Month: September 2017

Daily News 1 Sep 2017

NO INCREASE IN FLOODING IN N. AMERICA AND EUROPE – NEW STUDY

G.A. Hodgkins et al., Journal of Hydrology, September 2017

“The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.”

Fig. 2. Monthly distribution of floods with ≥25 year return periods for 1204 study gauges from 1961 to 2010, by major Köppen-Geiger climate for North America on the left in green and Europe on the right in blue. Monthly values are percent of total number of floods with > 25 year return periods for each Köppen-Geiger climate.

G.A. Hodgkins et al., Climate-driven variability in the occurrence of major floods across North America and Europe, Journal of Hydrology, Volume 552, September 2017, Pages 704-717

Abstract

Concern over the potential impact of anthropogenic climate change on flooding has led to a proliferation of studies examining past flood trends. Many studies have analysed annual-maximum flow trends but few have quantified changes in major (25–100 year return period) floods, i.e. those that have the greatest societal impacts. Existing major-flood studies used a limited number of very large catchments affected to varying degrees by alterations such as reservoirs and urbanisation. In the current study, trends in major-flood occurrence from 1961 to 2010 and from 1931 to 2010 were assessed using a very large dataset (>1200 gauges) of diverse catchments from North America and Europe; only minimally altered catchments were used, to focus on climate-driven changes rather than changes due to catchment alterations. Trend testing of major floods was based on counting the number of exceedances of a given flood threshold within a group of gauges. Evidence for significant trends varied between groups of gauges that were defined by catchment size, location, climate, flood threshold and period of record, indicating that generalizations about flood trends across large domains or a diversity of catchment types are ungrounded. Overall, the number of significant trends in major-flood occurrence across North America and Europe was approximately the number expected due to chance alone. Changes over time in the occurrence of major floods were dominated by multidecadal variability rather than by long-term trends. There were more than three times as many significant relationships between major-flood occurrence and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation than significant long-term trends. […]

5. Conclusions

Reference hydrologic networks isolate catchments where climate has been the principal driver of streamflow change by minimizing other drivers, such as regulation, diversions and urbanisation. The relationship between floods and climate change is more difficult to discern where catchments have been altered, making attribution to any single driver uncertain.

Trends over time in the occurrence of major floods (exceeding 25, 50, and 100 year return periods) in North America and Europe were evaluated for 1961–2010 and 1931–2010. All gauges drain catchments that are considered by local and national experts to be minimally affected by catchment alterations. Trend testing of major floods required the grouping of gauges. The 1204 gauges that met study criteria for 1961–2010 and the 322 gauges for 1931–2010 were grouped by continent, Köppen-Geiger climate and catchment size. The number of significant trends for 246 groups of gauges was approximately the same as would be expected by chance alone.

There were more than three times as many groups of gauges with significant relationships between the number of annual major floods and annual values of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation than expected due to chance. Catchment size was important to the results; there were significant negative relations between floods and the AMO at large (>1000 km²) North American catchments and significant positive relations at medium (100–1000 km²) European catchments. The opposite relations between European and North American major flood occurrence and the AMO are consistent with previous work on general wetness and dryness related to the AMO. There were no significant relationships, for any group of catchments, between major flood occurrence and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC (Hartmann et al., 2013) that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.

Generalizations about climate-driven changes in floods across large domains or diverse catchment types that are based upon small samples of catchments or short periods of record are ungrounded. Networks of streamflow data from minimally altered catchments will provide an essential foundation for future efforts to understand the complex temporal and spatial dynamics of major floods.

Full paper

via climate science

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September 1, 2017 at 03:39AM

Daily News 1 Sep 2017

The Cost Of Going Green: Australian Taxpayers Hit With A $60bn Power Bill

Taxpayers will have paid more than $60 billion through federal renewable energy subsidies by 2030, about twice what the crumbling car industry received over 15 years and enough to build about 10 large nuclear reactors.

The government’s large and small-scale renewable energy targets, which will compel energy retailers to buy 33 terawatt hours of wind, solar and hydro energy by 2030, will deliver about $45bn of subsidies to renewable energy producers over 20 years, according to analysis by The Australian.

The grab bag of direct subsidies from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation — which have spent or lent concessionally, respectively, $870 million in grants since 2010, and $4.3bn since 2013 — are on top of that.

Meanwhile, the proposed clean energy target arising from the government’s Finkel review, would mandate a further 33TWh of energy from renewable sources, costing an extra $11.3bn over the 10 years to 2030.

Government MPs yesterday sounded the alarm over the subsidies and called for clarity over government plans for a new coal-fired power station.

The chairman of the Coalition backbench committee for energy, Craig Kelly, described the costs of the subsidies as an “appalling waste” resulting from an “ideological rush to renewables”.

“No one will ever be able to compute the full opportunity cost of the alternate productive assets that this capital could have been invested in,” Mr Kelly said.

“We already have some of the highest electricity prices in the world. And what industry will we still have if we go down this track?”

Victorian Nationals MP Andrew Broad, chairman of the standing committee on the environment and energy, said the RET should be scrapped to allow renewables to compete on merit.

“To spend all that money and still have expensive power prices means the settings are all wrong,” Mr Broad said.

