News 8 new results for volcanoes

Fooled You! Richard Branson’s Volcano Journey Prank LiveScience.com British tycoon and explorer of the universe Sir Richard Branson has announced what may be his boldest endeavor yet: a trip to the scalding heart of an active volcano. Too bad it was his April Fools’ prank. The billionaire created a new website for his … See all stories on this topic »

Listen to the lightning storms of Mars and the ‘ice volcanoes‘ of Saturn’s … Daily Mail A team from the University of Southampton used physics and mathematics to work out what the violent weather of our solar system might sound like – capturing the crashing sounds of lightning on Venus, whirlwinds on Mars and ice volcanoes on Saturn’s … See all stories on this topic » Daily Mail

Are Tom Hanks and Seth Green Flying into a Volcano? The Daily Blabber from iVillage Richard Branson, the CEO behind Virgin Galactic recreational space flights, has announced his newest venture: Virgin Volcanic, which will take passengers to the core of an active volcano. Scheduled to come aboard the first expedition? See all stories on this topic »

Mount Etna erupts for fifth time this year – video The Guardian A trail of lava coursed down the side of the volcano, and some ash landed on a nearby village. Italian officials said there was no damage and nearby airports remained open. Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. See all stories on this topic »

Sounds of Mars and Venus revealed for first time Daily News & Analysis Using the tools and techniques of physics and mathematics, researchers including one of Indian origin have for the first time created the natural sounds of other worlds, including lightning on Venus to whirlwinds on Mars and ice volcanoes on Saturn’s … See all stories on this topic »

Words With Rocks Scientific American (blog) Volcanoes were different. Watching those roiling gray clouds of ash pour from St. Helens, having some of that ash placed in my thrilled young hands by neighbors who visited the volcano shortly after its May 18th eruption, connecting her to the volcano … See all stories on this topic » Scientific American (blog)

Eel Festival-goers go with the flow Ararat Advertiser “Ken Grimes, a well known consulting geologist, painted a picture of the process of change over millions of years and how volcanoes have affected drainage systems, either creating rivers or blocking up flows to form lakes, as is the case with Lake … See all stories on this topic »

Guided getaway: Explore old colonial towns or remote islands in Nicaragua CultureMap Austin volcanoes in the world, to scuba diving in the Little Corn Island — known for its remote, pristine beaches — along with the excitement of colonial towns such as Leon and Granada, in Nicaragua you can still travel under the radar and have great … See all stories on this topic » CultureMap Austin

Craig Thomson and the politics of slow corrosion

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/craig-thomson-and-the-politics-of-slow-corrosion-20120403-1waa0.html#ixzz1qxFotVUL

21st century solar cooling

by Judith Curry

During the 20th century, solar activity increased in magnitude to a so-called grand maximum. It is probable that this high level of solar activity is at or near its end. It is of great interest whether any future reduction in solar activity could have a significant impact on climate that could partially offset the projected anthropogenic warming. (Jones et al. 2012).

 

Two recent papers suggest that there will be little impact in the 21st century from a decrease in solar insolation similar to what was seen in the Maunder minimum.

What influence will future solar activity changes over the 21st century have on projected global near-surface temperature changes?

Gareth S. Jones, Mike Lockwood, and Peter A. Stott

During the 20th century, solar activity increased in magnitude to a so-called grand maximum. It is probable that this high level of solar activity is at or near its end. It is of great interest whether any future reduction in solar activity could have a significant impact on climate that could partially offset the projected anthropogenic warming. Observations and reconstructions of solar activity over the last 9000 years are used as a constraint on possible future variations to produce probability distributions of total solar irradiance over the next 100 years. Using this information, with a simple climate model, we present results of the potential implications for future projections of climate on decadal to multidecadal timescales. Using one of the most recent reconstructions of historic total solar irradiance, the likely reduction in the warming by 2100 is found to be between 0.06 and 0.1 K, a very small fraction of the projected anthropogenic warming. However, if past total solar irradiance variations are larger and climate models substantially underestimate the response to solar variations, then there is a potential for a reduction in solar activity to mitigate a small proportion of the future warming, a scenario we cannot totally rule out. While the Sun is not expected to provide substantial delays in the time to reach critical temperature thresholds, any small delays it might provide are likely to be greater for lower anthropogenic emissions scenarios than for higher-emissions scenarios.

