Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Lakes and reservoirs will be covered with solar panels under Ed Miliband’s plans to quadruple the use of the technology in Britain. The Telegraph has the story.
Mr Miliband is hoping to make it more difficult for locals to object to bodies of water being covered in the panels and to the erection of telegraph poles in rural areas.
The plans are part of the Government’s new “solar roadmap”, under which an area more than three times the size of Birmingham will be covered in solar panels in the next five years.
Ministers believe the strategy will mean the equivalent of seven million more homes are powered by solar electricity by the end of the decade, and claim it will cut energy bills by £500 a year.
The Conservatives called the plans “mad” and said they were “exactly what we have been warning of all along”.
The plans include new “canopy” solar panels to be built over public car parks, and more farmland to be used for generating electricity.
Renters could also be able to install plug-in panels on balconies or rooftops, allowing them to save money on energy bills for the first time, after Mr Miliband launched a safety review.
Mr Miliband is concerned that the planning process is a “burden” to landowners hoping to cover lakes with solar panels, and is exploring “levers” that would make them harder to oppose.
The Government hopes that by 2030, an estimated 0.4% of the total land area of the UK will be covered in the panels, up from 0.1%.
That would equate to 376 square miles, or more than three times the size of Birmingham. …
The world would be safer if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) were stopped, according to the teachings of many schools, the regulatory schemes of some governments and the hyperbolic public relations campaigns of a climate industrial complex. But the truth is happier: CO2 is an irreplaceable plant food that is increasing.
The world would be safer if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) were stopped, according to the teachings of many schools, the regulatory schemes of some governments and the hyperbolic public relations campaigns of a climate industrial complex. But the truth is happier: CO2 is an irreplaceable plant food that is increasing.
Carbon dioxide – the gas branded as public enemy number one – is not destroying the planet. It’s enhancing life on it. Across the globe, elevated CO2 levels are supercharging plant growth and delivering bountiful crop harvests at unprecedented rates.
Why does this matter? Because future generations could benefit from rejecting the hysteria and embracing common sense and well-established facts.
Since the start of the 20th century, atmospheric CO2 has risen from around 300 parts per million (ppm) to over 420 ppm. If you believe some headlines, this is tantamount to a death sentence. But if you’re a farmer – or a scientist focused on plant physiology – this increase looks like a gift.
Studies show that crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and grains grow faster and yield more under higher CO2 concentrations. This phenomena has been verified by observations of plants in the world at large and in controlled environments over many decades.
People taking advantage of this knowledge have contributed to an agricultural revolution. From Israel’s Negev Desert to Kenya’s Rift Valley, farmers are proving that CO2 is not a villain but an ally in feeding a growing population.
Greenhouse Boom: Food Where There Was None
Greenhouse farming employs tent-like structures with controlled environments to grow crops. Unlike open-field agriculture, which is susceptible to the risks of weather and pests, greenhouses provide stable ecosystems that extend growing seasons and manage lighting and temperature. In addition, greenhouses can artificially elevate CO2 to levels two or three time higher than ambient atmospheric concentrations.
These farmers achieve what nature cannot – predictable, abundant harvests in deserts, tundra and urban sprawl. The benefits include lower water use, reduced reliance on pesticides, year-round production and higher yields.
In a study, researchers assessed the proliferation of greenhouse farming in 119 countries, including 22 in Africa. Greenhouses now cover more than 5,000 square miles of land worldwide, 40 times the agricultural area under cover four decades ago.
China has 60% of the world’s greenhouse farms. Some of the largest are in Weifang, China, (82,155 hectares) and Almeria, Spain (35,117 hectares).
CO2-enriched greenhouses now supply a significant portion of urban vegetable demand in China, a country once plagued by food shortages and famine. “Rice, cucumbers, eggplants, and tomatoes provide off-season supply to the whole country,” says Chinese researcher Xiaoye Tong.
In the Hotan Prefecture of the Xinjiang desert, farmers grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons in greenhouses having CO2 levels up to 1,200 ppm, triple the outdoor concentration.
Greenhouses in this region have enabled the development of fast-breeding rice, reducing the growth cycle to just 75 days by leveraging vertical soil-less cultivation and artificial light control. The Desert Greenhouse Project in Xinjiang’s Shawan Oasis has over 2,100 units that can produce annually about 19,000 tons of vegetables and fruits in more than 30 varieties.
“The rate of expansion is the most dramatic in China, but the increase is a global phenomenon,” says Tong. For example, India’s greenhouse horticultural sector is growing by more than 6% annually. India’s government is fueling this growth through subsidies under the National Horticulture Mission, which covers up to 50% of setup costs.
The Metrolina Greenhouses in Huntersville, North Carolina, consists of 8 million square feet of heated indoor growing space, making it the largest single-site, heated greenhouse in the U.S.
In Spain, Novagric built the largest single-module greenhouses that cultivate high-yield tomato plants. Production rose from 21 kilograms of tomatoes per square meter to a record 30 kilograms of cherry tomatoes, and the yield is expected to continue rising.
You don’t need a Ph.D. to see through the haze. Ask yourself: If CO2 is so harmful, why do farmers pump it into greenhouses? Why are crop yields breaking records as CO2 levels rise? The answers are in biology, not ideology.
