Category Archives: Climate Change

Denialist Agenda (Part 4): Manufacturing a scientific scandal

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Clive HamiltonThis  is part 4 of an excellent series of articles on the denialist agenda by Clive Hamilton.  Here, Clive outlines how ludicrous the claims are about the IPCC made by hack journalists such as Jonathan Leake (The Sunday Times).  As to someone who has participated in the IPCC process, Clive’s account is accurate and Leake’s horribly twisted.  It’s just a pity that much of the world’s media is so horribly gullible or complicit.  Surely there are mechanisms that we should be using to combat this deceit?

Clive Hamilton, ABC Unleashed.

Although sceptics have been gnawing away at the credibility of climate science for years, over the last five months they have made enormous leaps owing to the hacking of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the discovery of a number of alleged mistakes in the benchmark reports of the IPCC.

While the “revelations” have been milked for all they are worth, and a lot more, the science remains rock solid. If instead of cherry-picking two or three that lend themselves to spin, you read the 1000 or so emails that were posted on a Russian server the picture that emerges is one of an enormously dedicated group of men and women doing their best to carry out research of the highest quality.

If there were a conspiracy among scientists to manipulate the truth, you would expect the evidence to be there in spades in these private emails. But it’s not. Instead they show scientists working their backsides off to do good science, with email exchanges stopping briefly on Christmas Eve to be resumed on Boxing Day, with apologies to colleagues for taking time out to have surgery or get married, all with a sub-text of worry about the implications of their work for the future of humanity.

Rather than cover-ups, we read private emails from one scientist to Phil Jones, the CRU head who has been forced to step down pending an inquiry, saying he has been watching the sceptics blogs and, anticipating misrepresentation, says “this last aspect needs to be tackled more candidly in AR4 than in the SOD, and we need to discuss how to do this”. Others show them bending over backwards to be open.

Before the leak of the CRU emails, one colleague emailed others in response to attacks by sceptics on Phil Jones:

“The sad thing here is that Phil Jones is one of the true gentlemen of our field. I have known Phil for most of my scientific career. He is the antithesis of the secretive, “data destroying” character the CEI and Michaels are trying to portray to the outside world.”

And the emails reveal the enormous external pressure they were under. They show they were constantly accused of being frauds and cheats; their work was twisted and misrepresented; and they were bombarded with vexatious freedom of information requestsorchestrated by denialists. In short, they were caught up in a hot political debate that they did not really understand or want to be part of, yet they were the target of savvy, secretive and ruthless organisations ready to pounce on anything they said or wrote.

This is the real story exposed of “Climategate”. Instead, the scientists in question have seen their professional reputations trashed in the world’s media for no cause, to the point where Phil Jones has been on the verge of suicide. It has been the most egregious and unfounded attack on the integrity of a profession we have ever seen.

Yet the science remains rock solid

Since the leaking of the CRU emails the worldwide press have reported a series of “mistakes” in the IPCC reports that have allowed the denial lobby to claim that the entire IPCC process and the body of climate science should be junked. It turns out that almost all of the mistakes are fabrications. How could this have happened?

The first and only significant error identified in the IPCC report is the claim that 80 per cent of Himalayan glaciers are very likely to disappear by 2035. This was a serious mistake for a scientific report that should not have got through the review process. But let’s be very clear about its significance:

  • The error occurred in Volume 2 of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), the volume on the impacts of climate change. Volume 1 reports and assesses the physical basis for climate science, including projections of warming. Chapter 4 contains an extensive discussion of glaciers, snow and ice. Projections for glaciers are also discussed in Chapter 10. No one has challenged any of the statements in these chapters, prepared by teams including the world’s leading glaciologists, which carefully lay out what is known.
  • The erroneous “2035” claim was nowhere highlighted by the IPCC. It appeared neither in the chapter summary, the report summary or the crucial Summary for Policymakers. In no sense was it a central claim of the IPCC report, as some newspapers have said.
  • It was a glaring error that should have been picked up earlier, but it was so deeply buried in the report that denialists around the world, with all of their supposed scientific expertise, did not pick it up for two years. In fact, they did not pick it up at all; it was first pointed out by Georg Kaser and others. Kaser is an eminent glacier expert who was a lead author of Chapter 4 in Volume 1.

