Finally some recognition of all the anecdotal weather we’ve been talking about here – Anthony
World Meteorological Organization
Thu Aug 21, 2008 1:15am IST
LONDON (Reuters) – The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Wednesday.
The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years, although temperatures remain above the historical average.
Global temperatures vary annually according to natural cycles. For example, they are driven by shifting ocean currents, and dips do not undermine the case that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term global warming, climate scientists say.
Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.
“We can expect with high probability this year will be cooler than the previous five years,” said Omar Baddour, responsible for climate data and monitoring at the WMO.
“Definitely the La Nina should have had an effect, how much we cannot say.”
“Up to July 2008, this year has been cooler than the previous five years at least. It still looks like it’s warmer than average,” added Baddour.
The global mean temperature to end-July was 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, the UK-based MetOffice Hadley Centre for climate change research said on Wednesday. That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000.
“Of course at the beginning of the year there was La Nina, and that would have had the effect of suppressing temperatures somewhat as well,” Met Office meteorologist John Hammond said.
Smokey, let me respond to a few of your long tirade of points brought up in your “conversion” post:
Noone is saying that nothing happening to the climate is natural. Certainly, there are natural ups-and-downs on the scales of years to centuries but these tend to be fairly modest and also to not go completely in just one direction…i.e., to be fluctuations. On longer timescales, there are more dramatic natural changes in climate such as the ice age – interglacial cycle…And, indeed carefully studying these cycles is one way that scientists conclude that the known forcings that we are introducing are now the dominant contributor to climate change (on the decade to centennial timescales).
Noone is saying that humans, or Americans in particular, are evil (or that all are ignorant, although some seem to be). What we are saying is that mankind now has developed to the point where we have the awesome power to change the atmosphere in ways that profoundly effect the planet’s climate system. Furthermore, we have the intelligence, lacked by other creatures, of being able to anticipate and at least to some degree predict these changes, and to try to prevent the most detrimental effects from occurring. And, it seems to be in our best interests to do so.
Well, there will continue to be natural variations in climate, but at least over the coming centuries, the evidence is that these natural variations alone should stay within certain bounds. The human-caused variations on the other hand, are likely to take us into realms of climate that have not been experienced in the entire history of homo sapiens…and this, coupled with the rapid rate of change and with other human pressures (such as habitat fragmentation, overfishing, and pollution), is likely to lead to extinctions and ecological upheavals on a large scale.
And, yes, we can choose to prevent this from occurring. And, in fact, many of the ways to do this (such as developing alternative sources of energy) are going to be necessary regardless since fossil fuels are a finite resource.
Frankly, I am not sure how someone who refers to the head of the IPCC as “an apparent street vagabond” has a lot of room to complain about ad hominem attacks. But, be that as it may, I find it rather amusing that you claim that publications supporting AGW are non-existent. In fact, studies of the peer-reviewed literature have shown that publications that dispute AGW constitute a miniscule fraction of the peer-reviewed literature, while papers that support it constitute a large fraction. Furthermore, those that dispute it often appear in publications that are considered by recognized measures to be inferior journals…and most have simply not stood up to scrutiny by other scientists.
Papers that disagree with AGW are not automatically illegitimate anymore than a paper that disagrees with evolutionary theory is automatically illegitimate. However, they are going against a large body of evidence, so it is not realistic to say that a few such papers falsify AGW. Not all papers are correct and if we use this standard of falsification in other fields of science, we would probably not have any major scientific theory that has not been “falsified”.
If every paper in the AGW field supporting the theory were elevated to such a high pedestal in parts of the blogosphere as papers such as Gerlich and Tscheuschner or Beck are, there would be no room to talk about anything else. This is particularly notable when G&T hasn’t even appeared in a journal and the Beck paper has appeared in a journal-in-name-only. And, both are embarrassingly poor science.
Neil Fisher says: “Try this
Doesn’t look very flat to me.”
