Reposted in its entirety from Climate Science
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. University of Colorado
There was an interesting news article in the Guardian on December 6 2008 by James Randerson titled Explainer: Coolest year since 2000
The article reads
“This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.
The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists at the Met Office. “Absolutely not,” said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre. “If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends.”
Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University, who runs the climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would overinterpret the figure: “You can bet your life there will be a lot of fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, it’s not been that cold a year, but the human memory is not very long. We are used to warm years.”
The Met Office had predicted 2008 would be cooler than recent years due to a La Niña event, characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean – the mirror image of the El Niño climate cycle.
Allen was presenting the data on this year’s global average temperature at the Appleton Space Conference at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot, yesterday. The 14.3C figure is based on data from January to October. When the Met Office makes its formal announcement next week they will incorporate data from November. “[The figure] will differ from it, but it won’t differ massively,” said Stott.
Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the 10th hottest year on record. Hottest was 1998, followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002.
In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade.”
Lets do a reality check.
The statement that “The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing” mixes up regional and global temperatures changes. Also, there has been no global warming in the last 4 years (at least; e.g. see). Global warming has stopped for the last few years.
The statement that “In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade” is scientifically incorrect. Heating cannot be ”masked”.
As given in the examples below, the news releases provided by the UK Met Office make for interesting reading and show the complexity and difficulty of skillful season climate prediction.
Thus why should there be any confidence in the forecasts regarding climate change in the longer term?
Examples of UK Met Office News releases
1. For example, on April 11 2007, they wrote in a news release “Met Office forecast for Summer 2007″ [to their credit, they do have a readily accessible archive]
“The Met Office forecast of global mean temperature for 2007, issued on 4 January 2007 in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, stated that 2007 is likely to be the warmest ever year on record going back to 1850, beating the current record set in 1998.”
This did not occur.
2. On April 3 2008 they wrote in a news release “A typical British summer”
“The coming summer is expected to be a ‘typical British summer’, according to long-range forecasts issued today. Summer temperatures across the UK are more likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average for the three months of summer.”
On August 29 2008 they published a news release titled “Wet summer could end with a bang” where they write
“The return to unsettled weather will mark the end of the meteorological summer which has been one of the wettest on record across the UK.”
I suppose that rainfall “near or above average” fits what actually occurred but this is hardly a particularly precise or useful forecast.
3. On September 25 2008 they wrote in a news release “Trend of mild winters continues”
“The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.”
They qualified this news release with the article on November 25 2008 titled “A cold start to winter” where they wrote
“The latest update to the Met Office winter forecast suggests that although the coming winter will have temperatures near or above average, it is very likely that December will be colder than normal.”
Now, in addition to a news release on December 9 2008 they published an article ”El Niño gives colder European winters”, which states
Sarah Ineson, climate research scientist at the Met Office says: “We have shown evidence of an active stratospheric role in the transition to cold conditions in northern Europe and mild conditions in southern Europe in late winter during El Niño years”.
The message in th UK Met Office press releases is that, since their is such poor skill with seasonal weather prediction, multi-decadal climate prediction must be a much less precise and accurate science than we have heard promoted by the IPCC and in the climate change press releases given out by the UK Met Office and others.
Stevo, I think we agree on many subjects. I am always re-examining my basic assumptions. I used to teach guitar and teaching a beginner was very often eye opening, as I found new approaches after going back to the very basic foundation of the instrument and music. It is arrogance beyond belief to assume I know all there is to know. Funny thing about getting older is that you learn how little we really know about any subject. If irrefutable proof comes to light that I am wrong, I have the nads to say “I was wrong” !! My fondest wish is that this site will be up and running when and if that comes to pass, one way or the other.
Sorry everyone, in the time I took to reply and post my reply to Chris V many others have commented-hope I have covered your points.
