I received this presentation of the “Bjerknes Lecture” that Dr. James Hansen gave at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on December 17th. There are the usual things one might expect in the presentation, such as this slide which shows 2008 on the left with the anomalously warm Siberia and the Antarctic peninsula:
Source: James Hansen, GISS
Off topic but relevant, NASA has recently “disappeared”updated this oft cited map showing warming on the Antarctic peninsula and cooling of the interior:
There is also some new information in Hansen’s presentation, including a claim about CO2 sensitivity and coal causing a “runaway greenhouse effect”.
Hansen makes a bold statement that he has empirically derived CO2 sensitivity of our global climate system. I had to chuckle though, about the claim “Paleo yields precise result”. Apparently Jim hasn’t quite got the message yet that Michael Mann’s paleo results are, well, dubious, or that trees are better indicators of precipitation than temperature.
In fact in the later slide text he claims he’s “nailed” it:
He adds some caveats for the 2xCO2 claim:
Notes:
(1)
It is unwise to attempt to treat glacial-interglacial aerosol changes as a specified boundary condition (as per Hansen et al. 1984), because aerosols are inhomogeneously distributed, and their forcing depends strongly on aerosol altitude and aerosol absorbtivity, all poorly known. But why even attempt that? Human-made aerosol changes are a forcing, but aerosol changes in response to climate change are a fast feedback.
(2)
The accuracy of our knowledge of climate sensitivity is set by our best source of information, not by bad sources. Estimates of climate sensitivity based on the last 100 years of climate change are practically worthless, because we do not know the net climate forcing. Also, transient change is much less sensitive than the equilibrium response and the transient response is affected by uncertainty in ocean mixing.
(3)
Although, in general, climate sensitivity is a function of the climate state, the fast feedback sensitivity is just as great going toward warmer climate as it is going toward colder climate. Slow feedbacks (ice sheet changes, greenhouse gas changes) are more sensitive to the climate state.
Hansen is also talking about the “runaway” greenhouse effect, citing that old standby Venus in part of his presentation. He claims that coal and tar sands will be our undoing:
Hansen writes:
In my opinion, if we burn all the coal, there is a good chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale (a.k.a. oil shale), I think it is a dead certainty.
That would be the ultimate Faustian bargain. Mephistopheles would carry off shrieking not only the robber barons, but, unfortunately and permanently, all life on the planet.
I have to wonder though, if he really believes what he is saying. Perhaps he’s never seen this graph for CO2 from Bill Illis and the response it gives to IR radiation (and thus temperature) as it increases:
It’s commonly known that CO2’s radiative return response is logarithmic with increasing concentration, so I don’t understand how Hansen thinks that it will be the cause of a runaway effect. The physics dictate that the temperature response curve of the atmosphere will be getting flatter as CO2 increases. Earth has also had much higher concentrations of CO2 in past history, and we didn’t go into runaway then:
Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya — 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).
There’s lots more in this paper to behold in wonderment, and I haven’t the time today to comment on all of it, so I’ll just leave it up to the readers of this forum to bring out the relevant issues for discussion.
I’m sure Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit will have some comments on it, even though his name is not mentioned in the presentation. My name was mentioned several times though. 😉
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Joel Shore
December 24, 2008 7:53 pm
hunter says:
Their lack of accounting for major non-CO2 positive and negative forcings means that their algorithms were designed with the answer already known.
What forcings do you believe have been left out and what are their magnitudes?
And the dodge about a cooler sun in the ancient past is only now being dragged out as yet more credibility of apocalyptic bs is stripped away.
Hansen himself ridiculed the idea of a solar influence in a speech in Houston recently.
Do you understand the difference between saying, “The sun has varied enough over the past [30, 50 ,100] years to explain the warming we have seen” and “the sun has varied in strength enough over the past hundreds of millions of years to explain why things are different now than they were back then”? (Hint: One number has a lot more zeroes than the other!)
Mind you, I am not saying that I endorse Hansen’s current view that there is a serious possibility that we could trigger a runaway greenhouse effect. However, if you want to effectively argue against it, you have to do so by actually presenting scientific arguments, not by attacking strawmen versions of Hansen’s scientific arguments.
Thanks for that excellent link, Mike Bryant.
And for a list of the latest U.S. warming: click
old construction worker
December 24, 2008 9:03 pm
Joseph (15:20:46)
Thanks for the link It make more sense to me than CO2 drives the climate theory
foinavon (16:22:31)
‘Mr Wilde asserts that it’s impossible to warm cold tap water in a bathroom to the temperature of a warm bath by heating the air in the bathroom. What do you think?’
Let’s take the bathroom example one step further. The bath water and the air are heated by two inferred heat lamps mounted in the ceiling 7 ft above water line. Both lamps are on a dimmer switch. After the lamps are turn on which would heat faster the air or water?
After x amount of time the air and water are at the same temperature. If the switch is turned down little, witch would cool down faster air or water? Would it make a difference if there was a humidifier or a dehumidifier?
old construction worker
December 24, 2008 9:26 pm
foinavon (16:22:31)
Heck, let’s take the bathroom example and add one more parameter. Triple amount of CO2 in the bathroom. Would it make a difference? What if I told you the bathroom is in depressurized portion of a plane cursing at 12,000 ft.
The last ice age ended only about 10,000 years ago. Surely that is the most relevant comparison for any discussion of CO2/Solar forcing contributions?
Peter
December 25, 2008 3:06 am
Foinavon:
In fact the atmosphere has warmed the oceans somewhat. A warmer atmosphere reduces the escape of surface thermal energy into space and thus the surface must warm in order to maintain an equilibrium between the incoming and outgoing radiation.
A warmer atmosphere also has more convection which: a) by the mechanism of surface wind, tends to cool the ocean surface, and b) aids in vaulting the heat energy to higher altitudes.
Whether or not this effect is greater than the warming effect you mentioned is arguable.
Merry Christmas to all
Lansner, Frank
December 25, 2008 3:49 am
The CO2-hypothesis, as i understand it:
After Angstroms results 100 years ago, its clear to all that CO2 hardly has any effect. Well, that is, until in the 1950´ies results indicated that CO2 addition in theory might have an effect at much lower pressures. That is, in high altitudes. This was due to spectra changes of CO2 for lower pressures.