And, try this: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 . It is what peer-reviewed science looks like, as opposed to people using data of unknown quality (in fact, serious known deficiencies) on the internet to make plots. If you want more references to the peer-reviewed literature, look here: http://sciencepoliticsclimatechange.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-on-water-vapor-feedback.html
In particular, in the Soden paper they note: “Although an international network of weather balloons has carried water vapor sensors for more than half a century, changes in instrumentation and poor calibration make such sensors unsuitable for detecting trends in upper tropospheric water vapor (27). Similarly, global reanalysis products also suffer from spurious variability and trends related to changes in data quality and data coverage (24).”
By contrast, the Soden paper looks at both overall trends and fluctuations in water vapor as determined from satellite measurements. By looking at both the trends and fluctuations, they can confirm that what they see in the trends is not due to artifacts.
‘Well, there will continue to be natural variations in climate, but at least over the coming centuries, the evidence is that these natural variations alone should stay within certain bounds.’
Which “bounds” are you talking about? The bottom of the last ice age to the top of the Holocene period.
General info
This correlation was the best of the factors we looked at (Total Solar Irradiance, CO2, PDO/AMO) with 10 year smoothing for all parameters including temperatures (which increases the correlation but would not impact the relative importance of the factors). Notice how especially in the last decade how the correlation of US temperatures with CO2 has actually turned negative for the US.
factor years correlation pearson coefficient
carbon dioxide 1895-2007 0.66
TSI 1900-2004 0.76
oceans warming 1900-2007 0.92
(PDOandAMO)
carbon dioxide 1998-2007 -0.14
http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?ref=rss&a=127
Hi John,
Whether you realize it or not, the two statements, “Max, “..I agree with Anthony that we should not place too much emphasis on this study” and “To simply write off Beck’s findings on historic atmospheric CO2 concentrations is foolish, John”, are not mutually exclusive.
Don’t place too much emphasis on them (as I do not place too much emphasis on AR4 WG1), but, at the same time “don’t simply write them off as foolish” (as I go not do for AR4 WG1).
Get the difference, John?
I’ll admit it’s subtle, but I’m sure you see what I mean.
Regards,
Max
Old construction worker raises a very good point with his coefficients.
They point out how we really understand very little about what is driving our planet’s climate, despite the rather arrogant (but ignorant) one-sided AGW claims of IPCC that “the understanding of anthropogenic warming … has improved”, “progress in understanding has been gained”, “analysis of climate models … provides increased confidence in the understanding of the climate system response to radiative forcing”. “advances in climate change modeling now enable best estimates … to be given for projected warming for different emission scenarios”, “there is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming”, “sine the TAR there is an improving understanding of projected patterns of precipitation”, etc.
These are all “PR statements”. Nowhere does IPCC admit,“there is still much more that we do not yet know about the drivers of our planet’s climate than we do know”.
This would be an honest assessment.
Don’t look for an honest assessment from IPCC, a primarily political organization, that is making a sales pitch for carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes.
Max
Note to Joel Shore
You wrote, “Studies of the peer-reviewed literature have shown that publications that dispute AGW constitute a miniscule fraction of the peer-reviewed literature, while papers that support it constitute a large fraction. Furthermore, those that dispute it often appear in publications that are considered by recognized measures to be inferior journals…and most have simply not stood up to scrutiny by other scientists.”
This is a subjective and rather silly statement.
Give me a percentage figure of the ”miniscule fraction” , please, if you can.
Inform me who is financing the reasearch of this “miniscule fraction”, and who is financing the “large fraction”.
Please let me know how much funding is flowing into each direction.
Which publications are considered to be “inferior journals”?
By whom are they considered to be such?
Can you identify the scientists to whose scrutiny these reports (or journals) have not stood up?
Can you advise on the basis of which specific criteria they have not stood up?
Please come with some specifics, or I will have to assume that you are just “blowing smoke”.
