Month: May 2024

Daily News 18 May 2024

Nino Recedes, NH Keeps Ocean Warm April 2024

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
Major El Ninos have been the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source. Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated. HadSST4 is the same as v.3, except that the older data from ship water intake was re-estimated to be generally lower temperatures than shown in v.3. The effect is that v.4 has lower average anomalies for the baseline period 1961-1990, thereby showing higher current anomalies than v.3. This analysis concerns more recent time periods and depends on very similar differentials as those from v.3 despite higher absolute anomaly values in v.4. More on what distinguishes HadSST3 and 4 from other SST products at the end. The user guide for HadSST4 is here.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through April 2024. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.

Note that in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes. That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period.

Then in 2022, another strong NH summer spike peaked in August, but this time both the Tropic and SH were countervailing, resulting in only slight Global warming, later receding to the mean. Oct./Nov. temps dropped in NH and the Tropics took the Global anomaly below the average for this period. After an uptick in December, temps in January 2023 dropped everywhere, strongest in NH, with the Global anomaly further below the mean since 2015.

Then came El Nino as shown by the upward spike in the Tropics since January 2023, the anomaly nearly tripling from 0.38C to 1.09C. In September 2023, all regions rose, especially NH up from 0.70C to 1.41C, pulling up the global anomaly to a new high for this period. By December, NH cooled to 1.1C and the Global anomaly down to 0.94C from its peak of 1.10C, despite slight warming in SH and Tropics.

Then in January 2024 both Tropics and SH rose, resulting Global Anomaly going higher. Tropics anomaly reached a new peak of 1.29C. and all ocean regions were higher than 01/2016, the previous peak. Then in February and March all regions cooled bringing the Global anomaly back down 0.18C from its September peak. In April Tropics cooled further, while NH rose slightly and SH remained unchanged.

Comment:

The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof their Zero Carbon agenda is needed, without addressing how impossible it would be for CO2 warming the air to raise ocean temperatures. It is the ocean that warms the air, not the other way around. Recently Steven Koonin had this to say about the phonomenon confirmed in the graph above:

El Nino is a phenomenon in the climate system that happens once every four or five years. Heat builds up in the equatorial Pacific to the west of Indonesia and so on. Then when enough of it builds up it surges across the Pacific and changes the currents and the winds. As it surges toward South America it was discovered and named in the 19th century It is well understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.

Now people talk about changes in that phenomena as a result of CO2 but it’s there in the climate system already and when it happens it influences weather all over the world. We feel it when it gets rainier in Southern California for example. So for the last 3 years we have been in the opposite of an El Nino, a La Nina, part of the reason people think the West Coast has been in drought.

It has now shifted in the last months to an El Nino condition that warms the globe and is thought to contribute to this Spike we have seen. But there are other contributions as well. One of the most surprising ones is that back in January of 2022 an enormous underwater volcano went off in Tonga and it put up a lot of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. It increased the upper atmosphere of water vapor by about 10 percent, and that’s a warming effect, and it may be that is contributing to why the spike is so high.

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations. Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015. This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since. The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies. Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July. 1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.

The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2.

SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8, a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12. Again SSTs are average 2013-14.

Now a different pattern appears. The Tropics cooled sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off. But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average. In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16. NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH were offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.) Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021. In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.

Then in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH produced a summer peak extending into September higher than any previous year. Despite El Nino driving the Tropics January 2024 anomaly higher than 1998 and 2016 peaks, the last two months cooled in all regions, and the Tropics continued in April, suggesting that the peak likely has been reached.

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH. The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before. After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

Contemporary AMO Observations

Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future. So I find that ERSSTv5 AMO dataset has data through October. It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic. “ERSST5 AMO follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.” So the values represent sst anomaly differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

The chart above confirms what Kaplan also showed. As August is the hottest month for the N. Atlantic, its varibility, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin. Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Now in 2023 the peak was holding at 1.4C before declining. An annual chart below is informative:

Note the difference between blue/green years, beige/brown, and purple/red years. 2010, 2021, 2022 all peaked strongly in August or September. 1998 and 2007 were mildly warm. 2016 and 2018 were matching or cooler than the global average. 2023 started out slightly warm, then rose steadily to an extraordinary peak in July. August to October were only slightly lower, but by December cooled by ~0.4C.

