Milton was a 65mph tropical storm this time yesterday (15Z advisory) Now 160mph category 5 Mind-bending, terrifying rate of intensification. Stadium effect eye and a satellite appearance which becomes more 'perfect' with every frame
I've been so lucky to have been rewarded a new research project by the Research Council of Norway! And what better way to celebrate than to write a column about it in today's newspaper? klassekampen.no/utgave/2024-...
This is an important correction to misleading conclusions that appeared in Cohen et al (2014, Nature) that suggested that more cold extremes were occurring - turns out that was an artifact of the changes in data coverage in the data set used.
Models and observations agree on fewer and milder midlatitude cold extremes even over recent decades of rapid Arctic warming – Blackport et al. doi.org/10.1126/scia... "The previously reported increase in cold extremes was overestimated due to an artifact of changing data coverage"
Midlatitude extreme cold events have decreased in severity and frequency over recent decades, in agreement with models.
In light of the UK shutting down their last coal power plant (hooray!), @xkcd.com estimated how much the country has burned in the past. It's equivalent to a layer of coal about 8 cm thick, if spread across the whole of the country. 😳
This is a great piece on the problems with a data-based approach when the data is fundamentally flawed - but I am fascinated to know why this guy thinks *physicists* can find objective measures of human ageing instead of, uh, one of the multiple subfields of biology that studies ageing. 🧪
Saul Newman’s research suggests that we’re completely mistaken about how long humans live for.
According to @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social, last summer was the warmest on record for both Europe and globally. Since 1979, Europe's summers have warmed 2.7 times faster than the global average.
So a lot of people have shared with me Musk's recent post about how we need to avoid a "Dark Age" as in Asimov's Foundation series. Let me just say the most noticeable blights in space advocacy papers are: 1) 5th grade understanding of history, w/out citations 2) Citing sci fi as if it is a source.
Cold war's crazy ideas involving an ice sheet: "safe" nuclear waste disposal deep under the ice, a testing ground for hovercraft speeding across the icy surface, or an elaborate system of tunnels for trains with nuclear war heads. Oh, and chairs made of permafrost: arstechnica.com/science/2024...
The Cold War spawned some odd military projects that were doomed to fail.
I have an op-ed in Aftenposten (Norwegian) arguing that Norway & its petroleum company Equinor (67% ownership) say one thing, but do another. Equinor has a plan for net zero, yet is full speed ahead on maintaining today's production levels. aftenposten.no/meninger/deb... 1/
Equinor has pledged to keep Norwegian petroleum production at current levels until at least 2035. The interesting thing about this is that it would follow the most aggressive scenario put forward by government agencies... (the government owns 67% of Equinor) 1/
