When climatologists talk about the Quaternary Period, you probably think they are referring to events that occurred thousand of years ago. You would likely be right, but for the official record, the Quaternary Period is the geologic and climatic time period that began roughly 1.8 million years ago and includes the present. The Quaternary includes two major geologic epochs including the relatively cold Pleistocene when glaciers ruled the Earth and the Holocene period that began approximately 12,000 years ago when the glaciers retreated. We see the climate alarmists sometimes arguing that we have left the Holocene and entered the Anthropocene – a time when the human impact has significantly altered the Earth. So, we are currently living in the Quaternary, Holocene, and Anthropocene, all at the same time.

One of the world’s leading journals focusing on the geology, geomorphology, geography, archaeology, soil science, palaeobotany, palaeontology, and palaeoclimatology of the Quaternary Period is published by Elsevier and is titled Quaternary Science Reviews. Three articles have been published recently in the journal with what we are calling the “Lessons of the Quaternary.”

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About a month ago, we ran a piece reflecting back on the behavior of the satellite-derived temperature history of the earth’s lower atmosphere for the past 10 years of so. We commented that the two major realizations of the temperature history of the lower atmosphere—one derived by researchers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) and the other by researchers at Remote Sensing Systems (RSS)—seemed to be drifting apart in recent months. Well, it has since been determined that a slight computational error involving the data for 2007 had been introduced in the RSS routines, and this error has now been corrected (see here for more detail) so all is now well again in the world of satellite-derived global temperatures—or it is?

Yes and no.

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One of the many pillars of fear regarding global warming is the claim that droughts will become more severe in the future, particularly in continental interiors. The story is very simple and is told over and over – temperatures rise, evaporation rates increase, and even with no change in rainfall, soil moisture levels decrease and droughts last longer and are more severe. Then, crops will fail, ecosystems will collapse, major cities will run out of water, diseases will spread – you know the story. There is always some drought occurring some place on the planet, so supporting evidence is easy to find.

We have written on this subject many times, and like everything else, there is a lot more complexity to the story. Changes in wind and/or clouds could impact future evaporation rates, global dimming could cause a decease in evaporation, plants could become more water use efficient thanks to higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and therefore extract less water from the soil, and on and on. One of the problems is that long term soil moisture data are rare to non-existent, but an article in a recent issue of the International Journal of Climatology brings us a story about soil moisture extending back 1,426 years!

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We’ve been talking ‘til we’re blue in the face about how the very existence of polar bears today is the strongest evidence possible that they should manage, as a species (although some individual populations may struggle), to hold their own in a warming climate. Why is this? Because their existence today is proof that they survived long periods of time (many thousands of years on end), when the climate of their Arctic habitat was warmer (and thus likely more ice-free) than conditions are now, and will be into the future.

But, in case you were withholding final judgment until you heard it from someone else, well, here you go:

Ancient polar bear jawbone found

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco
Monday, December 10, 2007

What may be the oldest known remains of a polar bear have been uncovered on the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic.

The jawbone was pulled from sediments that suggest the specimen is perhaps 110,000 or 130,000 years old.

Professor Olafur Ingolfsson from the University of Iceland says tests show it was an adult, possibly a female.

The find is a surprise because polar bears are a relatively new species, with one study claiming they evolved less than 100,000 years ago.

If the Svalbard jawbone’s status is confirmed, and further discoveries can show the iconic Arctic beasts have a deeper evolutionary heritage, then the outlook for the animals may be more positive than some believe.

“We have this specimen that confirms the polar bear was a morphologically distinct species at least 100,000 years ago, and this basically means that the polar bear has already survived one interglacial period,” explained Professor Ingolfsson.

And what’s interesting about that is that the Eeemian - the last interglacial - was much warmer than the Holocene (the present).

“This is telling us that despite the ongoing warming in the Arctic today, maybe we don’t have to be quite so worried about the polar bear. That would be very encouraging.”

So there. We’re not the only ones who think that polar bears are quite adaptable, and stand more than a good chance of surviving a warming climate—a feat that they have demonstrated on previous occasions. Will this new finding by Professor Ingolfsson put folks’ minds at ease and quiet the talk of the bears’ imminent extinction? Hardly. After all, the ultimate goal of such talk is not the survival of the polar bear, but the restriction of mankind’s activites on earth. And such fervent desire is not easily doused.

Recently the press was more ablaze than California with NASA proclamations that the surface area of Greenland had melted in 2007 at a record-high rate. This is true, if the record only extends back only 20 years or so—which is the case of the NASA dataset. If you could peer back a bit further into the past, say back into the 1950s, it is quite likely that the melt area in Greenland then was about the same as it is now, effectively rendering the 2007 melt area hardly newsworthy. Just another NASA climate-change exaggeration?

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Recently, former Vice President Al Gore won a share of the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to our understanding of the global warming problem. His film was seen as a masterpiece that certainly sealed the deal on his Nobel Prize. However, on the same day the Nobel committee honored Gore, world renowned hurricane specialist Dr. William Gray told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the Earth and not responsible for alter hurricane patterns, as strongly suggested in the Gore film. Gray told the crowd “They’re going to the Gore movie and being fed all this,” and “It’s ridiculous. The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures.” Dr. Gray said there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949 in a period of cooler global temperatures compared to 83 hurricanes between 1957 and 2006. Don’t look for Dr. Gray to receive a Nobel Prize anytime soon.

