WUWT readers, Figure 4 is noteworthy, because it points out the trend of 20th century warming in context with other periods of warming derived from the ice core record. I suggest you bookmark this post and that graph, as it tells a simple but indisputable story. – Anthony
Guest post by Frank Lansner
In a recent article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/08/working-925-what-a-way-to-make-a-livin-at-agw/
I estimated the total raw CO2 warming to be around 9,25 times the warming effect of one CO2-doubling:
Fig 1
Heat from one CO2-doubling (the “CO2-sensitivity”) has been estimated by IPCC and J. Hansen to be 3K or even 6K, including feedbacks. The 9,25 CO2 “doublings” cannot all have such a huge effect including feedbacks, so present day conditions on Earth must be extraordinarily heat sensitive (at least according to the IPCC).
Claim: Just a tiny temperature increase under present day conditions (like raw effect of one single CO2 doubling) should result in temperature jumps of up to 3 – 6 K.
Is this claim supported by evidence?
Fig 2
I have examined high quality Vostok temperature ice core data from the interglacial periods of the last half million years. These warm periods are the best evidence we have from Earth to examine the dynamics of present day climate on Earth.
We are looking for other huge temperature rises of 3K – 6 K that should result from just minor temperature rises.
Below I have identified all temperature rises of the Vostok data fulfilling the following criterion: “Temperature at the beginning of temperature rise must be at most 1 K below today’s temperatures indicated by -1K anomaly in the Vostok data. Next, the examined periods must be at most 300 years in length (we want to focus on the warming effect of one century time intervals) and finally, the initial temperature increase from glacial to interglacial is not included”:
Fig 3
96% of all temperature increases are between approx 0 and 1,4 K, only in one situation (approx 1 %) we find an interglacial temperature increase of almost 3 K.
That is: Under present day like conditions, temperature rises of 3K are very rare indeed, while smaller temperature rises of around 1 K are abundant and normal.
The interglacial periods shows no temperature peaks of the size interval larger than 3K. If in theory a minor warming of 0,5 – 1 K should lead to a 4-5-6 K warming including feedbacks, why are there no such peaks in the previous interglacial periods? There are plenty of 1K warming peaks (resulting of from all kinds of natural mechanisms) to induce the massive positive feedbacks that IPCC and Hansen expects.
Fig 4
The average interglacial temperature rise (from these data criteria) shows a warming of 0,65 K and lasts 113 years. In average they begin at –0,17K and end at +0,48K. (These averages are only to some degree dependent of my definition of interglacial periods – unless my definition of interglacial periods are totally wrong.)
The average temperature increase for these data of 0,65 K over 113 years – does not exactly make the modern temperature increase 1900 – 2010 of around 0,6-0,7K appear that special, does it?
Fig 5
The data tell us more: When the time intervals exceed around 100 years, the average magnitude of the recorded temperature increase does not increase. This is interesting and surprising because a longer interval should give time for a larger temperature increase. But on average the time intervals in data longer than around 100 years shows smaller net temperature rises indicating – unless this is a coincidence – that temperature peaks of the interglacial periods in average lasts around roughly 100 years.
Via Joanne Nova, I got a feedback to this result from George White:
“The analysis is consistent with long term averages changing more slowly than short term averages. The correlation drop at 100 years is because of a periodic effect of about 180 years. After 90-100 years, the direction of the temperature change reverses and the deltaT drops. If the analysis is continued, a second peak should appear between 250 and 300 years as a result of the second cycle of this period showing up with a minimum centered between the peaks. ”
Interesting, and thanks to George White.
When nature has warmed the planet over 100 years, this warming seems to END rather systematically. If positive feedbacks were strong why do temperature rises end so systematically? At least this warming-turn-off suggest that:
Natural forces or perhaps negative feedbacks are stronger than positive feedbacks after just a limited warming over 100 years
In addition, we see very few small temperature increases (of the order of 0 – 0,15K) for time intervals less than 150 years. On the other hand, the longer time intervals shows several of these tiny temperature increases. This indicates – unless it’s a coincidence – that if at first, temperature is on the rise, it often continues to rise until a significant temperature rise is reached. In other words: Temperature variability is the norm and constant temperature seems unusual.
Conclusion
Nature has provided us with data telling a simple story: For periods on earth comparable with today, we see many examples of temperature increases in the magnitude of 1 K for all kinds of natural reasons. Very rarely does any temperature rise (via supposed positive feedbacks) reach 3 K within 100 years.
It is thus surprising that IPCC and others with big confidence can claim large temperature rises of up to 3 – 6 K as most likely result from just a minor temperature increase, for example induced by CO2 warming.
