Guest post by Bob Tisdale
http://downloads.globalchange.gov/usimpacts/pdfs/climate-impacts-report.pdf
As noted in the title, it fails to address the multiyear effects of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on global temperature.
Other than explosive volcanic eruptions, El Nino-Southern Oscillation events have the greatest impacts on global climate on annual and multiyear bases. The year-to-year global temperature impacts of ENSO events are clearly visible in a comparative time-series graph, Figure 1. Also visible are the overriding effects of the 1982 El Chichon and 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruptions.
http://i44.tinypic.com/144ag5f.jpg
Figure 1
The multiyear impacts of the 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 El Nino events on Northern Hemisphere Lower Troposphere Temperature (TLT) are clearly visible in the TLT Time-Latitude Plot available from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). Refer to Figure 2 and 3, which are from my post “RSS MSU TLT Time-Latitude Plots…Show Climate Responses That Cannot Be Easily Illustrated With Time-Series Graphs Alone.”
http://i44.tinypic.com/16leq39.jpg
Figure 2
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http://i41.tinypic.com/2vwzmdj.jpg
Figure 3
A seldom-discussed, naturally occurring oceanic process called Reemergence (Refer to my post “The Reemergence Mechanism”) provides the mechanism by which the global oceans integrate the effects of ENSO events. And it only takes the cumulative effect of a very small portion (0.0045 or less than ½ of 1%) of the monthly ENSO signal, as shown in Figure 4, to reproduce the Global Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomaly curve.
http://i42.tinypic.com/iom6ab.jpg
Figure 4
YET HOW MANY TIMES DOES THE USGCRP REPORT MENTION THE EL NINO-SOUTHERN OSCILLATION?
The USGCRP mentions “El Nino” nine times in the body of the 196-page report, but those references only pertain to global temperature on one occassion. The first reference, however, states that ENSO is independent of human activities.
On page 16, during a discussion Natural Influences, they wrote, “The climate changes that have occurred over the last century are not solely caused by the human and natural factors described above. In addition to these influences, there are also fluctuations in climate that occur even in the absence of changes in human activities, the Sun, or volcanoes. One example is the El Niño phenomenon, which has important influences on many aspects of regional and global climate.” [My emphasis.]
They acknowledged that ENSO is independent of anthropogenic influence. That’s significant.
On page 17, in the text of the comparative graph of “Global Temperature and Carbon Dioxide”, they wrote, “These year-to-year fluctuations in temperature are due to natural processes, such as the effects of El Niños, La Niñas, and the eruption of large volcanoes.” [My emphasis.]
Yet they fail to note the multiyear and cumulative effects of ENSO.
Page 36, during a discussion of Pacific Hurricanes, they write, “The total number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the eastern Pacific on seasonal to multi-decade time periods is generally opposite to that observed in the Atlantic. For example, during El Niño events it is common for hurricanes in the Atlantic to be suppressed while the eastern Pacific is more active. This reflects the large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns that extend across both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.” [My emphasis.]
That quote is important in many contests. Much can be inferred from it. Yet they fail to acknowledge the multidecadal epochs when El Nino or La Nina are dominant. These epochs are visible in a time-series graph of smoothed NINO3.4 SST anomalies, Figure 5.
http://i43.tinypic.com/33agh3c.jpg
Figure 5
On page 38, under the heading of Snowstorms, they wrote, “The northward shift in storm tracks is reflected in regional changes in the frequency of snowstorms. The South and lower Midwest saw reduced snowstorm frequency during the last century. In contrast, the Northeast and upper Midwest saw increases in snowstorms, although considerable decade-to-decade variations were present in all regions, influenced, for example, by the frequency of El Niño events.” [My emphasis.]
And again, they infer multidecadal influences of ENSO, but the USGCRP have failed to account for it in their attribution of global temperature change.
There are further references of El Nino and La Nina events on pages 81, 147, 148, and 152, as they pertain to tuna stock, droughts, coral reefs, and coastal currents. No need to repeat those in this post.
CLOSING
Like the IPCC, the USGCRP either fails to accept the significant multiyear and cumulative impacts of ENSO on global temperatures or they chose to ignore them in their presentation of the causes of global temperature change.
Posted by Bob Tisdale at 8:42 PM
Erl Happ: You wrote: “I begin with the proposition that the changing flux of solar energy into the ocean governs sea surface temperature. Not unreasonable?”
