I have known Jim Witt for decades. He was Science Director for the Dutchess County schools in New York and co-founder of Fleetweather, Inc. In 1962 he initiated a very unique high school weather station at the school in which he taught. The United States Weather Bureau, extremely interested in the program, deemed it the most advanced high school weather program, not only in the entire United States but also in the entire world. Even in those very early years, he possessed a state-of-the-art Teletype machine, which brought current weather data directly into the school. He knew where it was snowing and when it would reach our area. This generated great excitement. He also had our own Weather Radar. This was donated, installed and repaired by Air Weather Service located in Lakehurst, New Jersey. In addition, he had access to computers; yes, even that far back he had use of computers, and the students used these constantly. Graduates of this weather program went on to get their doctorates in Meteorology and Computer Sciences and are now making their mark in prestigious positions such as: Director of Research of the National Hurricane Center, The Lead Forecaster for the NASA manned flight center, The Executive Vice President of Accu-weather, The Head Scientist and Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Another student has written the computer program (GFS Model) which all meteorologists in the world use each day to make their weather forecasts. Jim and his students also explored the solar system and its connection to weather. Jim has continued his research for many decades and has done a celendar each year with daily forecasts with every penny raised going directly to children who are seriously or terminally ill or who are physically or mentally challenged. To date, he has distributed over $1,700,000. He is well known in the New York area (see New York Times story here) for his long range forecasts and is a frequent guest on WOR radio. See some of the testimonials here for his calendar forecasts. 

Jim notes that lunar and solar cycles have a great influence, not only on our weather, but also on our climate. Years of pain staking research suggest they do. The sun is the main driver of our weather and climate. Much of his energies have centered on what really influences the sun and how these changes affect the jet stream, storm development and storm movement on earth. To produce a long-range weather forecast, all the information is fed into a series of computer programs. The programs then calculate an analog date. An analog date is a date, from the past, which has conditions (Sun & Earth, Sun & other Planets, Moon & Earth) similar to the date for which we are making the weather forecast. Unfortunately, weather observations at best, only “look back” one hundred years or so. This is just a “blink of an eye” when compared to the history of weather on earth. If the analog date happens to be a date from the 14th century, it is completely useless since no weather records exist that far back. Because of a lack of weather data during the “early years” it is very possible the analog date he will finally use could be the 4th, 5th or even 6th choice. Naturally, this will not nearly be as accurate as the first choice, the closest match.

Using this approach and gathering complete global historical data, Jim has with one of his former students, Neal Townsend, a specialist in weather computing, developed a very intriguing site here with forecasts for locations throughout the United States and abroad out two years.  Check it out. The first ten days are official government forecasts. Long range forecasts start day 11. His verification statistics are impressive. I have been often surprised how well the forecasts have verified especially for major events. I believe you may also.  I myself have used analog approaches for years using ENSO, QBO, PDO, solar and many other factors with some success. Jim’s approach takes a step back and looks at the factors that might actually control some of these events or indices and the intraseaonal variations we experience.  Again you can see the site here.

A new study that shows their internal temperature remains constant at 21.4deg could challenge the way trees are used to determine historical climate data. The internal temperature of leaves, whether in the tropics or a cold-clime forest, tends toward a nearly constant 21.4 degrees Celsius, reports a study released today. It had long been assumed that actively photosynthesising leaves - using energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar - are nearly as cold or hot as the air around them.

The new findings not only challenge long-held precepts in plant biology, but could upend climate models that use tree rings to infer or predict past and present temperature changes. For decades, scientists studying the impact of global warming have measured the oxygen isotope ratio in tree-rings to determine the air temperature and relative humidity of historical climates. Oxygen atoms within water molecules evaporate more or less quickly depending on the number of neutrons they carry, and the ratio between these differently weighted atoms in tree trunk rings has been used as a measure of year-to-year fluctuations in temperatures and rainfall.

“The assumption in all of these studies was that tree leaf temperatures were equal to ambient temperatures,” lead researcher Brent Helliker told AFP. “It turns out that they are not.” Helliker and University of Pennsylvania colleague Suzanna Richter turned those assumptions upside down in examining 39 tree species, across 50 degrees of latitude ranging from sub-tropical Columbia to boreal Canada. They compared current observed records of humidity and temperature against the isotope ratios in the trees, and found that tree leaves were internally cooler than surrounding air temperatures in warm climes, and warmer in cool climes. Even more startling was that in all cases the average temperature - over the course of a growing season - was about 21degC. “It is not surprising to think that a polar bear in northern Canada and a black bear in Florida have the same internal body temperature,” because both animals have internal thermostats to prevent overheating or freezing to death, he said. “But to think that a Canadian black spruce and a Caribbean Pine have the same average leaf temperature is quite astonishing,” he added.

Tree leaves keep cool through constant evaporation and reducing sun exposure through leaf angles or reflective qualities. Warmth is gained by decreasing evaporation and increasing the number of leaves per branch. All these tricks should be seen as evolutionary adaptations that help the trees attain a maximum of nutrients through optimal photosynthesis, Helliker said. The fact that part of this adaptation occurs at the level of entire forest canopies, and not just within individual leaves, is one reason direct measurements of tree temperatures have been so hard. The new findings, published in the British journal Nature, are bolstered by a recent study of a mixed species forest in Switzerland based on infrared thermal imaging. Measured across an entire growing season, the forest canopy temperatures were found to be 4degC to 5degC higher than the cool, ambient air in the Swiss Alps.

Global warming is forcing 30 species of reptiles and amphibians to move uphill as habitats shift upward, but they may soon run out of room to run. The shift could cause at least two toad species and one species of gecko in Madagascar to go extinct by the end of this century, a biologist says. Uphill movement is a predicted response to increased temperatures, researcher Christopher Raxworthy of the American Museum of Natural History says. Earlier studies in Costa Rica have provided evidence of how tropical animals respond to climate change.