As we sit through a ho-hum year in terms of hurricanes (a.k.a., tropical cyclones) in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea, another article has appeared in the professional literature with results that call into question any prediction about more tropical cyclones in the future. The latest work comes from a team of scientists with China’s Shanghai Typhoon Institute and is published in the Chinese journal Acta Oceanologica Sinica (you may notice a few misspelled words and odd phrases in some quotes from the article). The work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Special Climate Project of China’s Meteorological Administration.

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A couple of weeks ago, New York Times science writer Andrew Revkin wrote a piece titled “Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts” in which he described this year’s record low Arctic summer sea ice extent and the how the dramatic decline over last year had caught many sea-ice scientists by surprise. Revkin goes on to interview a variety of experts on the topic of sea ice, most of which realize that some (most) of the sea ice decline observed over the past several decades is likely related to anthropogenic changes to the earth’s climate, while admitting that undoubtedly, some natural (non-human-influenced) processes likely contributed to the decline as well.

Revkin starts out by noting “astonished by the summer’s changes [in ice extent], scientists are studying forces that exposed one million square miles of open water—six Californias—beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.”

And then he continues:

Proponents of cuts in greenhouse gases cited the meltdown as proof that human activities are propelling a slide toward climate calamity.

Arctic experts say things are not that simple. More than a dozen experts said in interviews that the extreme summer ice retreat had revealed at least as much about what remains unknown in the Arctic as what is clear. Still, many of those scientists said they were becoming convinced that the system is heading toward a new, more watery state, and that human-caused global warming is playing a significant role.

For one thing, experts are having trouble finding any records from Russia, Alaska or elsewhere pointing to such a widespread Arctic ice retreat in recent times, adding credence to the idea that humans may have tipped the balance. Many scientists say the last substantial warming in the region, peaking in the 1930s, mainly affected areas near Greenland and Scandinavia.

Depending on what Revkin meant by “recent times,” perhaps we could help him out as to where he may look in order to find out some information indicating that “widespread Arctic ice retreat” has occurred without any human help. If Revkin meant “since satellites started measurements in 1979” then, he probably has that covered, but if by “recent” he meant within the past 100 years or so, then maybe we could suggest a few other avenues to investigate.

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Imagine if a large hurricane struck New York City during this tropical cyclone season – the devastation would be incredible and during and following the disastrous event, global warming would undoubtedly be blamed for the all that happened to the Big Apple. Believe it or not, this will happen sometime in the not-so-distant future, it’s a virtual lock! New York City has been struck many times in the past by tropical cyclones, and it is just a matter of time before another hurricane passes directly over the city. Officials there are fully aware of the threat, as this brochure attests, providing plenty of information about hurricane evacuation zones located throughout the metropolitan area.

As we have detailed many times in the past, there is a considerable debate in the climate community regarding the future of hurricane activity. There are several prominent scientists arguing that recent global warming has increased tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that can support more hurricanes, stronger events with much higher destructive powers, and hurricanes that simply last longer. These scientists and their many followers have suggested that Katrina and other recent hurricanes have been made more destructive given the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases. Many others have raised substantial doubts about the proposed link between greenhouse gases and hurricane activity (we have covered many of their research papers, for the latest, see here). Nonetheless, should a large hurricane pass over downtown Manhattan, scientists promoting the greenhouse link would breathlessly appear on our televisions 24 hours a day.

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We have heard a million times that if we don’t stop emitting greenhouse gases, our inexcusable actions will result in a warmer earth, and the warming of the planet will cause icecaps and mountain glaciers to melt and sea level to rise. Island nations will be drowned, coastlines around the world will go underwater, Florida will cease to exist, and the World Trade Center Memorial could someday be a sight seen only by scuba enthusiasts. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says very clearly in the Summary for Policymakers “Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3] mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8] mm per year. Whether the faster rate for 1993 to 2003 reflects decadal variability or an increase in the longer-term trend is unclear. There is high confidence that the rate of observed sea level rise increased from the 19th to the 20th century.” The IPCC crew reminds us that “Global average sea level in the last interglacial period (about 125,000 years ago) was likely 4 to 6 m higher than during the 20th century, mainly due to the retreat of polar ice.” It seems that sea levels fell and rose many times in the past and long before humans had any chance interfere with the natural order of things. There is no reason whatsoever to expect sea level to remain constant – it never has and it never will.

We have covered this sea-level rise issue many times in the past at World Climate Report and we fully agree that sea level is rising – sea level has been somewhat steadily rising for the past 10,000 years. During the last glacial advance, a large amount of fresh water was tied up in ice, and as the glaciation ended, that water returned to the oceans. Furthermore, as the earth warmed up following the last glacial advance, thermal expansion of the ocean water occurred, and sea level rose even more. There is little doubt that the sea-level rise will continue into the future, but the rate of rise is the focus of an interesting paper published recently in Global and Planetary Change by a team of scientists from France and Spain.

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On September 28, 1955, a Category 5 hurricane named Janet slammed into Chetumal, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, killing over 600 people.

Hurricane Dean, another Category 5, and the third-strongest storm ever measured at landfall, hit in exactly the same place earlier this week (Tuesday, August 21,2007) and killed no one. Maximum winds in both storms were indistinguishable. The hurricane-hunter pilot who flew through the eyewall of the storm Tuesday reported severe turbulence, which is a temporary loss of aircraft control. Probably for the first time in human history, a Category 5 storm hit a populated area and everyone lived.

Because of its peculiar location, the Yucatan takes more big hurricane hits than just about anywhere else in the western hemisphere. When Mexico was dirt-poor, as it was in 1955, hurricanes could kill hundreds. They were warned, then, too. Hurricane-hunter planes also monitored Janet. Only one of these has ever been lost, and it as Janet was making landfall.

Similar storms, huge storms, very different results. What’s happening here?

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