Plants evolved when CO2 levels were five times higher than today. CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are restoring the carbon dioxide that was removed from the atmosphere when coal, oil and natural gas were formed from the remains of flora and fauna in swamps and seas millions of years ago. A deficiency of atmospheric carbon dioxide is being rectified.
In the meantime, greenhouse farming, fueled by this life-giving molecule, will be part of a promising future free of hunger.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
In their recent article, “June is the new July: Why intense summer heat is arriving earlier,” The Washington Post (WaPo) claims that “the heat waves moving in recent days across Canada, the U.S., and northern Europe are part of a dangerous new climate pattern.” This narrative is wrong, or misleading at best. Data does not show a meaningful trend toward earlier or more intense heat waves on a global scale. Evidence suggests that much of the perceived increase in early-season heat can be attributed to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and misinterpretations of regional variability, not to any alarming global shift.
In their recent article, “June is the new July: Why intense summer heat is arriving earlier,”The Washington Post (WaPo) claims that “the heat waves moving in recent days across Canada, the U.S., and northern Europe are part of a dangerous new climate pattern.” This narrative is wrong, or misleading at best. Data does not show a meaningful trend toward earlier or more intense heat waves on a global scale. Evidence suggests that much of the perceived increase in early-season heat can be attributed to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and misinterpretations of regional variability, not to any alarming global shift.
“The heat waves moving in recent days across Canada, the northeastern United States and northern Europe have one thing in common: They are occurring quite early in the season,” writes WaPo, continuing, “That timing speaks to a broader trend, connected to human-caused climate change, . . the hottest 10 years on record have all come during the past decade.”
One of the most critical oversights in WaPo’s article is that it ignores the role the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect has on recorded temperatures and trends. The UHI is well-documented phenomenon where cities record significantly higher temperatures than their rural surroundings due to concentrated infrastructure, asphalt, and human activity, biasing reported surface station temperature records and averages. As cities expand, the local thermometers used to measure temperature increasingly reflect urban heating, not global trends.
Studies have shown that UHI exaggerates apparent warming trends, especially in densely populated areas. When Toronto, London, and Paris report record-breaking early summer heat, we must ask, whether those records reflect global climate change, or are primarily artifacts of measuring temperatures in increasingly urbanized locations?
NASA’s own research acknowledges this issue, pointing out that urban areas can be several degrees warmer than surrounding rural regions. Also, research published by Roy Spencer, Ph.D., demonstrates that the homogenization process used by NOAA and other agencies tends to blend urban warming into surrounding rural stations, artificially amplifying apparent warming trends. Yet, mainstream media outlets like WaPo, routinely ignore the impact of the UHI on reported temperature trends.
The article repeatedly frames early-season heat waves as evidence of a “dangerous new climate pattern.” However, anyone with a grounding in meteorology can explain weather variability has always caused summers to start earlier or later from year to year. This isn’t new; it’s normal.
Meteorological history tells us that the start of summer-like conditions have naturally fluctuated for centuries, influenced by jet stream patterns, ocean oscillations, and other large-scale global and regional atmospheric drivers. Some years, summer seems to arrive early; other years, it comes late. There is no consistent, demonstrable trend pointing to earlier global summers. The problem is that WaPo takes a handful of recent years and extrapolates a dangerous trend from what is, essentially, a noisy dataset covering a short time frame.
To further support its alarming thesis that summer heat is arriving earlier and lasting longer WaPo cites the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute’s (CCI) claim that the Northern Hemisphere’s average temperature exceeded 21°C much earlier in recent years than during 1979 through 2000 time period. What WaPo and CCI ignore, however, are the satellite datasets, which are far less affected by UHI and offer a more reliable global measurement. Satellite records have measured significantly lower warming and smaller warming trends. The satellite data from UAH (University of Alabama in Huntsville) indicate that much of the “record heat” narrative is simply not borne out globally.
WaPo also regurgitates the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) claim that heat waves have grown “longer, more frequent, and more intense over the past seven decades.” Yet, the EPA’s claims are undermined by the government’s own data. Data from the National Centers for Environmental Information show that the 1930s, particularly during the Dust Bowl years, experienced some of the most severe heat waves in U.S. history, more severe and extreme than at present.
Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves presents historical data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which show that heat waves were far more severe in the 1930s than they are today. The number of days exceeding 95°F in the 1930s dwarfs anything seen in recent decades, as seen in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1. The annual mean number of days with a daily maximum temperature ≥95°, ≥100° and ≥105° each at 828 NOAA USHCN stations with at least 100 years of daily temperature readings between 1895 and 2023. Graph by Chris Martz from NOAA data at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2.5/
For example, the all-time record high temperature in North America — 134°F in Death Valley — was set in 1913, long before the industrial CO₂ rise that WaPo blames for current heat events. In fact, the heat wave frequency in the mid-20th century was significantly higher than today when looking at unadjusted, rural-only temperature records. Data show that more state heat records were set during the single decade of the 1930s (23) than all the records set or tied in the 55 years since 1970 (16), much less the six records set or tied since 2000, during the supposedly hottest two and a half decades on record.