In agreement with this, the IPPC was sure that we would see the famous “hot-spot” – an bubble of warmer air at 5 – 15 km altitude over the tropics.
As everyone knows, we have not seen such a warmer area, and at this point, i wonder:
Does anyone know: When the CO2 hypothesis does not include an CO2 effect at ground level, and there is no detectable effect in high alitude, well, where and how is CO2 today supposed to work???
The only place it has gotten warmer is near the surface.. And here CO2 is shown not to have an effect (Angstrom).
Another thing. I F CO2 should have had an effect as IPCC thought, in high altitudes, for instance at 10 km hight, and if we saw this hotter air bubble – what does physics say about a hotter air bubble?
Wel normaly a such would tend to rise. Hot air rises rather than sinks.
So how was the warmer air in 10 km hight supposed to melt the ice at ground level?
To this central quesition i have seen the answer: “the warmer air at 10 km hight will affect the ground by stronger radiation”.
hmm
The thing is, Air at 10 hight is around -60 degrees Celcius. And if it had been 1 degree warmer we would have this “Warm bubble” of -59 degrees celcius.
And this thin light extremely cold airmass, should be able to radiate the surface of the whole earth so tha ice melts etc?
The thing is, the level of heat-radition from air, no matter if its -59 degrees or -60 degrees is so extreeemly tiny that this CO2 warming from high altitudes seems very hard to find in a real world.
So to me, we have a CO2-hypothesis on the following ground:
1) It is prooven not to work at ground level.
2) Results from real world shows that no warming is seen at high altitudes.
3) IF there had been a meassurable effect at high altitudes, any warming transferral to ground level should happend by “heat radiation” emitted by thin -59 degrees cold air.
Or?
Since this CO2-hypthesis seems to alk on water, there must surely be a realy good explanation for this JOKE of a hypothesis???
Bill Illis
December 25, 2008 5:37 am
After foinavon and others have spent a great deal of time crapping on my logarithmic global warming formula above, I thought it was now time to show how the warmers cannot see the forest for the trees:
Foinavon gave the following formula for the global warming models.
“T = (3.0/log(2))*(log(C))-9.39
where C is the CO2 concentration.”
“T” here is 15C or the average temperature of the earth. My formula deals with the Anomaly from average so we can restate Foinavon’s formula to:
Anom T = (3.0/log(2))*(log(C)) – 9.39 (-15.0C)
“3.0/log(2) = 4.3” so the formula can again be restated to:
Anom T = 4.3 * logC – 26.39
But my formula was based on warming to be 3.25C per doubling, the average of the IPCC models for doubling so we can again restate foinavon’s formula to be:
“3.25/log(2) = 4.69”
Anom T = 4.69 * logC – 26.39
Let’s replace C with 280 ppm in foinavon’s formula and one gets
Anom T @ur momisugly 280 ppm = +0.03C
Which is wrong, of course, since temps are supposed to be about -0.4C or -0.5C in the late 1700s when CO2 was 280 ppm.
So let’s restate foinavon’s forumla again to:
Anom T = 4.69 * Ln(C) – 26.89
Which, of course, is very, very far off my formula of:
Anom T = 4.69 * Ln(C) – 26.9
– funny how the warmers have made their theory so complicated they can only see it in terms of what Hansen tells them about it.
Wondering Aloud
December 25, 2008 7:22 am
foinavon
The Scotese graph you repeatedly dismiss as bearing no relation to our known climate past is named for Chris Scotese PhD. He is a well known geologist who has been leading a project mapping the earth’s geologic past for many years. Your pretending this graph is fake or fabricated or generally not accepted widely is very odd as it agrees with other sources well.
Quit trying to arm wave away the opponents, if you can’t disprove rather than smear you have already lost.
Mike Bryant
December 25, 2008 7:36 am
Frank Lasner,
You have completely discounted the GCMs, and we know how much time and effort has gone into making them even more trustworthy than ANY data that you would care to throw around. Sure, everything that you have said makes perfect sense, however you are missing the whole point. Scientists know so, so much more than we mere mortals could ever fathom with our tiny brains. And we all know that we will be much better off when the scientists rule us.
If President Bush had listened to his science advisors eight years ago, we would now be living on a cooler planet. Oh wait, the planet IS cooler today, but Bush just lucky because of the negative PDO. Anyway, the ONLY proper role of data in the world today, is to back up the models and make sure everyone pays their fair share of CO2 taxes. To the extent that the data does NOT further these ends, it MUST be adjusted, massaged or “corrected”.
Frank, I hope that this clears things up for you. Remember, together we can solve it.
Mike Bryant 🙂
Hank
December 25, 2008 7:57 am
foinavon
The point I was considering is: granted that CO2 has risen between 25 and 45 percent, and further granted that some degree of warming will result from that CO2 rise just due to principles of physical chemistry; will that contribution be significant? When I see that water vapor is also a greenhouse gas it makes me wonder if the water vapor doesn’t dominate any effect contributed by CO2. Especially considering that there is so much more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO2. (The other interesting thing about water vapor is that its concentration varies so wildly – even on a single day.)
As to independent and dependent variables. Sure you can call CO2 the independent variable, but this isn’t a designed experiment we are discussing. There are so many uncontrolled variables that someone else can come along and call anything they want the independent variable. And people do this. They blame La Nina for parts of their data, or they point to the sunspot cycle, or they point to aerosols, black carbon, clouds and on and on. Personally I have a hard time thinking about independent and dependent variables unless you have a designed experiment where extraneous factors are controlled. If you don’t control, us skeptics will look on it as auguring.
I strongly disagree with you that water vapor couldn’t be considered an independent variable. It is certainly variable and it’s the design of the experiment that determines whether it’s the independent variable. Sure you can construct the argument where average temperature rises in lockstep with Keeling’s CO2 curve from Mauna Loa and say, “look CO2 is the independent variable, temperature is the dependent variable, and CO2 must be causing warming.” But, you can’t deny others the opportunity of saying, “but wait a minute; my experience of the world is different, and Keeling’s data is happenstance. By my reasoning cloud cover is the independent variable, temperature is the dependent variable and other factors are insignificant. Can you show me that average cloud cover wasn’t rising in the same time frame as Keeling’s data?”
