Pesky ozone hole blamed on COOLING

Despite the Montreal Protcol banning "ozone destroying" CFCs now having been in force for many years, the Antarctic ozone "hole" has not been playing ball. Instead of shrinking, it just waxes and wanes each year as it always has, with some very large holes recently.

But what about the Arctic hole? It is even more pesky. It has been at its biggest extent recently. How to explain that? Somebody must be desperate as they are now explaining it by recent COOLING. Cooling in the Arctic? It is a Warmist item of faith that the Arctic is WARMING! It looks like you can't have your hole and your warming too!

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L24814, 5 PP., 2011

Arctic winter 2010/2011 at the brink of an ozone hole

Abstract

The Arctic stratospheric winter of 2010/2011 was one of the coldest on record with a large loss of stratospheric ozone. Observations of temperature, ozone, nitric acid, water vapor, nitrous oxide, chlorine nitrate and chlorine monoxide from the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) onboard ENVISAT are compared to calculations with a chemical transport model (CTM). There is overall excellent agreement between the model calculations and MIPAS observations, indicating that the processes of denitrification, chlorine activation and catalytic ozone depletion are sufficiently well represented. Polar vortex integrated ozone loss reaches 120 Dobson Units (DU) by early April 2011. Sensitivity calculations with the CTM give an additional ozone loss of about 25 DU at the end of the winter for a further cooling of the stratosphere by 1 K, showing locally near-complete ozone depletion (remaining ozone <200 ppbv) over a large vertical extent from 16 to 19 km altitude. In the CTM a 1 K cooling approximately counteracts a 10% reduction in stratospheric halogen loading, a halogen reduction that is expected to occur in about 13 years from now. These results indicate that severe ozone depletion like in 2010/2011 or even worse could appear for cold Arctic winters over the next decades if the observed tendency for cold Arctic winters to become colder continues into the future.

SOURCE





New Paper finds significant cooling of Atlantic Ocean over past millennium

A paper published today in the journal Paleoceanography finds that Atlantic Ocean surface temperatures have significantly cooled over the past millennium, since the Medieval Warming Period from about 950-1200 AD.

PALEOCEANOGRAPHY, VOL. 26, PA4224, 11 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2011PA002130

Multidecadal variability and late medieval cooling of near-coastal sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical North Atlantic

By Henning Kuhnert et al

Multidecadal variations in Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SST) influence the climate of the Northern Hemisphere. However, prior to the instrumental time period, information on multidecadal climate variability becomes limited, and there is a particular scarcity of sufficiently resolved SST reconstructions. Here we present an eastern tropical North Atlantic reconstruction of SSTs based on foraminiferal Mg/Ca ratios that resolves multidecadal variability over the past 1700 years. Spectral power in the multidecadal band (50 to 70 years period) is significant over several time intervals suggesting that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) has been influencing local SST. Since our data exhibit high scatter the absence of multidecadal variability in the remaining record does not exclude the possibility that SST variations on this time scale might have been present without being detected in our data. Cooling by 0.5°C takes place between about AD 1250 and AD 1500; while this corresponds to the inception of the Little Ice Age (LIA), the end of the LIA is not reflected in our record and SST remains relatively low. This transition to cooler SSTs parallels the previously reconstructed shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation toward a low pre-20th century mean state and possibly reflects common solar forcing.

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)






CBS Hosts Guest Who Implicates Climate Change in Disasters of 2011

Since even Warmist scientists admit that there has been no climate change for over 10 years, nothing can be blamed on it so the pundit is plainly and irrevocably wrong. Something that doesn't exist can't cause anything

On Thursday's The Early Show, CBS hosted a guest who implicated climate change as one of the factors contributing to many weather disasters in 2011, and he ended up warning of more droughts in the future. After asserting that 2011 was an unusually active year for natural disasters, Dr. M. Sanjayan of the Nature Conservancy including climate change in the list of influences:

There's a perfect storm of events. We had a La Nina year, we had this thing called Arctic oscillation that drifted further South, but then we also have this underlying factor of climate change that makes everything warmer and supercharges the atmosphere, plus people today are living in places that sometimes puts them in harm's way.

As he recounted the heat waves of July, he intoned: "You only have to say Texas, 100 days of above 100 degrees in Texas. Can you imagine living through that? And that wasn't just a U.S. phenomenon. That was a global phenomenon. That's only going to get worse."

As he dismissed the likelihood of more tornadoes in 2012, he ended up predicting that there would be more droughts caused by climate change in 2012:

It's not going to be as bad because it's a La Nina year again, but a weak La Nina year. That's what people are saying. Now, that said, climate change is continuing, so you're going to continue to see droughts, but I don't think we're going to suffer from as many tornadoes and things like that like last year. So that's the positive news. Droughts are going to continue probably.

