I really wish Gavin would put as much effort into getting the oddities with the GISTEMP dataset fixed rather than writing coffee table books and trying new models to show the sun has little impact.
This paper gets extra points for using the word “robust”. – Anthony
Solar trends and global warming (PDF here)
R. E. Benestad
Climate Division, Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway
G. A. Schmidt
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA
We use a suite of global climate model simulations for the 20th century to assess the contribution of solar forcing to the past trends in the global mean temperature. In particular, we examine how robust different published methodologies are at detecting and attributing solar-related climate change in the presence of intrinsic climate variability and multiple forcings.
We demonstrate that naive application of linear analytical methods such as regression gives nonrobust results. We also demonstrate that the methodologies used by Scafetta and West (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2008) are not robust to
these same factors and that their error bars are significantly larger than reported. Our analysis shows that the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980.
Received 17 December 2008; accepted 13 May 2009; published 21 July 2009.
Citation: Benestad, R. E., and G. A. Schmidt (2009), Solar trends and
global warming, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D14101,
doi:10.1029/2008JD011639.
hat tip to Leif Svalgaard
7% of warming only? Then I am curious what caused so rapid increase of global temperatures between 1905-1940, when the gas-which-must-not-be-named was almost constant. Btw, warming IS negligible since 1980.
What will these people do after few years, when the downward trend will be more and more pronounced?
We use a suite of global climate model simulations for the 20th century to assess the contribution of solar forcing to the past trends in the global mean temperature.
Heaven forbid they use actual temperature observations correlated with solar cycle observations to assess solar forcing in the 20th century.
Maybe because it would demonstrate the naive application of outdated Fortran programs and show that the next grant request is nonrobust?
So the models do not include solar forcing??
**We use a suite of global climate model simulations…
Maybe I should still read it, or have I read too much?
When will someone measure something?
Have no interest in reading anything by Gavin.
Odds are its total crap.
Questions for those who actually read his stuff:
1. Does Gavin assume fabricated aerosol data to force his model to hindcast the cooling from ~1945-1975?
2. Is the sensitivity of his model greater than 1C (for a doubling of CO2)?
3. What is the magnitude of alleged natural temperature forcing, if any, relative to alleged humanmade forcing?
4. Does Gavin use GISStemp with all its warming bias as the basis for alleged observed temperatures?
*****************************
“We use a suite of global climate model simulations for the 20th century to assess the contribution of solar forcing to the past trends in the global mean temperature.”
So, instead of checking their assumptions, they checked against their assumptions.
We demonstrate that naive application of linear analytical methods such as regression gives nonrobust results.
I laughed out loud at that.
What he is saying is that our models aren’t just extrapolating a trend out into the future. They are of course, but to admit it would put Gavin and the other climate modellers out of a job. Drawing a straight line with a pencil and ruler is an awful lot cheaper.
What we know, you could write a paper, what we don’t know, would fill a library.
So we write papers.
When all that latent heat is dissipated-from ’98 on how will that be explained?
BTW the Sun is vewy,vewy quiet of late…
well nice of Gavin to use a grossly expanded vertical scale to increase the slope of his upward trend.
Why don’t you change the vertical scale Gavin to match the -90 to +60 C range of surface temperatures that can occur on earth under recent climate conditiosn.
And just what is the scale of that solar effect you have secretly dotted in there so you can’t see it ?
Since the outgoing surface radiation depends approximately on the 4th power of the local surface temperature (Kelvins; why not simply plot your trens on the Kelvin temperature scale; so we can see how totally insignificant it is.)
And how about those robust owl box locations you chaps use for your raw data; I particularly liked that academic masterpiece that stands outside the front door of the University of Arizona Department of Environmental “Science”.
George
Love these academic locutions.
“nonrobust” = “nyah nyah nyah”
/snarkoff
From a purely behavioural POV, defense, bet-hedging and CYA are the majority AGW position now, and that has to be good for real science and for those of us preparing for a couple of cold decades. Even the once-esteemed NYT is in on the act: Instapundit has linked a delicious article where the money quote from one D Hathaway is:
“We still don’t quite understand this beast,” Dr. Hathaway said. “The theories we had for how the sunspot cycle works have major problems.”
Even the NY Times, a big supporter of the IPCC story line, quotes a scientist as saying the solar/cosmic ray/cloud effect could have been 20% of the warming.
Many of us could have found scientists who might say the ratio was the other way, 80/20, solar/CO2.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/space/21sunspot.html?_r=1&ref=science
Using a “suite of global climate model simulations” (which, by the way, do not appear to give reasonably accurate hindcasts) to assess the contribution of solar forcing is ridiculous. I believe TSI (and I’m sure Leif will jump in here if I’m wrong) has only been accurately measured for the last two or three decades… so what has Gavin been using as a proxy for solar “forcings”? I’ll have to read the paper, I suppose.
Oh yes. *Please*, Gavin; stop using the word “robust”. It’s been done to death, and is now sounding affected.
???????????????????????????????????????????
Note that temperature data end in 2000-look how the models are shooting off at that point. Now, after that, did the models continue to track? No, they didn’t.
Let’s see what Scaffeta and West have to say (any self respecting (HA!) Journal would give them the chance to reply.
And of course the use more Total Solar Irradiance only, PMOD only nonsense.
But, I should point out that one mustn’t fall into the “if it isn’t the sun, it’s AGW” trap. None of these changes are of a magnitude requiring “explanation” by “forcings” at all.
Hey Gavin, where are your measurements of cloud cover to prove positive cloud feedback? And how do you know that warming causes the clouds to change and not the other way around?
Oh wait, you don’t. Because there aren’t really that many measurements of clouds at all. Which makes your entire narrative very speculative methinks…
Gavin Schmidt publication at JGR coincides with the NOAA and GISS tarmac measurements… all this is smoke screen for Copenhagen. I hope someone will demonstrate the inanity of his paper…
We use a suite of global climate model simulations for the 20th century to assess the contribution of solar forcing to the past trends in the global mean temperature.
I actually did not go beyond this statement. If I remember rightly, don’t most of the solar scientists who used the past to model SC24 now have egg on their collective faces?? I guess mankind never learns the lessons of history and are doomed to repeat it. Et tu Gavin.
How do they represent the solar forcing? Simply by a slight 0.1% variation in TSI?
I doubt their models include a coupled magnetohydrodynamic/cosmic ray/cloud nucleation representation.
But Anthony, you’re promising to do such a thorough analysis of the GISS, why would he work on that when you’re doing it for him and he can assess your work.
I’m with Allen (15:31:09). I read as far as “global climate model simulations” and know it’s just going to me more Schmidt rubbish. When he decides to join the real world of science, then I’ll read his work.
Why does the graph stop at 2003?
It would be nice if Gavin would spend some valuable time doing something really useful: Like getting out of the office and seeing to the siting issues.
Another would be to de-correct the unoffending stations and drop the useless concrete/asphalt/heat source thermometers.
If we wanted to see what was really going on at the surface, we’d be looking at Infrared images from imaging satellites and aircraft.
The sun is very quiet, indeed.
Just wait until winter hits with this going on.
Maybe Gavin could give us the RAW data, and let us correct the offending stations to the good ones. Then lets compare results.
GSTEMP is like me buying a bunch of apples for a pie. I find a couple of bad ones, but instead of throwing out the bad apples, I induce the good ones to rot. Wouldn’t want my pie to be inconsisent or taste nice.
It’s clear Gavin isn’t clued up on the sun.
Here’s something I’ve been working on this evening. Still a work in progress, but it’s getting there.
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo.gif
From their introduction.
“The paper is divided into 2 parts, of which the first explores
the danger of applying linear statistical methods to data
from a complicated and chaotic system.”
They start out admitting climate is chaotic. Then they proceed to do an analysis by making use of climate models.
I doubt they can model chaos. If they can’t, the model results don’t represent reality. If they can, each time they run the models they would get a different result. In either case I don’t see how the analysis can be reliable. Especially when they have to guess at the forcing values and their relationship to each other.
Another question, how is 7% of .6 not “negligible” in the first place? How is ~0 anymore negligible than .042 in such a wildly fluctuating system known to change by several degrees? This shows a fundamental difference in how the numbers are processed by the alarmed. No wonder .6 degrees warming scares them, its more the than an order of magnitude above “negligible”. And don’t even get me started on their “projections”…
How to make a global warmist career:
1) build a global mean temperature curve using convenient data points and processing showing great, unprecedented warming
2) design GCM models that fit these so called “observed data”
3) call it robust -easy since both are manufactured by the same Team-
4) analyze anything else through this prism and call them wrong
5) publish in a peer reviewed journal with selected “peers”…
Latest news from Asia:
The current solar minimum is over.
Scientist observed a sunspot as big as the moon.
Such a pity that [snip] are only about to get their papers published in E&E.
“I am curious what caused so rapid increase of global temperatures between 1905-1940, when the gas-which-must-not-be-named was almost constant.”
Between 1905 and 1940, CO2 concentrations rose from about 297ppm to about 311ppm. It would be perverse to call a 5% rise “almost constant”. And as is rather well known, the early part of the 20th century saw a lull in volcanic activity, and an increase in solar output. The combination of these three effects accounts for the observed warming.
Just how much research had you done into this, before posting here?
“Btw, warming IS negligible since 1980.”
Using all four major measures of global temperature, we can see that the warming since 1980 is not negligible. What data did you use to reach this erroneous conclusion?
“What will these people do after few years, when the downward trend will be more and more pronounced?”
Will it? According to whom?
“We use a suite of global climate model simulations for the 20th century to assess the contribution of solar forcing to the past trends in the global mean temperature”.
Translation:
We first select the most crooked climate models we could find for the 20th century and what’s finally left is contributed to the also screwed up mean temperatures.
Now you don’t have to read any further because the rest of the publication is bogus.
This solar obsession of the Hockey Team indicates that it’s a real hot button issue for them. Else, they would not expend so much energy trying to discredit the contribution of total solar energy flux and any side effects it may impart. I find this fascinating. So, obviously, this is a fruitful area of study. I eagerly await the next wave of CERN results regarding cloud formation.
Where do I wipe this BS off my boots?
“ur analysis shows that the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980.”
But Gavin dear, what about the climate sensitivity response (you know, that positive feedback) from that 7% warming? I mean, you keep asserting an AGW warming where 3/4 of the assertion modelled is actually from water vapor, not directly from CO2, so why doesnt solar influence get to play the same sensitivity game?
Warmist response to the record cold in the North this summer:
“Thanks to the thick blanket of CO2 temperatures have only dropped 10 degree Celsius below normal”.
Show us the data, Gavin. Show us your methodology. I’d bet he’s going to hide both and refuse to reveal them to Steve McIntyre.
Climate models from the 20th century? Too bad we’re in the 21st century!
What is the basis for the anomaly? An average from 100 years worth of data forced into a model that is not fit for prediction, only description.
Before you do that, chisel off the dried muck of murky speculation from Gavin et al. – It’s like you’re wearing high heels, hm?
Oh…I read that incorrectly….they used models instead of the actual data. Why work in reality when it’s more fun to make believe?
If you go back to the period between 4,000 BC and 1700 AD, the climate models would produce a flat line.
There is no forcing as defined in the climate models which changed one iota over the period (other than an occassional volcano which only has an impact for a few years). There is no aerosols, no GHG changes, no black carbon, no solar changes etc. etc. worth mentioning.
Go back a little farther and there are changes for the peak solar forcing during the Holocene Optimum and there were still some ice age glacier remnants around then, …
… but, according to the manner in which the models are constructed, the climate has been a flat line for the 6,000 years before GHGs started increasing.
Go back even a little farther, say 4.3 billion to 500 million years ago, and the climate models show that the Earth was frozen solid iceball.
Doesn’t particularly add up very well.
Richard deSousa (16:49:49) :
Show us the data, Gavin. Show us your methodology. I’d bet he’s going to hide both and refuse to reveal them to Steve McIntyre.
Why?? He used robust or some variant of it about 18 times in the link. That should be
goodrobust enough for you.Well, it appears that the arctic is not melting as much as 2008, this trend could change, however it appears it won’t. Let’s face it, the climate is cooler and it’s kind of hard to not think it’s the sun to me. CO2 may be a factor, a very slim one if you ask me. How can 330ppm affect anything? It’s like a few grains of sand hidden in a gallon bucket of sand.
“Our analysis shows that the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980.”
Your analysis is rubbish Gavin.
You’d think he had a set of crayons rather than a computer.
Average sunspot number 1800 – 1820 = 19.85
Average sunspot number 1986 – 2001 = 73.11
The oceans make a net gain at anything over about 42 sunspots on the monthly count.
How would it be possible for water vapor to act as a feedback? If CO2 is receiving its energy from the water vapor in the atmosphere (doesn’t it have to pass through the water vapor?) how is it possible that water vapor would emit more energy than it receives? Or does the CO2 emit more energy than it receives? Either way, we would be looking at a great new source of power.
RW (16:34:16)said (excerpt) :
Between 1905 and 1940, CO2 concentrations rose from about 297ppm to about 311ppm. It would be perverse to call a 5% rise “almost constant”. And as is rather well known, the early part of the 20th century saw a lull in volcanic activity, and an increase in solar output. The combination of these three effects accounts for the observed warming.
Question:
Based on what raw data?
CO2 levels pre-1958 are highly questionable, imo.
********************
“Btw, warming IS negligible since 1980.”
Using all four major measures of global temperature, we can see that the warming since 1980 is not negligible. What data did you use to reach this erroneous conclusion?
Comment:
There has been no net warming since 1980 – based on UAH LT;
Hadcrut3 ST shows a ~0.07C/decade warming bias.
“What will these people do after few years, when the downward trend will be more and more pronounced?”
Will it? According to whom?
Comment:
Cooling predictions, in chronological order:
In 2003, Dr. Theodor Landscheidt wrote a paper predicting serious global cooling: “Analysis of the sun’s varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC’s speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8° C within the next hundred years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected.” http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html
In 2005, Piers Corbyn predicted cooling by 2040:
On the 2nd February 2005, he gave this presentation to the Institute of Physics Energy Management Group. It contained the following:
In the next 5 or 10 years warming is likely to be maintained as a transpolar shift occurs. This will be followed by the magnetic pole moving away from the geographic pole, a decrease in solar activity, a southward shift in the Gulf stream and considerable world cooling by 2040 AD.
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2005/05/trying-to-bet-on-climate-with-piers.html
In 2006, NASA predicted that “Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries”. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm
Global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences before it is replaced by a period of warming in the early 22nd century, a Russian Academy of Sciences’ astronomical observatory’s report says. http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/08/25/globalcooling.shtml
–MosNews, 25 August 2006
The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times. The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth’s global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol.
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/08/25/globalcooling.shtml
–Khabibullo Abdusamatov, Russian Academy of Science, 25 August 2006
If you look back into the sun’s past, you find that we live in a period of abnormally high solar activity. Periods of high solar activity do not last long, perhaps 50 to 100 years, then you get a crash. It’s a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon. http://www.newscientist.com/unpwlogin.ns
–Nigel Weiss, University of Cambridge, 16 September 2006
Sunspot numbers are well on the way down in the next decade. Sunspot numbers will be extremely small, and when the sun crashes, it crashes hard. The upcoming sunspot crash could cause the Earth to cool.
http://www.newscientist.com/unpwlogin.ns
–Leif Svalgaard, Stanford University, 16 September 2006
*************************
THE COMING GLOBAL COOLING?
World Climate Report, 16 March 2007
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/03/16/the-coming-global-cooling/
An article has appeared in a recent issue of Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics with a curious title “Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years.” … …”Despite the increasing trend of atmospheric CO2 concentration, the components IMF2, IMF3 and IMF4 of global temperature changes are all in falling”… …”the effect of greenhouse warming is deficient in counterchecking the natural cooling of global climate change in the coming 20 years. Consequently, we believe global climate changes will be in a trend of falling in the following 20 years.”… …”The global climate warming is not solely affected by the CO2 greenhouse effect. The best example is temperature obviously cooling however atmospheric CO2 concentration is ascending from 1940s to 1970s. Although the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate changes is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated. It is high time to re-consider the global climate changes.”
Reference
Zhen-Shan, L. and S. Xian. 2007. Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, 95, 115-121.
********************
Timo Niroma:
http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspots.html
Alert note 31.10.2007 – A probable new Dalton minimum.
According to my theory about Jovian effect on sunspots, based on facts measured since 1700 and estimated since 1500 (Schove)
– The Jupiter perihelion and sunspot minimum never coincide and the nearing perihelion will slow the rise of the height of sunspot cycle, as happened to the cycle 23 and will happen still more dramatically to cycle 24.
– The Gleissberg cycle has almost reached its lower limit, which is 72 years.
— In fact this low it has not been ever after the Maunder minimum.
— So it must go up, the short cycles of the 20th century has created a debt that must be paid.
Now the next Jovian perihelion is in late March in 2011. I predict that the length of the cycle 23 is in the range of 12.2-13 years. This means a minimum earliest in October 2008 and latest in July 2009 (I use the minimum of 1996.6). This means that the cycle 24 is very low, in the range of 40-70, or a Dalton level. This means that the maximum will be reached only in 2014. All this means there will be a cooling for decades, probable one Geissberg or nearly 80 years. (A sidestep: The rise of the CO2 in atmosphere from 0.03 to 0.04 % does not have any meaning in this play. The rise should be to more than 1 % to affect the complicated feedback system of Earth if the last 200 million history of Earth is used as a proxy of what has happened yesterday.)
Assuming that the last 500 years in solar behaviour can be used as a proxy for the normal behaviour of the Sun, the estimated probability of the first prediction is .91 and for the latter .96, making the total probability of this prediction to be true as 87%. (A sidestep: I’m a statistician and this is a statistical study, but a remark for those, who urgently for years have asked me about the physical reason: I find the Svensmark theory (2006) of cosmic rays oscillating to the rhythm of the Sun’s magnetic field as most promising. The CERN investigations in 2008 probably will settle the issue.)
**********************************************************
Since then there have been too many predictions of global cooling to count them – even some warmists are predicting global cooling for the next twenty years…
About this issue, two important documents:
Nicola Scafetta´s lecture video:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/wkshp.nsf/vwpsw/84E74F1E59E2D3FE852574F100669688
The case UN vs. UN (UN FAO vs.UN IPCC): One following, as Gavin, Playstation meteorology, the other using Length of the Day (LOD) to forecast temperatures to the year 2100:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/
“The paper is divided into 2 parts, of which the first explores
the danger of applying linear statistical methods to data
from a complicated and chaotic system.”
There is a place to find these chaotic (non-harmonic systems):The lunatics´asylum.
An usual feature of psychic projection is to see outside what in reality happens INSIDE.
If glaciers start forming on Mt Washington again, and along the shores of the Great Lakes. To name but 2 places. I’m sure Gavin and NOAA will come up with proof that it’s one of the warmest years ever.
From Icecap.us, Third Column, “They Say It”
Jul 21, 2009
Biased Criticism of Anthony Watts For His Report “Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?”
By Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science
There is a You Tube video by Peter Sinclar titled “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” which ridicules the important contribution of Anthony Watts in identifying poor siting issues with the US Historical Climate Network (see his report). The video is clearly a biased presentation of what Anthony has accomplished, even resorting to the absurd connection of climate to how the health issues of tobacco were reported. The video fails to recognize that the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) invited Anthony to present his work in Asheville, and recently, one of the NCDC scientists invited him to co-author a research paper with him.
I will report if NCDC refutes this personal attack against a well respected colleague who has provided a much needed analysis to the climate science community. Stay tuned also for at least two peer reviewed papers which are quantitatively analyzing, using Anthony�s data, the impact of the poor sitings of the HCN sites on the long term surface temperature trends and anomalies.
This is typical knee jerk reaction of the alarmists when they have no answer for the science, go after the scientist and any supporting affiliation. In this case they go after the Heartland and make the tired false claim they are funded by big oil and tobacco. Anthony will have the last laugh. Science in the end will win out against the agenda-driven, rent-seeking phonies like Sinclair.
If global warmers are right then the next sun´s eclipse won´t drop temperatures, because as “respectful” scientists say :the sun is cold.
So the 1989 Quebec electricity transformers were burnt not by the sun but surely by a mob of french speaking canadians vehemently exhaling CO2 at the spot. 🙂
Allan M R MacRae (15:31:09) : I agree totally
Mike Lorrey says:
And, what makes you believe that the models use a significantly different sensitivity for a given W/m^2 of solar forcing as they do for a given W/m^2 forcing of CO2? I don’t believe that they do.
Steven Hill says:
I am sure that we could find substances that would kill you at far lower concentrations. However, more to the point in this particular case: When ~99% of the atmosphere consists of diatomic molecules that are essentially transparent to infrared radiation, the remaining ~1% can have a disproportionate effect on the climate. Furthermore, the fact that the warming effect of various greenhouse gases is approximately logarithmic over a large range of concentrations also means that relatively small concentrations can have a disproportionate effect.
It is also worth noting that the difference between the global temperature at the Last Glacial Maximum (when the place where I am sitting was covered in a couple miles thickness of ice) and now is only about a 2% change on an absolute temperature scale. So, on such an absolute scale, the kind of temperature changes that can have a significant impact are rather small.
One has to wonder why the observations (red line) on the graph stop at the year 2000. More recent data are certainly available. Why weren’t they used? Perhaps they would not support the conclusions?
Also, only the blue line (reconstructions, all) and solar continue passed the year 2000. The blue line goes up precipitously, with what appears to be only solar to account for this rise. This part of the graph appears to fly in the face of the robust conclusions.
Oh boy – that is embarrassing to see. What did the author expect? The error prone GCMs don’t account for any solar forcing, so he runs them and sees there is no solar forcing in the GCMs. Well Duh!
Did he prove there was no solar forcing in reality? Yeah, actually he sort of did. Solar intensity seems to be rising (whatever that ‘solar’ line is in the chart) and so is the temperature in the models. Seems to be to be quite clear that small increases in “solar’ drive large increases in their simulated climate!
Was he expect to see the ‘solar’ map directly one to one? Has he ever heard of a little thing called a ‘multiplier’?
Has the math and interpretation skills of this nation really degraded this far?
I skimmed it and saved it to my hard drive. Because I only skimmed it, my following comments may not be entirely accurate.
Seems like their climate models make unsubstantiated assumptions about the equilibrium absolute global temperature associated with a given level of solar forcing — and about the time delay to reach equilibrium. Moreover, some potential mechanisms were ignored.
I’m not sure that this paper provides any significant new information regarding the subject. Mainly its an effort to debunk contrary viewpoints. But, we already know that IPCC models downplay solar forcing (by any mechanism). Hence, using the models as a touchstone to ascertain the import of solar forcing must give the result they got.
So lets get this right…
Step 1: construct naive models to simulate climate over the past century which contain a) no solar forcing, b) crude cloud physics, c) incorrect feedback processes and d) no evidence of internal dynamics such as NAO, PNA, PDO, El Nino etc.
Step 2: when these simplistic models initially show a terrible fit to real climate (what a surprise), tweak the sensitivity of 1 parameter (CO2) until it “fits”
Step 3: conclude that because the (models of) climate appears to be so sensitive to CO2 that a doubling in the actual climate will lead to catastrophic runaway warming
Step 4: use said simplistic and hyersensitve models to test whether the Suns variability contributes to the (model) climate
Step 5: act genuinely surprised when solar variability doesn’t change the (model) climate that much
What a cartload of horse excrement….
As I read this the EDS commercial of the cowboys herding cats comes to mind. Using color, digital graphics, and misdirection the EDS-cowboys show how to get the cats to swarm like iron filings toward a magnet.
We know it can’t happen but it is fun to watch. Start with the bright red, white, and blue graph — you are unpatriotic if you disagree with this; then set TSI = S — because?, because it includes “spectral changes”, and then account for the Earth’s “geometry” — meaning, I think, it is spherical; add in a term for CO2 — while “ignoring all other factors”, and include a term ‘n’ for variability thought to be “noise.” That’s only part way through page 2. Many pages later we learn “. . .solar-related trends over the last
century are unlikely to have been bigger than 0.1 to 0.2 oC.”
We don’t understand what is going on with the Sun nor with the interactions between Sun and Earth. This research and report does not investigate these issues. Therefore, we have learned nothing.
Andrew W wrote: “Such a pity that denialists are only about to get their papers published in E&E.”
I sincerely hope you are not Andrew Weaver. If so, it confirms my suspicion that “real” climatologists are delighted to block papers that do not conform with your scientific and political agendas.
So, since the sun seems to have little effect, how did those models reproduce the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age? I’m curious to know what forcings caused those events in the models. I hope they are not still generating Mann’s discredited hockey stick. Now, Gavin cannot use the Maunder minimum to explain the little ice age so how is he going to model it?
“”” RW (16:34:16) :
“I am curious what caused so rapid increase of global temperatures between 1905-1940, when the gas-which-must-not-be-named was almost constant.”
Between 1905 and 1940, CO2 concentrations rose from about 297ppm to about 311ppm. It would be perverse to call a 5% rise “almost constant”. “””
Well given that the effect of CO2 increase is only linked to the temperature via a log function (base 2 presumably) and log 1.05 is about 0.07 to base 2, that would say about 7% of the “climate sensitivity factor” would be accounted for by such a rise, which is only 0.07 deg C if the CSF is 1 deg operdoubling. I’d say that’s almost constant.
Then there are those who say the CSF is way less than 1 deg C; which would mean that the CO2 really is even more constant than was thought; not that I believe in the CSF at all, but the modellers do.
Steven Hill (17:02:17) :
Well, it appears that the arctic is not melting as much as 2008, this trend could change, however it appears it won’t. Let’s face it, the climate is cooler and it’s kind of hard to not think it’s the sun to me.
Actually it’s already passed 2008 so your assertion is incorrect.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
CO2 may be a factor, a very slim one if you ask me. How can 330ppm affect anything? It’s like a few grains of sand hidden in a gallon bucket of sand.
Nonsense, try reading up on the physics.
Add 330ppm of chromium to corundum (colorless) and you’ve got a ruby add iron instead and you’ve got a sapphire. Still think that a low concentration of an absorber can’t have a noticeable effect? Without that 330ppm of CO2 this planet would be a ball of ice.
I see some serious flaws here. Comparing observation to an unproven model full of assumptions is simply a waste of his any every one elses time.
1. Only HadCRUT and GISSTEMP was used to assess the solar influence post 1980 when UAH data is available. The trend shown by eyeballing the graph is about 0.5 degrees or more from 1980. The UAH trend is smaller than this and would automatically increase the solar forcing so a 1% error margin is not reflecting the true uncertainty. Multiple data sets should be analysed.
2. The models fail to replicate natural climatic variation such as ENSO and PDO cycles. If the model cannot replicate these patterns, how you seperate the various forcings correctly?
3. The models are forced to fit HadCRUT or GISSTEMP data, this on its own causes potential issues, but secondly, a large climate sensitivity is assumed with little support, and then aerosol forcings and concentrations are assumed to suppress the over exagerated warming predicted in order for the model to hindcast. Just because a model hind casts known data by adjusting unkown data means nothing. The models have no proven forecasting skill. Hence they can not be used for assess forcings.
4. The models do not account for the solar signals observed throughout the climate, from river baseflows, rainfall, extreme flood frequency to sea level rise, hence they can’t fully replicate the suns role on climate.
5. The models only hind cast back over a short period of time. Run them back further and they can not account for anything natural.
6. You could just as easily build a model with positive climate feedbacks due to solar forcing with a high climate sensitivty and then supress it with aerosols and make the same assumption that co2 has had no role. This doesnt make it right. Its circular reasoning! The model assumes the sun only effects the climate in a small way, so thats the answer you will get out the model. The model is not some kind of inteligent system that works out for itself the suns influence. Unless the sun is programmed to have an influence it wont.
Is Journal Geophys. Res. on the take for AGWers just like Nature? How many others are there?
Actually, this seems to be a decent paper on TSI, which has been calculated in terms of its variation and ability to heat Earth. The TSI calculation combined with known Earth atmospheric deflection, absorption, and LWR has a fair chance of being modeled and compared with temperature series accurately enough that I give this paper a passing grade. Any temp variation produced by TSI changes is buried in the noise of all the other parameters, both known and modeled, known and modeled poorly, and unknown.
This makes good sense to me….
Why would somebody publish a report on somthing they have already written off as not the cause of global warming?
The thought that he could be wrong is eating away at him, day by day, and he has to morraly adress the situation.
This is how most people deal with denial. They position their mentality towards an opinion, and then provide supporting deranged arguements to build their confidence.
In this case Mr Schmidtt has created his own supporting deranged arguement, to disprove the solar link, and within this piece, we will find the faults that could provide evidence that shows the sun has had an even greater influence.