Similarly, glacier melt is a complex process influenced by snow accumulation, dust deposition, and even localized black carbon from vehicles and industry. The sweeping attribution to CO₂ emissions as the cause is a gross oversimplification that disregards these critical local variables.
This story is yet another example of WaPo failing to do its homework while aggressively pushing the climate alarm narrative. Instead of investigating the well-documented influence of UHI, natural weather variability, and the flaws in climate model projections, WaPo once again does its readers a disservice by defaulting to lazy reporting that assumes all heat is anthropogenic and that any deviation from an arbitrary 20th-century average is cause for panic. They’ve been called out before for this kind of sensationalist reporting here, here, and here, yet they persist, perhaps because fear sells.
As long as media outlets like The Washington Post prioritize climatic clickbait over credible science, they will continue to erode public trust. That’s the real dangerous trend here.
For 540 million years, the ebb and flow in the strength of Earth’s magnetic field has correlated with fluctuations in atmospheric oxygen, according to a newly released analysis by NASA scientists. The research suggests that processes deep inside the Earth might influence habitability on the planet’s surface.
For 540 million years, the ebb and flow in the strength of Earth’s magnetic field has correlated with fluctuations in atmospheric oxygen, according to a newly released analysis by NASA scientists. The research suggests that processes deep inside the Earth might influence habitability on the planet’s surface.
Earth’s magnetic field arises from the flow of material in the planet’s molten interior, which acts like a giant electromagnet. The flow isn’t perfectly stable, and this causes the field to change over time.
Many scientists have argued that the magnetic field is crucial for protecting the atmosphere from eroded by energetic particles coming from the Sun. But, the authors of the study in Science Advances point out, the role of magnetic fields in preserving the atmosphere is an area of active research. Before addressing the complexity of the cause-and-effect relationship between magnetic fields and oxygen levels, the study authors decided to see whether Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere have fluctuated in ways that demonstrate a link.
The history of the Earth’s magnetic fields is recorded in magnetized minerals. When hot minerals that rise with magma at gaps between spreading tectonic plates cool down, they can record the surrounding magnetic field. The minerals retain the field record as long as they are not reheated too severely. Scientists can deduce historic oxygen levels from ancient rocks and minerals because their chemical contents depend on the amount of oxygen available when they were formed. Data for both Earth’s magnetic field and oxygen extend over comparable ranges in databases that myriad geophysicists and geochemists have compiled. Until now, the authors of the new study say, no scientists had made a detailed comparison of the records.
“These two datasets are very similar,” said coauthor Weijia Kuang, a geophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Earth is the only known planet that supports complex life. The correlations we’ve found could help us to understand how life evolves and how it’s connected to the interior processes of the planet.”
When Kuang and colleagues analyzed the two separate datasets, they found that the planetary magnetic field has followed similar rising and falling patterns as oxygen in the atmosphere for nearly a half billion years, dating back to the Cambrian explosion, when complex life on Earth emerged.
“This correlation raises the possibility that both the magnetic field strength and the atmospheric oxygen level are responding to a single underlying process, such as the movement of Earth’s continents,” said study coauthor Benjamin Mills, a biogeochemist at the University of Leeds.
The researchers hope to examine longer datasets to see if the correlation extends farther back in time. They also plan to investigate the historic abundance of other chemicals essential for life as we know it, such as nitrogen, to determine whether they also support these patterns. As for the specific causes linking the Earth’s deep interior to life on the surface, Kopparapu said: “There’s more work to be done to figure that out.”
After years of opposing them, but facing constituents increasingly angry about rising electricity prices, New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently gave grudging support for two new Williams Companies natural gas pipelines.
After years of opposing them, but facing constituents increasingly angry about rising electricity prices, New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently gave grudging support for two new Williams Companies natural gas pipelines.
Assuming they clear new hurdles, the Constitution Pipeline will transport gas 100+ miles from northeastern Pennsylvania fracking fields toward Albany. The 23-mile Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline will connect New York to the New Jersey segment of the Transco Pipeline, America’s largest-volume natural gas pipeline system, and carry enough gas to heat 2.3 million homes.
Hochul, other state Democrats, and environmental activists have long stymied the projects, using exaggerated and fabricated water quality and climate change arguments – and fanciful expectations that heavily subsidized solar panels and onshore and offshore wind turbines can provide enough affordable electricity, enough of the time, to meet steadily increasing New York City and state power demands.
In exchange, the Trump administration will let them continue installing gigantic offshore wind turbines that will generate 9,000 MW of electricity (less than one-third of what the state needs on hot summer days) perhaps 30-40% of the year … and be supported by fire-prone grid-scale batteries that would provide statewide backup power for about 45 minutes.
New gas turbines would help avoid blackouts, ensure that poor families freeze less often in winter and swelter less in summer, and help the state meet power needs that are soaring because of data centers, artificial intelligence, and legislatively mandated conversions from gasoline and gas to electric vehicles, stoves, and home and water heating.
They could also help reduce the need to import electricity from Canada and other states: some 36,000 gigawatt-hours (11% of statewide electricity) annually.
But legislators want to put another hurdle in the way. New legislation would force homes and businesses to pay $10,000 or more to connect to natural gas lines. If Gov. Hochul signs the bill, or the legislature overrides a veto, few or no new customers would take advantage of the new gas.