The new research - based on surveys of Madagascar’s amphibians and reptiles conducted in 1993 and 2003 and announced this week - extends that work, expanding the number and diversity of species that the trend affects, making a stronger link with meteorological changes, dealing with relatively large shifts in elevation, and assessing the extinction vulnerability for tropical communities in the mountains. Nowhere to run.

Two of these species were not found again during the most recent 2003 survey. (And for the 30 species that were re-sampled between 1993 and 2003, the majority are already moving upslope to compensate for habitat loss at lower and warmer altitudes.) Extinction is expected to occur between 2050 and 2100 if current trends persist, because there will eventually be no higher ground, predict Raxworthy and his colleagues from the Universite d’Antananarivo in Madagascar, National Chung-Hsing University in Taiwan, University of Michigan and University of Oxford. The prediction is based on a conservative scenario in which warming remains below 2 degrees C (3 degrees F). Warming above 2 degrees C is considered to be dangerous in terms of impacts on biodiversity. “Obviously, more warming will put more species at risk,” Raxworthy told LiveScience. Read more here.

Icecap reality check: here is the NASA annual temperature plot since the 1880s for Antananarivo, a large city in Madagascar with a population of 452,000. See if you spot any signs of global warming. I always thought for there to be warming, temperatures actually had to rise. The creatures can’t read IPCC reports or model forecasts. Maybe they are moving because of the loss of habitat to population growth or trying to escape those crazy scientists with cameras and probes.

See larger graph here

One of the most vexing things about climate change is the endless debate about temperatures. Did they rise, did they fall or were they pushed? At times it seems like a Monty Python sketch following either the Dead Parrot or the 5 or 10 Minute Argument. However it is possible to see some of the issues by looking at the correlation of the five temperature series that are advanced by the uppers or the downers.

The five groups are:
1. GISS, The Goddard Institute, home of James Hansen,
2. NCDC, The National Climate Data Center, a part of NOAA (as is GISS), the National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration.
3. BMO/UEA, The British Meteorological Office and the University of East Anglia.
4. UAH, The University of Alabama, Huntsville, home of Roy Spencer with his colleagues including John Christy of NASA
5. RSS, Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, California, a company supported by NASA for the analysis of satellite data.

The first three groups use ground based data where possible with a degree of commonality. However since 70% of the surface of the earth is ocean and it is not monitored in a detailed manner, various recipes are followed to fill the ocean gap, if that is the best way of putting it. The last two groups use satellite data to probe the atmosphere and with the exception of the Polar Regions which are less than 10% of the globe, they get comprehensive coverage.

One of the ways to probe this is to look over time at the degree of correlation achieved in the measurements of the global temperature anomaly. The results of such a comparison are given in Table 1 for the monthly time series from 1979 to 2008. There is the Pearson correlation coefficient extracted from the data. A value of 1.00 shows the compared values move in step with each other while a value of 0.00 would give complete independence. (A value of-1.00 is also possible.) “Commonality”, the square of the correlation coefficient is interpreted as showing what proportion of one measurement series is covered by the other series. Note that correlation does not imply connection or causality except that we know there is some commonality with ground based measurements.

See larger table here. Read more of the interesting results here.

The linked to in-depth submission with a list of recommendations was made to the Australian Garnaut Review for consideration before making more unwise policy decisions about actions to offset climate change. Though they were meant for the Australian government, decision and policy makers should be made aware of these facts before going ahead here in the United States and elsewhere to take action that would greatly exaggerate the harm already done by prior actions or lack of actions by our presidents and congress of both parties (in part thanks to extensive lobbying by environmentalists) over the last three decades that has left us much more dependent on foreign oil when we could and should be energy independent.

While we are shocked by $4 per gallon gasoline, in countries that are energy independent, gasoline prices are absurdly cheap. In Venezuela gasoline is 12 cents a gallon. In Saudi Arabia it’s 45 cents a gallon. This is made all the more painful by the Chinese drilling for oil just 60 miles off the Florida coast while regulations prevent drilling for the oil and gas we have that could meet our total oil needs for 60 years and natural gas for 40 years giving us time to develop alternative energies. We haven’t built a nuclear plant in decades or a refinery for gasoline since the Carter administration. Instead we go down the ridiculous path of ethanol from corn that drives up all food prices without reducing emissions.

Richard starts out: “The scientific investigation of the Earth’s climate dynamics examines all the factors that give rise to climate change. Policy advice about what a government might do ameliorate the impact of climate dynamics, or more realistically, adapt efficiently to expected impacts of climate dynamics, would have to have regard to all of the main classes of results of this scientific investigation. If it didn’t, the policy advice would be flawed. If the Commonwealth Government was presented with a partial and biased analysis based merely on some aspects of climate dynamics, and policy advice was based only on a limited evaluation of some of those aspects, the legislative and budget measures implemented by the Commonwealth would join the catalogues of bad policy referred to in this Submission.”

He then goes on to recommend they hear a review of all the factors in climate change, hear about the shortcomings of the IPCC report, recognize that large scale oscillations are the norm and adopt a policy that adapts to change, advise research organizations to resume research into the areas of relationships between solar variability and climate dynamics; the natural internal variability of the climate system; and relationships between climate dynamics and the massive re-engineering of the planet by human beings over the last 300 years or so, and based on the finding of the submission, recognize that taxes (direct or indirect), tax expenditures, subsidies, grants, economic transfers or other forms of assistance or industry and/or workforce regulation are not warranted. He then goes into great detail on many of these issues and the science behind them.