The closing remarks include:
“Each segment of the mid latitude TLT data showed different:
-Response Times to El Nino Events,
-Response Times to Volcanic Eruptions,
-Rates of Response to El Nino Events,
-Rates of Response to La Nina Events, and
-Rates of Response to Volcanic Eruptions.
And there appears to be little consistency in the responses with a given dataset. For example, in some data sets, the earlier El Nino response is greater than the later response, and in others, the reverse is true. In some data sets, the time lags from a El Nino event or a volcanic eruption to the response from the mid latitude data is about 2 years before 1991 but then within months after 1993.”
http://i40.tinypic.com/s0vfqe.jpg

Regards

Sorry about the spelling.

I am also sorry that we seem to be in disagreement because I do not see why this is happening. I appologise if it is my poor communication skills.

Let me make it clear up front. I do not believe in CO2 being a significant driver of global warming. So please do not see my points as being a challenge to you or a support for the views of the AGWarmers.

I accept that your analysis does show that LSTs follows SSTs which follow El Nino events. However as a physicist I am interested in the global energy balances. One of the reasons the AGWarmers tend to dismiss this kind of argument is that even if the conceded that the oceans governed climate over the medium term they would argue that over the long term the extra energy trapped by CO2 will always win out. This is my only point. I can find nothing in your argument which necessarily changes the cumulative overall energy balance taking all sources and sinks into account.

For example the release of warm water onto the surface will increase the temperature of the air. This will increase radiation and evaportation and, in all probability, would lead to increased energy lost to space. In other words increased global temperature might actually correlate with a negative energy balance.

The reason I found your article so exciting is that it does show how recent patterns of climate change do not need to reflect recent changes in the energy balance. In other words you provide a mechanism by which small changes in the energy balance can be stored and released much later. Or indeed how a constant energy balance can result in an oscllating surface temperature. This implies that the AGWarmers cannot use recent data to justify or calibrate the amount of warming that CO2 generates. This is important because we know that the laboratory evidence only supports a 1degree F increase for a doubling of CO2 (I personally do not accept even this as proven in the real world).

My blog was trying to address the issue of the huge energy inbalances that occur over the 100,000 year cycle. The amount of energy needed to freeze and melt the thousands of cubic miles of extra ice seen during the ice ages is staggering, The so called interglacial periods are the most astonishing because they always seem to occur straight after the coolest periods. So the swing in energy balance is extraordinary, Since this occurs when the CO2 and methane concentration is at a minimum we know it is not caused by greenhouse gases.

I do not know the answer to this but the fact that the ice ages are synchronised to the Milankovitch cycles convinces me that the sun is the dominant influence. The problem is, as the AGWs constantly point out, the variations in insolation are very small. However this is like saying that a 1% change in rainfall will not have a big effect on river flow. What if this was stored as snow and then released as water during a thaw. We know that happens with dramatic effects. So small changes can have big effects if there is time to accumulate.

I had never realised how large the warm pools could be. I guess it is also possible that with ice forming near to the tropics even more dramatic warm pools might occur even possibly under the ice? So such accumulation of energy might be possible and with its release the sudden and dramatic rise in temperatures observed is no longer so perplexing.

And that, IMHO, is why no one bothers answering. AGW is paranoia. Paranoia is not sane. There can be no rational response to insanity. Best to ignore it and walk on past…

This guy does: http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages

And it has already been done for you. Though the graphs are presented to lower human scale precision.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

We have the present set of conditions of the planet plus long term history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Milankovitch_Variations.png

and the projection of where we go from here at finer detail:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orbital_variation.svg

I didn’t make that statement nor did I imply it. Please do not agree with something I did not write. Either I have a problem communicating, or you’ve misunderstood something I’ve written, or you’re blatantly misrepresenting what I’ve written to you above. Let me try again. My findings illustrate that El Nino events (those that are not impacted by volcanic eruptions) are the major driver of global ocean SST. Since global LST temperatures mimic SST, it would seem logical that those same El Nino events drive global combined LST and SST. But since you doubt that, stop by my website tomorrow (1/16/09) or Saturday (1/17/09). Here’s the link:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/

I’m examining Mid Latitude Lower Troposphere Temperature for the Northern Hemisphere. I’ve segmented it by continent and ocean. All the graphs are done. All I have to do is write it up. My illustrations clearly show that the 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 El Ninos are the dominant cause of TLT change for the Mid Latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere since 1979. The step changes are very clear. After that, I’ll look at the low latitudes for the Northern Hemisphere in the same way, then move down to the Southern Hemisphere low latitudes and then mid latitudes.

