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.
When everything looks like a nail, all you want is a hammer.
jack1947 says:
September 6, 2011 at 10:11 am
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?
Not at all – but now let us assume that the clouds remain overhead for a week. Although they are ‘acting as a blanket’ at night their albedo is keeping more heat out, The result is at the end of the week it will be significantly colder than had the clouds stayed away. It is the persistence of the cloudiness that is important. Also as I had pointed out earlier – clouds do not need a forcing heat to form they will form at the boundary of land and sea just because humid air is lighter than dry air.
BA;
Care to actually identify yourself in order to back that statement? Or are you just a coward bleeting from the shadows? Dressler’s paper robust? you mean the one that says there has been no warming for the last ten years? The one that contradicts things that SB11 never even said? But contradicts nothing it did say? That one? Or another one?
If you don’t have the balls to identify yourself, then just STFU.
With apologies to Joni Mitchell,
Thus sayeth the team:
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down and still somehow
It’s clouds’ illusions I recall.
I really don’t know clouds at all.
This is very funny…. the CAGW scientists are running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to plug all the holes in their leaky dam of CO2 scaremongering.
BA – Wagner wasn’t ashamed of anything. He was afraid of a beatdown from his warmist peers. He failed to keep the skeptics out, that’s his sin.
Julian in Wales says:
September 6, 2011 at 2:34 pm
Tell me this is not planned, look at what has happened within the space of four days. …..
Actually Julian, the Warmists must have been stockpiling and coordinating this firepower while SB11 was still in review, in anticipation.
“Care to actually identify yourself in order to back that statement?”
No, this website (like your response) is more than a little bit hysterical, I like the anonymity. I can back up my statements, though. For example, I said that “As a contribution to science, SB11 is transparently weak.” But don’t take my word for it, plenty of other scientists noticed. For example, when Pielke Sr. cited SB11 approvingly on the blog of Texas State Climatologist and co-author (lead analyst) for Anthony’s recent surface temperatures paper, John Nielsen-Gammon, J N-G replied,
“Also, Spencer has recently dropped below my credibility threshold so don’t bother citing him here unless the work is corroborated.”
And later in that same exchange, J N-G elaborated on his low opinion of Spencer and SB11, contrasted specifically with Dessler’s more competent deconstruction:
““Spencer’s paper”: It didn’t take my colleague Andrew Dessler long to work out a demonstration that Spencer’s new paper is wrong. Many of his colleagues have counselled against publishing this demonstration, arguing that the time wasted refuting yet another in a series of incorrect papers by the same author would be better spent advancing our knowledge about the climate system and that at some point it’s better just to ignore incorrect papers. I personally agree with you that an incorrect paper should be publicly refuted in the scientific literature, but I can see how it would get annoying to be working on one public refutation after another.”
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/08/roger-pielke-jr-s-inkblot/
“Or are you just a coward bleeting from the shadows?”
Calm down, it’s affecting your spelling.
izen says:
September 6, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Theo Goodwin says:
September 6, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Theo: “In sum, Warmista claims about CO2 concentration and temperature have no connection to observable reality whatsoever.”
Izen: Or the connection goes back as far as we can detect….
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFMPP41D1486B
Theo Goodwin says:
September 6, 2011 at 3:08 pm
izen says:
September 6, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Izen: I challenged you to replace your analogy with an appropriate counterexample that refers only to CO2 concentrations and temperatures. Are you going to do it?
Theo: Do not assign me homework.
…………………………….
Interesting connection, I’ve only looked at the first link, is this really saying that Carbon Dioxide at 700 ppm is very low and this low level accounts for the cooling?
So, does this hypothesis suggest that doubling CO2 from the levels we have now, will cause global cooling?
Am I misreading this? Is this falsifying AGW claims?
Where does Dessler’s paper say no warming over the past 10 years?
“Wagner wasn’t ashamed of anything. He was afraid of a beatdown from his warmist peers.”
JEM, what you’re doing here is just making up facts to support your political convictions. Scientists, the good ones, won’t do that which is why they lose arguments on blogs like this one..
Probably nothing, but, that number is not actually found in the PDF file … nor is the name of the sponsoring organization: “NSF” or the branch: “Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences” abbreviated usually: AGS.
Excel Spreadsheet of related grants with a little more information …
.
davidmhoffer says:
September 6, 2011 at 12:52 pm
_______________
That is quite a summary! Very well put, especially for those not intimately involved in the discussions. My interest level is such that it may ultimately lead me to financial bankruptcy.
Anthony, I would agree with davidmhoffer that a leading post ‘similar to’ / ‘such as’ / ‘this summary’ would be a good idea. There is a lot to digest here. This may be one of the deciding battles for the truth, which will ultimately win.
Anthony, I fully well know why you can’t take that needed break. There is just too much breaking news!
Weak B(alls) A(nonymous), weak; esp. in light of several other superior theses (plural) on the subject …
.
I downloaded the Cloud Forcing TOA numbers from the NCEP Reanalysis2 project starting in 1979.
The average reflectance of shortwave solar radiation (albedo) by Clouds was -52.3 w/m2.
The average longwave (greenhouse) forcing by Clouds was +25.9 w/m2.
Thus, Clouds were a net negative of -26.4 w/m2.
There is very little change in the net number over the period (other than a seasonality, it is less than 1 w/m2 anomaly at any time) with no overall trend over the period. Can’t really tie it (or the individual components) to the ENSO either although most other Reanalysis products are closely tied.
There is a pretty easy means of testing this.
When we were working with the NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center in the 1990’s we designed a student satellite experiment to look at “extinction coefficients”. We were going to do this with a simple visible light camera that would look at the Earth at the same time a spectrometer would look up at the sky in the direction of the satellite. The spectrometer would measure the decrease in energy at various wavelengths in the visible spectrum while at the same time we were looking down, measuring the same thing.
