While we are marveling at the recent revelation out of Serbia that shows a connection between cosmic rays, clouds and temperature, our own volunteer moderator, Roger (Tallbloke) noticed and collated some comments from Bill Illis which are well worth repeating here. Thanks Rog for catching this while I was otherwise engaged. I repeat his post here, which consists of a WUWT comment, but be sure to bookmark Tallbloke’s Talkshop
Over on the Spencer Good, Bad and Ugly response to Dessler 2011 thread on WUWT, Bill Illis quietly drops this little bombshell:
While we are having no luck finding a good correlation between clouds and temperatures in a feedback sense (the scatters are providing r^2 of 0.02) which indicates there is probably NO cloud feedback either way (and the IPCC calculates that positive cloud feedback might be half of the total feedbacks so that is very clearly in question now) …
There is a very interesting relationship between the Net Cloud Radiation levels and the Total Global Net Radiation as measured by the CERES satellite (which I don’t think anyone has looked yet being busy trying to find the temperature feedbacks).
I’m getting Cloud variability being a very large part of the variability in the total Global Net Radiation Budget – anywhere from 65% to 100% (with R^2 between 0.29 and 0.77).
First the (not really convincing but better) scatter using the CERES data (that Steve McIntyre and Roy Spencer made available).
And then the (much, much better) relationship over time.
And then the versions of the data that Dessler provided (where adjustments where made according to the ERA reanalysis dataset which some think is actually a little more accurate). 100% of Net Radiation governed by Clouds with R^2 at 0.77 .
And then over time, a really tight relationship.
So, do Cloud Variations affect the Earth’s Energy Budget? – the title of Dessler’s new paper – His own data says: holy moley!
If one thinks of a gas in terms of heat, or energy redistribution, rather than as a “GHG”,
throughout the depth of the atmosphere,
then is it surprising that the most powerful “GHG” redistributes by far and a way the best?
Water vapour is reportedly 95% of the supposed Greenhouse Effect unproven hypothesis, after all.
If one thinks of the earth’s surface as being “refrigerated” by water, then is it any surprise?
ie, earth’s surface is a solar and geothermal powered “refrigerator”.
Are clouds the cause of the cooling, or the effect of heating, causing extra cooling,
so that, amazingly,
nature keeps earth at -18C overall as seen from space?
Just what it should be, “regardless” of variations. Seems to be a complex, self regulating, natural system,
“we” do not understand, or are viewing incorrectly at present.
Is there a “Radiation obsession” blinding anyone?
Surely not…….
If this analysis holds up, coupled with the CERN data,we might see the final nail in the AGW coffin. It will be interesting to see how Dressler responds since his data gives such strong correlation.
Bill
Bill, can you take your last graph and give us the version where the two values plotted are SUBTRACTED from each other?
Thanks!
Max (PS – Pointer to the dataset? Do we have to run some archane program to extract it?)
The real Scientific understanding of Climate Controls is just starting, it is becoming more & more obvious that the IPCC Team do not really understand it at all, or if they do they are deliberately ignoring/hiding it.
More of this please.
Oh, the irony!
Without knowing anything about how CERES measures cloud radiation vs global net radiation, hard to know if this quite as stunning as it appears, but this kind of relationship is (R^2 of 0.77) is phenomenal in anything to do with climate.
Can someone explain the CERES radiation measurements to me?
Thanks for flagging this one up Anthony, it definitely deserves wider attention than my own post on Bill’s observations can generate.
Sorry for being a doofus but I assume that if I don’t understand something, lots of others are in the same boat.
What precisely is being measured to produce:
1 – Dessler CERES All-Sky Net Radiation
2 – ERA Net Cloud Radiation
When I google for precisely those things, I get no results. Before we get too excited, we should be really clear what we are talking about.
Nice! Raw data somewhere? Looks like putting this together with the amazing Serbian paper and we could have some good ammo (especially if we can show the same effects in the US and elsewhere).
I’ll see if I can stir up some interest in these issues in Anaheim next weekend. Typically, the elephant keepers are too interested in their own games and are usually unwilling to fight with bold ideas to improve prospects for the people. But I can try. There is a difference between what may be true, and what is practical.
Success depends on what voters think. If you don’t win elections, you can’t do much to change how government operates. However, when you are elected, you should demonstrate you have a spine. We have to find a way to show bad science being deliberately misused to hoodwink the people. One problem is, it only takes a small minority of powerful leaders to give marching orders to rest who can’t evaluate what is true or not. Too many companies and other entities who would naturally be interested in opposing and exposing the lies are finding ways to profit from the game. Some very clever ploys have been used to buy off the opposition.
Eventually, Nature will teach. The consequences of bad policy will certainly impact the system. Legislators in Sacto are going balls out to destroy the economy. They should know better, but they just can’t help themselves. Maybe we should let them have their way, just to show the rest of the country how bad their ideas are. As we know, some of the most dangerous policies are based on bad science. The problem is figuring out how to explain regulatory corruption to the voters. Who would be the most credible voice(s)?
