The meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers is not going to be nearly as dire as a Nobel Prize-winning UN climate panel predicted, but it does still threaten the water and food security of 60 million people, says a new report.

Glaciers are often described as the “water towers” of the world, and the UN has warned that the glaciers feeding major Asian river basins - and providing water for 1.4 billion people - are fast disappearing as a result of climate change. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which co-won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, went so far as to say that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 - which UN officials now admit was a mistake.

A study published Friday in the journal Science shows the report got more than the 2035 date wrong. It says the 2007 IPCC report also overstated and oversimplified the impact Himalayan glaciers have on Asian rivers.

Glacier meltwater plays only a “modest role” in the several major river systems in Asia, says the study by a Dutch team that took a close look the rivers downstream from the enormous Himalayan snow and ice fields.

“Meltwater is extremely important in the Indus basin and important for the Brahmaputra basin, but plays only a modest role for the Ganges, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers,” reports the team led by Walter Immerzeel at Utrecht University.

“A huge difference also exists between basins in the extent to which climate change is predicted to affect water availability and food security,” the study says. “The Brahmaputra and Indus basins are most susceptible to reductions of flow, threatening the food security of an estimated 60 million people.”

Though the study says global warming will lead to substantial changes in glaciers, it says the “impact will be less than anticipated” by the IPCC’s 2007 report. “In that report, it was suggested that the current trends of glacier melt and potential climate change may cause the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, and other rivers to become seasonal rivers in the near future,” the Dutch team says. “We argue that these rivers already are seasonal rivers, because the melt and rain seasons generally coincide and a decrease in meltwater is partially compensated for by an increase in precipitation.”

The study helps set the record straight, says glaciologist Graham Cogley, at Trent University, in Peterborough, Ont. “They are probably in the right ballpark,” he says.

Cogley, like many scientists involved with the IPCC, was dismayed the panel’s report contained the unsupported claim that Himalayan glaciers “are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.” UN officials have acknowledged the mistake, which overstated by several hundred years when the glaciers could melt away.

“It was a first-class disaster,” says Cogley, says of the mistake. He says some scientists saw the error and tried to alert senior authors, but it was “too late” to get the report corrected.

Cogley says he hopes that the fiasco - and the toll it has taken on the IPCC’s credibility - will lead to better co-ordination and cross-checking between the groups of thousands of scientists who will soon start work on the next UN climate change report.

He also says referring to the Himalayan glaciers as the “water towers” of Asia is “all right in a hand-waving sort of way.” But Cogley, like the Dutch team, notes that rainfall and snowfall often play a more important role than glacier meltwater in keeping rivers flowing. “The elementary point is that the farther you go downstream from a glacier, the less their relative importance,” says Cogley.

The meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers is not going to be nearly as dire as a Nobel Prize-winning UN climate panel predicted, but it does still threaten the water and food security of 60 million people, says a new report.

Read more here.

It is a measure of the weakness of the case against Sen. Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res.26) that opponents keep trying to change the subject. They want to pretend that a vote for S.J.Res.26 is a vote for Big Oil in general and for BP’s oil spill and all the associated ecological and economic damage in particular.

To say it again, if they really think oil is so bad that America should pay any price, bear any burden, and endure any sacrifice to get “beyond petroleum,” then they should follow the Constitution and try to assemble legislative majorities capable of enacting their agenda.

They know they can’t, so they want EPA - an administrative agency - to enact their agenda for them. That this makes a mockery out of our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability doesn’t seem to bother them one whit.

The vote on S.J.Res.26 is not “about oil.” The endangerment rule, which the Murkowski resolution would overturn, would not create a single tool or authority that could have averted the BP oil spill. It would not tighten a single petroleum industry safety standard or improve a single emergency response program. It would not create a single incentive that might have made BP more diligent in implementing safety standards.

The only way greenhouse gas regulations could stop oil spills is by making deep water drilling unprofitable. That, however, would make America more dependent on IMPORTED oil (duh!). Is that want opponents of S.J.Res.26 want?

