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Dear Readers This is a thread which, I hope that fellow members of this great forum can discuss practical geo-engineering solutions to fight Global Warming and to arrest some of the egregious regional climatic trends- heatwaves, drought, floods and storms, coastal erosion, etc.,- that have become more apparent in recent years. Whether one believes we are soon to face Apocalypse or that CO2- induced warming will be cancelled out by natural trends in the next thirty years- temperatures globally- and averaged throughout the year- have undoubtedly risen byjust over 1C since the end of the 19th Century: More severe droughts and wild-fires in the sub-tropics and Mediterranean latitudes and more devastating floods and storms in higher latitudes certainly have the potential to not only destroy habitats but also cause great economic hardship, destroy homes and offices and displace significant numbers of people. And, at this time, with China and Russia staying away it looks like COP26 will end up being little more than a jolly of G20 World leaders: If China, Russia and (likely) India will not countenance really cutting down coal production and burning (these are by far the biggest CO2 polluters), what hope is there for curbing CO2 increases to stop global mean temperatures getting above the 1.5C threshold whereby unstoppable feedbacks set in causing sea-levels to rise precipitously? In the light of all this, and the huge economically-damaging costs of Net Zero, forcing people to go electric by a certain date, putting higher costs and taxes on businesses and home-owners in Britain (and potentially bankrupting the country), I think the Government could abolish the Climate change Act (2008) and strike down the legal commitments to make Britain carbon-neutral by 2050 (costs of this in excess of £1 Trillion are conservative estimates). If the Chinese and Indians are not going to bankrupt their economies to persue Net Zero, then why should Britain when it is not going to have much effect? A different approach is needed. Firstly, Britain should incentivise business and companies to go green using tax breaks. There are still over £20 billion of stakes in part-nationalised banks still on the Government's books, these could be sold and the proceeds used to cut taxes on green products- economic growth and the revenues from the increased "Green Economy" will help make these tax breaks self financing. Secondly, rising CO2 levels, Global Warming and some of the unpleasant side effects (like increased drought in the Med and coastal erosion from more winter storms in high latitudes) need completely different, new approaches to tackle them. Again, R & D funds can be directed at the scientific community to develop real solutions to Global Warming, funded more by (perhaps) cutting the size of Quangoes. And talking of real solutions, please feel free to discuss practical, but effective solutions to reducing global temperatures- and dealing with some of the now- apparent unpleasant side-effects of a warmer World. Some ideas I have seen around, that could be economically feasible and practical (but with limited side effects) are as follows. These might need a Coalition of the Willing countries to just do (getting full Global Agreement for anything these days seems to be nigh-on impossible!): 1) Spraying sea-water into the troposphere over tropical oceans (with pumps from the sea-surface supported by large balloons (hot air balloons or filled with helium, whichever is most practical). The fine salt solutions sprayed into the atmosphere leads to moisture and condensation nuclei causing the ready development of more cloud. The increased cloud over tropical oceans would reflect more heat from the Sun back to space and help keep the Earth cool. The costs of a few thousand large balloons and pumps- and some helium should not be more than a few £ billions. 2) A fleet of suitably-modified high-flying jets could spray milions of tonnes of suplhur dioxide into the stratosphere around the Equator- above the altitude where it will be rained onto the surface from rain and high-altitude snowfall. Half a metre thickness of sulphur-dioxide above 20 km would have a dramatic effect in shielding the Earth from the Sun's rays whilst the settling of this sulphur dioxide is likely to be sufficiently gradual as to cause minimal damage to ecosystems, the environment and communities at the Earth's surface. Relatively cheap and practical to do, but likely to be great resistance from Environmentalists. 3) Salt extracted from sea-water. Billions of tonnes of powdered salt could be carried up to the edge of Space by thousands of specially- constructed Earth- orbiting rockets. These rockets would fly west-to-east around the Equator (and other low latitudes) releasing the powdered Salt- which would remain in orbit around the Earth- a man-made Earth ring (like Saturn's). The Earth-ring of powdered salt rotating around Earth at the edge of space would reflect the Sun's rays back into space and help keep the Earth cooler. At a cost of a few ££ billions, this could buy time for global markets to work on CO2-neutral energy and transport solutions. 