AGW update

[billvon 3,132]

One bit of bad news, two bits of good news.

First a study from Nature showing that AGW is having an effect on the incidence of extreme weather in the Indian Ocean. Next is a paper in Science indicating that slow sea level rises will not necessarily doom low coral-atoll islands since many of those islands will be able to "grow" with the rise in sea level. Finally a novel method to produce ammonia (i.e. fertilizer) from sunlight, water and air. That could replace a significant amount of our current natural gas use.
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Increased frequency of extreme Indian Ocean Dipole events due to greenhouse warming

Nature(12 June 2014)

The Indian Ocean dipole is a prominent mode of coupled ocean–atmosphere variability affecting the lives of millions of people in Indian Ocean rim countries. . . .Here, using an ensemble of climate models forced by a scenario of high greenhouse gas emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5), we project that the frequency of extreme pIOD events will increase by almost a factor of three, from one event every 17.3 years over the twentieth century to one event every 6.3 years over the twenty-first century. We find that a mean state change—with weakening of both equatorial westerly winds and eastward oceanic currents in association with a faster warming in the western than the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean—facilitates more frequent occurrences of wind and oceanic current reversal. This leads to more frequent extreme pIOD events, suggesting an increasing frequency of extreme climate and weather events in regions affected by the pIOD.
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Science 1 August 2014:
Warming may not swamp islands

Although Bikeman islet has disappeared beneath the waves, other Kiribati islands are expected to remain habitable as sea levels rise.

. . . In an interview with CNN in June, Tong insisted that rising sea levels due to global warming will mean “total annihilation” for this nation of 33 coral islands spread over a swath of the Central Pacific the size of India, and for other atoll island nations like Tuvalu and the Maldives. In May, Tong announced that Kiribati had spent $8.7 million to buy 22 square kilometers of land on Vanua Levu in Fiji as a haven for displaced citizens, cementing his nation's global reputation as an early victim of climate change.
. . .
No doubt, the sea is coming: In a 2013 report, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that global sea levels will rise up to 1 meter by 2100. But recent geologic studies suggest that the coral reefs supporting sandy atoll islands will grow and rise in tandem with the sea. The only islanders who will have to move must do so for the same reason as millions of people on the continents: because they live too close to shore.
. . . .
So Kench teamed up with Peter Cowell, a geomorphologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, to model what might happen. They found that during episodes of high seas—at high tide during El Niño events, which raise sea level in the Central Pacific, for example—storm waves would wash over higher and higher sections of atoll islands. But instead of eroding land, the waves would raise island elevation by depositing sand produced from broken coral, coralline algae, mollusks, and foraminifera. Kench notes that reefs can grow 10 to 15 millimeters a year—faster than the sea-level rise expected to occur later this century. “As long as the reef is healthy and generates an abundant supply of sand, there's no reason a reef island can't grow and keep up,” he argues.
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Science 8 August 2014:
Vol. 345 no. 6197 p. 610

New recipe produces ammonia from air, water, and sunlight

Robert F. Service

Report: Ammonia synthesis by N2 and steam electrolysis in molten hydroxide suspensions of nanoscale Fe2O3

The ability to turn the nitrogen in air into fertilizer has enabled farmers to feed billions more people than our planet could otherwise support. But it's costly. The massive chemical plants that produce ammonia—the starting material for fertilizer—consume up to 5% of the world's natural gas and belch out hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. Now, chemists have come up with an alternative approach drawing on renewable energy. On page 637, they report using heat and electricity produced from sunlight to stitch together nitrogen from the air and hydrogen from water to make ammonia, all without emitting a molecule of CO2.

“It's an important scientific advance,” says Morris Bullock, a chemist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. Still, says Ellen Stechel, a chemical physicist at Arizona State University, Tempe, the question is whether the process's “very respectable” efficiency in the lab can be scaled up to compete with the current ammonia industry.
.. . . .
Though impressive, the result “still has a long way to go” to replace the Haber-Bosch process, says James Miller, a chemist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who specializes in using solar energy to make chemical fuels. The reactor is most efficient when fed only a trickle of electricity. Licht and his team will need to boost the current 50-fold to match related industrial processes, Stechel says. Still, Miller adds, “he's on the right track.”
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[lawrocket 3]

[Reply]
First a study from Nature showing that AGW is having an effect on the incidence of extreme weather in the Indian Ocean

[lawrocket 3]

A new study by Chen and Tung was published in Science that seeks to explain the pause in surface temperature warming. My reading of the press release and comments (note: the press release was amended: Gavin Schmidt saw that the press release made some attributions that the paper did not): it concludes that the pause is caused by natural variation canceling out the CO2 forcing and that 40% of warming is natural.

Put succinctly, there's somehat of an oscillation and AGW might be causing it. By heating the surface water, a current causes the warm water to go deeper into the ocean. Once it hits a certain point, then the deep water mixing stops and surface temps rise again.

This is actually pretty neat: science showing a middle ground. Fonr the last decade, I think it was Pielke who has argued that we need to look more to the oceans for heat, anyway. Then Trenberth and crew said the missing heat is in the deep ocean. No we've got a study showing a mechanism for mixing of heat down to 1500 meters. And have actual data (Argo) to look at.

The result of it is stairstep heating. Quick rise. Level off. Quick rise. Level off. Natural variability has some control.

Also interesting: the study finds that the Atlantic is the lead driver. Like Curry's stadium wave hypothesis - the Atlantic affects the Pacific.

I'm not seeing a lot of discussion of this from the climate science community outside of Judith Curry. But it seems that there is some controversy. I don't think the hardcore deniers like it. And it doesn't appear that the alarmists like it, either. Neither side seems to want to touch it yet.

My wife is hotter than your wife.