UPDATE: Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has a comment on the paper here: Comments On The Dessler 2011 GRL Paper “Cloud Variations And The Earth’s Energy Budget also, physicist Lubos Motl has an analysis here. The press release from TAMU/Dessler has been pushed to media outlets on Eurekalert, see update below.
UPDATE2: Dessler has made a video on the paper see it here And Steve McIntyre has his take on it with The stone in Trenberth’s shoe
I’ve been given an advance copy, for which I’ve posted excerpts below. This paper appears to have been made ready in record time, with a turnaround from submission to acceptance and publication of about six weeks based on the July 26th publication date of the original Spencer and Braswell paper. We should all be so lucky to have expedited peer review service. PeerEx maybe, something like FedEx? Compare that to the two years it took to get Lindzen and Choi out the door. Or how about the WUWT story: “Science has been sitting on his [Spencer’s] critique of Dessler’s paper for months”.
If anyone needs a clear, concise, and irrefutable example of how peer review in climate science is biased for the consensus and against skeptics, this is it.
I’m sure some thorough examination will determine if the maxim “haste makes waste” applies here for Dessler’s turbo treatise.
Cloud variations and the Earth’s energy budget
A.E. Dessler
Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX
Abstract: The question of whether clouds are the cause of surface temperature changes, rather than acting as a feedback in response to those temperature changes, is explored using data obtained between 2000 and 2010. An energy budget calculation shows that the energy trapped by clouds accounts for little of the observed climate variations. And observations of the lagged response of top-of-atmosphere (TOA) energy fluxes to surface temperature variations are not evidence that clouds are causing climate change.
Introduction
The usual way to think about clouds in the climate system is that they are a feedback — as the climate warms, clouds change in response and either amplify (positive cloud feedback) or ameliorate (negative cloud feedback) the initial change [e.g., Stephens, 2005]. In recent papers, Lindzen and Choi [2011, hereafter LC11] and Spencer and Braswell [2011, hereafter SB11] have argued that reality is reversed: clouds are the cause of, and not a feedback on, changes in surface temperature. If this claim is correct, then significant revisions to climate science may be required.
…
Conclusions
These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade (over the decades or centuries relevant for long-term climate change, on the other hand, clouds can indeed cause significant warming). Rather, the evolution of the surface and atmosphere during ENSO variations are dominated by oceanic heat transport. This means in turn that regressions of TOA fluxes vs. ΔTs can be used to accurately estimate climate sensitivity or the magnitude of climate feedbacks. In addition, observations presented by LC11 and SB11 are not in fundamental disagreement with mainstream climate models, nor do they provide evidence that clouds are causing climate change. Suggestions that significant revisions to mainstream climate science are required are therefore not supported.
Acknowledgments: This work was supported by NSF grant AGS-1012665 to Texas A&M University. I thank A. Evan, J. Fasullo, D. Murphy, K. Trenberth, M. Zelinka, and A.J. Dessler for useful comments.
h/t to Marc Hendrickx
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UPDATE: Here is the press release from Texas A&M via Eurekalert:
Texas A&M prof says study shows that clouds don’t cause climate change
COLLEGE STATION, Sept. 6, 2011 — Clouds only amplify climate change, says a Texas A&M University professor in a study that rebuts recent claims that clouds are actually the root cause of climate change.
Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professor considered one of the nation’s experts on climate variations, says decades of data support the mainstream and long-held view that clouds are primarily acting as a so-called “feedback” that amplifies warming from human activity. His work is published today in the American Geophysical Union’s peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Dessler studied El Niño and La Niña cycles over the past 10 years and calculated the Earth’s “energy budget” over this time. El Nino and La Nina are cyclical events, roughly every five years, when waters in the central Pacific Ocean tend to get warmer or colder. These changes have a huge impact on much of the world’s weather systems for months or even years.
Dessler found that clouds played a very small role in initiating these climate variations — in agreement, he says, with mainstream climate science and in direct opposition to some previous claims.
“The bottom line is that clouds have not replaced humans as the cause of the recent warming the Earth is experiencing,” Dessler says.
Texas is currently in one of the worst droughts in the state’s history, and most scientists believe it is a direct result of La Niña conditions that have lingered in the Pacific Ocean for many months.
Dessler adds, “Over a century, however, clouds can indeed play an important role amplifying climate change.”
