Researchers at Stanford and Oregon State Universities have determined that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, contrary to earlier beliefs. Adding iron and other nutrients to produce large algae blooms in the ocean, which would absorb carbon dioxide has been a well known possible solution to global warming and has been talked about on this blog several times. According to the ScienceDaily article, this process only reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide if the carbon absorbed into the algae sinks to deeper waters, which scientists call the "biological pump." The theory of the process is that the more algae in bloom the more carbon is transported from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, via the "biological pump."

Here's where it gets interesting, during the process of testing the theory the researchers determined that there are clear seasonal patterns in both algal abundance and carbon sinking rates. But one thing about this relationship caught the research team by surprise, and it was that less carbon was transported to deep water during summertime bloom than the rest of the year!

"This discovery is very surprising", said lead author Dr. Michael Lutz, now at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "If, during natural plankton blooms, less carbon actually sinks to deep water than during the rest of the year, then it suggests that the Biological Pump leaks.

More material is recycled in shallow water and less sinks to depth, which makes sense if you consider how this ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss", said Lutz. "Ocean fertilization schemes, which resemble an artificial summer, may not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as has been suggested because they ignore the natural processes revealed by this research."

The study concludes that greatly enhanced carbon sequestration should not be expected no matter the location or duration of proposed large-scale ocean fertilization experiments.

This study is no doubt a win for environmentalists, who had major concerns about a large-scale project such as this. Maybe even some taxpayer relief as well!

This widely popular video, which has been out for a while, but I had not seen it, is titled on YouTube as the "Most terrifying video you'll ever see." The video has had nearly 3 million hits and no, it is not about Britney Spears, but it is about global warming. The reason it has 3 million hits is all in the title obviously, which he cleverly came up with, and not because he talks about global warming. But the man in the video makes a very easy to understand presentation about the risk and reward to the world in taking or not taking action to lessen the impact of global warming. The video has also been talked about in the Canadian press this weekend. If you have not seen the video already here is the link below.

"Most terrifying video you'll ever see"

What did you think of his presentation and conclusion? Which "lottery ticket" would you buy?

One of my co-workers here at AccuWeather.com sent me this link. It is titled, "A complete list of things caused by global warming" and wow is this some list! The site provides all these links to stories that have related certain things to global warming. Some of the links are broken, but you get the idea.

Some examples.......invasion of cats, lawyer's income increased, gingerbread houses collapse, suicide and food poisoning.

Feel free to offer some of your favorites in the comment section.

Research by a NOAA scientist and colleagues has determined that the Earth's tropical belt (area between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn) has widened over the past 25 years as the planet warmed. The team compared upper-air measurements and computer model simulations to come this conclusion. Some observational studies have already found a widening of the tropics by several degrees latitude since 1979, according to the NOAA article.

"We looked at how certain aspects of the structure and circulation of the atmosphere have been altered over the past few decades and how models predict they may change as the climate changes in the future,” said Dian Seidel, lead author and research meteorologist with NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory in Silver Spring, Md. “We are seeing indications that a warming climate is associated with expansion of the tropical region toward the poles, and the rate of expansion that has occurred in recent decades is greater than projected by climate models to occur in the 21st century."

Keep in mind, there are still a lot of unanswered questions as to what specific global warming mechanisms are causing this expansion. Some of those possibilities are warming sea surface temperatures, stratospheric ozone depletion and even changes in the El Nino Southern Oscillation system.

The findings of this study were just published in Nature Geoscience.

Seasonal melting this year in the higher altitudes of the Greenland Ice Sheet rose 150% above the 19-year average, according to a news release from NASA. Melting also took place on 25-30 more days than the average.

The large image on the link shows the melt anomaly of Greenland for 2007. The anomaly is measured as the difference between the number of days on which melting occurred in 2007 compared to the average annual melting days over the last 19 years. The red colors indicate more melt days than normal, while the blue is obviously less than normal. The image was made using microwave-frequency data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

Marco Tedesco, a scientist at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology also calculated a melting index. The index is determined by multiplying the number of days that melting took place by the area where melting occurred. The melting insex in the lower altitude ice sheet areas of Greenland during 2007 was 30% higher than average. Taking into account the entire Greenland Ice Sheet, the melting index for 2007 was the 5th highest on record, following 2005, 2002,1998 and 2004.

In a debate before an Institute of Medicine Panel on Global Health, top climate change scientists argued Tuesday whether or not there is concrete evidence linking global warming to the spread of infectious disease.

In the Boston Globe article written by John Donnelly, Mr. Donald S. Burke, dean of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, noted that a 2001 study found that weather fluctuation and seasonal variability may influence the spread of infectious disease. But he believes that such conclusions should be interpreted with caution. "There are no apocalyptic pronouncements," Burke said. "There's an awful lot we don't know." Burke said he is not convinced that climate change can be proven to cause the spread of many diseases, specifically naming dengue fever, influenza, and West Nile virus.

