Arquivo da tag: Meteorologia

Heat, Flood or Icy Cold, Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide (N.Y.Times)

11/01/2013UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Incerteza, jornalismo, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Previsãorenzotaddei

NY Times

January 10, 2013

By SARAH LYALL

WORCESTER, England — Britons may remember 2012 as the year the weather spun off its rails in a chaotic concoction of drought, deluge and flooding, but the unpredictability of it all turns out to have been all too predictable: Around the world, extreme has become the new commonplace.

Especially lately. China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing — minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting — that the traffic lights recently stopped working in the city of Yakutsk.

Bush fires are raging across Australia, fueled by a record-shattering heat wave. Pakistan was inundated by unexpected flooding in September. A vicious storm bringing rain, snow and floods just struck the Middle East. And in the United States, scientists confirmed this week what people could have figured out simply by going outside: last year was the hottest since records began.

“Each year we have extreme weather, but it’s unusual to have so many extreme events around the world at once,” said Omar Baddour, chief of the data management applications division at the World Meteorological Organization, in Geneva. “The heat wave in Australia; the flooding in the U.K., and most recently the flooding and extensive snowstorm in the Middle East — it’s already a big year in terms of extreme weather calamity.”

Such events are increasing in intensity as well as frequency, Mr. Baddour said, a sign that climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds.

Here in Britain, people are used to thinking of rain as the wallpaper on life’s computer screen — an omnipresent, almost comforting background presence. But even the hardiest citizen was rattled by the near-biblical fierceness of the rains that bucketed down, and the floods that followed, three different times in 2012.

Rescuers plucked people by boat from their swamped homes in St. Asaph, North Wales. Whole areas of the country were cut off when roads and train tracks were inundated at Christmas. In Megavissey, Cornwall, a pub owner closed his business for good after it flooded 11 times in two months.

It was no anomaly: the floods of 2012 followed the floods of 2007 and also the floods of 2009, which all told have resulted in nearly $6.5 billion in insurance payouts. The Met Office, Britain’s weather service, declared 2012 the wettest year in England, and the second-wettest in Britain as a whole, since records began more than 100 years ago. Four of the five wettest years in the last century have come in the past decade (the fifth was in 1954).

The biggest change, said Charles Powell, a spokesman for the Met Office, is the frequency in Britain of “extreme weather events” — defined as rainfall reaching the top 1 percent of the average amount for that time of year. Fifty years ago, such episodes used to happen every 100 days; now they happen every 70 days, he said.

The same thing is true in Australia, where bush fires are raging across Tasmania and the current heat wave has come after two of the country’s wettest years ever. On Tuesday, Sydney experienced its fifth-hottest day since records began in 1910, with the temperature climbing to 108.1 degrees. The first eight days of 2013 were among the 20 hottest on record.

Every decade since the 1950s has been hotter in Australia than the one before, said Mark Stafford Smith, science director of the Climate Adaptation Flagship at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

To the north, the extremes have swung the other way, with a band of cold settling across Russia and Northern Europe, bringing thick snow and howling winds to Stockholm, Helsinki and Moscow. (Incongruously, there were also severe snowstorms in Sicily and southern Italy for the first time since World War II; in December, tornadoes and waterspouts struck the Italian coast.)

In Siberia, thousands of people were left without heat when natural gas liquefied in its pipes and water mains burst. Officials canceled bus transportation between cities for fear that roadside breakdowns could lead to deaths from exposure, and motorists were advised not to venture far afield except in columns of two or three cars. In Altai, to the east, traffic officials warned drivers not to use poor-quality diesel, saying that it could become viscous in the cold and clog fuel lines.

Meanwhile, China is enduring its worst winter in recent memory, with frigid temperatures recorded in Harbin, in the northeast. In the western region of Xinjiang, more than 1,000 houses collapsed under a relentless onslaught of snow, while in Inner Mongolia, 180,000 livestock froze to death. The cold has wreaked havoc with crops, sending the price of vegetables soaring.

Way down in South America, energy analysts say that Brazil may face electricity rationing for the first time since 2002, as a heat wave and a lack of rain deplete the reservoirs for hydroelectric plants. The summer has been punishingly hot. The temperature in Rio de Janeiro climbed to 109.8 degrees on Dec. 26, the city’s highest temperature since official records began in 1915.

At the same time, in the Middle East, Jordan is battling a storm packing torrential rain, snow, hail and floods that are cascading through tunnels, sweeping away cars and spreading misery in Syrian refugee camps. Amman has been virtually paralyzed, with cars abandoned, roads impassable and government offices closed.

Israel and the Palestinian territories are grappling with similar conditions, after a week of intense rain and cold winds ushered in a snowstorm that dumped eight inches in Jerusalem alone.

Amir Givati, head of the surface water department at the Israel Hydrological Service, said the storm was truly unusual because of its duration, its intensity and its breadth. Snow and hail fell not just in the north, but as far south as the desert city of Dimona, best known for its nuclear reactor.

In Beirut on Wednesday night, towering waves crashed against the Corniche, the seaside promenade downtown, flinging water and foam dozens of feet in the air as lightning flickered across the dark sea at multiple points along the horizon. Many roads were flooded as hail pounded the city.

Several people died, including a baby boy in a family of shepherds who was swept out of his mother’s arms by floodwaters. The greatest concern was for the 160,000 Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon, taking shelter in schools, sheds and, where possible, with local families. Some refugees are living in farm outbuildings, which are particularly vulnerable to cold and rain.

Barry Lynn, who runs a forecasting business and is a lecturer at the Hebrew University’s department of earth science, said a striking aspect of the whole thing was the severe and prolonged cold in the upper atmosphere, a big-picture shift that indicated the Atlantic Ocean was no longer having the moderating effect on weather in the Middle East and Europe that it has historically.

“The intensity of the cold is unusual,” Mr. Lynn said. “It seems the weather is going to become more intense; there’s going to be more extremes.”

In Britain, where changes to the positioning of the jet stream — a ribbon of air high up in the atmosphere that helps steer weather systems — may be contributing to the topsy-turvy weather, people are still recovering from the December floods. In Worcester last week, the river Severn remained flooded after three weeks, with playing fields buried under water.

In the shop at the Worcester Cathedral, Julie Smith, 54, was struggling, she said, to adjust to the new uncertainty.

“For the past seven or eight years, there’s been a serious incident in a different part of the country,” Mrs. Smith said. “We don’t expect extremes. We don’t expect it to be like this.”

Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem; Irit Pazner Garshowitz from Tzur Hadassah, Israel; Fares Akram from Gaza City, Gaza; Ellen Barry and Andrew Roth from Moscow; Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan; Dan Levin from Harbin, China; Jim Yardley from New Delhi; Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon; Matt Siegel from Sydney, Australia; Scott Sayare from Paris; and Simon Romero from Rio de Janeiro.

* * *

It’s Official: 2012 Was Hottest Year Ever in U.S.

By JUSTIN GILLIS

NY Times, January 8, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/science/earth/2012-was-hottest-year-ever-in-us.html?hp&_r=0

The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the corn belt and a massive storm that caused broad devastation in the mid-Atlantic states, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States.

How hot was it? The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but last year blew away the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit.

If that does not sound sufficiently impressive, consider that 34,008 new daily high records were set at weather stations across the country, compared with only 6,664 new record lows, according to a count maintained by the Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, using federal temperature records.

That ratio, which was roughly in balance as recently as the 1970s, has been out of whack for decades as the country has warmed, but never by as much as it was last year.

“The heat was remarkable,” said Jake Crouch, a scientist with the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which released the official climate compilation on Tuesday. “It was prolonged. That we beat the record by one degree is quite a big deal.”

Scientists said that natural variability almost certainly played a role in last year’s extreme heat and drought. But many of them expressed doubt that such a striking new record would have been set without the backdrop of global warming caused by the human release of greenhouse gases. And they warned that 2012 was likely a foretaste of things to come, as continuing warming makes heat extremes more likely.

Even so, the last year’s record for the United States is not expected to translate into a global temperature record when figures are released in coming weeks. The year featured a La Niña weather pattern, which tends to cool the global climate over all, and scientists expect it to be the world’s eighth or ninth warmest year on record.

Assuming that prediction holds up, it will mean that the 10 warmest years on record all fell within the past 15 years, a measure of how much the planet has warmed. Nobody who is under 28 has lived through a month of global temperatures that fell below the 20th-century average, because the last such month was February 1985.

Last year’s weather in the United States began with an unusually warm winter, with relatively little snow across much of the country, followed by a March that was so hot that trees burst into bloom and swimming pools opened early. The soil dried out in the March heat, helping to set the stage for a drought that peaked during the warmest July on record.

The drought engulfed 61 percent of the nation, killed corn and soybean crops and sent prices spiraling. It was comparable to a severe drought in the 1950s, Mr. Crouch said, but not quite as severe as the legendary Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, which was exacerbated by poor farming practices that allowed topsoil to blow away.

Extensive records covering the lower 48 states go back to 1895; Alaska and Hawaii have shorter records and are generally not included in long-term climate comparisons for that reason.

Mr. Crouch pointed out that until last year, the coldest year in the historical record for the lower 48 states, 1917, was separated from the warmest year, 1998, by only 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit. That is why the 2012 record, and its one degree increase over 1998, strikes climatologists as so unusual.

“We’re taking quite a large step above what the period of record has shown for the contiguous United States,” he said.

In addition to being the nation’s warmest year, 2012 turned out to be the second-worst on a measure called the Climate Extremes Index, surpassed only by 1998.

Experts are still counting, but so far 11 disasters in 2012 have exceeded a threshold of $1 billion in damages, including several tornado outbreaks; Hurricane Isaac, which hit the Gulf Coast in August; and, late in the year, Hurricane Sandy, which caused damage likely to exceed $60 billion in nearly half the states, primarily in the mid-Atlantic region.

Among those big disasters was one bearing a label many people had never heard before: the derecho, a line of severe, fast-moving thunderstorms that struck central and eastern parts of the country starting on June 29, killing more than 20 people, toppling trees and knocking out power for millions of households.

For people who escaped both the derecho and Hurricane Sandy relatively unscathed, the year may be remembered most for the sheer breadth and oppressiveness of the summer heat wave. By the calculations of the climatic data center, a third of the nation’s population experienced 10 or more days of summer temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Among the cities that set temperature records in 2012 were Nashville; Athens, Ga.; and Cairo, Ill., all of which hit 109 degrees on June 29; Greenville, S.C., which hit 107 degrees on July 1; and Lamar, Colo., which hit 112 degrees on June 27.

With the end of the growing season, coverage of the drought has waned, but the drought itself has not. Mr. Crouch pointed out that at the beginning of January, 61 percent of the country was still in moderate to severe drought conditions. “I foresee that it’s going to be a big story moving forward in 2013,” he said.

Your weatherman probably denies global warming (Salon)

11/01/2013UncategorizedClima, Enquadramento, Incerteza, jornalismo, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Previsãorenzotaddei

FRIDAY, JAN 11, 2013 08:00 AM -0200

The good news: People can be persuaded climate change is real. The bad news: TV experts can’t

BY DAVID SIROTA

Your weatherman probably denies global warming

There’s a big reason climate change differs from so many public policy challenges: unlike other crises, addressing the planet’s major environmental crisis truly requires mass consensus. Indeed, because fixing the problem involves so many different societal changes — reducing carbon emissions, conserving energy, retrofitting infrastructure, altering a meat-centric diet, to name a few — we all need to at least agree on the basic fact that we are facing an emergency. This is especially the case in a nation where, thanks to the U.S. Senate filibuster, lawmakers representing just 11 percent of the population can kill almost any national legislation.

That’s why, as encouraging as it is to see a new Associated Press-GfK poll showing that 4 in 5 Americans now see climate change as a serious problem, it is also not so encouraging to see that after the hottest year on record, 1 in 5 still somehow do not acknowledge the crisis. Unfortunately, that 1 in 5 may be enough to prevent us from forging the all-hands-on-deck attitude necessary to halt a planetary disaster.

What, if anything, can be done? Short of eliminating the filibuster so that lawmakers representing this 20 percent don’t retain veto power over climate change legislation, America desperately needs a serious public education campaign.

The good news is that with such education, many of those who don’t yet believe climate change is a serious problem can, in fact, be reached — and convinced to accept obvious reality.

This is the conclusion of a new study by researchers at George Mason University and Yale University. It found that those with a “low engagement on the issue of global warming … are more likely to be influenced by their perceived personal experience of global warming than by their prior beliefs.” Summarizing the findings, Grist.org reporter David Roberts writes that “people who have made up their mind have made up their mind,” but for those in the “mushy middle,” personally facing severe weather — and being exposed to facts about what that weather really represents — “can make a real difference.”

The bad news is that this “mushy” group probably cannot be reached by the real experts, as 1 in 3 of those surveyed in the AP poll say they simply do not trust scientists. That leaves local television weather forecasters (many of whom are not actual scientists), national news outlets and Washington political leaders to the task — and up to this point, many of them have played the opposite of a constructive role in climate education.

For instance, when it comes to weather forecasters, a recent Rolling Stone magazine assessment of the local news scene found that “there’s a shockingly high chance that your friendly TV weatherman is a full-blown climate denier.” The report cited a 2010 survey finding that in the vast wasteland of Ron Burgundys, only half of all local weather forecasters believe climate change is even happening, and fewer than a third acknowledge the scientific evidence proving that it is “caused mostly by human activities.” Not surprisingly, their forecasts often omit any discussion of climate change’s effect on the weather systems, thus forfeiting a chance to properly contextualize severe weather events.

Similarly, an analysis in 2012 from the watchdog group Media Matters found that “the amount of climate coverage on both the Sunday shows and the nightly news has declined tremendously.” Meanwhile, the Columbia Journalism Review points out that the “presidential campaign was silent on the issue.”

In a nation that comprises just 5 percent of the world’s population but a whopping 18 percent of its carbon emissions, this situation is unacceptable.

If the first step toward solving a problem is getting past the denial stage, then it is long past time for news organizations and political leaders to end their climate denialism. Only then can we hope to reach the consensus on which our survival depends.

David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the best-selling author of the books “Hostile Takeover,” “The Uprising” and “Back to Our Future.” E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

Renee Lertzman: the difficulty of knowledge

18/12/2012UncategorizedClima, Cognição, Culpa, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Previsão, Psicologia, Sensacionalismo, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By Renee Lertzman / December 16, 2012

The notion that one can feel deeply, passionately about a particular issue – and not do anything in practically about it – seems to have flummoxed the broader environmental community.

Why else would we continue to design surveys and polls gauging public opinions about climate change (or other serious ecological threats)? Such surveys – even high profile, well funded mass surveys – continue to reproduce pernicious myths regarding both human subjectivity and the so-called gaps between values and actions.

It is no surprise that data surfacing in a survey or poll will stand in stark contrast to the ‘down and dirty’ world of actions. We all know that surveys invoke all sorts of complicated things like wanting to sound smart/good/moral, one’s own self-concept vs. actual feelings or thoughts, and being corralled into highly simplistic renderings of what are hugely complex topics or issues (“do you worry about climate change/support carbon tax/drive to work each day etc?”). So there is the obvious limitation right now. However, more important is this idea that the thoughts or ideas people hold will translate into their daily life. Reflect for a moment on an issue you care very deeply about. Now consider how much in alignment your practices are, in relation with this issue. It takes seconds to see that in fact, we can have multiple and competing desires and commitments, quite easily.

So why is it so hard for us to carry this over into how we research environmental values, perceptions or beliefs?

