New global water vapor findings contradict second draft of IPCC Assessment Report 5 (AR5)
Guest post by Forrest M. Mims III
I was an “expert reviewer” for the first and second order drafts of the 2013 Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 5 (AR5). The names and reviews of all the reviewers will be posted online when the final report is released. Meanwhile, reviewers are required to not publish the draft report. However, the entire second draft report was leaked on December 13, 2012, without IPCC permission and has subsequently received wide publicity.
My review mainly concerns the role of water vapor, a key component of global climate models. A special concern is that a new paper on a major global water vapor study (NVAP-M) needs to be cited in the final draft of AR5.
This study shows no up or down trend in global water vapor, a finding of major significance that differs with studies cited in AR5. Climate modelers assume that water vapor, the principle greenhouse gas, will increase with carbon dioxide, but the NVAP-M study shows this has not occurred. Carbon dioxide has continued to increase, but global water vapor has not. Today (December 14, 2012) I asked a prominent climate scientist if I should release my review early in view of the release of the entire second draft report.
He suggested that I do so, and links to the official IPCC spreadsheet version and a Word version of my review are now posted near the top of my homepage at www.forrestmims.org.
The official IPCC spreadsheet version of my review is here. A Word version is here.
A PDF version (prepared by Anthony from the Word version) is here: Mims_IPCC_AR5_SOD_Review
A relevant passage from the AR5 review by Mimms (added by Anthony):
The obvious concern to this reviewer, who has measured total column water vapor for 22.5 years, is the absence of any mention of the 2012 NVAP-M paper. This paper concludes,
“Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”
Non-specialist readers must be made aware of this finding and that it is at odds with some earlier papers. Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published, but the first NVAP-M paper was published earlier this year (after the FOD reviews) and is definitely worthy of citation: Thomas H. Vonder Haar, Janice L. Bytheway and John M. Forsythe. Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L15802, 6 PP., 2012. doi:10.1029/2012GL052094.
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Did you just talk about fight club?
Thank you for the extra reading, it’s been a busy couple of nights 🙂 And thank you for speaking out, helping to bring progress to the debate.
Well… Thanks for letting us know what you found.
Does this end the “water vapor amplification” mantra? One can only hope…
This from the guy who taught me to play with electronics.
We have plenty of professional scientists and researchers on this blog. There are also a huge number of people like me, educated to BSc (Hons) degree level, who struggle with the basic alarmist argument that the earth is heated to a staggering degree by a trace atmospheric gas.
For me, I stick to the basics. There is no way known to thermodynamics that a cooler object (like the atmosphere) can cause net warming to a hotter object (like the surface of the earth), regardless of any lower-order energy exchanges which may be occurring (like CO2 resonance to terrestrial long wave radiation at about 15 microns).
My question is, are there any attorneys, lawyers, or barristers on this blog that can bring this ruinously expensive scam to a prosecution against an individual, or a group of people, a publicly or privately funded body, or a government minister or adviser in a leadership role?
I want them to stop frightening the kids and I want my ‘kin money back.
Most people believe the CO2 alone is the cause of projected warming. They do not understand that even the IPCC does not clearly claim that. They claim that CO2 causes the initial warming which triggers more evaporation, more water vapor (and methane from melting ice). They then say that water vapor could be a positive or negative feedback, but their models mostly use water vapor as a positive feedback. Satellites from Spencer could not find the “hot spot” in the atmosphere from increases in global temperatures. That is, if warming was caused by greenhouse gases, then the extra warming should be from more heat entering than leaving the troposphere. Spencer concluded, based on my understanding, that there was no evidence of an increased greenhouse effect. Essentially, as the earth warmed, it radiated a proportional amount of excess heat out. The warming must be coming from natural sources… i.e. it was not trapped within the atmosphere.
To me, the more disturbing part of this post is the following admission, “Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published”. Excuse me? How can any organization even hope to claim scientific validity if they rely on papers that have not been published (meaning they’ve completed the review process, such as it is in Climate Science)?
I’m sorry, that’s very much like using Fleisman/Pons ‘Cold Fusion’ ‘paper’ (which hadn’t been published and subsequently never was because the review process exposed it for the rubbish it turned out to be) to justify a massive national effort to crash build billions of dollars worth of ‘cold fusion power plants’. Wouldn’t we have ended up looking a little bit stupid if we did that?
