I’ve plotted the results of the RSS Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) global temperature anomaly data by RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA).
For April 2008 it has moved a tiny bit higher, with a value of .080°C for a change (∆T) of 0.001°C globally from March.
RSS
2008 1 -0.070
2008 2 -0.002
2008 3 0.079
2008 4 0.080
click image for a ZOOMED 1998 -2008 DATA PORTION of the 1979-2008 image
RAW RSS data is available here
Note that there does not appear to be any sustained upwards trend post 1998.
Here is the entire RSS MSU dataset plotted:
click for a larger image
Chris, Pierre Gosselin:
I raised my question because I noticed that the timeline between 1998 and 2007 seemed to point towards a relative stable range of between .1 and .5 (with 1999 through early 2001 being a rise to the “stable range” and mid 2001 to 2007 holding steady). Suddenly we get a drop of .4 to the negative portion of the graph. Not only that, but the spring rise seems to be stalled.
Hence my question: Is this an outlier, or a clue of things to come? (a cooling down over the next few years?)
Just so you know, I do believe in human-caused global warming, but am definitely aware of the solar minimum of the middle ages, the power of volcanoes, and what I’m calling the Pollution effect (think China’s coal dust polluting the states of California, Washington and Oregon). And even without the evidence of a built-in limit of how warm the atmosphere can get (which does intrigue me), it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Pollution effect of this winter multiplied by the seeming disappearance of sunspots (cooling of the sun) and the volcano down south over the next year or two to overwhelm whatever warming we may have caused and hit us with some severe winters and cool, wet summers.
With my traning in chemical engineering, I’m wondering if the climate is behaving like a distillation column. Like adding more steam (i.e., heat) to a reboiler, GG’s absorbed more of the heat that would have been lost to space. In a distillation column, when more steam is sent to the reboiler (i.e., a heat exchanger at the bottom of the tower), then more liquid is vaporized and sent up the tower. If unchecked, more of the higher boiling component (think water and ethanol as the two main components inside the tower) is sent up the tower. Eventually, the purity of the ethanol going overhead as the distillate decreases as the concentration of water increases (not good!). So, how does one compensate if steam to the reboiler (i.e., the source of heat to the system) cannot be cut back? Easy, you send some the condensed overhead stream (called reflux) back down the tower as a liquid to cool it down. So, if more heat is being redirected back to the earth’s surface due to GG’s, then it appears to me that the atmosphere over the oceans (such as in the SH) causes more water to be vaporized. But instead of producing a positive feedback, it condenses at some altitude as it is loses heat. Eventually, this heat finds its way out to space. If all this happens very fast (i.e., it’s in equilibrium), I don’t see how “climate sensitivity” occurs.
So, to continue the analogy, the incoming irradiance plus the additional heat from GG absorption is like the steam to the reboiler, and the coldness of outer space is the overhead condenser. When more heat is applied (via GG’s), all that means is more vaporization and condensation going on between the earth’s surface and outer space. This is exactly what happens in a tower when more steam and reflux is added. There is more vapor traffic up the tower due to additional heat added to the reboiler, and when distillate is sent down the tower to compensate, there is more liquid traffic going down the tower. Overall, this does tend to increase the temperature at the bottom of the tower (or the earth’s surface, if you will) and lower the temperature at the top of the tower (or the stratosphere, if you will). However, both temperatures reache a plateau. The temperature does not runaway. In the example above, the overhead and bottoms temperature of the distallation tower reach their respective boiling points at the pressure of the tower. So, if the tower was run at atmospheric pressure, the bottoms stream can never exceed 212 F (the bp of pure water) and the top streram can never exceed 176 F (the bp of the ethanol-water azeoptrope, if I recall).
Maybe this is why we are seeing no temperature increases across the SH (mostly covered by oceans), and the highest temperature increases across the NH, particularly Asia (the largest land mass of all). In essence, there is not enough moisture to carry the heat into the atmosphere where it can “lose” it (via condensation) at higher altitudes.
Chris, the potential negative feedback of H2O in the form of clouds is obviously a big sticking point for AGW; Roy Spencer is doing work on this. The other issue you raise is the lapse period between the heating and the restoration of thermal equlibrium; if the lapse period isn’t sufficient, then AGW can’t occur; this is the point of the Gerlich, Miskolczi and Schwartz papers.
