It's that time again (yes, it is finally April!) to check out the latest global sea-surface temperature anomalies. Overall, it looks like the blues are beginning to win out a little bit over the warmer-than-normal yellows and reds, especially in the southern hemisphere, including a good chunk of the Indian and Pacific Oceans as we look at the latest image from March 27th, 2008. White areas are where there is a high enough % of sea ice.

"Patrick Henry" one of our regular commentators on this blog, was kind enough to eliminate the color table between the "normal" range of -0.5 to 0.5 on the map above with his software. Now, you can really see how the blues (below normal) clearly dominate the yellows and oranges (above normal) for that particular day late last month.

Here are the global sea-surface anomalies from around March 27th of the previous 4 years.......

2007

2006

2005

2004

La Nina

Also, it looks pretty certain that La Nina peaked out over the winter. Based on the latest imagery you can see the coolest anomalies continue to retreat farther to the west away from South America, while being replaced by slightly above-normal anomalies near and along the equator.

The chart below of the 4 ENSO (El Nino- Southern Oscillation) regions and the trend of the sea-surface temperature anomalies over the past month also support the idea of a weakening La Nina.

Here is a link to one ENSO forecast probability from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. If you look at the first chart you can see that by late summer there is a greater chance of neutral conditions compared to La Nina conditions. Other models still predict La Nina conditions through the summer, but trending weaker.

Mike Smith, who is the CEO of WeatherData Services, Inc, which by the way is an AccuWeather company located in Wichita, KS, recently performed an interesting experiment in his own back yard, and he asked me if we could post this on the global warming blog. Here is Mike's post.............

Recently, several articles have appeared in the popular press pertaining to "black carbon" or "soot." In the context of melting glaciers, at least one of these articles stated that the soot warmed the atmosphere and contributed to global warming. This is a misstatement as to the actual effect of soot on frozen surfaces such as glaciers and polar ice caps.

In order to understand the effect of soot, the concept of "albedo" has to be explained. The definition of albedo is "The ratio of the outgoing solar radiation reflected by an object to the incoming solar radiation incident upon it." Fresh, pure white snow has an albedo of nearly 100% -- in other words, just about all of the solar energy striking the snow is reflected back into space. Since the heat is reflected rather than absorbed, the solar energy has relatively little melting effect.

However, if the 'color' of the snow is darked by soot, the albedo drops dramatically. Since the soot absorbs some of the radiation that otherwise would have been reflected, heat transfers from the soot into the snow resulting in an accelerated rate of melting. It is important to state that this heat transfer can cause melting to increase even if the ambient temperature remains constant.

I conducted a backyard demonstration on Christmas Eve 2007.

Here is a photo of fresh snow cover in my backyard over which I had tossed some eight month-old fireplace ash under a totally blue sky

Keeping in mind this demonstration is occurring just two days after the winter solstace (meaning the albedo effect is less than it would have been under clear skies in February or March), in just one hour, the greater melting in the ash-covered areas is already apparent:

After four hours, the ash-free area has a depth of 5.5 inches

At the same time, the ash-covered areas have a depth of about 2.5 inches. Multiple measurements were taken (note ruler hold about an inch in front of ruler) which yielded an average depth of 2.5 inches.

The areas without soot melt about 0.5 inches of snow during this 4-hour period while the soot-covered areas melt 3.5 inches.

For visual comparison purposes, note the ruler hole in the non-ash-covered snow above the shadow.

Even tiny amounts of soot pollution can induce high amounts of melting. There is little or no ash at upper right.. Small amounts of ash in the lower and left areas of the photo cause significant melting at the two-hour mark in the demonstration.

Any discussion pertaining to melting glaciers or icecaps must consider the accelerated melting caused by soot pollution in addition to any contribution from changing ambient temperatures.

Mike's experiment will also be featured on Roger Pielke Senior's blog.

Photos: Copyright 2007, Michael R. Smith

Mike Smith is CEO of WeatherData Services, Inc., An AccuWeather Company. Smith is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a Certified Consulting Meteorologist.

NOTE: I will be out of the office Wednesday and Thursday as I drive back to Indiana to finally bring my wife and new daughter home after almost 4 weeks. My daughter is eating well and has reached the 6 lb mark. Just so you know, I do not expect there to be an updated blog on Thursday. Paul and Marlene will update the comment section while I am gone. I should be back on Friday. Brett.

An example of a climate model, in this case NOAA's GFDL CM2.1 model.

A study by meteorologists from the University of Utah shows that current climate models are indeed quite accurate and a valuable tool for seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends. The study will be published today in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. I expect to see some interesting comments from our readers in regards to this.

