Mid January Miscellanea.

As I'm still waiting for Dr Yurganov to be available regarding my last post I don't want to start on more methane stuff until my last post is resolved.

In the mean time I have been asked by a few people what my view is, I know some of the more alarming doomer stuff about methane has scared quite a lot of people, I'll go over the issue in detail in due course but for what it's worth basically I've read enough on methane and the Arctic that my views have coalesced: I'm not convinced by the claims that we're in for some kind of imminent climate apocalypse as a result of increased methane emissions in the Arctic. It's serious, needs to be watched closely, but I seriously doubt it's an iminent catastrophe. This has lead me to dive in to the Peanut Gallery over at RealClimate and get involved in some arguments which have taken a surprising amount of time - I've used it as a chance to re-examine my position, and I'm less convinced than ever that it's an imminently catastrophic situation.

I've also been off work recently to read papers (yes, on methane), on Friday I saw a fascinating lecture by Dr Jennifer Francis about her theory about changes to atmospheric circulation and sea-ice. I've previously linked to Jeff Masters on this subject. The lecture abstract is here, it's rather sparse. For those who want more detail her Powerpoint presentation is here, scroll down to page 5, session 9. I'm waiting for the video to be posted here, before doing a proper post - partly because I've slept since the lecture so want to remind myself of some points, partly because I want some more time to think of something to say that's worth reading. Two things that are worth noting - this seems to be mainly an issue for the US and it may play a role in the repeated 'jetting' of warm air to Greenland and the adjacent region of Canada that's caused some exceptionally warm temperatures in that area. This is important and fascinating work.

As an aside the conference was run by StormCenter Communications who seem like an intriguing outfit.

Now I'm going to settle down to watch Stargazing Live.