This experiment would not work on a cloudy day as the spectrometer would show little energy looking up while looking down our imaging system would not have the expected dip.
Now a pedestrian version of this would be go buy a solar panel. Hook it up to a load and track the maximum power point of the panel. When the sun is out and a clear day, the panel has output of 1. On a very cloudy rainy day, the panel will have an output of about 0.1 (numbers are normalized to account for location variation). On a day with high clouds the output will be about 0.3. On a day with high cirrus clouds the output will be about 0.7.
These are numbers that I have measured and you can too.
Clouds can cut the energy reaching the Earth’s surface by 90%. Go measure it, I dare you.
“Atomic Hairdryer says:
September 6, 2011 at 1:39 am
Santer et al’s backstop paper just published in JGR:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011JD016263.shtml
Trends >17 yrs are required for identifying human effects on tropospheric temp.”
I just won a bet with myself. I predicted that Santer will retire before this time period is up. Santer was born in 1955 and the age at which retirement statistics for Lawrence Livermore Labs reaches 50% is 65 years old. We have had a decade of no temperature change so we need eight more years to be more than >17 years. That puts us at the end of 2019 and by the time anyone remembers this prediction it will be 2020 and Santer will be at the most probable retirement age.
It’s a lot easier to model climate scientists than it is to model climate.
“What exactly is the Warmist advantage of publishing the Dessler paper in GRL, as opposed to a direct reply/comment etc to SB11 in Remote Sensing?”
if there is a comment and reply to comment, the author has the last word.
if put in Remote Sensing, it would have been as a comment
“Weak B(alls) A(nonymous), weak; esp. in light of several other superior theses (plural) on the subject …”
There’s a post to be proud of.
That’s why Spencer sent it to an off-topic journal that invited author nomination of reviewers.
Am I missing something here in that the results from measuring the radiation at the top of the atmosphere from satellites is somehow inappropriate to the journal “Remote Sensing“.
It is interesting that no one is attempting to refute the actual data showing that the transportation of IR wavelength outgoing radiation is higher than the models can support.
All of the models at the end of the day stand or fall on this data. If the transportation of energy at these wavelengths is higher than the models can support, then it is the models that must be doubted (after validation of the data of course)
BA says:
September 6, 2011 at 5:27 pm
“Care to actually identify yourself in order to back that statement?”
No, this website (like your response) is more than a little bit hysterical, I like the anonymity. I can back up my statements, though. For example, I said that “As a contribution to science, SB11 is transparently weak.”
BA: Maybe this discussion is more to your liking…
http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/06/the-stone-in-trenberths-shoe/
I placed the Dessler data online and re-did the regression reported in the Science article (The peer reviewers at Science did not require Dessler to show the usual diagnostics for any regression.) Readers interested in handling the data for themselves can do so as follows. (Spencer data also shown.) …
I replicated the slope reported in the article. However, the diagnostic statistics were not imposing. The adjusted r^2 was a Mannian 0.01045. With this poor a fit, the “confidence intervals” reported in the article and illustrated in Dessler 2010 Figure 2010 are not ones that would comfort an independent statistical reviewer – not that Science requires independent statistical review for statistical calculations by climate scientists, despite Wegman’s sensible recommendations on this matter a number of years ago.
Dessler got an r^2 of what????
You have what level of confidence in Dessler?????
Leonard Weinstein says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:20 am
Evaporation of water does NOT depend mainly on air temperature, but mainly on direct solar insolation. If a cloud covers the water or ground, evaporation (by removing energy with heat of vaporization), radiation, and convection quickly cools water and ground and the relative humidity is limited despite average air temperature, since the surface air temperature will drop. At night, the clouds can slow cooling by reducing direct radiation to space, so this is a net warming due to clouds, but the overall effect is dominated by daytime fluxes, and thus clouds (at least thick lower ones cool. The comment made by D that air temperature dominates evaporation in the presence of clouds (thus maintaining more clouds), or positive feedback, is patently false.
You have obviously not experienced freezing radiation fog, which is definitely not due to ‘direct solar insolation’, as it occurs at night. In many areas of the world the fog is driven by a low wind and becomes stratus keeping the surface below cold. The cloud may then after several hours be ‘burnt off’ by the sun which provides the latent heat of evaporation. Precisely the opposite of your hypothesis.
Matt says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:15 am
@ur momisugly 220mph
maybe because the word “forcing” isn’t even mentioned in your link?
CERN did not say whether there is a forcing or not. They said the results indicate that cloud nucleation is not correctly represented/understood.
I believe I was quite clear – and the title of the CERN CLOUD paper agrees:
“CERN’s CLOUD experiment provides unprecedented insight into cloud formation”
The premise,and finding of the paper is that cosmic rays are potentially responsible for cloud formation, by increasing atmospheric aerosols. If as they seem to find, cosmic rays are helping create clouds then those clouds would be a FORCING not a FEEDBACK of “climate” … the CERN CLOUD paper notes this new information is “important for understanding the climate”
The results of the CERN CLOUD work is the proof that cosmic rays DO affect cloud formation: “…cosmic rays enhance the formation rate by up to ten-fold or more”
Additional aerosals on their own have a climate impact, as they “reflect sunlight and produce cloud droplets” … and that the “mechanism and rate by which they form clusters together with water molecules have remained poorly understood until now” …
This study shows – pretty conclusively that the models cannot be accurate – as they are just learning about this new forcing so it cannot be in the models
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-peer-pressure-hardwired-brains.html
Lars P says:
September 6, 2011 at 10:43 am
“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.
Best laugh yet on this thread! Thanks.