On the other hand, you have Paul R. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, who said clusters of disease outbreaks spread by water, mosquitoes, and rats could clearly be traced to global warming. Epstein said those who "just look at specific diseases can miss the broader picture. If you look at ecological systems, water systems, the extreme weather, the range of wildlife . . . or more profoundly everything that supports a health system, then you can see the linkages. Scope is really important when you look at this."

An example of a documented link of disease to a chnaging weather pattern was exhibited by an earlier outbreak of chikungunya fever along Kenya's coast. Weather patterns caused by La Nina led to drought in east Africa during 2004. Because there was a shortage of fresh water, people rarely emptied buckets around their homes, giving mosquitoes an ideal breeding ground of standing water.

"An outbreak like that is from a convergence of factors, and climate is one of them," said Jean-Paul Chretien, who is the Defense Department's coordinator of overseas laboratories.

Image courtesy of NASA. You can track sunspot activity on a daily basis right here.

After a period of very high solar activity (high numbers of sunspots) in the 20th century, our sun has suddenly gone exceptionally quiet, according to astronomer Dr. David Whitehouse.

We are currently at the end of one cycle of activity and astronomers keep waiting for the sunspots to return and mark the start of the next cycle 24, but so far there has been no sign of that returning anytime soon.

Excerpts taken from Dr. Whitehouse's article, which was posted on the online version of The Independent...........

Sunspots - dark magnetic blotches on the Sun's surface - come and go in a roughly 11-year cycle of activity first noticed in 1843. It's related to the motion of super-hot, electrically charged gas inside the Sun - a kind of internal conveyor belt where vast sub-surface rivers of gas take 40 years to circulate from the equator to the poles and back. Somehow, in a way not very well understood, this circulation produces the sunspot cycle in which every 11 years there is a sunspot maximum followed by a minimum. But recently the Sun's internal circulation has been failing. In May 2006 this conveyor belt had slowed to a crawl – a record low. Nasa scientist David Hathaway said: "It's off the bottom of the charts... this has important repercussions for future solar activity." What's more, it's not the only indicator that the Sun is up to something.

During the 17th century Maunder Minimum, when sunspots were rare, it was also the period of time when the earth's northern hemisphere was sent into what scientists call the "Little Ice Age."

Studies show that by the end of the 20th century the Sun's activity may have been at its highest for more than 8,000 years. Other solar parameters have been changing as well, such as the magnetic field the Sun sheds, which has almost doubled in the past century. But then things turned. In only the past decade or so the Sun has started a decline in activity, and the lateness of cycle 24 is an indicator. The first stirrings of cycle 24 were supposed to arrive a year ago, then NOAA predicted it for March 2007, now they say March of 2008. The first indications that the Sun is emerging from its current sunspot minimum will be the appearance of small spots at high latitude. They usually occur some 12-20 months before the start of a new cycle. These spots haven't appeared yet so cycle 24 will probably not begin to take place until 2009 at the earliest, according to Whitehouse. The longer we have to wait for cycle 24, the weaker it is likely to be. Such behaviour is usually followed by cooler temperatures on Earth.

The tardiness of cycle 24 indicates that we might be entering a period of low solar activity that may counteract man-made greenhouse temperature increases. Some members of the Russian Academy of Sciences say we may be at the start of a period like that seen between 1790 and 1820, a minor decline in solar activity called the Dalton Minimum. They estimate that the Sun's reduced activity may cause a global temperature drop of 1.5C by 2020. This is larger than most sensible predictions of man-made global warming over this period.

Again, you can read the whole story here. Also at the end, Dr. Whitehouse has a list of the past seasons of the sun going back 1000 years.

A Purdue University led study determined that the number of days favorable for severe thunderstorms could more than double in some parts of the United States by the end of the century because of global warming.

The research team used climate models to examine future weather conditions favorable to the formation of severe thunderstorms, according to the ScienceDaily article.

"Areas close to the main sources of humidity, primarily the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, show the most significant increases in potential for storms," said Robert Trapp, the Purdue associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the research team.

"We know from the past that extremes in weather and individual severe storms can be devastating. This study makes a strong statement that a few degrees of global warming could make these severe events much more common than they are today," said Noah Diffenbaugh from Purdue's Climate Change Research Center.

Individual storms were not examined in this study because they are too small for the current climate models to analyze, and also a trigger is needed to initiate a storm, according to team member Harold Brooks from the Severe Storms Laboratory.

Research suggested global warming would lead to an increase in humid air that fuels severe thunderstorms, however, it also suggested global warming would reduce strong winds that contribute to the storms. "The result was a general increase in days more favorable to storm creation. It appears that the increase in warm, humid air near the surface outweighs the reduction in strong winds higher in the atmosphere," said Diffenbaugh.

