Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
James Hansen has taken time off between being arrested to produce another in the list of his publications. It’s called “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications“. This one is listed as “submitted” …
Normally these days I prefer to only deal with scientific papers, which of course leaves activist pleadings like Hansen’s stuff off the list. But in this case I’ll make an exception. Here’s my sole reason for bringing this up. Hansen’s paper says the following (emphasis mine):
The precision achieved by the most advanced generation of radiation budget satellites is indicated by the planetary energy imbalance measured by the ongoing CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) instrument (Loeb et al., 2009), which finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). Because this result is implausible, instrumentation calibration factors were introduced to reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models, 0.85 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009).
I bring it up because it is climate science at its finest. Since the observations were not of the expected range, rather than figure out why the results might be wrong, they just twisted the dials to “reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models.”
And curiously, the “imbalance suggested by climate models”, of some 0.85 W/m2, was actually from Hansen’s previous paper. That earlier paper of his, by coincidence called “Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications“, gave that 0.85 W/m2 figure as a result from Hansen’s own GISS climate model … but all this incestuous back-slapping is probably just another coincidence.
Of course, you know what all this means. Soon, the modelers will be claiming that the CERES satellite results verify that the GISS and other climate models are accurately duplicating observations …
You can see why Hansen’s “science” gets left off my list of things to read.
w.
PS—Upon further research I find that according to Loeb et al., 2009, they didn’t just tweak the dials on the CERES observations to get the answer they wanted, as I had foolishly stated above.
No, they didn’t do that at all. Instead, they used…
an objective constrainment algorithm to adjust SW and LW TOA fluxes within their range of uncertainty to remove the inconsistency between average global net TOA flux and heat storage in the earth–atmosphere system.
I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that it wasn’t just twisting dials, they actually used an objective constrainment algorithm to adjust their Procrustean Bed …
UPDATE: Some commenters have noted that my article implies that Hansen used those CERES satellite results in the study in question. Hansen did not use them, stating correctly that the uncertainties were too great for his purposes. —w.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Sean:
The results from Argo are another gaping hole for those working for ‘The Cause’. Easier to avert one’s eyes and gaze heavenwards I guess.
Instead of sending up CERES at great expense, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to use an exisisting telecommunications sattelite and just bounce the computer model results of it.
From Wiki: Ground and in-space calibrations agree to within 0.25%.
Looks like NASA’s calibration system isn’t woth a fried dog turd.
Another way is to look at the Earth facing side of the moon every month during the new moon from a satellite in Earth orbit. The moon’s albedo doesn’t change (much), the earth’s does. Measure variations in the reflected Earthshine on the surface of the moon gives you a “good enough” measurement of Earth’s albedo if you are only interested in the anomaly and not the absolute value.
My eye can’t measure the exact output of a light bulb in lumens but I can tell if a light is getting brighter or dimmer without knowing the exact number.
If over a 20 year period I see a trend, that’s all I need to know.
http://www.bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/
Hansen has got a bit of a problem. ‘Back Radiation’ can do no thermodymamic work. It’s Prevost exchange energy, a measure of the impedance to IR of the atmosphere – temperature convolved with emissivity.
Any engineer or physicist with process engineering training looks at what climate science [and Aarhenius] have done and shout ‘WTF’.
This is the most elementary of radiation physics’ mistakes and invalidates the whole subject.
jorgekafkazar:
So is there an article somewhere about this discrepancy on instrumentation accuracy? Not that I’m disputing you, Hansen claimed that 2010 was the hottest year by about 0.01C where I remember instrumentation accuracy can vary by about 0.5 degrees. I remember reading that his error bars where +\- 0.3 degrees.
Like- “Hey Jim! The data is off from your latest model again. What rural stations do you want to omit this time?”
Willis writes “the idea of simply adjusting the satellite results to fit the output from Hansen’s previous model runs is a joke.”
And probably more frequently than he thinks, I completely agree with him.
Just another classic example of why ‘climate science’ is not comparable with real science.
Where in real science would this be standard practice: The observations are wrong, as they don’t fit current models, so we shall stick with the results from the models,”
If NASA weren’t run by overpaid lawyers and bureaucrats, this guy would have been shown the door a long time ago – but then again, if it wasn’t for his scary stories Congress might reduce their funding further.
“However, my point still stands, which was that the idea of simply adjusting the satellite results to fit the output from Hansen’s previous model runs is a joke. Hansen doesn’t even begin to address that issue.”
He does, emphatically. He says:
“There can be no credible expectation that this tuning/calibration procedure can reduce the error by two orders of magnitude…”
What more could he say?
It was Loeb who did whatever was done, not Hansen. And to find that out (paywalled AFAICT), you need to figure out what Loeb is doing with his “objective constrainment algorithm”. It might even make sense, if you look at it carefully.
crosspatch says:
December 20, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Should be easy enough for figure out the albedo of the Earth if you have an observation station on the moon. Look at the Earth, measure the brightness. Done.
Satellites are probably too close unless they are in geosync orbit.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The biggesr problem is that it is in constant flux as there are changes in cloud patterns, ice extent, vegetation, river flooding just to name a few of the natural events that change daily or from season to season.and are not the same from year to year.
