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Wednesday, 11 November 2009

11th November - Today's News

This could make for an interesting insurance claim: mystery holes in Grovedale roof could be meteorites. Elsewhere in Australia it's rain that's been coming down as the heaviest falls in months hit central Queensland.

Rain claims 29 more lives in Nilgris whilst Cyclone Phyan threatens Mumbai

Landslides kills at least 1, injures 20 others in Italy

Blizzard hits north China - but was it manmade? Playing with weather stirs debate in China. Even without weather modification, the Chinese are predicting extreme weather forecast for Yangtze over next 50 years.

Ida weakens to a depression, heads east to Fla.

Following on from the announcement that areas of Antarctica where glaciers had melted were now absorbing more CO2 as a consequence, comes controversial new climate change data: is Earth's capacity to absorb CO2 much greater than expected?
New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.
I also note that:
Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published in early November in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.
Which does not mean we shouldn't worry so much about deforestation since it's the affect that loss of trees has on the evotranspiration cycle and of course the increase in mudslides and flooding in deforested regions that in my opinion are the biggest concerns.

All this suggests though that our obsession with CO2 might be a little misplaced .....

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

10th November - Today's news

Tornado hits Oregon coast as wild conditions continue

Antarctic glacier retreat creates new carbon dioxide store - is this Gaia in operation again I wonder?

Sixty missing and 124 dead after Hurricane Ida mudslide buries entire town in El Salavador, whilst Gulf Coast residents stay put ahead of Ida. Now downgraded to a tropical storm, Ida is expected to make landfall this morning in Lousiana.

The hot weather in Australia continues to spread with the first November heatwave for Adelaide expected this week - 5 days with the temperature above 35c being deemed a heatwave. Not surprisingly, some are claiming that SA heatwave is 'climate change weather'. Or maybe it's just weather.

Will drilling into a volcano trigger an eruption that destroys Naples? Er, no ....

Landslide kills 39 in southern India

After a wet October in the US, sunny November may cure this season's harvest headaches

More wholly unsurprising news as a new study announces climate models don't tell the full story.

Atlanta floods extremely rare
The epic flooding that hit the Atlanta area in September was so extremely rare that, six weeks later this event has defied attempts to describe it. Scientists have reviewed the numbers and they are stunning.
Past climate of northern Antarctic peninsular informs global warming debate

Changing Arctic affecting air, ocean and everything inbetween

Some argue that increased CO2 is beneficial to plant life and therefore a good thing. But it's not as simple as that - plants only benefit if they also get an increase in the other necessary nutrients they need to grow and there are suggestions that nitrogen loss threatens desert plant life.

Stone age humans crossed Sahara in the rain

Finally, an early storm warning for the British Isles for this weekend. A complex area of low pressure in the Atlantic will produce secondary lows which look set to track from the SW up the western side of the British Isles on Friday/Saturday and again later on Sunday/Monday. Gales, as well as heavy rain, for most parts but especially the west. Not a weekend to plan a high level camping trip or for sailing! The Met Office already have an early warning out for this for Friday.

Monday, 9 November 2009

9th November - Today's News

It was reported last month that Venezuela was suffering power shortages because drought has reduced the efficiency of the country's hydro stations. Now there are electricity blackouts in Ecuador for the same reason.

Nearly 5,000 stranded in NSW floods


Vanishing glaciers jolt smokestack China


Melbourne swelters as heatwave conditions strike early down south

Storms kill 91 in El Salvador as Hurricane Ida strengthens

Seafloor fossils provide clue to climate change

Was life founded on cyanide from space crashes?

Saturday, 7 November 2009

7th November - Today's News

Lightning's NOx-ious impact on pollution, climate

Severe storm cuts of thousands in New South Wales

Ida drenches Central America, forecast to enter Gulf - indeed, it now looks like Ida could be closing in on Florida

Expanding cities contribute to global warming (well there's a surprise!) - the full paper - publicshed by the Royal Meteorological Society can be obtained via co-author Roger Pielke Sr's website

It concludes:
Our results suggest that for both non-changed and converted land types, agriculture, urbanization and barren soils offered the clearest patterns in terms of sign and magnitude of the OMR [observation minus reanalysis] trends. Conversion to agriculture resulted in a strong cooling. Conversely, all conversions of agricultural lands resulted in warming. Urbanization and conversion to bare soils were also mostly associated with warming. We conclude that these LULC [land use land cover change] types constitute strong drivers of temperature change. Deforestation generally resulted in warming (with the exception of a shift from forest to agriculture) but no clear picture emerged for afforestation. Within each land use conversion type, a great variation of warming/cooling was observed, as attested by relatively large standard deviations. In addition, our analysis shows that there is not always a straightforward relationship between the different types of conversions: for example, (1) both conversion of urban to barren and the opposite resulted in slightly negative OMRs; (2) there was a weak warming of areas that shifted from bare soils to grassland/shrubland and for the opposite as well and (3) both conversion from forest to grassland/shrubland and the opposite were associated with a weak warming.
Copyright 2009 Royal Meteorological Society

