I’m waiting for May global land + ocean temperature data to be published from Hadley Climate Research Unit, at which time I’ll also show a comparison to GISS.
Since I did pretty well at guessing what RSS May data value would be, guessing 0.05 to -0.15°C, and having it end up at -.083°C, I’m going to put forth one for CRU.
My SWAG for HadCRUT is between +0.10 and +.0.17°C
Here is April 2008 from HadCRUT at 0.25°C
Click for a larger image
Reference: HadCRUT3 anomaly data which can be found here
description of the HadCRUT3 data file columns is here
Tom:
Hathaway (and the vast majority of climate scientists) base their estimates of the quantitative degrees of effects on decades of empirical work that goes far beyond simply looking at trends.
Then I suppose it should be easy to explain or reference why or how doubling CO2 will increase atmospheric temperature 3[+/- 1.5] C.. Please proceed.
Anthony: what about a rumination, (if you’re into That sort of thing) upon global temps and crop yields. Googling that phrase gave me this article, and I have no doubt that the link between growing season length, average temp over season, precipitation, frosts etc is faithfully registered by plants.
As opposed to fallible (gullible?) humans, plants don’t CYA, lie, prevaricate or provide half-truths. They just grow/yield, more or less according to the weather. And markets (particularly futures markets) track those yields, converted into expected order volume/price combinations.
Oh, but don’t pick bristlecone pine nuts as one of the crops in question. That’s been done already:-)
dear mr watts:
have you seen this article in new york times (revkin’s blog)http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/most-experts-foresee-a-repeat-at-least-of-2007-arctic-ice-loss/ ??????
i think thar mr.revkin is losing “neutrality”. am i wrong???
i will aprreciate your answer. thank you in advance.
Actually the non feedback modified CO2 climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 from 260 to 520 ppm is more like .5 C/ 1 F, not 1 C. The ‘unproven’ feedbacks are more rightly described as ‘disproven’. Additionally, the effects of clouds are treated as a positive feedback, when they are almost certainly negative.
jorge,
The link is corrupted
Philip_B wrote:
The Forcings theory has no explanation for the current cooling and the large year to year changes, except to call it ‘weather noise’.
Ascribing any effect to noise is sciencespeak for, ‘We don’t know the cause or it is something else we are not measuring.’
Yes, “noise” is any effect that is irrelevant to the signal you are trying to detect. The cause of some noise is known, the cause of some noise is not known. Some noise is systematic, some noise is random. There is noise in all measurements. Of everything. Everywhere. In all fields of inquiry. So what? People don’t ignore an upward trend in their average body weight just because their weight fluctuates day to day.
Perhaps what you’re trying to say is that the size of the noise (the variation around the trend in the average) relative to the signal (the upward trend in the average) is too large in this particular case of climate change, to be in your personal comfort level for decision making. That’s absolutely, perfectly fair. Nobody can (legitimately) argue with you about your personal standards for evidence, any more than they can argue with your personal preference for, say, pilsner over imperial stout.
My personal standards for evidence are such that I think the noise in the climate data is small enough relative to the signal (the long term upward trend) for me to strongly believe the signal exists. I’m helped toward that decision by familiarity with the statistical methods that climatologists use to filter out the noise and to quantify the probability of the signal existing. But no statistical methods can trump anyone’s personal preferences for strength of evidence. So you and I will just have to recognize that our standards differ. (At least in the case of climate change. I prefer imperial stout over pilsner; maybe our preferences coincide in that arena.)
Here’s the empirical calculation for the effect of doubling CO2 from 260 (pre-industrial) to 520 ppm using the IPCC methodology, ΔF = αln(C/Co) where C and Co are the current and pre-industrial concentrations of CO2, respectively and α = 5.35. ΔF = 5.35ln(520/260). So Calculating you arrive at a value of 3.7 watts/m^2 which, using a hueristic of ΔF of 1 Wm-2 ≈ 0.22 °C, translates to a temp rise of around .81C for a doubling of CO2. Interesting that because of the logrithmic nature of CO2 effects, to get another .81C rise in temp from CO2 we”d have to raise the CO2 level to over 1000ppm.
Many argue that this overstates the effects so use the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, G = σ(Ts4 – Te4) = σTs4 – OLR = 390.11 – 239.76 = 150.35 Wm-2, Constant, Ts = 288 K, Te = 255 K and OLR signifies Outgoing Longwave Radiation. This yields a warming of .18C/Wm-2.
You can calculate it several different ways and if you average the results (not sure of the validity of that methodology) you end up a with a figure of around .5C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. (some of the above gratefully taken from http://www.junkscience.com)
One must remember that the majority of the Alarmists believe the LIA was a short term regional event and not global. Most Alarmists, despite the problems with MBH9X, believe results of the flawed reconstruction. I would not be surprised if Hathaway used lowball figures for the LIA. Hence, he could say in all good conscience that the Maunder or Dalton Minimums had very little effect on global temperatures.
People don’t ignore an upward trend in their average body weight just because their weight fluctuates day to day.