To me the problem is that there aren’t good simple experiments. We are all looking at a world of data and it is going to be difficult to extract what all the factors are and determine what weight to give each of them, and especially to describe how all the factors interact. I understand that Hansen and others are working on the model that will do this, but I’m a long way from seeing that it’s anything that’s accurate. So I remain skeptical.
By my reckoning it’s the vagaries of water vapor in the atmosphere that causes the vagaries of weather. A complete climate model will only emerge when we can accurately describe the role of water in its various forms: as vapor in the air, cloud in the sky, and liquid in the ocean.
Joel Shore
December 25, 2008 8:00 am
Frank Lasner:
Your whole post is rather confused. You are correct that much of the effect of CO2 on the earth’s radiation budget is manifest further up in the atmosphere where the air is thinner. Basically, at the end of the day, the effect of increasing CO2, as we’ve discussed above, is to increase the effective level from which most of the radiation is escaping back into space. Since the air is colder as you go higher in the atmosphere and the intensity of radiation goes as the fourth power of the temperature, this means that the earth is now radiating less energy…and less than it is receiving from the sun. This means it will warm up until such point that ithe upper atmosphere has warmed enough that the earth is now radiating as much as it receives.
However, this all has essentially nothing to do with the prediction of the “hotspot” in the tropical atmosphere. Although greenhouse gases play an important role in the overall radiation budget, the atmosphere mixes heat well enough that the structure of the warming is not determined by where the greenhouse gases happen to absorb additional energy. Instead, in the tropical atmosphere, the temperature structure is dominated by convection in a saturated atmosphere. This means that the temperature structure is pegged to the “moist (or saturated) adiabat” (you can about the saturated adiabatic lapse rate here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate).
It is this structure that leads to the prediction that when the temperature rises at the surface in the tropics, this rise will be magnified as you go up in the troposphere. This is true regardless of the cause of the warming. And, in fact, the data from both satellites and radiosondes confirm that this magnification occurs for temperature fluctuations that occur over periods of months to a few years (e.g., presumably due to things like El Nino and la Nina). Where there has been difficulty in seeing this magnification, i.e., the hotspot, is in the long term trends over the period since satellite measurements began, which is now approaching 30 years; however, there are significant problems in measuring these long terms trends both with satellite and radiosondes (weather balloons) as it is very easy for spurious effects due to things like better shielding of the radiosondes over time to contaminate the long term trends. As scientists have grown to better understand the corrections that need to be applied to the data, this data has come into better agreement with the expectation of a “hotspot” in the tropical atmosphere.
But, again, its existence or non-existence says nothing about what is the cause of the warming that we have seen since its existence is expected independent of what caused that warming. Signatures that are more unique to warming by greenhouse gases are an increase in the height of the tropopause (the boundary separating the troposphere from the stratosphere) and a cooling of the stratosphere as the troposphere warms. Both of these have been seen.
As for your question as to how a “hotspot” at high altitude could melt ice at lower altitude: As I explained above, with the addition of greenhouse gases, the entire atmosphere heats up until the layer from which most of the radiation is escaping into space is once again as warm as it was when it was at lower altitude. In fact, if the “hotspot” is not there, that means that the temperature at the ground has to heat up by the same amount as the temperature further up in the atmosphere whereas if the hotspot is there, the ground temperature doesn’t have to heat up as much. This effect is known as the “lapse rate feedback” and is a negative feedback tending to reduce the temperature rise at the surface. So, if the models are wrong in predicting the “hotspot”, that means they are also wrong in including this negative feedback, suggesting that they might be underestimating the amount of warming to expect.
However, a more likely explanation is that the data that show the hotspot for the temperature fluctuations is correct and the data that have had a tendency not to show the hotspot for the longterm trends is not correct…And, the hotspot is really there.
Chris V.
December 25, 2008 8:36 am
Joseph (15:20:46) :
As others have pointed out, there is a lot wrong with the “basic physics” described in your link: http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1562
At one point, Wilde says this:
“The warming effect is a single persistent phenomenon linked to the density of the atmosphere and not the composition.”
Later on he says this:
“The increased warmth allows the atmosphere to hold more water vapour so that total atmospheric density increases and the atmospheric greenhouse effect strengthens.”
But the density of air does not increase as water vapor is added- it DECREASES.
Phil
December 25, 2008 10:05 am
I’m trying to understand the water “feedback.” If the climate sensitivity is asserted to be 3°C per doubling of CO2, WITH water feedback, what is the climate sensitivity per doubling of CO2 WITHOUT water feedback supposed to be? Simplifying things, water vapor is apparently the principal “trapper of heat,” yet is it asserted to be wholly dependent on CO2. What is the formula that is asserted to describe the dependence of water vapor on CO2?
Thank you, Bill Illis (05:37:46). I eagerly await foinavon’s response.
Make sure to keep him specifically focused on his answer to your post above. Throwing out a few citations to the work of others won’t do in this case.
Mike Bryant
December 25, 2008 11:09 am
I am with Joel on this one too, I believe that the hot spot is hiding wherever the extra heat is hiding… in the pipeline somewhere. It is SO obvious.
Mike Bryant
Joseph
December 25, 2008 11:16 am
Re: foinavon (16:22:31)
Stephen Wilde’s membership in the Royal Meteorological Society predates their adoption of a professional qualification requirement to become a Fellow. He is a “grandfathered” Fellow, but he cannot append the letters FRMetS to his name.
At any rate, this is not an ad verecundiam argument, but a discussion of the physics of heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere. The atmosphere only absorbs about 20% of the incoming solar radiation. This is insufficient to raise the atmosphere to the temperature that it is. The remaining heat is provided to the atmosphere by the ocean in the form of latent heat released from water vapor (during precipitation events) that has evaporated from the ocean (mostly in the tropics) and to a much lesser extent infrared radiation from the oceans surface. This second component is very minor.
