Earth's Ionosphere drops to a new low

so is disrupted communications all that is to be expected of a shortened atmosphere or are there worse implications? not saying that disrupted comms is a good thing..

Argh… The sky is falling!

Climate Change!-quick call Algore! BTW this isn’t warming-is it 7F. today in La Grande Or. and we are the local bananna belt….

The big melt: 2 trillion tons of ice gone since ’03
Scientists say NASA satellite data on global warming ‘should alarm people’
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28249708/
WASHINGTON – More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming.
Between Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska, melting land ice has raised global sea levels about one-fifth of an inch in the past five years, Luthcke said. Sea levels also rise from water expanding as it warms.
The pace of change is starting to outstrip our ability to keep up with it, in terms of our understanding of it,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., a co-author of the Arctic amplification study.
Two other studies coming out at the conference assess how Arctic thawing is releasing methane — the second most potent greenhouse gas. One study shows that the loss of sea ice warms the water, which warms the permafrost on nearby land in Alaska, thus producing methane, Stroeve says.
The amounts of methane in the region could dramatically increase global warming if they get released, he said.
That, Semiletov said, “should alarm people.”

Is this the reason why night-time radio reception of distant stations hasn’t been so good lately? Or is it my radio?

I assume they are mostly referring to the F1 and F2 layers of the ionosphere. Have ham radio operators noticed this lowering while using the HF Spectrum? (3-30 Megahertz)

How do we even know that this data is correct? I mean, they might have tweaked it to get the perfered outcome.

Go here and you’d think the world is about to end….
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20081216_climatestats.html

Hmm, picture kinda looks like the moon’s surface to me.

Disturbances happen with extreme UV events, like when the Sun is full of sunspots spewing plasma. If I am reading this correctly, anytime something thins up there, we should get colder. I would ask if the ionosphere is thinning or compacting. If it is thinning, like a worn out blanket, then heat escape from Earth’s surface is facilitated.
A note to Douglas, it is 9:34 AM and it is -5 F in Pendleton. Send pictures of palm trees.

would the ‘shrinking’ of the atmosphere reduce the insulation it provides and exacerbate the cooling?
i really have no idea, just asking

Increases in solar radiation increases the ionosphere. The more sunspots, the more radiation. Injections of strong plasma streams can create disturbances, like shooting a hole in a blanket. But the hole recovers. There is a 24 hr and seasonal change in the depth of the ionosphere. There is also a sunspot number correlation (because of increased radiation). It has been assumed that a quiet Sun would cause thinning. What was surprising was the amount of thinning. For those of us following the Sun, we know just how quiet it has been, in all it’s indices. Once I combined that in my thinking, I am not surprised by this. Maybe the scientists involved in the article haven’t been studying the Sun?

Basil, just a slight correction to your post. UAH and RSS showed a slight increase in the temperature anomaly, not the temperature. November was still colder than October.

Pamela,
Atmospheric thinning: A worthwhile thought. My amateur solar heating model (not a simple curve fit) indicated a strong correlation (with a physically explained lag) between sunspots and temperatures over the last 150+ years. But, measured fluctuations in actual energy reaching earth were not sufficient to explain all the effect according to scientists. So, I am interested in other potential heating-cooling mechanisms related to sunspot cycles. Maybe this “atmospheric blanket” thinning you describe is a candidate to explain one of the physical processes involved.

Space, the final frontier… now just that little bit closer.
Seriously though, could these simply be normal conditions for a Grand Minimum (if that’s indeed where we’re heading)? We didn’t have satellites during the LIA, after all, so we could be in previously uncharted territory, so to speak.

“However, the size of the actual contraction caught investigators by surprise.”
How could that be? Don’t scientists know everything there is to know about our atmosphere and any possible contributions/interactions with the sun? Isn’t the science settled? Golly jeepers!

To Pamela Grey.
Hi Pamela; are you some kind of official ‘sun-worshipper’ ?
I am becoming increasingly non-plussed by how many alleged “climatologists” seem to know damn near nothing about the sun; as if it is just an aberraration in their Playstation models.
Don’t have to reveal any State secrets; but you seem to know your sun .
George

pkatt. Except water.

Lawyers call it the ‘weight of evidence’. Scientists refer to ‘parsimony’. Sherlock Holmes said that when you eliminate every explanation which is impossible , whatever explanation remains, no matter how implausible (or unpopular) is correct. William of Occam (Ockam, Hockam, as you will) said something else like this while he was shaving 😉
All lines of evidence are … well.. lining up. It all coheres and the data trends have a pretty damned straight trajectory that points directly at, surprise, the sun. Who would have guessed that the same energy source which makes for the differences in temperatures between day and night, winter and summer also plays the major role in longer term temprature cycles?
I’m going home and turning up the heat ’cause it’s cold here in the east, too.
Tom

See what GOre started: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/697386/nationwide-protests-against-climate-plan/?rss=yes

pkatt:
yes.
Natural variation!

OT – but did anyone see this.
“Study-Climate change may force skiers uphill”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28251193
There is a suggestion that the resorts (Aspen/Park City) should be in good shape for the next 25 years but the long term trend is that there will be “there will be less snowpack — or no snow at all — at the base areas, and the season will be shorter because snow will accumulate later and melt earlier.”
I wonder if the AGW crowd is already starting to shift to an understanding of a negative PDO and hedge their bets?

Could this ionospheric altitude be used as a highly sensitive measure of solar cycle and consequently of Svensmark’s cosmoclimatology?
If so, there may be a strong correlation between the ionospheric altitude and cloud variation. These in turn would be a leading (“differential”) signal for global temperature change.

This cannot happen. I read a story a few years back that said because of CO2, the upper atmosphere had heated and expanded to the point where low orbit satellites were slowing sown and would crash into the earth. Of course, the scientists needed huge grants to study the problem.
I’m sure a simple adjustment will fix this.
(the story was written during the last solar max, but that couldn’t have any effect)

This has absolutely no influence on the climate or weather or the exent of the weather sphere (troposphere) which extends to only about 10 miles (16Km). The sun is the major driver of the ionosphere and it’s quite normal for depletion at solar minimum. The effect has implications for some HF radio services but more extended D layer collapse also means that AM radio transmissions can propogate further into the daytime hours. However, the MUF or maximum usable frequency is determined by F1,2 and E layers and this will be subdued and below 14 Mhz at the moment. See this site for more information..
http://www.solarcycle24.com/

Ed Scott (08:27:09) :
The big melt: 2 trillion tons of ice gone since ‘03…
Two trillion tons of glacier ice translates into 2000 km3 of ice which raises the ocean level by 6 millimeter in 6 years (2003 and 2008 included) or 1 mm per year. We know that ocean level raises by 3.3 mm per year in recent years, see
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global.jpg and recent discussions in WUWT.
This is 1/3 of the total, a well known figure. I remember seeing it in the 2007 IPCC report as attributed to glacier ice melting. In Germany, numbers such as 100 km3 for annual (excess) Greenland glacier melt have been circulated, when chancellor Merkel visited Greenland this summer (Remember, who else did so?). Total Greenland glacier volume is 2 Million km3, total annual precipitation is approx. 1000 km3.
Another 1/3 of the raise is thermal expansion of oceans, among the rest changes in land use could be responsible, or fossile water pumping. 1200 km3 per year of ground water are pumped, mainly for irrigation, but it is not clear, how much is taken out of the ground for good, how much is replenished during rain seasons.
In addition, error bars on all above numbers are pretty large.
For the increase of methane in recent years, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Methane-global-average-2006.jpg
Where is the contribution of permafrost thawing during the last 10 years of excess arctic sea ice melt during the arctic summers?
Maybe, 2 quadrillion kilogram of ice sounds even better.
Or 1 quintillion glasses of whisky/whiskey could have been put on the rocks (2 grams of ice each)

David L. – I though exactly the same thing… the decrease in the sun’s activity and the reduction of both the Heliosheath and the Ionisphere must help in creating more clouds… they must be correlated!

