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.
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sarc on/Since we do not know what causes climate to change, then it must be CO2 because that is the only thing that has changed during modern times. Anyone trying to find climate forcings other than CO2 must be liquidated. /sarc off
A paper this important to AR5 has no right being behind a paywall. I hope it comes out from behind the paywall. Otherwise it will likely be Wahl and Amman and the hidden corruption of the IPCC process to exclude legitimate challenge (Jones’ famous email requesting Mann to advise Wahl to delete) all over again.
Facts, data, logic, and clear thinking are on the side of SB11. I don’t think that matters much since climate science is much more religion than anything else.
We look to models (oracles?) to tell us the shape of climate a century from now and we can not even predict a small storm four days out. Religion. We spend billions each year on the keepers of the computer models and burn at the stake (metaphorically I hope) anyone who looks at raw data. Religion.
The Catholic Church was much better to science on the whole that government grants and gatekeepers have been.
“The usual way to think about clouds in the climate system is that they are a feedback ”
Stop right there, hold it, bub.
In whose world, the GCMs or the sky I stand under? I don’t get warmer on a cloudy day that is preceeded by a sunny day, because the Sunlight is bounced back into space on the cloudy day. Where’s the feedback data beef?
And in the real world, globally, there isn’t 100% cloudiness. There are always holes and canopies of cloudiness. So, don’t confuse Venus with Earth.
“If this claim is correct, then significant revisions to climate science may be required.”
By George, I think he’s on to something there. May I suggest substantial to go along with significant?
tallbloke says:
September 6, 2011 at 1:34 am
Nice catch, tallbloke.
Other names are the false dichotomy and the false dillema.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
I got a perfect grade in Formal Logic in college with almost no effort. Most of the rest of the class were getting failing grades. Not surprisingly logic is my profession – computer hardware and software design both of which are heavily dependent on complex logic chains which boil down in the fine detail to true or false with no excluded middle. An excluded middle is what analog electronics are all about and I hate analog electronics. Too much fuzziness. I like black and white answers with no gray areas.
Perhaps the devotion to computer climate models is what makes the climate boffins view the real climate as a digital system. The real world climate is analog not digital.
tallbloke says:
September 6, 2011 at 1:47 am
I am quite certain, and I am sure that you are too, that there does not exist 100% global cloudiness on Earth, unlike Venus. The uncertainlty of how much open sky vs cloudiness is a good question.
How many years of data (reliable) do we have?
If 10 years is too short a period to detect whether climate change is actually happening or not … surely it is likewise too short a period to detect the cause of any such change?
“Or how about the WUWT story: “Science has been sitting on his [Spencer’s] critique of Dessler’s paper for months”.”
Me thinks that it should be Lindzen’s critique in the brackets?
220mph says
———
Hmmm … thats funny … I don’t see any refererence to the EXISTING work on clouds as a forcing shown in the recently released CERN CLOUD study …
———
As far as I am aware the CLOUD study was about the formation of potential cloud droplet nucleation centers and has nothing to say about cloud feedback processes. There is a big gap between the 2 issues so the relevancy is not there.
I thought the address of Texas A&M had recently been changed from
College Station, TX to Malfunction Junction, TX.
Sorry, could not resist! Some the international readers might not know
about Aggie jokes.
I think than banning hotels and guest houses from offering bed and breakfast in their tariff would stop climate change completely. What a load of pointless drivel especially when 92% of the planets population couldnt give a tupenny damn about being green or climate change or global warming and even if they did the most they could achieve by being green is four thousandths of 1 deg c reduction. Clearly there are too many people getting too much cash for participating in this hyperbolic debate and too many deranged individuals who have little else of importance in their lives, whatever is wrong with sex?
ps thanks folks for the “welcome backs” on the other thread. I never left, actually. But I’ve always seen the issue of the corruption of Climate Science as a spiritual battle, so I have to go where Great Spirit directs – whether it directs me to engage with the precise language of science, or whether it seems to take me elsewhere. I suspect there are many others with similar attitudes also perusing the pages here – people like Richard Courtney, Chris Monckton, and of course Spencer and Christy.
I’m making strong statements about Thorium to my green and “anti-nuclear” friends. Thanks to the recent articles and comments here.