The results of the study also showed a strong seasonal and regional variation in the effects of climate change, which should not be a surprise.

There has been a lot going on recently in regards to to the global warming or if you prefer, climate change topic. We have the big U.N. Conference on Climate Change still going on in Bali, Indonesia. They just had the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change bill go to a committee vote last week, and by the way it passed 11-8, but it still has a long way to go and no further action (congressional vote) will not be taken until next year. The Seattle Times had an interesting article about climate language, and specifically the terms climate change and global warming. When it comes to talking about, well you know......., we get two versions, climate change or global warming from particular people or organizations. Here's a sampling........

Mainstream media.....global warming, they love that term!
Scientists......climate change, believe it or not!
IPCC (large group of scientists)......climate change. Hey, it's the CC in IPCC.
Democrats....global warming. I agree with the Seattle Times.
Republicans......climate change. Seems about right.
Environmentalists.........global warming. That's obvious.
Auto Industry........climate change.
Hollywood.........global warming.
NOAA..........global warming.
EPA..........climate change.
NASA.......both climate change and global warming.
Department of Energy......climate change
Accuweather.com......global warming....It's the Global Warming Center.
President Bush.....seems to go both ways now (does this count as flip-flopping?)
Al Gore........global warming.......preferred phrase.

A new one gaining steam is global climate change.

What term do you prefer? I'll take a vote. Also, feel free to add to the list.

After a 16-month investigation, a new report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee came to the "inescapable" conclusion that "the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science, mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming." The committee is chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Republicans on the committee called the report a "political attack" and their findings question the democrat's conclusion and investigative methods. The White House called the allegations untrue, according to the ABC News article.

According to the report, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) controlled which government scientists could respond to media inquiries, thereby suppressing dissemination of scientific views that could conflict with administration policies. Scientists who denied a link between stronger hurricanes and global warming were given approval by CEQ over scientists who suggested a link. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, White House approval for interviews with journalists became more prevalent. The committee obtained 27,000 documents from the CEQ during the investigation.

The report also stated that the White House minimized the signs of climate change by editing government climate change reports and editing scientific testimony to Congress.

"Claims that the administration interfered with scientists and with science are false." said CEQ chairman James Connaughton.

"A thorough investigation would have sought further evidence to complete the record before drawing conclusions based on the uncorroborated statements of one individual," the Republican report said.

Here is the link to the entire report (pdf file).

Update (12/12/07)........

In a follow up to this story, ABC News has a report in which Max Mayfield, the former director of the National Hurricane Center denies the committee's report that he was politically pressured to downplay the link between global warming and hurricanes during congressional testimony. Here is the link to the story.

As a kid growing up along the Rhode Island coast I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the beach and swim on a regular basis during the summer months. I hated sun bathing, so my place was in the water. Other than a thunderstorm and those dreaded crabs, the one thing that could ruin a nice swim in the bay was the seaweed. That stuff would just magically appear from out of the blue and just surround you, and by that time I was done for the day. I also remember throwing the stuff at my older sister and she would start screaming, which was funny at the time. Anyway, speaking of seaweed, a group of scientists at the Climate Conference in Bali believe that seaweed could be a potent weapon against global warming by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at rates similar to the largest rain forests, according to an AP article. The seaweed's rapid rate of photosynthesis is the main factor in its effectiveness in carbon absorption.

While most of the recent focus to carbon sinks have been on the forests, seaweed scientists (I still can not get over that title! Imagine your dad asking "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "I want to be a seaweed scientist daddy!") believe the world should look to the sea, where nearly 8 million tons of seaweed and algae are cultivated every year, especially in Asia. The scientists believe that more efficient cultivation methods could make this work. Seaweed can also produce clean-burning bio-fuels.

On the other hand, skeptics say seaweed is cultivated and harvested in cycles of only months compared to trees, which are more effective at carbon storage since they can last for years. Floating seaweed farms could also complicate fishing and shipping activities.

Update........

Oh, I almost forgot, If you were wondering what happened to part 2 of the Fred Singer video interview last week it will be posted either tomorrow or Friday. Katie was unable to finish editing the Singer video last week since she was in New York City doing a number of interviews for Headline Earth. One of those interviews was with the famous Dr. James Hansen, and you will be able to see part one of her three-part, one-on-one interview with Dr. Hansen starting next week.

Natural climate variations, which tend to involve localized changes in sea surface temperature, may have a larger effect on hurricane activity than the more uniform patterns of global warming, a new study suggests.

Warmer oceans due to global warming are generally assumed to provide a more favorable environment for hurricane development and intensification, but according to the study from the journal Nature, other factors such as atmospheric temperature and moisture come into play, which in my opinion is fairly obvious to a meteorologist. Anyway, Dr. Gabriel Vecchi from NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) and Brian J. Soden from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science went further and explored the relationship between changes in sea surface temperature and tropical cyclone "potential intensity", which is a measure that provides an upper limit on cyclone (hurricane) intensity.

