COSMIC RAYS ON THE RISE AS SOLAR MINIMUM APPROACHES

By Meteorologist Paul Dorian – Vencore, Inc.
vencoreweather.com

The sun is spotless again today which makes 6 days in a row and marks the 36th day this year - already more than all of 2016

The sun is spotless again today which makes 6 days in a row and marks the 36th day this year – already more than all of 2016

Overview
Today marks the 6th day in a row that the sun is blank and the 36th time this year – already more spotless days than all of 2016.   In what has turned out to be a historically weak solar cycle (#24), the sun continues to transition away from its solar maximum phase and towards the next solar minimum. In April 2010, the sun was emerging from the last solar minimum which was historically long and deep.  The blank look to the sun will increase in frequency over the next couple of years leading up to the next solar minimum – probably to be reached in late 2019 or 2020.  By one measure, the current solar cycle is the third weakest since record keeping began in 1755 and it continues a weakening trend since solar cycle 21 peaked in 1980. One of the impacts of low solar activity is the increase of cosmic rays that can penetrate into the Earth’s upper atmosphere and this can have many important consequences.

Comparison of all solar cycles since 1755 in terms of accumulated sunspot number anomalies from the mean value at this stage of the solar cycle. Plot courtesy publication cited below, authors Frank Bosse and Fritz Vahrenholt

Comparison of all solar cycles since 1755 in terms of accumulated sunspot number anomalies from the mean value at this stage of the solar cycle. Plot courtesy publication cited below, authors Frank Bosse and Fritz Vahrenholt

Third weakest solar cycle since 1755
A recent publication has analyzed the current solar cycle and has found that when sunspot anomalies are compared to the mean for the number of months after cycle start, there have been only two weaker cycles since observations began in 1755.  Solar cycle 24 began in 2008 after a historically long and deep solar minimum which puts us more than eight years into the current cycle.  The plot (above) shows accumulated sunspot anomalies from the mean value after cycle start (97 months ago) and only solar cycles 5 and 6 had lower levels going all the way back to 1755.  The mean value is noted at zero and solar cycle 24 is running 3817 spots less than the mean.  The seven cycles preceded by solar cycle 24 had more sunspots than the mean.

Daily observations of the number of sunspots since 1 January 1900 according to Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC). The thin blue line indicates the daily sunspot number, while the dark blue line indicates the running annual average. Last day shown: 30 April 2017. (Graph courtesy climate4you.com)

Daily observations of the number of sunspots since 1 January 1900 according to Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC). The thin

Why the UN’s Climate Models Are Inherently Unreliable, and Should Be Abandoned

Those who have examined the Wallace, Christy, and d’Aleo (WCD) 2016 and 2017 reports discussed in recent months on this blog may be understandably confused as to how they relate to the numerous climate models used by the UN IPCC and the USEPA over many years in support of their climate alarmism.

Source: Why the UN’s Climate Models Are Inherently Unreliable, and Should Be Abandoned in Favor of More Top-Down Approaches

US drought levels fall to lowest point in years – Only 5% of U.S. experiencing drought

BY REID WILSON – 05/12/17 11:35 AM EDT

Just 5 percent of the United States is experiencing drought conditions, the lowest level of drought here since government scientific agencies began updating the U.S. Drought Monitor on a weekly basis in 2000.

Record rain and snowfall over the winter on the West Coast and heavy spring rains in the Midwest have alleviated some of the worst and longest-lasting drought conditions ever recorded.

That parching, years-long drought came after another rainy period, in 2010, when just 8 percent of the U.S. experienced drought conditions. The boom-and-bust cycle is likely caused by climate change that creates more extreme weather patterns, scientists say.

At its driest point, in September 2012, 20 percent of the nation experienced what climatologists deemed “extreme” drought.

Today, small parts of Southern Georgia and Central Florida are still experiencing extreme drought. The drought has amplified several large wildfires in Georgia and Florida, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Parts of southern Arizona are in the midst of a long-term severe drought, while scattered areas of Texas, Colorado, the Dakotas and the greater Washington, D.C., region are dealing with more moderate water shortages.

No state has experienced the highs and lows more than California. As recently as September, the entire state was experiencing at least some drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and 43 percent of the state experienced extreme drought.

Today, after a rainy winter fueled by a so-called Pineapple Express weather system, more than three-quarters of the state is drought-free. Only the Los Angeles area and some inland counties near the U.S.-Mexico border are overly parched.