4) Pump large amounts of purified sea-water (or fresh water from glacial rivers/ lakes) using giant pumps and large pipes to the top of the Antarctic Pleateau and the top of the Greenland Ice Cap (in their respective autumns and winters) where it would freeze in the very low temperatures. The release of latent heat as vast quantities of water freeze would reduce the atmospheric temperature and pressure gradients (that is what meteorologists call the atmospheric baroclinicity) that drive powerful storms at higher mid-latitudes- helping to stem some of the heavy rain, flooding and coastal erosion in places like Britain, western Norway and western Canada. The freezing of water onto the ice sheets would help build up the ice-sheets and (in the process) help to reduce sea-level rises. This process could be taken further by spraying and freezing water onto large parts of northern Canada (with their permission) in the winter, over a designated a new ice-sheet. If ten metres' thickness of ice can be built up over a large part of Northwest Territories the ice would not melt away the following summer and the new ice-sheet would reflect away the Sun's heat. Thereafter the new ice-sheet could be built up the following winter by being hosed from some of Canada's many tundra lakes- the water would freeze and build up the ice-sheet and the release of latent heat would weaken the baroclinicity downstream- meaning less damaging winter storms heading towards Britain. This is practical, the costs are likely to be just a few £ billion (which rather compares favourably with over £1 Trillion for Net Zero!). 5) Cause a mild "Nuclear Winter" (or "H-Bomb Winter") to fight Global Warming by dropping a couple of powerful H-bombs on an evacuated desert island. Hydrogen bombs dont cause nuclear fall-out but (if powerful) they could send enough dust and ash into the Stratosphere to reflect heat from the Sun to but more time as the World moves towards CO2-free energy and transport solutions. A variation of this might be to try and bomb a normally- explosive volcano in a remote area to provoke it into exploding and releasing vast amounts of dust into the Stratosphere. This is probably the cheapest option, but would be very much a last resort! As this is intended to be a thread to discuss Geo-engineering solutions you are welcome to propose your own, different, ideas. If you think the above are non-starters what do you think might work? Should Western Nations bankrupt their respective economies and impoverish their populations for a vain cause (which it will be if China and India keep belching out CO2 and refuse to reduce emissions)? Ian Pennell

Dear Readers, Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere has undeniably had a warming impact on the Earth's climate, with the planet as a whole having a mean temperature during 2020 just over 1.0C above pre-industrial averages. The warming impact has undeniably been greater in recent years in Russia, Canada, and northern Europe where- in the winter months the mean warming has been over 2.0C above pre-industrial averages for the season. Some of this warming may be related to the Earth coming out of the Little Ice Age- but some of the effect is undoubtedly due to CO2 levels since we are entering a period of quiet Sun (weaker sunspot cycles with slightly weaker Solar output) which, all else being equal ought to bring a cooling back to the conditions of the 19th Century: Plainly that is not the case. But why do middle latitudes and higher latitudes in winter warm more? The exception is interior Antarctica that has got colder in recent winters, and winter 2021 (June-August) was one of the coldest on record at the South Pole. The Antarctic Ozone Hole in the Antarctic stratosphere has also made a bit of a come-back in 2021 (during the Southern winter). Is that also in some way related to warmer, wetter winters in most middle and high latitude areas? The answer is a definitive "Yes". Most meteorologists appreciate the impact of something called the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum on the Earth's global weather-pattern: In layman's terms, the Earth's rotation and the virtual absence of outside forces (gravitational tidal influences from the Sun and Moon, the effects of meteorites and bursts of super-charged plasma from the Sun following coronal mass ejections are largely negligible over just a few years) means that the atmosphere as a whole has to rotate with the Earth. From this, the frictional and pressure impacts of Easterlies at low latitudes and near the poles are counterbalanced by the frictional and pressure impacts of Westerlies in middle latitudes. This applies to both the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere and largely dictate the existence of the Westerlies in higher latitudes, but not necessarily where they occur or how strong they are. However, global weather- patterns are also (and primarily) controlled by the heat input to the Earth-Atmosphere system, how much heat there is and where it is on the Earth. It is also dependent on moisture and atmospheric temperature gradients. A warmer Earth not only means more moisture in the atmosphere but, with the edges of polar ice-caps (seasonal and year-round) retreated polewards it means that the Westerlies- intensified and largely fixed by atmospheric and near- surface temperature gradients (what meteorologists call baroclinicity) as the depressions that drive these depressions also need these zones of baroclinicity. Now, the areas of the Earth where easterlies are at the surface are called sources of Westerly Atmospheric Angular Momentum (AAM) or simply Global Atmospheric Angular Momentum (GLAAM). This arises because Easterly winds, blowing in a direction opposite to the Earth's rotation result in the Earth losing a bit of it's eastwards rotation to the atmosphere- in other words these areas with surface Easterly winds are sources of Westerly AAM (or GLAAM). Since, at least under current climatic conditions, the winds aloft do not start blowing 1,000's of miles an hour from the West and remain fairly constant in speed at the height of the winter (seldom more than 200 mph at 10,000 metres' elevation) it follows that other areas are sinks for Westerly AAM (or GLAAM). These areas are in higher latitudes where often -strong Westerly winds blowing over the