Excerpts taken from the Science Daily article.........

They found that warmer oceans do not alone produce a more favorable environment for storms because the effect of remote warming can counter, and sometimes overwhelm, the effect of local surface warming. "Warming near the storm acts to increase the potential intensity of hurricanes, whereas warming away from the storms acts to decrease their potential intensity," Vecchi said.

Their study found that long-term changes in potential intensity are more closely related to the regional pattern of warming than to local ocean temperature change. Regions that warm more than the tropical average are characterized by increased potential intensity, and vice versa. "A surprising result is that the current potential intensity for Atlantic hurricanes is about average, despite the record high temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean over the past decade." Soden said. "This is due to the compensating warmth in other ocean basins." "If the Atlantic warms more slowly than the rest of the tropical oceans, we would expect a decrease in the upper limit on hurricane intensity," Vecchi added.

A group of U.S. scientists studying updated climate models have determined that previous projections had underestimated the process now driving ice loss and indicate that the northern polar waters could be ice-free during the summers by 2013.

Actually, according to professor Wieslaw Maslowski, a researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, the 2013 projection does not even take into account the last two Arctic sea ice minima seasons of 2005 and 2007, since the study used data sets from 1979-2004 to make their future projections. "So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative," said Maslowski.

Maslowski believes other, more conservative model projections seriously underestimated the amount of heat delivered to the sea ice by oceanic advection, such as how warm water is moving into the Arctic basin from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

According to the study from the BBC article, it has become apparent in recent years that the real, observed rate of summer ice melting is now starting to run well ahead of the models.

Arctic ice expert, professor Peter Wadhams from Cambridge University, UK has used sonar data collected by submarines to show that the volume loss is outstripping even area withdrawal, which agrees with Maslowski's work. "The ice is thinning faster than it is shrinking; and some modellers have been assuming the ice was a rather thick slab," said Wadhams. "The implication is that this is not a cycle, not just a fluctuation. The loss this year will precondition the ice for the same thing to happen again next year, only worse."

Noted global warming skeptic Dr. Fred Singer answers more of your questions in the final part of this particular interview series, which is hosted by our own Katie Fehlinger. Singer also gives his opinion on Al Gore and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Katie talks about the global warming threat to the Emperor Penquin. Next week, Katie meets up with Dr. James Hansen of NASA.

Through the first eleven months, 2007 is so far the second warmest year in the period of instrumental data, second to 2005, according to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global temperature analysis, which is led by Dr. James Hansen, who will be featured in an interview next week with our own Katie Fehlinger.

What is noteworthy, according to Hansen, is the fact that the unusual warmth in 2007 occurred when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the Pacific has entered the cool phase, La Nina cycle.

In the analysis from Hansen's website, Hansen believes 2007 will remain in second place after the full year is taken into account, but there is also the slight chance that it could slip to third if December is unusally cold.

According to the GISS analysis..........

--The global mean temperature so far this year is running almost 1 degree F. (0.6 C) above normal.
--The greatest warming this year has been in the Arctic.
--The cooler, Pacific equatorial region west of South America shown on the temperature anomaly map reflects the building La Nina phase of the southern oscillation.

Hansen believes the natural variations of the southern oscillation and the solar cycle have minor, but not entirely insignificant effects on year-to year temperature change. Barring the unlikely event of a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next 2-3 years.

Hansen also acknowledges a minor data processing error in the GISS temperature analysis in early 2007, which he says does not affect the present analysis. The error impacted only 1.6% of the earth's surface and the error was immeasurable globally (~0.003 degrees C).

I recently (Dec 6th) blogged about the Sun's inactivity and how it could counteract global warming. At that time, there was still no signs of the new incoming cycle 24. Well, according to NASA, it appears that Cycle 24 might have started on December 11th.

"New solar cycles always begin with a high-latitude, reversed polarity sunspot," explains David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "Reversed polarity" means a sunspot with opposite magnetic polarity compared to sunspots from the previous solar cycle. "High-latitude" refers to the sun's grid of latitude and longitude. Old cycle spots congregate near the sun's equator. New cycle spots appear higher, around 25 or 30 degrees latitude.

Last Tuesday, a small region appeared in the higher altitudes of the sun (shown on the image above) and it was magnetically reversed, but there was no sunspot. If the fields coalesce into a dark sunspot, then scientists will declare that Solar Cycle 24 has officially begun, according to the Science@NASA article.

Latest image of the sun today still does not show any sunspots in the higher latitudes, at least from what I can tell.

Images courtesy of NASA.

Here is another link to this story.

Observations from the 15-month Tara Schooner Expedition in the Arctic have determined that surface ozone in the Arctic can completely disappear in just a matter of days.

