Climate models can’t be wrong or unreliable – can they? Except they generally are.
Academics from the School of Art & Design have teamed up with colleagues from the ANU Climate Change Institute on a design project, which takes existing data and communicates the impacts of climate change in a way that people can engage with and better understand, says Phys.org.
The resulting new climate tool visualises data which shows by 2050, Australians will no longer enjoy winter as they know it today and will experience a new season the designers are calling “New Summer”.
New Summer represents a period of the year where temperatures will consistently peak in many cases well above 40ºC for a sustained period.
Using the tool, people can click on thousands of locations across Australia to see how the local weather in their home town will change by 2050.
“We looked at the historical average temperatures of each season and compared them to the projected data and what we find everywhere is that there’s really no period of a sustained or lasting winter,” said Dr Geoff Hinchliffe, Senior Lecturer (SOA&D).
“In 30 years’ time winter as we know it will be non-existent. It ceases to be everywhere apart from a few places in Tasmania,” he said.
The tool – which uses data from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) and Scientific Information for Land Owners (SILO) – shows how many degrees the average temperature will rise by in each location and how many more days over 30 or 40 degrees a place will have in 2050 compared with today.
LONDON (Reuters) – Fracking Britain’s shale gas reserves could cut the country’s imports of gas to zero by the early 2030s, an industry group said on Monday.
Well site crew stand next to the coil tubing tower as shale gas developer Cuadrilla Resources prepare to start fracking for gas at its Preston New Road site near Blackpool, Britain October 5, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Powell/File Photo
Britain currently imports more than half of its gas via pipelines from continental Europe and Norway and through shipments of liquefied natural gas from countries such as Russia, the United States and Qatar.
Environmental groups strongly oppose the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves extracting gas from rocks by breaking them up with water and chemicals at high pressure.
But the British government, keen to cut Britain’s reliance on imports as North Sea gas supplies dry up, last year gave Cuadrilla permission to frack two wells at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire.
Industry group United Kingdom Onshore Oil and Gas on Monday published updated forecasts for the county’s shale gas potential in the wake of recent data from Cuadrilla’s sites.
The forecasts for well productivity were increased by 72 percent to 5.5 billion cubic feet (bcf) per lateral well, compared with estimates made in 2013 by Britain’s Institute of Directors.
One hundred fracking well pad sites, each with 40 lateral wells could produce almost 1,400 bcf a year by the early 2030s, equivalent to the gas use of 35 million homes, the industry association report said. This would be more than the country needs as it has around 27 million households.
But fracking companies say the industry is unlikely to take off in Britain under current regulations, which halt fracking activity if a seismic event of magnitude 0.5 or above is detected.
“Better climate knowledge about natural versus anthropogenic forcing seems to a decade away.” That was the major takeaway from a major 1999 climate conference in Houston, Texas…
In fact, one of the conference participants, Gerald North, climatologist at Texas A&M, repeated this a decade after this conference. In his words:
In another decade of research we will have squared away a lot of our uncertainties about forced climate change. As this approaches we can be thinking about what to do if the warming does indeed appear to be caused by humans and to what extent things are changing as result. (North to Seldon B. Graham, Jr. January 6, 2010)
Now for Cassidy’s 1,000-word writeup. As you read this, ask yourself: what is really that different today, 20 years later, science-wise?
On Friday, September 25, 1999, a distinguished panel of eight scientists, all active in research on global climate change, met at the Houston Club under the sponsorship of The Houston Forum to present a reasoned scientific discussion about global climate change. The half-day panel discussion was a welcome relief from the strident cries of special pleaders on either side of the question of global warming.
Ed Powell, Houston Forum leader, turned the meeting over to Dr. David R. Legates to moderate. He stated that the objective of the meeting was to present what is known and the limits of accuracy of the data that we have. During the morning session, four general topics were discussed:
1. The greenhouse effect and related issues
2. Anthropogenic vs. natural climate change
3. The state of atmospheric general circulation modeling
4. Temperature and other weather data
Dr. Richard Kerr, senior scientific writer with Science magazine, led off by pointing out that the greenhouse effect is a physical fact, but how much mankind has affected it is in doubt. That CO2 in air has risen from 310 ppm in 1959 to 360 ppm today is a fact. How much it has affected the climate is an open question. Other greenhouse gases, including methane and water vapor, have a powerful effect.