Changing solar flux is only one factor. Much of the variability in SST, especially in the Pacific, can be seen as the redistribution of heat from ENSO events. That is, the SST variability is an aftereffect of ENSO. During an El Nino event, subsurface water in the PWP sloshes eastward, releasing part of that heat to the troposphere in the eastern Tropical Pacific. During the subsequent La Nina, a portion of that warm water sloshes back to the PWP. The rest is redistributed by ocean surface currents to the North and South Pacific and to the eastern Indian Ocean. Refer to the following video.
Regards
pyromancer76: You asked, “Do you have any opinion on Mark Denny’s How the Ocean Works re its scientific accuracy from your perspective? Do you have any (other) recommendations?”
Sorry, I haven’t read Denny’s book. All of my reading materials have been online versions of papers and what’s available at websites.
tallbloke (00:22:30) : “wiggle matching of various potentially interesting correlations is where we’re at with some aspects of the heat retention puzzle.”
Lets think in terms of energy acquisition and energy loss from the earth as a whole: For sustained cooling all that is required is a tendency for the central pressure in the high pressure cells of the mid latitudes of the southern hemisphere to increase and the trades will strengthen. OLR increases during La Nina events. This is related to increase in release of latent heat of precipitation (including ice formation in cirrus cloud).
All that it takes for that to happen is for the ozone content of the lower stratosphere to fall away. This cools the regions of the upper troposphere that feed the mid latitude high pressure cells. With a supply of colder air at source, the central pressure will rise.
The result is a swing to ever deeper La Nina cooling episodes and shallower El Ninos.
Since the climate shift of 1978, 200hpa temperature has been falling along with the aa index of geomagnetic activity.
The supply of nitrous oxides from the mesosphere is probably in slow decline (due to the fall in geomagnetic activity) but the vortex is strengthening the evidence being falling temperatures at all levels in the high latitude southern (and to a lesser extent northern) stratosphere. So, the mixing of nitrogen oxides into the stratosphere is more vigorous.
Prediction:
1. The ozone hole over Antarctica will grow in size.
2. Atmospheric pressure in the south Pacific off Chile will continue to increase on decadal time scales.
3. When a vortex stalls as it did in spectacular fashion in January-February 2009 pronounced warming occurs in the summer hemisphere as ozone concentration rises strongly.
Remaining Problem: Explain how the vortex can weaken and strengthen over decadal and longer time scales. This is at the root of ‘natural climate change’.
I think the answer will be found to involve the electromagnetic nature of parts of the Earths atmosphere/ionosphere/thermosphere and it will be related to changing atmospheric pressure at the poles vis a vis the equator and also the tendency for the equatorial upper stratosphere to cool when the poles exhibit a sudden stratospheric warming. I think the mechanism is ‘atmospheric dispacement’.
As geomagnetic activity rises in solar cycle 24 the supply of nitrous oxides will increase and the high latitude stratosphere should cool faster. But, as the supply of moisture from equatorial regions is cut off as the tropical ocean cools the concentration of ozone in the equatorial stratosphere will increase. Wider swings in temperature there will accentuate the swings in the southern oscillation. From observations of weak solar cycles in the past this is what seems to happen. Witness cycle 20.
Ian –
Here’s a graph I made on an old blog showing global vs Arctic lower tropospheric data.
http://climatechangeskeptic.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/arctic-warming/
I’d say they match pretty well. It’d be interesting to see Arctic temperature vs Arctic sea ice. I bet there’s less of a correlation than one would expect.
Let’s see if I understand this … The PWP is impacted by viscosity, trade winds and (possibly) geothermal warming. In addition, clould cover and slight modifications in the sun’s intensity influence the degree of heating.
Sounds reasonable. Has anyone considered another factor. The temperature of upwelling cold water. Could it be that the starting point is impacted by this variable and that also influences the strength of the ENSO event? If so, these temps could also be the result of geothermal events as well as the termperature of the water when it sank many years/decade/centuries/millenia ago.
Carl Wolk: “Here’s a graph I made on an old blog showing global vs Arctic lower tropospheric data… I’d say they match pretty well. It’d be interesting to see Arctic temperature vs Arctic sea ice.”
You forgot to mention the scaling of the Arctic TLT. When the Arctic is scaled to account for Polar Amplification, they do correlate well.
Bob Tisdale (06:16:45) :
Re whether changing cloud cover explains the change in sea surface temperature or not.
I am not going to quibble about redistributive influences.
The energy from the sun is invariable but the emission from the Earth as OLR varies a great deal. The big El Ninos are characterised by a fall in OLR and the La Ninas are characterised by a rise in OLR. A tendency to El Nino dominance changes the Earths heat budget and causes temperatures to increase and the opposite removes energy and relates to cooling temperatures. This relates fairly obviously to a sunshade coming off and going on again.
OLR falls during the big El Ninos because the atmosphere warms fast, relative humidity falls and yet specific humidity rises but not fast enough to enable precipitation, cloud generation and latent heat release. A rise in relative humidity enabling cloud generation is the only way that this process of ocean energy acquisition can be brought to a halt.
On the other hand La Nina is a precipitation event that releases a lot of latent heat building the OLR while generating cloud and preventing the ocean from taking in solar energy.
Except that the “2007 melt” wasn’t caused by warmer Arctic waters, but by wind and ocean currents pushing the ice into warmer southerly waters.
Erl (09:24:56)
Hi Erl,
I’m currently puzzling over the issue as to whether changes in the air such as you describe do actually cause the SST changes or whether in fact the SST changes occur because of varying rates of energy release from the oceans arising from changes (probably cyclical) within the oceans.
I’m satisfied that wind changes and/or cloudiness changes cause or drive individual ENSO events and I take no issue with you or Bob Tisdale as regards the processes in the air which each of you describe.
However it seems to me that oceanic influences are very much more powerful than anything that can happen in the air and of course we have to consider the fact that the primary energy flow through the system is one way from sun to sea to air to space.
Any proposals involving a change in the global equilibrium temperature caused by climate change mechanisms arising in the air have to involve either a slowing down of the background energy flow from ocean to air or a reversal of the background flow so that energy is transferred from air to ocean.
There is also the problem that a maximum attainable SST temperature of 305 K is set by the properties of water and the density of the air and the temperature of space. I think it is agreed that if the ocean SST cannot exceed 305 K then that puts a top limit on the temperature of the air above that water and that in turn (given the circulations in the air and the oceans) also puts a lid on the average global air temperature.
Putting that all together I currently think that it is far more likely that the driving mechanism is variable energy release by the oceans and that all the phenomena observed in the air are consequences and not causes.
It appears that over a 30 year or so cycle there are warm phases in the Pacific when El Ninos are enhanced and La Ninas suppressed. Also 30 year phases where the opposite occrs giving 60 years or so for a full cycle.
On the other hand individual ENSO events as described by Bob Tisdale and ozone/upper level cloud changes as described by you occur on very much shorter time scales.
Thus from our observations it must be changes within the oceans on the 30/60 year timecale that are in command and not the processes that you both describe. Unless that is either of you can suggest how the 30/60 year cycle within the oceans can arise from those shorter term phenomena.
Can either of you help me on that ?
Stephen.
jeff Alberts (10:17:16)
Thanks Jeff, I’m aware of the anomalous Arctic wind patterns in summer 2007 but didn’t want to overcomplicate things.
Without those wind patterns the peak melt would have been at the end of summer 2006 and there might have been a small recovery in 2007.
The fact is that the amount of Arctic melt is more related to warm water flowing in under it than anything else although Arctic temperatures and winds do add another layer of variability.
However one cuts it the maximum melt was about long enough after the 1998 El Nino for that event to have caused it.
Bear in mind that the 1998 El Nino was the culmination of a long period of such events so a maximum melt around 2006/2007 was hardly surprising.
We are now in very different times.
Woops, the scaling amounted to change in Arctic=3.4 times change in Global. But here’s a question: why didn’t the 97/8 El Nino show up in Arctic temps like all the other ENSO events?
Erl Happ: You wrote, “The big El Ninos are characterised by a fall in OLR and the La Ninas are characterised by a rise in OLR.”
I plotted Global and Tropical OLR a few months ago, but I didn’t feel any need to post the graphs. In looking at them, the OLR during the 1997/98 El Nino and 1998/99/00 La Nina do not agree with your statement.
Global OLR:
http://i41.tinypic.com/ioisxs.jpg
Tropical OLR:
http://i40.tinypic.com/adezqo.jpg
Data available through the KNMI Climate Explorer:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
Bob Tisdale (13:22:40) :
My apologies Bob. I refer to OLR in particular equator to 10°S.
I have figure 4 in http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/climate-change-a-la-naturale/
This graph can be accessed directly at http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg220/erlandlong/Fig4OLRandSST0-10S.jpg
I discuss the dynamics, which are complex, in the post but to save you the trouble here it is.
1. There is a sudden fall in OLR during the El Nino warming events (red rectangles) when the steepest rise in SST is experienced. For this to occur, precipitation (and therefore latent heat release that drives OLR and the cloud cover that would exclude sunlight) fails to increase as the ocean warms.
2. In more moderate warming events, sea surface temperature and OLR simply increase together. In this instance an increase in precipitation occurs, releasing latent heat and promoting cloud cover, tending to slow the rise in temperature. This is the Earths thermostat working. Temperature gain is limited by condensation phenomena.
3. Elsewhere (blue rectangles) we see periods where OLR increases while SST actually falls. In this instance an increase in precipitation is accompanied by increased cloud cover (what could be more natural when the atmosphere cools) excluding energy from the Earth system causing SST to fall.
These are fundamentally different modes.
Let’s look more closely at the first mode. During the strongest heating events, OLR falls as the ocean absorbs energy causing SST to rise strongly. The energy from the sun is relatively invariable. If the Earths albedo (via atmospheric cloud) changes to admit more energy, it will be absorbed by the ocean, causing surface temperature to rise. OLR fundamentally depends upon the rate of evaporation and latent heat release. The atmosphere warms fast, evaporation from the ocean lags behind and relative humidity falls. As a result, less cloud forms. More energy then reaches the ocean. But in the end evaporation must catch up or all the ocean would long since have completely evaporated. The limit to this process is the capacity of the atmosphere to hold water vapour without precipitating it. The evidence of past events suggests that this mode is limited to about a year. There is no better illustration than the El Nino of 1997-8. Such an event is followed by an orgy of precipitation as surely as night follows day but there is no gurantee that all the energy acquired by the ocean in the preceding heating event will be vented.
In mode two, encompassing the more moderate heating events, the energy gained from loss of albedo is partitioned to both increased sea surface temperature and outgoing long wave radiation via an increase in precipitation. This slows the increase in surface temperature. This process worked throughout the period of the massive increase in sea surface temperature centered on 1978. Even when the thermostat is working well a massive step change in ocean temperature is possible.
In mode three the Earth increases its radiation levels via release of latent heat of condensation drawing energy from the ocean via evaporation, yielding a reduction in sea surface temperature. For sea surface temperature to actually fall, the system must increase cloud albedo to exclude solar radiation. This might be described as an internally generated precipitation event. But, such an event has limits. When the atmosphere is sufficiently well dried and the source of moisture is cut off by declining surface temperature, cooling must falter. The best example of this occurrence is the La Nina of the year 2000.
The flux in cloud albedo and precipitation is therefore the dynamic driving change in surface temperature. The relationship between albedo and release of latent heat changes over time. The Earth admits energy at some times building surface temperature and at others it very capably sheds energy from the system. This dynamic is not the cause of these events because it has no autonomous existence, no pendulum action driven by the system itself. The infrequent nature of severe heating events, and the step changes tell us that. But, is this the dynamic behind the gain in temperature that began in 1978? Plainly yes, every solar cycle is marked by a different value of the Southern Oscillation Index. The SOI value is unrelated to sunspot numbers. It rises and falls on multi-decadal time scales following a pattern of changing El Nino or La Nina dominance. The SOI simply tracks the air pressure relationship that drives the trade winds across the Pacific. When the trades weaken, the ocean warms. The mechanism I have described elsewhere. It is the action of the sun changing the strength of the polar vortex which determines the ozone content and the reactivity of the upper troposphere to ultra violet B. This dance is called the QBO, long associated with change in temperature at the surface, the upper troposphere and in the stratosphere, according to today’s climate science driven by Kelvin Waves that are in turn driven by tropical convection. But that is putting the cart before the horse in an argument of hopeless circularity. It is the chosen viewpoint of those who view the Earth as an overpopulated spaceship hurtling towards disaster. These are men who would be gods.
Stephen Wilde (10:23:06) : “Any proposals involving a change in the global equilibrium temperature caused by climate change mechanisms arising in the air have to involve either a slowing down of the background energy flow from ocean to air or a reversal of the background flow so that energy is transferred from air to ocean.”
