There are so many updates and fixes needed to the climate models these days its almost like watching a car undergoing a perpetual repair process. When does the time come when the owners realize that maybe they should take advantage of the “lemon laws” and get a new model? From Johannes Gutenberg University:
International research group shows that the aging of organic aerosols is caused by OH radicals
Climate models need to be updated
Atmospheric aerosol particles have a significant effect on climate. An international team of researchers has now discovered that a chemical process in the atmosphere called aging determines to a major extent the concentration and the characteristics of aerosol particles. To date, this aspect has not been accounted for in regional and global climate models. In the Muchachas [Multiple Chamber Aerosol Chemical Aging Experiments] project, the team has not only managed to demonstrate the effects of aging but has also been able to measure these. Their findings have been published in the specialist journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS).
The quality of air is determined to a considerable extent by aerosol particles. In the form of a fine dust, they are believed to be responsible for a series of respiratory diseases and cardiovascular disorders. In addition, aerosol particles also have various effects on atmospheric radiation balance. Aerosols make a direct contribution to radiation levels in the cloud-free atmosphere by dispersing, reflecting, and absorbing sunlight. Aerosols are also essential for cloud formation in the troposphere: They act as condensation nuclei which even in the presence of low levels of water vapor do enable droplets to form.
The size and concentration of aerosol particles is also of great importance for the number of cloud drops, which in turn influences the reflection characteristics of clouds. Hence, aerosol particles tend to have a cooling influence on the atmosphere. However, the precise processes and feedback mechanisms have not yet been fully understood, so that the interaction between aerosol particles, their suitability as cloud condensation nuclei, and the sunlight reflected off the earth’s surface represented one of the greatest uncertainties in the calculation of climatic activity.
The Muchachas project looked at organic aerosols, which constitute the largest proportion of chemical airborne particles. Organic aerosols are generated above forests, for example, and they are visible in the form of a blue mist in certain places such as the Great Smoky Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Blue Mountains. In densely populated areas however, anthropogenically generated and released hydrocarbons play an important role as precursor of the development of secondary organic aerosols.
The experiments showed that the mass and composition of organic aerosols are significantly influenced by OH radicals. OH radicals are the most important oxidants in the atmosphere and make an important contribution to keeping air clean. Researchers from Pittsburgh (USA), Juelich, Karlsruhe, and Mainz (Germany), Gothenburg (Sweden), Copenhagen (Denkmark), and Villigen (Switzerland) analyzed results in four different, large-volume atmospheric simulation chambers and found that the oxidation process called chemical aging has a significant impact and influence on the characteristics and concentration of organic aerosols over their entire life cycle.
“New climate models will have to take these findings into account,” says Professor Dr. Thorsten Hoffmann of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany. The Mainz researchers contributed primarily to the development of analytical techniques for studying the chemical composition of the aerosol particles in the Muchachas project. Thanks to their development of so-called ‘soft ionization’ techniques and the corresponding mass spectrometers, Hoffmann’s work group was able to track the concentration of individual molecule species in the atmospheric simulation chamber and thus observe the chemical aging of the atmospheric aerosols at the molecular level. It was clearly demonstrated that oxidation occurred in the gaseous phase and not in the particle phase. “Now the goal is to integrate these underlying reactions in models of regional and global atmospheric chemistry and so reduce the discrepancy between the expected and the actually observed concentrations of organic aerosol particles,” explains Hoffmann.
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“Hence, aerosol particles tend to have a cooling influence on the atmosphere.”
Very convenient excuse required because global average temperature has failed to rise for the last 14 years.
The CO2 fraction has been increasing but temperature is completely uncorrelated.
The ‘hockey stick blade’ is missing.
Good, the more understanding of aerosols the better.
It would be interesting to see what has been added to the climate models over time, plotted on a time scale and the result these changes has made to the accuracy of the projections.
Need to be fair here. The models, despite 30 years of effort, are not able to predict very well, so they SHOULD be updated frequently as tiny bits of understanding are gained. The real question is: is the effort worth it, or are the gains too small, especially when it takes a couple of decades to validate the prediction with observational evidence.
Since climate models ignore the effect of clouds, no surprise that they have also neglected hydroxyl radicals, the “detergents of the atmosphere”. Just because the concentration of CO2 is measured in dry air, does not mean that water vapor (up to 40,000 ppm above tropical forests) in the atmosphere can be ignored. It usually swamps the feeble effects of carbon dioxide (390 ppm).