The heat capacity of the ocean is approximately 1,100 times greater than that of the atmosphere. The atmosphere cannot contain enough heat of it’s own heat (absorbed from incoming solar radiation) to heat the ocean at all. A warmer (and therefore more humid) atmosphere can slow the cooling of the ocean, but it cannot add any heat to the ocean to warm it. The ocean warms the atmosphere, not the other way around.
Our planet is most definitely NOT in radiative equilibrium, and that’s a good thing. If it were, the average surface temperature of our planet would be approximately 170 °F. Instead, the evaporative transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere keeps our surface temperature habitable.
A somewhat technical discussion of this can be found here: http://www.oco.noaa.gov/index.jsp?show_page=page_roc.jsp&nav=universal
A more thorough (and technical) discussion can be found here: http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter05/chapter05_01.htm
I think Sections 5.2 and 5.6 in this second link are especially useful to our discussion.
Cheers!
Chris V.
December 25, 2008 12:02 pm
Bill Illis (05:37:46) :
3/Log (2) = 9.97, not 4.3.
I think you’re mixing up log and ln.
And the criticism of your “global warming formula” is not that it is wrong, but rather that it represents the EQUILIBRIUM TEMPERATURE.
You can not use it to determine what the temperature should (or shouldn’t be) TODAY because the global temperature is not at equilibrium wrt current CO2 levels.
We are not at equilibrium because the oceans take a long time (decades) to warm up.
Bill Illis
December 25, 2008 1:23 pm
Chris V.
It doesn’t matter if you put “Log” or “ln” in the formula, it is exactly the same formula.
3.25/Log(2)*Log(280) = 4.69*ln(280) = 26.42
3.25/Log(2)*Log(560) = 4.69*ln(560) = 29.67
Bill Illis
December 25, 2008 1:38 pm
Chris V. – “You can not use it to determine what the temperature should (or shouldn’t be) TODAY because the global temperature is not at equilibrium wrt current CO2 levels.
We are not at equilibrium because the oceans take a long time (decades) to warm up.”
How long is going to take then Chris because it is time for the warmers to come clean on this now. We should know don’t you think.
Above I noted “(12:42:43) Dec 21” that Hansen’s presentation says that the other 3 models he consulted expect it will take well over 1,000 years for the oceans to catch up to the equilibrium.
So what does that do to the surface temperature response? If you don’t know, someone at realclimate should be able to answer the question (I’ve asked and there are just vague answers).
And when I was deriving the chart, I was pretty clear this was the original timeline and now it is expected that slow ocean response times have been pushing the line out (each time they do a new one that is).
Joel Shore
December 25, 2008 2:28 pm
Phil says:
Simplifying things, water vapor is apparently the principal “trapper of heat,” yet is it asserted to be wholly dependent on CO2.What is the formula that is asserted to describe the dependence of water vapor on CO2?
More precisely, the concentration of water vapor is dependent on the temperature. So, as the direct effect of the CO2 causes temperatures to rise, the concentration of water vapor increases and you get additional warming (a positive feedback) from that. Of course, if something else other than CO2 (like an increase in solar irradiance) caused the initial warming, you would still get the same water vapor feedback effect…It is not specific to the cause of the warming being CO2.
As for the formula, the amount of water vapor that the air can hold is given by the Clausius-Clapeyron Equation (see for example here). If one assumes that the average relative humidity in the atmosphere remains constant then the amount of water vapor as a function of temperature is proportional to the value given by the Clausius-Clapeyron Eqn. Global climate models do not make this assumption explicitly, but it has been noted that they do seem to at least approximately predict that the relative humidity remains constant (or perhaps drops a little) as the temperature warms.
Joseph says:
Our planet is most definitely NOT in radiative equilibrium, and that’s a good thing. If it were, the average surface temperature of our planet would be approximately 170 °F. Instead, the evaporative transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere keeps our surface temperature habitable.
Not sure where you get this from. It is an elementary physics problem to work out that the blackbody radiative temperature of the earth (having the albedo of ~30% in the visible that it does) corresponds to about -18 C (or 255 K). The reason why the average surface temperatures are significantly warmer than this (~15 C) is because of the greenhouse effect.
John Philip
December 25, 2008 2:40 pm
There are two main strands of evidence that the increase in CO2 is due to human activity. The first is simple carbon accounting: we have inventories of greenhouse gas emissions and estimates of the amount of CO2 released by changes in land use sufficent to estimate by how much such emissions should have increased the atmospheric concentrations, and the answer is in excess of the observed increase – if all the CO2 we have emitted were still resident then the concentrations would be around 500 ppm – rather more than the actual levels, the difference being the amount absorbed by sinks in the oceans and biosphere. So unless there has been a contemperaneous increase in natural carbon production and a corresponding increase in the natural sinks, for which there is no evidence at all, all of the increase is due to anthropogenic sources.
Secondly, CO2 from fossil fuel combustion has a different isotopic signature to that from natural sources, named the Suess effect after the Austrian chemist who discovered it. Careful analysis of the isotopic carbon ratios of atmospheric CO2 confirm the proportions are those that are expected if the increase has a manmade source.
The increase in ocean heat content is not due to a conductive transfer of heat from the atmosphere; on average the sea surface is warmer than the air immediately above. The oceans are warmed by the absorbtion of sunlight and then lose heat back to the atmosphere by the loss of latent heat and some radiation. The increase in long wave radiation caused by the increase in GHG concentrations reduces the temperature gradient of the sea surface skin layer, which decreases the rate of heat loss to the atmosphere, causing more more heat to be retained.
A positive peturbation in the planetary radiative budget does indeed takes decades to heat the oceans and so any simple model that implicitly assumes we achieve equilibrium temperature on shorter timecales (or immediately!) will give the incorrect answer for sensitivity and so lead to incorrect and too cool, future projections.
