[TheClimate.Vote] December 17, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Thu Dec 17 10:08:57 EST 2020

/*December 17, 2020*/

[Follow the money]
*Federal Reserve joins global group focused on fighting climate change*
DEC 16 2020
With average temperatures climbing and severe weather events happening 
more frequently, the Fed is increasing its consideration of how 
environmental shifts could create risk for the financial sector.
In its most recent financial stability report, the Fed included a 
section dedicated to the issue of climate change...
- -
The Federal Reserve Board announced on Tuesday that it has formally 
joined the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the 
Financial System, or NGFS, as a member. By bringing together central 
banks and supervisory authorities from around the world, NGFS supports 
the exchange of ideas, research, and best practices on the development 
of environment and climate risk management for the financial sector. The 
Board began participating in NGFS discussions and activities more than a 
year ago.

"As we develop our understanding of how best to assess the impact of 
climate change on the financial system, we look forward to continuing 
and deepening our discussions with our NGFS colleagues from around the 
world," said Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell...
The letter also expressed concern that introducing climate-change 
aspects into those measurements could have a chilling effect on banks’ 
willingness to extend credit to industries such as coal, oil and gas.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/fed-makes-move-that-signals-growing-focus-on-climate-change-risk.html 

- -

[press release]
December 15, 2020
*Federal Reserve Board announces it has formally joined the Network of 
Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, or 
NGFS, as a member*
The Federal Reserve Board announced on Tuesday that it has formally 
joined the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the 
Financial System, or NGFS, as a member. By bringing together central 
banks and supervisory authorities from around the world, NGFS supports 
the exchange of ideas, research, and best practices on the development 
of environment and climate risk management for the financial sector. The 
Board began participating in NGFS discussions and activities more than a 
year ago.

"As we develop our understanding of how best to assess the impact of 
climate change on the financial system, we look forward to continuing 
and deepening our discussions with our NGFS colleagues from around the 
world," said Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell...
- -
“This news ... is a clear indication that the agency is acknowledging 
its role in addressing the systemic risk of climate change,” said Steven 
Rothstein, managing director of the group, in a statement.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/bcreg20201215a.htm

[new data category]
*UK: Air pollution listed as cause of 9-year-old's death*
A British coroner has ruled that excessive air pollution from traffic 
fumes contributed to the death of a 9-year-old girl who died of a fatal 
asthma attack
LONDON -- A British coroner ruled Wednesday that excessive air pollution 
from traffic fumes contributed to the death of a 9-year-old girl who 
died of a fatal asthma attack. The girl is believed to be the first 
person in the U.K. to have air pollution listed as the cause of death on 
their death certificate...

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/uk-air-pollution-listed-year-olds-death-74760756

- -

[perhaps the biggest in all history]
*The Great Smog of 1952*
For five days in December 1952, the Great Smog of London smothered the 
city, wreaking havoc and killing thousands.
- -
The smog was so dense that residents in some sections of the city were 
unable to see their feet as they walked. For five days, the Great Smog 
paralyzed London and crippled all transportation, except for the London 
Underground train system.
https://www.history.com/news/the-killer-fog-that-blanketed-london-60-years-ago

[from history - helping to transcribe weather data]

*Old Weather*
Help scientists transcribe Arctic and worldwide weather observations 
recorded in ship's logs since the mid-19th century.
First voyage  Zooniverse projects

Old Weather: WWII Recover hidden weather data collected by the Navy 
during World War II
The deep  More challenging projects
Old Weather: Whaling Explore the Arctic of the past from the deck of a 
whaling ship

Old Weather: Arctic Rediscover the historic Arctic voyages of the U.S. 
Navy and Coast Guard

*The Project*
Old Weather volunteers explore, mark, and transcribe historic ship's 
logs from the 19th and early 20th centuries. We need your help because 
this task is impossible for computers, due to diverse and idiosyncratic 
handwriting that only human beings can read and understand effectively.

By participating in Old Weather you'll be helping advance research in 
multiple fields. Data about past weather and sea-ice conditions are 
vital for climate scientists, while historians value knowing about the 
course of a voyage and the events that transpired. Since many of these 
logs haven't been examined since they were originally filled in by a 
mariner long ago you might even discover something surprising.