“I hope my analysis puts an end to this claim that clouds are causing climate change,” he adds.
For more information about Dessler’s research, go to http://goo.gl/zFJmt
About Research at Texas A&M University:
As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is in the vanguard in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represents an annual investment of more than $630 million, which ranks third nationally for universities without a medical school, and underwrites approximately 3,500 sponsored projects. That research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.
S & B’s conclusions have now been well and truly disproved…
The reaction to their work has unquestionably demonstrated that climate “sensitivity” is at an all-time high.
I am not sure what your point is, but here is an easier demonstration:
Take a balloon and fill it with He (helium) just enough to make it buoyancy neutral (ie lift=weight of balloon). Now tie the balloon to a lever. You now have a machine, that will perform work, whenever the sun shines, on the balloon. This is NOT a perpetual machine, but a solar device like the solar cell, it is simply fueled by photogenic energy. GK
Its very commendable that you have at least created a position at which you will doubt your currently held understanding of things. Please understand that we skeptics have been doubting all presumed causes of climate change for a while now, so there is no presumed cause to which we are attached, making it much easier to doubt what we’re not attached to.
izen – so AGW is unfalsifiable with the tools (todays data, models, etc.) used to create it?
That’s the point of GRL — rapid turnaround of “cutting-edge” research. Most of the papers go from submission to acceptance — to “in-press” in under a month. Many journals are trying this approach — remember the Nature journal that was free and had really no peer-review…?
Keynsian economics and Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming have a lot in common–Both cost a huge amount and both have produced nothing noteworthy. Both have caused their own downfall.
Jean Parisot says:
September 6, 2011 at 9:32 am
I can prove anything with a model–especially if I ignore the data.
Rocky – but can you disprove it?
RockyRoad says:
September 6, 2011 at 9:38 am
What economic model do you suggest?
The funniest thing about this whole ordeal is that while Dessler is arguing the POSITIVE feedback of clouds, he is ignoring the CAGW longstanding position that clouds are a net-negative feedback. You can see that in this IPCC-AR4 graph that makes its rounds on the internet:
I’ve always marveled at that graph as people still use it with a straight face. All it says is “we don’t know what the hell Clouds do, but we guessed at it anyway. Consequently, the entirety of our CO2 forcing is really a slave to how wrong we are about clouds.”
Oops, messed up the image link:
http://www.realclimate.org/images/ipcc2007_radforc.jpg
Jean Parisot says:
September 6, 2011 at 9:42 am
Disprove the null hypothesis? That’s not my job. You have to prove your hypothesis. Then we have something to work with.
(You could pose the same question you have to a first grader, and if you come away from that with the answer that the poor tyke can’t prove it, you can’t simply say “Well, then, mine is proven.”)
RockyRoad says:
September 6, 2011 at 9:38 am
Keynsian economics and Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming have a lot in common–Both cost a huge amount and both have produced nothing noteworthy. Both have caused their own downfall.
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The similarities are striking. Both defy physics. And both seem to advocate standing in a bucket when trying to lift it.
Nick Stokes said: “Despite what people here sometimes think, the IPCC is not all powerful. They can’t by citing a paper wave away the publisher’s rights.”
There is no need for that, merely that the IPCC only include science that is freely available to the public.
Wijnand says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:59 am
Wow, Lubos goes supersonic!
Good stuff!
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/andrew-dessler-clouds-dont-reflect.html?m=1
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Good read. Quite direct and pointed.
The army marching for the truth is astounding! It seems as if they are even coming from the clouds!
David Falkner says:
September 6, 2011 at 9:47 am
Holy Smokes! Anything else! Get the government out of my life and out of my wallet–Question for you: Do you spend your dollars more wisely than the government? If you say no, then you SHOULD give it to your government (but don’t complain when it’s wasted and the economy falters like it is). If you say yes, then the nation’s economy has a chance–slim, but a chance because apparently there aren’t many saying “Yes”.
(Do you really think government is the source of wealth? –I’d start there. What do they make? What widgets do they produce? What fuels and food do they provide–no, not getting somebody else’s money so you can buy widgests, fuel and food that somebody else has produced.)
Robert E. Phelan says:
September 6, 2011 at 6:39 am
Dr. Leif, you ARE joking, right?