Likewise, they don’t explain their wt. gain by the fact that they started taking 10-> 20 calories/day worth of vitamins part way through their wt. gain.
And they don’t use poorly functioning scales, or reports from poorly functioning scales, then keep adjusting them so it only looks like they’ve gained weight, while resisting the efforts of anyone beyond their own very small “wt. gain” group to check their data, while also demanding that everyone else should really lose weight by progressively starving themselves – that, or else turn over a lot of money to someone else.
Tom,
Hathaway is, as far as I know, a specialist on solar physics, he is not a climatologist. I am not going to assume he has done a lot of calculation of any sort on climate impact of changes in solar radiation. It is most plausible in my mind that he would leave that to the climatologists.
Any statement he makes regarding climate is, I believe, going to be more personal opinion than reflection of actual climate research on his part. He is an astrophysicist not a climatologist.
Bill,
I’ve read about this computation any number of places. What I haven’t seen is any kind of data on exactly how far along the log scale we are in relation to how much value the current CO2 doubling should have. I always see bald statements that this is what it is.
I have seen a couple of denialist presentations that put us much further along. They claim that the CO2 is saturated already and it has little additional effect.
Can you, or anyone else, help me out with that??
Tom…. You said this to Crosspatch…..
[ “Nothing personal, but I trust their carefully considered and empirically based calculation more than I do your instinct, with regard to how much effect a Maunder minimum would have.”]
So since you have great consideration for the methods used in determining the existence of AGW…
You would then be quite willing to take on board the fact that they now have a huge problem with the Hypothesis of AGW.
Namely that the Tropical Troposphere is not warming in accordance to the Climate computer models predictions.
Radiosonde data apparently shows zero warming. That data stretches back to the 1930’s…..
Satellite data apparently shows a 0.2 degree C warming. That data stretches back to the 1970’s….
Climate models predict that with an increase of 100ppm over fifty years a warming of 1.5 degrees C should occur in the Tropical Troposphere, 10 km above the equator at the 200 hPa boundary….. That Warming has not occurred.
So the Reality of Observation = 0 to 0.2 degrees C
Climate computer models = 1.5 degrees C
It would seem that the AGW hypothesis is severely flawed… in the very least.
I would say completely Buggered myself….
That should have read….. “that with an increase of 100ppm of CO2 over fifty years”….
Tom, You clearly don’t understand the concept of weather noise. Nor are your personal preferences in beer and issues relevant. It occurred to me that this might be very subtle irony, but I doubt it.
Look at the graph at the top of this page.
The Forcings theory says a steady increase in a forcing produces a steady increase in temperature. CO2 is steadily increasing, while monthly and annual temperatures go up and down by large amounts.
It’s clear that the Earth’s climate doesn’t conform to the Forcings theory over periods of months to say a decade. Something else must drive temperatures over periods up to a decade and the evidence that forcings including CO2 drive temperatures over longer time periods is flimsy to say the least.
But….everybody in the AGW camp is acting as though higher CO2 levels were a historically unprecedented event when, in fact, higher CO2 levels are normal as compared to our currently CO2 impoverished era.
“Signs of the current, new solar cycle (which actually overlaps with the last cycle) showed up in November 2006, and its first sunspots were seen in January of this year, and again in April, Hathaway said. So already that rules out another Maunder minimum, Hathaway says, since this solar cycle has already begun producing spots, even if there haven’t been many of them yet.
This cycle is just simply “off to a slow start,” Hathaway said.”
What Hathaway conveniently ignores is the fact that SC23 isn’t done with yet, and exposes either his ignorance of or disingenousness regarding the fact that solar cycles overlap. When he says the fact that the first SC24 spots in January “rules out another Maunder”, this shows me he is simply ignorant, and what he has to say should be ignored. His position on GHG’s shows a distinct bias for the “consensus”, and indicates he is not interested in the vast amount of science disproving that “consensus.
Ok here is my new guess.
hadcrut will be .19C
also, on a lighter note. Anthony, if you named one of kids “guess”
can you imagine the confusion.
stranger: whats your name?
kid: guess!
stranger: no, whats your name?
kid: correct!
who is on first
From a peer reviewed paper refuting the UN/IPCC:
“The fact that an almost linear change has been progressing, without a distinct change of slope, from as early as 1800 or even earlier (about 1660, even before the Industrial Revolution), suggests that the linear change is natural change. As shown at the top diagram of Figure 1, a rapid increase of CO2 began only after 1940. As far as the gradient of the linear change is concerned, it can roughly be estimated to be about 0.5°C/100 years based on Figures 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. It is very interesting to recognize that this gradient is almost comparable with the IPCC’s estimate of 0.6°C/100 years.” [authors’ emphasis]
In other words, the Earth has been warming at essentially the same rate since well before the Industrial Revolution. That fact alone destroys the claim that human activity has any measurable effect on the climate.
