It seems that there’s a paper (from JeanPaul Vernier at NASA) out that contradicts the findings of Kaufmann et al 2011, where they blame China’s increasing coal consumption for lack of warming in the past decade saying coal use is adding aerosol particles into the atmosphere that reflect sunlight and therefore cool the planet. [Update, see caveat at end of this post] But in Vernier et al in press at GRL, they say
Recently, the trend, based on ground-based lidar measurements, has been tentatively attributed to an increase of SO(2) entering the stratosphere associated with coal burning in Southeast Asia. However, we demonstrate with these satellite measurements that the observed trend is mainly driven by a series of moderate but increasingly intense volcanic eruptions primarily at tropical latitudes.
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Dr B Basil Beamish writes in Tips and Notes:
Anthony,
Here is a new paper hot off the press that seems to contradict the recent concept of cooling temperatures from China’s coal use.
Author(s): Vernier, JP (Vernier, J. -P.)1,2; Thomason, LW (Thomason, L. W.)1; Pommereau, JP (Pommereau, J. -P.)2; Bourassa, A (Bourassa, A.)3; Pelon, J (Pelon, J.)2; Garnier, A (Garnier, A.)2; Hauchecorne, A (Hauchecorne, A.)2; Blanot, L (Blanot, L.)2,4; Trepte, C (Trepte, C.)1; Degenstein, D (Degenstein, Doug)3; Vargas, F (Vargas, F.)5
Source: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS Volume: 38 Article Number: L12807 DOI: 10.1029/2011GL047563 Published: JUN 30 2011
Abstract:
The variability of stratospheric aerosol loading between 1985 and 2010 is explored with measurements from SAGE II, CALIPSO, GOMOS/ENVISAT, and OSIRIS/Odin space-based instruments. We find that, following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, stratospheric aerosol levels increased by as much as two orders of magnitude and only reached “background levels” between 1998 and 2002. From 2002 onwards, a systematic increase has been reported by a number of investigators. Recently, the trend, based on ground-based lidar measurements, has been tentatively attributed to an increase of SO(2) entering the stratosphere associated with coal burning in Southeast Asia. However, we demonstrate with these satellite measurements that the observed trend is mainly driven by a series of moderate but increasingly intense volcanic eruptions primarily at tropical latitudes. These events injected sulfur directly to altitudes between 18 and 20 km. The resulting aerosol particles are slowly lofted into the middle stratosphere by the Brewer-Dobson circulation and are eventually transported to higher latitudes. Citation: Vernier, J.-P., et al. (2011), Major influence of tropical volcanic eruptions on the stratospheric aerosol layer during the last decade, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L12807, doi:10.1029/2011GL047563.
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It seems the Calipso satellite is designed specifically for this task. From Spie.org:
Since June 2006, the Cloud-Aerosol and Lidar Infrared Pathfinder Observations (CALIPSO) satellite, a joint US (NASA)/French (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) mission, has provided high-resolution aerosol and cloud profiles of the Earth’s atmosphere. The long-range transport in the tropics of several small-scale volcanic plumes has been monitored using these observations, which are unprecedented in their scope and detail. Their fate demonstrates the importance of even minor volcanic events on stratospheric-aerosol levels.
CALIPSO offers a unique opportunity to monitor aerosols and clouds in the atmosphere. The instrument is carried on a spacecraft circling the Earth in a polar orbit (see Figure 1), which provides coverage from 82°S to 82°N. The CALIPSO lidar (light detection and ranging) uses a laser that emits light at 532 and 1064nm. The laser light is scattered by molecules and particles in the atmosphere, and a portion is scattered back (backscattered) towards the spacecraft. The backscatter signal is collected by a telescope and sampled at a rate of 10MHz. The 3D location and density of clouds and aerosol layers can be inferred from the vertical backscatter profiles from the ground to the stratosphere.3 Primarily designed for studying tropospheric particles, the nighttime channel at 532nm has a high sensitivity and can, with sufficient averaging, be used to detect small-scale volcanic plumes in the stratosphere for several months, even if the aerosol density is very low.
