Skeptical Science New Research for Week #4, 2020

Suggested suitable pairings

The US EPA has just announced revised regulations for wetlands maintenance. Among other backward effects the freshly degraded rules will allow land developers and others to pretend that the world ends at their own property line, which is of course a fallacy. Homeowners are not permitted to truncate sanitary sewer lines at their property lines, and the commonsense concepts and rationales behind this intelligent convention scale at all levels. A tactical mechanism employed by the current presidential administration of the US in fostering such regulatory degeneracy is that of attacking scientific input to policy formulation at all levels, annoyingly often under the cosmetic guise of “improvements.” Several articles in this week’s GHG sources & sinks, flux and Biology & global warming sections of our research news illustrate the importance of wetlands to our future well being. A critical review of EPA’s “transparency rule” (pdf) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science helps to expose the disingenuous methods employed by the Trump administration as it strives to dial the clock back to a romantic era of unfettered freedom to avoid personal responsibility for making things difficult for other people. 

87 Articles

Physical science of global warming & effects

Pantropical response to global warming and the emergence of a La Niña‐like mean state trend

The contrasting response of outlet glaciers to interior and ocean forcing (open access)

Air pollution slows down surface warming over the Tibetan Plateau (open access)

Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects

Causes and consequences of eastern Australia’s 2019–20 season of mega‐fires

Global warming accelerates uptake of atmospheric mercury in regions experiencing glacier retreat (open access)

Trends and correlations in recent air temperature and precipitation observations across Japan (1906–2005)

Global reconstruction of twentieth century lake surface water temperature reveals different warming trends depending on the climatic zone

Impacts of climate change on the evaporation and availability of water in small reservoirs in the Brazilian savannah

More green and less blue water in the Alps during warmer summers

Replacing GRACE/GRACE‐FO C30 with satellite laser ranging: Impacts on Antarctic Ice Sheet mass change

Forced and unforced decadal behavior of the interhemispheric SST contrast during the instrumental period (1881–2012): contextualizing the abrupt shift around 1970

A decade of variability on Jakobshavn Isbræ: ocean temperatures pace speed through influence on mélange rigidity (open access)

Changing human-sensible temperature in Korea under a warmer monsoon climate over the last 100 years

Spatio‐temporal variability of the annual and monthly extreme temperature indices in Nepal

Unprecedented recent late-summer warm extremes recorded in tree-ring density on the Tibetan Plateau (open access)

Modeling & simulation of global warming & global warming effects

Intensification of the Atlantic Water supply to the Arctic Ocean through Fram Strait induced by Arctic sea ice decline

Global coupled climate response to polar sea ice loss: Evaluating the effectiveness of different ice‐constraining approaches

Projected changes in ENSO-driven regional tropical cyclone tracks

Effects of explicit convection on future projections of mesoscale circulations, rainfall and rainfall extremes over Eastern Africa

Contributions of internal variability and external forcing to the recent trends in the Southeastern Pacific and Peru-Chile upwelling system

What is the Surface Mass Balance of Antarctica? An Intercomparison of Regional Climate Model Estimates (open access)

Increase in ocean acidity variability and extremes under increasing atmospheric CO2 (open access)

Using CESM-RESFire to understand climate–fire–ecosystem interactions and the implications for decadal climate variability (open access)

Response of shortwave cloud radiative effect to greenhouse gases and aerosols and its impact on daily maximum temperature (open access)

Twenty-first century ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and upper ocean nutrient decline from CMIP6 model projections (open access)

Historical Northern Hemisphere snow cover trends and projected changes in the CMIP-6 multi-model ensemble (open access)

ISMIP6 Antarctica: a multi-model ensemble of the Antarctic ice sheet evolution over the 21st century (open access)

Hadley cell expansion in CMIP6 models (open access)

Future changes in atmospheric rivers and extreme precipitation in Norway (open access)

Future projections of wind patterns in California with the variable-resolution CESM: a clustering analysis approach

Multiple possibilities for future precipitation changes in Asia under the Paris Agreement

East Asian Summer Rainfall Projection and Uncertainty under a Global Warming Scenario

Future extremes of temperature and precipitation in Europe derived from a combination of dynamical and statistical approaches

Climate model advancement

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation in high resolution models