If we accept from the get-go that we are complicated beings living in hugely complicated contexts, woven into networks extending far beyond our immediate grasp, it makes a lot of sense that I can care deeply for my children’s future quality of life (and climatic conditions), and still carry on business as usual. I may experience deep conflict, guilt, shame and pain, which I can shove to the edges of consciousness. I may manage to not even think about these issues, or create nifty rationalizations for my consumptive behaviors.

However, this does not mean I don’t care, have deep concern, and even profound anxieties.

Until we realize this basic fact – that we are multiple selves in social contexts, and dynamic and fluid – our communications work will be limited. Why? Because we continue to speak with audiences, design messaging, and carry out research with the mythical unitary self in mind. We try to trick, cajole, seduce people into caring about our ecological treasures. This is simply the wrong track. Rather than trick, why not invite? Rather than overcome ‘barriers,’ why not presume dilemmas, and set out to understand them?

There is also the fact that some knowledge is just too difficult to bear.

The concept of “difficult knowledge” relates to the fact that when we learn, we also let go of cherished beliefs or concepts, and this can be often quite painful. How we handle knowledge, in other words, can and should be done with this recognition. How can we best support one another to bear difficult knowledge?

One of the tricks of the trade for gifted psychotherapists is the ability to listen and converse. The therapist listens; not only for the meaning, but where there may be resistance. The places that make us squirm or laugh nervously or change the topic. This is regarded as where the riches lie – where we may find ourselves stuck despite our best intentions. If we were to practice a bit of this in our own work in environmental communications, my guess is we’d see less rah-rah cheerleading engagement styles, and more ‘let’s be real and get down to business’ sort of work.

And this is what we need, desperately.

Eight examples of where the IPCC has missed the mark on its predictions and projections (The Daily Climate)

17/12/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Incerteza, IPCC, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

flooded-768

A “king tide” leaves parts of Sausalito, Calif., flooded in 2010. Disagreement over the impact of ice-sheet melting on sea-level rise has led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to omit their influence – and thus underestimate sea-level rise – in recent reports, a pattern the panel repeats with other key findings. Photo by Yanna B./flickr.

Dec. 6, 2012

Correction appended

By Glenn Scherer
The Daily Climate

Scientists will tell you: There are no perfect computer models. All are incomplete representations of nature, with uncertainty built into them. But one thing is certain: Several fundamental projections found in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have consistently underestimated real-world observations, potentially leaving world governments at doubt as to how to guide climate policy.

Emissions

At the heart of all IPCC projections are “emission scenarios:” low-, mid-, and high-range estimates for future carbon emissions. From these “what if” estimates flow projections for temperature, sea-rise, and more.

Projection: In 2001, the IPCC offered a range of fossil fuel and industrial emissions trends, from a best-case scenario of 7.7 billion tons of carbon released each year by 2010 to a worst-case scenario of 9.7 billion tons.

Reality: In 2010, global emissions from fossil fuels alone totaled 9.1 billion tons of carbon, according to federal government’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory.

Why the miss? While technically within the range, scientists never expected emissions to rise so high so quickly, said IPCC scientist Christopher Fields. The IPCC, for instance, failed to anticipate China’s economic growth, or resistance by the United States and other nations to curbing greenhouse gases.

“We really haven’t explored a world in which the emissions growth rate is as rapid as we have actually seen happen,” Fields said.

Temperature

IPCC models use the emission scenarios discussed above to estimate average global temperature increases by the year 2100.

warming-300

Projection: The IPCC 2007 assessment projected a worst-case temperature rise of 4.3° to 11.5° Fahrenheit, with a high probability of 7.2°F.

Reality: We are currently on track for a rise of between 6.3° and 13.3°F, with a high probability of an increase of 9.4°F by 2100, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other modelers are getting similar results, including a study published earlier this month by the Global Carbon Project consortium confirming the likelihood of a 9ºF rise.

Why the miss? IPCC emission scenarios underestimated global CO2 emission rates, which means temperature rates were underestimated too. And it could get worse: IPCC projections haven’t included likely feedbacks such as large-scale melting of Arctic permafrost and subsequent release of large quantities of CO2 and methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent, albeit shorter lived, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Arctic Meltdown

Five years ago, the summer retreat of Arctic ice wildly outdistanced all 18 IPCC computer models, amazing IPCC scientists. It did so again in 2012.

ice-600

Projection: The IPCC has always confidently projected that the Arctic ice pack was safe at least until 2050 or well beyond 2100.

Reality: Summer ice is thinning faster than every climate projection, and today scientists predict an ice-free Arctic in years, not decades. Last summer, Arctic sea ice extent plummeted to 1.32 million square miles, the lowest level ever recorded – 50 percent below the long-term 1979 to 2000 average.

Why the miss? For scientists, it is increasingly clear that the models are under-predicting the rate of sea ice retreat because they are missing key real-world interactions.

“Sea ice modelers have speculated that the 2007 minimum was an aberration… a matter of random variability, noise in the system, that sea ice would recover.… That no longer looks tenable,” says IPCC scientist Michael Mann. “It is a stunning reminder that uncertainty doesn’t always act in our favor.”

Ice Sheets

Greenland and Antarctica are melting, even though IPCC said in 1995 that they wouldn’t be.

Projection: In 1995, IPCC projected “little change in the extent of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets… over the next 50-100 years.” In 2007 IPCC embraced a drastic revision: “New data… show[s] that losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have very likely contributed to sea level rise over 1993 to 2003.”

Today, ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica is trending at least 100 years ahead of projections compared to IPCC’s first three reports.

Reality: Today, ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica is trending at least 100 years ahead of projections compared to IPCC’s first three reports.

Why the miss? “After 2001, we began to realize there were complex dynamics at work – ice cracks, lubrication and sliding of ice sheets,” that were melting ice sheets quicker, said IPCC scientist Kevin Trenberth. New feedbacks unknown to past IPCC authors have also been found. A 2012 study, for example, showed that the reflectivity of Greenland’s ice sheet is decreasing, causing ice to absorb more heat, likely escalating melting.

Sea-Level Rise

The fate of the world’s coastlines has become a classic example of how the IPCC, when confronted with conflicting science, tends to go silent.

Projection: In the 2001 report, the IPCC projected a sea rise of 2 millimeters per year. The worst-case scenario in the 2007 report, which looked mostly at thermal expansion of the oceans as temperatures warmed, called for up to 1.9 feet of sea-level-rise by century’s end.

Today: Observed sea-level-rise has averaged 3.3 millimeters per year since 1990. By 2009, various studies that included ice-melt offered drastically higher projections of between 2.4 and 6.2 feet sea level rise by 2100.

Why the miss? IPCC scientists couldn’t agree on a value for the contribution melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets would add to sea-level rise. So they simply left out the data to reach consensus. Science historian Naomi Oreskes calls this – one of IPCC’s biggest underestimates – “consensus by omission.”

Ocean Acidification

To its credit, the IPCC admits to vast climate change unknowns. Ocean acidification is one such impact.

Projection: Unmentioned as a threat in the 1990, 1995 and 2001 IPCC reports. First recognized in 2007, when IPCC projected acidification of between 0.14 and 0.35 pH units by 2100. “While the effects of observed ocean acidification on the marine biosphere are as yet undocumented,” said the report, “the progressive acidification of oceans is expected to have negative impacts on marine shell-forming organisms (e.g. corals) and their dependent species.”

Reality: The world’s oceans absorb about a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans release annually into the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. Since the pH scale is logarithmic, this change represents a stunning 30 percent increase in acidity.

Why the miss? Scientists didn’t have the data. They began studying acidification by the late 1990s, but there weren’t many papers on the topic until mid-2000, missing the submission deadline for IPCC’s 2001 report. Especially alarming are new findings that ocean temperatures and currents are causing parts of the seas to become acidic far faster than expected, threatening oysters and other shellfish.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco has called acidification the “equally evil twin” to global warming.

Thawing Tundra

Some carbon-cycle feedbacks that could vastly amplify climate change – especially a massive release of carbon and methane from thawing permafrost – are extremely hard to model.

Projection: In 2007, IPCC reported with “high confidence” that “methane emissions from tundra… and permafrost have accelerated in the past two decades, and are likely to accelerate further.” However, the IPCC offered no projections regarding permafrost melt.

Reality: Scientists estimate that the world’s permafrost holds 1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon. That worries scientists: The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on earth, and researchers are seeing soil temperatures climb rapidly, too. Some permafrost degradation is already occurring.

Large-scale tundra wildfires in 2012 added to the concern.

Why the miss? This is controversial science, with some researchers saying the Arctic tundra is stable, others saying it will defrost only over long periods of time, and still more convinced we are on the verge of a tipping point, where the tundra thaws rapidly and catastrophically. A major 2005 study, for instance, warned that the entire top 11 feet of global permafrost could disappear by century’s end, with potentially cataclysmic climate impacts.

The U.N. Environmental Programme revealed this week that IPCC’s fifth assessment, due for release starting in September, 2013, will again “not include the potential effects of the permafrost carbon feedback on global climate.”

Tipping points

The IPCC has been silent on tipping points – non-linear “light switch” moments when the climate system abruptly shifts from one paradigm to another.

The trouble with tipping points is they’re hard to spot until you’ve passed one.

Projection: IPCC has made no projections regarding tipping-point thresholds.

Reality: The scientific jury is still out as to whether we have reached any climate thresholds – a point of no return for, say, an ice-free Arctic, a Greenland meltdown, the slowing of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation, or permanent changes in large-scale weather patterns like the jet stream, El Niño or monsoons. The trouble with tipping points is they’re hard to spot until you’ve passed one.

Why the miss? Blame the computers: These non-linear events are notoriously hard to model. But with scientists recognizing the sizeable threat tipping points represent, they will be including some projections in the 2013-14 assessment.

Correction (Dec. 6, 2012): Earlier editions incorrectly compared global carbon dioxide emissions against carbon emissions scenarios. Carbon dioxide is heavier, incorrectly skewing the comparison. Global use of fossil fuels in 2010 produced about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide but only 9.1 tons of carbon, putting emissions within the extreme end of IPCC scenarios. The story has been changed to reflect that.

Graphic of emissions scenario courtesy U.S. Global Change Research Program. Photo of activist warning of 6ºC warming © Adela Nistora. Graphic showing Arctic summer ice projections vs. observations by the Vancouver Observer.

Glenn Scherer is senior editor of Blue Ridge Press, a news service that has been providing environmental commentary and news to U.S. newspapers since 2007.

DailyClimate.org is a foundation-funded news service covering climate change. Contact editor Douglas Fischer at dfischer [at] dailyclimate.org

Scientists Pioneer Method to Predict Environmental Collapse (Science Daily)

17/12/2012UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Modelagem, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Researcher Enlou Zhang takes a core sample from the bed of Lake Erhai in China. (Credit: University of Southampton)

Nov. 19, 2012 — Scientists at the University of Southampton are pioneering a technique to predict when an ecosystem is likely to collapse, which may also have potential for foretelling crises in agriculture, fisheries or even social systems.

The researchers have applied a mathematical model to a real world situation, the environmental collapse of a lake in China, to help prove a theory which suggests an ecosystem ‘flickers’, or fluctuates dramatically between healthy and unhealthy states, shortly before its eventual collapse.

Head of Geography at Southampton, Professor John Dearing explains: “We wanted to prove that this ‘flickering’ occurs just ahead of a dramatic change in a system — be it a social, ecological or climatic one — and that this method could potentially be used to predict future critical changes in other impacted systems in the world around us.”

A team led by Dr Rong Wang extracted core samples from sediment at the bottom of Lake Erhai in Yunnan province, China and charted the levels and variation of fossilised algae (diatoms) over a 125-year period. Analysis of the core sample data showed the algae communities remained relatively stable up until about 30 years before the lake’s collapse into a turbid or polluted state. However, the core samples for these last three decades showed much fluctuation, indicating there had been numerous dramatic changes in the types and concentrations of algae present in the water — evidence of the ‘flickering’ before the lake’s final definitive change of state.

Rong Wang comments: “By using the algae as a measure of the lake’s health, we have shown that its eco-system ‘wobbled’ before making a critical transition — in this instance, to a turbid state.

“Dramatic swings can be seen in other data, suggesting large external impacts on the lake over a long time period — for example, pollution from fertilisers, sewage from fields and changes in water levels — caused the system to switch back and forth rapidly between alternate states. Eventually, the lake’s ecosystem could no longer cope or recover — losing resilience and reaching what is called a ‘tipping point’ and collapsing altogether.”

The researchers hope the method they have trialled in China could be applied to other regions and landscapes.

Co-author Dr Pete Langdon comments: “In this case, we used algae as a marker of how the lake’s ecosystem was holding-up against external impacts — but who’s to say we couldn’t use this method in other ways? For example, perhaps we should look for ‘flickering’ signals in climate data to try and foretell impending crises?”

Journal Reference:

Rong Wang, John A. Dearing, Peter G. Langdon, Enlou Zhang, Xiangdong Yang, Vasilis Dakos, Marten Scheffer.Flickering gives early warning signals of a critical transition to a eutrophic lake state. Nature, 2012; DOI:10.1038/nature11655

‘Missing’ Polar Weather Systems Could Impact Climate Predictions (Science Daily)

17/12/2012UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Modelagem, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Intense but small-scale polar storms could make a big difference to climate predictions according to new research. (Credit: NEODAAS / University of Dundee)

Dec. 16, 2012 — Intense but small-scale polar storms could make a big difference to climate predictions, according to new research from the University of East Anglia and the University of Massachusetts.

Difficult-to-forecast polar mesoscale storms occur frequently over the polar seas; however, they are missing in most climate models.

Research published Dec. 16 inNature Geoscience shows that their inclusion could paint a different picture of climate change in years to come.

Polar mesoscale storms are capable of producing hurricane-strength winds which cool the ocean and lead to changes in its circulation.

Prof Ian Renfrew, from UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, said: “These polar lows are typically under 500 km in diameter and over within 24-36 hours. They’re difficult to predict, but we have shown they play an important role in driving large-scale ocean circulation.

“There are hundreds of them a year in the North Atlantic, and dozens of strong ones. They create a lot of stormy weather, strong winds and snowfall — particularly over Norway, Iceland, and Canada, and occasionally over Britain, such as in 2003 when a massive dump of snow brought the M11 to a standstill for 24 hours.

“We have shown that adding polar storms into computer-generated models of the ocean results in significant changes in ocean circulation — including an increase in heat travelling north in the Atlantic Ocean and more overturning in the Sub-polar seas.

“At present, climate models don’t have a high enough resolution to account for these small-scale polar lows.

“As Arctic Sea ice continues to retreat, polar lows are likely to migrate further north, which could have consequences for the ‘thermohaline’ or northward ocean circulation — potentially leading to it weakening.”

Alan Condron from the University of Massachusetts said: “By simulating polar lows, we find that the area of the ocean that becomes denser and sinks each year increases and causes the amount of heat being transported towards Europe to intensify.

“The fact that climate models are not simulating these storms is a real problem because these models will incorrectly predict how much heat is being moved northward towards the poles. This will make it very difficult to reliably predict how the climate of Europe and North America will change in the near-future.”

Prof Renfrew added: “Climate models are always improving, and there is a trade-off between the resolution of the model, the complexity of the model, and the number of simulations you can carry out. Our work suggests we should put some more effort into resolving such storms.”

‘The impact of polar mesoscale storms on Northeast Atlantic ocean circulation’ by Alan Condron from the University of Massachusetts (US) and Ian Renfrew from UEA (UK), is published in Nature Geoscience on December 16, 2012.