It’s a kill switch, reflecting the state’s determination to impose “climate leadership” and “protect communities” from alleged dangers from fossil fuels.
It’s also hypocritical and irresponsible. New York doesn’t just import electricity; it also exports garbage.
New York City generates nearly eight million tons of waste annually. Its last municipal incinerator closed in 1990; its last municipal landfill in 2001. City trash is now mostly sent on barges, trucks, and trains to landfills (80%) and incinerators (20%) in New Jersey, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina! NY state exports 30% of its garbage.
The city and state could address both garbage and electricity challenges by using natural gas to power waste-to-energy (WTE) generating plants that burn trash, thereby reducing the need to landfill or export garbage, while increasing recycling, producing reliable, affordable, much-needed electricity, and reducing blackout risks that are climbing every year.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, a WTE or resource recovery facility operated by Reworld Waste burns home, business, industrial, and other garbage that doesn’t go straight into recycling programs and would typically be landfilled, including myriad extraneous plastics. The trash is dumped in a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials like rocks, mixed thoroughly, and burned with natural gas in a chamber at 2000 degrees F for up to two hours, until it’s totally combusted to ash.
The heat converts water to steam, which is super-heated in tubes to drive turbines that generate electricity: 80 megawatts 24/7, enough for about 52,000 homes. Depending on its composition, a ton of waste generates 550-700 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Since opening in 1990, the plant’s trash has replaced the equivalent of burning 2,000,000 barrels of oil for electricity every year.
Glass from lightbulbs and other nonrecyclable sources becomes part of the ash stream, from which ferrous and nonferrous metals are recovered. Most of the remaining ash is used as a substitute for sand and aggregates in road and building construction, cement and cinder block production, and manufacturing other building materials.
Unsold ash is landfilled, but by the time the metals are removed, only about 10% of the original trash bulk and 25% of its original weight is left.
Even staples, paper clips, bottle caps, metal light bulb bases, aluminum foil, and wires from spiral notebooks and furnace filters can be “recycled” this way. In fact, enough iron, steel, aluminum, copper, and other metals are recovered from the resultant ash at the Fairfax facility to build 20,000 automobiles annually.
However, plastic-metal-glass waste (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, microwaves), broken pots and pans, household appliances, and other larger refuse should go to special “white goods” and metal recycling centers.
Lime neutralizes acids in the airstream, activated carbon controls heavy metals, and fabric filter bags remove particulates, keeping air emissions below EPA standards. The scrubber waste (fly ash) is then dewatered and chemically stabilized before being landfilled or used in construction materials.
Process steam condenses back into water and is reused. Water from the wastes and scrubbers is recovered, treated, and used to cool the facility and equipment.
Two other trash-to-energy facilities serve the Washington, DC area; 75 across the USA generate over 2,500 MW of electricity. However, more WTE plants could help solve garbage, energy, landfill, and pollution problems in metropolitan areas across the country (and worldwide), including:
* Philadelphia, PA – 1,300,000 tons per year of municipal solid waste (MSW), but only one WTE; * Chicago, IL – 3,100,000 tpy, but just one WTE plant (other proposed facilities were rejected); * Houston, TX – 4,200,000 tpy, with one WTE facility; * Phoenix, AZ – 1,000,000 tpy, and one WTE facility; * Los Angeles, CA – 4,000,000 tpy, but again only one WTE facility.
New York and other jurisdictions that have rejected natural gas and waste-to-energy/resource-recovery facilities are missing enormous opportunities to address challenges that will only become worse. They’re also dumping their own local responsibilities into their neighbors’ backyards.
These facilities ensure secure, affordable electricity generation close by, without the need for expensive backup power and multi-hundred-mile transmission lines to part-time wind and solar power.
They utilize fuels that America still has in abundance: gas and trash. And they reduce the need for resources that are in increasingly short supply: landfill space, cropland and wildlife habitats impacted, and bird, bat and other wildlife lost due to wind, solar and transmission installations.
From my perch, these clear and significant benefits clearly offset the cost and subsidy concerns that some have raised about WTE facilities.
Metro areas and states should apply pragmatism, reality, and these benefits when reconsidering climate and “renewable” energy ideologies that have dominated public policies for far too long.
The Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) is also called the Southern Annular Mode or SAM. It is defined as the difference between the zonal (meaning east-west or circumpolar) sea level air pressure between 40°S and 65°S. That is the sea level pressure at 65°S is subtracted from the sea level pressure at 40°S (Gong & Wang, 1999). As the difference increases and SAM becomes more positive, the Southern Hemisphere circumpolar westerly (clockwise as viewed from above the South Pole) winds move closer to Antarctica and generally increase in intensity.
The Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) is also called the Southern Annular Mode or SAM. It is defined as the difference between the zonal (meaning east-west or circumpolar) sea level air pressure between 40°S and 65°S. That is the sea level pressure at 65°S is subtracted from the sea level pressure at 40°S (Gong & Wang, 1999). As the difference increases and SAM becomes more positive, the Southern Hemisphere circumpolar westerly (clockwise as viewed from above the South Pole) winds move closer to Antarctica and generally increase in intensity.
