Pirate's Cove

This is what happens when scientists leave the computer model room and go out in the field

(The Register…kinda sucks that I have to go to a British news outlet for this info) Scientists monitoring water flow in streams at test sites across the USA have found, unexpectedly, that the global warming seen in the late 20th century had basically no effect on most of the ecosystems they studied.

The world in general is thought to have warmed up by approximately half a degree C from 1980 to the year 2000, and while the past decade has seen no further increase, most full-time professional climate scientists expect warming to resume in the near future. However there has been much disagreement as to just what effects this could have.

I wonder what they found?

For this reason, the US government has been establishing long-term monitoring facilities across its territory for decades now, allowing accurate records to be collected showing exactly what ecosystem impacts have occurred. Results are now in on 35 important headwater basins feeding river systems across the States over the last 20 to 60 years: and they show that in 28 of these, no effects on water flow from warming could be found at all.

Even where a warming-driven effect could be identified in the record, it was small compared to other more important factors such as “municipal and agricultural water usage, forest management, wildfire, hurricanes, and natural climate cycles”.

So, nature isn’t really bothered by a bit of warming?

Tom Nelson finds a press release

An analysis of 35 headwater basins in the United States and Canada found that the impact of warmer air temperatures on streamflow rates was less than expected in many locations, suggesting that some ecosystems may be resilient to certain aspects of climate change.

The resulting real world data always seems to be “less than expected.” Must have ticked off the Warmist organization National Science Foundation, which was a sponsor of the study.