The conference, or two days in Palmerston North
A busy couple of days lie ahead for your Hot Topic blogger — he’s packing a bag and heading off to Palmerston North in the morning for the New Zealand Climate Change Conference 2013. I’ll be arriving...
View ArticleNZ Climate Change Conference 2013 day one
It’s been a long day in Palmerston North at the NZ Climate Change Conference for 2013. There’ll be nothing particularly cogent in this post, but I have recorded interviews with two of the VUW 3 — Jim...
View ArticleNZCCC 2013: David Frame on climate sensitivity
The NZ Climate Change Conference began with a keynote by Professor David Frame, the director of VUW’s Climate Change Research Institute, and I grabbed a few minutes with Dave later on the first day to...
View ArticleNZCCC 2013: Barry Smit on adaptation – Inuit, wine and uncertainty
Kicking off the afternoon sessions on the first day of this year’s NZ CCC conference, Professor Barry Smit of the University of Guelph in Canada launched his keynote — titled From theory to practice,...
View ArticleNZCCC 2013: Andy Reisinger on mitigating emissions in New Zealand
Day two of last week’s climate change conference kicked off with a keynote from Andy Reisinger, the deputy director of the NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre on New Zealand’s wedges – a...
View ArticleNZCCC 2013: Jim Renwick on Antarctic sea ice, SAM and ozone
Here’s the final interview I recorded at last week’s NZ Climate Change Conference in Palmerston North: VUW’s Dr Jim Renwick1 talking about the complex relationship between the southern annular mode —...
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TDB today: Europe floods as Arctic melts
In my column at The Daily Blog today, I ruminate on the links between the historic and damaging floods in central Europe and the rapid warming of the Arctic. What will it take to make the world’s...
View ArticleMcKibben: NZ needs to move away from oil and coal
Bill McKibben‘s on the New Zealand leg of his Do The Maths downunder tour, and I got the chance for a quick chat with him earlier today1. Bill lays out the essence of the carbon budget we have to live...
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People talking #11
Is it really six months since I posted the last open thread? I do apologise — please avail yourselves of the facility. I’m busy battening down the hatches before the first big winter storm hits, and...
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I think it’s going to rain today (when it’s wet, it’s very very wet)
I took Rosie the truffle machine for a walk around the farm just before dark yesterday. We were both a bit stir-crazy after four days of cold, cold rain and a couple of days of screaming southerlies...
View ArticlePlanet waves, and the big heat
It’s certainly hot in the southwestern USA at the moment — a dome of heat has established itself under a persistent high pressure ridge, and temperatures are pushing up towards all-time highs....
View ArticleRichard Alley: what we know now…
In this talk, recorded at the American Geophysical Union’s Chapman Conference on Climate Communication in Colorado recently, Richard Alley gives his overview of what we know about the state of the...
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TDB Today: penny-pinching stupidity by the NZ government
In my Daily Blog column this week, I express disgust at news that the NZ government is planning to cut climate science research funding by 50 percent. Not content with keeping their heads buried in...
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Canadian megafires send smoke round the globe
Massive forest fires are raging beyond control in Quebec, sending huge plumes of smoke to the east. The Eastmain fire — top left in this image from NASA’s Earth Observatory — is spreading towards the...
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Arctic summer 2013: fragile ice pack feeling the pressure
Looking down on the North Pole from satellite, NASA’s Arctic mosaic image for July 14 shows an unusually cloud-free view of the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean. Click on the image to see the bigger...
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Arctic sea ice time bomb ticking: the bang’s gonna be huge
Reading this press release about a new paper in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology spoiled my day. It might not be obvious to a casual reader just glancing through the morning news —...
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Sea level rise and the Canterbury coastline
What are the prospects for the shorelines of Pegasus Bay as sea level rises, river flows change, and wave directions change? Someone who really knows her erosion from accretion is Sonny Whitelaw, the...
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New Zealand’s changing climate and oceans: new Gluckman report out today
The Prime Minister’s science advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman, today released a new report looking at the probable impacts of climate change in New Zealand over the next 40 years. The report, New Zealand’s...
View ArticleA physicist speaks: Dessler on climate sensitivity – very unlikely to be less...
There’s been much ado about climate sensitivity — the amount of warming we expect for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere — in the last month or two. A couple of recent papers, and an expected slight...
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HARDtalk on thin ice in Alaska
Stephen Sackur took the BBC’s HARDtalk programme on the road in Alaska in a climate change episode screened a few days ago. It was the kind of aware and intelligent journalism one hopes to see on the...
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