By Paul Homewood

 

 

BBC blames Cyclone Idai on climate change:

 

Unless a rich benefactor steps in, the role of human-induced climate change in Cyclone Idai is unlikely to be clearly determined.

The scientists with the expertise simply don’t have the resources to do the large amount of computer modelling required.

However, there are a number of conclusions about rising temperatures that researchers have gleaned from previous studies on tropical cyclones in the region. While Cyclone Idai is the seventh such major storm of the Indian Ocean season – more than double the average for this time of year – the long-term trend does not support the idea that these type of events are now more frequent.

"The interesting thing for the area is that the frequency of tropical cyclones has decreased ever so slightly over the last 70 years," said Dr Jennifer Fitchett from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa who has studied the question.

"Instead, we are getting a much higher frequency of high-intensity storms."

Climate change is also changing a number of factors in the background that are contributing to making the impact of these storms worse.

"There is absolutely no doubt that when there is a tropical cyclone like this, then because of climate change the rainfall intensities are higher," said Dr Friederike Otto, from the University of Oxford, who has carried a number of studies looking at the influence of warming on specific events.

"And also because of sea-level rise, the resulting flooding is more intense than it would be without human-induced climate change."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47638588

 

Usual BBC tactics – find a junk scientist to spout falsehoods which they could not get away with themselves.

If McGrath bothered to check the actual data, he would find that Accumulated Cyclone Energy has actually been declining in the Southern Hemisphere:

 

http://www.policlimate.com/tropical/ 

 

 

Sea levels are barely rising at all around Mozambique:

 

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=432-001

 

And despite the assertion that there is absolutely no doubt that when there is a tropical cyclone like this, then because of climate change the rainfall intensities are higher, even the IPCC has had to admit that there is little empirical evidence to back this up.

 

But when did the BBC ever bother with facts, where climate change is concerned?

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March 21, 2019 at 07:42AM

By Paul Homewood

 

 

From GWPF

 

No wonder the public is increasingly sceptical about these kind of knee-jerk claims and predictions.

The unprecedented snowfall and prolonged cold weather in the Himalayan region this winter was caused by global warming, a weather scientist in Almora said Monday.

The trend will continue in the coming years as global weather patterns are changing rapidly, said Dr Sandeepan Mukherjee, a weather scientist at GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment and Sustainable Development based at Kosi in Almora.

“The erratic patterns of western disturbances, that cause rain and snowfall in winter months in the northern part of the globe, have become so due to the changing patterns of weather caused by global warming,” he said.

“It seems these erratic patterns will continue in the coming years with increase in global warming,” he added.

The first spell of rain and snowfall this winter was received in the Himalayan region on December 12 and the last was received as late as on March 13, residents of Munsiyari in Pithoragarh district said.

“There were 24 spells of snowfall in Munsiyari between December 12 and March 13 this year which broke the record of 1972 when there were 15 snowfalls,” Puran Pandey, a local said.

Full story

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March 21, 2019 at 06:12AM

Epic. Why are ‘schools of dead fish appearing in the water?’

Last November, a huge seismic event that shook the planet left experts wondering about its possible source, says ScienceAlert.

Researchers now think they know what might have caused it: an offshore volcanic event unlike any other in recorded history.

If the hypothesis is right, and there has been a massive movement of magma underneath the sea floor, that has implications for nearby Mayotte and the neighbouring Comoros islands off the coast of Africa.

Mayotte has already started to sink (by around 9 mm or 0.35 inches per month) and move eastward (by around 16 mm or 0.63 inches per month) – movements that would tally with an underground chamber getting deflated as magma flows out.

“We believe that the 2018 crisis is associated to an eruption, despite the fact that we do not have direct observations so far,” write the researchers behind the new study.

“It might be the offshore eruption with the largest volume ever documented.”

Based on the seismic readings taken in the area over six months leading up to the November tremor that was spread across the world, the team suggests more than a cubic kilometre (0.24 cubic miles) of magma has been shifted from an eruption point some 28 kilometres (17.4 miles) below the surface.

The thinking is that all this magma may not have reached the seafloor but instead flowed into the surrounding sediments, with volcanic gas remaining trapped inside the magma. That would explain why nothing has been observed yet above the surface.

“The 2018 event at Mayotte does appear to show a substantial volume of magma leaving a deep storage region which, if erupted, would make this indeed one of the largest recent submarine eruptions documented,” geologist Samuel Mitchell from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Gizmodo.

As the tremors continue, scientists are scrambling to get more instruments and equipment to the area, to get a better idea of what’s actually going on. For the time being, the idea of a major volcanic event fits the existing data pretty well.

There are still lots of unanswered questions though…

Continued here.

View paper (pre-print) here.

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March 21, 2019 at 05:30AM

  We’ve discussed here the views of Jordan Peterson (on climate activism, among other things) and I’ve been developing a healthy paranoia about Cambridge University, where professors of history and computery stuff are involved in an international five year plan to get climate scepticism recognised as an official conspiracy theory, alongside invasions of aliens (the … Continue reading Invasion of the Transphobic Climate Deniers

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March 21, 2019 at 04:11AM