Left to Right: Dr. Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Dr. Paul Knappenberger (President of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum), Dr. Wally Broecker (Columbia University), and Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert (University of Chicago) pose for a photo after the first of the Global Climate Change forum. Forum I was held at the Adler Planetarium.
From Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog.
Two Decades of No Warming, Consistent With . . .
Over at Real Climate they are busy giving climate skeptics reason to cheer:
We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.
Imagine, twenty-two or more years (1998 to ~2020) of no new global temperature record. What would that do to the debate?
Real Climate does say something very smart in the piece (emphasis added):
Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here. However, this apparent impulsive behavior explicitly highlights the fact that humanity is poking a complex, nonlinear system with GHG forcing – and that there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond.
As I’ve argued many times, uncertainty is a far batter reason for justifying action than overhyped claims to certainty, or worse, claims that any possible behavior of the climate system is somehow “consistent with” expectations. Policy makers and the public can handle uncertainty, its the nonsense they have trouble with.
“”” Remmitt (15:11:20) :
George E. Smith (14:12:00) :
“[…]
That radiation from the atmospheric air, goes in all directions so only about half of it is directed downwards towards the surface;
[…]”
Given, on the large scale, the planet is a globe, I’d say it’s less than half. Or is the atmosphere too thin to even notice the difference? “””
Well the globe thing is not a factor Remmitt, for the following reason. The radiation from a small volume of gas, is essentially isotropic; there’s no preferred direction of emission, so it’s spherical distribution.
But think about the radiation that is emitted nearly parallel to the ground (but downwards). When it gets to the surface, it is going to be spread over a huge area, because of the extreme obliquity. Consequently, that portion of the radiation is going to do very little surface warming at all; don’t forget for near optical surfaces like the water for example, you will also have grazing incidence reflection, to further reduce the absorbed flux density.
As a result, only the flux from a more confined cone angle is going to do much warming.
Now of course a given surface area is going to receive radiation from directly above, but also from surrounding large areas of atmosphere, but at ever more glancing angles.
It’s a fairly straightforward text book calculation to compute the average irradiance on the surface, but the atmsophere is so thin relative to the earth radius, that it might as well be flat; well the eartyh is flat, isn’t it; isn’t that one of our core beliefs?.
The real complication of the downward radiation problem, is that some of that radiation is going to get re-absorbed by GHG on the way down; and maybe many times.
As a result, accurate modelling of the atmospheric absorption is extremely complex. I’m not sure anyone has ever got it completely correct.
Ordinary optical absorption in most materials, is a one shot deal. A photon captured by an atom or molecule, transfers its energy to that molecule, and it ultimately becomes thermal agitation of the material, so heating the sample. Ordinary materials do not re-emit the photon that was absorbed, before the energy gets thermalized, so in that case the beam intensity drops steadily as energy is removed, and the absorption follows the usual e^-alpha. z extinction.
The atmospheric thermal radiation doesn’t behave that way, because the thermal photons that are captured by the GHG molecule, such as CO2, is transferred to the ordinary non GHG molecules, which are far more numerous, and then that heated body of gas eventually emits its own thermalradiation spectrum, which is similar to what is flying around anyhow, depending on temperature gradients and such.
So the atmospheric IR absorption is vey complicated, even in a simple one dimensional model; and then you still have convection mucking things up all the time. But it is fairly easy to show that the thermal radiation can travel upwards to cooler less dense atmosphere, much easier, than it can travel in the opposite direction into denser warmer GHG containing layers.
CO2 is 385 ppm by volume of the atmosphere; which is pretty much the same as saying by molecular species, treating the components as all ideal gases. That means there is once CO2 molecule for every 2596.4 non CO2 molecules. Taking the cube root of that number, and you get about 13.75.
So that means that individual CO2 molecules, on average, are separated by about 13.75 layers of other molecules in all directions. It’s what I call “Cocktail Party Physics”. The gal you want to talk to has so many guys around her; she doesn’t even know you are in the room.
So the GHG molecules operate single handedly; they are totally unaware of each other’s presence, so they act alone.
