The Discovery Channel has “shark week”. With all the Arctic news items on WUWT, this is beginning to feel like “polar week”. Here’s an article about aerosols having an impact on the arctic from a surprising source.- Anthony
From Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson
Since the 1890s, surface temperatures on Earth have risen faster in the Arctic than in other regions of the world. Usually, discussions on global warming tend to focus on greenhouse gases as the culprit for the trend. But new NASA research suggests about half the atmospheric warming measured in the Arctic is due to airborne particles called aerosols.
Aerosols are emitted by both natural and human sources. They can influence climate by reflecting or absorbing sunlight. The particles also affect climate by changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity. There is one type of aerosol that, according to the study, [reduces] rather than increases in its emissions seem to have promoted warming.
The research team, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies used a computer model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.
They found that Earth’s middle and high latitudes are particularly responsive to changes in aerosol levels. The model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 % or more of the warming measured in the Arctic since 1976.
Though there are several types of aerosols, previous research indicates two in particular, sulfates and black carbon, play leading roles in climate. Both are products of human activity. Sulfates, which come mainly from the burning of coal and oil, scatter sunlight and cool the air. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed clean-air laws that have halved sulfate emissions.
The models showed that regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest actual temperature increases since 1976, specifically the Arctic. However in the Antarctic, aerosols play less of a role.
Researchers with the NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in the April 3 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters that Arctic summers may be ice-free in as few as 30 years.
The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures rise by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since the mid-1970s. In the Antarctic, surface air temperature has increased about 0.35 C (0.6 F). That makes sense, Shindell said, because the Arctic is near North America and Europe, highly industrialized regions that produce most of the world’s aerosols.
“In the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases,” said Shindell. “We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we’re just looking at carbon dioxide. If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we’re much better off looking at aerosols and ozone.”
Aerosols tend to be short lived, staying in the atmosphere for just days or weeks, whereas greenhouses gases can persist for centuries. Atmospheric chemists thus think the climate may respond most quickly to changes in aerosol levels.
NASA’s upcoming Glory satellite is designed to enhance current aerosol measurement capabilities to help scientists reduce uncertainties about aerosols by measuring the distribution and properties of the particles.
Relation between AMO and Arctic ice (from CA)
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8510/nhse72anomamo.png
Sorry guys, but I already gave the link to the source I mentioned, including the history of temperatures, you only need to 1) read and 2) admit what I’m saying.
It’s now 11am here, temperature is 20C and should go above 23C in the next hours. The normal is 13C. Monday will be the “coldest” day of the decade with “only” 18C in Brussels, i.e. 5 degrees above normal.
Re Flanagan
Here in Central Europe we have the second warm week (~20°C) as well. However, the blossom period is well 1-2 weeks behind usual time. I remember March 1990 to be especially warm, when the trees here were in full leaves during its third week.
Smokey,
There are other source point assaults on the Arctic. China may be the biggest point source, but Russian oil drilling rigs (directly in the Arctic), cargo ships (now enjoying passage through the Arctic) and regional diesel (Europe, Russia, N. America) are also big culprits. Ozone pollution finds its source predominantly in the industrialized countries.
China’s trying to clean up the mess but this will take time. For every unit of production we offshore to Asia we increase CO2 by 40% (on average) and untold increases in aerosol soot. The irony here is that flat carbon taxes in the West will only lend to accelerating this trend for the foreseeable future, defeating the stated goal of reducing carbon emissions while we further eliminate domestic production (read: tax base, etc.).
Following a very dirty trickle-down model of wealth accumulation and industrial start up China has been raking Western consumers while underpaying her workers for almost two decades. This led to a giant pool of money that in turn fueled our debt bubble that went demonstrably bust. I could give a very long explanation as to how and why, but our corporations and gov’t have been complicit in this. What’s notable is that neither the Repubsnor Dems are being forthright about their role in the negative aspects of globalization.
anna v: In my opinion man is a part of animate nature, and of as much consequence to the inanimate nature as a mosquito on the back of an elephant.
Anna, you underestimate mosquito power! When I hear that drone at night… 🙂
Here’s Flanagan’s ref (he did give it) http://www.meteo.be/meteo/view/en/211797-Forecasts+in+detail.html?newlanguage=true – but I’m not going to do that piece of homework.
I followed Smokey’s ref to Lindzen replying to alarmists, and posted – late as it is on that thread, I got inspired.
Leebert, interesting story of Ramanathan. Do you have a reference?
Does anyone have a link to the source paper that is public access?:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n4/abs/ngeo473.html
http://www.espo.nasa.gov/arctas/docs/presentations/Russell_P3_GoalsPayload&FlightPlans.pdf
This is how they did the study.
