From a Louisiana State University Press Release Oct 1, 2009
Algae and Pollen Grains Provide Evidence of Remarkably Warm Period in Antarctica’s History
Palynomorphs from sediment core give proof to sudden warming in mid-Miocene era
The ANDRILL drilling rig in Antarctica
For Sophie Warny, LSU assistant professor of geology and geophysics and curator at the LSU Museum of Natural Science, years of patience in analyzing Antarctic samples with low fossil recovery finally led to a scientific breakthrough. She and colleagues from around the world now have proof of a sudden, remarkably warm period in Antarctica that occurred about 15.7 million years ago and lasted for a few thousand years.
Last year, as Warny was studying samples sent to her from the latest Antarctic Geologic Drilling Program, or ANDRILL AND-2A, a multinational collaboration between the Antarctic Programs of the United States (funded by the National Science Foundation), New Zealand, Italy and Germany, one sample stood out as a complete anomaly.
“First I thought it was a mistake, that it was a sample from another location, not Antarctica, because of the unusual abundance in microscopic fossil cysts of marine algae called dinoflagellates. But it turned out not to be a mistake, it was just an amazingly rich layer,” said Warny. “I immediately contacted my U.S. colleague, Rosemary Askin, our New Zealand colleagues, Michael Hannah and Ian Raine, and our German colleague, Barbara Mohr, to let them know about this unique sample as each of our countries had received a third of the ANDRILL samples.”
Some colleagues had noted an increase in pollen grains of woody plants in the sample immediately above, but none of the other samples had such a unique abundance in algae, which at first gave Warny some doubts about potential contamination.
“But the two scientists in charge of the drilling, David Harwood of University of Nebraska – Lincoln, and Fabio Florindo of Italy, were equally excited about the discovery,” said Warny. “They had noticed that this thin layer had a unique consistency that had been characterized by their team as a diatomite, which is a layer extremely rich in fossils of another algae called diatoms.”
All research parties involved met at the Antarctic Research Facility at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Together, they sampled the zone of interest in great detail and processed the new samples in various labs. One month later, the unusual abundance in microfossils was confirmed.
Among the 1,107 meters of sediments recovered and analyzed for microfossil content, a two-meter thick layer in the core displayed extremely rich fossil content. This is unusual because the Antarctic ice sheet was formed about 35 million years ago, and the frigid temperatures there impede the presence of woody plants and blooms of dinoflagellate algae.
“We all analyzed the new samples and saw a 2,000 fold increase in two species of fossil dinoflagellate cysts, a five-fold increase in freshwater algae and up to an 80-fold increase in terrestrial pollen,” said Warny. “Together, these shifts in the microfossil assemblages represent a relatively short period of time during which Antarctica became abruptly much warmer.”
These palynomorphs, a term used to described dust-size organic material such as pollen, spores and cysts of dinoflagellates and other algae, provide hard evidence that Antarctica underwent a brief but rapid period of warming about 15 million years before present.
LSU’s Sophie Warny and her New Zealand colleague, Mike Hannah, sampling the ANDRILL cores at the Antarctic Research Facility.
“This event will lead to a better understanding of global connections and climate forcing, in other words, it will provide a better understanding of how external factors imposed fluctuations in Earth’s climate system,” said Harwood. “The Mid-Miocene Climate Optimum has long been recognized in global proxy records outside of the Antarctic region. Direct information from a setting proximal to the dynamic Antarctic ice sheets responsible for driving many of these changes is vital to the correct calibration and interpretation of these proxy records.”
These startling results will offer new insight into Antarctica’s climatic past – insights that could potentially help climate scientists better understand the current climate change scenario.
“In the case of these results, the microfossils provide us with quantitative data of what the environment was actually like in Antarctica at the time, showing how this continent reacted when climatic conditions were warmer than they are today,” said Warny.