More HERE




HOW COLUMBUS CAUSED THE LITTLE ICE AGE

In a remarkable example of human-centeredness, Stanford University geochemist Richard Nevle blames Christopher Columbus for a sharp reduction in atmospheric CO2 during the 16th and 17th centuries. It seems that man-made warming believers never tire of telling us how powerful humans are, usually for the worse, in our ability to change nature.

Nevle claims that the deaths of American Indians, due to the sudden spread of European diseases after Columbus landed, would have stopped the Indians from burning so many forests to enhance their hunting. He says this would naturally lead to re-forestation of a land area at least as big as California. He estimates the billions of tons of CO2 withdrawn from the atmosphere as the new trees grew should just about explain a sudden drop in atmospheric CO2 during the years from 1500 to 1700 AD—as measured in the Antarctic ice cores.

If Dr. Nevle can “read” the deaths of the American Indians in the Antarctic ice record, has he checked for the impact of the Black Death in Europe and the Near East during the 14th century? Roughly half the population of Europe died then, along with vast numbers of people across the Near East. It is on the record that huge tracts of European land were allowed to revert from farm to forest during this period. The Near East got 300 years of persistent drought in the same time frame. Even the scruffy environment in North Africa and Syria is capable of changing the earth’s reflectance of sunlight if its people die of plague and the vegetation dries up.

I would think a geochemist, especially one from Stanford, would understand that the oceans hold about 70 times more CO2 than does the atmosphere. He would also understand that when water gets colder, it absorbs more gas from its surroundings. Thus, if a weakening sun suddenly put less heat into the earth’s oceans, the oceans would take more CO2 from that air. That CO2 reduction would register in the Antarctic ice cores and in temperatures around the globe.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the middle of the Little Ice Age, the sun had two extremely long “quiet periods” with very few sunspots. During these minima, the earth’s temperatures were slammed down to their lowest levels since the last big Ice Age. The Sporer Minimum lasted from 1460 to 1550, and dropped the temperatures in the subtropical Sargasso Sea by 2 degrees C. The Maunder Minimum lasted from 1645 to 1715 and dropped the Sargasso temperatures by 3 degrees C. In all, it meant nearly 200 years of declining temperatures in zillions of tons of water around the world, which then dutifully sucked CO2 out of the Antarctic air.

We’ve known about the Dansgaard-Oeschger 1500-year solar cycle of warming and cooling since 1984, and we’ve now found its evidence in ice cores, cave stalagmites, seabed sediments and fossil pollen—worldwide. The cycle is so strong that it persists even during the big Ice Ages that hit every 100,000 years and drops Antarctic temperatures by nearly 10 degrees C.

Could it be that Dr. Nevle is again over-estimating humanity’s importance? Should we be paying more attention to our currently very quiet sun? Maybe the lack of warming over the past 15 years is trying to tell him that CO2 is a minor trace gas—whose correlation with our temperatures over the past 160 years is a puny 22 percent.

SOURCE





Putting Extreme Weather Into Perspective

According to Heidi Cullen, “2011 is further proof that a new era of extreme weather is dawning — and it’s about to get much, much worse “. But is there any truth in such claims?

We need to put this year’s weather into some sort of proper perspective. A few months ago, I put together a record of extreme weather events in 1971. Nothing special about that year, it just happened to be 40 years ago. So how does 2011 compare?

Droughts in Texas, Africa and China? Droughts of equal severity occurred there in 1971, as well as in many other places. Floods? Queensland’s flood 40 years ago was much worse than this year’s, while 100,000 died in North Vietnam’s Red River Flood. India, Malaysia, Brazil and many parts of the US all suffered badly too.

Irene, the Hurricane that never was? 1971 saw Tropical Storm Doria leave far worse flooding all the way from North Carolina up to Canada, while Typhoon Rose devastated Hong Kong. Blizzards, Tornadoes? 1971 certainly had its fair share.

But don’t take my word for it, have a look at the list below.

DROUGHTS

In the US there were several notable droughts in 1971:-

* Florida – The worst drought on record resulted in 400,000 acres of the Everglades burned by fires. (1)
* Texas – Worst drought since the 1950’s. (2)
* Maryland – The 1958-71 drought produced the largest recorded annual departures from average stream discharge. (3)
* California – The summer of 1971 was “extra hot and long. Rainfall did not completely wet the (tree) root zones the winter of 1971-72 (sic)”. The same report in 1978 stated “the rate of development (of dieback of tree limbs) has been accentuated in recent years”. (4)
* Hawaii – The drought on Maui was described as the worst in 22 years. (5)
* North Carolina – The Air Force Bombing Range Fire destroyed 29300 acres of forest. (6)
* Minnesota – The Little Sioux Fire destroyed 14000 acres following “a period of abnormally dry weather”. (7)
* In total there were 108398 wildfires in the US in 1971 affecting 4.2 million acres. ( Figures for 2010 were 71971 fires and 3.4 million acres). (7a)