When I look at the ice chart Anthony has to the right of his blogs, I can see that there are other times when the ice extent slopes down for a short period then rises again. What is suspect is when all the lines for all the years do it at the same time of the year. These little bumps would be categorized as noise (IE random events) and shouldn’t occur at the same time from one year to the next. There is an area on the graph that looks odd to me in that the noise occurred on at least 3 line graphs at the same time of the year. But the little downturn at the end of 2008 doesn’t concern me much. A strong less cold wind or current, or both, can melt stuff and then go away as soon as it appeared, allowing ice to grow again. Wish it were blowing my way.

Richard deSousa (09:46:49) :
“I’m still hoping Santa brings us a return of the Dalton Minimum…”
Noooooo… I’m too old for that!
DaveE.

Anecdotal evidence of global warming:
Here in Kansas, yesterday, it was 20F below normal, It was so cold that today at 5F below normal it feels positively warm.

Ed Scott, the interesting part of this thoroughly alarmist piece from MSNBC is,
In the 1990s, Greenland didn’t add to world sea level rise;
So in the supposedly warmest decade on record when the “unprecedented” warming reached its peak, there was no net ice melt in Greenland.
Yet, post 2002, when we know temperatures have stopped rising and may well have fallen we suddenly get massive ice melt.
Something is seriously wrong with someone’s dataset. Or there is no relationship between ice melt and temperatures over decadal timescales (as unituitive as it sounds, it’s probably the latter).

Ed Scott–global sea ice is about “normal” right now.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Move along nothing to see here.

“Study-Climate change may force skiers uphill”
I tried skiing uphill, but always ended up getting the lift instead. It’s jolly hard work, though safer.

“” Leif Svalgaard (11:03:03) :
pkatt (10:26:47) :
Warm things expand, Cool things contract.. hmmm dont suppose it could be explained that easily?
Yes, this is close to the correct explanation, at solar maximum the upper [way upper?] atmosphere heats up and expands. “”
Leif, I don’t have any recollection as to what extent the ionosphere is “ionised” but I would guess that it is still mostly neutral gaseous, and I imagine encounters with energetic particles or photons within the capture crossection, are rare rather than frequent.
So that would suggest that any electric or magnetic field confinement, that might apply to the ions, would have little effect on the bulk of the neutral gas.
So why wouldn’t that gas behave pretty much like an ideal gas under those circumstances. There’s enough interraction with the incoming solar radiation; at least by the oxygen, that ordinary heating would seem to require the expansion you describe.
Electric and magnetic fields may move the ions around, but you don’t need those effects (if any) to get the gas molecules to disperse under more heating from the sun.
George

I think it is simple lack of enough ions in the ionosphere. Radio communications which rely on an active ionosphere are in the pits. Now anyone want to put forth why there are fewer ions in the ionosphere? Big yellow ball on vacation?

Ahh here we go:

As a result of the solar maximum, Earth’s atmosphere
is “puffed up” like a marshmallow over a campfire leading to extra drag on Earth-orbiting satellites.
…
As solar activity increases, extreme ultraviolet radiation (EUV) heats our planet’s gaseous envelope, causing it to swell and reach farther into space than normal.

So with the current minimum we are seeing, I can’t understand why they should be surprised that it has shrunk. I mean, if they knew it expanded during high solar activity and why it did so, why are they surprised that the opposite happens under the opposite conditions?

Tex,
I don’t think it works that way. To a large extent, the total amount of gas in the atmosphere stays pretty constant (shorter terms) but it moves around over the planet to create high and low pressures, and regions of average pressures. There always has to be highs and lows which are above and below the average.
So by and large, a photon emitted from the earth’s surface has to run the gamut of the same number of gas molecules to get out of the atmosphere. It only takes a millisecond to clear 300 km, whcih isn’t the all clear, but 5 ms certainly would be.
Those photons could care less, whether they pass up all those molecules in the first 100 km or whether it takes 1000 km travel to pass them all; the probablility of hitting any of them shouldn’t change.
Now the temperature may mess with that a bit, in that any single molecule covers a larger piece of the outfield, if it is warmer, but, that would just reduce the time it spends in any one place so I don’t see how much would change in the way of capture probablity. (but I’ll readily accept anybody’s math that says otherwise.)
I suspect that a significant way in which the “atmosphere height” may affect climate would be in what it does to water vapor distribution, and hence cloud formation.
But off-hand I can’t say what that effect might be.

The main thing missing from my theories is the mechanism whereby small changes in solar activity have such a large effect on observed global temperatures.
Even Leif Svalgaard has been flummoxed by that to the extent that he has been driven to doubt about the validity of the apparent historical link between climate changes and solar changes.
To my mind the smaller the depth of any part of the atmosphere the more exposed is the surface to the cold of space and the faster heat energy is lost from the atmosphere.
As I’ve said before the weather patterns and the global temperature trend FOLLOW a change in the global heat balance. So, if small solar changes (moderated by the oceans) can change that balance then the weather patterns change and over time a climatic change becomes apparent.
There’s so much that we do not know that any suggestion that the science is settled is a product of a non scientific agenda.

Les Johnson (14:38:36) :
Possibly related….a giant breech in the magnetosphere…
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm?list91627
I wonder if vukcevic has seen this article, goes along nicely with his theory.
But once again new horizons opening before our very eyes.

Lief, Pamela:
Remarkably little basic internet data (on sites updated since 2003 at least!) on the EARTH’S magnetic field, its relative strength, and the position of the (rapidly-moving-towards-Siberia) magnetic north pole.
Now, we (the few skeptics in this AGW-dominated world) have long theorized that a decrease in the SUN’S magnetic field reduces the shielding effect AROUND the earth, and this decrease in the solar system’s net shielding allows more cosmic rays (creating more cloud nuclei) into the upper and mid atmosphere; which then increases reflectivity, which reduces temperature.
An increase in the sun’s activity increases the shielding effect, which reduces the cloud nuclei formation, which (in general) increases the amount of energypenetrating the atmosphere, which increases temperature.
BUT ,,,, (dramatic paused added for effect in the classroom) ….
What if the EARTH’S magnetic and self-shielding effects need to be added to the sun’s shielding and magnetic fields? If the earth’s shielding were steadily going down as the poles shift – they are loooong overdue! – then the recent 160 years of a warming trend might be twice related to magnetic field shielding: the earth’s shielding is being reduced, at the same time as the sun’s shielding is being reduced.
—-
From this web site:
http://thepanelist.com/Opinions/Opinions/Shifting_Gears,_or_What_Happens_When_the_Poles_Fail_200809241195/
—-
It won’t be the first time it has happened. In fact, earth’s polarity has shifted a number of times in the past, usually in 250,000-year intervals (based on the study of lava flows and old ship’s records). One such shift, called the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal, is estimated to have occurred about 780,000 years ago, or double the time between the two pole shifts prior to that. This unexpectedly long interval is, in fact, what has scientists concerned about a coming pole shift.
In 2001, an international polar expedition discovered that the earth’s North magnetic pole has shifted about 186 miles since 1994. This drift continues today, moving about 25 miles a year from the Canadian Arctic toward the Severnaya Zemkya islands north of Russia in the Arctic Ocean, leading some scientists to predict that the North Pole may eventually end up in the South Atlantic. This speculation is supported by an anomaly in that area with a surprisingly high magnetic field intensity of about 60 percent. Although how a shift to the east predicts a subsequent movement south is beyond me.
The movement and shift is further supported by the fact that, in the last two decades, Earth’s field intensity (measured in gauss and mentioned above) has shrunk by almost 2 percent, with a decrease in the South Atlantic nearer 10 percent.
This decline in field intensity is one of the factors leading scientists to predict a pole reversal. What they can’t even guess at is how long before it happens, how the transition occurs, or what happens to living creatures at the time.