Although mistakes like this one should not occur, to suggest that it has any bearing on the credibility of the science of AR4 is absurd. The more remarkable fact is that so few errors have been identified in AR4, and none at all in the crucial Volume 1 which sets out the physical basis for climate change. On page 493 of Volume 2, where the “2035” mistake occurs, I count 20 factual claims that are falsifiable. Multiply that by the 3,000 or so pages in AR4 and you can see how utterly trivial that single mistake is.

But haven’t many more mistakes been found in AR4? No. The only other claimed error that has any substance is the statement that “55% of its [the Netherlands] territory is below sea-level”. This figure was supplied by the Dutch Government. It is slightly misleading because the correct statement is that 55% per cent of the Netherlands is at risk of flooding,although the Dutch Ministry of Transport says that 60% of the country is below the high water level. The confusion may have implications for the Netherlands’ dike planning but has no bearing whatever on the science of climate change.

There are three additional “errors” in AR4 that have attracted press attention and sparked denialist frenzies. They are analysed on the Realclimate website.

  • “Africagate” refers to the claim that AR4 overstated the potential decline in crop yields in Africa. The figures in AR4 have since been shown to be an accurate assessment.
  • “Disastergate” is the allegation that the IPCC erroneously attributed some of the rising costs of disasters to climate change. In fact, the section in question is hedged around with caution and the expert whose work was said to be misused by the IPCC has declared that the IPCC has fairly represented his findings.
  • “Amazongate”, a story that opened with the claim: “A startling report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise”. The story is plain wrong, with the expert on whose work the IPCC relied stating that the information is correct, although the referencing is incomplete.

Apart from the fact that these three “gates” are beat-ups with no basis in their criticism of the IPCC, they have one feature in common – the stories were all written by Jonathan Leake, science and environment editor of The Sunday Times.

Leake has close links with deniers and in fact based these stories directly on wild and unsubstantiated claims by sceptic bloggers, as uncovered by Tim Holmes. In the case of Amazongate, Leake had been informed by another expert that, while the referencing was inadequate, the claim in AR4 is correct and, if anything, an understatement. But Leake disregarded this and quoted that same expert in his story to exactly the reverse effect, as if he were a severe critic of the IPCC.

On the role of Leake I can do no better than quote Tim Holmes:

“While it is wholly unsurprising that the denial lobby should be attempting to push baseless and misleading stories to the press, what is surprising is the press’s willingness to swallow them. In this case, two experts in the relevant field told a Times journalist explicitly that, in spite of a minor referencing error, the IPCC had got its facts right.
That journalist simply ignored them. Instead, he deliberately put out the opposite line – one fed to him by a prominent climate change denier – as fact. The implications are deeply disturbing, not only for our prospects of tackling climate change, but for basic standards of honesty and integrity in journalism.”

Leake’s stories have been reproduced in the other Murdoch broadsheets, The Australianand the Wall Street Journal and of course have been amplified on Fox News, and are themselves now being referred to as “Leakegate”.

Bloggers and columnists, who attack climate science without ever opening an IPCC report or speaking to a real climate scientists, imagine that the body of climate science is a house of cards, and taking away one or two will cause it to collapse. In fact the scientific case for global warming is like a mountain built up by adding one rock at a time over many years. Even if all of the alleged errors were true it would amount to picking off a handful of rocks from the top of the mountain, leaving the rest unchanged and unmoved.

Yet these alleged mistakes – non-existent or trivial – with no implications whatever for the robustness of climate science have been deployed in a sophisticated campaign to blacken the reputations of the scientists responsible for alerting us to the perils of global warming.

Perception versus reality

Unfortunately, the chorus of declarations that the climate scientists got it wrong has had no impact on the earth’s climate. Indeed, those who study the climate itself rather than the bogus debate in the newspapers and the blogosphere understand that climate science and popular perceptions of climate science are diverging rapidly, not least because the news on the former is getting worse.

Soon after AR4 appeared in early 2007, those familiar with the science began to say that as a result of the consensus process and the natural caution of scientists, the Fourth Assessment Report had seriously understated the risks from climate change, particularly in its selection of scenarios and its estimates of likely sea-level rise.

Rather than rehearse the evidence for these warnings, well known to those who follow the science, let me make mention of a number of developments in climate science that have been published or reported in the five months since the leaking of the Climategate emails. It is evidence that warming is more alarming than previously thought yet which has been buried in the avalanche of confected stories claiming that climate scientists have exaggerated.

