Dr. Roger Angel, an astronomer from the University of Arizona has come up with a theory that he thinks will stop, and perhaps even reverse global warming. His theory involves a massive sun shield.

The shield would cover about 100,000 square miles and be made up by trillions of mirrors that would be launched (fired) into space about one million miles above earth. The shield would form a "sun shade" that would deflect the sun's rays. The article does not say how much of the sun's rays would be deflected.

How would they get the mirrors launched that far out into space?

They would use a huge (and I mean huge!!) cannon, which would pack 100 times the power of conventional weapons. The barrel of this cannon would need to be over a half mile (.6 miles) in diameter! I can't imagine the amount of noise and ground shaking this thing would produce.

The cannon would need to be fired at least a million times.

If the project can get going in the near future, it could be ready to launch in 20 or 30 years. If successful, the mirrors could last 50 years before being replaced.

Angel says that the cost of the project would be about 350 trillion dollars!

So far, Dr. Angel has secured NASA funding for a pilot project.

Researchers at the University of Victoria, Canada are currently testing the sun shield theory by using computer simulations. You can watch more about the testing of this theory on the embedded video segment by DiscoveryChannel UK, which is next to the Telegraph article.

Dr. Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Co-chair of working group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) briefed the Environment and Public Works Congressional Committee earlier this week on the latest global warming science.

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

Here are some of the highlights from Field's testimony. Much of it includes the earlier consensus findings of from the 4th Assessment Report of the IPCC.

--Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years.

--Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.

--Very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.

--Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70% between 1970 and 2004.

--Palaeoclimatic information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years.

--Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."

--For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios.

--Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the time scales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized.

--Drought-affected areas will likely increase in extent. Heavy precipitation events, which are very likely to increase in frequency, will augment flood risk.

--Many millions more people are projected to be flooded every year due to sea-level rise by the 2080s.

--Energy efficiency options for new and existing buildings could considerably reduce CO2 emissions with net economic benefit.

--In order to stabilize the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere, emissions would need to peak and decline thereafter. The lower the stabilization level, the more quickly this peak and decline would need to occur. Mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels.

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

You can read the full testimony from Dr. Field right here.

----------

Major funding to Dr. Field and the Carnegie Institution for Science provided by the
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Vannevar Bush Society, Edwin Hubble Society and the Carnegie Founders Society.

The recent near flatlining of global temperature anomalies since 2001 has been talked about a lot in the comment section of this blog and elsewhere over the past 1-2 years. An atmospheric science professor from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee says that this recent flat line of temperatures does not appear to have a firm cause, unlike previous cooling events since 1950 that were influenced by strong La Nina's and volcanic eruptions.

Associate Professor Kyle Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate.

According to Swanson, global temperatures should have gone up .2 C or .36 F between 2001 and 2007, but instead the temperatures have been nearly flat.

So what could be the cause?

Swanson believes that there could be several reasons. Here are the two that were listed.....

1. Sinking water currents in the North Atlantic could be sucking heat down into the deeper depths.

2. Greater than normal amount of tropical cloudiness, which is reflecting more of the sun's energy back into space.

Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it's just a hiccup, and that humans' penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.

Here is the link to the Discovery News article.

The study was posted in the Geophysical Research Papers.

The northern fringes of Greenland's ice sheet experienced much higher the normal melting during 2008, according to NASA researchers.

The image below shows the number of days when melting occurred on the ice sheet compared to the average number of melt days (anomaly) between 1979 and 2007. The blues indicate less melt days compared to normal in 2008, while the reds indicate a higher number of melt days compared to normal.

Other highlights from the research..........

--Many locations in northern Greenland experienced a record number of melt days.

--Average temperatures across northern Greenland were as much as 3 degrees C above average between June and August of 2008.

--Nearby ground based observations were unusually high and new records were set at many stations.

--------

The above image was made with data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) on board the F13 satellite of the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP).
Here is the link to the Earth Observatory story.

Geologists from Columbia University and the U.S. Geological Survey have mapped several large rock formations in the U.S. that could potentially absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Outcrops of ultramafic rocks.

