Set Phasers on Stun
March 29th, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
I’ve been receiving a steady stream of e-mails asking when our latest work on feedbacks in the climate system will be published. Since I’ve been trying to fit the material from three (previously rejected) papers into one unified paper, it has taken a bit longer than expected…but we are now very close to submission.
We’ve tentatively decided to submit to Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR) rather than any of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) journals. This is because it appears that JGR editors are somewhat less concerned about a paper’s scientific conclusions supporting the policy goals of the IPCC — regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, JGR’s instructions to reviewers is to not reject a paper simply because the reviewer does not agree with the paper’s scientific conclusions. More on that later.
As those who have been following our work already know, our main conclusion is that climate sensitivity has been grossly overestimated due to a mix up between cause and effect when researchers have observed how global cloud cover varies with temperature.
To use my favorite example, when researchers have observed that global cloud cover decreases with warming, they have assumed that the warming caused the cloud cover to dissipate. This would be a positive feedback since such a response by clouds would let more sunlight in and enhance the warming.
But what they have ignored is the possibility that causation is actually working in the opposite direction: That the decrease in cloud cover caused the warming…not the other way around. And as shown by Spencer and Braswell (2008 J. Climate), this can mask the true existence of negative feedback.
All 20 of the IPCC climate models now have positive cloud feedbacks, which amplify the small about of warming from extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But if cloud feedbacks in the climate system are negative, then the climate system does not particularly care how much you drive your SUV. This is an issue of obvious importance to global warming research. Even the IPCC has admitted that cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty in predicting global warming.
Significantly, our new work provides a method for identifying which direction of causation is occurring (forcing or feedback), and for obtaining a more accurate estimate of feedback in the presence of clouds forcing a temperature change. The method involves a new way of analyzing graphs of time filtered satellite observations of the Earth (or even of climate model output).
Well…at least I thought it was new way of analyzing graphs. It turns out that we have simply rediscovered a method used in other physical sciences: phase space analysis. This methodology was first introduced by Willard Gibbs in 1901.
We found that by connecting successively plotted points in graphs of how the global average temperature varies over time versus how global average radiative balance varies over time, one sees two different kinds of structures emerge: linear striations, which are the result of feedback, and spirals which are the result of internal radiative forcing by clouds.
But such a methodology is not new. To quote from Wikipedia on the subject of ‘phase space’:
“Often this succession of plotted points is analogous to the system’s state evolving over time. In the end, the phase diagram…can easily elucidate qualities of the system that might not be obvious otherwise.”
Using a simple climate model we show that these two features that show up in the graphs are a direct result of the two directions of causation: temperature causing clouds to change (revealed by ‘feedback stripes’), and clouds causing temperature to change (revealed by ‘radiative forcing spirals’).
The fact that others have found phase space analysis to be a useful methodology is a good thing. It should lend some credibility to our interpretation. Phase space analysis is what has helped us better understand chaos, along with its Lorenz attractor, strange attractor, etc.
And the fact that we find the exact same structures in the output of the IPCC climate models means that the modelers can not claim our interpretation has no physical basis.
And now we can also use some additional buzzwords in the new article…which seems to help from the standpoint of reviewers thinking you know what you are talking about. The new paper title is, “Phase Space Analysis of Forcing and Feedback in Models and Satellite Observations of Climate Variability”.
It just rolls of the tongue, doesn’t it?
I am confident the work will get published…eventually. But even if it didn’t, our original published paper on the issue has laid the groundwork…it would just take awhile before the research community understands the implications of that work.
What amazes me is the resistance there has been to ‘thinking out of the box’ when trying to estimate the sensitivity of the climate system. Especially when it has been considered to be ‘thinking in the box’ by other sciences for over a century now.
And it is truly unfortunate that the AMS, home of Lorenz’s first published work on chaos in 1963, has decided that political correctness is more important than the advancement of science.
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What – Water Vapour provides Negative Feedback, naturally limiting CO2 induced Warming!!!
What – No Catastrophy?
My goodness – how will all the rent seeking CO2 Emission CAP and Traders justify the transfer of so much wealth from the many to the few?
Inquiring minds want to know.
An excellent paper debunking the Climate Models and CO2 based Global Warming from the International Journal of Modern Physics can be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161
Enjoy.
I just can not be more proud!
RH is the key, plus two more.
Attaboy Roy!
I wish you luck Dr. Spencer, or as they say on the stage, break a leg! Wait, that might actually help you get published! Just kidding, of course.
Slightly off topic but I wanted to draw the communities attention to this work debunking rising sea levels. God I hope we can get back to science and lower the hysteria.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html
Your use of phase space analysis makes perfect sense to this lay enthusiast of chaos theory. What makes no sense is that climate modeling isn’t making more use of it. How can that be? “Butterfly effect” and other memes from nonlinear system thinking have percolated the popular awareness ever since Gleick and others broke the subject open about 20 years ago; the concept of phase space is both intuitive and powerful, inviting its use to crack tough nuts; much of this stuff arose in meteorology and climatology in the first place. What happened?
PS: Thanks for the excellent blog. I have learned so much, both from your postings and from the comments.
Also, as a personal curiosity, which gas is CO2 displacing when it is added to the atmosphere?
Feedback and data integrity comprise the Achilles’ heel of the AGW theory. It stands or falls on those two issues.
Owen,
The IPCC’s lack of interested in chaos theory has been the topic of intense discussion at CA. I suspect they avoid it because they think chaos is noise and cancels over ‘climatically significant’ timeframes. Without that belief they could not claim that CO2 is the primary cause of of the recent warming.