They’ll say, no, their goal is to “set America free” from dependence on petroleum as such. But that is not possible at reasonable cost, which is why despite decades of anti-petroleum agitation, fuel economy standards, and government support for alternative technologies and fuels, U.S. petroleum consumption and imports continue to increase.

At most, EPA’s greenhouse gas emission standards can only decrease the rate at which U.S. petroleum consumption increases. More accurately, EPA’s standards would only complicate and reduce the efficiency of the fuel economy program Congress created and amended via the 1975 Energy Policy Conservation Act and 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. As the National Automobile Dealers Association explains in a letter in support of S.J.Res.26, overturning the endangerment rule would help restore a more efficient approach: “a single national fuel economy standard, with rules set by Congress.”

Finally, the notion that oil is bad and hence that government can’t do too much to restrict petroleum production is benighted. Members of Congress who espouse this view either deliberately misleading the public or are ignorant of oil’s historic and continuing massive contribution to the improvement of human health and welfare.

A recent post on a blog called The Intellectual Activist eloquently explains the common sense of the matter. I reproduce it below.

Oil Is Good
By Jack Wakeland

I appreciated the pro-industrialism in last Friday’s edition of TIA Daily:

I also think that we need to return to a more old-fashioned attitude toward industrial accidents. Today, they are considered utterly unacceptable catastrophes for one reason: a large segment of the culture does not accept that it is legitimate for heavy industry to exist at all and has a particular animus toward industries that generate power - including oil and coal. So they exploit every accident to promote their pre-existing agenda of shutting down all oil exploration. But if we accept that the Industrial Revolution is a good thing - that it has roughly doubled the average lifespan and vastly increased our quality of life - then we accept that the oil industry has to exist and that occasional accidents are just part of the cost of living.

With continuous 24-hour headline news coverage of this supposedly “unprecedented” disaster - in fact, it was preceded by the 10-month-long, 140 million-gallon Ixtoc 1 blowout off the gulf coast of Mexico in 1979 - Rob Tracinski and Sarah Palin are among a tiny minority of American commentators who have voiced the opinion that industrial development is essential for civilization. Unfortunately Sarah Palin and almost all conservatives agree 100% with conservationism - the pre-New-Left version of environmentalism. They say that energy development as a “dirty” business - a necessary evil - that produces “dirty” messes. But we must endure the ugly mess if we are to enjoy the benefits of living a civilized existence.

Of all of the hundreds of commentaries written about the BP oil spill, I can’t recall one single editorial that endorses oil drilling as good.

It is good for oil company stock holders. Good for industrial producers. Good for automobile and truck drivers. Good for people who travel by ship, railroad, or aircraft. Good for people who don’t want to be limited to living out their whole lives without ever traveling farther than 100 miles from the village in which they were born.

Oil is good for people who buy products that are shipped to them from out of town. Good for producers who buy parts and supplies that are shipped in from out of town. Good for the specialization of industrial production that is made possible by mass shipment of parts and materials. Good for the geometrical growth of world-wide industrial productivity made possible by the specialization of production and trade.

Oil is good for farmers who use machines to plant and reap and store and dry and ship and process all of the food we eat. Good for farmers who use fertilizer and other agri-chemicals made from oil to boost the productivity of the land. Good for anyone who doesn’t enjoy enduring bouts of malnutrition and starvation- and the occasional famine.

Oil is good for people who don’t want to endure freezing indoor temperatures in the winter. Good for all producers and end users of lubricants, paints, plastics and other petro-chemical-based products. (Half of the volume of a barrel of crude oil ends up going to make fertilizers and plastics.)

Oil is good for powering all of the ships, trucks, aircraft, helicopters, communications equipment and base electrical systems, and all of the fighting vehicles that the US military use for our national defense. (Ask yourself why it was that when the US Army Air Force decided to destroy the entire nation of Germany in 1944 - why was it that they bombed the oil refineries? Why was it that they bombed all modes of transportation to limit shipment between factories of unfinished industrial products?)

Oil drilling isn’t a “dirty” business. It isn’t a necessary evil. It is good. It is a life-giving good. It is an unqualified good.