Ultramafic rocks in the United States could be enough to stash more than 500 years of U.S. carbon dioxide production, according to lead author Sam Krevor, who is a graduate student working through the Earth Institute's Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy.

"We're trying to show that anyone within a reasonable distance of these rock formations could use this process to sequester as much carbon dioxide as possible," said Krevor.

Most of the rock formations (see the map associated with the press release) are clustered in strips along the more populated east and west coasts.

These ultramafic rocks form in the earth's mantle, between twelve and hundreds of miles under the surface.

When the rocks are exposed to carbon dioxide they react and form common limestone and chalk.

The drawback of natural mineral carbonization is its slow pace (thousands of years), but scientists are testing out new ways to speed up the process.

Sunspot activity continues to be very low to nothing at all. According to some sites that I have read, it appears that we my have gone into a second solar minimum after a recent, brief upturn in activity.

Latest image of the blank sun.

The latest prediction as of March 2009 indicates that sunspot activity will soon start to increase very shortly, but we have heard this before. Some predictions from over a year ago anticipated a solar minimum during March of 2008.

By the way, I am on vacation this week. Mark Paquette is filling in for me and will be handling most of the posts and comments.

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) has released their global temperature data for the month of February.

RSS uses microwave sounding data on board satellites to measure the global temperatures at different levels of the earth's atmosphere.

Here is the February temperature anomaly map for the lower troposphere.....

A couple of observations from the above image.......

1. Note the strong negative (cold) anomalies over Siberia.
2. Note the strong positive (warm) anomalies over southeast Asia, the southern U.S. Plains and Mexico.
3. You can also see the strong positive anomaly over the northwest Pacific, while the Pacific waters just off the North America coast are below normal. This is a classic signature of the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).

Here are the official RSS lower troposhere temperature anomalies for February.

Global (-70S to 82.5 N): +.230K

U.S.: +.438K

Northern Hemisphere: +.391K

Southern Hemisphere: +.062K

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

I looked at the RSS lower troposheric temperature data since 2007 and noted the distinct downward trend in temperature between September 2007 and June 2008. The trend in temperatures since June of 2008 has been clearly upward.

I wanted to see how this matched up with the recent La Nina. According to the NOAA ENSO site, there were official La Nina conditions (based on their strict criteria) between the three month period of Aug/Sep/Oct 2007 and Apr/May/Jun of 2008, which happens to match up almost exactly with the RSS cooling trend stated in the previous paragraph.

It does appear that La Nina conditions did recently return (though not officially as the monthly criteria has not been met as of yet). NOAA predicts that La Nina conditions will weaken through the spring. Brett (still on vacation and sick as a dog).

--------------------
Acknowledgement

MSU/AMSU data are produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NOAA Climate and Global Change Program. Data are available at www.remss.com.

The second annual International Conference on Climate Change finished up in New York City earlier this week. Katie Fehlinger has more about the conference in our latest Headline Earth video.

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) released their global temperature anomaly data for February. The NCDC uses the blended land and ocean dataset developed by Smith and Reynolds.

Here is the NCDC dot map (a fan favorite!)

Overall, February 2009 was the 9th warmest February on record, based on 130 years of record keeping. Here is a breakdown of the temperature anomalies.......

Feb 2009

Global land/ocean combined: +0.50 C or +0.90 F

Northern Hemisphere land/ocean: +0.56 C or +1.01 F

Southern Hemisphere land/ocean: +0.44 C or +0.79 F

The warmest year globally is still 1998 (+0.83 C or +1.49 F), a strong El Nino year.

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

The NCDC also has updated temperature data for the 2008/2009 meteorological winter (DEC/JAN/FEB)..........

The three month period was the 8th warmest on record globally (+0.51 C or +0.92F).

The warmest three month winter period on record was 2007.

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

Snow cover across the northern hemisphere for the 2008/2009 winter was slightly below average....

By the way, in North America alone, snow cover was above-average.

