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
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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.
Izen,
“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.”
Well that’s interesting isn’t it? You decided to insert the qualifier ‘#1’ which wasn’t even mentioned before. Nice try at bait and switch though.
The real question now is will Spencer get to rebuttal this paper on GRL or anywhere else or are the gatekeepers very much back on duty ?
izen says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:20 am
“What pattern of global temperature change would cause ypou to doubt your position ???”
The pattern would be incremental increase of temperature that reflects incremental increase of CO2. Of course, Warmista have ruled out such a pattern. They argue that a year-to-year analysis of warming for the last thirty years is problematic and the fact that is shows no serious warming should be ignored. Then they assert that a decade-to-decade analysis does show the serious warming and should be taken seriously.
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.
AJB says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:23 am
If water presented a net positive feedback we would have had run away warming and the oceans would have evaporated millions of years ago.
Unless, of course, there was some upper boundary on temperature that we could only approach asymptotically. Sounds like a job for clouds.
Motl’s response is well worth looking at. In one passage he writes:
“If you read the whole paper, you will indeed fail to find any comment on the reflection of sunlight (try to search for “reflect” in the PDF file!) which is how the clouds guarantee that a part of the heat actually doesn’t get trapped in the ocean or elsewhere. Instead, much of the paper is filled with obnoxiously arrogantly formulated crackpot opinions that such an influence of clouds on the heat content would “contradict the energy conservation”! I kid you not.”
If Spencer’s paper was so bad that it’s mere publication caused the editor-in-chief to resign in shirt tearing chagrin, then after the publication of Dessler’s paper what should be see? Mass suicide?
Like many before you, you are making a false claim that climate change means AGW. Tell me, how are these the same? The climate has been warming since the low of the Little Ice Age. If you prefer a longer time scale, the climate has been warming since the low of the last ice age. How does any of that support the AGW position?
It appears your position is based upon a misunderstanding of fundamental facts. Will you now become a skeptic?
tallbloke says:
September 6, 2011 at 6:08 am
“OK, here’s my take:”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/desslers-spencer-rebuttal-scuttled/
Right on. Bears repeating. So I did.
So… painting the roofs of all our buildings will reflect heat back (through the atmosphere) into space and avert AGW, and soot clouds cause AGW (at least this week), but water clouds with white, puffy tops don’t avert AGW. Right…..
izen says:September 6, 2011 at 8:20 am Quote BUT, the average temperature for each decade has been warmer than the decade before since ~1900s.
Have you ever heard of the LIA and previous Ice Ages?
If the temperature had not been rising steadily since then we would stil be in one.
Where does the A in AGW fit it to the “Post” Ice age temperature increases?
There are very very few anti AGW posters who do not believe that GW occurs at some point in time and we are damned lucky to be living during one.
I have to read the entire Dessler paper before I have an opinion about it. Hopefully, a free to download version will be come available soon. If this is so important, why must it be paywalled.
And, prior to an opinion, it wouldn’t hurt to re-read “Spencer and Braswell” with Dessler’s ideas in mind.
“Mainstream climate science” is an interesting concept. As with all previous “mainstream” science the concept is to not rock the boat. The earth is the center of the universe, flies spotaneously generate from rotting meat, bleeding is an excellent remedy for what ails you, etc.
It’s already been said .. but I’ll say it again.
The CLOUD study by CERN completely destroys this fellows perspective.
Maybe he needs to try reading some “science” as opposed to editorials in the NYT.
” This site is interested in opinions against global warming, and it need not give equal time to each piece of the overwhelming evidence confirming global warming. And it doesn’t need to. If you could disprove that global warming is happening or man-made, all of that evidence which says it is, wouldn’t matter.”
“Overwhelming evidence” of AGW is kinda like Sasquatch. I keep seeing vague reports that all sorts of people have reported seeing it, but when I go looking for it, all I find are grainy photos of what appears to be a man in a monkey suit disappearing into the woods.