Ozone measurements from the ship in late April of 2007 found virtually no ice-level ozone for a 15+ day period, which is measured in the first 100-200 meters of air. According to the BBC News article, ice-level ozone falls victim to reactive bromine atoms released naturally from briny Arctic waters.

The scientists speculate that a warming Arctic would lead to more slushy ice, which could assist in the release of bromine, resulting in even longer periods of ozone loss, limiting the region's ability to deal with pollutants in the atmosphere.

"Ozone is the source for the 'vacuum cleaner of the atmosphere' - the molecule OH. So if we don't have as much ozone, we can't make as much hydroxide. If we then pump pollutants from mid-latitudes into the Arctic, they may just stay there," explained Dr Jan Bottenheim from Environment Canada.

You can see the track the ship has taken across the Arctic toward the end of the article. There is also an interesting part on the observations of "frazil ice" at the bottom of the page.

A few days ago I blogged about a letter signed by over 100 experts of various fields to the United Nations, which said that attempting to stop global warming was futile and that the IPCC process was flawed (see below). There was also another letter to the United Nations, that was signed by nearly 200 scientists which strongly urged immediate action by leading goverments to combat global warming. To be fair, I should have linked to both letters in the initial blog, which would have provided a more balanced post in which you could compare the letters. To make up for my mistake, here is a summary of what was written in that letter......

The letter starts out by addressing the 2007 IPCC report which states that we are now at least 90% certain that human activities are contributing to a warming planet and that many millions of people will be at risk from extreme events if the trend is not halted soon.

--The letter states that global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by 50% below their 1990 levels by 2050.

--Greenhouse gas emissions in the long run need to be stabilized at a level well below 450 ppm.

--Global emissions must peak and decline in the next 10-15 years in order to stay below the expected 2 degrees celsius increase.

TalkClimateChange.com did a nice post a couple days ago in comparing the two letters. Here is the link.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the earlier post from Saturday which I titled "Attempting to stop Global Warming is Futile and a Mistake, says letter to the UN

Global warming is a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages and it is not possible to stop climate change. The Bali and the IPCC process is a mistake, and will ultimately be futile. These are the conclusions from an open letter to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, which was signed by more than 100 specialists from around the world with expertise ranging from climate science to economics and biology.

The letter, which was assembled by Robert M. Carter, professor at the Marime Geophysical Laboratory of James Cook University in Australia, argues against the existence of consensus and rejects claims of abnormal climate change. The letter also disputes the IPCC process and claims new research has emerged making the IPCC reports "materially oudated".

The IPCC's Summaries for Policy Makers are the most commonly read IPCC reports among politicians and non-scientists, yet, according to the letter, these summaries are prepared by a small core writing team with final drafts approved by government representatives. A great majority of IPCC contributers, reviewers and other qualified scientists are not involved in the preparation of the documents.

The letter, which was posted on the National Post from Canada, also states that the IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. Also, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions.

By the way, one of the signers to this letter was Dr. Fred Singer, who is featured today in a video question and answer with our own Katie Fehlinger just below. Here is the link to all of the signatories of this open letter.

Satellite view of dust moving off the coast of western Africa

Evidence from the MODIS instrument on NASA satellites has determined that it was indeed Saharan dust that was responsible for one-third of the drop in North Atlantic sea surface between June 2005 and 2006. This drop in sea surface temperature may have contributed to the difference in hurricane activity between the two seasons. There were 15 hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin in 2005, but only 5 in 2006 as the sea surface temperatures remained relatively cool. By the way, this past season also saw less activity than what was earlier predicted.

Satellite view of Saharan Dust covering the Caribbean

According to the study by William Lau and Kyu-Myong Kim from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the dust effectively blocked sunlight from reaching the sun's surface and accounted for a 30-40% drop in temperature during the period. The actual drop in the North Atlantic was between 0.37 and 0.72 degrees F., or one-third of the total sea surface cooling of the North Atlantic.

"Previous studies have looked at how hot, dry air associated with a Saharan dust outbreak affects an individual storm, but our study is the first to focus on dust's radiative effect on sea surface temperatures, which may affect storms for the entire season. Nobody had suggested that link before," Lau says.

Scientists are also studying a possible link between the African dust and a high incidence of respiratory diseases and bronchial asthma on the island of Cuba.

This post was taken from AccuWeather.com expert senior meteorologist Joe Bastardi's column, which is available on AccuWeather.com Professional.. Joe specializes in hurricane and long-range forecasting at AccuWeather.com. I thought his post from Tuesday would be of interest to the global warming crowd. Here is the full unedited post...

Historic La Nina in the Making

The current La Nina has briefly leveled off at -1.5 is about to turn down once again. The CFS model is catching this as it can see the renewed charge of cold water in Nino 1.2 region that is coming west. This is the revenge of the Thermohaline circulation and the big implication is that it is a kick in the teeth of people pushing man-made global warming.