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

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the northern hemisphere sea ice extent was 5.1 % below the 1979-2000 satellite measured mean.

The southern hemisphere sea ice extent was 1.5 % below the 1979-2000 mean.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee using a math application know as synchronized chaos have determined that the air and ocean systems of the earth are now showing signs of synchronizing with each other after the most recent climate shift that occurred around the year 2000.

The team led by Dr. Anastasios Tsonis applied the math equation to climate data taken over the past 100 years. Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift.

"The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001," according to Tsonis.

What's the human impact?

Tsonis does not think we can say much about what impact humans are having since we still do not fully understand the natural variability of climate. The team realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural.

According to the article, Tsonis believes the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.

You can read the WISN.com article about this story right here.

A nice picture to brighten your day. Courtesy the Accuweather.com Photo Gallery.

Gabriel London has an interesting article in the Huffington Post (liberal news site), which relates to what many people write about in the comment section of this blog.

London is on target in my opinion when he states how changes in your local weather can easily influence your feelings about GLOBAL climate change. This also applies to critical law makers as well.

London also takes some shots at the media and the Weather Channel.

You can read his one page post right here.

Scientists working on a project called ANDRILL have been analyzing ice cores drilled out of the ocean floor in Antarctica from 2006. Based on their data, the team concluded that the Earth is headed toward another thaw, but that it could take a thousand years or more to complete.

Emperor penquins hanging out at the ANDRILL site in Antarctica.

During the Pliocene epoch 3 to 5 million years ago--a time when conditions in Antarctica are similar to today's--the ice in Antarctica collapsed and melted on a regular basis, raising world sea levels. Ice began melting on a massive scale when atmospheric CO2 levels rose to around 400 PPM. Today, that number is at 386 PPM and slowly rising.

Two climate modelers say that it would take 1,000 or more years from the beginning of a warm-up until the West Antarctic ice sheet would melt away.

Over history, there have been polar freeze/thaw cycles every 40,000 years due to the natural shift in the tilt of the earth's axis. Depending on which hemisphere is tilted closest to the sun, this natural process periodically leads to a natural build up of atmospheric CO2.

Direct exerpt from the Chicago Tribune article.........

"If something is an external cycle," Reed Scherer said. "It should be predictable. But it is much more complicated than that, and we (humans) seem to be throwing the pattern off balance now. It used to be that carbon dioxide rises were driven by the cycle. Now atmospheric carbon dioxide is driving the system."

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

A look deep inside a glacier

Check out this short video journey to the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet, courtesy NewScientist.

A supposedly, leaked Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) document indicated that the agency plans to issue a mid-April finding that global warming threatens both public health and welfare.

Coal-fired power plants like this may soon be targets of the EPA.

According to AlterNet (a progressive/liberal news and opinion website), the action by the EPA will set the stage for the first ever national regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in U.S. history.

The expected announcement will spell trouble for the coal-fired power plants, and will allow several states to set global warming limits for vehicles, according to the article.

What is your opinion on this?

Blog posted by Mark Paquette

As I was reading over Brett's blog about sunspots, or should I say the lack of sunspots, I wondered, what exactly is this going to mean to our climate? Is the sunspot cycle changing from the normal 11 year pattern? Is it just delayed, which as I've read occurs from time to time? Or is there something out of the ordinary going on here (ie. Maunder Minimum type of event)?

This article talks about predicting the solar cycle.

I had a long conversation with a friend of mine, and we brought up and talked about such topics as global warming, sunspots, the solar "constant" (in quotations since it is really not constant), and how the earth affects its own radiation balance. One thing that stood out to me is when he said that "things aren't that simple, or we would know that by now". I always look for simple relationships, ie. low number of sunpots, less solar energy reaching the surface of the earth, cooler climate. In theory sure, that maybe true, but in reality, the climate system as a whole is very complex and solar energy entering the earth's atmosphere, while an important piece to the climate puzzle, is just that, only a piece. So, while this correlation makes sense, it is definitely not as simple as this. The earth's climate is way to complicated of a puzzle to be solved just by this, with feedback mechanisms, albedo, etc. being involved.