Steven H.:
Kind of randomly I had been looking at those pictures the last few days, but I noticed that the extent image was “stuck” on December 11. Today’s image is the first new one I’ve seen since last Friday. I’m afraid my browser’s cache didn’t save the old file.
The slope of the line graph definitely changed since Friday (to nearly 0!) – I wonder if there has been a problem with the data and values from last week have carrying over?
That would explain the zero slope. What’s clearly different about today’s extent image is that the “1979-2000 median” line has been updated, but I think the sea ice has also been updated as Hudson Bay is almost entirely covered now.
The website does say there are occasional problems with the “real-time” updates and that monthly data are considered more accurate. Perhaps there were just some data glitches and this will all work out.

“” Stephen Wilde (16:10:53) :
The main thing missing from my theories is the mechanism whereby small changes in solar activity have such a large effect on observed global temperatures.
Even Leif Svalgaard has been flummoxed by that to the extent that he has been driven to doubt about the validity of the apparent historical link between climate changes and solar changes. “”
Well Steven, that position, that the sun can’t possibly be responsible for changes in earth climate; is one of the mantras of the UN IPCC club; and among the most commonly cited problems by the so-called mainstream press that propagates the IPCC propaganda (IMHO).
So I have to say I am very surprised to learn that Leif holds such a position.
I’m not a climatologist, so I don’t know exactly (or even approximately) how any of these global oscilaltion cycles works; but to me, they ONLY relate to how local climate changes; and I don’t believe they have much to do with the overriding question of whether the earth is gaining energy and getting hotter, or losing energy and getting colder, or pretty much staying put.
And I should hasten to add, that I am not interested in major earth orbit shifts; they clearly do things that are somewhat out of the ordinary, and hopefully somewhat understod.
But I have a VERY simple view of how I believe that basic energy balance situation works. It’s so simple I can’t believe it is not widely taught, and I can’t even imagine how it could possibly be wrong. (a good proof it is wrong would be gladly accepted).
The basic sun problem (evidently) is that around 35 years or three sunspot cycles of satellite measurments of the solar constant (Unfortunately not all from the same satellite) show that the solar constant changes cyclically with the sunspot numbers, so that it is higher at high sunspot numbers, and lower at low sunspot numbers; and the curve to me seems to have significant harmonic that makes it flatter at the bottoms and pointier at the peaks; which may be nothing more than the amount of time the sunspot numbers are near the peaks versus near the valleys. In any case, the peak to peak vartiation in the solar constant is only about 0.1% amplitude.
And the IPCC global warmers say that isn’t nearly enough heating change to affect the earth’s climate even though there is a significant body of data that shows earth temperature somewhat tracking the sunspot cycles, at least as far as the 22/23 year full magnetic cycle.
Despite this statistical linkage; the IPCCers are much more able to believe a linkage between global surface temperatures, and concurrent atmospheric CO2; even though the data shows absolutely no such correlation.
So what gives; the temperatures show clear linkages to multiples of the 22/3 year magnetic cycle and nobody believes; but they readily believe a CO2 temperature link in the absence of any such data.
So if the sun has an effect how does it do it; if 0.1% is not enough of a “forcing” (IPCC swear word) to cause any observable change in global surface temperatures.
Here’s my simple (IMHO) explanation; and I should hasten to add that I originated none of this; I’m just reading other people’s data, and connecting dots.
The major greenhouse gas in the atmosphere by far is water. Were it not for water in the atmosphere this planet would be an ice ball, no matter how much CO2 we had.
Water absorbs (some) incoming solar radiation, beginning at around 700 nm where there is significant solar energy. That helps warm the atmosphere directly; but works to cool the surface (less surface sunlight).
Water also absorbs in the infra-red starting around 1.1 microns, and then all over the place in bands out to around 3 microns; which adds to the direct solar warming of the atmosphere but subtracts from the surface warming. But the earth emitted IR near BB radiation, even over the hottest desert areas, has very little energy below about 4.5 microns, and over most of the globe below 5 microns, with 75% of it being generally longer that 10 microns where water becomes strongly absorbing. CO2 doesn’t really kick in in the IR region till around 13.5 to 16.5 microns (near ground level where the highest atmospheric density and pressure and CO2 partial pressure, makes CO2 most active. Beyond the 16.5 micron region water is the most opaque liquid known, and absorbs everything in less than ten microns of water depth.
So water vapor creates a GHG warming effect that also is a positive feedback effect, in that the warming due to water vapor absorption of IR, leads to further (prompt) evaporation from the oceans (73% of the earth surface).
That is the basic GHG positive feedback warming that raises the earth temperature from less than -15 C up to about +15C.
CO2 also intercepts part of the earth IR (the 13.5-16.5 micron slot), which also causes (on return to earth) prompt water evaporation; arguably a positive feedback effect, except there is so much water vapor compared to CO2, that the water vapor doesn’t really need any help to cause positive feedback warming on its own.
Now in addition to being by far the majority of earth GHG in the atmosphere, water is unique in that it is THE ONLY GHG which occurs in the atmosphere in all three phases; vapor, liquid, and solid; and in the liquid and solid phases, water forms clouds; so much clouds, that the earth has about 50% cloud coverage of its surface at all times. Clouds are the biggest contributor to the earth albedo of 0.367 or thereabouts. Snow and ice are miniscule in that very little sunlight reaches the regions where snow and ice are, and old snow and ice don’t reflect anywhere near as much as people think; snow in particular traps quite a bit anechoically.
So clouds reflect quite a bit of direct sunlight back into space, which cools both the atmosphere, and also the ground; and in addition clouds that can precipitate, further absorb a lot more direct sunlight which may warm the atmosphere, but further cools the surface by reduction of ground level insolation. (ever been under a midwest thunderstorm in summertime?)
Nobody ever observed the earth surface to warm up, when cloud passes in front of the sun; it ALWAYS cools due to simple geometrical optics. Evne at night, when metorologists (on the six o’clock news) claim it warms due to high clouds; it doesn’t; it still cools, but maybe at a slower pace; but it still cools, and in the daylight (we’re talking climate; not last night’s weather) it cools a whole lot more.
Most of the earth’s cooling takes place in broad daylight; like around noon . Try running cold water through your car’s radiator and see how ineffective it is at cooling your engine; that’s why it is pressurized to raise the water temperature.
So water vapor leads to positive feedback warming, and clouds lead to negative feedback cooling.
Recent measuremnts from satellites show that a 1 deg C increase in global mean surface temps, results in a 7% increase in global evaporation; total atmospheric water content; and total global precipitation. See Wentz et al, in SCIENCE for July 2007. “How much more Rain will global Warming Produce”) (maybe give or bring; don’t have the paper in front of me). Wentz hangs out at RSS in Santa Rosa California.
What Wentz et al didn’t say was the obvious, that precipitation is fashionably associated with Clouds; real clouds of the dark sun blocking kind; not the “cloud that floats on high oer dale and hill”.
That total global evaporation and precipitaiton must be equal is obvious; other wise we would end up with the oceans over our heads.
It is also interesting to note, that the Playstation video gamers also agree with Wentz et al, on the 7% per deg C increase in global evaporation and total atmospheric water vapor. (read the water vapor pressure tables in the CRC handbook of chemistry and physics, ofr obviousness).
BUT !! The gamers cliam that the total global precipitaiton only increases by from 1 to 3% per deg C, not 7%. So the models are in error by as much as a factor of seven from real world actual experimental observations of reality; and aren’t perturbed by the one way transport of the oceans up into the atmosphere. Notice the ever present 3:1 fudge factor that is built into all Playstation climate models.
So now we have a regulating system. If it gets too cold, we get lots of rain and snow, and soon the dark clouds break up and disappear; and more sunlight reqaches the ground and it stops colling.
If it gets too hot, you get more evaporation, more water vapor GHG (remember the logarithmic warming versus GHG), and eventually you get more clouds, and more albedo, and less ground level insolation and it stops warming.
So as long as we have the oceans out there, we couldn’t change the temperature of this planet either up or down even if we wanted to.
So now what all this solar activity business ??
Well it is obvious (at least to me) that the earth’s temperature is regulated by modulation of the cloud cover. Too cold, lose clouds, warm up; too hot, more clouds, cool down.
So anything that encourages cloud formation will cause the cloud cover to shift to ballance at a lower temperature. So dust from a volcano cools the earth; not so much by blocking or scattering much sunlight, but by nucleating raindrops in clouds to give more cloud cover at a lower temperature. Anything that inhibits cloud formation, like California clean air particulate regulations, causes it to warm up to get enough evaporation to produce enough clouds.
Now enter Henrik Svensmark et al, with their cosmic ray thesis. I have to admit, that from an earlier life as a nuclear physicist, I knew about the Wilson cloud chamber, and its abilty to show charged particle tracks in a supersaturated water vapor chamber.
Water molecules do not like to condense on each other; but they will condense on damn near anything else; dust particles, pollen grains, microbes, even on showers of ionised gases, which is what cosmic rays produce in the upper atmosphere. Various kinds of high energy particles from mesons to protons, and weirder things, crash into upper atmospheric gases,a dn create thick trails of ionised atoms/molecules that are ideal for growing water droplets and starting cloud formation. Some of these nuclear reactions result in N14 turning into C14 which is raioactive. Some of these reactions result in release of Neutrons, and being uncharged, they can pass through the atmosphere largely unscathed, whereas the high energy charged primaries can never get through all that gas mess up there withoug hitting something; so the neutrons are measurable at surface level to monitor cosmic ray flux.
So cosmic rays and charged particles from the sun can create charged particle showers in the upper atmosphere and encourage cloud fromation through droplet nucleation.
Solar activity affects the charged ion flux, and can be historically monitored before the space age, by measuring the C14 concentration in clearly datable tree rings; and C14 variation has a very convincing linkage to solar activity since the space age. In fact I got a nice paper from Fred Singer just yesterday, since I was discussing this very subject with him.
The linkage between solar activity and cosmic ray flux as evidenced by C14 production is very striking. There is no such match between CO2 and global temperatures.
Now solar charged particles and cosmic rays are also influenced by the magnetic environment of the earth, which includes the solar magnetosphere, and when the near earth fields are strong, the charged particles get steered towards the magnetic poles, which are regions of low water vapor concentration, so not a lot of cloud nucleation can occur; but when the combined near earth magnetic fields are weaker, the cosmic ray flux on earth is more uniform, and stronger so lots of CRs fall in the tropical regions where ther is plenty of water vapor to form clouds, so cosmic rays and charged solar ions have more effect when near earth magnetic fields are low, and that relates to the 22/3 year solar magnetic cycle.
When I first heard of Svensmark’s work about a year ago; I did some cartwheels.
I have to confess I have not read their original papers in detail yet; but I am quite convinced that they are correct.
The linkage between that pesky orange ball up there, and earth climate; is not the insipid 0.1% change in the soalr constant, but it is the very sizeable change in cloud formation that results form the solar magnetic fields, cosmic rays, and solar charged particles.
And why that is so blessed hard for climate scientists to grasp is quite beyond my ken.
I’m strictly limited to what I can distill out of other people’s data and papers, since I don’t work in this field; but If I can understanbd it, I don’t see why the people who call themselves climate scientists can’t see it.
I gotta go and eat before I become part of the methane producing decay matter; but tomorrow I will post a link to the paper that Fred Singer sent me.

