Scientists Chase Snowflakes During the Warmest Winter Ever

Inside a cavernous hangar at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility along the Virginia coast, a gleaming white P-3 Orion aircraft sits parked under harsh floodlights. It’s just after midnight and a group of scientists, technicians and graduate students cluster underneath a wing, peering at a 5-inch crack in one of the ailerons that the pilot uses to maneuver the plane.

Their disappointment is palpable. The eight-person team was preparing to board the research aircraft for a 10-hour flight through a massive snowstorm stretching across upstate New York and Canada as part of a new project funded by NASA to dissect the inner workings of winter storms. The researchers want to know how the bands of snow form, why some storms produce snow and others don’t, and why certain conditions lead to ice crystals, while others cause snowflakes. Their ultimate goal is better winter forecasts for the 55 million residents of the Northeast, and improved weather models that can be used for the rest of the US. NASA has dubbed the three-year study IMPACTS, or the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms.

Read the Wired story - “Scientists Chase Snowflakes During the Warmest Winter Ever.”

NASA, NOAA Analyses Reveal 2019 Second Warmest Year on Record

According to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Earth's global surface temperatures in 2019 were the second warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880.

Globally, 2019 temperatures were second only to those of 2016 and continued the planet's long-term warming trend: the past five years have been the warmest of the last 140 years.

This past year, they were 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (0.98 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

“The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before.”

Since the 1880s, the average global surface temperature has risen and the average temperature is now more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (a bit more than 1 degree Celsius) above that of the late 19th century. For reference, the last Ice Age was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than pre-industrial temperatures.

Read the story from NASA - “NASA, NOAA Analyses Reveal 2019 Second Warmest Year on Record.”

The oceans have never been hotter than they are now

2017 was only the second-warmest year on record, according to NASA. But when it comes to the ocean, temperatures have never been warmer.

Our oceans have never been warmer.

New data from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Atmospheric Physics analyzing ocean data from the last half-century shows a clear trend: The oceans are steadily getting warmer, with this year registering the hottest yet. And while the atmospheric temperature is more susceptible to year-to-year shifts, the data from the Earth’s waters shows the consistency with which our world is heating up.

“The ocean heat records are so impressive because they’re absolutely on a steady warming trend,” Robert Anderson, a geochemist at Columbia University, told VICE News. “People who point to pauses in global warming haven’t looked at the warming of the oceans.”

Read the Vice News story by Alex Lubben - “The oceans have never been hotter than they are now.”

2017 is so far the second-hottest year on record thanks to global warming

With the first six months of 2017 in the books, average global surface temperatures so far this year are 0.94°C above the 1950–1980 average, according to NASA. That makes 2017 the second-hottest first six calendar months on record, behind only 2016.

Total solar irradiance data (red) and linear trend (orange) since
1950 from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics Solar Irradiance Data Center at the University of
Colorado. Illustration: Dana Nuccitelli.

That’s remarkable because 2017 hasn’t had the warming influence of an El Niño event. El Niños bring warm ocean water to the surface, temporarily causing average global surface temperatures to rise. 2016 – including the first six months of the year – was influenced by one of the strongest El Niño events on record.

Reality has debunked the ‘warming stopped’ myth

For a long time one of the favorite climate denier myths involved claiming that we hadn’t seen any global surface warming since 1998. That myth has fallen by the wayside since 2014, 2015, and 2016 each broke the global surface temperature records previously set in 2010 and 2005 (which were also both hotter than 1998). 

Yet the myth persisted for years because 1998 was anomalously hot due to the monster El Niño event that year, which meant that global temperatures weren’t much hotter than 1998 until 2014 to today.

Now the first six months of 2017 have been 0.3°C hotter than 1998, despite the former having no El Niño warming influence and the latter being amplified by a monster El Niño. In 1998, there was also more solar energy reaching Earth than there has been in 2017.

Read Dana Nuccitelli’s story on The Guardian - “2017 is so far the second-hottest year on record thanks to global warming.”