Another area I'm interested in relates to sunspots, but also to cosmic rays and low and high clouds. As we know, low clouds are generally a "cooling" agent in the earth's atmosphere, since they block more incoming radiation from reaching the earth's surface than reradiating downwards outgoing longwave radiation. High clouds are the opposite, usually a "warming" agent. In theory, the more active the sun is, the more cosmic rays, the more clouds are formed, due to a process I'm not really familiar with. I am not familiar with whether or not the clouds would be high or low either, but since sunspots are associated with warming, I'll assume the increase in clouds would be of the high variety.

Does anyone have further information about this? Am I at least barking up the right tree here? By the way, my friend believes we are going to be in a period of about 40 years of slight cooling, because of many reasons, but one is that he believes that sunspot activity will be lower than normal during that period.

It will be very interesting to see what happens to the number of sunspots in the next month, the next several months, the next year and the next few years.

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) released their global temperature anomaly data for February.

According to their records, February of 2009 was the second coolest (tied with 2001) February since 2000, but was still above normal for land/sea combined global temperature. Here are the temperature anomaly stats............

Global: +.41 C or +.74 F

Northern Hemisphere: +.52 C or +.93 F

Southern Hemisphere: +.38 C or +.68 F

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

Dr. James Hansen is the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Dr. Richard Lindzen, a well known atmospheric physicist and professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently spoke at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York, which was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, which is libertarian/conservative think tank.

In the video, Lindzen says that endorsing global warming has made many scientists lives easier. One example is through funding of research.

Lindzen believes that many scientists over simplify the atmosphere and give CO2 too much influence. Here is the short video of Lindzen, courtesy of YouTube.

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

President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic was another featured speaker at the conference. President Klaus has been one of the few politicians in Europe speaking out against global warming alarmism.

In the video, Klaus questions the motives of environmentalists.

I figured today is as good a day as any to post the most recent update on global atmospheric CO2 (greenhouse gas) and the ozone hole over the Antarctic.

This information is made available by the Global Monitoring Division of the Earth System Research Laboratory (NOAA).

This plot from Mauna Loa goes back to 2005 and shows the normal seasonal variation (red) of atmospheric CO2, while the black line shows the upward trend of the mean.

This second plot of atmospheric CO2 shows the upward trend of atmospheric CO2 going back to 1959.

This next graphic shows the latest plots of other greenhouse gases, but keep in mind, the latest update on this seems to be over a year old now.

Finally, we have a graph showing plots of total column ozone for selected years going back to the 1967-1971 period. You can see that the October minimums have come up a bit for 2007 and 2008.

The Great Lakes as a whole have seen more than a 30% decline in winter ice since the 1970s, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL). The decline is attributed to global climate change.

I made this chart, which shows the trend since the early 1970s, using the ice graph conversion from the Canadian Ice Service.

Less ice will also result in an increase in evaporation, which will lead to lower lake levels, according to the Chicago Tribune article.

But, GLERL researcher Jia Wang says that natural variability is at least as large a factor (G.L. ice decline) as global warming.

I just checked out the most recent update on the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) from NOAA and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI).

According to these sources, there has been a clear, but weak La Nina (below-normal sea surface water temperatures over the equatorial Pacific) since December of 2008.

Based on current information, the ENSO is weakening toward the borderline of neutral.

Here is the latest ENSO plume forecast from several different models. As you can see, a clear majority of the forecast models continue to trend the ENSO toward neutral by the summer. The notable exception is the NASA GMAO model which is predicting a strong El Nino (unusual warming of the sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific) by the end of the summer. Clearly, this model is the outlier and probably should be thrown out on this particular run.

Here is the probability forecast through the end of the year. It basically shows an equal chance (25%) of an El Nino or La Nina, while there is a 50% chance of neutral conditions.