More, it appears (fig 4.) that the temperature rise of 0,7K from 1900 to 2010 is as normal as can be when comparing with other temperature rises during other warm periods.
***
Comments
1) I have defined “interglacial temperature rises beginning at -1K compared to modern temperatures, no lower. On this definition I found that the temperature increase 1900-2010 was normal. If I had defined interglacial periods as starting at -2K, then there would have been a few more temperature increases in the area 1-2K which would make the present temperature rise appear smaller in comparison. However, the limit -1K for interglacial periods mostly is in compliance with the nature of the interglacial periods. When first we have interglacial period its not often we find temperature in the area under – 1K. Therefore I found -1K to be the best choice to limit interglacial tendencies. Also, temperatures should resemble today’s temperature range as close as possible.
2) I have used 0,7K for the temperature increase 1900-2010. This is obviously highly questionable due to significant UHI measuring problems and adjustment issue that is likely to have exaggerated the temperature increase 1900-2010. On the other hand, temperature variations at Vostok are likely to be larger than global temperature changes, so perhaps a qualitative compare is somewhat fair after all. At least, if you claim that the present temperature increase is extraordinarily large, I think one should show data that supports it. And, as I showed, Vostok data does not really support the claim.
3) By Joanne Nova: “In the past natural temperature rises we should also see the positive feedbacks at work. But it is very difficult to isolate the exact amount of warming due to the natural forces vs that due to the natural feedbacks. Where does one stop and the other start? In any 3 degree rise, how much was due to the forcing, and how much to the feedback? If positive feedback was strong we would expect to see examples of it occurring in the past ice cores.”
Frank: This is very true and makes this topic a little fluffy to deal with. However, the absence of 3K – 6K temperature rises in the interglacial periods means that there should not have been any natural warming excl feedbacks of just 0,5 K or so (matching the raw CO2-sensitivity warming). And we still can see that the temperature rise 1900 – 2010 is just a normal interglacial variation.
4) Hereafter it could be interesting to do analysis using Dome C core temperature data that has twice a many data points for temperatures which may refine the results to some degree.
Source used for Vostok data:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_data.html
See also:
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/ice-core-evidence-no-endorsement-of-carbons-major-effect/
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/925—a-factor-that-could-close-the-global-warming-debate-193.php
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
@frank Lansner:
In several places you have a comma when it appears you intend a decimal point.
R. deHaan says:
No…This number, as near as I can determine, comes from looking at the transient climate response, not the equilibrium climate sensitivity. I.e., there would be additional warming “in the pipeline”. You can see the IPCC report for a discussion of the transient climate response and estimates of it; they are always smaller than estimates of the equilibrium climate sensitivity.
Welcome back Mr. Lansner! As a technician, not a scientist, I find it frustrating to argue with doctors and PhD’s trained in the medical sciences who find evidence of CO2 driving temperature in the Vostok (a Vostok series) and Greenland graphics. If one is paying attention to what one sees, it really is inescapable that we are living on borrowed time as far as the amount of time the current interglacial warm period has left. I have used Mr. Lansners ’09 article from WUWT many times. Here is another good reference using the ice core data, from WUWT. I have come to the conclusion that AGW is a belief rather than an evidence based phenomenon. It is the same old thing- you can make people believe anything you want if you present the evidence in the right way- even scientists and doctors. What I can’t understand is why it matters wether or not CO2 is the driver? The evidence from Antarctica and Greenland is clear- the chance of a huge temperature increase in the next 20,000 years or so is remote to nil. The chance of the earth getting very cold for 50,000+ years or so is very high and getting higher with each passing year.
What does it take to make people see that we are in the midst of only the fifth small interlude where the earth’s temperatures were in an average range equal to current temps? That, as in the story of the ant and the grasshopper, we better start preparing for what the evidence shows is inevitably heading our way. That is if the cycle of the last 800,000 years or so continues. Here and here (see graph- “Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time”) are two graphs that show that what the AGW buffs consider “warming”, is, in reality, not very warm at all! Leave it to the Geologists to bring in a little long term perspective. It appears that on an even longer time scale over many millions of years, we are actually in an “ice-house” period with average temps in the 10 deg C to 12 deg C range. If the earth enters a “hot-house” period, average temps could reach the 25 deg C range! Just the thought that human activity could affect the earth’s climate cycles, or that man could change or alter those cycles significantly is the height of arrogance. As an example, suppose the earth began having eruptions on the scale of the Siberian or Deccan traps? Do these statists actually think they could seriously have an effect on those events??? I think that AGW is more an attempt to gather power and pick our pockets while they have the chance.
re: the “typos” or awkward enlish phrasing, I would refer readers to the editor’s note in the ’09 article: “(Note from Anthony – English is not Frank’s primary language, I have made some small adjustments for readability, however they may be a few passages that need clarification. Frank will be happy to clarify in comments)“
@JohnWho:
Frank isn’t discussing temperature rise directly attributable to the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. Instead he is looking at the asserted feedbacks which are necessary for AGW proponents to justify 3-6c warming claims (and that have been accordingly built into the models). As I take it, it doesn’t matter what the driver of the initial temperature increase is, with the feedbacks that have been claimed we should be seeing far more pronounced temperature increases in the ice core records.