A primary question is: “If you perturb the climate, how will it change?” or, put another way, “If you kick it, how high will it jump?” It is not simple; there are surprises. One must get accurate, pertinent data to put into models to make accurate predictions. Predictions of warming of 1.5′ C all the way to 4.5′ C have been made if CO2 content of the air doubles. Computer models are improving and including more and more factors, but, as Dr. Richard Lindzen points out, the error bars on input data are still large.
In the wake of the deadly twister outbreak last week, Sen. Bernard Sanders declared that climate change is making tornadoes worse, to which researchers say: Not so fast.
This photo provided by James Lally shows a funnel-shaped cloud on I-10 near Marianna, Fla., Sunday, March 3, 2019. Numerous tornado warnings were posted across parts of Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina on Sunday afternoon as the powerful storm system raced across the region. (James Lally via AP)
Purdue University professor Ernest Agee, who has studied tornadoes for 50 years, said his research and that of other scientists shows that the number of violent U.S. tornadoes has in fact tapered off in recent decades.
“My opinion is that strong and violent tornadoes have actually leveled off,” said Mr. Agee. “They’re definitely not increasing with time over the last few decades. In fact, there’s a slight tendency, just a very slight tendency, of the decline in the number of violent and strong tornadoes.”
What’s more, 2018 was the first year since record-keeping began in 1950 without an EF4 or EF5 tornado, the most devastating twisters, as rated on the Enhanced Fujita Scale from EF0 to EF5, according to the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center.
“We’re definitely not seeing a trend of increase. If anything, we’re seeing a decrease in the number of strong and violent tornadoes,” Mr. Agee said, adding “and that’s in papers that I’ve published and my students and other colleagues that are prominent in the field.”
Ten deaths were reported last year from U.S. tornadoes, the fewest since unofficial tabulations started in 1875, breaking the previous low of 12 deaths in 1910. About 70 deaths per year are attributed on average to U.S. tornadoes.
“Last year was, for a lack of a better term, a tornado drought over the United States,” said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University.
None of that should reassure those living in storm-prone regions, as demonstrated by the destructive March 3 outbreak in Lee County, Alabama, that left 23 dead after a tornado registering winds of up to 170 mph, enough for an EF4 rating, swept through the area.
More tornadoes touched down over the weekend from Texas to Tennessee. The strongest was a twister with EF1 wind speeds in Logan County, Arkansas. The storms produced damage but no reported deaths, according to AccuWeather.
Climate change is inevitably blamed for any natural disaster, and Mr. Sanders led the charge after the deadly tornado, saying in a Facebook post, “The science is clear, climate change is making extreme weather events, including tornadoes, worse. We must prepare for the impacts of climate change that we know are coming.”
The Vermont independent linked to an article in EcoWatch about an October study by Mr. Gensini showing that Tornado Alley is gravitating from the Great Plains to the Midwest and Southeast, but the professor said the shift cannot be attributed conclusively to human-caused climate change.
“[Mr. Sanders] references our study, which says that climate change is shifting eastward. We just don’t know for sure if it’s precisely climate change that’s causing it, and certainly we cannot say at all that climate change caused the Lee County, Alabama, tornado,” Mr. Gensini said. “We’re not there as a science to be able to do that.”
Are tornadoes getting worse because of climate change? “It’s a bit of a premature statement,” said Stephen Strader, Villanova University assistant professor of geography and the environment. “In terms of noticeable trends due to climate change, we don’t see much there yet.”
Tornado damage up, deaths down
According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, the “link between tornadoes and climate change is currently unclear.”
“It is likely that a warmer, moister world would allow for more frequent instability,” the center said on its website. “However, it is also likely that a warmer world would lessen chances for wind shear. Climate change also could shift the timing of tornadoes or the regions that are most likely to be hit, with less of an impact on the total number of tornadoes.”
Iowa Climate Science Education 