“California’s drought was alleviated by atmospheric rivers that brought heavy rains earlier this year,” Matthew Rodell, a NASA hydrologist, said in a statement. “Combine that with recent precipitation across much of the northwestern and central parts of the nation, and the result is a much wetter-than-normal map.”

Now, California faces the opposite problem. Heavy rain and snowfall have damaged systems meant to capture water, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The federal government has already said it will send California $274 million to repair the Oroville Dam, where damage to a spillway forced the evacuation of almost 200,000 people in February. Water officials are worried that heavy rains could damage other dams in Northern California, too.…

PLANET EARTH COVERED IN MUCH MORE FOREST THAN THOUGHT

  • PLANET EARTH COVERED IN MUCH MORE FOREST THAN THOUGHT

 

Date: 11/05/17

    • Andrew Lowe and Ben Sparrow, The Conversation

    A new global analysis of the distribution of forests and woodlands has “found” 467 million hectares of previously unreported forest – an area equivalent to 60% of the size of Australia. The discovery increases the known amount of global forest cover by around 9%, and will significantly boost estimates of how much carbon is stored in plants worldwide.

    The new forests were found by surveying “drylands” – so called because they receive much less water in precipitation than they lose through evaporation and plant transpiration. As we and our colleagues report today in the journal Science, these drylands contain 45% more forest than has been found in previous surveys.

    We found new dryland forest on all inhabited continents, but mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, around the Mediterranean, central India, coastal Australia, western South America, northeastern Brazil, northern Colombia and Venezuela, and northern parts of the boreal forests in Canada and Russia. In Africa, our study has doubled the amount of known dryland forest.

    The world’s drylands: forested areas shown in green; non-forested areas in yellow. Bastin et al., Science (2017)

    With current satellite imagery and mapping techniques, it might seem amazing that these forests have stayed hidden in plain sight for so long. But this type of forest was previously difficult to measure globally, because of the relatively low density of trees.

    What’s more, previous surveys were based on older, low-resolution satellite images that did not include ground validation. In contrast, our study used higher-resolution satellite imagery available through Google Earth Engine – including images of more than 210,000 dryland sites – and used a simple visual interpretation of tree number and density. A sample of these sites were compared with field information to assess accuracy.

    Full post

     

Barack Obama: Climate Denier

BY STEVEN HAYWARD

Further to my item here yesterday about how the term “climate denier” is extended to everyone who dissents even the slightest bit from narrow climatista orthodoxy, Barack Obama clearly didn’t get the memo, for yesterday in Italy he let fly with this:

“Ninety-nine percent* of scientists who study climate change carefully . . . will tell you that it is indisputable that the planet is getting warmer and the only real controversy is how much warmer will it get.”

Whoa there, Lightworker! You’re not supposed to say that last bit! There is no controversy, understand? Only “deniers” say there is any controversy about forecasting future warming.

The weakness of the forecasting models has been at the heart of climate skeptics’ critique for a long while, and you don’t need to read any renegade science to have large doubts about the probity of the climate models. You only need to read the chapter on the problems of the models in each of the successive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) periodic reports. But I suspect that the number of journalists (and most climate activists, for that matter) who ever read the actual IPCC chapter on climate models asymptotically approaches zero. It suffices just to quote the “consensus science” document to get you branded as a denier, which is a great marker of scientific close-mindedness.…

Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Fred Singer on the ‘failure of UN IPCC to find credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming’

By S. Fred Singer

Exploring some of the intricacies of GW [Global Warming] science can lead to surprising results that have major consequences.  In a recent invited talk at the Heartland Institute’s ICCC-12 [Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change], I investigated three important topics:

1. Inconsistencies in the surface temperature record.

2. Their explanation as artifacts arising from the misuse of data.

3.  Thereby explaining the failure of IPCC to find credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

A misleading graph

In the iconic picture of the global surface temperature of the 20th century [fig 1, top]  one can discern two warming intervals — in the initial decades (1910-42) and in the final decades, 1977 to 2000.

Fig 1  20th century temps;  top—global; bottom– US

 

Although these two trends look similar, they are really  quite different:  the initial warming is genuine, but the later warming is not.   What a surprise!  I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘fake,’ but it just does not exist; I try to demonstrate this difference as an artifact of the data-gathering process, by comparing with several independent data sets covering similar time intervals.