One could argue that sharp increases on a small timescale might have been masked by statistical smoothing or inherent flaws in the proxy data, but then you’d have to explain why this wouldn’t also be the case with the ‘Hockey Stick’ graphs.
I’m no scientist, but this is how I understand it- apologies if incorrect. Thanks for another great article Mr Lansner!
Canadian Mike says:
Well, it may not have gone off the charts but it was much warmer. Note that since temperature depends logarithmically on CO2 concentration, a concentration of 16 times higher is only expected to produce a temperature change 4 times as large as a doubling would.
That may be so from what you have read…but it suggests that you are not reading the actual peer-reviewed scientific literature. It is difficult to get accurate and high-resolution estimates of both CO2 and temperature but when they have been obtained, the correlation is generally found to be strong. Of course, on long enough timescales, one also has to consider other important factors that affect the climate (like continental drift).
Well, those who actually study past climates would beg to differ with you. Their evidence suggests that, if anything, the current model estimates for climate sensitivity may be too low to account for the paleoclimate data: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;306/5697/821
They don’t introduce mythical forcings. What they do find, however, in looking at the 20th-century temperature record is that it does not constrain climate sensitivity very well because, among other things, there are some very real forcings (mainly aerosols) whose values are very uncertain. This is why better empirical constraints on climate sensitivity are derived from paleoclimate data and such things as looking at the climate response to the Mt. Pinatubo eruption.
We need more CO2 if we are going to feed the masses. Ooops…there will be no masses when those stuck in ice and snow start eating each other; as they did in Europe just a few hundred years ago. Children were roasted on the fire. Donor Pass Syndrome. Maybe Pfizer can develop a pharmaceutical to reduce DPS.
JohnWho, Canandian Mike has answered you, but I’d like to be a trifle more direct.
You are committing the “natural vitamin” fallacy, which is humanocentric hubris. Carbon dioxide has no maker’s marks or serial numbers. It has one carbon atom and two oxygens, and if it had more or fewer of either, or something else in addition, it would be something else with different properties and therefore not be part of this discussion. The same can be said with equal force of the carbon and oxygen atoms themselves, and of the protons and neutrons that make them.
So it doesn’t matter if carbon dioxide is made by little pink daisies or dark satanic mills. It’s carbon dioxide, wherever it came from. There are many sources of carbon dioxide, from the respiration of fleas to orogenic eruptions, and the only question is how much, because once a carbon dioxide molecule has escaped into the wild its source doesn’t influence what effect it will have.
A huge proportion of the AGW hysteria is driven by the same hubris. We look about us and see great local effects of human activity, and “reason” that our effect on the planet as a whole must be in equivalent proportion. It ain’t so, but try to tell that to the little minds that desperately search for some evidence that they are not just relevant but important to the Cosmos.
Regards,
Ric
Tarpon, you write:
“the next glaciation epoc is right around the corner. And nothing we can do about that. If we were smart, we would prepare for that inevitable eventuality.”
yes, isnt it funny, We are taking expensive precautions against larger meteor impacts happening with intervals of million years, but an ice age that will occur within thousand years? Nope, NO precautions…. simply because its not politically correct?
K.R. Frank
GeorgeG says: December 9, 2010 at 9:14 am:
@frank Lansner: In several places you have a comma when it appears you intend a decimal point.
That is the European convention, George. We use decimal points, they use commas. It does take a bit of getting used to though.
John Who, you write: “The addition of CO2 into the atmosphere by humanity is, arguably, not a natural occurrence, is it not? Does this unnatural act then operate outside of anything we’ve seen in the past?”
John, its widely accepted that CO2 itself will just create a minor temperature increase. The “dangerous” part is that IPCC et al. claims that just a little heat today wil create huge positive feedback and thus huge temperature increase.
So, John, CO2 – natural or not – is only itself resulting in a tiny temperature increase. The hypothesis is that just a little heat (from human Co2 or anything else) will make the world go hot like h… due to feedbacks.