Another maintenance factor which the AGW models do not consider is plate tectonics; according to Craig O’Neill, writing in Australasian Science, vol 29, no 3, the oceans are recycled in a process where “water, absorbed into the oceanic crust as hydrous minerals, follows the plate into the mantle. Similarly, dissolved CO2 in the oceans can precipitate to form calcite, which is then deposited on the plate and likewise recycled into the mantle.”
The process completes in geological time but is continuous so that if there is more dissolved CO2 in the water than more will be deposited. Likewise, if there is more heat than in the atmosphere, more will be re-radiated into space.
KuhnKat, Joel, and wondering aloud: Thank you for the finest exposition I’ve yet read of the Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper. And cohenite, I agree with your summary. The clock is certainly running, but what will be the endpoint? Some of these warmistas will still be howling crisis when science settles over them in their graves. Soon, if not already, the cry of alarm will mean ‘what’s your agenda’ as real environmentalists(that’s all of us, folks) come to realize that this is a grand and dangerous ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ tale.
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Chris,
The traditional explanation of the GW crowd is this:
The Southern Hemisphere is dominated by water, whereas the NH has a closer balance of land and air. The ocean responds more slowly to changes in temperature than the land. So, the warming would be slower where the ocean dominates. Air currents tend to move laterally around the globe, and between the upper latitudes and the tropics, but rarely from longitudinally from one hemisphere to the next. So, SH temperatures are affected by the preponderance of ocean in the SH, even over land. This all seems like a hypothesis that is reasonable enough to examine.
The GW crowd uses the disparity in NH vs SH temperatures to suggest that the SH is a running mean of sorts. And when temperature increases are constant, a running mean makes for a lagging indicator, and so the GW corwd is saying that the NH is more indicative of future changes than the SH. But the problem with the notion of oceanic temperatures as a running mean is that a running mean continues to move in one direction even after an abrupt change in the input. (Think of how they’ll say that unemployment claims are down, but the four-week running mean of unemployment claims is up.) The fact that the SH is leading a reversal of GW makes no sense at all.
Dan,
I agree. It makes no sense. I was using the distillation analogy as a means of trying to make sense of it all (it still fails).
Cohenite,
The other issue is the starting condition of the tower, or for the climate models, the starting assumptions. For example, if the bottom stream is already mostly water (say 99%), then extra heat and reflux will improve the purity of the bottoms stream to 99.5%, or higher. However, the increase in temperature at the bottom of the tower only increases incrementally (say 210 F to 211 F). At constant pressure, the temperature of the bottom of the tower is a function of its purity. As purity asymptotes to 100%, so does the bp (temperature) of the stream. On the other hand, if the starting condition of the tower bottoms stream is a 50 wt% water/ethanol mixture, then adding heat to the reboiler will increase the bottoms temperature from 190 F to 211 F (as an example) as ethanol is driven overheard. One of the takeaway points here is that climate sensitivity should DECREASE with higher surface temperatures (i.e., it asymptotes). Also, no matter how much heat you add to the atmosphere over the oceans, the temperature should not change since you cannot measurably change the purity of the oceans (way too large). However, a little extra heat over land could raise its surface temperature. Again, solar effects and land use changes over the centuries can have a big impact as well. With the temperature trend over NH essentially flat since 1998, I wonder if the NH climate has reached a point where the extra heat from GG absorption is balanced out with negative climate sensitivity?
superDBA – You do ask an interesting question.
>Is the accuracy of the measuring instrument and technique really
>1/1000 of a degree C? It doesn’t seem to make much sense to talk
>in such numbers unless it is.
It is important to note that calculating an anomoly of .001 is not the same as measuring to 1/1000 of a degree. There is only 1 significant digit in .001 which is a fair number regardless the precision of the original measurements. I’d be interested to see if all of the calculations are reported with this in mind.
