Quark Soup by David Appell
Saturday, January 04, 2025
Where Are The....
Stuff I've Read or Heard (in some cases, both)
Last month was the lowest Arctic sea ice extent (among Decembers) in the record. [it's an Excel file]
For the year, Arctic SIE ranked at 7th lowest, according to the NOAA data. Antarctica SIE ranked as 2nd lowest, above only last year (but 5.5% above).
Two-thirds of the world’s food comes today from just nine plants: sugar cane, maize (corn), rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil-palm fruit, sugar beet, and cassava. (Atlas Obscura)
Finland has more saunas than cars. (Between the Benches, YouTube 8:50)
Never knew this: the Mediterranean Sea was dry when the Strait of Gibraltar closed off 6 million years ago due to tectonic activity. It stayed dry for about 500,000 years until the Strait opened back up again.
Today I heard on a podcast that the EU allows 300 additives to its foods, while the US allows 10,000.
On this same podcast the name Nicholas Scarfetta came up, the well-known climate denier (by every means possible). It was about a paper he wrote, I don't know when, showing that, while the income distribution by percentile follows a power law (something like this), it's apparently not true at the lowest percentiles. I think. I haven't found the paper yet. But the economist who mentioned it seemed to think it was good and important work. (It may have been a physics-like paper using a model of people, somehow like Brownian motion or an Ising model, I'm still not sure, but want to look it up.
How cats say Happy New Year:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2241518019552267
"They haven't started, and we're almost done."
Monday, December 30, 2024
What the US Government Spends on Health Care
- monthly national health care spending from the Altarum Institute
- Medicare and Medicaid US government spending via FRED
It can't get high enough, as far as I'm concerned.
Friday, December 27, 2024
La Nina Enters the Realm
I hadn't checked the Nino3.4 sea surface temperature in several weeks, and was surprised to see this:
This is from tropicaltidbits.com.
An ENSO has to have the Nino3.4 temperature below -1.5°C for five months to be considered an El Nino or La Nina.... And now our watch begins. Winter (or at least La Nina) is coming. "Protect the weak and uphold the good," as the knights use as a motto. And never forget, "valar morghulis."
The Autobiography of Kevin Trenberth
I didn't know that Kevin Trenberth, the long-time climate scientist at NOAA in Boulder, published an autobiography in 2023. It's titled A Personal Tale of the Development of Climate Science: The Life and Times of Kevin Trenberth. I can't find it for sale (maybe it wasn't published in book form), but here's an online version, and you can download a PDF there.
He retired in 2020 and in 2021 moved to New Zealand (his native country) with his wife. I haven't started to read his book fully yet, just jumped around. This is about his life after retirement, from page 128:
In 2018 I began a phased retirement that included a visit to New Zealand. Following the election of Donald Trump as President and denier-in-chief in 2017, my daughter Annika, with two young children, was ahead of most, and with strong support from her husband, Matt, took advantage of her New Zealand citizenship to plan to and then move her family to New Zealand in September 2018. This was a remarkable and courageous act. With my own retirement looming, there was a strong incentive for my wife and me to follow.I'm seeing more and more people say or write that the US is no longer a country worth living in, it's a country worth escaping from. I even see video clips of younger Americans saying that. And clips from Americans who have moved abroad talk about how much better life is where they went, especially the escape from constant work, too little vacation, affordable health care, a gain of peace and the lack of constant political turmoil.
The foremost reason for leaving the U.S. was family, and the timing was determined by retirement. But Trump, the Republicans and U.S. society were also major factors. The latter included guns, school shootings, and the covid-19 response. The ineptitude of the U.S. in handling all of these is evident....
Thursday, December 26, 2024
Al Gore Getting Angry: "We Are Not Winning"
As Andrew Dessler wrote last year, "Out-of-control corporate power is the real cause of climate change."
Cheaper Than Therapy*
Friday, December 13, 2024
Earth's Albedo is Decreasing Due to Fewer Low Clouds
This is from a paper in Science last week, "Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo," Goessling et al, Science 6-Dec-2024. [Link]
I can only make this chart so big, so expand it if you want a bigger picture. Same since Blogger insists on publishing fuzzy pictures (for me anyway).
Top graph A is surface temperature; the relevant graph as a cause is the bottom graph F, low cloud cover, and to a lesser extent total cloud cover E. The units for both E and F are percentages relative to 2001-2022 (viz., the entire interval).
Then in Table 1 (below) they give their numbers: among them, the planetary albedo (reflectance) has decreased by about -0.4% (negative change => smaller albedo => less reflectance of sunlight => warmer temperature). What's causing reduced lower cloud cover?
"Utilizing satellite and reanalysis data, we identify a record-low planetary albedo as the primary factor bridging this gap. The decline is apparently caused largely by a reduced low-cloud cover in the northern mid-latitudes and tropics, in continuation of a multi-annual trend. Further exploring the low-cloud trend and understanding how much of it is due to internal variability, reduced aerosol concentrations, or a possibly emerging low-cloud feedback will be crucial for assessing the current and expected future warming."
So if the planetary albedo was the canonical 0.30 (30% reflectance), it is now 0.2988. (Round that however you like.) Not much, but enough to matter.
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Atmospheric Methane Level - Accelerating?
Source: NASA
The Price of Chicken
Prices adjusted via the Consumer Price Index.
Sunday, December 08, 2024
Smith Island and Sea-Level Rise
"When I was a little girl they used to say, 'The island's sinking. Now, this weren't yesterday. This has been a long time ago," Marshall said. "Well, fast forward 60-70 years, we're still here."
"While Maryland's 2013 offer to buy and demolish Smith Island homes was shot down, it did sound alarms for residents. Watermen and retirees learned how to apply for grants and lobby legislators. They've been successful, receiving more than $43 million for elevating roads, building jetties, restoring buildings and drawing in tourists."
Saturday, December 07, 2024
The Knot
The nautical mile "was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute (1/60 of a degree) of latitude at the equator, so that Earth's polar circumference is very near to 21,600 nautical miles (that is 60 minutes × 360 degrees). Today the international nautical mile is defined as 1,852 metres (about 6,076 ft; 1.151 mi). The derived unit of speed is the knot, one nautical mile per hour."
Thursday, December 05, 2024
7.0 Earthquake off Northern California
Here's the event page. 11:02 am Pacific Standard Time, 18:44 UTC.
There were 6.6 and 5.8 precursors in the 15 minutes before this big one.
It was less than 100 km offshore and tsunami warnings have been put up, but the quake(s) were over 2 hours ago so any tsunami would have perhaps hit already (?).
A little too close for comfort. I fear the coming M 9.0 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest will happen on a frigid January morning when I'm in the shower. I just hope I can find my eyeglasses and something to wear.
Monday, December 02, 2024
Total Warming, Japanese Style
The total global temperature change from the Japanese Meteorological Association, since 1890. Data here. I used
total_change = (total_linear_slope)*(total_time_interval)
because what else are you supposed to do?
It sure looks like warming since the last 1970s is starting to accelerate.... But I'm sure that can be explained by someone once sneezing 21 years ago within 10 m of a single weather station in Greenland.