The later warming is contradicted by every available dataset, as follows:

**the surface record for the ‘lower 48’ [US] shows a much lower trend; [see fig 1, bottom]; presumably there is better control over the placement of weather-stations and their thermometers;

**the trend of global sea surface temp [SST] is much less; with 1995 temp values nearly equal to those of 1942 [according to Gouretski and Kennedy, as published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2012];

** likewise, the trend of night-time marine air-temperatures [NMAT], measured with thermometers on ship decks, according to data from J Kennedy, Hadley Centre, UK

** atmospheric temperature trends are uniformly much lower and close to zero (during 1979-1997), whether measured with balloon-borne radiosondes or with microwave sounding units [MSU] aboard weather satellites [see fig 8 in ref 2]

** compatible data on solar activity that show nothing unusual happening.  Interestingly, the solar data had been assembled for a quite different purpose – namely, to disprove the connection between cosmic rays and climate change [see here fig 14 of ref 2], assuming that the late-century warming was real.  In the absence of such warming, as I argue here, this attempted critique of the cosmic-ray–climate connection collapses.

** proxy data also show near-zero trends, whether from tree rings or …

CJR Finds Scientific Opposition to Linking Hurricanes and Global Warming

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/aly-nielsen/2017/05/04/cjr-finds-scientific-opposition-linking-hurricanes-and-global

By Aly Nielsen |

A surprising report from the George Soros-funded Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) revealed several scientists oppose the way the media have tried to blame hurricanes on man-made climate change.

CJR used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to acquire emails “sent from or received by six hurricane researchers or forecasters” which included the terms “global warming” or “climate change.” The May 2, article written by Rob Verger indicate CJR was looking to see how scientists talked to the media about Hurricane Alex and “whether climate change should be blamed.” Verger said the emails showed a “heated online discussion among scientists.”

Because it was far earlier than a typical hurricane, Alex drew attention to itself and media climate alarm. The Washington Post described it Alex as “rare,” and turned to Weather Underground’s Jason Masters who tried to make the global warming point.

“It is unlikely that Alex would have formed if these waters had been close to normal temperatures for this time of year,” Masters wrote (and the Post quoted).

Christian Science Monitor was even more blunt, asking in its headline “Is climate change to blame for rare January hurricanes?”

“With the unusual occurrence of Hurricane Alex as an out-of-season hurricane, there have been a couple of meteorologists stating to the media that manmade global warming helped to cause the hurricane. Such statements are not, in my opinion, factual.” National Hurricane Center science and operations officer Chris Landsea said in a Jan. 18, 2016, email acquired by CJR.

Landsea told CJR he was similarly disturbed by how strongly former vice president Al Gore linked Hurricane Matthew to climate change in October 2016. Gore’s claims made Landsea “cringe, because there’s some links but it’s much much more subtle than he is insinuating.”

Hurricane Matthew wasn’t the only thing Gore has gotten wrong. After his climate alarmist film An Inconvenient Truth was released in 2007, a British court identified at least eleven material falsehoods, including attributing Hurricane Katrina to climate change.

In promotional footage of Gore’s follow up film, An Inconvenient Sequel, slated for July 2017, release Gore twisted and rewrote his earlier claims about what would cause massive global flooding including flooding of New York City in order to try to claim Hurricane Sandy proved him right.

While CJR’s report cited stories written by The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor erroneously linking specific hurricanes to …

Northern Hemisphere having a tough time shaking off winter

https://www.vencoreweather.com/blog/2017/5/9/1025-am-northern-hemisphere-having-a-tough-time-shaking-off-winter

By Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Vencore, Inc. – vencoreweather.com

Snow is running at well above normal levels across the Northern Hemisphere; courtesy Environment Canada

Snow is running at well above normal levels across the Northern Hemisphere; courtesy Environment Canada

Overview
Europe had an extended period of colder-than-normal weather in April accompanied by lots of snow and now much of the US is experiencing an extended period of colder-than-normal weather as we transition from early-to-mid May.  Snowfall has been running at above normal levels this winter across the Northern Hemisphere and continues at those higher-than-normal levels as we heads towards the middle of May.  In addition, temperatures in the Arctic region – which have been generally running at above-normal levels in recent weeks – have actually dropped to below-normal in recent days. One of the main factors contributing to this late season cold across much of the Northern Hemisphere is a blocking pattern in the upper part of the atmosphere centered over Greenland and Iceland and this tends to contribute to cold air outbreaks into the land mass areas on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Temperatures in the Arctic region (>80 degrees N) have fallen to below-normal levels (circled area) in recent days following several weeks at generally above-normal levels; map courtesy Weather Bell Analytics/Dr. Ryan Maue

