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https://fullfact.org/europe/what-does-leaving-eu-mean-energy-climate/

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World v Trump on global climate deal? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38676898

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World v Trump on global climate deal? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38676898

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World v Trump on global climate deal? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38676898

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World v Trump on global climate deal? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38676898

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revision games

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Dear EarthTalk: Don't some scientists point to sunspots and solar wind as having more impact on climate change than human industrial activity?
-- David Noss, California, MD

Sunspots are storms on the sun's surface that are marked by intense magnetic activity and play host to solar flares and hot gassy ejections from the sun's corona. Scientists believe that the number of spots on the sun cycles over time, reaching a peak-the so-called Solar Maximum-every 11 years or so. Some studies indicate that sunspot activity overall has doubled in the last century. The apparent result down here on Earth is that the sun glows brighter by about 0.1 percent now than it did 100 years ago.

Solar wind, according to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, consists of magnetized plasma flares and in some cases is linked to sunspots. It emanates from the sun and influences galactic rays that may in turn affect atmospheric phenomena on Earth, such as cloud cover. But scientists are the first to admit that they have a lot to learn about phenomena like sunspots and solar wind, some of which is visible to humans on Earth in the form of Aurora Borealis and other far flung interplanetary light shows.

Some skeptics of human-induced climate change blame global warming on natural variations in the sun's output due to sunspots and/or solar wind. They say it's no coincidence that an increase in sunspot activity and a run-up of global temperatures on Earth are happening concurrently, and view regulation of carbon emissions as folly with negative ramifications for our economy and tried-and-true energy infrastructure.

"[V]ariations in solar energy output have far more effect on Earth's climate than soccer moms driving SUVs," Southwestern Law School professor Joerg Knipprath, writes in his 'Token Conservative' blog. "A rational thinker would understand that, especially if he or she has some understanding of the limits of human influence. But the global warming boosters have this unbounded hubris that it is humans who control nature, and that human activity can terminally despoil the planet as well as cause its salvation."

Many climate scientists agree that sunspots and solar wind could be playing a role in climate change, but the vast majority view it as very minimal and attribute Earth's warming primarily to emissions from industrial activity-and they have thousands of peer-reviewed studies available to back up that claim.

Peter Foukal of the Massachusetts-based firm Heliophysics, Inc., who has tracked sunspot intensities from different spots around the globe dating back four centuries, also concludes that such solar disturbances have little or no impact on global warming. Nevertheless, he adds, most up-to-date climate models-including those used by the United Nations' prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-incorporate the effects of the sun's variable degree of brightness in their overall calculations.

Ironically, the only way to really find out if phenomena like sunspots and solar wind are playing a larger role in climate change than most scientists now believe would be to significantly reduce our carbon emissions. Only in the absence of that potential driver will researchers be able to tell for sure how much impact natural influences have on the Earth's climate.

CONTACTS: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, www.solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov; Token Conservative Blog, www.tokenconservative.com; IPCC, www.ipcc.ch.

EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

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The Role of Sunspots and Solar Winds in Climate Change

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Dear EarthTalk: Don't some scientists point to sunspots and solar wind as having more impact on climate change than human industrial activity? -- David Noss, California, MD Sunspots are storms on the sun's surface that are marked by intense magnetic activity and play host to solar flares and hot gassy ejections from the sun's corona.

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-spots-and-climate-change/

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https://quizlet.com/adataggart/folders/geography-a-level

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Including Ice Cores and sediment beds. Read from 3.3 - Proxy Data

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Climate deal will survive Trump

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The Paris climate agreement will survive a Trump presidency says the US special envoy on climate change Dr Jonathan Pershing.

He was speaking before the arrival of ministers and some heads of state in Marrakech on Tuesday.

They are coming to try to take the next steps to tackle global climate change.

But the meeting has been rocked by the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump will withdraw the US from the pact.

Shape and thrust

US lead negotiator Dr Pershing told a packed news briefing that the passion and dedication displayed in the effort to deliver the Paris treaty was strong enough to withstand the impacts of a Trump presidency.

"Heads of state can and will change but I am confident that we can and we will sustain a durable international effort to counter climate change," he said.

Dr Pershing said that he expected personnel from the Trump transition team to start arriving at the State Department in the coming weeks and they would drive the "shape and thrust" of US diplomacy over the next four years.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump sketched a plan to "cancel" the Paris Agreement and withhold US payments to the UN body tasked with stemming climate change.

