Monsoon Time
In which I discuss the perennial question: Has the Monsoon Started? print video
Archive of posts filed under the climate variability category.
“carba”
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 …
Explaining the Temperature Record
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 …
Wave goodbye to La Niña
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 …
Drought in Iraq
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 …
the climate policy dilemma
The New York Times’ Jad Mouawad had a story yesterday that neatly illustrates how hard it will be to come up with a workable climate policy in the United States. It describes the efforts of the members of the Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of businesses and environmental groups trying to sit down at the …
Hurricanes and Global Warming
(oops, typo in headline corrected) Andrew Solow and Andrew Beet out of Woods Hole have a new paper in GRL offering up the latest version of the argument that undercounting may be responsible for a spurious imputation of a trend in hurricanes (and therefore an assertion about the effect of global warming on hurricanes): [T]his …
Will Summer Never Come?
I am concerned that summer will never come here in Albuquerque. We hit a high of 94F (34C) May 20, and it has been cooler since. It’s increasingly clear that this “summer warming” thing is a myth.
Nature Conservancy NM Climate Change Report
Carolyn Enquist and Dave Gori at The Nature Conservancy have done a nice analysis of climate change’s impact on New Mexico ecosystems. My ABQJournal story.
George Will is a Hack
Those in my profession like to argue that the due diligence associated with journalism’s formalisms is what sets our work apart, gives it its credibility and substance. Which is why I reserve special outrage for what George Will did this week. In a column published Thursday, Will repeated a theme he has touched on before …