Lucy,
http://www.junkscience.com/may03/wsj-Asian_Brown_Cloud.html
So much could be said about globalization & the politics of soot.
Sounds like the solution to the Arctic “problem” is more coal-fired power generation without stack scrubbers.
leebert (04:25:46) : Look at the sky, clear blue, we are at the brink of cold space.
Gases if heated do not do any other thing but to raise up and deliver their heat to the stratosphere. The air, I don´t know if you know, can not hold heat enough as compared with water, the volumetric heat capacity of air is 3,227 times less than that of water, so that stupidity of considering a trace gas (385 ppm as measure in a volcano) in atmosphere as CO2 to keep the earth warm is just nonsense. Sea water keeps the warm and that is why you and me are alive.
Flanagan (01:29:33) :
You have done nothing of the kind. You gave the front end to the forecast. That is not the same as the historic data.
Try again.
[snip no discussion of “chemtrails” on this website, period. Zero, none, nada, end of discussion – Anthony]
[snip no discussion of “chemtrails” on this website, period. Zero, none, nada, end of discussion ~ charles the moderator]
[snip no discussion of “chemtrails” on this website, period. Zero, none, nada, end of discussion ~ charles the moderator]
Adolfo:
Indeed, so it’s a good thing we have a greenhouse effect. It’s warmer at night in Louisiana than it is in Arizona. Why? Water vapor. Humid air has a higher specific heat content than dry air. And warmer air can hold more water vapor. This is generally an accepted fact, but the $1T question is whether it’s broadly applicable to Earth systems in terms of amplified global warming.
This is the proposition behind global warming: That a bit extra CO2 is enough to create an additional feedback loop that the additional water vapor magnifies CO2’s warming effect. That is, the “warmists” scenario is that an additional +1 degrC warming caused by a doubling of CO2 will be amplified to a net +3 degrC warming from water vapor feedbacks, particularly overnight when radiative cooling takes place. So far evidence for this hasn’t been borne out by climate trends.
The counter arguments are that afternoon maxima shouldn’t increase much, only the overnight minima, likewise that average summer high temperatures haven’t changed, just that winters are shorter and not as cold. In other words average minima are higher, but average maxima are not. There’s evidence to bear this out.
So the worst-case scenario of a near-parabolic response to increased CO2 levels has not been demonstrated yet – instead the climate sensitivity to CO2 *so far) appears to be logarithmic (a generally accepted principle), which means that the first doubling of CO2 will only net +0.8 degrC, the next doubling only +0.38, the next doubling only +0.175, etc.
Unless aerosols or an ongoing solar minima are eventually shown to be masking a more severe climate sensitivity to CO2, the observed climate response is acceptable. The seas don’t appear to be heating at a dangerous rate, so it seems there’s no hidden heat lurking from below.
As I’ve always said, none of this exculpates CO2 for some warming, the question is concerning water vapor feedbacks and aerosol maskings. As this & other field data regarding soot are concerned, there’s more going in air-heating aerosol clouds than was anticipated by the warmists’ computer models. The moral of the story: Don’t sit too close to your computer screen.
Quoting myself:
I don’t want to miss the significance of these field data: This demonstrates something important about past global warming trends, that easily 1/3rd to nearly 1/2 of observed temperature anomalies can be attributed to either airborne soot or sootfall on ice (causing loss of ice & snow cover, and with them, lowered albedo). It shows how the extra heating from soot was exaggerating the climate signal from CO2, and that local soot-driven anomalous data points probably should be thrown out in interpreting net global climate sensitivity to CO2.
Up until Ramanathan’s field data all previous temperature anomalies had been ascribed solely to CO2 (& some methane). The problem here is that CO2 & methane warming should be smooth & spread out as they disperse and accumulate into the atmosphere, but that’s not the pattern we see.
Instead ongoing anomalies are all lumpy (consistent with soot), but the overall temperature trend globally hasn’t smoothed out: The far less sooty SouthernHemisphere has shown a much more modest warming trend consistent with logarithmic CO2 warming.
But, even now, the warmists won’t concede that they might have been letting soot pin extra heating onto CO2. Some are going back to the drawing board, yes, but not the loudest and most alarmist – not even a modicum of equivocation.
And WRT to shorter winter times, I’m wondering if the albedo-lowering effects of snow-melting soot could be far more widespread with a general continental shortening of winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s already been demonstrated that sootfall from Asia is darkening the glaciers in the American Rockies, leading to gradual decimation of ice packs in the Sierras and Rockies. If this effect is more widespread there could be net albedo reduction leading to earlier melts across Russia, Mongolia, the Himalayas, the Rockies, Canada and Northern U.S.A.
The moral of the story: More field data, please.
