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
=============================================================
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.
What is it temperature?…As for temperature, Tesla wrote (Tesla, Feb. 1919) that “in light of present knowledge we may liken electric potential to temperature.” Creating a low temperature region in the high energy ambient medium meant creating a sustained low electrical potential. Relative to the medium, the device creating this low pressure region could be seen as a self-cooling apparatus.
http://home.comcast.net/~onichelson/Thermodynamics2.pdf
Dessler is the fastest scientist in the world. We could fire all other warmists and still get all the warmism the world needs.
Sept 6. 1AM Roy,
this has happened to John Christy with a reply by Ben Santer appearing before him because they delayed the publication.
What a mountain out of a mole hill!! Sun makes heat. Clouds in the daytime reflect sun light and make it cooler. Clouds at night stop heat from radiating away and keep it warmer. Net, net……it depends upon if it’s cloudy in the day or at night. Anyone who goes outside once in a while knows this stuff. Seems like an inordinate amount of palaver over such simple concepts. Also does not seem too predictable as to which will happen, when. But then I am obviously not in the “mainstream” of climate science.
Nick Stokes, I’m confused. Why do you give stats for JGR when this is published in GRL? Are they the same? Also, I know it’s not your fault, but why give stats for 50% of approved papers? What about the other 50%?
Lubos summarizes by saying Dessler treats clouds as black, absorbing but never reflecting. And therefore that Dessler is a ijit.
No argument here.
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.”
Have you ever heard of a phenomena called oscillation? It is well known case of cause and effect reversing each other.
Another phenomena that is well known, is the favorite of alarmists – positive feedback. Surely you have heard of it? You know, increase in temperature causing increase in some kind of global warming gasses, which causes larger increase in temperature, ad infinitum,until we are all dead?
Just to make clear, positive feedback is what causes system to oscillate, and oscillation or runaway are 2 manifestation of same effect – depending on dynamics of the system, but it is immaterial to this conversation.
izen says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:14 am
“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.”
This is wrong; when A causes B and B causes A you have a positive feedback loop. You try to take back your first sentence a little bit by saying “the #1 cause of”; but that is ill-defined. Imagine A to be 30 % responsible for B; with 70% coming from other sources, but none of them reaching 30% alone – is A now “the #1 cause of” B? Sorting the sources by their influence, A would surely make the #1.
Well, but even if we ignore this ill-definition, and insist that A must be the dominating source of B, and B the dominating source of A, a positive feedback loop is of course still possible; A and B amplifying each other to the maximum extent possible. Say, A being the nuclear decay of one block of Uranium, and B being the nuclear decay of an adjacent block of Uranium.
Do we have a less obvious example? Think of a big city with many companies. This draws a lot of talented people from surrounding areas, and the presence of lots of talented people in one place draws more companies. A = companies; B = talented people. Causality works in both ways here.
Well, if it were impossible we would never have invented the term “positive feedback”.
But wait. You didn’t say anything about the sign of the influence. A negative feedback loop is an even more ubiquitious example of causal loops. Wherever some system stays in a range of possible states there’s such a feedback loop.
Classical example is an island with a population of rabbits and a population of foxes; where the size of one population is cause for a change in the size of the other population; which leads to oscillations, (Runge-Kutta differential equations usually being used to describe that, but it’s just an old negative feedback loop).
You said “A to be the #1 cause of B” BUT this figure of speech is misleading; a dependency might also be an inhibiting influence and it would still be called causality…
Where can we get a look at the paper? My bet it has a huge leap of assumption in it that has no proof or even compelling theory to support it.
REPLY: http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2011.pdf
“I hope my analysis puts an end to this claim that clouds are causing climate change,” he adds.
Therefore if the entire planet where cloudless this year, then next year the entire planet is covered 100% in cloud, then there would be no significant change in global temperature between the two years, given all else were to be constant; BUT, Dessler adds, “Over a century, however, clouds can indeed play an important role amplifying climate change.”
…but remember “The bottom line is that clouds have not replaced humans as the cause of the recent warming the Earth is experiencing,” Dessler says. He ust have the AC turn off…suffering from heat stroke. 🙂
AJStrata says:
September 6, 2011 at 11:14 am
Where can we get a look at the paper? My bet it has a huge leap of assumption in it that has no proof or even compelling theory to support it.
===================================================================
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2011.pdf
AJ, the comments above may be useful.