In the rest of the world there many more:-

* Australia – In Victoria what was described as a severe drought began that would last to 1973. (8)
* Ethiopia – 1971 saw the start of a 2 year drought that would claim 300,000 lives. (9)
* Kenya – 150,000 people were affected in what was described in 2006 as even worse than the 2005 drought, itself one of the worst on record. (10)
* Sahel – Mali, Chad, Nigeria and Burkina were in the middle of a drought that lasted from 1967-88 and which was described in Nigeria as the worst since 1913. (11)
* Okinawa – Experienced the worst drought in history. (12)
* China – Much of Northern China was in the grip of what in Beijing was on record as the worst drought ever (before or since). (13)
* Afghanistan – This was the worst in the country’s history. (14)
* Iraq – This severe drought led to the mercury poisoning tragedy. Iran was also affected. No drought there has been as bad since. (15)
* India – The 1971-72 drought affected many states and ranked as the 5th worst since records began in 1876. (16)
* Argentina – The 1971 drought was worse than anything since. (17)

FLOODS

* North Vietnam – The Red River flood was an absolutely terrible disaster leaving 100,000 dead. It was listed by NOAA as one of the century’s top weather events and described as a 250 year event. (18)
* India – Orissa was hit by a cyclone which left 10,800 dead. (19). Also, in Central India the Bundelkhand district was hit by floods (which were followed in 1972 by droughts). (20)
* Malaysia – 32 people were killed and 180,000 affected in the Kuala Lumpur floods in the worst floods since 1926. (21)
* Australia – In January the Canberra flood claimed 7 lives followed a month later by floods in Victoria which were called a 100 year event. In Queensland every month from January to May saw major floods and significant flooding returned in December. (22) (23) (24)
* New Zealand – The New Plymouth area was hit by their worst ever flood after 11.4 inches of rain fell in 24 hours.(25)
* Brazil – 130 dead in Rio de Janeiro floods. (26)
* Quebec – Heavy rainfall caused a massive landslide at the village of Saint-Jean-Vianney, leaving 31 dead. (27)
* Spain – 19 died in floods in Barcelona after 308mm of rain in 24 hours. (28)
* USA – Alaska suffered a major flood, only exceeded by the 1986 flood in the last 50 years. (29)
* USA – In February significant flooding occurred in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin.(30)
* USA – In March Southeastern States were affected with Georgia recording record levels in some areas. (30)
* USA – May and June brought significant flooding to Utah, Idaho, Nebraska and Wyoming. The discharge from the Bear River in Utah was considered a 75 year event. (30)
* USA – Significant flooding hit Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia in June and July. (30)
* USA – In August Baltimore was struck by one of the most damaging thunderstorms in 50 years and 14 died from the resulting floods. (30)
* USA – Widespread flooding followed Tropical Storm Doria up the coast from North Carolina to Maine in August. Some streams in New Jersey and Pennsylvania registered record floods. (30)
* USA - Extended flooding occurred in September and October affecting Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. (30)
* USA – More significant flooding hits Oklahoma and Arkansas in December. (30)

HURRICANES, TORNADOES ETC.

* The Atlantic hurricane season was a “fairly active” one with several notable storms.(31)
* The strongest was Edith, a Category 5, which killed dozens in Nicaragua before turning north and hitting Louisiana. (31)
* Ginger is on record as the longest lasting Atlantic hurricane ever, or at least until the 1899 San Ciriaco hurricane was retroactively discovered to be longer. (31)
* An unnamed storm in August attained hurricane status further north than any other North Atlantic tropical cyclone. (31)
* Canada was unusually on the receiving end of the tail ends of 2 hurricanes, Beth and Doria which both caused huge amounts of damage from flooding. Both were listed by Natural Resources Canada among the 18 major hurricanes of the 20thC. (32)
* In the Pacific the hurricane season was above average with 18 named storms, 6 of which made landfall. This latter number is still the record for a season. (33)
* The typhoon season was also a busy one with 24 typhoons of which 6 were super typhoons. This compares to 7 typhoons including 2 super typhoons in 2010. The season had an extremely active start with a record number of storms before August. (34)
* Typhoon Rose left 130 dead in Hong Kong plus many more at sea. It was described by the Hong Kong Observatory as “one of the most intense and violent” to have affected Hong Kong. (34)
* Cyclone Althea hit Queensland as a Category 4 cyclone in December. Damage was extensive but would have been worse if it had not arrived at low tide. (35)
* The tornado season in the USA was also above average with 58 F3+ tornadoes ( compared to 39 in 2010). (36)
* The worst tornado outbreak occurred in the Mississippi Valley during 2 days in February. 19 tornadoes were spawned claiming 123 lives across 3 states. (37)