No joke. Although the paper [one of mine] was just a correction to an earlier one [which was submitted June 21 and accepted July 18 – which was also fast http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL048616.pdf ]. Still, a 45 minute turn-around time is impressive.
The correction was just to correct a single character in an equation. The software used by AGU to produce the published version from my electronic manuscript has a subtle bug in it, that bit me. I protested after they issued the correction that it would be easier just to fix the single character error [as everything is electronic anyway – except the printed version that is some time delayed]. It took me several days of wrangling to get them to just make the fix, but they finally relented, and the correction is now moot and will eventually be removed from the record.
To be fair, at least Spencer & Braswell were given an advance copy of Dressler’s paper the moment it entered into the peer-review process so that they could begin writing their rebuttal. sarc/
On a sunny day the arrival of clouds overhead will cause the surface to cool as the clouds will reflect and/or absorb the incoming heat of the sun. On a cloudy night the temperature will be warmer on the surface as the clouds act as a blanket and seal in the heat of the day and prevent it escaping upwards. This is from common sense obeservation of the micro situation where clouds can either cool or warm the surface depending in the situation (time of day). On the macro scale, I would imagine that increased global cloud cover would increase the Earth’s albedo, thus reflecting more solar radiation back out to the upper atmosphere and into space. I am an amateur. Is there a flaw in this observation?
izen says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:14 am
But however big the world you DON’T get two things that are the primary cause of each other.
Causal chains are unidirectional. It is a logical impossibility for A to be the #1 cause of B, AND B to be the #1 cause of A.
The dispute here is over whether the pattern of events seen in the ENSO cycle is caused by the movement of thermal energy in the pacific over several years which then causes changes in the wind and cloud patterns.
OR whether the cloud patterns cause the slow movement of thermal energy through the ocean.
Actually it isn’t, but until you show signs of having understood Spencer’s paper I can’t be bothered debating it with you. While you re-read it, consider the lag between max energy input and max temp response.
just as a cough may add irritation to an infection.
You don’t understand my correction to your bad analogy either.
But there is no dispute amonst MOST rational observers that the oceans cause the clouds, NOT the other way round.
And it is just logical nonsense to claim that causation can run BOTH ways.
You don’t understand cybernetic feedback either.
”We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H2SO4–H2O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer.”
Low cloud is formed above the boundary layer.
This won’t have been deduced from the CERN experiment, which took place in a metal box.
It is in any case irrelevant to this discussion. Spencer’s argument doesn’t rely on GCR’s forcing clouds.
RockyRoad says:
September 6, 2011 at 10:00 am
Sorry, what economic model is that?
Dave Springer says:
September 6, 2011 at 1:15 am
“These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade”
I wasn’t aware there was any significant climate change due to any cause during that period of time. Global average temperature hasn’t significantly changed in the past 10 years.
Seems like a rather glaring flaw. Am I missing something?”
one thing: The swiftness of the control freaks. It seems that control freaks are all in bogus science and science fiction, like those gremlins or those evil Martians that want to take the earth over, trapped in their myopia, and regardless of the disorder and chaos that is left to go unchecked in important things such as social and economic decline
Joe says:
September 6, 2011 at 9:49 am
The funniest thing about this whole ordeal is that while Dessler is arguing the POSITIVE feedback of clouds, he is ignoring the CAGW longstanding position that clouds are a net-negative feedback. You can see that in this IPCC-AR4 graph that makes its rounds on the internet:
http://www.realclimate.org/images/ipcc2007_radforc.jpg
Actually, the cloud portion of that graph shows the negative impact of anthro-sourced aerosols seeding clouds. So that means they are attributing an increase in cloudiness to aerosols, and that there is a negative effect from that increase in cloudiness. Still, Dessler has some ‘splaining to do. If aerosols cause cloud albedo effects that IPCC and scientific literature consider important, how does the claim that clouds can not have an albedo effect in his paper wash out with the peer-reviewed literature? How does the incoming radiation know which clouds are caused by aerosols and which are not?
realclimate asserts that clouds need not be considered ‘as they are part of the system’.
accordingly, the global temperature average is a single number that subsumes allllllll the details, none of which, therefore, need be considered.?
“SB11] have argued that reality is reversed: clouds are the cause of, and not a feedback on, changes in surface temperature.”
Now I finnaly got it:
It is not a cloud in the sky cooling Chuck Norris below. The cloud is there because Chuck Norris feels cooler.