Skeptical Science New Research for Week #29 2024

Posted on 18 July 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack

Open access notables

Improving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:

To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface air temperature (LSAT) anomalies of non-infilled HadCRUT5 with the sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies of HadSST4. This GITD better accounts for non-uniform trends in warming in two ways. Firstly, the underlying warming trends in the model are allowed to vary spatially and by the time of year. Secondly, climatological differences between open-sea and sea ice regions are used to better account for changes in sea ice concentrations (SICs). These improvements increase the estimate of GMST change from the late 19th century (1850–1900) to 2023 by 0.006°C and 0.079°C, respectively. Although, for the latter improvement, tests suggest that there may be an overcorrection by a factor of two and estimates of SICs for the late 19th century are a significant source of unquantified uncertainty. In addition, this new GITD has other improvements compared to the HadCRUT5 Analysis dataset, including correcting for a small underestimation of LSAT warming between 1961 and 1990, taking advantage of temporal correlations of observations, taking advantage of correlations between land and open-sea observations, and better treatment of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Overall, the median estimate of GMST change from the late 19th century to 2023 is 1.548°C, with a 95{2add217ad2235d262e63a186eb2903fa1b3aade4b9d8db7a510444e5d82aac71} confidence interval of [1.449°C, 1.635°C].

Roofing Highways With Solar Panels Substantially Reduces Carbon Emissions and Traffic Losses, Jiang et al., Earth’s Future

Roofing highways with solar panels offers a new opportunity for PV development, but its potential of global deployment and associated socio-economic impacts have not been investigated. Here, we combine solar PV output modeling with the global highway distribution and levelized cost of electricity to estimate the potential and economic feasibility of deploying highway PV systems worldwide. We also quantify its co-benefits of reducing CO2 equivalent emissions and traffic losses (road traffic deaths and socio-economic burdens). Our analysis reveals a potential for generating 17.58 PWh yr−1 of electricity, of which nearly 56{2add217ad2235d262e63a186eb2903fa1b3aade4b9d8db7a510444e5d82aac71} can be realized at a cost below US$100 MWh−1. Achieving the full highway PV potential could offset 28.78{2add217ad2235d262e63a186eb2903fa1b3aade4b9d8db7a510444e5d82aac71} (28.21{2add217ad2235d262e63a186eb2903fa1b3aade4b9d8db7a510444e5d82aac71}–29.1{2add217ad2235d262e63a186eb2903fa1b3aade4b9d8db7a510444e5d82aac71}) of the global total carbon emissions in 2018, prevent approximately 0.15 million road traffic deaths, and reduce US$0.43 ± 0.16 trillion socio-economic burdens per year. Highway PV projects could bring a net return of about US$14.42 ± 4.04 trillion over a 25-year lifetime. 

Asymmetric and Irreversible Response of Tropical Cyclone Potential Intensity to CO2 Removal, Huan & Yan, Geophysical Research Letters:

Understanding the behaviors of tropical cyclone (TC) intensity under the CO2 removal scenario is important for future climate adaptation and policy making. Based on the idealized CO2 ramp-up (from 284.7 to 1,138.8 ppm) and symmetric ramp-down experiments, our results suggest an asymmetric and irreversible response of TC potential intensity to CO2 reduction. Potential intensity shows an additional enhancement at the same CO2 level during the CO2 ramp-down relative to the ramp-up periods (though with regional differences), and does not completely return to the initial value even when CO2 recovers on multi-decadal to centennial timescale. The enhanced potential intensity is dominated by the increased thermodynamic disequilibrium, which is mainly attributed to the weakened surface winds arising from the El Niño-like warming pattern and inter-hemispheric ocean temperature contrast.

Cyber-echoes of climate crisis: Unraveling anthropogenic climate change narratives on social media, Elroy et al., Current Research in Environmental Sustainability [perspective]:

In this work, we collected 333,635 tweets in English about anthropogenic climate change. We used Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning methods to embed the semantic meaning of the tweets into vectors, cluster the tweets, and analyze the results. We clustered the tweets into four clusters that correspond to four narratives in the discussion. Analyzing the behavioral dynamics of each cluster revealed that the clusters focus on the discussion of whether climate change is caused by humans or not, scientific arguments, policy, and conspiracy. The research results can serve as input for media policy and awareness-raising measures on climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, and facilitating future communications related to climate change.

Voters do not punish their government for climate policies under favorable conditions, Henriks et al., Environmental Politics:

This article investigates the impact of climate policies on electoral support for governing parties in Sweden through mixed methods combining a sentiment analysis of news articles and regression discontinuities of voter support over time. The regression discontinuity models indicate that the effects of climate policies on government support are not robust and are spurious across different model specifications. To ensure that we can detect effects, we used a set of political events that could have affected government support, such as elections and the Covid-pandemic as robustness checks. Contrary to expectations from literature and analyzed news reporting, we cannot determine robust effects of introducing climate policies on governmental support in Sweden. This suggests that governments do not need to anticipate losing substantial support when implementing climate policies – at least in favorable conditions.

Confronting heat-related illnesses and deaths at mass gathering religious and sporting events, McCloskey et al., The Lancet Planetary Health:

As global temperatures continue to rise, climate change should become increasingly important in the planning of mass gatherings and should be viewed as an existential threat to all mass sporting, artistic, and religious events. As such, planners and organisers of these events need to start to bring together research, ideas, and technology that can reduce future risks of severe heat-related illnesses and deaths.

