Administrative Notice
URL change: andreasjonsson > andreasijonsson
Administrative Notice
This is now strictly a science blog. I have moved all bird-related content over to http://swiftbirder.tumblr.com/. Please check it out.
Madden-Julian Conversation
I just stumbled on this new blog over at realclimate.org called the “Madden-Julian Conversation”. They have a series of very nice tutorial posts speaking about atmospheric modes of variability, including large-scale patterns such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Monsson and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). It is an excellent introduction to understanding the regularity and chaos of our changing climate.
What is the MJO? Part 3 - on modes of variability, and space and time scales
What is the MJO? Part 4 - more background on modes of variability
What is the MJO? Part 5 - interannual and intraseasonal, prediction, beating chaos
This video of the Aurora Australis from the International space station is so beautiful you’d almost think it was made up (computer animated). Note the forest fires on the ground towards the end of the video.
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=111725891
The beauty and simplicity of this presentation of the Aurora Borealis blows my mind.
Canada Cuts Ozone Sonde Network
This is really troubling. Canada, with its huge landmass in the Arctic, has a tremendous responsibility to the global community to continue its long-term monitoring of this fragile region. I don’t think Environment Canada are to blame specifically; they are just trying to cope with significant budgets cuts under the current government.
Arctic sea ice loss
A Polar bear has been recorded swimming 426 miles for nine straight days in search for ice.
Reduced emissions of ozone depleting substances will mitigate global warming
An interesting new study was presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Fransisco in December 2010: It was shown that controlling emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) within the Montreal Protocol and its amendments to prevent thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer, will have significant beneficial side-effects on climate change. It is projected that global warming could be reduced by as much as 1.5 degrees by 2070, compared to a scenario in which CFCs would have been allowed to increase unabated.
This is an exceptionally pedagogic clip from BBC that gives a hands on feeling for the Earth’s atmospheric layers by documenting the longest human free-fall in history. The video of Noctilucent clouds in the mesosphere were taken by my former colleague Jacek Stegman at Stockholm University.
Merchants of Doubt is a new book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway describing how the influential Marshall Institute in Washington, D.C., has run effective campaigns spreading doubt and confusion about climate change in an attempt to discredit the scientific consensus put forward by the IPCC. The book makes the interesting point that such climate change deniers are not, as often quoted, primarily motivated by financial incentives (e.g. it is often said that global warming skeptics are paid by the oil industry to prevent any regulations on the lucrative oiling business). Instead, the authors claim that the motivation at its core is ideological—these conservative scientist view any government regulation as a step towards socialism and communism. In essence, after the end of the cold war these contrarians turned to new enemies, working hard to prevent any government interventions against tobacco smoking and actions to address environmental issues, including acid rain, the ozone hole, and most lately climate change. I think this is a very important point to remember in the current debate.
If you don’t have time to read the book, this short radio interview by the Australian ABC sums it up pretty well.
These presentations are also well worth a watch:
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