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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From http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011GL049236.shtml , Dessler’s paper was “Received 11 August 2011; accepted 29 August 2011.” So a turn-around time (received -> accepted) of 18 days.
For comparison, I looked at the most recent twenty of GRL’s papers-in-press (one of which was Dessler’s). One of these was a Correction, accepted the same day it was received. Discounting that, there were two papers with faster turn-around times (1 and 2 days!), and one with an equal value. Fifteen were slower: 2 had turn-around times in the 20’s, 3 in the 30’s, 5 in the 40’s, and 5 with 50 or more days in turn-around. So this places Dessler’s paper at around the 80th-90th percentile in GRL speed.
@tallbloke regarding excluded middle (false dichotomy in my formal logic years) … Dessler has simply created a straw man at best?
According to GRL’s website, the paper by Dessler was “Received 11 August 2011; accepted 29 August 2011”. That’s 18 days. There’s no mention of the date of receipt of any revised version, which may mean that no revisions or changes were requested by reviewers. The paper seems to have had an easy run, at least as far as publication.
fredb says:
September 6, 2011 at 3:14 am
So Dessler’s publication time is not unusual
~4 weeks for one of my papers: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL048616.pdf
June 21, 2011 to July 18, 2011
Richy Roo (@RichyRoo2011) says:
September 6, 2011 at 4:40 am (Edit)
@tallbloke regarding excluded middle (false dichotomy in my formal logic years) … Dessler has simply created a straw man at best?
The first strawman is implying it must be all one or the other with regard to cloud forcing/feedback.
The second strawman is saying that if Spencer & Braswell and Lindzen & Choi were right “then significant revisions to climate science may be required”. Note the weasel word ‘may’.
I haven’t had time to absorb the paper yet so I’ll read it now and post some further thoughts on my blog.
“….have argued that reality is reversed….”
Doesn’t anyone else think that this is a strange phrase to use in a scientific paper? I cannot imagine any scientist using such a term to mean that the previously held opinion on cause and effect is reversed – it is poor grammar and ambiguous – ‘reality’ is not reversed, except into unreality. I take it to be a colloquial phrase, as in: ‘they are arguing that black is white, up is down’. It seems that their contempt for L&C and S&B is not something they are able to keep out of their scientific publications.
izen :
September 6, 2011 at 3:58 am
Where have you been the last ten years? Pricked your finger on a spinning wheel?
The indexes you quote are in stasis, not increasing, and if you have ever seen a sinusoidal curve, when one reaches the top, it looks like stasis short term.
richard verney writes “The question is whether clouds can cause a warming or a cooling, and if so whether this can lead to a trend on a long time scale basis.”
With respect, it’s more complicated than this. Cloud affect moisture, moisture affects lapse rate, lapse rate is tied in with temperature change …..
SB note diverse other effects then discuss where temperature should fit in, as a result of a forcing or a feedback or both and do not arrive at a quantitative solution.
Someone above asked how long we had recorded data on global cloud cover. About 1973, with some possible early errors. A paper with some overlap to SB re discussion of clouds is referenced elsewhere on WUWT at http://climate4you.com/ClimateAndClouds.htm#Tropical%20cloud%20cover%20and%20global%20air%20temperature
Whether it is right or wrong in part or in full, this cloud papers explains complexities that would cause prudent scientists to be less than dogmatic, as SB are.
BTW, the paper on clouds of course mentions rainfall. I have never seen a figure of the flux of CO2 from atmosphere to ocean carried by raindrops with dissolved CO2. Is it significant?
It is possible to have a paper peer-reviewed in only eighteen days (and, indeed, in only twenty-four hours) if the peer-reviewers have already seen the paper in draft and agreed their comments with the author or even collaborated with him before it was submitted. What is the betting that the peer-reviewers in this case were chosen from a panel consisting of A. Evan, J. Fasullo, D. Murphy, K. Trenberth, M. Zelinka, and A.J. Dessler?
@Harry Dale Huffman: Your example using the 1000 millibar layer on Venus is compelling, does anyone else have any thoughts on it?
Also any physicists capable of commenting on : http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1003/1003.1508v2.pdf (waaaaaaay beyond my maths)
A super speedy publication process is actually very good news. It means fundamental errors are more likely to be made. The author then has years to repent at leisure.
Sometimes GRL can be really fast:
2011GL049472
Manuscript Accepted 2011-08-29 10:00:18
Manuscript Ready for Production 2011-08-29 09:55:34
Decision Made 2011-08-29 09:54:55
With Editor for Decision 2011-08-29 09:53:15
Waiting for Reviewer Assignment 2011-08-29 09:43:37
Initial Quality Control Complete 2011-08-29 09:43:36
Initial Quality Control Started 2011-08-29 09:36:13
Author Approved Converted Files 2011-08-29 09:36:12
Preliminary Manuscript Data Submitted 2011-08-29 09:17:37
🙂
omnologos says:
September 6, 2011 at 12:40 am
“Question …where did Lindzen, Choi, Spencer and Braswell write that “significant revisions to mainstream climate science are required”?”