Record-busting heat in eastern Australia as climate warming goes extreme

Projected temperatures across Australia
for Sunday 5 February 2017.

2016 was by far the hottest year in the observation record, with the global average surface temperature 1.24 degrees Celsius (°C) warmer that the late nineteenth century, according to NASA data. This broke the record set just the previous year of 1.12°C, which in turn broke the previous mark set in 2014 of 1.01°C.

Although the El Nino conditions of 2015-2016 had some influence (perhaps 0.2°C) it is clear that the warming trend is 1°C or more.

And now Ben Domensino of Weatherzone reports that the month of February is about to put eastern Australia's record-breaking hot January to shame, with a historic spell of hot days and nights gripping parts of central Australia, southern Queensland and northern New South Wales during the first half of February:

The southwest Queensland town of Birdsville is forecast to reach 45-48 degrees from now until Thursday and could extend this run to 10 days by next weekend. This spell would smash the existing record of six consecutive days over 45 degrees from 2014 and 2004. Overnight minimums during this time should remain above 30 degrees, beating the 2012 record of six in a row. Birdsville's hottest day on record was 49.5 degrees on 24th January 1972.

Thargomindah's run of days above 44 degrees could reach 10 by Friday next week, including a few days at 46 degrees. The previous record run of days above 44 in the last 138 years was seven, in 2004.

Walgett in northern New South Wales will be a few degrees 'cooler' than its northern neighbours, reaching 41-45 degrees for the next week. This would take their run of days over 40 degrees to 12 by Thursday and it should to reach 15 next weekend. The current record of 18 days from 1884 could certainly be challenged this month.

Bourke has exceeded 40 degrees for the last six days in a row and will extend this tally to 16 by next weekend. There is a good chance the 121 year old record of 22 days above 40 degrees will be beaten by the middle of this month.

South Australia's Moomba is forecast to reach 46 degrees for six days straight, from this Saturday to Thursday next week. This will be an unprecedented run of hot days for the town, which has data available back to 1972.

Read the Climate Code Red story - “Record-busting heat in eastern Australia as climate warming goes extreme.”

NASA just made all the scientific research it funds available for free

NASA - all its publically funded research
is being made freely available.

NASA just announced that any published research funded by the space agency will now be available at no cost, launching a new public web portal that anybody can access.

The free online archive comes in response to a new NASA policy, which requires that any NASA-funded research articles in peer-reviewed journals be publicly accessible within one year of publication.

“At NASA, we are celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of scientific and technical publications,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman. “Through open access and innovation we invite the global community to join us in exploring Earth, air, and space.”

The database is called PubSpace, and the public can access NASA-funded research articles in it by searching for whatever they’re interested in, or by just browsing all the NASA-funded papers.

Read the ScienceAlert story - “NASA just made all the scientific research it funds available for free.”

Scientists react to Earth’s warmest year: ‘We are heading into a new unknown’

For the third time in as many years, the planet’s temperature has soared to a record high.

NOAA and NASA announced Wednesday that 2016 was the warmest year on record for Earth.

Several other organizations, which also track the Earth’s temperatures, also concluded 2016 was record-warm:

2016 was a record in all surface data sets pic.twitter.com/25aQKrOQqb

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) January 18, 2017

In NOAA’s analysis, temperatures over both the land and ocean reached record highs. No land area was cooler than average.

Read the story from The Washington Post - “Scientists react to Earth’s warmest year: ‘We are heading into a new unknown’.”

2016 Climate Trends Continue to Break Records

The first six months of 2016 were the warmest
 six-month period in NASA's modern temperature
 record, which dates to 1880.

Two key climate change indicators -- global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent -- have broken numerous records through the first half of 2016, according to NASA analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data.

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The six-month period from January to June was also the planet's warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century.

Five of the first six months of 2016 also set records for the smallest respective monthly Arctic sea ice extent since consistent satellite records began in 1979, according to analyses developed by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland. The one exception, March, recorded the second smallest extent for that month.