The problems of an occasional industrial accident in which fewer than a dozen men are killed fades to nothing in comparison with the great comfort and prosperity and scope of life- including the operation of the mechanized agriculture and industrial production upon which the bare survival of the vast majority of the 6.5 billion human beings currently living on this earth depends. 

UPDATE: Read here why Barbara Boxer needs to be ousted in te next election after this bit of demogoguery and more here.

See also how Auto Dealers Demolish White House Rationale for Opposing Murkowski Resolution in letter to senators here.

Today (June 10, 2010), the Senate will vote on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res.26) to overturn the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. 

The endangerment finding is both trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes Congress never approved. Wednesday, I will speak in support of S.J.Res.26 at an 11:00 a.m. Capitol Hill press conference hosted by Americans for Prosperity. My prepared statement follows.

Prepared Statement of Marlo Lewis

Sen. Murkowski’s resolution would stop EPA from ‘enacting’ controversial global warming policies through the regulatory back door. The endangerment finding is a classic case of bureaucratic self dealing. EPA has positioned itself to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards, set climate policy for the nation, and even amend provisions of the Clean Air act - powers Congress never delegated to the agency.

Worse, America could end up with a pile of greenhouse gas regulations more costly than any climate bill or treaty the Senate has declined to pass or ratify, yet without the people’s representatives ever voting on it. The Murkowski resolution puts a simple question before the Senate: Who shall make climate policy - lawmakers who must answer to the people at the ballot box or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges appointed for life? Because the endangerment finding dramatically expands EPA’s power, the agency fiercely opposes S.J.Res.26, depicting it as an attack on science.

That is nonsense. Although a strong case can be made that the endangerment finding is scientifically flawed, the Murkowski resolution neither takes nor implies a position on climate science.

The resolution would overturn the “legal force and effect” of the endangerment finding, not its reasoning or conclusions. It is a referendum not on climate science but on who should make climate policy. Climate policy is too important to be made by non-elected bureaucrats. That ought to be a proposition on which all Senators can agree.

The importance of Thursday’s vote is difficult to exaggerate. Nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability hangs in the balance.

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PRESS RELEASE NCPPR

National Center for Public Policy Research

Washington, D.C. - Senators will soon consider a resolution to pare back an Environmental Protection Agency plan to regulate greenhouse gases - a plan that would raise energy costs.

On June 10, the U.S. Senate will consider a “resolution of disapproval” regarding a 2009 ruling made by the EPA in late 2009 claiming six greenhouse gases are a threat to public health. This makes these gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

“The EPA’s endangerment finding endangers our economy and our liberty,” said Deneen Borelli, full-time fellow with the Project 21 black leadership network. “The EPA’s effort to regulate greenhouse gases will affect virtually every aspect of our economy and our lives. In expert opinion, this will result in higher energy costs and job losses while having—by their own admission—virtually no effect on cooling global climate.”

Senate Joint Resolution 26, introduced by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), would use the Congressional Review Act to overturn the administrative ruling. This would allow elected representatives to deliberate and pass their own regulations as Congress sees fit.

“I don’t want an unelected bureaucrat imposing rules and regulations on businesses that are essentially a tax on energy and will be passed along to consumers—many of whom are just getting by as it is,” said Tom Borelli, director of the Free Enterprise Project of the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“Opposition to the cap-and-trade bill that was jammed through the House of Representatives is one of the key positions of the tea parties, and this endangerment finding is cap-and-trade by other means,” noted Deneen Borelli. “Americans are already skeptical enough of lawmakers these days. Watching them pass up an opportunity to do what they were sent to Washington for will restore no lost faith in the government.”

“This resolution is a major indicator of where our republic is headed. Senators will determine if they are going to cede their authority as an elected representative of the people to largely unaccountable bureaucrats,” added Tom Borelli. “While the White House is eager for the EPA to seize regulatory authority, rank-and-file Americans such as those found in the tea party movement are troubled and will be watching to see who will be for and who will be against this massive federal power grab.” See release here.

The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-profit, free-market think-tank established in 1982 and funded primarily by the gifts of over 100,000 recent individual contributors. Less than one percent of funding is received from corporations.