What i did was just to check the past, if we earlier has encountered any such huge heat spikes. But there are hardly any. If it takes only a little heating to provoke a big heating then we should have seen big heatings before. And we havent really, thats the point. And more, we also see that the present temperature increase appears very normal in compare with interglacial temperature increases. This does NOT suggest that co2 has the effect you might fear.
K.R. Frank
Joel Shore says:
Well, those who actually study past climates would beg to differ with you. Their evidence suggests that, if anything, the current model estimates for climate sensitivity may be too low to account for the paleoclimate data: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;306/5697/821
Those who study past climates have graphics taken from data that literally unlink CO2 from temperature.
IceHouse or HotHouse shows that our current avg. temps are in the IceHouse phase of the earth’s climate history, irregardless of CO2. You warmists seem to think that a rise of 2,3, or 4 deg C is alarming. Try global avg. temps of 22 deg C! Or, if the cycle shown in the Vostok graphs holds for another hundred thousand years or so, we will probably see global avg temps in the 6 deg. C range with a mile of ice on top of Chicago! Either way, neither CO2 nor insignificant man has anything to do with it.
Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time shows that there is no correlation whatsoever between CO2 and temps.
You just refuse to see what is there.
Tim Ball says:
December 9, 2010 at 7:45 am
“As I understand the graph depicted in your Figure 2 (Petit et al) was produced by applying a 70-year smoothing to the original data. Did you use the raw data before smoothing for your analysis? The one thing the atmospheric CO2 measures from stomata and the 19th century instrumental readings analyzed by Georg Ernst Beck show is higher average levels and considerable variation from year to year.”
Hi Tim Ball! I used raw data from Vostok, not smoothed. In the present analysis I only looked at the temperature data, not CO2.
BUT! now you mention my hero Ernst Beck, so sad he died, I had some nice mails from him and some of his better stuff is represented here:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/co2-carbon-dioxide-concentration-history-of-71.php
– Check it out 🙂
Thanks for commenting.
K.R. Frank
kzb:
The criticism of this will be that we are now in special times, that is, there is an anthropogenic input of CO2. Therefore there is no reason to expect this warming trend to behave like past warming trends
Got pretty much that response on another discussion after mentioning Vostok:
The current warming trend can not be attributed to Milankovitch forcing or vulcanism.
The argument really IS “This time it’s different”.
Joel Shore says:
December 9, 2010 at 9:32 am
Canadian Mike says:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the correlation between temperature and CO2 indicates CO2 concentration LAGS temperature increase, so it is important to note cause and effect when discussing these items. Of course, I’ve seen CAGW proponents argue at length that the lagging increase in CO2 somehow caused the temperature increase 200 to 800 years prior, and some of this is supposedly peer-reviewed (tells you alot about the “peers”, doesn’t it?). How that logic works is beyond me.
Nice work, but the true believers already have answered all such silly questions with:
Its different this time.
Much like all the scammers with Ponzi scheme, Internet companies, and what not.
…Their evidence suggests that, if anything, the current model estimates for climate sensitivity may be too low to account for the paleoclimate data:…
Evidence also suggests that the idea of plates of solidified crust floating around on a liquid mantle is a totally ludicrous assertion. Of course, what have you to say about the thrust of this post and not those commenting?
trying to deduce the sensitivity from the paleo records is well known, and its considerably more complex than you present here. The first problem of course is that all your measures already include the feedbacks so they cannot be so simply distangled.
If you want to see how its done:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v347/n6289/abs/347139a0.html
or try this:
Aerosol radiative forcing and climate sensitivity deduced from the Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene transition
Aerosol radiative forcing and climate sensitivity deduced from the Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene transition
Petr Chylek
Space and Remote Sensing, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Ulrike Lohmann
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
We use the temperature, carbon dioxide, methane, and dust concentration record from the Vostok ice core to deduce the aerosol radiative forcing during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to Holocene transition and the climate sensitivity. A novel feature of our analysis is the use of a cooling period between about 42 KYBP (thousand years before present) and LGM to provide a constraint on the aerosol radiative forcing. We find the change in aerosol radiative forcing during the LGM to Holocene transition to be 3.3 ± 0.8 W/m2 and the climate sensitivity between 0.36 and 0.68 K/Wm−2 with a mean value of 0.49 ± 0.07 K/Wm−2. This suggests a 95% likelihood of warming between 1.3 and 2.3 K due to doubling of atmospheric concentration of CO2. The ECHAM5 model simulation suggests that the aerosol optical depth during the LGM may have been almost twice the current value (increase from 0.17 to 0.32).