From wiki:
“An unknown, though probably large, quantity of CO2 is in the ocean sediments as a methane-carbon dioxide-water clathrates, one of the family of gas hydrates.”
What happens to these ocean sediments when they are ground together at the meeting point of tectonic plates?
What gas is displaced when CO2 is added to the atmosphere? It has to be something, yes? You can only have a million parts per million, so if CO2 is going up, what is going down?
Eh, sorry for clogging up the boards here, but doesn’t this:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi_2008.png
make some kind of confirmation bias? I mean, did they put all the AGGI monitoring stations on volcanoes?
Keep at the journals Roy, they can’t ignore good research forever and keep any shred of credibility. History will judge some editors sharply.
There is a classic “catch-22” in all this difficulty. Anyone who fails to get a work challenging AGW published in a “peer reviewed” journal these days claims “reviewer bias”. I imagine a number of such papers were, in fact, rejected because the works failed to meet legitimate standards of scientific rigor, originality, etc. The question the general public is really in no position to answer is “which ones?”
The general public does have the means, however, to satisfy itself that the claimed bias does indeed exist. All it has to do is review a very long list of absurdly lightweight, pro-AGW papers that WERE published by those same journals and which met not even a layman’s standard of scientific rigor, originality, etc.
Ohioholic (21:48:45) :
From wiki:
“An unknown, though probably large, quantity of CO2 is in the ocean sediments as a methane-carbon dioxide-water clathrates, one of the family of gas hydrates.”
What happens to these ocean sediments when they are ground together at the meeting point of tectonic plates?
What gas is displaced when CO2 is added to the atmosphere? It has to be something, yes? You can only have a million parts per million, so if CO2 is going up, what is going down?
There is no glass ceiling to the atmosphere, just increasing the mass of the atmosphere by ppm.
What might CO2 displace?
Nitrogen + Oxygen + Argon (gases) = 99.96 %
Above are considered to be non-variable
versus
Water vapor (0 to 4%) , CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone
considered to be variable
and there still is Neon, Helium, Hydrogen
I’ll guess about 99.96 % of the time it is one of those in the top line!
anna v (22:23:41) :
When you measure on a per/X basis, why wouldn’t displacement be forced to occur?
John F. Hultquist (22:36:11) :
Would I be wrong to assume that the heaviest gas is displaced downward, and the lighter gas displaced upward at a proportional rate to their atomic mass? I am referencing the troposphere because I understand this is where the hot spot is supposed to occur.
Arrgh, Institutional and Society publishing divisions! Membership fees and lots of committees. How I remember puting the matchsticks in to hold my eyes open in those endless meetings.
Ohioholic (22:44:30) :
It is like any CO2 ( or whatever) source of new gas. Initially it will be high concentration around the source and will then defuse, convect and balance in the gravity field according to its molecular mass. But gases are not like sand, to stratify.
‘All 20 of the IPCC climate models now have positive cloud feedbacks, which amplify the small about of warming from extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But if cloud feedbacks in the climate system are negative, then the climate system does not particularly care how much you drive your SUV. This is an issue of obvious importance to global warming research. Even the IPCC has admitted that cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty in predicting global warming.’
What a marvellous quotation, Mr Professor.
So let me get this straight: we now have a multibillion dollar campaign to get us to reject all the technological advances which have changed society over the past 200 years, but the scientific basis for this is still completely unproven.
We’ve been chopping trees down right left and centre for 100 years but nobody does anything to stop it.
And we’ve just had the snowiest winter in memory in the European Alps, with snow depths on the upper mountains often being 400 – 500cm at the end of March, which I believe requires clouds to produce the precipitation, after being told that the warming of the past 30 years was a prelude to death through desertification.
Was it chaos theory you were discussing?
Or ‘Religious organisation theory 101’ at the Climate Taleban’s camps in the deepest limestone caves of our political centres?
The theory about constant opacity of the atmosphere (where in case of rise of CO2, water vapors decrease) has been suggested by Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi as well. Looks like Dr. Spencer and Dr. Miskolczi have come to the same conclusion from different sides.
Graeme Rodaughan (20:13:00) :
My goodness – how will all the rent seeking CO2 Emission CAP and Traders justify the transfer of so much wealth from the many to the few?
They will call it Energy Independence and it will come via the EPA, not the Congress. Afterall have you seen a bailout that actually helps anyone but a corporation? Even the stimulas only seems to be stimulating the gov.. Im worried about spending $20 for a new shower curtain.. meanwhile back in Washington D.C. ……….. enough said.
http://newamericanteaparty.com/
Ohioholic (20:49:25) :
What gas does it displace ?
Well actually all of them. What happens in a well mixed reactor (assuming the atmosphere is a well mixed reactor) is that the other gases reduce their partial pressures to maintain a constant total pressure of 1 atmosphere (or 101.3 kPa) that is made up of all the gases. Ideal gas theory basically says that each of the other gases will reduce in proportion to their orginal concentration so that for example an increase of 350 to 400 ppm will result in a 50ppm reduction in the TOTAL of all the other gases. In other words negligible change since for example O2 is 200,000 ppm, and N2 is 800,000ppm. O2 would drop to 199,990 and N2 to 799,9960ppm Ignoring the trace gases.
The technique of geostatistics commences with calculating the differences between successive pairs of observations ……. Works wonderfully well in mining and mineral exploration in spatial mode.
Juraj V. (00:11:05) :
The theory about constant opacity of the atmosphere (where in case of rise of CO2, water vapors decrease) has been suggested by Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi as well. Looks like Dr. Spencer and Dr. Miskolczi have come to the same conclusion from different sides.
*********************************
See Ken Gregory’s graph at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/05/negative-feedback-in-climate-empirical-or-emotional/