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The EPA Runs Amuck
By Alan Caruba

On Thursday, the Senate will vote on S.J. Resolution 26. It is an effort to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating “greenhouse gas emissions” without any legislative accountability. If the vote fails, the EPA will be free to continue its assault on the nation’s economy and every aspect of your personal life.

Here’s what my friend, Dr. Kenneth P. Green, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, had to say about the energy and environment “advisor” to President Barack Obama:

“Carol Browner’s selection as ‘energy coordinator’ (sometimes called energy czar) virtually guarantees that the Obama administration’s energy and environmental policies will be anything but moderate.”

“Her two terms as Environmental Protection Agency boss were marked by adversarialism, punitive enforcement actions, draconian tightening of environmental regulations and the message that business is destructive of the environment and dishonest about the cost of environmental regulations.”

And that was just the nice things he had to say about Browner. It is worth noting that Browner has been the lead spokesman about the BP oil spill for the Obama administration after it became obvious that Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, was generating negative public reaction to his ‘get tough’ approach and there have been few public statements issued by Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy.

The current administrator of the EPA is Lisa Jackson who learned her trade working under Browner until she was picked to head the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. A Browner acolyte, Jackson has presided over an EPA run amuck.

Jackson will be remembered for leading the EPA fight to get carbon dioxide declared a “pollutant” that can then be regulated under the Clean Air Act. This is the same reasoning put forth by the constantly renamed Cap-and-Trade Act that is was a “climate” bill and has now become something else. It is based on the same totally bogus “science” that gave us “global warming” until Mother Nature decided that the Earth should begin to cool about a decade ago.

President Obama just announced that, just like the much-hated healthcare reform bill, he is going to devote himself to getting Cap-and-Trade passed by Congress. Combined, they should be called The Destroying America’s Economy Act.

Suffice to say that, other than oxygen, carbon dioxide is the other gas on which all life on Earth depends. It’s what all vegetation “breaths” and, coincidently, it is what all humans and other animals exhale. It has nothing to do with the climate.

Dr. Green points out that, “When it comes to climate change, she is a disciple of Al Gore for whom she worked from 1988 to 1991,” adding that “Browner believes that ‘climate change is the greatest challenge ever faced’ and that the EPA is the agency to face it.”

I have been watching the EPA in action since it was created in the 1970s by Mr. Watergate himself, Richard Nixon. It has since expanded like a cancer cell, doing a lot of damage along the way. There must be a sign on the wall of EPA headquarters that says, “If it’s a chemical, we will ban it.” On May 24, the EPA announced it was discussing the perils of oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico. Please, let’s do nothing to disperse the oil!

From its earliest days, the EPA set out to ban or limit the use of any and all pesticides nationwide. They have never stopped. It is essential to understand that what passes for EPA “science” is merely a charade to advance their agenda.

It can cost up to $15 million or more for a company to get a pesticide registered for use. If you take away the pesticides, all that’s left is the pests, but this simple truth is lost on the EPA. They have come up with a proposed new “permit requirement that would decrease the amount of pesticides discharged to our nation’s waters and protect human health and the environment.” If you really want to protect human health, you have to kill the billions of insect and rodent pests that have always spread disease.

So far in the last month, the EPA has announced they will release “a draft health assessment for formaldehyde that focuses on evaluating the potential toxicity of inhalation exposures to this chemical.”

Also announced was news that the EPA “is initiating a rulemaking to better protect the environment and public health from the harmful effects of sanitary sewer overflows and basement backups.” They are “reviewing” Florida’s coastal water quality standards, a move that will wreak havoc on its agricultural and tourist industries.

Another EPA announcement noted that “It just got harder for a TV to earn the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star. Starting May 1, 2010, TV’s that carry the government’s Energy Star label are, on average, 40 percent more efficient than conventional models.” This is all done in the name of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions” when, in fact, this is the baseless justification for the global warming hoax.

If at this point, you are beginning to think the EPA is just a tad intrusive regarding your basement backup problems, the kind of television set you should purchase, and other previous decisions such as how much water your toilet can use or the banning of incandescent light bulbs nationwide, you will be happy to know that in May the EPA took the time to “encourage ways to travel green by checking into an Energy Star labeled hotel.”