I’ve illustrated why those El Nino events are so dominant in the posts here at WattsUpWithThat very clearly.

What part of illustrating that El Ninos are the ultimate driver of climate on this planet is not a challenge to the AGW hypothesis? According to It, anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the primary driver, BUT they’re not.

BTW, there’s no “N” in Tisdale.

You can find more here: http://www.bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/
and here: http://www.bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/calibration.html

The measurement is of the albedo or rather of (1-albedo) which is [next to TSI itself] the most important variable in the radiation budget of the Earth. Googling Earthshine Goode will get you a lot more [plus a lot of repetitions]. The trick to precision measurements in spite of the ‘double bounce’ is that the Moon is constant [the small variation due to libration is measured and compensated for]. These measurements are good.

I agree that you said nothing to imply that these findings directly challenged AGW theory. I was merely trying to clarify that this was the case.

You said you limited your analysis to post 1979. My comment regarding warming throughout the century was based on your graph 21 which summed anomalies from 1915 to 2007. Did I misunderstand this graph?

Let me say that I was really impressed by your paper and my comments were in no way meant to diminish the impact of what you had to say. I am sorry if I gave that impression. I found the clear factual presentation very refreshing.

George E. Smith (16:54:51) :
But I am suspicious of earth albedo reports. We don’t have a total global network of satellites that can continuously monitor the whole globe (continuously), and the process of measuring albedo from lunar “earthshine” is also an intermittent measurement technique that is not continuously available.
The Earthshine measurement do come from a [small] global network and do integrate over the whole Earth and the total albedo [and cloud cover] over the globe does not change significantly from minute to minute. Neither does the cosmic ray count. The Earthshine technique works. “”

Then I clearly don’t have any understanding of either orbital physics, or earthshine.

Why am I under the impression, that “earthshine” is spectrally modified solar radiation that is first reflected off the sunlit side of whatever portion of the earth is currently sunlit; in whatever oblique direction the moon happens to be, and then reflected off the moon, in whatever oblique direction the night side of the earth happens to lie, and that process can be monitored continuously while accounting for the portion of the earth that is sunlit, and its oblique albedo in the moon’s direction , and the oblique albedo of the moon’s earthlit portion taken into account etc etc; and they can do that without interruption ?

So what happens regarding the detection of the cloud coverage on the non sunlit side of the earth, given that those3 clouds aren’t going to be there in the same place, when that region eventually becomes sunlit.

What remains within the constraints of orbital mechanics, is a sampled data system that doesn’t even come close to satisfying the Nyquist sampling criterion.

It seems to me that earthshine must always exclude monitoring of cloud coverage on the night side of the earth.

Oh I’m sure that it “works” in that you can detect some double bounce radiation coming off the moon; but it gives no monitoring of cloud coverage on the nightside of the earth.

And of course it gives no clue to the state of precipitation going on, from any of that cloud cover anywhere.

George

My take on the satellite data:

1. GISS data shows an excess of SW radiation reaching the surface during the global warming years 1980-2000 and this is about 5x the computed ‘warming’ due to carbon dioxide’s infra-red radiation (extra CO2 over the same period);

2. Only the ocean surface waters can store this as heat;

3. The excess occurs in ‘pulses’ that correlate roughly to the 11 year solar cycles;

4. There are also pulses in the cosmic ray flux – and variations in amplitude though not overall trend – look at the pattern not the trend line – as it bears relation to the solar cycle;

5. Over this period 1980-1995 Svensmark found a correlation between the cosmic ray flux and low-level dense reflective cloud – but not all cloud; he had to work the data a bit but he thinks that correlation held for the next cycle too – others disagree;

6. Other workers, Usoskin, found a latitudinal effect as expected;

7. Earthshine data shows a decrease of albedo over this period, and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project shows a long term 4% reduction of low level cloud from 1980-2000 – there is less agreement on what happens after 2001 – but could be higher albedo, less SW, cooler oceans.

The key thing is to look at the patterns, the pulses and the oceans reworking the heat stores – because there are phase changes and time lags.

However controversial these data sets may be (IPCC regard them as contradictory – but I don’t think they are) – they do not support the carbon hypothesis – rather they point to cloud changes. One could argue that ‘global warming’ thins the clouds – but the models do not incorporate such cloud feedbacks.

