Category: Climate science

Keep it subdued

In my review of Climate Code Red a couple of posts back I mentioned the authors’ view that one of the limitations of the IPCC system is the pressure from vested interests harboured by some countries. An interesting example of the effects of such political pressure has come to light in the New York Times.  It concerns the exclusion from the last IPCC report of an updated diagram of climate risks, known as “burning embers”.  The 2001 report included the diagram and the planned 2007 version of the diagram would have shown the increased level of estimated climate risks since then.

All the diagram does is illustrate in graphic form the levels of risk estimated for a number of categories such as risks to unique and threatened systems, risks of extreme weather events, and so on. There is written description of the risks, but the graphic presentation was disallowed.

Several authors of the report now say that they regret not having pushed harder to include the diagram. Some scientists thought it too subjective, but apparently the main opposition to its inclusion came from officials representing the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, who thought the colourful diagram was too incendiary.   Continue reading “Keep it subdued”

Where the streets have no name

JanMayenvortexsmall.jpg

Not much of a climate connection here (though Greenland and sea ice are in the picture), but regular readers will know that I’m fond of looking down on the Earth from space. This image from NASA’s Earth Observatory shows a beautiful von Karman vortex street downwind of Jan Mayen island in the Greenland Sea (600 km N of Iceland, 500 km E of Greenland), surrounded by more conventional cloud streets running south off the sea ice. Click on the image for more detail, and check out the Wikipedia page for an excellent animation showing how the vortices form, and more pictures. We get them too: here’s a NASA satellite image from 2002 of a similar vortex street forming to the west of Mt Taranaki:
Taranakivortex.jpg

Normal climate service will resume shortly…
[Pet Shop Boys]

Reelin’ in the year

IPYWMO.jpg The International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-8 formally draws to a close today, and when today arrives in Geneva there will be a press conference to mark the release of a summary report, The State of Polar Research [PDF], which covers some of the preliminary findings. [BBC report here]. In the run up to this event, there’s been a blizzard (…sorry) of stories from the teams working at both ends of the world, and they make fascinating reading. From huge pools of freshwater building up in the Arctic Ocean to new mountain ranges as big as the Alps under Antarctica, methane plumes off Siberia and the death knell for summer sea ice in the Arctic, there’s a lot to cover…

Continue reading “Reelin’ in the year”

Serendipity-doo-dah

longnowclock.jpg I get emails from several Oxfords, but this week’s best came from the nearest and contained a link to “a lecture you’ll find worth looking at — coffee/keyboard interface warning.” The warning was heeded and needed. The lecture, by Dmitry Orlov, given to the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco on Feb 13 as a part of Long Now’s Seminars About Long Term Thinking, is titled Social Collapse Best Practices [Long Now report here, full text at ClubOrlov]. According to Orlov, who had direct experience of social collapse in Russia after the demise of the communist system (his thesis is that the US is moving rapidly towards closing its “collapse gap” with Russia), four things are important during a collapse — food, shelter, transportation and security. But especially security:

Continue reading “Serendipity-doo-dah”

Moulin, not rouge


This Discovery Channel promotional clip shows scientists measuring the flow of water down a moulin on the Greenland ice sheet. Wonderful — scary — images. Asked to define the scale of the problem of ice sheet melt on a scale from 0 to 10, Jason Box, a glaciologist from Ohio State University answers: 11. More at the UK Telegraph.

For a different — winter — view of Greenland, NASA’s Earth Observatory has just published an article about scientists overwintering at Summit Camp, including a blog by remote-sensing glaciologist Lora Koenig. Great pictures. Love the polar bear…

[Red]