He has also appointed Myron Ebell, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a man well known for his contrarian views on climate change, to head his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team.

Dr Pershing said that he had no information on who might lead on climate change issues in a Trump administration. Whoever it was, he said, should recognise the strength of last year's climate agreement and what it could help the world to achieve.

"The Paris agreement protects economic growth and the environment, all while providing nationally determined flexibility to accommodate differing circumstances," he said.

"It is durable, it is inclusive it is ambitious."

Negotiators from across the globe have been reluctant to directly criticise the incoming US administration.

They have instead opted to focus on the benefits to economies of a transition to greener sources of energy. The EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said that investments in renewable sources were worth more than $329bn last year, six times the amount in 2004. But the commissioner said that Europe expects the US to stay in the agreement.

"We expect that the commitments made by the Americans on climate change will be upheld, after all they are the second largest emitter in the world and they also have to do their fair share to fix the climate."

Away from the conference the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been calling for a carbon tax on US goods if President Trump follows through on his promise to walk away from the Paris deal.

"Donald Trump has said - we'll see if he keeps this promise - that he won't respect the conclusions of the Paris climate agreement," Mr Sarkozy, who is a candidate for next year's French presidential elections, told the TF1 television channel on Sunday.

"Well, I will demand that Europe put in place a carbon tax at its border, a tax of 1%-3%, for all products coming from the United States, if the United States doesn't apply environmental rules that we are imposing on our companies."

Delegates in Marrakech though were cool on the idea.

"Before the results of the US elections, we always said we didn't like carbon taxes," said Miguel Arias Canete. "The EU commission is not thinking to make any proposal on that issue."

On Tuesday, the King of Morocco will welcome heads of state including French President Francois Hollande and many African leaders to the high level segment of these talks here in Marrakech.

The leaders are expected to issue a call for countries to go further and faster with their emissions cuts than under their current pledges.

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The Paris climate agreement will survive a Trump presidency says the US special envoy on climate change Dr Jonathan Pershing. He was speaking before the arrival of ministers and some heads of state in Marrakech on Tuesday. They are coming to try to take the next steps to tackle global climate change.

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2016 world's warmest on record

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2016 looks poised to be the warmest year on record globally, according to preliminary data.

With data from just the first nine months, scientists are 90% certain that 2016 will pass the mark set by 2015.

Temperatures from January to September were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The body says temperatures should remain high enough for the rest of the year to break the previous record.

El Nino has had an impact, but the most significant factor driving temperatures up continues to be CO2 emissions.
What is climate change?
The provisional statement on the status of the global climate in 2016 has been released early this year to help inform negotiators meeting in Morocco, who are trying to push forward with the Paris Climate Agreement.

The document says the year to September was 0.88 above the average for the period between 1961-90, which the WMO uses at its baseline.

The whole of 2015, which broke the previous record by a significant amount, was 0.77 above the 1961-90 average.

While there are still a couple of months to go this year, a preliminary analysis of the October data indicates that 2016 is very much on track to surpass the 2015 level, which in turn broke the previous high mark set in 2014.

"Another year. Another record. The high temperatures we saw in 2015 are set to be beaten in 2016," said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas.

"In parts of Arctic Russia, temperatures were 6C to 7C above the long-term average. Many other Arctic and sub-Arctic regions in Russia, Alaska and north-west Canada were at least 3C above average. We are used to measuring temperature records in fractions of a degree, and so this is different," said Mr Taalas.

The report highlights the fact that other long-term climate change indicators are also breaking records. The amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere continued on its upward march in 2016.

Arctic sea ice continued to melt in significant amounts, while the Greenland ice sheet displayed very early melting this year.

Experts believe that the El Nino weather phenomenon played a role in the record warm temperatures seen in 2015 and 2016.

They quantify it as roughly 0.2 of a degree - but the bulk of the warming is coming from the accumulation of greenhouse gases. And the impacts of that warming are being widely felt.

"Because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen," said Petteri Taalas.

"'Once in a generation' heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular. Sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones," he said.

The surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the US has increased expectations that he will bring a more sceptical view of climate change to the White House.

Scientists are stressing that the evidence for the reality of climate change is getting stronger all the time.

"We are seeing the impacts of climate change on extreme weather," said Dr Peter Stott, who leads the climate attribution team at the UK Met Office.