Now in 2024 the AMO anomaly is higher than any previous year, but is now longer rising the last two months into April. Where

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

The purple line is the average anomaly 1980-1996 inclusive, value 0.18. The orange line the average 1980-202404, value 0.39, also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2013-202404, value 0.66. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

The news about our current solar cycle 25 is that the solar activity is hitting peak numbers now and higher than expected 1-2 years in the future. As livescience put it: Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun’s chaotic peak be? Some charts from spaceweatherlive look familar to these sea surface temperature charts.

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century. SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.” The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect. The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? And is the sun adding forcing to this process?

Space weather impacts the ionosphere in this animation. Credits: NASA/GSFC/CIL/Krystofer Kim

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

HadSST is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST4 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

via Science Matters

https://ift.tt/1yYXNG3

May 18, 2024 at 11:07AM

Daily News 18 May 2024

Post-Normal Food Systems Science

I came across this paper at Retraction Watch, and found its allegations interesting enough to share them here, seeing parallels with climate science.

The paper, by Peer Ederer, was published in Animal Production Science last month.

From the abstract:

Sciences related to animal agriculture are threatened by agenda-driven scientists. (…) Such agenda-driven scientists pursue an a priori mission, whose achievement justifies any means, even if it includes to willfully (sic) manipulate and interpretate data, or to violate good practices of integrity in the sciences.

Ederer reports three case studies, describing them as

Three case studies where science may have or be about to lose its integrity

I’m not going to dwell on the first two, but describe them briefly below. Quotes by Ederer unless made clear otherwise:

The first is about the IARC’s Working Group report on the carcinogenicity of red meat. IARC has form for finding everything in the Universe carcinogenic, including hot drinks and blue lights. They are probably most famous recently for the finding that glyphosate is carcinogenic, leading to giant awards against the manufacturer. Regarding red meat, the author argues that the IARC’s assessment is flawed.

The second is about the Global Burden of Disease’s 2019 report.

When it was published, some observers (concerned scientists) noticed a conspicuous jump of dietary risks and deaths associated with diets high in red meat, compared with the previous GBD 2017. There was a 36-fold increase to a total of 896,000 deaths (GBD 2019, 2020). Deeper analysis of the publication showed that the theoretical minimum-risk exposure level (TMREL) was reduced to 0 g per day, making red meat toxic from the first bite.

The third case study was the extraordinary one, and was titled

Sustainable livestock at United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021

The background is rather complicated. I will try to summarise briefly here, but if you want your statue to have arms and legs as well as a torso, you’ll have to consult Ederer’s paper. This one took place under the aegis of the UN, who wanted to set out a “decade of action” to achieve its sustainable development goals by 2030.

(There are 17 SDGs. How many can you name? Answer at the end.)

As part of this, Antonio Guterres convened a Food Systems Summit via the WEF (November 2020), and five action tracks resulted. The one our author was interested in was Action Track 2, whose theme was a “shift to sustainable consumption patterns.” The Chair of AT2 happened to be the founder and Executive Chair of EAT, “the science-based global platform for food system transformation.”

(Is it just me, or is the phrase “science-based” a red flag these days?)

Without knowing anything about this crew, you may guess at the sort of things they think are good solutions for “food system transformation”. Myself, I don’t think food systems need transformation by a UN body. Give countries the freedom to develop naturally and crop yields will inevitably rise, and unless we force people to do everything by hand, people will eventually farm their way out of poverty; ultimately the land area required for farming will go down. Yes the intensively-farmed land may be sterile, but at least this should spare larger areas for biodiversity. Well, I can dream.

Ederer quotes the 2019 EAT-Lancet report as saying:

The scale of change to the food system is unlikely to be successful if left to the individual or the whim of consumer choice.

Not unlike certain interventions in the climate sphere. Back to his paper:

The public positioning of the choice for AT2 leadership left no doubt, although not explicitly mentioned like this, that the AT2 aims were to significantly reduce the amount of meat consumption, accompanied by a corresponding reduction of livestock, and, by self-declaration as described above, to force through this transformation by authoritarian ‘hard’ measures against the will of the consumer where necessary.

Ederer writes:

By May 2021, the Summit preparations had reached a major impasse. Most of the various stakeholder groups representing farmers, civil society and industry could not find common ground with representatives from AT2 on the role of livestock in a global food system.