Antimatter signature detected in lightning

Storm triggered landslide kills 13 in Vietnam

And finally how could I not link to this article in Friday's Independent by my friend Tom Choularton? Can we really control the weather? His conclusions are very much the same as my own thoughts on the subject:
So does cloud seeding work? Well our studies indicate that in many clouds that produce lots of snow it does not seem to, because there is plently of natural ice already. However, I don’t completely dismiss it as a method – I do believe it’s possible it can be effective in some clouds in the right conditions and at the right temperature. Nevertheless, I feel some of the stronger claims made recently need further verification, before we herald this as a breakthrough in scientists’ ability to manipulate natural weather cycles.

Friday, 6 November 2009

6th November - Today's News

In the US, the wet weather delays harvest from Midwest to South

Vietnam flood toll rises to 98

It took until November, but we finally saw an Atlantic storm make landfall as a hurricane! Just. Ida drenches Nicaragua after landfall weakens system.

Carbon trading - the next 'sub-prime' - according to Friends of the Earth. I certainly agree it's a fallacious 'solution' to the problem of increasing carbon emissions, solves nothing but possibly makes money for a few. That said, I still want them to introduce personal carbon trading in the UK so I can make a killing selling all my unneeded 'carbon credits'!

Record October temperatures in Malaga

Melting snow shrinks Mont Blanc - no such worries in the UK, although I suppose if sea levels rise then our hills will become lower too ..... But are the Alps growing or shrinking? - as fast as they erode so they rise through isostasy!

More evidence not all oil and gas may be 'fossil fuels' after all: Abiotic synthesis of methane: new evidence supports 19th century idea on formation of oil and gas

There's a new theory on the cause (or one of the causes) of the PT extinction - fossil fuels! See, burning them can cause the end of the world ..... mass extinction blamed on fiery mountains of coal.

And in the USA, some earthquakes actually aftershocks of 19th century quakes

Thursday, 5 November 2009

5th November - Today's News

It's been a very quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic, but it's not quite over just yet and Tropical Storm Ida could trigger Nicaragua mudslides

Study uses satellites imagery to identify active magma systems in East Africa's Rift Valley

And apparently weather chaos looms - if we get a couple of inches of snow in London again this winter ....

Wednesday, 4 November 2009

4th November - Today's News

Why are the Himalayan glaciers melting? We don't actually know - but maybe there's a clue in reports of how much snow they used to get in the region?

Death toll rise in Vietnam floods

Volcanic and ferric surprises on Mercury

Atmospheric 'tides' trigger landslides at night

The Nazcans are added to the list of societies such as Easter Island and Greenland who brought about their own demise through uncontrolled deforestation: clearing oasis trees felled ancient Peru civilisation - not that any human activity can ever be environmentally detrimental to human society ..... as, I'm afraid to say, some still maintain.

In the wake of Beijing's cloudseeding activities, David Adam asks in The Guardian can we manipulate the weather? I would say emphatically yes, but mostly it's inadvertent and when deliberate then beware of unintended consequences. We're not all storm gods yet. As for geo-engineering to counter global warming: how about reducing our current geoengineering - that's causing the problem - first? Cut down on our pollution, contrails, deforestation and reliance on fossil fuels - all of which we'll have to do sooner or later, unless we're going to add our names to the list of peoples who squander all their resources until it was all too late? Somehow though, I feel I wouldn't place too much money on us not being the next Nascans or Mayans....

An interesting day of weather in parts of Britain yesterday (not the Vale of Evesham though, obviously .... ) with some possible tornados reported (currently subject to site investigations by Torro). Not so long back, few people realised we even had tornadoes in Britain, but that's changing though not necessarily for the best since now, any sudden, damaging wind gets called a tornado when often it's really just straight line winds or a microburst. At we're slowly weaning the media away from the term 'mini tornado', although it seems Sky News have yet to learn the difference between a tornado and a funnel cloud! Anyway, reports suggest a tornado in Hampshire causes chaos and for detailed, informed, discussion and accounts of this and other possible tornadic activity (and links to other local news stories) please visit Ukweatherworld.

My local MP (hopefully not longer - though a Conservative, and not exactly poor, he's being stealing tax payers money along with many of his colleagues and will hopefully be deselected before next year's election) has introduced a private members bill to ban wind turbines being built within a mile and a half of homes. MP raises wind turbine 'ban' plan. Wonder if that can be extended to Scotland where a wind farm in the Flow Country is planned with turbines being built just a few hundred feet away from an MBA maintained open bothy .....

Finally, Al Gore denies he is a carbon millionaire - despite making millions from his talks, film and books (of which the latest is being published this month - conincidentally just in time for the Copehagan Climate meeting). What's undeniable is his carbon footprint is more than I could muster in many, many lifetimes. And I bet he doesn't switch the light off when he leaves the room. The hypocritical arrogance of the very rich .....