Journal Reference:

Alan Condron, Ian A. Renfrew. The impact of polar mesoscale storms on northeast Atlantic Ocean circulation. Nature Geoscience, 2012; DOI:10.1038/ngeo1661

Physicist Happens Upon Rain Data Breakthrough (Science Daily)

17/12/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Incerteza, Matemática, Meteorologia, Modelagem, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

John Lane looks over data recorded from his laser system as he refines his process and formula to calibrate measurements of raindrops. (Credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann)

Dec. 3, 2012 — A physicist and researcher who set out to develop a formula to protect Apollo sites on the moon from rocket exhaust may have happened upon a way to improve weather forecasting on Earth.

Working in his backyard during rain showers and storms, John Lane, a physicist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, found that the laser and reflector he was developing to track lunar dust also could determine accurately the size of raindrops, something weather radar and other meteorological systems estimate, but don’t measure.

The special quantity measured by the laser system is called the “second moment of the size distribution,” which results in the average cross-section area of raindrops passing through the laser beam.

“It’s not often that you’re studying lunar dust and it ends up producing benefits in weather forecasting,” said Phil Metzger, a physicist who leads the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab, part of the Surface Systems Office at Kennedy.

Lane said the additional piece of information would be useful in filling out the complex computer calculations used to determine the current conditions and forecast the weather.

“We may be able to refine (computer weather) models to make them more accurate,” Lane said. “Weather radar data analysis makes assumptions about raindrop size, so I think this could improve the overall drop size distribution estimates.”

The breakthrough came because Metzger and Lane were looking for a way to calibrate a laser sensor to pick up the fine particles of blowing lunar dust and soil. It turns out that rain is a good stand-in for flying lunar soil.

“I was pretty skeptical in the beginning that the numbers would come out anywhere close,” Lane said. “Anytime you do something new, it’s a risk that you’re just wasting your time.”

The genesis of the research was the need to find out how much damage would be done by robotic landers getting too close to the six places on the moon where Apollo astronauts landed, lived and worked.

NASA fears that dust and soil particles thrown up by the rocket exhaust of a lander will scour and perhaps puncture the metal skin of the lunar module descent stages and experiment hardware left behind by the astronauts from 1969 to 1972.

“It’s like sandblasting, if you have something coming down like a rocket engine, and it lifts up this dust, there’s not air, so it just keeps going fast,” Lane said. “Some of the stuff can actually reach escape velocity and go into orbit.”

Such impacts to those materials could ruin their scientific value to researchers on Earth who want to know what happens to human-made materials left on another world for more than 40 years.

“The Apollo sites have value scientifically and from an engineering perspective because they are a record of how these materials on the moon have interacted with the solar system over 40 years,” Metzger said. “They are witness plates to the environment.”

There also are numerous bags of waste from the astronauts laying up there that biologists want to examine simply to see if living organisms can survive on the moon for almost five decades where there is no air and there is a constant bombardment of cosmic radiation.

“If anybody goes back and sprays stuff on the bags or touches the bags, they ruin the experiment,” Metzger said. “It’s not just the scientific and engineering value. They believe the Apollo sites are the most important archaeological sites in the human sphere, more important than the pyramids because it’s the first place humans stepped off the planet. And from a national point of view, these are symbols of our country and we don’t want them to be damaged by wanton ransacking.”

Current thinking anticipates placing a laser sensor on the bottom of one of the landers taking part in the Google X-Prize competition. The sensor should be able to pick up the blowing dust and soil and give researchers a clear set of results so they can formulate restrictions for other landers, such as how far away from the Apollo sites new landers can touch down.

As research continues into the laser sensor, Lane expects the work to continue on the weather forecasting side of the equation, too. Lane already presented some of his findings at a meteorological conference and is working on a research paper to detail the work. “This is one of those topics that span a lot of areas of science,” Lane said.

Why Sandy Has Meteorologists Scared, in 4 Images (The Atlantic)

10/12/2012Uncategorizedcomunicação científica, Desastre, jornalismo, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By Alexis Madrigal

OCT 28 2012, 12:23 PM ET 126

She’s huge. She’s strong and might get stronger. She’s strange. She’s directing the might of her storm surge right at New York City.

Update 10/29, 4:49pm: The Eastern seaboard has battened down the hatches. Hurricane Sandy is expected to make landfall in New Jersey in the next few hours, but flooding has been reported in Atlantic City and pieces of New York during this morning’s high tide cycle. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority already shut down rail, bus, and subway service in NYC, as did Washington DC’s authorities. All eyes are on the 8 o’clock hour, when the storm surge from Sandy will combine with a very high tide to create maximum water levels. In the worst case scenario, the storm surge will hit precisely at the moment the tide peaks at 8:53pm. In that scenario, New York City, in particular, could sustain substantial damage, especially to its transportation infrastructure.

The good news, if there is any, is that the forecast hasn’t worsened much. It is what it has been, which is grim. Meteorologist Jeff Masters put it in simple terms. “As the core of Sandy moves ashore, the storm will carry with it a gigantic bulge of water that will raise waters levels to the highest storm tides ever seen in over a century of record keeping, along much of the coastline of New Jersey and New York,” Masters wrote today. “The peak danger will be between 7 pm – 10 pm, when storm surge rides in on top of the high tide.”

Here’s the latest map of the prospective storm surge tonight. You can compare it to the image at the bottom, which shows what the forecast was yesterday.

* * *

Hurricane Sandy has already caused her first damage in New York: the subway system will be shut as of 7pm tonight. Meteorologists are scared, so city planners are scared.

For many, the hullabaloo raises memories of Irene, which despite causing $15.6 billion worth of damages in the United States, did not live up to its pre-arrival hype.

By almost all measures, this storm looks like it could be worse: higher winds, a path through a more populated area, worse storm surge, and a greater chance it’ll linger. The atmospherics, you might say, all point to this being the worst storm in recent history.

I’ve been watching weather nerds freak out about a few different graphs over the last several days, which they’ve sent around like sports fans would tweet a particularly vicious hit in the NFL. You don’t want to look, but you also can’t help it.

Dr. Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at WeatherBELL, put out this animated GIF of the storm’s approach yesterday. “This is unprecedented –absolutely stunning upper-level configuration pinwheeling #Sandy on-shore like ping-pong ball,” he tweeted. It shows how cold air to the north and west of the storm spin Sandy into the mid-atlantic coastline. (Nota bene: his models also show very high winds at skyscraper altitudes.)

This morning, the Wall Street Journal’s Eric Holthaus (@WSJweather), tweeted the following map. “Oh my…. I have never seen so much purple on this graphic. By far. Never,” he said. “Folks, please take this storm seriously.” The storm is strong *and* huge. And when it encounters the cold air from the north and west, it will develop renewed strength thanks to that interaction, a process known as “baroclinic enhancement.”

This last graphic I created from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration data that has weather watchers worried. It shows the probability of a greater than six foot storm surge in and around New York City. Hurricane Irene, by comparison, caused a four foot surge.

Note that the highest probabilities are focused tightly around New York City, which also happens to be the most densely populated area in the country. That’s a very bad combination. Jeff Masters, author of the must-read storm blog Wunderground, laid out the general problem.

“[According to last night’s forecast], the destructive potential of the storm surge was exceptionally high: 5.7 on a scale of 0 to 6,” he wrote. “This is a higher destructive potential than any hurricane observed between 1969 – 2005, including Category 5 storms like Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Camille, and Andrew.”

Specifically, New York City’s infrastructure may take an unprecedented hit. The subway narrowly escaped flooding during Irene, and Sandy (for all the reasons above) is expected to be worse. So…

“According to the latest storm surge forecast for NYC from NHC, Sandy’s storm surge is expected to be several feet higher than Irene’s. If the peak surge arrives near Monday evening’s high tide at 9 pm EDT, a portion of New York City’s subway system could flood, resulting in billions of dollars in damage,” Masters concluded. “I give a 50% chance that Sandy’s storm surge will end up flooding a portion of the New York City subway system.”

Update 1:06pm: To get a taste of how forecasters are feeling, here is The Weather Channel’s senior meteorologist, Stu Ostro:

History is being written as an extreme weather event continues to unfold, one which will occupy a place in the annals of weather history as one of the most extraordinary to have affected the United States.

On Twitter, Alan Robinson pointed out that I left out another scary map, the rainfall forecast, which shows the storm “sitting over the Delaware and Susquehanna watersheds.” Much of the damage that Irene caused came from flooding rivers. However, there is one key factor militating against similar damage, Jeff Masters of Wunderground says. Irene hit when the ground was already very wet. Sandy is striking when ground moisture is roughly average. Here’s Masters whole statement:

Hurricane Irene caused $15.8 billion in damage, most of it from river flooding due to heavy rains. However, the region most heavily impacted by Irene’s heavy rains had very wet soils and very high river levels before Irene arrived, due to heavy rains that occurred in the weeks before the hurricane hit. That is not the case for Sandy; soil moisture is near average over most of the mid-Atlantic, and is in the lowest 30th percentile in recorded history over much of Delaware and Southeastern Maryland. One region of possible concern is the Susquehanna River Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania, where soil moisture is in the 70th percentile, and river levels are in the 76th – 90th percentile. This area is currently expected to receive 3 – 6 inches of rain (Figure 4), which is probably not enough to cause catastrophic flooding like occurred for Hurricane Irene. I expect that river flooding from Sandy will cause less than $1 billion in damage.

Doubling Down on Climate Change Denial (Slate)

04/12/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

By Phil Plait

Posted Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, at 8:00 AM ET

Graphic of Earth on fire Oh, those wacky professional climate change deniers! Once again, they’ve banded together a passel of people, 90 percent of whom aren’t even climatologists, and had them sign a nearly fact-free opinion piece in the Financial Post, claiming global warming isn’t real. It’s an astonishing example of nonsense so ridiculous I would run out of synonyms for “bilge” before adequately describing it.

The Op-Ed is directed to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has recently, and thankfully, been vocal about the looming environmental catastrophe of global warming. The deniers’ letter takes him to task for this, but doesn’t come within a glancing blow of reality.

The letter itself is based on a single claim. So let’s be clear: If that claim is wrong, so is the rest of the letter.

Guess what? That claim is wrong. So blatantly wrong, in fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone could write it with a straight face. It says:

“The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years.”

This is simply, completely, and utterly false. The Met Office is the national weather service for the United Kingdom. In October 2012, they updated their database of global surface temperature measurements, a compendium of temperatures taken over time by weather stations around the planet. David Rose, a climate change denier who can charitably be said to have trouble with facts, cherry-picked this dataset and published a horrendously misleading graph in that bastion of scientific thought, the Daily Mail, saying the measurements show there’s been no global warming for the past 16 years.

But he did this by choosing a starting point on his graph that gave the result he wanted, a graph that looks like there’s been no warming since 1997. But if you show the data properly, you see there has been warming:

Graph showing how the Earth is warming up.

Global surface temperatures from the Met Office data. Top: Fiction. Bottom: Fact.

Image credit: David Rose/Daily Mail (top), Tamino (bottom).

The top graph is from Rose’s article, but the bottom graph shows what happens when you display the data going back a few more years. See the difference? What he did is like measuring how tall you are when you’re 25, doing it again when you’re 30, then claiming human beings never grow. That’s a big no-no in science. You have to choose starting and ending points that fairly represent the data, as in the bottom graph. When you do, you very clearly see the trend that the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, hammering home how patently ridiculous this claims is, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000. On top of that, Rose was using global surface temperatures, which don’t really represent global overall heat content well; most of the heating is going into ocean waters. So the data he’s displaying so awfully isn’t even the right data to make his claim anyway!

So the very first basis of this denial letter is total garbage, and was such an egregious manipulation of the U.K. Met Office data that the Met Office itself issued a debunking of it! Yet here were are, months later, with the deniers still ignoring facts.

The letter is chock full of more such falsehoods. If you want the rundown, please go readthe great article on Skeptical Science destroying this nonsense. Full disclosure: I had already written quite a bit more for this post before seeing the one at Skeptical Science, and decided it would be better to send readers there for more rather than debunk all the wrongness here. I’m pleased to note they found the same examples of misleading or outright false statements in the deniers’ article and debunked them the same way I had.

I do want to add something, though. I’ll note that it seems superficially impressive that they got 125 scientists, “qualified in climate-related matters” as they claim, to sign this letter.

Yeah, about that…

First, not everyone signing that letter is a scientist. Lord Monckton, for example, apparently has no formal scientific training, has some trouble with the truth, and oh, by the way, claims Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery. He’s the last guy I’d want signing a letter I was on. Yet he seems to pop up on every denialist list as a go-to guy.

Here’s another: The very first signatory, Hhabibullo Abdusamatov, claims that global warming is caused by the Sun, which is patently and provably false (see that Skeptical Science link for more). Many of the claims Abdusamatov makes (as listed on his Wikipedia page) are, um, not accepted by mainstream science, to be very charitable.

Going down the list of signatories I was struck by how many are not, in fact, climate scientists (again, for examples with references, see Skeptical Science); I counted a dozen who actually have climatology in their listed credentials. It’s kinda weird to write such a big letter and then only have fewer than 10 percent of the signers actually be credentialed in the field.

Of course, I’m not a climatologist either, though I am an astronomer classically trained in science, and that means I know enough to rely on the combined research of actual climate scientists from around the world. And when thousands upon thousands of such scientists— in fact, 98 percent of actual, bona fide climate scientists—say global warming is real, well then, that strikes me as being somewhat more credible than a hundred or so politically and ideologically driven non-climate-scientists.

I’ll note this isn’t the first time a laughably-wrong article has been printed by right-leaning venues and signed by multiple, similarly-inappropriate authors. The Wall Street Journalposted one in January 2012 (while turning down an article supporting the reality of global warming signed by 255 actual scientists), and in April 2012, another made the roundsthat was signed by 49 people, including some ex-NASA astronauts, but again, none who actually were climate scientists.

So we can expect to see more of this. Clearly, when you don’t have facts to support your claims, the best thing to do is make as much noise as possible to distract from reality. And that reality is that the world is getting hotter, and unless we do something, now, we’re facing a world of trouble.

Climate Change DO THE MATH! (Scientia Productions)

01/12/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, comunicação científica, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists (Financial Post) + EANTH list reactions

01/12/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, comunicação científica, Desastre, Incerteza, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists.

Special to Financial Post | Nov 29, 2012 8:36 PM ET | Last Updated:Nov 30, 2012 12:11 PM ET

Getty – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon

Policy actions that aim to reduce CO2 emissions are unlikely to influence future climate. Policies need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events, however caused

Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

H.E. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General, United Nations. First Avenue and East 44^th Street, New York, New York, U.S.A.

November 29, 2012

Mr. Secretary-General:

On November 9 this year you told the General Assembly: “Extreme weather due to climate change is the new normal … Our challenge remains, clear and urgent: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthen adaptation to … even larger climate shocks … and to reach a legally binding climate agreement by 2015 … This should be one of the main lessons of Hurricane Sandy.”

On November 13 you said at Yale: “The science is clear; we should waste no more time on that debate.”

The following day, in Al Gore’s “Dirty Weather” Webcast, you spoke of “more severe storms, harsher droughts, greater floods”, concluding: “Two weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States. A nation saw the reality of climate change. The recovery will cost tens of billions of dollars. The cost of inaction will be even higher. We must reduce our dependence on carbon emissions.”

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions.

The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years. During this period, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations rose by nearly 9% to now constitute 0.039% of the atmosphere. Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years. Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown. The science is unclear. Some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is also a distinct possibility.

The “even larger climate shocks” you have mentioned would be worse if the world cooled than if it warmed. Climate changes naturally all the time, sometimes dramatically. The hypothesis that our emissions of CO₂ have caused, or will cause, dangerous warming is not supported by the evidence.

