Real Climate Science

Met Office experts will be presenting new ways to maximise wind farm investment at wind energy conferences in Scotland this week in light of the volatility of wind resource over the last year.

Weather patterns, and crucially wind speeds, underpin the success for this type renewable energy. The severe gales experienced in Scotland last month coupled with the generally lower than average wind speeds experienced over the last year demonstrate the challenges of wind as a renewable energy resource.

http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/

Utah’s Green River provides almost 50% of the water flowing into Lake Powell. It joins the Colorado River just above Cataract Canyon (a bad place to take a wooden row boat.)

USGS data shows that June, 2011 will likely break the 1897 streamflow record. Global warmers have been telling us for decades that western rivers and ski areas are doomed. The Obama administration told us that three weeks ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

http://translate.google.com/

h/t to Marc Morano and S.E.Hendriksen

Sea surface temperatures are the most important factor in determining weather over the next few months. The northern hemisphere seas are turning frigid. No surprise that California, Greenland and The UK have been running cold.

http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif

I don’t think that extent is very meaningful this time of year, but FWIW 2011 is tracking 2006 very closely. 2006 had the second highest summer minimum in the JAXA record.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png

Julienne Stroeve from NSIDC sent her recent paper over, which she wrote in conjunction with Mark Serreze and others. Here is the abstract and link to the full document.

Abstract

The sequence of extreme September sea ice extent minima over thepast decade suggests acceleration in the response of the Arctic sea ice cover to external forcing, hastening the ongoing transition towards a seasonally open Arctic Ocean. This reflects several mutually supporting processes. Because of the extensive open water in recent Septembers, ice cover in the following spring is increasingly dominated by thin, first-year ice (ice formed during the previous autumn and winter) that is  vulnerable to melting out in summer. Thinner ice in spring in turn fosters a stronger summer ice-albedo feedback through earlier formation of open water areas. A thin ice cover is also more vulnerable to strong summer retreat under anomalous atmospheric forcing. Finally, general warming of the Arctic has reduced the likelihood of cold years that could bring about temporary recovery of the ice cover. Events leading to the September ice extent minima of recent years exemplify these processes.

https://docs.google.com/

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has blocked a federal lawsuit by states and conservation groups trying to force cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The court said Monday that the authority to seek reductions in emissions rests with the Environmental Protection Agency, not the courts. The ruling was 8-0.

http://news.yahoo.com/

The Colorado River is flowing into Lake Powell at a record rate, and has increased by 10X over the last decade. This correlates with plummeting winter temperatures in Colorado, which are dropping at a rate of more than 50 degrees per century.

http://lakepowell.water-data.com/index2.php?as_of=1964-06-18

Continue reading →

ftp://ftp.aviso.oceanobs.com/

Some years, alarmists love to pull out a map of “Greenland melt days.” Last year Greenland was surrounded by warm water, which led to a record number of melt days.

You won’t be seeing that map this year, because there has been almost no melting on the Greenland ice sheet – and the Sun begins its decline towards winter tomorrow.

Sea level fell by 10 mm last year, but no doubt Greenland was melting like crazy. The water just disappeared off the face of the planet.