Hadley's March temperature

The Hadley Centre pegs last month as the 2nd warmest March in their 160-yr records, after only 2002. In third place is March 1998.

Unlike NASA GISS, Hadley does not put the last 12 months as the warmest 12-mth period ever. In fact, they do not even put the last 10-yr moving average as the warmest ever -- that peaked in August 2007 by their records, though right now the 10-yr MA is only 0.006°C below that number....

"Sleeping Alone" by Amy Miller

Sleeping Alone

Listening
to the neighbor’s dog
bark
and bark.
He must
be very big,
his mouth as big
as my head,
as big
as a Macy’s Day float,
his corridor throat
commanding me
to hear:
I am one
dog
in the lonely bowl
of night
and there
is so
much
dark.

-- Amy Miller

(Apologies to Ms. Miller, but I no longer recall where I obtained this poem.)

Earth vs Lindsey Graham

NY Times: Graham Pulls Support for Major Senate Climate Bill

alternative headline: Senator Lindsey Graham has a snit, decides his feelings are more important than the future of the human race.

Save the Poles

Climate change contrarians (cozily ensconced behind their computers) relish stories of those North Pole explorers who for some reason don't make it, as if that somehow disproves the science of climate change. But they never seem to cover the ones who do make it.... and on Earth Day, too.

Anthony Watts' Ignorance

Anthony Watts writes:

Here’s a headline I thought I’d never see.

Why cleaner air could speed global warming

Now we hear that may be a good thing. Make up your minds!

This is an amazing admission of ignorance. It's been known for years that air pollution (SO2) is a negative climate forcing. This was detailed in the 3AR. I'm sure it's been known since before that. To act like it's now some new revelation is simply stupid.

And he's the science blog of the year? What a joke....

Is This the Story of Your Life, or What?

Via.

Reopening European Airspace

From the News:

(LONDON): Despite lingering ash in the skies from the Icelandic volcano, aviation authorities said that gaps in the cloud of grit in some places would allow for some movement in the air.

This smells like pure bullshit, pushed by a bunch of airlines who dislike losing millions of Euros a day. Gaps in the grit?? Come one, is that the best excuse they can conjure?

The Upside of the Airspace Shutdown

I know it's costing a lot of companies a lot of money (they can afford it), but there's something very uplifting about the shutdown of Europe's air space due to the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. As they say, Nature always bats last.

I predict that in a few years this will be looked upon with nostalgia. It's like the eastern seaboard blackout of 2003 -- Oh My God, some people had to walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn!

I bet now they look back on that as a magical time. I hope so. All I know is that whenever things have not gone the way I expected, I more than not remember that time as especially vivid, a time I felt very alive, a time different from the countless days when you just do your work, eat dinner, and go to bed. Snow days as a kid, car breakdowns, places you end up sleeping that you would never have guessed at the beginning of the day.... They can suck when you're in them, but after awhile you learn that things always somehow work out and you end up back in equilibrium -- a little wiser, a little more jaded maybe, but a little happier too. And with a few more stories to tell, which you know you will.

NOAA Confirms: Warmest March

NOAA confirms that last month was the warmest March in the records:

NOAA: Global Temps Push Last Month to Hottest March on Record

April 15, 2010

The world’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made last month the warmest March on record, according to NOAA. Taken separately, average ocean temperatures were the warmest for any March and the global land surface was the fourth warmest for any March on record. Additionally, the planet has seen the fourth warmest January – March period on record.

Jonah Goldberg's Ignorance

Jonah Goldberg, who allegedly displays what the LA Times calls "hard-hitting insight," completely misunderstands the implications of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. He believes that it warms the planet:

Question for the Planet Gore Guys   [Jonah Goldberg]

So, how many more Priuses will the world have to buy to offset this Icelandic volcano?

Of course, every freshman knows that volcanoes cool the planet, temporarily, and do not emit nearly enough carbon dioxide to counter that.

Yet Goldberg has been allowed to publish several columns on global warming. This is the state of punditry in America.

PS: Here's a graphic that says the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has emitted about 15 Kmt/day CO2 so far, whereas the European aviation industry emits 344.109 Kmt/day CO2. I'm skeptical of any calculation that specifies six significant figures, so take this with a grain of salt.