Your statement, “Papers that disagree with AGW are not automatically illegitimate anymore than a paper that disagrees with evolutionary theory is automatically illegitimate” is ridiculous.
It could equally be turned around to read that “Papers that support AGW are not automatically illegitimate anymore than a paper that supports a 6,000-year old world is automatically illegitimate”.
Get the point?
Regards,
Max
We are indeed due for a Bond Event. And, strangely, the world geopolitical scene is not all that different from the 5th Century AD.
As usual, I agree with the first half of your statement. However, your fears of a potential sack of Rome are probably misplaced. We are more resilient now than then, economically, technologically, and socially.
Old Construction worker: “Ok. What are the controls in the controls theory and how well do they match observed data?”
Controls in the theory? You mean controller?
On the second part – I do not know how well they match, I am sure it depends on the feedback. My initial comment was a qualitative one, oscillatory response to a changing variable is perfectly justifiable; it doesn’t have to be a monotonic increase.
Max, “To simply write off Beck’s findings on historic atmospheric CO2 concentrations is foolish, John
Get the difference, John? I’ll admit it’s subtle, but I’m sure you see what I mean.”
Yes, but I believe you initially assumed that I simply wrote Beck off – which is not true. Minor point, not worth arguing about.
But on your note to Joel, I hope you and other AGW skeptics do not take this line, I seriously doubt you will get anywhere with an independent group of people.
For example, AGW skeptical papers are a small fraction, it was in 2004 (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686), it hasn’t changed much since then. We can probably count the AGW skeptic papers in recent times, because they are so well publicized: Beck, Scott Armstrong, couple from Spencer, one from Ross, may be couple from Roger Pielke, Schwartz (which is not really a skeptical paper), …… and we are running out quickly. I honestly wish there are more.
Obviously Spencer and Lindzen are funded for their work. ..
I will let Joel address it fully.
Neil Fisher,
the link you have provided to the ESRL site displays relative humidity at 300mb, which is stratospheric level. The graph of 100mb (near-surface) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/0
(note that neither graph states the displayed level, but this is seen in the address line. The statement ‘up to 300mb’ is there whichever level you graph, and simply means that is the limit of the whole data set).
The equivalent graphs for specific humidity are:
300mb – http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/300mbhumidity.gif
1000mb – http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/1000mbhumidity.gif
Theses graphs appear to be in accord with what would be expected from a warming troposphere and a cooling stratosphere.
Joel Shore (19:42:14)
From your first link
‘Climate models predict that the concentration of water vapor in the upper troposphere could double by the end of the century as a result of increases in greenhouse gases. Such moistening plays a key role in amplifying the rate at which the climate warms in response to anthropogenic activities, but has been difficult to detect because of deficiencies in conventional observing systems.’
According to the “CO2 drives the climate theory” isn’t that added water vapor suppose to lead to more heat trapping clouds which the GHG models use as a positive feedback?
According to Spencer’s model (based on observed data) heat trapping cloud did form and the heat stored in water vapor escapes into space as it gets “higher in the sky”.
I know you don’t buy Spencer’s theory but it was “published, peer review paper” and it is up to you to falsify.
Your 2nd link is tad old
cloud did form and the heat stored in water vapor escapes into space as it gets “higher in the sky”.
should read clouds did not form
Note to John McLondon
Hi John,
Thanks for your post referring to my post to Joel, which you concluded with “I will let Joel address it fully”.
My post to him was in response to (what I thought was) a silly and unfounded statement about the numbers of pro/anti AGW papers, their quality, the quality of the journals publishing them, the decision body and process for establishing this quality, the relative amounts of funding for pro/anti AGW papers, etc.
While you touched on funding without getting specific, you obviously did not answer any of my questions to Joel, so I’ll wait for him to “address it fully”.
Regards,
Max
max: John McLondon addressed well the issue of the fraction of papers that disagree with AGW. As for funding, I imagine that most funding in the U.S. comes from organizations like NSF, NOAA, and NASA.