Here is a chart comparing the plot of the ENSO going back to July of last year and comparing the plot to a number of previous seasons that had a fairly similar ENSO pattern. It looks to me that the 2000-2001 season is the closest match to what is going on now. What do you think?

All graphs are courtesy of the International Research Institute. Here is a link to their site.

A reduction of airborne dust and volcanic emissions is the main cause of the most recent warming trend in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.

A dust storm off the NW African coast.

Greater than two-thirds of this warming trend in recent decades can be attributed to changes in the African dust storm and tropical volcano activity during the period.

According to the EurekAlert release, the researchers combined satellite data of dust and other particles with existing climate models to evaluate the effect on ocean temperature. They calculated how much of the Atlantic warming observed during the last 26 years can be accounted for by concurrent changes in African dust storms and tropical volcanic activity, primarily the eruptions of El Chichon in Mexico in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.

Volcanic ash moving over Kodiak Island, Alaska.

How about global warming?

The results also suggest that about 30% of the observed Atlantic warming during the period are due to other factors such as global warming.

"This makes sense, because we don't really expect global warming to make the ocean [temperature] increase that fast," says Amato Evan, the lead author of the study.

Blog posted by Mark Paquette

Earth Hour at 8:30 pm local time tonight.

I came across this article on the internet and it piqued my interest. First of all, since I had never heard of "Earth Hour", I wondered what exactly it was. I had heard of Earth Day, but Earth Hour? How long has it been around? Who came up with this idea? How many people know about it, or more importantly, plan to do something for it, or even care about it at all?

In general, I think events like this that try to let people know how important the earth is to us human beings is great. For me as an environmentalist and someone who respects and loves the earth and knows how gravely serious the health of our planet is to us, and who respects and admires the beauty of a snowstorm, a thunderstorm, or even a sunset, I think that these events (ie. Earth Day, Earth Hour, etc.) are all based on a good idea. Namely, to try to get other people involved in respecting the beauty and importance of the earth.

What I worry about is do events like these tend to be ridiculed by normal, everyday people; does it shed a "bad" light, almost an over-zealous sort of feeling, towards the people that are organizing and participating in these events? I'm afraid that people that are active in these events are looked upon as different, kind of the-end-of-the-world-is-coming-so-we-better-prepare-now-or-die type of people. People that are too busy trying to help save the earth and other different causes that they don't even take time to live their own lives. Basically, do people think of us as nature freaks that have nothing better to do than to let other people know how bad off we are treating the earth, at least in our minds and opinions. Do you think that people involved in these activities come across this way and thus you automatically are turned off towards their feelings and philosophies?

Another question, do events like this do more harm than good in trying to get normal, ordinary Joe or Jane to think a little more like these people? Or is getting the idea out to respect and love "Mother Earth" more important than how one comes across trying to get the idea out in public? For example, does Al Gore and his thoughts do more harm or good in the fight against global warming?

Photo below of Canberra, Australia on March 28,2008

In a recent episode of Headline Earth, host Katie Fehlinger has a talks with Accuweather.com tropical expert Joe Bastardi. In their conversation, Joe briefly discusses his thoughts on the upcoming 2009 hurricane season and the relation between global warming and hurricanes.

If you are interested in hearing the full three-part, raw, unedited video with Joe Bastardi, regarding the upcoming hurricane season, then you can find those segments right here. Just click on the hurricane 2009 tab and scroll down to the interviews.

Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, who I recently featured in a video segment from the second annual International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), recently made an addendum to his address made at the ICCC about negative climate feedback. Thanks goes to Anthony Watts for posting this story through his (Watts Up With That?) website.

In his post, Lindzen discusses positive and negative feedback in the earth's climate.

Through his research, Lindzen concludes that the earth is dominated by a strong net negative feedback and that any warming that arises from increasing greenhouse gases will be indistinguishable from the natural fluctuations in climate from processes internal to the climate system itself.

Lindzen also notes that the climate models which show alarming predictions are based on large positive feedbacks, which goes against the behavior of nature in his opinion.

I encourage you to read Lindzen's full one-page post right here to better understand what he is talking about.