JP
foinavon
December 25, 2008 3:17 pm
Joseph (11:16:01) Stephen Wilde’s membership in the Royal Meteorological Society predates their adoption of a professional qualification requirement to become a Fellow. He is a “grandfathered” Fellow, but he cannot append the letters FRMetS to his name.
on his dreary website it says rather clearly: Stephen Wilde has been a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society since 1968
In fact he isn’t, and has never been, a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. What he’s done presumably is to pay his dues and become a member just like anyone can. So he seems to be attempting to claim an authority that he doesn’t have. He’s not published anything in the scientific literature…he’s a lawyer
the article of his that you linked to is nonsense, and Mr Wilde clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, even ‘though he writes rather coherently and with quite a nice lawyerly faux “logic”. We could discuss his article in detail if you like. However I and others have already pointed out some of the howlers.
Dealing with your own argument, it seems that you’re not quite on the same wavelength as i am, since you’re describing the relationship between the oceans and atmosphere within the climate system, whereas I’m describing the earth’s heat distribution under conditions of a radiative imbalance which is causing warming.
Let’s go back to the beginning. You questioned my comment in a post [23.12.2008 (05:53:08)] describing some of the evidence (largely excess thermal distribution in the top 700 metres of the oceans) that the oceans are warming from the surface down: Yes, there’s pretty good evidence that the atmosphere has warmed the oceans.
And that’s indeed what the evidence indicates. The enhancement of the greenhouse effect has resulted in a radiative imbalance resulting in warming of the earth’s surface during the last 40 years. Around 84% of this heat has gone into warming the oceans (see references cited in my post [23.12.2008 (05:53:08)]. That’s what I mean with the rather simple statement that “the atmosphere has warmed the oceans”.
We could describe this very nicely by quoting directly from one of the two links you gave us in your post just above (the NOAA one) where they describe the effect of the radiative imbalance in warming the oceans in relation to sea level rise:: http://www.oco.noaa.gov/index.jsp?show_page=page_roc.jsp&nav=universal Another major role of oceans in climate that has major impacts on multi-decadal time-scales is sea level rise. Climate models estimate that there is a current radiative imbalance at the top-ofthe- atmosphere of about 7 W m-2 owing to increases of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. This has increased from a very small imbalance only 40 years ago. Where is this heat going? Some heat melts glaciers and ice, contributing to sea level rise. However, the main candidate for a heat sink is the oceans, leading to thermal expansion and further sea level rise. Levitus et al. (2000) have estimated that the heat content of the oceans has increased on average at a rate of about 3 W m-2 over the past few decades.
hunter says:
What forcings do you believe have been left out and what are their magnitudes?
Do you understand the difference between saying, “The sun has varied enough over the past [30, 50 ,100] years to explain the warming we have seen” and “the sun has varied in strength enough over the past hundreds of millions of years to explain why things are different now than they were back then”? (Hint: One number has a lot more zeroes than the other!)
Mind you, I am not saying that I endorse Hansen’s current view that there is a serious possibility that we could trigger a runaway greenhouse effect. However, if you want to effectively argue against it, you have to do so by actually presenting scientific arguments, not by attacking strawmen versions of Hansen’s scientific arguments.
It looks like the “Runaway Effect” has begun in earnest:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6
Thanks for that excellent link, Mike Bryant.
And for a list of the latest U.S. warming: click
Joseph (15:20:46)
Thanks for the link It make more sense to me than CO2 drives the climate theory
foinavon (16:22:31)
‘Mr Wilde asserts that it’s impossible to warm cold tap water in a bathroom to the temperature of a warm bath by heating the air in the bathroom. What do you think?’
Let’s take the bathroom example one step further. The bath water and the air are heated by two inferred heat lamps mounted in the ceiling 7 ft above water line. Both lamps are on a dimmer switch. After the lamps are turn on which would heat faster the air or water?
After x amount of time the air and water are at the same temperature. If the switch is turned down little, witch would cool down faster air or water? Would it make a difference if there was a humidifier or a dehumidifier?
foinavon (16:22:31)
Heck, let’s take the bathroom example and add one more parameter. Triple amount of CO2 in the bathroom. Would it make a difference? What if I told you the bathroom is in depressurized portion of a plane cursing at 12,000 ft.
Smokey (20:38:50) :
“click” goes to http://vortex.plymouth.edu/uschill.gif which is windchill, not temperature. You should have referred to http://vortex.plymouth.edu/ustemp.gif or my preference (pretty color bands) http://twister.sbs.ohio-state.edu/surface/ustemp.gif
The last ice age ended only about 10,000 years ago. Surely that is the most relevant comparison for any discussion of CO2/Solar forcing contributions?
Foinavon:
A warmer atmosphere also has more convection which: a) by the mechanism of surface wind, tends to cool the ocean surface, and b) aids in vaulting the heat energy to higher altitudes.
Whether or not this effect is greater than the warming effect you mentioned is arguable.
Merry Christmas to all
The CO2-hypothesis, as i understand it:
After Angstroms results 100 years ago, its clear to all that CO2 hardly has any effect. Well, that is, until in the 1950´ies results indicated that CO2 addition in theory might have an effect at much lower pressures. That is, in high altitudes. This was due to spectra changes of CO2 for lower pressures.
In agreement with this, the IPPC was sure that we would see the famous “hot-spot” – an bubble of warmer air at 5 – 15 km altitude over the tropics.
As everyone knows, we have not seen such a warmer area, and at this point, i wonder:
Does anyone know: When the CO2 hypothesis does not include an CO2 effect at ground level, and there is no detectable effect in high alitude, well, where and how is CO2 today supposed to work???
The only place it has gotten warmer is near the surface.. And here CO2 is shown not to have an effect (Angstrom).
Another thing.
I F CO2 should have had an effect as IPCC thought, in high altitudes, for instance at 10 km hight, and if we saw this hotter air bubble – what does physics say about a hotter air bubble?
Wel normaly a such would tend to rise. Hot air rises rather than sinks.
So how was the warmer air in 10 km hight supposed to melt the ice at ground level?
To this central quesition i have seen the answer: “the warmer air at 10 km hight will affect the ground by stronger radiation”.
hmm
The thing is, Air at 10 hight is around -60 degrees Celcius. And if it had been 1 degree warmer we would have this “Warm bubble” of -59 degrees celcius.