This is really good stuff! Thanks to the WUWT contributors for all you do.
Ack! Elephants in LA. Anaheim is ACWA later this year.
Wow, unless there is some circular reasoning or the data really represent the same thing, it’s clear that the opposite of Dessler’s summary is the truth, and quite an important one.
Holy Moley!
That is impressive.
Try to forget about the missleading terms “forcing” and “feedback”. Clouds are condensed water vapor that serve as “resistors” that slow the transfer of energy to space. Bill’s obsevations are consistant with mine. My OLR regressions on precipitable water and rain as resisters yield R^2 s better than 0.9. http://www.kidswincom.net/CO2OLR.pdf.
repeating commieBob’s question:
“What precisely is being measured to produce:
1 – Dessler CERES All-Sky Net Radiation
2 – ERA Net Cloud Radiation”
For heaven’s sake, peope. The point is, does “radiative forcing” (assuming they are measuring it properly, which I doubt) determine global temperature change? If anything, you should be graphing the all-sky net radiation vs global temperature, not vs. cloud radiation (oh, that’s right, this week everyone is hung up on clouds). But, since there is no correlation between clouds and temperatures (that is what an R-square of 0.01 means, for those too blind to judge from the scattershot graphs being shown on the internet), and the third figure above implies clouds are a good proxy for all-sky net radiation (and I agree with others — what the sam hill is all-sky net radiation, really, that the graph should look so good, better than anything else in climate science, and unheralded by peer-reviewed papers from competent scientists long ago), then it looks like there must not be a correlation between net radiation and global temperature. Except isn’t the data supposedly from the last decade, when the temperature hasn’t changed a statistically significant lick? And oh, look, at figure 2 above, the radiation also hasn’t changed a lick, either. At some point, someone has to stand up, right in the middle of the church, and say, “Hey, who’s in charge here? This is all horse-hockey.” Just a bunch of bitchy little girls, as a wise man once said. You’re all fired.
is it being shown that what the sun shines on radiates proportionally to how much sun is shining?
that wouldn’t be a cause for celebration, so I must not be understanding this.
Help a dummy out, plz.
Dessler 2010 is here.
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/dessler10b.pdf
Fig 1A and 1B is the Dessler data I’m using above. (Anyone looking at those two charts should have noticed the similarity).
All-sky net radiation includes All conditions (whether it is cloudy or clear). Another commonly used measure is just the Clear-Sky conditions which is when there are no clouds. All-sky net radiation is the incoming SW Solar radiation Minus the reflected SW solar radiation and Minus the LW radiation going out. These can be expressed in anomalies and still be the same amount.
Dessler calculated the Cloud Net Radiation by subtracting the ERA Clear-Sky data from the CERES All-Sky data (noting there may be biases in the CERES Clear-Sky data). There are a few differences in the end but it might be an appropriate method.
When the Net Radiation is positive, it means the Earth is accumulating energy, when it is negative, the Earth is losing energy. Generally, CERES is only accurate to +/- 2.0 W/m2 so that should be taken into account as well. All of the numbers available are smaller than the error margin.
If the scatter plot was for a process metric in high tech manufacturing, it would be actionable.
The net radiation budget MUST be RELATED to global temperature. Energy is conserved yes? That a DIRECT correlation is not observed simply means that the mechanism linking the two is indirect.
For a start you wouldn’t expect to see a direct correlation between radiation budget and temperature. You’d expect to see a correlation between radiation budget and the RATE OF CHANGE of temperature. And even here, much depends on which temperature is being measured. There is no such thing as the temperature of the earth. We measure temperatures of various bits of the earth. I would expect that changes to the global radiation budget would be likely to correlate with the rate of change of sea surface temperatures in the mixing layer. However variations in the rate of
mixing will have a huge effect on average SST, and are likely to drown out the signal.
So interesting that the so-called ‘team’ have so imprisoned themselves in their ideology that they cannot even glance at new, possibly contradictory, discoveries – meaning they will be the self-imposed victims of an end-run of knowledge (and wind up looking like fools).
With an averaging period of a month, are you effectively noting that the much of the energy radiated by the earth originates from the clouds because of the latent heat that was released when they formed and subsequently (almost entirely) radiated to space?
Let’s see … strong correlation between cloud seeds and GCRs; strong correlation between radiation balance and clouds. Hmm …
Ian H writes something that follows my Hmm…. very well.
Bill Illis,
When the Net Radiation is positive, it means the Earth is accumulating energy, when it is negative, the Earth is losing energy. Generally, CERES is only accurate to +/- 2.0 W/m2 so that should be taken into account as well. All of the numbers available are smaller than the error margin.
We have found a use for NOAA! We need a satellite that has a polar orbit at 90 minutes, and measures directly albedo and OLR and clouds.