The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased. There is little evidence that dangerous weather-related events will occur more often in the future. The U.N.’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in its Special Report on Extreme Weather (2012) that there is “an absence of an attributable climate change signal” in trends in extreme weather losses to date. The funds currently dedicated to trying to stop extreme weather should therefore be diverted to strengthening our infrastructure so as to be able to withstand these inevitable, natural events, and to helping communities rebuild after natural catastrophes such as tropical storm Sandy.

There is no sound reason for the costly, restrictive public policy decisions proposed at the U.N. climate conference in Qatar. Rigorous analysis of unbiased observational data does not support the projections of future global warming predicted by computer models now proven to exaggerate warming and its effects.

The NOAA “State of the Climate in 2008” report asserted that 15 years or more without any statistically-significant warming would indicate a discrepancy between observation and prediction. Sixteen years without warming have therefore now proven that the models are wrong by their creators’ own criterion.

Based upon these considerations, we ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not. We also ask that you acknowledge that policy actions by the U.N., or by the signatory nations to the UNFCCC, that aim to reduce CO₂ emissions are unlikely to exercise any significant influence on future climate. Climate policies therefore need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events however caused.

Signed by:

Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, Dr. Sci., mathematician and astrophysicist, Head of the Selenometria project on the Russian segment of the ISS, Head of Space Research of the Sun Sector at the Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, PhD, Professor of Physics, Emeritus and Founding Director, International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, U.S.A.
Bjarne Andresen, Dr. Scient., physicist, published and presents on the impossibility of a “global temperature”, Professor, Niels Bohr Institute (physics (thermodynamics) and chemistry), University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
J. Scott Armstrong, PhD, Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Founder of the International Journal of Forecasting, focus on analyzing climate forecasts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Timothy F. Ball, PhD, environmental consultant and former climatology professor, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
James R. Barrante, Ph.D. (chemistry, Harvard University), Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry, Southern Connecticut State University, focus on studying the greenhouse gas behavior of CO2, Cheshire, Connecticut, U.S.A.
Colin Barton, B.Sc., PhD (Earth Science, Birmingham, U.K.), FInstEng Aus Principal research scientist (ret.), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Joe Bastardi, BSc, (Meteorology, Pennsylvania State), meteorologist, State College, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Franco Battaglia, PhD (Chemical Physics), Professor of Physics and Environmental Chemistry, University of Modena, Italy
Richard Becherer, BS (Physics, Boston College), MS (Physics, University of Illinois), PhD (Optics, University of Rochester), former Member of the Technical Staff – MIT Lincoln Laboratory, former Adjunct Professor – University of Connecticut, Areas of Specialization: optical radiation physics, coauthor – standard reference book Optical Radiation Measurements: Radiometry, Millis, MA, U.S.A.
Edwin X. Berry, PhD (Atmospheric Physics, Nevada), MA (Physics, Dartmouth), BS (Engineering, Caltech), Certified Consulting Meteorologist, President, Climate Physics LLC, Bigfork, MT, U.S.A.
Ian Bock, BSc, PhD, DSc, Biological sciences (retired), Ringkobing, Denmark
Ahmed Boucenna, PhD, Professor of Physics (strong climate focus), Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Ferhat Abbas University, Setif, Algéria
Antonio Brambati, PhD, Emeritus Professor (sedimentology), Department of Geological, Environmental and Marine Sciences (DiSGAM), University of Trieste (specialization: climate change as determined by Antarctic marine sediments), Trieste, Italy
Stephen C. Brown, PhD (Environmental Science, State University of New York), District Agriculture Agent, Assistant Professor, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Ground Penetrating Radar Glacier research, Palmer, Alaska, U.S.A.
Mark Lawrence Campbell, PhD (chemical physics; gas-phase kinetic research involving greenhouse gases (nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide)), Professor, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, U.S.A.
Rudy Candler, PhD (Soil Chemistry, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF)), former agricultural laboratory manager, School of Agriculture and Land Resources Management, UAF, co-authored papers regarding humic substances and potential CO2 production in the Arctic due to decomposition, Union, Oregon, U.S.A.
Alan Carlin, B.S. (California Institute of Technology), PhD (economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), retired senior analyst and manager, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, former Chairman of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club (recipient of the Chapter’s Weldon Heald award for conservation work), U.S.A.
Dan Carruthers, M.Sc., Arctic Animal Behavioural Ecologist, wildlife biology consultant specializing in animal ecology in Arctic and Subarctic regions, Turner Valley, Alberta, Canada
Robert M. Carter, PhD, Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
Uberto Crescenti, PhD, Full Professor of Applied Geology, Università G. d’Annunzio, Past President Società Geologica taliana, Chieti, Italy
Arthur Chadwick, PhD (Molecular Biology), Research Professor of Geology, Department of Biology and Geology, Southwestern Adventist University, Climate Specialties: dendrochronology (determination of past climate states by tree ring analysis), palynology (same but using pollen as a climate proxy), paleobotany and botany; Keene, Texas, U.S.A.
George V. Chilingar, PhD, Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Engineering (CO2/temp. focused research), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Ian D. Clark, PhD, Professor (isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology), Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Cornelia Codreanova, Diploma in Geography, Researcher (Areas of Specialization: formation of glacial lakes) at Liberec University, Czech Republic, Zwenkau, Germany
Michael Coffman, PhD (Ecosystems Analysis and Climate Influences, University of Idaho), CEO of Sovereignty International, President of Environmental Perspectives, Inc., Bangor, Maine, U.S.A.
Piers Corbyn, ARCS, MSc (Physics, Imperial College London)), FRAS, FRMetS, astrophysicist (Queen Mary College, London), consultant, founder WeatherAction long range weather and climate forecasters, American Thinker Climate Forecaster of The Year 2010, London, United Kingdom
Richard S. Courtney, PhD, energy and environmental consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, Falmouth, Cornwall, United Kingdom
Roger W. Cohen, B.S., M.S., PhD Physics, MIT and Rutgers University, Fellow, American Physical Society, initiated and managed for more than twenty years the only industrial basic research program in climate, Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Susan Crockford, PhD (Zoology/Evolutionary Biology/Archaeozoology), Adjunct Professor (Anthropology/Faculty of Graduate Studies), University of Victoria, Victoria, British Colombia, Canada
Walter Cunningham, B.S., M.S. (Physics – Institute of Geophysics And Planetary Sciences, UCLA), AMP – Harvard Graduate School of Business, Colonel (retired) U.S. Marine Corps, Apollo 7 Astronaut., Fellow – AAS, AIAA; Member AGU, Houston, Texas, U.S.A.
Joseph D’Aleo, BS, MS (Meteorology, University of Wisconsin), Doctoral Studies (NYU), CMM, AMS Fellow, Executive Director – ICECAP (International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project), College Professor Climatology/Meteorology, First Director of Meteorology The Weather Channel, Hudson, New Hampshire, U.S.A.
David Deming, PhD (Geophysics), Professor of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, U.S.A.
James E. Dent; B.Sc., FCIWEM, C.Met, FRMetS, C.Env., Independent Consultant (hydrology & meteorology), Member of WMO OPACHE Group on Flood Warning, Hadleigh, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom
Willem de Lange, MSc (Hons), DPhil (Computer and Earth Sciences), Senior Lecturer in Earth and Ocean Sciences, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Silvia Duhau, Ph.D. (physics), Solar Terrestrial Physics, Buenos Aires University, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Geoff Duffy, DEng (Dr of Engineering), PhD (Chemical Engineering), BSc, ASTCDip. (first chemical engineer to be a Fellow of the Royal Society in NZ), FIChemE, wide experience in radiant heat transfer and drying, chemical equilibria, etc. Has reviewed, analysed, and written brief reports and papers on climate change, Auckland, New Zealand
Don J. Easterbrook, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington, University, Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A.
Ole Henrik Ellestad, former Research Director, applied chemistry SINTEF, Professor in physical chemistry, University of Oslo, Managing director Norsk Regnesentral and Director for Science and Technology, Norwegian Research Council, widely published in infrared spectroscopy, Oslo, Norway
Per Engene, MSc, Biologist, Co-author – The Climate, Science and Politics (2009), Bø i Telemark, Norway
Gordon Fulks, B.S., M.S., PhD (Physics, University of Chicago), cosmic radiation, solar wind, electromagnetic and geophysical phenomena, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
Katya Georgieva, MSc (meteorology), PhD (solar-terrestrial climate physics), Professor, Space Research and Technologies Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
Lee C. Gerhard, PhD, Senior Scientist Emeritus, University of Kansas, past director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey, U.S.A.
Ivar Giaever PhD, Nobel Laureate in Physics 1973, professor emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a professor-at-large at the University of Oslo, Applied BioPhysics, Troy, New York, U.S.A.
Albrecht Glatzle, PhD, ScAgr, Agro-Biologist and Gerente ejecutivo, Tropical pasture research and land use management, Director científico de INTTAS, Loma Plata, Paraguay
Fred Goldberg, PhD, Adj Professor, Royal Institute of Technology (Mech, Eng.), Secretary General KTH International Climate Seminar 2006 and Climate analyst (NIPCC), Lidingö, Sweden
Laurence I. Gould, PhD, Professor of Physics, University of Hartford, Past Chair (2004), New England Section of the American Physical Society, West Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A.
Vincent Gray, PhD, New Zealand Climate Coalition, expert reviewer for the IPCC, author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of Climate Change 2001, Wellington, New Zealand
William M. Gray, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Head of the Tropical Meteorology Project, Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S.A.
Charles B. Hammons, PhD (Applied Mathematics), climate-related specialties: applied mathematics, modeling & simulation, software & systems engineering, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Management, University of Dallas; Assistant Professor, North Texas State University (Dr. Hammons found many serious flaws during a detailed study of the software, associated control files plus related email traffic of the Climate Research Unit temperature and other records and “adjustments” carried out in support of IPCC conclusions), Coyle, OK, U.S.A.
William Happer, PhD, Professor, Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, U.S.A.
Hermann Harde, PhD, Professur f. Lasertechnik & Werkstoffkunde (specialized in molecular spectroscopy, development of gas sensors and CO₂-climate sensitivity), Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Universität der Bundeswehr Fakultät für Elektrotechnik, Hamburg, Germany
Howard Hayden, PhD, Emeritus Professor (Physics), University of Connecticut, The Energy Advocate, Pueblo West, Colorado, U.S.A.
Ross Hays, Meteorologist, atmospheric scientist, NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (currently working at McMurdo Station, Antarctica), Palestine, Texas, U.S.A.
Martin Hovland, M.Sc. (meteorology, University of Bergen), PhD (Dr Philos, University of Tromsø), FGS, Emeritus Professor, Geophysics, Centre for Geobiology, University of Bergen, member of the expert panel: Environmental Protection and Safety Panel (EPSP) for the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) and the Integrated ODP, Stavanger, Norway
Ole Humlum, PhD, Professor of Physical Geography, Department of Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Craig D. Idso, PhD, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.
Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.
Larry Irons, BS (Geology), MS (Geology), Sr. Geophysicist at Fairfield Nodal (specialization: paleoclimate), Lakewood, Colorado, U.S.A.
Terri Jackson, MSc (plasma physics), MPhil (energy economics), Director, Independent Climate Research Group, Northern Ireland and London (Founder of the energy/climate group at the Institute of Physics, London), United Kingdom
Albert F. Jacobs, Geol.Drs., P. Geol., Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Hans Jelbring, PhD Climatology, Stockholm University, MSc Electronic engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, BSc Meteorology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Bill Kappel, B.S. (Physical Science-Geology), B.S. (Meteorology), Storm Analysis, Climatology, Operation Forecasting, Vice President/Senior Meteorologist, Applied Weather Associates, LLC, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, U.S.A.
Olavi Kärner, Ph.D., Extraordinary Research Associate; Dept. of Atmospheric Physics, Tartu Observatory, Toravere, Estonia
Leonid F. Khilyuk, PhD, Science Secretary, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Professor of Engineering (CO2/temp. focused research), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
William Kininmonth MSc, MAdmin, former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological organization’s Commission for Climatology, Kew, Victoria, Australia
Gerhard Kramm, Dr. rer. nat. (Theoretical Meteorology), Research Associate Professor, Geophysical Institute, Associate Faculty, College of Natural Science and Mathematics, University of Alaska Fairbanks, (climate specialties: Atmospheric energetics, physics of the atmospheric boundary layer, physical climatology – seeinteresting paper by Kramm et al), Fairbanks, Alaska, U.S.A.
Leif Kullman, PhD (Physical geography, plant ecology, landscape ecology), Professor, Physical geography, Department of Ecology and Environmental science, Umeå University, Areas of Specialization: Paleoclimate (Holocene to the present), glaciology, vegetation history, impact of modern climate on the living landscape, Umeå, Sweden
Hans H.J. Labohm, PhD, Independent economist, author specialised in climate issues, IPCC expert reviewer, author of Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma and climate science-related Blog, The Netherlands
Rune Berg-Edland Larsen, PhD (Geology, Geochemistry), Professor, Dep. Geology and Geoengineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
C. (Kees) le Pair, PhD (Physics Leiden, Low Temperature Physics), former director of the Netherlands Research Organization FOM (fundamental physics) and subsequently founder and director of The Netherlands Technology Foundation STW. Served the Dutch Government many years as member of its General Energy Council and of the National Defense Research Council. Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences Honorary Medal and honorary doctorate in all technical sciences of the Delft University of technology, Nieuwegein, The Netherlands
Douglas Leahey, PhD, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, past President – Friends of Science, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Jay Lehr, B.Eng. (Princeton), PhD (environmental science and ground water hydrology), Science Director, The Heartland Institute, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Bryan Leyland, M.Sc., FIEE, FIMechE, FIPENZ, MRSNZ, consulting engineer (power), Energy Issues Advisor – International Climate Science Coalition, Auckland, New Zealand
Edward Liebsch, B.A. (Earth Science, St. Cloud State University); M.S. (Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University), former Associate Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; former Adjunct Professor of Meteorology, St. Cloud State University, Environmental Consultant/Air Quality Scientist (Areas of Specialization: micrometeorology, greenhouse gas emissions), Maple Grove, Minnesota, U.S.A.
William Lindqvist, PhD (Applied Geology), Independent Geologic Consultant, Areas of Specialization: Climate Variation in the recent geologic past, Tiburon, California, U.S.A.
Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, Prof. Dr. , PhD (Physics), retired from university of appl. sciences HTW, Saarbrücken (Germany), atmospheric temperature research, speaker of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Heidelberg, Germany
Anthony R. Lupo, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Science, Department of Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, U.S.A.
Oliver Manuel, BS, MS, PhD, Post-Doc (Space Physics), Associate – Climate & Solar Science Institute, Emeritus Professor, College of Arts & Sciences University of Missouri-Rolla, previously Research Scientist (US Geological Survey) and NASA Principal Investigator for Apollo, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, U.S.A.
Francis Massen, professeur-docteur en physique (PhD equivalent, Universities of Nancy (France) and Liège (Belgium), Manager of the Meteorological Station of the Lycée Classique de Diekirch, specialising in the measurement of solar radiation and atmospheric gases. Collaborator to the WOUDC (World Ozone and UV Radiation Data Center), Diekirch, Luxembourg
Henri Masson, Prof. dr. ir., Emeritus Professor University of Antwerp (Energy & Environment Technology Management), Visiting professor Maastricht School of Management, specialist in dynamical (chaotic) complex system analysis, Antwerp, Belgium.
Ferenc Mark Miskolczi, PhD, atmospheric physicist, formerly of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, U.S.A.
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Expert reviewer, IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Quantification of Climate Sensitivity, Carie, Rannoch, Scotland
Nils-Axel Mörner, PhD (Sea Level Changes and Climate), Emeritus Professor of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
John Nicol, PhD (Physics, James Cook University), Chairman – Australian climate Science Coalition, Brisbane, Australia
Ingemar Nordin, PhD, professor in philosophy of science (including a focus on “Climate research, philosophical and sociological aspects of a politicised research area”), Linköpings University, Sweden.
David Nowell, M.Sc., Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, former chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Cliff Ollier, D.Sc., Professor Emeritus (School of Earth and Environment – see hisCopenhagen Climate Challenge sea level article here), Research Fellow, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, W.A., Australia
Oleg M. Pokrovsky, BS, MS, PhD (mathematics and atmospheric physics – St. Petersburg State University, 1970), Dr. in Phys. and Math Sciences (1985), Professor in Geophysics (1995), principal scientist, Main Geophysical Observatory (RosHydroMet), Note: Dr. Pokrovsky analyzed long climates and concludes that anthropogenic CO2 impact is not the main contributor in climate change,St. Petersburg, Russia.
Daniel Joseph Pounder, BS (Meteorology, University of Oklahoma), MS (Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); Meteorological/Oceanographic Data Analyst for the National Data Buoy Center, formerly Meteorologist, WILL AM/FM/TV, Urbana, U.S.A.
Brian Pratt, PhD, Professor of Geology (Sedimentology), University of Saskatchewan (see Professor Pratt’s article for a summary of his views), Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Harry N.A. Priem, PhD, Professore-emeritus isotope-geophysics and planetary geology, Utrecht University, past director ZWO/NOW Institute of Isotope Geophysical Research, Past-President Royal Netherlands Society of Geology and Mining, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Oleg Raspopov, Doctor of Science and Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Professor – Geophysics, Senior Scientist, St. Petersburg Filial (Branch) of N.V.Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowaves Propagation of RAS (climate specialty: climate in the past, particularly the influence of solar variability), Editor-in-Chief of journal “Geomagnetism and Aeronomy” (published by Russian Academy of Sciences), St. Petersburg, Russia
Curt G. Rose, BA, MA (University of Western Ontario), MA, PhD (Clark University), Professor Emeritus, Department of Environmental Studies and Geography, Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
S. Jeevananda Reddy, M.Sc. (Geophysics), Post Graduate Diploma (Applied Statistics, Andhra University), PhD (Agricultural Meteorology, Australian University, Canberra), Formerly Chief Technical Advisor—United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) & Expert-Food and Agriculture Organization (UN), Convener – Forum for a Sustainable Environment, author of 500 scientific articles and several books – here is one: “Climate Change – Myths & Realities“, Hyderabad, India
Arthur Rorsch, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Molecular Genetics, Leiden University, former member of the board of management of the Netherlands Organization Applied Research TNO, Leiden, The Netherlands
Rob Scagel, MSc (forest microclimate specialist), Principal Consultant – Pacific Phytometric Consultants, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Chris Schoneveld, MSc (Structural Geology), PhD (Geology), retired exploration geologist and geophysicist, Australia and France
Tom V. Segalstad, PhD (Geology/Geochemistry), Associate Professor of Resource and Environmental Geology, University of Oslo, former IPCC expert reviewer, former Head of the Geological Museum, and former head of the Natural History Museum and Botanical Garden (UO), Oslo, Norway
John Shade, BS (Physics), MS (Atmospheric Physics), MS (Applied Statistics), Industrial Statistics Consultant, GDP, Dunfermline, Scotland, United Kingdom
Thomas P. Sheahen, B.S., PhD (Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), specialist in renewable energy, research and publication (applied optics) in modeling and measurement of absorption of infrared radiation by atmospheric CO2, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (2005-2009); Argonne National Laboratory (1988-1992); Bell Telephone labs (1966-73), National Bureau of Standards (1975-83), Oakland, Maryland, U.S.A.
S. Fred Singer, PhD, Professor Emeritus (Environmental Sciences), University of Virginia, former director, U.S. Weather Satellite Service, Science and Environmental Policy Project, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.
Frans W. Sluijter, Prof. dr ir, Emeritus Professor of theoretical physics, Technical University Eindhoven, Chairman—Skepsis Foundation, former vice-president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, former President of the Division on Plasma Physics of the European Physical Society and former bureau member of the Scientific Committee on Sun-Terrestrial Physics, Euvelwegen, the Netherlands
Jan-Erik Solheim, MSc (Astrophysics), Professor, Institute of Physics, University of Tromsø, Norway (1971-2002), Professor (emeritus), Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, Norway (1965-1970, 2002- present), climate specialties: sun and periodic climate variations, scientific paper by Professor Solheim “Solen varsler et kaldere tiår“, Baerum, Norway
H. Leighton Steward, Master of Science (Geology), Areas of Specialization: paleoclimates and empirical evidence that indicates CO2 is not a significant driver of climate change, Chairman, PlantsNeedCO2.org and CO2IsGreen.org, Chairman of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man (geology, archeology & anthropology) at SMU in Dallas, Texas, Boerne, TX, U.S.A.
Arlin B. Super, PhD (Meteorology – University of Wisconsin at Madison), former Professor of Meteorology at Montana State University, retired Research Meteorologist, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Saint Cloud, Minnesota, U.S.A.
Edward (Ted) R. Swart, D.Sc. (physical chemistry, University of Pretoria), M.Sc. and Ph.D. (math/computer science, University of Witwatersrand). Formerly Director of the Gulbenkian Centre, Dean of the Faculty of Science, Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science, University of Rhodesia and past President of the Rhodesia Scientific Association. Set up the first radiocarbon dating laboratory in Africa. Most recently, Professor in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo and Chair of Computing and Information Science and Acting Dean at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, now retired in Kelowna British Columbia, Canada
George H. Taylor, B.A. (Mathematics, U.C. Santa Barbara), M.S. (Meteorology, University of Utah), Certified Consulting Meteorologist, Applied Climate Services, LLC, Former State Climatologist (Oregon), President, American Association of State Climatologists (1998-2000), Corvallis, Oregon, U.S.A.
J. E. Tilsley, P.Eng., BA Geol, Acadia University, 53 years of climate and paleoclimate studies related to development of economic mineral deposits, Aurora, Ontario, Canada
Göran Tullberg, Civilingenjör i Kemi (equivalent to Masters of Chemical Engineering), Co-author – The Climate, Science and Politics (2009) (see here for a review), formerly instructor of Organic Chemistry (specialization in “Climate chemistry”), Environmental Control and Environmental Protection Engineering at University in Växjö; Falsterbo, Sweden
Brian Gregory Valentine, PhD, Adjunct professor of engineering (aero and fluid dynamics specialization) at the University of Maryland, Technical manager at US Department of Energy, for large-scale modeling of atmospheric pollution, Technical referee for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science programs in climate and atmospheric modeling conducted at American Universities and National Labs, Washington, DC, U.S.A.
Bas van Geel, PhD, paleo-climatologist, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, Research Group Paleoecology and Landscape Ecology, Faculty of Science, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gerrit J. van der Lingen, PhD (Utrecht University), geologist and paleoclimatologist, climate change consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, Nelson, New Zealand
A.J. (Tom) van Loon, PhD, Professor of Geology (Quaternary Geologyspecialism: Glacial Geology), Adam Mickiewicz University, former President of the European Association of Science Editors Poznan, Poland
Fritz Vahrenholt, B.S. (chemistry), PhD (chemistry), Prof. Dr., Professor of Chemistry, University of Hamburg, Former Senator for environmental affairs of the State of Hamburg, former CEO of REpower Systems AG (wind turbines), Author of the book Die kalte Sonne: warum die Klimakatastrophe nicht stattfindet (The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Crisis Isn’t Happening”, Hamburg, Germany
Michael G. Vershovsky, Ph.D. in meteorology (macrometeorology, long-term forecasts, climatology), Senior Researcher, Russian State Hydrometeorological University, works with, as he writes, “Atmospheric Centers of Action (cyclones and anticyclones, such as Icelandic depression, the South Pacific subtropical anticyclone, etc.). Changes in key parameters of these centers strongly indicate that the global temperature is influenced by these natural factors (not exclusively but nevertheless)”, St. Petersburg, Russia
Gösta Walin, PhD and Docent (theoretical Physics, University of Stockholm), Professor Emeritus in oceanografi, Earth Science Center, Göteborg University, Göteborg, Sweden
Anthony Watts, ItWorks/IntelliWeather, Founder, surfacestations.org, Watts Up With That, Chico, California, U.S.A.
Carl Otto Weiss, Direktor und Professor at Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Visiting Professor at University of Copenhagen, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Coauthor of ”Multiperiodic Climate Dynamics: Spectral Analysis of…“, Braunschweig, Germany
Forese-Carlo Wezel, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Stratigraphy (global and Mediterranean geology, mass biotic extinctions and paleoclimatology), University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy
Boris Winterhalter, PhD, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
David E. Wojick, PhD, PE, energy and environmental consultant, Technical Advisory Board member – Climate Science Coalition of America, Star Tannery, Virginia, U.S.A.
George T. Wolff, Ph.D., Principal Atmospheric Scientist, Air Improvement Resource, Inc., Novi, Michigan, U.S.A.
Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller –NASA (Ret) ARC, GSFC, Hdq. – Meteorologist, Ogunquit, ME, U.S.A.
Bob Zybach, PhD (Environmental Sciences, Oregon State University), climate-related carbon sequestration research, MAIS, B.S., Director, Environmental Sciences Institute Peer review Institute, Cottage Grove, Oregon, U.S.A.
Milap Chand Sharma, PhD, Associate Professor of Glacial Geomorphology, Centre fort the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Valentin A. Dergachev, PhD, Professor and Head of the Cosmic Ray Laboratory at Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
Vijay Kumar Raina, Ex-Deputy Director General, Geological Survey of India, Ex-Chairman Project Advisory and Monitoring Committee on Himalayan glacier, DST, Govt. of India and currently Member Expert Committee on Climate Change Programme, Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, author of 2010 MoEF Discussion Paper, “Himalayan Glaciers – State-of-Art Review of Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change”, the first comprehensive study on the region. Winner of the Indian Antarctica Award, Chandigarh, India
Scott Chesner, B.S. (Meteorology, Penn State University), KETK Chief Meteorologist, KETK TV, previously Meteorologist with Accu Weather, Tyler, Texas, U.S.A

