There’s a new paper in Science today by Arcturo Schmitnick of the Innsbruck Institute for Advance Studies suggestiing global warming may have a larger effect than previously understood on the world’s population of Gnomes. Schmitnick used a coupled GCM/Forest-Elf simulation to try to determine the geographical distribution of climate change patterns against what elfologists know about current Gnome populations:

In the simulations, a disruption of the Atlantic hypertroidal circulation leads to a collapse of the Northern European Gnome stocks to less than half of their initial biomass, owing to rapid loss of nutrient reservoirs. Globally integrated export production declines by more than 20 per cent owing to reduced upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water in northern lakes and embayments and gradual depletion of upper water nutrient concentrations. These model results are consistent with the available high-resolution palaeorecord, and suggest that global Gnome populations are sensitive to changes in the Atlantic hypertroidal circulation. Globally integrated Gnome production declines by more than 20 per cent owing to reduced upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water and gradual depletion of upper ocean nutrient concentrations. These model results are consistent with the available high-resolution palaeorecord, and suggest that global Gnome productivity is sensitive to changes in the Atlantic hypertroidal circulation.

This could be good news for KDE, at least with respect to the Gnomes who depend on fisheries for their liveliihood, though it’s less clear what will happen in the continental interiors, where Gnome forest patch agriculture dominates.

Reading Richardson Gill’s The Great Maya Droughts, I ran across a fascinating discussion of early Europe that shows why climate variability needs to take its place alongside great battles and intellectual ferment in our tellings of history.

Gill talks about the work of Carol Crumley, whose climate reconstruction shows how the Romans and the Celts each dominated large areas of central Europe when the climate was to their liking. The Celtic style of agriculture was more well suited to a cold climate. From 1200 to about 500 BC, much of Europe was cold, with great variability. This was the environment in which Celtic agricultural practices evolved, with a robust flexibility. By about 300 BC, the cold line had shifted north, bringing what we now call a “Mediterranean climate” to much of Europe. The Romans were good in this kind of an environment – few crops, urban living. So when the climatic line shifted north, the Romans went with it, pushing out the Celts and coming to dominate central Europe. Gill quotes Crumley:

The extent and duration of the Pax Romana in Europe was greatly facilitated by climatic conditions that favored Roman – as opposed to Celtic – economic, social, and political organization. Not only were Roman patterns of settlement and land use in marked dstinction to those of Celtic polities, the were especially suited to the mediterraneanized cliamte of Europe.

On Pat Michaels’ latest global warming discussion

The latest greenhouse gloom: modelling suggesting climate change, by influencing Atlantic circulation, could whack the ocean food chain.

The conventional thinking is that the extremes of El Ni?o and La Ni?a are the times during the natural cycles of climate variability when climate causes the most damage. But an intriguing-sounding paper in the Journal of Climate by Lisa Goddard and Maxx Dilley offers intriguing alternative way of thinking about it. First (full disclosure here, I’ve only read the abstract, the full paper doesn’t seem to be on line) they argue, ” Contrary to expectations, climate anomalies associated with such losses are not greater overall during ENSO extremes than during neutral periods.”

Second, climate anomalies during El Ni?o and La Ni?a can be more readily forecast, allowing folks to prepare and therefore reduce the damage. “Thus, the prudent use of climate forecasts could mitigate adverse impacts and lead instead to increased beneficial impacts, which could transform years of ENSO extremes into the least costly to life and property.”