While these two key climate indicators have broken records in 2016, NASA scientists said it is more significant that global temperature and Arctic sea ice are continuing their decades-long trends of change. Both trends are ultimately driven by rising concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Read the NASA story - “2016 Climate Trends Continue to Break Records.”

Please, Donald Trump, don’t send climate science back to the pre-satellite era

Jenny Fisher.

Bob Walker, an adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, has set alarm bells ringing by recommending that NASA’s climate monitoring programs be axed.

But his dismissal of the “politicised science” at NASA’s Earth Science Division shows an ignorance of the breadth, role and significance of its contributions to society in the United States and worldwide.

It’s unclear what exactly Walker means by his comment that “future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies”. Is the plan merely to shuffle the deckchairs – same science, different badge — or is it code for cutting the research observation and monitoring efforts altogether?

Helen McGregor.

If the former, it is hard to see what it would achieve, beyond risking a loss of expertise as other agencies attempt to develop the same capabilities as NASA. But the latter is a frightening prospect, because it would effectively take us back to what climate scientists refer to as the “pre-satellite era”.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a lecturer in Atmospheric Chemistry from the University of Wollongong, Jenny Fisher; and an ARC Future Fellow, also from the University of Wollongong, Helen McGregor - “Please, Donald Trump, don’t send climate science back to the pre-satellite era.”

Climate deniers do many 'impossible things' at once

Anti-carbon tax protesters in front of
 Parliament House in Canberra in 2011.

Sometimes, climate science deniers will tell you that we can’t predict global temperatures in the future. Sometimes, they’ll say we’re heading for an ice age.

Occasionally, contrarians will say that no single weather event can prove human-caused global warming. But then they’ll point to somewhere that’s cold, claiming this disproves climate change.

Often, deniers will tell you that temperature records show that global warming stopped at some point around 1998. But also they’ll insist that those same temperature records can’t be relied on because NASA and the Bureau of Meteorology are all communist corruption monkeys. Or something.

Black is also white. Round is also flat. Wrong is also right?

A new research paper published in the journal Synthese has looked at several of these contradictory arguments that get thrown around the blogosphere, the Australian Senate and the opinion pages of the (mostly) conservative media.

The paper comes with the fun and enticing title: “The Alice in Wonderland mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism.”

Why Alice? Because, as the White Queen admitted: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Read Graham Readfearn’s story on The Guardian - “How climate science deniers can accept so many 'impossible things' all at once.”

The [Olympics] Year the Rain Forest Burned

This month, hundreds of millions worldwide had their TV eyes tuned to the Olympics. But this season might be remembered not solely for the gold medal count but for foreboding events now unfolding just a thousand miles northwest of the Rio games.

With a camera on a NASA satellite that circles over Earth’s poles, University of California, Irvine professor James Randerson has spotted a near-record number of early-dry season fires burning on the southern and western perimeter of the Amazon forest, including in seven Brazilian states and swaths of lowland Peru and Bolivia.

Randerson, a biologist, has created a computer model for forecasting forest fires. Evidence from various satellites indicate that the rainy season just ended shed unusually little precipitation. “It’s the driest we’ve observed in the last 15 years at the onset of the dry season,” he says. Several weeks ago, he forecast a chart-busting conflagration later this month. The many blazes already detected appear to bear out his prediction.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story - “The [Olympics] Year the Rain Forest Burned.”

July was 'absolutely' Earth's hottest month ever recorded

NOAA and NASA data reveal the Earth’s temperature reached its highest point in 136 years of record-keeping during July.

“July 2016 was absolutely the hottest month since the instrumental records began,” tweeted Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is responsible for temperature measurements.

It was the 15th straight month of recording-breaking temperatures in NOAA’s analysis and 10th-straight in NASA’s, passing the previous hottest Julys by substantial margins.

“It’s a little alarming to me that we’re going through these records like nothing this year,” said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma.

Read The Washington Post story - “July was ‘absolutely’ Earth’s hottest month ever recorded.”

