Archive by category | Climate variability

The real holes in climate science

When I started working last month on a news feature about gaps in climate science I was expecting a tough reporting job. Too fresh, so I thought, were the scars the field and many leading scientists had received from the hacking affair at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Norwich to readily discuss with a reporter the ‘dirty laundry’ (my phrase) of climate science.  Read more

UK press gets ‘Mr Global Warming’ hot under the collar

UK press gets ‘Mr Global Warming’ hot under the collar

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond The cold snap in Britain – seen here in this NEODAAS/University of Dundee image – has triggered a rash of ‘global warming isn’t real’ comments. Climate scientist Mojib Latif is not a happy man. The Leibniz Institute researcher says he “cannot understand” why his research is being cited in media reports questioning climate change. “It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming,” he told the Guardian. “I have said that  … Read more

Glaciation ahead – on a geological time scale

Glaciation ahead - on a geological time scale

More elderly readers of these pages may remember having heard in their school days back (circa 1970s) that scientists then thought an ice age would be coming soon. I certainly do – even though the alleged ‘global cooling consensus’ in the scientific literature of the time has recently been disproved as a myth. Now an interesting new paper in Nature [subscription] suggests that a rapid natural transition towards a stable glacial climate, with permanent ice sheets covering large parts of North America and Eurasia, could indeed be ahead. Thomas Crowley and William Hyde ran a coupled energy-balance/ice-sheet model to test  … Read more

Jolly hockey sticks

Jolly hockey sticks

Cross posted from The Great Beyond The contentious ‘hockey stick’ climate change graph has again been upheld as broadly accurate, doubtless to the rage of climate denialists/sceptics/whatevers. A team led by Michael Mann of Penn State University has looked at a whole range of proxies for surface temperatures over the last 2,000 years in an attempt to counter criticism of the graph, which showed a long ‘handle’ and a sharp upturn (the blade). Their findings? As the Christian Science Monitor puts it: “It still looks a lot like the much-battered, but still rink-ready stick of 1998. Today the handle reaches  … Read more

A precipitous rise in extreme rainfall

A precipitous rise in extreme rainfall

Global warming has been expected to bring not only droughts, but also floods, because what rain you get comes hammering down harder. And the downpours of the future now look to be even more drenching than expected.  Read more

Post-World War II cooling a mirage

Post-World War II cooling a mirage

The 20th century warming trend is not a linear affair. The iconic climate curve, a combination of observed land and ocean temperatures, has quite a few ups and downs, most of which climate scientists can easily associate with natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions or El Nino events.  Read more