Spencer said it on his blog. This pal reviewed paper is essentially a response to blog posts and media attention. Don’t you remember what Wolfgang said, about how blog posts drove him to resign?
I wonder how you find reviewers for a scientific paper addressing blog posts? Genuine scientists do not have time for that sort of thing.
Izen said
“Sometimes I think that even the succession of the next decade always being warmer than the previous one will NOT shut up these deluded “skeptics”.
(not to mention the shrinking ice, glaciers, moving wildlife/plants, increasing DLR, increasing extreme events, sea level rise….) ”
I would date the general warming-with numerous reverses and advances-to date back to around 1610. When do you believe the world started to warm?
tonyb
The paper’s introduction contains a biased gem :
The usual way to think is now equivalent to reality.
One can deduce that whatever is against the usual way of thinking is against reality. Why bother doing Science then?
I wonder if this is the first peer-reviewed paper ever written to answer the newsmedia’s interpretation of another peer-reviewed paper? FoxNews has suddenly become scientifically relevant.
Henry Galt says:
September 6, 2011 at 1:18 am
But you do have a point–they admit climate hasn’t changed significantly over the last decade–is that because atmospheric CO2 levels have stabilized or perhaps even declined?
Sounds like these “scientists” have just fallen on their own climate swords for we all know that CO2 has neither stabilized nor declined in the past decade. (This has always been about CO2, right? Certainly a decade (or longer, actually) of significant non-correlation is more than just an inconvenent hiccup in their CO2-driven climate hypothesis, which they inadvertently debunk while arguing over clouds.)
Dessler’s abstract reads: “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.”
Has Dessler ever been outside? To anyone who has been outside when the sun has gone behind a cloud knows the surface temperature gets cooler. The short abstract reminds one of a Greek tragedy. The desperation is so great, the nonsense spills out over the keyboard and others in the tribe applaud.
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” is a line from a play by Euripedes. I wonder if Dessler has read the play?
How long does it take a reasonably sharp person to recognize that Dressler’s paper is just a set of straw man arguments and does not address the S&B papers main point?
I particularly like
“These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade”
A true statement! There hasn’t been any “significant climate change” over the last decade. They can’t seriously think there is anyone reading their paper stupid enough not to know this.
This non work should not be being “supported by NSF grant”.
Also the weasal words “not in fundamental disagreement with mainstream climate models,” make me strongly suspect that a fair evaluation would show that they are indeed in fundamental disagreement. This is being cynical I know, but, the obvious deception in the earlier parts of the conclusion make me question all the conclusions.
Jim Turner says:
September 6, 2011 at 4:50 am
“….have argued that reality is reversed….”
Doesn’t anyone else think that this is a strange phrase to use in a scientific paper?
Yes, I noticed that too. I was shocked that it was written at all and doubly shocked that no reviewer demanded a sentence structure more in line with scientific practice.
The posting by Leif just above suggests, in fact almost proves that no actual review of any kind occured.
Me too. The term used to be “drivers,” didn’t it? Why’d they change, except for propagandistic purposes?
stevo says: September 6, 2011 at 12:55 am
The system is biased against bad science. So-called “skeptics” produce a lot of bad science, and it’s a good thing that they have difficulty publishing it.
And for you “bad” means anything that contradicts the inflated CO2 warming predictions?
Are you telling me that Svensmark produced bad science. Or that CERN produced bad science. Are you trying to tell me anything produced by any sceptic was as atrocious as the hockey stick?
In my experience having read climate papers, the only reason no one sees that they are such atrocious science is because they don’t say anything … and I say that having the unfortunate experience of actually wanting to use the “science” in these papers.
And where did I eventually find something that could be used? In a paper on heat lost from swimming pools By that time I had a stack of papers 2inches high, and the only paper that actually set out a methodology that could be followed was one on swimming pools.
Steven Mosher says:
September 6, 2011 at 1:12 am
“Accepted aug 29.”
“heck this paper got written, submitted, reviewed and accepted faster than 50% of papers
wait to get their first response.”
Indeed – statistically, this is an outlier (or is that out-liar…).
PREDICTION: THE EDITOR OF GRL WILL RESIGN FOLLOWING A FULL APOLOGY TO SPENCER AND BRASWELL. HE WILL WRITE AN EDITORIAL LAMENTING THE PUBLICATION OF DESSLER (2011), GIVEN THE TECHNICAL PROBLEMS IT CONTAINS, AND ITS NEAR UNIVERSAL CRITICISM FROM CLIMATE WEBSITES…/sarc
I wonder what Kevin said. Perhaps “Don’t worry about Wagner, we’re taking him and his journal down. Just don’t mention albedo in your paper. If anyone asks, tell them your albedo data matches the models.”
In separate communications, Rajendra Pachauri possibly concurred, affirming “Just don’t mention libido, I’m covering that in my next novel.”