Perhaps, he is hoping that somebody finds somthing, so he can plead innocent when the errors are found.
And this is what the experts are for, not myself. Good luck
Find the errors and use the same report to show a higher solar influence.
I was looking here Phil, your correct on that other one.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
As for your theory on CO2, you can’t prove that the addition of man adding to the 330 ppm means anything…so kaput to that as well. CO2 is a meaningless gas when compared to H20 and other gases.
All this crap about life on Mars and it’s CO2 levels is all fiction
Let’s recalculate gavin’s number (using his own assumptions) since he has to use a climate model to do his simple calculations.
Total solar irradiance change from 1900 to 2000 according to Lean 2004 – 2.0 watts/m^2.
Divide by 4 and the albedo = 2 watts/m^2 * 0.7/4 = 0.35 watts/m^2.
Use gavin’s 0.45C per watt/m^2 temp impact = 0.35 * 0.45 = +0.158C from 1900 to 2000. (add another 0.05C going back to 1610).
Thus, the solar change accounts for 25% of the change in temperatures (using gavin’s own assumptions).
Which is very similar to what he writes on page 8 of the Results section (before he summarily dismisses them and then just starts over) –
“Thus the solar forcing contributed with 12.61 ± 9.31% of the forcing compared to greenhouse gases, but could account of 24.63 ± 10.7% of
the change in ‘‘all”, ….”
Phil. (18:12:45) :
Maybe you can answer, why would the sensitivity figure be constant at .75C? That is where Hansen calculated it to be during the last glacial maximum. Why would it be the same now?
We’re not interested in forcing a warming. We’re interested in this warming.
Benestad and Schmidt are still using Lean et al 1995 and 2000 data, though they do acknowledge that the newer datasets [Foukal et al., 2006; Wang et al., 2005] have a smaller long-term trends. Benestad and Schmidt state, “the use of the older forcing would tend to increase the attribution to solar in our analyses. The impact of different estimates is addressed in later sensitivity tests.” Yet I do not find Foukal et al mentioned again in the paper, other than in the references. And, outside of the references, the only other time Wang et al is mentioned is the a discussion of how Scafetta and West spliced TSI datasets.
Also note the “smaller long-term trends” of Wang et al is still greater than the Svalgaard and Preminger trends:
http://s5.tinypic.com/mmuclk.jpg
I discussed this tendency of climate modelers “to increase the attribution to solar” in the post “IPCC 20th Century Simulations Get a Boost from Outdated Solar Forcings”. My version with the larger graphs is here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/ipcc-20th-century-simulations-get-boost.html
The WUWT version with 88 comments is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/05/ipcc-20th-century-simulations-get-a-boost-from-outdated-solar-forcings/
Regards
So the solar parameter/proxy he used peaked at 1940, rather than 1960? Not that I can see it really. It should have continued rising until 1960 which wouldn’t correlate well with the halting of warming that started in 1945.
It sure helps hide the ocean modulation…the cooling starting at 1945, and then the warming starting 1980ish which correlates with PDO/AMO doesn’t show up. You can’t get good correlation without both solar and ocean cycles. Seems like he knows what he’s doing…
Is there any way to reprint the graph? With the TSI scaled properly?
The TSI only covers a tiny fraction of the graph………
This is another publicity front, as there will soon be evidence released proving solar forcing……. who thinks the senate got a copy of this graph. ha ha.
The solar influence should be the most noticable line on the graph, not the least.
He’s fired in my books
“Phil. (18:12:45) :
Without that 330ppm of CO2 this planet would be a ball of ice.”
So, by your logic, it was colder during the Medievil Warm and Roman Warm periods becuase there was less (Apparently) CO2 in the air than today? It seems history does not agree with your logic.
Wow!…browsing the pdf he certainly has reasonable data for the solar proxy…Page12 illustrates nicely the lack of correlation if using solar only. You have to add ocean modulations to achieve the majority of the remaining error.
Not sure how he morphed the solar data from Lean to the forcing he shows.
How de do dat?
Really?
Why would solar forcing be pertinent before1980, but not after? Did someone unplug the sun while I wasn’t looking? You mean the lack of sun can cool, but an active sun cannot warm? Huh? Forgive my lack of logical understanding here, but this makes absolutely no sense to me.
More junk science, I might add….
Looking at the graph on page 12, if he has the solar add about 50% more influence (by whatever causation), and the resulting error sure looks like PDO/AMO…
No, wait, it looks like CO2. I was wrong. Go back to sleep…
Off Topic: New York Times: Missing Its Spots: ‘Sun may be on verge of falling into an extended slumber’ could cause ‘extended chilly period’.
Is this the end for global warming?
No wait…temperature leads solar. My bad…
Gavin who ?
Phil. (18:12:45) : “ball of ice” … how many ppm of water vapor would be in the air at 0 degrees C?
Andrew, if indeed you are Weaver, given the recent post regarding how your model performs on climateaudit, I’d be a tad less smurk.
Reply: I don’t think Andrew W is attempting to claim to be Andrew Weaver. ~ ctm
So this was peer-reviewed.
Other flawed, even seriously flawed, works have passed peer-review into publication.
‘Scientific Misconduct And The Nature Of Science’ :
“…the whole thing prompted some further thoughts about scientific misconduct, objectivity, and the peer review system…. The peer review process that is at the core of science’s ability for self-correction consists of two phases….the editor reads it and sends it out to a minimum of two reviewers… This second part of the peer review process is what really matters…”
http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/scientific_misconduct_and_nature_science
Ed (19:22:00) :
No wait…temperature leads solar
LOL!!
Is there a reason that Schmidt & Benestad leave most of this century off his “Reconstruction of by Linear Models” chart? I notice that alarmists seem to do that quite often in their papers lately.
It’s as if they’re nostalgic for a warmer time… and don’t want to even think about these cooler years we’re in.
“Phil. (18:12:45) :
“Without that 330ppm of CO2 this planet would be a ball of ice.”
We’d better start pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere then – and quickly!
Somewhat OT:
Speaking of the Sun, the Aurora might be kicking up at least a little bit tonight:
http://www.softservenews.com/aurora.htm
Somewhat rare as of late. I saw a huge one when Solar Cycle 23 was in full bloom. The Sun has been pretty dead for the last few years though.
“Solar . . . negligible for warming”? All my life I’ve noted the temp goes up when the sun goes up and down when the sun goes down. Other factors enter into the equation as you experts point out, but the sun is still top dog when it comes to warming or cooling, at least to my simple mind!
Stepped in what?
Bob Tisdale (18:57:16) :
Benestad and Schmidt are still using Lean et al 1995 and 2000 data, though they do acknowledge that the newer datasets [Foukal et al., 2006; Wang et al., 2005] have a smaller long-term trends.
The trend in solar TSI is much smaller than B&S [perhaps remove the ‘&’ 🙂 ] assume [and even smaller than Bob T’s], so their solar input variation is much smaller than what they worked with. That may mean that their ‘7%’ might similarly be a lot less than 7%.
All I can say is it’s very, er, interesting that observations are cut off at 2000 for a paper published in 2009.
We know that Gavin et al’s models don’t work and they never have – and the never will – as prediction tools. Not one correctly predicted the current cooling period – and it is quite a long lasting period now so a valid model, which actually means something, would surely have seeen it coming? And they are really starting to struggle to be able to make current real data fit with the actual measured data. They can correctly ‘hindcast’ but what a joke that is! Try laying a bet today on last year’s Kentucky Derby for example.
I could ‘build a model’ to correctly hindcast old data – I’d just use Excel to fit a polynomial. Maybe that’s how they do it anyway – use whichever curve gives the ‘expected warming’ once they start to ‘model’ the future. And then go and hide it all in some fancy maths.
Way off topic.Can anyone verify these claims1) We are responsible to all the recent rise in CO2.
2) CO2 will absorb and re-emit longwave radiation.
3) If you shine more longwave radiation on an object it will either warm or cool less quickly.
I can’t seem to find any verifiable data to refute these.
regards . Stu
Jimmy Haigh (20:12:59) :
Oh fiddlesticks! I was distracted by the baby there!
That should read: “And they are really starting to struggle to be able to make current measured data fit with the modeled data. “
Bill Illis (18:47:20) :
Let’s recalculate gavin’s number (using his own assumptions) since he has to use a climate model to do his simple calculations.
Total solar irradiance change from 1900 to 2000 according to Lean 2004 – 2.0 watts/m^2.
Except as you know very well, because Lief has posted on here multiple times, Lean has revised that figure downwards. Of course that doesn’t suit your agenda so you keep going back to the repudiated data.
Check out the TSI reconstructions on Leif’s research site, (Wang & Lean).
http://www.leif.org/research/
P.S that I can understand ( I make signs for a living)
Ball of ice without CO2? Is that trying to say the Sun has no power to warm the Earth, last I checked it gets well over 100 degrees on the part of the moon baking in the Sun, any ice on the back side of the moon would melt when it recieves direct sunlight. If you stand outside and feel the warmth of sunlight hitting your face, you know the Sun has warming power.
Also, what are the clear differences between those two ice datasets, regardless of which one you believe it doesn’t show ice even close to being below 2007.
Geez Phil, you can’t spell Leif’s name? I before e except after L! 😉
Don’t know if you caught the question I asked you earlier.
The Copenhagen summary report attributes the recent cooling in part to low solar activity. It would seem to follow that normal to high solar activity would cause perceptibly warmer temperatures.
Patrick Davis (19:12:12) :
“Phil. (18:12:45) :
Without that 330ppm of CO2 this planet would be a ball of ice.”
So, by your logic, it was colder during the Medievil Warm and Roman Warm periods becuase there was less (Apparently) CO2 in the air than today? It seems history does not agree with your logic.
That history has nothing to do with my logic.
Jim (19:28:51) :
Phil. (18:12:45) : “ball of ice” … how many ppm of water vapor would be in the air at 0 degrees C?
About 0.09psi if saturated, but not particularly relevant since with no CO2 in the atmosphere not much of the planet would be that warm!
Also Phil, I would be interested to know the temperature value that CO2 forcing asymptotically approaches, sans feedback.
Adam from Kansas (20:25:37) :
Ball of ice without CO2? Is that trying to say the Sun has no power to warm the Earth, last I checked it gets well over 100 degrees on the part of the moon baking in the Sun, any ice on the back side of the moon would melt when it recieves direct sunlight. If you stand outside and feel the warmth of sunlight hitting your face, you know the Sun has warming power.
The Moon’s albedo is ~0.12, snow is about 0.8, snow and ice seems to do well enough in the direct sunlight in the Himalayas. White coral sand on tropical beaches stays relatively cool to the touch for the same reason.
Also, what are the clear differences between those two ice datasets, regardless of which one you believe it doesn’t show ice even close to being below 2007.
The OP referred to 2008! Currently the Arctic seaice extent is dropping fast, another 120,000 km^2 today, already passed 2008 and will probably be 2nd only to 2007 in a day or so. With the current rate of drift the NP webcam will be floating in the ocean in early Sept.
Steven Hill (17:02:17) :
Well, it appears that the arctic is not melting as much as 2008,
Hey Anthony,
Can I be the spelling marm tonite. Perhaps you are tired and need some coffee, cause gaving’s name is spelled wrong:) 🙂 🙂
Reply: Thanks, I fixed it, and the word coffe as well. ~ charles the moderator
It’s amazing how pathetic the science of global warming is. It makes you shake your head!!
Ok so Gavin is pontificating that solar influence is at an irrelevant level in the context of AGW.
Of course he is. The guy has gambled his credibility, reputation and career on AGW.
Gavin and AGW relies upon the solar influence having a minor role in global temperature trends.
That’s a huge conflict of interest creating extreme bias which has already eroded his credibility.
He’s an untrustworthy activist with personal interests at stake .
The worst source for anything authentic and reliable.
His deleting and even doctoring commenter’s posts on his blog is one of many red flags which should render him unfit for publicly funded influence at any level.
So his latest pretense of impartial and honest science should be met with disgust and disregard.
Steve S (22:20:50) : which has already eroded his credibility.
I didn’t know of his original credibility in an pre-eroded state.
He was who then?
So the sun is irrelevent in the context of AGW is it? Here’s a very simple, but I believe effective, thought experiment…
Suppose one hot summer’s day, I decide to pull that cosmic string which is – conveniently – connected to the on/off switch for the sun. 8 minutes later, the planet that was on the daylight side of the Earth, suddenly notices… ” E’re – the sun’s been switched off, cor blimey!” (Cockney accent added for dramatic effect).
I wonder how long it would take for the Earth to start getting intolerably cold, and whether the fraction of a percent of human-introduced carbon dioxide would make a blind bit of difference.
Also, “planet” should be “population” in my above post. Bleh.
Phil. (21:33:34)
The OP referred to 2008! Currently the Arctic seaice extent is dropping fast, another 120,000 km^2 today, already passed 2008 and will probably be 2nd only to 2007 in a day or so. With the current rate of drift the NP webcam will be floating in the ocean in early Sept.
The rather monotonous consistency of the drift patterns of the Arctic webcams over each of the years it has been deployed seems to me to strongly suggest that the primary driver of sea ice loss in the Arctic has not been in situ melting, but the relative strength of the Cross Polar Drift. Each of the sites that have persisted for up to a year has ended up in pretty much the same location at about lat 72-68 off the East coast of Greenland. The ice pinger data at this years site is showing only minor loss of thickness even though it has already moved to lat 85.
Adam from Kansas (20:25:37) :
We need the whole atmosphere, including the CO2.
Plants need food and we need plants.
Besides, on the moon, the diurnal is cyrogenic freeze to vaporized roast
We went there, too..
BTW, if you watch the Arctic ice animation that Jeff id made a while back the flow pattern is quite apparent.
Kevin Cave (22:38:16) :
Now that is something the ancients got very worried about. The Sun getting eaten.
Today, we have a Sun that has gone eerily quiet, and we know it.
Gavin gets two more points for inventing the word “nonrobust”.
I like that propaganda diagram, it is narrow and high to create a steep slope and its limits is set sp that the temperature curve hits the roof before it reaches the end instead of fitting it well within the limits.
Should the solar forcing curve be interpreted as how much the TSI has contributed to the gloobal warming, i.e 0.1 to 0.2C during the 20th century?
I always thought “Robust” was a word used to describe spaghetti sauce.
Phil. (20:21:13) :
Bill Illis (18:47:20) :
Let’s recalculate gavin’s number (using his own assumptions) since he has to use a climate model to do his simple calculations.
Total solar irradiance change from 1900 to 2000 according to Lean 2004 – 2.0 watts/m^2.
Except as you know very well, because Lief has posted on here multiple times, Lean has revised that figure downwards. Of course that doesn’t suit your agenda so you keep going back to the repudiated data.
Recanted data more like.
The real issue is the degradation of the sensors on the satellites measuring TSI. Something I’m going to try to find out more about. Scafetta seems to be on the case, per Nogw’s several posts linking his EPA presentation.
I’m approaching the issue the other way about to see what the world would look like if the solar signal has the terrestrial amplification Nir Shaviv calculated, and allowing for some sensor degradation on the radiometers.
Should have some preliminary results later today.
Sneak preview:
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo.gif
The only solar forcing that Gavin has ever included in any of his models is Total Solar Insolation (TSI). He does not include any solar-magnetic effects, which is how solar activity is hypothesized by Svensmark and others to affect global temperature.
TSI varies by less than .1% over time. Solar activity ranges from fifty years of near zero sunspots (the Maunder Minimum), to the “grand maximum” solar activity between the 1930’s and 2003.
In other words, just more of the same omitted variable fraud that Gavin Schmidt has been engaging in his entire career. Search GCR in Gavin’s paper and you’ll see that he only mentions it to give his rationales for why he doesn’t bother to include it. The guy is the ultimate charlatan.
@RW:
“Between 1905 and 1940, CO2 concentrations rose from about 297ppm to about 311ppm. It would be perverse to call a 5% rise “almost constant”. ”
-5% increase of much less important GHG than water vapor is negligible.
“Using all four major measures of global temperature, we can see that the warming since 1980 is not negligible. What data did you use to reach this erroneous conclusion?”
-Had not been there two volcanic events in 1984/1991 and natural El Nino, the trend would be flat. Today temperature is on the level of 80ties.
-Start doing more research. Yesterday it was late.
I would ask 2 questions.
1. Why does the graph stop at 2002
2. Does Solar forcing mean direct solar irradiance or does it include secondary effects of the solar cycle i.e. magnetic field influencing cosmic rays influencing cloud formation influencing albedo etc.
Global Climate Modeling. Getting it wrong for 20 years… and counting!
But don’t worry – we’ll get it right eventually!
RW (16:34:16) :
Between 1905 and 1940, CO2 concentrations rose from about 297ppm to about 311ppm. It would be perverse to call a 5% rise “almost constant”.
An increase from 297ppm to 311ppm gives a forcing of ~0.25 w/m2. Given the uncertainty of the measurements before 1958 and in the context of climate variability over a 35 year period, ‘almost constant’ is a fair description.
Note that using your figures the CO2 forcing since 1940 is more than 4 times the pre-1940 forcing yet the magnitude of the warming is of similar order.
And as is rather well known, the early part of the 20th century saw a lull in volcanic activity, …..
Ah yes – the “lull in volcanic activity”. This is where something not happening causes temperatures to rise at an unprecedented rate. Though, of course, there was Krakatoa in 1883 and the other one (can’t remember it’s name) in 1902 yet within a few years temperatures began to rocket.
Mind, though, it’s now been 18 years since last major volcano. The Pinatubo eruption in 1991 was the last eruption to have a climatic effect. Perhaps the ‘lull’ in volcanic activity has caused whatever temperature increase we’ve seen since then.
and an increase in solar output.
Gavin’s just shown there was no increase in solar output.
The combination of these three effects accounts for the observed warming.
The combination of these 3 effects before 1940 amounts to diddly squat.
Just how much research had you done into this, before posting here?
More than you.
The term ‘forcing’ sounds very Orwellian to me.
Has some new major source of energy other than the Sun been discovered in the Solar System?
Quote, Gavin, “we examine how robust different published methodologies are”
Hypocrisy writ large when you consider that Gavin and co have been busted several times for exploiting far less robust methodologies themselves to give the desired result. e.g., Mann’s hockey stick, Steig’s smearing etc.
We can take this study with a large pinch of salt, because it is the same old, same old story.
OK I haven’t read this stuff, but why the obsession with the second half of the 20th century? Did it not get more warmerer in the first half of the 20th? DId it not get warmerer still in the 19th century? … oh, wait, the temperature of the planet was constant until 1950. I forgot; silly me.
As Barry pointed out before the graph shows the temp in 2/10th of degrees and shows solar variation in full unit.
I think that if the solar variation was plotted within the border of 1365 and 1367, would show a better correlation.
BTW- what is the R^2 for the solar temp when compared to the co2 R^2 of 0.07 from a post a few days ago.
Can we say that Gavin’s credibility is nonrobust?
I look at Gavin’s graph and note that solar influences started out below zero at the earliest part of his graph…. It then rises to be above zero at the latest end of his graph…. I look at the temp trends… They start out lower at the start of his graph and finish higher at the end of his graph…
Seems unequivocal to me…. Solar has a definite influence on Global temps.
…. Gavin just showed it:-)
I’m severely unimpressed with this offering from Gavin. A computer modeling based study using disputed temperature data and disputed TSI data claiming to rule out solar influence on climate. At best I would only consider TSI to be a proxy for solar influence, and I am very wary of revisionist reconstructions of TSI fluctuation. I believe Jack Eddy was correct when he said that there would be “many plugs” connecting the sun to our climate.
Referring to questionable TSI reconstructions alone concerning solar influence smells like a Straw man argument. I am starting to suspect that black body TSI measurements using cavity sensors on satellites is only part of the picture. Leif has pointed out in a previous thread that the atmosphere is largely transparent to microwave frequencies. Planet Earth has a lot of water…
This is a follow up to my previous post (response to RW (16:34:16) 🙂
RW writes
The combination of these three effects accounts for the observed warming.
meaning that an increase in solar (1), lack of volcanic activity (2) and increase in C02 concentrations (3) combined to produce a warming trend of ~0.14 deg per decade between 1915-1944 (GISS temperatue record). [Note that the GISS record has a warming trend of ~0.16 deg per decade since 1975].
Using RW’s figures, the CO2 forcing (3) between 1905 and 1940 is only about ~0.25 w/m2 which is negligible. But even that is not relevant, because when the warming actually started, i.e. between 1910 and 1920, CO2 concentrations would have been even lower.
As Gavin Schmidt himself states the solar (1) contribution was tiny – and, according to Leif , it’s actually even tinier than Gavin’s estimate.
That just leaves volcanic activity (2) – or the lack of it to be more precise. According to James Hansen’s volcanic aerosol forcings diagram, there was a major eruption in the early 1880s which I assume to be Krakatoa and another one in the early 1900s which I think might be the Guatemalan eruption in 1902 (but I’m happy to be corrected on that). The ‘lull’ in activity, therefore, was no more than 15 years before the warming started.
I think RW is right on this, i.e. these are the accepted contributory factors for the early 20th century warming by the AGW crowd. From this we can draw the following 2 conclusions:
1. The Hockey-Stick cannot possibly be correct and, if that sounds obvious to most, it’s not yet obvious to everyone. The H-S reconstruction shows a sharp upward kink in ~1902. This represents a climatic shift which is completely out of character with the previous 900 years – yet all that’s happened is there are fewer volcanos. For the H-S to be correct , we have to believe that there were no periods in the past 1000 years (2000 years if we accept Mann & Jones) where volcanic activity was as low as in the early 20th century.
2. The AGWers have no idea what was responsible for the early 20th century warming (or the subsequent mid-20th century cooling) and, therefore, cannot possibly explain the late 20th century warming. The “detection and attribution” studies from which they conclude that it is only by including ghgs that 20th century warming can be explained are based on flawed assumptions. In a recent RC post, Raypierre acknowledged the ‘ocean’ effect’. There is some backpedalling going on – but it’s nothing to do with the sun.
Gavin et al will attack on the solar front because it’s where they can win. The more that sceptics promote the sun as the driver the happier they’ll be. The sun/climate link is patchy at best. I doubt very much that there will be any significant cooling due to solar activity – and certainly none in the near future.
There are plenty of weaknesses in the ‘catastrophic AGW’ argument (CO2 is likely to cause some warming) but the sun is not one of them.
Jimmy Haigh (20:12:59) :
“… models don’t work and they never have – and the never will – as prediction tools”
because they violate fundamental laws of physics:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
“It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models. ”
Freeman Dyson
But then I forgot; the Omniscient Hansen says that Dyson doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I wonder which has done the most useful science?
Slightly off-topic, but I have a quote I would like to nominate for quote of the week:
“When we apply full-blown GCMs, the match between hindcasts and observations is nothing short of impressive; ”
From here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/warming-interrupted/
Joel Shore:
“Steven Hill says:
How can 330ppm affect anything? It’s like a few grains of sand hidden in a gallon bucket of sand.
I am sure that we could find substances that would kill you at far lower concentrations.”
Phil:
“Nonsense, try reading up on the physics.
Add 330ppm of chromium to corundum (colorless) and you’ve got a ruby add iron instead and you’ve got a sapphire. Still think that a low concentration of an absorber can’t have a noticeable effect?”
—
Why do they have to give us these inane, fatuous, irrelevent analogies? Helps to hide the non-sequiturs, I suppose. Anyway, when I studied it, the stuff Phil talks about was chemistry.
———————
Going back a couple of threads, is this article printed on toilet paper?
Or maybe you could tax Gavin’s output instead?
O/T, and apologies if this has been posted, but I just ran accross this article during my morning cup o’ joe:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5877583/Giant-Chinese-dustball-circles-the-Earth.html
This is one condensed instance, so certainly there is some level of this taking place at other times, and it seems this would have to have some impact?
JimB
There was recently a paper published which estimated there is a missing mechanism which amplifies the solar forcing by amplitude of 7. If we amplify the dash solar curve by 7, we get close to GISS record, even the last part should be more flat than GISS presents.
OK, I’ve finished calibrating my “model”.
I have included a lookback to 1850 because it amuses me that Gavin can’t do the same with his model without looking very silly indeed.
I have included a look forward to 2043 on the assumptions that the next three solar cycles are similar to the Dalton Minimum period 1800-1834, and that my assessment of the rate the oceans gain and lose heat is somewhere in the ballpark.
I would welcome questions about my method and any other feedback.
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo-2043-1.gif
Thanks
I have no desire to read anything from someone who got his clocked cleaned in a debate against a “fiction writer” and 2 “not real” scientists.
Has anyone noticed that arctic ice extent is tracking 2005 values – and has been for some time now.
If it stays that way a major recovery is in progress…
Gavin Schmidt: It’s not the sun, stupid!
Realist: It’s the models, stupid!
Juraj V. (04:02:56) :
There was recently a paper published which estimated there is a missing mechanism which amplifies the solar forcing by amplitude of 7. If we amplify the dash solar curve by 7, we get close to GISS record, even the last part should be more flat than GISS presents.
Try Nir Shaviv’s paper on Using the Ocean as a Calorimeter. It’s on his blog too.
On Wednesday, July 22nd, the Moon eclipsed the midday sun over China. “The temperature dropped from 96.6 F to 88.5F at totality,” http://www.spaceweather.com/
Yup conclusive proof that the sun has no effect on how warm the earth gets.. lmao.
Allan M R MacRae: there is excellent CO2 data from before 1958 from ice cores. I used Law Dome data. Simply saying you think it’s “highly questionable” without any further elucidation is not useful.
“There has been no net warming since 1980 – based on UAH LT”
Incorrect. As my graph already showed, UAH data shows a net warming of 0.37°C – and that is clearly discrepant with the warming seen in the other three datasets, which agrees very closely at 0.46-0.47°C.
To make your incorrect claim, I suspect that you are comparing just two monthly anomalies – one from 1980, one from now. Thus, you are ignoring more than 99% of the data. That is what is known as ‘cherry-picking’, and it’s led you right up the garden path.
Your list of ‘cooling predictions’ contains only pseudo-science and misinterpretations. Landscheidt was an astrologer; Piers Corbyn has made many weather and climate predictions, and analysis of them has shown that they are correct no more often than would be expected by chance. You quote NASA making predictions about the solar cycle – the link you give says nothing about any predictions of ‘global cooling’ so why did you include it? Similarly with Nigel Weiss’s comments. And “Timo Niroma”? A literature search reveals only publications in Energy and Environment, which is not a scientific journal. Doing a proper literature search one finds that not a single serious scientific paper predicts long term global cooling, if CO2 concentrations continue to rise.
George E. Smith: not believing in climate sensitivity at all, wow, that’s a new one. How then do temperatures ever change?
Juraj.V:
“5% increase of much less important GHG than water vapor is negligible”
It seems weird to me that you think you can simply baldly state something like this, with no further justification. You are wrong. A simple calculation shows that the radiative forcing due to this increase in 0.25W/m2. That is sufficient to cause 0.2°C of global warming. By simply looking at the global temperature records, you can see that 0.2°C is not negligible.
“Had not been there two volcanic events in 1984/1991 and natural El Nino, the trend would be flat. Today temperature is on the level of 80ties.”
Analysis which accounts for these effects does not support your statement. There is an upward secular trend. Temperatures today are about 0.4°C warmer than they were in 1980, as you can see if you use all the data instead of just 2 points out of more than 340.
John Finn: “almost constant” is not a fair description. The total forcing from the post-industrial rise in CO2 is ~5.35ln(387/280)=1.7W/m2. 15% of this is not negligible.
Simultaneously you seem not to believe that a lack of volcanic eruptions could cause warming, and that the lack of eruptions since Pinatubo is the cause of all the warming. Have a look at the data. You can see that there were no significant volcanic eruptions between 1912 and 1962. Clearly, a 50 year period with no major volcanic eruptions will be warmer than a 50 year period with three or four.
“Gavin’s just shown there was no increase in solar output.”
That’s funny. I was under the impression that you did not accept this result. Please clarify.
“The combination of these 3 effects before 1940 amounts to diddly squat.”
What a truly bizarre statement. Your position seems to be based on a determination to ignore all the well known, well characterised influences on climate, instead replacing them with a belief that no-one knows anything about why climate changes. Is that the case?
I’d like to offer a little constructive criticism on the graph. It’s really, really boring and could benefit by some decorative touches. Like those found on old maps. Sprinkle some sea monsters and so on around it. The lines are too jaggedy, they should look more like waves with foam and stuff. Ought to have some stuff above the line, like stars, moon, sun. And below the line fishes, and maybe a whale or two. The right side should indicate that’s the end of the known world, and don’t sail beyond it or you will fall off. Oh, and definitely needs a compass rose in the corner so we know which end is North.