Anna
Keelings organisation has the virtual monopoly on calibration and of reference gases-I am not a supporter of conspiracy theories so that may or may not be of any significance. I have posted a little in my reply to Chris about the selective data that G S Callendar used. On Charles Keelings admittance in his autobigraphy, Callendar influenced his early work and he accepted the figures of 280ppm pre industrial and 295ppm in 1900. This was contrary to other published information which consistently showed much more variable figures
Chris V
Yes you can ascertain exactly who the scentists were and the circumstances in which they took their readings-they are either in my data or in the material posted about Becks website referenced earlier. Unlike some other people Beck actually details his sources and puts them online without someone needing to file a freedom of information notice to obtain the information.
If you want a bibliography of the other suppliers of measurements, Beck has included them. I suggest the comprehensive papers from Benedict and the 1917 paper would make as illuminating reading as ‘Air and Water’ that I referenced in my last post. Taking co2 measurements was common and reliable from around 1820 when Saussure took a long series by Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
The measurements weren’t being taken out of context by third rate practitioners using primitive equipment but by noted people as part of the scientifc and social life of the age. We even have pictures and adverts for the equipment!
If you are really interested in how embedded co2 readings were in everyday life I can cite a variety of documents.
I am sure Beck can be selective-as we all are to prove our point-however there are far too many readings by far too many good scientists who really knew what they were doing, to be able to turn round and say ‘it is garbage.’
The real story revolves round the highly selective measurements taken to prove his AGW theory by GS Callendar, and Charles Keelings endorsement of them in 1956 because he was a young man, in a new job, who knew nothing of climate science or co2 measurements and accepted what he was told by a respected meteorologist. This is not an AD Hom attack-Keeling seemed a genuinely nice man and Callendar was a very interesting and extremely worthy person in his professional life. However he was an amateur meteorologist -I suggest you go over to Real Climate tell them you’re an amateur with a new theory and see how long they take to rip you to pieces!
TonyB
A few charts to help with this discussion.
First, the CO2 growth rate does vary directly with temperature. Oceans and plants are currently absorbing about half of our emissions and it seems a cooler ocean absorbs a little more, a warmer ocean a little less. CO2 growth rate lags the temperature changes by about 5 months. During the little ice age when ocean temps were cooler, I imagine there could have been lower CO2 than the 280 ppm imagined. Maybe CO2 was higher during the MWP as well but the 1800s were cold so CO2 levels of 350 and higher couldn’t be explained by this.
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/879/co2lagkz2.png
Second, even though CO2 growth does vary with temperatures, it is still going higher and higher. Going back to 1850, using ice core data and then the global CO2 measurements starting in 1958, we are on a slightly exponential growth rate for CO2 and we will likely reach the CO2 doubling level of 560 ppm by 2070.
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1071/co2forecastwz0.png
Third, if you use a lower CO2 sensitivity figure of 1.5C per doubling (2.34 ln(CO2)), rather than the global warming model’s estimate of 3.25C per doubling, you’ll find the lower sensitivity CO2 number of 1.5C per doubling provides a pretty good match to the temperature and CO2 estimates over the geologic time over the past 500 million years.
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/3291/co2tempgeotnc8.png
Once again, the models are wrong.
Bill
you said;
“I imagine there could have been lower CO2 than the 280 ppm imagined. Maybe CO2 was higher during the MWP as well but the 1800s were cold so CO2 levels of 350 and higher couldn’t be explained by this.”
Using the real world rather than manufactured global temperatures it can be seen that the 1800’s were an extremely variable century with great warmth and great cold-so co2 levels would fluctuate considerably
This graph from Hadley back to 1660 covers the 1800’s which confirms the warmth almost equal to todays at times (two out of the Uks top three warmest winters ever occured in the 1800’s)
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/mencken_hobgoblin.xls
This one covers Switzerland from 1850 and again shows considerable warmth.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/beck_mencken_zurich_uhi.jpg
According to the highly variable temperatures shown we could have expected co2 readings exactly in the range that have been measured
TonyB
anna v @ur momisugly 11:30:08 :
Is this the chart you’re looking for?