The Productivity Commission found the automotive industry received the equivalent of about $30bn of industry assistance between 1997 and 2012. It estimated up to 40,000 people might lose their jobs following the withdrawal of Toyota, Holden and Ford as carmakers in Australia, including job losses along the supply chain.

The 39 renewable energy projects under construction or being completed this year have created 4400 jobs, according to the Clean Energy Council’s latest figures.

ACIL Allen Consulting chief executive Paul Hyslop yesterday told a parliamentary inquiry that it was more cost-effective to hold off any investment decisions in low-emissions technologies under renewable energy schemes until the “last possible minute”.

“Solar costs have probably fallen 75 to 80 per cent in the last six or seven years,” Mr Hyslop told the energy and environment committee. “If we had not done anything seven years ago and today we then did all those things, we could have … two to three times as much solar (energy generation) in roofs for the same amount of investment over that period.

“If you think that the cost of renewables and low-emissions technology is falling rapidly, absolutely put it off for as long as possible.”

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

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September 1, 2017 at 03:26AM

Daily News 1 Sep 2017

Too Much Ice Forces Arctic Climate Explorers To Give Up Campaign

From the arctic mission reports, where they try to put the best spin on this colossal failure as reported by the BBC:

Pen Hadow sets sail for North Pole as Arctic ice melts
British explorer Pen Hadow and his crew have set sail from Alaska, in an attempt to become the first people ever to sail to the North Pole.
With Arctic ice melting at an unprecedented rate, previously inaccessible waters are opening up, creating the potential for their planned 5,500 km (3,500 mile) journey for the first time in human history.

Um, no. Here is the view of the North pole today, as reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC):

Image source: NSIDC, captions by WUWT

From NSIDC:

Cooler conditions, slower melt

August 21, 2017

A cooler than average first half of the month kept ice loss at a sluggish pace with little change in the ice edge within the eastern Arctic. Retreat was mostly confined to the western Beaufort and northern Chukchi seas. Ice extent remains above that seen in 2012 and 2007.

Here is the photo of the beached sailing vessel at the end-game:

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Full post

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

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September 1, 2017 at 03:26AM

Daily News 1 Sep 2017

Roger Pielke Jr.: The Hurricane Lull Couldn’t Last

The U.S. hadn’t been hit by a Category 3 or stronger storm since Katrina in 2005. We were overdue.

A neighborhood near Addicks Reservoir in Houston, Aug. 29. PHOTO: DAVID J. PHILLIP/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Activists, journalists and scientists have pounced on the still-unfolding disaster in Houston and along the Gulf Coast in an attempt to focus the policy discussion narrowly on climate change. Such single-issue myopia takes precious attention away from policies that could improve our ability to prepare for and respond to disasters. More thoughtful and effective disaster policies are needed because the future will bring many more weather disasters like Hurricane Harvey, with larger impacts than those of the recent past.

For many years, those seeking to justify carbon restrictions argued that hurricanes had become more common and intense. That hasn’t happened. Scientific assessments, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. government’s latest National Climate Assessment, indicate no long-term increases in the frequency or strength of hurricanes in the U.S. Neither has there been an increase in floods, droughts and tornadoes, though heat waves and heavy precipitation have become more common.

Prior to Harvey, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm, the U.S. had gone a remarkable 12 years without being hit by a hurricane of Category 3 strength or stronger. Since 1970 the U.S. has only seen four hurricanes of Category 4 or 5 strength. In the previous 47 years, the country was struck by 14 such storms. President Obama presided over the lowest rate of hurricane landfalls—0.5 a year—of any president since at least 1900. Eight presidents dealt with more than two a year, but George W. Bush (18 storms) is the only one to have done so since Lyndon B. Johnson. The rest occurred before 1960.

Without data to support their wilder claims, climate partisans have now resorted to shouting that every extreme weather event was somehow “made worse” by the emission of greenhouse gases. Earlier this week, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt directed researchers “to shed some of the fussy over-precision about the relationship between climate change and weather.”

Turning away from empirical science—or “fussy over-precision”—comes with risks. But whatever one’s views on climate, there should be broad agreement today that bigger disasters are coming. Some may blame greenhouse gases while others may believe it to be some sort of karmic retribution. But there is a simpler explanation: Because the world has experienced a remarkable period of good fortune when it comes to catastrophes, we are due.

Agreement that more big disasters are on their way should provide opportunity for those otherwise opposed on matters of climate policy to come together and make some smart decisions. Here is where they might start:

• Establish disaster review boards. In the aftermath of every plane crash, the federal government convenes experts under the auspices of the National Transportation Safety Board to find out what went wrong and what might be done to prevent it happening again. Meteorologist Michael Smith of AccuWeather (a scientist who decades ago helped identify the “microburst” weather phenomena and its role in plane crashes) has long argued that the nation needs a National Disaster Review Board. After every disaster, it would evaluate what went wrong—and right—and distill lessons. The Trump administration should create such a board in the wake of Harvey.

• Encourage resilient growth. Disaster researcher Dennis Mileti has explained that the choices made at the local level—such as where to build—determine how a community will experience disasters. As communities develop, it can be difficult to see how local decisions might affect disasters years or decades down the road. This is particularly the case in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, when the push to “return to normal” might mean simply reinforcing the conditions that led to problems. Local communities need to take better advantage of experts who can explore development choices with an eye toward better preparing for an uncertain future.