While in the hotel, you are advised to “turn off the lights and TV when leaving the hotel room”, “adjust the thermostat to an energy-saving setting so it doesn’t heat or cool the room while empty”, “to open curtains to take advantage of daylight when possible”, and “re-use linens to save both water and energy.”

If, by now, you’re getting the feeling that the EPA is more intrusive into the most mundane aspects of your life than any other government agency or combination of agencies, you’re right.

And very little of it has anything to do with protecting your health or the environment. It has everything to do with advancing a fanatical green agenda intended to threaten every form of energy production, manufacturing process, property rights, and your right to make a wide range of personal lifestyle decisions.  See post here.

RADIO INTERVIEW
Shannon Goessler, the executive director of the Southeastern Legal Foundation will be discussing SLF’s lawsuit against the EPA over CO2 regulation on Global Cooling Radio.  The interview will take place this Saturday at 10:00 AM CDST here.

In today’s odd academic culture, including the world of climate science, academic freedom applies selectively. People use their positions and their email for politicking and electioneering and have no trouble retaining their jobs. But using your email to send out some inconvenient, apolitical weather data that says something your boss or your governor may not like can get you fired.

I can’t count the number of emails I received in my thirty years at University of Virginia where this faculty member or that administrator urged me to support some piece of legislation. But the latest email kerfluffle, involving Phil Mote, director of the Oregaon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University, goes a bit further.

Mote was upset that Art Robinson, a physician from Cave Junction, Oregon, won the Republican primary for Oregon’s fourth congressional district. That’s because Robinson was behind the “Oregon Petition Project,” in which over 31,000 people, largely science professionals (including over 9,000 with doctorates), signed on to a document stating that there was “no scientific evidence” that greenhouse gas emissions could cause ‘catastrophic heating” in the foreseeable future.

Robinson did not harp on this issue in the campaign. Instead he ran against the general politics of 12-term incumbent Pete deFazio, including his March vote for President Obama’s health care bill. With that one, deFazio probably voted himself out of Congress.

In response to Robinson’s Republican primary win, Mote wrote to his colleagues at Oregon State University emphasizing that Robinson was the force behind the Petition Project and that, if he were elected, OSU would be put in the “tragic ranks of our climate colleagues at University of Oklahoma...and University of Alaska,” where elected officials have the temerity to disagree with Mote about global warming. He signed his missive as “Director, Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and Oregon Climate Services.” Eventually he emailed his colleagues, calling his initial message a “mistake.”

Hardly. Consider the shady track record of climatology in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. Mote’s previous position was Washington State Climatologist at the University of Washington, where he repeatedly pointed to a 50% decline in mountain snows between 1950 and the mid-1990s. But there are data available after 1995 and before 1950, and when all the data are taken together - thanks in part to the fact that it has snowed plenty there in the last 15 years- the strong decline is erased.

Mote’s then Associate State Climatologist, Mark Albright, emailed this information to several people. When he refused to stop telling the whole truth, Mote terminated his position. Across the Columbia River at Oregon State University, the previous head of the Oregon Climate Services, George Taylor, put all of the Cascade snowfall data online for anyone to see. The long-term records clearly showed no decline at all. Ted Kulongoski, Oregon’s “green” governor, told Taylor he could no longer refer to himself as Oregon State Climatologist. Oregon State University showed little support, too (although Taylor was twice elected as President of the American Association of State Climatologists). Taylor quit rather than continue in such an environment.

George Taylor got into trouble for simply for telling the truth about the lack of a big decline in mountain snowfall, and his university seemed to not care. Mark Albright lost his position for the exact same offense. Phil Mote, who terminated Albright, replaced George Taylor.

Two things are very disturbing. Where was the hue and cry over “academic freedom” over the Albright and Taylor incidents? And how could Mote originally think it was just perfectly fine to use his official position concerning a local race for Congress?

