Statistics expert Briggs: Actually, Weather Is Climate

EARTH”S INTERNAL FURNACE
The real answer is within.
Temperatures inside the Earth are close to those on the surface of the Sun, somewhere around 10,000 Degrees Fahrenheit.
This internal Earth heat slowly dissipates through the Earth’s crust.
This heat must logically play some role in surface temperatures, certainly keeping our orb from freezing. Temperatures only 1 Kilometer below most land masses are too hot to survive in without mechanical cooling.
The heating process probably has cycles over time of hotter and cooler periods, or some kind of heat pulsing. Some change is happening inside our planet if our magnetic poles keep alternating from time to time, and super-volcanoes periodically explode.
What if climate change is really related to variations in the heat being transmitted and released through the crust in pulses of decades or centuries or longer periods of normal fluxuations ?
Has this been mentioned as a factor to be taken into consideration before we completely condemn carbon dioxide by humans as an alleged cause of irreversible warming destined to destroy the planet and our way of life as we know it ?
There must be some deep mine temperature statistics somewhere to reveal this detectable component.
I submit that Earth’s Internal Heat must play some role, even if minor, in climate variability.
“Look more closely grasshopper, the real answer is within.”

A very good article, and I’m beginning to wonder whether the distinction between climate and weather isn’t just a hangover from the days everyone thought the climate long-term weather was static.
An area that really needs to be extended is the frequency analysis of the variability of the global warming signal. Evern the UK Met Office know that variation increases the longer the period you are considering, so that the noise signal INCREASES over longer periods and so it is HARDER to predict the long term rather than short term. So, how ironic it was for us in the UK to hear the Met Office exuse for their prediction of a mild winter when we had one of the coldest winters in 30 years: “its far more difficult to predict season to season than century to century” HAVEN’T THEY READ THEIR OWN PUBLICATIONS ON NOISE PROFILE OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE.
Any for anyone who wants to see a natural reproduction of the global temperature signal from purely natural noise have a look at this link: http://www.tursiops.cc/fm/pink.gif
And the final noise, is that there is going to be a UK parliamentary investigation into climategate: http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_technology/s_t_pn14_100122.cfm
AND IF THERE IS ANY NEED TO HELP CO-ORDINATE SUBMISSIONS I AM WILLING TO GIVE MY TIME TO THIS!

Very good and very clear.
Pielke Sr., I believe, said it this way: Climate is experienced as weather.
Part of the dumbing down due to AGW theory is that many people implicitly believe that there is something called ‘climate’ that is seperate from weather.

We in the UK are in the middle of the fifth or sixth Iraq inquiry into WMD – an issue that is notorious for the “sexed up data”, the “dodgy dossier”, with “real and imminent threats of WMD”.
Change Weapons of Mass Destruction to “Weather of Mass Destruction”, and the sexed up claims in the dodgy IPCC dossier of real and imminent threats of hurricanes snow, heat, rain, drought, and politicians in pink leatards pretending to be cats (google Galloway, big brother).
The only concern I have about the analogy is that “weather isn’t climate” – but since the WMD – hurrucanes, droughts, etc. that constantly gets in the news isn’t climate but weather …

K Bray says “Temperatures inside the Earth are close to those on the surface of the Sun, somewhere around 10,000 Degrees Fahrenheit.”
No…no…..you haven’t been listening. Al Gore says the temperature of the interior of the earth is “millions of degrees.” And they have special drill bits that can drill into that. Now go into the corner and repeat that over and over until it is true.

@bucko36
He said if it’s cold, it suggests it’s not getting warmer.

Is there any statistical test for a random walk? Could ‘average temperature’, what ever that is, be following a random walk? The lags that are evident in the auto-correlation statistics make me wonder.

‘(To anticipate an objection: “that number was practically zero” is logically equivalent to “she was practically a virgin.”)’
OK, now I’m reminded of a certain scene from the film “Chasing Amy.” Who knew Kevin Smith was a climatologist? 🙂
IsoTherm (13:56:14) : ‘[quoting the Met Office] “its far more difficult to predict season to season than century to century” HAVEN’T THEY READ THEIR OWN PUBLICATIONS ON NOISE PROFILE OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE.’
Just out of curiosity: back in 1909, what did they predict for the winter of 2009-2010?
My take from this article: 21st Century temperature records are “consistent with” global warming, global cooling, neither, “…UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis.” (with apologies to “Ghost Busters”)

The problem is, tell it to a warmer, point outside to the snow, and he says “So what?” The MSM have told him that the planet is warming and he trusts the MSM more than his own lying eyes. People really do, they are proud that their educated upbringing made them so good at abstracting away their own sensory experiences and suspend their disbelief and understand that it must be pretty hot EVERYWHERE ELSE.
To shake up the belief system of warmers, i made good inroads telling them about the logarithmic nature of CO2 forcing (they usually don’t know that!), the tiny amount of the forcing compared to the sun’s radiative flux, and the fact that temperatures started rising BEFORE 1950 when CO2 started rising. It’s exhausting but i keep hacking away at the foundations of the believes of the ones that are still able to listen. Some are lost cases, though. They won’t find out of the believe in AGW even when they freeze to death in midsummer.

Thankyou Dr Briggs for your very logical comments. Of course weather is climate and vice versa. The whole “weather is not climate” meme is very frustrating to me. After all climate is composed of statistical measures of weather, as Dr Briggs has clearly enunciated. Thankyou!

Nice article, using statistics always gets them just look at Steve Mc, do any of ‘the team’ have maths qualifications or is enough to have a good imagination when deciding the latest temps.

Marcel Leroux had convincingly demonstrated it a while ago…

Ref – Gary Hladik (14:41:03) :
“Just out of curiosity: back in 1909, what did they predict for the winter of 2009-2010?”
_______________
More of the same?

Well actually, we only have about 30 years or less of reliable measurements; not 100.
Prior to the polar orbit satellites, and the oceanic air/water sensing buoys; both dating to about 1979/80, the surface data comes mostly from ocean water data, which John Christy et al showed in jan 2001 is not correlated, between surface water temperatures, and near surface air temperatures.
So all the ocean data prior to about 1980 is pure tripe in my book.