pkatt (10:26:47) : “Warm things expand, Cool things contract.. hmmm dont suppose it could be explained that easily?”

Except that water expands when it turns to ice…

JP (12:35:35) :
MMmmm…I was wondering why Art Bell’s show was coming in clearer…

If Art Bell’s show is coming in with any kind of clarity you need to adjust your brain.

What about the effect of the reduced surface area of the atmospheric sphere?
If the amount of energy presented to the top of the earth is roughly 1,366 Watts per Square Meter, and you contract the total volume of the atmospheric sphere, this necessarily reduces the surface area irradiated by the sun.
Now obviously a square meter of the top atmosphere that is interpose between the sun and the surface of the earth holds more heating effect than a square meter that presents a straight line missing the earth (where the light would pass in though the atmosphere and go out into space having missed the earth but presumably partially heating up those molecules it comes in contact with).
But I’m not suggesting that this effect would huge, but I’m guessing that the effect might be non-zero. Given the fact that sun’s irradiance varies only 0.1% during the solar cycle, could this effect overtime be significant for the earth’s climate and represent a up-to-now hidden component of solar forcing? Or does the solar energy that misses the earth but hits the atmosphere largely irrelevant?
Of course I would think that the greater surface area may represent a greater opportunity for the earth’s atmosphere to radiate it’s heat out. I certainly don’t know how this would all wash out numerically, but if the models currently assume a larger (and less variable) surface area, might they need to be adjusted to account for this reduction?
Jim Thomas

tarpon (15:08:54) :
I think it is simple lack of enough ions in the ionosphere. Radio communications which rely on an active ionosphere are in the pits. Now anyone want to put forth why there are fewer ions in the ionosphere? Big yellow ball on vacation?