Just to answer a few of the issues raised in response to my post…
Gary Gulrud: I agree with you that a degree in physics does not guarantee that one’s work will not be garbage…In fact, the Gerlich paper unfortunately demonstrates that quite clearly. My point is only that a lot of people think, “Oh, a couple of physicists have come along and shown the climate science community that they are all wrong”…and indeed that is the angle that the paper itself takes. So, it is important to point out that there is no groundswell of support for this paper in the physics community. In fact, we can readily detect that it is wrong.
As for my concentric blackbodies illustration, you are claiming that this is not a realistic calculation for determining the radiative effects of CO2 in all its detail…but this is a “strawman”. I was using that analogy as an example of a much simpler system exhibiting all of the basic characteristics that lead G&T to conclude that the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
cohenite: You mention 5 recent papers that you think “bury AGW”. I think you need to maintain a bit of perspective. There are hundreds…if not thousands…of papers published every year on climate science and you are cherry-picking those that agree with your preconceived conclusions. Of these, one (the G&T paper) is, as I have noted, an embarrassment and has not seen the light of day in any journal. The second, the Miskolczi paper, is pretty impenetrable so I don’t have much to say about it but it is rather suspicious that such a supposedly groundbreaking paper can’t find the light of day except in some obscure Hungarian journal. The third, the Schwartz paper, represented what the author admitted was a first attempt to determine climate sensitivity in a new way…and there are already some comments submitted on that paper that basically show that it has severe problems. The fourth, the Aqua data (by which I assume you mean the work of Roy Spencer et al.) is some interesting work…but by someone who has a track record of getting the analysis wrong in favor of no-warming before (and has clearly stated motivations on this). The fifth, the Argo data is indeed a bit of a mystery…However, it is only available over quite a short time period, there has already been one previous problem identified with that system that caused a spurious cooling artifact, and the results seem to be in contradiction with sea level rise data that suggest that the sea level is continuing to rise due to thermal expansion of sea water (which would suggest it is continuing to warm).
The overall point is that you are taking 5 recent papers that have not even been in the literature long enough to have other scientists react to them (and in some cases have yet to appear, or in the case of G&Twill likely not appear in the literature…at least in any reputable journal) and elevating them to the status of received wisdom, and you are ignoring the many other papers that have appeared in the meantime that have supported AGW.
JS:
Your reply to my points casts them in the most favorable light possible. Your illustration is worthless beyond 7th grade science class.
I don’t believe your study of physics could have included Thermodynamics at all, as you have not addressed a single material critcism.
Put up or run away before we taunt you anew, Sir.
JS said:
“the results seem to be in contradiction with sea level rise data that suggest that the sea level is continuing to rise due to thermal expansion of sea water (which would suggest it is continuing to warm).”
If that’s true, then where’s the heat?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
I would be more likely to believe that Argos was in error if there wasn’t contraversy regarding estimates of, and projections for sea level rise:
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf
JS; yes, I tend to get a bit excited; the Schwartz paper has been subject to a Hansen and associates’ analysis:
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/comment_on_schwartz.pdf
Hansen notes that; “In fact the principal physical mechanism which leads us to believe that not all committed GHG warming has yet been experienced and a substantial amount remains “in the pipeline”, is the warming of the deep ocean.”
Now, as I pointed out, this seems to be contradicted by Argo; it also is merely restating the problem the ipcc models face; which is, their predictive, real-world success rate is zilch (unless, of course you accept NASAGISS without demur); they need the lapses to be right; so the critique of Schwartz is right in that his model does not fit the lapse parameters of other models, but Schwartz seems to be in better accord with what is really happening. And, you are right, noone is coming near Miskolczi; he has a go at this endless opaque, stratified atmospheric model that is at the heart of CO2 activity. I have tried to argue on the basis of Wien and Beer, but I am assured that temps are insufficient for wavelength shift, and the strata opaqueness defeats Beer; much is also made of the fact that the rate of excitation due to thermal radiation of CO2 is many orders of magnitude slower than the rate of collisional deexcitation so there is no chance absorption will be saturated. Miskolczi seems to bypass this traffic jam; and right now seems to be vindicated by what is actually happening.
re: getting papers into major journals
I have been down that path. It is a backroom-dealing, turf-guarding, jealousy-rules endeavor that left me desperately wanting a bath and forever jaded against the Ivory Tower research departments of our institutions of higher learning. My first submission was to a journal that had as its editor an investigator that was studying the very thing I was studying (but I finished my study first thus submitted first). Needless to say, it was not published in his journal. Unless you have lived the process, don’t call it some kind of merit measure. It is decidedly not.