* * *

Reactions (I will not mention names here; all are from emails in the EANTH list)

1) “Hmm, I clicked on a few links, googled a few names. Found that when one is listed as “author of x book”, said book doesn’t appear on Amazon, etc.

Many non-PhDs.

Many “consultants”. Losts of “adjuncts”, lots of professor emeriti. someone listed as an “Extraordinary Research Associate”.

Little actual data. Few peer-reviewed research reports.

Didn’t recognize most of the names. Did recognize some “suspicious” ones (e.g., Tim Ball, a lovely [sic] Canadian).

Misrepresentation of the SREX report (quotation is a minor comment on a single point of many – page 280 of 594).

Link is to a letter published in the Financial Post, the business section of the National Post, the more rightward leaning of Canada’s 2 national papers. To give an indication, on the day in 2007 when the Nobel was awarded to IPCC and Gore, the headline on front page was “A Coup for Junk Science: Gaffe riddled work undeserving”.

Conclusion: don’t bother to click the link.”

2) “A few of the names on the list are also contained in table 3 of the 2012 Heartland Institute Proposed Budget (pages 7-8). Namely:

Craig D. Idso

Anthony Lupo

Susan Crockford

Joseph D’Aleo

Fred Singer

Robert Carter

Link:

http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/(1-15-2012)%202012%20Heartland%20Budget.pdf”

3) “Is it that bad guys without phd and associations with the wrong institutions nullify the legitimacy of the good guys with proper credentials? Suppose you could not look them up. Would you be unable to judge the contents (with links to data) of the letter? You seem to require a certain kind of authority (defined by political means especially) to allow you to decide whether ideas are valuable. How sad. If every scientist were that intellectually timid there would be no learning. Thank goodness for the Feynmans of the world.”

4) “Short of being able to read, review and test all the science, a person has to make judgements based on additional criteria. My criteria include, but are not limited to, some things such as peer-review, credentials, reputation, availability of cited sources/affiliation/expertise, guilt-by-association, and so on. They are only part of the judgement of credibility. I looked up a book listed in the credentials of one “expert” and could not find it; I followed links, and so on.

The endpoint was when I looked for the quotation in the cited source (SREX ) and evaluated it as misrepresentation. Since the IPCC was called on as an expert source by the so-called experts, yet it claimed other than what they claimed it claimed, the credibility of the letters and listed experts is to be disparaged.

That’s the character of science, and process of knowledge. Yup, that is how one really, really does judge which ideas are valuable.”

5) “Thank you for drawing attention to this open letter. I suspect quite a number of the people named in this letter are members of naysayer groups. From an Australian perspective Prof Bob Carter is a member of the secretive Lavoissier group. I have inside knowledge of this group as I was approached with my husband to write a film script about climate change many years ago and we pulled out eventually after being told what they wanted to say about the science of climate change, which required a distortion of the facts. We had the impression that the money for the film was coming from America and I wouldn’t mind betting that it was oil and mining interest finance ($6 million). The person who set out to recruit us was a glaciologist who was also a member of the Lavoissier group. For more information see the following:

Pearse, Guy , “High and Dry”, Viking/Penguin,Camberwell, Victoria, 2007.

Hamilton, Clive, “Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, Black Inc. Agenda, Melbourne, Victoria, 2007.”

6) “I read a short and entertaining book that laid out a good process for deciding what to believe about climate change (or any other complex issue with lots of scientific research swirling around). It’s by Greg Craven and it’s called What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Besides providing a way to cut through all the chatter, the book offers sound fundamentals for people interested in how scientific information comes to be accepted. I think it’s a great book for students, especially because the author (a physics teacher) tackles tough subjects with humor.

Here’s a link to it: http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Worst-That-Could-Happen/dp/0399535012/”

The State of Climate Science (scienceprogress.org)

27/11/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

CLIMATE SCIENCE

A Thorough Review of the Scientific Literature on Global Warming

By Dr. James Powell | Thursday, November 15th, 2012

Polls show that many members of the public believe that scientists substantially disagree about human-caused global warming. The gold standard of science is the peer-reviewed literature. If there is disagreement among scientists, based not on opinion but on hard evidence, it will be found in the peer-reviewed literature.

I searched the Web of Science, an online science publication tool, for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between January first 1991 and November 9th 2012 that have the keyword phrases “global warming” or “global climate change.” The search produced 13,950 articles. See methodology.

I read whatever combination of titles, abstracts, and entire articles was necessary to identify articles that “reject” human-caused global warming. To be classified as rejecting, an article had to clearly and explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false or, as happened in a few cases, that some other process better explains the observed warming. Articles that merely claimed to have found some discrepancy, some minor flaw, some reason for doubt, I did not classify as rejecting global warming.

Articles about methods, paleoclimatology, mitigation, adaptation, and effects at least implicitly accept human-caused global warming and were usually obvious from the title alone. John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli also reviewed and assigned some of these articles; John provided invaluable technical expertise.

This work follows that of Oreskes (Science, 2005) who searched for articles published between 1993 and 2003 with the keyword phrase “global climate change.” She found 928, read the abstracts of each and classified them. None rejected human-caused global warming. Using her criteria and time-span, I get the same result. Deniers attacked Oreskes and her findings, but they have held up.

Some articles on global warming may use other keywords, for example, “climate change” without the “global” prefix. But there is no reason to think that the proportion rejecting global warming would be any higher.

By my definition, 24 of the 13,950 articles, 0.17 percent or 1 in 581, clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming. The list of articles that reject global warming is here.