Just a few suggestions to make the graph more visually interesting.
Interesting… So we have GISS model E producing sensitivity of 2.7°C used to validate solar against GISTemp. From what I gather in the paper, CO2 forcing is not allowed to vary to produce the best match, it is on or off. A good parallel study would be what CO2 forcing does it take to match UAH + whatever passes as global temp before satellites. Obviously the CO2 sensitivity would be much lower, and solar much higher. The paper states that other temp data sets produce similar results, but how similar, and what data sets? GISS and UAH are so dissimilar now, I don’t see you you could reach remotely similar conclusions. I think you could get similar results by using population as a proxy for CO2, or inverse distance to airports, 1/(number of pirates), whatever.
Once detailed sources and methods are released (any minute now), this would be a great one for Jeff Id and Ryan O to look at.
Curiousgeorge (04:49:10) :
I’d like to offer a little constructive criticism on the graph.
I’m not sure whether you are referring to my graph or Gavins, but anyway, I agree.
It shall be done me hearty, Oi will make it so. :o)
Phil. (20:48:48) : “About 0.09psi if saturated, but not particularly relevant since with no CO2 in the atmosphere not much of the planet would be that warm!”
So are you saying the water vapor isn’t a greenhouse gas?
“right side should indicate that’s the end of the known world, and don’t sail beyond it or you will fall off. ”
“Here there be skeptics”
I think it is great!
They have demonstrated that they can prove the solar forcing (and indeed all the global warming) using multiple linear regressions and a couple of analytical solutions.
Therefore, there is no need anymore for those few hundred million dollars to run numerical solutions on expensive computers. Let’s divert that investment to solar radiation research.
“The solar forcing in these analyses is characterized by the total solar irradiance employed to estimate the linear sensitivity of hTi to S”
and it is summarized as S * .7/4
No matter how is the distribution on earth, the impact of tropical albedo, etc. etc. And of course a quick dismiss of the effect of solar variability on cosmic radiation and cloud nuclei generation.
p. 13.
“One example could be galactic cosmic rays….
In these cases the forcing values might be
underestimated …
However, the regression coefficients were similar
for both GCM and observations, and the fact that these additional mechanisms were not present in these GISS ModelE simulations, suggest that processes such as GCR are not important”
It’s not in the model therefore it does not matter.
To contrast all that, a interesting solar temperature chart and a related recent paper
source
A Lagged Warm Event–Like Response to Peaks in Solar Forcing in the Pacific Region Gerald A. Meehl and Julie M. Arblaster
http://tr.im/tuxU
jmc (02:55:30) :
“because they violate fundamental laws of physics:”
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
Thanks for this paper. Have you tried posting it on real Climate? I think it would get through because they may not understand it over there.
Here’s the abstract:
“The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33◦C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the
assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.”
RW (04:48:18) : “Juraj.V:
“5% increase of much less important GHG than water vapor is negligible”
It seems weird to me that you think you can simply baldly state something like this, with no further justification. You are wrong. A simple calculation shows that the radiative forcing due to this increase in 0.25W/m2. That is sufficient to cause 0.2°C of global warming. ”
Why do you only look at radiative forcing? What about the counter-effect of clouds?
Phil. (20:21:13) :
Bill Illis (18:47:20) :
Let’s recalculate gavin’s number (using his own assumptions) since he has to use a climate model to do his simple calculations.
Total solar irradiance change from 1900 to 2000 according to Lean 2004 – 2.0 watts/m^2.
Except as you know very well, because Lief has posted on here multiple times, Lean has revised that figure downwards. Of course that doesn’t suit your agenda so you keep going back to the repudiated data.
I was using the latest TSI data from Lean (2004 after she revised it downward) and the same data gavin posted up in his paper and that gives +0.158C from 1900 to 2000. Leif’s reconstruction produces a figure of about half of that.
Did I miss the bit where Gavin considers the energy budget effects of multidecadal changes in the rate of energy emission from the oceans and the constantly changing speed of the hydrological cycle ?
brazil84 (03:29:34) :
Slightly off-topic, but I have a quote I would like to nominate for quote of the week:
“When we apply full-blown GCMs, the match between hindcasts and observations is nothing short of impressive; ”
Yes – that is a peach. It just shows the self delusion these people suffer from. I honestly believe that some of them actually think that they are doing something worthwhile.
It’s like one of these huge financial institutions – none of which saw last years’s crash coming – turning round now and coming up with a model and saying that they have now hindcasted it. And that the results are ‘nothing short of impressive’.
John Finn: “almost constant” is not a fair description. The total forcing from the post-industrial rise in CO2 is ~5.35ln(387/280)=1.7W/m2. 15% of this is not negligible
But ~80% of that has occurred since 1940 since when we’ve had ~0.5 deg rise in temperature. You appear to be attributing a far smaller forcing in ~1940 to a warming which began 30 years earlier. What happened to the CO2 lag? i.e. the “heat in the pipeline” nonsense. Did the rules change around the middle of the century.
The CO2 forcing in 1915 was negligible when the warming began – and it wasn’t much more in the 1940s when the warming was over.
You also need to explain how the arctic warmed 4 times as much as anywhere else despite receiving far less sunlight (and none for 6 months). While you’re at it you can also explain how the Arctic cooled 4 times as much as anywhere else in the 1945-1975 period.
Simultaneously you seem not to believe that a lack of volcanic eruptions could cause warming, and that the lack of eruptions since Pinatubo is the cause of all the warming. Have a look at the data. You can see that there were no significant volcanic eruptions between 1912 and 1962. Clearly, a 50 year period with no major volcanic eruptions will be warmer than a 50 year period with three or four.
A significant warming trend began in ~1912 or just after. Of course there might be some short term warming after the effects of the stratospheric aerosols have cleared, but this is not going to last for 30 years. The effect of Pinatubo lasted about 2 years – or are you saying that 18 years later we’re still warming from that?
The 1915-1944 GISS trend was ~0.14 deg per decade. The trend was maintained throughout the period. It was not a short term uptick following a volcanic eruption.
That’s funny. I was under the impression that you did not accept this result. Please clarify
You appear to want me to clarify why your impression is wrong. I don’t know why your impression is wrong – it just is. Perhaps you didn’t read my post properly.
What a truly bizarre statement. Your position seems to be based on a determination to ignore all the well known, well characterised influences on climate, instead replacing them with a belief that no-one knows anything about why climate changes. Is that the case?
Spot on. The whole attribution issue is a crock and what’s more they know it over at RC. This is a response by Raypierre to a comment from one of the fan club.
[Response: Wayne, please note that this is Kyle’s article not mine, though I did encourage him to write it for us. I think the interesting question raised (though not definitively answered) by this line of work is the extent to which some of the pause in warming mid-century might have been more due to decadal ocean variability rather than aerosols than is commonly thought. If that is the case, then a pause or temporary reduction in warming rate could recur even if aerosols are unchanged. Learning how to detect and interpret such things is important, lest a temporary pause be confused with evidence for low climate sensitivity. –raypierre]
Oh sure there are the usual disclaimers in there, but they are finally being forced to accept that ocean fluctuations have a significant influence on climate. If ocean variability can pause and reverse warming then it can just as easily amplify warming. And that I’d suggest is pretty much what happened. There might be a CO2 signal but natural variability is the dominant factor.
I do like Ray’s “commonly thought” bit, though. I’m not sure what is definition of “commonly thought” is. It presumbly doesn’t include those they’ve been ignoring for the past 15 or 20 years.
RW (04:48:18) :
Allan M R MacRae: there is excellent CO2 data from before 1958 from ice cores. I used Law Dome data. Simply saying you think it’s “highly questionable” without any further elucidation is not useful.
So you like the ice core data.
How do you explain that it clearly suggests that CO2 lags temperature?
Please explain how the future causes the past.
*****************
As regards the UAH temperature data, when you fit a straight line through the warming portion of a sine curve, this will give you a misleading warming trend. The cooling portion preceded 1979, having occurred from about 1945 to 1975.
My bet is when the surface temperature data is analyzed and the warming bias removed, there will be no net warming from ~1940 to 2008.
*******************************
As regards cooling predictions, there are countless more since 2008, including a recent one (“no warming for 20 years”) from the warmist camp – but those are the easy ones, since Earth has been cooling for almost a decade.
Rather than defame those who had the courage to go against the conventional dogma of global warming pre-2008, perhaps you should consider how they came to their controversial conclusions.
There is an incredible amount of data supporting cyclical variation in climate and temperature – river flows, underwater sediments, and direct temperature measurements are a few examples.
***************************
The paradox is that you predict global warming , and I hope you are right – because humanity does much better during warm periods.
I predicted global cooling (in an article published in 2002, based on a conversation with paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson). I really hope that I am wrong, because humanity does poorly during cold periods.
*************************************
In any case, I am convinced that the body of evidence suggests that the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to a doubling of CO2 is much less than 1 degree C, and your side of this debate is promoting needless hysteria at great cost to society.
**********************************
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=104619
To translate:
Most Americans don’t believe AGW is a real problem.
Slightly off topic, but I found an interesting article in the online version of Esquire this morning. Its author, environmental writer Bjorn Lomborg, attacks Al Gore’s proposed solution to global warming and sugggests some much more practical–and less expensive–alternatives. Esquire isn’t Science magazine, but it seems to offer more evidence that at least SOME inroads are being made with the mainstream media. The article can be accessed here:
http://www.esquire.com/features/new-solutions-to-global-warming-0809
If Gavin’s 0.45C warming for each watt/m^2 of forcing is on the mark, the ~0.6C C20th warming (allowing for the negative PDO in 1900 Vs the positive PDO in 2003, and a bit of jiggery pokery with the temperature record) could be accounted for by solar alone if the ACRIM/Neptune measurements were used for estimating the TSI/sunspot ratio rather than PMOD.
Given that the sensors are not perfect, and degrade quite quickly and have to be allowed for with adjustments, it seems at least possible to me that small calibration errors could creep in at early stages in the program.
After all, the difference between Gavins assessment of solar contribution and it fully accounting for C20th warming is only 2.2W/m^2 or so out of 1366, when you take into account the location of oceanic energy absorbance that seems to be involved in the serious heat action on Earth.
An error of less than 0.3% in radiometer calibration caused by sensor degradation and imperfect data adjustment would cover that difference.
The stakes are high, and it’s no wonder the disgreement between the solar measurement teams is so ACRIMonious.
nogw’s link again to the Scafetta presentation to the EPA. The letters from the ACRIM team on around slide 16 make interesting reading.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/wkshp.nsf/vwpsw/84E74F1E59E2D3FE852574F100669688/$file/scafetta-epa-2009.pdf
tallbloke (23:37:59) :
According to Scafetta TSI was adjusted by 0.86 w/sq.mt. so it not longer follows solar cycle…but playstation games..
Gee, how does that play against the unadjusted GISS data?
Gavin, if you start with crap, you’re going to end with crap. In this case using GISS Temp data in your study was a bad starting point.
All the adjustments GISS does seems to push the more recent temps higher while lowering the older ones. Sorta defies the law of averages and runs against the UHI we now know has encroached on surface stations.
So you fault here was starting with a bad set of temperature data, after that point nothing else mattered.
Dave Wendt (22:49:17) :
Phil. (21:33:34)
“The OP referred to 2008! Currently the Arctic seaice extent is dropping fast, another 120,000 km^2 today, already passed 2008 and will probably be 2nd only to 2007 in a day or so. With the current rate of drift the NP webcam will be floating in the ocean in early Sept.”
The rather monotonous consistency of the drift patterns of the Arctic webcams over each of the years it has been deployed seems to me to strongly suggest that the primary driver of sea ice loss in the Arctic has not been in situ melting, but the relative strength of the Cross Polar Drift.
It’s both, the drift in both the Fram and Beaufort are major factors in the loss of multiyear ice.
Each of the sites that have persisted for up to a year has ended up in pretty much the same location at about lat 72-68 off the East coast of Greenland. The ice pinger data at this years site is showing only minor loss of thickness even though it has already moved to lat 85.
I think you’re misreading it, there’s 75cm of water on top over the last 20days, see the ice data below, note the isotherms.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np_weatherdata.html
Allan M (03:38:02) :
Joel Shore:
“Steven Hill says:
How can 330ppm affect anything? It’s like a few grains of sand hidden in a gallon bucket of sand.
I am sure that we could find substances that would kill you at far lower concentrations.”
Phil:
“Nonsense, try reading up on the physics.
Add 330ppm of chromium to corundum (colorless) and you’ve got a ruby add iron instead and you’ve got a sapphire. Still think that a low concentration of an absorber can’t have a noticeable effect?”
—
Why do they have to give us these inane, fatuous, irrelevent analogies?
Because we keep getting posters making ‘inane, fatuous, irrelevent’ statements about the concentration of CO2 based apparently on their personal incredulity and lack of knowledge of the physics and chemistry
Helps to hide the non-sequiturs, I suppose. Anyway, when I studied it, the stuff Phil talks about was chemistry.
Well if the nonsense posts weren’t being made in the first place rebutting them wouldn’t be necessary. When I teach it it’s called Physical Chemistry, i.e. a mix of both.
———————
If I have it right we have a mixture of small model techniques, and GCM simulations in this paper. As I understand it most of the analysis is performed using small model techniques.
And it real seems to be a simple small model.
I have to confess that I like small linear models but they have to be fit for purpose.
In general the temperature function is produced taking forcings, applying them to the linear model and producing temperatures. Because the model is linear you can do this bt processing the individual forcings and summing the outputs to product the combined temperature function or sum the inputs (forcings) and produce an output temperature function directly. It makes no difference.
It is this linearity that allows linear regression to be used.
Now the big issue is what function should be use to map an individual forcing to temperature. In this case it seems that it is to multiply it by a constant and perhaps delay (lag) the result.
I am afraid that if you start (lagging) the result you are simply saying that the model is nopt fit for purpose. Forcings do not do time travel.
If you have a lag, you have to consider the attenuation of the signal associated with that lag.
What you need is a simple linear mopde that reproduces the lag and has the correct amount of attenuation. Now as we do not know the attenuation this is a subjective process. But there are siple linear models that are likley candidates.
The simplest mdoel to account for lags is the slab ocean model, this has its faults as it does not work well at all timescales, in particularly it can not cope with both long term trends and short term variations like volcanoes, ENSO, or the solar cycle.
A step up is the combined, thin slab and deep diffusive ocean model. This produces more acceptable results when considered accross a range of timeframes.
Now the model they seem to have used is the simplest of all the “no ocean” model, There is nothing in there model to produce either lags or estimates of the attenuation of the signal.
Now with the combined slab and diffusive ocean, you can produce significant amounts of attenuation with very little lag. So if you conduct an excercise using the data we are most sure about (the satellite data) you can find an attenuation of the signal by a factor of 1/2 quite easily, and still only show around a 1 year lag. So compared to the “no ocean” model your result would argue for a value twice as large for the significance of the solar effect.
Now I am sure (at least sincerly hope) that the authors know this. They say that such modelling is naive (the no ocean model is certainly naive) but there are simple linear models that do reproduce lag and estimate attenuation and they could easily use one.
A criticism of the combined slab and diffusive ocean is that it introduces two extra degrees of freedom, slab depth and a value for oceanic diffusivity. But they are constrained by OHC and seasonal temperature responses (lags and attenuations), so there should be no added degrees of freedom.
One thing I can say is that the “no ocean” model runs a significant risk of over emphasising the strnght of long period forcings such as GHGs at the expense of forcings that have significant short term variations, and if like solar, you have both a long term trend and significant short term variation this can lead to quite misleading results.
Alexander Harvey
Now this can be considerable.
@ Tallbloke – The one that’s at the top of this thread. I guess it’s Gavins.
@ Brazil84 – “Here there be skeptics”. 😀 . I like it. Good sugg. 🙂
Gee, how does that play against the unadjusted GISS data?
There isn’t any unadjusted GISS data. GISS starts out with NOAA fully adjusted adjusted NOAA data. It never encounters the unadjusted stuff.
evanmjones (07:00:36) :Read tallbloke (06:14:48) :
Good to see a scientific paper on Global Warming, Well Done Gavin.
I’ve always wondered how we have been at the low end of solar output in the cycle for the last 2 years, but somehow over the last two years temps have been going up, Remarkable.!.
I think that what we have here is a tacit acknowledgement that solar influence has a marked influence on climate. We cannot expect that the powers that be concede the point immediately.
As opposed to the IPPC stance of no discernible impact we are now getting recognition that solar cycles play a role.
What I find noteworthy is the .1 to .2 degree possible impact that has been quoted by Gavin using only TSI and ignoring other parameters such as the magnetic impact and the possible change to cloud cover.
Progress indeed. Maybe we will get to the truth sooner than we thought. Let us give credit where credit is due, if the likes of Gavin etc. concede that they may have been wrong and proceed accordingly with real and unbiased science to arrive at the true state of the issue whether it be CO2 forcing, solar, orbital or whatever then great.
Wishful thinking?
Bill Illis (05:22:42) :
I was using the latest TSI data from Lean (2004 after she revised it downward) and the same data gavin posted up in his paper and that gives +0.158C from 1900 to 2000. Leif’s reconstruction produces a figure of about half of that.
Lean doubts now that there is any long term trend. [Agreeing with me]. At the SORCE 2008 meeting in Santa Fe, she put it this way: “Long-term trends: do they exist?” This is science-speak for not trying to counterdict one’s earlier papers 🙂
“Our analysis shows that the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980.”
I have not read all the comments, and I will not read this paper, so someone tell me what physical basis he uses to assert that the sun has variable input that was reduced post 1980. Why did the sun influence global temperature pre-1980, but not later. What, does increasing CO2 block incoming radiation? To me, this is unmitigated garbage, as Leif should agree (and already may have).
Jimmy Haigh says:
The folks at RealClimate are well aware of this “paper”: http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=G._Gerlich_and_R._D._Tscheuschner and those of us who are physicists are really, really embarrassed that such junk actually saw the light of day in a minor (but not completely disreputable) physics journal. Their claim that the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is so easy to demonstrate incorrect that one could take students in a first year physics course through it on a problem set.
What climate models predict is the forced component of the climate’s response. They do not predict the exact course of internal climate variability (in essence, weather), which is very sensitive to initial conditions. There has been some recent work (by a group at Hadley and by Keenlyside et al) to try to initialize the ocean well enough to predict some of this variability over a timescale of a decade or so, which may be possible because the timescales for some processes in the ocean are slow enough that such a decade can still be short enough that the sensitivity to initial conditions hasn’t yet caused a complete divergence, but it is still very experimental at this stage.
If you want a good analogy, think of this: If we run a numerical weather model in January six months into the future, the weather prediction that it makes for a particular day will be garbage (and we will get a completely different prediction if we make very small changes to the initial conditions). However, it will correctly tend to predict the climatic consequences of the seasonal forcing, e.g., it will show that here in Rochester the climate in July is much warmer than in January.
What it is more logical it is the assesment by UN´s FAO study, that temperatures and fish catches follow LOD and PDO 60 years cycle, to which Scafetta refers as, at the end of his lecture, as “a symphony” of the solar system, following Kepler´s “music of the spheres”. Of course unacceptable for presumptuous “new age” scientists.
I’m having difficulty understanding how the demonstration that climate models don’t respond to solar forcing is useful in any way….
The Iceberg (07:33:45) : Nice cheerleader costume.
Abraham Lincoln think Michael Bay is uncool
http://lincolnsaysuncool.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/lincoln-says-uncool-michael-bay/
Now let’s try some analysis using REAL data instead of model data…
In http://justtotheleftofvenus.izfree.com/htm/soundandfury/220709-analysing_temps.htm I demonstrate that the HadCRU3 temp record is dominated by a 60-year cycle.
According to Timo Niroma http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/tilmari/tilmari5.htm#60 there is a 60-year cycle connecting solar effects to climate.
My analysis shows that this 60-year cycle has a much stronger effect than a naive FFT would suggest.
Maybe the sun affects climate more than Gavin is willing to admit…?
(BTW I’d like it if people would take a look at my analysis and comment on it)
timetochooseagain (16:03:27) :
Note that temperature data end in 2000-look how the models are shooting off at that point. Now, after that, did the models continue to track? No, they didn’t.
Talk about a cherry pick! I think we are back at zero again and – hey – hindcasting isn’t easy! It must take at least 6 years to correctly hindcast real data.
The Iceberg (07:33:45) : Could it be due to … well … ocean currents … or … maybe … cloud cover variation. Oh, of course not – what am I thinking? The behavior of climate rests only on CO2 and a few other GHGs and TSI which is constant.
press (07:52:10) :
Gavin using only TSI and ignoring other parameters such as the magnetic impact […]
What magnetic impact?
Gavin produces and writes an easy study. What he should now do (if this is indeed his way of dismissing other hypothesis, leaving only CO2) is model ENSO affects against the temp rise. To do that he will need to start with the amazing correlation between these two measurements and then model it.
Question, if CO2 is capable of producing some or all of this warming and ENSO is capable of producing some or all of this warming, something in the back of my mind related to two loud sound sources not being additive makes me consider that we can ignore CO2 warming. It is not additive to the affects of ENSO on temperature.
Iceberg, global temps have been going up the last two years? The changes in temps in the last two years can be entirely explained by weather pattern variation. Are you saying that these wriggles are evidence of global warming? If you do, you are dismissing in total ocean temps, currents, trade winds, jet stream behavior, local geographic climate parameters, etc. Yours seems an overly dismissive statement to me.
Jimmy Haigh and jmc,
the GHG hypothesis does NOT violate the second law of thermodynamics. I have read this paper, initially with great expectation, but was disappointed. Mostly it is a textbook on various physical processes including irrelevances like Freznels law. When you finally get to the analysis of the supposed violation of the second law of thermodynamics, there are serious flaws.
The second law states that heat cannot of its own accord travel from a cold place to a warm place. If it did so, the cold place would become yet colder whilst the warm place gets hotter. Yet GHG works on the principal that outgoing LR radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by the GHG and some of this re-emitted radiation will come back down to the ground and have a warming effect. Since the region where the GHG does this is cooler than the ground, this is supposed to violate the second law of thermodynamics.
I spent days thinking about this paradox, and I came to the conclusion that the radiation is NOT heat. It is not heat that is flowing to the warmer area. I would say it is quite acceptable for a molecule of CO2 to absorb a photon of energy and reradiate it. In fact this must happen. Can that photon then be used to warm a surface that is warmer? Yes. If the photon is emitted in that direction then it will be absorbed by the warmer ground. The fallacy lies in the fact that the paper overlooks the fact that this energy came from the warmer ground in the first place. In order to violate the second law, more energy would have to migrate from the cooler area than was being received from the warmer area with the result that the cooler area would cool still more. This does not happen. This area in the mid troposhere does not become cooler, although it does not warm as much as the climate models predict. If this is a violation of the second law, then a thermos flask must also be impossible, because that radiates IR from the cooler reflective surface to the warmer liquid.
My only question on this paper is if a layman like myself can see this is not a violation of the second law, then how can these physicists not see this?
Have they Iceberg? Give stats please ( not GISS )
I don’t think it helps to dismiss the Benestad-Schmidt paper out of hand. For one thing, there is much in conveniently conceded in one place. It is critical of the simple correlation analyses. It acknowledges that the climate senstitivity may be different for different forcings. The value to be derived from the paper is an abandoning of the simple linear chart arguments for the AGW hypothesis by emphasizing the poor value and reliability of linear methods when applied to the complex nonlinear climate system. It may be self-serving of Gavin to be arguing this, because it points to the need for climate models. However, a need for climate models does not mean that the climate models we have are up to the task. Diagnostic studies have show they have errors and correlated biases far larger than the task at hand.
The second part of the paper, appears to be an attempt to debunk the methodology of Scaffeta and West in much the same way as McIntyre and McKtrick did the methodology of Mann, et al. There is even an echoing of the complaints about the lack of availability of data and details on the methods, and the showing of a trend from the S&W method, even when applied to forcing time series without a trend, in this case “constant”, rather than statistical white noise. I would think either the S&W methodology needs to be rehabilitated or the B&G analysis found faulty.
While B&G are noting the inadequacies of linear methods, they still are willing to draw simplistic conclusions about attribution from them, such as emphasizing the lack of a significant solar trend in the latter half of the 20th century, while clearly favoring GHG attribution for 1980 to 2000, even though it matches the temperature trend from 1950 to 1980 worse that solar. The problem is not mere selective focus, but one of semantics. As the climate commitment studies showed, just because a forcing plateaus as solar forcing did circa 1950, doesn’t mean that the temperature will also plateau. The thermal inertia of the oceans delays the response, with most of the temperature response occuring in the first few decades as the ocean mixing layers adjust, but with the deep ocean extending the complete response for millenia or more. However, the temperature DID plateau and even cool a bit in the next few decades after 1950. What gives? It appears that humans did influence the climate via aerosols, interrupting the solar and GHG warming responses and allowing those responses to resume perhaps with a catch up vengenence in the 80s and 90s. The sematics of the issue is whether to conclude that the 80s and 90s warming is a resumption of the climate response to the warming influences of solar and GHG gases or is due to the ending of an aerosol cooling event. There is no way the GHG trend accounts for the steepness of the temperature rise any better than the plateau in admittedly high solar activity does. We need models.
However, while B&Gs use of models may have some validity in evaluating the S&W methodology, B&G did nothing to rehabilitate the models from the wealth of issues found in the diagnostic studies prepared for the IPCC FAR and also published since. It should be assumed that the models used still have a positive surface albedo bias, still fail to reproduce the amplitude of the response to the solar cycle detected in the observations, still have a positive rather than negative tropical cloud feedback, and still reproduce only one half to one third of the increase in precipitation observed in association with the warming. B&G and the peer reviewers of their paper should be faulted for drawing conclusions about the attribution of the recent warming without having satisfactorially addressed these issues.
However, given the recency of the publication, B&G should not be faulted for their model’s significant under-representation of the warming contribution of black carbon.
Whoops, I should have been using “B&S”, instead of “B&G”. apologies to Gavin.
sorry Lief was referring to magnetic flux http://www.mps.mpg.de/solar-system-school/evaluation/balmaceda.pdf
Anyhow while you are here. Answer me this. Assuming, and this is accepted that the core output of the sun is a constant ( diameter and pressure calculated).
1. During a solar cycle maximum we are losing energy, as can be measured.
2. During a solar minimum we are losing less energy.
3. During a series of high solar max cycles we should then be losing more energy than the core produces?
OK my point here is. The core output of the sun is constant given the parameters and pressures, however the energy output at the surface is not and there is no dispute here.
So during a period of high solar surface output as has been the case in recent cycles is it not logical that the surface plasma is losing energy, cooling, and this in itself slowing the fluidity and conductivity of the plasma?
Is this not what may be ultimately the reason for cycles?
I will go one further. In engineering ( I am one ) if you cool a surface of a given object it takes time to recover to its previous equilibrium, all factors being equal. Why is the sun any different?
press (09:16:54) : You seem to be laboring under the assumption that the Sun is accurately modeled. I noticed no one accurately predicted the length of the current and continuing minimum. That’s because no one understands in detail how the Sun works, including you
The solar cycle last 11 years. This is the MAIN solar variability. There are ups and downs of global temperature every 11 years? Answer:NO.
The variation of solar activity during the whole 20 th century is negligible in comparison to the 11-year solar cycle (see the year-to-year solar variability graphs).
Obvious conclusion: solar forcing is very small. 20 th century warming CANNOT be caused by this forcing. Specially the post-1980 warming, when solar activity remained nearly constant on timescales longers than the 11-year cycles (actually it REDUCED a little).
Metaphysisist Joe Romm’s top 5 posts or first 5 are all stories of the future. How do we deny a report about the future? It is not falsafiable.
If we are going to talk about the future, we will need perfect math models from schmidt.
Vincent (08:41:58) :
The volumetric heat capacity of air makes it impossible to hold heat as the sea water does, having 3227 times more capacity. Hoping a ball of fire jumping around in the atmosphere?…the only fire to find is their firing imagination.
press (09:16:54) :
sorry Leif was referring to magnetic flux http://www.mps.mpg.de/solar-system-school/evaluation/balmaceda.pdf
It doesn’t load [hangs], so can’t comment.
is it not logical that the surface plasma is losing energy, cooling, and this in itself slowing the fluidity and conductivity of the plasma?
The temperature of the solar plasma [the 99% that is not magnetic] is absolutely constant to our best ability to measure it.
The magnetic activity adds a little extra [0.1%] while it lasts, and it comes and goes with the solar cycle. The magnetic field does drag on the movements of the plasma, but very little, and it is mostly the other way around: the plasma moves the magnetic field around. but, the bottom line is that the effect of solar activity compared to the rest of the output of the Sun is minute, and is in any event cyclical [comes and goes].
