Week 4 Reflection

The more I study climate change the more I appreciate just how complex the subject area is! I find it very frustrating that much of the mass media coverage is so biased and unscientific.

The Ship Tracks South of Alaska were fascinating! Interesting to think that these tracks would disappear if diesel ships were replaced by modern sailing ships.

I'm interested in the climate effects of particulates. It appears that they can me involved as nucleation "seeds" for cloud brightening and sulphate particulates can be involved in global dimming.

Particulate air pollution is a significant heath hazard as reported in The Mortality Effects of Long-Term Exposure to Particulate Air Pollution in the United Kingdom. One of the conclusions of this paper is:

Removing all anthropogenic (‘human-made’) particulate matter air pollution (measured as PM2.5) could save the UK population approximately 36.5 million life years over the next 100 years and would be associated with an increase in UK life expectancy from birth, i.e. on average across new births, of six months. This shows the public health importance of taking measures to reduce air pollution.

So some particulates can have beneficial effects high in the atmosphere but are a health hazard nearer the ground.

Didn't attend any other climate related talks in Cambridge this week. Looking forward to the next in the Adaptation to climate change seminar series on Sea Level Rise, Coastal Cities, and Wetlands on Thursday.

Week 4 - Should we geoengineer our climate?

Professor Jim Haywood defined geoengineering as using technology to control the climate. It is our use of technology that is the driver of climate change so by using the name geoengineering we are suggesting that it can become an engineering discipline and that we can exert control over the climate.

So the question is less about whether we should continue to modify the climate in an uncontrolled manner and more about how we attempt to rectify the damage done in a controlled manner.

The Technical Summary of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2013) in Box TS.7 | Climate Geoengineering Methods is not optimistic about Carbon Dioxide Reduction (CDR) where it states The level of confidence on the effectiveness of CDR methods and their side effects on carbon and other biogeochemical cycles is low. Regarding Solar Radiation Management (SRM) it states There is medium confidence that SRM through stratospheric aerosol injection is scalable to counter the RF [Radiative Forcing] and some of the climate effects expected from a twofold increase in carbon dioxide concentration.

I have mixed feelings about geoengineering. If you have the good fortune to live on a planet with a climate sufficiently stable to support the development of civilization it makes a lot of sense not to act in a way that damages that stability! The damage has now been done and it is far from clear how (or even if) it can be repaired and whether geoengineering will be a blessing or a curse.

Week 4 - IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

The two page IPCC press release that summarises the Fifth Assessment Report (2013) makes grim reading. However, I wonder if the full impact is appreciated by those with limited appreciation of science? In the UK many politicians in senior roles have low levels of scientific education.

When sat in a heated and air conditioned office a gradual change to the thermostat of a couple degrees C might not even be noticed. Similarly, an average annual sea level rise of around 17mm doesn't sound particularly worrying.

UK Secretary of State for the Environment, Owen Paterson,from his comments on the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Any Questions?' on 7 June 2013 appears to be a believer in many of the arguments put forward by climate change deniers. It is perhaps no surprise that his Department plans major major spending cuts on climate change initiatives.

No surprise that David Rose reporting in Mail on Sunday reported on a leaked copy of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report with the headline World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought - and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong. It also states Scientists accept their computers may have exaggerated as if the computers had minds of their own! A graph is labelled with The catastrophic errors: how 36 of 38 most important climate computers forecast doom that never was.

James Delingpole (who is right about everything) wrote in The Telegraph under the headline 95 per cent of intelligent people know the new IPCC report is utter drivel. No surprises that he states that global warming has paused for 15 years; that climate sensitivity appears to be far smaller than the scaremongering computer models predicted a common but misleading argument explained in The global temperature jigsaw.

Fortunately, Nick Collins, a Science Correspondent for The Telegraph produced a better balanced news report under the headline IPCC report: global warming is 'unequivocal' although someone, presumably a sub-editor, decided that unequivocal in the headline needed quotes.

The Guardian has a special section under Environment dedicated to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is a reliable source of news.

The Executive Summary in Chapter 9 - Evaluation of Climate Models states The ability of climate models to simulate surface temperature has improved in many, though not all, important aspects relative to the generation of models assessed in the AR4. There continues to be very high confidence that models reproduce observed large-scale mean surface temperature patterns (pattern correlation of ~0.99), though systematic errors of several degrees are found in some regions, particularly over high topography, near the ice edge in the North Atlantic, and over regions of ocean upwelling near the equator.

FAQ 9.1 in Chapter 9 - Evaluation of Climate Models states So, yes, climate models are getting better, and we can demonstrate this with quantitative performance metrics based on historical observations.

Broadly speaking, climate models are getting better and recent change in global temperatures reflect the predictions of climate models for almost all regions.

Week 4 - Run your own climate model

Set up BOINC on my home workstation (Intel Xeon CPU E3-1275 V2 @ 3.50GHz (8 processors)) running openSUSE 13.1 and added the climateprediction.net project.

Interesting to note that my account had credit which I think came from participating in BBC Climate Change Experiment which was associated with the documentary Climate Change - Britain under Threat broadcast in January 2007.

Week 4 - How much more will Earth warm?

The Ship Tracks South of Alaska were fascinating! I was aware that exhausts from aircraft could have an effect on cloud formation but I hadn't considered that ship exhausts could have a similar effect. Small particles are nucleation seeds which lead to the formation of brighter clouds.

It seems likely that particulate pollution from motor vehicles, especially diesel exhausts, may have similar effects.

Week 3 Reflections

I answered Q5 Why is the Arctic experiencing the largest warming on Earth? correctly but I feel it is something of a simplification. The loss of sea ice is clearly a driver of what Prof. Peter Wadhams refers to as the Arctic ice death spiral. However, something must kick-start the process that results in the initial loss of sea ice.

The  recent paper The central role of diminishing sea ice in recent Arctic temperature amplification (Screen & Simmonds 2010) which I found via Skeptical Science goes into more detail. The full paper is available here.

In the past, I had the good fortune to hear a talk about sea ice by Prof. Grae Worster. Unfortunately, I forget the details but there is a great deal of complexity in something as simple as the freezing of salty water! There is a paper here and here is the remarkable 'Brinicle' ice finger of death filmed in Antarctic http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15835017.

I attended two talks on climate change this week: "Climate Change and Migration", Alex Randall, Climate Outreach Information Network and and the third in the Adaptation to climate change seminar series by Professor Charlie F Kennel. The latter referred to http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr196.pdf. Short Lived Climate Pollutants (SLCPs) were discussed as a short term adaptation strategy and to refresh the stale climate dialogue centred on carbon.

Week 3 - Global carbon emissions

My chose countries were: China; United Kingdom (home); United States; India (lower middle income); Qatar (rich); Maldives (Pacific island nation); and Congo, Dem. Rep. (poor).

Estimates for rich and poor countries used data from Wikipedia.

Here's my graph.

Here's the same countries showing carbon dioxide per capita on this graph.

The second graph shows the massive differences between the richest and poorest countries. There is a slight drop in the United States and the United Kingdom, possibly as a result of the recession or the transfer of manufacturing to China which shows a steady rise.

However, the per capita results don't show the inequalities within countries. As inequalities grow, as in the United Kingdom, it is likely that the individual carbon dioxide emissions of the poorest will be reducing as they struggle to balance bills for heating and eating while the lifestyles of the richest will result in higher emissions.