To resolve the impasse, Ederer was one of three individuals nominated to compile a 2-page paper summarising the views of 70 organisations on sustainable livestock. He summarises its view on livestock as,

‘Much improvement is necessary, but livestock is part of the solution, not part of the problem’

Naturally, the AT2 folk did not approve, and asked the trio to incorporate points from a further bunch of stakeholders brought in from left field. Ederer quotes some of their responses to the original document:

‘That is nonsense’, ‘On farmer-driven roadmaps: in other areas such as energy, would it be acceptable for oil producers to decide a roadmap?’, ‘It is absurd to proposition a growth in the livestock as a solution’, ‘It is irrelevant that livestock farming has provided food, clothing, power, manure and income and acted as assets, collateral and status. Fossil fuel has done many of the same things’, ‘We are a 38 trillion investor network calling for sustainable agriculture system which importantly includes a shift to plant-rich diets and lower quantities of high-quality meat and dairy consumption’ and similar (these quotes are taken from email conversations that were shared among many members of the solution cluster and therefore are neither private nor confidential).

At this point there was another impasse, because Ederer and his two co-summarisers rejected most of the ideas from the new stakeholders as either not based in science or without known methods to achieve them. It was proposed that the different viewpoints would be presented in three separate 2-page position papers: A, Best Practices and Technologies (substantially similar to the original); B, Grazing for Soil Climate and People, and C, Aligning Production to Consumption. Paper C was the work of EAT-aligned organisations advocating for a shift to a plant-based diet.

Each of the three A, B, C papers was extensively referenced to scientific journal articles, public-policy documents or existing practice descriptions. The Scientific Council of the WFO (World Farmers Organisation) (SC-WFO) checked the quality of the references of each of the three papers (the author of this paper being a co-author of the SC-WFO as well). In the A and B papers, the evaluation found three references each that were not correct, of 45 and 56 respectively. However, among the 53 references of the C-paper, 17 were wrong or irrelevant sources unrelated to the statement, 22 were relevant but said either nothing about or even the opposite of the statement, and 18 sources employed demonstrably weak or manipulative methodologies that could easily be disqualified (multiple mention possible). Only 11 of 53 sources were correctly attributed and supported the statement. That was the quality of the science provided by the C-group, which supposedly was the competence centre of AT2 and EAT on the subject.

One of the papers cited in paper C was Springmann et al 2016, “Analysis and valuation of the health and climate change co-benefits of dietary change.”

In that work, the authors claim to have calculated that if all of humanity switched to a vegan diet, then 8.1 million deaths could be avoided per year on grounds of improved health. The authors claim to have calculated this value based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) survey 2010. The vegan diet that they composed would avoid the GBD health risks of diets being low in fruit for 4.9 million avoided deaths, and low in vegetables yielding 1.8 million avoided deaths. Avoided deaths because of diets high in red meats falling away due to it being vegan, would contribute only 38,000 cases (according to GBD 2010, each value was extrapolated by some factor to adjust for population growth to then reach a total of 8.1 million avoided deaths). Clearly, the avoided death toll of the preferred diet had almost nothing to do with being ‘vegan’, and all with eating sufficient amounts of vegetables and fruits.

I have not done more than skim Springmann et al 2016, but another contemporary paper led by him advocating a carbon tax on food was discussed at WUWT.

Now, it’s obvious that Ederer has a viewpoint here and is not an entirely disinterested observer. But it’s also obvious that certain scientists have an agenda and are willing to spin results rather shamelessly to portray them as supporting that agenda in an unalloyed way, creating “facts” which vanish like morning dew on close inspection. (A diet of white rice is vegan, and it’s unclear to me how resource-intensive a lot of the foods that make being vegan remotely appealing are.) As to the UN, I’m not sure really what the point of it is, other than to create a vast unaccountable bureaucracy with luxury opinions about every topic you care to name.

Attentive readers will know that I’m a vegetarian. I’m also an old-fashioned liberal, who would not dream of imposing any of my preferences on anyone else. I will even, when I am PM, resist the urge to create a law against public sniffing.

Ederer’s conclusion on identifying agenda-driven scientists:

…agenda-driven scientists may be identified by terms such as ‘scientific consensus’ whose aim it is to choke off debate and proclaim an unchallengeable truth. Knowledge discovering scientists, instead, can be identified by having more questions than answers. Paraphrasing Feynman, the biggest difference between the two is that the airplanes of the agenda-scientists fail to land – always.

Reading the paper, I was struck by the similarities between food science and climate science. When it comes to policy, there is a preferred narrative, which often goes beyond what is defensible based on good-quality evidence. If you are looking for evidence to support your case, look hard enough, and you will find it. Such an approach leaves opposing evidence undiscovered. If a valid summary of climate science is “it’s worse than we thought,” then we know there is something wrong.

Answer to quiz question: here they are (image via DAERA):