Written by Carli Velocci
A cloudy day here on Earth might be a sign for gloom, but elsewhere in the universe, to behold one is a scientific achievement.
In this case, a team of researchers from UC Santa Cruz announced that they have detected water clouds for the first time outside our solar system on a brown dwarf known as WISE 0855, which is around 7.2 light-years away from Earth.
Written by Vijay Jayaraj
Throughout history, humans have cautioned each other to prepare for winter, both literally and figuratively. Harsh climates can be very dangerous, and hard times fall on us all. Globally, that warning can again be given literally as temperatures are dropping – winter is coming! 
The latest temperature records indicate a massive drop in the global temperature levels during the past two months, helped by the receding El Niño and the fast-approaching La Niña. In fact, the 2-month drop of 0.37˚ C (0.67˚ F) in global average temperature May-June was the second largest in 37 years of recorded history.
If the approaching La Niña is strong, it will drive the temperature further downward.
And this recent drop in global temperature levels only reiterates the importance of relying on accurate satellite-based temperature measurements for our assessment of climate change.
These current real-world temperature levels are already lower than the faulty computer model temperature projections used by the IPCC to guide global energy and developmental policies.
Written by Maxim Lott
Do scientific papers ever seem like unreadable gibberish to you? Well, sometimes they really are.
Some 120 papers published in established scientific journals over the last few years have been found to be frauds, created by nothing more than an automated word generator that puts random, fancy-sounding words together in plausible sentence structures. As a result they have been pulled from the journals that originally published them.
Written by realclimatescience.com
In 1999, NASA showed no net global warming from 1876 to 1976. This wrecked their hockey stick plans, so NASA erased all of the inconvenient pre-1880 data and cooled 1880 temperatures by about 0.2C.
This abuse of science is atrocious, but it gets worse. The NASA data had already been highly corrupted in 1999. In 1974, the National Center For Atmospheric Research (NCAR) showed 0.4C cooling from 1940 to 1970, and no net warming from 1870 to 1970.
Written by Doug L. Hoffman
Recently, the journals Nature and Science reported on two experiments which revealed molecules released by trees can seed clouds. These findings run contrary to an assumption that sulphuric acid is required for a certain type of cloud formation.
This further suggest that climate predictions may have underestimated the role that clouds had in shaping the preindustrial climate. And since sulphuric acid is considered an anthropogenic pollutant, this means man has a smaller role in climate change than previously assumed. Almost left unmentioned in the news reports of these results is the role cosmic rays play in the formation of cloud nuclei, an idea proposed years ago and treated with derision by the mainstream climate change cabal.
Written by Dr. Rich Swier
John L. Casey, founder of Veritence Corporation and author of Dark Winter, on April 11, 2016 made two major climate predictions.
Prediction 1. We can now add this new event and date to our memories – February 2016. This is the month when global temperatures began a final long term decline into a deep and potentially dangerous abyss of record cold that will last for thirty years. Read more.
Prediction 2. Like the past 200 years of relatively continuous growth in global temperatures, the 2015-2016 warm temperatures were caused by the Sun. Unfortunately, the last two decades of solar heating, which have simultaneously permitted bumper crops for the world’s hungry masses, is in my opinion, the last of its kind for at least the next 400 years. The warmth we have enjoyed and that of generations to come is over.
Written by Judith Curry
The AAAS and affiliated professional societies just shot themselves in the foot with the letter to U.S. policy makers.
Last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued a press release entitled Thirty-One Top Scientific Societies Speak With One Voice on Global Climate Change. Punchline:
In a consensus letter to U.S. policymakers, a partnership of 31 leading nonpartisan scientific societies today reaffirmed the reality of human-caused climate change, noting that greenhouse gas emissions “must be substantially reduced” to minimize negative impacts on the global economy, natural resources, and human health.
Written by Bevan Dockery
Analysis of the satellite global temperature and known atmospheric carbon dioxide levels indicate that it is the temperature of the atmosphere that controls CO2 levels, not the reverse. The findings discredit the UN IPCC narrative that carbon emissions drive global warming. 
The graph (shown right) displays the time relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, from the Scripps Institute, compared to the satellite lower tropospheric Tropics-Land temperature provide by the University of Alabama, Huntsville, for the major 1997-‘98 El Nino event. The maximum in the annual increment of the temperature, at October 1997, preceded the maximum in the annual increment in the CO2 concentration, at March 1998, by 5 months revealing that the CO2 change could not possibly have caused the temperature change.