sea or against hills result in a frictional force at the surface slowing the Westerlies down- and helping to speed the Earth's rotation up. The fact that the Length of Day remains fairly constant throughout the year- and from year to year (though the Length of Day is very slowly increasing by a millisecond a decade mainly due to the effects of marine tidal friction due to the Moon)- means that Westerly AAM is imparted to the rotating Earth as much as it is removed via tropical and Polar Easterlies. Now, for some interesting observations of global weather maps by a seasoned meteorologist (myself): For almost all the year the Westerlies seem to be concentrated at the highest latitude 40% of the Earth's surface (sin-1(1-0.4)=36.9 degrees, so that is Westerlies restricted to North of 36.9 degrees North and South of 36.9 degrees South). Of course, there still are some occasions with Westerlies in lower latitudes, strong Westerlies occur on the equatorwide of hurricanes and tropical depressions when these occur but these are counterbalanced by just as strong violent easterlies on the other side of these tropical storms. South-Westerlies blow over India and adjacent parts of southern Asia during the Summer Monsoon- which will help reduce some of the need for strong Westerlies at higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere in the winter there, so this will not help weaken Westerlies in high Northern latitudes. Often the Tibetan Plateau gets Westerly winds in winter, but these have seldom been strong and they are restricted to those areas north of 30 degrees North. (Continued below)

Dear Readers The impact of increasing global temperatures over the last forty years on Arctic sea-ice cover is clear: There has been a consistent decline in sea-ice extent compared to the long-term normal (see here for an illustration: http://nsidc.org/soac/sea-ice.html#seaice). The possibility of the Arctic Ocean becoming ice-free in summer, then remaining so into the winter is one that is of increasing concern for remote communities on the Arctic coastline and for wildlife. Less appreciated, perhaps is how an Arctic Ocean free of pack-ice year round would impact upon the prevailing (and possible extreme) weather- conditions further afield. It is certain that the loss of Arctic sea-ice would occur in the context of global temperatures just 2.5 to 3C above those of today. As the Arctic warms and the edge of the pack-ice recedes north of Spitzbergen the ice-free water absorbs heat from the Sun rather than reflecting it back to space and this helps warm the local ocean surfaces further. If Greenland remains very cold and ice-covered the baroclinic zones of sharp atmospheric temperature and pressure- gradients would extend north-eastwards and northwards from the tip of southern Greenland, this would encourage more North Atlantic depressions to push deep into the Arctic. That process would, in addition bring warm southerly winds from the North Atlantic right up into the Arctic- further exacerbating regional warming. It is clear to see that if this feedback between more ice-free waters absorbing the Sun's heat in the summer, then attracting depressions into the area in winter bringing more warmth- really took off then the entire Arctic could become free of ice one summer, then remain free of ice as autumn and winter storms moved in over the ice-free areas with warm air from lower latitudes. Once the Arctic is ice-free and the surface waters stay above the freezing-point of ocean water year-round (-1.8C) the ice-free ocean would release a large amount of warmth into the low atmosphere. This would lower surface pressures but would also have a smaller warming influence on the high atmosphere over the Arctic. The main influence of the lowest 3,000 metres of the atmosphere being some 10C warmer in Autumn and 15 to 20C warmer in Winter would be a drop in average surface-pressures over the central Arctic by 15 millibars in Autumn and 20 to 25 millibars in Winter- that fact alone combined with the stronger atmospheric temperature gradient between much warmer conditions in the low troposphere and still very-cold air in the upper-atmosphere would be strongly conducive to storm activity in Autumn and Winter. The article referred to here lends support to this thesis (https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/19/jcli-d-18-0109.1.xml). In Summer, an ice-free Arctic would be little warmer than the part-thawed pack-ice there today, unless sea-surface temperatures could get well above freezing-point: It is thus likely that the Central Arctic would not experience more summer storms in a warmer world, but hotter conditions on the continents surrounding the Arctic in a warmer would still increase the crucial baroclinic atmospheric temperature contrasts to increase cyclogenesis at the margins of the Arctic- with worrying implications for coastal erosion along the Arctic coast-lines of Canada, Alaska and Russia. This still implies, for the purposes of discussing the wider implications for mid-latitude weather-conditions, a general northwards shift in storm- tracks. We now look at what the implications of increased temperatures and storminess in the ice-free Arctic Ocean mean for regions well to the south of the Arctic Circle. There is a school of thought that believes an ice-free Arctic ushers in wetter conditions with stronger winds in temperate latitudes, with severe winter cold spells becoming a thing of the past (not least because the World would be 3C warmer and middle-latitudes are not far from the unfrozen Arctic Ocean region that will be 20C or more warmer in winter). Certainly this means that any northerly winds coming from the Arctic interior will not bring severe cold to Britain during the winter months, but