Update: At the suggestion of one of the readers at the cross post at WUWT, I’ve rewritten the second paragraph after Figure 3. Thanks, richard verney.
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In response to the May 19, 2013 op-ed Overheated rhetoric on climate change doesn’t make for good policies by Lamar Smith (Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology), the Washington Post published an op-ed by Michael Oppenheimer and Kevin Trenberth on June 6, 2013. The Oppenheimer and Trenberth op-ed was titled Climate science tells us the alarm bells are ringing. Oddly, it is chock full of overheated rhetoric, which Representative Smith was cautioning against. Unfortunately, the Oppenheimer and Trenberth op-ed is typical of the responses by many climate alarmists to Representative Smith’s op-ed, as discussed in Judith Curry’s blog post Rep. Lamar Smith on climate change.
In addition, a couple of things caught my eye in the Oppenheimer and Trenberth op-ed.
It failed to mention Balmaseda et al (2013) Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content, of which Kevin Trenberth was co-author. Instead, they linked a couple of other recent papers and webpages. Their op-ed reads:
Much has been made of a short-term reduction in the rate of atmospheric warming. But “global” warming requires looking at the entire planet. While the increase in atmospheric temperature has slowed, ocean warming rose dramatically after 2000. Excess heat is being trapped in Earth’s climate system, and observations of the Global Climate Observing System and others are increasingly able to locate it. Simplistic interpretations of cherry-picked data hide the realities.
Specifically, Oppenheimer and Trenberth linked Lyman et al (2010) Robust warming of the global upper ocean, and they linked a webpage that introduced Loeb et al (2012) Observed changes in top-of-the-atmosphere radiation and upper-ocean heating consistent within uncertainty.
Balmaseda et al (2013) is a newer paper. It was published in May 2013. Kevin Trenberth is a coauthor, yet Oppenheimer and Trenberth chose not to include it as a reference in their op-ed. Curious.
Note: After a few preliminary discussions, the uncertainties and difficulties with the Balmaseda et al (2013) paper were presented in detail in the blog post Open Letter to the Royal Meteorological Society Regarding Dr. Trenberth’s Article “Has Global Warming Stalled?”. Refer also to the cross post at WattsUpWithThat. There is also a pdf copy of the post here. The discussions including and following the heading of NORTHERN HEMISPHERE OCEAN HEAT CONTENT DATA DOES NOT SUPPORT BALMASEDA ET AL should also apply to Lyman et al (2010) and Loeb et al (2012).
Oppenheimer and Trenberth continued with more heated rhetoric (my boldface):
Contrary to Smith’s assertions, there is conclusive evidence that climate change worsened the damage caused by Superstorm Sandy. Sea levels in New York City harbors have risen by more than a foot since the beginning of the 20th century. Had the storm surge not been riding on higher seas, there would have been less flooding and less damage. Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding.
Earlier, Oppenheimer and Trenberth complained about “cherry-picked data”, but they presented a rise in sea level since the beginning of the 20th Century. They should know very well that the IPCC claims their climate models cannot simulate the rate of warming for the last 30+ years without being forced by manmade greenhouse gases—implying that manmade greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming during the last 30+ years, while Mother Nature is responsible for the warming before then. That was the intent of Figure 9.5 in their 4th Assessment Report. Refer to Chapter 9 Understanding and Attributing Climate Change, under Heading of “9.4.1.2 Simulations of the 20th Century”, where the IPCC wrote:
“Figure 9.5 shows that simulations that incorporate anthropogenic forcings, including increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and the effects of aerosols, and that also incorporate natural external forcings provide a consistent explanation of the observed temperature record, whereas simulations that include only natural forcings do not simulate the warming observed over the last three decades.”
It appears that Oppenheimer and Trenberth presented the 12-inch-plus rise in sea level since 1900 at The Battery simply to make the assumed anthropogenic impacts appear greater. They must have felt the 6.5 inch rise in sea level since 1975 at The Battery (reference here) versus Sandy’s storm surge there of 13.88 feet or 166 inches (reference here) was not significant enough. The sea level rise of 6.5 inches since 1975 is only about 4% of the storm surge so they must’ve believed they needed to exaggerate the supposed influence of manmade global warming.