I think it’s because all the ions are being placed into Qray bracelets. Obviously this is a man made problem. /sarc

Richard Sharpe (17:57:15) :
Robert Cook PE says:
usually in 250,000-year intervals (based on the study of lava flows and old ship’s records)
If you know the location of a ship that old with intact records, please let me know, because I think I can make us unbelievably rich.
……
Thank you for finding that in the piece I quoted. What the writer is trying to say, but expressed poorly, is that north magnetic pole (pole location, mag field declination, mag field intensity, etc) can be derived from (recent) ship logs, and from (ancient) iron particles trapped in old lava flows.
Same problem remains: how much of the changing magnetic field influences are from changes in the sun’s external magnetic field, and how much are from changes in the earth’s internal field?

George E Smith,
Thanks for your thoughtful and comprehensive summary of Svensmark’s ideas
and your take on the evaporative and water vapour effects which I find broadly plausible since it accords with the gist of one of my articles at CO2sceptics.com.
I too am intrigued by what Svensmark says and look forward to future developments. Apparently the CERN experiment will be looking at it amongst other things.
I’m not surprised by your view as regards the regional effect of weather patterns. That is the general view. However I think it is wrong. All my observations over 50 years lead me to believe that the global heat balance changes for whatever reason (usually a combination of solar and oceanic influences) and weather patterns follow and once new patterns have been in place for a while then there is your new climate until the heat balance shifts again.
I’d venture to suggest here,as I have done elsewhere, that if one calculates the average distance of the jet streams from the equator then subject to some sort of calibration that will tell us whether the atmospheric temperature is rising or falling and with some refinement it could also tell us how slow or rapid the process is in either direction.

As the atmosphere thins does the relative thickness of each level proportionally thin as well? As the troposphere etc is cooling wouldnt this 1 – cause contraction and 2 impact on the temperature of the earth by reducing it. Everthing interplays

CNN and NASA are at it again. Headline:
“Ice melting across globe at accelerating rate, NASA says”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/12/16/melting.ice/index.html
Also, I have a question about triggers of potential climate change. Can anyone comment on the effects that real pollution (as opposed to CO2 as a pollutant) has had on temperatures? Is it possible that the high levels of pollution from coal and other sources produced dark particulates in the atmosphere that absorbed solar heat and triggered what appeared to be global cooling. Then our efforts to clean up the air removed these particles over the course of decades, allowing us to see the full effect of the sun again?
Just wondering and don’t have time to reserach now.

“” DaveE (05:20:08) :
George E. Smith (18:50:49)
Try running cold water through your car’s radiator and see how ineffective it is at cooling your engine; that’s why it is pressurized to raise the water temperature.
Cold water is VERY effective at cooling your car’s engine, which is why the thermostat remains closed limiting the amount of cold water getting to said engine until operating temperature is attained. “”
Dave, if the cold water is so effective at cooling the engine; then why does the engine heat up with the thermostat closed, when all that is in there when you start it is cold water ?
The waste engine heat has to be transported from the engine to the atmosphere; and that requires passing it through the “radiator”, which is more properly described as a “heat exchanger”, which does both “radiation” as in electromagnetic radiation cooling, and conduction/convection to the air flow that is passing through it via the fan or vehicle .
The hotter the water is, the more efficiently both the radiation (4th power of Temperature) and conduction/convection (linear with temperature) operate.
Apparently 85% of all roadside automobile problems (USA) are cooling system related. Temperature destroys automotive components, and if it was legal to do it (in California), I would pull the thermostat unit out of all my cars, as it just constricts the water flow.
Instant on passenger heat is the main incentive for putting a thermostat in the cooling system; it’s just another unnecessary compoonent to go wrong and fail out on the road. Too many cars simply don’t have any where near enough heat exchanger capacity to cool modern engines, so they have to be super pressurised to get the cooling efficiency up so the engine doesn’t overheat. That results in burst hoses; right when you are least able to handle the problem.
I used to own a Dodge van purchased new with the factory towing package to pull a boat. On a trip to southern California with the boat, the radiator developed a header tank crack, and started losing water at a good clip just when I was on my way home, so I had a 20 gallon cooler chest full of water, in the back and had to stop periodically to resupply the water. I finally got tired of the process, so I took one of my MIL’s hair clips, and bent it to sit on top of the tank under the pressure cap so it held the pressure cap permanently open. The vehicle had a plastic overflow tank, with about a 1 1/2 gallon capacity, open to the air, and I filled that full of water.
Without the pressurization from the radiator cap, the whole system operated at atmospheric pressure; so the presure didn’t force open the header tank crack;but with an extra 1 1/2 gallons of water capacity in the header tank (extended) there was plenty of cooling capacity, and I drove most of the 300 plus miles in that condition, and never touched it again for months.
It turns out that there were four differnt “radiator cores” available for that vehicle. The regular one was a single layer of tubes, and the heavy duty tow package one that I had had two layers so was twice as thick. the header tanks were wide enough to support three and four layer cores; so I had the radiator shop put a four layer core in and never ever had another cooling problem. The hair pin eventually rusted away so I replace the pressure cap with a sealed cap that had no pressure valve, os as water expanded in the engine, it simply flowed over into the extra 1 1/2 gallons of coolant.
I once owned an MG-1100 sedan that had a completely sealed radiator sysystem. The radiator header tank had a non valved sealing cap just like I installed on the dodge, and then a steel overflow tube lead to a steel water tank that held about 1 gallon of cooling fluid, and that tank had a pressure cap on it. The system worked perfectly for years, until a gas station idiot undid the sealed cap on the radiator header tank, before I could stop him, and it never quite sealed properly again.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Ice levels drop again today….soon it will be lower than all the lines on that chart.

Here’s the Link to the paper (book) that I referred to from Dr Fred Singer.
http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf
You will note their whimsical title of NIPCC Report.
Theres’ a huge amount of data and stuff for anyone to dig into here; whatever your own view/bias happens to be.
I believe it is figs 14 or 15 or thereabouts that show pretty good indication of solar linkage to earth climate via the charged particle/cosmic ray/cloud linkage, which way overshadows nay small variation in the solar constant with sunspot cycle.
The C14 production in the upper atmosphere is taken as a proxy for solar activity.
You can research the literature on C14 or ask Leif , if you want to validate this idea for yourself. (Hey that’s what I do; without the data these chaps in the field put out we would all be in the dark.)
By the way; I believe you have permission to print yourself a copy of this book; but don’t go pasting it all over the web. link people to the site and follow the normal copyright procedures; and if you use pieces of it elsewhere, give the usual credit to the NIPCC, and Fred Singer and Co will be happy you find it useful.

Driving South on 275 yesterday about 45 minutes before sunset I say a really interesting thing I don’t ever remember seeing before, a rainbow in very high altitude clouds. It persisted for about a half hour and I was able to get a crude shot of it with my cell phone camera, which didn’t capture the brightest part, but brought out the background irridescence in in the rest of the cloud that I hadn’t noticed when taking it.

Stephen Wilde,
You have not lived on the Pacific Coast. The ocean temps drive both local and large scale weather patterns. Offshore winds cause upwelling of 40 degree water which drops local temps signficantly and the PDO is driven by surface winds.
Weather is a complex phenomenon and patterns will arise independent of outside input due to the complexity of the system.
Add in the oceans and geography and the properties of water and it gets evenmore complex- what is a hurricane.

George E Smith wrote:

To me the question of local climate is somewhat irrelevent; the temperature will be somewhere between -90C and +60 C, measured on the ground, no matter where you go on earth (surface), and somehow humans have adapted to deal with that whole range

Actually we haven’t adapted. We change our surroundings to suit us instead of adapting to our surroundings. We put on a coat instead of growing one. We turn on the AC instead of evolving a better method of keeping cool.