this does not rule out cold air coming from the east even if sea-surface temperatures around Britain are 4C warmer at the start of the winter. And there is no guarantee that that will be so because if the North Atlantic Drift weakens in response to weaker Westerlies sea surface temperatures around the UK may not be much warmer than today. The main influence of an ice-free Arctic Ocean, at least in Autumn and Winter will, from the above, be to steer the deep depressions (that normally push north-east from Iceland to north of Norway in Autumn and Winter nowadays) much more northwards along the East Greenland Coast and into the Arctic interior. Furthermore a much warmer Arctic in Winter would even ensure that the upper-atmosphere warmed a little (as cyclonic cloudy convection transfers heat into the upper-air)- increasing the 500 mb heights by 200 metres or more. That process alone would help decrease the strength of the Circumpolar Vortex by 10% or more, not least over the North Atlantic west of the UK. On the other side of the ledger, if the North Atlantic is 4C warmer in early winter that almost doubles the latent heat available to fuel deep depressions and could help tighten and strengthen the Circumpolar Vortex twice as much as the reduced Circumpolar Vortex might weaken it. That is particularly possible if Greenland is still ice-covered and Greenland/ north-east Canada still get very cold in winter, the sharp baroclinic temperature gradients in the atmosphere between Greenland/ NE Canada and a warmer North Atlantic would be a very potent source of cyclogenesis- but the question then becomes where do the depressions go, i.e. eastwards or northwards up the East Greenland Coast into the ice-free Arctic Ocean. If the depressions that normally headed just north of Norway in the past travel up the East Greenland Coast towards the North Pole in a warmer world that has very profound implications for the climate of western Europe (including the UK). Continued below.

Dear All Thought that, in the light of COP21 in Paris that produced lots of hot air and an absence of commitment to specific measures to steer the World towards carbon neutral within 50 years I would kick off the New Year of 2016 with discussion about what happens in 50 years' time if CO2 levels are still rising past 550 ppm and global temperatures reach dangerous levels above pre-industrial levels: To Geoengineer or not to Geoengineer, that is the question. And if we do Geoengineer and cannot get measures past the United Nations do we form a Coalition of The Willing- say the UK, USA, Canada, Germany and France- to commit to specific measures to reduce global temperatures (like H-bombs over remote Pacific islands, securing and bringing to Earth asteroids then firing at the south-side of Arctic mountains at noon in June to reduce the tilt of the Earth and keep high latitudes cool enough to preserve ice-fields)?? Are the risks of doing nothing and allowing mean global temperatures to rise high enough to cause massive methane outpourings from the Siberian Tundra, to cause the Greenland and West Antarctica Ice-sheets to disintegrate raising sea-levels by over 10 metres worse than risking some [unintended] consequences of carefully planned operation to halt global temperature rise?? I am assuming that we in the West do all we can to reduce CO2 emissions and to lean on emerging markets as much as possible to do the same in the interim and we still fail (in fifty years' time- by which time things will start getting serious) to get global CO2 emissions to half what they are now. If that's the case do we just continue trying to get the global community to respond and do nothing else except continue to have summits (Brasilia in 2030, Chennai in 2045, the Harare Cool Earth Summit in 2064, perhaps!) in which the world's Government continue their hand-wringing saying "Something Must Be Done To Save Earth!" without any collective willingness to commit to specific measures? Lets get all the brains together to see what if, this comes to pass, we should do. You might think that we should not to anything but adapt to a much warmer Earth with most of England getting a climate more akin to the hills of NW Portugal today. Plans for evacuating London, Newcastle, Liverpool; getting all British homes equipped with air-conditioning to cope with long periods in July and August with a humid 35C and to take in refugees from much of Africa that will simply become too torrid for human civilizations anyone?? I do not think that this situation arising is far-fetched because the specific measures that Western and fast-developing economies would require to get them carbon-neutral in fifty years will be totally unacceptable to large percentages of their respective electorates and such policies would plunge the economies concerned into recession: In other words their governments will cave in and refuse to implement the necessary policies unless of course they are dictatorships like Mao tse Tung or Robert Mugabe, or the governing parties want to be voted out of office for good! On the other hand we do, in my view, have a little more time than most models suggest because natural variations in the Sun's output predicted to occur over the next 30 years (a number of solar physicists believe the Sun is about to enter a quiet Maunder-Minimum type phase during which its output drops by up to 0.5%). Other factors such as worldwide man-made aerosol pollution from fast-developing countries like China, Brazil and South Africa will slow down the rate that rising CO2 levels leads to higher global temperatures. But developing countries will learn to clean up their smoke-stacks in time and the Sun will increase in strength to current levels (or more) after 2060 so complacency will be costly.