Statistical analysis of the complete data set extending from December 1978, when satellite measurements began, until the present determined that the 5 month delay was the average throughout the 38 year period.
Written by Christopher Booker
Once again last week we saw Dame Julia Slingo, the Met Office’s £240,000-a-year Chief Scientist, lecturing a conference of “50 experts” on the dire effects of “climate change and extreme weather on health and well-being”. This might have seemed timely. 
Since last December, Dame Julia’s computer models were predicting that 2016 would be the hottest year since records began in 1850. It is true that even the satellite temperature records showed last year as being unusually warm. But this was due not so much to “man-made climate change” as the natural effect of an exceptionally strong El Nino: the warm phase of that Pacific current which raises temperatures all over the world.
We saw much the same natural effect in 1998, 2006 and 2010, when thanks to strong El Ninos, global temperatures spiked. But on each occasion this was followed by a La Nina, giving the opposite effect, such as the dramatic cooling of 2007/8, which lowered global temperatures by 0.7 degrees C, equal to their entire net rise over the past century. Much the same is now happening again.
Written by Andrew Follett
Scientists announced Friday they’ve successfully attached biologically active “living metal” to titanium, which could revolutionize how doctors create artificial joints and other implants.
Titanium is used by doctors to create implants because it is extremely strong and not harmful to human tissues, but the metal lacks beneficial biological properties of natural tissues like bone or natural teeth. “Living metal” created via the research combines the biological benefits of proteins with the physical strength of titanium.
Written by Greg Uyeno
Two continent-size blobs of hot — and possibly molten — rock can be found deep underground, about halfway to the center of the Earth, according to a new study. These curious structures — each of which is so large that it would be 100 times taller than Mount Everest — could be made up of materials that may shed light on how the Earth formed, the researchers said.
One of the blobs is located beneath the Pacific Ocean, and the other can be found beneath the Atlantic. These underground structures start where the Earth’s mantle meets the core, but they send “plumes” up through the rock like a Lava Lamp, the researchers said.
Written by Gerald A. Meehl et. al.
Boulder — The recent trend of increasing Antarctic sea ice extent — seemingly at odds with climate model projections — can largely be explained by a natural climate fluctuation, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The study offers evidence that the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), which is characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific, has created favorable conditions for additional Antarctic sea ice growth since 2000.
Written by www.investors.com
Energy: A recent report by an energy consultancy suggests that the U.S. now has oil reserves bigger than Saudi Arabia’s. Believe it or not, that might be a huge understatement. 
The Rystad Energy consultancy’s latest estimates for U.S. oil reserves says the U.S. may have as many as 264 billion barrels of the crude stuff, compared to Saudi Arabia’s 212 billion barrels and the world’s total of 2 trillion barrels.
“At current production rates,” notes Reason’s Ronald Bailey, “this is enough oil to supply the world for 70 years.”
He’s right. And that’s great news. But it’s even better than that, in fact.
As we have noted on these pages many times before, the amount of oil and gas reserves in the U.S. just keeps growing, thanks to huge advances in technology. Bailey quotes from ExxonMobil’s “The Outlook for Energy” for 2016: “Technology is not just expanding our daily oil production; it also continues to increase the amount of oil and liquid fuels we can count on for the future.”
Written by The Earth Institute at Columbia University
There was a period during the last ice age when temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere went on a rollercoaster ride, plummeting and then rising again every 1,500 years or so. Those abrupt climate changes wreaked havoc on ecosystems, but their cause has been something of a mystery. New evidence published this week in the leading journal Science shows for the first time that the ocean’s overturning circulation slowed during every one of those temperature plunges – at times almost stopping.
“People have long supposed this link between overturning circulation and these abrupt climate events. This evidence implicates the ocean,” said L. Gene Henry, the lead author of the study and a graduate student at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
The impact of changes in the ocean overturning circulation on climate has become a hot topic today as global temperatures rise and melting sea ice and glaciers add freshwater to the North Atlantic. A 2015 study suggested that cooling in the North Atlantic may be due to a reduction in the overturning circulation, while a 2016 study suggested there had not been enough freshwater to have an effect.
The new study explores what happened to ocean circulation when the earth went through a series of abrupt climate changes in the past during a time when ice covered part of North America and temperatures were much colder than today. It looks at the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which distributes heat as it moves warmer surface water from the tropics toward Greenland and the high northern latitudes and carries colder, deeper water from the North Atlantic southward.
