on a robust body of research reported in the peer-reviewed literature.

The AMS also points out that the artificial controversy generated by the out-of-context quoting of selected emails carries virtually no weight in light of the existing body of climate science:

For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited.

The University of East Anglia updated its statement on the issue on Saturday.

The Economist has an analysis of the hack in its Nov. 26 edition: Mail-strom

Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground relates the hack to the mud-slinging industry in his blog: The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy

Image: From The Economist

Chicago Climate Course

With the overwhelming quantity of global warming material on the Web, it's a lot of work to separate the Drudge Sludge from the Real Deal. CapitalClimate has a set of links to various climate tutorials and references in the left column of this page. A post today at RealClimate points out that David Archer of the University of Chicago has now uploaded video of his entire course called Global Warming. The course description:

This 10-week course for non-science majors focuses on a single problem: assessing the risk of human-caused climate change. The story ranges from physics to chemistry, biology, geology, fluid mechanics, and quantum mechanics, to economics and social sciences. The class will consider evidence from the distant past and projections into the distant future, keeping the human time scale of the next several centuries as the bottom line. The lectures follow a textbook, "Global Warming, Understanding the Forecast," written for the course.

The files are in Quicktime format (m4v), which should be iPod compatible.

New Satellite Data Contradict Antarctic Ice Loss Assumptions

Update: SkepticalScience puts some additional context on the new results:
East Antarctica is now losing ice

Original post:
A paper published online this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, "Accelerated Antarctic ice loss from satellite gravity measurements", shows increased rates of ice reduction in Antarctica. The data from the GRACE satellite confirmed earlier indications of ice loss in West Antarctica at the rate of 132 gigatonnes of ice per year. More surprising, however, was the result that East Antarctica, which had been considered stable, is also losing ice mass. The rate of decline in East Antarctica is estimated at 57 gigatonnes a year. The estimates, based on satellite data from 2002 to 2009, show the maximum loss rates in coastal areas.

Lead author Jianli Chen of the University of Texas Center for Space Research said:

While we are seeing a trend of accelerating ice loss in Antarctica, we had considered East Antarctica to be inviolate. But if it is losing mass, as our data indicate, it may be an indication the state of East Antarctica has changed. Since it's the biggest ice sheet on Earth, ice loss there can have a large impact on global sea level rise in the future.

Image (click to enlarge): GRACE estimate of Antarctic ice loss, from University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research

NewsHour Features Greenland Ice Core Report

Tonight's PBS NewsHour features a report on Greenland ice core analysis:

In July of 2009, Climate Central senior research scientist Heidi Cullen traveled to Greenland with a production team from StormCenter Communications to visit the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling Project, or NEEM. Scientists from 14 nations gather together each summer in northern Greenland, where they work to drill a core of solid ice, looking into the past for clues to future climate change.

The NEEM scientists are focused on a period known as the Eemian, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 10,000 years. During the Eemian, temperatures were between 5 and 9 degrees F warmer than today, and global sea level was 13 to 20 feet higher. Under many climate change scenarios, global temperatures are projected to warm a similar amount this century, so understanding the climate of the Eemian could teach us more about the potential effects of warming today.

Means, Extremes, and Hype-ocracy

October 21 Update:
If the term "weather weenie forum" seems a bit harsh, consider the responses when it was pointed out that the original claim was incomplete, misleading, and therefore possibly subject to misuse. First, the comment posted in the forum:

Not strictly correct as stated:
Means, Extremes, and Hype-ocracy [link to this original post]

Some of the responses:

Nobody implied anything about global warming with the stats....Paranoid much, Steve?

He'll get to it in a minute as soon as his dial-up starts working again

:lol:
Who the Hell are you?

I vote capital punishment for capitol climate. :bike:

He's not a big fan when you question him about his beliefs.

Original post:
Weather geeks love their numbers, and to paraphrase Dr. Freud, "Sometimes a stat is just a stat." With the political polarization of the global warming issue, however, things can sometimes get a little out of hand. As noted here previously, a recent remarkably dank spell has led to several record low maximum temperatures here in the National Capital region, including 2 successive records on Friday and Saturday (October 16 and 17).

Quoting a weather weeenie forum, the earnest young lads at the WaPo's local weather blog have overstated the case: "This was the first time DCA has had back-to-back record low highs in October since 1891." Undoubtedly, this has already made it to the climate deniosphere in some such form as, "WaPo reports global cooling back to 1891 levels." Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the more accurate statement is a lot less sexy: "Of the currently existing record low maximums at Washington, DC for October, the only others on consecutive days were in 1891."