A single IR photon could easily pass through the entire atmosphere in less than a millisecond, and perhaps never encounter a single CO2 molecule. Maybe not too likely, but not impossible either, so a vast cascade of absorptions and re-absorptions is going on all the time, as the thermal energy tres to get from one place to another.
Bear in mind that a photon heading downwards, after transferring its energy to the air by collsions, and getting re-incarnated as a differnt IR photon of a different (but nearby) wavelength, may be re-emitted in the upwards direction, and retrace its track for a while.
No wonder the problem has not been completely solved; it is total chaos at its finest.
George
“If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.”
Of course, there is no evidential support for this hypothesis other than the fact that their models need it to be correct.
Well, having said all that it looks like the only thing that really matters is the Humboldt Current, and the Trade winds over the Andes. When they’re clickin, we’re cool. When they take a break, we’re hot.
If I were a “climate scientist,” I think I’d be trying to figure out what drives that.
So… are we all gonna die in the next 50 years or not? I’m tired of this emotional roller coaster.
Oh cool! RealClimate has a wordpress blog and I can actually SEE the scientists who taught me a little about Climate Change. I’m no scientist, so I can’t understand some of it but I’m really good at recognizing the truth when I see/hear it!!
Nice!
I hypothesize that it may get hotter, colder, or stay the same 20 years from now, based the computer program I wrote to do my income taxes, modified to predict weather 20 years from now.
Now, where can I pick up my well-deserved climatology degree?
Graeme Rodaughan (16:47:15) :
“And if the cooling keeps going, and passes the 1990s average… What then will they claim?”
A possible answer to Graeme Rodaughan’s question is,,,,,,,
Did anyone catch this response over at RealClimate?
“When the Keenlyside paper came out, Andy Revkin had a nice blog article on whether the drive for carbon mitigation action could survive a decadal interruption in warming. It’s a good question, but one I wouldn’t presume to know how to answer. Our best armory for the arguments you fear quite rightly is to build up our understanding of decadal variability and the extent to which it can cloud the long term trend. It’s too soon to say whether the current “pause” in warming is anything more than statistics being clouded by one unusual El Nino event, but we should be thinking now about possible explanations just in case something more interesting is going on. –raypierre]”
This overshooting hypothesis appears to be utter nonsense.
How does overshooting work? Can it physically exist?
Where is the evidence of overshooting?
Where are the overshot spots?
Robert (17:15:21)
“This assertion probably needs some qualification. It is falsified by the simple fact that ice water (and cold beer) does get warmer when exposed to warmer air. A similar mechanism certainly does transfer energy from the atmosphere to the ocean.”
In that situation the ice water or cold beer warms by conduction from the surroundings through the container. There is no direct net energy transfer from air to liquid.
Evaporation from the open surface of the container continues throughout and removes more energy from the liquid than is added from contact with the air.
The liquid nevertheless warms up because the energy from conduction exceeds the energy lost by evaporation. That cannot happen with a huge ocean overlain by a thin layer of air exposed to space. In that situation the energy flow is always continuous and one way only. However the rate of flow does vary and it is that variability in the rate of flow that falsifies the idea of human induced climate change.
I guess the thing with these shifts are that they are like rolling straight 6’s – it might happen occasionally and give you a break, and are lucky breaks which randomly ‘mitigate’ the effects of AGW – but to gamble on them continuing to happen when there is a known and physically proven forcing effect from CO₂ would be foolish. The author makes this clear.
OT, but more GW hype…I can’t seem to find any other media reports of this, potential, (Summer?) event.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/arctic-glacier-poised-to-split-up-20090715-dl0w.html
Sam Vilain (21:48:48) :
“… there is a known and physically proven forcing effect from CO₂ ”
You can not be serious!!!!
sounds scareing,,,,, so the effects must be dangerous
I hadn’t even noticed, but-is That Paul Knappenberger in any way connected to Chip, above, who HAPPENS to have the exact same name?
http://masterresource.org/?page_id=71/#chip
Clearly the deniers and the alarmists are engaged in a cabal to distract us with whether AGW is a threat or not so that we miss their plan to steal the Hope Diamond. Or was that an Episode of South Park with politicians? Anyway.