Intolerance appears to be endemic in academic climatology. In Climategate, the University of East Anglia found nothing wrong with a culture of climate bullies blatantly attempting to bend the canon of knowledge, which is the peer reviewed scientific literature. Penn State did the same in its investigation of Michael Mann’s vituperative emails found in the East Anglia package.

The overarching issue is that political correctness has so infected the academy that academic freedom with regard to global warming is now a figment, while electioneering on the public’s dime results in no punishment whatsoever. See more and comments here.

See recent ICECAP story on this situation with Mote here with link backs to prior stories on the snowpack.

The calmest sun in a century may rustle up more hurricanes, as the season officially begins. Research by Robert Hodges and Jim Elsner of Florida State University found the probability of three or more hurricanes hitting the United States goes up drastically during low points of the 11-year sunspot cycle, such as we’re in now.

Our star is just beginning to eke out of the lowest period for sunspots in a century. Years with few sunspots and above-normal ocean temperatures spawn a less stable atmosphere and, consequently, more hurricanes, according to the researchers.

Years with more sunspots and above-normal ocean temperatures yield a more stable atmosphere and thus fewer hurricanes. “The effect is actually amplified under certain conditions,” said James Elsner, a geography professor at Florida State University. Hodges is his graduate student. “With fewer sunspots, there’s less energy at the top of the atmosphere,” Elsner explained, therefore the atmosphere above the hurricane is cooler.

When that happens, the differential creates more atmospheric instability and stronger storms, energizing what might otherwise remain tropical storms into hurricanes. Chances of three or more hurricanes hitting the U.S. increase from 20 to 40 percent in years when sunspots are in the lowest 25 percent, compared with years when they’re in the highest 25 percent, the researchers found.

There’s only a 25 percent chance of at least one hurricane hitting the United States in peak sunspot years. The chance spikes to 64 percent in the lowest sunspot years. The scientists studied the frequency of hurricanes and sunspots from 1851 to 2008, adjusting for other hurricane-influencing factors such as El Nino and changes in sea-surface temperature. They recently presented their findings in a poster at the American Meteorological Society’s conference in Arizona. Their work also was published this month in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters (Elsner, J. B., T. H. Jagger, and R. E. Hodges (2010), Daily tropical cyclone intensity response to solar ultraviolet radiation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L09701, doi:10.1029/2010GL043091).

UV light’s effects

For hurricanes to form, the atmosphere must cool fast enough, at the right heights, to make it unstable enough for storm clouds to form. This thunderstorm activity enables heat stored in the ocean to be unleashed, developing into tropical cyclones. As the “heat-engine theory” of hurricanes goes, storm strength decreases when the layer near the hurricane’s top warms.

Although sunspots are cooler, darker blotches on the sun, more solar flares form near the increased magnetic activity within sunspots. “The spots are kind of an indication of the amount of energy,” Elsner explained. “The more sunspots, the more active the sun.” Sunspots ebb and flow on 11-year cycles. There can be anywhere from 200 to 300 sunspots a day at the cycle’s peak or as few as one to three dozen at the cycle’s low, as has been happening in recent months.

Solar radiation also varies as the spots pass across the sun’s surface while the star rotates on its axis about once a month. The sun’s yearly average radiance during its 11-year cycle only changes about one-tenth of one percent, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. But the warming in the ozone layer can be much more profound, because ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation. Between the high and low of the sunspot cycle, radiation can vary more than 10 percent in parts of the ultraviolet range, Elsner has found.

When there are more sunspots and therefore ultraviolet radiation, the warmer ozone layer heats the atmosphere below. Their latest paper shows evidence that increased UV light from solar activity can influence a hurricane’s power even on a daily basis.

Sunspots no factor

The researchers say their finding could help improve hurricane intensity forecasting. But because of the novelty of the research, the National Hurricane Center has yet to factor in sunspots in its forecast. Nor do hurricane seasonal forecasters such as Phil Klotzbach and William Gray’s team at Colorado State University. “Thus far we’ve not used sunspot information at all,” said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami. “If it does prove to be a robust signal, we’ll certainly consider including it in the future. But Id’ need to see more evidence.” Read story and comments here.

See more on the solar cycle variances of ultraviolet effect on climate here.