Citation: Jones, G. S., M. Lockwood, and P. A. Stott (2012), What influence will future solar activity changes over the 21st century have on projected global near-surface temperature changes?, J. Geophys. Res., 117, D05103, doi:10.1029/2011JD017013.  [Link]

On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth

Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf

The current exceptionally long minimum of solar activity has led to the suggestion that the Sun might experience a new grand minimum in the next decades, a prolonged period of low activity similar to the Maunder minimum in the late 17th century. The Maunder minimum is connected to the Little Ice Age, a time of markedly lower temperatures, in particular in the Northern hemisphere. Here we use a coupled climate model to explore the effect of a 21st‐century grand minimum on future global temperatures, finding a moderate temperature offset of no more than −0.3°C in the year 2100 relative to a scenario with solar activity similar to recent decades. This temperature decrease is much smaller than the warming expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century.

Citation: Feulner, G., and S. Rahmstorf (2010), On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L05707, doi:10.1029/ 2010GL042710. [link]

Both of these papers generally come to the same conclusion:  a small impact, nominally 0.1C, from an insolation change similar to a Maunder Minimum.

Feulner and Rahmstorf consider decreases in the solar constant determined from historic reconstructions of 0.08% and 0.25%.   Whereas Jones et al. consider the reconstructions of Lean (2000), Krivova et al (2007) and Lean (2009). Referring  also to the  slide on Pending Maunder Minimum?  of Judith Lean’s presentation discussed recently on the Solar Discussion II thread.  For 21st projections, these different reconstructions imply the following insolation reductions (note the first threeeare my eyeball interpolations from Lean’s slide):

• Lean 2000:  2.2 W m-2
• Wang et al. 2005:  0.4 W m-2
• Krivova et al. 2007:  0.8 W m-2
• 0.25% reduction:  3.4 W m-2
• 0.08 reduction:  1.1 W m-2

Feulner and Rahmstorf select reconstructions with larger reductions in insolation than Jones et al.; however neither includes the recent reconstruction of Shapiro et al. (2012) that gives a 6 W m-2 reduction.

Fuelner and Rahmstorf use a low order coupled climate model, whereas Jones et al. use a simple energy balance climate model that is tuned to the Hadley AOGCM in terms of sensitivity and ocean heat diffusivity.

While I find the model and experimental design of Feulner and Rahmstorf to be preferable, I find the text of Jones et al. to be more interesting in terms of raising issues.  Some points of interest from Jones et al.:

While the IPCC assessed research that investigated the impact of natural forcing factors on past climate, researchers have not methodically examined what impact future changes in natural external forcing factors may have.

JC comment: there has been an implicit assumption by the IPCC that natural forcings are of minor importance.  IMO this has been to the great detriment of our understanding of the climate system.  Little effort has been made to investigate the impacts of varying forcing reconstructions  (e.g. Schmidt et al.) on attribution of past climate change and variability.  It seems that this issue has been receiving attention only in the past few years.

Climate modeling and detection and attribution studies show that changes in TSI have a relatively small influence on global temperatures changes over the 20th century, with anthropogenic influences dominating the observed warming.

Auditor-general’s report criticises AusNet tender process

Updated April 03, 2012 10:19:51 (Source ABC News)

The Commonwealth Auditor-General has highlighted a series of flaws in the Federal Government’s handling of the tender for the Australia Network contract.

The auditor’s report has found that while the government was entitled to hand the lucrative Australia Network tender process to the ABC, the decision “has presented the Australian Government in a poor light and cost the two tenderers time and money.”

Sky TV and the ABC both tendered for the multi-million dollar international broadcasting contract.

But the process was eventually scrapped and the Government handed the contract to the ABC, saying it was not in the public interest for the process to continue.

The Auditor-General’s report into the affair was tabled this morning.

It highlights the delays in the process and finds that key ministers did not hold a common view on the approval process.

It says the manner and circumstances in which the high profile tender was conducted brought into question the Government’s ability to deliver such a sensitive process fairly and effectively.

The Government has confirmed it has agreed to pay Sky compensation for the costs it incurred tendering for the contract before the process was scrapped.