SAM has the third strongest 1950-2021correlation with HadCRUT5, after the AMO and WHWP, of all the oscillations discussed in this series. The R2 that SAM, by itself, has with HadCRUT5 is 0.55. Only the AMO (R2 = 0.58) and WHWP (R2 = 0.56) have higher correlations, all three together achieve an R2 of 0.77 as shown in post 1, figure 3.
When the SAM is positive in winter the persistent westerly winds and the Southern Ocean current that surround Antarctica intensify and allow less Antarctic cold air to escape to the mid-latitudes. The mid-latitude areas, mainly Patagonia, New Zealand, and Southern Australia warm as a result and often become drier. However, in the summer a positive SAM can also draw tropical moisture south causing northern and eastern Australia to get more precipitation. The effects of SAM on the southern mid-latitudes are dependent upon the season and the effects are often opposite in summer and winter. A negative SAM, during the summer, can cause heatwaves in Southern Australia.
When SAM is negative, the belt of circumpolar winds move toward the equator and weaken. Figure 1 illustrates the difference between a positive and negative SAM or AAO. Also, this video from the Bureau of Meteorology of Australia is informative.
Figure 1. An illustration of the positive and negative SAM modes by Bethan Davis. The illustration is CCA. The STF is the Southern Tropical Front and the SWW are the southern westerly winds.
Antarctic temperatures are always cold and don’t vary much (see figure 2), but when SAM is negative it has a big effect on the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitude temperatures and precipitation. The positive SAM occurs more frequently during La Niña events and the negative is often associated with El Niño events.
Figure 2. Recent Antarctic temperature trends. Modified from Turner (2019) figure 10.
The Southern Annular Mode is a function of air circulation around Antarctica and not ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) or SST distribution, thus it is not directly connected to global mean surface temperature (GMST). However, through its outsized influence on Southern Hemispheric weather it does seem to influence the HadCRUT5 GMST or at least correlate with it as shown in figure 3.
As noted in Turner (2019), the phase of the SAM “exerts the greatest control” over Antarctic temperatures. Compare the pre-2000 to post-2000 trends in figure 2 to the shift from a negative to a positive SAM in figures 3 and 4 to observe this. The western Antarctic Peninsula shows more of a change in temperature trends than East Antarctica.
Figure 3. A comparison of the NCEP SAM reconstruction to the HadCRUT5 global temperature anomaly. Since 1925 the visual correlation between HadCRUT5 and SAM is good and the R2 (1925-2024) is 0.46. From 1950-2021, R2 = 0.55.
The GMST is not a very good measure of global climate, the real climate state on Earth is too complicated to describe with any one number but none-the-less, it has become the climate indicator that nearly everyone uses to attempt to measure the impact humans have on climate. As figure 3 shows, the changes in SAM track the changes in GMST as measured by the Hadley Centre.
Figure 3 suggests that Southern Hemisphere wind circulation patterns affect global climate or that both are influenced by some common force. The common forcing could be changes in the Sun, Earth’s orbit, or additional atmospheric CO2. Thus, it could be that global circulation patterns are not just moving heat around in a random fashion, it could be that as they change, regardless of the cause, they affect global climate over the long term.
Unlike most climate oscillations, the CMIP6 climate models do a fair job modeling SAM and collectively they also reproduce the positive trend since 1925 (see figure 3) pretty well (IPCC, 2021, pp. 71, 113, 115, 491). The IPCC believes that the recently increasingly positive SAM is due to CO2-fueled warming (IPCC, 2021, p. 114) & (Lee, Petersen, & Lin, 2019). But it is hard to determine cause and effect in this case.
AR6 admits there is a “lack of consistency in links between increasing greenhouse gases,” the Southern Annular Mode and drought in Cape Town as an example (IPCC, 2021, p. 110). Lee, et al. did a comprehensive model study (using E3SM) of the annual and seasonal SAM and found that while historical and standard model test data (AMIP) created a statistically significant positive trend in recent years, their CO2-based model experiments did not, in fact their 4 times CO2 (4xCO2) model trends opposite (negative) to observations. This casts considerable doubt on the idea that CO2-based warming is affecting the SAM as claimed by the IPCC. Neither their 4xCO2 nor their 1pctCO2 model runs were statistically significant, and neither compared well to observations annually or by season (Lee, Petersen, & Lin, 2019).
The SAM trends positive with time since the early 20th century as shown in figure 3. This suggests that the southern polar vortex is increasing in strength on average. It also suggests more frequent La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific. The SAM, the polar vortex strength, and the ENSO are all affected by stratospheric circulation patterns, which, in turn are influenced by the solar cycle (Haigh, 2011). Haigh also reports that solar activity appears to affect SAM, this can be seen, in a rough way, in figure 4.
Figure 4. Comparing the SAM trend with Silso sunspots. SAM has a strongly positive trend in the first part of the Modern Solar Maximum from 1925-1945 and in the second part from 1970-2000.
The general correspondence in positive SAM trends and solar activity is fair. SAM shows a strong positive trend from 1925-1945 in the first part of the Modern Solar Maximum and from 1970 to 2000 in the second part. But the correspondence from 1945 to 1975 is not very good. After the end of the Modern Solar Maximum in 2005, the SAM trend levels out. The pentadecadal decrease in solar activity from about 1963-1977 in solar cycle 20 and the solar cycle minimum between solar cycles 18 and 19 (1952-1956) may account for some of the interruption in the positive SAM trend from 1945 to 1975, but some other unknown factors are needed to fully explain it.