PPS: A post on a Google group on geoengineering by Alan Robock says Eyjafjallajokull has emitted only about 0.004 Mmt of SO2 (a cooling agent), whereas 1991's Pinatubo eruption emitted 20 Mmt. 

Eyjafjallajökull Won't Influence Climate

It doesn't look like Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano will influence climate. So far its VEI (Volcano Explosivity Index) is about a three. By contrast, Mt St Helens was about a 4, and 1991's Pinutabo (which did influence climate, by about -1°F for a year) was about a 5. (The VEI is logarithmic.)

But it might cause a tiny bit of cooling at this rate, if it keeps enough planes out of the air! (Aviation contributes about 2-3% of worldwide CO2 emissions.)

(Figure via climatecentral.org)

Temperature Change as a Stock Price

Chris Guan:

"I think if temperature change was a stock price then the Chamber of Commerce would be buying in."

Chart

Hiatt

"I don't know who they think they are/
 smashing a perfectly good guitar."

Ecotopia Excerpt

Bert got to ridiculing the old Dupont slogan, Better Things for Better Living through Chemistry. "All that meant,' he proclaimed, "was nylon, orlon, and the total prostitution of the state of Delaware. We want better living through biology. We don't think in terns of 'things," there's no such thing as a thing -- there are only systems.'

-- Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston (1975)

12-month Temperature Record

I was playing with the GISS temperature anomaly data, and it turns out that the last 12 months (April 2009- March 2010) have been the warmest 12-month period in their records.

Wow: GISS March Temperature

NASA GISS says March 2010 was +0.84°C above their baseline -- a very high number and second only to 2002's +0.85°C. (It dwarfs 1998's +0.56°C.)

This is surprising, given that the recent El Nino already appears to be waning.

Moreover, NASA GISS's records peg 2009's climatological winter (Dec 09 - Feb 10) as the second warmest, after only 2007's.

Carbon Emissions in 2050?

Kevin Drum writes about carbon emissions:

Are we likely to meet our goal of cutting carbon emissions 83%? Probably not. I imagine Stuart is right about that. But is that cause for despair? Hardly. If we aim for 83%, maybe we'll get to 60% instead. And perhaps that will turn out to be enough. Or, if it isn't, perhaps some modest geoengineering will get us the rest of the way. And if that's not enoughand geoengineering isn't acceptable even on a modest scale — well, at least we've only got 23% to go. Any way you look at it, we're better off than if we shoot for a more "reasonable" goal of 60% and only make it to 40%.

Personally, I think carbon emissions will be higher in 2050 than they are today. Here's why:

1. As Nate Lewis of Caltech pointed out at conference I attended last year, the planning/construction/production lifetime of a major power plant -- or just about any major construction project -- is about 40 years. So we'd have to be seriously planning carbon-free energy production right now. We're not -- we're hardly even on the dance floor. The rest of the world isn't any better.
2. our insistence on ever more economic growth
3. China
4. India
5. the rest of the developing world who, rightly, all want to live like we do.
6. an increase of 2B more people on the Earth by 2050.
7. lack of political will
8. dedicated and nefarious interests influencing #5 as best they can
9. existing carbon-free technologies are not sufficient to produce all the energy we'll need to 2050, except solar. And more solar, and more solar.
10. human greed, selfishness, and stupidity.

Mt St Helens, Saturday evening

Review of Climate Model Evaluation

Here's an interesting paper on the present-day evaluation of climate models:

"How Well Do Coupled Models Simulate Today’s Climate?" Thomas Reichler and Junsu Kimm, BAMS, March 2008, p. 303-311 (American Meteorological Society)

Their conclusion?

CONCLUSION. Using a composite measure of model performance, we objectively determined the ability of three generations of models to simulate present-day mean climate. Current models are certainly not perfect, but we found that they are much more realistic than their predecessors. This is mostly related to the enormous progress in model development that took place over the last decade, which is partly due to more sophisticated model parameterizations, but also to the general increase in computational resources, which allows for more thorough model testing and higher model resolution. Most of the current models not only perform better, they are also no longer flux corrected. Both improved performance and more physical formulation suggest that an increasing level of confidence can be placed in model-based predictions of climate. This, however, is only true to the extent that the performance of a model in simulating present mean climate is related to the ability to make reliable forecasts of long-term trends. It is hoped that these advancements will enhance the public credibility of model predictions and help to justify the development of even better models.

(Emphasis mine.)

James McMurtry - Cheney's Toy