*About the Science*
Millions of weather, ocean, and sea-ice observations recorded by 
mariners and scientists over the past 150 years are being recovered by 
Old Weather. These data are made freely available in digital formats 
suitable for climate model assimilation, retrospective analysis 
(reanalysis), and other kinds of research. The performance of 
data-assimilating modeling and extended reanalysis systems is greatly 
improved, the uncertainty of results (especially in sparsely observed 
regions like the Arctic) is reduced, and new long-period calibration and 
validation data sets are being created. As the historical data resource 
is extended farther back in time it will be possible to study a wider 
range of weather and climate phenomena and to better understand their 
impact on the Arctic and global environment, now and in the future.

https://www.oldweather.org/

- -

[explained in a video]
*Old Weather: Citizen Scientists*
Aug 5, 2016
NOAAPMEL
Become a citizen scientist and help recover weather observation data 
from logs made by US ships since the mid-19th century.
https://youtu.be/3wL9Q_puFak

- -

[Blog Post from Old Weather]
*A new Old Weather project*
*December 16, 2020
by Kevin Wood*
Old Weather – WW2 is now an active Zooniverse project. The purpose of 
this project is to recover hidden marine weather data recorded in U.S. 
Navy ships’ logbooks during World War II. Like all Old Weather projects, 
these data will be used to drive sophisticated computer models that help 
us understand and reconstruct weather and climate in extraordinary 
detail. But there is another goal that is just as vital – to uncover the 
source of a mysterious distortion in sea-surface temperature data 
collected during the war.

This distortion, which Chan & Huybers refer to as the World War II Warm 
Anomaly, may not be physical in nature, but, they argue, arises from 
earlier bias adjustments applied to correct for differences in sampling 
methods. The age-old technique of hauling up a bucket of seawater then 
taking its temperature on deck produces a different value compared to 
those collected from an engine-room cooling water intake, for example. 
There may even be differences in values because of the characteristics 
of particular ships, especially how deep they sit in the water (their 
draft). So knowing the fleet composition within the data set, and the 
specifics of how the measurements were made is crucial to teasing out an 
answer.

Because of the work we’ve been doing with the U.S. National Archives 
over the past eight years or so we are in a unique position to help 
investigate this question – we have digital images of many of the 
original U.S. Navy logbooks. The logs we are transcribing in this 
project were selected because the ships were often in the same place at 
the same time, even moored alongside each other in nests. All but two 
survived the entire war, 1941-1945. Twelve were based at Pearl Harbor in 
1941, eighteen were in the Aleutian Islands in 1942-1943, and ten were 
caught in Typhoon Cobra in December 1944. This opens up many 
opportunities to investigate sources of bias, from factors associated 
with different ship types, the weather instruments in use at different 
times, or changes in methods required by wartime operations (such as 
blackout for example). It will also be possible to investigate how 
tropical and sub-polar environments may have influenced the data in 
different ways.

Moreover, with logbooks in hand, we can also better understand legacy 
issues associated with U.S. Navy data key-punched onto IBM cards in the 
early 1950s and subsequently migrated into today’s widely used 
International Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS). Already 
we have found out that the fleet composition represented in ICOADS is 
tilted toward submarines, destroyers, and destroyer escorts. Aircraft 
carriers, with probably the best-equipped and best-trained weather 
personnel in the Navy, appear to be mostly neglected.

The World War II Warm Anomaly is large enough to appear in the long-term 
global mean sea-surface temperature record. This presents as an aspect 
of natural variability that may not in fact be real. If this turns out 
to be true, the corrected temperature record would appear to evolve 
upward more smoothly over time, and correspond more closely to model 
results as described by Chan & Huybers.
https://oldweather.wordpress.com/2020/12/16/a-new-old-weather-project/

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - December 17, 2014 *

The New York Times reports:

"The Cuomo administration announced Wednesday that it would ban 
hydraulic fracturing in New York State, ending years of uncertainty by 
concluding that the controversial method of extracting gas from deep 
underground could contaminate the state’s air and water and pose 
inestimable public-health risks."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/nyregion/cuomo-to-ban-fracking-in-new-york-state-citing-health-risks.html?mwrsm=Email 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/17/3604762/breaking-new-york-will-pursue-fracking-ban/ 

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/andrew-cuomo--im-not-a-scientist-374321731971 

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