Discussion
The Southern Annular Mode or Antarctic Oscillation is defined as the sea level air pressure difference between 40°S and 65°S. It is positive when the SLP in higher at 40°S than at 65°S. The climate response varies by season and location, but generally a positive trend means warming in the mid-latitudes and a movement of the strongest surface circumpolar winds poleward (Lee, Petersen, & Lin, 2019). This accounts for much of the good correlation between SAM and HadCRUT5 shown in figure 3.
As Joanna Haigh and others have pointed out there does appear to be a connection between solar activity and SAM, but it is not perfect since solar activity was high during most of the mid-20th century cooling period from 1945 to 1975. Specifically, the 1945 to 1960 portion during solar cycles 18 and 19. Thus, if solar activity influences SAM, something else contributed to the mid-20th century cooling. That period of cooling was global and can be clearly seen in Southern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions (Brönnimann, Brugnara, & Wilkinson, 2024).
The introduction of more CO2 in the E3SM model studies by Lee, et al. produce a negative trend or no trend in SAM which is contrary to observations, making CO2 an unlikely cause of the recent positive SAM trend. Another possible influence on SAM may be trends in other oscillations or changes in the stratosphere as proposed by Wallace (2006). There does appear to be a strong connection between SAM and the stratospheric polar vortex.
The SAM has a powerful influence on global climate and can affect weather in the Northern Hemisphere (Lin, Yu, & Hall, 2025), in particular the Warm Arctic-Cold Eurasian weather pattern that causes a lot of extreme winter weather. The SAM also affects the Indian summer monsoon and other eastern Asia weather phenomena.
The next post will discuss the Atlantic Meridional Mode or AMM.
Works Cited
Brönnimann, S., Brugnara, Y., & Wilkinson, C. (2024). Early 20th century Southern Hemisphere cooling. Climate Past, 20. doi:10.5194/cp-20-757-2024
Gong, D., & Wang, S. (1999). Definition of Antarctic Oscillation Index. Geophysical Research Letters, 26(4), 459-462. doi:10.1029/1999GL900003
IPCC. (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. In V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, . . . B. Zhou (Ed.)., WG1. Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
Lee, D. Y., Petersen, M. R., & Lin, W. (2019). The Southern Annular Mode and Southern Ocean Surface Westerly Winds in E3SM. Earth and Space Science, 6(12), 2624-2643. doi:10.1029/2019EA000663
Lin, H., Yu, B., & Hall, N. (2025). Link of the Warm Arctic Cold Eurasian pattern to the Southern Annular Mode variability. npj Climate & Atmospheric Science, 8. doi:10.1038/s41612-025-01102-z
Turner, J., Marshall, G. J., Clem, K., Colwell, S., Phillips, T., & Lu, H. (2019). Antarctic temperature variability and change from station data. International Journal of Climatology, 2986-3007. doi:10.1002/joc.6378
Wallace, J. (2006). On the Role of the Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations in Polar Climate. ECMWF Seminar on Polar Meteorology (pp. 75-88). ECMWF.
Just 12 car trips person per year would be allowed!
The Berlin Constitutional Court has declared the “Berlin car-free” referendum admissible, paving the way for a possible drastic reduction in car traffic.
Just 12 car trips person per year would be allowed!
The Berlin Constitutional Court has declared the “Berlin car-free” referendum admissible, paving the way for a possible drastic reduction in car traffic.
Cars may soon be banned in Berlin. Image generated by Grok 3 AI
The court found that the aim of promoting health and climate protection is a legitimate legislative objective and that the draft does not violate fundamental rights.
There is no constitutional right to individual road use.
The initiative aims for a car-free Berlin center in which private car trips would be limited to just twelve per person per year. Exceptions would be for police, emergency services and people with mobility impairments. Delivery traffic and special cases such as services would be able to be approved digitally. The proponents argue that the aim is not to replace combustion engines with electric cars, but to reduce the total number of vehicles around the city center.
“We have won, right down the line: the future of Berlin belongs to safety, climate protection and the health of all Berliners – and not to unrestrained car traffic,” said the Volksentscheid Berlin autofrei (Referendum Berlin car-free) in a statement.
170,000 signatures needed for a referendum
Next, the initiative must collect 170,000 signatures within four months in order to bring about a binding referendum.
The initiative, however, faces opposition from various groups. Business associations, such as the Association of Business Associations in Berlin and Brandenburg (UVB), have warned that a widespread car ban would be a severe blow to the economy in the capital region. They fear reduced customer access, especially for businesses that rely on delivery services or customers traveling by car.
There are also concerns that restricting car use would interfere with property rights, as car owners within the affected zone would be limited in how they could use their vehicles near their homes. Many residents and businesses rely on cars for their daily commutes, deliveries, and other activities. The proposed restrictions, allowing only 12 private car trips per person per year within the city’s S-Bahn ring.
Critics also point to the current state of public transport infrastructure, expressing concerns about “significant bottlenecks” and overcrowding if a large number of car users switch to public transport. While Berlin has an extensive public transport network, it probably isn’t robust enough to handle such a massive shift.