“marchesarosa (14:58:13) :
[…]
But maybe there is a teensie bit of an effect to add to all the others – solar radiation, sunspots, cosmic rays, UHI etc. I really find it hard to totally discount all those undersea hydrothermal vents.
Does anyone else have a view?”
My view is: If it’s a small bit, forget it. More CO2 also adds a tiny bit (1.5 W/m^2 according to the IPCC i think), and tiny bits are just compensated for by the earth’s built-in cooling system: the weather – convection, evaporation, precipitation (and a drop in humidity in the troposphere, see Ferenc Miskolczi). Negative feedback.
The earth’s climate toggles from Ice Age to Interglacial ATM, two stable local minima, and it takes more than a tiny influence to lift the system through the local maximum in between these two local minima. What exactly causes the flip is not known ATM and is not researched because big science busies itself by exploring global meltdown. Never happened, never will.

I do agree that there is no precise dviding line between weather and climate.
I prefer weather as an instance of climate: You add up enough instances – you get climate.
Probablistically speaking, the chances of Global Warming overriding this cooling phase in the short term are slim pickins.
With the oceans flipped to cold phases, I don’t see anything in the next 20 years to bail AGW out of the pit it’s dug for itself. These same AGW models were used to predict warmer than ever seasons, and they fell on thier collective faces in cold slush. The snail’s pace of Solar Activity, if indeed that has something to do with it, and the predicted even lower SC25 is no comfort for phantasmaGoracle warming either.
With Trillion of bucks and scads of economies poised on the brink of monetary pits, the odds are very good that the AGW proposals to take on the Climate to smash it into submission… are doomed. Given the choice of watching to cooling proceed and betting on an outlier are foolish to the nth degree. And we know they have been busy bees fudging the records, so the presumpition of slight cooling is in serious doubt.

K. Bray (13:50:19) :
EARTH”S INTERNAL FURNACE [snipped]
This internal Earth heat slowly dissipates through the Earth’s crust.
This heat must logically play some role in surface temperatures, certainly keeping our orb from freezing. Temperatures only 1 Kilometer below most land masses are too hot to survive in without mechanical cooling.
What if climate change is really related to variations in the heat being transmitted and released through the crust in pulses of decades or centuries or longer periods of normal fluxuations ?
There must be some deep mine temperature statistics somewhere to reveal this detectable component.
I submit that Earth’s Internal Heat must play some role, even if minor, in climate variability.
*****************
K. Bray:
See if you can google any information on temperatures inside South African mines. They go deep and the temperature at depth is uncomfortabloy hot, and the temperature varies quite regularly with depth.
Water from an undergrond spring will be at ground temperature. Where I am, at 45°N in eastern Canada, the temperature is around 6°C. It should be this year-’round for, below a certain depth, the temperature is more-or-less constant throughout the year. Similarly, the air temperature inside deep caves will be relatively constant at the temperature appropriate to that depth.
IanM

Thanks, Mr. William M. Briggs, for confronting the Global Warming Scam with yet another another inconvenient truth.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo

Well the recent Haiti earthquake demonstrates that cataclysmic events can and do happen with considerable regularity.
To argue that such events are consistent with some model; is not the least bit helpful; even with the caveat that the probablilies are not zero.
But to offer such a model as a thesis for what the real world physics of the situation is doing, is just plain silly.
It is well known in classical climatology, that the earth’s mean surface temperature is a logarithmic function of the atmospheric abundance of CO2. Dr Steven Schneider of Stanford evidently said so when he started his concept of “Climate Sensitivity”; one of the keystones of classical climatology, and central proposition of the AGW theory.
There is only one problem with Dr Schneider’s thesis. There simply is nowhere to be found any data sets of simultaneous earth surface temperature, and atmopsheric CO2 abundance that have been shown to be related either logarithmically; or the reverse; exponentially. Not only are there no such simultaneous data sets; but there are not even any time delayed data sets, that show earth surface mean temperature to be logarithmically related to any earlier time epoch CO2 atmospheric abundance; nor to an data sets where the CO2 abundance changes follow after the Temperature changes, as Antarctic ice cores seem to show, with a time delay of about 800 years, between temperature rise and CO2 rise.
No such data for any time scale in the last 600+ million years, can be shown to fit a lograthithmic function. Yet many very common physical phenomenon most certainly do follow a logarithmic/ exponential relationship; depending on the order of the variables.
Radioactive decay, forward current of semiconductor diodes, and resistive charge decay of a capacitor held charge, are all known to be logarithmic, or exponential over many orders of magnitude of the wider range variable.
Well actually there really are two things wrong with Dr Schneider’s thesis. Not only is there no experimentally observed data sets that follow his theory; but there isn’t even any physical cause and effect relationship between atmospheric CO2 abundance, and mean earth surface temperature.
And any high school science student would be able to suggest why such a postulate is rather silly to say the least.
The purported mechanism by which CO2 via the “Greenhouse effect” warms the earth, rests on the selective absorption of Long Wave Surface Emitted thermal Infra-Red Radiation. (LWIR).
Now nobody that I know, who knows any physics at all, has any doubt that CO2 and indeed other molecules such as H2O do in fact absorb such radiant energy from the earth’s surface, and in turn warm the rest of the atmosphere via molecular collisions. It simply is not rational to claim this is not so.
It is far less certain that this heated atmosphere in turn warms the earth’s surface. Certainly a warmer atmosphere at any altitude, will of course radiate thermal radiation into outer space more effectively, and thereby add to the cooling effect of the earth. It can be argued that the cascade process of reabsorption and re-emission of LWIR in the atmosphere, favors the escape to space, rather than the warming of the surface, since the upward path traverses through ever less dense and colder atmosphere and GHG gases, thereby narrowing the width of the IR absorption spectrum lines as altitude increases, and both temperature and pressure broadening subside.
On the downward path, however, the density and temperature both increase, so the absorption band widens, as you go lower, increasing the probablility of recapture, and so lowering the probability of reaching the surface.
And when it does reach the surface; most of it is going to be absorbed in the top 10 micorns or less of surface waters; and that concentrated surface warming is going to promote prompt evaporation from the surface.
This prompt evaporation increases the atmospheric H2O concentration; which already exceeeds CO2 abundance virtually everywhere in the atmosphere, and conveys huge amounts of energy into the upper atmosphere in the form of latent heat of evaporation; thereby resulting in surface cooling of a substantial amount. The resulting cloud increases result in further cooling of the surface due to increased albedo, and more blocking of solar radiation to the surface.
So almost nobody pooh poohs the GHG mechanism.
The trouble is that the extreme range of earth surface temperatures, most of which can be present simultaneously, covers the range from about -90 deg C, to about +60 deg C or more.
Over that range, the emittance of LWIR from the surface will vary by more than an order of magnitude; closer to a range of about 11:1.
So the putative driver of climate sensitivity; CO2 absorption of surface emitted LWIR varies by more than an order of magnitude depending on where you are on earth; and virtually nowhere on the earth is such a relationship even sampled; so there is not any measured real world data, to even establish some global average; of what is a highly ranging variable; namely the heating of the atmosphere by CO2 capture of LWIR from the surface.
So no; there isn’t any physical mechanism to support Schneider’s thesis; nor is there any recognised data sets that demonstrate his logarithmic “climate sensitivity” notion.
As I said, any high school science student, can see it is a ludicrous idea.
But then dozens of University faculties have a vested interested in indoctrinating new generations of mushheads, into this bizarre dogma.