According to the researchers, these fossils show that land temperatures reached a January average of 10 degrees Celsius – the equivalent of approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit – and that estimated sea surface temperatures ranged between zero and 11.5 degrees Celsius. The presence of freshwater algae in the sediments suggests to researchers that an increase in meltwater and perhaps also in rainfall produced ponds and lakes adjacent to the Ross Sea during this warm period, which would obviously have resulted in some reduction in sea ice.
These findings most likely reflect a poleward shift of the jet stream in the Southern Hemisphere, which would have pushed warmer water toward the pole and allowed a few dinoflagellate species to flourish under such ice-free conditions. Researchers believe that shrub-like woody plants might also have been able to proliferate during an abrupt and brief warmer time interval.
“An understanding of this event, in the context of timing and magnitude of the change, has important implications for how the climate system operates and what the potential future response in a warmer global climate might be,” said Harwood. “A clear understanding of what has happened in the past, and the integration of these data into ice sheet and climate models, are important steps in advancing the ability of these computer models to reproduce past conditions, and with improved models be able to better predict future climate responses.”
While the results are certainly impressive, the work isn’t yet complete.
“The SMS Project Science Team is currently looking at the stratigraphic sequence and timing of climate events evident throughout the ANDRILL AND-2A drillcore, including those that enclose this event,” said Florindo. “A broader understanding of ice sheet behavior under warmer-than-present conditions will emerge.”
correction: enhanced STRATOSPHERIC water vapour has led to….
Joel Shore (08:20:14) :
Which skeptics are those? And which skeptics are using their predictions to try to force the world to make trillion dollar changes to the world economy?
My original point still stands. AGWers in 2007 were dislocating their shoulders doing high fives vicariously celebrating Hansen’s models and chortling how accurate they were. It’s a little funny to see you guys all now saying “Error bars! Error bars!”
Scott Mandia (22:09:06) :
Anthony: My bad. Scott was just returning volley. Sorry about that.
Joel Shore (12:54:09) :
Thanks for your thoughts.
Seems to me using a blend of the best data available, satellite, radiosonde, and otherwise…is the best approach.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Eric (skeptic) says:
That’s a weird interpretation of what they say. I am not sure how you came up with it. They are not assuming constant RH. They are simply giving the reader a feel for what one would intuitively expect a plot of T12 to look like if constant RH occurred (although they also run a GCM modified to enforce constant RH in order to show in more detail what the model would predict).
You are correct that the measure of water vapor has to be obtained by a differencing procedure. However, since they have essentially two measurements (T_12 and T_2) and two unknowns (temperature and water vapor), they can verify the agreement of each independently.
P Wilson says:
What they are looking at is how water vapor is changing in the atmosphere. Its radiative effects are well-understood (and, of course, also seen in the remote sensing by satellites). Not every paper in the field is going to deal with every aspect of the science.
Of course, if you continue to believe that the Steffan-Boltzmann Equation and God-knows-what-else isn’t correct, then it would be like my trying to talk to a Young Earth Creationist…and frankly such effort is not worth my time.
Joel,
Here is the proper way to use the Stefan Boltzmann equations in relation to global warming and surface temperatures.
http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/6840/sbearthsurfacetemp.png
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2608/sbtempcperwatt.png
There is other humidity datasets and they all show very tiny changes. This is supposed to be the best dataset now. Notice the trends from 1989 to 2007 are expressed in E-05 or 0.0000X
http://nierenbergclimate.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/6/6/1166378/the_following_results_use_the_era.pdf
The only places one finds large changes in humidity are these specific studies where they are trying to show the climate models are right. Of course, these studies all involve some transmutation of the data and they never show their actual data. That and they all pick specific periods where the ENSO has changed humidity levels in the tropics which it is known to do.
Joel Shore
The usual nonsense. Added to which I don’t think you’ve answered any propositions throughout this thread! At least none of the ones that I’ve posed. At best, its evasion, though this has been pointed out.
