Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50, 2019
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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
A nonlinear theory of atmospheric blocking: An application to Greenland blocking changes linked to winter Arctic sea ice loss
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)
Increase of the transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions with decreasing CO 2 concentration scenarios
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
Singular Extreme Events and Their Attribution to Climate Change: A Climate Service–Centered Analysis (open access)
Utilizing recent climate data in eastern Texas to calculate trends in measures of aridity and estimate changes in watering demand for landscape preservation (open access)
Building long homogeneous temperature series across Europe: a new approach for the blending of neighboring series
Development of a Submonthly Temperature Product to Monitor Near-Real-Time Climate Conditions and Assess Long-Term Heat Events in the United States
Precipitation Extremes: Trends and Relationships with Average Precipitation and Precipitable Water in the Contiguous United States
Sea Surface Temperatures: Seasonal Persistence and Trends
Recent Trends in the Near-Surface Climatology of the Northern North American Great Plains (open access)
Modeling & simulation of global warming & global warming effects
Effect on the Earth system of realizing a 1.5 °C warming climate target after overshooting to the 2 °C level
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation less predictable under greenhouse warming
Dynamical Downscaling of Future Hydrographic Changes over the Northwest Atlantic Ocean
Future Projection of Extreme Heavy Snowfall Events with a 5?km Large Ensemble Regional Climate Simulation
Climate forcing and response to greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone in CESM1
Greenland ice sheet response to stratospheric aerosol injection geoengineering (open access)
Changes in Anthropogenic PM2.5 and the Resulting Global Climate Effects Under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 Scenarios by 2050 (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
North Atlantic Integrated Water Vapor Transport—From 850 to 2100 CE: Impacts on Western European Rainfall
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.
Trophic niche segregation allows range?extending coral reef fishes to co?exist with temperate species under climate change
Climate?driven shift in coral morphological structure predicts decline of juvenile reef fishes
Limitations of cross? and multigenerational plasticity for marine invertebrates faced with global climate change
The impact of rising CO2 and acclimation on the response of US forests to global warming (open access)
GHG sources & sinks, flux
State of the science in reconciling top?down and bottom?up approaches for terrestrial CO2 budget
Sensitivity of the global carbonate weathering carbon-sink flux to climate and land-use changes (open access)
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
Evidence for large carbon sink and long residence time in semiarid forests based on 15 year flux and inventory records
Understanding spatial variability of methane fluxes in Arctic wetlands through footprint modelling
Climate change communications & cognition
Filtering perceptions of climate change and biotechnology: values and views among Colorado farmers and ranchers
Corporate promotion and climate change: an analysis of key variables affecting advertising spending by major oil corporations, 1986–2015
The Prevalence and Rationale for Presenting an Opposing Viewpoint in Climate Change Reporting: Findings from a U.S. National Survey of TV Weathercasters (open access)
Hiding from the climate: Characterizing microrefugia for boreal forest understory species
Developmental trap or demographic bonanza? Opposing consequences of earlier phenology in a changing climate for a multivoltine butterfly
Humans dealing with our global warming
Financial impacts of climate change mitigation policies and their macroeconomic implications: a stock-flow consistent approach (open access)
Climate benefits of proposed carbon dioxide mitigation strategies for international shipping and aviation (open access)
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
Mixed manifestations of climate change in high mountains: insights from a farming community in northern Pakistan (open access)
Growing Season Synoptic and Phenological Controls on Heat Fluxes over Forest and Cropland Sites in the Midwest U.S. Corn Belt
Climate Warming Changed the Planting Boundaries of Varieties of Summer Corn with Different Maturity Levels in the North China Plain
Climate Change, Temperature and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities, 1895-2015
Visualizing Climate Change Adaptation: An Effective Tool for Agricultural Outreach?
Individual and combined impacts of future land-use and climate conditions on extreme hydrological events in a representative basin of the Yangtze River Delta, China
The effects of projected climate change and extreme climate on maize and rice in the Yangtze River Basin, China
Which practices co?deliver food security, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and combat land degradation and desertification?
Climate change impact on Northwestern African offshore wind energy resources
Achieving ambitious climate targets: is it economical for New Zealand to invest in agricultural GHG mitigation?
Attributing ocean acidification to major carbon producers
A multi-level climate club with national and sub-national members: theory and application to US states
Other:
Comment on “The Impact of Recent Forcing and Ocean Heat Uptake Data on Estimates of Climate Sensitivity”
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
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Suggestions
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The previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.
Posted by Doug Bostrom on Wednesday, 18 December, 2019