Why?

Because this is exactly what should be happening in the natural cycle that develops when the AMO is in its warm state. It is the reason for why we see such powerful La Ninas; they are counterweights. But this one is very important for three reasons.

1) We may see the lowest recorded three-month mean in 3.4. The lowest I can find in the three-month running mean is -2.0. The CFS is forecasting -2.5. Since farther away from 0 it gets, the tougher it is, the forecast is suspect as -2.5. If it were baseball, it's like pitching back-to-back perfect games, possible, but not likely. First of all it has to hit -2.1, which would be the lowest and a record, that is perfect game one, then to keep falling is even more miraculous. However there is reason to believe it COULD happen, as we are seeing a pick-up of the easterlies and renewed cold water is coming from the east. I did not see the report mention the extremity of the forecast by the CFS, in terms of the La Nina, you are looking at the extreme let's say that the 1993 super-storm attained, an extreme COLD event, not ever recorded before.

2) The time it is forecasted. I have not seen a La Nina or for that matter and El Nino "peak" in the three-month period centered on March. The reason is the driving mechanisms that respond to the seasons can not sustain it. So the forecast is, if you will a third perfect game in a row, if it came true, the triple whammy of strongest ever, strongest by an unheard-of amount, and occurring at a time that has never happened before. The late Norm MacDonald would look at something like this and say ... that won't happen, because he had never seen it happen before, and then it wouldn't. So why should this? Well, that leads us into the next point.

3) Suppose it gets close or breaks it be a little bit. It is still a sign that the oceanic responses to the warming cycle is working! This is what happens in nature, so it's a major thorn in the side of people blaming people. There is not rout and the fight is one to take the earth back to where it was 25-30 years ago when the talk was of ice age (and it will be again). It is simple; look at history and one can see it. But suppose it is right, or close, the implication of this COLD event cannot be underestimated as far as what it means to global temps. This has to be factored into the entire system, and the development of questionable land-based data with suspect thermometers and heat islands has been given unearned credit in the global temps. But it's interesting to note how there is not a lot of attention being given to this La Nina as far as what the LONGER TERM CLIMATIC IMPLICATIONS ARE. It simply gets blamed for everything that goes wrong with the weather, and then somehow it's caused by global warming, which it is, but not human-induced, simply part of the natural cycle.

Now why so strong? Well, the earthquake idea was laid out several months ago and is the reason why in spring, way back the hurricane conference, attendees heard my theory on a LATE STARTING LA NINA that would try to reach moderate levels at the end of the hurricane season. Let's go back and remember, all one needs to do is look at the ENSO archives, until middle and late summer, there was no forecast from the center of a La Nina, as it is now their ideas are still conservative given the audacity of the CFS. It's interesting to note that when the warm cycle of the El Nino was coming on, and we were taking apart the idea it would get that strong and in fact touting the reversal, there was talk of that becoming the strongest El Nino ever. However there is hardly a peep I can hear, though I am banging the drum, for what is looking more and more like an event that may make history.

Now one may say this is all self-serving hogwash, but I say it is part of an idea that has to do with what that earthquake may have meant. Please go back through the archives and read that if you haven't. But let's take this a step further. Suppose the idea that the earthquake in some way delayed this La Nina by helping cause the last El Nino (one has to answer the question on the rapid SOI variances that followed for a year and a half, something jarred the weather) and the result was a damming up of the La Nina so that what should have started a bit earlier and not been as strong, literally snapped back strongly the other way so we are seeing this now. What would happen in the grander, longer-term forecast that lower solar constants that are anticipated as the century matures, increased volcanic activity because the signs are there, and the Earth's natural cycle fighting back, all acted together at once. The threat is the rubberband snaps and there is rapid cooling. The fact is the warmer it gets the harder it is to get warmer, unless there is some kind of increase in the total energy available. It is the huge hole in the cheese of the global warming argument, that there is only so much water vapor that can be held before there is condensation. And the more water vapor and warming, the more it will start to snow, maybe not down to sea level in Atlantic City, but in the arctic deserts (we are seeing that now) and in higher ground. The first step of the warming in the 30s was to dry things out and warm things up so much, there were articles in Denver newspapers in the late 30s that the glaciers would be gone within 10 years! This has happened before. But there was not the amount of rumblings we are hearing from people who study the sun for its possible reduction of radiation, though slight, has a major cumulative effect on a black body such as Earth, such as the opposite in the run up over the past years has had. And the wild card of volcanic activity is also a big problem.

Scoff if you want, or close your mind to this, but these are things to think about. You see we are treading on uncharted ground now, or may be very soon, but it is a COLD EVENT in an ocean that may be the uncharted event, and such an event in the tropical Pacific takes out a major source region of heat, for the decrease of temperatures in a wet bulb area of 80 is far more important than an increase in wet bulb areas that are near and below 0! Years from now, when I have left the playing field, if I am right, then maybe you will be talking about these ideas to your children. But at the very least, what we all should do is constantly look with an open mind and try to reason out what we are seeing.