I am beginning to think (following C.G.Jung´s psychic energetics) that the trouble behind global warming/ecology/green movements, etc. it is a pernicious displacement of unchanneled libido energy, which it is reaching its critical mass within some of the followers/believers/fanatics…:-)
Yes not quoting GISS, try HADCRU or NCDC. ?
Pamela, There is a close fit between ENSO and Global temps. I’ve modelled it many times. However what is also very evident is the underlying background increase in temperature i.e La Nina 2007, brought temps down by the suggested amount but only to a higher low level than previous due to background warming. Also ENSO is a capacitor of global temperature, a short term varience, it is not a true driver of global temperatures.
I’ve heard the arguement of lags, but have yet to see any evidence of where the excess temperature is stored before and during the lagging effect, there is no evidence in this storage mechanism in ocean currents deep or surface.
Leif Svalgaard (09:50:31) :
press (09:16:54) :
“sorry Leif was referring to magnetic flux http://www.mps.mpg.de/solar-system-school/evaluation/balmaceda.pdf ”
It doesn’t load [hangs], so can’t comment.
Well, it finally loaded. There are two things wrong with the magnetic flux [apart from it not having any impact on its own – except through TSI]:
1) The reconstructions are based on the Group Sunspot Numbers which are much too low before the 1870s, and
2) on Lockwood’s 1999 reconstruction of the Open flux [used to calibrate (1)]. Not even Lockwood believes that finding anymore. To see what is wrong with the 1999 claim:
http://www.leif.org/research/Reply%20to%20Lockwood%20IDV%20Comment.pdf and
http://www.leif.org/research/Comment%20on%20McCracken.pdf
Roger Pielke Senior Discusses this paper and wonders how Lean and Rind and Schmidt and Benestad can come to such different conclusions:
http://climatesci.org/2009/07/22/new-paper-how-will-earths-surface-temperature-change-in-future-decades-by-lean-and-rind-2009/
And notes that both could easily be wrong because 1. Both use surface temperatures rather than ocean heat content 2. both do not deal with the issue of the effect of circulation changes.
I could scarcely agree more.
Sound and Fury says:
First of all, B&S do not just use “model data”. They use both model data and real data. The advantage of the real data is, of course, that it is real data. However, the advantage of the model data is that you are able to know the “right” answer…i.e., you know how much of the warming in the model is due to changes in solar forcing (because you can run the model turning on and off the various forcings) and hence you can test how well various data analysis procedures give you the correct answer.
Second of all, when doing FFTs, you have to look carefully at the issue of significance. I am very skeptical of how significant your 60-year cycle is since that represents a cycle length that is about half the data record. Hence, there are not very many cycles in the data record…and the error bars should be correspondingly large.
henrychance (09:41:49) :
Metaphysisist Joe Romm’s top 5 posts or first 5 are all stories of the future. How do we deny a report about the future? It is not falsafiable.
If we are going to talk about the future, we will need perfect math models from schmidt.
I’ve just taken a $1000 bet on with Joe Romm that 2010-2019 will be cooler than 2000-2009. He gave me 2:1 odds in my favour as well!
commonsense (09:40:37) : “There are ups and downs of global temperature every 11 years? Answer: NO.”
WRONG.
http://www.sciencebits.com/files/articles/CalorimeterFinal.pdf
“The variation of solar activity during the whole 20 th century is negligible in comparison to the 11-year solar cycle (see the year-to-year solar variability graphs).”
Have you ever heard of a low pass filter? No? Then I can see why you have no clue what you talking about.
press (09:16:54) :
sorry Leif, I was referring to magnetic flux
In spite of the flaws of the paper, their conclusion is in the right direction [just not enough]:
-This first physics-based reconstruction of TSI back to the Maunder Minimum suggests an increase of about 0.80 W/m2 since 1700, with the lower limit being about 0.60 W/m2. This value is much lower than in previous works that may have important implications on Sun-climate relations.
Vincent says:
That’s a very good question. I suppose even people who should know better can delude themselves…or perhaps they do know better but are trying to delude others.
From what I can make out from what your saying, I think your explanation of where G&T are wrong is basically correct but I think it can perhaps be said more simply: G&T assume that because the earth’s surface is warmer in the presence of an IR-absorbing atmosphere than in its absence, this means there is a net flow of heat from that atmosphere to the surface. However, this assumption is not correct. In fact, the net flow of heat is always from the warmer surface to the cooler atmosphere. This may seem counterintuitive since you might wonder how then the earth’s surface ends up warmer! The answer is that in the comparison case, in which there is no IR-absorption, all of the radiation emitted by the earth’s surface escapes into space. Thus, even if an IR-absorbing atmosphere returns only a small part of that emitted radiation (and, in particular, less than it receives) back to the earth, this will still result in the earth being warmer. And, there is nothing particularly mysterious about this…Basically any problem in radiative heat transfer that involves a “heat shield” will show this sort of effect.
Allan M R MacRae:
“How do you explain that it clearly suggests that CO2 lags temperature?”
What’s to explain? This is not anything new. Without human activity, how would CO2 increase of its own accord? It wouldn’t, clearly. Warming, due for example to solar or orbital variations, would cause outgassing from the oceans.
You have yet to explain why “CO2 levels pre-1958 are highly questionable, imo.”
“Please explain how the future causes the past.”
Perhaps you need to rephrase this question so it makes sense.
“As regards the UAH temperature data, when you fit a straight line through the warming portion of a sine curve, this will give you a misleading warming trend. The cooling portion preceded 1979, having occurred from about 1945 to 1975.”
There is no UAH data from before 1979. Datasets that extend further back cannot even remotely be fitted by a sine curve so it’s not clear why you mention one.
“My bet is when the surface temperature data is analyzed and the warming bias removed, there will be no net warming from ~1940 to 2008.”
You’ve lost that one already.
“As regards cooling predictions, there are countless more since 2008, including a recent one (”no warming for 20 years”) from the warmist camp”
Using terminology like “warmist camp” is a little bit immature, don’t you think? You have misunderstood this one, anyway. No-one claims that the climate will do anything other than warm in response to more CO2, in the long term. In the short term, internal variations can temporarily offset the CO2-induced warming.
“but those are the easy ones, since Earth has been cooling for almost a decade.”
Not even wrong. Over pretty much any 10 year period in the instrumental record, there is no trend that is statistically different from zero. This is because climate is not a phenomenon that can be measured over a decade. If you want to understand your error here, what you need to do is this: calculate trends from x-present, starting from x=2007, say, and working backwards. At each stage, use a realistic model of the noise characteristics to calculate the error on the trend. Find the first value of x for which the trend is statistically significant. Tell us whether the trend is positive or negative. See if you can find any value of x for which there exists a statistically significant negative trend.
“The paradox is that you predict global warming , and I hope you are right – because humanity does much better during warm periods.”
“does better”? Without further definition this is basically meaningless. Tell us, though, considering the cold period known as the little ice age – why did world GDP per capital not drop during this time? Why, if warm times makes humans “do better”, are the most prosperous countries currently predominantly at mid-northern latitudes? Why is Scandinavia, for example, far more developed than equatorial Africa?
“In any case, I am convinced that the body of evidence suggests that the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to a doubling of CO2 is much less than 1 degree C, and your side of this debate is promoting needless hysteria at great cost to society.”
I do not have a “side”. There isn’t really a “debate”. If the sensitivity were even as low as 1°C/2xCO2, then the paleoclimate record becomes impossible to explain.
“”” Vincent (08:41:58) :
Jimmy Haigh and jmc,
the GHG hypothesis does NOT violate the second law of thermodynamics. I have read this paper, initially with great expectation, but was disappointed. Mostly it is a textbook on various physical processes including irrelevances like Freznels law. When you finally get to the analysis of the supposed violation of the second law of thermodynamics, there are serious flaws.
The second law states that heat cannot of its own accord travel from a cold place to a warm place. If it did so, the cold place would become yet colder whilst the warm place gets hotter. Yet GHG works on the principal that outgoing LR radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by the GHG and some of this re-emitted radiation will come back down to the ground and have a warming effect. Since the region where the GHG does this is cooler than the ground, this is supposed to violate the second law of thermodynamics. “””
The earth’s surface is known to emit long wave IR radiation corresponding roughly to a black body spectrum at a temperature around 288 K; and some of that radiation escapes into space. Some of that may land on the dark side of the moon; particularly near new moon times; and in principle, we could measure the total radiation that hits the moon’s cold side.
Well the angular subtense of the sun is pretty much the same as the moon, so the same amount of radiation that hits the moon, also travels to the sun and lands there, even though the surface temperature is around 6000 K
Somehow I don’t think there is a Maxwell’s Demon out there on the sun, telling earth sourced IR photons; No, you can’t come in here.
Clausius stated the second law as follows; ‘No cyclic machine can have no other effect, than to transport heat from a source at one temperature, to a sink at a higher temperature. ‘
Note the word “cyclic”.
The English usage is a trifle arcane; the expected “other” effect, is of course an input of energy or work done from some other origin.
Your ordinary household refrigerator transports “heat” from the cold inside to the warm outside, leaving the inside colder, and the outside warmer.
Unplug it, to disconnect an “other” effects, and it ceases to function.
George
Lief I am not convinced. If a body loses more energy at a given time then the body as a whole will lose energy. Whatever you measure at the surface is not necessarily indicative of the surface plasma as a whole. Does this make sense?
Leif (08:30:26) asks “what magnetic impact?”
As Leif well knows, studies of the physical record have consistently found a .6 to .8 correlation between GCR proxies and temperature proxies. Usoskin et al. 2005, for instance, “Solar activity over the last 1150 yrs: does it correlate with climate?” found: “a correlation coefficient of about .7 – .8 at a 94% – 98% confidence level.”
Because GCR and TSI both vary with solar activity, high decadal and centennial scale correlations between GCR and temperature do not by themselves rule out that the GCR-correlated temperature changes are actually being caused by variations in TSI. Because TSI variations are so miniscule, this would require a very high climate sensitivity, which seems to be contradicted by all the direct evidence about climate sensitivity, but set that aside.
While the decadal and centennial GCR-temperature correlations do not contradict the TSI explanation, this explanation IS contradicted by the .75 correlation between GCR and temperature that Shaviv and Veiser found on million year time scales. Their 550 million year study looked at climate correlations across transit through the Milky Way’s spiral arms, where the GCR flux impacting the solar system becomes more intense. On this time scale, variations in solar activity are not visible except for secular trends, effectively controlling for TSI, yet the same correlation between GCR and temperature is seen, providing good evidence that it is the GCR that is driving climate, not TSI.
Add this to the direct evidence that climate sensitivity is low, and may actually dampen down forcings instead of amplify them, and the case for a magnetic impact becomes very strong. A better question would be “what TSI impact”? We KNOW that TSI variations are very small, and our best direct evidence about climate sensitivity says that this too is small. Multiply the two together and the result is small.
Leif reserves his skepticism for the effect that according to the physical evidence is doing most of the work. Seems to me he is pretty much in the same boat as Schmidt on this one. My comment on Schmidt at 23:43:55.
RW:
Huh?? Does that mean orbital/solar variations are due to human activity? And without human activity, CO2 can not increase ‘of its own accord’? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??
And there are plenty of other wacky statements in that polemic besides that confused contradiction. Time to get off the meds.
Score one for Allan M R MacRae.
“However, it will correctly tend to predict the climatic consequences of the seasonal forcing, e.g., it will show that here in Rochester the climate in July is much warmer than in January.”
Thus, climate models are based on the assumption (and hope) that climate trends over hundred year time frames are predictable in the same way that summer and winter are predictable.
Given that we don’t even know what (if anything) caused the Little Ice Age, such an assumption seems unjustified, to put it mildly.
Molon Labe says:
It is true that their model assumes just the solar effects due to the direct variation in TSI. However, this assumption does not go unchecked. They note:
Patagon has very incorrectly summarized this as saying: “It’s not in the model therefore it does not matter.” What it actually says is something like, “If this assumption were wrong, we would expect to find the forcing coefficient determined by regression for solar in the real data to be much larger than that for the forcing coefficient for GHGs. However, in actual fact, the regression coefficients for solar and GHGs forcings were similar to each other in both the ‘model data’ and the real data. This suggests that the real world is behaving like the model world…i.e., that there doesn’t appear to be any mysterious mechanism in the real world that is amplifying the effect of TSI variations (or depends on some other aspect of the solar irradiance such as just the UV component).”
RW (10:21:34) : “I do not have a “side”. There isn’t really a “debate”. If the sensitivity were even as low as 1°C/2xCO2, then the paleoclimate record becomes impossible to explain.”
Unless you have some bullet-proof proxy for the Sun’s output, you can’t be sure it is more of a variable star than we know.
One way you recognize a good scientist is how hard he tries to prove himself wrong and explains all the ways he has tried in published papers. One doesn’t see much of that in many of the climate papers. You guys need to try harder.
“Because we keep getting posters making ‘inane, fatuous, irrelevent’ statements about the concentration of CO2 based apparently on their personal incredulity and lack of knowledge of the physics and chemistry”
Your lack of knowledge is showing. Even if a CO2 molecule got ‘hot’ from radiated heat it would either lose the energy to the surrounding air by collision and at 400 ppm would have NO thermal effect (drowned in thermal noise). The idea that a CO2 molecule radiates back down to a warmer Earth and warms it is playing fast and loose with basic thermodynamics.
So does CO2 keep the Earth or is it H2O which is the primary infra-red blanket?
Well desert air is bone dry so try spending a night in the middle of the Sahara in shorts and T-shirt, see just what the min to max temperature swings are when you only have 400ppm of a GHG that only covers 6% of the relevant I-R range. If the day-time temps can drop that far that fast overnight then CO2 must be assumed to have no discernible effect.
RW (10:21:34) :
Maybe you can tell me why the calculated climate sensitivity of .75C would be the same today as it was during the last glacial max. Basically, the question is why would the climate today respond the same way as the climate at the peak of an ice age?
press (10:36:05) :
Lief I am not convinced. If a body loses more energy at a given time then the body as a whole will lose energy. Whatever you measure at the surface is not necessarily indicative of the surface plasma as a whole. Does this make sense?
No, it does not make a lot of sense [nor a little bit]. By your logic: If a body gains more energy at a given time then the body as a whole will gain energy. During the solar cycle, the body loses some and gains some. At the end of the day it is even.
Alec Rawls (10:40:04) :
“Solar activity over the last 1150 yrs: does it correlate with climate?” found: “a correlation coefficient of about .7 – .8 at a 94% – 98% confidence level.”
And how well do we know the record of both? The record has very high autocorrelation and contains only a handful of independent points.
Their 550 million year study looked at climate correlations
And how well do we know that record?
Leif reserves his skepticism for the effect that according to the physical evidence is doing most of the work.
The evidence is very poor and doesn’t hold up very well when looked at in detail. Cosmic ray intensity returns to the same level at each solar minimum, while temps do not. The solar cycle is clear in GCRs [although only a few percent] but very weak in temps [0.1C], so the few percent variation of GCRs cause a tenth of a degree of [cyclical] temperature variation. Hardly something to write home about.
My question is, why would anyone assume that a single calculation by a single office is the final word? Doesn’t science require replication of findings and observation confirming theory?? Or have I stumbled back to reality.
Joel:
Like cyanide or botulinus toxin, for example? Whereas most other substances are not harmful at far higher concentrations. You do not prove your point by using outliers.
Phil:
Apart from shifting the spectral bands slightly, what effect do these trace impurities have on the physical properties of corundum? And, besides chromium or iron, how many other substances would have no noticeable effect whatsoever? And how many substances besides corundum would show no noticeable change by having equivalent amounts of those impurities added?
How much more cherry-picking are we going to see?
Sandy:
Not quite. The re-radiation by CO2 molecules doesn’t warm the surface, but rather slows the rate at which heat is lost from the surface through radiation.
But it’s (almost) irrelevant anyway, as almost all the heat loss from the surface is through convection and evaporation, with only a tiny amount being lost through radiation, and even that tiny amount being slowed far more by water vapor re-radiation than that of CO2.
Wow that graph looks dramatic! Shooting up like a rocket! At least maybe we can only really blame human activity after 1980 on this apocalyptic result…
Speaking of Solar… A beautiful little solar cycle *23*! magnetic signature is stirring… It might produce a spot…
This may sound Hollywood-ish but this very strange minimum and the refusal of cycle 23 to die just keeps reminding me of the number 23 enigma… coincidence or not it’s pretty cool if you ask me 🙂
Indiana Bones (11:27:06) :
“My question is, why would anyone assume that a single calculation by a single office is the final word? Doesn’t science require replication of findings and observation confirming theory?? Or have I stumbled back to reality.”
I think you have hit upon one problem: No one can do a controlled experiment on the Earth. Sucks, they can’t even measure its surface temperature!
Kevin Cave 22:38:16) :
So the sun is irrelevent in the context of AGW is it? Here’s a very simple, but I believe effective, thought experiment… the sun’s been switched off.
I wonder how long it would take for the Earth to start getting intolerably cold, and whether the fraction of a percent of human-introduced carbon dioxide would make a blind bit of difference.
The temperature drops on average by 10C in the 12 hours after the Sun sets. So, on average, the Earth’s temperature drops by 0.83C each hour after the Sun is no longer beating down on the Earth each day.
By the middle of day 3, temps will have fallen by 40C and every river on the planet will be frozen right to the bottom (followed soon after by every lake and then the oceans). Land near the ocean at the equator will be moderated somewhat but everything else will already be frozen solid by day 3.
This example also provides a good explanation for the timelines of the greenhouse effect. Before the end of day 2, all of the 33 degree greenhouse effect has already been lost to space. There is no 30 year lag in the greenhouse effect – it is only a delay (or accumulation) of 36 hours in how long it takes for the Sun’s energy to escape into space. The energy random walks around the molecules in the ground and then in the atmosphere for an average of 18 hours before it escapes into space. (oceans and icesheets can also accumulate that energy so this where the lags come from but this accumulation will be much less than 10% of the total).
RW:
You’re right. How else would you explain the paleoclimate record unless the sensitivity is so high that it responds to CO2 increases 800 years in the future?
Sandy (10:53:27) :Obviously your name tell us you know a lot of deserts :-).
It is outrageously absurd that nonsense of CO2 warming. That is why I have always joked about GWrs. saying that when going to bed they warm their feet with a bottle filled with hot air.
Bill Illis (11:49:05) :
Following that logic, shouldn’t CO2 peak its trapping capacity two days after release also? How could that lead to a catastrophic tipping point?
Leif Svalgaard (19:53:27) :
The trend in solar TSI is much smaller than B&S [perhaps remove the ‘&’ 🙂 ] assume [and even smaller than Bob T’s], so their solar input variation is much smaller than what they worked with. That may mean that their ‘7%’ might similarly be a lot less than 7%.
Well to me this implies then that Schmidt has too much weight on TSI variations in his early climate recontructions – which means they must be wrong in terms of how they modelled the temperature variations at the start of the 20th century.
Either the Earth’s climate is very sensitive to solar variation (through some yet to be proved mechanism), or some other factor, which is not modelled (or modelled incorrectly) drove climate during the first half of the 20th century.
Furthermore, it’s logical to think that this factor hasn’t simply gone away, which means any modelling for the second half of the 20th century and beyond will be erroneous since the models are missing this variable.
Sandy:
I can vouch for that. I once spent a night on the fringes of an African desert in midsummer. I’ve never been so cold in all my life.
Ben G (12:07:15) :
Well to me this implies then that Schmidt has too much weight on TSI variations in his early climate recontructions – which means they must be wrong in terms of how they modelled the temperature variations at the start of the 20th century.
He very likely was and they very likely are.
Either the Earth’s climate is very sensitive to solar variation (through some yet to be proved mechanism), or some other factor, which is not modelled (or modelled incorrectly) drove climate during the first half of the 20th century.
I don’t think the climate is hypersensitive to solar variations, because we would likely have had a run-away situation somewhere along the 4 billion years climate history. It seems to me that on the contrary, the climate is very ‘robust’ [Anthony – do I get points for using that word, like Gavin did?] against perturbations [internal and external] to have maintained a livable temperature over all that time.
The sun is a variable star. It sometimes produces 200 sunspots a month, other times, none at all for years on end. The number of spots does correlate with temperature. Not perfectly, but better than those who would smooth the sun into homogeneity or perfect regularity would have us believe.
Download and hang onto the original data before it gets ‘adjusted’ to fit someones idea of how things were, are, and should be.
David: How could that lead to a catastrophic tipping point?
That is the scary part: The CO2 political and sociological issue will have catastrophic consequences for the world…
In my country, a few weeks ago, 24 policemen were assasinated because some NGO’ s told native amazon indians that a new issued bill, intended for the rational exploitation of the forests, was going to deprive them of their land, which was not true at all. Those NGO’s guys are most probably trying not to allow any investments in the area, in order to be only ones who through giving to the indians carbon credits at US$3. per forest hectare they would profit. (we can only guess the amount they will graciously and enforcedly sell those carbon shares to the “polluters” of the first world)
E. Rozanov et al
Recent satellite observations show that the solar ultraviolet irradiance is much more variable than the total solar irradiance. Atmospheric effects of the solar irradiance variations during 11-year solar activity cycle are investigated using different numerical models and observation data sets. It is shown that the direct and indirect (via ozone production) heating in the upper and middle stratosphere due to enhancement of the solar spectral irradiance leads to an acceleration of the polar night jets and suppression of the Brewer-Dobson circulation resulting in the ozone increase and warming of the lower tropical stratosphere. These stratospheric changes alter the tropospheric circulation leading to a statistically significant warming of the surface air over Russia, Europe and North America. The importance of the solar spectral irradiance variability for the attribution of the temperature changes in the upper stratosphere is also shown by the comparison of the simulated and observed temperature evolution during the last 25 years of the 20th century.
Note GISS e has little photochemistry ie it is not interactive an uses constants.
Leif Svalgaard (09:50:31) :
The reconstructions are based on the Group Sunspot Numbers which are much too low before the 1870s
What is the evidence for this Leif? I thought optics were pretty good by 1750, and the people who did the observations were careful people.
Joel Shore:
Re the first part, I didn’t realise that was what they had done; I actually did something similar (which I basically always do with statistical tests), that is to say I make ‘validation runs’ with various generated datasets.
“Second of all, when doing FFTs, you have to look carefully at the issue of significance. I am very skeptical of how significant your 60-year cycle is since that represents a cycle length that is about half the data record. Hence, there are not very many cycles in the data record…and the error bars should be correspondingly large.”
Well, I do realise that (actually, it’s somewhat less than a half, since the record is 159 years long), which is why I intend to get hold of some longer time series (maybe some paleo reconstructions; for all their flaws, they may be useful in this case).
However, I think it is worth noting that it is not the FFT that detected this cycle (in fact, on the direct FFT, it is swamped by the 1/f noise), but rather the autocorrelogram. The second FFT is only to detect shorter, less directly visible cycles; the autocorrelogram shows a very visible 60-year cycle.
So the issue is not the size of the FFT error bars, it is the size of the autocorrelogram error bars. Unfortunately I have yet to learn how to calculate these, but certainly the 60-year spike in the second FFT is much stronger than anything which was produced when I ran the program over white-noise data. (I need to try red-noise data and perhaps ARMA data as well in order to be sure).
Anyway, thanks for your comments; I do realise that the data are not really long enough to establish a result, but they do suggest rather heavily.
Vincent
“If this is a violation of the second law, then a thermos flask must also be impossible, because that radiates IR from the cooler reflective surface to the warmer liquid.”
The silvered surface of a Thermos flask does not radiate IR to the liquid, it REFLECTS what comes from the liquid. Anyway, a Thermos flask works mostly by reducing conduction and convection. The Second Law results in it being rather imperfect.
“I spent days thinking about this paradox, and I came to the conclusion that the radiation is NOT heat. It is not heat that is flowing to the warmer area.”
Then why are you talking about cooling and warming?
“Can that photon then be used to warm a surface that is warmer? Yes. If the photon is emitted in that direction then it will be absorbed by the warmer ground. The fallacy lies in the fact that the paper overlooks the fact that this energy came from the warmer ground in the first place.”
This is where you have just invented the latest perpetual motion machine.
It would be good to be clearer about the terms “radiation,” “heat,” and “energy.” And talking about the activities of a single photon does not help in seeing the overall picture.
—–
Phil:
“Add 330ppm of chromium to corundum (colorless) and you’ve got a ruby add iron instead and you’ve got a sapphire. Still think that a low concentration of an absorber can’t have a noticeable effect?”
What on earth is a “noticable effect?” Is this a large or a small effect? Neither. In this, at least, size does not matter. It is a colour effect. Does it cause warming of a sapphire more or less than a ruby? What is the possible relevance of this?
On another thread. If positive feedback is necessary to bring about Thermageddon, then how can this feedback work without feeding back? Otherwise there is a runaway effect (which never happened when CO2 was 18 times the present level in the pre-cambrian ice age. Or when, before photosynthesis, it was most of the atmosphere). My bank manager can work this out without even studying physics.
Taken from spaceweather.com regarding the recent longest total eclipse of the 21st century over Asia:
‘On Wednesday, July 22nd, the Moon eclipsed the midday sun over China. “The temperature dropped from 96.6 F to 88.5F at totality,” reports Donald Gardner from Huangshan.’
———————–
An 8.1 degree drop in temperature experienced during the day whilst the sun’s rays were totally blocked by the moon for approx 5 minutes…
You cannot ignore that solar-related impact!
The eclipse:
OT The asian eclipse:
http://www.3tv.cl/index.php?m=video&v=5224
Peter says:
The point we are making is that one cannot simply dismiss the effect of CO2 through intuition that 385ppm is too small a number to matter. I also gave you two specific reasons why such intuition is off in this case (that ~99% of the atmosphere is transparent to IR radiation and that the dependence of forcing on concentration is approximately logarithmic over a large range of concentrations). However, in the end, one must do actual calculations to determine the radiative forcing due to a doubling of CO2; those calculations have been done and they show that it is far from a negligible effect.
Peter (11:32:52) :
Phil:
“Nonsense, try reading up on the physics.
Add 330ppm of chromium to corundum (colorless) and you’ve got a ruby add iron instead and you’ve got a sapphire. Still think that a low concentration of an absorber can’t have a noticeable effect?”
Apart from shifting the spectral bands slightly, what effect do these trace impurities have on the physical properties of corundum?
They do more than ‘shift absorption bands slightly’ they dramatically change its absorption characteristics from transparent to strong absorption, exactly the same effect that CO2 has on air! Get it, I chose the analogy very carefully?
And, besides chromium or iron, how many other substances would have no noticeable effect whatsoever? And how many substances besides corundum would show no noticeable change by having equivalent amounts of those impurities added?
Some do, some don’t, just like some gases absorb some don’t.
How much more cherry-picking are we going to see?
It’s not cherry picking, we have an atmosphere which contains a small proportion of a very strong IR absorber in an otherwise transparent gas just like most colored gem-stones are transparent with a small quantity of a visible absorber.
Peter (11:40:28) :
Sandy:
But it’s (almost) irrelevant anyway, as almost all the heat loss from the surface is through convection and evaporation, with only a tiny amount being lost through radiation, and even that tiny amount being slowed far more by water vapor re-radiation than that of CO2.
Rubbish, most of the loss from the surface is IR radiation unless you’ve found a way to bypass Planck’s law of blackbody radiation!
300K surface emits about 460W/m^2
Peter (11:32:52) :
Phil:
“Nonsense, try reading up on the physics.
Add 330ppm of chromium to corundum (colorless) and you’ve got a ruby add iron instead and you’ve got a sapphire. Still think that a low concentration of an absorber can’t have a noticeable effect?”
Apart from shifting the spectral bands slightly, what effect do these trace impurities have on the physical properties of corundum?
They do more than ‘shift absorption bands slightly’ they dramatically change its absorption characteristics from transparent to strong absorption, exactly the same effect that CO2 has on air! Get it, I chose the analogy very carefully?
And, besides chromium or iron, how many other substances would have no noticeable effect whatsoever? And how many substances besides corundum would show no noticeable change by having equivalent amounts of those impurities added?
Some do, some don’t, just like some gases absorb some don’t.
How much more cherry-picking are we going to see?
It’s not cherry picking, we have an atmosphere which contains a small proportion of a very strong IR absorber in an otherwise transparent gas just like most colored gem-stones are transparent with a small quantity of a visible absorber.
Peter (11:40:28) :
Sandy:
But it’s (almost) irrelevant anyway, as almost all the heat loss from the surface is through convection and evaporation, with only a tiny amount being lost through radiation, and even that tiny amount being slowed far more by water vapor re-radiation than that of CO2.