The significant point about extreme records is that they are cumulative. It's a lot easier to set records in the early years because there are fewer previous values to exceed. Therefore, records should become less frequent as time goes by. That means that the 2 consecutive records this year are significant, but not as much as the quote would indicate. A couple of minutes with Excel™, the Swiss Army Knife™ of Data Analysis shows at least one contradictory example nearly 50 years more recently. Consider the record low max of 42° for tomorrow, October 20. It was set in 1940. The current record for today is 45° in 1972. What was the second lowest? It was 46° in 1940, so that was the previous record, and back-to-back records were set in 1940 on the 19th and 20th. There was also at least a third record set in 1940, on the 16th (the one that was broken on Friday).

On the other hand, the October average to date (through the 18th) in 1940 was 59.9°, 1.8° above the average so far this year of 58.1°. Even with declining averages in the next couple of weeks, that's still a long way, though, from the record cold October of 50.7° in 1876 or the 52° tie in 1907, 1917, and 1925.

Besides being tied for the second coldest October, 1925 is also the currently reigning champ for record low maximums; it holds 4 daily records on the 10th, 22nd, 29th, and 31st. Although the daily data are not readily available that far back, those records on the 29th and 31st suggest strongly that 1925 set a third consecutive record on the 30th as well. Interestingly, that month was much more extreme on the high side than the low side, since no currently existing record daily low minimums were set in October that year.

New Study Extends CO2 History Current Level Highest in 20 Million Years

A new study published in the latest issue (October 8) of Science Express, the online version of Science magazine, has extended the history of CO₂ levels back as far as 20 million years ago. The results indicate that current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations of about 385 parts per million (ppm) are equivalent to the highest in that entire interval.

Previous analyses of air bubbles trapped in ice cores had shown that CO₂ levels varied between 180 and 300 ppm over the last 800,000 years. The new technique uses the ratio of boron to calcium in the shells of fossil marine algae. It was calibrated by comparing its results to the measurements from ice cores. The new data show that during the Middle Miocene period from 14 to 20 million years ago, the CO₂ level was around 400 ppm, very close to today's readings. The measurements have an average error of 14 ppm.

During the Middle Miocene, global average temperatures were 5 to 10°F warmer than today. Sea levels at the time were about 75-120 feet higher than today, and there was no permanent ice cap in the Arctic.

Image (click to enlarge): Atmospheric CO₂ levels during the last 1000 years, the last 800,000 years, and 15-20 million years ago, compared with projections for the next century (from UCLA)

What's Up With TV Weathercasters?

Oct. 19 Update: The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media had a post in July on broadcast meteorologists behaving more responsibly.

Oct. 14 Update: The Great Beyond blog at Nature gives the shorter Paul Hudson:

Two scientists who have previously said they didn’t believe in global warming still don’t believe in global warming.

"Climate sceptics celebrate BBC story"


Oct. 11 Update: The BBC article is now being Telegraphed as:
BBC's surreptitious U-turn on global warming
and
The BBC's amazing U-turn on climate change

Original post:
Given that meteorology is so closely related to climatology, it seems rather odd that weather forecasters, particularly broadcasters, have such a hard time understanding the science of global warming. Here in the Washington DC metro area, one notable exception is Bob Ryan, a former president of the American Meteorological Society, who has spoken out on the air and online about the subject. Other members of the broadcast media are either reluctant to become involved in a perceived controversy or are vehement critics of the science. In the latter category is one local weekend substitute who teamed up several years ago to routinely bash the science with a colleague from Baltimore in a one-hour weekly weather program on a squawk radio station (today's top story: "Marylands Own Steny Hoyer Says Screw You to the People").

Online, of course, one of the most notorious anti-science sites is run by a former broadcast meteorologist.

The latest entry in the science-bashing derby comes from across the pond. In an article today on the BBC web site, What happened to global warming?, Paul Hudson, listed as "Climate correspondent, BBC News", repeats the discredited meme of no warming since 1998. The Beeb is normally a reliable source for science coverage, but among other inaccuracies, this article also parrots the recent misrepresentation of a paper by Latif. Who is Paul Hudson? His Beeb bio lists him as a former UK Met Office forecaster who is now a "presenter", as they say over there, on BBC Look North, which is apparently the BBC local service for Yorkshire and the North Midlands.

Do the harsh lights of the TV studio fry the parts of the brain responsible for processing science? My theory is that these folks just become unable to see the forest for the trees when they spend so much energy focusing on hour-to-hour and day-to-day weather.

Google Earth Provides Climate Change Visualization

BNET reports that Google Earth on Tuesday launched a series of guided tours to provide a visualization of climate change projections. According to the official Google blog,

In collaboration with the Danish government and others, we are launching a series of Google Earth layers and tours to allow you to explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet and the solutions for managing it. Working with data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we show on Google Earth the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emissions scenarios that could occur throughout the century.

Also in cooperation with the Danish government, Google has launched the YouTube COP15 channel in anticipation of the Copenhagen climate change conference (fifteenth Conference of the Parties under the United Nations’ Climate Change Convention) to be held in December.

The introductory tour (short version):