OTHER EVENTS

* The highest ever UK January temperature was recorded in Gwynedd at 65F. (38)
* In Canada the snowfall record for one season was set on Mount Copeland in British Columbia in the winter of 1971/72. (39)
* In the same winter Mount Baker in Washington broke the US record when 1122 inches fell. (40)
* Montreal’s “snowstorm of the century” left 17 dead with 70mph winds producing second storey drifts. (41)
* Texas and Oklahoma were hit by a giant blizzard which set the state record snow depth in Oklahoma of 36 inches. The National Weather Service in Amarillo lists this blizzard as one of the top 20 weather events in the Panhandle. (42) (43)
* Columbia suffered its worst winter in years resulting in economic losses of $150 million. To make matters worse heavy rains caused the two biggest rivers, the Magdalena and Cuca, to flood vast regions in the Central and Western parts of the country. (44)
* Most of the USA was colder than normal. 1971 nationally was the 36th coldest in the 20thC. (45)

Just suppose that this was the record for this year and not 1971, would Heidi be saying anything different?

SOURCE





Energy Makes Christmas Great

Marita Noon

In November, I boarded a flight, heading to a speaking engagement later in the day. The flight attendant commented on my attire. I told her that I was a “speaker” and therefore could dress with a bit more bling than the average person. “Oh, what do you speak on?” “Energy,” I replied. “Great, I used to be a nutritionist.” She responded. I told her that it wasn’t that kind of energy.

With Christmas just passed, you may think you need lots of her type of energy—and you’d be right. But without my kind of energy, you’d need a whole lot more of her kind of energy to create the “old fashioned” Christmas that so many of us picture when we think of the holiday.

One of the big traits of Christmas is the entire multi-generational family gathered around the table. Back in the day of the picture perfect holiday, travel meant hitching up the horse and wagon. Today, to accomplish this, family members often have to travel great distances to get to the site of the big meal. Christmas is reported as one of the busiest travel seasons—whether by auto or air. But even before the travel takes place, energy is a big part of the picture.

The travel has to be planned. Air travel takes a visit to one’s favorite travel website. Travel by land often requires a Mapquest search for the best route. Both need energy to function. Then when the actual travel takes place, regardless of the method or distance, fuel is needed to make the trip possible.

Even the big meal takes more energy than one might assume. First the turkey (or ham or beef) has to be raised (I’ll not belabor each phase of energy used there). Then to get it to the store in a safe and sanitary manner, requires refrigeration and transportation—both are energy dependent. Once at the store refrigeration is, again, important. To go to the store to make your selection demands fuel.

Let’s jump to the big day. Most people stuff the bird and cook it in the oven—though the fried turkey has increased in popularity. Either way, energy is required for cooking—natural gas, electricity or propane. And, that does not include the veggies, the mashed potatoes (that need a mixer), or the freshly baked rolls. The feast typically includes some sort of salad. At my great aunt’s home in Massachusetts, salad was green Jello with chopped celery and a dollop of mayonnaise. In modern homes the salad is usually lettuce based. Either way, energy is needed to keep things fresh and cool.

Once the meal is ready, many people use an electric knife to cut the turkey and a hot plate to keep things warm while the final preparations are made. Both need energy.

Around the table, the ambiance may be created the “old fashioned” way with candles and a flickering wood-fueled fire. But even fire is energy—the first used in civilization. But maybe you have music playing on the stereo—downloaded from iTunes (thanks to energy).

Post meal, fat and happy, many households will retire to the sofa to watch the big game of the day. Once again energy is a central feature. It gets all the on-site participants to the stadium. Energy lights the stadium and powers the television cameras. Perhaps the image gets to your home via satellite or cable. Neither is possible without energy. Once in your home, that flat screen TV needs electricity and rare earth to give you that great picture. The beer you’re drinking is nice and cold, or the cider nice and hot, thanks to energy.

But it is not over yet. In most homes, while the men watch the game, the women clean up. Whew! The dishwasher makes it so much easier. And the hot water coming straight from the tap is expected. Once again, energy.

If you are the cook, by the end of the day, you are ready for all of those people to head home. You are lacking energy and are ready to crawl under your electric blanket—all warm and snuggly.

One you start thinking about it, you can see myriad other ways that energy makes your Christmas the picture-perfect event of which you’ve dreamed. Maybe your digital camera was used, your computer to view the shots, your printer to print out copies for everyone. You get the picture.

When you come to the table and bow your head to give thanks for the family, friends and food—don’t forget the energy that made it all possible.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

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