Written originally elsewhere, elaborated here. A new study by a California team looks at the effect of the warming of the Indian Ocean, which seems to be anthropogenic in origin, and how that influences precipitation in Africa. It decreases it. People go hungry as a result: We present analyses suggesting that warming in the central …
One of my crude measures of the long range energy picture has always been coal-to-liquids. At some price (the usual number I hear is somewhere at or above $60 or $70 a barrel) it becomes economical to make liquid fuels out of coal. Given Appell’s Theorem, it has seemed inevitable to me that, regardless of …
I’ve made a healthy journalistic living off of the Climate Prediction Center’s long-lead forecasts, seasonal prognostications about whether we can expect things to be wetter or drier next winter. It got so bad for a while that my sister started calling me Niña-boy. The thing is, people want to know what to expect. Regular people …
stuff I wrote elsewhere
It’s always been clear, though seldom talked about, that global warming will have its winners as well as losers. Bill Griffith has an example in today’s San Francisco Chronicle: Due to global warming, this summer’s Ho Ho crop is the largest yet.
In which I discuss the perennial question: Has the Monsoon Started? print video
Great letter from Tom Swiler in today’s ABQJournal: I propose that carbon dioxide should also be known by the name “carba.” Other oxides are known as the elemental root followed by an “a.” For example, aluminum oxide is known as alumina and silicon dioxide is known as silica. Like the name “water,” “carba” is not …
There has been a great deal of discussion lately about an apparent global cooling trend that conventional climate science is at loss to explain. Most recently, for example, Anthony Watts made much of the latest satellite data out of Huntsville: Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of …
Today’s Climate Prediction Center monthly ENSO forecast discussion bids a fond farewell to La Niña, and illustrates the difficulty of figuring out what will happen next: A majority of the recent dynamical and statistical SST forecasts for the Niño 3.4 region indicate a transition to ENSO-neutral conditions during June – August 2008 (Fig. 5). During …
As if things weren’t bad enough, this from NASA’s Earth Observatory: One of the worst droughts in the past decade settled heavily over the Fertile Crescent region of Iraq and Syria in the winter of 2007-2008. Under normal conditions, winter rain and rivers flowing from the mountains of Turkey sustain the rich agricultural land that …