The cut off date for papers to be included for the next IPCC report WG1 is as follows:
By this date papers should be submitted for publication to be eligible for assessment: 31 Jul 2012
By this date papers cited by WG must be published or accepted (with proof – such as a letter of confirmation from the journal editor): 15 Mar 2013
http://www.nzclimatechangecentre.org/ipcc/ar5
Does this means in order for Spencer/Lindzen and Co to get something more into AR5 (other than an off hand reference to being “scuttled” by Dessler 2011) they have to submit a new paper by 31/7/2012 and have the paper accepted by 15/3/2013? Not impossible, but what are the odds of a fast turn around for either?
From Dessler11
“n AMIP models. This means the interaction in these models is one-way: clouds
respond to SST changes, but SST does not respond to cloud changes. In other words,
realistic ∆Rcloud variations are generated in these models by specifying ∆Ts
variations. The suggests that the observed lead-lag relation is a result of variations
in atmospheric circulation driven by ∆Ts variations and is not evidence that clouds
are initiating climate variations. This conclusion also agrees with the energy budget
presented earlier that concluded that clouds are not trapping enough energy to
explain the ∆Ts variation”
I recall a recent posting (It may have been here, or elsewhere, or perhaps both. I’m really tired at the moment) which discussed a study that questioned how GCMs with widely varied climate sensitivity could be tuned to track the observational temperature record so similarly. They discovered that the modelers varied the “aerosol factor”, i e clouds, to match their sensitivity estimates to bring the models in line. This would seem to be wildly at odds with the above. As I said I’m too tired to chase down the link right now, but perhaps someone else who saw it will help a bro out.
@- Jeremy says: RE- It IS a logical impossibility that A causes B AND B causes A. That IS nonsensical…
September 6, 2011 at 8:33 am
“How long has it been since you’ve studied Quantum Mechanics?”
Not long enough?
I know causation can become a slightly problematical concept in QM, but unless you are going to invoke temporal loops around singularities there is no logical possibility that if A causes B then B also causes A. It would require a causal influence to travel BACK in time.
Unless you have a example of such a causal loop I will remain convinced it is an incoherent concept. Either ENSO causes clouds which can have a (limited) feedback on the evolution of the ENSO cycle; -OR- Clouds cause ENSO so that the ENSO cycle can only occur AFTER cloud variations cause it.
Only Lindzen and Spencer seem to favor the second option – or worse, they illogically claim BOTH causal chains occur!!!
@- Jeremy says:
September 6, 2011 at 9:25 am
“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.”
In doubting ALL presumed causes of climate change is there ANY evidence that would make you doubt your doubt !?
Or is your ubiquitous doubt impervious to all empirical evidence ?!
@- Theo Goodwin says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:39 am
“So, why did the Warmista give up incrementalism? And please do not trot out that tired old menagerie of excuses about climate being chaotic, holistic, or enlightened.”
For the same reason we don’t expect incrementalism in the seasonal changes. The solar energy arriving at the surface may be changing incrementally as axial tilt and orbital position cause seasonal change, but the actual temperature does NOT change incrementally. It can be warmer in April than in May, or colder in October than November. Only by taking the average over 10 days or so can you find the incremental seasonal change buried in the daily variation.
P. Solar: Good comments.
izen says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:20 am
“I have stated before that IF the next decade is cooler than 2000-2010 then I would at least doubt AGW theory, or be looking for negative factors impacting the extra thermal energy retained by the additional CO2.”
So, if there are data not yet available which could change your position… Is it not premature to advocate societal upheaval and massive reallocation of resources to address what may not be a problem?
David Falkner says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:41 am
“Unless, of course, there was some upper boundary on temperature that we could only approach asymptotically. Sounds like a job for clouds.”
Or, for radiation of heat which increases as T^4 – rather difficult to overcome that. The nomenclature often throws off the newly acculturated. The idea is not that there is overall positive feedback, but that there is internal positive feedback embedded within an overarching negative feedback loop. Such a positive feedback would have the effect of amplifying the input forcing response without creating overall instability.
The IPCC claims the feedback is positive on the basis of known physical properties of water vapor. S&B have been arguing that the feedback is likely overall negative due to the effects of clouds, but appear to have concluded that the data are too corrupted by other processes to nail it down precisely. Dessler is arguing that it is impossible for the data to be so corrupted. But, based on the quality of his previous work, and the fact that, that claim is rather bold, I expect that he is wrong, but I need to read the paper to see how he justifies it.
An interesting take on it…
http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/06/the-stone-in-trenberths-shoe/
fwiw.
Having read the paper I can see how the turn on it was so rapid.
There’s not much there.
One thing of note: SB11 did apparently play some games with selecting which model results to show. That was a mistake on my view.