Bill Marsh: I’m a non-scientist and I have to say that this aspect, not just of the IPCC, but the entire global temperature debacle, that bothers me the most is the sloppy to non-existant ‘supporting’ documentation. It’s been airy hand waving, “Trust me I’m a scientist” all along. Snake oil sales. The closest analogy I’ve seen in my own life was a tent revival.
To me, the more disturbing part of this post is the following admission, “Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published”. Excuse me? How can any organization even hope to claim scientific validity if they rely on papers that have not been published (meaning they’ve completed the review process, such as it is in Climate Science)?
#######
simple many papers have been submitted and ACCEPTED but not published yet. So the papers are sent around to reviwers if you want them. The authors have to write the most up to date summary. If the paper misses the final date, then they have to decide what to do for the final draft.
If a sceptic paper was submitted and accepted youd want them writing about it
Old ones of Chaco Canyon did not have as much data on water vapor as these guys but stil yet knew to move on to a place where the climate was better.
Tax and Spend is not the solution to any of this.
steven mosher says:
December 14, 2012 at 6:31 pm
No, Steve. We don’t want Warmist or Skeptic papers. We want papers based on the science–and that’s your problem. It isn’t a matter of the spin you apply, it’s a matter of rational logic.
What I understand you to say is if by chance a skeptic paper should happen to be submitted, that would by highly unusual, wouldn’t it?.
You’ve basically admitted that most if not all of the papers considered by the IPCC lean toward a Warmista interpretation.
That is not science.
Steven Mosher writes:
“The authors have to write the most up to date summary. If the paper misses the final date, then they have to decide what to do for the final draft.”
Are you saying that the final version of the paper is available to all reviewers who want to see it and that it is available in a timely fashion that would permit the reviewer to take account of the paper in his own work? Your last sentence seems to say that they can do what they damn well please.
I hope we see more of these critiques from reviewers.
(typo: “the
principleprincipal greenhouse gas,”)steven mosher says:
December 14, 2012 at 6:31 pm
To me, the more disturbing part of this post is the following admission, “Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published”. Excuse me? How can any organization even hope to claim scientific validity if they rely on papers that have not been published (meaning they’ve completed the review process, such as it is in Climate Science)?
#######
simple many papers have been submitted and ACCEPTED but not published yet. So the papers are sent around to reviwers if you want them. The authors have to write the most up to date summary. If the paper misses the final date, then they have to decide what to do for the final draft.
If a sceptic paper was submitted and accepted youd want them writing about it
Perfect example of incohrerence.
reductio ad absurdum
I applaud your choice to bring forth more of the truth we all need to see.
I am hopeful others will follow the brave step taken in the last few days by the 2 of you folks.
I am certain there are many IPCC reviewers and participating scientists that feel that “uncomfortable feeling” that surrounds producing a report that does not always provide the scientific truth of the matters involved.
I would encourage each and every one of you to stand up as these brave people have.
The scientific process is very important in the end to every single one of us on this planet.
Now the feedback is missing too?
Anthony writes in his addendum to Mimms’ post above:
“Non-specialist readers must be made aware of this finding and that it is at odds with some earlier papers.”
Isn’t this point about water vapor absolutely basic? If increasing CO2 has no detectable effect on water vapor trends then can it have an effect on anything that drives climate? In other words, isn’t increasing water vapor the most direct and simple forcing that has been claimed for increasing CO2? If none is detectable at this late date, doesn’t that mean that the forcing game is over, done, and finished?
Theo Goodwin,
Yes, exactly. That is a point I’ve made quite a few times. CO2’s effect on water vapor is central to the AGW argument. Now it turns out that there is no measurable effect at all from rising CO2.
Willis Eschenbach says that CO2 is only a 3rd order forcing, which is swamped by 1st and 2nd order forcings. I agree with that. CO2 probably had a warming effect, but it took place at much lower concentrations. Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere now causes no measurable warming. The only effect it has currently is entirely beneficial: it results in greater agricultural productivity.
As usual, the warmists have got everything backward. CO2 is completely harmless; it is beneficial to the biosphere, and it causes no measurable global warming at current or projected concentrations. The planet itself is confirming that CO2=AGW is simply a failed conjecture.