Since June 2006, CALIPSO observed several volcanic plumes and followed them as they were carried around the world by atmospheric circulation. Figure 2 shows the evolution of the mean scattering-ratio (SR) profile between 20°N and 20°S from June 2006 to May 2010 with a temporal and vertical resolution of 16 days (CALIPSO measurement cycle) and 200m, respectively. The SR is the ratio between the total (aerosol and molecular) and molecular-only backscatter. The maxima, seen in 2006 with an SR greater than 1.2, represent two volcanic plumes, injected at 20 and 17km, respectively, by the Soufriere Hills in the Caribbean on 20 May and the Tavurvur cone of the Rabaul volcano in Papua New Guinea on 7 October. The plume from Soufriere Hills remains at the same level for three months before being slowly lifted in the stratosphere by the general circulation, while the Tavurvur aerosols, at lower levels, disappear within two to three months.
Smaller plumes, with SRs between 1.08 and 1.14, were observed at 17–19km in November–December 2008 and July–December 2009, respectively. These two plumes are further transported into the tropics after the Kasatochi (Alaska) and Sarychev (Kamchatka, Russia) eruptions on 7 August 2008 and 12 June 2009, respectively. The signal seen at 21–22km in March 2009 with an SR of 1.10–1.12 is the signature of soot particles from an extreme biomass-burning episode near Melbourne (Australia) on 7 February 2009 (‘Black Saturday’).
For the first time, those moderate events have been detected over a long period, demonstrating that eruptions with a volcanic explosivity index between three and four and located in the tropics can be an important source of aerosols for the stratosphere, a fact not fully recognized until now. The sulfuric dioxide initially injected at 19–20km is oxidized into sulfuric acid droplets and transported by the general circulation—also called Brewer-Dobson (BD) circulation—into the middle tropical stratosphere, forming a reservoir. Afterwards, those aerosols are released into the global stratosphere according to the season and the phase of the quasibiennal oscillation.5 The vertical velocity of the ascending branch of the BD circulation can be deduced by subtracting the sedimentation from the apparent volcanic-plume uplift, providing an opportunity to evaluate the mean vertical atmospheric motion in the stratosphere.
more at Spie.org here
JP Vernier has done a nice slide show explaining it all, just prior to the publication of the new paper, and you can view it here:
http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/geoengineering2011/presentations/vernier.pdf
I found this graph most interesting:
They say that small trend starting in 2002 is “No large eruptions over the last decade : but small and frequent ones”.
Update – Caveat: As Jos points out in comments, this Vernier study is about the stratosphere (15-30) where Kaufmann et al is the troposphere (0-15km) , an important distinction that I missed. That’s what I get for posting late at night while tired. However, the premise that Vernier contradicts, the issue of stratospheric aersol increase due to China coal use appears to be falsified. Perhaps though, the authors will turn to the troposphere next as this recent study suggests that the volcanic impact on climate may be significantly underestimated. The secondary nucleation process they cite may work to increase tropospheric aerosols, and also, it stands to reason the smaller eruptions, as cited by Vernier, would also inject into the troposphere as well.
Albedo reflectivity does not necessarily entail the escape of infrared energy. It is controlled by the same directionality and convective flow rates of infrared energy conditions determining the measures of responses to saturation levels of greenhouse gases.
Richard S Courtney says:
July 18, 2011 at 2:35 am
Anthony:
Thankyou for posting this. It is interesting. But my BS detector jumped when I read this sentence in the paper:
“The long-range transport in the tropics of several small-scale volcanic plumes has been monitored using these observations, which are unprecedented in their scope and detail.”
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I expect that what they intended to say was something like “CALIPSO has given us the opportunity to examine small scale volcanic plumes in much more detail than was previously possible …”
Once you’ve written a sentence like the one you cite, it’s almost impossible to see that there is an alternate reading that says something other than what you intended. So, yes, there is a plausible reading of their text that surely is BS, but no, it probably wasn’t intentional.
O/T http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/18/cern_cosmic_ray_gag/
Sorry – Just wanted to highlight this sad state of affairs
So the researchers agree that SO2 is the cause of the temporary pause in warming. In fact without the CO2 greenhouse effect it is hard to explain why the SO2 did not cause significant cooling.
So Trenberth thought it was a matter of heat being hidden in the deeper ocean.
Then we were told it was China. Now it’s volcanoes.
Where is consensus when you need it?
“Dr B Basil Beamish”
Sorry, but somebody has to say it. Best name ever.