OK, downloaded the paper and it is ripe with unfounded assumptions and poorly staged straw men. I will post a blow by blow rebuttal later, but clearly this was rushed out and is more politics than ‘science’.
For example, the front matter states “the question of whether clouds are the cause of surface temperature changes, rather than a acting as feedback” is a unsubstantiated bit of tunnel vision. Clouds are produced in response to more than simple surface temperatures (or ocean temperatures). I would think a PhD in climate would no better than to begin the debate with such a silly straw man.
Clouds are usually created in boundary conditions along fronts. Clouds can be created during cooling AND warming transitions. Clouds also act as thermal energy conveyor belts moving energy and H2O up and down the atmospheric columns. Clouds also provide feedback to ocean heat (transporting energy and H2O across immense distances.
Clouds ABSOLUTELY impact surface temperature readings. At night they hold in heat. On the coasts fog banks reflect heat and keep surface temperatures many degrees cooler than their inland neighbors (go to San Fran sometime to experience this impact).
This is such a simpleton model it begs the question of why it would be in any ‘scientific’ paper at all?
Again, this ‘paper’ misses the entire systemic dynamic of temporal and distance changes that clouds produce. Clouds move energy. Right now in DC, clouds are dumping energy picked up in the Atlantic (in the form of inches of rain). The surface temperature here in DC had NOTHING to do with the impact the clouds are having on our temps (cooling them down dramatically).
Good lord, PhD have really lost their value over the last few decades.
The fundamental flaw with this “rebuttal” is that the El Nino-La Nina cycle is a weather pattern, not climate change. The trade winds are cyclically disrupted by waves of temperature change under the ocean surface. Short of the ocean cooking-off, there would be similar cycles even if there is overall climate change. They are quite safe and correct in saying that clouds have little (quantifiable) impact on this cycle, but it doesn’t apply to the question at hand.
izen says:
September 6, 2011 at 11:34 am
“I know causation can become a slightly problematical concept in QM, but unless you are going to invoke temporal loops around singularities there is no logical possibility that if A causes B then B also causes A. It would require a causal influence to travel BACK in time.”
When Spencer says “clouds influence temperature AND temperature influences cloudiness” he does NOT imply that a particular cloud traveled back in time, izen. Rather, it’s different clouds at different times. Get the concept?
Wow:
1 Journal
30 days
131 scientific papers
703 sciency pages
13 editors
Conclusion: Turning out papers like a real paper mill.
Note to self: bleeding hell, that’s why they charge for every paper. o_O
Dessler’s results are essentially the same as Spencer’s.
I think Dessler is going to have some explaining to do.
It really comes down to the argument that error bars are needed, additional data needs to be included and clouds are only treated as a one-way feedback in the models (so Spencer should not be considering them as a bi-directional feedback/forcing)]. Big Deal.
Dessler’s argument that only temperature affects clouds is pegging my logic alert meter. Assume for the sake of a very simplistic equation CD = CN * T where the threshold of cloud nucleation is CN, cloud density is CD and T is temperature. They are all interdependent mathematical relationships. Dessler is essentially stating that any change in T will also change CN and CD. That makes perfect sense. However, given the relationship, any change to CN or CD should result in a change to temperature.
Forgiving my way over simplified math, Spencer and Braswell’s argument asserts:
CD = CN*T works
CN = CD/T works
T = CD/CN works
Spencer and Braswell’s bidirectional argument makes perfect logical sense. Dessler, on the other hand says only T can change and there exists no mechanism for CN or CD to change, thereby affecting T. That can make sense if there exists no mechanism that can affect CN (or CD for that matter) independent of T.
Yet we know that CN can be affected by the concentration of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in the atmosphere – a relationship that is known to have more than one mechanism and mode. Dessler’s argument seems to unceremoniously dismisses the notion that any mechanism independent of temperature exists. Given that Spencer and Braswell’s argument makes perfect mathematical sense and Dessler’s argument ignores known mechanisms that can affect CN, I’ll have to side with Spencer and Braswell on this one. Dessler is wearing blinders.
One of the better discussions I’ve found on cloud condensation nucleation and its general affect on clouds and energy balance can be found here:
http://www.newmediastudio.org/DataDiscovery/Aero_Ed_Center/Charact/A.what_are_aerosols.html
Thanks for the updates, Anthony. The analysis by Steve McIntyre is quite interesting, and Lubos Motl’s response is most eloquent.
I meant to say “Assume for the sake of a very simplistic argument the equation CD = CN * T where the threshold of cloud nucleation is CN, cloud density is CD and T is temperature.”