Using chemical tracers in sediment that builds up on the sea floor over time, Henry and his coauthors were able to document the relative speed of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation during each abrupt climate change during the last ice age.
The chemical tracers show that the speed of the ocean overturning circulation changed first, and that sea surface temperature changed a while later. That suggests that cooling may start with changes in the ocean circulation, influencing the northern sea surface and atmosphere, said co-author Jerry McManus, a professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Evidence from ice cores and deep-sea sediment has shown that the northern climate also cooled before the southern climate during these abrupt changes, creating a “bipolar seesaw,” with the north cool while the south was warm, and the south cooling as the north warmed.
The scientists stress that more work is needed to determine whether changes in ocean circulation initiated the abrupt climate changes or were an intermediary effect initially triggered by something else. “Our study supports the view that changes in ocean circulation were at least in part responsible for causing abrupt climate changes. However, what in turn caused those changes in circulation remains a mystery,” Henry said.
Also unclear is why these abrupt climate shifts, also seen in previous ice ages, haven’t happened in the past 10,000 years. The instability appears to occur only in certain temperature ranges, and when there is a large amount of land ice that could contribute freshwater.
“We would all like to understand better how the earth’s climate operates,” McManus said. “This demonstrates the crucial role that global circulation can play. The dynamics of the deep ocean directly influence the earth’s climate.”
The series of abrupt climate changes studied here occurred between 60,000 and 25,000 years ago, ending as the last ice age peaked. Each followed a general pattern in the Northern Hemisphere: The cooling happening over hundreds to 1,000 years, then the frigid temperatures persisted for a few hundred years in what is known as a stadial, McManus said. Once warming started, it happened very rapidly, with a rise of 3 to 6 degrees Celsius in average sea surface temperature and larger changes over Greenland within a span of decades.
During every cold northern stadial, the overturning circulation had slowed, so it wasn’t bringing as much heat northward from the tropics and Southern Hemisphere, the study shows. The chemical tracers also suggest that circulation slowed almost to a halt during certain stadials known as Heinrich events, when massive amounts of icebergs broke off and drifted away from the Laurentide ice sheet, which covered a large part of North America at the time. Icebergs carry freshwater that can affect ocean circulation, and computer models have suggested that adding that much freshwater to the Atlantic could shut down circulation. Exactly what influence the icebergs had during these periods will be the target of future research.
To determine how ocean circulation changed, the scientists measured three types of chemical tracers. By comparing the ratio of protactinium-231 to thorium-230, two daughter isotopes of uranium decay that remain in seawater for relatively short but consistently different periods of time before drifting into the seafloor, they could determine when circulation was strongest. Another isotope, carbon-13, captured in tiny shells, is more common in North Atlantic waters than in southern waters. When circulation was strong, protactinium was low and carbon 13 was high, because more protactinium was carried away by the current and more northern waters formed.
Axel Timmermann, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii who studies abrupt climate changes and was not involved in this study, called it a “breakthrough analysis.”
“Large changes in the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation are thought to have played a major role in generating millennial-scale global variability, known as Dansgaard-Oechger events, during the last glacial period. The paper by Henry, McManus and colleagues finally provides supporting evidence for this fundamental scientific hypothesis,” Timmermann said.
The other coauthors of the paper are Bill Curry of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences; Natalie Roberts and Alex Piotrowski of the University of Cambridge; and Lloyd Keigwin of Woods Hole. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Comer Science and Education Foundation, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Climate Center.
The paper, “North Atlantic ocean circulation and abrupt climate change during the last glaciation,” is available from the authors or from Science: 202-326-6440 or [email protected].
The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. http://www.
Written by Tony Heller
Climate fraudsters at Yale University show plumes of runoff from the Greenland ice sheet, and claim that the ice sheet is melting fast and will raise sea levels 23 feet.
This is utter nonsense. About 500 billion tons of snow falls on Greenland every year. This lowers sea level slightly during the winter. During the summer, the snow melts and returns to the sea – raising sea level slightly. It has nothing to do with climate. It is called summer.
Written by Jonathan Beale
Can you chemically “grow” a military drone?
It sounds like an idea for a science fiction film, but here in the UK scientists and engineers are spending time and money to see if they can do exactly that.
British warplanes are already flying with parts made from a 3D printer.
Researchers are already using that same technology to build drones.