Archive for September, 2015

Hurricane Joaquin: “Established by God”

Wednesday, September 30th, 2015
Hurricane Joaquin as imaged by the NASA MODIS instrument mid-day Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015 (Google Earth remap).

Hurricane Joaquin as imaged by the NASA MODIS instrument mid-day Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015 (Google Earth remap).

After ten years without a major (Cat3+) hurricane hit on the U.S., intensifying Hurricane Joaquin (from the Hebrew for “established by Jehovah”) is causing understandable nervousness along the East Coast.

The storm is still meandering east of the Bahamas, and there is great uncertainty about just when it will be picked up by an approaching trough from the west. The National Hurricane Center is calling for it to reach “major hurricane” status, but as can be seen in the following graphic, the model guidance is all over the map regarding the track:

Joaquin-11L_tracks_latest

We will know more in the next day or two, but one very real possibility is that the hurricane will join forces with the weather system approaching from the west, and cause some pretty nasty flooding from the Carolinas up through the mid-Atlantic, along with widespread high winds.

Nothing is for sure right now, so stay tuned.

Minnesota Hearing Addresses the Social Cost of Carbon

Wednesday, September 30th, 2015

Estimated changes in vegetative cover due to CO2 fertilization between 1982 and 2010 (Donohue et al., 2013 GRL).

Estimated changes in vegetative cover due to CO2 fertilization between 1982 and 2010 (Donohue et al., 2013 GRL).

I testified before an administrative law judge (ALJ) in St. Paul, MN last week as part of a process that will determine what value the State of Minnesota decides to place on “carbon pollution”, also called the social cost of carbon (SCC).

This was the first expert testimony I have provided other than the several times I have testified in Congress. Congressional testimony is much more free-wheeling…more like a show for entertainment value and political posturing.

The Minnesota hearing was more like what you have seen on TV, with objections being made, sustained, and overruled. There were even accusations of “badgering the witness”.

It was interesting, to say the least.

There were economists who testified on both sides as to whether the economic models used were appropriate, whether they made valid assumptions, etc. I only saw two witnesses testify on that issue, one from each side.

It was clear that the lawyers from both sides were more comfortable cross-examining witnesses on economic issues than on the science behind the IPCC’s estimates of future warming, which (of course) are one of the primary inputs to any SCC model calculation. The greater the human-caused climate change, presumably the greater the damage caused by it (although one can also claim there are benefits, since cold weather kills more people on average than hot weather).

The judge had another judge present to help her out, one with an economics background and who could advise the ALJ on some of the more technical issues. The ALJ seemed most focused on procedural issues (as she should be, I suppose), making decisions regarding whether certain pieces of evidence would be admitted, etc. She seemed fair in the way she handled objections from both sides.

Scientists providing 5-minute opening statements along with me were Dick Lindzen and Will Happer. Lindzen mainly addressed climate sensitivity, Happer argued that CO2 emissions were actually a benefit, and I emphasized that the IPCC models used for the SCC calculations were demonstrably biased in their global warming projections.

As I recall, Happer received a minor question on cross-examination, while Lindzen was pressed on one of his claims regarding climate sensitivity, which he was forced to clarify. All five lawyers declined to ask me any questions on cross examination.

All of us provided written testimony well in advance of the hearing, which was responded to with rebuttal testimony from Andy Dessler and John Abraham. We also provided written rebuttal testimony in response toDessler’s and Abraham’s original written testimony. Another round of surrebuttal testimony then ensued. I believe that Dessler and Abraham provided opening statements this week, but I haven’t heard how that went.

Minnesota state law apparently requires there to be a social cost of carbon assigned to energy production in the state. I suppose that, theoretically, the assigned value could be zero. The question for the judge to address now is whether to replace the current value(s) [which are claimed by environmentalists to be too low] with the federal value, which is much higher, or whether it should be recalculated from scratch. Some good background on this can be found in a news story here from a year ago.

No matter which way the judge rules, I hear the ruling will likely be appealed. Then, no matter what the final ruling is, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission can probably just do what they want to do, anyway. I believe that the Commission simply asked the judge to help them with the process. I will admit that legal issues sometimes confuse me, so people are free to correct me on any of this I got wrong.