"One degree may sound a relatively small number but in the context of such a stable climate that we've had over the past millennia, and the rapidity of that warming, we are seeing this real world evidence that doesn't come from a model or a projection."

According to the WMO analysis, 16 of the 17 warmest years have been recorded this century. The only exception was 1998.

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2016 looks poised to be the warmest year on record globally, according to preliminary data. With data from just the first nine months, scientists are 90% certain that 2016 will pass the mark set by 2015. Temperatures from January to September were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

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Ice cores

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Scientists set out this week to try to find the oldest ice in Antarctica.

They are seeking a location where they can drill a frozen core that contains a continuous record of climate change stretching back 1.5 million years.

The chemistry of this ice can be used to deduce past temperatures on Earth.

And tiny bubbles of air trapped inside the core will also betray the levels of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide that were once present in the atmosphere.

This new data is expected to provide additional confidence in the modelled forecasts of how conditions on the planet might develop in the future.

"We've got a very good record of what's been happening over the last 800,000 years but there are some aspects which we cannot fully explain," said Dr Robert Mulvaney from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"By studying ice that's 1.5 million years old, it should give us the underpinning belief that we really do so deeply understand the climate system that we can be absolutely sure that what we're projecting for the next few hundred years is based on a complete knowledge of the science," he told BBC News.

The EU-funded Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice (BE-OI) project will update and extend an effort that was conducted a decade ago.

This previous venture drilled some 3,200m into the East Antarctic Ice Sheet at a topographic high point known as Dome Concordia (Dome C).

Its recovered core represented 800 millennia of compressed snowfall on the White Continent.

And with each slice through this cylinder of ice, researchers were able to reconstruct ancient climate conditions on a very fine timescale.

As well as being able to sample small encapsulations of historic greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide - they managed also to gauge past swings in temperature.

This was done by analysing the different types, or isotopes, of hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the ice. The ratio of heavy atoms to light ones in snow varies depending on whether the Earth is warm or cool.

The investigation revealed that ice ages came and went on a roughly 100,000-year cycle, and that temperatures moved in lock-step with carbon dioxide levels.

But there is a slight problem with this narrative: go back even further in time, to more than a million years ago, and the ice ages seesaw on a roughly 41,000-year cycle. This is evident from particular ocean sediments that can also yield a "proxy" of past temperature.

Precisely why there is a switch in timing is not clear. Scientists know it must be linked to changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun which affect the amount of energy reaching the planet's surface. Yet, it is clear something else is also in play, and researchers think the answer will be found in the proposed 1.5-million-year-long ice core record.

"We have hypotheses of course, but no-one is really certain what the mechanism is that we're missing," said Prof Olaf Eisen, the BE-OI project coordinator from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany.

"It may have something to do with what the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were doing at the time, but we currently don't have that record. We know what the temperatures were doing from the stable isotopes in marine cores, but we don't know about the atmosphere and that should come from the ice."

The immediate task for the 10-nation project is finding the right spot in Antarctica to drill the ice. Hence, the expedition now about to get under way.

BAS will be conducting radar surveys of the ice sheet's layers near Dome C, and sinking some short, 600-metre holes to test ideas on how the ice should age and change temperature with depth.

At the same time, a French party will demonstrate an exciting new probe that can read oxygen isotopes and methane concentrations as it pushes down through the ice.

The current plan holds that if the British can find a favourable site this year, the French will assess it fully next year by taking their SUBGLACIOR drill all the way to the rock bed, more than 3km down.

"Everything on this probe has had to be invented and we go to Concordia to test all the technological choices we have made," explained Dr Jérôme Chappellaz, a senior scientist at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France.

"So, this will mostly be a trouble-shooting season. It's in 2017/18 that we plan to deploy it to the site we consider to be the optimum one and take the probe all the way to bedrock."

This should establish whether the chosen site really does hold a 1.5-million-year-old record of past conditions.

A large field campaign could then follow in later Antarctic seasons with specialist coring equipment to retrieve a proper cylinder of ice for more extensive study back in European labs.

"The previous project probably took us about 10 years from initially setting up where we wanted to drill to achieving the core," said Dr Mulvaney.

"It's a very remote location and very expensive to put people into. And we don't want to put all that effort and money into something if we're not pretty sure we're drilling in the right place."

