Tuesday, September 23, 2014

West US warming due to natural causes, not you

New research finds that warming along the US’s Pacific Coast is due to regional natural causes, including shifting winds.

Did the IPCC models predict this? We are spending $ trillions due to those models.

Seattle Times

It has been a subject of debate for years: How much has global warming contributed to a documented rise in temperatures along the West Coast?

A new study published Monday in a major research journal suggests the answer thus far, particularly in the Northwest, is: hardly any.

An average coastal temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius since 1900 along the West Coast appears more likely to be the result of changes in winds and air circulation over the eastern Pacific Ocean, two former University of Washington scientists found.

And the researchers said they could find no evidence that those weather patterns were being influenced by human greenhouse-gas emissions.

“It’s a simple story, but the results are very surprising: We do not see a human hand in the warming of the West Coast,” said co-author Nate Mantua, now with NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “That is taking people by surprise, and may generate some blowback.”

Climate scientists for years have acknowledged that Pacific Northwest weather can vary naturally year to year — or even decade to decade. But many have argued that human burning of fossil fuels is already a huge factor driving up regional temperatures.

But the new research by Mantua and lead author Jim Johnstone, formerly with the UW’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans, suggests that natural variation in weather accounts for the vast majority of regional temperature increases for the last 113 years.

The study found wind responsible for more than 80 percent of the warming from Northern California to the Northwest.

The study released Monday at Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.

The previous

No comments: