Reposted from Dr. Roger Pielke Sr’s blog
New Paper “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” By Spencer and Braswell 2011
There is a new paper published which raises further questions on the robustness of multi-decadal global climate predictions. It is
Spencer, R.W.; Braswell, W.D. On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance. Remote Sens. 2011, 3, 1603-1613.
The University of Alabama has issues a news release on it which reads [h/t to Phillip Gentry]
Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”
The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
The previously unexplained differences between model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming have been the source of often contentious debate and controversy for more than two decades.
In research published this week in the journal “Remote Sensing” http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf, Spencer and UA Huntsville’s Dr. Danny Braswell compared what a half dozen climate models say the atmosphere should do to satellite data showing what the atmosphere actually did during the 18 months before and after warming events between 2000 and 2011.
“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”
Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in a warming cycle. The models forecast that the climate should continue to absorb solar energy until a warming event peaks. Instead, the satellite data shows the climate system starting to shed energy more than three months before the typical warming event reaches its peak.
“At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being gained,” Spencer said.
This is the first time scientists have looked at radiative balances during the months before and after these transient temperature peaks.
Applied to long-term climate change, the research might indicate that the climate is less sensitive to warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere than climate modelers have theorized. A major underpinning of global warming theory is that the slight warming caused by enhanced greenhouse gases should change cloud cover in ways that cause additional warming, which would be a positive feedback cycle.
Instead, the natural ebb and flow of clouds, solar radiation, heat rising from the oceans and a myriad of other factors added to the different time lags in which they impact the atmosphere might make it impossible to isolate or accurately identify which piece of Earth’s changing climate is feedback from manmade greenhouse gases.
“There are simply too many variables to reliably gauge the right number for that,” Spencer said. “The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations.”
For this experiment, the UA Huntsville team used surface temperature data gathered by the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Great Britain. The radiant energy data was collected by the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments aboard NASA’s Terra satellite.
The six climate models were chosen from those used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UA Huntsville team used the three models programmed using the greatest sensitivity to radiative forcing and the three that programmed in the least sensitivity.
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Dr. Spencer has a pdf available. He discussed the findings here.
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Yeah, they were; postumously dragooned, Shanghaied, and drafted. The AGW press gang dug ’em up and shot ’em full of Zombie Juice.
A quick question: what king of energy is it being emitted from Earth? Could this be back scatter related to the recent paper on SO2, or is it more ground emitted IR?
Brian H says:
July 28, 2011 at 10:09 am
“Oh, and radiation from a cold body does not cool a warm one.”
That is a general statement, but it actually only holds under specific conditions. This isn’t one of them.
Joseph Ryan-This paper regards looking at cooling and warming events, so unless there were spikes of SO2 tightly connected to individual spikes in temperature, the findings of more SO2 (and from what I’ve seen, it’s very little additional material) in the atmosphere recently has little bearing on the results discussed here. But from my reading of Roy’s work prior to this paper, the fluxes are a mix of reflected solar radiation and the emitted (or un-emitted) infrared. The larger signal is in the reflected light, though. It appears to be directly linked to changing cloud cover in response to or causing temperature variations.
Oh, well, my question was regarding the earlier paper that stated that the lack of warming in the last 15 years was do to China and India’s massive number of coal power plants. In that study they determined that the lack of warming was due to increased SO2 back scatter of solar radiation.
I just wondered if the study had determined that it was ground emitted IR and not SO2 related back scatter.
Dr. Roy Spencer is on the board of directors of the George C. Marshall Institute, and on the board of advisors of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. End thread.
REPLY: Al Gore is on the board of Apple and Google and many other green enterprises. Unlike Dr. Roy Spencer, Gore published science fiction rather than science that has been peer reviewed, and has made millions of dollars pushing it, and has been far more influential than Dr. Spencer in shaping world opinion. Therefore, your point is denied. – Anthony
Brian H says:
July 28, 2011 at 10:09 am
Brian W;
You appear to be distinguishing IR and LW radiation. What is this marvelous distinction?
There is a difference between Near Infrared and Thermal Infrared – near is not thermal.
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html
http://www.webcitation.org/5y68yeeRD
AGW has created a new physics, it’s science fiction. It claims that Thermal IR does not heat the Earth. Doesn’t even reach it.. Nonsense of course, the heat we feel from the Sun is thermal infrared, the same heat that the land and oceans get and which is what heats them up.
AGWScienceFiction says Visible light converts land and oceans to heat, nonsense again. Visible light cannot heat oceans, regardless how far blue visible travels, it is not heating the water any more than visible light is heating the air, nitrogen and oxygen molecules scatter visible light. Water is a transparent medium for visible light, it is transmitted through it. The AGWScience is physically impossible, fiction.
This isn’t about Al Gore. This is about a rogue “Climate Scientist” trying to convince people that Climate Change isn’t something we should be worried about. Most Climate Scientist know and accept that humans are influencing our climate for the worst. Somewhere around 97%.
If there is any fiction here it’s creationism. Something that Spencer foolishly believes in.
Brian says:
“Most Climate Scientist know and accept that humans are influencing our climate for the worst. Somewhere around 97%.”
You believe something that just ain’t so. Had you omitted “for the worst,” you could have at least had somewhat of an argument, even though your 97% figure is preposterous, and has been repeatedly debunked here.
Despite a ≈40% increase in CO2, the planet has warmed a piddling 0.7°C over a century and a half, and most of that warming is due to the planet’s emergence from the LIA.
The added warmth is good, not bad, as is the added CO2.
Smokey says:
July 28, 2011 at 3:25 pm
“You believe something that just ain’t so. Had you omitted “for the worst,” you could have at least had somewhat of an argument, even though your 97% figure is preposterous, and has been repeatedly debunked here.
Despite a ≈40% increase in CO2, the planet has warmed a piddling 0.7°C over a century and a half, and most of that warming is due to the planet’s emergence from the LIA.
The added warmth is good, not bad, as is the added CO2.”
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/06/scientists-overwhelmingly-believe-in-man-made-climate-change/1
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/97-climate-scientists-humans-causing-global-warming.php
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php
http://www.brighthub.com/environment/renewable-energy/articles/81275.aspx
What you’re saying just isn’t true Smokey. The real Climate Scientist agree to the tune of 97%.
Brian,
You would do well to stop repeating the alarmist talking points emitted by envirostooge-Treehugger, the cartoonist who runs Skeptical Pseudo-Science, etc., and think for yourself. The Beliefs you stated have been discussed endlessly here, and they have been thoroughly deconstructed. Use some keyword searches and get up to speed. I have no desire to spoon-feed a newbie facts that anyone with an open mind can easily locate.
Obviously you didn’t read this very article, which shows that climate models are wrong. We already knew that here. And you couldn’t get 97% of people to agree the Pope is Catholic. That number is debunked nonsensus. Science doesn’t operate by consensus. The word itself is anti-science, but the alarmist crowd clings to it like a drowning man clings to a popsicle stick; it’s all they’ve got. And now they don’t even have that any more.
Carbon dioxide at current and projected concentrations is an essential minor trace gas that is beneficial and harmless. There is no evidence to the contrary, only computer climate models. And as we see in this article by Dr Pielke, those models are wrong.
Hell’s Bells. We better cut off the funding for any more of this nonsense.
From Bart on July 27, 2011 at 11:10 am:
A. From my high school physics teacher to my university professors, simply “dropping the m” is hardwired into me as abhorrent. You might get away with setting m=1 and ignoring it somewhat when possible, but don’t forget you did it if you work with other masses. Also, the quickie units notation you used is likewise verboten, it must be accurate and as clear as possible, and the mass is not represented which can cause problems later. Heck, I was stretching for illustrative purposes when I didn’t convert to meters per second.
B) Bowling balls were specified, not tar balls. So why go with an inelastic collision? Indeed, by showing conservation of kinetic energy I was implicitly specifying an elastic collision. Also the example was an analogy for heat transfer. So why add in a heat loss component and muck things up?
As it is, your result is in agreement with what Wikipedia says happens with a perfectly elastic collision between equal masses, they exchange velocities, even though you specified it as inelastic.
Brian:
1. That 97% number came from asking two questions that were so broad that even skeptics (including me) would have answered Yes to them.
2. The restriction of the selected pool of 77 on the basis of their having published over 20 papers on climate biased the results. Naturally, a believer is going to blather on about his topic of interest more than a skeptic. E.g., an astrologer or phrenologist will have written more about his field of interest than a debunker. It doesn’t make him a better authority on the matter.
3. Most climatologists went into the field because it gave them an outlet for their greenie finger-pointing. Climatology has become a branch of environmentalism, with its “don’t touch nature” bias and its knee-jerk precautionism. Similar biased selection occurred in the field of recovered memory therapy.
Smokey,
“James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News”
That’s all I need to know about your link.
I’m not a climate scientist, but I go with what seems to make sense the most.
“Science doesn’t operate by consensus.”
It does when the people that are paid to research the topic says it is. Why shouldn’t we listen to the most experienced people in the field? Unless you’re a climatologist, then it’s tough to see how you have a leg to stand out in comparison to guys like Hansen and Gavin.