With their record profits, Exxon certainly could afford to spend lots of money funding climate research if they wanted to. However, as far as I know, they have instead used their money more to fund think-tanks that don’t do any serious research but just regurgitate discredited arguments. Go figure.
As I noted, there are recognized ways to measure the quality of journals, such as impact factor, the number of libraries that get the journal, etc., etc. These aren’t perfect measures but they are reasonable ones particularly in distinguishing between journals that aren’t even close by these measures.
Well, some are so obvious that I can analyze and understand the weaknesses myself. For others, one has to look to how the scientific community active in the fields views them as reviewed by the IPCC, CCSP, or the NAS. It is the same criteria by which science is generally judged. You know, organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences were set up for a good reason.
Sorry but that is not going to fly. If you look at the positions of respected scientific organizations like the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, etc., etc., my statement shows remarkable parallelism, i.e., those organizations endorse evolutionary theory and AGW. And, if you look at the sort of claims that are made regarding how the scientific “establishment” is biased against them and so on and so forth and so on, you will also see the same remarkable parallelism between the creationist / intelligent design movement and the AGW skeptics movement.
old construction worker says:
Well, my post was focussing on the water vapor feedback, not the cloud feedback. I.e., more water vapor means more absorption of IR because of the greenhouse gas properties of water vapor.
To the extent that most of the climate models do have a positive cloud feedback, I am not sure exactly what it is due to. Note that it is not obvious that more water vapor will necessarily leads to more clouds since the relative humidity is predicted to remain roughly constant (i.e., warmer air can hold more water vapor before it condenses into clouds). Note also that clouds themselves are complex because they both trap infrared radiation and block solar radiation, so they can have both warming and cooling effects.
First of all, if you read Spencer’s paper rather than the press releases, you will see that even they admit that they haven’t shown that the effect that they found operates on the timescales of interest. Second of all, since I am not a climate scientist, it is not up to me to falsify every skeptic paper that get published in the literature, nor do I have the qualifications to do so. I am sure that, in time, the climate science community will react to that paper. (I think I have already seen one criticism of it somewhere…but I can’t remember where it was now.)
Are you saying that there have been dramatic new papers regarding the water vapor feedback in the last 2 years that change this summary? Pray tell, what were they?
old construction worker,
According to Spencer’s model (based on observed data) heat trapping cloud did form and the heat stored in water vapor escapes into space as it gets “higher in the sky”.
I know you don’t buy Spencer’s theory but it was “published, peer review paper” and it is up to you to falsify.
With respect, that’s not quite my understanding of Spencer et al 2007. Over a short time-scale of weeks they observe a reduction in ice cloud coverage during the warm/rainy phase of oscillations, thus reducing long-wave absorption –
“The increase in longwave cooling is traced to decreasing coverage by ice clouds, potentially supporting Lindzen’s ‘‘infrared iris’’ hypothesis of climate stabilization. These observations should be considered in the testing of cloud parameterizations in climate models, which remain sources of substantial uncertainty in global warming prediction.”
Sud et al. 2008 have done exactly this. They cite Spencer and observe that:
Moreover, GISS-E simulations are well within the limits of several observations-data analyses [e.g., Lindzen et al., 2001; Fu et al., 2002; Hartmann and Michelsen, 2002; Lin et al., 2002; Spencer et al., 2007].
http://climate.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/fulltext/2008GL033872.pdf
That, of course, is the way science tends to work. Occasionally it may be a matter of ‘falsifying’ work that is simply wrong, but far more often it’s a matter of taking observations into consideration and building a more detailed understanding. (Incidentally, I presume that both Spencer’s and Sud’s research have been government funded).
