Sensitive side (from the NASA Global Climate Change Website)
By Rosemary Sullivant,
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
A little extra carbon dioxide in the air may, unfortunately, go further towards warming Earth than previously thought. A team of British and U.S. researchers have uncovered evidence [1] that Earth’s climate may be up to 50 percent more sensitive to long-term increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide than current climate models predict. The reason for the underestimation, they say, may be due to long-term changes in ice sheets and vegetation that are not well represented in today’s global climate models.Just how much will global temperature rise in response to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide? This is one of the key questions that climate scientists need to answer. According to the climate models used in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels is expected to warm Earth by about 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit), once the atmosphere and oceans spend a few years or decades adjusting and reaching a balance.
But according to a recent study by a team of researchers that includes Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Earth’s climate is also influenced by other, much slower processes. These include changes in ice sheets, vegetation and aerosols, for example, that take place over hundreds and thousands of years.
Because of their complexity and long timescales, these processes are almost impossible to integrate into today’s climate computer models. As a result, it has been difficult to know just what their effect on Earth’s climate sensitivity would be.
To learn more about this sensitivity, Schmidt and his co-authors looked back 3 million years into Earth’s past. They used a computer model that describes the oceans and atmosphere to predict, retroactively, the climate of the mid-Pliocene — a period when both global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were higher than today. The model substantially underestimated just how high temperatures would go. When the researchers adapted the model to include the effects of long-term climate changes in vegetation and ice sheets, they were able to get a much closer representation of the warming in the Pliocene era.
The team found that it took much lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide to recreate the Pliocene’s warm climate than current models — which consider only the relatively fast-adjusting components of the climate — predict. Pliocene carbon dioxide levels are estimated to have been around 400 parts per million by volume (ppmv), while according to current simulations it would take 500 to 600 ppmv of carbon dioxide to bring about the warm temperatures of the Pliocene. As a result, the researchers estimate that Earth’s response to elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide is 30 to 50 percent greater than previously calculated. In other words, the climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought.
This higher sensitivity of the climate should be taken into account, the team concludes, when targets are set for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The results of the study appear in Nature Geoscience.
Research paper: [1] Daniel J. Lunt et al., “Earth System Sensitivity Inferred from Pliocene Modelling and Data,” Nature Geoscience, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2010).
PDF Here
Same ole propaganda. That pliocene model has been harped about since december or so by the AGW crowd. What a waste of human ingenuity and computer power.
“R. Gates says:
May 5, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Interesting…will need to really look into this. Can’t wait to see what the skeptics have to say.”
You’ll be wasting your time.
OMG! maybe they should model the effect on computer modellers that 100% CO2 would have!
I’m still waiting for the conclusion the last round of eco sorts were wrong about Nuclear Power. I keep waiting. One of these has to be worse.
Now poetic justice would be Jane Fonda caused the AGW because she scared the population into being anti-nuclear.
And what do we see by observations today? I also note the use of computer models; so please see from Gavin, as well a Michael Mann:
See also
CO2 amplification is less than we thought – Nature: December 2009
“Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
“Amplification of Global Warming by Carbon-Cycle Feedback Significantly Less Than Thought, Study Suggests”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134721.htm
“Temperature and CO2 feedback ‘weaker than thought'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8483722.stm
and finally
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/why-climate-models-lie
Well this study seems to fly in the face of ice core data that covers the period supposedly retrospectively modeled. The ice cores show that temperature increases about 800 years before CO2 levels rise then both decline again. In light of the empirical evidence the claim of greater sensitivity to CO2 seems very unlikely.
The interesting thing I noted in this study was the claim that they were studying effects over longer term timescales of hundreds or thousands of years. I am wondering if this is because the public are no longer buying into the “doom tomorrow” stories. Is this a “doom is still possible” study to keep the hoax alive? I wonder when climate scientists are going to realize that it’s not just “doom tomorrow” that people are not buying into, but the whole “GIGO computer models show it’s worse than we thought” thing.
The Russians came up with their answer to all this “climate modeling” a long time ago. They said that the Earth is their model, and that using the Earth as their model the THEORY that carbon dioxide caused “global warming” had failed spectacularly. Let the West waste billions chasing their fairy story they said while laughing themselves silly, they’re not interested.
This study has nothing whatsoever to do with real climate science and everything to do with convenient politics and the desperate need for more “research” grants.
Can we please divide these climate scientist’s into two groups, those with models and guess work and those with true facts and figures. Then maybe i’ll start believeing what they say. There models for modern times don’t work so instead they start modelling 3 million years ago (of course this has the added bonus of no-one being able to physically check there findings like the melting glaciers or the hockey stick) , this is a joke right? oh wait i see who made the report silly me probably need more grants to fly round the worked warning of the falling sky.
What’s the news? When temp increased 5 C since the last ice age CO2 increased 50%.
What’s so strange then about a 10 C increase doubling the CO2?
How is it even possible to estimate what they claim to be estimating?
As I understand it there are a myriad of factors like the one they are studying that are unknown quantities (factors which can be either positive or negative mind you). So how is it you can compare the difference of empirical data to your best predictions (i.e. models) and somehow ascertain the magnitude of a specific factor? Ascertain the overall magnitude of all missing factors..sure, no problem. But a specific factor? How does that work exactly?
