via Watts Up With That?

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August 1, 2025 at 10:45AM

More sunlight generally means higher temperatures, obviously. The most likely reason for more sunlight is fewer clouds in the way. To quote a recent Talkshop post: ‘Earth’s cloud cover is rapidly shrinking and contributing to record-breaking temperatures, according to new research.’ But climate worriers only see bad news in more warmth, and by inference seek to blame human activities for clouds or lack of them.
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Terrestrial plants drove an increase in global photosynthesis between 2003 and 2021, a trend partially offset by a weak decline in photosynthesis—the process of using sunlight to make food—among marine algae, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.

The findings could inform planetary health assessments, enhance ecosystem management, and guide climate change projections and mitigation strategies, says Phys.org.

Photosynthetic organisms—also known as primary producers—form the base of the food chain, making most life on Earth possible.

Using energy from the sun, primary producers fix, or convert, carbon from the air into organic, or carbon-based, matter. But primary producers also release carbon through a process called autotrophic respiration, which is somewhat akin to breathing.

The rate of carbon gain after accounting for loss through respiration is called net primary production [Talkshop comment: or net primary productivity – see image in link].

“Net primary production measures the amount of energy photosynthetic organisms capture and make available to support nearly all other life in an ecosystem,” said first author Yulong Zhang, a research scientist in the lab of Wenhong Li at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.”
. . .
Satellite insights
Observations from satellites offer continuous perspective on photosynthesis by plants and marine algae called phytoplankton. Specifically, specialized satellite instruments measure surface greenness, which represents the abundance of a green pigment called chlorophyll produced by photosynthetic life.

Computer models then estimate net primary production by combining greenness data with other environmental data, such as temperature, light and nutrient variability.

The authors of the new study used six different satellite-based datasets on net primary production—three for land and three for oceans—for the years from 2003 to 2021. Using statistical methods, they analyzed annual changes in net primary production for land and, separately, for the ocean.

They found a significant increase in terrestrial net primary production, at a rate of 0.2 billion metric tons of carbon per year between 2003 and 2021. The trend was widespread from temperate to boreal, or high-latitude, areas, with a notable exception in the tropics of South America.

Full article here.
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Image: Photosynthesis [credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop

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August 1, 2025 at 09:55AM

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via JoNova

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August 1, 2025 at 09:25AM

By Paul Homewood

 

h/t Paul Kolk

 

The usual lies from the BBC:

 

 

Andrew Davies was on his way to New Zealand to work on a Doctor Who exhibition, for which he was project manager. The first leg of his flight from London to Singapore was fairly smooth. Then suddenly the plane hit severe turbulence.

"Being on a rollercoaster is the only way I can describe it," he recalls. "After being pushed into my seat really hard, we suddenly dropped. My iPad hit me in the head, coffee went all over me. There was devastation in the cabin with people and debris everywhere.

"People were crying and [there was] just disbelief about what had happened."

Mr Davies was, he says, "one of the lucky ones".

Other passengers were left with gashes and broken bones. Geoff Kitchen, who was 73, died of a heart attack.

Death as a consequence of turbulence is extremely rare. There are no official figures but there are estimated to have been roughly four deaths since 1981. Injuries, however, tell a different story, official figures from the National Transportation Safety Board show. (Of these, 166 were crew and may not have been seated.)

But as climate change shifts atmospheric conditions, experts warn that air travel could become bumpier: temperature changes and shifting wind patterns in the upper atmosphere are expected to increase the frequency and intensity of severe turbulence.

"We can expect a doubling or tripling in the amount of severe turbulence around the world in the next few decades," says Professor Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading.

Full story here.

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Far from there being “no official figures”, the NTSB, which the BBC themselves quote, are absolutely clear – the number of turbulence-related accidents are not increasing; since the 1990s, the trend is flat:

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101.pdf

The BBC make this meaningless statement:

“In the US alone, there have been 207 severe injuries – where an individual has been admitted to hospital for more than 48 hours – since 2009”

Well, so what. The clear intention is to deceive readers into believing that this number is unusual and much higher than before. This is then followed by predictions of climate related increases in years to come, in order to emphasise the supposed link.

Readers would no doubt form rather different conclusions, if they had been provided with the actual data at the beginning.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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August 1, 2025 at 08:28AM