Scientists know that ghg’s don’t cause warming at the surface of the earth, so have contrived an absurd mechanism to say that its going on somewhere else. They now admit that water apour is the primary ghg, and so concoct a mechanism, equally absurd by which c02 causes it. As for the silliness of appplying the steffan-Bolzmann equation, for want of any better method of contriving the numbers, read above – P Wilson (14:34:00)
Since c02 can’t be inferred as causing the warming, it is being used to amplify another fraud – the water vapour multiplier effect.
so lets consider some of the factors. the wavelength of c02 obsorbtion is that of subzero temperatures, not of normal temperatures. ordinary outgoing radiation is in the 6-12 micron range, or else around 15C at average. None of this is interecepted by c02 as it doesn’t correspond to the c02 length of 13-16microns. On the other hand, radiation given off by the arctic can be captured by c02. This presents the problem of the thermal ability of c02 to cause water to evaporate from oceans.
Warmer air holds more water vapour, . Increasing the holding capacity is reducing the relative humidity, which would reduce precipitation; but global precipitation is increasing—the real reason being that oceans are heating, not the atmosphere. This is because air has a small heat capacity whilst oceans don’t – the implication being that any heat intercepted by c02 doesn’t affect oceans as It doesn’t have the thermal energy. It takes a large amount of energy to increase the temperature of water than it does air, so there is no mechanism by which air can increase the temperature of oceans.
Here the logic gets even more ridiculous. If c02 had this forcing efect on water vapour then all human effects would disappear, as natural amplifications take over, – yet vapourisation of oceans takes place well outside the parameters of c02
Even the most ridiculous stretching of logic cannot salvage this anthropogenic c02 thesis. Streching it to 30% of all c02 and maintaining that human c02 accumulates whilst natural c02 doesn’t is preposterous, as oceans regulate c02 levels, but maintaining that it amplifies by a high magnitude a water vapour feedback, since c02 doesn’t do much on its own is by far the greatest absurdity.
going higher up into the atmosphere because none of it is happening close to the surface though is the ultimate error. Upper tropospheric temperatures are -19 to -45C. It is impossible for these temperatures to keep the surface warmer than if ghg’s didn’t. Thats why they had to pull the Boltmann constant out of thin air to esoterically amplify the whole state of affairs by ten times in order to get the 1C on a c02 doubling
Scott Mandia (22:09:06) :
“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.”
– Mark Twain
“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. ”
also Mark Twain
Joel said “However, since they have essentially two measurements (T_12 and T_2) and two unknowns (temperature and water vapor), they can verify the agreement of each independently.”
Nice thought, but they are not solving an equation. The two measurements are being made simply so they can separate out the UT from the full Troposphere, not to solve an equation. In any case they are dependent variables.
They run their model and compare the UT temperatures from the model and the T12-T2 measurement and conclude that there must be moistening since the model shows moistening. They are simply confirming that their model (with its embedded hypothesis) matches their hypothesis of reality.
But as I said above, there are other models that could easily match the T12-T2 measurements. For example the UT could be warm and dry (which in reality it is according to the radiosondes) with T12-T2 showing the difference that they ascribe to moistening. It is a temperature difference, not a measurement of anything but that.
P Wilson – Like I said, your ability to write nonsense and paranoid delusions about what scientists are doing (yes, it is all a big plot…yes indeedy!!) exceeds my ability to set you straight. If someone says that all of basic physics is wrong, there is really not much I can do. I suggest that you communicate with Roy Spencer; he seems like a nice fellow and maybe you will actually listen to him since you and he are on the same side on the larger issue of whether AGW is a serious problem or not. If you want some history on the understanding of the greenhouse effect, see here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Bill Illis – Your “proper way” to use the Stefan-Boltzmann Equations seems to be to be to ignore all feedbacks (and also do the computations at the surface when one really should choose the effective radiating level), which is far from proper.
Bill Illis says:
This is more paranoia. Brian Soden, the lead author on the paper that I have referenced, has actually co-authored a recent Science article that was quite skeptical on the linkage between global warming and hurricane intensity ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;322/5902/687 ). And, the data from the satellite channels is indeed shown. And, I have no idea what you mean by them choosing specific periods. The data runs from like 1982 to 2004.