Rubbish, most of the loss from the surface is IR radiation unless you’ve found a way to bypass Planck’s law of blackbody radiation!
300K surface emits about 460W/m^2
Mr. Alex (12:58:23) : LOL:That temperature drop of EIGHT DEGREES is quite impossible because of the big amount of China and India GHGs!! I am sure that is the product of self-suggestion, because CO2 must have stored a lot of energy to emit back to ground during the eclipse…
Do you see how stupid is gwrs. nonsense?
Anthony,
Gavin does not work on GISTEMP. I don’t know why you’re attributing the responsibility for it’s upkeep to him. Did you not know this?
Sandy (10:53:27) :
“Because we keep getting posters making ‘inane, fatuous, irrelevent’ statements about the concentration of CO2 based apparently on their personal incredulity and lack of knowledge of the physics and chemistry”
Your lack of knowledge is showing. Even if a CO2 molecule got ‘hot’ from radiated heat it would either lose the energy to the surrounding air by collision and at 400 ppm would have NO thermal effect (drowned in thermal noise).
I’m sorry but it’s your ignorance which is being exposed, that is exactly the mechanism by which the atmosphere is heated by the surface and the way by which that surface radiation is prevented from directly radiating into space.
The idea that a CO2 molecule radiates back down to a warmer Earth and warms it is playing fast and loose with basic thermodynamics.
A classic error in your understanding of heat transfer as it applies to radiation.
So does CO2 keep the Earth or is it H2O which is the primary infra-red blanket?
The primary greenhouse gas on the earth is CO2 without it water has a minimal effect.
Well desert air is bone dry so try spending a night in the middle of the Sahara in shorts and T-shirt, see just what the min to max temperature swings are when you only have 400ppm of a GHG that only covers 6% of the relevant I-R range. If the day-time temps can drop that far that fast overnight then CO2 must be assumed to have no discernible effect.
Your assumption would be incorrect since the CO2 would be preventing a further 40W/m^2 of losses.
Phil. (06:31:46)
I think you’re misreading it, there’s 75cm of water on top over the last 20days, see the ice data below, note the isotherms.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np_weatherdata.html
You may be correct, since I haven’t been able to locate a reference on the site that describes exactly what is being measured or how the graphs should be interpreted. My assumptions are actually based on a comment you yourself posted to Anthony’s original post regarding the webcam site
Phil. (19:16:20) :
Not much change in the ice pinger distance, even though the station has drifted 161 miles to the SSE (lat lon data here). If I interpret the pinger graph correctly, the ice thickness has changed from ~2.75m to ~2.5m.
The ice surface is at about 60cm so the thickness is now appears to be about 1.9m.
Since the pinger graph has been essentially flat since then, I assume the ice thickness hasn’t changed appreciably and since the thermistor string starts at 60cm above the ice I assume that it is now reading mostly air temp with about 10-15cm of standing water, which would seem to be consistent with the webcam images and the amount of snow that has melted. This would seem to indicate that the loss to melting is less than 10%, while the overall loss is approaching 50%. My suggestion that the Cross Polar Drift is the dominant actor derives from how consistently the station drift patterns have moved along the 0 azimuth line which matches quite closely with maps of that current that I have seen.
Allan M (12:55:49) :
Phil:
“Add 330ppm of chromium to corundum (colorless) and you’ve got a ruby add iron instead and you’ve got a sapphire. Still think that a low concentration of an absorber can’t have a noticeable effect?”
What on earth is a “noticable effect?” Is this a large or a small effect? Neither. In this, at least, size does not matter. It is a colour effect. Does it cause warming of a sapphire more or less than a ruby? What is the possible relevance of this?
The role of the Cr ion and Fe ion is exactly the same as the CO2 in the atmosphere, although present in low concentration they are each strong absorbers and dramatically change the otherwise transparent matrix they are in. Since the ions effect the visible absorption we see the effect as color in the otherwise transparent crystal. The ruby crystal used in the laser invented by Ted Maiman contained about 0.05% Cr without the absorption and emission by those Cr ions there would be no laser.
“Indiana Bones (11:27:06) : Doesn’t science require replication…Or have I stumbled back to reality.”
Yes it does. Yes you have.
Stay there. It’s a better place to be.
“”” —–
Phil:
“Add 330ppm of chromium to corundum (colorless) and you’ve got a ruby add iron instead and you’ve got a sapphire. Still think that a low concentration of an absorber can’t have a noticeable effect?”
What on earth is a “noticable effect?” Is this a large or a small effect? Neither. In this, at least, size does not matter. It is a colour effect. Does it cause warming of a sapphire more or less than a ruby? What is the possible relevance of this? “””
Hexagonal single crystal Aluminum Oxide, is “Sapphire”; regardless of whether it is pure, or doped with impurities or not.
“Gem” sapphires can be obtained in almost any color from totally clear to totally black (opaque), although most people wouldn’t regard the black stuff as a gem. There is a whole mountain sized black sapphire somewhere in Wyoming or somewhere near there. You could drop a cubic yard of molten aluminum oxide, into a 20 foot deep hole; and simply fill the hole in with dirt; and it will cool slowly enough that most of it will grow a single crystal sapphire; probably highly strained, and not too pure. It is not the most difficult crystal to grow.
Those multicolor sapphires, can also be obtained in reds; but by definition, they are NOT Rubies, unless the Red color is due to Chromium doping.
Then there is that State gem of Colorado; which I believe is called RhodoChrosite; which forms absolutely spectacular; totally cube shaped, and very large bright red (transparent) Crystals. Wonderful stuff.
But Phil’s point is being missed; the fact that the atmospheric abundance of GHG species (other than water) is microscopic, does not negate their effects on the atmosphere.
The whole semiconductor industry; and all its myriad of marvellous products, with all kinds of weird properties; is built on deliberately doped materials that are so pure; that they make the earth’s atmosphere with its minute impurities look like a total garbage dump, in comparison.
With total atoms in the 10^23 range per CC, silicon impurity doping levels are in the high 10^15s per cc up to the low 10^19s (100 ppm), and that 10^19 stuff IS total garbage, and only useful to make electrical contacts to the useful layers; there aren’t any useful semiconductor processes going on at that “muck” level.
Even a tiny pinhole in a balloon (or your car tire); will certainly let all of the air out.
The whole of life on earth depends on the simple fact that the H2O molecule is NOT straight like the CO2 molecule; but has about a 104 degree bend in it.
So sometimes, even the most insigniifcant things are highly significant in the overall scheme of things.
George
tallbloke (12:45:04) :
“The reconstructions are based on the Group Sunspot Numbers which are much too low before the 1870s”
What is the evidence for this Leif? I thought optics were pretty good by 1750, and the people who did the observations were careful people.
in 1750, the optics were not comparable to 100 or more years later and people didn’t count sunspots according to any specific criteria. They reported when they saw a big one, but most of ‘specks’ that we today count as spots would have been ignored.
There are, however, objective criteria that can be used. Solar activity maintains the ionosphere and cause an electric current to flow 60 miles overhead during the day. The magnetic field from this current causes the compass needle to deviate from its usual [i.e.. night time] direction. This deviation is easily measured [even in 1750 – was discovered actually in 1722]. We can thus keep track of the currents in the ionosphere and thus of solar activity without relying of people counting spots.
A non-technical description of this is here: http://www.leif.org/research/CAWSES%20-%20Sunspots.pdf
and in more detail [and corroborated further] here:
http://www.leif.org/research/Napa%20Solar%20Cycle%2024.pdf
Joel Shore (13:10:24) : Please check those numbers during the ninght in a desert. Your CO2 molecules won’t help you get warm!
However, if you don’t believe me take with you a bottle filled with hot air, or better, filled with hot CO2.!!
Don’t you see they have cheated you?
Phil. (13:15:03) : “Rubbish, most of the loss from the surface is IR radiation unless you’ve found a way to bypass Planck’s law of blackbody radiation!
300K surface emits about 460W/m^2”
You are SO FOCUSED ON RADIATION! The air convection currents that help form clouds put large amounts of heat in short order into the upper atmosphere, bypassing much of the CO2. THEN the heat radiates into space. Also, clouds prevent the radiant energy from hitting the ground (or ocean) in the first place. You guys are really hung up on CO2 and radiation – as if nothing else existed or mattered.
Leif Svalgaard (14:16:00) :
tallbloke (12:45:04) :
And further support from this:
http://www.leif.org/research/SPD-2009.pdf
The Iceberg (10:01:49) :
I thought you were kidding in your first comment–I should say–I thought you had to be kidding. But in your second comment I see you actually weren’t.
You did know that GISS temp data has been publicly corrected more than once? With that reputation it is dicey to trust that data set.
It’s a good idea to look at all data sets. By doing that you will find the earth has been cooling for years now.
You do agree it’s a bad idea to exclude any data set? And also it’s a bad idea to trust and quote a data set that has already been found faulty?
Joel Shore:
They claim nothing of the sort. What they say is that what is said by some about the greenhouse effect is in violation of the 2nd law.
They actually make the point that the net flow of heat cannot be to a warmer body from a cooler one, and that those who suggest it does are confusing heat with energy.
Perhaps if Schmidt et al took the time to read the paper properly, they might come to a different conclusion.
Vincent:
Please try to understand what the paper actually says before condemning it. There is no paradox at all.
If a portion of the surface is emitting, say, 1000 photons per second, and two of those photons, having been absorbed and re-emitted towards the surface, are absorbed by the surface. The net emission from the surface is therefore 998 photons per second, instead of the 1000 per second it would otherwise have been. Note that said re-emission does not warm the surface, it merely slows down the rate at which it cools. Also note that all those 1000 photons do ultimately escape back into space, it just takes a tiny bit longer than the original second.
Phil:
“It’s not cherry picking, we have an atmosphere which contains a small proportion of a very strong IR absorber in an otherwise transparent gas just like most colored gem-stones are transparent with a small quantity of a visible absorber.”
Since when did CO2 have more than a limited (~15 microns) absorption, which is covered already by water vapour and other gases. Even the IPCC couldn’t characterise CO2 as a “very strong absorber.” That’s why they invented the mystical +ve feedbacks.
Ben G (12:07:15) :
Well to me this implies then that Schmidt has too much weight on TSI variations in his early climate recontructions – which means they must be wrong in terms of how they modelled the temperature variations at the start of the 20th century.
Precisely. The generally accepted assumptions are wrong.
So we’re looking at a stretch of .8 Kelvin from low to high points – which would come out to… 1.44 Fahrenheit.
Damn.
You know, if he redid the chart with .1 Kelvin graduations, it’d be MUCH more impressive and scarier.
Leif Svalgaard (14:16:00) :
There are, however, objective criteria that can be used. Solar activity maintains the ionosphere and cause an electric current to flow 60 miles overhead during the day. The magnetic field from this current causes the compass needle to deviate from its usual [i.e.. night time] direction. This deviation is easily measured [even in 1750 – was discovered actually in 1722]. We can thus keep track of the currents in the ionosphere and thus of solar activity without relying of people counting spots.
Thanks for the interesting links Leif, I’ve read the laymans paper, very clear.
If we have such a good handle on the ionosphere though, why were NASA caught on the hop with CINDI?
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/outer_atmosphere.html
How do we know the ionospheric magnetics correlate to solar activity if we don’t know why it’s height changes the way it does? Wouldn’t that leave open the possibility that the ionosphere might have been different back before 1850 and so make the corrections invalid?
I realise you have to juggle the visual data and magnetic data to get a best fit. It must be fascinating forensic work. I’m just trying to get a feel for the levels of uncertainty involved in all this.
Show me the error bars. 😉
As an old steam man, I find this site with it’s mind-boggling calculations, well…mind boggling.
Then I saw something I think I understand less more than the other stuff.
That is, Which way is a Photon?
OK, What is a Photon?
Suppose one pops up, (from where?) where does it go?
I would have thought, in all directions at once.
And yet all the pictures I’ve seen of photons is (are?) as particles travelling most purposefully in a direction, any direction, yet usually through a little slit, and then, in its photonic way, causing any amount of theoretical confusion.
Why?
Joel Shore:
Who said anyone was dismissing the effect?
And most of the remainder that isn’t is water vapor.
Which means the effect gets less as the concentration increases.
Regardless of what you may have us believe, there’s still considerable uncertainty over the magnitude of the effect.
Phil:
Yes, within that tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum known as visible light.
CO2 absorbs a tiny portion of the IR band. It does not, by any stretch of the imagination, make the atmosphere anything like ‘opaque’ to IR. In fact, it is dwarfed by the IR absorbtion of water vapor. And, at its strongest absorption band (~16um) it’s practically at saturation.
You cannot describe the Earth-atmosphere system in terms of ideal blackbodies. It’s only at the top of the atmosphere that most (all) of the heat loss is through radiation.
Try disconnecting the radiator fan on your car, leave it idling, and see how quickly (and expensively) it overheats.
And what proportion of that is in the 16um CO2 absorbtion band? And, in turn, how much of that is re-radiated downwards towards the surface?
Peter (11:56:35) : “How else would you explain the paleoclimate record unless the sensitivity is so high that it responds to CO2 increases 800 years in the future?”
Obviously carbon dioxide shares some properties with thiotimoline.
Who would have thought that Isaac Asimov was the father of climate science? 🙂
To those debating I would say it may be getting to the point that the warmers would still believe man can cause a catastrophic warming even if the Sun was to suddenly disappear and thus would be believing that the Earth continues to get warmer because of the CO2 and there’s absolutely no light from the Sun because the star no longer exists.
That sort of thinking may be already here looking at this discussion.
“Why?”
Here is as good an explanation as you are likely to get, assuming you are serious. A layman’s introduction by one of the most brilliant men who ever lived. Watch the first video “Corpuscles of Light”, which takes you from Newton’s experiments on light through the development of the theory of Quantum Electrodynamics.
http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
tallbloke (15:07:46) :
If we have such a good handle on the ionosphere though, why were NASA caught on the hop with CINDI?
Because they are talking about the thermosphere, some 10 times further up than [the part of] the ionosphere where the currents flow [~60 miles, 100 km]. The air up at CINDI there is VERY much thinner than where the currents flow. The density goes down by a factor of a thousand for every 50 km we go up, so you figure out how many billions of times thinner.
How do we know the ionospheric magnetics correlate to solar activity if we don’t know why it’s height changes the way it does? Wouldn’t that leave open the possibility that the ionosphere might have been different back before 1850 and so make the corrections invalid?
Because we have explored the ionosphere for ~80 years in great detail [including in situ observations] and we know how it works.
I realise you have to juggle the visual data and magnetic data to get a best fit. It must be fascinating forensic work. I’m just trying to get a feel for the levels of uncertainty involved in all this.
Show me the error bars. 😉
It is very difficult to put error bars on these old data. The best one can do is to use many stations and compare the spread of the data. Look at figure 16 of the Napa paper and note the spread [e.g. in the lower panel]. The layman’s error bar would simply to by eye fit a band over the blue symbols such that the width of the band contains 2/3 of the points. Similarly for the red [filled[ points. It is clear that these two bands have a separation such that it is very unlikely that it is die to chance.
There is a greater issue. Even with error bars, this could just be a fluke [such happens], But we have now 4 independent methods and data sets that show this:
1) geomagnetic variation
2) sun spot areas
3) Calcium K-line
4) measurements of the foF2 layer height [not mentioned in any of my papers, but known for a long time:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/TE053i001p00079.pdf and
http://www.leif.org/EOS/JZ057i004p00473.pdf
These papers showed:
“Analysis of data for Washington and Watheroo indicates differences in the relationship between foF2 and sunspot number for the current and preceding sunspot cycles. The sunspot number is therefore not entirely satisfactory as an index for ionospheric variations. Consequently, ionospheric data for the current cycle only should be used in preparing ionospheric radio propagation predictions whenever possible.”
Basically what they found was that the relationship between the height of the F2 layer and the sunspot number changed when Waldmeier took over in 1945. Same conclusion as I have come to.
Any one of these lines of evidence can be dismissed as a fluke or a data problem. However you can’t say that about all four of them collectively, so there is little reason to doubt the validity of this.
Jimmy Haigh (00:43:16) :
Global Climate Modeling. Getting it wrong for 20 years… and counting!
But don’t worry – we’ll get it right eventually!
Well get closer when we get a handle on the sun’s effect on climate.
Apparently Piers Corbyn, and the makers of The Farmers Almanac, have know that all along.
Gavin Who at RealWhat has it bass akwards. And I have some kind of hunch he knows that full well that he does.
John Edmondson (00:38:48) : does it include secondary effects of the solar cycle i.e. magnetic field influencing cosmic rays influencing cloud formation
I think that would be primary, not secondary.
I notice his “reconstructed” graph of the 20th century “forcings’ – NOT real, measurable temperatures! – now strangely has a “hot spot” from 1935 through 1945 of less than 1/10 of one degree C, while earlier “histories” of that same period clearly show that recorded temperatures were equal to the miraculously higher 1990-2005 temperatures.
Strange, this trend of ever-decreasing GISS NASA temperatures ever-earlier in the century.
George E. Smith (14:13:46) :
But Phil’s point is being missed; the fact that the atmospheric abundance of GHG species (other than water) is microscopic, does not negate their effects on the atmosphere.
Thanks George I knew you’d get it with your background.
Jim (14:18:22) :
Phil. (13:15:03) : “Rubbish, most of the loss from the surface is IR radiation unless you’ve found a way to bypass Planck’s law of blackbody radiation!
300K surface emits about 460W/m^2″
You are SO FOCUSED ON RADIATION!
It’s because you are so focused on getting it wrong! The poster to whom I was replying asserted that heat transfer from the surface was dominated by conduction and convection which is flat out wrong it’s mostly radiation as Planck’s Law shows.
The air convection currents that help form clouds put large amounts of heat in short order into the upper atmosphere, bypassing much of the CO2. THEN the heat radiates into space. Also, clouds prevent the radiant energy from hitting the ground (or ocean) in the first place. You guys are really hung up on CO2 and radiation – as if nothing else existed or mattered.
Because it’s the only source of heat for the planet and the only way in which heat can be lost by the planet and it’s the dominant mode of heat transfer from the planet’s surface to the atmosphere. How could anyone considering the Earth’s energy balance not pay attention to radiation?
Allan M (14:33:40) :
Phil:
Since when did CO2 have more than a limited (~15 microns) absorption,
For ever.
which is covered already by water vapour and other gases.
It isn’t
Even the IPCC couldn’t characterise CO2 as a “very strong absorber.”
They should.
Peter (15:27:26) :
Phil:
“They do more than ’shift absorption bands slightly’ they dramatically change its absorption characteristics from transparent to strong absorption”
Yes, within that tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum known as visible light.
“…exactly the same effect that CO2 has on air!”
CO2 absorbs a tiny portion of the IR band. It does not, by any stretch of the imagination, make the atmosphere anything like ‘opaque’ to IR. In fact, it is dwarfed by the IR absorbtion of water vapor. And, at its strongest absorption band (~16um) it’s practically at saturation.
It’s not a tiny portion of the Earth’s emission spectrum. It is opaque at certain frequencies that’s IR space telescopes based on the Earth can’t observe in that range. It is not dwarfed by the IR absorption of water vapor. Except for some line centers it’s not saturated.
“Rubbish, most of the loss from the surface is IR radiation unless you’ve found a way to bypass Planck’s law of blackbody radiation!”
You cannot describe the Earth-atmosphere system in terms of ideal blackbodies.
Certainly can in the IR band we’re talking about which is an almost perfect black body.
It’s only at the top of the atmosphere that most (all) of the heat loss is through radiation.
Not true as discussed above.
Try disconnecting the radiator fan on your car, leave it idling, and see how quickly (and expensively) it overheats.
Now that really is an irrelevant analogy.
“300K surface emits about 460W/m^2”
And what proportion of that is in the 16um CO2 absorbtion band?
~20%
And, in turn, how much of that is re-radiated downwards towards the surface?
Depends on the altitude.
Vincent (08:41:58)
I bow to your superior grasp of thermodynamics Vincent. I’m not a physicist either and know next to nothing on the subject.
I had assumed that the paper, being peer reviewed, was good science!
Gene Nemetz (17:36:40) :
Absolutely. The warmers don’t have a very high opinion of Piers Corbyn – ergo, he’s probably correct!
Peter says:
Well, the way that their paper is written makes it difficult to figure out exactly what they are saying. I agree that they tend to nitpick on terminology / pedogagy. However, in the end they seem to draw grand conclusions from it, such as that the atmospheric greenhouse effect is “fictitious”. If they just stuck to the point that people don’t always get the pedagogy correct, like this guy, Alistair Fraser, does: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadGreenhouse.html , then I wouldn’t have any real quarrel with them. However, that is certainly not what they do…and certainly not what most people who point to this paper believe that they have done.
I’ve also thought that the best summary of their paper is that everything that is correct (such as that a real greenhouse does not primarily work by trapping IR radiation) is not original and everything that is original is not correct.
This sort of statement (besides being pedagogically incorrect as noted by Alistair Fraser) is essentially a “red herring”. What is important for the energy balance is the rate (in Watts) at which heat flows, so changing that rate changes the energy balance.
“Gavin et al will attack on the solar front because it’s where they can win. ”
I agree, you don’t need to know the answer to know what it isn’t.
Solar forcing will not explain temps any better than CO2 forcing, and if you make it solar vs CO2 then CO2 starts to look reasonable.
Most likely there is no one dominant factor over these minor short-term fluctuations.
Phil. (17:53:36) : I don’t see how Planck’s black body law prevents convection moving heat, or clouds from reflecting the Sun’s light. That isn’t logical.
Phil said: “It’s because you are so focused on getting it wrong! The poster to whom I was replying asserted that heat transfer from the surface was dominated by conduction and convection which is flat out wrong it’s mostly radiation as Planck’s Law shows.”
Phil, can you explain how Planck’s law means that molecular collisions happen less frequently in our quasi-black-body absorber than the emission of photons?
” Bill Illis (11:49:05) :
Kevin Cave 22:38:16) :
So the sun is irrelevent in the context of AGW is it? Here’s a very simple, but I believe effective, thought experiment… the sun’s been switched off.
I wonder how long it would take for the Earth to start getting intolerably cold, and whether the fraction of a percent of human-introduced carbon dioxide would make a blind bit of difference.
The temperature drops on average by 10C in the 12 hours after the Sun sets. So, on average, the Earth’s temperature drops by 0.83C each hour after the Sun is no longer beating down on the Earth each day.
By the middle of day 3, temps will have fallen by 40C and every river on the planet will be frozen right to the bottom (followed soon after by every lake and then the oceans). Land near the ocean at the equator will be moderated somewhat but everything else will already be frozen solid by day 3.
This example also provides a good explanation for the timelines of the greenhouse effect. Before the end of day 2, all of the 33 degree greenhouse effect has already been lost to space. There is no 30 year lag in the greenhouse effect – it is only a delay (or accumulation) of 36 hours in how long it takes for the Sun’s energy to escape into space. The energy random walks around the molecules in the ground and then in the atmosphere for an average of 18 hours before it escapes into space. (oceans and icesheets can also accumulate that energy so this where the lags come from but this accumulation will be much less than 10% of the total).”
—————–
Bill, excellent post, most interesting, as it also highlights a few things that I also find rather curious;
1) The way CO2 is treated by the AGW’ers to be some kind of Magic Mirror Molecule which acts as some extremely effective heat blanket around the planet.
2) Does any climate scientist take into account how much heat is supplied to the atmosphere from heat which is contained within the planet itself? I’m referring to geothermal heat from below the Earth’s crust. Now, my understanding of the current knowledge is that below the crust we have a viscous Mantle, a liquid Outer Core, and a solid Inner Core – all are very hot. The vast majority of the heat generated is fuelled by the decaying of radioactive isotopes like Potassium 40, Uranium 238, 235, and Thorium 232 contained within the mantle – something like 90% of the heat generated, I think the figure is.
This heat has to go somewhere – thermodynamics dictates it can’t just be being kept back by our thin crust – and if my understanding of basic physics is correct, the heat will escape the body of the planet and out into space – obviously the atmosphere is in the way.
I’m wondering if this heat has in any way some significant additional effect on the atmosphere and if so, if that additional input has been taken into account.
Joel Shore:
“And, what makes you believe that the models use a significantly different sensitivity for a given W/m^2 of solar forcing as they do for a given W/m^2 forcing of CO2? I don’t believe that they do.”
Beliefs are meaningless, what is the science?
“I am sure that we could find substances that would kill you at far lower concentrations. However, more to the point in this particular case: When ~99% of the atmosphere consists of diatomic molecules that are essentially transparent to infrared radiation, the remaining ~1% can have a disproportionate effect on the climate. ”
The problem is you can’t even seem to do basic math, in addition to putting your beliefs before science. 330/1,000,000 = .00033 or 0.033%, not ~1%, a factor of 30 difference. If there were as much as 1% of the atmosphere made up of CO2 (about 10,000 parts per million) then I am sure we would see some actual warming. The difference between 260 and 330 ppm is so miniscule as to be worthless.
Joel Shore,
“And, what makes you believe that the models use a significantly different sensitivity for a given W/m^2 of solar forcing as they do for a given W/m^2 forcing of CO2? I don’t believe that they do.”
One of the problems with the models is that they do treat solar and CO2 radiative forcing more equivilently than they should. For instance solar penetrates 10s of meters into the oceans, while the CO2 wavelengths are essentially a skin effect, a few microns, yet CO2 forcing is coupled to the whole mixing layer. The hubris of assuming the forcings are equivilent is perhaps best demonstrated by the use of a simple formula to convert senstivities derived from solar or aerosols to a sensitivity to CO2.
Phil. (17:53:36) :
It’s because you are so focused on getting it wrong!
Ascribing motivations is a two-edged sword… Careful with that axe, Eugene.
Kevin Cave 20:37
2) Does any climate scientist take into account how much heat is supplied to the atmosphere from heat which is contained within the planet itself?
This effect is supposed to be very, very little – much less than 1.0C.
But there is another similar effect that is not taken into account and that is the gravitational compression of the atmosphere itself. The weight of the atmosphere itself causes an increased temperature effect.
This is the force that causes stars to reach temperatures high enough for fusion to start. This is the force that makes the “atmosphere” of Jupiter near its core at 10,000 kelvin even though no sunlight gets down there and there is little greenhouse gases in Jupiter’s atmosphere. This is the force that explains about half (200C) of the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus which cannot be explained on the basis of solar input and greenhouse gases.
I haven’t seen anyone calculate the effect for Earth but it would not be a non-significant amount. Technically, the solar input and the greenhouse gas effect numbers do not make any sense as the temperature impact is ten times higher per watt for solar versus the greenhouse effect. So there are other factors which are not built into the theory.
Leif Svalgaard (16:53:00) :
Basically what they found was that the relationship between the height of the F2 layer and the sunspot number changed when Waldmeier took over in 1945. Same conclusion as I have come to.
Any one of these lines of evidence can be dismissed as a fluke or a data problem. However you can’t say that about all four of them collectively, so there is little reason to doubt the validity of this.
Thanks Leif, interesting stuff. Clearly, our measurements have got a lot more accurate since the discovery of radio, and as you say, there is much more uncertainty the further back we go.
One thing from the laymans paper which struck me was when you said Wolf got it right in 1848 (high cycle). Why would a careful man like Wolf get it right in 1858 but get it wrong at other times? It looks like 1875 was correctly counted too, so why would the intervening low cycle be under counted?
Even now there are problems, PMOD is dropping off the chart, and confounding baselines beyond the issue of it’s decoupling from sunspot (sunpore!) numbers.
Maybe you didn’t spot my post at (06:14:48) or maybe you don’t want to comment at the moment while the controversy between the PMOD and ACRIM/NEPTUNE teams is unresolved. It would only take a very small error (less than 0.3% ?) in the calibration corrections for the radiometer sensor’s early degradation to change the picture regarding the sun’s alleged lack of climatic effect completely it seems to me.
When controversies like this one arise it’s because there is sufficient uncertainty in the data that the proponents of both the “It’s the sun!” and the “it can’t be the sun!” agendas can derive evidence to support quite opposite conclusions from it.
Researchers are [slowly] moving their estimates of the long-term trend closer and closer to what I have been saying for quite some time now [that there is very little, if any, long-term trend]:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/Claus/IAMAS-2009/iamas-poster_SABF.pdf
Note the red curve in the last Figure [lower right, how flat it is.
In the past 10,000 years TSI [averaged over 40 years] has not varied more than [and mostly a lot less] than 1 W/m2 from its present value:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/Claus/TSI_longterm/reconstr_TSI_grl_rev_submitted.pdf
Consistent with what I have been saying the past several years. It seems that researchers are finally converging on a common view on this.