Now many of you may be wondering, what is the bottom line of the longer-term forecast given this historic (hysteric?) idea? But that is not what this post is all about and this post should have raised enough eyebrows so that at the very least, you are curious enough to examine some of these ideas, and come up with what they may mean on your own. That is what open debate in a free society is all about, and what has made us find the right answer in so many things, even we rumble, bumble and stumble our way to it.

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV), which according to the New York Times Politics Blog is a left-leaning, non-partisan environmental group has come out with a new interactive site which allows you to compare the candidates (Democrat and Republican) positions on climate change and energy.

The report is based on the contenders responses to an environmental questionnaire. In the Republican race, John McCain stands head and shoulders above the field, since he is the only Republican candidate to come out with a detailed plan to address global warming, according to LCV president Gene Karpinski. For the democrats, there are not too many differences,but Karpinski notes that Bill Richardson's proposal, which calls for a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is the boldest. Obviously, you can tell where the LCV stands on the issue.

Here is the link to the LCV voter guide on global warming.

By the way, the LCV is not endorsing any candidate, according to Karpinski.

Which candidate's climate change and energy plan do you like the best? Which one is the worst in your opinion?

The 2007 Energy bill was signed into law by President Bush yesterday. Here are some of the highlights of the bill taken from the Environment News Service article......

--35 mpg standard mandated by 2020, which is the first increase in vehicle fuel economy standards in 32 years.

--100-watt incandescent light bulbs will be gone by 2012 and 40-watt ones will be history by 2014. I have already replaced about 80% of my household lighting with the compact fluorescent ones and not one has burned out yet in 3 years.

--The law creates a 15 billion gallon renewable fuels standard fro grain based fuels, which will be met primarily by corn based ethanol.

"The bill I sign today takes a significant step because it will require fuel producers to use at least 36 billion gallons of biofuel in 2022. This is nearly a fivefold increase over current levels," President Bush said. "It will help us diversify our energy supplies and reduce our dependence on oil."

Not everyone was happy with the passage of the bill...........

Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) said the measure would increase the cost of fuel, triggering a recession. "The cost of building our homes is going to go up because of all the new building code restrictions for so-called ‘green buildings' in this bill. The cost of electricity is going to go up. The cost of manufacturing our automobiles and our trucks is going to go up."

"The cost of appliances is going to go up because of all the new efficiency standards we're putting in for appliances. And even the cost of light bulbs is going to go up. The light bulbs that light this chamber right now will be illegal when this bill becomes totally implemented. The incandescent light bulb that you can get for 90 cents or 50 cents at Wal-Mart is going to be outlawed," said Barton. "That's a cause for recession."

On the other side.......

"The lighting section of the energy bill is a bright light in an otherwise underachieving piece of legislation," said Earth Day Network President Kathleen Rogers. "Along with the requirement that automobile fleets average 35 miles per gallon and building efficiency improvements, Congress took a very modest step in the right direction, but sold out to the oil and gas industries by approving huge subsidies to companies that are experiencing record profits."

What is your opinion of the new Energy Law? Too much? Not enough? Or a good compromise.

In this week's Headline Earth video, Katie Fehlinger visits NASA lead Scientist Dr. James Hansen. Hansen is well known across the world for his research in climatology and raising awareness about global warming. Dr. Hansen has been the subject of this blog and within the comment section on many occasions. This video interview is part one of a series with Dr. Hansen

A recent study just reported in the December 20th issue of Nature shows that a large part of the greenhouse gases during the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum phase 55 million years ago was injected as a result of a chain-reaction of events. This period, which saw rapid global warming, is seen as the best fossil analogue to predicted future climate trends, according to the Science Centric article.

The Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum was caused by a relatively rapid increase increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, which was determined using sediments that accumulated 55 million years ago on the ocean floor in what is now New Jersey. Through a chain-reaction of events CO2 concentrations likely became higher through intense volcanism and warmed the planet as a result. This is interesting, as you would think the massive amounts of ash and dust particles released from all the eruptions would lead to a cooler planet, as we have documentated in much more recent history. Anyway, as a result, marine methane hydrates, which are ice-like structures, melted and released large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, which further accelerated the warming (positive feedback) since methane is a strong greenhouse gas. The end result was a 6 degree celsius increase in temperature.

The research team says that the study confirms that climate warming can enforce mechanisms that inject massive amounts of stored carbon into the atmosphere and that current/future warming will likely see similar feedbacks.

Happy Holidays to everyone! Time for me to take a much needed break from this stuff and get recharged in time for Wednesday. I will try to keep the comment section up to date as best I can, but family comes first. Regards, Brett

Wired.com came out with an interesting article several days ago, listing in their opinion, the ten most radical geo-engineering ideas to fight global warming. Here is the link to The Year's 10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Earth. Some of the more extreme measures........