Thanks Will, very well done.
We have a 50% chance of rain tomorrow. 😉

“John (15:38:23) :
[…]
That particular “science” is in desperate need of overhaul.”
The major shortcoming is that clouds and humidity are not computed by their models but preset by parameters as far as i could find out.
A while ago i found von Storch’s institute on the web and while trawling it i found an offer for a Diplomarbeit or Master’s thesis to model the effect of clouds. I find it striking that even by 2010 they still don’t have that. I mean their grid cells are too large to model local phenomena but how difficult can it be to add a cache that at least approximates cloud formation by getting a best match to the state of the grid cell and retrieves the best observed data for that state. That wouldn’t be perfect but way better than what they have.
This is really poor given that they cry wolf since at least 1988 now. My impression is that they did not try in earnest to model the earth’s climate but tried in earnest to milk the system for all it’s worth.

Overcast skies trap heat and keep temperatures warmer all night.
Clear skies let the ground heat quickly dissipate off earth at night allowing significant cooling.
This is observable and obvious, even by just sleeping “under the stars.”
Perhaps a solution to warming, (if that is a “problem”) would be dehumidifying atmospheric air. The drought issue however would be seriously problematic, but it would be cooler.
Water vapor appears to be the biggest obvious factor in temperature regulation.
The other factors like co2, methane, internal heat, etc. are incidentals.
Let’s get back to manufacturing things and controlling the toxic chemicals… leave CO2 alone… CO2 is beneficial and necessary for life.
How to “UNSETTLE” the “SETTLED” science ? That is what is necessary and is slowly being done. I want to help however I can… even if just with humor…

“George E. Smith (16:02:09) :
[…]
The trouble is that the extreme range of earth surface temperatures, most of which can be present simultaneously, covers the range from about -90 deg C, to about +60 deg C or more.
Over that range, the emittance of LWIR from the surface will vary by more than an order of magnitude; closer to a range of about 11:1.”
Very good, i didn’t think of that.
George, when you say that nobody has observed the logarithmic relationship: My guess is that it exists but is obfuscated by the water vapour content. When CO2 concentrations rise, LIR rays are more likely to be reflected back closer to the surface. This means more energy at the surface and less energy higher up, leading to a cooling higher up and a drop in air humidity higher up. That’s how i interpret Miskolczi. The overall greenhouse effect is thus constant even when CO2 varies.
You say that the direction upwards for a LIR ray is easier because the absorption bands get narrower. True, but consider that a LIR ray is absorbed after 10m or 30ft on average. For the LIR band, the atmosphere is a very dense fog. Imagine the atmosphere to be made of layers each 10m thick: It will take a lot of absorptions and re-emissions until a LIR ray reaches space. I think it’s very unlikely.
Look into these slides by Miskolczi :
http://miskolczi.webs.com/ZM_v10_eng.pdf
Slide 62 is interesting, ED for downward emittance is the LIR flux emitted downwards. It’s practically ALL of the LIR flux that goes downward; and it has been so in pre-industrial times if Miskolczi is right. It’s always been a saturated greenhouse effect, mostly caused by water vapour.

{ Kevin Kilty (15:36:02) :} Thanks Kevin.
Any one of a number of obscure sources of earth’s heat could be latched onto by a group of “believers” to choose it as a scape goat and promote the idea for punitive legislation, as we see happening worldwide.
Shameful and foolish rules are coming out of formerly sacred halls of reason and freedom. “Settled Beliefs” will come to no good, only accurate science will correct it.
If they don’t listen, we must vote them out… think MA, “Let’s beam ’em out Scotty !”

From the text: [if “climate” is defined as the yearly mean temperature]
Historically, it has not been defined in this manner.
Type Köppen climate into your search box and look at a few of the reports and images that are returned. To me, these patterns that are defined would have to change noticeably before we start talking about climate change. Anything else is simple variability.

