A highlight of recent research supporting the climate realist perspective #2

I have come across three scientific papers published recently, all of which support the climate realist perspective, and thought them of such significance that I should share them here, in my climate realist paper update series.

Seemingly with every passing week, I see more and more papers supporting the climate realist perspective. Many such studies can be found in the lists of significant papers on this blog (most papers on such lists support the climate realist perspective), but since some don’t have a list yet or won’t in the future, I will report on at least some of them in blog posts. Just this week, for example, I have seen recent research arguing for national climate change driven by direct thermal emissions from energy consumption, (related to the urban heat island effect, press release here)

Energy consumption (heat output) versus national climate change of Japan and the United Kingdom. Note that energy consumption seems to predict national climate change better than the CMIP5 climate models. From Murray and Heggie 2016.

a natural cause of recent cooling in the North Atlantic (press release here), and a strong reduction in atmospheric blocking (which causes cold outbreaks like the episode in early 2014) with future warming. All of these support the climate realist perspective, since climate realists accept that the urban heat island effect has a significant warming effect on the climate, the thermohaline circulation is not shutting down because of human-caused warming, and cold outbreaks will not get worse and more frequent with further warming.