  • We have just had the warmest decade on record.
  • A new study concludes that an average warming of 3-4°C (which means 7-8°C on land), previously thought to be associated with carbon dioxide concentrations of 500-600 ppmv, is now believed to be associated with concentrations of only 360-420 ppmv, a range that covers the current concentration of 385 ppmv, rising at 2 ppmv per annum. If confirmed by further research, the implications of this are terrifying.
  • While news reports allege glacial melting has been exaggerated, the best evidence is that the rate of disappearance of glaciers is accelerating. The University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service reports that “new data continues the global trend in strong ice loss over the past few decades”.
  • The rate of flow into the sea of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, adding to sea-level rise. This augments the evidence that IPCC cautiousness led to significant underestimation of the likely extent of sea-level rise in the 21st century. The East Antarctic ice-sheet, previously believed to be stable, has now begun to melt on its coastal fringes. The West Antarctic ice-sheet continues its rapid melt.
  • Sharply rising temperature in the Arctic has, over the last five years, caused a rapid increase in the amount of methane being emitted from melting permafrost. The limit of the Arctic permafrost has retreated northwards by 130 kilometres over the last 50 years in the James Bay region of Canada.

    • I have tried to find some new studies that go the other way in the hope I can counterbalance this bleak story, but have not succeeded.
    Over the last five months, a vast gulf has opened up between the media-stoked perception that the climate science has been exaggerated and the research-driven evidence that the true situation is worse than we thought.

    Just when we should be urging immediate and deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, the public is being lulled into disbelief, scepticism and apathy by a sustained and politically driven assault on the credibility of climate science. For this we will all pay dearly.

    Tomorrow: Where are the defenders of science?

Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain

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Jeffrey Sachs, guardian.co.uk,          Friday 19 February 2010 12.47 GMT

In the weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the science of climate change came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence — and that the science itself is severely flawed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), the global group of experts charged with assessing the state of climate science, has been accused of bias.

The global public is disconcerted by these attacks. If experts cannot agree that there is a climate crisis, why should governments spend billions of dollars to address it?

The fact is that the critics — who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks — are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign, they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.

Many books have recently documented the games played by the climate-change deniers. Merchants of Doubt, a new book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway set for release in mid-2010, will be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. The authors show that the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.

Today’s campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulphur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing “acid rain.” Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too.

Later still, the group defended the tobacco giants against charges that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other diseases. And then, starting mainly in the 1980s, this same group took on the battle against climate change.

What is amazing is that, although these attacks on science have been wrong for 30 years, they still sow doubts about established facts. The truth is that there is big money backing the climate-change deniers, whether it is companies that don’t want to pay the extra costs of regulation, or free-market ideologues opposed to any government controls.

The latest round of attacks involves two episodes. The first was the hacking of a climate-change research centre in England. The emails that were stolen suggested a lack of forthrightness in the presentation of some climate data. Whatever the details of this specific case, the studies in question represent a tiny fraction of the overwhelming scientific evidence that points to the reality and urgency of man-made climate change.

The second issue was a blatant error concerning glaciers that appeared in a major IPCC report. Here it should be understood that the IPCC issues thousands of pages of text. There are, no doubt, errors in those pages. But errors in the midst of a vast and complex report by the IPCC point to the inevitability of human shortcomings, not to any fundamental flaws in climate science.

When the emails and the IPCC error were brought to light, editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal launched a vicious campaign describing climate science as a hoax and a conspiracy. They claimed that scientists were fabricating evidence in order to obtain government research grants — a ludicrous accusation, I thought at the time, given that the scientists under attack have devoted their lives to finding the truth, and have certainly not become rich relative to their peers in finance and business.

But then I recalled that this line of attack — charging a scientific conspiracy to drum up “business” for science — was almost identical to that used by The Wall Street Journal and others in the past, when they fought controls on tobacco, acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and other dangerous pollutants. In other words, their arguments were systematic and contrived, not at all original to the circumstances.

We are witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and right-wing think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for 30 years — time after time — but their aggressive methods of public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion.

Climate change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great scientific minds have learned over the course of many decades to “read” the Earth’s history, in order to understand how the climate system works. They have deployed brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as satellites reading detailed features of the Earth’s systems) in order to advance our understanding.

And the message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth’s climate and ocean chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and other hazards that will damage the food supply and the quality of life of the planet.