Cont.
4. If they were skeptical and did enter the field, they would be unlikely to get grants, and so would be hard up for material to publish. If they nevertheless did write skeptical critiques of warmism, they’d have a hard time getting them published. (See the recent trouble Spencer had getting his paper published, or McIntyre et al.) OTOH, an alarmed alarmist is going to churn out all sorts of unlikely doomsday scenarios and get them published. (E.g., warming is causing bats to die off–a now-debunked thesis published twice in Nature, while papers skeptical of that idea were rejected.)
5. Were those polled guaranteed anonymity? If not, that might well have inhibited a few skeptics from participating.
6. “argusbargus” posted this here in January: “The AGW authors’ citation counts are inflated and many well cited non AGW authors are missing from the list.”
PS to #1:
Richard M says:
July 7, 2010 at 5:37 am
Zilla, the 97% number includes all those that believe that CO2 causes some warming. That includes Lindzen and about 95% of all skeptics. That’s right, most of the people who post here also fall into the 97% number. The number you fail to understand is that ONLY 41% believe in the “C” in CAGW. And, the survey itself was taken before ClimateGate so I’d expect that number would be less today.
Bart says (July 27, 2011 at 10:28 pm): “Look at it this way: if you had such a system, would you advertise it?”
So cosmology has “dark matter” and “dark energy”, climatology has “dark heat’ (hiding in the oceans), and now–not to be left out–the stock market has “dark millionaires”. 🙂
And here I am: just in the dark.
Myrrh says:
“AGW has created a new physics, it’s science fiction. It claims that Thermal IR does not heat the Earth.”
Now there is an odd twist! Usually the claim is that AGW is inventing, not denying, the heating ability of thermal IR. The ~ 325 W/m^2 of “back radiation” is entirely thermal IR heating* the earth. The ability of thermal IR to help warm the surface is a CORNERSTONE of AGW theory.
* I don’t really want to get into the whole debate about exactly what “heating” means. The thermal IR from the atmosphere to the surface (ie “back-radiation”) certainly does add energy energy to the surface, raising the temperature higher than it would be without that back-radiation.
Brian says (July 28, 2011 at 7:20 pm): “Unless you’re a climatologist, then it’s tough to see how you have a leg to stand out in comparison to guys like Hansen and Gavin.”
Wow! Ad hominem, appeal-to-consensus, and appeal-to-authority all in one thread! Must be some kind of record. If he can just manage to work in the Precautionary Principle, he’ll have a no-hitter!
My God this is exciting!
“REPLY: Al Gore is on the board of Apple and Google and many other green enterprises.”
Does he still have a share of that carbon offset company?
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=40445.
Brian,
Your ad hominem dismissal of an individual simply because you can not refute his science tells us all we need to know about you. And I should remind you that the scofflaw James Hansen has made multiple predictions since the 1980’s — not one of which has turned out to be accurate.
And the odious Gavin Schmidt is a U.S. government employee who uses his position to censor free speech. How do you excuse that anti-Americanism? Schmidt also famously lost his debate with Michael Crichton [risibly blaming his loss on Crichton’s height], and now Schmidt lacks the cojones to debate any skeptic — just like most every other frightened climate alarmist. You are being led by the nose by cowards. How does that feel?
If you actually want to learn about the issue at hand, read up on MIT’s Prof Richard Lindzen, who has forgotten more about the climate than all the realclimate clowns combined. The choice is yours. You can believe what grant-seeking climate charlatans like Mann and Schmidt are spoon-feeding you, or you can learn some honest science. This is the place to learn real science, not at propaganda blogs like RC and skeptical pseudo-science.
Smokey asks “Thanks for the links. But I wanted confirmation showing that an individual has produced a stock market model that made him fabulously wealthy, by accurately and consistently predicting future market actions.”
Start with this – layman terms.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/01/fast-loose-and-out-of-control.html
This type of trading is both common and profitable – and all driven by models/algorithms.
If the point you are trying to make Smokey is that you can’t model complex things you need to look elsewhere since it is – as Bryan indicated.
Smokey says “If you actually want to learn about the issue at hand, read up on MIT’s Prof Richard Lindzen, who has forgotten more about the climate than all the realclimate clowns combined. ”
Not sure I’d pick Lindzen as a poster child – lots of know issues with his statements. And that isn’t an ad hominem attack, it’s just being accurate.
Nice Smokey. Well said.
Bystander,
That is simply front-running the markets. It isn’t a program that predicts future price movements. Nice try, but just another alarmist fail. And the internationally esteemed Prof Lindzen still knows more about the planet’s climate than the bozo clowns you worship.