If the adiabatic lapse rate is responsible for surface temperatures and also for temperatures at each and every altitude, then we would expect the moisture carrying capacity (absolute humidity at saturation) of the atmosphere to be completely specified by the adiabatic temperature profile, except for the areas of dry descending dessicated air in the high pressure regions. If these areas occupy a constant fraction of the whole then the net absolute humidity will remain at a constant fraction of saturation. These are good reasons to believe that Forest Mims’ observations confirm fundamental truths about the physics of the atmosphere.
Does this mean there is no such thing as the “Greenhouse Effect?” No, it is real and potentially has a small effect on the temperature driving force at the surface which is required to set convection in motion. Convection is the primary means for redistributing heat within the lower atmosphere. It establishes and maintains the adiabatic temperature profile (lapse rate), and simple thermodynamics requires it to have a cooling effect. Of course, radiation remains the only way for heat to finally exit the atmosphere.
E.M.Smith asked on December 14, 2012 at 5:28 pm: “Does this end the “water vapor amplification” mantra?”
Water vapor amplification is an indirect mechanism, which requires warmth. So if there’s no warming (as is the case for the last 15 or so years), because other factors overwhelm the influence of increased CO2, there’s nothing to amplify.
But even if not, MODTRAN calculates the water vapor amplification effect at only about 65% of the warming due directly to CO2 alone. A lot of Climate Movement activists seem to think that the water vapor “positive feedback” is some huge multiple, but it’s not:
http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/MODTRAN_etc.html
Moreover, that calculation does not take into account negative feedbacks from increased evaporation: increased water-cycle cooling, and perhaps increased cloudiness, so that 65% is really an upper bound. The real-world amplification of CO2’s warming by H2O is almost certainly less than that.
I am enjoying watching the IPCC self-destruct. Their models are completely useless.
And the gravy train is just about to hit the buffers.
I am watching … with interest.
I think we should address these issues more soberly.
The leaked CH7 suggests something totally different to what skeptics have hitherto interpreted. This is according to the lead author:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-14/ipcc-draft-climate-report-leaked/4429036
Professor Steve Sherwood, the director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, was the lead author of the chapter in question.
He says the idea that the chapter he authored confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming is “ridiculous”.
SO I suggest we go slowly, slowly.
“TonyM says: December 14, 2012 at 8:32 pm
“I think we should address these issues more soberly…”
Great catch. This has to be the best quote on that report “Climate communication fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland John Cooke says, if anything, warming is worse than predicted in the last IPCC report.”
Aren’t they wearing out that mantra… it’s as if they were predicting an ice age and it didn’t happen.
If it wasn’t such an explicit commentary on the state of humanity it would be humorous
The fact that CO2 increases while H2O vapor remains the same refutes utterly and finally the AGW hypothesis. For those unacquainted with how their theory works, you need to understand that the AGW theory depends not so much on CO2 as on H2O vapor. CO2 operates as a sort of kickstart, increasing atmospheric water vapor and it is the increased water vapor which does the real warming, according to the AGW theory. The converse disproves the theory: if CO2 increases, but H2O vapor does not, the theory fails. The immutable laws of radiation physics has been misapplied by those who built a house of cards and called it AGW. Their propaganda and alarms notwithstanding, we have seen nearly sixteen years of increasing CO2 without warming. So much for climate models.
@Theo Goodwin: You wrote: “Isn’t this point about water vapor absolutely basic? If increasing CO2 has no detectable effect on water vapor trends then can it have an effect on anything that drives climate? In other words, isn’t increasing water vapor the most direct and simple forcing that has been claimed for increasing CO2? If none is detectable at this late date, doesn’t that mean that the forcing game is over, done, and finished?”
I think it is important to tell the whole truth. I am not sure one can conclude that increasing CO2 has no detectable affect on water vapor. But, the IPCC should be forthright in saying that their models are based on the hypothesis that water vapor levels are amplified by CO2 and that the increase in water vapor is a net positive feedback for the warming caused by CO2 –and that try as they might, they could not find a detectable correlation between CO2 and Water Vaport… unfortunately. But we have been able to adjust our models to reproduce the past, so they are good models.