Models, whether of climate predictions or whatever seem to generate far more heat than light. Are there any examples of them ever being worth the effort?
Weren’t aerosols the ‘fudge factor’ in CAGW models? Isn’t the lack of data about aerosol (essp SO2) the entire ‘secret sauce’ for making CAGW models back fit temperature data?
Knowledge of aerosol aging would help, if only we had even a vague clue as to the volume of aerosols being generated in the first place. Past, Present, or Future.
“Hence, aerosol particles tend to have a cooling influence on the atmosphere.”
–
This is great news. Now we have a way to prevent global warming by adjusting the amount of aerosol particles in the atmosphere. So there’s no need to worry about CO2 and no need to send civilization back into the dark ages by cutting the use of fossil fuels. In other words, we can counteract the exaggerated warming effects of CO2 with the exaggerated cooling effects of aerosol particles. Problem solved!
But I suggest we wait until warming has actually been observed and has proven itself “harmful” before we start releasing additional aerosol particles into the atmosphere. We wouldn’t want start a new ice age or inflict society with other unintended consequences until absolutely necessary.
“Hence, aerosol particles tend to have a cooling influence on the atmosphere.”
Only when they reach the stratosphere and there is very little evidence it does with the exception of powerful volcanic eruptions.
SAOT levels have declined over recent years, showing the non-warming period has very little to do with this.
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7766/saot.png
Human SO2 levels had been declining until 2005 (end of data) while global temperatures during the same period were rising for majority of it. Notice no trend is detected between SAOT levels and human SO2 levels because they don’t reach the stratosphere. The declining human SO2 levels were blamed for the previous cooling period while a recovery was supposed to correlate here.
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/429/had3vso2vsaot.png
The models adjusted this correlation and tried to blame aerosols on this, but the main problem being adjusting for warming periods and recent non-warming period it just doesn’t work at all. The factor is much larger than any noticeable difference change for the period after.
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5816/had3vsaotadj1979.png
When adjusting global temperatures using SAOT levels these do not have any influence on the non-wamring period. Hence, the period is still not warming.
Speaking of aerosols, here’s a recent article that says that aerosols don’t radiate as blackbodies.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429112/aerosols-climate-change-and-the-dramatic-failure/
They point out that when an object is large compared to the wavelength of the radiation it is emitting, then surface effects dominate. But when an object is small compared to the wavelength, then radiation can be emitted from any point within its volume. In that case the geometry of the particle must play a role.
To prove the point, they measured the heat radiated by a silicon nanofibre with a diameter of 500nm, which is much smaller than the wavelength of thermal radiation.
They show that this heat emission cannot be described by Planck’s law, even when a correction factor is applied.
Instead, Wuttke and Rauschenbeutel accurately model the output using another theory called fluctuational electrodynamics, which takes into account the geometry of the experiment.
These wonderful models fail –
The heat is missing from oceans;
The heat is missing from the upper troposphere.
The clouds do not behave as predicted.
The models can not predict the short term, the regional, or the long term.
The models can not deduce the past climate from current data.
How could we believe that models can predict the future?
Any possibility that there could be link to solar influence in this.
Less UV, less OH, more aerosol = cool
On the other hand, maybe I don’t understand the chemistry well enough.
RichyRoo:
At October 5, 2012 at 9:18 am you ask
I answer, YES!
None of the models – not one of them – could match the change in mean global temperature over the past century if it did not utilise a unique value of assumed cooling from aerosols. So, inputting actual values of the cooling effect (such as the determination by Penner et al.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/07/25/1018526108.full.pdf?with-ds=yes )
would make every climate model provide a mismatch of the global warming it hindcasts and the observed global warming for the twentieth century.
This mismatch would occur because all the global climate models and energy balance models are known to provide indications which are based on
1.
the assumed degree of forcings resulting from human activity that produce warming
and
2.
the assumed degree of anthropogenic aerosol cooling input to each model as a ‘fiddle factor’ to obtain agreement between past average global temperature and the model’s indications of average global temperature.
More than a decade ago I published a peer-reviewed paper that showed the UK’s Hadley Centre general circulation model (GCM) could not model climate and only obtained agreement between past average global temperature and the model’s indications of average global temperature by forcing the agreement with an input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling.
The input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling is needed because the model ‘ran hot’; i.e. it showed an amount and a rate of global warming which was greater than was observed over the twentieth century. This failure of the model was compensated by the input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling.