And this thin light extremely cold airmass, should be able to radiate the surface of the whole earth so tha ice melts etc?
The thing is, the level of heat-radition from air, no matter if its -59 degrees or -60 degrees is so extreeemly tiny that this CO2 warming from high altitudes seems very hard to find in a real world.
So to me, we have a CO2-hypothesis on the following ground:
1) It is prooven not to work at ground level.
2) Results from real world shows that no warming is seen at high altitudes.
3) IF there had been a meassurable effect at high altitudes, any warming transferral to ground level should happend by “heat radiation” emitted by thin -59 degrees cold air.
Or?
Since this CO2-hypthesis seems to alk on water, there must surely be a realy good explanation for this JOKE of a hypothesis???
After foinavon and others have spent a great deal of time crapping on my logarithmic global warming formula above, I thought it was now time to show how the warmers cannot see the forest for the trees:
Foinavon gave the following formula for the global warming models.
“T = (3.0/log(2))*(log(C))-9.39
where C is the CO2 concentration.”
“T” here is 15C or the average temperature of the earth. My formula deals with the Anomaly from average so we can restate Foinavon’s formula to:
Anom T = (3.0/log(2))*(log(C)) – 9.39 (-15.0C)
“3.0/log(2) = 4.3” so the formula can again be restated to:
Anom T = 4.3 * logC – 26.39
But my formula was based on warming to be 3.25C per doubling, the average of the IPCC models for doubling so we can again restate foinavon’s formula to be:
“3.25/log(2) = 4.69”
Anom T = 4.69 * logC – 26.39
Let’s replace C with 280 ppm in foinavon’s formula and one gets
Anom T @ur momisugly 280 ppm = +0.03C
Which is wrong, of course, since temps are supposed to be about -0.4C or -0.5C in the late 1700s when CO2 was 280 ppm.
So let’s restate foinavon’s forumla again to:
Anom T = 4.69 * Ln(C) – 26.89
Which, of course, is very, very far off my formula of:
Anom T = 4.69 * Ln(C) – 26.9
– funny how the warmers have made their theory so complicated they can only see it in terms of what Hansen tells them about it.
foinavon
The Scotese graph you repeatedly dismiss as bearing no relation to our known climate past is named for Chris Scotese PhD. He is a well known geologist who has been leading a project mapping the earth’s geologic past for many years. Your pretending this graph is fake or fabricated or generally not accepted widely is very odd as it agrees with other sources well.
Quit trying to arm wave away the opponents, if you can’t disprove rather than smear you have already lost.
Frank Lasner,
You have completely discounted the GCMs, and we know how much time and effort has gone into making them even more trustworthy than ANY data that you would care to throw around. Sure, everything that you have said makes perfect sense, however you are missing the whole point. Scientists know so, so much more than we mere mortals could ever fathom with our tiny brains. And we all know that we will be much better off when the scientists rule us.
If President Bush had listened to his science advisors eight years ago, we would now be living on a cooler planet. Oh wait, the planet IS cooler today, but Bush just lucky because of the negative PDO. Anyway, the ONLY proper role of data in the world today, is to back up the models and make sure everyone pays their fair share of CO2 taxes. To the extent that the data does NOT further these ends, it MUST be adjusted, massaged or “corrected”.
Frank, I hope that this clears things up for you. Remember, together we can solve it.
Mike Bryant 🙂
foinavon
The point I was considering is: granted that CO2 has risen between 25 and 45 percent, and further granted that some degree of warming will result from that CO2 rise just due to principles of physical chemistry; will that contribution be significant? When I see that water vapor is also a greenhouse gas it makes me wonder if the water vapor doesn’t dominate any effect contributed by CO2. Especially considering that there is so much more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO2. (The other interesting thing about water vapor is that its concentration varies so wildly – even on a single day.)
As to independent and dependent variables. Sure you can call CO2 the independent variable, but this isn’t a designed experiment we are discussing. There are so many uncontrolled variables that someone else can come along and call anything they want the independent variable. And people do this. They blame La Nina for parts of their data, or they point to the sunspot cycle, or they point to aerosols, black carbon, clouds and on and on. Personally I have a hard time thinking about independent and dependent variables unless you have a designed experiment where extraneous factors are controlled. If you don’t control, us skeptics will look on it as auguring.
I strongly disagree with you that water vapor couldn’t be considered an independent variable. It is certainly variable and it’s the design of the experiment that determines whether it’s the independent variable. Sure you can construct the argument where average temperature rises in lockstep with Keeling’s CO2 curve from Mauna Loa and say, “look CO2 is the independent variable, temperature is the dependent variable, and CO2 must be causing warming.” But, you can’t deny others the opportunity of saying, “but wait a minute; my experience of the world is different, and Keeling’s data is happenstance. By my reasoning cloud cover is the independent variable, temperature is the dependent variable and other factors are insignificant. Can you show me that average cloud cover wasn’t rising in the same time frame as Keeling’s data?”
To me the problem is that there aren’t good simple experiments. We are all looking at a world of data and it is going to be difficult to extract what all the factors are and determine what weight to give each of them, and especially to describe how all the factors interact. I understand that Hansen and others are working on the model that will do this, but I’m a long way from seeing that it’s anything that’s accurate. So I remain skeptical.
By my reckoning it’s the vagaries of water vapor in the atmosphere that causes the vagaries of weather. A complete climate model will only emerge when we can accurately describe the role of water in its various forms: as vapor in the air, cloud in the sky, and liquid in the ocean.
Frank Lasner:
Your whole post is rather confused. You are correct that much of the effect of CO2 on the earth’s radiation budget is manifest further up in the atmosphere where the air is thinner. Basically, at the end of the day, the effect of increasing CO2, as we’ve discussed above, is to increase the effective level from which most of the radiation is escaping back into space. Since the air is colder as you go higher in the atmosphere and the intensity of radiation goes as the fourth power of the temperature, this means that the earth is now radiating less energy…and less than it is receiving from the sun. This means it will warm up until such point that ithe upper atmosphere has warmed enough that the earth is now radiating as much as it receives.