Hello folks and Happy New Year to you all. I just want to throw something up which might be very interesting because I have just read a book called "Dark Winter" written by John Casey. John Casey heads up the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) in the USA, he has done extensive work studying Sunspot Cycles. We are all familiar with the 11-year Sunspot Cycle (known as the Schwabe Sunspot Cycles), but there is also a 206-year cycle and a 1200-year cycle. It is Dr Casey`s conclusions that these cycles conspire to produce a 30-year spell stating after 2015 when the Sun will be very, very quiet, that the proportion of the short-wave energy from the Sun that reaches the surface and lower atmosphere will fall by 1% compared to recent years as a result. As a consequence there will be global cooling caused by changes in the Sun`s output and we will have conditions in Britain as cold as they were in the early 1800s when Frost Fairs were held on the Thames. Dr Casey, and a number of respected scientists working independantly from around the World, concur with this prediction that the energy reaching the Earth`s surface is about to drop leading to a global cooling of 1 to 1.5C. Neither Dr Casey nor the scientists whose work he cites believe that the global climate is as sensitive to increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere that either the IPCC or other scientists who are government-unded would have us believe. As for myself, what matters is independant scientific opinion and findings built up through the rigorous application of science, and then taking all the parameters into consideration before cpmong to conclusions about the future direction of our climate. Six years ago I started writing a thesis (almost finished- but other things cme along and I have not actually completed it): This thesis analysed the effect of a 2C global warming from the mean global temperatures in the 1970s on the climate in different parts of the World, my contention was that as the Arctic ice continued to shrink and the oceans warm that the main weather belts (subtropical high, Westerlies and subpolar depression tracks) would shift poleward a few degrees and that the Westerlies strengthen slightly- leading to warm and dry summers in southern Britain but wetter, milder and stormier winters across the countrz and wetter, warmer summers in Scotland. This certainly ties in with the weather-patterns of late 2013 and 2014 and (earlier) most of the 1990s and 2000s. In recent years I have read plenty of material (I have read Christopher Booker- he of the Sunday Telegraph- his book "The Real Global Warming Disaster") and now this book written by John Casey of SSRC. He has also written a book called "Cold Sun" though i do not have and have not read it. Meanwhile the BBC and those at the Met Office and (of course) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) who in their fifth report maintain that the serious threat in the future is from manmade Global Warming (AGW it is referred to). All these organisations maintain unless stronger concerted action is taken to stem rising CO2 levels the World will reach a "tipping point" by mid-century. With these conflicting accounts of the future climate globally (and regionally) it is best to go back to science and do theresearch and maths from everything that we can find. As a meteorologist you will (probably) have come across the book "Atmosphere, Weather and Climate" (Barry and Chorley, latest Ed. 2003). I have used this a lot to try and make sense of where we are going and to make regional\seasonal predictions. It is very thorough and covers the global circulation, treatment of the Sun, cloud and local microlclimates: All of the content is rigorous and well-researched and it has stood the test of time. The first edition came out in the 1960s. There is a dedicated chapter on Climatic Change and reference is made to the likely effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial times. There is the consensus in the scientific comunity that doubling CO2 levels would cause a 3.5C warming of the global climate (compared to pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm). That means that when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere reaches about 550 ppm by volume the World would get 3.5C warmer than it would with CO2 level at 280 ppm. This is according to the Global Circulation Models that already take into account feedback effects (and I must emphasise this point). The publication just referred to also makes detailed references to the initial "forcing" effect of doubling CO2 levels from pre-inductrial levels being about 6 to 8 Watts per aquare metre of extra heat being trapped in the radiation emitted to space by the Earth`s surface. Using Stefan`s Law on radiation, given the effective black-body temperature of the Earth being about -18C, this would lead to a global temperature rise of just 2C (and can I emphasise that the feedbacks will only come into play to push the Earth up to 3.5C warmer if this is the only forcing influence on the global climate- it is not!). CONTINUED)