Bill Nye believes NASCAR could change the world

This NASCAR, if it was electric,
could change the world.

I have roots in the southern United States. My mom was from Durham, North Carolina, and my sister, nephew, nieces, spouses, their exes, kids and more kids live in and around Danville, Virginia. Around there, it’s a big deal to go to the races. The boys of various ages, and occasionally some of the girls and women, will pile into vehicles to go see races in South Boston or other tracks nearby. I’ve been to the track in  – the ‘paper clip’ – which is still the shortest track on the NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) circuit. It’s less than a kilometre long, only half a mile. But it is exciting. The cars go just crazy fast, and they are amazingly loud … or LOUD!! But beyond the heart-pounding, Are-these-cars-going-to-jump-the-barrier-and-kill-me? exciting quality of it, it’s depressing – leastways depressing for me as an engineer. Because here I am trying to envision the smart, efficient transportation technology of tomorrow, and there is NASCAR doing the opposite – celebrating a very old transportation technology of yesterday.

Despite the excitement, NASCAR kinda breaks my heart. It’s a celebration of old tech. It uses gasoline-burning instead of electron-flowing. I wish NASCAR were more like NASA. I wish NASCAR were more about the future instead of the past. I wish NASCAR set up Grand Challenges to inspire companies and individuals to create novel automotive technologies in the way NASA does to create novel space technologies. At NASA currently, there are challenges to come up with techniques to mine an asteroid, build a better space suit, and survive the radiation environment in deep space. Those competitions are like races, with winners getting significant grant money. Or look at Google, which created the Lunar XPrize, a genuine competition to see which private group can land a robot on the Moon and send pictures back. There’s no reason why NASCAR couldn’t be like that: a race with rules designed to reward the coolest, most advanced vehicle technologies.

Read the Bill Nye story on Aeon - “If NASCAR embraced electric cars it could change the world.”

Blazing Hot First Half of 2016 Sends Climate Records Tumbling

Halfway through, 2016 has been an exceptional year for climate records, scientists say.

Scientists at NASA released their first-ever mid-year analysis of climate trends on Tuesday, which revealed that every month between January and June had the warmest average temperature on record for that month.

NASA researchers did this new analysis "mainly because the average temperatures for the first half of this year are so in excess of any first part of the year that we've seen," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "It's somewhat worthy of note."

When comparing this year's temperature trends with past years, Schmidt said 2015 was also a very warm year, "but 2016 really has blown that out of the water."

In the U.S., Alaska has been the runaway leader in warming. The first half of the year was the warmest six-month span ever for the state since records began in 1925. And the high temperatures appear to be continuing into July. The town of Deadhorse recently experienced its hottest day, clocking in 85 degrees Fahrenheit on July 7.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Blazing Hot First Half of 2016 Sends Climate RecordsTumbling.”

Pence is defiant in the face of irrevocable science

Donald Trump's U.S. presidential running
mate, Mike Pence, and yes, it seems 'birds
 of  a feather do flock together'.

It was a winter of record snowfall two years ago when Donald Trump's reported running mate made a daring comment about climate change.

"We haven't seen a lot of warming lately," Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) said during a February interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC.

It turns out that same year, 2014, would go down as the warmest since records began in 1880. The status was short-lived. The following year would supplant it as having the highest average temperature in the instrumental record, according to NASA.

Pence, a Tea Party favorite, is seen by many Republicans as someone who would be a calming choice for vice president in Trump's unconventional candidacy. He would add legislative and executive experience to a party ticket headlined by a television celebrity who has never before run for political office.

Trump was expected to formally announce his choice of running mate this morning but announced last night that he would postpone his plans, citing the "horrible attacks" in Nice, France, that left at least 84 people dead. Authorities said a truck crashed into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day.

Read Evan Lehmann’s story on Climate Wire -  “'Global warming is a myth. ... There, I said it'.”