Spencer’s paper considers short-term oscillation but does not offer any observational evidence of a long-term change in ice-cloud cover in response to GW. Such an observation would be of greater impact, I imagine, but it does not exist as yet. If it is there to be found, then it will be. In the meantime, I do think it should be realised that Spencer has not, as yet, published any science to support his conviction that the planet has a ‘thermostat’ which will substantially limit the potential of warming.
Hi Steven,
You wrote, “Spencer has not, as yet, published any science to support his conviction that the planet has a ‘thermostat’ which will substantially limit the potential of warming.”
Please read his report and subsequent follow-up papers more thoroughly, Steven.
He has shown that the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC (admittedly with a large degree of uncertainty) is most likely incorrect and that the net cloud feedback is likely to be negative and strong.
That’s all.
But that is enough, Steven, to raise serious questions about 1.3°C warming attributed to clouds in the 3.2°C climate sensitivity for 2xCO2.
Take away the assumed positive cloud effect and (even without replacing it with Spencer’s observed strong negative effect) you are down to a 2xCO2 sensitivity of 1.9°C rather than 3.2°C.
And we haven’t even started talking about problems with the water vapor feedback assumptions, which will be the topic of future discussions.
Face it, Steven. IPCC has done a good job of exaggerating the feedback assumptions in the direction of making AGW more alarming that it would otherwise be. It is quite logical that if IPCC errs, it will be in that direction, as their whole existence depends on a world that is worried about human impact on climate and frightened about where that will lead.
No crisis = no need for further existence of IPCC. (These are nice jobs.)
No crisis = no need for multibillion dollar climate research grants. (Lots of “climatologists” and “computer gurus” depend on this source of funding.)
No crisis = no opportunity to enact draconian carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes making a few already wealthy people richer at everyone’s expense and giving bureaucrats and politicians hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to shuffle around. (No need to mention how politicians react to the prospect of having more public money to handle.)
This is what many have referred to the whole scientific basis supporting an AGW-hysteria as “agenda-driven science”. Follow the money (and power) trail.
Regards,
Max
Hi Max,
Please read his report and subsequent follow-up papers more thoroughly, Steven.
Please may I suggest that you do the same? Also, may I suggest that you read the IPCC Assessment Report, which you refer to without seeming to be properly aware of its contents?
Let me be specific –
“He [Spencer] has shown that the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC (admittedly with a large degree of uncertainty) is most likely incorrect and that the net cloud feedback is likely to be negative and strong.”
1) Can you demonstrate, by quotation from his scientific papers, where he has shown that “net cloud feedback is likely to be negative and strong”? I am not aware of this evidence, and would be very pleased to read your evidence, by quotation. Such evidence would have a very significant impact upon my own assessment, so I look forward to what you have to say.
2) Can you illustrate to me, by quotation, where is “the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC”? Again, I am not aware of any such assumption. In fact, reference to the text of the Report suggests that your assertion is entirely wrong, for example:
In the current climate, clouds exert a cooling effect on climate (the global mean CRF is negative). In response to global warming, the cooling effect of clouds on climate might be enhanced or weakened, thereby producing a radiative feedback to climate warming (Randall et al., 2006; NRC, 2003; Zhang, 2004; Stephens, 2005; Bony et al., 2006). [8.6.3.2]
In doubled atmospheric CO2 equilibrium experiments performed by mixed-layer ocean-atmosphere models as well as in transient climate change integrations performed by fully coupled ocean-atmosphere models, models exhibit a large range of global cloud feedbacks, with roughly half of the climate models predicting a more negative CRF in response to global warming, and half predicting the opposite (Soden and Held, 2006; Webb et al., 2006). [8.6.3.2.2]
These quotations are both from the chapter on climate modeling, to which process you refer. I suggest that they clearly demonstrate your assertion “the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC” to be false, so may I advise you to read the materials you are referring to rather than you advising me to do so, which I have already done, as I think will be evident?
In short, Max, I think this demonstrates pretty clearly that you are engaged in blagging it. You can show me to be wrong very simply, of course, by quoting from the IPCC AR to support your assertion. I look forward to what you will come up with.