The current conservative-led Senate under Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) has actively opposed traffic reduction policies, campaigning against bicycle lane expansion, speed limits, and parking reductions. Residents should be able to choose their mode of transport, including cars.
While the court has deemed the initiative legally permissible, there remains a number of hurdles, including a potential referendum. Past experiences with referendums in Berlin show that implementation can be challenging due to political resistance.
There are also questions about how the 12-trip limit per person would be enforced, raising concerns about bureaucracy and data privacy.
The Brazilian climate conference leadership is fed up with trade wars and shooting wars distracting from climate negotiations.
‘Climate is our biggest war’, warns CEO of Cop30 ahead of UN summit in Brazil
Negotiators doubt countries’ financial and environmental commitment as military and trade wars divert attention
Fiona Harvey Environment editor Sun 29 Jun 2025 14.00 AEST
“Climate is our biggest war. Climate is here for the next 100 years. We need to focus and … not allow those [other] wars to take our attention away from the bigger fight that we need to have.”
Ana Toni, the chief executive of Cop30, the UN climate summit to be held in Brazil this November, is worried. With only four months before the crucial global summit, the world’s response to the climate crisis is in limbo.
Meanwhile, the US president, Donald Trump, has withdrawn from the Paris agreement and is intent on expanding fossil fuels and dismantling carbon-cutting efforts. The EU is mired in tense arguments over its plans. China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is rumoured to be considering weak targets that would condemn the world to much greater heating.
…
Toni, a respected Brazilian economist, told the Guardian: “There’s no doubt that the wars that we’ve seen – military wars and trade wars … are very damaging – physically, economically, socially – and they divert the direction and the attention from climate.”
Are we finally coming to the end of the COP climate process?
Nations are struggling to get their homework in on time, everyone wants to see what everyone else is doing before they submit their own grudging climate plan.
China is rebelling, new coal approvals have surged.
European nations, as usual are being utter hypocrites – pretending they care about climate change, while rushing to exploit and import as much fossil fuel as they can, to prop up their failed renewable systems. Leave it in the ground – except when a European company or nation wants it.
Even Brazil, the host of the COP30 climate conference, is getting into the climate hypocrisy act, clearing a large tract of Amazonian rainforest to create a new highway to the conference site. I wonder if conference participants will be able to purchase souvenirs made from the rare and endangered hardwoods which were bulldozed to make that climate conference road?
And towering over all this is the US led AI revolution, which is driving a profound uptick in demand for energy across the entire world – an increase in demand which cannot be answered by renewables.
NewScientist, a publication dedicated to popularizing science, recently published a post titled “Extreme winter weather isn’t down to a wavier jet stream,” reporting on a new study that shows, the jet stream is not getting wavier in winter months due to climate change. This is true, and it has been evident for some time, but runs counter to assertions commonly made by climate alarmists.
NewScientist, a publication dedicated to popularizing science, recently published a post titled “Extreme winter weather isn’t down to a wavier jet stream,” reporting on a new study that shows, the jet stream is not getting wavier in winter months due to climate change. This is true, and it has been evident for some time, but runs counter to assertions commonly made by climate alarmists.
NewScientist writes that “[i]ncreasingly erratic winter weather in the northern hemisphere isn’t a result of the polar jet stream getting more wavy, according to new research . . ..”
Although the vast bulk of the article is devoted to insisting that climate change is causing worsening winter and summer weather, claims regularly debunked at Climate Realism, the publication deserves some credit for reporting the study’s results concerning the jet stream, which was, in fact, the focus of the research itself.
The new reports findings are not actually that “new,” in the sense that Climate Realism has reported on research that came to the same conclusion several times in the past few years, here, here, and here, for instance. There is copious evidence showing that not only are cold snaps not uncommon, but that the jet stream’s (and more specifically, polar vortex) influence on extreme winter weather has been acknowledged since at least 1853. Years of studies looking at the frequency of and intensity of polar vortex events have found no consistent trends. As pointed out by my colleague Anthony Watts in this post on the subject, “a 2021 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found no statistically significant increase in jet stream waviness or meandering in recent decades,” and he explains there has never been a consensus among scientists when it comes to the issue of polar vortex/jet stream behavior.
The post at NewScientist goes on to explain the new study, saying “recent erratic behaviour isn’t out of the ordinary,” and that the jet stream has been both wavier and less wavy than it is today.
Unfortunately, that is where the NewScientist and the authors of the paper it was discussing ceased to follow the evidence. One of the study’s authors reassured NewScientist that climate change is still “affecting extreme weather events in all sorts of really important ways,” and that the jet stream is actually becoming wavier in the summertime, “where it is getting slower, with bigger waves, which leads to things like big heatwaves, drought, and wildfires.”
This would be compelling if existing data backed up the claim, but, in fact, big heatwaves, drought, and wildfires have not become more frequent or severe in recent decades. Heatwaves were much more severe in the earlier decades of the 20th century, and overall drought has been declining while precipitation increases. Now that it is summer, many outlets are attempting to claim that hot weather is driven by climate change. In doing so they almost always ignore where heat records are being set, as it is often at airports and other heat-absorbing locations, and ignore historical records that show hot summers are not unprecedented.