Preconceptions have a nasty habit of reappearing as conclusions.
Have they read the paper? I thought the whole point was it could do both: and in one direction the feedback was quasi instantaneous, and in the other there was a time lag which accounted for a problem in the models. Don’t they want their models to be better?
I write this from under near 100 % cloud cover in Paris (those Impressionist paintings with leaden grey skies? Not artistic licence …); and it’s definitely COOL.
I suspect “the team” is in panic mode right now. Lindzen and Spencer are not lighweights and the team knows they are right. Modeling of clouds has always been the Achilles Heel of climate models and clouds (actually water vapor in general) are what turn a rather welcome 1C temperature rise per CO2 doubling into an alarming 3-5C rise per doubling. Without being able to prove that high level of climate sensitivity and with empirical observation not in satisfactory agreement with it the science behind CAGW is simply too deficient to use as a basis for draconian legislation aimed at reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
At this point in time the scientific “consensus” is falling apart, the public smelled the rat when the Climategate emails became public, and the CAGW cause is lost on both fronts. Al Gore has been reduced to a potty-mouth ranting fool. All that remains of it is rapidly declining financial/political inertia.
Climate boffins are ignoring the first rule of holes: when you find you’ve dug yourself into a hole the first thing to do is stop digging.
This whole Wagner resignation episode is just more digging. What’s really amusing is that the CAGW faithful have not only failed to stop digging, they’re digging even faster! Amazing. Amazingly STUPID, that is.
>>
Conclusions
These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade
>>
Well in that case why do *all* IPCC referenced climate models use positive cloud feedback to predict catastrophic climate change?
Dessler has a bee in his bonnet trying to refute something that Spencer et al never claimed. Spencer Bradwell 2011 simply examines the proportion of radiation that is a forcing to that which is a result of a forcing, without any specific attribution .
What SB2011 does show irrefutably is that the proportion of these two is totally wrong in the climate models.
Dessler , not Spencer and Bradwell , attributes this soley to cloud and then disproves his own claim. This paper has no bearing on the claims of SB2011.
The findings of SB2011 does not require a significant change to climate science , it just means they need to re-evaluate their fiddle factors. That would take about 2 minutes.
From the conclusion:
These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade
What happened that we now talk of climate over 10 years? Was not the kosher value 30 years?
My teeth go on edge whenever “forcing” are discussed, whether with articles in climate “science” with whom I will finally agree with or disagree. The term is a misleading invention of the climatologist and helps propagate errors ad infinitum.
Climate is a deterministic chaos system. In such systems, one cannot grab the butterfly in Japan and accuse it of causing a storm in Paris. Direct causal connections are destroyed in such systems. A realistic modelling of climate as a deterministic chaos system would be to enter all the dynamics pertaining to weather and let it develop over a century to get climate.
Once the past is fitted in such a dynamic model ( a la Tsonis et al) then one could take one by one some dynamic equations to determine the extent of the contribution to the total output. In such a study one could speak of the strength of the various inputs.
This is not currently done in the GCM’s . Some favourite “forcings” are grabbed and thrown in and developed and wiggled by hand to fit past data, and then let loose to predict future ones. There are so many parameters that the proverbial elephant would not only move its ears but it could fly and dance.
Sometimes I think that only the onset of the next Little Ice Age will shut up these deluded “scientists”.
The truth is that ANYTHING that alters the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere alters cloud quantities and cloud distribution and so affects the flow of energy into, through and out of the system That ‘anything’ can be solar variations, oceanic variations, GHG quantities and a multitude of other minor internal system processes.
Crucially anything that fails to alter that vertical temperature profile significantly is not going to have a significant effect on clouds either. Hence my doubts about the Svensmark hypothesis.
What I think happens from the top down solar point of view is that for whatever reason the atmosphere expands when the sun is active and contracts when it is inactive.
In the process the temperature of the stratosphere and mesosphere changes oppositely to the sign of the temperature change in thermosphere and troposphere. I know that s not what the ‘science’ currently says but it is what we have seen and the CFC aspect was introduced to specifically deal with those aberrant observations. I suspect that was a mistake.
The effect is to draw the tropopause upward when the sun is active and push it down when the sun is less active. Globally averaged of course.