The ceteris paribus assumptions in all of the climate theories, AGW, solar radiation, ocean currents, SO2, etc. are the fly in the ointment. As someone above noted, climate is a chaotic system. All other variables are not constant and determining the complex interactions is a very difficult objective. It’s like the salesman (or politician) who had a down year but tells his boss (constituents) that were he and his plans not so great it would have been even worse. If what you predict does not occur then you were wrong, your model is wrong and “masking” is an excuse. Important policy decisions should not be made based on such nonsense.
Drew says:
July 18, 2011 at 3:32 am
In any case, given that aerosols are reflecting some energy back into space, this information lends credence to the hypothesis that the world is undergoing a rapid warming phase and is being diminished by other factors (such as aerosols). I’m re-evaluating the whole system at the moment because the idea that there are better explanations for the warming trend are wearing thin. And, the explanations as to the stagnation of the warming trends are reasonable.
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No Drew, they are not reasonable. It would be reasonable if minor volcanic eruptions were never part of the natural cycle prior to 2002, but they were. Obviously, CO2 isn’t the driver people thought it was. I’m not sure you were reading the same study the rest of us were. What color is the sky in your world?
Re those tropical small scale plumes. Small scale is the operative word. The tropics have been quite quiet for the last decade when it comes to major plumes. Lots of volcano, little plume action. The big plumes have been in the far north. We had been taught for years that a massive vertical plume is necessary to affect weather. This paper reverses that and implies any and all volcanic eruptions do so. But volcanic action of any sort seems to me to be a constant.
It also fails to address why the Southern Hemisphere land temperatures have shown a measurable cooling trend for over a decade.
i thought carl sagan went into hiding after his nuclear winter crap was falsified by the kuwait oil fires.
this travesty seems to have 2 equal and opposite edges
Scott says:
July 18, 2011 at 5:06 am
Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong
There’s a protest singer, he’s singing a protest song..
Mark Knopfler, Industrial Disease.
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Scott, I think of that line every time someone mentions the IPCC models. I go on to say, we know without doubt all but one of those models MUST be wrong, is there any reason to believe that one of them (and one which we cannot even identify) might be right?
The apparent recent increase in stratospheric aerosols is probably too small to have had a significant effect on the temperature or it’s trend. It’s much smaller than Pinatubo or other major individual eruptions, and those had small transient temperature impacts.
However, am I the only one who spots a potential satellite inter-calibration issue between “GOMOS” and “SAGE II” where, at least in the tropics, there appears to be a persistent low bias of GOMOS relative to SAGE II, or alternatively SAGE II biased high relative to GOMOS?
Vernier’s presentation was quite interesting. I like that he makes liberal use of the question mark 😉 making it clear he knows that there is much he, and everyone else, does not yet know, but he is curious and studying the questions, searching for answers. That is what science is all about!
Rattus Norvegicus:
Thankyou for your comment to me at July 18, 2011 at 4:58 am that says:
“You are parsing the sentence you quoted incorrectly. “unprecedented” refers to the observations, not any observed effect.”
Sorry, but that is what I said, and I did not parse it incorrecly. Please read my post at July 18, 2011 at 2:35 am again.
I said the sentence is ambiguous and gives a false implication (it does) but another statement in the paper tells the truth. I quoted both statements.
Perhaps the years have made me too sensative, but climate papers containing such ambiguous statements have been so common – and have been so often misused – that my BS detector always jumps when I see such statements.
Richard
Don K:
Thankyou for your comment to me at July 18, 2011 at 8:37 am.
I think my response to Rattus Norvegicus (at July 18, 2011 at 11:16 am) covers the point. If not, then please get back to me.
Richard
Ciccio says:
July 18, 2011 at 8:11 am
” I have just read Mars has an atmosphere of 95% CO2 and a lot of methane, why is it so cold that the CO2 freezes? I know the distance makes a hell of a difference but if an extra 100 parts per million will raise the temp by 2 degrees why does 950,000 parts per million do the opposite.”
Short answer – lack of thermal capacity of the atmosphere, there is VERY LITTLE atmosphere so no thermal sink from which to re-radiate energy absorbed from the surface. On Earth there is less CO2 but it converts the LW radiation into thermal energy of the whole atmosphere, which is then available to be converted back into LW radiation half of which is re-emitted downwards.
Of course the lack of vast bodies of liquid water as an additional thermal sink doesn’t help…..
” I notice on the NASA site that the permanently frozen parts are shrinking and someone suggest it maybe the sun but that suggestion was shot down faster then a rapist in a nunnery.”