Sorry – my mistake – not Australia but the Tip of Borneo which is still technically NH

Bernd Felsche (17:03:38) :
This 30 year issue has been raised and commented on a number of times in the past year. Here is an example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/20/antarctica-warming-ice-melting-not/#comment-191302
Ubique of Perth WA (17:55:26) :
Why is the NSIDC still making comparisons with a 1979-2000 average? Twenty one years is a pretty ordinary baseline – why aren’t we seeing a 1979 – 2008 average?
Climate normals are set by international treaty to be an average over 30 years with the last year ending with a zero. After 2010 there will be updates.
Has anyone ever wondered about the choice of years for averages or normals of climatic variables? In case you have but haven’t found the answer, here is one:
“Climatologists define a climatic normal as the arithmetic average of a climate element such as temperature over a prescribed 30-year interval. The 30 year interval was selected by international agreement, based on the recommendations of the International Meteorological Conference in Warsaw in 1933. The 30 year interval is sufficiently long to filter out many of the short-term interannual fluctuations and anomalies, but sufficiently short so as to be used to reflect longer term climatic trends. Currently, the 30-year interval for calculating normals extends from 1971 to 2000.”
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/normals.html
Also, here: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/26747.pdf
ps: I re-post this about once a month.

meanwhile, back at the UN ranch:
ww Jan: UN: Senior UN climate change official calls for united global action to forge rapid accord
The failure of last month’s United Nations summit in Copenhagen to agree on ambitious and immediate global action to combat climate change means that the task has become more, not less urgent, a senior UN official said in an opinion piece published today.
“The window of opportunity to tackle the climate problem closes more rapidly the longer nations delay to act together,” UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer wrote in the Bangkok Post. “But Copenhagen has raised the challenge to the highest level of government policy, the level where it must ultimately be resolved.”…
“It will take time for countries to digest the implications,” he said. “This is well and good, for they must come to terms with the challenge ahead. Now, industrialized countries can resume discussions to raise their collective mid-term emission cuts into the minus 25 to 40 per cent range that science has indicated would avoid the worst climate impacts. Failure to achieve this can only mean the need for greater ambition later.
“Countries need to discuss how the long-term finance will be raised. Let us also not forget that in Copenhagen, nations pledged $28 billion in short-term finance for immediate action, and this money is sitting in national budgets. Countries need to find how this money can be used as soon as possible to launch immediate action.”
Mr. de Boer stressed that multilateral agreements are the only tool the world has to agree on laws, regulations, accounting norms and market mechanisms for global action in curbing climate change and keep it honest.
“It is increasingly impossible for nations to act confidently without these reference points, in a world where no one bloc calls the shots,” he said. “If countries follow up Copenhagen’s outcomes calmly and with their eye on the collective advantage, then they have every chance of completing this promise.”
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33565&Cr=climate+change&Cr1=

Turns out forgetting to close the lid on a really great old deep freeze in my garage was the tipping point. Sorry all.

I am a layman and may be I have lost the plot but isn’t it a central issue of the AGW theory that CO2 is a ‘greenhouse’ gas such that with ever increasing concentrations/quantities, the global temperature WILL increase? Warmists continually assert that the physics that this is based on dates back 150 years and is certain and sound. That physics does allude to the possibility that with increasing concentrations/quantities of CO2, the global temperature will cool. If that is the fundamentals of the physics, it follows that if there are any periods (even of just a year) when global temperatures have not increased even though CO2 concentrations/quantities have increased, then there MUST be other factors at work which factors have cancelled out the predicted increase. This is important since unless the Warmist can (i) identify what those other factors are; and (ii) explain how those other factors have cancelled out the predicted increase (during the relevant time frame), all one is left with is unexplained natural variation in the climate system. In these circumstances, one is forced to conclude that one does not fully understand the climate system which system contains unexplained natural variation affecting global temperatures. Once one accepts that summary of present day knowledge, it is impossible to assert that the ONLY explanation for the observed warming since the mid 1800s/early 1900s is the introduction of man made CO2 and the whole case behind the AGW theory does not pass even a balance of probabilities test, ie., an equally plausible explanation for the observed increase in global temperatures since the mid 1800s.early 1900s could be the unexplained natural variation in the system.
I fully concur that when testing the AGW theory, colder than average (predicted) years are more significant than warmer years since colder years runs counter to the theory and therefore these years require some explanation which explanation is still consistent with the underlying premise that increasing levels of CO2 will increase global temperatures. It is not sufficient for proposers of the theory to say we do not know what went on, it is just natural variation. When the cold years extend to more than 1 year, it causes ever more problems for the theory since the odds against this happening increase dramatically. In the UK we have had two cold winters in succession notwithstanding the MET office advising us that cold winters will become a distant thing of the past.
PS. I have been reading the posts for many months on many of the relevant sites but I have never seen anyone suggest that since CO2 concentrations appear to lag warming by about 800/1000 years, may be the observed increase in measured CO2 during the last 100 years is nothing more than the signature of the MWP or Roman warm period, ie., it has nothing to do with burning of fossil fuels during the last 100 years. Does anyone have a view on this?

We may see AGW fade away as a UN concern – Fox is reporting that the UN wants to get involved with controlling health care world wide. Frankly, that sounds like a more promising avenue to one world government than the climate.

Well I just checked out your Miskolczi reference Dirk, and it looks like a nice dissertation; whcih I will have to digest.
But nowhere in it did I find any assertion that most of the atmospheric emission goes downwards.
In several places, the author asserts that the atmospheric upward emission is always half of the surface upward emission. That would make the upward and downward each half ot the total surface emission; which is about what a simple isotropic atmospheric emission would suggest.
A lot of good stuff in there to think about, and some stuff I have no confidence in, such as the Trenberth earth energy budget. Anybody knows that the incoming solar TSI is more like 1366 Watts per m^2 and not any 342 number which Trenberth asserts.
And no 1366 W/m^2 time shared over the surface does not produce the same effect as 342 received 24/7 by each square metre of the earth from pole to pole.

But remember that the assertion IS that the logarithm of the CO2 atmospheric abundance matches the rise in mean global surface temperature
I thought that the assertion was that CO2 causes small rise in temp that results in exponential rise in water vapor as max water vapour in atmosphere about doubles for every 10 degree rise in temp, approximately tripling CO2 direct effect?
That said my understanding is that the energy emitted by an ideal black body is determined by Stefan’s Law which is
P(w/m2)=5.76*10^-8*K^4
If we use temp of earth average at 300K, and get a 3 degree rise, earth radiance would go up by 18 w/m2? But IPCC estimate is CO2 doubling = 3.7 watts, tripled by H2O = 11.1 watts. so unless they are claiming another 7 watts from somewhere else? Or I am missing something else?