David, TonyB, and others:
Here are a few reasons why I don’t take that graph too seriously:
1) The temperature it uses are the Hadley CET- that’s Central England Temperature. Hadley’s global temperature goes back to 1850; that’s almost as far back as the CO2 measurements. Why not use the global temps?
2) It doesn’t include any post-1950 data (Mauna Loa, South Pole, etc.) It would be very worthwhile to show the different variabilities and trends pre- and post-1950.
3) The line labelled “Total Cumulative Manmade Emissions” is incorrect. It shows ANNUAL, not CUMULATIVE emissions (thanks for the link to the original spreadsheet, Tony). That blue line at the bottom would look very different if it were actually cumulative emissions; it would bring the last data point up to over 320,000 MMT of CO2 (and actually, the entire graph has plotted the mass of Carbon, not the mass of CO2).
It looks like whoever made that graph needs to go back and do it right; then we would have something to discuss.
anna v (11:30:08) :
This link provides some info on the other CO2 monitoring stations:
http://www.climate.noaa.gov/index.jsp?pg=./about_climate/about_index.jsp&about=physical
It ain’t just Mauna Loa…
Can you provide anything similar for the pre-1950 data Becks graph uses?
Bill Illis (12:08:28) :
The oft-cited 3 degrees +/- for CO2 doubling comes from multiple sources- paleoclimate, modern observations, as well as models.
David Ball (11:35:19) :
Stevo, I think we agree on many subjects. I am always re-examining my basic assumptions. I used to teach guitar and teaching a beginner was very often eye opening, as I found new approaches after going back to the very basic foundation of the instrument and music. It is arrogance beyond belief to assume I know all there is to know. Funny thing about getting older is that you learn how little we really know about any subject. If irrefutable proof comes to light that I am wrong, I have the nads to say “I was wrong” !! My fondest wish is that this site will be up and running when and if that comes to pass, one way or the other.
David, you have described the profound weakness of the Algore/UN/IPCC/Pachauri cabal. They are not teaching and learning, they are dictatorial.
TonyB,
You said:
“CO2 outgassed for 0.1ºC temp rise = 2,000 x 0.3/100 Gt = 6 Gt ie one year’s emissions
CO2 outgassed from 30m depth for 1ºC global temp rise = 600 Gt ie near-total atmospheric content.”
Do you think you could clarify the physics behind that a bit?
Because my thinking would be that the atmosphere isn’t generally in equilibrium with the oceans because the ocean temperature varies from equator to poles. You’ll get outgassing in the tropics at one partial pressure, and absorption near the poles at a much lower partial pressure, with the atmosphere settling at a partial pressure somewhere in between. If 1C changes solubility by 3%, that will change the partial pressures about 3% (Henry’s law), and hence the average partial pressure that the atmospheric level tends towards by about 3%.
The oceanographers say the total transfer is about 90GtC each way at present, so I’d expect a 3% change to result in an 18GtC transfer, or about 9ppm. And if the temperature changed 10C, like it is said to have done for the ice ages, then the CO2 level would change by about 90ppm, which is about what the Vostok ice core said.
Can you say where that goes wrong, or which numbers are wrong, and perhaps expand on the principles by which Endersbee’s calculation works?
Thanks.
David Ball,
“Funny thing about getting older is that you learn how little we really know about any subject. If irrefutable proof comes to light that I am wrong, I have the nads to say “I was wrong” !!”
I find I’m often wrong. My aim is only to be wrong a bit less often than the other guy! 😉
Finding out that I’m wrong means I’ve learnt something new. I like being wrong if it means I get to find out about an interesting new subject. But at the same time I don’t give in easy.
As far as I’m concerned, science is all about falsifying stuff, so if you’re not proved wrong on a frequent basis, you’re not doing it right. It’s Natural Selection for ideas.
And that’s one reason why all this “scientific consensus” and “peer-reviewed papers” and “2000 climate experts” nonsense, the IPCC Ipse Dixit drive me absolutely wild! That these people have the bald-faced temerity to call that Science!
I’ll ask again. Be it resolved; Co2 does/does not drive climate change.