Similarly, data shows that wildfires were worse in the past with research from NASA and the European Space Agency showing that acreage lost to wildfires has declined markedly over the past few decades.
The NewScientist, and the AGU study it references, should have quit when they were ahead. They should have published their unalarming findings about climate change’s lack of an impact on the winter jet stream without then assuring people that despite their study’s findings, they really are true believers and climate change is making weather worse. The latter point is refuted by real world data.
The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has unveiled the very first “mega” images of the cosmos obtained thanks to the extraordinary features and wide-field view of its LSST camera—the largest in the world. The camera took nearly two decades to build and involved hundreds of scientists across the globe, including a number of CNRS teams. The world-wide First Look unveiling event is held on 23 June at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has unveiled the very first “mega” images of the cosmos obtained thanks to the extraordinary features and wide-field view of its LSST camera—the largest in the world. The camera took nearly two decades to build and involved hundreds of scientists across the globe, including a number of CNRS teams. The world-wide First Look unveiling event is held on 23 June at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
The impressive, car-sized Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera is like nothing seen before: thanks to its 3200-megapixel resolution and the wide field of view of the telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory1, the LSST camera can photograph 45 times the area of the full moon in the sky with each exposure. The high-definition images, which use six different colour filters, capture the entire southern night-sky in just three nights of shooting. One year after its journey from the United States to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, the first “mega” images will be unveiled on 23 June at a press conference held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. This worldwide premiere is the culmination of 25 years of research and construction by international teams, including several research teams from CNRS2.
The exceptional quality of these initial images show that the telescope is ready to start its mission: to scan the entire southern hemisphere sky by taking 1,000 high-definition photographs using six colour filters, every three nights for the next ten years. Studied end-to-end, these scans will provide a high-definition, four-dimensional film of the evolving processes of the Universe. The ten-year project will also generate unprecedentedly rich and profound views of the southern sky and reveal the faintest and furthest-away objects of the cosmos. For the first time on a large scale, this vast survey will reveal the slightest changes in the Universe, from nearby celestial phenomena, such as asteroids and comets, to very distant ones, like supernovae. The project paves the way for major advances in cosmology in dark matter and dark energy, as well as our understanding of our solar system.
CLICK TO ENLARGE: This image combines 678 separate images taken by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. An ULTRA-HIGH-RESOLUTION image is available but may take quite a long time to download. Download Trifid and Lagoon at full resolution (24.14GB)
In this video, NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory showcases 46 subtly pulsating RR Lyrae variable stars in an early glimpse of the dynamic sky Rubin will reveal. Over the next 10 years, Rubin will detect up to about 100,000 of these stars extending out to more than a million light-years away, allowing scientists to map the outer reaches of our Galaxy and explore the structure of the Galactic halo that surrounds the Milky Way and extends nearly halfway to our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
CNRS: a key component of this international project The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory built the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera. As historic partners, SLAC called on CNRS scientists to help build the focal plane of the camera and help design and build its robotic filter exchange system, which will automatically change the camera’s colour filters—each weighing 24-38 kgs—5-15 times per night. By measuring the quantity of light emitted by night-sky objects, and by converging the images taken through the different filters, it will make it possible to precisely determine their position and distance in relation to the Earth. Other CNRS scientists helped develop the computing infrastructure for the quantitative and qualitative data analysis of the gigantic trove of images that will be collected from the 17 billion observable stars and 20 billion observable galaxies. The goal of this painstaking effort is to create the most comprehensive catalogue of data on the universe.
Twenty terabytes of collected data will be stored every night. In France, the France Data Facility (IN2P3) (CNRS) in Lyon will store and process 40% of the collected raw image data. This data will be released to scientists around the world at regular intervals to foster groundbreaking discoveries and breakthroughs over the coming decades.
Why develop a ground-based telescope? Even with 25 space telescopes currently in use, ground-based observation remains essential in documenting the Universe in its entirety. Larger and more sensitive, ground-based instruments produce higher-precision exposures as a result. These instruments also record larger volumes of data than space-based ones, as the remote downloading of data from the latter remains a complex process. Last but not least, ground-based telescopes can also be repaired and improved with increasingly efficient tools. With this state-of-the-art camera, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is the latest addition to the fifty or so structures operating equipment and infrastructure to observe the universe from Earth and space.
Notes :
Named after the American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who was the first to establish the presence of dark matter in galaxies.
From the IN2P3 Computing Centre (CNRS), the Marseille Particle Physics Centre (CNRS / Aix-Marseille Université), the Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory (CNRS / CEA / Université Paris Cité / Observatoire de Paris), the Annecy Laboratory of Particle Physics (CNRS / Université Savoie Mont-Blanc), the Clermont Auvergne Physics Laboratory (CNRS / Université Clermont Auvergne), the Subatomic Physics and Cosmology Laboratory (CNRS / Université Grenoble Alpes), the Nuclear Physics and High Energy Laboratory (CNRS / Sorbonne Université / Université Paris Cité), the Institute of Physics of the 2 Infinities in Lyon (CNRS / Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1), the Laboratory of the Physics of the 2 Infinities Irène Joliot-Curie (CNRS / Université Paris-Saclay / Université Paris-Cité), and the Montpellier Universe and Particles Laboratory (CNRS / Université de Montpellier).
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