Tag: Gloabl Cooling

China’s Burning Coal Has Cooled the Climate

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that smog from the extra coal acted to mask greenhouse warming. China’s coal use doubled 2002-2007, according to US government figures.

Although burning the coal produced more warming carbon dioxide, it also put more tiny sulphate aerosol particles into the atmosphere which cool the planet by reflecting solar energy back into space.

Piers Forster from the UK’s Leeds University, who led the IPCC chapter analysing factors affecting global temperatures, said the new study was “interesting and worthwhile”.”The masking of CO2-induced global warming by short term sulphur emissions is well known – it’s believed that the flattening off of global mean temperatures in the 1950s was due to European and US coal burning, and just such a mechanism could be operating today from Chinese coal,” he told BBC News.

via BBC News – Global warming lull down to China’s coal growth.

Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages – solar and earth wobble

In a publication to be released Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions conclude that the known wobbles in Earth’s rotation caused global ice levels to reach their peak about 26,000 years ago, stabilize for 7,000 years and then begin melting 19,000 years ago, eventually bringing to an end the last ice age.

“We can calculate changes in the Earth’s axis and rotation that go back 50 million years,” Clark said. “These are caused primarily by the gravitational influences of the larger planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, which pull and tug on the Earth in slightly different ways over periods of thousands of years.”

That, in turn, can change the Earth’s axis – the way it tilts towards the sun – about two degrees over long periods of time, which changes the way sunlight strikes the planet. And those small shifts in solar radiation were all it took to cause multiple ice ages during about the past 2.5 million years on Earth, which reach their extremes every 100,000 years or so.

Sometime around now, scientists say, the Earth should be changing from a long interglacial period that has lasted the past 10,000 years and shifting back towards conditions that will ultimately lead to another ice age – unless some other forces stop or slow it.

via Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages – solar and earth wobble – CO2 not main driver « Watts Up With That?.

Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell

Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell – New York Times
According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Niña phase for a few more months, a year after it was in the opposite warm El Niño pattern.

If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.

Tree Ring Evidence Reverses Findings

DailyTech – Reseacher: Arctic Temperatures “Not Especially Warm”

Grudd’s results contradict his earlier reconstructions of Arctic temperatures, which demonstrated significantly cooler temperatures prior to 1900. The difference, he claims, is due to more accurate scanning of samples, along with a better understanding of how tree ring widths and density respond to temperature changes.

Grudd, of Stockholm University’s Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, compared both tree ring width and maximum density, to construct the most accurate data yet seen for the region. He found a sharp warming trend since the year 1900. However, over the entire period, several such warming events were seen with temperatures in at least four periods (AD 750, 1000, 1400, and 1750) all equally warm or warmer than at present.

Most surprising of all, he noted, when taken as a whole temperatures in the Arctic have actually declined 0.3 degrees over the past 1,000 years. As Grudd himself says, temperatures at present are “not especially warm.”

The full temperature record also reveals why the last 100 years has appeared unusual — the year 1900 was actually the coldest of the entire period.

Climate Change – The Sun Or The SUV?

DailyTech – Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age
During the Little Ice Age, global temperatures dropped sharply. New York Harbor froze hard enough to allow people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island, and in Britain, people reported sighting eskimos paddling canoes off the coast. Glaciers in Norway grew up to 100 meters a year, destroying farms and villages.

But will it happen again?

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to “stock up on fur coats.” Sorokhtin, who calls man’s contribution to climate change “a drop in the bucket,” predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond.

Brutal Winter Or Ice Age?

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age
This blog has been covering the Scientific Journals coverage of this developing  story. With this article Canada’s main Newspaper is the 1st “Major Media” to pick it up.

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.” Continue reading “Brutal Winter Or Ice Age?”