The 24 articles have been cited a total of 113 times over the nearly 21-year period, for an average of close to 5 citations each. That compares to an average of about 19 citations for articles answering to “global warming,” for example. Four of the rejecting articles have never been cited; four have citations in the double-digits. The most-cited has 17.

Of one thing we can be certain: had any of these articles presented the magic bullet that falsifies human-caused global warming, that article would be on its way to becoming one of the most-cited in the history of science.

The articles have a total of 33,690 individual authors. The top ten countries represented, in order, are USA, England, China, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, and Netherlands. (The chart shows results through November 9th, 2012.)

Global warming deniers often claim that bias prevents them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. But 24 articles in 18 different journals, collectively making several different arguments against global warming, expose that claim as false. Articles rejecting global warming can be published, but those that have been have earned little support or notice, even from other deniers.

A few deniers have become well known from newspaper interviews, Congressional hearings, conferences of climate change critics, books, lectures, websites and the like. Their names are conspicuously rare among the authors of the rejecting articles. Like those authors, the prominent deniers must have no evidence that falsifies global warming.

Anyone can repeat this search and post their findings. Another reviewer would likely have slightly different standards than mine and get a different number of rejecting articles. But no one will be able to reach a different conclusion, for only one conclusion is possible: Within science, global warming denial has virtually no influence. Its influence is instead on a misguided media, politicians all-too-willing to deny science for their own gain, and a gullible public.

Scientists do not disagree about human-caused global warming. It is the ruling paradigm of climate science, in the same way that plate tectonics is the ruling paradigm of geology. We know that continents move. We know that the earth is warming and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary cause. These are known facts about which virtually all publishing scientists agree.

James Lawrence Powell is the author of The Inquisition of Climate Science. Powell is also the executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium, a partnership among government agencies and laboratories, industry, and higher education dedicated to increasing the number of American citizens with graduate degrees in the physical sciences and related engineering fields. This article is cross-posted with permission with the Columbia University Press blog.

This article is a cross-post with our partners at DeSmogBlog.

Naomi Klein on Capitalism and Climate Change (Bill Moyers)

27/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsão, Violênciarenzotaddei

November 15, 2012 – The Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein joins Bill to discuss hurricanes, climate change and democracy.

Saúde mental, outra vítima da mudança climática (IPS)

27/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, discurso ambiental, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Saúde mental, Violênciarenzotaddei

23/11/2012 – 10h05

por Patricia Grogg, da IPS

As tensões e angústias acompanham toda pessoa que sofre um desastre. Foto: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 23/11/2012 – “A cidade parecia bombardeada. Caminho para meu escritório, cruzo com pessoas que levavam em seus rostos o mesmo – diria dramático – espanto que eu. Nos olhávamos e, sem nos conhecermos, nos perguntávamos: como foi com você? Aconteceu alguma coisa com sua casa? Foi uma solidariedade afetiva muito importante para mim”. Este testemunho dado à IPS, por uma jornalista de Santiago de Cuba, coloca na balança um dos lados bons da reação coletiva após um desastre como o sofrido por esta cidade na madrugada do dia 25 de outubro, quando o furacão Sandy, apesar do alerta meteorológico e das advertências oficiais, surpreendeu boa parte de seus habitantes.

O valor econômico dos prejuízos ainda são desconhecidos hoje, quando a parte mais oriental do país cura suas feridas, graves de todos os ângulos. Mas existe também o impacto psicológico, do qual se fala menos e se vê nos olhos das pessoas quando contam: “perdemos nossa casa com móveis, eletrodomésticos, até as lembranças”. “Tive muito medo, me enfiei no armário quando o vento levou o telhado do meu quarto. Meus vizinhos me tiraram de casa e me ajudaram a atravessar a rua até onde haviam se refugiado outras famílias cujas casas estavam em muito mau estado”, contou à IPS Isabel da Cruz, de 70 anos, moradora de Guantânamo, outra área afetada.

Depressão, tristeza, angústia, desespero, incerteza e agressividade, todas estas são manifestações que acompanham as pessoas depois de um desastre em qualquer parte do mundo. “Imagine, nos deitamos com a bela e acordamos com a fera”, comparou um trabalhador do setor turístico cujo hotel onde é empregado foi totalmente destruído. “As pessoas estão deprimidas e desorientadas. Em muitas nota-se o desequilíbrio psíquico pelas perdas sofridas”, disse à IPS o sacerdote católico Eugenio Castellanos, reitor do Santuário da Caridad del Cobre, virgem padroeira de Cuba. O padre estima que 90% das casas do Cobre, localidade vizinha a esta cidade, sofreram o impacto do Sandy.

Juan González Pérez, por sua vez, disse à IPS que dias antes do furacão houve focos de violência em alguns lugares, especialmente na hora de comprar artigos em falta. “Ficamos muitos dias sem energia elétrica e começaram a vender ‘luz brilhante’ (querosene) para cozinhar. Embora houvesse o suficiente para todos, aconteceram discussões e brigas na fila. Quando as pessoas se desesperam, costumam ficar agressivas”, observou Pérez, mais conhecido por Madelaine, líder do espiritismo cruzado “muertero”, uma expressão de religiosidade popular nesse lugar. Segundo contou, aconselha aos seus seguidores “unirem-se, se lavar bem, dar a quem não tem e não se desesperar”.

Em Mar Verde, a praia por onde o Sandy tocou o território cubano a 15 quilômetros de Santiago, a médica Elizabeth Martínez atende mais de cem pessoas, abrigadas em cabanas de veraneio que, por estarem mais afastadas do mar, se salvaram do desastre. “O impacto psicológico é grande, mas não houve mortes e nem temos pessoas doentes”, contou. Pouco mais de uma semana depois da passagem do furacão, os esforços em matéria de saúde se concentravam fundamentalmente em conter focos epidêmicos. “Estamos dando informações sanitárias aos moradores, ensinando como cuidar de doenças transmissíveis, sobre a importância de descontaminar a água antes de beber”, informou a médica.

Segundo meios especializados, estima-se que entre um terço e metade de uma população exposta a desastres sofre algum tipo de problema psicológico, embora na maioria dos casos se deva entender como reações normais diante de eventos extremos, que sob o impacto da mudança climática ameaçam aumentar em intensidade.

“Quando encontrei meus vizinhos no abrigo, estávamos em choque. Mas alguém disse: vamos limpar a entrada que está bloqueada por essas árvores caídas. Então, começamos a trabalhar, embora no começo ninguém falasse”, contou uma mulher do setor turístico. Nos primeiros dias era possível ver muitas pessoas recolhendo escombros e varrendo as ruas de suas vizinhanças.

Diante da frequência e da maior intensidade dos ciclones tropicais, as autoridades de saúde, desde a década de 1990, começaram a se preocupar com o impacto psicológico dos desastres causados por esses e outros fenômenos naturais. Em 2008, quando o país sofreu três furacões, uma indicação ministerial fortaleceu a inclusão do tema nos planos sanitários. Em um artigo sobre o assunto, o médico cubano Alexis Lorenzo Ruiz explica que os aspectos psicossociais dos desastres são considerados tanto na capacitação do pessoal como na organização dos programas que chegam a todo o país e enfatizam a atenção a setores mais vulneráveis, como menores de idade, adolescentes e idosos.

Do ponto de vista da saúde mental, nos desastres toda a população “sofre tensões e angústias em maior ou menor medida, direta ou indiretamente”, afirmaram Katia Villamil e Orlando Fleitas, que recomendaram não se esquecer que o impacto nessas circunstâncias é mais acentuado em populações de escassos recursos. Estes profissionais afirmam que as reações mais frequentes vão desde as consideradas normais, como ansiedade controlável, depressão leve ou quadros “histeriformes”, até estresse “peritraumático”, embotamento, redução do nível de atenção, descompensação de transtornos psiquiátricos pré-existentes, bem como “reação coletiva de agitação”.

O furacão Sandy causou estragos não apenas em Santiago de Cuba, mas também nas províncias de Guantânamo e Holguín, com saldo de 11 mortos. O governo de Raúl Castro ainda não divulgou as perdas econômicas, embora dados preliminares e incompletos dos primeiros dias indicassem uma estimativa de US$ 88 milhões.

Call to Modernize Antiquated Climate Negotiations (Science Daily)

19/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2012) — The structure and processes of United Nations climate negotiations are “antiquated,” unfair and obstruct attempts to reach agreements, according to research published November 18.

The findings come ahead of the 18^thUN Climate Change Summit, which starts in Doha on November 26.

The study, led by Dr Heike Schroeder from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, argues that the consensus-based decision making used by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stifles progress and contributes to negotiating deadlocks, which ultimately hurts poor countries more than rich countries.

It shows that delegations from some countries taking part have increased in size over the years, while others have decreased, limiting poor countries’ negotiating power and making their participation less effective.

Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Dr Schroeder, Dr Maxwell Boykoff of the University of Colorado and Laura Spiers of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, argue that changes are long overdue if demands for climate mitigation and adaptation agreements are to be met.

They recommend that countries consider capping delegation numbers at a level that allows broad representation across government departments and sectors of society, while maintaining a manageable overall size.

Dr Schroeder, of UEA’s School of International Development, will be attending COP18. She said: “The UN must recognize that these antiquated structures serve to constrain rather than compel co-operation on international climate policy. The time is long overdue for changes to institutions and structures that do not support decision-making and agreements.

“Poor countries cannot afford to send large delegations and their level of expertise usually remains significantly below that of wealthier countries. This limits poor countries’ negotiating power and makes their participation in each session less effective.”

The researchers found that attendance has changed in terms of the number and diversity of representatives. The number of delegates went from 757 representing 170 countries at the first COP in 1995 to 10,591 individuals from 194 countries attending COP15 in 2009 — a 1400 per cent increase. At COP15 there were also 13,500 delegates from 937 non-government Observer organisations.

Small developing countries have down-sized their delegations while G-7 and +5 countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa) have increased theirs. The exception is the United States, which after withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol started to send fewer delegates to COPs.

The study also looked at the make-up of the delegations and found an increase in participation by environmental, campaigning, academic and other non-Governmental organisations.

“Our work shows an increasing trend in the size of delegations on one side and a change in the intensity, profile and politicization of the negotiations on the other,” explained Dr Schroeder. “These variations suggest the climate change issue and its associated interests are framed quite differently across countries. NSAs are well represented on national delegations but clearly the government decides who is included and who is not, and what the official negotiating position of the country and its level of negotiating flexibility are.”

Some countries send large representations from business associations (Brazil), local government (Canada) orscience and academia (Russia). For small developing countries such as Bhutan and Gabon the majority of government representatives come from environment, forestry and agriculture. The UK has moved from mainly environment, forestry and agriculture to energy and natural resources. The US has shifted from these more conventional areas to an overwhelming representation from the US Congress at COP15.

Journal Reference:

Heike Schroeder, Maxwell T. Boykoff, Laura Spiers. Equity and state representations in climate negotiations.Nature Climate Change, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1742

Estudo aumenta precisão ao simular clima (Folha de São Paulo)

14/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4621, de 09 de Novembro de 2012.

Americanos conseguiram método indireto para levar em conta o papel das nuvens no aquecimento do planeta. Metodologia criada por eles indica que o mais provável neste século é que temperatura média aumente perto de 4º C.

Pesquisadores americanos acabam de achar um meio de determinar quais modelos da mudança climática parecem ser os mais precisos. E a má notícia: os melhores são os que predizem modificações mais drásticas no clima para as próximas décadas.

O segredo do trabalho, conduzido por John Fasullo e Kevin Trenberth, do Centro Nacional Para Pesquisa Atmosférica em Boulder, Colorado, foi se concentrar naquilo que se podia ver -no caso, a umidade relativa em regiões subtropicais- para compreender o que é muito mais difícil de medir: a dinâmica das nuvens.

As nuvens são um dos elementos-chave na interpretação do fenômeno do aquecimento global. Isso porque elas têm um efeito duplo. Por um lado, por serem claras, elas refletem a luz solar para o espaço, resultando em resfriamento. Por outro, o vapor d’água nelas é um poderoso gás do efeito estufa, podendo gerar aquecimento.

Os modelos de computador têm dificuldade em lidar com as nuvens e seu papel na evolução do clima.

Incerteza, em termos – Já é possível simular, ao menos em parte, o efeito delas, e existe um consenso mais ou menos claro de que a soma de tudo que elas fazem resulta em suave resfriamento. Entretanto, ainda há muita incerteza sobre o que isso significa para o futuro.

Tal incerteza é o grande mal a afetar a ciência do aquecimento global. Os detratores costumam apontá-la como a prova de que o medo da mudança climática é muito mais um movimento ideológico do que uma conclusão científica inescapável.

Ao que tudo indica, porém, a incerteza diz respeito ao nível de aquecimento para as próximas décadas, mas não ao fenômeno em si. Alguns modelos sugerem que, nos próximos cem anos, veremos um aumento da temperatura média da ordem de 4,5 graus Celsius. Já os mais modestos preveem que tudo não passará de uma variação de 1,5 grau Celsius.

Foi aí que entrou em cena o lampejo de Fasullo e Trenberth. Como é difícil observar diretamente as propriedades das nuvens e compará-las com o que os modelos oferecem, eles decidiram estudar a umidade relativa do ar, sobretudo nas regiões subtropicais, em geral mais secas.

A vantagem é que dados de umidade relativa são obtidos com confiança a partir de satélites, de forma que é possível contrastar as previsões dos modelos para o presente com observações reais. Também há forte correlação entre a umidade relativa e o processo de formação de nuvens, de forma que, a partir de um, é possível inferir o efeito de outro. O chato é que os modelos que parecem estar mais corretos são justamente aqueles que preveem mudanças mais fortes, da ordem de 4,5º C.

A questão das nuvens, porém, não é a única fonte de incertezas. “Esse trabalho é só uma das peças do quebra-cabeças da sensibilidade climática”, afirma Karen Shell, da Universidade Estadual do Oregon (EUA), que comentou a pesquisa na mesma edição da revista “Science” na qual os resultados saíram.

Cultural Dimensions of Climate Change Are Underestimated, Overlooked and Misunderstood (Science Daily)

13/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Cultura, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Psicologia, Visualidaderenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2012) — The impact of climate change on many aspects of cultural life for people all over the world is not being sufficiently accounted for by scientists and policy-makers. University of Exeter-led research by an international team, published on 11th November in Nature Climate Change, shows that cultural factors are key to making climate change real to people and to motivating their responses.

From enjoying beaches or winter sports and visiting iconic natural spaces to using traditional methods of agriculture and construction in our daily lives, the research highlights the cultural experiences that bind our communities and are under threat as a result of climate change. The paper argues that governments’ programmes for dealing with the consequences of climate change do not give enough consideration to what really matters to individuals and communities.

Culture binds people together and helps them overcome threats to their environments and livelihoods. Some are already experiencing such threats and profound changes to their lives. For example, the Polynesian Island of Niue, which experiences cyclones, has a population of 1,500 with four times as many Niueans now living in New Zealand. The research shows that most people remaining on the island resist migrating because of a strong attachment to the island. There is strong evidence to suggest that it is important for people’s emotional well-being to have control over whether and where they move. The researchers argue that these psychological factors have not been addressed.

Lead researcher Professor Neil Adger of the University of Exeter said: “Governments have not yet addressed the cultural losses we are all facing as a result of global climate change and this could have catastrophic consequences. If the cultural dimensions of climate change continue to be ignored, it is likely that responses will fail to be effective because they simply do not connect with what matters to individuals and communities. It is vital that the cultural impact of climate change is considered, alongside plans to adapt our physical spaces to the changing environment.”