Azimuthally Averaged Wind and Thermodynamic Structures of Tropical Cyclones in Global Climate Models and Their Sensitivity to Horizontal Resolution

On the Climate Sensitivity and Historical Warming Evolution in Recent Coupled Model Ensembles (open access)

Experimental protocol for sealevel projections from ISMIP6 standalone ice sheet models (open access)

The role of the surface evapotranspiration in regional climate modelling: Evaluation and near-term future changes

CMIP5 model biases in the climatological mean state of the western Pacific warm pool

Biology & global warming

Evidence for satellite observed changes in the relative influence of climate indicators on autumn phenology over the Northern Hemisphere

Potential changes to the biology and challenges to the management of invasive sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus in the Laurentian Great Lakes due to climate change

The meagre future of benthic fauna in a coastal sea – benthic responses to recovery from eutrophication in a changing climate

Climate and human water use diminish wetland networks supporting continental waterbird migration

GHG sources & sinks, flux

Carbon dioxide fluxes to the atmosphere from waters within flooded forests in the Amazon basin

Carbon system simulation in the Pearl River Estuary, China: mass fluxes and transformations

Synoptic Meteorology Explains Temperate Forest Carbon Uptake

Seasonal Variability of the CO2 System in a Large Coastal Plain Estuary

Investigation of the global methane budget over 1980–2017 using GFDL-AM4.1 (open access)

Soil GHG fluxes are altered by N deposition: New data indicate lower N stimulation of the N2O flux and greater stimulation of the calculated C pools

Assessing the response of forest productivity to climate extremes in Switzerland using model‐data fusion

Modelling and empirical validation of long‐term carbon sequestration in forests (France, 1850‐2015)

Fluvial CO2 and CH4 patterns across wildfire‐disturbed ecozones of subarctic Canada: Current status and implications for future change

Decreased carbon accumulation feedback driven by climate‐induced drying of two southern boreal bogs over recent centuries

Climate change communications & cognition

Civil disobedience movements such as School Strike for the Climate are raising public awareness of the climate change emergency

Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change: Lessons for Deliberative Public Engagement and Communication (open access)

From risk calculations to narratives of danger

Humans dealing with our global warming

Climate change and the opportunity cost of conflict (open access)

Paris Climate Agreement passes the cost-benefit test (open access)

Climate Assessment Moves Local (open access)

Diversity buffers winegrowing regions from climate change losses (open access)

“The best scientists are the people that’s out there”: Inuit-led integrated environment and health monitoring to respond to climate change in the Circumpolar North

Climate smart agriculture extension: gender disparities in agroforestry knowledge acquisition

Adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers toward climate change: evidence from Hamadan province in Iran (open access)

A flood damage allowance framework for coastal protection with deep uncertainty in sea‐level rise (open access)

Quantifying the feedback between rice architecture, physiology and microclimate under current and future CO2 conditions

Prioritizing climate-sensitive infectious diseases under a changing climate in Ghana: a multicriteria evaluation analysis approach

Global ecosystem service values in climate class transitions (open access)

What is important for achieving 2 °C? UNFCCC and IPCC expert perceptions on obstacles and response options for climate change mitigation (open access)

Early transformation of the Chinese power sector to avoid additional coal lock-in (open access)

On the Effects of Linking Cap-and-Trade Systems for CO2 Emissions (open access)

On interaction between carbon spot prices and Czech steel industry (open access)

What drives climate policy adoption in the U.S. states?

Greenhouse gas emission reduction potential and cost of bioenergy in British Columbia, Canada

Meeting goals of sustainability policy: CO₂ emission reduction, cost-effectiveness and societal acceptance. An analysis of the proposal to phase-out coal in the Netherlands

The impact of heterogeneous market players with bounded-rationality on the electricity sector low-carbon transition

Other

A topography of climate change research

A nonequilibrium thermodynamic approach for surface energy balance closure

On the Cooling-to-Space Approximation

Modelling the evolution of Djankuat Glacier, North Caucasus, from 1752 until 2100 AD (open access)

A mass conserving formalism for ice sheet, solid Earth and sea level interaction (open access)

Informed opinion & nudges

EPA’s proposed transparency rule: Factors to consider, many; planets to live on, one (open access)

Cleaner air is a win–win

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