I have asked two questions very consistently over the past few days, and received a response from no one. Any takers?
1) Why is the climate sensitivity figure static? It was determined by Hansen using figures he derived from the last glacial maximum (@0.75°C). What reason is there to think our climate would act the same as the climate then? To visualize, why would it be X=0.75? There could be many different things that affected climate that looks like XY=0.75. If you are solving a million year old problem, and leave out one thing, you have a Y in your equation, and it must be accounted for.
2) What is the forcing (in Celsius) CO2 can provide without feedback (dependent on #1, of course)? I do mean the asymptote it approaches. It saturates and can no longer add to temperature after a point. What point, and what is the concentration needed to provide this point?
I will notice that everyone tries to explain the current warming, but what explanations are there for the cooling that led to the Ice Age scare?
Joel Shore (10:47:07) :
” Patagon has very incorrectly summarized this as saying: “It’s not in the model therefore it does not matter.” What it actually says is something like, “If this assumption were wrong, we would expect to find the forcing coefficient determined by regression for solar in the real data to be much larger than that for the forcing coefficient for GHGs. However, in actual fact, the regression coefficients for solar and GHGs forcings were similar to each other in both the ‘model data’ and the real data. This suggests that the real world is behaving like the model world…i.e., that there doesn’t appear to be any mysterious mechanism in the real world that is amplifying the effect of TSI variations (or depends on some other aspect of the solar irradiance such as just the UV component).” ”
Which is a flawed approach, since a similarity of effect does not imply a certainty of cause (equifinality).
Besides I am unconvinced by models which make a good job at fitting one variable, the temperature, but a very poor job at simulating other variables, such as humidity, precipitation, low latitude mid troposphere temperature, ocean heat, etc.
(See here just a few of the biases)
Bill Illis (22:03:07) :
Kevin Cave 20:37
2) Does any climate scientist take into account how much heat is supplied to the atmosphere from heat which is contained within the planet itself?
This effect is supposed to be very, very little – much less than 1.0C.
I came across an interesting paper recently that suggests the climate models have been underestimating the geothermal contribution to the oceanic heat balance
http://www.ocean-sci.net/5/203/2009/os-5-203-2009.pdf
I don’t know that I believe it any more than any of the other dubious efforts I’ve encountered in my rummaging about in this climate farce, but the authors do seem to generally use conservative assumptions and still arrive at the conclusion that the geothermal component is not negligible as the models have assumed it to be, but may in fact be comparable to downward mixing globally and regionally, particularly in the Northern Pacific, even more significant.
Leif Svalgaard (22:44:25) :
In the past 10,000 years TSI [averaged over 40 years] has not varied more than [and mostly a lot less] than 1 W/m2 from its present value:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/Claus/TSI_longterm/reconstr_TSI_grl_rev_submitted.pdf
Consistent with what I have been saying the past several years. It seems that researchers are finally converging on a common view on this.
I note that the paper is written by someone who stands accused of making ad hoc ‘adjustments’ to the ACRIM/NEPTUNE data when he never worked with the original project scientists or consulted them, and is submitted to a journal which returned Craig Loehle’s multiproxy reconstruction of the medieval warm period unread.
Leif Svalgaard (22:28:11) :
Researchers are [slowly] moving their estimates of the long-term trend closer and closer to what I have been saying for quite some time now [that there is very little, if any, long-term trend]:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/Claus/IAMAS-2009/iamas-poster_SABF.pdf
Note the red curve in the last Figure [lower right, how flat it is.
I note this is the same author’s document repository. I can’t download either at the moment because my mobile phone co prohibits ftp, damn their eyes.
Allan M (14:33:40) :
Phil:
Since when did CO2 have more than a limited (~15 microns) absorption,
For ever.
which is covered already by water vapour and other gases.
It isn’t
Even the IPCC couldn’t characterise CO2 as a “very strong absorber.”
They should.
——
That last remark is “noticable.” Fellows, we have a HERETIC in our midst, who dares to say that the IPCC, the climate gods, are not dealing out enough apocalyse and damnation.
As for the rest, I now know you are speaking from the wrong orifice. Just pray they DON’T tax toilet paper.
Thank you and goodnight.
Leif (11:13:18) claims that “the evidence [for GCR as a driver of global temperature] is very poor and doesn’t hold up very well when looked at in detail,” but it is his justifications for this statement that do not hold up:
“Cosmic ray intensity returns to the same level at each solar minimum, while temps do not.”
Of course they don’t. If you turn the flame up under a pot of water for ten minutes, then turn it down for one minute, and repeat over and over, then the temperature fluctuations should stabilize, so that the pot keeps returning to the same minimum temperature, but ONLY so long as you keep turning the flame up to the same level. Turn the flame up high one time and low the next and the bottom temperature will be low or high respectively.
Isn’t this obvious? If high solar-magnetic activity creates warming, then an especially active solar cycle will deliver a warmer planet to the next minimum than a less active cycle does.
More Leif:
The solar cycle is clear in GCRs [although only a few percent] but very weak in temps [0.1C], so the few percent variation of GCRs cause a tenth of a degree of [cyclical] temperature variation. Hardly something to write home about.
We all know that surface temperature variations on the time scale of the solar cycle are dominated by ocean oscillations, so the last thing anyone would expect is that the solar cycle would be clear in temps. Imagine a steady series of identical solar cycles. If magnetic effects are driving temperature then the smoothed temperature would remain constant while the ocean oscillations take the warming and cooling of average ocean temperature and spread it into irregular surface temperature fluctuations over multiple solar cycles. There wouldn’t have to be a clear variation over the solar cycle, even if GCR was doing a lot of work.
The exception would be if we were able to follow the average ocean temperature. That would allow us to see directly how much heat was being dumped into and taken out of the oceans over the solar cycle (making sea surface temperature oscillations irrelevant for measurement purposes). I’m not sure where Leif’s 0.1C figure comes from. If it is a fluctuation in average ocean temperature then it is actually a huge number, very much something to write home about. It would mean that the oceans were absorbing gigantic amounts of heat when the sun was active, and releasing gigantic amounts when the sun was quiet.
Since we don’t yet have much of a record for ocean average temperature, this is presumably not what Leif is talking about. His 0.1C is presumably a surface or atmospheric number, but the implications are not all that different.
Raise and lower the average temperature of the oceans by 0.1C over the solar cycle and the surface temperature oscillations will on average rise and fall by the same amount. It will be a noisy signal, but with large numbers the expected signal would equal the fluctuation in average ocean temperature, or at least the average for the part of the ocean that oscillates. If we can distinguish that signal at all, it is big, not small.
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
So you’re saying step back and look at a bigger picture ?
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) : noisy signal
This Richard Feynman video makes a good point. The aerosols formed from cosmic rays are real. But to think we can, at this point, have all factors sorted out in such a new finding, and how it exactly affects climate and temperatures, is like the insect in the pool knowing exactly why and how each wave is like it is.
Is there any warming coming from the core of the earth? Like a cycle ? Or is it completely stable forever?
He’s using “global climate model simulations for the 20th century to assess the contribution of solar forcing”. At least he’s admitting what he’s doing. Does he think that checking the models is how you find out about the real world?
Rather than analysing the models, so he can pretend it’s reality, why doesn’t he just ask the programmers what assumptions they used. His argument seems totally circular: Modellers, linked to the IPCC, program assumptions into their models; lets analyse the models to find their assumptions; we then draw conclusions about the real world.
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
Isn’t this obvious? If high solar-magnetic activity creates warming, then an especially active solar cycle will deliver a warmer planet to the next minimum than a less active cycle does.
Nice nail-head-hammer interface there Alex.
The oceans start gaining net heat at around 42-44 sunspots/month
Work out the differences + and – and add them cumulatively, add a dash of PDO and AMO to taste, calibrate to sea level rise and OHC, et voila, c’est pret a manger:
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo-2043-1.gif
Maybe I’m missing something, but to me “heat”, “work” and “radiation” are all forms of energy that can be inter-converted, provided the Laws of Thermodynamics are obeyed. This is how I see the problem:
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is only possible to transfer heat from a cold medium to a hot medium by supplying external work to the system. If the cold upper atmosphere could heat the warmer ground without some input of external work, then the Second Law would be violated. To avoid this, the argument is that
“outgoing LR radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by the GHG and some of this re-emitted radiation will come back down to the ground and have a warming effect.”
In the end, isn’t this warming effect of the ground a transfer of heat from a cold source to a hot source? Or because it is radiation it can be moved around and converted to heat without paying something for it?
Some will say that the required work to run this “refrigerator machine” comes from the Sun’s energy. Then, the total energy for warming would have to be subtracted from the energy that has already been used as work to run the “engine”. Is this done? If not, then this un-subtracted energy would be counted twice: to drive the “engine” and to warm the system.
Perhaps climatic modelers forgot this, and that is why atmospheric models predict the un-observed “hot spot” in the upper atmosphere, because they have that “free” energy to do it (The Hidden Heat?).
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
The exception would be if we were able to follow the average ocean temperature. That would allow us to see directly how much heat was being dumped into and taken out of the oceans over the solar cycle (making sea surface temperature oscillations irrelevant for measurement purposes). I’m not sure where Leif’s 0.1C figure comes from. If it is a fluctuation in average ocean temperature then it is actually a huge number, very much something to write home about. It would mean that the oceans were absorbing gigantic amounts of heat when the sun was active, and releasing gigantic amounts when the sun was quiet.
I calculated that the oceans absorbed and retained an additional 14×10^22J between 1993 and 2003. The official estimates put it much less, to stay in line with the 1.7W/m^2 of co2’s alleged forcing.
Leif checked and verified my calculations.
That’s equivalent to a 4W/m^2 forcing. Since mid 2000, the surface outgoing longwave radiation increased by 4W/m^2 – the oceans went into heat release mode, and are still emitting strongly now, because a new solar cycle hasn’t started up properly. That’s why we get el nino at or shortly after solar minimum. And el nino reduces the overall solar signal when the temperatures are averaged, because it mitigates the rise in ocean temp at cycle max.
Leif knows all this, I’ve explained it to him several times, but he still plays the ‘reset to 0’ card.
The satellite altimetry of sea level shows the oceans retain and release heat both on solar cycle length scales, and multidecadal scales during runs of high amplitude cycles. This is what my graph is based on, the accumulation and diminution of solar heat in the oceans. That’s what drives earth’s temperature, there’s your global warming.
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo-2043-1.gif
The curve from now to 2043 is what will happen to temperature if the next three cycles resemble the Dalton minimum.
jmc (03:52:47) :
Perhaps climatic modelers forgot this, and that is why atmospheric models predict the un-observed “hot spot” in the upper atmosphere, because they have that “free” energy to do it (The Hidden Heat?).
Congratulations, you have won a free NASA/IPCC oven.
http://1.2.3.10/bmi/cache.backpackinglight.com/backpackinglight/user_uploads/1225544577_08198.png
Try that link again
http://cache.backpackinglight.com/backpackinglight/user_uploads/1225544577_08198.png
Leif Svalgaard,
I think there are two reasons to question the weight you are placing on the Steinhilber paper. Their TSI calculation has limited range, since the solar open magnetic field can’t go below zero. Note this quote:
“Assuming the extreme case, namely that the open magnetic field is zero, from this equation follows that the lowest possible value of TSI lies 0.93Wm−2 below the PMOD composite in the year 1986.”
This looks a lot like a singularity for their method. All cases where the open magnetic field is near zero (such as at the Maunder Minimum) at the radius of the earth’s orbit may not correspond to the same TSI. In some cases, it may barely be zero at Earth’s orbit and others may be zero at Venus orbit or less. For example, just because you have a thermometer that can’t read below 96 degrees F, doesn’t mean there can’t be temperature’s below that.
Note also this quote:
“We made the rough estimate that the cycle amplitude in TSI scales linearly with the cycle average of the minima values of Br. With a scaling of 0.42Wm−2 nT−1 this assumption reproduces the amplitudes of the three observed cycles within ±11%, which is acceptable for the present reconstruction [for details about the cycle amplitudes see Fr¨ohlich, 2009].”
These three modern cycles are all from a period of high solar activity. It would really help to have data on cycles when the Sun is in it’s minimal mode, say a Dalton type minimum, so we could know if this scaling factor they calculate is valid for other solar activity modes. The authors’ even note, based upon their results that “the behaviour of solar activity during the grand minima is not just a lack of sunspots, but more complex.” In any case, we are not justified in extrapolating from just the three similar cycles that we have observed to other solar modes.
Yes!
Abstract The long-term fluctuation of the Schwabe period (LSP) of sunspots number (SSN) has been found to have high correlation with the variation of the length-of-day (LOD) in low frequency by using the data of smoothed monthly mean SSN during 1818–1999 and the method of wavelet transform. Analyses indicate that the maximum correlation coefficient between the series of LSP and LOD during 1892–1997 is about 0.9, with a time lag of about 5 years for the LOD related to the LSP. Though the maximum correlation coefficients between the LSP and the other two LOD series (1818–1997) reduce to about 0.4, they remain over the thresholds of 95% confidence level. This suggests new evidence for possible impact of solar activity on the long-term fluctuation of the earth rotation.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/d71wm65u6v162348/
Bill Illis (22:03:07) : Once the atomosphere is initially compressed it would get hot. But after it reaches equilibrium, the heat would dissiapate.
Allan M (01:42:41) : Phil is like the guy with a hammer – everything looks like a nail. Phil has a spectrometer – every problem looks like radiation.
Dave Wendt (00:36:36) :
Thanks for the link.
I was looking for such a report.
Every contribution to ocean heat content undermines the Anthropogenic Warming Doctrine.
This is a serious report and it must be listed with all other reports that debunk the AGW semi science.
tallbloke (01:25:47) :
I note that the paper is written by someone who stands accused of making ad hoc ‘adjustments’ to the ACRIM/NEPTUNE data
I know Claus Froehlich very well. He is a world authority on TSI, and does good work and his adjustments are argued not just made ad hoc. One can disagree with his assessment, that is another matter.
On PMOD dropping off the chart: I have posted on this before, it is due to a calibration error of PMOD [how to compensate for degradation].
One thing from the laymans paper which struck me was when you said Wolf got it right in 1848 (high cycle). Why would a careful man like Wolf get it right in 1848 [you had ‘1858’?] but get it wrong at other times? It looks like 1875 was correctly counted too, so why would the intervening low cycle be under counted?
Who knows. Sunspot areas measured by Warren De La Rue in the 1860s from photographs of the Sun also show a high cycle.
Leif, so generally we should assume the Sun itself is varying by a very small amount over recent time-scales.
But the Milankovitch cycles are still in operation resulting in a changing level of the TSI received by the Earth (at least on a seasonal scale).
For instance, during the Holocene Optimum period from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, the axial tilt receached its highest point in the cycle (24.5 degrees) and, during the summer months for both hemispheres, the solar radiation received would have been enough to melt more snow and ice at high latititudes and thus, lower the albedo.
The axial tilt is moving back to the minimum now and will reach that low level of 22.1 or 22.4 degrees in about 8,000 years.
Before the last five or six 100,000 year ice age cycles, the ice ages followed the axial tilt cycle of 41,000 years.
There is another small change in the axial tilt called nutation which has a period of 18.6 years which could thus be affecting the high latititude seasonal solar insolation.
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
We all know that surface temperature variations on the time scale of the solar cycle are dominated by ocean oscillations, so the last thing anyone would expect is that the solar cycle would be clear in temps.
This is what I’m saying: the empirical evidence is not there. One can believe in the mechanism and try to justify why the evidence is hidden in the deep ocean and all that may be correct, but that is different from saying that there are clear correlations with temps. Remember that the mantra goes that the observations show a direct and immediate link [what Svensmark claims].
New peer reviewed report:
None of the late 20th century warming and cooling can be attributed to humans:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2117/PeerReviewed-Study-Rocks-Climate-Debate-Nature-not-man-responsible-for-recent-global-warminglittle-or-none-of-late-20th-century-warming-and-cooling-can-be-attributed-to-humans
tallbloke (01:25:47) :
Why would a careful man like Wolf get it right in 1848 [you had ‘1858’?] but get it wrong at other times? It looks like 1875 was correctly counted too, so why would the intervening low cycle be under counted?
Here you can follow the ‘evolution’ of the Wolf Number:
http://www.leif.org/research/Evolution%20of%20the%20Wolf%20Number.png
As you can see, it has a history of constant tinkering and adjustments. The years 1857, 1861, 1874, 1882 refer to the years when Wolf actually published revised versions of his table.
Bill Illis (05:59:24) :
Leif, so generally we should assume the Sun itself is varying by a very small amount over recent time-scales.
Recent meaning 10,000 years, yes.
But the Milankovitch cycles are still in operation resulting in a changing level of the TSI received by the Earth (at least on a seasonal scale).
Yes, and are probably responsible for the glaciations. But one must no conflate that with variations of solar activity and the Sun itself.
tallbloke:
Sneak preview:
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo.gif
Great graph but what do the red and blue lines represent? HCUT and ??? The graph is more useful if an expanded explanation is included with the graph.
Thanks
jmc says:
The Second Law says that the NET flow of heat is from the warmer to the colder body and not the other way around. And indeed, if you work it out, there is more heat flowing from the earth to the upper atmosphere than flowing from the upper atmosphere to the earth. The reason that the earth still ends up warmer than it would be if there were no greenhouse gases (and hence the atmosphere were transparent to IR radiation) is that in that case, all of the radiation emitted by the earth would escape into space with none of it coming back. The role of the IR-absorbing atmosphere is to send some of it back but it still sends back less than it receives.
Leif Svalgaard (06:01:14) :
Alec Rawls (02:10:44) :
We all know that surface temperature variations on the time scale of the solar cycle are dominated by ocean oscillations, so the last thing anyone would expect is that the solar cycle would be clear in temps.
This is what I’m saying: the empirical evidence is not there. One can believe in the mechanism and try to justify why the evidence is hidden in the deep ocean and all that may be correct, but that is different from saying that there are clear correlations with temps.
Fair enough, but as I said to Alex, it’s not all hidden in the deep ocean, some of it gets lost in the averaging of temps across the cycle, because el nino is a deeper ocean response to solar min and the nearer surface heating which took place six years earlier at solar max.
Now to prove it… You’re good at goading people onwards I’ll give you that. 😉
Gail Combs (07:01:08) :
tallbloke:
Sneak preview:
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=ssnc-pdo-amo.gif
Great graph but what do the red and blue lines represent? HCUT and ??? The graph is more useful if an expanded explanation is included with the graph.
Thanks
I thought no-one would ever ask, thank you.
HADcru sea surface temp in red. The blue curve is my calculation from sunspot numbers (as a proxy for TSI) of the accumulation of ocean heat content during times of higher solar activity (Most of C20th) and loss during solar minimum and times of low solar activity.
The obvious gaps between the red and blue curves are what I’m working on at the moment, and I believe I just found the answer I was looking for. I got a clue the other day when someone posted a graph of the troposphere using the amsu raw data, which shows 0.4C swings in global air temperature on a monthly basis.
More revealed soon, back to work.
David says:
First of all, it is not a million-year-old problem. The last glacial maximum was only 15,000 or so years ago. So, we have very good ice core data giving us the concentrations of greenhouse gases and also good proxies for the temperature in the ice core and in other places (like ocean sediments). We also know the orbital parameters of the earth back then. And, things that change on a geologic timescale, such as the locations of continents and mountain ranges, are essentially the same as they are now.
The estimate of the climate sensitivity is derived by including all of the effects that we know about (difference in orbital parameters, change in albedo due to the presence of ice sheets, change in greenhouse gas concentrations, and change in aerosol loading in the atmosphere). One can never really say for sure in science that one is not leaving something out…but I don’t know of any serious proposals of what the missing forcing could be (and it would have to be large compared to these other forcings in order to significantly alter the conclusion).
All of our understanding of the feedbacks in the climate system suggests that, while climate sensitivity might change somewhat as the climate changes, it will not change sufficiently rapidly that this estimate from the Last Glacial Maximum to now won’t be a good approximation of what would happen as you warm from the current climate. The one thing one could in principle argue would change is that there is less ice to melt now as there was then; however, as Jim Hansen has pointed out, this estimate of the climate sensitivity as being 0.75 C / (W/m^2) considers the change in albedo due to the ice sheets to be a forcing not a feedback…And, so Hansen argues that in our present “experiment” (where any such change would be considered to be a feedback not a forcing) should actually have a larger climate sensitivity, at least on timescales long enough that the disintegration of land ice on Greenland and West Antarctica can occur. [Hansen calls the 0.75 C / (W/m^2) value the Charney sensitivity and argues that the full sensitivity including the ice sheet feedbacks could be about double this, although some other scientists seems to be skeptical that it will be that much higher.]
Carl Chapman says:
As I noted in my post from 10:06:48 on 22 July, they don’t just use climate model simulations, they also look at the actual data. In particular, using the climate model simulations allows them to test different data analysis methods for extracting the contributions due to each forcing from the temperature record in a case where you know the “right answer” (because you can run the climate model with various forcings turned on or off).
Leif Svalgaard (05:57:07) :
On PMOD dropping off the chart: I have posted on this before, it is due to a calibration error of PMOD [how to compensate for degradation].
It’s the degradation that occurs as soon as the sensors are put into service that I think may hide the missing 3/4 of the solar forcing. My rough estimate is that a 0.3% error in calibration would cover the gap. I won’t argue it with you now, because I don’t know enough, but the oceans were getting an additional 4W/m^2 during 1993-2003, and the present estimate of TSI only accounts for around ~0.45W/m^2(PMOD) or ~0.9W/m^2(ACRIM) of the elevation of solar cycles 22-23 above the level where the oceans start to gain heat.
A good chunk of it may come from Nir Shaviv’s terrestrial amplification of around 8x, he suspects it’s clouds. I’m not sure, but I do know it’s coming from somewhere, and since downwelling longwave doesn’t heat the ocean, it ain’t co2.
Joel Shore (07:10:01) : “The role of the IR-absorbing atmosphere is to send some of it back but it still sends back less than it receives.”
Then why do the recent satellite global temp data show cooling or at worse flat over the past several years?
Such a shame how this thread has degenerated into those who want to question trivial points about AGW that are probably correct but not alarming, and the advocates who want to defend those points because it is easy, and they can misdirect that the point they can make points to alarm…
tallbloke (07:38:45) :
It’s the degradation that occurs as soon as the sensors are put into service that I think may hide the missing 3/4 of the solar forcing.
The problem with this is that one tries to compensate for the degradation. There are several ways of doing this. The basic principle is this: have several identical sensors, one that measures all the time, one that measures half of the time, one that measures very rarely [e.g. once a month]. When not measuring, the sensor window is shut and no degradation occurs, thus the sensors have different degradation as a function of how often they measure. This allows the degradation to be plotted as a function of exposure time. Extrapolate the curve to zero exposure time and you have overcome the degradation.
Another way [SORCE] is to compare with a selection of non-varying stars. So degradation is supposedly under control, but it is still a difficult measurement.
What about sea ice during the last glacial maximum? Ocean processes were the same?
James Hansen picks a climate sensitivity number that is large enough to allow him to argue that climate catastrophe is right around the corner. But Hansen also lies; he encourages lawbreaking, he manipulates the GISS numbers, he constantly changes history, and he takes huge amounts of money from individuals and organizations that are promoting an AGW agenda, despite what the real world shows.
It is wrong for the government to continue employing anyone so blatantly unethical, but there is nothing I can do about that. What I can do is refuse to accept Hansen’s artificially jacked up climate sensitivity number.
For all anyone knows, climate sensitivity could be zero. Prove it isn’t.
Joel Shore (07:33:50) : “As I noted in my post from 10:06:48 on 22 July, they don’t just use climate model simulations, they also look at the actual data.”
Is GISS used for this?
Where could we get a greenhouse farmer using an open greenhouse?
Smokey (08:00:07) :
For all anyone knows, climate sensitivity could be zero. Prove it isn’t.
Smokey, you’re good at getting papers, do you have this one.
How declining aerosols and rising greenhouse gases forced rapid warming in Europe since the 1980s
Rolf Philipona
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, Aerological Station, Payerne, Switzerland
Klaus Behrens
Meteorologisches Observatorium Lindenberg, Deutscher Wetterdienst, Lindenberg, Germany
Christian Ruckstuhl
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Mainland Europe’s temperature rise of about 1°C since the 1980s is considerably larger than expected from anthropogenic greenhouse warming. Here we analyse shortwave and longwave surface forcings measured in Switzerland and Northern Germany and relate them to humidity- and temperature increases through the radiation- and energy budget. Shortwave climate forcing from direct aerosol effects is found to be much larger than indirect aerosol cloud forcing, and the total shortwave forcing, that is related to the observed 60% aerosol decline, is two to three times larger than the longwave forcing from rising anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Almost tree quarters of all the shortwave and longwave forcing energy goes into the turbulent fluxes, which increases atmospheric humidity and hence the longwave forcing by water vapour feedback. With anthropogenic aerosols now reaching low and stable values in Europe, solar forcing will subside and future temperature will mainly rise due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming.
Received 15 October 2008; accepted 5 December 2008; published 20 January 2009.
Citation: Philipona, R., K. Behrens, and C. Ruckstuhl (2009), How declining aerosols and rising greenhouse gases forced rapid warming in Europe since the 1980s, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L02806, doi:10.1029/2008GL036350.
Smokey (08:00:07) : I’m not one to agree with Hansen’s numbers but come one “climate sensitivity could be zero”? That’s REALLY impossible (it would mean that no amount of perturbation of the climate system could ever cause any change at all, not even a small amount. That is plainly falsified by the geological record showing rather large changes. That does NOT mean that those changes correspond to large sensitivities (Shore et al’s argument that it does is BS) but it does rule out zero.
Another interesting disclosure from the Benestad and Schmidt paper is that the model climate appears to be in a different mode at CO2 doubling. Note the much lower transient climate sensitivity at the time of CO2 doubling:
“The equilibrium climate sensitivity of GISS ModelE is 2.7C for a doubled atmospheric concentration of CO2, whereas the transient response at the time of CO2 doubling in a 1% increasing CO2 experiment is 1.6C”
I hypothesize that the higher 2.7 C figure is an erroneous artifact due to the positive surface albedo bias found in all the AR4 models by Andreas Roesch. He investigated the well known high lattitude problems that the models had matching the observations of the 1990s and also focused on the surface albedo in general. Most of the models albedo bias was due to a delayed spring snow melt and large snow cover area, larger snow cover fractions and due to poor parameterization of the shadows cast on the snow by darker tree “stems’. The correlated positive surface albedo bias in found in all the AR4 models when globally and annually averaged, translates to between 3 and 4 Watts/m^2. This is energy present in the actual climate, but not in the models. But the models were advancing their snow melts with increasing warming, just not as fast as was actually happening in the decade of the 90s. So models that are claimed to “match” the 20th century warming, will eventually, over the course of their projections, and the CO2 doubling sensitivity runs, will catch up and add over 3 W/m^2, in addition to whatever increase in forcing there is from their CO2 scenerios. This is energy that should have been in their climates already. If i recall correctly, the model that Gavin Schmidt is using in this paper, had a surface albedo bias that was better than the average for all the models, so the effect might not be quite as dramatic. I would not be surprised if it were still large enough to explain the discrepency between the CO2 doubling sensitivity and the transient sensitivity in the climate at the doubling time.
To give the 3W/m^2 some perspective, the energy imbalance during the 1998 en nino year was only about 0.75W/m^2.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005JD006473.shtml
Smokey (08:00:07) :
Or this one.
Atmospheric water vapor and surface humidity strongly influence the radiation budget at the Earth’s surface. Water vapor not only absorbs solar radiation in the atmosphere, but as the most important greenhouse gas it also largely absorbs terrestrial longwave radiation and emits part of it back to the surface. Using surface observations, like longwave downward radiation (LDR), surface specific humidity (q) and GPS derived integrated water vapor (IWV), we investigated the relation between q and IWV and show how water vapor influences LDR. Radiation data from the Alpine Surface Radiation Budget (ASRB) network, surface humidity from MeteoSwiss and GPS IWV from the STARTWAVE database are used in this analysis. Measurements were taken at four different sites in Switzerland at elevations between 388 and 3584 m above sea level and for the period 2001 to 2005. On monthly means the analysis shows a strong linear relation between IWV and q for all-sky as well as for cloud-free situations. The slope of the IWV-q linear regression line decreases with increasing altitude of the station. This is explained by the faster decrease of IWV than of q with height. Both q and IWV are strongly related with LDR measured at the Earth’s surface. LDR can be parameterized with a power function, depending only on humidity. The estimation of LDR with IWV has an uncertainty of less than 5% on monthly means. At lower altitudes with higher humidity, the sensitivity of LDR to changes in q and IWV is smaller because of saturation of longwave absorption in the atmospheric window.