Stephen, I can not agree with your basic proposition as repeated above. As you can see from my preceding post to Bob, the Earth can warm or cool via a change in cloud cover and precipitation intensity. The two go hand in hand.
Erl.
I think that further observations are needed to distinguish between our differing contentions.
For the moment I would just point out that although there is logic in your sequene of observed events the fact is that my description fits the observations equally well on the scale of individual ENSO (ELNino/La Nina) events.
For example, if we take your mode one of powerful ocean surface warming I would say that the ocean warms first then the increasing energy transferred to the air increases the capacity of the air to hold more water vapour thus reducing specific humidity, reducing total cloud cover and increasing OLR.
However that would only be temporary because a little later the increasing rate of evaporation would catch up with the increased water vapour carrying capacity of the air and, overall, precpitation rates would increase.
There are three reasons why I prefer that scenario:
1) Oceanic energy content is hugely greater than that of the air and so minor variations in the rate of energy flow from the oceans will have very large effects on the temperature of the air. In contrast it would take large changes in the air to result in a warming of the ocean surface. You partially recognise that by relying not on the air imparting warmth to the ocean surface but instead an increase in solar energy reaching the ocean surface from increased insolation due to less cloud cover. I think that is, however, the wrong way round.
2) It would take some time for increased insolation to build up in the surface waters yet the onset of a strong EL Nino is very rapid. I don’t think your mechanism would be fast enough.
3) I am not satisfied that your essentially short term scenario (consistent with the frequency of single ENSO events) can explain the 30/60 year periodicities that have been clearly observed between positive warming phases and negative cooling phases. To deal with that I think one has to have an oceanic mechanism involving variations in the rate of energy flow from ocean to air.
Your description works in logic as does mine in relation to individual ENSO events but to explain those longer term periodicities one needs something more which seems to be missing from your scenario.
Bob Tisdale’s ideas suffer from the same problem which is why, above, I invited both of you to try and help me on that point.
“the increasing energy transferred to the air increases the capacity of the air to hold more water vapour thus reducing specific humidity, reducing total cloud cover and increasing OLR”
Whoops. The above should read as follows:
“the increasing energy transferred to the air increases the capacity of the air to hold more water vapour thus reducing relative humidity, reducing cloud cover and increasing incoming shortwave radiation at the expense of OLR”.
Moderators, please amend for me if possible.
Stephen,
“For example, if we take your mode one of powerful ocean surface warming I would say that the ocean warms first then the increasing energy transferred to the air increases the capacity of the air to hold more water vapour thus reducing specific humidity, reducing total cloud cover and increasing OLR.”
I think you mean relative humidity. I said ‘decreasing OLR’ in mode 1.
The ocean absorbs lots of energy with very little increase in temperature. Trenberth made the point that the capacity of the atmosphere to hold energy is about equal to a couple of metres depth of ocean water (70% of the surface is water). The additional thing that I would say is that the ocean holds this energy for months whereas the air holds it only during daylight hours.
Land returns heat to the atmosphere almost as fast as it comes in from the sun. It has little storage capacity. For this reason average global near surface air temperature is 15°C in July and only 3°C in February. Global cloud cover collapses by 3% in NH summer. Global OLR peaks in July- August. This is because the land returns energy to the atmosphere as fast as it arrives. Its a 12 hour timescale.
A study of the annual cycle shows us a lot about climate dynamics. The ocean is a sleeper, an accumulator, a holder of energy, a transfer agent (latitudionally), it has little diurnal range and the air above it responds accordingly. The temperature of the ocean is a response to the solar energy that it absorbs but the diurnal and annual range is tiny.
Re:3) “I am not satisfied that your essentially short term scenario (consistent with the frequency of single ENSO events) can explain the 30/60 year periodicities that have been clearly observed between positive warming phases and negative cooling phases. To deal with that I think one has to have an oceanic mechanism involving variations in the rate of energy flow from ocean to air.”
It is not the ‘frequency’ that matters. Its the lean towards one extreme or the other that does. And that lean is consistent over two or three solar cycles. To see what I mean by this statement aggregate the value of the SOI index for each solar cycle and observe the pattern.
What is it that accounts for: “variations in the rate of energy flow from ocean to air.”
I was taught in grade school that sun spot cycles affect tree ring growth: fat rings warm/wet years thin rings cold/dry. This “folk” wisdom still persists and googling does not find refutations.