Temperatures in the Arctic region (>80 degrees N) have fallen to below-normal levels (circled area) in recent days following several weeks at generally above-normal levels; map courtesy Weather Bell Analytics/Dr. Ryan Maue

Discussion
During the month of April, Europe experienced a persistent colder-than-normal pattern and significant snow piled up in the Alps across the central part of the continent.  The air was so cold, in fact, that many vineyards from England-to-Italy suffered serious losses as the battle with freezing conditions was relentless in many areas.  In the US, a colder-than-normal pattern has kicked in for much of the nation and should continue into the middle of the month and there has been some accumulating snow in the western US and across portions of the Northern Plains and interior Northeast.  In fact, the next ten days or so will see more in the way of accumulating snow in the western US and many ski resorts in that part of the country will have good conditions right into the month of June.  The Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California, for example, will get more substantial snowfall over the next ten days or so to add to the massive totals that they received this winter.

500 millibar height anomaly pattern with strong blocking (in red) over Greenland and Iceland and deep upper-level lows over the Northeast and Southwest US; map courtesy AER/Dr. Judah Cohen

500 millibar height anomaly pattern with strong blocking (in red) over Greenland and Iceland and deep upper-level lows over the Northeast and Southwest US; map courtesy AER/Dr. Judah

Data Analyses Show Rapid Global Surface Cooling, Growing Arctic Ice Thickness

Analyses show that global temperatures continue their rapid cooling trend, as Schneefan here writes. What follows are excerpts of his recent comprehensive analysis.

The cooling comes naturally in the wake of the moderate La Nina conditions that have ruled over the past months.

In April surface temperatures 2 meters above the ground plummeted as the following NCEP chart shows:

Source: weatherbell.com/temperature.php

Global satellite temperature anomaly from the mean measured by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) rebounded a bit after a large March drop.

Source: UAH Global Temperature +0.27 deg. C.

Foremost the atmosphere above the oceans cooled the most during March, 2017. This is clearly depicted by the UAH: an anomaly of +0.29°K to +0.09°K compared to the WMO 1981-2010 mean.

Plot UAH satellite temperatures von UAH in the atmosphere 1500 m altitude (TLT) over the oceans. Note the rose colored curve shows the ARGO ocean buoys’ mean of the sea temperature to a depth of 2.5 m, with 37-month smoothing. Source: www.climate4you.com/, sea surface temperature estimates: UAH.

Global RSS satellite data show a rapid cooling since early 2016:

Moreover despite the powerful warming El Niño event of 2015/16, the unfalsified satellite data in 2016 show that no new significant global heat record was seen when compared to the El Niño year of 1998. We are talking about hundredths of a degree, completely within the boundaries of uncertainty.

No significant warming in 20 years

The powerful linear global cooling continued in April 2017 and will continue for the time being, Schneefan writes.

What does that mean for the global warming? Schneefan adds:

The IPCC global warming claimed by the climate models has been missing for almost 20 years. And that despite the constantly rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations!”

And just days ago, Kenneth Richards here showed that there hasn’t been any warming over the entire southern hemisphere at all. The warming of the past decades is not even global.

What is now becoming glaringly obvious is that the IPCC has wildly overestimated its projected global warming for the future. When the IPCC models from the various IPCC reports are compared to the observations, the result gets vividly illustrated by the following chart showing the satellite observed temperatures from January 2001 to June 2016:

The Speedometer for the 15 years 4 months January 2001 to April 2016 shows the [1.1, 4.2] C°/century-equivalent range of global warming rates (red/orange) that IPCC’s 1990, 1995 and 2001 reports predicted should be happening by now, against real-world warming (green) equivalent to <0.5 C°/century over the period, taken as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite global lower-troposphere temperature datasets. Quelle: http://joannenova.com.au/2016/05/monckton-ipcc-climate-models-speeding-out-of-control-compared-to-real-world/

The Global Warming Speedometer for January 2001 to June 2016 shows observed warming on