PaulHClark (11:55:17) :

OT – but did anyone see this.
“Study-Climate change may force skiers uphill”

Here all this time I was under the impression skiers always had to go uphill (via those expensive ski lifts) before going back downhill.

George E. Smith (17:58:19) “I apologise for forgetting that Kosciusco hill sometimes gets snow.”
And well you may apolgise, Sir! Kosciusco is a hillock. It is somewhat taller than I am, and even I have snow up top… Damnit.
(p.s. I also ripped the thermostat out of my ’48 Holden to good effect; after it had done 125,000 miles.)

“” Roger Carr (05:13:50) :
George E. Smith (17:58:19) “I apologise for forgetting that Kosciusco hill sometimes gets snow.”
And well you may apolgise, Sir! Kosciusco is a hillock. It is somewhat taller than I am, and even I have snow up top… Damnit.
(p.s. I also ripped the thermostat out of my ‘48 Holden to good effect; after it had done 125,000 miles.) “”
No offense intended Sir Roger; we of the shaky isles have to yank your chain occasionally. I have often wondered (OBSCON) if the fact that the land of Oz was such a low down place, has something to do with your lousy rainfall. There’s plenty of moisture coming off the ocean, but it just buzzes right across the whol dang place without hitting anything important.
Maybe you need to build some synthetic mountains out there in the ouback to encourage the clouds to climb to precipitation height.

“” Chris V (21:29:20) :
George E. Smith (17:58:19) said:
The REAL sun illuminates the spot at 1368 W/m^2; four times what NOAA claims, and the atmosphere reduces that down to 672 W/m^2 at the ground also 4 times what NOAA claims.
The number you cite for the REAL sun illumination (1368 W/m^2) is what hits the equator, at noon. It decreases towards the poles (because of the lower relative angle of the suns rays) and is zero on the night side of the earth. The total illumination hitting the earth is 1368 multiplied by the surface area of a circle with the radius of the earth.
The number NOAA gives is that total illumination, divided by the the entire surface area of the earth.
The surface area of a sphere is 4 pi r^2. The area of a circle is pi r^2. That is why the “real” numbers you cite are 4 times the NOAA numbers.
“”
I guess I just totally wasted my time even raising the issue.
So if you know what the real number is, perhaps you also know why NOAA doesn’t use it.
What good is a climate model if it isn’t a model of anything real ?

“” Jeff Alberts (19:14:00) :
George E Smith wrote:
To me the question of local climate is somewhat irrelevent; the temperature will be somewhere between -90C and +60 C, measured on the ground, no matter where you go on earth (surface), and somehow humans have adapted to deal with that whole range
Actually we haven’t adapted. We change our surroundings to suit us instead of adapting to our surroundings. We put on a coat instead of growing one. We turn on the AC instead of evolving a better method of keeping cool. “”
Well each of us is different; no matter how much effort is expended trying to make us all the same. So you can adapt in whatever way you want; others will choose to do other things.
Just consider the absurdity of trying to “Adapt” to a change of just a half deg F over the last century; which has the whole planet in an uproar. A century ago we did everything so differently from now, who knows how uncomfortable we were with our lot.
As for me; my plan A for adaptation to the global warming of 0.5F is to do exactly nothing; it will be all gone before I was able to detect any improvement in my lot anyway.

All the signs are here. Hint – I am not referring to any of Algore’s scenarios.

George E. Smith: That’s a lot of words to attempt to cover up the fact that you are attempting to judge a field of science but have some extremely basic misunderstandings of the field (as Chris V. has illustrated). I think I will trust the judgement of the scientists in the field themselves…and reputable scientific bodies such as the National Academy of Sciences (as well as my own judgement as a physicist).
Fortunately, since we will soon have a President who seems to actually believe in using the best science available rather than distorting science to fit his ideology (as we had to contend with for the last 8 years), that will also hopefully the prevailing view in guiding our public policy.

Hey Roger,
I was in Melbourne Christmas of 2006, when you were having terrible droughts, and bush fires. My relatives were getting into the water tank thing to try and save more water for their needs. The day we flew out to Auckland again, the drought broke and they got rain to try out their new storage tanks. Glad you’re getting some relief; the smell of that bush fire smoke was pretty pungent.

Chris V. (14:04:34) :
and Joel Shore (17:56:40) :
As another physicist I agree with the exposition of George E. Smith (16:34:09) :.
What he was trying to explain is that there is no meaning in making a ball of the earth and equitably distributing the incoming sun energy because this model has no correspondence with the way the earth radiates away the heat.
The heat is lost much faster ( I think he says 12 times faster) from the tropics than from the north . A model that depends on isotropic input and output cannot represent the real earth conditions. There cannot be a one to one correspondence with real earth because of the different functional forms needed all over the globe.
Integrations are necessary which are not being done.