According to the Danes (DMI Polar Temperature on the sidebar), mean temperature and climate north of the 80th northern parallel is now lower than at any time since 2004, meaning this winter still has plenty of punch left in it. Nice weather for young polar bears!
REPLY: I have a story coming up on this – Anthony

“Weather is not Climate”
Okay, let’s see:
The Northern Hemisphere Summer 2008 was cooler.
The Southern Hemisphere Summer 2008 was cooler.
The Northern Hemisphere Winter 2008 was cooler.
The Southern Hemisphere Winter 2008 was cooler.
The Northern Hemisphere Summer 2009 was the “Summer that never was.”
The Northern Hemisphere Winter 2009/2010 is the coldest in 100 years.
The Southern Hemisphere Summer 2009/2010 has twice had snow, even down to the 3,000 foot level In Australia, which is uncommon. even in their winter.
Umm, how long does a “weather” pattern have to exist before it becomes “climate” ? ? ? ?
How many kilometers of species treelines have to move {south in the northern hemisphere, or north in the southern hemisphere} before the Climate Scientologists realize that the Climate Zones have shifted?
Perhaps when Michael Mann and Phil Jones are in police custody and making plea-bargain deals for leniency, we will see a modicum of reality hitting the politicians who would believe tea entrails instead of actual science.
BTW, where are the peer-reviewed studies listing the names of the “30% of the species will become extinct” mentioned in the last IPCC report? Where are the peer reviewed studies on the drought-driven crop failures that are in the last IPCC report? Which crops are going to fail? Publish them so Farmers can avoid failures of those crops! The IPCC were “spot-on” about the peer-reviewed science journal papers on glacial melting the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. Wait, they lied about that. Never mind, they said we could belive them on everything! “Trust Me!”
LAUGH OUT LOUD!
Newt Love (my real name) newtlove.com
Aerospace Technical Fellow: Modeling, Simulation & Analysis
“The most famous person nobody has heard of!”

For George E. Smith:
“..Anybody knows that the incoming solar TSI is more like 1366 Watts per m^2 and not any 342 number which Trenberth asserts.
And no 1366 W/m^2 time shared over the surface does not produce the same effect as 342 received 24/7 by each square metre of the earth from pole to pole.”
It’s pretty simple. And the theory matches the measurements. It’s not, on average 340 W/m^2
The TSI is received against the “2d radius” of the earth, so the total energy incoming is:
E(total) = S x pi x r^2
where S is the solar “constant” of 1367W/m^2 at the distance of the earth from the sun
r is the radius of the earth
Some is reflected out by the clouds, earth’s surface – the planetary albedo, A – which is about 30%
And the 70% received in is shared out (unevenly) over the area of the earth which is 4 x pi x r^2
Actual average shortwave solar radiation absorbed by the earth’s surface =
S/4 (1-A)
= 240 W/m^2
The actual number at any one time depends on real angle of the sun at the particular point so is dependant on latitude, time of year and time of day.

Good Morning Mr. Briggs:
Your mission, should you decide to accept, is to take several of the “Average Temperature” data sets, to analyze them in terms of their “standard deviation” over time.
You are to show that changes over the last 10, 50, 100, 150 years DO NOT FALL
far enough outside of 2 SD’s to have ANY statistical significance.
Should you, or any of your “SM” (Statistical Methods) team be denounced, or derided, you may safely dispense of your critics as complete statistical morons.
Good Luck Mr. Briggs, this Email will Phil Jones delete in 5 seconds…
5
4
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2
1
Psssstttt!!! —-

Let me put it another way:
Black walnut wood is beautiful. Back in the early 80s, When weather changed, and the permafrost layer marched south during the late 1970s, the “climate zones” in North America shifted south. Many Black Walnut trees growing near St Louis, Missouri were killed by the “cold-line” moving south. A local saw mill harvested these “southern” trees, and processed their wood into T&G flooring, and I did my whole house in the hardwood floors.
Why did the “climate zones” — where trees grow — shift, if not a climate change. Well, in the late 80s and 90s, the climate zones shifted north. Now, in the “20-teens” we are seeing the climate zones shift south again.
Why aren’t moose wandering around in Palm Springs? Why do southern pine trees not grow in Connecticut with the northern pine species? It’s the climate, stupid!”
Yeah, “weather isn’t climate” but long-term cold weather moves the climate zones south, and long-term warm moves them north.
BTW, since we are warmer than the Little Ice-Age, isn’t that a good thing? We are not as warm as the MWP. Is that bad? Why is it that, even though the AGW crowd has yet to prove that rising CO2 forces rising temps, that they get a free-pass on their assertion that “change is BAD!” What a normative load of BS propaganda. Are they saying that the 1970s were the most perfect for the planet? Was it the 1980s that were “perfect.” Please tell me so I can laugh out loud!
Newt Love (my real name) newtlove.com
Aerospace Technical Fellow: Modeling, Simulation & Analysis
“The most famous person nobody has heard of!”

I think this is the only time I’ve ever seen “Business as Usual” defined as a climate model in itself. Everyone else uses it to describe an unchanged rate of human GHG emissions. There are them climate models based on BAU emissions, but they certainly don’t say “whatever happened last year will more or less happen this year, and so on into the future”.

OMG… but…but… if we can’t draw a clear distinction between weather a climate then all of Stephen Schneider’s precautionary principle doomsday “insurance policy” scams/metaphors will become forever muddled and meaningless. Say it ain’t so!

Davidmhoffer,
“If we use temp of earth average at 300K, and get a 3 degree rise, earth radiance would go up by 18 w/m2? But IPCC estimate is CO2 doubling = 3.7 watts, tripled by H2O = 11.1 watts. so unless they are claiming another 7 watts from somewhere else? Or I am missing something else?”
Yes, you are missing the fact that in order to get a 3c rise from 3.7 watts, the climate models incorporate positive feedbacks which supposedly add to this value.

