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.
Dessler is so caught up in the chicken-and-egg puzzle that he has convinced himself that chickens are impossible.
Maybe people here can help me with something….
Do clouds move from their place of origin — cooling the earth and ocean below (or perhaps slowing the heating process) I ask this because I watched the Hurricane Irene system move along on my TV and computer screen. Temperatures appear to have dropped beneath the cloud layer… .. or do clouds remain stationary — thus lending credence to some of Dessler’s work.
Was this all faked? Like the Moon Landing? Do Clouds really remain stationary?
What did I miss?
These are serious questions (other than the second last set. 🙂 )
Wait a second! The last decade temperatures have been flat, so what cloud influence do they expect to see? Am I reading this wrong? Doesn’t this support the cloud hypothesis?? GK
Joe says:
September 6, 2011 at 7:50 am
Or that chickens lay no eggs. Obviously, Dessler has.
As I type, a post about a Cat 4 Hurricane has 11 comments on this site, while this posting, though posted later, already has 177 comments.
Does anyone have any doubts which storm interests people more?
God help us, if Mother Nature hits us with a physical Cat 5 storm while we are so distracted by this Cat 6 Hurricane.
And do not tell me there is no such thing as a Cat 6 Hurricane. There is, and it is caused by humans, and it is called, “War.”
This debate may not involve tanks and bombs, but it is a war all right. On one side is Truth, and the Beauty science based upon truth can offer us, and on the other side is falsehood, and all the misery which perverted science bears as its fruit.
phlogiston says:
September 6, 2011 at 6:47 am
“Dessler: An energy budget calculation shows that the energy trapped by clouds accounts for little of the observed climate variations.”
“A glaring straw man in the middle of the (very short) abstract. Why the hell bring in the word “trapped”?? Who on earth is talking about energy accumulating INSIDE CLOUDS!?”
He’s talking about clouds trapping energy beneath them like a blanket traps your body heat. This is true but only at night and only over land or ice. It’s radiative trapping. Land cooling at night is dominated by radiative transfer. Ocean cooling is dominated by evaporation not radiation so clouds trap very little heat there. Given the ocean covers some 70% of the earth’s surface and Dessler mentions this he seems to have a good understanding of it. He’s right that heat trapping by clouds is not a large player in earth’s energy budget.
Where Dessler leaves the reservation of understanding is he ignores the other effect of clouds – reflecting sunlight during the day. This has a huge effect on surface temperature. The sun is the only significant source of surface heating and the ocean has an effective albedo near 0% meaning it soaks up every bit of sunlight that reaches it. So even a wispy cloud that reduces solar energy reaching the surface by a mere 5% has a huge effect even though, unlike a thick cloud, it’s barely noticeable to unaided human senses.
I don’t know whether the blunder of not considering daytime albedo of clouds is due to ignorance or puposeful obfuscation but those appear to be the only two choices. The omission is particularly interesting because CERES measures energy leaving the earth by frequency and so discriminates between longwave radiative cooling of energy absorbed by the earth’s surface and shortwave reflected energy that wasn’t absorbed.
“Have these people never heard of albedo?”
That appears to be the $64,000 question. They know about it. They ignore it. They assign it a constant unchanging value in as far as clouds are concerned. Some of the models take albedo change of seasonal snow cover into account but none consider albedo change in clouds into account because they believe that global average cloud cover is constant. Global average cloud cover being constant is an assumption with very very little empirical support because we haven’t been able to measure it much before ten years ago and different attempts to obtain a measure do not satisfactorily agree.
People like Dessler know this is a huge gaping hole in the models. Cloud modeling has always been poor and global data scarce. So they argue, like Dessler is doing, that clouds don’t really matter all that much.
@- tallbloke says:
September 6, 2011 at 3:52 am
“It is not a logical impossibility that clouds are causing temperature change and temperature change is causing cloud change simultaneously. The world is a big place, there are many different processes going on in it.”
There are indeed and clouds causing temp changes and temp changes causing clouds are all part of that.
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.
There is no dispute that the cloud patterns CAUSED by the ocean thermal changes modify the total ENSO cycle – just as a cough may add irritation to an infection. 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.
Oceans are the cause, clouds are the feedback.
@- tallbloke (-Re: the claim that GCR has negligible effect on low altitude clouds.)
“Interesting assertion, which you haven’t backed up with any argumentation here. Anyway, GCR’s are not the only way cloud might be affected by another factor other than temperature.”
I quoted the sentence from the abstract in the thread discussing this –
-”We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H2SO4–H2O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer.”-
perhaps you missed that ?
@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.
Ron Cram says:
September 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
“Dessler’s paper seems to be arguing that clouds form only when temperature goes up. If any other process contributed to the formation of clouds, then LC11 and SB11 would be correct. But, according to Dessler, reality is clear and settled and clouds can only form by higher temps.”