Co-authors Thomas Reichler and Junsu Kim measured how well climate models actually do their job in simulating climate. They compared the output of about 50 national and international climate models that were developed over the past two decades against observations for present climate.

Excerpt from the press release........

"Coupled models are becoming increasingly reliable tools for understanding climate and climate change, and the best models are now capable of simulating present-day climate with accuracy approaching conventional atmospheric observations," said Reichler. "We can now place a much higher level of confidence in model-based projections of climate change than in the past."

Other observations from the study......

--Models used for the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) paper have reached an unprecedented level of realism.

--Climate models built in the U.S. are now some of the best worldwide. (This reminds me of what you typically hear from the American auto industry.)

Here is the link to the full study (pdf. file)

By the way, after almost 4 weeks, my wife and new daughter are home! Hopefully, things will slowly get back to normal now. It was one crazy March! Brett

Research from a group of scientists at Lancaster and Durham Universities in the UK contradicts the idea from some climate change skeptics that changes in the cosmic ray's coming to the earth from the sun determine cloudiness and temperature, leading to global global warming.

The UK team found no evidence of a link between the ionizing cosmic rays and the production of low cloud cover.

"This is of vast significance because if the skeptics are right, it would mean we’re wasting our time trying to cut greenhouse gases. But we couldn’t find the link they were proposing which means we are right to be cutting carbon emissions," said particle physicist professor Terry Sloan of Lancaster University.

The cosmic ray theory was developed by Danish scientist Dr. Henrik Svensmark. Dr. Svensmark suggested that when the solar wind is strong, the planet warms up because fewer clouds are produced and more of the sun's heat reaches the surface. Here is a DiscoverMagazine article from last summer about Svensmark and his research.

Prof Sloan’s team investigated the link by looking for times and places on Earth which had documented weak or strong cosmic ray arrivals, and seeing if that affected the cloudiness – but they found no significant link, according to the Lancaster University press release.

Below is from the BBC news article.........

Dr. Svensmark was not convinced by their findings. Terry Sloan has simply failed to understand how cosmic rays work on clouds," he told BBC News.

"He predicts much bigger effects than we would do, as between the equator and the poles, and after solar eruptions; then, because he doesn't see those big effects, he says our story is wrong, when in fact we have plenty of evidence to support it."

But Terry Sloan adds............

"We tried to corroborate Svensmark's hypothesis, but we could not; as far as we can see, he has no reason to challenge the IPCC - the IPCC has got it right.

"So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions," says Sloan.

There is a fairly simple explanation of the solar wind right here..

This is a link to a plot of the solar wind speed (the yellow lined plot) over the past 7 days, courtesy of NOAA. Note: the speed has increased to nearly 600 km/sec as of Friday night after being down near 300 km/sec on Thursday night. The average speed for the solar wind is about 400 km/sec. 700-800 km/sec is considered high, while 300 km/sec is considered low.

Here is the link to the entire study, which was posted in the Environmental Research Letters.

Note: The host of the comment section has been recently inundated with a tremendous amount of spam. We are talking one (spam) coming in every minute at certain times of the day since this weekend, which has seriously clogged up the section. We have been dealing with this issue for well over a year and for the most part it just has been a minor annoyance, but I cannot say that anymore, especially with what I have seen over the past 3-4 days. With all that stupid spam to delete and sift through there will be times when some of the legitimate commentary gets bypassed by accident, resulting in it not being posted. We are currently looking at potential solutions to this growing problem. Thanks for your patience. Brett.

On to the topic at hand..............

In a follow up to my previous blog titled "Researchers find no sun/climate change link" I bring you a link to David Archibald's March presentation to the International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), which is titled "Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States". In his presentation, Archibald tries to demonstrate that the sun does indeed drive the earth's climate, contrary to the UK study, led by Terry Sloan. Archibald uses the proposed relationship to predict the earth's climate to 2030.

Some of the main conclusions from Archibald's presentation.......

1. The earth is getting colder (0.06 degrees per year since 1998) and will accelerate to 0.2 degrees per year starting sometime in 2009.

2. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has a miniscule warming effect.

3. Increasing CO2 will increase agricultural productivity.

4. The ideal atmospheric CO2 level is a minimum of 1,000 ppm. Dr. James Hansen (head of NASA GISS) believes the maximum safe level for CO2 is 350 ppm.

The presentation by David Archibald is right here.I recommend looking through it. It is long, but he does have some very interesting graphs.

According to the ICCC, David Archibald is a scientist operating in the field of cancer research, climate science and oil exploration.

According to official accounts, the new solar cycle 24 supposedly began this past January, but since then there has not been a peep of activity from #24, instead we continue to see a few spots every now and then from the outgoing cycle #23. Now, it looks like the real start for solar cycle 24 is further delayed.

