When Tokyo experienced man-made climate change
– Winter 1944/4 –

Post 06 October 2018

P Gosselin and Kirye provided at NTZ an interesting information concerning temperature trends at Tokyo on 4. October 2018, titled: “Tokyo Surface Temperature Shows No Trend Over Past Quarter Century…Cooling Now Accelerating”.  With reference to the Figure on the left, they observe that the overall trend over the past 30 years, Tokyo has warmed modestly, but that warming trend, however, is mostly due to the colder years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When looking back at the past 24 years, Tokyo has been cooling off, as is the case for many other cities in Japan. In Tokyo the year 2017 was the coldest in over 20 years. Gosselin and Kirye finish their post with the remark: “This contradicts claims of runaway warming that we often hear from climate warming alarmists.”

The time will tell whether the cooling trend sustains. If that is the case, the theory of the influence of CO2 on global temperatures will need to find better justifications. What remains on track is the question of what role humans play in air temperature warming or cooling. This can be clearly demonstrated by an event that occurred only a few decades ago. It was man-made by naval war in the Pacific. It was like a huge field-experiment and it worked sufficient. The whole story is discussed in the book “Failures of Meteorology! Unable to Prevent Climate Change and World Wars” (2012, p. 219 – HERE”, from which few short excerpts with Figures are given here on.

A cold winter in Japan 1944/45
All text are excerpt from the book Chapter H:
Pacific War, 1942-1945, contributing to Global Cooling?

Naval war activities in the Pacific since 1942 – Brief overview
	The number of submarines increased from a few dozen in 1942 to well above 200 in 1944, during which more than 40 boats where on war patrol simultaneously. The US Navy lost 48 submarines in the war zone of the Pacific. Together with the increasing US surface fleet and the bomber capacity since 1942 total losses for Japan amounted to 10.0 million tons, or about 3,000 vessels including about 110 submarines. Allied material losses were considerably less, but accounted as well to approximately 1,000 ships, and many thousands of aircraft.
	Alone due to naval activities, one can assume that many millions of shells have been fired, many ten thousand bombs dropped into the sea, many thousand sea mines laid, depth charges released, and torpedoes fired. The number of Japanese sea mines in the Japan Sea seems to have been so effective that US submarines avoided this as area of operation. The US and Allied forces advanced from South and South-East via Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines before reaching Okinawa in summer 1945, but had been also active further north, e.g. at Midway (06/1942) and the Aleutian Islands (June 1942 to August 1943).

Only nine months before Japan surrendered in August 1945 the country went through an unusually very cold winter 1944/45. Since autumn 1944 the US Navy recaptured the Philippines , this actually lasted until the surrender of Japan one year later. One of the largest engagement took place in the Leyte Gulf, and covered a number of clashes and fighting that are know as Battle of the Leyte Gulf. The belligerents employed at least 40 carriers, 20 battle ships, and about 200 cruisers and destroyers, as well as many hundreds of airplanes. The distance to Okinawa was not more than about 1,000 km and to the south of Japan 2,000 km. Japan ’s North-South supply lines could be penetrated more effectively by submarines and bombers. Water masses from the military operations or attack areas were carried with the Northern Equatorial Current and Kuroshio Current towards Japan within a short period of time, and suddenly Japan had an exceptionally cold winter based on the months of December 1944, January and February 1945.

Three of the four coastal stations shown in attached Figures are highly influenced by warm water currents from the south, whereas the Kushiro station is within the reach of the cold Oyashio Current . While the Oyashio Current was presumably the least affected by naval war activities, the warm currents coming from the South have been affected. Warm water current can quickly be cooled down by pushing cold water into higher sea water levels, as deeper water layers usually have 10-15°C lower temperatures.  

The corresponding situation in the mid-axis of the main island of Japan can be found at Nagasaki at the southern edge, and about 600 km WSW of Kyoto. Here a warm water current enters the Sea of Japan as Tsushima Current, or passes as Kuroshio Current at the East coast of Japan until it turns east at the height of Tokyo around about 36°North.

Coldest May & July on record – The data 1945
	Since January 1945 a huge military machinery closed down on Japan rolling northwards from Burma, and the Philippines, or closing in from the East after the strategic Iwo Jima Island had been conquered in a battle lasting from February 19 until March 16 for which the US Marine Corp employed 450 ships, including 6 battleships, 4 cruisers and 16 destroyers, and manpower of 50,000 soldiers. To prepare for landing the island was bombed for 72 days by B-24s from the Marianas while naval ships bombarded the island for three days. Since summer 1945 the USA was able to commence 1,000 bomber raids from Iwo Jima against Japan .
	There were many other naval activities underway, from bombing, kamikaze flights, mining, submarine encounters, and shelling, of which the last major battle concerning the occupation of Okinawa, began on April 1, 1945 and ended June 21, 1945. The amount of war material employed and lost was gigantic]. That is certainly only a small part of the story about what has happened in the western Pacific during eight months at war in 1945, and it should come as a surprise if that should not have  left any traces in the marine environment, and on the climate.