Fred H. Haynie says:
September 6, 2011 at 6:44 am
“The use of the terms “forcing” and “feedback” with respect to the effect of clouds on energy transfer rates are missleading. A better model would be to consider them as a resistance that slows the rate of transfer. Global climate models that are based on long term averages will never be able to explain the physical realities we observe every day. While Spencer and Braswell’s paper may have errors, it demonstrates this basic fact. I’m looking forward to published responses on both sides. It will be interesting to tract the timing and journal that publishes them.”
When reading an essay by Warmista, a translation is needed. Warmista do not mean what we mean by familiar terms such as ‘cloud’, ‘sunlight’, or assertions such as ‘clouds reflect sunlight’.
A formal analysis of a Warmista computer model (computer code) would reveal that it contains no primitive predicates for ‘___is a cloud’, ‘___is sunlight’, ‘___is reflected from___’ or similar fundamental terms. In the words of the late W. V. Quine, Warmista do not quantify over clouds, sunlight, or reflection; that is, Warmista do not posit the existence of such things. For Warmista, clouds and such are epiphenomena, fluff that is determined the reality but does not determine reality. So, the Warmista postion is truly a metaphysical position and any argument to the contrary that is based on observable is treated as simply irrelevant. In practical terms, Warmista terminology simply rules out any assertion to the effect that clouds cause something.
What is found in a Warmista computer model? Predicates for radiation and the effects of radiation. So, if you want to say something about clouds in the Warmista ontology, you have to talk about radiation. If we talk about radiation only, clearly we cannot take seriously the sunlight reflected by clouds, except to the degree that the matter can be described in terms of radiation or heat transfer caused by radiation.
Like Fred Haynie, I am excited about the papers by Spencer and Braswell because they bring this issue to the fore, though they might not do it directly. I am more excited because revealing the Warmista ontology reveals that they will never have physical hypotheses about cloud behavior. Their very terminology forbids it. If you cannot have physical hypotheses about cloud behavior then your science simply cannot comprehend the work of Svensmark or Kirkby, good physical science. Warmista science must treat La Nina as statistical noise, something that Tisdale criticized forcefully on WUWT in recent days.
In conclusion, Warmista must come to understand that there is more between Heaven and Earth than their computer models are capable of addressing.
Picking ten years with no temperature change to study if clouds during that time cause temperature change…brilliant! Trying to make clouds black or white WRT climate change…why do so many demand an either/or when they live in an ‘and’ universe. If it gets cloudy before dawn, it stays warmer than had it stayed clear. Should the clouds remain during the day, it will be cooler than had it stayed clear. Studying climate change over ten years…doesn’t happen.
Exactly backwards, of course. The “proof” doesn’t need to be that climate change is natural, but that the climate is changing unnaturally. Please refer to the null hypothesis if further clarification is needed.
BTW: What evidence are you referring to? Climate models? Expert statement of belief? Neither of these are evidence. Nor is melting of the arctic ice evidence of anything unnatural.
Error Correction:
“For Warmista, clouds and such are epiphenomena, fluff that is determined the reality but does not determine reality. So, the Warmista postion is truly a metaphysical position and any argument to the contrary that is based on observable is treated as simply irrelevant. In practical terms, Warmista terminology simply rules out any assertion to the effect that clouds cause something.”
Should read:
For Warmista, clouds and such are epiphenomena, fluff that is determined By the reality but does not determine reality. So, the Warmista postion is truly a metaphysical position and any argument to the contrary that is based on observable Fact is treated as simply irrelevant. In practical terms, Warmista terminology simply rules out any assertion to the effect that clouds cause something.
Alan D McIntire – Discussion of “predator/prey” relationships.
Alan: Some of the first predator/prey studies were performed on the wolf /moose populations on Isle Royle in Lake Superior.
They showed “brilliant” connections between the moose, and the wolf populations. Finally, some brave “skeptic” pointed out that there was a difficulty with the “phase relationship” between the wolf poplulation and the moose. In point of fact, the moose population would decline because of a change in fertility of the moose, not the number “culled” by the wolves!
Eventually it was found a certain fauna, the key source of certain nutrients, related to reproduction, varied with a 7 year cycle (7 years to high, 7 years decline)…and also varied the Moose, and as a follow on, the Wolves.
Now, has anyone ever “apologized” for that error? Not really. Interestingly enough, I read an article about that systematic error that indicated it was STILL IN TEXTBOOKS 20 years after it was discovered.
That should help put the whole correllation/cause/effect thing into perspective. And when I hear of someone modeling the cloud/rain/albedo system as “predator/prey” I just laugh.
Max (From MN)
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.
@-anna v says:
September 6, 2011 at 4:50 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.”
