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.
==============================================================
Dr. Spencer has a pdf available. He discussed the findings here.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dave Springer says:
July 31, 2011 at 4:10 pm
The so-called greenhouse effect on a water world is predominantly done by liquid water not gases in the atmosphere.
Think about it. Greenhouse gases distinguish themselves from non-greenhouse gases by two things – they are transparent to visible light and opaque to infrared light. Liquid water is transparent to visible light and opaque to infrared light. The big difference is that the ocean has over a thousand times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. Just the first 10 meters of the ocean weighs as much as the entire atmosphere above it and pound for pound water has 4 times the heat capacity of air. The atmosphere is a bit player on a water world like ours when it comes to greenhouse effect. The lion’s share of the greenhouse warming is done by the ocean not the atmosphere. At least so long as the ocean presents a liquid surface. When it’s covered by ice all bets are off.
As far as it goes – but it’s the gas of water, water vapour, which moves the heat from the Earth into the atmosphere releasing it higher up, without the Water Cycle the Earth would be 67°C – around 50°C higher than it is. But all the gases in our atmosphere, in the massive weight of the volume of the gas air and water above us, a ton/square foot, are greenhouse gases because they are the greenhouse. A greenhouse is not all about warming, but of regulating warm and cold. The volumes of the gas air also contribute to warming:
For example:
My bold. This AGW meme that greenhouse gases only warm and only by transfer of heat by radiation is cherry picking. The whole system needs to be taken into account, all the properties of the gases, liquids and solids and the processes between them.
“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.”
Well, what a surprise.. If Spencer took the transfer of heat by convection into account and understood the Water Cycle, none of this would come as a shock, it’s the natural order. The heat is taken up and away primarily by water vapour in convection, releasing it to the atmosphere higher up where it’s colder, heat flows from hot to cold, at which point the water vapour condenses out to come down as rain. Water is the main cooling mechanism of our Greenhouse, which is all the gases in the Atmosphere, at the same time as being as you say, the predominant store of warmth in our water world due to its vast amount and capacity to store heat.
The greater capacity to store heat is in inverse relationship to the amount of time it takes to warm up, (carbon dioxide warms up quickly and practically instantly loses the heat, oxygen and nitrogen hold on to it a little longer), water with its very high heat capacity and land with its lower play their part in creating our local weather systems, from the same page linked above:
.
For interest, the link I posted begins at: http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/circulation/air_pressure_p_1.html
Bystander makes no sense at all with his nonsequitur. Nothing was refuted. And as stated above, a skeptical scientist is the only honest kind of scientist. Alarmist scientists are not skeptical, therefore they are dishonest, QED. They practice no skepticism, but instead use bogus charts, and fabricate the temperature record in order to push their agenda. This is all well documented. They run and hide from debate. They do not provide transparency of their methodologies, and they refuse to follow the scientific method. Believers like Bystander condone that anti-science through silent concurrence, and reinforce those dishonest scientists’ bad behavior.