KuhnKat: I don’t know exactly where to start with your last post.
Firstly, you state: “In fact, the observations support the Germans in that the temps generally get cooler with elevation.” Who is exactly is arguing that temperatures don’t decrease with elevation in the troposphere? In fact, as I have previously explained, this decrease is vital to understanding the greenhouse effect as it means that the effect of the greenhouse gases is to cause re-radiation from a place higher in the atmosphere where it is colder. All your talk about whether there is a delay or not is completely irrelevant. Before you attack a theory, it is wise to actually understand it.
Secondly, you claim: “In other words, claiming that they claim to falsify the Greenhouse Effect is FALSE. This is the Strawman I am talking about. They do not claim to disprove the Greenhouse Effect or the standard theory for the habitability of the earth, only the IPCC and other warmers Enhanced Theory.” You don’t even have to go beyond the first sentence of the abstract to see that you claim is false. They state: “The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist.” And, among other things, they claim that the calculation showing that the earth’ surface temperature is, because of the atmospheric greenhouse effect, 33 K warmer than it ought to be “is a meaningless number calculated wrongly”.
Thirdly, you say: “You state that the doubling of CO2 will cause 1.2 to 2 to 4.5C with other feedbacks. I believe when the Germans wrote the paper the IPCC were still claiming almost twice that amount WITHOUT feedbacks other than CO2 itself. Maybe the IPCC are coming to believe in real physics also??” Could you please find me the place where the IPCC report stated that the climate sensitivity is twice this amount without feedbacks. Hint: You won’t be able to since the IPCC had previously in its Third Assessment Report in 2001…and I believe even going back to the First Assessment Report in the early 90s…put the likely equilibrium climate sensitivity, including feedbacks, at 1.5 C to 4.5 C. And, the fact that the sensitivity to CO2 without accounting for feedbacks would be about 1.2 C is a calculation that follows by a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation once you know that the radiative forcing for a doubling of CO2 is about 4 W/m2, which also is an estimate that has been known for a long time.
I’ve already addressed the issues with the other papers that you mentioned in my response to cohenite.
Vince Noir: I don’t know where the heat is…which is why it is a bit of a mystery. The sea level rise data suggests the heat is continuing to go into the ocean. The Argo data is suggesting it hasn’t. One of these sets of data must be wrong (or being misinterpretted). Hence the mystery. Such mysteries are not uncommon in science…and this one will presumably be resolved in the next few years.
Joel Shore, et al., re: The GHG effect as a concentric black-body enclosing the earth:
An ideal black-body absorbs all radiation impinging on its surface. It then emits at a wavelength related to its temperature(note: reflection of incident radiation does not occur with the ideal and is not considered further).
Black solids, like anodized aluminum, we consider to closely approach black-bodies in that all of the absorbed radiation not instantly re-radiated is retained as heat in the solid’s lattice.
The values ’emissivity’ and ‘absoptivity’ are defined as dimensionless constants of proportion to the black-body and its characteristic curves of radiative emission and absorption.
On one hand, a black solid at room temperature might possess an emissivity of 0.98, or 98% that of the ideal black body. An analogy might well be made between a body so comprised with the ideal and inferences made from the theory of the ideal and conferred on the real.
On the other hand, a lower temperature gas like C02 at 25C has an emissivity(equal to its absorptivity) of 9*10^-4, or <<1/1000th that of the ideal. The bulk of energy absorbed(not instantly re-radiated) by the gas molecule is converted to kinetic energy and shared with any other molecules present(not retained by the molecule alone or its like). Analogies made between the ideal black body and such a gas aren’t simply loose, or fraught with inaccuracies, they are wildly unsound. All solids, snow for example, any alloy for another, are better candidates.
Joel’s concept of the atmosphere as an increasingly effective blanket owing to the increase in partial pressure of CO2(for whatever cause) may have some value, however small, but his analogy–as a black-body enclosing the earth–is woefully ill-informed, suggesting (whatever the truth of the matter) no formal training in the subject.