One of the key objections to the SB11 paper is that 10 years of ENSO variations swamps any trend in global temperatures.
BUT, the average temperature for each decade has been warmer than the decade before since ~1900s.
With La Nina conditions and a very quiet sun it is STILL warmer now than during a El Nino event and an active Sun in the 1980s.
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.
What pattern of global temperature change would cause ypou to doubt your position ???
I would like one of those heat trapping clouds for my perpetual motion experiments. It seems to me that the heat trapped would result in humongous evaporation at the top of the cloud surface, which would rise rapidly and eventually cool and then return to whence it came to repeat the process. Just need to figure how to get a harness on it.
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.
I don’t remember SB11 claiming that they were in fundamental disagreement. I thought SB11 said that the illusion of positive feedback was a problem ignored by climate scientists. And this paper doesn’t seem to address that. I’m not paying for it, however, so I guess I’ll have to take someone else’s word for it. Boy, it sucks to be a plebe these days. Everything universities do is behind a paywall, even college football. 🙂
I assume Spencer has read the paper by now. After laughing uncontrollably for 5 minutes he’s likely already started a reply. Or, maybe he just can’t stop laughing and it will take longer.
Loop, loop my Kingdom for a loop … evidently Dressler’s horse is called Feedback but doesn’t answer to his name. Maybe he’s been force fed and has no bridle. Andy, go contemplate the operation of a steam engine for a while in the shade. Pay particular attention to the spheres whirling around that progressively shut off the energy supply if the speed increases. The atmosphere is a self regulating heat pump. The regulator is the physical and thermodynamic properties of water in its multiple states. If water presented a net positive feedback we would have had run away warming and the oceans would have evaporated millions of years ago. Frankly I am fed up with listening to stupid unphysical arguments like that. When is someone finally going to pull the funding from these clowns?
R. de Haan says:
September 6, 2011 at 2:58 am
Andrew Dessler: Clouds don’t reflect sunlight
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/andrew-dessler-clouds-dont-reflect.html#more
———————
Clouds don’t, but an eclipse does. 🙂
http://www.mreclipse.com/SEphoto/TSE1991/image/TSE91-GOESw.JPG
Max Hugoson says:
September 6, 2011 at 6:50 am
“I therefore wonder just how S&B’s “critics” can so “walk on water”, that they can have their analysis, counter work, and publication time table squeezed in to the time frame alloted.”
When your position is metaphysical and your opponent’s is not, you do not have to read your opponent’s work.
Interesting how prevalent in mainstream science that cause and effects are reversed. Here’s a simple way to look at clouds and I know I’m mixing some thermodynamic terms, but the point remains: Clouds are reflective. Daytime – radiative heat from sun much higher during the day than radiative heat from earth at night, so feedback is obviously negative. This simple explanation assumes similar cloud cover day vs. night. The convective heat transfer associated with cumulo nimbus clouds accentuates this negative feedback. Fewer clouds at night than day is another negative feedback. The positive feedbacks are much smaller than the negative feedbacks, so the net effect is to have a negative feedback.
Dale says:
September 6, 2011 at 7:18 am
“Just a question from a simple peon, but if Dessler claims that clouds don’t affect the climate, and clouds are made up of water vapor (a MUCH more effective GHG than anything else), then is he trying to debunk the entire warmie argument that changes in GHG’s affect climate? I hope someone more knowledgeable in the area can answer.”
Clouds aren’t made up of water vapor. Water vapor is an invisible gas. Clouds are composed of droplets of liquid water. This is usually taught by demonstration of observing a whistling tea kettle. You cannot see the steam until some distance away from the small opening. That’s because it’s all water vapor where it exits the kettle and doesn’t turn into visible steam until it mixes with enough cool air to condense and form water droplets. So where you can actually see the steam what you’re seeing is a mist of liquid water droplets.
It’s funny, it’s struck me today more than ever – as Europe is collapsing, as the US markets are collapsing, as the economy is collapsing, as the entire concept of efficient government contol of anything worldwide is collapsing…
this entire argument is such an ingrown, overhyped screamfest of nonsense! Not that Anthony’s doing anything wrong in opposing the lies, far from it! The lies must be opposed. But all in all, this issue is just kabuki theatre, full of sound and fury, Signifying Nothing.
It’s like watching WOW players argue about which magical attribute is more powerful. To the wide world at large, the answer is; Who could possibly care anymore? These scientific journals? I expect almost all of them to be gone in 10 years, or less. None of this will even be remembered.
And for those who would argue that well, it’s because of where government funding will go, that could be a point; except that we have now reached a state where there is going to be NO new government funding for anything, for any of us, for a very long time.
Endgame is Here, friends.
How long has it been since you’ve studied Quantum Mechanics?