The BE-OI project does have a Plan B, just in case. It plans to do some additional survey work also at Dome F, another of the ice sheet's topographic high points.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

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Scientists set out this week to try to find the oldest ice in Antarctica. They are seeking a location where they can drill a frozen core that contains a continuous record of climate change stretching back 1.5 million years. The chemistry of this ice can be used to deduce past temperatures on Earth.

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Orbital causes of Ice Ages

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Throughout geological time, the Earth's climate has varied drastically, primarily driven by through energy transfer from the sun to the Earth's surface. This position and the interaction between the Earth and the sun (orbital variation) has varied over the Earth's 4.6 billion year history, controlling the climate.

What is the Milankovitch theory?

The Milankovitch theory is used to explain the impacts of the Earth's movements on its climate. It was developed by Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milanković during the early 1900s. Using mathematical theory, he hypothesised that variations in the Earth's orbit were the primary drivers of global climate patterns. These 'orbital forcing' mechanisms are centred on three parameters: eccentricity, obliquity, and precession (see below). These parameters interact with one another, each with a different periodicity (or cycle). The Milankovitch theory addresses the impacts of these three factors on the Earth's climate.

Similar hypotheses were also developed much earlier, by James Croll and Joseph Adhémar during the 19 th Century. However, at that time, geological dating methods were not sufficiently advanced to provide reliable dated evidence in support of the theory. In fact, despite the evidence presented by Milankovitch, it wasn't until the publication of the pioneering work of Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton in 1976 that the Milankovitch theory attained widespread acceptance. Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton provided the first, high resolution, high precision record of long-term global environmental change using deep ocean cores. Their work, published in 1976, used oxygen isotope measurements from the tests (or shells) of deep sea organisms called foraminifera to track changes in global ice volume over the last 450,000 years. This was used as an indicator of global climate changes over this time period, and provided strong evidence in support of the Milankovitch theory.

Eccentricity (100,000 year cycle)

The term eccentricity refers to the shape of the Earth's orbit, as a measure of the degree to which it departs from a circular shape. The orbit typically varies from near circular (low eccentricity: 0.005), to near elliptical (high eccentricity: 0.058). The mean eccentricity is 0.028, and at present is approximately 0.017. Changes in the orbital shape arise due to a combination of factors, which combine to produce a periodicity of change over approximately 100,000 years. The dominant influence on the shape of the orbit is the interaction with the gravitational fields of Jupiter and Saturn. The shape of the Earth's orbit determines the amount of incoming solar radiation due to changes in the distance from the Earth to the sun. The shortest distance is termed the perihelion, the longest distance is the aphelion. When the orbit is at its most elliptical, the amount of solar radiation at perihelion is c.23% more than at aphelion.

Obliquity - the tilt of the axis (41,000 year cycle)

This term refers to the angle of the Earth's axial tile in relation to its orbit. It is also referred to as the 'obliquity of the ecliptic'. Obliquity varies from 22.1° to 24.5° (an angle of 2.4°) and back again, over a time period of approximately 41,000 years. When obliquity increases (i.e. the earth is tilted at a greater angle) there is a greater variation between Winter and Summer insolation - in Summer there is more solar radiation, and in Winter there is less. This solar radiation is not equally distributed, however, due to the shape of the Earth's surface. With an increase in obliquity, high latitudes (towards the poles) receive an increase in insolation, while lower latitudes receive a decrease in insolation. The Earth is currently tilted at approximately 23.44°, so it is half way through its cycle of tilt from 24.5° to 22.1°.

Precession - the direction of the axis (26,000 year cycle)

Precession is the direction of the Earth's rotation (or 'wobble') on its axis. This motion occurs due to the tidal forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun on the Earth.

The impacts of precession are largely felt at perihelion (when the Earth is at its closest proximity to the Sun) due to increased solar radiation. For example, when the North Pole is directed towards the Sun, the northern hemisphere receives much more insolation in Summer, and experiences a colder Winter. Meanwhile the southern hemisphere would experience milder seasons. In contrast, when the South Pole is directed at the Sun, it is the South Pole that experiences the larger seasonal variations. In its current state, perihelion is reached during the southern hemisphere summer, and aphelion is reached during the southern hemisphere winter. This is why the southern hemisphere often experiences greater seasonal extremes than the northern hemisphere.

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Throughout geological time, the Earth's climate has varied drastically, primarily driven by through energy transfer from the sun to the Earth's surface. This position and the interaction between the Earth and the sun (orbital variation) has varied over the Earth's 4.6 billion year history, controlling the climate. What is the Milankovitch theory?