I suspect we are going to see more state-level challenges to the “social cost of carbon”, which is basically addressing the unintended “negative externality” consequences of our use of carbon-based fuels. My opinion is that there has been no demonstrated damage caused by adding 1 carbon dioxide molecule to 10,000 molecules of air over the last 100 years. Even the IPCC admits the evidence for increased severe weather is shaky, at best. Whether sea level rise is greater than it was before CO2 emissions could contribute is also debatable.

We do, however, have evidence that increased CO2 boosts crop production and has led to global greening, a positive externality. So, I have to wonder whether the social cost of carbon is actually negative.

My suspicion is that we are in for years of debate and legal challenges on this issue. It seems like the social cost of carbon is an unusual case for the environmentalists to make, when the supposed damages caused by CO2 emissions are not really demonstrable, and future damages are largely theoretical.

S. Fred Singer: A 1960s Trailblazer for Satellite Remote Sensing

Saturday, September 19th, 2015

fred-singer_0Those of you who follow our efforts to bring some balance to offset global warming alarmism also likely know of our honorary godfather, Fred Singer. Fred has been a tireless crusader, including helping to establish the NIPCC as an answer to the U.N.’s IPCC.

But people like Fred (and myself) didn’t start out in global warming, which is a relatively modern invention. For example, my original claim to fame was developing methods for measuring global precipitation from satellite-borne microwave radiometers, starting in the early 1980s. Fred started out well before me in satellite remote sensing, serving as the first director of the National Weather Satellite Service during 1962-64. I was still in elementary school at that time.

Now, as my 60th birthday approaches in December, I find myself going through my old files and throwing away everything except items of historical interest. Yesterday, I hit upon a stack of old microwave rainfall retrieval papers, and I stumbled upon one I had totally forgot about.

It turns out that Fred Singer wrote one of the very first papers on the possibility of measuring precipitation from satellites with microwave radiometers. The original idea was put forth in brief qualitative terms in a German article authored by Konrad Buettner in 1963. Then, in 1968, Fred and co-author G. F. Williams, Jr., put some theoretical equations and aircraft test flights behind the idea. The article was Microwave Detection of Precipitation over the Surface of the Ocean, in the May 1968 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research.

As an expert in this field, I can tell you that Fred’s treatment of the issue was surprisingly sound and insightful for such an early piece of work. It postulated effects which we now have widespread support for from satellite measurements.

I just wanted to bring attention to his early pioneering work in satellite microwave remote sensing, which eventually led to a wide variety of passive microwave imagers flying in space: ESMR, SMMR, SSM/I, TRMM, SSMIS, AMSR, GMI, and others. I’m sure there are other satellite areas he also helped to pioneer, too.

Great work, Fred!

Satellite Reveals Biblical Mideast Duststorm

Tuesday, September 8th, 2015

The dust storm currently impacting the Middle East started over northern Syria two days ago, and has spread south and westward. I don’t recall one this extensive in this area during the modern satellite era.

The following color imagery from the NASA MODIS instrument reveals the daily progression of the storm, and just how large an area the storm has covered, from southern Turkey to northern Egypt (click to enlarge).

MODIS-Mideast-duststorm

UAH V6.0 Global Temperature Update for Aug. 2015: +0.28 C

Thursday, September 3rd, 2015

NOTE: This is the fifth monthly update with our new Version 6.0 dataset. Differences versus the old Version 5.6 dataset are discussed here.

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for August, 2015 is +0.28 deg. C, up from the July, 2015 value of +0.18 deg. C (click for full size version):
UAH_LT_1979_thru_August_2015_v6

The global, hemispheric, and tropical LT anomalies from the 30-year (1981-2010) average for the last 8 months are:

YR MO GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2015 1 +0.28 +0.40 +0.16 +0.13
2015 2 +0.18 +0.30 +0.05 -0.06
2015 3 +0.17 +0.26 +0.07 +0.05
2015 4 +0.09 +0.18 -0.01 +0.10
2015 5 +0.29 +0.36 +0.21 +0.28
2015 6 +0.33 +0.41 +0.25 +0.46
2015 7 +0.18 +0.33 +0.03 +0.48
2015 8 +0.28 +0.25 +0.30 +0.52

The tropics continue warm with El Nino conditions there.

The global image for August, 2015 should be available in the next several days here.

The new Version 6 files (use the ones labeled “beta3”) should be updated soon, and are located here:

Lower Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt
Mid-Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tmt
Tropopause: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/ttp
Lower Stratosphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tls