The sun's sunspot activity remains ultra quiet (April 8th image)

Anthony Watts has a nice post in his blog on the situation in regards to the waiting game on solar cycle 24. Watts has a link to Jan Janssen's Solar Activity and Earth Monitor web page. On his web page, Janssens does not expect solar cycle 24 anytime before July of 2008, and perhaps not till early 2009, which would make solar cycle #23 one of the longest in over 100 years. Keep in mind, his forecast is not the "official" prediction.

Here is the graph (below) of the latest sunspot prediction from NASA.

Industrial and Biomass black carbon emissions across the globe.

A new study published in the March 24th issue of the Journal Nature Geoscience says that black carbon, a type of aerosol, may be the second most important contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide (CO2) and a key to preventing warming in the short run, as reported by the article in LiveScience.

Black carbon is produced in diesel exhaust and when wood and coal are burned.

Dr. V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California and lead author of the study says that soot particles absorb and scatter the sun's radiation. Black carbon is the absorbing component of soot.

Using data from satellites, aircraft and surface instruments they estimated that black carbon has a bigger warming effect than earlier though and much more so than what the IPCC estimated in their report.

Dr. Ramanathan suggests that tackling black carbon emissions might be an effective way to prevent some short term climate warming, while figuring out ways to control rising CO2 emissions can still be sorted out.

The researchers found a significant warming effect from black carbon at about 6,500 feet (2 kilometers) altitude, where black carbon absorbs not only sunlight, but the light reflected by clouds at lower altitudes. They say this effect is unaccounted for in model-based estimates used in most studies, meaning that black carbon's actual warming contribution has been underestimated. Its warming impact is more than some greenhouse gases, such as methane, Ramanathan contends in the article.

Atmospheric scientist Dorothy Koch of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), who was not affiliated with the study, cautioned that the case wasn't that simple. Black carbon doesn't stay in the atmosphere for long, which means it might have a high effect in the short term, but greenhouse gases that stay in the atmosphere longer have a bigger long-term impact. There is also uncertainty as to just how much of the black carbon in the atmosphere comes from human activities, Koch said.

Hurricane Ivan over the Gulf of Mexico in 2004.

Dr. Phil Klotzbach and Dr. William Gray from the Colorado State University have just issued their updated long-range Atlantic Hurricane forecast for 2008 and the U.S. landfall strike probability. Once again, they are calling for a well above-average tropical season and a higher than normal probability of a major hurricane landfall in the United States.

In section 5 of their pdf, Klotzbach and Gray discuss how the current conditions in the Atlantic basin are quite favorable for an active season.

Where is the global warming part of all this? Well, in section 9 of the pdf, Klotzbach and Gray explain that the very large increase in major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin between 1995-2007 was in their opinion primarily a result of the multi-decadal increase in the Atlantic ocean thermohaline circulation (THC) due to changes in ocean salinity and not directly related to global temperature increase.

Klotzbach and Gray feel that we should not read too much into the highly active hurricane seasons of 2004-2005. Even though the activity was unusual, it was within natural bounds of hurricane variation. The authors note that both 2006 and 2007 had slightly below-average and average activity, respectively.

Klotzbach and Gray believe that the Atlantic basin is currently in an active hurricane cycle associated with a strong thermohaline circulation and an active phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). They expect this active cycle to continue for another decade or two, before we enter a quieter Atlantic major hurricane period.

By the way, it looks like Dr. Gray is in the slow process of passing the entire responsibilities of producing these forecasts over to the younger Dr. Klotzbach. Gray has been starting to focus more of his time arguing against global warming concerns.

In a press release that was issued at the end of March, researchers from the Met Office (UK) observed changes in extreme daily minimum (<1.5%) and maximum (>98.5%) temperatures across different world regions since 1950. Here is was they found.....

1. Daily extremes have risen by over 4 degrees celsius (7 degrees F) over the last 50 years.

2. Minimum temperatures, especially those over Russia and Canada are now up to 4 C (7 F) warmer than the middle of the 20th century.

3. Maximum temperatures have warmed 1- 3 degrees celsius (~2-5 degrees F) across Canada and Eurasia.

4. The total area exhibiting positive trends is significantly greater than can be attributed to unforced natural variability.

5. The comparatively small areas of cooling are found to be consistent with unforced natural climate variability.

6. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is found to have a significant influence on extreme winter daily temperatures for many areas, which is no surprise.

Simon Brown, Met Office Climate Scientist said: "This latest research shows that some extreme events are already increasing. The trend is set to continue with our changing climate having a significant impact, with warmer nights and hotter days in the future".

Here is a link to the abstract of the study in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Katie Fehlinger of Headline Earth continues her interview about climate-rel