The IPCC and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message. We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food, industrial, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous human impact on the climate. It is our responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and then to act.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010

Ice Shelves Disappearing on Antarctic Peninsula

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From ScienceDaily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2010) — Ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change, according to new data. This could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide, experts say.

Research by the U.S. Geological Survey is the first to document that every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990. The USGS previously documented that the majority of ice fronts on the entire Peninsula have also retreated during the late 20th century and into the early 21st century.

The ice shelves are attached to the continent and already floating, holding in place the Antarctic ice sheet that covers about 98 percent of the Antarctic continent. As the ice shelves break off, it is easier for outlet glaciers and ice streams from the ice sheet to flow into the sea. The transition of that ice from land to the ocean is what raises sea level.

“This research is part of a larger ongoing USGS project that is for the first time studying the entire Antarctic coastline in detail, and this is important because the Antarctic ice sheet contains 91 percent of Earth’s glacier ice,” said USGS scientist Jane Ferrigno. “The loss of ice shelves is evidence of the effects of global warming. We need to be alert and continually understand and observe how our climate system is changing.”

The Peninsula is one of Antarctica’s most rapidly changing areas because it is farthest away from the South Pole, and its ice shelf loss may be a forecast of changes in other parts of Antarctica and the world if warming continues.

Retreat along the southern part of the Peninsula is of particular interest because that area has the Peninsula’s coolest temperatures, demonstrating that global warming is affecting the entire length of the Peninsula.

The Antarctic Peninsula’s southern section as described in this study contains five major ice shelves: Wilkins, George VI, Bach, Stange and the southern portion of Larsen Ice Shelf. The ice lost since 1998 from the Wilkins Ice Shelf alone totals more than 4,000 square kilometers, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.

The USGS is working collaboratively on this project with the British Antarctic Survey, with the assistance of the Scott Polar Research Institute and Germany’s Bundesamt fűr Kartographie und Geodäsie. The research is also part of the USGS Glacier Studies Project, which is monitoring and describing glacier extent and change over the whole planet using satellite imagery.

The report, “Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947 — 2009” and its accompanying map is available online (http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i-2600-c/).

The other completed reports in the Coastal Change and Glaciological Maps of Antarctica series can be viewed online (http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/).

This image shows ice-front retreat in part of the southern Antarctic Peninsula from 1947 to 2009. USGS scientists are studying coastal and glacier change along the entire Antarctic coastline. The southern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula is one area studied as part of this project, and is summarized in the USGS report, "Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947--2009" (map I--2600--C). (Credit: Image courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey)

The new SkepticalScience iphone app: perfect for rebutting cranky misinformed deniers like Gene Shinn

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There is a great (free!) new iphone app for John Cook’s awesome SkepticalScience website.  It lists common denier canards and explains why they are rubbish (in a polite, rationale way).  It is the perfect app for those of you with denier relatives (check), friends (check), facebook aquatances (check) and grouchy-retired-exoilindustrygeologist-colleagues (check) who think a few cold days in Key West negate a century of global warming, e.g., link.

John is getting lots of press (e.g, here and here) for this leap forward in this enjoyable rationale debate of minor importance, so why not join the bandwagon.  I can’t wait to see the “skeptic” apps!  Any predictions what they will look like?

Shout down the sceptics

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Published in the Sunday Morning Herald, Feb 17, 2010

Climate change sceptics are really making my unborn grandchildren angry. Just when we thought the science was in and we could start focusing on action to avoid the massive environmental, social and economic costs of global warming, along come the climate-science deniers to muddy the waters.

Now we are arguing over a few emails and a typo in the latest Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change report.

If there were a typo in The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, would that nullify the theory of evolution? If an email were stolen from one lung cancer specialist that showed frustration with tobacco lobbyists, would this prove that all cancer specialists around the world were in a conspiracy to destroy cigarette companies? If a tennis ball is filmed only after it bounces and is moving upwards, does this disprove the law of gravity?

Obviously the answer is no, no and no. Yet the deniers of climate science desperately hang on to a few drops of so-called proof to claim the entire ocean of evidence is flawed.

These minor errors do not invalidate the work of scientists from around the world who are screaming from their combined rooftop that human activity is warming the planet. Hundreds of scientists from more than

100 countries whose work is peer-reviewed by hundreds more are apparently all in a global conspiracy to make us pay more for electricity. The insects they study that are migrating earlier or travelling higher up mountains due to enhanced global warming must be in on the conspiracy, too.