--Building an army of 300 foot tall scrubbers which absorb CO2. What happens to the CO2 after that is still unanswered according to the article.

--Dusting hurricanes.

--Building a giant space solar shield using 16 trillion mirrors!

Which one is your favorite? For those of you who are regulars in the comment section, do you think Patrick's tunnels should be on the list?

Once again we go back to the last severe global warming episode (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM) 55 million years ago, thanks to an article from Discovery News.

Marine scientists from California have determined that the massive accumulations of the mineral barite on the bottom of the ocean indicates that the PETM was accompanied by several thousands of years of ocean plant life kicking into high gear. That massive increase in ocean plant life captured excessive carbon from the atmosphere and deposited it to the ocean floor where it was buried. Barite, otherwise known as barium sulfate, is a good indicator of ocean plant productivity according to Adina Paytan, an oceanographer at the University of California. When organisms in the life-rich upper waters die, they sink to the sea floor along with the barium since all living things contain a lot of barium in their tissues. In very deep water, the barium reaches its saturation point in the water and combines with sulfur to create the mineral barite.

According to the study, the large accumulations of barite may very well indicate that the direct products of living organisms may have cooled the atmosphere during the PETM.

"This study is suggesting that the peaks in barite observed in the deep sea...are accurately reflecting changes in the accelerated, though temporary, sequestration of carbon by one process -- higher algal production," PETM expert James Zachos told Discovery News.

That doesn't mean Earth is likely to repair the damage done by current global warming in any timely way, however, he cautions

According to Zachos, the accumulation of barite went on for 170,000 years, which indicates that it takes much, much longer to cool off a hot earth than to heat up a cool planet.

In part two of the interview with lead NASA scientist James Hansen, host Katie Fehlinger takes a closer look at what happened when NASA was accused of issuing false temperature data and at Dr. Hansen being linked to the global cooling forecasts from the 1970s.

Katie also takes a look at the impact of global warming on the clown fish habitat (remember Nemo) and 'Lights Out America'.

There have been some requests to talk more about the ongoing La Nina phase of the El Nino Southern Oscillation cycle (ENSO) in the equatorial Pacific, especially since it is clearly having an impact on the weather patterns across parts of the globe and certainly here in North America. Here's the latest........

--Moderate-strength La Nina currently across the tropical Pacific.
--NOAA predicts continued La Nina conditions through Spring 2008.

Current sea surface anomalies from the Pacific, courtesy of NOAA. (Note the large area of colder than normal sea surface water covering a large part of the equatorial Pacific). Stronger than normal easterly winds over the region push warmer surface waters westward, while allowing colder water to upwell from the South American Pacific coast and expand westward near and along the equator.

The latest Outgoing Longwave Radiation anomaly (OLR) image below indicates a large area of suppressed precipitation/convection (orange shading) along the equator between 150 east and 145 west longitude.

--Stronger than normal easterly low-level winds (consistent with La Nina) are present over the central and western equatorial Pacific as shown by the purple shading in the graphic below.

--The current Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) for the Sep-Nov 2007 time period is -1.1 celsius. The value is the sea surface temperature departure from average in the Nino 3.4 region and is the principle measure for monitoring ENSO. The ONI value for a La Nina needs to be -0.5 celsius or less, while the value for an El Nino needs to be +0.5 celsius or greater. The lowest ONI value in recent time was -2.0. Here is a link to the historical ONI index.

The graphic below shows the Nino regions.

--There must be 5 consecutive overlapping 3-month seasons to be considered a full fledged La Nina or El Nino. So far for this current La Nina we are up to 3, but it is just a matter of time.

--ENSO models predict La Nina to continue into the spring.

--The latest CFS forecasts predict the La Nina to further strengthen and perhaps reach record level by spring (-2.8 by March from the ensemble mean forecast shown by the thicker blue line in the graph below). Joe Bastardi alluded to this in his post last week.
Keep in mind though, I have seen these forecasts bust pretty badly over the past several years. Nothing is certain.

What could this mean for the weather patterns across North America the rest of this winter if these ENSO forecasts hold true?

--Very strong Pacific jet stream should deliver many more storms to the West coast, especially from northern California up through southern BC.

--Arctic air only makes brief visits into the lower 48 and pretty much hangs out from Alaska through northern Canada and down toward northern BC and Alberta.

--Southeastern U.S. high pressure ridge stays strong and keeps much of the southern states warmer than normal, with the Southeast remaining drier than normal.

--Central Plains to the Northeast U.S. milder than normal.

--Midwest/Great Lakes into Ontario/Quebec continue to see more storms than normal, but even though it's milder than normal snowfall remains above-normal.

NOAA has a great ENSO status site (pdf) that is updated weekly.