The Rise and Fall of the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”

Two decades ago, in an interview with science journalist Richard Kerr for the journal Science, I coined the term the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” (AMO) to describe an internal oscillation in the climate system resulting from interactions between North Atlantic ocean currents and wind patterns. These interactions were thought to lead to alternating...

17h

Looking for help with an electricity tax-swap idea

Guest commentary from Yoram Bauman Everyone from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Elon Musk thinks that putting a price on carbon is an important step in tackling climate change. Politically, however, carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems face an uphill battle, in part because they could drive up the prices of household basics like gasoline...

1d

Forced responses: Mar 2021

A bi-monthly open thread on climate solutions.

3d

Unforced Variations: Mar 2021

This month’s open thread. Northern Hemisphere Spring is on it’s way, along with peak Arctic/minimum Antarctic sea ice, undoubtedly more discussion about the polar vortex, and the sharpening up of the (currently very uncertain) ENSO forecast for the rest of this year.

4d

Laschamps-ing at the bit

A placeholder to provide some space to discuss the paper last week (Cooper et al, 2021) on the putative climate consequences of the Laschamps Geomagnetic Excursion, some 42,000 yrs ago. There was some rather breathless reporting on this paper, but there were also a lot of sceptical voices – not of the main new result (a beautiful new 14C dataset...

6d

Regional information for society (RifS) and unresolved issues

It’s encouraging to note the growing interest for regional climate information for society and climate adaptation, such as recent advances in the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the climate adaptation summit CAS2021, and the new Digital Europe. These efforts are likely to boost the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) needed as a guide...

3w

Don’t climate bet against the house

Decades ago (it seems) when perhaps it was still possible to have good faith disagreements about the attribution of current climate trends, James Annan wrote a post here summarizing the thinking and practice of Climate Betting. That led to spate of wagers on continued global warming (a summary of his bets through 2005 and attempts to set up others...

5w

Unforced Variations: Feb 2021

This month’s open thread on climate science topics. Discussions related to solutions should go here.

Feb 2021

Climate Adaptation Summit 2021

The first ever Climate Adaptation Summit (#adaptationsummit) that I have heard about took place last week, on January 25-26. I think such a summit was a step in the right direction. It was adapted to the Covid-19 situation and therefore an online virtual summit streamed on YouTube.  I watched a few of the streamed sessions, and it struck me that...

Jan 2021

Update day 2021

As is now traditional, every year around this time we update the model-observation comparison page with an additional annual observational point, and upgrade any observational products to their latest versions. A couple of notable issues this year. HadCRUT has now been updated to version 5 which includes polar infilling, making the Cowtan and...

Jan 2021