Professor Katrina Brown from the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute adds: “The evidence is clear; when people experience the impacts of climate change in places that matter to them, the problems become real and they are motivated to make their futures more sustainable. This is as true in coastal Cornwall as in Pacific Islands.”

Journal Reference:

W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, Katrina Brown, Nadine Marshall, Karen O’Brien. Cultural dimensions of climate change impacts and adaptation. Nature Climate Change, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1666

Climate of Change (PBS)

01/11/2012UncategorizedClima, Economia, Eleições americanas, Enquadramento, Incerteza, jornalismo, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

October 23, 2012

FRONTLINE explores the massive shift in public opinion on climate change.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/

It’s Global Warming, Stupid (Bloomberg)

01/11/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, jornalismo, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By Paul M. Barrett on November 01, 2012

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-01/its-global-warming-stupid

Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.

Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.

An unscientific survey of the social networking literature on Sandy reveals an illuminating tweet (you read that correctly) from Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. On Oct. 29, Foley thumbed thusly: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”

In an Oct. 30 blog post, Mark Fischetti of Scientific American took a spin through Ph.D.-land and found more and more credentialed experts willing to shrug off the climate caveats. The broadening consensus: “Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.” Even those of us who are science-phobic can get the gist of that.

Sandy featured a scary extra twist implicating climate change. An Atlantic hurricane moving up the East Coast crashed into cold air dipping south from Canada. The collision supercharged the storm’s energy level and extended its geographical reach. Pushing that cold air south was an atmospheric pattern, known as a blocking high, above the Arctic Ocean. Climate scientists Charles Greene and Bruce Monger of Cornell University, writing earlier this year in Oceanography, provided evidence that Arctic icemelts linked to global warming contribute to the very atmospheric pattern that sent the frigid burst down across Canada and the eastern U.S.

If all that doesn’t impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.

On Oct. 17 the giant German reinsurance company Munich Re issued a prescient report titled Severe Weather in North America. Globally, the rate of extreme weather events is rising, and “nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” From 1980 through 2011, weather disasters caused losses totaling $1.06 trillion. Munich Re found “a nearly quintupled number of weather-related loss events in North America for the past three decades.” By contrast, there was “an increase factor of 4 in Asia, 2.5 in Africa, 2 in Europe, and 1.5 in South America.” Human-caused climate change “is believed to contribute to this trend,” the report said, “though it influences various perils in different ways.”

Global warming “particularly affects formation of heat waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity,” Munich Re said. This July was the hottest month recorded in the U.S. since record-keeping began in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that two-thirds of the continental U.S. suffered drought conditions this summer.

Granted, Munich Re wants to sell more reinsurance (backup policies purchased by other insurance companies), so maybe it has a selfish reason to stir anxiety. But it has no obvious motive for fingering global warming vs. other causes. “If the first effects of climate change are already perceptible,” said Peter Hoppe, the company’s chief of geo-risks research, “all alerts and measures against it have become even more pressing.”

Which raises the question of what alerts and measures to undertake. In his book The Conundrum, David Owen, a staff writer at theNew Yorker, contends that as long as the West places high and unquestioning value on economic growth and consumer gratification—with China and the rest of the developing world right behind—we will continue to burn the fossil fuels whose emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Fast trains, hybrid cars, compact fluorescent light bulbs, carbon offsets—they’re just not enough, Owen writes.

Yet even he would surely agree that the only responsible first step is to put climate change back on the table for discussion. The issue was MIA during the presidential debates and, regardless of who wins on Nov. 6, is unlikely to appear on the near-term congressional calendar. After Sandy, that seems insane.

Mitt Romney has gone from being a supporter years ago of clean energy and emission caps to, more recently, a climate agnostic. On Aug. 30, he belittled his opponent’s vow to arrest climate change, made during the 2008 presidential campaign. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” Romney told the Republican National Convention in storm-tossed Tampa. “My promise is to help you and your family.” Two months later, in the wake of Sandy, submerged families in New Jersey and New York urgently needed some help dealing with that rising-ocean stuff.

Obama and his strategists clearly decided that in a tight race during fragile economic times, he should compete with Romney by promising to mine more coal and drill more oil. On the campaign trail, when Obama refers to the environment, he does so only in the context of spurring “green jobs.” During his time in office, Obama has made modest progress on climate issues. His administration’s fuel-efficiency standards will reduce by half the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks by 2025. His regulations and proposed rules to curb mercury, carbon, and other emissions from coal-fired power plants are forcing utilities to retire some of the dirtiest old facilities. And the country has doubled the generation of energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind.

Still, renewable energy accounts for less than 15 percent of the country’s electricity. The U.S. cannot shake its fossil fuel addiction by going cold turkey. Offices and factories can’t function in the dark. Shippers and drivers and air travelers will not abandon petroleum overnight. While scientists and entrepreneurs search for breakthrough technologies, the next president should push an energy plan that exploits plentiful domestic natural gas supplies. Burned for power, gas emits about half as much carbon as coal. That’s a trade-off already under way, and it’s worth expanding. Environmentalists taking a hard no-gas line are making a mistake.

Conservatives champion market forces—as do smart liberals—and financial incentives should be part of the climate agenda. In 2009 the House of Representatives passed cap-and-trade legislation that would have rewarded more nimble industrial players that figure out how to use cleaner energy. The bill died in the Senate in 2010, a victim of Tea Party-inspired Republican obstructionism and Obama’s decision to spend his political capital to push health-care reform.

Despite Republican fanaticism about all forms of government intervention in the economy, the idea of pricing carbon must remain a part of the national debate. One politically plausible way to tax carbon emissions is to transfer the revenue to individuals. Alaska, which pays dividends to its citizens from royalties imposed on oil companies, could provide inspiration (just as Romneycare in Massachusetts pointed the way to Obamacare).

Ultimately, the global warming crisis will require global solutions. Washington can become a credible advocate for moving the Chinese and Indian economies away from coal and toward alternatives only if the U.S. takes concerted political action. At the last United Nations conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, the world’s governments agreed to seek a new legal agreement that binds signatories to reduce their carbon emissions. Negotiators agreed to come up with a new treaty by 2015, to be put in place by 2020. To work, the treaty will need to include a way to penalize countries that don’t meet emission-reduction targets—something the U.S. has until now refused to support.

If Hurricane Sandy does nothing else, it should suggest that we need to commit more to disaster preparation and response. As with climate change, Romney has displayed an alarmingly cavalier attitude on weather emergencies. During one Republican primary debate last year, he was asked point-blank whether the functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ought to be turned back to the states. “Absolutely,” he replied. Let the states fend for themselves or, better yet, put the private sector in charge. Pay-as-you-go rooftop rescue service may appeal to plutocrats; when the flood waters are rising, ordinary folks welcome the National Guard.

It’s possible Romney’s kill-FEMA remark was merely a pander to the Right, rather than a serious policy proposal. Still, the reconfirmed need for strong federal disaster capability—FEMA and Obama got glowing reviews from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Romney supporter—makes the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign-trail statement all the more reprehensible.

The U.S. has allowed transportation and other infrastructure to grow obsolete and deteriorate, which poses a threat not just to public safety but also to the nation’s economic health. With once-in-a-century floods now occurring every few years, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the country’s biggest city will need to consider building surge protectors and somehow waterproofing its enormous subway system. “It’s not prudent to sit here and say it’s not going to happen again,” Cuomo said. “I believe it is going to happen again.”

David Rothkopf, the chief executive and editor-at-large of Foreign Policy, noted in an Oct. 29 blog post that Sandy also brought his hometown, Washington, to a standstill, impeding affairs of state. To lessen future impact, he suggested burying urban and suburban power lines, an expensive but sensible improvement.

Where to get the money? Rothkopf proposed shifting funds from post-Sept. 11 bureaucratic leviathans such as the Department of Homeland Security, which he alleges is shot through with waste. In truth, what’s lacking in America’s approach to climate change is not the resources to act but the political will to do so. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in October found that two-thirds of Americans say there is “solid evidence” the earth is getting warmer. That’s down 10 points since 2006. Among Republicans, more than half say it’s either not a serious problem or not a problem at all.

Such numbers reflect the success of climate deniers in framing action on global warming as inimical to economic growth. This is both shortsighted and dangerous. The U.S. can’t afford regular Sandy-size disruptions in economic activity. To limit the costs of climate-related disasters, both politicians and the public need to accept how much they’re helping to cause them.

Risco calculado (Fapesp)

13/10/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Workshop sobre extremos do clima expõe o desafio de converter informação científica em prevenção de desastres

FABRÍCIO MARQUES | Edição 199 – Setembro de 2012

Inundação em parque de diversões de Nova Orleans após a passagem do furacão Katrina, em 2005: tragédia despertou a consciência norte-americana. © BOB MCMILLAN / FEMA PHOTO

É praticamente certo – a certeza, no caso, chega a 99% – que vá ocorrer até 2100 um aumento na frequência de dias e noites quentes em diferentes regiões do planeta. Já em relação à intensidade das chuvas, que efetivamente recrudesceram em diversas áreas, ainda há dúvidas se o fenômeno é global – os dados disponíveis indicam que as previsões nessa direção têm um grau de confiança de 66%. Divulgado em março passado, o Relatório Especial sobre Gestão dos Riscos de Extremos Climáticos e Desastres (SREX, na sigla em inglês) apontou essas tendências, entre várias outras, com base no conhecimento científico recente compilado pelo Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC). Seus resultados foram discutidos numa reunião realizada no auditório Moise Safra, no Centro de Convenções Albert Einstein, em São Paulo, entre os dias 16 e 17 de agosto, na qual pesquisadores de vários países também debateram estratégias para o gerenciamento dos impactos e para levar o conhecimento aos tomadores de decisão. Oworkshop “Gestão dos riscos dos extremos climáticos e desastres na América Central e na América do Sul – o que podemos aprender com o Relatório Especial do IPCC sobre extremos?”, foi promovido pela FAPESP e pelo Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe).

“Ficou claro nas discussões que a interface dos cientistas com gestores e comunidades locais é um ponto crítico. Há muito ruído nessa comunicação”, disse à Agência FAPESPo climatologista José Marengo, coordenador do workshop e membro do comitê organizador do SREX. Talvez a recomendação mais importante extraída dos debates tenha sido essa: é preciso estabelecer novos canais de diálogo entre cientistas e autoridades para enfrentar os riscos de desastres resultantes de eventos climáticos extremos e reduzir os prejuízos que eles causam. A necessidade de participação mais ativa dos governos em decisões relacionadas a questões como vulnerabilidade às mudanças climáticas e estratégias de adaptação também foi destacada pelos pesquisadores presentes no workshop. “Os governos se mostram pouco preparados e continuam sendo pegos de surpresa por eventos meteorológicos que estão aumentando em frequência e intensidade, como mostram os relatórios, e deverão aumentar ainda mais no futuro”, disse Marengo, que é coordenador do Centro de Ciência do Sistema Terrestre do Inpe e lidera um projeto temático, no âmbito do Programa FAPESP de Pesquisa sobre Mudanças Climáticas Globais (PFPMCG), acerca do impacto dos extremos do clima nos ecossistemas e na saúde humana no Brasil.

Segundo o pesquisador, frequentemente existem recursos para mapeamento de risco e remoção de população em áreas vulneráveis, mas o dinheiro acaba sendo transferido para outras áreas. “Isso mostra uma falha no nosso diálogo com os governos locais. Não é segredo que o clima está mudando e todos os anos pessoas morrem por conta de desastres que poderiam ser evitados se esses recursos fossem aplicados”, afirmou.

A forma como a informação científica alcança a sociedade frequentemente é diversa da imaginada pelos pesquisadores.  “Apareceram nos nossos debates discussões, por exemplo, sobre termos como ‘incerteza’, que é derivado da área de modelagem climática e cujo conceito nós cientistas compreendemos, mas que ainda não foi traduzido adequadamente para o público”, disse Marengo. Outra confusão envolve o próprio conceito de desastre. “Não são as chuvas que matam as pessoas. É a combinação delas com famílias morando em encostas e em residências precárias. Não dá para acabar com as chuvas intensas, mas, com planejamento, é possível reduzir o número de mortes”, afirmou o pesquisador. A percepção da sociedade sobre as mudanças climáticas obedece a uma lógica às vezes distinta da dos cientistas. Marengo cita como exemplo o furacão Katrina, que devastou o sul dos Estados Unidos em 2005 e inundou a cidade de Nova Orleans. “Não há como afirmar que o Katrina, analisado de forma isolada, seja resultado das mudanças globais. Mas foi esse evento que despertou a população norte-americana para o problema”, afirmou.

Escassez de dados

Uma das principais conclusões do relatório SREX, que foi elaborado pelo IPCC a pedido do governo da Noruega e da Estratégia Internacional para a Redução de Desastres (Eird), da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU), é que vem ocorrendo um aumento na frequência de eventos climáticos extremos no mundo nas últimas décadas em razão das mudanças climáticas. Com base nas evidências presentes, o relatório indica que é altamente provável um aumento na frequência de dias e noites quentes nos próximos anos em diferentes regiões do planeta. Mas é incerto se alguns fenômenos climáticos extremos tendem a ocorrer em escala global, devido à escassez de dados. O documento aponta dúvidas em relação ao aumento da frequência de chuvas intensas em todo o mundo, indicando regiões que apresentam aumento e outras onde ocorreu redução do evento climático. Também faltam evidências de que ciclones tropicais tenham se tornado mais frequentes, embora as chuvas relacionadas com esses fenômenos, de fato, estejam mais intensas. Da mesma forma, é possível que secas atinjam com mais frequência e intensidade certas regiões do planeta, como o Nordeste brasileiro ou o México, mas não representem um fenômeno generalizado no planeta.

Para os pesquisadores que produziram o relatório, um dos principais desafios foi afinar os discursos entre especialistas de diversas áreas. “Foi o primeiro esforço para trocar conhecimento de maneira multidisciplinar”, disse a médica e professora da Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Unam), Úrsula Oswald Spring, que participou da elaboração do SREX e esteve noworkshop de São Paulo. “Sem construir uma linguagem comum, não é possível avançar nas soluções dos problemas colocados pelas mudanças climáticas.”

Apesar das incertezas sobre a extensão e a frequência dos fenômenos climáticos extremos no futuro, seu impacto, hoje, já é palpável. Dados apresentados por Úrsula Spring mostraram que mulheres e crianças são as maiores vítimas de furacões, terremotos, tsunamis, inundações e outros eventos extremos, climáticos ou não. Elas representam de 68% a 89% das mortes que ocorrem nesses fenômenos no mundo todo. As mulheres são 72% das pessoas que vivem em condições de extrema pobreza, o que as torna mais vulneráveis em situações de desastres. “O papel das mulheres é o de cuidar, então salvam filhos, pais e animais e não enxergam o risco que correm”, disse Úrsula, que pesquisa o tema há 10 anos. O prejuízo também é muito maior em países pobres: 95% das mortes por desastres naturais ocorrem em países em desenvolvimento. “Para que grandes desastres ocorram é necessário que a população esteja vulnerável e exposta”, afirmou o professor da Universidad Católica do Chile, Sebastián Vicuña.