Also, a major portion of sea level rise comes from thermal expansion, but ocean heat content data and satellite-era sea surface temperature data both indicate the oceans warmed naturally. Refer to my illustrated essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” [42MB].
Wisely, Oppenheimer and Trenberth avoided the subject of sea surface temperatures along Sandy’s path. The sea surface temperatures of extratropical portion of Sandy’s storm track have actually cooled since the New England Hurricane of 1938. Figure 1 is Figure 4 from the post October 2012 Sea Surface Temperatures and Anomalies Along Sandy’s Path Were NOT Unusual. I published that post within weeks of Sandy. It’s difficult for alarmists to claim manmade greenhouse gases caused the warming of the sea surface temperatures of the extratropical portion of Sandy’s storm track, when the sea surface temperatures there have cooled over the past 70+ years.
Figure 1
But Oppenheimer and Trenberth did make a statement with respect to hurricane Sandy that we can check with data. They wrote, “Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding.” We’ll use RSS lower troposphere temperature anomaly data for Sandy’s storm track. It’s available on a gridded basis through the KNMI Climate Explorer. For those new to lower troposphere temperature data, they represent the temperature at about 3000 meters above sea level, as calculated from satellite measurements. Based on the linear trend, the lower troposphere temperature anomalies for Sandy’s full storm track (12N-40N, 80W-70W) haven’t warmed since 1990. See Figure 2. And for the extratropical portion (24N-40N, 80W-70W), they haven’t warmed since 1985, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 2
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Figure 3
Note, the upward spikes in Figures 2 and 3 at January 2013 occurred after Sandy. The sharp drops occurred in November 2012. The October anomalies, leading up to Sandy, were not extraordinary. For Sandy’s full storm track, they were about 0.32 deg C. And for the extratropical portion they were approximately 0.56 deg C. Those values had been exceeded regularly before then.
If the lower troposphere temperature anomalies haven’t warmed in 2 to almost 3 decades, it’s difficult to claim “Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding.” But, obviously, alarmists are more than willing to make claims that aren’t supported by data.
Granted, Oppenheimer and Trenberth did not state that manmade greenhouse gases caused the atmosphere to be warmer above Sandy’s storm track, when they wrote, “Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding.” But they implied it. If the lower troposphere temperature anomalies above Sandy’s storm track haven’t warmed in 2 to almost 3 decades, it was pointless for Oppenheimer and Trenberth to write, “Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding,” unless they wanted their readers to believe the atmosphere above was warmer.
Of course, Oppenheimer and Trenberth mentioned moisture in the air, so we need to address that as well. We’ll use the Specific Humidity and Precipitable Water from the NCEP/DOE Reanalysis-2, which are available through the NOAA NOMADS website. And we’ll use the coordinates of the extratropical portion of Sandy’s storm track (24N-40N, 80W-70W). Specific humidity in Figure 4 represents the ratio of water vapor to dry air and is expressed in kilograms of water vapor per kilogram of dry air—at 2 meters above the surface. Based on the linear trend, it hasn’t increased since 1990. The Precipitable Water in Figure 5 is the amount of water in the column of atmosphere if all the water in that column were to be precipitated as rain, and it is presented in kg per square meter. It shows no trend since 1985 for the extratropical portion of Sandy’s storm track.
Figure 4
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Figure 5
The NCEP/DOE Reanalysis-2 outputs do not agree with the claims made by Oppenheimer and Trenberth. No surprise there.
CLOSING
Oppenheimer and Trenberth made claims of “conclusive evidence” about Hurricane Sandy that are not supported by data and by the NCEP/DOE Reanalysis-2. They also complain about cherry-picking but don’t hesitate to cherry-pick a start year when it suits their needs. And I found it odd that they did not cite Balmaseda et al (2013), a paper that Kevin Trenberth coauthored. Please feel free to point out other inconsistencies or curiosities in their op-ed.
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excellent analysis. And very polite to use the word “odd” to explain a behavior that is prima facie evidence that they’re cherry picking the papers in order to advocate for their preferred political outcomes.