I think Dessler made a rather incredible statement that totally ignored the ability of clouds to reflect insolation back into space. What I also find interesting is the simple fact that increased cloud cover over the equator (especially the Pacific) would have a rather immediate and drastic effect on our global climate. If you decrease the amount of incoming solar radiation to the tropical regions of the Pacific, you change everything.
It would appear the Climate Rapid Response Team has jumped the WUWT fence and are driving the conversation in circles here as they did yesterday at Dr. Curry’s site.
Don’t take the bait.
Dave Springer says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:12 am
“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.”
“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.”
Where clouds can be treated as agents of radiative “trapping,” during the night, they are real. Where they cannot be treated as agents of radiative “trapping,” reflecting sunlight, they are not treated at all or, if you prefer, treated as unreal.
Overheard inside Dessler’s head:
“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all”
(h/t Jo i Mitchell)
The non-paywalled version can be found at Dessler’s site:
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2011.pdf
Wow, Lubos goes supersonic!
Good stuff!
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/andrew-dessler-clouds-dont-reflect.html?m=1
Anthony,
I am troubled by the tedious perseverance over making a case for either “cause” or “feedback”.
The source of gain for heat is the sun and radioactive decay in the earth. That means everything else is feedback.
It just doesn’t matter whether it is called feedback or not. The issue is circumspect because the IPCC view is that clouds stimulated by cosmic radiation has no effect on climate. So their view of the cloud model, the one that diminishes the influence of cloud cover, MUST be the credible model.
In a subset of the model, clouds reflect radiation from the sun, they absorb radiation from the sun, they reflect and absorb radiation from terrestrial sources and they hold energy.
I don’t get the need to classify clouds as source or feedback. Cloud formation, is loosely connected with the gain source. When the radiation from the sun reduces ever so slightly, the cosmic radiation increases cloud formation , a positive feedback response to lower incident radiation, lowering the radiation that reaches the earth.
I think that this relationship is the one that is driving climate. The gain is solar radiative output.
In the sense that clouds effect that gain is silly. The sun doesn’t know what is happening on earth. Cloud formation and temperature are following the sun.
Paul Nevins says:
September 6, 2011 at 5:24 am
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?
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How long does it take to read this fragment? “The question of whether clouds are the cause of surface temperature changes, …….”
While I’m very amused by the publishing of this tripe, I have to admit, I’m a bit disappointed. I was rather looking forward to a raucous engagement with the warmista. Instead, this looks like an embarrassing first step towards a capitulation. Reading through the comments here and postings by Lubos Motl and Tallbloke, there just isn’t much more to add.
Dressler created a strawman and then didn’t do a very good job at refuting his own strawman! It’s over. GRL has embarrassed themselves to the point of irrelevance. Dressler has embarrassed himself, his university and his alma mater. Indeed, were I Dressler’s real parent, I’d be embarrassed. The NSF has much explaining to do. They just spent a lot of our money on this work of non-science. The peer-review process is exposed as being fatally flawed. It simply can’t be relied upon to help generate quality science in the manner it is being employed. I’d like, very much, to know who exactly were the reviewers and have someone explain how come none of them actually read S&B11? Or perhaps their reading comprehension level is so low they didn’t understand what S&B11 was stating?
Allen63 says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:46 am
I have to read the entire Dessler paper before I have an opinion about it. Hopefully, a free to download version will be come available soon. If this is so important, why must it be paywalled.
This which I posted above still works.
[snip, use the one at Dessler’s site: http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2011.pdf ~ ctm]
wws says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:30 am
As is the psuedoscience of CAGW, and for the same reason–illogical approaches to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and science. Each system you mention manifests the same illness; they all suffer from distortions of the truth.
wws says:
September 6, 2011 at 8:30 am
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… It’s like watching WOW players argue about which magical attribute is more powerful……….
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Sort of. WWS, but one of the reasons for the markets dropping, is because of our throttling of energy production. If energy production is throttled, then wealth creation is throttled. Why is the western society throttling energy production? Because of tripe such as Dressler’s bizarre blathering.
Thunderstorms are the “tower CPU heat sinks” of Mother Nature.