Regards,
Steven
Hi Steven,
I’ll ignore your statement, “In short, Max, I think this demonstrates pretty clearly that you are engaged in blagging it. You can show me to be wrong very simply, of course, by quoting from the IPCC AR to support your assertion.”
You posed two questions, which I will answer.
“1) Can you demonstrate, by quotation from his scientific papers, where he has shown that “net cloud feedback is likely to be negative and strong”? I am not aware of this evidence, and would be very pleased to read your evidence, by quotation. Such evidence would have a very significant impact upon my own assessment, so I look forward to what you have to say.”
To your first question. Spencer states that the physical observations show that the cirroform ice cloud fraction anomaly is reduced with higher sea surface temperature, adding, “the decrease in ice cloud ceverage is conceptually consistent with the ‘infrared iris’ hypothesized by Lindzen et al. [2001], who propose that tropical cirroform cloud coverage might open and close, like the iris of an eye, in response to anaomalously warm or cool conditions, providing a negative radiative feedback on temperature change”.
He quantifies the net overall impact of clouds, “Our measured sensitivity of total (LW+SW) cloud radiative forcing to tropospheric temperature is –6.1 W/m^2 °K”, and goes on to conclude that “these observations should be considered in the testing of cloud parameterizations in climate models, which remain sources of substantial uncertainty in global warming prediction”.
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf
Spencer has published several other papers since then essentially reiterating his findings of negative feedback from clouds, but I think the above should suffice in responding to your question.
Your second question:
“2) Can you illustrate to me, by quotation, where is “the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC”? Again, I am not aware of any such assumption.”
To your second question, below is the link.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter8.pdf
Please refer to page 633. You will see:
“Using feedback parameters from figure 8.14, it can be estimated that in the presence of water vapour, lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks, but in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity (±1 standard deviation) of roughly 1.9°C ± 0.15°C (ignoring spread from radiative forcing differences). The mean and standard deviation of climate sensitivities derived from current GCMs are larger (3.2°C ± 0.7°C) essentially because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback (Figure 8.14) but strongly disagree on its magnitude.”
IPCC goes on to assert, “the contributions of water vapor/lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks to sensaitivity spread are non-negligible, particularly since their impact is reinforced by the mean model cloud feedback being positive and quite strong.”
Believe this should clear up your question on “the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC” and also your accusation that I am “blagging it”.
Regards,
Max
Be nice you two.
Hi Steven,
Just so you don’t try to misinterpret (or misunderstand) the IPCC quotes I just posted to demonstrate that the climate models cited by IPCC (in arriving at a 2xCO2 sensitivity of 3.2) ALL assume a positive feedback from clouds, and that this feedback is assumed to be strong, let’s analyze the words.
2xCO2 climate sensitivity (including water vapor, lapse rate, surface albedo feedbacks, but EXCLUDING cloud feedback) = 1.9°C
2xCO2 climate sensitivity (including water vapor, lapse rate, surface albedo feedbacks, but INLUDING cloud feedback) = 3.2°C
Sentence “because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback”, means exactly that. They all predict a positive cloud feedback.
The sentence saying that other feedbacks are “reinforced by the mean model cloud feedback being positive and quite strong” also means exactly what it says.
Bumping the 2xCO2 sensitivity up from 1.9°C (without clouds) to 3.2°C (with clouds) is, indeed, evidence that the “impact is reinforced” by cloud feedback being “positive and quite strong”.
Any questions?
Regards,
Max
Hey jeez,
You are right in asking Steve and me to be nice.
Is accusing someone of “blagging it” being nice?
Regards,
Max
Reply:I’m not looking to cast blame. We all step over the line. I’m simply asking for the discussion to be maintained at a respectful level and tone.~charles the moderator aka jeez
Two people divided by a common language
Blag:
1. (informal) persuade or deceive in order to get something for free
2. (informal) steal