TonyB,
Sorry, I just realised I need to clarify that a bit.
I said “…and hence the average partial pressure that the atmospheric level tends towards by about 3%.” What I’m thinking is that the rates of diffusion change by 3%, so the weighting between the two that decides the average point shifts by that amount. You can calculate it by considering the amount transferred each way at the given rate.
It’s all a bit off the top of my head. I hope you can figure out what I mean.
Thanks.
Link to Ernst-Georg Beck’s website:-
180 Years of atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods
PeteM:
I had to smile a bit when I read your statement about species moving toward the poles. (On the serious side, yes, I’m confident that we can find species that are extending their range north. Sometimes that may be due to species following flora, and vegetation has become much more vigorous with additional CO2 in the atmosphere.) What made me smile though was thinking of all the turtles who are begining rescued this fall on the Atlantic coast and being brought into shelters because temperatures are too cold for them. Also, polar bears this past year tried to extend their range farther south into Iceland, but Icelanders would have none of that and shot both intruders onto the island.
Smokey,
Yes, thanks. Though Bill Illis also gave another link with the same data.
Chris V (14:10:00) :
anna v (11:30:08) :
This link provides some info on the other CO2 monitoring stations:
http://www.climate.noaa.gov/index.jsp?pg=./about_climate/about_index.jsp&about=physical
I was asking about peer reviewed papers, not PR. The peer reviewed I found are all Keeling + another author. If all these stations send their data to Keeling that is what will appear.
Becks paper has extensive references and I think TonyB gave a link.
If the levels of CO2 do not start at 280ppm, but at a higher level, this reduces the anthropogenic effect, and may reduce it drastically. Nobody is saying we are not burning more carbon into the atmosphere ending up in CO2. The point to ponder is whether the quantity added to the atmosphere has been overestimated, by intent or stupidity.
The CO2 rates of change have fluctuations of 3ppm due to temperature increases as seen in the plots provided above. The yearly increase of Mauna Loa attributed to humans is 2ppm.
Let me state my hypothesis: CO2 varies a lot more than is stated, this would be evident also in the AIRS data, which were so very slow to come out, if they were not so parsimonious in the plottings.( they do need their grants after all).
It is a hypothesis. Until we have access to all the data it will remain a hypothesis.
The alternative is to many of us getting CO2 measuring instruments and testing the hypothesis on the ground the hills and the seas.
The ice core data have been questioned by people as far as absolute calibrations go, and in addition I observe that icebergs form right next to a huge sink of CO2 in the oceans so even if the calibrations are correct, they can only tell us about CO2 in the arctic and antarctic and not the rest of the world, unless we are speaking of iceball earth.
“Hottest was 1998, followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002.”
What about 1934 ?
That was just the US.
Of course if the McKitrick and LaDochy 2007 studies are right, there has been some 20th century warming but it has been highballed by about a factor of two.
Raw temperatures (with only TOBS adjustments) show cooling in the US for the 20th century. (The USHCN v.1 adjusted shows US warming,and USHCN v.2 even more so. But I think their adjustments are for the birds. For them, SHAP is a positive adjustment, which flies in the face of every fact I know.)
TonyB (03:50:34) :
Stevo and E M Smith
” A guy called Beck has been saying that for years, I think Tim Ball mentioned it recently. It’s extremely dubious.”
Please tell me on what basis this information that Beck produces is dubious?
Don’t know why I’m in this challenge. I just posted a link to info with a disclaimer that I was just pointing to it, not endorsing (i.e. taking no advocacy position). Since when does professed neutrality constitute advocacy?
To be clear: I have no idea what the recent history of CO2 levels has been and take no position on who has said what to whom about it. I neither endorse nor decry any position.
The only thing I can say about CO2 at present is that I’ve seen a time series from Mauna Loa? that showed rather large year to year variation. That would leave me to speculate that whatever we do seems to be soaked up rather rapidly by whatever does the soaking up. (How can “it”- quantity or increase- drop a lot in one year if our production is near constant unless the absorption ability exceeds our production?