Do people who question climate change science do so in other areas of their lives? Do they refuse a doctor’s advice when seriously ill? Do they question aeronautical engineers before they board a plane? Or do they mistrust science only when it points to global catastrophe?

The denial machine is well oiled and is loudly supported by old-energy lobbyists, conspiracy theorists, opportunistic politicians, liars and self-important opinion writers. These writers place themselves above collected scientific wisdom using simplistic unsubstantiated popular chants.

We must refocus on the voices of the overwhelming majority of scientists who warn us that we are fast approaching various environmental tipping points. The science of climate change and the duty it drops in our laps will not go away because of a typo. We must act, otherwise in 2060 there will be hordes of irate youngsters breaking down the doors of nursing homes demanding to know why we ignored the science and trashed the planet.

David Whitcombe

And you can add do David’s list of questions: Does the fact that two Aussie journalists have been nabbed by Media Watch (here and here) making up quotes, fudging the science and misleading the public, i.e., exagerating to make a point, does this prove that all “skeptic” accusations are false?  By the denier logic, the answer is  yes.

Now, take a look at the first several responses, including #6 from our old friend Mark H:

“entire ocean of evidence” Do you mean all the manipulated data from East Anglia University?

Climate change has always been and always will be. Look at an article in the Sunday Herald Sun late Nov 2009. It told us how crocodile skeletons (from 6 different species) had been found in the Sahara. This proves that the Sahara was once some sort of tropical wetland because crocodiles don’t live in deserts. Climate changed and caused a desert to form many many thousands of years before human activity could possibly have been the culprit. You claim that many scientists agree with human induced climate change, but I suspect it has more to do with their attempts at getting Government grants, which they have been very successful.

Laurie | Melbourne – February 17, 2010, 7:01AM

Dave – February 17, 2010, 7:02AM

There is nothing wrong with healthy scepticism. I’m more than happy to be brought around to accept climate change – IF – it can be proven. It hasn’t & I remain sceptical. Especially when there is so much money to be made & so much opportunity for us to be taxed.

Wayne | Canberra – February 17, 2010, 7:18AM

Another thought; I wonder if Krudd could have formed the new world order and prevented the last ice age?

Dave – February 17, 2010, 7:19AM

Excellent article- all this skepticism now seems reminiscant of the tobacco lobby years ago, as they were clutching onto minor studies showing smoking was safe. Tell that to all the people who used that to keep smoking, and then ended up with cancer.

As for irate youngsters breaking down the doors of nursing homes, there’ll be no need. We simply won’t pay your pensions since dealing with the environmental challenges of unabated climate change will make supporting old people unaffordable

John – February 17, 2010, 7:19AM

David, Me thinks you have been limiting your reading to ABC and fairfax. Try reading the Australian occasionally. For a run down of ABC climate change errors see:

http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com

MarcH – February 17, 2010, 7:15AM

So evolution which has been around for over 100 years is just a theory but man made global warming requiring massive unilateral economic restructuring has achieved fact status which no one may question in a little over a decade?

The problem is that politics is about 20 years ahead of the science on climate change. There has been a massive overreach by the green movement which has cost the movement its credibility and caused genuine, fixable environmental problems to be ignored.

Dave | Sydney – February 17, 2010, 7:14AM

So I guess the alarmists’ fascist approach is back in full swing. Anyone disagreeing with these Chicken Littles must be “shouted down”.

How does “hundreds of scientists” represent an “overwhelming majority”, especially in light of the 31,000 signatories of the Oregon Petition?

“Do they refuse a doctor’s advice when seriously ill?” If the treatment is not backed up by a single scientific study, then yes. Science has as much evidence of our ability to stop climate change as it does of our ability to reverse the rotation of the planet. You can’t assume that the treatment is simply to reverse the process of the ailment.

When you’re talking “heads in the sand”, you can’t go much further than this author. He’s clearly oblivious as to the (still emerging) mountain of evidence of scientific fraud. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to know.

Funny how in the same sentence he accuses others of being conspiracy theorists he talks about our “well-oiled denial machine”.

Prince Planet | nsw – February 17, 2010, 7:30AM

Take a valium, Dave. Then go look at the meteorological records of countries all over the world. Hot weather, Cold weather, insect migrations etc, etc are all event recorded in past records. These events have come and gone. Oceans turned into deserts, including central Australia, just look at the fossils of marine creatures discovered out there, long before the “man-made industrial revolution”. Take control of your hysteria and read objectively with an open mind. Of course Homo-sapiens have changed the environment, but it has changed by itself many times before without so much of our influence.

