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Non-Tech : Climate Change, Global Warming, Weather Derivatives, Investi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Citron who wrote (228)	12/29/2008 11:19:09 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 442

It's official: Snowfall record for single month tumbles The Capital Times — 12/29/2008 madison.com With about three months to go in the winter of 2008-09, Madison could end up with the average total amount of snow for a season already before the calendar is flipped to the new year. With 42.9 inches already in November and December, the 1-3 inches expected on Tuesday could push the snowfall total up to the average 45 inches that normally falls in any given winter in these parts, with the brunt of winter still to come. The record snowfall in December is now at 38.6 inches, breaking the previous December mark of 35 inches set in 2000 as well as the previous monthly mark of 37 inches that fell in February 1994. The Madison area did fail to break another record Saturday when temperatures reached a high of 49 degrees early in the morning. That was 1 degree shy of the record for that day of 50, set on Dec. 27, 2003. Weather Central meteorologist Kelly Curran said the warmth will come back Monday with a high in the upper 30s after a high of 28 on Sunday, one degree above normal. The warmer temps will be accompanied by strong winds, gusting up to 40 miles per hour Monday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. The light snow on Tuesday could get blown around, but the snow isn't expected to cause driving problems. New Year's Eve on Wednesday will be colder with highs in the low 20s, but travel should be good with sunny skies and no snow. On New Year's Day, there's another chance of light snow, but little or no accumulation is expected. A chance of snow is in the forecast for the upcoming weekend, but little or no accumulation should come of it, with highs in the low 20s to start out 2009. Road conditions around Wisconsin were in relatively good shape Monday morning, with some slippery stretches reported on highways in southern and central Wisconsin. The Capital Times — 12/29/2008 6:15 am

To: Sam Citron who wrote (228)	1/5/2009 10:51:43 AM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 442

Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979 DailyTech.com 1/1/2009 by Michael Asher dailytech.com Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago. Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close. Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards. The data is being reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions. Each year, millions of square kilometers of sea ice melt and refreeze. However, the mean ice anomaly -- defined as the seasonally-adjusted difference between the current value and the average from 1979-2000, varies much more slowly. That anomaly now stands at just under zero, a value identical to one recorded at the end of 1979, the year satellite record-keeping began. Sea ice is floating and, unlike the massive ice sheets anchored to bedrock in Greenland and Antarctica, doesn't affect ocean levels. However, due to its transient nature, sea ice responds much faster to changes in temperature or precipitation and is therefore a useful barometer of changing conditions. Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008. Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC's Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this was due in part to colder temperatures in the region. Chapman says wind patterns have also been weaker this year. Strong winds can slow ice formation as well as forcing ice into warmer waters where it will melt. Why were predictions so wrong? Researchers had expected the newer sea ice, which is thinner, to be less resilient and melt easier. Instead, the thinner ice had less snow cover to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, and therefore grew much faster than expected, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. In May, concerns over disappearing sea ice led the U.S. to officially list the polar bear a threatened species, over objections from experts who claimed the animal's numbers were increasing.

To: Sam Citron who wrote (228)	1/31/2009 11:24:42 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 442

How does a new Nature study conclude that Antarctica is warming when actual temperature readings show it is not? By Lawrence Solomon January 31, 2009, network.nationalpost.com For two decades now, those predicting climate-change catastrophe have been frustrated by skeptics who ask, “If carbon dioxide is warming the planet, why does the data show Antarctica to be cooling?” Until last week, the doomsayers had all manner of complicated explanations but no slam dunk answer. Now, thanks to a new study published last week in Nature magazine, the doomsayers obtained the answer they sought — proof that any fool can understand. The bottom line: Antarctica is in fact warming, just like the rest of the planet. “Contrarians have sometime grabbed on to this idea that the entire continent of Antarctica is cooling, so how could we be talking about global warming,” elaborated Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and a co-author of the Nature study. “Now we can say: No, it’s not true ... It is not bucking the trend.” The press seized on the findings. “Antarctica is warming, not cooling: study,” announced a Reuters headline. “Global warming hits Antarctica,” stated CNN. “Antarctica joins rest of the globe in warming,” said the Associated Press. But this study in Nature leaves many unimpressed, including top scientists from the doomsayer camp. One week after the study’s release, it is clear this study does nothing to explain the enigma of a cooling Antarctica. The Nature authors had a daunting challenge. For one thing, the U.S. government has maintained a scientific base at the South Pole since 1957 at which temperatures have been continuously measured. The temperature readings show a cooler climate over the past half century. For another, various weather stations in Antarctica record cooler temperatures. Moreover, satellite readings of temperatures above Antarctica show a cooling trend. Little wonder that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself rejects the warming hypothesis. In its 2007 report, the IPCC accepts that Antarctica shows a “lack of warming reflected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region.” To reconcile Antarctica with the rest of the globe, global warming advocates have taken the simple, if unsatisfying, view that the lack of warming in Antarctica is consistent with the presence of warming everywhere else. How do Mann and the other scientists involved in the Nature study now conclude that Antarctica is warming when actual temperature readings show it is not? Antarctica’s weather stations cover a small fraction of the continent. Where data doesn’t exist, Mann makes various assumptions, then deduces Antarctic temperatures over the last 50 years with the help of computer models. The official explanation: “The researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends.” Are these statistical techniques reliable? “I have to say I remain somewhat skeptical,” states Kevin Trenberth, a lead author for the IPCC and director of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “It is hard to make data where none exist.” Such results “have no real way to be validated,” states John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. “We will never know what the temperature was over the very large missing areas that this technique attempts to fill in.” “How do the authors reconcile the conclusions in their paper with the cooler than average long-term sea-surface temperature anomalies off of the coast of Antarctica?” asked Roger Pielke, senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, in noting one of several failings in the study. Michael Mann and Nature are not new to political controversy, or dubious science. The two collaborated before — in publishing what became known as the hockey-stick graph. This graph — which showed the 1990s to be the hottest decade of the hottest century of the last thousand years — became one of the most publicized facts of the year when it was published. Then the hockey stick became slapstick as it became an object of ridicule: Mann’s statistical techniques were shown to be entirely invalid and Mann was shown to have lacked the statistical knowledge demanded by the study. Mann and Nature refused to make public the data used to produce the graph, Nature refused to publish a response rebutting the hockey stick graph and Nature’s peer review process was shown to be a sham. It took years, and a U.S. Congressional committee, to finally resolve the dispute, to Mann’s and Nature’s shame. Mercifully, the verdict over the latest offering from these two is seeing a speedier resolution.