Reader Jim asked:

1) If human beings were extinct and not affecting climate change, would the
climate still change?

2) What should the global temperature be? What is the ideal temperature?
Should it ever change?

The response to question number 1, Jim, is absolutely! The entire history of the globe is a history of climate change. Ice ages, periods of near tropical conditions in the mid-latitudes. It's all happened before, for a variety of reasons. Many, but not all, climate scientists believe that much of the warming over the past few decades has been caused by human activity, both through emission of greenhouse gases and because of land-use changes.

As for your second question, I would think we're fairly close to that now, as far as humans are concerned. The warming of the past few decades has mostly been seen in a decrease in the diurnal (day to night) temperature range. That is, nights have not been as cool, which has resulted in a lengthened growing season in some areas. I think this is mostly the case in the mid-latitudes and people in other parts of the world may disagree.

The Roger Pielke Sr. Research group has been trying without much success to obtain official photos of the U.S. Historical Climate Network (HCN) recording sites from NOAA since 2002. The HCN sites are used to diagnose the monthly and yearly surface temperature anomalies across the United States. The U.S. data is also included in the global temperature anomalies that we are constantly seeing in the media. The story, which appears in Climate Science states that several scientists have independently obtained photos of the HCN sites. According to Pielke, their photos clearly show significant siting problems with a large number of the recording stations, which could very well be leading to widespread temperature inaccuracies.

Make sure you check out some of the links included in the Climate Science story. Brett.

"Hannity & Colmes" from Fox News just did an interview with author Bjorn Lomborg, who says we need to have middle of the road approach to global warming. I noticed the headline on the video picture of Lomborg saying he is a global warming scientist. Lomborg is not a trained scientist. Lomborg holds political science degrees and is currently an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School focusing on statistics. Lomborg authored "The Skeptical Environmentalist" back in 2001, which was controversial, and his latest book from 2007 is titled "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalists Guide to Global Warming."

I like how Lomborg is just about to answer why Al Gore will not debate him and is suddenly cut off. I guess that is TV for you!

Anyway, here is a link to the transcript of the interview.

As many of you are already aware, Dr. James Hansen has released the source code for the NASA gistemps. A portion of the U.S. temperature data was correctly called into question a while back by Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, resulting in an adjustment of the U.S. temperature data. The most notable correction resulted in 1934 taking back the top honors as the warmest year in the U.S. on record, no longer 1998.

On his website (part 2 of the pdf), a clearly angry and frustrated Hansen says that due to a "flood" of demands for the source code he decided to release it last week, but the simplified version, "for people interested in science," according to Hansen, may not be available for a week or two, meaning most of us will have no idea what to make of the initial release.

Hansen also talks about the "bad" data out of parts of Africa and South America. He says that if they omit South America and Africa there is only a tiny effect on global temperature change, actually a 0.01 celsius increase. McIntyre fires back, saying that now in addition to South America and Africa, Hansen is also implying that the lack of material change since the 1930s with the U.S. data and lack of Antarctica data does not matter as well. That is indeed a lot of land, especially in the southern hemisphere, and if you are strictly looking at land masses where people live, I would have to agree with McIntyre that it does indeed matter. But, when you combine ocean and land, which Hansen and his collegues do, then it is not nearly as significant globally, based on the maps and graph display included in Hansen's response, since the oceans make up a clear majority of the earth. I am sure many of us look forward to the release of the simplified version. To be continued no doubt.

Steven Milloy of JunkScience.com just put out a follow up to the study I discussed yesterday about the strengthening link being established by a study between climate change and greenhouse gases using fossilized sea shells. In the second part of his post, below the Japanese office workers story, he was able to interview Jan Veizer, who is one of the supposed co-authors of the new study. Though, I was not able to find how much of a role he actually had in the study, as there can be many co-authors. Anyway, according to Milloy, Veizer said that the quoted conclusion of the study represented a "compromise" between the study's disagreeing authors. He also quotes Veizer as saying the basic pattern of reconstructed sea surface temperatures in both his original study and the new study remain inconsistent with the notion that atmospheric CO2 drives global temperatures. It would be nice to get reaction from one of the two authors that were highlighted in the original study. You can read more on this here

Just to note: Milloy is a paid advocate for certain oil and tobacco companies.