Sad…

NOAA report indicates January 2010 one of the warmest on record

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A new NOAA preliminary report (State of the Climate Global Analysis January 2010) indicates January 2010 was one of the warmest on record.  Surely, this will convince AGW deniers they were wrong to argue the mid-Atlanctic snowstorms are evidence global warming has ended.  Hat tip to Joe Romm, see his coverage here.

Speaking of the DC snowstorms, I love this quote by Dana Milbank “As a scientific proposition, claiming that heavy snow in the mid-Atlantic debunks global warming theory is about as valid as claiming that the existence of John Edwards debunks the theory of evolution.”

From the NOAA report

Global Highlights

  • The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record.
  • The global land surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.83°C (1.49°F) above the 20th century average of 2.8°C (37.0°F)—the twelfth warmest January on record. Land areas in the Southern Hemisphere were the warmest on record for January. In the Northern Hemisphere, which has much more land, comparatively, land surface temperatures were 18thwarmest on record.
  • The worldwide ocean surface temperature for January 2010 was the second warmest—behind 1998—on record for January, 0.52°C (0.94°F) above the 20th century average of 15.8°C (60.5°F). This can be partially attributed to the persistence of El Niño across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC), El Niño is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring 2010.

    • It really doesn’t look like this has been a cold winter globally or that the earth is cooling does it:

    January Blended Land and Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies in degrees Celsius

    The January 2010 average temperature for the Southern Hemisphere as a whole (land and ocean combined) was 0.58°C (1.04°F) above the 20th century average—the second warmest January on record, behind 1998. However, the Southern Hemisphere land temperature was the warmest on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2006 by 0.02°C (0.04°F).

    The global ocean temperature represented the second warmest January on record, with an anomaly of 0.52°C (0.94°F) above the 20th century average—the second warmest January, behind 1998.

    Perhaps these are the facts Andrew Bolt was alluding to here?

    Measured temperatures for the lower troposphere are the highest ever recorded (NOAA; “Global averages from radiosonde data are available from 1958 to present, while satellite measurements date back to 1979”)

    Although most of the Arctic Ocean experienced cooler-than-average temperatures, the Arctic sea ice extent remained below average.According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the January 2010 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent—which is measured from passive microwave instruments onboard NOAA satellites—was 13.8 million square kilometers (7.2 percent or 1.1 million square kilometers below the 1979–2000 average), resulting in the fourth lowest January sea ice extent since records began in 1979.

    Diversity of Corals, Algae in Warm Indian Ocean Suggests Resilience to Future Global Warming

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    Todd LaJeunesse from Penn State has an interesting new paper out about zooxanthellae diversity and coral acclimation to ocean warming.  Also see the great video of Todd talking about this work here.

    Penn State researchers and their international collaborators have discovered a diversity of corals harboring unusual species of symbiotic algae in the warm waters of the Andaman Sea in the northeastern Indian Ocean.  “The existence of so many novel coral symbioses thriving in a place that is too warm for most corals gives us hope that coral reefs and the ecosystems they support may persist — at least in some places — in the face of global warming,” said the team’s leader, Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Todd LaJeunesse.  According to LaJeunesse, the comprehensiveness of the team’s survey, which also included analysis of the corals and symbiotic algae living in the cooler western Indian Ocean and Great Barrier Reef area of Australia, is unparalleled by any other study. The team’s findings will be published during the week ending 20 February 2010 in an early online issue of the Journal of Biogeography.

    Corals are colonies of tiny animals that derive nutrients and energy from golden-brown, photosynthetic algae that live inside the corals’ cells.  “This symbiotic relationship is sensitive to changes in the environment,” said LaJeunesse.  “For example, because the algae are photosynthetic, they are very sensitive to changes in light.  They are also sensitive to temperature,” he said.  “An increase in sea-surface temperature of just a few degrees Fahrenheit for a period of several months can cause many of the coral-algal symbioses to break down and the algae to be expelled.  This process is known as bleaching because it leaves behind the clear animal tissue and the white skeleton underneath.  When bleaching is severe, due to either high temperatures or low light availability, corals soon die without their symbiotic partners.”

