In my digging I discovered that the Apache webserver had open directory listings for folders, and this allowed me to explore a bit to see what I could find. in the \images folder I found a few images that I did not see published on the AIRS website. I’ve saved them to my server should they go offline, but have provided links to the original source URL.
One for Sea Surface Temperature at the tropics seems interesting, though the data period is too short to be meaningful. Note that to eliminate cloud issues, the soundings are done when the satellite has a lookdown to “clear sky”.
I find it interesting that there is a slight global cooling of the oceans during this period of September 2002 to August 2004. The question is: where is the rest of the data and why has the AIRS group not been presenting it on their website? It is after all a publicly funded NASA program.
It is also interesting that this goes against one of the “signatures” of an AGW driven warming. Dr. David Evans writes in this essay:
“The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hotspot about 10 km up in the atmosphere over the tropics.”
“The signature of an increase in well-mixed greenhouse gases (such as due to carbon emissions). Warming would be concentrated in a distinct “hot spot” about 8 – 12 km up over the tropics, less warming further away, turning to cooling above 18 km.”
What I’d REALLY like to see is the January version of this map:
Unfortunately, the January version of this image is unavailable. It would be interesting to see if the concentrations in the northern hemisphere maintain which would point to industrialization sources. Or, if the pattern flips, and we see concentrations decrease in the NH and increase in the SH, that would point to seasonal variation and thus likely be driven by biomass.
I’ve put in a request to the AIRS group for the January 2003 image, and others, we’ll see what happens.
UPDATE: 7/31/08 I got a response, see this new posting
I’m somewhat like counters in that I’m not sure what I’m seeing. I think it beyond doubt that the slope is not significantly different than zero. But what puzzles me is the almost absolute uniformity of it over what is actually a fairly long period — three years. I would expect to see some kind or variation in the data; if not much seasonal variation because this is the tropics, then at least evidence of temperature change from ocean current flow. On the one hand, this looks like what I might expect to see for the temperature of a still body of water, which the ocean is anything but. Try to imagine an ENSO animation of this data; I cannot.
Compare this, which is UAH’s Satellite Data for Ocean Tropics for the same period:
http://i37.tinypic.com/2gselxf.jpg
Or this, which are SST’s for the Nino regions for the same period:
http://i34.tinypic.com/2s9zp5w.jpg
Granted, these are monthly data. But they still make me wonder what we’re really looking at in this AIRS chart.
It looks like the blogosphere is beginning to make an inroad into the dead tree press with these sceptical items. This seems to be the way to go!
Incidentally, we have not heard any more about the proposal to allocate work to us in support of an idea you had? Is this going through the mill, or on hold at present?
Oh my livin lord. I just thought of something. The AIRS site sent me to the CO2 trend site that includes a substudy on the decrease of 14CO2 in the atmosphere. These substudies that were limited to just a few short years, reveal a decreasing level that is as stairstep as the other ones that show an increase. It is assumed that the increase shows the influence of fossil-based 12/13CO2 isotopes because 14CO2 has decreased in lock step. Fossil fuels do not contain 14CO2 because it decayed 100,000’s of years ago, leaving behind only 12/13CO2 isotopes in the signature left from burning these fossil fuels. Seems to be a reasonable argument.
However, 14CO2 is made ONLY by cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere. Lots of cosmic rays would mean lots of 14CO2. Unfortunately, during the time 14CO2 was being measured, the magnetic shield of the Sun was at its greatest strength, protecting our atmosphere from cosmic rays. It would make sense that whatever 14CO2 was still in the atmosphere once 14CO2 was not being produced by cosmic rays, would begin to decay at a fairly steady rate, which it did. The rise in 12/13CO2 relative to the decrease of 14CO2 is as reasonably explained by the Sun as it is by burning fossil fuels.
Correlation does not equate with causation. Two theories explain the same measured trend. One is natural, the other is human-caused.
REPLY: I can see the relative rise in isotopic 12/13CO2 to 14CO2 but I don’t see mechanism here for the overall volumetric increase in CO2.
Mike McMillan, point taken. Although hail is formed from water droplets.
Hailstones when sliced through their center reveal an onion-like layering, particularly evident in the larger stones. These distinctively different layers indicate the type of ice formed as the hailstone grew in size, layers usually alternating between opaque ice and clear ice.
An opaque ice layer forms when the hailstone collects small, supercooled liquid water drops that freeze rapidly on impact, thereby trapping air bubbles within the ice and giving it a “milky” texture. When larger supercooled water drops impact on a hailstone, the freezing is slower, allowing the air bubbles to escape, and thus forming clear ice.