When a hypothesis [in this case, AGW] has been decisively falsified, then that hypothesis is no good, and must be entirely rejected. As Einstein said in response to a letter signed by 100 scientists who claimed that his theory of relativity was wrong: ”To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”
The fact that the planet has been warming at the same rate over the past 100 years, at the same rate that it has since the 1600’s, is an astonishingly effective falsification of anthropogenic global warming. The AGW hypothesis will never recover from that fact alone.
source:
http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/highlights/2007/akasofu_3_07/Earth_recovering_from_LIA.pdf
Tom (18:01:50) wrote
quote The reason air temperature is the main determinant of water vapor content, is that there are vast pools of liquid water available to go into the atmosphere as vapor if there’s room, and there are vast quantities of particles in the air available to be seeds for precipitation to take water out of the air if there’s not room. So the limiting factor is only how much room is available in the air, which is determined primarily by the air temperature. unquote
Up to a point. I am continually amazed by the treatment of low level oceanic clouds in the great climate game. A clear ocean has an albedo of effectively zero. Draw across that clear ocean a thin layer of stratus (and about thirty percent of the ocean has stratus over it) and its albedo is over 50. Half the incident radiation is now reflected back into space — depending on your calculation of the average wattage of sunlight at the surface that will be a change of many tens of watts/m^2. Incidentally, reducing the stratus cover by 1% would equal or exceed the CO2 forcing for the whole of the 20th century. Conversely, of course, increasing it by the same amount would offset the AGW contribution — this is the basis of the proposal by Latham and Salter with their hygroscopic-nuclei-producing trimarans.
Other things being equal, more water vapour will lead to more low-level clouds. Only if there is a paucity of cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs) will the clouds fail to form and thus not reflect back the incoming radiation in a perfect illustration of negative feedback in action. All things are not equal: large areas of the ocean lack CCNs — Google NASA ship tracks to see the result of adding a few billion nuclei to these areas. Then look at
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/a_picture_is_wo_14.php
— those black areas are places where fewer CCNs are pushed out by plankton. It’s not surprising that the world is warming with the low level cloud cover being modulated by such large changes.
I leave it to the intelligent reader to think of a way we might have modulated CCN production and thus the oceanic strato-cumulus cloud cover over the last hundred years, thus causing all the warming that we have seen to date. I am watching the latest paper of the SST corrections with bated breath — I’d hate them to explain away the kreigesmarine effect, that great surge of temperature during WWII. I’m hoping they’ve just lumped it in with the ENSOs, which it obviously isn’t.
JF
” have seen a couple of denialist presentations that put us much further along. They claim that the CO2 is saturated already and it has little additional effect”
Kuhnkat,
The effects of CO2 on trapping low level heat is not a linear function, but an inverse log function -the greatest temp increases occur early on. There’s a law of diminishing returns as CO2 increases. The increase in temperature due to GHGs is greater when the concentration goes from 200 to 400pm than when it goes from 400 to 800ppm. Professor Lindzen pointed this out years ago, and since has been banished from polite company.
I truly wish the science community would present other measures of the sun’s effects other than TSI in their models. Ozone measures, cosmic rays, anything that fluctuates to a greater degree than TSI and both physically and chemically has the potential to affect climate to a greater degree. I also truly wish we could compare apples to apples in terms of graphs. We are usually presented with just a small piece of the CO2 graph and a small piece of the temp graph. If you expand both out, the shape and extent of the rise we see right now has been duplicated several times in history. It’s like a blow-out of a small city taken from a satellite view of Earth. I want to see the “Earth” view of CO2 and temp, not the “stairsteps to heaven” graphs we see all the time. We can’t see the forest for the trees.
If climate modelers were really worth their salt, they would prepare several models from several theories: CO2 forcing, TSI forcing, ozone forcing, cloud forcing, etc, etc, etc, and then follow the ones that produce better results. It would be politically wiser as well. The smart person puts a hedge on their bet.
J. Hansford wrote that the tropical troposphere is not warming in accordance with climate model predictions, and that is a severe flaw in the AGW hypothesis.
We’re back in the realm of statistics: Prediction at large scale (e.g., global average temperature) can be accurate despite less accurate prediction at any few given areas in a smaller scale (e.g., tropical troposphere temperatures).
Poor prediction of tropical troposphere temperatures is a “severe flaw” in the models only for people who are concerned mostly about that particular level of accuracy in tropical troposphere temperatures. But for folks who care more about the global average temperature, what matters is the accuracy of the global average temperature.
There is a thorough and lively discussion of tropical troposphere prediction accuracy here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/tropical-tropopshere-ii/
Tom,
The “hot-spot” in the tropical tropesphere is suppose to be the hallmark signature of AGW. The IPCC literature was fairly clear about this. If GHGs are causing AGW then there should be a very obvious hot-spot in the upper tropical tropeshere. Most Alarmists ignore this problem, and have now formally declared that this signature may not be apparent in the “raw” data, but can be construed from calculations of the thermal wind. In all, Gavin Schmidt would like this whole issue to go away. Remember, if the data doesn’t fit the models, change the data.
[…] Stock Report 12 06 2008 Interesting quote of the week: If Global Warming were a stock, and you bought it in 1979 at zero (par) and decided to sell it this month to buy a house, 29 years […]