    LaJeunesse said that continued global warming eventually may cause the demise of coral-reef ecosystems, which would have major impacts on the tourism and food-fisheries industries.  According to team member Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, coral-dominated reefs may become scarce within the next 30 to 50 years, given the increase in the number of bleaching events that recently have taken place.

    LaJeunesse2-2010small2.jpg

    “The fact that the Andaman Sea and other regions around Southeast Asia are home to such a high diversity of corals is surprising because the water there is so warm and sometimes murky,” said LaJeunesse.  “The inshore locations we surveyed are not the sort of places where you would expect to see thriving coral communities.  Not only is the water warm and murky, but the tidal flux is so great that many of the corals can spend hours out of water, exposed to the harsh sun and dry air.”

    The team identified the species of algae that associate with corals, as well as giant clams, sea anemones, zoanthids, and other reef-dwelling animals that form close symbiotic relationships with the single-celled algae that are referred to as zooxanthellae.  In the Andaman Sea, the scientists found a variety of seemingly thermally tolerant algae species, with one species being particularly abundant.  Called Symbiodinium trenchi, the species is a generalist organism — one that is able to associate with a variety of hosts. Corals harboring this symbiont appear to be tolerant of high heat. LaJeunesse found the same species in the Caribbean Ocean during a bleaching event that took place in 2005.  “Symbiodinium trenchi, which normally occurs in very low numbers in the Caribbean, was able to take advantage of the warming event and become more prolific because of its apparent tolerance of high temperatures,” he said. “The species appears to have saved certain colonies of coral from the damaging effects of unusually warm water.”


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    In contrast, the scientists found very few thermally tolerant algae species in the cooler western Indian Ocean and Great Barrier Reef area.  According to LaJeunesse, the Andaman Sea is on average three or four degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the western Indian Ocean and the Great Barrier Reef area.  “Symbiodinium trenchi and other related symbiont species can tolerate this warm water, but if global warming causes the water to warm further, even these species might not be able to deal with it,” he said.  “However, if the water warms by three or four degrees Fahrenheit in the cooler western Indian Ocean or Great Barrier Reef area, Symbiodinium trenchi easily could persist.  The problem is that Symbiodinium trenchi occurs in very low numbers in these cooler areas and, so far, has not proliferated during bleaching events as it has in the Caribbean.”

    LaJeunesse said that some scientists have suggested that reefs suffering from high water temperatures might be “seeded” with the thermally tolerant Symbiodinium trenchi; however, he is not sure the approach will work.  “Symbiodinium trenchi forms symbiotic associations only with corals and other animals that acquire their symbionts from the environment,” he said.  “Other species of coral are born with algae already in their cells.  If Symbiodinium trenchi were introduced into a new environment, it may be able to ‘rescue’ some species that acquire their symbionts from the environment, but it would not be able to ‘rescue’ species that are born with algae already in their cells because these species have evolved special relationships with their algae.”

    Not only is LaJeunesse concerned that “seeding” reefs with algae, like Symbiodinium trenchi, will fail to “rescue” animals that are born with algae already in their cells, but he also is concerned about possible negative repercussions.  “You never know what the effects might be of introducing an organism into an ecosystem in which it is not well established,” he said.

    LaJeunesse explained that the diversity of species the team found in the Andaman Sea likely is the result of the dramatic changes in the ocean environment that the region has experienced since the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch.  Typically, during times of environmental change, generalist species of algae that are able to associate with a variety of animal hosts are more successful than specialist species of algae that can associate only with particular hosts because the generalists can spread to many hosts, thus forming new combinations that might be better suited to the new environment.  Once the environmental change has stabilized, some of the generalist species form special associations with new hosts and, as a result, become new specialist species.

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    In the Andaman Sea off the coast of Thailand, not only is the water warm and murky, but the tidal flux is so great that many of the corals can spend hours out of water, exposed to the harsh sun and dry air.

    LaJeunesse said that one of the team’s most important findings is that coral-algal symbioses are much more ecologically and evolutionarily responsive to environmental changes than previously was believed.  “The responsiveness of these symbioses to historical climate change gives us hope that some species may survive in some places in the face of future warming,” he said.  “Yet, even though these symbiotic relationships have persisted through historical climate changes, they never have experienced the rapid rate of warming that we are seeing today.  So, while we shouldn’t underestimate life and its ability to respond to change, we also should do everything in our power not to test its resilience.”

    This research was funded by the World Bank, Penn State University, Florida International University, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.