Because solar output is falling not rising at present, but is varying too little to be a significant factor. The shrinking of part of ONE polar ice-cap is a regional or even local effect driven more by the Martian equivalent of the Milankovitch cycles on the inclination and eccentricity of the axis and orbit.
Maybe the Germans decided to abandon nuclear and go back to coal as part of their attempts to halt AGW………
Wish the UK would follow suit and get rid of the idiot windmill freak we have as a ‘climate minister’.
Seems to me it would be fairly easy to calculate the full amount of SO2 from both China and all of the volcanoes over the past few years to get a total cooling effect, and then make a reasonable estimate as to how much cooling this much SO2 would have caused.
If the amount of SO2 over the past 10 years has been significantly higher than the previous 10 years in the troposphere and stratosphere, regardless of source, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that some cooling took place because of it. Through in a couple of La Nina’s, and a quiet sun, and well…you get a halt to warming. So it took all of that to mask the effects of CO2?
Two of the largest eruptions of the past 100 years happened in 1980 and 1982 (Mt St Helens and El Chicon). Isn’t that when things started getting ‘hot’? Then two more major eruptions in 1991 (Cerro Hudson & Mt Pinatubo). While you can see some cooling after these events, you can also see the Sun growing quieter at the same time. Someone is jumping to unproven conclusions again.
>”Recently, the trend, based on ground-based lidar measurements, has been tentatively attributed to an increase of SO(2) entering the stratosphere associated with coal burning in Southeast Asia.”<
And can someone tell us how can a chimney a few hundred feet high manage to send all that SO2 miles high into the stratosphere? Molecular weight of SO2 is around 64. Compared with atmospheric gases, NO2 is 28, Oxygen 32, hence it is much heavier than atmospheric gases and should tend to settle at a lower levels not higher levels. However weather and climate may dictate otherwise. .
The more climate papers that are published the more obvious it becomes that the science is in its infancy. The scientists should quit making predictions since they really have no clue. They have a lot of work to do before they can make any believable predictions.
izen says:
July 18, 2011 at 11:32 am
Your answer to Ciccio seems like a lot of hand waving. Mars has more than 14 times the amount of CO2 in its atmosphere than earth – 5.7mb mean partial pressure of CO2 compared with 0.4mb on earth.
Let’s have a better explanation as to why Mars isn’t frying because of all that CO2.
Any informed opinions here about what happens when liquid iron is bombarded with neutrons? I want to know if there is any mechanistic rationale to a connection between mantle events and the solar wind, especially the non-magnetically-deflected neutral particles. Anyone?
Carol G in BOS says:
“Any informed opinions here about what happens when liquid iron is bombarded with neutrons? I want to know if there is any mechanistic rationale to a connection between mantle events and the solar wind, especially the non-magnetically-deflected neutral particles. Anyone?”
I don’t think the neutron flux from the sun is significant.
If there IS a flux of neutral particles, long before the flux would be strong enough to affect liquid iron it would have denatured all protein and eliminated all life on Earth.
@- Billy Liar says:
July 18, 2011 at 4:13 pm
“Your answer to Ciccio seems like a lot of hand waving. Mars has more than 14 times the amount of CO2 in its atmosphere than earth – 5.7mb mean partial pressure of CO2 compared with 0.4mb on earth.
Let’s have a better explanation as to why Mars isn’t frying because of all that CO2.”
Nobody else has offered even hand-waving…. but by all means lets have a better explanation!
The CO2 on Mars does cause a ‘greenhouse’ effect of around 5degC, rather more than it does on Earth where ~90% of the 33degC ‘greenhouse effect is from other GHGs, mainly water vapour.
@- Alex the skeptic says:
July 18, 2011 at 3:58 pm
“And can someone tell us how can a chimney a few hundred feet high manage to send all that SO2 miles high into the stratosphere? Molecular weight of SO2 is around 64. Compared with atmospheric gases, NO2 is 28, Oxygen 32, hence it is much heavier than atmospheric gases and should tend to settle at a lower levels not higher levels. ”
Galileo showed by logical argument (not dropping cannonballs) that all masses fall at the same rate, heavier objects do not fall faster than light ones.
At Surface temperatures and pressures there is no significant stratification of the atmosphere not least because the molecules are moving at around 1000 miles/hour.
Good thing too, otherwise given the relative weights of oxygen and nitrogen we would be walking around in pure oxygen at sea level, which would drop to zero above a thousand metres….