Eric (skeptic):
No…Read what they write about the differencing:
Eric (skeptic) says:
I am confused. Do you understand that what satellite remote sensing does is look at the radiation received at certain wavelengths and express it as an effective radiating temperature? Are you saying that you don’t believe it possible to determine water vapor content at all using satellite remote sensing?
Joel, don’t be so self deluded. It doesn’t seem you have the ability to set the record straight. Simply because the suppositions are speculative, whereas the truth is empirical.
I’m focussing on science, nay the most basic principles of it. The AGW activist camplaign has itself in a muddle by streching logic beyond its natural frontiers. Once a premise is mistaken then all the others have to be bended to fit it, in true Aristotelean style
nothing to be paranoid about, so lets leave the ad hominems/personal attacks for the schoolyard.
Joel
Anyway, its clear to see what has happened. Since water vapour is independent of c02, and c02 of vapour, the AGW lobby had to focus on c02 since the human contribution to water vapour doesn’t exist. Yet its 100 times the ghg. This is the source of muddleheadedness.
i daresay if we were responsible for water vapour, the AGW lobby would be ignoring carbon dioxide and rewriting the laws of physics accordingly.
So again, you are wrong as usual. At least as a researcher in this field i’m not accusing the press, politicians and AGW of paranoid nonsense. Its better to dissect the arguments and focus on FACTS
Here’s the bandwidths of ghgs
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Absorption_Bands_png
P Wilson says:
(1) Just out of curiosity, are you even aware that the other combustion product of hydrocarbons or natural gas besides CO2 is water vapor? (Admittedly, the amount of water vapor we produce and the rate at which it is transported in and out of the atmosphere mean that we do not influence the amount of water vapor directly on a global scale by our emissions of it as we do for CO2, but that presumably wouldn’t affect the “AGW lobby” whom you speak of of re-writing the laws of physics to say we do.)
(2) I think people who say the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation is not relevant to objects at everyday temperatures and who believe that the Earth radiative balance is such that it emits 1% or less of what it absorbs from the sun ought not to accuse others of “rewriting the laws of physics”! That one just pegged my irony-meter!
(3) Could you name names for this “AGW lobby”? Does it include the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the academies in all the other G8+5 nations, AAAS, AGU, AMS, APS …? How are all these groups coordinated in this massive conspiracy on basic principles of science?
for the steffAn bolzmann being used for the climate, see above. particularly the figures involved. No amount of streching them can justify it.
When Mrs Thatcher, James Hansen, Al Gore started this fashion of power mongering which led to the present racketeering campaign – it has its roots in economic programmes and political manipulation. Of course, Mrs T was at odds with coal miners and middle east oil barons at the time.
However, power mongering doesn’t achieve anything, and the scientific technique has been corrupted during the process.
For the political lobby heres a few choice comments. We see that the club isn’t in the least interested in the environment.
This farrago came out of the Club of Rome, not at all a rotten club, and have a lot of very admirable ideas, but when you look at the register of alarmists, and some of their attitudes – such as Al Gore, Blair, Soros, Merkel, and many others, then on has one’s doubts about scientific veracity, which is virtually zero
Here is a typical quote from the Club of Rome.
“We are on the verge of a global transformation.
All we need is the right major crisis”
– David Rockefeller,
Club of Rome executive member
“We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…So we have to offer up scary scenarios,make simplified, dramatic statements”
– Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years from today it will probably be too late.”
– Club of Rome,
Mankind at the Turning Point
Roughly translated, “4 years and we’re done for…” “10 years and we’re done for….” “20 years and we’re done for…” means: “There are respectively the periods of time for this chance of our political and economic reform/ideas to be viable. ”
Surely there are other methods of making world change acceptable than creating a bogus about the climate, and making man its cancer. It’s interesting to speculate as to whether they are masters or the victims of their own propaganda machine.