Exactly right which is why one can’t really look at changes on the annual scale, they need to be on the decadal or longer scale. It would take 10 to 20 years of data to show a reliable trend. Thing is, Earth is prone to huge swings in climate in that period of time. The entire warming from both the Younger Dryas and the 8.2ky event were done in less than 50 years. We probably went from glacial to interglacial temperatures in less than 100 years but the last of the glacial ice pack probably didn’t finish melting until about 8000 years ago. That is likely the cause of the 8.2ky event. A huge glacial lake burst in Canada that drains North into the Arctic probably happened as the last of the glacial ice from the ice age gave way and flooded the Arctic ocean with fresh water.
I have not yet had an opportunity to properly read his paper still less to think about. As Nick Stokes observes, it is dangerous to make a comment without having read the paper. I do note that Hansen states:
“We conclude that the slow climate response function is inconsistent with the observed
planetary energy imbalance. This is an important conclusion because it implies that many
climate models have been using an unrealistically large net climate forcing and human-made
atmospheric aerosols probably cause a greater negative forcing than commonly assumed”
The implication of that statement requires some thought and for example on the impact upon Figure 1.
Nick writes “What more could he say?”
He describes many of the deficiencies of measurement actually. But that doesn’t stop him concluding…
“The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 ± 0.15 W/m2 during the 6-year period
2005-2010, confirms the dominant role of the human-made greenhouse effect in driving global
climate change.”
When you do get the Loeb paper (Volume 22 of Journal of Climate) see
4. Uncertainties in global mean TOA fluxes
on page 752
At first glance at the Loeb paper, it seems to me that the adjustments are reasonable. They are due to instrumentation and optical issues though I am not an expert with optics. It has to do with angles and apertures and the like causing the instrument to read an artificially high value such as:
You couldn’t make this sort of stuff up!
Oh…wait a minute, that’s exactly what they do.
Science you won’t hear:
We have used an “objective constrainment algorithm” to adjust the raw data from the LHC to show the Higgs Boson is really at 10 Gev, just where our back-of-envelope calculation published in ‘Dodgy Science Letters’ said it would be, and nowhere near the 125 Gev recorded by the unadjusted instrumentation. This result is NOT preliminary and no debate is allowed. Er, can we have our money now please…
TimTheToolMan says: December 21, 2011 at 1:24 am
“But that doesn’t stop him concluding…”
But that inference is based on ocean readings, not satellite measurements.
Quote: Should be easy enough for figure out the albedo of the Earth if you have an observation station on the moon. Look at the Earth, measure the brightness. Done.
You’d think so at first blush, but it’s nowhere near that easy. The problem is that from any single point in space (either the moon or a satellite) you can only measure the amount of sunshine reflected back to your observation point.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Surely the albedo that matters is the ‘effective’ albedo of the earth facing the sun only? Thus sort of as in measured from one direction? So, if measured from one more or less equatorial in-line position it must be a pretty good estimate, probably much better as a practical result than other convoluted methods? Why would one need complete surrounding measurements? Surely the albedo measured from a polar direction is meaningless since sunlight does not arrive from that direction. One would need a series of measurements covering one rotation of the earth in order to allow for changes in topography, and short term changes in cloud cover during that 24hr period would detract a little from the result, but it still sounds if there would be merit in it. Sorry to sound so practical… 🙂
“Surely the albedo that matters is the ‘effective’ albedo of the earth facing the sun only?”
If you are looking for a trend over time for something like climate change, the trend facing the sun will be the same as the trend facing the moon and the reading obtained during “full earth” (new moon) is with the Earth facing the sun.
@crosspatch:
Your idea of having a satellite measure the earth’s albedo as it brightens the moon has some merit. But James Hansen and I are much smarter than you. We know that the observed brightness of the moon will not be accurate until those readings are adjusted to compensate for the shadow cast on the moon by the satellite itself.
That adjustment might be very very large.
“The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 ± 0.15 W/m2 during the 6-year period
2005-2010, confirms …”
Now, I right a lot of technical reports and am well used to weasel words, but ‘inferred’ and ‘confirms’ in the same sentence (especially when the inferred value is model-derived and bears no relation to the original observed data) is an absolute classic.
The only conclusion that could reasonably be drawn was that the satellite data was in error by some unknown amount and therefore could not provide any meaningful information regarding the energy imbalance of the top of the atmosphere (given the magnitude of the looked-for signal).
Continue… I do see that this method would probably not be adeqaute as an ABSOLUTE measure of reflection… but for comparative and trend analysis it should work.
GabrielHBay;
Surely the albedo measured from a polar direction is meaningless since sunlight does not arrive from that direction. >>>
The problem isn’t that sunlight arrives from that direction, the problem is that reflected sunlight might LEAVE in that direction. Angle of incidence = angle of refraction. Since the bulk of the sunlight does not hit TOA at a right angle, but at increasingly sharp angles as one considers higher and higher latitudes, the sunlight would “leave” for the most part at angles that could NOT be measured from direct reflection at the equator. Then consider the scattering effects because the atmosphere is not uniform, the earth surface is not uniform….
Nick writes “But that inference is based on ocean readings, not satellite measurements.”
Well yes.It wouldn’t work otherwise would it. I wonder how the slopes compare.
As I recall (someone correct me if I’m wrong) (like this site needs prompting in that regard, lol) what happened at Three Mile Island was due in part to operators deciding that the readings from the safety systems were “implausible” and decided to bypass them instead of letting them safely shut the plant down.