Category Archives: icesheets

Why I care about and study mosses

Posted on 20 February 2021 by ecoquant

For a guy who has spent most of his professional career developing, studying, and improving engineered systems, software, and applying mathematics to them, the idea of devoting a substantial part of the rest of his life to the study of … Continue reading →

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, astrophysics, bryology, bryophytes, carbon dioxide, climate, Cosmos, Ecological Society of America, icesheets, longitudinal study of mosses, longitudinal survey of mosses, National Phenology Network, Neill deGrasse Tyson, science | 1 Comment

We shouldn’t forget where we are on the course towards climate disruption

Posted on 23 December 2019 by ecoquant

We shouldn’t forget where we are on the course towards climate disruption. We shouldn’t forget we’ve already disrupted. Emissions are still increasing. This means it’s getting worse every year. It is not something which is in the future. It’s here … Continue reading →

Posted in Antarctica, being carbon dioxide, climate disruption, Eric Rignot, global blinding, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, sea level rise | Leave a comment

“Climate Science for Climate Activists” is a wrap

Posted on 6 August 2019 by ecoquant

The class “Climate Science for Climate Activists” I have taught for the last 6 or so weeks is now completed. The slides are available here.

Posted in alternatives to the Green New Deal, Anthropocene, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, being carbon dioxide, Blackbody radiation, bridge to somewhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, cement production, Clausius-Clapeyron equation, clean disruption, clear air capture of carbon dioxide, climate, Climate Adam, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate grief, climate models, ClimateAdam, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, ecomodernism, electric vehicles, electricity, Emily Shuckburgh, emissions, energy utilities, environment, evidence, EVs, flooding, floods, fluid dynamics, fluid eddies, food, food scarcity, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels, Gavin Schmidt, geoengineering, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, Glen Peters, Global Carbon Project, global warming, Grant Foster, Green New Deal, Green Tech Media, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, grid defection, Hermann Scheer, Humans have a lot to answer for, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, investment in wind and solar energy, investments, John Marshall, klaus lackner, lapse rate, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, life cycle sustainability analysis, Mark Jacobson, meteorological models, meteorology, Nathan Phillips, National Center for Atmospheric Research, negative emissions, nonlinear systems, nor'easters, ocean warming, oceanic eddies, oceanography, oceans, permafrost, personal purity, photovoltaics, precipitation, Principles of Planetary Climate, radiative forcing, Ray Pierrehumbert, Robert Young, science, sea level rise, seismology, shorelines, Sir David King, solar democracy, solar domination, solar energy, solar power, solar revolution, Stanford University, Stefan Rahmstorf, Steven Chu, Stewart Brand, sustainability, Svante Arrhenius, Tamino, the energy of the people, the green century, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, the value of financial assets, utility company death spiral, Wally Broecker, water, water as a resource, WHOI, wild fires, wind power, wishful environmentalism, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon | 1 Comment

This flooding can’t be stopped. What about the rest?

Posted on 17 June 2018 by ecoquant

Tamino is writing about this subject, too. That entirely makes complete sense as it is the biggest geophysical and environmental story out there right now. I’ve included an update at this post’s end discussing the possible economic impacts. It’s been … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Worshipers, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate economics, climate justice, coastal communities, coastal investment risks, coasts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corporate responsibility, Cult of Carbon, environment, Eric Rignot, flooding, floods, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, hydrology, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, investing, investments, John Englander, living shorelines, Massachusetts, New England, real estate values, rights of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, Robert M DeConto, Scituate, sea level rise, seawalls, shorelines, Stefan Rahmstorf, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, wishful environmentalism, ``The tide is risin'/And so are we'' | Leave a comment

Sea-level report cards, contingency upon model character, and ensemble methods

Posted on 13 March 2018 by ecoquant

Done by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, new sea-level report cards offer a look at current sea-level rise rates, and projections. What’s interesting to me is making the projections conditional upon the character of the model used to project. … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Association, American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, anomaly detection, Bayesian model averaging, changepoint detection, climate disruption, climate economics, climate education, coastal communities, coasts, dynamical systems, ensemble methods, ensemble models, flooding, geophysics, global warming, Grant Foster, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, living shorelines, meteorological models, nonlinear systems, prediction, sea level rise, shorelines, Skeptical Science, spaghetti plots, temporal myopia, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, tragedy of the horizon | Leave a comment

XKCD tells it all

Posted on 12 September 2016 by ecoquant

Alerted to the existence of the image by Tamino. The figure is due to the irrepressible Randall Munroe.