Hence the precautionary principle is just a hollow term that only serves as a convenient obfuscation through which a subjective opinion obtains an aura of legitimacy. That’s why AGW proponents and environmentalists love to use the precautionary principle: it gives them this (unwarranted) pretentious moral superiority.

There is some discussion of the ‘moving target’ of Svensmark’s theory here: http://cce.890m.com/solar-cosmic-rays/
I think most of it is true [although meant for laymen].

George E. Smith (11:10:09) :
what is really happening which is all the magnetic effects and the effects of and on cosmic rays.
Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis does not rest on that very small solar constant variation; his thesis is quite intact even with zero variation in the solar constant. “”

Leif,

I have to admit, that I only know second hand what is in the Svensmark Papers, and in fact am presently witing to hear from him about those papers.

If albedo is the only cloud effect he has adressed (I believe his first publishing was around a decade ago), then I wouldn’t expect that the tell the whole story.

Clouds have a much bigger effect than just albedo, and there is more to the cosmic ray effect than just cosmic ray flux.

An immediate effect of near earth magnetic variations is to redistribute cosmic rays in latitude, since charged particles tend to spiral around the magnetic field lines, which selectively steers them towards the magnetic poles. And since atmospheric water vapor is not uniformly distributed in latitude, then one would not expect charged particle nucleated clouds to be uniformly distributed in latitude, but to vary depending on the strenght of the magnetic fields. And yes I realize that true primary cosmic rays are very high energies copmared to charged particles from the sun, in which case I would expect solar particles to be affected more that the true galactic cosmic rays which can get up to the 10^20 eV range.

In addition to albedo changes due to clouds, there is the further attenuation of ground level solar energy due to the internal absorption particularly in highly precipitating clouds.

According to Wentz et al (SCIENCE July 2007), increased surface temperatures produce increased total global precipitation, which means increased dense cloud formation. They reported a 7% increase in precipitation for a one deg C mean surface temperature increase, and that would lead one to expect a similar 75 increase in precipitating clouds; either in the form of increased cloud area, cloud density (moisture content) or cloud persistence; or some combination thereof.

they found that total global precipitation, total atmospheric water content, and total global evaporation all incresed 7% for a 1 deg C rise in global mean surface temperature. I added the prcipitating cloud increase myself; they never mentioned it.
They also reported that the GCMs agreed with the 7% increase in evaporation and total water content, but predicted that increases in precipitation would only be between 1 and 3%; not 7%.

So the GCM under a warming scenario predict a continuous transport of water into the atmosphere, since evaporation and precipitation do now match according to the GCMs. That then begs the question, how can the evaporation and precipitation differ by a factor of from 2 2/3 to 7, yet the total water in the atmosphere increases at the same rate as the evaporation.

There’s no physical way the GCM numbers can be real; they are mutually incompatible.

But I am suspicious of earth albedo reports. We don’t have a total global network of satellites that can continuously monitor the whole globe (continuously), and the process of measuring albedo from lunar “earthshine” is also an intermittent measurement technique that is not continuously available. Clouds on the other hand change in mere minutes; so it is not possible to observe them continuously all over the globa from satellites, and it certainly isn’t possible to continuously observe their total solar transmission from the ground continuously over the whole globe.

Editorially, I am just mystified by how slow these allegedly “elite” thinkers are. It’s like they never even got started.

Oh, well, I can think of one “rational response”, which in fact is based upon your own “Precautionary Principle’s” logic. That is, you must apply the Precautionary Principle to your own Precautions.

I had already learned this way of thinking at least by the time I was 6. So why are we still having to deal with you?

Actually I agree with you completely. I just got diverted by Leif’s points and tried to deal with them in isolation.

In my articles I do say more than once that I am not happy with TSI as the sole indicator of the sun’s effect on our climate. I am sure more than just TSI is involved but TSI is a useful proxy for the level of solar activity generally because even with the recent amended TSI numbers going back to 1600 it is clear that the sun is more active than it was then however slightly and an effect of some sort on climate seems to me to be irrefutable from historical records even if the fit is not perfect.

If Bill Illis provides evidence that the sun contributed 0.1C from a rise of 0.7C then that is good enough (in my mind) to explain observed warming when one combines sun with ocean cycles.

The issue may well be one of sensitivity rather than the absolute level of TSI variation and it may well be something other than simply TSI which has the effect.

Whatever the truth it is not a CO2 issue and the science is not settled.