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/hailform.htm
Have you filed an FOIA request with NASA? If not, just let me know what information you need and I’ll handle it.
REPLY: Thanks I’ll keep that in my back pocket. Let us see what comes from a gentlemanly inquiry.
Anthony
I was only responding to the substudy contention stated in their write ups that the relative % decrease in 14CO2 from all CO2 was touted as a sign of AGW.
Regarding the overall increase, I believe that outgassing from warm oceans have been causing the steady increase. It will take a while for the trend to reverse itself once oceans cool to the point that they not only stop outgassing, but begin sinking to a greater degree than they outgas.
Do you think this could be at least one part of the explanation? click
Admittedly, the increase in CO2 has not been adequately explained. Since the vast majority of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to natural, not anthropogenic causes, a coherent theory is needed. As it stands, we’re still scratching our heads.
And Pamela Gray (09:06:19), kudos for that fascinating post. It certainly undermines the claims of long-term persistence of CO2.
Re: David Evans’ statement that “The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hotspot about 10 km up in the atmosphere over the tropics.”
This is probably one of the most oft-repeated misconceptions at the moment. The fact is that the models predict such a hotspot independent of the mechanism causing the warming. It is a consequence of moist adiabatic lapse rate theory and is, I repeat, expected independent of the mechanism (see e.g., the figure here comparing GHGs and solar mechanisms: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends )…and also for temperature fluctuations on shorter timescales as well as for the long term temperature trends. And, in fact, as Santer et al. have shown ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;309/5740/1551 ), it is clearly seen in the observational data sets for fluctuations on the monthly to yearly timescale. While it is not seen in many of the data sets for the long term trends, the long term trends in these data sets are known to have serious structural errors. And, attempts to correct these errors do seem to bring the data more in line with what the models predict. See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/tropical-tropopshere-ii/langswitch_lang/po
The signature that is expected to be different between solar and GHGs is the trend in the stratosphere, where solar predicts warming and GHGs predict cooling. And, the trend seen in the stratosphere is indeed one of cooling. (Some of the cooling there is also due to stratospheric ozone depletion, although as I understand it, where in the stratosphere the cooling is concentrated for these mechanisms does allow one to distinguish at least somewhat between the two causes.)
Pamela Gray say: “Regarding the overall increase, I believe that outgassing from warm oceans have been causing the steady increase. It will take a while for the trend to reverse itself once oceans cool to the point that they not only stop outgassing, but begin sinking to a greater degree than they outgas.”
Well, you may believe this. But, do you have evidence of this? As I understand it, scientists have evidence that the oceans have been a net sink for the CO2 that we have been producing (which is why the pH has been decreasing). Furthermore, you must explain why at the exact same time that we started emitting major quantities of CO2 through burning fossil fuels, did the oceans decide to start emitting to bring up CO2 to levels not seen in at least 750,000 years. (Unless you believe the old wet measurements of CO2 are accurate and wild oscillations in atmospheric CO2 concentration stopped just when the new measurement method became available.) And, why are atmospheric CO2 levels increasing by an amount less than the total amount of CO2 that we are putting into the atmosphere each year if the oceans are outgassing?
An important official statement about AIRS:
How about asking for the (improved?) tools to access Any/All of the data?
REPLY: I’ve been in touch with the AIRS team, and I expect we’ll see everything we ever wanted to see in about 8 weeks. They are doing extra due diligence to ensure the methodology and data are solid. After corresponding with them, I think they deserve that chance to release it on their terms.
Good things come to those who wait. – Anthony
CO2 to temp correlation?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/carbontracker/columns_us/monthly/monthlycolumn_nam1x1_200512.large.png
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/Dec05TDeptUS.png
Hmmm.
Joel,
“This is probably one of the most oft-repeated misconceptions at the moment. The fact is that the models predict such a hotspot independent of the mechanism causing the warming.”
I disagree with the folks at Real Climate. We can play dueling graphs. If you take a look at the projected 8-12km tropospheric temp modeling provided by the IPCC 2007, IPCC Assessment Report 4 (AR4), 2007, Chapter 9. Figure 9.1, in
Section 9.2.2.1, page 675.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch09.pdf .) You will see that the ‘hotspot’ is only given in the model that assumes the heating is caused by increases in GHG plot (C). The others show the expected pattern that should emerge if warming is the result of Ozone depletion, volcanic eruption, solar irradiation, and sulphate aerosols. None of the others show a ‘hotspot’ signature. Interestingly enough, the IPCC neglected to include a plot based on the observational record for comparison purposes (something I thought would be a natural thing to do), but it does not match ANY of the model outputs. It seems that the cause of warming is not due to one factor alone but some combination of these and possibly others that were not modeled (such as cloud formation in response to GCR changes).