Received 28 July 2006; accepted 27 September 2006; published 2 February 2007.
Citation: Ruckstuhl, C., R. Philipona, J. Morland, and A. Ohmura (2007), Observed relationship between surface specific humidity, integrated water vapor, and longwave downward radiation at different altitudes, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D03302, doi:10.1029/2006JD007850.
timetochooseagain,
The climate sensitivity couldn’t be zero, but there is enough uncertainty, that the net feedback could be close to zero or even negative, even though all the models have the feedback as positive. The unknowns in just the tropical cloud cover dwarf the phenomenon of interest. There are probably 10s of W/m^2 of error, when the energy imbalance thought responsible for the warming is less than 1W/m^2. The correlated model surface albedo bias i discussed above is already on the order of 4 times the energy imbalance. Unfortunately correlated error defeats part of the purpose of combining model ensembles, the hoped for cancellation of random errors. All of the AR4 models are correlated in having the net tropical cloud feedback as positive. We don’t have the kind of observations that can resolve the issue, although recently published work (by Christy, et al?) suggests that the net feedback might actually be negative.
RE: Joel Shore (07:33:50) :
**As I noted in my post from 10:06:48 on 22 July, they don’t just use climate model simulations, they also look at the actual data. In particular, using the climate model simulations allows them to test different data analysis methods for extracting the contributions due to each forcing from the temperature record in a case where you know the “right answer” (because you can run the climate model with various forcings turned on or off).**
That is one of the problems – the “right answer” may not be correct. As in they “Know” CO2 along with “positive” forcing is responsible for most of the heat gain.
Hmmm – 321 comments… this is why I like WUWT.
Thing is, the planetary atmosphere has many ways to achieve thermal equilibrium. We’ve observed both heating and cooling mechanisms, and even non-science oriented people comprehend the concept of oscillation. Unless someone plants a sun behind us, we will always have a reliable heat source on the day side and a reliable sink on the night side. Overall, what leaves is what arrives. This planet has an overall temperature that is dependent on 1AU around this specific star. It doesn’t matter WHICH mechanism is in play, there will only ever be one temperature range.
It will always amuse me that some people so fervently believe that one small factor can possibly bump the entire system out of equilibrium. Whatever did this poor planet do in years past when REAL problems hit it, like giant projectiles, huge volcanoes, different atmospheric make up, etc.?
Heck, I’m sitting in an air conditioned office that is alternately just slightly cooler than I’m comfortable with and slightly warmer. Every time it’s slightly away from where I want it to be, I don’t delude myself into thinking I need to run over to the thermostat and mess around with it, and I’ve never once felt the need to chart the temperature trend using straight lines that continue indefinitely either upward or downward, and I’m definitely not going to kill my personal finances by calling in an HVAC company to replace the A/C unit. Although, if I really stretch it, I could probably begin charting temperatures in here, altering the past record to show a misfunctioning HVAC system, and convince the building owner that he needs to replace it…
Forgive my musings here, but exactly what has to be wrong with your logic to believe that a trace gas has any hope at all of causing “runaway” anything, other than runaway: spending, speculation, name-calling, argument, strife, economic suicide, etc.?
CodeTech (10:12:17) :
“It will always amuse me that some people so fervently believe that one small factor can possibly bump the entire system out of equilibrium”.
CodeTech,
The problem is ignorance and plain stupidity high jacked by politics.
I think it’s hardly amusing, it’s embarrassing.
“”” africangenesis (09:35:59) :
timetochooseagain,
The climate sensitivity couldn’t be zero, but there is enough uncertainty, that the net feedback could be close to zero or even negative, even though all the models have the feedback as positive. The unknowns in just the tropical cloud cover dwarf the phenomenon of interest. There are probably 10s of W/m^2 of error, when the energy imbalance thought responsible for the warming is less than 1W/m^2. The correlated model surface albedo bias i discussed above is already on the order of 4 times the energy imbalance. Unfortunately correlated error defeats part of the purpose of combining model ensembles, the hoped for cancellation of random errors. All of the AR4 models are correlated in having the net tropical cloud feedback as positive. We don’t have the kind of observations that can resolve the issue, although recently published work (by Christy, et al?) suggests that the net feedback might actually be negative. “””
Well one or two simple observations might be worthy of note.
#1 The ground/surface can easily warm the atmosphere (via conduction, LW radiation absortion (GHG). The atmosphere on the other hand has only one way to warm the ground/surface, and that is by downward LW re-radiation from the very low power atmosphere; and that downward LW does not do much surface warming since it leads to a lot of ocean evaporation fromt the very surface which is where the LW is captured.
#2 When a cloud passes in front of the sun, it ALWAYS cools down in the shadow zone, since the cloud tops reflect a lot of solar spectrum energy back out into space (albedo increase) and then the cloud’s optical density absorbs additional solar spectrum energy; so net effect is that less solar spectrum energy reaches the surface; so the surface gets cooler.
Yes the energy captured by the atmosphere may warm the atmosphere; but as we have already seen from #1; the warmer atmospheree is not very effective in warming the surface; whereas a warmer surface is quite effective in warming the atmopshere.
Ergo, the effect of clouds is ALWAYS negative feedback (and very strong negative feedback at that).
No high clouds at night do not warm the surface; it is the warmer surface that is the very cause of those high clouds; so that purported positive feedback cloud effect is a fraud.
A simple mental exercise of considering the results of having either zero water vapor in the atmosphere, and hence zero clouds; or it’s opposite of solid cloud cover all over the earth from the ground to 50,0000 feet (pick a number); should convince anyone, that water vapor produces positive feedback atmospheric warming; but water in cloud form produces negative feedback surface cooling.
Either of those two starting assumptions will lead to an intermediate state with partial cloud cover; pretty much like we have now; the two end points are quite unstable.
Jim (05:13:31) :
“Allan M (01:42:41) : Phil is like the guy with a hammer ”
A device which used to be referred to, where I come from in the North of England, as a “Manchester Screwdriver.”
africangenesis (09:35:59) : and George E. Smith (11:20:50) : I don’t disagree, however my points is merely that a zero sensitivity is totally unphysical. A small one isn’t.
Just what’s the number? Dunno. I think that Lindzen and Spencer have been independently looking at satellite data to find evidence on feedbacks and are coming to pretty much identical results-about half a degree per CO2 doubling (my own estimate would actually be a little higher-but not much, and well within their margins of error). But that raises other questions: is the sensitivity constant? Does it very with timescale, or with climate itself? Glacial climates seem to be far less stable than interglacial-that is, they have large fluctuations. Cooling down from the last big period of really warm climate, I can’t remember the name right now (paleocene?), there were no glacial cycles at all, and as things cooled down, the magnitude of the cycles suddenly began to increase-which suggests to me the possibility that warmer climates are more robust to perturbation than cooler ones. But that’s a subject about which I have less knowledge than some other things, so maybe some geologists could comment on that.
And of course other questions, too, probably, but none that spring to mind immediately.
“Rubbish, most of the loss from the surface is IR radiation unless you’ve found a way to bypass Planck’s law of blackbody radiation!”
You got the wrong place. You are talking about the MOON. After you get into a car in the south that has its windows closed then explain to me again how conduction and convection do not count when talking of heat transfer in an atmosphere.
The Warmist view neglects the excitation of CO2 electrons by direct sunlight. Some of the excitation energy must be from the sun. Time wise, during the day, the sun’s energy would have first priority since the energy goes sun-air-earth and then back to air. Only CO2 molecules not at a high energy state already would be available to be excited by energy radiated back from the earth. Second the amount of infrared energy from the sun is much greater than that from the earth.
At this point the PPM of CO2 that absorbs earth radiated energy is much less than the total 400 PPM. The fact that infrared energy is absorbed by “green house gases” is not in dispute. The origin of the energy and the direction of net energy transfer is.
Let us look at nature:
At the same latitude the climate with a high humidity will be moderated compared to a desert. Very high day time temperatures followed by low night time temperatures are the norm in low humidity. This means that the action of the greenhouse gases is to SLOW the energy transfer from the sun. (NOT the energy trans fer from the earth) Moisture capture some of the incoming energy from the sun during the day thereby lowering the day time temperatures.
“Water vapor absorbs heat and releases it slowly….At night, when the humidity is high, the atmosphere retains more heat, and nighttime temperatures stay somewhat high. On dry nights, however…., the atmosphere cools off rapidly.” This is straight from a Warmist paper the full quote is below.
“…Water vapor is the main reason for the greenhouse effect, in which certain gases in the atmosphere allow sunlight to pass through, but absorb heat released from the Earth (when sunlight strikes the Earth it changes from visible light to infrared radiation, or heat). Without this effect the Earth would be about 33°C cooler than it is at present (that is, 60°F cooler). Human-caused emissions, leading to increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases in the atmosphere may accelerate the greenhouse effect. Water vapor absorbs heat and releases it slowly. At night, when the humidity is high, the atmosphere retains more heat, and nighttime temperatures stay somewhat high. On dry nights, however, with little water vapor to absorb heat, the atmosphere cools off rapidly….” http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ce-Cr/Climate-Moderator-Water-as-a.html
The fallacy is neglecting the role of sunlight in warming up greenhouse gases during the day and attributing the warming to black body radiation from the earth ONLY. The following “Water vapor absorbs heat and releases it slowly” shows it is energy absorbed from the sun during the day and released slowly at night that is the true “atmospheric greenhouse effect”. By falsifying the ratio of the suns infrared energy compared to that of the earth’s, Warmists make it look like it is blackbody radiation instead of daytime sunlight that is actually transferring energy to the “greenhouse gases” and the gases then transferring the energy back to the earth causing a net gain in the earth’s temperature. “…On dry nights, however, with little water vapor to absorb heat, the atmosphere cools off rapidly….” even infers this is happening at night.
This breaks the second law of thermodynamics. Yes there is a slowing down of the transfer of energy but it is the slowing of the energy transfer from the sun to the greenhouse gases to the earth and NOT the earth to the greenhouse gases and back to the earth. (Does Conservation of Energy allow you to count that same photon twice???)
Also neglecting the effect of water (atmospheric and ocean) and the sun, and then stating CO2 is the primary driver of climate is absolutely the stupidest thing I have ever heard. If I construct a model holding everything constant except CO2 of course I can prove CO2 is the major driver of climate.
africangenesis says:
You have misunderstood their statement. It has nothing to do with being in a different mode. It has to do with the fact that equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate response are different animals. The former is the eventual response of the climate to a doubling of CO2 whereas the latter is the temperature change that has occurred at the time when CO2 has doubled when increased at a certain rate (conventionally 1% per year). I.e., it basically just represents the fact that the climate system is out-of-equilibrium when CO2 is increasing that fast so the full climate change has not yet been realized at the time that the CO2 reaches double its pre-industrial value.
Gerald Machnee says:
The right answer is right by definition. It may not be the right answer in the real world…but it is the right answer within the model. And, if a data analysis technique (such as that of Scafetta and West) gets the wrong answer when applied to model data, it is unlikely to get the right answer when applied to real data. If a data analysis technique gets the right answer when applied to model data, then that can give us some confidence that it will get the right answer when applied to real data, although this is of course not guaranteed.
Nogw (08:36:54) :
“Where could we get a greenhouse farmer using an open greenhouse?”
Easy just up the road from me here in the North Carolina. The greenhouses are plastic sheeting over a PVC pipe frame and as soon as it gets warm enough the farmer remove the plastic sheeting.(usually in stages to allow harding off)
These greenhouses allow radiative/conductive heating during the winter and convection cooling during the summer. If you do not use convection cooling you will cook your veggies before they have flowered!
Mike Lorrey said:
Fine. I was just being polite. You can replace, “I don’t believe that they do” with “They don’t” if it will make you happier.
I can do basic math just fine. The fact is that there are other non-diatomic-molecules that absorb IR in addition to CO2, the most prevalent being water (which accounts for most of that ~1%…the reason why it is so approximate is that water vapor concentration varies significantly within the atmosphere).
As for the difference between the pre-industrial levels of ~280ppm and the current level of 385ppm being “so miniscule as to be worthless,” could you please provide us with scientific evidence that this is actually the case? Have you done the calculations for what the radiative forcing due to this change is, for example?
Joel Shore:
“And, if a data analysis technique (such as that of Scafetta and West) gets the wrong answer when applied to model data, it is unlikely to get the right answer when applied to real data. If a data analysis technique gets the right answer when applied to model data, then that can give us some confidence that it will get the right answer when applied to real data, although this is of course not guaranteed.”
===
OK. So when a model gets consistently wrong answers for most of the period is question (1909 through 2009 – when the models get the correct answer compared to CO2 levels for only 25 years of 100) – when do we throw out the artificial and contrived model input guesses?
How long do the CO2-radiative forcing modelers get to “guess wrong” before they accept the fact that their simplified theories and atrociously inept programming approximations are simply wrong?
Robert A Cooke PE: I have no idea what you are going on about and how it relates to what I said.
Gail Combs (12:27:10) :
Fine comment, succinct and clear. I learnt a few things there.
Leif (06:01:14) : Remember that the mantra goes that the observations show a direct and immediate link [what Svensmark claims].
Well, that is part of the mantra, and Svensmark says he arrives at it by controlling for ocean oscillations and volcanic aerosols (his figure 2). I don’t know how well he is actually able to control for ocean oscillations, but to the extent that he is, the obscuring effects of the oscillations are overcome and his results are valid.
The rest of the mantra is that the GCR-temperature correlation is also visible on other time scales. Suppose that temperature fluctuations over individual solar cycles are profoundly obscured by ocean oscillations that can’t be well controlled for. There are still fluctuations between high and low solar cycles, or between multiple high and multiple low cycles, that would create temperature fluctuations that span across the ocean oscillations and hence can be seen in the smoothed temperature series.
Shaviv cites Bond and Neff as getting the clearest results over these time scales (decadal, centennial, millennial). As noted earlier, Shaviv himself found a high degree of correlation between temperature and transit through the spiral arms. That this signal is also readable through ocean oscillations within the time scale of individual solar cycles is just icing on the cake.
Of course all of this is still formative and shows a high degree of uncertainty, but this uncertainty is relative. The question is which of the different possible explanations best fit the evidence, and the alternative explanations have bigger problems. The TSI and CO2 explanations both depend on high climate sensitivity, which seems to be directly contradicted by the physical evidence. The GCR temperature hypothesis may not be as strongly evidenced as we would like but it is not in contradiction to any clear evidence. That makes it the clear favorite in my assessment. “What GCR effect?” Right there: that horse way out front.
Tallbloke:
Interesting notes on the amount of energy flowing into and out of the oceans. One question: why does the Pacific going into energy release mode create an El Nino? Fits with the recent news of a new El Nino forming, but it seems counter-intuitive to me. If the top water cools and sinks, any water that takes its place from below would not be particularly warm. Is El Nino an inversion effect, or a migration effect?
am sure that we could find substances that would kill you at far lower concentrations. However, more to the point in this particular case: When ~99% of the atmosphere consists of diatomic molecules that are essentially transparent to infrared radiation, the remaining ~1% can have a disproportionate effect on the climate.
I grant that small amounts of a given substance can have a great effect. But this is consistent with the thesis that it is the very first few tens ppm of CO2 that have nearly all the effect. And that from here on (~385ppm), if not long since, it is highly diminishing-to-negligible returns.
The question is at what point in the curve are we?
And, of course, according to the IPCC, the direct effects of CO2 are slight–the devil is in the feedbacks. And it looks as if it’s a negative devil after all.
Allan M (01:42:41) :
Allan M (14:33:40) :
That last remark is “noticable.” Fellows, we have a HERETIC in our midst, who dares to say that the IPCC, the climate gods, are not dealing out enough apocalyse and damnation.
As for the rest, I now know you are speaking from the wrong orifice. Just pray they DON’T tax toilet paper.
Thank you and goodnight.
Can’t handle the science so you resort to ad hominem, seems like the British education system is not what it was.
evanmjones:
Since the effect is approximately logarithmic in concentration, it just means that the natural way to talk about the effect is in terms of a given fractional change in concentration (such as a doubling) rather than a given absolute change in concentration. It is a property of a logarithmic function that log(f*x)-log(x) is independent of x.
While that may be true from most of the evidence posted on this website, I don’t think it is true from most of the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature, which rather points to feedbacks positive enough to increase the direct effect by a factor of about 1.5 to 4.
Gail Combs says:
I am quite confident that climate models already include the absorption of the IR part of the solar spectrum. It certainly appears in this schematic diagram by Trenberth: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200904/images/trenberth-fig1.gif
However, I don’t think your point about priority makes sense. At any particular moment in time, there are photons in all the various stages of the process that you describe. Furthermore, do you have any reason to believe that the radiation field is intense enough that the saturation effect that you speak of (where lots of CO2 molecules are in a high energy state) is a significant effect?
Basically, your whole thesis amounts to a claim that scientists are doing the radiative calculations incorrectly with absolutely no evidence presented that this is in fact the case.
RE: Joel Shore (13:05:14) :
**The right answer is right by definition. It may not be the right answer in the real world…but it is the right answer within the model. And, if a data analysis technique (such as that of Scafetta and West) gets the wrong answer when applied to model data, it is unlikely to get the right answer when applied to real data. If a data analysis technique gets the right answer when applied to model data, then that can give us some confidence that it will get the right answer when applied to real data, although this is of course not guaranteed.**
In science you cannot define the right answer as “by definition”. You have to prove it and it has to be replicable. The “right answer within the model” is for dreamers. Something like “The science is in” also does not hold water. You better get into the real world! We are waiting for right answers.
Jim (19:13:05) :
Phil. (17:53:36) : I don’t see how Planck’s black body law prevents convection moving heat, or clouds from reflecting the Sun’s light. That isn’t logical.
It doesn’t it just is more effective at transporting heat, let’s see your analysis showing how much non-radiative heat transfer there is from the surface to the atmosphere, do it for the night time to make it simpler.
Jim (05:13:31) :
Allan M (01:42:41) : Phil is like the guy with a hammer – everything looks like a nail. Phil has a spectrometer – every problem looks like radiation.
When I’m considering a planet which can only exchange heat with its surroundings via radiation you betcha!
Gail Combs (12:27:10) :
“Rubbish, most of the loss from the surface is IR radiation unless you’ve found a way to bypass Planck’s law of blackbody radiation!”
You got the wrong place. You are talking about the MOON. After you get into a car in the south that has its windows closed then explain to me again how conduction and convection do not count when talking of heat transfer in an atmosphere.
Where did you get a car that has windows transparent to IR in the 5-20μm range, it must have cost you a fortune! When you park your car in the south with it’s window closed you let in the SW but prevent heat loss by LW radiation and convection.
The Warmist view neglects the excitation of CO2 electrons by direct sunlight. Some of the excitation energy must be from the sun.
Very little since it does cover the right wavelength range.
Time wise, during the day, the sun’s energy would have first priority since the energy goes sun-air-earth and then back to air. Only CO2 molecules not at a high energy state already would be available to be excited by energy radiated back from the earth.
The excitation of CO2 by IR in the 15μm band, which is by far the most important, is from the ground vibrational state to the first excited vibrational state, there are no photons from the sun capable of doing this so you’re wrong.
Second the amount of infrared energy from the sun is much greater than that from the earth.
Not anywhere on this planet!
At this point the PPM of CO2 that absorbs earth radiated energy is much less than the total 400 PPM.
Really, kindly explain why.
The fact that infrared energy is absorbed by “green house gases” is not in dispute. The origin of the energy and the direction of net energy transfer is.
Not by anyone who knows what they’re talking about.
Let us look at nature:
At the same latitude the climate with a high humidity will be moderated compared to a desert. Very high day time temperatures followed by low night time temperatures are the norm in low humidity. This means that the action of the greenhouse gases is to SLOW the energy transfer from the sun.
Firstly by forming clouds which is nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, secondly by the latent heat of vaporization of water which is far higher than the specific heats of the ground and air. Wrong again.
The fallacy is neglecting the role of sunlight in warming up greenhouse gases during the day and attributing the warming to black body radiation from the earth ONLY.
The following “Water vapor absorbs heat and releases it slowly” shows it is energy absorbed from the sun during the day and released slowly at night that is the true “atmospheric greenhouse effect”. By falsifying the ratio of the suns infrared energy compared to that of the earth’s, Warmists make it look like it is blackbody radiation instead of daytime sunlight that is actually transferring energy to the “greenhouse gases” and the gases then transferring the energy back to the earth causing a net gain in the earth’s temperature.
There’s no falsification that’s the way it is.
(Note to Anthony, I notice that the accusations of fraud proliferate despite your undertaking to police it)
This breaks the second law of thermodynamics. Yes there is a slowing down of the transfer of energy but it is the slowing of the energy transfer from the sun to the greenhouse gases to the earth and NOT the earth to the greenhouse gases and back to the earth. (Does Conservation of Energy allow you to count that same photon twice???)
You appear not to know what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is.
One common expression of it is: the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.
How is that applicable to what you’re discussing above?
Also neglecting the effect of water (atmospheric and ocean) and the sun, and then stating CO2 is the primary driver of climate is absolutely the stupidest thing I have ever heard. If I construct a model holding everything constant except CO2 of course I can prove CO2 is the major driver of climate.
A straw man argument, the effect of water is not ignored in fact it’s regarded as a primary feedback, the sun however does not vary very much compared with CO2 were it to do so then that should be included, read some of Leif’s posts on this topic.
The Warmist view neglects the excitation of CO2 electrons by direct sunlight. Some of the excitation energy must be from the sun.
Very little since it does not cover the right wavelength range.
Gerald Machnee:
My bad. I thought you actually wanted to understand the science. However, I guess you just want to just engage in your own sophistry of twisting the meaning of what I am saying. Have fun.
Phil. (15:18:07) :
“When I’m considering a planet which can only exchange heat with its surroundings via radiation you betcha!”
Sure, if you are talking a black body with no atmosphere, then you would only have to consider radiation. But the fact is clouds can reflect radiation before it even gets to the ground. So it’s not JUST radiation. Come on Phil! You are avoiding clouds like they were the Swine Flu.
Joel, I have a question for you. The oceanic oscillations correlate VERY well with the temperature series (better than anything else), irregardless of what else is warming or cooling the land. Are you of the opinion that CO2 affects are warming both oceans and land or is one warming, thus warming the other? By what mechanism is this taking place?
Alec Rawls (13:59:47) :
The GCR temperature hypothesis […] is not in contradiction to any clear evidence.
This is a far cry from claiming that the evidence is clear and overwhelming…
Leif (13:59:47):
Surely you did not fail to notice that the absence of contra-indications was mentioned at the end of a long list of indications:
To cite just the absence of contra-indications, as if no positive evidence had been put forward, is just a dodge. Seems pretty anti-scientific.
The direct evidence for GCR as the primary driver of might not be “clear and overwhelming” (though it seems to be getting close). What IS clear and overwhelming is that this hypothesis fits the evidence a lot better than the competing hypotheses. Good to see you coming around a bit on that. Your position seems to have moved from “what magnetic effects?” to denying that the evidence for these effects is overwhelming. Maybe not so anti-scientific in the end then. Just an inveterate jouster.
Jim (17:10:19) :
Phil. (15:18:07) :
“When I’m considering a planet which can only exchange heat with its surroundings via radiation you betcha!”
Sure, if you are talking a black body with no atmosphere, then you would only have to consider radiation. But the fact is clouds can reflect radiation before it even gets to the ground. So it’s not JUST radiation. Come on Phil! You are avoiding clouds like they were the Swine Flu.
To quote John McEnroe “You have to be kidding!”
Clouds scatter radiation, how do you think you treat radiation without clouds? Radiation is the only mechanism by which the Earth exchanges energy with its surroundings, whether directly or by scattering, end of story!
Phil. (19:07:41) : “Clouds scatter radiation, how do you think you treat radiation without clouds? Radiation is the only mechanism by which the Earth exchanges energy with its surroundings, whether directly or by scattering, end of story!”
Phil., I do understand that for the most part, the Earth can exchange energy with the space around it by radiation. But you said the Earth acted as a black body. Clouds are one feature of Earth that make it considerably less black, especially around the tropics where most of your precious radiation impinges. Yes, clouds scatter radiation. They scatter it right back into space from whence it came, thereby cooling the Earth. Feel free to act dense as you wish, but it makes you look silly.
Alec Rawls (18:41:45) :
Your position seems to have moved from “what magnetic effects?” to denying that the evidence for these effects is overwhelming.
First, ‘magnetic effects’ doesn’t sound like GCRs and nucleation. I was asking for clarification on what ‘magnetic effects’ there were, that is the direct effects of magnetism.
Second, in my opinion there is no evidence, just speculation. To recognize speculation for what it is is hardly ‘anti-scientific’. My comment was directed at the large group who consider ‘the science settled’ for GCRs driving the climate and claim that the evidence is overwhelming. It seems to me that you have climbed down a bit to merely say: “The GCR temperature hypothesis […] is not in contradiction to any clear evidence”.
Alec Rawls (18:41:45) :
The TSI and CO2 explanations both depend on high climate sensitivity, which seems to be directly contradicted by the physical evidence.
May I point out that the solar cycle modulation of GCRs is only about 10% [with the higher energies – presumably the most effective – even less], so the climate must have very high sensitivity to GCRs. If those 10% provide nucleation ions for clouds, what a lot more clouds would be generated by the remaining 90%.
Leif Svalgaard (20:14:36) :
Alec Rawls (18:41:45) :
The TSI and CO2 explanations both depend on high climate sensitivity, which seems to be directly contradicted by the physical evidence.
As Carslaw points out, the evidence is not good, but the hypothesis deserves to be investigated because it is a possible [not plausible or accepted] mechanism. But we are very far from being able to say that this is the mechanism.
Leif Svalgaard (20:14:36) :
As Carslaw points out: here
Jim (19:46:03) :
Phil., I do understand that for the most part, the Earth can exchange energy with the space around it by radiation.
‘Can’, it’s the only way!
But you said the Earth acted as a black body.
Focus Jim, note that it was the surface that was being discussed:
“Rubbish, most of the loss from the surface is IR radiation unless you’ve found a way to bypass Planck’s law of blackbody radiation!”
You cannot describe the Earth-atmosphere system in terms of ideal blackbodies.
Certainly can in the IR band we’re talking about which is an almost perfect black body.
Clouds are one feature of Earth that make it considerably less black, especially around the tropics where most of your precious radiation impinges.
Not the surface!
Yes, clouds scatter radiation. They scatter it right back into space from whence it came, thereby cooling the Earth. Feel free to act dense as you wish, but it makes you look silly.
Really, perhaps if you read the posts before posting you might look less silly.
Allan M (13:47:56) :
Gail Combs (12:27:10) :
Fine comment, succinct and clear. I learnt a few things there.
Better unlearn them then because almost everything she said was wrong as shown above.
Alec Rawls (18:41:45) :
The GCR temperature hypothesis […] is not in contradiction to any clear evidence.
It actually is. Too many papers to mention here, but they have been discussed before. For me the most direct contradiction is that GCRs is supposed to work through changes of the albedo, and the albedo the past couple of decades has not varied like the GCRs, so to uphold the hypotheses you need to invoke some special pleading or circumstance that explains why it [for the moment] is not holding up.
Phil. (20:49:28) :
So how would CO2 create a feedback? If it doesn’t, then we are just going to ever more slowly approach a temperature until CO2 absorption capabilities are saturated. What temperature is that?
On Galactic Cosmic Rays and climate one should keep an open mind and do not keep making the mistake that there is one and only one way the climate is affected by a variable.
Not only the climate/atmosphere-ocean-land system is highly nonlinear in its responses but also highly complex. GCR could very well be a factor that in synergy with ocean and air circulation, even with plankton dust production, (and somewhere there running in the last row CO2) form the final result called weather. Let us not make the mistake that the AGW have made by picking up CO2 and running away with it like a flag at a football match.
Leif Svalgaard (20:14:36) :
“Alec Rawls (18:41:45) :
The TSI and CO2 explanations both depend on high climate sensitivity, which seems to be directly contradicted by the physical evidence.
May I point out that the solar cycle modulation of GCRs is only about 10% [with the higher energies – presumably the most effective – even less], so the climate must have very high sensitivity to GCRs. If those 10% provide nucleation ions for clouds, what a lot more clouds would be generated by the remaining 90%.”
If one puts aside the “cloud theory” of GCR as a circular distraction,and and looks at the more accepted theory of stratospheric photochemistry (Crutzen got a gong on this) sensitivity is more apparent eg.