Perpetuating the lie that sea level used to be stable is one of the purest forms of anti-science going. Trenberth et al. trade on this misperception, year in and year out, and will continue to do so until someone, somewhere, manages to call them on their ____. Sea level, for those keeping track at home, has been falling since the Eemian high stand …
In her post…
http://judithcurry.com/2013/05/31/rep-lamar-smith-on-climate-change/
…Judith Curry wrote:
“JC comments: The theme of Rep. Smith’s op-ed is overheated rhetoric; he selected topics to discuss where he views the rhetoric to be overheated. Rep. Smith’s statements about climate science itself are defensible, in fact support for these statements is provided in my testimony. Criticisms of the ‘science’ were either:
– “factually incorrect (warming has continued to increase and models have predicted warming accurately)
– “appeal to consensus (the infamous 97%)…”
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And what do Oppenheimer and Trenberth do? They cite the nonsensical “97% consensus” paper by Cook et al.
I’m sure Oppenheimer Trenberth can point us to the clear signal of GHG-induced sea level rise in lower Manhatten.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8518750
Of course, Margaret will come along and say my graph isn’t from the “PeerReviewedLiterature”, so we shouldn’t look at it.
They over – “cooked” this Op-Ed with that phony 97% stat. Shameless…
Bob
As usual a very interesting article.
I do not consider that you data and analysis supports your paragraph reading:
“If the lower troposphere temperature anomalies haven’t warmed in 2 to almost 3 decades, it’s difficult to claim “Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding.” But, obviously, alarmists are more than willing to make claims that aren’t supported by data”
Your point is that factually there has been no warming during the periods discussed. You have produced data which points to the correctness of that fact (ie., that there has been no warming). However, that fact is quite seperate to the proposition that “Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding.” The correctness of that fact(s) depends upon the physics and properties of air, water and temperature, not upon whether the temperature has factually changed (or not). I consider that you should rephrase that paragraph.
Not knowing what the Eemian period was, I looked it up. Seems that Wikipedia says that the global temperature was warmer than it is now by 1-2°C north of the Alps and trees grew in areas that are now tundra. Many other discussion points that it was generally warmer then than now. So claims that current conditions are “unprecedented” again do not stand up to minor scrutiny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian
The various flat trends presented here have different start dates, and it appears to me that the start dates are not the start dates of the datasets used to generate them. Although the case here appears reasonably robust, this does get me suspicious that the various start dates were chosen to be at warm times of their datasets, for cherrypicking purposes. I see that in the many claims that the world has not warmed in 16 or 17 years.
Meanwhile, I do agree that Sandy was not a man-made monster, but a tropical/extratropical hybrid superstorm along the lines of ones that affected northeast USA in 1991, 1973, 1954, and likely 1869. There are probably a few others.
richard verney: I understand what you’re saying. Oppenheimer and Trenberth implied that manmade climate change caused atmospheric temperatures to be warmer over Sandy’s storm track, but they aren’t warmer. Let me ponder a way to rework what I’ve written.
Dr. Bob: There was a recent study that showed temperatures in Greenland were 8 deg C warmer during the Eemian.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/24/first-complete-ice-core-record-of-last-interglacial-period-shows-the-climate-of-greenland-to-be-significantly-warmer-than-today/
Regards
They can’t even be consistent with their own arguments:
“The year 2012, the hottest on record for the United States…”
“Much has been made of a short-term reduction in the rate of atmospheric warming. But “global” warming requires looking at the entire planet.”
“Simplistic interpretations of cherry-picked data hide the realities.”
One of the (several) things that bugs me about the deep ocean heating idea. I understand that deeper colder water is going to expand less than warmer water. Still, isn’t it odd that we’re speculating that there are all sorts of changes going on in the amount of energy going into the ocean and we see nothing outside of the noise level in SLR? The change coincidentally happens to break even huh. hmm.
Trenberth continues to try and cover his many, many mistakes. Obviously, he thinks that when you are in a hole the solution is to keep digging. He is now moving from a poor scientist making mistakes to a liar. The planet will continue to cool with the PDO whether he likes it or not.
