Temperature Record of the Week
This issue's Temperature Record of the week is from Lexington, Missouri. Visit our U.S. Climate Data section to plot and view these data for yourself.
Current Editorial
Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment: An Equal Opportunity Provider: Allowing the air's CO2 content to rise has recently been criticized because its beneficial effects on plant growth and development extend to weeds as well as crops and other desirable plants. Some Harvard professors take this observation to suggest we should curtail anthropogenic CO2 emissions in a move akin to "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" or, worse yet, biting the hand that feeds us.
Subject Index Summaries
Hurricanes (Atlantic Ocean - El Niņo Effect): Climate alarmists claim future global warming will increase both the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. One way to test this claim is to determine how these hurricane characteristics have varied in the past between warmer El Niņo years and cooler La Niņa years. This summary reviews the results of several studies that have done just that.
Trees (Type - Eucalyptus): A review of some of the recently published literature suggests that increases in the air's CO2 content will enhance photosynthetic rates and biomass production in eucalyptus trees, which are often used in carbon sequestration programs because of their rapid growth rates.
Carbon Sequestration Commentary
The Highly-Hyped "No Regrets" Aspect of Carbon Sequestration Misses Its Real Significance: If you're going to trust someone about the merits of sequestering carbon in the planet's soils, put your trust in those who work close to the land ... and get their hands dirty doing it. Soil scientists are such people; they know what they're talking about.
Current Journal Reviews
The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in China: An analysis of a stalagmite found in a Beijing cave reveals the existence of the past millennium's two most outstanding climatic features, one of which is claimed by climate alarmists to be but a regional anomaly of lands bordering on the North Atlantic Ocean and the other of which is claimed to have not existed at all.
Cautions About Putting Too Much Faith in Climate Models: A fresh perspective on the issue of climate change and its impacts concludes that demonstrable empirical correlations between various solar phenomena and earth's climate may well be better predictors of the planet's climatic future than today's best climate models.
Urban CO2 Concentrations of Phoenix, Arizona, USA: A year-long minute-by-minute study of near-surface atmospheric CO2 concentration in a residential neighborhood of a major urban complex sheds new light on the urban CO2 dome phenomenon. It's even bigger than originally believed.
Forest Response to Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment: The Duke FACE Experiment: One of the world's premier studies of the effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment on the growth of trees in a natural forest setting continues to demonstrate the productivity-promoting consequences of providing trees with more of the most basic raw material required for their growth and development.
Biomass Responses of Meadow Fescue to Elevated CO2 and Temperature: Occasionally, a plant will be found that does not respond positively to atmospheric CO2 enrichment under a particular set of environmental circumstances. With a change in one or more of its environmental parameters, however, the plant response to CO2 may also change.