P Wilson:
What figures? This one http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Absorption_Bands_png ? What do you believe it shows? If you are able to do detailed radiative transfer calculations in your head on the basis of that diagram, I am quite impressed!
By the way, your quote from Stephen Schneider is taken way out of context. See here: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/APS.pdf Schneider has done more than almost anyone else to explain the science, including the role that uncertainty plays in it.
I haven’t bothered to investigate the other quotes.
You’ve still avoided my question though. Are you saying that either the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the academies in all the other G8+5 nations, AAAS, AGU, AMS, APS don’t understand the basic laws of physics as well as you do or are you saying that they are actively deceiving the public?
“Are you saying that either the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the academies in all the other G8+5 nations, AAAS, AGU, AMS, APS don’t understand the basic laws of physics as well as you do or are you saying that they are actively deceiving the public?”
Such people are no longer true scientists. Once they become administrators or politicians they no longer concern themselves with the science. They simply rely on others whom they trust.
Perhaps their trust has been misplaced ?
Joel, I explained twice above how water vapor sensing is done using satellites. If you want details google for meteosat water vapor calibration and click on the first hit. Also look at the channels on HIRS here http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/pod-guide/ncdc/docs/klm/html/c3/sec32-1.htm and compare to the paper. Water vapor absorbs peak IR in meteosat WV1 channel. The HIRS channel 12 is not the same as meteosat WV1, although it overlaps somewhat.
Your quote from the paper states that they verifying the temperature measurements from the satellite with the temperatures from the model. They are not, as you seem to imply, measuriing UT water vapor with the satellite data. Nor are they calculating UT water vapor or any other water vapor using the satellite data. They are generating temperature data with the model which assumes constant RH (or UT moistening for the rough equivalent), then verifies that the measured UT temps roughly match the modeled ones. Their conclusion is correct that UTWV has increased iff the model itself is correct.
Joel Shore (11:45:15) :
I refer you to a previous post at P Wilson (14:34:00) for the explanation of the invalidity of the Steffan Bolzmann law in relation to the climate.
However, when a consensus is singing from the same hymn sheet, one cannot say that they are all in cynical collusion. Power mongers see that fossil fuel extractors like Exxon and BP make huge profits. They want to create extra capital from it to maximise revenue, like a racket. Most of the climatologists here in London i’m acquainted with live on good incomes and carry on this consensus. However, it is something akin to the position that Galileo found himself in, or Darwin found himself in. According to the Papacy at the time it was sacrilege to say that the earth revolved around an earthcentric universe, as the church had the monopoly on what was at the time the motions of the universe. Now, not even the pontiff would dispute Galileo. At the time of Darwin, the consensus even amongst Biologists was that God was the creator of life. THeoretically, if man came from apes, then Jesus died to save apes too, and this caused some to scoff..
Conspiracy – I don’t think so. The reigning in of pure science as opposed to advocacy based paradigm is the probable explanation.
Getting back to the climate, far too much attention is paid to ghg’s. they don’t drive the climate – they are effects of what does drive the climate. Given that water vapour cannot cause an enhanced greehouse effect of itself, even less so c02, so the atmosphere cools as it acts as a heat sink, disippating, rather than accumulating heat. Even at high temeratures, very little heat is given off by the earth’s surface. Even at 30C, very little radiation is picked up by equipment that is used to detect frequencies in that wavelength.
correction:
According to the Papacy at the time it was sacrilege to say that the earth revolved around an earthcentric universe, as the church had the monopoly on what was at the time the motions of the universe.
should read
According to the Papacy at the time it was sacrilege to say that the earth revolved *around the sun* in an earthcentric universe, as the church had the monopoly on what was at the time the motions of the universe.
Eric (skeptic) says:
So, which part of this description of how it works that is in the paper do you disagree with:
So, in other words: T_12 can vary for two reasons. Either the temperature changes at a fixed effective emission altitude or the effective emission altitude itself changes (and, if it goes up, T_12 goes down because temperature in the troposphere is a decreasing function of height…This is the same principle that allows an infrared satellite photo to essentially show the height of the cloud tops). And, a change in the effective emission altitude for this channel occurs when there is a change in the amount of water vapor (more water vapor means more opacity and hence a higher emission altitude).