Deslizamentos

O climatologista Carlos Nobre, que é secretário de Políticas e Programas de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento do Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (MCTI), membro da coordenação do Programa FAPESP de Pesquisa sobre Mudanças Climáticas Globais (PFPMCG) e do IPCC, enumerou estudos publicados por pesquisadores do estado de São Paulo que tratam dos riscos causados pela maior frequência de chuvas intensas. Um deles apontou um aumento do número de áreas suscetíveis a alagamentos e que apresentam risco maior de deslizamentos de terra na capital paulista. Outro estudo demonstrou que, com a urbanização, as áreas de chuva intensa se expandem e aumenta o risco de contaminação por leptospirose – doença transmitida principalmente pela urina de roedores. Já uma pesquisa feita no Departamento de Ecologia da Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), campus de Rio Claro, em parceria com o Inpe, mostrou que Campinas e Ribeirão Preto são as duas regiões no estado de São Paulo mais vulneráveis às mudanças climáticas. A concentração populacional em Campinas potencializa as consequências de uma enchente. Já no caso de Ribeirão Preto, a região deverá registrar temperaturas mais altas nas próximas décadas. “Podemos discernir em algumas regiões os impactos socioeconômicos causados pela aceleração dos eventos climáticos, que estão associados a maior vulnerabilidade das populações em razão da crescente urbanização do mundo e, em particular, das cidades da América Latina, onde esse processo ocorreu nas últimas décadas de forma caótica”, disse Nobre à Agência FAPESP. No Brasil, os recursos para reconstrução de regiões assoladas por desastres causados por eventos climáticos extremos tiveram uma evolução muito rápida nos últimos 10 anos e ultrapassaram o patamar de R$ 1,6 bilhão em 2011, apontou Nobre. Se há incertezas sobre a tendência de aumento da frequência de chuva em escala global, no caso de São Paulo não restam dúvidas de que as chuvas intensas têm aumentado muito na cidade nos últimos 50 ou 70 anos, observou Nobre. “Hoje temos três vezes mais chuvas intensas do que há 70 anos. E as evidências de que esse tipo de evento ocorre com maior frequência na capital paulista estão muito bem documentadas”, afirmou.

Os resultados do relatório SREX serão aproveitados e atualizados nos próximos relatórios que o IPCC divulgará em 2013. Segundo Marengo, ainda há uma escassez de estudos sobre vulnerabilidade às mudanças climáticas em regiões brasileiras. Para produzir o SREX, pôs-se de lado a norma não escrita de que um bom estudo científico é apenas aquele publicado em revistas especializadas de língua inglesa. “Conseguimos atingir um nível bom em algumas publicações brasileiras, mas ainda falta mais literatura científica publicada no país”, afirmou o pesquisador. Os pesquisadores detectaram a necessidade de aumentar o financiamento de estudos sobre mudanças climáticas, com apoio de instituições governamentais e não governamentais. Os grupos recomendaram ainda o fortalecimento das instituições locais de gerenciamento de risco. “Não é preciso criar novas instituições, mas fortalecer as que já existem”, afirmou Marengo.

IPCC enters new stage of Fifth Assessment Report review (IPCC)

13/10/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Marketing, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

GENEVA, 5 October – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is moving to a new stage in the preparation of its next major report, the Fifth Assessment Report, with the first of three government and expert reviews that will take place between now and May 2013.

The multi-stage review of draft reports is a key element of the IPCC assessment process. The main stages are the review of the first order draft by scientific experts, the review of the second order draft by Governments and experts, which starts today, and a final round of government comments on the draft Summary for Policymakers.

In the second stage of the review, IPCC member Governments are invited to review the second order drafts of the reports. Individuals with relevant expertise may also provide expert comments. The purpose of this government and expert review is to help ensure that the report represents the latest scientific and technical findings, provides a balanced and comprehensive assessment of the current information and is consistent with the mandate of the working groups and the outline of the Fifth Assessment Report that was approved by the Panel in October 2009.

For Working Group I, which covers the physical science basis of climate change, the government and expert review of the second order draft runs from 5 October to 30 November 2012. Further details are available at https://sod.ipcc.unibe.ch/registration/.
The government and expert review period for the second order draft of Working Group II, covering impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, will run from 29 March to 24 May 2013. More information will be available at www.ipcc-wg2.gov closer to that time.
Working Group III, which assesses the mitigation of climate change, will hold the government and expert review of its second order draft from 25 February to 22 April 2013. Further information will be available nearer the time at www.ipcc-wg3.de/ .

The number of experts involved in the review of the first order draft of the three IPCC working groups ranged from 563 to 659 for each working group, resulting in between 16,124 and 21,400 comments for each working group’s draft. Report authors must respond to each comment and they draw on the comments to produce the second order drafts. Experts who took part in this review are also invited to comment on the second order draft.

Following the multi-stage review, the Summary for Policymakers and the full report are submitted for approval and acceptance to the IPCC Plenary, its main decision-taking body. To ensure transparency, all review comments and author responses are made available on the IPCC website after the reports are accepted and finalized.

Working Group I will release its Summary for Policymakers in September 2013. Working Group II will release its Summary for Policymakers in March 2014, followed by Working Group III in April 2014. The Synthesis Report, that synthesizes key findings from the assessment reports of the IPCC’s three working groups and from recent Special Reports, is due to be released in October 2014, marking the end of the current assessment cycle.

British Met Office facing legal action over pessimistic forecasts (Independent.ie)

04/10/2012UncategorizedClima, Culpa, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Marketing, Mídia, Meteorologia, Opinião pública, Previsão, Psicologia, Visualidaderenzotaddei

Wednesday October 03 2012

A tourist attraction is considering suing The Met Office after it claims a string of pessimistic forecasts kept visitors away.

Rick Turner owner of the Big Sheep in Abbotsham, Devon, said poor forecasting was to blame for lower attendance at his farm attraction business.

Mr Turner is so angry he says he’ll take the agency to court unless its forecasts improve.

He said: “The Met Office seems to come up with such pessimistic forecasts predicting chances of rain when we’re enjoying sunshine.

“We’ve had a lot rain – that’s why it’s nice and green.

“But it’s important for the tourist industry that when we do have sunshine we need to be shouting about it rather than saying there might be some chance of rain.

“The Met Office forecasters need to realise that everything they say has an impact on whether people go on holiday or go for a day out.”

The Met Office insists that forecasters have no reason to dampen spirits and are simply doing their best with the data available.

But the weather service admitted ‘No weather forecaster is going to get it 100 per cent right all the time.’

“We have to tell the weather as it is that’s what our job is. This summer has been thoroughly disappointing,” said forecaster Dave Britton.

“It’ll be hard to find someone who hasn’t found that. It’s been the wettest summer in 100 years.

“The UK is lucky enough to have one of the best weather forecasting services in the world – we should recognise that.

“We have to remember Devon is the third or fourth wettest county in England. The Met Office can’t stop it raining. We get it right 87 or 88 per cent of the time which is absolutely phenomenal.”

Malcolm Bell a tourism expert in the south west said forecasts needed to be more balanced: “The challenge is that in the forecasts the Met office says there could be showers here or there when in fact it could be dry for 90 per cent of the time.

“People just hear the word rain and that puts them off going somewhere for the day.

“There’s a difference between that goes on for two or three hours and rain that lasts ten minutes in a shower and then passes through.

“I know it’s an incredibly difficult task for the Met Office but I always advise people to look at the websites – you have to get quite local to get more accurate.”

In June Claire Jeavons, who runs the Beverley Park holiday site in Paignton, Devon, said “alarmist” forecasts which often proved groundless were having a major impact on bookings across the West Country.

Claire Jeavons, who runs the Beverley Park holiday site in Paignton, Devon, said “alarmist” forecasts which often proved groundless were having a major impact on bookings across the West Country.

“It is already causing holiday-makers to stay away,” she said. “Just a few days ago we were hearing that all caravan parks in the West Country were on flood alert, and this simply wasn’t the case.”

Tony Clish, director of Park Holidays UK which owns 700 caravans in Suffolk, said he believes weather forecasters are afraid of being caught out after recent predictions of a “barbecue summer” were proved to be inaccurate.

He said: “Coastal holiday parks in Suffolk often stay dry when it is raining inland, yet forecasters frequently tarnish the whole county with a single wet-weather symbol.

“We’re not asking them to bend the truth, but just to be more careful with phrasing. For example, they could say that while inland areas may have showers, coastal areas are expected to be dry.”

NASA Scientists Use Unmanned Aircraft to Spy on Hurricanes (Wired)

25/09/2012UncategorizedClima, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By Jason Paur

September 21, 2012

Image: NASA

Hurricane researchers are gathering unprecedented data this month by using two NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft. The airplanes were originally developed for the military, but have been modified to aid in atmospheric research.

One of the Global Hawks was flown to its new base at NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility on Virginia’s Atlantic coast earlier this month and has already flown several missions over developing tropical storms giving atmospheric scientists the ability to watch and measure storms for up to three times as long as they could with manned aircraft, including NASA’s modified U-2 spyplane. The second Global Hawk is set to depart the Dryden Flight Research Center in California and join its hangar mate in the next week or so.

The airplanes were first used to observe storm development on a limited basis in 2010. The earlier missions were flown out of Dryden, which cut short the amount of time the planes could spend over Atlantic storms. Now based on the East Coast, the Global Hawks can spend up to six hours off the coast of Africa as storms develop, or 20 hours or more as the storms approach North America.

This long loiter capability is what has scientists excited to gain new insight into the life of a hurricane, says Scott Braun, principal investigator on NASA’s Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) project.

“We’ve kind of gone from reconnaissance, which is short-term investigations” said Braun, “to more of surveillance where you can stay with a storm and move with it for a while.”

The path flown by Global Hawk AV-6 over tropical storm Nadine on Sept. 12. (NASA)

On Wednesday, the Global Hawk known as AV-6 departed Wallops Island and flew for nearly 25 hours observing tropical storm Nadine over the central Atlantic. It was the third time AV-6 had flown over the storm in the past 10 days. The airplane carries an “environmental payload” designed to gather big-picture data by flying around the entire storm (above). In addition to a high-resolution infrared sounder and cloud-physics LIDAR for measuring the structure and depth of clouds, AV-6 can make direct measurements by dropping out radiosondes that can measure temperature, humidity, wind speed and air pressure as they descend by parachute from as high as 60,000 feet.

The other airplane, AV-1 has a different suite of remote sensing instruments on board focused on the development of the inner core of the storms, measuring variables including wind profiles, rain rates and liquid water content of the clouds.

Researchers have learned a lot about predicting the path of hurricanes over the past several decades. But being able to predict the intensification of storms, especially early in their development has not been as successful. One of the aspects of storm and hurricane development Braun and the HS3 team are hoping to learn more about is the role dry, dusty air masses blowing off the Sahara play in the intensification process. It’s something debated in the research community, and until now scientists have had limited capabilities to watch the interaction for long periods of time.

“In some ways the Saharan air layer is essential,” Braun said. “The question is, once you develop these waves, to what extent can this dry and dusty air get into these disturbances to disrupt the ability of thunderstorms to get rotation organized on smaller scales to spin up a hurricane.”

Braun says most of the storms form from the air masses that come off Africa, but in manned aircraft they may only get a few hours at a time to watch and gather data. Satellites are also used extensively, but they offer a few snapshots a day and cannot make direct measurements. The Global Hawks provide the capability to watch the storms develop for up to a day at a time. And with two of them the researchers will eventually be able to watch storms continuously.

“We could potentially follow them all the way across the Atlantic, so you’re looking at the full life cycle of these storms.”

The Global Hawks will remain in Virginia through early October until hurricane season is over. The airplanes will be back on the East Coast for more long flights next year as well as in 2014.

ONU quer garantir que temperatura global não se eleve mais que 2ºC (Globo Natureza)

13/09/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Matemática, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, ONU, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4582, de 13 de Setembro de 2012

As negociações climáticas da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) devem continuar pressionando por atitudes mais ambiciosas para garantir que o aquecimento global não ultrapasse os 2 graus, disse um negociador da União Europeia nesta semana, um mês depois de os EUA terem sido acusados de apresentar um retrocesso na meta.

Quase 200 países concordaram em 2010 em limitar o aumento das temperaturas para abaixo de 2 graus Celsius, acima da era pré-industrial para evitar os impactos perigos da mudança climática, como enchentes, secas e elevação do nível das marés.

Para desacelerar o ritmo do aquecimento global, as conversações climáticas da ONU na África do Sul concordaram em desenvolver um acordo climático legalmente vinculante até 2015, que poderia entrar em vigor no máximo até 2020.

Entretanto, especialistas advertem que a chance de limitar o aumento da temperatura global para menos de 2 graus está ficando cada vez menor, à medida que aumenta a emissão dos gases de efeito estufa por causa da queima de combustíveis fósseis.

“Está muito claro que devemos pressionar nas negociações de que a meta de 2 graus não é suficiente. A razão pela qual não estamos fazendo o bastante se deve à situação política em algumas partes do mundo”, disse Peter Betts, o diretor para mudança climática internacional da Grã-Bretanha e negociador sênior da UE, a um grupo de mudança climática no Parlamento britânico.

Na última semana, cientistas e diplomatas se reuniram em Bangcoc para a reunião da Convenção da ONU sobre Mudança Climática (UNFCCC, na sigla em inglês), a última antes do encontro anual que será realizado entre novembro e dezembro em Doha, no Qatar.

Flexibilidade nas metas – No mês passado, os EUA foram criticados por dizer que apoiavam uma abordagem mais flexível para um novo acordo climático – que não necessariamente manteria o limite de 2 graus -, mas depois acrescentaram que a flexibilidade daria ao mundo uma chance maior de chegar a um novo acordo.

Diversos países, incluindo alguns dos mais vulneráveis à mudança climática, dizem que o limite de 2 graus não é suficiente e que um limite de 1,5 graus seria mais seguro. As emissões do principal gás de efeito estufa, o dióxido de carbono, subiram 3,1% em 2011, em um recorde de alta. A China foi a maior emissora do mundo, seguida pelos EUA.

As negociações para a criação de um novo acordo global para o clima, nos mesmos moldes de Kyoto, já iniciaram. Na última conferência climática foi aprovada uma série de medidas que estabelece metas para países desenvolvidos e em desenvolvimento.

O documento denominado “Plataforma de Durban para Ação Aumentada” aponta uma série de medidas que deverão ser implementadas, mas na prática, não há medidas efetivas urgentes para conter em todo o planeta o aumento dos níveis de poluição nos próximos oito anos.

Obrigação para todos no futuro – Ele prevê a criação de um acordo global climático que vai compreender todos os países integrantes da UNFCCC e irá substituir o Protocolo de Kyoto. Será desenhado pelos países “um protocolo, outro instrumento legal ou um resultado acordado com força legal” para combater as mudanças climáticas.

Isso quer dizer que metas de redução de gases serão definidas para todas as nações, incluindo Estados Unidos e China, que não aceitavam qualquer tipo de negociação se uma das partes não fosse incluída nas obrigações de redução.

O delineamento deste novo plano começará a ser feito a partir das próximas negociações da ONU, o que inclui a COP 18, que vai acontecer em 2012 no Catar. O documento afirma que um grupo de trabalho será criado e que deve concluir o novo plano em 2015.

As medidas de contenção da poluição só deverão ser implementadas pelos países a partir de 2020, prazo estabelecido na Plataforma de Durban, e deverão levar em conta as recomendações do relatório do Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC, na sigla em inglês), que será divulgado entre 2014 e 2015.

Em 2007, o organismo divulgou um documento que apontava para um aumento médio global das temperaturas entre 1,8 ºC e 4,0 ºC até 2100, com possibilidade de alta para 6,4 ºC se a população e a economia continuarem crescendo rapidamente e se for mantido o consumo intenso dos combustíveis fósseis.

Entretanto, a estimativa mais confiável fala em um aumento médio de 3ºC, assumindo que os níveis de dióxido de carbono se estabilizem em 45% acima da taxa atual. Aponta também, com mais de 90% de confiabilidade, que a maior parte do aumento de temperatura observado nos últimos 50 anos foi provocada por atividades humanas.