However, this all has essentially nothing to do with the prediction of the “hotspot” in the tropical atmosphere. Although greenhouse gases play an important role in the overall radiation budget, the atmosphere mixes heat well enough that the structure of the warming is not determined by where the greenhouse gases happen to absorb additional energy. Instead, in the tropical atmosphere, the temperature structure is dominated by convection in a saturated atmosphere. This means that the temperature structure is pegged to the “moist (or saturated) adiabat” (you can about the saturated adiabatic lapse rate here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate).
It is this structure that leads to the prediction that when the temperature rises at the surface in the tropics, this rise will be magnified as you go up in the troposphere. This is true regardless of the cause of the warming. And, in fact, the data from both satellites and radiosondes confirm that this magnification occurs for temperature fluctuations that occur over periods of months to a few years (e.g., presumably due to things like El Nino and la Nina). Where there has been difficulty in seeing this magnification, i.e., the hotspot, is in the long term trends over the period since satellite measurements began, which is now approaching 30 years; however, there are significant problems in measuring these long terms trends both with satellite and radiosondes (weather balloons) as it is very easy for spurious effects due to things like better shielding of the radiosondes over time to contaminate the long term trends. As scientists have grown to better understand the corrections that need to be applied to the data, this data has come into better agreement with the expectation of a “hotspot” in the tropical atmosphere.
But, again, its existence or non-existence says nothing about what is the cause of the warming that we have seen since its existence is expected independent of what caused that warming. Signatures that are more unique to warming by greenhouse gases are an increase in the height of the tropopause (the boundary separating the troposphere from the stratosphere) and a cooling of the stratosphere as the troposphere warms. Both of these have been seen.
As for your question as to how a “hotspot” at high altitude could melt ice at lower altitude: As I explained above, with the addition of greenhouse gases, the entire atmosphere heats up until the layer from which most of the radiation is escaping into space is once again as warm as it was when it was at lower altitude. In fact, if the “hotspot” is not there, that means that the temperature at the ground has to heat up by the same amount as the temperature further up in the atmosphere whereas if the hotspot is there, the ground temperature doesn’t have to heat up as much. This effect is known as the “lapse rate feedback” and is a negative feedback tending to reduce the temperature rise at the surface. So, if the models are wrong in predicting the “hotspot”, that means they are also wrong in including this negative feedback, suggesting that they might be underestimating the amount of warming to expect.
However, a more likely explanation is that the data that show the hotspot for the temperature fluctuations is correct and the data that have had a tendency not to show the hotspot for the longterm trends is not correct…And, the hotspot is really there.
Joseph (15:20:46) :
As others have pointed out, there is a lot wrong with the “basic physics” described in your link:
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1562
At one point, Wilde says this:
“The warming effect is a single persistent phenomenon linked to the density of the atmosphere and not the composition.”
Later on he says this:
“The increased warmth allows the atmosphere to hold more water vapour so that total atmospheric density increases and the atmospheric greenhouse effect strengthens.”
But the density of air does not increase as water vapor is added- it DECREASES.
I’m trying to understand the water “feedback.” If the climate sensitivity is asserted to be 3°C per doubling of CO2, WITH water feedback, what is the climate sensitivity per doubling of CO2 WITHOUT water feedback supposed to be? Simplifying things, water vapor is apparently the principal “trapper of heat,” yet is it asserted to be wholly dependent on CO2. What is the formula that is asserted to describe the dependence of water vapor on CO2?
Thank you, Bill Illis (05:37:46). I eagerly await foinavon’s response.
Make sure to keep him specifically focused on his answer to your post above. Throwing out a few citations to the work of others won’t do in this case.
I am with Joel on this one too, I believe that the hot spot is hiding wherever the extra heat is hiding… in the pipeline somewhere. It is SO obvious.
Mike Bryant
Re: foinavon (16:22:31)
Stephen Wilde’s membership in the Royal Meteorological Society predates their adoption of a professional qualification requirement to become a Fellow. He is a “grandfathered” Fellow, but he cannot append the letters FRMetS to his name.
At any rate, this is not an ad verecundiam argument, but a discussion of the physics of heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere. The atmosphere only absorbs about 20% of the incoming solar radiation. This is insufficient to raise the atmosphere to the temperature that it is. The remaining heat is provided to the atmosphere by the ocean in the form of latent heat released from water vapor (during precipitation events) that has evaporated from the ocean (mostly in the tropics) and to a much lesser extent infrared radiation from the oceans surface. This second component is very minor.
The heat capacity of the ocean is approximately 1,100 times greater than that of the atmosphere. The atmosphere cannot contain enough heat of it’s own heat (absorbed from incoming solar radiation) to heat the ocean at all. A warmer (and therefore more humid) atmosphere can slow the cooling of the ocean, but it cannot add any heat to the ocean to warm it. The ocean warms the atmosphere, not the other way around.
Our planet is most definitely NOT in radiative equilibrium, and that’s a good thing. If it were, the average surface temperature of our planet would be approximately 170 °F. Instead, the evaporative transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere keeps our surface temperature habitable.
A somewhat technical discussion of this can be found here: http://www.oco.noaa.gov/index.jsp?show_page=page_roc.jsp&nav=universal
A more thorough (and technical) discussion can be found here: http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter05/chapter05_01.htm
I think Sections 5.2 and 5.6 in this second link are especially useful to our discussion.
Cheers!
Bill Illis (05:37:46) :
3/Log (2) = 9.97, not 4.3.
I think you’re mixing up log and ln.
And the criticism of your “global warming formula” is not that it is wrong, but rather that it represents the EQUILIBRIUM TEMPERATURE.
You can not use it to determine what the temperature should (or shouldn’t be) TODAY because the global temperature is not at equilibrium wrt current CO2 levels.
We are not at equilibrium because the oceans take a long time (decades) to warm up.
Chris V.
It doesn’t matter if you put “Log” or “ln” in the formula, it is exactly the same formula.