And my paper demonstrated that the assumption of aerosol effects being responsible for the model’s failure was incorrect.
(ref. Courtney RS An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999).
More recently, in 2007, Kiehle published a paper that assessed 9 GCMs and two energy balance models.
(ref. Kiehl JT,Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity. GRL vol.. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007).
Kiehl found the same as my paper except that each model he assessed used a different aerosol ‘fix’ from every other model. This is because they all ‘run hot’ but they each ‘run hot’ to a different degree.
He says in his paper:
And, importantly, Kiehl’s paper says:
And the “magnitude of applied anthropogenic total forcing” is fixed in each model by the input value of aerosol forcing.
Thanks to Bill Illis, Kiehl’s Figure 2 can be seen at
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/8167/kiehl2007figure2.png ]
Please note that the Figure is for 9 GCMs and 2 energy balance models, and its title is:
It shows that
(a) each model uses a different value for “Total anthropogenic forcing” that is in the range 0.80 W/m^-2 to 2.02 W/m^-2
but
(b) each model is forced to agree with the rate of past warming by using a different value for “Aerosol forcing” that is in the range -1.42 W/m^-2 to -0.60 W/m^-2.
In other words the models use values of “Total anthropogenic forcing” that differ by a factor of more than 2.5 and they are ‘adjusted’ by using values of assumed “Aerosol forcing” that differ by a factor of 2.4.
So, each climate model emulates a different climate system. Hence, at most only one of them emulates the climate system of the real Earth because there is only one Earth. And the fact that they each ‘run hot’ unless fiddled by use of a different and completely arbitrary ‘aerosol cooling’ strongly suggests that none of them emulates the climate system of the real Earth.
Richard
Michael Urry says:
October 5, 2012 at 9:01 am
“Models, whether of climate predictions or whatever seem to generate far more heat than light. Are there any examples of them ever being worth the effort?”
So the real cause of ‘climate change’ is the extra heat being produced by all these models? Sounds like research grant material to me. What we need is another model to model the climatic effects of climate models!
if only lemon laws applied to climate models……
GCMs don’t look good despite repeated attempts at adding particulate fudge factors:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/10/05/german-meteorologist-on-temperature-models-so-far-they-are-wrong-for-all-atmospheric-layers/
Climate Models, Why are they needed? they obviously become redundant every time real world data is observed and need to be updated with a new X anthropogenic variable just to save-face or so it seems, the under lying physics taking place in the real world is very poorly represented by these augmented reality models. What annoys me most about them is, before the time has been taken to verify the accuracy or lack there of, they usually make headlines in the media as if they are anything less than hard factual evidence until proven wrong.
All these “corrections” to the models over the years. How can anyone still claim Hansen correct on that hot day in DC so many years ago?
If we update the climate models, does that invalidate all the studies and papers which use the results of those models? If climate science was real science, the only answer is ‘yes.’
Bryan says:
October 5, 2012 at 8:09 am
“Hence, aerosol particles tend to have a cooling influence on the atmosphere.”
Very convenient excuse required because global average temperature has failed to rise for the last 14 years.
The CO2 fraction has been increasing but temperature is completely uncorrelated.
The ‘hockey stick blade’ is missing.
=============================================================
Maybe we should have a hockey game with all the players using “hockey sticks” based on the real temperature trend?
(Well, maybe not. Whenever they swung their sticks they’d all get self-inflicted knee injuries from the Little Ice Age.)
This reminds me of the following post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/07/one-more-thing-that-is-better-than-we-thought-noaa-the-atmosphere’s-self-cleaning-capacity-is-rather-stable/
http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_scen_selection.html
The original fudge factor is still there. Criterion 1. Last updated 28 November 2011.
I guess it’s too hard to write a new Criterion 2: “If Criterion 1 doesn’t work, break out another tin of builders bog”.
A new type of radical for the CAGW crowd – at least these don’t attempt to win debates by insult and hate speech instead of rigorous scientific analysis.
Did I simply come in late and actually miss the robust debate about the basic science of the whole shebang or has there never actually been one other than some anecdotal discussions around glaciers, polar bears and ex vice presidents with a carbon footprint and bank account I’d love to ascribe to ?
‘Aerosols, Climate Change and The Dramatic Failure of Planck’s Law’
Physicists show how Planck’s law of black body radiation breaks down for nanoparticles, a discovery that could have huge implications for climate science
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429112/aerosols-climate-change-and-the-dramatic-failure/