Sorry to be conversing with myself, but one more thought for those who are still following this thread. There’s something I’m not aware that the aerosol soot research has established, is how much tropospheric soot contributes to overnight heat retention, elevating overnight temperatures.
In other words not only do brown clouds drive extra heat during exposure to the sun, but as these particles settle at night I would be curious to know how much extra specific heat is contributed by soot in general during the overnight hours.
Tony, as a meteorologist, would you know? Is smoggy air warmer during the overnight hours than clean air? If that’s the case couldn’t tropospheric brown clouds also generally lead to higher overnight temperatures?
We’re still following leebert. Keep it up. I think aresols will be easier to control then CO2 and cheaper to reduce. The question is how much of a negative feedback helps or hurts the climate. Additionally what effect do they have on the bio and chemical side of the atmosphere.
During night hours sometimes the atmosphere close to ground heats up, this is when atmosphere has cooled down before and equilibrium has been lost , then it goes the other way: the absorbed heat, during the day, from the ground and buildings starts to be irradiated to the atmosphere and from it, all that heat, goes up again and it is lost by irradiation “up, up and away”… it doesn´t matter if it is the gas we exhale, CO2 and plants breath or water vapor. In the water vapor case, this gives up its heat and falls down as rain or condenses as dew, when dew point is reached.
The case of sea water it is different: When you heat up, say a 10m3 tank filled with water, as it is usual in any chemical plant, to 80°C, it will take more than 48 hours to reach the isotherm with room temperature (if this is about 20°C). Can you imagine trillions (now that this figure is popular for bankrupting countries) of cubic kilometers of heated water?. It has taken from 1998 to at least 2007 to cool the pacific ocean enough for the Nina to reappear.
If somebody wants to use the telltale of global warming or climate change to terrorize people, OK, but to be fooled by such ideas I find it just naive.
leebert: Have you seen my post above?
Watch this picture:
http://www.igp.gob.pe/vulcanologia/Principal/Html/VolcanLadoSur-ImagSatelital-Grande.htm
Do you see any humans down there?…WE ARE TOO LITTLE AND TOO FEW TO CAUSE ANY DETECTABLE CHANGE
OK..what we can do and what we have done already is to contaminate alimited space around us, as with soot from chimneys, if a certain town or city it is not well vented by winds, but, eventually, we and that soot will go UNDER the ground.
Pass the word: Now it is not about CO2 anymore, now it is Aerosols and vapor.
BBC is already on it already.
Please don´t make it hard to digest it…just tell us what do you want from us, who knows, if you tell straigthly the truth we can even comprehend you!
RE: Rubber and Asphalt Dust
I ask this simple question: Since 1900, where have the many billions of pounds of rubber and asphalt dust as well as brake dust gone? The short, simple answere is anywhere and everywhere.
A passenger car tire with an A tread wear rating will lose about a pound of rubber during its lifetime. Can you imagine how much rubber is shed from the tires of an 18 wheeler, many of which are on the road 24/7/365? Mega lots.
These fine particles of rubber and asphalt will be a great accelerant for brushfires such as those occur in So. Calif and Australia.
Here is simple method for checking for these particle. Take a Post-it note and dab it on the any flat surface of a car that has a layer dust until it fails to stick. If you examine the strip of particles the black one lok rubber. You will also see small nearly clear ones that look like sand. These are from concrete road sufaces.
These particles probably cause excess warming in So Calif since thesre is little rain to wash these from exposed surfaces such as the roofs of houses. The folks there should probably wash of the roofs of their house before the start of fire season
in the late summer and fall.
Aerosols are anything that is sprayed in the air, look up in the sky for more than a minute and you can watch the CHEMTRAILS being sprayed almost daily and clouding up the sky . what effect do you think they are having ?????
This blog post kind of resonated with me, when I read it:
I was really getting tired of playing the research game — and it is a game. Success as a researcher ultimately boils down to how successful you are at getting proposals funded, and that ultimately depends on this bizarre mix of technology and politics. Because NASA research budgets were shrinking the competition was getting more intense. As a result, every CFP (call for proposals) would get more and more applications. Ostensibly, the review boards were looking for the highest quality proposals, but in fact what they were looking for were the proposals that, if funded, would get them in the least amount of trouble. If you have two proposals and one of them comes from CMU and the other one comes from Podunk U. it’s a lot less likely that the president of Podunk is going to call their Congressman and complain if you send the money to CMU than the other way around.
Its sad, but that’s the way science (in part) is.
This hypothesis is purely bogus.
From 1920 to 1970 manmade aerosols certainly increased a great amount, yet the temperature dropped during that period.
The correlation is bad. NASA is confused.
HINT: Try looking at solar activity!