Sensitivity of Surface Temperature and Atmospheric Temperature to Perturbations in the Stratospheric Concentration of Ozone and Nitrogen Dioxide
V. Ramanathan, L.B. Callis, and R.E. Boughner
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
Article: pp. 1092–1112
ABSTRACT
The present paper examines, with the aid of a radiative-convective model, the sensitivity of the globally-averaged surface temperature and atmospheric temperature to perturbations in the concentration of O3 and NO2 within the stratosphere. The analysis considers reductions in stratospheric O3 with and without a simultaneous increase in the stratospheric concentration of NO2. Ozone is reduced uniformly in a region between 12 and 40 km within the stratosphere. The ratio of the percentage change in NO2 to the percentage change in O3 is denoted by δ; three values of δ (0, −6 and −10) are considered.
For all the cases considered, it is shown that reducing stratosphere O3 cools the atmosphere and the surface. If the reduction in O3 is accompanied by a simultaneous increase in NO2, the increase in solar absorption by NO2 partially compensates for the reduction in solar absorption due to a decrease in stratospheric O3. Consequently, the decrease in atmospheric and surface temperatures is smaller for larger values of −δ. The results for the surface temperature changes depend on the adopted cloud model. The change in the surface temperature for the constant cloud-top temperature model is 1.6 times larger than that for the constant cloud-top altitude model.
The model also indicates that the surface temperature is sensitive to the vertical distribution of O3 within the atmosphere. Increasing (or decreasing) the altitude at which O3 density is maximum has a cooling (or warming) effect an the surface temperature. The consequences of O3 reduction to the latitudinal energy distribution are also discussed.
The results should be considered as reflecting the sensitivity of the present model rather than the sensitivity of the actual earth-atmosphere system. However, the present results should be indicative of the potential environmental consequences due to perturbations in the stratospheric concentrations of O3 and NO2
Alec Rawls (13:59:47) :
Interesting notes on the amount of energy flowing into and out of the oceans. One question: why does the Pacific going into energy release mode create an El Nino? Fits with the recent news of a new El Nino forming, but it seems counter-intuitive to me. If the top water cools and sinks, any water that takes its place from below would not be particularly warm. Is El Nino an inversion effect, or a migration effect?
Hi Alec, you should visit bobtisdale.blogspot.com for a comprehensive analysis of el nino’s. The ’98 el nino was a migration effect according to Bob, warm water from the Pacific warm pool spreading out and radiating it’s heat from the surface.
Bob noted a few days ago that the current temperature anomaly pattern in the Pacific is very different to any he’s seen before, the whole Pacific surface is warm, rather than a classic el nino hot spot spreading from the equatorial region. If anything, the hot spots are in the more northerly latitudes off Japan at the moment.
I conjecture that this is a different type of el nino. There was a recent article on here about ‘modoki’ el nino. The Japanese word modoki carries the connotation of ‘inferior’ or ‘shadow of’. I think it’s a ‘bounceback’ of all the extra heat which has gone into the oceans during the run of high amplitude-short minimum solar cycles we’ve had. The ocean has switched from a heat absorption mode to heat dissipation mode in this extended solar minimum.
My calculations show that the rise in surface temperature of around 0.3C in the 1993-2003 period is consistent with an average increase of 0.13C of the top 700m of the oceans (averaged across the globe) and a reasonably linear dropoff of temperature from surface to thermocline. This corroborates my 14×10^22J extra ocean heat content calculation, because 0.13C is the amount the sun has warmed the top 700m to give a thermal expansion consistent with the rise seen by the satellite altimetry.
I asked an oceanographer, James Annan, how the extra heat got mixed down to the thermocline as far as 1000m below the surface when wave action etc mainly mixes the top 50m. He told me that there are tidal mixing effects and a strong downwards current at high latitudes which takes surface waters below, and recirculates them.
Perhaps changes in circulation due to a cooling surface are bringing the sequestered extra ocean heat back to the surface. It has to be able to get out somehow. I don’t know enough about salinity and the motion of currents to give a full account, but logic demands that it happens. The fact that the sea surface is warming everywhere at once is the manifestation of the effect. It isn’t the quieter sun which is making the surface get warmer, so it must be heat coming up from below.
Phil. (20:49:28) :
“Allan M (13:47:56) :
Gail Combs (12:27:10) :
Fine comment, succinct and clear. I learnt a few things there.
Better unlearn them then because almost everything she said was wrong as shown above.”
I am quite choosy about teachers. You have disqualified yourself already.
Phil. (20:44:32) : You are very skillful at dodging the point. You might treat the surface of the Earth as a black body. But there is more to the climate system than the Earth. Clouds are also present. So while you might be able to treat the surface as a black body, you can’t treat the Earth plus atmosphere as a black body. That is what you are going to great lengths to ignore, and yes, it makes you look silly. It is a very transparent game you are playing.
maksimovich (23:48:28) :
“The analysis considers reductions in stratospheric O3 with and without a simultaneous increase in the stratospheric concentration of NO2.”
Which leaves the problem of what changes the O3 and the NO2, both of which are destroyed by GCRs. NO2 in the stratosphere is derived from N2O coming up from the troposphere. Interesting is the fact that the change in N2O over the past millennium closely parallels that of CO2 [with ppm replaced by ppb] as it should because 2/3 of the NO2 concentration comes from combustion of fossil fuels…
maksimovich (23:48:28) :
“The analysis considers reductions in stratospheric O3 with and without a simultaneous increase in the stratospheric concentration of NO2.”
Which leaves the problem of what changes the O3 and the NO2, both of which are destroyed by GCRs. NO2 in the stratosphere is derived from N2O coming up from the troposphere. Interesting is the fact that the change in N2O over the past millennium closely parallels that of CO2 [with ppm replaced by ppb] as it should because 2/3 of the NO2 concentration comes from combustion of fossil fuels…
Joel Shore (13:05:14),
“You have misunderstood their statement. It has nothing to do with being in a different mode. It has to do with the fact that equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate response are different animals.”
My bad, thanx. Of course they weren’t implying a different climate mode, and probably think that the difference between the transient and equilibrium climate sensitivities is totally due to running the model climates for centuries to get the equilibrium figure. However, I think my point is still valid, that the equilibrium figure may be inflated by the model climates catching up with the surface albedo feedback that was already present in the climate observations for the 1990s, and extra 3 to 4 W/m^2 globally and annually averaged for the AR4 models. As i said, I think it is less for their model, but still must be acknowledged as significant by all who think the energy imbalance responsible for the recent warming is significant. Regards, and thanx again.
Leif Svalgaard (07:15:29) :
because 2/3 of the NO2 concentration comes from combustion of fossil fuels…
While correct, I should have talked about the sources of N2O, not NO2. So correction: 1/2 of the N2O is anthropogenic.
Phil:
And during the daytime it receives anything up to around three times that amount from the sun. What stops the surface from getting unbearably hot during the daytime?
Also, why is it that it can be uncomfortably hot on one day, and the next day can be decidedly chilly, with the same clear sky and the sun at the same inclination, when the only thing that’s changed is the direction or strength of the wind?
So how is it then that the car remains much cooler if you leave the windows open just a tiny bit? Are you suggesting that all the radiation escapes through that tiny gap?
Leif wrote (20:14:36): It seems to me that you have climbed down a bit to merely say: “The GCR temperature hypothesis […] is not in contradiction to any clear evidence”.
THIS is what I was referring to when I suggested you were being anti-scientific. I did NOT merely say there are no contra-indications to a GCR-temperature mechanism. I also pointed out the mountain of indications. You characterized me as only saying that there are no contra-indications so I cut and pasted the list of indications for you. Now you ignore that I re-listed the pile of indications for you and again say that I am merely saying that there are no contra-indications. Holy cow!
Being a scientist means first of all conserving information. A scientist doesn’t ignore what he already knows, but you do, over and over, if it is information that it suits your established position to ignore. You are a VERY hard person to have a rational exchange with. But then I’m an inveterate jouster too. A little inefficiency is not a big deal, as long as there is something worthwhile. You do push it though, making me flat out repeat myself.
As for your “what magnetic effects?” remark, apparently I misunderstood. I thought you were just being dismissive, denying that there are any magnetic effects that need to be accounted, a la Gavin Schmidt. Now it turns out you were just writing as if you didn’t know what magnetic effects were being referred to.
It’s a good question. When I use the term I am referring to the effects of the solar-magnetic flux (that is, the modulation of GCR, which is in turn hypothesized to affect temperature; any effect that solar-magnetic modulation of the earth’s electrical circuit may have on temperature; and any other mechanisms by which the solar wind might affect temperature, whether anyone has thought of them yet or not).
TSI and spectral shifts could also be considered “magnetic effects” in that they are also regulated by solar-magnetic activity, but that is not a useful categorization. In particular, it is the effects of the solar-magnetic flux that are completely omitted from the climate models of Gavin Schmidt and the IPCC. That is what needs to be talked about. These guys are committing omitted variable fraud and it makes sense to tailor terms to address what needs to be talked about.
The IPCC omits solar-magnetic effects from its models on the grounds that we don’t yet understand the mechanism by which such effects would work, even as they acknowledge extensive evidence that SOME such mechanism is at work. If they can’t model the mechanism, they can’t include it in their model, right? So that’s their excuse.
Okay, but for Schmidt et al. to then use that model as their predictor of what will happen is not science. The scientific method is defined by the priority of data over theory. They are saying that since they are unsatisfied with the theory they are going to ignore the data. Schmidt also belittles the data. Search GCR in Gavin’s article that is the subject of this post. All you will find is excuses for why he does not include it in his model.
This is why I keep focusing on which hypothesis has the BETTER evidence. It is easy to dismiss GCR effects as merely speculative, but it means nothing when ALL of the different climate hypotheses are speculative, with CO2 being the most speculative of all. To make the best scientific forecasts that we can, we need to weight the different hypotheses by the RELATIVE quality of the evidence for them.
In an exchange with science fiction author Jerry Pournelle, Gavin Schmidt explained why he did not include GCR effects in his models: “”[T]here is no obvious need for ‘new’ or unknown physics to explain what [is] going on.”
He doesn’t “need” it. He can just ratchet the climate sensitivity of his model way up until the tiny fluctuations in TSI, multiplied by climate sensitivity, will be able to account for the historical correlations between solar-magnetic activity and temperature. But this is as speculative as speculative gets. The evidence for such high climate sensitivity is much weaker than the evidence for GCR temperature effects. It is clearly CONTRA-indicated.
Not so with GCR-temperature effects. It accounts for the solar-activity temperature correlations (the “indications”), with no contra-indications. That is a clear superiority over the CO2/high-climate-sensitivity hypothesis.
To omit the better evidenced hypothesis from one’s forecasting in favor of a less evidenced hypothesis is not science. It fails to conserve information. Schmidt just ignores whatever does not support his presumptions. If the effects of solar magnetic flux on temperature were accounted in accordance with the relative weight of the evidence for them, the estimate of CO2 warming effects would be correspondingly lessened, to the point where run-away CO2-caused warming would be out of the picture.
It is only the prospect of run-away warming that creates alarm. A modicum of warming would always be good, since throughout human history, warmer has always been better. The value of a modicum of warmer becomes greater when natural variation heads in the cooling direction, as it seems to be doing now, but it would still be positive even if solar cycle 24 was already roaring along. It is only the omission of the solar-magnetic variable, causing solar-magnetic effects to be misattributed to CO2, that is creating the current drive to unplug modern civilization.
That, of course, is why all this matters. There would be no urgent need to figure out what drives the relatively slow changes in climate if dishonest scientists were not using their bogus claims of dangerous human-caused global warming to execute an illiberal power grab. It is disturbing in this context to see Leif snapping off rebuttals without regard to whether they make any sense. Yes the GCR-temperature hypothesis is speculative. So is ALL of climate science. What matters is that it is LESS speculative than Gavin’s idiotic hypothesis of super high climate sensitivity.
How can the other professionals in the field allow Schmidt to get away with his bogus excuses for completely omitting solar-magnetic effects from his forecasts? No attempt to weigh the different possibilities according to the evidence for them. He just omits the best evidenced hypothesis. Well, we actually know how he is able to get away with this. Al Gore was given $10b to construct a climate science industry in his own image, and the acolytes like James Hansen that he empowered have controlled where every penny of the next $69b
was spent. That’s not easy for an insider to buck, but it needs to be done.
Alec Rawls (11:27:37) :
THIS is what I was referring to when I suggested you were being anti-scientific
Scientific does not mean that anything goes, but rather that one has a critical attitude.
I also pointed out the mountain of indications.
Piling on the same indications doesn’t make it any better. There is really on one piece of ‘evidence’, namely that some time ago a correlation between GCRs and low clouds was presented. [The ‘evidence’ that purports to go back 500 million years is just speculation]. The correlation has since diminished or gone away. The mechanism has been modeled and found wanting. Attempts to invoke Forbush Decreases have been contradictory. The albedo that was supposed to be part of the mechanism does not vary in concert with the solar cycle. The GCR intensity variation over time does not resemble temperature variations. If the evidence was solid there would be no discussion, but it is not. Instead of piling it on, select the single most compelling piece of evidence in your opinion, and let us dissect that.
You are a VERY hard person to have a rational exchange with.
Because I push hard for evidence and reason, especially when it does not seem to hold up.
I thought you were just being dismissive
I don’t think I’m ever ‘dismissive’. I just wanted to know what was meant.
it is the effects of the solar-magnetic flux that are completely omitted from the climate models of Gavin Schmidt and the IPCC.
TSI is in their models and since the variations of TSI are due to solar magnetism, these thing are NOT omitted.
omits solar-magnetic effects from its models on the grounds that we don’t yet understand the mechanism by which such effects would work
No, not for that reason, but because their effects are so small. And solar forcing is part of the models.
How can the other professionals in the field allow Schmidt to get away with his bogus excuses for completely omitting solar-magnetic effects from his forecasts?
Partly because other scientists [e.g. Lean] find that the solar contribution is so small and inconclusive. And, as I said, TSI and solar forcing are not omitted. They are just small and therefore do not have any big influence on the result compared to all the other variability. Another reason is that solar activity is cyclical and so evens out. That different cycles have different sizes is just a second order effect. Example: the GCR flux varies ~10% over the cycle, but less over long-term. An example of that is that we find that during the Maunder and Spoerer minima, the solar modulation of GCRs was still going on [and not significantly weaker than today], so the LIA cannot be due to [lack of] GCR variation.
But, in true scientific tradition, put forward your single strongest piece of evidence based on hard and real data, and we can discuss that.
Leif Svalgaard (07:23:26) :
Leif Svalgaard (07:15:29) :
“because 2/3 of the NO2 concentration comes from combustion of fossil fuels…
While correct, I should have talked about the sources of N2O, not NO2. So correction: 1/2 of the N2O is anthropogenic.”
Different species different story.
Here we are describing the catalytic reagents. Say the increase of odd nitrogen (NOx = N + NO + NO2 ) and odd hydrogen (HOx = H + OH + HO2 ), and the subsequent loss of ozone. Concomitant reactions eg Crutzen, P. J., Isaksen, I. S. A., and Reid, G. C., Solar proton events: Stratospheric sources of nitric oxide, Science, 189 , 457–458, 1975.
A more recent paper Orgurtsov 2007
The input of high-energy particles into the atmosphere causes destruction of ozone and the generation of NO2 (Pudovkin and Raspopov, 1992). Such changes are particularly strong during proton events. For example, on 4 August of 1972, at 30–35 km altitude, the concentration of ozone decreased ten times and the concentration of NO2 increased by factor 2. In as much as NO2 absorbs intensively solar radiation in the green and blue part of the spectrum, the irradiance at the Earth’s surface decreases. Ultraviolet flux increases, due to ozone depletion of the stratosphere, and the radiation balance of the atmosphere changes, which may result in changes in atmospheric circulation.(dynamic response)
At altitudes below 60 km the main quiet time ionisation source is (GCR) by precipitation.And at solar minimum fluxes and species are an order of magnitude higher eg Brasseur and Solomon, 2005, pp. 164–169
maksimovich (15:18:54) :
Different species different story.
I mentioned NO2 by mistake, so forget about that.
At altitudes below 60 km the main quiet time ionisation source is (GCR) by precipitation.And at solar minimum fluxes and species are an order of magnitude higher eg Brasseur and Solomon, 2005, pp. 164–169
Actually not, near the surface the ionization comes from radioactivety in the ground. At solar minimum, the GCR flux is not an order of magnitude higher… only about ~10%.
Patagon (05:16:56) :
To contrast all that, a interesting solar temperature chart and a related recent paper
A Lagged Warm Event–Like Response to Peaks in Solar Forcing in the Pacific Region Gerald A. Meehl and Julie M. Arblaster
http://tr.im/tuxU
This paper uses the outdated Hoyt-Schatten and Lean TSI reconstructions and is thus not valid.
Leif Svalgaard (16:21:22) :
“A Lagged Warm Event–Like Response to Peaks in Solar Forcing in the Pacific Region Gerald A. Meehl and Julie M. Arblaster
http://tr.im/tuxU”
This paper uses the outdated Hoyt-Schatten and Lean TSI reconstructions and is thus not valid.
It is a total mystery [or maybe not] that climate researchers still use those ten+ years old invalid reconstructions [the maybe not bit: if they used modern TSI-reconstructions they wouldn’t find any effect]
Peter (09:33:28) :
Phil:
300K surface emits about 460W/m^2″
And during the daytime it receives anything up to around three times that amount from the sun.
At noon on the equator with a cloudless sky with a black surface.
What stops the surface from getting unbearably hot during the daytime?
Under the above conditions very little! Today in Death Valley the air temperature was 115ºF and the surface was 132ºF, under those conditions the emissions are ~600 W/m^2.
Also, why is it that it can be uncomfortably hot on one day, and the next day can be decidedly chilly, with the same clear sky and the sun at the same inclination, when the only thing that’s changed is the direction or strength of the wind?
“When you park your car in the south with it’s window closed you let in the SW but prevent heat loss by LW radiation and convection.”
So how is it then that the car remains much cooler if you leave the windows open just a tiny bit? Are you suggesting that all the radiation escapes through that tiny gap?
Air flow.
Jim (06:09:17) :
Phil. (20:44:32) : You are very skillful at dodging the point.
No I keep on point it’s you who keep trying to change the subject.
You might treat the surface of the Earth as a black body.
Indeed I did in response to a comment about the heat loss from the surface.
But there is more to the climate system than the Earth. Clouds are also present.
Yes but that wasn’t what was being discussed!
So while you might be able to treat the surface as a black body, you can’t treat the Earth plus atmosphere as a black body. That is what you are going to great lengths to ignore,
It wasn’t the subject of the discussion, but you had to pitch in with your irrelevancies.
Joel Shore
“….Basically, your whole thesis amounts to a claim that scientists are doing the radiative calculations incorrectly with absolutely no evidence presented that this is in fact the case.”
Why do I think the sun’s IR over powers the earth’s? Take a look at the graph on page 14 of “Computer Processing of Remotely Sensed Images”. The thermal Infrared spectrum of the sun is given as 5900K and that of earth as 290K. A look at NASA graph shows how the scale was changed on the earth IR without notation so as to miss lead (as noted by Gerlich & Tscheuschner ) The order of Sun to air to earth is logical because energy from the sun hits miles of atmosphere before it ever reaches the earth. A spectrum of the energy at the earths surface shows all those dips in the IR curve where water and CO2 have absorbed a significant portion of the energy. Take away the sun and the earth will not radiate any IR at all. This train of thought is just as logical as IR radiation from the earth is captured by CO2 and then bounced back to the earth HEATING it further contrary to the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. If warmists get to count the energy heating the earth twice, I get to say the sun had first dibs on activating CO2 to a higher energy state and the graphs certainly show it happening. (links at bottom)
And while everyone is yelling about CO2 no one sees a word in the press about irrigation increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases even though it is reported by IPCC.
According to IPCC “…Knowledge about changes in water vapour at upper tropospheric and lower stratospheric levels is of great importance because strong alterations in radiative forcing can result from small absolute changes in water vapour at these levels…Specific humidity trends over the United States were overwhelmingly positive for the period 1961 to 1995, with magnitudes of several per cent per decade”
“SEVERAL PER CENT PER DECADE!!!” yet it is completely left out of the IPCC “Warming Potentials of Halocarbons and Greenhouses Gases”
“the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov”
Why is water is left out of the news? Because it swamps the effects of CO2 and because the World Bank, IMF, Monsanto (85% controlled by financial interests) Cargill, Andre, Bunge et al are all making money hand over fist as they consolidate control of food into the hands of private corporations and banks. Thanks to the “green Revolution”. “Global Warming” is set to do the same thing. It consolidates control of energy into the hands of a few multi-billionaires.
As was noted on Watts Up elsewhere:
Al Gore proclaimed, “I bring you good news from the U.S….Just two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill…very much a step in the right direction….“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.”
But David Rockefeller puts it even more bluntly
“The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.” David Rockefeller speaking at the Bilderberger meeting in June 1991 in Baden Baden
The move to completely wreck/take over the USA is a foot and progressing by leaps and bounds thanks to those blind socialists who can not understand it is NOT socialism it is Feudalism with the bankers and private corporations as the new aristocracy.
In Sept. 14, 1994 David Rockefeller, speaking at the UN Business Council.
“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long – We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
“Computer Processing of Remotely Sensed Images”. http://books.google.com/books?id=x0aHc4zxv74C&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=%22infrared+spectrum+sun&source=bl&ots=XiDjhdIbmt&sig=350Z-iyZ2ZPbdTENnPC9Wsv3PgM&hl=en&ei=sf1qSr3RCdTktgfL76nHBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
NASA graph http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page2.php
spectrum at the earths surface http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/Outreach/Edu/Windows/irwindows.html
IPCC on Irrigation http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/079.htm
Shaidurov’s paper “Atmospheric hypotheses of Earth’s global warming” is under consideration for publication in the journal “Science First Hand,” Published by Russian Academy of Sciences (Editor-in-Chief, Acad. Dobretsov, Vice-President Russian Academy of Sciences, President of Siberian Branch RAS). A preprint is available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510042
which was published originally as University of Leicester Technical Report No. MA-05-15.
Phil
The argument by Joel Shore seemed to indicate that heat transfer from the earth was ALL due to IR long wave radiation. I was pointing out that convection and conduction can not be ignored. Try the closed black box with a plate of NaCl salt closing the top. It still gets hot even though salt is transparent to IR radiation. Lack of convection and NOT long wave radiation causes the car to be hot.
Leif Svalgaard (17:19:51) :
It is a total mystery [or maybe not] that climate researchers still use those ten+ years old invalid reconstructions [the maybe not bit: if they used modern TSI-reconstructions they wouldn’t find any effect]
While the calibration and other ‘adjustment’ issues are still in play, it’s quite reasonable to have people working on different data interpretations. Not everyone believes in the historically re-adjusted on the level, sober and steady sun.
Maybe your client has hoodwinked you into abetting an attempt to hide his wayward hooligan tendencies from the court.
Gail Combs,
Quite frankly, your latest post is incorrect start to finish. I’ll try to point out the major errors that you make although I won’t claim to be complete.
So yes, the SURFACE of a body at 5900 K will emit more IR in W/m^2 than the SURFACE of a body at 290 K. However, we are not at the surface of the sun. We are 93 million miles away, which is, if I recall, on the order of 100 radii…meaning that the W/m^2 at the orbital radius of the earth is down by a factor of order 10000 from what it is at the sun’s surface. And, then there is a factor of 4 to account for the fact that the cross-sectional area that the earth presents to the sun is only pi*r^2 whereas the surface area is 4*pi*r^2.
Yes, but my point is simply that we are talking about a continuous process, not a short pulse of light being emitted by the sun. Hence, your argument about priority is nonsense. I also think the excitation / saturation issue that you worry about is likely irrelevant although I haven’t tried to do the calculations to prove it.
Boy this gets frustrating! It is not contrary to any of the Laws of Thermodynamics. G&T don’t understand what they heck they are talking about (or they do but are purposely deceiving their readers). As I have noted above multiple times, the net flow of energy is from heat to cold. The atmosphere is simply acting as a heat shield that effectively reduces the outward flow of heat from the earth. It is not difficutl to come up with exactly-solvable problems simple enough to give to freshman physics students that demonstrates this.
Yes, I am sure the the IMF and Monsanto etc. have bought off all of the scientists in the world and it is all one huge conspiracy. (I have to go check the mailbox for my check!)
Now let’s take off our tinfoil hats and get back to the real world: Irrigation may cause some local effects but has only a very small effect on the global water vapor concentrations. As for your IPCC quotes, they are explaining the importance of water vapor, but not direct manmade additions of water vapor. The reason that this is the case is that because of its large concentration in the atmosphere, its short residence time (it rains out within about a week…at least in the troposphere), and the predigious natural sources for water vapor, water vapor concentrations are not determined by the relatively small direct human sources but instead by the temperature. This is summarized by the statement that water vapor is a feedback not a forcing. As a feedback, water vapor plays a very important role and it is not ignored at all.
First of all, heat transfer from the earth + atmosphere to space is in fact completely by radiation because there is no significant convection or conduction in space. However, some of the transfer from the earth’s surface up in the atmosphere is due to convection and evapotranspiration as is shown in Trenberth’s diagram: http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/Atmosphere/images/radiation_budget_kiehl_trenberth_2008_big.jpg . Radiation still plays a larger role though.
Gail Combs:
Just as an FYI, I was off by about a factor of 2 on the sun’s radius…So, in fact, the irradiance of the sun at the distance of the earth’s orbit turns out to be down by a factor of ~46000 from the radiant exitance at the surface of the sun. (And, then there is still that additional geometrical factor of 4 to get the average irradiance over the surface area of the earth.)
There is, of course, another way of seeing that the NASA plot is a lot more practical than the plot in that remote sensing book for comparing the relative radiative powers at the earth (and that G&T are thus wrong to claim that scaling them to show them to be equal is misleading): The total power radiated by the earth and the total radiative power received from the sun must be pretty close to balanced; otherwise the earth would be heating up or cooling down at a ridiculous rate. Of course, they are not quite in balance now, which is why global warming is occurring, but the imbalance is less than 1% percent.
In fact, looking at that NASA diagram again…and also at an absorption spectrum for CO2, I am beginning to think that your argument involving CO2 absorbing any significant amount of sunlight is worse than I thought. I think most of the sunlight absorbed by the atmosphere is in wavelengths where CO2 does not significantly absorb…So, in fact, to a very good approximation, CO2 is transparent to sunlight and the absorption of ~23% of sunlight by the atmosphere that does occur (according to Trenberth’s diagram) is almost entirely due to absorption in the UV, visible, and near-IR parts of the spectrum by components other than CO2.
So your argument seems to be wrong for multiple reasons.
Funny how these threads get high-jacked these days…
Lief,
Do you know of any TSI reconstructions which show that solar irradiance finished it’s ramp up, not in 1960, but in 1945? Other than generated from models to match temp trends?
Any info would be much appreciated,
Ed
Phil. (23:11:05) : ” Jim (06:09:17) :
Phil. (20:44:32) : You are very skillful at dodging the point.
No I keep on point it’s you who keep trying to change the subject.
You might treat the surface of the Earth as a black body.
Indeed I did in response to a comment about the heat loss from the surface.
But there is more to the climate system than the Earth. Clouds are also present.
Yes but that wasn’t what was being discussed!
So while you might be able to treat the surface as a black body, you can’t treat the Earth plus atmosphere as a black body. That is what you are going to great lengths to ignore,
It wasn’t the subject of the discussion, but you had to pitch in with your irrelevancies.”
Phil, you are thick headed. The topic is “solar trends and global warming”, not “treat the Earth’s surface as a black body.” You may believe clouds have nothing to do with global warming, but your are wrong.
Ed (07:59:22) :
Do you know of any TSI reconstructions which show that solar irradiance finished it’s ramp up, not in 1960, but in 1945? Other than generated from models to match temp trends?
There was no ‘ramp up’ in the beginning of the 20th Century. TSI reaches the same value at every minimum.
tallbloke (08:14:22) :
Not everyone believes in the historically re-adjusted on the level, sober and steady sun.
Only solar physicists do. Other people with agendas have the Sun vary to fit.
To use a NSW (natural solar warming) tactic, meanwhile, the more robust statistical LIM model used to forecast oceanic ENSO events indicates that the PDO will remain neutral and then turn slightly negative but still in the neutral range this winter. I predict average amounts of snow, rain, cold, warmth, and drought, in their usual PDO neutral places, as the jet stream will be in a somewhat northern track (but not extremely so) and will be a bit less loopy compared to the previous two winters.
Lief:
“There was no ‘ramp up’ in the beginning of the 20th Century. TSI reaches the same value at every minimum”.
But doesn’t the TSI level at maximum increase, and when considering subsequent increasing maximum levels, there would be an increase in the average over subsequent cycles?
Ed