Under: Publications there is an interesting presentation:
An assessment of the tropical Humidity – Temperature covariance using AIRS
Antonia Gambacorta, et al. AIRS SCIENCE MEETING, October 10, 2007:
Slide 9
See graph, Slide 11:
However, the graph appears to show AIRS data with very substantial systematic variations from the GFDL model and the constant Relative Humidity model. Seeing that water vapor is a far more important “greenhouse gas” then carbon dioxide, small changes in water vapor totally swamp any changes in CO2.
The relative humidity data could be a way to test Miskolczi’s greenhouse theory vs conventional greenhouse warming models.
See:
* Ferene M. Miskolczi, Physics of the Planetary Greenhouse Effect, 2008 International Conference on Global Warming, New York March 2-4, 2008., <a href=”http://www.heartland.org/newyork08/audio/Tuesday/miskolczi.mp3 Audio or Powerpoint
Thanks, Brian D, for those graphs! (12:10:29)
It appears that the higher the CO2 concentration, the lower the temperature.
As Spock would say: “Interesting.”
Joel
I think we need to step away from “net” concepts and look at CO2 like we do ozone. We used to talk about it in terms of overall increase or decrease. However, we now know it spreads unevenly around the globe and thins/thickens in different places due to several factors. But what if we had only local stations measuring ozone at the south pole? We could infer that ozone is thinning everywhere. But our inference would be the direct result of station bias. If we only measured it for the past 30 years, we could infer that the hole is a new thing. Both inferences are potentially wrong since we do not have a long multi-decade and multi-cycle data set for ozone. But now that we have global satellite data, it is reasonable to talk about ozone in a zonal regional pattern, not a simple “net” number. And we now understand that ozone is very much impacted by solar cycles, regardless of the over-use of hair spray in the 50’s-60’s.
I think CO2 is like this example. Many people tend to think of the stairstep to heaven graph as the final say: CO2 is increasing and it is caused by fossil fuels. But the “overall increase” may be a biased measure for reasons that will likely become clearer in the next 5 years (or possibly in the next few months) and will result in changes in our understanding of it, just like ozone.
I think that the graphs are going up because something was/is linearly venting or concentrating it into the atmosphere near the measuring stations. It makes sense to then state that CO2 may be absent or thinning in other areas. So is it increasing everywhere or just being moved around in globs and from one form into another? With satellite data coming our way (hopefully soon) we will all have a better understanding of what this natural and necessary gas is actually doing.
So Joel, to answer your very good questions, I wanna see more data, over a longer period of time, and in a form that shows actual CO2 levels around the globe just like we have now for ozone, temps, clouds, weather systems, ash, ice, etc. I’m just not going to hang my hat on fossil fuels=rising CO2=global warming. If I did, I could be hanging my hat on the “ozone hole” assumptive mistakes of the past. You would think that we would learn from that scientific global scare.
Basil,
You still haven’t figured out the “fingerprint” of AGW as stated by the IPCC and you are now trying to disprove 2 (two) separate highly technical measurements of the ocean upper temperature that just happen to be in agreement??
Good luck bud!!
Joel Shore (11:29:02) :
“This is probably one of the most oft-repeated misconceptions at the moment. The fact is that the models predict such a hotspot independent of the mechanism causing the warming.”Suppose this is true. (But that doesn’t mean I believe it is. I’d be interested in your reply to Bill Marsh.)
Assuming it is true, what does it say about the models that the hotspot isn’t there “in the real world” regardless the source of the warming? If the models cannot get the real world right — and the new paper by Koutsoyiannis et al is yet another indication that they cannot — then why should we trust what they say about the impact of rising CO2?
I’m not sure you did your cause any good with that argument.
KuhnKat (18:07:05) :
I don’t doubt that over this period of time, there was a decline in SST. I’m just wanting to be sure we know what we are looking at.
Basil, I suspect Joel is engaging in what is called obfuscation, and knows better.
AGW models surely do consider mechanism. They aren’t playing with models to forecast tomorrow’s weather in Tahiti. And they are aware of the problem, to the extent that more indirect observational data had to be used to clean up the discrepancy. But regardless, you make a quite valid point, that if a model is wrong, it is wrong. Not exactly rocket science. Reposting:
“Also, the models predict the fastest warming should occur at the Tropics at an altitude between eight and 12 kilometers. However, temperature readings taken from weather balloons and satellites have, according to most analysts, shown little if any warming there compared to the surface.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080530144943.htm
Anthony,
Can you please update this post with the progress you have made with the AIRS team along with any details that you think should be included?