Steady, anna (anna v | 23:50:26), that sounds most unsettling…

Well I’m not going to belabor the point, and waste a bunch more of Anthony’s space.
The NOAA budget chart gives 390 W/m^2 for the surface radiation; which corresponds very closely to the blackbody radiation rate for 15 deg C (59 F) which has been the typically cited “mean global surface temperature” at least in the public media for quite afew recent years, although it may be slightly lower these days. I’m not unhappy with taking BB rates as applying to the real world, since some 73% of the real world surface is ocean and oceans do radiate somewhat like ablack body; probably with an emissivity in the 97-98% range (based on Fresnel reflection losses)
The hottest air temperatures correspond to 1.75-1.8 times that rate, and probably the hottest surfaces reach 2.0 times that or more.
The lowest temperatures go below -120F, and at least anecdotal reports from Vostock go to -140 F (-90C). For those typical lows the radiation rate drops by about 6 times from the “Global average”, giving a typical range of about 10:1, and as much as 12:1 for the extremes.
If the radiation rate (radiant emittance) were linear with temperature, then using an average temperature, with an average radiation rate would still yield a correct total radiation number.
But the real system isn’t linear, and it is reasonable to expect it to follow something close to a fourth power law.
Anytime you have a cyclic function raised to some power greater than 1, the integral of that is always greater than what you get by simply integrating the average, and for a fourth power function it becomes significantly greater.
So a radiation total based on an average global temperature must underestimate the total radiant cooling of the earth.
Where I live the climate follows a pattern that it has followed for thousands or millions of years.
The solar blow torch goes around my location in a 24 hour cycle, and has always done so, so that the insolation is only positive for a portion of that 24 hour cycle, typically around a third, but that varies from place to place on earth, but everywhere outside the Arctic, and Antarctic circles sees that 24 hour cyclic insolation climate behavior. On top of that, the earth moves in its elliptical orbit, so the amount of insolation also goes through an annual cycle of about 365 days.
If you don’t integrate the actual cyclic variations in that clearly observable climate behavior not only over the 24 hour day but also over the 365 day year then you don’t get the correct total radiation for any point on the planet.
That also doesn’t take into account that on average about 50% of the total globe surface is covered by clouds, and those clouds typically come and go on time cycles that can be just a few minutes to hours or days, and if you only measure the minimum and the maximum temperature at any measuring location, for any day, then you get no information about the higher frequency cloud related changes in the solar insolation at surface level.
If you ignore the cloud variations (I’m told that the GCMs do ignore clouds), and if you measure the temperature twice a day at regular intervals (midday/midnight or somesuch), your best chance of getting a correct daily average temperature would be if the temperature curve were a pure sinusoidal function. Theoretically, you can recover the average temperature (for the day) in that case, but you cannot recover the cyclic variation during the day, because you are employing “critical sampling”.
Well unfortunately the daily temperature cycle is not sinusoidal, even in the cloudless case, because the heating and cooling rates don’t match, so the temperature signal contains frequency components at least twice the daily rate, and in that case, you are undersampling and it is theoretically impossible to recover even the average value of the temperature for the day, even with no clouds. If you can’t get even the correct average temperature for a single day, you certainly can’t get it for a whole year, and just throwing in the random cloud variations means you have no idea what the mean temperature or total insolation is for even a single day, at any point on the planet.
Twice aday temperature sampling is not adequate for determining the average temperature.
That problem pales into significance when you start looking at the spatial sampling.
I read somewhere that back around 1900 there were a total of 12 reporting weather stations in the arctic (north of +60 degrees). That number grew to the mid 80s at its peak, but then declined to somewhere in the 70s; and I’m guessing that occurred around the collapse of the soviet empire.
I have no idea how many reporting stations there are south of -60, but I doubt that it is much different.
Over the oceans which after all are 70% or so of the total surface, measurements are often reported from ships, and historically, such as back when Arrhenius was doing hsi thing 100 years ago, they threw a bucket over the side to gather water from some unknown depth in some unknown location. Since 2001, we have known that ocean water temperatures do not correlate with ocean air temperatures, and why would we expect them to since air over Hawaii today, may be over America in a few days. also the ocean currents meander, so even in the same GPS co-ordinates, you cannot depend on being in the same water.
So prior to about 1980 when those ocean buoy studies were begun, we don’t have any reliable oceanic lower tropospheric temperatures, for 70% of the globe; even whatever measurements Arrhenius was doing.
So maybe the climate community are satisfied with that situation; but there isn’t any mathematical support for the way they sample gl”global temperatures”.
And even if they could get the correct global average value, it still tells us nothing about the total radiative cooling or total global insolation.
That’s the only global energy problem that i’m interested in; I’ll leave it to others to worry about whether the Riviera will be comfortable next year.
As for the GHG “forcings” (IPCC swear word), I would be pleasantly surprised to find out that any of the GCMs consider local temperatures, and Wien Displacement of the IR spectrum in computing the local CO2 absorption of surface emitted IR radiation. In the polar regions with lower temperatures, the IR emission falls closer to the CO2 absorption band, but the lower atmospheric temperatures reduce the Doppler broadening of that band.
In the hottest tropic areas, the IR spectrum peak moves further away form the CO2 band, but the Doppler width is increased. I’m sure I could find all that accounted for in the Computer models of climate.
Of course it suits the IPCC to maintain that 3:1 fudge factor in all of their utterances, because they can then ask; what if this worst case was the real one ?
If their error margins were reduced, they might find their predictions were no longer scary enough to suit their political purposes.
And I’m outa here.

George E. Smith says:

I don’t do this for a living; my employer is paying me to design stuff for them; they have only one test, and that is my stuff has to work or I get fired. While my computer is thinking for me, I’m able to pop into places like this and try to be helpful to anyone like Mike, and helping just one person to understand some things that are esoteric, yet within the grasp of any sensible person, makes it very worthwhile to me.

We are similar in that regard, as I also do not do this stuff for a living. Like you, I do computational work in a different area for a living and read (and comment) about climate science in my free time.
I do appreciate many aspects of your philosophy. I too like to figure things out for myself. However, I think that when one does that, it is important to do it with lots of humility and the understanding that if you don’t understand something that the experts in the field are saying or doing, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong…It more likely is a lack of understanding on your side.
In fact, a while back, I ran into the exact same factor of four issue regarding the solar constant that you ran into above…i.e., I was looking at the variations in the solar constant over the solar cycle and not understanding why they weren’t considered more significant in comparison to other forcings, until I learned that one had to divide by a factor of four to account for the difference between the surface area of the earth and the pi*r^2 projected area as “seen from the sun” (and there is also an additional factor of 0.7 because of the earth’s albedo). However, it seems to me that when you run into something you don’t understand, you seem to assume the worst of the scientists…i.e. that they are doing it wrong. So, you think they are using the wrong forcing…or that they applying the forcing equally over the whole earth in the climate models, which as Chris V. pointed out is not the case.

anna v: What you are stating is nothing new to climate scientists. They understand chaos and sensitivity to initial conditions and indeed they do see it in their models. I.e., if they perturb the initial conditions, then the model follows a different trend of ups-and-downs in the temperature. However, despite these differences, the predictions of how much the global temperature changes over a reasonable-length period due to a change in greenhouse gas forcing is robust to these perturbations in the initial conditions.
The technical distinction that is often made is that weather prediction is an initial value problem whereas predicting a change in climate in response to a forcing is a boundary value problem.

Joel Shore,
Using chaos in the language and using chaos theory to calculate are two different and distinct issues.
In the IPCC reports where models are given with spaghetti graphs and large bands of
“errors” when you go to chapter 8, you see that these are not real errors, i.e. varying systematically the parameters and initial conditions to see how much the solutions are perturbed , but “educated estimates of what the errors are”, i.e depending on the modeler’s intuition.
I am too lazy to hunt again the exact chapter and verse where it is stated clearly In the last IPCC report that “no likelihood” has been developed yet for the models.
I am sure that the reason they have not been able to develop a likelihood function for these models is what I stated in my previous post: first order approximations (that the use of averages is), diverge strongly in systems of coupled non linear differential equations.
So the robustness depends on the intuition of the modelers and not on hard mathematics.
It is all done by sleight of hand and magic.

Joel Shore (17:12:38) :
Anna V: If likelihoods are what you desire, various groups (such as Annan et al.) have done Bayesian likelihoods for the climate sensitivity based on climate models simulating various empirical climate changes in the past.
I would like errors to be statistical errors and not estimates of the modelers, whether by a likelihood fit or any other way.
this is from AR
chapter 8
Climate Models and Their Evaluation,8.1.2.2 Metrics of Model Reliability, partway in the second paragraph:
The above studies show promise
that quantitative metrics for the likelihood of model projections
may be developed, but because the development of robust
metrics is still at an early stage, the model evaluations presented
in this chapter are based primarily on experience and physical
reasoning, as has been the norm in the past.
you say:
As I have noted before, if quantum field theory had controversial implications, we would see QFT “skeptics” who would be asking us how we could believe a theory where you have to subtract quantities that are diverging to infinity to get a meaningful result!.
The analogy is misleading. If QFT were giving results contradicting the data, it would have long ago been thrown in the wastebasket. Theoretical calculations using it always give errors, not estimates of theoreticians of what the errors should be There are calculations of the fine structure constant that are parts in a billion correct. The IPCC models are failing in most of their predictions. I will repeat here what I have shown before:
The AGW hypothesis’ only justification comes from the computer models, GCMs, used extensively in the AR report of IPCC.A model/theory falls even if one datum disproves it, and there are at least four:
1) Temperatures do not follow IPCC projections. Here is a plot to remind this:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg
2) The fingerprint of CO2 in the tropical troposphere as set out in the AR4 report is absent in the data. Here are the links
for models:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf
data:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/GHGModsvsReality.jpg
3) The oceans are cooling instead of warming and setting off a feedback loop of greenhouse warming: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
The spin is: global warming missing heat. The truth is, nature does not follow the GCM IPCC models.
4) the specific humidity is not rising as it should in order to create the runaway feedback loop predicated in the models:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/Timeseries/timeseries.pl?ntype=1&var=Specific+Humidity+(up+to+300mb+only)&level=300&lat1=90&lat2=-90&lon1=-180&lon2=180&iseas=1&mon1=0&mon2=11&iarea=0&typeout=2&Submit=Create+Timeseries
The basic premise of the models, that the tiny, (anthropogenic CO2 is a tiny fraction of the CO2 in the atmosphere:
http://www.co2web.info/Icecap_CarbonDioxide.pdf) anthropogenic CO2 is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and starts runaway greenhouse warming is absolutely not supported by the data
In addition there is no driving correlation between the rise in CO2 and global temperatures in this plot: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Correlation_of_Carbon_Dioxide_with_Temperatures_Negative_Again.pdf
If this were a scientific proposition it would have been thrown out and rethought from the beginning. That is why I think it is just political.
Thus, imo, all this AGW business is a production set up to stampede the masses into supporting policies they would never consider otherwise.