Ignoring the obvious problems of using the rings as proxies for temperature, they still show a direct link with sun cycles ( unless someone has a publication that makes this observation a science myth, as in “urban myth”).
So sun cycles do affect climate as far as ring tree data go and to claim otherwise is strange.
continuing:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6591-sunspots-more-active-than-for-8000-years.html
The team started by using sunspot records to calibrate models of how carbon-14 in tree rings correlate withsolar activity. The models “reproduce the observed record of sunspots extremely well, from almost no sunspots during the seventeenth century to the current high levels”, writes Paula Reimer, a paleoclimate expert at Queen’s University, Belfast, UK, in an article accompanying the research paper in Nature.
They then extrapolated the tree ring data backwards in time and discovered that no period in the last 8000 years has been as active as the last 70. About 75 sunspots have appeared every year in this period, compared to an annual average of about 30 over the last 11,400 years.
They even calibrate sunspots!!
So the question is not whether the low TSI affects climate, but how.
Carl Wolk (11:06:35) :
But here’s a question: why didn’t the 97/8 El Nino show up in Arctic temps like all the other ENSO events?
Maybe the AMO going negative damped the signal?
erlhapp (17:46:35) :
Just plain wrong. The ozone content of the lower stratosphere/upper troposphere is determined by the drift rate from zone of creation.
The real problem with you is the persistent lack of precision. In a single post you mix the e-layer, the stratosphere, the upper troposphere as they were all the same. The O3 level in the stratosphere [at the point where it is created up at 30 km] is determined by the solar flux as far a creation is concerned and some pollutants as far as destruction is concerned. The O3 concentration at lower levels are determined mostly from below [at times helped along by upwards traveling waves] and has little to do with the Sun. Correlation the upper troposphere O3 with weather/climate is thus mostly a circular argument.
Jeff Alberts:
“except that the “2007 melt” wasn’t caused by warmer Arctic waters but by wind and ocean currents pushing the ice into warmer Southerly waters”
OK, Jeff. I remember the animation on WUWT showing this. However, there is the possibility that the extreme melt in 2007 was due to a combination of an El Nino related pulse of warm water AND favourable winds. A plus for a hypothetical El Nino link to ice extent after a delay of nine years is that it is predictive – provided you get a big El Nino and you can wait around for 9 years – and aside from all the other influences you mentioned.
Carl Wolk
Thanks for the comment Carl. I responded on Climate Change Clarity.
anna v (21:30:40) :
They then extrapolated the tree ring data backwards in time and discovered that no period in the last 8000 years has been as active as the last 70. About 75 sunspots have appeared every year in this period, compared to an annual average of about 30 over the last 11,400 years.
They even calibrate sunspots!!
Let’s hope they did it better than N.S. reported it. Those look more like monthly counts than annual ones.
Anyway, thanks for bringing this up, because although the idea of sunspot count variation being linked to earth’s climate doesn’t have a identified mechanism which will satisfy Leif Svalgaard, it’s clear the trees are trying to tell us something.
Problem is, talking to the trees isn’t very fashionable either.
The updated version of my graph includes Bob Tisdale’s smoothed Nino 3.4 plot – hope that’s OK with you Bob.
http://s630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/?action=view¤t=sst-nino-ssa.jpg
One curiosity is that the changes between positive and negative ENSO phases at 1915 and 1945 are preceded by reversals in the global SST trend by quite a few years on a plot smoothed over the solar cycle length. Perhaps Bob would comment on that.
Leif Svalgaard (22:12:29) :
And the real problem with you is the constant necessity to negate the observations of others that don’t happen to fit your ideology. The notion that upper troposphere temperature is completely determined from below is a case in point. The statement that ozone concentration relates only to solar flux (and is well documented) is another.
But I see that you are now happy to admit a destruction factor.
Perhaps if I push you a little harder you might tell us about the ‘dynamical processes that account for the presence of ozone below that elevation where the short wave lengths of electromagnetic radiation capable of splitting the oxygen molecule are fully exhausted.
And perhaps you could be a bit more precise and yielding about:
“some pollutants as far as destruction is concerned.” i.e. where they come from and how they are created, what difference they make, measured penetration, mixing ratios, effect on the ozone hole and so on. And please don’t forget the effect of water vapour.
But, if you really want to be consistent perhaps its better just to forget the whole thing. It just might take you where you don’t want to go.