The size and intensity of the polar vortices is a relevant factor and the outcome is latitudinal shifting of all the components of the surface air pressure distribution which changes the sizes and positions of the climate zones.
That changes the energy budget via the speed of the water cycle.
So an active sun tries to COOL the system by changing the structure of the atmosphere to let energy OUT of the system FASTER via the higher tropopause but in the process clouds are drawn poleward to let more energy into the oceans which offsets the faster loss to space.
The opposite when the sun is less active.
So the cloud changes provide a negative response to the solar effect on the structure of the atmosphere.
However the system response to bottom up changes from the oceans or GHGs is different. There the initial system response is positive. Faster energy release from the oceans or more energy in the air from more GHGs pushes the clouds poleward to allow even more energy into the oceans in a positive feedback but in the process the height of the tropopause rises just as it did with a cooler stratosphere and again the rate of energy loss to space accelerates via a faster water cycle which is sufficient to apply a negative response in due course cancelling out the combined effect of more energy from the oceans (or GHGs) AND of more solar energy into the oceans.
Thus whatever changes the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere will cause cloudiness changes that then exert a negative influence (to effects from above) or positive influence (to effects from below) and what we then experience is shifting climate zones as the height of the tropopause rises and the speed of energy flow through the system varies to cancel the forcing agent.
It is a neat solution to the problem but relies on a cooling stratosphere at a time of active sun as a natural phenomenon.
It is the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere that is key because that then causes the cloudiness changes AND the rate of energy input to the oceans AND the changes in the rate of energy transfer from surface to space.
I think it will eventually be found that the fulcrum on which the whole thing rests is the height of the stratopause which mediates the effects on the atmospheric temperature profile between competing influences from the sun above and oceans below. Interestingly that is the point above which Joanna Haigh found her unexpected ozone response to the quieter sun.
Kevin Cave says:
September 6, 2011 at 1:09 am
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Kevin
Your experience is no doubt shared by many. certainly those living in mid lattitudes will during the day in summer notice substantial differences in temperature between open skies and cloud in summer. A couple of days ago in the UK it was bright and sunny with little cloud cover and was 27degC and if you put a thermometer in the sun no doubt it would have read over 40 degC. The next day it was cloudy and only about 18 degC. The difference between sun in open sky htting your skin and sun shielded by clouds will often be 15 degC if not more. At night (other than in deserts) the difference between clear skies in summer and cloudy skies may be only a few degrees.
There are two distinct issues: are clouds (1) cause or are they feedback, AND (2) are they a net positive or a net negative? Once that has been determined, one needs to consider has there been any measurably significant trend change in cloud cover over the period in question.
I do not consider that there is such a thing as average cloudiness (to my list of variables one must add the time of year of cloud formation and the height at which a cloud is formed) and whether a cloud is a negative factor or positive factor will depend upon the combination of many variables. That said, I would be extremely surprised if overall clouds were not a net negatives, ie., overall they cool temperatures more than they raise temperatures..
When i clicked the PDF link earlier I got through, but i don’t know if will still work
[use the one on Dessler’s site ~ http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2011.pdf ~ ctm]
Andrew Dessler: Clouds don’t reflect sunlight
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/andrew-dessler-clouds-dont-reflect.html#more
Jimmy Haigh:
That exchange sounds like Kevin and Gavin.
Proof, if more proof was needed, that climate science is hopelessly corrupt.
Skeptical papers take years to be published. Consensus papers only weeks.
We are not dealing with climate science, we are dealing with climate politics, climate ideology and the climate religion.
This paper by Dessler and the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Wagner can only be described as phyrric victories for the Team.
To paraphrase Plutarch, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the skeptics, we shall be utterly ruined.”
And why is there no-one doing proper experiments on this? We have wind tunnels, why not “atmosphere chambers”, where they could test out some of these ideas? Why oh why will none of these guys get off their butt and engage with the real world?
Someone needs to tell these guys that computer games, however much fun, are not reality.
Sorry rant off 🙂
Keith Battye says:
September 6, 2011 at 2:09 am
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
You have it in one in a world where radiation dominates. But hold a second, in the real world does radiation dominate?