Posted in Anthropocene, bridge to nowhere, Carbon Cycle, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, coastal communities, coasts, environment, evidence, fossil fuels, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, meteorology, Our Children's Trust, Principles of Planetary Climate, Randall Munroe, Ray Pierrehumbert, science, the right to know, XKCD | 1 Comment

This Earth Day: The Data

Posted on 22 April 2016 by ecoquant

(Amendments on 25the April 2016.) Sorry, folks, it’s It’s not just El Niño. El Niño’s have gotten bigger over the years. (Click on image for a larger picture. Use your browser Back Button to return to blog.) (Click on image … Continue reading →

Posted in American Petroleum Institute, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, BEST, Bill Nye, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, Chevron, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate justice, corporate litigation on damage from fossil fuel emissions, corruption, Dan Satterfield, ecology, El Nina, El Nino, ENSO, environment, evidence, Exxon, false advertising, fear uncertainty and doubt, fossil fuels, fracking, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, Gulf Oil, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, ignorance, James Hansen, John Cook, La Nina, meteorology, NASA, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, open data, organizational failures, physics, rationality, reasonableness, regulatory capture, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, selfishness, Spaceship Earth, statistics, sustainability, Texaco, the problem of evil, the right to know, the tragedy of our present civilization, UU Humanists, WAIS, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Twila Moon, glaciologist

Posted on 13 February 2016 by ecoquant

Twila Moon, University of Oregon, and, soon, University of Bristol, “Face to face with climate change, in Greenland”. Her research concerns ice interface dynamics, principally concerning glaciers.

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, Arctic, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, ecology, environment, fossil fuels, geophysics, glaciers, glaciology, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, ice sheet dynamics, icesheets, physics, planning, rationality, reasonableness, the right to know, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Underestimated Rates of Sea Level Rise

Posted on 4 February 2016 by ecoquant
Posted in adaptation, Antarctica, Anthropocene, Arctic, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, ecology, floods, Florida, fossil fuels, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, IPCC, James Hansen, John Englander, Richard Alley, Scituate, sea level rise, Stefan Rahmstorf, temporal myopia, the right to know, Wally Broecker, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Techno Utopias

Posted on 3 February 2016 by ecoquant

Professor Kevin Anderson on Techno Utopias. The Paris “COP21” agreement is/was not only expecting miracles, it was counting on them. Y’think climate disruption causes ecosystem disruption: Try geoengineering. Well the answer was simple. If we choose to continue our love … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, bollocks, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, coastal communities, complex systems, consumption, COP21, corporate supply chains, denial, disingenuity, economics, environment, ethics, evidence, exponential growth, extended supply chains, FEMA, finance, fossil fuels, games of chance, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenwashing, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, ignorance, IPCC, James Hansen, Kevin Anderson, Lenny Smith, liberal climate deniers, living shorelines, MA, meteorology, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, planning, population biology, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, regime shifts, Sankey diagram, science, sea level rise, selfishness, silly tech devices, Techno Utopias, the right to know, the value of financial assets | 1 Comment

“That time has come and gone.”

Posted on 22 December 2015 by ecoquant

Lonnie Thompson, PhD,Byrd Polar Center, Ohio State University: “When I first started working on this and seeing the system change, I think it was 1992 when I first testified at U.S. Senate on climate change. Back then I talked about … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, climate disruption, environment, geophysics, glaciers, global warming, greenhouse gases, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, IPCC, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, Spaceship Earth, temporal myopia, UNFCCC | Leave a comment

dynamic linear model applied to sea-level-rise anomalies

Posted on 11 December 2015 by ecoquant

I spent much of the data working up a function for level+trend dynamic linear modeling based upon the dlm package by Petris, Petrone, and Campagnoli, while trying some calculations and code for regime shift detection. One of the test cases … Continue reading →

Posted in Bayesian, citizen science, climate change, climate data, climate disruption, dynamic linear models, floods, forecasting, Frequentist, global warming, icesheets, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, meteorology, open data, sea level rise, state-space models, statistics, time series | 1 Comment

Global Sea Level Rise by NASA Satellite since 1993

Posted on 2 November 2015 by ecoquant

Y’know those NASA satellites Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is so proud to tell us say that there’s been no warming of Earth in 18 years? Well, that’s wrong, of course, but it’s the same organization and the same kinds … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropocene, carbon dioxide, Carbon Worshipers, Cauchy distribution, citizenship, civilization, climate change, climate disruption, destructive economic development, economics, floods, forecasting, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, living shorelines, MA, meteorology, oceanography, planning, politics, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, statistics | Leave a comment

New Study Projects That Melting of Antarctic Ice Shelves Will Intensify

Posted on 13 October 2015 by ecoquant

New research published today projects a doubling of surface melting of Antarctic ice shelves by 2050 and by 2100 may surpass intensities associated with ice shelf collapse, if greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel consumption continues at the present rate. … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropocene, capricious gods, carbon dioxide, civilization, climate, climate disruption, ecology, exponential growth, geophysics, global warming, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, James Hansen, meteorology, NASA, NOAA, oceanography, physics, prediction, risk, science, sea level rise, sustainability, temporal myopia, WAIS, WHOI | Comments Off on New Study Projects That Melting of Antarctic Ice Shelves Will Intensify

The Art and Science of Stefan Rahmstorf

Posted on 18 September 2015 by ecoquant

Updated, 21st September 2015 I particularly like the last scene from TDAT. James Hansen and Makiko Sato have an update titled “Predictions Implicit in ‘Ice Melt’ Paper and Global Implications”. WHOI has studied the Irminger Sea and continues the study … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropocene, art, bifurcations, carbon dioxide, Cauchy distribution, civilization, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, destructive economic development, disingenuity, ecology, economics, education, environment, ethics, Exxon, games of chance, geophysics, global warming, humanism, Hyper Anthropocene, icesheets, IPCC, James Hansen, mathematics, maths, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, sea level rise, statistics, sustainability, the right to know | Leave a comment