I caught this story today from The Australian titled "El Nino shaped by Global Warming."
This is not the first time we have heard of this, but anyway, researchers from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CISRO have determined that since 1977, key El Nino indicators have been recorded at unprecedented levels. Now keep in mind, we are talking 30 years of data here, not hundreds or thousands.

What is El Nino? El Nino is the unusual warming of the surface water in the equatorial eastern and central Pacific, which has been found to have widespread impact on global weather patterns. Currently, we are in a strengthening La Nina phase across this region, which is the opposite of El Nino (cooler than normal surface water over the eastern and central equatorial Pacific).

The most commonly accepted indicator of El Nino is the Southern Oscillation Index or SOI, which is an index number determined by using sea level pressure anomalies at Tahiti and Darwin. The research team suspects that the Walker Circulation may play the bigger role, as the circulation tends to weaken during El Nino and strengthen during La Nina.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Dr. Scott Power, a Bureau researcher, said the trade winds were the weakest they have ever been in the 30-year record. Power believes that it is possible that global warming has put the circulation into a permanently weaker state. He cites that since 1977 there have been 7 El Nino events versus 4 La Nina's, including the current one going on. Southeastern Australia is currently in its 11th straight dry year, and some believe that the weaker Walker Circulation is to blame. Power admits that he cannot quantify this link, but he believes that it is part natural and part human induced.

Certainly not a convincing study, but I thought it was interesting. Thoughts?

UPDATE............

Dr. Scott Power, the lead researcher in this study makes a welcome response to this story in our comment section. Here it is.........

Hi Brett,
thank you for showing an interest in this work. Just thought i would clarify the situation a little bit.

For the SOI we had data extending back to 1876. We examined running 30 year averages - one value for each 30 year block. The lowest value occurred during the most recent 30 year period i.e. in 1977-2006. We also examined the degree to which the difference in the mean before and after 1977 is unusual but shall refer your readers to the paper if they are interested in such technical details. Its a short note so I'd encourage people to read it!

We also examined Darwin MSLP separately. As you know Darwin MSLP is sometimes used as an index for ENSO in its own right. Darwin MSLP exhibited its highest 30-year value on record during 1977-2006.

This strongly suggests that Walker Circulation weakened to record levels in 1977-2006. To test this hypothesis we examined changes in zonal (east-west) windstress averaged across the Pacific. We used ERA40 and NCEP reanalyses to do this. We recognise that the reanalyses have inaccuracies but they are best available as far as i am aware. This data is also much shorter than SOI. Nevertheless it exhibited its lowest 30 year magnitude (corresponding to weakest trade winds) during - you guessed it - the period 1977-2006.

We also used the SOI to define El Nino and La Nina events: if June-Dec SOI>5 we called it a La Nina year, if the June-Dec SOI<-5 we called it an El Nino year. We then found that the number of El Nino events was greater during 1977-2006 than in any other 30 year period and the number of La Nina events was the (equal) lowest on record. Thus 1977-2006 appeared to be more heavily influenced by El Ninos than any other 30 year period on record.

We then went on to discuss these findings in light of previous work (e.g. Vecchi et al. and other studies discussed in recent IPCC report) pointing out that some climate models exhibit a weakened Walker Circulation in response to global warming.

Finally, note that some of the media stories written about the article have different conclusions to the paper itself!

Thanks again.

Regards,
Scott Power

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.

Paul Yeager, who is our western weather expert here at Accuweather.com has an interesting post which is titled "Global Warming Debate". Paul takes a look at the people who enter the global warming debate, such as the ones who contribute to the comment section of this blog. Paul believes there are four groups within this debate, and they are listed below.....

1. The Apathetic group

2. The Deniers

3. AGW Proponents (Anthropogenic or Man-made Global warming)

4. The Skeptic

I encourage you to read Paul's blog so you can see how he defines each group. If you wish, let us know which group you think you fall into. Maybe I will take a vote if we get enough responses. If you respond please do so in the global warming blog comment section. You can also email Paul with any comments in regards to his post right here at yeager@accuweather.com

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.