(Donald Trump has since named Indiana Governor, Mick Pence, as his running mate in the upcoming U.S. presidential election)

NASA appeal to CSIRO to abandon climate change cuts

"The cost to our international reputation
 is immense" -
Kim Carr, ALP's shadow science minister.

The US space agency NASA has appealed to CSIRO to abandon plans to cut a key monitoring program that it says will undermine Australia and the world's ability to monitor and predict climate change.

Brent Holben, the project scientist in charge of NASA's Aerosol Robotic Network, urged CSIRO to reconsider any plans it had to cut or withdraw its contribution to the program, according to a letter obtained by Fairfax Media.

"I understand that CSIRO is undertaking a major restructuring that may lead to the closure of AeroSpan [CSIRO's partner program]," Dr Holben wrote in the letter addressed to Alex Wonhas, a senior CSIRO executive, and dated May 1, 2016.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “'Dismay': NASA appeals to CSIRO not to cut global climate efforts.”

Catastrophic changes justy decades away - James Hansen

The great aspiration of the Paris climate accord is to keep global warming from exceeding two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But according to a new paper, even two degrees of warming would mean the disintegration of large sections of the polar ice sheets, boulder-spewing storms stronger than any since prehistory, and the drowning of most coastal cities by the end of the century.

“We’re in danger of handing young people a situation that’s out of their control,” the paper’s author, retired NASA climate scientist James Hansen, told the New York Times on Tuesday.

Using computer models, evidence from ancient episodes of climate change, and modern observations, Hansen and his team arrived at one essential conclusion: The melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets will set off a vicious cycle that dramatically accelerates the pace of climate change. The key concept here is ocean “stratification,” a process by which cold, fresh meltwater rises to the ocean surface while warmer salt water is pushed beneath. (The Washington Post notes that an “anomalously cold ‘blob’ of ocean water” has been detected off the southern coast of Greenland.) That warmer salt water would eventually reach the base of the ice sheets, melting them from below, thus spurring more stratification, which would then spur more melting, which would then spur more stratification, which would spur more warming, until our grandchildren are all swallowed by the sea.

Read the New York Times Magazine story - ”New Paper Suggests Catastrophic Climate Shifts May Be Decades Away.”

'Broken record' about broken heat records

We hate to sound like a broken record, but we keep breaking heat records. Any way you slice it, last year was warm. Unusually so.

NOAA and NASA have both confirmed what scientists have been predicting for months: 2015 was globally the hottest year ever recorded (and the direct temperature records date back to 1880). But what else did scientists determine about the state of the climate in 2015? Here’s what else you need to know.

Read The Climate Reality Project Story - “2015 Crushed global heat records: three things you should know.”

Study warns of ecosystem collapse

The world’s climate is already changing. Extreme weather events (floods, droughts, and heatwaves) are increasing as global temperatures rise. While we are starting to learn how these changes will affect people and individual species, we don’t yet know how ecosystems are likely to change.

Research published in Nature, using 14 years of NASA satellite data, shows eastern Australia’s drylands are among the most sensitive ecosystems to these extreme events, alongside tropical rainforests and mountains. Central Australia’s desert ecosystems are also vulnerable, but for different reasons.

As the world warms, this information can help us manage ecosystems and to anticipate irreversible changes or ecological collapse.

Read The Conversation piece by a professor from the Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster at the University of Technology in Sydney, Alfredo Huete and a research associate in Remote Sensing of Environment, also at the Sydney University of Technology, Xuanlong Ma -  “Rising extreme weather warns of ecosystem collapse: study.”

Bushfire incidence in Australia is on the rise.

Bushfire incidence in Australia is on the rise.

The number of bushfires in Australia is on the rise - up 40 per cent since 2007 - local scientists have found.

In a new research paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, scientists from CSIRO and University of Tasmania also say the increasing bushfire frequency indicates a major climatic shift - though the research does not directly ascribe the rise to human-caused global warming.

The research team studied NASA satellite data from 2007 to 2013 to determine the number of bushfires, to try and develop a system to forecast where they might breakout.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Australian bushfires on the rise, new research finds.”