You have to admit the eerie “coincidence” is hard to dismiss. 😉
So……… If I’m reading this right, these guys just gave themselves an additional 11 year pass on being wrong about global warming. I see how it works. Take observable data that does not jive with your model’s predictions and “hypothesize” some lame excuse to give your self a pass, so you and your buddy’s can still hit the lecture circuit until it’s time to retire. Brilliant!
Hmmm, so now we have 12 years before the warming starts again. How convenient for the AGW’ers. They can keep pushing this and tweak their models to include this, since they overlooked it in the past. By the time 2020 comes about and the temperature doesn’t fall we’ll all be broke and they’ll be nothing we do do about it.
How can we disprove a negative, that’s what they’ve basically given us and from here on in everything will match with their new pet theory, and even if the world heats up, they have it covered. AGW >> CC >> World Government coming too soon!!!!
This announcement, as I see it, gives the whole pro-AGW movement the time it needs for the masses to be force feed, and then accept, the spoon of “cod liver oil” that is cap and trade, emissions trading, carbon pollution policy etc etc. Had to laugh at the “pat on the back” Rudd received from Obama etc when he announced the formation of the carbon pollution institute, a bunch of people to determine climate policy none the less.
No disrespect however, I see more and more young “gen Y’s” etc taking this AGW poop hook line and sinker.
OT, Peter Garrett, Australian Environment Minister, has just announced a new uranium ore mine for South Australia.
Of the 385 ppm of CO2 contained in the atmosphere, how much is naturally there as a baseline to our added CO2?
If the earth cools for the next 20 or so years, the Global Warming Alarmists (excuuuuuse me, the Global Climate Change Alarmists) have a ready-made re-characterization of CO2 that fits their real agenda: “the anthropogenic release of CO2 into the atmosphere is baaaaaad and must be controlled”.
Because Global Climate Change Alarmists believe that like a greenhouse CO2 traps heat and thereby warms the planet, they feel justified in calling CO2 a Greenhouse Gas. By the same token, they could equally as well call CO2 an “Igloo Gas”. After all, like a greenhouse an igloo helps keep its interior warm.
If global cooling continues, instead of using the phrase Greenhouse Gas, which carries the connotation of an uncomfortably hot earth, to characterize CO2, the Global Climate Change Alarmists will use the phrase Igloo Gas, which carries the connotation that CO2 is responsible for an uncomfortably cold earth. Thus simply by deciding which CO2 characterization to use (Greenhouse Gas or Igloo Gas), Global Climate Change Alarmists can promote their real agenda.
George E. Smith (19:00:36) :
Thanks for the elaborate reply.
Bob Tisdale (14:30:42) :
tallbloke: You wrote, “Not that much heat escaped that year anyway. Look at Bob Tisdale’s OLR graph for the Nino 3.4 area…”
Though the Global OLR dataset doesn’t disagree with your conclusion, NINO3.4 Outgoing Longwave Radiation is not Global Outgoing Longwave Radiation:
http://i29.tinypic.com/2cn85qe.png
Thanks Bob, I’m learning all the time.
According to your global outgoing longwave radiation graph, OLR started to fall at the start of 1998, was falling sreeply by mid 1998 and carried on falling steeply all the way past the millenium. Definitely less OLR in ’98 than in ’97, followed by much less in ’99 and ’00.
However, if less heat was able to escape to space due to the reduced OLR, and as we know from George E smith, the air doesn’t warm the ocean, and yet global temperatures dropped, I’m left wondering where it went. Back into the ocean as precipitation? Out to space at the poles where the satellites don’t pick up the data so well?
What are your thoughts on that?
Warmists admit that the earth is in a cooling trend, the length of which just happens to coincide with realist scientistific prediction, but…AGW (aka natural cyclical warming) will be back on track?
Sounds like a lot of hubris and weasel words to me. Nothing new at all then…
@ur momisugly Sam Vilain (21:48:48) : “…there is a known and physically proven forcing effect from CO₂ …”
Can you please direct me to the source of this claim?
Warmists admit that the earth is in a cooling trend, the length of which just happens to coincide with realist scientistific prediction, but…AGW (aka natural cyclical warming) will be back on track?
Sounds like a lot of hubris and weasel words to me. Nothing new at all then…
Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.
We hypothesize…
Is this all RealClimate has to do to be believed?