You simply have no way to know which of those other unknown factors are capable of dominating your factor (i.e. overshadowing it’s effects). More specifically you don’t know what conditions would cause other factors to dominate your factor of interest (otherwise they wouldn’t be unknown factors), you don’t know by how much they will dominate your factor of interest, and you don’t know what time periods during the time series your factor of interest will be dominated.
In short, even if you have a set of simple and logical rules for how your factor behaves. Even if with those rules the model now produces a function with an r-value as good as say 0.997. Even then, you still need to demonstrate that your model is more accurate as a result of the change (not to mention a need to demonstrate the base model itself is of any value), and you need to demonstrate it with something more than the r-value.
The notion that prodding a function with subtle adjustments until it says what you want it to and then pointing to the fact that it says what you wanted it to, is not a demonstration of anything worthy of scientific note.
I’m sorry but this doesn’t sound like science to me. So unless they have some rather ingenuous methodology that I’m as of yet unaware, I call a rather hearty BS on this.
Oh no. Not another “puter” model! Where will it all end, perhaps dissappearing up their own………………………………….? It was sheer arrogance & ignorance in using a computer model to predict the effects of F & M disease in the UK, & look what happened there, absolute chaos & disaster! Remeber the first rule of AGW, it is ALWAYS worse than we thought. Which as I have said before, lends little confidence in these studies as they seem to be continually underestimating the outcome, surely they should have learned by now, I dare say the next study will conclude that they had underestimated the CO2 effects & it’s much worse than we thought, again.
When can we stop paying for these climate entrail readers?
“All Models Are Crap, But Some Are Useful”
(Free to George E P Box).
The last model, as far as I know, which really worked
was Henry Ford’s Model T.
Laff riot!
Here’s another article from some of the same authors: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1886/189.abstract
I like this part of the abstract: “In accordance with palaeobotanical data, all model simulations indicate a generally warmer and wetter climate, resulting in a northward shift of the taiga–tundra boundary and a spread of tropical savannahs and woodland in Africa and Australia at the expense of deserts. Our data–model comparison reveals differences in the distribution of polar vegetation, which indicate that the high latitudes during the Middle Pliocene were still warmer than its predicted modern analogue by several degrees. ”
This is in stark contrast to the claims of drought because of global warming. The fact is that data from the Pliocene indicate the following: In a warmer world, today’s deserts, both the hot and the cold ones (in the Arctic) would shrink and be replaced by usable, greener land. The already warm areas near equator won’t warm much, only the areas close to the poles will be a lot warmer. So we really have nothing to fear from CO2: If we for the sake of argument assume that AGW theory is basically right about temperature rise because of CO2, we can look forward to a future world that is much more pleasant and can feed a lot of more people than today’s world. The only possible problem I can think of is a really fast sea level rise, so fast that there will be some problems adapting (e.g. relocating lots of people living at sea level today). But even that single negative issue will be overwhelmed by all the advantages of a warmer world with lots of CO2 for plants to feed from in the air.
Pat Frank!
Is it possible to have that again in English?
Worse thought than previously to CO2:
source
Gavin Smith!
Well thats a guy to trust! Ha hahahahahahah! Has his options in chicago cap and trade lost its value? A new alarm is produced anything is “worse than we thought” will give them a boost?. Or was Al Gore the client who ordered a new scare by NASA?
Maby NASA now is AL Gores private climate scare mongering company?
I wonder if anyone take this guys seriously these days?
If the models fits, yell it form the roof tops … if the model doesn’t fit, stay silent. Strange science indeed.
Who wants to be the first to say computer models are not science.
If the EARTH could ask Gavin a hundred thousand questions, and each question pertained to all the infinite and important and interdependent variables that make up the atmosphere, the lithosphere, the ionosphere, etc., what would Gavin’s answers be?
The same, “I dunno…” a HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES OVER….
Sheesh.
Eh? Does this mean that the known temperatures of today are actually hotter than we think because the climate is more sensitive to known levels of CO2 than we thought?
Or doesn’t it really matter at all, because the temperature today is reality, not a prediction.
It seems to me they have now managed to make climate science so abstract that only the models matter and the actual perceived reality no longer counts. We are now about to embark on a massive campaign to reduce CO2 in the real world to ensure a correction of temperature in a virtual world. Fascinating.
“Earth System Sensitivity Inferred from Pliocene Modelling and Data,”
Here is the newly released program from the study.
10 Print “It’s worse than we thought”
20 Goto 10
You can’t argue with that, can you?
Considering the obscene amount of money to be made by declaring Carbon dioxide the most lethal atomic structure in the known (and unknown) universe, also capable of scaring the crap out of black holes forcing them to spew matter back into space, it’s not surprising that “it’s worse than we thought.” Also, a few hundred million $ in “research” or grant money is chicken feed, simply basement bargain start-up costs. Sorry Gavin and the rest, without rock solid evidence, the only models worth looking at are gracing the catwalks.
“In other words, the climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought.”
(quote from the paper)…….Yes, the CO2 theoretical madness is worse than we thought!!!