The oceans are warming

More than 90% of the heat accumulating on Earth from global warming has gone into the sea.  In years that the seas retain heat, the atmosphere warms less than the trend.  In other years, when the sea releases heat into the atmosphere it warms more.  That is what ENSO (El Niño/La Niña; averaging 9 or so years from peak to peak); the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation a 20-30 years cycle); and the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) cause--heat is transferred backwards and forwards from the sea to the air.  We are (as regards the atmosphere) in a cool PDO phase and also in a cool ENSO phase.  Global air temperatures would have been much higher if both cycles had been in a warm phase.

The climate change denialists point to the "pause" in the rise of global temperatures from 1998 onwards.  As it happens last year was the hottest ever measured, but never mind, now they're claiming the data are faked, of which more later.  But the heat has gone into the sea.  Which means that when it is released, even if just some of it, as will happen with an ENSO or the (inevitable) reversal of the PDO, global air temperatures will soar.  The "pause" such as it was, only applied to the air, which holds less than 7% of the increasing warmth of the earth.  Sea temperatures just went on rising, right off the top of the chart.

Oh, but the scientists are making up these numbers too, don't you know?  Cue tin-foil hats.

Read more here.  And there are a whole string of fascinating charts here.

Utility-scale solar costs plummet

Here in Australia, we tend to think of solar as rooftop solar, because our retail electricity costs are so incredibly high (roughly 30 cents per kWh), and so solar is already cheaper than retail electricity, and has been widely adopted.  But in the US, utility-scale, i.e., very large projects have been much more important.

The chart shows the price on the left, time on the x-axis, while the size of the circles shows the size of the contracts.  The average yearly compound decline has been about 16%; the decline between 2013 and 2014 about 18%.  ($50 per MWh = 5 cents per kWh) .

Now these costs are reduced because of an investment tax credit.  That's worth  about 2 cents per kWh.  So when (if) the tax credit expires in 2017, new contracts will be more expensive.  But by then the average cost will have fallen to about 4 cents per kWh, in another 2 years to about 2.5 cents per kWh.  So the expiry of the tax credit will cause at worst a brief pause in the uptake of utility solar before the switch resumes.  But I suspect that the tax credit will be extended, because it has become obvious to everybody who isn't a coal mine shill that global warming is real and continuing and that a switch to renewables is extremely urgent.  This year is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, and since the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) should have been bringing falling global temperatures over the last decade, while temps have actually risen, even the blindest and most biased of observers must be starting to worry.  More of that in another post soon.

[Read more of the article here]

Hottest ever September

NOAA has just announced that the world has had its hottest September ever measured (click on charts to get bigger image; chart from here)

Average global monthly temperatures for September

This comes after the hottest May and June, 4th hottest July, and hottest August.  So it won't surprise you that this is also the hottest 12 months to September.  Note how obvious it is that 1998, always picked by the denialists as the starting point of their data set "showing" that the world is "no longer warming",  is a statistical outlier.

Average global temperatures, 12 months to September each year

The last 60 months have been equal warmest to the 60 months to September 2007.  Note that there is a 30 year cycle around the long term rising trend (the PDO, or Pacific Decadal Oscillation ; Into the Deep), as well as shorter cycles.  In the first of the down phases of this cycle (1880-1911) global temps fell.  Then the oscillation turned positive and temps rose for the next +-30 years, until 1945.  In the next down phase, global temps went sideways (not down).  Then a renewed up phase starting about 1980 (the 5 year moving average will lag the underlying data by 2 and a half years) and lasting until around 2005.  In the current down phase, global temps have gone on rising, only more slowly.  Just how fast will observed temperatures rise when the PDO again flips to an up phase?  At that point you will have the cycle/oscillation adding to the underlying trend. Scary.

Average global temps, 60 months to Sept each year

The only good news is that something is finally being done.  For example, China has imposed a tariff of 6% on imported coal.  This is effectively a carbon tax, because although it doesn't apply to domestic coal production, China imports most of its coal these days.  It is the world's biggest importer of coal, and not coincidentally, the world's biggest emitter of CO2.  And the tariff makes renewables relatively cheaper.  This step is in addition to a carbon trading scheme to be introduced into China's 8 largest cities in 2016 as well as other domestic programs to support renewables.