I cannot, therefore give his opinion regarding the G&T paper, or a matter involving Thermodynamics, generally, any credence whatever.
Cohenite: I’ve tried arguing on the basis of Wein and Beer, too, but above a certain percentage they cause rapid forward feedback, undue excitation, an increase in lapse rate and imminent collapse.
Chris, time is moving on, but I have been thinking about your tower model and the purity of the base creating a circumstance where climate sensitivity asymptotes with increased temp; does this invoke the Wien, Stefan-Boltzmann, Beer effects, which the AGW crowd do not accept as limiting, through saturation, CO2 forcing?
Gary: You continue to miss the point. My point is that their argument about the violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not in any way depend on the emissivity. If you think it is, go to the section where they talk about it and show us where it comes in.
I am not saying that a blackbody is a good analogy for CO2 in the atmosphere but merely that I have shown you an elementary radiation problem that exhibits all of the same characteristics that G&T argue means that the atmospheric greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Is that so hard to understand…Or, are you just pointing out irrelevancies because you have no real counterargument to this?
Well, let’s see. Sea level rise is supposed to be somewhere on the order of 1-2mm per year. And this isn’t everywhere. Some places it has dropped, others it has risen, so it’s clearly not rising everywhere. Some of the rise is actually due to tectonic movement (subsidence, et al). I’d question whether 1-2 mm is even measurable, given that the average ocean surface varies by much more than that from second to second. It’s also important to note that sea levels have been higher than they are now since the last glaciation, so again, what’s the “norm”?
JS:
“violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not in any way depend on the emissivity”
G&T’s raising the 2nd law is entirely focussed on the back-radiation issue, providing chapter and verse of its importance to AGW theorists(sic), you are misrepresenting their argument to imply otherwise. I brought up emissivity.
“I am not saying that a blackbody is a good analogy for CO2 in the atmosphere”
Not for CO2 and not for the atmosphere as a whole. Don’t use the analogy, it is invalid as an heuristic at any level.
“I have shown you an elementary radiation problem that exhibits all of the same characteristics that G&T argue means that the atmospheric greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics”
You showed us nothing re: G&T, and you cannot. You simply granted their point on back-radiation, that it cannot heat the surface and proceeded to a non-physical fantasy which purported to explain a putative retarded gradient in the IR radiative fluence through the atmosphere.
“Or, are you just pointing out irrelevancies because you have no real counterargument to this?”
Like pointing to the failure of MSU and Aqua satellite data to give any evidence of your retarded gradient? How is this irrelevant?
“Now, hopefully, the folks on this side are not succumbing to global cooling doom and gloom. We’re supposed to be smarter than that.
So far I don’t see any data suggesting we’re headed for a cooling disaster?
If you have it – then show it! So far I’ve seen only imaginations running amok. Keep your fantasies in check folks.”
hear hear pierre! you and me both!
I am worried about the DeVries cycle, I cannot deny it.
But I also think is a very serious misunderstanding of recent history to posit wars over dwindling resources, especially including food.
Wars over resources are SO pre-mid 20th Century. Those times are over, plain and simple, made so by technological capability.
Given a bad cooling scenario, we may see some relatively tight times as we adapt and readjust. And, yes, the poorest of the word will be hardest hit, as always. But I will add my voice in protest against those who talk about food wars and various Mad-Max-joins-the-Esquimeaux scenarios.
Thanks Paul, I get that a lot; as a result I’ve taken up champagne; I think of the bubbles as CO2 molecules. The distribution curve gives me a headache.
Gary: It is useless to argue this point with you since it is clear you haven’t even read the relevant section of G&T. I suggest you look at their section 3.9.3.
And, by the way, although it is actually irrelevant to the current discussion, I am curious how you got your number of 9*10^-4 for the emissivity (/ absorptivity) of CO2. As you no doubt know, emissivity and absorptivity are wavelength-dependent…and in this case, strongly wavelength dependent since CO2 has specific absorption bands. Since skeptics have often argued that the bands are saturated already (as an excuse to rule out any significant effect of CO2 on radiative absorption without actually doing the calculations that show otherwise), it seems unlikely to me that the absorptivity is so low in these bands.