Category Archives: Climate

The Pause That Refreshes

Posted on April 11, 2014 by gymnosperm

We hear more and more about the Pause. This pause refers to a hiatus in lower atmospheric warming for a human generation since 1997. This “pause” by its very name implies that warming will resume sometime soon. Only zealots will claim … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Global Warming, Paleoclimate, the "Pause" | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Spectra, Goddess of Light

Posted on March 31, 2014 by gymnosperm

We worship in strange and disjointed ways. One seeking to better understand how Spectra’s blessings arrive and leave our planet is confronted with a bewildering array of graphics. This one shows incoming light in nanometers. This one shows outgoing in … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Greenhouse Spectra, Optical Material Properties, Photon, Spectra | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Large Igneous Provinces, Temperature, Sea Level, and Extinctions

Posted on March 25, 2014 by gymnosperm

We had been looking at the stuff one can easily google regarding global temperature and large igneous provinces (LIP’s) and it seemed there might be something, so we dug in. There is an organization, largeigneousprovinces.org, that has excel data in … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Cretaceous normal superchron, Extinctions, Geology, Large Igneous Provinces, Magnetic Reversals, Paleo Sea Level, Paleoclimate | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

California Drought Update Early March

Posted on March 7, 2014 by gymnosperm

San Francisco did break the record of 1917 as of January, but just barely. Had the rains begun a day earlier as forecast, the monthly record would have held. Anyway, the drought is definitely not the end of life as we … Continue reading →

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Cold is the New Hot

Posted on March 4, 2014 by gymnosperm

Once it was that everything was getting hotter and hotter and pretty soon we would be frying eggs by just putting the pan outside. This was to have been because a certain trace gas was invested with magical powers far … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Climate, Climate Change, Cold is the New Hot, Global Warming, Religion, Shamanism | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Carbon and the Second Coming

Posted on February 15, 2014 by gymnosperm

Why do we yearn the judgment day? Why is there always, on some street corner, somewhere, somebody proclaiming that the end is near? One must learn from their weaknesses, if possible. But this yearning keeps returning, again, and again. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Climate, Human need for Judgdment, Shamanism | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Ah, the Frogs

Posted on February 11, 2014 by gymnosperm

Almost forgot about the frogs. It has been dry, desert dry, in California for so long. They are tiny creatures, like what we used to call “tree” frogs, but they live in the grass. You can never imagine there would … Continue reading →

Posted in Biology, California Drought, Climate | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A New Feature of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation?

Posted on January 24, 2014 by gymnosperm

We learn about things in mundane ways. Our conception of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) began with fish. Salmon are absolutely delicious. Tough handed people venture into dangerous conditions to catch them for us. It became apparent to the tough … Continue reading →

Posted in California Drought, Climate, Geography, San Francisco Rainfall | Tagged | 3 Comments

Some Things We’ve Noticed About the California Drought

Posted on January 17, 2014 by gymnosperm

California is a drought state. Our so called “Mediterranean” climate falls in a global zone just poleward of the great deserts and along the western continental margins that is characterized by winter rain and summer drought. Should we be surprised … Continue reading →

Posted in California Drought, Climate, Geography, Oceanography, Paleoclimate, Relationship of SST and 200hPa Anomalies, San Francisco Rainfall | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Carbon Dioxide, the Wimp

Posted on January 13, 2014 by gymnosperm

It is pretty well-known that CO2 represents only one part in 2500 in the atmosphere. Water vapor represents one part in 40. Not only is CO2 a wimpy constituent of the atmosphere, it is also a wimpy constituent of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Global Warming, Optical Material Properties | Tagged , , | 16 Comments