Thanks again,
Mike
The links in the posting by Brian D appear to somewhat validate the claims made by Chilingar et al in their article, “Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission“.
The basic premise is, “Computations based on the adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect show that increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere results in cooling rather than warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Granted, this is a snapshot of one month, but it certainly makes for an intriguing case to perform a multi-year reconstruction based on available data.
LeeW (21:16:12) :
quote:The links in the posting by Brian D appear to somewhat validate the claims made by Chilingar et al in their article, “Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission“.
The basic premise is, “Computations based on the adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect show that increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere results in cooling rather than warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Granted, this is a snapshot of one month, but it certainly makes for an intriguing case to perform a multi-year reconstruction based on available data. /end quote
Hmmm. It is almost like somebody is hedging their bet, no? If the cooling trend continues we will be getting the same blurb: stop breathing because you will freeze the planet.
Anna V…
Actually, the aritcle uses the doubling of CO2 theory put forth by Hansen to show that it would actually cause a decrease of 0.1C, and not the projected increase that Hansen implies.
So, I think it’s safe to keep breathing…FOR NOW!! 🙂
Bill Marsh says: “I disagree with the folks at Real Climate. We can play dueling graphs. If you take a look at the projected 8-12km tropospheric temp modeling provided by the IPCC 2007, IPCC Assessment Report 4 (AR4), 2007, Chapter 9. Figure 9.1, in
Section 9.2.2.1, page 675.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch09.pdf .) You will see that the ‘hotspot’ is only given in the model that assumes the heating is caused by increases in GHG plot (C). The others show the expected pattern that should emerge if warming is the result of Ozone depletion, volcanic eruption, solar irradiation, and sulphate aerosols.”
I disagree with your interpretation of Fig. 9.1. One has to be careful reading contour plots. In particular, for mechanisms like the solar forcing that are expected to have been much weaker over that time period, the contours are not shown over fine enough intervals to resolve the ratio between the surface and upper tropospheric warming. If you look at the scale, you will see the surface warmed 0 to 0.2 C while the upper troposphere warmed 0.2 to 0.4 C. This is compatible with almost any amplification factor greater than 1 and less than infinity and is most definitely not incompatible with the amplification factor of 2-3 that Monckton says (and that figure confirms) is predicted for the mechanism of greenhouse gases.
For sulfate aerosols, you can also see the expected amplification in that figure. In this case, the aerosols cause a cooling. So, the prediction is that the cooling higher up in the troposphere will be amplified relative to the cooling at the surface, which is indeed what the figure shows.
Basil says: “Assuming it is true, what does it say about the models that the hotspot isn’t there “in the real world” regardless the source of the warming? If the models cannot get the real world right — and the new paper by Koutsoyiannis et al is yet another indication that they cannot — then why should we trust what they say about the impact of rising CO2?”
Well, models are never perfect reproductions of the real world. However, in this case, the models do get it right for the temperature fluctuations that occur on monthly to yearly timescales. They disagree with some of the observational data sets for the multidecadal trends, but as I noted there are very good reasons to suspect that it may be more the data than the models that are wrong there. And, indeed attempts to correct the data for known problems brings them more in line with the model predictions.
At any rate, the fact that the models get the amplification of temperature fluctuations right severely limits potential mechanisms by which they are failing.
Glenn: You quote from an article in Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080530144943.htm However, what you quote is the part of the article that introduces the problem that the article says has now been resolved. In fact, the title of the Science Daily article is “Apparent Problem With Global Warming Climate Models Resolved” and explains how this apparent discrepancy between the models and data has been resolved by a recent scientific paper! In fact, one of the authors of the paper is quoted as saying: “I think this puts to rest any lingering doubts that the atmosphere really has been warming up more or less as we expect, due mainly to the greenhouse effect of increasing gases like carbon dioxide.” Admittedly, that statement may be a little bit strong given that it is only one paper…and one would like to see their results confirmed by others. However, there are several papers in press now that are all reaching similar conclusions, see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/tropical-tropopshere-ii/langswitch_lang/tk
Pamela Gray says: “I think that the graphs are going up because something was/is linearly venting or concentrating it into the atmosphere near the measuring stations.”
So, such venting is happening at all of the stations shown here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/tseries.php?type=mr#imagetable ?!?
And, what is happening to the CO2 that we know we are producing from fossil fuels…CO2 which, unlike the exchanges occurring between oceans and atmosphere and biosphere and atmosphere, has been locked away for millions of years?