Yes, you are missing the fact that in order to get a 3c rise from 3.7 watts, the climate models incorporate positive feedbacks which supposedly add to this value
I included that. CO2 doubling = 3.7. Positive feedback from water vaper = 7.4 watts. IPCC mentions other feedbacks, NONE of which are in the same order of magnitude as those two. Now earth isn’t an ideal black body, but with radiance increasing commensurate with temperature raised to power of FOUR…. the negative feedback from plane old physics ALONE is larger than the temp change the IPCC claims is possible. so either I missed something else, or their claim is WAY over stated.

Good work Briggs, I guess your not bored after all.

“davidmhoffer (06:13:15) :
[…]
the negative feedback from plane old physics ALONE is larger than the temp change the IPCC claims is possible. so either I missed something else, or their claim is WAY over stated.”
Exactly. The small extra wattage induced by man-made GHG rise completely drowns in the natural fluctuation.

The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines:
Main Entry: re·ify
Pronunciation: \ˈrā-ə-ˌfī, ˈrē-\
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): re·ified; re·ify·ing
Etymology: Latin res thing — more at real
Date: 1854
: to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing
“Climate” is a reification of Weather. Weather is real. The atmosphere is real. Solar radiation is real. Evaporation of water from the oceans is real. A whole host of other processes are real. They produce Weather on an ongoing basis. Making measurements on the Weather and computing statistics on the measurements and choosing among the statistics which ones you think are important gives you Climate.

davidmhoffer (06:13:15) :
Yes, you are missing the fact that in order to get a 3c rise from 3.7 watts, the climate models incorporate positive feedbacks which supposedly add to this value
I included that. CO2 doubling = 3.7. Positive feedback from water vaper = 7.4 watts. IPCC mentions other feedbacks, NONE of which are in the same order of magnitude as those two. Now earth isn’t an ideal black body, but with radiance increasing commensurate with temperature raised to power of FOUR…. the negative feedback from plane old physics ALONE is larger than the temp change the IPCC claims is possible. so either I missed something else, or their claim is WAY over stated.

The issue might be that the Stefan Law does not apply in this case. The LWIR goes out though a narrow “water vapor window” and in order to get a temperature to the fourth power factor for emitted power, you need the full spectrum. Depending on how the spectrum peak fits within this window or not results in effects ranging from a temperature to the 4.6 power to almost no effect at all.

suggest that since CO2 concentrations appear to lag warming by about 800/1000 years, may be the observed increase in measured CO2 during the last 100 years is nothing more than the signature of the MWP or Roman warm period
maybe yes maybe no. There are multiple cycles at play, each with its own latency. Solar energy has lots of shortwave, and so penetrates the ocean up to 300 meters. a 1 watt/m2 rms increase in solar would take 36 years to increase 300 meters of ocean 1 degree…. so yeah, that could set in motion all kinds of things that may not show up for decades or centuries. But greenhouse effect is all longwave which only penetrates the first few mm of water where the resulting heat would promote evaporation into the atmosphere…so CO2 variation ought to be much shorter term than solar, methinks.

Davidmhoffer
Re: TOA/Surface forcing
I’ve come up with a crude calculation which I hope illustrates the amplification of the TOA forcing at the surface.
Let G be the amount of energy emitted from the earth’s surface.
Let A be the amount of energy emitted from the atmosphere.
Another way of thinking of A is that it is the amount of energy that is transmitted through the atmosphere.
If there were no absorbing gases in the atmosphere then we would have the trivial result that: A = G, i.e. all energy emitted from the surface is emitted directly to space.
But we do have absorbing gases in the atmosphere. If T is the Transmission factor (i.e. the proportion of G which is transmitted) then the amount of energy emitted to space from the atmosphere is given by
A = G x T (i) so that
240 = 390 x T
i.e. T = ~0.62 or ~62% of G is transmitted
If CO2 doubles, outgoing energy would be reduced by 4 w/m2 (again using easy numbers) so the energy emitted (transmitted) from the atmosphere, i.e. A = 236. Substituting this new value into (i) we have
236 = 390 x T or T = 236/390 = ~0.605
Now only 60.5% is transmitted. But the earth still needs to get rid of 240 w/m2 which means the surface will need to warm. To find out by how much we can rearrange (i) as follows
G = A/T i.e.
G = 240/0.605 =~397 w/m2 which is an increase of ~7 w/m2 compared to a 4 w/m2 forcing at the TOA. The 1.7 factor (deltaG/deltaA) looks to be pretty consistent with the numbers mentioned in earlier posts, so we have some confidence that the explanation is valid.

The claim that the climate isn’t weather is like saying that food isn’t strawberries. …and then arguing that strawberries aren’t food.

The real problem is that they had falsified data and the “warming is man made” by GISS and CRU. Is this climate or weather?

I’ve been sayin this for years. Averaging daily weather-related temp readings and then coming up with an anomaly over time and calling it anthropogenic climate change as if it were different from the weather-related temperature data it is derived from cannot be supported by this kind of statistical figuring. It is not an explained mechanism. It is not a cause and effect explanation. It is not a correlation of any kind. What would be interesting is to also report median and mode as well as high and low anomaly.