There is a wide range of sensitivity numbers from the lukewarmer end of things
( 1C-2C) to the alarmist ranges.
There are two ways to GUESS at what the sensitivity is:
1. empirical studies of long temperature records and proxies.
2. Modelling ( what we use in engineering design)
Ther is no way to calculate it directly. the ranges of estimates is broad. its not likely to narrow. C02 causes warming. No credible science says otherwise. HOW MUCH warming is a scientific debate. What we should do about it is a MORAL debate.
If people dont accept the fundamental physics ( C02 warms) then they have no voice in the scientific debate and no standing in any moral debate
Amazing how many seem to miss the point of the original post which I read as this:
Hypothesis (as espoused by AGW proponents): a small change in the Earth’s temperature from an increase in CO2 will trigger a larger, catastrophic change in the Earth’s temperature due to positive feedback mechanisms.
The fine analysis – which looks for ANY period in Earth’s history where a small change (regardless of source) triggered a catastrophic, larger change – rejects this hypothesis.
c1ue says:
“Its different this time.
Much like all the scammers with Ponzi scheme, Internet companies, and what not.”
“Ponzi schemes” – i.e. Social Security?
steven mosher says:
“If people dont accept the fundamental physics ( C02 warms) then they have no voice in the scientific debate and no standing in any moral debate”
That’s cute. So anyone who disagrees with you is immoral? No matter what their standing in the scientific community? So I guess Mr. Pachauri, by your reasoning, is a moral, upstanding world citizen? Haven’t you posted here before? How about the moral standing of Mr. Watts and all the scientists who visit here? So why do you bother with us?
Seems to me, if you marginalize us at the start, there is no debate. Oh yeah, I forgot, the debate is settled. There is no science left to explore, there is only consensus…. Says you (and AlBore).
c1ue says:
“Its different this time.
Much like all the scammers with Ponzi scheme, Internet companies, and what not.”
Ponzi Scheme – i.e. Social Security?
KD in Milwaukee: Spot on! Thank you.
Steven Mosher, you write: “trying to deduce the sensitivity from the paleo records is well known, and its considerably more complex than you present here.”
In other articles i have discussed matters with an angle like you mention here. But in the present article you fail to see (?) that i just say that
1) There are hardly any big warming peaks earlier – how on Earth can IPCC then claim that they will come now?
2) The present warming 1900-2010 does not really appear that spectacular compared with earlier temperature rises.
Steven, can you be more specific in where you might disagree here? Im not (in THIS article) using the angles you drag in.
K.R. Frank
dwright says:
December 9, 2010 at 5:45 am
I’m a bit slow on “climate science” but how can one trust an ice core to trap a gas like CO2?
Molecules are slippery things, do we know how cold gas reacts with a frozen liquid?
Resolution for temperature signal in ice cores is much better than for carbon dioxide trapped in bubbles. The former is calculated from oxygen isotope ratio of water, which does not migrate much once frozen while the latter one, being in gas phase does, so this temporal resolution for Antarctic plateau, where snow accumulation is slow is anywhere between 2000 to 6000 years. Air bubbles do not get enclosed until the firn-ice transition zone is reached, which is around a depth of 90 m at Vostok and even then there may be some thin super cooled liquid water at ice crystal boundaries, enriched in salts excluded from the solid phase. This can further serve as a vehicle of CO2 migration since this particular gas is highly soluble in cold water.
Therefore temperature and CO2 signals derived from ice cores are not directly comparable. But this article is about temperature alone, so the caveat does not apply here.
The one thing that’s different in the present century is the greatly increased human population and its concomitant influence on the environment.
And yet humanoids have been setting fire to the environment for at least 1.6 million years. It doesn’t take many humanoids to burn vast tracts. Even cave men could do it, and did. Burning an acre of forest yields as much CO2 as driving 5 to 10 cars all year. There are some 3 billion burnable acres in North America alone. Do the math.
The idea that human beings were benign transients flitting around harmlessly like butterflies until 1900 (or whenever) is absurd.
n.b. If people don’t accept the fundamental ethno-ecology, then they have no voice in the scientific debate and no standing in any moral debate. Or so say some.
RockyRoad says:
December 9, 2010 at 4:22 am
“First fix: “the raw total raw CO2 warming ” (remove one “raw”)
[Fixed, thanks]”
I would keep both of them for another sentence. Raw, raw for this great article!
Also, Mike D raises the huge point of the impacts of aboriginal burning which the AGW discussion as well as the so-called ‘wilderness movement’ ignores. The latter ignores it very deliberately because it shatters their whole premise.