The warmists are using media hype of course. I posted at the Guardian pretending to be a disillusioned warmist about claiming the 400 ppm CO2 when Mauna Load said it was 399.77 ppm. The reply was it was as reported 400 (no decimals and rounded up). I replied saying in that case there is zero CO2 parts per thousand and nothing to worry about. The problem is that no news doesn’t sell news in newspapers, television or online. If the media constantly reported. Headline today: The planet is as warm as it was 30 years ago. The media would soon lose lots of revenue. So of course, for good business they play up all doom and gloom global warming stories and unfortunately the global warming advocates have become hooked on the drug of “media (slight) misrepresentation) to try to promote their views.
It’s such a shame to see these scientists throw away their careers, which is what will happen in less than 10 years I would expect. The Manns, Trenberths, Cooks etc will be resigned to a wiki page about them.
And… Breaking news. The planet is as warm as it was 30 years ago.
The report does not mention the state of the tide at New York harbour when the storm struck. If it was at exactly the time of high tide it could conceivably have made a difference but at any other level none whatsoever. And was it a Spring or Neap tide? An answer would be interesting — can anyone from NY provide the information from the tide tables please?
‘Oddly, it is chock full of overheated rhetoric, ‘ not really that is Trenberth ‘normal ‘ pratice .
After all what else has he got.
For you youngsters, Oppenheimer is the godfather of the computer model approach to global warming scare mongering. The op-ed sounds like Oppenheimer, at least the older Oppenheimer. He is the fellow who published a peer reviewed article arguing that global warming will increase the rate of immigration across the Mexican border. That was clever Oppenheimer’s way to get the Rednecks on board with global warming.
Though Trenberth has produced some bizarre sound bites, I have not known him to wallow in the pit of advocacy as he apparently does here. I guess things are getting really desperate among the 97% in the land of global warming/climate change/extreme weather events/ocean heat monster.
In some disciplines now entrenched at Universities we may be witnessing a subversion of pure research towards using low hanging research methods as useful political tools. Because University faculty and leaders are not voted in, there is only one recourse open to us. Funding. And the only way towards that path is through voting out all sympathetic politicians who write the checks. However, beware that path as well. Replacing one kind of political bent for another is itself very risky.
The difference in MSL at the Battery between the 1929 datum and 1978 is + 0.78 ft. Have not seen any data since ’78. Some other references based on work by the RR’S and USCGS suggested a 1879? datum of 6 in or so less than ’29. Would imagine that info would be available the authors. When the design criteria for Battery Park City was developed in the late 60’s, the water levels from the 1820’s hurricane that hit at low tide and others were used to develop the sea wall elevation. That storm is a good comparison to Sandy’s effects. Assuming no increase in height since ’78 in MSL, and saying an average of 3 in increase from 1900 till 1929, that would suggest the 12 in +/- est., used. If one were to look at the Battery Gage data for the Dec 1992 N’easter you will see that SE TO E winds for two tide cycles at avg. 20-30 kts. seem to have a lot more influence on flood heights than the datum delta.
The comments following that article just piss me off. No facts, then just call them names and quote sks.
Once again, thank God for Judith Curry, the best climate scientist in the business.
Another fine essay, Mr. Tisdale. Thanks for posting it as a timely response to Oppenheimer, Trenberth, and the 97%.
Those “alarm bells” they hear are tolling not for climate, but for the Alarmoscience nonsense spewed by the likes of Oppenheimer and Trenberth. They are using every trick in the book to try to keep their hocus pocus 3-card monte snakeoil salesman manmade climate “science” alive, to no avail. Shameful.
Oppenheimer and Trenberth say:
… The two of us have spent, in total, more than seven decades studying Earth’s climate …
and have resorted to quoting a cartoonist from Australia. How sad.
Actually its worse than we thought. If T&O want to claim that CACC has impacted sea level rise at Battery Park, then they need to show that sea level rise at Battery Park has accelerated since the IPCC-blessed start date of the early 1970’s.
Unfortunately for T&O, the sea level data from Battery Park shows no acceleration in sea level rise. That is, of the 1 foot of sea level rise since 1900, approximately 0.0 feet is attributable to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Trenberth and Oppenheimer’s claim that sea level rise caused Sandy’s storm surge to be higher than without anthro CO2 emissions is specious drivel… and completely consistent with their prior utterances regarding CACC.
“must’ve” is very loose speak where I come from. (and we’re loose already!)