John Finn
I’ll look forward to it. But as I’m in the UK and I’m not sure which US timezone you live in – I’m not sure when I’ll read it.
Time zones being a Canadian invention, and I being in Canada, there’s no need to drag the Americans into it 🙂 I’m Central Time. That said, my follow up question got really complicated and turned into more of a position paper, but please read it as a question:
In brief, I treated the whole planet, atmosphere included, as a Black Body. Your explanation treats the earth land and sea surface as a Black Body with a layer of atmosphere around it. To make up for a deficit of 4 watts at Top of Atmosphere, the Black Body needs to radiate an extra 7 or so. Fair enough as the atmosphere makes for an awful correlation to Black Body since the bulk of the energy spectrum goes right through it. Even then, any energy increases would eventually propagate through the system as a whole making the model valid given sufficient time to achieve equilibrium, but let’s put that aside for a moment.
CO2 molecules make for an excellent Black Body correlation provided that you remember that they are suspended in the atmosphere. So energy captured by a CO2 molecule is radiated in all directions as opposed to the earth Black Body only having one way to go. So energy radiated by a CO2 molecule heated up by LW from the earth can wind up in one of three places. The portion radiated downward will either collide with another molecule in the atmosphere, or earth. The energy radiated sideways or upward will either collide with another molecule in the atmosphere, or escape into space.
So the physics really falls apart again. If all we were looking at was CO2, about 20% of its radiation would be down. To get an extra 4 watts going down you would need to radiate about 20. Of course that’s not fair. The other 80% gets radiated in other directions, some of which escapes into space and some of which hits other molecules. Of the energy that hits other molecules, 20% would be radiated down and 80% would either escape or hit other molecules and so on in a law of diminishing returns. So you still need CO2 to radiate an extra 16 watts or so (guesstimate mine) to raise the over all atmosphere temperature to deliver 4 down. What temperature rise does that require?
In the Troposphere at an average of -20 C, you would need a temperature increase of 4 degrees C to correspond to a 1 degree C rise at earth surface to get 7 watts going out to get back to equilibrium. Even if I over guesstimated by double, we would still need to see Troposphere temperatures varying from mean by over double that of surface temperatures. Amsu-A only has about 10 years of data, but they pretty much track together, suggesting once again that the rise in earth radiance for a given temperature increase would over whelm contribution from CO2. That’s only a 1 degree rise. Since earth radiance goes up with T^4, an exponential rise in CO2 contribution would be required to keep up. Further, how long would it take? The stratosphere has 2500 times as many other molecules as CO2…. So a very long time for the CO2 to heat up the rest of them even if you include conduction as well as radiance. One could, I suppose, calculate the transmission spectrum of CO2 for a given temperature and then determine if molecules beyond the troposphere absorb in that spectrum but not in the one the earth normally radiates at…. But we’re starting to talk pretty thin atmosphere there, so a lot would just escape, and the rest…20% down, 80% sideways or up….
OK, I’m sure I blew it somewhere back there in the logic chain…. But the energy balance doesn’t seem to add up either way. If the whole thing, atmosphere included, is a Black Body, then we’d need to see exponential rises in CO2 contribution to keep up with increased earth radiance? If we look at it as two layers, we would need an exponential rise in CO2 contribution to keep up with earth radiance?

davidmhoffer (12:16:22) :
John Finn
I’ll look forward to it. But as I’m in the UK and I’m not sure which US timezone you live in – I’m not sure when I’ll read it.
Time zones being a Canadian invention, and I being in Canada, there’s no need to drag the Americans into it 🙂 I’m Central Time. That said, my follow up question got really complicated and turned into more of a position paper, but please read it as a question
David
Sorry about my “american” assumption. It’s just that there’s rather a lot of them about – and a good few post on WUWT.
I’ve read your post but will need to go over it again before I could give a reasonable response to your points. However, I’d just like to make the following couple of points of my own.
1. In your original post, you queried the apparent discrepancy between IPCC value of ~18 w/m2 and the CO2 forcing figure (amplified by feedback) of ~11 w/m2. I believe I gave a simple illustration as to why the IPCC use the higher figure. I did not attempt to justify it. However, it does seem reasonable that if an extra 4 w/m2 is to be emitted from the TOA then the surface will need to emit more than 4 w/m2 since some of the extra energy emitted from the surface will be absorbed by the ghgs in the atmosphere.
2. I don’t doubt your 80% : 20% absorption figures but ultimately some goes up and some goes down. OK – 80% is not radiated to the surface (immediately) but some of that 80% will be re-absorbed and 20% of that will be radiated down and 80% radiated elsewhere … and so on. In a column of the atmosphere there is the potential for lots of absorptions and emissions.
If I am able I’ll try and give a more considered response to your post later (I am quite definitely not able at the moment 🙂 )
PS I hoped you enjoyed dinner.

Sorry about my “american” assumption. It’s just that there’s rather a lot of them about – and a good few post on WUWT.
no need to apologise, apparently we look like them too 🙂
1. In your original post, you queried the apparent discrepancy between IPCC value of ~18 w/m2 and the CO2 forcing figure (amplified by feedback) of ~11 w/m2. I believe I gave a simple illustration as to why the IPCC use the higher figure. I did not attempt to justify it. However, it does seem reasonable that if an extra 4 w/m2 is to be emitted from the TOA then the surface will need to emit more than 4 w/m2 since some of the extra energy emitted from the surface will be absorbed by the ghgs in the atmosphere.
I wasn’t actually disputing your numbers, I sort of accepted them. In reading your comment above I may have misunderstood though. If IPCC calculates 3.7w/m2 at TOA, there would be amplification at earth surface due to the difference in the area of the TOA sphere vs the seal level sphere – but only about 3%. At end of day though, I don’t think you can calculate baed on the extra energy being modeled as starting at TOA and coming down. It “starts” at earth surface as normal level of earth radiance and goes up. The “normal” amount gets retained and the rest escapes. IPCC claim is double the amount of CO2 and retain an extra 3.7 w/m2 = 1.1 degree temp increase. But at 0 C that would only be enought to sustain about .75 degrees. At 20 C, that would only be enough to sustain 0.64 degrees. At 30 C, it would sustain only .58 degrees. In brief, the warmer it is, the less effect a given change in energy input gets. If I magnify as per your estimate, I still have the same disconnect between the steepness of the two curves, and at some point, radiance MUST over whelm CO2 forcing. At the same time as that is happening, the curve from CO2 forcing has to go the other way. If going from 280 ppm to 560 ppm adds 3.7 watts, does adding another 280 to toal 840 ppm add 7.4 watts? No, it can’t. The last 280 can only capture a certain percentage of what is coming at it, and since the first 560 already got some of it, the last 280 gets the same percentage of a smaller number.
So…as temperature goes up, the effect of a given energy input decreases. As CO2 concentration goes up, the effect on energy input decreases. No?

1. Any correlation between cold winters and hot summers?
I think this is a much more important question than people realize. For starters, farmers are, as you pointed out, far more governed by the growing season fluctuation than the annual fluctuation. My personal observation is that “less cold” winters are often coupled with “less warm” summers and vice versa. Its hard to find data broken up that way, but what little I’ve seen suggests that. The other reason I think it important is that most long term temperature reconstructions rely on tree ring and other similar data. This assumes that any fluctuation in growing season is mirrored by the non-growing season. The farther north you go, the shorter the growing season and the longer the part of the year that the tree ring data doesn’t measure, so any divergence becomes more significant. Given that the recent controversy has been over tree ring data from Siberia, I just don’t see how it can be considered valid unless studied from that perspective.