3.25/Log(2)*Log(280) = 4.69*ln(280) = 26.42
3.25/Log(2)*Log(560) = 4.69*ln(560) = 29.67
Chris V. – “You can not use it to determine what the temperature should (or shouldn’t be) TODAY because the global temperature is not at equilibrium wrt current CO2 levels.
We are not at equilibrium because the oceans take a long time (decades) to warm up.”
How long is going to take then Chris because it is time for the warmers to come clean on this now. We should know don’t you think.
Above I noted “(12:42:43) Dec 21” that Hansen’s presentation says that the other 3 models he consulted expect it will take well over 1,000 years for the oceans to catch up to the equilibrium.
So what does that do to the surface temperature response? If you don’t know, someone at realclimate should be able to answer the question (I’ve asked and there are just vague answers).
And when I was deriving the chart, I was pretty clear this was the original timeline and now it is expected that slow ocean response times have been pushing the line out (each time they do a new one that is).
Phil says:
More precisely, the concentration of water vapor is dependent on the temperature. So, as the direct effect of the CO2 causes temperatures to rise, the concentration of water vapor increases and you get additional warming (a positive feedback) from that. Of course, if something else other than CO2 (like an increase in solar irradiance) caused the initial warming, you would still get the same water vapor feedback effect…It is not specific to the cause of the warming being CO2.
As for the formula, the amount of water vapor that the air can hold is given by the Clausius-Clapeyron Equation (see for example here). If one assumes that the average relative humidity in the atmosphere remains constant then the amount of water vapor as a function of temperature is proportional to the value given by the Clausius-Clapeyron Eqn. Global climate models do not make this assumption explicitly, but it has been noted that they do seem to at least approximately predict that the relative humidity remains constant (or perhaps drops a little) as the temperature warms.
Joseph says:
Not sure where you get this from. It is an elementary physics problem to work out that the blackbody radiative temperature of the earth (having the albedo of ~30% in the visible that it does) corresponds to about -18 C (or 255 K). The reason why the average surface temperatures are significantly warmer than this (~15 C) is because of the greenhouse effect.
There are two main strands of evidence that the increase in CO2 is due to human activity. The first is simple carbon accounting: we have inventories of greenhouse gas emissions and estimates of the amount of CO2 released by changes in land use sufficent to estimate by how much such emissions should have increased the atmospheric concentrations, and the answer is in excess of the observed increase – if all the CO2 we have emitted were still resident then the concentrations would be around 500 ppm – rather more than the actual levels, the difference being the amount absorbed by sinks in the oceans and biosphere. So unless there has been a contemperaneous increase in natural carbon production and a corresponding increase in the natural sinks, for which there is no evidence at all, all of the increase is due to anthropogenic sources.
Secondly, CO2 from fossil fuel combustion has a different isotopic signature to that from natural sources, named the Suess effect after the Austrian chemist who discovered it. Careful analysis of the isotopic carbon ratios of atmospheric CO2 confirm the proportions are those that are expected if the increase has a manmade source.
The increase in ocean heat content is not due to a conductive transfer of heat from the atmosphere; on average the sea surface is warmer than the air immediately above. The oceans are warmed by the absorbtion of sunlight and then lose heat back to the atmosphere by the loss of latent heat and some radiation. The increase in long wave radiation caused by the increase in GHG concentrations reduces the temperature gradient of the sea surface skin layer, which decreases the rate of heat loss to the atmosphere, causing more more heat to be retained.
A positive peturbation in the planetary radiative budget does indeed takes decades to heat the oceans and so any simple model that implicitly assumes we achieve equilibrium temperature on shorter timecales (or immediately!) will give the incorrect answer for sensitivity and so lead to incorrect and too cool, future projections.
JP
Joseph (11:16:01)
Stephen Wilde’s membership in the Royal Meteorological Society predates their adoption of a professional qualification requirement to become a Fellow. He is a “grandfathered” Fellow, but he cannot append the letters FRMetS to his name.
on his dreary website it says rather clearly:
Stephen Wilde has been a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society since 1968
In fact he isn’t, and has never been, a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. What he’s done presumably is to pay his dues and become a member just like anyone can. So he seems to be attempting to claim an authority that he doesn’t have. He’s not published anything in the scientific literature…he’s a lawyer
the article of his that you linked to is nonsense, and Mr Wilde clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, even ‘though he writes rather coherently and with quite a nice lawyerly faux “logic”. We could discuss his article in detail if you like. However I and others have already pointed out some of the howlers.
Dealing with your own argument, it seems that you’re not quite on the same wavelength as i am, since you’re describing the relationship between the oceans and atmosphere within the climate system, whereas I’m describing the earth’s heat distribution under conditions of a radiative imbalance which is causing warming.
Let’s go back to the beginning. You questioned my comment in a post [23.12.2008 (05:53:08)] describing some of the evidence (largely excess thermal distribution in the top 700 metres of the oceans) that the oceans are warming from the surface down:
Yes, there’s pretty good evidence that the atmosphere has warmed the oceans.
And that’s indeed what the evidence indicates. The enhancement of the greenhouse effect has resulted in a radiative imbalance resulting in warming of the earth’s surface during the last 40 years. Around 84% of this heat has gone into warming the oceans (see references cited in my post [23.12.2008 (05:53:08)]. That’s what I mean with the rather simple statement that “the atmosphere has warmed the oceans”.
We could describe this very nicely by quoting directly from one of the two links you gave us in your post just above (the NOAA one) where they describe the effect of the radiative imbalance in warming the oceans in relation to sea level rise::
http://www.oco.noaa.gov/index.jsp?show_page=page_roc.jsp&nav=universal
Another major role of oceans in climate that has major impacts on multi-decadal time-scales is sea level rise. Climate models estimate that there is a current radiative imbalance at the top-ofthe- atmosphere of about 7 W m-2 owing to increases of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. This has increased from a very small imbalance only 40 years ago. Where is this heat going? Some heat melts glaciers and ice, contributing to sea level rise. However, the main candidate for a heat sink is the oceans, leading to thermal expansion and further sea level rise. Levitus et al. (2000) have estimated that the heat content of the oceans has increased on average at a rate of about 3 W m-2 over the past few decades.