Actions speak louder than words: the case for responsible scientific activism in an era of planetary emergency, Wyatt et al., Royal Society Open Science:

To date, governments’ decisions (such as continuing with vast subsidies for fossil fuels) clearly show that powerful vested interests have been much more influential than the amassed scientific knowledge and advice. We argue that in the face of this inaction, scientists can have the maximum amount of influence by lending their support to social movements pressing for action, joining as active participants and considering civil disobedience. Scientists seeking to halt continued environmental destruction also need to work through our institutions. Too many scientific organizations, from national academies of science to learned societies and universities, have not taken practical action on climate; for example, many still partner with fossil fuel and other compromised interests. We therefore also outline a vision for how scientists can reform our scientific institutions to become powerful agents for change.

From this week’s government and NGO section:

How the Oil Industry Has Sustained Market Dominance Through Policy Influence, InfluenceMap

The authors discuss the entrenched nature of the oil and gas industry’s opposition to the alternatives to fossil fuels, revealing a decades-long playbook employed to hinder progress toward the transition. It builds on previous analysis of historical fossil fuel industry lobbying that highlighted the use of climate science denial tactics. It demonstrates that a range of other narratives and arguments are still being deployed by the sector to this day, despite contradicting the Science-Aligned Climate Policy analysis of the IPCC. The authors highlight the potentially seismic effects that are associated with this influencing campaign, which has enabled an expanded and sustained market for fossil fuel products at the expense of zero-carbon alternatives. The sale and use of these products have resulted in cumulative GHG emissions that now threaten to put global temperature rises on track for catastrophic climate impacts.

Clean Energy Isn’t Driving Power Price Spikes, Brendan Pierpont, Energy Innovation Policy & Technology

Some observers have argued that clean energy is to blame for rising electric rates, but the data does not support this conjecture. The author walks through recent trends in electricity rates and unpacks the myriad factors that have contributed to rate increases in recent years, leading to several key takeaways including evidence that does not suggest that clean energy is driving electricity cost increases; wildfire costs and risks have significantly increased electricity rates in California; natural gas price volatility has been a major driver of higher electricity costs in some states; utilities have made substantial investments in aging, uneconomic coal plants, raising costs to customers; transmission and distribution costs are rising nearly twice as fast as inflation, driven by a focus on grid hardening, resilience, and advanced technology; and regulated utility profit margins and bias toward capital investments underly rising electricity rates.

136 articles in 67 journals by 757 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

The correlation between Arctic sea ice, cloud phase and radiation using A-Train satellites, Cesana et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-24-7899-2024

Observations of climate change, effects

Amplified warming of North American cold extremes linked to human-induced changes in temperature variability, Blackport & Fyfe, Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-024-49734-8

Long-term changes in tropospheric temperature in India: Insights from radiosonde measurements, reanalysis data and CMIP6 model projections, Kumar & Kuttippurath, Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107583

Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

An algorithm to analyse long-term tendencies of pressure systems over Europe, Varga?Balogh et al., International Journal of Climatology Open Access 10.1002/joc.8566

Improving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society Open Access 10.1002/qj.4791

Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

Dynamical downscaling CMIP6 models over New Zealand: added value of climatology and extremes, Gibson et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access 10.1007/s00382-024-07337-5

Emergence of lake conditions that exceed natural temperature variability, Huang et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access 10.1038/s41561-024-01491-5

High-resolution climate projection dataset over India using dynamical downscaling, Barik et al., Geoscience Data Journal Open Access 10.1002/gdj3.266

Investigating the skills of HighResMIP in capturing historical and future mean precipitation shifts over Pakistan, Eman et al., International Journal of Climatology Open Access 10.1002/joc.8558

Processes that Contribute to Future South Asian Monsoon Differences in E3SMv2 and CESM2, Meehl et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl109056

Projected near-surface wind speed and wind energy over Central Asia using dynamical downscaling with bias-corrected global climate models, ZHA et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2024.07.007

Projection of future non-stationary intensity-duration-frequency curves using the pooled CMIP6 climate models, Mianabadi et al., Natural Hazards 10.1007/s11069-024-06779-8

Projections of the Adriatic wave conditions under climate changes, Moulin et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1409237

Shifts from surface density compensation to projected warming, freshening and stronger stratification in the subpolar North Atlantic, Marsh et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access 10.1007/s00382-024-07336-6

The impacts of global warming on climate zones over China based on CMIP6 models, Wang et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8567

Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

A simple framework for likely climate projections applied to tropical width, Baldassare & Reichler Reichler, Climate Dynamics Open Access 10.1007/s00382-024-07335-7

An improved and extended parameterization of the CO2 15 µm cooling in the middle and upper atmosphere (CO2&cool&fort-1.0), López-Puertas et al., Geoscientific Model Development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-17-4401-2024

Characteristics of the temperature correlation network of climate models, Wang et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access 10.1007/s00382-024-07329-5

Cloud Radiative Feedback to the Large-Scale Atmospheric Circulation Greatly Reduces Monsoon-Season Wet Bias Over the Tibetan Plateau in Climate Modeling, Liu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl109180

Correlated spatiotemporal downscaling of Euro-CORDEX climatic data for infrastructure resilience assessment, Chatzidaki et al., International Journal of Climatology Open Access 10.1002/joc.8529

Improving CMIP6 Atmospheric River Precipitation Estimation by Cycle-Consistent Generative Adversarial Networks, Tian et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 10.1029/2023jd040698

Limited Benefits of Increased Spatial Resolution for Sea Ice in HighResMIP Simulations, Selivanova et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2023gl107969

Resolving the Turkana Jet—Impact of Model Resolution in Simulating Channel Flow and Inversions, Warner et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2023jd040299

Testing the Sensitivity of a WRF-Based Great Lakes Regional Climate Model to Cumulus Parameterization and Spectral Nudging, Hutson et al., Journal of Hydrometeorology 10.1175/jhm-d-22-0234.1

The Ensemble Consistency Test: From CESM to MPAS and Beyond, Price-Broncucia et al., Open Access 10.5194/gmd-2024-115