Sorry, error in my sentence structure — left my intent somewhat ambiguous in my immediate preceding post
I meant to say — “There is only one thing that can effect the height of the Ionosphere, the atmosphere’s of other planets, and the temperature of the earth — its the SUN
i.e. one factor that can collectively effect all of the above
— no CO2, methane or other “Green House Gas” need bother to apply
Still recovering from recently shoveling the beginnings of the next glacial outbreak
Westy

You might ask how they have aligned the predictions and the data, since this doesn’t agree with plots in the literature (such as that shown in Chapter 1 of the IPCC AR4 or in this paper in Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;316/5825/709 ). Also note that there the model predictions are basically the forced component, i.e., not including “noise” due to El Nina / La Nina and the like, and the data for 2008 only includes the first half of the year (which was considerably colder than the second half). That’s a lot of problems with one graph!
There are many similar graphs, and they all show the discrepancy. Look at my last link:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Correlation_of_Carbon_Dioxide_with_Temperatures_Negative_Again.pdf
You can handwave, but data do not go away.
You’ve been hoodwinked if you believe that the “hotspot” in the tropical troposphere is a fingerprint of CO2. It has nothing to do with CO2
If so, it is the IPCC report that is doing the hoodwinking. Actually in the first internet version, the CO2 only plot had the words “fingerprint” or maybe “signature” on it. It is after the Douglass et al report that they retroactively disappeared it, but did not dare disappear the plots quoted. It seems you do not read links. People can keep changing the goal posts, but that is not science. The world is asked to commit energy hara kiri based on the IPCC reports, not the later glossing over and hand waving.
The link for humidity is NOA data , and it is not working well at the moment ( even if one copies the non highlighted parts), only one plot but it shows the diminishing specific humidity. Here are plots of relative humidity also falling: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/GlobalRelativeHumidity300_700mb.jpg. The paper you refer to is not freely available.
I do not think you have replied to the four points in any clear way.

Joel Shore
Of course there must be a similar mechanism for all extra heatings ( I hate the forcing business, which tries to mask three dimensional physics into two dimensions). The crux is what the models used as parameters and feedback loops etc.
The red in the hot spot appears only for the CO2 labeled plot in the IPCC report, and that is a fact. The data do not show the enhancement which is given in the IPCC report for the sum total of effects.
As for the temperature and CO2 plots, I would make them myself from scratch if I were up to all these new tools of excel work sheets and stuff.
I am sorry, but you still are not “explaining away” the discrepancies between the IPCC model claims in the formal report, and data since then.
All the rest is “epea pteroenta” flying words.

WestHighlander says:

One thing that I learned as an experimental physicist was that if a fancy model needed even more fancy disclaimers, etc — then the model was not worth the paper, tape, magnetic disk surface, etc that it was encoded upon

I would be curious to know what level you reached in terms of physics research because your experience is much different than mine. Mine is that science is rarely as cut-and-dried as people like to think it is. With any model, one can dream up millions of reasons why it is wrong…and, frankly, even to this day I never fail to be a little bit surprised when a piece of experimental data confirms my modeling. There are always so many things that can be wrong with it…and so many ways in which nature introduces complications. And yet, I think we scientists have done pretty well at modeling and understanding it nonetheless!

But you say — climate averages out a lot of the above complexity issues and we don’t credibly try to predict the climate of any specific point 100 years into the future — just some sort of average.

Yes…The point is more precisely that predicting the response of the climate to an external forcing is a boundary value problem and is very different from an initial value problem. What you didn’t note regarding that sensitivity to initial conditions is that while runs of climate models with perturbed boundary conditions rapidly diverge in the sense of having different jiggles up and down, they all show similar behavior in response to a significant forcing over a long enough period of time.

The only way to test the partial validity is to see if the model (with all parameters set to the best of our knowledge) can track the past record of the measurements (averaged in some agreed upon manner) — and surprise — there is not one GCM that can without fiddling about (e.g we use a different parameter to explain what happened in the 1980’s than we chose to use for the 2060 to 2100) time interval

Actually, Hansen made predictions with an early crude model back in the late 1980s and his predictions have turned out so well that there is a whole industry of distorting the record on that. However, you are also incorrect that this is the only way to test the models. There are a variety of ways to test them…both the entire model…and the pieces of the model and, moreover, there are a variety of empirical ways to get estimates for the equilibrium climate sensitivity…which is really the main thing that the models are trying to predict (well, one could I suppose argue that they are also trying to predict the transient climate response).
Anyway — We don’t see even a hidden signature of the 6 moth oscillation in the “Global Surface Temperature record” nor in the MSU data from the satellites, nor in the radiosonde data – instead what we tend to see in the spectral analysis is an approximate 11 year periodicity – that seems to fit sunspot cycles
This is a bogus test. If a climate model were forced with this small oscillation in CO2 levels and produced a detectable response then I would agree that one should then expect to see it in nature. However, do you have any such evidence that the climate models would do so? I doubt it extremely for a variety of reasons (the main one being the shortness of this oscillation period relative to various relaxation times in the system). You can’t just invent tests and say that you expect to see this if the theory is true without subjecting your own hypothesis to the test…And, the best way to test whether this is what one would expect from the theory is to run the models that encode our current theoretical understanding.

So how can you credibly say that “the science is settled”? — when we are constantly discovering things about or environment such as incomplete plasma sheaths, low ionosphere heights, magnetic field anomalies, unexpected strength of the solar wind, etc.

Oh, I have no doubt that the science is not settled in the sense that I imagine we are still in for some surprises. Unfortunately, I think that these surprises are just as likely if not more likely to be unpleasant ones than pleasant ones (such as that the significant change we are making to the composition of GHGs in the atmosphere is not going to have any major effects). And, just because we don’t know everything does not mean we know nothing. Science deals with uncertainty all the time…Nothing is ever certain in science. However, the only time when we let this paralyze us into complete inaction is when we allow politics to triumph over science.

sorry, Lucia’s link http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4687#comment-316299