Arguments
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50, 2019
Posted on 18 December 2019 by Doug Bostrom
Our crowdfunding campaign to complete development of the Cranky Uncle game for improving our climate cognition reached its initial goal of $15,000 in only 7 days. We've activated our first stretch goal, to port the app to Android. You can help by contributing right now while you're thinking about it! To all those who've already contributed, a massive Thank You!
Pointing the finger
Attributing ocean acidification to major carbon producers extends anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 attribution to the ocean. The paper explores major historical contributors to ocean acidification, and the spatially nonuniform effects of CO2 absorbed into the ocean to reduced pH.
The effects of emissions don't always redound to emitters, as usual, or at least so far. As drastic costs are imposed on various societies as climate change become a tangible matter, it's not surprising that people will become interested in discerning winners and losers, and especially identifying culpability. We're wired for fairness ,which is why we've spawned so many laws and lawyers. Busy times ahead. From the abstract:
Using an energy balance carbon-cycle model, we find that emissions traced to the 88 largest industrial carbon producers from 1880–2015 and 1965–2015 have contributed ~55% and ~51%, respectively, of the historical 1880–2015 decline in surface ocean pH. As ocean acidification is not spatially uniform, we employ a three-dimensional ocean model and identify five marine regions with large declines in surface water pH and aragonite saturation state over similar historical (average 1850–1859 to average 2000–2009) and recent (average 1960–1969 to average of 2000–2009) time periods. We characterize the biological and socioeconomic systems in these regions facing loss and damage from ocean acidification in the context of climate change and other stressors. Such analysis can inform societal consideration of carbon producer responsibility for current and near-term risks of further loss and damage to human communities dependent on marine ecosystems and fisheries vulnerable to ocean acidification.
Gravity simulation
Timm and Maibach scrutinize television weather forecasters and their presentations of climate change, in The Prevalence and Rationale for Presenting an Opposing Viewpoint in Climate Change Reporting: Findings from a U.S. National Survey of TV Weathercasters. As journalists of a kind, broadcast forecasters are subject to norms of "balance" and hence can be found creating what might be termed "dark mass" in the form of giving excess heft to what less polite people might call fringe beliefs, in an attempt to present "both sides" of the story. Of course, this is problematic when it comes to genuinely weighty topics that are no longer a matter of opinion:
The journalistic norm of balance has been described as the practice of giving equal weight to different sides of a story; false balance is balanced reporting when the weight of evidence strongly favors one side over others—for example, the reality of human-caused climate change. False balance is problematic because it skews public perception of expert agreement. Through formative interviews and a survey of American weathercasters about climate change reporting, we found that objectivity and balance—topics that have frequently been studied with environmental journalists—are also relevant to understanding climate change reporting among weathercasters. Questions about the practice of and reasons for presenting an opposing viewpoint when reporting on climate change were included in a 2017 census survey of weathercasters working in the United States (N = 480; response rate = 22%). When reporting on climate change, 35% of weathercasters present an opposing viewpoint “always” or “most of the time.” Their rationale for reporting opposing viewpoints included the journalistic norms of objectivity and balanced reporting (53%), their perceived uncertainty of climate science (21%), to acknowledge differences of opinion (17%), to maintain credibility (14%), and to strengthen the story (7%).
64 Articles:
Physical science of global warming
Effects of Ocean Slow Response under Low Warming Targets
Fixed anvil temperature feedback - positive, zero or negative?
Radiative effects of daily cycle of cloud frequency in past and future climates (open access)
Photochemical reaction of CO2 on atmospheric mineral dusts
Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects
Linking Global Changes of Snowfall and Wet-Bulb Temperature
Potential problems measuring climate sensitivity from the historical record
Analysis of the Beaufort Gyre freshwater content in 2003?2018
Sea Surface Temperatures: Seasonal Persistence and Trends
Modeling & simulation of global warming & global warming effects
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation less predictable under greenhouse warming
Dynamical Downscaling of Future Hydrographic Changes over the Northwest Atlantic Ocean
Climate forcing and response to greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone in CESM1
Greenland ice sheet response to stratospheric aerosol injection geoengineering (open access)
Mechanisms of Future Changes in Equatorial Upwelling: CMIP5 Intermodel Analysis (open access)
Responses of the Hadley Circulation to Regional Sea Surface Temperature Changes
The Response of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to Climate Change
Climate models permit convection at much coarser resolutions than previously considered
Impact of global warming on western North Pacific circulation anomaly during developing El Niño
Nonlinear Climate Responses to Increasing CO2 and Anthropogenic Aerosols Simulated by CESM1
Ocean Swells along the Global Coastlines and Their Climate Projections for the Twenty-First Century
Scoring Antarctic surface mass balance in climate models to refine future projections (open access)
Biology & global warming
Phenology of nocturnal avian migration has shifted at the continental scale
The topographic signature of ecosystem climate sensitivities in the western U.S.
Climate?driven shift in coral morphological structure predicts decline of juvenile reef fishes
GHG sources & sinks, flux
State of the science in reconciling top?down and bottom?up approaches for terrestrial CO2 budget
Quantifying the terrestrial carbon feedback to anthropogenic carbon emission (open access)
Arctic soil governs whether climate change drives global losses or gains in soil carbon
Understanding spatial variability of methane fluxes in Arctic wetlands through footprint modelling
Climate change communications & cognition
Hiding from the climate: Characterizing microrefugia for boreal forest understory species
Humans dealing with our global warming
A new approach to explain farmers’ adoption of climate change mitigation measures
Future risk of frost on apple trees in Japan
Implications of climate change for managing urban green infrastructure: an Indiana, US case study
Climate Change, Temperature and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities, 1895-2015
Visualizing Climate Change Adaptation: An Effective Tool for Agricultural Outreach?
Climate change impact on Northwestern African offshore wind energy resources
Attributing ocean acidification to major carbon producers
Other:
Warming reduces predictability
Climate Explorer: Improved Access to Local Climate Projections (open access)
Informed opinion & nudges
UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2019
Obtaining legal copies of "paywalled" articles
We know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. Here's an excellent collection of tips and techniques for obtaining articles, legally.
Suggestions
Please let us know if you're aware of an article you think may be of interest for Skeptical Science research news, or if we've missed something that may be important. Send your input to Skeptical Science via our contact form.
A list of journals we cover may be found here. We welcome pointers to omissions, new journals etc.
The previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.
Comments