“”” scienceofdoom (21:09:02) :
continuing.. for George E. Smith:
I’d be amazed if Trenberth had got such a basic number wrong- what are you citing?
The averaged value across the globe is 240W/m^2. At a given point at a given time, it is quite possible to be 340W/m^2. “””
Well then be amazed.
The official NOAA chart which evidently is attributed to Trenberth shows an incoming solar radiation component of 342 W/m^2, which gets divvied up in various ways.
Well that may happen on some planet, but not on this one. On Earth, we have a TSI value of about 1366 W/m^2, which is 4 times Trenberth’s number.
Evidently he takes into account that only a bit more that half of the earth surface is sunlit at any time; actually about 51-52% because of atmospheric refraction, the sun’s angular diameter and other scattering effects.
The earth surface unfortunately only respoonds to what it sees, and when it sees actually 4 times Trenberth’s figure, arriving at the surface, the heating of the surface is much faster (even four times as fast), and it reaches a higher peak temperature, because of that 4X irradiance. The higher temperature reahced results in a much greater amount of thermal radiation from the ground, and moreover it is spectrally shifted to shorter wavelengths because of the higher surface temperature (Wien’s Displacement Law). Consequently the outgoing LWIR is both greater in intensity than with Trenberth’s model, and also spectrally shifted further away from the CO2 absorption band.
The integrated result is that the earth cools much more in reality than it would if bathed continuously at 1/4 the irradiance. The surface emittance is going to roughly follow a 4th power of T law, while the surface emitted spectral peak emmittance follows more of a 5th power of T law; which is of more interest when figuring GHG (CO2) absorption.
Averaging a function which is highly non-linear, always yields a lower value that the integral of the effects of that non-linear function.
And in Trenberth’s model, the surface irradiance of 198 W/m^2 is the same everywhere including on the noonday sun lit North African Deserts, and at the South Pole during the peak of winter midnight.
Total nonsense.
If they are going to create “Climate models” they should at least model something akin to the planet we live on; which does not enjoy a constant never ending low value solar insolation; but a highly variable and cyclic one which creates totally different physical effects.

“”” davidmhoffer (18:28:17) :
But remember that the assertion IS that the logarithm of the CO2 atmospheric abundance matches the rise in mean global surface temperature
I thought that the assertion was that CO2 causes small rise in temp that results in exponential rise in water vapor as max water vapour in atmosphere about doubles for every 10 degree rise in temp, approximately tripling CO2 direct effect? “””
Well actually ANY rise in mean global surface temperature will result in increased H2O in the atmosphere. CO2 has no special dispensation to produce warming that selectively leads to more water vapor. Water vapor itself is perfectly capable of doing that. CO2 is merely a small incremental increase in total atmospheric GHG; which is totally dominated by H2O.
And we have Wentz et al, July 7 , 2007 SCIENCE “How much more rain will Global warming bring ?”
And their measured answer, :- one degr C rise in mean global surface temperature results in 7% increase in total evaporation, total atmospheric water content, and total precipitation. Total precip always has to equal total evap over time, or else we would end up with the oceans over our head, instead of under our feet.
And if this 7% per degree were valid over the whole range of atmospheric moisture from zero upwards, you would expect, the evap/precip and total atmospheric water content to each grow the same. If the rate constant varied widely over a large temperature range, you would still expect evap and precip tyo be equal, but you would not expect atmospheric total water to grow at the same rate; but it does according to Wentz.
As for the GCM view of the situation; they agree that precip equals evap; they’d be silly not to, and it so happens they also agree on the same 7% per degree growth in total atmospheric water. BUT ! according to the GCMs, the rate of increase of evap/precip, is only 1-3%; not 7% as Wentz et al observed on a real planet called earth.
So there is your 3:1 mandatory computer model fudge factor; but more importantly the models are in error from the observation by as much as a factor of 7 : 1.

“”” scienceofdoom (21:09:02) :
continuing.. for George E. Smith:
I’d be amazed if Trenberth had got such a basic number wrong- what are you citing?
The averaged value across the globe is 240W/m^2. At a given point at a given time, it is quite possible to be 340W/m^2. “””
Well SoD, I’m quite familiar with how they get the number they use; it’s just that nobody bothered to inform planet earth about Trenberth’s rule. So Earth does not calculate it’s total incoming solar energy that way, so naturally it gets a different answer. And moreover, there is nowhere in place any system capable of measuring Trenberth’s number; so it is a bit disingenuous to say his number agrees with measurments.
And even though the total surface area of the planet, is about four times the total interception disk, the actual amount of the earth surface that is soalr irradiated at any time (absent cloud cover) is about 51-52% of the total earth surface; not 25%. This comes from a sun angular diameter of about 0.5 deg, and a horizon atmospheric refraction of at least the same order of magnitude at each end of the day. When the sun’s lower limb is sitting on the visible horizon, the entire sun disk is completely below the horizon. Then atmospheric scattering conducts sunlight into the night sky at admittedly a lower level for the duration of morning and evening twilight.
The earth surface takes all of this detail and more into account; but Trenberth’s model does not.
Why not model what earth really does, rather than some “artist’s impression” ?

Well David; you and I seem to be among the few, who seem to understand that you cannot simply average a non-linear function and get the right answer
That and energy must increase exponentially to achieve a linear temperature increase, claiming expontial increase in future CO2 emmissions due to fossil fuel consumption would run the planet out of oil in 3 years, linear increases in CO2 forcing are impossible since the amount of energy to contain is finite and so incremental CO2 forcing must diminish even if exponential CO2 increases were possible, same rule applies to water vapour….
What I really dont get is how hard it is to get a basic discussion of physics going when even a simple understanding of these issues is 100 times the proof that glacier melting was a fabricated story.