Now, T_2 is at a frequency that is in the oxygen absorption band, so it is not sensitive to the water vapor concentration (and oxygen is well-mixed in the atmosphere so its concentration doesn’t vary with time), and is thus just a measure of the temperature at a fixed effective emission altitude.
So, by subtracting T_2 from T_12, you remove the effect of the change in temperature and are left with something that basically just shows the change in water vapor.
The graphs of spectoscopic absorbition show that water vapour has over three times the badwidths of c02. In the lower figure bandwidths particularly where c02 doesn’t capure heat, such as 10-30C which would be a normal temperatures. To obtain the result of how effective it is you would then have to multiply the factor of its ghg potential by 3 for a direct comparison with c02. There are some 30 times as many water vapour molecules in the air at any one time than c02 molecules, and it is variable. It can be anything from 1-3 percent of the atmosphere. It enters the air mainly as a result of temperature – efffectively, and comes back as precipitation, depending on conditions. The fact that we can ignore this as ghg as a cause of global warming, which does 100 times more than c02 leads to the conclusion that all ghg’s do not cause global warming. Actually there are a lot of sound reasons why ghg’s do not cause warming.
P Wilson:
You mean the one where you said: “If it were a correct hypothesis, blackbody objects, trees, asphalt etc would be emitting more radiation than human bodies at night, beause they received more exterior radiation. (I presume the S Boltmann equation is how NASA defined outgoing radiation as 41% of the total.) In reality, that is a mathematical equation and not a physical one. If it were 41% then humans wouldn’t be detectable, as everything terrestrial would be throwing the same light.” I then gave you a link to an explanation of infrared night vision goggles by someone who actually works for a company that manufactures them in which it was explained that the reasons humans are distinguishable is that they are simply (generally) hotter than those other objects.
The rest of that post is just a bunch of poor intuition and failing to understand how, in normal everyday life, we are surrounded by this infrared radiation and objects are absorbing approximately as much as they are emitting.
I really don’t mind ignorance of physics. There are subjects that I am ignorant on. And, ignorance can be cured. But, what is so frustrating with you (and frankly is fairly endemic on this whole website) is a level of ignorance combined with a level of arrogance whereby the people who are most ignorant are not only unwilling to cure their own ignorance but rather are spreading it and telling those who try to dispel it that they are wrong. It is sad that people are so blinded by ideology that they would rather create their own reality than understand the reality that actually exists.
This logic has so many holes in it, it is hard to know where to start. First, it misses the fact that much of the radiative physics was understood at a time when AGW was not the dominant paradigm, in fact it was a hypothesis in the scientific wilderness, which you would know if you read the history that I linked to. Second, it betrays an extremely incorrect notion of how scientists operate…Getting scientists to agree on something is like “herding cats”. Third, if you were right then the scientists like Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer who are “heretics” on AGW (in a manner of speaking) would presumably have no reason not to agree with you on these claims you are making in regard to the radiative physics. As it so happens, they don’t. In fact, Roy Spencer is involved in satellite remote sensing experiments that would simply not work if you were right and the accepted physics was wrong. (It is like telling someone who has built a particle physics accelerator that relativity is incorrect…If it were, the damn thing would not work because it is designed based on those equations.)
P Wilson:
No you don’t. It simply does not work that way. Doing the radiative calculations is more complicated than that and, at the end of the day, the result is that over much of their concentration range, the dependence of the radiative forcing on concentration is logarithmic. And, for each different type of molecule, there is a different efficiency factor that depends in a non-trivial way on its absorption and the absorption of the other components of the atmosphere. There are substance, such as the halocarbons present at less than 1 part-per-billion that nonetheless have a not-insignificant effect (e.g., roughly 20% of the radiative forcing that the increase in CO2 from pre-industrial levels has).