I’m open to the idea that CO2 baseline might be cooked, but have no basis for one side or the other. (Gee, that sounds like a skeptic 😉
Re: Forecasting
“One of their somewhat surprising rules of thumb is that one of the things which tends to lead to a forecast being wrong is that the forecast was made by experts.”
Another one leading to error was “consensus”. Obvious really. How do you get consensus on a complex issue except by browbeating? So the winners are the best browbeaters. IPCC are clearly good at that. The only time consensus is likely to be the right outcome is when the issue was obvious in the first place, clearly not the case with global warming.
Chris V
You said;
“1) The temperature it uses are the Hadley CET- that’s Central England Temperature. Hadley’s global temperature goes back to 1850; that’s almost as far back as the CO2 measurements. Why not use the global temps?
2) It doesn’t include any post-1950 data (Mauna Loa, South Pole, etc.) It would be very worthwhile to show the different variabilities and trends pre- and post-1950.”
Various charts are produced for various purposes and highlight a particlar aspect of a study. This is probably the one you’re looking for.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/man_vs_nature.jpg
The man made emissions are shown against total natural co2 emissions. It doesn’t take into account the decomposition of 90% the gas as it is absorbed into sinks over a 50 year or so period. Around half of what man has emitted is no longer in the equation so could you clarify the source for your figure?
As for using Hadley-these are real world figures that date back to 1660. The Zurich ones are real figures dating back to 1850. Bearing in mind the site on which you are posting are you seriously suggesting that global temperatures back to 1850 should be considered some sort of quality benchmark?
The figures are from cdiac-they use information up to the present day.
It took Michael Mann fifteen years to come up with hockey sticks and spaghetti graphs that bear no relation to reality, so I feel I can have a little time (and preferably lots of govt money) to refine my own.
It is a great pity there has not been much more study on this subject and then we would get to the truth more quickly.
TonyB
Chris V
Perhaps you can answer the question I posed earlier.
If co2 has a dramatic effect on temperatures how do constant levels of 280ppm cause the dramatic temperature fluctuations of the past? In the last 5000 years we have had temperatures colder than, the same as, and warmer than, the present, but surely they should have been relatively constant?
TonyB
Chris V – “The oft-cited 3 degrees +/- for CO2 doubling comes from multiple sources- paleoclimate, modern observations, as well as models.”
I just showed you that the 3 degrees does NOT work for either the paleoclimate or the modern observations.
The 3 degrees is off by Half (in both the paleoclimate and the modern obervations.) It only occurs in the models.
TonyB (02:09:13) said:
If co2 has a dramatic effect on temperatures how do constant levels of 280ppm cause the dramatic temperature fluctuations of the past?
CO2 levels are not the only thing that affects climate.
Joseph (11:18:40) :
This is probably OT, but I believe it is relevant (and besides, it’s bugging me).
There is a graph of temperature and atmospheric CO2 for our planet for the last 600 million years (http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html) that has been referenced several times in this thread (Stevo 16:04:42, Deb 19:18:16, E.M.Smith 22:20:40) that I find fascinating. It seems to display our planet’s temperature “topping out”, or reaching a plateau at 25C several times in geologic history. Is that our planets “maximum temperature”? Why would that be? Why, or how, could our planet even have a “maximum temperature”? Can anyone explain this?.
I will try to . We now have a very nice tool in
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
Where you can watch the temperature of the oceans and seas of the world every day.
The reply to your question is : the water, earth is 75% water. If you look at the tropical temperatures they never go over 30 or so degrees celcius. One of the main reasons is that the hotter the water, the higher the humidity and the cooling by evaporation. The higher the humidity, the more clouds, clouds finally cover up the area and the heating is limited.
And this without the grand storage of heat that the whole ocean has with its various currents.
in
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm
read “Global Warming and Nature’s Thermostat:
Precipitation Systems” .
So even though the system is not deterministic, i.e. you cannot solve an equation for it, it still has feed backs that limit its cooling and heating.